Ericka POV

Blood. So much blood everywhere.

My hands were in latex gloves- attempting to assist the doctors and nurses as they tried to save people. My gloved hands were bloody.

My gloved hands didn't know what to do, so I stood there and stared.

Men were on gurneys and operating tables, people in desert cameo surrounding them. Everything was moving franticly. Lights, shouting and yelling-"Need three units of AB neg here!"- "Scalpel! Suction! Gauze! Clamp- Now, now, now!"

And beeping- so much goddamned beeping from every machine- a beep for every heartbeat. I wanted to make it stop. I wanted to scream and rip my hair out.

But the beeping was good. It meant he was still alive. The shouts of "We're losing him!" meant nothing so long as the machines still made that awful noise.

Beep. Beep. Beep. The tones were erratic, not keeping the steady rhythm they should have been.

Beep. Beep. Such an agonizing pause. I thought my heart would break waiting for that next beat.

Beep. Beep. Beep- another agonizing pause, followed by a steady tone. Someone had flat lined.

Not him, not him, no, no, no- anyone else but him. Not Erick. Not my fucking brother. No!

I shot straight up out of my bed. Panic flooded me- I looked at my hands, expecting to see bloody latex gloves- instead I saw my pale hands- ungloved and clean.

That fucking dream again. I took several deep breaths, begging the shaking to stop. Eventually I calmed down enough to get out bed and function. I pushed the dream to the back of my mind.

Guess it's time for another talk with God.

Going to a church- any quote 'house of God' would do- and praying, became my ritual for whenever I had that particular nightmare. It had become so common that that I was in church at least three times a week- it scared me a how frequent the nightmares had become, but it scared me even more that I had become so used to them.

I ventured out of my bedroom, peering around the corner after catching sight of a harry man snoring on my couch.

Oh. It's just Rocco. I shook my head, catching sight of Connor standing in the kitchen with a very hung-over looking Murphy. I had actually forgotten that the Saints of South Boston had crashed in my apartment- On my living room floor and in my bed. I inwardly groaned. The guys I had gone on dates with had never- never - seen the inside of my home, let alone been allowed in my bed. I must have been exceptionally drunk.

Wait- did we have sex? I racked my brain for the few fuzzy details I could think of- Memory loss- an unfortunate side effect of drinking for me. He spoke some language to me. Whatever tongue it had been, it had been pretty- I couldn't recall the exact words, but his voice came back to me- deep and lilting.

Oh God. I bit my lip. Between trying to remember if I had had a hot romp in bed with Connor and remembering how he spoke to me- and how he had kissed me outside my apartment the other night, before things went to shit- I was, well, you get the picture.

When was the last I got laid? Evidently, it had been a while, because I couldn't for the life of me remember. I turned on my heel and walked into the bathroom to shower, bound and determined to keep my mind out of the gutter.

You will NOT have sex with the hot Irishman. You will NOT have carnal relations with a vigilante, God driven killer. Bad, Ericka. Bad idea.

The mental chiding stopped halfway through my shower when the door opened and somebody walked in, seemingly oblivious to the fact that someone was in the shower. I peered around the curtain and watched as Murph threw up into the toilet. His jeans were stained with dried blood- a daunting reminder of Maria and her brother. I ducked back into the shower to allow him some privacy.

I heard another set of footsteps come into the bathroom. Someone was speaking in a language I didn't know- then I realized with a pang it was Connor- apparently trying to calm his brother. I stood still, out of the spray of the showerhead and listened. It was the same language he had spoken to me and- if I was assuming correctly – the one he had spoken to Murph last night. I smiled to myself. It was the same thing Erick would do to calm me down- though he spoke in German instead of the flowing language that both brothers seemed to know.

After a few minutes passed without Murphy retching, I heard them both get up and leave the bathroom. Quickly, I finished my shower, running to my room in a towel, praying that none of the guys could see me. I dried off and searched my room for clothes. Fashion had taken a back burner- something I was starting to deeply regret as I realized I had nothing but long sleeve shirts and scrubs. I rummaged through my closet and managed to come up with jeans and a black t-shirt. I dressed at lightning speed, proclaiming myself as 'good enough.'

I walked into the kitchen and found the twins sitting at the table. They were silent; Murphy stared into his cup of coffee and Connor was reading through the newspaper, or at least he looked it. His eyes were rather unfocused for someone who was engrossed in the front page. I cleared my throat, making both brothers jump.

"Anyone hungry?"

Twenty minutes later, I remembered why I lived off of pop tarts and take out- I couldn't cook for shit.

Somehow I had managed to burn both the scrambled eggs and toast, setting off my smoke alarm. Murph was in stitches as I frantically tried to shut off the appliance of doom.

"I thought women were supposed to be able to cook!" He cackled.

I threw a spatula at him. "Fuck off!"

Murph threw his head back and laughed even louder at me. Connor watched us from the sink, grinning ear to ear. I finally stood on a chair and ripped the detector from the ceiling and yanked out the batteries, throwing it on the table in triumph. It bounced off the table and landed on the floor, breaking into a few pieces. I winced. So much for getting my security deposit back.

"So…. What are we gonna eat now?" asked Murphy with a straight face. I glared at him. "I mean, come now. We can't cook. That's woman's work ya know."

I opened a cabinet and threw a box of pop tarts at him, hitting him square in the forehead. "Bon appétit, monsieur." Murph grumbled and walked sulkily to the patio to smoke, taking the pop tarts with him.

Connor chuckled, picking up the pan I had attempted to cook with. "Sorry about him. He's a bit of a prick when he's hung over." He grinned down at me. "Nice shot by the way."

I grinned back. "Thanks." I grabbed the skillet of out his hand and started scrubbing it in the sink. A few moments of silence passed. I became very aware of Connor's presence next to me. Heat rushed to my cheeks and I concentrated my scrubbing on a crusty section of the pan.

Connor put a hand on my arm. "I think it's clean, aingeal." I looked up at him and saw him staring at my forearm. "Nice ink." He said.

I glanced down at my arm and saw the tattoo I went to great lengths to cover up- the word 'conviction' in a cursive font. I then noticed that he had tattoo on his hand- 'veritas'- and an elaborate Celtic cross on his arm. My eyes flickered up to his neck, where I saw a caricature of a saint.

I felt an 'oh duh' moment as I registered his tats. Why or how I hadn't noticed any of them was beyond me. I cleared my throat and pulled my arm out of his grasp. "Yeah. You too."

I put away the skillet and moved onto cleaning up the beer cans lying all over the kitchen table. The fact that I had a tattoo all but escaped my mind- most of the time it was covered up. I felt Connor's eyes on me.

"What's the story behind it?"

I paused in my cleaning. "Behind what?"

"Your tattoo."

I sighed, not looking at him. "It was the last thing my brother said to me before he died."

He frowned. "Thought you said you didn't have any siblings."

"None that are living." I threw away the beer cans and moved onto the fragments of the smoke detector. "One brother was killed in a drug deal, the other one died in a bombing in the sandbox."

I didn't miss his accusing look. "Why didn't you just say that when it came up the other night in conversation?"

My temper hit its boiling point. I stood straight up and glared right back at him. "Because it's kind of a mood killer on a first date, don't you think?" I snapped. "What did you want me to say? 'You have a twin brother? That's cool, my brothers are worm food.'" I clenched my jaw, trying hard to calm down. "Any further questions, your honor?"

Connor's stony gaze softened. He put his hands on my shoulders. "Tá brón orm, aingeal. Just trying to look out for me and Murph. Our trust isn't something we just hand out, you know." He paused, looking thoughtful. "Come to think of it, I don't know much at all about you."

I sighed, raising my hands in defeat as I recognized that he had a very valid point. "Look, I'll tell you anything you want to know. Anything."

He pulled me into a hug and I felt the last of my anger and tension melt away. He kissed the top of my head before letting me go.

"Tell me when you're ready, love. I'm not in a hurry."

I looked up at him. "No, I'll tell you now. No sense in delaying the inevitable." I resumed my cleaning as I talked, detaching myself from the situation. "My brother, Phillip, decided to get involved with drugs back in high school. He moved to Dallas- we lived in Texas at the time- and he got in deep with the wrong people. Got himself all shot to hell. Happened when I was still in middle school. Erick, my other brother- my twin-" I amended. "Died in a car bombing when he was deployed to Iraq."

Connor raised his eyebrows. "Erick and Ericka? Parents were real original, weren't they?"

I managed a smile. "Yeah. Didn't know they were going to be raising twins until after we were born. They weren't big fans of modern medicine." I shrugged. "Guess at the time they were just too damn lazy to come up with separate names for us."

Connor snorted before moving onto his next question. "You were both military?"

"Yeah." I nodded my head absently. "Joined at the same time, trained and deployed together. Same unit, different jobs. He was a ground pounder. Infantry." I clarified, remembering Connor wasn't likely to understand military slang. "Hell of a lot smarter than that- Could've worked in intelligence- he taught himself German, had a 4.0 in school- but that was the job he had wanted to do since he was ten years old."

I absently ran a hand through my mane of hair. "I followed him into the service. Not like I had many other options. Our mom ran off when we were young, and dad dropped dead of a heart attack middle of our senior year. Eric was all I had. Why wouldn't I follow him?"

By this point, the kitchen was spotless. I paced back and forth in a straight line, trying to keep myself from getting worked up and teary eyed. I was telling him facts about myself. Simple as that. Not something to get all emotional about. Happened years ago. Against all of my self-restraint, the words started to pour out of my mouth. Rambling. I'm rambling. Somehow, I couldn't care.

"I asked him right before we signed up if he was sure it was something he wanted to do. And he said that he had never felt so convicted about anything in his life. I told him right before he died that I was getting out when I got back to the states, that I couldn't take the carnage anymore. I begged him to reconsider, but he was so goddamned adamant about staying in. I asked him, 'why in the fucking world would you want to do this shit anymore?' and he said to me, he said, 'Because, Ericka, it's what I fucking believe in. I stand for something. You might have heard of it- It's called conviction.'"

I felt the tears burning in my eyes. "Next time I saw him, he was on a fucking operating table and I was supposed to fucking put him back together again. I didn't know what the fuck to do. It wasn't like he was just some other G.I that I was supposed to work on. He was the man I had grown up with and had known my whole life- and I couldn't do anything. I just stood there and watched him die."

Connor rose from his chair and pulled me into him. He held me tightly as I cried silently into his shoulder. "I'm sorry, love. I'm sorry." Over and over again, he spoke the words in various languages, trying to comfort me. The same thought repeated itself in my mind.

I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry.

AN- I'm sorry this chapter had to revolve so much around Ericka and her past- I felt like she needed to have a storyline that would explain why she had gravitated so quickly to the MacManus twins. I had a hard time writing this chapter, and I'm sure you guys as readers had a hard time reading it as well. (Thank you for slugging through it! You're the best!) Rest assured- next chapter will be full of – as Murph would put it- "gratuitous violence.