Disclaimer: Obviously, I do not own the show or any of the characters. SPOILER ALERT FOR SEASON 1.
It's probably just the alcohol, but the beats of the music are starting to sound a little bit like a marching drum that's announcing war. She can feel herself dancing along to it, but her whole body is on alert, ready to switch to fight and flight any second.
"So, cool place huh?" The bloke in the leather jacket asks.
She tries to remember his name. Jeff something. Or maybe Jed. No, not Jed, she's thinking of Star Wars again. That's what happens when you binge watch a multiverse of movies in a single day.
Oh, yeah, that's right. She broke the multiverse.
Another shot of tequila, and she takes not-Jed's hand in hers. It doesn't feel right, at least not the way-
No.
She realizes he asked her a question, but she can't remember what, and she just laughs, because that always works.
Encouraged, he leans in close and whispers into her ears. "How about we get out of here?"
"And go where, exactly?" She asks, but she's not sure he understands, not with how slurred the words come out.
She laughs again, and this time, it's bitter. This time, she's laughing at how this is so him, this getting drunk in the face of imminent danger and making a mess of things.
(But I'm not you.)
She's frozen in her place the second the glowing yellow door appears. But it's not for her, at least not this time.
She hasn't been on the run for a while. Doesn't need to be. Because even though she is the one who unleashed the chaos, it's the chaos that needs to be contained immediately. She's low on the list of priorities.
The TVA will come for her. But not right now.
It's extremely easy pretending to be a psychic. All she has to do is take her client's hands and enchant him, find a memory, describe it back to him.
Sometimes she does it just for fun, just to see the look of amazement on their faces.
Other times, she does it for the money she needs to survive.
"And I see a blonde woman. Very beautiful."
"That's my wife."
The way he smiles, loving and proud, makes her heart drop.
"What do you see in her future? Is she happy? Does she get the job at the magazine?"
There is definitely at least one timeline where she does get the job, but The Enchantress cannot exactly tell if it's this one. She can't actually see the future, after all.
She sees the colors drain from his face as her silence swallows the room. "She's going to be okay, right? I just want her to be okay."
(I just want you to be okay.)
There's that bitter laugh again, because-
No. She can't do this right now.
"She loves you very much", she whispers, to the man in front of her, and to the man who is not there to hear those words.
Mobius finds her in the middle of a concert by a Nirvana where Kurt Cobain never died. She can easily slip away, disappear into the screaming, writhing crowd if she wants.
Or she can just take him some place quiet and hear him out.
"Help us", Mobius pleads. He sounds exhausted, and not just physically. "We're outnumbered and outwitted. Our world is in danger."
"This isn't my world", she reminds him.
"Yet, you're here", he retorts.
Her smile is pained. "Where else will I go?"
He is sympathetic, like he always has been. And he offers her a new glorious purpose. "Come with me. We need you. He needs you."
She feels the air find its way out of her lungs the same way she pushed him out of her life- painfully, forcefully. "H-how is he?"
"He's okay… all things considered."
Now there's a cocktail of relief and disappointment that will give her months of sleepless nights.
"Tell him I'm-" she starts, but she doesn't know how to finish that sentence. What can she tell him? That she's sorry for not trusting him when she should have? That she's sorry for making the universes collide?
That she's sorry for betraying him and breaking his heart?
(How will I know you won't betray me at the end?)
"Nevermind."
It's been really hard facing the consequences of her actions, watching the timelines bleed into each other and destroy people's lives- families torn, achievements gone, every little anomaly delving into death and destruction. Every headline on the newspaper is her fault, and she has to live with that.
But that seems so easy compared to this moment where she has to face him.
The plan was to send him away, kill He Who Remains, give people their free will back, save the world, then come back to him. Yeah, he'd be mad at her at first, sure, but he'd forgive her eventually, she was confident.
Then the timelines started to branch the minute she stuck the dagger in that terrifying man's chest, and she knew she had screwed up.
She had sunk to the ground in defeat as the realization of the repercussions hit her, and she did what she has always done- run.
She didn't even realize she had sent him to the wrong universe until she teleported herself into another universe as well. The journey back was long and lonely, but she dreamt of him in colors while the world was bleeding red, and that was enough to keep her going.
She doesn't really know what she'll do when she sees him again. Neither does she know what reaction she expects from him. Nothing he can say to her can be worse than what she thinks of herself.
A part of her hopes he would be overwhelmingly happy, he would come running to her, just like he did at The Void, greet her with the smile that has won a hundred hearts- including hers, and tell her everything will be alright. Another part of her fears that he would be furious, and he would confront her with accusations of unleashing havoc on all worlds- especially his.
What she never expected is this eerie calm that makes her feel like she is standing in the storm center.
His walls are up.
And it causes her to redirect the anger she feels at herself towards him. There's venom in her voice. "So you do get to rule, after all."
"I don't feel much like a king." He shrugs. "I'm more of a multiversal janitor. Mopping up multiversal messes."
"My messes."
"Our messes." He corrects, his features softening around the edges. "We made a mistake." He has been saying that ever since he found himself in the alternate TVA, and that hasn't changed even after getting back to his own version of the bureau. Always "we", never "she". He simply cannot bring himself to blame her without taking accountability for his part in the mess.
"Don't patronize me." Her hands are shaking, just like her voice, a sharp contrast to his steady silhouette, and can he just hold her, please? "I don't need you to take the fall for me."
His eyes go cold, like they were forged in the heart of Jotunheim. "Of course not", he says, fully composed. "You don't need me for anything. It's not like we're in this together."
(Maybe we can figure it out-together.)
She now knows her walls don't- can't- keep the hurt out- it just keeps her locked inside this cage of distrust and insecurities. And the price she has to pay for it is too high.
They could have been lying on a beach somewhere, sipping mimosas right now. Instead, they're here, in the vast, silent library of the TVA, sitting on separate tables, reading files on variants.
The only thing worse than bearing the weight of his gaze is having him stare at his files without looking in her direction even once. She can't take it anymore.
"I'm sorry." She suddenly blurts out.
He looks up, confused. "I'm sorry?"
"I'm sorry for what I did." She repeats. It's difficult to start an apology, but once she finds the strength to begin, the rest of it flows automatically. "I'm sorry I messed up everything. I'm sorry I broke the timelines. I'm sorry the world is in danger." She takes in a deep breath. "And I'm sorry I betrayed you."
His smile is the saddest kind. "A Loki betraying a Loki. That's the least surprising thing in the world. What's shocking is how I didn't see it coming. You really had me going with that kiss. Very nice distraction. Very Loki."
Free will comes with the fine-print of living with the consequences of your choices. And she has to live with hers every day. The tears finally spill out of her eyes. She hasn't let herself cry for a long, long time. But now she's breaking down worse than the multiverse. "I didn't do it to distract you. I did it to say goodbye."
He gets up, and she panics that he's leaving. Instead, he sits down in front of her, reaches for her hand, but changes his mind mid-way and lets them fall to his side. "You didn't have to say goodbye."
"It's all I've ever known." She feels like that scared little girl, far from home, running from minute men, with nobody to turn to but herself. "I told you, I don't have anyone."
"You had me."
That's the saddest part of it all, isn't it? Everything else in her life is the TVA's fault. She's torn from Asgard? Hasn't seen her parents in years? Can't remember her brother Thor? Spent her whole childhood running and hiding? All TVA.
But this? This is all her own doing. This is the one time she had something real, something worth holding onto, someone worth fighting against the world for. Instead, she questioned his intentions, didn't hold on, fought him and ruined everything.
"I didn't want to rule, Sylvie", he finally tells her. "I wanted you."
She has dreamed of this moment when he tells her how he feels. They have come so close to it so many times, the words dangling off the edge of his tongue but never quite finding their way out. She has always known- every word, every action pointed to it. But it was so hard to imagine someone could love her.
It's so hard to imagine someone can love her again. The past tense in his wording terrifies her worse than any danger ever could. "Is it too late to fix things?"
His smile doesn't reach his eyes. "We are fixing things. That's why we are here. Saving the universe."
"You know what I mean."
"I don't know how to trust you again, Sylvie." He tells her point blank- no deception, no lies, no Loki-ism. "And you never trusted me to begin with."
That's not entirely true. She trusts him more than she has trusted anyone. "I really thought I was doing the right thing."
"I know."
(Not to be dramatic, but yeah, we're saving the universe.)
The Avengers are much nicer than Loki described them, considering they don't kill her for what she has done, instead tell her about their own journeys towards redemption. Wanda tells her about the man she has loved and lost, and the pain she has caused to an entire town. Barnes talks about his past as a brainwashed assassin. Clint tells her the story of Natasha and how she took charge and changed her life.
Thor is the kindest of them all. He talks about how far Loki himself has come. He tells her stories of his version of Asgard, the nine realms, the glorious battles, the beauty of earth.
She still dreams of death, but sometimes she doesn't.
Sometimes, she hopes.