Yeah, so in case you're wondering, Nikolai is Belarus. Thought it might help. Also, an OC of mine, Vladmir, will show up. He is not Romania.

- Matthew's POV~

This was weird. This was weirder than weird. What was I doing here? The boy who had just saved me from a couple of thugs, cussed me out in Russian, and was possibly part of a gang had led me through the streets and into an old abandoned apartment complex. The paint was cracked and chipping and the roof looked like it was just about to cave in and bury us in a pile of old, termite-bitten wood and disgustingly flowery wallpaper. Many times on our short journey through the city I tried to ask him where we were going. Most times I opened my mouth, but couldn't say it, and the other times I suppose I was simply too quiet to be heard, either that or he ignored me.

I could've run, but I was too frozen to do so, too afraid of what might happen, or what this boy might do. So I walked silently, trying to keep as much space between myself and the boy while still being close enough to follow him. He led me through a part of the city I had purposefully avoided because of all the violence I had heard of there.

I kept close to him during this part of the journey, and many times I saw shady-looking people, but it seemed they noticed who I was with and stayed out of our way. Just who the hell is this kid?! I thought to myself time and time again, but never voiced it. He led me into the old building, up the stairs, and into a room. Surprisingly, it wasn't that bad. There was a queen-sized mattress on the floor in the corner, and an old couch. A backpack and a duffel bag, both army green, were the only real signs that he was staying here. He pointed to the couch and spoke for the first time since he asked me if I spoke English.

"You may sleep here tonight. Tomorrow you will leave. There is an airport two blocks down, toward the middle of the city." He said. His accent was still as thick as molasses, but I had been speaking English for long enough to understand him. I pulled off my backpack and sat stiffly on the couch. Either he didn't notice my discomfort, or, once again, he was ignoring me. He sat on the mattress and pulled the backpack toward himself, pulling out a phone and calling someone.

I sank deeper into the cushions of the couch as he spoke in rapid Russian to whoever was on the other side if the phone. He paused for a moment, and it sounded like someone was yelling on the other end. The phone beeped and the boy held it out in front of himself, staring at it. Whoever he called had hung up on him. He threw the phone back in the bag and chucked it into the corner, where it hit the wall and fell to the floor with a thud. I pulled my knees to my chest, suddenly very afraid of the boy, but it seemed that that was the last of his fit of anger. He ran a hand through his chin-length hair and looked at me. He stared at me for a moment, thinking, then put his hand down.

"Do you have a name?" he asked, staring up at me.

"U-uh, yes…I-I'm Matthew." I couldn't control my stuttering, no matter how I tried. I swallowed the lump in my throat. "Matthew Williams." I said. He tilted his head to the side and stood, walking back over to the bag that he had thrown in the corner and rifling through it. He pulled out a thick, heavy-looking manila envelope and pulled out a stack of papers about as thick as a Harry Potter book. He thumbed through the papers for a moment, then paused and pulled out a couple papers held together by a paperclip. He handed them to me silently, then put the others back.

I didn't notice him sit next to me, shocked into silence by the contents of the papers in my hands. A profile, but not just any profile, it was mine. A missing persons report.

Matthew Williams,

17 years of age

Gender: male

Hair: blonde, shoulder length

Eyes: blue Height: 5' 3"

Description (As given by his foster parents): Thin, wears glasses, may be wearing a red sweater, may have a black bag, round wire-frame glasses.

Country of origin: Canada

I looked up at the boy, my mouth still hanging open in shock. I quickly closed it and backed away from him, or as much as I could while staying seated. He shrugged.

"I am not the police. I have been reading these reports for…well, I have a reason. But I cannot share it. The point is, you do not exist." He said. Just then, I heard a door open, and footsteps, wearing what sounded like military-grade combat boots, pounding up the stairs. I sat rigid, tense with fear. "Oi, Nikolai!" came a loud voice. A man appeared in the doorway, his short brown hair mussed, wearing cargo pants and holding a bundle of rumpled papers. "I found…."

He stopped abruptly when he saw me. He looked between the boy and me for a second. His amber eyes seemed to stab straight through me. "Who-is-this?" he said, the words short and choppy. The boy next to me seemed unfazed.

"He was being attacked by some of Carriedo's men, so I decided to give them Ivan's message." He said.

"You didn't freaking have to. And you can't just-"the man started. "But I can." The boy said, shrugging it off. There was a moment of freakish silence. You could cut the tension in the air with a knife. The man muttered to himself, rubbing his eyes, and then spat something that sounded extremely nasty at the boy in Russian. The boy retorted, and soon they were both speaking it. It seemed they were both fluent in the language, and from my limited knowledge of Russian, all I was able to tell was that they were talking about that "Carriedo" guy again. And some other people, Ivan and Katyusha.

My head spun. I didn't know half of what they were saying, so after a while I gave up on understanding any of it. Finally after maybe fifteen minutes of them going back and forth, the brown-haired man turned to me. He sighed as I shrunk back into the couch in fear. He stepped forward and the air in my lungs seemed to freeze and turn to lead. He saw my frightened expression and took a step back, rubbing the back of his neck. He gestured toward the blonde, who had taken up residence in the far corner of the mattress.

"He is Nikolai. I'm Vladmir." He said. He also had an accent, but I hadn't noticed before because I had been too busy waiting for him to pull out a knife and try to kill me. He flopped down on the other end of the couch and I turned toward him, pulling my knees back up to myself. Thoughts spun like a whirlwind in my head, and in my daze I couldn't secure one for even a moment. He stared at me expectantly. I swallowed the lump that had somehow taken residence in my throat without my consent.

"I-I'm Matthew. Uh, excuse me for asking, but are you…are you Russian? I-I mean, not trying to offend you or-" I asked, but like everything else, it was barely audible. I nearly fell off the couch when he started laughing, clutching his stomach as he rocked with the force of it. Nikolai scoffed at his behaviour, but didn't comment.

"You-you really are something, kid." He said when he had finally stopped. I pushed my glasses back up from where they had slipped down my nose. "Yeah, we are. So," he continued. "You're French-Canadian? How did you get here? You don't look old enough." He said.

"Oh. I…I, um…well…" I said. It really was a long story, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to tell these people. What if they were just asking so that they could take advantage of me? I wasn't in any place to try and fight them, nor could I run.

"You can tell us. Like I said, we are not the police. Are you a runaway?" the boy, Nikolai, said from the corner. I looked between the two for a second, but Vladmir seemed genuinely curious, and he didn't look ready to jump at me either, stretched languidly along the couch like a cat.

"Well, I suppose you could call it that. I-I actually, well, you won't believe this, but…" I sighed. "I purposefully left; I kind of found a way to erase my files without being caught. I hate my home, and I'm good enough with computers to do these things so…I just did. I've been living on the streets for…well, for about two years now I guess." I said. Vladmir's stare softened and he looked away.

"You should go back home to your parents." He said quietly. I felt anger bubble up in my chest before I could stop it.

"Why? How could you know what it was like there?" I said, not yet a shout, but not my normal, soft speech. A sad smile twisted at the corners of his mouth. He sat up, resting his elbows on his knees and staring at his clasped hands as he spoke.

"I wouldn't know but…I know that this life is not as glamorous as it looks." He said. I raised an eyebrow. What life? "We are…criminals." He said. "Don't use that word." Nikolai said stiffly. Vladmir shrugged.

"W-what? So…why don't you…y'know, leave?" I said. Vladmir stared at his hands, folded in his lap. "You can't just leave. Once you are in, there is no way out. The world of crime is not a two-way door, Matthew."

- Alfred's POV~

When I awoke, the first thing I noticed was the throbbing in my left arm, a dull, aching sensation that spread up my left arm like tiny tendrils of fire. The second was the ringing in my ears that made it almost impossible to focus on anything else. It made me dizzy, even though it was obvious that I was already lying on my back. The third was that the blurriness in my vision was taking much longer than it usually did to go away. No matter how many times I shook my head and tried to swallow, the fuzziness in the corners of my vision and the dryness in my throat wouldn't go away. They faded, but still left their traces. My throat felt like the tundra outside, hot, dry, and cracking. I coughed, my chest heaving, and was immediately stilled by a sudden eruption of pain in my arm, which I could now see was bandaged all the way to the shoulder.

I looked around to see that I was on a litter (A/N- A litter (according to my parents who used to be in the military) is a portable, metal-framed hospital bed they used in the military), the bed I was on had about two feet of space between it and the curtain that surrounded it for privacy and in case I started to bleed out and they didn't want anyone seeing. Don't think about that. You're alive, aren't you? I thought.

A woman peeked inside the curtain and, seeing that I was awake, smiled warmly at me and stepped inside. I recognized her as one of the medics, a particularly popular one, known for her kindness and boundless energy. She had long, wavy hair that she had pulled back into a bun, save for a long, gravity-defying piece that she could never seem to manage. She fiddled with the machines, the IV in my arm, and the pillows, all the while talking with me to test my memory.

"Where are we?" she asked, lifting my arm gently to look at it.

"Afghanistan." I said, hissing from the pain that immediately followed the movement.

"What is your name?" she said.

"Alfred F. Jones."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-one, my birthday is the fourth of July." This went on for a while, she asked me about my parents, my high school, how I was feeling (like I had been run over by a semi truck, which she frowned at), and my time in the military. Finally she asked the question I had been waiting for.

"Alfred, do you know what happened?" she asked softly. I grimaced.

"I…I think so." I said. Everything was fuzzy from that time; I only remembered a few details. It was just a routine check for road bombs. We did it all the time. She nodded for me to continue.

"Uh…we were checking for mines. It just got really bright really fast and I guess I passed out. I…did I get like…blown up?" I said. She giggled at my choice of words and finished bandaging my arm again.

"Well, sort of. You were the closest, and your arm was injured badly. Luckily, we have a good doctor here, doctor Edelstein patched you up. With a little work you'll be able to use your arm again."

- Nikolai's POV~

As I child, I didn't really know my father-okay, lets rephrase that, I didn't know my father at all. The only memory of him I had was a cold, dark shadow with icy blue eyes that only ever glared at me. He avoided my siblings and I at all costs, no matter what. When I was about seven, Ivan eleven, and Katyusha fourteen, he suddenly showed up and, without a word to Katyusha or myself, dragged Ivan out with him.

Ivan returned a few days later, but he didn't talk to us. He locked himself in his room without even looking at us. Katyusha fed him and tried to keep his health up, and he seemed to recover. Just when we thought he would be fine, our father came back and dragged him out again. This became a terrible, never-ending cycle, until Ivan stopped getting better. Day after day, he became more violent, lashing out at Katyusha when she tried to help him. When Katyusha came out of his room clutching her cheek and fighting back tears for the first time, I was horrified. But each time, she smiled with the same bright expression and hugged me whispering, "We will be strong. We must. Ivan is still our brother, this is still our home."

The cycle continued for only four years, but to us it felt like a lifetime. Many times I wondered if we could really survive it, if there was a way out. Finally, Ivan came back one last time, and without batting an eye, without even a hint of remorse, said something neither Katyusha nor I could've foreseen.

"Dmitri is dead." He said quietly, and shut himself back into his room. Katyusha and I stared at each other in disbelief. I hardly even noticed that he had called our father by his first name. None of us cried. How could we cry for a man we never knew? His funeral was silent, the few people that came to it just stepped in for a moment, payed their respects and left. We sat in a row in silence, staring at the closed coffin.

There were three other children who came to his funeral, supposedly children of his brother, our cousins. They too sat in a row, on the other side of the isles in the church. I saw Katyusha walk over to them, and talk to the oldest, who looked to be around Ivan's age. He had long auburn hair down to his shoulders and wore a sombre expression. The two other boys stood behind him, shaking with fear. We were young, I was only ten. Ivan was fourteen, Katyusha seventeen. That was the day that Ivan inherited our father's life, the life of a crime lord. That day, if we were not already from all that we had seen, we became adults, whether we wanted to or not.

- Matthew's POV~

After a while, Vladmir started to try to make conversation, which was a bit awkward at first, but it was comforting compared to Nikolai's stony silence. He avoided questions about my life at home, instead asking about how I had gotten here, what my stay in Spain was like, and what I planned to do. After a while, he asked me what I was going to do and where I would go after the plane ride.

"Sounds like your parents won't be much help." He murmured. I nodded.

"Well, maybe I don't need them." I said indignantly. "I got here just fine, I can go wherever once I'm in Europe. I know how to cross the border, and it won't be any different than here. I've been living on my own for two years now, who says I can't keep going?" he raised an eyebrow at this, but didn't question it or reprimand me. We sat in silence for a while, Vladmir with his head tipped back, staring at the ceiling, Nikolai still shuffling papers irritably, and me, still fumbling with my thoughts to make sense of everything, half-curled into a ball on the very edge of the couch. Nikolai seemed content with the quiet, still atmosphere that had settled over the room like a blanket. Finally, after what seemed like hours of not talking, Vladmir piped up again.

"So, what country are you planning to go to?" he asked. My teeth worried at my lip as I was tied between telling the truth-that I wasn't going home-and lying and probably being caught. I wasn't much good at fibbing, and I had never gotten better.

"Well...I was thinking Austria. Then, from there, I'll go to Hungary." I said. He looked over at me and I thought for a split second he might yell at me.

"Promise me you'll stay within the law there. You do not want to end up like us." He said. I glanced at Nikolai, who clenched his jaw and all but glared at the papers in his hands, refusing to look up. The air around him seemed to turn to ice and I winced at the expression on is face. Vladmir followed my gaze and chuckled, not bothered at all. He leaned closer to me.

"He doesn't hate you or anything; he's just not good with people he doesn't know very well. Or people in general." He whispered, the edges of his mouth curving into a smirk.

"I can hear you." Nikolai muttered, still intent on refusing to look up. Vladmir didn't seem to care either way. So if you hate strangers so much, why help me? I thought as Vladmir stood, retrieving a blanket from the duffel bag and tossing it my way. And, moreover, why bring me here? Why not just give that message to the "Carriedo" guy and leave me? I thought, sinking further into the musty-smelling couch as the lull of sleep dulled my senses and pulled me into the world of the unconscious.

So here I was, on the plane finally, just starting to take off on the thirty minute flight to Klagenfurt, Austria. I thought back to Vladmir and Nikolai. When I awoke, they had been gone; every trace of their former existence in that room had been erased except for the mattress and couch. It was bare, save for a piece of paper, folded carefully and placed in the middle of the mattress with further directions on how to board the plane.

Where had they gone? Were they going back to Russia? I couldn't help my curiosity for Nikolai. Just who was he? Helping me, and then refusing to acknowledge my presence while the person who seemed to disapprove of my being there the most talked to me. Nothing he did made sense. And his eyes, those of a man who had seen the world. I had to remind myself that he was just a kid, younger than me even. The more I thought, the more my mind twisted around itself searching for answers I didn't have until I started getting a headache.

I still had the blanket in my bag, and its presence weighed heavily upon my thoughts. It was such a kind gesture for those supposed "criminals". I reached into my pocket and took out the folded paper with the instructions, looking it over one last time to make sure I had done everything right. I sighed and folded it back up, ready to put it away, when I noticed small, choppy handwriting on the back. I turned it over and stared for a moment at the words written there.

Please stay out of Russia. Nothing personal, for your own protection. -NB

I knew who it was from immediately; it was so different from Vladmir's large, messy scrawl that took up nearly the entire front page. It was the kind of handwriting that made you think that maybe it was typed by a computer instead of actually hand-penned. Nikolai's ability to use as little words as possible shone through in his writing. Are NB his initials? I thought. I couldn't help wondering about his last name. It seemed I would never know anything about the boy. It wasn't fair, in my mind, that he would know my full name, my home country, nearly everything there was to know about me, and I only knew the measly amount I got from looking and talking to him. You mean not talking to him. The little voice in the corner of my brain whispered mockingly.

As it were, I spent the entire plane ride thinking about those two. The plane landed near Klagenfurt at about ten in the morning. I remembered Vladmir's instructions on how to exit the airport and heeded them carefully. I stumbled wearily off of the plane, fully prepared for the sudden onslaught of the German language. I gasped as I looked around. It was just so...so cool. It wasn't too different from other airports, but all of the German on the signs and the weird-looking shops drew me first thing I did was go over to an ATM, which (thank god) allowed me to use English so I could get out real Austrian money. I got out the equivalent of thirty dollars (A/N- I'm American, sorry that I don't know much about European money ^^,) and proceeded to check out the oh-so-alluring café that was just next door.

I was a java-head, no doubt about it. At home, I used to walk to school, and along the way I would stop at Tim Horton's for coffee. I thought back to this as I struggled to remember the little German I knew. The woman just smiled and offered to pick something out for me, to which I gratefully accepted. They gave me some wonderful drink with cinnamon and tons of whipped cream, practically dripping off the sides.

I nursed it as I walked through the airport, through the parking lot, and found myself out on the streets on the outskirts of Klagenfurt. I gazed around in wonder, not caring if I looked like a tourist. The towering buildings and shops with giant windows for me to stare into seemed to never end. I didn't care that it was cold, or that the hem of my jeans were getting wet from the puddles. I felt a surge of nostalgia, from when I first got to Spain, wandering around Madrid for weeks before I went anywhere else.

I knew I was getting deeply, irreversibly lost, but at the moment I didn't care. As that deep navy blue of the night sky began to creep over the horizon, the streetlights flickered on. A soft smattering of stars flickered overhead, less prominent because of the light pollution, but beautiful nonetheless. The buildings, a soft tan colour, were built like a maze, most only three or four stories tall, with perfectly placed windows and reddish-brown rooftops. I walked aimlessly for what could have been days without tiring.

I finally noticed the time, realizing for the first time how my feet ached and my back hurt from carrying my backpack It was only when I started to notice the change in colours in my wandering that I realized how dark it was. The streetlights weren't as close together as they had been in the inner city, and it started to look a little suspicious. The buildings on either side of me turned to houses, a few grey, stone buildings scattered around. I turned around and around, but no matter what I did, I couldn't find my way out of the winding path of houses. I began to panic, there seemed to be no was out of the labyrinth of houses and streets.

When I turned around to see a pair of eyes, glowing what looked like blood red in the yellowish glow of the streetlamps, I screamed.

And then I fainted.