A/N: Here's where we start to step away from canon. Crossing my fingers. Un-beta'd and woefully un-owned by me.
Agent Elizabeth Keen felt as though she had fallen down a rabbit hole. The fall was long and dark and she very much doubted that she would wind up in wonderland at the end. She had yet to find one aspect of her life that had not proven false. Her husband was a liar, possibly a dangerous spy, for reasons Lizzie couldn't begin to guess. She had tried to believe in him, to restore her faith in their relationship and found herself…not up to the task. But every day she put on her happily married mask, every day was a masquerade. She was tired of trying to guess what everyone was hiding.
Raymond Reddington was the only person who hadn't lied to her; which was almost odd considering he was a notorious criminal. He didn't always tell her everything, in fact, he never told her everything, but he didn't lie. He was, unlike some men she had married, exactly what he seemed to be. But he still knew too much, and far too often she found herself wanting to shiver under the heat of his gaze. His speech was so perfectly eloquent and civilized that the occasional innuendo left her gaping like a fish, cheeks flushed bright pink, and he would just smirk at her and keep talking.
Then everything seemed to hit the wall at once, her life shattered into pieces and she found herself on Reddington's doorstep. She found him in a basement workshop, tinkering with the same music box he had been working on before. He glanced up once and then stopped what he was doing and looked at her more closely, studying her face. She wondered if he could see the tear tracks on her cheeks, or if she had rivers of black mascara painted on like a Greek mask of tragedy. He offered her a seat on a stool next to him and said nothing. Everything he could say, such as "I warned you" or "I told you so", she expected all of that to come spilling from his lips like water from a faltering dam. But the dam held, and Reddington was silent. She found that, as much as he could talk and tell stories and play court jester, when it was just them, he was often simply quiet. Lizzie wondered which Red was real, and which was a character he played.
"Tom's gone." The words slipped out without any passion. She felt his calm demeanor wrap around her like a blanket. His hands once again moved to their work. It looked to Lizzie as though he was just putting the finishing touches on it.
"So I gathered. I'm sorry about it."
"I guess it isn't your fault, really. Is it?"
Red didn't answer this time. He was winding the music box using the key on the side. The first tinkling chords of "Masquerade" from Phantom of the Opera made tears spring to Lizzie's eyes.
"I had a music box that played that song. Sam gave it to me for Christmas or a birthday, I can't remember which, but when I was young, and felt sad for any reason, Sam would wind up my music box and hum along with it. He would hold me and tell me that I would be okay. " Lizzie looked at Red in the half-light of the workshop. Searching his face for anything that would help her figure out how he knew her so well.
"How did you know? You've been working on this thing for weeks now. As though you knew…that Tom…would give himself away…" Lizzie trailed off, realizing that the man beside her had known what she herself would not admit. On their second operation together, at a restaurant in Quebec, he had asked her, "What if I told you everything you think you know about yourself is a lie?" She had shrugged it off as him toying with her. Now she was forced to really wonder if she knew herself as well as she had thought.
Her head was spinning, swarming with unanswered questions and lost hopes for a normal life; she closed her eyes and felt his arm come around her shoulder, pulling her into his chest. She could feel the fine cotton of his shirt against her face, dampening as tears emerged again. He laid his cheek against the crown of her head, and she could hear him humming softly.
"Masquerade, hide your face so the world will never find you…"
Two weeks later, Lizzie laid her head against the staircase of her home and wondered why she hadn't simply stayed in the basement with Reddington. But no, she had asked him to find Tom for her, she had questions, she wanted answers. Now she had them, some of them, and they brought her little peace. It had taken longer than she wanted to free herself from the handcuffs. The spindle of the staircase would have to be replaced. She stood in her now completely destroyed living room, marveling at the absurdist comedy her life was becoming. The headlines could read "FBI agent handcuffed to staircase by former husband, with own cuffs." Lizzie huffed a sigh and rolled her eyes, thinking that was just what Red would say.
Red. Tom had looked so…earnest when he restrained her.
"He's not who or what you think, Liz. He's not a good guy. You know where the key is under the lamp, I know you know. Take it and go to the First National Bank in Georgetown. Learn the truth."
More lies? Perhaps. Or a more sinister form of torture, lying with the truth. Lizzie shoved the toppled bookcase back up onto the wall, making her way to the dining room and the lamp she had disassembled after seeing the surveillance footage of Tom doing the same.
"Masquerade…you can fool any friend who ever knew you…"