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Someone had told him that time ran differently in the TVA, but the waiting room felt like the worst of the twenty-first century - bleak walls, headache-inducing lighting, stiff muscles and all. If he’d had to make a guess, Steve would have estimated that he’d been in his chair for four hundred years, but if he’d worked out the clock on the wall correctly, it’d been closer to a couple hours. Same difference.
Could boredom counteract the effects of the serum? Because he felt like he was dying of boredom.
So the shock was worth the excitement when two armored TVA folks dragged in someone who looked a whole lot like Loki.
Loki, of all people. He was in the same kind of aggressively unflattering jumpsuit they’d stuffed Steve into, which was a far cry from the imperious leather armor and billowing cape that the Loki of Steve's memories wore. He wasn’t sure if the outfit made Loki look so much smaller than he’d been in New York, or if it was the tight, panicky posture, or if he just seemed... younger, somehow.
One of the TVA guards stayed behind, hovering with that lit-up weapon stick of theirs, while Loki, vibrating with outrage and fear, almost vibrated right out of the heavy collar around his neck. After about a minute of Steve trying not to stare and Loki staring at everything, assessing and panicking, he finally locked in on Steve and all but barked, “What?”
The guard gave him a glance, then went back to middle-distance gazing. It felt like tacit permission to conversate. After briefly considering pretending he hadn’t been staring, Steve said, intelligently, “Loki?”
“Who are you?”
That was an interesting question to have to answer to Loki. “Ah,” Steve said, and finally decided on, “Captain America?”
The TVA guard gave him a sideways glance that felt loaded. Steve tried not to squirm, feeling judged. “Steve Rogers, more commonly.”
Loki just shook his head and turned away again, rocking back and forth in the chair. His hair was longer than Steve had ever seen it, and some of it had gotten caught in the collar.
“Your brother,” Steve began, but stopped when Loki’s attention snapped to him again, hope flaring up before he masked it.
“You know Thor?” he demanded. “Where is he? Is this his idea of a joke?”
Steve quickly shook his head. “No, he’s - well, I don’t know where he is, but he told us all you were--”
He stopped again. Loki’s eyes widened in impatience. “He did this to impress some Midgardians?”
“No, no, it’s...” Steve trailed off, at a loss for how to explain that Thor believed Loki had been killed a few years ago. Again. “How’d you survive?”
That seemed to get the TVA guard’s attention. Steve straightened, as if soldier-posture would ward off suspicion.
Loki squinted, then sat back hard, all jittery nerves and flexing fingers. “It’s a joke. He’s playing a prank. For all I told him how bad he is at it. This is proof. This is proof that he should leave it to me. Norns. Idiot.”
Pranks? Thor? Something was off. Steve ran over what he knew from Thor about Loki, as well as what the TVA had told him about time, including the little cartoon he’d seen before he’d name-dropped the Ancient One and the whole time heist debacle. They’d dumped him here four hundred years ago (or two hours, give or take) while they got in contact with the sorcerer, but he’d heard enough about pruning, bad timelines, variants...
Oh.
Steve leaned forward. Maybe Loki looked younger - smaller - because he was younger. He wasn’t quite the Loki that Steve had known, or the one Thor had told them about. Or was it? Maybe this Loki was from further back in Thor’s own timeline. What if it was? Would Thor still have his brother, now that the TVA had plucked Loki out of the timeline? Were they going to--
This time, when Steve looked at the TVA guard, they were looking back. Almost like they could read his mind, the realization on his face.
Loki was staring at his hands, flexing them, occasionally snapping his fingers or twisting his wrists in elegant, complicated gestures. Thor had talked about Loki’s magic before; it looked like Loki was trying to cast spells, or whatever he called it. Nothing was happening, and with each twist or snap, the panic on his face grew.
“No magic in the TVA,” the guard said blandly.
Loki looked up at them, then stared straight ahead, momentarily still. But only for a moment. His eyes went to the glowing death stick in the guard’s hand.
It had already been a disastrous day, and Steve wasn’t ready to add ‘watching Thor’s brother die for the nth time’ to the list of bad shit he’d encountered in a single twenty-four hours (give or take the time dilation whatever). He shifted into a closer chair and said, a little louder than necessary, “So Thor’s playing pranks now?”
Loki let the death-stick alone long enough to look at Steve again. His scoff was shaky, but a good cover for the desperation Steve had seen earlier. “So-called pranks. They are... not particularly funny.”
“No,” Steve agreed. It was unsettling to do this - interact with the Loki of New York that he knew, except not, a version that was still close enough to Thor to talk about his current habits rather than just spit vitriol. Not to mention he was pretty sure this Loki was about to-- “I’m sure he can come up with some interesting ideas, though.”
Another snort. “That’s one word for it. Maniacal, another.”
His hands were still frantic in his lap, but the wildness had faded somewhat. Steve felt safer, both for his own sake and for Loki’s. He shifted forward, elbows on knees, and said, “He’s probably just trying to keep up with you.”
Loki eyed him, half suspicious. “What would you know about it? Captain?”
It was the same attempt at distaste and condescension as the Loki in New York had made, right before kicking Steve’s ass. “The soldier,” that past/future Loki had snarled, with what had sounded like a lifetime’s accumulation of hatred. This younger Loki’s was weaker: a shield. And no wonder.
Steve made himself smile. “He talks a lot about you. We’ve - my, uh, friends and I - we’ve... heard some stories.”
Loki’s eyebrows twitched as a twist of emotion passed over his face, too complicated for Steve to parse. But there was a softening there, too.
“All flattering, I’m sure,” he muttered, and flopped back in the chair. “What’s a Midgardian doing here in Thor’s terrible prank jail?”
“I... well, this isn’t from Thor.” Steve winced when some of the panic returned to Loki’s face. “This is... complicated.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Loki said, brushing over Steve’s denial that Thor was responsible for the TVA.
“Also complicated.” Steve tried to smile again.
Loki narrowed his eyes. “How does a Midgardian become a time criminal?”
“Oh... lots of practice?”
A quick blink was the only response. If Steve hadn’t known better, he’d have thought Loki was curious - curious and waiting.
Steve opened his mouth - to, what, talk about his past? about the ice? about seventy years lost, decades he’d accepted he’d never get back until the time heist had happened? the run-in with some other Loki whom Steve had known? - but just then, a handful of TVA guards, led by a nondescript, gray-haired man in a suit, walked past their waiting room. The man gestured at Loki’s guard on the way by, and the guard yanked Loki to his feet, the tip of their glowing death stick pitting an artificial light against Loki’s sickly pallor.
Horribly, Loki looked to Steve. For help.
Steve half-stood, but the man and the guards flanking him had already moved past, and Loki’s guard quick-stepped to catch up. “Wait,” Loki said, looking between the corridor outside and Steve, back and forth, over and over, “wait, I--”
“Can we talk about this?” Steve asked the guard’s back, aware of how ridiculous he sounded as he stood all the way. “Look, I don’t know what he did, but--”
“Please sit and wait for your liaison, Captain,” the guard said without so much as a glance over the shoulder. “This isn’t your concern.”
“He’s my friend’s brother,” Steve said, trying not to look too long at the raw fear on Loki’s face, “so it kind of feels like it could be.”
“Captain,” Loki said, bordering on frantic.
But in another moment, Loki’s struggling notwithstanding, they were gone. The sound of scuffling feet, muttered reprimands, and pants of effort lasted a little longer, then faded as they got further down the corridor, vanishing in seconds.
Slowly, Steve sat back down. He wondered what he’d do if he heard screams in the distance. He never did. The thickening silence was nearly as bad, allowing his imagination to wreak havoc.
It’s just Loki, he thought, trying to call up memories of New York. The destruction, the death and the fire, the way that attack had led to even more suffering and death. But he remembered Thor’s stories of what had happened after the death of his father, what had gone down on the junk planet, what Loki had done when Thanos found the Asgardian ship. Even in Steve’s own timeline, there was more than one Loki to contend with.
He leaned his head back against the wall, suddenly tired and unnerved. He didn’t feel like thinking about Loki anymore.