Fic : Chapter 25 : House You Live in (draft)
Remember Me
Remember me, I'm the one who hurt you, dear
Hurt you, hurt you, dear
Remember me, I'm the one who loved you, dear
Loved you, loved you, dear
I'm the one who ran away
And left you all alone
I'm the one who broke your heart
And scorned the love I'd known
Remember me, I'm the one who's sorry now
Sorry, sorry now
-Gordon Lightfoot
OOO
“She should have asked if that was the only connection.”
Raymond said nothing. Eventually Dembe walked away.
With Lizzie gone, Raymond poured himself a drink and sank into the buttery softness of his favorite leather chair.
OOO
As soon as Aram spotted her walking into the room, he sprang up out of his seat like a Jack-in-the-box.
He had a file in his hand and a hesitant look on his face. “Liz, I -”
Liz couldn't even come up with words. She just shook her head.
Seeing her face, Donald approached and asked.“What's going on?”
Aram started to explain. “You remember how Cooper ordered me to run the fingerprints from the cabin -”
“- Can it wait?” Liz asked interrupting Aram. “Is what is in that file going to change anything? Is it going to bring my daughter back to me?”
Aram looked stunned at first, but then he agreed. “Yeah. Sure it can wait.”
Liz turned to Donald. “Can we go? Please? Can we just go home.”
Donald nodded. Patting his trouser pockets to confirm he had his keys, he didn't even bother to get his jacket from the office.
OOO
Hours later, Raymond was sure he was dreaming as he heard that familiar staccato beat of her heels on the floor.
Opening his eyes, he wasn't sure why he had invented a four legged companion for her.
It was irrational but his first thought seeing Mr. Kaplan's hair was that the shock of what the Woodsman had done to her had caused her hair to turn white.
Then the rational part of his mind kicked in to tell him that it was her natural color. At her age, the brown hair had to have been the result of coloring - a luxury she wouldn't have been afforded during her time in captivity. Since escaping, she simply hadn't colored again.
Happy to see her, Raymond smiled his most brilliant, most sincere smile. “Mr. Kaplan!”
He tried to stand to greet her, but he found it was all he could do to keep his head up. He managed to flail a hand and knock his empty glass to the floor.
His body might not work, but his mind could - though perhaps not as quickly as usual. “You drugged me!”
He didn't bother to ask how she had gotten into his safe house. Mr. Kaplan had been in charge of his safe houses for so long. She had selected this one personally.
“You are a creature of habit, Raymond.” She chided him. “You really should have updated your security protocols. At the very least gotten all new safe houses.”
“Dembe said as much.”
What could he say? He was like one of those parents whose children had run away or gone missing. He admitted as much to his ghost of Christmas Past. “I was afraid that if I did you might not be able to find your way back to me.”
“You really think that little of me?”
He just kept on smiling, so happy to see her.
He said it so magnanimously. “I forgive you.”
Mr. Kaplan reminded him. “I didn't do anything that requires your forgiveness.”
“I'm sorry.” Raymond admitted.
“You should be.”
Managing to raise his hand, he reached out in a clumsy attempt to stroke her scarred cheek. He suspected her involuntary flinch had less to do with fear of him and more to do with the man from the cabin.
Seeing her flinch - this woman who hadn't attempted to run, nor tried to plead or bargain, this woman who had calmly walked into the woods with him in full knowledge of what they were there for, this woman who had gone eye to eye with him at his angriest and refused to back down - seeing her flinch broke his heart in a way he couldn't describe.
Catching his hand, she guided it to her face. “You were penny wise, but pound foolish. What have I told you?”
Raymond's eyebrows knit together. He had to swallow before answering. “Always double tap.”
He wanted desperately, so very desperately to avert his eyes from her torn cheek, but he wouldn’t let himself.
“I'm sorry for what I did and ... for what he did.”
She put his hand back down for him. “I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to tell you it's time we went our separate ways. Don't look for me, Raymond.”
“I don't want to go our separate ways. I want you back.”
“We both know that can't happen, Raymond. Not after this.”
“Words cannot express how much I have missed you these past few months. Don't leave me, Kate.”
“Raymond, do you remember the time you dragged me to Laredo looking for those cookies you love?”
His attempt at a nod made his head loll alarmingly. “The Bizcochos!” His smile returning, he chuckled. “Mexican holiday cookies! How could I forget? It was the last time you ever let me drive the get away car.
“I bought the bakery out. I was going to give them out to everyone I knew. I bought so many of them, they filled the trunk of the car. At the border, they were convinced we were trying to smuggle something illegal into the country in the cookies. We had to make a run for it. I gunned the car. We had so many cars chasing us!” He laughed.
Until she reminded him. “Just when we finally lost them, you hit that dog -”
So that was why his imaginary Mr. Kaplan had a dog …
“- and you insisted on stopping.”
… but that dog hadn't been a Rottweiler.
“You always get so melancholy on the anniversary. I just wanted to provide you with a little adventure. A little diversion to take your mind off of Annie for a little while.”
“When it was clear there was nothing that could be done for the dog you put it out of its misery.”
Raymond's head again lolled along to Mr. Kaplan's story.
“And then you insisted on staying to bury it. We had the cartel, the Federalis, the FBI and the border patrol breathing down our necks, but you insisted on staying to bury it. Do you remember what you said, Raymond?”
Raymond's smile was gone. “There are some times when a man has to clean up after himself.”
“You left me there, Raymond. You didn't even have the decency to bury me like you would a dog.”
He admitted the truth. “I couldn't bring myself to look at you. I couldn't look at what I had done. At what I had become.”
Her tone held such disappointment. “Goodbye Raymond.”
There was something he was forgetting. Something he should ask about. Something very important.
Agnes!
“What about Agnes?”
“I'm taking Agnes. You get Elizabeth.”
Raymond protested. “Kate, what are you doing? This isn't The Parent Trap. We don't get to each take one. Agnes belongs with her mother.”
When she offered no response, he kept at her. “You can't do this to Lizzie. If you want to punish me fine, but don't do this to Lizzie!”
“Raymond, I'm doing this for Elizabeth.”
“I don't understand.”
When she offered him nothing more, he said it again. “Agnes belongs with her mother. Don't separate them, Kate.”
[“No.” ]
His voice caught as he made a counteroffer. “You … you take them both.”
He made his suggestion and then held his breath.
She didn't meet his eyes as she simply stated. “No.”
Raymond pleaded. “Kate please.”
She indicated that she was done with that part of the discussion by changing the topic. “I've taken care of Tom. He won't be a problem going forward.”
Raymond wasn't sure what that meant or if he even wanted to know. Instead, his voice sounding very small even to him, he asked. “What will you do? Where will you go?”
Sharply, she answered. “I'm not entirely sure but I do know that I won't be trying to find a quiet, pristine piece of land to run out the last of my days.”
Her voice was more even, she was all business as she said it again. “Goodbye Raymond.”
As she turned and began to walk away, he called out to her.
“Kate no! Don't go!”
But she just kept going without so much as a backwards glance.
He called out to her again using the more personal [name.] “Mr. Kaplan please!”
There was no pause in her forward motion.
“Mr. Kaplan! Wait!”
Just before she reached the door, Raymond remembered. “I have something of yours.”
Nothing. Not even a hesitation.
Her hand was on the door knob, she was leaving as he called out in desperation. “I have something of Annie's.”
She paused. As ever, that got her attention.
Turning around, she eyed him warily as if he could no longer be trusted - which he supposed he couldn't be.
“It's in my vest pocket.”
The lure of it was too great for her to resist.
After she made her way back across the room, he watched rather than felt her reach into his jacket.
He had killed the men who had shot Mr. Kaplan, the ones who had killed Annie and taken her ring. He had found them and he had killed them, but given his injuries in the fire, it had taken him weeks. By then, Annie was already in the ground. He couldn't give the ring back to Annie so he had gone to Kate. He had put the ring on her unconscious finger himself. In the more than twenty-six years since, he had never seen her without it.
Seeing the ring the Woodsman had taken from her, she sighed. Her expression softened. She put it back on her finger where it belonged. “Thank you, Raymond.”
As she bent down to kiss his brow, he closed his eyes and leaned into her kiss trying to memorize every detail of it.
And then she was gone.
OoO
Red woke to the most excruciating headache. As he started to recall his haunted dream of the night before, his hand stole to his pocket.
Mr. Kaplan's ring was gone.
Finis
A/N Okay a couple of things
So I wrote the majority of this story in the days after 4.4? aired. At that point we knew Tom was leaving for Redemption and a lot of people seemed to be lamenting the addition of a baby. We didn't know that the Woodsman would turn out to be a friendly hermit - still no explanation for why he had leg shackles!
A lot of it was based on Kate's comments which have since been perhaps retconned.
Before the events with Nikos Kate had asked Raymond if he remembered what she looked like that night bleeding in the street with Annie's body Reddington said no, he wasn't there.
This exchange left me with the impression that Annie would have been someone that both Mr. Kaplan and Reddington knew.
Also at that point supposedly Raymond had put Liz into Kate's arms as a baby and she promised to protect her. From that I jumped to the conclusion that Kate had to have some connection to Katarina for Raymond to have any expectation that Kate would have access to Elizabeth to protect her.
Maybe they will clean the inconsistencies up next season, but for now they stand.
I could live with it, but I wasn't too happy with how 4.8 ended regarding Mr. Kaplan. While I was happy that she would live to see another day and there was a chance she would pop back up down the road, her excusing of Reddington's shooting of her didn't sit right with me. It played out a little too battered woman syndrome to me.
Of course they came back after the hiatus and rectified that, but I wasn't too happy with the final ending of that either.
I was hoping for a more happy medium. An ending more like this where she doesn't completely dismiss what he did. She puts a distance between them, but it is left open ended for her to return.
Speaking of which, there is a sequel to this story - I'll Never Find Another You.