Title: The Concierge of Crime #001
Show: The Blacklist
Summary: What happens when they finally reach the end of the Blacklist?
Spoilers: Through 1.4 – The Stewmaker
Pairings: none
Rating: T
Disclaimer: The Blacklist and its characters are property NBC et al. My fanfic is purely for entertainment and I do not profit from it. Though I'm sure Red could find a way…
A/N: Plot bunnies assaulted me at 2am. This made me realize that I kinda love writing Red's dialogue.
Elizabeth takes a seat on the bench over-looking the Washington Monument. Over the years this has become a common meeting place for them. As his summons for meetings became more routine, and the lengths he went to to protect her from the absurd danger he put her in grew more apparent, their relationship evolved. It has been years now that they have functioned less as informant and captor, and more as partners, even with a sliding scale of dependency and dominance nearly reaching equilibrium between the two.
"What's it been now, Lizzie? Seven years?" He smiles at her as he sits next to her on the bench.
"Six years, ten months." Elizabeth replies after a pause short enough to indicate that the exact amount of time that they have worked together is a well-known quantity, and not something she'd had to calculate on the spot.
This brings a small smile to Reddington's face. "And how many monsters off of my little list have you brought to justice in that time?"
"Two hundred sixty-four." She states. Again she is reciting rather than tabulating. But then she adds contemplatively. "Actually, I only brought two oh-seven to justice, taking into account the ones that you dealt with on your own."
"Yes, well, let's not squabble over semantics. They all ostensibly met justice in one sense or another."
She raises an eyebrow at him.
He shrugs dismissively.
She wonders what suddenly has him feeling so nostalgic. She's also slightly surprised that he has summoned her so soon. They wrapped their last case just three days earlier and she'd barely finished the paperwork on their capture of "The Kingpin", as Red had called this major nemesis of his. She's come to expect a routine gap of seven to ten days between the summation of a case he had lead her towards and the development of a new one. It was time for him to relocate and perpetrate some new minor black market exploits to maintain his cover while gathering intel on their next target. Such it has been for nearly seven years. She's curious about this break in pattern. In that time she's also learned better than to try and rush or pry any information out of the fedora adorned man on the bench next to her, so she continues the small talk and waits for the reveal of the next boogey man he will steer her towards.
"Still." He continues, "The success of our little working arrangement has provided you with a certain amount of notoriety within your professional circles."
"For which I have expressed my gratitude on multiple occasions." She huffs out. It is an old point of contention between them.
"Yes. The fruit arrangement last Christmas was a thoughtful gesture." He says with a whimsical sarcasm.
She smirks at him. This is what their relationship has become.
"But with all due brevity, I do hope that you have enjoyed this time spent working together, as I have." He seems serious now.
This disarms Elizabeth now and, for the first time, she realizes that Dembe and Luli are not hovering nearby in their usual watchful positions. She looks at Red, concerned. "What's going on here? You're talking like we're not going to be working together anymore."
He looks at her with a soft expression and reaches a hand up, gently placing it on her cheek. "My dear Lizzie…"
She shakes the hand off, disrupting his statement, and quickly turns to the sarcastic defensiveness that has become her crutch over the years for dealing with Red when he gets a little too personal. "Cut the Hannibal/Clarice shtick Raymond. You haven't tried pulling this crap since five years ago when you kindly disclosed that my former husband was number six on your list."
He seems slightly hurt by this, and she catches the briefest flicker of an emotion in his eyes that she almost labels as regret. It's such a foreign emotion to see on him that she always notices it when it appears, and it only appears when discussing her ex-husband.
It had taken a year and a half for her to piece together the ultimate depths of Tom's other life, and the horrific deeds that earned him the moniker "The Death Whisperer" and a top ten spot on Raymond Reddington's esteemed Blacklist. That had almost been the end for her. Her marriage, the man she loved and had planned to adopt children with, had been nothing but a lie. Compounding her grief was the fact that the betrayal had not ended with her personal life. Red had known the whole time. The burgeoning trust she had been beginning to extend to him by that point in their working relationship was shattered. He never admitted it, but they all knew. That was why he had picked her. To get to her husband.
She had nearly put a bullet between Red's calm, calculating, beady eyes in the chaos that surrounded that case. The only thing that stopped her was that she had noticed that same look in his eyes then. It actually hurt him to see the pain he had inflicted on her. It was an exquisitely rare glimpse of empathy from the man she had always regarded as being nearly sociopathic. It had saved his life and, along with an unexpected amount of groveling and excessive volunteering of help and information over the next few months, their working relationship.
Today Red recovers quickly with a wry laugh that reaches all the way to his stomach. "An apropos metaphor, though our working relationship has proven less fictional and far more productive."
"I'm going to assume this conversation has a point, and that you'll get to it sometime soon." She stares at him impatiently.
"Well then. No need to beat around the proverbial bush." He straightens the collar of his jacket as he continues, "The primary detriment, or benefit depending on one's interpretation and circumstances, of working from a list is that, excluding the intervention of outside forces, eventually one should ultimately complete the list. Such is the conundrum that we are now encountering."
"Seriously?" She looks as if she is about to mock him. "You mean to tell me that after seven years you've run out of bad guys? Last I heard, no one has declared world peace. I'm sure there's a corrupt dictator somewhere that we can overthrow."
"As you pointed out earlier, it has been six years and ten months, give or take a few days and accounting for leap years." He un-sidetracks himself. "But as I often reiterated to you, my list does not include the world's petty criminals. My mission in aiding you and the FBI was to bring the most heinous and elusive of the world's apex predators to bear. And we have done just that, in spectacular fashion, I might add."
She rolls her eyes at him. "So you're saying that we're done? After all this you are just going to slink off back into the darkness?"
"Oh heavens no!" He says with a laugh. "I've worked with you lot for far too long. Enough of my associates have been dispatched, that any half-witted cartel underboss could elucidate that I am no longer on the up and up, relatively speaking, of course."
She continues to give him a blank look, not seeing where this is going.
"Don't despair. There is one name left, and it is the one that is going to make you, Elizabeth Keen, a household name. For you are about to arrest one of the FBI's top ten most wanted, and number one on the Blacklist."
She has an idea now what he is suggesting and stares at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Do not let the ease with which you are about to apprehend this final quarry deceive you. There is no agent in the bureau that wouldn't be elated to personally capture "The Concierge of Crime"." He rises from his seat on the bench, stands in front of her, and extends his arms as if waiting to be handcuffed.
She rolls her eyes and swats his wrists away. She stands and dismissively addresses him, "'Number one on the Blacklist'? Really? Self-aggrandizing much?" She gives him a moment to abandon whatever game he is playing at.
"Not in the slightest." He corrects, his face serious. "You know what kind of monster I am, have known for quite some time. I mean really Lizzie, as you said yourself, you were even there to bear witness to no less than fifty-seven acts of murder."
"And nearly every one of those times you killed a Blacklister because my life, your life, the life of one of our team members, or the life of a child was in imminent danger." She counters his argument.
"Now you're rationalizing my murderous tendencies." He ticks at her. "Perhaps we have worked together a bit too long."
"Perhaps you're being ludicrous." She looks at him flatly and starts to walk away.
"Not at all." He darts quickly to step in front of her and block her egress. "The Kingpin was the only other name left on my list. I've had a few days to put my affairs in order, and now it is time to finish this for good. And that means turning myself in."
"Do I need to remind you that you already did that and were granted immunity years ago?" She shakes her head and steps around him.
"Transactional immunity." He corrects. "And I think you're going to want to hear about this particular confession, as it pertains rather directly to you."
She barely turns her head as she strides away from him. "They always do." She dismisses him.
"So then you don't want to hear about how I killed your father?" He says it loudly enough that passers-by turn to look at them.
Elizabeth halts, takes a deep breath, turns, and storms back toward him. "What did you just say?" It comes out as an angry whisper.
"I asked if you would like to hear the details surrounding your father's demise." He smiles triumphantly.
"You just said that you killed my father."
"And this is a conversation much better suited for an FBI interrogation room, rather than a public thoroughfare, wouldn't you agree?"
"I don't know what you're playing at, but you're going to get your wish." She is grinding her teeth as she speaks. "Raymond Reddington, you are under arrest." She pulls his hands roughly behind his back and agitatedly places a set of handcuffs around his wrists.
"That's my girl, Lizzie." He smiles.
"Shut up." She barks at him and pulls her cell phone from her purse. She taps the screen a few times and then holds it to her ear with one hand while shoving Red in front of her with the other. "Cooper, it's Keen. You're never going to believe who I'm bringing in right now."
A/N: Anybody interested in seeing where this goes? I have a plan for another chapter or two if you all are interested. If not, this makes a decent enough place to stop. Reviews = Love.