AN: Well, this has been canon-shafted six ways from Sunday, but that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned. I still wanted to wrap it up, though, so... here it is!

Elizabeth Keen was dead.

There was no real reason to doubt it, as far as the world was concerned. The media frenzy surrounding her exoneration all but ensured that her death soon after—clearly at the hands of the very same Cabal that had tried so hard to set her up—would receive wall-to-wall coverage as well. For a long time, Naomi couldn't escape it.

She couldn't put into words exactly how she felt about what happened. The world saw one thing in Keen's demise: confirmation that The Cabal was real and just as dangerous as it was alleged to be. Naomi saw something else in her demise, purely because she had much more information to work from—it was nothing short of the tragic end to an unfairly tragic life.

When Raymond Reddington dropped off the face of the earth not long after Keen's death, Naomi couldn't help but take pause. While it made sense to her that Raymond would take Keen's murder especially hard, his sudden and complete disappearance seemed so very neat and clear cut, and nothing—nothing—about Raymond was ever neat and clear cut.

Did he fall victim to The Cabal as well? With Keen dead, would he allow his defenses to slip so much that they finally got the better of him? Or was it more complicated than that?

After the initial furor died down, only the fringes even whispered about Keen or Reddington. It was strange for the world to be so quiet where they were concerned. It seemed highly unlikely that decades worth of notoriety would disappear like that in a puff of smoke if he was still alive. Even before Raymond's life had crashed back into hers with the business with Berlin, Naomi couldn't go more than a few months without hearing about him in one way or another, but now there was next to nothing and it was… unsettling.

But time passed, as it always does, and the unsettled feeling in the pit of Naomi's stomach started to fade into the background. Eventually even she didn't spare more than a thought for Raymond or Elizabeth Keen for months on end. She got caught up in her own life, in taking better care of herself, getting her health back on track.

Frank wanted no part in Naomi's health kick, which left her to her own devices for her Sunday afternoon walks in the park downtown. Naomi loved the park. She considered it an oasis from the nonstop obligations of modern life. It was so very alive and friendly in the park, filled with families and children, runners and bikers, strolling elderly couples and puppies. And ice cream carts.

Strictly speaking, Naomi wasn't really supposed to eat ice cream all that often, but she had been sticking to her meal plan so well lately, her numbers were almost within the normal range for a woman of her age. If she went for a nice long walk in the park before treating herself to an ice cream—a small ice cream—from the cart by the lake, surely they cancelled each other out. Maybe her cardiologist wouldn't approve of her logic, but it was sound enough as far as Naomi was concerned.

Cheat days were one of life's little pleasures, after all.

Naomi took her cone from the ice cream man and started to hand over a couple dollars to pay for it when she was interrupted by a gentle but insistent tugging at her pant leg. She glanced down to find a little girl, barely old enough to walk, standing at her side with one of her plump little hands outstretched as far up as she could reach.

"Ice c'eam," she said, and pointed to the cone, with her head tilted imploringly to one side.

Naomi's breath caught in her throat. She took in the mass of blonde curls, the gray-green eyes, the familiar curve of the little mouth—she might as well have been staring into the past. How in the world…?

"Hey, Aggie, come on," came a woman's voice. "Why don't you leave the nice lady alone and we'll get you your own ice cream?"

Naomi knew that voice, but she'd never heard it so filled with warmth or cheerfulness before. She turned around to watch the voice's owner approach; despite the fact that the woman's hair was blonde now—dark blonde rather than the light hair she favored when she was on the run a couple years ago—there was no mistaking her for anyone other than Elizabeth Keen.

And if Elizabeth Keen was alive and well, then perhaps Raymond was, too.

A quick calculation helped Naomi to surmise why Keen had found reason to vanish in the first place. She must have already been pregnant when the authorities caught up to her, and Raymond would without a doubt move mountains to make sure Elizabeth and her child were safe. And judging by the look of the little girl, it wasn't just Elizabeth's child he'd been protecting…

She didn't know what kind of breakthrough they had while they were on the run, but she knew that's when it had to have happened. Perhaps the urgency forced him to acknowledge some things, to face some harsh realities. Perhaps he'd come clean with her about their shared past. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…

Naomi would never know the truth.

Elizabeth bent to hoist the little girl into her arms.

"It's OK," Naomi said. "She can have it if she wants it. I probably shouldn't be eating it anyway."

"You sure?" Finally, Elizabeth looked up and made proper eye contact—and immediately froze with the toddler slung across her hip. Silent recognition passed between the two women and Naomi could tell Elizabeth was weighing her options… Would Naomi blow her cover? Should she find an excuse to leave as soon as possible? How was the best way to do that without causing a scene?

But Naomi was in hiding, too. Exposing Elizabeth would mean exposing herself, not to mention putting an innocent child at risk.

"Of course I'm sure. How can you say no to that face?"

Elizabeth let out a quiet, slightly forced laugh. "If you figure out how, you'll have to let me know."

The little girl reached out for the cone with both hands and absolutely went to town on it. The two women stood and watched her eat for a few tense, silent moments.

"Look, I'm really sorry about this," Elizabeth said, suddenly diffident, as she combed Agnes' hair out of her face with her fingers.

"Don't worry about it, it's no problem. She seems like a handful."

"Yeah, she is."

"Takes after her father, I imagine."

Elizabeth's dimples showed when she smiled in spite of herself, even though she ducked her head awkwardly and struggled to hold Naomi's gaze. "Oh, I'm not gonna let myself off the hook that easily. She does have his sweet tooth, though," she said, watching the little girl devour her ice cream.

"She's beautiful."

"She is."

"What's her name?" she asked.

"Agnes." Naomi raised her eyebrow at the old-fashioned name even as a familiarity tickled at the back of her mind; Elizabeth elaborated as if she often faced questions about her choice. "I named her after my father's mother."

"Sam," Naomi said without thinking, and Elizabeth met her eye, a strange mix of confusion and fear and finally understanding flashed across her face.

"That's right, I forgot that you…" She trailed off and bit her lip, apparently thinking better of continuing down the path of conversation that made it clear that they weren't complete strangers to anyone who might be listening.

Naomi knew from experience that Elizabeth would have questions upon questions she'd like to ask and she knew how hard it must be for her not to do so. This was probably her only chance to have someone other than Raymond's perspective about her adoptive father and she had no choice but to pass it up.

It suddenly struck Naomi just how much of Elizabeth's life Raymond was responsible for, either directly or indirectly. Her father, her freedom, and now even her child. He was inextricably woven into the fabric of her existence, just as she was his. She was instrumental in his fall from grace, in his motivation and drive, and now in his future.

What a strange thing it was to be so irrevocably tied to someone else. Naomi never had the privilege of that kind of… constant… in her life. Even though she was well aware that a constant isn't necessarily without conflict and drama (and this one certainly was not), it was still something she lacked—and felt the lack of.

She supposed it just wasn't meant to be. Not with Raymond, at least. And while there was still a part of her that missed who they used to be together, she knew the two of them would never have lasted through everything. There had been too many storms for their tenuous bond to weather.

Raymond and Elizabeth's bond was forged in fire, sharpened by conflict, honed by hardship and pain. Naomi didn't know why it gave her some kind of peace that they'd made it this far, but it did nonetheless. It was a strange, mixed-up, melancholy kind of peace. She could only hope that history would not repeat, for the sake of the little girl.

"All done!" Agnes said, proud of herself in that very particular way small children often are. Naomi could feel her heart melting despite herself. She should feel resentful, but this little girl was an innocent, brought into this world by two people who had known nothing but chaos for decades. That they managed to carve out a stable enough place for themselves now was nothing short of a miracle and she could hardly begrudge them that.

Naomi and Jennifer's stability were casualties of Raymond's war, a war he didn't start but had chosen to fight nonetheless. A war he fought for this child's mother, and in time for this child—his child—as well.

Elizabeth cleared her throat. "What do you say, Agnes?"

"T'ank you," she said, her little voice tinged with a milky sort of thickness from stuffing her face full of ice cream.

Elizabeth grabbed a bunch of napkins from the cart and tried to clean up the sticky remnants of ice cream from Agnes' rosy little cheeks. Naomi pulled a wet wipe from her purse and offered it to her instead.

Elizabeth eyed the little packet for a moment before taking it. "Thank you. Again. I left the diaper bag back at the car, so I…"

"No need to explain. I remember when I… well. I remember what it's like."

"Right. Yeah."

Naomi took a slow, deep breath, feeling the weight of all things unspoken heavy in the air around them.

"Well… I guess we should get going."

"I hope you enjoy the park. It's beautiful at sunset."

"I'm sure we will," she said, and then bent down to speak to Agnes. "Do you wanna go find Daddy? Come on, I'll race you."

Naomi watched the pair run down the pathway and caught sight of Raymond in the distance. From what she could see, he was dressed casually for once, with linen trousers and a short sleeve button down, topped off with a straw fedora, all in light colors. He basked in the sunlight under the watchful eye of his ever-present body guard and friend, while he waited for his little family to return from their simple quest for an ice cream.

A smile spread across his face when he saw Agnes running towards him and he crouched down, opened his arms wide, and swept the little girl up into them, spinning around as he stood again. Once Liz reached them, he stopped short, obviously listening to something she said, and then turned to stare directly at Naomi across the park.

Naomi raised her hand in a motionless wave. Raymond did the same, and nodded in acknowledgement. Then he set the little girl down again on her feet and took one of her hands. Elizabeth took the other.

Naomi watched them wander down the path on either side of their little girl until they disappeared from sight.