When they had reached the safe house there hadn't been time to look around and there wasn't much to see in the sweaty midnight darkness. She remembered the lilting rasp of frogs and thinking there must be water nearby. The dampness of a humid June still lingered in the air and settled immediately onto her skin. She hated going to bed with the sweat of the day still on her skin but her body gave her no choice – she sunk into the mattress, body and soul. She remembered that familiar feeling of sleep constricting around her like a fist. She wondered if she'd ever rest properly again; or if she'd ever known what that was like in the first place. She couldn't remember the last time sleep felt like falling. It felt more like walking the plank. Like giving herself over to an abyss.
Waking up screaming was not new to her; as a child Sam would bring her warm milk in bed, not realizing that it would effectively ruin it for her for the rest of her life. It reminded her of his bumbling and sincere care for her, but also made her throat feel raw and her heart begin to panic. Tom had tried to comfort her but like Sam before him he could never quite relate to what haunted her, not when the threat wasn't tangible. He was always a little too simple in that way – but in hindsight, the more likely explanation was that he didn't care sincerely. Sitting up with her those nights was all part of his job. The night shift.
Although her throat was still raw from screaming, she felt peculiarly rested. Her limbs were sore from stillness and her joints popped themselves awake as she stretched under the blankets. She had to peel herself from the sheets, her raw skin irritable against their softness. The wrinkling of the sheets left pink and white indentations in the flesh of her arms and legs that she could see faintly in the light that was peeking in from the curtains. Dust twinkled in the streaming sunlight and rested on the book shelves, the nightstands, the lamp. She had no idea if it was sunrise or sunset, but the creeping glow of a weary sun was streaming in all the same.
He had slept there last night, right next to her. She faintly remembered the comfort that had settled over her feeling his weight next to her, the sensation of his presence weaving itself into her consciousness like a stitch holding together the rough tatters that were left of her. They hadn't touched. They didn't need to.
She was still wearing the under layers of her clothes from the day before… she wanted to burn what was left of them. There would not come a day that she would willingly relive the circumstances under which she shot Tom Connolly. If she had to do it over again, she would pull the trigger every time, but the crack of her gunshot echoing through the marble banquet hall served only to remind her of how close she'd come to letting him live. How badly she had wanted to hold fast to Cooper's voice and all that remained of the Elizabeth Keen she'd known herself to be. But more than any guilt she might ever face, she didn't want to remember a world with Tom Connolly in it. No doubt he was being remembered fondly by the media at that very moment on every available channel – everyone but a few people in the world blind to the dead-eyed hatred that he passed off as charisma. The thought made her sick.
For now she would imagine, for a few fleeting and breathless moments as she sat on the edge of an unfamiliar bed, that none of it had happened. She was just in a house. Away. On vacation. Taking a break from her normal life. She cloaked herself with the memory of the last time she'd felt normal, used it to guide her through the fantasy. She could imagine herself in the company of a faceless but comforting companion, easy and unthreatening. In a past life it might have been Tom – whisking her away to some little cottage in the woods for the weekend, tisking at her for even the mere mention of work. Maybe a pot of coffee would be brewing at an odd hour. Maybe she would be poking around the bathroom sampling the travel sized soaps and lotions. The sound of a rustling newspaper. Waves crashing on a beach.
Instead she heard nothing. The floor creaked beneath her as she made her way to the door, the raw wood floors hobbling her sleep-numb feet. From the looks of the interior they were in a cabin, warm toned oak surrounded her, womb-like, on all sides, filling the air with the pleasant, settled scent of the woods. And coffee. She hadn't imagined it after all. She stepped into the little living room off the bedroom and saw that it looked over a surprisingly grand back porch, a lush grassy slope and finally a quiet view of a lake. Through the open shutters of the windows she could hear the water lapping the banks.
She hadn't seen him at first, but his bare feet giving him away, propped and crossed on the wicker ottoman. Steam rose from a mug that he had placed on the table next to him, positioned next to his matching chair so he could look out over the water. That is, if he had been awake. She crept up behind him, careful not to let her footsteps disturb his sleep. She listened for a moment to his delicate snore and the puffs of air leaving his lips; he couldn't have been asleep long. His brow showed a hint of thought and she wondered if he might be dreaming. A delicate pen, likely worth more than her last car, laid over the pages of an open Moleskine notebook. He'd been writing a letter.
Before he awoke with a start, she was sure she'd made out the word "Lizzie" scrawled at the top of the cream-white page in blood red ink, a stream of prose following it. The image smoldered in her mind as he closed his notebook upon waking. The moment of startled realization on his face didn't linger and blossomed into a slow smile upon seeing that it was her.
"Lizzie," he said. "How did you sleep?"
"Relatively well, considering," she said, taking a seat next to him.
"It must be something about this place," he said, gesturing to the view. "Something about the south, I don't know what it is. Could be the chicory they're so fond of down here. Caffeine free." He shook his head, drawing the inside of his lip between his teeth thoughtfully and scowling. "The first time I stayed here I thought I might be having an aneurism. Throbbing headaches day and night! Caffeine withdrawal. And here I was drinking that chicory thinking it might help." He chuckled. "Herbs. As coffee. I can't imagine what possesses people."
"Is that what this is?" Liz asked, pointing at his mug.
"No, no," Red said. "This is Folgers. Or as I like to call it, my reminder to do some grocery shopping. Would you like some? A little Irish crème and you'll forget that it came from a can."
"Isn't it a little early, even for you?" she said, looking around for a clock.
"It's 7:30 in the evening, Lizzie. You've been sleeping straight through the day."
"I'll take a large," she said, rubbing her eyes and feeling rather sheepish. On any other day she might have wondered where they were and how he'd chosen their location. But she was content to let that information go undiscussed under the circumstances. Perhaps it was better if she didn't know.
Red groaned a bit as he got up from his chair, wincing slightly over his shoulder. He babied it with his hand a bit, trying to do so out of her view. A pang of reality gored her chest. It wasn't so long ago that he'd almost died.
"Are you alright? Have you been doing the stretches that Kate told you to do?" she said, peeking over the back of her chair. Her eyes grazed over the cover of his notebook lustfully; she couldn't violate his privacy but she felt that childlike itch in her chest that she knew wouldn't go away until she saw inside the cover. It may as well have been tucked under a Christmas tree.
"I haven't thought much of it," he said, the gurgling of poured liquid and the heavy smell of coffee wafting through the air.
"You need to do them, you know," she said, settling back in her seat.
"I don't mean to sound like a child but they aren't very comfortable," he said, handing her the cup and taking his place again with a barely muffled grunt.
"That's how you know they're working," Liz said. "Certainly someone who knows enough about the human body to do a field transfusion knows about how the body heals. And I don't imagine this is your first encounter with a bullet."
"It's not," he said. "But I'm older now than I was then. It wears on you. The mind gives in."
"You are barely eligible for the senior discount and Denny's, don't talk like that. It's unbecoming."
Red chuckled, but his eyes were distant. A poignant silence ebbed back into the room and it crackled with their shared anxiety. The thought of Red giving up, whatever that might mean, made her eyes prickle with tears. If she didn't control her breath, her chest would start to heave and she'd become short of breath. And then he'd know. Perhaps that was best. They were bound to lay their cards on the table sometime. It might as well be on her terms.
"You can't talk like that," she said quietly as she watched what was left of his ambient smile fade. "It scares me, you giving in. And I can help you but just… take it easy on me. Just for a little while."
He moved his hand to hers like it was guided by wire, not stealing so much as a glance her way. He found her by instinct.
"It won't always be this way, Lizzie," he said just above a whisper, the gravel of his voice gliding mellifluous over the sound of waking crickets. And she believed him.
But for a fleeting, wild moment, in the flickering dusk, she wished it could be.