A/N: Kind of a short chapter, I know. Hope you like it though. You could review and let me know.

His head snaps toward his door, heart thumps before going into his throat. Then his mind goes elsewhere. "Helga, go in my bedroom." He commands her in a slightly hushed voice.

"Wha-Arnold." She starts in a panicked voice.

"Go in my bedroom and close the door." He orders her again, looking over to her. She looks scared, silently asking him to keep her safe. She closes her mouth and steps around the coffee table and starts down the hallway. "And Helga." He softly calls. She looks over her shoulder, fear still clenching her features. Another four pounds come on the door. Not knocking, pounding with the blunt of a fist. Cops would have announced themselves right after the first knock. Helga jumps, but Arnold doesn't flinch. "Don't come out until I tell you." He tells her.

He doesn't want to talk to her like this, but he can't think of it now. His mind is in another place, another version of himself taking over. She quickly goes down the hall and turns into his bedroom, closing the door softly behind her.

He takes a slow breath and reaches into the long drawer of the coffee table in front of him. He pulls out Grandpa's 1911 out from a pile of papers, tugging the slide back to check it's loaded, then pulling the hammer back with his thumb. He steps up to the door, just a few feet away, lifts the gun, putting his left hand over his right, lining up the sites, focusing his left eye on the front site, aiming directly at the peep hole.

There's another loud pounding on his door, six or seven this time. But he remains unshaken. It's four o'clock in the morning and this is an unsecured building. He hears a groan on the other side of the door, then the knob being tested. He quietly stalks up to the door and looks through the peep hole.

Sure enough, he should have known. His dress shirt dismayed, face still beaten, hair disheveled. He watches for a few moments as Roy looks up through the peep hole, his arms braced against the door jams outside. Taking one last breath, gun still being pointed forward, he pulls the chain out, unlocked the deadbolt, then the door lock, and flings open the door, then jumping back to put a sizable gap between them.

With his gun lifted, left eye focused on the site being pointed directly at Robert's head, he doesn't give him a chance to speak. "You take one more step, I won't hesitate to put a bullet in your head." He warns him lowly.

Roy stops dead in his tracks, just in the thresh hold of Arnold's apartment. "Where is she?"

He doesn't answer, just keeps his sites trained on Roy's head. He doesn't want to shoot him, go through the trouble of having to get his gun, his favorite gun at that, back from evidence. He's well within his rights, and this guy is sure to be wanted by now anyway.

"I know she's here. Now where is she?"

He thinks about staying silent, letting him stare down the barrel of his gun, but decides to speak. "I was an Army Ranger." He starts, putting even more warning into his voice. "They taught me a lot of ways to kill someone. If you leave now, you won't find out how many."

Roy narrows his eyes to him, glaring at him.

"And just so you know, you're trespassing and I'm well within my rights to pull this trigger. If you turn around now, the only thing you'll have to worry about being wounded is your ego."

Roy looks around his apartment, one last ditch effort to find her before slowly turning around. He's out the door, the sites still being trained on him as he looks back to shoot Arnold one last hard stare. He's down the hallway and is gone.

Arnold lowers his gun, letting himself relax. He closes his door, locking everything back up, then goes over to his bedroom door, still shut tightly. He taps the bend of his finger lightly against the wood. "Helga?" He calls.

He hears the bed frame creak and then the knob being turned. The door slowly opens and she looks to him, glossy eyed.

"It's okay, he's gone." He says softly. Her eyes go to his right hand, still holding his Grandpa's old service weapon. He follows her eyes, then takes a step back. "Sorry." He says on a chuckle, almost jokingly as he holds the hammer back, pulls the trigger and decocks it, then flicking the safety on. He goes back to the coffee table and sets it back inside, sliding it shut.

Helga comes back out, creeping her way back out into his living room, arms crossed over her stomach, hands rubbing her arms as if she's cold. Fear still grips her features. He stays standing in front of the coffee table, watching her. "Are you okay, Helga?"

She looks back up to him, stopping just a few feet away from the coffee table, separating them. She opens her mouth to speak, but chokes on her words and looks away again, shuffling away from him.

He slowly steps around the coffee table, stopping in his tracks when she takes a noticeable step back. "Helga, what is it?"

She lets out an audible breath before looking back up to him. "Would you have really killed him?"

He lets out a sigh, cementing himself to his spot. "Only if he had forced me to." She looks away again, shaking her head off to the side, revealing the track of a tear scratching her beautiful face. Hates his honesty is hurting her this much. There's a look in her eyes now that she doesn't even know the man standing in front of her.

"You really would have murdered him?" She asks him, anguished anger in her voice. Pain is now evident on her face.

"Murder? Helga, he threatened you and was here to force you to come back with him. So yes, if he had forced me to, I wouldn't have hesitated."

"Arnold, he may not have been the best guy in the world, but he's still a person." She says, letting her arms fall, palms down and facing out, pleading with him almost.

"You're talking like I don't already know what it's like to take a life. And until you do, until you know what it's like to have no choice but to end someone's life, you don't get to talk!" He hisses through clenched teeth. He feels every part of him stop when he realizing what he's feeling. The flex in his neck, the click in his jaw, his nails digging into his palm, the blood rushing in his ears. The image in front of him finally reaches his mind, making his whole being sink.

He has to look away.

The hurt in her eyes, so pointed, so direct. Directed at him. Letting him know that he caused it. He stumbles back, shaking his head from side to side, now realizing his eyes are burning. How long have they been doing that? He raises his hands and pushes the sides of his head in, letting out the most hushed groan he can. His back hits against the wall next to his couch, and he feels himself slide down to the floor. He tries to fight it, the rising choke he feels in his lungs, force it back down. But it's not working.

He promised himself that he would never hurt her. But he did.

He brings his knees up and hides behind them. He squeezes his eyes shut, feeling this moisture that should not be there leak out. The clench is still there, in his chest, just sitting there, right in the middle. His hands fist his hair, tightening until it feels as if he is about to rip his hair out. He feels a tight mixture of humiliation, anger, a strange sense of betrayal, and a need to hit something really hard. To punch a hole is something. Maybe that will make him feel better.

But in the next second, the only thing he feels is her soft touch, running up his forearms. She gently pries his fingers open and takes his hands in hers. He still can't look at her. Can't face the situation. Her small, almost dainty fingers work themselves against the tendons in his hands. "Arnold." She calls out to him in that soft voice of her's. The voice she used that night in that other life time. After too long of a pause, he lifts his head and looks up to her.

She's kneeling down in front of him, her face almost stone serious as she looks down at their hands. She lets out a sigh and stands up, taking his hands with her, never letting go. She tugs on his hands and he pushes himself up off the floor. Once on his feet, she softly wraps her arms around his chest. "Helga." He protests.

"Just hug me, Arnold." He can't answer her, feeling her hand run itself in a small motion up and down his back. It only takes a second to fall into her, under her spell, trapped in the vortex of her. He wraps his arms around her, pressing his nose into her hair, letting her flood his senses. "We've both seen things." She says, words slurred a bit from her cheek resting against his shoulder. "We've both changed, whether for better or worse, I think only time will tell. But for now I think we just have to accept that. That we aren't the same two teenagers who left each other lying in bed."

"Helga..." He starts, putting his hands on her shoulders and pushes her back, more than reluctantly. But when he looks at her, at those big blue eyes, sucking all the courage right out of him. "I..." He can't ask her. Not now. He lets out a long breath, closing his eyes and shaking his head in an almost invisible motion. "You're probably tired. I should let you rest."

Her brow pushes together in a straight line. He resigns to his fate, of her basically saying there's no going back, pushes her off of him and sits down on his couch. He slouches forward, running a hand through his matted and messy hair, either forcing himself not to look at her or unable to, he can't really figure out which one.

He hears her pad across the carpet of his apartment, down the short hallway and into his bedroom, sliding the door closed, but not shut. He throws himself back and looks aimlessly into his lap. His eyes eventually go to his left forearm. He has two tattoos, one of his Ranger company, right arm, and one running the length of the underside of his left forearm, reading 'NO EMOTION'. He lifts up his long sleeved shirt and traces the length of it, outlining the letters. He lets out a deep sigh, burying himself, that side of him under a shell.

She doesn't want to go back. She doesn't want him back, doesn't want them. The thought of coming back home and finding her, or maybe the thought that she was just out there at all, is what kept him going, in the military. He never even considered being rejected by her. When they started dating back in high school, she was very open about the crush she had on him. He teased her once in a while about it, but hindsight being twenty twenty, she loved him. They made a great couple.

But that was with just regular Arnold Shortman. Not Pvt Shortman, Army Ranger.

He lets out a sigh and closes his eyes, letting his head fall back.

He needs to move on. For both of their sakes.