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Chapter Text

𝐈.

'𝐔𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐥, 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲, 𝐈 𝐟𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐢𝐝𝐞. 𝐒𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐈 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐰 𝐮𝐩; 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝𝐬. 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐈’𝐥𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐞.'

Sylvie Laufeydottir learns early to kill first, die last. She's not used to the sight of blood on her hands, because despite the fact that all of the daughters of Asgard learn to be warriors like their brothers, Sylvie is a princess. That means they teach her diplomacy before they give her a sword.

Diplomacy, however, isn't a great deal of use at the ends of a thousand worlds, because shouting at a tsunami isn’t particularly efficient. So the TVA trains her out of habits that were long instinctual, because they don’t care about paltry concepts such as justice and truth and never having done anything wrong. And instead Sylvie learns to get her hands on the few weapons that hold fast against them.

Enchantment comes first, because if nothing else, it’s practical and it comes naturally to a Loki, especially one who always knew she was a Frost Giant, because Odin doesn’t try to hide power from what he knows could be an asset in his hands. (Frigga’s barely around, in this timeline. Perhaps Sylvie’s crime was scaring her would-be mother away). Odin only taught her the basics (because he’ll always prefer Thor) but she learns to expand on that quickly. Soon Sylvie is no longer running from fights but controlling them, in the minds of those who are doomed. It’s good practice, she thinks, and they’re nothing but fresh meat anyway. She’s seen enough apocalypses by now to know that that’s always the case.

It’s no use trying to make friends down here, whether she’s on Vormir or Asgard or Earth. Sylvie Laufeydottir grows up in the hulls of sinking ships and in the epicentres of earthquakes and on the fringes of invasions, and everyone always dies . She had a friend, once. In the quiet of a long night before an artificially mutated virus takes the people of Kalu, she meets a girl who introduces herself as Luna. Luna, for the glowing green-tinted moon of the planet’s orbit. “I’ve always liked the colour green,” says Sylvie, half-smiling as she meets Luna’s eyes, looking up from the pack of playing cards on the table. She doesn’t know the rules, so Luna wins every game. Sylvie doesn’t mind, because she’s not alone right now. It’s been a long time since she could have said that last.

“So do I,” says Luna softly, careful not to wake her Pa. “It reminds me of nature. The natural world.”

There is nothing natural about the sickening chartreuse colour the skin of her dead body takes the next day.

So no, Sylvie never had something as simple as friends. Because she remembers the tears she cried that morning too.

Crocodile tears, an agent of the TVA says the next time they see her. A Loki could never be anything but ingenuine. Those words never seemed to stop ringing around her head. They don’t for a hundred years, anyway. No more niceties for Sylvie, she thinks. You used up that privilege long ago. 

It’s just her and the trusty Tempad and her magic for near a thousand years after that.

They catch a thousand other Lokis but they never catch her. For a long time, she struggles to care for them amongst all the time spent surviving. Her control of her magic improves, she learns to pick out the apocalypses where she can stay the longest. She learns to survive if not thrive, and soon Sylvie Laufeydottir is no longer a lost little girl finding her way at the end of the world, but a woman with a goal—to end the corruption of the TVA for every other Loki that comes after her. A young woman who likes the colour green not just because it suits her, but because it reminds her of what she has lost. 

When she meets Loki Laufeyson, Sylvie thinks that she’s suitably unimpressed.

Lamentis is not a place for any Loki to find themselves, because it’s utterly, undeniably stupid. Nobody gets off this planet alive, and especially not when they’re a Tempad down. And this other version of her is slightly—highly—stupid. It’s like babysitting a toddler, albeit a toddler that looks and acts a lot like her.   That frustration seeps into her mind, stronger than anything else she could feel right now, and even the promise of imminent death doesn't quite sway her from those emotions. The bunker, the old woman, the train. Everything he does takes her one step further away from the TVA, and for a couple split seconds she actually manages to wonder if they're all in on this, playing some twisted game of cat and mouse with her as they close further and further in on their target. Their Variant, they call her. Sylvie's just pretty sure the Time Keepers can't take anything other than a well-oiled machine of workers in their world, eyes facing forward and unquestioning.

She's pretty sure that she'll become one of those forgotten agents if she ever gives into this Loki, who's... okay, perhaps a little more intelligent than she gave him credit for. And that takes them to the Ark. 

Sylvie Laufeydottir tends to stay away from big cities whenever she can, because there's always a chance that someone survives those almost-apocalypses, and the nexus events thouse result in are never fun. That, and cities become violent in their last days, especially if they know what's coming. They're protesting in the streets on Lamentis, pulling buildings down and killing guards and setting fire to everything in their sights.

For all this is one of the worst apocalypses to find oneself in, it's surprisingly meek for certain doom.

Loki doesn't seem to agree, though, because he's as panicked as she's ever seen one of them act, and she was pretty goddamn paranoid a few hours back. "They're going to let these people die," he mutters, and there's emotion there that makes Sylvie start. Because it's been so long that she's damn desensitised to these things now, and she's sure the TVA is as well. If she'd had a second to pause, then, she might have considered this Variant of herself, wondered what made him different from all of the others. But, unfortunately, she was doing her best at that point not to get murdered by falling moon rock, which was actually rather distracting. 

But then she has a moment later. When the two of them are sitting and watching the sky and she swallows and tells him about Asgard. About her life. It's been a long time since she's told anyone anything. It's been a long time since anyone has cared.

"Do you think what makes a Loki a Loki," she asks, "Is the fact that we're destined to lose?"

"No," he says. 

Which is a revelation, to say the least.

Maybe he’s just bigheaded, which is a real possibility, because most of them are, but there’s something underneath all of the layers she’s seen while they were on Lamentis that uncovers itself in the face of doom. Something genuine. And just for a second, she thinks that maybe they’re not going to lose this fight after all.

A little optimism, after all, never hurt anyone but Sylvie. 

Which of course is when the TVA decides to come back and ruin it all again. 

It’s funny, how she spent all of this time quietly suspecting deception, but when they do get captured she never suspects this Loki once. Oh, she suspects something he did, but not purposefully. Something like breaking the Tempad but on an utterly different scale; a scale that denies her even the small freedoms she had in roaming the end of the world, alone, scavenging for food in trash heaps and finding the piece of herself that was lodged deep inside her while water seeps into a submarine.

B-15 gets her out, and for a short while, Sylvie wonders if it is going to happen. It is killing the Time-Keepers, but she’s never given that thought freedom in her mind, because thinking it can be done only dishes out useless hope to the begging wishes in her mind that want vengeance.

(Vengeance because she doesn’t miss Odin but she misses Thor and Lady Sif and the Warriors Three, who all were around. And though she barely remembers them anymore she holds on to those blips of a dream fiercely, because even she learns, slowly, to know that there should be hope for a life other than running from the TVA).

And then they’re not fucking real, and for a second everything just grinds to a halt in Sylvie’s mind. 

A thousand years. Of waiting and wishing and avoiding all distractions in her path, in the hope that one day she’ll find her way out, and they’re not. Fucking. Real.

And then he’s gone too.

By principle, Sylvie Laufeydottir does not have friends, mainly because she remembers Luna, and how utterly helpless she felt that day she was unable to save her from that inextricable fate. By principle, Sylvie Laufeydottir does not become attached and she does not care. But it’s hard to deny that Loki didn’t care in return. 

So maybe, maybe, she gets to care a little bit as well. 

Ravonna, Miss Minutes, the guards. They all point her to the end of time, and so that’s somewhere she goes willingly, in the end. Into the void that every other Loki before her succumbed to. Briefly, she lets herself wonder if Ravonna might be lying, if that might be the end of Sylvie Laufeydottir, but the TVA have never been liars. Just assholes through and through. And they like to tell her what they think is the truth, anyway. There is no space for a Loki on the Sacred Timeline. The crimes you’ve committed are unforgivable. You don’t understand concepts like love or friendship. A Loki never could.

And so she never did.

𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬? ‘ 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞, 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲. ’ 

But now a couple. Even looking out into the big black void that is Alioth, both of them find a place to care about each other, like siblings until the end. 

Sylvie barely remembers Thor. This is more real. It’s strange. It’s almost happy, for all that they’re probably going to die anyway. 

It feels like both of them have been given a chance. 

So she gazes into the eyes of the void, and she smiles a little. We could make it, she thinks. 

This apocalypse is lovelier than all of the others.

Chapter Text

𝐈𝐈. 

'𝐈 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐨𝐤𝐚𝐲.'

There are several problems with being burdened with glorious purpose. First being this; what exactly is his goal?

A long time ago, Loki Laufeyson might have said conquest. It was what Odin had raised them for, primarily, of course. To rule the Nine Realms, of which their home was only one. Later, Loki might have claimed Jotunheim to be his home too, but the fact remained; Odin raised his sons to rule, never mind who they truly belonged to. 

Thor’s supposed to inherit, so Frigga trains her younger son with magic, and soon he’s better than her too. Casting illusions, of power, of vulnerability, of safety, planting ploys and questions. It's an easy way to fight, especially when Thor has his hammer and the Warriors Three follow him into battle. It's easy to hang back and do exactly what he's good at, it's easy to be Loki, even if Loki is an outsider and a magician and a strange little boy with too much to say for himself. Only in battle, though.

Then Thanos comes with a promise for a few particularly unpleasant few years, and he makes good on that promise. 

Loki wanted to rule too, of course; otherwise, there's little use for a Frost Giant when he has Thanos' children. But that doesn't change the fact that nothing about being a servant of the Mad Titan is pleasant. Thor thinks he's dead, Frigga thinks he's dead, Odin thinks he's dead (and if he's honest, there's no promise that Odin would come back for him anyway), and there's no one left to fend for Loki but Loki. And resistance in that place... resistance didn't end well. That was what happened to Nebula. At least he's a little more useful than her, in Thanos' mind. He can (if he wants to) be subtle. And that's an honest virtue, even in a place that stinks of pain and death.

New York, Thor, the Avengers. More than once he wanted to drop his guard and go to his brother, or tell them about the threat that was coming, but there was never a chance for that, and why would he, anyway? Loki Laufeyson was the God of Mischief, god of lies. There was no true reason to trust him, not in this eventuality.

Not, he learns a few days later, in any eventuality. 

They hunt Lokis at the TVA, because according to the glorious purpose of the Timekeepers, they're not supposed to exist. Maybe the temptation to live up to their title disrupts the precarious balance they've created in the Sacred Timeline. Maybe they just find them annoying. Maybe hunting Lokis is a fun sport for them to watch, down there in their mysterious chambers. "The TVA has pruned a lot of these guys," Mobius says, shooting a glance at Loki. He doesn't really know how to react to that except to shrug apologetically. Besides, he doesn't really care. Too many people have tried to kill him before for it to particularly sound like a threat anymore.

And yet, then he watches the recording.

He watches his mother die. He watches himself unable to stop it. He watches himself betray Thor and Odin again and again, then he watches Odin forgive him even as he dies. He wonders if his father might have had good intentions, hidden back in the unknowable recesses of a king's mind. He watches Ragnarok, from the confines of a cramped spaceship with what survives of Asgard, and is constantly aware that there are not enough people on that ship. He watches the end of the world.

(Later, he'll wonder if Sylvie ran to that apocalypse. He'll wonder if he could have found her sooner. If it would have made any difference.)

And then he watches himself die. 

Well, maybe he should have expected it. The Mad Titan always came for his prey eventually. And it's self-centred and egotistical and stupid to think that just because Loki was Loki, he might have survived that betrayal, or so he thinks. And yet, for a short minute, Loki knew he had hope. When that screen flashes ‘End of File’ and Loki’s still sat there in that time cell, watching Thor alone, all of that is crushed in an instant. He can’t go back; the TVA won’t let him. He’s been here for a day and he knows how the TVA works; polished, straightforward, and geometrical, everything a Loki shouldn’t be. Everything the world shouldn’t be, he thinks, though that might just be the lessons of his upbringing that wormed his way into his head and stayed there. It’s sort of twisted, to trap the God of Mischief (chaos) in a place that’s as orderly as this; a crooked juxtaposition that serves only to hurt. But then the first vestiges of a plan begin to form in his mind.

It’s going to be his one day. 

Or, less so Loki’s own. Those dreams of dictatorship vanished with the knowledge of what happened to Thor and Frigga after the fact of his last attempt (one part nags at him that he’d been nudged to that anyway, he’d had no free will, he’d been tasked with keeping to the Sacred-fucking-Timeline and he’d done his job perfectly up until now). But to find more than a flimsy imitation of free will on this timeline, in order to save his mother, he needs to get himself an audience with the Timekeepers. 

And he needs to find something worthy to offer them, but that’s a very secondary goal in the shadow of the first. He’s always been good enough at improvisation, anyway. He’d figure it out. The God of Mischief needs to improvise to plot his schemes, even though they seem like children’s games now. 

Then he meets Sylvie.

It’s a game of chance, following these variations in the timeline. In a way, the TVA and it’s targets were the only people with freedom in the universe, which means he can do whatever he wants, assuming he can get away with it. More than once, he wondered exactly what would have happened if he’d followed Mobius’ voice and not stepped through that portal, if he would have gotten another chance to meet her again—if she’d even want to, if she had failed the first time. One day later he’ll ask Sylvie if they would have, and they’ll give some glorified version of a yes or no, but it doesn’t matter what they say.

Because Loki Laufeyson is the God of Mischief and new games, and he follows the Variant to Lamentis.

Okay, so maybe it’s not immediately a stellar relationship. Maybe they try to kill each other a few times before they sit down and have a conversation, but what could you expect from two Lokis? But Lamentis takes something from him as much as it gives. 

People die in the apocalypse—it’s kind of a given. And yet, watching them protest and fight and beg, even, at the end, hoping the collapse of the Ark is some twisted play to throw the paupers off the scent of the real one, something in Loki finally understands how it feels to be under the thumb of something that he can’t reason with. “They’re going to let these people die,” he says, the realisation striking him and leaving him cold. It’s callous; there’s no comfort for the doomed in this place. Only the reassurance that soon their fear would be over.

And Sylvie is used to this.

More than anything else; more than the revelation that all of the TVA agents are variants, more than his love for Mobius, more than his pursuit of free will and being yanked out of his timeline by an authoritarian, well, authority, that’s what convinces him that the Time Variance Authority is evil. Because no one deserves to see an apocalypse and feel used to it.

The TVA, Mobius’ jeers, the Timekeepers. They’re not real, but at that point Loki only really cares because the others do; it doesn’t look much like there’s any getting out of this one for any of them.

'𝐖𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐭.'

He did believe it, he guessed, because he’s a Loki, which if nothing else makes him egotistical. Sylvie probably shares that in heaps, because they’re the same. They’re Variants of each other, even though they’d never shared a life, but even knowing that Loki begins to think of her as his sister. Loyalty to the end, stretching through time. He wonders what the TVA would think of that, this new Loki, these new Lokis, an actual team that trusted each other. He’s heard the insults; Mobius has said them to him straight;

'𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧'𝐭 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐋𝐨𝐤𝐢. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐮𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬, 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬, 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞. 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐬.' 

So maybe Loki Laufeyson isn’t going to kill the founder of the TVA—but maybe Sylvie Laufeydottir can.

And then they reach the end of the world. 

Alioth is Garmr, the bloodstained guardian of Hel’s gate, and Sylvie is she who tames it, she who kills  it. She teaches him a lot of things, though he'll probably never admit that to her. But when the two of them pass the gate at the end of time, he begins to wonder. Sylvie hesitates, and with a deep dawning realisation, he realises that they both got so caught up in this quest that they never consider what they'd do when they got here; it was never even their choice to go to the Time-Keepers. "Everything okay?" He asks.

It's quite obvious to tell (because they have the same tells) that Sylvie definitely isn't. 

Miss Minutes, 'He Who Remains' (which, by the way, is a dumb villain name), a dozen new revelations. The universe wants to break free, and so it manifests chaos. And this man who has claimed himself to be all-knowing stamps down in freedom in every way—he stamps down on free will. As the God of Mischief, Loki should probably have something to say about that. He should have someone to kill in response to it, but honestly? For someone who was never particularly good at considering the consequences of his actions, he seems to be doing that a lot now. 

Sylvie is less inclined. 

'𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐈 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮? 𝐇𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐚 𝐜𝐨𝐧?'

And fuck. He kind of wishes it was, because if it was he wouldn't be letting his heart sink, and he wouldn't be fighting just to stop her but to kill her too and everything would be much easier, kind of like entering a ring of gladiators with the intention to sit on the throne of champions. But no. "Really? Is that what you think of me, after all this time?" he asks. Maybe she never really trusted him in the first place, maybe all of this was a means to an end and to creating chaos and to turning her back on everything the TVA ever stood for, even if a tiny portion of those intentions were good. But no, neither of them believe that; all that's happened is that they've reached a crossroads, and for once, being variants of each other doesn't make that the same. Loki Laufeyson had a sister, and in an instant that sister is gone. 

She sends him back to the TVA with a knife in his stomach and a scream and a sorry. And all that's left from there is to build back up. 

'𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮? 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞?'

And Mobius doesn't even remember him either.