AUTHOR'S NOTE: straight up honesty hour: I've written a chapter that's like. Two or three away from this one and I just want to get there so everything feels like necessary filler ughaksjdhaskjdhas.

Coming home at the end of the day was an unparalleled relief. Finally relieved of the scrutinizing gazes of her peers and allowed an opportunity to breathe, Elizabeth found a few hours of solace in the evening. Some nights offered a more generous refuge, and others less, but that was an occupational hazard that she had long accepted. In the few hours after her return, she was permitted the opportunity to breathe. The later the hour grew, the more dread would inevitably settle in her stomach, weighing her down with aching malaise. The closer the hour to dawn, the more sick she became. Why had this sensation not, at the very least, eased? It had been almost two weeks. She had not yet found a cause to betray her outward allegiance … but it was only a matter of time, was it not?

She ought to have counted her blessings, few as they were. Reddington was a fortuitously absentee master, despite having pulled her strings on the tip line three times in the last week. He was briefer, at the very least—though that was not to say that his purpose was not fulfilled. Regardless, he had a hands-off approach thus far, and had maintained a distance that worked (well enough) for her.

But perhaps he was not as hands-off as she had initially anticipated.

The key turned in the lock, and she stepped into her home in a subdued, vaguely theatrical way: staggering forward as if wounded, like her knees and shoulders were weighed down by hidden burdens. It occurred to her one night, while she lay sleeplessly in bed, making constellations out of the stucco in her ceiling, that she carried the world on her shoulders, and that a single misstep would cause it to roll off and devastate those within it. It was curious that, at the time, the guilt of what she had not yet done consumed her, yet the emotions felt in the aftermath of her future betrayals were but a fraction of this.

Dragging her unseen troubles into her home, closing the door behind her with relief, she would have thought that this was the beginning of her brief refuge. She was mistaken.

He was sitting in Don's armchair. At that particular moment, if only by virtue of his posture, he looked remarkably like him. The ghost of Don, just as she would expect him to be: ankle resting on the knee of his leg, leaning slightly towards one side—tilted enough towards the window that lifting his gaze only slightly would offer him a view of the street. The principle difference between their silhouettes was that there was no newspaper in his hands, but a fedora.

She consciously did not sit in that chair.

"Hello, Lizzie."

Stricken with déjà vu, she swallowed hard before she spoke. He always said her name exactly like that—he had the day they met, and every phone call since—the tone never wavering from its calm, vacant style. Whenever he said those words to her, he pulled a string that reverberated quietly inside of her, causing ripples of unrest to spread from her core to her fingertips. That he was sitting in Don's chair worsened the blow.

"What are you doing here?" it occurred to her that he had managed to get in unaided, but there was little point being surprised about that. She slept at night with the deadbolt fastened, but it was a false security. Any endeavours to shut him out, she thought, rightly or wrongly, were wholly fruitless. He had violated the only place she had felt safe.

Instead of directly answering her question, Reddington commented, "I had half a mind to water your fern."

Her mouth was dry. All she managed to say in response was, "But you didn't?"

"No," a pregnant pause settled, consuming them both. Reddington, smiling peaceably. Elizabeth, with her pounding heart lodged in her throat. "How was—"

"Where have—"

They starting talking simultaneously, and, as the result of these types of interactions often is, both fell silent at precisely the same moment. He indicated forgivingly for her to begin. The consequence was that Elizabeth realised how very little she had to say.

"Where have you been?"

"Out and about."

She contained the shudder that built from the base of her spine. He looked so earnestly nonchalant when he said so, but her imagination couldn't help but envision the worst: treason, given Reddington's history, and other stereotypically-criminal acts.

Rather than dwelling on the matter, Reddington pushed on.

"I know we had an arrangement," he didn't say anything accusatory. He seemed fully aware that she was wary of him, and was generally indifferent to it. He still had a sense of ownership over her that neither of them was prepared to deny, "but I think we'll need to expedite the process a bit. Why don't you take a seat, Lizzie."

She shook her head, but he smiled, his eyes possessing such a semblance of warmth that she ceded in a moment. Her knees buckled as she fell onto the couch adjacent his armchair.

"You haven't held up your end."

Struggling to sound normal, she answered, "I haven't had anything for you," but the way that she stroked the scar on her palm betrayed her.

He didn't seem surprised, rather as if he had suspected as much—yet that was not the cause for his visit. It was evident to her in the way that he paused, biding his time before approaching a matter of greater importance: "I need you to come somewhere with me."

When would she stop feeling so paralyzed by his presence? It was odd that she felt guilt and fear, yet no remorse. None of her wanted to go back on her word, to leave Raymond Reddington in the dark and throw herself with a cleansed soul to the light where she belonged. Her loneliness alienated her from that world, too. She didn't belong there, not with such a scarcity of affection.

"Why should I trust you?" she asked abruptly, rather than commenting on anything he'd said before. It hardly registered. She only wanted to know one thing right now. "Why should I trust that you know my father?"

She wished with all her heart that she hadn't sounded so pleading.

"You shouldn't trust me. I'm a criminal," she noticed the gentle irony in his words. He maintained eye contact so effortlessly that it made her nervous; prolonged eye contact had that effect on most people. It was aggressive, challenging and seductive at once, "but I'm not lying to you about this."

If he had been any other man, she would have trusted her instincts as Reddington had instructed her to the day they met. She would have sensed sincerity and good intentions, buried, however deep, beneath a self-serving purpose. His will appeared not to be tainted, his purpose not evidently nefarious—only because he was Raymond Reddington was her judgement distorted.

"Now, Lizzie, the only way that this partnership will work synergistically is if you put your best foot forward."

She braced herself quietly for his demand, wondering where this was going. She had already attempted to explain her inactivity to him, so surely it wasn't back to that—or was he going to give her advice?

Elizabeth was continuously surprised by how cordial he appeared. Although his thoughts were often unfounded and usually bizarre (their previous conversations had included nothing short of acupuncture, Florence and some cannoli or other he had found), he appeared to be articulate and capable of kindness. If not kindness—not of the genuine variety—then, at the very least, some modicum of humanity. Where he found it in himself to conjure a tone of such a gentle tenor, she couldn't possibly say. It wasn't conducive to the man she had suspected he was. Her profile was better-fitted for a colder man, a man who was more blatantly conniving.

But that was, she reasoned as she sensed herself softening to him, characteristic enough of a brilliant manipulator. A diligent sociopath would seek the traits in man that were regarded as desirable, and might aspire to recreate them to his benefit. Like her, perhaps he had reasonably unaffected sight into the minds of others, had the ability to peer through the slightest cracks in the façade and see the damaged interior. They were all haemorrhaging, just from different wounds in different places.

"I need you to come with me. You'll be appropriately compensated. We'll need to do something about your hair but—"

"What?"

"You're going to come with me into the den of thieves."

"Why?"

"I need you to do what you FBI are supposed to best: sniff out a rat. If you find it, you can keep it."

Another pause that felt endless followed, a drawn-out silence that begged to be broken.

"I don't think I can," she resented her quivering tone, the current of self-doubt and apprehension that accompanied it. She didn't want to admit her fallibility, but she didn't see a way around this. She needed what Reddington was offering, but she couldn't pay her way—she believed that adamantly. It was apparent to her as she felt her finicky heartbeat palpating beneath her breast.

He looked at her with such seriousness that she was taken aback. He had such intense emotion in his eyes, such attentiveness, that was powerless to resisting it. He was listening to her, really listening. As frightening as that was, it was exactly what she needed from him.

"Lizzie."

All he said at first was her name, gazing at her with those keenly intelligent eyes. His hand lifted from the brim of his hat and settled on her anxious, fiddling fingers. She didn't recoil from his touch as she would have expected herself to. She instead craved that comforting gesture, was grateful for the kindness of his effort.

"You have put Cooper and your colleagues on a pedestal they do not deserve," she couldn't tear her eyes away from him, and that made every word he said unbearably reasonable. "If guilt is what holds you back, forget it. Don't be so black and white when you think of the world. None of us are angels, Lizzie."

His smile, half-concealed by shadow. Half-reason, half-madness. His fingers, tipping her head back further and further.

Liz. Convulsing as her gag reflex was tickled by the growing incline.

Why couldn't Anslo have turned his blind eye to her?