For Disclaimer, see chapter one. Here's chapter two, and the actual beginning of what's happening. To those of you that reviewed and followed and read the first chapter, thank you so much! You guys rock my socks.

It's just a chain, at first. Wrapped around a body he cannot see. The hook, thick and heavy, swings idly, lifted by invisible hands. It is just a glimmer, a trick of light, something to catch his eye in the dark. The chain comes closer, a nearing that cannot be jostled by regular steps. With it comes a face he'd discarded two years ago; a face that would never again smirk the way it was smirking now.

"It hasn't been long enough, Red." Anslo pauses at the end of the table and Red blinks a few times, trying to wash the image of the dead from his field of vision. "But, as fate will have it, here we are." Anslo swings the chain that's wrapped around him with a flourished, circular motion and takes a step around the table. He pauses and glances at Ressler, cocking his head in surprise. "He looks like he's doing well."

"Agent Ressler." Red finds that he can't look away from Anslo as the man looks back at him, his face shadowed in odd places, his skin not so substantial now that he's moved from his initial space. He's not as real as he had appeared to be a moment ago. An incomplete illusion. Doesn't make any sense. He's hallucinated before. Probably too many times. "Ressler." His heart rate spikes, his mouth bone dry. There's a boulder on his chest, nausea bubbling in his throat. His wrists, having long gone numb, chafe against the ties that hold them above his head as he tenses, and he eyes the hook in Anslo's hands. It's an unkind reminder for their last encounter.

"You know I've been following you around, Red. And what a bloody dismal affair it's been." Anslo walks closer still, a calculated prowling until he's directly beside him. He looks at the hook, smiles, lets it dangle over Red's stomach; a pendulum swinging back and forth. "You recognize this, don't you, old friend?" We were never friends. Red wills the illusion away, turns his head just a bit to look beyond what's not supposed to be there. "Ah-ah, none of that. That's not how this works." The chain swings towards his face, away, and then lands heavily on his chest. Red flinches at the very real weight of it, sucking in a breath that won't cure the windedness in him. "This game has rules." He points to the darkness at the end of the table, and Red sees the curly brown hair, the red nightgown, those scared blue eyes.

"I'm hallucinating." He gets out the word between breaths, and feels as though his tongue might stick to the roof of his mouth permanently. A violent emotion rips through him at the sight of a still and staring version of the young girl Lizzie had been.

"Bravo, Red!" Anslo reels back with a bark of laughter, dragging the hook and chain with him. Red strains against the ties and shackles that keep him secured to the table as Anslo approaches her. "Now listen up, because I don't have much time." Red can feel his face scrunch into something less than dignifying as Anslo drapes the hook over Lizzie's right shoulder and brings the slack to rest across the other. "You're dying, Red. For people like you, there are…protocols. And while I would love nothing more than to discard them, I am, quite literally, bound in such a protocol. "

Anslo looks displeased with the whole affair, studying the younger Lizzie as she simply stares at Red. After a moment, the illusion scoffs and shakes his head, a languid, lazy movement. Something remorseful and determined dashes across Anslo's face when he turns away from Lizzie to look back at Red; it eats up the blank stare in his ruined eye, fills it's milky appearance with emotion that should not be possible. This look, the desperate sorrow that clings to Anslo, strikes Red and he finds that he's holding his breath.

"Reddington?" Ressler's voice is an echo compared to the noise that Anslo's eyes are making.

"I wanted to be like you, I wanted a chance, I looked up to you, Red. You." The hook is back in Anslo's hand, no longer swinging or dragging. Aside from the disturbing images in front of him, Red can't seem to reach that place of calm he so easily accesses in times like these. There's nothing to grasp, no strand of stillness in the chaos of his body's malfunctioning state. "But you were never who I thought you were." Anslo is beside him again, peering down at him with a heavy and knowing stare. An expression hungry for truth. "I regret not being able to see it in life." Regret. The word that ended his life and haunted him still.

"Red, look at me." Donald's attempts to get him to focus are useless as Lizzie takes a halting step forward. She reaches for his legs, her hand nearly around his ankle, when Anslo's attention whips in her direction. The two hallucinations face off for a moment, Anslo's face full of fury and want for recompense. "Hey. Look at me."

"That," Anslo's eyes dart down to Lizzie's hand and then back to her face. She looks impatient, young and old in equal measure; timeless and unwavering. Ancient. "Isn't your job yet." Job. Yet. Red feels sick, the need to vomit almost unbearable. He can't seem to get any words out. Knows he should be asking some kind of question. Realizes that he should try to turn himself as best he can before he gets sick in this position and suffocates. But he feels disjointed, his thoughts racing in no particular direction despite his trying to focus. "It's mine."

Anslo raises his hand up and drives the hook into Red's chest. The pain rips into him. His mouth opens in exclamation, and for a moment, there's nothing but the sensation of that cold metal in his body. It's not real. In the finite moments after, Anslo's smirk is less malicious and far more envious as he pushes on the hook, feeling some sort of pull. An out of body experience, a foggy confusion. His eyes clench shut as everything around him seems to get sucked into itself, the sensation of moving without going anywhere, and the moment is gone.

Momentarily blinded, Ressler hunkers in the cage, body in a fetal position to protect himself. There's a fantastic ringing, accentuated by pops of stun grenades and gunfire, in his ears. When the bangers seem to end, he raises his head and finds the people that were surrounding Red a moment ago are either on the floor or stumbling away from the table. Ressler knows well the loss of balance and discombobulation brought on by those grenades. Being on the receiving end of a raid is no picnic, and he's thankful that he's not on his feet right now.

One of the goons from earlier has found his rifle and raises his gun towards the dark figures at the far end. The guy barely gets the weapon up before he's shot down. Through the ensuing smoke and chaos, comes an unfamiliar tactical unit. Some younger guys check the downed assailants around Red, while older, more experienced men flock to the criminal on the table, and, suddenly, Liz is crouched right in front of him.

"Ressler, you alright?" Her face is dirty and her eyes are alight with adrenaline. Slung over her shoulder is a tactical rifle he knows she didn't get from sanctioned distributors. Behind her, Dembe and a man in a ponytail join the sentries around Reddington.

"Yeah, I think one of them has the keys." He looks at the lock on the cage door and then tosses his chin at the goon they'd shot. But Liz just stands up, positions the rifle in her hands, and hits the lock twice with the butt of her weapon. Hard. When the thing breaks, she gets the door open and reaches for him. Ressler lets her take him by the forearm, and they get him standing. "Red had a seizure not too long ago, they were helping him, I think. Stabilizing him before you guys got in here." He gets a nod in return, and watches her relay the information to Dembe. She wears determination like a crown. Something primal and, so very right, adorns her persona in this moment. He blinks, finds he barely recognizes her, and then watches her cast a weary glance over Reddington's still form.

"We're gonna be leaving soon." She's made eye contact with Dembe, the small glance enough to make Ressler's stomach flip. Red's in bad shape. He watches Liz shiver, like she's mentally and emotionally pulling herself away from the image of the man on the table as his team surrounds him. She looks back at him again, frowns at her assessment of her ex-partner, and Ressler wonders how beat up he looks. "You good to walk? You seem out of it." There are tears in her eyes that neither of them will point out. Maybe when this all started, Ressler would have comforted her, offered some kind of assurance, but they aren't the people they used to be, and those tears aren't for him.

"I'm fine." The hard look he receives almost makes him laugh. Almost. "Honest." Getting his ass kicked was part of the daily grind. What was the big deal about a stun grenade to the face? He moves towards the table, his eyes on Red's unconscious figure, but Liz's hand reaches out and stills him. There's a medical team coming in from the far end. "I should tell them what I know." Liz meets his eye for just a moment, an unspoken need for information present in her stare, but she relinquishes her hold on him.

"Right." The prospect of more damage, more pain, more danger to add onto what she can already see seems to have made her shut down. She accompanies him to where they're prepping Reddington for transport, and then excuses herself. Ressler looks up from where he's indicating to Red's singed vest, and the needle pricks in the left arm. He's explaining their captor's routine to Dembe when Liz starts to move away. He watches her extract a burner phone from the pocket of her jacket and flip it open. She takes one last look back at them, her eyes heavy with that same, watery expression from before. Whoever she's calling seems to answer. Liz turns, speaking definitively, and starts moving towards the far end of the warehouse.

Before Ressler knows it, she's out of sight.

He's in their house, hand to his chest. Anslo is gone. The hook with him. But the chill that permeates his chest is raw and aching. Red finds himself bent over his knees, sucking in the air he'd been unable to adequately acquire on that table. It's then that he begins to realize the gravity of his surroundings, the hard wood under his feet, the white knitted booties that the younger Lizzie is wearing on her feet. He looks up and finds her there beside him, staring at him with naked concern.

"What is this?"

"A reminder," The sound of excitement and the distinct noise their fridge used to make when it closed stops him from replying. He looks back at Lizzie in confusion. She smiles at him, an enormously sorrowful expression that leaves him inching his way towards the kitchen. He lends his hand to the wall for support, finds it as sturdy and real as the hook had felt when Anslo laid it on his chest. When he peers around the corner, he is taken by the image of his wife and daughter gathering bowls and supplies around the far end of the counter. Their backs are to him in their tiny space, and not for the first time in his life, does he think of how perfect this image is.

His wife whispers something to their daughter, smiling. There's a wrinkle in her nose that creates a pit in his stomach so deep and filled with excitement, nervousness, and desire that he has to lean against the wall so that the image doesn't bring him to his knees.

"You're crying." Lizzie's little voice startles him and he finds his arms feel too heavy to bother lifting them to touch his cheeks. He looks at her, eager to see the truth of it in her eyes. What he finds there is a resolute soul that regrets the decision to show him this. Ignited by promise and delusion he sucks in a breath and looks back at his little family. Hope stirring, a bird with a broken wing.

"If I reach out...would they feel me? Am I able to-" Hold them. He can't look to Lizzie now as he asks, his voice quiet with longing; deepened by a nascent tone of emotion.

"No." Dead. A stone dropped straight to the bottom.

"It's okay." It's worse than torture. He wants to stay here, watching this, forever. You're crying. Of course, he would cry. When the sounds and smells and loves of a life gone by had been returned, there was nothing else to do but cry. This profound joy, and the simultaneous heartache, produced nothing else but the anguish gliding down his cheeks and dropping onto the front of his vest. "It's okay." A whisper, nothing more.

"It's not okay." He looks to her when she says this, physically feeling the frustration and anxiousness laced in her voice. Or perhaps it is the memory of her voice. He cannot be certain. "I have more to show you. Had more to show you."

"More? Lizzie, what's going on?" If he was dead, then this was the heaven he did not deserve. The girl Lizzie used to be shakes her head at him, a frown furrowing her brow. Everything he remembers her being is not who she is beside him. A hybrid between suffered wisdoms and youthful confidence.

"If you keep getting this emotional, I won't be allowed to guide you through them all." She reaches out her hand to him and he finds himself so torn with dismay, that whatever his outward reaction, it makes her drop the proffered hand. "Look, this isn't like those other times you dreamt of something nice, Red. You're weak, and we have to work with what we have." We. He doesn't know who 'we' is and he doesn't want to leave. "I can only show you what was, I can't let you keep it."

It might be the most awful thing she has ever said to him. Can't let him keep them. Can't let him touch them. Hold them. Talk to them. Can't let him surround himself in their voices or the smell of their hugs, engulfed in the unique scent of their hair. All the little facets he can't remember or recreate to soothe himself.

"It's not real anymore, Red." He looks between Lizzie and the kitchen as if, by another divine intervention, a loophole will present itself to him. But all he sees is Lizzie lift her hand towards him again. "Come on." He catches sight of the calendar on the fridge, sees the red circle on September 20th, 1989. A Wednesday. A reminder.

"I remember this." He looks at her with a smile. He knows this day. He can place it. He can see the events in all their mottled glory, but what happens hasn't happened yet. Here and now, he's waiting for the part he needs.

"We have to leave this behind."

"Please. Let me stay just a few minutes longer. Please, Lizzie." She drops her hand, her voice far away, dented by his lack of cooperation.

"That's not how this works." The little girl he'd known that night is watching his wife and daughter bake, her eyes and face far more like the woman he knows now than the child she'd been. His daughter lets out a squeal of laughter and Red's chest wrenches at the sound. She tosses flour at his wife and he blinks at the sight of the two of them, wishing with everything he was that they could see him. He feels joyful and sick to his stomach all at once. "Take it," he looks down at Lizzie's outstretched hand and steps away from her, shaking his head.

"Wait." He looks at her and the edge he'd seen in her expression ignites but she looks back at the two, then at the door. She knows what's coming as well.

"Red." He ignores her as the sound of keys turning the lock at the front door grabs the attention of his girls. Raymond walks just around the corner of the wall so he has full view of the foyer. His younger self drop the duffle from his shoulder to make room for his daughter to jump into his arms. He watches his daughter's arms go around his neck as they spin around once and he waits for the slight hiss of pain on his part. His daughter leans away from his face, her eyes serious and tone scolding,

"Daddy," as she gently brings her little hand to tap at the edge of the bandage laid along the juncture where his neck slopes into his shoulder.

"It's just a scratch, pumpkin. See?" His girl is having none of it, and the younger him laughs a little before he tilts his head so she can inspect it better. He'd been careful to school his features. Almost feels the phantom pull on the injury as he stands there. Red remembers hoping nothing had started to seep through. One of the stitches had come a little loose when he nodded off in the plane.

That had been the job that started all of this mess. A knife, a forger, and some documents he wasn't supposed to see. How corning an ally had revealed what a true enemy might look like. Red startles at the sound of his wife's voice next to him, his name on her lips, and he looks over to see her worried eyes. That already-tight smile. "Tell mommy it's just a scratch." The younger him is speaking, but Red watches, amazed, as the entirety of the conversation he remembers having this night flashes briefly in his wife's expression. A whole subtext to be discussed later.

"No." Red whispers his daugher's response, with a fond remembrance, as she says it, and he turns to watch the younger him balk; the smile he sees now is far less teasing and far more nervous. The panic he'd felt, the betrayal, is written starkly on his younger version's face. She puts her hands on his cheeks and brings their faces a little closer, a mimicry of her mother's affections. "You only hug me that tight when you're sad."

She kisses his nose and squirms out of his arms until she's standing in front of him. She's not wrong. When she fell off the swing and broke her arm after she turned four, he held her after they got home from the emergency room. When his first assignment turned out to be more stressful than he'd planned, he'd come home late, scooped her up from her crib, and then fell asleep on the couch with her resting on his chest.

His wife had been panicked that next morning until she'd found them. When he'd missed her dance and piano recital, he'd demanded two days off to take them camping so he could make her smile at him again. There may or may not have been multiple gifts after that incident as well. All those times and countless others, he'd come home and spun her around in that all-encompassing hug.

"Red," he turns away from what his family used to be, sees Lizzie's hand held out to him again. "You have to take my hand." His jaw clenches as he looks at her, hears his wife beckon their daughter to her, hears himself say something about putting his bag up stairs, and he steels himself at the sound of his little girl stalking towards her mother.

If he turned around now he'd be in just the right position to fool himself into thinking she's walking towards him and not her mother. That if he just side stepped and stood in front of his wife, he could pretend to be the choice. Instead, he stares resolutely at Lizzie's hand and reaches out for it.

The moment their hands touch, Red finds himself choking on the smell of blood. Reeling away from Lizzie and colliding into the banister where the desperately scared younger him makes a dash up the stairs; a madman calling their names, pushing doors open too forcefully, making noises of grief he hadn't remembered making, calling for them again. Red looks to Lizzie and finds her crying; a silent wash of anguish and guilt. He shakes his head, and reaches for her, but she backs up. He finds her terrified of him, looking around her at things he cannot see.

"Lizzie give me your hand," Please, take us away from this. She's panicking in front of him. Gasping. Crying. Shaking her head. The younger him runs by them, jumping over the railing on the stairs to go into the kitchen. The sound of his calling and running down into the basement is a haunting background to his distress at seeing Lizzie like this before him. "Give me your hand, Elizabeth."

"Give me your hand!" She screams at him. Fire suddenly engulfing them. The stench of blood gone, the acrid, unbreathable air around them now suffocating. He looks around for the younger him, and finds him lying on the ground, the flames just starting to lick at his coat. He doesn't need this. He knows everything. "You have to give me your hand!"

"Why are you showing me this?" The sound of the fire and the house coming down around them makes him yell and the flames between them are as hot as they were that night. Lizzie reaches out for him, and he hears the full exclamation as she burns herself. She isn't looking at him, she's looking at her wrist, eyes glittering with the mirage of the fire around them. Red reaches for her, pushed back by circumstance and emotion, anger and defeat. This isn't how it happened. This isn't what he was told. He didn't save her, dammit. But she's not paying attention to him. Just staring at the bubbled skin on her wrist and hand as though frozen.

"Lizzie, now!" This ghost of the woman he knows seems to remember herself. She casts her burning, teary eyes at him before reaching out the rest of the way through the flames to grab his hand and pull him through.

He lands in the Piazza della Repubblica and finds himself without her. The roar of the fire is just an echoing horror in his ears, too concerned with looking for her than the time or date of his newest illusion.

"Lizzie?" He turns around and finds the square fairly empty. The panic he would normally feel in moments where he could not find her is notably absent. It strikes him, the calm he feels after what he'd seen. That sick feeling still accompanies him, the rush from the fire as distant as the roaring flames. What he knows now is that he won't be faced with the family he had to leave behind, and somehow that sick feeling gets pushed back beneath the complicated layers of his grief.

The light snow that flurries around him glows golden with the lights adorning a central pine just beyond the archway. He finds himself illuminated by the light, trapped in the night, spying a few couples milling about, and a man that walks in the shadows. All at once, he is frozen with recognition as the man stops under the awning of one of the darkened shops; hunches there for a moment, breath billowing away from him. Another spectre of himself, trying to flee his own torments. The night he was supposed to meet Lizzie in the apartment near the Cattedrale. It wasn't a far walk, but he knew he wouldn't be joining her. Not tonight. Not any night after what he pulled to land himself here in the first place.

"I think it's time I confirmed what's happening to you, Ray."

Yikes. It's finally done. A bit longer than I planned, but Ressler wanted his two cents, so I had to add that part in haha let me know what you think! The next chapter should be up in a few a days.