Loki's feet were hurting something awful, they were dragging through the purple dirt and kicking up rocks. He was sweaty, sobering up, and feeling a bit miserable. Yet he wasn't giving all that a lot of attention, instead he was peering at Sylvie while deep in thought.
It was a strange thing, to know nothing yet everything about someone. When Loki looked at Sylvie he recognized some of himself in her but there were some striking differences. They had the same style, but Sylvie had blonde hair. He wasn't sure if the blonde hair was natural or dyed, but he knows the only time he ever had blonde hair was after one of Thor's pathetic attempts at pranking him. Loki smirked as he remembered the hilarious look on Thor's face when he woke up one morning with pink eyebrows. He and Sylvie had both been greatly wronged in some way or another, but Sylvie was a bit more hardened and closed off than Loki. And of course there was one very obvious difference between them, something that Loki was burning in curiosity over.
"I hope this doesn't come off as incredibly rude", Loki loosened the tie around his neck, "but have you always been a woman?"
Sylvie snorted, "Well you could've worded that a little better but I understand that Asgard isn't exactly progressive in its views. But to answer your question, I...haven't always been this way."
"Ah. So you weren't raised in Asgard?"
"I grew up in Alfheim.", Sylvie gazed into the purple sky with a faraway look in her eyes, "People are more open minded there. I was allowed to be myself and eventually I figured out that to be myself was to be a woman."
Loki's brow furrowed, he wondered how his life would have been had he not been raised in Asgardian society. Would he have come to the same realization as Sylvie had?
"Did you ever feel as though your body just wasn't quite right?", Sylvie asked.
Loki struggled to remember. His own thoughts, memories, and maybe even the very essence of his being had been warped after his time in The Void.
"Well I remember that shapeshifting came very naturally to me at a young age.", Loki swept his fingers through his messy hair, "I would sometimes shift into a female form but Thor quickly taught me to be ashamed of that part of myself. The whole finding out that I am a frost giant has also complicated my relationship with my body."
"Thor?"
"Yes, he was my brother..or stepbrother I suppose. Thor and his friends always valued highly the traits of a warrior, and being feminine was most certainly not considered one of them."
"And how do you feel when you are in a female form?"
"I don't feel any different, maybe a bit excited about the novelty of it, but I just feel like myself in either form."
"Hmm, interesting.", Sylvie's lips quirked in a way that Loki knew his own did and he felt a bit unsettled for a moment.
"But that's enough about me", Loki adjusted the collar of his dress shirt, "If you don't mind me asking, how did you acquire this form? I know that I could shapeshift into that form but our powers differ, do they not?"
"The pursuit of a new body was actually what introduced me to witchcraft. I could have perhaps taught myself to shapeshift but that wasn't exactly what I was looking for."
"And what is it that you were looking for?"
"A permanent change, not an illusion or a temporary transformation. I found a solution through alchemy, and the moment I finally had the body I was meant to have the TVA came for me.", Sylvie answered with no small amount of bitterness laced through her words.
Loki came to a halt, his fists clenched in anger, "They did what!?".
"I don't know if they came after me because I was never meant to learn magic in my reality or if the blasted timekeepers just decided that I wasn't meant to be Sylvie. But I refuse to regret it. I refuse to regret being who I am no matter what those infernal space lizards have to say about it!"
Loki didn't know what to say. His mind was burning with the same righteous fury that Sylvie was radiating.
He took a deep breath, "I really admire that."
"Oh piss off! I wouldn't have said anything if I knew you were going to be an ass about it."
"No, no", Loki gesticulated a bit frantically, "I'm being sincere. I really can't even imagine how terrible that must have been for you."
Sylvie's shoulders lost a bit of their tension as she grumbled, "C'mon keep walking, we'll never make it there at this rate."
Loki trudged behind Sylvie while lost in thought. How much exactly had Asgard taken from him? They mocked and derided him for always leaning towards androgyny, he had never been able to discuss his sexuality with anyone besides his few male partners, and then of course there was the whole making him hate and fear Jotuns.
While at the TVA he had read through their files on Jotunheim. He came to realize that everything he had thought he'd known about the Jotuns was propaganda and fear-mongering. They weren't mindless brutes, they had one of the best magic academies in all the realms. Jotuns hardly placed any emphasis on gender or sexuality, a third of their species were intersex and most Jotuns did not have any preference in the gender of their partners. Being a mage in Jotunheim was not only accepted, it was praised and encouraged! How different would Loki's life had been had he grown up in Jotunheim? Or even Alfheim like Sylvie had? What kind of person would he have been if he had just felt accepted and understood growing up? In that moment Loki felt more wronged than he ever had in his life.
He needed to think about something else, anything else.
"So, why 'Sylvie'?", Loki asked.
"What do you mean why 'Sylvie'?", some of the tension returned to her shoulders.
"Why'd you choose that name?"
"Ah.", her posture became a little less defensive, "It means forest. The forests of Alfheim are...a sight to behold. I felt more at home there than anywhere else."
"So, the forest? That's why you like green?"
"..Well yeah, why'd you like green?", Sylvie untied the bun in her hair, neatened it, and retied it.
"My magic. It was always green", Loki said. "Green like greed, like malice, and envy."
Sylvie frowned slightly, "Well that's not all that green is. I mean what color are the leaves and the grass?"
"..That would depend on which realm you're on."
Sylvie pushed Loki in a way that was more lighthearted and friendly than Loki was expecting.
"Oh don't be an ass.", She huffed, "Fine. What color is the grass in MOST realms?"
"Green.", Loki kicked away a rock in his path.
"See! There you have it.", Sylvie smirked.
"That doesn't prove anything."
Sylvie rolled her eyes. "Not everything has to be some kind of sign that you're evil, Loki."
Loki cleared his throat a bit uncomfortably and looked to the sky, "Right."
They walked onward quietly for a few minutes but eventually Sylvie broke the silence with a question.
"So do you feel as though you are a man? Do you think the name 'Loki' fits you?"
"That's not something I've really given much thought to. But I suppose I do feel like a man, I just wouldn't mind being a woman every once in a while maybe? But as for my name, I do like 'Loki'. I feel as though it suits me but I also feel that 'Sylvie' fits you."
Sylvie hummed a bit distractedly, "I'm wondering now though how much our different upbringings account for our difference in gender."
"Well there's also some biological differences among our variants aren't there? I mean have you seen that one variant with the absurdly large arms?"
Sylvie giggled, "Yes, I call him Gorilla Man in my head."
Loki chuckled and felt that he and Sylvie might just get along.