Because nope nope nope I can't wait for this whole story arc to be resolved on the show, so here's my two-part take on how I wish things would go.
Weren't we like a pair of thieves
With tumbled locks and broken codes
You cannot take that from me
My small reprieves your heart of gold
Weren't we like a battlefield
Locked inside a holy war
Your love and my due diligence
The only thing worth fighting for
-'The Only Thing Worth Fighting For', Lera Lynn
It happens in stages. In waves.
emptiness a hum
emptiness a hum an ache
Emptiness. A hum. An ache. An ache. Brightness.
They're the first things she's aware of when she breaches consciousness once again. There's a sense of something missing, an ache and another ache that runs even deeper and even as her eyes remain tightly closed against the harsh lighting, she realizes what it means.
The hum comes from the light over the bed. It's unrelenting. It's too quiet for her to still be in that godforsaken club.
No disco lights. No music.
"Are you back with us, Elizabeth?"
Her mind is still passing through the last remaining cobwebs of haziness and for one brief second the rasping voice resonates as someone else's and she has a spike of solace and then souring dismay.
She opens her eyes because she knows she's not there. She knows she's not where she had been the last time she closed her eyes. With them.
"Are they okay?" she rasps. "My baby…" her voice breaks.
Mr. Kaplan stares down at her from her perch on the small bed, lips pursed in what would initially seem like displeasure with Elizabeth's emotions, but her eyes relay her sympathy. It's nighttime beyond the window over her shoulder. It's been hours, she thinks.
"They're fine," Kate assures her. "All of them."
Her baby - Agnes. Her baby is somewhere that isn't her arms and might not be her father's arms and she pushes herself to sit up at the thought, hisses at the immediate pain, and Mr. Kaplan chides her softly, maternally. It's a foreign thing, to be on the receiving end of it. She wonders if she can get her voice to sound like that. Wonders if she'll have a chance to find out.
She's the reason for this plan. Liz wants her to have a family, a good one, and if things had continued the way they were going, she just couldn't see it happening. Separation now, as painful as it is, might mean an actual chance at a future.
Nick comes in to check on her. He looks awful, pale and drained and she feels guilty about it, the fact that she's dragged him into all of this, but she swallows down the tears and asks him how long he thinks it will be before she can leave.
It's good to have a number of days from him. It's a solid assurance while her plan moving forward may take months, years. It's something she can rely on.
Not like Tom, she's predicted correctly.
"Tom left," Mr. Kaplan announces the next time she sneak away to see Liz, who is currently snipping away at dyed red hair in front of the small cabin's bathroom mirror.
Her fingers grip the scissors tightly as she turns sharply to stare at her, and panic races down her spine and floods her gut in the heart beat before the older woman continues to speak.
"I convinced him I could be trusted with the baby's safety. Waited until he left and brought Agnes to Raymond and Dembe."
Kaplan takes the scissors out of the other woman's relief-sagging grip and steps out of the small space, returning with a chair. Elizabeth allows Kaplan to push her down into the seat, the fingers at her shoulders are firm, but kind.
Elizabeth watches her work in the mirror, feels assured fingers comb through her hair and gather and pinch them in small clumps to clean up the pixie cut that's being created. "Tom-Jacob - whatever you call him - he said he couldn't handle it. He had to get away. Said you deserved that much from him."
Lips purse for a moment, as if she's debating telling Liz the rest.
"I think he suspected."
Snipping fills the empty silence.
Liz swallows, feels her eyes sting. "Did he...did he say something to him?"
Kaplan pats her shoulder.
"Even if he did, I don't think it would have even registered. They're all grieving, Elizabeth. They're all still in shock."
Kaplan surveys their work in the mirror. It's sloppy but it will do.
"Just do what needs to be done, and get back to all of them. That's the best thing you can do for them right now. Follow through. Make it quick. Make this time count."
Walking away hurts. It doesn't stop hurting, like she worries it might with time, and somehow that comforts her - she can't walk away from her loved ones so easily. She slowly, stiffly wraps herself in conviction and waits for rare, private moments to unravel. The closer she gets, the less time there is for that.
She checks in with Kaplan when she can.
Nick is gone, vanished without a trace to preserve his life. The Task Force moves on, trying to do the work they've always promised to do. Dembe, at first, is rarely seen far away from Raymond Reddington's side.
And then, even Liz is hearing talk that Reddington has gone into some kind of retirement. Dembe is handling the day to day operations.
"The bottles are gone, hasn't touched a drop since Tom left. He's got some nice little house on the shore and he's got round the clock security. He's taking care of himself to take care of Agnes," Kate tells her over a crackling phone, voice quiet and hard to hear over the noise surrounding Liz on the windy dock, halfway across the world.
Liz closes her eyes and grips the phone. Agnes is two months old by now. Her memory of her daughter's beautiful, tiny face is probably no longer accurate. She wonders what she looks like. What she's like.
The ache threatens to drown her and she opens her eyes, looks at the yacht in the harbor across the way from her, and reminds herself there's someone on there who can help her get closer to her goal.
Kaplan agrees when she asks her to give Agnes a kiss for her. To tell her she loves her very much. She ends the call and throws the burner phone into the bay and feels resolve straighten her shoulders and spine.
When it's done, finally entirely totally done, it's been another eight months.
There's snow, but it's less here at the shore than it was on her drive. It makes the ride seem longer, and anxiety and anticipation are doing a good enough job of making the ordeal feel relentless, even with Dembe and Kaplan in the front seat, the first time in so long she's been around familiar faces. But months seem like nothing compared to this last drive - what she hopes is the last drive.
Dembe presses the code into the keypad at the gate, waves at security, and continues up the drive.
The house is beautiful, peaceful, and it's everything she could have hoped for as a home for her daughter, or wished for the man who has actually stopped running to raise her daughter here.
Dembe lets them into the house.
"We're back here Dembe," calls a voice she's missed for months, and there's a deep tug and spreading warmth in her chest. We.
It's early evening, and there's the quiet sound of television on in another room further back in the house. Raymond must not have thought anything of Dembe coming over, not after his brother and bodyguard had called to tell him he was on his way. The whole place is bright and clean and her throat gets tight at the sight of a colorful, small plastic toy casually left out on the kitchen counter at the end of the hallway ahead of them.
This is a home, she realizes. He lives here. She's amazed at how much he fills up this space.
Kate tells her to wait at the door while they go to find the homeowner. They want to prepare him.
And she hears gentle, hushed voices for a few good minutes, but then she hears her and it's too much, she can't wait. Elizabeth walks down the hallway into the clean, brightly lit kitchen, and rounds the corner into the cozy den and back from the dead into Raymond Reddington's life.
He'd stopped talking, confusion and concern coloring his voice, the second he'd heard footsteps approaching, and now he truly seems frozen as he looks past Kate's arm at the newcomer.
He's still in the process of defensively bringing the infant in his arms closer to his chest, but she feels her heart practically stop at the sight of her daughter. It takes all of her willpower not to rush forward, to run her hand over that bright, soft hair on her child's head. To hold her close and smell her and never let go.
Raymond's furrowed brow smooths as confusion is replaced with shock on his features. She tries to keep still under his gaze; she too, can't believe she's standing here after all this time. His mouth parts and she's too far away to be certain, but his eyes look glossier, and she wonders if they sting like hers are right now. Wonders if his gut has plummeted like hers.
And then the shock and awe is smothered under anger, and his jaw snaps shut and his lips press together firmly.
"Take the baby," Raymond says sharply, and Dembe darts forward, gently scooping her daughter up and then both he and Kate are walking up the stairs on the other side of the room. She can't help it; she stares hungrily after them, has to put her hand on the counter to keep herself in place.
A small amount of indignation bubbles up in her, but she swallows the anger down - she can imagine what he thinks of her right now, and she can't lash out like that. Right now, he's trying to do what he thinks is best. Just like she's done.
Her eyes slide back to Raymond Reddington, slowly rising from the recliner and stepping into the empty center of the room, hands in his pockets, in essence blocking her access to the same staircase.
He stares at her, closed off in a way she's never seen before, never could have predicted. Sudden understanding of just how furious he is seeps into her, and the hope that her return would go well withers.
But then he swallows, and her eyes drop to her scar on his neck, and she realizes he hasn't launched into false bravado, the room isn't ringing with his insincere dry laughter. She's managed to strip him of that at some point, even in this strange private moment.
Kaplan has told her, in clipped words, what had happened in that ambulance: how he'd held onto her for so long, how he'd refused to move and would have been taken away in handcuffs had it not been for Ressler and Samar's presence, how he'd collapsed on the way to the car after.
She thinks back to the time Raymond was shot, and Nick's careful work with the percussion cap.
Elizabeth has spent nearly a full year trying to get back home, and they've been the most difficult months of her entire life. Now she's here, and she realizes that this next part might be the hardest thing she's attempted yet.
He'll be furious - she understands this. But she's done what she's needed to do so she could stand in this very spot.
She wants to come home, and she's so very close.
So she takes the next step, and she smiles - it's small and delicate, just a little apologetic - and swallows against the tightness in her throat to finally speak.
"Hello, Raymond."