A/N Final chapter! Reddington bets on the long play, leaving Liz wondering if fairy tales can ever come true. Angst/Romance/the long play. Disclaimed. I really hope you've enjoyed this fic, please do review! My new fic, Heat, will be coming soon… ;-) NTD.
As soon as he hung up, Reddington snapped the cell phone in two and stood in silence, breathing hard. He couldn't be angry at Sam. He'd done the only thing he could. Besides, Raymond Reddington could disappear in sixty seconds, and Sam knew that. He just wanted his little girl home safe – that was something Reddington understood.
His mind went suddenly to the files of the Major's operatives. He'd delayed and delayed but in truth he'd known at first glance who the candidate would be: Jacob Phelps, a young but exceptionally gifted street kid the Major had raised and trained into a highly skilled white collar operative. The kid was damaged for sure – probably a psychopath - but had an impressive resume and a remarkably unthreatening appearance for a professional liar and hitman. The Major had recommended him personally. Jacob Phelps AKA Tom Keen was the one into whose hands he would entrust her safety. It was a decision that, years later, he would bitterly regret.
He glanced up and saw the girl looking at him questioningly, utterly unaware of how lovely she was in the lamplight, the folds of her robe falling gracefully around her and the rose in her hand dark against her pale skin.
"What's going on?" She asked quietly.
"It appears that your colleagues at the FBI have made some progress in determining your whereabouts. I expect they'll be here to rescue you before long" he said evenly.
Liz frowned. "I don't need rescuing."
Reddington looked at her fondly before speaking in a resigned tone. "Perhaps not. But this changes things. Regrettably the time has come for you to go home. Go back to your job, Lizzie. Spend some time with your father…I'm sure he misses you."
She rose to her feet, her blue eyes wide with dismay. "No" she whispered. "I know you think you're protecting me but you don't get to send me away like this, not after tonight…"
She choked back a sob and he walked to her, drawing her gently to him, stroking her hair and kissing the top of her head as she rested her head on his chest, her body tense. "Shhhhh, sweet girl" he soothed. "Everything's going to be ok."
Suddenly she broke away from him, her eyes shining. "No, it won't be! They're coming for us, so we need to leave now or stay and fight!" she said urgently. "Either way I'll need a gun. I may not carry a firearm but I'm trained to use one. We need to move now!"
As he listened to her his stomach crumpled in sickening realization. He had wanted to possess her, mind and body, to make her totally his…and he had succeeded. She was prepared to fight her own people, to give up her entire life for him, he who was so corrupt and undeserving of her love.
"These are your colleagues, Lizzie" he responded gently. "Your brethren. Are you really prepared to maim them? To take their lives?"
She ran a hand distractedly through her hair, her voice faltering. "I don't know. God, I don't know anything anymore. We need to go."
He stood quietly for a moment, regarding her thoughtfully, his expression pained. Finally he turned and walked to the scotch decanter on the dresser. "Very well. Let's have one for the road. Toast goodbye to the old place – these four walls have served us admirably."
"You can't be serious! We don't have time, we need to move now!"
"No need to panic Lizzie" he said, calmly fixing the drinks. "I never take up residence anywhere without a number of contingency plans in place. I can disappear in sixty seconds - in fact I offer that particular package to clients. Here" he said, handing her a glass of scotch.
He raised his own tumbler to toast, his eyes a little glassy. "To this ostentatious old house…to the treasured memories I shall take from it…and to you, Elizabeth."
"To us" she said determinedly, taking a sip from her glass.
He watched her closely for a few moments, his jaw tight. "I need you to sit down, Lizzie" he said quietly.
"I get that you have a plan and you're probably used to the FBI coming after you but I'm not, and I can't just hang out here and wait till the last minute!"
Reddington's lip twitched, his expression strained. "Elizabeth, you need to sit down." His tone was harder this time, almost stern.
"Did you not hear me?" she said sharply. "We need to go – why do you keep telling me to sit down?"
Finally he sighed and smiled at her sadly. "Because in about thirty seconds you'll be unconscious. I don't want you to hit your head when you fall."
She paused and her lips parted slightly in shock as she registered what he had said. She looked at the tumbler in her hand as numbness began to creep over her, the patterns in the carpet swirling in her peripheral vision like corn fields on a windy day. She stepped backwards shakily until her legs hit the chaise and he walked to her quickly in great strides, wrapping his arm around her waist to support her. He removed the glass gently from her hand and she looked up at him, blinking and confused.
"Why are you doing this?" she said, stricken.
He pressed a long kiss to her forehead, cradling her head in his hand as she clutched feebly at him. "It's for the best" he said quietly into her ear, his voice deep and hypnotic as the drug coursed through her. "I promise you're going to be ok sweetheart. We will meet again, when the time is right. One day, we're going to make a great team."
Shortly after, he felt her body go limp and lifted her smoothly into his arms.
"I'm doing this because I love you" he breathed.
Liz woke lying on her bed upstairs in the grand house. She heard voices around her and felt pressure on her wrist. Her mouth was so dry and the world was spinning, but she managed to focus on the man standing next to her bed who was rather aggressively feeling for a pulse.
"She's alive – get a medic in here!" he commanded to the persons swarming the room.
The man looked down at her, his jaw set in a grim line, his regulation haircut made no less comical by the fact that he was ginger.
"Agent Scott, I'm Special Agent Donald Ressler with the FBI, Washington Field Office. It's over – you're gonna be fine" he said stiffly.
She looked around at the men in standard issue Kevlar tearing her bedroom apart, opening drawers, moving furniture. "Nothing, sir" one of them said loudly. "The whole place is pristine, like no one was ever here."
Liz licked her dry lips. "I don't need rescuing" she slurred, her tongue feeling thick and heavy.
"Sure" the agent responded sarcastically. "Where's that medic?" he yelled abrasively, his hand on his hips.
She hauled her heavy limbs into a half sitting position and noticed a single red rose lying on the night stand. Confused, she reached for it, desperate to connect with her hazy memories of the night. Agent Ressler batted her hand away.
"Please don't touch anything Agent Scott." He turned and gestured to one of his men, pointing at the rose. "Bag this."
Liz was about to protest when an ambulance crew arrived and surrounded her. They rolled up the sleeve of her silk robe, took her blood pressure and shone lights in her eyes which made her head spin even more. It was as though she was falling even though she was lying down. She couldn't think. Why was everything so jumbled?
She looked up at Agent Ressler and asked the only question she could think of.
"What the hell happened?"
"You've been missing for weeks, Agent. Your mobile psych team figured it was payback for your work on the Lorca case but the trail went cold. My team was already in New York working on another case, we got called to assist in the search for you."
"The Lorcas…" she said slowly.
"Yeah" the ginger agent continued. "That's what we all figured, but I gotta say this sleeping beauty shit isn't their MO. I reckon your team will have a lot of questions for you once you've been checked out."
Liz's cheeks reddened but thankfully by that point the paramedics were wrapping her in blankets and shifting her onto a gurney.
Once she was strapped in she looked up at the man. "Agent Ressler? You said you were here on another case. What was it?"
"I'm leading a dedicated task force" he said grandly. "We're hunting a wanted fugitive we think was in New York – nothing that concerns you."
Liz's heart tripped in her chest. "Who is it? Who are you looking for?" She asked as innocently as she could.
Agent Ressler waved his hand dismissively. "That's classified, Agent Scott."
"But you're close?"
She watched the agent's shoulders sag a little. "Honestly? Our guy's in the wind. But we did some good while we're here - we found you, a missing agent, alive. That's a win in my book." He turned to the paramedics. "Take her to hospital – and notify her family she's been found."
The next few days were a total blur. Whatever drug he had given her was so powerful she struggled to hold on to her memories, the events of the week merging and distorting in her mind. Perhaps he had wanted her to forget completely – it pained her deeply to think that he would purposefully take her memories of him away. Conversations and gestures and emotions twisted in her brain, but she could never forget the feel of his hands on her body or the lulling sound of his gentle voice. Whatever else, she knew he had been real. The man who rescued her, and loved her more deeply and completely than she had ever been loved.
In hospital she was thoroughly examined and photographed, and careful notes were taken regarding the treatment she had been given for her injuries. Her wounds had been stitched impeccably, the doctor had said. Someone had looked after her very well. Someone had cared.
When the inevitable questions were asked, she wasn't able to tell them much. She remembered being taken from outside work, being chained in a factory or warehouse for a time. She knew that she'd been moved to the grand house, but knew nothing about how she got there or where it was. All of that was perfectly true.
Eventually they found the warehouse, but, like the house, it was pristine with no sign that anyone had ever been there. Not a single member of the Lorca family had been seen since her disappearance. She thought of gunpowder and blood and roses, and stayed quiet.
It turned out that the estate wasn't far from where she had been held; empty, isolated and private - the logical place to go with a female victim, they'd said uncomfortably. But as for who had taken her? Their guess was as good as hers, she'd told them regretfully. She'd been drugged and remembered almost nothing.
Her colleagues were only too pleased that she wasn't able to help; the strange, uptight newbie who'd shown them all up with her work on the Lorca case had been taken down a peg or two. They were happy to fill in the blanks for her, theorizing that a member of the Lorca family or an associate had taken her themselves, either out of guilt or to satisfy some twisted fantasy. It was a good enough story and she clung to it; on some days she almost believed it.
But at night when the dreams came, dreams of fire and rabbits, silken robes and roses, his voice soothed her through her sleep, as intimate and real as the gentle, erotic caress of his murderous hands had been. On those nights she clung to the name, the name she claimed she never knew, the name she would never forget: Raymond 'Red' Reddington.
After that, everything moved so quickly. Her beloved, stoic father informed her as gently as he could that he had cancer, that perhaps he would make it, perhaps not. She didn't tell him about the man in her dreams, and all Sam said was that that he loved her oh so dearly and was mighty glad she was home and safe. He did beat the cancer, in fact, but with a strong chance of recurrence it's best to live each day as it comes, Butterball, he'd said. Forget the past, and look only to the future.
A year passed, and then another, the shadow of those strange weeks fading like her memories into the background while she advanced her career and planned a perfect future. She imagined a husband and a park and a little girl who would walk between them. Soon there was a man who asked her marry him, but there was just something missing. It was nothing she could put her finger on though, and a scrap of a dream is not enough to build a life with, she thought sadly. Fairy tales do not happen in real life. And so when the next man asked for her hand, a sweet, unthreatening school teacher, she said yes.
She was so happy and gave little thought to her past until her wedding day, when among the gifts she saw a familiar black velvet box. There was no gift wrap - no card even - but she knew what it was, even before she opened the box and saw the delicate necklace of sapphires and diamonds, she knew, and she cried as though her heart would never be whole again. As though it never had been.
The dreams came more frequently after that; fire, and blood and roses and lying in his arms. Sometimes he would be carrying her from the dreadful cell in which the Lorcas had imprisoned her. Other times he was carrying her through a raging fire, the flames licking at his back, but in those dreams she was just a child, her screams piercing the night from sometime long ago. Some nights, he would speak to her. Sometimes he told her everything was going to be ok, sometimes he asked her who it was she really wanted, his gentle voice calling to her through the darkness like a beacon from a lost and forgotten home.
Finally, the day came that she heard that voice again in waking hours.
Her first day in a new job. A box. A man in chains with a voice that sounded like home.
"Agent Keen, what a pleasure."
And she remembered it then, like it had always been a part of her, an old Russian tale from her past. A hideous creature living in darkness, the merchant's daughter his only light or pleasure in the world. How he loses her to a deep sleep while he must fight a long and bitter war to bring peace to the land. How she might awaken to fight at his side. How he would finally come for her. His true love.
The Scarlet Flower.
The End.