"Lizzie, what is it that people always say about instincts? Particularly your instincts?"

He said it significantly, as if her ability to read others was truly spectacular. Ordinarily, perhaps she would have agreed. Today, the very idea was laughable. She stared silently, lips slightly parted, holding her breath.

"Trust them."

His smile was somehow endearing, although she couldn't see past something methodical sketched into his brow.

"You were right about Donald. You were right about Tom," looking her squarely in the eye, he said decisively, "You are right about me. Trust me, Lizzie."

A long pause settled. Then, suddenly and very amicably, he added, "Or don't."

Only then as he tore his eyes from hers did she feel that she could speak again—and by then she was quite speechless.

She stood in the center of two powerful forces, equidistant from her colleagues at the post office and the admiral she had been taught to fear. Each surveyed her closely, the former group watching her in fear that she was still fragile, and the latter observing her to make sure that she didn't do him the disservice of revealing his intentions. He extended his hand, beckoning—come and see—while J. Edgar Hoover reached forward, calling her home and draw her back into the familiar. She felt no closer to one than the other, halfway between the criminal world and the legal one.

It was any government agency's worst fear that one day a mole would dig its way through the rankings. It had never, even for a moment, occurred to Elizabeth that it would be her. She had betrayed any reassurance that she was a good agent in one fell swoop, succumbing dumbly to the petty proposition made by a criminal, winning her over with an illusion of love.

She called in sick on Friday, said she had a nasty bug. It wasn't like Elizabeth to place herself above her career. Cooper was quick to remind the members of his team that work was their first, second and third priority. It was only because she was so consistently reliable that he allowed her this. Had she been any less nauseous about it, she would have been grateful. She spent the weekend deliberating, and she couldn't bring herself out of fear to leave her home—irrational, of course. Reddington already knew where she lived.

He knew that this was her brownstone, where she and Don had lived. He knew that Don drove a navy Honda and that he left for work fifteen minutes earlier than Liz, for no reason other than that his dedication persistently surpassed hers despite either of their best intentions. Reddington would have known more than that, wouldn't he? He would have known that they had a cheap print of an Andy Warhol framed in their upstairs hallway, the hallway leading to their bedroom. He probably knew that they slept on white sheets, always cotton for comfort, never anything for aesthetics. More than that—he probably knew that he had first kissed her in that doorway, and that she had pulled him in from the rain. That she had smoothed back his wet hair, kissed his square jaw, fiddled thoughtlessly with the buttons of his shirt even though her fingers were cold enough that their tips were deprived of feeling and that Don had slid his fingers up the small of her back beneath her shirt and that they had hid that secret from the world until suddenly it was unbearable and she needed him and he needed her and they couldn't be silent any—

She could talk herself in circles. And she did, floating between fear and optimism when left to her own devices. He invaded her life—but she was so weak in the face of his bait.

It was only natural that Jolene had been chomping at the bit when she called Elizabeth later that afternoon. She had so many questions, and it seemed only a limited amount of breath with which to ask them. Elizabeth's replies were brief and vague in nature, bordering on curt. It hadn't been her intention to recall the details in so standoffish a manner, but it struck her as inappropriate to explain to anyone, even a trusted confidante, what she had just stumbled into.

She did consider it, even early on, to be a stumble. It was easier to put it that way: a blunder that she had unwittingly made, rather than willingly succumbing to the request of a criminal on a sentimental whim. Reddington seemed to know plenty about her. There was a very real possibility that his lure was fabricated, a mirage to satisfy a girl who had grown up too fast and was starved for a vision of family. She tried not to dwell on it.

Jolene had, understandably, lost patience with her early on. She was a bubbly girl with an attention span that relied on reciprocity; if she sensed that her conversation partner was not prepared to cave and spill the gory details, she moved on. She was appropriate like that, and Elizabeth valued this quality in her friend. Jolene allowed her to dismiss the entire thing as being "a bit of a waste of time," adding, "He's a bit old for me."

Elizabeth knew it wasn't practical to hide forever, but she fought with herself until Monday morning. She considered this to be a true test.

It didn't take long before the current of the post office swept her up. She hadn't even had a chance to remove her coat before she was addressed.

"Keen, we got something!"

It didn't matter what Bryan Goodwin actually said after that. He could have said that the building was on fire, or that his mother had passed, or that she had spinach between her teeth. He could have said anything in the world, and her heart would still have raced the same way. It was not because he was devastatingly handsome—although he was, and was not often allowed to forget it—and it was not because she felt any inclination whatsoever to impress him. Indeed, she fancied the reverse to be true. No, her heart raced only because he played for the good guys. She was on their home turf, but she felt as if she was playing an away game. Guilt displaced her from her kin, and she nauseously lifted her hand in greeting to Bryan.

"On what?"

"On Briggs," the look that he gave her was slightly incredulous. They had been working this case particularly hard over the last week, and it wasn't at all like her to lose track of these things. "We got something from our tip line."

Someone made the mistake of calling him "The New Ressler." Of course, that person had later apologised. It was inappropriate under any circumstances to speak so of the dead, never mind in the presence of their lover. Elizabeth had responded graciously, saying that he wasn't far off. She lied. She could see the differences. Everything about them was difference. Donald had instincts, and even his impulses seemed calculated; Bryan was different, with his decisions less natural and more distinctly methodical. He was by the book, certainly, but he abided by it not because he believed in it, but because he relied on it to perform efficiently. Maybe she was a nitpicker, but she had to be. Her job was to paint accurate portraits of people, and she was exceedingly good at it. She saw plainly that Bryan was a decent man, and not half-bad in the field, but he was—well, he would never be dear to her.

Perhaps for the better.

A bit of distance was what she wanted in that moment—distance from Reddington, distance from the FBI. It didn't matter which. Distance from someone—but it was the last thing that she could afford. Neither party would tolerate it. Even in the early days of this arrangement with Reddington, this, she understood, was an unequivocal truth.

Bryan waved Meera over. Elizabeth couldn't help but feel another wave of illness crash over her. Meera knew her better than anyone else on the team.

"How are you feeling?"

"Better," she answered lamely, "Thanks."

"Boss!"

Everyone had the tendency to look when someone called this, powered by self-importance and the desire to know that someone considered them as their leader. Ultimately, the title fell ambiguously over the group as one of the techs scurried over, cordless phone in hand.

"We have a call on our tip line."

Bryan raised his hands in the air, gesturing as if to say so what?

"He says he'll only speak to Elizabeth Keen."

"Hello, Lizzie. I've had an awful morning. Tell me something nice."

She almost dropped the phone. Her heart leapt to her throat, and she waited mutely for a moment, trying to remain composed. Was this line monitored? What could he say to her here? "Do you have anything to report to the FBI?" she said evenly, unable to meet Bryan's eye and instead opting to lean, feigning nonchalance, against the table.

"Do I? I don't know. Have you ever tried bacopa monnieri? I hear it does wonders for one's memory."

She realised then that he hadn't wanted to say anything to her, nothing particularly. He just wanted to remind her that he was out there. As if she could forget.

"No," she was relieved that she still sounded so steady. She was regaining her footing bit by bit. Still leaning against the edge, she lifted her eyes to Bryan and offered only the faintest shake of her head, indicating that this was a perfect waste of time. "I can't say that I have."

"Huh," said the voice at the other end of the line. "I'll call back if it comes to me."

Sounding vaguely exasperated, she managed to say, "Thank you for your time."

When she hung up, she hid her trembling fingers in pockets and shrugged as she spoke, leaving her associates with a brief, "Nothing."

The irony of her own words turned her stomach. Bryan just shrugged.

"I've been bonding with your lover, Red. She's fun, isn't she?"

His index finger, skirting over the lightbulb's screw cap.

"You should join us, Red," his accent. His slur. His thumb, with a distinct smear of blood along its knuckle, pressed against Liz's jaw.

Her eyes, wide with panic. Straining her neck. Anything but to bite down.

His finger, tipping her head further and further back.

"No pressure."