Second Chances
Chapter 65
Sigyn woke up, laying on her side, her legs tucked up in a foetal position. Her eyelids were heavy as she tried to open them and a density on her body indicated she was covered in some weighty material. The surface she was on was certainly comfortable but she couldn’t remember where she had gone to sleep. Actually, she didn’t remember going to sleep at all.
The material surrounding her was grey, and as her tired eyes focused she realised it was fur. Maybe she was dreaming again, her memories were certainly becoming clearer and more frequent in their recall, not to mention how realistic and immersive it was when Charles took her back. It would explain how even now she could smell wood burning, in a fireplace she assumed, the softness of the fur, the…cold at her wrist? She pulled her right hand out from beneath the furs to find a large, solid manacle with a chain leading around her head and, as she tilted her view, up to a large ring on the head of the cast iron bed. Cast iron wasn’t Loki’s style. As she thought it his last words to her came back. He had, effectively, dumped her, although that was far too mild a term for what he had said. What he had done was made her feel she was worthless to him, that the entire last week had been a lie. What an idiot she had been. Anger and sadness fought inside her for a purchase, maybe this was a dream and not a memory, and her way of showing herself she had become too reliant on him in such a short space of time, thinking she meant more to him than she obviously did. She walked out, she left for Xavier’s, and…blackness. No, something else had happened, and now she was in chains. Shit. If she had been grabbed by someone or something she figured they evidently didn’t know she was awake or they would have said something, they might not even be here. The chains looked and felt sturdy enough that she wouldn’t be able to break them physically, and magically she would have to think it through. First things first though, stop feeling sorry for herself and see where the hell she was.
She pushed herself up as she looked around. The room was, it seemed, the entire building, with curtained windows on each side although the drapes were open, and one door, opposite the bed. The walls were wooden, log cabin wooden, the sparse furniture rustic, from the table and two chairs to the few cabinets. A basin and stove were off to one side. There was a standing mirror in one corner and a rug on the floor, which was the skin of a wolf. Okay, not earth, because while she was used to furs as Sigyn, Maia was definitely not an advocate of it. It belonged on the animals. So, Asgard? Or another of the realms, but probably not Midg…earth.
She was still wearing her clothes for the day, a black skirt and blue blouse, but her shoes were gone as was her jacket. She pushed the furs all the way off her and checked the chain next. It had a length to it that would allow her to walk around the bed, but not much further and that was what she did, climbed off the large bed and went to the nearest window, leaning to the side to see as far as she could. It was night outside with little light from the moon, everything was in shadow, varying degrees of darkness that was so thick in places it was as though they moved as she looked. The shapes looked like trees, some distance from the window, and if she could get free it would be a good somewhere to hide. She went back to the bed and sat on it, facing the head so she could reach both sets of shackles and look for a weakness. She tested with what power she knew she could reach without knocking herself out, brute strength which wasn’t much, and in the end just beating the manacle on her wrist against the bed out of sheer frustration, which did nothing but leave her with pain and bruising.
She had one final idea, she climbed off the bed and tried to pull it, hoping to block the door even if it gave her a little more protection from whoever might come through it, but it was just too damn heavy. Eventually, frustrated and more than a little upset, she sat back on the bed and made herself comfortable. Wherever she was she wasn’t going anywhere unless someone let her.
