A/N Liz and Red have two encounters, each devastating in their own way. Warning: This chapter is very NSFW. Heavy angst, heavy smut, and with a side of violence. You have been warned! As ever, not mine. Enjoy, and I do love reviews :-)

The next day Liz kept to her room, and he decided against disturbing her. She needed time to process what he had told her. She was learning the hard way that one of the most difficult things about living on the run was watching events unfold, and being powerless to stop them. People get hurt, and you have no legitimate recourse, no rights or recognition save as that of an enemy of the state and the people. That was her identity now; her name was blackened, and, she had discovered, not even real. Her identity had been chosen for her, her fate, her future, all given to her by him. He held her entire life in his hands and slowly but surely he had closed his fist around her.

That evening when he came through to the sitting room he was surprised to find that she had emerged without his knowledge. She was sitting in the leather armchair, casually slouched down with her impossibly long legs crossed. She was wearing a loosely belted midnight blue cotton robe and it was clear from the deep v of visible skin at the front that she had little or nothing on underneath. He leaned against the door frame for a moment, taking in the scene as she eyed him from across the room. Volatile, unpredictable, hard and soft – she managed to be all of those things in this one moment. He watched as she picked up his fedora from the end table beside the chair where it had lain neglected since their arrival. She circled her fingers slowly around the brim, before turning her gaze back to him.

"It's strange how something as innocuous as a hat can become the lynchpin of a whole persona. This is your costume, isn't it? For your intimidating, criminal image?"

Red smiled and put his hands in his pockets. "I suppose it is. Surviving in the world in which I came to live required me to develop numerous attributes, one of which was a somewhat carefully cultivated façade. But then I also happen to like hats, Lizzie."

She studied the charcoal grey fedora for a moment longer before placing it on her head, titled to the side. She regarded him from under the brim, and cocked her head slightly, mirroring his mannerisms. He shifted a little, his trousers growing uncomfortably tight, and wondered if she had any idea how torturously arousing this image of her was. He suspected that she knew full well what she was doing to him. At first he had been concerned that her sexual interest in him was related to feelings of indebtedness, but this… this was more about control, control over her life that had been turned upside down. And for now at least, he would let her have it.

"Don't you look dandy" he said, a little hoarsely.

"Do I?" She responded bitterly. "Or do I look like a dangerous criminal? Like a killer? Do I look like I belong on the FBI's most wanted list?" her voice cracked a little as she spoke and he moved towards her then, desperate to salve the hurt she was feeling. He stood beside the chair and put a hand on her shoulder. "Lizzie". When she didn't look up he sighed before getting down on one knee in front of her so he could talk to her, see her face, and to show her that he was willing to surrender her the control she clearly craved.

"Listen to me" he said in rich, soothing tones. "You don't belong there, Lizzie you don't. You are kind, and brave… you're an incredible woman and you deserve the best in life. And you will get through this." She didn't respond. After a pause he patted her knee and made to get up, but she uncrossed her legs to lean forward, putting her hand on his shoulder to hold him in place. She looked down at him with dark eyes, and he wondered whether she was acting now in response to what he had said or in spite of it.

Her lips were tantalizingly close to his when she spoke. "Red…did you say I look dandy?" Her mouth curved into a wry smile. He returned her smile knowingly and responded in a low voice. "Ahhhh. Perhaps I chose my words poorly. Challenging. Seductive. Beautiful….Yes, those words would better describe how you look to me."

Despite her cool demeanor, he observed an enchanting blush creep into her cheeks, but her hand hadn't moved from his shoulder. "Lizzie, do you intend to keep me on my knees for the remainder of the evening?" His eyes twinkled as he watched her process his flirtatious comment.

"Maybe not the whole evening…"

He blinked at her and the humour in his eyes was replaced by fire. She'd done it again, turned the tables on him so quickly. Two could play that game. He slipped his hands delicately under her thighs, sliding her forward on the chair and balancing her on the edge before gently parting her legs, revealing what he had suspected was the case, that she wasn't wearing underwear under the robe. He looked up at her, and she seemed to stare back with equal fire, challenging him.

He began to run his fingers lightly up and down her inner thighs and then slowly bent to kiss and nip the sensitive flesh there. She hummed, first with pleasure and then frustration at his teasing, and dug her nails into his neck until he growled and she felt his tongue at her core at last. She was already trembling with anticipation but he wasn't having it – it wasn't like last time when he had gently but surely brought her to an all-encompassing, comforting orgasm. No, this time he seemed determined to make her wait, to tease her, taste her and explore her leisurely with his tongue, occasionally slipping two fingers inside her and withdrawing tantalisingly when she came close.

Each time she was at her peak, her fingers clutching at the leather of the armchair, he slowed, pausing to run his tongue over the marks where he had nipped her thigh, soothing the reddened skin, before returning his attentions to her aching centre. She squirmed in the chair, trying to fuck herself on his fingers, his tongue, but he held her still, gripping her thighs hard enough to bruise until she quieted and allowed him to continue at his own languid pace. He wound her up mercilessly, to the point at which she cried out involuntarily and was no longer capable of keeping as still as he required. Only when she begged him did he finally allow her release, closing his lips around her clit and bringing her to a shattering orgasm that was almost painful in its intensity. It was emotionally devastating, so much so that in the end she tried to fight it, as though he had torn through every barrier she had set up to guard herself from her own desolate fears, shame and guilt, releasing the darkness that clawed at the periphery of her mind.

When she came she made a sound that was close to a sob, and as he looked up at her he saw tears spill over as she shut her eyes.

"Lizzie - "

He reached for her hand but she withdrew it, placing it over her mouth to hold back her sobs before standing on shaky legs and moving quickly past him.

"Lizzie we need to talk about this…"

But she had left the room, left him on one knee on the floor in front of the chair. He rose to his feet with more difficulty that he would like to admit, and fetched a glass of scotch, before taking her place in the armchair. He savoured the taste of scotch and Lizzie on his lips, a dazzling combination. Idly picking up the fedora which now lay on the end table, he ran his fingers over the soft felt and it occurred to him that although he had now performed this most intimate act, he had still not seen her breasts, not held her, or even kissed her properly.

Theirs was a strange kind of intimacy, with all the silken wantonness of hidden desire coupled with a harrowing lack of verbal or emotional exchange. He just wanted her to talk to him. To tell him how she was, just if she was coping, or even if she wasn't. He craved it even more, he realised, than the exhilaration of feeling her soft thigh brushing against his cheek. Her tears were heart-breaking; the silence was becoming deafening.

That night, he drank. Really drank. The exquisite totality of his failure consumed him; failure to protect her from the truth, to keep her from harm, and now, he hadn't been able to protect her from his own baser instincts. She was clearly in no state to make good decisions about what she wanted, and she was utterly reliant on him for everything in their current situation. He'd been captured by the moment, too caught off-guard by her seductive behaviour to consider the ramifications; she was now clearly disgusted with him or with herself or both. He should never have let it get this far.

As he sank another scotch he was plagued by images of the times he had failed to protect her – he remembered finding her, barely conscious in Stanley Kornish's woodland hideout, instruments of torture laid out with alarming neatness, and Kornish, naked, standing over her. He'd never asked her what Kornish had done to her before he had arrived; they didn't have the kind of relationship where he could. He was a monster, and she'd said so.

Yet more scotch, and his thoughts began to scatter. He recalled his purge after Anslo's attack. The cabal's stunt had led him to murder a friend, and a young woman – a paramedic not even Lizzie's age whose pretty face pleading with him to spare her before he mercilessly ended her life haunted him still. He should never have touched Lizzie with those same murderous hands. He was depraved. He would destroy her. His feelings for her were borne from his own selfish need for redemption; even if she forgave him, or God forbid developed deeper feelings for him, it wouldn't change what he was. Finally, in a haze of alcohol induced stupor and misery he dragged himself to bed, where he fell into a fitful sleep.

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As Red slept, Liz woke from her own nightmares. Much as in her sleep she had been tormented by guilt over many things, when she woke she focussed on just one. She shouldn't have left him like that. Now she couldn't focus on anything but the need just to be held by him, to hear his soothing tones.

This time when the door opened he didn't wake. For a second Liz thought he was talking to her, but he was talking in his sleep, his speech murmured, muddled. She padded over to him cautiously, and saw him lying on his front, his hand gripping the pillow. His shoulders were bare, and she could see pale raised tissue, scars stretching like veins on a leaf over his back. She gasped as the implications hit her like a fog being blown away. He would have to tell her the whole truth now. She reached out tentatively and patted his shoulder to wake him.

"Lizzie don't…go back"

She frowned for a moment before realising he wasn't talking to her – he was still in the grips of a nightmare. She sat beside him on the bed and shook his shoulder harder.

In an instant her world shifted in a dizzying whoosh and she was on her back on the bed, his hand deathly tight around her throat and the distinctive coldness of a gun barrel at her temple. His eyes were glazed and she caught a bitter smell of scotch and sweat as he leaned over her. She tried to speak but his hand was so tight that black spots appeared in the corner of her vision. She couldn't breathe. Instinctively she brought her hands up to claw at his arm, struggling weakly.

As she scrabbled at his arm she saw his face change into a mask of horror as he came to his senses and he removed his hand from her neck, recoiling back from her. She gulped down air and coughed hard. When she looked at him again he was out of bed breathing hard, removing the magazine from the glock with shaking hands before slamming it away in a drawer. He turned to look at her, his eyes dark with fear.

"Are you alright?" His voice seemed dark and distant. Empty.

She sat up on the bed, her hand rubbing her neck. "I…" she swallowed painfully. "I think so." She frowned at him, biting back tears of shock and fear. "What happened?"

He regarded her for a moment from his position a few paces back from the bed. He wore dark pyjama bottoms but his chest was bare. Under a generous smattering of silver hair she could see strong muscles at his chest and abdomen moving as he breathed, and a tattoo on his arm that she couldn't make out. He spoke slowly, his voice low and bitter.

"What happened, is that we proved without a shadow of doubt that this has to stop."

She swallowed again to hold back the tears, unable to conceal her wince from the pain in her throat.

"I'll knock next time" she whispered.

"Elizabeth that's not what I meant and you know it." He bit the inside of his cheek, his face contorted with the pain of what had happened. "I could have killed you."

"It was just a nightmare – that's what it was, right? A nightmare?"

He swallowed. "Yes. And we've learned the hard way that even my dreams… even my nightmares are dangerous for you. This stops."

"Red-"

"IT STOPS." His hand swept through the air in a gesture of cutting, of finality. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he spoke again his tone had softened. "Go back to bed Lizzie. We'll talk in the morning."

Still shaking, she slipped wordlessly off the bed and made her way from the room. His head was pounding as he turned to look at the space where she had been on the bed, the crumpled covers the only evidence of what had happened. After a moment he ran to the bathroom and knelt down just in time to throw up.

TBC