Ice hit my veins.

Something I had never seen on Tony's face made my body flood with a sensation I couldn't determine as either fear or stone cold panic. I thought I was the only person he knew besides the homeless people he had met on the street, but as the voice behind me spoke, Tony's face painted a black color. I was wrong.

He knew this man.

As I slowly turned around, man became men. I hadn't sensed more than one person—hadn't sensed anything at all. As usual when I was with Tony, anything and everything, including myself, disappeared and was lost on me as I dove into his madness. Now, everything suddenly sharpened and turned too sensitive as I looked at no less than four men with carved faces that were staring hard at Tony and me with expressions that made my skin crawl.

The four men spread out, cornering us in inside the narrow alley. I automatically stepped back, bumping into Tony who remained more solid than stone. From wall to wall, we had perhaps fourteen feet to breathe, but the air was strangled when the four Russian men slithered up to us.

They were no ordinary thugs. Obvious foreign language aside, they were burlier than the average person, harsher molded and firmer cut. Larger. They wore nondescript clothes and the indents of their grimaces seemed almost carved.

"You thought there is such a thing as running," The man from before spoke, stepping forward with a stalk-pray approach. He spoke in a heavily accented tongue, but it was the tone of voice he used that made my stomach shrink and fill with ants. His eyes landed on Tony and pierced his oceans without a shred of fear. He wasn't scared of drowning. "You think you can run when you kill men of the russkaya mafiya?"

My heart stopped. I didn't understand Russian, but I understood one English word perfectly; Kill.

Something singed through me, and like a nauseous wave of nostalgia, it hit me.

The blood.

That night. The bloodbath. The night he showed up at my apartment. The answer to the question I had been afraid to ask, the question I had wanted to know... and thought I got my answer to.

Nobody died. Those were his words. Naïvely, I had believed them. Or had I simply chosen ignorance?

Staring up at the threatening man in front of me now, I knew either way Tony had lied to me.

Somebody had died that night.

Everything inside me screamed not to turn my back to the lethal man in front of me. Only an idiot turned their back to a predator. Still, my feet spun me around on their own, as if they couldn't stop themselves. My eyes needed to see him, needed to see the confirmation in his eyes. Was Tony a lethal man, too?

My eyes bore into his that wouldn't clip away from the man behind me, the man who had just called him a murderer. For the first time in broad daylight, I saw the soldier in him take place inside his eyes, inside his body. Gone was the tired man searching for a soul; instead there was a soldier standing headfirst in front of an enemy who was coming closer as the silence ticked by.

And I was caught in between them.

"Tony," I whispered, my heart beating frantically in my chest. So now it decided to work. The air was more taut than the men all gathered in the tiny off-sight alley, and my body was picking up on it. It was vibrating with energy and wound-up alarm bells that only grew louder as time expanded. Danger. Danger. Danger. I couldn't take it; I was succumbing to the one thing I had been trying to push through for weeks.

Numbing fear.

Suddenly it was right here, and unlike the Devil, I was frozen and couldn't run from it. Even if there had been a way out.

"Tony," I stared up at him, my body beginning to shake—pleading him. Say something. Do something. Adrenaline started coursing through me when my eyes saw the threatening men box us in, Tony still unyielding from his spot. I caved and backed up, gripping on to Tony's arm and seeking behind him like a coward. I knew when I was sheep and they were wolves.

But Tony was no sheep.

"You killed my men," The guy from before spoke again, as if he hadn't heard him the first time. Their noses were practically touching, yet Tony showed no sign of feeling the need to move. Bravery or insanity? I almost couldn't hear what the man was saying from the blood rushing in my ears.

"You thought you could get away with it..." He narrowed his eyes and moved so close to Tony, his breath struck his lip. "but like them, we see everything. You can't hide from us, and neither can he."

He? Who were 'them'? My eyes flickered between Tony and the Russians, trying to catch a glimpse of something from their faces I could read and translate, but nada. Tony showed nothing either, but his fists were clenched as tightly as my knees were locked together.

"You will speak to us," The Russian gritted out, his men all acting like rabid dogs waiting for their trigger word. Their signal to attack. Loaded guns. My eyes were darting around, adrenaline making me dizzy trying to pick up on everything all at once. The time was narrowing, the world was inching closer... Reality was so close to catching up to us... "Talk or suffer."

"W-who are you?" I couldn't believe it when I heard my voice utter words in this very moment. All the eyes shifted to me, the attention, the tension. Suddenly, the Russian was staring at me, every bit of his wrath gleaming my way. My body ceased and desisted, refusing to do my bidding as he gave me a single stare that told me to shut the fuck up while the men were talking. The worst part was, my question hadn't even been the one I had wanted to ask.

How did they know Tony?

Or rather, how did Tony know them?

Again, my eyes flickered between the wound up men as soon as the Russian turned his attention back to Tony who still hadn't spoken. He had remained a solid piece of stone since the moment they entered the alley. Even for me, it was a long time for him to be silent. He hadn't let out a word. Only stared at the man in front of him with that hint of something in his eyes. It looked vaguely familiar...

"Talk," The Russian sneered at him, a final warning. When he didn't, he muttered something lowly in Russian. "Tell us what we want to know or we start with the girl."

And just like that, I recognized the look on Tony's face. It was exactly like back in the alley, too quiet, too stoic.

Oh, shit.

Everything happened too fast for my brain to absorb it. Someone moved first, but I didn't see who. It all turned into a blur that mixed with my scream as hands grabbed me and hands lunged after Tony.

– A symphony of chaos evolved before my eyes.

Brutal hands reared me back and slammed me back against something hard—a chest—while other hands wrapped around my mouth and arms. My screams got stuck in my throat as I felt myself get shoved aside from the fighting that broke out, like a scene out of an action movie. And like those movies, I could do nothing but marvel.

It was dirtier in real life. Less coordinated. Less beautiful. More brutal. Two men held me, two men went at Tony. Blow after blow, they rammed their fists into his gut, slammed him up against the alley wall and pounded him like he was nothing but meat and bones.

Blood. Too much of it. My screams turned into hysteric sobs and my arms and legs begun kicking and fighting when I saw blood ooze from his mouth in a sickeningly thick volume. They struck him again, his head whipping to the side. I couldn't watch it, couldn't watch them kill him.

"Where is it?!" The Russian shouted, his spit striking Tony's face as he gripped it and turned it up, meeting his cerulean blue oceans with pure rage. A flash of silver made my eyes widen, but it was the metallic click that made my heart freeze. "Tell us. We know you know him."

What happened next happened faster than my adrenaline could slow-motion it and put it into context in my head. Instead, my mind gave up and handed it to me in glimpses while I helplessly watched from my captive's hands – watched as they held Tony's life at gunpoint.

But then, the gun was suddenly in his hand.

A deafening shot rang in my ears and a scream tore from my lips. The sound was louder in real life. Painstakingly loud. And one wasn't enough.

Two more. Thumps behind me. Freedom. The ground. Me. Flashes after flashes, until I could do nothing but curl up in shock, my body acting on pure instinct. Seek shelter.

I heard grunts and flesh meeting bone. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine it being a karate movie, the whishes and whooshes of air being pushed around and out of places it didn't belong. Occasionally I heard a curse. Something in a foreign tongue my ears could recognize as oaths. Funny how the tone was the same in every language. Same as fists. They all sounded similar. It was universal.

Just like music.

'Music can fight the battles that goes on inside the heart... but it can't fight the wars that goes on outside out it.'

It was the wrong time the words replayed in my mind, but I heard them louder than the fight in front of me. The words that had rocked something inside Tony echoed inside me and drowned out the traumatic scene in front of me.

Music was international – real music. When instruments weaved their sounds and vibrated through the air, every nation in the world could understand it. It was a language that spoke entirely on its own, but a language that everybody understood. No racism, no religion, no nothing.

But some people were deaf to it.

Some people chose not to listen because they were too busy seeing, and some people were so busy listening they had turned blind to the world.

Music can fight the wars inside the heart... Tony could fix and break my heart with just one melody on his violin, but the violin could never have saved him here.

Music could fight the wars inside the heart, but it couldn't fight the wars outside of it. Some people were deaf, some people were blind; Tony had decided to be neither. Music could only do so much, and if there was anything I had learned from being with Tony, it was that he was a fighter.

Fighting was what was saving us now. Fighting was what had gotten him here. Fighting, not just with his fists and not just for himself, was what had brought him to this moment now where I saw him physically and mentally beat the deaf men in front of him.

Music couldn't fight wars because the people at war were deaf. Whatever had snapped inside of Tony's mind as he had realized this had made him seek towards... something else. Soldier or not, he could fight to defeat the deaf, and he did and he had. Some place, somewhere, there was once a time where he hadn't been heard and it had killed him. Broken him. Even before the world broke his mind, something had broken his heart.

And if even Tony with all his gifts couldn't be heard... then I knew now why he had sought to fighting.

Violence solved nothing, but true fighting wasn't violence. Tony had said nothing to the Russian who had been goading him since the moment they showed up. He had kept still, words mute, locked down. He didn't want to fight.

But sometimes, fighting was inevitable. To the deaf, anything he said would've fallen on... deaf ears.

So instead, he spoke with his fists.

At the sound of something uncomfortable snapping, my mind finally snapped as well and my eyes jerked up. Everything turned from a blur to crystal sharpness just in time for me to see Tony wring the neck around on the last standing man in the alley. I would've screamed if I had any voice left, would've cried if I could still feel my body.

But nothing.

I could tell I was shaking, but I couldn't actually feel it. Numbing fear had turned me completely... numb. Was I even still in my body?

My eyes were the only thing that moved as Tony collapsed on the ground as well, covered in blood. It was déjà-vu. Except, this time it wasn't night; this time it was broad daylight. Blood looked brighter under the sun, less opaque. The faint puddles of melting snow around us were pink. All these strange combination of colors pained a gruesome rainbow, and in the centre, of course, was my warrior.

He was breathing. Alive. Or was he? His face was broken. He was shaking. Crying? He was supporting his upper body on his knuckles. Bloody knuckles. Blood still oozed from his mouth, his hair had fallen from his bun. Tainted red. So much red. He had reacted again. Instinct, impulse, reflex. Blackout. Now he was waking up, and the aftermath was breaking him.

The war didn't kill him, it was everything after.

My eyes were burning, my cheeks feeling cold with liquid. Sobs broke from me as I looked around the alley, saw the bodies lying around us. Dead. Dead. Dead.

I wanted to scream, but the sight was too surreal. I had seen a dead person before, but never four together, along with the person who had killed them all gathered in the same space. The same person I used to call my savior. The same person who was now... a murderer.

But he had been so all along, hadn't he?

The saddest thing was... the thing that made me break down into tears... a part of me had known all along.

His kind of PTSD wasn't normal. It wasn't just memory loss. Wasn't just pain and heartache. War. Blood. It was the conscience of someone who had taken a life, more than once, and no matter how many baths he took, he was still bloodied.

But just like me, he could pretend not to see it when it wasn't visible. But now... it was visible for all to see.

A sound came from him, a sound that made my heart break. He had killed, but who had he killed? Who? Why? He was looking around as well, shaking his head. He had done this? When? How? His eyes found mine, and whatever he saw made him wrench his eyes away. No.

A broken melody.

Time seemed frozen, yet at the same time something kept moving, something that told us both we couldn't stay here. Gunshots had rung. Bang-bang... bang. Someone had to have called the police. Was that sirens in the distance? If they found us here, it was all over...

I wanted to move. Tried to. My limbs stayed frozen and I let out a sob. Maybe they should find us here. Maybe it was supposed to end this way. Maybe, this had been what the road had led to all along; my stupidity following a man I hardly knew.

A murderer.

Oh, God. I felt my stomach toil, but I swallowed consistently and tried to keep it down. Had to. A few feet away, I saw my guard get up somehow, breathing in and out. Then, he was stalking my way.

"Get up," He rasped. "Now." It was a harsh command. When I didn't—couldn't—one of his bloodied hands came around my arm and jerked me up. A cry tore from me as my frozen limbs were forced alive.

"N-no... s-stop, p-please..." I was crying. Uncontrollably. My legs wobbled as he pulled me to the ground, pulling me along, pulling me away. "P-please..."

I didn't see how he managed to get us out of the alley or anywhere else for that matter, without being seen by pedestrians or other curious eyes. Suddenly everything went dark, but I was still awake. Someone had turned off the sun and there was an echo. Thump, thump, thump. Boots against concrete. It sounded like the subway, but it was too dark. We were... underground?

My eyes didn't adjust to the dark, but Tony seemed to know exactly where we were going. I heard a scraping sound and a ragged breathing. The thumping sound became uneven.

"T-Tony..."

My voice was a broken whisper. Maybe he didn't hear it or maybe he just didn't stop. Couldn't. He kept moving, leading us somewhere only he knew. Then again, he was the puppeteer...

I couldn't tell for how long we walked. It felt like hours. At one point we stopped moving. I heard the ragged breathing, but the scraping stopped. We stood still for a long time. Too long. Then, we were moving again.

By the time we stopped again, I heard something metallic move. Suddenly my limbs were forced to climb up, up a ladder. Up, up, up.

I expected daylight to blind me, but there came none. When my hands felt the cold asphalt against them, my fingertips were too numb already, but a gasp still broke from my lungs. It was night.

I stepped onto the street of my own block, looking around in horror while Tony climbed up from the sewerage system behind me. The manhole was covered up and then his hand was around my arm again. Pulling.

I found myself standing in front of my own door. I stared at it in shock, feeling Tony's hands pat my pockets down until he found what he was looking for. With a diligent turn, he unlocked the building door and pushed me inside, guiding me up the stairs. When my apartment door appeared, it was unlocked for me as well. Hands moved me inside, the sound of the door locking behind us. Bolt and key.

And again, it was like déjà-vu, but something was wrong. Reversed. I felt my body almost collapse until a pair of hands caught me and held me.

"Shower," He voiced. "Now."

• • •

Our mind rejects traumatic things and seeks shelter in itself. If you've never tried it, you don't know.