Chapter 12
"Trouble in paradise?" asked Mobius with a playful smile as Sylvie joined them within that small shelter.
"Actually, I think it's the opposite," she corrected him, flopping back on the chair where Sigyn had been seating before, adjusting the blanket around her shoulders. "When all of this is over, they might just be on the path for reconnection."
"Look at you, playing Cupid," the former analyst added.
The Variant offered a half-smile.
"Can't go an entire lifetime causing mischief alone."
"Guess not," he replied, looking over his shoulder to catch sight of the pair in question conversing. "Y'know what? Good for them."
"Yeah. Good for them," mused the woman in a distracted, almost yearning whisper. "What did she do, by the way? Why was she arrested?"
Mobius shrugged his shoulders.
"At first sight, nothing. I mean, nothing seemed off. Sigyn was supposed to escape Thanos, go down to Earth and grow old in Norway. Out of nowhere, this branch started forming after she got in that escape pod. They wouldn't tell me what had caused it, her files were classified."
"And that to you wasn't a red flag?" questioned the Goddess of Mischief, not without some condescension in her tone.
"Not at the time, no," confessed the man with a defeated sigh.
"Oh, I wouldn't keep my hopes up rooting for those two," intervened Classic Loki as he jerked his head towards the two subjects outside. "If our experience here has taught us anything is that there's no love lost between Lokis and Sigyns." He turned to look at Kid Loki, who nodded his head in silent agreement from his seat.
"You've had Sigyn Variants sent here too?" asked Mobius with genuine curiosity, for the one he knew had been the only he had ever come across as an analyst.
"Oh, yes, dozens. Although I doubt any remain. We've seen our fair share of all kinds of people down here: Lokis, Sigyns, some of their children—"
"Their children?" snapped Sylvie, leaning over in her seat before exchanging a quizzical glance with Mobius.
"Have you ever met a Loki with children?"
"I mean, a couple of 'em, not a lot," answered Mobius with a shrug. "I've never seen any of 'em pruned, though. You said their children actually ended up here?"
"Mostly the two boys," Classic Loki went on. "We haven't seen any arrive in quite some time, come to think of it. Which is probably for the best, they were showing up younger and younger each time."
Sylvie stared intently at space as she thought back to those short seconds of connection between her consciousness and Sigyn's, during which she shared with her some memories of her own just as she flicked through most of hers. She remembered having run into one particular detail that could have been considered odd, but seeing as she was merely making sure she was indeed ally and not foe, needing nothing specific rather than just an overview of her memories, she hadn't fixated or made much of it. That new piece of information, however, had triggered her to start connecting the dots into a dark theory indeed. Mobius knew just from watching Sylvie that cogs were turning ceaselessly in her head and so indignant seemed the expression on her face that he was holding his breath waiting for the conclusion she was most surely drawing.
"Sylvie?"
"Those rotten fascists!" spat the Variant in disgust as she jumped to her feet, storming out of the shed.
Before, she might have hesitated before getting herself involved in the middle of a story that had nothing to do with her, not really, but this was different; having experienced first hand the cold-blooded apathy of the TVA, she refused to keep to herself when it came to exposing how abominable their interventions could truly be, how they were the real criminals, the real villains that had claimed far more lives than they pretended to save. Mobius rushed to follow her. Sigyn heard her name being called in the distance and she separated from her companion to stand back up, taken aback by the urgency with which Sylvie seemed to be looking for her.
"What? What is it?"
As Loki rose and stood behind her, Sylvie reached them at last, her breathing slightly labored given how quickly she had been walking without even realizing. Behind her, Mobius joined in as well.
"The night before your husband died, do you remember that?" Sigyn faintly narrowed her eyes, wondering what she could have possibly been talking about.
The night before Loki died had been, the remaining population of Asgard was cruising across the universe towards the Earth, just like they had been doing the day before. She thought of something relevant at last: something personally relevant, intimately relevant, and her eyes widened, wanting to believe that was not what Sylvie was referring to. Much as she thought, however, she couldn't come up with anything else. Bewildered, she became visibly nervous and momentarily glanced at the God of Mischief from over her shoulder, as though embarrassed to be bringing up the topic right in front of him.
"When you said you wanted to know what I knew, I assumed you meant about the TVA. I didn't think you'd go… snooping into things like that."
Loki raised his eyebrows, listening intently into the conversation for details that confirmed what he was suspecting they were talking about. Over the women's shoulders, Mobius offered him a mocking expression of congratulations.
"I didn't see anything, that's not how it works… but it happened."
"Wh— Yes! Why?"
"And the next day you were arrested by the TVA, yes?"
"What does this have to do w—?"
"Sigyn, please," interrupted Sylvie almost pleadingly, for she was having a hard time enough as it was trying to come to terms with the despicable assumption she had made. "When they reset the timeline… where were you?"
"I was there," replied Sigyn as-a-matter-of-factly, which caught Mobius' attention.
"Wait, what do you mean?"
"When the TVA showed up, they reset the timeline and then they brought me in."
"They reset the timeline… with you still on it?" the analyst repeated, wanting to make sure he was understanding correctly.
"Yes!" Sigyn insisted, confused as to why that would be of interest to any of them, especially since they knew about the TVA's m.o. even better than she did.
"Shouldn't that have pruned her?" wondered Loki, thinking out loud. Sigyn glanced around at all three of them and sighed, still at a loss as to why that would be of any relevance all of a sudden.
"When they arrested me, they were about to bring me through the Time Portal until the commander stopped them, he said I needed to be there for the reset, I imagined that was just procedure."
"No," Mobius corrected solemnly. "It's not."
"So, why wasn't she pruned?" asked Loki.
"I mean… I've heard of operations where commanders calibrated reset charges by inputting any percentage of temporal aura they wanna leave untouched. There's a chance that's what happened here, they adjusted the charges to spare her, but that still doesn't explain why they would have wanted her to be there."
Sylvie looked at the analyst, a silent invitation to think over what they had just heard Classic Loki sharing, hoping to send him down the same train of thought she had ventured down just a moment ago. Sigyn and Loki stared at them expectantly. Meanwhile, the other Loki Variants were exiting the shed, deciding to pry into whatever confrontation was happening outside. At first, Mobius just stared back at Sylvie, disoriented. They could all see the precise moment in which, upon reflection, he finally figured out what she already had, his expression turning aghast before he closed his eyes and looked away, as if he had just bore witness to something harrowing.
"Oh, Ravonna," he lamented to himself in a whisper, bringing a hand up to his face, still unable to wrap his head around how blind he had been about what kind of person he had been working for all along.
"What?" Sigyn demanded, having grown anxious watching everyone pondering, seemingly sharing common, secret knowledge about something related to her while she herself was completely in the dark. "Mobius, what? What is she talking about?"
The analyst kept his head lowered; he couldn't look her in the eye. It was Sylvie who met her gaze, once again staying silent, merely confirming with sad eyes that were referring to the most abhorrent possible scenario. Sigyn felt her heart growing heavier and heavier in her chest, constructing her breathing which became erratic and harder to keep under control, her jaw tensing with noticeable struggle. Usually, with very few exceptions, she had the enviable ability of swallowing back her feelings, of switching from one emotion to the next as if automatically activated. This time, however, her face was an open book, exposing every single one of her emotions. Her eyes were wide with flabbergast, glistening with tears of wrath and desolation. Her breathing grew heavier, her chest visibly rising and falling with each rapid, heavy breath, a clear sign of adrenaline shooting up and down her veins. She seemed on the very verge of an destructive outburst and the only thing containing her was her own sense of self-control.
"Mobius…"
The man sighed deeply and glanced up at her. "I'm sorry," he whispered brokenly. "I swear I didn't know, I asked them a million times why they had arrested you, no one would tell me. If I'd known, I…" He stopped himself, shaking his head with sorrow, for he knew deep down that back then, he sincerely believed that the end justified the means, which meant he would have probably allowed it to happen nonetheless. "I'm really sorry."
"Would someone please explain to me what's going on?" demanded Loki impatiently, for he was the only one left in the dark and was beginning to develop a nauseating feeling that told him he was somewhat involved in whatever dreadful topic was being discussed.
"Why?" Sigyn urged, her heartache visibly transforming into rage.
Classic Loki intervened once again. "We've seen Variants of them th—"
"Them?" she punctuated.
Up until that moment, the older Variant had appeared unaffected by these revelations. Now, however, as he nodded his head in confirmation, he seemed genuinely aggrieved, even if he wouldn't exteriorize it.
"Narfi and Vali. Twins."
From the sidelines, Loki had been collecting whatever scrap of information he could salvage from each exchange, finding himself forced to sort it out on his own for no one could be bothered to enlighten him. As realization began to set upon him, he glanced at his female counterpart, who looked back at him apologetically, still unable to name out loud what a detestable thing the TVA had done. Like Sigyn, at first he refused to believe it, trying unsuccessfully to overlook the turning feeling in his stomach that proved he had in fact arrived at the right assumption. Classic Loki went on.
"We've seen Variants of them trained by Lokis to do all kinds of wicked things…"
"Loki was dead!" Sigyn bawled. "I would have raised them in Midgard, what wicked things could they possibly do?"
"Doesn't make much of a difference to them." The old man shrugged. "They would still be Loki's children."
"They were my children too!" Sigyn bellowed, pounding at her own chest with a closed fist. "Does that count for nothing?!"
Mobius had to clear his throat before he was able to speak up again.
"It's not always the nexus event per se that's the problem, it's the fact that something's different that it's supposed to be. So… sometimes, just in case—"
"Just in case?" Sigyn snarled. "They erased me from existence, they away took my past, present, future, and everyone in it just in case?"
"I'm really sorry," Mobius insisted, shaking his head.
The Wife of Mischief, even in her fit of fury, knew better than to assign any blame onto the analyst, particularly since he had been ignorant to that information until just then. She turned towards the valley, glaring daggers at the cloudy creature, the barrier separating her from the true culprits of her indignation. Before then, she ignored what part she played in that mission against the TVA.
Even though she had been arrested, up until that moment of revelation, working for them had been her only alternative —or so she had thought— to an empty existence lacking all sense of purpose. Other than having gained some perspective thanks to Sylvie's experience with the Agency, realizing how inherently cruel and authoritative they were, she held no personal grudge against them. Needless to say that now, the desire to slaughter every last creature responsible for having annihilated her past and snatching away her future was burning furiously within her.
She whipped her head towards Sylvie, with a look more determined than any she had ever extended to anyone before.
"Do you really think you can enchant that thing?" The Variant inhaled deeply, seemingly encouraged by that vote of confidence, and nodded her head.
"Yes."
"Good. Let's go."
Everyone, propelled with purpose, support or sheer inertia, was ready to go on towards Alioth in a matter of seconds. As they all marched on, Loki reached for Sigyn's arm to retain her. She flinched out of reflex, still in a state of alarm for her emotions were still tremendously raw. Sensing her rampaging distress, the God of Mischief ran his hands down her arms in an attempt to be soothing.
Sigyn was still holding onto her anger, trying to disregard how poisonous it could eventually become, purely out of fear that she would come crumbling down the moment she allowed herself to feel anything else.
Meanwhile, Loki was at a loss as to how to feel. Supposedly, his own timeline never would have been affected; he never would have married Sigyn and he never would have had children— as a matter of fact, even if Sigyn had existed, he never would have lived to see it. Nevertheless, either out of empathy or feeling it genuinely personal, he was still experiencing an inexplicable heartache.
"What is it?"
The Prince exhaled a sad chuckle, eyes lowered as he shook his head.
"I don't know." He had been invaded by the abrupt need to speak with her, interact with her, but when the time came to think about to say, he faltered. "I'm sorry, this is new for me."
An odd instinct kicked in, she wouldn't have been able to describe it if she had tried, and Sigyn's sorrow and rage were suddenly mitigated upon seeing his face.
"You okay?"
"Are you?"
Though fueled by the burning desire to inflict at least a fraction of the pain they had caused her on whomever had been responsible, Sigyn realized that she was still oddly stable. Despite having experienced more pain and suffering recently than she had throughout her entire life, she was not yet crumbling down like she imagined she would have under different circumstances. She imagined herself to be saturated, forcibly numb for the lack of ability of processing so many calamities all at once; she suspected that were they get past Alioth and somehow put an end to all of that, she would then know for sure how she felt.
"I suppose we'll see," she therefore answered.
Ready to join the rest of their party, she was surprised to be tugged back by her hand towards Loki the moment she turned away.
"What? What is it?"
This time, his pause was not due to the fact that he couldn't find the words to express himself, he was just having a hard time plucking up the strength to actually utter them.
"I'm really sorry," he whispered at last. Sigyn faintly shook her head. "It's not your fault." She glanced away momentarily as she swallowed, for now it was her turn to summon strength.
"And I'm sorry, too."
They joined the rest.