Chapter Text
Sylvie came out of the enchantment with a start. Loki groaned next to her, his pupils returning to their normal size, but his expression morphed into a grimace of pain. Almost immediately, their surroundings shimmered green, any vestiges of Asgard and its golden shimmer gave way to cold steel and dark blue lights.
The chittering of the Chitauri patrolling the ship came through the walls, and the sound of their feet against the floor echoed off the steel corridors. Sylvie hauled Loki onto his feet and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He heavily leaned on her as she slapped the temp pad on her wrist.
They needed to be literally anywhere but here. Lamentis-1, she tried, but the temp pad blared red and green. What?
Damn. Midgard.
Red.
Asgard?
Red.
Fuck- the TVA?
Red.
Sylvie swore every curse and nasty thing she had collected over the millennia and looked up and spotted the faint outline of shadows approaching the corner. It was typical that she had some rotten luck.
“Damn it- hold still.” Sylvie laid Loki down on the ground once more, grabbed his legs and proceeded to hoist his body over her shoulders like a sack of potatoes in a fireman's carry.
He grunted, bracing his trembling arm on her shoulder as she balanced him. It wasn’t like they had any better options.
Taking a deep breath, she did what she did best, she ran. Heavy boots on grated steel, she nearly slipped a few times on some oil- but she diligently ran away from the sound of nails on steel. Loki was heavy , but he wasn’t the heaviest thing she’d ever carried. It was more awkward than arduous, which she supposed summed up everything they were.
“I thought you had a plan?” Loki asked, his voice gravelly and wispy. It was the single most reassuring thing she’d ever heard.
“I, well. I had a Loki plan.” Sylvie snapped back as she rounded a corner, pointedly avoiding every hallway that sounded like it had something coming down its halls.
“Very reassuring that you lean into being a lesser variant now of all times.”
“If you have time to be an ass, you have time to look at this.” Sylvie huffed as she waved her wrist with the temp pad on it. The weight across her shoulders shifted a bit as Loki grabbed the temp pad, and she let him slide it off without a thought.
“Magic?” Loki asked, clearly surprised upon his brief investigation.
“You’re a magician,” Sylvie said between huffs, growing more breathless by the minute. They couldn’t run forever, and she could feel the Chitauri converging onto them from every facet of this maze-like structure.
“It utilizes energy tracing- we need something for it to lock onto. Otherwise, we’ll need to figure out a way to switch its settings. Which I don’t know how to do.” Loki briefly made a gagging sound from how he was being jostled.
While that all made sense in theory, practically she had no idea what to do with that information.
She had no clue how she’d switched it before. It had all been luck up to this point. Luck that had apparently run out.
“I don’t have anything except myself!” All of the items she had on her were taken from places that had long since been obliterated into a million little pieces.
“Well, I might. Give me your magic.” A cold, hand pressed hard against her neck, undoubtedly trying to stay balanced while also reaching for something more. The invasive feeling of Loki trying to siphon her own magic was jarring enough to nearly have her throw him down onto the floor. Instead, she gritted her teeth and let him take whatever he could. It felt like being stuck in a wind chamber that was trying to draw air from her lungs- which was already in short supply. She still let him do whatever vampire-like magic he needed to do, and her hands began to get clammy towards the end of it.
Something materialized next to her, and she couldn’t help but crane her neck to see what Loki had gotten from his magical pocket. It was… a rock? With a rune on it. If the rune hadn’t been filled by a faint gold light, she would’ve thought it was just a smooth rock.
“A rock?” Sylvie slowed her run and adjusted Loki on her shoulders to catch her breath. Gods be damned, he was heavy.
SCREEE
Sylvie jumped when Loki tried grating his little rock into the temp pad. His already pale hands had gone bone white with the amount of force he was applying to the damn thing. “Are you trying to break-” She abruptly stopped mid-sentence when the temp pad blinked a few times, and a time-door opened in front of them.
“You were say-” Loki was interrupted when Sylvie leaped through the flashing yellow and orange door.
Loki could hardly keep his vision straight, his hand shakily trying to grate his mother's magic from the rune stone onto the temp pad to see if it would take it.
One moment he was hoisted atop Sylvie’s pointy shoulders, the next he was in even greater agony on the floor, feeling like he’d been dropped from several feet above. Every broken bone in his body made him aware of their neglect, every barely healed cut angrily flared pain at him.
He could vaguely hear Sylvie shouting at some people to stay back, she muttered curses as she pried the temp pad from his fingers, and then the anguished cry of his own mother as she ordered some guards to take him away to the healing halls.
The moment Loki felt strong arms grab him on either side and the mossy smell of the Vanir forests outside the windows, his mind slipped into a muddled state of sleep.
The irritating feel of his grungy armor on his wounds disappeared, and he plunged into the weighted warmth of the soul forge. A calloused hand grabbed his own with no additional words said. Just a squeeze, before it was gone.
-After some time-
“...They are converging on Thanos as we speak.” His mother’s voice echoed as he floated through this state of consciousness.
“I see. That’s good,” Sylvie said, tapping her hand against the side of the soul forge. The relief Loki felt at that moment was immense, his chest was full and he thought he was smiling. She'd stayed. The world garbled together as Loki tried to open his eyes, but he couldn’t lift a single finger.
“You… Sylvie,” Frigga started with the utmost delicacy. “Are you not my child from another strand of time?”
The vestiges of Sylvie’s enchantment still echoed in Loki’s senses, and he felt her emotion become hot and taut. Grief and anger, denial and longing, all those emotions swirled together and plucked their mental connection before it all abruptly ceased.
Clicking her tongue to mask her inner turbulence, Loki could imagine her leaning back in her chair with her arms crossed over her chest.
“We’re strangers,” Sylvie stated, leaving no room or desire for argument.
Loki could feel the warm grasp around his hand tightened, his mother’s hand, and she absently squeezed and unsqueezed his palm.
“Yes, we are. Now, however, we aren’t.” At those words, he could hear the slight shudder of Sylvie's next breath. Refusing to say a single word in response, lest she shattered her own illusion of indifference.
That was Frigga, though. She was always able to worm her way into people’s hearts, by simply speaking the unspoken. “Thank you for bringing Loki home.”
“…So what was it like, being raised as a Princess of Asgard?” Frigga’s gentle voice asked from a some distance of the soul forge. The connection he had with Sylvie still held, although it grew weaker as time passed.
He didn’t need a connection to know that Sylvie was attempting to win a battle of wits with his mother.
“I don’t know much. My parents didn’t lie about me being adopted if that’s what you’re looking for.” Her barbed words were familiar, and Frigga hummed in response.
“ And how do you think that changed you?” Loki listened while Sylvie struggled to find a way to quarrel with Frigga, who seldom assumed the worst from her responses. Even when she meant it.
That was who Frigga was. A purely decent, cunning, and patient person.
A large hand held his own. Scarred and calloused, wrinkled and cooled with age. “Loki,” said a voice he hadn’t heard in years. He sounded older.
“You imply one thing, yet do another. Why wouldn’t you tell me, Loki?”
Was this what Frigga did to Odin during the Odinsleep? Chastize and reminisce on the past while he was incapable of defending himself?
“Well, you probably would’ve listened to him a few centuries ago.” Sylvie’s voice came from a much farther spot.
“ You would presume to know?” Odin said dismissively.
Sylvie hummed in response, her voice growing in volume as she neared them. “ I think you both share that trait. ”
“What is that?”
“ You’re both imperceptive clowns. ” Loki would have given his right arm to see Odin's expression at that moment. There were a few beats of stunned silence before his father slammed the butt of his spear on the floor.
“Watch your tone, child," he warned in a manner not all that different from how he used to rebuke Thor when they’d been younger.
“ You should watch yours, I’m neither your subject nor a child. I stopped being a child centuries before Loki had.” Any concern he had of them, though, quickly vanished with the echoes of laughter between the two. And a parting apology from his adoptive father.
“…You’re amazing for having survived and grown to be who you are now.” Came Frigga’s voice once more. Norns, if he could, he'd twiddle his thumbs. Being kept in this frozen awake state was driving his mind into idle madness.
A scoff.
“Thanks,” Sylvie said in a way that didn’t give away if she was pleased with the compliment or not. There was a moment of silence, a lull in conversation, and then Frigga offered a bit of herself to the Goddess of Mischief.
“You mentioned Loki showed you an illusion on the train.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Well, we have time. Would you like to learn a bit of that magic?”
“Timekeepers, Thanos, Kang, we have many things to worry about now.” Thor’s voice rumbled above him. Next to his mother and Sylvie, Thor was also a frequent visitor. Usually recounting stories of battles and glory with him, updating him on how the fight against Thanos was going.
“Yeah, but they’re all killable,” Sylvie offhandedly remarked, which earned a booming laugh from his brother.
“…Indeed, they are.”
When Loki was finally able to open his eyes, he was on a proper bed. The evening sun filtered through the windows of his stone suite, and the first noise he made was a groan of exhaustion. The sharp cuts all along his arms and legs, the bruises, and the broken bones were all healed. He felt like shit nonetheless.
Sitting himself up against the headboard, he took a glance around the room and was surprised to see Sylvie simply watching him from a chaise at the corner of his room. Arms crossed, legs slightly apart. Sylvie looked like she wanted to get up, but seated she remained.
“Good evening,” Loki said in greeting. His voice rough from days of disuse, and Sylvie leaned back in her chair.
“Good morning. Do you want me to call them to get you breakfast?” Sylvie asked, correcting his skewed sense of time. Blinking away whatever amount of sleep that had lingered in the corner of his eyes, Loki took a moment to assess his current state.
He really should eat something, yet eating seemed like more work than it was worth.
“Perhaps not now,” Loki said as he swung his legs from under the blanket and over the side of his bed. His joints creaked in protest, and for a moment he was unsure if he was going to be able to stand properly. Sylvie continued to watch, observing from the corner of the room, her index finger rhythmically tapping her bicep.
“... a little help?” Loki called out in the stillness of the room, and Sylvie nearly leaped to her feet to grab his arm. As evidenced by her harrowing rescue operation, she was very strong and lifted him with ease.
“Your hands are a little pointy,” Loki said, raising a complaint he had when she had first carried him through Thanos's ship.
Sylvie rolled her eyes and adjusted her hands in a vain attempt to alleviate the pressure. “So sorry. I’ll just drop you instead,” she briskly said. As she said it, though, her grip on him only tightened.
What a conundrum, Sylvie was.
As they did little laps around his room to help his muscles get accustomed to getting used once more, Loki couldn’t help the smile that settled on his expression as Sylvie kicked away any rug or article of clothes that might trip him. Even when the feeling in his legs had long returned, he pretended to be unbalanced for just a few minutes longer to simply bask in her presence.
The first thing he was going to do, after visiting his family, would be to take Sylvie to Vanaheim’s downtown markets.
Sylvie looked quite at home and comfortable in the clothes she chose to wear. Frigga had an excellent eye for clothes that matched their wearer. There were times when their outfits would match, simple tunics with occasional accents of gold- but Sylvie seemed to default more towards black. She looked stunning regardless of what she wore, though.
She seldom wore her armor anymore, enjoying her newfound freedom as she explored Vanaheim’s markets and forests in peace, although her sword was always by her hip. However, despite her prowess in battle, Odin had forbidden either of them from fighting.
Odin couldn’t stand the thought of losing either of them. And he knew if Sylvie went, Loki would follow. Surprisingly, though, Sylvie didn’t protest and merely shrugged. “Not my monkeys, not my circus,” she had quipped. Yet another interesting saying she had picked up on her travels.
But Loki would watch Sylvie slip into the night with Thor. Armor on, eyes glinting with a familiar set of excitement as she scratched that itch she occasionally got when she was idle for too long. He’d diligently maintain a duplicate of her until she returned, even absurdly creating fake conversations with her duplicate in the gardens as Odin walked around the palace with Frigga.
Loki realized that Odin was weak for him, as he always had been. With enough prodding, enough mischief, and enough complaints from the Vanir nobility, Odin had officially permitted them to join the fight.
It was exhilarating, showing the nine realms the strength of his illusions. With Thor by his side, and at Sylvie’s back, a proper battle with magic and vengeance was as addicting as it was exhilarating.
She was chaos and ferocity, clawing, scratching, and slashing her way through troves of Chitauri and other children of Thanos. There was a specific amount of vindication in how she would gaze upon their foes that had Loki’s heart fluttering. Sometimes after a battle, they would fall asleep in each other’s arms. Sometimes on each other's beds, sometimes on each other's chaise. No words were spoken, no questions were asked, and Loki knew that he could do this, every day, for an eternity.
Soft lips against her own, large, warm hands that nearly spanned her entire lower back. His lips tasted sweet, and his body was pliant. Sylvie couldn’t help but glance at the door every so often. Even as he undressed her with reverent fingers, caressed her old scars with his lips, and soothed them with his tongue.
Loki knew it was an old habit, and he did nothing to prevent her from watching. In fact, he shifted their position so that she would never have her back to the door. She threaded her hand through his hair, pulling him up from his ministrations to have a taste of his lips.
Perhaps here, she thought, she’d finally be able to indulge in a different kind of hedonism.
Loki woke up with a strangled scream in his throat, and a cold sweat covering his body. He covered his eyes to protect them from the filtered moonlight. Damn these dreams, these memories of his time on the ship. They came less frequently, dissecting Chitauri on the battlefield and fooling Thanos’s other soldiers to skewer each other had certainly helped.
Still, his skin itched with the phantom pain of his cuts.
He was pulled from his thoughts at the sound of someone lightly knocking on the wall behind him.
Tap tap, thump, tap. Pause. Tap tap, thump, tap.
Sylvie sent through the stone, now awake in her room right next to his. There were nights he ignored her call, nights where he let embarrassment redden his ears and exhaustion tug him back to sleep.
Loki sat up in bed, his bare back against the headboard and he knocked on the same wall.
Tap tap tap.
Not a few minutes later, Sylvie cracked open his door. Her hair tousled from sleep, her long black pants billowed as she walked, and he saw the light binding across her chest- but nothing more on her torso.
“It’s bad for you, to wear that to sleep,” Loki said as a greeting. Sylvie ran a hand through her bleached locks and took a seat next to him. The bed dipped from her weight, and Sylvie held out her hand for him to take. “It’s none of your business.”
Her fingers were warm and textured, and Loki focused on them for a little while. His body gradually relaxed, his mind slowing down until he had to stifle a yawn.
“Thanks,” Loki said as he slid into the covers. Not wanting to keep her from her own bed. She’d been very particular about sleeping on her own, something about not being used to sharing sleeping space.
Sylvie squeezed his hand, and like every night this happened, slid off the bed and shuffled back to her room. “Sure.”
The bed dipped next to her and the wooden frame creaked. Sylvie came out of her sleep in an instant, opening her eyes to see a faceless person. Axe hoisted above their head, knee on the side of the large bed-
Sylvie awoke, her eyes instantly focused on the ceiling and her senses listening for anything she could. Her breathing was low and even, and she reached for her sword next to her-
Instead, her hand slapped someone in the face, and she whipped and rolled to clobber whatever was next to her. Sylvie's fist was met with a pillow, however, and a laugh. “Perhaps I should sleep on my stomach, and get a massage while I’m at it.” A familiar voice said, and the world seemed to come back into color. The edges of the furniture softened, and the light from the moon didn’t seem nearly as bright.
Sylvie sat up for a moment, taking a few minutes in silence to force herself to remind where she was. “Do you want to stay?” Sylvie asked like she did every night since they had agreed to share a bed. Partly out of convenience, partly out of a sort of self-imposed rehabilitation Loki had humored.
“For all nights, always,” Loki said, turning over as he was already falling asleep. As Sylvie watched his breathing even out, the gentle rise and fall of his chest beneath the covers- she felt a disproportionate amount of affection for him. A type of affection that had her reaching to wrap a hand around his torso, and tuck his head beneath her chin.
An affection that had her feeling like she’d always had this, and she would always want this. For all time, always.
-Several months later-
Loki looked like he was acclimating quite well to his life here. His mother had been overjoyed to see him once more, tears were shed, and the war against Thanos was won by Odin thanks to everyone’s efforts including their own. The relationship between Loki and his family was on the mend, and it felt like a good ending to a story.
Sylvie never wanted for anything. Food, clothes, and respect, it was a 180-degree turn from her old life. She spent long hours napping in the Vanir sun, and she even had the chance to spar against Thor. The fucking brute. But it had been exhilarating learning the palace arts from him. The right to a skill she never had the chance to learn.
She loved it. It was everything she had wanted, everything she had dreamed of- and yet she often found herself looking down at the temp pad. Frigga had taught her the magic necessary to use it, a Tony Stark had shown her the technology behind it.
“What are you doing, brooding out here on your own?” A familiar voice asked behind her. She was surrounded by the rarest things in the universe.
Trees, life, a potential home, a potential family. Frigga had been all but ready to fold her into Vanir royalty, should she desire it, but Sylvie had been putting it off.
It didn’t feel right, and something deep and unsettling twisted in her as she admitted the fact to herself.
“I’m just thinking,” Sylvie replied nonchalantly. Loki didn’t say anything, opting to simply lean on the same tree with her. There was a lot of this, lately. The comfortable silence between them. Every time she wanted to ask Loki what he wanted to do, she felt like she already had her answer.
With how he laughed in the courtyard with the Vanir children, every dusty political meeting he attended where he eviscerated his opponents. Every time he had tea with his mother and short walks with his father. He was home, and she was, perhaps just an interloper.
But there was more to it than that, she thought. Mind wandering back to the Citadel, the consequences of her actions, both reflected in Loki's state when she'd found him- as well as the haunting scene of the multiverse infinitely branching.
“About?” Loki finally prompted, and there was a weight there. This thing they had been dancing around that neither of them wanted to bring up. That neither of them had tried bringing up. The Citadel.
The further they delayed it though, the further she could see him drift. The further she felt herself drift.
“The TVA,” Sylvie began, “and the Citadel.”
The trees rustled around them as if they were offering to mask their conversation in their noise. Loki, in the meantime, furrowed his brow. Perhaps tensing just a bit as he tried to gauge where this conversation would go. “What of it?”
“It’s my fault you returned to Thanos," she said, beginning with the most obvious thing.
Loki waved that portion away, even as he visibly shuddered. “It’s your fault I was released," he countered.
“Are you not bitter?”
“I never said I wasn’t.” Loki pushed himself off the tree and began lightly pacing back in forth, in a lazy and meandering way. All the while she watched him.
“I know you didn’t mean to push me there, although I was a bit...perturbed that you hadn't thought me worthy of listening to.” The rare times when Loki was direct and frank with her never failed to be refreshing, although it pained her no less.
They were talking facts, she knew. Clearing up this business between themselves before moving on to whatever they were going to do next. It felt like it had been so long ago when she first arrived here in Vanaheim with him, and yet it hadn’t even been a year.
“I was grateful, however, that you flushed out the remnants of the mind stone. That in your anger, you had given me the opportunity to rectify the one true regret I've had since I had come out of the timeline. I was able to save my mother," Loki confessed. Clearing his throat to mask the bit of emotion that had tightened his chest, he flashed her a gentler smile.
“I’m grateful you came back for me, and that you listened to me. That you’ve, well, stayed. That we can experience this together.” Loki gestured to the forests around them, which also included her.
Sylvie shook her head. It was impressive how Loki made their hedonistic lifestyle of sex, violence, and overindulgent consumption of grapes and nuts seem like the pinnacle of romance. (But it was, for them.)
“You’re happy here.”
You don’t want to go
Loki, for as dense as she thought him to be, was remarkably good at picking up her underlying questions. Not just because he was her, but because they knew each other better now. Which was also something that she was trying to get accustomed to, knowing people she would come to care about.
He straightened out his tunic, greens, and golds, and tilted his head back ever so slightly.
“I’m happy right now, but really. What is happiness?” Sylvie groaned at his rhetorical question and sat down in the chair Loki had conjured for her on the spot, knowing full well she might be here for a while now. Loki flashed her a grin and conjured a chair right across from her.
“Happiness,” he began. “Does happiness mean the familiar? Or does it mean the new? Is it the practical, or can it align with fantasy?” Loki asked, leaning forward so they were at eye level.
Sylvie shrugged in response, and Loki held his hands out to her. Palms upturned, requesting, and she took them. His fingers traced the callouses on her palms and the scars that littered her fingers.
“I’m happy here, but I know myself. I also know you enough to say that we’re the gods of the same thing. We’re Gods of Chaos and Mischief. We’re not meant to live a simple life of happiness.” What a complicated and long-winded answer to her question at best. Sylvie still wasn’t sure if Loki had answered her question.
“Love truly is a dagger, Sylvie,” Loki said, shifting gears when he saw how unenthused she was. “It’s beautiful, until it cuts you. It’s dangerous, until it frees you.”
That was… not a bad metaphor. To the point where Sylvie could imagine it was more a statement of truth rather than a poetic element.
“It’s a bit of both,” Sylvie added in understanding. To which Loki nodded.
“It has been a bit of both.”
“I truly am sorry,” Sylvie said once more. Perhaps for the last time so as to not continue to beat this event to the ground, but it was a sentiment she would carry with her for all her time. Always.
There was a knowing smile, a smile Sylvie had learned to trust that had no hidden meaning in it.
“I know.”
“There’s something wrong with me.”
“Something wrong with us.”
“I… I want to leave. I want to find the TVA. To figure out what’s happening with the multiverse.”
“I’ll give Mobius a great big kiss when I find him.”
“Careful, his mustache will give you a rug burn.”
“Why do you think I’d kiss him on the lips? Why not the forehead?” Loki leaned forward with that silly grin on his face and a suggestive raise of his eyebrow.
Sylvie in turn put a hand on his chest to push him away, but ended up just leaving it there to linger on his person to feel his heartbeat instead. “Fuck off. I know what you meant.”
“Are you sure?” Sylvie asked for the dozenth time that week. They were staring down into a yellow timedoor, not knowing which TVA it led to. They didn’t have a plan- but they had each other. Loki’s lopsided smile, the new clothes on her back- and the hand in her own though were enough.
Because when she closed her eyes and opened them, even when he was not immediately there, she knew he was right next to her. And she to him.
Together, she thought they’d be okay.