AN: To be quite honest, though it had its winning moments, I felt that the finale left much to be desired, particularly from a lizzington shipper's POV. We at least needed a reunion, if nothing else. I knew what I had to do, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Starting with Red's confrontation of Kate, I rewrote it, keeping many lines intact, but digging deeper, and finally making some sense out of that completely nonsensical pregnancy timeline. Everything most of us lizzington shippers crave is packed into this story, and I hope it'll bring some satisfaction to my shipmates.
-...-...-...-...-...-
Red made no effort to hide his feelings of anguish at Mr. Kaplan's betrayal. 'Tom gave us the slip, my ass,' he thought. Fingers balled tightly into fists at his sides, he took three long strides to close the distance between them.
His once most-trusted associate trembled slightly under his piercing gaze, stuck at a momentary loss for words. She'd known that this day would come, had practiced her explanation ad nauseum during every quiet moment that she'd had to herself. She'd decided to be firm with him. Stern. Commanding. She'd stand by her actions because they were warranted. This was her job, and no one could do it better.
That was the plan, anyway.
Now, in the moment, her tongue felt thickened with a mixture of guilt and fear. Too many times, she'd seen that look in his eyes, but never directed at her. "Raymond, I -"
Before she could finish that thought, he cut her off with a menacing growl. He couldn't believe that she'd be the one to kick him while he was down, and god help him, he'd never been lower. "Oh Kate... I would name every human being on the planet before you if asked who might betray me."
She sighed and tried once more to begin, "Raymond -" only to be cut off again.
" I know what you've done," he sneered through gritted teeth. "I know you helped Tom and Agnes leave the country without my knowledge."
Somehow, the indignation in his voice cut her the wrong way, provoking within her the courage to respond in kind. She could do this. She could stand up to him. She'd done it before. "Yes."
"Yes," he parroted.
She lifted her chin and boldly held his gaze. "What exactly do you want to know, Raymond? If I'm sorry? Yes. I'm sorry you weren't more honest with Elizabeth from the beginning. I'm sorry you wanted to know her so desperately that you convinced yourself we could keep her safe. I couldn't sit back and watch you make the same mistake with Agnes. I didn't betray you. I did what I've always done. I protected you... this time, from yourself. And I protected her, too."
"You're wrong." He shook his head. Christ, she couldn't have been more wrong.
" Don't ask me where they are. I won't tell you." Even as she spoke the words, steady on the surface, visions of Brimley with a pair of needle nose pliars and an ornery alpaca danced in her mind's eye. She could withstand his insane advanced interrogation methods if necessary, but that didn't mean she relished the thought.
"You don't understand, Kate. I don't have to ask. I know where they are, and so does Alexander Kirk."
"Kirk?" Impossible.
"Kirk was tracking Tom. He knows they're in Cuba. He's flying there as we speak." Red rested one tired hand on her shoulder, as if to steady them both. He stuck his other hand into his coat pocket and wrapped his fingers around the tiny thumb drive that Aram had given him weeks ago. He kept it with him at all times now, a talisman, a touchstone. "I know you had her best interests at heart, that you were trying to protect her, but now, because of you, Agnes is in grave danger."
She tried to swallow the thick lump in her throat. He still didn't really know what she had done, at least not the worst of it. Through quivering lips, she whispered, "Not just Agnes."
The air cracked as if a lightning rod had been struck between them. Kate held her breath and watched his body freeze. Understanding hit him like a ton of bricks, knocking him back a few steps as a strangled sound escaped his throat. "Lizzie."
"Yes." There was more, so much more, but she might leave the rest up to Elizabeth to tell him, if she wanted.
If she survived.
-...-...-...-...-
Seated across from Red on his jet, just after takeoff, Kate felt his eyes on her, demanding her attention. Lips pursed, she looked up, anticipating the next deluge of questions. At least they were only flying out to Cuba, and not somewhere across the Atlantic. Touchdown couldn't come quickly enough.
"How? How could you?"
"The 'how' won't change anything." The set of his jaw and twitch of his cheek told her that her reply was insufficient. Before he could repeat the question, she indulged him, "I suppose I knew what I would do that afternoon in the car, on the drive to the mobile ICU. That poor girl, so afraid, always looking over her shoulder, in the dark about who she was and why it mattered. We've discussed this before, Raymond, repeatedly. Both Dembe and I have tried to reason with you, but you've consistently dismissed us every time. This time, now, it would have been no different..." She paused for a breath, letting it sink in before continuing, "But it wasn't just about Elizabeth anymore. The baby was already paying the price for her association with you. I saw my opportunity, and then I took it."
He shuddered, shaking his head as if to deflect her explanation. "I saw her die."
"You thought you did. Most heart monitors come with simulation devices for training purposes. All Nik had to do was connect her heart leads to the simulator, and then he could make her vitals do whatever he wanted... raise her heart rate, drop her oxygen levels, crash her blood pressure."
He pulled the thumb drive from his pocket and slowly rotated it through his fingers. "I sat over her body. I watched her die."
"No, you saw what we needed you to see. Once she was on the ventilator, one large dose of a beta blocker dropped her cardiac output and pulse to a level just barely detectable under the best of circumstances, let alone with a gunfight raging outside. Then, you didn't want her body taken to the morgue. That made things easier. Elizabeth was in the body bag for less than two minutes. Nik was standing by with the antidote, glucagon. I found a suitable Jane Doe for the funeral. Need I continue?"
Had he not been sitting already, he may have collapsed again. His hollowed stomach had long since dropped. He clenched his jaw even harder, blinking back tears and trying to steady his voice, "Had it really come to that?"
"I know how much you love her, Raymond, but she loves her daughter just as much, if not more. Yes, it had come to that."
At last, he averted his withering gaze, letting it drift to the clouds outside the window. "Ever since that day, not a minute has gone by that I haven't thought about her last words. I turn them over in my mind, analyzing every possible nuance. She had finally called me by my first name, for the very first and last time. I was the last person she spoke to. My face was the last thing she saw. Maybe that isn't real now, but it was all too real before. For weeks, that moment has plagued me."
Kate wanted to take it as a good sign, that he was opening up and sharing with her, but she knew that it was only wishful thinking. Softly, she coaxed him, just as she would have under more normal circumstances, "What did she say?"
"Very little. Just an incomplete sentence, lacking one single word - the one which would have given it all meaning... she said, 'Raymond, I do love...'"
Despite her frustration, Kate's heart violently seized for him. She could just barely resist the urge to reach for his hand. Such a gesture wouldn't be welcome, she knew.
He went on, "Love what? Love who? Chinese food? Autumn in Paris? Agnes? Tom? Dare I fool myself into imagining that she might have said 'you'?"
"She might not want to love you, but she does."
"Knowing what I know now, even if that's what she was trying to say, I can't possibly believe that she meant it. It was a declaration born of pity, or possibly guilt. After refusing to let me see her baby, she just didn't want me to think that she'd died hating me."
"She was only protecting her daughter," Kate reiterated.
He shoved the thumb drive back into his pocket with a huff. "Right," he growled. "It would be dangerous for me to simply look at her daughter. It makes perfect sense."
"It did." In a manner of speaking, in a way that she couldn't believe he still couldn't see for himself. Elizabeth had never confirmed it, and Kate didn't dare ask, but she could see it plainly. If she could see it, then why couldn't Raymond?
"Don't be fatuous, Kate. How does it make sense? You said that I don't listen. Well, I'm your captive audience. Indulge me."
It would be unwise to withhold anything from him now, but did she dare lead him to this truth? At the same time, the fact that she hadn't told him already would appear as another betrayal, to him. She was damned no matter what. Rather than answer directly, she said, "But you have seen her. You've held her in your arms, let her grasp your fingers, stroked her soft, blonde hair."
"You're deflecting."
"Am I? You and Elizabeth became close while you were on the run, working to clear her name." Again, the spasm under his left eye. She'd struck a nerve.
He nodded, but his eyes narrowed further. "Too close for her, apparently. Never close enough for me."
"You were intimate." Perhaps she should have phrased it as a question, she thought, after the words had already passed her lips. It sounded like an accusation.
"That's none of your business," he snapped. "Especially after what you've done."
"My god, Raymond..." Could he be more dense? "I'm trying to lead you somewhere, but you aren't following."
He simply continued to stare at her, his nostrils flaring with every breath.
After several long seconds, she added, "Have you ever wondered, if only for a moment, how eleven months of gestation could result in a premature birth?"
He canted his head, perplexed. "I beg your pardon?"
"That doesn't make sense, does it? No. What does make sense is Agnes being conceived in late August, while Elizabeth was on the run, with you."
His jaw dropped and trembled, unable to contain the soft whimper that escaped his lips. "But Tom," he began helplessly.
"Is as clueless as you, apparently."
"So, she, she's..." He felt as if he'd been wrapped in sunshine and sucker punched, cradled in warmth but utterly ruined. It was everything he wanted, but nothing that he should have, nothing he deserved.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because it's so simple, so blatantly obvious, Raymond, that I could only assume that you were being willfully ignorant. Either you didn't want to know, or you already knew and were giving her an out. When you told me her due date, I immediately did the math. Tom was hundreds of miles away, hunting down Karakurt."
Red closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, working his way through the situation from Kate's perspective, hopeful that her actions could be understood... only to find that he couldn't see beyond wounds carved so deeply. His rumbling, sandpaper-rough voice rubbed her raw. "If we don't get them back, I don't expect either of us to survive."
-...-...-...-...-...-
When at last they arrived in Cuba, Dembe drove like a bat out of hell to the little villa where Kate had tried to stow away Red's whole world. Guns drawn, the trio skulked across the yard and found the front door unlocked - the first of several bad signs. Glass littered the carpet. Picture frames had fallen off the walls. The scene painted the obvious signs of a struggle, two adults taken against their will. Red whimpered at the sight of the empty crib, and he braced himself against it while Dembe cleared the rest of the house. When he returned, he communicated his findings, or rather his lack thereof, with a small shake of his head.
Galvanized, newly enraged, Red turned to regard his betrayer, his destroyer, his close friend. "Kate..."
She stood stock still, accepting of her fate, whatever it may be. Still holding his gun, he cupped her face in his hands. In the otherwise silent room, the sound of him flicking off the safety was deafening. She could feel his trigger finger twitching against her cheek as he searched her eyes.
His grief-stricken voice rolled over her like a tidal wave. "What am I gonna do with you, Kate?"
She closed her eyes and held her breath.
Neither were aware of Dembe's silent approach until he gently placed his hand over the one in which Red held his gun. "Raymond, don't." He didn't know whether or not Red was about to kill her, but he refused to stand by and watch it happen. Red offered no resistance as he extracted the gun from his fingers and placed a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Let her help us find Elizabeth, and then decide."
Red snapped to attention as if a spell had been broken. When he spoke, his tone was schooled and smoothed back into business mode. "My phone, please. Unless Kirk already had a team on the ground in Cuba, he'd have to reach out to Manny Soto to carry out his plan. Let's hope old Manny isn't still chafed about that little strontium ninety gambit."
Kate said nothing, simply relieved that he had a plan. Frankly, she doubted her usefulness at this juncture. She wouldn't have even known where to start looking for them.
Some bloodhound, she was.
-...-...-...-...-
After ignoring Red's calls, Manny was nowhere near pleased to find him on his doorstep, but he was predictably more than happy to roll over on Kirk for the right price, especially after Red assured him that Kirk wouldn't survive to retaliate. Manny gave him both the keys to his SUV and the GPS coordinates of a desolate cabin in the jungle that Kirk had rented from him, far off the beaten path. It was a place where screams could go unheard and blood could be spilled with no questions asked.
The unpaved road to the cabin was bumpy, and at their speed, brutal on the vehicle's suspension.
Not that they cared.
Dembe parked a few hundred yards from the cabin, and they briskly felt their way through the pitch-black night, each weighed down with more ammo than they could possibly need.
Though prepared to run into a team of guards outside, Red found that Alexander's hubris hadn't waned over the years since he'd seen him last. He peered through a window and saw what looked like a small celebration going on inside. Six men sat around the kitchen table, sharing an enormous bottle of vodka that was nearly empty. Kirk sat at the head of the table, his cheeks flushed from having too much to drink. With his condition, it wouldn't take much. Red saw no sign of Liz or Agnes, but from Manny, he'd learned that the cabin had two bedrooms and a basement. He and Dembe would take out Kirk and the others, while Kate was charged with finding his girls.
He took several paces back from the window, nodding at Dembe before taking aim at Kirk, through the glass. Kirk wouldn't know what hit him, or who had killed him, and he didn't give a damn. He squeezed the trigger three times. The window shattered, and Kirk dropped to the floor. The five remaining men clambered to their feet, drawing their guns and stumbling towards the door. Idiots. Every last one of them. He and Dembe summarily put them all down in the doorway.
Red nodded to Kate to follow them inside, and he intentionally stepped on the bodies in his way, trusting that the rubber treads on his custom Italian shoes would keep him from slipping in their blood. With his gun still drawn, he made his way over to Kirk, to check his pulse. Kate headed towards the bedrooms while Dembe looked for survivors.
It was so absurdly easy that it didn't even feel real. "Oh, Alexander," he spoke aloud to the dead man. "You really should have stayed in Moscow." He picked up the vodka bottle and took a large swig. As he set the bottle down, Kate reappeared in the doorway, cradling his daughter in her arms.
"She's okay. She was sound asleep in a bassinet. The basement door is locked. He must have Elizabeth down there."
He sighed, blinking back tears of relief. Rather than waste time by looking for a key, he took several large strides down the hall and kicked in the basement door with a single, swift blow.
"Give her to me. Find Tom," he grunted, and then anxiously trotted downstairs. He flipped on the light and stood at the landing of the steps, taking in the sight of the woman he'd believed to be dead. She was tied to a wooden chair in the center of the room. Scrapes and contusions on her jaw showed how hard she had fought her captors. On any other day, he would have been proud. Relief and pain at the sight of her swelled like a fist in his chest. He resisted the urge to sprint the few steps between them and pull her into his arms.
"Red," she breathed.
He looked down at Agnes, finally taking in their many shared similarities. Her chin, her cheeks, her fair complexion, but most of all, the way she arched a single eyebrow as she stared back at him curiously. With his eyes still on his daughter, he asked, "How could you, Elizabeth? Why didn't you tell me?"
But she ignored his questions. "Is she okay? Where's Tom?"
Rather than untie her, Red walked in a slow circle around her, looking her over from head to toe, his gaze lingering on her red nail polish. Part of him was stalled with disbelief, not entirely convinced that he wasn't hallucinating again. "She's fine. Dembe and Kate are looking for him now. Answer me."
"If you believed that I was dead, then so would the rest of the world. Cooper, everyone at the Post Office, the entire criminal underworld. I didn't want to do it. I did it for her. It was the only way."
He stopped directly in front of her, his feet planted in between hers, and shook his head. "I'm not talking about that."
"You mean..." She couldn't bring herself to even finish the sentence.
"Yes," he growled. Agnes began to squirm in his arms, displeased by his tone, so he went back to walking, rocking her gently.
Liz sighed and closed her eyes before replying, "Vincent Peretti."
"Vincent Peretti?"
"Of the Peretti family, lot number twenty-seven at the King's auction, for sale to the highest bidder to ensure his silence, damned because of his name. He was just a boy, an innocent boy. I couldn't stop thinking about him. I don't want that to happen to her." She sniffled and feebly attempted to brush away a tear with her shoulder.
Red reached out to get it with his thumb, leaving a wet streak across her cheekbone. "Yes, I remember," he said.
"I know that it isn't all your fault. You didn't make me a Rostova, but we made her... both a Rostova and a Reddington. God, I can't think of a more perilous identity to have. That's why I wanted to give her away, but then I couldn't. I couldn't go through with it. And when I told you I was pregnant, you just assumed it was Tom's baby, and he assumed the same. I've wondered all along if perhaps you secretly knew. You knew that I was pregnant before I even knew for sure, but you never said anything. I even thought that maybe it was the reason you were so adamant about me keeping her. When Mr. Kaplan told me her plan, I didn't know if I could do it... but then I saw her. She looked just like you, and she was so beautiful and precious and utterly helpless. That's when I agreed. I didn't know what else to do."
"I know you don't believe me, but you're much safer with my help than without. Your alleged death didn't stop Kirk from going after Agnes. Imagine his delight when he tracked Tom all the way to Cuba, only to discover that you were here, living and breathing, waiting for her."
"And now I know why..." She trailed off, expecting Red to elucidate on Kirk's motives, curious as to whether or not he knew them, but he remained silent, hanging onto her every word. "He's sick, and Agnes and I are his only living relatives. He wanted to keep us, alive, to harvest from us as needed." She rolled her shoulders and winced as the motion pulled at the ropes around her wrists. "Do you plan on untying me?"
"I would, if I trusted you to stay put until we finish talking."
All complaints died on her tongue. Of course he didn't trust her. Why would he? "I didn't kill my father. I killed my uncle."
He squinted at her, chewing the inside of his cheek. "No, Lizzie. Alexander Kirk is your uncle. He wasn't even there that night."
She chuckled humorlessly. "I know Kirk wasn't there, but he was with my mother nine months before I was born. She never knew if I was her husband's or his brother's. Kirk had his suspicions, but chose to keep quiet rather than admit his betrayal to his brother. By the time he heard the news about his brother's passing, I was already gone, hidden away with Sam."
"Katarina had an affair with Constantine?"
"He ran a DNA test with a sample of my blood from the car accident. He probably tested Tom and Agnes too. They've either killed him, or they told him that he isn't her father, and he escaped." She knew that if he'd escaped without hearing the truth, then he would have reached out to Red for help. He'd want to get her out of there, at all costs. Dead or alive, he was gone for good. It occured to her that permanently losing Tom hurt nowhere near as badly as losing Red had. She sighed heavily, feeling her way through a sudden, stabbing guilt. Tom may have conned her into their first marriage, but she'd conned him into the last one.
"I know you believe that he's changed. I can even believe that he wants to change, but men like Tom don't change. Short of a bullet between his eyes, I couldn't stop you from marrying him a third time. I let him live because you loved him, and to kill him would be to hurt you... But Agnes is equally ours, and I won't have that man in my daughter's life, even if it hurts you, and even if you hate me for it. Full disclosure, Lizzie. If he's still alive, I can't promise that I won't kill him. If I sense even the slightest possibility that he wishes you or Agnes harm, he's dead." Though she was tied to a chair, technically at his mercy, his posture stiffened in anticipation of her rage-fueled reaction.
Much to his surprise, she just nodded glumly, staring downward at her lap. She'd expected him to say as much.
"How long have you known?" she asked. "Tom said that you've been showing up at my apartment, insistent on providing security, a trust fund, desperate to be a part of her life."
"Only a few hours. Before, I'd only wanted to protect her because she's yours, not because she's mine."
"I don't understand how you failed to figure it out. I mean, did you forget about that night, after Dembe saved us from Solomon? We did have a lot to drink, but I distinctly remember crawling into your bed. Then I woke up alone, sore, with hickies on my inner thighs."
"No, Lizzie." Both his expression and tone softened. "I remember every last second, every sound you made, every freckle on your body, every curve laid out before me. That memory... There isn't enough hard liquor in the world to make me forget that."
The faraway look in his gaze made her eyes well up with another round of tears. She understood. "You regret it."
"Don't you?" If she did, they almost certainly had different reasons. "It's difficult to admit, now that we have our daughter, but imagine she was never conceived. Would you regret it then? Didn't you regret it before you found out?"
"No, I don't, and neither should you. My only regret is that you seemed to regret it. I'll remind you that you're the one who left in the middle of the night."
In light of all that had transpired since then, her answer surprised him. "We crossed a line that I had no business crossing. You were traumatized, vulnerable. What happened when you crawled into my bed was something that I don't even deserve to have in my dreams, much less in real life. I was selfish, and I lacked the strength to rebuff your advances... And then there was Tom. You still loved him, wanted him. I was simply filling in the empty space he'd left. I knew that I was momentary, so I left to spare you the early morning walk of shame. I thought that if we didn't wake up together, then you could more easily pretend that it never happened."
She shook her head and glared at him, "Oh, shut up. Can you even hear yourself? Do you know how patronizing your self-loathing sounds in this context? I came to you because I wanted you. We were equally vulnerable to each other."
Red didn't know how to respond to that, but felt they'd each spoken enough of their respective pieces for one night. Even now, a war raged within him over whether he should pull her into his arms or disappear to sulk alone, to lick his wounds, to nurse his fractured heart. But then, one didn't exactly preclude the other, did it? Cradling his daughter with one arm, he circled around to the back of the chair and produced a knife from his coat pocket. He trembled at her proximity as he slowly cut into the ropes around her wrists. The heady scent of her shampoo invaded his nostrils, forcing him to close his eyes for the briefest of moments.
With great effort, he stood up and made his way to the front of the chair, where her ankles had been tied to its legs. Then, he was back on his knees, kneeling before her. While working on the ropes, from his peripheral vision, he saw her reaching down, for Agnes, he assumed, but he was wrong again. She instead cupped his face with her hand, the same hand he'd pressed to his cheek when he thought she had died. When he looked up at her face, it was too much to bear. A single, fat tear slid down his cheek, into her waiting fingers.
"Raymond, thank you," she whispered.
He shuddered but made no reply, intent on setting her free before he fell apart completely. When he stood up and threw the ropes aside, she immediately stood with him and pulled him into her arms, trusting that he wouldn't resist. With his free arm, he hugged her back as tightly as he dared, careful not to crush their daughter between them. He felt her hands everywhere, on his shoulders, the nape of his neck, the small of his back, as if she were committing the feel his body to memory.
"You have no idea what you've done to me, Elizabeth," he breathed against her neck. Of all the times she'd cut him down, not once did he ever want her to know how affected he was. He'd always accepted it, willingly taking her lashes and then suffering privately, so as not to burden her further.
But this was different. Everything was different. This time, he wanted her to know. "I'm sorry," she sobbed.
He took a step back and held out their daughter, offering her to her mother. Liz took her gratefully and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Hi, sweetheart. Mommy missed you so much," she cooed. "I'll never let anyone take you away from me again." She soon tore her eyes away from her baby's face to look up at Red. "So... what happens now?"
"I have a safehouse in Havana. Dembe will stay with you tonight. Tomorrow, after you've gotten some sleep, we'll come up with a plan."
She nodded, understanding that he wouldn't be there, and why. He needed time alone to process everything.
He stuck his hand into his coat pocket and ran his fingers over the tiny thumb drive for one final time before pulling it out. He wouldn't need it anymore. He gently took her hand, placed it in her palm, and closed her fingers around it. "What's this?" she asked, both wary and curious as she shoved it into her pocket.
"Something you should see before you even think about returning to DC. At the safehouse, you'll find a laptop in your bedroom. After you've put Agnes to bed, use it to open the files. I'm sure you're exhausted, but it won't take long. I'll be staying in the pool house, so if you need me for any reason, that's where you can find me."
He turned towards the stairs, but she stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "Wait. Mr. Kaplan... what are you going to do with her? Please don't kill her. Promise me you won't."
"I'm not going to kill her, Lizzie. You and Agnes are alive and safe. Nothing else matters."
She slid her hand down the length of his arm, laced her fingers with his, and pulled him back to her, just close enough to plant a brief kiss to the corner of his lips. "Okay, good," she said, ignoring his surprised expression. She then took a step forward and glanced at the stairs, encouraging him to lead her up them, still holding his hand.
What on earth would she find on that thumb drive, and why did she have to see it before going home?
-...-...-...-...-
AN: Thank you for reading this long chapter! You can expect the second and final installment within the week.