Work Text:
She had looked.
Often, waking up in a comfortable bed with clean sheets and comfy blankets, warm and even clean herself - god, how few times that had ever happened! - feeling rested and content she would have to remind herself that she had looked for him.
On world after world, in battlefields and palaces, ruins and wilderness, going to places where even her power and strength were threatened by the sheer cruelty of the environment, Sylvie had searched for Loki. Her Loki, the Loki who had saved her, even if he didn’t know it yet.
Through ever more branching universes she had looked.
There had been so many Lokis. And so many Richards.
Apparently, the two things that the universes all loved were variants of Loki and Nathanial Richards. The first were never the one she sought, and the second she killed over and over again, or tried to, sometimes having to flee to survive to keep looking.
That was how she had ended up here, in this universe, snug in a big sweater that had been the first piece of clothing she had ever been given rather than stolen or enchanted someone into making for her, watching the autumn leaves fall onto the lawn where nearly a year before she had fallen, bleeding and desperate, from a hastily opened portal, barely escaping Kang and his army.
That Kang, and that army.
“You're thinking about him again, aren’t you?” Nora had come out, holding two beers, without Sylvie having noticed. In a mere year, her heightened vigilance had calmed to the point that she could be snuck up on by a customer service manager wearing hiking boots and clinking two bottles.
Taking one of the beers and then a deep pull so she wouldn’t have to answer right away, Sylvie looked at Nora’s profile where she settled in next to her on the steps. Even after many months she still could not quite figure out who or what Nora reminded her of. It was always on the tip of her thoughts. But then, a life lived in fast forward, forever on the run, meant that her brain had tended to discard anything that wasn’t vital for her survival or her mission.
“It's ok if you don’t want to talk about him, it's just I can always tell when he’s on your mind. You look… wistful, and guilty.” Then she reached out and touched a strand of her hair, letting it run through her fingers. “The blond is almost entirely grown out. I like it like this, but I can cut it and touch up the dye for you, if you want.” Nora took a drink, her long throat stretched, and Sylvie leaned over nuzzling up to it, teasing her earlobe.
“You always smell so lovely. So warm…”
Sylvie wasn’t sure if she had ever been warm before Nora.
Turning her head, so their noses all but touched, Nora’s big brown eyes were serious, “I don’t want you to think you can’t talk about him. Or that you can’t keep looking. If you want this to be your… base of operations I am fine with that. I’m not going anywhere. I love this house too much.”
“I-” Sylvie never found it hard to talk. Fast-talking, charming, enchanting, had been her weapons when a sword or a punch to the face wouldn’t do. But talking about anything sincere, or real, was still like working an atrophied muscle for her. Only with Loki had she even come close to such talk, and that was in the midst of running and fighting and disaster so she hadn’t felt the ripping pain of it until after she had kissed him and shoved him away, refusing to listen, to give him a chance, to -
She still thought she was right. Not for the sake of her revenge, but for the sake of everything. Despite the madness and war brought by fucking Richards over and over again, it was better that the universes break free. That time and free will prevail.
But maybe, had she been able to trust, they might have thought of another way. A way with less death and suffering. A way together.
“You’re gone again,” Nora said. “Maybe your body should go where your mind is off to.”
Then she pressed her mouth to Sylvie’s, gently, firmly, a little open, so they could go deeper, if they wanted. She tasted of hops and there was a little cinnamon sugar from the cake they’d had before still on her lips, adding a roughness to the tenderness. Heat to the warmth.
Pushing Nora down, so her back was on the wooden porch, her short, brown hair halo’d out, she wanted to straddle her. Run her hands under the heavy, worn hoodie she wore, overwhelm her, instead, she leaned on one hand and shook her head a little, “I don’t want to leave you, but I -”
Again, she couldn’t talk.
“You owe him. And you love him. Ah,” Nora reached up and put her hand over Sylvie’s mouth, “shut up. I know you may not know how you love him, but you do. He is your friend. Your first friend. Your best friend, and that is more than enough reason to keep looking. It doesn’t diminish anything between us. Anyway, from what you said, I don’t know if you could have loved me if you didn’t have him in your life first. You would have enchanted me, stolen all of my groceries and first aid supplies and booked it.”
Sylvie laughed and lay down beside Nora, taking her hand. They looked at the peeling roof of the porch together. “I couldn’t enchant you. I did try but your mind was too strong.”
“And you were passing out from blood loss. Don’t forget that.”
“I’m not likely to. It was the closest call I’d had in a long time.”
They were quiet for a time, and then Nora sat back up, leaning her elbows on her knees, taking another sip of beer. When she turned to look back down the light of the almost gone sun filtered through the gold and green leaves softened her features, blurred them a little, and for a moment Sylvie thought she could see exactly what she’d looked like as a girl.
A hard, sharp pain, like a lance of light shot through Sylvie’s brain, and heart, and maybe even her liver, breaking open a locked door, an abscess, or maybe cutting a knot, she didn’t know which, she just knew that it hurt, it was agony, it was a wonderful pleasure, it was delight, it was another atrophied, forgotten thing of her that suddenly was forced to stretch and move and be recognized.
Nora grabbed her when she bolted upright, clutching her chest and head. “Sylvie! What’s wrong? What-”
“I know what my Nexus event was.”
Sylvie loved her brother and her mother and even her father, though he was distant and busy and rather cold. She loved the big castle of gold where she could run through the halls and play, and the gardens and the Bifrost where she and Thor were forever trying to get Heimdal to send them to fun-sounding worlds like Quink and Pangur and Midgard.
He never did, and Sylvie swore that someday there was no place she wouldn’t be able to go.
Sylvie loved learning magic, and playing tricks on people, and learning to ride, and her first sword, and her first lessons from her older sister Hela, who liked her more than she did Thor and so taught her ways to use his size against him.
She loved so many things.
But most of all she loved her best friend.
She had brown eyes and brown hair and her family did something in the palace, Sylvie did not know what, and some people said it was inappropriate for her to be so close to the princess, to a goddess, when she wasn’t even of noble birth.
Neither of them cared nor listened.
For years and years they were inseparable, each other’s shadow, should it be Sylvie studying, sharing what she had learned with her friend, or following her friend to the kitchens, the basements, the back halls, and storage rooms, everywhere that a princess would be expected to not merely not go, but be barely aware of.
Like all children, no matter how close, they would fight, never anything serious, though they would both run to their mother’s in tears from time to time after one of them had gone too far. Sylvie playing too mean a trick or her friend teasing her for being a princess and therefore spoiled. But they always made up, the fights quickly forgotten as one of them thought of a new bit of trouble to get into.
Sometimes they even let Thor play with them.
One day, Odin surprised Sylvie with a gift to celebrate the day he had brought her to Asgard. A marvelous set of toys, carved by the finest craftspeople on Asgard.
There was a dragonship, and a valkyrie upon a winged horse, her sister’s great wolf Fenris, a winged serpent, and even some Einherjar. Sylvie, who was Loki then, had loved it more than any other toy she had, both for how beautiful they were, and because Odin had given them to her with his own hands, tousling her hair and smiling.
Needless to say, she refused to let anyone else play with them. Not Thor or any of his friends, not Sif, with whom she practiced fighting, not even her best friend.
One day, Sylvie had taken the wooden box that held them out onto one of the balconies that looked out over the great river that cut across Asgard and fell into space so she could fight a great battle, her Valkyrie saving the palace itself from the wicked wyrm Níðhǫggr, who had risen from the roots of the Yggdrasil to kill the AllFather.
“May I play, too?” Her friend had found her there. “I know I cannot be a Valkyrie, but I could be one of the guards. Or one of the sailors on the Dragonship.”
Before Sylvie could answer her friend reached out a tentative hand and stroked the winged horse’s mane, her eyes wide at how beautiful it was.
A shouted “no” and a shove sent her friend sprawling.
Rather than cry, her friend took up the Valkyrie and ran. Sylvie was taller and faster and she snatched at her, yelling that she hated her, that they weren’t friends anymore.
Her friend, cornered, climbed onto the wide railing of the balcony, running along it. They had both done it so many times, getting into bad trouble whenever they were caught. Sylvie clambered up as well, chasing her, managing to snatch the toy from her.
Her friend fell.
Her friend fell towards the river.
Sylvie could see her face now, her eyes massive with shock, and the sheen of the rainbow light from the fine mist of the falls and the golden light of the palace, had made her look beautiful and terrible.
Throwing herself flat on the wide, marble banister, Sylvie reached, with her hand, with her magic, with more than she knew she had in her, and the power of her seidr caught her friend and pulled her back up and into her arms. They held each other, and swore they would never, ever tell anyone what had happened, tears wetting each other’s faces and clothing.
“You can have my toys, all of my toys,” she had sobbed to her friend, lying but meaning it in that moment.
When they heard voices coming - Frigga and her handmaids no doubt - Sylvie had used her magic again to hide the tears streaks on their cheeks. Her friend ran off to do whatever chores she was shirking, and Sylvie went back to playing, holding the secret of her magic close.
That was when the TVA came.
And Sylvie knew, she wasn’t meant to have saved Sigyn.
“You look so much like her,” Sylvie touched Nora’s face, her hair, her arm, “I didn’t know it, I didn’t remember it, until now. So much. I even… when I didn’t want to be Loki any more, when it hurt too much to be Loki and not know what that meant, or who that was, I think I took my name from her.”
“Her name was Sylvie?” Nora said, smiling at her, her eyes glittering with tears for some reason. Sylvie still didn’t understand how everyone’s emotions worked, no matter how many minds she enchanted.
“No. No, it wasn’t. There was another girl I knew named Sylvie, but she was more of what you would call a frenemy. I think I confused her name because I confused so many things back in those first years. I was so scared all of the time, and the memories of home made me feel worse because I could never go there again, so I made myself forget everything I could. Especially my mother, and Thor. And Sigyn.”
“Sigyn.”
Nora saying that name sent another shiver through Sylvie.
“You are right,” Sylvie stood up, gazing down at her lover, “I do need to keep looking. I owe him that, and I want it. I am not letting Richards, or the Multiverse, or anything else separate me from those I love ever again. I know he’s out there. Surviving, and fighting, and trying to be better, and I want him to know that I am better, too. That I am ok.”
She put down her hand and pulled Nora up into her arms, holding her close, whispering in her ear, “But not until tomorrow.”
Now the shiver went through Nora, and this time when they kissed it was not gentle.