Before we start this chapter, here's a quick note to how this story will be updated; my exams start this Wednesday and finishes after Friday. I might get a chapter in after that, and then the week after, I have my SAT subject exam to go for, which means that depending on how much I spend studying, I might again, be able to upload another chapter.

After that, I go to an MUN conference in Hague, which means that, voila, I'll be gone a whole week, with possibly no updates.

But we'll see! I might be able to get in a total of two or three chapters until the first week of February, but no guarantees. It all depends on how much I procrastinate on my studies.

Now on the subject of the new chapter:

My excuses to all who may or may not have been shocked by what happens to Matt in this chapter. This is a little different from what the previous chapters, but hopefully it'll become the main base for me to build my story on. I'm a horrible writer, and the only way that I could think of getting other characters involved in the plot was like this.

Again, apologies to all.


Chapter 4 – Seeing Red

While the two remaining brothers got along quite well, there tended to be small scuffles when they were usually around. Their fights ranged from anything to everything, including articles of clothing, food, their sonic, articles of clothing, books, knowledge, and occasionally, articles of clothing.

But sometimes they grew big. But they always started with something small. Every catastrophe started with a tiny trigger of a bullet that would grow into a cannonball.

On that particular time, it was their soccer teams. It was such an innocent topic, too! The two were alone in the flat, munching away on a bowl of crisps as they watched a soap opera that their mother had left on before she left for grocery shopping. They had argued back and forth, discussing which one was better, and the topic shifted to Matt's soccer abilities. Then that changed to how the youngest stopped playing soccer. Then that evolved into why he had stopped playing soccer. And that was when things became ugly.

"You never apologized," Matt had said, and David's gaze snapped to face his brother properly.

"Apologize?" David asked, confusion on his features. "For what?

"You were never there when I woke up in the hospital, ten years ago."

"That doesn't necessarily mean that I wasn't there."

"Doesn't it?"

"I went out to take walks and maybe we just happened to miss each other!"

"But did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Go out for walks?"

"Of course I did, don't be stupid."

"Don't tell me that they were all due to walks."

"No, but I was very busy."

It was at this point that Matt raised himself up on his arms to look at David properly. Something was wrong. Something was off.

"Doing what?" he had asked.

"Trying to get into medical school, perhaps?"

"John was always there!"

"Well, I'm not John, I'm sorry, but I'm David."

"But you still didn't say sorry."

"What was there to be sorry for?"

There was a complete silence in the living room, except for a cry of anguish that came from the soap opera on television. Anyone else in the room would have sworn that he would have heard a pin drop onto the floor.

"What was there to be sorry for?" repeated Matt slowly with a strange expression of a mixture of tearing up and smiling that he knew was on his face. "You, you – I knew that you were possibly heartless, but this time, this time –"

"Well, maybe I could if you tell me what I did!"

"Oh, now you're definitely heartless."

"What did I do?"

Another silence between the two. The television had been turned off by the remote control that was now gripped tightly in Matt's hand. How could David be so ignorant? How could he be so stupid? How could he do this to him?

Something bubbled up inside him, and all of his sudden, his rib cage felt too tight for his heart which he swore was beating twice as fast as normal speed. And all this time, his eyes have been misting over, making his vision become slightly blurrier by every moment.

"Look at you," he gasped out, eyes wet with tears. David reached out, presumably to wipe away his brother's eyes, but the he flinched away, not wanting for his brother to touch him. David stared back dumbly. "Look at you, you've practically ruined my life, and now you're asking me what you did."

"What?" Was that really David's voice? But it sounded so faint…

Matt was unable to reply. David extended his hand to his sibling again, this time towards his shoulder, but Matt shrugged him off.

"Don't touch me," he said, before grabbing his tweet jacket and keys before running out the door, narrowly avoiding a bewildered Tardis, who called out to her youngest son as she clutched several bags of grocery.

And that had been two days ago. He hadn't gone back to his apartment since then.

Honestly, he couldn't believe that David could pretend all that and not feel guilty. He very nearly ruined his life. Pushed him off a flight of stairs which led him to his back injury, and made him give up playing football.

How could David be so ignorant?

That was the only thought that had gone through the past two days as he could focus very little on anything else. He knew that David was arrogant, – they all were – he knew that David was forgetful at times, - but so was he – but this was one button pressed one too many times.

He didn't want to go back home just yet. He couldn't face David, not when he felt so hurt inside.

The world must hate him so, if it made him feel hurt now after ten years the incident happened. It hadn't hurt so much before. So why did it hurt now?

So Matt sat down in his labs, working away on a new project or a modification that might be useful, until the end of the day when he could return back to his and his friend's flat, which both he and his friend paid for the rent for now. But sometimes he didn't want to go back to the flat; he just wanted to stay in the labs and work away until he forgot everything else except for what he was doing.

That was why the janitor always pushed the protesting Matt out of the building, then proceeded to tell him off about staying late at night in the university laboratories, how it was a public building and therefore everybody had to use it the same way, and that also meant that Matt had to leave at the same time as everybody else, which Matt had not done.

Matt failed to see the point. He still had work to do in his lab, there were still research papers that were waiting to be written on the desk of his office, and in his mind, public buildings weren't public until everybody got to use them whenever they wanted to.

But the janitor won't let him back in and they've changed the locks to wood. Apparently, somebody told the university about how his sonic screwdriver didn't have a wood setting. Well, that was disappointing.

It wasn't even that late, it was only ten in the night; plenty could be done even at that hour, thought Matt as he took a shortcut and slipped into an alley. He glanced at the bakery across from him where he sometimes bought snacks for his mother – he had known from when he was young that he and Tardis shared a sweet tooth. Sometimes Matt would sneak sweets from the pantry, but his clumsiness always gave him away.

Tardis called him "her thief" ever since.

Matt looked away, a scowl prominent on his baby-like features. Thinking about his mother made him think back to his idiotic human being that he called a brother, the one reason for him not returning home for.

How dare he say that to him?

His grumpy mood was now even more ruined by sour thoughts of his brother. And he had been so happy with seeing both River and Amy that afternoon, too.

He sighed, glaring at the bakery one more time before his eyes caught onto something else.

Several shadows stood in the small alleyway. Matt briefly registered two men and one woman and that the men were hardly being friendly to the woman before he stumbled back and knocked over an empty glass bottle.

Damn.

The shadows snapped to where he was standing and Matt suddenly felt very conscious of himself.

"Uh, hello," he called aloud to the shadows as he walked towards them. He could now see that the woman was deathly pale as one of the men had gripped her by the throat, steadily choking her.

That wasn't good.

"Hi, hello," said Matt as he neared the two men. "I'm sorry, but what exactly are you two doing?"

One of the men grimaced at him. "Piss off."

"Yes, well, the thing is, I think that you're trying to harm this lady over here and, as a human being who's had the pleasure of indulging in the education of morality, I don't think I'll be able to."

The shadows stared, even the woman whose air was slowly being cut off.

"It's none of your business," said the other man. "What happens here doesn't concern you."

The first man suddenly looked back at Matt, as if he'd seen him for the first time. Then he looked at him up and down and Matt felt even more self-conscious than the first time.

"Yeah," said the man. "But you look like a good little mama's boy; I'll bet that you have plenty of money in those pockets too."

Matt's non-existent eyebrows flew into his hair.

"My money? Oh, you mean that you're going to mug me! Oh, okay, alright. No, not alright, not alright at all."

It was at this point that alarm bells started to ring in his head. His first instincts were to run, but his gaze drifted over to the woman that glared at him, daring to do so, and the light from a far away streetlamp was only just enough to show him that her hair was red.

He had always liked red hair.

So he needed a plan. A good plan, not a bad plan. It had to be something simple, but brilliant, and not complicated. Complicated meant all the more reasons why the plan could go wrong.

A plan.

Get the girl and run.

With that, he threw himself onto the other man who gave a yell of surprise as released his capture. The engineer turned and tugged on the woman's arm, who wheezed as air hit her lungs.

"Run," said Matt and pulled the woman along. Behind them, the two men could be heard chasing after them. He vaguely caught the silver glint of a blade as he glanced behind him.

Oh great, they had a knife.

They weaved in and out of alleyways, desperately trying to get away. The pattering feet and growls could be heard very close by, and Matt was scared, terrified even, but the rush of adrenaline excited him and he was never one to resist anything exciting.

Why did he have to be like this?

He turned a corner and immediately spotted a small gap between the two buildings and pushed his new found companion inside before the evil men could come around the corner themselves while his brain immediately formulated new possibilities for them to be safe.

"Now listen here," said Matt, desperately trying to catch his breath with both hands on the woman's shoulders. "Get to the nearest police station, the closest one is just five blocks down, move straight across the alleyways and you'll be standing on a big street in no time. Tell them what you've seen, what those men had done to you. Go. You'll be safe there."

"But what about you?"

"Don't worry, I'll be okay. I'm the King of Okays."

"Don't be stupid, you'll come with me," she argued back.

"Nah, I won't, but I assure you that your safety is guaranteed the moment you start heading towards the police."

"And why is that?"

"Because I'm going to distract them."

He ran off, letting his chasers catch a glimpse of him before rushing down the road and stumbling into alley after alley. He could still hear two pairs of footsteps behind him and was secretly glad that the two men hadn't noticed that the woman was missing and hadn't thought of going after her instead. They'd taken him as the bait. Now if he could find a police station himself -

He turned another corner.

"Oh no," he softly gasped out as his eyes turned down what he presumed was another alleyway.

Except there wasn't one.

He was trapped in a dead end.

A very scary dead end with a graffiti of an angel with its eyes covered with its hands.

Matt turned around, but his attackers had already come close, affectively leaving him to back away against the wall, against the graffiti. He pressed his back against it, hoping that the wall would open up and let him through, leaving the two men behind.

Of course it didn't.

He looked up into the faces of both men, trying to take mental photographic memory to remember their faces. Even in times like this, he couldn't stop being a genius like he was.

If he got out of this, the two men would pay for attacking the woman - and him, he thought as he panicked - who would probably be safe by now.

If.

One of them still held the knife.

Why couldn't he open his mouth now and reason with them? Negotiate? Possibilities of succeeding? Less than likely. Better not to try.

"Thought you could outrun us, didn't you? Too bad you didn't. We'd love to let you go, but we can't," said the taller one, and even in the dim light Matt could see the whites of his eyes. "You'd be tellin' the police."

"So we'll just have to finish you off here," finished the other, twirling the knife in his hand with the air of someone having practiced the matter countless times, before lunging forward with the blade pointing straight towards Matt's stomach.

The knife entered his abdomen and his mouth opened to scream in pain, but let out a strangled gasp instead.

Then the attacker - Matt could see his features quite clearly now, and now it would be burned into his skull forever - had twisted and pulled the blade out, leaving him to collapse on the pavement with the blood pouring from the wound. Then he was pulled onto his knees by his hair and the knife entered him again, was twisted again, then was pulled out again, leaving another gap between his skin.

He vaguely remembered the two men looking down at him with satisfaction before pulling out his wallet from his top pocket and running away, down the alleyways and most likely onto a main street, where the crowd would hide them from the police.

So they had mugged him anyway.

He vaguely remembered clapping one hand over the gaping wound and pulling out his mobile phone from his tweed jacket with the other. His hands were slippery with his own blood and were shaking so terribly, but he hoped that he could at least tell somebody about his condition. Even that red headed woman that he had hopefully saved tonight wouldn't be able to tell the police his whereabouts now.

His hand scrabbled on the keypad and pressed 1 on speed dial as he hissed out in pain, squeezing the wound with the hand that wasn't occupied with the phone in attempt to stem the blood. He couldn't even turn over on his back.

The phone kept ringing.

Matt felt his conscious slipping. Everything was starting to be blurry.

Then the phone stopped ringing.

"Hello? Matt?" said the person on the other line. Despite everything that Matt had thrown at him in his head earlier that night, he was never gladder to hear the Scottish accent.

It was strange, he thought idly in his mind, how he had avoided David for the last two days and now the only person he wanted to speak to was David. Because David could find him. Because David wasn't as stupid as Matt kept telling everyone he was. He would put together that Matt's phone was a smartphone and would go on the internet to track it down, leading him straight to Matt.

"David," he breathed as he let out another strangled gasp between his teeth.

"Matt? Matt, what's wrong?"

"David," he said. "Hurts."

"What? Matt, is something wrong? What hurts? Did you hurt yourself?"

He wanted to say more, but those were the only two words that could come out. What was wrong with his mouth? What had reduced his ability to speak? Was it the pain? The deep gashes on his stomach told him that it was probably the correct to assume so.

He vaguely remembered the alleyway suddenly shining very brightly from a torch, and a cry from a quite familiar redhead that he knew from earlier that night, and wondered briefly in his mind how she had found him. He remembered several other figures alongside her, his swirling vision barely making sense out of the word that started with a P on their clothes.

He vaguely remembered his phone slipping from his fingers as David's questions became more frantic and desperate and louder for his brother. He vaguely remembered the redheaded woman rushing to him even before the police did and turned him over even as the black spots at the edge of his vision became wider and more numerous.

How? How had she found him? How?

Somebody picked up his phone. Somebody squeezed his hand and told him to stay with them. But he couldn't stay. Going to sleep was too tempting.

He let the darkness take over.

The blood splattered graffiti of the angel was still weeping when the ambulance arrived.