Memory

To Find Him

It's all black... And then I push myself up, yet instead of it being difficult, it seems like I'm floating.

The last thing I remember is Loki drawing a knife, thinking I mean to kill him with the one I pulled out.

And I remember slicing my own throat. I don't remember anything else, except a name that echoes in my head, over and over and over.

Rowan.

Rowan, Rowan, Rowan...

Darkness is around me, in the black clouds around me that spark with red lightning. It's in the air that makes everything look so... abandoned. It's in the ground, so much so that it looks like I'm standing in the middle of a gaping black hole that must go on forever.

Is this what death feels like?

And I don't have time to think, because the dark in the air wraps around me like a cocoon that I don't fight.

It lifts me in the air, and I stay there, emotionless as the dark obscures me completely, with bits of glowing red in the cloud.

My hair floats around my face in a halo, and I can't move at all, frozen in place.

I start to remember things, echoes from before.

"Mavi..."

"...useless bitch..."

The sting of a slap.

"...should have killed you when I had the chance..."

"...see how you fare without your eyes..."

The phantom pain of a knife wound on the side of my face.

"MONSTER..."

"Goodbye..."

Confusion, shock, grief, a fleeting memory of a hand gripping mine weakly.

"Go rattle the stars..."

"...promise..."

The cold of a ring clenched in my palm...

Fireheart.

I remember.

The black cloud around me disappears, and I fall to the ground in some throne room. I pull myself up and take in my surroundings.

I vaguely remember why I came here to Helheim--To bring Rowan back somehow; I knew when I killed myself that I could find this jet-haired woman in a black-and-green suit lounging on a spiked throne.

The goddess of death. Hela.

Everything's very blurry, until she speaks in a cold voice, and my eyes focus a little more. "So, I take it you took your own life in the hopes of bringing back a loved one."

I nod, but it's not really me doing it. I am faintly aware of a ring on my hand, but I am barely in control of myself.

She smirks evilly. "You cannot bring back the dead, girl. Now you are stuck here, unless..."