Powerlessness ( Loki x Reader )

XXVIII.

~ (Y/N) ~

My mouth tastes of cotton.

A blanketing sharpness that encompasses my taste buds, I relish the thought of water; of relief. It's consuming, the feeling that coats my tongue with the flavoring of chalk. A desire so immoderate to bring numbness. Blindness. But my attention is quickly everted to the smell of sulfur in the air.

I open my eyes slowly. Reflexes short of rust. I feel as though my slumber has lasted years, eons even. The crack of my bones sound beneath dirtied flesh as I lift myself from the ground. My brain barely registers my awakening and the sight that plays before me takes a moment to comprehend. Where am I?

An inferno. Dantes in fact. A hell that has risen from the ground and shown face to present us here. A civilization adorned in fire. Bodies casted in ash to lay aside me. I am the only to awake in this illuminated nightmare.

I can barely speak. Horror caught in the mid of my throat as my mouth dries further with panic. Panic that somber's sickness. Sickness that melts over guilt. What have I done?

I tread carefully. A slue of bodies to dodge and avoid that only groups further with distance. More and more they add and add again, until mountains of charred corpses traffic my path and leave me to squeeze between them. Their faces are unrecognizable but their bodies never repeat. Each corpse their own breed of man. A life that carried individually between them, all snuffed out by a similar and insignificant end.

Until one.

His face is still intact, his body still whole. He lays as if he's asleep. Lulled into a peaceful slumber. I kneel to awake him, but he doesn't respond. Just lays there, beautifully. Just as astonishing as the day I met him.

"Loki! Loki please. Please don't do this to me. Please... Please don't do this."

But a voice, unlike any I've heard. Unlike any anyone has heard, speaks in a song behind me.

"It can all go away."

I turn quickly. Snapping my head at the voice with vigor and quite possibly anger. Ready to address - to confront this impetuous bystander. But am met with nothing.

I turn back to my beloved. Ready to attain for the sins that have lead to his undeserving demise. But just as the voice he is gone like smoke. No more. Almost as if he never was. I had hope at first. "Maybe." But it proved fleeting. I could still feel is cold skin along my trembling fingers. Indented into my finger prints. A cavern left to my soul. The pain is all I have left of him and all I carry as I continue on.

The tread is short before another obstacle impedes my way. A building collapses atop me and I catch it with the grip of my curse. Knocked aside as my stomach curdles from the reality of my abilities. A gift from the universe I thought once. A mother, a sister, but a murderer in the end. The fire carries my scent. The perfume of catastrophe that seeps from my pores. I killed my only love. My only one. But the reality sinks deeper. The building now set aside, I am met with further horror.

They hung from metal rods. Spears protruding their torsos. Contorted in a way seemingly impossible to the living and the dead. But their faces were discernible. Perceptible. They were my family at a time. My home. My rightful place on this earth. Now all stared down at me with soulless eyes, terror twisted in their faces.

I heaved at the sight. Repulsed and absolutely dumbfounded. What horror? What luck to be faced with something so gruesome? It was sacrilege to the religion of man and morality. How could a soul commit an act so vile? So cruel? Does this body really lack such compassion?