A thousand lifetimes on the run. For centuries, Sylvie had run from the TVA living at the end of civilizations, the end of worlds. It had taken countless close calls for her to realize she was at least somewhat safe in apocalypses, but then it became a learning curve to learn exactly when she needed to leave one place for another.
It had become apparent very early on that she couldn’t let herself get close to anybody. All the women who had become concerned seeing a child running around on her own, who had tried to help her, only ended up making everything hurt more. At first it had ended with the TVA pruning those who had tried to help her because she had intervened in their limeline - which in turn only made Sylvie’s need for justice even stronger.
By the time she was apocalypse hopping, caring for someone meant that she had to live with the knowledge that they were soon to be dead. Even if she left before the disaster took everyone out, rewound time to live in that apocalypse again, they wouldn’t remember her. Every single time she was erased from everybodies memory.
Sylvie would be lying to herself if she said it didn’t sting, even just a little bit. She craved some sort of connection with somebody, anybody, but had to deny the simple want. Instead she would throw herself at people, have one night with them - whether it be some sort of date night or, when she was older, something more physical - and move on before she could get attached. It would satisfy her for a short period of time, but in the end it never truly worked. She wanted, needed, something more.
Not even a romantic feeling, even just something platonic. Yet as time went on, as she got older, she knew that she could never have that. Not until the TVA was taken down. So she kept pushing on, thinking of everything she could finally have when she got her revenge. The first time she had enchanted someone successfully, she felt she could take down every universe in existence if she wanted. And of course, the feeling of empowerment, of success, had taken over her every thought and she felt ready to enact her plans.
The first time she had tried to take down the time keepers, it had gone south very quickly. She had gotten into the TVA, had gotten a lot of information that she hadn’t necessarily been looking for (all TVA agents were actually variants, that might come in handy later), and then Ravonna Renslayer had been a centimeter away from pruning her.
It had been a hard lesson to learn, her entire thought process on what she had to do changed. However, returning to the timeline also had her realizing something growing inside her that she hadn’t felt before: a hatred for herself.
‘You were too careless,’ she scolded herself daily, ‘You had your chance and you blew it. You can’t be so confident. Fake it, but don’t feel it. Come up with a plan that has multiple steps, don’t run in blind. And push any and all personal feelings aside.’
That’s when it started. Training herself to not feel anything for anybody, by means of hurting herself if she thought she was starting to get attached.
‘Getting attached means you get hurt,’ Sylvie repeated in her head, ‘And if they don’t do it, you have to do it yourself.’
It healed quickly every time, never leaving a mark. A few times, when she found herself getting way too attached, she went deeper.
Sylvie wasn’t sure when she started feeling numb to everything, but one day she realized she didn’t care anymore. She didn’t care if people loved her, she had managed to convince herself that she wasn’t lovable anyways. She didn’t care that every person she saw was hours away from death.
Quite honestly, she didn’t care if she died with them. But she remembered how she felt when she had been taken from her home, how everyday more and more innocent people were being arrested and pruned for going against some predetermined path.
Every single time she found herself sitting minutes away from death, not caring if it took her, Sylvie thought about that feeling. That’s what motivated her to leave, to keep living.
‘Take down the TVA,’ she told herself, ‘Then the numbness will go away. You can live wherever you want, be with whoever you want.’ But now there was also this other thought that nudged its way into the front of her mind, ‘That is, if anybody will want you. You won’t even have anything to live for, so why bother?’
Sitting in Roxxcart setting up the reset charges she had stolen, Sylvie tried to push these thoughts out of her head. Once the timeline was free, she’d find a new purpose. It would be okay, wouldn’t it? She’d be okay. Yet, the thoughts kept coming. Even as she tried to find rest at night, more and more thoughts crept into her mind.
‘Your life is pointless. You aren’t even supposed to exist. This plan isn’t going to work, you know. Just give up.’
The thoughts brought up anger in Sylvie, anger she wasn’t sure how to get rid of. So when she felt it, she would go out and get another reset charge. She’d find a good fight to let it all out.
Then that stopped working too.
She went out and got more reset charges - they were vital to her plan, after all - but the fights didn’t make her feel any better. One night when the thoughts were too loud, Sylvie thought back to her old ways of getting herself to not care for people.
‘Just once,’ she told herself, ‘just once to see if it helps. I just need the thoughts to stop.’
It became a habit, one that couldn’t be easily broken. Whenever the thoughts started, she would take one of her knives and make them go away. As Roxxcart had become her safe haven, sometimes Sylvie would stand outside in the storm, willing it to take her.
And then finally the TVA found her, along with some cocky Loki variant. ‘Act confident. Fake it, but don’t feel it.’ she chanted in her head as she stalled for time, then gave him a little wave as she stepped through the timedoor.
Yet of course her plan fell apart so quickly. It was his fault - no, it’s your fault - she had once again lost her chance to take down the TVA. And now she was stranded on Lamentis-1, alone with the person who messed everything up, and a broken TemPad.
Ever since they had landed in that little mining shack, Sylvie’s head had been screaming at her. ‘You need your knife. It’ll calm you down, then you can think clearly.’ but she couldn’t, not when there was somebody else with her. So instead, she took all her feelings out on Loki. Yelling at him, fighting him, anything she could think of. She just had to keep her mind off of her knife until she could be alone.
Sitting by the lake after seeing the Ark get destroyed brought Sylvie some peace. ‘I’ll finally be dead,’ she thought, ‘I won’t have to run anymore,’ Loki hadn’t come to find her yet, she wondered if he would even bother.
So, she took her final moments to run her knife over her skin one last time. Her head was screaming in relief at the familiar feeling, but she quickly hid it when she heard someone walking up to her.
Loki’s compliments weren’t going through to Sylvie, her mind was blocking them all. ‘Fake it, don’t feel it.’
Looking over at him, she felt her heart drop. She had grown attached, hadn’t she? This was the very thing she had always told herself not to do, and yet here she was, wishing that he didn’t have to die with her.
So suddenly being back at the TVA, everything that happened, became a blur in her mind.
“Do you have any happy memories?” Renslayer taunted.
The numbness Sylvie felt was pulling at her heart, thinking of the moment she had Loki had shared on Lamentis. Loki, who she had just seen be pruned.
‘You let yourself get attached and they die,’ her brain had been saying nonstop, ‘It’s your fault.’
“Just one, really,” Sylvie whispered, wishing more than anything for her knife. But she held something better in her hands, she held a pruning stick. So, in a desperate attempt, she turned it on herself.
In the void she fought back tears when she realized multiple things at once: she wasn’t dead, Loki hadn’t died when he had been pruned but Alioth had probably killed him, and that her entire existence had been pointless now.
Everything she had fought for, thrown away because she let herself grow attached to someone.
Yet she wouldn’t let herself cry, especially not in front of Mobius. ‘Don’t show any weakness. Fake your confidence, fake that you don’t care. Don’t. Feel. Anything.’
The issue was that she did feel something. She felt sorrow, she felt love, she felt the need to mourn what she never had. Even finding out that her Loki hadn’ been taken by Alioth didn’t take these feelings away.
‘My entire life, I wasn’t supposed to exist. I only existed to take down the TVA. Maybe I can still do that, but if it took being pruned this entire time I’ve wasted my entire life.’
And of course Loki had to go and ask her what she was going to do once the timeline was freed.
‘I’ll probably just kill myself,’ was her first thought, but she pushed it out of her head. And then he offered to stay with her when it was all over, and she felt herself growing even more attached.
Her mind was screaming for her knife, but she couldn’t do anything with so many people around her. Instead, she decided to focus on the mission.
And then, Loki was gone. He Who Remains was gone. Everyone was gone.
Sylvie fell to the ground and cried. She cried for Loki, for the childhood she had lost, the family she had lost, and for the fact that she was now completely and utterly alone.
When she composed herself, she decided to step into a random timeline. Perhaps being around people would make her feel better.
It did the opposite. Sylvie found herself shutting down, avoiding people at all costs. She didn’t want any of them around her, she didn’t want to talk to anyone. And she certainly didn’t want to feel happy. ‘You don’t deserve it,’ the voice in her head was telling her, ‘Your purpose is done. Why are you still here?’
Sighing, Sylvie found herself ready to give in. Every chance she could find, she got out her knife and silenced the voice for as long as she could. Yet slowly, it was becoming less effective. The voice rang loudly in her head at all hours of the day, never taking a rest.
‘I need to see him one more time,’ she finally decided one night, ‘I’ll find him, make sure he’s safe, then I’ll leave. I just need to make sure he didn’t get killed because I found myself getting attached. But I won’t talk to him, no…he probably hates me. He should hate me.’
But as time passed, Sylvie couldn’t find Loki anywhere. It took a year before she accepted that he had probably died, or was purposely hiding from her. Whatever it was, Sylvie decided that she was done.
That’s how she found herself back on Lamentis, hoping that this timeline wouldn’t branch and somehow survive. She needed the planet to crash into Lamentis, she needed this to be how she went out.
‘This is where you messed it all up,’ the voice said, ‘This is where you have to leave.’
Sylvie sat on the rock by the lake and closed her eyes, knowing she only had a matter of seconds left alive. “I’m sorry, Loki,” she whispered, deciding they were fitting last words.
Then, as she felt the end coming, she felt herself get pushed by something - someone - and landed on a cold floor. ‘This isn’t Lamentis,’ she thought, confused, ‘Where am I?’
“Sylvie,” the voice made her finally open her eyes, holding back tears when she saw Loki looking down at her concerned, “What were you doing? You just almost died! That was Lamentis, remember? Planet crashes into the moon and everyone dies, including variants who happen to be there at the time of impact?”
“It’s the only way,” Sylvie choked out, “It’s the only way I want to let myself go.”
“Why?” Loki pleaded, “Gods, I never imagined that’s how I’d find you. If I would’ve gotten there a second later-”
“You were looking for me?” she whispered, not believing it, “No, I was looking for you. You…you were hiding from me. You hate me.”
“Why would I hate you?”
“The Citadel, I pushed you away.”
Loki shook his head, “I’ve only ever been worried about you, Sylvie. I could never hate you.”
‘But you can’t love me,’ the voice said, ‘I can’t be loved.’
“You don’t believe me.” he said after Sylvie remained silent, “You truly think I hate you? Sylvie, I understand why you did what you did. Did I appreciate it? No, not really. But I’ve never hated you.”
For the first time in her life, Sylvie found herself crying in front of someone. “You should’ve left me there, Loki. I found my glorious purpose, as you would put it. I took down the TVA, and now I have nothing. There’s no reason for me to keep going.”
“So you find a new purpose,” he said without missing a beat, “You’ll always have a purpose, Sylvie. It’ll change, trust me mine changed drastically, but you’ll always have one. Please, don’t say your life doesn’t matter because it does. It matters to me. You matter to me.”
“Loki-”
“Let me finish. You’re in a dark place right now, and I don’t know how long you’ve been there. But whatever your mind is telling you, don’t listen.”
“Loki…” waiting to see if he would cut her off again, she continued, “I can’t just not listen to my own mind. It’s always there, always screaming at me. If I could just shut it out, I would’ve a long time ago.”
He couldn’t find it in himself to ask how she usually silenced her thoughts. The thought of her in pain ate at his heart, and he didn’t want to have confirmation on if she had been inflicting it on herself all this time.
“I know it’s hard,” he said after a moment of silence, “But I promise it will get better. It seems impossible, trust me I know, but we can work on silencing those hurtful thoughts. I can’t promise they’ll leave forever one day, but we’ll deal with them when they do come. Will you let me help you?”
“I can’t do that to you.”
“I’m offering.”
“I won’t drag you down with me,” Sylvie shook her head, “If I get too close, it always ends. The first time I got attached to you, you got pruned!”
Loki gave her a lopsided smile, “Then it’s a good thing I’m hard to get rid of. Even after getting pruned, sent away in a timedoor, and everything else I’ve been through…I’m still here. And trust me when I say you’re not getting rid of me again.”
Sylvie stared at him not knowing what to say. It was true, wasn’t it? He was still here.
‘Maybe,’ she thought, ‘Just maybe, I can give it one more shot.’