A/N: Thank you everyone for the wonderful feedback on this my first Blacklist fic. Here is the other half to make a whole. Please let me know what you think.

"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you."

― Friedrich Nietzsche

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Liz splashed cool water onto her face. Once, twice, again. Her hand was trembling.

She hated herself for that.

Behind her, all around her, she could hear the great steel cage lumbering into place. The mechanical whir of the maximum security cube seemed to shudder and roar in the large echoing space before finally locking into place. The resultant bang both startled and reassured her.

He couldn't touch her.

But he had. He had touched her mind with his soft, probing questions, questions he seemed to know the answers to. He had touched her heart by stirring the memories there, memories long forgotten or replaced. Raymond Reddington had touched her like no other criminal (no, person) she had ever met. He didn't just know of her, she realized darkly, but he knew her. Reddington knew things about her that others did not. Most terrifying of all, he knew things about her that even she didn't know.

And that's why he was valuable.

The cool porcelain of the bathroom sink kept the nausea at bay as she held both sides of it to steady herself. Her wrist glanced against the gleaming white, shocking the sensitive skin of her scar. Her scar, she thought bleakly. He seemed to know about that too. She worried it absently. Her face in the mirror betrayed her fear, red-rimmed eyes timid and wild. He knew about her scar! Liz only knew what she had been told, what she recalled through manufactured memories. She closed her eyes, steeling herself. She would use him, she concluded. As dangerous as he was, perhaps Raymond Reddington could fill in the gaps of her memory, if she could just keep him out of her head.

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Liz sat on the edge of the cast iron tub, staring blankly at the bathroom door. Tom fussed protectively, testing the temperature of the water and laying out the necessary instruments.

Not instruments, Liz corrected herself. She tightened her arms around her, trying to purge the memory. All she could think of was the Stewmaker. How, just a few hours ago, she'd sat paralyzed and watched as the Stewmaker prepared her final bath.

The Stewmaker. What a bleak perversion of something usually comforting. She would never eat stew again.

Distantly, she registered Tom. He kissed her on the head, murmuring. She didn't quite understand him. He showed her a brochure, some getaway. He was touching her, speaking to her as if from another room; both his touch and voice were alien. He was gone then, and she had barely registered his presence.

Red.

Red was a murderer. Red was her savior.

She stood, letting the silk robe fall to the tile. She eased into the water. It was hot, a little too hot, but she let the water enfold her up to her neck. Maybe the heat would burn away the memories that, like the Stewmaker's drugs, had permeated her...skin and vein and bone. She thought of the Stewmaker boiling in his own roux.

Red.

She searched for words to describe what she'd felt when she saw Red's face materialize in that cabin. A kaleidoscope of emotions stirred something very primal insider her, like gulping air after being held under water. That was it, she realized. Red had given her air.

She smoothed her arm with her other hand, relishing in the warmth there. The skin sloughed off with the contact, blistering and peeling to reveal sinew and bone. She gasped, shutting her eyes tight. When she opened them again, the image was gone. She blew out a few sharp, quick breaths to steady her nerves.

You're a monster. That's what she'd said to him in the ambulance, right after he'd saved her life.

After he'd saved her from the Stewmaker. Hell's cauldron had popped and spat behind him as he stood regarding her. She would never forget the way he'd looked at her then. His gaze was soft, expectant. Tinged with wonder. No one had ever looked at her like that. Those were not the eyes of a monster.

And yet, he terrified her. "It is he who burns; it is he who slaughters." She closed her eyes against the memory. The little bedtime story he'd told the Stewmaker was more than a story, she realized. It was his story. And just when she thought it had reached its conclusion...

You're no better than him.

But was that true? Liz was not sorry the Stewmaker was dead; that she admitted. So, what did that make her?

Liz stepped out of the bath and into her robe quickly. Goose flesh formed along her arms and legs, but she welcomed the sensation. She moved into the bedroom to sit on the edge of the bed. She found her phone where it lay on the nightstand. Liz weighed it in her hands a moment, considering dialing the number she now had memorized. She didn't. She replaced it with a heavy clatter before lying back onto the pillow.

She closed her eyes, exhaustion overcoming her. I'll see him tomorrow, she thought sleepily. She smiled.

Liz would dream of monsters that night; she would dream of them many nights after.

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