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Before Hel had come to visit her sister days ago, Kettil's father had sent very upsetting messages to Freya's phone that explained why Kettil would be missing for a week. Little did he know that he'd chosen the worst week of all time to take his son away from the ghoul who'd come to think of Kettil as her only way towards recovery. Freya still had nothing of her own to hold on to, so when her sister left her in that bed after driving her past the point of thought, she'd stayed there.

Not a single thought had passed through Freya's crippled mind for days. She'd breathed because her body made her. She slept when her body told her to, and she woke when she couldn't hold on to the sweet peace of unconsciousness any longer. But even awake, she wasn't really there. The blissful land of haze and thoughtlessness had missed her, and she it. She'd remained there every day, slowly whittling away all of the work that she and Kettil had put into her health for the last few months.

It felt so nice.

Freya's body shook bonelessly when her sister shook her, but she didn't respond the way Hel hoped. In fact, if Freya realized Hel was in her room at that moment, she probably would have started screaming again.

She felt the hands touching her, but her head lolled back and her eyes barely fluttered to look away. The spark of thought threatened to ruin her perfect, painless existence, so her subconscious worked quickly to stifle any real recognition. Perhaps those hands were her mothers, trying to wake her up in the morning.

Yes, that had to be it. The firm, but warm hands of her mother forcing her to get up for the day and get moving. She all but ignored them, but the thought of her mother put her at ease. Despite looking away, eyes unfocused at nothing in particular, Freya's lips twitched in a smile.

Pinching her nose made Freya's lips part to breathe, but the words were distorted, and they didn't make any sense to her. So she let them go, like paper ships on a rolling river, and they fluttered away without another thought.

It was almost jarring, then, that Freya suddenly pushed herself up to a sitting position, rested her back on the backboard of the bed, and turned her head just slightly. At this point, she stopped moving, but the small, twitchy smile remained on her face. She looked like she was sleep walking, without the walking part.

But at the very end, when she demanded to know if Freya was listening, Freya's response was a flicker of blinking, a slow turn of her head in the general direction of her sisters, and a soft exhale of breath. She heard her. She heard her sister - but the words were passing through a barrier of subconscious that forced her to hallucinate a safer image. She heard those words coming from her mother, because they made sense, and she was safe.

The sound of glass tinkling transformed into the gentle tinkle of a windchime, and memories danced hazily in Freya's mind, dull and half-formed. She could still hear Hel through her mothers voice, but none of the words made any sense, and Freya couldn't pull herself together long enough to understand them. As soon as she tried, her protective mechanisms triggered, and her haze deepened until she couldn't think.

She knew someone was talking about Hel. Talking ill of her. Freya wouldn't allow it, not ever. She wanted to say something.. anything.. she wanted to stop this person from talking. But all she could do was furrow her brow, trying hard just to see reality from the fiction her mind trapped her in.

And then, suddenly, her walls cracked.

It was the conflicting vision of her mother telling her she never wanted to return home that made her hazy, safe filter sharpen back into reality. There was nothing safe about hearing your mother tell you she never wanted to return home - the mere idea of her leaving Papa, and all the children - no, Freya couldn't handle another abandonment. Her safety zone had become unsafe, and it shattered, leaving her in nothing but the cold cruelty of reality. At least there, her mother wasn't abandoning her.

But her sister was.

Freya's eyes sharpened as they settled on her sister for the first time that day. The sudden stinging pains on her arm and leg caught her attention, and she pulled up her blankets just enough to see the pools of blood that her untreated wounds had left to dry on her bed. It was a disgusting little sight, but it was days old, and there was nothing left to be done about it. Freya settled the blanket back down, and turned wet eyes back up to her sister.

Everything the ghoul had been saying slowly started to settle in, slicing away at the scarred flesh of her heart until the blood on the bed was the least of her problems. She'd always known Hel felt overshadowed, but in her eyes, in her eyes, Hel had always been the most important person to exist. No one overshadowed Hel, for Freya. No one could ever live up to the importance her sister had held in her heart. She'd clung to her sister like a lifeline, and never let go.

And as she realized that, a sad sort of acceptance took hold of her.

"I thinks-" Freya's voice was quiet and hoarse from lack of use, and she cleared her throat to get the scratchiness out. "Deep downs, I always knew that's what yeh'd want." Freya's eyes fell to the bed, and she let out a painful sigh. "I convinced myself that I came teh Amity teh takes care of yeh, but that was a lie. I comes here because.. because I knew yeh were never comings back." The tears fell freely from Freya's eyes. "And I didn't wants teh be left behind without yeh. I would gives up all of them, even my own twin sister, if it meant not losing yeh."

And with that admission, Freya's last little self-lie came crumbling to the ground. Maybe things hadn't changed between them as much as she'd thought. Maybe, in the end, Freya had always been the one who needed Hel, more.

Hel's words, as passionate and inspiring as they were, hit a brick wall when they reached Freya. The ghoul looked like she was crumbling, sinking back down into the bed, and curling up defensively.

"Do yeh really thinks yeh carries me, Hel?" Her hoarse whisper scratched out. "I comes here, because I didn't thinks I could lives without yeh. But do yeh really thinks that actually worked? Do yeh thinks yeh've carried me anywhere since I've gotten here?" Freya's hand lifted out of the covers, and she began picking shards of glass out of her skin, re-opening the tiny wounds that had dried around the glass. "Yeh talks like yeh've been the one that was there for me when I needed yeh, all those times.." The glass tore at her skin, leaving little trickles of blood. "Yeh talks like I'm strong, because of yeh. Yeh says yeh thinks I can stands on my own two feet, and yeh has faith in me." Freya's eyes turned cold, and flickered away. "Hel, yeh don't even know who I am anymore. Yeh reached yehr goal already, before yeh knew it. Yeh lived yehr life independently, crumpet." She dropped the little shard of glass, and spread the trickle of blood until it was a red path of war paint down her arm. "Yehr so, so wrong. Stupid, blind, selfish, wrong."

And her eyes, flickering back to Hel, looked at her sister for the first time with clarity she wished she never had. "Don't talks like yeh knows what I can or cannot duu. Yeh don't knows who I am, anymore. I fell too far for yeh teh sees me, anymore."

This moment, dripping with anger, and frustration, was the closest Freya had felt to her sister in a very long time. For a single moment, she lifted her hand, and pressed it against one of the arms beside her, brushing them with a soft, regretful touch, before her hand fell to the bed and her face turned away.

"Wrong." Freya whispered, with an aching sort of quiet that felt like every word was a struggle. She felt it happening. She felt her sisters rage building up, that familiar rage that she knew all too well, but she couldn't feel it. She was mad, but she couldn't use that rage as strength. She couldn't even look at her sister, anymore.

The ghoul was so close, closer than she'd ever been, but she was pulling away at the same time, and Freya knew fighting it would only make Hel pull faster. Her heart mourned painfully with loss.

She wasn't going anywhere. And Hel was leaving her behind.