She Is Loved
Elizabeth found the letter tucked under the crack in the door of her motel room. Written in hand-scrawled, finely-printed letters. She knew exactly what the words meant and what the meaning of the letter was. It was the sender's identity that was a current mystery to her.
Elizabeth,
I know this time, today, must come as a rather difficult and lonely one for you.
Valentine's Day. It is a time where love is nurtured, or born. But whether you are in doubts, know this:
You are worthy. You are loved. And you deserve the very best in life. Never lose sight of that.
Were you even aware of how Valentine's Day came to be? A popular account is of Saint Valentine of Rome. He was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and for ministering for Christians who were prosecuted under the Roman Empire, of all things. According to legend, during his imprisonment, he had healed the daughter of his jailer, Asterius. Before his execution, he had written a letter to the daughter signed, "Your Valentine" as a farewell before his death.
That is me; I am your Valentine.
I wish you to know how immeasurably loved and worthy you are despite the lack of Valentine's letters or cards you may receive.
She had reread the note ten times already, wishing with the way the handwriting was curved alone, that it would give her some sense of insight into who the sender was. For a moment there, she had begun to suspect it was Tom- only she hadn't seen nor heard from him in awhile now. Or was it Reddington? Somehow, Red never struck her as the romantic type.
But there was only one way for her to find out. And it was by less than honest means.
She dialed Aram's private number, receiving the click on his end as he answered. "Hey, Aram. It's me. Liz Keen."
"Liz?" He sounded surprised to hear from her. Flustered, also. "Wow, you're calling me. What's up?"
"Actually, I have something I need you to do for me. And by something, I mean a task done completely off the record." If she was going to ask Aram for his help in identifying who the sender was, she didn't want Cooper or anyone else within the taskforce knowing. Seeing as Aram had done her proud before on certain things she wanted done in secret, he was her go-to guy. "I received a letter this morning that I need you to analyse and see if you can match up the fingerprint DNA. Are you free to do that for me?"
Aram was silent for a moment as Liz waited patiently, her heart beating.
"Uh, sure. I think I could do that?"
"Great, Aram. It would mean so much to me. Can we meet in person for me to give you the letter in, say..." She glanced down at her watch, "About twenty minutes? Outside the Post Office."
"Sure, I'm pretty sure we can do that."
"Great, thank you so much. You're the best."
She could almost vividly picture Aram's flattered and shy state in her mind at her compliment. "I'm the best? No, I... I wouldn't say that exactly. But seeing as this is off the record and its imperative nobody else can know about it, I suppose I really am the best."
Aram had notified Liz that it could take up to over three hours before the process would be complete and he had the fingerprints successfully analysed by swab test. It was also a matter of finding the matching DNA print on the government database, so Liz was left hanging by a thread hoping that a match would come up.
She was in an aisle, doing her grocery shopping when her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out, checking caller I.D before flipping it open to answer the call. It was Aram, not an hour too late.
"Aram, what results do you have for me on the fingerprint DNA from the letter?" she asked, her voice unusually higher-pitched with nerves. A part of her dreaded that the results would be inconclusive, that there would be no current match in the database. She needed to know who wrote her the letter. She needed to know with a desperate and fiery passion. "Any luck?"
"Actually, plenty."
She waited, listening on pins and needles.
"Um, so I ran a check through the database with the current swabs of fingerprint DNA and, as it turns out, one match came up."
"So? Who was it?"
"Remember when Reddington surrendered himself into the FBI and DNA swabs were taken, as well as fingerprints?"
"Yes?" she said slowly.
"Okay, so... a Mr. Reddington had the one and only fingerprint DNA on the database currently that matched the ones on your letter."
Liz didn't know why she felt so stunned the way she did, but there was no denying it. Her eyebrows arched in shock. "It was Reddington?" she whispered.
"Yep, it was Reddington. Reddington's your mysterious Valentine."
There was a peculiar sense of inner clarity that overcame her. So it wasn't from Tom, it was from Reddington. Her curiosity was immediately salved.
"Remember what you said earlier?" Aram spoke again, his voice vibrating with excitement.
"Yes, of course." She smiled. "You are and still remain to be the best, Aram. You're awesome and the greatest. Thank you." Liz had to clear her throat, the shock still permeating through her system. "And remember what I said?"
"Yes, I certainly do. This is completely, utterly, one-hundred percent off the books."
"Happy Valentines," she muttered warmly, shutting her phone closed, ending the call.
As she started pushing her trolley again, she felt conflicted. Her heart seemed to pick up, beating furiously and rapidly in her chest as an unfamiliar and utterly overwhelming sensation filled her. So now she knew who the sender of the letter was. What mattered now was what she was choosing to do with that information.
When Liz turned up at the safe-house Reddington was staying at, she still wasn't entirely sure how she was to respond to her learned information. What was one to do with the knowledge that they had received a Valentines Day letter from the one person that they had least expected it to be from?
"Red?" she called as she turned, shutting the door behind her quietly. "Are you here?"
She had expected him to come rushing out to greet her the instance she had announced herself in, yet he didn't. She huffed under her breath, moving down along the hallway into an area that opened up into a large room.
As she glanced around curiously, Red came into view. He was sitting on the couch with an arm draped along the back of the chair and one leg crossed over the other. He wore one of his light grey three piece suits, his vest, something round sitting in the empty middle cushion beside him. She felt her heart swell with fondness when he met her eyes, smiling a tight-lipped smile. It took her all she was worth not to return the smile, not that she wasn't tempted to especially after being privy to the knowledge that it was him, of all men, who had sent her such a lovely, heartfelt letter for Valentines Day.
"Ah, Lizzie. Just in time."
She glanced around cautiously again, wondering what he meant. "Just in time for what?"
He picked up the rectangular box sitting on the cushion beside him, holding it out to her. As she stepped closer, automatically helping herself to the seat across from him on the couch, she realized it was a box of chocolates in various assortment of flavors.
His eyes searched her face as she reached out, grabbing the first chocolate in the box that her fingers met.
"Mr. Kaplan sent me these," he explained, perhaps seeing the confusion written on her face. "Kate has always had the most marvelous-"
"-You sent me a Valentines letter," she said, stating rather than asking. She had tried, but she found she could no longer keep it to herself anymore. She inspected him closely as she waited, nibbling on the corner of the chocolate.
He simply gave her a quick upturn of his lips before he glanced away, settling back into the cushion. He seemed too preoccupied with deciding which chocolate in the box to select all of a sudden. She realized he was purposefully evading her.
She didn't want to incriminate Aram, so she chose her words carefully. "I had someone run the fingerprints from the letter I had received this morning through the database." She couldn't help the smugness that was coating her tone. "As it turned out, one set of fingerprints matched. You aren't the only one with connections, remember?"
When Red finally spoke, he dropped his chin slightly. "Yes, I was indeed the one who wrote that letter."
His voice dropped to barely above a whisper, his tone gravelly. She noticed he wouldn't look at her, as if he felt her questioning in regards of the letter had placed him into a particularly vulnerable situation.
"Why, Red?" she asked softly, desperately; her face pinching in confusion. "Why would you bother to do that? Why write me a letter for Valentines Day then hide it under my door while you knew I was sleeping and that I would most likely find it come next morning?"
He turned to face her, his eyes moving back and forth from her mouth to a spot above her forehead. She caught the corner of his mouth twitch. "Because I wanted you to know."
"Know? Know what? What else is there for me to know?"
It was clearly far too difficult for Red to vocalize right now, and she recognized that. Liz glanced away, down at the half-eaten chocolate she held between her fingers. God, why couldn't he be straightforward with her for once? Why couldn't he just come out and say it already, without having to make her do all of this unbearable waiting?
Her mind went back to what he had written on the letter unconsciously; More so the other words, rather than the prattling explanation about how Valentines Day came about. How he wrote that she deserved the very best in life, that she was loved. Of how worthy he wanted her to know she was, and how much he...
How much he loved her.
A gasp left her mouth as it all suddenly seemed to click into some semblance of sense to her; Liz's eyes starting to gather with moisture. She started staring at the bitten-in center of the chocolate hardly, trying to will herself not to start crying by distracting herself in wondering what flavor the chocolate was meant to be exactly.
"I wanted you to know, Lizzie, that... despite how difficult this particular time of the month can be, particularly when you have... lost so much, that you weren't alone and that you are valued."
Tom. He was talking indirectly about Tom, about how she had lost everything. Her marriage, which ended up being false. Her husband, and any fragments for her to have a decent chance at a sort-of normal life.
"But that isn't just it, is it, Red?" She made herself glance his way, finding him watching her.
She was finding it so difficult not to cry. She never realized until just then, by being in the same room with him, of just how much his words in the letter had truly meant to her. She didn't realize those were all the very things she had needed to hear from him, until then as she met and held his gaze.
"You wanted me to know by that letter that... regardless of what happened with Tom, my crumbling career and everything else, I'm not alone." She gave him a small smile before she glanced back down at the chocolate she held in her lap with her fingers. She realized she had failed on keeping herself composed when she felt hot tears sliding down her cheeks. "That I am... worthy and that you..." She drew in a deep breath before inhaling out of her nose deeply in a way to calm herself. "You wanted me to know that you loved me... that I am loved."
She caught out of the corner of her eye, Red's hand reaching over for hers, and she grasped it tightly in her own, accepting his squeezes of comfort and reassurance. She met his gaze and he gave her a curt nod with a tight-lipped smile as his fingers tightened over hers.
Despite everything they had been through and Red's constant demonstrations of his loyalty and just how far he would have gone to protect her, Liz had always doubted it and second-guessed it until then. His letter was the very thing she needed to reassert just what she was to him, and she never even realized it was exactly what she needed. His letter was the key.
She moved in, lifting up an arm to curl it around his neck, holding herself tight to him as the tears started cascading down her cheeks uncontrollably. Red softened into her embrace, sliding his arms around her, hugging her back as she rested the side of her cheek against his shoulder. He moved one hand up to her head, weaving his fingers through the strands of her hair, stroking it as he rested his chin into her hairline on her forehead. In his arms, she often felt so strangely whole and complete, like she had only just reached home.
She was loved. He loved her.