If time passed at the TVA, Loki figured it would have been night. The constant bustle of agents and alarms had been quieted as most tried to squeeze out a few hours of rest before waking to handle the next fire razing the newly formed multiverse. Loki knew he should be too, but sleep didn’t come easily of late, so if he wanted anything resembling it, he would need some help. Fortunately for him, the TVA infirmary had a swath of options for helping with sleep. The concoction Loki preferred had two pills, one to knock him out, the other to get rid of the dreams.
The nightmares, he figured, would be the more accurate term.
They were always the same, they had been since the first time he attempted sleep after being cast through the time door. They all found him back standing in the Citadel with Sylvie, He Who Remains, sitting behind his desk, leering at them. In this version of events the building begins to crumble around them, the gold veining evaporates, leaving the structure shaking. Sylvie could never see the fact that the building was crumbling; no matter how he screamed, or pulled, or how much debris began to fall, nothing would take her attention away from attacking He Who Remains.
It ended the same way every night. The Citadel caves him, and he loses her in the collapse and finds only a mountain of shattered stone where she once was. He digs through the rubble until his palms are shredded but never finds her. He wakes with a certainty he never would.
Loki had thought that finding her, in reality, would rid himself of them, but if anything, since that day in the McDonalds, things had just gotten worse. That was when he had started going to the infirmary for help.
His body was still too alert from everything had had occurred at the Fair. Still sore with bruises from all of the falls, still humming with the burst of magic Sylvie had run through him. Even without the nightmares he wouldn’t be able to sleep in this state without help. But the migraine pulsing behind his eyes warned him it was desperately needed, so he went in search of more pills.
Making his way through the infirmary, the space was eerie in its emptiness. Without pruning the timelines, or chasing variants, few hunters were being deployed anymore, making injuries far more rare. It was so dark Loki assumed he was alone. The sound of grunts and hisses of pain informed him otherwise.
Consciously, Loki knew he should let it be. That whoever it was obviously wasn’t looking for his observation. But something about the sound drew him towards its source like a string tugging on his chest. With slow, hesitant steps, he followed it to a small med bay with a single fluorescent light shining against the shadow of the rest of the space.
His steps stopped in the doorway as his eyes found the cause of the sound. His breath caught in his throat. He blinked, sure it was a sleep-deprived hallucination. When it persisted, he blinked again. Still, the form remained.
“Sylvie?” he tested carefully.
She instantly froze, every muscle tensing with just the word like prey catching the eyes of a hunter in the bush. Her pause gave Loki a better chance to take in the scene he had stumbled upon. She was sitting up on the gurney in the center of the room, her armour had been stripped, leaving her only in a basic black sports bra beginning to fray on the edges. The sight of her made Loki’s cheeks burn as he tried to force down the flow of heat fighting its way through him.
Turning his eyes to the rest of her, her neck was craned to face the mirror behind her, while bloodied bandages were strewn around the space. His stomach turned with the sight. Looking into the mirror’s reflection, he could see that her back had been torn, leaving it covered with cuts and scrapes. Some of the shorter ones had stopped bleeding already, but concerningly, many were running with red. His sights focused on a particularly nasty gash between her shoulder blades, dribbling streams of blood down her spine.
Her face snapped towards him with a snarl, breaking her out of her temporary paralysis.
“What are you-” he started.
“If you’re allowing the man who used this place to take over all of reality back in, at the very least, I’m going to keep an eye on him,” she snapped before he could get the whole sentence out.
Loki battled through a mix of emotions. Part of him was relieved she was here; he’d always feel better when she was in his sight, but the knowledge that she felt that she needed to, that she needed to leave her wonderful life to come to the place that she vowed never to step foot in again all because she didn’t think he could be trusted with Timely and the TVA made his insides writhe with guilt and anger.
Giving her a slow, steady nod, she met his reaction with a lifted chin to him, expression still fierce.
“What? You’re not going to tell me this is a bad idea, too?”
Norns it was like she was just searching for another argument between them, he thought to himself. As if she needed to search, they hadn’t been able to make it through more than a handful of words to each other before one of them started yelling since the Citadel.
“No,” he swallowed, fighting to not give her the fight she was so clearly seeking, “I think it’s good you’re here.”
Her face froze, shaded with confusion before hardening again.
“Because we’re one step closer to your vision of the future,” she nodded like she was convincing herself, “one more thing you can tell me I was wrong about.”
“Sylvie-” Loki attempted. He didn’t know why he kept trying at this point; nothing he said was making much of a difference. She had already decided she hated him, and it wasn’t like his efforts were changing her mind.
“Just forget it,” she huffed, getting to her feet she was about to leave but only made it a step before wobbling. Her eyes glazed as she lost her balance and stumbled to grab the counter.
Whatever force was keeping him standing in the doorway evaporated as Loki paced forward to steady her. Getting closer, he noticed how pale she was and the sheen of sweat that was leaving her choppy bangs clinging to her forehead. He wondered how much blood she had lost. His hands went for her shoulders until she flinched away from his touch, the motion made him notice the twin bruises blooming on either shoulder standing out against her skin in the fluorescent lighting.
In a flash of memory, Loki saw his magic throwing her against the wall of the ferris-wheel. He winced as the scene continued for him to place the source of the cuts across her back, with her crashing into the window as their magic collided, raining shard of glass onto her.
His eyes burned with regret as he carefully wrapped his hands around her forearms and guided her back to the padded blue bed. He could tell she was dazed because she didn’t try to fight him, just silently letting him sit her back down. Sitting seemed to bring a bit more colour back to her face and help clear her gaze, so he released his hold to be able to step around her back and properly survey the carnage.
Looking at the mess, Loki felt like he was going to be sick. The entire top of her back had been stained with smears of dried blood, making it hard to make out the jagged tears of skin except for the pools of fresh red they were still leaking.
His eyes fell to her small hand, wrapped so tightly around a silver needle tied with a long black thread it was pale and shaking. Looking back at the mirror and the mess of bandages, he could suddenly place what she had been trying to do when he found her.
Guilt started piling faster in him, not only in being able to recognize their fight as the cause for the injuries but in realizing she didn’t feel like she could ask for his help to the point she was trying to stitch her wounds by herself.
“Have you cleaned it?” Loki asked softly, his hands hungered to trace the long cut along her back in something akin to comfort, but he held himself back in fear of making this worse.
“I don’t need your help,” she growled, at least sounding more like herself again, even if the words came out shaking.
“I know,” Loki breathed, knowing an argument wouldn’t be worth the cost of her pride.
They both went quiet. Loki watched her lungs inhale and exhale in strained breaths. Despite only being half a step away, the space between them felt cataclysmic. He didn’t know how to start in trying to bridge it. Not anymore. Everything he had tried thus far only seemed to push them further apart. So he just stood, frozen and silent, waiting to see what she would do.
After what felt like an eternity, she finally dropped her head off to the side and gripped the side of the bed.
“It hasn’t been cleaned,” she swallowed.
It was small; it wasn’t even a request, but something in her words sounded like an offer. Loki fought for a tight smile, despite the fact she wasn't facing him. Stepping off to grab disinfectant and a cotton swab, he could feel Sylvie’s eyes on him, tracking his every movement.
“I know you need to clean them first,” she added, cutting through the silence with an edge of defensiveness, “that disinfecting should be a priority.”
Looking back at her over his shoulder, Loki’s brows creased in confusion. Her shoulders were raised, and her eyes were on the tiled floor below.
“I was just worried I was going to pass out, and passing out with an unsanitized cut means waking up with an infection; passing out with an open one can mean not waking up at all.”
Tightening his hold on the objects, Loki turned to face her more directly and leaned against the mint green counters. He didn't know why she thought he would judge her approach to treating her own wounds or why she cared enough to feel a need to justify it. He supposed a fear of perceived incompetence. That at least he could understand.
“You don’t need to explain it,” he shrugged, “I know you’re capable of taking care of yourself.”
Sylvie glanced up at him and gave him a ghost of a smile, but it seemed pained before she dropped her eyes again to their previous location. They seemed to be lost, but Loki couldn’t guess in what. At one point, he knew he could have. That time both seemed a lifetime and mere seconds ago.
Returning to his place behind her, Loki doused the cotton in the clear liquid, flooding his nose with a sharp metallic scent. Lifting it, he could see Sylvie shivering in anticipation.
“I’m going to-” he whispered.
“Uh huh,” she cut off too quickly.
“It’s going to hurt-”
“I know.”
With an exhale, Loki lifted the swab to her pale skin. Pressing it against the open flesh, he could feel her body wince with pain beneath his touch. She sat silently as he worked, trying to clean it. The last touch over a particularly sensitive area pulled a small whimper from her throat. The sound felt like a dagger through his skull as he pulled back the now dark red and damp swab.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“What for?” she tried to laugh.
The space of an answer landed heavy between them. Loki didn’t know where to start, he didn’t know where to end. It had all become such a mess he couldn’t even tell what he was apologetic for anymore. The fight, the citadel, finding her at all. Did he regret any of it? Did it matter? It all felt too big, too whole, too gaping, like he was drowning in it.
“For hurting you” was the most honest thing he could offer her.
Sylvie didn’t speak. She didn’t even move. She just sat stiff in space. Without facing her, it was impossible to guess at her reaction until he heard her sniffle, and her shoulders began to shudder.
Loki felt powerless watching her. So desperately, he wanted to find their way back. Back to what they were. Back to when he would know what to say to her. What to do here.
But every step they had taken since the Citadel had sent them in the wrong direction, and Loki didn’t want to risk ending up even farther from her.
Anger towards her clawed at him through the powerlessness. A bitter voice reminded him he didn’t break this, at least not alone. It wasn’t just his responsibility to fix things. She could be the one to take the next step if she even wanted to. He doubted she did. Every sign she had given him screamed somewhere in the space between disinterest and derision at the idea of inviting him back into her life. She didn’t care. Maybe she never had.
Silently, she slammed the needle onto the mat, pulling him back into remembering the real work at hand.
“It needs to be stitched, or the bleeding won’t stop,” she muttered.
Looking at the silver object and the mess of ripped skin still spilling blood, a lump grew in his throat.
“I haven’t done this before,” he admitted.
He expected a dismissive scoff from her, some quip about how lucky he was to never need to know, but none came. He didn't know it that was a good sign or a bad one.
“Have you stitched fabric before?” she just asked flatly.
“My mother taught me.”
Sylvie didn’t reply before wiping her nose with the back of her palm. He wondered what she was thinking about. Maybe her own mother teaching her in the days before she was taken, maybe about how unfair it was that he got to learn stitching on fine silk from the gentle hand while she had to teach herself on her own flesh. Maybe nothing at all.
“It’s the same motion as that,” she got out, voice still unreadable.
Lifting the needle and pressing his thumb and forefinger against her warm skin, he pierced the beginning of the cut with the needle and led it through to the other end. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised the act got no reaction from Sylvie, he knew she had been through worse.
“Is that why you didn’t look for me?” she said suddenly, so quietly Loki almost missed it.
“What?” Loki tried to configure her question while keeping his focus on his stitches.
“Because you know I can take care of myself?
His hands stopped on their own accord, shocked out of movement by the implication of her words.
“Sylvie, I looked for you from the moment I came crashing through that time door,” he choked, “It was all I could think about.”
“Besides the TVA,” she scoffed.
“No,” he pushed, his voice edging on disbelief, “you came first.”
“Loki,” he could hear her eyes roll even without her facing him, “I went by my full name, Hel I even registered my car under it, I used that temp-pad all the time. I wasn’t hard to find if anyone bothered to look. There is no way in ten months you didn’t-”
“Nine days,” Loki cut her off, suddenly catching her misunderstanding with a sinking weight in his stomach.
Ten months echoed through his mind. Almost a full year. He knew it had been longer for her than it had been for him since the Citadel, she had settled into her new life and her hair had grown in a way that couldn’t have been accomplished in the mere days it had been for him. But ten months, the sheer length of imagining her alone in that time made him feel dizzy.
“What?”
“It wasn’t ten months for me, it was nine days. And I spent every moment of every one looking for you.”
Sylvie went quiet again for a long moment. He had wondered how X-5 had found her. She was typically so careful, she had hidden from the TVA for centuries, using her own name, the temp-pad; it had all been so uncharacteristically sloppy, he couldn’t make sense of it until now. She had thought about all of that. She knew she was leaving clues, she had been doing it on purpose, wanting to be found and for almost a year thought he just didn’t care enough to even look. And that when he finally did, all he could talk about was the TVA.
Her bitterness no longer seemed quite as misplaced.
“Oh,” was all she replied.
Returning to his work, Loki debated his next words with care.
“Is that why you didn’t come back? Because you could take care of yourself?” he asked, his tone coming out a bit more bitter than what he was aiming for. But it was true. She could have. At any point in the apparent ten months she had experienced since the Citadel, she could have found him instead. She spent all that time knowing where he was, only a tap of the temp pad away, and unlike him, she chose not to.
“I didn’t come back to the TVA because I didn’t want to be in the TVA,” she snapped. “I don’t have much interest in spending any more time with people who kidnapped me as a child and hunted me my entire life, in case you’ve forgotten.”
Rage simmered beneath her words. A deeper, sadder rage than he was used to from her. Not the sparking anger he had been on the receiving of so many times before, this was colder, this was emptier.
“I’m surprised you were willing to come here,” he broached carefully.
“I am, too,” she admitted with a scoff, “I promised myself I never would, and yet….”
The end of the sentence hung in the reality of their current situation. As Loki pulled another stitch through, he felt words begin to climb up his throat. He wanted to shove them back down. Every time they tried to discuss anything akin to the topic, they ended up fighting. And norns he was so tired of fighting her.
“Can I ask you something?” to his surprise, he still heard himself ask.
“I can’t promise I’ll answer it, but you can ask,” she muttered in response.
“If you hate this place so much, why did you send me here?”
With his hands placed firmly on her skin able to feel even the slightest shift of muscle, he could feel how the words make her tense.
“Because you have people here,” she eventually explained carefully.
“What are you talking about?”
“You have people here,” she repeated, “people who care about you.”
“So do you,” he countered, “and you didn’t come back.”
“Oh really,” she laughed darkly, “who? The people who hunted me my whole life.”
Her shoulders raised with a heavy breath as she put her hands between her knees and pressed them together.
“I don’t have anyone.”
You have me.
You had me.
Both crossed Loki’s mind. Neither got into words, but Sylvie seemed to hear them regardless.
“You should know. I told you already, right before you promised you weren’t going to betray me under that shitty tablecloth,” she laughed humourlessly her voice twisting into anger.” Just because you were lying that day doesn’t mean I was.”
Loki winced with the vile dripping in her words. His mind raced to defensiveness. He hadn’t lied. Not then, at least. He had meant every word he had said. Every one. And there was nothing he wouldn’t have given to have let them be true. But it wasn’t his fault they hadn’t been, and he wasn’t going to let her make him out to be something he wasn’t.
“I didn’t-”
“From the beginning,” she cut him off with a snarl, punctuating each word, "I warned you I was going to kill him. Over and over, I told you that. You were the one who chose to come with me. I never asked or expected you to. You joined me . Then, at the last moment, you suddenly got second thoughts and decided it was your place to stop me-”
“That’s-” he attempted to justify.
“And then you went back to work for the omnipotent fascists you and your friends promised you were going to 'burn to the ground' the last time we talked, which is clearly going just swimmingly,” she barreled through with another broken laugh, lifting her arms as if to demonstrate.
“Sylvie,” he repeated, but she was undeterred by his attempts.
“So yeah, even though you and everyone else were lying that day, I wasn’t.”
The weight of her words echoed between them. The unspoken anger that had been blanketing every one of their interactions finally brought back into the room before them. He expected there to be relief in it but instead found only more fury. After all this time, she still didn’t get it.
“I didn’t lie, I didn’t want to let you down,” he forced out, “But things changed Sylv. We can’t pretend things didn’t.”
“Did they?”
“Of course,” he balked, “you heard what He Who Remains said, what the risks were. You wouldn’t even take a second to consider-”
“It didn’t matter,” she bit.
Frustration grew in Loki. How could she be so cavalier towards multiversal war? The destruction of everything. How could she still not care? He had hoped having something of her own that she wanted to protect would help her see what he had been trying to do at the Citadel, but she was just as blinded now as she was then.
“How can you say that?” he threw his hands up in defeat.
“What could he have said that would have changed things? What could have ever been worth the price of the TVA?” she countered, “Of depriving everyone of free will, of killing trillions upon trillions? Nothing,” she sneered, “nothing is worth that. Nothing ever could be. It didn’t matter what he wanted us to believe, what he offered us; it didn’t change the fact that the timeline needed to be freed.”
“Then why couldn’t we have just talked about it?” he shot back, his voice growing louder with rage.
“Because there shouldn’t have been anything to talk about!” she roared, her voice cracking, letting something far sadder leak through all of her anger, “I trusted you, I thought you understood what I was fighting for. I thought you understood me . And then you changed your mind!”
Loki stood speechless, needle in hand and his eyes glassy.
“You chose your side. And it wasn’t mine,” she whispered, but Loki could hear the tears fighting through.
And all at once, Loki could finally see it.
This wasn’t about the Citadel. This wasn’t about He Who Remains, or the TVA, or anything else. This was about him.
He had let himself be so angry about her not seeing things his way, he had never thought about seeing it through her eyes. The idea of her spending her entire existence solitary except for her purpose, feeling as if she was up against the rest of the world alone. He had been the one person she had let in, her one hand to hold against all of reality, and then he abandoned her in her cause at the last moment.
He had hurt her.
More than who was right or wrong, more than what either of them had done with that hurt, that was what was important.
Of course, she had hurt him too. And he had used that as a shield, keeping her at arm’s length because that was what he assumed she wanted.
But now, with the lens of his own hurt and anger raised, he could see it. He could see her. All she wanted was to feel like she didn’t need to keep fighting alone. And he kept putting them on opposite sides.
Finishing his stitch with a final tightened pull and a knot, he dropped the needle. She went to stand, but he placed a hand on her shoulder, just above where the bruise began. Without breaking contact, he moved around the bed to sit down next to her.
She avoided his gaze, dropping her head to study her scuffed combat boots. Still, he could finally see her face, and her cheeks lined with tears.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“You said that already,” she gritted.
“But not properly. I’m sorry for fighting you, I’m sorry for making you fight me. I’m sorry for doubting you, I’m sorry for letting you feel like you were alone. You trusted me, and I betrayed that trust. Sylvie, I am truly, deeply sorry.”
She sat, just kicking her legs for a while, before sniffling and wiping her cheek with her palm.
“You made your choice,” she said again, but it sounded less firm this time, and far more desperate.
“Do you want to know why I want to save the TVA so badly?” he whispered.
“Because of the He Who Remains vari-”
“No,” Loki shook his head, “because of you.”
Her face twisted in confusion.
“I want for you to have a life where you don’t need to worry about variants, or war, or any of that. And you seemed to have found it. I don’t want you to lose that, and I think that the TVA is the best way to prevent that from happening. That’s why I want to save it. That's always why I wanted to save him.”
Sylvie studied him out of the corner of her eye, her face was unreadable. Eventually, she swallowed.
“You know why I like Broxton?” she said quietly.
“Quite honestly, no, I don’t see the appeal.”
“I know,” she laughed, “it's not much.
Her eyes glazed with longing as she began fiddling with her fingers in her lap.
“But there’s always food nearby, and everyone is happy. The sky never falls, and the worst thing that happens in a day is someone spilling their rootbeer. It’s easy.”
Loki gave her a sad smile, stained with the knowledge that something so small, so unremarkable, seemed spectacular given the life she had experienced.
“And there are people,” she continued, “like my manager Jack, who looks like he is twelve and never tells me when I messed up, even when I burn five bags of fries and forget to charge half a dozen customers for their orders. And Bill, who comes in every day and gets a small coffee, two milk, 3 sugars, and always remembers my name. Or Leah, she’s six, she comes in after softball and gets an ice cream cone with her dad, who smiles when I give him extra napkins because we both know she’s going to need them.”
“It sounds nice,” he smiled.
“It is.”
“And then I showed up and ruined it,” Loki shook his head solemnly.
“You did,” she choked, “just not the way you think. I had myself convinced that it was enough. It took a while but eventually, I convinced myself to stop watching the door waiting for you to show up. That I didn't even want you to anymore. That seeing other people from behind the counter, with their friends, with their family, with their…” her eyes jumped to Loki and she seemed to loose her word before rolling her head back, “that seeing other people together being happy was enough. That I was satisfied. That I was happy. And then you showed up, and it reminded me how it felt, not just to watch it, but to feel it. To have someone know you, not just your name. And how much I missed it. How much I missed you.”
Even through tears, Loki couldn’t help but smile at the simple idea.
She missed him too.
“And all of sudden, it wasn’t enough anymore.”
Loki leaned towards her until their shoulders were brushing.
“I missed you too,” he whispered.
“It was only nine days.”
“And yet it felt like years.”
The corners of her lips twitched into a smile.
“I’m sorry,” she swallowed, “for pushing you away. And the rest of it, all of the fighting, the yelling, the lying. I appreciate despite that, you still …”
She gestured vaguely behind her, but Loki understood.
“I appreciate you still trusted me enough to.”
Her smile grew, pulling on something in Loki's chest.
“For your first time,” she rolled her shoulder, “you did good.”
“I’m honoured by your praise,” he grinned, throwing a hand over his heart.
“Wasn’t really praise,” she muttered, “more of just an observation.”
He laughed, and she smiled. Something familiar and warm crossed between them, humming in the look they shared as his eyes fell into hers and wrapped around the two of them like a shared blanket.
Slowly, carefully, Sylvie leaned her head against his shoulder and yawned. Loki risked reaching a hand over to begin stroking her head absently, relief so sweet and so heavy pouring through his veins. Looking down at her, he could see similar relief soften her features as her eyes drifted closed.
“Tired?” he whispered.
“No, it’s just the blood loss,” she murmured, but it sounded unconvincing.
“We have beds,” Loki whispered, “we can get you-”
She shook her head with a whine. Loki understood; the thought of moving right now seemed woefully unpleasant. So, wrapping his arm around her, he slightly repositioned them to able to lie back on the gurney.
As soon as he was even in a proximate position to lying, Loki felt himself drifting off into sleep. Sparing a last look down at Sylvie, he could tell she was falling into the same. With her breathing softly on his chest, for the first time in ten days, the dreams that met him were sweet.