Fooled You

3

My clothes smoothed across my skin like a thin layer of ice. 

The rain pounded my body, my eyes rapidly blinking away the water dripping down from my matted hair.   

I could no longer differentiate between the cold of metal and rain. It was long gone, my warmth. A numbed chill remained, leveling itself gradually on my consciousness.  Only the feel of concrete cutting into the skin beneath my feet kept me alert, awake. 

It was smoldering, this craving to escape, to get out.

Panels of memories abruptly cut through, showing me faces that stung at the emptiness growing within me.

I could hear their voices, whispering from those fleeting pieces. 

The "back then" we were, and the "now" I am. 

Alone. Without a safe place. My safe place that was lost with them.

The urgency grew sharper. I started faster through the pour, adrenaline spreading like a flame to paper. I felt the rain hollow, and the mush of sounds cleared into the small beats they were. 

And in my alertness, I heard something come through the rain, muffled. My head jerked at it, that something that resembled a voice. It was too close, too close for the little comfort I needed.

"Anouk-hime." 

The voice rolled over me in a shock. A hand yanked my arm from the side. I immediately readied a leg for a kick to a tender place until I made out a familiar face against the dim skies.

"Bal?" 

His grey eyes shone amidst the rain.  

"We're going to have to move fast." 

His words sank in like an anchor. 

"You're on my side?" I spoke in a tone that could only be best described as disbelief. Distrust. Doubt. 

After everyone else betrayed me? 

The stiffness that kept his face firm fell away some. 

"I've always been on your side." 

The muscles that had been set in and against my jaw loosened and the thinly pressed line that was my lips suddenly felt light. 

He let go of my arm.