AN: Thanks so much for reading and reviewing, and to cassiemortmain for the beta.

Warnings: violence, character death (wooooooo). Somewhat graphic.

Somewhere west of Cunnamulla, South West QLD

"Tom!" Sybil's voice comes out a sandpaper scrape, too weak to carry past her own ears. She clears her throat, reaches up to sweep her hair out of her face. Before she can see whether Tom's moving, there's a click to her left that sounds, in her skittish ears, like a gun getting ready to fire. It sends an electric shock of adrenaline through her before she recognizes that it's only Declan's seat belt unbuckling.

He drops onto the wagon's ceiling, which is strewn with fast food wrappers, an empty coffee cup, a cigarette packet—the tumbled detritus of your standard road trip, with one irregularity: a shovel lying on the ceiling just in front of Sybil, which miraculously failed to take her head off whilst being flung up from wherever it was in the back. Declan stretches into the cargo area behind them to trawl through the debris with his hands. He's looking for something. The gun, Sybil thinks, he must have lost his gun. In her daze, it takes her a few seconds to grasp that he mustn't be allowed to find it.

Tom stirs up front, and everything else in her mind momentarily washes away in relief. "Sybil?"

"I'm all right! I'm all—" Declan's abandoned his search for the gun at hearing Tom's voice. He slithers past her and into the front before she can blink. "Tom! Look out!"

But Tom's already unbuckled his own seatbelt. He and Declan make a dark tangle of arms and legs. Ragged breath fills the car, a plosive curse, the crackling thump of a shoe hitting the starred windscreen. "What the fuck do you think you're doing," someone growls. It takes Sybil a minute to work out that it's Tom, murder in his voice. Then the flat sound of a fist connecting with flesh; a gasp of pain. "Where's your fucking gun now, arsehole?"

"You'd better hope I don't find it," grunts Declan.

Sybil's still disoriented, tethered to her upside-down seat. Blood rushes in her temples; her left ear has begun to ring. The smell of petrol plucks at a loose thread in her mind. And then, all at once, the bright flare of awful realization.

"Tom!" she cries, jabbing at her seat belt release with panic-numbed fingers. Finally it pops open, spilling her onto the ceiling. "We need to… we have to get out of the car!" She manages to get her door open and sprawl onto the ground, scrambling up to pull at the driver's door handle. There's no sign of Danny in the front seat; Tom and Declan are wedged in sideways, bashing ungracefully at each other. "Tom, come on!" She leans inside to grab an arm and narrowly misses getting elbowed in the face. The dome light shining up from underneath throws eerie shadows, makes harsh angles on their faces. Tom's eyes are opaque in the half-light. He flinches as Declan lands a punch on his ribs.

She tries again, and this time manages to put some authority into her voice. "The car is about to catch fire." That may or may not be true, but this is no time to ponce around. "You need to get out, now."

Funnily—or it would be if the situation weren't so dire—Declan's the one who responds. "Fuck!" His sense of self-preservation must be finely honed indeed. Sybil pulls back fast as he struggles over Tom and bolts out the driver's side door. Tom follows, catching him up twenty meters from the car with a flying tackle. Sybil half crawls, half stumbles through the dust in their wake, going on pure adrenaline; she doesn't feel as though she's badly hurt, but she could probably be bleeding out and not even know it. She tucks her head to look over her shoulder. Somehow she's managed to put a respectable distance between herself and the car, but the sight of it, belching black smoke into the blackening sky, makes her hobble that much faster. Flames start to lick the edges of the window frames while she watches. Within seconds the whole thing's engulfed, radiating a wave of heat that bakes the skin on her cheeks and makes her eyeballs feel as though they'll melt if she looks too long.

She blinks and turns back to Tom and Declan, who are still on the ground. Tom's trying to pin Declan on his back. Rage and the writhing shadows thrown by the fire lend his face a cruelty that unsettles Sybil enough that she can't look for long; he seems almost ready to tear Declan's throat out with his teeth. For a few seconds it looks as though he'll prevail, but Declan wriggles out from under him and struggles to his feet. Tom makes an unsuccessful grab for his ankle, rolling away and jumping up before Declan can kick him. They regroup and begin to circle each other, fists held up before their grim faces.

"Come on, then," Declan says. Jeers, more like; Sybil wants to cry out to Tom not to be taken in, but he's already rushing forward, spitting a curse as he takes a wild swing and misses, getting a punch in the face for his trouble. Sybil flinches. He's too angry, she thinks. If he can't calm down, Declan's going to roll right over him.

Declan lets him fall back. Ever the cool one, he seems to be conserving his energy. As he turns Sybil notices him taking little glances away from Tom, scanning the ground. Still looking for his gun.

Two can play at that game. Sybil scoots backward, away from the fighting men. Best not to attract either of their attention unless—until—she can actually help. She looks around for Declan's gun or, lacking that, a rock. She wishes she'd thought to grab the shovel out of the car.

Danny. Where's Danny?

The thought that he might be lurking about somewhere makes her scramble up into a crouch, her head swiveling wildly back and forth. She'd noticed he wasn't in the car when it came to a stop, but completely forgotten him in the mad dash to get out.

It doesn't take her long to catch sight of him. He lies unmoving, a crumpled heap in the dark road. He must have been thrown out; he's a good distance from the car, which ended up several meters off the pavement. From this far away Sybil can't determine what injuries he might have sustained or how much blood there is, but there is an air of finality about his still form that she has seen too many times.

Even so: I'll have a look at him. It doesn't matter whether she likes him. It doesn't even matter that he was going to kill her. The training takes over, and she must do what she can. She walks closer to Danny's body warily, but on legs that feel steadier with every step. Thirty meters away, and he doesn't move. Twenty meters, and the night wind ripples his shirt under the leather jacket, but he still doesn't move. At five meters Sybil can see enough to know that he's never going to move again. Nevertheless, she kneels beside him and presses her fingers to his cooling throat, feels for the pulse that is not there. She pushes aside his jacket to begin chest compressions, tears his shirt open from neck to waist, and freezes at the sight of the handgun still in its holster.

He'd put it back there, earlier. She remembers thinking he must have realized he didn't need to keep it out as long as Declan's gun remained on her. The holster is even snapped closed, which is probably the only reason the gun wasn't thrown clear in the force of the exit from the car.

Sybil stares down at it like it's a rattlesnake she's uncovered in a pile of leaves. It's not as if she's never handled a gun before; the fox-hunting era is long over for the Earl of Grantham and his family, but Sybil's visits to New York had their rural pleasures as well as more cosmopolitan ones. Nor did her grandfather excuse his granddaughters from learning their way around a firearm and a deer blind, whether they were so inclined or not. It's just that she doesn't quite believe that the universe, or whatever higher power might be in it, has so conveniently thrown this piece of luck into her hands.

She can't decide what kind of luck it is. She forgets all about going through the motions of saving Danny's life and looks over her shoulder at Tom and Declan, picked out in ruddy light from the burning car. They could be teenagers brawling over a girl at an autumn bonfire, except there's no one to pull them apart and tell them they're drunk, to drive them home and tuck them into beds where they'll wake up with bruises and hangovers. Outside of films, Sybil hasn't witnessed many physical fights—only the odd scrap at school, which always drew a large audience and never lasted longer than a few minutes—but she can tell that both of them have participated in their share. Tom's by far the more aggressive one, but he's reined in his fury enough to land more hits than he misses, and he's not giving Declan a second to gather himself. Sybil sees why when Declan spins halfway round: there's a dark shape outlined in his hand. He's got hold of a rock. He brings it up and Tom dodges the blow easily, but he's not so lucky the next go-round. Declan gets him by the shoulder and wallops him on the head with a nauseating crack of rock against bone. When Tom twists away the side of his face is dark and shiny with blood.

Declan presses his advantage, backing Tom toward the car. All it'll take is one stumble and Tom will be sprawled on his back on the ground, fair game. And is it just her imagination, or is he moving more slowly? He's getting tired. He's having to wipe blood out of his eyes. He scans the ground but even if he does pick up a rock, how does it end? Then they'll both just have rocks.

Sybil's fingers curl tight around metal, and she looks down almost in surprise; she doesn't even remember taking the gun out of its holster. It feels right in her hands, warm and smooth and heavy. Comforting. She walks nearer to Tom and Declan. They're completely focused on each other, but she moves slowly. It wouldn't do to catch either of their attention, and she'll need to be close when she takes her shot.

It never occurs to her to question whether she should do it. She gave Declan the benefit of the doubt once; she won't make the same mistake again. She raises the pistol like Grandpapa taught her, elbows straight, right hand braced with left, feet set at angles. For an instant she considers going for the leg rather than the kill, but she hasn't fired a gun in years. The risk is too great that she'd miss. She takes a couple of deep breaths. The two men separate and the calm of surgery settles over her; Declan's in her line of fire, nicely lit up, Tom safely off to one side. Her exhale descends into its trough and she reminds herself squeeze, don't jerk.

The last of the air leaves her lungs, but her bullet does not follow it.

It never occurred to her to question whether she could do it.

He's going to kill Tom! The trigger stays frozen at nine-tenths. He's going to bash in his head with a rock! She presses her lips together and calls up the exact timbre of Declan's voice when he threatened to kill and then rape her. It's not difficult; the moment is still fresh and bloody in her mind. But she can no more squeeze that last half millimeter than she can climb into the burning car and drive it to Sydney.

And then her chance is gone. Declan and Tom crash into each other, Declan's weighted fist coming in again and again. Tom takes the hits as stolidly as before, but then his luck fails him: his feet tangle together and he falls. Declan's down on him in a second, raining blows on his head and shoulders through the weak screen of his raised arms.

A bitter liquid rises in her throat. She could have prevented this, but instead she choked, again.

I can stop it. There's only one thing to do: she's got no hope of hitting Declan, not without risking Tom's life, but she can sure as hell distract him. She fires two rounds into the ground twenty feet to their right. The shots reverberate across the plain, with exactly the desired effect: Declan freezes, all his attention suddenly on her.

"Get off him," she says. His hand drops and he does, slowly. So far so good. Tom wallows on his back, semiconscious. He'll have to hold on until she's sorted his brother out.

But then Declan begins to walk toward her. A smile spreads across his face that puts a tremor in her hands.

"Stay back. I will shoot you." Her voice is good, low and steady. The barrel of the gun points straight at his chest; it's shaking, but only a little. You'd hardly notice it.

Declan notices it. His grin widens, and the most frightening thing is that he doesn't look fierce at all. He looks overjoyed. For the first time Sybil gets an inkling of the charm Tom spoke of his brother possessing: if that smile had walked up to her in a London pub six months ago, she might not be here now. "Ah, c'mon now," he says. "If you were going to shoot me, you'd have done it five seconds ago."

"I'm just waiting for the right shot." She tries a smile that comes out as a grimace, lips scraping dry against the fronts of her teeth. Declan keeps approaching: slowly, as though she's a wild animal he doesn't want to spook.

Declan half turns to look behind him, exaggerating his movements for effect. "Well, there's nothing in the way, is there? Will I give you a proper target?" He throws his head back and his arms out to either side. And she tries; she really does. But by now her hands are shaking so badly that she fears hitting Tom even though Declan's no longer near him. More than that, she fears showing her hand. If she shoots and misses, Declan won't even bother hesitating any longer.

After a few seconds he drops his arms, grunting with amused contempt. "I knew you wouldn't. You blew the cold-as-ice act back at the house, didn't you?" He continues toward her at the same measured pace. It's not so much his words that convince her he knows the truth as the tone, the bravado. He fears death—the mad scramble to get out of the car before it caught fire—just not at her hands. The fact that she can't prove him wrong makes her grit her teeth in frustration. This should be the part where the music swells and her chest heaves and she lets out a suitably dramatic war cry, pulls the trigger, and keeps pulling it until she's emptied the gun into him. But this is no film.

She hasn't taken her eyes off him once but somehow he's closed more than half the distance between them, like the monsters that leap closer when you blink. She backs up, gun still held out, carefully scraping her feet backward over the ground so she won't trip. "Stop!" She hears but cannot quell the note of hysteria in her voice. He just laughs like this is all good fun. She doesn't dare look away, even to see if Tom's still moving.

"You really can't do it," marvels Declan. He's practically on top of her, but he refuses to hurry: he knows he's won, and he's going to enjoy it. She pulls the gun in toward her chest, cradling it as if to protect it. A small part of her rages Come on! You haven't come this far to go out like this! But it's not enough to break the paralysis.

What does it is a dull whump off to the side, felt more than heard: the car's petrol tank exploding. The triumph in Declan's eyes turns to alarm. His hands fly up to protect his face and he crouches with an awkwardness at odds with the sinuous menace of before. Beyond him is Tom, unsteady but on his feet, eyes wide, mouth moving. She can't hear what he's shouting over the noise of the fire, which has flared up again with the fresh fuel. But he holds out his hands: gesturing, urging, beckoning.

Their eyes only touch for an instant. But in his, Sybil can see all that might be if they can only make it out of here alive. For what is love but being willing to take on the load that the other cannot bear?

Without thinking she draws her right arm back. Declan's head comes up, his mouth twisting in a snarl as he leaps at her. He's too late. She lets the gun fly and watches it arc away, glinting in the firelight. She sees it land on the ground before Declan slams her backward into the dirt and she grunts, tasting blood. A knee in her solar plexus as he scrambles off her and she gasps, coughs until her throat's raw and gasps some more. Firecrackers burst around her, blinding, deafening. She can't be sure whether they're real or only in her oxygen-deprived brain.

Finally she can breathe again and the roar in her ears quiets to a dull rushing sound; no, a groaning, and it's not in her imagination. Whoever's making that sound is in the kind of pain you can't be strong through. She props herself up on her elbows. In the light from the dying fire one man lies supine in the dust; the other stands over him holding the pistol.

"Why couldn't you just leave us alone?"

Tom speaks quietly, so quietly she hardly hears him. His voice is heavy with sorrow. "I'd done what you wanted. I was gone. Why'd you have to come out here and…" He chokes up, raises a hand to his mouth.

Sybil waits for Declan to answer, but he's beyond speaking. His breath comes in shallow, ragged pants. Slowly she gets up and goes over to where Tom stands a few feet from his brother, still tensed as though he's waiting for him to rise up and attack. He looks up and she can see tears glint in his eyes. "Is he…do you know if he would be..." he swallows, blinking fast. "Is he suffering?"

Declan stares past them into the night sky; his eyes are unfocused, lips pulled tight over clenched teeth. He coughs painfully and brings up strings of bloody spittle, blackish in the poor light. He's bleeding internally, then, Sybil thinks. Her eyes go to his abdomen, the blood welling between his tight-clamped fingers. Probable arterial perforation as well. He'll be dead in minutes if he doesn't get medical treatment.

She lays her hand gently on Tom's back. "There's nothing we can do for him." It'd be touch and go even in hospital. Out here, he's got no chance at all.

Declan starts making a sound in his throat, a monotonous whine. "Fuck," Tom whispers. He turns and takes a few steps away, his left hand going to his eyes, gun still held loosely in his right. "Fuck." Abruptly, he whips around, strides back, and brings his hand up to rest the barrel squarely in the middle of Declan's forehead.

"I'm sorry," he says, and pulls the trigger.

Sybil can't look at Tom's face. Instead she watches Declan's body go limp, his eyes dull. Every death is different, and even with as many as she's seen she'd never say she's used to them. But this one sends a particular chill through her. She is not normally given to flights of fancy, but she could swear she feels his soul flapping past her and off into the night.

Tom remains motionless until his brother has stopped twitching, then drops the gun into the dirt and walks away.

-o-

Declan's mobile doesn't have a signal; Danny's is gone, lost on the side of the road somewhere. Sybil stands hugging her elbows and stares at the blackened, smoking hulk of the wagon. Well, she thinks, we aren't going anywhere in that.

A bulbous moon has risen, casting a ghostly light on the whole scene: the burnt car, the bodies, the dark hostile sweep of the land around them. Tom has dragged Danny's body over to lie beside Declan's. It's not right to just leave him over there unprotected, he said. Unprotected from what? Sybil didn't ask. Now that he no longer needs it, the fight's gone out of him. He doesn't seem angry or fearful or even remorseful, just blank. The only time he displayed anything approaching temper was when she tried to take a look at his injuries. Leave it, he said, brushing her hand away from his forehead.

But you're bleeding.

I'll be fine. He looked directly at her for the first time since just before she threw him the gun. Please, Sybil, just leave me be for a while.

And she has. She's pacing circles on the hard ground, since she can't make herself relax enough to sit or lie down, keeping Declan and Danny's bodies in the corner of her eye and watching for wild dogs or marauding kangaroos or whatever else might be waiting to attack. She hasn't a clue what she and Tom are going to do. They've got no food, no water, no clothing but what's on their backs. We'll figure it out, she tells herself with determined optimism.

Meanwhile, Tom has had quite long enough to brood. What he needs now, whether he'll accept it or not, is support. And being strong for him will have the side benefit of making her feel stronger.

He's on the other side of the car where he can't see the bodies, sitting with knees drawn up to his chest and arms crossed on top of them. Sybil sits down a few feet away from him, close enough to put a hand on his arm, though she doesn't. "I've been thinking," she says. "We ought to try and find somewhere to rest tonight, and walk back along the road as soon as there's light to see." Maybe they'll be lucky enough to be picked up by some well-supplied tourists.

Tom shakes his head. "We've got to bury them. It's not right to leave them here."

"Bury them." Sybil clears her throat and tries to think of a tactful way to express how very little she cares whether Declan and Danny end up as dingo food. Finally she gives up. "With what, our bare hands and a burnt-up shovel?"

Tom shrugs. "We'll find some rocks to make a cairn or something."

"Tom." Sybil scoots a little closer to him so she can look into his face; this situation calls for a mixture of empathy and straight talk. "We're not leaving them here forever. We'll send someone back to get them. But first we need to get to a town ourselves, or else we won't be able to do anything for them." She lets that sink in, not wanting to state the obvious: Because we'll be dead. After all this, the thought's too unbearable. "But what we need to do now," she says in her most soothing voice, "is to find somewhere out of the wind and get as much sleep as we can."

Tom finally meets her eye. "You think I could sleep?" He chuckles bitterly. "We'll never get to a town anyway, not on foot. We're too far out."

"Then someone will come."

"No one comes out here." All of a sudden he's breathing hard, air hissing through his teeth in great ragged gulps. "Ah, fuck," he whimpers, lowering his head to his crossed arms, shoulders heaving.

Sybil feels her breath hitch; tears prick the backs of her eyes. No. Don't you dare fall apart again. "Tom, we'll be OK." She reaches over and puts her hand on his arm.

He clutches at it. "Will we? Will we?" He laughs madly. "I've killed two people today."

She leans closer to say It's all right or You didn't have a choice or something equally true and equally ineffectual. Her lips brush his temple. "I know..."A mere breath of air in his ear and suddenly his hands are rough on her upper arms, pulling her against him, his mouth bruising and desperate on hers. A flare of surprise, then a different kind of fire lights in her lower belly and spreads downward. Her arms tighten around him, draw him down on top of her.

I'm alive. We're alive. It's not so much a conscious thought as a counter-rhythm to the accelerating beat of their hearts, the sucking sound as she pulls his tongue into her mouth, the rasp of her nails up his back under his shirt. She's panting, moaning as he pushes up her shirt and bra and sucks the soft undersides of her breasts. He gives an answering moan deep in his throat; his teeth close not-quite-hard on her nipple and she cries out, a hot spear of lust shooting through her.

"Fuck me," she hisses. His breath draws in sharply and his mouth's hard on hers again, his hand under her skirt, between her legs, making her gasp. Between them they manage to fumble her knickers off and his jeans half down without ever breaking their kiss. The head of his cock presses against her stomach, and they rut together until their breath comes in gravelly gasps. "Fuck me," she says again, bringing her knees up to either side of his body, and he sinks into her with a groan.

We're alive. A shivering cry escapes her and she doesn't think about the stillness of Danny's body in the road, or the way Declan's face looked when he came toward her to take the gun. We're alive. She can feel herself starting to come already. She grinds hard into Tom, inviting it, demanding it.

"Sybil," he breathes, "Oh, God, Sybil—" he thrusts as though he can no more stop moving than he could stop breathing.

It's nothing she would call pleasure, the sensation that rips through her like the explosion through the car, makes her scream in half-agonized abandon. She can hardly stand it. Her hips buck and Tom gasps and locks his arms around her, tighter and tighter as he drives into her faster and harder. He tenses, then shivers, letting out a groan that seems as though it will tear him apart.

We're alive.

He stays within her. His lips, warm on her neck, slip to her ear, cheek, eyebrow, mouth. "I love you," he murmurs. "God, I love you so much." He kisses her again: mouth, cheeks, her eyes that flutter closed under his lips and open to meet his when she feels him looking down at her. "I'm so sorry," he says.

She laughs a little, shaking her head. "Sorry? What for?"

"I almost got you killed." It's bright enough that she can see the shadow cross his face. "I should never have let him put you in that car."

"Don't be ridiculous." She puts a hand on his cheek, bringing his face back down to her so she can kiss him. "I'd only have gone after you. I want you to know, Tom... the stuff I said at the house… I was only going to ring the police as soon as I could."

"Yeah, 'course." He smiles, a not entirely happy one, and rolls off her and starts setting his clothes to rights. "That wasn't a bad plan, you know. I wish it'd worked. But you should have left, even when it didn't."

And Tom would be the one lying dead in the outback. "I couldn't let him take you away from me." Not without you knowing how I feel. "I love you." She smiles. It feels so good to say it like this, in rapture instead of desperation.

He crawls back over the short distance he put between them, reaching out and pulling her across the rest of it to kiss her hard. "I love you." For a few more minutes, everything they've endured today seems far away.

The euphoria dissipates all too soon. Even wrapped together as close as they can get, they can't stop shivering. Tom's guilt returns with the nighttime chill. Sybil lets him talk; he needs to get it out. He kept silent about too many things for too long.

"I don't know how Ma's going to take it."

"You don't have to tell her all of it." Sybil pauses, reconsiders. "Though it might make her feel better to know."

"I won't speak ill of him. Not any more than I have to."

"I think the fact that he was going to kill us both is enough."

"That's what'll be the worst." His chest moves under her cheek as he chuckles. "If it weren't for you, I'd almost wish for the outback to finish me off."

Sybil won't allow herself to think of that. "Well, that's not going to happen. Tomorrow we'll see if there's anything left inside the car that we can use—"

"There isn't."

"—and we'll find an… outpost or something. Or we'll get a signal on the mobile. I refuse to believe we've gone through all this for nothing."

"I hope you're right."

I am, Sybil thinks. I have to be.

-o-

Sybil has just dozed off when Tom shakes her awake, sounding equal parts excited and terrified.

"Wake up, love. Sybil, wake up. There's a car."

AN: if you want a suggestion for mood music during the sex scene, I had Hot As Sun's "Come Come" on a loop in my head while I was writing it. :)