A/N: I was going to do something serious, instead I spent my day writing this. Perhaps less clever of me.
AU where no one is related. Don't ask me for details. Never look a gift horse in the mouth and all that...
...And despite that he hated the word, his future was approaching.
The light flickered on and off. Dark corners. Mold spread like vines, moist licked up the lengths of the wall like a wet tongue. Even the small window fitted in the door had grown opaque with neglect.
Punches like breaths, sagging, the bones in a hand striking meat, striking flesh. Hitting a man. The light buzzed, mingling with the sound of abused lungs and ribs fraught with demise.
In the other room, nonplussed from autonomy, a man leaned forward. "Carl," he said. "Consider your situation."
Wet cough. Then a small nod, like a spasm. The man on the floor struggled with his obstructed eyes.
"Your wife is a wonderful woman. I would hate to see her widowed."
Leaning his head back against the rusty metal of the wall, the man sucked in another breath. "You fucking-..." he lisped, struggling with the rearrangements in his mouth.
The other man straightened up, cocking his head to the side. "Yes. It wouldn't bother her for long, though."
A sound, like a sniffle, came from the floor. It could have been tears, or snot. Perhaps it was blood that clogged the man's nose.
"This is me, asking nicely. When I am done asking nicely, there is absolutely nothing that will stop me from going to her place of business, and putting a bullet in her head. Alright?"
The man he'd called Carl shook his head vigorously. "I'll get you the documents," he croaked. "Don't hurt her."
He hated the word. Hated it, hated it, hated it!
"Future". As if the universe had a plan, as if it was conscious, as if it didn't matter what he did.
The classmates he'd left back at the bureau? Well, he came back to them.
Measly men and women, fearful like cockroaches, hanging on to the promises of their promotions. Security guards and special agents. They'd all gathered around him now, a box of sugar in an anthill. Swarming in the corridor, shoving him in a bunker, a neatly bandaged pot for people like him.
They treated him well, then less well. Courteous, hostile, a comic display of insecurity and fear. Eventually their faces blurred into one, a smudge of a person. They were here because they'd been rewarded, awarded, promoted. The sum of their actions left no alternative. The best of the best worked together to snare him.
He was there because his feet had taken him there. Because at some point there had been a decision to go, to enter the sliding glass doors and hand his passport to an officer. He'd walked in, already waiting for them, expecting them to come. They did so, but angrily.
The FBI, or whatever they called the dark nook of the bureau they'd hidden him in, behaved like an enraged child. Stomping their feet, snarling out of sheer frustration. The same questions, over and over, a verbal water boarding that made his skin crawl. They interrogated him, absurdly obsessed with a protocol that had never served them well. Why was he there? Had he lost his mind? Had he come to murder them and eat their children? He was passed along after a while, handed down like useless fine china, too valuable to throw away but too refined to use.
A guard put him in another cell, shackling him to the seat then drawing a sigh of relief as he left.
It was a Tuesday. He met his future on a Tuesday.
There was a somber expression on her face, neatly arranged as to not give anything away. She sat down, her back straight as a ruler, a code book approved stance. In comparison, the crossing of her legs was an exquisitely feminine motion. Elizabeth, the name on top of the quite sizable folder he'd gathered, didn't suit her. A petulant profiler turned agent, or something in between. She could not only catch crooks but also plot out their minds at the same time.
He had to laugh. "Agent Keen, what a pleasure."
It had taken time, but he'd done his research. One piece at a time, photos and grades, a casual checking-in. A testing of the water before committing to its cold.
She turned her palms out, "Well, I'm here."
"You got rid of your highlights."
When he'd first found her, after a search online and a tour to the DMV, he'd been met with someone with reddish hair. Mostly brown hair, but it had had tinges of red in it. Strands of honey.
Her eyebrows went up.
"You look much less Baltimore. You get home much?"
"Tell me about Zamani," she said.
"I don't get home much," he said.
Then again, she should know. She'd been there when it burned down.
His future was a fragile thing, much too reminiscent of a meeting between a wine glass and the floor.
The guards had let her past. That was the first mistake.
When she came into the room, he made a notion as if to continue on with his crossword.
Second mistake.
The woman he'd come to know as chilly, distant, bound tightly by rules, paced across the expensive Persian mat. Throwing a lamp, she screamed, she yelled at him, teeth bared.
He dismissed her anger, her concern.
Third mistake.
He put the pen on the table.
Last mistake.
The future was uncaring. It was like a production line in an endless factory, jumbling the pieces, moving them along.
Through some compromise he was able to employ Luli and hire Dembe back. Things moved quicker with them around. The two of them carved out their own places in his life, decided by their past. Luli, both cold and warm, but never at the same time, managed his affairs when he couldn't. She filled him in on the world outside, the little people moving about their lives. One of his suppliers had taken an unplanned vacation to a super max. It was one of those vacations without an end in sight. That weasel would talk as fast as his eerily white teeth would let him. A red flag.
He greeted Dembe with a smile. The man would keep an eye on possible assailants.
Dembe had no blind spots.
As two distinctly different liquids the people had split into groups. The ones abiding the law were on one side, regarding him with disbelief, their brows drawn together in annoyance. Reddington got in his car.
He could go wherever.
Instead, he went to a soiree. He went there with Elizabeth and put her in a nice dress for no other reason than his own amusement.
At the gala, a foul woman made a short speech. Her ugliness shone through, her kindness a mere appropriate facade. A stockbroker, betting against women. Whatever fate was doled out to her this night, it was far less upsetting than the evil of her plans. He admired the ruthless way she'd set up shop. He despised her work. She tricked her victims into business, took them from their homes and families, for no other reason than money. Power. The hypocrisy of it all tasted sour in his mouth.
There hadn't been an antidote simply because there was no one that deserved it. Elizabeth tried. She tried, fiercely, screwing the body off of a pen, shoving it in the woman's neck. Seeing it anew was like watching an unfortunate rerun of his own demise.
"What is it with you in hotel rooms and pens in people's necks?"
Hours later, a pier, the two of them, and Dembe. The brisk day engulfed the sky. Floriana had died in her arms. He'd stood by. He would be held accountable. Not that it mattered. Their organization was buried so deep it'd take a decade to get it out of the dark. A decade of insistent digging, of working with shovels and hands, a decade of blinking sweat out of your eyes. No one would bother.
On the pier, Elizabeth spoke aloud of doubts. She told him. She told him things, simply because she was able to tell him. That was how he qualified. To that specific job, he was the only applicant. She doubted herself. It ached in her, to have missed Floriana.
"Do we ever truly know anyone?" he asked.
They were only human. An endless range of emotions, of longing and bad deeds. And evil rarely presented itself by name.
The future was demanding. It took and it took on behalf of a hunger that was all-consuming.
"I want to know the truth," she said. "I want to know why you chose me." The truth, as it pertained to her and him and the old house, was not something you could deliver in two sentences or less. You had to build up to it, brick on brick, until it eloped out from underneath you. The truth was the bait he used to set the trap. The truth was what she wanted. The truth would make her leave.
A day passed. A day with sacrifices and decisions.
"You didn't have to kill him," she said. Always rebuking him, second-guessing. As if mercy was a scientific constant, something solid.
"I believe I will always do whatever I feel I have to do, to keep you alive," he retorted.
And once, finally, he could leave it at that. He reached for the handle, felt a gust of street air, brilliant, cold, and then Liz leaned in to pull it shut.
"You owe me an answer."
"What's the question?"
"Why me?"
"Because of your father."
Increasing frustration.
Some things you can't say.
"We're not the same," she said hotly. "I have a life, people who care about me. But you... this is all you have."
"I have you."
One of the greatest American authors had lived out his life in the small apartment, clogged with books. When Reddington had come to see him, he'd always put his hat on the larger pile of books by the door. An impromptu commode solely built out of words.
There were bottles of foggy liquid strewn around the flat. He found the first one hidden under the bed. The next one in the closet behind another pack of manuscripts. It tasted of juniper, of old cigarettes, late nights that staggered into the early morning hours.
Grey, one of the men in his periphery, looked out the window.
"Why did you waste the opportunity on the girl?"
"I'm betting on the long play. The future."
Grey took his leave.
"Your future is arriving now."