Maeve was still in the middle of playfully getting after Vali for the popcorn bowl hurting her toe. When all of the sudden she felt the rush of cold as if she had jumped into a pool with her clothes on.
A flood of adrenaline and excitement and playfulness flooded her. These were her husband's emotions. Then it was followed with the exhaustion that followed and then embarrassment that ended in feelings of being naked and receiving a kiss.
She didn't know what they were doing but she felt the love eminating from him for the other girl and the whole thing left her feeling like she had just had something shared with her from him that was incredibly private.
"Make it stop! Make it stop! Make it stop!" She cried and then told Vali what she had experienced.
Vali scowled. He seemed to become more angry than he had ever been. He clenched his fists and punched a hole in the wall, his werewolf fur bristling up his forearm and the drywall littering his fist with crumbs. He breathed with his eyes dark at the audacity of his uncle who was only a little older than him because he had been lost in time with Maeve.
In reality he was 900 and Maeve might have been as old as time itsself and she had no idea.
"That jerk; he has no dignity." Vali yelled. "Why won't he come back here and divorce you then if he wants to be with her so bad? If I could be with you Maeve, I would never do such a senseless thing like that!!!"
Maeve was holding her head in her hands and blushing and crying and started rocking back and forth, trying to calm down. She hadn't really heard Vali's heartfelt angry love confession. She wouldn't have noticed if she had. She sat there on the floor of the living room crying bitterly for about an hour.
Vali tried holding her so she could feel better, but it wasn't working, so he went and got her a glass of water and a pill. "Here Maeve, just take a bit of this, it will make you feel less of your bond magic."
"At this rate I'm going to need a prescription." She mumbled and swallowed it. "It doesn't even work anymore. I feel him hurting me all day, even if it's just holding her hand, I'm so jealous! He has no right! He's my husband! Who cares if she was there first? I just wanted to be good enough!!!!"
But she had been there first and so Maeve knew she never had a chance.
Vali patted her back and took the empty glass, "hey you shouldn't want to be with someone who doesn't love you back Maeve. Don't waste your time."
She sighed, "I know Vali, but I feel like I'm falling in love but I'm alone. I'm worse than Sakura! I'm not just alone, I'm the third wheel in a cheap mellow drama!"
Vali held her hands and looked in her green eyes, his blue eyes fierce. "Maeve, I will help you get away from that boy. Whatever it takes, my stupid uncle doesn't deserve you."
————————
After Vali went to bed, he lay on the top bunk of his room, deep in thought.
His brother was snoring below him and he stared at the spackle on the ceiling. The designs reminded him of the stars, which he could always see in the void.
"Hey Narfi." He called out to his brother after a while. He rolled over and looked below him at his brother who lay sprawled out fast asleep on the bottom bunk.
"Narfi" he said again, "hey! Wake up!"
Then he chucked his pillow at him and Narfi jumped up and exclaimed annoyed, "what was that for!?"
"I was thinking about Maeve." He said into the darkness, looking out the window and not really looking at his brother.
"Why?" Narfi asked confused.
"She needs to get further away from my uncle, we got to do something so she doesn't keep feeling herself being left behind. She's a part of this family and we have to do something about it!" He said determined.
"Don't you mean we should help her find him so she can tell him to stop? I mean, he would feel guilty for hurting her if she just tells him what's going on." Narfi responded. "Besides, we are in the void, so where else can we go that is farther away from him?"
"I'm not sure, I was thinking if we go to a different realm, then he would have to cross the bifröst to find her and maybe that would break the connection."
Narfi looked at Vali like he was crazy, "we aren't supposed to ever leave the void. Dad said that Odin will find us."
"Why would Odin be out to get a bunch of teenagers?" Vali exclaimed, "Dad doesn't always know what he's talking about. He can't always be checking Yggdrasil to see how our timeline is doing! Maybe he can't even see our future if we're in the void, so how can he know what Odin thinks of us? Isn't Odin like supposed to be our grandpa? Didn't he adopt Loki when he was a kid? So I bet he would be glad to see us."
Narfi folded his arms, "I'm going back to bed." He said and turned around to sleep facing the wall.
"Think about it." Vali said, "What if you get to be around other people, go on an adventure? I thought you wanted to leave this place."
"Yeah, but I wanted dad to say that we would be ok if we did." Narfi corrected him.
"Nobody else has a dad who can see the future." Vali said, "When they all need to make choices, all they rely on is themselves.
"Loki brought me here to live with you guys when I was just a baby, I didn't even get to know where I came from. All he told me is that I was destined to grow up without my parents, and so he brought me here with him in the void where I wouldn't be hurt like that.
"—Well I know that it's just because he already lost his other son Fenrir! Well I'm not Fenrir!
" I am tired of just being some replacement son!
"Every time I ask him about leaving to find out about my origins, he says that it's not my time yet to know everything. He has our destiny all mapped out and what is it even doing for us to be sitting here?
"Today, watching that show with Maeve, I already knew what was going to happen because I've seen that whole show before. I didn't tell Maeve because she hasn't been here as long, but everything that we could do here, I've already done a million times!
All that those people have is one destiny, one story, I can push play over and over and over again, but they are stuck in their story. They don't have a destiny!!!! Who cares if someone watches it or not!!! It will always end the same.
"Well I don't want Loki controlling my life anymore, pretending to be my dad and telling me what my destiny is! I'm not a part of this pretend family! I want to shape my own destiny! Vali finished, his speech to his brother his best attempt to convince him of his plan.