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The sky at the end of the world is cloudy, grey, miserable. The fallacy is almost tangible. He hears soft footfall behind him and tenses instinctively. But there’s no attack. Sylvie sits beside him in a near soundless motion. He breathes out, allows himself to relax. His lips quirk into a sad smile. It’s exhausting, being this on-edge all the time. He wonders how she does it.
That’s the difference between them, he thinks. They may have been born into the same family, been destined for the same fate - shared the same name too, once. But she’s lived a life he never would have survived. Next to her, with her callused hands and tangled hair, he truly feels like a prince in the most pathetic of ways. He feels too… clean. Coddled. Spoiled. All his past attempts at power seem childish - the actions of a snot-nosed brat vying for attention in his brother’s shadow.
“Alioth will hear you if you think any louder.” Sylvie nudges his shoulder with hers. His lips quirk again, the smile less sad this time. He turns his head to meet her eyes - eyes he could swear are the ones he’s met in the mirror his entire life.
She offers him a small, awkward smile. Another difference. Nature versus nurture. He’s spent his life hiding behind masks, illusions. Pushing his true feelings down deep. She, though, hides behind nothing. Her emotions sit on her face, her shoulders. She’s the definition of an open book, though he doubts she realises it. He wonders how long it’s been since she actually talked to anyone outside of the TVA, wonders if she ever tried to strike up conversation with people during the apocalypses she knew they would die in.
“I’m just… taking it all in.” He says.
She nods. Looks towards the horizon. They sit in silence for a minute or so.
“Mobius isn’t so bad.” She prompts, eyes darting towards him, a glint in them that he can place immediately. It takes all his effort not to roll his own. Of course she can tell.
“Or so good. I think that’s why we get along.”
He sees how she bites back a knowing smile. “He cares about you.”
His heart cartwheels. He feels too vulnerable. “It’s cold.”
“We don’t feel the cold.”
“How do you know we don’t?" He gestures to the skeletal house behind them. "There’s a crocodile wearing our crown in there, and you’d find it so hard to believe we’re different races?”
"So you aren't a Frost Giant?" She doesn't sound remotely convinced.
That's a far more loaded question than she seems to realise. The way she says it with such ease, apparently without the strings of shame, the needle prick feelings of worthlessness. He wonders if he'd find it so easy to say, if only his family had told him sooner.
"...Alright, fine. But that doesn't mean I don't know it's cold."
"You were trying to change the topic."
"I was not."
"You were too."
"I -" Loki stops, argument heavy on his tongue. There's an ache in his heart.
"No, go on. Deny it again."
"No, I - I forgot what this felt like. For a while there."
"Love?"
"No, no. This, the bickering."
Sylvie makes a questioning noise that catches against understanding in her throat. They sit in silence for a long minute.
"Do you miss him?"
Loki sighs. "More than I'd like to admit." He thinks on the last time he saw his brother, on screen at the TVA. Watching his own lifeless form flung to the ground. He wonders if Thor misses him too. "Do you?"
He watches her expression, the way the onset of grief ages her in seconds. Her eyes remain trained on the ground.
"I barely remember him."
He opens his mouth to respond, and then closes it. He wouldn't want pity. He expects she doesn't, either.
"I remember his face, though." She offers. "That incessant smile."
Loki snorts. "Yes. I think anyone would find that hard to forget."
"And how he used to beg for mother to braid his hair after he'd bathed, even if she was already doing mine."
"It was the only way we could get him to bathe, at one point."
Sylvie laughs outright. "And the week he spent where he wouldn’t let anyone touch his head. It took two hours to get a brush through it afterwards.”
Loki finds himself smiling. "I'd forgotten that."
"I remember it like it was yesterday." There's that grief again.
More silence.
"Loki?"
"Yes?"
“At the TVA. Were you going to tell me you loved me?”
He takes a breath. “Yes.”
“Why don’t you now?”
“Because I was wrong.” He forces himself to meet her eye again. "I think - I think I’ve just never had a friend before.”
Sylvie’s face flickers between emotions; relief, humour, understanding.
“Neither have I.”
“Do you think it’s strange that I like you?” He asks.
“Why do you say that?"
“I mean…” His mouth hangs open for a moment as he searches for the words. “Is it not narcissistic? Self obsessed?”
“I don't think so, no."
He stares at the ground for a moment, sucks his bottom lip into his mouth. He wants to say what he means.
“I just - I suppose I’ve just… never really gotten along with myself.”
She nudges his shoulder with hers again, prompting him to meet her eyes.
"Me neither."
He feels a tension drain out of him that he hadn't realised he was holding.
They lapse fully into a comfortable silence, staring out over the landscape together. He allows himself those few minutes to lean on her, shoulder to shoulder. That small amount of safe, reassuring contact.