This is from The Kingmaker – THAT scene where Liz shows up at Ressler's apartment at the end of the episode. I had wanted to write this from the second I saw it, inwardly screaming at the TV to show us more! But I made myself wait till I saw the follow up scene on the show, to get my beginning and end points correct! (And this was out of order originally in my series as I worked my way through the episodes. I just couldn't wait to get it written!) Update - I moved it to where it needs to be in the episode flow, but maintained its Chapter Number.
Ressler sat reading the newspaper, quietly drinking a beer in the silence of his apartment. The room was lit just how he liked it – with the soft yellow glow from his lamp. No bright fluorescents in here. No glaring tv screens high above the room. No bullpen, no desks, no monitors –only a small tv that he rarely even turned on. This was his space, the place he wound down from the day and gathered his thoughts before turning in for the night.
The place he and Audrey had called home for a while. Before she was gone.
For a little while, his apartment had felt like a prison to him. The week he'd spent holed up in here after she'd died was still painful to think about. But time is consistent in one thing. Slowly, imperceptibly, it erases tiny details; slowly but surely, little things align and life starts to feel more 'normal' again. In the weeks since she'd been gone, he was now able to feel more comfortable in his surroundings again, secure in the knowledge that she was okay with that. That she wanted that for him.
The knock at his door was unexpected and not exactly welcome at this late hour. For a moment he thought of ignoring it, but then he dropped the newspaper and made his way to the door. He was too curious who was calling at this time of night. It couldn't be good. Peering through the peephole, his heart jumped. Liz? He didn't hesitate and reached down and opened the door quickly. She stood almost shyly in the hallway, looking at him silently. Both searched the others eyes, questioning this unfamiliar territory.
"I didn't know where else to go," she said, apologetically.
Seeing Ressler out of the office and in his home was different to what she'd imagined. It had all seemed so clear when she had driven over here after fleeing her house in tears. Yet now, with him standing before her dressed casually with a beer in his hand, she suddenly faltered.
He nodded imperceptibly before standing aside for her, letting her know she was welcome to come in. Closing the door behind her, he quickly looked at his watch. It was 11:48pm. He turned to face her, his calm features belying the questions racing through his head.
She looked briefly around the dimly lit room. The light level was comforting. Tom always liked their home brightly lit… She shoved that thought aside quickly, refocusing on Ressler who was still standing by his door, having not said a word yet. She had noticed over the months that Ressler's best defense when uncomfortable or unsure around a situation was to remain quiet and watchful. She liked that in him. Tom would go in all smiles and hand shakes and introductions. She needed to stop thinking about Tom, she told herself roughly.
Both suddenly spoke at once, aware of the silence stretching between them.
"I'm sorry, I know it's late…"
"Liz, what's wrong…?"
There was no mistaking the worried tone of his voice. She answered his question immediately, dropping her defenses in that instant.
"Everything. Everything is wrong." She dropped her eyes and her shoulders slumped.
He quickly moved to her, placed his hand on her elbow and moved her into the living room. "Come in here Liz, and talk to me."
She sank into his couch as he sat down beside her and looked into his blue eyes. Her mind raced through the past months; from the day she first met him, their arguments, their conflict with each other, and their ability to completely infuriate the other at times. Yet slowly a partnership had been formed, with trust growing into a working friendship, through hardships, long hours and work secrets. Through his loss of Audrey and now her loss of Tom, the two of them were still here - a constant in each others lives. And suddenly she trusted him even more. She had done the right thing in coming to him.
He looked at her sitting beside him on his couch, his mind flying back to the first time he'd seen her, standing on her porch. He'd taken her to the Post Office that day, having had no idea who she was. They had been thrust unwillingly together by circumstances. The weeks had grown into months. The cases had piled up. She had pushed his buttons, and he hers. They'd had a volatile relationship at work at times, yet he could count on her to have his back. That had been proven. He'd risked everything for her with ROMEO and looking at her right now, he'd do it all again in a heartbeat. "Who the hell is Elizabeth Keen?" he'd asked on that first day. Elizabeth Keen was his friend. She had come to him needing help and he was going to give it willingly.
"I need to tell you… everything…" she said quietly, not looking at him.
"I'm listening." He would listen to her all night if need be.
She inhaled deeply, and began to talk. "I lied to you. Today, on the bridge, I lied to you."
"I know," he told her gently. Of course he'd known she hadn't told him everything and that she had been hiding something.
She looked at him in surprise and then nodded in understanding. As she watched him calmly sitting there, she didn't want to lie to him again. She'd had enough lies to last a lifetime.
"Technically, it wasn't a lie…it was an… understatement." She rationalized, seeing his mouth barely shift into a tiny smile at that. He didn't say anything, not wanting to stop her talking now that she had started.
"Tom and I did have a fight. And he did leave the house, and I don't know where he is – well, not exactly. That's all true." She looked into her partner's concerned eyes as he sat right beside her. Inhaling deeply, she stood up, looking back down at him before telling him the truth.
"My marriage is done. My husband is gone. He was never my husband to begin with – he's some sort of agent, a spy. A murderer. I wasn't his wife. I was his job!" She said to him, her words tumbling out now.
He stared open mouthed at her, rising to his feet now. What?! You weren't wrong when you said you'd understated things!
"How long have you known this?" he searched her face now. He started counting back to her arriving late at work, the personal time off and the lateness to staff briefings. All had been to do with Tom over the past three weeks or so.
"Some of it a few weeks… the worst of it a few days. But honestly, I've known it for months. He and I had been 'wrong' for so long. We were broken and I didn't know why and didn't know what to do to fix it. But it couldn't be fixed because it wasn't a real marriage… It all started to unravel when Tom was stabbed and almost killed by Zamani…"
"The day Reddington entered your life. Your first day at the Post Office," he said softly, nodding. Damn, Red. It always, always comes back to him.
At the mention of his name, a shadow crossed her face. He knew it likely had to do with the photos she'd shown him that morning, of Red entering the hospital where Sam had died.
He watched her features, not liking what he saw. "Liz…?
She turned to him and now he saw something else. Something deep in her that was hurting. "He killed Sam. Red killed the only father I've ever known," she told him, desperately trying to understand.
"What? He told you that…?"
She nodded, not trusting her voice anymore.
He clenched his fists and turned from her, processing this. He felt his chest tightening at the thought of Red deliberately taking Sam from her. He had seen her pain first hand when she had heard Sam was dead. It had destroyed her. Reddington had done that to her.
He quickly turned back to her, finally understanding why she had nowhere else to go. No Tom. No Red. No one. She has me. And right then, looking at her standing so overwhelmed in his living room he vowed that she would always have somewhere she could go.
"He took him from me. Why would he do that?" she whispered.
The tears were brimming in her eyes yet he could see her trying not to cry. He held his arms out to her then, inviting her in if she chose. She stepped into his embrace immediately, accepting his offer and slipping her arms around his waist. He was warm and solid and secure and she needed that more than anything right now. She laid her head on his chest, closing her eyes as she felt his heart beating against her cheek.
He didn't say anything as he held her against him. He rubbed her back, laying his chin gently on her hair. Part of him suddenly never wanted to let her go, but he pushed that thought away quickly.
She had been held by him once before, on a pathway near a cabin in the woods. She'd been so distraught that she had barely noticed what was happening that day. She knew this time – and a part of her never wanted him to let her go. But she knew they needed to, so she pulled her arms back from around his waist.
She looked up at him and smiled. "Thank you. I needed that." His eyes were a bright blue in the glow from his lamp as he looked silently down at her. The thought came to her, out of nowhere, that Donald Ressler really was a good looking man. She squashed that thought immediately and took another step back from him.
He nodded, giving her one of his rare smiles, watching her pull herself together now.
"Would you go somewhere with me…? There's something I want to show you," she asked him.
"Of course. Lead the way," he said, already moving to get his jacket and keys and suddenly very thankful he had answered his door this evening.
###
"Where are we?" he asked her as they pulled up to what looked like storage units in the dark.
"You'll see in a minute," she answered, as she pulled up to a large unit and got out her keys. He followed her into the main building, then through the door to one of the separate air conditioned, powered units. She flipped on the light switch and suddenly the room was before him. A room of about 20' x 10', with a 'crime scene' board at one end, a desk with a computer, a table and some boxes of files. This was an office – in a storage unit. He stared at the board at the end of the room, slowly walking toward the photo of Tom Keen.
She came up beside him, and answered the question she knew he was about to ask.
"Red owns these units and he set this one up for me."
He glanced sideways at her, gauging her tone at the mention of Reddington again. She seemed okay this time though.
"What is this?" he pointed to the burned scrap of paper, with 'BERLIN' typed on it.
"We don't know. Red's been trying to find out, but we don't know what it means. We believe it has something to do with who Tom works for."
He turned to her now and placed his hand on her arm. "Okay Liz. Tell me everything now."
He pulled up the second chair as she sat down at the computer desk and for the next three hours she told him everything. She didn't leave anything out. Starting with when Tom had been stabbed, and her doubts that then led to him demanding the FBI check him out. What had happened after their investigation and how the doubts had lingered. She told him the full story, and he barely said a word the entire time.
Sometimes he sat still while she talked. Other times he got up and began pacing, unable to keep it all in. At times they went back to the board as she spoke of Jolene and Craig, and the safe deposit box key. He finally found out where the photos of Red at the hospital had come from.
They sat at the computer and she showed him some of the surveillance footage of Tom in their home, opening his 'go box', hiding the safe deposit key, etc. When she told him of the Pavlovich brothers delivering Tom to her for 'questioning', he stared at her. Red had used blacklisters to find Tom! Was there anything the man wasn't involved in? She finally finished, telling him about their fight that had wrecked their dining and living room and how Tom had told her he was one of the good guys before he walked out of her life.
Ressler's head was swimming with it all. How had she been dealing with this for so long? He had told her a couple of weeks ago to 'take as long as you need' when she'd told him she had some personal business to take care of. He'd had NO idea it was this involved. He found himself wondering if she would have come to him tonight if she hadn't have been upset with Reddington. He decided not to pursue that line of thought. She had come to him and that's all that mattered.
"Where is Tom now, do we know?" he asked her.
She noticed immediately he had said 'we'. She wasn't in this alone anymore.
"Last I heard he was in New York and Red's people were still tailing him," she told him.
They were standing at the board when they heard a key in the door lock behind them. Ressler immediately reached his hand to his right hip, but realized he was unarmed as he turned to face the door. Instinctively, he took a step in front of Liz, putting his left arm in front of her.
Reddington walked in the door, taking in the entire situation in an instant - Donald's protective stance over Lizzie, and the fact that Lizzie had now confided in her partner.
"What are you doing here?" she asked him coldly, coming out from behind Ressler now.
"The door was opened to this unit over 3 hours ago. I came to see if you were okay, Lizzie," he told her, as they saw Dembe appear quietly in the doorway. Of course, Red would never go anywhere without the man.
He looked Ressler in the eye now. "I see things are fine though. Good evening Donald," he said pleasantly, regaining some of his charm.
Ressler had his arms folded, glaring at Reddington. He was really having a problem not strangling Red right at this instant, knowing what he had done to Sam - what he had done to Liz.
"I told you we were done. You need to leave, now," Liz told Red, then turned her back on him.
Ressler saw something flicker across the man's features. Was that… pain? It was undeniably there. Ressler had just seen Reddington cut very deeply at Liz's dismissal of him. He'd only ever seen that look of pain once before on Red. When Anslo Garrick had a gun to Liz's head.
Red looked at Liz calmly now, the moment gone. He nodded to Dembe and the two of them left the unit. Ressler looked at Liz, who was still facing the board.
"Wait here," he told her and then sprang after Reddington. He met him outside just as he was getting in the car.
"Donald, as much as I'd love to stay and chat, it is very late."
"Is it true what you told Liz? Did you kill Sam?" he demanded of Red.
Donald was calling her 'Liz', and Red wondered just what had transpired between the two of them this evening. "That's between Lizzie and I, Donald."
"Why would you do that though, knowing it would hurt her? That it would hurt both of you…" Ressler asked him, suddenly unable to feel as angry at Red anymore.
Red looked at the younger man. "Yes. It's true. Sam was suffering and didn't want to live another 6 weeks. We mutually decided to end it for him and I put him out of his misery. I wouldn't expect you to believe or even understand that Donald. Good evening to you."
He got in the rear seat of the car, leaving Ressler standing there processing the fact Reddington had just told him something that was personal. He had just shared something that he didn't have to. For a few moments, Reddington had sounded…human.
The car window dropped down, revealing Red sitting in the shadows.
"And Donald, thank you for being here with Lizzie. She's going to need you." The window was raised back up before Ressler could reply. Not that he could think of a reply to that anyway. He already knew Liz was going to need him. The car pulled out of the storage units and Ressler walked back inside to Liz again.
"What did you talk to him about?" she asked quietly, pretty much knowing the answer to that.
"He didn't deny killing Sam when I asked him," he told her gently.
"No, if there's one thing I do know about Red, it's that he doesn't lie. Oh, he can mislead and withhold with the best of them, but he won't openly lie," she said, trying not to sound too harsh.
"I think he cared about Sam though, that was obvious…" he told her carefully, unsure how she would react to that.
Her reaction surprised him though, as tears sprang to her eyes. "Yes, I think he did. And I think it hurt him to kill Sam. But it hurt me too. It hurts that he's withheld that from me all this time."
He stood beside her, and nodded. She brushed her tears away and picked up her keys, getting ready to leave the storage unit.
Ressler had a feeling that the night was almost over and suddenly realized he didn't want it to be. "Are you up for one more field trip tonight?" he asked her, almost afraid of her answer.
She looked at her watch and saw it was almost 4:00am now, but still nodded. She didn't want to be alone right now.
"Where to this time?" she asked him, thinking he probably meant the Post Office.
"Are you hungry?" he asked, surprising her with how boyish he suddenly looked.
She nodded, realizing she was starving. "I could definitely eat. Lead the way," she smiled.
After she locked up the storage unit and they walked to her car, Ressler held out his hand asking for her car keys. She gave them to him and he drove them to his favorite 24 hour hamburger place near his apartment.
###
Their meal was eaten and they sat across from each other at the back of the diner, sipping their drinks.
"What are you going to do, Liz?" he asked her gently. It needed to be her decision where she took this next. He would stand by whatever she chose. There was no way he was leaving her alone in this now.
She knew what she needed to do. Tom Keen, or whatever his real name was, needed to be taken to the FBI as a case. Six hours ago she had been overwhelmed and had fled sobbing from her house. Things were different now, and she knew she could face this.
"I'll call Cooper and have him meet me at the house. But before I do that…would you go there with me first?" she asked him, needing him to see it before it became a crime scene. She needed that one last moment with just the two of them before it flew wide open and her life became a side show.
He nodded, and then looked at his watch. It was 5:30am now. He normally left for the office at 6:00am.
"Let me quickly shower and get ready, then I can stay there with you when the crime scene boys come in," he told her, and she agreed.
They left the diner and headed back to his apartment. She let him drive her vehicle again, just needing to have him take charge even if was just in that small thing.
"Thank you…for listening to me and not writing me off over all this," she told him as they pulled up to his apartment block.
He turned off the engine and handed her the keys, looking over at her. "That's what friends are for, Liz".
They walked into the lobby and caught the elevator to the 4th floor, and entered his apartment again. He went to quickly shower and change while she waited in his living room. Standing at the window, she watched as the sun came up, giving the world outside a soft pink glow - the first dawn of yet another stage of her life. One in which Tom was truly gone. In which she was done with Reddington, and yet still ready to face this day.
Fifteen minutes later Ressler appeared behind her, and she turned to him and smiled. Special Agent Donald Ressler was back in his suit and tie and slicked back hair. But there was a difference now. Now she knew he truly was her friend and partner underneath that 'uniform'.
"Ready?" he asked her gently. She held his gaze a moment, and nodded. He picked up his keys and they left his apartment, driving in separate vehicles now to her home. He followed her and they pulled up outside in the soft morning light. He had only been here once and the memory of that day came flooding back. The helicopter overhead, Liz and her... husband... standing on the front porch and his introducing himself to her. So much had happened between that day and this morning.
He followed her up the steps to her house and they stepped inside. The first thing he noticed was the broken stair rail and it felt surreal to see it, after he'd only heard about it a few hours ago. Knowing that was where she'd been hand cuffed by Tom Keen when he'd held her at gun point. The thought of Tom Keen doing that to her made his blood boil.
He stood in the doorway of the wrecked living room as she leaned against the wall, looking at him. The place was trashed. He stepped through it, shaking his head, looking at the broken chairs and furniture. The dining room had fared no better. Oranges lay on the table from an upturned fruit bowl. When she said they had fought…she wasn't joking… He walked slowly back to her, leaning his foot up on some broken furniture, surveying the scene again.
Soon her home would be swarming with agents and crime lab guys, going through the place with a fine tooth comb. But for now, it was still the two of them for a few more minutes. She was watching him, and remembered a conversation they'd had a couple of months ago. She smiled at the thought of it. He was protective of her even then.
"I should have let you rough him up," she smiled ruefully, leaning against the door frame.
He was looking down, and smiled that she'd remembered he'd offered to do just that. Maybe things wouldn't have turned out this bad for her if he had. Whatever happened with this, he was going to stick by her though. Of that, he was sure.