AN: I'm slow. Ugh, the slowest, I know. Nonetheless, here it is. Again, there's sexual tension/thoughts, but no smut. Oh, and FINALLY Red's gonna confront Liz about all of the pain she's caused him. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this! If you have any thoughts or comments, I'd love to read them, so please don't hesitate to share.

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For nearly fifteen minutes, they lounged in silence, sipping their drinks and reveling in the sweetness of their little girl. With hopes of lengthening the pleasant, peaceful moment, Red was making a valiant effort to squash his anger at Liz's betrayal, but exhaustion and the comfortable warmth of her body against his side put him squarely on the precipice of nodding off. He had to make a decision, and quickly.

Speak or sleep?

He'd originally planned to delay their necessary heart-to-heart until the following day, after they'd both had some much-needed rest. Red, the reigning king of delayed gratification, thought that he could wait.

But he suddenly found himself more acutely aware of the ephemeral nature of their existence. A mere six-hour delay morphed into a risk greater than he'd willingly accept. Since Liz had made the decision to come see him now, rather than wait for dawn, he suspected that she was feeling the same, so he gave her a little nudge. "As I recall, a night of restful sleep is more noteworthy for you than a night without. Are you going to tell me why you're really here? Do you need my help with something?"

Though he believed that he already knew what had brought her to him, he wasn't going to lead her with specifics.

Liz's most immediate thought rolled through her mind at the breakneck speed of a single, monosyllabic word. 'Because-I'm-so-fucking-sorry-that-I-can-hardly-breathe-and-I-need-you-to-touch-me.'

That wouldn't do.

"I don't know." Sighing, she shoved her hand into her pocket, pulled out the thumb drive, and held it up expectantly. "I guess to return this."

It was true enough- just one of the many elephants crowding the room, all lined up and impatiently waiting to be addressed.

He nodded but made no move to take it from her. Liz wondered if he was waiting for her to speak.

She could think of no place better to start than the very beginning. "You know, on the day that you strolled into J. Edgar Hoover and kneeled down in the lobby, I knew intellectually that I was a vulnerability to you, because you needed me. I knew it as soon as I was debriefed on the situation, before we even sat face-to-face. I knew it for such a long time, but... I don't think I ever really felt it until I watched that video tonight and saw your legs give out."

Red cracked a small smile and offered a half-hearted attempt at levity, "I do have a bum knee, you know."

But she wasn't amused. "It wasn't your knee."

"No... it wasn't," he conceded.

Liz stared at him openly, imploring. He could see that she was treating him with kid gloves, willing him to understand what she wanted but unwilling to apply any pressure.

His side. She wanted to hear about his side of recent events.

Fine. He'd have to learn to be more open with her, anyway.

Red's voice blew out in a low, monotone rasp. "Everything about that came as a surprise to me. Everything, from Donald unwittingly recording the moment, to Aram intuitively knowing that I'd want to have it. And the fundamental lies and betrayals that brought it all to fruition, such as the manner of your death."

He shook his head and gazed up at the ceiling, his jaw stretching open and then closed again. "Especially the manner of 'your death'. Starting when you were just a child, I've imagined hundreds of worst case scenarios, and from the shadows, unbeknownst to you, I've eradicated almost as many threats. But for you to die, or even to fake-die in childbirth? For my closest confidant to orchestrate it all, knowing that it would destroy me? For her to sit back on her hands while she watched my inevitable unraveling? Never that."

He sounded so emotionally distant, so artificially placid that if not for their daughter, Liz would want to run outside and drown herself in the pool.

Or slap him across the face and scream into his ear.

Or climb into his lap and grind herself against him so that he could do nothing but hold her in place and buck upwards until the heat and the friction of his hardness made her come.

They were all equally attractive options.

He relayed these events to her with less feeling than he would a story about ants, and it nearly drove her mad until-

Oblivious to her salacious inner conflict, Red's voice finally, finally cracked to reveal a hint of the strain that had previously only rippled below the surface. She in turn began to punctuate his sentences with soft whimpers and winces. She couldn't help it.

"From my side of your cruel charade, it was the last time I'd ever see you in the flesh. It was the last time I'd feel the luxurious softness of your skin against mine... the last time I'd have a reason to fight for something, to fight for anything at all."

She knew from experience that he couldn't stand the sight of her eyes when she was broken down and crying, so she rested her cheek against his shoulder again, essentially hiding in plain sight, hoping to make the conversation easier for him.

And just as she deserved, it dragged on.

"Have you ever heard of Carl von Cosel?" He asked.

And again she wanted to scream. His question came with an entirely different tone, schooled and stoic, as if within the span of a single breath, while she put her head on his shoulder, he'd shrugged off one personality and donned another.

Raymond was hurting, but Red still had a story to tell.

He paused to let her answer, so she shook her head 'no', knowing that it would prompt a detour for storytime.

She'd soon wish that she had lied.

"Von Cosel was born 'Carl Tanzler' in the late nineteenth century, in Dresden. As a boy, he dreamed that one of his ancestors had come down from heaven to introduce him to his soul mate. It was so vivid that in his mind, it permanently erased the line between fantasy and reality, and he became fixated on the image of this beautiful, ethereal woman in his dream. For decades, everywhere he went, he looked for her, but to no avail. Somewhere along the way, he married and had two daughters, but the dream woman was never far from his mind. He wouldn't stop looking."

Before she could think better of it, Liz jumped in and asked, "Wait, so he believed in soul mates, but he married a different woman, despite knowing that it wasn't her?"

His reply was a flawless deadpan. "You sound surprised." He might as well have told her that she was the last person in the world who should be surprised, that she of all people should know that people marry for all kinds of reasons.

Effectively shamed into silence, all she could do was wait for him to go on.

"In the 1920s, when he was in his early fifties, he emigrated to the US and started going by 'Carl von Cosel'. He got a job at a hospital in Key West, and it was there that he met Elena, a 21-year-old Cuban expat with tuberculosis. Immediately, he recognized her as the woman from his dream. He was on top of the world and over the moon. At last, he'd found his soul mate!"

"From the very beginning, he openly professed his love and showered her with gifts. This behavior was just as unusual back then as it would be today, but in his hubristic mind, they were bound together by fate, and he was the only person in the world who could save her life. He just knew that as soon as he did, she'd automatically fall in love with him too."

"Under less dire circumstances, both Elena and her family probably would have been alarmed, but they were very poor, and her prognosis poorer. They desperately wanted to believe von Cosel when he so confidently declared that he'd save her, free of charge, and so they gave him carta blanca to try all manner of dubious treatments, most of which he'd invented himself. Try as he might, however, Elena ultimately succumbed to her illness."

"It's worth noting that there's no indication that his feelings for her were ever returned. Rather, both Elena and her family tolerated his overbearing presence and affections because he was her best hope for survival."

Liz had to wonder if Red self-identified with von Cosel's hubris. Was that what he believed as well, that only he could save her, and that she'd then fall in love with him?

Because in his case, he'd successfully saved her countless times, and it wouldn't be hubris.

OR, did he perceive himself as the well-meaning, crazy old fool that she and Sam only tolerated because they had an extreme shortage of options?

That was far more likely, and it made her heart ache for him even more.

"After she died, they accepted von Cosel's offer to pay for both her funeral and the construction of an above-ground mausoleum. Only he and her sister, Florinda, had a key for it. For the next two years, von Cosel was seen visiting the cemetery almost every night. When he suddenly stopped, it was without explanation, but everyone just assumed that he had finally moved on."

Liz wrinkled her nose, hoping that the story wouldn't go in the direction that it seemed to be headed.

"Seven years later, Florinda began to hear outrageous, whispered rumors about the doctor, prompting her to enter the mausoleum for the very first time, only to find it empty. Unfortunately, von Cosel had moved to another town, but she eventually managed to track him down. When she knocked on his door, he welcomed her inside without hesitation, as if everything were normal and he had nothing to hide."

Red shook his head and chuckled loudly, as he so often did while spinning these strange tales, and she knew it meant that the story was about to get darker.

"On his bed, she spied what looked like a wax mannequin, but of course it wasn't. It was Elena. He claimed that during his nightly visits to the mausoleum, she begged and pleaded for him to take her away, and he was simply rendered powerless, unable to deny anything to the woman that he loved. As you can imagine, that didn't cut it for Florinda. She ran away screaming and alerted the authorities. They wasted no time rescuing the corpse and hauling von Cosel to jail."

"Ugh," was the only response that Liz could utter, but the worst was yet to come.

"A coroner's examination of the body revealed the means by which von Cosel had tried to preserve her. Her bones were tied together with wires and piano string. Her torso was stuffed with rags to maintain its shape. Her face was reconstructed with mortician's wax, and her eyes were glass. As her skin had decomposed, he replaced it with silk that was coated in a mixture of plaster of paris and wax. When her hair fell out, he made it into a wig. He masked the stench of decomposition with a combination of oils, herbs, and perfumes."

"A media frenzy erupted. People were so entranced by the story that before she was to be buried in a secret, unmarked location, city officials decided to put Elena's body on public display. More than six thousand people came to gawk."

"So," Liz began, "I presume he was jailed for a long time."

"You presume wrong. Though he was deemed competent to stand trial, the statute of limitations for both grave robbery and desecration of a corpse had expired, so the charges were dropped. He was perceived by most as harmless- just an eccentric, pitiful, lovelorn man. Ah, but that's because for decades, the more illicit discoveries from the coronor's exam were withheld from the public."

That could only mean one thing. Liz's eyes widened. "That's vile." She hoped that the story was done, and that he'd hurry up and circle back toward whatever parts of it were relevant.

Or maybe not. Did she really want to know?

He then quieted for just a moment, steeling himself by turning to nuzzle the top of her head, indulging in the scent of her shampoo.

His voice was soft in volume but gravel-rough in texture. "Trying to bargain with the laws of nature is crushing in its futility. I've never lied to myself with such conviction as that afternoon with you, in the back of that van."

Liz could feel the tension in his body, the strain like an icepick crudely opening his sternum. He'd never been very good at pouring his heart out- not to her, at least.

"I almost believed that as long as I held onto your hand, it would never grow cold. I could lend you my warmth. If I kneaded your muscles, rigor would never set in. Maybe my heart could even beat strongly enough to circulate your blood as well as mine, and then you wouldn't have to go, and I... I just wanted to try."

He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, shaking his head. "That night, I recalled von Cosel's story, and for the first time, I found myself not only pitying him, but empathizing as well. He'd spent the vast majority of his life thinking about her, dreaming about her, and when he finally knew the joy of being face-to-face with her, it was so damnably fleeting. I can see how obsession and despair might drive a less sane man to commit such depravities. He just couldn't let her go."

Red lamented the ineloquence of this retelling of his heartbreak. It was raw and it was real and it was the best that he could do.

And for the sake of their shaky, nebulous relationship, she needed to hear it.

He continued, less softly, "Though painful beyond measure, the memory of our final moment together was invaluable to me, so between the video and Aram's kind words, that thumb drive became everything."

The tension between them crescendoed so slowly that she hardly noticed, until his teeth were clenched together so tightly that Liz almost couldn't understand him anymore. She smirked at the sudden, inappropriate realization that he'd make a terrible ventriloquist.

Predictably, their daughter didn't appreciate his tone. She began to fuss, her chunky legs pumping with surprising strength. Red popped his index finger into her mouth, and she eagerly gummed it, mollified almost instantly.

He was a natural. He was one of those men that make fatherhood look easy.

Because of her, he tried to focus on calming the strain in his voice, but it was no use. He failed.

Miserably.

"Tom had Agnes, the only living and breathing and real piece of you. Tom had my daughter because YOU GAVE HER TO HIM, and what did I have? I had a stupid piece of cheap metal and plastic, and like the pitiful old fool that I am, I cherished it. At one point, I was even envious of the courier, for his ability to hide such things beneath his skin. I had to settle for keeping it in my pocket. Whenever I felt uneasy, which was often, I'd compulsively run my fingers over it. If you look closely, you'll see the faint outline of the logo that I managed to rub off of its side."

Before Liz could oblige, he took her hand in his and flipped it over, palm-up. With his fingers encircling her wrist, his thumb rhythmically caressed the mottled length of her burn scar. "Not unlike the way that you do this."

Shocked by the unexpected, electric contact, she gasped and briefly closed her eyes.

It didn't go unnoticed.

On impulse, Red's nimble fingers then successfully sought out her radial pulse. It thundered beneath the pale skin of her wrist, reassuring and real, incontrovertible proof of her physical response to him. Her body was a dangerous weapon, indeed- one that he could not only turn on, but also turn on himself.

This was new territory for him, but he could think of no sweeter demise.

Normally, he expected women to sense that he could satisfy their physical needs. He could also afford to be absurdly selective, and the few to pass muster invariably felt lucky to find themselves under his skilled hands, pressed into his mattress.

Or chaise lounge. Or desk. Or kitchen table.

Or any other available piece of furniture, really.

And given the chance, his paramours always, always returned for another round.

But Lizzie, his Lizzie, she was different. She was significant. For her to respond to his questing fingers was still unexpected and novel and thrilling beyond measure. He couldn't even be sure if she desired more after their one night together. She never let it show.

Until perhaps now.

Despite the lingering pain of her betrayal, he was tempted, too tempted.

Rather than simply release her, he practically threw Liz's hand back into her own lap. She flinched and reared her head up to look at him, her lids heavy with the questions lurking beneath them.

Red's voice lowered further and thickened with emotion. "But you're alive, so I don't need it now, and I don't want it. I don't ever want to think about a world without you in it. You will outlive me, and she will outlive both of us. That is the only reality that I can accept."

She nodded mutely and put the thumb drive back into her pocket.

-...-...-...-...-

AN: So, the creepy story that Red told? Non-fiction, believe it or not. I'm sorry if it got a little long/boring.

This fic isn't over yet, though.

Thankyouthankyouthankyou for reading!