Even at the start of their partnership, Roger Mayfield Murtaugh thought that there was something off about Martin Riggs.

At first, he wrote it off as Riggs being absolutely jackshit insane, because he definitely was that. But it was more than just Riggs's general disregard for his safety, and his penchant for following his id.

There was an odd...air around Riggs; a peculiar chill that hung heavy on Murtaugh's shoulders and pooled in his lungs. Murtaugh thought that it was just nerves, his brain and body playing tricks on him, turning his stress over getting such a reckless partner into a tangible response to try and warn him away.

But even after working a few cases with him, that feeling didn't dissipate. It lingered. It followed Riggs like a weird puppy. And Murtaugh knew that it wasn't just him that felt it, because he saw the bravado of many criminals falter when Riggs simply entered the room, even when the man was too hungover to so much as glance in their direction.

And then there was his inexplicable ability to just be anywhere. It was like the man could teleport. Murtaugh noticed it the first week they were working together. Riggs could catch up to just about anyone, always coming out of nowhere to blindside a fleeing suspect that Murtaugh had no hope of catching up to. More than once, Murtaugh swore that Riggs had moved across a room in the blink of an eye. Locked rooms weren't off-limits to the scruffy man, either; every time Murtaugh finally got into them, Riggs would already be on the other side of the door, ready with a snarky comment on how he had to wait for the older man.

Murtaugh was willing to ignore those things. They were, after all, easy enough to explain away. Riggs, as an ex-SEAL, was basically a trained killer, so it stood to reason that he would be faster, more slippery, and more instinctively intimidating than most other people.

But Murtaugh was certain that no amount of SEAL training could explain how Riggs's form just seemed to fall apart sometimes, especially when he was in the corner of Murtaugh's eye. The closet comparison Murtaugh could draw was when a TV or computer froze and glitched, the picture sheering and becoming pixelated at the edges. Something similar seemed to happen to Riggs sometimes, but only when Murtaugh wasn't focusing; the moment he did, the strange distortion was gone.

The first time he saw the distortion very clearly-and confirmed that it wasn't just his imagination-was when Riggs was jabbed with a cattle prod on a case. Riggs had cracked a joke while twitching and riding out the remnants of the electric current still coursing through his body. But Murtaugh hadn't really registered that, because Riggs had gone fuzzy at the edges again, jumping and shuddering as if he was a cartoon character that had just stepped into ice-cold water.

Then Riggs had sucked in a breath, his form pulling back together, and he had moved on with his day as if he hadn't just gotten jabbed in the abdomen with fifteen thousand volts of electricity.

It was then that Murtaugh decided that yes, there was something off about Martin Riggs.

And he was going to find out what.


Murtaugh, for a while, was able to ignore the strange things about Riggs. His oddness didn't seem to hurt anybody or really cause a problem, and part of his pursuit for as low stress a life as possible was to just ignore weird shit as best as he could, so his attempt to figure Riggs out was more of a secondary objective in their partnership.

That is, up until Murtaugh got a glimpse of something that made him think that maybe Riggs's weirdness wasn't as benign as he thought.

/

It was during the case with Marcus and the robbery-inclined valets that Murtaugh saw it. Riggs had stayed behind to secure the other robbers while Murtaugh chased Marcus down. In that moment, talking Marcus down from doing something he'd really regret was the only thing Murtaugh was focusing on. Marcus was a good kid, a friend to his son since elementary school; Murtaugh had no intention of letting him throw his life away just because he had gotten caught up in something awful.

He hadn't even heard Wiley behind him, hidden by a parked car. However, he did hear the heavy footfalls of his partner as he sprinted out of the broken-into house, and he definitely heard when Riggs screamed his name as if he had been shot.

Which wasn't too far off the mark, because when Murtaugh spun around, he was staring down the barrel of a handgun, Wiley's finger already tightening on the trigger.

There was no time. Murtaugh knew that. He had tucked his gun away in a show of trust towards Marcus; a trust that he would have never demonstrated if he had known that Wiley was right there. It was too late to correct that, too late to draw his gun to return fire. Too late to think on how he was about to disobey the one rule he and Trish had.

He heard the gun go off, saw it jump in Wiley's hand, felt the very beginnings of a searing pressure in the center of his chest.

And then he saw nothing. His vision blacked out, and he felt as if he had been rammed into by a car. He swore he heard things-muffled screams of alarm and more guns going off-but everything was just so dark and disorienting, and he felt like he was sinking, and any noise was drowned out by this odd surging sound, like a heartbeat heard from the bottom of a well.

And then he was waking up, sprawled out on the pavement with one hell of an ache in his chest, but a distinct lack of blood on his skin or a bullet through his heart. Marcus was nearby, too, collapsed in a untidy pile on the street, but looking no worse for wear than Murtaugh felt. That was a relief.

The screaming, though, was less of a relief. Murtaugh was on his feet in seconds, looking for the source, terrified that he was about to find his partner shot full of holes and dying in the dirt like a dog. Even if the man wanted to have his ticket punched for him, there was no way in hell that was happening on Murtaugh's watch.

Riggs wasn't the one screaming.

It was Wiley, his clothes torn, every inch of exposed flesh a bloody mess, his face a twisted mass of unadulterated terror as he cowered and struggled to drag himself away from Riggs, who loomed over the man like a gargoyle perched on the ledge of a cathedral.

For a moment, every part of Murtaugh was frozen, right down to the words in his throat. Riggs, from what Murtaugh could tell from staring at his turned back, looked as he always did. The air around him, though, was different, even more than it usually was. It was almost nauseating, screaming danger and warning anybody away. Murtaugh had made jokes about the man being a wild thing before, but those had just been jokes. Now, though...

If anybody had walked up to Murtaugh and told him right then that Riggs was a feral animal, he would have absolutely believed them.

Murtaugh wasn't entirely sure how or when he managed to call out to his partner, but he must have, because Riggs was suddenly spinning around towards him, not at all worried about Wiley attacking him from behind. The face that greeted him wasn't even close to the one Murtaugh was familiar with.

On some base level, it still looked like Riggs. But his mouth was stretched too wide, and was filled with too many teeth that were sharp and jagged like a shark's. His flesh was too pale and grey, with veins like the lines on a road map. And his eyes...they were completely white and glowing from within, cracks of that light spreading outwards from his eye sockets to frame his eyebrows and ride along his cheekbones.

That face was only there for a blink of an eye, gone so quickly that Murtaugh had to think twice on whether he had actually seen it, or if maybe the stress of the job was really getting to him.

Riggs, though, had that same look on his face that Murtaugh's kids got whenever they were caught sneaking back into the house well after curfew.

And then he was at Murtaugh's side, grinning and patting his shoulder, and babbling at one hundred miles a minute as he checked on Marcus's condition.

Murtaugh barely managed a comprehensible conversation with the man while they waited on backup and CSIs to come clear the scene. There was no way that Murtaugh's silence escaped Riggs's attention, but he seemed content with letting the man keep to himself, bumming a ride back to the precinct from a uniformed officer when Murtaugh's back was turned. He should have been angry that his partner took off without telling him after such a high-adrenaline, dangerous situation, but Murtaugh found himself thanking every deity he knew the name of that he wouldn't have to ride back with Riggs.

He felt guilty about feeling that way later, when he was calmed down enough to convince himself that his silence towards his partner was the result of shaken nerves from nearly getting shot, and not because of the instinctual, primal fear that clawed at his throat whenever he thought of that sharp-toothed, glowing-eyed face.

The next day, he moved gingerly while getting ready for work. There was a bruise forming in the center of his chest, the same kind that he got once when he caught a bullet in the vest during a shootout. He couldn't help but remember that hot, burning pressure against his chest when Wiley pulled the trigger the night before, right before Murtaugh had been damn near convinced he had been shot dead. The feeling then had been similar to that shootout; the only difference was, he hadn't been wearing a vest the night before.

Two weeks later, Riggs and Murtaugh were rushing from the precinct to get to the latest crime scene. Riggs had forgotten his jacket again, that army-green thing with the bullet hole in the shoulder. Murtaugh was beginning to think Riggs only owned five articles of clothing.

Like the nice, considerate partner that Murtaugh was, he snatched up the jacket and made to follow Riggs, who had already gotten bored with waiting for Murtaugh, and had disappeared into the stairwell. That man could somehow outpace an elevator, no matter how many floors he had between him and his destination, or whether he was going up or down.

Something tumbled from one of the pockets and hit the ground, the light tinkling of a small, metal thing catching Murtaugh's attention. He looked down to where the object had rolled to a stop near his foot.

It was a bullet. Just the bullet, no casing to speak of. And judging from the mushroomed metal on one end, the bullet had already been fired and met its match against something particularly solid.

Murtaugh told himself that it was just a coincidence, because his partner couldn't catch bullets, and he wasn't bullet proof. Riggs was a strange man whose obsession with firearms was borderline diagnosable, so it stood to reason that he would have some weird things in his pockets, like random bullets that had already been fired. It was just a coincidence. There was no need to send the bullet off to try and connect it to Wiley's gun, because there was no connection. It was a coincidence.

A few days later, the test results from the crime lab were sitting on Murtaugh's desk.

The bullet was a perfect match.


Riggs didn't talk about himself much.

He didn't talk about himself at all, really. It would probably be easier for Murtaugh to pin the man down and rip his teeth from his skull than to pull any sort of personal fact from him. In all honesty, the only reason Murtaugh knew anything about the man was because others had told him the information, or because Riggs had been trying to embarrass his partner.

The man was tight-lipped, so it was no surprise that he didn't verbally acknowledge his oddities. There were no slip-ups, no subtle comments injected into a conversation so that Riggs could later claim that they were sharing information and bonding. After weeks of working together, Murtaugh was becoming convinced that there was never going to be an instance where Riggs would give any hints towards what was up with him.

Until they worked the case with the rampaging ex-SEAL, Chad Jackson.

/

Murtaugh had the worst luck.

Two crazy ex-SEALs. Two. What had he done to piss off God so much that He would deem this necessary?

Creeping through an abandoned supermarket to try and sneak up on a trained killer and watch his insane partner's back did not feel like a good way to start what was surely going to be an incredibly long work day.

Up ahead where Murtaugh's aisle opened up into the dairy section, he could hear the quiet echoes of conversation. The voices weren't that loud, so it was hard to make anything out at his distance, but it sounded like Riggs had made contact with their target, and was making some sort of introduction. As Murtaugh drew closer and the words became clearer, it certainly seemed like that was what was going on, but he couldn't make heads nor tails of whatever crap was spewing from Riggs's mouth.

"So...all that milk, but I know you ain't no brownie."

From Murtaugh's cover behind an end cap stocked with bags of chips-horrible cover, really, if things went the usual route of ending in a shootout-he could see Jackson's bemused expression, like he wasn't sure if he should be laughing or growling.

"How do you figure?"

Riggs scratched the back of his head and shrugged; the picture of nonchalance. "Well, they don't like straying too far from the comforts of home, and it doesn't get much farther than the Sandbox. Plus they make awful swimmers for things that like to hang out near waterfalls."

Jackson snorted in clear agreement. Then, "Harbinger or Wrangler?"

"C'mon now. Do I look like I would have the patience to be a Wrangler?" Riggs asked with a grin that stretched just a bit too wide to be natural. An instinctual shiver rolled down Murtaugh's back.

Jackson chuckled, the noise bouncing around the empty supermarket and reverberating back, making it sound like dozens of people were hidden in the shadows and laughing at something Murtaugh had no hope of understanding. "You know, I'm usually really good at telling what the others are, but I can't seem to figure you out."

"What can I say? Being mysterious is part of my charm."

After that, things deteriorated at a truly impressive speed. Jackson noticed Cruz trying to sneak up behind him and bolted. Riggs made after him, snarling at Cruz as he passed, while Murtaugh ran out the front door and circled the building to try and cut him off.

But Jackson didn't come crashing out the back door like Murtaugh had figured he would. No, the man sailed off of the roof, hurtling through open air as if the wind itself carried him, depositing him on top of a semi-truck trailer. One more hop, and the man was gone, vanishing behind the interwoven branches of a hedge.

Murtaugh was just surprised that Riggs hadn't leapt after him.

/

The case was over.

Jackson was caught and in the hospital, his mission completed.

Murtaugh's mission, however, was nowhere near that point. Hell, it had hardly even started, though not for lack of trying.

His target was on the roof, legs dangling over the ledge as if he didn't have a care in the world, a mop bucket filled with ice and Coors parked behind him.

Murtaugh had no idea what he wanted to do, nor what he wanted to say. So he went with his gut.

"You can talk to me, you know." Not bad. "About anything. Whenever." Riggs didn't even glance over his shoulder as he chuckled into his latest can of beer. "Why won't you talk to me, man?" Because partners were supposed to do that. They were supposed to know everything about each other, share secrets that their spouses, parents, or kids didn't even know. They were supposed to be friends, confidants, family in a way that blood relatives couldn't comprehend.

They had been working together for weeks, but Riggs felt like a stranger.

Murtaugh still didn't know how old he was.

"I'm unbelievably complicated, Rog." Wasn't that an understatement. A memory of Riggs's face, cracked and glowing and with jagged teeth, sprang into Murtaugh's mind, just as it commonly did whenever he was reminded of his partner's strangeness. It still surprised him, bringing with it a discomfort that Murtaugh could never shake while in Riggs's presence. "No need to drag you into that."

Too late. "I've already been dragged into it."

Riggs drained the rest of his can, and crushed it in his grip. He replaced it with a fresh one, but he didn't open this one; he just snapped the tab against the top, the steady click click click like a clock ticking at the other end of a wide room. "Not completely, I haven't."

Murtaugh raised an eyebrow. "That's a remarkable amount of restraint for you." He wasn't sure if he meant it as a joke or not. "Why haven't you?"

The can cracked open, and Riggs drained half of it in one gulp. "You have a good family, Rog."

Murtaugh tilted his head forward and his stance widened, his shoulders becoming set. "Are you saying you're a danger to my family?" he asked. He didn't think Riggs would outright threatened his family, but as he had to keep reminding himself, he didn't actually know much about the man.

Riggs finally turned, twisting at the waist just enough to look at Murtaugh over his wrinkled collar, his eyes wide. That expression alone had Murtaugh dropping his battle-ready posture.

"Me? No. Not to you. Not to them." Riggs looked pained, as if the very thought of causing harm to Murtaugh's family was like a knife twisting in his gut. He turned away quickly, hiding the look behind his shoulders and his beer. "But, you know, the more you poke around a river, the more likely you are to find a snake. It's best to keep to yourself on the riverbank, because those things in the mud might just be a couple of branches, but eventually you're gonna find yourself tripping over a water moccasin."

That was a warning. There was no way that was anything but a warning. Murtaugh just wished he knew what Riggs's warning was supposed to be steering him away from.

"You're a strange guy, Riggs," he finally said.

Riggs threw him a grin over his shoulder. "You know, I've been told that a lot recently. I don't see it."

Murtaugh accepted Riggs's offer to sit next to him with a chuckle; a chuckle that he swallowed when he was faced with the sheer drop over the ledge of the roof. He ignored his instinct to get away from the deadly drop, however, because for the first time ever, Riggs mentioned his late wife without having to have the comment dragged out of him. That conversation was brief and not too terribly informative, but it was something. It was progress. And the fond smile curling Riggs's lips as he talked was the most natural, human thing Murtaugh had ever seen on the man's face.

'A branch or a snake, huh?'

Murtaugh wondered which one he was sitting next to.


Riggs did a lot of weird things.

He had an odd assortment of cravings and ate odd things, if he ate at all. Honestly, the only times Murtaugh saw the man eat, was when Riggs knew he was expected to eat, or if he thought it would throw somebody off their game. His little comment made weeks ago-"I ate, like, a week ago."-made much more sense.

But that wasn't the weirdest thing that he did. Not by a long shot. The first prize still went to what Murtaugh had started to simply call, "The Face Thing".

The runner-up went to Riggs's ability to cause absolute destruction wherever he went. The man had turned it into an art form.

For the longest while, Murtaugh figured that all of the destruction was a sort of secondary thing; a byproduct of Riggs just being Riggs. Like when fugitives were hit by buses or propane trucks were exploded because of a misplaced motorcycle. Those things were accidents. Riggs hadn't meant for those things to happen. The biggest kind of damage Riggs could directly cause was through the use of his gun.

Which was still a considerable amount of damage and entirely horrifying, but whatever.

Even when Riggs practically shredded Wiley, that was still something that Murtaugh could kind of understand, because it was still on a human scale; an easy-enough-to-achieve level. Hell, if Murtaugh was particularly committed and hadn't cut his nails in a couple of weeks, he could have probably achieved the same result.

An entire SUV, however, was another story entirely.

/

Murtaugh used to love reading the Miranda Rights to criminals.

There was always that point when, no matter how cocky they were, the bad guys would get this look in their eye, a sort of terrified defeat as they realized that they were caught. That shit was about to get real, and their lives as they knew them were probably over. The truly heinous and guilty ones would put on a brave face, toss out confident rejoinders to any questions posed, but no matter what they said or what tone they used, one look in their eye and Murtaugh would know. There was no bravery, there was no confidence, because the kinds of criminals he hunted were cowards.

Ever since meeting Riggs, though, that joy was stolen from him, because he usually had to yell out the lines of the Miranda while ducking from gunfire or running from explosions, or just generally fearing for his partner's safety.

He counted himself lucky to only be doing that last thing, although he didn't like that only worrying about Riggs's life was paired up with "luck" in his mind.

Riggs had shot off the moment he was able, vanishing into the throngs of people in the large house in search of Rachel. He had left Murtaugh again, but Murtaugh was okay with it this time, because Rachel had been a friend; one of his last ties to Miranda and his old life. That, and Murtaugh's newest arrest was only one half of their criminal target; Julian was down for the count, but Ashworth was still out there, which meant Rachel was probably still in danger.

Murtaugh waited impatiently for backup to arrive, practically sitting on Julian until a couple of uniformed officers showed up to take him off of his hands. One of those officers was kind enough to point Murtaugh in the right direction when he said he had to find his partner. That direction just so happened to be four blocks away.

Murtaugh froze once he got to the scene.

Ashworth's car was a wreck. The smashed, burning shell barely resembled a car at all.

The automatic nausea that had risen in Murtaugh's throat upon seeing the car-if it looked like that, then how did Rachel and Riggs look?-abated the moment he saw his partner alive and well, a dark glower on his face as he watched the SUV blaze, the subject of his ire locked up tight inside the mangled mass of flame and metal. Once the attending firefighters turned their hose on the car, Riggs focused his attention on the ambulance on-scene, where Rachel sat on the back ledge with an orange blanket wrapped around her shoulders, a butterfly bandage holding a slice in her forehead closed.

Riggs, in contrast, looked the same as he always did; barely a hair out of place.

He approached them from the side, frowning when Rachel kept shooting Riggs odd looks, like a child that had just witnessed two dogs snarling at one another through a chain link fence. She spoke, her voice hushed.

"I-I didn't believe her, when she said that..." She shook her head. "Miranda said that you were-"

Riggs cut her off by clearing his throat. When her eyes snapped up to meet his, he winked at her with a small smile.

Murtaugh cursed his luck, but didn't miss a step. "What the hell happened here?" he demanded.

Riggs turned to him with a grin. "Hey, Rog! Nothing much. Ashworth tried to run Rachel down. I took care of it."

Murtaugh pointed over his shoulder at the charred SUV. "That's 'Nothing much'?" he asked. "Avery is going to kill you."

"Hey, that's not damage to the city! That can't be added to my tab!" Riggs paused, his mouth twitching downwards into a frown. "It can't, right?"

Murtaugh rolled his eyes, because leave it to Riggs to totally miss the point; the one thing the man was actually capable of missing.

"Seriously, Riggs. What happened?" Murtaugh asked. "Are you two all right?" He immediately kicked himself, because just like that, Riggs shut down. He should have remembered that you don't ask if Riggs is all right, because the answer is generally no.

As expected, Riggs averted his eyes, shuffled his feet, and used the excuse of brushing ash out of his hair to duck his head. "Yeah, Rog, we're good. Listen, Rachel was really shook up, so I'm going to take her home so as she can get cleaned up." He offered a hand to the young woman as he spoke, who accepted it with just the briefest moment of hesitance.

"We still need to take her statement!" Murtaugh called after his partner. Unsurprisingly, Riggs kept walking, waving a dismissive hand over his head.

"I'll take care of that at her place. Buh-bye!"

And then he was gone, his lips barely moving as he whispered to Rachel in a constant stream until they disappeared around a line of police cruisers.

It took Murtaugh a moment to realize that Riggs had left him with the difficult, annoying part of wrapping up a crime scene. Again.

Forty-five minutes later, the firefighters on scene had finally wrangled the blaze consuming the SUV into something manageable. It was the last bit of the scene that hadn't already been thoroughly photographed and documented.

Murtaugh trailed after the crime scene photographer as she snapped mid-range photos of the SUV, his intention to get a quick look at Ashworth's corpse, because even though he knew that the man was dead, he still felt compelled to check.

He got as far as the front of the SUV before pausing. The thing had clearly flipped and rolled at least twice before exploding, so there was bound to be a considerable amount of damage, but the car looked like it had slammed into a pole somewhere between Julian's house and the scene. It hadn't, though, because otherwise it would still be wrapped around that pole, like a tree snake around a branch. The front end wasn't just crushed inwards, but also down, as if it had been curb-stomped by the Incredible Hulk. And stretching from the hood and around over the driver's door were four gashes, like massive claw marks, in the blackened metal.

Murtaugh hovered his hand over the tears, spreading his fingers out as far as they would go. They didn't even come close to spanning the gaps between all four gashes.

He spotted Bailey chatting with a few uniformed officers, and waved her over.

"You ever seen anything like this?" he asked.

Bailey shrugged. "I've seen a lot of car accidents," she said in lieu of an actual answer.

"So it could have been caused by the SUV rolling?"

"Maybe?" Bailey leaned forward to take a closer look, backing off again when the photographer moved forward to take a few close-ups. "I don't know, Murtaugh. Every crash is different, you know that. Anything could have caused those."

Yeah. Anything.

Murtaugh figured he had a pretty good idea.


Physical damage rolled off of Riggs like water off a duck's back, which was incredibly fortuitous for the man, because he threw himself headfirst into danger a lot.

He hadn't noticed it at first because shooting Riggs had, for a lack of a better word, worked. It had hurt him as it ought to, so Murtaugh had thought nothing of it.

It actually took him a while to notice Riggs's odd durability. It wasn't until Riggs tried to give himself a nasty case of road rash and get himself drowned that Murtaugh realized that Riggs was rarely ever hurt by anything that should have killed or at least mildly maimed a normal man.

At that point, Murtaugh had no idea if Riggs's disregard for his own safety actually stemmed from his desire to die-like he had originally assumed-or if it was because Riggs knew that so little could hurt him.

Either way, durable or not, Riggs seemed determined to give Murtaugh another heart attack.

/

Was his quick breathing because of the physical strain of chasing a truck down on foot, or because he was pretty sure he was having a panic attack?

Murtaugh had no idea. It was probably a combination of the two.

The last he had seen of Riggs had been when the man had sprinted towards the truck as it peeled out onto the street. He thought for sure that Riggs would be left in the dust, because nobody was so stupid as to grab onto the chains dangling at the back of a fleeing truck and willingly get dragged along behind it.

Scratch that.

Nobody aside from his insane partner.

Murtaugh had been a cop for a long time. He had seen car crashes, where the passengers or drivers had been ejected and flung across dozens of feet of road. And he had once investigated a hate crime where the poor victim had been tied up behind a sedan and pulled around on a gravel road until simple things like muscle and tendons couldn't hold the limbs together any longer. In all of those cases, he became incredibly familiar with what happened when a fleshy body was rubbed against rough asphalt.

He was so sure that his partner was about to get his death wish granted; that he was going to catch up and find a red, oozing, gooey mess for him to report to Avery and whatever next of kin Riggs might have had. Even then, as the nightmarish images plagued his mind, he held out hope that Riggs's SEAL training would have given him enough strength to haul himself into the bed of the truck, and that all that would be needed was an emergency trip to the hospital for stitches and splints.

When he finally caught up to his partner, he didn't need any of those things, nor a couple dozen biohazard bags to collect the bits and pieces of what had once been Martin Riggs.

Because Riggs was whole and healthy. His hair was windswept, his clothes ruffled and a bit frayed at the knees and abdomen, but beyond that, he was fine. He was more out of breath than anything, although that was probably because he had somehow gotten into a shouting match with a DEA agent during the five minutes that Murtaugh had lost sight of him.

Murtaugh, to his credit, just went with it.

/

He had looked everywhere.

Everywhere.

He had checked their desks, the Airstream, his own house, and had even texted Trish, Baliey, Cruz, Avery, and their new friend, Palmer. He had even checked lockup, just in case he had somehow ended up there for disorderly conduct or whatever.

Nobody knew where Riggs was.

And that worried Murtaugh, even though he knew he should suspend that until he knew for sure that Riggs was in trouble.

But he couldn't help it, because not even three hours ago, Riggs was getting dunked head-first into a barrel of disgusting water, with who knew what floating around in it. Riggs had basically been waterboarded, and he had just vanished. Murtaugh wasn't an expert, but he knew that people were usually encouraged to seek medical treatment after being drowned.

He had read articles about it when R.J. had first started becoming interested in swimming, paranoid that he would need to use the information to save his son at one point or another. That information had never been needed-because, like his wife had insisted, their boy was smart and would figure out swimming just fine-but it had still stuck with him.

Horror stories of brain damage and delayed reactions. People seeming fine after coughing up water, only to drown hours later because of fluid buildup in the lungs; "dry drowning", it was called. Not to mention the psychological toll that literal torture could have, and the Lord knew that Riggs didn't need any more of that kind of damage.

The more Murtaugh thought on that, the more he was convinced that Riggs had to get to the hospital right the hell now, no matter the man's probably-with-good-reason aversion to the centers of medicine and healing.

His last ditch effort was just upstairs, which he made his way to with haste. Doctor Cahill had a weird knack for finding the man; if anybody knew where Riggs was, it would be her.

As it turned out, Murtaugh was right. Cahill did know where Riggs was, but only because he was stretched out on her couch while the doctor herself sat at her desk, scribbling away at whatever papers held her attention.

Murtaugh paused at the door, fingers hovering near the handle, because maybe he was about to interrupt something? Maybe they were taking a break from an impromptu session, with Riggs gathering his thoughts or composure or whatever while Cahill gave him the space to do so. Hell, as long as Cahill was there to keep an eye on him-and knew about the waterboarding, which she probably did-Murtaugh could probably brush off his worry of Riggs dry-drowning in a place where nobody could help him.

Murtaugh was just about to leave them to whatever when he noticed that Riggs definitely wasn't gathering his thoughts in the middle of a therapy session, because the man was knocked out cold. Asleep, by the looks of it, and not drowning, which was a serious plus. Riggs finally getting some rest was good. Even Murtaugh had begun to notice how little the man slept, and how tired he looked all the time. It was worrisome, to say the least.

Another thing that was worrisome?

Riggs's form had started to fall apart at the edges again, sheering apart and glitching, just as it had that day when he was stuck with the cattle prod.

Right in front of Cahill.

Before he fully registered what he was doing, Murtaugh had already ripped open the door and stepped into the office.

He wasn't sure what his plan was. Try to cover for Riggs so nobody else saw the inexplicable? Ask Cahill if she saw it too, just so he knew once and for all that he wasn't crazy?

Murtaugh didn't get to make a decision. Riggs's mumbling made him freeze and take a better stock of the situation.

A portion of Riggs's unstable form was caused by the man's own writhing on the couch, as if someone was stabbing into him with a red-hot fire poker, or something equally as agonizing. The parts of his face that weren't lost to the glitching dissolution of his body were twisted up in a grimace, baring teeth that, while not as sharp as the teeth that snapped at Murtaugh in his nightmares, were still too jagged to be entirely human.

Riggs suddenly jerked and buried his face into the forearm that had been pillowing his head, grinding his eyes and forehead into his sleeve. A keening, soulful sound clawed its way out of the man's throat, wrenching at Murtaugh's gut and squeezing his heart.

Because somewhere in the near-sob, Murtaugh was sure that he heard words, half-slurred by sleep and mumbled through a dream.

"Miranda," and "I want to," and "I'm trying," and "I can't."

Cahill had gotten up. Murtaugh only noticed when the quiet clapping of a blanket basket's wicker lid shook him from whatever paralysis he had found himself wrapped up in. In her arms was a quilt that looked warm and hand-stitched, and on her face was a small, sad smile.

She crossed the room like a ghost, completely silent until she was snapping the quilt open and up, letting the air gently carry it over Riggs's twitching and collapsing form. It dipped in places that it shouldn't have, like there was none of Riggs left there to hold it up.

Cahill looked unconcerned by all of this as she placed a gentle hand on Riggs's shoulder, her grip firm, even when that shoulder seemed to be trying to melt right out of her grasp. She rubbed small, soothing circles along what remained of his upper arm; a grounding contact.

And just like that, Riggs was silent and still, his breath evening out, and his form snapping back together. Cahill stopped rubbing his shoulder, but her hand remained.

Cahill turned a soft smile on Murtaugh, the sadness mostly gone, but still lingering deep in the slope of her eyebrows and the curve of her mouth.

Without a word, she gave him a wink, and raised a finger to her lips.

Murtaugh had a feeling that her request for silence went beyond Riggs's sleeping.

For a reason that he never understood, Murtaugh didn't ask.


A cop's greatest pride was their danger sense, and Murtaugh was no different. At times, this instinct was probably the leading factor in his continued survival. Los Angeles, like any city, could be deadly to police officers that were foolish enough to not listen to their gut.

Just by being Riggs's partner, Murtaugh was ignoring that instinct.

Still, he was beginning to wonder if he should continue to turn a blind eye to the things that Riggs did. The Face Thing and Wiley getting torn up was what started the doubt, and the shredding of the SUV doubled it. If Riggs could do that to a car within seconds, who was to say what he would do if he suddenly snapped and hit someone that didn't deserve it? Who was to say that his family wasn't in danger?

Murtaugh wished that there was someone he could talk to about it. He balked at the idea of going to Cahill-even though she seemed to know more about things than she let on-because that felt like some sort of breach of trust. He wasn't going to do that until he knew that Riggs was a threat.

Rachel moved away basically overnight after the Ashworth case, so she was out, too. He made all of two attempts to contact her before he decided that she wasn't going to be returning his calls.

That left him with no one.

So he was left to stew in his instinctual distrust and worry.

Until an eight-year-old boy, Ethan McFadden, gave him a wake-up call, and his own youngest daughter drove the kid's point home.

/

There was no way the boy hadn't seen anything.

There was just no way.

Murtaugh had seen Riggs's beach, had seen the carnage. It was like a tornado had swept through, digging deep furrows in the sand, and tossing gun-totting jackasses left and right. Most of them had limbs bent the wrong way and bones protruding through flesh. Others looked like Wiley had, with slashes in their clothing and skin, like they had gotten up close and personal with a feral cat.

And standing in the middle of it all was Riggs, Ethan wrapped up protectively in his arms.

All that crap around him, Murtaugh knew there was no way that Ethan hadn't seen Riggs do something weird. But the kid still clung to Riggs like he was a lifeline, refusing to let go all the way to the hospital to see his mother. If he had seen Riggs do whatever it was that he could do, or if Riggs had done the Face Thing, why wasn't the kid running for the hills? On bad days, Murtaugh still wanted to do that himself.

Riggs had said that he had given Ethan instructions to keep his eyes shut, and had locked him up in his Airstream while the real action went down. So maybe Murtaugh was wrong, and the kid hadn't seen anything.

Except yes, he totally freaking did, because otherwise Ethan would have had no reason to pull Murtaugh aside at the hospital while his mother was talking to Cahill. He would have had no reason to ask in a hushed whisper, "You know that Riggs is...different, right?"

So the kid did know.

Instead of verbally answering, Murtaugh just nodded.

Ethan's unsure posture relaxed a bit, the fear that he might be making a mistake melting away.

"Oh. Cool. Do...do you know what he is?"

"Son, I've got no idea."

Ethan nodded, as if he had been prepared for that answer. He was disappointed, Murtaugh could tell that much. He had been hoping for a better answer than that; a more informative one.

Yeah, well, so had Murtaugh.

Ethan peered at him, tilting his head to the side as he narrowed his eyes, studying Murtaugh's face. Then, he said, "There's no reason to be afraid of him, you know. Riggs is a good guy."

Murtaugh snorted. "I'm not afraid of my partner."

Ethan shook his head. "I'm good at telling when adults lie to me," he said. "And even if I wasn't, I've seen the way you look at him when you think he can't see you or isn't paying attention. It's really obvious. And if I can tell, then Riggs can, too." Ethan paused. "Maybe that's why he hasn't told you what he is."

Murtaugh didn't know what he hated more: That an eight-year-old had thought of that before he had, or that somewhere in the back of his mind, his instincts were still whispering for him to run and get away and hide.

"You're pretty confident that you've got Riggs figured out," Murtaugh said.

"He's good, I can feel it. If he wasn't, I wouldn't have felt safe with him, even when that bad guy was attacking us with all of those guns."

Right. All of the bad guys, and all of the guns. "I still think he's dangerous." And completely, absolutely, certifiably batshit insane.

Ethan grinned, his eyes and smile as bright as the sun. "Yeah, but only for people that deserve it."

Murtaugh really wished he could share the kid's confidence.

/

The day had started out pretty awful, and had just kept getting worse.

It had all started when Riggs had dangled Eddie Flores off a roof as he bared too-sharp teeth and made a sound deep in his throat that was nowhere even close to human. To be fair, Eddie deserved it. Poking fun at a man's dead wife just wasn't cool.

It had gone downhill from there.

Riggs had been high-strung for the rest of the day. If he had been on a hair trigger before, Murtaugh had no idea what he was on now, but it was horrible. His form always seemed to get unstable if Murtaugh looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but after their run-in with Eddie, Riggs went fuzzy around the edges a lot more often, and not just when he was hanging out in Murtaugh's peripherals. With Avery around more in an attempt to avoid the in-laws, Murtaugh spent the entire case paranoid that Avery would notice something he shouldn't. Murtaugh didn't have the energy to deal with something like that yet.

And then Eddie's asshole uncle had to go and have Murtaugh's family taken hostage, which he felt was totally uncalled for. He felt that he handled that well, though. Crisis averted. Kind of.

Riggs had called him. He had asked after his family's well-being, and reported that Eddie was dead and gone. Murtaugh had asked if he was happy.

"He didn't kill Miranda," Riggs had said, his voice coming through flat over the cell connection.

"Do you believe that?"

"He's dead, Rog, and his uncle left. Haven't got anybody to ask now." A beat. "Glad your family's safe. Enjoy your Christmas."

Riggs had hung up before Murtaugh could respond, leaving the older man staring at the blank screen of his phone. All he could see reflected in the glass was Riggs earlier that day, when he had shown up at the Airstream and pulled the door open without a warning. He had been greeted with a gun swinging around to meet him, held just a bit too high and close to the body to be a natural reaction's stance.

Murtaugh didn't need to be a detective to know where the muzzle of that revolver had been pointing before he had walked in.

"I'm worried about him," he had explained when Trish asked how Riggs was doing. "I'm more worried about him." Because he was kind of always worried about the man for one reason or another.

Trish had just smiled and pat his arm, and before Murtaugh knew it, he was leading his family up into the Airstream, internally guffawing at the look of bewilderment on Riggs's face as five extra people crammed into the small space.

Too small of a space, they all decided, and not a very hospitable one after Murtaugh burnt out the power, so they had all spilled out onto the beach to build a fire and marvel at the stars.

So the day had started shitty, but was ending on a better note. Murtaugh was thankful for that.

The air was pleasant, warm, and light, kind of like a spring breeze. Even sitting as close to the fire as Murtaugh was, it wasn't stifling or burning the flesh along his cheekbones and forehead.

He had noticed the atmosphere earlier, right around the time they successfully reheated dinner over the bonfire, which had caused a round of celebratory cheering.

Murtaugh had grown so accustomed to the odd chill that hung around Riggs that the absence of it felt even more unnatural. For a moment, he had thought that Riggs had snuck away, but one glance had found him right where he had been since being assigned "supervision" duty after his attempts at using lighter fluid to make the fire heat the food faster had almost resulted in the loss of both his and R.J.'s eyebrows.

He didn't connect the warmth to anything until halfway through dinner, when he noticed that every joke, every comment, every playful slap at his knee while Trish or the kids shrieked with laughter at a sarcastic quip, brought a smile to Riggs's face; a smile he could never quite smother or hide behind his mustache or bowl of stew. And with each smile, the gentle warmth around them swelled, chasing the chill away more and more.

Murtaugh found that he liked the warmth much better.

So wrapped up in analyzing the warmth was he, that Murtaugh didn't notice that Riggs had vanished outside the ring of light cast by the bonfire until his father instincts kicked in and told him that something was wrong. Trish didn't seem to notice, so he left her with Riana and R.J., who were busy searching for constellations with her.

Murtaugh moved away from the heat of the bonfire and into the chill of the darkness of night, a shiver running across his shoulders that even the odd warmth couldn't keep away.

Spending so long around the fire, it was nearly impossible to see anything in front of him. Off to his right he could hear the gentle lap of waves along the shore, but the ocean was like a void that swallowed the stars, a lone streak of pale moonlight just barely managing to carve a path across the water.

The slippery sands were difficult to navigate when he couldn't see where he was stepping, and it was only after he had rounded the Airstream and made his way to the looming shadows of the nearest sea cliff that Murtaugh remembered his phone, left behind by the bonfire, the flashlight app utterly useless to him now.

He was considering turning around to retrieve it when he heard the quiet mutterings of his partner closer towards the shoreline. One hand on the rough stone of a boulder, Murtaugh followed it around until the moon's light helped his eyes adjust and pick out Riggs's form as he shuffled back and forth across the sands.

Murtaugh narrowed his eyes. Something was in one of Riggs's arms, pinned by his elbow and hand to his side.

He waited until Riggs turned again and came a bit closer.

It was Harper.

His heart almost stopped in his chest. He couldn't help it; it was instinctual. No matter his opinion on the man as a person, Riggs was dangerous, especially when on his own, and he had just carried his youngest daughter off without anybody noticing. How had nobody noticed? And why the hell had Riggs taken her?

Murtaugh had just opened his mouth to call out to his partner, but Riggs beat him to it. He didn't speak to Murtaugh, though, rather just aloud, or maybe to the tiny baby balanced on his hip.

"No, that one's broken. Oh, look here." He bent down and popped back up again, twisting something in his fingers and holding it up for Harper to see. She took one look at it, and then went back to chewing on her fist. "Nah, you're right. Kinda plain, isn't it?" He tossed the thing over his shoulder, where it landed with a thump in the darkness. "Something cooler. You'd like something more spiky, wouldn't you? Like a grenade going off! I like those ones, too."

Harper pointed at what looked to be a crab as it meandered by, dragging along with it a jagged shell that had to be the size of a softball.

"Someone's still using that one, darlin'. You wouldn't want to steal some poor guy's home, would you?" Riggs went back to sweeping the beach, his eyes locked on the sand at his feet. "If only we could ask the Nereids to find something good for us. They're, like, some of the only other ones that like me. Too bad they swim south for the winter. They'd love you, you know," he said, tapping Harper on the nose. She giggled and gave him a gummy smile. "Listen to that voice! Already a better singer than them! They'll be so jealous." He stooped and scooped up a tightly-spiraling wentletrap shell as long as his hand, and held it up for Harper's appraisal. Again, the shell held her interest for only a fraction of a second. "You're one tough customer. Don't worry, we'll find the best darn shell California's got to offer."

Riggs suddenly froze, his spine going rigid. The pleasant warmth was sucked out of the air, the familiar chill rushing back in to take its place as Riggs's head snapped around towards the sea.

Creeping out of the water were two long and sinewy things that slithered across the sand like snakes. Riggs took a step away from them the moment they got within five feet of him, his grip on Harper becoming much tighter.

But the things just kept coming, all ten feet of them, until a small body hauled itself up from the shallow waters, standing on short and spindly legs that looked much too thin to hold up the potbellied, frog-like creature that owned them. The things-the creature's arms-raised off of the sand to corral Riggs in a space that was too small for comfort.

Murtaugh really wished he had brought his gun.

Riggs cleared his throat. "Evening," he said, tone flat. The creature blinked at him with its bulbous black eyes. "Gotta say, I'm surprised. I thought your type preferred bogs and the like, not oceans."

"Lakes crowded," the creature croaked, its voice like reeds rattling in the wind.

"With grindylows? That'd be terrifying."

"Child?" the thing asked, its arms drifting closer to Riggs. "Give?"

Riggs glanced at Harper, seemingly unconcerned with his predicament. "She's not up for grabs-" he reached out and smacked away an arm that had come too close, "-and neither are the other kids around here. So scram. Go drown seaweed or something."

The creature's tiny body began to vibrate, the water around it rippling. "Give!" it snapped. "Mine!"

Riggs's eyes narrowed, and when he spoke, he did so with bared teeth, which had become jagged like a shark's in an instant. "This beach is mine, actually, and so is the kid. So fuck off."

The creature hissed in displeasure. "Give!" it shrieked, its arms shooting inwards towards Harper.

The beginning of a sob built up in her throat.

Not one finger managed to touch her. Riggs ducked the first arm, and latched onto the second with his free hand. In one fluid movement, he ripped the creature towards him, the tiny body skipping across the sand until he pinned it beneath his boot. The darkness almost seemed to flex and constrict like a viper as Riggs snapped his teeth and snarled, the deep, threatening sound shaking the sand and making the creature tremble. Or maybe it wasn't the snarl, but Riggs's white, glowing eyes, and the cracks of light that split his face.

It was probably a combination of the two; it definitely was for Murtaugh.

"Y-you!" the creature stuttered. "You o-one-"

"Shut up, before I rip your lips off," Riggs growled; an order that the creature was eager to follow. "Listen good. This is my territory. Any child on this beach? They are mine. Touch even a hair on one of their heads, and you'll wish I killed you tonight. Understand?"

The creature nodded rapidly. "Yes!" it said. "Yes!"

"Good. Now go paddle around the Atlantic." Riggs pulled his foot off of the creature, who took off like a bullet from a gun, scurrying back into the safety of the waves.

Another hiccuping sob shook Harper's small frame, and Riggs turned his attention to her. Between one blink and the next, his face was back to normal, and the light warmth returned, wrapping around the beach like a favorite blanket.

Riggs smiled, the expression gentle and fond.

"Don't worry, little one," he said softly, drawing a soothing hand across the top of her head, smoothing out her short hair. "Ain't no one gonna harm you so long as I've got something to say about it." He gave her a quick peck on the crown of her head, which earned him a gurgling laugh. "Now let's find us that shell I promised you. Remember, we're looking for one fit for a princess, so none of those lame, dull-colored ones. Did I mention I like the ones that look like grenades?" He paused after taking only two steps. "Oh, uh, and don't tell your dad that I swore, okay? Don't want to give Rog another heart attack. He might even think I'm a bad influence on you. Granted, I probably am, but let's keep that a secret between us."

Five minutes later, they had found something like a crown conch shell, splattered with all shades of reds and oranges and pinks. Harper had latched onto it and hadn't let it go, running her fingers over the spikes while giggling. Riggs had beamed with pride, a grin splitting his face wide open, even when he had had to pull the shell away from Harper's mouth twice in half as many minutes.

"Ah ah, keep that out of your mouth, young lady! Sand is gross. Trust me."

When they made it back to the fire a few minutes later, Murtaugh was there waiting for them with a smile and an open seat beside him. Riggs handed Harper over to him without a word.

Because Riggs was Riggs, the "without a word" part only lasted for a couple of seconds.

"What, no Amber Alert?" he quipped. "I'm shocked."

"I knew she was with you." That was technically the truth. It had just taken a bit of snooping to find that out, is all. "Hanging out with the fun uncle." He tapped the seashell still clutched in his daughter's tiny hands. "Hunting for seashells."

Riggs peered at him out of the corner of his eye, feigning nonchalance. "A man with major psychological issues walks off with your kid and you're cool with it? You're awfully trusting," he said with an odd tone, as if testing the waters.

Murtaugh met Riggs's nonchalance with his own unconcerned shrug. "You're crazier than a sack of cats, Riggs. That's a given. But there's also probably nobody safer for her to be around than you," he said, voice and gaze firm. He hoped that Riggs could pick up on the meaning of his words: I trust you. Maybe eventually, Riggs would trust him, too.

Riggs looked away, dropping his gaze to the baby bouncing on Murtaugh's knee. Noticing the attention, Harper smiled and held out the shell in offering. Riggs took it reverently, dipping his head as if accepting a knight's sword from the queen of a kingdom. He raised the end of the shell to his lips, took in a deep breath, and then imitated trumpet fanfare, crossing his eyes and puffing out his cheeks in an exaggerated show of exertion. Harper burst out into a frenzy of giggling laughter, that gurgling, giddy yuk-yuk-yuk that only babies could make drawing unbidden chuckles from the two men.

Murtaugh turned a grin to his partner. "You know, you might actually not be terrible?"

Riggs rolled his eyes. "Gee, thanks, Roger. Merry freakin' Christmas to you, too."


A/N: Did you guys know it's, like, impossible to format anything on this godforsaken website. I posted this on AO3 a while ago and tried to just...copy it here, and it went straight to HTML or something.

Part one done, part two should be up sometime soon, hopefully.