A/N: This fic contains references to historical figures and events, treats Roger Casement's Black Diaries which contain evidence of his homosexuality as authentic, includes references to execution by hanging and how such was historically carried out in the British context, historically-accurate anti-English sentiment, and some reference to medical procedures including needles.

Cathleen ní Houlihan is a personification of Ireland found in nationalist literature from the 19th and early 20th centuries and also the title of a play by W.B. Yeats.

I expect this fic to have two parts. If you enjoy please review.

He has seen death, of course. Seen it, and held it, touched it, tasted it (the blood from his bitten lip salty and hot when the bullet tore through his arm; dust in the air dry in his throat, cordite on the back of his tongue; the quinine sharp as he swallowed it and gagged.)

He has seen death. Has seen bodies. Bodies in his own home (mother, father), bodies in the Congo (so many of them, so many, imprinted on the backs of his eyes), bodies on the streets of Dublin (blood trickling between the cracks of the cobblestones, cries and shouts and screams, the dust heavy in the air, the revolver in his pocket burning, burning.)

He has pictured that body. That body, left to dangle for an hour, customary practice, to ensure that death truly has taken place. Pictured it, and tried not to picture it, though his mind insists on conjuring the image sometimes, in the depths of the night.

(Ought he have gone to London? Not that he could have been there, but to have been in London…)

He has never attended a hanging. If he had headed for the States instead of the Congo probably he might have. The Americans always favour their own fashion for doing things, as is their right as their own nation, but that particular penchant for public execution is not something he has any taste for. So he has never seen a hanging but he made a study of it, that summer when treason and the weight of it was something he had spent months shaping his tongue around.

(The trap door, the measured long drop, based on height and weight and build, knot positioned under the left ear to knock the head back and snap the neck.)

(That tightness in his chest each time his thoughts go there. Breathe, Philippe, breathe.)

Judicial hanging. Better or worse than being stood against a wall and shot? Or merely different?

Tidier. No blood in the dust. The hole and the quicklime just the same.

(The tolling of bells makes him shiver.)

Bodies seen, bodies imagined. Pale faces, and still fingers, cold beneath his touch.

He is under no illusion how fortunate he is that Raoul's body was not among them.

God but if he ever finds the men that did it—If he ever finds them they'll wish—they'll plead—they'll—

Raoul's fingers stir in his, slim and frail and he swallows, swallows and forces himself to draw a deep breath, and swallows again.

Tuck it away, tuck it away, what you will do to those men. They will have to wait, finding them, killing them. Those Tan English bastards what right have they to come in here? What right have they to come in here and shoot your brother?

That voice in his ear but nobody here, nobody here, only him, Christine and Sorelli in the other room and Erik outside somewhere, and Raoul here in this bed, Raoul sleeping quietly, his arm strapped to his chest.

Raoul. His little brother, his baby brother, and they shot him.

The tears burn his eyes, blur his vision, but he will not wipe them away, cannot bring himself to. Why should he? How can he? His little brother. His little brother, only seventeen, a boy, and they shot him.

They call themselves men, call themselves soldiers, but if they were men they would not break into houses and shoot boys.

1903. He was only just back from the Congo. Twenty-two and it felt like he had seen enough of man's cruelty to man to last him a lifetime. Casement was dashing off letters demanding his report into the Belgian atrocities be published without any of this waiting, that there were people dying, and the telegram came on a cold morning in November, to re-call Philippe to Dublin.

His father, telling him that his mother was ill, gravely so. That the baby was not due for three weeks but he had come early, and Philippe held the paper trembling in his hand, and read the words to try and make them make sense.

His mother ill (dying). And a baby brother, tiny and premature and unlikely to live.

He legs were so weak he very nearly fainted.

(Casement got him to a chair, and loosened his collar, and made him drink brandy and smoke two cigarettes, offered him quinine but he shook his head, whispered he couldn't, and Casement made the arrangements for him to go home while his head was still spinning.)

He thinks it was a peaceful crossing of the Irish Sea, but he has no memory of it beyond looking out on the grey water, as if he were hovering somewhere outside of his body.

He arrived in Dublin, arrived home, just in time to kiss his mother's cheek and hold her hand as she died.

The first time he held the baby, this baby that was his brother when he had thought to be an only child all his life (this baby a miracle when there had been miscarriages all through his youth, when his mother had died to have this child), something pulled inside of him, pulled and wrapped itself around this tiny boy, asleep in his arms, with the most delicate lashes, and a snub nose, and the smallest most perfectly formed little fingers he had ever seen in his life.

He bowed his head and kissed that forehead, kissed those tiny fingers, and knew he would do anything, anything, to keep this tiny brother safe and well.

Raoul. Because their mother had wanted it, after her dead brother.

Raoul Anthony De Chagny.

The priest baptised him there in Philippe's arms, because their father was with the doctor, and the baby was surely to die, just a matter of time.

But De Chagnys have always been tougher than they look.

(If there is anything Philippe has ever been grateful for in his life, it has been that above all else.)

Raoul's blood is dry on his trousers, on his shirt, traces of it still staining beneath his nails four days later. He should change his clothes, he knows, should change and scrub his hands again, but his gaze keeps drifting from Raoul's pale sleeping face to those flakes of dry blood, and he cannot bring himself to move. What if Raoul woke when he was gone? Woke and panicked to find him missing?

How could he inflict that on him, after all he's been through?

(In the depths of his fever, half-blinded with the blood loss, with the burning in his skin, the shock of the wound, the morphine, he kept asking for him, calling, "Philippe...Philippe…Philippe…" and it didn't matter that Philippe was right beside him, squeezing his hand and stroking his hair and whispering to him, low in his ear, "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm not going anywhere…" the tears still welled in his eyes and trickled down his cheeks, over the bridge of his nose and it was all Philippe could do to keep his own tears at bay. When he at last quieted, it was mostly that he had worn himself out.)

No. Better to stay here, as long as he can, and keep Raoul from being frightened.

He never did like being alone in the dark.

Philippe had the perfect alibi when they were arresting men over the Rising. He had been in hospital, with Raoul, who had been dreadfully sick and who had just had his appendix out. He had gotten the countermanding order from MacNeill, that there was to be no rising, and he had no intention of leaving Raoul alone in such a place. There were any number of doctors and nurses to say that's exactly where he stayed, with his little twelve year old brother, holding his hand and making up stories to tell him so he wouldn't be frightened, and plastering a smile on his face every time the boy woke.

The only place he could bear to be, when the shooting started.

(If he had not been there beside him, Raoul would only have been frightened for him.)

(If he had not been there beside him, if he had gone out to fight, he might have found himself executed too.)

He could not go to see Erik in the hospital in May 1916, because Erik was under an armed guard. The Sherwood Foresters keeping an eye on him night and day, after he was shot in a house on Northumberland Road. They had not thought he would live but they arrested him anyway, and allowed him to be treated only so he could be alive for execution.

The fourteen men they shot in Kilmainham—God but how the memory of it chills Philippe's blood. Connolly, strapped to a chair with his shattered ankle. Who had the job of untying him when he was already dead? Plunkett, newly married, his throat still bandaged from the operation for his tuberculosis, that he left his sickbed after to go to the GPO and fight. MacDiarmada, and he could hardly stand with what polio had done to his legs, could hardly have fired a shot at any man, but they shot him anyway. MacBride, who had not known it had been planned but who met McDonagh in the street that day in his uniform, and joined on the spot. Willie Pearse, who stood and fought and was executed mostly because he was Pádraig's brother.

Philippe has always been keenly aware of how his actions could lead Raoul into trouble through no fault of his own.

Markievicz was spared by virtue of being a woman, that brave and wonderful Countess with her pistols and feathered hat. De Valera, and his American birth pushed him down the list enough that he was spared when the executions were stopped. (Stopped, but they called what Casement did high treason and sent him to England, and when it was a trial and high treason, not a court martial over the Rising, they could hang him with their consciences clear.)

Erik, too ill from the bullet in his chest to be brought to Kilmainham and shot so the reprieve came in time to save him, too, and when he was well enough they shipped him to Frongoch instead.

And Philippe could not go to see him in the hospital, or they might have arrested him too, and he would not have cared, then, but for what could have become of Raoul, and they needed a man on the outside, needed someone still free.

So it was only afterwards, long afterwards, after the Rising and after Frongoch and in that long summer of 1918 when the war was inching close to its end, that he and Erik realised they had loved each other, in a distant sort of way, for a very long time.

(Late August, the sun on their skin, the grass grown long and white, Erik's hand cupping the back of his neck, Erik's lips upon his own.)

He slept last night with his head on the pillow beside Raoul's, careful not to wake him, or jar him. His fever had finally broken, and the relief of it was enough that Philippe had wept, there in Erik's arms, as Erik held him close and pressed his face into his hair, and didn't tell him that it was all right now, didn't tell him that Raoul would be fine, didn't say anything at all, just held him and let him cry, the tears of three days without sleep, three days of fear that Raoul would die beneath his hands, or the Tans would come back and try to finish the job and he'd have to shoot them and then run for his life and not know if Raoul would live or die.

When he had cried himself out, Erik kissed his forehead, sat him down and made him drink brandy for the sake of his nerves while Sorelli was brewing tea.

(He almost asked for quinine, but it is years since he has taken any, his malaria fevers long passed, and he would not know where to find it.)

He has loved Erik for years, loved him since their days in Conradh na Gaeilge before the war, before the Rising, before any of it even though he didn't know it then. He only came to understand that on that evening when they first kissed. But for all the years of loving Erik, he never loved him more than that moment when Erik sat him down and squeezed his hands, and bid him see how peacefully Raoul was sleeping.

The rush of love inside of him made his eyes water.

He loved men before Erik, of course. Loved men, loved boys when he was a boy himself, before he knew he loved them, when slipping into each other's beds in the quiet of the dormitory at night was secret illicit fun, hands gentle and fumbling on each other. Fourteen and fifteen years old, and girls were pretty but still unattainable, and there were none at school anyway. And they were learning what it was to have these urges, these feelings, these desires, and half-giggling little gasps in the darkness were nothing new. They were all acquainted with their own hands. To become acquainted with another's hands, even when that other was another boy, was something more.

It was only afterwards, only in the Congo with the benefit of years and hindsight, that he realised he had loved Andrew his best friend in a way that was not merely friendship, and if he had known then what he had come to know, had come to understand about himself, he would have kissed him.

(And likely it would not have been appreciated because the informality of hands was one thing but mouths were another, yet still a part of him regretted not having done it, a part of him that ached for Andrew to still be in his life.)

After school there had been George in London, and still he pretended to himself that it was nothing more serious than a friend helping a friend. And besides, there had been Anna, and Catherine, and Vera, and Elizabeth too, and their kisses left him aching for more, but they were proper girls, like he was a proper boy, a proper young gentleman, so it could only be kisses and nothing more.

It was Casement who turned his world upside down. Casement, in Madeira, in Loanda, in Boma, in places without names. Casement, who showed him what it was to want, to need, to feel. Casement, and the spark bright in his eye, his smile, who taught him what it could really be to have a lover.

He supposes, in hindsight, it could have been no other way.

They said all those things around the time of the trial, all those whispers of rumours. Diaries and letters, but they never followed any initials back to him, and if they had he would have denied it, would have protected Casement and all he stood for from those two terrible words, gross indecency.

To take something wonderful and paint it in such terms, as if it were a crime, a sin, to be happy for a little while. As if it were unnatural to feel something like peace.

(To reveal a man's innermost being in an attempt to shame him, to ruin him—It makes Philippe's blood burn to think of what they did to him, what they tried to do.)

No matter how true it was, it was not his place to spill another man's secrets.

And he would never betray him when it was exactly what the English wanted him to do.

(He still has every letter Casement ever wrote him, hundreds of them, hidden safe away. And the very last one, three days before they killed him, is hidden safest of all. 31 July 1916.)

(He has his own letters too, unsent, from After. Because he needed to write, needed to try to put shape on this thing beneath his ribs, this ache, this grief. Every one of them is addressed to Roddie, but he cannot use that name anymore, cannot bear the feel of it on his tongue, in his head. Within one short assembly of letters there are far too many things that can never be given form.)

What would he have done, if that bullet had taken Raoul's life?

What could he have done?

Raoul's fingers are soft and cool against his lips. He is doing nothing here, nothing, except being. But there is something comforting in watching his brother sleep, something beyond words, beyond any sort of expression. Just listening to each breath, so soft, watching the throbbing of his pulse in his throat, the slight shiftings of his face, the delicate shadows cast by his lashes. His hair is still a little damp from the sweat, blond curls stuck to his forehead like when he was a boy, and gently Philippe brushes them away, tucks one stray lock behind his ear. He has always preferred wearing his hair a little long, always resented getting it cut for school and Philippe would have been happy to let it grow its golden curls but he was afraid of what people might say, that people might think he wasn't taking good enough care of his brother. So he insisted on keeping it trimmed and tidy and Raoul grumbled about it, but since he decided to leave school, since they fought over that and Raoul put his foot down and insisted he could not abide the other boys, not with the things they were saying about Philippe, that he wouldn't fight but he wouldn't go back to school either, since that day he hasn't cut his hair, not a single snip.

Philippe can't blame him, really, about not wanting to go back. They can see about his exams when this is all over. What are exams, really, when this is being part of history? When this is freeing their country, piece by piece? And the hair, well, it's as good a disguise as any. Almost as good as growing a beard, or shaving one off.

God but Raoul hasn't even started to shave yet.

Something about that thought makes Philippe's heart falter.

He left the room earlier, just for a few minutes. He was lightheaded and a little faint, and he needed the air to revive himself, so Christine took his place at Raoul's side and he stepped outside.

A cool afternoon, just a little hazy, deceptively pleasant for late March as if the worst of the winter might be over and summer just around the corner, and he found himself staring at the purple flowers by the wall, staring, and not really thinking at all.

Tired. Too tired, couldn't remember the name of them, only that they were delicate and purple. And somehow the Tans hadn't trampled them when they burst in, and the tears welled in his eyes. He couldn't even explain why. But the flowers were still there and the Tans hadn't trampled them, not even when they ran after shooting Raoul.

He felt Sorelli's arms come around him, steady him, and he leaned into her, hardly daring to breathe, in case the tears would come and he would never be able to stop them. But her hand was light on the back of his neck, a gentle pressure, and he swallowed and pressed his face into her hair, and didn't try to stop them.

(When the clock struck nine, nine in the morning of 3 August 1916, and 300 miles away across a sea in another city they pulled the trapdoor beneath the finest man who had ever stood in such a place, Philippe fancied he could hear the bells toll the end of his life. He had lain awake all night, all night unable to sleep, and when he heard those bells, even though they were only in his own head, the tears welled in his eyes.)

(Sorelli carded her fingers through his hair, and kissed them away.)

That that man, that beautiful brave proud man rests in a prison grave in English soil, nameless and unmarked without so much as a flower to acknowledge where he lies, is an affront to all that is good and true.

He had only wanted to break the system, had only wanted to make things right.

Of all the crimes the English have committed, of all the things they've done that one burns deep inside Philippe so he can hardly breathe, has burned with a fire all its own for the best part of five years now.

Someday they will bring Casement back, they will take him from that terrible place. Someday, when Ireland is free.

Sorelli brings him soup, a thin broth that Christine has made, and kisses his hair. She has brought a bowl for Raoul too, for when he wakes again. He needs to eat something for the sake of his strength.

He catches her hand as she moves away, and she looks back at him, a question in her face, and in spite of everything, in spite of the ache in his chest, he manages a smile for her.

"Thank you."

Loving men, loving Erik, has never kept him from loving Sorelli. His dear sweet beautiful Sorelli. It was the winter of 1912 when they met, the winter of 1912 the first time she kissed him and lay him down in her bed and she was a proper girl but she was also an actress, and caring what the world thought only mattered to her when it came to the stage. She called herself a woman who loved men, and she loved him and he loved her all the more for the audacity in her eyes and the knife in her boot.

Two knives, one in each boot.

Yeats had Maud Gonne in her unattainable beauty, but he has Sorelli. And it was Casement who first taught him of poetry, but it was Sorelli who gave him something to write for.

Sorelli, and Cathleen ní Houlihan. Their ideal, their Ireland.

And when he thinks of Cathleen, tries to give her – give Ireland – form in his head, it is Sorelli's face she wears.

They arrested Sorelli after the Rising. Arrested her for having stood beside the Countess in Stephen's Green, with a pair of his trousers tailored to fit and a revolver at each hip, a cigarette between her lips. He did not see her, could not see her when Raoul needed him, but he can picture her just as clearly as if he had been there, the tilt of her head and defiant line of her jaw, gunsmoke and dust swirling around her.

His beautiful Sorelli, tall and proud and ready to fight.

And she was out by July because they couldn't keep her, not when the prison guards all fell under her spell, men and women both. The star of the stage. How could a mere prison cell ever hope to contain her?

She came straight to him, after she was released, and what a relief it was to hold her in his arms again, in that summer that seemed so much of death, and feel her lips pressed to the corner of his.

(They have always been careful that there would not be a child. How could they in good conscience bring a life into the world when Ireland remains unfree and either or both of them could be murdered for trying to save her?)

They have rarely been parted. Sometimes that seems like enough.

The first night he slept in this chair, holding Raoul's hand as he slept after the doctor attended to his wound, he dozed fitful and she brought a stool for him to prop his legs on, and draped a coat over him, that he would not get cold. He had wanted to stay awake, to keep watch lest Raoul should stop breathing in the night, lest he should wake and need him, but he had given his blood to the doctor to put into Raoul's veins (thank God the man had been at the war in France, thank God such wounds were something he knew, thank God he was on their side) and he was so tired that he could not keep his eyes open.

But Sorelli came to him, and kissed him, and covered him, and with her lips pressed close to his ear she whispered, "we'll keep you both safe, I promise."

He nodded against her, and trusted that she would.

(There is not a moment that he does not feel how fortunate he is, to be able to love Erik and Sorelli both, and they love him in return, and each other, too. The three of them together, how it should always be.)

When Raoul wakes he whispers to him, those old stories he learned in summers in Antrim, with Bigger and his neophytes all learning Irish, and Casement when he was there. And Erik.

Queen Maeve. Cúchulainn. The Tuatha Dé Danann. Children of Lir. Fionn and the Fianna. Oisín in Tír na nÓg. Deirdre of the Sorrows.

These old stories, to keep Raoul from trying to speak, that he whispered to him to help him sleep as a little boy. And Raoul watches him with his eyes half-open, his fingers curled around Philippe's own, and Philippe whispers to him until he falls asleep, one story after another, until his voice fails him again.

("…glad you're here…" Raoul murmured, once, and Philippe's voice cracked and he could not carry on the story, only kiss Raoul's forehead, and press his face close to him, and whisper, "I wouldn't be anywhere else.")

They were coming back from meeting Lynch in the mountains, he and Erik. And it was cool but not yet cold, the weather improved, the evening coming in slow, sun dipping below the horizon. The news was that MacThomáis had been taken, that he had put up a struggle from what they could tell and was probably being tortured. Murray had his boys on it, trying to find him, but there was nothing they could do until they knew more, except try to take more of the Tans and interrogate them. Malley was planning how, and all Philippe and Erik could do was sit tight.

They had come down off the mountain, were picking their way through the rocky fields, not speaking, just occasionally reaching out to steady each other, to feel the brush of the other's hand, the air cool enough to keep them from sweating. And he could not say what Erik was thinking but what he was thinking was what would happen to Raoul if he should be taken. He would not want his brother to be part of an attempt to rescue him, would want him to leave heroics to Erik and to Sorelli, and Malley and Murray and the boys. For Raoul to stay somewhere safe, stay with Christine. And he was remembering, and trying not to remember, the time Raoul almost drowned.

Only six, slipped and fell into the river, and there was so much blood from where he'd cut his head, and he wasn't breathing when Philippe pulled him from the water and he was frantic, frantic, rubbing his chest and slapping his back, watching the water that trickled from his mouth, his pale face and blue lips, and Philippe was crying, crying and willing him to breathe, and he gasped, a feeble little gasp, so weak Philippe almost missed it, until he gasped again and moaned and coughed, and Philippe bundled him up and carried him back to the house. He was sick for weeks afterwards, from the cold and the water in his lungs, but he didn't complain, and Philippe was so frightened, and so proud of his brave little brother, who gave him the weakest smile the first time he woke and that seemed the most brilliant smile Philippe had ever seen.

(Raoul's nightmares ever since were always of drowning, until they were of shooting, until they were both.)

Philippe resolved to teach him to swim after that, and he wrote Casement about it because Casement was an excellent swimmer, and the letter came all the way from Peru, "My father taught me to swim by throwing me into the water. Might be best to take a different approach."

The memory of it all was going through his head that evening as he and Erik picked their way through that half-barren landscape towards Christine's house. The safest house they knew, offered up to them by her because her father had died in Frongoch, wrongfully interned, and she hated the English for it, hated that he should have to lie in foreign soil, that he had been taken from her in such a way. And Christine is only Raoul's age, but she has been on her own for four years now, and the thought of Raoul being left alone like that—

He refuses to let himself to think of it.

(He suspects that Raoul might be sweet on Christine, and he suspects that she might be sweet on Raoul in turn, and the thought of their innocent love is the brightest spark in these darkest of times.)

He slipped on a rock and Erik steadied him with a hand on his elbow, and that was when they heard the shots.

The shots, coming from the direction of Christine's house.

As long as he lives he knows he will never forget the sight of Raoul slumped against Christine on the floor, Sorelli's hands pressed to that hole beneath his collarbone, the blood so dark spattered on his pale face, on his throat, his head on her shoulder and eyes screwed shut, tears trickling down his cheeks as he gasped, chest heaving, each breath ragged.

The whisper of Erik's voice behind him, "I'll go for the doctor."

Falling to his knees beside Raoul, his shaking hands pushing Sorelli's out of the way to press into that hole, the blood welling between his fingers, Sorelli getting towels and the blood was so warm, so warm against his skin and there was someone saying something, someone whispering and it was only then he realised it was him, him whispering Raoul's name over and over, "Raoul Raoul Raoul," and Raoul's eyes flickered and opened, so blue in the pale of his face, the blood smeared on his cheek, and he smiled that thin smile he had when he was six, that thin ghost of a smile, and something like a sob caught in Philippe's throat that he swallowed down.

When Raoul tried to speak, he shushed him.

They cleared the table and the doctor examined him there. Put him to sleep with his case of drugs and stopped the bleeding and stitched the wound closed. And he didn't say it, but if the bullet had been over a little more, a little lower—

Philippe squeezed Raoul's fingers and stripped off his coat, his jacket, his vest, and peeled up his sleeve for the doctor to take his blood.

He felt the pinch of the needle in his arm, the tightness of the tourniquet, but all he could look at was the slackness of Raoul's face, the rise and fall of his chest.

And all he could think was, When they write about this they'll say it was absurd to operate on a boy on Christine Daaé's kitchen table. He laughed then, but it wasn't really laughing, it was weeping, and he turned his head into Sorelli's chest and she hold him as he shook.

Erik carried Raoul to the bed in Christine's father's old room, and when Philippe was steady, he followed.

How many times did Raoul wake, when he was just a little boy, and couldn't get back to sleep because the walls were closing in on him? How many times did Philippe wake, when he sensed more than felt the shifting of the bed, felt the little hand on his shoulder shaking him? And the whisper, "can I stay with you?" And he just nodded into the pillow, too groggy to speak, and shifted over, lifted the blankets, and felt that little body press in beside him and cuddle close, the head of curls tucked in under his chin. And he would wrap his arm around Raoul to keep him close and safe, and Raoul would try to wrap his little arm around him to hold on tighter (he must only have been five at the time), and Philippe would whisper, "sleep now," and Raoul would nod against him, and be out like a light.

He would lie awake, listening to his little brother breathe, and the feeling in his chest was beyond words, just this great swelling love for this little boy who was not supposed to have lived, but who was the most precious person in the world.

He closes his eyes, and listens to those breaths now, soft and slow from the morphine, and knows that for all that has happened, for all that must still happen and what might happen, that he must be the most blessed man in the world.

His brother is alive, is going to live. Right now, what right has he to demand more?

(He loves Raoul more than words can say, a love engraved deep in his bones, in his blood. Loves Sorelli and Erik equally and holds them in his heart. Loved Casement, once, and it was long in the past already before everything happened, a relic of the Congo in 1903, but there is room inside of him for them all, all of these people who have been the world to him.)

The Tans mistook Raoul for him, he knows that. They kicked open the door and shot so quick they mistook a seventeen year old boy for an almost-forty year old man.

That Raoul has almost died is his fault.

"The fault of British imperialism," Erik said, his eyes blazing. But Philippe knows the truth—he could try to free his country, but he could not keep his brother safe.

(Did Pearse feel this way, when he knew he had condemned his brother to death?)

He put a gun in his brother's hand and he hates himself for it.

He did not want Raoul to be part of this, but he knew there was no way to keep him out. He is his brother, and Ireland is his country too, and if he does not survive this war then Raoul is the one who will have to live on in the new world they're trying to create.

They will create it, they must.

A free Ireland for them all.

The thing he's dreamed of, since he first heard of 1798.

Since he first heard of his uncle Philip, his father's brother whose name he wears, hanged for a traitor in 1867.

Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori, they tell the boys they send off to fight in their wars. But his country is Ireland, and for Ireland and Raoul he will die if he must.

Not sweet or right or good, but his duty.

Erik kisses him, Sorelli holds him, Christine makes him eat.

Raoul rests, and wakes, and smiles faintly at him, and rests some more.

But he will be all right now. He will be all right.

If he had gone with Casement to America instead of staying to help bring the guns into Howth…

If he had insisted Pearse take heed and not fight…

If he had stood and fought with them…

If Raoul had not been so sick…

If he had been there at Banna Strand…

If he had been arrested…

If he had gone to London…

If their father had not followed their mother to the grave…

If… If… If…

His life a bundles of "if"s, questions, brought to this room, this chair, this blood beneath his nails, and the bullet that almost killed Raoul.

He is dozing, dreaming of a white sandy beach, of seagulls and a boy's laughter when he hears the commotion in the other room.

His hand goes to his gun, his gaze flickers to Raoul and sees he is still asleep, then the voices reach his ears and he breathes deeply.

Malley.

"…found MacThomáis…same shot de Chagny…Lynch wants…"

A lower tone, Erik. Philippe can picture him, the knitted brow, the ravaged half of his face in shadow, can't make out the words.

Sorelli, "He'll want to know."

He already knows. The men who shot Raoul, same as the ones who took MacThomáis. They must have word that he is still alive, when Malley has brought the news himself, and not sent one of Murray's boys.

A rescue party. He and Erik and Malley. How many times have they done this?

Collins organises the assassinations. They rescue the men who are taken, or shoot them if it is kinder. Working together, they will free a nation.

(Rescue or kindness? Which will this one be?)

He kisses Raoul's forehead, and releases his hand.

Christine will stay with him until they are back. Sorelli will be ready if the Tans come.

With any luck, he'll be back before Raoul wakes.