A/N: Happy Secret Hiatus, Whitney! I hope you enjoy! This story started as something different (what I had planned...as much as I plan, at least) but then these two were mean and insisted on another course for it. All I could do was write it, or else my muse refused to behave and my head would pound. So I stopped fighting it and just went with it. Nice and angsty, no fluff sadly. I'm even starting to delve into theories regarding the mythology, so that's fun. Anyway, enjoy my contribution to the slew of "on the run" fics that have been popping up all summer! Based on a prompt from the Lizzington Shippers FB page.
Fully disclaimed.
This particular safe house was so ordinary, so...domestic, that she was almost able to convince herself that this was her own home. That she had finally agreed to move out of the motel and settle into something that was more than just a place to sleep.
Almost.
It was hard to convince yourself of domesticity when your life was anything but, she thought grimly. Standing there in the study, though…it was a quiet place, and she found that it allowed her some semblance of peace. She was hardly ever disturbed; ever since they had arrived yesterday she had been left to do as she wished. It was a familiar routine, and while it wasn't necessarily unwelcome, Liz found herself wishing that she would stop being treated like the most fragile of china.
It had been a month. One month since she had shot Connelly and turned her back on the FBI. It's not like she had had much choice in the matter; her career was over no matter if she had stayed or disappeared. Over and over she told herself this, but it didn't make coming to terms with it any easier. The bastard had asked for it, but she had never shot someone other than out of self-defense. It was cold-blooded murder. No sane person was able to do something like that and not question everything they believed about themselves. As an added bonus, she was already questioning who she was and now that her memories from the fire had flooded back she was dizzy with all of the realizations that it brought.
Pulling that trigger had set off a domino effect, and the end wasn't anywhere in sight.
She was holding on, though. Despite it all, she had been able to anchor herself to the one constant in her life. That anchor was making it possible to tread water instead of drown. There was just one problem: that anchor seemed to think that she would break when touched, and downright tiptoed when around her.
It seems I'm the one person in this world that can make Raymond Reddington tiptoe of all things.
The study was tucked back in a corner of the house, and was fairly sizable. Rows upon rows of books lined the shelves, and a desk sat on one side while a curved couch sat on the other. A large bay window spanned the middle, with a simple armchair and side table facing outward. Somewhere to read while enjoying the view, she figured. A beautiful ornate rug filled the empty space in the center, and her socked feet sank into it when she walked across it. It was a hideaway, quiet and out of the way. A wonderful place.
Walking over and sliding a book out of the shelf at random, Liz went to the couch and stretched out and flipped to a random page. She never actually read when she was in here; rather, she just read the words on the page and let them distract her mind from buzzing. If asked what she was reading, she wouldn't have a clue.
Time seemed to pass without her noticing, and she found herself simply existing. The sun had shifted its position in the sky when she felt her body tingle and go on high-alert, silently warning her that she was no longer alone in her space. There was no need for the warning, however. She knew exactly who it was without even looking up.
Her blue eyes raised from the words on the page to meet his green ones, and she quirked her brows questioningly. He looked rather…relaxed. Moreso than she had ever seen him. He had stripped down to just his pants and shirt, buttons undone and sleeves rolled up. No tie, no vest, no belt—he didn't even have shoes on, she noticed in amusement, catching sight of his socked feet. She hadn't the slightest idea how long he had been there. His hands were in his pockets and his head was tilted to the side as he looked at her, a thoughtful expression on his face. His watching her didn't bother her as much as it used to; Liz was used to it after almost three years of working with him. It was just something he did.
"Did you need something?" she asked, not unkindly. He didn't usually seek her out like this, especially in the middle of the day. He had continued to work while on the run, and normally conducted business while she busied herself doing…well, anything that took her mind off of things, really. It had been a sort of routine that they had fallen into, and although they talked on a regular basis and ate meals together, it was hardly the partnership that she had expected.
It was almost as if they were in an in-between state; the part after the shit storm but before the recovery.
"Not in particular. I merely came to see where you had chosen to tuck yourself," he replied simply, and his mouth quirked up in the beginning of a smile. "I see my prediction was correct. What are you reading?"
He made his way over to the couch and sat in the space she made, curling her legs up and tucking them underneath herself. She glanced at the cover before tossing it lightly to the floor, and shrugged indifferently as she turned back to him.
"Some history book, I think. I don't pay much attention. I just read it without absorbing it. It's…it's just something to keep my mind busy, honestly." Otherwise, she would go crazy. She stayed silent on that bit, however. He surely knew what she was going through. He knew the truth, after all, even if he refused to address it.
"It's a good coping mechanism, keeping the mind busy. It allows for certain kind of…peace. It's an illusion, but eventually that illusion becomes an accepted wiring in your brain and you begin to believe it. It becomes easier, then. It never goes away, but after a while you find out how to live with it and it just becomes a routine to push it down and lock it away. You find pleasures to mask it, and they allow for some relief and escape from the dark recesses of the brain." His voice grew softer, his eyes drifting farther away as he spoke. Liz knew that they weren't just talking about her anymore; once again he was letting her in, in his own way.
His mouth pressed into a thin-lipped smile and his eyes refocused on her, looking at her with a mixture of sadness and regret.
"I'm sorry, Lizzie. This entire situation—"
"Red, stop. Please." Liz closed her eyes and took a steadying breath, trying not to allow her voice to tremble. She had expected them to have a conversation at some point, but she couldn't bear his self-loathing another moment. It was like a kick in the gut, knowing what she knew now. She understood it, but it needed to stop.
"Stop it. Stop hating yourself for something that I did; you didn't pull that trigger. I was fully aware of and in control of my actions. They were…fueled by emotion, yes, but I knew what I was doing." Her jaw firm, chin tilted high, and blue eyes flaring were a sight to be reckoned with, and she couldn't help but feel a flash of satisfaction when she saw his brow furrow and lips purse. He was rendered speechless, if only for a moment.
"Shooting Connolly had some consequences that I wasn't prepared for, it's true," she admitted, giving him a sad smile, "but I would rather deal with that than the prospect of—" Liz cut off abruptly and looked away, biting her lip. She hadn't told him what had made her shoot Connolly. Her trigger, so to speak. Truth be told, she was afraid to tell him. Once he realized that she valued his life so much that she would kill for it, there'd be no turning back. She knew how hard he worked to keep her out of his criminal filth, as he called it, and she knew that he would not approve in the slightest. The last time she had saved his life he had insisted that she never do it again. What would his reaction be now?
"Lizzie," he ventured after a moment, "what did Connolly say to you?" He was looking at her intently, a question in his gaze.
"He said a lot of things," she replied vaguely with a shrug, trying to feign nonchalance. "Mostly he threatened me, my job, the people I care about…" She sighed and turned back to him, realizing that he was going to figure it out sooner or later if she didn't tell him. "He threatened the death penalty for you. That's what made me pull the trigger."
Her proclamation was met with a stark silence. He had gone so still as he sat staring at her that she was hardly sure if he was breathing. The silence dragged on, and Liz became wound tighter and tighter as she waited for his response. Finally he turned away from her, and instead looked out the window, sagging noticeably as he rested his weight on his elbows and braced them against his knees. He looked like a man who could no longer hold the weight of the sins he bore.
"Please don't be angry. I know you don't want me to—"
"Angry." He barked the word out harshly, his mouth twisting into a sour expression. "That would be easy, wouldn't it; to be angry. It would be selfish of me to be otherwise. And yet here we sit, and I find myself anything but—"
The last bit he was almost growling, and Liz recoiled slightly; she had never seen such anger from him, particularly directed at himself. His eyes were hard, and his face had the ugliest expression she'd ever seen. He hated—absolutely hated—himself. It was as plain to her as anything.
"Red." No reaction. "Reddington. Red." Still he didn't look at her; it was as if she was talking to a wall. "Damn it, Raymond, look at me."
Now that got a reaction. He visibly flinched and looked at her in shock, obviously taken aback at both her tone and the use of his first name.
"You don't think I understand what all this is about? This…hatred you feel towards yourself?" She pushed off of the couch angrily and glared at him, hands on her hips, and closed the distance between them until he was forced to look up to meet her gaze. "Do you think you're the only one in this world who hates what they've become? What they've had to sacrifice in order to survive and make truth will out? You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders like you're the only one who can manage the burden. You think that your sins and those you carry for others make you undeserving of love. That you're a monster. If that's true, then I must be one too, because I shot a man in cold blood and I'll be damned if I don't think that he deserved it on some level." She crossed her arms and looked at him questioningly. "So tell me, Red: am I a monster, or did I simply do what was necessary to survive?"
It was a loaded question, they both knew it; she didn't simply ask it for herself. She was forcing him to think, to reevaluate it all in a context outside of his warped outlook. How he could think himself a monster for what he did…it made sense why he saw himself in that way, but really, when you compared it to all of the good he had done in the process, it was hard to be so black and white about it.
The world wasn't divided up into good and evil; there was evil in the good, and good in the evil. You just had to learn how to look at the world on a gray canvas. Why couldn't he see that when reflecting on who he was?
With a sigh she sat beside him, rubbing her forehead where a headache was starting to form. If there was one thing Liz wished, it was for all of this complicated nonsense between them to be over and done with. It was making everything more difficult than it needed to be.
"Tell me something," she said after a moment. "That night…what made you do it?"
The fire swirled around her, and everything was aflame. The air was so thick she couldn't breathe, and she was crying, stumbling around blindly until a hand caught her arm and pulled her forward. Daddy? she thought, but no, daddy was nowhere in sight, and the gun—oh the gun—it had gone off, and daddy had been shot. She had shot daddy, that's right, but daddy had been hurting mommy and she didn't like it when daddy hurt mommy, and oh, she had only wanted to help—
"When you said you remembered everything…the memory. It's intact?" he asked softly, jarring her back to the present. She rubbed her arms, trying to rid herself of the goosebumps that rose on her skin, and nodded.
"I remember it as it happened, but I never knew why. Remembering now, though...I can piece things together. I was right, before. When I said you were there for the Fulcrum. You told me it wasn't that simple, but I refused to listen. What did you mean?"
He looked at her then, seeming to weigh his options. She knew he was trying to decide on what he could tell her. He didn't want to endanger her, she knew, but he obviously wanted to her know the truth. Things would be so much easier if it were all out in the open, but until now he had been determinedly close-lipped about it.
"You must understand that before now, I have remained silent about that night because I thought that by blocking your memory and refusing to tell you the truth—despite how much it was paining me to keep it from you—I was allowing you plausible deniability. Something that on the chance that I could no longer keep you safe, afforded you a layer of protection from those who wished you harm. You can't get information out of someone who doesn't have information."
"So you aren't going to tell me," she said flatly.
"I didn't say that. Elizabeth, if I tell you about that night you need to know that there's no going back. If we fail, you will no doubt be implicated and that extra layer of protection will cease to exist. You say you want to know the truth. Are you ready to handle the consequences of what that truth will bring?"
Was she? Perhaps the question wasn't if she was ready to handle it, but whether she wanted to. For so long she had asked him for the truth, and here he was ready to lay it out before her…it was all she had ever wanted. Was she ready? Did she want it?
"I know that I want the truth. I want to know what happened that night that changed both of our lives irreversibly. Why you did what you did…why you are the way you are. You're offering to tell me all of it?" She knew how to word her questions now, to make sure he didn't tell her half-truths. If he wasn't going to tell her all of it, then she wasn't ready to listen.
"…yes." He said it with hesitation, and it came out so softly that she was afraid she was hearing things. But he squared his jaw and gave her a curt nod as he said it, and that was that.
Raymond Reddington was going to tell her everything.