GlaringEyes: Regarding your question from your review… Maaaaaaybe. ;3

And for any and all who are interested and hadn't heard yet, apparently Tom Waltz (Who wrote the "Sinner's Reward" and "Past Life" comics) is going to do a comic based on Anne's back-story, so we get to learn much more about her and, hopefully, get to know which ending was canon in Downpour! (*Bites nails* PleasepleasePLEASE don't kill off Anne, I don't need another favorite character dead, PLEASE).

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Murphy had fallen asleep on the couch in the apartment he shared with Travis Grady when the phone rang.

Travis was out on a delivery route, and Murphy was alone until Saturday morning. He had been idly flipping through the TV channels before eventually giving up and landing on some New Hampshire Chronicle re-run, Fritz Wetherbee's voice gradually lulling him into a thin sleep.

He started awake, looked around sleepily as he tried to process what the noise was and where it was coming from, and then finally realized that it was the phone. Murphy scooted to the other end of the couch, the phone on the table next to it, and picked it up. "Grady residence." Travis usually responded with a dry 'Casa Del Grady' or some variation thereof.

"Murphy?"

Red flags went up immediately, and Murphy pushed a little further into awareness: Anne didn't usually call him 'Murphy' (out loud, anyway); she called him 'Pendleton', just as he typically called her 'Cunningham'. And her voice sounded uncharacteristically shaky to boot.

"Cunningham? You all right?"

A pause, and Murphy thought that he could hear her panting at the other end, along with a curious beeping sound. "No."

"What happened?"

Anne cleared her throat, but when she spoke the tremulous quality remained. "I… Had a little accident."

Murphy's eyes widened. "What kind of accident?"

"Sewell shot me."

For a moment, Murphy was silent. It was kind of like watching an atom-bomb go off while you were standing within range, but a fair distance from the blast: He saw it fall, saw the mushroom cloud go up, and was now waiting for the shockwaves to hit him, waiting to see if he was going to be very frightened, very concerned, or so goddamn angry that he pulled Travis's shotgun out of the closet and hunted George-motherfucking-Sewell down like a rabid dog and blew his damn head off-

The shockwave hit, and fortunately- for Sewell, anyway- it was overwhelmingly made of concern for Anne's wellbeing.

"Where? Where were you hit?"

"Right-arm. It didn't go too deep, but it's still pretty painful. I lost some blood."

"Where are you?"

"A hospital."

"Which hospital?"

There was a pause. Murphy gripped the edge of the table tightly. "Alchemilla General." Murphy frowned- he could swear that he had heard that name before.

"And that's where, exactly…?"

Anne cleared her throat again: "Silent Hill."

There was another long moment of silence before Murphy was able to articulate properly again. "I- What- Why are you in Silent Hill? Why are you in Silent Hill getting shot by Sewell?" He could hear the somewhat hysterical note that was starting in his voice, but didn't have a mind to do something about it at the moment.

"I would be happy to explain if you would up here and help me leave. I can't drive, and for reasons that will become obvious once I explain, I don't want to stay here for too long." Murphy had a license now; a fake license, that is. Laura Sunderland had hooked him up with it.

"I've got a friend who does some stuff. So long as James doesn't hear about it, it's all yours." The sixteen year-old had remarked after offering. "Deal or no deal, McMurphy?" Murphy had hesitantly accepted, regretful of not informing James of his daughter's mischief but also dearly wanting to never get on Laura's bad side.

Travis had a car, one that Murphy was allowed to drive when needed. As Travis was currently absent, there wouldn't be an issue with borrowing it.

Murphy took a deep breath, counted to three, and forced himself to say, "I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Okay." Murphy hung up.

There are so many towns in Maine. So many towns in America, and somehow Anne managed to land herself in a hospital in the creepiest, most fucked-up one in possibly the world.

His very strong sense of self-preservation was jumping up and down and screaming 'DON'T GO!', but his equally strong sense of loyalty was telling him that Anne was his friend now, and if Sewell was involved, backup was most definitely needed. While returning to Silent Hill was one of the last things he wanted to do, Murphy couldn't just leave her there.

Damn it.

This was an incredibly crappy way to find out he was right about Anne being up to something.

[-]

Fortunately, the roads to Silent Hill did not end in decimated pavement, nor were they infested with grotesque creatures looking to kill him. Murphy found his way to Alchemilla in record-time, about an hour and a half's drive.

Murphy had never really been fond of hospitals, but very public and crowded places had become an entirely new source of anxiety since getting out of (check: escaping) prison. There was always that nagging fear at the back of his mind that someone might recognize him and call the police, and there was no way in hell he was going back to prison. Not a chance.

The nurse at the desk didn't notice him until he cleared his throat. "Can I help you?"

"Uh, Anne Cunningham? She came in a few hours ago."

The nurse rotated her chair to face the computer, and after a few second of typing she stood up, leaned over the desk and pointed down the hall. "Down that way, fourth room on the right."

"Thank you."

Murphy counted off the rooms as he passed them. Most had sliding glass doors, but most were open in favor of a cloth curtain for privacy. When he reached the fourth room on the right, Murphy went to pull back the curtain- then stopped, and called first. "Cunningham?"

"It's fine, come in." Anne looked a lot livelier than she had sounded over the phone, and Murphy strongly suspected that some form of pain-medication had been involved in making that happen. She seemed to be in the process of getting redressed, already having replaced her shirt, pants and socks. Her right arm was in a sling with the sleeve rolled up past her shoulder, showing bandages wrapped tightly around the limb. She seemed to be taking great pains to not move it.

"What the hell happened?"

Anne looked up at him, and her eyes were sharp. "Nice to see you too."

Murphy was just irritable enough to manage some sarcasm. "I'm sorry, was that too blunt? Let me try again. Hi Cunningham! Great weather we're having. How the hell did you get shot?"

"Shh!" Anne hissed, waving her good arm urgently as her eyes burned into his. "Quiet!" She lowered her voice. "There's a mandatory reporting law in Maine: Hospitals have to report gunshot-wounds to the police. They don't know this is from a bullet."

"How could they not know?"

"I managed to convince them it wasn't."

Murphy frowned. Any doctor worth their salt should know a gunshot wound when they saw one- at least, he thought so. Convincing them that the bullet-shaped wound had not come from a bullet sounded like a lie beyond Anne's capabilities. "How?"

Anne shifted a little, and her eyes flicked to the curtain, and then back as she pulled her shoe on one-handed (she didn't ask for help, and so he figured it was better to keep his mouth shut). "It was a pretty deep graze," Murphy had to step closer, as she had lowered her voice to a whisper. "It didn't actually leave a bullet-hold in the middle of my arm, but the skin was split open. The doctor was suspicious, but I told him that I met the wrong end of some metal when I was walking."

It sounded like a good bit of bullshit to him. "And they really believed you?"

Anne's expression went dark, and she seemed to read his mind as she said, "All right, so it's not one of my better lies. I swore up and down that was what happened, and I'm thinking they don't have sufficient evidence to report it. But I'm not one hundred-percent certain, which is why I would like to leave quickly."

Anne finished with the boots, stood and grabbed her coat with one hand. As she adjusted it on her arm, Murphy could see that the shoulder of the right sleeve had been ripped open, the gray fabric around the hole saturated with blood.

Jesus Christ.

Murphy took a deep breath, and then nodded. "Fine. Okay."

It took an additional twenty minutes for Anne to completely get discharged, and the time seemed to turn her already nasty mood into a ragingly-bad one. Murphy began to reconsider his plan to ask her for the full story once in the car around the time when Anne had to request a new form because she had ripped the old one with the force she had been applying to the pen.

By the time they got out of the hospital, it was twelve-thirty. "Need help with the door?" Murphy asked, and Anne shook her head. "Where's your car?"

"On a side-street in Pleasant River." The redhead muttered as she yanked open the door and carefully sat down inside. Murphy was about to walk around and shut the door for her, but she simply reached across her lap with her left hand and awkwardly tugged it shut. He got inside as well, and thought for a moment.

"Leave the keys with me. Travis and I can come up on Saturday and drive it home for you."

Anne deflated a bit, and slid her good hand through her hair. "Thanks."

She shut her eyes, and Murphy decided not to prod for the details of the story. If there was any immediate threat to her safety Anne would have told him already, and he had no desire to bother her just when it seemed that her temper was starting to dwindle. Besides, she would have to tell him eventually- right?

There was relative silence for the next half an hour or so, until Murphy needed some help finding the right roads. He had been to Anne's house before, but not coming from Silent Hill. "Which road do I take once I get off the highway?" Anne was quiet, and he realized that she had nodded off. "Cunningham?" He reached over and gave her arm a tap, which caused her to jerk sharply.

"What? What?"

"Which road do I take once I get off the highway?"

Anne stifled a yawn behind her hand. "I'll let you know when we get there." She straightened up and shifted uncomfortably. "I'm surprised at you, Pendleton."

"How so?"

"You haven't started interrogating me yet."

Murphy's lip quirked upwards. "I know better."

"Good." He thought that the subject was being dropped there, but just as he was signaling to take the off-ramp to Windham, Anne sighed and rubbed her eyes. "Would you like the condensed version?"

"Shoot." Anne gave him a thin look, and Murphy forced his chuckle to turn into a cough. "Sorry, no, I- I'm sorry, I forgot. Bad choice of words."

"Right." The officer drawled. "Long story short, I transferred to Ryall State a little over a month ago. It's this road, turn right here."

The turn ended up being a little sharp, but it was better than missing it altogether. "The prison?"

"No, Pendleton, the college football team." The crabby edge to Anne's voice was returning, and Murphy decided not to interrupt her again. "I decided that after trying to kill you that trying to kill Sewell would be a waste of time and energy, and that I'd probably end up in prison myself. So I decided to look into those things dad reported him for, did some investigating, found out he was having a meeting with someone in Silent Hill tonight, and then this."

Murphy glanced at her briefly before turning his gaze back to the road. "I'm still a little unclear as to how 'Sewell meeting with someone in Silent Hill' turned into a bullet to the arm."

"I was eavesdropping, accidentally made a noise, and wouldn't you know he and at least one of the other bastards that were with him had guns." Anne waved her hand vaguely before pinching the bridge of her nose. "Left at the next intersection. You should recognize it from there on."

"I take it he didn't see you?"

"I don't think so, but I didn't exactly stick around long enough to check." She shifted in the seat, mouth tightening in pain.

"Painkillers wearing off?"

"A bit." As it so happened, they were just about to Anne's house. It was a woodsy area, with the nearest house barely visible some dozens of yards away in the trees. The windows were dark.

Though they had known each other for a while, there were certain questions that neither of them had been comfortable posing to one another. Anne had never asked him about Charlie or Carol, even though she had to know about them; she had openly admitted to learning plenty about him after he was convicted of killing Frank. And Murphy did not ask Anne if she was or had been married, even though the fact that her surname was no longer Coleridge indicated that she was. Murphy was left to deduce that if she had been married she was not anymore, because all signs indicated that she lived alone.

"Are you coming in?" Anne asked as she maneuvered the door open with all of the awkwardness she'd had in closing it.

"I don't know, am I?"

"Did you have more questions?"

"Yes."

"Then come in." She stepped out of the car, and Murphy didn't miss the way she wobbled when she stood. He climbed out too, but didn't shut the door.

"You up to answering them?"

"Might as well get it over with." That didn't actually answer the question as to whether or not she felt like answering them at the moment, but Murphy had found that arguing with Anne when he didn't have to only led to headaches.

Murphy followed her inside, eyes scanning the living room. It looked largely untouched, which wasn't too surprising: He knew Anne tended to work long hours, and given that she had apparently been supplementing that with some detective-work on the side, he couldn't imagine she had a lot of time to just relax.

"All right," Anne said, tossing her jacket onto the arm of a worn green couch on her way to the kitchen. "What else did you want to know?"

Murphy considered for a moment. "Didn't anyone think it was suspicious when you transferred to Ryall?"

Anne picked something up off the kitchen table and walked back. "No. Actually, I was suspecting a lot more suspicion than they gave me, given that I was under investigation." She looked him in the eye as she sat down on the couch. "For the most part, they seemed to be pretty… At ease with the idea that I may have killed you."

Murphy's mouth twisted into a grimace as he leaned back against the arm of an armchair across from her. "Yeah, they weren't too fond of me after the conviction."

"Cops stick together." Anne said simply.

"Don't I know it. How did Sewell react?"

Her fingers dug into the fabric of the couch, and she looked a little nauseous. "In a sick, sadistic, maniac, Sewell-ish way… I actually think he tried to flirt with me."

Murphy could stop the small convulsion of disgust that wracked his body at that image. "Carry pepper-spray."

"I do."

"Carry two bottles of pepper-spray. I'm not kidding, Cunningham, I would not put it past that deranged son of a bitch to actually try something if you said no to him." Anne looked a little taken aback by that, but didn't question him. She did shift a bit, though, and winced suddenly. "How's your arm?"

"Painkillers are wearing off. It's not pleasant. Make your other questions quick."

"Who was he meeting with?"

Anne rolled her eyes to the ceiling pensively, carefully adjusting the sling with her free hand, her jaw tightening in pain when she did. "I don't know. One of them had an accent, so I'm reasonably certain he wasn't from around here. There were four of them, one of whom seemed to be from Silent Hill." Her lips curled upwards. "They shook Sewell."

Murphy's eyebrows rose. "Did they?" Oh hell, if there was anything he wanted to see before he died, it was George Sewell looking scared.

"They did. They mentioned someone- Officer G, they called him, and I'm assuming it's a police officer they've knocked off in the past or it wouldn't have bothered Sewell as much as it did." The smile slid off of Anne's face, and she reached up and rubbed her eyes. "Damn. I mean- damn. I knew I was getting into something reasonably ugly, but I didn't think I'd be putting myself in a position to get my brains blown out quite so quickly."

"You said Sewell didn't see you."

"I said I wasn't certain if he saw me, and that may not matter. I'm ninety-nine percent certain this is a drug operation, and you'd be surprised at the kinds of people that can be in on those things; Sewell's a prime example."

Murphy snorted and crossed his arms. "Sewell's slime."

"Yeah, but he's slime in an officer's uniform. Unless they know him like you or I do, people aren't going to suspect him of being in on something like this. If they've got a prison-guard with them, they could have police, hospital workers paid off or blackmailed to keep them informed or help them run it…" Anne stood up, and for the first time that night she seemed to be openly nervous about what she had gotten into. "Shit. I could be in trouble."

Murphy watched her for a moment. "You could talk to Douglas and Cheryl. They seem to have a lot of information on the seedier side of Silent Hill."

"I don't want anyone else involved. It's bad enough that he could figure out it was me at the yard, I don't need to drag anyone else into the line of fire."

Anne's reasoning was sound- and to be honest, Murphy would be inclined to do precisely the same thing in her situation. But he couldn't help but think that if he was in her shoes, Travis would quickly knock him upside the head and tell him to go for help while he still had a head and limbs to do it with.

What's more, Silent Hill had given Murphy the gift of foresight. He was a lot better at planning ahead now; and more importantly, he was a lot better at seeing the many different potential consequences of his- and others'- actions now. With what had happened that night, he did not, could not see Anne's poking into this drug-thing on her own ending well. There was no way she was going to stop and just let Sewell off the hook, and he was going to be on high alert now that he knew someone was onto him.

"They're trustworthy, and Douglas has dealt with these kinds of people before. Besides, we don't even know for certain if Sewell knows-"

"Why are you saying 'we'?" Anne cut him off irritably, whipping around and glaring at him. "There is no 'we', Pendleton, and I don't want there to be. This is my problem to solve."

Something about that touched a nerve. "Given that he almost killed you tonight, I would think that maybe you'd like some help trying to do something about him."

Anne's expression could have frozen fire. "I've been doing just fine on my own."

"Yeah, sure you were. By the way, how are those pain-killers treating you?" Murphy snapped.

Her cheeks went red. "This isn't your business, Pendleton. I'll take Sewell down in my own time."

"And quite possibly get yourself killed in the process." Neither of them seemed to notice that their voices were getting louder.

"I can't just stop. Since I can't put him away for what he did to my dad, I have to find some other reason to get him put away. Don't you get that?"

"I do, because in case you've forgotten, you aren't the only one who Sewell's screwed over."

"Yeah, he framed you for murder. For murdering my father. My father, Murphy!" Anne's voice cracked noticeably.

There was a long, considerably uncomfortable moment of silence. Anne abruptly turned away, and he assumed that she was either tearing up or getting close to it. Murphy pushed off of the arm of the chair.

He was reminded of that moment in Silent Hill when Anne had cracked, when she had almost broken down sobbing after she tried to shoot him and couldn't bring herself to. In most of Silent Hill, she was unflinching, cold, resolved in doing what she needed to do but never getting the chance to do it until the boat- but underneath, there was more turmoil than he had realized.

They got on well enough, but Murphy never professed to know what was going on in Anne's head. Hell, Travis had been better at guessing that she probably wasn't holding up well post-Silent Hill, and at the time he hadn't even met Anne. For her, the healing process involved getting some form of justice for what had happened to her father, and Murphy was starting to wonder if she was going to be able to move on in the event that that didn't happen.

Easy for you to talk about healing, A little voice in his head hissed. You've already taken care of your Bogeyman, however ashamed you are of destroying your life to do it. You know beating the ever-loving shit out of Napier and then letting Sewell kill him didn't solve anything, but you do feel better knowing he's not off killing more kids. Anne's Bogeyman is alive and well, and is still running around and probably screwing up peoples' lives as badly as he screwed up hers. So no, healing is probably out of the question until something's done about this prick.

Damn it.

"Look," He began quietly. "Frank was your dad. I'll never know him like you did, and I won't insult you by pretending that I did." He chewed his lip for a moment. "But he was my friend. He treated me like one of his own, and I couldn't have been more grateful for everything he did for me. It's not just being framed, Anne: What Sewell did to your dad is personal for me too. I want to see him pay for it. And I would rather not see him pay for it by getting pinned for murdering you. Let someone help, let me help."

There was, on one hand, a strong sense of wanting to stay the hell out of trouble, because one wrong step and it was Wayside Maximum until they carted him out in a pine box. But on another, aside from genuinely wanting to be of some help to Anne so that she didn't end up dead, there was a savage desire to screw Sewell over as thoroughly as humanly possible. He did want the son of a bitch to pay for what he had done to Frank, and he wanted the satisfaction of Sewell knowing that he had taken part in it.

Anne didn't speak for a moment, didn't face him. But then she slowly turned back around, and for the most part she looked pretty composed. The officer shook her head tiredly. "You have a death-wish, don't you Pendleton?"

Murphy gave a half-shrug. "Probably."

Finally, her expression softened. "You want to help? Fine. So long as you're okay with either potentially getting killed or ending up in prison again, fine. That's your neck to risk."

"What about Douglas and Cheryl?"

Anne bit her lower lip. "I'll ask them some questions before I start giving them information." She leaned over and picked up the object that she had pulled off of her kitchen table. "This is the only evidence I have of Sewell and Benson- another guard- planning anything. It's barely anything, just them talking about when they were supposed to go to the yard for the meeting and Sewell just generally being a dick." It was a small tape-recorder, with a cassette tape inside.

She handed it to Murphy, and he studied it for a moment. "Did the police get called after the shooting started?" He asked.

"Mm-hm. At least, I think that's why those cruisers were speeding off in that direction."

"Well, there's some proof: If there were shots fired there would be a report filled out somewhere along with the tape of the 9-1-1 call, right?"

Anne's eyes brightened. "And that means that I have Sewell admitting on tape to being at the yard around the time that happened." And then she smiled a genuine smile, which was a fairly rare event- especially when it was Murphy that had done something to provoke it. "Damn. Maybe it won't be so bad working with you after all, Pendleton."

"You probably would have drawn the same conclusion if you weren't hopped-up on painkillers."

Anne rolled her eyes. "Not so much anymore, actually. I'm taking another dose and going to bed." She fished the bottle of pills out of her jacket pocket, and then hesitated. "You can stay, if you want. It'll be, what- two-thirty by the time you get home?"

"Closer to three." He couldn't lie: The prospect of having to drive back home at this hour was not a pleasing one.

"There's a spare bedroom upstairs."

"I'm fine with the couch."

"You're certain?" When Murphy nodded, Anne gave one in return, and then the two stood somewhat awkwardly in silence for a moment. "Well. Okay. Good night, then."

"Good night."

Anne went upstairs, and soon enough there was total silence. Murphy walked over to the light-switch near the door and flipped it off before carefully making his way back to the couch. He sat down, crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. Sleep would probably come pretty easily. It had been a long day, after all: Several hours of work on a number of badly damaged cars, followed by about two hours of slowly getting himself into an entirely new batch of trouble that might end with his or Anne's death or imprisonment, or some fun new mixture of the two. Again.

There is something seriously wrong with me.

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…Wa-oooow, I didn't mean for this chapter to turn out so long, but okay. I don't normally write multi-chapter stories anymore, so chapter-by-chapter writing is an unusual experience for me. The next chapter will be the last, though- don't want to drag this out too long.

On that note, if you happen to notice any discrepancies in this chapter (as in, I say one thing and then contradict it three paragraphs later), let me know. I ended up re-writing the entire first half of the second section when I had most of the chapter done, as well as some key details in the first section; I think I adjusted everything to match the changes, but if something's off, tell me.