[Chapter 68: Epilogue]

Five days after Annie had saved their lives, four days after Leah's father ensured their lives would remain saved, three days after they'd left the hospital, two days after she'd finally allowed herself to cry, one day after she'd finally stopped crying: Connor and Murphy made contact.

Smecker had shown the text to Leah during an early morning meeting at the Bureau office, and the moment the meeting was over, Leah had called Annie to relay the message.

Whole Foods in Manchester, NH. Console.

Console.

Her mind supplied the definition automatically: to comfort in a time of grief or loss.

Even with Leah behind the wheel, the drive was a rollercoaster, literally and emotionally. Between stretches of endless highway and the ever-changing, yet still remarkably similar FM radio stations, Annie ran the gamut between cautious, heart-fluttering hope, fear of being followed or discovered, and ultimately, disappointment in finding nothing but the promised car in its promised location. In the car's center console, there were only Leah's keys. From the amount of frost on the hood, the boys had left the car at least a day before sending the text, probably as a precaution in case anyone decided to put out a search.

Couldn't they have left any sign? Of how Connor was doing, or of where they were going-or how far? Anything at all?

Leah stared at her keys, passing them slowly from one hand to the other. She was uncharacteristically quiet, sitting in the driver's seat and looking somehow smaller. The seat was moved back too far, Annie realized, still set for Murphy's height.

Console: a support between the seats of an automobile that has indentations for holding small items.

"They're long gone," Leah said.

"I know." Annie turned her face to the cold breeze. "They're sticking to the plan."

They caravanned back to Leah's father's house to drop off the Lexus, and then Leah drove Annie back to the shop. Told her it was smart that the guys were being so careful. Leaving no notes, no messages, in case anything, even the Lexus, had been followed or intercepted.

This was good. This was what they all wanted, Leah reminded her. Everything quiet, uneventful.

It was a comfort, a consolation to have someone tell Annie the things she knew but didn't want to accept. She invited Leah in for a cup of coffee. The Dunkie's across the street had a better brew, but the crowd there had swelled while the Yolk was shut down for repairs-too many people for her current frame of mind.

Leah stayed for an hour. Annie hugged her when she left, bewildered by her own tears when her friend hugged her back.

The pub was still closed, so Annie used the back door at McGinty's to check on Doc, and ended up staying for a drink while Paulette showed her the new bar stools and wall décor and furniture they were ordering with the insurance money. They made it through the funerals together. Alone, she paid the visit to Mama Del that she'd promised.

Jake was a rock, for both better and worse, for he was too close for her to hide her moments of weakness. Discussing anything MacManus-related was difficult. To an outsider, they'd ripped through her life like a tornado, and then disappeared. Yet somewhere in his heart, Jake understood. Most often it was easier to avoid the subject altogether. Annie began to look forward to Leah and Ortie stopping by the shop during their shift. When Annie half-jokingly suggested she and Leah should check out apartments, Leah beamed and informed her she'd already found the perfect one, and the rental agreement just needed her signature.

Omar, new backpack in tow, returned to selling newspapers not only at the Yolk, but at Dunkie's, and occasionally at the shop, although their business hours weren't ideal for hot-off-the-press news. He figured out pretty quickly that Annie would buy any paper with a story about Boston police, crime, and political corruption, no matter the time of day—and she always overpaid.

She didn't know why he always acted so surprised and delighted. It had been his own idea, after all, to start donating his profits to the Chapel Restoration fund. St. Augustine's had been Connor and Murphy's home. While the two of them were away, there was no mail to pick up for them, no dog to feed, no housesitting favors for her to provide. How could she not help with this? How could she do so little to help? The question plagued her more with each passing day, until the answer came in a most unexpected way.

She had been attempting to clear out some of the old boxes upstairs, and making respectable progress, despite the barrage of memories, when Jake's booming voice called to her through the floorboards. Had she forgotten to mark an appointment time? They were getting more business than ever these days, and to be perfectly honest, her artistic skills were far better than her administrative ones.

She came downstairs and into the lobby, and the apology on her lips fell away.

They'd never, as far as Annie could recall, had a priest in the shop before.

"Father Tim?"

He stood beside Jake in his white collar and long black cassock, showing him something that made Jake's dark brows furrow beneath the slanting tips of the devil horns on his scalp. Even with less than a week left until Halloween, the sight was so surprising that it took Annie a moment to realize that Father Tim seemed equally surprised to see her.

"Annie. I didn't realize…" He trailed off with a smile, as if figuring something out.

What was he doing here? They were looking at a sketch, she guessed, since they held it atop one of the standard red folders she and Jake used for keeping track of custom artwork.

Jake turned the drawing around for her to see.

"Is this yours?"

Her heart skipped. It was the tattoo she'd designed as a memorial for Rocco. It felt like years had passed since the day she'd shown it to Murphy, and he'd asked to keep it. "Where did you get this?"

"It came in the mail, along with a generous cash donation for 'building repairs,'" Father Tim said. Sounding nearly as confused as she felt, he added, "There was no other note. The return address was here – One-Eyed-Jake's Tattoo. Neither of you sent it?"

She took the sketch and flipped it over, shaking her head. There was nothing written on the other side. "Do you still have the envelope?" she asked, trying not to let hope get the better of her. A postmark would be fantastic.

"I'm sorry," Father Tim said. "The mail had all been processed by the time I saw it. The envelope was thrown away."

Her heart sank. She stared down at the paper in her hands so that they wouldn't see her burning, blinking eyes. There was something different about the drawing. Something had been changed.

"Whoever sent it obviously wanted you to come here," Jake said to the priest, though his gaze was on Annie as he spoke. She could feel that his guess as to the sender was the same as hers.

It means he's fine, she thought. An indirect message like this was safer, for everyone's sake. It was better. She took a steadying breath and handed the sketch back. The priest's eyes were kind.

"I wish I could take credit for the donation," Annie told him truthfully, "but only the design is mine, and it's…personal. It was for a friend."

"It's remarkable," Father Tim mused, studying it again. "Striking. And yet—complete, somehow." He shook his head, displeased with that description. "Sister Margaret calls it 'righteous,' and I suppose that's closer than any word I can come up with."

Annie warmed at the thought of her tattoo art being discussed in the church office.

"I'm glad you like it. But I can't imagine why he—" she caught herself almost too late—"why anyone would send it to you."

"It's a question I haven't been able to put aside myself. I've prayed over it, and I'm led to the same answer again and again." He regarded her thoughtfully.

Murphy, what are you up to? She found herself holding her breath.

"The public will never know what sacrifices have been made to free them from being prey for the corrupt and the powerful. Those of us who do know suffer again, in not being able to honor it, or even acknowledge it. And yet—when I look at this, I'm inclined to see this time of restoration as a gift of opportunity."

Two months later

Annie found an overlap in the hanging plastic that closed off the chapel reconstruction from the rest of St. Augustine's. Quietly, she poked her head inside. The air was colder than the rest of the church, and smelled of paint and sawdust, but the view of the work was remarkably better, while scaffolding still covered the exterior.

"How's it look?" Leah asked.

It was too soon to tell. Annie had an irrational fear that the men in hardhats would mount the glass into the window frame backwards, and that no one would notice unless they tried to read the Latin script flowing across the top of the design – and found all the letters reversed.

"Even if they install it right, the words will look backwards from the outside," Leah pointed out.

Yes, but the people I care about reading it are the ones who'll spend time on the inside.

Leah swept the plastic aside, stepping past her into the construction zone. Ignoring the sidelong glances of the workers, she crossed her arms and frowned at the stained glass still covered in its slightly-obscuring protective film.

"The words are fine. But there's an extra star on the left."

"It's a divine/earthly perspective, remember? The lack of symmetry reflects our imperfections as humans, compared to the perfection of God. You said you liked it."

Leah pressed her lips together in a hilarious attempt to accept that the miniscule difference was acceptable.

"I…just think it might look better if both sides were the same."

Annie fought a smile. "Also the letters could be in alphabetical order. It would be much more organized, even if the words didn't mean anything…"

Leah narrowed her eyes at the glass. "Well, we don't know what the words mean anyway."

The simple translation they knew: Never stop. Father Tim had thought it was a dedication to friendship, and declared that it worked equally well as a commitment to the Faith, and he'd approved the design as written. Only she and Leah knew that her original, meaningless placeholder letters had been erased. Murphy had written these himself.

"I thought we would've found out by now," Annie said quietly. "I thought I would've had a chance to ask."

Someone started up a drill gun, drowning out her thoughts. Leah put a hand on her shoulder and they retreated back through the plastic into the sanctuary and out towards the lobby.

"So, guess what came in the mail today?" Leah asked as they passed between red and gold Christmas trees flanking the exit.

Automatically, Annie's hand passed over the only mail she'd cared about in three months, folded up in her back pocket. The drawing was creased and worn from being carried around. It was all she had; there'd been no other communication through Father Tim or anyone else. And there was none today—Leah would never have waited this long to tell her. Annie reached instead into her coat pockets and pulled her gloves on.

"Please tell me not another package from my sister. She's never going to forgive me for not coming home."

"In my experience, people don't send packages of handmade ornaments and—may I say—astonishingly good cookies to sisters that they don't forgive."

"They're guilt cookies. Did you open them?"

"They're love cookies, and they were addressed to both of us. Hope understands that you want to have a white Christmas. Which, incidentally, it looks like we're going to have."

Annie gave her a look. They'd been checking the weather every day. Boston was set to have a cold but very dry Christmas.

Leah grinned. "Your passport came today, too. We can leave for our trip tomorrow as long as Jake's okay with it." She pushed outside into the chilly air, breathing it in deeply.

Jake would be fine. He was going to be closing for two weeks over the holidays, taking Regina down to Florida. Since even before Thanksgiving, Leah had been championing a getaway in the opposite direction for her and Annie, one which involved tire chains and snow boots, and winter sports that Annie had tried only once, on the faux-snow mini-mountains outside of L.A., to disastrous results.

Leah stepped off the bottom stair and turned around. "Hey, this is supposed to be good news."

"Leah…"

"You're not going to tumble down the mountain. If you do, I'll be there to hold you in C-spine until the ski patrol arrives."

"That doesn't make me feel better."

"Forget the skiing, okay? I promise this is going to be the best vacation you've ever had. You're going to thank me. Profusely. You'll probably embarrass yourself."

"Those are strong words. Those almost sound like…betting words."

The cookies, they decided, would be held in escrow for three days – not the entire length of their trip, but any longer and Annie argued they'd be stale. Leah assured her she'd be eating them the first night.

Murphy tossed the stick across the frozen, snow-patched hill that was the front yard and lost sight of the dog as she tore after it. This was what he got for taking in a stray. You'd think the smell of dinner would have her scratching at the door, but no, she was more riled than ever, jumping at Murphy as though determined to bring him inside with her.

Murphy set his log and brought the axe down hard, splitting it into twin halves, then picking each up to split again. The pieces were still too large for Madin to comfortably fetch (they never needed kindling, as there were always more newspapers to burn), but as she raced back towards him Murphy threw one anyway, far into the growing shadows of the pines, hoping if he slowed the dog down, he might be able to finish this pile and move it all under the eaves before he lost the light entirely.

He would have called Connor for a hand, but his brother was inside wrestling with a twenty-pound, likely overcooked turkey, and Murphy had little desire to interrupt until the meat was ready to eat. He set up another log.

A turkey, of all things. They'd ignored Halloween, and missed Thanksgiving entirely, due to its earlier placement on the calendar up here in the north. When a nearby church had hung evergreen wreaths on its doors, Connor had announced that they should "fucking celebrate something," even if it had to be quiet, and in their shared solitude, and far from the warm, welcoming light of the tiny place of worship. That night, Murphy had snapped the trunk of the sapling that had sprung up next to the mailbox, and managed to make it stay up in the tree stand he'd found in the shed. The next morning, it was decorated with Christmas cookie cutters, the closest thing to ornaments Connor had been able to find.

Murphy had meant it as a joke, and Connor knew it, but once it was up, neither of them would cave to taking it down. This was hardly the first holiday they'd celebrated with just the two of them, toasting home and family, many hundreds or thousands of miles away. In recent years, some of those toasts had been made at Doc's. He wondered what it would have been like this year – what it could have been like—if he hadn't come all the way up here to make sure trouble hadn't followed him to the edge of the world.

As far as he could tell, it hadn't. Although, the less he saw, they more he felt compelled to look, in the papers, TV, online, and of course, through Smecker. The agent was optimistic these days. Court cases, convictions, sentencings were all pending, of course. But he reasoned that the worst was behind them.

He hoped that the friends they'd left behind would spend the holidays with family – Smecker, and Greenly, and the others. He knew they'd take care of Chaffey and Dolly. He hoped Dimitri would stay strong through these early stages of his Witness Protection. He hoped Bingle could put work aside, despite the demands of his new director position, and maybe focus on why he worked so hard. He hoped Seamus and Rhonwen were safe somewhere, and together.

He hoped Annie didn't think about him as much as he did her.

The stack of wood toppled as a blur of gray barreled into his legs. Trying to keep the axe high cost him his balance, and the mutt was only too happy to get him on his back in the icy pine needles and dirt.

"Easy, Madin!" Connor called from the front door. "He'll be throwin' his axe for you the next time."

Madin dropped the wood on Murphy's nose and barked impatiently.

Murphy snatched the wood, rolled upright, and chucked it downhill as hard as he could.

"If you don't want her to keep playing, why do you keep throwing the damn stick?"

"I'm hoping she won't come back."

"Right," Connor scoffed. "Well, when you're all done dog training, there's a bird in here who's in no danger at all of flying away."

"Should I bring the axe?"

Whatever comment Connor made was drowned out by Madin's sudden, furious barking.

Murphy was back on his feet as headlights swung across the trees. At the base of the property, a car had pulled off the machine-plowed road and onto their narrow driveway. Murphy moved smoothly to the shed and reached around for the shotgun propped inside the door. Connor hit the lights and faded back inside. Before the car had crawled halfway up the drive, Murphy heard the swift crunch of footfalls coming around the side of the cabin from the back.

It was dark enough now that all they could make out of the car was its headlights.

"Can you see the make?" Murphy asked Connor. Murphy had little hope in the darkness.

"Hold tight…"

It was lost tourists, or the absentee property manager. Or someone had managed to track down the Saints.

Still partway down the drive, the engine cut. Murphy's hands itched to cock the shotgun. Instead he took a breath, and waited. Listened. Watched.

The driver's side door opened and the interior was bathed in watery light. There was a passenger, too. Murphy lowered the shotgun, trying to blink the halos from his vision. Suddenly Connor was laughing and calling Madin off. Murphy's boots found their own way forward through the snow, until he was close enough to be certain that the green eyes staring back at him were the same ones in his dreams.

She climbed out, hesitantly at first, and he crushed her to him, unable to speak, even to swear at his brother for not telling him.

It was her keys, Leah told them later, as they sat around the dying fire. When she'd found them in the Lexus's center console, she'd noticed that the silver cabin key was missing. She'd given the property manager a heads up just in case, that some 'traveling friends' of hers might be coming to stay for a while.

Murphy could hardly fathom that his brother had kept it from him the whole time. Connor passed him the tin of cookies, by way of apology. He hadn't wanted to give his brother false hope, in case Leah hadn't noticed.

Annie smiled. "Because, what were the odds? Oh, and by the way – this girl speaks French. Like, fluently. You should have heard her at the border crossing."

"Since when?" Connor asked, dumbfounded.

Leah sighed. "Since the first grade."

Connor's mouth opened, followed a few seconds later by words. "You told me you didn't speak any other languages. Your exact words were, 'Languages aren't my thing.'"

"They're not." She shot Annie an exaggerated glare. "I suck at accents, okay? I sound like a drunken Kennedy."

"You can't be that bad," Connor laughed. "Accents are more art than science, though. I could teach you."

"And you can teach me," Annie told Murphy.

"You don't speak French."

She glanced sideways at him, the firelight catching in her eyes. "Just pretend like I do."

Murphy brushed a cookie crumb from her lip with his thumb. "Cette maison dispose uniquement d'deux lits."

Connor chucked a wad of newspaper at him, groaning.

Leah cleared her throat, and then told the boys about the church repair, that they were going to love what Annie had done with the place. Murphy couldn't wait to see it.

Annie asked about the meaning of 'Never Stop.'

Murphy took her hand in his and kissed the stains of ink dotting her fingertips—so sweetly familiar, and yet a little different every time. Always reflecting a work-in-progress.

"They were Rocco's last words," he said quietly. "He meant us to keep fighting, to not give up."

"In that church window, it'll be a reminder," Connor said. "That our eyes should stay open."

Leah traced his tattoo, where their fingers wove together. "And if you see something you can't let pass?"

Connor looked to Murphy.

"We'll never stop looking out for what's right," Murphy said. "Even if we have more connections now, more options on how to handle things—I think we'll never stop being Saints."

French translation: There are only two beds in this house.

And that, beloved readers, is The End.

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One Final Note: This story would never have come together as it did without the hours, hard work, great instincts, and true talent of my friend GoddessLaughs.

Thanks also to pitbullsrok and AngelxPhoenix for their much needed beta brilliance.

Every single one of you who reviewed made my day, and inspired me to get back on that keyboard. Those of you who favorited, signed up for alerts, or even just clicked on a chapter helped make me believe that it really was worth it to see this thing through to the end.

So…what now? Well, I guarantee my next project will be finished a lot faster ;P

It won't be posted one chapter at a time. It won't be fanfic, actually. It will, however, be packed full of action, snark, quality angst, and a healthy (possibly unhealthy) dose of sexual tension. If this sounds like something you'd like to read, PM me your email address and I will make sure when it's ready, you are the very first to know.

One More Final Note [2017]: Hey there! Just wanted to let anyone who's wondering know...that the new story is coming along, but I gotta admit I MISS your reader feedback now that I'm no longer posting. I received a sweet, thoughtful review today out of the blue, and I couldn't stop smiling at random strangers all afternoon. If you're finishing this epic tale for the first time (or second!), please know that I still see and appreciate all your follows, favorites, and especially reviews! There's no better writing motivator in the world. Love you guys.