Chapter Sixteen

Liz blew through the doors that led back to the rooms that Selma Orchard worked in. Tom was already laid back, hooked up to machines that were reading his vitals - vitals that were spiking, Liz couldn't help but notice - and an IV that was supposed to supply medication that kept this from happening. Though, if her own experiences were anything to go by, it only took one vivid memory to send the adrenaline through the roof to tear straight through the drugs that were meant to keep the person steady.

"Liz, here. Come here," Orchard demanded and Liz instantly followed the instruction.

Tom was mumbling under his breath, but as she inched closer she could hear her own name tumbling from his lips. She reached over, her movements careful and slow, and brushed back sweat-drenched hair. "Tom. Babe? Can you hear me?"

"... without you…" she caught and Liz leaned down to press a gentle kiss to his lips.

"I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

He relaxed a little at that.

"Tom," Orchard called out and he turned towards her voice, even if his eyes weren't open. "I need you to follow my voice back. Can you do that?"

Liz reached down and took his hand, feeling him cling to it. She didn't dare speak, not sure if it would cause some sort of mishap in bringing him back around. He was struggling as it was.

Slowly those dark blue eyes started to open and he blinked heavily before they rolled around to focus on her. There was an awe in them. "You're here."

A pang of guilt rattled through her. "I'm sorry I was late."

"You couldn't open your eyes," he managed and suddenly Liz realized he was still half in a memory.

The memory.

"You remember?"

He squeezed his eyes closed again and groaned. "Pieces. There was a fight in the apartment, wasn't there? I hid something in Agnes' room. A bag of some kind."

"Yeah."

"The guy…. the big guy in the glasses. Just kept coming at me with the knife." He reached around and his fingers wrapped into the fabric of his t-shirt right over the scars. A shudder tore through him. "They nearly killed you."

"Do you remember what happened? After the hospital? Did my mother—?"

"Agent Keen," Orchard said softly, reeling her in. "As I'm sure you remember, the memory recovery process can be… taxing. Tom should rest."

"No, I'm good," he answered immediately, even if he didn't look it. He caught Selma's hesitant gaze. "I'm missing ten years. I need more than fractured moments the first day in."

"It will come," she promised. "Now that we've begun you'll start to retain more. Your mind knows to hold onto memories that slip through like dreams, so little by little you'll start rebuilding what you lost. It's a slow process, but a steady one."

"No," he snapped. "That can't be it. Please. I'm good to go again. You said you wanted Liz here to guide me through. She's here."

Orchard seemed to consider that for a moment. "Okay. Something calm. Preferably something happy. That's the safer route right now."

Tom's fingers closed around hers. "How'd we meet?"

Liz felt an unusual sense of peace wash over her. "At a cafe almost ten years ago now."

As she started in on the story Orchard reminded her to paint a picture. She talked about the setting, the weather, and what had brought them there. Every inch of it was etched into her memory and Tom's eyes drifted shut.


If he'd felt what it meant to be Tom Keen in the first memory of the day, this one felt closer to who he'd been the last couple of years. The master spy, the dangerous operative. Tom Keen was only a cover in that moment and as the memory played out across his mind's eye, that was the only reality he could focus on.

There was a woman - Ellie - who Jacob had befriended as a way to find an in and keep an eye on Elizabeth… Scott. She'd been Scott then. He'd only meant to keep an eye on her from a distance. That had been the job. A friend of a friend. Instead that friend had taken the opportunity to set up a blind date between them and wouldn't take no for an answer, and Jacob could only argue so much. He'd go, have coffee, chat with her for a little bit, and lean into the fact that he'd built the Tom Keen cover as someone she'd never look twice at.

The memory shifted and if he listened closely he could hear Liz's voice. "Where are you?"

"Standing at the entrance," he answered, the words sounding strange from inside the memory. "I see you."

She was sitting at the table waiting, and when she looked up at him and their eyes met, somehow he knew this was the moment he'd lost control of the job that he had been put on. This was the beginning of the end of Jacob Phelps. The beginning of what he'd seen evidence of since he'd found himself as on her doorstep, soaked through, and having left St Regis with more questions than answers. He'd needed to know how he got there. The path he'd taken and why she looked at him like she did. Why she treated him the way she did.

Like she loved him. Like he was special to her.

The memory played out and Jacob Phelps melted away for Tom Keen, real pieces of his personality that he'd never dared let show in his own dangerous world slipping through and Liz latching onto them.

As the memory faded away, Orchard's voice guiding him back despite the desperation to stay, he found the same woman sitting off to his side that had lit up the memory. She was a little older, but so was he, and that smile still warmed him like the sun.

"You had me then," he breathed. "I just didn't know it at the time."

Her smile grew just a little. "You've said that before." She brushed back his hair, her touch gentle and she leaned down to press a soft kiss against his lips.

The memory may not have answered everything, but in its own way Jacob - Tom - thought it answered more than he could have ever been willing to ask.


Things were always easier at a distance. In the same way no sane person wanted a distraught brain surgeon to crack their skull open, an operative couldn't afford to let personal feeling get in the way of the job. Even when the job was personal. It took cold precision to set up an operation, moving people like pawns on a chessboard into place to be useful when the hour called for it. One wrong move could blow the op and get everyone in the game killed.

Katarina had put distance between herself and the precious few people that she cared over the years to try to take them out of the game entirely. Raymond had been the first to push for it, and when Christopher Hargrave's abduction hadn't swayed her, the fire had. Masha had gotten her hands on a gun - a child that was only trying to protect, with no understanding of the power she wielded in her tiny hands - and Fitch hadn't trusted Katarina to finish what she'd started. He'd sent people after them, and as close as they had all come to losing their lives that night, she had finally given way.

Then she had split from her mother, then her father, from Ilya, and then, finally, from Raymond. Little good it had done any of them.

Raymond likely told himself that he had had good reason for barreling back into her life, but he had pulled Masha back into the crosshairs, and by doing so had set off a chain reaction that had put their daughter's life on the line again and again. Fitch, Kotsiopoulos, Solomon, and Constantine, just to name a few. Then there was the business with the bones. Katarina had increased her eyes and ears when she heard her daughter had publicly announced that she was Masha Rostova and was being hunted, but Raymond's foolishness in handling Kate had exposed his secret and tilted a precarious situation to set the dominos falling. And then, when she thought he wouldn't dare expose them further, Townsend had reenacted his Directive and a light had been shone on the age-old conflict. Of course Raymond felt the need to play white knight, and it had landed them where they were right then.

She'd been told he had been on a ventilator and the fact he was breathing on his own now was a good sign, but all Katarina saw as she sat quietly at her father's bedside was a man who had loved and hated her with more fire than a parent had right to have and the safeguard that he and Ilya had put in place to protect Katarina had nearly gotten him killed.

"She's dead, you know."

She could feel Raymond's eyes on her, even if her own remained fixed on Dom. "Who?"

"You know who," she answered, her voice cold. "The bitch that did this to him."

There was a long moment before Raymond loosed a tired sigh. "She offered to help. She never offered to be the sacrificial lamb."

"She was paid for her troubles."

"She was asked to give up everything to protect a woman she idolized for a man she adored. Then, even in hiding, Dom and Ilya took what little life she'd found for herself."

"Are you defending her?"

"Merely stating that there were clear risks to the actions that they chose to take that came back around years later."

"She wasn't an innocent, even then," Katarina murmured.

"None of us were." She looked up and found him watching her. "She's gone now."

"Only because I saw her for what she was: a threat."

"Of our own making."

"A threat, nevertheless." She turned her attention back to her father, and for the briefest moment she considered taking his hand in hers. Instead she cleared her throat. "I suppose it would be pointless to tell you we could use Ilya in all of this."

"He's gone, Kat."

"We could find him if we tried."

"Leave him be. He's done."

"Always so protective of him. He's stronger than you give him credit for."

"That doesn't mean he deserves to suffer for it."

"None of us deserve this, Raymond."

"Don't we?"

She hated when he was like this. Stubborn and playing the part of the martyr that they both knew he was not. They all had regrets. Raymond just let his burrow in like a tick.

Time to readjust. "Did you know that they're keeping Howard Hargrave tucked away in some tiny town in Texas of all places?"

"I'm not reaching out to him."

"We need him."

"He and I are hardly on speaking terms."

"At least he liked you once. He's always hated me."

"He knew what you were capable of."

She snorted softly and looked up as the doctor poked his head in. Katarina stood before Raymon had the chance to kick her out. "Dembe? Take a walk with me?" she asked the all-but-forgotten man sitting quietly in the corner pretending to read. She could still remember the malnourished, angry teenager Raymond had found all those years ago. He'd come so far since then, and she would have wagered he was the one that kept Raymond's head above water.

Dembe made a small sound of acknowledgement and followed her out of the makeshift room.

Katarina led him up the stairs to the roof, asking about his little girl that was grown with a daughter of her own now. He answered, his sentences short and she could hardly blame him. She had always known more about him than he had known about her.

They reached the roof and Katarina turned sharply. "How long?"

Dembe blinked, his confusion appearing genuine. "I don't know what you mean."

"How long has Raymond been sick?" His expression closed off even more than it had been and she resisted the urge to sigh. "He's shifted his assets, made Masha his sole heir, and has begun to pay off any remaining debts."

"This is a conversation you should have with Raymond."

"You and I both know he won't admit anything until he's forced to, and simply knowing isn't leverage. I saw the pills. They're not for my father." She waited, but Dembe gave her nothing. Katarina closed her eyes and pushed a breath out through her nose. "The war is coming if he wants it or not. Our deaths won't stop it."

"Whose fault is that?" Dembe asked quietly, his gaze sharp and focused on her. "He is dying, Katarina."

"And don't you want to save him?" There. She saw it. The shift was subtle, but she had his interest. Well, she had to start somewhere.


The sun had long since dipped below the horizon, leaving New York City bustling under electric lights rather than natural. Foot traffic moved away from the financial district and the sound of drivers laying down on their horns was muffled from eighty stories above. It was surreal being able to look out her office windows and watch it all so removed. A bird's eye view, but if something were to happen on the street at that very moment she would be powerless to do more than watch.

But that was life, wasn't it? From her vantage point she could see as things started to unravel but, even with her power and influence, she could do little to stop it.

A knock at her office drew Scottie Hargrave's attention and she lifted an eyebrow at Kat Carlson who lingered there. "I thought you left out already."

"I've been following down something that came in. I didn't want to bring it to you until I confirmed the information." She held out a physical file.

Scottie's interest piqued as she set her scotch glass in her desk to exchange it for the offered intel. Kat looked nervous. That was never a good sign. She flipped it open.

"You and Howard had the search set up from before. I suppose it was never discontinued, because the alert came in this afternoon. Someone ran his DNA."

Kat's lilt sounded further and further away as Scottie scanned the documents, feeling her breath catch in her chest. "And you've… confirmed it?" she asked carefully.

"You played it close, but…. I know how much losing him again hurt you. I made sure. The photos were taken less than an hour ago. They just came in from one of our more discreet operatives in D.C."

Scottie flipped the page to reveal the photo in question and, sure as she had said it, it was time stamped less than an hour before. The operative had managed to capture a photo of three people she knew well. Her daughter-in-law, her granddaughter, and her son.

Trembling fingers touched Tom's face. He looked tired, maybe even a little sick, but very, very much alive.

Her vision blurred and she cleared her throat, desperately trying to keep her voice steady. "Have the jet fueled and ready within the hour," she instructed. "We're going to DC."


TBC

Notes: I was so excited to get a chance to bring Scottie into the mix. I miss her almost as much as I miss Tom. She was a blast.

Next Time: Ressler and Park follow a lead to Bonn, Scottie arrives in DC, and Tom hits a wall with his memory therapy.