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The second Sylvie’s knife entered He Who Remain’s body she wished she could take it back.
It wasn’t the actual act of killing that she regretted. In the years she had been on the run from the TVA, she had killed often and without regret. Killing wasn’t something she felt bad about anymore. It was simply another ugly part of her.
So no, it wasn’t the killing of him that she regretted at all. It was the fact that Loki hadn’t been there with her so that they both could have destroyed him. Together.
She almost scoffed at the word. In the grand scheme of things the word together was an illusion. It promised an end to loneliness, that you had someone to be with instead of working by yourself. Nothing good ever lasted, that was another thing she had learned during her years on the run. It was something she had foolishly forgotten during the past few days of her life.
It was all Loki’s fault. Around him she had forgotten almost everything she had taught herself. She had gotten soft in a way. Something she should have never let happen to herself. All her life she had wanted one thing and one thing only. For the TVA to be taken down. But after meeting Loki she had started wanting something else. Not running all the time, jumping from apocalypse to apocalypse, letting herself have the luxury of friends or something more that wasn’t just a one night stand with some desperate person preparing to die.
She had hated him at first. Someone who was her but also not. He had grown up in Asgard unlike her who only had several blurred out memories from her childhood. She had resented him for it, she still did if she was being completely honest with herself, but after that moment on Lamentis something had changed between them.
Later when they had been taken to the TVA and she had been alone in that room she had tried to sort through everything that had happened between them in the past twenty four hours, but it all felt weirdly jumbled and she couldn’t make sense of anything. She could excuse him serenading her because he was obviously drunk, but she couldn’t excuse the way he had looked at her before, how his eyes had softened when they met hers.
The next time she had seen him had been in the elevator before they were to meet the timekeepers and something had seemed different about him. She didn’t know what had happened to him in the past few hours, but it seemed like he had been defeated in some sense.
“You okay?” She has asked him and he had nodded slowly before going back to staring at the elevator doors. She had surprised herself by even asking him that question. It wasn’t as if she had cared for him in any way. Sylvie Laufeydottir didn’t, couldn’t care for anyone, but after finding out that the timekeepers were nothing but mindless androids and seeing Loki pruned she realized that she did in fact care. The way her heart had dropped when he began to disappear was an indication of that. Just because she acknowledged that she cared about him didn’t mean that she had to do anything about it. Instead she would completely ignore it until it went away. Not exactly a practical thing to do, but useful.
And then she had pruned herself to get to him in another impulsive act.
Once again she told herself it was all part of her plan to take down the person responsible for the TVA, but deep down she knew it wasn’t. She had just wanted to find Loki.
And she had found him, alive, and the rush of relief that had come over her destroyed any of the mental walls she had tried to put up surrounding him.
Later when he had conjured up that stupid blanket that was most definitely a tablecloth and brought up Mobius’s theory she had simply brushed it off because she didn’t, couldn’t think about it. Instead she asked what he planned on doing after they took down the TVA and when he had said the word “together” she felt something she hadn’t felt in a while.
Hope.
The feeling of loneliness that had been following her ever since she had escaped from the TVA as a child disappeared when she was around him and for the first time in ages she actually felt hopeful. Hope that she wouldn’t have to be alone anymore, that she could have something that lasted more than just one apocalypse.
And then after defeating Alioth when they had walked hand in hand into the citadel at the end of time she felt so confident that they would find whoever was behind the TVA and destroy him together before figuring out what she wanted to do next with Loki and her life.
But no. Instead they had found one man who seemed to know everything, sitting behind a desk and doing nothing but taunt them.
She had thought that her and Loki would be on the same train of thought. After all, killing him was everything she had worked for and it made sense in the grand scheme of things, but Loki had been hesitant. So hesitant that she had gotten mad at him. Nothing was going to get between her and her plan, even if it was the first person who had genuinely cared for her in years.
And so they had fought and somehow their swords had ended up against each other's neck and she was shouting at him to kill him and take his throne because it was her fault for trusting him and it was something she never should have done. He was the very reason why she didn’t let her guard down and she had gone against her rules and now this was the result.
And then he was talking to her in an attempt to calm her down and her mind was going a million miles per hour so she had kissed him.
She didn’t regret kissing him. If she was being honest with herself she had wanted to do it for a while, maybe even since she had woken up on the train and had seen him drunkenly singing to her.
It wasn’t something she had planned. At that moment the only thing running through her head was getting too He Who Remained and destroying the person who had singularly ruined her life and Loki had been in the way.
She told herself that it was simply a distraction. A way for her to momentarily distract his attention to steal the temped and get him out of the way. At least that was what her attempt at reasoning was.
Of course there was a million other ways to distract him and she didn’t have to kiss him, but she had reasoned that this might as well be the last time she saw him so why the fuck not.
It was a messy and impulsive plan which wasn’t like her, but a lot of things had changed about her over the past few days or however long it had been since her plan to take down the TVA had gone horribly wrong and she had been stuck on a planet with an obnoxious variant who she had almost killed them both.
And so before she could truly think over what she was about to do, she had dropped the sword that was cutting into Loki’s neck and she had kissed him. She hadn’t intended it to be genuine, but the second their lips had met she realized that it in fact was. She did have feelings for Loki and that made what she was going to do so much harder.
“But I’m not you,” she had told him before pushing him away from her and sending him through the portal, hopefully somewhere safe even though every cell inside of her was screaming for her to not push him away. To let him stay, so that she wouldn’t have to do everything alone again because gods she was so lonely and he was the only one who could push away the tide of lonliness
But she didnt.
She watched as he disappeared into the portal and it felt the same to her as when he had gotten pruned, with her heart dropping and the knowledge that she wouldn’t see him again.
Not seeing him again had been a term she had struggled with, but in the end it would be better for both of them. And even if she did somehow find him again in the vast universe and all it’s other realities who said that he would even forgive her. It was much easier to just accept that this was the last time she was going to see him and to use their kiss as her last memory of him.
And so she had dropped to the ground and watched as the universe began to branch and spread and hoped that in some other reality there was a version of her who didn’t lose in the end.