A/N: James Spader is the king of my satellite castle. I'm a little baffled by it, but there you are.

The first time is in the middle of an evening out. She's wearing a dress, the designer of which only he can pronounce, and her hair is loose and full around her face. His part of the equation is harder for her to put together: there is a bow tie involved, and a white shirt, and suspenders hidden under the jacket. Mostly what she knows is that the cloth under her hand, above his heart, seems impossibly smooth, almost frictionless; and his hand at the small of her back a small oasis of warmth, fingers still, satin between them, heartbeat in his wrist and lifeline.

"Pandora," he says, because he's named her without asking first. His hand slides sideways, curving around her waist, and his voice is warmer and smoother than the satin. Not frictionless, though; she gets caught on it.

She snakes an arm around his neck, half-turned into him, and spares a glance for watching eyes.

"You owe me," she breathes, audibly. It's the truth, but it sounds enough like a lie to be said aloud. In response he pulls her into him a little further, and she presses up against him and puts her mouth on his. There are people watching; his mouth is cold, a little clinical, and he lets her kiss him with reluctance. The girlfriend who has worn out her welcome; the one on the way out. She'll leave him behind, now, but she'll still have a part to play.

She lingers a little longer than he expects, probably.

He works his mouth in the wake of her, wordlessly for a second or two, then finds what he wants to say. One eyebrow quirks.

"Lovely to see you again, Pandora," he says. "Dembe will escort you to your car."

She watches him, lets her eyes trace the path her mouth took, plays the part.

"Goodnight, Red," she says, and she turns away finally; walks from him, through the crowd, and lets Dembe take her arm.

Later, when it's all over, he says nothing. She tells him about the fallout, she shows him the box. The mission was entirely successful, for once— but Reddington says nothing. Only his eyes, hooded and watchful, speak to her.

She stops in the middle of a sentence, puts her hand on her hip.

"What?" she demands.

Reddington stirs. "Nothing," he says, and takes the box from her. "You were perhaps more aptly named than I suspected." He flips the lid up, inspects the contents, gives a short nod of approval, closes the lid again.

"And what does that mean," says Liz, "exactly."

He gathers his thoughts for a minute, then looks up at her.

"Excellent work tonight, Lizzie," he says. "We should celebrate, but I suppose you're probably tired. So we'll put it off. I'll see you in the morning."

A short nod of approval for her, too, and he's gone, Dembe trailing in his wake. Liz watches after him, carrying the box she worked so hard for— then she shakes her head, shakes the memory of his voice out of it— Pandora— and goes home for a hot bath and bed.

The second time is, she thinks, an experiment. Probably a misguided one, but there you have it. Experiments are often, by their very nature, misguided. Exploratory. She is a traveler, headed out into nowhere without a compass, and she cannot fully explain what possesses her to move close to Reddington, take up handfuls of his collar, and put her mouth to his.

What she does know is this.

His hands are at his sides; she thinks one of them twitches a little, but no more than that.

His mouth may be warm, but he is not. She can feel him sidling away from her, even though she has him up against a wall; some metaphysical action, perhaps. On a spiritual plane, he's left her in the dust. It is like trying to kiss a mountain range, or an iceberg, more like, and feeling it gently drift away. Action, reaction.

He is not kissing her back.

She pulls away, unexpectedly feeling a surge of anger spike through her insides.

Reddington narrows his eyes at her. He's angry too, from what she can tell, but his anger isn't as important as her anger, as her shame.

"A challenge?" he says. "A test? Faster than a paternity test— see if he'll react like a father when I get up close and personal. Dishonest, Agent Keen."

The words father and dishonest come out tinged with the same flavor of disgust. She cringes a little, away from him, drops her hands at last to her sides and turns away.

"I know you," he says, "better than you know yourself. Do you think I wouldn't realize that you weren't being honest?" He tilts his head. "Do you think I'm so obsessed, Lizzy, that I will grasp immediately at whatever bone you choose to throw me, ignoring that it comes from your own confusion?"

She doesn't speak. She never wants to speak to him again.

He reaches out, and grasps her sleeve with one hand. His voice turns pleading in an instant.

"When we do this," he says, and stops, and closes his eyes for a moment to amend. "If we do this. Lizzie. You'll have to mean it."

She won't look at him. She never wants to look at him again.

But his half-quirked smile is obvious in his words, bleeding through the tone. It's the kind of smile that is a lie in and of itself: he doesn't mean it.

"I'm accustomed to a certain richness of lifestyle," he says. "Only the best. I won't accept anything less."

Twice, she thinks to herself, wondering if she should go home and start a little running tally. But all it means, really, is that she doesn't really have to wonder what his mouth would be like, anymore.

And so she hardly ever does.

The third time, he saves her.

It's nothing he hasn't done before, saving her. He's done it often enough that she has begun to build her faith around him, though she could never tell him that. She believes in him. She will get captured, and she will either escape, or she will try to escape and be recaptured, and somewhere along the timeline Raymond Reddington will ride to the rescue, guns blazing. Guns blazing— she hears him coming long before she sees him. He's expended and discarded his handguns along the way, and when he hoves into view, he's carrying someone else's sawn-off shotgun, snub-nosed and ugly in his articulate hands. His jacket has been discarded, and his hat is, she hopes, somewhere safe. He wears a grey vest, a white shirt under it that shows battle scars. Other people's blood.

She watches him silently as he undoes the gag, takes a small tool from his pocket and removes the zip ties hobbling her hands and ankles. The plastic has cut deep into her skin, and her wrists especially look horrendous, all raw meat and dried blood. He handles her gently, which is nothing unusual, but she catches a glimpse of his face and the bottom of her stomach drops. Reddington's eyes are wet, his mouth has a set to it that looks like he's been dead for days.

"What?" she says, and her voice is hoarse. She swallows and tries again. "What's wrong?"

Reddington shakes his head. But Liz wants to know. She puts a bloody hand on his arm, insistent.

"What?"

"Proof," says Reddington, looking at her hand. He hesitates for a moment, then covers it with his own. "They had proof."

She thinks of misleading pictures, body doubles, body parts in the mail, mocked-up surveillance footage. It's nothing that hasn't been done before. Somewhere along the timeline, someone will lie. The one you love is dead. A major mistake to make, when it came to Reddington; she almost pitied her captors.

Under his hand, her own flexes, and she presses her numb fingers as tightly around him as she can manage.

"I'm here," she says, and shakes her head as though she doesn't even believe it. "I'm fine."

"Lizzie," says Reddington, and he lets his head sink towards hers, puts his forehead against hers. She listens to him breathe for a moment, lifts her other hand and strokes his head, once, twice, curls her fingers experimentally around the shell of his ear. His fine short hair is prickly under her palm. He lifts his chin, just barely, just enough, and presses a close-mouthed kiss to the left side of her mouth, another to the right. He does not linger. She wants to cry, ridiculously.

He pulls away from her, gets to his feet, reaches down in his own wake for her, to bring her up with him.

"If you thought I was dead," she says, standing now, a little wobbly. "Why did you come after me?"

Reddington closes his eyes for a moment, gives a half-smile that is meaningless.

"You're a phoenix, Lizzie," he says. "I believe in you."

He takes her out of the cell, releases her into the world. Stepping into the sunlight, he watches her hopefully.

The fourth time hasn't happened yet.

She can feel it, somewhere out there; somewhere in there, buried near the bottom of the box. She wants to take it out and blow the dust from it: this tiny tendril-curl of hope, and a future.

She wonders sometimes how this happened. When this happened, that her life should be so inextricably bound up with Red, and his voice, his lingering touch, his mouth. She wants to ask herself, but she's too certain that she doesn't have the answer.

Besides which.

It's getting hard to remember a time when it was different. A time before Red, when her life was still boxed up, neat and tidy and full of the future. Now, she is not neat, she is not tidy, and the future that spills over her sides is a different future, unexpected, untrustworthy, uncertain; but there.

She holsters her gun, smooths down her jacket, and goes out to meet it with her eyes open.