A/N Red finally gets some answers - unfortunately they are the ones he fears the most. Meanwhile Lizzie has to bear the consequences of her actions. As ever, I don't own The Blacklist! Reviews make my day :-)
Calling your name in the midnight hour
Reaching for you from the endless dream
So many miles between us now
But you are always here with me
(Here with me, Susie Suh)
Several more weeks passed and Red had heard nothing of Liz, but other forces were at work which troubled him. After she and the clowns at the FBI had helped botch his operation in Russia his intel had been severely compromised, but he was seeing signs that things were moving there. Not signs that anyone else would pick up – things that only he would put together. That's what made him so effective; he made it his business to know pieces of puzzles other people hadn't considered. Several accounts at Monarch Douglas Bank had been cleared out, and one public figure with whom he did regular business sent a terribly polite message that his services were not required at present. Then another. People were running scared, hunkering down. It was as if now that he finally had the fulcrum they were suddenly convinced that he didn't, which meant they had good reason to believe that someone else did, which wasn't good at all. The balance of power was shifting.
When he received a message from one of his trusted street level assets to meet him in a park he went eagerly, hoping to gain some insight into the recent activity, or perhaps even news of her. He sat on the bench bathed in afternoon sunlight watching ordinary people going about their lives. He barely felt human any more. When a man sat next to him he sighed in resignation. It was assistant director Cooper. How had this happened? Perhaps in losing Lizzie he had lost his edge. And without either of those, he was nothing.
"Is this how it happens, Harold? Agent Keen leaves along with my immunity deal, you bring me in and I never see the light of day again. Correct?"
Cooper paused, staring out over the park.
"No." He said after a while, as if it was difficult for him. "As far as the FBI is concerned, you are in the wind and I am not here."
"Well then, what can I do for you?" Red said, feigning a bright tone.
"I'll get to the point, Reddington. A joint CIA task force in Russia have been monitoring the activities of a group of rogue former KGB agents for some time." Red's pulse quickened but he said nothing. "One of their operatives managed to get close to an operations center based in an old college building in Moscow, close enough to get tactically useful photographs of the layout and shots of some of the inhabitants. When they ran facial recognition they got a match. It was Agent Keen." And Red thought his heart would stop. Whatever he had expected, it wasn't that. Cooper continued: "She doesn't appear to have been harmed, but she's been held there for several weeks – we put together a timeline after a witness came forward to say she saw a woman being dragged into a van near Southern Avenue."
"Southern Avenue?" Red repeated. He already knew why it sounded familiar, and it twisted his gut. Everything was now so clear. Tom Keen had kept a hideout near there. She had gone to Tom. She had trusted him, and he had sold her out to the very people he had been trying to shield her from. It made sense with the recent changes in criminal and political activity he had observed - it wasn't that they had the fulcrum – they had her.
Cooper paused. "Red, my request to mobilize an extraction team was denied – the CIA are at the apex of a critical mission, and Agent… Miss Keen is no longer a member of the bureau. Not since her resignation was authenticated. My hands are tied. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Red's mind was racing and his stomach like lead. God the baby – what about the baby? When he spoke it was brief, and controlled. "You don't need to say another word Harold." Red rose from the bench and began to walk away before turning back to Cooper, his lip trembling almost imperceptibly. "Thank you." Cooper nodded and the two men walked away in opposite directions, one with his task accomplished, the other's just beginning.
BLBLBLBLBLBLBLBLBL
Thousands of miles away, Liz woke from a nightmare, almost the same as the one she had been having most of her life. She heard the crackling of fire, and child crying, but this time it wasn't her crying in the burning house, it was her child, her child she couldn't find in the smoke and heat, and there was no man to carry them out of the flames. She worked out she had been there for 38 days, marking each sunset she saw from the window with a mark on the wall. During that time she had begun to feel the baby move, as though her child was willing her to live through this. She thought of Red, communicating silently with her with his eyes, and thought hazily that perhaps his child was doing the same thing in the only way he could. He. She had no way of knowing for sure, but to her the baby was a boy. His father's son.
In the time she had been there she had been able to glean a little information, enough to know she was back in Russia, and enough to know that her captors wanted her alive, at least for now. She was given rooms in part of an old building, hastily converted, she thought, with a simple sitting room, bathroom and a bedroom which was fitted with a hospital bed complete with restraints, the sight of which chilled her. When she arrived, she found a plastic crate on the table filled with medications – the language on packaging was Russian, but each had a label on the front with basic instructions in English – Iron, twice a day. Vitamins, once a day. They were trying to make sure she and the baby were ok. She took comfort in that, and took the medications religiously.
There were windows in the sitting room which stayed shuttered, and she spent most days sitting nearby, soaking up the strips of light which came through the slats, and thinking bleakly of how she had ended up there. Tom had sold her out, that much was clear now. It was too much of a coincidence that she had been taken right after leaving him. She cursed herself for thinking that he might help her. For thinking that she could just disappear. But the thing that haunted her most was Red. She felt the bitter sting of betrayal, for putting Tom in her life and for shutting her out. But now that she was apart from him, she yearned for him like a sickness gnawing at her heart. Each day her mind visited her with new torments; the fear that he would find out about the baby and reject them, the fear that he would try to control their lives with power games and secrecy, and, above all, the fear that she would eventually die here and he would never know he had a child, or how much she loved him.
The old Liz would have tried to run. Tried to find a way out. Would have fought till the end. But not now. Everything she observed told her that she wasn't in immediate danger. And given that, the best thing she could do for her baby was to stay put, at least for now. Try to learn as much as she could before figuring out her next move. Her guards spoke little English and said almost nothing to her except to ask whether she needed further medications. A week in, she tried asking for a doctor and to her surprise had been visited later that same day by a youngish woman who arrived with a portable ultrasound, took her blood pressure and palpated her stomach. The woman didn't speak a word to her, but she did hold the monitor so that Liz could see the baby before she left, which made Liz cry inconsolably.
Finally, she was taken downstairs to meet a middle-aged Russian man with weather-beaten skin, who spoke to her dispassionately in heavily accented English. She expected to be questioned about the Fulcrum, but it wasn't mentioned. He called her Masha, and told her to call him 'dyadya'. "Father?" she whispered, her heart racing. "No - uncle" he responded. "We shall have to improve your Russian, so much time has gone by, yes?"
"Are you my uncle?" She asked, and he frowned at that but didn't answer her. "You'd better talk to me – I've been kept here for weeks with no explanation. Why am I here? Tell why me you kidnapped me!"
He sighed. "It is not 'kidnapping' as you say to bring a person home. You will understand soon." He approached her and cupped her face with his hand. "There is so much you will do for us."
His touch and the certainty with which he spoke filled her with panic and she slapped his hand away. "I'm not doing anything for you! Tell me what the hell is going on!" As soon as she struck him the two guards who had been stationed at the door appeared on either side of her, holding her arms firmly.
The man hissed in annoyance at the blow. "You will calm yourself - you must think of your child. Until you learn to respect the needs of your country, your child will be reason enough for you to do as you are told."
Liz felt a wave of ice-cold panic roll over her, and tried in vain to shake herself free from the grip of the guards. "Don't you dare threaten my child!"
He shook his head and spoke with an air of cold authority. "I would never wish to have to do so. Children are the hope for the future of our country. But you should learn now that if you want to see your child after it is born, you will do exactly as I say. When I ask questions you will answer fully. When I give you a task you will complete it without question. And Masha…" he stepped towards her, squeezing her cheeks in his hand. "You will sleep with who I tell you to." His eyes were cold and calculating. She cried out and tried to wrench her face away but the grip of the guards tightened. After a moment, he released her, and instructed the guards in Russian.
They escorted her roughly back to her rooms, this time marching her through the sitting room to the bedroom where they pinned her to the bed. For a second her mind fogged with panic - how hard could she afford to fight back? What about the baby? She had managed to stay calm for weeks, but she broke now, screaming as she felt the restraints on the hospital bed being buckled tightly around her wrists and ankles. Flashbacks from when she was held by Braxton invaded her consciousness; the tightness of the leather, the chemical smell and memories of the fire as real as they had ever been left her with a strange sense of guilt that she couldn't place.
Once she was restrained she was temporarily overwhelmed with relief to see that the guards were leaving her room. The last one slapped her hard on the cheek and said 'be good' in a thick accent, but after that he followed his colleagues out, locking the door behind him and leaving her helpless and alone - more alone than she had ever been. For as terrifying as her previous brushes with those forces after the fulcrum had been, she had always had Red. He had saved her from Braxton. He had been with her when the interrogator had questioned her. But this time was different. This time he didn't know where she was, and he wouldn't be looking for her. She had left him. She knew that deep down he believed she was better off without him, and her leaving would only cement that.
As she lay there unable to move, the guilt she had felt grew and weighed heavily on her heart: a childhood memory just out of reach; knowing that she had left Red with no explanation other than his own belief of his worthlessness; and ultimately the knowledge that her child was in peril because of her own actions. She cried until she was exhausted, falling into a fitful sleep at last. Some hours later, she jolted awake when a man's hand clamped over her mouth.
