Disclaimer- Don't own BDS or any part of it, yada yada

AN- OMG! We're getting close to the end here! Please review- it makes me write faster! :)

Connor POV

Murphy was pissed. Not slightly peeved, not annoyed, not even let down. Just flat out pissed off.

"What the fuck, Ericka? You said you were in!" He threw his arms up in frustration, flinging his bag across Ericka's normally immaculate living room, which was now strewn with medical supplies, guns and ammo. Roc and I looked up from packing to watch the shouting match going on; I was thankful Ericka happened to be the sole tenant of the dilapidated apartment building- it would be hard to explain to the cops why my brother and girlfriend were fighting- "Sorry Officer- They were fighting over whose gun was whose and it just escalated from there."

Ericka gave Murph an icy glare that would have stopped any other man- including myself- in his tracks. "Alright, fine. I'll come with you guys and leave the ER high and dry. Forget the fucking eight car pile-up on the highway , no big deal."

Murphy, however, seemed to be either immune or oblivious to her death glare. "You can always go into work when we're done with this shit." He dug through his bag, silently counting and taking inventory. Ericka narrowed her eyes at him, grabbing her coat from the hook by the door. "Won't take that long."

"Yeah, Murph. Ya know what? I'll call into work and tell them to have the patients 'hurry up and wait to die' because one of their nurses happens to be off assisting a couple vigilantes." She spat at him.

Murphy gnawed on his thumb, pacing in a circle. "You're fucking ditching us here, that's what's going on." He broke into an odd mix of Gaelic and German. Ericka put her hands on his shoulders. "Beruhige dich." Murph stopped his pacing and stared down at her. "You guys will be fine without me on this one. They won't." She looked at me meaningfully, pulling her coat on over her scrubs. "Be careful. Don't get shot." She rushed out the door, no doubt sprinting to work.

I had to admit, as Roc drove the beat up black van we had 'borrowed' to the house where our latest job was going to take place, it was pretty good advice to keep in mind. Goal of the day: Do not get shot, stabbed or otherwise wounded.

We parked down the street from the house, and after seeing a kid leave the garage on a bike, we moved quickly into the garage, shutting the door and letting Roc lead us to where we needed to go. Everything ran in a blur for a while. I didn't pay much attention as we snuck around, as we forced the woman of the household to punch in a security code and then proceeded to taze her, as we waited with baited breath for them to open the door for us to let us in, as Roc looked around the room full of criminals and uttered the words, "All of them." I was shooting, Murphy was shooting, Rocco was shooting- it didn't phase me much, as if pumping lead into people was a mundane day to day activity, like taking out the trash.

As soon as every man in the room was down , we dropped our bags and started pulling out pennies to place over the eyes of every dead man. Rocco started to flip a shit. "Shit! Shit! He ain't here!"

"What the fuck you mean he's not here?" barked Murphy.

"He's not here!"

"Well look again for fuck sakes!" I snarled.

"I know what the fuck he looks like!" shouted Roc. The door opened behind him.

"Behind you!" Roc jumped and aimed his gun at the man behind him. The man, from what I could tell was a short and creepy looking motherfucker- rose tinted shades and all. Roc fired his gun at the guy, but apparently he had thought ahead, padding his stomach and chest with a towel from the bathroom and wielding a metal something; The guy was definitely a professional killer.

"Oh shit!" Yelled Roc and he ran across the room. The guy with the shades jumped on Rocco's back. "Shoot this motherfucker!"

Murphy ran after and tried tugging the guy off of Rocco. Fucking hell. I grabbed Murph by his shoulders and pulled him away from the grabbling men. He yelled obscenities as he fought to get out of my grasp. "No!" I yelled at him. "Fucking let 'em go!" I looked to Roc, who was wrestling the man. "Now's your fucking chance to earn your stripes!"

Murph gestured at them. "What- are you fucking kidding me?"

I pushed him back. "It was your idea to bring him in!" Murph yelled words of encouragement to Roc, though I was still holding him back. "Now's your fucking chance, man!" I caught something moving out of the corner of my eye. I let go of Murph and grabbed a gun, going over to the corner where a man was moaning in pain. He stared at me with wide, cloudy eyes. I tried to ignore the look on his face as I pulled the trigger, the bullet that landed in his head finally ending his life. I caught the bullet case in the air and crossed myself, saying a silent prayer for the man's soul. I turned back to the fight behind me with our mantra of evil men, dead men playing through my head.

Murph rolled a cue ball across the floor to Roc. He grabbed for it and then he finally got the upper hand. He hit the guy in the face with the cue ball over and over, rising from the ground and throwing the man onto the couch. "Sick fuck! Sick! Fuck!" He yelled. Murph and I watched as he beat the guy to a bloody pulp. Roc got up and lunged at me. "Good job, you did good-"

"AH, fuck you!" he screamed, swinging at me. I stepped out of the way and pushed him onto the pool table, waiting for the adrenaline to leave his system. "Taking a fucking deep breath there, Roc." I grabbed his chin and held it firmly in place. "You did good, it was nicely done." He was still bugging out on me hardcore. I put my gloved hand over his mouth and kissed it, then promptly walked away to tend to the dead, figuring that I had finally gotten my point across. Roc layed across the pool table while Murph and I placed pennies and prayed, panting heavily, but at he had finally calmed down.

As we packed up our gear, Murph turned to me. "D'ya think I was too hard on Ericka?" He asked, chewing his lip. I shook my head. "Maybe a bit irrational on your part, but I'm a bit miffed she wasn't here." I admitted.

Roc stood over us, bag slung over his shoulder, shades already in places. "Ericka wouldn't leave us high and dry- she knew we'd be fine. Don't get your panties in a twist, jesus." He looked around at the dead bodies in the room. "I need a beer after this shit." He muttered. Murph flung an arm around his shoulder. "You said it, man."

We stepped out of the large and neat white house into a typical suburbian neighborhood. The sun was bright and it was unusually warm- it seemed weird to me that we had just killed several people and yet the weather was gorgeous. It seemed so contradictory.

Roc stopped in his tracks. I looked up and saw a man in all black, aiming two guns at us and smoking a cigar. What the fuck? Murph and I both pulled out our guns and took aim over Roc's shoulders. The man quirked the side of his mouth up at us, sunglasses reflecting the light. I frowned , losing focus for a split second. I could have sworn I had seen that exact same smirk before- corners of a mouth perking up around a cigarette. Why this detail was so important, I had no idea, but it cost me dearly.

The man started firing first. We shot back, trying desperately hard to hit the guy. Roc looked dazed as he sunk to his knees and fumbled around for his gun, finally getting it out of his jeans. Shots rang loud; panes of glass broke in cars as our bullets hit them instead of our moving target. The man in the black coat dropped his guns and then pulled out two more from his coat, resuming his fire.

Roc screamed in agony and dove into the bushes next to us. "Son of a bitch! Fuck!" Rocco had been hit; I prayed that it wasn't life threatening. Murph and I kept firing at the fucker in front of us; somehow he managed to avoid our fire. Murph ducked into the other set of bushes, yelling in tongues; He was hit as well. I kept shooting at the man, trying to hit him before I ran out of ammo. I tried to calculate how much I had left, but I honestly had no fucking clue, and I didn't really care after I felt a hot piece of lead tear into my thigh. "Fuck!" I grabbed at my leg and kept firing blindly. Finally, one of us- I'm not sure who- hit him with a bullet. He grabbed at his arm and then simply walked away, like he was bored. As much as I wanted to follow behind him, the pain in my leg and the shouts from Murph and Roc reminded me that we had to bail.

"Murph! Ya alright?"

"Argh! Motherfucker!" was the reply I got as he kept shooting after him. I looked around for Roc. "Roc! Get the bag! Get the fucking blood!" I added as I looked at the column and door that was splattered with blood.

"The fuck was that?" screamed Murph, pulling out a can of ammonia and spraying down the door.

"Get the fucking blood!" I repeated, frantically spraying every drop of blood I could see. If the cops collected any DNA from any of us, we would be so incredibly fucked.

"He shot off my fucking finger!" wailed Roc, holding up a bloody hand that was wrapped in his t-shirt. Under normal circumstances, I would have cringed and felt some empathy. However this was not normal fucking circumstances- somebody was sent after us.

Somebody wanted us dead.

"Roc! Fucking go!"

"What the fuck? Fuck! Roc grab the fucking bag!"

"Fuck! My fucking finger-"

"Fucking shit!"

We all sprinted to the van, ignoring pains and trying to hightail it the fuck out of there before the cops showed up. Murphy drove the van, taking the roads at speeds that were well above the legal limit. None of us spoke the whole ride back to Ericka's place. I wasn't keen on the idea of going there in case someone followed us, but we didn't have much choice.

We limped into the apartment, blood dripping onto the floor from all of our wounds. I threw my shit down and let the fear, adrenaline and pain wash over me. "Who the fuck was he, Roc? I know you know, so don't even start!"

"Oh fuck you!" he yelled, leaning over the sink. "I told you I never saw him before!"

"Well he sure as fuck knew you!" Murph looked as if he wanted dearly to clock him in the face.

"Fuck you! Fuck you both!" voices started to overlap.

"Fucking amateur-"

"-Lost my finger-"

"What the fuck!"

"Everyone shut the fuck up!" Murph ran around furiously, looking for something. "Shit!" he swore loudly. He grabbed an iron from the kitchen table that was amid a pile of laundry. I vaguely wondered if it was the same one from Rocco's apartment. He slammed it down on the stove and cranked up the heat on the burner.

"The fuck you doing?" asked Roc, looking suddenly horrified. Murph grimaced. "There aren't enough stitches for all of us, and I don't think we have much time. We've all lost a lot of fucking blood, and we need to seal the wounds."

"Oh fuck…" Roc sank down into a chair, cradling his hand. Murph stared down at him, face stern. "It's the only thing we really have at this point. I thought Ericka restocked our supplies after my shit, but I guess not." He turned to me after putting a tea kettle on another burner. "Better get these bullets out while we're waiting." He pulled a pair of long surgical steel tweezers from a bag. I sat down in another chair and allowed Murph to fish around in the hole in my leg. It hurt, bad. A groan left me as he pulled out the bullet, tossing it onto the counter. He gave me a gauze pad that was soaked with rubbing alcohol, gesturing for me wipe off the blood and clean around the wound.

He wiped off the tweezers and after pouring more alcohol and boiling water onto them, handed them to me, sitting down in his own chair. He nodded and grimaced at me. Carefully, I reached forward and removed the bandage from his upper arm, blood oozing out of them. It took me a while to find the lead ball wedged in his arm; several times I had to stop as he tensed up in pain from me accidentally hitting a muscle or nerve. Eventually I got it out and threw the tweezers in the sink, never wanting to touch them again.

At this point, the iron was white hot. Murph looked around at us, face white. "Do me first." He said. After three failed attempts, we pushed everything off the kitchen table and forced him to lay belly down ontop of it. Roc held him down and held onto the gag in his mouth as I pressed the iron to his already burnt skin. It was ten seconds of horror; he moaned and gripped the corner of the table with his free hand, shaking and grunting in pain. The smell was the worst part- burning flesh mixing with blood, sweat and rubbing alcohol.

After we wiped off the iron, we moved to Rocco's hand. Murphy applied the iron carefully this time while I held onto the gag. He bucked against the pain, not even attempting to stay still, though he somehow managed to keep his hand still so we wouldn't have to apply the iron again. Murph took extra care to put burn cream and bandages after the fact, attempting to offer some relief from the pain, though judging by the fact Roc immediately grabbed a bottle of whisky out of the freezer and took a long drink straight from the bottle, the attempt was futile.

Then it was my turn. I put the cloth that was our gag in my mouth and bit down har. I felt Murph pulling on it from behind me. I nodded at Roc and he placed the very tip of the iron on my leg. Holy hell, did it fucking hurt. I reached behind me and grabbed Murphy's hair, the only thing within reach that I could grip onto. Ten seconds lasted a lifetime- I tried to focus on something, anything to dull the pain. The time when Murphy and I broke a window in our church playing soccer in the pews came to mind. Then it was over and I stood up shakily, limping over to the living room couch, desperate to sink into the cushions. Roc and Murphy weren't far behind me. They plopped down next to me; Roc handed me the bottle of whisky, frowning at his bandaged hand. "Still feels like it's there." He said.

I snorted, taking my own drink from the bottle and enjoying the sudden warmth it brought to my belly. "Yeah, well….it's not."

Ericka POV

"Here ya go, one large black coffee with three shots of espresso." Annie plopped a huge steaming cup and a brown bag in front of me. I grabbed for the coffee and took a large gulp, choking as the hot liquid hit my throat. Annie shook her head at me. "It's called hot coffee for a reason."

"Ah, shut up." I coughed, wiping my mouth with the back of my head. I reached for the brown bag and pulled out a bagel, munching on it hungrily. "Thank you sooo much. I needed this." Annie thankfully hadn't mentioned the night at my apartment when Roc and the twins had guns drawn and pointed at her- aside from asking about Murphy, she acted completely normal. I think it was a case of 'don't ask, don't tell,' and that suited me just fine.

Annie shrugged. "It's nothing. You looked a bit off color earlier." I nodded, unable to speak due to the sheer amount of bagel in my mouth. I was sure I looked pretty gross, but hunger compelled me to eat like a starved dog. "Might wanna slow down there, might throw up again." She was, or course, referring to earlier in the morning when I had to duck into the bathroom for twenty minutes while I barfed up stomach acid.

"I'm fucking hungry!" I said between bites. Annie tilted her head. "You didn't make your normal coffee run this morning?"

I shook my head. "No time."

She rolled her eyes at me. "Any idea why you blew chunks earlier? You've never been bad with blood." I shrugged. "Nerves?" Between not being able to be with the boys on their latest job and the sheer chaos the ER had been in when I showed up, my nerves had been shot completely. I raised my eyebrows at her. "Why are you so fixated on that?"

Annie took a sip of her own drink. "I dunno. Figured you might be knocked or something"

I choked on my coffee again. "WHAT?"

"Well, it makes sense, doesn't it? Morning sickness, you've been eating like a horse lately, and, I hope you don't take offense to this, but you look like you've gained weight right around the middle. Oh, and you mentioned that were late this month."

I stared at her. "You're full of shit."

She waved her hands at me. "Maybe, but it couldn't hurt to take a pregnancy test. Probably stress anyways." I shook my head at her and walked off to do my rounds.

But as I walked home after my shift, her words resonated in my head. I ducked into a twenty-four seven drugstore and wandered around until I found the aisle with pregnancy tests. I furrowed my brow as I stared at the shelves. Why are there so many to pick from? After looking for a solid ten minutes, I grabbed three different ones and walked to the checkout. The bearded cashier gave me a strange look. I laughed sheepishly. "Just want to be sure." I explained. He handed me my change, looking seriously weirded out.

I walked home at a frantic pace, wanting nothing more than to see that the boys were alright and to take the damn pregnancy tests to dispel Annie's twisted notions that I was indeed preggo. I opened the door to the apartment to the rather disturbing scene of my laundry basket full of clothes knocked over onto the floor, and a bloody iron on the table. My stomach rolled. I stepped into the living room and saw the boys staring at the TV, watching a news broadcast. "We are confident that we will apprehend the people responsible for this." Said a snarky looking man. I did a double take- he looked familiar, but I couldn't place the face for anything.

"That's the guy that got us off the hook for the Chekov thing." Said Murph. Roc looked furious, even from his profile. "Then that makes him a lia-fuckin-bility."

"He's a good man. He's not too be touched." Said Connor, the tone of his voice stern. Roc took a sip from a bottle. "Whatever."

"Jesus Christ, I just bought that bottle Roc!" They all turned to look me. I noticed the bandage on Murph's arm. "What happened?"

"Well, some guy showed up after we killed people, shot me in the arm, Conn in the leg, and-"

"The fucker shot off my goddamned finger." Roc held a heavily bandaged hand up. I felt my head swim a little. "You…. You cauterized your wounds…with an iron?" Murph nodded at me. "Didn't have the time for stitches. And I don't think we had enough thread for them, in any case." He looked at me concernedly. "Ya alright there?"

I shook my head and ran to the bathroom to puke up my coffee and bagel. I felt someone beside me, holding my hair back for me. "It's alright love. Everything's alright." Came Connor's soothing voice. I surfaced from the toilet bowl, gasping. "Ericka, aingeal, don't cry now, don't cry." He said, wiping tears from my cheeks.

"No, no. It's not all okay. You guys got hurt and I wasn't there…" my voice trailed off and I scolded myself. Pull yourself together, for God sakes.

There was a light knock on the door. Murph stepped in and set a plastic bag on the sink. "You dropped that…" he mumbled, rushing out. Connor reached up and made to peek in the bag. I grabbed his arm. "No… don't look in there."

"Why not?" he frowned at me.

I looked at him hopelessly. "Connor. I think I might be pregnant."

His face was blank. "What?"

"I might be pregnant." I pointed to the bag. "Those are pregnancy tests. Um…." I watched his face go from blank to ecstatic. "You're telling me… I might be a dad?" I nodded. He laughed loudly. "Shit…. I thought it might be something awful."

"Awful?" I repeated. "I don't want to be a mother! This IS awful!" Connor took my face in his hands.

"Calma mo aingeal. We don't even know if you are, so just take a test and see if there's reason to worry." I had to admit he was right. Ten minutes later we found ourselves staring at the plastic stick I had pissed on, waiting for a result.

"How long does it take?" he asked.

"Box said fifteen minutes." I replied anxiously.

"The fuck is going on in here?" asked Murph, muscling his way into the bathroom. He looked at the plastic stick. "You're not….?" He asked.

"I don't know yet." I said numbly. Rocco appeared around the corner. "The fuck you guys doing?"

"Ericka might be knocked up." Said Murph bluntly. Roc's jaw dropped. "Holy shit. Holy shit, serious?"

"Hey there's something there!" Connor nearly shouted. All four of us crowded around the stick that was sitting on the counter. Two faint pink dots appeared. "What does that mean?" asked Murph. Connor fumbled with the box. "That means….. negative." He said, sounding disappointed. The rest of us breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"Thank God." I muttered. I grabbed the bottle of booze out of Roc's hand and took a long drink, handing it back to him when I was finished. I squeezed my way out of the bathroom and went to my room, collapsing on the bed. Connor came in after me, shutting the door. He curled up next to me, pulling me to his chest.

"I know you're disappointed."I said.

He kissed my cheek. "A little. But I suppose it'll happen eventually." He smiled. "No rush."

I rolled onto my back. "What makes you so sure?"

"Got a good feeling about it. Ya know, I've always wanted kids. Big house with a yard, couple dogs, beautiful wife. What can I say? I'm a traditional man."

"That's great and all, but," I said, a smirk pulling at my lips. "Who wants to put up with your sorry ass?"

His face turned serious as he propped himself on an elbow. He started to talk rapidly. "Look, I know life with me isn't normal, and I'm sorry, and I know you plan on coming back to Ireland with us but that's just not enough for me and I've been meaning to ask you but the timing never seemed right and-." He looked at me with burning eyes and took a deep breath. "Marry me?"

I felt my mouth open and close several times, utterly lost for words. Following impulse, I pulled him down on top of me and kissed him with as much passion as I could muster. We broke apart and I grinned up at him. "Yes, ya fucking twit.. I'll marry you."