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Life after Kang was supposed to be easy.
Well, maybe not easy. Sylvie is neither a fool nor naive. But it was supposed to be easier at least.
No more running, no more hiding, no more fear. Perhaps, she had dared to hope in the darkest of nights, no more loneliness. She could find someone in the vast multiverse, settle down, live the normal life the TVA deprived her of eons ago.
Now, however, she knows what a foolish hope that was. An entire life of loneliness and pain cannot measure up to the emptiness she feels within her.
Every day is the same. She awakens in the tiny, dirty apartment she calls home, makes herself look halfway acceptable, and sets out for the garish fast-food restaurant she scrapes a living from.
And isn’t that interesting? Princess Sylvie, of Asgard, is working for a living.
That should feel normal at least. No more scrounging for scraps amidst the flames of the latest apocalypse. No, now she joins the hordes of unhappy mortals shuffling through their dank, little lives, heads downcast.
It’s sickening.
But this world, this noisy, dingy, chaotic world of grease and loudmouthed assholes and constant, constant movement toward some unknown, unseen goal is hers now. She asked for happiness, and this is what she received.
She bets the Norns are laughing their asses off.
If she were anyone else, Sylvie guesses she would find solace in the depths of a bottle. Hell, she has seen some of her coworkers doing just that. That will never be her escape, though. Drunkenness means vulnerability and vulnerability means death.
No, she loses herself in music. Every day she goes to the record store after work and lets the notes flow through her and around her and into her, permeating her soul, giving life meaning, providing answers to the unanswerable.
Some songs bring tears to her eyes, others make her chuckle or smile, and still others make her feel as though she is flying, soaring through the skies, high above the smog and skyscrapers, higher than the clouds even, without a care in the world.
And then there are the few special ones, the ones that remind her horribly, inexplicably of him. She always skips those.
He is gone. She will never see him again.
And that is how it should be. He made his choice, and she made hers. She doesn’t regret it, not one bit.
But if she doesn’t think about him, if she doesn’t imagine his lips on hers, or his crystal blue eyes staring into her with an emotion so wonderful she doesn’t dare believe it for one second, if she doesn’t think of that day in the Void huddled beneath the blanket with him pressed so close, she could feel his heat, smell his scent…it’s all for the best.
She has had countless relationships, countless late-night flings as the world burned outside. This is just another to add to the list. And if she allows herself to ponder what could have been if she hadn’t shoved him through that Time Door she will simply collapse and cease to exist. A pathetic, broken-hearted loser is what she will become.
And the world devours pathetic, broken-hearted losers.
So, she buries her head in the work she abhors, and in the music, she adores, and she keeps ticking on.
That is all there is now. And what’s so different? That is all there has ever been.
Survival.
She keeps ticking on.
The more time goes on the more the days blend together.
Was it Monday or Wednesday that her boss screamed his head off at her for spilling a Coke? Was it Sunday or Tuesday that the record store was closed unexpectedly, and she spent the day aimlessly traversing the city? Was it Thursday or Friday that she dreamt of him, an agonizingly vivid dream, where he knelt on the ground before her, naked and vulnerable and wounded by her hands, and yet looking up at her as though she was a goddess?
It’s all the same haze and she drifts in it.
Drifting is dangerous, drifting means death.
But her mind has slipped into a dreamless sleep from which it will not wake. And there is nothing she can do about it.
She keeps ticking on.
The day he comes is as uneventful and atrocious as any.
It rains that morning, drizzly and miserable, nothing substantial enough to warrant an umbrella. And she squints up into the clouds, letting the water caress her face before she walks into her dreaded workplace. From there it is business as usual until he waltzes right through those double doors.
She is in the middle of handing a tired parent toting a crying child, a Happy Meal and two Big Macs with a side of fries, when she catches sight of him, standing awkwardly beside the sign marking the start of the line. His eyes lock onto hers before she can look away, the tiniest of hopeful smiles lighting his face, and he starts forward, trench coat flaring out behind him.
He nudges two customers out of the way, ignoring their complaints, and then he is standing before her whole and alive and just as infuriatingly attractive as he was the first time she saw him. She should turn away, she knows she should, but something roots her to the spot.
“Sylvie.”
Her name is a prayer on his lips, a supplication of the damned.
She hates it. She adores it. She wishes she could bring him to his knees like she did in that damned dream and hear him say it again and again, a plea for mercy, a plea for more.
“Sylvie, I’m sorry.”
She starts. Of all the ways she thought this conversation would go, an apology from Loki, Crown Prince of Asgard is not one of them.
“I-I’m so sorry,” he continues, and it’s only them in the whole wide world, it’s only his voice filling her ears better than any music she had ever heard. “This is all my fault and I’m sorry. But perhaps, perhaps we can fix it, fix all this…together.”
He reaches out to her. “I would like to do this together…if you’ll have me.”
Sylvie looks at him and sees that same emotion in his eyes, the one he had the day she pushed him away. She backs away and something fragile shatters within her.
Funny. She didn’t think it was still intact.
“I’m sorry too,” she mutters, cracking voice betraying the emotions surging within her. “But I can’t help you. I’m done.”
She turns from him, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Please leave.”
After a few agonizing moments that feel like years, he does, and she almost wishes he hadn’t.
In the record store that night she listens to “If You Love Me” by Brenda Lee. And she cries silent tears that tear at her throat, begging to be allowed to become full-fledged sobs.
When the song is finished, she heads home to the tiny apartment that smells like mold, falls into bed, and is asleep before she can even turn the light off.
Morning comes and with it an even worse emptiness than before.
“If You Love Me” is still playing on repeat in her head.
She keeps ticking on.
Two days pass, then three, stretching out into eternity.
Suddenly, Sylvie is very much aware of what day of the week it is, and what time of day, and every single little detail that she has missed these past months. The smoke has cleared from her eyes and mind, sliced in half by his twin daggers, and everything is more painfully clear than it has been in ages.
And nothing hurts quite so badly as the fact that time crawls onward and he doesn’t return.
It’s what you wanted, she hisses to herself when the tears she restrains all day sting her eyes at night. You pushed him away again. Deal with it and move on. You know how.
But Norns help her, she can’t.
Yet, even without him, life goes on.
Even without him, she keeps ticking on.
The next time she sees him is in the McDonald's parking lot after her shift. He is leaning on the brick wall, half of him cloaked in shadows, his leg bouncing up and down in a mad rhythm.
No sooner has he caught sight of her than the motion stops.
“Sylvie!”
He rushes toward her like an overexcited puppy, all wide eyes and long limbs and a spirit not even she can break.
“Sylvie, I need to talk to you.”
He is close now, so close she can see the dark circles beneath his eyes, the strain in his expression, the remnants of wounds on his face and collarbone. Suddenly, he looks much less like a puppy and much more like the man he is, the man who has seen too much, endured too much.
When he reaches out and tentatively sets his hands on her shoulders, she allows it.
“What?” Her voice breaks and she clears her throat.
Damn it. Two seconds and she’s crumbling.
“I just want—I just—” He swallows, inhales, tries again. “I don’t want your help, Sylvie. You don’t have to save the multiverse or fight in this war or—or do any of that because you’ve done enough. You deserve—you deserve everything. You deserve to be happy, Sylvie, you deserve to be okay, and that is all I want for you.”
His grip on her tightens just a smidge but it doesn’t feel like a threat or a restriction. It feels safe.
“So, I will ask this one thing and then I will go. Sylvie, are you happy?”
Sylvie looks into his eyes, so bright against the shadows cast by the neon lights, and she tries vainly to breathe.
Are you safe?
Are you happy?
Are you okay?
When has anyone ever asked her these things and meant it? Who has ever asked her these things, besides him?
Some unidentifiable feeling, some terrible and wonderful and warm and overwhelming feeling swells in her chest and bursts, and the next thing she knows she is throwing her arms around him and sobbing into his shoulder.
He doesn’t waste a moment enveloping her in an embrace, his cheek resting atop her head, his own tears wetting her hair. His body is pressed close to hers, warm and real and grounding and she revels in the feel of it. It’s been so long since she has been touched, so long since she has been held, so long since she has been safe.
Fuck it all, she wants this feeling to last forever.
And when at last her sobs slow to a stop and the last shudders of emotion have left her limp, and he is still there holding her, comforting her, her remaining defenses shatter like castles of glass.
“I’m sorry,” she grits out, pulling back to look him in the eyes. “I fucked everything up and I hurt you and I’m so fucking sorry. It was never supposed to happen the way it did.”
A sad, little smile lifts his lips as he gently nudges a strand of hair back from her face.
“Please, don’t apologize. I’ve made far larger messes than this, believe me.”
Sylvie can’t help but scoff. “Larger than wrecking the entire multiverse?”
“Well…” He pauses, chewing his lip in thought. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
She hums. “I’m sure this is a first. Breaking down in a McDonald’s parking lot, that is.”
At that, a full-blown grin spreads across his face. “Yes, but this isn’t the weirdest thing I’ve done in the last months. Wait until you hear the tales I have to tell.”
Fresh tears blur her vision, and she blinks them away. “Why wait?”
“What?”
“I would love to hear them now…if you’ll have me.”
Hope flashes across his face, tentative but blindingly bright all the same. “And after that, after the tales are finished, what then?”
Sylvie studies his face, every laugh mark and line, every scar, the tendrils of inky black curls blown across his cheek by the breeze. Alarm bells have begun to blare in her mind. Vulnerability, attachments, love–all are dangerous things, deadly things. Only the weak, foolish, and naive welcome them, not knowing they invite death.
But her heart pounds in her chest and her lungs burn with the chilly air and for the first time in forever, she feels alive.
It’s a risk, this daring dance with the devil, but it is one she is finally willing to take.
She runs her thumb along his cheek. “When the tales are finished, if you are willing, we will make new ones…together.”
The spark of hope becomes a full-fledged flame, and he sweeps her back into his arms.
“I am willing,” he murmurs, voice thick with emotion. “Oh, Sylvie, I am more than willing.”
Sylvie awakens the next morning to a day as rainy and murky as the one when he came back into her life. She turns from the window to face him, a smile pulling at her lips.
“Good morning, beautiful,” he whispers. “Are you to save the multiverse?”
She huffs a laugh. “Well, no need to be dramatic, but yeah, yeah I’m ready.”
She’ll keep ticking on, just like she always has.
With him by her side, holding her hand, keeping her strong, she’ll keep ticking on.