Liz eventually found Red in the garage, rummaging through old boxes of sentimental trinkets. When he heard her approach, his head snapped up, but his shoulders slumped in relief when he saw that she was alone.

"Hey. I thought you might like some coffee."

"Thank you, Lizzy." He wrapped his hands around the warm mug, closed his eyes and inhaled the delicious aroma. Liz put her hand on his shoulder, feeling the tension in his muscles ease under her fingers.

"Where's Dom?"

"Off to get groceries."

"Right."

As if on cue, they heard Dom's car rumble to life in the driveway; the sound soon faded off into the distance. Finally, they were alone.

Red exhaled heavily, grateful for the respite from Dom's looming presence. "We didn't talk last night. Frankly, I'm surprised you're still speaking to me. I can only imagine what he told you."

"My mother came off a lot worse than you did, to be honest, but I don't know if Dom thinks so. To him, you're the big bad American spy who tried and failed to save his little girl. It's not like you forced her to become obsessed with the goddamn Warrior Gene."

"He told you about that, huh?" He shook his head. "I was hoping he'd be a little more tactful, but Dom is Dom. Straightforward and matter of fact, even if it'll gut you. He has a knack for it, I'll give him that."

Red set his half-drunk mug down on one of the boxes stacked next to him. "How are you holding up, Lizzy? I know you weren't prepared for any of this."

Liz took a deep breath and let it out slowly through pursed lips. "My mother… was a bad person," she said, haltingly, not really answering his question at all. "You tried to warn me, but I kept clinging to the fantasy version of her I've carried around in my head since before I can remember. You could've told me so many things… so many awful, terrible things. But you didn't."

"I didn't want you to think I was speaking ill of her out of any kind of ulterior motive. Every girl deserves to have a mother she can look up to."

"Deserves to, maybe. Doesn't mean it's realistic." Liz shook her head. "It's silly. I don't know why it mattered so much to me. Sam was more than enough growing up. I got by just fine without a mother to look up to then."

"It's not silly. Losing your mother as a child… it's devastating. Sometimes talking about it—hell, even thinking about it—rips open old wounds you thought were long healed. Of course this hurts. You're losing her all over again. Even if it's only that idealized image of her you're losing now."

A thought caught hold of Liz's attention, like a loose thread. And like a loose thread, she was tempted to pull it. Too tempted. She'd never been very good at resisting temptation when an idea truly stuck in her head. (Maybe she had that in common with her mother.)

"Did you…" She trailed off; perhaps it was better she didn't bring it up after all.

"Did I what, Lizzy?"

Liz bit her lip. "You lost your mother when you were young, didn't you?"

The corner of Red's mouth twitched up in a sad smile. "Am I that transparent?"

"Only when you don't want to be," she said, mirroring his smile. "I'm sorry. About whatever happened to your mother."

"I'm sorry about yours. If there was anything else I could've done to help her, I would have. I promise you that."

"Maybe it's for the best that she didn't raise me. I was barely more than a prop to her, a pawn, an experiment."

"You were so much more than that."

"Not to her."

"Yes, you were. She loved you. Inasmuch as she was capable of loving anyone."

"She sure had a fucked up way of showing it."

"She wanted to make sure you were equipped to survive in her world; exposing you to the Warrior conditioning would help her do that. But, yeah, it was still pretty fucked up."

Liz found it oddly endearing to hear Red borrow her phrasing, though she wished he had used the profanity in a different context so she could properly savor it.

"Did any of it stick, do you think?"

"The conditioning?"

"Yeah. Is that maybe why I… why I find it so difficult sometimes to…" Words failed Liz as she tried to verbalize what exactly her difficulty was—why she sometimes clung so desperately to people who hurt her despite knowing deep down how damaging it was, and why she was so damn resistant to opening herself up to accepting care and concern from others, out of fear that they might hurt her, too. It was frustrating and counterproductive, but try as she might, she couldn't shake it.

"I don't know," he said, softly. "I know that's not the answer you want, but—"

"I'll probably pass the gene on to my kids, won't I?" she interrupted.

"Probably. Especially if…" He trailed off, with an aborted shrug.

"If the father has it, too," she finished for him; his reluctance to do so himself lent weight to a pet theory of hers.

"It'll be all right. It's not really a predictor of anything. Not in and of itself. It's only through very specific extenuating circumstances that it would ever become a problem."

"Like if The Cabal knew I carried the gene and I had a child…?"

"I would burn them to the ground if they ever tried to harm your child," Red all but growled, after a tense moment.

The two of them lapsed into a thick silence, the weight of an unknown future and a misspent past heavy in the air around them. Dom had kept many of his daughter's childhood mementos in the boxes that filled the garage, and perhaps even some of Liz's, as well. She felt detached sifting through the childish drawings and toys with Red, maybe even a little voyeuristic. There was no emotion to be felt about these artifacts of a forgotten time; they sparked no recovered memories and they were significant only because she knew they once belonged to her family, to her, not because she felt any recognition.

"Look, Lizzy," Red said, after taking the lid off of another old box. "Isn't this something?"

Liz peeked inside to find petrified macaroni art stuffed in between dried up bottles of school glue and half-empty jars of glitter; she crossed her arms and hugged them around herself, feeling more than a little uncomfortable. "I'll stick to crayons, thanks."

Red picked up one of the jars and poured an obscene amount of glitter onto his hand.

"Are you out of your mind?"

"What's the matter? You don't like glitter?"

"Nooo. I hate glitter with every fiber of my being. I got a piece in my eye when I was a kid and Sam couldn't get me to calm down until we finally got it out again. At 2 AM."

"Oh, come on, Lizzy. It can't be that bad. Don't you want to make masterpieces like this someday with little…"

"Agnes," she offered.

His eyes lit up and he gave her a lopsided grin. "Agnes?"

"For Sam's mother," she said, with a wistful smile. (Maybe those strangers from Sam's photographs were more her family than she realized.)

"Don't you want to make masterpieces like this someday with little Agnes or… or Sam the Second or—"

She raised an eyebrow. "Dom?"

"Perhaps. Personally, I think Raymond is a good strong name."

Liz barked out a laugh. "Oh, really?"

Red nodded cheekily, almost proud of himself. "Did you know that it means protector?"

She scrunched up her face. "That's a little on the nose, isn't it?"

"I'll show you 'on the nose', sweetheart."

"Reddington, what the hell are you doing?"

Red advanced on her, a spark of mischief dancing in his eyes. When he got close enough to almost touch her with his glitter-coated hands, she shrieked and made a run for the door.

"You bastard!" she called over her shoulder as she raced through the snow-covered yard and ducked behind a line of trees. "We're not dressed for this!"

Despite her protests, Liz bent down to scoop up enough snow for a healthy snowball and began packing it tightly together with what little heat was left in her hands. She yelped in surprise as Red's arms came around her from behind and she spun herself around, using his momentum and his own surprise to knock him off balance. They toppled over together, sinking into the top layers of snow, and Liz took advantage of Red's lapse in attention to smash her snowball into his face.

Red sputtered and blinked, gazing up at Liz with a faux innocence made all the more ridiculous by the streaks of glitter clinging to his cheeks and peppered through his hair. What an absurd picture he made, staring at her like that. Laughter bubbled out of her, uncontrollable and infectious, spreading to Red as quickly as his stupid glitter had spread to her.

Oh, it felt so good to laugh, such deep, cathartic belly laughs, even as the cold air started to steal the breath in their lungs.

The waning morning sunlight caught the glitter and the powdery snow on Red's face, causing them to sparkle brilliantly. Liz's breath stuttered to a stop and her stomach flipped, and before she could think better of it, she leaned down and captured his lips in a kiss.

The noise Red made—the little gasp of surprise that morphed into a grateful whimper… That was Liz's favorite part of kissing him. He always seemed so reverent, so… appreciative, to have her lips on his.

They'd barely even kissed since that night in the shipping container, just a stolen moment here and there when the stress became too overwhelming and Red would calm her in the best way he knew how. He took her so carefully into his arms, took her face between his hands and made her feel like she wasn't alone. It was more of a comfort thing than a sexual one, or even a sensual one. Even still, Liz was almost ashamed by how much relief she felt just having his responsive lips beneath her own again, how much she needed it.

It was nice to know she could mean so much, even to one other human being. It was nice to know she could mean so much to Red, who dropped everything to come and guide her through this abyss of her own making after she killed Connolly. And on that fateful night aboard the container ship, he had let his guard down long enough for her to get a glimpse of the man she thought she knew so well, yet not at all.

Yes, it had been far too long.

All of a sudden, the front door of the house slammed shut; Liz and Red sprang apart, meeting each other's eyes in silent panic.