Liz sighed when she felt her stomach growl. She leaned against the arm of her couch, watching some show without paying much attention to it. A little irritated, she pulled out her phone and just as she had found the name in her contacts, she heard knocking. She quickly padded across the living room and opened the door.

"Where have you been? I'm starv—" Her annoyance quickly disappeared when she laid eyes on him.

Ressler stood at the door with takeout bags and an apologetic grin on his face, along with cuts on his jaw and a large bruise under his right eye. The most glaring injury was a gash that cut diagonally across the bridge of his nose. He looked completely disheveled, his tie loose and his clothes dusty.

"Sorry I'm late." He said, quickly moving past her and heading towards the kitchen with the food.

"What the hell happened to you?" She quickly followed him, annoyance returning with his nonchalance.

He glanced at her and took off his suit jacket, laying it on a chair. "Uh...bad traffic."

"Bad traffic? Really?" She narrowed her eyes at him. "I know you didn't get all these cuts at Wing Yee's. God, you probably scared the crap out of them."

"Yeah. Bad traffic." He gently rolled up his sleeves, revealing more scrapes and cuts on his arms, and started pulling food out of the bag. "I got your favorites. And..." he pulled a bottle of wine from the bag and displayed it proudly. "What do you think? Some dumplings to settle your stomach; some wine to settle your nerves?"

"Don." She crossed her arms and frowned at him angrily.

He sighed and placed the bottle on the counter. "I was chasing after a perp today...and the car flipped…"

"What?!"

"I'm fine, alright? And we caught him, so…" he shrugged and unwrapped his chopsticks.

"You should've called or texted me! You could've gotten hurt!" She shouted, ignoring the food. She was not going to let him shrug this off.

"I didn't want you worrying more than you already are. And the medics let me go, so really, it's nothing serious. It looks worse than it is." Ressler gave her a placating grin.

She sighed, still a little irritated, but relieved he wasn't badly hurt. "You couldn't have gotten 'em to clean up your face before you left?"

"I didn't want to be late. Because knowing you, you probably haven't eaten all day, have you?"

"...No..." she admitted, looking away. "Too busy trying to distract myself…"

He raised a brow at her and shook his head with a smile. "I'm sure you aced it."

Liz then rolled her eyes and pulled open a drawer in the kitchen. She grabbed a first aid kit and ordered him to sit before her.

"No, Liz, come on, you don't have to do that. I'll take care of it when I get home."

He stopped talking when she gave him a cold, intense glare. One that he'd only seen when she was completely serious. He relented with a sigh and braced himself as she dabbed one of his cuts with disinfectant. In turn, he held a dumpling with a pair of chopsticks up to her mouth and smiled inwardly when she ate it.

"I don't want you bleeding all over the apartment." She mumbled around her food.

She finished patching him up after he had fed her half a box of dumplings.

"There. All done." She sighed. "You're pretty again."

"Oh?" He chuckled, making some of the paper stitches and bandaids on his face move. "You think I'm pretty?"

Liz narrowed her eyes with a smile as she put the first aid kit away. "When you're not being a stubborn idiot, yeah. Now how 'bout you make yourself useful and pour me some wine."

"Yes ma'am." He smirked.

Ressler walked towards one of the cupboards and opened it. As he reached up to grab some glasses, he couldn't help but groan, a sound that didn't go unnoticed by Liz. He placed the glasses by the bottle, clearly avoiding his eyes from her scrutiny. As he reached for the wine bottle, Liz jabbed a finger into his side and watched in shock as he recoiled his arm and shut his eyes. His jaw was clenched and he exhaled, obviously trying to stifle the pain that wanted to make itself heard.

Once the pain evidently subsided, Ressler sighed and finally met her eyes.

"Let me see." She said, arms crossed and eyes lethal.

He blinked at her.

"...Can't a guy get a drink before you rip his clothes off?" He gave her a charming grin in an attempt to disarm her annoyance.

"Don, I swear to god..." She snarled through her teeth.

He sighed again, hesitantly pulling off his tie and unbuttoning his shirt. She moved his shirt out of the way and gasped as she beheld his torso.

A giant purple bruise stretched down his right side, just below his chest. Liz saw that several more scrapes marred his skin and she was dumbfounded that he could even move around as much as he could.

"You didn't even see a medic, did you?"

He remained completely silent.

Wordlessly, she buttoned up his shirt. She then went to the living room to grab her purse and her keys and headed towards the door. Over her shoulder, she looked at him with fire in her eyes as he stood still in the kitchen.

"Get your ass in the car. We're going to the hospital."

Liz thought about their past together. She suddenly remembered the lecture she gave him on the way to the hospital, how he sat quietly as she yelled at him about taking care of himself. It didn't take long in their friendship to realize that they were both horrible at taking care of themselves, so they took on the role for each other. It was an unspoken agreement. He took care of her and she took care of him.

But standing there in front of his pale, unmoving body, her own face streaked in his blood, she realized that she had failed him. She looked at his prone form, shirt ripped open and stained crimson, with a sinister wound on his chest. She knew she couldn't keep the promise that she'd tacitly made. She'd failed to take care of him. Failed to save him.

He was an innocent man, afflicted by a terrible curse and the world saw him as nothing but a ticking time bomb. A traitor who turned his back on the people he swore to protect. A monster.

But now she knew who he was. Remembered who he was. He wasn't just a mystery to solve. He wasn't a problem to get rid of. He was someone she would fight for. Someone who would stick by her through thick and thin. Someone who would risk his life and gladly put himself in harm's way to save anyone who needed saving. He was her best friend.

And now he's gone.

Liz stumbled towards the operating table. She stole a glance at the metal basin beside the operating table. Within it was a puddle of blood and the bullet that did the damage.

Completely ignoring the medical team that was quickly packing away the equipment, she finally let herself fall apart. Broken sobs wracked her aching chest as she gripped the edge of the table tightly. Through blurred eyes, she looked at his cold, ashen face.

His eyes were closed and he held no expression. The lines that often graced his forehead were gone and his face was heartbreakingly relaxed. It killed her that he looked completely peaceful. That it took death to achieve something he so clearly deserved.

Liz summoned the strength to reach out to him, before grasping his hand. It felt heavy and motionless, and as she brought it up to her face, she could feel her breath catching. She curled his fingers closed, squeezing tightly as she gave his knuckles a kiss before shutting her eyes tightly. Her heart was pounding and her head was throbbing; it was as if all the air suddenly left her lungs. She then began to feel the pain radiate throughout her body until it was all she could feel. Before she knew it, she felt herself slump over as her mind drifted away into darkness; firm grasp still around his hand.

Ressler woke and saw nothing but pitch blackness. Groggily, he tried moving his arms, but found them mostly unresponsive, lying heavy on what felt like firm leather. He felt surrounded by gentle rumbling and realized the unmistakable feeling of a moving vehicle. He was in the backseat with a cloth hood on his head, clawing his way out of unconsciousness and comprehending the cold that snuck its way inside the vehicle. Ressler tried to move, but found no luck, save for small movements in his extremities.

When he regained more control, he realized that he could feel warmth in his hand. A refuge in what felt like nothing but cold darkness. He tried to squeeze, and found the sensation spreading from his palm and intertwining with his fingers.

"Don?" He heard Liz's voice, clearly trying to pull herself from sleep.

Before he could react any more, the car slowed to an uneven stop. He could just hear the sound of dirt and crunching leaves under the tires. He then heard the front doors of the car opening and closing, before the one beside him opened.

A tight grasp claimed the hood on his head and pulled it off abruptly. He suddenly found himself lying flat on a table on his back, eyes exposed to obnoxious fluorescent lights. Squinting away the invasive brightness, he tried to recover his grip on reality. His chest felt beaten and raw, his head felt like it was about to split apart, and his throat was dry and tender.

He somehow found the strength to sit up, leaning up on his elbow and squeezing the bridge of his nose to regain some semblance of stability. It was then that he noticed that the arm he was leaning on ended with a hand covering his own. He followed it and found Liz, slumped over the operating table, her hair draped over her face as she lay completely still.

Ressler took another look around the room made of plastic, and what he saw shocked him. Several more bodies, dressed in sterile gear, were on the floor. Medical equipment lay scattered, broken and abandoned amidst the motionless forms.

"Oh no." He said breathlessly.

Fueled by fear, he reached over and tightly grasped Liz's hand. She felt cold and immobile.

"Liz!" He croaked loudly, his throat still recovering.

He got up on unsteady legs, using the table as an anchor, and made his way towards Liz. He pulled her down to the floor, onto his lap and held her. He then moved the hair out from her face, his eyes widening at the blood that stained her skin.

"Liz!" He called again, slapping her face lightly.

Desperately, Ressler reached his thumb up and opened one of her eyes. And suddenly the shock and pain that was dominating him disappeared. Her eyes, though dull and unresponsive, were still hypnotically blue. He realized that he could feel her pulse under his fingers. Her chest rose and fell. She was alive.

"Liz, wake up." He said gently, still cradling her in his lap.

After a few moments, she began to stir. Her eyes fluttered open, though only for a moment, as she apparently felt the same splitting headache that he had when he woke. Squeezing her eyes shut and putting a hand to her head, she tried to adjust to the pain. When she looked up and saw his relieved face, her eyes widened and she quickly reached up and took him into a tight embrace.

"I thought I lost you." She said with a broken voice.

"I'm fine." He said, rubbing a hand up and down her back.

She sniffled and nodded at him with a smile. He cleared his throat and let her off of him, looking around the room.

"What happened here?" He asked. "I remember getting shot...and...everything after that is fuzzy."

"You…" She hesitated, trying to find the words. "You died…"

He looked at her, wide-eyed and unblinking.

"Your heart stopped." She explained. "And then...I'm not sure what happened. I passed out, and when I woke up…" she gestured to the bodies that lay around them.

Ressler approached the medical staff and felt his breath catch when he saw white eyes.

"Shit." He whispered.

Then he remembered, looking up at her in realization. Something he had to tell her before he was shot.

"Where's Reddington?" He asked urgently.

"Umm…" she mumbled, still recovering from her fluttering headache and throbbing chest. "I don't know. He stepped out to take a call." Looking around, she found a room void of life, except for the two of them.

"Liz, listen to me...Reddington knows more than he's letting on."

"What? How do you know?"

He continued in a hushed tone. "I saw him...when Orchard dug around in our memories. He was there. I couldn't hear anything he was saying but...he was there. I'm sure of it. I didn't want to say anything while he was around."

She exhaled, looking around to see if the man was nearby. Red's not telling me something? I wouldn't be surprised.

"He might be involved in whatever happened to us." Ressler said, finding his bloody coat, which had been tossed aside onto a nearby chair, and draping it over his ruined shirt.

Liz regarded him with eyes full of concern and nodded. "Let's see if there's anything we can use here."

Liz looked around the nearly packed-up room. She decided to search the bodies, hoping they'd have a phone or car keys. What she found instead chilled her to the bone.

As she inspected one of the corpses, she saw a horrifying, familiar sight. The silky black lines that converged together to form a daisy; the same deceptively beautiful tattoo that brought about one of the most painful moments she'd ever gone through.

And it was worn by someone Reddington trusted enough to be in his emergency medical staff. Ressler's memories put Reddington at the forefront of suspicion. He's probably the most astute person she knows. Either he didn't know about the assassin, which she doubted but couldn't rule out, or he did. Which was a terrifying thought. Because it would mean that Reddington could've been behind the attempt.

Liz had about a million thoughts flying around in her head. Before she could put any of them together and voice them, however, a loud bang erupted throughout the building.

Turning towards the source of the sound, they knew they were in trouble. They knew that sound; remembered the noise of a battering ram as it would breach an entrance and signal the beginning of a raid.

"Oh, fuck." Ressler voiced.

He then pulled Liz's hand towards the other side of the building, away from the sounds of the jackbooted agents making their way towards them. What they didn't expect was an encore of the loud bang echoing from where they were headed. They were trapped.

All they could do was stand together as a group of agents in tactical gear stormed in and aimed their rifles right at them. The two of them raised their arms as they were surrounded.

Ressler quickly found himself on the ground, pinned by the HRT agent and having handcuffs locked around his wrists. He looked over to Liz, who was getting the same treatment. As their eyes met, they remained speechless, merely searching each other's eyes as the agents apprehended them. Both looking for an answer, though knowing they wouldn't find one.

Moments later, Liz was gently pulled up to her feet. She turned and saw Samar's intense stare, though she saw a hint of sympathy in her eyes.

"Look, we'll go with you, but you gotta keep us together. Please." Ressler implored as Meera pulled him up, a little hampered by their size difference.

"You don't have much of a choice though, do you?" Meera quipped.

"Do it, or you all die." Liz said boldly, eyeing the two other agents. "It's not something he can control. Not without me."

Samar stared at Liz and Ressler, then at the bodies that littered the floor.

After a moment of deliberation, Samar nodded to one of the other agents. "Keep them together, but keep a close eye on them." She then turned to Liz. "Don't think we won't shoot if you try anything."

Liz could do nothing but nod. She was a little hurt by Samar's words, having worked with her for so long. But it would be naive of her not to be cautious. Trust was hard to come by in their field of work. And though she believes she's earned it, it was understandable that her colleagues' instincts would have them treat her and Ressler like any other suspect. She was thankful that she trusted her enough to accept their request.

"Never thought I'd live to see it." Meera said over her shoulder to Liz as they were led out of the building.

"What do you mean?" Liz asked, confused.

"Reddington's gone out of his way your entire life to protect you." The smaller woman answered. "Imagine our surprise when he called out of the blue to tell us where you were."