Prologue

She didn't get many visitors. Even Howard didn't have time to come and gloat now that he had his precious company back under his control. An FBI agent - an Agent Lamb who had headed up the team that had taken her into custody along with Tom and Nez - and her lawyers were the only outside faces she saw on a semi-regular basis, so the fact that she had received two visitors within a week of each other was strange enough.

Scottie could have done without the first one. She hadn't recognized the fake name he had given the prison guard, but she knew Raymond Reddington's smug face anywhere. Just seeing him had soured her mood, but what he had come to tell her had left her gutted.

Tom was dead.

Christopher was dead.

Her boy, her precious, perfect child that she had just found out was alive, was gone all over again. Just like that. There was too much that she didn't have a chance to say to him, and now she never would.

Reddington hadn't given her many details. If he didn't have them or simply wasn't in a sharing mood, she didn't know. There had been a job of some sort and he had crossed the wrong person. He had bled out on the operating table. Elizabeth was in a coma. Agnes was in good hands, she needn't worry, but after everything, he had thought Scottie deserved to hear it from him.

Then he had just left like her entire world hadn't folded in on itself all over again. Like her son hadn't been murdered. Like….

She had ghosted through the days that followed, numb and in pain all at once. She had no interest in food, and sleep came only in fits and starts, leaving her wide awake on her cot with thoughts of a little boy grown into a man with a hesitant smile and clever eyes. He filled her thoughts and weighed on her soul.

Her son was dead.

The second visit didn't spark her interest. In fact she tried to send them away, but she was told that it was a new lawyer from her firm. The woman needed to see her and wouldn't leave.

Scottie moved only because she had to. She sat heavily in the chair and felt them fasten the locks on her cuffs in place. She waited, dark gaze unfocused and starting ahead blindly until the door opened.

Heels tapped on the hard floor and brown eyes flickered up, finding a set of clear blue, once very familiar, looking back at her. Thin lips quirked up ever so slightly as the woman took her seat, a few strands of red hair breaking loose from their hold. "Ms Hargrave. It's been a while."

"It has," Scottie managed. "If you're here to tell me about Christopher, Reddington beat you to it."

One light brow lifted. "Reddington knows less than he thinks he does. Most men do."

Any other time, Scottie might have smiled at the comment, but not then. "What has brought you of all people out of whatever corner of the world you've been hidden away in?"

"I received a call from your husband. He wanted to cash in on a very old favour. Istanbul. Do you remember?"

"I do."

"Would you like to know what dear old Howard wanted?"

"I have a feeling you're going to tell me if I care or not."

The other woman hummed, amused. "He wanted me to access information on the doppelgänger project. You remember the one. I think your Grey Matters team uncovered the last town in Russia some months ago, didn't they? When you still had Halcyon."

Against her better judgement, Scottie's interest began to stir very slightly. "What for?"

"He needed a duplicate and fast. Imagine my surprise when he sent me the photo of a young man that looked very much like your Christopher might all grown up. When I found the name and realized he was married to Masha I knew it couldn't be a coincidence."

Scottie's mind was running faster than she could put the thoughts in order. "Our son is dead. Why would he need someone to look like him?"

"That is the question of the hour," her visitor murmured, blue gaze flickering to meet hers. "He wasn't forthcoming with the details and was very careful with whatever he had planned to remove the actual Mr Keen from the hospital. It's almost like he didn't trust me."

"Why are you telling me all of this?"

The woman she had known in what could have easily been another lifetime now tilted her head just a little. "Because for what we have coming, two Hargraves are more useful than one, and I know they won't keep you here for long."

"What do you mean what we have coming?"

"Raymond didn't just kick the hornets' nest this time, he took a baseball bat to it. Or maybe Christopher did. It's hard to say where it all began. I'm hoping your husband may have more answers."

"So you're back?"

Amusement danced in her eyes. "Aren't you? Or were you ever really gone?" She stood, the chair scraping loudly. "Don't get too comfortable here, Scottie. I'll see you on the other side."

"Wait," she called, barely biting back the other woman's name from escaping as she did. "Is he alive? Christopher. Tom."

"My suggestion is if you want the answer to that question, you make peace with your husband."

Scottie snorted. "You're one to talk."

"Oh no. I wasn't fool enough to marry the mark I fell for." That said, she tapped on the door and was gone, leaving Scottie Hargrave alone and terrified to hope.

There was something comforting about the steady beeping of the machinery after the last week. Nez Rowan leaned against the doorframe of the room, finally gaining the attention of the man in a chair at the foot of the bed. His eyes scanned over a tablet in his hands before he made a mark on it and looking up, his gaze softening. "They're telling me he could wake up today."

"So I hear," Nez answered, her voice barely above a whisper as her gaze swept over Tom's sleeping form. He was pale and sick. He had only opened his eyes once since she had led the extraction team stealthily into the hospital to bring him back, and that was shortly after the doctors had called it and the screaming machines had been turned off. Their focus had been on the dead man's wife, still with hours of surgery ahead of her. The op had been put together quickly, but with great care. It had to be, or they'd lose him, and Howard had known that as well as she had. There had been two trusted Halcyon operatives placed with the medical personnel, one surgeon and the other a nurse. The original plan had been to save him there. If they had had their pick, that would have been the best way, but the moment that he went into vfib and the doctors couldn't bring him back around, the operatives had known what their next course of action was. The machines were cut off and the doctors had turned their attention fully to Elizabeth Keen, no one noticing or commenting on the nurse that wheeled Tom out to where Nez and her team had waited.

She hadn't seen him at that point. All she had to go on had been the reports that she received in real time from their people's audio hook up in the OR. Nez could still remember the way he'd looked when they'd brought him around to the room they were waiting in. He was gone. For the briefest of moments she'd stood there, staring at the damage done by whoever he'd been up against. It had been extreme, and only the years of training had had allowed her to snap out of it and pull the syringe from her pocket to administer the dose that Howard had painstakingly described to her. She hadn't known exactly what it was supposed to do, but she had seen the pain just behind the determination in Howard's eyes, and she knew that she couldn't let him lose his son twice without at least trying whatever idea he had, even if it did nothing.

Nothing was exactly what had happened for what had seemed like a short eternity, and Nez had been about ready to transport her dead partner home to his father when dark blue eyes had popped open and he'd dragged a ragged and pained breath in, every muscle seizing up on him and startling her so that she nearly dropped what was left of the medication she had given him. He'd looked at her for just a moment, confusion muddling his usually sharp mind, but it wasn't her name that had tumbled from his lips. It had been just as well that he'd passed out then, because the last thing Nez Rowan had wanted to do was send him into cardiac arrest from the stress of knowing his wife was in brain surgery right then.

"What was in that stuff you gave me anyway?" she asked at last, shaking herself from the memory. "The syringe you had me give to Tom. It wasn't adrenaline. If that would have worked, the doctors would have already tried that."

Howard turned his attention back to his tablet. "Something one of our scientists has been working on. Very experimental, but we were limited on both time and options."

"Scientist, huh? Whitehall?" His attention turned to fix on her and she smirked. "You think I don't know that you guys have been working together? I never had a stake in using or not using him, as long as the right side got him."

"And did it?"

Her gaze shifted over to as a monitor gave a slightly different beep and she thought she saw one of Tom's long fingers twitch. "Whatever he came up with saved his life. You tell me."

Howard hummed softly in response, but the increased beeping caught his attention and he stood to watch the monitor carefully. They had adjusted the medication that morning to ease him back towards consciousness, but they had no way to know for sure exactly when he'd come fully around. He'd begun to fight the the breathing tube earlier that day and they'd had success in pulling it and allowing him to breathe on his own, but his eyes had remained closed, barely responsive to anything around him. The doctor had explained that she had no way to know how long he'd remain in that state. The drugs were experimental, and all they had to go on were untested theories. The best that they could do was wait and monitor his vitals to make sure that he continued breathing well on his own.

The same doctor came in behind them to check all the machinery and Nez held her breath as she stepped around so that she could see as Tom's dark eyes finally slide open sluggishly. She reached out and caught Howard before he bounded forward, and the doctor motioned just half a beat later for them to stay back, speaking quietly to her patient.

"Liz?" Tom managed, voice hoarse and strained. "My wife...she…" He pulled in a struggling breath and Nez saw one hand wrapped up in the sheets, knuckles white with the way he was holding onto it.

"I'm sorry, but I don't know anything about your wife," the doctor managed, looking to Howard for answers, and he stepped forward. She whispered something lowly in his ear before he nodded and she took her leave.

Tom's gaze shifted slowly to his father and he looked more confused than before. "Howard?"

"Hey there," the older Hargrave greeted, trying to keep his voice light. "You've been through one hell of an experience. Take it easy, son."

"Liz."

"Is resting. She-"

Tom swallowed hard. "She couldn't stay awake," he managed, the machines surrounding him beginning to beep a little faster than they had before. "She couldn't… Where is she?"

"She's safe."

"Where?"

"Tom, you need to-"

The panic had already set in and the alarms were beginning to scream. The doctor returned, all but shoving Howard out of the way as her team accompanied her. She immediately had a full breathing mask put in place as Tom began to gasp for air and pushed some sort of medication through one of the IV's. Slowly he began to settle down and his eyes slipped closed again, the hold he'd had on the sheets relaxing. Just like that, he was sleeping again.

The doctor whirled on Howard. "That's why I said to keep the stressors down."

"I told him his wife was fine. He didn't seem to hear me…" A frown pulled his lips downward and he glanced back at Nez. "Do we have an update on Liz?"

"The doctors said she's stabilized, but she's still not awake from what our sources say. They're not even making a prediction on how long she could be out."

"You know my opinion on the matter. I suggest we let him sleep," the doctor said. "Let him heal, let him regain some strength."

"How long?"

"There's no way to know for sure. We're working with an experimental drug in uncharted medical territories here, Mr Hargrave. If you want to give your son the best chance he has to survive this, you'll let me do my job."

"Then do your job," Howard snapped and he stalked out of the room, motioning for Nez to follow. She did, nearly running into him when he stopped abruptly and whirled on her. "I want you to lead a team to investigate everything that happened. I want to know what Tom was involved in and who did this to him. I was hoping he could tell us himself, but we've lost too much time as it stands. I don't want any more surprises."

Nez nodded, but paused. "What about Agnes?"

"What about her?"

"Reddington has her."

"Then she's safe. Find out what we need to know. I'm not going to upend what's left of my granddaughter's world before we have answers. Remaining with Reddington may be the safest thing for her."

Nez wasn't sure how much she believed him in that, but she gave a curt nod. They did need answers, and if she knew her former partner, once he was awake, they'd only get what he wanted to give them. Howard was right. They couldn't afford any more surprises.

Notes: I've been talking about doing this story since they killed him and I kept coming up with excuses not to. I was in the middle of a multi-chapter for Dirk Gently, then I was in the middle of a multi-chapter for Wynonna Earp, and then I went back to the one for Dirk Gently. I had too many ideas. I kept hoping maybe they'd turn around and surprise me and bring him back on the show... really, I think in the end, while all of those were valid reasons, I think it boiled down to the fact that I just wasn't ready to face jumping into what I knew was going to be a lengthy experience in Blacklist writing. I couldn't make up my mind on the details and so I just kept pushing it off.

I sat down a few weeks ago and started plot pointing and trying to organize my thoughts to see if I could make it work. My go-to for medical writing advice wasn't available, so I reached out and was stunned by the amazing response I got on Tumblr, all of which went into working through the medical side of bringing Tom back. I have piles of notes, great people that have been willing to lend their expertise where I'm lacking, the other stories are either finished or just shy of the last chapter being posted, so here we go. No more excuses. There's a good chance this will be my last full length Blacklist fic, so might as well make it worth it, right?

Big thanks to Whimsicalwombat for being willing to beta this for me and to bounce ideas off of her.

If you guys don't follow me over on Tumblr, I've been doing some extras for this, and I have already started putting together AU gif sets for sneak peeks like I did back when I was writing Everything Back to You. There's a AU vid over there (and on my YouTube channel) as well.

The plan is to update at least once a week, preferably on Wednesdays before the show. I've gotten some great feedback on Twitter and Tumblr when I started talking about doing this, but I'd love to know here what you think. Feel free to drop me a review and buckle up. I have quite a bit of this story planned out already and it's going to be one hell of a ride.

Next time: Howard has a conversation with Reddington over his son's grave, Tom wakes up, and Scottie is released from prison.