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"Sylvie," Loki says, "do you care for me?"
If Sylvie had known how many people Loki had cared for over time, it would feel like less pressure. If she knew about Victor, it would be still less. If she knew about the lovers, the marriages, the children.
Loki isn't saying For all time. Loki is saying I'm afraid.
But Sylvie doesn't know any of that, so she panics. She does the thing she's best at: she runs.
Loki has been out of Sylvie's life for a long time, and good riddance. She barely thinks of him anymore. If she does think of Loki, it's not of the person she met, it's of the person she used to be. The person she's still mistaken for. The reason she's on the run.
Sylvie grew up in apocalypses. That does things to a person. She doesn't mind being half-feral, because she's isn't trying to make friends.
But she's so tired of running. The constant fear and adrenaline and distrust have worn her down until some day she just wants to stop and fight. For all she knows, the TVA might have forgotten about her. But if she were the TVA, she wouldn't forget. If she were the man at the end of time, she would remember Sylvie. The way he looked at her as if he knew every inch of her history makes her sick and furious.
There are places and times she could stop, but only for a little while. If the TVA hasn't forgotten, they'll find her when she starts creating Nexus Events.
Where can she go that won't do that?
She has an idea. She already thinks it probably won't work, but it's somewhere she belongs, if she belongs anywhere. She can't go to Asgard (wouldn't if she could), but she can go home.
She comes to Jotunheim in a time when she believes Laufey will be alive. She isn't sure what she's looking for, except maybe her mother. What she finds isn't quite that. She's always known about her parent. She's just never seen them. Laufey is tall and brutal, cold as ice, and when Sylvie walks in, she almost turns and runs again. But no, she has to take a chance. She's so tired.
"Mother," she says.
Laufey's eyes flash. "Loki." There's uncertainty in the rumbling voice.
Sylvie isn't much of a liar. That's odd, for someone who used to be Loki, but Sylvie hasn't been Loki for a long time.
"Not exactly," she says. "I was, once. But now I'm Sylvie. And I want to help you."
It seems like such a good idea. Laufey is everything she imagined. Intelligent, thoughtful, even kind. The mother she imagined. She considers, for once, trusting someone.
She stays a few weeks, pacing, purposeless. The other Jotuns don't talk to her. She's starting to think she won't be able to stay. But maybe if she's useful, she can get some of her own back.
One day, sitting shivering at the foot of Laufey's throne, she says, "Can I do anything for you? I can travel from one end of time to the other. There must be something." Is this where she stops running?
Laufey regards her. "One thing, perhaps. Something was taken from us. Taken by Odin and then lost in Midgard. It's just a simple thing, but with a great deal of sentimental value."
"What is?" Sylvie asks.
"A casket," Laufey says. "Containing an important Jotun artifact. I can tell you where to find it."
So Sylvie goes.
Sylvie isn't a trusting person, but she has blind spots. Family is one. Isn't it for everyone?
She hops around, asking questions, never stopping too long in one place. She finally gets a lucky break by monitoring people's search history with a program she wrote herself. It brings her to 21st Century Midgard, a time period that's saturated with the Loki Sylvie knew. She isn't aware of that, though.
She keeps walking into these things with her eyes open, missing all the context. Not that context ever helped Loki all that much. But at least she would have been prepared.
There's a woman named Verity Willis who has been googling very interesting terms. "cold box." "antique box cold." "frozen box." That's not conclusive, but it's enough for Sylvie to follow up on.
Verity lives in a little apartment in New York. Sylvie doesn't bother finding out more than that. She should probably have a plan. If she were Loki, she would, but Sylvie's plans usually involve a sword and not a lot else. She's sick of thinking of herself only in relation to Loki. She isn't Loki.
She knocks on Verity's door late one night, with no thought in her head except to draw her sword and demand to know what Verity is searching for.
Verity opens the door. She's got long red hair, currently messy from sleep, and she's wearing pajamas.
"What," she says, but not like a question. She's taking Sylvie in, horned helm to booted feet. "Loki?"
It occurs to Sylvie to lie. "Oh, uh, yes," she says.
Verity narrows her eyes. "Liar."
"No, I am," Sylvie says, surprised. She's not usually arguing this side. "Look at, uh. The horns."
"Asshole," Verity says. "I don't know who you are, and you clearly don't know who I am, either. I know when people are lying."
"I'm not lying," Sylvie insists weakly. "Loki can shapeshift. I'm Loki."
"I literally hear when people are lying," Verity says flatly.
And that's how things become complicated. Even when Sylvie tries to be Loki, Verity can't see it, and Sylvie falls immediately a little bit in love.
Sylvie gets her breath back and says, "My name is Sylvie. I'm a Variant of Loki. From another timeline."
Verity's face changes. "Oh. That wasn't a lie."
"I need your help," Sylvie says, which isn't what she meant to say, but isn't a lie. It also isn't the whole truth. She's already learning to evade Verity's power.
Verity lets her in, still keeping distance between them. When Sylvie doesn't do anything dangerous, Verity makes her a cup of hot cocoa and lets her sit on the couch.
"So, what's wrong?" she says, when they're both settled. Verity has a big hoodie on over her pajamas now. She's not any less attractive. It's very distracting.
"I found you online," Sylvie says. "I'm good with technology. I--" She searches for the parts that are true and finds herself explaining what it means to be a Variant, and what it means to be always running.
When she finishes, Verity says, "I'm really not used to Loki telling the truth."
"Don't call me that," Sylvie says, heated.
"So you're saying don't deadname you," Verity says dryly.
Sylvie isn't familiar with the term, but she knows what the two words mean separately, and they strike her in the heart. She didn't know she was allowed to be angry about being called Loki.
"Well, don't," she says.
"Oh," Verity says. "Yeah. Okay, I won't."
Sylvie hasn't stayed alive this long by lingering over guilt, but she does feel a little bad for what she has to do next.
The trouble is, she doesn't do it. She lets Verity fill the gaps with assumptions. Sylvie is running, Sylvie needs a place to hide. She came to Verity so that could happen. It's not true, but it seems true.
Verity lets her stay the night on the couch. She doesn't sleep at all, just lies waiting for the TVA to show up or the world to end.
In the morning, when those things haven't happened, Sylvie and Verity have cereal.
Verity tells Sylvie about her job. It's boring and she hates it, but she can do it from home, which is important to her. Sylvie can understand that. Verity tells Sylvie all about how she knows Loki, and although Sylvie can't tell which parts of it are true, it all sounds true.
"And where's Loki now?" Sylvie asks, trying to keep her voice neutral.
Verity sighs. "No idea. They disappear and show up. They're always getting 'reborn,' but they're the same Loki." She looks at Sylvie. "Not like you."
Sylvie is so fucked.
She ends up staying for a couple of weeks, restlessly haunting Verity's small apartment. Neither of them talks much, but they watch TV and eat together, and Sylvie feels like she's going to explode. Why does Verity trust her? Does Verity trust her? When is someone going to come and ruin this? When is Sylvie going to ruin it?
Because she does have to. She only has one family left, and she has to come through on her promise to Laufey. Three weeks in, Sylvie decides she can't wait any longer. She gets up in the middle of the night and goes to Verity's room.
Verity is asleep, one tattooed arm outside the blankets. Sylvie squints down at the tattoos. So pretty. So--There's something in there, a serpent, that makes Sylvie anxious, and she looks away.
What does it mean that Verity doesn't think Sylvie's whole existence is a lie? Sylvie never doubted it, but everyone else always did. She shakes the thought off. Laufey knows her, too.
She reaches down and touches Verity's temple.
Some of what she sees is what she expected. Verity alone. Verity hiding from the world. She doesn't run, but she does hide. Together, they'd be masters of avoidance. Sylvie sees memories of Loki and looks away from those.
What she's looking for is harder to find, but it's there. She feels the cold before she sees it. The casket, burning with ice, buried in the back of a closet. Sylvie gasps and digs further. A man. Verity's father. She pulls back and sees the house, the address, the street name.
What she hadn't expected were the other memories. She's overwhelmed by them suddenly, but when she's able to slow herself down, she begins to understand. Verity isn't just Verity. She has other memories, under those ones. Ones she may not even know about. In them, Sylvie sees Asgard, as it was before Sylvie was torn away from it. She sees Verity with a long red braid, laughing. Sees her with Loki. Sees her cry.
Distracted, Sylvie loses the thread of the enchantment. She stumbles backward, clutching her head.
"What the hell?" Verity shouts. "What were you doing in my head?" She's sitting bolt upright, away and furious.
"Nothing, I," Sylvie tries to pull herself together, flustered.
"Liar!" Verity screams. "Get the fuck away from me, okay? People like you are the reason I don't go out. God, I was stupid. Go away and leave me alone."
Sylvie runs. She runs and runs and doesn't stop until she's at the subway station, and then she keeps running.
Huddled in one corner of a late-night train, she pulls her hood up and catches her breath. So they've both lost Asgard. Verity isn't just Verity, she's Sigyn, an Asgardian girl. But like Sylvie, she isn't a normal Asgardian girl.
Still, Sylvie runs. She runs right back to Jotunheim, where Laufey is waiting for her.
Laufey takes the casket, turning it in huge blue hands. Sylvie fidgets. Maybe this is where she learns to calm her body and stop and stay. But Verity's apartment was clean and cool and safe, and now every instinct in her is telling her something is wrong.
Laufey opens the casket and the world freezes.
Sylvie grew up in apocalypses. She knows what they feel like. When this one starts, she is already running before she knows it. She runs, but she doesn't touch her TemPad. She always has to stay and watch it fall apart. It's safe, and it's familiar.
The cold starts in Jotunheim, but it spreads. It spreads to Asgard, to Midgard, to Alfheim. It spreads and spreads in a matter of hours, with Sylvie running through snow, then wading through it. She doesn't recognize the landscape until she realizes she's in New York again somehow. Just the end of the world again.
The TVA can't find her in an apocalypse, but Odin can. He comes crashing down onto the Manhattan street, riding that horrible horse of his.
"Loki," he says.
"No," Sylvie snaps, but her lungs feel frozen. She's a Jotun; she shouldn't freeze. But if she was really a Jotun, she wouldn't be suffering like this, and Laufey would love her.
She's hauled back to Asgard, the first place she was ripped out of. She wonders if she should be grateful.
It quickly becomes clear that gratitude is not in the cards. She's the worst thing she could be: a prisoner. Odin's fury at the freezing of the Realms is immense, and it seems he blames her. Well, fair enough. Because Sylvie isn't Loki, she doesn't even try to lie.
They punish her. Of course they do. She used to think nothing could be worse than being torn from Asgard, but now all the memories of her childhood there come rushing back. Asgardians are bullies. Asgardians are brutal.
She's chained in a dark cave, so deep in the earth that the cold barely penetrates it. She knows it's still there, though. She can feel it. Somewhere above her, a rustling begins.
"I'm not afraid," she says. It's not a lie so much as bravado. But there's nobody there to hear here. Was this really worth it?
Three things happen at once: she hears a dripping round, something strikes her face, and she's suddenly in pain. Something is burning her. She shouts, more in frustration than anything else. All this for a family that doesn't even want her. Just like all the families.
Loki has a story, and there are places in that story Sylvie could easily step into, but she doesn't know that. She's never heard those stories. She's been on the run; it's not like she has time to stop and read. She isn't sure how long she waits in the dark, anticipating the pain, then getting used to it.
Suddenly, it stops.
She risks opening her eyes. She's still in the cave, but the dripping has stopped. So has the noise. Everything. Time.
The man who remains is sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cave, lit by a candle in his hands, watching her critically. "Honey," he says.
"No," Sylvie says.
"I tried to tell you," he says. "There's really no getting rid of me. I'm a more amenable version than most, so don't complain. I do need to prune this total mess you've made, though."
Which means pruning her. Sylvie knows this dance. Time to run.
He Who Remains says, "You know what happens next" and she doesn't. She has no context.
Above her, the venom starts dripping again. The chains are heavy. Even without context, Sylvie knows these things are bad.
"You always end up here," He Who Remains says. "Isn't that nasty?"
Sylvie can't run this time, but she can fight. Even without a sword, she's got hands and teeth. If he gets too close, she'll bite him.
"If you're going to kill me, do it," she spits.
He hops to his feet. "That's not why I'm here," he says. "You'll probably understand someday. In fact, I know you will. At the end of time."
"What are you talking about?" Sylvie snaps.
He laughs. "Sorry, I'm not He Who Explains. You'll find out. Eventually. Right now, I just need to prune the timeline where you bring Laufey the Casket."
Sylvie thinks about this. The venom is making it difficult. "Does that mean Verity won't know what I did?"
"We'll see," He Who Remains says.
"You're a little bastard," Sylvie says. This feels more like familiar ground.
"Yes," he agrees. "But first–"
In the corner of the cave, light has been growing, reddish and infinitely changing. He Who Remains seems to suddenly notice and turns to it.
"Some things," he says, "happen the same way no matter what." He sounds infinitely sad when he says that, or afraid.
The light resolves itself into a portal, yawning open in the darkness. Sylvie fights against the chains. Is this something worse? When she looks back at He Who Remains, he's gone.
Out of the portal steps a man, or at least something shaped like a man. He's tall and he's armored in steel, with a green cloak over it. He's wearing a mask of steel, too. Nothing inside Sylvie reacts. But behind him, Verity comes through, and Sylvie's heart panics.
"You were right," the man says. He inclines his metal head toward her. "Loki."
"Sylvie," Verity corrects. "Can you get those chains off her, or what?"
"Of course," the man says. He makes a complex gesture and the chains withdraw. Sylvie quickly rolls out of the way of the venom, which continues to splash on the ground.
"We should run," Sylvie says, grabbing Verity's hand.
Verity hesitates. "Believe me," she says. "I would love that. But there's not really anywhere to run. It's all frozen."
"All of this is going to be pruned," Sylvie says.
"No idea what that means," Verity says.
Sylvie doesn't like the intent way the robotic head of the witch man is turned toward her. "Can you get us out of here?" she asks.
"I can," he says. "You really don't know me?"
"No idea, not interested," Sylvie says. "We need to go."
The man laughs. "Very well, Sylvie," he says. He presses his hand into the air and another red portal opens. They step through into the coldest place Sylvie has ever been. Colder than Jotunheim. It's a dark castle with a storm raging outside the windows. There are no fires and there is no warmth.
Run, her instincts urge. But Verity is still holding her hand and won't run with her.
The robot witch man waves a hand and torches spring to life.
"Why did you help me?" Sylvie demands, turning to Verity.
"I saw Odin take you," Verity says. "So I came. I bet that was fuckings stupid, becaues you're a liar and a traitor, but I know what I'd do if Odin took Loki. So."
"What would you do?" Sylvie asks. Her head is spinning.
"I'd find their stupid husband and make him help," Verity says.
Sylvie has a lot of feelings very fast. "Oh," she says.
The man, whose name turns out to be Victor, gets them something warm to drink. It all seems improbable, much more of a trick than Laufey's court was. Outside, the storm rages and rages. Sylvie wants for all of this to go away, for the branch to be pruned and everyone to forget. But when the the storm stops suddenly, nothing else changes.
"We're still here," Sylvie says.
"This place is protected," Victor says. "Do you assume I know nothing of magic?"
"Yuck," Sylvie says. His arrogance is intolerable.
He looks at her, or at least his mask head turns in her direction. "You're so like Loki," he says. "Loki as Loki was. When we met."
"And what's that like?" Sylvie doesn't think she'll appreciate the answer.
"A monster," Victor says. "An animal." But he doesn't sound disgusted.
"Fuck off," Sylvie says.
Verity laughs.
They stay for a week, maybe a little longer. Sylvie loses track. She keeps thinking it's time to run, but she doesn't. There are more warm drinks. There's a horrible little girl who lives there, and she is the rudest person Sylvie has ever met except for herself. It doesn't feel like home, because Sylve doesn't know what home should feel like, but it feels good.
Eventually, Verity says, "We should really go check on my apartment." She hasn't let Sylvie apologize and she hasn't forgiven her, but she seems to be giving Sylvie a chance anyway.
"Probably for the best," Victor says. "Loki is going to turn up eventually, and I'm not sure how pleased anyone will be with that."
Sylvie agrees. She wants to leave Loki in the past. Loki has always been her past.
Victor leaves Verity and Sylvie alone. Sylve knows what she's supposed to ask, but she doesn't know how to ask it.
"I don't have a house," she says instead.
"I know," Verity says.
"I like you," Sylvie says. The words stick in her throat and come out a little strangled.
"Oh no," Verity says. "No, hell no. I dodged a bullet on that with Loki. This is not happening."
"What's happening?" Sylvie asks, vexed. This is not the response she'd hoped for.
"I'm not going to sleep with you or them," Verity says. "Sorry, but I'm just not--no."
Sylvie chews her lip. "You don't like me," she says.
Verity sighs, relenting a little. "I do," she says. "That's part of the problem. I like you way too much. But I'm not a whole lot of fun to date."
Fun. Sylvie wasn't really thinking about fun. "Yeah?" she says.
"Yeah. You know I'll always know if you're lying."
Oh, that. "So?" Sylvie says. "I don't spend a lot of time lying. Have I?"
Verity wraps her arms around herself. Sylvie tries not to feel distracted and worked up about her tattoos. "It's not just that. I don't like going out. I don't like sex. I'm not--You can probably just find a person who's a whole person out there."
Sylvie contemplates this. She doesn't know what a "whole person" is like.
"I don't care about the sex," she says. "And I don't go out places."
"You can't enchant me," Verity says.
"I know," Sylvie says. "I won't."
Verity nods. "You mean that."
When she offers her hand, Sylvie doesn't run.