Chapter Text
“Since we are dying, and there doesn’t seem to be a way out of it.” Loki said, as he sat down beside Sylvie and watched the arc burn in the distance, “shall we relax and have some peace?”
“Easy for you to say,” she ridiculed, “hedonistic clown.”
“I know you blame me,” he started.
“Doesn’t matter,” she pulled a small smile, “the mission’s no more.” And he blinked his sheepish eyes with the same twitch on his lips.
“It’s funny, you know.” The distant fire devoured the buildings and the people in them, and the two travelers shared a brief comfortable silence. “I’ve imagined how this would end thousands of times, but never this.” She looked at him, “with another version of me, at a meteor crash.”
“You know what?” He grinned, “same here.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and he turned to look at her in surprise, “you are a prince. You had a good life. Not like me, I’ve always been on the run.”
“Well, this isn’t that bad,” he shrugged, “still better than getting pruned by the fools at the TVA, or being smashed to death by a giant green monster.” She quirked her brow at the last half-sentence but didn’t say anything.
“How about the postman you spoke of?” He asked, “would you prefer to share this moment with him?”
Then she smiled. Loki realized that underneath all her armor and teeth Sylvie was still a girl, like any girl he’d met — a girl with fears and maybe special feelings for a guy, and could smile or cry over small acts of kindness.
Her smile lingered, and her eyes twinkled.
“I was raised by him,” Sylvie let out a deep breath and started her story, “there was no one else.” She stopped briefly, as Loki reached out to wrap her hand in his, “father, although I don’t remember much of him now, managed to get a tempad from the TVA agents and held them off while mother brought us away. She hid us in a small fishing village in Midgard and masked us with her magic. Then she went back to find him, saying that once she finds father they would come back for us, and we’d be all together again. But she never did.”
Sylvie squeezed Loki’s hand back, as shock and woe spread in his eyes. “I remember she said to my brother, ‘look after your sister. You are the man of the family now.’ And that’s what he’s been. Just a few years older than me, he had to grow up and provide for what’s left of the family. Whenever he tried to use his powers, a nexus event would occur and the TVA would appear. We had to use the tempad to find the next place and time when that happened, and hide our names. We became Donald and Sylvie.”
More meteors started to crash on the planet, and into the lake that’s in front of them, but Loki was unmoved. He was enthralled by her story. And it continued, “he had to work mundane jobs, and hide us from the TVA, and deal with the aftermaths of my mischiefs. Of all the things he could have become — he could have been the finest Asgardian warrior, the God of Thunder, the best superhero — he became a postman so that we could stay alive.”
She stopped and stayed quiet while Loki gently wiped the tears off her face. “I’ve always said to myself — one day I will end this. This ridiculous, cruel chase. And whoever’s behind TVA, I will find them and I will kill them, for the life that he never had, and that we can finally be free.”
“I’m sorry,” it was now Loki’s turn to say it. He couldn’t help but think that if he had tried to help her at the TVA, they might have been closer to that goal now.
“Do you think what makes a Loki a Loki,” she asked, “is the fact that we are destined to lose?”
“No. We may lose, sometimes painfully. But we don’t die.” He said firmly, “you’ll live, Sylvie, and so will your postman.”
While larger meteor pieces broke through the atmosphere, and she could feel the ground fall apart, she believed him.
They stood up and watched the world collapse while keeping their hands connected.
“How about you?” She asked, raising her voice as collision sounds got louder around them, “who is your would-be prince?”
“Oh, him” Loki laughed, “just a clerk working at a stupid organization. Always in a dull brown suit, and ridiculous hairstyle from the 90s.”
She tightened her grip on his hand as debris fell within meters and water splashed on their shirts. Both relied on the other person to keep balance.
Loki looked into her face, and found her smiling, in a way that reminded him of Frigga when he cried in front of her as a little boy. He smiled back.
The sky and the lake and everything else was burning around them. This was the end, thought either of them. It was at that moment when orange light appeared out of thin air, and a portal opened, revealing the said man in a brown suit on the other side.
Sylvie could see the worry and tiredness from his face, as the man said, “finally I found you.”