Disclaimer: I do not own The Blacklist or any of the characters depicted in this work of fanfiction. I am making no profit from this work.
THE TEARS I GAVE YOU
The Breath From My Body
He had expected a confrontation at the airstrip. The car had careened recklessly across the tarmac before screeching to a stop and she had flown out of the driver's door, her coat flapping in the wind as she had run to the foot of the steps he stood frozen on. Her words didn't register with him as all he could focus on was the holdall in her hand, handing at her side, and everything it meant. Only when she exasperatedly called him by his full name did he return his attention to her; with a nod he indicated they should board the borrowed jet and make a hasty exit from the States. Dembe would tie up any loose ends, as instructed, and he had another team dealing with the Berlin issue. He would receive updates regularly, but he didn't feel he ought to be in the fray of the issue; he was safer doing what he did best, keeping his Lizzie safe.
They had talked, at length, on the flight; he had dared to hope long ago that this might happen, though recent events and revelations about Sam had led him to relegate the hope to nothing more than a pipedream. She had cried unashamedly in front of him and he let her; she needed the release and it would take time for her to recover from the fact she had left her husband – spy or not – to bleed out on a cold concrete floor in a run-down, anonymous building. She would come to terms with everything eventually, to accept the things she couldn't change and move on. He would keep her safe and give her the space to find herself and work out what direction she wanted to take her life in.
Everything shifted up a gear after they had left. Red worked hard for them to disappear off the face of the earth, much harder than he had for any of his clients, all the while keeping an eye on her. She seemed to be floating along with him, not really engaging with the world around her; he told himself her state was only temporary and resolved to find them a permanent residence as all the moving around was hardly helpful to her recovery. He soon procured a modest three-bed apartment in Paris; it wasn't as big or ostentatious as other places he'd kept or borrowed, but it seemed to suit them both well enough.
They spent the first couple of months cleaning the place out and moving new furniture in, some old and some new, rearranging it until they had the place exactly as they wanted it; he had insisted in the place not being too chock-full of possessions – in the event that they needed to make a quick getaway it wouldn't do to be tripping over coffee tables and floor cushions, no matter how nice they looked in situ. They split the chores evenly, though he insisted on cooking; Lizzie didn't argue, they both knew her cooking was sub-par, though he had promised her he would let her help if she didn't eat all the ingredients during preparation. She instead opted to wash the dishes, insisting that dishwashers were lazy when he protested the repetitive chore of drying.
Red hadn't expected her to come to him when she did. He had been asleep after another night of good food, wine and a little music; they had moved the furniture back and he had shown her what little he knew of swing dancing. He hadn't heard her come into his bedroom, only waking when the weight of the book he'd been reading was lifted from his chest; with bleary eyes he had watched her mark his place and set the paperback aside before she sat on the edge of his bed and looked down at him. He doesn't recall the exact sequence of events that led to her lips being on his, half-asleep as he was, though he soon woke enough to roll her beneath him and act out one of the many fantasies he had entertained on countless lonely nights.
Lizzie's bedroom soon became the guest room and the guest room was turned into a study, which was soon filled with books; he was careful to keep her novels away from the classics and biographies he so loved. Their domesticity was easy, their conversation flowing, and their nights filled with heat. They were settled and he found himself not worrying too much about the future, instead concentrating on enjoying the present, leaving the running and security of his downsized empire to his associates as he told himself he deserved this wonderful reprieve from his business.