Loki (fiorvalr) wrote in noexits, @ 2021-09-16 19:33:00 |
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Loki and Sylvie both seek out the same refuge.
In the aftermath of the Lokian invasion, Sylvie had awakened with one thought: this must be what it felt like to discover your entire life was a lie, like the TVA agents she'd shown the truth. Having the rug pulled out from under your feet, your body used for some agenda that wasn't her own… Sylvie was devastated. She had a new appreciation for Hunter B-15 and Mobius. Overcoming that sense of less and sense of self was hard to reconcile. Sylvie could have stayed in her room, her magically protected room where no one else could get in. She thought about it, but the fact was that she hadn't even begun to stock up on items and there was nothing for her to do in it. She didn't have a television or even books. She'd been to voids, a horror-filled dystopia, and the 1950s as two vastly different people. And the only thing she had to show for it was the ridiculously silver costume she'd worn as a Lokian. It was hanging on the outside of her closet, as if it were tormenting her and the things she'd done. She'd killed so many people, maimed others, and there had been no empathy for them at all. At least when she was scheming and making plans to bomb the sacred timeline, she had been fighting against people she thought to be evil. People who were actively trying to kill her at every opportunity. There'd been no excuse but conquest for General Loki. She slinked outside Butler hall to the cafeteria to retrieve a few items to eat and prepared a cup of tea to take with her. Then she'd scanned the way and hurried toward the theater. In the basement had been that practice room, the room that she and Loki had tumbled to when they were escaping the monsters. It was absurdly quiet in there, even if it wasn't sound proof, and even better: there was one door and no windows. Sylvie sank into the corner and set her meager display of toast and tea. Maybe she could shapeshift into someone new, make up a new name, and just keep that up for the rest of her time here. Mobius may have believed that she could be the person to get them out, just as she'd been the person to open the timelines, but she didn't believe that. She'd been the person hell-bent on conquest, and those memories had not left her. She had memories of an entire other lifetime in which she'd been instrumental in destroying entire populations of planets for the Lokian race, and she'd been so proud of it. Egotistically so. Narcissistically so. She took a sip of her tea, wishing Mobius had one of his Time Sticks so she could prune herself back to the end of the universe where she could be alone with all the terrible things she'd done. Self-flagellation seemed to be a Loki trait as well, and for a brief instant, she thought to reach out to the other two. Then realized they were probably fully into their own versions of self loathing and didn't want to be bothered. The one positive aspect of having died just before arriving in Derleth was the fact that when the reset hit, Loki was almost always immediately awake. The traumatic shock to his brain and body made it impossible for him to stay asleep. Synapses were firing uncontrollably. His mind was in a panic as it tried to reconcile his old life and ease into his new one. Every week it was the same. And this week was no different. The only difference was that now he remembered another life. The life of a different Loki, one that was both more unhinged than himself and more organized. One that had lived his life without many of the same traumas or tragedies. A Loki who was practically born with his glorious purpose. It was as much a horror as it was a comfort. The worst of it, however, was yet to come. Or, at least, that’s what Loki surmised. There would be fallout from this past week, regardless of whether it was warranted. Loki knew that. There were people in Derleth who already had good reason to despise him. And while that hadn’t been him last week, it had been another Loki. Worse yet, a Loki who looked just like him. Which seemed to say that all Lokis, particularly those with his features, were horrible, untrustworthy creatures hel-bent on death, destruction, and a throne. It had been a long time since Loki had blood on his hands. Real blood. The blood of dozens, if not hundreds, of people. He’d managed to stay under the radar and off most battlefields for a decade. And then, without his permission, he was thrust back into another reign of murder and terror. He could only imagine what the repercussions of this would be. And while he hoped that his new friends — he inwardly cringed at the word — would understand that it wasn’t his fault, he wouldn’t be able to blame them if they backed off. He might have, too, if he were in their position. Once a Loki, always a Loki. That was how he found himself quietly creeping down to the band rooms in the basement of the Peasley Theatre. Loki didn’t make it known that he’d spent quite a deal of time there during his first Void experience in Derleth. During the week when he was human. Weak, powerless, and the subject of self-pity. But those semi soundproofed rooms had been something of a sanctuary for him that week. The week when he’d truly been afraid of death. It was quiet there. It was a forgotten place. And it was very often empty. That’s probably why he thought of it when he created the portal to save himself and Sylvie from the monsters during the week of unnerving silence. And maybe that’s why she was there, as well. Loki was surprised to open the door and see Sylvie sitting there, but he also wasn’t surprised. He hesitated in the doorway, quickly trying to forget the memory of their reunion. Well, the reunion of the Lokians. Loki frowned. “My apologies, I—” But he didn’t close the door. She looked up, on edge, the moment the door knob turned, but she wasn't prepared for a fight. If anything, she looked like she was on the verge of surrender. Seeing him was unexpected, but not necessarily unwanted. There were really only two (maybe three?) people she wouldn't run from at this point, and he was one of them. It was strange. Their shared glorious purpose in that universe involved the three of them, as a family, and there was a tightening in Sylvie's chest as she thought of it. She'd had a family as a Lokian, people who loved her and believed in her. A son who, despite being abandoned to the cause as a child, was still devoted and loyal. A lover who relished her presence. These things seemed like something she would never have, and yet some other version of her had. At what cost though? All those lives. All those worlds. She'd wondered if those universes were primed for pruning after they left. Their introductions should not have been possible, and yet they were there for a week, influencing events. This one had been an apocalypse for Dunwich; the previous world was the post of an apocalypse. Was she destined to spend her entire life creating and destroying universes? Maybe she deserved it. No, she definitely did, especially after the previous week. "No. It's — it's okay." Her voice was very tiny, even to her, and if he shared any memories of the Variant, she might have reminded him of the time they sat together near that pond on Lamentis when they thought they were going to die. Helpless, hopeless, and disappointed with how life had turned out. She hadn't even been angry with him anymore. "You can stay." Loki stood in the doorway for a few seconds longer than he probably should have. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to stay. Not because he distrusted Sylvie’s presence. On the contrary, actually. If there was anyone in Derleth who could understand how he felt at that moment it was her. Sylvie and Ikol. Both Lokis. Both like him, but different. All of them under the same spell and influence. Each of them forced to do something they probably wouldn’t have done under normal circumstances. He thought probably because he was fairly certain that Sylvie never would have ordered the deaths of hundreds. And Ikol seemed to be a reasonably calm Loki, if not a bit suspicious. But Loki couldn’t speak for himself. If he’d had his own mind back, but still the strength and power of an invading army, would he have chosen to fight? Or would he have played the role and hoped for a different ending? That he might truly one day have great power and influence in another realm. He didn’t think he would. But he didn’t know for sure. Loki stepped inside the practice room and closed the door behind him. Then he sat down on the floor. Not beside her, but across from her. In that opposite corner of space where they could both have their privacy. Where they could still stretch their legs if they wanted and not touch each other. He looked at her blank-faced and tried to process how the other Loki had felt about his general. It was confusing. Now, what to say? Asking her if she was alright felt pedantic. Anything that referenced what happened would be intrusive. He glanced around the room. No instruments to distract. So, he didn’t think about it. He just said the first thing that came to his mind. “I’d never had a chocolate malt before last week. That was my first one. I think I liked it. I think … it’s a pity we didn’t have them on Asgard.” Sylvie had been snatched out of her timeline before she'd gotten a sense of self, though she'd known a general direction she'd wanted to go. She'd wanted to protect people — especially her people, even if she wasn't born of them. Would that have happened if she hadn't been taken from her timeline? Or would she have grown into what the TVA considered the right Loki persona? She liked to think she'd be a good person. Up until that point, she'd been a little stinker, but nothing more than your standard little sister shenanigans. Sylvie had never been taught magic — did that come later? Or was that because she'd been told what she was earlier? Then the TVA came, and surviving meant that she'd had to do some things that were extremely hard to stomach in the beginning. The first time she'd killed, it had been completely by accident. She'd been caught unawares before she'd figured out where she could stay. It had been an hour since she'd arrived on Knowhere, and it seemed that things were alright. No one had come yet, so she went to get some food. She'd pick-pocketed to get the credits, which she knew wasn't great, but Knowhere was notoriously strict in a lot of respects. She'd been at the bar, eating some kind of soup. She didn't know what it was, but it warmed her bones and made her forget that she was on the run for just a little while. When the hand on her shoulder came, her fight instincts kicked in. She reached for the knife on the bar next to her bread-like substance and jerked it as hard as she could in the direction of a person's neck. The branded logo of the TVA caught her attention, before she'd realized what she'd done. The man — Hunter Z-234 — gurgled, grasping at his throat, before he collapsed on the ground. The next few moments stretched out for what felt like hours as she stared at his heap of a body at her feet. No one else seemed to really notice or care, save a few people who were nearby. None of them came to help the man. She only snapped out of it when she heard several Minute Men run into the room. She reached down, grabbed Hunter Z-234's TemPad and Recharge, and then disappeared into another spot on the timeline. "I'd never had an icebox cake before. Could have eaten a whole one on my own." “Yeah, me too,” Loki said, his thoughts obviously distracted. “I really like cake.” He took a heavy breath and for a brief moment it looked as though he might sigh. But he didn’t. He merely held the air in his lungs for a few seconds and then slowly exhaled. The sound was barely audible. It was a repose. A quiet bridge between what sounded like superficial conversation, but amounted to so much more. Lokis, it seemed, were masters of saying everything while saying nothing. That was what he’d learned the most since Ikol and Sylvie’s arrival. There was so much more to them than words or conversation could convey. A Loki was many things. That was clear. That was obvious. A Loki was also full of many feelings. Brimming with complexity. Depth. A myriad of layers, most impenetrable, some purposefully paper thin. But the common thread was how much they said when they didn’t speak. Even in silence they were practically deafening. At least to anyone who was paying attention. But perhaps no one was. Perhaps only a Loki was that astute. Loki glanced down at his slacks. His Derleth attire. The one that most people found so awkward on him. He would have thought it awkward himself if he hadn’t spent that one week as a human, with a closet full of tweed. Another lying Loki. No powers, but just as manipulative. Loki had come to appreciate the casual look, however. Slacks. T-shirt. Derleth University hooded sweatshirt. It made him feel invisible. And while that wasn’t normally a Loki trait. At least, not one of his quintessential Loki traits. It was something he’d been embracing more frequently. He didn’t want to be seen. Because when he was seen, bad things happened. “Some people are going to say it’s not our fault and they’re right. It isn’t. But it doesn’t feel that way.” Worse of all was that Loki didn’t hate the Loki he’d been last week. He didn’t like him, but he understood him. “I know it won’t matter to say anything about it. Apologies won’t make a difference. Reasoning it with logic won’t either. That doesn’t change the feeling inside. But I want you to know that I don’t think it’s our fault. And I won’t think of you any differently.” Loki paused, realizing after the fact that his words could have been twisted in an unintentional direction. “About the invasion, that is. The killing. I don’t think that’s who you are.” But that is who she was. She'd spent so long that she'd lost count murdering TVA agents to claim their reset charges, to find out all those details about the TVA itself. Sylvie had told herself that the ends justified the means because she could end the Time Keepers and their Sacred Timeline bullshit, but the truth was: she was a murderer. A hypocrite. And it was time to acknowledge that. "Maybe not invasion, but I've killed." She paused, pushing away her cup of tea. She was desperate for the warmth, but couldn't bring herself to let herself have it. "I killed a lot of TVA Agents — Variants just like me who had been mind-wiped into working for the TVA — while I was trying to stop them. Collateral damage," she scoffed, exhaling harshly from her nose. "Told myself that they'd have done me in so I better get the jump on them, but the fact is: I was laying traps for them so I could catch them off guard." She wasn't any better than the TVA, no matter what reasoning she put behind it. But him? If a Variant of him from long before his timeline ended could change, then so could this one. This one had been broken down until he was willing to give his life for his brother. "I don't think it's who you are either." “Well, I assumed you…” Loki paused. He wasn’t sure how to clarify what he was trying to say. Maybe he didn’t know what he was trying to say. “I mean that I don’t think you want to do that. I don’t think it’s in your nature to do that. You don’t enjoy hurting people. What you’ve done before sounds like it was always about survival. Not … pleasure.” But the Loki of last week hadn’t been like that. Loki had felt his sadistic pleasure when he tore open Bucky’s guts. He remembered the sheer joy that had rushed through his body when he saw the citizens of Dunwich vaporized. When he felt glory and success at his fingertips. That had been a Loki who enjoyed hurting people. Yes, much of it could be explained by the Lokian dogma. By the way in which their civilization had existed for thousands of years. Assimilation. Annihilation. Repeat ad nauseam. But it hadn’t been just that. Supreme Leader Loki enjoyed inflicting pain. He was glad when the people fought back. It was an excuse to fuel his rage. Sylvie wasn’t like that. Not the Sylvie he knew from his Derleth. Maybe he was wrong. She hadn’t told him everything about herself, after all. There were still secrets between them. But he felt — somewhere inside of him where logic didn’t make sense — that she wasn’t like that Loki. And he hoped he wasn’t either. “He wasn’t not me,” Loki said after a thoughtful pause. “That’s what makes these other realities so difficult. They’re not me. But they are. I see parts of myself in all of them. And they’re not always parts I like. Usually they’re not.” He ran his fingers back through his hair, sweeping it over his shoulder. “I’m not sure there’s a version of myself anywhere that I like. But you…” Loki shrugged. “You’re different.” General Loki had enjoyed the fight as well, and inside, Sylvie did too. She wasn't as trained as Loki was, but Ravonna fighting her, had sent her into a rage. Like the General, Sylvie had plotted and schemed and thought of every way possible into the TVA, to destroy it. She and the General had that in common: scheming, plotting, and a single-minded focus. The General and Supreme Leader Loki had gotten off on that. Literally. Sylvie shoved that to the back of her mind. She heaved a breath. "It wasn't not me though either. There were bits of me in there. Things that I thought made me different from other Lokis." She looked at him. "The more I try to pretend I'm not Loki, Goddess of Mischief, the more I realize I am." And despite what his Variant told her, they were always destined to lose. And survive. Which, honestly, wasn't always the greatest thing in her book. "I saw you. In Ragnarok. Every single time, you showed up. You helped everyone. When your people needed you most, you were there. Whatever your motives, whatever you think of yourself, remember that." Other people might have questioned the relationships of the Lokis in last week’s reality. His passionate love affair with Sylvie. Ikol as their son. There were probably more than a handful of Derleth residents who saw something unnerving in that arrangement. Something unnatural. But Loki didn’t feel that way about it. He didn’t think it was at all strange or unexpected. In fact, it felt more natural to him than anything else. They were Lokis. They weren’t the same, but they were born of something similar. Something familiar. Why wouldn’t they be intricately drawn to each other? Why wouldn’t they all be together? In an odd way it comforted Loki to know that there was a version of himself who had that connection. Even if he was horrible. Even if he was a truly despicable person. A villain. At least he was a happy Loki. And he was. Loki knew. He’d felt it. Supreme Leader Loki might have been the happiest Loki in all the possible realms. He had everything he wanted. It was hard not to be a little jealous. “Is that so bad?” Loki looked over at her, his eyebrows drawn quizzically towards the center of his forehead. “Being the Goddess of Mischief?” Loki didn’t know if he regretted being the God of Mischief. He supposed, if he thought about it, he didn’t. He just wished he could have been seen as more than that. But it was his own fault that others saw him the way they did. He’d spent centuries cultivating that persona. He couldn’t expect to change their perspectives overnight. As much as he might want to. He looked away when she mentioned Ragnarok. Somber embarrassment swept over his features. He should have been proud of what he’d done there, but he wasn’t. Simply because his motives were so cloudy. “If I’d been smarter or cleverer then maybe I would have done it differently. I won’t demean what I did, but … maybe Asgard would have been better off if the Goddess of Mischief had been there to help instead of me.” Loki offered a small, sad smile. It was meant as a compliment, but he wasn’t sure if it hit the mark. Sylvie ached for that sense of achievement, of family, of belonging that she'd felt as a Lokian. She felt like she shouldn't, because they were truly despicable beings, hel-bent on destruction, war, and conquest. It reminded her too much of the things He Who Remains talked about with his Variants. Were they happy? Did they feel like they belonged? That feeling was all that Sylvie wanted now. She had no timeline to go back to, even if she could, and no one to call family or friends. She'd destroyed any potential for a found family when she sent Loki back to the TVA. What she'd done was unforgivable, and she'd just lost the closest thing to acceptance that she'd ever experienced. It would have been easier if she didn't have to remember that bond, and how she'd lost it. It was overwhelming to think about. "There's a universe out there somewhere, possibly more than one, where there's a Goddess or God of Mischief doing all the things we ever wanted to do. To be." That had to be enough for her. There was no happy ending for her. "Good. Bad. They're free to choose." In all the ways they'd never get to be. Her mind conjured the image of her Loki's face just before she'd sent him back through the Time Door. The yearning, the love. The loss of that relationship from last week and the one before she arrived here — all of it was crashing down on her. Sylvie strained against the tightness in her chest as she thought of him. "We like to pretend that we're fine being alone. Because it makes it easier when people reject us. Because — we're scared of letting people in because if they knew the true us, they'd be horrified. But they had each other, and I — " Her throat clicked and she jerked her head down. The words just wouldn't come out, because it meant opening herself up. It meant being vulnerable. It meant that he could reject her. Loki couldn’t understand Sylvie completely because, despite the fact that he’d never felt like he belonged to his family, he still had one. He’d had a mother and a father who raised him. He’d had a brother who both loved and tormented him. He’d had a home. A people. It was his choice to spurn them. To turn away from them because of the lies. But he still had them. Sylvie hadn’t had anyone. She’d been alone almost from the very beginning. A Loki on their own. With no one but themselves to trust. No one but themselves to confide in. What could that do to a person? No. What could that do to a Loki? He listened to her without interruption. He kept an intent gaze on her when she spoke, watching every nuance of emotion. Ensuring that he noted every choking syllable. It was horrible to hear the pain in her voice. It caused his own chest to tighten. Anxious, sympathetic, and even a little guilty. For what he wasn’t certain. Maybe for spending so much of his life not appreciating what he had. She had nothing. Nobody. And the person she seemed to care about most wasn’t here. Only Loki was here. Not her Loki, but a facsimile that couldn’t live up to the man she’d lost. “You don’t horrify me,” Loki said, his voice just barely above a whisper. It came out unexpectedly. Without thought. Telling her the truth suddenly came as naturally to him as his desire to kiss her last week had. Not that it was him who’d kissed her. And not that she was her. But it was a kind of unconscious tie. Like a part of them was linked to each other regardless of who they were. “We got off to a bad start. I struggle to let people in as well. Not just because I’m afraid of frightening people with the truth, but because I worry that someone might see something else. That they might see something good in me. Something worth seeing. And I might ruin that like I always do. By being me.” Loki chewed on his lower lip. “But how do we know this isn’t one of those universes? Maybe this is how we get to be one of those Lokis. The ones who are doing everything they want. Living the lives they always hoped they could live. Perhaps this is our chance to be free of the past.” But maybe that was easy for him to say. He was dead. His past was gone. And she’d always be waiting for him. “A chance to just be us. Loki. Sylvie. Without everything else.” Even if he came back, there was no guarantee that he'd want anything to do with her. In fact, Sylvie was absolutely certain that whatever they'd have — however fleeting, or in the moment — was over because of her actions. That was something she was going to have to live with; there was no changing the past. That was going to take time though, and if she was constantly shoved into alternate personalities, that was going to make things a whole lot more difficult. How could you grieve a thing if you couldn't remember it? How could you process anything at all if trauma just kept getting tossed on top of it without any end? "All I've had was my revenge. My mission." That last word came out in a scratchy voice that was met with a sneer. She'd never used the expression when thinking about the mission, but it seemed appropriate in retrospect. "My glorious purpose." She took a bite out of her now-cold toast as if to punctuate her disgust. It felt like chewing cardboard. The more she chewed, the hard it was to swallow. Her cold tea would have to help with that. She'd never had much of a problem being honest. Mostly. She wasn't a particularly good liar; all she had was her ability to dodge and weave through subjects. She'd never learned to be an actor or a scamp so none of that came naturally, and he had. She suspected this was honest though, like he'd been on Lamentis. "Do you really believe that? That this is a chance to get to be us?" “You shouldn’t mock it,” Loki said. Surprisingly his tone wasn’t judgmental or argumentative. In fact, it was uncommonly lucid. This was clearly something he’d given a lot of thought. “Your glorious purpose, that is.” Loki lifted his head and leaned back fully against the wall of the practice room. He placed his hands in his lap. Not folded, but idly pulling at his fingers as he thought through the words he planned to say. “When I was younger I was obsessed with the idea of my glorious purpose. I thought I knew what it was. It was so clear in my mind. I had no doubts. No hesitations. I knew where my future would lead. I knew what I deserved.” Loki lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. “But I was wrong. Or better, I was naive. I saw the world in black and white. I couldn’t see beyond my own prejudices. My own anger.” He tugged at one of the drawstrings on his sweatshirt. “When I sacrificed myself for Thor… And I say that lightly because motivations are complicated… I thought that was my true purpose. I thought ‘this is what it’s all been building towards.’ But I still thought I was invincible. That I would find a way out. That I would survive. Like I always do. But that didn’t happen.” Nothing ever happened the way Loki planned. “Before I met Loki I thought I was the only one. Before I met you I thought we were all self-righteous bastards incapable of shrugging off the chips on our shoulders. I thought that to be a Loki meant to be doomed to an eternity of pain and suffering. To never know affection or kinship or love. But look at this place.” Loki waved his arm as though to reference all of Derleth in that small space of room they occupied. “One of my enemies, a woman who has every reason to hate me for what I did to her friends and her people, has become my friend. One of my brother’s fiercest warriors has pledged his allegiance to me as his prince. And a woman I never thought could possibly exist has told me that in another world there’s a version of me who made the right decision. A version who has learned things that I never thought possible for me.” Loki still didn’t know how to weigh all of these changes in his life. He hadn’t been in Derleth long, not even two months, but it felt as though it had been years. Coupled with the fact that he knew there was no possibility of him returning to his world heightened everything. All the relationships. All the connections. All the changes. It was happening so quickly, but at the same time it had been centuries in the making. “Why shouldn’t this be an opportunity for us to be the people we want to be? Why can’t I choose to be the Loki I want to be? Why can’t you be the Sylvie you want to be? Why do we have to continue repeating the past?” Loki didn’t know if it was possible, but he had to believe the option was there. If not then what was his purpose? Who was he then? Loki didn’t want to be the man he’d been for the last thousand years. He wanted to be someone new. Someone happy. Someone who belonged. There was something else that Loki thought about saying. Something that had struck him during the previous week. A part of Sylvie that he’d never noticed before until they were both under the thrall of their alternate selves. But he held himself back. He’d already said more than he was prepared to admit. “I don’t know the answer. I just know I can’t go back to the way I was before. And I get the feeling that you can’t either.” Who was she before? Sylvie didn't know. She'd spent so long just surviving that her entire personality had become that. Plotting, scheming, revenge. Wash, rinse, repeat. Do it enough times, and it becomes you. There was a part of her that really enjoyed the memories of those fights. The visceral nature along with the pain in her fists reminded her that she was alive. She was here! She existed! The Loki she'd been on Asgard was a distant memory these days, and more like watching a television show, some pristine memory of a bygone era, frozen in time, never to be experienced that way ever again. She had a mother, a father, a brother, friends. She had people who cared for her, and the only place they existed was in this tiny pocket in her mind. They were gone, stolen from her because of some decision she'd made along the timeline. Sylvie wasn't so unselfish that all of this revenge had been about them, but they were gone. Because of her. Because of something she did. And Renslayer couldn't remember. An entire timeline gone because of her action (or inaction) at the age of eight. "You go, I go." Even in an alternate world, two Lokis still followed one another into the unknown. Unlike those Lokis, Sylvie had betrayed hers when the time came. "At the void, at the end of time. I was going to enchant the monster there. Alioth. I'd gotten a glimpse off it when I'd arrived, and I thought I could get behind it to the person it was guarding." She glanced down. "He and Mobius and the other Lokis there… They had a TemPad. Mobius was going back to burn the TVA to the ground. I thought Loki should go with him. If I failed, there was no way out of the void." Her eyes darted up to look at him. "He refused. He said, you go, I go. He almost died a few times before the old Loki sacrificed himself by creating an illusion of Asgard. It was so real that Alioth tried to devour it. I was only able to enchant it because he was with me. Because we did it together." Together. It was a foreign concept to Sylvie, so used to being alone and lonely. "I don't know who I am. I never really gave it much thought. Just one thing on my mind until I got my plan, then there were two things on my mind. I never let myself think beyond survival and revenge, because — we're Lokis. Nothing goes the way we plan. How do I even begin to figure out who I am?" It was still difficult hearing her talk about her Loki. It made Loki feel uncomfortably self-conscious. He caught himself comparing and contrasting which, of course, was ridiculous because he didn’t know this Loki. All he knew was what she said about him. All he knew was how she looked when she talked about him. But that was enough to make him doubt his own worth. There was a kind of affection in her eyes when she spoke his name. When she reminisced on the moments they’d shared. Loki didn’t even know if Sylvie was aware of it. But there was more than just guilt and pain in her eyes when she talked about this other Loki. There was— Loki hesitated to even think the word. —love? He tried to wrap his mind around that. He didn’t know if it was true. He was only extrapolating from what he felt when he saw her. When he heard the tremble in her voice. The uncertainty. The doubt. But also the respect and the warmth. What would it take to become a Loki who could love? What would it take to become a Loki who could be loved? It frightened him to even think about it. Love was one of those elusive emotions. That was something for heroes. For the deserving. Loki had always felt trapped on the outside where that was concerned. Love required trust and Loki was a liar. And everyone who had ever been close to him had lied. Lied to him. Lied about him. Lied for him. You go, I go. You’re not him. “Truthfully?” Loki shrugged. “I don’t know. But at the risk of sounding melodramatic, maybe that’s something we can do together. Not just you and me, of course. The three of us. We’re not the same, but we’re all Lokis. We all have our tragedies, our complicated pasts. But none of that really matters here. It only matters as much as we want it to. So, maybe we can figure out who we are or who want to be by knowing each other better.” It sounded far too optimistic coming from his lips. Almost foreign. The tone didn’t quite match him. But perhaps that was because it was honest. “And maybe it’s time to stop planning and just start doing.” |