Archive of Our Own

Liz couldn’t breathe.

She stumbled away from Baz and into her apartment, but leaving the scene behind didn’t ease the pressure off her lungs. She shut the door behind her without meeting Baz’s curious eyes, but her hands trembled and lip quivered. She leaned her forehead against the door and clutched her chest, but she…

Couldn’t… 

Breathe.

She had already been struggling to keep it together after her assault outside the grocery store, and just when deliverance in the form of her first real friend was at hand, it was yanked out of her grasp.

With Zoe’s offer of companionship—of friendship with no strings attached, despite her status as a convicted felon—came the first deep, stable breath Liz had been able to take in months. And then it was gone. Zoe was gone.

Because of Reddington.

Could she have anything without him butting in? Had she ever had anything free of his influence? Anything fully to herself?

A gasp ripped its way out of her throat as her knees buckled and she fell against the door. She slid to the floor with one harrowing thought pressing against her: Had she?

Red had not only known her as a child but had changed the course of her life forever. He had saved her from that fire and erased her memories of it. Then he’d given her to Sam, the man who would become the greatest direct influence on her.

Sam in turn had raised her to exercise extreme caution in leaving an impression in any way; while she now understood letting her do otherwise would have been too dangerous, the truth remained that she had never let people in growing up.

As a woman full-grown, she chose to focus on her education, then had trouble connecting with people as a prodigy of psychology. Her marriage occurred and fell apart because of Red. Which, of course, had been when Red really entered her life—strolling into FBI custody like the eye of a hurricane ripping her life apart.

Now, she might have incredible friends at the Post Office, but only thanks to Red. The task force did good work, but at Red’s discretion and direction.

As a field agent, she seldom profiled anymore, and it wasn’t like she would have much to offer these days—Red did better than her, overturning any profile she made as if he hadn’t taken enough from her.

So in the few sectors of her life in which Red hadn’t involved himself, other circumstances had ensured she left no memorable impact, found no place for herself. Who was she, really?

Not in the sense of who she was to Red or who her birth parents were. What did she have to speak to her existence, her personhood?

“Nothing,” she sobbed, staring at her shaking hands with wide, terrified eyes. “I have nothing. I am nothing.”

Maybe she was being dramatic.

Okay, fine, even in her hysterical state she could admit she was probably being dramatic. But that didn’t matter—not then, not to her. She was alone in her apartment on a cold, caliginous night. Who cared if she let herself fall apart, if she let go of all rationality and just wept?

Who cared if she did anything?

Red could undo any accomplishment she attained with a phone call, uproot her entire life with a wave of his hand.

What was her life, if not the product of Red’s plans and whims? Who was she, if not the product of Red’s meddling?

She had no one and no thing that Red hadn’t given her. He made decisions for her, moved people in and out of her world without notice, withheld information she longed for. Did it matter that he supposedly did so for her protection? He lurked in and around every corner—this imposing presence looming large over her life.

And she was left feeling so, so small.

Uncaring that the foetal position would only exacerbate that feeling, Liz curled up right there and then, at the foot of her front door in a puddle of her tears.

Her crying had stopped, but primarily because she didn’t have the energy to complete more than two tasks at once and decided to prioritise internally losing it and breathing. Her lungs still burned with panic, her whole body still shook, but at least she could suck in oxygen again.

Her little spiral had been cathartic, but it had hollowed her out. She was exhausted and weak and, goodness, she just wanted a good, tight hug. But who would give it to her?

She’d rather not give the task force any more reasons to see her as inferior; her family had all died; Tom had long since abandoned her; she had no friends. To whom else could she turn?

Her eyes slid shut in defeat as her mind provided an unwanted answer to that. But even as she berated herself for thinking his name, she was pulling out her phone and dialing Nick’s Pizza.

The ringing echoed throughout the deathly empty apartment and Liz started. What was she doing? Red had already demolished so many of her walls without permission—she refused to help him take more from her. Refused to give up anything else to him.

Just as her thumb moved over the End Call button, logic broke through to her. Red would worry if she hung up without telling him why she’d called, and the absolute last thing she needed was him appearing on her doorstep.

But maybe she could get an explanation out of him, and that would be nice.

She let the call connect, anxiety clawing up her throat.

“Lizzie?”

“Red.”

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” She could hear the frown in his voice. “You sound shaky.”

Liz scowled, mustering as much anger as she could even as her heart raced with the extraneous effort. “What’s wrong, Red, is you installing men across my apartment to stalk me ’round the clock.”

“They’re not stalking you, Lizzie,” he said. The gentle understanding in his voice made her hackles rise—dammit, she provoked him so he wouldn’t comfort her. “They’re just protecting you.”

A wet, bitter laugh tumbled out of her mouth. “Protecting me,” she mocked. “You act like everything you do shields me. Well, guess what, Reddington? I’ve never felt more naked, more vulnerable, more violated than where you’re involved.”

“Sweetheart—”

“I can’t even have neighbours because of you. I have nobody, Red!”

A stifling beat passed. Then: “You’ll always have me, Lizzie.”

“That’s not—!” Her voice faltered, and her hand tightened into a fist around her phone as genuine anger started to funnel through her, resentment and indignation whetting her words into an estoc narrow and sharp. “That’s not good enough.”

Red didn’t make a noise, but she could feel him recoil.

Her heart ached as she realised the hurt she must have inflicted. She knew she wasn’t in the right mental state to call him—to make any decision about him, whether it be letting him in or shutting him out—but now there was no taking it back.

One last tear leaking out and dripping down her face, she hung up and threw the phone across the room.

With that call, she had worn herself out even more—maybe more than she ever had in her life. She hated fighting with Red. Something about them felt all-consuming, fervid…inevitable. Something about them felt inextricably like fate.

But she hated giving in even more, especially when so much had already been taken from her.

She unfolded from her little ball of despair and rolled onto her back. Then a thought—so simple, so powerful—struck her.

Resisting fate, or whatever they were, would be an uphill climb with no summit? Fine, then she wouldn’t fight. But she wouldn’t give herself up, either.

She would let Red do what he would, but she would carve out a part of her life that would be completely, entirely hers. Untouched by him. Untouched by anyone but her.

Energy started to return to her, her body burning hot and bright with fuel other than anger. She needed a moment to recognise it, but she was sure—it was resolve. It was a passion she’d thought long dead. And it was hers.

What had been an illusory idea materialised in the abyss of distress the night before was rapidly solidifying into a plan. By the time she hurried into the Post Office, brushing past her coworkers and making a beeline for Aram’s desk, the plan had taken shape insofar her hands itched to reach out and touch it.

Although the physiological effects of her sob session had subsided and she could once again think and breathe clearly—if not easily—her resolve persisted. But she would need a little technical help to bring her plan to life.

“Agent Keen!” greeted Aram, eyes wide with surprise as she appeared at his side. “Good morning. What brings you in today? Does Mr. Reddington have a new name?”

Liz shook her head and shoved aside the pang of hurt at Aram’s confused frown—time had yet to accustom her to being reduced to a civilian consultant who needed a specific criminal wreaking havoc to come to work. Another thing ripped away.

“Actually, you can’t tell him I came to you today,” she said. “I don’t want to endanger you, so if he gives you a hard time, then you can tell him what I’m asking now. But I don’t think he’ll have any reason to suspect either of us.”

Aram’s eyes flicked from side to side. “Um, suspect us?” he said. “Suspect us of what?”

Liz took a deep breath—this was the point of no return, the first utterance she would give her brainchild. “I need a computer Red won’t be able to trace,” she said. “That he won’t pick up activity from poking around my Internet usage or whatever. Is that possible? Can you prepare that for me?”

“Yes, uh, I suppose,” said Aram. “What…? What are you…?”

“Remember how I said I didn’t want to endanger you?”

He gulped. “Okay, but I just… I couldn’t in good conscience fulfil this, um, this admittedly suspicious request without knowing what…”

“Why?” snapped Liz, her voice dipping low and dark. “Because I’m a felon?”

His eyes widened further, and Liz took a step back as if she’d been struck. Oh, gosh, she seriously needed to learn how to stop spewing words she couldn’t take back.

“I’m sorry,” she said with the murmur of a mother soothing an injured child. “I’m— That’s perfectly reasonable, Aram, of course. I… I want to be…” She swallowed, the words thicker and heavier than she expected. “I want to offer psychological counsel online.”

“Oh. That’s…” He blinked. “Oh. How come?”

Her left hand drifted to her right palm as she considered how much to tell Aram. “Well,” she started, forcing a chuckle. Play safe, play simple. “Being an FBI consultant doesn’t really take up all of my time…or, you know, pay the bills.”

The first part was true, although not an actual motivation for this decision. And the second part was a flat-out lie considering she planned to do this all pro bono. But dishonest or not, both parts proved much easier to present than the truth—than her heart.

“And I guess you want to know why Red can’t know.”

Aram nodded in that stiff but earnest way of his.

“Well…”

Options for what to do in her little carved-out corner of blissful existence had abounded, but she hadn’t needed too long to settle on an initiative to help people: though she took pride in her work with the task force, it was another aspect of her life Red, for better or worse, controlled.

And she wanted to reclaim the primary feature she had used to define herself before meeting Red: psychology. For it to mean anything, Red couldn’t know; otherwise, he would get involved, and this being entirely hers was sort of the point.

But she couldn’t tell Aram all that, could she?

Play safe, play simple, she reminded herself.

“Patient confidentiality,” she said, relaxing when Aram’s furrowed brow eased. “A precaution. You know how Red gets. Sometimes I feel like he’s suffocating me.”

She cleared her throat, taken aback by her own words. Were they accurate—was that truly how she felt? If not, why did she say that? Dammit, if yes, why did she say that?

Expression gentling with sympathy, Aram swivelled around and started typing on his computer. “I can imagine,” he said. “You should have seen him when we found out about your assault. He was livid, vehement—more homicidal than usual. I’d be surprised if he hasn’t been doing background checks on every passerby you encounter.”

She grimaced but managed to school her features in time as Aram turned back around with a frown.

“Speaking of which,” he said, “how are you?”

Memories of last night, of collapsing on the floor and sobbing into her hands, of endeavouring to soothe herself because she didn’t have anyone to turn to, flashed before her unbidden.

She forced them aside with a smile.

“Good, really good,” she said. “Call me when it’s ready, okay?”

Nodding, Aram gave her a soft smile that only made her stomach churn more odiously.

She hesitated a moment, unsure of what to do next, a wobbling sapling in a rushing river. But when she looked around at her coworkers, dozens of iterations of the life she wanted but would never be able to achieve, that river threatened to drown her.

She turned on her heel and left before it could.

For the next week, each breath was a struggle, a hurdle she had to make a conscious decision to jump. But after she got the call from Aram—got to feel her new laptop in her hands—the jump came a little more easily.

And as the hours on her secret computer passed, time spent fighting for her sense of self, she fought for her breath less and less.

She could get used to that.

In a way, she did. Within a couple of weeks, she had settled into a pattern or schedule of some sort—a comfort, at any rate. She found her groove helping people in such heavy situations they had sunk to the deep web for support.

Although Liz wasn’t a medical psychologist or licensed psychiatrist, her degree and her crescive experience with the seedy parts of the world were likely the best these people could get. And she was happy to be that for them, to be there for them.

Of course, her motives weren’t all noble—she got something out of the arrangement, too, and not only the sense of independence, of autonomy, that she’d planned.

The truth was she often found herself working with criminals looking to get out of the lifestyle and with criminal associates straining against the implications of such an attachment, situations she should have expected but hadn’t thought of.

In interacting with these people, she was getting more in touch with herself—after all, she had become both a felon and unwillingly ensnarled in the life of one—and…well, with Red, in a sense.

Instead of running in circles, running from her issues, running herself aground, Liz was moving towards something, going someplace. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, but the prospect filled her with excitement, purpose, vitality. She was discovering herself, settling into her skin.

She was living.

And not solely from scouring for cries for help in forums and from messaging people in distress. Working with the FBI, chasing Blacklisters, every aspect of her life brightened when viewed with a lens better calibrated—when she understood herself better.

Unfortunately, things carried on a bit tensely with Red.

Perhaps not tense, since she no longer begrudged him his place in her life and he so easily forgave her. But awkward. Uncertain. Which was ironic since, in the last few years, he had become the one certainty in her hectic world. And with her newfound self-assurance, that didn’t seem like such a curse anymore.

Liz wanted to rectify her and Red’s relationship, to get them to a better place. A stabler place, now that she herself was more stable. But for all of her counselling other people, she had no idea how to fix what she had broken.

How fortunate, then, that fate would not be hindered by a banality like human emotional constipation.

“The Boo Hag?” scoffed Ressler, squinting at the screens and boards displaying intel on Red’s newest Blacklister.

“Now, Donald, don’t sniff at the most well-known character of Gullah folklore,” chided Red. “The name might seem ridiculous to you, but say it to the right people and you strike fear right into their hearts.”

Samar leaned back against a desk and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve heard of this,” she said. “Isn’t a boo hag one of those sleep paralysis myths?”

“That,” mused Red, “or an actual skinless creature stealing people’s breath while they sleep.”

Liz arched an eyebrow. “Or this Blacklister.”

Red swivelled on his heel and grinned at her. “Yes, Lizzie, or this Blacklister.”

“That’s the boo hag I’m interested in,” cut in Cooper. “Tell us about her.”

“Ah, for once, you assume a woman when it’s a man,” said Red. “That is my hypothesis at least, but we’ll get to that. The Boo Hag, number one hundred and seventy-nine on the Blacklist, drugs and kidnaps socialites, then steals their identities.”

Ressler’s brow shot up. “Steals the identities of well-known, outgoing people?”

“Oh Donald, ever the skeptic,” sighed Red. He ambled over to the photos on the board and pointed to the appropriate ones as he went on. “The Boo Hag has his own special cocktail of drugs, which induces horrible nightmares and leaves the captive incredibly disoriented and incredibly vulnerable. That is how he gains entry into their accounts. He then dryboards them to get the info he needs to make the most of those accounts.”

Liz winced; dry asphyxiation had gained popularity as a torture method, given its balance of simplicity and ruthlessness perfect for the CIA’s repertoire of enhanced interrogation techniques. Due to a particular patient of hers from the dark web, she’d studied the aftereffects enough to know she hoped she never experienced it.

“Seems like a lot of effort,” remarked Ressler.

Aram nodded. “Identity theft occurs all the time to American citizens with little physical harm befalling them,” he said. “In fact, the statistic increases some sixteen percent every year. Nobody ever dies.”

“So why does the Boo Hag go through all this trouble?” asked Samar.

Red clucked his tongue and smiled. “Well, first of all… Agent Mojtabai, the Boo Hag, in all his years of milking every cash cow out there, has not killed a single victim.”

This time, Liz’s brow shot up. “He goes around drugging and torturing people in the spotlight, lets them live, and hasn’t been caught yet?”

“While in control of their lives, he ensures they won’t have enough social or financial capital upon return to pursue him,” explained Red, looking directly in her eyes as if four other people weren’t in the conversation. “He is also extremely skilled at picking his victims to maximise reward and minimise risk. Look for case files or news coverage on these victims, and you won’t find any. I’d go so far as to say I’m the only one who’s listened to their testimony.”

“But why?” she asked, repeating Samar’s objection with a frown. Some detail in all this seemed…distinctive…somehow. “Why all the trouble?”

“Practically speaking,” he answered, “I imagine he had the means and the opportunity to amass a lot of money, and he made use of them. If you mean why this particular way… Well, a healthy serving of greed, a pinch of sadism: that’ll do the trick.”

Red walked over to another board with photos of a half dozen or so vaguely familiar faces. After a moment, Liz recognised them as minor socialites in the District.

“Recently,” continued Red, “that serving of greed has gotten to our dear Boo Hag. He’s grown ambitiously dangerous and dangerously ambitious, blackmailing people in high places even after stealing their identities and releasing them back into the wild.”

Suddenly, every detail about this case seemed vaguely familiar. But why?

Ressler snorted. “Well, that explains why he’s on the Blacklist,” he said. “Threaten some of your people in high places, Reddington?”

Despite Ress’s provocation, Red gave him an easy smile. “Perhaps,” he said. “Are you prepared to overlook that in exchange for the Boo Hag’s real name?”

Cooper, who had been watching intently but silently, straightened. “You know his real name?”

Red made a noncommittal noise and waved a hand. “Know is such an undefinable term, Harold,” he said. “Do I have the justified true belief that the Boo Hag is the wine connoisseur Iestinus Aurum? Perhaps not, and Plato would be displeased. Do I have evidence and a good feeling that the Boo Hag is the wine connoisseur Iestinus Aurum? Why, yes.”

Iestinus Aurum… That name rang through her head as if it already knew its way. Had she heard it before? Wouldn’t she remember a name that unique? Or would its peculiarity make it all the more probable for her to gloss it over?

“What is this evidence?” asked Ressler, nose scrunched in poorly concealed disdain.

Red clasped his hands together before gesturing to the third board, at its centre a medium-sized picture of who Liz presumed was Iestinus Aurum and various, smaller documents and photographs around the edges like plots on a mind map. “Ladies and gentlemen of the FBI, Iestinus Aurum,” presented Red. “Most simply call him Stein. He’s married to—”

Recognition slammed into Liz, and she couldn’t hold back her gasp of surprise. Stein. She knew a Stein—a sadistic, greedy, manipulative Stein.

Everyone turned towards her, each with their idiosyncratic expression of curiosity twisting their visage. Concern even contorted Red’s face, and heat rose up her neck.

“Um,” she said. “Sorry. I think… Never mind. Please, Red, continue.”

He surveyed her with a pinched brow once again, but after meeting her gaze and receiving her best reassuring smile, he turned around as requested.

“Stein is married to Rosemary Aurum, née Lawrence—a trophy wife, only seen outside their estate for social events. Stein himself, however, gets around quite a bit…”

Liz tried to swallow the ball of nerves that had materialised in her throat, but it was all she could do to just keep breathing.

For the past couple of weeks, she’d been working with a battered wife who referred to her husband as “Stein”. Liz had assumed it was a surname, but apparently not.

The wife, known to her as R. L., had been enduring physical abuse and verbal intimidation for the many long years of their marriage, but recently, “Stein” had changed.

The couple had always lived a life of luxury and R. L. never dared question it, but existence had really been expensive lately and she had caught wind of what Stein did to make it so.

He manipulated people to gain privileges, and R. L. could no longer stomach it.

“…they’re moving up in the world,” Red was saying, “and others are paying for it.”

Liz took a deep, shaky breath. R. L. had said similar words: “We’re prospering at the cost of our souls.”

Before today, Liz hadn’t known how to help her with that guilt—the typical “Nobody is at fault but the actual perpetrator” talk didn’t sway her.

But now, maybe Liz could take action.

She took another breath, this one steadier than the last, and focused on the rest of Red’s debrief. This could be the op of her life.

> I can’t. He’ll catch me.

> He’ll kill me.

The words glared at Liz from her computer screen, the cursor in her blank text bar mocking her with every blink.

R. L. had sent those messages twenty minutes ago, and while they both remained online, neither had said a word since. What could Liz offer against threat of death?

We’ll protect you. <

She cringed. Lame, yes, but the FBI could promise nothing more.

> Not from my husband.

> After all, you haven’t protected me from him thus far.

> I don’t mean that resentfully.

> That’s just the truth.

Liz bit her lip. How could a woman stay so level-headed, so down-to-earth while in such a situation?

She started to type a half-hearted platitude, then paused. R. L. would see right through it, and didn’t she deserve better than that?

But in Liz’s hesitation, R. L. continued her own train of thought.

> I’m not just anxious, either. Logically, is the reward greater than the risk here? I mean, is there at all a guarantee this will free me from him?

> Free everybody from him?

That, Liz could address with relative confidence. Selling people on wild plans for the greater good was part of the job description these days.

Yes. If you can tell us the victim he’s currently working, we can set a trap. We’ll catch him red-handed. There’s nothing he can do about that. <

R. L. didn’t reply right away, and Liz took the time to reread her recent messages. Comprehension dawned on her then: R. L. wasn’t only concerned for herself, but for Stein’s victims. Of course—Liz could use that! How could she have forgotten the very selflessness that had driven R. L. to the dark web?

> What if I can’t tell you his victim? I’d have to snoop. He could catch me before I ever get back to you.

Liz looked away from the screen and to her lap, where her hands had dropped in impatience. She stroked her scar as she came to terms with what she’d have to do.

She hated resorting to this tactic—no comfort ever came from having to guilt-trip people already being taken advantage of because you couldn’t calm their actual fears. But what else could she do?

R. L., please. You’re our best chance of catching him. Stopping him. <

Even if you don’t help us with this case, he’ll go to the next victim and the next and the next. <

Each time, you’ll know in your heart you could contact me and have a chance to help them. <

Each time. Why not save them now? <

No response came.

Liz started to worry when, after a few minutes, R. L.’s online status indicator blinked off. She sat at her computer, rubbing her scar raw, for another hour before deciding R. L. wasn’t coming back. She shut it down and crawled into bed, but sleep eluded her.

With a defeated sigh, she reached for her phone and called #7 on her speed dial.

“Hello, Lizzie. It’s getting late. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah.” Somehow, the lie children grew up telling with ease was difficult to tell Red. “Well, I don’t know. Can I ask you a question?”

Hearing shuffling on the other side of the call, Liz smiled at the image her mind conjured of Red crossing his legs or reclining in some fancy chair. She wished she was there to see it.

“Of course, sweetheart,” he said. “You can always ask me anything. I can’t promise a satisfactory answer, but—”

“It’s not one of those questions,” she interjected. “I just… Do you ever resent what you have to do to make it in this world? Even when it’s protocol—or whatever the criminal version of protocol is. Even when it’s to save yourself, or to save others.”

The line went silent, and for a moment Liz feared Red had left her hanging as R. L. had. But she should have known better—Red would never.

“Every day, Lizzie. Every day.”

Liz’s eyes fluttered shut at that, as if those mere words had lifted an invisible, pressing weight. She didn’t know if that weight had to do with her or with Red.

She opened her mouth to say something—to thank Red, or to apologise; anything to keep him on the line—but no words materialised. Surprisingly, Red didn’t speak either: from his end, she heard nothing but breathing.

Without realising it or planning to, she fell asleep hearing exclusively his breath and feeling exclusively her own.

She didn’t know how to feel when she checked her call history the next morning and saw Red had let the call go for hours despite the conversation ending within the first few seconds. She wondered how long she’d been out before he hung up. She wondered if he’d drifted off at all as well.

For reasons she couldn’t—wouldn’t—name, she hoped he had. She hoped her certain, if silent, presence soothed him as much as his soothed her.

But she put down those thoughts before they could grow teeth.

Still, Liz experienced a certain lightness as she prepared for the day, and gravity only yanked her back to the ground when she checked her secret computer’s notifications and saw one message from R. L.

> Eric Affabee

Attached was a link to Mr. Eric Affabee’s website, which in turn came with links to his social media pages and other personal information. But Liz didn’t waste a minute perusing any of it: she emailed the link to herself, shut down the laptop, grabbed her keys, and shot off.

Ress caught sight of her first as she entered the Post Office like a whirlwind. “Keen?” he said, arching an eyebrow. “Did Red reach out with more information on the Boo Hag?”

Liz faltered an instant before nodding. “Yes, he thinks he knows who the next victim will be,” she said. “Eric Affabee. Ever heard of him?”

“Sounds familiar,” he replied as he started towards the staircase to the upper office. “I’ll update Cooper.”

The day unwound into, fittingly, its own whirlwind of researching Affabee and setting a trap for Stein. Liz was so harried she didn’t have a chance to call Red and update him until she was on her way home.

Of course, perhaps that was a blessing in disguise, for the communication gap did help her persuade Red the task force had uncovered Eric Affabee by themselves.

Neither of her lies was implausible, and she didn’t sense a hint of suspicion from either side. Nevertheless, anxiety crawled just beneath her skin as the case dragged on, reminding her she couldn’t possibly block every potential avenue to the truth.

At any moment, any agent could make an offhand comment about Red’s providing Affabee’s name that the Concierge of Crime would overhear and contradict, and don’t get her started on the nerves that jumped each time Red started on one of his stories. Who knew where those would lead?

But she wasn’t caught out.

Their plans unfurled beautifully, and Liz couldn’t help but smile to herself as she watched Ress haul off Stein in cuffs.

She had done that—her, Elizabeth Scott Keen. She hadn’t done it alone of course, but she was realising that wasn’t the point. This arrest had been her work, and no one could take that away, not even her own self-doubt and insecurity.

Liz could at last say in full confidence that she made things happen, she left an impact, she was her own person. And even though she believed Red persisted as the greatest power in her life and not herself, she was no longer in crisis over it. Every problem had a solution, but—

“A job well done, Lizzie.”

She whirled around, and her smile widened at the sight of Red in a dashing three-piece and complementary fedora. “Couldn’t have done it without you,” she returned, and for once, it wasn’t an accusation.

Red hummed and sidled up to her, holding his wrists behind his back and watching with her Ress’s enjoyment of the spotlight.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, and her train of thought returned to her. Every problem had a solution, but a problem bigger than her required a solution bigger than her.

“Red?”

He angled his head towards her to show her he was listening.

“I’m sorry,” she started. Stopped. Swallowed. “I’m sorry for what I said before.”

He finally looked at her, brow furrowed. “You’ve said many things, Lizzie, not all meriting an apology. You’ll have to be a tad more specific.”

Rolling her eyes, she turned to face him. “I’m sorry I said you weren’t good enough,” she said. “Or, you know, your presence wasn’t enough or…” She sighed; why was this so difficult? “However you took it. I’m sorry.”

Red tilted his head, inspecting her with a quizzical look. “Sweetheart, that was months ago.”

“Yeah, but I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “As soon as I said it, I knew it wasn’t what I meant and I wanted to… I don’t know, take it back and say it right, I guess. But I’m not as good with words as you, and I’ve only just figured out how to say it right. If that…makes sense.”

Her cheeks started to burn, and she couldn’t take the pressure. She broke eye contact and glanced at the ground, silently begging it to swallow her whole.

Then Red re-entered her field of vision, the toes of his dress shoes shifting towards her as he stepped into her space and his calloused hand appearing as he reached out to touch her chin and guide it upwards.

“You’re making perfect sense, sweetheart,” he reassured her, his voice dropping to a murmur in his proximity. “But you don’t have to explain. I understand.”

Liz stepped back and narrowed her gaze—something, maybe the sad glint in his eyes or the waver in his smile, told her he didn’t, and she knew she couldn’t let him walk away with his supposed understanding.

“Then you understand you are enough?” she questioned.

Red blinked, his arm still half in the air. “What?”

“You drive me insane, Red. You’re the scariest, smartest, bravest person I know, and sometimes I can’t catch my breath because I’m trying so hard to keep up.” She huffed a short laugh, incredulous he didn’t see what she saw. “You’re more than enough. There’s nobody like you. You realise that, don’t you? No matter what happens in my life, you’ll be here; billions of people will come and go in this world, but there will”—her voice cracked as the truth of her own words hit her—“never be someone like you.”

Red’s eyes were wide as they scanned her face. She wondered what he saw there—fear? Dolour? Trepidation? She couldn’t say; scattered as they were, her emotions confused even her.

When he didn’t respond, she returned to the root of this conversation: “So, yeah. I’m sorry.”

Red shook his head. “Lizzie, you have nothing to be sorry for,” he said. She opened her mouth to argue, and he hurried to continue: “But this is quite possibly the best apology I’ve ever received. Thank you, sweetheart, for…” He huffed his own short laugh. “For ensuring I did understand, I suppose.”

With a nod, she brushed her fingers against her scar. “It’s a start, I guess.”

“A start?” he said. “To what?”

Liz shrugged. “To getting in sync. To both of us understanding the other. To coexistence.” She met his eye with what she was sure was an amused twinkle in her own. “We could be a great team.”

Red grinned in that infuriating, know-it-all way of his. “I have no doubt, Lizzie, but you misunderstand my question,” he said. “I meant beginnings have endings. So, you say this is a start? Where does it go? Where does it end?”

A smile started to spread across her lips as she caught on. “I think you’ll have to find out with me, Red.”

“Hmm, I could be amenable.” He tilted his head, grin widening. “How does 7 PM tomorrow sound?”

Weeks passed, and life was good. The FBI caught Blacklisters—or, you know, found what was left of them—and Red took her out once or twice a week. Not for dates, obviously, just so they could hang out and get to know each other, unfettered by the stressful circumstances of their typical lives.

For all of the progress she’d made in understanding Red’s mind while with her “patients”, it didn’t compare to casual, carefree one-on-one time with the man himself. Then again, could anything compare?

And regarding her patients, while Liz remained available online for people to reach out to for free mental health counsel and resources, she no longer went looking for the people who needed a saviour. Not on the deep net, at least.

She and Red were working towards a point where he could protect her as he needed without overstepping boundaries and she could let him in without compromising herself. They were moving forward—together—and they were happy.

So naturally, that’s when everything had to fall apart.

“Keen, how soon can you get to the Post Office?”

Liz stifled a sigh as she rolled out of bed with her phone in hand, not daring a glance at the time in case it made her weep. “Depends,” she muttered into the receiver, “is Red already there with all his sticky notes?”

“He doesn’t have a Blacklister for us,” said Ress. “Well, not a new one.”

She halted her little shimmy into some pants and almost fell over. Before she could ask, Ress elucidated—

“It’s Stein. The Boo Hag. He broke out of prison.”

“Damn it. Do we know where he’s going?”

“No, but we know where he’s been. His wife, Rosemary? She’s gone. Signs of a struggle. Navabi and I are heading to the penitentiary to talk to his buddies and see if we can’t figure out what he’s after.”

Liz cursed again under her breath—she had a few guesses. “Alright,” she said. “I’ll be there soon. Keep me updated.”

Immediately after hanging up, she called Aram and dug out her secret computer, now only used a few minutes a day when she checked for notifications.

“Aram. You’ve heard about Stein?”

“Yeah. I haven’t been able to track him yet, which is to be expected. The strange thing is I can’t get a timeline for his wife, either. Social events before his arrest, then showing up at his trial, then… Well, it’s not nothing, but there are a whole lot of holes.”

Biting her lip, Liz weighed the pros and cons of blowing holes into her own lies by bringing this computer into the light of day. But even if Stein hadn’t murdered a captive before, vengefulness could make you cross lines like never before.

“Listen, I lied when I said Red gave me Affabee’s name,” she said, lowering her voice even though she had no one to hide from. “It was actually R. L. Rosemary, his wife. She was somebody I talked to…on that laptop you gave me.”

 The line went silent, and Liz bit back an impatient groan.

“She sold him out, Aram,” she said. “That’s why he took her.”

“Bring in the laptop. I might be able to use the metadata to fill those holes. Hurry.”

Aram hung up then, but Liz didn’t have time to be surprised at his abruptness. She grabbed the laptop and dashed out the door.

Red was already in the Post Office when she arrived.

“Lizzie!” he greeted with a wide smile and wider arms. “Dreadful business with Iestinus, hm? I would never have pegged him as the jailbreak sort of fellow.”

Liz tossed him a look as she hurried past and towards Aram’s station. “And why’s that? Can’t get his hands dirty like you?”

Following after her, Red gave one of his belly laughs. “In a way,” he said. “In my experience, men who consider ‘wine connoisseur’ to be their primary personality trait are not men who are prepared to dig tunnels with spoons.”

“Yeah,” she mused, “and add in the fact he drugs his victims to subdue them, and a profile of impotence starts to form.”

Red grinned. “Sounds like a Lizzie- and Reddington-approved profile, sweetheart.”

She arched an eyebrow at him as she slid the laptop onto Aram’s desk, currently sans Aram. “You should patent that.”

Red laughed again, and she felt the beginnings of a fond smile twitch on her lips at the sound. “First, allow me to add onto that profile,” he said. “How familiar are you with Roman mythology?”

Liz shrugged. “I took a couple of years of classics courses to check a box in my undergrad program.”

“Hmm, well, let’s see if you’ve heard this one.” Practically sitting on the desk, Red tilted his head to catch Liz’s eye. “Bacchus was the Roman god of wine, among other domains. On an important journey, he noticed an unusual sprig in the ground.

“He uprooted it—although I personally submit one should not do so with unfamiliar wildlife—and placed it in a hollow bird bone to carry with him. However, it grew so quickly its roots became exposed.

“Bacchus thus placed the bird bone with the plant inside a hollow lion bone. Wouldn’t you know it, the same thing happened! Finally, Bacchus placed the lion bone with the bird bone with the plant inside a hollow donkey bone, where it became a vine.”

“Wine,” guessed Liz. She couldn’t help the blush that rose in her cheeks when Red rewarded her with a proud smile. She cleared her throat but didn’t dare look away. “So what’s the significance of the bones?”

“Ah, yes.” Red shifted, inching closer to her. “According to Bacchus, should man drink in moderation, he will be merry and sing like a bird. Drinking more will make him a lion on the prowl for trouble. Drinking too much will turn him into a donkey, positively making, if you will, an ass of himself.”

Liz couldn’t hold back the giggle that broke from her, and Red beamed at her.

“One could draw certain parallels to our wine-loving friend the Boo Hag,” he drawled on. “A steady fix of ambition had him living the life. A dose more and he was asking his peers and the FBI alike to knock him down a few pegs. And now, we’ve reached that level of reckless foolishness.”

She smirked. “Is there a type of foolishness that isn’t reckless?”

Red opened his mouth. “Well—” He paused. “Well, that’s—”

She laughed, but before she could rub it in, Cooper’s voice rang out from the platform outside his office.

“Where are we on Stein, people?” he called as he started his descent.

Liz gave Red a final smile before jogging over to meet Cooper at the base of the stairs. Time to get to work.

Hours later of that work passed, and they hadn’t made much progress. The FBI had raided all of Stein’s property after his arrest, from his vineyards and his wine cellars to his summer homes and his storage rooms. If he had somewhere else to hide a hostage, the FBI didn’t know about it.

So where in the world had he gone?

Liz had practically fallen asleep at her desk trying to answer that question when Red slipped into her office.

“Lizzie?”

She jolted up. “The Middle Babylonian Period!”

Red arched an eyebrow. “Now that’s going to need some context.”

Liz scrubbed at her face and flopped back against her chair. “You reawakened memories of my classics courses,” she muttered, glaring at him through bleary eyes. “Memories that should have stayed asleep.”

Chuckling, he stepped closer to her, their knees almost touching. “Speaking of sleep, it looks like you could use some,” he said. “How about I drive you home?”

“You mean Dembe will drive me home?” she grumbled, though she pushed herself up and collected what she would bring with her all the same.

“Well,” he huffed, “I’ll keep you company in the backseat.”

Liz smiled as she made her way to the door. “Don’t worry Red,” she said. “That’s the way I like it.”

He hurried to catch up with her, then placed his hand on the small of her back. She tried not to think too much about the heat radiating off of his palm as he led her to wherever Dembe had parked.

Quiet descended on them throughout the drive, and though the air hummed with tension, the atmosphere was not unpleasant.

As much as she enjoyed talking and laughing with Red throughout their coffee runs or candlelit dinners—which were not dates—something special breathed through the silences they shared. Something inextricably unique.

Red walked her to the front door of her apartment building before disturbing that silence, turning towards her with abrupt intent right there on the doorstep. He was so close, his gaze pinned her where she stood.

“What exactly did you dream of, sweetheart?” he asked, voice low, almost gruff. Or was that her imagination? “What is so dream-worthy about the, ah, Middle Babylonian Period?”

“Plenty, I’m sure,” she snarked. “But I was remembering our unit on the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was written at that time. Ever read it?”

“Unfortunately, no, I haven’t gotten around to it,” he admitted. “I’m familiar with the basics of course: quests and adventures, then the search for immortality.”

Liz nodded. “I thought about one particular part though,” she said. “The discovery of wine.”

“Oh?” he said, a smirk splitting his lips. And goodness, why couldn’t she stop looking at his lips? “I see my story about Bacchus has been on your mind all day. Sweetheart, are you trying to one-up me?”

“As if I could,” she snorted. “I won’t tell you the whole story—isn’t necessary. But according to the Epic, wine was discovered by a woman drowning in misery who found joy in what she thought would kill her. Unbelievable joy, really.”

Tilting his head, Red seemed so much closer than a second ago. “That’s the interpretation that struck you, Lizzie?” he murmured.

She nodded, but in a daze, her mindpower concentrated on the shape and movements of Red’s mouth. “Well, you know,” she mumbled. “Literature is open to interpretation. Like life, I’ve been learning. You can choose to see things one way or…”

She trailed off as Red stepped even further into her space. Her eyes darted between his lips and his eyes as he leaned closer, inch by inch.

She didn’t know what was happening.

She didn’t know what she wanted to be happening.

Yet she wouldn’t fight it. Something about it felt inevitable. Something about it felt like fate.

But maybe her indecision read as inquietude, her unresponsiveness as unease, for Red’s trajectory seemed to shift at the last moment. His lips brushed her cheek as he whispered, “Goodnight, sweetheart; sleep well,” against her skin.

Then he was gone, taking her ability to breathe with him.

It took a moment for her heartbeat to return to a rate that wouldn’t set off a hospital’s monitors, but as soon as her brain rebooted, she smiled so hard her face hurt.

For all intents and purposes, nothing had happened, yet those moments of shared air, of quiet companionship, of being in Red’s presence in the moonlight…

They filled her with such joy. Unbelievable joy.

Ducking her head, she unlocked the apartment building and let herself in. It simply would not do for her to get mugged or abducted from standing on her doorstep in the middle of the night like some fool. After all, Red’s security watched her apartment alone, not the whole building.

And, wow, when did her hackles stop rising at the very thought of Red watching her at all?

What in the world was happening to her? No—she thought back to mere seconds ago and flushed—to them?

“Good things,” she murmured to herself. “Good things.”

“Not for long.”

Liz whirled around and reached for her gun, but it was too late. In one swift motion, the masked figure behind her pushed her against the lobby wall and shoved a hypodermic into the inside of her elbow, and there was nothing she could do.

Fire.

Everywhere she looked—

A child crying, adults yelling.

Low-pressure heat, and the kind that claimed without mercy.

—fire.

Upside down.

She looked down and saw small, soft, innocent hands.

There was a gun in them.

Inside out.

She looked again and saw bigger hands, one scarred but both dripping with blood.

There was a gun in them.

Around and around and around.

A gunshot, hardly remembered. A woman screaming in agony and grief.

A gunshot, hardly regretted. A man crying out in shock and alarm.

A gunshot, easily the most horrible moment of her life. More yelling, this time with the words discernible—“No! Dembe! Reddington! I’m gonna lose him if I don’t get him to an ER”—although the scene itself stayed murky.

An unforgiving light whited out her vision, making her head feel as if it would explode.

Glass walls slamming shut, sealing her into a square and sterile box, and then—

She couldn’t breathe.

She couldn’t breathe.

She gasped for breath, sobbed for mercy, but the fire only returned and swallowed her whole.

Wherever she was when she came to, it was a far cry from her apartment building lobby.

The small room had cracked white brick walls, a wood ceiling emanating whiffs of rot, and an icy cement floor. Uneven but empty wooden shelves lined the wall opposite where Liz was chained, cramping the already tight space further.

“You’re shivering.”

With great effort, Liz lolled her head to the side and leaned it against her shoulder. A vaguely familiar woman sat across the room from her, posture straight yet diminutive.

Unbroken but prudently meek, she thought.

And then her familiarity clicked—Red had shown her picture with Stein’s.

Liz swallowed a few times, trying to work past both the lump of fear in her throat and the dryness of her mouth, but her voice came out small and hoarse anyway. “You must be R. L.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “Oh,” she realised. “You’re the Good Doctor?”

Wry amusement tugged at Liz’s lips. “You know, people gave me that name against my will,” she said. “Please, call me Liz.”

“If you call me Rosie.”

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Rosie.” She glanced around, wincing as the harsh lightbulb above caught her eye. “Although the circumstances…could be better.”

Rosie looked down. “You’re shivering because of the drugs,” she said. “You cried out and twitched in your sleep for hours, so his nightmare serum or whatever he calls it must have done a number on you. The aftereffects might take a while to subside.”

Liz licked her lips as she recalled Red’s debrief on the Boo Hag from however many weeks ago. Nightmare drugs. Fantastic.

“He pumped me full of those drugs all night,” whispered Rosie. “Then he shoved rags down my mouth and nose and taped them shut. On and off, on and off, wouldn’t stop until I told him what…” She finally looked up, meeting Liz’s gaze with the most sorrowful eyes. “I’m sorry. You’re here because of me.”

With a weary exhale, Liz reclined against the wall, ignoring the uncomfortable scrape on her skin. “And you’re here because of me,” she pointed out. Guilt prodded at her, but she tuned it out. “The only one we can blame is Stein.”

“I’d really thought I was rid of him,” sighed Rosie. “Those few weeks he was in prison were…bliss. The closest I’d ever gotten to Heaven.”

Liz huffed a weak laugh. “You were sort of that for me—for a while, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

Liz shrugged. “I didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to become a pro bono mental health counsellor online.” She paused; technically she had, although after a night of crying on the floor, which Rosie didn’t need to know about. “I was dealing with some stuff, and I needed one—just one—aspect of my life to be good and in my control.”

Rosie arched her brow. “Some stuff, huh?”

“Dealt with.” She shook her head as the irony of the situation crystallised. “It’s funny, you know. Once I had the time and space to figure out my own inner turmoil, he didn’t seem like such a problem. And now that we’ve been—”

“Wait, back a step,” interjected Rosie. A strange look overtook her expression. “He? Did your ‘stuff’ lie about who he was, manipulate you into sleeping with him, and almost kill you too?”

“No!” said Liz, horror at the very idea bursting out of her. “Red would never lie to me, or—or take advantage of me like that!”

Rosie stared at her, and Liz’s cheeks warmed at the vehemence of her outcry. Although she found she…didn’t regret the words, she could admit her defensiveness might come across as a little excessive.

“Sorry,” she muttered, stroking her scar. “I didn’t mean to, you know… It’s just—” She gave a mirthless chuckle. “My ex-husband did lie and manipulate and almost kill me, and Red helped me through it. And he… He cares about me. And I—” Voice faltering, Liz looked at her scar and took a deep breath. “He means a lot to me, too.”

Rosie let her head drop against her own shoulder, studying Liz for a minute before speaking. “So there’s life after this.”

Clanking resounded through the cramped space, then the screech of metal scraping against metal, before the large door near Rosie opened into the room to reveal a lithe and smiling man in a pinstripe suit.

“Oh, my angel,” he singsonged as he strolled in. His voice hardened as he stopped a metre away from Rosie. “There is nothing after me.”

“Aurum,” snarled Liz, lurching forward to the metallic protest of her restraints. “Let us go, or you’ll regret it.”

Stein crossed his arms and looked down at her over his nose, which must not have been hard to do since she was on her knees and chained to a wall. But he had the stench of someone who would do it even if she stood tall and proud.

“No, my dear Elizabeth Keen,” he said. “I had to pull quite a few favours to figure out who you were from my traitorous darling wife’s computer, but it’ll be worth it. I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

Liz sneered. “What lesson?”

“An important one,” he snapped. Against her will, Liz flinched back from his aggression, and his eyes lit up. “My fear serum hasn’t worn off on you yet? What a pleasant surprise!”

Never breaking eye contact with her, he slowly undid his belt. Liz’s heart quickened as anticipation coiled around her throat. What was happening? What was Stein doing? What—

Flashing her a smirk, he quickly turned and whipped the belt down.

Liz’s shouts of protest mingled with Rosie’s cries of pain.

Neither had any effect. Stein continued bringing the belt down on his wife, the blurred arc of leather searing Liz’s retinas.

All she could see was that belt, over and over and over. All she could hear was her own pleas echoing in her ears. All she could feel was the sting of her rub-raw wrists bleeding on her chains as she fought against them. And the burn of her lungs. She couldn’t—

Dammit, she couldn’t breathe.

“Stop it, Stein, stop it!”

“Stupid—backstabbing—selfish—!” he spat, chest heaving as he stumbled back against the shelves and let the business end of the belt fall to the floor.

Liz gaped at him, and he gave her a bewildered look of his own before he staggered out of the room, metal door slamming shut behind him. Then she turned to Rosie, who had curled up in the corner of the room—no longer unbroken, no longer meek.

She was simply terrified.

“Are you… Are you…?” Mouth parched, Liz couldn’t get the words out.

Rosie glanced at her through her quivering hands. “He’s never done that before,” she croaked. “But I recognise my husband in him, and my husband is methodical. He’ll be back tomorrow, same time, same plan. And I don’t know if he’ll stop.”

Liz collapsed on the floor, her legs folding uncomfortably beneath her; she didn’t have the energy to move. “Why?” she whispered.

“I can’t be sure,” said Rosie. “He never explains himself to me. But he wants to teach you a lesson. Punish us both, yeah, but teach only you. And the wrong you did him was meddling in our life.”

Grimacing, Liz’s eyes slid shut. “Which is why I’m chained up and you’re not,” she said. “He wants me to sit back and watch, the way I ‘should’ have done before.”

“His logic is twisted, but…” Rosie sighed. “Logic all the same.”

When their eyes met, Liz hardened her gaze. “Then I can reason with him,” she said. “To a certain extent, of course—otherwise, he’d let us go.”

Rosie scoffed. “If not our freedom, what is possibly worth bargaining for?”

“I’ll offer myself in your place.”

She recoiled, wincing when her injured back hit the wall. “Liz, you can’t—”

“I will,” she cut in, resolve solid as rock. “Making me watch you in pain won’t make me think I shouldn’t have stepped in and tried to save you from pain before. But making me hurt directly… That could break my spirit. That could make me wish I’d never gotten tangled up in this mess.”

She gave Rosie a sardonic smile. “Humans are inherently selfish creatures after all.”

Rosie gave her a strange look, one Liz couldn’t quite decipher, but didn’t respond. And though Liz was grateful for the reprieve, its silence was still lifeless and oppressive, and goodness, she missed Red.

She missed him.

And she didn’t stop missing him.

The next day, she found they were both right—Stein came back as Rosie predicted, and he listened to Liz’s argument as Liz predicted.

But he remained, as a whole, unpredictable. He didn’t use the belt that time—or ever again, in fact. He settled for his fists and his feet.

At least he decided to unchain her like Rosie. Didn’t appreciate the fetters getting in the way, maybe. Kept her wrists and ankles tied together though—there was such a thing as over-generosity in the eyes of fate.

At first, she kept track of the days passing by when he came—in the mornings, he brought food and water; in the evenings, he yelled, mostly at Rosie, and hit, mostly Liz.

Within a few days, she lost track of even that.

But she never stopped missing Red.

She dreamt of him, every night she didn’t pass out from the pain. And when she couldn’t fall asleep at all because of the ache in her ribs or the throb of her face or the cold numbness in her feet, she let herself drift through memories of him instead.

She avoided thinking about the last time she saw him, for she knew such thoughts would lead her to wonder how he was now—how he’d reacted to finding out she’d been taken from right under his nose.

But one night, her subconscious played that evening for her in her sleep, every detail as she remembered. In her dream, however, the trajectory didn’t change.

And she woke up, not with dread or hopelessness soaking through her bones, but with a passion she thought long dead burning through them. A passion that sparked a thought, so simple, so powerful—

I’ll see him again.

Like clockwork, Stein appeared with two large Tupperware containers filled with all the flavourless food they would have that day. He shoved them through a hatch in the door, then Rosie slid him the plastic bowl he would refill with all the water they would have that day.

He never stuck around to watch, but simply knowing they would have to lap up the suspicious liquid like animals due to their exhaustion and their restraints must have been enough.

As soon as she saw Red again, Liz would mock him for all he was worth for thinking Stein had a mere pinch of sadism.

“Happy twentieth anniversary, my angel,” said Stein as he slid the refilled bowl back through the hatch. Rosie replied only with a sneer.

Once Stein left, Rosie shuffled over to Liz and opened one container. “You up to eat?” she asked.

“Not really,” answered Liz, “but I guess I’ll have to build up strength if we’re going to get out of here.”

Rosie arched an eyebrow, and Liz mustered a weak grin.

“Stein comes here twice a day,” she said. “He doesn’t even open the door to give us food, so the first time’s out of the question. But I’ve noticed that when he comes in to beat me, he leaves the door unlocked. I guess it’s too much trouble opening, closing, then opening it again a few minutes later.”

“What are you suggesting?” demanded Rosie. “We can’t both make a break for it with him right in the room with us—one of us will have to stay as some sort of distraction or obstacle. And I assume you want to play that part, since you’ve been so willing to offer yourself up thus far, but I refuse to leave without you.”

Grin fading, Liz scoffed. “It’s not like you’re leaving me to die,” she said. “You only need to go and get help. In fact, I know just the number for you to call, although you’ll have to address him as Nick’s Pizza for him to trust you’re with—”

“No.”

Rosie straightened back her shoulders, resembling for the first time in a while the unbroken woman Liz had seen upon first awakening in this hole.

“I haven’t fought you on taking Stein’s punches because I know I can’t convince you and throwing myself in between you two will just make him angrier. But I’m not leaving you here.”

“There’s no other way,” snapped Liz. “There’s no other exit and no other time this one is vulnerable.”

A quiet gasp fell from Rosie’s mouth, and her eyes darted around the room. “Wait a second,” she murmured. “I think… I think there is another exit.”

Liz sat up. “What? But I don’t see—”

“I think I know where we are,” cut in Rosie, excitement starting to rise in her voice. “Stein, he always talked about buying an old bootlegger hideout and renovating it, preserving it, making it his own.

“Stars,” she muttered, “my husband was obsessed with alcohol.

“Anyway, bootlegger bases were riddled with secret passages, right? Including ones that led outside, I bet.”

Liz pushed against the wall into a crouch, Rosie’s excitement infectious. “Help me up,” she said. “Quickly! I think you’re right. Those secret passages, they’d lead into the wine cellar…?”

“Yes, but this could be any room in the…”

Liz gestured to the empty shelves, and a surprised laugh burst past Rosie’s lips. They shared a small, secret smile before Liz nodded to a wall.

“Let’s listen for hollow sections.”

It took them the rest of the day, but their buoyant excitement never disappeared as their plan took shape. They found their hollow section—right in the nook where Liz huddled to sleep and, incidentally, the last place they looked, because fate had a sense of humour.

They tore down the bricks, leaving their fingers shredded and bloodied but their hearts lighter and lighter, and saw a dark, dank corridor with seemingly no end. However, Liz had felt a draft, and they agreed that must mean the outdoors.

By then, Rosie was convinced Stein would be there any minute, so they decided to replace the bricks and wait until he’d left them for the night before making their escape with a maximised head start.

“Then what?” asked Rosie. Her features were flat, placid—she clearly wanted to carry on being as level-headed as always—but her eyes gleamed. No longer were they the sullen brown, the mirror of despair, to which Liz had grown accustomed.

She couldn’t help but smile as she answered.

“Then we find a phone. We call Red. I have no idea how he’ll find us after that, but he will. He always comes for me.”

Rosie’s lips twitched downwards. “You’re putting a lot of faith in him.”

Liz worked her jaw, unsure of how to respond. She had no hope of denying it, but how could she possibly explain? And she didn’t know whether she wanted to defend her faith, much less how to.

Hadn’t she been the one questioning how much she depended on him a mere few months ago? What had changed?

Before she could think of a suitable response, footsteps pounded outside the metal door.

“You’ll be okay,” said Rosie, watching her with intent. “Just one last night, same as any. He smacks you around a little, and then we escape. We never see him again. You’ll be okay.”

Why does it sound like you’re talking to yourself? Liz wanted to ask, but her heart had lodged itself in her throat.

Just one last night, same as any. Just one last night, same as any. Just one last night, same as—

The door flew open.

“Ohhhh, my darling!” crowed Stein, his eyes unfocused and his gait unsteady. “My angel! Happy—hic—anniversary, my sweet!”

Rosie only had time to share a wide-eyed look with Liz before Stein shoved his wife against the wall and planted a slobbery kiss on her mouth.

Utter shock shackled Liz to the floor. What…the hell…did she do now?

Rosie ripped her lips away from Stein’s, the back of her head knocking against the wall from the force of her retreat. “Stein,” she stammered, “you’re drunk. You’re drunker than I’ve ever seen you. You handle your alcohol so well—”

“Well, I had a lot to drink. Twenty is a big one!” he replied, face splitting in a sleazy grin. “We should celebrate. Divorce is so…so commonplace these days. We’re so lucky to have made it to twenty, my Rosemary. We’re so lucky. How do you want to celebrate our good, good luck?”

Rosie glanced at Liz, but Stein noticed and backhanded her into the wall by the door.

“Don’t look at her!” he barked. “Don’t look at her ever again! That’s how you ruined things last time! You want to ruin our second chance, too?”

“No, Stein,” whimpered Rosie, clutching the side of her face. “No, I— I want to celebrate.”

“How, my angel?” asked Stein, the good cheer back in his voice. “Oh, you know what would be perfect?” He shuffled in close, but his drunken whispering continued audibly to Liz across the room. “Let’s just stop—stop fighting, stop stressing; go back to what we were before. Let’s just stop and…be newlyweds.”

Memories lanced through Liz: foul, nauseating memories. Without conscious decision to do so, Liz took a step forward and called out, “Stein!”

He whipped around from where he’d been stalking towards Rosie and narrowed his eyes. “Stay out of this,” he said, voice low and dangerous. He turned back towards Rosie and latched his mouth onto her neck, his hands roving over her.

She met Liz’s eyes over his shoulder, and the look she gave her expressed such fear it knocked Liz’s breath out.

She grabbed Stein’s shoulder and pulled him off of Rosie. Liz opened her mouth to yell at him again, but he struck her across the jaw before she could, sending her teeth clacking inside her skull.

“This is between me and my wife!” he bellowed as he grabbed a fistful of Liz’s hair and yanked her head up, ignoring or plainly not seeing the coppery blood pouring from her mouth. “Like all of our problems were between us. You keep meddling!” He jerked her head from side to side to punctuate every word he said. “Stay—out—of—our—business! I’m—taking—what—I’m—owed!”

Abruptly, Stein let go of her hair, and she flew into the shelves. They dug into her side, and tears leaked out of her eyes even as her throat struggled to produce any wail or sob. Her lungs barely worked as it was.

She slid down, the shelves aggravating her already bruised and busted body. Stein had resumed his assault on Rosie against the wall as Liz battled for breath on the floor.

The beatings of the previous few days had been regular, methodical—the true sign of a career criminal. But this was pure emotion. Pure rage. Pure betrayal.

And all at once, the burn in her lungs faded to the back of her mind.

“Aurum!” she called. “We both know that’s not what you’re truly owed.”

Stein paused but didn’t look at her. “And what—?”

“Your wife betrayed you,” she said. “She’s your traitorous darling wife, remember? Any wife owes”—Liz swallowed back an acidic wave of bile—“her husband attention in bed, but this one? You deserve recompense. You deserve revenge.”

Stein turned his head, watching her with dark eyes. “Revenge?”

Liz nodded, her stomach churning. “And how…better…to get that than to…betray her back?” she asked. “To betray your marital vows more fundamentally than she ever did?”

His eyes started to glint as he let go of Rosie and turned his whole body towards Liz. “And are you offering yourself to help me with th—”

“Yes,” said Liz. She didn’t want to hear it spoken out loud. Not from him. “Yes, I—”

“Liz,” hissed Rosie. “Don’t do this.”

Stein’s gaze jumped from his wife to Liz, a smile gradually spreading across his mouth. “Well, if she’s against it…”

In a flash, he was across the room, grabbing Liz’s arm in a vice-like grip, and pulling her off the floor.

“She’s gotten so much one-on-one time with you,” he murmured into her ear, and she stifled a shudder at the stench of alcohol on his breath. “Doesn’t seem fair. How about we get some privacy, too?”

Liz’s heart stuttered. “What—”

He pulled her towards the door, and Liz met Rosie’s eyes from where she clung to the wall to stay upright.

“Liz,” she pleaded, terrified and unsure and every emotion Liz was sick of feeling.

“Go,” she mouthed. “Go.”

Rosie started to shake her head, but Stein slammed the door shut between them before either of them could say another word.

He started to drag her down the eerily frigid and scentless corridor, which, save for intermittent incandescent bulbs buzzing overhead, resembled the secret tunnel she and Rosie had uncovered— Damn, why did that feel like a lifetime ago?

Damn, what if Rosie didn’t go through? That woman was little else if not steadfast, and she had seemed pretty adamant about not leaving Liz behind.

But dammit, if Rosie didn’t get out, then who would call Red and—

Oh, no.

Even if Rosie left—the logical step to take at this point and, thus, hopefully what she would do—Liz hadn’t passed along Red’s contact information.

Sure, Rosie probably knew how to dial 9-1-1 in his stead, but Liz of all people knew local law enforcement had nothing on the Concierge of Crime.

The hope that had built within her for the past twelve hours, that had frozen but never melted away before a plastered Iestinus Aurum, started to flag.

Her lungs seized as the limitless possibilities of what lay in front of her flashed before her eyes. What would Stein do to her? What should she do in response?

What could she do? Stein was lanky and drunk but fit and sure-footed, and Liz was mentally disoriented, physically beaten down, in completely unfamiliar territory, unarmed, and…so, so alone.

An ember of wry amusement lit and flickered out in her chest as she realised Red would have refused to leave her, too.

Oh, gosh, Red… 

Her knees buckled as a cruel thought gripped her.

“Get up,” spat Stein. “Get…up!”

But her body no longer wished to cooperate.

Every ounce of pain Stein had inflicted on her in the past however many days rushed back full force. Her walls of numbness and forces of compartmentalisation crumbled in the teeth of the thought that she wouldn’t see Red again before fully fixing things between them.

Before telling him how much he meant to her.

“Dammit, fine,” muttered Stein. “We’ll just have to do it here…”

He scrabbled at Liz’s clothing, already dishevelled and ill-fitting from her days in captivity. Her skin crawled with every brush of his fingertips against her skin, but her agency was sinking in the murky waters of her despondency.

Her eyes fluttered shut, and another memory from the first year of her partnership with Red washed over her.

“Red,” she whispered—just as Red had whispered her name while in the execution position—so softly Stein didn’t react. Maybe she hadn’t even spoken out loud. Did it matter?

But then another thought, another memory, this one not so cruel, came to her. I won’t give myself up even when faced with an uphill climb with no summit.

And then yet another thought, this one as uplifting and kind as a thought could be: I’ll see him again.

Stein had finally wrestled her shirt to her underarms, but she wouldn’t let him get it any further.

With a yell, she twisted her torso, ignoring the twinges up and down her ribs, and elbowed him in the face.

He recoiled, ripping her shirt in the process.

“Gah! What the—?”

Liz rolled out of the way, back towards the repurposed wine cellar.

On all fours, she started the filthy crawl back, but Stein gave a guttural protest and launched himself onto her ankles.

She kicked at him, and though her feet didn’t hit their mark half the time, when she risked a glance at him, his lip was busted and his nose gushing blood. She counted it as a win.

“Stop—res—ist—ing!” he bit out, latching onto her pant legs and tugging. “I’m—taking—what—I’m—owed!”

“I don’t owe anybody any part of me,” she wanted—needed—to say. For better or worse, she belonged entirely to herself.

Her chest heaved with the words as they fought to get out—but her heart was darting all over the place, her throat closing and mouth quivering, her breath coming and going too fast.

With a furious snarl, Stein dug his nails into the flesh of her legs and dragged himself over her. “You’re just making things harder for yourself,” he said. “Even if I have to make do with the cold concrete, I’m going to enjoy myself. The only part that changes”—he hovered over her, giving her a lecherous smile as he pinned down her shoulders—“is how much I have to hurt you first.”

To emphasise his point, he lifted one hand and struck her across the face before moving both hands to restrain her wrists with even more pressure, all in one swift movement.

Liz fought, arms jerking and legs kicking and neck twisting, but something within her started to fracture as she realised she… 

Couldn’t…

Move.

Silent tears streamed down her face as she choked on her sobs. This was true imprisonment. True theft of choice.

True loss of self.

“Dammit, shut up, you whore!” he shouted.

She flinched, expecting another blow, but none came.

Just as she opened her eyes, Stein was heaved off of her with a shout.

“Hey, what—?”

“Why, good evening, Iestinus!”

Even with her vision blurry with tears, she recognised the form of Raymond Reddington standing above her. Clutching Stein, he tilted his head at him with a slightly disturbed grin on his face.

When Red’s eyes met hers, Liz felt like her diaphragm had collapsed altogether, her breathing failed so completely.

Red shoved Stein into the capable hands of Dembe, standing right behind him, before dropping to his knees and skimming his hands over Liz.

She whimpered when he grazed a particularly tender bruise, and Red’s eyes shot to hers.

“Sweetheart, you’re going to be okay,” he murmured. “Do you have any grievous injuries?”

Liz gave a minute shake of her head as a shiver skated down her spine. Upon seeing it, Red didn’t hesitate to pull his suit jacket off to drape cozily over her.

Fire snapped in his eyes as he took stock of the state of her clothes, but he didn’t mention it as he helped her cover back up.

Leaning in, he whispered, “I’m sorry we took so long to get here. But I’m going to take care of you now, okay?”

Liz opened her mouth to respond—to protest that Red didn’t need to apologise, to tell him she knew he would take care of her, to reassure him she had no doubts of that of all things—but no words came out besides puffs of what was devolving into hyperventilation.

“Shh, Lizzie, you need to breathe,” he soothed as he manoeuvred her up and into his arms.

Tucking her head under his chin, she pressed her ear to his heart and let the regular rise and fall of his chest bring her down from the cliff of panic she’d been teetering on.

“Breathe, sweetheart, mhmm. That’s it, my dear, good…”

Thank you, Red, she thought, over and over, the mantra adding another layer of palliative repetitiveness. But she couldn’t force the words out of her actual throat, even as her breathing approached a stable range.

She grasped one of Red’s lapels and pulled to get his attention.

“Yes, Lizzie?” he prompted, his voice low and soft and the most comforting sound to ever touch her ears.

In response, she could only stare into his eyes, wise and warm depths, the shade of green most intimately familiar to her at this point. However, this was the first time she found herself close enough and paying enough attention to also notice the spires of sandy yellow sprawling through his subtly tinted irises.

If she didn’t feel beaten on the outside and broken on the inside, she would be perfectly comfortable forever right where she sat.

After a minute of silence, Red furrowed his brow. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

Liz shrugged, gaze faltering, and Red’s eyes narrowed. He studied her for a moment, and upon finding whatever he searched for, his features darkened.

“Dembe.” His voice kept low, but it had changed unmistakably; Liz just couldn’t put her finger on how. “Take Elizabeth and meet Rosemary out—”

Fervently shaking her head, Liz curled into a tighter foetal position in the circle of Red’s arms. She had just readjusted to the sensation of his touch being reality instead of memory. She wasn’t letting him out of her reach for anything.

Thankfully, Red, whether he understood the reasoning or not, yielded to the objection with a heavy sigh.

“Alright, Dembe,” he started again, “please go back to the hole we entered through and keep an eye out for law enforcement. They’ll be arriving soon. I would love to have a few words with Iestinus before we leave. Oh! And, uh—”

Chuckling, Red helped Liz into a sitting position against the wall across from where Dembe stood, then climbed to his feet and faced his friend and their captive.

“Would you mind terribly if I borrowed that knife you…?”

Dembe didn’t even wait for the end of the request to pull a knife out of wherever he apparently kept a knife on his person. Then he let go of Stein and, with a firm nod to Red and gentle smile to Liz in passing, headed towards the wine cellar.

Once the echoes of his footsteps had faded, Red let out a hearty laugh.

“I try not to judge people before getting to know them, Iestinus, but I couldn’t help making a few presumptions about you,” he said. “This is the main one now, so do correct me if I’m off—don’t be shy!” He tilted his head and leaned towards Stein, backing him into the wall through sheer intimidation. “You’re quite well versed in wine-related lore, aren’t you?”

Like a student who dreaded the worst on a test but realised they actually understood the questions, Stein perked up and agreed, “Yeah, heh, I am.”

His confidence evaporated when Red started to twirl Dembe’s knife with one hand. “Splendid!” said the Concierge of Crime, as if he hadn’t noticed the anxious darting of his quarry’s eyes. “So you recognise the allusion when I refer to Bacchus and the three bones, hm? See, I had been telling my darling Lizzie here about how you’d hit all three levels of drunkenness, but I had spoken about metaphorical drunkenness—greed, to be frank. I utterly neglected to consider actual intoxication!”

Red laughed. “That is absolutely my bad.”

Stein stepped towards the side, heading away from the cellar and presumably to the main house, but Red was too fast. He grabbed Stein’s wrist, slammed it into the wall, then drove the knife through Stein’s palm.

Liz winced as the man’s scream echoed up and down the corridor.

“I imagine you weren’t above being regularly buzzed during the day,” mused Red. “Which didn’t help your inborn greed. Feeding it made you merry and sociable—but that led to jail, which led to finding out about your wife’s inconvenient scruples about your lifestyle choices, which led to abducting her and the good woman who encouraged her to do the right thing, which led to you hitting that good woman. Multiple times. Brutally. And that will lead to, well…retribution.”

Stein’s scream as Red yanked out the knife stapling his hand to the wall broke into pants of exhausted agony as Red stabbed it back into his other palm.

Liz recalled a factoid she had read before—palm injuries seldom proved fatal, but they hurt like hell. Hundreds of nerve endings. Dozens of small bones.

She didn’t know whether she should worry that her breathing came a little more easily as Stein struggled with his.

Red gripped the knife’s handle and leaned on it to get into Stein’s face. “Continue with that path,” he said, “and you start looking for trouble. For instance, spitting insults that are simply untrue!”

Stein looked up, confusion visible on his face even through the pained contortion of his muscles. Red scoffed and dragged the knife out of his palm.

“What?” he said, speaking over Stein’s pleas for mercy. “Did you think I didn’t hear you call Elizabeth a whore? That won’t go unpunished, Iestinus.”

“Please, I don’t even know who you are! I didn’t mean—”

“Oh, but I do: I mean every single word I’m saying.”

With that, Red gripped Stein’s lower jaw with his free hand and reached forward with his knife. Liz could be imagining it, but she thought Red was positioning his body to block her view of whatever he was doing.

She had a pretty good idea, however, from the literally bloody screams gushing from Stein’s mouth.

And the suspiciously tongue-shaped object Red threw into a dark corner a moment later.

“The final stop,” he went on, unperturbed by a weakened Stein falling against him, “is irreversibly reckless stupidity, objectively terrible decisions, such as even thinking to touch a woman against her will. And, Iestinus…”

Nausea swirled inside Liz as the knife impaled Stein a few key centimetres below his gut.

“…I do mean the final stop.”

Stein collapsed in a sobbing, gurgling heap at Red’s feet, and Red crouched to stay with him. With one hand twisting the knife around and around in Stein’s wound, Red used his other to grip Stein’s nape and hold his head up.

“If you have any hope of getting out of this alive, mercifully snuff it out,” said Red, the disinterested drawl in his voice giving way to a dangerous snarl. “This woman here, this incredible and brave and selfless woman you’ve horrifically, unforgivably harmed? To the extent she can’t speak?”

He didn’t take his eyes off of Stein, but the wine connoisseur himself looked at Liz.

She instinctively shrunk away, but then she noticed the terror in his gaze. She straightened as she understood what that meant—for once, he was not the predator and she was not the prey.

“She is not only the centre of my universe and the direction of my life, but the motivation of my very person,” continued Red. He paused to give a concessionary sigh. “Yes, I ultimately make my own decisions, but they will always be inextricably tied to this woman—the woman you’ve beaten black and blue—my love, my life, my heart.”

Liz gasped, something about Red’s words searing through her, but he spoke again before she could figure out what.

“I don’t know what I would do without her. And that is why you will suffer for doing this to her.”

Red tore the knife out of Stein and shoved him against the wall, but before he could bring it back down where he pleased, Dembe reappeared.

“Raymond, sirens approaching,” he said. “We need to leave now.”

“Inform Mr. Kaplan,” instructed Red. “I imagine it will take them several hours to find the secret passages, if they find them at all. She’ll have to work literally beneath their noses, but I trust she can manage.”

Dembe glanced at Liz, then at Stein. “Do I tell her trace cleanup or a body removal?”

Red chuckled darkly. “By the time she gets here, the body won’t be much more than trace.”

“There is no time,” warned Dembe. “We can either leave the body or take him to a secondary location, but—”

“We have time, Dembe.” Hearing Red’s voice gravelly with emotion, Liz couldn’t help but wonder whether logic could even get to him at that moment. “I’m not leaving until I’m finished with him.”

“We must go now to stay ahead of the police.”

Liz’s eyes widened as the implications of that struck her. “Red,” she croaked out.

They both whipped around to look at her, but her focus remained on Red.

“Sweetheart—”

“Please,” she whispered, “can we leave?”

Red rolled his tongue in his mouth, gaze jumping from her to her captor. Then it settled on her. “Of course, Lizzie. Let me help you up.”

He reached down to get her arms, but she shied away and mumbled, “Don’t think I can walk.”

Although the fear of not seeing Red again proved no longer a problem, it had devastated her walls, the very walls that she used to depend on for security but that she was now realising were flimsy compared to Red’s protective devotion.

She hurt and shook all over, and she could only pay attention to her surroundings at all because they involved Raymond Reddington for crime’s sake. How could she push through her exhaustion and pain to walk back to the cellar then through the tunnel that had already seemed endless from peeking down it?

Too busy considering the predicament, she didn’t realise Red had jumped to his own conclusions until he whirled back around on Stein.

“You,” he growled, advancing on him, knife brandished. “I’d thought I’d arrived in time to stop you from committing the deadliest of sins, but if I was wrong—”

“Wait,” cut in Liz, “I didn’t mean—”

Her voice broke, but as Red looked back at her, she tried again.

“Stein didn’t…” Her voice bottomed out, and she took a shaky breath. “He was going to, but you… You saved me. I’m just—” She inhaled again with frustration, angry at herself for failing so spectacularly at speech. “I’m so tired.”

“Okay, sweetheart,” he said, lowering the knife. “That’s okay. You’re okay.”

“Raymond,” said Dembe, gentle but firm. “We must go. What about him?”

Without a word, Red whipped out a gun and emptied the magazine in Stein’s chest. Even as the gunshots echoed, he squatted to curve one arm under Liz’s legs, support her back with the other, and lift her into his arms.

A surprised squeak got past her lips at the swiftness of his movements, and he looked at her with a tender smile as Dembe led the way.

“I have you, Lizzie,” he said. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”

The headiness of Red’s masculine and above all familiar cologne eased her into a bone-weary sense of security, but she managed to ask, “Rosie?”

“We met her outside,” he answered. “She showed us the secret passage. Fortunately, because we might have thought the place empty if we’d gone in through the front door. And if we had—”

Liz clenched her eyes shut and shook her head. “I don’t want to think about that.”

Red pressed a kiss to her hair and nodded. “You’re safe now, Lizzie,” he said. “Why don’t you rest? I can’t imagine you’ve gotten much good sleep in this…filth. There’s a bit of a drive to the warehouse; you have time.”

“Warehouse?” she said. “We’re going to a warehouse?”

“You deserve a palace, sweetheart,” he said, “but it’s the closest location I can have secured for a medical team.”

Anxiety wrapped around her heart, but she bit her lip to keep quiet as she snuggled closer to Red’s warmth.

But as drowsiness crept up on her, her self-consciousness started to slip and she found herself mumbling, “Just don’t leave me, Red. Don’t let me go.”

“Never,” he said, with more doggedness than necessary considering she was half-asleep. “I promise, Lizzie. I promise I won’t.”

“Why?” With the edge of consciousness so close, she wasn’t entirely certain she had spoken out loud.

And as she tumbled over that edge into peaceful slumber, she wasn’t entirely certain if she imagined Red’s murmured response—

“Because I love you, Lizzie.”

Each time she drifted into consciousness, Red was at her bedside.

The first time, he’d been on the phone, receiving an update from Mr. Kaplan from the sounds of it.

Liz couldn’t keep her head above water long enough to be sure.

The second time, his head lay near her hip, his soft snores muffled by the linens.

Though it took all of her energy reserves, she dragged her hand over to him and caressed as much of him as she could reach. He stirred but did not wake, which she hoped proved he had fallen asleep feeling safe and relaxed.

She exhausted herself out before she could ask.

The next time, he finally noticed she was awake.

She couldn’t even finish croaking his name before he shushed her and urged her to drink water. Once she had downed the cool liquid relief, he opened his mouth to speak, which was when his phone started to ring.

He’d looked apologetic but said the call pertained to hunting Stein’s associates and was, thus, imperative to her safety. He’d suggested she go back to sleep while he took the call, and she’d wanted to argue but…

Well, she hated fighting with Red.

The first time she awoke not feeling like a train had run her over—and, honestly, was still running her over—seemed to be the first time Red had been away from her bedside in at least a couple of days.

She almost hated that he cared so much about her.

She definitely hated that she had worried him.

Tears sprang to Liz’s eyes. She pressed her head back into her pillow as if to disappear into it, but her vision only blurred more.

Everything was in shambles. Again. Yet worse than ever before. She had messed up her relationship with Red, her place in the task force, her personal safety… And how could she hope to fix it all?

Maybe she should never have tried to win more than the crappy hand fate had dealt her. If she had simply stayed quiet, did as expected…

Sure, she’d have drifted further and further into loss and purposelessness, but she wouldn’t have gotten hurt. She wouldn’t have gotten anyone else hurt.

Like Rosie. Red.

Maybe even the task force.

How many times now? How many times had she used—wasted—government time and resources and money?

Exhaling shakily, Liz reached up to press the heels of her palms into her eyes. A few miserly tears slipped down her face; she ignored them, let them dry on her healing skin.

Infinitely later, she dropped her arms to her sides and stared at the ceiling. Though unsure whether to be grateful Red missed seeing her fall apart, she certainly felt alone.

Then, a knock at the door.

“Hello, Liz,” said Rosie as she pulled out a gift bag from behind her back. “I got you something.”

Pushing herself into a sitting position, Liz sighed. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Rosie levelled her with a no-nonsense look of her own. “Oh, like how you didn’t have to get beaten by my husband every night for nearly two weeks?”

“That’s different,” she huffed. Paused. “Two weeks?”

“Felt a lot longer, right?” With a sigh, Rosie sat at the foot of Liz’s bed and started fingering her blanket. “And trust me, it was not that different. It took me a lot of guts to sneak in and out of this place crawling with armed men working for this Red of yours. I haven’t even formally met him, but I overheard him on the phone earlier, talking to some guy who’d helped my husband escape prison. The threats he made… I’m going to have nightmares.”

Liz couldn’t help but smile down at her lap. “Yeah, Red gets like that sometimes,” she said. At least she could guess where he had disappeared off to, then. “He wouldn’t have hurt you though—trusts our mutual captive friendship enough to let you stay here, after all.”

“I’ll have to thank him for that. Who knew being dryboarded for a day could damage your tissues?” She shot Liz a sardonic smile. “It’s one thing hearing about your husband’s torture methods in court—an entirely other to experience them yourself. I’m…definitely going to have nightmares.”

Liz reached over and, catching on, Rosie met her hand halfway and took it. “You know how to reach me if you need somebody to talk to.”

They shared a small smile before Rosie squeezed and pulled away. “Speaking of which,” she said, “I don’t know if you remember this but a piece of advice you gave when you first started counselling me was finding a tangible way to self-soothe.”

Liz nodded along. She did remember.

“I got myself a teddy bear, and I wanted to give it to you now, to… I don’t know, fittingly wrap things up, I guess?” Huffing a laugh, Rosie pulled a red stuffed rabbit out of the bag. “But I’m giving this instead since you mentioned liking the colour red and—”

“I love it, Rosie,” reassured Liz, taking the gift and feeling warmth spread inside her. “Thank you.”

“I figured the symbolism would be off,” she said. “My teddy bear helped me deal with an abusive arse. You’re dealing with…”

She trailed off, and Liz lightheartedly supplied, “An annoying one.”

When Rosie snorted, Liz sighed and settled back in her mattress.

“Jokes aside, try not to look at your situation through the lens of what’s behind you. Stein is gone for good now. You have a fresh start, Rosie.”

Her new friend regarded her with sharp eyes. “Whereas you…?” she prompted, and Liz huffed. This woman saw too much.

“I feel as though every step I took to a solution for my problem has just been undone.”

“Why?” questioned Rosie. Liz looked away, unsure how to reply, and her friend pounced on the hesitation. “Because Red saved you from a situation you got yourself into?”

Liz glanced back, incredulous and a little bemused that she could be so easily read. But she wouldn’t waste precious breath denying it if Rosie had already figured it out.

“I couldn’t do one thing without him getting involved,” said Liz, flashing a self-deprecating smile. “And I’m not mad at him, not about this—not about any of it anymore. I’m just…” She shrugged. “Tired. He’s always protecting me, always rescuing me like some damsel in distress. Who am I without him?”

Rosie didn’t hesitate. “The Good Doctor.”

Liz scoffed. “Rosie, that’s not who I am.”

She rolled her eyes and scooted closer. “Okay. You still did good,” she argued. “And you still did it by yourself. You say you’re not the Good Doctor. Fine. You being able to say so just tells me you’re at a place where you do know who you are.”

Her voice lowered and her eyes gentled as she leaned in towards Liz. “Does he?”

“He must,” mumbled Liz. “He must know me better than I know myself by now.”

Rosie leaned back and threw her hands in the air, half-exasperated and half-excited. “And he continues to protect you!” she said. “That tells me he sees what I see: You’re a good person—you, Liz, as an individual. You’re more than that even: you’re incredible, brave, selfless. That doesn’t belong to anybody else.”

When she stayed silent, Rosie let her arms drop and took Liz’s hand again with a raised brow. “But does that mean you don’t belong with anybody else?”

Liz still didn’t know what to say in response, and after a moment, Rosie stood and took the empty gift bag with her. She paused at the door to give Liz a parting smile.

“Whatever you choose to do or be next,” she said, “you’ll always be the person who saved me in more ways than one.”

Liz blinked. Wasn’t that what Red was to her?

From rescuing her from the fire decades ago and saving her from Stein afresh, to watching over her as a child and dropping everything to guide her as a fugitive, Red was the reason she could go home at the end of the day.

“Home” wasn’t always where she lived, or even a specific location; it definitely wasn’t always what she expected. But she was home because of Red.

Could it be that…she was home with Red?

Stifling the occasional groan of pain, Liz shuffled out of bed and hobbled over to the window nearby: a yellowed industrial window, largely boarded up with wooden planks.

With a single glance outside, she confirmed what was not discernible from the sterile and blindingly white make of her current bedroom: she was in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere.

Well, at the edge of a small town, but that was pretty much the same thing.

Down the street, she spied a shop sign for a toy store and knew Rosie must have seen the red rabbit in there and remembered Liz’s telling her about her stuffed rabbit as a child. To pass the time in captivity, no subject had gone untouched, yet—

Liz glanced back at her gift on the bed and mulled over the past few minutes: completely unexpected but possibly just what she needed.

—this had been the most remarkable interaction she’d had with the other woman.

Partly because Rosie had known what troubled her and what to say to help her, like a fictional character with the sole purpose of furthering the main character’s development.

But partly because of Rosie’s actual words.

Liz did know who she was now. Again. Yet more thoroughly than she had prior to meeting Red, if also more painfully.

Even if, this time around, she had needed to fight as never before to find out what she was made of, the knowledge in the end gave her true confidence that she could pass any trial, jump any hurdle.

Yes, Red had saved her from Stein, from the fire, from countless other dangerous situations and likely countless more to come. But it had been—and always will be—her who survived.

Liz had chosen to push, to fight, to live. No one could have made that choice for her. It had been her, all her, inextricably tied to Red or not.

Something sent her stomach free-falling as that thought took shape, the something that had seared through her when Red had given his little monologue to Stein about who she was to him.

His love, his life, his heart.

What did that make him to her?

“Sweetheart?”

Liz’s attention jumped to the door, her nerves only eased by the unmistakable baritone of the sole person she trusted to never hurt her.

“Baz informed me Rosemary dropped by. Are you still awake?”

Instinctively, she glanced down to make sure she looked okay—and, well, her cuts and bruises were fading, and someone had changed her into clothes that weren’t ripped and stained in blood, so that was nice—before responding, “Yeah, Red. Come in.”

The hinges squealed as the door opened. Upon seeing her at the window, Red’s eyes widened and he hurried over to her.

“Lizzie!” he admonished. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“I was just—”

“And stay away from the windows,” he tutted as he steered her back to the bed. “We want to lie low. Besides, abandoned warehouses are so rarely up to code these days. Have I ever told you about Kyle? He contracted tetanus from being shot through a window like that, you know.”

Liz rolled her eyes but permitted herself a small smile. “I think Kyle had bigger problems, Red.”

Chuckling, Red sat beside her, shoulder to shoulder. So close, yet so far.

Liz swallowed and stared at Red’s fingers as they drummed against the mattress.

“Because I love you, Lizzie.”

Had she imagined that? If yes, why would her subconscious feed her such thoughts? And if not… What does a person say to that?

“Red?”

He angled his head towards her to show her he was listening.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for coming for me.”

He turned his head to face her. “Lizzie, I will always come for you.”

She gave him a half-shrug. “Well… Thank you.”

He shook his head. “Unfortunately, I can’t take the credit. Agent Mojtabai told us about your…connection to Rosemary.”

Lizzie’s fluttering heart froze in her chest and plummeted into her stomach. “Oh.”

“Yes… He hadn’t had the chance to show you what information he gleaned from the computer, but he showed us as soon as you were taken. He found Rosemary’s IP address and, eventually, her physical address—her own safe house, separate from Iestinus’s web of real estate.”

“The perfect storage place for his top-secret dealings,” guessed Liz.

Red nodded. “The FBI eventually decrypted and sifted through all of the intel hidden there,” he said. “Of course, guided by the invaluable insights of Iestinus’s criminal acquaintances, I was hours ahead of them.”

“What did you find?”

“The unique address Stein had access to that the FBI’s investigation hadn’t uncovered.”

“Oh.” She looked at the floor, at her bare feet and Red’s squeaky-clean dress shoes. “Thank you for that, then, Red. You did save me. Doing it alone…isn’t the point.”

Red huffed. “You won’t let up, will you?”

She nudged his foot with hers. “Nope.”

“Then, I suppose I have to accept your gratitude.”

“I…hope you’ll accept my apology, too.”

“Apology?” he spluttered. “Lizzie, what could you possibly be apologising for?”

She lifted her head and forced herself to meet his eyes. “I’m not sorry I helped all the people I did,” she said. “I’m definitely not sorry I helped Rosie. But I am sorry I went through so much trouble to keep it from you when you go through so much trouble to keep me safe.”

With heartache exuding from him, he shook his head. “No, sweetheart, I’m sorry. For pushing you to such an extreme and, even more deplorably…” He sighed and, dropping his eyes, reached out to hold her hands in his. “For not noticing you felt so suffocated in your own life.”

Liz cringed. Had Aram parroted her “I feel like I’m suffocating” to the team when catching them up on her extracurricular activities? She knew he tended to flutter like a bird when anxious, but Liz didn’t need more reminders of her past desperation and Red certainly didn’t need more reasons to deplore himself.

“Stop,” she whispered, squeezing his hands. “Stop doing that. This isn’t your fault, Red. I made my own mistakes—let me accept responsibility for that.”

“Lizzie—”

“Dammit, Red!”

His eyes flew back up to hers, and she stared back hard, begging him not to look away.

“I’m my own person. And you know what people do? They make mistakes. They screw up. They have poor judgement. Don’t take that away from me.”

“I’m not trying to take anything from you.”

Liz deflated under Red’s even yet impassioned voice. “I know,” she sighed. “I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I just… I need you to understand, okay? Because we’ve made good progress, and we… We have potential for so much more.” Biting her lip, she scooted closer to him. “Don’t you want to realise that potential?”

Red’s eyes widened. Before he could regain his bearings, she pressed onwards.

“I want to,” she professed. “It’s taken me a while to accept it—to realise even—but I… I want to see where this goes. I want to keep spending time together, keep holding hands, keep flirting, keep—”

Heat flushed into her cheeks. What were the chances she could blame her injuries on that one?

“Look, I just want to keep you in my life, to have you in my life.”

Red continued staring at her.

After a solid minute, she averted her gaze.

“Okay. You’re not saying anything. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I’ve messed up again. I’m sorry.” Looking down, Liz pulled on her hands to free them of Red’s grasp. “Oh, gosh, I am so sorry. Am I on any drugs we can blame for this?”

Red tightened his grip, tugging her arms to make her look at him. “You haven’t messed up, sweetheart,” he said, and an exhale escaped Liz’s panicked lungs. “I’m simply surprised. Your tenacity tends to be directed towards shutting me out.”

Liz winced. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying you’re sorry,” he said. “If you weren’t ready to let me in, you weren’t ready. I’m honoured you want to now, sweetheart. Your trusting me with your heart is”—he let go of her left hand to cup her cheek—“a gift. A precious gift I will cherish for the rest of my life.”

Liz smiled as Red leaned forward to press his forehead against hers.

“But I don’t want to hurt you,” he murmured. “You must be sure you know what you’re getting into.”

“And what am I getting into?”

His hand moved from her face to her shoulder and squeezed. “I will still want to protect you, Lizzie. Whether you send me a thousand miles away from you or bring me as close as I physically can get…”

He paused to roll his tongue, and something twisted low in Liz’s gut.

“Protecting you in all that you do will always be my priority,” he continued. “If that bothers you, if that makes you uncomfortable…”

“It doesn’t.” Moving her right hand to her shoulder, Liz lay it over his hand. “Not anymore, now that I’ve—and we’ve—figured out some things.”

Red raised his brow. “Is that so?”

She stared him down. “Red, I ultimately make my own decisions, but they will always be inextricably tied to you. Not because you manipulate me like Tom or hold me captive like Stein, but because I love you.”

He inhaled sharply, and she tightened her grip around his hand.

“My love, my saviour, my protector. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

Red startled. “Is that—? Are you quoting—?” As a small smile appeared on his lips, he shook his head. “You love me, Lizzie?”

“I do.”

Red’s smile widened. “Well, sweetheart, if you’re sure—”

“I am.”

“—then I’m going to kiss you now.”

“Oka—”

Red surged forward to seal her mouth with his own, ardent enough to push her back against the headboard of the bed.

Forcible as it was, the kiss called to mind the late Iestinus Aurum, but such a terrible comparison vanished with the tender swipe of Red’s thumb against her chin.

His smell and his taste caressed her senses just as gently yet formidably as the rest of who he was enveloped her world. She wouldn’t change a thing about it. About him. About this.

Stein had been painful and thieving and deranged. Red was passionate and loving and steady.

So, so steady.

He held her up, balanced her out, gave her life.

Being tied to someone wasn’t a curse, not with the right someone. Not with Red.

When they broke apart for air and he smiled at her, she took a breath, and knowing he was there—his unconditional love and continuous support and oh-so-steady presence—she realised it was the first full breath of her life.

THE END