Disclaimer - I don't own the Blacklist and I'm not making any money from this story.

Red wondered if there would ever come a time when Lizzie would learn something about her past without blaming him. He didn't know what exactly the recovered memories contained. He just kept trying to keep her from going into the room at the end of the hallway. There was no reason for her to relive the death of her father at her mother's hands. No child should have seen it once, let alone relive it over twenty-five years later. He'd always thought it was odd that she never asked Red about her mother. The questions were always about her father, but if more of her memories returned he was sure the questions about her mother would start.

He continued to stare at the flames leaping from the wood in the fireplace grate as he absentmindedly sipped from his glass of Scotch. This was the first quiet moment that he'd had to himself since he'd allowed himself to be captured in Hong Kong. The only part of his plan to stop Braxton that didn't work out exactly how he' d envisioned was due to Lizzie and the damn FBI. He should have known that Lizzie would rush to his rescue, but he always seemed to have a blind spot when it came to her.

Dr. Wallace had certainly earned the money Red had paid him all of those years ago. When it was apparent that Lizzie needed to be kept hidden from those determined to find the Fulcrum, Red decided that she would always be in danger from her memories of that fateful night. If those memories were put out of reach she couldn't accidentally let slip something that would get her killed or worse. Yes, Red would have loved to know where the Fulcrum was hidden, but at that point in his life he wouldn't risk the life of a young girl to find it. Through the years Red asked Sam if Lizzie had started to remember anything about that night, but Sam always told him that outside of nightmares featuring flames she didn't remember anything prior to coming to live with him.

Lizzie left the restaurant after her meeting with Dr. Orchard. She didn't know what to think about the bombshell she had dropped on her. Who would have gone to such trouble to keep her from remembering the night of the fire or her parents? Her thought immediately was Red, except she knew how much he needed the Fulcrum to keep the "cabal" from killing him. The doctor also told her how concerned Red had been when he first located her and that he asked her if Lizzie would be hurt if she was allowed to continue to recover her memories. She backed up Lizzie's memory of Red trying to keep her from looking into a room in her memories. How he had yelled at her to not go in there, to turn around, how she didn't need to see what was happening in there.

Now that she's had a chance to process the memories, she wasn't sure she really saw Red where she thought she'd seen him when the memory was first recovered. When she was being lead from the burning house she thought she saw a man and a woman supporting Red out the front door of the house. But, that man looked like Red the way he is now, not what he looked like twenty-five years ago. What if Red was the man helping her to get out of the house. The man that ended up on the floor under burning pieces of the ceiling? What if her father was one of the men running out of the door, leaving her behind to die?

Lizzie knew the only person that could help her make sense of this jumble in her brain was the same man she'd rejected again just days earlier. She was ashamed of her reaction when Red had reached out to steady her when she'd stumbled out of that treatment chair. She knew that at the time she'd only been reacting to what she'd seen in her memories, now with time to think she realized she'd been unfair to him once again.

They were scheduled to fly out of Russia sometime tomorrow now that the CIA operative was free and France had a new contract to build and support a new pipeline. Since they had the night Lizzie decided to stop wasting time and would talk to Red tonight.

Lizzie called Red's latest burner phone which always seemed to appear on her phone under Nick's Pizza. One of these days she needed to ask Red how it was possible his always changing number was always programmed into her phone.

"Dembe is he there in his suite? I need to speak to him." Lizzie asked when Red's big bodyguard answered her call.

"I'm not sure if tonight is a good time. He's been drinking pretty steadily since we returned to the hotel." he said quietly.

Hearing this made Lizzie feel even worse than she had before. She suspected her behavior towards him since Braxton took her caused his descent into a bottle. She realized just how little she considered Red's feelings in the matter. If she hadn't decided she needed his help yet again, would she have thought about how he must be feeling after being rejected by her again. She really needed to start thinking about other people's feelings more.

"I need to see him, to apologize to him."

"We are in the penthouse. I'll let him know you are coming." Dembe told her after a moment's consideration.

Within minutes of hanging up the phone Lizzie was standing outside the only door on the hotel's top floor. She knocked on the door a little hesitantly. Dembe opened the door without the normal small smile he usually gave her in greeting.

"He is down the hall the first room on the right." Dembe told her before leaving her to retire to the room on her left.

She was a little surprised he didn't walk her to where Red was, but she supposed he felt they would need some privacy for the conversation to come. She followed Dembe's directions and found Red standing next to the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city lights below.

"Red, we need to talk." Lizzie said to his back.

Red continued to face the window where he could see Lizzie's reflection in the glass. He was surprised, but happy to see that she still felt comfortable enough with him to seek him out. He took another sip of Scotch from the cut crystal glass in his hand before turning to face her.

"Of course Lizzie," he said quietly.

He moved to one of the chairs that were flanking the sofa and sat down, crossing his legs. He sat without speaking, waiting on Lizzie to start the conversation. Lizzie moved to the couch and took a seat near his chair. She wasn't used to this side of Red. The Red she was used to told stories to fill the silence between them. She didn't want to admit how intriguing each story, each little piece of his past that he shared with her was to her. Every tiny morsel of his past that he revealed made her hungry for more. She envied him having a past that he could remember so vividly.

"First, I'd like to say how sorry I am for what I said after you saved me from Braxton. I know your interest in me is not only because of the Fulcrum. If that was all you cared about you would have done exactly what Braxton did already. Dr. Orchard told me that the first thing you asked her was how I was and when she told you I was okay, that I was starting to remember. You asked her what I was remembering. She said it was memories about a fire and something called a Fulcrum. You asked her if it would hurt me to continue. She said she thought I'd be fine. She told me she thought that if she said it would have hurt me you would have stopped right then and there." Lizzie said the last as a question rather than a statement.

Red realized he had to give her the right answer. Lucky for him and his promise to never lie to her, he felt the true answer would also be the right answer.

"The Fulcrum was never worth more to me than you and your safety. I let the doctor continue because I didn't want the memory of that night to surface when you were alone. I wanted to be there to answer any questions about the Fulcrum you might have had after your memory surfaced. What I didn't want you to remember was the fire and what happened to your father."

The truth of Red's answer was plain to her. The miserable look on his face was one she'd never seen out of him before. She wanted to make him explain her memory of loud voices raised in an argument that she'd only remembered bits and pieces of, but the man's voice telling the woman that he needed the Fulcrum to stay alive. This was exactly what Red said about why he needed to find the Fulcrum. She wasn't sure if what she'd found hidden in the bunny was the Fulcrum or not. As soon as they returned to DC she'd get the item from Aram and give it to Red.

"I believe that you didn't want those memories to surface. Dr. Orchard told me something else the last time I spoke to her. She said that to her it looked like someone else had tapered with my memories, putting some type of block there to prevent me from recalling anything from before that night. This person or group took all of my earliest memories, any memories of my parents. Were you that someone?" Lizzie asked unable to keep the agitation out of her voice.

Red didn't know what it was that Dr. Orchard saw during the memory retrieval that made her conclude there was additional tampering. He'd been assured no one would be able to detect the memory block. If the doctor that helped him all those years ago had still been alive Red would have made him pay for his arrogance. He didn't see anyway to dance his way out of this question.

"I asked the doctor to just block the night of the fire. The fool blocked everything instead. I never wanted to take all the memories that you had of your mother and father. I hope that you don't recall those memories. Lizzie, your parents were anything but loving towards you. I'm sorry, but that's the truth."

Lizzie didn't know what to think about Red's confession. Was it possible that Red had saved her from a miserable childhood? Did all her happy memories with Sam make the loss of her earliest memories okay? It would take time to decide what her answer would be, for now, she would believe Red's description of her parents.

"We'll let all of that go for now. My memories of the fire are still sketchy, but they seem to be coming back a little bit at a time. One memory remains constant, there were three men and a woman there that night. You were one of the men. My memory of you seems to come at me from different angles. At one point I see you walking out the door with another man and woman. In another I seem to see you lying face down on the floor where parts of the ceiling were laying on you and they were burning. Which of the memories are really true? Why were you there that night?" Lizzie asked a little desperately.

Red was finally to a place where he felt he could share parts of that night with her. He still wouldn't share her father's name with her. He may be gone, but as long as Lizzie never knew him she could honestly deny any connection to the man. He hated taking the memory she thought was of her father, however he promised her the truth, always.

"Both memories are true. The man and woman that were with me forced me out the door after he started the fire to destroy any evidence that might have lead to us. I heard you screaming from a bedroom in the back of the house. Once they got me outside they let go of me. I couldn't leave a child to die in a fire. I ran back into the house. I found you hiding in a bedroom closet. We were almost to the door leading outside when part of the ceiling fell on us. I managed to shield you from the flames. You put your hand down on the floor to brace yourself. That is where you got the burn on your hand. There was type of metal shape on the floor that caused that strange shape. Somehow I managed to get up and got us outside. The other two were gone. I managed to hot wire your father's car and drive away before the police and fire department showed up." Red relayed his story in a voice nearly devoid of emotion.

She was finally grateful to finally get part of the story of that night. She realized this also explained the terrible scars on Red's back. His FBI file noted the extensive scarring. The file also contained pictures of all of his scars and tattoos. Despite the fact the pictures were right there in his file she never looked at them. It seemed too much like an invasion of his privacy. She knew she would have had trouble not flashing on those pictures every time she saw him.

"You told me once the story that my dad told about how he came to have a four year old child living with him. You were the friend that took me to Sam. Why didn't you just tell me that?"

"We were still on shaky ground after I'd confessed to ending Sam's life. If I'd told you that I was the one that took you from your parents I didn't know how you would react." Red said with his hands gesturing between them.

Lizzie scooted to the edge of her seat and leaned towards him.

"You never gave me a chance to decide. You have to quit doing that Red." her frustration with the man coming out in her voice.

Red moved to the edge of his seat and mirrored her position.

"Quit doing what Lizzie? Quit trying to prevent you from being hurt or quit trying to not risk making you angry? Do you want to know what one of my biggest fears has been in the past year and a half? The fear that you would follow through on your threat that our partnership was over, that you never want to see me again." Red told her with watery eyes that he couldn't hide sitting this close to her.

She didn't know what to say. She knew that she'd practically him once a month that she was done with him. She'd even gone so far as to resign and arrange for Red to be arrested, knowing that he would have been tossed into some place like the Factory. Now that she's seen first hand what she would have condemned him to, she would do everything in her poser to make sure he never got sent to such a place.

"I can't promise to never get angry at you again, but I don't see a time when I won't want to see you again." Lizzie said with a shy smile. "But, to prevent me from getting angry with you again, are there anymore secrets from my past that you are keeping from me? Besides my father's identity I mean."