AN/Disclaimer: In this chapter, Red's life hangs in the balance while the FBI and friends try to escape from The Factory. Liz and Ressler have a serious heart-to-heart about how Liz's newfound romance will affect their partnership, and especially the risks that Ressler will have to take in order to keep mum for them. Liz comes up with a clever plan that just might make everyone happy.

Thank you for reading! I greatly appreciate all reviews. There will be at least one more chapter after this one.

Sadly, I still own nothing. Also, I can't promise that you won't find any factually incorrect triage details. Please kindly forgive me/suspend disbelief/overlook. Hey, the show gets away with it, right?

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Stunned and covered in debris, it took several seconds for Liz to process what had just occurred. She could hear little over the incessant, shrill ringing in her ears. A cloud of unsettled particulates hung heavily in the air. Acting on instinct, she hoarsely shouted for her team. Navabi and Ressler groaned and sputtered, but the one voice that she most needed to hear was silent. As Liz extricated herself from the debris, her palm grazed over the unmistakable softness of Red's closely-shorn hair. His body lay limp and unresponsive as she crawled out from under him. "RED!"

Kneeling at his side, Liz shouted and slapped his face. "WAKE UP, RED! COME ON! Two fingers pressed over his carotid showed a weak, thready pulse, and he wasn't breathing. "BREATHE, GODDAMNIT!" She opened his mouth and tilted his head back, hoping that his neck wasn't broken. A macabre thought struck her suddenly. After waiting so long to advance their relationship, and having finally taken that step, this COULD NOT be the last time that their lips touched. Panic prevented her from appreciating the irony of checking his pulse in the exact spot where she'd once stabbed him.

Ressler's hand on her shoulder made her jump. "Keen, come on, we have to get out of here!"

"Not without Red!" She sealed his lips and breathed into his lungs again.

Samar clambered to her feet and cried out in pain. "I think my shoulder is dislocated. Damnit!"

"Okay, hang on. This is gonna hurt, but I can reset it," Ressler offered.

"BREATHE, YOU BASTARD!" Tears began to stream freely down Liz's cheeks.

"What the hell?" Desmond's voice sounded through the chaos.

"Okay, on the count of three," Ressler braced. "One, two,-" A sickening pop sounded.

Taken by surprise, Samar screamed. "YOU SAID ON THREE."

"Did I?"

Liz's pleas went up in pitch, but lowered in volume. "Please, Red! You're all I have. I need you! This doesn't end here."

"Keen, we need to get out of here, now!"

She gave Red another breath before replying, "Then help me carry him!"

"I'll help," Desmond quickly offered, already standing at her side.

She gave Red one last breath and glanced up to see Ressler standing on the other side of him. "No! I've got him."

"No way. I'm stronger. Besides, that gash behind your ear is bleeding profusely. You probably have a concussion."

"Huh?" Previously unaware of the injury, Liz lifted her hand to locate it. He was right. "I'm fine! I'm doing it."

Recognizing the look that she'd just given him in the chopper, Ressler scowled and relented. "Whatever."

Desmond and Liz hooked their arms beneath Red's and hoisted him up, dragging his limp form between them. The airborne particulates were beginning to settle, but visbility had hardly improved. As they stumbled down the hall, Liz realized that she was so disoriented that she had no idea where they were. Without Desmond, she wouldn't have known which way to go.

Arriving at the exit, they found that the door frame had warped in the explosion, jamming it shut. Desmond helped Liz lower Red back down to the floor, where she resumed her efforts to rouse him. Navabi and Ressler put their collective efforts into forcing the door open. Between breaths, Liz began to worry about Braxton's whereabouts. Did he die in the explosion? For all she knew, it could have been a part of his escape plan. She'd expected to find him outside and waiting for his chopper, but it had definitely been more than five minutes since Red had given her that ETA. Braxton may have left already.

With a terrible screech, the door finally opened, and Ressler addressed Desmond, "You good on ammo?"

"Gun's loaded, but more would be better. We haven't run into any prisoners, so I'm guessing the survivors went the other way and escaped through the main exit. We'll be running into them when we get out there."

Well, Liz thought, that explains why she had felt so lost. They weren't going out the same way that she'd gone in.

"You all have an armory, or somewhere that you could get more ammo?" Ressler asked.

The guard ruefully shook his head while taking a deep breath, steeling himself for what he knew that he had to do. "Yes, but getting there won't be easy."

"Nothing ever is," Liz chimed in, glancing up at him with red-rimmed, glassy eyes.

Navabi offered, "I'll go with him." She turned towards Ressler. "Stay here. Keen's practically a sitting duck."

On any other day, that remark would have pissed Liz off, but in the present, it barely even registered. "Here, Des, this belongs to you." She unclipped the walkie-talkie from her belt. "Let us know when you get there, and call for help if you need it."

"Ressler, catch." She tossed him Red's walkie-talkie. It was a miracle that it didn't get lost in either the explosion or the exit.

"Ready?" Samar asked. Desmond nodded.

Ressler's brow furrowed with worry. "Be careful, guys."

As soon as they were out of earshot, he started to rail against Liz. "I hope it doesn't come across as insensitive for me to bring this up now," he began.

"I'm sure," Liz replied curtly, checking Red's pulse again. Still thready, but still there.

"But you're currently too busy to stop me from talking before I finish, and I'm taking the opportunity as presented."

"Uh huh," she replied, already annoyed.

"I don't want you to get the wrong idea, so first I'd like to say, for the record, if you weren't already providing triage for Reddington, I'd jump in to do the same. I don't want to lose him, either."

"I know that. Did you think I'd forgotten about the Post Office breach?"

"No, but I'm speaking as your partner here. I accept that every now and then, we'll have to break a few rules in order to cover each other's asses, and not just in the field, but also in a much broader sense. At the risk of ruining our careers, we even keep secrets from Cooper and everyone else. That requires a lot of trust, and I do trust you, Keen."

Liz sighed. He was only getting started on the lecture.

"I think I've been more than fair with you about this. I've covered your ass at least as many times as I've covered my own. Keeping your 'ex-husband hostage situation' to myself has been especially risky. You acknowledged that it's way more than you should ask of me, and you said that you were grateful. You were done. You weren't going to ask me to do anything like that ever again."

"Right."

"And now you are! Already! I don't appreciate you taking advantage of me like this. From a moral perspective, I really don't care who you're involved with, and that includes Reddington. If you can live with who he is and what he does for the taskforce that has LITERALLY been built around him, then fine. I don't have a problem with you sleeping with our biggest asset."

"But..."

"BUT! You've crossed the line of partner privilege. Holding your husband hostage was a one-time thing. I made a couple excuses for you, at the time, but now he's gone. It's beyond my comfort level, but it's over and it's done."

"Look Ressler, I'm so-"

He cut her off. "Let me finish! You and Reddington... this will be ongoing, and who knows how long? It could be forever. Actually, having witnessed the extent of his devotion to you, I suspect that it will be. So, now what? You expect me to cover for you in perpetuity? I WILL lose my job over it. I can see that it's worth the risk for you. If you get fired, you'll still have him. If I lose my job, I'll have NOTHING. My job IS my life, and you're being SELFISH. You KNOW that it's all I have, and you DON'T EVEN CARE."

"Listen Ress-" She tried again.

"EVENTUALLY, YOU WILL GET CAUGHT. It could be next week, or maybe even a year or more from now, but it's inevitable. They'll KNOW that I've known, Keen! One by one, the little lies that I've told will be lifted like fingerprints, and they'll be used to nail my ass to the wall." He paused for a long moment, running his hand over his scalp. Liz wasn't sure if he was done yet, so she stayed silent this time, waiting.

"Now, you'll probably say that you and Reddington can cover your own tracks, but I doubt that you've accounted for one very critical factor."

Another pause. Goddamnit, just say it already!

"EVERYONE IS ALREADY SUSPICIOUS! Navabi is THE ONLY taskforce member who hasn't asked me if your relationship is romantic. That devotion that I was talking about earlier? EVERYONE can see it."

"You never told me," Liz quietly replied.

"Oh, like you don't already see it? You needed me to say, 'Hey, Keen, have you ever noticed how Reddington sticks his neck out for you?' Did YOU think that I had forgotten about the Post Office breach? He knew that Garrick intended to torture and kill him, but with a gun to your head, Reddington didn't give a fuck about that. HE was an afterthought to himself! After saving my life, he would have killed me, right in front of everyone, just to get out of the box so that he could go die for you."

"I know. I meant that you didn't tell me about everyone asking about Red and I."

"You didn't expect that?" He spat.

"Of course I knew that everyone has wondered about our mysterious connection, but the fact is that I'm just now figuring that out, myself. I didn't expect everyone to make such a baseless assumption, and especially in the beginning, while I was still married."

"They didn't. Not back then, anyway. The assumptions about a romantic involvement came later, and they're completely separate from the original connection that brought him here. We're all still very curious about that too, by the way."

"Which brings me back to my question. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I wanted to protect you."

"Yeah, I've heard that one before," Liz scoffed.

"I'm not being trite. You have enough on your plate, and you're spinning too many of them as well. The higher-ups are already breathing down your neck because of Tom. How would it help to make you worry about them asking me if you're with Red? You'd just end up distancing yourself from him, and it's the worst possible time for that, whether or not you'd like to admit it. I'm only telling you now so that you know how careful you'll have to be. You can't be as cavalier as Reddington."

"Does that mean you won't be telling Cooper?"

"I don't know. I need time to think about it. Maybe I'll request a transfer to another taskforce instead. You've cornered me into a really fucked up situation, Keen. You didn't have to flaunt it in front of me. You could have at least tried to keep me in the dark for awhile. A little plausible deniability would have been courteous."

Liz knew what he meant, but she was mad as hell that he'd choosen to bring it up while the man wasn't even breathing on his own. "What makes you think that I didn't?"

"Are you serious?"

"Well, I can't really answer that without stealing another chunk of your plausible deniability, can I?"

The walkie-talkie buzzed to life with static, and Desmond's voice sounded through it, "Gunned down a few prisoners that were trying to gain access to the armory, but we're fine. Heading back now."

"Copy that. Good work, guys," Ressler replied, and then turned his attention back towards Liz. "Okay, whatever. I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, assuming that it was new."

"You do realize that I wasn't aware that you guys were standing out there and waiting for us, right? I wasn't trying to FLAUNT anything." She said.

"So, for all you knew, we could have been in troubIe, but you chose to screw Reddington instead of trying to help us?"

Oh shit. Shitshitshit! "Well," Liz began, trying to think fast.

Red sputtered, his lips opening and closing as his lungs feebly started to work on their own.

"YES! RED! COME ON!" Liz took the biggest breath that she possibly could, and hastily blew it into his lungs. With his exhale looking a little too weak, she immediately did it again, just in case. "BREATHE, RED. YOU CAN DO IT!"

Finally, he did.

"Oh thank god!" Both agents exalted in unison. Ressler squeezed Liz's shoulder, and she glanced up at him as they exchanged tight-lipped smiles of relief.

Still, they weren't out of the woods just yet. "Red, please wake up!" she pleaded.

The agents stared at him, carefully studying every feature, desperate for even the slightest sign that he was regaining consciousness. After a long moment of strained silence, feeling guilty, Liz attempted to smooth things over with her partner.

"I'm sorry for doing this to you, Ress, and I know that 'sorry' isn't good enough," she began. "You have every right to be angry. I've handled this poorly. Closeness, and playing well with others is something that I... I don't know. I'm not very good at it."

"You think? You gave us that disclaimer on day one."

"But I didn't even know the full extent of it. I mean, back then, at least I thought that I had a loving husband. I didn't know that the one person I've consistently trusted for my entire life was best friends with a most-wanted criminal."

"Is that supposed to be an excuse?"

"Well no, but just the same, it has rattled me. I already had a pretty bad temper, but back then, whenever it got the better of me, I was always fully aware of it. Now... Now, I have to work so hard at just EXISTING. I focus so much on being strong and moving forward that I treat everyone around me like crap. Most of the time, I don't even notice. It is selfish."

"Well believe me, I notice," Ressler replied, but the edge in his voice had softened.

"I'm sorry for putting you through it. You've been a great partner and friend." She lightly ran her fingers over Red's scalp, hoping that he could somehow feel it.

"Thanks. I know what you mean though, about how hard it is to move forward after losing it all. Believe it or not, it really helped to know that you believed in me enough to not go to Cooper about the pills. You were at risk there too."

Tentatively, she replied, "Since we're being honest... I didn't exactly believe that you could do it. I wasn't really sure, but I was hopeful. What I believed was that you deserved a chance."

"Eh." He shrugged. "I'll take that."

"About your job being on the line though... I think Red might be able to help."

"Hmph."

"During all of those years that you chased him around, there's a reason that he was so effectively elusive. It's the same reason that he gets away with breaking so many laws, even while we knowingly watch him do it."

"His charisma?" Her partner replied sarcastically.

"That too, but I'm talking about him knowing the right people."

"Go on."

"He knows their most deplorable, heavily-guarded secrets, and he's not afraid to use them to his best advantage. The manipulated parties quietly bend to his will, leaving everyone below them none the wiser."

"You're saying that he's some kind of puppet master? I already knew that." Ressler frowned.

"No, you think that since he came forward, the only strings that he's pulling are the ones that you've seen. There's a lot more, and they're much longer than you know. That's what I meant about everyone being none the wiser. To be honest, I include myself among them."

Incredulous, Ressler shook his head. "You're saying that Reddington can blackmail Cooper into letting me keep my job after he finds out about you guys? Do you really expect that to work?"

"Not just Cooper, but those who outrank him as well. Actually, Red already has a go-to incident to lord over him, and he's used it more than once."

"Huh... I guess that might explain some of Cooper's more questionable decisions... Listen, if it works, I'm not saying that I'd be ungrateful, but I'll believe it when I see it."

Several dots simultaneously linked inside of Liz's head. Oh, this is just too perfect! "You still don't know why Red is here, do you?"

"I know about Braxton."

"But you don't know why Red wants him so badly. You don't know why he went through all the trouble of being arrested and sent here..."

"So tell me."

"Braxton's trying to get The Fulcrum," she replied, secretly delighting in her partner's confusion as he glared at her impatiently.

"Go on."

"It's the definitive dirt dictionary for an enormous cabal." Liz paused, eyes widened. "Oooo! I like that alliteration!"

"You're picking up Reddington's most annoying habits, you know."

Liz ignored the comment and continued, "The person who holds The Fulcrum therefore has the power to make even the fattest of heads roll and crumble. In effect, they become the most influential 'puppet master' in the world. Red's gonna stop him and take The Fulcrum for himself."

Suddenly, it occured to her that Red had never actually said anything about wanting to find it for himself, just that he didn't want Braxton to know about her. He probably did want it though. Why wouldn't he? Cautiously, Liz left out her own involvement in the matter, still uncertain of exactly what it entailed. Whatever it was, Red wouldn't want Ressler to know.

"Braxton must have gotten away already. He probably blew up the place on his way out the door. Even if The Philtrum could have assisted in this situation, it's gone now."

"Fulcrum. The 'philtrum' is that little groove between your upper lip and nose. Anyway, I wouldn't write this off as a failure just yet. One way or another, Red's getting it."

A barely-audible voice croaked from the floor, "Have a little faith, Donald. I always get what I want."

-...-...-...-

AN - If you would like more, this story continues in a sequel- Lizzie Lazarus.