Truth - The Balance

Chapter 21 - Illusionist

Crying out, Natalie clutched her arms tightly around her abdomen, slowly rising to her knees in pain. She looked over her shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse at the two of them, but she had ran too far within the dense forest and couldn't see them past the all the brush.

She was torn in between running back and running onwards like Truth had told her to do. But she could feel sorrow crippling her soul, knowing it was Truth's intense mental state and not her own, although she wasn't far from falling as she stumbled onwards. The simulated pain she could tolerate, but not the simulated hurt mingling with her own.

A heartbreaking sob escaped her lips as she stubbled forward, falling down onto her knees in pain. Was Truth being killed right at this moment? She couldn't bare the thought of it, hot tears disorienting her vision as she coughed and sputtered on her silent pitiful sobs. Her lungs felt as if they would collapse from trying to hold back her loud wails of sorrow. She finally let them escape, filling the quiet woods with her mourn for the loss of Truth, the only man she had ever loved with so much intensity. Her literal soul mate.

The Earth beneath her trembled, as if a small after shake of an earthquake erupted. But Natalie didn't care, she didn't care if a tornado came along and sucked her inside of it's deadly spinning vortex.

She didn't even get a change to really know him, and that thought alone had her blacking in and out of reality, wishing she'd lose her mind completely and let insanity take her away from the pain.

Doubling over, Natalie dry heaved, her tightened stomach cramping from the lack of fluids and food she hadn't digested in God knows how long.

She remembered a pain like this when a solider had appeared on her doorstep. He had gravely informed her that Paul had been fatally shot down in Iraq. She could remember the shock of it, and how reality didn't kick in until hours later when she suddenly fell down in her shower. She had cradled herself for hours in the freezing water. Her hero had died.

It had been a mental breakdown, her shrink had called it, prescribing her pill after useless pill. Nothing would help her anxiety after the initial depression of her loss had calmed down. She would go into major panic attacks that would make her afraid to drive or go into public. Sure the narcotic pills would take the edge off, but it never cured her. Leaving Florida had been the only thing ease it, and she still wasn't sure how over him she really was. But her anxiety stayed, hiding away and keeping pressure on her chest at all times. Only being with Truth truly cured her disorder.

When she was little she could recall the pain of losing the first love of her life, her father. Even now that she knew what kind of man he had really been, she still loved him, especially when she was little. He had been her father after all.

And now she's losing the other man she had let into her life after she had promised herself never to let another in, in fear of losing someone she loved so intensely. And here it was, happening all over again, but this time even more brutally than before.

Every man she had ever loved was taken from her. Each one of them murdered.

She had half a mind to teleport back to the pair, killing Deceit and ending this entire ordeal. But who was she trying to fool? She knew she couldn't kill him, she couldn't even escape his clutches when she had been held hostage by the bastard.

She wouldn't go back. She would obey Truth's final request and keep running. If she was lucky, she could get out of here and to somewhere safe... Once she could find the strength to get back on her feet.

Natalie let out another strangled cry, choking and feeling so much pressure on her head she thought she would possibly have an aneurism. The thought of blowing a blood vessel and slipping into oblivion seemed appetizing. At least she wouldn't suffer anymore-well being her luck she'd live and suffer for the rest of her long, and now immortal, life.