Ikol and Sylvie find themselves on the same path, and they share
a connection.
âš
Implied cat death.
Not all earworms were catchy little bops that stayed in your head because they were catchy. Sometimes, they were a catchphrase that stood out, and one line played over and over again. Sylvie couldn't remember where she'd heard the song before, probably on some radio station a hundred years ago, but the phrase time after time was stuck in her head. She supposed it was appropriate for a time traveler.
The problem with an earworm in an post-apocalyptic world in which monsters with incredible hearing was that sometimes that earworm got in the way of the sounds of the world. While Sylvie wasn't barefoot like a lot of people were, she had learned over a millennia how to not make a sound and how not to be seen. If she were heard, she might be fast enough to dodge, but not fast enough to do it without sound.
So she tiptoed on her boots on the way out of Derleth, cautiously looking every which way she could. There was a small footpath of sand on the way into town which, now that she was thinking about it, was curious. Had someone from Derleth laid it down? Or was it here before they arrived? In the end, it didn't really matter where it came from, just what it did. It led straight to town, and it kept your footfalls quiet.
Just as the tiny town came into sight, Sylvie stopped. A cat leapt down from a tree, and while it might have been quiet in any other time period in any other dimension, it was not here. The sound of growls, clicks, and something large and fast came speeding through. Before the cat had gotten a few feet away from the tree, one of the monsters swooped out from nowhere and struck, carrying the cat along with it.
There was one in this area. That was… not good.
She stood there in her spot for another fifteen minutes, wondering if she should begin her trek again, or should she wait another ten minutes before she could try.
It was against better judgment to be out here. It was. Ikol recognized that, and there was a part of his brain that was working on the implications of ignoring that better judgment and leaving Butler Hall again, but it was only a shallow reflection for now. Anything too deep, anything too distracting as he tread ground could mean hitting a root that was popping out of the ground -- a rock, something his meandering attention wouldn’t have caught. He had to stay on task.
This time as he walked the path from Derleth, a sandy one that clearly had been laid by someone who recognized the risk of crunchy leaves and the importance of softening footfalls, he had his coat doing the legwork of concealing his location by keeping him invisible. It meant no sighted creature would know where he was, or at least it meant that beyond maybe scent and sound, he was a less notable presence in this world.
Something hit the ground behind him. He turned to see a cat descending from a tree and swiftly be snatched away. Then, he spotted someone behind him. She’d been so quiet, that he hadn’t even realized she was there at all before this exact moment. He would’ve chuckled at the odds of once again being in Sylvie’s path, but… well, noise.
He lowered the cloaking on his coat and held up his hands to her. A signal to let her know he was here and to not be alarmed. Then he polished it off with a small wave. Because he was him.
Sylvie wasn't exactly confused. She was able to almost literally melt into shadows with her magic. She could take control of people's minds. She could lift things with her mind. She could blast things away. She could turn into different people. Magic was not unfamiliar.
However, not realizing a person was there? That wasn't familiar at all. Sylvie was usually way more on her guard. Maybe she was concentrating so hard on being quiet that she didn't notice anyone ahead of her at all.
That was a scary thought.
It was rare that someone could disappear altogether though, and it seemed like Loki's coat was enchanted for it. Interesting. Maybe if she'd been able to stick around Asgard longer, she'd get a shiny new coat like that. Instead, she'd had to pillage her clothing from Ragnarok and modify it to fit her. Sacred Timeline Loki was way taller than her, so she'd simply taken one of his armoured tops and changed that to fit, omitting a few key components along the way. Still, she kept the gold necklace. She liked that.
She held her fingers to her lips though, then realized she was holding her breath. Sylvie tried to exhale as slowly as she could, as soundlessly as she could, and let her shoulders slacken just a bit.
Sylvie’s gesture to remain quiet was met with a half eyeroll, which was really only because not making a noise was old news by now. At least two days old. Days strangely seemed to stretch out double long in Derleth at times…
He raised his hand and jabbed a thumb behind him in the assumed direction she was headed. The direction he was also headed. To town, that is, and whatever may still be awaiting them within it. He tilted his head as if to place the question mark on the end of a sentence. Going my way?
It had been more of a quick decision to go outside again, chalked up to contrarian habits and genuine curiosity. Widow said to let her know who was venturing out. He did not. His assumption was that keeping his silence intact and not being visible would keep problems at a minimum. Perhaps that had been a lark. It seemed Derleth was always forcing company, even in the times he least asked for it.
Although, maybe those were also the times he most needed it. It was always complicated.
He could eyeroll all he wanted, but given that his counterpart had knocked a bin of bubblegum off a grocery store shelf just the day before meant that it wasn't unwarranted. In her eyes. Maybe to him, he was ten steps ahead of everyone else. That cloak. She was really interested in that cloak.
And had no idea who Black Widow was, so she didn't feel the need to check in with anyone. No one knew her, so what did it matter anyway?
To Sylvie, it felt like she was never going to get away from Lokis, so she might as well just admit defeat and fall in line behind him. So that's just what she did. She nodded and walked several quiet steps toward him, paying extremely close attention to the trees where the cat had come from — and been disappeared. How long had it survived just to get blindly taken while jumping from a tree? What a waste.
Once she was close enough, she asked — wordlessly — your cloak? and gesturing with her hands at her shoulders. Invisible?
Company it was, then. Ikol half expected her to plead an exit and he would have let her go, even if perhaps with a touch of disappointment. Ego and all.
He watched her careful way of moving, almost cat-like in the deliberate steps and softened contact with ground. It was a more graceful thing than his reliance on boots that provided a shortcut to the same buffered and silent outcome.
The question was registered and he offered a small grin. He tripped the spell and vanished in a quick shimmer before reappearing. It was a small trust afforded in her favor, and more than he gave Loki. That, however, was more of a game of keepaway than safeguarding secrets -- at least for something so superficial.
Shadow thread, he mouthed. He ran a thumb under a lapel and winked.
Never heard of it. It came with a shrug and a slight head shake to get the point across in case her mouth didn't.
It was better than responding to the wink. Winks were weird things. She'd seen them in films, but never in real life. Maybe it was all that time in apocalypses where people were trying not to die that kept them from winking, because clearly people actually did it.
Or maybe just this Loki did.
It was hard to tell.
She held out a hand in the hopes of touching the fabric, seeing what it felt like. Maybe there was some sort of magic she could glean from it. Not steal, just figure out for herself. What she wouldn't give to be able to turn herself invisible. Asgard?
He caught the extended hand and gave it a contemplative look. It was a request to get closer, and he didn't suspect there was any nefarious intent behind it. Sense being the operative word, and that was stacked atop all of one meeting and a conversation on the network to give him an idea of what made a Sylvie tick.
What the Hel. Ikol held out his arm to her, allowing her to feel the fabric of she wanted.
Svartalfheim. Harder to mouth, but he felt he hit the major syllables. I travel… He held up a hand, palm down and flat and tilted it back and forth. Occasionally.
Dark Elves?
She was of Asgard, no matter what she proclaimed now. She'd heard the stories of Malekith and his plans to take over the Nine Realms. In fact, she'd thought to travel to London once or twice, but because Thor stopped it, she'd never thought she could go there. The second she set foot down, she'd be spotted.
She turned some of the fabric between her fingers. It didn't feel like anything out of the ordinary really. Just… fabric. Perhaps stronger than some of those she'd found on Earth, but other than that — ordinary.
She shrugged a shoulder, pulled half her face. Not bad.
At her silent question, Ikol nodded. It was also something of a test, in its own way, given that someone claiming to be loosely in Asgardian orbit would probably falter on details. So far he couldn’t sniff out a fib.
He casually breezed over any further demonstrations. Speculation was fine about whatever else he had on his person, but show-and-tell soured if it started to become about bragging rights.
It’s comfortable, too. And with that much, Ikol stuffed his hands into the pockets. He quarter-turned, giving the path a quick survey and then opening his mouth to wordlessly say something else, but something nearby rustled in the foliage.
He stopped short, his mouth pulling into a taut line. The risk was accepted, but, as ever, there was always a variable that was hard to account for. A dead branch had come loose from a tree, cracking off and then hitting several other branches on the way down before shattering on the ground mere feet away.
Ikol evened his breathing and stayed frozen. He looked to Sylvie, and gave the smallest shake of his head. Don’t. Don’t move, don’t run. Don’t.
Sylvie's gut reactions were never to stop. Never don't move. Never don't run. As soon as she saw a Time Door, Minute Men, a Hunter — she was on her feet and running faster than she thought possible. She usually had a TemPad those times, though, and would be cycling through apocalypses to jump through.
Here, she was just stuck.
And pray to the Nine Realms that her thumping heart beat didn't give her away.
Just as with the cat, a loud lumbering came through the trees. The damn branch. Sylvie was beginning to believe this whole world was set to spite them. Set it in a forest with so many crunchy leaves, and not nearly enough people to distract the creatures from them. It was a shame that someone couldn't just build hundreds of meandering robots that could take the brunt of the creature's destruction.
But they'd need an assembly line, and wouldn't you know it: that would make a lot of noise too.
The branch was utterly destroyed after the creature came through, but it didn't keep running, like the other with the cat. This one stood there, as if it were some sort of guard, listening carefully for the slightest sound. Sylvie's eyes went as wide as they could, and she paused her breathing.
It was not lost on Ikol that these things had torn an Asgardian apart already. He kept his eyes on the creature after noting that Sylvie had followed suit.
It wasn't clever. It wasn't tricksy. It was so un-Loki-like to stand here and wait in silence, but the creature started to turn away from them and it was hard to fault using logic over bravado or showmanship. He glanced upward, debating if there was a way to cause a commotion far enough away from them to send the creature away. That thought swiftly became limiting without using magic.
And that…
That was a different risk.
His eyes tracked down a tree, and behind it a waif of a boy was peering at him with an accusing stare. The specter was gone in a blink with its warning heeded. Ikol shook himself slightly, trying to focus back on a more physical and present threat. There was no time for ghosts here. Still, his train of thought was decoupled. He looked to Sylvie again, searching for some sort of answer.
She could do what she had done at the grocery store: use magic to distract the creature. Hell, with some telekinesis, she could throw it a good long way away. It wouldn't hear a thing and might even be distracted long enough to hear some other random noise in the woods. Before she knew it, she was lighting up her hands with green Asgardian magic.
Sylvie looked quickly to Ikol before one single nod was given. Her hands rose and as they did, so did the creature. It began to flail in the air, and that made it a whole lot harder to control. She was used to flash-in-the-pan telekinesis, the kind you did with boatloads of adrenaline, and not a lot of thinking. This was requiring more telekinetic muscle than she was used to.
If she could scream, throwing it would get it even further away, but that might draw more to them. So instead, she flung it as far as it would go in silence. It wasn't as far as she'd like, but it was enough — she hoped.
Ikol's expression shifted from bemused to mild alarm until he mentally recognized the tactic. A smirk was fleeting as he regarded Sylvie's prowess and took a silent second to recognize that having allies with a punch to pack was a very good thing.
He gave her an impressed look, then mouthed Nice with a quick thumbs up.
They weren't free and clear, but it sounded like a cascading effect. The crash of the monster out of view seemed to have alerted its kin, but they surged in the wrong direction towards where they assumed prey was waiting. Away from him and Sylvie.
And then, after some hazy stretch of time, it was completely quiet again. Ikol surveyed the path ahead. Town wasn't far and it was an equal distance back to Butler Hall. He glanced at Sylvie, trying to discern if she was weighing out the same options.
She was. She'd already been here, dealt with two other creatures while dealing with another Loki. She wasn't as adept at the other two, hiding their thoughts, her mind turning over whether or not it was an acceptable risk to keep going or not.
On the one hand, she really wanted to look at this world. So much of it reminded her of the Void at the end of the time that she wondered who else she'd find out there. Part of her hoped to find Mobius or the Loki in the green and yellow costume who magicked Asgard and sacrificed himself. Even the kid or the alligator would be nice.
Starting over wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
So reluctantly, she jerked her head toward the campus as an invitation to join her.
Ikol managed to hold onto his neutral expression and keep it from slipping down a crestfallen slope. There was a small thought that with Sylvie at his side, they could forge ahead. He could still fight, if needed, but he knew it wasn’t practical. It placed the bulk of responsibility for their safety on Sylvie, and she wasn’t even aware of that.
He needed to figure out how to self-sustain. An existence plagued by limiting magic was… difficult.
But that wasn’t a problem to be solved today. He nodded. Whatever was in town, he guessed it would have to remain there. He took a step towards her and shrugged a small shrug as if to resign to sensibility.
Sylvie didn't question Loki's non-use of magic. Not all Lokis used it; some preferred to rely on blades. Or a bit of both. But running into two creatures before they'd really gotten to the town seemed like a sign to Sylvie, and she wasn't sure she wanted to see where that ended up.
Besides, she had enough candy stocked up. Even bubblegum for whenever they were out of this realm. When she could talk and freely chew on gum without being wary of the noises she made. Every single noise. She was louder than she thought she was. She wondered if other people found themselves realizing just how loud everything they did was.
Still, she was curious. He had a cloak that made him invisible. Did he have anything else that was magical in nature? Pity she couldn't ask him. Instead, she walked silently and slowly enough to be friendly — if a walk could be friendly. She supposed if a walk could be fast and murderous, then they could be friendly too. She'd never thought about it.
Silence made things awkward though, and she desperately wanted to talk. To ask him questions. No Thor? She shook her head, then pretended to throw a hammer and have it return to her. She'd only seen it in TVA footage, never real life.
Ikol moderated his pace. It was partly because a shorter, slower step was less likely to make noise or cause a trip-up that even his soundless boots wouldn’t be able to prevent, but also because he knew how to be considerate of a smaller stride. Walking with Verity in another time, another place, another world had been a lesson in that much.
He kept his hands out of his pockets as he walked. Reduce the risk of doing something dumb, live to see the rest of the week. Theoretically.
Also, it seemed that Sylvie was hoping to carry on their ‘chat’, such as it was. He brightened up at that, and also because despite everything… Thor tended to bring up good memories. More so now that he was elsewhere beyond reach, and instinct grabbed the most superficial layer of who Thor was to him: a brother, a friend, and Asgard’s heart. And someone entirely unaware that the Loki he loved had been killed and replaced by the one claiming his name now.
Not here. Ikol gave a shrug, fingers pointing down to indicate their present overall location. But yes. Back home. Do you -- He gestured to her, then tapped his temple with one finger. Know a Thor?
A little bit. She held up her thumb and forefinger, indicating such. She'd looked up to her Thor so much, hung onto every word he said. He was clever, but not in a devious way. Not in the way that Sylvie's mind often worked. But he also was a bit of a shit sometimes, not wanting his sister to hang around him and his friends. If she'd had a few more years with him…
Well, that was neither here nor there. She never got those years, and he would not have known her anyway. Just from seeing him a few times during Ragnarok, she only knew a few things: he had become a hero and saved as many Asgardians as he could. That was enough to give her the push to change her hair at some point. It seemed a silly thing really. She'd gone through her anti-Loki phase (admittedly a lot longer than the phase most teenagers went through where they hated their parents), changed her hair (any color, and she went blonde), and then changed her name.
He was— How did she put this without giving herself away? She tilted her hand open. A friend.
It seemed reasonable. Thor had a habit of making friends of most anyone he crossed, even if his occasional bouts of being an absolute jock might temporarily get in the way. For all the muscles and all the posturing, Thor was kind. Kinder than he should have been to a troublesome little brother who spiraled into chaos and ultimately waged centuries of war on him. It was just Thor, to see good. To believe in good. His absence was keenly felt, even despite it being a mere two weeks in this world -- because it was hard to imagine anywhere without a Thor.
Ikol reached into his pocket and pulled out his personal phone. He jumped through a few screens, then drew up a picture of Thor. It wasn’t the portrait of a hero or anything like that; it was just Thor in Midgardian civilian clothing, seated at a dinner booth with a plate stacked high with pancakes. A Thor who was ‘off-duty’ and who had entertained his sibling’s wish to go out for a milkshake.
He makes those fast. The screen was held out towards Sylvie so she could see. I’m glad you got to know him.
Oh no. Sylvie hadn't expected photographs, and while this Thor looked slightly different than the one in her memories, he was still Thor. She'd tried to shove down her feelings for her brother, even pretended she remembered nothing of her time on Asgard, but the truth was that her entire life on the run, she always thought the end of all this revenge would see her back in her own timeline, somehow, but on her own terms. It was idealistic and so very Thor to have that sort of weird hope, but there it was.
Instead, she was just sitting at the end of time with no one to blame but herself.
Her eyes welled up though not enough to spill over, but there was a tiny smile on her face. She remembered his appetite so well. There was not a time she hadn't commented on it in a teasing tone. Sometimes she had to remember to sneak something she wanted seconds of lest the future God of Thunder snag it for his fourths of fifths.
Not very long, she mouthed. But long enough.
Maybe he should have watched her expression, but the result was much the same: seeing Thor inspired a small smile, and it made that hollow Thor-shaped hole in this world feel like it had a gravity that could pull someone in if they weren’t guarding their feelings well enough. He looked over after a few seconds, to catch her response.
And, maybe… maybe he thought he saw something in the way she looked at the picture, but it could well be projecting. Fraught as his relationship could be with Thor, he usually assumed that those who knew him would be prone to missing him, as well.
Seems there is never enough… Ikol tapped where a watch would have been on his wrist, had an Asgardian with a smartphone ever needed one. Time.
Then, he shrugged, and turned the phone’s screen off. There were more pictures, but too many would be a damning bit of evidence and he was not ready to open that can of worms. Not now, if ever.
It was funny. Time was the one thing she seemed to have an abundance of, just not the right kind of time. Not time with Thor or Frigga. Not time with Loki or even Mobius. There wasn't even enough time at the end of time to think or get a grip on what was actually going on. Most of her time had been spent plotting her revenge against the TVA that she'd never stopped to really think about what she would do once she'd taken care of the head of the TVA.
If things were normal, Sylvie would have cleared her throat to get away from those pesky emotions. But she couldn't, so they could just have to sit there in her mouth while she tried to pretend that nothing mattered.
(But it did. Seeing Thor mattered.)
Once again, she was down to two words: Thank you.
That. That surprised Ikol. He knew the words, even without their audible component. It just seemed peculiar to be thanked for showing a picture of a Thor, and specifically one she presumably had not met before. Not unless it held some deeper importance to her to see any Thor, but that was once again a touch of projection, plausibly. Something to ask about in the future, maybe. Something to pocket for now.
He nodded and gave a slight bow, since it seemed like a small amount of levity was a better response than merely mouthing that she was most welcome. For whatever he’d given her.
The outline of Derleth was becoming more apparent in the distance now. They were on the homestretch. Ikol looked over again, brows lifted as a stray thought crossed his mind. Not telling Widow about this, right? he asked.
Sylvie didn't really know who or why this Widow person was allowed to tell people what to do, but it seemed like this Loki (and the other) thought she was formidable enough to tell or not tell, or to listen to. She gave a single nod.