Agnes 25

Author's Note: We continue to explore the twist.

Warning: description of sexual assault—not graphic, but it's there.

Let me know what you think.

WWWWW

Dr. Orchard stood above Donald Ressler's prone body and monitored the feedback coming from his brain. They had decided because Liz had been subject to this procedure more times than Ressler, he would be the one to undergo it. Hopefully, they would get all of their answers from him, and she wouldn't need to re-live anything that was unnecessary.

"Let's go back to May 2015," Dr. Orchard said, her voice soothing.

Liz watched the monitor, and all seemed to be well with Ressler. Originally, she was going to be the only other person in the room with Ressler, but Reddington made a solid point that something Ressler revealed could mean nothing to her but something to him. So, he was allowed in as well.

Ressler nodded.

"What is going on in your personal life?" She asked.

"Fantasy baseball league," Ressler said with a slight smile. "My team is stacked and doing well. Andy is pissed."

Liz smirked. She heard Reddington quietly chuckle next to her.

"Are you dating anyone?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"Carrie," Ressler said. "We've been on a few dates but…"

"But?"

"She's very girly," he said with a sigh.

"You and Carrie are sexually involved?" Dr. Orchard asked, knowing Carrie could have been implanted and was really Liz.

"We are," he said softly. "She's very vanilla."

Dr. Orchard looked at Liz confused.

"Plain," Liz and Reddington said at once.

"Do you recall any sexual activities that were different with Carrie?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"No, it's boring," he said softly.

"And when you look at your sexual activity with Carrie now, with the awareness you now have of seeing everything as it happened, was it actually Carrie you were having sex with?"

"Yes," Ressler nodded.

Liz shook her head, that wasn't it.

"Did you have sex with anyone else besides Carrie in May of 2015?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"No," Ressler said.

Liz and Dr. Orchard exchanged a look of confusion. Reddington shifted next to Liz.

"Did anything strange or different happen in May 2015?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"Liz left me," he said softly. "Went on the run and left me."

Liz took his hand in hers.

Reddington nodded to Dr. Orchard; she needed to specifically ask about Liz.

"Did you and Elizabeth Keen have sex in May 2015?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"No," he said.

"Did you and Elizabeth Keen ever have sex in 2015?" Dr. Orchard went on.

"No," Ressler said.

"Did you and Elizabeth Keen ever have sex prior to 2015?" Dr. Orchard continued.

"No," Ressler said.

"Did you and Liz ever sleep, just sleep, together?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"Once," he said. "After Tom and Liz fought, I wanted to make him a eunuch."

Liz stifled her chuckle.

"We all did," Reddington said under his breath.

"When was this?"

"May 2014," Ressler said.

"You both slept?" Dr. Orchard asked. "Now that you can look back and see everything as it happened, you only slept?"

"On my sofa, we fell asleep talking and I woke up with her head on my shoulder," Ressler said. "It was nice."

Liz smiled softly. It was nice and she wished they had done something about their feelings then instead of waiting.

"Were there any times in May 2015 that you could not account for? Lost time?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"No," he said softly.

"No times where you woke up unaware of your situation or circumstances?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"No," Ressler answered.

"When you had signs of bruising or needle marks," Dr. Orchard asked.

"Any memories you can see now that are new from May 2015?" Dr. Orchard questioned.

"No, it wasn't like in 2014."

"What happened in 2014?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"Memories I see now, but they're…new." Ressler said.

Reddington leaned in, intrigued.

"When in 2014?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"Milton Bobbit case," Ressler said sleepily. "March."

"March 2014 would make my pregnancy twice the length," Liz whispered.

"The dates don't match but his missing memories may tell us something we can look into," Reddington said, quietly.

Dr. Orchard nodded and continued.

"What happened in March 2014?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"I was doing a lot of drugs," Ressler said. "Lost time."

"Lost time?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"Oxy, it was powerful and made me forget," Ressler said.

"Forget what?" Dr. Orchard asked, thinking this was the incident with Liz.

"Forget that Audrey was dead, and Liz was…" Ressler let the sentence hang.

"Liz was?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"Married," Ressler said with a frown. "Not mine."

A look of surprise went over Liz's face. They'd never really spoken about when they became interested or attracted to each other.

"I don't know how you didn't know, it was painfully obvious," Reddington whispered to Liz.

"And were you involved with anyone sexually?" Dr. Orchard asked.

Liz looked at her confused, it was too early for her to be pregnant, so the question seemed pointless.

"Rhonda," Ressler said with a wicked grin.

"Looks like Rhonda wasn't vanilla," Reddington quipped, and Liz's face went slightly pink. Ressler would not want this information, this private information, to be something he was teased about.

"Do you have lost time with Rhonda?" Dr. Orchard asked.

His face screws up and he seems confused.

Dr. Orchard looked at his brain activity and smiled.

"You had lost time and you remember it now?" Dr. Orchard asked.

He seems confused.

"Don't try to make sense of it, just tell me what happened," Dr Orchard said.

"I'm at her place, there's loud music, we're drinking…whisky," Ressler said. "She…I'm high."

"She?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"She is acting different," he said. "She starts to tie me up."

Liz leans in.

"It's always the most masculine that just want to submit," Reddington said offhandedly.

Liz shushed him.

"At first, I think it's kinky but…she's acting strange," Ressler said. "She's looking at me differently. I feel higher than usual. I wonder for a second if something was in the whisky..."

"How is she acting strange?"

"She seems…she's not high," Ressler said. "She's all…business."

"Was she usually high when you two had sex?"

"Usually," Ressler said. "She liked oxy too."

Liz looked at him sadly. His drug addiction was such a painful part of his past.

"And she's sober, you can tell?"

"Yeah," he said.

"She…she's being a little rough," he said.

"How?"

"With her hand on me," he said. "I tell her to slow down, to take it easy, that she's hurting me…"

Liz squeezes his hand a little. He's being assaulted, being hurt, being taken advantage of, and it breaks her heart.

"And she's not putting on a condom…" Ressler said, upset.

"What's she doing?"

"We're not having sex, she's making me come, but gets out a specimen container…I ask what she's doing, and she ignores me. Then a man comes in from the other room…I don't know him. I didn't know anyone else was at her place, I'm scared. It's all wrong."

Liz squeezes his hand and wants to hug him.

"She collects your sperm?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"Yes," Ressler nods, still confused.

"And then what happens?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"Another man comes in the room with equipment," Ressler said. "I'm sitting there half naked, tied up, and I'm…puzzled and frightened. I start to yell but the drugs…it is hard to understand what's happening..."

"We were worried they had convinced him to do something to you," Reddington said sadly as he watched the young man struggle. "But the truth is, he was sexually assaulted."

Liz swallows hard and wants to lean in, embrace him, take it all away. A couple of tears silently fall down her cheek.

"What do you see?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"The one man, he takes the sample away and I see Rhonda walking toward me with a needle. I see the old man, with the equipment coming toward me with a smile. I yell, I keep yelling for them to stop, I ask what's happening…Rhonda tells me no one will hear me, and injects me with…something."

"What do you remember next?"

"Waking up in Rhonda's bed," Ressler said. "But…but I don't remember any of that from the night before, I feel like I have a bad hangover. I don't know what she did to me, what that old man did to me, I had no idea…"

His eyes are watery at the realization that he's been assaulted and had no idea that morning as he kissed Rhonda good morning and spoke with her over coffee before he left for work.

"Do you see Rhonda again?"

"No," Ressler said. "She texted she was leaving to stay with a friend for a while and I never heard from her again."

"But only now you remember the assault?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"I didn't know then, I didn't…she kissed me and made me toast and…and I didn't know she hurt me. I didn't know," Ressler said, his blood pressure going up and the tears now falling from his eyes.

"You are safe now," Dr. Orchard said quietly to him. "And you remember now, so there's nothing to worry about, okay?"

He nodded, but his blood pressure continued to rise.

"Did anyone say anything to you, now that you know, that explained why they did this to you?" Dr. Orchard asked.

He shakes his head and tears quietly track down his face.

"No," he said, his voice hoarse. "I yelled, I don't know why they did that to me, why they didn't stop when I…"

"His blood pressure," Liz said as she looked at the monitor.

"Donald, you are safe, no one is hurting you," Dr. Orchard said. "I'm going to take you out of this state…you will wake up on your own when you are ready. Liz is here, she will keep you safe."

A smile creeps across his tear-stained face at the mention of Liz's name.

Dr. Orchard injects him with another drug and his entire body seems to relax and he's asleep.

"He should wake sometime in the next hour," Dr. Orchard said. "I had my son my invitro, it sounds like that was the plan."

"Collecting his sperm in 2014, a year before Agnes…how could they know to do that? What was the plan? Who…?" Liz started as she ran her hand softly through Ressler's hair.

"I know someone," Reddington said. "He's involved in black market invitro and…"

"Like, people who can't pay what the clinics…?" Liz started.

"No, gathering specimens of individuals who may not want to be parents, but unwittingly become them," he said cagily. "I will see if he has any involvement."

"And if he does?" Liz asked.

"Then he can possibly provide us with a timeline on your collection and a name of the people who hired them to assault you and Donald…" Reddington said.

"My collection?" Liz asked.

"Ova extraction," Dr. Orchard said. "Liz would have to have been on some powerful hormone injections though, she would have…"

"My vitamin B injections…" Liz whispered as she covered her mouth with her hand.

"Excuse me?" Reddington and Dr. Orchard asked at once.

"My doctor said I was dangerously low on Vitamin B so for …I want to say a month, Tom was injecting me with Vitamin….Tom was injecting me…Tom was involved…" Liz said, the revelation hitting her like a wall.

"Tom?" Dr. Orchard asked.

"Her ex-husband," Reddington provided.

"It was in the spring of 2014…" Liz said. "Fucking Tom was injecting me with hormones, and I thought it was vitamin B. He was involved, was it Berlin?"

"More likely the Cabal," Reddington said.

"Why would the Cabal want me to have Ressler's baby?" Liz asked, confused. "Why go to all this trouble when I was married to Tom and we could have…"

"He was infertile," Reddington said.

Liz nodded and her mind started to spin.

"Could they use the baby as leverage over Ressler or you, when they needed to?" Reddington asked.

"I don' know," Liz said.

"Tom willingly let me get pregnant with Ressler's baby? That's not Tom. And he loved Agnes, did everything for her. He wouldn't have if he thought she was Ressler's…"

"I don't know Lizzie," Reddington said as he walked toward the exit. "But I do know I can get some answers if The Incubator was involved."

Liz watched him walk from the room and looked down at Ressler, her hand gliding through his hair as she frowned.

"They'd need to extract the ova…" Dr. Orchard said.

"I had my appendix rupture right after the injections…" Liz said quietly. "I…our insurance said they couldn't get me into a nearby hospital, so they paid for a private clinic to…my appendix didn't rupture, this was planned."

Dr. Orchard looked at her worried. "You were unconscious and thinking you were in an appendectomy, but it was probably the ova extraction which followed weeks for hormone injections."

"The private clinic worked for them, they had it all planned, and Tom was in on it," Liz said, thinking of her grieving Tom and avenging his death. The man who was involved in her being made pregnant against her will.

"If it was invitro," Dr. Orchard said. "You would have noticed some weight gain, your emotions would have been everywhere…"

Liz absent-mindedly nodded.

"And because it's a year prior, the fertilized embryos were probably frozen," Dr. Orchard explained. "And thawed and inserted when needed. Do you recall another medical procedure? Another emergency surgery around the time you would have got pregnant with Agnes?"

Liz shook her head in the negative. "No, not at all. The appendectomy was my last medical procedure before Agnes was born."

"So, it looks like Krilov was involved in his collection," Dr. Orchard said as she looked carefully at Liz. "And your implantation."

Liz nodded absently. "I need to know who did this to us."

To be continued…