Out of reach • A Loki fanfiction

Chapter 55 - Memories

The news of the healer's visit had reached Harald's ears. Of course he knew of nothing that had happened behind her chambers doors, but he was worried about his sister. When he asked her if she was okay, she shrugged her shoulders and went on with her day. She stayed cooped up in her chambers, avoided to talk to him—or anyone at all, and seemed unbothered to try anymore.

It was the truth. Vera had been pacing her chambers for days on no end, occasionally forgetting her meals or to simply brush her hair. It wasn't entirely because of the loss of a clump of cells she knew she lost before knowing that she carried it. Sure, part of it was. But how could she cry about it when she was sure none of this was real? All she had been stuck with between these walls was her twisting mind. Questioning herself, declaring herself officially insane, finding the urge to demand a second opinion, only to realise she'd have to go trough more research if she'd decide to walk that path.

She paced bare feet with her tangled hair quickly tied together in a messy bun on the top of her head. Her cuticles were all practically gone by now, picked at with anxiety or chewed on with stress.

Making sense of her life for the last couple of months seemed to be an impossible task. Before the annual exchange to Asgard, everything had been fine. Uneventful and dull, but at least mentally stable. But when she—for the first time in her lifetime, and with no parents—left her home realm, nothing somehow seemed to make sense. She never made friends there, never spoke to people, sat with an erect spine around her assigned table, and did nothing more but smile to everyone she passed there.

That wasn't Vera. She had never been one to not at least try to go and explore parts of Asgard when the hour was late. And thinking back on it now, she had no idea why she acted like a robot during their visit.

After that month, nothing seemed to feel right either. Whenever shooting her selfmade targets in the forest next her home, no arrow fully seemed to hit, even though it did. Whenever going for a ride with one of their horses, she seemed to miss a horse she never had. When she slept, she lucid dreamed. And when she woke, it was as if waking up in a stranger's bed.

She got to know she had been pregnant. And she got to know that she miscarried. Then to top it off, multiple parts from her memories either seemed to be missing, or vague.

Looking at herself in the vanity mirror, a switch seemed to suddenly flip. She knew she had gone crazy. But she had accepted it. She just gave into the craving of turning everything inside out and upside down. To stare at her surroundings for a second to realise that nothing here was truly in place. Like, why was her vanity so void from books? This wasn't the table for it, but she remembered not giving a damn where she left her books behind. And how was her trashcan empty before cleaning day? Where were the fresh makeup smudges? Why did it look like as if books had been pulled from a single shelf in her cupboard, and had never been put back?

Call her gone mad, but she couldn't take staring at her bookshelves for a minute longer.

A few steps were enough to reach her shelves. Then her spiked heart rate was the only factor needed to throw the first book out, onto the floor.

Literature, autobiographies, poetry, tomes, philosophy, and picture books. She flicked them trough, one by one, before brutally discarding it on the carpeted stone. Pile after pile formed themselves on her floor, making the whole corner of her room a mountain of numbers and words.

Almost her entire cupboard got emptied. Almost.

Perhaps her floor was destined for mess, for only one of the last books contained a detail to finally catch her eye, and make the storm stop.