Part One.

She had been agitated when she left, but at least it wasn't at him. He had told her everything and likely added yet another target to his own back by doing it, but that was okay. It had to be okay. Liz deserved to know, and if Reddington wasn't going to be the one to tell her then someone had to. It might as well have been him.

He had told her, he had given her every opportunity to keep herself safe from him, and now Tom needed to leave. He needed to get as far away from DC and New York as possible if he wanted to survive this. He needed to give her a chance to start over. He really was in over his head with this, but somehow he didn't care. He loved her, even if he didn't always know exactly what that meant. He had now betrayed one of the most dangerous men in the world not once, but twice for her. Hell, after his less than amicable split with the Major, he should have been gone as soon as the passports hit his hands.

But there he was, sitting in a little bolt hole of a warehouse, in DC, waiting for a phone call that was never promised. They said that love made people do crazy things. He supposed that waiting for Liz to call him after she got her confirmation- at least, he hoped Reddington would give her the truth and wouldn't blatantly lie to her face about it - was one of the less crazy things he had done for her lately.

Tom wasn't sure when he had dozed off, tucked away behind piles of junk so that he couldn't be seen if someone entered. He had been running over the conversation they had had in his mind again, her quiet, careful voice trembling in his own mind just as it had when she stood in front of him, almost like the dam that she hid her emotions behind was beginning to give and crack. Every time he had tried to stop she had told him to keep going. She wanted everything. When he had finished she had reached forward and touched his cheek, fingers lingering there and he'd wondered if she was going to kiss him again. Instead there had been a threat. If he was lying about this... But she knew he wasn't. She was just hiding, protecting herself. He couldn't really blame her for it. The words had been sharp and tough, but her touch was soft. She hated the truth he had told, but she understood that it was one he had told for her. Because she had asked.

There hadn't been a goodbye. She had simply turned and left him to receive her confirmation.

The sound of the front door scraping open jolted him out of his doze. Tom froze, listening carefully as it scraped back shut and footsteps echoed to the center of the large room. It could be Liz, but it could be someone else as well. He didn't dare trust his sleepy, hopeful mind just yet.

Silence followed for a few moments, stretching out so that he was barely breathing. He pressed himself up against the wall at his back, pulling his legs up carefully so that he could bolt if he needed to. He had his gun gripped in his hand and was about ready to confront the intruder when he heard her suck in a deep breath, the sound bouncing off the walls. "Tom, are you still here?" she called quietly, her voice quivering ever so slightly.

It had been hours, he realized as he rose enough to see it was growing light outside, as if night had come and gone and he hadn't noticed. "Yeah," he answered, hopping down from his perch, his muscles complaining a little at the sudden movement after being curled into a corner for so long. His gaze fell on her and Tom felt his chest tighten just a little. Lizzy's eyes were rimmed red and she wore the same clothes she'd been in the day before. She looked miserable, as if she hadn't slept a wink.

"I... I didn't know where else to go," she whispered, echoing his words from only days before.

The dam seemed to break the moment Tom reached for her. Liz didn't hesitate as she launched herself in his arms and buried her face in his chest. He held onto her as sobs rocked her entire frame, stroking her hair carefully in a way that had always calmed her before.

It took a while, but finally the sobbing subsided and Tom pressed a hesitant kiss to the side of her head, not risking his own voice. He didn't dare say the wrong thing.

"I'm sorry," she whispered hoarsely as she pulled away, looking up at him.

"Don't apologize. You okay?"

"No."

Well that was honest. She looked torn and hadn't moved from her spot. Tom's arms were still loosely around her and he swallowed hard. "Lizzy-"

"Someone shot him."

Tom blinked, finally releasing her. "What?"

"I gave Reddington what he wanted. It's all he wanted anyway, so I gave it to him and told him I was done."

She was trembling now and Tom pulled in a steadying breath of his own, reaching back to pull on every small thing that he'd learned could ease an all-out panic attack when it was working its way up inside of her. "Hey," he said softly, pulling her attention around to him. "Take your time."

She nodded and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, tears escaping, and when Tom ran his thumb along her cheekbone to wipe it away, she caught his hand and held onto it. After pulling in a deep breath she opened her eyes and locked onto his. "He's been after this thing he calls the Fulcrum. Do you know anything about it?"

Tom shook his head. "I told you everything I know about my original assignment. He was very careful not to give me too many details."

She nodded, accepting the answer, and she still had a death grip on his hand. "I... I just wanted it to be over, you know? This last... I can't keep doing this. I lost everyone that I cared for and I don't think I can take losing anyone else."

"Liz, what happened?" he coaxed softly.

"I was about to leave and someone shot him. I didn't see the shooter, but it came from up high. He's... I'm so angry at him right now, but-"

"But you don't want him to die," her ex-husband whispered and she looked up at him, eyes pleading for him to understand. He couldn't find it in himself to agree with her on the sentiment, but Liz had a better heart than she knew. It had certainly saved his life. So instead of saying that she would be better without him, he swallowed the words and chose her feelings over his own. "How is he?"

Liz relaxed just a little. "Out of surgery. He's still in bad shape. Dembe said that there's a group that's been trying to kill him. Red talks about them sometimes, but never very specifically. They tried to kill us a few months ago at-"

"They tried to hurt you?" Tom demanded, feeling his temper flare dangerously.

"We were on a ship trying to rescue Reddington. They tried to bomb it. They did bomb it. These people are powerful." He nodded stiffly and her brows drew together. "Tom?"

"Hmm?"

"What are you thinking?"

He searched her gaze carefully, not sure he wanted to say.

"The truth," she reminded him and he sighed.

"Honestly? No wonder he needed someone to protect you." The first reaction wasn't going to help them though. "I'm also thinking about some contacts I can reach out to to find these guys."

"We'll find them."

"Lizzy, you're good at your job. There's no questioning it, but if Reddington had been comfortable with sending the FBI after these guys, don't you think he would have done it already?"

"So what? You're offering to help a man you hate?"

Tom snorted. "No. I'm offering to help you."

The woman he loved blinked at him. "There are people trying to kill you, Tom. Won't this draw attention?"

He shrugged. "I'll be discreet. I'm good at that." Tom offered her a small smile. "I'm good at my job too, Liz. Let me help you?"

"I hate your job," she whispered and the hurt was back in her voice.

"Only because you've been on the other end of it."

Her blue eyes were studying him then, careful and cautious. "You're just checking into it?"

"Just reaching out to contacts. I'll let you know every step if it makes you feel better." He paused, watching the struggle play out across her face. "I'm not going to lie and tell you I'm doing this for him. These people have already put you in danger. I'm doing it to keep you safe, not him."

"Why?" she asked, her voice small under the heavy question.

The truth, he reminded himself. She deserved the truth. Tom pulled in a deep, steadying breath and brought her hand that was still clutching his up, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. "Because I still love you," he admitted softly, risking a look at her expression. "That's the honest truth."

"It's so much easier to hate you," she whispered.

"You can hate me after," he offered, his voice a little teasing and it pulled the smile from her that he had hoped for.

"Probably not." She pulled her hand free and her fingers touched the side of his face. "Be careful, okay?"

"You too."

For a moment he thought she might kiss him again, but she didn't and turned without another word. Liz left him alone and Tom returned to his corner to grab the bag that held everything he currently owned. He'd felt like he was drifting aimlessly the last few days, but now he had something to focus on. Helping Lizzy was all that mattered.

It had been a long few days and Red still wasn't awake. Dembe hadn't left his side and even Ressler had dropped by to check on him in an unofficial capacity. Not that the FBI officially knew where Raymond Reddington had been cared for. With the attempt on his life, a traditional hospital was out of the question.

Not that Red didn't have the connections for the same quality care.

"You look like you're expecting a call," Kate Kaplan said with a raised eyebrow and Liz glanced up from her phone from where she had been willing it to ring. She hadn't heard from Tom since he promised to dig up as much as he could find on the group that had shot Red, and she felt torn between the option of giving him space to work and worry for him that she couldn't crush. He had offered to help her, even though he hated Reddington. Even though it would possibly cause him more trouble than it should have been worth.

Liz offered a thin smile. "Just hoping for good news from somewhere."

"This isn't something you can fix, dear," the older woman said seriously, crossing her arms. "And he'll pitch a fit when he wakes if you've tried."

"He can't expect me to sit here and do nothing," the young agent growled.

"He can and he does. I've known the man a long time, and I'll let you in on a secret. The rare few he gets close to are invaluable to him. Don't go getting yourself killed."

"I wasn't planning on it." Her phone buzzed in her hand and she stood. "Keen."

"Hey. It's me. You have time to meet?"

Liz hoped that the relief that rushed through her didn't show on her face. "Yeah. Text me the address. I'll see you in a few." With that she hung up and found Mr Kaplan giving her a very knowing look that made her uncomfortable.

"Be careful with that one, dear."

"I'm sorry?"

That knowing look just didn't stop. "You're a big girl and you'll make your own decisions. You don't need me or even Raymond to tell you what you already know, but we will anyway. Raymond gets a little overprotective now and again, but his intentions are good on this one. Don't mistake this young man for the one you married. Don't let him make that mistake either. It sounds like he fell hard enough that he might."

Liz pursed her lips together. "You'll call if he wakes up, won't you?"

"Of course."

"Thanks."

The address she found waiting for her wasn't too far away, but it wasn't the one she had found him at a few days earlier. He'd been forced to move, or perhaps had chosen to. Regardless, she found it and him easily enough and he didn't look any worse for wear. In fact, he looked better than she had seen him in months. His baggy sweatshirt had been replaced with a button up dress shirt and boots with loafers. He was clean shaven and a pair of glasses very different than those she was used to were perched on his nose. He looked up from where he was balanced on the back two legs of his chair and reading what looked like a file that was in his hand. "Hey."

Liz quirked an eyebrow. "You have a job interview or something?"

He grinned at her, and for just a moment he looked more like her Tom. Mr Kaplan's warning rang in her head and she forced herself to focus as he spoke. "So, my contact came through. Sorry I just sort of dropped off the map, but I didn't walk away from it empty handed." He handed over the files to let her leaf through them as he gave an overview of what her eyes were scanning. "This group is filled with ghosts. The only way I could dig up what I did in the time that I did it was because I knew a guy who was looking into it for another job."

"This guy have a name?"

"Of course he doesn't." Tom was smirking at her when she looked up and there was a bit of mischief dancing in his eyes. He was in a good mood. Apparently he'd found something worth his time. "Lizzy, I'll do my best to be honest with you over things directly having to do with you, me, or both of us, but-"

"I'm a federal agent and this is your source. That's fair."

"Thank you."

"So what did this nameless guy tell you?"

Tom tipped forward, standing with the momentum. "Anonymity is this the way this group works, and while this buddy of mine is a little on the paranoid side, it doesn't mean that he's wrong. He ran across whisperings of this alliance several years ago. Apparently he never really let go of it, because when I reached out to him he had a bunch of tidbits piled up in a file. He's found at least a few names of people that are involved."

Liz scanned the documents, finding names and little snippets of information that she couldn't always make sense of. Apparently Tom could, though, because he seemed to think this was a major step towards something. She just wasn't sure what. "These are major players in the government, Tom. Are you sure your friend's not just paranoid?"

"He's a lot of things, but this is real, Liz. I found a link to a Katherine Goodson in-"

"She's the Deputy Director of the National Clandestine Service," Liz jumped in, flipping a page over to find a picture of a woman she had heard had been in the middle of the whole Braxton affair and had nearly gotten them all killed. She would have had authority to have launched the missiles. Suddenly Tom's buddy didn't seem quite as crazy as she'd hoped, but it did make her feel like the walls had closed in just a little closer. "How big is this group?"

"No clue, but we're about to find out."

"What do you mean?"

"My buddy-"

Liz rolled her eyes. "Just give me a first name. I promise I'm not going to arrest this guy, Tom."

Her ex-husband chuckled. "Jeff. Jeff has been looking for someone - has an entire persona already built up and ready - to go undercover and find out more. He actually reached out to Bud a couple of years ago, but I was-"

"With me," Liz said, the words bit off a little more than she'd meant for them to be.

He looked a little sheepish. "Yeah."

The realization of what he was saying began to sink in and blue eyes shot up from the pages she was still scanning. "Wait. The new clothes. You're going undercover?"

"Jeff needs someone on the inside and I fit the type. It's perfect. He gets what he wants, we get what we want, and everyone goes home happy."

"Tom, we don't know who's in this group. You could be walking into a trap."

He stopped, a little of the excitement washing away and he blinked at her. "It's just a job, Liz. To get you your answers. It's what you wanted."

"No, I wanted you to reach out to someone, not go undercover. I-" This was stupid. This was what he did and she couldn't explain why it was making her so angry. So afraid. All she could think of was the way Red had dropped in the street and how everyone seemed to be after Tom these days. If Bill McCready caught wind that he was working - and he had just said that this friend of his had originally reached out to the Major for this very job - they would kill him. "It's too risky."

"You're worried about me." The crazy idiot smiled at her and she felt her heart pound a little harder. Damn him. He did know every button to push, even when he didn't seem to be trying.

Liz rolled her eyes. "Of course I am, you jerk." His smile only broadened and he stepped forward. Suddenly he was right in front of her and Liz struggled for control. Not just for herself, but for him as well. Mr Kaplan was right. Neither of them could just go back to what they had had. He wasn't the man that she'd married, even if he might be the man that she loved. This man was a trained deep cover operative, not an elementary school teacher that needed to be protected from the dark, horrible world outside. He knew what the risks were, and if he was willing to take them, she shouldn't stand in his way. With a sigh, she reached up and touched the side of his face, her fingers lingering there for a moment. "But you're a professional, right? Just don't get yourself killed."

He reached up, taking her hand in his. "You know you have to keep this quiet, right? Until we know how deep this goes, you can't trust anyone."

"I trust my team."

Tom grimaced at that. "I know you do, Liz, but-"

"No buts. These people were the ones that kept me afloat when you turned my life upside down," she snapped, hand pulling away from his and he winced visibly at the cutting remark.

"Okay," Tom agreed slowly. "Fair, but you don't know about their bosses. Their peers. You want to keep your colleagues safe, you'll let me do my job."

Liz huffed, irritated. "What is with you two? Both of you. You think you know exactly what's good for me and you have to hide the truth to make sure I do it. I'm not a child, you know. All giving me partial information does is get people hurt."

Her ex-husband blinked at her and looked a little startled by her tone. He probably thought she was going to chunk something at him. It was getting close. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"You're right. I'll feed you whatever I can from the inside and you do with the information what you think is right."

She let some of the anger roll off her shoulders. The effort seemed honest, and it wouldn't do either of them any good not to acknowledge it. She reached out again, this time her fingers touching his arm. "Thank you."

"I'm going in first thing in the morning."

Liz opened her mind to respond, but her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out, Ressler's name flashing across it. "Work," she murmured.

"It usually is."

She looked up at him, seeing a look that was all Tom. It was sad, but resigned, and she grit her teeth against it as she slid the phone open. "Keen."

"New case just came up."

"Reddington's still in the hospital. Has he woken up?"

"No. Apparently this is coming from somewhere higher than Cooper."

That didn't sound good. That sounded like a distraction to keep the taskforce from investigating what had happened. "Okay, I'll be there in ten." She clicked end and her gaze drifted back to the man she still loved and a question left her lips before she gave herself permission to let it. "Do you prefer Tom or Jacob?"

He tensed then, that guarded expression returning to his blue eyes as he watched her. "Why?"

"Because if we're going to be in each other's lives, if I'm going to… figure out how I feel about you, I need to know you. Are names just something you pick up and toss out or do they mean something?"

"Most of them," he answered after a moment. "I don't get attached."

"Yes you do."

"Not usually," he corrected himself with a mirthless smile. "You're special, Lizzy."

She couldn't help the small smile that tugged at that. One of the hurts that had stung so deeply was the idea that they didn't choose each other and that he was only there to get paid. He had certainly made an effort to prove that even if feelings hadn't been there to begin with, they had been later. "Which one?"

He shrugged. "I liked being Tom Keen. I liked being with you. If you want to keep calling me Tom, that's fine. I'm not sure there's much left of Jacob Phelps anyway."

There were moments when he seemed so lost that Liz didn't know how to respond, so she went on instinct and tipped up on her toes, pressing a kiss to his lips. His arms came around her after a moment's hesitation and he kissed her back, fingers brushing the side of her cheek. When they broke she loosed a shuddering breath. "I think there's more of him than you know. We can find out how much."

"Last one," he answered in a breathless whisper and she knew what he meant. His last undercover job like this. He needed to find himself for himself, and if he could do that, maybe even for them. They could never find what was between them if he continuously disappeared into other lives. It had to be real or not at all.

"Last one," she agreed. "I have to go. Be safe."

"You too."

She felt his eyes on her as she handed him the file back and turned to leave. A very quiet part of her mind wanted to believe that the kindness and the love that Tom showed her was really Jacob shining through. She wasn't sure if that was true, but she could find out. She wanted to, and she hoped they'd both live long enough for it.

The odds weren't in his favour, and it likely wasn't a job he would have accepted while he had still worked for the Major. Jeff was a paranoid sort with far too much money at his disposal to fund those fears, but every once and a while he hit in something solid. It had taken nearly three hours to convince him that Tom was not, in fact, dead, before he'd been willing to talk about anything else. A few drinks in him hadn't hurt either, and when the two men sat down to discuss, Jeff had begged him to go in. He'd offered a hell of a lot of cash, and was still happy to pay with the understanding that he had another client that needed the same information as long as he got what he needed from it. Tom hadn't divulged who it was and Jeff had known better than to ask. He knew he'd receive the same courtesy.

Everything was set, and Jeff had always wanted Tom to fill the role, so it was well tailored to him. How Jeff pulled the strings to get him a meet with Kat Goodson, he wasn't sure. The born-forger had provided him with all the appropriate degrees and documents. His name was Eric Miles, thirty-three years old, single, and freshly back to DC for this job. Undergrad at Columbia, one graduate degree from Harvard, another from Princeton. Not bad for a kid that grew up on the streets, Tom thought with amusement. Getting to be someone that his life would have never allowed for him to be was one of the many things he had always loved about undercover work.

But this was it. His last go at it. He was going to choose Liz. He needed to know who he was outside of the parts he played if he wanted to love her. He needed to find out how many small truths Tom Keen had managed to tell her.

He had always worked fast, but without the groundwork that Jeff had laid this would have turned to a very lengthy assignment. Something big was happening and Goodson needed someone to help her balance the double life she led. When the aid that had worked for her went missing, well, it did tend to open things up and Eric Miles had come very highly recommended by just the right people. He'd been scooped up and it had only taken him two days to quietly create the fire - one that even the assistant director had not detected - and then put it out, promptly gaining her trust and the Director of Clandestine Service's attention.

Yes, he had always worked fast, but there was something satisfying to know that if this had to be his last operation, he was shattering his own records. He needed to if he was going to be of any use to Lizzy at all.

TBC

Notes: Okay, I don't expect this to be overly long, because I don't have time for two huge fanfiction projects and I'm already committed to one in the Once Upon a Time fandom, but the plot bunny took hold and I thought I'd let it go for the hiatus.