The Apocalypse Is Coming.
Loki stood outside, in the void-thing.
No, she didn’t know how she got here. If she knew, she would be running through it in their internal monologue.
(And if you’re going to question the pronouns, then you’re just an asshole. Loki knew how to deal with most assholes.)
Someone was standing in the shadows.
Shit, someone was standing in the shadows.
But look, Loki- it’s been a tough time. Ever tried learning that everything is a lie and everything is screwed? Then getting betrayed and forgotten and having your trauma dismissed? Having a racist asshole as a father- well, Loki didn’t believe that yet. The narrator was only a temporary measure because apparently they had to document this.
{Alyce.}
{Yes?}
{Don’t screw with the narration.}
{Fine. But this- how are you going to convince them to come with us? They might even be a LP4+?}
{I don’t know. We’ll see. For now, just don’t screw with the narration.}
{Gotcha. I believe in you Vallie.}
{Thank you.}
“I mean you no harm. I promise.” Valentine said, skidding out of the shadows and putting her hands up in somewhat surrender.
Loki looked like a being on the end of their rope. And by that she...he... meant clutching on to the frayed edges of a rapidly disintegrating string.
“Where am I? Who are you? Why does this keep happening to me?”
“Hello, I’m AGENT522 or Valentine Steward. No, I’m not from the TVA. The TVA is barely part of the story.”
Loki made a bunch of stop-start noises and motions, before running their hands through their hair.
“That doesn’t- well, that barely explains anything to me!”
Valentine took a deep breath. This was going to be a long day.
“Listen, you just learnt about your whole reality being a lie and the sacred timeline or whatever it said in your file. But that’s only your universe, which is a neutral anomaly that contains a weird set of subdimensional logic while also not extending at all to the external multiverse and still only taking up one place in the Ether.”
Loki looked confused. It was understandable. She would have been confused as well. Hell, when she was picked up as a Torn, she hadn’t understood at all.
“How do I know you’re not a variation of someone I know who’s evil now? Or part of the alt-TVA?”
“You don’t. I literally have no idea how I could prove to you that we mean no harm. But like, I think we’re doing a better job than what the TVA did.”
“True.” She considered the woman in front of her, managing to try to process the shitshow that had been the past few days, while mentally testing pronouns and trying to figure out who the fuck were these people. Loki was pretty good at mental multi-tasking.
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing- well something, but nothing too bad.”
“What do you mean “nothing too bad”? Everyone wants something off me, constantly, and someone always ends up getting hurt.”
Valentine considered it, really considered it.
It was rather funny, because the TVA actually were somewhat counterproductive. Because although they attempted to stop the timeline from branching, it was somewhat inevitable.
But they were a neutral anomaly, which meant that maybe the TVA had kept them from becoming a negative anomaly. (The fact that they all acted so high-and-mighty with their destructive little things and timepads was frankly adorable. You don’t know power until you’ve felt the void take a piece of your soul for admission. You don’t know pain until you lose everything, and live the rest of your life with the understanding that you will never be able to be the same.)
Then again, they slaughtered trillions, possibly zillions of beings, so Valentine wasn’t going to give them any kudos for that.
But Loki… this ISV was- not rare, when your world was made of infinites, there was no rarity. It was just harder to find.
Loki had had a tough couple of- she was going to say weeks, but really, it had been months- or even years, his...their...fitted better for the moment... childhood was somewhat hell, because psychological abuse still traumatises even with privilege, Loki had had a tough fucking life, and by taking them to the TDC it might just make it worse.
So why?
“Listen, your universe, if you can’t tell, is unstable. Not from the whole timeline shattering thing, I’m surprised that your ISV actually managed to maintain that bullshit for all this time, but because of strain from people coming in and out of the Ether. Simply, it’s either going to collapse or fizzle out. So we-”
“We?”
“My partner Alyce, who is technically here and probably finds it rather amusing that I’m saying this, and I, chose you to come with us.”
“Why? How do you know the world is going to end? Is everyone okay?”
“No! Almost everyone in your universe is going to die, and it’s not going to be pretty. You can’t stop it. The thing is, that’s not the world, that’s only your universe. The world lies behind this void.”
Loki looked at them incredulously {I think that’s the right word}.
“You are so bad at explaining stuff.”
“I know.”
“You’re not going to convince me to go anywhere.”
“Fine. Sure. I want to know though, what would you do next? You have the knowledge that the apocalypse is coming, you know that the world you know has spiralled out of control, Mobius doesn’t remember you, Sylvie is shattered, and you know that you’re going to die. Besides, the TVA was all bullshit, at least the reason they arrested you was.”
“What?”
“They arrested you for screwing with the sacred timeline by picking up the Tesseract and sending yourself to the desert and screwing with the Avengers, but the Avengers managed to get the Space Stone anyway, so if they were actually going to delete you it would change the way that the Avengers orchestrated the end battle in the redeemed combination of past and future, which would screw up their sacred timeline, which also probably would have removed you from the equation in a weird way and- they’re idiots.”
Loki stood there, trying their best to process that.
“Really though, what would you do? You know that there’s more chaos to be caused, there’s more places than what you could have ever even dreamed of. Not all-power, but you’ll be able to improve reality or you can get in a sector where you rescue people, or watch other people, or become an Archivist. There are so many jobs- When your universe, MAULSFGRECF11 shatters, the world will lose your potential.”
“You’re rather good at monologuing. But here’s the thing: I don’t trust you. And I don’t care what bullshit you have to spout about the apocalypse, I found the multiverse, I found the truth, and what you’re saying makes no sense. There is no power, there is only suffering.”
Valentine wanted to scream. She now understood why she was banned from this field work. She should have let Alyce do it, with her silver tongue and the fact that she could explain shit. Valentine couldn’t. She didn’t know how to get through to them. She had the patience, but they didn’t have the time.
This subsection was getting increasingly unstable the longer they sat here trying to convince Loki to just believe them, which was fair, considering their past, but they either came with them or they died and Alyce refused to let this whole ISV branch fade without any survivors. Because she was stubborn and had access to a lot of ISV branches and multiverse systems.
She cared too much. That was the issue. They were two different sides of the coin. Alyce was brash and stubborn and was always towing a dangerous line, yet indifferent to the workings of the people- or, really, probably not people who she worked for. Valentine was sparky but quiet enough, obedient and patient enough, yet achingly curious, with the constant need to understand and to know, the hunger for knowledge that fuelled her.
“You remind me of myself.”
Valentine offered quietly. If it had been someone who had had even slightly worse hearing it would have been lost to the stasis in the air.
“Which feels a tad narcissistic. But you suffered through years and years of psychological and insidious abuse. Then when you finally snapped, you paid the price for it deeply.”
Loki was looking at Valentine with a poker face. Again, why the fuck was she, the socially inept stupid one out of the two, lacking Alyce’s analytical and tactical genius, without the ability to read people or pick up on cues-
Why the fuck had she agreed to this?
Definitely the most stupid thing she had done all week with Alyce. And that was saying something.
“And out of everyone there, I felt like they stole your life. They stole your potential. They took what could have been. So, because I can’t offer you a better past, I can offer you a future.”
“How do I know you’re not lying? How can I trust you?”
“You can’t. It’s up to you what you do next.”
“Okay.” They look around.
Then they throw their hands to the sky, (black hair flipping almost extravagantly, and Valentine would have found it funny if the situation at hand wasn’t so dire) and then screamed “Hey God! What are you punishing me for now?”
Understandable.
See, this was the issue, she understood, but didn’t know how to react. She understood but couldn’t make it better.
“So.”
“So.”
“Are you going to come with me?”
“Through the shadow-void away from the only truths I’ve ever known with a random stranger who claims the apocalypse is coming and is going to break everything?”
“...yes?”
Loki looked around, there was a slight gleam of suspicion in there, but there was also lingering heartbreak as well, and at the core was a calculation being made, risks being weighed, and she hoped that they would factor in that literally any sane person would disagree to this.
“Ok.”
“What?”
{Told you that you could do it.}
{Oh, do shut up.}
“Okay. I’ve had a shitty time recently and I can feel that something is going to happen. Besides, the timeline has split right? So there will still be variants-”
They cut themself off mid-sentence, considering what their future might look like if they accept this crazy deal, if they do the stupid thing that they can feel the aching temptation to explore and create and become.
“So there will be other versions of me anyway.”
Valentine only nodded, offering a bit of truth, a bit of confirmation and a bit of silence so they could work out what was next.
“Okay. I’ll come with you. Things can’t be worse than what I’ve already seen, right?”
Valentine only nods, but this time it’s total fucking bullshit.
“One last question, where will the void take me..?” They asked, eyeing the complete absence of matter and light that made up the void.
“To our flat while Alyce files your paperwork.”
They stepped forward, and reached out to touch it.
And then it consumed him, well, it appeared to, it was more taking a bit of his being and giving it access to the Ether.
Yeah, Valentine should have probably told him that before he touched it, but it was a tad bit late now.
{Okay- thank god, I never want to do that again.}
{Which bit?}
{All of it. The telepathy, the writing, the guesswork of emotions- it’s hell, I don’t actually think I would wish anyone through Narration.}
{Let’s send that to your friend.}
{Ava isn’t my friend, we just know each other from-}
{A previous trip, yes I know. So let’s send this to Ava and tell her to put it in our files.}
{Then we can deal with the demi-god being in our flat?}
{Precisely.}
***