Chapter Text
"What were you going to tell me?" demands Sylvie, swaying with the same exhaustion that Loki feels as they stumble through a sunlit forest together, the distant echo of mortar shells rumbling through their boots.
Rather than try to dredge up an answer, he gestures for the Tempad that only a breath ago had been plucked from the unconscious Renslayer’s belt, whisking them away to yet another apocalypse. Sylvie grimaces but hands it over without objection. It is a small thrill, to be trusted by someone like her who barely a day ago would have left him for dead.
“It may be easier to show you,” he says, the interface chiming in his hands as he navigates to a screen that depicts the flat line of the unaltered, pristine timeline. He hesitates. He may be mistaken. He may have been manipulated. Another interrogation tactic meant to wiggle under his skin and present him with something he desires, force him to reveal details and vulnerabilities.
The brain fog and phantom pain of the time loop is still wrapped around his thoughts like a curtain. He has been tortured before, reality warping away from him like a beam of light through a crystal, casting colors and shadows that do not represent the truth.
He may have invented it, the look in Sylvie’s eyes as impending death hurtled toward them. The weight in the touch of her hand.
Sylvie leans back against the rough bark of a tree to catch her breath, wet hair hanging limp about her face, eyebrow raising in a get on with it gesture. It strikes him plainly with a strange ache in his chest. He wants it to be true.
As he draws close to her, her face softens. A subtle thing, a tremble around the mouth, a gentling of her eyes. His hand hovers, hesitant to close the distance, and her brow draws together as the moment stretches, staring quizzically at the screen of the TemPad as he lifts it to show her.
His fingertips graze the sweat-damp skin above her brow and trail down to delicately tuck a strand of her wild hair behind her ear. Her wrinkled brow relaxes, her lips parting, and the screen held in his palm pings with the beginnings of a climbing branch.
Loki steps back, and the timeline flatlines again.
Sylvie stares, her mouth still open, her head falling back against the bark of the tree.
“Fuck,” she says. “What does that-- That means--”
“It means,” says Loki plainly, keeping his voice measured and still, “that I may have a plan.”
The safe house Sylvie procures for them is carved into the hollow roots of an ancient tree, dirt-packed floors and rough-hewn furniture and neatly-labelled provisions stored in a bountiful pantry, its occupants long driven out by the war that thunders in the distance. He watches her light misshapen candles with a slender match, her long fingers flicking out the flame as it licks toward them.
“So,” says Sylvie, settling cross-legged at the low dining table, “your plan.”
“Ah, yes, my plan.” He fidgets with the TemPad, propping it upright on the table. “Well, it’s very complex actually. Highly elaborate. May require some diagrams, some sketches. Quite complicated.”
She sighs.
“You don’t have a plan. Brilliant.”
“I have… a theory,” he says, drumming his fingers absently against the rough grain of the table. Sylvie rolls her eyes.
“Great. Care to share?”
"It's a work in progress."
"Excellent. Wonderful."
"Quit saying things like that. This whole situation is fairly humiliating for me. I am simply--"
"Humiliating for you?" Sylvie snorts. "I have spent decades pursuing a plan only for you to ruin it last minute and then for none of it to matter anyway. You claim we still could have a chance here and now, you're what? Shy?"
Loki makes an offended noise.
"You take that back at once."
"Then tell me, you blathering idiot. Speak plainly."
"Right," says Loki with an in-drawn breath. "It appears that… certain interactions between us may cause the timeline to branch.”
"Interactions,” she deadpans, expression giving away nothing about what may be going on in her head. "What kind?"
All of this feels dangerous. Fraught. She is his only hope left for survival and the closest he has had to an ally in what feels like eons. He braces for rejection, expecting laughter and snide mockery. He does not dare look directly at what he feels, the shape of it an amorphous thing with no easy landmark to latch onto, nothing in his long life that has prepared him to grapple with the complexities of it.
Breathing deep, he allows himself to look.
He is fond of her, he thinks. For the places they differ and that they share. He finds himself trying to catalogue the differences. Is he as clever as she is? As quick on his feet? Does he look like that when he is pissed off, when he is afraid? There is a protective feeling, warm and strange. He does not wish her to come to harm, fears for her, feels for her. He remembers the sickening cold that sank in his gut when he assumed her dead and knows that cannot be simple narcissism.
If she ever was him, the schism of her timeline means that she isn’t anymore. She has endured untold horrors that he has not, has lived a thousand lifetimes alone and desperate. His past few years of suffering shrink in comparison to hers. It has to have changed her, those traumas, that loneliness. She is separate from him. Her own person.
It does not feel like an inward sort of desire, an arrogant and masturbatory thing. It does not feel twisted and demented and wrong.
He cares for her. Is fascinated by her and wishes to know her. Wants to allow himself to be known by her.
And.
He watches her face in the candlelight, edges softened and eyes dark. She does not share any of his features, her expressions and mannerisms her own, her body lean and unfamiliar. It is impossible to ignore the more base reactions of his body, no matter how inappropriate or unlikely.
That sort of interest has always been uncommon for him, pushed aside as the domain of less interesting men. He has had plenty of relations over the centuries but usually of a mechanical nature, a way of releasing tension, a simple show of hedonism, but this is new.
He is attracted to her. He desires her.
His silence is beginning to frustrate her, thinning patience clear in the taut lines of her body, and he knows now is the time to summon whatever dwindling courage he has left. It has been his habit to flee from even the possibility of conversations like this one, shrinking from the risk of vulnerability, shirking rejection before it can manifest.
But everything has changed, his life and very understanding of reality fraying at the edges and evaporating. It is the end of the world, and there is only Sylvie, something utterly unexpected at the center of this horrible maelstrom. Something good.
She deserves to know that much at least. That she is a bright spark in the darkness. That she has warmed something in him. In many ways is better, sharper, more than he is.
"Amorous interactions,” he says simply, trying at nonchalance and knowing he has failed by the open expression that crosses her face.
“You mean the timeline responded to…” She looks at his hands resting on the surface of the table and reaches for them in a quick movement, drawing short in the last breath to hover without touching. Delicately, she brushes a finger along his knuckle, both of them watching the timeline flicker on the narrow screen of the TemPad. “To touch?”
“No, we touched a number of times on Lamentis with no effect, but then… something shifted,” says Loki, managing something that resembles a cheeky grin. "Truthfully, I fear the inescapable magnetism of my person proved to be too alluring to you, and you er… well. I feel the same."
“That’s ridiculous,” she huffs, drawing her hand away. “You don’t know anything about this."
“I told you it was a theory.”
“A stupid one.”
“Well, how else can you explain this?”
He reaches for her, his palm clasping the warmth of her neck, thumb stroking along the smooth pulse that patters against his skin. The moment the timeline jolts, he drops his hand again.
"You don't know anything about me," says Sylvie, the tremble in her voice surprising the both of them.
"I know enough," he says. "Norns help me, I'd like to know more."
She looks at him, her mouth drawn in a thin line, exhausted shadows bruised under her wary eyes, and he knows she does not trust it. Given the circumstances of her life, how could she? He has long endured feeling slighted and inferior in the footsteps of his golden child brother, but Sylvie grew up without friendship, without solace, without a shred of comfort or security.
"You're absurd," says Sylvie without looking at him, splaying her fingers as close as she can without touching his. "You are the most ridiculous person I've ever met. How can I--" She laughs, a quick and bitter thing. "Isn't this a little odd? To feel anything… amorous…" She lingers on the word. "Toward someone who is an alternate version of yourself?"
"Do you?" Loki asks and is charmed by the clear pinking of a blush across her cheeks. "Feel something?"
"I'll have you know that I still find you profoundly irritating," says Sylvie, flushing more deeply by the second.
"And I still consider you the inferior variant," Loki lies, pleased by the beat of genuine laughter his words inspire.
"You're full of it," says Sylvie, laughing. "You're in love with me."
"Presumptuous," he says with a sniff. It can't be real love, not so soon, but then, how often does a person meet their own variant? He doesn't know how any of this works. He is enamored, at least. Curious. Interested.
"All that nonsense chatter about love on that train. What was that? Foreplay?" Her tone is amused rather than cutting or dismissive. Still, he bristles.
"That was simple curiosity. It's not every day you meet a variant of yourself."
"It's not every day you fall in love with a variant of yourself."
"I rescind my comments," he says, folding his arms across his chest. "Nothing amorous here. The Nexus events are clearly pure coincidence."
"Shut up," says Sylvie. Her eyes gleam with something strange and bright, and a tentative smile gentles her features. Once more, she reaches for him, and he relaxes, holding out his hand palm up for her fingers to brush. The timeline rises and falls again like the first tremulous beats of a heart long frozen in stillness. "I feel something," she says. "I don't know a thing about love, and your metaphors were frankly no help. I shouldn't trust you, and I shouldn't trust this feeling, but I…" She trails off, holding his gaze.
She is right that it's odd, to look into her dark eyes and feel something with the faintest familiarity staring back. To know that only a day ago, he had not known she existed.
"I won't presume to know what I feel either," he says, weighing each word carefully. "But whatever both of us feel, it's powerful enough to alter the timeline on a massive scale. I think we would be foolish not to take advantage of that."
"That's your plan?" she asks. "Destroy the timeline with the sheer power of self-love?"
"Yes, exactly."
"No. Forget it. It won't be that simple. The TVA was alerted almost immediately on Lamentis-1. We'll just bring them down on us every time. We're fortunate that these small blips haven't been detected."
"I wouldn't call it fortunate," says Loki, struck by the way the flickering shadows catch on the hollows of their knuckles. So close but unable to reach for her, to feel the grasp of her hand once more.
"Why not?" she asks, quiet and soft.
"Because," he says, an unsteady breath swelling in his chest. "I would very much like to touch you."
Love truly is a dagger, he thinks, struck by the wretched unfairness of it all. And it aches.