AN: May want to grab a tissue when you read this one. I'm out.

Thank you to DeDe324 for hand holding and listening to me whine about how unwhieldy Connor is.

Connor tried to make sense of this document in his hand. He stared at it until it the words all melted together into dark lines on a yellowed piece of paper.

Did this mean he was someone's unwanted bastard? Was he tossed out like rubbish? Thrown in a basket and left on the MacManus' doorstep with a note saying "Love him as your own"?

Skipping the now empty glass on the coffee table, Connor wrapped his lips around the end of the bottle, his eyes never leaving the paper that felt like a death sentence. Everything he knew of himself was a fucking lie. A perpetual lie built upon on a secret they kept hidden from him for 34 years.

Connor MacManus was not even a MacManus. Who the hell was he then? Who were his parents? His mother? Lady X? Some spindly girl of 14 who was promised love everlasting in exchange for one night's romp in the back of Daddy's car?

Maybe a wayward woman of the street who turned tricks in order to keep herself fed? Who became pregnant in a predominantly Catholic area that made it impossible to flush him down the drain like the unwanted thing he was?

A rape victim who couldn't face the child who was conceived out of hate?

Or worse yet ...was he the child brought into this world through incest? Connor's stomach boiled at the thought of being the direct result of an ugly, disgusting act such as child rape at the hands of her family. The alcohol and bile burned his nose as he tried to choke it back down. His eyes watered as he made for the window in the corner.

He struggled with the ancient latch as his stomach sent another push up his throat. At the last moment, he was able to get the window thrown open in time to lean out and splatter the overgrown bushes.

Eyes closed, he hung half out of the window for a few moments, allowing the cool air to temper his head and his heart, wicking the sweat that had accumulated on his face and arms away . He laid there until the pounding in his head stopped, and his heart quit racing. He tried to push the thoughts of who his mother was out of his mind and focused on the woman who had treated him like a son all those years.

Standing and closing the window, Connor moved to slump in her rocking chair in the corner, and reached for the whiskey with a shaking hand. He swished it through his mouth, cutting the horrid taste, before swallowing the fiery liquid. His stomach lurched at more alcohol, but he was able to keep this batch down.

Connor was in knots over the hell he and Murphy raised over the years. The grey hairs he caused his poor mother. Most of their more harebrained ideas were out of his brilliant schemes.

Tears long held at bay suddenly flowed down his cheeks. The hell he put that woman through... What kind of gratitude was that? She opened her home, and her heart to him and all Connor did was give her grief.

Should he even call her Ma? She treated him like her son but did he deserve it? Did he deserve that compassion?

Connor MacManus had been called any number of things in his 34 years , but a burden was not a word that sat comfortably on his shoulders. He was a burden on his poor birth mother, and he had to be given to someone else. He then became a burden on the MacManus family, especially after Da left. Ma was left to raise her own son as well as someone else's wretched kid.

No wonder his mother was always so vague as to which one was older. She must have known if she had admitted Murphy was the oldest, the boys would beg to know by how much.

At the same time, he was surprised she never let it be known that he was adopted during one of her benders. She was always letting out little secrets that should not see the light of day when she was drinking. How did this one never come out? Even when she was pissed at him and completely buckled, she never let this one go.

Why?

Why keep it from him? That's was probably the part that bothered him more than anything else. Why the secrecy? Why allow the boys to believe they were brothers, twin brothers even?

Why?

Connor took another long draw from the bottle in his hand, before going back to stare at the paper on the coffee table. He briefly shuffled through the papers behind it in the box as well as those in front, searching for another clue, but he found none.

With a disgusted huff, he stood and walked to the built in shelves by the fireplace. He grabbed a random picture album, took it back to the chair with him. The book in his lap, an all but empty bottle of whiskey in his hand, Connor traveled down memory lane, trying to find clues he missed along the way. He was certain he had not missed any, but he hadn't had this information as he did now.

He flipped through the book, his mind filling with with memories of his childhood, his family. Rarely was there a picture in there that held just one of the boys. They were always together. He paused at one image, the two of them on horseback. They couldn't be more than 3. Connor had his arms around Murphy, his own hands held the reins tight while Murph held onto the mane for support. Reaching out as if he could go back to that time through emulsion under his finger, Connor brushed his brother's face, his little brother. Tears sprung to his eyes, a lump formed in his throat.

But not his little brother.

Fuck.

Blinking to clear his eyes and his mind, Connor looked at the smiles, and tried to focus on the good times. But the memories that flooded his mind were not those that were documented in the black and white and color krome photos in his lap.

The day one of them found a black permanent marker and decided to color each other's tongue. Like always, he convinced Murphy to go first. They sat on one of the beds in their room, Murphy's tongue caught between Connor's finger and thumb as he tried to hold it still under the apparently ticklish brushes of the marker.

By the time he let go, the marker had run over the edges of Murph's tongue and formed a U-shaped goatee on his chin. Once Connor had stopped laughing, and Murphy was done pounding on him for making fun of him, the marker had bled onto Murphy's teeth. That resulted in a whole new laughfest as Murphy tried to wrestle the marker from Connor's grip to repay the favor.

By the time Ma got home, the marker was dry, and both brothers, the sheets of the bed and the wall behind them was covered in black slashes. It took them well over two weeks before the last of the ink disappeared from their skin.

Then there was the day they were about 8 or 9, he convinced Murphy to show Nola, the girl next door, his penis... by pushing it through a knot in the fence between their homes. That worked out well until the pretty 7 year old touched it, a lot. And Murphy liked it, a lot. When Ma called them inside for dinner, Murphy had a hard time [Connor had to laugh at the pun] pulling back through the rough-hewn board. He tried not to yell too much, but the amount of splinters that accumulated on his penis was too much for him and he finally let out a yelp that brought Ma from the house. Connor had heard Nola quickly disappear from the other side of the fence, but his mother saw her pretty curly head retreat.

"Whut has dat lil bitch done?" Ma asked. Murphy hid behind Connor as he tried to tuck his oversensitive member away. Their mother was not fooled by the protective stance Conn threw up and pushed him aside reaching for her dark haired son behind him. Murphy was red in the face as he tried to explain the half a dozen splinters buried in his penis. Connor was certain neither of them sat for almost 4 days after the beating they received for that one.

Murphy got in his fair share of brotherly abuse in. One day Ma left them home alone to go to work. It was one of the first times she left them home and not sent them off to stay with family or a neighbor. They were probably about 11, maybe 12. Connor got bored, and wandered out onto the roof. While he was out there, Murphy proceeded to lock every window in the upper part of their house, laughing on the other side of the glass once Connor realized he was screwed. He had walked out there at around 11 in the morning. Ma pulled back in the driveway after 6 and found him still crouched on the shingles, drenched from the rainstorm that passed through an hour earlier and Murphy napping upstairs.

And then there was the Moran home incident, the crown jewel of their nefarious youth. The abandoned Moran home sat just outside of town, and was a popular spot for teens to go and hang out. No one had live in that house for as long as the boys could remember, probably even longer than they had been around.

One day they, ok he, came up with a brilliant idea to build a fire in the ancient fireplace to try to warm them against the rain storm that was brewing outside. The fire was going good and strong by the time Connor had sweet talked Caoimhe out of her undies, finally getting her to relent to his charms. Suddenly a new burning smell filled his nose. Reluctantly pulling his eyes and mouth from her perfectly small breasts, he saw the floor around the fireplace in flames. Connor yelled for Murphy to unbury himself from between Nola's thighs, ignoring the twinge of jealousy at the thought Caoimhe still hadn't let him go that far with her yet. With the girls screaming loud enough to wake the dead, the two brothers tried to get the blaze under control. But it wasn't long before the dry floor boards were all snapping with flames and the four of them darted out into the rain, dashing for the car. Connor dropped the car into drive and tore away from the building like the devil himself was after them. Less than a mile from home, sirens rang out in the night. They looked behind them to find a cop car close. Connor had no choice but pull over. In a small town like this, the cop already knew it was him.

By the time Kevan Rafferty reached the window, the sound of multiple sirens filled the air, making the four teens looked at each other with wide eyes. "Evenin MacManus," Rafferty said, leaning down far enough to look at everyone in the car. "Where are ye off t'in such a hurry tonight?"

Connor licked his dry lips and thought up a quick lie. "Have t'get t'lasses back home 'fore curfew."

Kevan quirked an eyebrow at him. "Its hardly 10." He looked at Caoimhe in the passenger seat. "Your da want you in by 10?"

The brunette nodded, staring at her clasped hands in her lap.

He smirked before looking at Nola and Murphy in the backseat. Just 8 years older than the lot of them, Kevan had known the four of these kids since they were all in diapers, grew up next door to Caoimhe. He knew her father didn't give a rat's ass when she came in. He probably wouldn't even notice if she didn't come back home ever again; which was probably the main reason she took up with the fair haired MacManus brother.

Kevan narrowed his eyes at Connor, looking at the boy hard, noting how he stared out of the front window. "What are ye hidin, MacManus?"

"Nofin', sir," Connor had tried.

"T'ole Moran place is on fire, ye lot wouldn't happen to know anything about dat, would ye?"

The four of them were all quick to say no, making Kevan's hand twitch against the door handle. He stood and stepped back toward his own vehicle, about to call for assistance to come help him with the four of these miscreant teenagers when the radio squawked to life, calling for all officers to come help with crowd control at the fire. A good sound flame drew the public like nothing else, even with the rain in the air.

Rafferty had slapped his hand on the roof of the car and sent the four teens on their way before climbing back into his own car. With the evening shot, Connor dropped Caoimhe off before heading home. Later he sat on the hood of the car, smoking while he waited for Murphy to walk Nola home. He knew by the light on over the kitchen sink that their mother was up. And he didn't want to face her alone, especially if she had been drinking. One look at him and Ma would know what he had done. She always did. She always knew.

His Ma. But not his mother.

Chasing tears and demons with more whiskey, Connor continued to sift through the memories as the sun broke over the horizon as his world fell apart around him. Did it really matter if they weren't blood? His Ma was his Ma. And Murphy was his other half. Nothing could change that.

Or could it?