He has often wondered how it would have been if their parents had lived. He probably would not have been so close to Philippe. Philippe, the only person he had in his world. His big brother who kept him safe, who made it his duty to see to his every need, that he would always be happy, always be well. Philippe.

Philippe could have handed him off to someone else, some cousin or distant aunt. Spared himself the trouble of looking after a baby brother who had come into his life and thrown everything into disarray. Could have gone off on his adventures, back to the Congo maybe, or to Lisbon, or Brazil, but even thinking it Raoul knows Philippe would never have done it. He cannot imagine him having sought work in the consul's office, having done anything to help His Majesty's Government in any way. His desire for Irish freedom was too deep, too much a part of him, for him to have done anything but fight the system.

Besides, he cannot imagine Philippe ever abandoning him. It was not in his brother's nature. He never once doubted that Philippe would always be there, never once doubted that he would always bring him with him, if he could. If it was safe.

If their parents had lived, maybe Philippe would have fought in the Rising, would have donned his uniform and checked his guns and led men into battle on the streets of Dublin. And maybe they would have arrested him afterwards, and put his name down for execution before they sent him to Frongoch instead.

Or maybe they would have taken him out and shot him like the others.

(Hypothetical as it is, as long ago as it is, Raoul feels ill to think of it.)

It sounds a terrible thing to say, sounds awful, but maybe it was for the best that their parents died when they did. That they could not worry about the things they did, what they got involved with. Better this way, when in 1916, his appendix kept Philippe out of the fighting.

The one time he was able to save his brother.

He has no doubt that Philippe should be standing here today, and not him. And maybe him too, but only beside his brother. His brother who maybe wouldn't be able to stand up straight now, if he were here. Who would be bent with age, with old wounds. Or maybe he would be standing prouder than de Valera, his jaw set and firm, the way it only ever got when he was trying to keep himself from crying.

(Raoul remembers that set jaw, hazy through the net of his lashes, in those last days, when he had burned with fever, and was too weak to stay awake.)

Pathetic fallacy they call it, don't they? When the weather reflects the mood?

That there should be damp sleet today when the last days have been so fine…

It is proper to look at the person who is speaking, he knows. Respectful. It was drilled into him in school. But his eyes keep drifting to the coffin, draped in the tricolour. Such a big coffin when it only contains bones. As if they are all a little bit pretending that forty-nine years have not passed since this funeral should have been held.

A little bit pretending, but how he aches to turn to Philippe, and take his hands, and tell him they've finally brought Casement home.

He swallows hard against the tightness in his throat, and leans heavier on Christine's arm.

He remembers Casement better than he remembers his father. To be expected, really, when his father is a faint shadow in his memory, with soft hands and smelling of cigar smoke. But he remembers Casement, remembers him coming to see Philippe, this tall man with his beard who seemed all the taller for how small Raoul was. He would come to visit, when he was back from London or Brazil or Peru or wherever he had been, and he and Philippe would shut themselves into Philippe's study for a long time, and talk so low that Raoul, trying to eavesdrop at the door, couldn't make out more than snatches of words. But Raoul didn't mind, because seeing Casement made Philippe so happy, and he knew his brother had been with the man in the Congo.

(The Congo was one of the first places Raoul could pick out on a map, after Ireland, because Philippe would tell him stories about the things he'd seen, the animals, the monkey who would steal glasses of alcohol and get drunk, and Casement's bulldog John who commandeered the captain's cabin on the ship and refused to let the man in. Surely the angriest dog who ever existed, but how Raoul loved hearing about him.)

(He always loved when he was allowed to listen in, so long as he stayed quiet on the floor, and he could sit there and listen to them talk for hours, these stories swirling around him, and how grown-up it made him feel.)

The last time Casement came to visit, the summer of 1914, before the gunrunning, before the whole world turned, when he was getting ready to go to America, Raoul remembers Philippe embracing him before he left, and he wonders, now, has wondered a good many times in all the fifty years since, if some part of Philippe knew it would be the last time.

He made a study of Casement, in 1929. Just for himself, because he felt like he should. He didn't care about the diaries because he knew them to be true even if nobody else wanted them to be (and although pieces of them have been published he has refused to read them, just like he has refused to read those biographies of the man, except for Monteith's record of what happened).

Why would he want to read these books when he knows the things they won't include, and what they will try to deny?

So he made his own study of Casement, and of Philippe. And though it did not ease the ache in his chest for his brother, it did feel like relief.

Ruairí Ó Dálaigh. The name he used through the civil war, whenever he needed to be someone else for a while. For a time, he had been one of the most wanted men in the country. A dubious honour for someone barely 19 years old.

Ruairí, Irish for Roger, for Casement and Philippe both.

(Philippe had called himself Mac Easmainn, when they were fighting the Tans, when he needed to not be de Chagny, and so it felt right, in the civil war, to use the other half of Casement's name.)

Ó Dálaigh, Irish for Daly, which sounds just enough like Daaé, the closest he could find. For Christine, his dear lovely Christine, always waiting for him. Always ready.

He would be lost without her.

He was in the kitchen, in the kitchen of Christine's little cottage. The evening was closing in, sky salmon-pink and bruised purple, still light to the west. Philippe and Erik would be back soon from meeting Lynch, and Sorelli was in the back room.

Only he and Christine in the kitchen, and he smiled at her. They were at an awkward stage, halfway between friendship and romance, and he was hoping to take them fully to romance, even as he wondered if it was right to become involved with a girl in the middle of a war.

But he loved her. And he knew that with a certainty clearer than almost anything else he had known in his life, and he had to try.

(They say that seventeen year olds can't fall in love, not really, that they're too young, but he did and he's never regretted it. Though he will admit, everything with Christine has always been exceptional.)

"What would you say," he asked her, in that evening light in her kitchen, "if I asked you if you would be inclined to kiss me?"

She quirked her brow, and smiled at him. "I would say that you were very sure that you had earned it."

She was very close to him, close enough that he could kiss her if he wanted, and his gaze flicked from her lips to her eyes. "How could I earn it?" he whispered, and her smile was soft, her hand light, brushing his hand.

"Bring me flowers."

And he nodded, and was about to go to the door to go out and pick those purple flowers by the wall, when the door burst open.

He was falling before he ever heard the shot, before he ever heard the screaming, and the pain that tore through his chest was more than he could breathe around.

He gasped, and tasted blood in his mouth, iron and salt, and felt the drumming of boots.

When Sorelli told him, in the spring of 1928, that she was expecting a baby, he hugged her, and kissed her, and told her she could use Philippe's name for the child, if she wanted.

She smiled at him, her eyes just a little damp, and told him he would want Philippe's name for his own child.

("You have as much right to it as I do," he whispered, and squeezed her hand.)

Erik was a nervous wreck all through the pregnancy, worried something would happen to Sorelli, because she was far from being a young mother, worried the baby would inherit his face, but in the end there was no need to worry, on either count.

Philomena Constance O'Raghallaigh was born in late October in 1928, with a perfect face, and her mother's eyes, and named for the man who could have been her father, in a kinder world.

Raoul knew even then, even at seventeen (knew even at fifteen), that Erik and Sorelli were both his brother's lovers. He didn't care, the right or the wrong of it, because it was what he knew and because they both made Philippe happy.

One of his last clear memories of his brother is of him kissing Erik in Christine's kitchen, that morning before they went up the mountain to meet Lynch.

He pretended to be reading the newspaper, but he was smiling behind it.

He has always been relieved that his own son did not come early like he did, but went to full-term, and a little over it. He doesn't think he could have borne it if he had been told his little boy was unlikely to live.

1 September 1934. The day he became a father. The day he first cradled Philippe Ruairí in his arms.

(They call him Ruairí, but he always signs both of his names, his own honour to the uncle he never knew.)

When Christine was sleeping, after her ordeal, he sat down by the fire with his tiny boy in his arms, wrapped up in blankets, just his face and one little hand free, that hand free only because he kept pulling it from his wraps no matter how Raoul tried to tuck it in. And Raoul traced his finger over those soft knuckles, and it was then that the tears he'd been fighting all day welled in his eyes, then when he didn't have Erik to keep him distracted, to hug him as if it would keep all of his pieces from coming apart.

(They had not spoken of who was missing, of who the baby would be named after.)

And the tears came, as he held his son close, and he let himself think of Philippe, let himself ache for him to be there, the ache he had been fighting all day alongside the worry and the fear.

"I wish you could meet him," he whispered, to both Philippes, the one in his arms and the one long gone, and the baby whimpered against his chest, as if he knew of the grief in his father's heart.

Raoul swallowed, and kissed his little boy's forehead, and promised, then and there, that he would always keep him safe.

He remembers that long journey back to Dublin, hardly being able to breathe at all. Who was driving them? Someone Christine knew, someone who could be trusted. Sorelli had gone on the train, with Phi—with the coffin carrying Philippe, playing the part of the grieving widow, though it wasn't playing, not really. And he was in the back seat of the car, all of this pressure in his chest and most of it not from the wound, feeling outside of his own body, not feeling very much of anything at all.

The two solid points, reminding him this was real – Christine's hand wrapped around his own, Erik's fist, clenched in his lap, his face as pale and ravaged as Raoul felt.

One of his favourite photographs sits on his desk. Philippe and Sorelli, February 1916. Him in his Volunteers uniform, a Boer hat casting an aspect of knowing imperiousness to his face, tall and proud, a revolver at his hip and hand resting just above it. Her, her Irish Citizen Army uniform, and the trousers was one of Philippe's tailored to fit, her high leather boots, hair pinned back and face set, dressed for battle, dressed to lead men, a broad-brimmed hat shading her face.

The finest picture of a couple he has ever seen.

Beside it there is another one. September 1918, at the beach. Philippe and Sorelli and Erik lying in the sand, each of them laughing, Philippe's hand shading his face from the sun. It was Brittas Bay and there are the grassy mounds behind them, and it was taken with Erik's Ensign Deluxe, and he knows that because he was the one who took it after Erik showed him how to use the camera, and he felt so proud, his first time take a photograph.

Another one, he and Philippe in a photography studio, surrounded by books. He was about seven, so Philippe was twenty-nine, each of them dressed in their best, because once or twice a year Philippe would insist they have their photograph properly taken. He never did ask why.

(He wishes now he had.)

Ones, too, of him with Christine, him with Ruairí, the three of them together. Christine and Erik and little Connie, not so little now, all grown up. One that Ruairí was obsessed with when he was small, of Philippe and Casement in the Congo, sitting in wicker chairs under a tree, probably in Boma, both of them dressed in white so that Casement's beard looks twice as dark, twice as conquistadorial, and Philippe just looks so young, his hair seeming twice as light, a little long around his ears.

It is, he thinks, one of the only photos he has of Philippe without those webbing lines around his eyes, put there from time, and worry.

(Put there, mostly, by him.)

He was one of the first to know, about bringing Casement back. Ruairí had gone to England, to do something he couldn't talk about, highly classified, and Raoul figured it was some sort of government work, so he didn't press him.

The call came through late at night. Raoul answered it, groggy with sleep, Christine pale beside him because neither of them have ever expected night-time calls to bring good news. And he did think something had happened, with the way Ruairí was crying on the line.

"We did it, Dad," and through the tears there was a smile in his voice. "We've dug Casement up."

(Like something illegal, he said when he got home the next evening on the flight that carried the coffin, and by then the world knew. An exhumation in the prison grounds under cover of darkness, the guards and prison doctor, and he saw some of the prisoners trying to watch out the windows with cracks of mirrors. But they dug Casement up from where he'd been buried in that unmarked grave in quicklime, and when Raoul asked if they were sure they had the right bones, Ruairí nodded, and his smile was grim. "Very tall," and he swallowed, "and there was still some of his hair.")

He knew, too, knew long before he ever found the stash of old letters, that Casement had been Philippe's lover, once. They were dear friends when Raoul knew him, but in the Congo, and for a little while after, they had been a good deal more. And Raoul knows, because he asked Philippe about it, told him that he knew though he was only three-quarters certain. It was the winter of 1920, only a few months before—Before, and Philippe swallowed, and took a sip of his brandy, and told him. He has always been happy that he asked.

He found the letters a few years after it all, not long before he married Christine. Saw Casement's to Philippe, saw Philippe's addressed to "Roddie", and there on the floor of his brother's old room he lay down and wept.

He has read the letters, all of them, over the years. And it felt a little like prying, but he couldn't help himself, not when these were pieces of his brother, not when these were some of the last things he had of him.

He keeps the letters safe, and he has not decided yet what he will do with them at the end of his day, but he would never consider destroying them. They are too precious. And maybe, someday, the world will understand.

He remembers the Rising. Remembers being in his hospital bed, and the pain in his belly if he moved too fast, and the shooting outside, the tit-tit-tit of bullets, cracking boom of shells. And Philippe holding his hand, Philippe smiling at him, telling him stories when he woke, even though he was so pale, so tired himself, even though he must have been scared half to death, for Raoul, and for his friends out there fighting, and maybe he was wishing he could join them, could stand and die with them.

Raoul never asked. Maybe he would have, given more time.

He remembers hearing the names, MacDonagh, MacDiarmada, Plunkett, and realising that these were men he knew, these were Philippe's friends who had come to the house, and Plunkett always wore those little spectacles, and they would talk to Philippe in his study.

These men who were Philippe's friends, and they were dead because they had been executed, because they were trying to free Ireland.

(That was when he knew he would someday fight for his country, take up arms against the English, for Philippe and his friends if for no one else.)

That Erik, who used to bring him sweets and tell him stories when he came to see Philippe, had almost died and was now being sent to prison in Wales. That Sorelli, Sorelli, who was like a sister to him, who he helped to rehearse her lines for plays and she told him he was the best assistant, that Sorelli who he thought would marry Philippe and become part of the family was in prison too…

He hated it. Hated every minute of it.

He was never so happy as the day Sorelli was released, and came to stay with them.

(In all of his nightmares after the Rising, Philippe was the one getting shot.)

(In all of his nightmares after 27 March 1921, Philippe was the one getting shot. But it was not a nightmare anymore, because that was what happened.)

Hundreds of cards came after Philippe's funeral. Hundreds of them, from people he had helped, people who had known him, people who thought it was the very highest honour, to have died for Ireland.

He could not reply to them. He was far too ill. But Christine read him each one at his insistence, and he wept to know his brother had mattered to so many people.

He kept each one and when it was all over he replied to them. His duty to his brother.

He did not, at first, realise that he had been shot.

Christine's face hovering above him, pale and blurred with tears. Sorelli so close, sharp pain, a pressure high in his chest as she pressed down and he retched, gagged on it, the room tilting, turning, upside down and Christine's shoulder beneath his head the only thing he knew and he closed his eyes and leaned into her, leaned in, that pain burning through him, and he was so cold, so cold…

Philippe's voice, Philippe's hands half-swallowed in the pain and he'd know them anywhere, know them, and he opened his eyes for to see his brother and he smiled at him, smiled so he'd know he was alright, know it was nothing, just a scratch, but when he went to tell him that Philippe shushed him and he couldn't remember seeing his brother so pale before, the lines so deep around his eyes, so deep…

He raised his hand for to trace them, touch them, and Philippe twined their fingers, and held on tight.

They had not wanted him to attend Philippe's funeral, but he had to. He had to. His brother's funeral. Where else could he be?

Hardly a week since he himself had been shot. It didn't matter the risk he might collapse. That he could burst his stitches (again) and start bleeding. That he wasn't well enough to be on his feet at all. His brother was dead. He had to go to his funeral. How could he ever live with himself otherwise?

Christine made sure he was bundled up well, his left arm still strapped to his chest, and he leaned on a cane, Christine on one side of him, Sorelli on the other should he need to be steadied. A damp, miserable grey day, Erik carrying the coffin with men Raoul can't remember, his face pale and eyes rimmed red, but he did not cry, would not let himself cry, so Raoul didn't either.

He saved his tears for after. After, when he collapsed into bed and didn't leave it for three week, and didn't sleep much either, even when his fever came back, even when the threatening infection flared in his wound.

Sleeping meant watching Philippe choking on his own blood again.

Appropriate, really, to bury Casement in Glasnevin, when Philippe's grave is only a few rows away.

Philippe stayed in bed all day the day they executed Casement. Philippe hadn't wanted to tell him, but he had to because everyone was talking about it, and around noon that day Sorelli came down to the kitchen and had a cigarette and made tea. He hadn't been able to eat all day, not when he knew what was happening, not when that word hanged seemed to contain so much. So when Sorelli was making tea, he went up to Philippe's room. The curtains were pulled so that it all seemed cast a little pink with the sunlight filtering through, and Philippe was lying there on his back with his eyes closed.

He didn't stir when Raoul crawled into bed beside him (and Raoul was twelve then, almost thirteen, and starting to get tall) and pressed himself close. But when Raoul took his hand, Philippe wrapped his arm around him and drew him closer, and his cheeks were damp with tears.

That was when Raoul started to cry, and the two of them stayed there like that until they cried themselves to sleep, safe in each other's arms.

The next morning Philippe got up, and made breakfast, and read the newspaper with the stern look he wore when he was upset, and it was almost as if the world could be normal again.

That day on Banna Strand with Philippe. Easter 1920. Cold and damp, the waves crashing on the shore, wind whipping around them, tearing the tears from their eyes.

Philippe pale and gaunt. The wound in his arm had gotten infected, he was carrying it in a sling. And his skin burned with fever in contrast with the cold when Raoul took his hand, but the tears in his eyes had nothing to do with the wind or the pain or the cold.

And Raoul knew he was wondering, if he had been there that Good Friday in 1916, if it would have made any difference.

(Raoul does not hold his appendix responsible for Casement's death. That would be ridiculous. But he cannot pretend he has not wondered if Casement might have been saved, if Philippe had been here.)

(A part of him agrees with Monteith—kinder, to have let Casement drown in the waters of Banna Strand when his malaria flared, as he almost did, than to have saved him to be sent to the scaffold.)

(When Raoul went to Banna Strand, alone, in 1926, he sat down on the sand and closed his eyes, and conjured up Philippe's face as it was that day, gaunt and pale and shadowed with the stubble of his beard, and with his brother in his mind's eyes he whispered, "we'll get him back," a breath, "I promise.")

How it tormented Philippe, that Casement should lie in a prison grave in British soil.

How Raoul knew, that summer of 1916, that there was something different in his brother, something he was powerless to fix, that could never be the same again.

(He hopes, deep down, that this day's work, this funeral, can finally bring peace to his brother's memory.)

He couldn't stay in school. How could he? Knowing Philippe was out there fighting, for him and for Irish freedom. Knowing that the other boys knew. And most of them kept quiet, most of them didn't say anything. Liam just squeezed his hand every time there was news of another killing, another Republican dead.

But it was the ones who didn't keep quiet, the ones who taunted him with words like murderer, fool, killer, because they had never liked him, never liked him and the freedoms Philippe gave him, the things he had that they didn't. So they whispered these things to him when there was no one listening, and he couldn't stand it anymore, he couldn't stand it. He was only still there because Philippe wanted him to be safe. What good was it being safe when he had to listen to that? What good was it being safe when out there Philippe could be dying?

(Some of them had brothers who had died fighting the Germans. That Philippe was fighting the English, fighting the men their brothers had stood alongside, galled them.)

The night Foster called Philippe a murderer and a homosexual was the night Raoul broke his nose for him, and the night he knew he would have to go.

(It wasn't that Foster might have known, he was just trying to be hurtful, trying to slander a man better than his brother ever could have been. And Raoul didn't tell him that he didn't care if his brother was a homosexual or not, that he was glad to know he loved Erik, that it was a comfort to know there would always be someone at Philippe's back to keep him safe. How could he tell him that? Foster would never have understood.)

After he was shot, after he woke, he couldn't find Philippe, couldn't find him for the longest time, but then he was there.

There every time he opened his eyes, one hand soft in his hair, other hand in his, his voice low, a whisper. The blankets were so heavy, weighing him down, and he thought there should be pain but he couldn't find it, too tired to really hear Philippe's words, only know he was there, and that was enough.

He thinks he told him that, told him he was glad, and a tear trickled from Philippe's eye, and he pressed his face close, and it was easier to sleep, easier with Philippe beside him, but why Philippe was crying, he couldn't know.

One time he woke, and Philippe wasn't there, only Christine. And she looked so pretty, in the dim light, her fingers gentle squeezing his, and he thinks he told her that, how pretty she was. And she smiled at him, a thin watery smile, and said she was glad to hear it, and that Philippe would be back soon.

He remembers their whispers: "…sorry for…bleeding on your floor…" "…doesn't matter, I promise…" "Have I—" and she kissed him, and her lips were so soft, so sweet on his, and he gasped into her mouth, and closed his eyes, and it didn't matter that his heart was racing in his chest, didn't matter until she pulled back and kissed his forehead and there were tears damp on her cheeks. "…didn't…get you flowers…"

"You will," she whispered, "you will."

And he closed his eyes, her fingers soft on his cheek, as she sang him back to sleep.

(He buys her flowers once a month, to earn that kiss she gave him all those years ago.)

He prefers to remember Philippe tall. On summer evenings and cool spring mornings and bundled up against the autumn chill. Prefers to remember him happy, well. Prefers to remember him by the fire, and in the garden.

Prefers to remember him at his best, not bleeding to death on Christine's table.

"…that that man is in heaven, I hope, with all the other Irishmen who have given their lives for our country."

De Valera finishes his speech, and the crowd applauds, and all Raoul can see through his blurred vision is Philippe's face. Philippe's soft smile, and he knows that wherever he is, Philippe is at peace, with all the others too.

He takes one last look at the coffin before they start lowering it down, and closes his eyes against it.

It was years before Erik could speak at all of Philippe's death. Years before he could open his mouth to tell about it, and have words come, not just a moan that made him close his eyes against the pain.

The Tans were watching for them. MacThomáis was already dead, the information wrong. The shooting started before they were ready. The bullet clipped Erik's forehead and he was half-blind with blood. Malley's arm was bleeding but he was still firing. They sheltered behind a stone wall. The shots cracked flakes of stone that tore their faces. Erik thought he heard Philippe moan and his shots faltered. A wet choking cough beside him but he couldn't see, still firing. Philippe still firing. Malley still firing. So much dust he couldn't see. Malley dropping his gun, no more rounds. Philippe stopped, lying flat in the dirt, gasping. Erik down beside him, trying to stop the bleeding, two holes, belly and chest, but Philippe just shook his head, shook his head.

They heard the Tans go, the exchange of voices, but all Erik could see was Philippe's face pale in the moonlight.

Malley helped him lift Philippe onto his back and ran for the doctor. Erik carried Philippe home.

Raoul woke to voices, rushed and fast, words indistinguishable. Woke to light bright around the edges of the door. Woke alone.

His heart pounding. Something wrong, something terrible.

The voices. Erik, "…ambushed…Malley the doctor…" Sorelli, "…get him down here…" Christine, "…towels…water…" And a voice so faint he couldn't make out who it belonged to, "…the priest…"

The cold creeping fear in his chest. Erik, half-hysterical, "You don't need the priest!"

Someone hurt, someone hurt, and only one person could make Erik sound like that.

He was on his feet before he had time to think, the room swaying, tilting, but he didn't care, didn't care. Philippe was hurt, Philippe, he had to be with his brother, he had to.

He lurched to the door, stumbled, caught the handle to steady himself, and jerked it open.

His head spun when he saw what lay beyond.

Erik, covered in blood, leaning over someone stretched on the table, hands pressed to their chest, their belly. Christine gathering towels, Sorelli with a syringe and a bottle of morphine.

Hair. That blond hair, the same as his. Philippe's hair.

The colour all drained from the room, the voices faded, and he swayed, swayed, and the next he knew he was sitting in a chair, sitting in a chair beside the table, watching the blood well up between Erik's fingers, listening to his brother gasp.

He fumbled for Philippe's hand and squeezed it. The answering squeeze was so weak he almost didn't feel it.

"…be in bed…" Philippe's voice faint and he looked into his brother's face, bone pale, the blood smeared over his cheek, from his lips, those eyes so blue, so blue looking back at him, and he shook his head.

"Need to be with you," he whispered, his voice hoarse with the tightness in his throat, the tears blurring his eyes that he tried to blink away. Philippe's lips twitched, just slightly, as if he might smile, and then he coughed and frothy blood dribbled down his chin.

"Erik," that voice fainter than a moment before, and Raoul saw the tears that shone in Erik's eyes, his lips twisted, as he looked at Philippe, "stop. No…point."

"Philippe—"

But Philippe shook his head. "Dying…anyway. Feel it. Just let…me see you." Each word an effort, his breaths getting shallower, and Raoul wanted to tell him to stop, tell him to save his strength and let Erik help him, but when he opened his mouth the words wouldn't come only a moan of pain, and then Philippe was whispering again. "Straighten…my legs." And Raoul's blood was cold, cold when he saw the stricken look on Sorelli's face, everything fallen away, when he saw that Philippe's legs were already straight.

The bullet that punched through his belly had shattered his spine.

It was all Raoul could do not to be sick.

But Philippe was whispering again, whispering, "S'relli," and Sorelli was at his side, smiling through the tears, and she kissed his cheek and stroked back his hair, and Erik kissed his face, and Philippe was whispering to them, telling them he loved them, and Raoul couldn't see this, couldn't listen, closed his eyes against it as if that would make it not real, and Christine's arms came around him and he leaned into her, Philippe's grip so faint in his.

And he heard, "Christine," and her answering whisper, "I'm here," and Philippe's breathing ragged, "take care…my brother…" And Raoul felt her nod. "I will, I promise."

"Raoul," and he blinked his eyes open again, blinked his eyes open in time to see the tear that trickled from the corner of Philippe's eye, his brother smiling at him, eyelids flickering, "Be good." So faint, so faint, and Raoul couldn't speak, his throat too tight, could only nod and kiss Philippe's hand and try to smile at him, and it was enough, it must have been enough, because Philippe nodded, and his eyes flickered shut, and he sighed.

Raoul squeezed his fingers tighter, and lay his head on Philippe's shoulder, and listened to the gurgling of each breath, each wheezing cough and shallow little gasp, listened to the blood dripping to the floor, listening to the pounding of his own heart, and everything was just blank and hollow, Philippe's fingers so slack, so cold in his.

And when the gasping stopped, when there was just the softest sigh, and silence, he willed himself to sleep. To sleep, and never wake up.

The doctor arrived too late to save Philippe's life, too late to do anything except check for a pulse that wasn't there, and stitch the cut above Erik's eye as the tears trickled down his face, and find that Raoul had burst his stitches, and was bleeding through his bandages.

(Raoul hadn't even noticed. He thought the blood was Philippe's.)

Erik spent that night sitting at Philippe's side where he still lay on Christine's kitchen table, covered up to his chin with Erik's big coat, wounds hidden, his eyes closed and body still, silent in death. Raoul didn't see it, back in bed half-conscious with his wound re-stitched, the fresh bleeding stopped, Christine holding his hand, her head on the pillow beside his, Sorelli at his other side, her face blank and a gun in her hand.

Sorelli told him about Erik afterwards, when he was well. How Erik had sat there all night with Philippe, in case the Tans came, in case they tried to take his body. And though Raoul didn't see it, he can picture it as clearly as if he were there. Erik, a gun in each hand, his clothes torn and stiff with Philippe's blood, with his own. His face white beneath a smear of blood, eyes red-rimmed and burning. Erik, ready to fight, ready to follow Philippe in death, if he must. To keep them safe.

They still have the table. The table that Philippe died on. Christine tried to persuade him to burn it, but something always stayed his hand, something that said such a thing should be kept, as a relic. It is covered with a white tablecloth, and there are purple flowers on it, and photographs. Himself and Philippe. Himself and Christine and Ruairí. Philippe and Erik and Sorelli. All of them happy, all of them young. And if someone lifted the tablecloth, and knew where to look, they could still see the bloodstains, could still see the place where Philippe's life bled into the table, where Raoul's own life tried to.

A macabre thing to keep, maybe. But it reminds him of what they fought for, reminds him of what they lost.

And he could never bear to part with it, when it is a silent memorial to his brother.

His brother died because of him. Of that he has no doubt. If he had not been shot, Philippe would not have been so tired. He would not have been weakened from giving blood to him. He would have been looking after himself.

Was it that he was reckless? Was it that he was slow? Did he feel guilty that he could not protect Raoul?

Raoul can never have an answer, will never know. What he does know is that Philippe died, and it was, in some way, his fault.

The guns boom their volley, in tribute to the man finally laid to rest, and Raoul sees Philippe behind his eyes, and feels the tear that trickles down his cheek.