Disclaimer – Not mine, only borrowing.
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A/N – Fits in around the end of 01x05 The Courier. (That's when I wrote it.)
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Circumstance
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"Is that all, Mr Reddington?" A young woman asked from the doorway.
Red jerked, as if he'd forgotten she'd been in the house. "Yes, of course Anna. I'll call if I need anything."
"You have a maid?" Liz watched her go.
"Anna?" He sounded amused at the notion, "She's more of a house keeper. I have a few places like this one, Anna keeps them comfortable for me."
"So she knows what you do?"
"Probably, Anna's very..." Red settled back into the sofa, returning to the view. "I do my best not to conduct any business when she's around."
"You care about her." Liz realised.
"I care about many things, Lizzie."
"But you care what she thinks of you." She expanded, "Tell me how you met?"
Red glanced in the direction Anna had gone and sighed before answering.
"She was ten. Her mother; Mira, and I were exploring a purely physical relationship. I didn't even know she had any children until she got a call from the school, Anna had broken her arm and they needed a parent. I offered her my car."
"What about Anna's father?"
"I doubt Mira remembered what he looked like, let alone his name. Our relationship ended, but I had people keeping an eye on Anna. Mira was one of the least maternal people I've ever met and there was something about her. Some people leave lasting impressions."
"You thought she'd be helpful one day."
"Perhaps once. The next time I saw her was a decade later. Anna was about four months pregnant, her boyfriend had left her for richer prospects and Mira had just died. But there was Anna, not letting the world weigh her down, not even when some of Mira's former paramours were suggesting distasteful ways that Anna could pay them back the money that her mother had borrowed."
Liz asked the easier question. "What was the money for?"
"I could never find out." Red admitted ruefully, "Certainly not for her medical bills. Or any of the other things she left Anna to deal with. Anna could barely afford the funeral, was about to declare bankruptcy."
"So you helped her."
"Not as much as I wanted to." Red frowned into his glass, "But more than she wanted me to."
"You gave her a job," Liz tried for lightness, "With travelling."
"That came later," He sounded angry, "After the ex-boyfriend got scared about potential paternity issues, after the goons he'd hired threw her down a few flights of stairs, after she lost the baby, after the police failed to do anything and after... I found her in a hospital, drugged up to her eyeballs so she would be less of a danger to herself and others."
"She'd tried to kill herself?"
"Twice before I got there." Red sighed, "It was surprisingly easy to get her out, even easier to find the ex and the goons."
"Did you kill them?" She almost hoped he'd say yes."
"No Lizzie," He caught her gaze for a second, "There's a difference between doing monstrous things, being a monster and enacting justice for someone who can't do it for themselves. No, I had them sent to jail, mostly on paedophilia charges. I heard they barely lasted a week before someone castrated them."
Liz winced.
"And now Anna does this for me." He gestured at the house in general, "She has excellent mental health care opportunities, travels the world and knows that whenever she wants to leave, there is an extremely generous severance package waiting for her."
"Why are you telling me this?" She asked.
"I want you to know that you can trust her, that she has no part in our business," Red replied, "Maybe because no-one else knows the entire story and there are some things that need to be said out loud, at least once. That some people made by circumstances out of their control."
Liz considered his answer.
"You like that there's a person you've helped, without then being or becoming part of the madness and the monstrous things around you." She stood to leave, "And you want me to approve of that."
Red's voice followed her out of the room.
"Or maybe I told you a sob story so you wouldn't tell your superiors about my lovely, young mistress."
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