Part Eleven: In Which a Great Deal Must be Considered

When Sigourney awoke she was alone. She knew she was before she had even opened her eyes. In that place between sleep and awake, she could feel the emptiness of her bed beside her. She jolted up, hair blinding her for a moment before she could rake it back out of her eyes.

On the pillow next to her lay a folded piece of paper with 'Siggy' scrawled across it in neat, narrow letters. She snatched it up and flipped it open, scanning the words there too quickly to actually read. She had to make herself breathe and start again. It said:

My love,

I will return as soon as I am able.

Yours.

She sat in the stillness of her bedroom, the note loosely in her hand. That part of her that knew Loki better than she knew even herself instinctively told her that he had gone to do something foolish. She recalled the night before and all they had discussed. Had she agreed to go away with him? Sigourney couldn't quite remember. He had asked her and then... She smiled, rubbing her hand over the place where Loki had kissed her neck. She could still feel his cold lips against her skin.

Sigourney got up and showered. Then she dressed and put the kettle on. As it slowly came to a boil, she leaned against the counter. She ran her fingers against the cracks in the tiles where Loki had gripped them the night he'd come back from disappearing. Sigourney thought for a moment, frowning. Had that really only been a day ago? It felt longer. She traced the jagged lines in the tiles and came to terms with the fact that she probably wouldn't get her damages deposit back.

What would she do with the apartment if she left with Loki? What would she do with all her stuff? She looked around the small space, at her books and dishes and furniture. She couldn't possible bring it with her. It wasn't like Uhaul offered interplanetary services. She supposed she could pack it away in a big storage locker somewhere. But the thought of it being cracked open and auctioned off if her payments stopped going through made her cringe. How would she even make payments from goodness-only-knew-where in the universe?

For a brief moment she wondered if her parents could help her. She was trying to work out how to explain that she would be leaving, supposing that saying she wanted to travel again would be believable, when she was struck by a hollowing thought.

They didn't exist.

The realization turned her into a ghost with skin. She knew it was true, but even still she went to the wall phone. Sigourney picked up the receiver like she had so many times before, balancing it between her face and her shoulder. Her hand hovered uselessly over the number keys as the dial tone droned in her ear. Her mind was blank. She couldn't remember the phone number of her parents' house. The house she had grown up in. A house that... didn't exist.

She felt sick. Sigourney slowly returned the receiver to its cradle as the kettle behind her began to whistle. She was alone. She had always been alone. All those phone calls, all those birthday dinners and early morning school drives and late night homework sessions had never happened. They were some kind of trick her distorted memory played on her often enough to make it feel like it had been real. But it wasn't. A sharp pain sounded just above Sigourney's right eyebrow. She pressed her fingertips to it, willing it to go away as the kettle screamed behind her. She whipped around and yanked it off the stove.

What had she just been thinking about? She shook her head and started to fix her tea. She got the box of peppermint tea her mother had given her for her last birthday out of the cupboard. Her mother... Sigourney's breath came in a sharp hitch. That was it. She had realized that her parents weren't real. Or at least, they weren't real in the way she remembered them. How had she forgotten that so quickly? The pain above her brow flared again, but she muscled through it. She knew that she had to have had parents at one point. Elsewise where would she have come from? She pressed her palm above her right eyebrow and clenched her teeth.

The image of her father's smiling face peering down at her as she hid under a library table filled Sigourney's mind. The pain turned all the more sharp. The thought threatened to slip away again. Sigourney clenched her free first tight, pressing it into the counter. She couldn't let this get away from her. She needed to remember. She shut her eyes and held on to the image of her father's face despite the hot, stiff pain.

"You said you would at least make an attempt today." He had told her in his sympathetic way.

Sigourney, no older than ten, had only shrugged in reply. She knew he was right.

"You did promise, you know. You can't stay in this library forever." He reminded her, raising his eyebrows pointedly.

"Mother does." She protested.

"That's because it's my duty." Her mother's voice, calm and reasonable as always, came from near by, "Listen to your Father. Go outside. Make friends."

"You did say you would at least try." Her father's smile was encouraging as he gazed meaningfully at her.

Sigourney sighed and pushed herself up, crawling out from under the table.

"The other children are in the garden." Her father told her, placing his large hand on her shoulder.

Sigourney sighed again and prepared herself for what she was about to endure. She hated it here. She hadn't wanted to move, but her mother's work demanded it and so the whole of her ten-year-old life had been uprooted. Was that not enough? Why must she be made to endure the torment of trying to make friends? It wasn't as though the other children even wanted her. But she had promised she would try. So what else could she do but go and brave their mockery and scorn for a few minutes before coming back and hiding under the table again. Sigourney's mother finally looked up from the books she had spent the morning pouring over and laughed a little.

"My goodness, child." She shook her head, smiling affectionately, "We are not sending you into battle. You aren't being shipped off to the Valkyrie. You needn't look so grave as that."

Sigourney, still leaning against her kitchen counter, couldn't help but smile a little at the memory. She had felt so hard-done-by in that moment. Really, she knew she had just been scared.

This memory of her parents felt solid enough for her to touch. Sigourney half believed that if she just reached out far enough she could press her fingers to it like the surface of a mirror. The pain above her brow eased as the memory solidified in her mind. She glanced down to where her golden bracelet sat around her wrist. Her parents had given it to her on her fifteenth birthday. But unlike the tea, she knew that memory was real. She read the rune inscription, Ever Loved, and knew that they were real. They existed somewhere in the universe. Sigourney could feel it. She wasn't alone. She just had to find them.

The wall in Sigourney's mind gave way enough for other memories to come through. They came in a flood. Some things she understood. Her mother reading to her, playing in the lower gardens, sharing secrets with Sif, laying in a bed with Loki. Other memories she didn't understand. A woman hugging her while they both cried, people avoiding her gaze in a banquet hall, and the circular gilded chamber.

She was just beginning to try and sort out some of these stranger memories when her cellphone buzzed in the next room.

"Shit." Sigourney cut out under her breath.

She raced to reach it before the call ended. It was Lavender. Sigourney knew the reason for the call before she put the phone to her ear.

"Where are you?" Came Lavender's voice from the other end.

"I'm sorry." Sigourney replied, scrambling to gather her bag and a jacket, "I'm on my way. I lost track of time, but I'll be there in ten minutes."

"You had me worried." Lavender said back, her voice only just losing it's concerned edge, "Ten minutes. If you're not here by then I'll send out a search party."

The line went dead. Sigourney shoved her phone into her jacket pocket as she crambed her feet into her boots, not bothering to pull the laces tight. She left the apartment and her half fixed tea still on the kitchen counter.

She nearly fell down the stairs to the foyer because of her slack-laced boots. Mrs Hult, who was watering the plants there, raised an eyebrow at her. She was barefoot, wearing a long floral dress. Her silver-white hair was swept back from her kind, lined face in a low twist. And her keen, dark eyes stood out starkly against her pale complexion.

"Late, are we?" She teased, her thin voice just touched with laughter, "Your young man left this morning in quiet the rush too."

Sigourney stopped half way to the door, her jacket hanging from where she wore it on only one arm, "My young man? You saw him?"

"Oh, there's no need to be embarrassed." Mrs Hult waved a hand.

"No, I'm just..." Sigourney pulled her jacket on the rest of the way, shifting her bag, "I just wondered if you noticed how he looked when he left? Did he seem worried or upset at all?"

"Had a row, did you?" Mrs Hult took her hand and squeezed it sympathetically, "It will pass."

"No, nothing like that." Sigourney assured her.

"Well, in that case he looked rather pleased with himself." Mrs Hult turned back to her plants.

Sigourney's mind worked quickly. Perhaps Loki hadn't gone to do something fool hearty after all. She wanted to hold onto that hope, but her intuition told her better. She thanked Mrs Hult and ducked through the front door. It was raining out. As she crossed the slick street, she promised herself that if she were to leave with Loki they would come up with some way to contact one another when they weren't together. Space cellphones, if that was a thing at all. And they would have to have a long conversation about his disappearing without any explanation. Twice was too many times.

When Sigourney reached the shop Lavender was leaning against the door. She smiled and crossed her arms, her mint coloured raincoat buckling. Sigourney rummaged through her bag for her keys as quickly as she could, still feeling frantic.

"You know, when I tell my friends about stuff like this they're deeply jealous. Their bosses throw a fit if their even a minute late. And here I am, waiting on you." Lavender teased.

"I over slept." Sigourney tried to explain, realizing that she hadn't even bothered checking the time when she'd woken up, "Though, I'm glad you're the envy of teenage employees everywhere. If I could afford to hire them all I would."

"Oh, please don't. I enjoy being special." Lavender smiled all the more, then asked with a hint of the concern that had tinted her voice on the phone, "Late night?"

Sigourney nodded, "Yeah. And... just a weird morning."

They went inside the shop. Sigourney dumped her bag on the counter and flipped on the over head lights. They cut through the rainy dimness, flooding the shop in cold artificial light that seemed to glare more sharply than it ever had before. Sigourney paused as she took off her coat, swimming through her too-full mind while trying to remember how to be an ordinary person. Had the book shop always been this small? This pedestrian? She glanced around, seeing it now as something else entirely. She knew every shelf and volume. But somehow she was a stranger. She hung her coat up next to Lavender's and tried to shuffle through the papers on the counter.

"Can I ask you something sort of strange?" She asked as Lavender hopped up to sit on the edge of the counter.

Lavender shrugged, "Sure. I live for strange."

Sigourney had to think for a moment. She turned over her words carefully as Lavender watched, waiting.

Finally, she asked slowly, "Have you read books where the main character discovers a new, magical world?"

"What, like Alice in Wonderland?" Lavender raised an eyebrow, "Sure."

"Well, you know how sometimes the protagonist has to decide if they want to go back to their ordinary lives or stay in the new world?" Sigourney crossed her arms tight to keep her hands from shaking, "I was just wondering, if it were you, what would you do?"

Lavender thought about this for a moment, swinging her legs a little. Sigourney stared at the floor. For some reason the waiting was unbearable. She felt as though the only thing keeping her from flying apart was how tightly her arms were crossed.

After what seemed like ages, Lavender said, "I dunno, I guess it depends on what kind of magical world I had found and what sort of character I was. Like, is the life I would have in the magical world better than the one I already have? Or is this a kind of European-Medieval-There's-No-Soap-Or-Penicillin deal?"

Sigourney couldn't help but smile, "That's a really good point."

"Basically, if my life was going to be better and my leaving wouldn't hurt anyone, then I'd totally go." Lavender concluded with another shrug.

Sigourney considered this piece of incite.

"What would you do?" Lavender asked.

"I don't know." Sigourney said softly, still smiling as she let her arms uncross themselves, "That's why I asked."

Sigourney turned over what Lavender had said again and again through the course of the day. If she went with Loki, would her life be better for it? She tried to weigh the possibilities in her mind, but it was difficult to compare what she already had to what she didn't fully yet know. The biggest draw to going was the possibility for answers. To pick apart the mystery of her memories and find out why she was like this. Find out who she was. And, of course, she could be with Loki through it all. But there was a deep rooted fear of the unknown. The possibility of discovering something about herself that she wouldn't like and being suddenly thrown in above her head with no option of going back petrified her.

But would her life be better? That was the question that cut her open without warning when she really thought about it. Sigourney had always thought she had a pretty good life. She had her parents, her apartment, and the shop after all. Sigourney had always been content in taking up her tiny corner of the world without ever asking for more than she had. But the veil had lifted and now she saw her life with new eyes. Her parents, as she knew them, weren't real. Her primary relationships in life were imagined. She didn't even really have any friends. She went home every night to her empty apartment and filled her head with books to block out the solitude she was imprisoned in.

The shop wasn't any better. Sigourney knew now that it was little more than a child's blanket-fort castle, with books stacked around the edges to keep the monsters of her own loneliness at bay. She had built it, book by book, to keep herself safe and separate from the outside world. How many people a week even came in? And of them, how many did she know? How many had she talked to beyond the stiff politeness of the everyday? None. They passed in and out of her life like shadows across the wall, never touching anything enough to really change it. And she had been content to let them drift by.

Sigourney glanced at Lavender who was diligently sorting paperbacks from hardcovers out of a box she'd found in the broom cupboard. Lavender had always been the one person Sigourney had ever been close to. And even then she always kept her at arm's length, telling herself that Lavender was too young to be an actual friend. That the divide between them caused by their difference in age was insurmountable. That they weren't actually that close because of it. But none of that was true. The divide between them was of Sigourney's making. She had chosen to close herself off and actively did so day in and day out. Lavender was an irreplaceable strand within the fabric of Sigourney's life. She saw her everyday, relied on her heavily, and benefited from the relationship they had. And yet how much of her life had Sigourney actually shared with Lavender? A devastating precious little.

Sigourney's eyes stung with the onset of tears and she turned quickly to the bank of plants in the window, busying herself with watering them until the threat of crying had gone. But the question in her mind made that tough. If Sigourney left, would her going hurt anyone? Mrs Hult would find someone else to rent to and Fisk would probably bum breakfast off of anyone just as happily as he had with Sigourney. She didn't even really know her other neighbors beyond passing them in the hall now and again.

But there was Lavender.

Sigourney knew that she was not the center of Lavender's life. Far from it, in fact. Lavender was her own person, with goals and dreams Sigourney had never allowed herself to be vulnerable enough to learn. Sigourney didn't want to assume so much as to believe that her leaving would cause Lavender to miss her as she would a friend. She knew she took up very little space in Lavender's world. But Sigourney also knew that she was Lavender's primary source of income. An income that all went into a savings account for Lavender's post secondary education. If Sigourney left, she would be depriving Lavender of what little security there was in her weekly paycheck. There was no question of Lavender's ability to be hired by someone else, a someone who could undoubtedly afford to pay her far better. But Sigourney still felt she had an obligation to her. If she chose to leave, Sigourney would do everything within her power to ensure that Lavender would be alright.