67 "Go Back to Sleep."

It was strange really; she had lived as a human being—as in had been alive as one—for almost all of her life—which was quite strange to think about, to consider the 'life' she had once held as a ghost—and yet now, feeling warm and not perpetually numb, to be required to breathe to survive, and to capable of properly touching things was now terribly foreign to her.

What was even more foreign was the emotions that arose when she turned her head towards a collapsed, androgynous figure who was essentially all white and black, all light and shadow; a man she both knew and did not know within her hazy state of mind.

'Was he... always this beautiful? He must've been—but I don't recall registering it...' she thought dimly as hands hoisted her up, muffled voices talked to her, attempting to pull her attention from the man who seemed to be the center of her universe, the gravity that simultaneously kept her grounded and pulled her towards him. In an attempt to recall why she did not seem to remember the man's apparently extraordinary beauty, her head ached; images of a world viewed through dark lenses and muddy memories that did not seem like her own swam around her head, and only by returning her attention back to him did the pain reduce.

It dispersed along with the memories, an unpleasant fog in which she could now see the sun through.

For a moment, she could not recall the last several months, the trauma's and reminders that had been built up and had quietly overwhelmed the specter surrounded by fear on all sides, whispering the paranoia she was too afraid to speak; there was just her, her grandmother, and a dream she rarely had and never wanted to leave.

She could recall a blue sky, a meadow of yellow flowers that glowed, the monochrome figure sleeping, and then sunset eyes that stared at her with an unfathomable emotion.

"...a!"

The eyes seemed to say, 'I know you, you know me. Together, we are as we always should have been, and apart, we are half we can be.' A longing planted itself within her soul, a siren song calling for them to become as they should be; it was as if she had been living with most of herself removed, like living on gasps of air, and if she could just touch that hand, could just breathe—

"...sta! Wa... ..p!"

In the illusion, she reached for him, dying for his hand to touch hers, aching for the distance to be breached, to touch him; begging him to touch her too, and make her feel more alive than she ever could have been—

"Asta! Snap out of it!" Hela ordered, and everything shattered; her melodious voice interrupted the siren's song, and Asta's once red—now sunset yellow eye which had been glowing dimmed significantly, a fear and a loss consuming her soul, corrupting her very being, tearing her apart.

"I... Jörmungandr, he—" she again reached for his limp form, concern entering her heart unannounced as she saw his state, the rapidness of his eyes beneath his eyelids. She could feel that magnetism, the strings that held them together pulling taught, urging her to follow them to her Patron, lest she be sliced to ribbons.

"He's fine; however, you are not allowed to go near him."

To Asta, in her current mental and spiritual state, that might have been the singular worst command of her life. It was agony to be only a few steps away from him, and now she was not allowed near him any further?

"N-No! No, let me—please, I need to—" Asta protested as tears began to fall, her sunset yellow eye still glowing faintly as whatever bond that had been established with the resurrection tugged at her to comply with its wishes, the sweetest parasite to ever exist, as it gave dreams and delusions she could only dream of falling into forever.

Hela jerked her back violently, bony hands biting and bruising into new flesh and shoulders before she hissed, "Remember the payment."

And then reality came back to her, in a rush of unpleasant memories and dark specters of fear; she recalled clinging to Jörmungandr often because of the fearful emotions, as even things like hatred and fear steered clear of him for the most part—a stark contrast to Hela.

Fear settled onto the overseer's shoulder, a grinning black phantom clawed and inscribed into her body, as if it was always meant to be there; no wonder she was always terrified of Hela.

'...Why did I make that deal again? The motivation... there was a motivation... a reason...' Asta pondered further, and as always, she found the reasoning, which within her mind had initially been a very valid one.

'I was scared of him, because he wasn't human, and he could destroy everything and hurt me if I got too close to him; I wanted to abandon him... but...' she vividly recalled the image of him in the flower field, the lone monochrome within color, the ink blotch against picturesque scenery. 'He's lonely too; he's hurt too. Why would I...'

"Why would I..." she mumbled aloud, holding her head that ached from the divinity, from the purity that seemed to try and wash away the dark view of the world she as a specter at times seemed stuck within.

'Grandmother taught me to always be kind; she loved me being kind and optimistic in spite of my anxiety. So why would I... fundamentally, it makes no sense, so why did I make a deal like that? If Jörmungandr ever knew, he would be so, so sad...'

Face darkening by the second as she began to notice an incongruency with her actions, so seamlessly fit into her own natural anxieties she would have thought it her own, Asta turned her gaze to Hela's as an even greater wariness emerged within her as she murmured, "What did you—"

Initially straight lips twisted on Hela's face, and her hand immediately shot out with the Fear in her arm as she tsked her lips, the first crack of anxiety existing within her face.

"You need further assimilation, go back to sleep," she declared before muttering under her breath, so quietly that Fenrir and Anubis, who attended to Jörmungandr, could not have heard it along with most of her and Asta's sparse conversation:

"I'll need another chat with them, you're supposed to be more mentally worn and paranoid; go back to sleep, and you'll be the coward we need you to be."

'Them? Mentally worn? Paranoid? What...' and once again, Asta slumped back to sleep, the heaviness of her eyes pulling her away from reality and into nightmares this time—the one place Jörmungandr could not follow her.

'Jörmungandr...'