A/N- For the lovely on tumblr that wanted a fic where Red has to physically wound Lizzie in order to save her. Disclaimed. Reviews are appreciated.
/
"This man is dangerous, Lizzie," he tells her, thumbing through a dossier with a curled lip.
"The one baddie even Raymond Reddington is afraid of? Wow. I'm shaking in my boots," she murmurs, the airplane's pressure making her ears pop.
"You should be," he answers her, more than a little serious, and it catches her off guard because she thought it was business as usual.
"Should we have more backup than just Dembe?" she inquires, mentally calculating how quickly Cooper could get a few SWAT teams—
"No," he interrupts her train of thought, reaching across the rich leather seat to touch the back of her hand. It's natural for her to upturn her palm, to entwine their fingers. Lizzie's heart skips a beat when he begins to stroke his thumb from her ring finger to her scar.
"I'll keep you safe," he promises quietly.
"Okay," she murmurs.
She closes her eyes and believes him with her whole heart.
/
It is all very sudden.
Crimson blooms like a spilt bouquet of fresh roses across the crisp white sleeve of her blouse. Her pupils dilate, breathing staccatos, and she hears a piercing sound, animalistic, blood-curdling. Elizabeth realizes, within the next span of a few seconds, that her mouth is open, and that keen is coming from her. Her own lungs giving out, staggering, she is staggering to the ground.
There's a medical definition for shock, but nothing can encompass the way Lizzie's hand quakes madly when she unconsciously feels the ground around her, and indirectly splays her fingers into warm, wet, sticky blood. Shuddering like a wet cat, a sob hitching forward from her throat, and it's not that the pain has reached her yet, because she's still too gone for physical responses, it's just that she can't look away from him.
The gun dangling at his side, his face turned away, and he's talking up a storm, words spitting like bullets. Sweat is at his brow, and he's sweating bullets. Bullets.
There's a bullet in her arm.
It came from that gun.
Red is holding that gun.
And she doesn't understand.
She doesn't understand when he turns his body toward her swiftly, and in a great display of power or hierarchy, points the pistol at her again. Red is pointing a gun at her, and he isn't looking at her when he does it, and Lizzie doesn't comprehend what he's saying, but she's hearing it. She's hearing him say, "You don't think I know how valuable that woman is? I do. But she's not valuable to me like she is to you, and I will kill her in a heartbeat if it means watching all your plans fail."
The man standing opposite Red sneers something about connection.
Her pulse is slow in her ears. Thump. Thump. Thump. She startles when Red's laughter erupts from him heinously, sickeningly abrupt. "Of course I care for her. Like a stray dog that needed a home."
That she understands, and it hurts. He's hurting her. He's hurting her, and he's already shot her, and he's hurting her. She cries out, a splitting sensation tearing through her abdomen, and there's no blood there, but her pulse is so loud in her ears and she watches Red's eye twitch, but he never turns to her, never looks at her, and the man says something else.
The gun is still risen in direct pathway of her head, and terror pulses through her in drones.
"Don't tempt me, Leo. The next one goes in her head."
And then he looks at her, the gun still aimed. He looks at her, but Red's eyes aren't his eyes- they're cold and calculating and he's not, this isn't, if she could only just—
"Red," Lizzie jerks out, voice breaking in so many places she's barely audible, tumbling, tumbling onward, and, "Red, please, Red, don't do this. Don't. Please. Please. Red. Red!"
The strangest expression clouds his features, his mouth a thin line, and she's sobbing, she's sobbing and her arm is finally starting to sting and burn, and there's blood, and he's going to kill her. He mouths, "I'm sorry," and he cocks the gun, and Lizzie's mind somehow scrounges up the knowledge that the one man in the world she has ever trusted, the man she loves, the man she loves is going to kill her.
She loves him, and he's going to kill her.
"I love you," she whimpers, tears blurring her vision, and it's like the sun breaking the dark earth because something flitters across his face, lips contorting into a grimace, and yes. She's reaching him. Those words reached him, and he's finally seeing her. He's looking at her, and she sobs it out. She's sobbing his name out.
"Red, I love you. I love you! Please— I love—"
But it happens, it happens and the bang is so loud it makes her ears sing.
The gun fires, and she screams, and she screams, "RED."
Body convulsing like a wet cat, crusted spit at her lips from the blood pressure, from the raw nerves, and she waits for the bright lights in her vision to give way to sun, she waits for the pain to fade, for her to awake in another life, one where it's Christmas and there's a little girl bursting into the bedroom and pouncing on the bed, saying, "Mommy, Daddy, wake up! Santa came! I wanna see if Santa brought me a hat like Daddy's! Wake up! Wake up! Wake—"
/
She wakes slowly, to fine blue blankets and a ceiling fan whirling.
Her arm throbs kindly, reminding her that she's very much alive, and none of it was a dream.
When she makes out his silhouette amongst the drawn curtains, the thin strips of dim yellow, she freezes in her own skin. He takes note, moves in closer. "It's okay," he tries to assure.
But she can't help the way she flinches away from his hand, eyes wild and desperate to get away.
"You shot me," her tongue trembles. "You shot—
"I know," he grimaces all ugly, a monster with skin. "Dembe was caught in commotion and it was the only thing I could—
"You shot me," Lizzie repeats, numb. "You said—
"I know what I said," he wilts, lost in thought. "I'll never regret saying something more than what I said in that warehouse, Elizabeth, but it was the only thing I could do to ensure he didn't," he breaks off, bends forward and digs his elbows into the mattress before burying his face in his hands.
His shoulders shake, and Lizzie's everything shakes, and she whispers, "I said—
"I know what you said," his breath hitches, muffled. "I know what you said."
/
She can't stand to watch him like this; his body is hunched within itself, little noises breaking free every now and again. Tears stream fresh down her cheeks, and Lizzie knows how silly it is to want to offer him resting place, to let him curl within the hollow places of her body and live there for a time, for forever, but she can't help it. It's like their souls were made for each other, edges matching, mouths creeping. Lizzie reaches her hand out and touches his head, the soft hair there.
He bends his neck up slowly, eyes bloodshot and deep-set. Takes her hand, presses his mouth against the flesh. More tears. Heavy chests.
"I'm so sorry," he confesses. "If it's any consolation, I'll never forgive myself. I hurt you. I'm so sorry, Lizzie. I'm so sorry that I keep hurting you."
He almost looks deranged to her, then, and it is a sharp dip in her gut.
She hates seeing him like this.
"Red, it's okay," she attempts. "Dembe got there in time. You had to think fast on your feet, and it's not like you actually... It's—it's okay, alright? It's—
"No," he shudders out, sharp and metal in his delivery. "No, it's not okay. I made you bleed and then I listened to you beg me. You begged me not to kill you, and all I could think was—"
"What?" she whispers.
"Lizzie," he manages to pronounce her name without flaw, word falling over her like a star, like a kiss. "Lizzie," he gets her attention matter-of-fact, but his eyes carry more meaning than a gunshot, than a bomb dropping, than a bleating human heart settled into her hands for safekeeping.
"I love you too."