I'M SO ASHAMED DX! It's been nearly a year since I updated this story, I didn't realise that my Writer's Block had been going on so long...arghhhhhhhhh!

My most sincere apologies to you all so without further ado, enjoy!

Hetalia belongs to Hidekaz Himaruya!

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Natalya...

Would he come? She would not blame him if he stayed away, after everything she had done. Even now, she wondered how she could have been so out of control, so ….. there was no other way of saying it ….. so insane! Natalya knew it all happened, remembered every part, as much as she would like to forget it now, all the pain and misery that she had caused in her delusion, even the death of an innocent man who had never even met her, let alone done anything to her. All for the love of the one man she had no business loving, at least in that way.

She lay in her bed, staring at the dress bag, knowing what it contained. It was the morning of her wedding day and it was a day she believed should not be happening. Not because she hated the groom! Well, at one point she had but that had been part of the delusion too and she now loved Sergei Mikhaylov but she was scared that it would turn into an obsession as well. Besides, she thought he would be better off without someone as broken as her and she also thought that she did not deserve Sergei after everything that she had done but they were soul-mates so he was stuck with her so all she could do was try not to slip back into madness and lose Sergei the way she had lost her brother.

There was a knock and her bedroom door opened and her older half-sister, Katyusha came in. Someone else who's forgiveness Natalya felt that she did not deserve after Natalya had shot her while trying to shoot Yao Wang. She could have killed Katyusha and the fact that she had not been the intended target was no excuse Now that she was more mentally stable and less irrational, she knew that she had gone into an innocent man's home, waving a gun around, attacking an innocent teenager and attempting to murder a blind man in cold blood, accidentally shooting Katyusha when she tried to stop her. Natalya would not blame Katyusha for never wanting to see, let alone speak to her again but Katyusha's heart and forgiving spirit were boundless. She knew her sister had been ill and was still considered so. Diagnosed with an excessive attachment disorder, Natalya was being given therapy and had been taking anti-psychotic drugs to help manage her condition and she was doing much better these days and Katyusha did not want to see her sister slip back into insane obsession.

"Time to get up, Natalya!" Katyusha said, cheerfully. "You have a big day ahead." Natalya sat up in her bed, her newly-grown back, platinum blonde hair mussed from sleep. She had cut it to disguise herself as a male to get access to the plane that Ivan had been sending his soul mate and his soul mate's younger brother to safety on. She had sabotaged the plane, despite the fact that there had been others on the plane and the plane had crashed. She was lucky she had not killed everybody on board but someone had died, not her target but the pilot who had done everything to get everyone else down alive and paid for it with his life.

A stab of guilt hit Natalya in the heart, guilt that she would be having a wedding when that innocent man never lived to find his soul mate and there was someone out there that would never find his or hers. All because of her!

"Natalya!" Katyusha's voice called again.

"I'm awake," Natalya called back and pulled the covers back, putting her feet on the floor as Katyusha came up to the bed.

"Time to get up!" Katyusha announced. "Eduard is making breakfast so we'll eat that and then we'll get you ready for your big day while he goes to help Sergei." Natalya looked at her older half-sister, wondering how she could be so forgiving. She knew that Eduard was not and was here under protest.

"How can you stand to be near me, Katyusha?" Natalya asked. "After everything I did, how can you even stand to be in the same room?" Natalya could not raise her head because of the shame she felt but Katyusha sat beside her, pulling her into a comforting hug.

"You weren't well, Natalya," she replied. "You were ill and irrational. You're so much better now."

Yes, Natalya had been sick. She had been dragged into the mental institution her father had arranged for her, kicking and screaming and eventually drugged when she refused to calm down. She woke a day later and, a few days after that, the doctor had come to see her. Given her behaviour, she was hand-cuffed to a chair in the doctor's office as he began the first of her sessions with him.

"Tell me about your brother, Natalya," the doctor said. "Tell me how you feel about him." Natalya raised her short haired head and looked at the doctor down her nose.

"How could you ever understand!" she snorted. "No one understands, not even Big Brother, but he will! Once that interloper is gone, Big Brother will understand everything!"

"What will he understand?"

"That we're meant to be together! Like we always were! It's been me and Big Brother since we were children, since Mother died …."

"How did you feel when your mother died?" the doctor asked, finding that little slip interesting. Natalya just pressed her lips together and refused to say anything more about that. The doctor changed tack.

"Natalya," he said. "You heart beats for Sergei Mikhaylov and your brother's heart beats for Yao Wang ….." He got no further as Natalya tried to launch herself out of the chair at him, stopped only by the handcuffs.

"DON'T MENTION THAT DEMON'S NAME IN MY PRESENCE!" she screamed, trying to pull her wrists from the handcuffs but they stayed locked up in them. "That sorcerer put a spell on Big Brother, he's not his soul mate and Mikhaylov is not mine. Big Brother and I are soul mates, no one else's!"

"Then why didn't your heart start beating for your brother?" the doctor pointed out, ignoring the insane notion of brother and sister being soul mates for a moment. "Why did your heart beat for someone else? Why does your fate lie elsewhere?"

"IT DOESN'T!" she screamed again. "Fate got it wrong. Big Brother is my soul mate. Mother told me before she died ….." Then she stopped as if she realised that she was about to reveal too much.

"What did you mother tell you, Natalya?" the doctor asked. He found it hard to believe that any mother would tell her daughter that her soul mate should be her own brother. "Maybe if you tell me what your mother said, I might understand why you believe your soul mate is your brother." Natalya squeezed her lips tight and refused to say anything more, no matter what the doctor did to try and encourage her to talk. He had orderlies take her back to her room and wrote notes, suspecting an attachment disorder and prescribed some moderate anti-psychotic drugs to start with, beginning immediately but he had to find out exactly what Natalya's mother had told her before she died.

A few years down the line, Natalya now realised that she had misinterpreted what her mother had said on her death-bed but she had been a grieving child of four, losing her mother so thinking rationally was not high on the list of things to do. But still, she should have been able to understand when she got older what her mother had actually meant but Natalya had held on to the interpretation she made as a child, clinging to her brother like a clinging vine. Like poison ivy. Until he felt he had to run. Her brother had felt like he needed to escape and she had done that to him.

Katyusha managed to drag her downstairs for breakfast after making sure she took her medication, under the eye of her disapproving brother-in-law. Eduard did not want his soul-mate within ten miles of Natalya, sibling or not but Katyusha would not abandon her little sister in her time of need. Or on her wedding day.

When breakfast was done, Katyusha took Natalya back upstairs and sent her off for a shower while she got everything ready for Natalya's hair and make up and carefully taking Natalya's dress out of the bag and checking it for creases as she waited for Natalya.

Natalya stood under the warm water, letting it cleanse her skin and hair, wishing it could cleanse her conscience as well. Her misdeeds were always there, just behind her eyes and had been from the moment she began to realise exactly what she had done and how wrong it had been.

They had to make her take the drugs at first. She refused any medication that they gave her, usually violently but they made her take it and she still had to have sessions with the doctor. After a few month, she began to open up a little and speak more about her childhood. She was also less inclined to yell or scream at Sergei when he came to visit her (strongly encouraged by her father) and did not shout at the doctor when he mentioned Sergei's name.

Natalya was still obsessed with Ivan and still angered at any mention of Yao but it was not as rage fuelled and, finally, the doctor got to the bottom of what Natalya's mother had told her on her deathbed.

"Don't go, Mama!" a four year old Natalya begged her frail mother, holding her mother's hand as she lay on her bed. No one told Natalya her mother was dying but somehow she knew that her mother was going away somewhere and she would never be coming back. "Please don't leave me alone!" Her mother gave a weak smile.

"You won't be alone, Liubimaja(Sweet one)," she told her young daughter. "I can't stay but you will never be alone. You have your family and, one day, you'll have your soul-mate."

"What's a soul-mate?" Natalya asked. She had heard the term before but no one had ever explained to her what it actually meant.

"Your soul-mate is the one you're destined to spend your life with," her mother explained. "They'll be by your side throughout everything, good times and bad. And you will find that person, Natalya! Your heart will tell you so listen to it."

Maybe the pain was the reason why Natalya's mother did not tell her that her heart would tell her she had found her soul-mate by beating but whatever the reason, what her mother had told her stayed in four year old Natalya's mind.

After their mother died, the three sibling banded together but Ivan and Natalya, being closer in age, clung together the most and, in the coming years, Ivan was there for Natalya as they grew and Natalya remembered what her mother had told her.

"They'll be by your side throughout everything, good times and bad"

And so began the delusion that Ivan was her soul-mate and her whole life revolved around him as her excessive attachment disorder began to develop. And when Ivan became friends with others, jealously consumed Natalya as his attention began to be diverted away from her. She became convinced that they were trying to take her soul-mate from her and that she was within her rights to do whatever it took to stop them.

Ivan's first friend, Mikhal Klokov was Natalya's first victim when Ivan did not spend the afternoon with her, instead going to Mikhal's house to play. Ivan had always had trouble making friends as being the son of the famous or infamous General Dmitri Arlovsky tended to put others off but young Mikhal was braver than most and approached Ivan. Ivan was very happy to finally have a friend and began to spend more time with Mikhal, much to the anger of his little sister. Natalya saw Mikhal as a brother-thief and interloper, one she intended to remove.

No one knew quite what happened. It was fortunate that Mikhal ran into the side of the truck when the brakes failed on his bike, instead of in front of it and had Mikhal been closer, he might have ended up under the wheels. As it was, Mikhal was badly hurt, suffering several broken bones and a concussion but another casualty of the accident was Ivan and Mikhal's friendship as Mikhal began to avoid Ivan. No one knew that he had been told to by his parents after they received a note that said "Next time, he might not be so lucky. Stay away from Ivan Arlovsky!"

Mikhal's parents did not know who did not want their son being friends with Ivan. The only thing they could think of was that the General did not want his son associating with anyone he considered beneath him and they were not going up against the infamous General Winter.

Ivan was confused and somewhat saddened at the unexplained loss of his friend while Natalya was delighted that her plan had worked.

As they grew older, Natalya's obsession with Ivan became worse and Ivan had increasing trouble keeping any friends that he made as they all met with freak accidents and mysteriously broke contact with him afterwards and the rumour spread that being friends with General Arlovsky's son would bring bad luck.

Ivan's only constant companion was Natalya but Ivan was beginning to find her presence excessive and smothering so when he went to college at the age of 17, it was a relief for Ivan to have some space. That was when he met Saskia Anosova.

Saskia was a similar age to Ivan with long, black hair and deep violet eyes who had seen Ivan sit on his own in the cafeteria for a few weeks before approaching the boy who seemed very lonely to her. She went to the counter to get her lunch and then walked up to the table where the lone boy sat.

"Privet!" she greeted and Ivan looked up at her in surprise. "Do you mind if I sit here?"

"No, I do not mind," Ivan replied, looking at the pretty girl as she sat down. Even when he went to college, people seemed to give him a wide berth so the fact that this girl approached him was a surprise. He was disappointed that his heart did not start beating when he looked into her eyes but he was happy that someone wanted to talk to him. "My name is Ivan Arlovsky."

"I'm Saskia Anosova," she smiled at him. "I'm studying economics and business courses."

"I am studying mathematics and computers," Ivan replied. "I am also training to be a pilot."

"A pilot," Saskia said, taking a sip of her drink. "That's great!" They talked some more about family and home and Ivan felt happy that he had a new friend.

Natalya watched Ivan from afar for a few more weeks as he went around his college with his 'friend' but she was not fooled. That slut was after her brother! Her soul-mate! And Natalya would stop her.

Natalya took to following Saskia and all she needed was a moment, a second when she was alone. And she got that when she followed Saskia to the college library and she went up to the roof to wait. She pried a heavy piece of loose stone from the edge of the roof and waited for Saskia to leave the library.

It took two hours but Natalya was patient as she looked down over the door of the building, the light inside occasionally throwing out the odd shadow as someone left the building. Many times Natalya had lifted the stone, only to pull it back when it turned out to not to be Saskia but eventually Natalya's patience paid off.

A shadow appeared, cast across the road by the light streaming from inside the building's front door and Natalya readied the stone and Saskia stepped out of the building below Natalya. As Saskia wrapped her scarf around her neck, Natalya lined up the stone above her head and released it.

Saskia turned and was moving away when the stone struck her in the shoulder. She screamed in pain as her clavicle shattered under the impact and drove her to the floor. Natalya hissed in frustration that she had not completely remove Saskia from Ivan's life and she had no chance for a second try as people ran out of the library to assist the injured girl but Saskia would be out of Ivan's life for a while. As she made her way out of the building without being seen, Natalya decided it was time for she and her brother to finally face their destiny.

"What are you doing, Natalya?" Ivan demanded as he pushed her away after she passionately kissed him. "A sister does not kiss her brother that way!"

"Don't deny it, brother!" she replied, trying to kiss him again. "We are destined to be together. Marry me, brother and it will make our hearts beat! Marry me, marry me, marry me ….."

"You are insane!" Ivan exclaimed and he gave her another push. "How can you believe that is normal? Our hearts will never beat because siblings are never soul mates and I will never love you that way!"

"Who will love you that way, brother?" Natalya demanded. "That little hussy who thought to steal your affection from me. She couldn't tempt you from her hospital bed, could she!"

"It was you!" Ivan was horrified. "You dropped that rock on Saskia! You almost killed her and all she wanted to be was my friend. How could you do such a thing?"

"She didn't want to just be your friend," Natalya hissed. "None of them wanted to just be your friend. They wanted you for themselves and take you from me but I wasn't going to allow it!" Ivan realised just what had been befalling his friends.

"Everyone who wanted to be my friend!" he breathed. "Everyone who was hurt! That was you!" He backed away from her and ran.

Natalya lowered her head under the warm spray of the shower, hoping against hope that it could wash away everything that she had done but deep down inside knowing it could never do that. Once her medication had brought her down to the level where she could think rationally, her sessions with her doctor picked through everything. He made her understand her misinterpretation of her mother's last words to her, that Ivan was always there for her because that was what siblings did and it did not make him her soul-mate. How it all had made her misinterpret Ivan's friends as threats and what she tried to do to Saskia …...

It was only by sheer luck that Saskia had not died that day for which Natalya was grateful. She already had the blood of one innocent person on her hands. And it could have been more. Everybody on that plane she sabotaged could have died had the late pilot not been as good as he had been. All to kill her brother's real soul-mate.

The weight of Natalya's sins sat heavy on her shoulders and her mental illness did little to mitigate her in her eyes. All she had done was turn her brother's life into a lonely existence and harmed innocent people, killing one and she would have to live with that for the rest of her life.

"Natalya!" Katyusha's voice called through the bathroom door. "It's time to get ready. You don't want to be late for your own wedding!"

Her wedding. To Sergei Mikhaylov, a subordinate of her father's and her true soul-mate, although she had hardly been happy at the time he started her heart beating but, that being said, neither had he.

Sergei …...

Sergei stood under the shower, the water plastering his black hair against his head as he got ready to marry his soul-mate. When he first met Natalya, he never thought this day would come and never thought he would ever agree to it. Never would he have thought that his superior's crazy daughter would have been the one who would have made his heartbeat and, to be honest, when he discovered Natalya was his soul-mate, he had not been best pleased.

Sergei was not an angel by any means, you were not attached to General Dmitri 'Winter' Arlovsky's military staff without doing some pretty questionable things but what he did, he did on orders and never did it involve harming the innocent. Natalya's insane behaviour had revolted Sergei and, at the time, he wondered why Fate hated him so much.

A lot had changed since then. Natalya's medication and treatment had altered her behaviour completely and, with each step toward sanity, Natalya had worked her way into his heart. It had not been easy at first, Natalya had cursed him every time she saw him, still lost in the delusion of being the soul-mate of Ivan, her older brother and she initially resisted anything to the contrary but, as her sessions with her psychiatrist unravelled the root cause of her obsession and the medication help her calm enough to see what she had done and face the consequences, they began to reach an understanding and grew closer.

Trust was hard for Sergei and he had to trust that Natalya was not faking her recovery and she would not relapse. The first part, he had just about managed but the second was out of their hands but, if Natalya kept up her medication, they could just about make it.

He climbed out of the shower, grabbing a towel to dry his body and hair as he made his way to his bedroom where his wedding suit was hanging ready for him to change into. Eduard would be here soon, playing reluctant Best Man as he would be family to Sergei very soon. In Sergei's line of work as General Winter's subordinate, he did not make many friends, just associates. Eduard was not happy to be playing this role, Sergei knew but it was nothing against him. Eduard had still not forgiven his sister-in-law for shooting his wife, accidentally maybe but Eduard was still understandably sour about it.

After drying his hair, he put on his underwear and wrapped a dressing gown around himself and went to get some breakfast while he waited for Eduard to arrive.

Natalya sat in front of her bedroom mirror while Katyusha arranged her hair, brushing it through and pinning it up and Natalya looked at her reflection. It was different to what it had been in the past, the intense stare and a gleam of what she now realised had been madness. Now her eyes were softer but the madness had been replaced with haunted remorse.

Katyusha hummed as she pinned the last lock of hair into place and began to apply a light touch of make-up to Natalya's face. She did not need much, her skin was almost flawless and she looked up at Katyusha as she applied face powder to her sister's face.

"Why?" Natalya asked, causing Katyusha to stop.

"Why what?" Katyusha asked.

"After everything I did," Natalya replied. "Why are you doing all this for me? I drove our brother away, shot you, killed an innocent man and almost killed many more, including our brother's soul-mate and brother. How can you stand to be anywhere near me? I know Eduard can't and he's right to!" Katyusha just hugged her sister.

"Oh Natalya!" she sighed. "You were sick! I know that and I know how much you've punished yourself since you began to recover. I know you didn't intend to shoot me and, deep down, Eduard knows that too. He just has trouble coming to terms with what happened."

"I'm not surprised," Natalya said. "I could have killed you and I did intend to kill Yao. I did kill an innocent stranger and his family will never forgive me for that, not that they should."

"I can't speak for them," Katyusha replied. "I can only speak for myself and I forgive you!" Katyusha let her sister go and began to finished Natalya's make-up.

"Let's get you ready for your future husband, okay?" Katyusha smiled at Natalya and Natalya smiled back, thinking of Sergei. As the madness receded, the love that soul-mates inevitably feel for each other began to seep into her heart and, as the saner Natalya emerged, Sergei began to finally fall for his soul-mate.

A little explanation as to why Natalya's behaviour went off the rails and what happened to anyone who became friends with Ivan. Natalya's mental state has a little bit of guess work on my part as the research I did sometimes contradicted itself and I don't have much experience with mental illness so take it with a pinch of salt, it's simply for the story.

To Leslie, I'm sorry I turned Natalya into such a crazy nutjob in Rescue Me but I always intended to redeem her like I've done before in my Hetalia Tales series (Shameless, I know). I hope you read this and approve of her redemption.

This was going to be a one-shot but I was hit with a dry spell of Writer's Block and, when it cleared enough for me to continue, it got away from me a little and became very long so I've broken it up into two parts and part 2 will be uploaded next week.

So till then,

Hasta la Pasta!