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He was warm.
That was the first thought that popped into her head when he conjured the blanket around them.
Not that she didn’t expect him to be. But knowing that someone would be warm was one thing. Feeling that heat all along one side of your body, the solid warmth as close as you could get without actually touching, was something completely different.
And she wanted to touch.
Sylvie shook her head. That was a thought for another time(line). Perhaps when they weren’t minutes from facing the creature that guarded the Void or mere steps away from a shack full of Lokis (and a single, far too knowing Mobius).
At least the view was something. Set on a hill as they were, the entire kingdom of trash spread out before them, skeletons of pruned worlds littering the space between here and the end of time. And in the distance, Alioth rumbled, at the ready to devour the next branch that came its way.
Though she could barely focus on the task ahead, what with Loki so warm and close and sturdy under the blanket next to her. It left her feeling unmoored, like she could take flight at any moment.
So she fell back on what she always did on the rare occasions when things got too real: sarcasm.
“It’s not very snuggly,” she declared, complaining a whole hel of a lot easier than parsing any of her actual feelings.
But rather than clap back, he chuckled at her prickliness, the sound just a little knowing, tiny wrinkles fanning out from either eye. Laugh lines. She didn’t know a Loki could get them.
She looked down, focusing on anything but that surprised little smile and the lines it brought forth. “Is it a tablecloth?”
He shook his head, actively trying not to laugh at her. “No, it’s a blanket.”
The recognition in that look was almost too much to bear. But he wouldn’t rise to her bait, not like he had in the beginning. Well, like they both had. Two hair triggers on a jaunt at the end of the world. Weirdly enough, it had been easier back then, the not trusting a whole lot easier than the trying to trust they were currently aiming for.
But if he could rise to the occasion, so to speak, so could she. So she took a deep breath and steeled herself for two words that had rarely, if ever, passed her lips.
“Thank you.” They came out softer than she’d been intending, quiet enough that he actually inclined his head.
So it was that much closer to her when his answer slipped from his tongue. “My pleasure.”
A shiver went through her.
It wasn’t that she was cold per se. She didn’t really get cold. And if she did it would take a lot more than this paltry breeze to do it, of that she was sure. But there was something about the juxtaposition of Loki’s ( her Loki , now that she had to specify) solid heat and the cold air of the Void-adjacent that threw her own stiff frigidity into sharp relief.
She didn’t let people get this close. Not willingly. Or for any length of time. A life spent jumping from apocalypse to apocalypse didn’t allow for much in the way of quiet moments or lingering glances. Even her assignations had been of the fleeting, last moments to live variety, leaving no chance to catch those pesky feelings that seemed to turn anyone involved into a bumbling idiot.
Like perhaps, if she had to come up with an example... pruning yourself.
Love was a dagger, indeed.
And like a dagger, she watched him, noting the playful glint to his eye, the way he carefully held her gaze. The way he couldn’t quite look away.
Though it quickly became too much for them both, the connection, the strange things it kicked up, and the two of them looked down nearly simultaneously, the smile on Loki’s lips dying slowly, like a banked fire. Under the blanket, his hand inched closer, stopping just when his pinky brushed the side of hers. An easier form of connection. For them both.
But like all nice things in her life, it couldn’t last. Not when there was a question weighing so heavily on her mind.
Peace was not meant for her. It was in her very nature to shatter it, creature of chaos that she was. So that’s exactly what she did.
“How do I know that, in the final moments, you won’t betray me?” Once again, the words came out softer than she intended, making them sound almost intimate and her, vulnerable.
There was a split second where she could see the pain flash across his face, a blink and you’d miss it moment that was certainly showing her more than he’d intended. And more than she wanted to see. But in the space of a breath, it morphed into a kind of resignation, Loki shifting so he could look into her eyes once more.
“Listen, Sylvie…” he trailed off, obviously hesitant to say whatever was on his mind. A rare occurrence indeed. In fact, she’d only seen it once before in the time they’d known each other, and they both knew how that ended.
As if he could sense the direction of her thoughts, he sighed heavily before going on.
“I betrayed everyone who ever loved me,” he admitted, the words not a surprise to her at all. “I betrayed my father, my brother, my home. I know what I did. And I know why I did it.”
No, the words weren’t a surprise, but the self awareness they contained certainly was.
“And that’s not who I am anymore. Okay? I won’t let you down.”
His expression was open, eyes completely guileless even in the gloomy mist of their pre-Void holding cell. He seemed desperate for her to believe him, but she’d seen ploys like this before. From him. Though even she had to admit, he’d never been quite this convincing any of the other times.
She fixed him with her best approximation of a searching look. “You sure?” Because she sure as hel wasn’t. “Cause if we make it and the TVA is gone, there might be a timeline for you to rule.”
From what she knew of him, that was the crux of his entire existence, and the biggest of their growing number of differences. He wanted power; she just wanted permission to exist.
He huffed out a laugh, a wry smile playing at his lips. “Ah. And then I’ll finally be happy.”
She found herself smiling in spite of herself. And when she smiled, he smiled. They were infectious like that. So she was finding out.
“What about you?” he asked, bumping his shoulder against hers in a sudden rush of heat. Once again she was struck by the solid warmth of his body, the proximity of it to her own. She knew the deceptive strength he hid in those limbs, had seen them in action more than once. But there was a softness about him, a certain gentleness in the way he treated her that she would have hated from anyone else. But when Loki looked at her like that, a half smile still settling across his lips, she found that she didn’t mind it. Not one bit. “What will you do when this is all over?”
She’d never been asked that question before. Honestly, she’d never even thought about it. For as long as she could remember, her entire life had been a string of steps in service to her master plan, years and years in the making. She’d never seen farther ahead than the next move, never let herself imagine anything past the end of the TVA and the culmination of her years of work.
To say she was tired would be the understatement of the millennium. No, several millennia. Tired of running, tired of hiding, tired of fighting simply for a place on the timeline. But who was she if she wasn’t chasing down the TVA? Dismantling them piece by piece? Her entire life, her entire identity had been formed around bringing down this organization. Would she even be Sylvie anymore if she succeeded?
It was a discomfiting thought, one that she wanted nothing more than to push to the recesses of her mind where she kept the rest of them, but instead found herself answering his question honestly anyway.
“I don’t know.”
He accepted her answer with a nod, and offered one in return. “I don’t know, either.”
Without warning, he looked down, suddenly nervous. There was that look again, the one she’d seen earlier. Right before he tried to tell her something and ended up pruned from existence for his trouble. Something fluttered in her chest.
Had he simply been trying to tell her Mobius’ theory, the one they had just scoffed away as nonsense? Or had it been something deeper, something more?
She held her breath while he struggled to find the words.
“Maybe…” He paused, taking a deep breath, his eyes fixed not on her, but on the ground where their hands were just barely touching. He slid his pinky a little closer. “Maybe we could… figure it out.” In a flash of icy blue, those eyes found hers, his face so earnest it set her heart to racing. “Together.”
One word. Just three syllables. But it was enough to change her entire world.
Together. She had only ever been alone in this. Every connection she’d made had been temporary, every person she’d known slated to die almost as soon as she’d met them. And with one little word, with a single offer, he had changed all that.
But what he was offering was too good to be true. The likelihood that they would both make it out of here alive was slim to none. Decidedly not in their favor. And the thought of all that hope crashing down on her in the end was too much to bear. She’d suffered a lifetime of losses; one more might just end her.
She needed to protect herself, temper her expectations. So all she gave him was a whispered, “Maybe.”
And yet, despite her careful noncommittal, hope still crept in.
She blamed him for it. It was the way he smiled at her, the softness around his eyes, the simple fact of his warm presence next to her, all conspiring to make her long for something she knew somewhere deep down that she’d never be allowed to keep. Because while Lokis didn’t die, they didn’t win either. And that future he was peddling, the one they might forge together, that was an absolute win.
Under the blanket, his hand finally found hers, closing over top with a gentle squeeze. Like every time they touched, she felt that subtle shift, as if the fabric of time and space itself was reweaving itself to accommodate them.
Her mind turned once more to the nexus event - their nexus event. Could Mobius be right? Could they break the timeline even here?
It seemed Loki was intent to find out.
Because that look on his face had turned hungry, wanting, the way he’d once looked when telling her he planned to take over the TVA. But now those eyes were turned on her, insatiable in their desire, growing closer and closer in the setting sun...
“Loki!”
They both whipped their heads around, more of a knee-jerk reaction for her than anything. She didn’t answer to that name. Not anymore.
But Mobius was standing at the top of their little hill, motioning for Loki to come up. “Come on, you need to settle something for us.”
Next to her, Loki raised a hand in acknowledgement. “I’ll be right there,” he called. Then, turning to her, he huffed out a disbelieving little laugh. “Duty calls, I suppose.”
“I suppose it does.”
He looked from the top of the hill to her and back again, like he couldn’t quite decide where his attention should be. “Strange working with people instead of against them, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know.” She tried to keep the subtle resentment out of her voice, but it didn’t quite take.
“Are we going to talk about…” He motioned between the two of them.
Sylvie shook her head, unable to keep the half smile off her face. “No, no we’re not.”
“Fair enough.”
With a grunt, he got to his feet, her right side subjected to a sudden rush of cold air as the blanket he’d conjured went slack, left to drift lazily on the never ceasing breeze. There was just a second of hesitation, long enough only for her to note his absence, before he’d bent over to tuck the blanket around her.
It was still warm. From his body.
His hand lingered on one of her shoulders, face hovering above hers in a strange approximation of their usual height difference. For the second time in as many minutes, she wondered if he’d close that gap, see if perhaps they could end the Sacred Timeline here and now…
Only to have Mobius interrupt. Again.
“You coming?” he shouted, hands on his hips.
Loki’s laugh was more like a breath, heat spreading across her lips. “Duty calls,” he repeated. Only this time, he sounded significantly less excited by that prospect. And with a final squeeze of her shoulder, he was gone. Leaving her with her tablecloth and her thoughts.
Sometimes it felt like fate would always put her exactly where she’d started. Alone.
“Sylvie!”
This time she nearly jumped at the sound of her own name, turning to find Mobius still perched on the hill.
“What are you doing down there? We need you, too!”
Startled, she tucked the blanket around herself as she rose to meet the rest of the Lokis near the abandoned shack. A ragtag team if she’d ever seen one, but a team nonetheless. Her team.
She smiled. Duty called.