The Fate of Fractured Lives

03 Exodus

Getting away from the war zone was complicated. There were too many things happening and too many eyes were searching for targets and opportunity. We couldn't risk Donna being identified or the other me making a scene. This forced us to be on our own and to move on foot. Even with Donna sensing the best possible outcomes ahead of us, food, shelter, and money were tricky to come by. It was slow going. To keep us alive, Donna used her ability to liberate stashes of money and food from different people and places without being noticed. We specifically took from people of the criminal and terror oriented variety. She wanted to serve justice in one way or another to those people but her priority was keeping us unseen.

If that wasn't sketchy enough, there was my emotional state to contend with, which at the time was iffy at best. Publicly, not that we carried on publicly very much, I was able to keep things together pretty well. Privately... Donna had a lot to deal with. I had some bad moments where I blew up on her in spite of me trying to keep my monster from coming out. If you wanted to label me as being verbally abusive, I couldn't argue otherwise. Sometimes I got mad at Donna because she didn't tell me things. Sometimes I got mad because she was just silent. Sometimes I was mad because I just needed to be mad. Of course I didn't know her silence and omissions were due to the gaps in her senses and the mental blocks. Weirdly during all those bad moments the feral me never even twitched.

There were also my moments of manic crying and panic, with the occasional nightmares and sleep terrors thrown in for good measure. Imagine having to try and sleep next to someone who could punch a hole in concrete if the right bad dream struck. Yeah, that happened once. Okay maybe more than once. Fortunately she could sense when to move out of my reach when sleep took me to bad places. I can't imagine how tense she must have been knowing my episodes were coming and knowing she could do nothing to help me. Though honestly, I'm not sure there was anything she could have said or done to make me feel better. Donna had no option but to be there for me. And she did it thanklessly. Because of her ability to see and feel through time, she already loved me.

Eventually we made it to Turkey. Fortunately Donna's gift allowed us to find people we could interact with without having too much of a language barrier. She did this everywhere we went. Donna snuck us across the border and we made our way to the city of Diyarbakır. From there she found a smuggler and paid our way to Pakistan by helping him navigate a cargo plane through mountains and radar coverage. We ended up living in Karachi for a few months. Donna worked to keep us clothed, fed, and sheltered by helping unsavory types complete illicit activities while avoiding authorities. She didn't like it but we needed the money.

During that time, little by little, she was able to explain the gaps in her time sense and the mental blocks. Slowly, I began to understand. I was also getting a little better at controlling my outbursts but I was still horrible to her sometimes. Not as much yelling, but there was still plenty of anger and attitude. I wasn't even angry at her so much as I was just angry and I could let it out on her because I knew she wouldn't leave me. I was also beginning to view Donna as a parental figure which made a part of me want her to punish me for being a monster. But no matter how bad I acted, she never raised a hand or her voice. I'm still embarrassed by how I acted back then. My behavior only changed after a particularly bad tantrum of mine. I found Donna crying, rocking, hitting herself in the head, and telling herself to "Just say something." It finally dawned on me how much the problem was tearing her apart and how much I was helping to break her down. It sat next to her and stayed quiet. Then I leaned on her.

"I'm sorry." she said, still crying.

"I sorry too." I replied.

Donna tirelessly worked to give me the best life she could. She had a lot to handle being officially dead, age twenty two, on the run, and now raising a tween with major guilt, survivor, and murder monster issues, who also had the potential to cause mass deadly destruction. Fortunately, things never came to that mass murder and destruction part. From then on I did better at keeping my emotions in check and managed to not explode on her. Sometimes I went to the opposite extreme where I seemed like a robot. Donna actually had to encourage me to not be so controlled. It wasn't that I had worked through some of my trauma. Emotional protection, or more accurately containment, became part of the power package. I could now compartmentalize and suppress my feelings and emotions like no other. Of course anxiety didn't get suppressed at all. Because why not?