Can You See Me? (A Loki FanFiction)

Chapter Twelve

This continued for weeks.

After that first time in the wash room I had spent nearly an hour curled up on the floor, my silent sobs racking my aching body and tears falling endlessly from my eyes. My mind seemed blank, my trembling body cold and numb save for the aching pit in my stomach. All of my fears had come true. Every single one.

Finally, I realised that Thor would be wondering where I was, so I lifted my sore, stiff body from the ground and ran myself another bath. No matter how hard I scrubbed at my skin, until it was red and raw, I still could not get the lingering feeling of him off of me. I could feel his hands on me every time I closed my eyes, phantom breaths on my neck as if I was replaying the incident again and again.

It felt like a punch to the gut every time the images flashed in my mind.

If I thought the pain would lessen over time, I was wrong. I would often find myself suddenly flinching at random times or if I was left alone to my thoughts. It felt like there was a constant lump of lead in the pit of my stomach, forcing me to relive the memories in my every waking moment. Even in my dreams I was tormented.

Nowhere was safe for me, apart from perhaps when I was with Thor or his warriors, so I often found myself clinging to the Prince's side at every chance I could get. But I couldn't hide forever. He would wait for me until I was alone, catching me unaware and dragging me into empty rooms or secluded corridors. Sometimes I thought he had nothing better to do than hunt me around the palace.

I told nobody of what was happening, not even Kari. Whether it was out of fear or embarrassment, I wasn't sure, but I knew that nobody would ever know about what I was having to endure. Constantly scared, I often found myself looking over my shoulder or hiding in the Prince's chambers just to avoid the risk that he was in the mood to play.

To begin with, the only solace I had in the darkness was that he was at least gentle with me. But even that deteriorated over time. Every time he took me was worse than the last; he would become more aggressive, more demanding of my small body, that soon my skin was mottled with ugly patches of blue and black, especially around my upper arms and waist where he would sink his fingers into my skin. I tried to hide the bruises, but after a particularly violent incident in a broom closet, Thor had noticed a rapidly forming bruise on my neck. Panicked that the truth would be found, I stumbled out a poor excuse that I had gotten it from training that morning. Not surprisingly, he believed me. I was getting far too good at lying to him, a fact that kept me awake during many nights.

Of course, that wasn't the only reason I was losing sleep. Such was my constant fear of him that I eventually began to stop eating as well; my stomach too busy tying itself in knots to hold down anything for long. Soon I began to notice that my recently snug clothes were now becoming far too big, so much so that when I stood naked before the mirror in the servant's bathing chamber, I was almost unrecognisable to myself. Gone was the young, round-faced girl, now stood a broken, used woman, with a body no better than a skeleton and skin as red and raw as a beaten criminal. I was disgusting, both inside and out. A whore and a liar. Used goods. Damaged.

No man would ever want me now.

Inevitably I began to withdraw into myself, becoming a hollow shell, devoid of emotion and no longer having the desire or energy to interact or socialize with anyone. But still, I put on a brave face and fought through the pit of constant fear and dread in my stomach, if only to keep Thor blissfully ignorant to what was happening right beneath his nose. I would laugh and smile and joke as I used to, but it was all just a mask. Beneath it all, the self-loathing and resentment kept building and building and building until, eventually, I snapped.

It was a perfectly normal morning in late Spring; I had just returned from helping prepare the horses for the afternoon's hunt and was sitting at the back of the kitchens eating a measly amount of lunch, a rare occurrence these days. If it was left up to me I would have inadvertently starved myself to death by now, but Kari had noticed my sudden loss of weight and now every morning she would give me a stern warning that if I didn't eat that day she would throttle me. I believed her.