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“Should it really be this beautiful?” Sylvie asks, in the near quiet (if not for the asteroids falling all around them and the distant rumbling of celestial bodies cracking and falling apart above)
Loki laughs next to her, looking up at the shooting stars. “I don't know,” he confesses. “All the worlds I have seen die have been...significantly more violent.” He thinks of whether to tell her or not, and then does, “Asgard is destroyed in my timeline.” She drops her chin, face slackening. He swallows and scoffs cynically, “The only thing more beautiful than Asgard was it burning, I'll admit.”
She sides eyes him, holding back a smile. “You’re a vengeful thing.”
He scoffs, casts her looks back at her, “aren't you?”
She shrugs, “I wasn't there long enough for them to really give me much to hold against them.”
“Huh,” he says, and tries to imagine that.
They sit and stew in silence for another moment, Loki turning his head upwards to watch as the little meteors crisp and burn up as they enter the atmosphere.
Sylvie scoffs and coughs in disbelief next to him, “It’s a — I can't believe it.”
“Death?” he suggests.
She shakes her head slowly, “Everyone on this planet is about to die, and they know it. Including us.”
She laughs shortly, “I'm going to see myself die.”
“We’re not the same,” he says, because it seems important. It really does. They're not the same. Loki didn't even know there could be different versions of himself until...how long ago was it, a few days ago? Feels like forever. The existence of Sylvie certainly doesn't make him believe it anymore. There's not even the same in name.
She shrugs, “We’re Loki’s, aren't we?”
He huffs, leans towards her. “You're much better than me, Sylvie.”
She is silent for a moment and then she turns her head, says slyly, “I won't argue with that.”
There is silence again, then Loki shifts, his long legs folding up under himself.
“I’ve seen myself die before. They showed me a tape of my life, in the TVA.” She hums. “I...it’s a very long story but I was killed by a titan, and my brother was there —” he stops short, suddenly wondering, “Do you have a brother? A Thor?”
She nods, shakily, “yes.”
“I guess that’s something we share.”
She smiles weakly.
“Yes. Well, not much happened after that. He crawled over to where I lay, and the ship we were on exploded and — and, well, I suppose he died too.”
“Sorry.”
He does a strange, pinched-half laugh, a wounded sound really. “I hadn't quite realised that. Thor is dead.” He hangs his head, “My brother was always stronger than me,” he says, even a little sadly, “it seems odd.”
“I guess they pruned my Rhor,” she pounders, wistful and BLAH, “I…I guess my whole family was.”
“Sorry,” he says, this time.
“It's fine. Never really...it didn't last long enough to...to — for me to care.”
“Don't lie,” Loki scoffs, shaking his head.
She looks away.
Loki just watches. It occurs to him, suddenly and really, that she is the last person he will ever see, and she’s blinking back tears. He has the urge to comfort her, but that never really ends up working well for him, so he doesn't.
She takes a long time, or it seems so, she swivels her head around again and looks at him. The meteors are still falling and they haven't died yet, so it hasn't been that long.
“What did you do, to become a variant?”
It's an odd question, only it’s not, since this entire — everything is pretty odd.
“I stole the tesseract,” Loki says. “Well, I've stolen the tesseract before, but obviously that time wasn’t meant to be.” He shrugs, “I was recovering from a mild case of mind control at the time, to be fair. And they laid the opportunity at my feet.” He looks towards her, “You?”
She shakes her head. “I was just a kid. I have no idea.”
He goes to say something back, but is distracted by a huge chunk of the moon above them splitting off and landing across the lake. A shockwave starts, reverberating outwards, the smooth water is no longer smooth, and the wind gusts hot into their faces.
“You said we aren't meant to die,” she says, and watches the ground heave and shake, rolling in one unstoppable wave; one that reminds her of the kinder places she’s lived in, the ones that didn't see their apocalypse coming. Like Florida, 3307, and the children on the beach getting knocked down by waves, laughing as they get back up.
He shrugs next to her. “I guess I was wrong.”
She turns towards him, keeping her eyes away from their impending doom. It feels wasteful to look. Better to ignore for a moment more.
“Sylvie?”
She opens her mouth and then closes it a little frantically, the words stuck in her throat. He takes her hands the same time she takes his. “Loki, I —” she finally manages, fueled by his warm skin on hers — how long has it been, since she touched someone without the point of killing them?
He cuts her off, firm and just a little desperate, “Don’t look,” he says, and she doesn't and neither does he, just stares into her face, tired and determined, with that familiar grit around her mouth — the only things he finds in common between them are suddenly both uncountable and unheard of. They are the same person and have never even met each other at the same time.
The ground is shaking under them. “This is new for me, you know.”
“What?”
“Finally dying,” he grins, it's rather freeing, actually. To know he's not getting away with it this time. He's actually sorry, for once too. He looks at Sylvie. Right when it was getting good. She’s looking at him, that questioning look on her face, “It’s taken a few tries to get right,” he explains, and smiles to ease any pity she could find from that statement. She stares grimly back. She must know what it's like — to survive so much you doubt you can die anymore.
Loki thinks of the end of planets — falling into the void. He thinks of the Chitauri that greeted him, and their master. He thinks of fighting in New York, arrows exploding. Most of all, he thinks of being a kid again and swimming in the river in spring, and how they told him not to go where the current was strongest, and how of course he never listens. The current pulled him under, tugged him along the river, and Loki exhaled his breath early, and all his hope of saving himself dissolved into panic with that gasping silver breath whipped away from him. Then there was a distant splash, a body next to his, hands pulling him to the surface. That first gasp of fresh air was the freshest he’s ever felt, even though it was spluttering and expelling cold water. Are you alright, brother?
The roaring grows louder. She has to shout. “Do you regret it? Dying now?”
Loki opens his mouth to reply. The wave of living earth (or dying earth, really) envelopes them in an instant, before either of them can even process it. The ground heaves up, swallowing them in moondust and crushing rock. Loki is yanked away from Sylvie or Sylvie is yanked away from Loki but either way that tender grip, the two identical strangers, is severed.
Loki thinks: finally.