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As Liz lay on the bench, looking up at the cement ceiling of her cell, she couldn’t help but play the words the nurse had told her over and over in her head. You’re pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant. She hadn’t even heard the nurse say the words to her, but she saw her mouth it, her hearing too overwhelmed to process anything. Is there anyone you want me to call? Miss? There wasn’t anyone to call. No, this was a secret she would have to take her grave, which was coming a whole lot sooner than she would have liked.
As she sighed staring up at the ceiling, Ressler adjusted his chair, drawing her out of her thoughts. Liz turned her head to the side. There he was, just sitting there. In his perfect suit, with his perfect hair, not one single hair out of place. He looked as put together as usual. Liz smiled. It was somehow easier to smile knowing she didn’t have long to keep smiling, but she couldn’t hide how she was truly feeling, a treacherous tear escaping from her eyes before she could wipe it up with the sleeve of her jumpsuit.
“You alright there, Keen?” Ressler asked, leaning forward, his face becoming more confused.
Liz nodded, pressing her lips together as more tears filled her eyes. “Yep,” she said quickly so her voice didn’t have enough time to break. She remembered how one night, after the Task Force had gone out drinking to welcome Samar, she and Ressler had stayed behind later, and he had confided in her, drunkenly, about the pregnancy test, Audrey’s pregnancy test. “I’ll be fine,” she whispered, wondering how the world could be so cruel.
He shifted his chair a little closer to the bars of her prison cell and offered her a kind smile. “I know I’m here to keep you safe,” he said, “but you can talk to me. What’s on your mind?”
She looked back up at the ceiling. She desperately wanted to tell him exactly what was on her mind. She couldn’t tell him, the one person that she would have wanted to know, the only person. It wouldn’t be fair. Liz smiled at him again to try to keep the tears at bay. “I want to be cremated. There’s a beautiful river in—”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” he interrupted. “I’m going to make sure of it. We have it all planned out. You’re not leaving my sight. There’ll be Federal Marshals in the hallway of the courthouse. Once you’re transferred, you’ll be under military guard.”
I’m never making it to that courtroom. You and I both know that I’m never making it out of here alive. It’s not a question of ‘if’, but ‘when’. There were so many things she wanted to say, but fewer things she wanted him to hear. Liz swallowed hard. “When it happens,” she said as she sat up to face him, “it won’t be your fault. I know you did everything you could. I won’t blame you,” she continued, trying to keep her face as stoic as possible but her tone of voice soft.
“Liz…”
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, and I am truly sorry for what I’ve put you through, but I know I did the right thing. I don’t have any regrets, even if I have to die for what I’ve done.”
Ressler shook his head at her. “You’re not going to die, Liz. You’re going to face trial, and the truth will come out. It always comes out,” he said, looking her directly in the eyes.
Liz nodded slowly and solemnly. He always did believe in the truth, the system, that they were somehow one and the same, that you could use the system to get to the truth. She didn’t want to argue with him, not tonight, not on the last night she could be sure she’d be alive. “Maybe,” she said softly, “but just in case it doesn’t—”
“It will,” he interrupted, his voice filled with hope.
“It’s important to me that you know that you I don’t blame you. You don’t need my forgiveness, or you have it if you want it,” she paused. “Please, just accept this,” she whispered desperately. She could see Ressler tense his jaw as he usually did in stressful situations in response to her words.
“Ok,” he replied, biting his lower lip uncomfortably.
Liz smiled her first genuine smile of the evening. “Thank you,” she whispered before lying back down on the bench. She didn’t want to die, not really, not at all. As her eyes traced the inconsistencies of the cement ceiling, she wasn’t quite sure what to think. Maybe accepting her fate was a coping mechanism, it was the last thing she couldn’t let them take away from her. Knowing what was coming was a strange feeling. What had her life been about? Was that really everything? Was it all really supposed to end like this? If this was her last night, it was one thing the Cabal couldn’t take from her. Liz cleared her throat. “Even though I don’t regret anything, I wish things had turned out differently,” she said.
Ressler chuckled. “Differently how?” he asked.
“I always had this dream, or vision, I don’t really know what you call it,” she said turning on her side to face him, resting her head on her hand, elbow pressed against the painfully hard bench. “My husband and I walking through a park, with our daughter between us, holding our hands, swinging,” she said, smiling at the image.
“You’ll get to have that,” he replied, forcing a slight smile in an effort to reassure her.
I wish we could have had it, together. You don’t even know how close we were to having it together. Even the thought of what she would be missing out on made her want to tear up, so instead, Liz sighed sarcastically rolling her eyes. “Ugh, here I am, trying to accept my death, and you’re trying to make me feel better? Come on, let me have my moment, Ressler,” she replied in as happy of a tone as she could. As she looked back up at him, she realized that her attempt at a joke had definitely missed the mark as Ressler sat there with a blank face starting back at her.
“Keen, the way you’re talking…” Ressler paused, a look of concern overtaking his face. “You don’t want to hurt yourself, do you?” he asked carefully, as if he was stepping onto glass barefoot.
“God, no,” Liz replied. “That’s the last thing on my mind.”
Ressler nodded.
“Let’s talk about something else, I don’t want to sleep,” she said.
“Don’t want to or can’t?” asked Ressler, a hint of concern hidden in his question.
Liz smiled. He knew her too well. “I don’t want to spend my last night alive sleeping, Ressler,” she whispered, forcing a smile to hide the tears that had started forming in her eyes. “And before you ask, no, that doesn’t mean I want to kill myself,” she said, interrupting him as he opened his mouth. “I’m not suicidal, just realistic.”
Ressler closed his mouth, nodding stoically again. “What do you want to talk about?” he asked, shifting his eyes from her to the hallway to her prison cell that he was supposed to be keeping an eye on.
Fuck it, if it really was her last night, she wanted to know. Liz took a deep breath. “My birthday,” she said. “I know it’s unprofessional and if anyone knew about it, you wouldn’t be allowed to be here, but… I need to know.”
Ressler couldn’t hold back a chuckle, probably at the absurdity of the whole situation, as he licked his upper lip. “What do you wanna know, Keen?” he asked.
Her smile faded from her face as she looked him straight in his blue eyes. “Did it mean anything? To you?” she asked hesitantly.
It was as if he was gasping in slow motion as the smile faded his face, his jaw dropping slowly as he turned to look Liz in her eyes, his brain still processing the words. Ressler pressed his eyes closed before looking down and nodding ever so slightly. It was all he could get out. For some reason, no words seemed to form on his tongue or on his brain. He looked back up, not at Liz, but back at the hallway he was supposed to be guarding, his head still nodding ever so slightly as his eyes began to water.
As Liz felt her lower lip begin to quiver, she turned onto her back, holding a hand over her lip. The tears had begun to flow out of her eyes, down the sides of her face, but she didn’t care anymore. She knew she could only sniffle slightly. That was the problem with jail cells, lack of privacy to cry your eyes out when you needed to.
Ressler cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anyth—”
“I missed you,” Liz interrupted. “I thought about calling every day,” he said, still sniffling slightly as she wiped the tears off her face with her jumpsuit. If there was ever a time for honesty, this was it. “That’s why I called you right after I did it, I needed to hear your voice.”
Ressler paused for a long time, leaving Liz to ponder what he could have been thinking about, before speaking up again. “Why’d you do it, Liz?” he whispered, trying to hide the pain in his voice. “Why’d you shoot him?”
She couldn’t tell him the truth. She couldn’t tell him that as soon as she had heard Connolly mention his name and what he was going to do to him that the world had gone a little blurry. She couldn’t tell him any of it, it would be selfish to shift the burden onto him. “I don’t know,” she stuttered. She had been the one to take the shot; even if she didn’t regret it, she had started the mess, even if there was no other way out. “Everything got blurry and distant. I didn’t realize what I’d done until I saw him hit the ground,” she said.
Ressler sighed.
“I know you don’t believe me—”
“I do, Liz,” he interrupted. “I do.”
Liz pressed her lips together. “Do you regret it?” she asked.
“Regret what?” asked Ressler furrowing his eyebrows as he turned to look at her.
“Letting me go,” Liz replied.
Ressler stared back down the hallway blankly for a while before nodding. “Everyday,” he said quietly. “I wish it hadn’t gone this far.”
“You did the right thing,” she replied.
“I wish I was as sure as you are,” he said, offering her a kind smile before turning back to look at the hallway. “You should really get some sleep, Keen.”
Liz smiled. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m such a dangerous criminal that I don’t even get a pillow,” she replied.
Ressler let out a chuckle before starting to take off his jacket.
“Oh, you don’t—”
“Keen,” he interrupted, holding his jacket through the bars to her. “It might not be a blanket or a pillow, but it’s all I have.”
She stood up, slowly making her way to the bars, her eyes fixed on his. There wasn’t much she wouldn’t do to get out of this situation. Her in here, him out there. Her with a secret she would have to take to her grave not to cause him more hurt, him never knowing how close they could have been. She reached out her hand to grab his jacket as her eyes traced his face. As he passed the jacket off to her, Liz felt his hand brush by hers. “Sorry,” she whispered.
“About what?” he asked with a smile on his face.
Liz smiled back at him. Little did he know how much she truly had to be sorry for. Somehow, he had been the only one who hadn’t looked at her like a criminal this whole time. Even when he arrested her, he had looked at her with intense pity and regret filling his eyes instead of the disgust everyone else treated her too. When he looked into her eyes and told her that she wasn’t going to die, part of her believed him.
“Get some sleep, Liz,” he whispered softly before sitting back down in his chair.
Liz walked over back to her bench, putting his jacket under her head. She closed her eyes. It smelled like him. Maybe if she closed her eyes long enough, she could pretend that she wasn’t really here, on a cold bench in a jail cell, about to be assassinated. Maybe she could pretend that it was her birthday, and she was back in his bed, in his arms. Safe.