"(Jorinde) had been changed into a nightingale, who was singing..."
-Jorinde and Joringel
What Liz assumed was morning had come. The only indication that she had that any time had passed was the metallic squeal of the door's slot being shoved open.
She barely recalled falling into some sort of sleep last night. Just as Miriam had probably hoped, her sleep had been fitful-the nightmares had invaded her mind again. But this time, instead of dreaming of her life being taken by shadowy governmental agents, she dreamed of rough canvas against her skin, the fabric invading her mouth, scraping her tongue and scratching the roof of her mouth as she took deep, heaving breaths, struggling to fight against suffocation. She dreamed of lying on the cold ground, flowers falling onto her equally chilled skin, their petals dusting her like a organic snow. And then she had felt her body begin to degrade and decay, skin peeling from bones in crumbling layers as the plants and the earth took her into itself.
As she tried to shove away the disturbing images that still lurked in the back of her skull, she all but ran to the door as the promised sheet of rules was shoved through the slot. Liz pressed her palms to the wood, her hands making a gentle thud to let Miriam know that she was there.
"Miriam, just a moment, please. I wanted to talk to you," she said, keeping her tone quiet and placating. There had once been a time when she was a child and she had been too busy playing to notice that she had run into the middle of the street in front of a car that barely had enough time to stop in front of her, billowing out gasps of dirty fuel from the tailpipe. The acrid scent of exhaust had still been on her tongue as she apologized to Sam for what had nearly happened, her tone low and quavering.
That was the voice she used now-the voice of a somewhat disoriented, apologetic child. She hoped that it would appeal to Miriam.
"What do you want to talk about?" Miriam sounded wary.
"Well, I was doing some thinking last night. You know, about what you said-about my being with Reddington because I don't think I deserve better. And..." she paused for effect, but also because she took some small measure of enjoyment at making Miriam tip between hope and doubt. "I think you're right."
"You do?" The words turned sharply up. It was part question and part incredulity.
Liz wetted her lips and rubbed them together. Was she being too sudden in her epiphany as to be unbelievable? Should she have waited a day or two before beginning to comply with Miriam's wishes?
"Yes," she began carefully. "I don't know how much research you did on me, but before all of this happened, I was married. Or, well, sort of married. It wasn't technically real since 'Tom Keen' was nothing but an alias." At least she didn't have to invent the resentment that shone through when she talked about Tom. She'd let him help her clear her name, but only because it had been a necessity. Thinking about what he'd done still made fire curl up inside her.
"I couldn't find much on that, but I was aware that you'd had a sham marriage of some sort," Miriam said, sympathetic.
That was good. If she was at least feeling sympathy, then Liz partially had her hooked on the line. She just needed t keep reeling in carefully.
"Since you take care of women like me, I guess you know that women that leave abusive situations can often have trust issues and extremely low self esteem. I didn't realize it at the time, but that's what had happened to me. After what Tom did, I was lonely and had no self confidence, and Reddington was there..." She paused again, though not for effect. She was simply stricken by how much of what she'd said wasn't a lie.
It was true that after the annulment and her discovery of who Tom was-of what Tom was-she had been in shattered pieces, though she'd refused to admit it at the time. Red had been one of the few, solid, supportive forces in her life, and while she never made a romantic pass at him, there had been times when she'd clung to him both figuratively and literally in the wake of her brokenness and the realization of the horrid things she'd done in the bowels of that ship.
"He was there and it just happened. I wasn't planning on it, but I was empty and I needed something to fill the emptiness and...I've always had a thing for questionable guys too. I dated a few of those before Tom. But when I met Tom, I thought I'd finally become rational about guys. He seemed to normal, stable, and sweet. He seemed good." She swallowed against a sudden knot in her throat. Almost all of that had been true too. As ludicrous and as horrifying as the idea seemed now, she'd thought Tom had been the mythic "One" that all the romantic songs and movies talked about. He had been everything that her string of exes weren't.
"I'm sorry." Miriam's voice was soft.
In other circumstances, she would've felt touched over someone's sympathy at her situation. But right now, she felt a stab of triumph. She had the old woman close to being on her side.
"So after what happened, I felt completely betrayed, especially after I thought Tom and I were the right thing. I just fell back into my old, bad dating habits." She folded her arms and gave a shrug.
"Why are you telling me this now? You wouldn't admit last night that you and Reddington were together." Miriam didn't sound unkind, but she suddenly sounded skeptical again.
Liz searched for a plausible explanation. "That's because I can't even admit to myself most of the time that we're together. What we are isn't that simple. It's not just we're dating or not. What we are is...I don't know. We are allies-that's not a lie. But he's not my boyfriend, and I'm not his girlfriend. We haven't 'defined the relationship'. It's just that we're mostly allies and sort of friends, but sometimes something less than platonic happens between us. We're...allies with benefits, I guess. Reddington isn't big on conventional relationships."
"You are ashamed." It was a statement, not a question. It was as if Miriam was so certain in her ability to analyze Liz that she wasn't even giving her the choice of deciding how she felt-she was telling Liz what her emotions were. It made her prickle, but the goal was comply, no matter how much it pained her to do so.
"Yes, I am ashamed. I was an FBI agent-a criminal profiler. I was supposed to help catch and put away people like him, not initiate an affair. Another reason I couldn't admit the nature of our relationship to you last night is because I haven't admitted it to anyone before. Sure, people have guessed, but no one knows for certain except you." If she made Miriam feel special about having that confidential piece of knowledge, perhaps it would help in Liz's plan of gaining her confidence.
"But that's part of it, is it not? You've had an unfortunate taste in men, and you became a criminal profiler. You have an attraction to the criminal mind," Miriam said, her voice low and concerned.
She resented the insinuation that she was like some fictional psychiatrist falling for her patient. Like Harley Quinn falling for the Joker-naive and young, not knowing what she was getting herself into, unable to resist his psychopathic glib, superficial charm.
But in the end, it wasn't exactly a completely incorrect observation, was it? There probably was some tie between her taste in men and her fascination with the criminal mind. On her first day at the Post Office during her analysis of herself, she openly admitted that she wanted to relate to and understand the criminal mind. How far of a leap was it between that and being attracted to those with a dangerous, extralegal edge?
"Well, I don't think you're wrong. I haven't really thought about it before that way, but your analysis sounds about right. Maybe you should've become the profiler," she laughed, hoping the false smile was apparent in her voice. Teasing and humor indicated camaraderie.
"Oh, no. I would never have had the stomach for that sort of work. It's simply that I'm quite good at reading people," Miriam said. Said by someone else, it would've sounded like boasting, but coming from her it was a simple fact.
"I can tell. Well, anyway...thank you for listening to me. I just wanted to clear some things up." She hoped that Miriam wasn't going to simply leave. She was leaving an opening for the woman to consider what she had said, and if her apparent compliance and flattery had been satisfactory.
"Well, I'm happy that we had this chat. I feel a bit better about the future of our relationship and about the outlook of your progress. I'll be back in a few hours to take you to your new room," she said the last sentence without any sort of grandiosity, but Liz's heart flipped.
"New room?" she echoed.
"Yes," Miriam replied, a smile in her voice. "You've earned it."
Like a sheep unaware of the butcher's blade against its throat that awaited it at the end of its journey, she was being lead blindly down a hallway with a bag over her head and thick, square hands were pressing down against her shoulders, turning her this way and that. Liz tried not to think about how the weave of the bag was so similar to her nightmare of suffocation. The coarse fibers that brushed against her cheeks now felt exactly like the fabric in her dream as her attacker shoved the bag over her head and into her mouth, closing off any promise of air.
Miriam had returned several hours later to escort her to her new room promised, but what she hadn't said was that she was going to bring Zachiel in tow with a black canvas bag clutched in his blunt fingers. He was a broad, thick man with a mouth that drooped down into somewhere between somber and stern. When he'd looked at her, his watery eyes narrowed a bit, a hand twitching. Her gaze dropped to the twitching hand-it was wrapped in a gauze bandage that was dappled with rusty blotches of dried blood. She had to keep herself from smiling at her handiwork.
But she was meant to be obedient and gentle, so she'd apologized for the wound. His face hadn't softened, and he didn't even give a grunt of recognition at her words, but at the very least perhaps the apology had been noticed by Miriam.
Miriam explained that the bag was to be used like blinders for a horse-if she couldn't see, then she wouldn't get spooked and doing something to hurt either her or Miriam and Zachiel.
But she knew the real reason. It was to prevent her from scoping out the rest of the building for potential signs of weakness that she could later use to escape.
She'd tried not to protest at the use of the bag, but she wasn't able to keep herself from flinching when it was slipped over her face, her heart beginning to race and adrenaline jolting through her system as her mind put her back in the parking lot, collapsing beneath the weight of an unknown sedative.
As they lead her down the hall, she tried to make note of every turn they made, of any gentle drafts that might indicate a window nearby. They could blind her eyes, but they couldn't blind her senses and her training.
"Here we are," Miriam said from behind her.
She shuffled to a stop and she swayed as Zachiel's bulk bumped against her back, his hands not moving from their spot on her shoulders. She wanted to kick him in the shins, but she stayed where she was, ignoring the twitching muscles in her legs.
"Now, I have a bit of a surprise for you that I didn't want to mention until now." Miriam's footsteps clomped against the floor, coming to stop in front of Liz. She took Liz's slack hands in hers, her fingers cold and slim, a wormy vein pressed beneath Liz's thumb.
"A surprise?" She didn't need anything that could further complicate her planning.
"Yes. You see, I want you to meet someone. She was the first girl we brought here, and she's adjusted so well, despite an...an incident that occurred three months after we saved her. I think you'll like her. She has quite a soothing presence." Miriam patted her hand in a way that was supposed to be soothing, but she wanted to jerk away when she felt the crescents of the woman's fingernails tap against the back of her hand.
"I would be glad to meet her." And she was, in fact. If this girl was the first one taken, she'd been here for a year, and she could have valuable insight that would be of use.
"Now, this is your room, so she'll be gone after your chat. I just thought that given your earlier distress, a bit of a house warming visit would do you well." Miriam dropped her hands and jabbed a key into the door's lock. It didn't scrape inside, so that meant the lock was well cared for and wouldn't be as easily picked if she had the opportunity.
Zachiel dropped one hand from her shoulder and pressed the other to the middle of her back to herd her into the room. Her jerked the bag off her head, throwing a spray of dark hair into her eyes, and before she could turn around, the door had been shut and locked again.
"We'll be right outside the door. Just knock when you're ready for your visitor to leave."
As Liz turned, she saw that the woman sitting down on the bed was the same bewildered, confused woman in the photograph that Red had given her. She had the same long neck and wide, doe-like eyes, but this time she had an air of peace about her, back straight and a line of platinum hair falling over her left shoulder. She swept a hand to the spot beside her, palm flat. "Please, sit down," she said, her voice airy and light.
Liz just stood there for a moment, hands heavy at her sides. She hadn't washed in two days, and she felt like a layer of grime had settled over her skin and embedded itself into her hair, and she was still wearing the dress from yesterday, the cloth now wrinkled from her having slept in it. Beside this delicate, slender woman, she felt like something wild and feral that had emerged from the woods, stinking of mud and musk, with leaves and dirt matted into its fur.
She walked toward the bed, noting that though the room didn't have a window nor any furnishings besides the bed, there was a light switch, and the color palette of the room was a light yellow as opposed to the clinical, harsh white of the room she had woken up in.
The mattress gave gently beneath her weight as she sat down, and she brushed a hand over the hem of her dress, trying to push out some of the wrinkles.
"I'm Reagan Dunn," the woman said, pressing a hand to her chest.
"Elizabeth Keen." She jerked a thumb up at herself, hand limply falling back into her lap.
"Miriam says that your first night here was a pretty rough one. I'm sorry to hear that." Reagan's lower lip jutted out.
"Yeah, this was just all really sudden. I'm going to need some time to adjust," she said, bobbing her head. There was no point in denying how odd and disorienting the entire experience was.
"I understand. It took me quite a while to get used to this place, but once you adjust, it's better than you can imagine. We don't have to worry about anything here, and we're taken care of." She ran a hand through her elfin hair, and it almost shimmered. Liz felt even more misshapen and strange beside her. There was something distant about the way Reagan spoke-as if she had to box up some part of herself in order to believe the words that she was saying. And that was probably the case. In situations like this, people's minds did strange things in order to keep them sane and alive.
"I understand that you escaped," she said, giving a quick glance over to Reagan. She tried to keep her tone casual and conversation, but bringing up the escape was risky. If she betrayed her to Miriam, Liz would have undone all the work that she had done so far in order to make the old woman trust her.
"Oh," Reagan breathed, for a moment, her cheeks tensing, body rigid as if a coil had been tightened inside of her. "Yes, I did, but that was because I was confused and didn't understand the favor that Miriam and Zachiel had done me."
Liz wanted to get more out of her, but if she kept pressing for more details about the escape, then she surely would become suspicious. "I guess I'm on the path to understanding, then. So...what sorts of things are there to do here? There's not exactly a lot in my room yet."
"Well, as long as you follow the rules, you'll eventually get more and more privileges and freedom to do things. I have a TV, DVDs, books, and window in my room, and I have a sketchbook and pencils." She smiled at the mention of the art supplies, and the smile was the most real thing that she had done in the entire time Liz had been talking to her. It was a glimpse into who she had been before she was snatched away from her life.
"That's nice. I'd love to finishing watching The Wire sometime, and it looks like I'll have a lot of time in here to do that." She glanced up and the blank wall, imagining a flat TV mounted there.
"Oh, well..." Reagan's long fingers ran through her hair again, knotting the white strands around the tips of her fingers. Those hands were artist's hands. "I'm not sure she'd let you have The Wire. She lets us watch things, but she has to approve them first, and I'm not sure that it would meet her standards."
That was just another piece of evidence for one of the more subtle isolating and controlling behaviors that Miriam displayed. The woman had learned it somewhere. Zachiel, perhaps? But if anything, she seemed to be the one that told him what to do, not the other way around. So then perhaps she had learned it from someone she had known when she was younger? "I see. Well, anyway, I hope I can watch something soon. I like keeping my mind busy, and I'll probably get bored if I don't have something to engage me."
"It will give you time to think and adjust. Miriam says it's important to have a lot of time alone with your thoughts before you have any distractions." Reagan dropped her hand again, any sign of nervousness replaced by plastic serenity.
Of course that was part of Miriam's plan. Brainwashed subjects weren't presented with large rewards until they'd complied satisfactorily to their captor's wishes.
"Well, thank you for talking to me Reagan, I really do appreciate it. I don't have a lot friends, and it's nice to see a friendly face." She took one of Reagan's hands and tried to smile, but a muscle in her lip twitched, protesting the forced action.
"I'll come visit any time Miriam allows it," she said, eyes shining. Liz's heart twinged for the woman-nothing she'd said were her own wishes or desires, nor were they her own words. It was always what Miriam allowed, what she wanted, what she said, what she let Reagan do. During the year Miriam had been collecting the women, it seemed that Reagan had been her guinea pig pet project, and she'd bent and molded the willowy girl almost perfectly, her fingerprints dotted across Reagan's psyche.
Liz didn't know what she would be like if she had been trapped in the house for a year, but she doubted she would've become so placid. She wouldn't have bent. She would have snapped and shattered willfully let Miriam cut herself on the jagged pieces while trying to put them together into something beautiful.
"I'll see you soon, then." She let go of Reagan's hand and watched her rise, her bare feet almost gliding across the floor as she walked to the door, her white dress swaying with each movement.
She knocked on the door and it jerked open, only open a second long enough for Reagan to exit before it was yanked closed and locked, as if they were afraid Liz was a wildcat that would spring out of the opening and devour them given the chance.
And they weren't wrong, she supposed. The moment she'd woken up, hadn't she been fantasizing of ways she'd escape? And many of those ways had involved some sort of collateral damage. Half of her was disgusted at her violent desires, no matter how objectively wrong Miriam and Zachiel's actions were. Their form of morality was twisted beyond recognition of anything acceptable, but they had not physically hurt her or the other women as far and she knew, and they were still humans who had rights that deserved a fair hearing and trial after their crimes were discovered.
But the other half of her snarled and trembled in anticipation of the thought of escaping and hurting one of them. That half was the part that had become restless and active once she'd gone on the run, unsated by the blood of Connolly. It was the ragged part of her that was sick of the lies and the death, of the endless crimes and tragedies she'd seen. It said, Don't let them betray you or take anything more from you. If they try to hurt you, if they even think of hurting you, hurt them first. It was the creature that had made her chain Tom up in that was the primal, dark thing that had made her kick the ribs of the man repeatedly until they snapped in the diner until Red had manage to quiet and pacify the ravening beast.
It had woken up, she supposed, the minute she had discovered that two years of a marriage were a lie, and after that, it was never satisfied by anything she did, and it only became stronger and more vicious the more she fed it.
But she couldn't listen to it right now. It was irrational and impulsive, and she needed to be calculated and plan carefully, spending her time alone in order to analyze the information she'd gathered. If she was going to escape, it was time for an air of calm. If she was to survive she had to be like...
She had to be like Red. The man had survived countless tortures and fire fights and the entire time, he hadn't shed a tear of pain, and he'd barely let his muscles flinch at all. She knew he felt emotions, but he usually hid them behind a thick hide that he'd built up over the decades.
She had to begin working on creating her own hide.
