HeartBound {Avengers Fanfic}

Chapter 8: Understanding the Misunderstood

"One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood."

-Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The next morning's meditation didn't go any better. Freyja didn't visit Loki or check in on Thor, but she still couldn't concentrate. Her escapade with the youngest Asgardian prince the previous morning had dredged up old memories in the night that just made her feel worse about her situation. She had checked every strand of the future, just to be sure there was nothing she could do.

About a third of the threads were the results of her breaking down and returning to Asgard. None of those turned out well. One image was of her cradling Loki's body as blood slowly gushed from a long wound that spanned the length of his torso, the broken bodies of her friends surrounding her. Another showed her broken on the floor with Thanos in possession of the Tesseract. Then there was the one where Thor was impaled on a spear, his hammer laying useless next to him. An alternative version where everyone was in chains, waiting in line for their execution. Then, most disturbingly, a vision of herself chained to the ground, surrounded by what looked like the ruins of Asgard, as Thanos sat on a throne of gold.

The rest, excluding one she had yet to riddle out, were visions of what would happen if she continued running. She saw herself in her various forms in different worlds. In each one, she looked as though she had been pushed closer and closer to the brink of sanity. A few showed narrow escapes as Thanos tried to trap her. The majority seemed to show what would come once she had lost her mind after a few more millennia. None of them seemed to have an end.

The last one that didn't seem to fit into either of the categories was convoluted beyond recognition. A dead Jötunn who had fatal burns across her chest lay on the flagstones of Asgard's streets as Freyja kneeled over her with an enraged expression. The image was replaced by her locked in a mental battle with the Titan Thanos, tears rolling down her face for some inexplicable reason. And then the final vision, the one which shook her to her core, came into view. She lay on the cold streets of Asgard, eyes open and unseeing, in a pool of her own blood. Loki, his Æsir form stripped away to reveal his blue skin, was falling forward until he was almost draped across her, looking too close to death for her comfort. More importantly, Asgard was burning around them. Freyja had no idea what path would bring her to those realities.

None of them were acceptable in her eyes, none of them were optimistic. But, then again, time had made her a realist and so she didn't believe in a perfect scenario. Perfection, an aspect her people had strived for, was something she didn't believe in. Just as she didn't believe in the apathy her people had clung to so desperately. The more she looked back on it, the more she realized that there had been many aspects of her people that she did not agree with. But she had still been crushed when her people had been all but wiped out.

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. The skies were almost completely clear, obscured only by the occasional wispy cloud that drifted lazily across the blue. It was a dull color compared to the brilliance of the Vanaheim skies, much more so in comparison to Asgard's miasma of stars, though she still thought it was beautiful in its own right. If there was one thing she missed about her home, it was the stark contrast between the sable colors of the Vanir and the vivid hues that made up the world they lived in. But that no longer existed. Vanaheim had become a wasteland of browns and greys.

It hurt to think she would never see that beauty again. Never confide her doubts in her brother again. Never fix the shattered remains of her relationship with her father. All of her friends were dead, all of her family. It hurt so much that she felt as if her heart was being ripped out. The only cure to the ache, as she had recently found out, was Loki. Or the Loki she had known before, it would seem. But the man she had known was buried somewhere beneath the pain and anger.