A/N: Back from a forever long break! Don't own any of this.
Liz stared at the ceiling of her hotel room, finding patterns in the popcorn texture. She felt like she hadn't moved in days, felt as weighty as the invisible stone that weighed on her chest and dragged down her limbs.
She knew he was there before he even walked into her room.
"Reddington, Reddington, Reddington," she chanted quickly, and immediately there was a cacophony of crashing glass and clattering metal. She sat up on the bed, already feeling guilt sour and bloom in her mouth before seeing the damage.
The puddle of water remained, but Red was already in the process of causing the broken glass and the bagel, tray, and plate to lift up off the floor; his face was set with a sad, grim sort of look.
It had been days. Liz had spent most of the time crying, and sleeping on and off. The only time she felt awake, like she was coming up for air, was her time with her family for all the steps of laying her father's body to rest.
She'd blamed Red for the loss of her father, for not stopping him. She'd screamed. Knocked a lamp off of credenza. Whenever he came close to her, she's send him away, or keep him away, her own trick she's discovered during her rage and grief.
The sound of falling metal and breaking glass seemed to remain, ringing in her ears. Liz drew her knees up, resting her elbows on her comforter covered thighs, closed her eyes, and swallowed. She took a deep breath and pressed the palms of her hands into her eyes, rubbing them. Her sleep-dulled fingers swept over her face and came to rest, interwoven, at the back of her bowed neck. Everything felt gritty - the inside of her eyelids, her lips, her face, her throat.
For the first time in many days, she felt like she was awake and it hurt.
The lamp beside her bed flickered.
Red was back, standing at her door. His hands were in his pockets and his eyes were following along on the floor, tracing the line where the carpet patterns changed between the sitting area of the suite and her bedroom.
Before she could even see his face, a sympathetic wave of remorse swept over her, and she gritted her teeth. She had enough of her own sadness to deal without adding his to her shoulders.
How long had the link been between them? He'd probably been aware of everything she'd been feeling as well.
"I wish I could have made him stay," he whispered. He licked his lips and when he looked up at her, there was a split-second where he looked deer-in-the-headlights-and-scared-shitless young, but then decades of guilt and knowledge caught up with him.
"When it's your time, it's your time, though," he sighed.
From the tense movement of his lips, she knew that if she'd allowed him to be more corporeal for the moment, she would have seen him nervously swallowing, that left over-anxious habit somehow so humanizing.
His eyes darted to her shoulder, or maybe her headboard; she wasn't certain of where his gaze was directed, but it was very much intentionally not on her as he spoke next.
"And I've learned when it isn't your time, you can't hitch a ride." He added, quietly, "No matter how hard you try."
Her first attempt to say anything after that failed, words dying in her throat. She bowed her head and took a deep breath.
Liz was raised to live without apologies, and to be as self reliant as possible - Sam Smith was always a solo act, he never needed an opening act in his entire career and he was never interested in one. Her ability, when it flared up, made her isolated, but isolation felt a little less lonely when she didn't need to depend on others.
Reaching out to people had always been difficult.
Asking for things was harder, and forgiveness? Even more so.
"Red," she said, voice cracking on his name, dry and rough from lack of use and crying.
He shook his head. "You're grieving," he responded, dismissing, to spare her, his eyebrows rose, eyes downward, and she could see the facade starting to slip into place, but this time it was for her protection.
"No," she said forcefully, sitting up straight, surprising the beginning of an aloof look off of his face. "No, I - I was grieving, but that's not okay. I'm - I'm sorry, for blaming you. I shouldn't have blamed you."
Her sagging shoulders tensed back up a little when she remembered the photo in her bag.
"But I'm still mad about." She gave him a pointed look. "Whatever it was that you and my dad were talking about, that you two kept it from me. Right now though, this is me, this is me saying 'I'm sorry' for what I said. For how I acted."
Red shook his head, his mouth set in a grim line. "We shouldn't have - I shouldn't have kept the truth from you; you're right."
Liz rubbed at her eyes again, and she could feel the raised scarring of her palm and wrist on her cheek as she did. The question that was always there, in the back of her mind, bubbled to the surface once more.
"Red, what is this, this thing between us?" When she noticed how still he became, she continued, in a voice that she tried to keep firm, but she could hear how how brittle around it was around the edges. "I don't have a lot to - I only have a little control over my ability, my husband, my whole relationship was a lie, my dad just died...I don't have much."
He was watching her, lips pressed tight, the corner on one side twitching up a little. "You have me."
She did. She knew that. She had Red, like it or not. He was a constant for her before she even knew it. Now, he was…
She tried to imagine if it would be the same if he was alive, if things were different.
But here he was, the man from the photo with Sam and Cooper, barely looking older than he did in that photo. Her constant companion. Her very own Casper of the criminal, sex-oozing variety.
She needed to know why.
Liz pushed herself backwards to rest against the headboard, shifting to sit tailor-style, alert, her eyes trained on him. "Tell me about the photo."
She jerked her head in the direction of the chair in the corner of the room, and after she gave him a permissive nod, Red stepped into the room and the chair moved to face her bed.
She spoke his name three times, and with the room's low-lights, he looked solid, he looked like he was alive.
Red seated himself, crossing his legs and running his hands on the chair arms; she knew he couldn't feel them. It was just a control thing.
He watched her. "You won't believe this."
She shrugged. "I see dead people. Try me."
He sighed, heavily, leaning back, and gave her a look that easily said 'I warned you' before diving into it.
"I was still at the Naval Academy when I got picked to go to DC for a panel. Some young leaders, armed forced, reaching-across-the-branches, kumbaya crap kind of thing. I met Cooper there, we realized that we both had similar secrets, and he knew of others with similar secrets. People who could see the dead, could read minds, could move things...we were closet comic book nerds and suddenly it seemed like we could actually be the X-Men.
"We convinced the right people for the funding, with the assistance of a young man who could influence people's decisions. We set up the Morgue and suddenly, we," he shook his head and laughed, as if he barely believed it to be true himself. "We were a clandestine department and we had staff and only half a clue as to what we were doing, but we were thrilled."
The photo came out of the suitcase, floated to land on the comforter between them. Seeing her Dad's face made her eyes blur a little, made them sting.
"How does...how did Sam come into this?"
Red studied the photo, a sad nostalgia on his face. "He was an early member and...and my best friend. My partner."
Liz tried to think of Sam Scott the magician, the always smiling, always wise-cracking man who raised her, and imagine him, younger and serious in the Morgue, in a business suit; it was difficult, but she knew very well Red couldn't lie to her.
He ran his hand through his hair nervously and continued. "We found out through some of our connections about Yilmaz, this...thug. He was leading a burgeoning crime syndicate that was involved in highly specific trafficking; just as we had finally realized what our abilities could do on a larger-scale for the defense of the country, there were those who understood the potential for personal gain.
"Sam and I, we were tasked with going undercover, attempting to take part in one of the auctions that would take place. Our covers were solid enough to gain their trust, and Sam being a telepath, he was able to influence them into allowing us to have a 'preview' before the auction."
Liz could sense his growing anxiety, could see him start to fidget. He tilted his head a little and worked his jaw, and bitter smile twitched on his mouth.
"You were there, you were...younger. Than most of them. Almost all of them."
Her heart pounded in her ears. An auction? Trafficking? Liz's gut twisted with anxiety over the direction this story was going. Her fingers brushed over her scar, and he noticed the motion, halting the tale.
A scar that big, that painful, and all she could remember from her earliest memory was darkness, and her own screaming. The same as her nightmares.
Her fingers traced the branches of the scar down to where they met and joined.
She couldn't remember the last time she ate. That was good. She'd probably have thrown up if there was anything in her gut.
She almost didn't want to ask the question on the tip of her tongue. "I didn't get this in a fire, did I?"
The head shake she received in response was very subtle, but it was enough. She swallowed, throat dry, and covered the raised and mottled skin with her other shaking hand. She didn't want to see it. She didn't want him to see it.
Tears stung her eyes again, but for a very different reason.
"That's sick. That's disgusting" she spat in a hushed whisper, wiping at her nose and cheeks. "Branded like cattle."
Red waited a moment, allowing her the time to say any of the multitude of things she was thinking, but she couldn't get them out. "We thought the same thing," he assured her. "And seeing you there in that place it was," he stopped, and shook his head, closing his eyes. "We knew we had to act, and quickly."
"We left and got ready to come back with the strike team. We came back and found the building up in flames - they must have had a psychic of their own, or a telepath...even now, I don't know. Neither does Cooper - I've seen his files."
Liz dropped her head back on the wall behind her and inhaled sharply through her nose. "You saved me from the fire."
Without moving, she watched him from that strange angle, through lowered eyelashes. Watched him battle with how to react to her statement: truth or another conversation topic, some quick brush off with bravado.
"You died saving me."
His silence and stillness made her sit up properly. Her heart pounded furiously.
"You died saving me," she slowly repeated.
He dipped his head, lips pressed firmly together, somber and sad.
The silence was going to suffocate or shatter her and she wasn't sure which one it would be.
"Please say something," she begged. "Even if it's ridiculous or some story about a woman who sells hats in Guam and makes some pastry I can't pronounce and how it's the bes-"
"-You were the first kid I found," he said, voice gruff. "You were...I guess you were still awake when they set the fire. The bastards had run. You crawled and hid but when I ran in, I found you first. I grabbed you. Got you out."
She remembered that, she remembered hiding and the smoke and the screams. She had always remembered those screams. She thought they were her own but there so many in her nightmares and -
She remembered hiding and the smoke and the screams and her back against the leg of the chair. The smoke in her lungs and soft familiar comfort of her stuffed bunny against her cheek.
She remembered being pulled out and lifted, and the feeling of the cold night air in her lungs and Sam cradling her.
Red continued. "I tried. I went back in but there was just too much smoke and I couldn't find my way back out and I…"
He shut his eyes tightly. "I'd promised you I'd come back."
Liz remembered the feeling of his finger linked with hers, the curve in reverse and enlarged.
Raymond Reddington was haunting her because of a fucking pinky swear when she was a child.