A/N: The poem Lizzie quotes is "Antigonish" by Hughes Mearns. Hope you enjoy this chapter! As always, un-beta'd and I own nothing. Mad love to my Gutterbugs for letting me bounce bits and pieces of this fic off of them.

Elizabeth Keen was considered among her peers to be a good profiler, with a solid intuition and good observational skills. Head throbbing, she slowly regained consciousness and took in her surroundings, she wondered if she should just turn in her badge already, because she sucks at this. Tom Keen knelt in front of her, checking the zip ties that bound her ankles to the chair. His hair was a little longer since she had seen him last, his glasses were gone; along with almost any trace of the man she had once married. She was staring at a stranger, wearing the face of someone she thought she knew.

This was becoming a theme.

"Hey, babe," his voice was the same, and the crooked half smile. It drove Lizzie mad, like Halloween when she was a little girl. The masks of cartoon characters and superheroes had scared her witless, Sam never understood why and young Lizzie couldn't explain the terror of realizing that under the colorful, smiling face was another face, a completely different and unknown one. All you could see was an illusion, and as she grew older, she came to realize that those illusions hid far scarier monsters than she knew as a child.

"Yesterday, upon the stair I met a man who wasn't there…" She's quoting obscure poetry and it's making her laugh for some reason. The man wearing Tom's face looked at her strangely.

"They must have hit you harder than I realized."

She rolled her eyes skyward. "Well, yes, Secret Agent Ex, I guess you could assume head trauma at this point. And I'm so done being your punching bag. Now, why don't you tell me what's going on? Because I doubt sincerely that you are the one in charge here."

"Well, he did say you were smart, Ms. Keen." There was another voice, raspy with disuse, thick Slavic accent. She turned her head slowly; well aware that one too-quick move would have her vomiting on her shoes.

"Who said I was smart? Who are you?"

"Your husband said you were smart."

He came into her field of vision now, medium height, medium build, wearing a summer weight suit and no tie. He was almost unremarkable, except he seemed to be missing a hand.

"Well, not smart enough, evidently, or I never would have married him. You must be Berlin."

He gave a tiny, almost courtly, bow.

"I need you to tell me where Raymond Reddington is. " The barrel of the gun Tom now held at her knee gave the lie to the pleasant tone of the question.

Lizzie kept her eyes on Berlin.

"I don't know where Reddington is, but I imagine he will find you very soon. You have something he wants, you see."

"I have something he wants? I think you have that backwards, Ms. Keen. Typical of a head injury."

"You have a story to tell. You've been after him all this time. He wants to know why. That is the biggest weakness of Raymond Reddington, his insatiable curiosity. You've gone to a lot of trouble to get his attention, and now you have it."

The man called Berlin began to pace slowly, seemingly turning over her answer in his mind. Lizzie refused to look at the man with the gun. She couldn't make him go away, but she could ignore him.

"Liz, you have to tell him…" he whispered and if she could have kicked him she would have done it.

"No, you don't speak. You aren't even real. You never were. You are just a trick of the light." She hissed at him under her breath, keeping her eyes on Berlin, who was still lost in thought.

"I…"

"No. Shut up. "

He closed his mouth with a snap, jaw clenched, and she could see, from the corner of her eye, the person under the mask he wore, like a ghost in a long-abandoned house. Her skin felt like it was going to crawl off her bones. She closed her eyes, anything to make him go away.

Reddington was not far when the favor he called in finally paid off. Dembe passed him the phone in the backseat of the Mercedes. He had wondered how long Alan Fitch would dither about before he realized that it would be the wisest choice to let Red handle this problem, before it became a much larger problem.

"You have a location?"

"Yes. An abandoned café over near Union Market."

Red hung up the phone and gave Dembe the address. He would be there in ten minutes.

The sound of gunfire made Lizzie's eyes open wide. Berlin smiled.

"It appears you are correct. And lucky."

Lizzie glanced around quizzically. Lucky wasn't the word she would have used.

Her chair was spun around to face the door, the gun no longer at her knee but at the back of her head. She wondered if Reddington even knew she was here. She got her answer as he slipped inside behind Dembe, both with guns drawn. Surprise was a fleeting expression before he holstered his weapon. Dembe remained where he was, as always, on guard.

"Raymond Reddington, at last."

"Well, fortunately I wasn't expecting a warm welcome. But yes, I'm here. Maybe you would like to tell me why? And why is Elizabeth Keen here?"

"You know why. You know the story. Someone would have told it to you by now."

"I know you lost your daughter. I'm so sorry about that. But I have been wracking my brains since I figured out who you were and I still can't figure out what it is I'm supposed to have done to you."

"You are the one who killed her!" Berlin is no longer calm. His eyes are bright with fury and unshed tears.

"I have to ask you a question, before we go further. Who told you that I killed your daughter? Because they lied."

"Or you lie."

"Oh, everything about me is a lie. There's no doubt about that. It's just that the lie isn't what you think. I didn't kill your daughter."

"I told myself that I would not stop until I had done the same thing to you that you have done to me."

"So you are going to kill Agent Keen, why?"

"She is your daughter. Her father is Raymond Reddington."

"Yes, her father is Reddington. But I'm not Raymond Reddington."

He moved to Berlin, slowly reaching into his jacket pocket, walking past Lizzie with a nonchalance she knew he was faking.

"This is your daughter. She's not actually dead. She defected and she ran and I'd imagine she's probably not going to be happy to be found, but she is alive."

Berlin stared at the paper in his hand as though it would burst into flames. He jerked his head at Tom who pulled away from Lizzie and the two of them disappeared out the front door of the café. Lizzie sucked in a breath so deep she began to get dizzy. Her head lolled a bit on her shoulders as she flirted with unconsciousness.

"Lizzie. Dembe, cut her legs free. Lizzie, stay with me."

Dembe and Red cut Lizzie out of her bonds and she stumbled from the chair on legs that threatened to collapse underneath her. Red slid an arm around her waist to steady her until she regained her balance.

She pushed away from him, slowly regaining the feeling in her extremities.

"Lizzie? You okay?"

"Yes I'm fine. You need to go after Berlin, Red. "

"Not until I'm sure you're okay."

"Red, go, I'm fine. It's not the first time I've been tied up, you know?" As soon as the words left her mouth she wished them erased. Red's jaw dropped for a moment, before he regained his composure and even the stoic Dembe's eyebrows raised fractionally. Lizzie waited for the inappropriate comment but it never came. She waved them off and this time, they took her word.

Pistols raised; they moved towards the kitchen and the rear exit of the restaurant, sweeping right and left. Lizzie followed behind them but stopped to shake out the pins and needles feeling from her feet and hands. Red and Dembe moved out of her sight line and she heard a door being opened. She had just stepped inside the darkened kitchen, when a familiar arm slipped around her neck. The muzzle of the gun was cold as it dug into her neck. She didn't hesitate, a twist of her body, a jab of the elbow and she grabbed the gun, trying to wrest it out of the grip of her former husband. They grappled for control of the trigger when Lizzie felt it under her finger. She pulled it, once and then again. The shocked expression on Tom's face told her what she needed to know. Using the last of her strength, she shoved him through the swinging door and into the dining area. She watched him hit the counter and slide to the floor. Lizzie grabbed the gun, hearing the sirens approaching, ran to catch up with Red.

"Lizzie? Are you all right?" The rear door was thrown open and Red stepped back inside, gun still in hand. She smiled at him to show she was unharmed.

"Tom."

His mouth compressed into that thin line again, eyes like cold green glass, as he began to move past her. She stopped him with a hand on his arm. She should be the one to finish this.

"No, Red, I'll do it."

"Be quick. I'll be waiting in the car."

He gave her hand a squeeze before stepping back outside and she turned to deal with her unfinished business. Reddish brown streaks marred the black and white tiles on the floor, but Tom Keen was nowhere in the room where she left him. She searched the booths, behind the counter, anywhere he could have hidden.

Tom Keen wasn't there.