This is for the blacklist secret santa over on Tumblr. Merry Christmas, mymostpreciousking! I hope you enjoy it! ^^ Just a few holiday scenes for ya. I hope you had a wonderful holiday! Sorry this turned out a bit more angsty than I had expected.
The last time Liz had seen Red, he'd made eye contact with her just before being shoved into the back of a LandRover.
That was a little over forty hours ago.
The team had gotten back from Vienna just this afternoon. Having taken down a banking mogul in connection to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of laundered money for the Cabal, they were all, understandably, exhausted, but none of them were exactly willing to go home right away. They'd milled about the Post Office after Liz and Ressler had swung by the sitter's to pick up Agnes, and finally, the team found themselves gathered around the space around Aram's desk.
The forty-second hour mark rolled around.
Still no call.
Samar had taken to showing Agnes a few card tricks, which, Liz joked, was just a way to hone her daughter's penchant for being sneaky. There were mentionings of family visits by both Ressler and Aram, and, when pressed, Liz told them that Red had planned a surprise for Agnes this coming weekend. Three days from now. She hadn't thought that he would be...well, missing wasn't exactly the right word most of the time, but the worry was no different.
It wasn't until another hour of waiting that Cooper called it a night for all of them; ushering the team into the elevator with a soft voice and a touch of consternation when they protested.
"But mommy," Agnes looked up at her as the elevator doors closed, clearly against leaving this place without Red firmly in toe.
"Don't worry, Pumpkin, he'll be home in time." Liz smiled and smoothed her hand over the top of her daughter's head, catching Cooper's sympathetic glance her way when her daughter asked,
"Promise?"
"Promise." And though she wasn't sure if Red would be breaking that promise she'd just made, there was little else to do besides reassure her daughter that all was well as she and Agnes wished everyone a Merry Christmas and headed home.
A kind of stillness had settled over the apartment when Liz awakened on the couch. Her hand reached out in a flash to grip the gun she'd placed on the coffee table. Her stomach flooded with nerves as she sat up, the blanket over her shoulders falling to the couch. The night was blue. A waxing moon gave off just enough light to catch on the snow still covering the ground in pockets from DC's last storm. Everything about the city seemed to hold its breath, a sort of pregnant anticipation for anything other than the silence that spread through the streets and filled each nook and cranny.
Waiting for dawn.
Waiting for movement.
For the city to wake up.
For life to move on.
Liz's hand flexes around her weapon as she checks her corners. When nothing moves, she peers at the front door. Locked and bolted shut. The darkness of the kitchen didn't move, nothing seemed to be lurking, and her eyes couldn't make out any abnormalities anywhere else either in the apartment.
Satisfied that there is no immediate danger, she takes a deep breath, sagging back into the couch cushions, and surveys the shadows around her, still bothered. Nothing seemed to be out of place, but like anyone used to living on the edge, she knew that there was something off about the apartment. It was as though the very air was being taken up by some added presence. With nothing discernible about the change in the atmosphere of the place, a shiver races down her arms.
Aberrant thoughts of ghosts and glimpses of Christmases past and yet to come, flash unbidden through her mind. On impulse, she checks her phone for the time, finds it well past a decent hour, and, with a near tangible disappointment about her with no word still from Red, she flips the safety of her gun back into place. Shaking herself of what must be the eeriness of the hour and the moonlight infiltrating the apartment through the windows, she moves to push up off the couch. It isn't until she takes a step towards the hall that she feels a cool sensation through her socks.
Peering down through the dark, she finds melting snow on the carpet under her socks, and when she follows the trail, she finds it leading from the door, to the couch, where her eyes fall to the blanket. A blanket I definitely didn't have before. Liz doesn't bother to check the continued path of the snowy footprints trailing down the hallway. Instead, on instinct, Elizabeth finds her gun leading the way quietly through the door as she enters her daughter's bedroom; a thing more out of habit than fear or necessity.
Her eyes fall to her little girl's bed and she leans against the door frame at the sight of Red curled around Agnes on the twin-sized mattress; relief like a fire in her blood. Normally, her daughter would be a starfish in her sleep, limbs flung outward, the comforter around her ankles. But right now, she's turned to nestle into the fabric of Red's suit and jacket, her hands fisted in fierce possession of the material before her. It's then, the uncomfortable wetness of her socks chilling her toes, that she finds Red's snowy, dirty shoes still on his feet; no doubt soaking the fabric of Agnes's comforter. She frowns a little at his apparent lack of attention to this small but important detail. It wasn't like him to deliberately make a mess.
Setting her weapon on her daughter's dresser, Liz carefully makes her way to the bed and begins untying his shoes before gently pulling them off; careful not to let his socked feet fall back into the wet spot of the comforter. She sets his shoes on the floor at the foot of the bed, and turns to eye his fedora hanging on the bed post above his head.
Gathering up the details for a hint of where he's been since she last saw him, her gaze travels down to the man himself. By the small glow of Agnes's nightlight, she can see the faint glint of stubble reaching around Red's cheeks to meet his sideburns, the slight scab of blood at the edge of his brow on the left side of his face, a longer cut above his ear on the same side.
Something in her chest catches, and Liz can feel that familiar helplessness take hold of her heart and lungs as she looks to Red's face. Nearly two whole days and he hasn't shaven, or taken the time to really clean himself up for them the way he usually does. That helplessness is a strangling emotion in her throat and she tries to swallow away the temptation to wake him and ask where the hell he's been and why he is the way he is and who in God's name did this? And why didn't you call?
First the snow all through the house, then his shoes and coat and suit still on, and now his disheveled appearance? Liz finds herself standing just in line with where his hips are, trying to get a better look at all the little injuries done to his face and head, wondering about concussions, having been aware of how awful she was about tending to herself after one. Like an itch she can't scratch, she wonders again about waking him, checking him over, getting him changed into something more comfortable than-
"Mommy," Agnes's big eyes are glaring up at her over Red's shoulder. At some point, Liz had started to reach out for Red's arm, but her daughter's sharp whisper has frozen her mid-gesture. Liz draws her hand back and shrugs at Agnes's imploring stare. It's in the small moments after this that Liz becomes aware of another sound in the room: Red's breathing, that slow and steady cadence of sleep. Agnes has turned her attention away from her mother and her small hand has moved to lay gently on the side of Red's face. Her finger softly taps the space just below the scab on his brow and, when he doesn't wake, she frowns deeply.
"Papa," She whispers her father's name with a scolding note that perfectly matches Elisabeth's own when she's being stern, except there's no fire behind her daughter's soft exclamation. If anything, it's a reaction to finding him in such a state as he is now. Liz watches her daughter in fascination as her little hand withdraws and she stares at the stubble on his face, her father having so rarely not shaved, that this was a foreign concept to her.
"He's okay, Aggie." Liz whispers, taking a seat in the space carved out by Red's bent knees. After a moment, seeing that he really wasn't going to be awakened so easily, she leans over his legs to place her hand near her daughter's foot, and turns her attention to a bit of discoloration she can see in the slate gray of his slacks along his thigh; dust and other particles as evidence of sitting or lying down on a dirty surface. Or getting knocked to the ground unconscious.
Her stomach flips, and Liz starts to believe she really should investigate his health a little better now that she's found him the way she has. If she were to turn the light on fully, she wonders what other remnants she'd find of his being handled roughly once again.
"But mommy," Drawn to her daughter's shadowed face, Liz raises her eyebrows expectantly, humming in curiosity for her daughter's serious tone. "Papa's face is never scratchy." It is said as though it perfectly disproves Liz's original statement; her daughter drawing the correct and obvious conclusion that the man between them was not, in fact, okay. She feels herself smile, and she thinks the little girl has her beat there when she notices that Red's eyes slide open to blink at Agnes.
"Shouldn't you two be in bed?" His voice rumbles into the room, and somehow, the sound of it makes the apartment warmer, safer, steadier. The terrible stillness, the gnawing anticipation, vanishes without any evidence of it having been there. Agnes giggles and wrinkles her nose at his tired frown.
"I am in bed, papa," Red makes a show of looking up and around him in the dark, his eyes carefully skipping over Liz as he determines where he is for their daughter's benefit.
"Huh," his eyes close again and he turns his face into Agnes's pillow a little more. "Are you sure this isn't my bed?" He angles over and throws his left arm over their daughter, lightly pinning her to the bed as he attempts to take up more room than he already has. Before the girls know it, Liz has been bumped into a standing position and Agnes has been consumed by the majority of Red's shoulder. There's a peel of laughter from their little girl, muffled by the fabric of Red's coat, and Liz reaches out to pinch the back of his thigh, eliciting a slight jerk of his leg, before lightly tugging at his shoulder for him to roll back over.
The man doesn't budge an inch.
"Papa!" Agnes's giggles produce a smile on the half of Red's face that Liz can see. "Get. Off!"
"Hmm, maybe you're right." He finally rolls back over onto his side, but leaves his arm around Agnes. "This bed is far too small for me."
Father and daughter look at each other with twin smirks before Agnes's eyes widen a little and her hands lift to cup both sides of his face. Liz is leaning over them just enough to see their faces, and she recognizes the signs of exhaustion in Red's features, the kind that speak of conversations to come and burdens to bear. In Agnes's, she sees only the realization of something having been figured out.
"I know why you like my room, tonight." She whispers, her eyes big and full of courage.
"Oh?"
"Because the bad things are back." Liz can't help the sharp intake of breath, nor the need to grip Red's shoulder a little harder. For a long moment, both his girls watch his brow furrow and his face sag in the way that speaks of grief. After a slow and measured exhalation of breath through his nose, there's a soft,
"Yeah," before Agnes, still holding her father's face between her hands, leans up and touches her forehead to his own; pulling his head down a little to account for their height difference. Red's arm circles around his daughter a little tighter, and he squeezes his eyes shut as Agnes closes her own as well.
In the silence, Liz watches this routine with the eyes of someone who has just discovered a very precious treasure. With this simple interaction there is a procession of tiny moments replaying in the back of her mind.
A two year old Agnes dragging her blanket and dolly into their room when Red was laid up after a shootout in Italy. How she'd simply clambered up onto Liz's side of the bed to silently wait for Red to wake up.
Red pacing the nursery with a fussy, feverish baby in his arms when she caught a cold.
Her and Red walking into a full-on flour war between Dembe and Agness in the kitchen after a long day trying to fish out an identity forger Red needed information from.
Her and Agnes glaring, miserably sunburned, at a freshly tanned Reddington while they sat on a couch eating ice cream after a long day out on the ocean.
Watching her eight-and-a-half-month old teeter and totter her way to Red across the latest safe house foyer for the first time and the subsequent months spent chasing after an inexhaustibly curious Agnes as she honed her walking skills.
Liz rolling her eyes every time a new safe house was required as Aram, Ressler, and Samar, the affectionately named "Baby Triumvirate", made all the drawers, corners, doors, and toilets Agnes Safe™. Supervised by Raymond, Harold, and Dembe, Father's Inc.
Waking up in the hospital after an explosion to the sight of Agnes asleep on her father's chest.
Her running into Mercy General's ER to find Agnes with Charlene, a hot pink cast around her arm, and a harrowing tale about swinging on the swings too high. A story her father did not find entertaining until Agnes told it to him herself that night when she was back, safe and sound, in her own bed.
The small affections from Red: tying a bow in Agnes's hair, tickling her, bumping their daughter's arm when they're up to something, the big hugs, tossing her into the air and catching her again, the animated stories at bedtime...
They all led her to this new moment, and Liz wonders why she's never seen them do this before.
"There," Agnes pulls away in the same moment that she pushes Red back so she can look into his eyes again. "All better?" Red blinks slowly at their daughter and nods his head.
"All better," He leans forward and plants a kiss on her forehead, before leveraging himself up with a barely repressed groan. Liz snakes her hand around his arm to help him, and for the first time since she found him, he turns and makes eye contact with her. Liz knows Agnes is watching them carefully, far too perceptive for a five-year old, so she simply squeezes Red's arm before drawing back. There's a small nod from him and three, quiet good night's echo around the room before Liz and Red make their way to the kitchen where Liz seats her troublesome criminal at the bar while she digs around for their first aid kit.
"I'm sorry," he says, watching her stretch up to reach into the cabinet between the sink and the one with the mugs.
"It's okay," But Red drops his gaze to his hands resting in his lap, distracted. There's a grimace on his face when she turns around and she knows it's the one that says he's beating himself up over something or other.
"I wanted to be home before we had to be at the cabin this weekend and I would have had Dembe clean me up, but I was so annoyed that this entire ordeal had already taken so long that I didn't even think about it, and I saw you on the couch, and then Agnes asleep, and I-" He's hushed by Liz who sets the kit on the top of the bar and steps up between his legs to gently take hold of his face the way their daughter had a few minutes ago.
"Raymond," His eyes travel up her body and his own hands fall to her waist. His tired expression meets hers with a deep breath. "It's alright." She smooths her thumbs over his slightly stubbly face and finds herself grinning at him.
"What?" His brow furrows in confusion at her expression and he manages to look a little suspicious of her just then.
"Nothing, it's just," She leans down and kisses him softly, a thing that lingers and reassures, when she pulls back. "You are pretty scratchy." He makes a face, and she drops her hands to his shoulders, kneading them through the fabric there for a moment while her eyes drift from the scab on his brow to the cut on the side of his head. Unaware that she is frowning a little until he reaches up and grabs her hands, brings them to his mouth to lay a kiss to each palm. Liz's breath catches in her chest, and Red glances up at the small sound with eyes that swim in an expression she is often hesitant to name.
"You don't have to explain," Her voice is soft, her hands gripped gently around his own where he holds them against his chest. She watches one of his eyebrows lift in obvious surprise, for, usually, Elizabeth Keen does not sidestep an opportunity for answers to anything. "I mean, I'm damn curious why you didn't call, and why they took you for so long, and why you're banged up a bit, and I will probably ask you about that later, but right now?"
There's the memory of reading a redacted file three years ago. A memory of handling the history of the man before her with such care and trepidation it might as well have been a grenade before her that day. Everything about me is a lie. There had been no words then to describe the horrible story that unfolded before her, and there aren't any now. It is simply a tale of ghosts that will always haunt the living, a brand that very rarely stops burning, an explosion whose concussive force was still dissipating through time.
"I'm just glad you made it home before this weekend." It was an unspoken truth in their household around the Christmas season that Raymond Reddington would be a different person. Oh sure, the magnanimous and charismatic traits were still there, he was still an infuriatingly cunning criminal, he was still eccentric and pushy about eating this or drinking that, but the holidays would always leave him open for attack, and Liz didn't always anticipate those vulnerabilities.
"I'm glad you two were here, earlier." He swallows thickly and his grip tightens just a little more on her hands. His eyes don't avoid her this time, and when she looks up, those ripples of the past have appeared again. Elizabeth has seen him in all states over the years, and it is this one, the one that bears the weight of tragedy, grief, and the likelihood of it happening again. It is an exclusive fear, reserved for sharing among those he counts as family.
Sighing, wanting nothing more than to pull him to bed and wrap her arms around him until their daughter comes bouncing in all ready to go in the morning, she extracts her left hand from his to lay it on the side of his face.
"We're going to go up to the cabin in two days, we're going to do whatever it is you have planned for us up there, we're going to have a wonderful time," She tilts his face up just a little more towards her and he leans into her touch, letting his eyes slip closed for a moment before opening them again to meet her own. "And it isn't going to happen again, Raymond, do you hear me?"
She's not sure he truly does even though he nods and pushes her gently away from him so that they can stand. He grabs the first aid kit from the top of the bar and motions towards the hall. She follows him, helping him shed his coat and jacket, watches him undo his vest, and notes that he's lost his tie along the way.
Morning comes before the both of them even realized they'd fallen asleep, and Liz peeks an eye open at the sound of wheels rolling across the carpet. Standing next to the bed is Agnes, smiling brightly, wearing her pajamas, a traveling backpack Aram got her, and she's practically buzzing with excitement.
"Why are you guys still sleeping?" Liz smiles and presses her face into Red's shirt a little to hide her smile, and wraps her arm around him just a little tighter. He grunts, but doesn't open his eyes, and Liz regrets glancing at the clock.
"Aggie, it's six in the morning." She says quietly, wanting Red to get a little more than three hours of sleep after the last two days he's had. But her daughter simply jumps up and down and tells her in a rush that she was checking the weather, of all things, and that there's a storm that's supposed to set in before tomorrow evening, and they have to pack right now, or else.
Sorry it's a little late! But I hope you enjoyed it! It seemed to be the gift that keeps on giving, so the next chapter will be up tomorrow as a little something extra so it wasn't crazy long! Again, I hope you had an amazing Christmas, mymostpreciousking! ^^