END HIM

“I don’t know what you’re thinking, we don’t need this, he’s fucking crazy, completely useless, and that shit back there… I say we leave him, let them find him and skin him.”

A second voice grumbles under it’s breath.

“Ughhh, fine, I don’t know… Slap him or something.”

The sound of dry skin slamming skull echoes against the walls of their hide out.

“Mmph?” A voice confirms.

“Yes, fuck, again!”

A oversized hand slaps Ebbe, jolting his eyes open to yet another dark room. His eyes strain to make anything out against the other-worldly glow. His hand instinctively glides to his face to rub off the sting.

“Again!”

“Hnnnguh!!”

“Whatever, you saved him, he’s your responsibility. Just… don’t let him get in my face, I’ll fucking kill him.”

The voice was familiar, but the form in front of him wasn’t, his eyes finally adjusting. To his unsurprised surprise, the huge, lanky, hairy fellow with barely visible white eyes under a mop of hair didn’t seem threatening. It stands and makes its way back towards the voice, leaving a battered Ebbe to a pile tangled vines.

He stands, too, groaning in anticipation of the intense pain he remembered passing out to the time before... Nothing? He feels his face for sores, scours in confusion at his undamaged feet and hands, then to the other two, both huddled over and trying to wrap the smaller one’s foot which was flopped over in all the wrong ways. “Would someone tell me what the fuck is going on here?” Ebbe begs as his arms raise and release in annoyance.

No answer as the other two mutter amongst themselves.

“I said-“

They twist in his direction, the smaller ones gets up to the disappointment of the other, foot crunching under the rest of his bodies weight, “Shut UP! I thought I’d be able to put up with your ass for him but no FUCKING way….”

“You- uhh.” As the guy stomps closer Ebbe can finally see… Broek? “I thought you were-“ Pain surges once again as he’s punched to the ground,

“Why-” A cold shiver and nausea overtake him-

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?” Another punch, “WHERE IS FRIGG?”

“I DONT KNOW!” Ebbe yells as he clamors to his feet and tries to dodge another attack, barely avoiding a swing but knocked back by another. The images clouding the back of his mind he didn’t have time to process yet punching just as hard, if not harder than each of Broek’s blows, Ebbe’s reflection mixing with the blood red anger behind Broek’s eyes as they came closer through the glowing dark.

“You had to! You and Karl, you planned the whole thing, didn’t you?!”

A gut punch blows Ebbe to his nude back side “I didn’t know Broek… hnnng… I swear!”

Before he could stand, Broek was on top of him, hands wrap around Ebbe’s throat, squeezing, but all Ebbe could see as he fought to breathe, locked into a blur of an all too familiar look on Broek’s face was the scared man chained to that wall, innards splayed all over that desk like he was Karl’s toy, the body on the fire when- though he was right there… feelings buried deep, lost somewhere from his childhood kept him locked to the floor as the weirdness of the past few times he’s woken up dissipates.

That’s right… I did nothing… I should have, I could have… why didn’t I…

“YOU DID!!! You had to have! What WAS it then? Your charming stupidity? Curiosity? Was he your butt buddy?“ Fingers wrap tighter as every word bites harder.

“I- didn’t- kno..”

If I fight back…

Broek lifts and slams Ebbe’s head to the ground, though smaller, he was much more tactful, and not held back by a life of remorse or regret. The only thing in the way from total air loss was the lump in the back of Ebbe’s throat…

This isn’t a dream… it’s hell, I deserve this… don’t I-

“You are so fucking PATHETIC!”

I know… But if I…

Another punch.

“FIGHT ME BACK, BASTARD!” Broek rages.

Ebbe’s nose caves in on itself, snapping of jawbone, crunching of teeth as the blows come faster, harder. His eyes feel cold in comparison to his hot blood as it splatters his face, dribbles past his ears and down the back of his neck to the floor.

You will die…

Broek’s friend steps in, grabs his bloody fist mid-punch- Broek seems as though he wasn’t going to have it, he effortlessly flicks his arm from the other’s grip and swings again, and again… as if seeing Ebbe’s face no more than a pile of mush wasn’t enough. “You let him kill my sister! I thought you loved her!” Tears start to mix with Ebbe’s blood as it sprayed on his face “You were supposed to protect her… YOU PROMISED! You promised and I trusted YOU OF ALL PEOPLE!” He roars feverishly-

Dazed, Ebbe is pulled into a dark place deep inside him… a memory from so long ago of her soft, knowing smile as she bent down to help him up, offering her gentle shaky fingers to his calloused, bloody, trembling ones plays back as if he were truly there again- before the gut wrenching, soul crushing, anger inducing pain reminds him that he’s not as images of Broek flash behind Frigg to drag her off like an animal… Time stops. Everything in Ebbe’s body stiffens, he’s felt this before… when he first showed up here, wherever here was… the rage he’d locked away for all these years is trying to make its way to the surface, uncontrollable till now- everything seems to tumble into place as he gains a new awareness, a new understanding, another perspective. It was him vs. Broek. A voice within him booms “END HIM.” Ebbe’s hand whips up from his side just in time to catch the blow that would have made the front of his face one with the back of his head. “I didn’t know” he spits through gnarled teeth, his hand overlaps Broek’s, and with lightning speed, he obliterates it in an unexpected snap.

As a phased Broek snarls in pain and jumps off the mangled mess he made on the floor, Ebbe stands; an eye, bits off flesh and curdled blood slide from his face and hits the floor, every muscle in the rest of his body ripples violently as he rolls his arms forward, as his fists lift to his lopsided head ready to kill.

Sensing an explosion, the big hairy one steps between the two, looking ready to knock both on their asses. His attention though, rolls to Ebbe.

“STOP.”

As Broek exhales sharply, doubled over his busted foot while attempting to roll his fingers back into place, he begins to get a grip on himself and what he’d started, and with who. “All this work to get here only to find you…” He clears his throat as he tries to snap out of it, torn, his weight shifts between charging and staying, shoulders still heaving over heavy breath. “I’d feel bad killing a broken man, anyways.” He finally spits, decided. His dark, wiry brows settle low, his grey-blue eyes glare stubbornly at an unwavering Ebbe, noticing a clear difference rippling through the remaining amber eye adorning the mangled face. 

“Don’t walk away from me, Broek.” Ebbe demands.

“Don’t get me started again, Ebbe, I couldn’t kill you before because of her, but now that she’s gone…” He tenses his good hand. 

“I tol’ yah, if yer ee’re, if ees ee’re, she migh’be, too.” The hairy one chimes in hoping this fight was over.

Ebbe collapses out of nowhere, his entire body thudding to one side, stiff till the hard ground breaks his fall.

Hávi double-takes and points to Ebbe… “Ee is dat one, yuh known it, Br…”

Broek breaths a sigh of… relief? He stands as well as he could, shoulders finally relaxing. He spits Ebbe’s blood dripping from his face to the ground and continues eyeing the bulky torn up red-head aggressively. “If he is… he sucks at fighting… that’s going to be a problem.”

“I dunno- yuh got lucky ee pass’d out, wa’ever dat was dere a’ t’e end was nuffin’ like back’n de Stitch cave…”