Sylvie goes into Loki's mind to find out what's causing his memory issues, headaches, and personality shifts. She finds Space King Loki there.
And destroys him. Or does she?.
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Some character death memories, a scary animated clock, and ultimately, blood and stabbing. They are Lokis.
It was stark white, the edges hazy like the Void. Loki stood in what appeared to be the center, but in truth there was no way of knowing how far the space reached. It was the mind, after all. Were there any real limits to its size? To its possibility? Perhaps that was the most peculiar aspect of it all. That Lokiâs mind was so blank. So unobtrusive. So empty and clean. Like it wasnât really his mind at all.
Or maybe this was merely a preface. Another illusion meant to protect all of his thoughts, memories, and emotions from the intrusive reach of her enchantment. It wasnât like Loki to allow anyone in his mind. Not so easily. Not without preparation. He may have learned how to trust since being in Derleth, but that didnât mean he wasnât expecting the worst. Anticipating tricks. And while there was no reason to think Sylvie would purposefully cause any damage, she was still a Loki. And as a Loki equally as untrustworthy as himself.
Loki held out his arms to the side. âSee? Nothing wrong! Everything is as it should be!â
He smiled. It was that knowing smirk he pulled whenever he was trying to hide something. The one that was a little too wide. A little too toothy. The one that always accompanied a slight tilt of the head. Lying, even in his own head. No one should have been surprised.
He let his arms drop to his sides. He was wearing the uniform he wore the day he attacked New York City. Green and black leather covered in golden armor. No helmet. Hair slightly shorter than it was in real life. The version Loki had of himself in his mind. Loki at his peak.
Or at his lowest, depending on the perspective.
âNow you can run on back to Natasha and that devilishly handsome doctor and tell them that everything is alright. Thereâs nothing wrong with Loki. Heâs just a little tired and high strung. Probably a tiny bit sad. You know, bearing the weight of all those missed opportunities. No different than normal.â Wink.
Sylvie's mental image of herself flickered between what she was now, and a small, dark-haired girl in green leather. It wasn't something she could control, and having grown up on her own, she often found herself still thinking of herself as that scared child the TVA took into their custody following a session of saving Asgard with the help of her Valkyrie toys.
She'd been in many people's heads before. Even in spaces like this one, and almost all of them projected a lie.
At first.
"You know that your smile actually gives off a mental aura of lying?" She flickered, and tiny Sylvie pressed forward, "Even if it didn't, I'd know you were utterly lying anyway. This whole mental image you've projected here is quite a good illusion, but that's all it is:" Grown-up Sylvie returned. "An illusion."
She pulled from both of their memories, a chair that was in their room as a child. The one she often sat in and watched the sword-play outside, swearing to herself that she'd be down there one day. She'd learn to fight like a Valkyrie.
When Sylvie sat down, the little girl replaced her.
"We aren't going anywhere until you start with the truth."
âOf course itâs a lie. Everyoneâs mental image of themselves is a lie. We tell ourselves the things we need to hear in order to keep on living. To keep on surviving. Iâm no different. I tell myself Iâm a great and glorious liberator of the Midgardian people. An honored warrior of Asgard. A king. Andââ Loki waved his hand in the air with a little flourish. âThatâs exactly what I am. Exactly what I need to tell myself in order to get through the day. Even if I know itâs complete and utter nonsense. Itâs the nonsense that keeps me alive.â
But that wasnât exactly true either, was it? That was too easy. Too obvious. And far too playacted to be any semblance of the truth. It was impossible to believe that Loki could actually be more honest on the outside. And compared to this version of himself? The Loki in the physical world was practically a saint of truthfulness.
He didnât even flinch when she made the chair. He merely grinned. No teeth this time. Lips pursed, curiously eyeing the construction from their childhood. It was familiar, yes. But was it conjured from her memory or his own?
âIâm surprised you havenât figured it out yet. Then again, youâve been gone a while. You missed a lot of the key hints. Thatâs why youâre here and not Julia. Julia knows. She hasnât been able to put words to it yet, but sheâs figured it out. Maybe if she had her shade sheâd be able to see it more clearly. Strange is oblivious, of course. But thatâs because he doesnât want to see. He prefers this version of me, after all.â Loki bent at the waist to look in little Sylvieâs big eyes. âHe likes being degraded. Heâs the same in every universe. It makes him easy to manipulate.â
Loki stood up. Then he waved a finger at her. âI remember the first time we met. Not here, of course. Not in Derleth. In the TVA. It was brief. I had other things to do and, quite frankly, you were small potatoes.â
He walked around to the back of the chair, his armor slipping into that familiar TVA uniform. Then he whispered just behind her ear. âDid they ever tell you what you did? Did you ever find out what your Nexus Event was?â
Sylvie slowly grew from her younger self into the version Derleth knew today. Her horns were still intact, two of them. They weren't as worn dented. Her armor was more or less perfect, and not a copy of his. The only thing of the child that remained was the way she was sitting â not at all ladylike, her mother might have said at some point â and the fear in her eyes as she stared straight ahead. Not daring to look at him.
Because it wasn't him. It wasn't the Sacred Timeline Loki from Derleth; it wasn't the Variant Loki she knew. This was some other one. How did another Loki get inside this one?
But that was easy to figure out now that she had the idea.
Evil Derleth. Somehow that version of him had stuck around inside Loki, taking a ride. The missing time, shifting personalities â had to be from this one taking over. Headaches were caused by two minds inside one body. Even if it was a god's body, Loki would have to struggle to keep himself at the forefront, whether he knew it or not.
"It doesn't matter what my Nexus Event was," she finally answered, jerking her chin up in defiance. "We're not here to talk about me."
âNo, I guess we arenât.â Loki stood behind her for a few seconds in silence. There was an instinct to respond rashly. Could he strangle a mind? He could do it to himself. Well, to the other Loki who had sequestered somewhere in that empty space. But could he do it to Sylvie? Could he reach out with both hands and squeeze the enchantment out of him?
He wondered. But in the end he kept his distance.
His appearance changed again. His own attire. Not unlike Loki from New York, but with subtle differences in the armor and the design of the guards on his forearms. Not her Loki. Not their Loki. But his own.
âI know, I know. Hitching a ride like a parasite. Itâs embarrassing. But it wasnât entirely intentional. It wasnât supposed to happen this way, but your lot messed everything up. So rude.â He flipped his hair back over his shoulder. âBut tell me, Sylvie. What do you want to talk about? Oh, and for the record, Iâm not going anywhere. So that discussion is off the table.â
Sylvie stood up, and there was no flickering or change to her mental self anymore. She was stalwart and determined. Derleth's Loki didn't need to be the one she fell in love with to know that this was causing him pain and would continue until this asshole took him over, possibly locking up their Loki permanently.
She turned to face him.
"Good thing it's not a discussion then."
Before the words left her mouth, she disappeared and reappeared in a flash of green in several places in this mental void. She'd learned that trick from Loki on Lamentis-1, but creating more than one of herself in someone's mind was so much easier to do than in real life. Each one pulled out her sword.
"Parasites have to be cut out."
But Loki didnât move. Was it confidence or stupidity? Maybe a little bit of both. Or maybe he truly didnât think he had anything to be afraid of. Heâd been in that mind for months, after all. He knew it, inside and out. There were illusions stacked upon illusions. Some of his own making. Some belonging to the resident Loki. What were a few more parlor tricks between good friends?
He laughed when he was suddenly surrounded by numerous versions of her. Like a circular wall of Sylvies. Heâd seen that before. In his own world. Before Derleth. Heâd done it once or twice himself. Until it was no longer necessary.
âCute. Thatâs a fun trick. Really adorable.â Loki turned around because of course heâd assume the real version of her was behind him. He was the God of Backstabbing, after all. And if he was wrong? Well, what was she going to do? Kill him and risk killing the other Loki? âAre you sure you want to do this? What if you miss? What if you make a mistake and Iâm the only one who survives the reset? Have his sad, pathetic little friends authorized you to start cutting out pieces of his soul?â
Loki grinned. âKill me and I promise you he wonât wake up. I have him in a place even your enchantments canât reach. But, by all means, go ahead. Doom him to a Sleeping Beauty helscape. Iâm sure no one will blame you.â
While he spoke his hand glowed a deep shade of red and he slowly began to crouch down. When he touched the floor of the mental void, the landscape changed. Gone was the stark empty white nothingness, replaced by a location Sylvie would know well.
The Citadel at the End of Time.
And Loki himself was gone too. Disappeared into the shadows ofâ
âHEY, YâALL!â
Which was Sylvieâs only warning before a swarm of dozens of Miss Minutes attacked.
It may have been the Citadel, but it was not the same room where they'd spoken to He Who Remains or fought. It was that front foyer area where Miss Minutes had jumped out at them and offered them more lies. She could see the fallen statue a little further ahead before one of the orange three-dimensional (and still somehow only two) clocks jumped on this version of her. Sylvie spun into action immediately. All of them did.
"I won't make a mistake," every single Sylvie huffed while slashing with her sword. She held her green-magicked hand outward and blasted a few of those Miss Minutes backwards. She wasn't used to the clock fighting; she seemed to be more of the stalling kind, and maybe that's what this Loki was using her for. Stalling so that he can think up more tricks to stop her from getting rid of him.
Five versions of her had thrown off their fights and began to stalk toward King Loki. One raced a little faster, sliding on the ground to kick out his legs. Another flung herself at his back. Three were still coming for their charge.
The first blast sent one of the Miss Minutes clocks shattering into a thousand tiny shards. Tiny glass fragments that dug in sharp when they slashed the skin. But it was all in the mind. It couldnât do any real damage, could it?
âHEY NOW! THAT WASNâT VERY NICE!â all of the clocks shouted in unison. Then the ticking hands on her face flew off like miniature spears, zipping through the citadelâs foyer towards the various Sylvie illusions. When they struck a fake image they both fizzled out into nothing, inspiring a frustrated sigh from a single Miss Minutes at the center of the fray. âCANâT YâALL JUST GET ALONG?â
Meanwhile, Loki was departing the scene. He didnât run. He didnât rush. Although there was a considerable pace to his steps. Mental hurrying that didnât exactly translate into this imaginary image of himself. The Sylvies caught up to him. Was that too easy? Shouldnât he have been trying harder?
He fell to the floor when one of the Sylvies kicked at his legs. Then he twisted himself around and grabbed onto the one who went for his back. He held on tight.
They kept falling.
And falling.
And falling.
Memories flashed on either side of them. A kind of historical vortex of her past, his past, and the other Lokiâs past as they tumbled through a mental Bifrost.
They crash landed on the Statesman, in the middle of a particularly choking scene.
Loki smirked. âOuch. That must have hurt.â
He caught Sylvie by the front of her armor and shoved her towards the edge of the shipâs platform, where the damage from the invading vessel was sucking debris into open space.
"Yeah, but that'll get him into Valhalla."
The back of Sylvie's boot caught on someone's body. She didn't look down, too afraid to see if it was someone whose face was familiar. She'd been to Ragnarok so many times, she thought she knew all of their faces. From Heimdall's son to the baker in the square. This â with Thanos â was something she'd never seen before. Thanos was something she'd only heard of on some planets she'd been to. The big purple guy was far more intimidating in Loki's memories.
Just not this Loki.
The nice thing about being in a memory palace was that anything went, and the Variant's terrible metaphor for love rang in her ears. An imaginary dagger. One appeared in each of her hands, and before he could do anything, she jabbed them into his ribs as hard as she could.
"How about that? That hurt?"
âValhalla.â Loki rolled his eyes in disgust and irritation. âThe biggest lie of all. To think that any of us would be welcomed there. If he were meant for Valhalla then he would be there. If this moment was his salvation then we wouldnât be having this conversation.â
Thanos clenched his fist and that telltale crack echoed throughout the ship. Loki didnât look. Not because he couldnât stand to see his Variant tossed limply to the ground, but because he didnât care. He would have walked over his own corpse without a second glance if it were in his way.
Thatâs how a Loki got their rule. Thatâs how they gained their kingdom. Not through tricks or liberation or brute force, but from not caring.
About anything or anyone. Even themselves.
He felt the sharp stab of the blades before he saw her. That was the downside of the mental landscape. Particularly when the landscape wasnât fully yours to begin with. He could never have complete control. Not when he was sharing the space with another Loki. Not while he was also distracted by the added enchantment. That created blind spots. One that Sylvie managed to sneak through.
The memory faded away and they were back to the white void.
Loki grimaced. He looked down to see the daggers hilt deep in his torso. But there was no grief in his expression. No shame or remorse. Nothing but anger and frustration. And pain, of course. But Lokis were always good at minimizing their pain where others could see it. Looking weak was worse than dying, after all.
âIâll kill you for that,â he growled, blood trickling out of his mouth.
He took a step backwards, pulling himself out of those blades. Blood soaked the front of his leather attire, two dark stains forming where sheâd stuck him.
âIâll kill you and whoever you care about.â Loki grinned, teeth covered in red. âIf you actually care about anyone this time around.â
"Yeah, looks like you're out of luck there, mate." Sylvie gave a shrug that came across as nonchalant but was anything but that. She wasn't sure what he meant by that. Did the other version of her care about someone? She'd never run into her that week. Neither of them had sought the other out.
It was a lie when she finished, "Don't give a shit about anyone this time."
There was a twist of her hand in the air in front of her, and one of the TVA's collars was around his neck. In her hands now was He Who Remains' TemPad. She used it to piss him off a lot more by literally jerking him around inside of Loki's mind. She hated that trick so much when they put it on her, but damn if it didn't feel satisfying this time around.
Then she used it to slow him down, while she remained at the same speed. All she needed to do now was enchant him and use that to convince him to leave. "You're going to listen to me, and then I'm going to make you go away. I hope you still have a body to get back to, because you're not sticking around in this one."
âYouâre a scourge, Sylvie. In every universe. Always the same old sad sob story and you never do anything different. You never learn. And youâll never find what youâre looking for. Especially not while youâre here.â Loki spit out a mouthful of blood on the floor. Was he threatening her or was this some admission of truth based on something heâd seen? It was difficult to tell. That was the trouble with Lokis. The truth and the falsities were so interwoven it was almost impossible to know what to believe. And this Lokiâs eyes were different from the one sheâd spent time with in Derleth. Different even from her Variant. This one didnât falter. There was no flash of pity or flicker of doubt in his gaze.
Whatever he had planned, he was confident heâd be able to follow through. No matter what.
He didnât fight back when she put the collar on him. That was a good trick. A good play. He had to give her credit for that one. It was a smart move even in this incorporeal mental landscape. And it did annoy him. Because he knew how infuriating those devices could be. Like so many other Lokis heâd experienced them once before. And the memory was strong.
âI could have given it to you,â he said between the repetitious back-and-forth of being wound and rewound in time. âThe thing youâve been searching for. I have it.â
Then everything slowed.
His body moved at an almost indecipherably heavy speed. He couldnât even blink without it feeling like a decade between the moment his eyelids closed and his lashes moved upward. And he couldnât reply. He was moving too slowly for his words to be anything more than fluctuating sounds on low frequency.
But if looks could kill.
"Fuck me, you talk more than any of the other Lokis I've met. And there's been a lot of you. Just yap yap yap. All talk." Sylvie rolled her eyes.
But there were doubts. She was a Loki, after all, and where would a Loki be if there wasn't a never ending supply of doubt or stubbornness or cheek. One of those things was bound to come to the forefront, oftentimes doubt was covered with one of the other two.
What could he have given her? Her timeline back? Her family back? No one could. They were gone, destroyed by the TVA a long damn time ago. There was no going back, because she'd lived a thousand years of it on her own. She couldn't get those years back, and the Variant she'd fallen in love with wasn't here. Besides, she'd tossed him back to the TVA. There was no coming back from that.
So Sylvie did what she could; she tried to move on. She struggled watching Loki connect with Mobius in a way she'd never get to, and she struggled watching other happy couples. How did they manage it? She could barely keep friendships. Every time she thought she'd made a new friend, they disappeared.
Whatever.
That was meant as a distraction, and she knew it. Sylvie reached her hands out, one on each side of his temple while he was still in slow motion. "This won't hurt a bit, if you don't make it difficult."
Loki did something a little odd when Sylvie placed her hands on the side of his head. He was still in slow motion, so the action wasnât complete. But for a split second he managed to look her directly in the eyes. And his eyes there was a knowing gleam. A twinkle that in real time might have been a wink. The tell tale âI know something you donât knowâ expression. And just before her enchantment dug its way inside his immaterial brain, he entered her thoughts. His voice whispering in her mind, untouched by the speed reduction the rest of his body appeared to be experiencing.
Weâve done this before, you know. In another Derleth. With another Variant. And the next time you see me, youâll be begging me to give it to you. That thing you want. I hope for your sake Iâm in a good mood when I return. The last time we had this conversation, I wasnât.
The green glow of her magic wrapped around his skull, sinking its way inside of him. Inside his bodiless self. There was a moment of mental struggleâinstinct trying to surviveâbefore he let go of his control on the space around him. On her. On himself. On the other Loki. Presumably. His nose bled, trickling over his lips and chin. Funny how that wasnât in slow motion like everything else. Then he began to disperse into tiny fragments. Like infinitesimal pieces of dust being whisked away on the wind. Starting at his toes and slowly making its way up to his face. Until he was gone. And while there was nothing left to speak, there was a discarnate whisper in the void around them that would have sounded eerily familiar to Sylvie.
See you soon.
But surely thatâs not who this was. Clearly he just snatched that memory from her mind in a last ditch effort to leave her in chaos. Right?
Then nothing. A pause. A hesitation. Before a time door opened in the blankness and another Loki stumbled out.
Loki blinked, confused. Then he looked at Sylvie with a suspicious furrow of the brows. âWhat are you doing here?â
Sylvie didn't worry needlessly. She was a planner. She plotted and schemed her way out of the TVA's grasp, and she plotted and schemed her way to stay out of their reaches. Then she schemed to reach the Time Keepers, to destroy the entire TVA if she could. She wasn't the type to sit down and think for too long. Too much of that led to becoming overwhelmed with everything that had happened in her lifetime.
She was definitely rattled now, though she didn't let on to the Loki in front of her.
"Getting rid of your pest problem," she answered, then snapped her fingers to remove herself from his mind. She didn't need to, but it was a polite warning that something was about to happen.
In the real world, her eyes snapped open. She turned to the others and exhaled. Orlin and Natasha would wonder what happened, so she waited until Loki's eyes opened before she said, "The other Delerth's version of Loki somehow tagged along in his head, fighting for dominance." She paused before looking back at Loki. "He's gone now."