Tabula Rasa (Unlike Loki: Book Two)

Chapter 26

(Loki)

Every time I touched her, it felt like the first time all over again.

My skin tingled, sparking with energy. Each place I touched her had it's own note, it's own tune. It made me breathless. It made me want to smile, to weep, to scream to the world that she was mine.

Because she was. She was mine.

Each time she touched me, my skin burned with a fire I didn't know could kindle on my skin. She warmed me in a way I didn't think was ever possible.

Five years.

That's how long I had been gone. It had felt like an eternity to me. Just floating in a black void. It hadn't been but the last few days that I had actually moved and done anything. But, for all I knew, that took ten times as much time as I thought.

I was afraid to close my eyes.

I hadn't told them everything. I was vague and undescriptive.

I didn't want them to feel bad for what had happened to me.

I was terrified to close my eyes, for fear for what I might see behind my eyelids.

I had never told them that I felt that I was suffocating, that I was being physically and mentally tortured. I never told them that I had panicked the whole time, screaming and screeching, but no sound coming out. I didn't have the heart to tell them that I had been in more pain than I had ever felt in my life, and that my mind had been dug around in, my worst nightmares coming to life in front of my eyes.

I had watched Anna die in every way possible. Over and over and over again.

And I hadn't been able to save her.

I had watched Asgard burn to the ground. The deaths of men, women, and children filling my vision, their screams filling my mind.

And it had been all my fault.

My heart hurt just thinking about it.

It was hard for me to even smile, unless I was looking at Anna, because I knew she was alive. She was alive, and well, and tangible beneath my fingers.

But what if I couldn't save her?

What if something came along, and I failed to save her? What would I do?

I couldn't live anymore. I wouldn't. Not without her.

I had been attacked in the In-Between, once people recognized me. They hated me, wanted to send me to Helheim. Maybe I belonged there. They had attacked me, unable to move, and ripped me to shreds, literally. And then they would wait until I had mended back together, and they would do it all over again, laughing at my pain. I saw everything, felt everything.

I didn't want to close my eyes. I refused to.

I don't know what had finally allowed me to move, but I was thankful for it. It put me on equal ground with all the other spirits. No one had powers or strength that was unordinary from that of a mortal.

I didn't tell them that wherever I went, I was looked at with hate and malice and rage.

I didn't even want to know the looks I would have gotten if I had gotten to Valhalla.

Ha. Like I would EVER get to Valhalla.

I'd be going the other way, for sure.

I didn't have the guts to them that either.

I fought my way out, but only because I was worried I wouldn't be able to save Anna from Mangog.

I thanked the gods that he was dumber than a box of rocks and hadn't realized that she was Queen.

But why had he killed the man he over took.

There was only way he would've killed him. Mangog thought the man was the King.

What had I come home to?