Chapter 6
The God of Mischief awoke in a startle within a few seconds, regaining consciousness after a blunt blow to the head had knocked him out momentarily.
Grunting with pain, he pushed himself up to a sitting position, not without a fair amount of struggle, his other hand cradling his throbbing head. The instant he had collected his thoughts, a surge of adrenaline rushed through him and he turned swiftly to glance at the wreckage surrounding him.
"Sigyn?" He stumbled to his feet, his eyes frantically searching for his companion, who was nowhere in sight. "Sigyn!"
As he made his way through the brunt and mangled remained of the train, with meteorites still raining upon that moon —some in the distant, some dangerously close— Loki kneeled next to every body he found, or at least next to those who had made it through the crash in one piece, seeking for signs of life. He felt his heart clench in his chest further and further with each time in which his fingertips sensed no pulse, fearing he would eventually find the Asgardian in the same lifeless state.
"Sigyn!" he cried out into nothingness, out of sheer desperation, for he was running low on the hope of finding her safe and sound. When he turned on his heel to look for her in the other direction, he found a familiar sword with its tip being held up to his throat.
"Give me the TemPad," demanded the Variant.
"Where did you come from?"
"You sent me here, you witless worm!"
"Forgive me for being thrown off by the fact that you were nowhere to be found when we got here."
"You opened two portals, miles apart from each other. See what happens when you touch what isn't yours? Speaking of…" Sylvie turned her sword to the side, nearing the blade to the other's skin. "The TemPad."
Loki held out a hand with his palm facing up and over it came sweeping his other hand, leaving behind a magically summoned TemPad which had once been in perfect shape, but now lied a smokey wreckage of technology.
"In all fairness, we did have a meteorite crash into us—"
"You fool!"
Sylvie walked past and away from him, her hands glowing a bright green as she seemed to somehow capture sheer energy out of thin air, which she used in order to muffle a cathartic scream. Her outburst deflated around her, causing a rush of air that made dust and debris float about.
After glancing over his shoulder while debating how good of an idea it would be to delay his search for his partner, Loki decided at last to approach the other subject. A conversation of similar levels of empathy as the one he had been engaged in moments before seemed to develop between the two deities of mischief with surprising tranquility, perhaps to the point that neither of them would admit so, even to themselves. There had only been two other people —before his arrival at the TVA that was— with which Loki had ever been able to have such earnest exchanges, not because they were particularly sentimental, but because he could so openly and effortlessly be himself, teasing, jesting and making himself vulnerable all at once, all without his realization.
At last, the two variants agreed to cooperate and take one last insane shot at surviving that apocalypse. However, even as they ran together to the launch pad of these escape vessel they were after, Loki would ocassionally turn and call out for his first companion, still refusing to leave her for dead so wholeheartedly.
"Oh, don't tell me you've grown fond of their little pet," spat his counterpart and only then did the Prince discover he had stopped advancing, facing the empty camp of destruction in a defeatist fashion with tears beginning to cloud his vision.
"She's got more experience with the TVA than the two of us combined, she could have been useful!" he argued, but so false sounded his voice to his own ears that he didn't even dare turn to look her in the eye.
"Precisely my point. Trust me, none of them are worth the benefit of the doubt."
And with that, Sylvie turned and advanced on her own, as if indifferent as to whether the other chose to join her or not. For a few seconds, Loki paused in deep thought as he tried to connect the dots and accurately interpret that unprompted advice. Eventually, he trotted forward to catch up with her pace.
"Wait! What is that supposed to mean? She's a variant, same as us, why wouldn't I trust her?"
"So what? They're all Variants," remarked Sylvie, unfazed.
"What?"
"The TVA, the Minutemen, the analysts, the judges... They all start off as Variants."
"They don't know that!"
"Exactly." She paused to turn her face towards him. "For all we know, everything your little girlfriend's ever told you about her is a lie, she could be doing the Time Keepers' will, she wouldn't tell the difference, trust me."
"Trust you? A Loki?"
"Fine," answered she, shrugging her shoulders. "Don't trust me. Go after her and die, then."
It must have been inertia, for he was too absolved in his thoughts to have been able to control his actions, but Loki kept on walking. His mind had entirely disassociated from his body at that point, too focused looking back at the memory of their most recent interactions in search for any red flags he might have overlooked in the moment. A mechanism of survival seemed to have activated at the very back of his mind, a mechanism with forced Loki to push Sigyn off his mind for the time being, because he couldn't look after his own survival —not efficiently at least— while still concerned about what might have become of her. Therefore, he chose to believe for the time being, that she was indeed the Time Keepers' puppet.
A considerable amount of time —impossible to measure within the standards of the TVA given their particular flow of it as compared to the timeline they knew— later, all three Variants were being dragged across the corridors of the agency, having been immediately spotted by the creation of a very special, never-before-seen kind of nexus event. Each of them were taken into separate interrogation rooms where they were to be confined, who knew for how long.
Sigyn had been extracted first, separately, around the same time Loki and Sylvie were watching the last chance at survival blowing up in flames. She had tried crying out for her companion, but never heard a response. It hadn't been until she had attempted to stand up and had come crashing down in agony that she realized a long shard of glass significantly piercing her thigh, impeding her from going in search for the Prince.
"Sigyn, come on..." Mobius insisted with a lamented sigh, very visibly resenting having to ask that question yet again, adopting the not unusual empathetic demeanor that overcame him almost involuntarily whenever made to enforce the Agency's will past his comfort zone. "One of you, two of you, all three of you, something caused that nexus event, I just wanna know what it was."
She didn't answer. She had already shared all of the information on the matter she had, however insignificant.
"How long have you been working for the Variant?" he insisted, longing as much as she did to have that interrogation end once and for all. "Either one of them, come on— Which of them were you helping?"
"I've told you already, Mobius, you just don't believe me."
The analyst's lips parted, wanting to say something sympathetic, eventually sighing in defeat and shaking his head once he realized she was giving him no alternative.
"Look, I'm really sorry. But whoever it is, they're not worth the trouble, trust me."
Sigyn exhaled a faint laugh as she pulled off a smirk; subtle as the gesture had been, it had been cold enough to pierce Mobius' soul, like a child when they realize they have thoroughly disappointed their favorite parent. Two Minutemen took the Asgardian by her arms, leading her towards a red portal.
After having been shoved through it, she landed into her own bedroom— her old bedroom, that was. The portal closed behind her, and she struggled to maintain her serene expression, standing up straight and as pulled together as ever, despite knowing what was to come. Bracing herself, she walked across the marbled floors, turning to gaze upon Asgard through the arches leading to the balconies, until eventually, she took a seat on the edge of her bed, expectantly.
"And all this fuss just because I was merely claiming what had been promised to me since birth."
Loki —her internalized version of him— stood before her a translucent illusion, pacing back and forth across a short distance, hands linked behind his back.
"Right on cue," she said to herself, forcing herself to smile. Her husband paused, turned swiftly to face her while wearing a dark, mischievous grin.
"Oh, don't tell me the AllFather has managed at last to pit you against me." She nodded along, still trying her hardest to pretend the repetition of the same old memory only amused her after having experienced it so many times in a row. "King Odin of Asgard… signed the peace treaty between his realms with blood and then expects the rest of us to stick to ink…"
"Very poetic, darling, you should write that down," she commented for no purpose in particular other than amuse herself for the illusion remained as unresponsive to her jibes as ever.
"You promised," stated Loki as he came to a halt, turning his head towards her with an accusatory face of seemingly sincere sorrow. Sigyn could no longer feign indifference. Trying to keep herself just as put together, although very obviously avoiding the vision's gaze, she forced a quivering smile.
"What can I say, sweetheart? Things change," she replied in a shaky whisper as she shrugged her shoulders.
Loki approached her and he leaned towards her so they were face to face.
"You're nothing without me."
She responded by batting her hand violently through him so the illusion would fade at last; the real Loki —as real as anything within that Time Cell could have been considered— was locked away deep within the prisions as Asgard's prisoner. Out in the corner of the room, Loki's hologram manifested again and started pacing back and forth across a short distance, hands linked behind his back.
"And all this fuss just because I was merely claiming what had been promised to me since birth…"
Meanwhile, as she experienced that memory over and over again as her punishment, Loki was being pushed down onto a chair right before Mobius.
"Fancy technology, threatening interrogation tactics…" mused the God of Mischief. "Seems you and I are in a loop of our own."
"Well, there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then," answered Mobius, readying himself to start taking notes.
"Certainly has." And thus began an interrogation that involved both people with whom he had just been marooned in an apocalypse.
The analyst asked in detail about every thing they had done, every thing they had said, eventually asking pointblank how long they —the three of them, just two of them— had been plotting that attempt of an escape. Meanwhile, he dismissed each attempt Loki made to try and shine a light upon a game-changing piece of information he had very recently learned. His questions answered and the God of Mischief's pleas unheard, Mobius came to the conclusion that they had reached an impasse.
"I guess we've reached a dead end then."
"What have you done with her?"
"Dragged her in here, same as you, you saw her."
"Not Sylvie— not… not the Variant."
"Sylvie? That's interesting," taunted the analyst as he pretended to take note on the pet-name. "Is that Sylvie with an -ie or a -y? I wanna get it down right."
"Sigyn, where's Sigyn?"
"Where you left her."
Loki's brow furrowed as he unconsciously leaned on the desk between them. Seeing the sincere, though most likely unaware, expression of anguish on his features, Mobius bursted into laughter, shaking his head in disbelief.
"What's so funny?"
"I'm sorry, I mean, look at you! When you came in here, you had no one in your life, no one to love you..."
"Mobius..."
"And now here you are, caught in a love triangle and one of 'em's yourself?"
"Where is she?"
"Unbelievable! I mean, two Lokis falling for each other, that's a slow news day at best. But you…" He pointed in his direction.
"Where is Sigyn?"
"You were already falling for another girl five minutes before that just 'cuz she told you she's your wife! Wow, I just—"
"Is she alive?"
"How, how do you do it? Seriously. How does it... compute?" He gestured around his own head. "Are you really that emotionally starved—?"
Loki banged his fist against the desk. The analyst was silent at last, though the smugness on his expression lingered, a defense mechanism with which the God of Mischief was far too familiar.
"Where is Sigyn?" he asked again. "Did you really leave her at
"… no," he admitted.
"Is she alive?"
"For now."
"What does that mean? What have you done with her?"
"It means that thanks to you, and thanks to that little stunt you pulled taking all three of you to that apocalypse, and that branch your twisted little threesome created, I don't know how much time your wife's got left."
"She's not my wife."
"Yeah, you should be so lucky," Mobius agreed, nodding his head. "I told you to stay away from her, you wouldn't listen, now..."
Loki shook his head, eyes wide and unblinking as he stared at nothingness, like a person does when they are at last seeing everything more clearly than ever before.
"The moment things don't go their way, they take people out of their time," he murmured, still too immersed in his thoughts to realize he was speaking out loud in the first place. "And then they make them do the same to others, that's why Sigyn is here..."
"Yeah, you know what, you've got me there," said Mobius sarcastically. "My job—my whole world revolves around you, that's all I do here, 'oh how can I intervene in Loki's life today'…"
"No, no, no, you see? We're just the TVA's experiments. They remove one factor after the next until they have a version of us they can contain and those who they couldn't they bring here, they turn them into their own enforcers."
"See? That's the Loki I know. Pretentious and full of himself, thinks the whole TVA revolves around containing his mighty power…"
"I'm not talking about power," insisted the Frost Giant, shaking with an impatience that bordered on desperation. "This is not about some… ascension, it's not about some glorious purpose, this about our lives— Your life, Mobius, you had a life before this!"
"Alright, you're just gonna jump from one lie to the other until I bite, aren't ya'? Good luck back down there. Try not to fall in love with that one, okay? I can't afford any more messes of yours I gotta clean up." He picked up his notepad and got of his feet, aiming for the door. "I mean, no wonder you have no idea what caused the branch, you were too busy having two different people liking you, must have been a first for you—"
Loki glared daggers at him as he was picked up by his arms by two Minutemen and dragged towards the red portal.
"You know, of all the liars in this place, and there are a great many, you're the biggest."
"Oh, yeah," replied the analyst, turning to face him.
"Why? 'Cause I lied about your wife?"
"Oh, no. That I can respect. I mean, the lies you tell yourself," he spat back before disappearing through the threshold.