It wasn't often that corrections officer George Sewell found himself wide-eyed and speechless, but as he stood gaping at the 'dead' man lounging quite comfortably in his living room, Sewell found speech far from forthcoming.

Murphy Pendleton rested back against the sofa, stretching out his long, lean legs as if he had all the time in the world and had never felt the burden of worry and strife upon his broad shoulders. "You look surprised to see me... cupcake." said Pendleton, with an infuriatingly calm lilt to his tone.

Sewell was certainly something about all of this, but he found that 'surprised' didn't quite cover the breadth of what he was feeling. When he had opened his front door not two minutes ago-after a gruelling shift at the penitentiary-he had had plans for a nice long soak in the bath, and a brainless slump in front of the television with a pizza and some awful late-night movie. What he hadn't planned on doing upon entering, was having a conversation with a man who had been declared dead over three years ago. For a moment, Sewell had thought that he might have been hallucinating, but then Pendleton had spoken, his echoing of the pet-name 'cupcake' laced with too much contempt to be imaginary.

"You not going to say anything? I'm hurt here... I thought you and I had a special something going on back at the-"

"Get the fuck outta my house!" was the first thing that tumbled from Sewell's mouth. It was an octave higher than usual, and he didn't much appreciate the touch of panic laced within the words, or the way his lower lip trembled towards the end, but they were out and he meant them.

Murphy just stared; his green eyes wide and-

-the fucker was laughing at him-

Sewell grit his teeth, and told his brain to calm the fuck down, and his lungs to take a fucking breath deep enough to steady his rocky nerves. As he tried to compose himself, Murphy smirked and reclined against the cushions. With a languorous stretch, he settled his feet atop the coffee table, knocking several coasters to the carpet in the process.

Sewell glared, which was another thing he very rarely did; he was a man of action and control, not a man who hid behind withering glances. But he was feeling well and truly lost, fear settling into his limbs like dead weights. He had never been frightened of Pendleton during the man's stay at the penitentiary (the guy had been a pushover), but there was something dangerous about the look in his eyes as he challenged Sewell to enact his order. If there was one thing Sewell hated more than having no control in a situation, it was that feeling of being on the losing side. And right now, that's exactly where he was; this man smirking across at him was not the same pushover he had coerced and framed back at the prison, this man was someone else entirely.

"It took me a long time to find you, officer Sewell. The first two years I figured I'd lay low, keep myself out of trouble until everyone forgot I ever existed. I was terrified that I'd pass someone who recognised me, I didn't want to go back to jail. So, for over a year I barely left the place I was staying at, I always went out at night, walked ten miles just to get to the nearest store and stock up... That was pretty grim during the winter, I'll tell you."

Sewell pursed his lips; he wanted to say something, to ask why the fuck Murphy was telling him all of this, but his voice had fled the scene.

"After a while I eventually accepted that, well, that everyone else had accepted that I was dead, that I'd died trying to escape from the bus. What was it they said about my body?" He looked conflicted for a moment, then his eyes brightened and he smiled to himself, "Oh yeah, that was it; that I'd stumbled over a cliff trying to evade capture... Everyone thinks my corpse is still out there somewhere, rotting in some river."

Pendelton looked down at his hands, a flicker of something clouding his eyes as they roved the expanse of rough skin and scars.

"I've visited my own grave, you know. They buried an empty casket. It felt weird looking at my own headstone."

Sewell shifted, trying to ease the whining of muscle down his left leg-he hadn't been so good on his feet since... since Coleridge's bitch had-

"I sometimes wish I had died. Well no, no, that's not quite right. I used to sometimes wish I had died, but then I'd think about you and how bullshit it was for me to feel that way when I knew you'd be perfectly happy, getting on with your life, not even caring about the sick shit you've done. So I guess I have you to thank for giving me a new lease on life, George, but it's the least you could have done, right? After fucking it up in the first place."

Sewell stiffened. "Oh, I'm sorry, was it my fault your kid got killed? You gonna blame me for that? I'd say you were pretty fuckin' down in the dumps when you stole off with that patrol car. Tell me something, Murph; what were you hoping for most, to get arrested so you could off Napier, or to crash and burn?" The only indication Sewell got that he had struck a nerve was the tiny jolt of tension in Murphy's jaw; it wasn't much, but it was enough to make him feel a little less of a coward for just standing there, and allowing this man to continue.

Murphy tore his gaze away from his hands to fix it on Sewell, who felt himself further emasculated when his hands reached out of their own accord to clutch at the door handle pressing into the small of his back; he was eternally grateful when his fingers did nothing more than rest atop the cool brass.

"Carol puts flowers on my grave every other weekend." said Murphy after a moment-

-Christ, had he always been this talkative? Sewell remembered that getting him to talk back at the prison had been like pulling teeth.

"I've watched her a couple of times, just... just to see how she looks, ya know, if she looks well. But it's like watching a stranger; I don't feel anything for her now, it's just some lingering sense of loyalty. It kind of hit hard when I realised that; I thought I still loved her, but now I just see her and she could be anyone.

"Honestly, I thought, after-after Charlie, that she would never forgive me, that she'd hate me for the rest of her life. I know she blames me for what happened to him, I still blame me; if I'd have been paying attention Napier wouldn't have-" he clutched at his hair suddenly and-ah, there was the Murphy Sewell knew, then he was gone and this stranger was back, looking cold, collected and...

Sewell didn't like that look at all.

"Tell me, cupcake," said Murphy, the corners of his mouth twisting sharply up, "have you missed me all this time?"

Sewell flushed at the implication, before immediately righting himself and fixing Murphy with his most withering glare. His higher brain functions still hadn't kicked in and pumped him full of the get-up-and-go attitude he had perfected over the years, but he figured he'd be O.K so long as he had a quick exit at his back and Murphy was at least a few feet away from him.

Sewell realised, after a moment, that Murphy was actually waiting for a response to his question (colour me surprised), and-already feeling well and truly emasculated by this point, Sewell needed to earn a few points back-so he accepted that little challenge in Murphy's eyes and returned a smirk of his own. "All this time, Princess," he leered.

Murphy flashed him a grin in response, looking suspiciously pleased. He shifted awkwardly across the cushions of the sofa, before patting a hand down against the newly relinquished space. His shit-eating grin only broadened when Sewell failed to move from his spot at the door. "Take a seat," he said, "I bet you've had a long day, full of bribes and beatings. You must be exhausted, officer." He patted the empty spot again, goading him.

In a move he suspected he might very well regret later on, Sewell allowed his wounded sense of male pride to guide him over to where Murphy sat. He relished towering above his seated frame for a moment, before shifting over to the opposite side, as far away from the man as he could get without sitting on the arm. It felt good to lean back against the cushions; it had been a long day, and his legs were glad for the respite.

"So, what do you want, Pendleton?" demanded Sewell once he was comfortable.

Murphy studied him from across the vacant seat between them, an odd, almost confused look on his face. "To chat," he muttered, "didn't I already say that?"

Sewell fumed, and found his grip on the arm-rest tightening to the point of blanching his strained knuckles white. "Cut the bullshit, Murph!" he seethed, "You came here to get some sort of comeuppance for Coleridge, didn't you? Well, I'm afraid you're a little late to the party on that one, Sugar; daddy's girl had a pretty good go at it, and I'm betting your imagination isn't quite as creative as hers was."

The springs in the furniture squawked in protest as Murphy sidled closer. Sewell continued to grip the arm-rest, willing himself to stay put, to hold on to what was left of his dignity, and not freak the fuck out and run. Because right now, he was struggling to deal with that niggling fear spreading like wildfire through every part of him. He flinched when their thighs brushed, but kept his eyes forward; he wasn't about to let on how nervous he was.

"I'm sure you got exactly what you deserved, Sewell," said Murphy, his voice low and dangerous, "You killed a good man, you framed me for it. I went through fucking hell all because of you and your need to be at the fucking top-"

"So come on then!" yelled Sewell as he turned to his right to face him. Murphy was leaning far closer than what was decent, but Sewell willed the surprise away from his face, keeping his expression dark and threatening as he fixed gazes with him. "Come on, if that's why you're here. But I tell you fuckin' now, kid, I'll give as good as I fuckin' get."

For a brief instant, Murphy looked unsure of himself, his face a ghostly echo of the way it had looked back at the penitentiary; soft and yielding, vulnerable. But then the moment shattered, and he looked as wild and as dangerous as any man Sewell had seen during his rounds at the prison. "I thought it was," he said, his breath ghosting over Sewell's steadily flushing face, "I thought I'd know what to do when I got here. I wanted to tell you exactly what kind of a pathetic fuck I think you are."

He sighed, the force of it dislodging a few of Sewell's carefully slicked locks. "I ran through so many ideas on my way here, you know... I was going to beat the living crap out of you, leave you in a mess like you did with Frank. I was going to make you beg me to get you help-"

Sewell scoffed, as if that would ever happen.

"I'm not the man I used to be. I could do it, to you, I could hurt you, I think I could even kill you, Sewell. I was soft when you handed me Napier; I should have been the one to kill him, but I'm not that person any more...

"Someone once told me that revenge is a long, and treacherous road. She asked me where I thought it would end, and for a time, I didn't know. I just wanted to hurt the people who had wronged me; I still do. I want to hurt you, Sewell. I want to hurt you so badly, but what kind of a man would I turn into?"

Sewell took a deep breath. He couldn't tear his eyes away from this stranger sat in front of him, leaning so close. He realised that he wanted to listen to him, he wanted to hear every little thing that he had to say, even if it came with the risk of snuffing his own existence.

Murphy brushed a hand through his shaggy hair, sighing again. He trained his eyes on Sewell, keeping him rooted under a stony gaze. "I don't want to be a man I'm afraid of," he admitted after a moment, "I don't want to be capable of killing someone. Anne got enough revenge for the both of us that night. I came here to get my own back, but I'm not going to carry on down that path, I refuse. Besides, you're not the man you used to be, not after-"

Sewell was not about to take a slur like that lying down. Quicker than Murphy probably thought him capable of, Sewell grabbed at his shirt and shoved him back against the opposite arm-rest. He snarled, feeling well and truly pissed by this point; he could take a great deal of things before his patience wore thin, but he wouldn't sit back and accept it when his masculinity was challenged.

"I'm still man enough to beat the living shit out of you, Sweetheart!" he hissed.

Instead of gracing Sewell's wounded ego with a look of panic, Murphy just smirked as he let his head fall back against the arm-rest, exposing the delicate line of his throat. "That's not what I heard," he murmured, tongue flicking out to lick at his lips, "I heard Anne's little group of con-friends made you their bitch that night."

Sewell's stomach plummeted; if Pendleton knew about that, then who else knew about it? The cons at the penitentiary? Maybe they had been laughing at him this entire time, maybe the increase in cat-calls over the last few years had been a result of this knowledge. What about his co-workers? He had never bothered to make friends at work, he didn't have the patience for anyone besides himself. Could that bitch have spread the news around? The final nail in the coffin as his carefully built-up reputation crumbled about him.

Sewell was jolted from his thoughts by the brush of a hand against the side of his face. He jerked away from the touch as if burned. "You a fucking fag now, Murph?" he sneered.

Murphy continued to smirk, gazing up at him through half-lidded eyes. "Heard you moaned like a whore when they all took you-"

The words had already been spilled, the damage was done (maybe this was the final nail), but Sewell still felt a satisfying little jump as his fist connected with the fragile cartilage of Murphy's narrow nose.