Idun was the hugging type. She offered hugs freely and openly, with warmth and happiness and an ease that suggested she was born to distribute hugs. She was the one who offered the hugs. Idori didn't. He wasn't an overly physical person. He didn't like being touched, as far as Idun had gathered. That rarely stopped her from greeting him warmly, but it made it very strange now that the tables were turning. Why did he want to hug her in the middle of this crowd, with Bragi bleeding and everybody falling eerily quiet? The furrow remained firmly between her brows. She looked at him with curiosity, lips parts, words failing for a moment. Why was Bragi saying No? Idun couldn't think the worst, because she didn't know the worst. She didn't understand situations like this. She didn't know what could draw an entire crowd into an alleyway. These just weren't the things she knew.
"Idori," she began. The look that crossed her brother's face stopped her immediately. He looked confused now, and his brow furrowed as his lips parted. There was a question there, trying to get out. It never did. He started falling forward, and even though it happened quickly, everything slowed down. Instinct made Idun reach for him, attempting to keep him on his feet. She didn't understand. Her arm went around him and she tried to keep him up, but he was so heavy. Idori fell. The momentum knocked her to her knees as well. It was only then that Idun realized there was blood on her arm.
She stared at it, wondering when she'd been injured. Had she brushed against something as she pushed through the crowd? Had she cut herself somehow? As comprehension failed her, she continued to just study the red slick across her skin. And then it finally clicked. This was the arm she'd thrown around Idori's back. This wasn't her blood. Her eyes shifted to her brother, face down on the ground. There was a knife buried into his back. There was a lot of blood. Some of it was on her. Idun looked back down at her arm, and then all her reactions finally began to make sense. She scrambled backwards before forcing herself back onto her feet, horrified as she finally turned to Bragi.
Idun saw Bragi's lips move, but she didn't hear anything. She heard absolutely nothing. Her ears were humming, but it wasn't truly a hum. Hums made noise. This was the opposite of noise, it was an absence, a void. Idun was deaf but fully aware that the rest of the world wasn't. Bragi could hear. He was speaking. He could hear himself, and he could hear it when she said "No" and held up a finger as if that would be enough to keep him back, keep him away. Idun didn't hear herself, but he did. He could hear. His ears weren't humming.
"I...no. No, I need to leave," she said. Her voice felt like shards of rock were dashing her throat to tattered ribbons. She didn't want to speak anymore. She needed to leave.
She shook her head and turned away, still deaf, too numb to realize there were tears running down her cheeks. The blood was still on her arm. Idun looked at it and she sobbed, but she couldn't hear it or feel it and somehow, that meant it wasn't real. None of this was real.
The crowd parted. She started to walk with nothing in her way to stop her. This wasn't real. Idun needed to go home.