Previously...
"They're in the house."
Well, no shit, Sherlock.
Reddington continues. "Anton is there, too. Don't let him escape. We're on our way, less than a minute out."
The phone goes dead, and Ressler lets it drop to the floor as he backs himself up into the bedroom.
He realizes too late that he's backed himself into a corner. Going into the bathroom is not an option - Liz and Sammy are hiding in there - and he realizes he's out of places to hide when three grinning faces enter the bedroom.
Oh, God, he thinks, and raises his gun, firing off shots in quick succession, hoping to take one or two of them out to give Liz a fighting chance.
The gunshots echo loudly in the room, but the sound of the bathroom door being kicked open as Ressler falls to the floor, his shoulder on fire and his vision blurring, is the loudest sound of all.
June 18th, 12:12 PM (Bethesda Hospital)
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The steady rhythm of the machines surrounding her comfort Liz. She's curled into one of those tiny hospital chairs, her arms folded on top of Ressler's crisp, white bed. She sighs, resting her head on her arms, her eyes toward his face (which is covered in tubes and wires passing through to bring continued life to his body).
She doesn't realize she's crying until Reddington walks up behind her, a gentle hand on her shoulder as he stands stoically, staring at Ressler's white face and the swath of bandages covering his chest and neck.
"He's going to be fine," Reddington says simply, and Liz nods, brushing at her eyes with closed fists. She wants Ressler to wake up, but not - because when he does, she'll have to tell him -
"He came out of surgery an hour ago. They said the bullet passed clean through, but that it tore up a lot on the way out," she says instead, trying not to focus on the empty ache in her arms, her chest. There's no warm body filling her arms, no sleepy sighs and warm puffs of baby breath on her neck. She's crying again (loud, hiccuping sobs) as Reddington pulls her into a hug.
"I didn't mean Ressler," he clarifies, and Liz lets herself collapse into his embrace, crying openly as she tries to block out flashes of the night before -
Ressler screaming, in pain and in panic - his last words a shout to her to run away, get away, save Sammy.
"I l-lost him," she says finally, and it's a whisper, a confession. Reddington stills for a second, and she's afraid he's going to pull away, but then a drop hits her cheek and she knows he's crying, too, and that makes it so much worse.
Sammy screaming - a sound she'd never heard from him, terrified and completely betrayed as she allows him to be ripped from her arms -
"He'll be fine," Reddington says again, snapping her out of her thoughts. "I have my best men, and Samar, on it. We got some of his men - we're going to find out where they went, and then we'll save both Sammy and Michael."
"SAMMY!"
The sound of her own voice, broken and torn, as Sammy is taken from the room, the man left behind to deal with her grinning in a disgustingly smug way, his breath a laugh and his finger playing with the trigger -
He sounds so sure, Liz wants to believe him. But the silence in the room is so complete that she can't imagine what she'll do if Sammy truly is gone.
"Say goodbye to your little family," the man sneers, and Liz tries to cover herself with her arms as the man pulls the trigger.
His little breaths, his sleepy snuffling as he curls into his favorite position. The sound of his cries, his laughter. She's unsure if she could give the baby back to his father without losing her shit, but she sure as hell can't live with herself knowing she let Sammy get taken away, possibly to his death.
The man's body falls to the ground, and Liz is up before she knows what's going on, because she's not dead and her captor is, and she needs to go after Sammy -
Arms, surrounding her, holding her in place, keeping her from Sammy.
"It's not use, they're gone."
Her heart speeds up, and she hears noises in the room. She can't be sure of what they are, because between the tears that are running freely down her face and her own panic, she can't see straight. It's a panic attack, she realizes, and she's in a hospital, so she knows that she's being held down and given something to make her sleep, but she doesn't want to sleep and so she strikes out at anything within her reach. She knows she connects with her target, too, because she hears a muffled groan.
There's a sharp pain in her neck, and then the arms holding her are gone and replaced by a warm embrace. A familiar embrace.
"Get some rest, Lizzie," she hears, and the warm voice soothes her.
It's the last thing she hears before she falls asleep.
4:05 PM (Reddington's Safe House)
Aram tries not to wince as Samar walks out of the bedroom, gingerly wiping blood off of her fingers. He sees a lump of quivering pain in the room, tied to a chair, and he forces himself not to do something stupid, like vomit. He's been sitting in the living room, cringing every time there was a yell or a scream that had been caused - he knew - by one of his partners, for over three hours.
Samar spares him a glance, but looks away quickly, and Aram knows he hasn't hidden his fear or his his discomfort well, because she won't meet his eyes again.
"We have a location," she says instead, addressing Dembe, who has been waiting just as silently (though more patiently and with less cringing and twitching than Aram).
"I will tell Reddington," Dembe says simply, and pulls out his phone as he walks from the room.
The room is silent then, with Aram frozen on the couch and Samar wincing as she tries to pull the blood out from her fingernails. She hasn't cared before, and she wonders why she cares now, but she knows why and the reason is sitting about ten feet away from her, disgusted and terrified by her actions.
"Thank you," comes his quiet voice, and she freezes, the blood soaked cloth stilling as she lifts her head up, not letting herself look back but curious at what Aram is doing. But it doesn't sound like he's doing anything - she can't hear any noise so she doesn't think he's moved.
He speaks again, and when he does, she lowers her head and clutches the bloody cloth tighter.
"Thank you, for doing this. You're good at it, but I know you don't enjoy it. But you found Sammy for us, and that's all that matters," he says, and his voice is quiet. She does hear noise then, and she tenses as he nears. She turns around, and though he still looks scared of her - of her actions, she corrects herself, because he's too close to be actually scared of her - he smiles.
"It terrifies me," he says, and she winces and looks down. "What you do. What Agents Keen and Ressler do, what Reddington does. But I understand why and you could never change how I feel about you."
It's the perfect thing to say, she realizes, because she'll never change who she is and what she does, and he's telling her he accepts it.
She rests her head on his chest, and he doesn't even wince when the bloody cloth touches him. Instead, he pulls her into his arms and hugs her - a move she realizes he's nervous about, because his heart is beating fast and he's shaking a little bit.
"Liz and Ressler aren't complete without Sammy," he says. "And we aren't complete without them. So thank you, for keeping the team together."
They stand like that for only mere seconds, but it's enough, she realizes as Dembe walks back into the room, holding out his phone to her, because she has the resolve to keep going despite the exhaustion and the mental strain of torturing another (admittedly evil) human being. So as she pulls herself from Aram's arms, she takes the phone and talks into it with an urgency she didn't realize was there before.
"He gave us a location, a warehouse on Barrow Street, across from..."
5:10 PM (Ressler's Hospital Room)
Reddington walks in and is completely unsurprised to see Liz sitting by Ressler's bed, even though he had personally seen to it that another bed be pulled into the room. She'd been asleep when he'd last seen her, knocked out from sedative they'd given her when she'd begun panicking.
"How is he?" he asks, and Liz regards him sleepily from her post.
"Better," she says, and then yawns and stretches, reaching for a coffee cup on Ressler's bedside table. She takes a long draw from it and meets his gaze with sad, hollow eyes. It looks like she's been crying again. "The doctor says he may wake up soon, his vitals are all good and he's breathing on his own," she recites, motioning toward Ressler's face, where there used to be an intubation tube. Now he only has a nasal cannula, and Reddington nods, happy with Ressler's medical progress.
"Good. Let's go find Sammy so he can be comforted by your presence as well as Sammy's when he wakes up."
It's offhanded, the way he says it, and it has the desired effect, because Liz snaps her head around, meeting his gaze with a shocked expression (which is a million times better than the hollow, empty expression she wore before).
"You know where he is?" she asks, and she's already fumbling her shoes back on, grabbing her coat.
"Samar was able to get a location from one of Anton's men. We're hoping they're still there, and with the condition I assume James is in, I imagine it'd be harder to move him than what it's worth."
Liz nods, pushing her arms into her jacket and then pausing. She leans back and presses a kiss to Ressler's forehead, letting her fingers linger on his cheek for a moment.
"He'll be safe?" she asks, and Reddington nods.
"I have men all throughout this hospital. No one gives him medication or checks his vitals without permission from my men."
Liz nods, comforted by the fact that Ressler has joined her on Red's keep alive at all costs list.
"Great. Then, where are we going?"
6:45 PM (Anton's Location)
Liz's heart is beating fast, her fingers shaking on her gun. She's pressed up against a concrete wall, the sharp edges of her bullet proof vest digging into her back as she tries to breathe slowly, tries to calm herself down so she doesn't accidentally shoot something she's not meaning to shoot. Sammy and James are inside, she reminds herself, and desperately hopes it's true.
One of Reddington's men gives the signal, and Liz feels like throwing up as suddenly they're inside, surrounded by darkness and the residue from the smoke bomb that had been tossed in as a diversion.
Gunshots ring through the air, and she pushes through the memories, the sickening feelings that rise in her as she remembers more important gunshots that had rung out less than a day ago. A man screams, a final gunshot silences him, and suddenly the warehouse is enveloped in silence.
It doesn't last long, because the search of the warehouse eventually turns up fruitless, judging by the eventual shout of, "He's not here!"
Liz almost falls to the ground, bile rising in her throat as she pushes through the smoke and into the main room of the warehouse.
But then she realizes that "he" must mean Anton, because there he is, wrapped warmly in Reddington's arms.
Reddington is moving toward her, but she's frozen on the spot, unable to move or choke down the emotion rising in her.
"Here," Reddington says gently, and he helps her grasp onto the warm baby. Sammy protests softly until he turns around and sees Liz, and then his bright blue eyes light up and he's opening and closing his fists, wanting to be in her arms. He yells at Reddington in his indignant baby voice when the older man doesn't pass him over quickly enough.
Suddenly, Liz is in overdrive, checking Sammy over for any sort of injury, a plan that Sammy isn't on board with. He kicks her in the stomach and reaches out his pudgy little fists again, wanting to be held close, and God, there's nothing Liz wants more but she has to make sure he's OK first.
"He's fine, he's fine," Reddington reassures her, and she finally clutches Sammy to her chest, feelings she didn't know she possessed overtaking her as her baby is safe once again. She's crying again, but these are tears of happiness and relief, and she doesn't care if she looks weak in front of Reddington and all his men, because Sammy is safe.
"Thank you," she chokes out, and Reddington nods, a small smile on his lips.
"There's more," he says, and he puts a hand on the small of her back to lead her further in the room. Her feelings of relief and happiness turn sour, and bile rises in her throat once more when she sees the body of James Madison. He's alive, she realizes, but just barely. He's being secured to a stretcher by Reddington's people, and he's clearly in pain with each move. He winces and he seems to be crying, but as she gets closer, his attention turns from his injuries to her, and suddenly he's meeting her eyes and Liz stops moving.
"Thank you," he says simply, and his lips move as if he wants to say more, but a nurse jabs his arm with a needle and suddenly his eyes are rolling back in his head and he's being stuffed into the ambulance that Liz hadn't realized had arrived.
She wants to say you're welcome, but she's finding it hard to press down the feelings of resentment, jealousy, and hatred, feelings she knows this man did nothing to deserve, but feelings she can't control because she knows now that she'll lose Sammy. Despite the fact that she has been working this whole time to save James Madison, she finds that the idea of giving Sammy back is too painful to process.
"Take me back to Ressler," she demands instead. Instead of saying things she'll regret, instead of feeling sorry for herself, instead of dwelling on the fear that closes over her suddenly.
Reddington simply nods.
It's not until they're in the car, headed back to the hospital with Sammy gripped tightly in her arms, that Reddington whispers his confession.
"It's hard," he begins, looking out the window, watching the buildings pass by. "When you have to give your child away. It haunts you for the rest of your life."
Liz doesn't respond. Instead, she holds Sammy closer and enjoys his warmth, the sweet, baby smell he gives off, and his soft, sleepy snores.
After all, she doesn't know how much more time she has left with him.
There are no excuses for my actions! OVER A MONTH. Ah, well. My goal is to finish both stories before the next Blacklist episode, so I have less than two weeks, so HOPEFULLY you'll enjoy a lot of updates between now and then!
Please review!