So we begin Season 4, after the LONG hiatus. This Conversations starts a new year, a new story, and as usual I'll be adding and expanding on existing scenes (and as a side note, where I went in Conversations 3 has no bearing on where I pick up S4. It's a new story this year.)

And in starting my Conversations 4, I had previously written a one shot for the Ressler Prompts that has Ressler's phone call with Red where he learns Liz is alive. And so, at the risk of repeating myself, I want to insert that in here, as a 'this is where we are at' point in starting this new season of Conversations, which takes place right before 401.


Ressler sits at his desk, reflecting on the events of the day. After holding Reddington at gunpoint, he'd left the criminal and his entourage, making his way back to the Post Office. Even while his gun had been held on Red, hand shaking on the pistol grip, part of him had wanted Red to kill Kirk. He was ready and willing to let Reddington take a life to avenge another. The entire drive back to work had been one of conflict and reflection. On returning, the war room was quiet and he'd gone straight to his office. And sat. And thought. He'd crossed a line. A very big line. One he would not allow himself to cross again.

His phone rings, startling him out of his thoughts. Looking at the caller ID he gives a soft groan and then answers, gearing himself up for another round with Reddington. As if their Mexican standoff at the courthouse today hadn't been enough.

"Reddington, what do you want?" Ressler isn't angry or annoyed. Just resigned to the fact that he's more like the criminal than he cares to admit.

"Donald," Reddington answers and something in the man's voice makes Ressler lean forward in his office chair.

"What is it?" Ressler asks. Something is wrong.

"Elizabeth…" Reddington stops, and at the crack in the man's voice, Ressler has the overwhelming sense he's about to hear a gunshot through the phone as Reddington ends it all with a bullet to his brain. Because it's been too much for the criminal to bear. And Ressler wouldn't blame the man one bit for taking himself out of the mix. And in an odd sort of way, it would be fitting if he were the one to hear the man's final word. His final breath. His death.

Head dipping, he speaks quietly to the man. "Reddington, you-"

"Donald. Elizabeth is alive."

Ressler's head shoots upward.

At Ressler's audible gasp, Reddington continues, voice taut. "Her death was an elaborate hoax in order to extricate her and her child from this life." He stops, then continues. "From… my life." Every word he speaks exudes pain.

Ressler can't say a word as his own feelings run the entire gamut. Shock. Disbelief. Bewilderment. Awe. Relief. Where one emotion ends and the other begins is fuzzy, as another emotion comes to the fore – that of compassion toward the man he is listening to.

Red continues. "It was perpetrated by one whom I would never have deemed capable of such intentional deception." Now there is a tightness in the criminal's voice that Ressler has never heard before. It takes a few moments before he recognizes it. Barely controlled fury. Reddington has been betrayed.

It occurs to him that they all have.

"Donald, there's more. Kirk has taken her, and Tom and Agnes are both missing. I need you here in Cuba. But wait until I get more information."

It takes a moment to realize Reddington has hung up as he sits gazing into nothing, phone still to his ear. How can Liz be alive? He had mourned her! Thoughts tumbling over each other, he staggers to his feet, drops his phone to his desk and stands a moment.

Liz is alive. And with that news, the sickening reality hits him even harder. He'd almost let Reddington kill an innocent man today. Seeking revenge for a death that never occurred. He would have participated in the killing of a man who was in no way responsible for the death of Elizabeth Keen.

"Shit..." Ressler steps away from his desk and the walk from his office is a blur, but he finds himself outside Cooper's office, feeling like he's about to implode. He hesitates, then slowly walks into Cooper's office, trying to digest it all. He won't sit down, despite his boss encouraging him to.

As he talks to Cooper, explaining how he had almost let Reddington kill a man, he falters, questioning his ethics. His morals. Everything he's held dear. And finally trusting his voice to give Cooper the news that he's just been hit with, he slowly looks to his boss.

"And Liz. She's alive."

Cooper's look shadows what Ressler had felt. He sees the emotions fly across the man's features in quick succession before he asks one word.

"How?"

Exactly what Ressler needs to know.

Cooper steps back, leaning against his desk. "We buried her. I gave her eulogy..." He looks to Ressler again. "And she's really-"

"Yes."

Cooper is still shaking his head. "What do we need to do? Where is she?"

"Cuba somewhere. Reddington wants me there."

Cooper nods, still taking in the news. "Of course. Whatever you need to do, I'll back you," he replies, looking at the haggard agent before him before placing his hand on Ressler's shoulder. "Come on, sit down."

And this time, Ressler accepts the offer, dropping into the chair as Cooper makes them both a stiff drink. Turning, he hands a whiskey to Ressler before resuming his own place behind his desk. The two men sip in silence, each processing what they've heard before Cooper looks to Ressler again.

"Don, I get the distinct impression that what happened with Reddington this afternoon has affected you more than the fact Elizabeth is alive and has betrayed all of us."

Ressler leans forward, deposits the empty glass on the desk before him and looks to the side, dropping his eyes. Both things are weighing on his mind, but in time honored response where bad news overrides good news – because Liz being alive IS good news - Cooper is correct. "I was seeking vengeance for a murder that never happened."

"All of us believed it had happened."

"Doesn't matter though. I was still ready to let Reddington kill a man in cold blood." He stands, turns and runs his hand across the back of his neck. "What does that say about me?"

Cooper rises to his feet, takes both empty glasses and refills them. "It says that you cared enough for another to want to do something about her death."

Ressler takes the offered whiskey, drops back into the chair and looks up at Cooper. "That doesn't help."

Cooper gives him a small smile, pats him on the shoulder, takes a sip of his own drink and regards Ressler. "Perhaps not. Earlier this afternoon, Reddington sat right where you are in this office. A broken man, bereft without Elizabeth who had come to say goodbye. He wasn't only offering his farewells to me personally, or the Bureau. He was saying goodbye to life."

Ressler stops twirling his glass in his fingers and looks at Cooper. "He was suicidal. I got that impression loud and clear also."

"Exactly. So what I'm saying, Don, is that I believe he wanted you to be the one to pull that trigger and end it for him. But he knows you, and knew the stakes had to be high for you to do that. He pushed every button you had, hoping you'd kill him in the process." He sighs, shifts position against his desk and continues. "But it was a no win situation for you. Kill him, or let another man be killed."

Ressler stands again, pacing. "Yeah well, I didn't pull the trigger. I had my gun sight on the back of his head, and I couldn't pull the trigger."

"No, you couldn't. Because you're not going to kill a man in cold blood. Reddington can and has done so too many times to count. And in a suicidal desire may have wanted you to be the one to end his life, but you can't. It's not who you are. And sometimes the best course of action is no action at all."

Ressler shakes his head. "So I had the wrong intention yet still did the right thing. Score one for the boy scout," he scowls.

"Don't sell yourself short. I would have done exactly what you did out there today. You're a good man, and when dealing with someone like Reddington morals can be pushed to the limit. But you prevailed and were not the one who was going to pull the trigger, and I admire you for that." Cooper pauses as Ressler sits down at the desk again. "And I know Elizabeth admires that in you a great deal," he adds quietly.

Ressler groans, leans back and shakes his head. "Liz…" He looks to the side, through Coopers windows to the unseen war room below. And while still unsure if he can put his feelings into words where Liz's return is concerned, he forges on anyway. "I can't believe she did this. Even for Agnes, I can't believe she felt it necessary to…to..." he stops, unable to voice it.

"That she felt it necessary to lie to us, betray every one of us and let us mourn her passing with no regard to our feelings," Cooper finishes. "Had things really reached that point?"

"I didn't realize they had. If she'd only talked to us…" Ressler tells his boss quietly, knowing full well why she hadn't. She would have only confided this to Tom. If she'd only talked to him...

Cooper's line of thought is obviously following the same track. "So Tom Keen knew. All this time, waltzing in here to help find the men responsible for her death, and he knew."

"Son of a bitch."

Cooper nods. "Thank you for not saying 'I told you so'."

Ressler can't hide the small scowl. "Oh, I'm saying it. You just can't hear me."

Cooper nods, knowing he deserved that one. "We'll have to deal with Tom Keen later, but first, we need to find them."

Ressler regards his boss. There is only one person he is interested in finding. "Put me on a plane and get me in the air. At least I can be on my way to Cuba while Reddington figures out where Kirk is holding her."

"I wish it were that easy. But the Bureau has no jurisdiction in-"

Ressler rises to his feet, resuming his pacing. "Screw jurisdiction. Here, take this if it helps," he tells Cooper, unhooking his badge from his belt, "and just let me go."

'Don, if it were that simple, I'd be booking two tickets and joining you. We can't do it this way. We need Reddington's intel first, and then I need to have a talk with Panabaker. We need to do this the right way."

"I know," Ressler sighs, stopping and facing his boss. "But the second we find a way with Panabaker, you get me on that plane."

"Both of you. I'll have Samar join you to find Liz."

Ressler turns and shakes his head. "I wouldn't count on it. She won't take this well."

Cooper watches Ressler pace across the small confines of his office. "Tell me something. Why aren't you angry at Liz? Or is that something else you're just not saying?"

He's been asking himself exactly that for a while now. With feelings tumbling over each other the last hour, it's been hard to sort them out and make sense of any of it. "I may be angry after I see she's safe, but for now, I just need to find her. I have a job to do."

Cooper pauses before replying, watching his lead agent. "A word of advice, Don."

Ressler stops, looks to Cooper and waits. Advice is actually welcome, right about now. "And what would that be?"

"When you find her, as I know you will, follow your instincts. Don't just make it about the job. Not everything is just about doing your job."

Ressler licks his bottom lip, and looks away. His boss knows him better than he thinks he does. Is he really that transparent where Liz is concerned? He stands at the window, looking down into the war room. And for the first time, allows his eyes to wander back to their office. To where he'd stood and picked up her foot massager the night of her funeral, knowing she'd never use it again.

"Why don't you head home for a few hours and get some rest. You look beat," Cooper offers, making no move to rise up off his desk.

Rest? There is no way his brain can shut down enough to sleep. "I will if you will," he tells his boss, not turning from the window. Because he knows his boss has been sleeping in his office, and all but living at the Post Office. Realizing he probably shouldn't have said that out loud either, he turns, "Sorry, didn't mean to-" but pauses, surprised to see Cooper smiling.

Cooper waves him off, rising to find the blankets from a filing cabinet drawer. "This old couch here is very comfortable, I'll have you know."

Ressler is about to tell him he'll just shower and grab some sleep on a downstairs cot when he changes his mind. "Yeah, I'll head home. Gotta pack a bag for wherever I end up in Cuba." He doesn't know if and when he'll be going, but he'll damn well be ready at a moment's notice when they get the word.

"Sounds like a plan. Get some rest, Don. Oh, and pack casual clothing, just in case we need to send you down there under cover," Cooper adds.

Ressler nods, bids Cooper goodnight and heads down to his office. He looks to Liz's desk, because even while she was dead, it was always Liz's desk in his heart. He's stopped himself every time he'd remembered her smiling or sitting on the edge of his desk. But now he allows those memories to come forth, wondering when he will see her again.

He smiles, looking at the empty desk and unoccupied chair. There is also something else he needs to bring from his apartment, and place back under her desk for her feet.

###

Apparently, he's not ready to go home and pack his bag just yet though, and before he even questions it, he's heading somewhere else. A place he had visited late in the night following her funeral. The fact he'd scaled the fence into the cemetery that night had seemed a mere hindrance rather than breaking and entering as he'd stood at her grave.

As it does tonight. Parking down from one of the side gates, he exits the car, looks around into the still night and once again, grabs hold of the iron railings and hops over onto the grass below. Walking under the dark trees, he doesn't need to use his phone to light his way. There is sufficient moonlight. An owl hoots off to his right, and his foot steps leave a trail in the dewy grass behind him.

Her gravestone is ahead and entering the clearing, he steps silently past the pale gravestones in the moonlight, before he arrives in front of hers. In the weeks since he's been here, the grass has made great strides in its regrowth. Gone is the dirt he'd previously knelt and run his hands through. His hand rests on the gravestone, reading the inscription. The words that had stabbed his heart previously now are hollow. Because there is no Elizabeth Keen lying in eternal rest at his feet.

"Liz...why?"

He can't answer that one, nor can she just yet. But he will ask her, even though he already knows the answer for the most part. If things had got to that point, as Cooper had asked, what must it have been like for her to take such drastic measures? To walk away from everyone and everything she held dear, to escape the life she was leading. He drops to his knees in the wet grass, leaning against the granite headstone.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. Because he should have been there more. Should have talked to her more and understood the frame of mind she'd been in. His index finger traces the outline of her name, and he finds himself blinking back tears. But these are not heartbroken tears of loss, as they were weeks ago. Now the tears that roll down his cheeks are full of regret, but mostly relief. She is not lost to him. His head rises and he takes in the starlit night above him, giving silent thanks to the One above that she still walks upon this earth.

He straightens, rises to his feet and looks down at the empty grave. "I will find you. And I'll be there more for you, Liz. I promise you that." His words are hushed in the still night, as he brushes his cheeks with his hands, sniffs and turns away from the stone. Because she isn't there. She's somewhere in Cuba and he's promised he will find her. Because he's not leaving without her this time.

###

A few hours later he's back at the Post Office, bag ready beside his desk even though there is still no word from Reddington. Standing above the war room outside his bosses office, Ressler exhales deeply as the elevator doors open below him. The last person he really wants to have this conversation with has just entered the war room. He watches as Samar exits the yellow elevator a little after 7am, making her way to her desk. Cooper exits his office right behind him. Neither man has slept more than an hour at most, Ressler having finally left the cemetery around 3:00am.

"Show time," Cooper says softly to Ressler, looking at who has arrived. He wastes no time, nor does he give Ressler a moment to decide to go tell her himself. "Agent Navabi. A moment, please?" he calls down.

Placing her shoulder bag in her drawer, Samar nods and makes her way up the metal staircase. She looks questioningly to Ressler but he remains impassive before following her silently into Cooper's office, closing the door behind the three of them. Cooper sits at his desk. Folding his arms Ressler stands behind Samar and to the side.

"Is there a problem?" Samar's eyes flit from Cooper to Ressler, then back to their boss.

Cooper's eyes slide from her and meet Ressler's before returning to Samar. You could definitely call this a problem. "Sit, please," he offers, motioning to the chair without answering her question.

"I'll stand, if that's okay," she replies, and Ressler can hear the tension in her voice as if preparing for a fight. But nothing is going to prepare her for this.

"Agent Navabi… Samar… there is no easy way to hear this, so I'll just come right out with it," Cooper tells her, folding his hands in front of him and leaning forward in his chair. "Elizabeth Keen is alive."

From his position behind her, Ressler sees the sudden drop in her posture. The shock wave as it hits her, the head tilt to the side before she recovers, stands tall again and speaks.

"Alive? How is that possible?" she asks, her words guarded and tense.

Ressler steps forward, and she turns to him as he takes up the question. "She faked her death. Made it look like she'd died in childbirth, but she didn't. The doctor was in on it." And he's speaking the words, and yet even now it doesn't seem possible this is happening, because up until 10 hours ago he'd thought her dead for weeks.

"She lied to us? To Reddington?" Samar asks, and Ressler nods. "But that day on the road, you saw her dead," she adds, turning more fully to Ressler, her voice raised in challenge.

"I did," Ressler answers, his mind filled with that awful scene again. Of her lying cold and pale with a distraught Reddington holding her hands. Kissing her forehead. Of the man breaking down and collapsing at his car, and him taking a distressed Samar in his arms as she'd sobbed. And all the while he himself had been screaming on the inside, barely keeping it together. "It was a hoax. She only appeared to be dead."

Samar straightens and the chill in her voice is unmistakable. "I see."

Ressler nods, his own fatigue in stark contrast with the spark in Samar's eyes before she turns to Cooper again.

"So what now? She comes back to work and we just go on as if nothing has happened?"

Cooper leans back in his chair. "I don't think that's possible," he replies, sighing as he shakes his head. "For two reasons. The first being that we don't know exactly where she is."

Ressler speaks up again, offering up the information they currently have. "She's in Cuba." He hesitates, drops his eyes and then continues. "But Alexander Kirk found her and has taken her. Tom and Agnes are missing."

"Taken her? What does Kirk want with her?"

"That, we don't know," Cooper tells her. "So far we are the only ones here who are aware of this turn of events. But that will change in the next hour or so, as we inform the Bureau of Agent Keen's return," Cooper tells her calmly, yet there is no hiding the disbelief tinged with frustration. He's in a difficult position. They all are.

"This is all we have, until we hear more from Reddington," Ressler adds, stopping as Samar's phone lights up with a text. She hesitates, quickly reads it and looks to Cooper.

"Sorry, but it's Aram. He's going to be a little late. It's not my place to say but I think he needs to hear this sooner, rather than later. May I let him know of the miraculous resurrection of Liz?"

The tone in her voice is calculating, almost mocking, but Cooper ignores it for now. "I'll call him in a moment, before he gets here."

"Very well. Will that be all?" she asks, looking to Cooper then Ressler. Cooper nods, effectively dismissing her from his office. Without a glance to either of them, she strides from the office. Both men see the clenched fists at her side.

Ressler leans against the wall as she exits, shoves his hands in his pockets and looks to his boss. "One down, about thirty to go."

Cooper allows himself a soft chuckle. "Yes, and they're all going to take it in different ways. And you were right about how Agent Navabi would react, but I'm sure it will pass. Aram will be a wide eyed puppy, unable to digest it at first, but then jump around in joy. To be honest, I myself am torn. I'm not sure if I want to hug Elizabeth or tear strips off her for putting us through the last few weeks."

Ressler knows exactly how he feels.

Cooper shakes his head, takes his phone from his pocket and dials a number. "Aram. Harold Cooper."

Leaving the office to let Cooper make his phone call, Ressler mentally prepares himself for the disgust Samar is sure to be exuding. But he's in luck as she's nowhere in sight as he heads down the stairs to his office. Once again, he finds himself standing at Liz's desk just as he'd done a few hours ago in the middle of the night. He checks his phone, knowing full well he hasn't missed a call from Reddington, but can't stop himself from checking.

A few minutes later he's out by Aram's desk as the yellow elevator door opens, revealing the IT guru pushing his bicycle. Almost to his relief, Samar is at the elevator to meet Aram and deflect his endless questions. Ressler only half hears Samar's clipped responses to Aram, just waiting for the questions to come his way. Yet still his mind is elsewhere. He can't head for locations unknown in Cuba just yet. But the waiting overnight has shown him clearly where his path lies.

He will find Liz, take hold of her and hug her tight.

And never let her go again.