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"You deserve to be alone, and you will always be alone." This phrase, thrown by Sif, arrives again now, as if the time loop had broken, ruptured in space like a rubber band, and its loose end slapped him in the face.
Loki is standing before Mobius and B-15, overwhelmed by confusion and grief, while Mobius - Mobius! - keeps asking his name again and again, while B-15 looks at him like he's a stranger, while Sylvie's voice still rings in his head, "I'm not you," and he feels a tight lump in his throat.
Stop. There's no time for weakness. B-15 quickly realises he is a threat and calls for reinforcements.
He gives them an unnoticed glance, sharp and quick as a sweep of the sword he can't reach right now. Since there is no sword, he needs a weapon, but which of the two? Not the tempad, Loki decides instantly.
Though B-15 doesn't remember him at all, he remembers her weak points and vulnerabilities perfectly. Before Mobius can intervene, Loki ducks under the huntress' arm and snatches the prune stick from her.
"Hey, hey," says the analyst peacefully and throws up his hands, while he and B-15 back a few steps away. "Slow down, friend, let's talk first!"
Friend.
Loki bites his lip on the inside. Even if this Mobius isn't the real one, not the Mobius who knows him well, and B-15 is not the original B-15, Loki isn't going to fight anyway. There is only one way now.
So Loki looks at the orange, buzzing, hornet-like light at the end of the prune stick and points it at himself.
How bitterly he would smile if he only knew that Sylvie had done exactly the same thing before!
... "Sylvie!"
There is only silence in reply, dead as dust, dry as grass.
"Sylvie!!!"
Then he understands that no one will answer him. The Void is literally a void space. Loki remembers it as a deserted but not uninhabited place, but now there's not a single soul around. The worst part is that Alioth is nowhere to be seen, too, and there is no way back to the Citadel it was guarding. No way back to Sylvie.
Loki draws his sword - now, outside the confines of the TVA, its magic works again and makes it shine like a torch in the silent twilight. May its light be noticed by someone, anyone, Kid, Croki, the President's gang, even the cannibals! However, time passes and no one appears. Or does time stand still? If so, it's Loki's turn to move.
Not without difficulty he finds the hill that served as a refuge for the Variants and removes the rubbish to open the lid. He descends the bunker stairs, each metal step resounding and resonating.
The bunker used to be a circus inside, covered in the colorful specks of fairground decoration and gambling machines, but now it has all vanished, hidden behind indistinct glare, while Loki enters the vaults of a glass labyrinth.
Could it be that he has actually pruned himself to death and what he sees is his delirium? For a moment he thinks he is surrounded by a crowd of people and monsters. For another second, he realises it is his own face, refracted many times over in carnival mirrors. The truth is somewhere in the middle. A whole portrait gallery of familiar and unfamiliar silhouettes appear here and there on the shimmering walls. Here stands a red-haired Loki, dressed in a striped jumpsuit which could be a prison uniform or a stylish outfit in some alien fashion. Here stands the President in all his sinister glory, the unmistakable one. Here is a green fairy fluttering with her wings, and, despite her tiny size, Loki can clearly see her wearing little golden horns.
But all of them are silent and don't seem to see Loki - all but one. Carelessly whistling a vaguely familiar tune, this one is striding down the mirrored corridor, and Loki thinks it's his own reflection walking towards him. A horn of his tiara is broken ("Like Sylvie's!" - the memory of her sears like a searing charcoal), his trousers are torn at the knees, his legs are bare. It must be another Variant, the last survivor of the Void.
He comes quite close and stops in front of Loki. After taking a closer look and measuring something, this other Variant turns into a girl ("She doesn't look like Sylvie," another thought burns even more painfully) and then reverts back to his own appearance. "He's very young," Loki thinks, looking into eyes the colour of spring leaves that glow with a strange incomprehensible merriment.
"Oh, am I?" The doppelganger's laughter bounces off the mirrors with a resonant clink of glass.
"I beg your pardon?" Loki protests in reply. "It was just a thought-"
"A very expressive one, then. I am much older. I was before you, I am now with you, and I will be after you, although we are one."
"Are you... me?" He hesitates a little, afraid to hear the same answer again: "I am not you".
"You could say so. I am Loki, the God of Stories. What kind of Loki are you?"
"I -" Loki begins and suddenly realises he has nothing to say. The God of Mischief? No, not anymore. Mr.Laufeyson, the TVA analyst? Not really. Loki the hero? But what kind of hero is he, after all he's done?
"I see," the God of Stories says with sympathy in his voice. "So you go back in time, you want to be you sooner. But when you're here, you just smash it all, tear down everything that made you you, all the support systems..."
"I... I just wanted..." Loki barely manages to suppress a sob.
His double embraces him with unexpected affection and kisses his forehead softly and lightly:
"I know. It's alright." *
-"It's worse than ever," Loki says through the tears." When Sylvie unleashed the Multiverse, I thought for a moment that she might be right, she might have set the world free and made it a better place. But instead, the world collapsed. It shattered, it became fragmented, lonely, oh, so lonely!"
The words come out in a burst. The memory makes a rewind, and once again he hears Sif's cruel but true words about loneliness.
" You are not alone," the other Loki smiles and points to the mirrors." They are always with you."
Loki laughs back almost hysterically:
-"How can all of them be me? Especially these ones," he waves his hand towards Hulk Loki and Fairy Loki.
"There's no such thing as just one ultimate truth," says the God of Stories enigmatically." Take a closer look."
Loki walks slowly along the mirror gallery, unafraid to get lost in its endless twists and turns, and watches.
"They are me. Hulk Loki is me, my rage. Boastful Loki is me, my guile. The President is also me, my insolence. In the distant mirror whose sapphire cosmic light glows so unbearably it makes me cry, there's a Loki who holds out the Tesseract to Thanos, and he's my courage. Sylvie... it's Sylvie in the last mirror".
"I know she's me, too," Loki says to his companion, who is not reflected in any of the mirrors - or maybe there are no mirrors left. They have crossed the maze, but Loki is hesitating to take a step and leave it for good.
-"Yet it is loneliness, only multiplied many times over," a dry laugh is scratching his throat.
"Come here," the God of Stories beckons him. Where he stands, the rays of dawn pierce the cloudy Void. Loki's double smirks slyly and mischievously, and as Loki approaches him, he puts a pebble in his hand.
"You know what to do," he says, swinging a shard of brick.
The glassy cloud crashes down like a waterfall, sprinkling and spraying minute shards.
-"There it goes, the real multiverse," the God of Stories laughs and gives Loki a friendly pat on the shoulder:
"Stop chasing your own reflections. There are other people, the ones who you need, and the ones who need you. Somewhere there is the old TVA, they worry about you and wait for your return. Somewhere there is Midgard and the Asgardians whom you saved once upon the future. Somewhere there is a brother who grieves for you."
" Thor?" Loki throws his head up sharply, so that his hair flies up in a wave. "Isn't he -"
"You're afraid to admit it even to yourself that you hope to meet him again, aren't you?" the double asks with understanding.
Loki's darkened eyes brighten, and a luminous green begins to shine again, just like his companion's eyes:
"Do you know how to get out of here?"
"You know," he echoes.
From nowhere, the God of Stories draws a staff that looks a bit like the scepter Loki once held, but a lighter one, resembling a peacock's feather. He strokes a single line on a wall fragment to outline a door, then sloppily writes over its top:
EXIT
"It's your story and your decision," he says. "Where will you go?"
"I'll make my way to the TVA, and then to my timeline. Well, I'll take chances," Loki replies confidently.
"Now, that's the real Loki approach, taking chances," the God of Stories winks at him. "Good luck!"
Is Loki saying this to himself?
Sif was wrong. Fate was wrong. Or maybe both of them were right, but there is no such thing as just one ultimate truth. Loki will find his own - his own truth and his own people.
Even though the world has broken up into multiple reflections, even if it is a mirror maze, he will find his way, because he knows that there is someone waiting for him. Even in this fractured universe, there are places where he is not alone.