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A/N- I'm so stinking tired of contemplating what exactly happened the night of fire and dissecting/interpreting every line of the muffled conversation from the memories, so I decided to write some Lizzington wish fulfillment that is likely to never actually happen on the show because the writers are finagling banana peels. Oh well. This was partially based upon the FB group prompt about them staying in a hotel in Uzbekistan. Enjoy, babes.
Disclaiming that stuff.
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I.
How does a monster stop being a monster?
Somebody loves him.
That's how.
/
He might as well have taken a gun and made roses bloom across her gut.
"…because I don't know where it is," she tears the syllables from her throat from what facilities she possesses, so few. Drip, drop, drip, drop. Oh, and her eyelids are so heavy. She is so heavy. She's sinking fast in dark water. She can't breathe. There's no more air. There's no more light. Gravity, it seems, is a bitter thing.
She can't remember how the fish survived.
Despite being a professional psychologist, despite having the ability to delve into criminal minds and pick them apart, despite all the reasons why she should know better, she didn't. She told herself she knew better. She promised herself it wouldn't come to this, and yet.
And yet when the moment comes, and she realizes that no, no, he didn't care about her, he doesn't care about how she's flayed open in front of him, drowning before his eyes, dying, she's dying and he's never cared about that, just so long as she doesn't die until he has the golden egg, the talisman, the catalyst. When the moment comes, she's not prepared for how it feels like he's taken a blade with serrated edges and twisted it into her gut, blood pounding in her ears, mouth moving, and she's numb. He brings more blood than Tom ever could.
Bloodletting, that's what it feels like. Lurching. Loss.
The loss of something so vital, because he's—
He's become someone, and she's not a romantic and she's too independent to think of someone as the person that spins the world on its axis, but he has her hung up, has her by the hand, and he's been leading her this way and that, guiding her, and now, all of a sudden, she's alone. She's alone in the dark, twenty-something years later and still stuck in a closet, smoke everywhere. Except now he's just quiet, and watching her, and he's not telling her what she needs to hear.
Lizzie doesn't know what she needs to hear, but she does know that he's the one who should be saying it.
See, she thought he'd made her his obsession, his world, that for him she's not just a woman everybody is paid to crawl inside, paid to pretend with, to sleep with, that she could be, for him, she could be—
The truth, it seems, hurts more than a lie ever did, and it's just so funny.
It's funny, but she's not laughing. Red's not laughing, either. And God, she's got to get away before she breaks to pieces, falls to the floor.
She's not a little girl, anymore. If she closes her eyes, the petite child is by her side, again. Little Lizzie wraps her small hands around Big Lizzie's wrist, in those few scant seconds she sits in the chair and collects herself to rise.
"Masha, scream," baby whispers come, beckon her. "If you scream, he'll save you. I know you don't want to, but you have to scream. You're in pain. You need him to save you."
Lizzie grimaces in pain at the imagined shadow, and shifts about, and then—
His hands. His hands, and no, no, she can save herself, she has to be able to save herself because everything is burning and filling with smoke and she's got to go. She's got to go.
"Don't touch me!" Lizzie screeches. Trembling all over. Eyes wild.
Red looks as if she's physically wounded him, flinching away.
Funny, again, in a not-so-funny way.
She's never seen Raymond Reddington actually flinch.
Then, there's Ressler, a shock blanket, and right. Right, there's that.
The fish. The fish had a ray of light. Ray, she thinks, and allows herself to be shown away by her colleague. She wonders, if she kissed Ressler later, senseless and grasping, if it would make her feel again. Before Tom, she'd have one night stands like take-out. Preference over passion. The opportunity will be there, when Don will take her back to a hotel room and help her find sustenance, sanity. She might stop being numb. It might make her feel happy. Feel anything at all. Ray, she thinks. Ray of light in the darkness.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, she'd thought he was calling her his ray of light. It feels like a lifetime ago.
She feels like a different person.
It doesn't make sense. She's not making sense. She's been water boarded, for Christ's sake. She's had her mind taken out and played with. Nothing should be coherent, right now. Ray. His name is Ray, and she's never called him that.
Ray.
Lizzie closes her eyes.
"Come back!" Little Lizzie screams at her adult counterpart, still standing, meek, in the empty pool floor. Thick, hot tears fall down the child's face. "Lizzie! Lizzie, Ray's hurt! You hurt him, Lizzie! Don't go! Please, don't go! You promised you'd stay! You promised! Lizzie!"
The farther away she gets, the quieter the little girl's voice becomes, unit finally, dimly, it disappears all together.
/
Lizzie holds the charred rabbit in one hand, the drive in the other, and imagines the entire world resting on a ticking bomb.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.
/
When Lizzie dreams, her nightmares are not what she expects.
There's no water, drowning her. No gasping for air. Instead of blood, instead of scorched flesh and Christmas lights, instead of a body left to burn like a prayer candle, there's only a couch. Yellow cast-off on a mid-town penthouse's wall. A music box. A familiar tune.
"Lizzie," Red says into the crown of her hair. "Do you know that everything is going to be alright?"
It morphs, then. A ship's belly; grime, filth, sorrow. His arms wrapped around her body, her face buried into the scent of knowing, of gentle release. "There's nothing wrong with you," he tells her.
In the dreams, he kisses her mouth instead of her forehead, takes her cheeks in his wide hands— takes her heart like the ocean taking the dirty sands, taking, taking her home. Soft, ebbing flow, tongue sweet and warm. The taste of cigars she's never smoked. He tastes like resolve.
He touches her so sweetly it hurts when she wakes, anguishes her to the point she wishes she could cut her heart out of her chest and abandon it on the street, and she should have known better.
She should have fucking known better.
/
Lizzie tries very hard to pretend everything is business as usual.
Because for him, it probably is.
/
The bigger problem, if there could possibly be something larger than a beast that claws at her insides every waking moment of the day, is this innate urge for her subconscious to reveal every single detail of her lacking around him.
She's never fancied herself an insecure woman.
During the first few miniscule cases, after Luthor Braxton, it's like she's finally realized exactly how she, Elizabeth Keen, and he, Raymond Reddington, differ. Her cheap suits, his hats that cost three times a week's paycheck. They have lunch at a little outdoor café and discuss strategy, and Lizzie takes note of how the waitress stops four times to refill his drink, watches him eye the woman's backside offhandedly, wink at her, and a part of Lizzie whimpers, cowers. Because now it all makes sense, and look at him, Jesus.
She had been so terribly stupid to think that a man like him would have sought her out, above all else. The Lullis, the Madeleine Pratts, all the voluptuous, knowledgeable women in the world, and Lizzie somehow had it in her head that he would have chosen her because she stood apart. She's nothing. She's still a child, to him. She's still that child with the stuffed rabbit and polka dotted nightdress, still little bitty. In the days following her abduction, she notices Red's behavior toward her shift. Distance.
Before, he was always brushing her arm, leading her with a hand positioned upon her lower back. There's none of that, now. Polite conversation. Inane stories, none of them as double entendre as they once were. Maybe she'd been reading too much into it, before. Maybe he's finally realizing that she doesn't need to be wooed.
She'd told him that he could stop pretending, and now he has, and she's sick.
/
And then there's Uzbekistan.
Fucking Uzbekistan.
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II.
"Liz," Don murmurs, compassion in his gaze. "You don't have to do this."
"It's really not that big of a deal," she tries; conveying as smothered an emotion as she can, but it's weak, even to her own ears. "The agency gets room assignments wrong all the time for foreign hotels. Language barriers, lack of funds. I'll be fine."
"Keen—
"Ress, Reddington has the Presidential Suite. Regardless of number of beds, I'm sure the couch will definitely suffice. It's late," she goes on, shoulders sagging.
"I'm tired," she sighs. She can see the understanding floating across his taut features. Bags underneath his eyes. "You're tired."
His nostrils flare. "We've got a big day ahead of us tomorrow," he agrees, grudgingly. "Don't spend all night getting into pillow fights with Reddington, okay?"
And then he turns, suitcase in his grip, and wheels towards the elevator. She follows, and it's sinking in. It's sinking in what she's just agreed to, what she's getting ready to do. She's slept near Red before, anyhow. But that was a comfy couch, yellow light, nostalgic tune, music box, and—
"Goodnight," Don nods to her, and gets off on the fifth floor.
The button for the fifteenth is so bright, so taunting.
Lizzie throws her shoulders back despite her weariness, and hits it.
/
Lizzie raps at the door with her white, clenched knuckles.
She does not expect the person that answers the door.
An attractive woman, young, twenties— maybe— with eyes so dark they must be black, a soft pink at her lips. "May I help you?" her accent chimes.
If the woman had been in a bathrobe, Lizzie would have turned on her heel.
But she's not. She's dressed modestly: a button-down shirt, a pair of kitten heels. A classy escort, maybe. Where's—
"Madina," Dembe's voice comes, and Lizzie can hear the shuffling of him rising from cushions, coming to aid. "Is everything alright?"
"Fine," the woman, Medina, smiles, narrowing her eyes distinctly at Lizzie. "We have a guest."
The door opens ever so, and Dembe's eyes widen as she comes into view before him. "Elizabeth."
"Dembe, I—
"What are you doing here, Lizzie?"
The bag, poised at her shoulder, droops with the way her entire body sags, weakens. Red's voice floats, despite the awkward situation, what with Dembe and the woman still staring and watching her stationed outside the door. Lizzie raises her voice to carry. "All the agency got Ressler and I was a single queen. I thought I might take your couch, if you'll let me."
Dembe moves to allow her inside, and Red hasn't replied, until—
"Stop! I'm not decent yet," Red's voice is especially sharp, higher than it usually rings. Lizzie's mouth purses, chest cold. He can't even stand the thought of her seeing him—
Dembe stops as Red dictates, and Medina disappears back into the room where Lizzie cannot see her. Dembe looks apologetic, and Lizzie, Lizzie's chest goes cold. Her everything goes cold. Barely mouths, "Is that woman a—
Before the bodyguard halts the train of thought, stern. "She is a masseuse."
Lizzie looks at him dubiously, until Madina slithers through the open crevice in the doorway, a Coach purse under her arm. She steps out into the hallway and flips her dark mane of hair, almost snobby. "I am not a call girl, no. Mr. Reddington's back particularly bothers him, you see. He sees me every time he visits my country. Have a good day, Madame."
She disappears toward the elevator in a waft of expensive perfume, and it strikes Lizzie, so suddenly, that she doesn't even own a scent as elegant. Nothing imported, no elegance like that, no pricelessness. Lizzie rocks back on her heels, expression sour. Dembe clears his throat.
Finally, after another few, terse seconds of Lizzie swaying on her feet, arches aching, Red goes: "It's alright."
His voice has returned to its normal gravel, normal deep cadence, and Lizzie leans into it, practically stumbles into the ornate entryway. Crown molding, plush carpets that must be one of a kind, the color of eggplant. The Grand Mir hotel does not disappoint. Red stands in the middle of the sitting area, shirt untucked from his slacks. Lizzie has rarely seen him so unruffled, so neutral.
"Hi," she greets, lips puckered.
His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows.
"Do you have room for me?" she inquires, trying to insert as much nonchalance into her tone as she can. It falls flat.
For a moment, with how soft his eyes look, how sweet, it's almost like Luthor Braxton didn't happen. Almost. His mouth moves to form certain words, but then slackens, and reiterates something else.
"A queen in one room, and a king and a pull-out in the other," he states. "You should come see the view."
/
It really is something.
Moon, white and yielding, ever-present above them. The windows are from the ceiling to the floor, give way to show the city lights, the busy streets below them, even at ten in the evening. Everything is clean, the sheets perfect and turned down, but instead of the suite giving off the general hotel scent, all Lizzie can breathe in is his coating, all cigars and cognac, expensive aftershave. Lizzie breathes out, smiles even though it's killing her. It's killing her to be this close, and Red thinks she's in awe of the view. "Beautiful, isn't it?"
He's right in her ear, and Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ, she means nothing to him.
Reality tips so fast she thinks she might vagal.
"Yeah," she splutters, eyes glazing, and she turns away from him just as Dembe garners their dual attention.
"I usually take the sleeping arrangement closest to the door," he starts, and she finishes for him.
"I can take the pull-out," she assures. "Dembe, take the queen. I won't have it any other way."
The thing about the queen, though, is that it's separated by a wall, an easily separate door to split his room from the rest of the area. Lizzie turns her body, can spot a luxury tub within the bathroom off the master room, can see the bottles of something that Red has already sat on the counter. An electric razor lying there. Domestic. She's going to be sleeping within feet of him. Sleeping.
Lizzie gulps, and then—
"Well, I shall take my leave, then. Goodnight Raymond. Elizabeth."
Lizzie blinks stupidly, farewell ghosting across her lips.
She must be losing her mind.
And then Dembe's gone, and she's alone with the one person in the world that could shatter her chest. That has shattered her chest.
Over and over and over again.
"Lizzie, are you alright?" he asks her, eyebrows furrowed in something akin to concern, but no. No, he doesn't.
He doesn't get concerned over her.
She has to keep reminding herself that the mind plays tricks when it wants to see things that aren't there.
"Fine," she responds, cheeks the color of milk. She turns on her tail, zips open her bag and tries not to pay attention to the way he's still standing, watching her. If it had been before, she might've thought he was staring at her ass, but it's not before. It's now, and finally, finally he moves. Bends beside her, digs for the latch that pulls out the mattress. His biceps, through the white material, bulge.
Lizzie licks her lips. Stands, her toothbrush and a pair of soft, cotton pants in her hands. She strides to the bathroom, and closes the door behind her. Once she's alone in the overtly fancy, overpriced room, she sits down on the toilet, and puts her head between her knees. Puts her hand over her mouth.
Shudders.
/
"I'm sorry your back hurts," she tells him, when they've both lied down, the darkness all around. She can hear his breathing shorten, and then regain composure. He grunts.
"I'm not a young man, Lizzie," he responds tightly, as if the acknowledgement makes him anxious.
She pulls the covers tighter around her body.
"Goodnight, Red."
After a moment, voice wistful, barely a whisper:
"Sweet dreams, Lizzie."
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III.
She does not dream.
She does not dream, but she still wakes to panting, to heaving, to anguished cries. Disoriented, her eyes burn, adjust, and the clock beside the king-sized bed reads a quarter after three, and Lizzie, Lizzie jolts up in shock, even in her state.
Red.
It's Red, and he's—
He's having a nightmare.
Something awful, from the way he's writhing, tossing in the blankets, moaning in pain, whimpering, and she's never hear him like this, so gutted, and she, she can't help but—
"Red," she says, speech level, willing him to wake up.
He doesn't.
"Red," she pleads, even as his cries continue. "Red, please."
It's no use.
She fumbles to stand, heart pounding in her ears as she crosses the distance on unsteady legs, sinks down to the opposite side of the mattress than what he's occupied, leans in. And then—
"Lizzie," he coughs, and she thinks, oh, oh God, he's awoken, and he's wondering what I'm doing, what I'm—
But then he writhes again, and she realizes.
She realizes, and her heart clenches.
"Red," she says his name, low, soothing. Her fingers reach out for his face, crumpled as if he's in unfathomable pain. He moans again, and oh, oh, it's too much. Like touching an untamed being, Lizzie places the warmth over her palm over his tensed cheek, quiets, even if he's not conscious yet.
"Red, it's just a dream."
His weathered eyelids snap open with a gasp mangling his parted, thin lips.
The close proximity makes every part of her body tingle.
"It was just a dream," she repeats, for his sake.
"Elizabeth."
They meet one another's eyes for too long.
Her hand, pressed against his face, strokes thoughtlessly, until she comprehends her actions, and stops. His skin is surprisingly soft. But her fingers never move, never fall back to a neutral position, once she takes note. They should, but they don't. Instead of saying anything, he turns his head, and in a move that shoots sparks of frozen timbre down her spine, he presses an open-mouthed kiss against her palm.
It's chaste, but moist. When his lips smack away, the air cools against her flesh. Lizzie's throat has a lump lodged precariously close, makes her inhales sharply. Red's eyes, in the vague light cast by the night, are sea green, tinged red around the edges. He gauges her reaction before he speaks.
Voice primal, jagged, and these, these are the words that change the tide.
This is what changes everything, when he says:
"Lizzie, I would give my life for you."
Lizzie forgets how to breathe.
She's lying half on her side, now. She hadn't even noticed shifting into the position, but now she's above the expensive-feeling blankets, propped up on her elbow. Chest tight at the sentiment, at the meaning. He does not tell her she matters. He does not tell her the other things don't matter.
Instead, he proclaims again, richly, "I would give my life for you, and only you."
He stares at her so, so intensely, and she's taken back to that day weeks ago, in that fateful chair, him so close to her, the chemical and anatomical reactions dividing and dashing like a million stars, and she can feel it now, too. There's something undeniably base about the way they look at each other. The sun to the moon. The ocean to the shore. Stars to sky. Something like that.
"Oh," she murmurs. "Loyalty above—
She breaks off.
Stupid.
Because she'd thought. Well.
She'd thought that he—
She'd thought—
Her mouth opens and closes multiple times, and her eyes fill with tears, and it's instantaneous when they come together, there, in a city she's never been, in a bed she'd never intended to occupy. He puts his mouth upon her own, takes her pretty jaw in his large hand, and she, she lets her own linger, linger.
They're kissing, she realizes.
She's kissing Raymond Reddington.
Her stomach flips, and he's gentle, but he knows what he's doing, and he knows what he wants when he cups her face and slips his tongue past her lips, and she moans torridly; a broken, embarrassing sound. She's kissing him, running her own tongue against his teeth, uneven as they may be, and her back arches, and he just, he's kissing her. She keeps repeating it to herself.
He's kissing her.
Raymond Reddington is kissing her.
And it's perfect, so perfect that she wonders if the world is ending around them. They come apart, gasping for air. He's got his hands tangled up in her hair, gaze hazy as he looks upon her ruggedly. She knows her own eyes are unfocused too, pupils dilated. She's overly aware of her lack of bra beneath the blouse, at the pertness of her nipples, straining against thin, navy fabric.
But then his presence leaves her, and he rolls away.
Puts space between them, intentional, and she stares and struggles to put together a coherent sentence before—
"Lizzie, we have to stop."
The warmth in her veins, the raging heat, is wiped clean by freezing.
Such bite.
Such unbelievable bleakness in the statement, in his eyes, and she—
Her entire form must concave, because in the next moment he's pulling her against his chest, despite the sentiment expressed. He's slinging an arm over her form and pulling her against him, and Lizzie realizes, abrupt, too late, that she's got tears racing down her cheeks, dripping against his skin. "I'm sorry," she gasps. "I don't know what's wrong with me, I—
"Lizzie," he mutters, pained at the sight and sound of her response. "This isn't about want. Once you find out the things I've done, who exactly I am, you're going to regret having ever thought of me this way."
"What?" she hiccups, pathetically spiting. "Is this incest?"
"What? No," he sputters out, and she can feel his face heat against her forehead. Apparently, the idea makes him blush.
Raymond Reddington blushing.
What a thought.
"Well, that's good," she quips. Her nails dig into the collar of his shirt.
From where she rests, she can hear his heartbeat.
She's never heard a sound more beautiful.
She doesn't know, upon later recollection, what possesses her to say:
"Tell me, then. Tell me what's so terrible."
"I can't—
"Not the specifics of the other people involved," she assures, mild and bland. "Only the things you think are so terrible that would make me not want to be with you with my whole soul, the way I want to right now."
She raises her head, meets his eyes steadily. "Do your worst."
After a moment, his eyes wane, a sullen expression overtaking.
"Okay."
And then he lets go of her, and sits up.
Fingers moving to the top, shiny button of his Oxford.
/
People always talk about before and after.
For Lizzie, there will always be a before she knew, and after she knew.
In the moonlight, the battered, puckered flesh of Red's back glows like a haunted relic, a makeup reserved for haunted houses back in Nebraska, except this isn't a Halloween joke. This is his flesh. This is his life. This is her life, what it's worth. The life he saved, and—
He faces away from her, grasp clenched around the edge of the bed.
His chest rises and falls in steady increments, but his jaw works furiously.
Lizzie has both hands over her mouth, staring, staring.
No words, just staring, because—
Because this means that—
Lizzie heaves towards him, travels across the California king on her knees, clumsy. The bed bounces with her weight until she's behind him, close enough to feel. She's crying again, wordlessly. Her fingers won't keep steady where they reach up to drag across the tenderized skin with all the reverence she's capable of, until she realizes, and stops.
"Does it hurt?" she asks him, pained.
"No," he answers, vacant, after a long moment. "No, not anymore."
Lizzie presses her fingertips against it.
Leans down, cocks her head.
Kisses the ragged flesh.
Red shivers.
His prayer to her, his giving to her. In some way, she knows this is the anthem to his loyalty to her, and it kills her. She can't believe he—
"You survived," she bleats, in the half-slated moonlight. "You survived—
"—for you," he finishes her sentence, aching, too. "I survived, and the little girl that saved me burned her hand in the process."
She goes stock-still. "Red."
He turns his head, meets her eyes.
Takes her mouth. Takes her soul.
And this, this is how they begin.
/
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Fin.