Chapter one, The End of a Beginning

Mark was walking home from work like any other night, the lights of New York finally starting to dim at five in the morning. He was tired. It was the same every night, working at a club, serving endless numbers of drinks to an endless stream of underage kids who poured through the doors to dance and make a ton of noise. He hated being the one to serve the alcohol to the underage teens, but it was his job. The club where he worked was considered "hot" by the upper class party kids whose parents could afford to buy them out of any charges leveled. Once again, he wished that he could quit his job, but he had promised himself that he would never be jobless. And at the moment, nothing was available for alternate work. He would just have to tough it out until he found another position.

He was deep in thought when he rounded the corner next to his apartment building. Another man brushed past him, hurrying somewhere. He turned his head and looked into the alleyway next to his building, standard practice for someone who lived in a big city, just to be sure there were no muggers waiting in the shadows. For the first time ever he saw something in the dark corners of the side street, a girl, lying on the pavement, the pale moonlight washing over her limp body. He stopped, and turned to look closer. He saw sheen over her exposed stomach, and realized that it was blood. He hesitated, should he go to her, or was he only senselessly endangering himself. After all, her attacker could be lurking somewhere in the shadows, alerted to the sound of his footsteps. A gentle gasp from the alleyway broke through his reverie, he saw the girl try to raise herself on her hand, and fall back down with a pained groan. Her head turned toward him, her large eyes connecting with his. They stunned him, her eyes; they were so expressive, full of emotions that he knew a girl as young as her should never have to bear. Betrayal, pain, sadness, he saw them all there. He no longer cared for his own safety, he had to save this beautiful girl.

Swiftly he walked to her, about ten feet from the mouth of the side street. Up close, he could see that the blood was coming from a long gash that traveled from her right shoulder all the way to the left side of her waist. It was like a gruesome sash, oozing blood. She was wearing a pair of blue jeans, and a white shirt. The shirt had been ripped when her assailant had inflicted the cut, and to Mark, she looked like a fallen angel. Her skin glowed with an eerie light, as if she was lit with a dying fire from within. Her hair was short, and a deep chocolate brown with a reddish tinge where the light hit it. It was cut in a bob that framed her face in a mass of swoops and curls. Her face had a light alabaster complexion, no doubt enhanced by the loss of blood she had experienced. Her lips were full, and soft, a beautiful red, and her eyes, which were the first thing that he had noticed, were large and hazel, fringed in soft black that looked like it could have been drawn by one sweep of charcoal. Even though she lay in such a broken state, Mark could not but be affected by her lonely beauty.

She turned to him with a wince, that clearly showed that she was indeed human, and not some angelic beauty that had fallen from the sky, and her eyes pleaded for help. Her lips struggled to form words, but Mark needed not second urging. He carefully leaned down, and examined her wounds. Upon closer inspection, the jagged cut across her chest was not the only laceration that she had. Her stomach was crisscrossed with tiny cuts, and there were small cuts all up her throat. Much to his surprise, she did not panic when he got to her, she did not cry or scream, or try and hold on to him, she merely looked at him with a grateful look in her eyes. He wondered if she would be able to tell him what had happened…but no better way to find out than to ask…

How did this happen to you?

She looked at him, sighed, and replied, "I was walking home from work, and this man grabbed me and pulled me into the ally, and told me that either I would have sex with him or I would die."

She winced as she said this, probably because he had taken off his sweater, and begun to dab at the cuts on her body with it, he was sure that it was hurting her tremendously.

"Brave girl" he thought to himself.

"I obviously chose to "die", although thanks to you, it didn't seem to work."

He saw her smile to herself in a twisted little way. He shuddered to think what he would have done given the same choice, assuming that he was a girl of course.

"Do you want me to call the police?" It seemed like a logical thing to ask her, but he was shocked when a flash of fear flitted through her eyes, and she answered with a stern

"No". "Just take me home please".

Those words sent an unexplainable shiver to his inner core, and he resolved that he would do no such thing. He continued to wipe away the blood from her torso, but he made firm eye contact with her.

"You are not going to be alone in this state! I understand if you don't want to go to the police, and I won't make you, but I am not going to drop you at some apartment building with your injuries and let you fend for yourself."

"Well then where do you expect me to go? You won't let me go home, and if I go to a hospital they will call the cops which I have already said I don't want to do!"

At this point, she hoisted herself to a sitting position, and leaned against the cold stone of his apartment building that formed one of the walls of the ally. He couldn't help stepping back and looking at the absurdity of his situation. He was sitting in an ally with a beautiful girl at five… thirty in the morning. Said girl was very pissed off because he would not leave her alone in her apartment all by herself with some gruesome wound, that (shit) were starting to bleed again because she had sat up and leaned against his apartment building… his apartment building! Yes, the perfect solution!

"This is what we are going to do, I am going to take you to my apartment, and we are going to patch you up. You are going to stay the night with me, and then we are going to take it from there in the morning, when we both have had some sleep."

She gave him a very incredulous look. "You want me, who by the way was just very nearly raped and murdered, to come to your apartment and sleep over. And by the way I don't even know your name!"

Mark rolled his eyes. "If I was planning to take advantage of you, don't you think that I would have done it while you were weak and lying on the ground, instead of trying to get you to stop bleeding, and wasting my very precious sleeping time instead of ruining my favorite sweater with your blood, and sitting out here in the cold!"

She looked at him doubtfully, but shook her head. "I guess you are not gong to change your mind, and it is cold, so let's get going…"

He smiled inwardly, score one… He stood, and offered her his hand; she grasped it and tried to pull herself to a standing position. She immediately fell back down. He sighed, now he supposed he would have to carry her. Oh well, she didn't look like she would weigh more than 125 or so, and he was a strong guy. He pulled her up, and gently scooped her into his arms. Yep, just as he thought, not to heavy. He started off toward the front of the building. Her head rested lightly on his shoulder, and he heard her sigh, half in a pained way, and half as though some burden had been lifted from her. She turned her face to him, and once again, her beautiful hazel eyes caught his.

"Thank you."

"You are most welcome."

They reached the front door, and Mark set her feel gently on the pavement. He reached into the pocket of his now ruined sweater, and retrieved his key. They entered the building with the girl leaning heavily on his shoulder. He knew that if she had been able to walk on her own, she would have. He marveled at how much he had learned about her in just a half an hour, more than he did about most people he knew for a week. He knew that she was stubborn, and independent, and anyone could see that she was very beautiful, but you would have to be blind to miss that. They laboriously climbed the stairs, and arrived at his door. Mark had some apprehension about her seeing his apartment, it was nice, with a bedroom, kitchen, and living room, but he did deep down want to impress her, and for all he knew, she lived in a penthouse. He opened the door, and they entered his tiny foyer. He removed his sweater and shoes. He helped her out of her pink sneakers, but didn't bother with her coat. He had found it right behind her in the ally, and he saw that she had drawn it tight about herself, no doubt to cover the fact that her shirt was particularly useless as far as covering merits went. Back in the ally he had avoided looking at her stomach and chest any more than he had to, sensing that doing so made her nervous.

He brought her into the kitchen, and noticed her eyes glancing about the room, taking in his décor. He was proud of how his apartment was decorated. A close friend of his from high school had come up to visit him for a couple of weeks the past summer, and he and Mark had gone shopping to find some things to spice up the apartment. It definitely helped that his friend was an interior designer. They had come up with an oriental feel for the rooms. The walls were painted in a pleasing jade color that exuded masculinity, and the furniture was modern Japanese design, all sweeping clean lines, and black wood. He loved these rooms. Apparently the girl did to. He could see an approving look on her face as she surveyed the décor. He jerked his mind back to more practical things and headed toward the bathroom to get some antiseptic for the girl's cuts. The girl… he had to stop calling her that. When he got back he would have to ask her name. He retrieved the needed things, and returned to the kitchen. The floor was tile, so if any blood got on the floor it would be much easier to clean than if it got on the carpets in the living room. He turned toward the girl and was surprised to see her standing, looking at one of the pieces of framed artwork that hung on the wall. It was a Japanese brush painting, with the letters for peace, harmony, and wisdom in the corner. He loved that picture; it was of a Geisha standing on the bank of a river, a coy smile on her face.

"Like it?" he asked.

"Love it" she replied, "It's as if she knows something that she is dying to tell you. He was shocked, that was the same thing that he had said to his friend when he had first seen the painting.

Snapping back into more comfortable ground…

"We should clean up your cuts."

"Yes we should."

She sighed, and turned away from the picture. He looked at her with a questioning expression, wondering if she was going to put up a fuss about removing the tattered remains of the white shirt. She sighed again, and shook her head.

"May I have a small blanket", she queried…

"Of course."

He went to the linen closet, and removed a small receiving blanket that he had from… somewhere, he didn't remember. Maybe it was from one of those bachelor parties that they had at the end of high school, a prank gift. He gave it to her, and watched as she spread it across her chest so that it covered all the way from the bottom of her chin to her belly button. He received a stern glace from her, and turned his face to the wall. He heard her groan as she peeled away the remains of the shirt from her wounds. When he turned around he saw that she had removed the shirt, and had recovered her self with the blanket, although she had left a part of it folded over, so as to expose part of the long cut. He came over to her, and took up some of the antiseptic, and poured it onto a cloth. He proceeded to dab at the cut, clearing away the blood. It pained him to hear the sharp intake of breath that accompanied these actions. "It must hurt like a bitch," he thought to himself.

Almost an hour later, they had finished cleaning her cuts; she had cleverly maneuvered the blanket so that he never saw any more than was absolutely necessary. He had also convinced her to wear some of his pajamas, and to sleep in his bed, on the assurance that he would stay in the living room all night. He was now arranging his own makeshift sleeping space on the couch. He heard her soft breathing from the other room, and decided that if she was asleep, it would not hurt to "check on her" to make sure that she was alright. He tiptoed into the bedroom, and gazed on the sleeping form. She looked so content and cute, laying there in his oversized pajamas, the blankets clenched up to his chin. He sighed in contentment, maybe he could convince her to stay for a while…

"Ah Ha! I knew that you wouldn't stay out! You miserable low-life scum!"

Her eyes popped open, and the façade of sleeping beauty was broken. Seeing that he had fallen into her trap, Mark hastily retreated to the door, with the girl close behind him, beating furiously with a pillow. He thought that she was mad, but his last glance at her face before he dived head first into his bed betrayed the slightly mischievous glint in her eyes.