Who are you?
Who am I?
Wind in wings
Two angels falling

"You ain't gotta do this," Marty said, holding a blood-soaked t-shirt in one trembling hand. The young man had been beaten, rolled for the five dollars and change he had in his pocket and left in an ally to... to do whatever homeless people did whenever they got the shit beat out of them.
Die. Get better and crawl back below. Whatever. It happened more frequently now. No one knew why.
"Seriously," Marty breathed, leaning back against a well-used pillow and closing his eyes. "You don't. It ain't worth it."
"It is," replied his companion. "They'll learn." 
Marty shook his head and winced. He was barely in his twenties, and bean-pole thin. His face was all angles and lines underneath the puffiness of his injuries, pale below the purple of bruises. Two teeth were missing, and when he talked and his teeth became visible, he appeared ten years younger. The pair were below the city, 'Below', in one of the several hundred maintenance tunnels that ran beneath Hudson city, feeding the city above with light and power and heat. Hundreds of the cities homeless made Below their residences. Nobody really cared, and the transients and hobos, bums and disenfranchised, they all made a sort of home of the place. Had done for years.
Marty tried to focus on his friends face in the gloom of the tunnel. "They won't. They don't never learn. You can keep at em forever and they'll still kick the crap out of the little guys. Out of us." This last was said bitterly. "Below don't count, you know that man. It was my own fault for -" 
The man before him snarled. He actually, honest-to-god snarled, like a cat, tiny pupils gleaming in the dark, hands making slashing downward motions, nails gleaming. "No. It wasn't. You've got every right to be anywhere you want to be." Marty closed his eyes and felt his blood swirling and throbbing and pulsing in his bruises. His mouth tasted like copper. "They're animals." The man rose from his crouch, then reached into one of the layers of clothing wrapped around his solid frame and withdrew a wad of bills, which he handed to a surprised Marty.
"Where did you -"
"From the animals," replied the man, a dark humor frosting the words.
Marty considered the bills, then leaned forward, wincing, and took them. "You didn't kill nobody, did you?" 
The man shook his head. "No. No killing. If you kill them, they don't learn." The promise of pain laced through that sentence. Pain and maybe something more. "The message gets lost." 
"Thanks," Marty said, the momentary stab of fear and worry fading. What message? "I mean it, really. Thanks Adam. We got a friend in you, and that's no mistake."
Adam smiled, incisors sharp and white in the washed out colors of the tunnel. "Forever." He rose from his crouch and began to go.
"Just be careful, ok. There's them new guys in town. The Conkeestadoraye's, or somthin like that. They might think you was doin somethin wrong, you know? " Cause you are, but you're also doin right, and ain't nobody ever done right by me in my life so I ain't gonna stop you.
Adam stopped and went still for several long minutes, the only sound that of his breathing, deep and slow. Marty began to feel the fear creeping back in around the pain. "Adam?" Marty whispered, licking lips gone suddenly dry, the sting on his lower lip where it had been split making him blink.
"DiSantiagos..." Adam growled.
Then he was gone, leaving Marty clutching the money to him, shivering in the dark and calling on the names of every Saint his Grandmother had ever taught him, thanking them that Adam would never be coming for him out of some black alley or side door. 

And you'll never know
You'll never know