Stolen Time

Truth within the lie

"It's quite unbelievable how he even had the guts to approach you, and he kept persisting after you told him to leave," Arlo shook his head. "It's hard for me to understand low tiers sometimes. No power, yet all the audacity."

Seraphina attempted to block out all of Arlo's pointless rambling as they were waiting for Doc to return to the infirmary. It wasn't that hard as everything sounded distant like she was under a large body of water. Her senses were both incredibly sharp, making every sound, sight, or touch feel piercing as the pain traveled from her overstimulated nerve endings to her overloaded brain synapses, and incredibly dull, not letting anything of the outside world truly register to her.

Why? Why did this keep happening?

Just after this morning, and all the things that came after she was stuck again in the same excruciating cycle. With barely any time to even try to process what was going on, be it her quickly deteriorating mental health or her heart constricting like it was striving to kill her. This feeling... This feeling of... whatever this feeling was it left her breathless.

And yearning.

She had to stop herself from thinking about him.

When she heard his voice calling for her she froze. It was a mixture of relief and dread that overcame her in an all-consuming way.

She understood the dread. Whatever happened he proved to be the main reason behind her suffering. His mere presence meant torture right now as her brain squeezed and stammered and slammed into a wall with every word he uttered and every glance she chanced at him.

He equaled pain, and pain equaled whatever this madness was. Him being there made her mind go haywire, desperately trying to do something it just couldn't do.

She didn't know what it was. She couldn't know, because the pain was simply too much to pull through. Whenever she made an attempt it got worse.

She wanted the pain gone.

She wanted him gone.

Once and for all.

Another stabbing ache halted her thoughts and she was forced to remember the other part of her problem. She gazed down at her hands, forcing through the mental haze. Her fingers were half curled up and kept twitching as the throbbing persisted. Her hands balled into fists and her nails dug into her palms painfully.

She wished this pain could mask away the phantom pain she felt.

Even when her mind seemed to calm down her 'wounds' left her no room to breathe, no time to relax, and no chance to truly string her thoughts together. This gave her the only conclusion she could deduce in her current, terrifying state.

She had two sides within her mind fighting.

Was it the other side that was responsible for all the unreasonable emotions she felt?

Yearning.

Longing.

Heartbreak.

Guilt.

Grief.

She wanted to understand all of them, but the other part of her consciousness clawed at her skull, screaming at her to stop.

Get away.

Leave.

Run.

It's his doing.

Get rid of him.

She wanted to know what was going on in her mind for one moment and then wanted to hide away from the whole world in the next. She couldn't remember when she last felt this... cowardly.