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Tik. Tok. Tik. Tok.
The sound of a harmless, non-sentient clock echoed in her empty suburban house. Sylvie sighed, her breath just another empty noise bouncing off the walls, and she thought that she really should try getting an audio system. The dull green walls were barren, save for a few empty shelves and a pile of unread books somewhere in the corner. It was a stark contrast to how flowery the outside was. Flourishing gardens, dozens of butterfly bushes, and cute ornaments she had picked up along her multiversal travels hung over her wooden balcony.
Gardening was something Sylvie loved- watching how life would bloom from season to season was a novel experience. But even novelty couldn’t keep her entirely occupied.
So she had time, more time than she had ever dared to hope she had, to find a new glorious purpose to throw herself into. Sylvie sat on her tweed sofa, the cushions broken into the point where her ass was nearly on top of the box spring, but it wasn’t the most uncomfortable thing she’d ever sat on. She tapped her finger in time with the second hand of her clock, and she gazed out her living room window in thought.
Two years, seven days, three hours, and twenty-five minutes.
That was how long she’d gone without seeing Loki. Two blissful years. Seven harrowing days, twenty-five nail-biting minutes. She could’ve spent another decade here, she thought, just idling away like this while she figured out what to do.
In place of tranquility, however, now all she had was restlessness. Running into Loki in a McDonald’s of all places could have that effect, she supposed.
-A few hours earlier-
Sylvie pressed her lips at the counter of the register as Loki went from person to person, questioning them how long they’d visited this McDonalds, who recognized her, all with that sharp, arrogant, and mysterious charm of his. He looked grandly authoritative to these Humans, with his cute little jacket and a well-pressed shirt.
It was a pity because he looked better with a little bit of grime on him. It was like the reset button had been pressed- but no, there wasn’t quite it, Sylvie thought as she adjusted the nametag on her chest and crinkled her nose.
Loki straightened up from the last booth he’d visited and turned to make final, glorious, infuriating eye contact with her, and Sylvie let out a small sigh. She knew that it wasn’t that the reset button had been pressed on him- it was merely that he was in his element. And she was not.
Strolling up to the counter, hands in pockets, a smug smile across his face as he settled in front of her, he waited. The asshole wanted her to say it, and fine- she would keep up this ruse between them.
“Welcome to McDonald's, Variant. May I take your order?” Sylvie said in her customer service voice. A serene, upbeat tone that surprised Loki enough for him to raise his eyebrows at her as if he were asking if she wanted to recant her sentiment. As if that were the strangest thing she’d ever done.
“Sylvie, what are you doing here? And ten pieces of chicken, with a large fry, if you wouldn’t mind,” Loki asked as pretended to rummage for his wallet before conjuring some paper money for her to take. Sylvie scribbled down the order and collected the exact amount from Loki’s hands, taking care not to brush their fingers together.
“I’m working what you would call a part-time job. Prince,” Sylvie retorted, turning her head to shout the order before turning back to him. This response seemed to take Loki off-guard, his eyebrows furrowed, and he leaned forward onto the counter. His hair smelled ever so slightly of mint, his hair freshly combed back. “You smell like a mismade breath mint.”
“And you smell like a large fry.” Despite herself, Sylvie could feel a small smile tug at the corners of her mouth. That would’ve been genuinely insulting from anyone other than Loki.
“Well, since you’ve just come to run your mouth…” Sylvie took her name card from around her neck, punched in her hours, and handed Loki his food on her way out of the kiosk area. “I’m quitting today, so if you have anything to say to me: you should say it now before I disappear like smoke again,” Sylvie said with all the nonchalance of moving from one apocalypse to the next.
As she said it though, she couldn’t stop a hint of a sigh from weaving between her words. To make her reluctance known, it was all she could do to just make a straight line for the door to not look back at her likely very confused coworkers. They were certainly the longest conversationalists she’d ever had, and she’d miss them for sure. It wasn’t a big deal though, she’d done it thousands of times-
“Sylvie, wait. No- that’s not what I wanted to do!” Loki said as he held the door open after her. They were in that weird in-between space between the inside and the outside. She still had no idea what it was really for, another strange human creation, but it made Loki’s voice very loud- and the background very quiet.
Sylvie realized her heart was pounding in her chest, her fingers were just slightly cold- her neck just a tad too warm. Damn, she never remembered it being so hard to just ditch someone. Loki sighed in this little area they were in, and she could see his vague reflection in the windows. His shoulders slumped, a hand running through his still greasy hair as he seemed puzzled more than anything. Not wanting this to drag on longer than it had to, Sylvie just resigned herself to the inevitable and turned to face him. He was taller than her by a good head or too so she had to crane her neck to meet him eye to eye.
Loki was more well-rested than she last saw him, which was good she supposed.
“Well, get on with it.” Sylvie adjusted the collar of her shirt, undid the first button, and waited for the blow. Their small space seemed instantly smaller, the quiet of the area deafened as neither of them dared to even breathe. Loki’s blue-green eyes darted across her form, her shirt, the way she had her arms at her side, and more than anything- he just looked at her . His eyes bore into hers, and something like realization dawned on his face.
“You have no common sense,” he began- which was rich coming from the God of Mischief. “You want me to hit you? Verbally assault you?” Loki hissed, his hushed words bouncing and slithering up the walls.
“Of course, I don’t want you to, but I realize that I was wrong. So I’ll let you get your vengeance and leave.” The issue with small spaces, Sylvie was quickly realizing, was that she could hear her voice bounce back at her. Like being in a cave, or being chased through a narrow chasm- she could hear the sound of her own struggle. A different kind of breathlessness.
“Vengeance?” Loki reiterated his disbelief simmering (rising?) to anger. Sylvie tapped her left foot once. He really loved to hear himself talk and drag things like this out.
She reached into her bag and popped a small fry in her mouth. “Yes, now get on with it.”
“Really? Is that how little you think of me?” Loki stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked forward toward her- and sidestepped. He pushed the door open with his shoulder and held it open for her to walk out, and Sylvie rolled her eyes.
“I won’t give you another opportunity,” she said as she walked out.
“I don’t want it. Look- I didn’t come out here to be like one of your apocalypses and force you to uproot your life here. I just wanted to find you. If you want to talk, I’ll be at this restaurant a week from now. Same time, the same place.” Loki called over the black asphalt- and Sylvie just hopped into her truck.
Rolling down her window, she stuck her head out to Loki once more, who was merely watching her through squinted eyes as the sun set.
“And if I don’t want to?” She asked, pulling her car out of the space and pausing to give him one last look.
Loki pursed his lips and gave a tight shrug. “Well, message received. It’s the multiverse, Sylvie. You don’t have to do anything.”
Hours turned into days, and days turned into a week. Sylvie pulled her blue robe around her shoulders a little tighter as she squatted down to sit on the steps of her porch. The faint sound of crickets and grasshoppers filled the air with their seasonal hum, and Sylvie took a sip of her cold soda.
It occurred to her that Loki was right for once. She didn’t have to do anything. She could up and go right now, in search of a new glorious purpose without all the extra baggage of another person. It was easy to fiddle with the black rings on her fingers, the ones that allowed her to control the new temp pad she currently had.
It was a new habit she’d picked up, the metal had been woven with pulverized bits of obsidian formed from a dying star latent in magic. It just took a little bit of enchanting to convince the small forge that they had overlooked her order.
That was the easy thing about those things, she could just enchant people and be done with it. But this was something very different.
Foreign, even.
Foreign in a way that it didn’t make her want to run away from it, but get closer. “Curiosity killed the cat,” Sylvie muttered under her breath. Taking a moment to close her eyes, to really think this through. She thought she was done with all this. Different timelines, harrowing glorious purpose… but Loki was in this timeline. And he was hardly dangerous.
“Damn, I’m trying to convince myself,” Sylvie added a wry chuckle at the end of her remark.
When Sylvie entered the McDonald’s it was quite dark. The appointed time had passed, but she figured that she would drive over to check if the fool was still there. The stark white lights of the restaurant illuminated a single worker, someone she didn’t recognize, and Loki. One hand holding his head, while the other absently twiddled a french fry.
To be clear, she didn’t feel guilty for missing their appointed time, but she did feel just a bit sorry for him. Like she usually did for small children or injured animals.
She pushed through the metal and glass door, still in her bathrobe, and felt his gaze snap on her immediately. His blue eyes lit up with excitement and he propelled himself out of the chair. “You came! You know, I was just thinking of where to jump next. Mobius has given me a ‘vacation’ of some sort. You really won’t believe what the TVA looks like now…” And as he spoke, Sylvie felt a mixture of annoyance and relief in his cadence. The strange familiarity she’d grown accustomed to in their short time together- a presence she didn’t know was missing until reunited.
“So how did you end up here? Enchantment? Wooing them?” Loki asked as they sat down in the nearest booths.
Sylvie shrugged before tucking a bit of her hair behind her ear. “A bit of both.” And the way the corner of Loki's lips pulled up with excitement had her heart stir- if only just a little.
-3 Happy meals later-
It didn’t take very much for Loki to convince her to put down the spatula, and take up her old sword once more. It hadn't taken much from the God of Mischief to stir up her old desire for a bit of danger. As they spoke into the night with a handful of patrons coming and going at this late hour, Sylvie couldn't help but enjoy Loki's company once more.
She hadn’t known she was missing his company until she had it back.
“I never quite understood your choice of swords. There’s hardly any guard on it- what will you do if your offender pushes their blade against yours?” Loki mused.
Sylvie popped the fifteenth chicken nugget in her mouth and gave it a thoughtful chew. “I don’t fight as you do. Of all the things we don’t have in common, that’s obviously the biggest.”
“I’ve seen you fight.” Loki challenged as he twiddled a french fry between his fingers, and Sylvie just leaned forward onto the table. “You’ve hardly seen how I fight.”
At this, Loki leaned forward on his elbows with a single fry in his mouth. “I’ve seen enough.” That greasy strain of potato flopped as he spoke, a far cry from his princely origins.
“Just a blip,” Sylvie said with nonchalance, and her company merely scoffed.
“Care to demonstrate?”
“Where, in the McDonald’s parking lot?”
“Do you keep your sword in the shrubbery around here?”
Sylvie just gave him a deadpan gaze as she drummed her fingers on top of the table. Well, she supposed one little spar in her front yard wouldn’t warrant a call to the police.
It later turned out that yes, indeed, it did.
-The 6th sleepover-
“It’s a little bare, don’t you think?” Loki said as he brewed them a cup of tea in the kitchen. Sylvie sat at the small dining room table right next to it and turned the next page of her book. Something about a king splitting his land in absurd proportions.
“Your sense of fashion?” Sylvie replied, hardly looking up from her book as she took a bite of her jam on toast.
“No, your hairline," Loki said under his breath, "I mean your walls. The small attic I’ve been staying in upstairs has more vibrancy than your living room, and I’ve only been here for a fraction of the time.”
“Well, I’m neater,” Sylvie said, because what else could it possibly be? Loki was like a Magpie, gathering little items wherever he went, getting furniture for his items, getting furniture for his furniture that held his items.
Sylvie had only agreed to let him use the attic since he said he had some work to do on this timeline, but it seemed he had an opinion on what her house looked like too.
“Your books are in piles on the floor.” Loki set down her steaming hot cup of tea, a tad over-brewed- just the way she liked it.
“Organized piles,” she dismissed. Loki took a sip from his cup, before clearing his throat to speak. “Do you think,” he began none- too carefully. His tone seemed carefully neutral, and when Sylvie looked up to see what the fuss was about- she couldn’t read him.
“If I retrieved shelves for your living room, would you use them?”
“Where are we going to get them?” Was her first question, because she honestly did not like the style of furniture at this time. Hence the piles of books on the floor.
Loki gave her a sly smile and raised one eyebrow- already asking if she was being serious with her question.
“We have all of time and space. With your enchantment and my princely charm- we could get whatever bookshelf you wanted.”
“So we’re going to steal the bookshelves?” Sylvie clarified, only just a bit surprised.
Loki nodded and waved a hand over the table in a vague gesture. “Unless you’d prefer not to.”
“That’s not very princely of you,” Sylvie remarked, but she could already feel the old tingle of excitement as she lightly massaged her own hands. She turned one of the various ringers on her hands in thought, already thinking of where they would go.
In response to her remark, the God of Mischief crinkled and huffed. “Where do you think all our gold came from?”
And, well, Sylvie couldn’t quite refute that. “I have a destination in mind. Let’s finish our drinks and go.” Sylvie briefly bit the inside of her bottom lip in thought and took a deep breath. “Could you tell me later? Where did all our gold come from.”
Loki’s smile melted into a smaller, more genuine one, and he leaned back in the cheap chairs she had gotten from Ikea.
-Many, many, many thefts later-
“You’re an idiot!” Sylvie growled over her shoulder as she attempted to pry open the old TVA’s doors. The inside of the facilities of this TVA was dilapidated, and yet these accursed steel doors refused to budge. Loki wasn’t far behind her, dozens of manila files tucked under his arms as he sprinted towards her and the closed door. “Open the timedoor!” Loki shouted as he approached, Kang’s soldiers were hot on their heels.
“I can’t control it here!” Sylvie snapped, straining to try and pry the gold doors the rest of the way open. She’d agreed to come here with him for some files Mobius needed, but leave it to them to bump into the only squadron of Kang’s soldiers in this whole place.
“Anywhere will do, hurry!” Loki was just a few feet away, the soldiers were only a few feet more, and Sylvie clicked her ringers together and pulled them through the timedoor.
The frigid air hit them like a wall as soon as they passed through, and the little light they had vanished as she forced the timedoor shut.
It was eerily quiet on this mountaintop they were on. Dark, and devoid of life- save for the two of them. “Well, that was unpleasant,” Loki grumbled next to her, spitting out some bits of snow from his mouth.
Sylvie rolled her eyes. “I’ll say. You’re just a magnet for-”
“Mischief?” Loki finished for her. Sylvie grabbed some snow in her hand and threw it in his direction.
“I’ll spare you by saying yes. Did you get what we needed?” Sylvie stood to brush off the snow from her tweed coat and helped Loki pick up the files.
They flipped through them together. Old TVA schematics, old TVA reports from Nathaniel Richards himself- and Loki pushed his hands over his head and stretched. “Well, that’s everything Mobius wanted.” With a flash of green light, the files were safely tucked away in his magical backpack, and it was mission complete.
“Well, shall we leave then?” Sylvie asked, letting her magic flow through the rings to reset them.
Loki tutted his tongue at her apparent haste and conjured two stools for them to sit on. “Now, darling, I said that was all Mobius wanted. I also got this little folder right here.” He sat down on the stool like a proper professor of etiquette. Back straight, legs crossed as he held out a manila folder. Edges worn with age, the spine nearly split in half with how often it was opened.
Sylvie didn’t need to ask to know what it was, and she was all the more uncertain of it. It wasn’t like she hadn’t gone looking for her file at first- but between trying to find the correct TVA every time, avoiding the time holes, and navigating the maze that was the inside of the TVA- she decided it just wasn’t worth her time. “How did you find it?” Sylvie asked, her voice feeling like nothing in the vastness of whatever wilderness they were in.
It was then that the brilliancy of the winter night erupted above them. Brilliant greens and blues formed ribbons in the sky- providing adequate illumination for her to read the file. Sylvie didn’t even remember when she’d sat down, or when she had taken the envelope from Loki- but she was staring at it now. “Loki Variant 0029.” She ran her fingers over the faded stamp.
“Would you like some…” Loki’s voice interrupted whatever stream of unthinking she had found herself in. Loki slowly twiddled his thumbs, a methodical pressing on the top, sides, and bottom on repeat as he observed her. The mage light highlighted the concern that underscored the shadows of uncertainty in his expression. Sylvie let out the breath she had been holding. Loosening the grip she had on the file, she shook her head once. She didn’t want him to go, not this time.
“You’re fine. It’s just, well- I thought this wouldn’t matter,” she said, lightly shaking the file in her hands for emphasis. “I know who I am, I’ve made peace with it. But now that I have this… I just want to know.”
“It’s your birthright.” It was so silly, Sylvie thought. It was so strange that for how superfluous Loki could be with his words, he could infuse so much comfort with so little. Her heart was beating out of her chest, and her previously chilled fingers were now hot with adrenaline. With one finger, she traced the edge of the manila folder before she pushed it under, and flipped the page over.
There was a faded photocopy of her as a child. Eyes bright and wide with fear, that familiar hate was non-existent. She read the details one by one. Her estimated age, her race, and the synopsis of her life up until that point. Those blips of her life before she had become the TVA’s rabid dog they had to put down were solidified in writing. Every point up to her nexus event had been combed over and analyzed by dozens of analysts before Mobius. Notes in the margins with various theories on where she would go next based on ‘x’ childhood event.
Little did they know, however, that she wasn’t that person anymore. She couldn’t even imagine being this person these people had theorized. As she thumbed through the pages, the sound of Loki opening a bottle of wine was the only thing to be heard in miles. Eventually, she got to the tab that had defined her life.
Sylvie licked her slightly chapped lips, cleared her throat- and declared her event.
“Nexus Event: Variant shared Thor’s dream of becoming a Valkyrie. Destabilizing result: Loki would unite the nine realms against Thanos.”
Sylvie didn’t care anymore- the reason she was plucked from her timeline was a moot point at this stage of her life, but the tears still fell. Her chest shuddered, and the tears fell- but there was no sound.
It was stupid that her Nexus event was that she had wanted to share a dream with her brother. Sylvie seldom thought about Thor anymore, but she had fond memories of him. His bright smile, his unwavering confidence and trust in her- even when she replaced the honey on his cake with cooking oil.
“For the crime of wanting what Thor wanted,” Loki remarked from across her- but Sylvie shook her head. That wasn’t exactly it for her.
“For sharing a dream that they didn’t want to be mine.” It was no secret to her that Loki had a strained relationship with Thor. Perhaps that was how Loki viewed her file, but that wasn’t it at all.
Just a man behind a desk who decided that she had strayed from his path. That was all it was in the end.
Loki was leaning forward with concern and held out an upturned palm toward her. Sylvie reached out and placed her hand in his. Their skin shimmered green and blue as the night continued on its business. She closed the file and tossed it aside in the snow and sat with her elbows on her knees, head down as Loki gently massaged her calloused hands.
The past was the past, but it was still bitter nonetheless. They were supposedly destined to lose, destined to turn out for the worst. Yet here they were, not entirely bad- but not necessarily good.
Mischievous was probably the word for it- and it was fitting now more than any other time. Once the tears subsided and her breathing became more or less steady, she wiped her tears off with her shoulder and look up at Loki.
“Thank you,” she said- and she truly meant it. “For everything,” she added.
Loki pulled her hands a little closer to him and placed a cold kiss atop them. "My pleasure." They stayed like that for just a little longer, staring at the Northern lights as they did their best to settle their thoughts.
-Two cups of mulled wine later-
The two eventually opened a timedoor to Sylvie's house. Even though they were technically frost giants, both of them found comfort in the familiarity of the warmth of a fireplace. They sat shoulder to shoulder on her new couch, the cushion now properly supporting their asses, each with a book in hand.
Sylvie looked up from her book, a novel she was hardly paying attention to, and scanned how her space had changed. Her walls, previously empty- were lined from corner to corner with shelves. A rich, dark wood that contrasted the lighter color of her walls. Her floors, previously littered with miscellaneous items, were empty save for the furniture it supported and some strange rugs they'd picked up over time.
This was all so new, having someone by her side for the mundane parts of her life. It felt like she had blinked, and she was suddenly in a relationship with Loki. It was as if one day she woke up, and she knew that Loki preferred his tea under brewed with just a dash of honey. Or that those bookshelves they had stolen all that time ago had always been there.
Sylvie didn’t know exactly when she had begun to expect Loki to be next to her so that she could pull him to his chest when she couldn’t sleep- or when Loki knew that she preferred sweeter wines over the dryer ones- but that time was now. Where they just did things like this, being chased across time and space together.
Her staring must have caught Loki's attention because he looked up from his book and held his place with his thumb. His eyes, now softened, never quite lost that sharp edge of his. For all his affection- he was always looking for a way to insert a smart comment.
Although the way he looked at her now, Sylvie knew she was in for something a little sweeter.
“It’s times like these, where I’m reminded of how I didn’t want to be in a relationship with you because I was afraid you would tie me down,” Loki said softly, his voice implying he had more to say after- but the statement surprised Sylvie nonetheless. She set her book down in her lap and took a sip from her glass. “That’s rich, coming from you,” she quipped. Loki laughed as he shook his head. “I thought you would expect me to be someone I wasn’t. But you’ve proved me wrong. You always see me for how I am, for better or for worse."
Sylvie felt her ears flush just a bit from his declaration. Loki always had a propensity for these long, eloquent, and exaggerated confessions. She always rolled her eyes at these, but she actually did enjoy them just a bit. Especially now.
“Of all the things we don’t have in common,” Sylvie interjected before he could continue. “Of all the things we don’t have in common, I think we share that same sentiment.” Because Loki made her feel grounded in a way that was liberating. And that was that, she supposed. For all their differences and growing similarities, she treasured him- and it was reassuring to know that she was valued in return.
Sylvie's thoughts wandered back to that file she had left in the tundra of Midgard. In that file, she wasn’t valued. She was an animal of prey, studied to obsession so that she could be slaughtered. Loki had studied her plenty over the years they'd been together now- but it was different.
Sylvie reached out to card her hand through Loki's hair, through the sides, and over the top. Her God of Mischief leaned into her touch, sighing as she gave his scalp a light massage on their sofa.
Things were different for the both of them. And it was finally here, on their little couch in the suburbs of Midgard, that she dared to hope that she could have this. For all time, always.