Mirabella Odinsdottir

17- Emptiness

The feeling of emptiness, usually it's a comfort to me as I have said before. Emptiness protects you, from emptiness there is no pain, it is an amazing way to survive but it is definitely no way to live.

That is the hardest part, living after the nothingness. The feeling of nothingness is completely nothing, but as your thoughts ease, after the fogs of anger and denial lift, there is a huge crashing wave of sadness and guilt. It's a feeling that chokes you, an invisible monster who wraps its hands around your throat, it makes your head go fuzzy, makes your nose tingle and your lower lip wobble. Then it moves down to your chest. It wraps its hands around your heart and pulls, the cruelest part is how it pulls.

It doesn't rip it right out, it's a slow process. It wraps its fingers around your heart and applies pressure, slowly but surely until it makes you want to scream. Even if you do scream it will ignore your pleas and will only make you choke on them faster. Then it begins pulling, clawing at your heart, pulling it out of your chest, this is when you are left with nothing.

Nothing but your raw emotions, sometimes it's an uncontrollable anger, anger at something but nothing and with no way to direct that anger, it becomes dangerous. A raging fire without boundaries that sees no sign of stopping.

The only stopping it is for it to die down itself, no matter what you do it will never be enough to stop it. The pain never goes away, it may dull but it is still there and always will be. Once you feel something like that you will never go back to seeing things how they were.

Other times, other times you feel no anger at all. Only that clawing in your chest and you focus on that, that clawing, you are left with the relief of feeling something, even if that something is the poisoning sadness that spreads through your body.

But in this moment, I felt both of those things, the stabbing of anger, the poison of sadness, the feeling of everything and nothing, the heat of the situation and the coldness of the truth.

My head hadn't time to process being lifted up, back onto the bridge by Father, because just as my feet hit the bridge, just as I had collapsed to the floor too weak to stand, I was immediately up on my feet again running to the edge were Loki had just fallen. My feet slammed against the bridge as I ran until two arms wrapped themselves firmly around my waist.

I screamed and I kicked but no matter how hard I tried I wasn't getting anywhere. Slowly my struggles grew weaker and the tears streamed down my face. I was then pulled into a hug and buried myself into Thor's neck. I let out sob after sob, my chest heaving with each one and I struggled to find time to breathe between my crys.

"It'll be alright"

Thor spoke quietly and held the back of my head still holding me into his neck, "How could this" I let myself sob twice more, "Be alright?" I finished, my voice barely anything but a whisper.

My brother, my brother who had cared for me, played with me, fought with me, laughed with me, cried with me, raised me, was gone. How would that be alright?

It wasn't going to be alright. It couldn't. Especially not when it was my fault.