Avengers: Legacies

All In Mind

Sigyn hadn't slept for days. Something plagued her dreams and followed her into her waking hours. Voices lingered in the back of her mind, but she didn't know whom they belonged to or what they were trying to tell her. All of them at once whispering to her. She had not known peace since stumbling through the tunnels in the mountain with the vengeful, forgotten dwarves, bitter and bloodthirsty. Except that Sigyn remembered very little of her time in the mountain. She had run with Rosalie and Pym and then she was running alone, confused and afraid. So disoriented she wanted to collapse with despair.

There was also the matter of her hands. The black substance that started coating her fingertips in the mountain now reached past her wrists and was making its way up her arms. No one else seemed to notice, not even Tait, and she wondered if she'd been cursed, or worse, if she was sinking into insanity. A curse she could break. Insanity was something so foreign to her she couldn't help but fear it. What was happening to her? What was real, and what wasn't?

"Sigyn."

Her head shot up and caught the others staring at her worriedly. Her face burned at being caught dozing off. They were planning their next steps now that the locator device was close to being finished, and she was struggling to keep her eyes open.

She smiled, her lips drawn tightly over her teeth, as she pushed her long, dark hair back behind her ears. "Forgive me. Sleep has not been easy for me as of late."

Her eyes focused on James at the head of the table. He nodded, his own eyes flickering to Rosalie beside him, his sister's under eyes also bruised with lack of sleep.

"It's safe to say it hasn't been easy lately. For some of us," James said.

Snap his neck!

This voice tormented her the most. The loudest one. The most violent and gruesome. She masked her flinch at the sudden outburst by adjusting herself to sit up straighter in her chair.

"Yes." Her smile was serene, but her face felt tight around her eyes and mouth. "It is. I hope we'll find some rest soon."

You shouldn't defy me, princess. Once this protection spell of yours wears off, you shall be mine again.

Sigyn leaned back against her chair and rubbed along her brow at the ache forming behind her eyes. When the voices spoke like that, aware of her past actions, she felt she was more cursed than insane. Upon returning from the mountain, she had performed a protection spell on herself, but that hadn't stopped the nightmares from coming. Or the voices. She had angered them, or rather whoever was in charge of them, and she was paying for it. Severely. Her strength waned like the moon each night, and she feared she'd lose more than just a few memories to the voices in her head. The soot-like blackness overtaking her body would cover her head to toe, and turn her into a creature of shadow. Whatever she was becoming, she wanted nothing to do with it.

Tait's eyes were on her. They bore into her as he tried to gain her attention, but she only could send him a weak smile, avoid meeting his gaze. She wanted to tell him, to tell everybody, but she already felt crazy enough without the others seeing her as such. And what was it that they could do to help her? Nothing. None possessed magic like her, no one skilled in sorcery like her. Even if Tait practiced his small share of magic, it would not be enough to rid herself of this torment. She had to do this herself, and she needn't bring anyone else into the situation lest someone got hurt. She had to do what she could to protect her brother and friends. They just had to understand that when it came time for her to confess the reasons behind her withdrawal from the group, her ghastly appearance, her meek nature.

Sigyn jumped as a hand landed on her shoulder. She glanced down at the hand's scars, pale against semi-tanned skin, and she lifted her eyes to her brother's stony ones. He stood, the others as well, and Sigyn quickly launched herself from her own seat, scolding herself yet again for not paying close attention.