I really really need this next chapter. The more I think about what could happen after Liz is in that box, the more I see angst and ugly crying and negativity. DAMN why can't this kids just love each other?

He rubbed his tired eyes with his thumb to try and push the tiredness away. When he looked at his watch, he was surprised to see it was already 9 o'clock, and he had been staring at the same piece of paper all afternoon.

He hasn't been able to concentrate, not since that day. He could still feel her moving as he tried to pin her to the ground, her stone cold eyes staring at him right behind his eyelids.

And now, she was right there. Right downstairs in that box, probably hating on him. Every time he thought about her he thought she hated him. And then he hated himself for taking the blame. It wasn't his fault. She had done that to herself, and he wouldn't take it.

He remembers her words in the truck while she was being transported there.

"You'll have a trial, a fair trial and they will clear you" he said, trying to calm her down, reassure her.

She looked at him, the same cold eyes she had been giving him ever since that day through the gates of the Russian Embassy.

"You and I both know I'm not getting out of that court alive"

"I'll keep you safe" he said, for the millionth time, and then said it again as they closed her inside the box. He just wished she understood it.

He gave up on that report, there was no reason to bother with that anymore. He knew what he wanted.

He looked at the war room completely empty. Once again the people had gone home and he didn't notice it. They didn't even try convincing him to go home anymore. They knew he wouldn't.

The last time he went home, he was a wreck, and he did something stupid. It was like that place was forbidden until he solved that.

He walked around the empty room, the screens now turned off for the night, and then stopped at his mural. Her face stared back at him, her serious FBI badge photo. Her hair was brown then, that woman he recognized. He turned to look at the room that they used to share, and it was like a film rolling in his head, picturing times when they laughed in there. Times when he felt whole.

That's when it stroke him. He hated her. He hated that blonde woman downstairs, the woman who had mercilessly wrecked him. He hated what her choices made him do, but most of all, he hated what she had taken from him.

He took a deep breath and then marched towards her. It was time. She had no escape, and she had to know.

He approached with caution as he noticed she was awake, but distracted lying on her back on the cold steel bed provided in there. She noticed him coming and sat up, staring at him.

"Hi" she said, and he nearly fell for her soft voice. It was almost as if she cared. No, stay strong, Ressler, he tried to convince himself as he came closer and his eyes found her, no longer cold. Tired, but tender, not cold. "How are you?"

She said it and he didn't know if he should crumble down at her feet or if he should stay uptight as the robot she considers him now. Maybe it had been a mistake coming down here.

"Ress?" She whispered his name, as she stood up and approached the glass, and he felt a sob trying to escape his lips. He was about to crumble. His plan of giving her the blame about to fail as he was completely at her mercy, as always. He was already there, though, so he might as well just say it.

"How am I? I'm a mess right now, Liz. I can't think straight, I've done things I never thought I would, I can't sleep, I barely eat." She listened to him with attention, as if she knew he deserved that chance to speak. She was giving him that chance.

He chuckled at the thought that she was once again genuinely listening to him, and caring. "And the irony of all that is that whenever a case got to me like that, whenever something hit me too hard, there was only one person that could calm me down, set things straight. My partner. You don't know her. Short brown hair, blue eyes, a smile that can light up a building. She knew me, she knew parts of me that even I can't figure out."

He noticed a tear roll down her face as she kept still, just looking at him. That rebel tear that escaped her eye and ran down her face just like she escaped from him, and ran away.

"She's gone now. She's left me. She doesn't care anymore." That made her cry. Her lips were trembling and her tears were no longer trying to stay in her eyes. He didn't care. Or wished he didn't.

"Ress"

"No, Liz, it's my time to talk now. You talk about the things I did to you, well you don't know half of the things you did to me. You have no idea what this whole thing has done to me, how I am now. You and Red like to call me a Robot of the FBI, a heartless man; well, if I am heartless, that's because you took my heart with you when you chose to run. When you forced me to chase you, when you chose him. I said that I was going to help you and I meant it, I will. I would leap off a building for you, Liz, I would. So I won't allow you and Red and Tom to make me the villain here, because I'm not."

She kneeled down, sobbing, and he looked at her with the same cold stare she had for him. Inside, he was desperate, wanting to open that box and hold her close and tell her it was going to be okay. But he hated her, as much as he loved her, and the opposite feelings were crashing inside him in a battle of the century, as he watched her crumble. Good. He had crumbled so many times because of her. Let her now crumble for him.

"It's up to you now. You have my heart. You can finish crushing it, or you can do something about it."

He held a sob before it escaped his mouth and looked down to let a tear escape his eyes straight to the floor. He saw as it hit the tip of his shoe.

He turned around, trying to ignore as she looked at him sad, announcing that his plan of being cruel had been successful.

"Why?" She screamed as he walked slowly towards the door. "Why come here and tell me all these things like this?"

He stopped and tried to control his emotions, but it was too hard.

"Because you hurt me, Liz! Because you destroyed me, I'm absolutely nothing without you. So I might as well be the robot you made of me."

He had stomped toward the glass and was now really close, his palms agains the wall and his face close to hers, so close that if it wasn't for the glass, their lips would be touching. So close that she could nearly count he freckles on his cheek. So close that she could clearly see the rage and the hurt inside his eyes.

She caressed his forehead over the glass, trying to soothe him, and he nearly felt her touch, or at least the memory of when she did that to calm him down came running back to him. He allowed himself to cry, touching the glass with his forehead, wishing it could go straight to her lap.

"I miss you, liz" he confessed, all his plan of hating her going down the drain.
"I miss you too" she whispered, her palms on the glass where his head would be, if she was able to hold it.