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They settle into a new routine when they leave the Wisconsin safehouse, Liz full of single-minded determination and Red watching her warily whenever her attention is elsewhere.
Much like he felt when they first went on the run, she is everywhere. Except it’s a different kind of awareness now, because she’s no longer so broken and he’s no longer an enigma.
When she smiles at him, it’s unguarded, pulling him in. When she reaches for his hand or hugs him, he can tell she’s trying to make it commonplace. They are friends, or as close to it as they ever could be, and it’s eroding what’s left of his barriers.
Over the next few weeks, they arrange meetings with Cabal members. Rather than by Red’s invitation directly, each is through trusted liasons, and Liz has fun playing with the disguises before they arrive at each site together.
Red chooses the Cabal members they kill based on several factors, beginning with those who are high-profile and legally untouchable. It frustrates Liz to know it’s true, but some Cabal leaders are too powerful to be harmed by even the world-shaking effects of the Fulcrum leak.
Their list of targets is further trained on people inside the Cabal who have murdered or directed others to murder--especially on a large scale. That makes them especially dangerous enemies and also important to remove. It sends the message that no one who remains is safe.
At the third meeting, they take out two men simultaneously; Liz shoots the head of a multinational corporation before he can finish aiming at Red, and means it when she tells him later that she has no regrets.
She feels safe with a gun holstered under her shirt again. She’s slowly moving past the guilt she’s been carrying since Connolly.
She feels even safer with Red’s hand hovering at the small of her back whenever they enter new situations. He expects her to hold her own, always has, but his presence--especially the way he’s reaching out more, relaxing around her--is a comfort.
Liz has trusted him with her life since before it made sense, and that’s one of the things between them that remains the same.
They’ve killed a handful of high-ranking Cabal members when something slips.
Red thinks it was Julian, an associate he has trusted for decades. One he will never trust again. Whatever the weak link in his careful arrangements, instead of meeting Ingrid at the deserted farmhouse in dusty Kansas, they’re almost caught by the Task Force.
Ressler and Samar are there, Samar’s eyes apologetic but her aim unflinching as she trains her gun on Liz. Ressler should be aimed at Reddington just as steadfastly, but his gaze flicks to Liz for the briefest of moments and that’s all Red needs. He takes the shot.
The second he does, chaos breaks loose between the FBI team and the men Red brought with them. Red and Liz take cover behind a rusted truck until Dembe pulls up in an SUV. Samar fires in their direction, but doesn’t stop their escape in the bulletproof vehicle.
Taking narrow backroads after that, they switch vehicles twice and don’t stop moving until they’re in Denver, letting the city swallow them up.
While Dembe is still driving, Red finds a bloody graze on Liz’s arm that she neglected to mention.
“It was from Samar,” she tells him. "She could have fired on the tires or gas tank and stopped our escape entirely, but she didn’t.”
Their orders were clearly to capture, not to kill. This was just a warning shot.
She frowns. “But Ressler…”
“What about Ressler?” Red’s voice is gruff as he dabs at her arm. Since waving him off didn’t work, she lets him disinfect what’s barely even a wound. She hopes it’ll calm him down.
“Red, you got a clean shot at him. Should we talk about that?”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” He runs his fingers around the edges of her bandage, making sure the adhesive will hold. Reminding himself that this is the extent of the damage. It could have been so much worse.
Her smooth skin is still warm, alive. Her eyes keep trying to find something in his. He can’t bear to look at her.
“If that were true, I don’t think you would seem so upset. I’ve seen you shoot people before and barely blink. Red--I know you’ve shot Ressler before. So what’s going on?”
“Nothing, Lizzie. We’ve already talked about this. They’ll chase us until this mess is over, one way or another. I gave them a distraction so we could escape. It’s that simple.”
“It’s not simple at all, though, is it. You’ve fought back to back with Ressler now. You know him. To face him and pull the trigger...I can’t imagine it.”
“I hope you never have to. But as you said, Donald and I have a history that goes back to long before you joined the Task Force. We only fought on the same side at times...to protect you. We were both on your side. Allegiances shift. Loyalties change.”
She nods. “That is incredibly sad.”
“Yeah.”
He shrugs and gently pats her arm. “At any rate, his injury, like yours, will be a flesh wound. He will recover. But if we’re lucky, he won’t be able to chase us for a while. We need to regroup.”
****
They move to the coast, spending a few weeks in Seattle, then Portland. The crowds pose more of a risk, especially with the Task Force having seen their faces...but they saw a blonde Liz and Red in a dark wig under his hat.
Though he doubts that will fool them, he can hope.
Urban areas are the better option for now, even with the risks, because the crowds also offer anonymity. People in cities wish to mind their business and be left alone. Because Red can’t postpone it any longer--the endgame is approaching--Dembe joins them in their various apartments.
Red lights up in his company, and Liz laughs more.
Mr. Kaplan only contacts them by phone; Red invites no one to meet in person. But well-paid colleagues are still picking off Cabal members, now with stealth and finesse.
“It’s almost time,” Red tells Liz over dinner. They’ve been ordering groceries, grateful that local markets cater to shut-ins and fugitives, and cooking all their meals together instead of taking turns. She insists.
“Time for…”
“The end of it.” He smiles, slow and satisfied.
Liz takes another bite of the French fish dish he suggested they fix that evening, thinking it over. “But we’ve barely gotten started with the Cabal. Red--what exactly is the endgame here? We’ve never talked about it.”
He glances at Dembe, who nods appreciatively over his food, then aims that dangerous smile her way. “You see, Lizzie, it was so up in the air. There really wasn’t much to talk about while we waited to see what needed to be done. We poked holes in their organization. We weakened their trust in each other.”
“And now?”
“Now it has become clear to me that the best way to stop them, to neutralize them, is not to wipe them off the map. It’s to stoke that power vacuum and step into it.”
“Wait.” She raises her hand, letting her fork clatter on the china plate. “You’re telling me that you want to join the people who want me dead? Who tried to have me framed for murder?”
“These are also the people who had me on the run,” he reminds her. “Even before they became a force in your life. Surely, if you’ve learned anything since we met, it’s that the maxim is true: the closer you keep your enemies, the safer you are from their attacks.”
“We’re their enemies, too. Why would they welcome our involvement in their organization? They have us on the run, Red. They’re winning.”
“Are they? Seven of them have died in the last six weeks. Their numbers are many, but not limitless. They’re unwilling to meet in public. And we put their secrets on full display. I think we’re not the only ones on the run.”
“So you propose, what, a truce? An alliance?”
“Oh, heavens, no.” He dabs at his mouth with a cloth napkin. “Those sorts of things require trust. A level of mutual respect that can transcend disagreement. You cannot form an alliance with someone you know will murder you at the earliest opportunity. No, my plan is much more straightforward.”
He stands, holding his hand out for her plate. Liz passes it to him, waiting for further explanation.
“While we’ve been on our own the last few weeks, Mr Kaplan has been using her many skills to gather information. Following leads, hunting down trails I suspected might be fruitful. Thanks to her, and to Dembe--” he toasts his friend with a glass, “the final pieces are in place. Now we make a trade.”
Her hands, no longer busy eating, are free to grip the tablecloth in a moment of sheer blinding terror. Red loves to make these moves behind her back, playing chess and telling her nothing until checkmate. It would be just like him to trade himself for her freedom.
The exact opposite of what she wants, the last thing she will ever agree to. Bold and brave but completely futile--because the second he gives himself up for her, she knows she won’t be able to rest until she gets him back.
Will they never stop this? Liz wonders, listening to the pounding of her heart as Red pauses long enough to blink at her.
“A trade of information,” he clarifies slowly, watching her with concern. “Lizzie, are you alright? You look...”
She nods, swallowing the taste of fear along with a fair amount of shame for the conclusion she was so ready to believe. It takes her a moment to gather her words.
“So, you’re going to blackmail them, to give you a seat at the table. And then you’ll...run the table.”
Red’s smug smile wars with lingering worry. “Quite right. You already know that the Cabal runs through governments and militaries and nation-states alike. With the right leverage, I can make their hunt of us a liability that will hurt them far more than any success would ever be worth. I may even be able to get your former position back.”
“It would be nice to no longer be a fugitive,” she agrees. “Buy my own groceries sometimes. It’s impossible to surprise you with a menu when you know everything that arrives on our doorstep.”
“I understand. You’ll be free to buy whatever you like, then. And invite me for dinner, I suppose, if the mood strikes you. I would be amenable to that,” Red says with a more relaxed smile.
He still doesn’t quite get it, Liz knows: that she wants more than separate lives, occasional dinners together or friendly evenings of chatting over wine and poker. Red isn’t fighting her on that front, but he doesn’t see himself in her picture. And if she’s being honest with herself, she knows that could be because she hasn’t yet decided on the specifics of it.
She knows she wants Red. That part is easy.
But if what he’s saying is true, that he can use their leverage to clear her name, she will have more choices to make. Harder ones.
She worked her whole life to become an FBI agent, to earn her place as a profiler. She knows it’s something she’s good at. A career she was made for, even.
But.
And then.
Raymond Reddington in a box.
She isn’t that person anymore, if she ever really was--the young woman with the loving husband and the dog, nervous about her new desk job working in DC. The edge she lives with now, the side of herself that can hurt and hunt and kill...part of Liz thinks she has always had that darkness. Since she was a child. Maybe she was born with it.
God knows that despite the blame she’s flung at Red, he isn’t the source of her darker tendencies. He did everything he could to steer her away from being more like him. And with all the harm she caused, her work on the Task Force also helped her save people.
Liz stills wants to save people. She wants to use her skills for some kind of greater good. But she can’t pretend she’s a paragon of virtue going forward, no matter how clean her record is once Red gets done with it.
Which leaves her where, exactly?
****
Liz goes with Red to the summit he sets up with the remaining core of the Cabal. She feels useless there, since he also brings a full guard of men armed to the nines. And he certainly doesn’t need her help to negotiate. Yet he insists on inviting her, shaking his head when she questions him.
“I’d like you with me,” Red says, without explaining further. The understanding that he means it for himself--that he wants her by his side not to protect her, or humor her need to be involved--is a gift. So Liz takes it, and bites down hard on the urge to speak up during the information exchange.
Even if all her presence does is affirm their new unity as a team, she can see the value in that, for their strength in the eyes of the Cabal. Word will spread in the underground Red travels, making its way eventually back to the FBI.
Everyone will know that Red has made a play for greater power, and that Liz was right there with him when it happened. She wonders what her old friends will think: if Samar will understand her choices, if Aram will worry that she didn’t make them freely. If Ressler will get that defeated look in his eyes and consider her a lost cause.
She can’t blame any of them for their judgments from a distance--they don’t know what she knows. But she’s never felt clearer, not lost but found. The Cabal can be run by people who want her dead for threatening their supremacy, or it can be run by Red.
Who she trusts to find the right balance between control and domination. Who she knows will keep the rest of the Cabal on a tight leash.
As Liz sits with him in a glass-and-chrome boardroom, watching the Cabal give him the command he requires, she suspects he’s already seeking out leverage to hold over each member.
Mr. Kaplan has been hard at work again, coming to their newest safehouse, passing Red messages. Now that he’s busily reining the Cabal in, he and Liz don’t have to move every few days--and his family can visit safely. Dembe stays over for a week, recommending books to Liz and telling her stories about Red when they first met.
"Don’t believe a word of it,” Red warns her. “This man is a notorious fibber.” But his eyes shine with joy when he looks at the two of them.
Liz has never seen him so happy. So settled. Power suits him.
Red finds her in her room one night, strolling casually through the open door. He has learned the hard way that if he tries to return to polite formality, Liz will roll her eyes at him or ask “What are you waiting for, gold filigree?” without looking up from what she’s doing.
“It took longer than I would have liked,” he says, unprompted. “But it’s finished.”
“What?” She has no idea what he’s talking about, since the Cabal restructuring was completed a week earlier.
“Your record has been erased.”
Liz sets her book down. “My criminal record?”
She’d forgotten Red was even working on that, and she knows she should feel excited. Or relieved. A rush of something should be washing over her. Instead she feels numb.
“Yes. It’s been fully expunged, as though none of this ever happened."
And there it is, she thinks. That would be why.
“But, Red,” she corrects him gently, “it did happen. Erasing my record can’t take any of it back. I still have to live with it.”
He sighs. “I wish this could be easier, Lizzie, I really do.”
“Well, it’s not.”
She reaches out and grabs hold of his hand, tugging him over to sit next to her on the bed. “It’s okay that it’s not, though, Red. It really is. I’m okay.”
“Yeah.” She does look okay lately, he has to admit. Red expected this news to bring her peace, but Lizzie seemed content even before it.
Now she smiles at him, still holding his hand loosely. “Got a minute?”
“Sure.” He turns a little more to face her, giving her his full attention.
“Since you mentioned it, I’ve been thinking a lot about what comes next for me. All those choices I have now, you know? With a clean slate.”
Red nods.
“I could go back to working at the FBI. As a profiler. It might take some string-pulling, but you’re good at that.”
“I’m sensing a ‘but.’”
“That’s because you know me,” Liz says. “The Task Force only existed because you wanted to keep me close and take down the Cabal. Which means there will never be a Task Force again. Not like there was.”
“I know.”
“But even if they’re not hunting me...you cleared my name, Red, not yours. You will have to stay like this, won’t you? In the wind, still a wanted criminal.”
“Yes.”
That doesn’t bother him; he’s used to his routine. But Red can’t tell what Liz is working towards in her explanation. It worries him.
“So the only way I can have a normal life is if I never see you again.”
“Not never,” he assures her. “You know that I’m capable of moving freely, off the radar of all manner of authorities. We can still...see each other.” Dinners maybe, he thinks. Game nights with Dembe. Arguing over which movie to watch.
“That isn’t going to work for me.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t want a few secret visits a year, Red, while I pretend to be an upstanding FBI agent.”
“I would argue that you wouldn’t be pretending, Lizzie. Even FBI agents are allowed to have friends. Of all stripes.”
“That’s not really the point. With my past already laid bare for the world to see, who would ever let me keep a low profile at a desk again?”
Red frowns, following her logic.
“You can whitewash my record all you want, but my face was on the news. That future is gone. And without you in it, I wouldn’t want it anyway.”
“Well, then. What exactly do you want?”
“I don’t belong at the FBI anymore, but I still have all my training. All my skills. Red--I think we should start our own Blacklist.”
He clears his throat, genuinely surprised. “Our own Blacklist?”
“Yes." She let go of his hand to gesture with both of hers. "Just think about it. We stopped a lot of terrible people with the Task Force. We could go back to doing that, now that we’re done running. You have your own access, your own connections, and yours are better than the FBI’s a lot of the time.”
“Lizzie, I understand wanting to help people--I love that about you--but I worked with the Task Force to my own ends. I was never on a crusade to better the world.”
“So? So what if you’re not looking to atone for your sins and make the world better? It can be my crusade. I have my own sins, Red, and I don’t need your reasons to be the same as mine. I’m asking you to work with me anyway, because we’d be good at it.”
Red flexed his empty hand, trying to imagine it. “I suppose I would be your best resource for catching uncatchable criminals.”
“You would. And if we had leads we couldn’t follow up on, I’m pretty sure we could find a way to tip off Samar or Aram, without giving up our locations.”
Liz bit her lower lip while he thought it over. “Well? What do you say?”
“I think it’s a brilliant idea.”
Red grinned, his smile stretching even wider when she hugged him. “It sounds perfect for your talents--and I can certainly think of some people whose neutralization would improve my hold on the Cabal.”
“See? Win-win.”
“But, Lizzie...you’re sure this is the path you want to follow? Playing judge and jury, outside the law? It’s not a decision you can take back, once you begin.”
She nods, a firm dip of her chin. “I’m sure. The worst criminals work outside the law, untouchable. You taught me that. Somebody should be responsible for them, and I’m in a unique position to try. Who will do it if I don’t?”
“Okay, then.” Red pats her leg, pleased. “It will be fun to have a reason to work together more closely again. I’ve been so busy restructuring the Cabal lately, I’ve missed you.”
“Me too.” Liz eyes him across the inches that separate them on her bed. “Speaking of that.”
“Hmm?”
“I want to spend more time together.”
He shifts in place. “As I said, I look forward to it. Getting us settled and safe had to take priority, Lizzie, but of course I hope to have more time with you now. We should decide what to make for dinner.”
“No, Red. I don’t mean--” Liz takes a deep breath, trying to figure out how to explain without causing him to withdraw.
“I love you,” she begins.
He smiles at her, soft around his eyes. “I love you, too.”
One of the benefits of things settling down has been watching Red get comfortable with her affection. She says the words often, deliberately. Hearing him say them back is nice...but Liz knows he doesn’t mean it the way she does.
He hears love and thinks family and friendship. And sure, they’re close in that way too, but she keeps saying it and waiting for Red to hear attraction and commitment, and it just doesn’t seem to be happening.
With Red, blunt often backfires. Half the time, they end up in an argument, even when that isn’t her intention. But being gentle and trying to drop hints has been totally lost on the criminal mastermind she's all but living with.
So, blunt is the only option she has left to try.
“Red...I’m in love with you.”
“You--what?”
“That’s what I mean when I say I want to spend more time with you. I want to spend it differently; I want to be closer to you. I want to share my life with yours.” She pauses, scared of the look on his face--it’s unfamiliar, and she knows his expressions well.
“That’s the future I want: hunting Blacklisters, working together when you’re not busy with the Cabal...but also date nights. Early mornings and staying up late. Being together. Getting to a place where I know exactly what I want hasn’t been easy, Red, but I’m there now. I need to know what you want.”
Of all the situations he has tried to be ready for, Red feels shockingly unprepared for this one.
A small part of him wondered, when she declared that she loved him in Wisconsin, if perhaps she meant it in this way. But he considered that part a traitor, hope running wild. Allowing himself to hope has often been--historically speaking--both foolish and dangerous.
Lizzie has always been dangerous, because he can’t seem to defend himself against her. That’s what love is--being powerless.
He loved her even before he walked back into her world; that was a lifetime of fondness mixed with debt and guilt. But it’s different knowing her as the woman she is now. He can’t imagine not loving her...and though he tries not to think about it, he can’t imagine not wanting her.
Admitting that out loud would be a betrayal of all Lizzie could have beyond him, and of the effort he’s expended to hold himself back from her.
“Being with me would make the target on your back infinitely bigger,” he tells her, hoping to walk the line between evasion and lying. “Combining our lives further...would be a terrible idea. Yours has already seen so much darkness, Lizzie. You don’t need to add more of mine.”
She’s patiently listening, though her hands are pressed down into the bed beneath them. He knows she’ll push back; he isn’t done.
“I need you to really think about what you’re saying. Lizzie, I know you’re a good person. In a way that I’m not. The idea that you and I could--”
He swallows. “Have dates, or some sort of uncomplicated life, be a couple. It seems unrealistic given what I am, and who you are. You can love me and still keep yourself safe, keep a distance.”
“Reddington, I have no interest in keeping a distance. I’m trying to tell you that.”
Liz reaches up to touch his cheek. “I want less distance. I want you.”
“I will always choose you, no matter the harm to others,” Red explains. “Anyone who is a threat, even those you care about--it will always be that simple for me. I don’t have room for your morality.”
“I know.”
“How can you sit here and say that doesn’t matter to you?”
“Because it used to.”
Liz nods at the way he leans back. “I used to worry, a lot, about the way I felt pulled to you. Knowing everything you are, I worried what it said about me. Because it didn’t bother me--because I don’t care. Not the way I thought I should...the way a good person would.”
“The truth is, Red, I’ve made peace with it. I know you’re not a monster, no matter how often I used to throw that word at you. I know it because I’ve seen the real monsters. The people we caught, they were greedy and twisted and cruel. They were evil. But you’re not them.”
What’s coming next feels inevitable to Red. He can sense it, see it in her eyes. Evasion won’t be enough to save him. Nothing can save him. Salvation was never within his reach.
Sinning, though, he is well familiar with. Give me my sin again, he thinks foolishly, as yearning dislodges errant Shakespeare from the recesses of his mind.
"You don’t kill for pleasure, or entertainment. You’re willing to do whatever you have to, to protect others or save yourself. And we don’t have to have that in common for me to understand it.”
“I understand you,” Liz tells him. “Which is why I know as well as you do, you never answered my actual question. I did not ask you for a list of reasons why I should run for the hills rather than be with you. I asked what you want.”
She says it as though it’s a simple question. It’s probably the most difficult one he’s ever tried to answer.
“Forget the Cabal for a minute,” she offers. “Forget all our other enemies, including my old employers. Forget our complicated history, and think about the future. Yours and mine. What do you see?”
“Lizzie...”
“The manhunt is over,” she says, gazing into his guarded eyes. “It’s just us now. Here, in this moment, it’s only you and me. So tell me, Red...what do you really want?”
You.
He watches her as she approaches, and doesn’t react at all when her lips meet his. It would be the easiest thing in the world to give in. That’s what scares him.
When she finds herself kissing a statue of the Concierge of Crime, Liz hums a little in her throat and retreats, studying Red.
They’ve come so far from where they started; he’s not a mystery to her anymore.
She can read his tensed muscles, coiled so tight he seems like he’ll shatter if pushed. A pulse is jumping along the column of his throat. His hands are motionless on the bedspread, but she sees the tips of his fingers curling into the material–gripping ever so subtly.
Raymond Reddington is holding onto himself for dear life, and that tells her two very important things. First, that he desperately wants to avoid touching her back…and second, that he has to stop himself from doing so with visible effort.
Which means that he wants his hands, and mouth, and skin, on hers more than anything in the world, but will not allow himself the satisfaction.
Liz smiles.
She can work with that.