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It’s roughly a week and a half until the smell of her has all but faded from his bed sheets and he runs out of excuses not to change them. Ressler goes through the motions mechanically – pull hamper wash iron make –his head running a mile a minute, words forming and deforming and thoughts shaping into undecipherable impossibilities.
It’s roughly a week and a half of small pieces crumbling away from his mind like a cloud of dust, all-encompassing yet hopelessly uncontainable, and his fingers strain against his palms amidst the desperation of wanting to act with little idea of what to act on.
He lies on clean blue sheets that night. He wonders what disappeared first: was it the sound of her voice on his head, the scent of her perfume on his pillows - or was it the dreams that turned into nightmares at 3 am, a living body turned dead, the gripping fear that wakes him in dripping sweat and barely contained breathing. Had that disappeared, even?
He turns on his side and falls asleep, undecided if he really wants to let the nightmares go. It is his closest memory of her, after all.
.
Ever since he was a little over 5 years old, his mother told him intuition would always be your best friend. Ressler had frowned, of course, very sure that John from school was his actual best friend and would remain so until they were at least 80 years old. His mother had smiled, stroked his hair, reminded him that John hadn’t been there when Ressler stormed into her bedroom and warned them there was someone in the house from the unsuspecting noise of a vase being moved, or when he had tugged on her skirt insistently because a member of an organized group his father had helped put to prison was eyeing them intently across the coffee shop where they were eating.
Ressler holds onto his intuition during all of his training and comes to terms with the fact that it isn’t always right, but it always saves him in the end. He’s not sure if this is the end, but when he gets home from a draining conversation with only half the woman he really wants to talk to, he feels the chill behind his right ear, the numbness on the pad of his thumb. Her words still ring loudly – nothing has changed – I miss you – I really do miss you – his numbness minutely overpowered by the tightening on his ribs, the knife that twists there, unforgiving.
He still opens his door as if his whole thumb wasn’t numb now, his face going cold at the edges, the beginning of something he can’t pinpoint while wondering if there is an end to save him from. The knob twist in his palm and it doesn’t take him long, not really – his eyes are sharp and he knows her, knows he won’t see her and so swiftly looks for the next best thing.
Ressler sighs heavily, closing the door loudly behind him and running out of ways to deal with this, all of this. He throws the case files he’s holding to a chair nearby, heading straight to his kitchen counter, his steps heavy and shaky and angry. So angry. For a moment, he is so, so angry.
Donald, I care about you - it slams into him full force, his face scrunching into some form of pain – he grasps onto the counter, head hanging, breathing quickening. He wonders, idly, if he prefers this. If he would rather feel all of it than nothing whatsoever.
Even through his peripheral sight he can see it, mocking him, taunting. The offending dark rectangle burns into him, and he considers throwing the damn charger against the wall in hopes it’ll shatter into inexistence.
“Fucking, motherfu-“ his hand smashes into the marble counter with little restraint left to offer, his knuckles throbbing heavily and the skin broken on the very top of them, but the charger doesn’t move and his heart doesn’t slow and the words keep spilling from his brain, his memory torturing him into short of a raging breakdown.
So, the gun wasn’t charged. Either that or she managed to somehow distract him, again, disarm him, again, and the charger is in fact his. The weight on his right hip tells a different, fuller story, and he has the urge to groan in protest as he stares the charger down, hoping it transforms into anything else. Or maybe hoping the miniscule thread he holds on to stops hurting like this.
It’s all of three minutes of every scenario fighting through his brain before he moves to grab it, his fingers circling it in a steel grip, and he decides that, okay. Okay, so she wouldn’t shoot him, or Aram, or Cooper, but he was already sure of that and this changes nothing. Nothing. Okay, so she needed him to know this. He’s still angry. He’s still furious- he’s still-
His eyes zero in on the small square paper formerly trapped beneath the charger. He frowns, looking around quickly and back to the counter, frowning again. He reads it before he can stop himself, which saves him the debate of burning the note in order to spare the last remains of his mental health, and the words form into a sentence he half expect, half dreads.
I couldn’t risk you. Any of you.
In the end, he burns the note all the same. The charger from the gun is hidden deep under his mattress, where hopefully nightmares won’t reach him.
It is an end, of sorts.
.
He sits on the bench, quiet, unmoving. Cold, she imagines, shivering alongside him, away from him.
Liz taps her fingers restlessly near the car’s window, the sight of him growing increasingly harder to witness. She rubs her scar against the seat, needing the friction to feel grounded, less helpless, more herself. Ressler looks left and right from time to time, and if she focuses just right, she can feel his hope as if it were her own.
But she shouldn’t open the door. She knows that. She knows.
She blinks away the sudden sting as she sticks the key in the ignition, knowing she has to walk away, drive off, knowing that coming here was dangerous but sitting next to him would be wavering on suicide. Liz presses her lips together, closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. She turns the key.
But he’s talking, now. She looks up in surprise at the sound of his voice, hidden in layers of distance and the remnants of a grueling winter wind, and can’t stop the thought that occurs to her. It’s the team. He’s brought them here.
Skip’s words – don’t trust him – are daggers piercing her mercilessly as she sits still, not breathing, and she barely gathers enough willpower to be hurt. She squints in the dim light, trying to make out the words, but he keeps looking from side to side and the words rush out in a speeding string. She shakes her head, not trusting herself to read this right, read him right.
She blinks through the fog settling around her car, and Ressler seems to finish talking. He pockets his phone, rubs at his eyes, and finally looks up at the sky.
He had set this up to catch her, she concludes. She smiles, in spite of everything. She had managed to do so, so much worse. What were his sins compared to hers?
Half fueled by longing and powered by a renewed need to escape, she starts the car and slithers away slowly, carefully. Her phone vibrates with a new message, Skip warning me she promptly believes, but a quick glance at the screen has her parking only a few spots over.
Ressler
It flashes brightly, incriminatingly, and Liz bites her tongue within a wave of self-loathing - there is no team. No one is here.
He is, though. He is here.
She plays the message, twice. All the while she looks at him, and he’s still there, still so horribly, physically there, and her heart pounds desperately against her chest, her toes numb from the cold and something pressing at her to move. Move. Do.
She does.
Liz can only scantly see his profile, but she’s not far enough to miss the surprise that washes over him at seeing her name pop up on his screen. She grips the phone until there is pain, and prays silently that she isn’t causing him any (more).
He picks up.
“Hello?” he breathes, a question to avenge all others. She smiles at his voice, acutely aware of how unsure he is, she is.
“Hey. It’s me.”
“Jesus, Liz-“ the words slip out in a rush of relief, and the wave reaches her, engulfs her, warms her. Her toes stop tingling. “I thought you weren’t, I mean. I thought this wasn’t even your phone number anymore.” he jokes, chuckling slightly, and she hates that he thinks that. God, she hates it.
“I wouldn’t do that.” She murmurs, certain he has no reason to trust her but begging some unknown force that he does, in spite of it all. She grips the phone tighter. “I’m sorry I couldn’t go,” she says, and hopes the pain weighing her down somehow makes up for the lies she has to spill. Somehow.
“I know,” he answers, and the shame flames higher. She slides further down into her seat, until he’s only barely visible to her. Punishments come in all sorts of shapes. “Did you get my message?”
“Yeah. Rakitin.” She observes as he shifts slightly, sticking his free hand in the pocket of his jacket. He doesn’t look everywhere now, given up on his quest to find her, just kicks some dirt on the ground and seems to grip the phone just as hard as she is. She feels closer to the dirt on the ground than the phone in his ear, shameful in every sense of the word. “Can’t say I wasn’t expecting it.” She offers, if only to keep from saying turn around. God, I won’t go, but turn around.
“Yeah.” He sighs, regretful. He nods silently for a second, and then- “I’m sorry. I really thought we could end this. I thought you could- I. I thought you could come home.”
Her eyes burn intensely. Her ribcage caves into itself with the pressure of home – what is home, where is home, are you- she shakes her head and wipes at her eyes, her throat working around the dryness there. She makes some sort of choking sound, completely out of control, and Ressler’s head hangs even lower.
“Keen,” he starts, and she shakes her head harder as if he could see her.
She can imagine there are about a million things he wants to say. Her eyes never leave him once, although he seems just as lost as she is, and eventually his voice begs at her ear. “You can come home, ok? I just want you to know that. I want you to know that, that we- we are on your side, and- goddamnit, we just want you back-“ and his head is in his hands now, his back heaving with every breath. If she were pressing the phone any harder to her ear, his words would melt into her.
“I know,” her fingers twitch against the urge to scratch at her scar. “Don, I know. I- I do. And I will come back.” And then, because she isn’t sure if she is the masochist or the sadist, but pain is their every communication – “I know.” She reiterates, and hopes it isn’t lost on him.
It isn’t, she’s sure. He stills for a second, and she wonders if the hairs on his nape are standing up against the cold, or if he’s pressing his lips together in an attempt to not give it away. Not give everything way.
It’s hopeless, by now. They both know.
And Liz needs to go.
“Listen,” she continues, finally looking away from his dark frame. “A lot of things are happening right now. I’m in control, but I… I’m afraid. I would never forgive myself if something were to happen to the team. I need to you promise me-“ he looks up, and she looks down. “Promise me if you’re ever in danger, you’ll call this number, okay? Promise me.”
He nods.
“Good. Okay. Thank you.”
He’s silent for a moment. “What are you thanking me for?”
“Being you.” She half whimpers, sounding pathetic. Her thumb hovers on the disconnect button. “I have to go now.”
Ressler doesn’t answer. Instead she hears ruffling, the sound of fabric, a groan, and she tries her hardest not to look. Out of the corner of her eye, she realizes he has gotten up, but there’s no more room for her to slide down the seat and so she turns her head fully towards him, scanning his movements.
He’s staring dead in her direction. She stops breathing altogether, her throat closing up. Her free hand immediately moves to the ignition, but his voice stops her. “Hey, Keen?”
“Yeah?” she asks, pained.
“How did you know I was nodding?”
She’ll deny it to Skip later, when he asks her if it was worth jeopardizing the mission for a full hand of nothing, but she contemplates opening the door. She sees it so clearly- she’ll open the door and walk up to him and apologize and apologize and apologize and he’ll hold her and he’ll be warm, so warm and she’s still so, so cold, and she-
She disconnects the call.
The ignition only starts up on her second try, and because punishments come in all sorts of shapes, Ressler doesn’t move to stop her.
It’s an icy, freezing winter night.