It's been a long day without you, my friend
And I'll tell you all about it when I see you again
We've come a long way from where we began
Oh, I'll tell you all about it when I see you again
When I See You Again
The room feels too large. There's only one desk instead of two and it's silent and his partner isn't there filling the quiet with her large personality, her quirks, her quiet way of researching and then yelling "Ah ha!" when she'd discovered something or simply running to him in excitement.
Ressler sighs, and rubs a hand over his eyes. He props his head on his hand and looks over the sea of files covering his desk. In his office. Oh, Lord, how had he gotten himself here?
"Boss?"
Ressler looks up, the term unfamiliar yet becoming frighteningly normal.
"Yes, Agent Navabi?"
The way she looks at him is almost pitying. He doesn't blame her. He's practically lived here for two months and he knows he isn't the prettiest sight right now. It's 9 at night and he's been here since 7 in the morning. He shucked his suit jacket several hours ago and so far, two buttons are undone on his shirt, the cuffs rolled up to facilitate easier digging through copious amounts of sightings, eyewitness accounts, information given by other branches of the FBI, and personal records of missions he'd been on where he'd missed them every single time.
"You should go home, get some rest."
Ressler chuckles tiredly. "Yeah, I probably should."
They're both silent for a few minutes. Agent Navabi sighs, leaning against his doorway.
"You're not going home, are you?"
Ressler shakes his head, standing up and grabbing his coffee cup.
"No. There was a sighting in Paris, France yesterday and I need to figure out as much as I can before the lead goes cold."
Samar grins a little. "I'm surprised you're not on the first flight out there."
Ressler shrugs, heading for the door. Samar follows - he doesn't even need to ask her.
"I've done that plenty of times. I know what happens - they'll be gone. Unless I can catch them off-guard, it's pointless. By the time someone reports something to me, it's already been reported to Reddington by the eyes and ears he has planted throughout the world. No, unless I come up with the lead, it will have gone cold by the time I get there."
Though it doesn't stop me from wanting to be on the first plane, he thinks. For Ressler, it's physically difficult to hold himself back, to stay at the Post Office, because he has responsibilities now. He is a rule follower, a man who knows the protocols inside and out and follows them, no matter what, because they are what kept him safe his whole life. It was the only way he knows how to live.
"Alright. Well, I'm heading home. You're the last one here."
The again is unspoken but silently understood by them both.
"I'll try not to stay much longer," he promises in vain, and she nods, as if it's a lie she still believes (like she won't come back in the morning to find him passed out on the couch in his office).
"Goodnight, boss."
"Goodnight, Samar," he says, and he refills his coffee cup (black, two sugars) as she walks out the door.
He sighs heavily and heads back to his office.
9:02.
It'll be another night of the same.
The feeling of dread at the silence - the lack of ringing - grows heavier. If he's honest with himself, the only reason he stays so late is that he might hear from her.
It'd started a few weeks ago, and he didn't quite know what to do with the fact that he didn't want to report it.
Ressler? she'd said, and she sounded like she might decide to hang up at any moment, because she knew what a monumentally horrible idea calling was. But he'd responded, Keen. I thought I'd never hear from you again, and they were off.
They never - not once - talked about Reddington, or Tom Connelly, or the Cabal, or anything having to do with work. They never talked about the fact that he was hunting her, trying to arrest her and Reddington to place them in the system - a system that he knew would sink it's claws into them and never let them out.
But he hunted them anyway, and they never talked about it.
Ressler sat down in his chair once more, setting his coffee cup down with a thunk.
Her calls usually came around 9, and he was beginning to suspect he wouldn't be hearing from her again.
It'd been seven days now.
Had Reddington found out about her calls (did he know in the first place, and just hadn't stopped her?) Had a member of the Cabal found them before he did? (he refused to believe this idea, because he knew if the Cabal got a hold of Keen or Reddington, they'd both be dead). Had Keen decided to stop calling because she finally realized how horrible an idea it was?
He didn't know.
All he knew was that not hearing from her after almost a month of consistent phone calls (all made on burner cells, untraceable, because boy scout that he was, he had tried to trace her calls). They never lasted more than a few minutes, because most phones could be traced within a one hundred and twenty seconds with the right person trying. She took all the right precautions, and he felt both relief that he couldn't trace her and unspeakable frustration that he could hear from her but not be able to find her.
He knows he should just go home. He knows that going through the most recent eyewitness accounts and rearranging his meticulously ordered files won't bring him any closer to catching them.
He'd hunted Reddington for five years without catching them. He knew (hoped) that this would be no different.
Riiiiiiing.
The shrill sound breaks the silence and Ressler's heart starts beating out of his chest as he whips around to stare at his phone (personal, because even Liz wouldn't dare call the FBI office while on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted list).
He picks it up, sees unknown number flash across the screen, and swipes to answer the call immediately.
"Hello?" he asks, and he sounds breathless even to himself (relief).
"Ressler," she says, and he feels himself melt into his chair because she's alive even if he can't catch her.
He pulls the phone away from his ear for a brief second to press the red, flashing record button, because fuck, he can't just stop being who he is because it's her. He hates himself for it, but he does it anyway.
"God, I thought you were dead for sure," he whispers, and he chuckles. He runs a hand through his hair, and this feels a little bit like a torrid love affair, waiting until everyone in the office has gone home to talk to his lover (which Liz, of course, is not, it's just an expression).
"We were… busy," she says, and because that's straying too close to talking about work or Ressler hunting her, she steers the conversation in another direction. "How are Samar and Aram? Still dancing around that fiercely unresolved sexual tension?"
Ressler laughs at that, because yes, they are, and frankly he's getting sick of it. "Yes, of course they are," he says dryly. "I'm going to have to lock them in a closet soon."
Liz chuckles and the sound warms him from his fingers to his toes. She's not dead.
He wants to catch her for many reasons - to see her, to finish the mission - but mostly he wants to be the one to capture her because it means that no one who wants her dead can do it.
"Are you sleeping?" she asks, because even over the phone she can sense his dreadful self-preservation skills.
"Yes," he says defensively. She clicks her tongue in disbelief.
"Ress, take care of yourself, please."
He knows their time is almost up. It's been a minute and a half.
"I'll try."
He can hear her shuffling, and then the sound of chiming bells in the background. He almost laughs and asks if she's at church, but then he hears the bells again and they're not like any bells he's ever heard before. It sounds like they're playing a specific tune and it sounds different, like they might be made of something else, something normal bells aren't made of.
He doesn't ask, because suddenly he knows what to do.
"Liz," he says, and he tries to keep the excitement out of his voice. "Be careful, yeah? Try to not wait a week before calling again."
"I'll see what I can do," she says, and there's no good-bye, no drawn out cheesy dialogue. She just hangs up. So he does, too.
As soon as their call is disconnected, he dials Aram with shaking fingers.
The line rings once, twice… three times, and then Aram's sleepy voice floats over the receiver.
"M… ello?" he croaks, and Ressler doesn't want to know why Aram was in bed at 9 and frankly, he doesn't care, either.
"Aram. I need to know something."
"Ok," Aram says, and he sounds a little more awake now. "What do you need to know?"
"Can you track a sound? Like, if the sound was unique enough - say a certain church bell ringing - is there any way you could figure out which church?"
"Well," Aram begins, and Ressler's heart is beating fast with excitement as he shoves all his files to the side of his desks, opening his laptop and connecting his phone to it as he puts Aram on speaker. By the time Aram decides to answer the question, Ressler already has the recording of his latest conversation on his laptop. "I think so, if it was distinct enough. Like, the FBI has this database, of sounds they can trace. Trains, the sound of a plane, that kind of stuff. We use it when we get recordings of things, to match the sounds and then take out whatever sounds in the recording are unnecessary, that way we can clear up long-range recordings that are messy. I think we could reverse it, use a sound and found out where it came from - I mean, it's worth trying."
"Great," Ressler says. "How long will it take you to put on pants and be here?"
"What?" Aram says, and Ressler has no patience.
"Aram. I need you here, like ten minutes ago."
"Why the hell do I need to come back in?"
"Because," Ressler says, grinning and pressing 'play' on the recording. "I think we may have found Liz."
OMG. OMG. OMG. THAT EPISODE! I am so excited for Season 3, because this is how it's going to go: Ressler is going to FREAKING HUNT Reddington and Keen and it's going to be EXCITING and also HOT. So there. And I couldn't help but start this fic, because OMG. THAT EPISODE. Really, you should have seen my spaz-attack after watching it with my sister yesterday. She now thinks I am certifiable.
PLEASE let me know what you think! I think I may turn this into a full story, instead of the one-shot I originally planned. :)