A/N Red and Liz deal with the aftermath of his revelation, leaving them both with difficult decisions to make. Warnings: Smangst (emphasis on the angst). This is very sad – please bear with me (and them) through this – I promise it will be worth it. As ever, not mine and reviews make my day!

She sat frozen on the sofa for several long minutes, her hands shaking, and her eyes wide and unfocused. He watched her intently, scanning her face to gauge her reaction, whilst panic swelled like a tidal wave in his own chest. It was only then that he truly acknowledged to himself that he had never, ever intended to tell her, and would not have done had she not put everything together so quickly and asked him directly. But she had, and he couldn't lie to her. He watched helplessly as her face shut down in shock in front of him. He reached for her hand but she withdrew it sharply with a strangled sob and then she was scrambling up, stumbling towards the door.

He sprang up and grabbed her, spinning her round to face him. Her body was tense and she wouldn't look at him, remaining brittle and frozen in his grasp. His chest was painfully tight and he felt his own breath coming in shuddering gasps, his voice shaking.

"Lizzie, let me explain-"

She closed her eyes and shook her head, her whole body shaking now, her breathing labored.

"Sweetheart you need to calm down and breathe-"

She let out another sob, a terrible keening wail and tried weakly to pull back from him.

His stomach turned to iron. He was losing control of the situation, something he never allowed himself to do – he couldn't afford to. When he spoke again the tremor in his voice had vanished, his tone now firm and commanding.

"Elizabeth look at me."

When she didn't comply he took her jaw between his fingers and thumb and lifted her face, forcing her to meet his eye.

"You asked me a question and you will not walk away from me before I have answered you properly. Do I make myself clear?"

She swallowed and inclined her head fractionally. He nodded and released her then, loathing the terror he'd seen when she'd finally looked at him.

"Good. Now sit down and take some deep breaths."

She seemed frozen to the spot and so he placed a hand on the back of her neck and steered her gently back to the sofa where she sat down, her gaze now fixed on him apprehensively.

In the midst of her fog of fear and heartbreak she expected him to launch straight into a justification of his actions, justification which in his warped, egotistic mind he would expect her to accept. She was surprised when he poured a glass of water from a decanter on the table and handed it to her. She accepted it wordlessly and took a sip, the cool liquid soothing her dry mouth.

He picked up a dining chair and placed it in front of the sofa, opting to sit opposite her rather than at her side. When he spoke again his voice was gentle, and tinged with emotion.

"Lizzie, I think you know by now that I was the friend who took you to Sam after the fire and asked him to care for you."

She nodded slowly.

"I explained to him that your father had died. He was concerned that you had a mother who might come looking for you, and I told him the truth - that your mother had disappeared that night and I never expected to see her again." He paused, his lip trembling a little. "That your mother had left you." He dropped his head. "I never, ever wanted to tell you this Lizzie."

Liz stared at him from the sofa, her eyes bright and fiery. "Keep talking" she said suddenly, her voice quiet and hard. "Tell me what you did!"

Red swallowed. "I was young and inexperienced - new to naval intelligence. When Katerina Rostova approached me prepared to divulge Russian secrets it was a coup for me. Until that point she had been the stuff of myth. I had no idea that this…alliance would change my life forever. That it would bind me inextricably to a child who, at that point, I didn't even know existed. Weeks after the fire she contacted me. After she learned that I had survived she suspected that I had taken you. She wanted you back."

As Liz listened she couldn't stop her hands shaking. "But you didn't give me back" she whispered. "You kept me from her."

She watched as Red's face fell, the creases around his eyes deepening. His voice was filled with sorrow. "I had been betrayed…they took everything from me. By that point I was trapped in the web of a devastating conspiracy and my only hope was a blackmail file detailing their activities. I wanted to use fulcrum to expose them, but the night of the fire Katerina tried to persuade me to return it to them. I realized I had been played from the start. It was no coincidence that she had reached out to me. So yes, I kept you from her. I went to meet with her at an old safe house, with a trusted colleague. It was a trap. We were ambushed by her and her people."

Liz frowned in confusion. "A trap? I don't understand. She wanted me…"

Red sighed, his expression anguished. "She wanted the fulcrum, Lizzie. When they realized that you and the fulcrum were gone they fired at us. My colleague was killed. And I…" Red shook his head, unable to meet her eye.

"You shot my mother."

Red nodded, his hand covering his eyes. "I tried, Lizzie. To save her. She was your mother. She had answers I desperately needed. But I couldn't."

He exhaled loudly and a heavy silence followed.

"Weakness and shame…" It was so quiet he barely heard her. He raised his head to look at her, his eyes red-rimmed.

"Lizzie?"

"You killed her and you told me she died of weakness and shame. You're not just a monster" she breathed. "You're inhuman."

His cheeks colored at her words and his eyes seemed to grow darker. "You have every right to be angry. I don't deserve anything else from you. But as for what I told you…At just four years old you had more courage and strength than Katerina Rostova" he said scathingly. "You protected her from her brute husband, while Katerina ran and left you – a little girl – to die in a burning house. When she learned you had survived she tried to use you to get the fulcrum. I cannot begin to fathom the shame in that."

Before he had finished speaking Liz was on her feet and coming at him, her face now wet with silent tears and contorted with grief. She slapped him as hard as she could, the palm of her hand and its scar that served as a dreadful reminder of that night colliding with his cheek with stinging force. He remained seated and didn't move a muscle to stop her. Sobbing, she slapped him again, and he didn't respond other than to close his eyes against the impact.

"Stand up" she choked. "Stand up!"

He did as she asked and rose slowly to his feet in front of her, readying himself for whatever punishment she felt fit to deliver. She leant forward and he braced himself for her to punch him, or spit in his face. He was shocked to the core when she pressed her mouth to his, her lips trembling.

"Lizzie what are you doing?" His voice was raw.

She said nothing and silenced him with another kiss, fiercer this time, her teeth sinking into his lip hard enough to draw blood. He grasped her shoulders to hold her back and licked the blood from his lip. Her eyes were dark and wet, while a metallic taste swirled in his mouth. His earlier arousal returned with a vengeance, now a wretched and unwelcome feeling under the circumstances. Desperate to conceal it from her he took a step back, but she moved with him, pressing her body against his while her delicate hands tore at his suit jacket. She pushed it down his arms to the floor and started fumbling with his tie, all the while trying to breathe through shuddering sobs.

He understood then; much as she wanted to hurt him, she wanted to hurt herself more and she wanted to use him to do it. He understood too well how pain makes people self-destruct, but he wouldn't be the instrument of her undoing, not now. Shaken, he took hold of her wrists as gently as he could. "Stop sweetheart. Trust me you don't want it like this. This isn't what you want."

Enraged by his words – his rejection - she wrenched out of his grasp, struggling and clawing at his face like a wild animal. "What I want?" she screamed. "What I want is for none of this ever to have happened!"

She paused, shaking when she saw blood well to the surface in the lines left by her nails on his cheek. Instinctively she stepped back, expecting him to strike her, to defend himself, but he remained still. After a moment he removed a white cotton handkerchief from his vest pocket and held it to his face, his eyes wide and glassy.

When she spoke again her voice was quiet, but he took in every word like a brand on his poor, corrupt soul. "I've spent my life profiling criminals. Some of the worst people there are. People who hurt me. Who terrified me. I've been betrayed, deceived and used by my own husband for years. But I have never hated anyone as much as I do you."

He watched, frozen as she turned and fled from the room. Finally he sat down heavily in a chair, and after a while removed the handkerchief from his cheek to inspect it. The white cotton weave was neatly patterned with deep red lines, so uniform it was almost as though it had been designed that way. He couldn't have expected her to react in any other way. He deserved worse.

He thought numbly that she couldn't be left alone this way. He decided to seek out Clara, to instruct her to go to her, to try and alleviate her pain somehow, although if there was a way to eliminate the kind of pain she was feeling he had yet to discover it. Then he remembered that Dembe had helped her with her therapy in the garden that afternoon, that Clara was no longer needed full-time. He couldn't ask Dembe to go to her. He was too ashamed, and deep down he knew that it wasn't what she needed. Dabbing the handkerchief against his face one more time, he took a deep breath and made for the stairs.

He opened her bedroom door slowly and saw her on the bed, her body curled in a ball of grief and dwarfed by the imposing four-poster on which she lay. He closed the door and she sat up, her face red and raw from crying. They looked at one another in silence for a moment, and then Liz raised her hands to her face to wipe her eyes.

"I don't hate you" she said finally.

"You should."

She sighed in defeat. "For what? For defending yourself? For saving my life? You've saved me more times than I can count." She shook her head. "It's easier to hate you than admit the truth. Of who my parents were. That they cared more about a thing - the fulcrum - than me. That I wasn't important" she choked.

Red frowned and shook his head. "You were important, Lizzie. You are everything." He paused before speaking again, his face as open as she had ever seen it. "That night was an extraordinary turning point in both our lives. We had both lost so much, yet we both survived." His voice shook and he looked away from her for a moment. "What I came to feel for you… I had no right. Perhaps if I had been able to care for you myself all those years ago I would love you now as Sam did. As a f-"

"Don't" she cut him off sharply.

He watched as she put her hand on the bed, a silent invitation. He went to sit beside her and she raised her hand gently to the welts on his cheek. She leant forward and placed a gentle kiss there before moving to his mouth. She kissed him and it was sweet, and tender and heart-breaking. It felt like forgiveness and he realized with sickening clarity that he didn't want it; the thing he'd craved for twenty-seven years was now within his grasp and he couldn't accept it. He was a monster, and the only way he knew how to be with her was as a libertine, her deceiver - her captor.

When she crawled into his lap and allowed her crimson robe to fall from her shoulders, the material as red as the blood on his cheek, part of him wanted to stop her, terrified of what it might mean. Instead, he shed his many layers as she demanded and prepared himself to receive the gift of which he was so undeserving. He laid her fragile body down as gently as a freshly-cut rose and made love to her with all that he was, each stroke a hopeless prayer for transformation into someone worthy of her. She clung to him desperately with her arms about his neck and he felt her tears wet his shoulder as their bodies rocked together towards an inevitable and devastating completion. When they finally shattered in one another's embrace he heard the words he dreaded, barely a whisper in his ear - "I forgive you."

~BL~BL~BL~BL~BL~BL~BL~BL~BL~BL~BL~

The next morning he armored himself in his customary three piece - a dove gray wool-silk blend – and busied himself in the library of the house, waiting for the moment she would come to him. He looked up when the door opened and she was there, dressed, with a small carryall in her hand. He leant back against the desk.

"You're leaving."

He watched numbly as her teeth sank into her lower lip.

"Please understand. You know I have to. After everything that's happened… Now that I have immunity I need to build a new life for myself, a new identity. I need to do it for myself, Red."

He stared at her, his mind racing. When he didn't respond she walked over to him and his hand closed around the desk drawer behind him, a drawer in which he had placed a syringe filled with a sedative earlier that morning. When she reached him he saw tears glistening in her eyes. She offered him the most beautiful smile before leaning up to kiss his cheek. "Thank you" she whispered. "Thank you for everything." He stood there, paralyzed as she retreated again, turning to look at him once more before closing the door behind her.

No he wanted to scream. Don't thank me, sweetheart – show me that fire, that anger. Don't forgive me. Don't let me go. He thought again of forcing her to stay – that was something the monster understood. There were many ways it could be achieved. It may not even be necessary to physically subdue her, he thought. She needed time to adjust to what she had learned about that night, to be able to ask him questions that he would answer gladly if it gave him the opportunity to help her to know herself - and him – better.

There were also other considerations. She was still weak. He couldn't reasonably allow her to leave when she could still be a target for displaced, vengeful cabal members. It wouldn't have to be violent at all – he could be gentle. He could convince her it was best for her, that he was best for her. No one could possibly love her more deeply or completely than he. He could look after her properly, help her get stronger and then teach her so many things – languages, French cooking, martial arts…some parts of his business enterprises. He wouldn't touch her again until she was ready. He would never force her.

He raised his hand to his mouth, horrified at himself and the thoughts she engendered. It would have been so easy. She had been right there, kissing his cheek, tender and unsuspecting. It would have taken less than ten seconds to pin her down on the desk and administer the drug, and in those ten seconds he would have sealed both of their fates and damned himself forever.

The door opened and he looked up sharply to see Dembe enter the room. The bodyguard stopped in his tracks as his eyes settled on the deep scratch marks on Red's face, unmistakably from fingernails. He'd seen marks like that before. He'd made marks like that before, in another life. Seeing his expression, Red raised his hand to his cheek. "It's not what you think. I told her the truth."

Dembe nodded and spoke quietly. "Elizabeth has asked me to take her to the airport. I would like to help her."

Red stared at him.

"You must let her go now" Dembe continued softly.

Red shook his head, his expression bleak. "I don't think I can do that."

Dembe nodded gently. "You can, my friend. For her, you can. And I shall pray that her heart returns to you."

At that Red took a shallow, shuddering breath and brought his hand to his chest with a grunt.

"Raymond! Your chest-"

Red shook his head and lowered his hand. "Go. Take her where she wants to go."

"You are not well-"

Red looked up, his eyes like fire. "I said go!" He took a few deeper breaths and his voice softened. "I'm fine. Make sure she has everything she needs – money, accommodation… everything she needs Dembe. Take care of it." Dembe nodded, his eyes filled with sadness and respect, but Red had already turned away. He waited until Dembe had left before he allowed a single, gruff sob to be torn from his throat.

TBC