The door to Maggie and Elizabeth's house opened, and Maggie stomped in with long strides and a scowl. She had been more than relieved that her doctor had concluded, as she had, that it was safe to release Maggie from the hospital again as long as the redhead stayed home and didn't overexert herself until she was at least physically much better. She had also been pleased that her wife had responded directly to her text, assuring her that Elizabeth would pick her up from the hospital and drive her home as soon as possible.

Maggie was clear that Elizabeth wouldn't spend the whole day at home with her, even if the detective would like to. However, after all, there was still a psychopath on the streets of Boston who now not only had four more innocent women on his conscience but a cop as well. One of them.

What she needed to count on was Elizabeth updating her with the latest information and next course of action on the way home from Mass Gen to Somerville.

The fifteen-minute drive was not enough time to discuss all that at length in the car; it would have to wait until they got home.

Maggie had snatched her travel bag from Elizabeth in the driveway, under protest from the detective, to make her displeasure clear in no uncertain terms and to make it clear to Elizabeth that she could not get right back in the car to return to BPD.

Elizabeth had followed her wife into the house and closed the front door, taking a deep breath. "Maggie --"

The redhead tossed the travel bag carelessly onto the couch and marched briskly into the kitchen. She opened one of the hanging cabinets and took out the whiskey bottle Elizabeth had opened the night before but only looked at it. It was unmistakable that the ME would very much like to take a sip directly from the bottle but refrained from doing so, knowing well the effect of the kind of medication she still had to take and alcohol.

Elizabeth followed her wife's lead and gritted her teeth. "Maggie, you know that if we saw another option, then --"

Maggie closed her eyes briefly and licked her lips before lifting her gaze. "Why you, of all people?" she asked unusually quietly.

The detective stopped and tucked her chin. She could see quite clearly in the ME's eyes that this simple, almost innocent question was only the beginning of an extended argument. "Excuse me?"

Maggie looked at her wife long and hard, almost clutching the edges of the kitchen island. She could feel deep inside her frustration and lack of understanding slowly building into burning-hot anger. A rage at herself, at the man who had overpowered her in the dark back alley at the Velvet Pearl and kicked her in the abdomen so hard he had killed her baby, at Elizabeth offering herself up as a decoy one more time. Evolving into a rage against the whole world and humanity. "Why should you, of all people, stand in front of the camera and play the decoy?" she repeated her question.

Elizabeth furrowed her eyebrows and took a step toward the redhead. "Mags, I already told you that in the car --"

Maggie raised her hand, furrowed her eyebrows, and nodded vehemently. "Yes, yes, yes," she said, her tone tightening. "I know. But Jane and Maura are just as capable as you are to host this damn show. Or Nick, he could do it too. Or Kate. Kate is very likely even more competent than all three of you. After all, she is a forensic psychiatrist."

Elizabeth lowered her brows. "I'm not trying to take that as an insult," she replied calmly, lest the situation get out of hand. But there was also an anger bubbling deep inside her that was slowly creeping to the surface. "It's not like I'm standing in the Boston Garden with a bullhorn, unprotected, telling the public about our previous cases and the BodyCounter. It's in a freaking TV studio monitored by numerous cops."

Maggie rolled her eyes and ran her hands over her face to take a deep breath. But then she dropped her hands again, and her scowl made the detective shudder. "You said the same thing about Alexis Beasley. She was trying to draw out the BodyCounter in a controlled and monitored environment."

Elizabeth gritted her teeth and took a step toward the kitchen island. "Maggie --"

The redhead grabbed the whiskey bottle again, shipped it back to the hanging cabinet, and slammed the door shut loudly. "And now her severed head is in my goddamn morgue!"

The detective blinked a few times and nodded with her lips pressed together. "Yes," she said, and her tone also sharpened and grew. "I'm well aware of that, Maggie. Alexis' head was addressed to me."

"All the more reason for you to recuse yourself from an ongoing case just once," Maggie said bluntly, and as those words passed her lips, she inevitably clenched them. She didn't want to say those words, or at least not when the atmosphere was heating up. But now, the words were spoken and couldn't be taken back. If the ME was honest with herself, she didn't want to take them back either because they had weighed on her soul for quite some time.

Elizabeth looked at her for a long time and drew her eyebrows together. She took another step toward the kitchen island. "You know very well that taking down monsters like the BodyCounter is my fucking job, Maggie. Especially after he kills one of us."

Maggie nodded hastily and looked at her wife with wide eyes. By all appearances, all dams were now broken. "But it's also your fucking job to get back to your family every night, to your kids," she shouted now. "Alive!"

To Elizabeth, this moment felt like déjà vu. She had had an argument like this once before, many years ago, but not with Maggie, with her late wife Sarah. It was one of the last arguments she had had with Sarah before she had shot herself with the detective's second service weapon.

The detective's eyebrows drew together, and he pointed to herself. "You knew exactly what you were getting into when we got together, Maggie."

Maggie nodded slowly, blinking back the tears that suddenly welled up in her eyes. "However, I didn't realize that you put your job above everything else, Liz," she said calmly again, but with an undertone that didn't bode well. "That you risk your life over and over again."

Elizabeth shook her head in confusion. "It's part of the job, Maggie," she replied. "It's just that I don't have an office job where, at the very most, I cut my finger on printer paper."

"I didn't realize you'd go to such lengths repeatedly so that you'd come out the hero of the whole story in the end." The redhead recognized the confusion reflected in Elizabeth's eyes. "It's not just about this case, Liz." She paused and closed her eyes for a moment, trying to choose her words carefully without giving full vent to her frustration that had accumulated over the past few years. She blinked at the ceiling and put her hands on her chest before looking back at her wife with a frown. "I knew the day we met that you weren't like the other uniforms and detectives. You had a burning passion for your job and wouldn't give up until you closed a case." She smiled sadly and lifted a shoulder. "That was super sexy back then." She rolled her eyes and laughed briefly. "That's why I fell in love with you, even though I was told by everyone in the 'basement' who knew you better than I did then that you were happily married. I didn't give a shit. I still had a crush on you, even though I knew at that point that I, the odd ME, never, ever had a chance with you. I don't know; maybe I was also subconsciously hoping that your marriage with Sarah would fail and I'd eventually have a spark of a chance at a relationship with you."

Elizabeth stepped toward the kitchen island, and her budding anger fizzled out. Now she felt as if a hand had clutched her heart and was squeezing it as her throat tightened. She and Maggie had never discussed when the redhead had fallen in love with the detective. Whenever the subject had been broached, Maggie had waved it off and said with a smile that it had happened in the course of working together several times.

It hadn't escaped her notice during her first marriage that Maggie flirted with her playfully whenever she was in the morgue again but never went so far as to make the situation awkward. Elizabeth had teased back without ulterior motives, which is how her friendship with Maggie had developed at the time. She even had to admit that some days, she had wondered what it would be like to be in a relationship with a person like Maggie. A person who was psychologically stable and not unstable like Sarah. Perhaps she had fallen in love with the ME piece by piece at such moments. If Sarah hadn't ended her own life, maybe she would have filed for divorce to have a healthy relationship with Maggie.

Maybe ...

But life had other plans. Sarah had had other plans.

Maggie wiped a tear from her cheek. "Of course, I certainly didn't hope your marriage with Sarah would end in tragedy. It's not like I'm an inhuman being." She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. "I couldn't have known I'd fall so deeply in love with you --" She paused, walked over to Elizabeth, took her hand, and placed it over her heart. "I couldn't have known that I would fall so deeply in love with you that it would be unbearable if I couldn't be near you."

"Maggie," Elizabeth whispered now with furrowed brows, resting her forehead against Maggie's. Now she understood why the redhead was permanently in her office at BPD and later even at crime scenes, despite her pregnancy, although she had promised to refrain from the latter. "Maggie," she whispered again, trying to avert the disaster approaching her at full speed. "Maggie, I'm so sorry." She tried to back up her words with a long, gentle kiss but knew that apology was too late when she felt Maggie begin to shake in an attempt to suppress her tears. "Please --"

Without warning, Maggie stepped back from the detective and shook her head with her lips pressed together. "I can't take it anymore, Liz," she said, heading toward the staircase that led upstairs to the bedrooms. "I'm going to stay with a friend for now to figure out what to do with us."

Elizabeth knew she should follow her wife and try to talk to her, but she couldn't move as much as she wanted to. She was rooted to the spot as everything spun in her head while her world crumbled around her.

At that moment, she realized that her marriage had been heading for a precipice for quite some time; however, the incident with Maggie and the BodyCounter had been the deciding factor to only further solidify the redhead in her decision. And that Maggie had used the past few days she had spent in the hospital to think everything over thoroughly and make her inevitable decision.

She stood in the kitchen, dumbfounded, shaking her head in disbelief. "What the hell just happened?" she asked no one but herself.