Revision of Me
Author's Note: A one-shot based on all the spoilers for the rest of season 8 after Ivan Stepanov. It's kind of angsty—but I think realistic of where they are emotionally. Please leave a review.
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Don Ressler leaned against the rustic wood beam and watched Ida work with a new horse. She had generations of family who lived and breathed horses and had been trained to do this since she was a child. The older woman knew he had been there for over an hour watching her with the young horse but had said nothing, she knew he had a lot on his mind. Finally, when she sensed the horse was done for the day and she wasn't going to teach him any more she called over to a ranch hand who took him from her and she approached Don.
"You've been watching me train him a lot lately," Ida said as she took a drink of water and looked out over the rolling hills that had been her home for 63 years.
"He interests me," Don said with a soft smile. "His progress…"
"He's following along because he knows what's good for him," Ida smiled at the young man. "He knows from sensing me that I won't take no cheek."
Don chuckled at her assessment of the young horse.
They stood in silence for a long time, watching the sun finally make it's decent under the hills and plunging the ranch into a soft quiet darkness.
"He'll find his own way eventually," Ida said contemplatively as she placed her metal water bottle down on the ground.
"Aren't you training him so he won't?" Don asked her, confused.
"No, I'm training him so he'll have a solid base to make the right decisions when the time comes," Ida said.
"I don't…" Don started but was cut off by the no-nonsense woman.
"Nothing is a straight path," she said, her voice holding edges of fatigue after a long physical day. "If I give him solid training now, make him fall in line, then when something happens that means he needs to make a decisions he's never faced before, he will trust his gut and know what to do. If he encounters a bear, a snack, a cliff edge, uneven ground…you name it. The road ahead is unexpected, and I can't train him for everything, but I can train him to know enough that when his instincts kick in, he knows the decision he's making is the right one."
Don nodded, her explanation hitting close to home. He heard her walking farther away from him, probably toward the gate to leave the exercise area.
"What if his gut had led him astray in the past?" Don called to her.
"Then he will learn from that as well," she said. Don heard the latch open and the creak of the gate, he could see the fuzzy outlines of her movements as she shut the gate behind her.
"Have a good night, Don," Ida said before he heard her fall falls walking away and back to the main house.
Don stood leaning against the wood fence for a long time after that. Thinking.
He heard someone walking behind him and, after over a month at the ranch, had stopped bracing for a fight or looking for someone trying to attack him. Things had been quiet on the ranch since arrival and, the latest word was that there were no threats.
"I knew I would find you out here," Liz said as she walked up behind him.
"I was watching Ida and the colt," Don said, not turning and soon feeling her arms wrap around his mid-section and her head rest against his back.
"Thinking of becoming a horse trainer?" Liz asked, her voice muffled in his shirt.
"No," Don said honestly. "Just enjoying the process."
He felt Liz nod against his back, and they stood in silence for a few minutes, her arms wrapped around him while he leaned against the fence in the dark.
"Agnes in bed?" He asked over his shoulder.
"Yeah, but I think she's waiting for you to go in and say goodnight," Liz said as she shifted and squirmed under his arm, so she was standing between him and the fence. "What's up?"
He met her eyes and leaned in and gave her a soft kiss on the lips before he pulled back.
"Just thinking about gut feelings and instincts," Don said, trying to not get into a deeper conversation that he was still mulling over in his head.
He couldn't see her expression in the dark, but he knew Liz, he knew she was contemplating whether to push or not.
"Come on, let's get inside," Don said as he pushed back off the fence and reached for her hand blindly in the dark. He found it on the first try by instinct, and his eyes flashed to the thoughts he had been having and he wondered it this was something he should pay attention to.
She walked companionably back to their small cabin by the creek and he could tell she was smiling, even in the dark.
"What's got you smiling?" Don asked, with a chuckle.
"How do you know I'm smiling?" Liz asked.
Don scoffed, he knew her.
"Okay, well, if you must know," Liz started. "Agnes has asked if she can just call you Don, not Uncle Don."
Don's brow furrowed. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
"Why do you think that is?" Don asked.
Liz started to giggle and Don knew this was going to be interesting.
"We've been doing a social studies unit in her workbooks about families," Liz said. "And I have had some very difficult questions to answer about hers, and had to tell her some things I don't even know about our family."
Don nodded and gave her hand a squeeze, he still wasn't sure why she seemed giddy about this.
"And she asked about aunts and uncles," Liz chuckled. "I didn't think, and said aunts and uncles are brothers and sisters of parents."
"Oh shit," Don said, suddenly realizing the misstep.
"And she asked if you were my brother," Liz laughed. "I think I went ghostly white and thought of all the incestuous…"
"Shit," Don said.
"I quickly corrected it, and said we can call people aunt and uncle that technically aren't related to us, and that you were definitely not my brother," Liz smiled in the darkness. "Oh my god Don, I just had a zillion thoughts go through my head in that instant about how I had messed up her concept of permissible couples could be and…"
"It's amazing what we assume they know and what they really don't," Don said as they approached the front porch. "I am happy Agnes does not think you are kissing and sleeping with your brother."
"Jesus Christ, so am I!" Liz laughed.
"So just Don now?" Don asked Liz as he opened the door.
"Don," Liz nodded as they walked into the warmly lit living room.
The cabin was small, maybe 600 square feet, planked in old cedar and had furniture in it that was older than the both of them, but it had become home over the last month. The kitchen was from the 1960's, the bedrooms barely large enough to fit a double bed, and the living room only fit a couch, chair, and the wood fireplace. But, shockingly, the place had not been stifling. They had smores bonfires, read books in the living room, helped out around the ranch, Don had taught Agnes to fish in the creek that was next to them, and, when the mosquitoes weren't bad, they had spent hours sitting on the front porch talking.
Don walked into Agnes' room and looked at the little girl laying in the big bed surrounded by stuffed animals and lit by the fairy lights Liz had draped from one wall in her room.
"You waiting for me?" Don asked her as he smiled at the child.
"Petunia was," Agnes said as she lifted up a frog stuffed animal for him to see.
"Well, we can't let Petunia go to bed without a goodnight kiss," Don said as he took the stuffed frog from her and kissed it before he handed it back to Agnes.
"And Melinda," Agnes said, holding up a stuffed white dog.
"And Melinda," Don said with a smile as he kissed the dog and placed it next to her on the bed.
"And Shelby," Agnes said as she smiled at him and held up a stuffed dolly with red hair.
"Shelby," Don nodded and kissed the Dolly.
"And…" Agnes started.
"I will run out of kisses at this rate," Don said as he sat down at the foot of her bed.
Agnes giggled.
"I have one more left, choose wisely," Don said with a wink.
Agnes' head circled around to look at all her stuffies, and she stopped and looked at him.
"Agnes," she said with a partially toothless smile.
She had never asked him for a kiss goodnight before, and Don felt his throat choke up a little and his eyes glaze over.
"Agnes can have one whenever she wants, even if it's not bedtime," he said before he rose from his spot and leaned over to kiss her softly on the forehead.
He looked down at the smiling girl in the fairy lights and wished her sweet dreams before he left her room, closing the door over slightly.
Don saw Liz reading on the sofa and walked past her outside to check the security of the cabin like he did every night. Alarms and trip wires were in place, cameras in the trees and the perimeter was secure. It took him close to an hour every night to feel like everything was in place for them to sleep. There was no AC in the cabin so windows with screens were left open, but they'd wired every window to an alarm if anything was disturbed. It was not ideal security, but it was what they had.
When he came back inside, Liz was walking to their bedroom with two mugs of tea. She had been dousing him with some sort of calming bedtime tea since they arrived and he had hardly slept the first few days, preferring to stay in the living room and keep an eye on everything; his gun at the ready.
He locked the door, set the alarm, and turned off the lights walking the familiar path in the dark to their bedroom. Their bedroom. It was still a little hard to grasp. When Reddington had decided to send him with Liz and Agnes into hiding he had mixed feelings about it. Yes, he wanted to protect them—that was a given. But with recent developments in their relationship before Liz left to work with Townsend, things had been murky as to what they were to each other.
In truth, prior to this hiding situation they had slept together three times, once after the incident with his brother, the second time after they got her sister back, and the third time when she needed a rest. After the first time, things had been awkward, and they had kind of avoided any discussion of it. After the second time, things seemed more natural and he was thinking things may go somewhere, until they didn't. And, after the third time, she went and became a criminal, so he really didn't know what that meant. So, it was with no expectations that he entered into this situation and had been surprised by it.
Within a day of arriving, Liz had sat him down on the porch one night and literally spilled her guts to him. There were tears, some laughs, some awkward moments, and many revelations. He's been a little overwhelmed and told her he needed time to process everything. He knew she wasn't happy to hear that, but he was being honest. So, she gave him space and he took a few days to have more conversations with her, to clarify, to confirm, and to settle his own mind.
Then, one night she was talking in that way she does when she's anxious and her speech is quick, and he leaned in and kissed her. He caught her by surprise, but her reaction was also a surprise; she cried. Don had pulled back and looked at her, fear on his features, perhaps all that was just talk on the porch on the couch all these days?
She pulled her face up to meet his and the only words that escaped her mouth were 'thank god' and then she attacked him with her mouth. Their lovemaking that night had been emotional, for both of them, and when he woke in the morning his muscles were heavier and his spirit lighter. They had not turned back since. They had easily fallen back into sleeping with each other and he hadn't had sex this much in years, it felt good to share this with her again, good to feel to loved and wanted.
Don had felt, over the course of the last month, that he had been changing, revising himself, into a new person and that frightened him a little. He had prided himself on being the man that was incredibly independent. One that hid himself away from others. The man who had been burned more times than he cared to remember and kept a steely exterior to prevent that from happening again. If he fully gave over to his emotions, to what he felt for Liz and Agnes, would be able to recover if it went wrong? If he was on his own again?
Because, although Liz said she was all in with him, he also knew that things changed rapidly in their lives. Where they were was a testament to that—a month ago would he have ever dreamed he would be in hiding with Liz and Agnes on a horse ranch? With everything going on with Townsend and the trust issues that had plagued them throughout their partnership, would trust become an issue again? Would he lose them like he lost Audrey?
Don tried not to let those thoughts stay with him too long each day, but he would be a liar if he said they weren't a thought every day. He'd told Liz about these thoughts, in the spirit of honesty, and she had seemed deeply bothered by them. He couldn't help that, and he hoped she understood that he was having serious trouble trusting himself. He had been so wrong in the past, and now he was forty, and it involved a woman he loved and a child, he couldn't be wrong about this. He knew he just couldn't.
Don walked into their bedroom and noted the soft tea lights she had lit on the bedside table. She was sitting on the bed in her underwear and tank top with her legs curled up underneath her, watching him.
"You okay?" He asked, she had seemed particularly quiet this evening.
"Yeah," she nodded, but he could tell something was off.
"Liz, I know I've been reticent and…" Don said as he peeled off his shirt and tossed it in the hamper and started to undo his pants.
"Particularly reticent," Liz said as she met his eyes. "Are you regretting this?"
He looked at her confused. "What would you say that?" Don asked.
"Because I'm wondering if you are, regretting this," she offered. "And it's okay if you are, this is a lot to…"
"I'm not," Don said clearly as he threw his jeans over the one wood chair in the corner of the room.
Liz sighed. "Then what is it?"
Don took a cleansing breath and walked in his boxer briefs toward her and sat on the one edge of the bed that wasn't against a wall. His knees almost grazing he wall as he sat, the room was that small.
"I've been thinking about where we go from here," Don said quietly. "I mean, once we don't have an evil super villain trying to wipe us out."
Liz took his hand in hers and nodded.
"You mean, back to the Bureau or DC or…?"
"Or everything," Don said. "What do you want?"
"I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to stay like this forever, the three of us cut off from the world," Liz smiled at him. "I know it's not realistic but…"
"It's not?" Don asked with a raised eyebrow.
Liz chuckled at his joke.
"I'm just not sure what our normal can be," Don said. "What we're both willing to walk away from or stay with."
Liz nodded.
"Okay, moment of truth," Liz said as she sat up a little straighter. "If someone asked me right now what I couldn't live without…"
Don nodded.
"I'd choose, Agnes, and you, health and safety," Liz said as she met his eyes. "Everything else is just window dressing. And if any of that got in the way of Agnes, you, health or safety then I don't want it in my life."
Don nodded. He knew she wanted him to say what he couldn't live without, but that was a harder question. Liz and Agnes, health and safety seemed to be a good start, but his entire identity was tied up in being a cop and working at the Bureau, would he truly be okay without that? Would that mean the other important people and aspects of his life would be at risk? Was he becoming a person who didn't need that anymore? As the days passed here, he felt he may be, but he wasn't quite sure yet.
"Agnes asked me to kiss her goodnight," Don offered with a smile, avoiding what he knew she wanted to talk about.
"She did?" Liz asked with a smile, surprised the uncle conversation and the kiss had happened in the same day.
"Yeah, I finally got promoted from stuffies," Don chuckled.
"That's quite the promotion," Liz chuckled. "She loves you."
"And I love her," Don said, knowing the words were true and not something he'd said to Liz before.
Liz's eyes got watery, and she wiped at one.
"Liz, I didn't mean to…" Don started as he took her hand in his.
"I know," she said with a nod as she looked out the small window of their room.
Don looked down at his hands, holding hers, and smiled. Ida said he'd know when he reached a cliff what to do. And he knew in that moment, he had been thinking too much. He had to follow his gut, that it had steered him down some wrong paths in the past, but he had learned from those. And today, he was a man who knew. He knew.
"I love you," he said as he met her eyes.
Her body seemed to buckle slightly with his words. As if they had been sitting in the air between them and had not been said often enough to reassure her that they were true. He'd only said them twice to Liz, once on the night of rest when she came to him, and on that first night here when she'd poured her heart out to him on the porch of their cabin. She had said them to him in passing often over the last month, casually to reassure, and seriously to imprint, those feelings on their relationship.
"Liz, I want to spend the rest of my life with you and with Agnes," Don said quietly. "I know that. I know I love you and I love her. And I know that life if not going to look like I thought it would look. I'm coming to terms with that."
"Don, it can if…"
"No, it can't," Don said as he rubbed his thumb back and forth over the back of her hand. "It's like you said, what's important? The rest is just window dressing. But, I need to let go of that window dressing and that may take some time."
Liz nodded.
"But this place is helping, you and Agnes are helping, and I'll get there," he said as he picked up her hands and kissed the back of one.
She looked at the good man before her kissing her hand gently and closed her eyes. She was beyond lucky and she knew that every single day.
"Don," she started. "This is it for me. Know that…you are it for me. I know I could say it nicer or more romantic, but truly, that's how I feel. There is no one for me, but you. Now, and always."
Don nodded and started to kiss his way up her arm and she felt all of her hairs stand on end. When he got to her shoulder he looked up at her and his nose was touching hers.
"Give me a kiss, sis," he smiled a devious smile at her and leaned in making light of Agnes' questions from earlier today.
She pulled back, "Ewww!"
Don's laugh was a rumble that travelled all over his body; the face she was making was priceless.
"Okay, give me a kiss…my love," he said correcting himself as he leaned in for another kiss.
"That I can do," Liz said as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him against her into a passionate kiss.
The End.