Note: Darker themes, Violence/whump remain for this chapter + 1 oblique reference to child abuse - you have been warned! As ever I don't own the Blacklist. I'm just playing with the characters. I promise to give them a break at some point - just not today ;-)

There's a reckoning a-coming
and it burns beyond the grave
its lead inside my belly
cause my soul has lost its way

(Blood on my name, The Wright Brothers)

Liz slowly began to come to, with a searing pain in her wrist where her weight pulled on it. Through the fog she heard a low but heated conversation taking place a few yards away. The director had returned.

"For God's sake you nearly killed her – I hired you to get answers which won't happen if she is no longer with us!"

"Please stay calm – I can assure you we are making excellent progress. I have never accidentally killed anyone"

The director shot him a look of disgust and walked over to Red, who blinked, but not quickly enough to hide his emotion.

"Thankfully I think another angle has revealed itself, hasn't it Mr Reddington?" The director reached out and peeled the tape from his seething mouth.

"If she…" Red swallowed, unable to finish the sentence he had begun. "Richard, so help me there won't be a place left in the world you can hide from me!" he spat, his eyes thunderous. "Not a single hotel, Richard. No bank, no Chinese laundry, not a single, tiny cave on a mountain anywhere on this godforsaken planet where I won't find you and deliver you to hell myself."

Liz shifted in an attempt to regain her footing to relieve the strain on her wrist, but her exhaustion was paralysing and she moaned in agony. The sound caught their attention. As she opened her eyes she heard Red choke out "Oh thank God, thank God" followed by something in Arabic she didn't understand. She had seen many sides of Raymond Reddington over the last year, but she didn't think she'd ever seen him afraid.

The director laughed quietly. "You know in my younger days I spent some time in the gulf. I was a woeful solider as you might imagine, but I found I had a talent for languages and picked up Arabic rather quickly. It's a beautiful language really. What was that – my love? My life? Goodness – that was unexpected! I wonder what secrets you two have been sharing."

He turned his attention back to the interrogator. "In case your twisted little brain didn't manage to catch that, he's in love with her.", he said with a chuckle of disbelief. "Use him. Do whatever you need to do to finish this. I need it by morning." And with that, he left Red and Liz alone with their tormentor to contemplate the new reality the director had created for them by saying those words aloud. He's in love with her.

Red was no coward, but much as he had forced himself to watch while the interrogator had begun to choke her, he could not now bring himself to look at her. He had felt it was his punishment to watch her hurt because of him. But he couldn't bear the thought of what he might see in her eyes now the director had uttered those words. Anger. Disgust. If he was going to die tonight, that would not be the last thing he saw. He closed his eyes, and pictured her smiling face in the sunlight. But had he caught her eye at that moment, he would have seen something more uncertain, something akin to confusion, or even wonder.

Their reverie was short-lived. The interrogator had returned to her side, with a lazy smile on his lips. "This is going to be even more entertaining than I expected." he drawled, breaking a moment that was more sacred than he could ever fathom. "What does she taste like, Mr Reddington? Or don't you know?" Reds eyes snapped open. The interrogator turned to face him, and seeing his face, he finished softly: "you don't know."

Without looking away from Red, he began to trace his finger across the neckline of her dress from the shoulder to the centre. When he reached the curve of her throat his hand began to slide slowly down, smoothing over the silk and pausing to caress her breasts before travelling down to rest on her stomach. Liz turned her eyes away from both men, blushing furiously and trying to focus on her wrist, on keeping her feet on the ground. She found the pain a comforting distraction.

When she heard Red begin to speak, she almost didn't recognise his voice. It was weary, bitter and so cold. The voice of someone who had been in the dark for too long.

"Do you really think this is going to work? You're an amateur" he hissed. "I've been wrenching information out of innocents since before you were born, but I never got off on it like you, you horrible little pervert. Frankly, it's unprofessional." He laughed cruelly.

The interrogator's eyes narrowed. He didn't remove his hand from Liz, but it stopped its descent. Red continued.

"You know I was a happy child, at one time. Were you? Did you have friends? Or were you the type of boy that other children stayed away from? I bet they were afraid of you – children know when there's something wrong even if they don't have the words to describe it." Red paused, observing the interrogator's face intently. Just a little further. Just get him away from her.

"Did your mother touch you?" He whispered. "Have you ever managed to get-off without thinking about choking the life out of a woman?"

Liz felt the hand leave her stomach, and became aware of the tears spilling silently down her face. The interrogator approached Red, his hands shaking. He reached behind him and removed a revolver from his waistband and, wide-eyed and trembling, aimed it at Red's head.

Then out of nowhere the air was filled with noise, so many noises and lights, the shouts in the background of Cooper's team, feet hammering across the boards of the warehouse. There was a grunt from the interrogator as he took a bullet in the shoulder, staggering backwards and dropping his weapon on the floor near Red's chair. The swat team surrounded them, securing the interrogator and carefully lifting Liz free of the chain. By the time they had cleared the main hall, the director was nowhere to be seen. Ressler approached Red, undoing the straps that bound him to the chair.

Shoving Ressler aside, Red sprang up, grabbed the revolver from where it had fallen by his chair, and fired at the interrogator who was kneeling, handcuffed and bleeding on the floor. His aim was flawless – the man was down instantly. He moved quickly towards him, his face blank and eyes like marble, firing again and again until the magazine was empty. The second the last bullet was discharged he dropped the gun and fell to his knees, hands on his head, as he had when he surrendered to Liz in the park. Ressler reached him in an instant, kicking the gun away and securing Red's hands behind his back. As he attached the cuffs he shot a meaningful look at Liz who was sitting with a paramedic, her face frozen in horror.