ladyjanelly

Warnings: More with the hurt and the death and the dying.

Connor is calling him. Strong fingers grip his.

"Murph, get a hold of yourself," his brother's voice says, but he's not angry or impatient like Murphy remembers him being so often.

"There is no place here for that. Let it go, Murphy. Let it be."

Fingers brush his hair back from forehead, and he tries to focus on those fingers, let himself be drawn to them, but he's not strong enough. As much as he wants to be here, to stay here, the world slips away on him again and becomes a field of white. He's running, and Connor just behind him. The air is so cold it burns his lungs and stabs his cheeks like a hundred good steel pins.

Connor has the gun. He knows this, as surely as he knows Connor will not use it. They cannot kill a good man. There are costs higher than death.

They struggle through knee-deep snow, heading for a sparse tree-line ahead of them. Murphy hopes that the branches will have kept some of the snow off of the ground, or that they can hide there, but he doesn’t really expect it to be so.

A grey shape shoots across the snow towards them, faster than they can hope to travel. "Connor!" he shouts. "The dog. Shoot the damn dog!"

They know the silent bastard of a wolfhound. Rory's dog, and his master can't be far behind. They stop and Connor fumbles with half-frozen fingers to get the gun out and pointed in the right direction. Not fast enough and Murphy steps in between.

The hound almost outweighs him, and the force of its charge bowls them both over into the snow. He takes the crush of jaws on the arm instead of the throat, wishing for the thickness of a coat to keep teeth off of his skin because the sweater he's wearing is doing no good at all. And then Connor is there, pressing the pistol against the beast's ribs and pulling the trigger.

His elbow is almost wrenched from the socket as it falls.

They run again, Murphy cradling his arm against his side, leaving a fresh blood trail in the sharp white of the snow. Connor's ahead now, and it seems it should be the other way around, but to say so would take too much effort.

He hears the shot and starts to fall before the sensation of impact registers.

"Conn..." he calls out as he's tumbling face-first into his brother's footprints.

"No! Murph!" and he is shamed by the anguish in Connor's voice, shamed that he has caused the one he loves more than even God such pain.

"Run. Go." He tries to say but his voice won't work and Connor's rolling him over and trying to stop the gushing of blood with his hand. The bullet's gone through him and the damn sweater is truly ruined now, he thinks.

"How could y'do it, Connor?" Rory's voice is sharp as the wind. "He trusted you two. You were family for Christ's sake!"

"We claim no kinship with evil men." Connor's words are calm, but there's a shadow of anger there. "The blood of innocent women and children stained his hands. There was a darkness in his soul that would never be cleansed."

Murphy wants to tell him to just shoot the bastard, but there's no strength left save that of Connor's arms around his shoulders, holding his head free of the snow. The cold seeps into him though, a dull aching numbness that is spreading up from hands and feet towards his heart. His fingers twitch, to no effect.

"Those 'innocents' died to send a message," Rory sneers.

"So did your Da." Connor answers and Murphy knows the boy won't understand, but at this point it doesn’t matter a bit.

The rifle-shot echoes across the cold and empty field. Connor's blood is hot against his cheek. He falls beside Murphy, his hand still over Murphy's chest as if to try and stop his bleeding, even in death.

Murph hears the sound of the gun being reloaded, and he feels the emptiness in the world where his brother's soul should be.

Rory's shadow passes between Murphy and the cloud-shrouded glow of the sun. Tears shine in the boy's eyes as he raises the stock to his shoulder.

Murphy looks up at those eyes, the same blue-grey as his own. "Shoot," He whispers.