As always, updates may be sporadic. But I'm deep in with this one, it's a project close to my heart. This one is for the great authors of the old CJ/Toby fandom ten years ago who inspired me to begin on this road, though they'll likely never see it. I can only hope this thing can live up to it's name.

He kept having to drop her off at the motel. After the first few late nights on the first few investigations he began to struggle not to speak. He began to feel her terse demands to be left at her seedy, disreputable lodgings — no she wasn't interested in a little late dinner, no he shouldn't arrange a nicer long stay hotel for her, no he shouldn't send Dembe over tomorrow to take her into work even though Dembe would keep her safe in the dark, freezing, too-early morning — were meant as personal jabs to make it perfectly clear how little she wanted to do with him. She wouldn't even look at him as he soaked in the vision of still and petulant face for as long as he was able, even though her coldness hurt him just as profoundly as the sight of her nourished him.

He wasn't entirely sure why he kept offering her rides when these encounters leave him so unsettled. He wasn't sure why she kept accepting.

He always walked her to her door though, and some night she let him in, leaving door open for him to follow in the most non-committal kind of wordless invitation — but it was an invitation he always took when she offered. He didn't know why she let him in either, sometimes he wished she wouldn't, sometimes he wondered if her neighbors on the other side of the paper thin walls around her room wished she wouldn't either because often enough to make him ashamed she ended up shouting or crying or throwing something against the wall, and once or twice he'd been forced to leave before snapping and doing the same.

He didn't know how to stop pushing her and she didn't know how to let an argument end, and more than once she'd demanded he leave and then followed him back out onto the filthy sidewalk in her bare feet to beg him not to go before they were through, not to leave her in the lurch, not to leave her alone and he would follow her back in even though it was a mistake, and all they would do was push each other farther and farther towards hysteria and heartbreak, and those nights usually ended with him looking into her tear-streaked face and feeling like his chest was collapsing — not being able to even form words as she asked for the answers she deserved, and knowing that she wouldn't sleep that night and neither would he and then they'd face each other over a case the next day and never say a word of the night before because these interludes couldn't exist in the world where they worked and hunted and functioned like adults.

Once, instead of trying to get him to admit he was only there for his own interest, or calling him cold and withholding, she only watched him brush past her back into her cluttered and dingy room, completely silent in a way that begged, in a way that stung, and the expression on her face was so lost, so pained and uncomprehending, she looked almost like a child — and yet not child-like at all, the look in her eyes was too grief stricken, the set of her mouth too full of bitterness.

It had been a long, hard stretch of days. He'd sent her after a despicable man perverting his medical training by selling babies to unsuspecting families by means of indentured immigrant women made to be surrogates for a pittance and a promise of citizenship. He'd wanted the business stopped at all costs from the moment he heard of it from a friend of a friend who'd saved his life once who's cousin had gone missing. But then he'd brought the case to Lizzie and watched her bow under the weight of it and regretted every with every fiber of himself that this was their discourse, he brought her monsters and made her look at every awful thing of his world. What must she think of him. It was no wonder there were days when she could barely stand the sight of him.

He'd put out his hand to comfort her that one night, after he'd tried to take his leave to stave off god knows what kind of argument and she'd accused him of fleeing every time they were on the verge of talking about anything real. He touched her so rarely these days, his hand on her arm felt profoundly personal — and she'd crumpled, dissolved, despondent as he'd ever seen her and for a second he'd been paralyzed with fear. How could she still feel so much, how could she still express it? And he realized she'd been picking at him all night over far too much scotch — decent scotch, too, it was one of her few indulgences and he wondered when he was in the mood to flatter himself if she bought it to keep him coming around — because she'd wanted to fight instead of breaking down, she'd wanted company instead of being alone, she'd wanted comforting and he'd been too distracted by his own self chastisement to notice. He'd held her that night, almost 'til dawn, propped up against the hard, creaking, laminate headboard of her motel bed, her head heavy against his shoulder, her arm tight across his chest, her fingers digging in to the flesh of his side.

Usually though, on the nights she invited him in, they'd just have drinks and stare each other down, and he'd sit in the terrible arm chair in the corner of her room that always made his back hurt and watch her as she watched tv or fiddled with her laptop or watched him back with this look on her face. Someday he'd figure out what that look meant and why it made his chest hurt, seeing it on her. Someday he would find a way to convince her that this was not a game to him, not a ruse, not a job or a hoax or anything cruel and premeditated, not even anything he'd meant for, or could control.

It wasn't as though he set out to feel this way about her. And it wasn't as though he was going to demand she feel anything in return. He just wanted her to understand enough to trust him, to let him keep her safe. That was his goal, now that everything else had crumbled when he wasn't looking, just to keep her safe. He wasn't sure anymore that he could win his way back into her life even to do that.

Dembe kept telling him to tell her the whole truth and be done with it or to back away and leave her in peace because this constant tension and half measures were go to irreparable harm to both of them in the long run. In principle he agreed, but he didn't feel in control of himself anymore. He'd realized the reason he was delaying was pure cowardice, and yet even as he planned the words to say and come to the very edge of speaking them a hundred times over he still hadn't been able to force himself to say it allowed when she was there to hear. It was bad enough now, living in the dim and comfortless penumbra of Lizzie's life, it would be even colder and darker when she had cast him off entirely.

And then there was the consideration that nearly justified his silence when he was in a forgiving mood, that the explosive fury of her anger at him might drive her into reckless action — as it had too many times before — and she might put herself in even more danger as she lashed out. Sometimes he suspected she'd learned the lesson of his enemies attacks, that the surest way to hurt him was to hurt her and had decided to dangle her her own destruction in front of him to hurt him, to manipulate his actions. Other times he wasn't able to credit her actions with that much malice, he didn't think Elizabeth, who was angry but essentially kind could be capable of such a thing. But perhaps she was, for him, the evilest influence in her life, perhaps she was.

He was never sure if his fear for himself or his fear for just was the true reason for his reticence. He knew neither reason mattered, truly, not when his silence caused her so much pain. But on the other hand, it also kept her from charging out into the dark after enemies she didn't, couldn't really understand until they'd destroyed her. That made his weakness nearly worth it.

The summer began with a confluence of disaster, the disappearance of Berlin, the confrontation with Red that had nearly led to her resigning her job and Red nearly getting imprisoned and interrogated for the rest of what was going to be a very short life, the confrontation worry Tom that led to the desperate attempt to save him, begging Red for help, all of it has happened together over a short stretch of days. And after the dust has cleared, and after the man she had known as Tom was buried, she found that her relationship with Red head become strained past all tolerability. Her guilt over the way she had acted towards him, her hurt at the way he and Sam had colluded together in keeping Sam's mortal illness from her, and Sam's decision not to start and fight like she was a child to be protected, like they weren't thinking her off the chance to say goodbye, the compulsion of her pride that kept her from admitting how desperate she was for Red to start on her life in spite of everything, all of those made it almost impossible to keep working with Red.

Even to be in the same room with him was wretchedly uncomfortable for a time, she avoided him as much as she could and yet when she was alone, when she ignored yet another call from him, she knew that she was lonely for him, longing for the time when she had been able to rely on him in times of crisis without crushed by the weight of her conscience. For a while everything in her life was unbearable, every moment with him, every moment without him, every moment with her colleagues who looked at her just as they'd always done, with bland curiosity, sympathy, tolerance, and no comprehension of what she was capable.

As summer went on, Red withdrew for a time. For a few weeks she hardly saw him, even though it was the huge of their search for Berlin. Even as the weather sweltered and cloyed, the distance helped to, of not clear the tension between them, at least allowed her time to ruthlessly compartmentalize it. She was able to have him when he came back with some measure of calm, at least until the first time he showed up at her for late at night, tipsy and reticent but clearly in distress.

She was the one who shot Tom, she would always have to live with that. He had held a gun to her head and he had been about to shoot Red, had already shoot him in the arm, she later discovered and if she hasn't shoved Tom's am wide there was no telling how that afternoon would have ended. But still, she had good a cluster of shots into his gut, felt the heavy kick off the service weapon in her hand and watched her pantomime husband go down.

She'd demanded that Red let her finish it, it was her mess, her false hope, her traitor to put down, put out of his misery. But she couldn't. There was a look in Tom's face as he sat slumped and bleeding out, like a little boy lost and alone. It was the ghost of the mask he wore to their marriage, the ghost of who he might have been once, not even remorse but something like vulnerability and it skewered her. She couldn't kill a man she'd taken to her bed, not even though he'd used their intimacy to test her and control her these last month's. If she did, she would lose all the answers he could give off what possessed him to use her so. If she did she would toes his poisoned soul to hers and our would surely drag her her down into the abyss and below, lost forever in whatever half realm Tom had lived.

She knelt at his side. She put her hands to his bleeding wounds and made him cry out trying to stop them up. Then she yelled for Red, shrieked for him in panic. She would never forget the look of him as he Berle's back into the room not ten seconds later, his face milk white with fear and his eyes burning with the spark of fury.

She begged him to help. She never him to keep Tom alive, so he could answer their questions. She pled in a tearful rush leaning over her nameless husband groaning in mortal distress, and Red stared down like he didn't understand what he was seeing. Then he pulled out his phone and spoke s number down the line and have their location. When he was done he told her help was on the way.

She remembered watching him fold in on himself after that. His posture slipping towards defeat like a clockwork winding down, his face showed such sorrow, near ageless melancholy before it closed to her into a cold blankness she'd never seen directed at her. For the first time she feared him. For the first time, covered in the blood of a man she hated and worked she could leave for dead, she realized she could lose him - not to a bullet or a prison but in a way that was almost but not quite worse, looking right at him and realizing he couldn't see her. Or that he could, that he finally had seen her for what she was.

Tom had passed out shortly after that and neither she nor Red said anything at all, waiting. It wasn't long before Kaplan and Dembe appeared, with a pair of people in anonymous blue scrubs and lab coats and a tall, long-haired man with a gun that she recognized from Kaplan's team. They bundled Tom off out of the abandoned building, Kaplan looking skeptically between the three of them without comment while assessing the situation with her team. They bundled Tom into a white panel van and onto a gurney and before Liz could try to decide if she were willing to ride with Tom to wherever they were going, Kaplan told her there was no room for her, she should go with Red.

"You will explain this to me later, Raymond, I'm sure," she commanded and pulled the van doors shut in their faces.

Red's magic code to summon up Kaplan and her emergency medical team only got them so far. Kate later told her that there were three contingencies in place, on for Red himself, one for Dembe, and, though she should have expected it came as a shock, one for her. The stockpiled blood they had access to was not the right type for Tom and they had to send out for more, costing precious time. He made it through the surgery okay, but he was weakened and went on to have a bad reaction to the antibiotics they'd started him on after the surgery. They treated him as well as they could considering the circumstances and sent out for more supplies, different antibiotics, more guards because they weren't sure if Tom would try to escape when he woke up, even considering his condition and they weren't sure if Berlin's side would be coming to retrieve him.

All the while Liz sat outside by the entrance to the warehouse where they'd set up, uncomfortably perched on a stack of wooden shipping pallets. Dembe stood guard near by, she could feel the judgement, the sympathy, the pity in his gaze. Red was nowhere around. She didn't know where he'd gone, she wished she could talk to him, explain to him, apologize for making save this man he so obviously hated.

Not that she could explain, even in her own head she didn't understand, not truly. She needed Tom to live, to prove something, though god knew what, and she was furious at herself for needing, and furious at him for living, for putting a gun to her head, for trying to kill her one ally in all this — as Red proved himself to be, over and over, regardless of anything else he was — for making her stand between him and Red and realizing that she might in that moment be forced to witness Red's murder at her husband's hands. She didn't understand why she had put them all here in the place, trying to save this man. She just knew she didn't want to be the one who killed Tom and she didn't want to mourn his death, and she would, she understood enough to realize that even after all he'd done to her she would mourn him if he died.

Tom woke briefly in the night, though his fever was already spiking. Kaplan came and got her when he did, warning her that Tom's condition was critical and he was developing an infection. They'd done the best they could and now it came down to whether or not he would survive the night. His chances would look better if he could manage to make it through but the look on Kaplan's face as she explained this to her was not overly hopeful.

Liz went to his bedside, half sure she would beat the truth out of him no matter what his condition, and half sure she wouldn't even be able to get up the nerve to speak to him, as if he could still harm her even while he was in this fragile state. She needn't have worried, he seemed eager to talk, as though here, at the end he wanted her to understand. He was delirious and babbling, she would never afterwards be sure if he had understood what was going on or if anything he'd said had been true. But he had been awake and he'd called out to her when she got near.

"Liz," he slurred, "what's happening, why are you helping me?"

"I need answers, Tom. You can only do that for me alive," she told him, arms crossed, staring down at his sweaty flushed face. It was like that time he had caught a bad flu from the kids at school and wouldn't drink enough water and had ended up with an ear infection like a child, and she'd had to drag him to the doctor... Only it wasn't like that at all. There was this glazed, animal look in his eyes now, like death was already waiting in them. She felt cold, colder than the fan set up at his bedside and chilly May evening could account for.

"M'names not Tom, don' call me that," he said as he shifted and tried to look at her from his prone position.

"Okay. Fine. If you tell me why you're here, in my life, I won't call you Tom"

"I was sent here… it's not important. My boss is gonna get your boyfriend," he assured her with a nod, "You should be glad. You shouldn't trust Reddington. He eats up girls and leaves their bones. Maybe he doesn't even leave those, maybe he makes a soup like Baba Yaga. You should know about that, Lizzie... All good little Russian girls are scared of Baba Yaga."

"Russian? Who's Russian?" She asked, but he was drifting, "Tom! Who's Russian?"

"Everyone these days. You, boss, mother, daughter... It's catching, I think. Everything's about Russia now, just like when i was a kid," he caught his breath for a while, seemingly lost in thought. She didn't like how out of it he was, how small his voice was. She wanted wanted to be cruel and hard, but she wanted to kind, merciful to a dying man. He was dying, she could tell that, she didn't know she would recognize it crouching in wait in the room with them, but she did.

"Said you wouldn't call me that," the nameless man reminded her.

"I said I wouldn't call you Tom if you told me the truth," she said, "But I don't think you've told me any of that yet."

"'S the truth. Swear. You should run away from Reddington, he'll eat you up. I tried to be nice to you, and then I tried to warn you, you have to realize that, Liz. If you had just let me go on being nice to you until it was all done and none of this would have happened."

"If you hadn't taken money to be my husband, none of this would have happened either," she snapped, "What's your name, Tom? What's your boss's name?"

He mumbled something, and his eyes slid shut. Against her better judgment, she stepped to his bedside, put a hands on her husband's shoulder. She wasn't sure if it was to comfort or restrain him. He was scalding hot against her palm even through his hospital gown. "Tom, what is Berlin's real name," she prodded, "How did he find you? How did he find me?"

"Dunno. Ask the Major. Ask Red. Why are you doing this, Liz? Why are you saving me?"

"I told you. You have information I need."

"And after this, you'll let me go?"

"I don't know," she said, and looked away, trying to decide what to say, how much she could promise even knowing she probably wouldn't have to follow through, "Yes. Alright. Yes.I'll let you go if you tell me enough to find Berlin."

"And your boyfriend is okay with that? He won't hunt me down when your back is turned?" he asked. His voice sounded thin, young, helpless.

This isn't what I wanted, she thought, This is awful. This is awful. Just die if you're going to, I didn't want you to suffer like this, I swear I didn't. I can't hate you if you suffer. I don't want to mourn you, please don't die.

"You mean Red?" she asked, trying to track what he'd said, prickled by his insinuation but not willing to waste time arguing about it.

"Yeah."

"He does what I ask," she promised, thinking of how Red had done this for her, hadn't he, even though he shouldn't have, even though this futile attempt to save her husband and herself was breaking them all, "He doesn't lie to me. He'll let you go if I tell him to."

"That's nice. That's nice that he does that for you. The Major used to do what I asked sometimes too," he said, seeming to fade, his eyelids were drooping and she wasn't sure he was even able to focus on her anymore.

"Who is the major, Tom?" she insisted, pressing harder on his shoulder, trying to regain his attention.

"Name's not Tom, 's Jacob. Don't tell him I told you. Not supposed to."

"Okay."

"Did you walk the dog? I haven't seen him in days, did he get lost again?" he asked suddenly, as though startling awake.

"Hudson is fine, no thanks to you," she said. Her voice sounded so brittle and dry.

"Oh. Alright. Dumb mutt always wanders off," he said, and sighed and subsided.

"Hudson is a good dog, you just don't know how to talk to him," she said, and it felt like a conversation out of a time warp. She felt like she was suffocating.

"You shot me, Liz," he said like he'd just remembered and it shocked him, "You shoot me today. Didn't think you had it in you. Why are you saving me?"

"I'm not, Tom," she said very gently and found she could hardly talk, and stroked his shoulder instead of holding it down, "I tried really hard, we all did, and I think I broke Red's heart, but I didn't save you. You're dying. I think you can tell that, right? I think, I think you deserve to know. So you should tell me now, everything you wanted me to know."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess... I do know… Name's not Tom... Always hated Tom. 'S Jacob. Nice house though, nice job, nice wife… not so bad if it's the last thing," he tried valiantly to refocus on her, and something strange in his gaze, distant but satisfied, made her take back her hand. "You were always so nice, Liz. Didn't you ever get tired?"

That was the last coherent thing she heard him say. She tried for as long as she could stomach it to get more out of him — which wasn't long — but he dozed and mumbled and Kaplan came and shooed her away so she and the team could undress him and try to bring his fever down with ice packs and antipyretics and a new, stronger antibiotic they'd gotten ahold of, if he could tolerate it.

She went outside again and found that Red was there, waiting and smoking and not speaking to her. The car was nearby, probably in case they needed to make a quick escape. She found out later that he'd overheard most of her interrogation of Tom, Jacob, such as it had been. She would always wonder what it had looked like from the outside, how it had sounded. She sure hadn't been able to tell from within.

She didn't ask for comfort and he didn't offer, but it was a profound relief that he hasn't given up on her completely. In any case, she didn't even think she would be able to stand it if Red tried to sooth her, hold her. She didn't know what to do with herself. She felt vicious and tired and sick, like she'd broken something priceless and irreparable and also like she was being punished in a way she didn't deserve, for something she hadn't done. She was restless and and wanted to pace but she was too exhausted even for that. She had been awake for three days by then, between it all. She sat on her stack of pallets and waited. As dawn came, she began to doze sitting up.

Red's hand on her knee woke her in the pretty, sunny, cold spring morning. Kaplan was beside them, speaking to her kindly.

"He started to seize, from the fever. His heart stopped three different times. We couldn't get him back, dearie. Even if we had, at that point he would have had brain damage from the fever, the lack of oxygen. I'm sorry. He's gone. Do you want to see him? You don't have to, if you don't want to, but it might help you have closure."

"Red?" she asked, sleepy and confused and panicked, "What do I do?"

"I can't tell you that, Sweetheart. Only you can know that for yourself," he said and stroked her knee and she tried not to flinch from the kindness.

"I don't— I don't want to see him," she said at last.

"That's perfectly alright, Dearie," Kaplan assured her with a kindly nod and then took Red's arm to lead him a respectful distance away. Liz still overheard.

"I need to know what to do next, Raymond, about the remains."

So she became a widow, before she had even had the chance to decide if she wanted her false marriage annulled. They told Tom Keen's school it had been a car accident, Aram even dummied up some police reports and sent a tip to the local news to make the story appear legitimate. Every aspect of the situation aside from the mere fact of his death was too classified and the alternate story was deemed the most prudent course of action from on high. She was glad of something easy to say, ordinary and by wrote to repeat to those who called up to express their condolences to the young wife of their friends Nice Tom the School Teacher.

But it was grating, too, wearying and infuriating to hear over and over what a good guy he had been, how young and selfless, how unfair it was that they'd lost him so early in life. She wanted to shout at them all, that it was unfair but not for the reasons they thought. Unfair because he was a liar and a cheat, a murderer, hadn't hesitated to knock her out when it had meant his escape. Hadn't hesitated to tell her over and over that she was the source of every evil influence in their relationship and extorted apology from her until she had been sure that was her function in life, to apologize to her husband and hope for his forgiveness. Even after his death, even after he had held a gun to her head, she wasn't completely sure his betrayal wasn't something she had done, something she had invited or at least deserved for not seeing it coming. So she didn't shout at Tom's friends for their condolence calls, she just stopped answering the phone and opening the mail.

They buried the body quickly and discretely with a small service she didn't attend - their remaining acquaintances assumed she was too grief stricken - under the name of Tom Keen. No matter what other identities he had once held, that was his only legal identity and that was what his death certificate had read. Kaplan had told her that the whole production would make her transition to widowhood more secure, more unremarkable. She and Red footed the entire expense, though she was sure they did it in a way that no one could trace.

Within a week Liz had moved out of the townhouse and put it up for sale. That's when she got her first motel room. That's when she decided that despair was a luxury she had earned.