Author's Note: I wrote this quick one shot for nikkixsensei as part of a Secret Santa exchange. I wrote it in like an hour, and it's un-beta'd, so here it is in all its unpolished glory! Oh and also: I have no ownership of The Blacklist or any of its awesome characters.
When you've been a notorious criminal for as long as Raymond "Red" Reddington, you get a sort of "sixth sense" when it comes to bombs. It manifests itself in subtle ways: a vague feeling of uneasiness when approaching a door, a tiny chill upon discovering a seemingly innocuous package or bag, an involuntary twitch of the wrist when sliding a key into the ignition. It was this heightened sense of awareness that caused Red to find himself frequently on the outskirts of explosions. There, in the outer ring, the force of the blast still knocks you off your feet. A wave of heat washes over you, and for several minutes, you can't hear a thing. But in the end, you're alright. You get up, dust yourself off, and live to die another day.
As it turns out, running towards the blast in order to throw yourself in front of the one person that makes your miserable existence worth sustaining? That's a completely different story.
It was the soft leather glove tips pressed lightly against his neck that alerted him to her presence. Through cracked eyelids he could see a fuzzy blob of black against an even fuzzier backdrop of orange. He felt no pain, only heat. There was no sound.
His eyelids must have fallen shut because the gloved fingers were tapping his cheek now, insisting that he stay awake. He forced his tired eyes open again, wider this time, until at last the soft blur of Liz's face came into focus. Her mouth was moving but he couldn't hear her—couldn't hear anything save for a faint high pitched whine in his right ear. He parted his lips.
It didn't matter if he could hear her; what mattered is that she heard what he had to say.
"Lizzie," he croaked. He must have spoken softly, because she leaned closer to hear him. He attempted to clear his throat, which in turn set off a lengthy bout of coughing. He could see Liz coughing too; if she didn't get out soon, she'd die from smoke inhalation. He'd have to speed this up. "Lizzie, about your father…"
A finger pressed roughly against his lips. "Read my lips," she said, and he did. "This is not the time for dying declarations because you are not. going. to die. Okay? You hear me?"
"Lizzie…" he gurgled half-heartedly, but she was gone. Suddenly he felt himself being lifted from underneath the arms and dragged backwards across the Factory floor (or what was left of it, anyway). His chin bobbed up and down as he watched his own feet scrape and bounce over chunks of drywall and bits of glass. Slowly but surely he drifted into unconsciousness.
It was the first unselfish thing he'd ever done, at least in her book (in reality, he'd done a great number of very unselfish things that she had somehow utterly failed to observe).
As such, she was compelled to find out why...or at least that's what she told herself. You see, as a criminal profiler, it's much easier to blame your frantic attempts to save a mass murderer's life on simple curiosity than the possibility that you might, in fact, maybe, probably have feelings for him.
Lift with your legs, she reminded herself as she hooked her elbows beneath his arms and began to scuttle backward. They were still a fair distance from the nearest exit, and then there was the stairwell to navigate (if it wasn't already engulfed in flames, that is)…
The cool metal of a gun barrel pressed roughly against her temple served as an odd contrast to the intense heat of the burning building. She stopped short, tightening her grip on Red defensively.
"I'm sorry, Liz."
"Ressler? What are you doing? Help me! We've got to get him out of here."
"I can't let you do that." Her colleague's voice trembled and she tilted her head sideways to look at him, causing the gun to dig deeper into her skin. His eyes were glassy, his light auburn hair tangled and matted against his forehead. "My orders…" he began, pursing his lips together. "My orders are to make sure he doesn't make it out of here alive."
"Orders? What orders? Orders from who?!" Liz shouted. "The FBI?"
When he didn't respond, she shouted again. "Whose orders, Donald?!" The gun began to wobble against her skin. "The bomb," she muttered, "...the bomb wasn't theirs, was it? Oh my God," she snorted. "This was a suicide mission...how long have you known?!"
"Please," Ressler pleaded, lowering his weapon. "Leave him, Liz." A tear trickled down his cheek, carving a winding path through the film of black dirt and ash coating his normally fair skin. "If I let you go, they'll kill me."
"Who will kill you?"
"Please," he whispered.
She looked at him intently for a moment, finding in his eyes a watery cocktail of fear and regret. Taking a step backward, she looked over her shoulder. They weren't far from the door now. Returning her gaze to her partner, she silently bid him farewell. "Do what you have to do," she said firmly, resuming her backward trek to safety.
He raised his gun reflexively and held it there for a few brief seconds before letting it drop to his side in defeat. He stood motionless, his eyes locked on hers until she reached the exit door. Suddenly a metal beam broke loose from the ceiling and crashed to the ground between them, sending up a plume of thick smoke. The last thing she saw as she backed through the doorway was the hazy silhouette of her friend, and a giant burst of flame.
Red was awake again and she heard him groan as she hauled him down the concrete steps and out the back door into the frigid air. They needed to get as far away from the building as possible without being seen. Fortunately, the prisoners who had survived the blast and already escaped had been kind enough to demolish the outer fence in more than one spot, giving Liz a clear path to the trees surrounding the compound. Her arms were shaking violently now and her back and shoulders screamed protests with every teetering step.
"Lizzie," Red moaned when they reached the edge of the forest. "Lizzie stop. It's no use." He gestured toward the trail of blood—his blood—that shone brightly against the thick snow. He had no idea where the blood was coming from, but he guessed it was his legs: one or both of them, neither of which had any feeling at the moment.
As if to underscore his point, Liz immediately lost her footing and tumbled backward into a snow bank, dropping him face down in the snow. Coughing and heaving, she pulled him into an upright position against the bank next to her and began to examine his burns.
"Can you hear me?" she asked. She discarded her gloves and brushed the backs of her fingers gently against his face, clearing the snowflakes from his cheeks and eyelashes. He shook his head slowly and raised a finger to his right ear.
"Try this one."
She pressed her lips against his ear. "You're going to be okay," she said. "Dembe will find us."
He smiled, though she suspected he was only humoring her. The only thing they could do now was wait; neither of them were in any condition to travel deeper into the snow-covered woods. The sun had just dipped below the horizon which meant that in a matter of minutes, the temperature would plunge well below zero. Liz pressed herself against Red's side, resting her head gently on his shoulder.
An hour passed, then two. Red faded in and out of consciousness, despite Liz's efforts to keep him alert.
"Is that the ocean?" Red asked after a long period of silence.
"I think so."
"I can hear it," Red said wistfully.
"Why don't you tell me a story?"
"What would you like to hear?"
"Anything. I mean, you've traveled the world. What's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"
Red paused. "I'm looking at it," he replied.
In any other circumstance, Liz would have laughed at what seemed like a ridiculously cheesy attempt at a pick-up line. But this wasn't any other circumstance. If someone didn't find them soon, they'd be dead within the hour.
Her mind wandered to the story of the sea gypsy he told when he surrendered himself to her. How she had kissed him on the cheek. How it had been like a burst of sunlight…
Before she knew it, she'd pressed her frozen lips against his. She felt him smile against her mouth as he responded in kind.
"Guess I can die happy now," he teased when she withdrew.
"No one's dying, you hear me?" she snapped.
"Lizzie. You and I both know that I'm not going to make it through the night. You're going to have to leave me here." Liz opened her mouth to protest, but he continued before she could speak. "There's a deposit box, in Düsseldorf. Box four twenty-"
She kissed him again, effectively cutting him off. "What did I tell you about dying declarations, huh?" She bit her lip and punched his shoulder angrily. "What did I tell you?" As if on cue, tears sprung from her eyes, freezing almost immediately against her skin. "Dammit, Red. You are not going to die and I am not leaving you." She threaded her fingers through his and squeezed tightly.
Red sighed, his eyes wandering slowly over her face, as if trying to memorize it. "Well then," he smiled weakly. "At least let me tell you that I lo-"
"Tell me later," she said tersely. "Okay? Tell me when we get home." She looked away.
He closed his eyes.
"Raymond." Dembe bolted from his chair the second he heard his friend stir. "How are you feeling?"
"I've certainly felt better," Red said dryly. He attempted to wiggle his toes and was grateful when they responded. He ran his fingers gingerly over the burns on his scalp. They were crusty and sore, as expected. "Lizzie…" he breathed suddenly, leaning forward as if to get up.
"Relax, Raymond. She's not here. She left yesterday for Nebraska, to prepare a safe house for us. She says you can recover there for the next few months unnoticed."
Red sighed and let his head fall back against the pillow.
"She asked me to give you this," Dembe said, handing Red a small thin envelope.
He ran his thumb along its seal and carefully removed a white rectangular business card. "Agent Elizabeth Keen, Federal Bureau of Investigation" it said on the front, along with the usual list of contact information and a bright, embossed FBI seal. On the back, in neat, cursive lettering, were four words he thought he'd never ever hear again, much less from Agent Elizabeth Keen:
"I love you too."