Liz couldn't remember the last time she felt quite as alone as she did at that moment.

Barely over a year ago, she was simply going about her life, excited to finish up her training at Quantico and finally start the family she always wanted with the man she loved, and now here she was, sitting next to the decomposing corpse of that very same man, her treacherous not-really-husband. A man who tricked her, lied to her, exploited her. A man she killed, little by little, over weeks, over months. How on earth did she get to this point? Did she even recognize herself anymore? She wasn't sure that she did.

It grew colder and colder in the belly of the boat as the sun began to set, but the chill in the air didn't fully account for the way Liz's teeth chattered in her mouth. She hugged her knees to her chest and rubbed at the scar on her wrist, searching for any scrap of comfort she could find in her terrifying new reality.

She needed help. Fast. She couldn't call Ressler or Cooper, not now. Even if she explained what she'd done, they wouldn't just help her hide the body of a man she essentially murdered without judgement or consequences. Aram was out, too—she wouldn't dream of involving him in her mess. Samar might understand, might even be willing to help her, but Liz didn't know her well enough to be comfortable sharing this kind of thing with her.

The solution to Liz's problem was obvious, she just… didn't want to admit it. But what other choice did she really have here? She didn't have the resources on her own to… dispose of Tom, especially in a way that wouldn't be traced back to her. She understood what she would need to do in theory, but in practice, she didn't think she had the stomach for it.

Could she really detach herself from what Tom was to her for so long in order to do what needed to be done? Could she perhaps even… dismember his body, destroy the pieces beyond recognition? Or maybe pilot the boat out to sea and dump his corpse overboard? Just the thought of it made her feel faint.

Her phone was in her hand before she consciously realized she'd dug it out of her pocket. The screen barely responded under her fingers, slick as they were with cold, nervous sweat, but soon enough, her thumb hovered over the number seven on the dial pad for a long moment, poised to touch it.

No.

How could she possibly turn to Red after all the effort she put into hiding this from him? How could she admit what she'd done and why she'd done it? Liz scrolled through her contacts until she found one she'd buried for emergency use only. Because if nothing else, this certainly qualified as an emergency. Before she could talk herself out of using that number, too, she jabbed the call icon and held the phone up to her ear to wait.

"Mr. Kaplan?" she said breathlessly, as soon as someone picked up on the other end.

"Who is this?" came the woman's terse voice.

"This is Elizabeth Keen."

There was silence for a moment and then, "Has something happened to Mr. Reddington?"

"No, no, it's me. I… I need your help."

"Are you injured?"

"No."

"And this isn't something you can bring to Mr. Reddington?"

"Please. It's urgent."

Kaplan didn't speak again for just long enough for Liz to start to worry she wouldn't agree. "Text me your location," she said, at last.

Liz let out the breath she'd been holding. "Thank you," she said, and then she did as she was asked.

She scrambled to her feet so she could be prepared to intercept Mr. Kaplan on the docks, but of course Kaplan wouldn't be there for who knows how long. She wondered where Kaplan spent her time when she wasn't cleaning up Red's messes. It never seemed like she was terribly far away.

Liz began pacing back and forth at the base of the stairs, because the adrenaline surging through her veins wouldn't allow her to sit still. Her eyes kept straying to the grimy porthole, to the door that served as the final barrier between her secret and the world. She had blood on her hands now in a way she never had before and that truth weighed heavily on her.

She had always been impulsive, always ran right up to the line of what was acceptable, maybe even played just on the other side of it every now and then, but this? This was calculated. This was sustained. She took away someone's freedom, held him prisoner under her own power, rather than under the authority of the system.

More than half an hour passed before Liz's straining ears caught the faint but rising sound of heels on rough wooden planks. She climbed up the staircase as quickly and quietly as she could and peered cautiously outside. Relief flooded through her when she found Mr. Kaplan looking curiously back at her from the dock, carrying her bag of goodies at her side like a perverse Mary Poppins.

Liz stepped out onto the boat deck to offer Kaplan her hand to help her aboard and ushered her inside, down the stairs.

"So why am I here, Agent Keen?"

Liz opened her mouth to try to explain, but her vocal cords wouldn't cooperate. She gestured towards the heavy door instead and said, "It's just through here."

The loud creak of the hinges was all the more conspicuous with someone else around to hear it. Kaplan's face hardened when the scent of the room washed over her. It was even stronger for Liz the second time—stale body odor and must and rot, putrid and clinging.

"Is that… who I think it is?"

Liz bit her lip and nodded.

Kaplan sighed and crouched down, tried to lift Tom's bowed head so she could examine his grubby face, but his stiff, dead muscles resisted the movement.

"This is recent, Agent Keen. Much too recent, if I'm remembering the events of the past few months accurately."

Liz could still only nod. Kaplan took a moment to study her face, her head tilted slightly to one side in a way that reminded Liz vaguely of Red; she wondered absently who had picked up the trait from whom.

"You have to tell him," Kaplan said, quiet but firm.

"How the hell am I supposed to do that? He thinks I killed Tom months ago! How on earth am I going to explain—"

"Ah. I understand."

"What?"

"You don't want to disappoint him."

It took a few seconds for Kaplan's statement to sink in fully and when it did, Liz was bewildered by it.

"That is not what this is about!"

"Is it not? Do you think he'll be angry you let your husband live, temporarily? Because the outcome is the same here as it would've been if he died immediately after you shot him."

She scoffed. "I'm not worried about him being angry."

"Then you think he won't understand, that he'll judge you for what you've done?"

"Well, no, but—"

"Do you think he'll hold it against you?"

"Of course not."

"Why are you so afraid of him knowing, then?"

Liz sputtered. Was that really what this came down to? She didn't want to disappoint Red? She wanted his approval? His good opinion?

Good god, what if it was?

Oh, sure, it certainly wasn't the only reason she didn't want him to know, but she couldn't deny that she wanted to live up to the way he looked at her the day they met. What a screwed up thing that was. He was a master criminal who had done far worse than what she'd done here—it shouldn't matter what he thought of her.

But it did matter. It mattered a great deal. It mattered because no one had ever looked at her the way he looked at her before. At least no one who wasn't… Well, 'required to' wasn't quite the right term. Expected to?

She always felt at least three steps behind Red at any given moment and she hated the idea that they were on such uneven ground most of the time, that he knew so much about her life and she knew so little about his. She kept Tom alive to give herself an ace in the hole, to be her source independent of Red, to wrench back some of the power she'd lost over the direction of her life. She just felt so out of control lately that she couldn't help but want to hang onto whatever small measure of it she could. That had all backfired. Tom proved to be extremely limited as a source of information and now he was dead.

Liz knew that there was a not insignificant part of her that wanted to prove herself to Red, even though he gave her no indication he felt she needed to do that. Of course he thought she was worthy; he asked for her when he turned himself in, had he not? He wanted her with him when they went after Wujing, despite the fact that she had barely any training with encryption. He thought she could hold her own with a woman like Madeline Pratt, who was truly in a league of her own. Liz had nothing to worry about, but she worried nonetheless. She didn't just want Red's good opinion—she craved it, and she hated that she did.

Perhaps if she hadn't been primed by Tom's betrayal to doubt whether warmth and affection and interest could be real, she would be able to allow herself to let her guard down, to accept Red's confidence at face value, but that wasn't her reality. Her reality was that she wanted to live up to the ridiculously high regard with which a criminal mastermind saw her while also being terrified that regard was a ruse, one she needed to gather her own intel to protect herself against.

"Why does he have to know? Like you said, dead is dead—does it really matter? Why can't we just… keep this between us?"

"I'm sorry, Agent Keen. My loyalty is to my employer first, and then to you. I'll handle this for you because you'll be up shit's creek if I don't, but believe me when I say if you don't tell him, I will."

Liz cringed internally. Kaplan's ultimatum felt so much more binding than Ezra's had been; her position in Red's orbit made it impossible for Liz to use the same tactics she'd used to get him off her back and, more to the point, she wouldn't want to do the same thing to Kaplan anyway.

"Fine. I'll tell him," she relented; Mr. Kaplan looked at her expectantly. "What? You want me to do it now?"

"Now would be better. The longer you wait, the harder it'll be."

"And you want to be around to make sure I do it."

Mr. Kaplan shot her a tight smile, and her eyes twinkled just a bit as she did it. "Raymond always said you were smart."

Liz took a few deep breaths, fiddling with her phone as she tried to work up the nerve to call Red.

Fuck it. This couldn't possibly get any worse. She held her thumb on the number seven and waited for speed dial to take over. He answered almost immediately.

"Lizzy! I was just thinking of you…"

"Hey, Red," she said, and then her voice promptly died in her throat. How could she possibly explain what had happened? Either her tone of voice or her subsequent silence must have tipped him off that something was wrong.

"Are you OK?" he asked, his voice tinged with concern.

"Can we meet?"

"Elizabeth, if something's happened—"

"It has. Something's happened. I don't want to talk about it over the phone. That hideaway of yours, the writer's house…"

"Fredrick Hemstead," he offered, automatically.

"Right, yeah—is that available?"

"What is this about, Lizzy?"

"Please, Red. Once we're together."

"Sure. Of course. Do you want Dembe to come pick you up or—"

"I'll meet you there," she said, and ended the call before he had a chance to respond.

Kaplan was standing a few feet away, not really attempting to disguise how closely she'd been listening.

"Is that good enough for you to let me go?"

"Yes."

Liz let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you for trusting me."

"Oh, don't get too comfortable, dearie. I plan to check in with him tomorrow to make sure you've fulfilled your end of the bargain."

"I guess I should've expected that," she said, with a nervous huff of a laugh. Kaplan smiled and stopped Liz with a hand on her arm when she moved to walk past her.

"Breathe. You'll get through this," she said. "I know you feel like you have to guard yourself around him, but Raymond… He'll be more than willing to be there for you. All you have to do is ask."

All Liz could do was nod and offer a watery smile in return.

Liz sped away from the harbor, driving as fast as she could without drawing undue attention to herself.

She needed to put as much distance between herself and that godforsaken boat as she could as quickly as she could, but she didn't make it more than five miles away from the waterfront before she had to pull over to the side of the road and vomit out her door onto the pavement. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and rested her forehead against her steering wheel for a long moment while she waited for her stomach to stop roiling.

Despite her detour, she still ended up arriving at Fredrick's house before Red and picked the lock to let herself in. The eerie quiet stood in surreal contrast to the pleasant scent of old books. It was such a homey place, charming in an eccentric way, sort of like its current owner, but it was obvious it hadn't been used in months. Perhaps even since the aftermath of The Courier.

Liz stripped off her jacket and balled it up, tossing it into a cluttered corner she hoped she could get away with pretending she forgot it in. She scrubbed her hands and rinsed her face off in the kitchen sink, and rinsed out her mouth, too, hoping Red wouldn't be able to tell she'd been sick so recently.

When she heard movement outside the door, she snagged a bottle of that mystery liquor Red had shared with her the last time she was here, as well as a couple of mason jars from the drainboard by the sink.

Red only seemed slightly surprised when she pulled open the door to greet him, his face colored more by cautious curiosity and concern. He took in her appearance and the bottle in her hand and gestured for her to precede him into the living room.

"Thank you for coming," Liz said, handing him one of the makeshift glasses. She popped the lid off the bottle and started to pour him a couple fingers, sloshing the liquor as her hand trembled with nerves. It felt so strange, preparing a drink for him in his own house.

Red watched her, the concern on his face growing with every passing second. He reached out and steadied her hand as she finished pouring. She made herself a glass next and raised it in a halfhearted toast before taking a cautious sip; she swished the liquor around her mouth to wash away any lingering taste of vomit and swallowed it because she couldn't be bothered to head back to the sink to spit it out.

Red frowned and led her over to the couch and cleared off a couple stacks of books so they both could sit comfortably after she took too large a swig from her mason jar and choked a bit.

"Tell me what's wrong, Lizzy," he said, once they'd settled in. "I've never seen you quite like this before."

Liz's heart pounded in her ears. Now or never.

"I… I killed Tom."

A beat passed in confused silence. "Unless I'm missing something, that's old news."

Liz took a shaky breath, staring down into the weird cloudy moonshine in her jar. What an absurd metaphor for her life; even her liquor was murky.

"I've been holding him captive," she explained, in a low, halting voice. "Stashed away on a boat in a harbor that nobody really uses."

Red was still incredulous. "You shot him in the abdomen. More than once. How on earth did he survive transport, let alone weeks afterwards?"

"I called one of Tom's old work colleagues to patch him up so he was stable enough to… well, so he wouldn't bleed out immediately."

He raised an eyebrow. "His work colleague? An elementary school teacher treated gunshot wounds?"

"She's also a volunteer EMT. And a realtor."

"What a remarkable woman. Multitalented. Is she perhaps looking for a job?"

"Red, I'm trying to be serious."

"I know. I'm…" He reached out and gave her upper arm an awkward, comforting squeeze. "I apologize. I know this is… difficult for you."

"Difficult for me?" Liz stared off into the distance and shook her head. "I killed a man. Slowly."

"Couldn't've happened to a nicer guy," he said, more flippant than she thought was quite fair, given the circumstances.

"Red, I tortured him."

"He deserved it."

"He did terrible things, so he deserved terrible things done to him? Is this really that simple to you?"

"Of course. I find I have trouble mustering up any sympathy for that vile excuse for a man."

"What was all that with Ressler, after Audrey died? You tried to talk him out of getting revenge, you warned him that it would consume him, but for me it's OK? Why is it different?"

"Because Tom hurt you. He deserved to suffer, he deserved to regret everything he ever put you through. I would have killed him for you, but you stopped me. If you let me do it, we wouldn't even be here right now."

Liz bit back the instinctive argument that Red couldn't blame this on her like that, because he could. This was her fault, all of it.

But was he really blaming her? Or was he simply disappointed she had to go through this at all? If she was honest, she knew it was the latter. Of course it was the latter. Red was… he… He was too compassionate by half, is what he was. Especially about something like this. Too willing to do unspeakable things to spare others the burden.

"I don't think you get why this is bothering me the way it is," she said. "It felt good while I was doing it, it felt justified. It felt like the only way I could ever take control of my life back from him was to make sure he lost every last iota of control over his. And now I not only have to live with the fact that I killed a man in cold blood, I have to live with the knowledge that I enjoyed it."

"Lizzy—"

"I'm a monster."

"You are no such thing." Red put his glass on the coffee table and shifted closer to her on the couch. "Come here," he said, holding his arms up slightly in hopes she would be open to physical comfort from him. She leaned forward, wrapping her own arms around him with a fierce sort of desperation.

"You're going to be fine." He kissed her hair. "You'll be OK." Her temple. "There's nothing wrong with you, all right? Nothing." Her cheek.

Warmth flooded through Liz's entire body at the feeling of his lips, raising a flush on her skin and a kaleidoscope of butterflies in her belly. She turned her head, instinctively seeking his mouth with her own without even opening her eyes to guide her; she didn't stop to think about how she would feel if he pulled away, if he rejected the kiss, because if she did, she'd never try. And she needed to try. She needed to feel something other than panic and fear.

But he did kiss her back, despite the clear signals from the way he held himself against her that he was utterly shocked at what she'd done. Shocked, but not averse to it, no.

"Lizzy," he breathed, once she leaned far enough away for him to speak.

She stroked her fingers over the side of his head, enjoying the way his short hair felt against her skin. "God, I've wanted to do that for months. Even before I knew what Tom was. What does that make me?"

"Human. It makes you human," he said, and then his lips were on hers again and his fingers were in her hair and for that moment there was nothing in the world but the two of them.