I apologize if any of you find this conclusion to be tedious and/or monotonous. I decided this was the only way to do what I wanted to do but I admit it became much longer than I was expecting.
About ten months after the Bowden incident, Julia began her career with the city morgue. This decision was mostly made for her as no hospital would hire her, no matter how much her father tried to intervene on her behalf. Originally her position with the morgue was intended to be temporary because she was simply filling in until the department head could find someone or rather, some man, to replace the previous pathologist. But no one else seemed to want the gruesome job and they were forced to keep her. No one was very happy about this except for Murdoch. He was thrilled to get to work with his wife and on March 12th, 1894, he got his wish.
The case was a terrible one. An extremely troubled fourteen year old boy by the name of Clayton Bolds murdered both his parents and then hung himself from a tree. Of course, The Murdoch's didn't just look at the scene of the crime and immediately know what had happened. It took almost a week to figure out that the boy had been responsible for everything. The main reason for this delay was because neither Julia nor Murdoch wanted to believe such a young man could have been capable of such a thing. They looked at their four year old son and only saw innocence and goodness. It was hard to imagine that David could ever turn so rotten, let alone in just a decade. But through extensive interviews, Murdoch had learned that The Bolds had been horribly abusive parents. Clayton's best (and only) friend confessed that once The Bolds had locked Clayton in the basement without food or water for several days simply because he had misbehaved a little.
Needless to say, such a case, so soon after starting as a pathologist, did not make Julia want to stick with this career path. But as previously mentioned, she had little choice in the matter. It was either cut up dead bodies or never work a day more in her life. And after everything she went through to get where she was, she just had to suck it up and deal with it. Maybe in time, one of the Toronto hospitals would take note of her impeccable work ethic and decide they had made a terrible mistake in slighting her. Mind you, it wasn't all bad. Within a few weeks she had come to quite like working with her husband and even started to enjoy coming into work everyday, away from their son who she had become extremely attached (almost co-dependent) to since she finished her residency.
Later that year, Julia became pregnant again (and remained so past the two month marker) to the delight of both of them. Somehow her superiors caught wind of this development and they really wanted to get rid of her, stating that it was not safe for someone in her condition to be handling the tools of the trade. Murdoch was pretty sure she would have added a few more bodies to her morgue if he hadn't calmed her down, like the last time an all male board tried to oust her. In the end they decided to keep her on. Julia had a funny feeling that this was only because no one else wanted the job.
On April 5th the following year, their second son was born. Whereas David looked like her, Yannick looked like him, all the way up to his wonderfully luscious eyelashes that Julia simultaneously envied and adored in equal measure. His first word was 'bike.'
That same year Murdoch was assigned a supernatural case involving spirits, and he had firmly believed the medium (Miss Pensell) to be a fraud. Nothing she said or did could change his mind, not until she brought up a certain sentimental conversation he had had with his father before he had changed into a monster and been killed. Murdoch had never told anyone else about this, not even his wife, so there was no way Pensell could have known what Harry had said to him. Not unless she had been actually speaking to his spirit. Julia had become a bit jealous of the woman because Murdoch had gone to her home in the middle of the night in order to get a reading. Murdoch had become a bit jealous of Julia because she had been fawning over the celebrated author, Conan Doyle. That is, up until she heard him give a lecture about the great beyond...then she realized both he and her husband had lost their minds.
Only a week or so later The Murdoch's had a big fight when a case involving homosexuals was dropped in their laps. Julia hadn't seen anything wrong with such a lifestyle but Murdoch had a hard time getting past his Catholic upbringing. He had shouted something or other about their sons, saying that if either of them ever became a sodomist, he would disown them. She had been outraged and almost thrown a heavy (and likely fatal) bowl at his head. In the end they had worked their differences out, if only for the sake of their sons keen feelings.
Murdoch had never been so aware of his class difference with his wife as when a rower had been murdered at a prestigious club. For the first time in a long time, he felt inferior to her and wondered why she had chosen him out of many other potential suitors. It took days for him to stop thinking like an insecure teenager and more like the married man of nine years that he was.
Julia was again annoyed when Miss Pensell came back into the picture. Matters were not helped when her prediction of William's death were divulged. He tried to hide how afraid he was but she could tell that he was very scared (as could David). Seeing him so vulnerable like that started to have unnerving effects on her psyche as well. When her husband was almost killed, she nearly lost her head and frightened their older son badly (Yannick was much too young to understand what was going on). So when the medium declared that she was off to Prague, Julia's heart was lightened considerably, as if the woman were the source of her husband's misfortune.
Not long after what Julia had termed 'The Reaper Killings', (to the annoyance of her husband) William was again almost killed! This time she managed to function better than the last. At least he hadn't been physically hurt when he had been taken hostage and almost shot and then burned in a barn. Combining this incidence with the Bowden one, Julia had grown a severe dislike of that particular farm structure and swore to never step foot in one if she could help it.
A deranged sequential killer attempted to gut Julia, and Murdoch just about had a heart attack when he dashed into the darkened morgue and found her huddled up, unmoving in a corner. But then time began to flow anew and he noticed that she was indeed breathing and her would be killer was slumped against another wall with a pair of dissecting scissors sticking out of his chest. Still, it was several more seconds before he could take in air and go to his wife's aid. They had left shortly after that, leaving the inspector and George to deal with the dead man. Except for that horrendous crash in The Pendrick Charger II, Murdoch had never purposefully killed anyone. As such, he wasn't really sure what to say to Julia in order to make her feel better. Instead he stayed up all night just holding his wife and stroking her hair as she silently sobbed into his chest. For awhile after this Julia acted strangely, as if she were a muted version of herself, lacking that vital spark that was so captivating to him. As usual, David picked up on such a discrepancy and Murdoch did his best to allay their perceptive sons fears, even though he himself was uncertain how long she would be affected by this unfortunate occurrence, just like when they hit their rough patch due to her miscarriages. It was times like these that he wished Guillaume was around to hash things out with. Murdoch settled for talking with Brackenreid and surprisingly the man had a few nuggets of wisdom to offer.
Some time later, long after she was back to her normal self, The Murdoch's underwent a little experiment in the park, involving way too much absinthe and loose morals. If some strollers had not come across them, they would surely have made love right there under a tree, like animals. That's not to say they had never done something like that before. During a camping trip in the summer while their sons were sound asleep with Bobby and John and just a tent away from The Brackenreids, they had snuck off into the forest for just such a rendezvous, finally recreating the erotic experience that had been so abruptly ruined all those years ago during their first date in British Columbia.
An abortionist case had The Murdoch's at odds again, even more so than the homosexual one did. Julia seemed to think it was the woman's right to get rid of an unborn child if that was something she desired or required for whatever reason. He couldn't understand her logic. Firstly because of his beliefs but also because she had had so much difficulty carrying their children to full term. He was sure she would think all life was sacred and not to be trifled with but apparently this was not the case. When Julia's almost love and slight tormentor Isaac Tasch came into the picture and Murdoch believed him to be an abortionist, he was more than happy to send him to the gallows. Seeing Isaac again reminded her of how thoughtful and sweet he had been at first, before everything had become muddled up. And she was quite proud of the boldness of his actions and helping to prevent unnecessary deaths. As such, she wanted to stop his demise. But no matter what Julia said to Murdoch, (including threatening to withhold sex for a long time) he would not listen because he was too angry at her. It was a very near thing but in the end, when Murdoch had regained some of his composure, he had abided by her wishes and left well enough alone. Needless to say, he was not very happy with his decision when his wife started spending time with the man on a regular basis. According to her there was nothing unsavoury going on but he wasn't sure he bought it. If he hadn't been completely certain that Julia would never speak to him again, he would have gone ahead and turned in the baby killer, even at the risk of exposing his own cover up a month earlier. Somehow they worked through their issues, though things were never quite the same after that blow out. A little piece of their relationship was forever lost amidst the chaos of that time, even after they hashed some things out whilst confined to a hot air balloon.
Julia came to learn that the worst feeling in the world was not dealing with the near death of her husband but rather his sudden and lengthy disappearance. For awhile she blamed herself. If only she still bothered to go to church with him, this could have never happened. David had been off playing with some boys after the service, and when he came to find his father, (who was usually having a discussion with the priest) he could not find him! Thus came the most stressful time in their lives, waiting and waiting and waiting some more, until a smelly dog finally found the first piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Two weeks after his disappearance, Murdoch came home to his family and they all rejoiced, Yannick giggling happily even though he didn't know what was going on. By the time she got the full story out of him, she was very jealous of a woman named Anna Fulford but was also touched that his brain damaged mind had remembered her before anything salacious could occur. At least, that's what he told her, claiming Anna would never have let him cheat anyway because he was wearing his wedding ring. Regardless, she had an even better idea of what it felt like to think something untoward was going on with her beloved (the previous time involving his French instructor Chiasson). And considering how Anna was across the sea, she decided to stop visiting Isaac so frequently, something he was not very happy about as they had grown close again over the last while. All she ever seemed to do was let him down but she rationalized it this way: he still had his freedom...and his life thanks to her.
Murdoch had thought that his wife could never get any stranger than the time she had dressed up as a man in order to help him solve a case (when she wore his clothes in private, that was an entirely different matter). He learned in a few years time that he was wrong. The summer after the turn of the century, she had foregone all of her clothing in an attempt to participate in a nudist colony! Murdoch was peeved when his protege and boss caught a glimpse of his wife's naked body. Mostly he was annoyed at her for being there in the buff. She knew that their station house was involved in a case and would likely come across the constabulary in some form or other. His wife made it up to him by renting a room at The Fairmont using an alias and giving him a good work out in which they were as loud as they wanted and no one there cared.
David had been very distraught when his best friend Bobby Brackenreid was taken hostage. Thankfully they had managed to locate him and return the boy to his rightful parents. The Murdoch's hoped to never go through something like that themselves. Unfortunately since Mr. Ogden had given his eldest daughter her inheritance at the birth of his first grandson, this could very well happen...
Not long after this, Murdoch was reunited with one of his oldest friends, none other than James Pendrick! When Murdoch learned that Pendrick had been in town for months and had not called on him, he was dismayed. But when he discovered that the man didn't seem to recognize him or his wife at all, Murdoch was deeply vexed. Sure it had been over a decade since the last time they had seen each other, and sure they had only known each other for a brief span of time, but even so, he had expected some form of recognition from the man! It took Pendrick's wife, Sally, to pick up on Murdoch's distress to bring this issue to the surface. Pendrick was apparently mortified when he realized his mistake and quickly made his apologies, claiming he had had a few too many glasses of champagne. Murdoch didn't buy his story for a second. As far as Murdoch was concerned, Pendrick's actions had been inexcusable! Pendrick must have known he was living in Toronto. Anyone who read the Gazette knew this fact. So when his former partner became a suspected mastermind, involved in a great many deaths, Murdoch immediately assumed he must be guilty. This version of the man he used to know was cold and distant and not at all like he remembered him to be. Whatever hardships he had gone through to make him this way, Murdoch would never learn because he was never going to ask and Pendrick was not likely to tell.
During this same time, Julia had another round of jealousy and outrage when Mrs. Pendrick gave her husband a nude portrait of herself! Granted it was in an abstract form but that was besides the point! She knew he was married with children! William of course pretended like the painting wasn't what she thought it was, calling it a landscape. But she was nobody's fool. She had been to enough art galleries in her younger years to know the difference. And considering William was investigating Sally's husband, it didn't take a genius to figure out who gave it to him. By the end of the case she forced him to give it back, not that he needed much prodding. Even with the painting gone, she was still feeling insecure about herself so she discretely took a few nude photos of herself and stuck them in William's sock drawer. His reaction to finding such scandalous photos was priceless. She never saw them again but was pretty sure he had simply placed them in a more secure location. Still, she became frustrated when her husband apparently had to go to the Pendrick mansion for work on more than one occasion over the course of the next few months.
Julia was surprised (and just a teensy bit flattered) when one of her favourite authors, Mr. Wells started hitting on her. He didn't seem to care that she was (more or less) happily married. When she confided this to Ruby, she simply said, "Oh that's just Berty's way. Don't think on it for another minute, Jules." When the man tried to persuade her to cheat a second time, she became quite annoyed and told him off soundly. Later Julia confided the whole thing to her husband and if Wells hadn't gone back to England already, William would have given him a piece of his mind.
Around this time she was also approached by another man intent on wooing her but for a different capacity. He was a doctor and wanted her on his team at the sick children's hospital in Buffalo. While very tempting, she had to turn him down. She wasn't about to move her entire family to the states simply for herself, even though William claimed he would be willing to do so. After all, it might not be that difficult to transfer to the police force there because he knew one of the detectives. Mostly she decided to stay because Toronto felt like home again, like it hadn't since her mother died.
After another strange death, in which the victims organs were cooked, her husband almost suffered the same fate! And again it happened in a barn! While she was still unreasonable and in a frantic state she demanded that he never go in another and vowed to keep her sons out of barns as well. The good thing about this case was that Sally was found out to be a devious harpy, just like Julia had always suspected but her husband had been blind to this fact, so hurt by Pendrick's brushing him off, he was the only suspect on his list (and in fact, the man would be for several years to come). She tried not to rub it in too much once the case concluded.
About half a year later, Murdoch was reunited with his favourite (and only) French boss and after they worked a case together, they caught up well and good. When asked if he was staying, Guillaume informed Murdoch that he was only here on business and that there was nothing left for him in Canada. Murdoch was understandably upset by that statement but didn't let it show.
In a bizarre coincidence, the woman from Bristol wormed her way back into her husband's life when her fiance was murdered. Julia was irrationally jealous of her and couldn't seem to understand why William had to protect her from the assassin when another police officer could. Her husband reminded her that it was Anna who had saved his life across the sea. Without her, he would have never made it back to his family. After this Julia decided to become friends with Anna but never got the chance as the woman was forced into hiding.
Her husband was a wreck for a very long time when his sister finally came back into his life only to be taken away again. He lamented that he was now the last surviving member of the Murdoch clan, but she informed him otherwise, stating that there were in fact three other members now and soon to be a fourth. The news of her pregnancy helped to soften the loss of his sister. It was almost as if one soul was traded for the other. And when their daughter was born to them the following year, Murdoch was convinced of this fact. Without much thought, they named her Susannah.
Julia decided to take an apprentice during her pregnancy because it was quickly becoming a very difficult one. The sight and smell of blood and guts seemed to be heightened this time around and she could barely stand to be in the same room as the corpses, let alone perform several autopsies a week! Not one to admit defeat or give the department the satisfaction of knowing they were right for once, she hand picked a young woman by the name of Emily Grace to take over whenever the nausea became unbearable. She knew she was pushing her luck with having yet another female in the morgue but Julia didn't care. If the department had a problem with her choice, they could come down there and tell her so...and quickly get chewed out by an irate pregnant lady. No one ever came down.
A few months after his sisters death, they took a trip to the Alberta Badlands and Murdoch was delighted to share such a wondrous place with his family. Little Yannick in particular seemed fascinated by the concept of dinosaurs and stated quite adamantly that he would become an archeologist and explorer.
Pendrick appeared again and this time he was sporting a new fast vehicle, called The Pendrick Bullet. Murdoch was sarcastically pleased to note that the man's taste in naming his inventions had not changed much in all of these years. Since he was still bitter about being tossed aside by his former friend, he had no issues whatsoever suspecting him of yet another murder. He was proved wrong and during the investigation Pendrick had intimated that he desired to start their relationship freshly but Murdoch didn't care.
Yet again Miss Fulford somehow got herself mixed up with her husband but this time Julia actually wanted to help her (even if she was an idiot for coming back to Toronto) and so when the time came she was willing to fake her death. It appeared that she would never get a chance to know Fulford better and once more Julia was disappointed. Anna seemed like an interesting person, not afraid to do things that society would frown on.
When his wife was kidnapped by a deranged maniac and then buried alive, Murdoch decided it was best for their family to move away. He wanted to get out of Toronto because it seemed to be cursed and forever causing their family strife. Just like the last time, Julia informed him that she would not be leaving and added that it wasn't the city that was the problem, it was the job. Eventually he relented and they stayed put. Together they watched as Gillies was hung and his evil forever removed from the world.
A man claiming to have invented a time machine started making headlines and Murdoch was forced to investigate what he deemed to be an elaborate fraud. The perpetrator of this fraud convinced him to take a ride into the near future after filling out a suspicious questionnaire about his hopes and dreams. Though the experience had been hard to fathom, he didn't for one second believe he had travelled into the future. Not long after this he proved that it was simply a hoax.
One of the strangest murders involving a plane piloted by a dead pig exploded into Murdoch's awareness. Pendrick was involved somehow and Murdoch was determined to put him behind bars, once and for all. But things were not as they seemed and the man was proven to be innocent. After Pendrick pushed his many years worth of work into Niagara Falls, he again stated that he wanted to be friends with Murdoch and that he was sorry for how he had treated him. This time Murdoch relented and almost sixteen years later they started over.
A psychopath threatened to gas the city and consequently it was evacuated. Julia did not want to leave him there but Murdoch forced her to take the children and go. His logic was simple: if the worst should happen, there was no point in leaving them orphans. After a tearful goodbye with his family, Murdoch had a breakthrough with the case and came to realize that there was no threat after all. Relieved, he apprehended the scoundrel responsible for causing so much mass panic and was soon after reunited with the Murdoch clan.
The Murdoch's continued to have adventures as the years went by but the scales eventually tipped so that it was their children who got into trouble more often than them. Thankfully none of them were ever fatally wounded but there were many close calls, especially in relation to Yannick during his exploration of the world. Years before their middle child went off on his own, Julia was given the reigns of The Toronto Hospital and made sure that important changes were made around the place. Any competent female doctor who wanted a placement was welcome there and Susannah and her friend, oddly enough a blonde haired woman named Anna, applied as soon as they were qualified. So it was that Julia got to work with her daughter on a regular basis and Murdoch got to work with David at the precinct in a similar capacity to how it was with Brackenreid. When the Englishman became Chief Constable, he appointed Murdoch as the new inspector of station house 4, leaving the detective position open for George. And since Higgins had replaced the detective at station house three, David was free to work directly under George. Oftentimes, the constable solved the crimes before his superior but waited for George to come to the same conclusions as him. The only times there was a problem was when George wasn't able to solve the case on his own or he was taking a lot longer to do so. But in those instances, Murdoch usually came to his sons aid and told George what he needed to know without his son having to step out of line and try to run the cases. Therefore for the most part, things were harmonious in the work worlds of all of The Murdoch's.
As for their personal lives, well, there were the usual ups and downs that every relationship is bound to have but Julia and Murdoch were attached at the hip and would never ever let each other go, not until their last breaths, and maybe not even then...
Many thanks to all of you who stuck with this for so long. Hope it was worth your while! I also wanted to say that this will be my last story for awhile so feel free to peruse and/or revisit my many other works in the meantime. Ta-ta for now my fellow Murdochians! :)