A/N: I love the Blacklist, as well as the idea that Raymond is Elizabeth's biological father. This is my first Blacklist story, and reviews would be much appreciated. This particular piece takes place in season three, episode five, "Arioch Cain".
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, I just play with the plot and characters to my liking.
"That's close enough," Solomon says in his soft voice, a smirk developed on his face as two men rolled a table behind Elizabeth Keen. "Put her on the table."
I watched for a moment, until the two men grabbed her under her arms and behind her knees, pushing her onto the table. The man holding her legs moved his hands to her hip, holding them tightly, possessively. I strained against the restraints and against the men holding me in my seat. I knew the look in those men's eyes, and I didn't like it. "You don't have to do anything to her, let her go. All my resources are at your disposal," I directed towards Solomon, all while looking at Lizzy.
"Reddington," Solomon scolded, sounding much like a parent would to a child. I glared at him, "you know it doesn't work like that."
"Red!" Lizzy's desperate voice cracked with fear. I rapidly turned my head in her direction again, rage pounding through my veins as I saw the man at her feet pop the button on her jeans and slowly drag the zipper down. The chair I am placed in protests loudly as I try once again to get to her. Forceful hands shove me back down, the men in the plane bunker laughed; either at my failed attempts, or at her vulnerability.
Elizabeth struggled feebly as the man pulled her pants past her hips, and up to the bend in her knees. The second man holding her shoulders suddenly grabbed a fistful of her blond locks and pulled hard. She winced in pain. My fight to get to her were futile, but each time I tried to stand I grew more desperate. Finally, as the man reached for her underwear, I broke. "Touch my daughter and I swear to god, I will kill you." This only made the men laugh. Who was I to threaten any of their lives in the position I was in? Suddenly, a golf cart with a dead, bloodied man distracts Solomon and his men. I lock eyes with Elizabeth as gunfire echoes around the room.
I am rarely shocked, but I found my mouth go slack when I recognized Dembe, guns in hand, firing away. The men who had kept me in my chair fall to the floor, along with the two men who pinned Lizzy to the table. She turns on her side, curling in on herself and almost falling over the edge. I race over to her, catching her body with my chest as Dembe cuts off the ties binding my wrists. My arms wrap tightly around her, holding her as she begins to cry.
"You're okay, I've got you," I murmur into her hair, "I've got you." Her bindings are removed, and she rushes to pull her pants up, but her hands are shaking too much to successfully do the button and zipper. Wordlessly, I move her hands away and do it for her.
I leave Lizzy sitting on the side of the table to walk over to the dark skinned man who had saved our lives and embrace him tightly, tears stinging at the corners of my eyes. He was supposed to be dead, but judging by the betrayal from the man who told me of Dembe's death, I should not be terribly surprised to find him alive.
Lizzy and I stand side by side as Dembe is loaded into the back of the ambulance after having collapsed due to a gunshot wound in his side. "You should go with him," she implores softly. I nod but I don't move. A few moments later she asks, "Did you mean it?"
"I meant a lot of things, Lizzy, which one are you referring to?"
"Are you my father?" I am transported back to the time when she had first asked the question, she sounded the same, nervous and uncertain. I was tempted to tell her the truth, but I had found myself telling her the opposite instead. This time, I tell her the truth.
"I am your biological father, yes. The man you remember shooting was not a father figure to you, he was one of the people employed by a man I had worked for at that time. Earlier that week, I mouthed off, refused a job request. I pissed him off and he sent a few of his people to the house on Christmas Eve. My car ran out of gas on the way home and I had to walk about five miles to get there.
"As soon as I walked in, I knew something was wrong. It was too quiet… and you didn't run up to the door to greet me like you usually did. Instead, I found a man in a pool of his own blood, dead. I found you, curled in your mother's lap, in your bedroom. She told me what had happened, that you had shot the man with his own gun as he fought with your mother. I was comforting you, trying to find a way out of this, planning how to escape discreetly, when another one of his men threw flaming cocktails into the house, which went up in flames rather quickly. On the way out, we were trapped, I pushed you through a weak spot in the wall of flames and I followed shortly after. I reached for your mother, but she was already dying in the flames." I choke on emotion as I was drug further into the memory.
"At that moment, I knew I couldn't leave with you. It would have placed you in far too much danger. I found someone who could make you forget the night of the fire, as well as most everything else that could make you remember me or your mother… And I left you to a friend I trusted- Sam Scott.
"The first time we met after that day was when I surrendered to the FBI, but I had kept a close eye on you throughout your life; at first it was Sam, but then you moved away and I had hired Tom to become your friend. As you know, I fired him when the relationship became romantic, and he was then hired by Berlin. That was the reason I turned myself in, because I knew Berlin would have come after you if I were not physically there to protect you." It was silent after I finished the story, and I braced myself for her anger. Instead, I got a hug, her face buried in my neck.
"I was wrong," she whispered, "You are not a monster." My heart thrummed painfully, and despite being in the danger that we were in, I felt the most content I have ever been in over twenty years.