Part Two

She hadn't looked at him like that in years. The careful, cool distrust reminded him of the days in and following the boat. The days when she thought he was a stranger wearing her husband's face.

Tom didn't push his luck as Liz and Ressler went through the protocol to transfer him into their custody, the cuffs remaining on the whole time. While Liz did everything she could not to look at him, he kept catching Ressler glancing over, as if he were trying to assess for himself if he thought this was a set up or not.

They had come in Reddington's jet. The same one that Tom had inadvertently helped him scam off of a gunrunner. It had been some time now since he had spent much of his focus on Liz's would-be father. Early on he'd worried about what the imposter might do if he thought Liz knew, but as time had worn on Tom had redirected his limited energy to finding a way to get out, to get back to his family. He'd gotten close a couple of times, but with each failed attempt they had locked him down even tighter.

Now, as he was being led into the plane like a prisoner, he couldn't help but think about the man that had lied to Liz about being her father…. and the fact that she wouldn't listen to a thing Tom said about it until she was certain he was who he said he was.

Tom kept quiet as Ressler sat him down, gruff and cold, and took the seat across from him. Liz sat on the bench across, both with a clear view of him, but Tom had to turn if he wanted to look at Liz.

He waited until they were in the air before finally risking a look at her and then back to Ressler. "So… what have I missed?"

The question was as light as he could manage, and clearly not expecting a direct answer to it. He just needed to get one of them talking. He'd spent too long alone in the silence.

Liz didn't answer, and when Tom looked back, Ressler's eyes narrowed. The dark haired man sighed. "You know, if someone were going to use a double, it's a hell of a lot easier to sell a corpse that doesn't need to know anything."

"A corpse can't gather intel," Ressler answered stiffly.

Tom shrugged. "When I was undercover in Halcyon we had a case with body doubles. They were trained to fit in, surgically altered to look close enough to their doubles that they could pass, but they wouldn't have stood up to anything. There's only so much an operative can prepare for."

"Have you ever tried?"

Liz's voice was soft and Tom turned as best as he could to see her. "To fill in for an existing person? You know I have." He waited just a moment, and when she didn't acknowledge the statement he tried for a smile. "I was a dead ringer for a CEO's estranged kid. The ex wife had moved out to the West Coast with him years before and Bud sent me in."

"How old were you?" she prompted, and she looked like it was everything she could do not to latch onto the hope he could see just behind her eyes.

"Sixteen." He pulled in a breath, shifting at the uncomfortable angle. "I told you about it when neither of us could sleep one night. You were seven months pregnant and I was still recovering from when Gina had me shot. You said… that was the first time you told me you hated Bud, and that we'd keep our child safe. Together."

He could see tears start to brim and Liz shook her head.

"How would I know that, Liz? If it weren't me, how could I know that?"

"I don't know," she whispered, "but I can't…."

"Hey," Ressler called lowly, drawing his attention back around. "Enough."

He didn't know what it was, but there was something that had caused Liz to secure herself behind her walls. "It's more than just me, isn't it?" Tom asked softly.

There was a moment of hesitation before his wife's partner nodded. "Yeah."

Tom swallowed hard. "She said Cooper was the one to…. after we were attacked, what happened?"

Ressler hesitated just a moment before finally pushing a long breath from his nose. "She's was in a coma. For ten months."

Tom nodded slowly, settling back and processing what Ressler had said and all that came with it. That would mean she would have been unconscious during any kind of funeral that he might have had, and then by the time she woke up, the world would have moved on. Ten months and there was a good possibility she'd never really found a way to work through her grief, even if she'd forced herself to accept that he was gone.

There wouldn't be any convincing her. Not until she knew for sure. Once she did, once she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, she could let herself believe him and they would be alright. That moment couldn't come quick enough.

Years before, after Liz had found his go-box hidden in the floor of their home and had run her own investigation, they had brought Tom into the Post Office. He had been escorted in as a suspect in a murder that she had finally learned years later that he'd only been an accomplice to. Bag over his head, he hadn't been deemed dangerous enough at the time to warrant the box. The man they had brought in that day had, and Liz found herself watching him from the computer in her office.

He looked like Tom in every way, from the slouch of his shoulders to the way he tilted his head, blinking hard as if it would teach him for what came next. The way he paced the box, long fingers stretching and curling in an agitated manner. And his voice…. He had finally stopped talking on the flight over. Stopped trying to convince her. She wasn't sure that her resolve would have held if he had kept talking.

The story that he had told in the plane had looped in her mind the remainder of the flight, pulling her deep into the memory. They had laid stretched out together on the couch, her back against his chest, and there had been something about the way that Tom had told the story like it had been just another day in his childhood. He'd told it in the same casual tone that Liz might have described a summer trip to the beach with Sam when she was young. With their own child on her way, Liz had found herself boiling at the thought of Bill McCready and the way he had stolen Tom's own childhood from him. For manipulating and twisting it to his own gain, even if Tom didn't see it that way. Her husband had been surprised at the seething reaction and the conviction in which she had told him that they would protect their child together. He had tightened his hold on her and pressed a kiss to the side of her head, promising her that they would.

But they hadn't. First she had left, leaving him to raise Agnes for the first month of her life, and then he had gone off to Halcyon…. and then he'd died. She had been so angry, so lost that she hadn't dared drag Agnes through it with her. She had nearly lost herself in pursuit of answers, and by the time she found herself as close to solid ground as she thought she ever would again, she was thrust into a the back half of a war with the Cabal. She, Reddington, and what was left of the Task Force were fighting for their lives and for their future. Losing wouldn't just mean their deaths, but likely Agnes' too.

And, if by some miracle Tom had found a way home to her, he would understand why she was hesitating. It was for Agnes. He would understand.

"Not only did you go, but you brought him back."

Liz looked up, tearing her gaze away from the screen to see Reddington lingering at her office door. She purses her lips together, weighing her answer. "I know you didn't want me to go… but I had to."

"You wanted to," he corrected, his voice a bit more gentle than his usual reprimands. He was trying, but the strain to do so was evident in the small twitch of his lips and his carefully chosen words. "I understand the…. desire to hope for the impossible."

"It's hard not to hope when the impossible happens to us. You were seconds away from death when Cooper convinced Diaz to stay the execution," Liz pointed out.

"Seconds away, but Harold didn't have to identify my body."

Liz grimaced at the reminder. "It could be him," she whispered, the hope desperate inside of her.

"The resemblance is remarkable, though appearances can be altered," he reminded her pointedly.

"But DNA can't."

"That could take some time to get back."

"Cooper's pulling some strings." She glanced up. "He knows things… things only Tom should know."

"Should. That doesn't mean that they haven't…" He stopped, and she could see him reining himself back in. She couldn't help to think back to the flippant manner in which he'd referred to her grief while they had both been in a race against the other for the bones. As they faced down a common enemy with the truth finally between them, she had seen his purposeful attempt to shift his approach to her. There were still moments that he spoke to her as a child, but there was a conscious effort to correct the behaviour. To make sure that they faced the Cabal as equals.

There was nothing flippant in his voice now, and she saw the pain reflecting in his eyes as he said, "They have always been willing to use the ones we love the most against us."

That doesn't mean it isn't him, she wanted to say, but didn't could force the words. She knew how many ways they had hurt him, how many times his own hope had been decimated. He was trying to protect her.

"Let me speak to him." She looked over, finding Reddington's gaze on her and his head bobbled a bit as he continued. "I'm less inclined to be…. Biased."

"There's something else. Something that has you convinced that it's not him. What is it?"

"Your husband was many things, Elizabeth, and foolishly sold on the idea that I was here to harm you was one of them. Yet he hasn't said a word about what he found on the DNA report, has he? The information he was willing to put both of you at risk so that he could get it to you."

Liz sighed, shaking her head. "If he is a double then you'll just be giving the Cabal a chance to-"

"If he is Cabal, we won't give him the chance to get back to them."

The meaning behind the statement weighed heavily between them, but Liz knew that if the results came back that he was anyone other than the man she had fallen in love with, if the Cabal had put a doppelganger into play to try to convince her that Tom was alive, she'd pull the trigger herself.

He had heard Liz talk about the infamous box that the Task Force had used over the years. It had held Reddington more than once, including when the man had used it to protect himself and Ressler from a man named Garrick had broken in. Kirk had been held there before his health had sent him to the hospital and his eventual escape, and Liz herself had been delivered and nearly killed in that same box. He was pretty sure that Alan Fitch had also met his end inside the walls. Tom hadn't even seen it before that day though. Now he found himself on the wrong side of the glass.

They had taken what they needed from him to run their tests and just left him. He had no doubt that they were listening and watching his every move, assessing every twitch and frustrated sigh that escaped him. None of the Task Force had shown up though, and he hadn't seen Liz since they had gotten there. That had to have been hours ago by this point.

The guard outside the box shifted, drawing Tom's attention on time to see a familiar figure enter. Just not the one he would have preferred.

Raymond Reddington strode into the room. He spoke to the guard who shot him a questioning look before moving away from the box, even if he hadn't left the room. Reddington's gaze flickered to meet Tom's, and the younger man found himself plunged into the last clear memory he had of the other: laid out on the floor of his and Liz's home, bleeding out, and Reddington stepping over him with his gun aimed. Tom had thought that he would end it all right there.

"My, even up close you strike a remarkable resemblance."

Reddington's voice pulled Tom from the memory and dark blue eyes met a lighter shade.

"I hear all the preliminaries check out. All the right scars, tattoos…and a depth of knowledge."

Tom loosed a breath that shook more than he would have liked, his temper starting to boil with each new word. "You're the one that has Liz thinking I'm some sort of double."

"Elizabeth isn't a fool. She knows the lengths our enemies will go to."

"And who exactly is that?"

That infuriating smirk tilted his lips. "I think you know that."

"How's that? Because from what I gathered, the guys that had me dropped me in that hole and left me there for two years. They didn't exactly keep me up to date on the news," Tom snapped, nearly slamming his fist against the thick glass, but stopping himself just in time. Breaking a hand wasn't going to do a damn thing to help him. When he spoke again he could hear the exhaustion he felt in each word. "I've been away from my family for two years. They thought I was dead. My wife doesn't believe me and I have no idea where my daughter is. Just… just tell me-" he looked up to the camera, speaking to Cooper or Ressler or whoever was listening now "- what do you need to know for me to prove it's me?"

"What you don't say speaks volumes," Reddington murmured, turning to leave.

As quickly as the fight had left him, it rushed back and Tom straightened. "Like what? Unlike you, I don't have anything left to hide. I'm exactly who I say I am, but you… No one knows who you are. You've fixed DNA results and people drop like flies around you if they know even a fraction of your secret, but I'm here, and I know what I saw on that test with the bones." Reddington turned slowly as Tom spoke, his expression more shocked than angry. Good. That must have meant Reddington had miscalculated. If he thought Tom was someone else or that he wouldn't dare put everything out in the open, it really didn't matter. "The people that had me might have bought you time, but Liz is gonna find out exactly who you are. Or who you're not. You don't get to keep lying to her."

"And who am I not?" Reddington asked and his tone was careful, as if he didn't dare give anything away that Tom didn't already know.

"The bones that Mr Kaplan dug up, the ones she sent to me to give to Liz… They belonged to Liz's father. The real Raymond Reddington."

He was being recorded. Even if Liz wasn't watching at this exact moment, the Task Force would know. They'd keep her safe. He couldn't touch either of them in here. The strange thing, though, was that he didn't look like wanted to. It took Tom a moment to push past the adrenaline rush that always came with facing down Reddington to see that he didn't look worried at all. He had never moved past the surprise.

"My word," Reddington breathed. "Tom."

TBC

Notes: So, apparently this will be a three parter lol

But hey, at least Tom inadvertently convinced Red of who he is?