Given Name

Disclaimer: I do not own the Blacklist characters, and I make no money off of this.

Chapter 1

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It was eerie how simple it had been to recover Naomi Hyland. Harold Cooper and the rest of the team were operating under the assumption that Berlin had given her up on purpose to further his plan.

Whatever 'his plan' was.

There were multiple opinions on the subject: he had gotten what he needed from her, and released her, having no further use for the woman. He had released her as a distraction. He had given her information to deliver to them. She was an accomplice, and everything she said was a carefully crafted lie designed to mislead them. Whatever the reason, their response was generally the same. She had to be questioned.

She had already been in the interrogation room at the Post Office for several hours, recounting—in great detail—her abduction and the time she'd spent with the man calling himself Berlin. Liz paid close attention to her shifting moods throughout the interview, noting her anger, her focus, her exhaustion. She hadn't cried. She had been almost mechanical during her explanation of the events immediately leading up to and including the amputation of her finger.

After reviewing the recent events so many times that Liz felt she could recite them herself in Naomi's own words, she had asked about what Reddington had been like when they were married. "Is there anything you can tell us about his life that might be useful in tracking Berlin, or discovering their connection? How much of his activities were you aware of while you were still married to him?"

"You can't imagine what it was like to be married to Raymond," Naomi said. "He loved us, I know that. But we always came second. If there was a job to be done, a new case or task or mission, or whatever the hell his job actually entailed, that came first. He'd come home soaking wet, or covered in blood—not his own—" she interrupted herself, "or he'd stumble in with a broken arm or black eye. He'd risk his life and personal safety at the drop of a hat, but he never considered the people in his life who loved him, and wanted him to be safe. And present. I stopped sleeping, because if he wasn't home, I'd have nightmares about what he might be doing. Sometimes the nightmares even came true; one time he disappeared for days…I finally got a call from a hospital six hours away saying he'd been admitted to their burn unit with second and third degree burns over most of his back. How the hell does that happen? That doesn't happen to normal people in the Navy. I remember arriving in his hospital room, frantic, and asking him how he'd gotten the burns. He was so delirious from the pain medication that I thought I could get something truthful out of him about his job—for once—while his guard was down, but he just kept saying, 'I did something good. I did one good thing.'" Naomi cringed and knit her eyebrows together in disgust and sighed. "How could anything he was doing out there be worth the damage he was doing to his own family?"

Liz had been silently absorbing the details of Naomi's story, continuing her initial psychological profile of the woman who had been married to Raymond Reddington, scribbling notes on a legal pad in front of her. When Naomi had mentioned the burns, her hand had frozen, her pen stalled halfway through a word. The notes suddenly forgotten, Liz asked, "Naomi, when was that? When did he get burned? What year?"

"Oh, God, I don't know…it was over twenty years ago. I remember being angry at him for missing something while he was gone, but I don't even remember what it was anymore. They all just blur together. He missed so many things. He missed anniversaries, he missed bedtimes, he missed first steps and birthday parties..." Naomi looked up at Liz earnestly, her eyebrows raised. "Don't get me wrong, when he was there, he was a good husband, and a great father." She paused, and spread her hands out on the table in front of her, and Liz silently counted to nine without realizing she was doing it. "When he was there," she repeated. "But when you have to explain to your little girl that even though daddy promised he'd see her ballet performance this time, he just wasn't able to make it home tonight…you start to hate him a little bit. And when she insists on sleeping in her swan outfit so he can see her in her costume the next morning, but he's still not there when she wakes up…your hate grows. He misses Christmas by a few days one year, and doesn't come home at all the year after that. And suddenly you're in witness protection. Somewhere between the first missed anniversary and teaching your daughter her new name, you forget the loving husband you adored so much when you married him."

There was a knock at the door, and Ressler stepped into the room. "Agent Keen, Director Cooper needs a word with you. He's in his office."

Liz looked from Ressler to Naomi and back again, trying to keep her expression professional as she mentally lunged for the excuse to leave. She suddenly felt like if she had to take one more breath in the interrogation room she'd suffocate. "Of course," she told Ressler, turning back to Naomi. "Thank you for discussing all of this with us. I'm sure it's difficult to talk about, but if you don't mind, Agent Ressler is going to take over in here; please tell him anything else you remember that you think might be of help to us." Liz stood up hastily and was halfway to the door when Naomi spoke up again.

"Midas turned everything he touched into gold. Who was the one who turned everything he touched into ash?" She stared across the room with unfocused, haunted eyes.

Liz shook her head. "I've never heard of someone who could do that."

Naomi smiled miserably and tilted her head, looking up at Liz. "Yes, you have," she said softly, the smile sliding back off her face as her eyes drifted back down to the table.

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So this is just sort of a prologue… The real story in my head is what happens when Liz goes to see Reddington, wanting to talk—armed with some new information and the substantial bargaining chip of being in possession of his ex-wife.

I'm planning to post the final chapter of my other Blacklist fic before I sink my teeth into this one full-force, so it might be a few days before Part 2 of this story gets posted. I just figured, hey, since it's already written, why not put it out there now? Plus, I feel like as soon as 2x02 airs, my version of events will be proven wrong, and suddenly I'll have to label this fic AU. :\

Let me know what you think! I love reviews; they make me grin. :) Please comment before you leave the page! Please? ::hopeful smile::