Enamoured with a Mortal

Chapter Four

T/W: There is reference to a suicide attempt in this chapter. Read cautiously, be safe.

Present Day

It had been many weeks since I'd slept long enough to be able to dream. It was very rare that I managed to get more than three hours sleep at any given time, in fact it was more common for me to go over a day without any sleep at all. The thoughts of those around me always put it down to overworking, or trauma, or some other mortal nonsense that I tended not to bother myself with. The less I slept the quicker I could find her. It truly was that simple. Especially when I was following a lead. Cheap hotel rooms often just became a room to keep documents when needed. Which is why it was so surprising to me that I managed to dream at all. Perhaps the countless nights of unrest were finally catching up with me. Usually, even when I forced myself to rest it resulted in only a few hours of poor sleep that did more harm than good. Still, she'd want me to try to rest, so I tried. So when I dreamt of her being here with me, when I pretended that I could feel her seiðr near me and could run my fingers through her golden brown hair, I just let myself give in. I selfishly allowed it to calm me, thinking little of how badly it would hurt in the morning. I allowed myself to relish in the comforting thought of her by my side. Of the two of us spending countless hours alone in each other's company.

But eventually I was pulled from my dreams and into the hotel room, forced away from even the comfort of having her in my dreams. It was so jarring, so disorienting, that my mind even tried to convince me I could feel her seiðr next to me. It felt so warming, so real, even as I rubbed my eyes to force myself to wake fully. No it was exactly as if I could feel it. I jumped up in my bed suddenly, noticing the inconsistencies with the room around me. The finer details were hazy, almost like a filter placed over an image. The wall decals blurred into each other, the carpet seemed even more faded than before, and the general dirt of the place almost vanished. Enough was wrong to be conscious that something wasn't right. And yet it didn't feel like I was still in a dream, at least not one I'd ever experienced before. The space felt too realistic. I could touch and interact too freely and the same amount of resistance was in everything. It wasn't an illusion and surely couldn't be a dream, and yet it wasn't real. Not with her standing just a few steps away from me, her back to me as she looked out the window. It felt like the space I was forced into after my spell backfired, and yet I knew it couldn't be. No seiðr was spent on my end, no materials were given, it couldn't be a spell.

And yet I found myself in a space so similar, a flawed memory-like version of the hotel room I knew I was in and she felt real. I almost wanted to force myself to ignore the inconsistencies around me, to make myself believe it real. I desperately wished that it could be that simple, that three months of suffering could end right here, right now. I called out to her, just as I had done during the spell, and she immediately turned to the sound of my voice, looking even more confused at my presence than she had been on Asgard. Almost like a lost child, frightened and baffled.

"Oh, I... I must have fallen asleep." I couldn't focus on her words. If this were a dream, why did she look so broken? Why couldn't I picture her healthy, happy, as if nothing had ever gone wrong? Why did I have to torture myself even further? Her hair was incredibly blonde, brighter than it ever had been before and roughly cut above her shoulders. Once again there was no hint of my hair throughout it, instead a short piece of blonde hair where it had connected stuck roughly out just above her left ear, grown slightly since last time. The skin around her temples, wrists and ankles were deeply discoloured, red welts or burns etched into her skin. And yet I couldn't spend more than a second focussing on any of that. None of those factors plunged a dagger into my heart as much as her arms. Deep red blood flowing down her arms and dripping into a pool on the carpet below her.

I'd never experienced a complete loss of breath before, but it was as if all oxygen had been sucked out of the room. It caused me to freeze. As if I couldn't get any part of my body to work, no matter how much I desired to grab her and take her somewhere safe. That was until her eyes lost focus and rolled back and she began to fall to the floor. Instantly I caught her, before I could even think to do so.