AN: Now we get Liz's perspective. Thanks so much for reading. Please let me know what you think!

Disclaimed, again

-...-...-...-...-

It must have been Tom. How else would the cabal have known when and where she was meeting with Red to hand off the fulcrum? They never said where they were meeting over the phone, so even if the lines were tapped, there was nothing constructive to be overheard.

When the bullet hit Red's chest, all of her rage and misgivings about the man vaporized. Her main focus was on saving his life. She couldn't lose him. She didn't just need him for answers. She needed him for... everything.

But for now his life was in capable hands, and here she was, entering his secret flat in Bethesda, and her curiosity for the enigmatic man was alighted anew. First, she set about locating the items that Dembe had sent her to get, but then... hell, she couldn't help herself. There wasn't any time for this, but when would she have another chance to dig around in this place? Being a secret flat, she could only imagine what sort of treasures he might have hidden there. She may get some answers, and this rare opportunity was unlikely to repeat itself.

The flat wasn't big enough to offer many hiding places, so she made quick work of checking the most obvious spots, starting with the bedroom. Her eyes lit up when she spotted a large briefcase under the bed, but of course it had a combination lock. She tried to think of numbers that might hold some type of significance for Red, but her first few tries yielded nothing. Briefly, she contemplated harsher methods, like bolt cutters, but that wouldn't do. She didn't want him to know that she'd been snooping. He wasn't even supposed to know that she was there at all. On a lark, she tried her birthday, and the briefcase snapped open. "Aha!" She nearly jumped for joy.

Inside, she found rows of videotapes, all homemade, and each labeled with a different woman's name and date. She recognized Red's handwriting immediately. Who were these women, and what did he have on the tapes? Blackmail against them? She selected the only familiar name from the lot, Samar Navabi, and popped it into the VCR.

The camera zoomed in on the mossad agent's face. She was sitting on a couch, in a place that Liz didn't recognize. It looked like a swanky hotel suite.

"My name is Samar Navabi."

From behind the camera, she could hear Red's voice asking, "What's your favorite position?"

Wait, what? No...

"I like to be on top."

Oh.

"Of course, you like to control the pace," he murmured, just loudly enough for the mic to carry the sound.

"Mmhm, as well as the depth and angle of penetration."

She couldn't believe her eyes and ears. This was obscene, but it was what Samar said next that really perked her ears up.

"What about Elizabeth?"

"What about her?"

"What would she think of your interviews? The videotapes. I can't imagine she'd be too understanding."

Hah! She was right about that.

"I don't want to talk about her, " Red replied.

Of course he didn't.

"But you always tell her the truth. That's your thing, right? You don't lie to her. So what are you going to tell her about these tapes?"

He sighed. "'Truth' isn't synonymous with 'full disclosure'."

Typical.

Samar shrugged her shoulders. "Fair enough. I was just curious. Proceed."

Damnit!

Red was all too eager to do exactly that. Without missing a beat, he shot out, "So, when you're on top, do you usually come?"

She laughed. "I always come."

"It sounds like you're good at getting what you want. Do you find enough partners, or do you occasionally have to meet your own needs?"

No. Just no.

"Enough? Usually..." She smiled coyly, making eyes at the camera. "Sometimes I take matters into my own hands."

"What's the most unusual place that you've touched yourself?"

DOUBLE NO! Liz rushed to stop the tape before the agent could answer. She'd heard enough. What the hell was all of this for, anyway? Was this Red's idea of foreplay? Did they have sex after all this bizarre dirty talk? If so, then she could almost wrap her head around it, but she needed to know, so she decided to fast-forward through the whole thing. It was nearly an hour long. As the tape wound, she saw her coworker's blurry form disrobe, perform for the camera, and then get dressed again.

So, they didn't have sex. Then the tapes were for... what? His own personal use? Some bizarrely intimate form of pornography? And why the hell should she care, anyway?

He'd watched some of the surveillance footage from her old home with Tom, she reasoned. It was quite possible that he'd seen her own intimate moments on film.

None of that explained why she was so innately upset by the tapes.

Jealousy?

She had imagined closeness with Reddington before. She'd even had a taste of it, once, in a delicious moment of weakness. Even so, if she hadn't run away, deep down she knew that he never would have asked her to sit down for one of these interviews.

But if he had asked, she would have said 'no', right? Yes, of course she'd turn him down. Emphatically, in fact. She wasn't a prude, but she certainly lacked the temerity for something like this.

She rewound the tape, put everything back exactly as she'd found it, and made her way to the door. She could revisit all of this strangeness later. For now, her only objectives were to deliver the items to Dembe and find Leonard Caul.

Caul found her first.

-...-...-...-...-

After delivering the fulcrum to the director, Liz was far too exhausted to deal with Reddington, but she didn't have much of a choice. All she really wanted to do was lay eyes on him, see him conscious and breathing, and tell him where he was going next. As she walked through the warehouse, she tried not to think about the bodies and the injured men strewn about the concrete floor. Her overwrought psyche didn't have enough room to process the carnage.

Red caught sight of her from across the room and perked up instantly. "Lizzie." He shifted in his bed, trying to sit up a little, but she could see that he was a pretty out of it, like he'd just had a fresh shot of morphine.

Her gut unfurled in relief, but that wasn't enough to put him back on her good side. "We've cleared a wing at Sibley Memorial for you and your medical team. Cooper will oversee your security personally."

In typical Reddington fashion, he'd probably made his own plans already. He was far more interested in suturing what he still believed was their latest break. "Lizzie, when I hired Tom Keen - "

"Don't. There's nothing you can say." Had he not surmised that Tom was the reason that he'd been shot? Or even worse, that it was her fault that he was even able to set it up? She'd probably care later, but for now, she wasn't at all interested in the story of how Red had hired him.

Of course he ignored her. "When I hired Tom Keen, it was... at a time of profound transition in your life. You'd already left behind the relative safety and innocence of youth. Sam's care - "

"You want to talk, Reddington? Tell me about the videotapes," she spat. She crossed her arms over her chest, defiant, desperately trying to pretend that the words hadn't escaped her mouth accidentally. Her only recourse for opening this door was to drag him through it, whether he liked it or not. She held his eye and hoped that he couldn't sense how terribly she was quailing inside. "More specifically, Agent Navabi's tape. Are you trying to get her fired, or to possibly have your immunity deal rescinded?"

He looked as if she'd just shot him again, paled by shock, but he quickly shifted his weight and donned a mask of indignation. "You were in my apartment."

"Dembe couldn't leave you. Someone had to get the key and the interface for the fulcrum."

He grimaced. "And he instructed you to look under the bed to find them?"

"No, he - "

"No, you couldn't resist the opportunity to conduct a thorough invasion of my privacy. Did you convince yourself that you were just doing your job?"

Even drugged to the teeth on opiates, he was incorrigably evasive. "Why did you make that tape? Are you having sex with her?"

"No, I'm not having sex with Agent Navabi, or anyone else for that matter." He paused and worked his jaw. "I'm impotent."

She blanched, both arms dropping to her sides. "What?"

"I'm impotent."

"No, you can't be. What about Naomi, Madeline Pratt, Melee, Dechambou?" Hell, she could have gone on. He had more notches in his bedpost than a politician's courtesan.

"Well, I wasn't always, but... now I can't get an erection in the presence of another person, so for all practical purposes, I'm impotent."

"Oh..." She was shocked beyond words.

Seeing that he had her off-balance, he capitalized with a heavy dose of patronization. "Does that satisfy your curiosity, Lizzie? Are you going to tell Harold now? Try to get Agent Navabi fired?" What made it doubly infuriating was the fact that she probably deserved it.

She clenched and unclenched her firsts. "No, I'm just. I'm just going to go."

This time, as she weaved her path through the day's bloody aftermath, it didn't register at all.