Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of NBC and its related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Liz's already terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad night gets worse even after Red comes to the rescue. Character death. Three-shot…potentially in five parts. Only time will tell.

Warnings: mentions of violence and brutality. Some spoilery-ish things.

Author's Notes: a story that's been circling my brain for a while that I finally decided to put on a page. It's set shortly after "The Good Samaritan Killer", just after Red resurfaces, but as long as you're up on the whole Tom-Keen-is-a-Secret-Agent-of-Some-Kind thing and temporarily forget the events of "Berlin" pts. 1 and 2, you should be good to go!

One Bloody Thing After Another

Prologue

There was blood under her fingernails. Liz didn't know how it got there. She had stayed in the house long enough to take stock of her surroundings, not nearly long enough to see the full extent of the carnage, and then slipped out the back just as the first of the police cruisers arrived. Someone had called for all the emergency vehicles and, really, Liz couldn't blame them. A human being's worth of gore had been strewn through two rooms in the house. No forensics team in DC had enough manpower to tackle the mess, and very few cops had the stones to take down the kind of menace that ground people into slurry.

Liz marveled at her level of detachment from the whole situation: her use of objective rhetoric to obscure the details, her application of logic to avoid an emotional reaction. She had reverted straight into the role of investigating officer even though she was the primary suspect. Even though there was a person lying in puddles and heaps through their home.

A sudden flash of the crime scene – objective rhetoric again: hold it together, Liz – was nearly her undoing. She stopped between streetlights and caught her head in her bloody hands. She told herself all the necessary lies to keep on walking: that everything was going to be alright, that she just needed some time to get her story straight, that the FBI would believe her no matter how much blood they found under her nails. No matter how much of her they found in the messy remains at the house.

Liz surveyed the street quickly upon recovery, expecting the cavalry and finding herself in non-threatening company. There was a small cluster of pedestrians standing outside the pub at the street corner and a few parked cars dotting the curbs. Liz couldn't tell if the sirens she heard were audible or stuck on an endless loop inside her head. Either way, they sounded far enough to not be a concern for the time being.

She would find a place to take cover.

She would get in contact with someone at the office.

She would definitely be placed under arrest.

Her gait stuttered; Liz nearly keeled into the pavement. The walls she had built around her emotions were crumbling. Try as she might to hold it together, Liz was as torn up as him. She fell into the nearby wall, clutching at the brick with her bloody fingers, and stood, struggling to breathe against the coffin-like tautness of the atmosphere. She forced herself to think about all the necessities her current status demanded. Shelter first. Liz needed somewhere to hide.

And fast. The traffic was starting to slow. One car in particular was pulling up to the curb nearest her. Liz made sure her hair was still tucked under her coat and started walking again. Her adrenaline spiked for the umpteenth time that night. Finally, her legs stopped shaking. She was able to walk straight: calm, cool, composed. Just another twenty-something out for a night on the town. Meeting friends at the pub for a drink. Not a murder suspect psychopath whose husband…

A hand traced across the back of her wrist. Liz lashed out, scalded from the contact and the sudden proximity. Red caught her before she could land a blow. "You need to get rid of your cell phone, Lizzie."

"You need to let go of me," she snapped. He did as he was told, revealing his open and empty palms in a rare show of peace. The gesture caused Liz to wince. Pain was starting to register from somewhere inside her, somewhere deep and unknown, buried beneath miles of academy training and careful disassociation. "Do you know what's happened? Did you see my house?"

She always knew the answers to questions like that with Red. Of course he knew: Red always knew. He was ten steps ahead on his worst days. Tonight though, he didn't taunt her with his knowledge. Tonight, Red met her with calm understanding. "That's why I'm telling you to get rid of your cell phone. I found you far too easily."

Liz hadn't thought of that. Why? Why wouldn't she think to get rid of her phone? "I don't know," she confessed, answering the millions of questions he hadn't asked yet. There were tremors in her voice, pithy aftershocks from the cataclysm she'd witnessed. She pulled her cell phone from her back pocket. Her fingers were uncooperative. They kept sliding over the plastic and failing to open the latches. Liz wasn't sure how long Red had kept his hand outstretched for, but he was waiting when she finally gave up. She handed him the phone and watched him make quick work of the SIM card and battery.

The pain in her chest grew in intensity as she watched him. Gradually, Liz became aware that she had forgotten more than just her cell phone. She had overlooked or otherwise lost a whole catalogue of information. All the evidence from the house, the mental map she had made of the fight, the way he looked amidst all the blood: gone. All gone. And Liz didn't really want to know where it all went.

"I want you to come with me, Lizzie. I'm going to take you somewhere safe," Red assured her.

"It's all gone," she felt tears welling up in her eyes.

"You're in shock."

Dembe appeared behind him. "Cruisers are heading this way," he informed them.

Red appeared not to hear him. All his focus was on her. "Lizzie, we have to go."

"I need to figure this out," she tried to keep walking. Red kept her wrist lightly restrained in his hand. "I need to know who did that. I need to know who killed him."

"I can get answers for you," Red told her, "but I can't do that from here. You need to come with me, Lizzie. Now."

He had never said her name that many times before in a conversation. The way her said it – free from condescension – worked to clear her head and kept the pain in her chest at bay. Liz found herself nodding. She found herself walking with him toward the open door of the car. She found herself leaning on him more and more as she walked until the seat caught her and he shut the door. Liz held her own self at arm's length now, because if Red was here it was as bad as she forgot. Worse even. She didn't need to remember to know that.

"I should turn myself in," Liz commented to the nighttime outside her closed window.

"Oh, no, Lizzie," Red said from his seat next to her. She hadn't heard him get in, but there he was, sitting comfortably, adjusting the temperature in the backseat to something that should have been uncomfortably hot. Liz only realized then that she was shivering, and her bloody fingers had gone numb. "You were right to run."

Her chest ached whenever she tried to breathe. The hot air swirling in the cab caused her to unwind. Dembe eased the car away from the curb, and for some reason, that was enough to make her finally weep. Something about the relief of escape made the knowledge that she could never get far enough away from tonight sharper, more refined. The pain in her chest blossomed into agony. "He's gone," Liz buried her face in her hands. "He was in pieces and I…I didn't do it. I don't know...I don't remember. Maybe I…?"

"No, Lizzie," Red's hands – murderer's hands, monster's hands – were strong under her arms. He held her upright and shifted on the seat to catch her against his shoulder. "Lizzie, you didn't kill your husband."

Happy reading!