She had always wanted to be protected, but she had not known it until that night. They had gone to a small, local bar for a quick drink. They sat at a table in the corner, Ax with his back to the wall and eyes on the door. She noticed immediately the three who came in, not because she saw them but because of how Ax had changed. Changed without changing. She remembered the feeling of cold. She saw him relax and lean back in his chair. A short time later she heard a step behind her and Ax looked down at his beer.
“Hey, pretty Lady, what brings a tart like you into a dump like this, then?” It was the biggest, obviously the leader. She could not see him, but she could smell him. Sweat and beer.
Lucy said nothing. Did not even turn around.
And then Ax. Nothing much. He did not even look up. He just said, in a very quiet, almost distant voice, “Go away, now.”
She heard them, all three, laugh behind her and she moved to sit beside Ax, felling safer just being close to him.
The big guy, the leader, took her seat. Just sat down. Stared at Ax.
“Now, what was that?” he asked.
Now Ax looked up. He was a picture of calm, she remembered. And how he had taken his time over the words, pronounced slowly, calmly, precisely.
“I said, get your ugly, fat face out of mine before I rearrange your bone structure, fat boy.“
Of course, Lucy knew. If you talk to people like that, that way? No way were they going to back down now. And it looked as if Ax knew exactly that.
The fat one just looked at Ax as if, was this guy a retard, maybe?
“O.K. cunt, you’ve earned it now.” And he made his move.
Ax had been waiting for it. All his life. His left hand blocked the slow punch, his right hand snaked around the back of fat-boy’s neck and rammed his face into the table. Then his free left hand picked up the beer-glass, threw it into his right which continued to lift it up before turning it around, still half-full of beer and ramming it into the guy’s ear. The pressure broke fat boy’s ear-drum before the glass shattered, cutting into his neck.
At that same moment the guy on his left charged. Ax just stuck out his stiff left fingers and the guy ran into them, choking his windpipe. As his hands grabbed the exposed throat Ax looked over at the remaining guy. The guy just stood there, then shook his head, raised both palms up and backed off.
Ax threw off the second guy, then sat back down. Then, using both hands he pushed fat-boy off the table onto the ground.
“Come on,“ he said to Lucy, “we’re leaving.”
He stood up, hands at his sides, eyes on the floor. Then he walked. He stopped at the door on his way out, turned back and said, “You all saw it. They started it. Sorry for the trouble.”
And with that they had walked out of their past and into their future. Lucy had found her protector.
Ax did not see the Arab in the corner. As soon as they left he hit speed-dial on his mobile.
The healing. The becoming human again. Lucy had done that. Lucy had given him the chance to live again. She never spoke of that evening. She never asked him any questions. But she held him in the night when he started to shiver in his dreams. She held him when he screamed “NO!” But she never asked. She took his hand when they watched the angry, red sky late at night, and she leaned her head against his shoulder when they waited to cross a road. And the dead, dry plant that was his heart started to grow again with the water of her love.
For his part, he knew what he was feeling and he asked himself why. For he knew that he did not deserve this. And he knew that she, too, had a deep secret. For only someone who had fallen into some kind of hell and climbed out alive could be this gentle and this hard and this strong and this soft. But she never talked about it. Never tried to get sympathy. He was used to being the strong one so it was strange and a little bit disconcerting for him to see how she did not need him. Not like others had needed him. Not like the weak needed the strong. She needed him to rest against when she became tired. But she did not need him to pick her up or even to support her. Everything she did she did herself. She used him and allowed him to use her even if he did not know he was doing it.
And then one day everything had changed. She had come downstairs early in the morning. He knew she had been awake during the night for the heat of her body had been missing from their bed. He was in the kitchen with his second coffee. She was dressed like she had never dressed before. Sexy. Terribly sexy. She wore bright red lipstick. Hair brushed back off her face. Her top open, no bra. Flat tummy, accented waistline, olive skin just begging to be touched. That beautiful face looking down at him. He was lost in her eyes. Those dark, dark eyes. She had come into the kitchen, did not look at him. She poured a coffee, and sat down, at the table, opposite him. Her long legs were crossed, her body twisted towards him, her nipples hard and obvious under the thin material of her blouse.
“I’ll start,” she said. “This is my story.”