A/N: I realize I have not updated this story since the beginning of November and for that I apologize. I have been working 2 jobs and shortly after I posted the last chapter I started working in excess of 60 hours a week (7 days a week) which left little to no time for writing. This is the second to last chapter of this story and afterwards I hope to finish the re-write of Her Defenses. I have been keeping notes and hope to start a proper sequel to the initial story in the near future. In the meantime, I plan to keep plucking away at my other story, Desperado, and will update that as time permits.

Chapter 7

I don't see the point in keeping this up anymore, so I guess this will be the last letter you'll probably ever get from me. The only thing I can really hope for anymore these days is that one day you'll come to Ireland and our paths will cross again.

Probably for the last six or seven months I've been having this dream – all of us sitting in Doc's having a drink, just like old times, but it wasn't. We're older, our faces more haggard from time. For some reason me and Murph look like a pair of homeless folks with scraggily beards, unkempt hair, even our eyes are sunken in a bit more. Your hair is faded, the red has turned to grey and silver, your eyes are surrounded with dark circles, and you have this look that seems to say that you've seen some shit you wish you hadn't.

Rocco's behind the bar pouring drinks and Da is leaning over the bar with a cigar between his teeth. They're both telling us that neither of them regrets the decisions they made, that they would do it all over again if they could. Murph is trying to apologize to Roc for getting him involved with us in the first place and I was trying to apologize to Da for everything I ever blamed him for.

They were both gone before we could even get a word.

It was just the three of us in the bar after that.

You told us how sorry you were for ignoring us all these years but refused to look us in the eye to say it; you just kept looking straight ahead, never touching your glass. I was pleading, no begging, you to look at us but you said you couldn't. You said that if you did everything would change and it wouldn't be for the better. It was like you were trying to give us some kind of warning.

You know us, you know that we were never really ones to listen or heed warnings. We got up, went around the bar, and it wasn't until we were face to face with you that we wished we hadn't gotten up in the first place. Caoimhe, you weren't you; there wasn't anything about you there except your voice and hair. The mirror we saw you in was just a reflection of what you were.

Looking at you head on, you were nothing more than bones wrapped in dead flesh. Bullet holes riddled your body and the longer we stared each other down the more we started to notice what it was that caused you to look the way you did. The handcuffs were still around your wrists, the gag hung loosely around your neck, and just when I was reaching out to touch you, a gunshot rings out.

It always happens in slow motion. The bullet exiting the middle of your forehead, blood spraying in every direction. As your head falls onto the bar, someone silhouetted in the shadows is tucking their gun back into their pocket. We see the Cheshire cat grin on their face before two more gunshots ring out.

I always wake up right after that.

I hope this dream is not a sign of what will be if we ever see each other again. It still hurts knowing Rocco's gone even after all these years, I can't imagine what that pain would be like if I lost Da, Murph, and you all in one go. Hell, you can't imagine how hard it is for me right now to even put these words to paper. I don't want to call this the end but what choice do I have? It's like you once said, every book has its ending and I guess this is the end of our book.

Connor