A/N: I'm fairly positive I'm not the first one to write a Liz-pulls-a-gun-on-Red fic, but this has been sitting on my computer since the Luther Braxton two-parter (in several different forms) and I wanted to share it.

Also, it may or may not be a clever distraction from the fact that I haven't updated my multi-chapter fic in over a year? I mean, uh . . . LOOK AT THIS SHINY NEW FIC I WROTE YOU GUYS.

The Irish whiskey doesn't sear his throat enough on its way down. Good whiskey, Red was once told, should bear down on your palette like a tidal wave and gradually mellow to a restless sea. This particular brand is highly recommended by his cohort operating out of Dublin, but he can't fathom its appeal. He wants to drown in it but instead finds himself wading into a kiddie pool of a drink. I could have taken some pointers from that ascetic in Minsk, he thinks ruefully. All I need is a cat o' nine tails and I'm set.

When Dembe tells him she's here unannounced, he slings back the rest in one quick jerk. He suspects he's going to need it. She usually gives him at least five minutes' notice.

She looks like the poster child for poor stress management when she walks in. Her hair hangs in limp, frizzy locks around her ashen face. Dark circles the color of a twilit sky underscore her eyes, betraying a lack of sleep. There's a certain familiarity to her appearance, the impact of recent events writ large in her expression. He knows physical torture more intimately than she does, but their bond via emotional trauma is arguably worse.

Red instructs Dembe to excuse them.

Dembe obliges, and closes the door. The lock clicks softly.

And her gun is out and trained on him.

All the rehearsed pleasantries die on his lips, the poker face he's cultivated for decades failing him instantly. He sets the whiskey glass down on the coffee table, eyes darting between her and the gun. "What are you doing?"

Her stance is solid, unyielding, her focus without parallel. She sees him merely as a threat to be neutralized. The fire that links their pasts seems to burn in her eyes. "I want my life back."

"And you think killing me will give it to you."

She blinks in the affirmative.

He tries to sound like his usual blasé self to mask the staccato rhythm of his heart. "Lizzie, this is not you. You're not thinking clearly. Whatever it is you believe is going on between us, we can work it out—" He starts to lean forward, intending to talk her down eye-to-eye; he's prideful, and averse to being the submissive in any given situation.

She jerks the gun up, following him. "Come any closer and I promise I'll put a bullet in you."

He sits back. No need to inform her she'd spare both of them a great deal of agony in doing so.

"I can kill, Reddington," she continues evenly. "I may not know a lot about my past, but I know that. And I know you treat me like a pet, throwing me little morsels of information with the knowledge that I'm completely dependent on you for my sense of self." She seems to be enjoying the momentary power she has over him. "All I've been able to think about since Braxton is what would happen if I bit the hand that feeds me. Would removing you from the equation give me any satisfaction? Would it give me some peace of mind, that I'd never know the truth and could finally put the whole thing behind me?"

He's stared down the barrels of innumerable guns but never has the looming threat of a bullet meant for his heart felt tantamount to betrayal. "It's not a problem solved by killing me," he urges her. "It's so much more. I conceal from you only that which you need to be ignorant of in the moment, for your protection. You will know everything sooner or later."

"Your promises are hollow."

"My promises to you are carved in stone."

The crack in her demeanor is subtle. She's come a long way from the FBI ingénue who would allow a single shifty glance to jeopardize an entire operation. But the gentleness he so admires in her is the tool he needs to bring her back from the precipice – and because he loves her in a truly screwed-up way, he resolves to show her some of his own cracks. "It . . . hurts me to see you so lost."

Tears begin to pool in her eyes. "Stop," she whispers.

He doesn't. He can't. "You never asked to be their asset, you were so young –"

"Don't you dare, Reddington."

"—they infiltrated your memories, dismantled who you were to protect their interests –"

"I swear to G—"

"—and I don't blame you at all for feeling like you can't trust anyone until you trust yourself first –"

"PLEASE!"

Good, some derisive part of him thinks. Now she knows desperation. Now she knows how I feel every time she defies my attempts to help her. He makes one final appeal and hopes for the best. "Lizzie, if you had any doubt as to whether I deserve to live, you would have pulled the trigger by now."

The gun's sight drops almost imperceptibly. Red realizes this may be the longest they've ever looked into each other's eyes. And he wants it to last. That moment of truth, of supplication.

Liz drops the gun to her side and places it on the table in the no-man's-land between them. Red takes the first deep breath he's had since she arrived. Though his military training tells him to seize it and gain the upper hand, he does no such thing, instead wishing he could embrace her. The coffee table obstructing him feels more and more like a chasm.

"I shouldn't have let you talk," she says languidly. "I should've just shot you and been done with it." She collapses on the chair opposite him.

"And simultaneously undone all the Post Office's efforts. Plus, Dembe certainly would have been upset."

She props her head up on one arm. "Why didn't he come running?"

"Dembe has specific instructions to never interrupt us unless I provide him with a code word."

Her features scrunch in confusion. "You trust me that much?"

The corners of his mouth turn up slightly. Soft, and hard, and soft again. "Yes."

Liz exhales. A burdensome silence falls for several seconds before she speaks again. "No matter how disingenuous and deflective you are to me . . . No matter how often I watch you abduct and harm and kill to achieve your own goals . . . I keep coming back to confide in you. What does that say about me?"

It was a rhetorical question, yes, but he wanted to supply her with an answer: it says you're searching for a sturdy person to lean on when you need help. And I wish I could be that person for you.

"I'm just . . . so exhausted with this," she goes on. "The Fulcrum. The shadow organization. This dance that you and I have to do." She gestures lazily between them before running her fingers through her hair. "I almost get it, you know? The whole 'I'm endangering you by giving you information' thing. But I still don't know exactly why you turned yourself in, and it . . . it eats away at me, knowing I may only be a means to an end for you."

God, where to go with this. "When I turned myself in, it was chiefly out of a desire to find the Fulcrum. I assure you that that much is true. And I had calculated every conceivable way to deliver you to this point in the hopes that you'd give it up without resistance."

Liz visibly relaxes. "That's . . . weirdly comforting."

"What I didn't anticipate was forming such a strong attachment to you."

She looks alarmed suddenly, as if this revelation was somehow out of left field for them. "I want to believe you, Red."

"Believe this," he says, his voice tinged with frustration. How many cards did he have to reveal before she relented? "If you were simply a means to an end, we would be enjoying our respective nights off right now and I wouldn't be sitting here trying to convince you of your value as a person, not as a target."

Liz looks at him through watery eyes, her mouth hanging open. "I'll believe in my value as a person as soon as you do the same."

He swallows uncomfortably. Licks his lips. Searches for a way to respond to the idea that the girl – no, woman – he's cared for for years might return the feeling. What he comes up with, as usual, falls flat. "I don't deserve you, Lizzie."

She damn near ignores him as she rises to holster her gun. "Sorry I almost killed you." And she's out the door before he can say anything else.

He closes his eyes slowly. "On the contrary," he says to the empty room.

And the memories come flooding back.

The house is on fire. His head is on fire. Concussion? Doesn't matter. He's about to die anyway.

He's drifting, his body relaxing, submitting. He would've liked to see his family one more time, to apologize –

His eyes dart open, meeting a swath of brown curls and a little hand tugging frantically at his coat.

He reflexively inhales a lungful of smoke and coughs it back out. "Get – out—"

But she persists, willing him to get up. She isn't crying. Her blue eyes twinkle with comprehension and something else – sympathy. No one's looked at him like that in a long time, and it's a pinprick of hope in him. Like he's capable of being forgiven.

She doesn't let go of him, nor does she loosen her grip on the stuffed rabbit in her arms, its snowy white fur tinged brown by the flames.

The fog begins to clear from his head and, once he knows he's still in one piece, he pushes himself upright, one aching muscle at a time. Before long he's on his feet, and the girl has curled her hand around his. She leads him down a hallway, past rooms that are already charred beyond recognition. He doesn't focus on the blackened, person-sized lumps they pass.

A tearing, crackling sound above them makes him instinctively yank the girl backward. A patch of burning ceiling plummets, and then another, directly onto him. He shields the girl as white-hot pain rips through him, bringing him dangerously close to passing out again. An inferno rises behind them; the already-burnt skin of his back feels like it's beginning to crisp. Sheer agony threatens to paralyze him, but somehow, he nudges the girl around the detritus and onward.

It seems like eons before they escape the house, and when they do, the bitter cold is unforgiving to his wounds. His attackers – the people he was working against –have fled rather than deal with any survivors of their handiwork. The adrenaline rush wears off in a heartbeat; he topples backward into a snowbank, and hitting the ice-coated mound sends a shockwave through him, as if someone is driving a red-hot poker into every part of his back simultaneously.

The girl stands a few feet away, transfixed by the flames engulfing the rest of the house. She must be freezing, he finally thinks, and carefully removes what's left of his singed coat to drape it around her. She wobbles a bit under its weight but manages to pull it tighter. When she finally turns to him, her eyes are puffy with tears.

Without thinking twice, he opens his arms, and she comes to him, nestling her head into the crook of his neck.

Now what?

Liz didn't always trust him. Hell, she didn't always like him, either. But as far he was concerned, that was incidental to the fact that one blustery winter night twenty-eight years prior, Liz had saved him.

And he was determined to return the favor.