Author's Note - Spoilers for all of Season 1 of Loki (TV). Comments are wholeheartedly appreciated. Also posted on AO3 under my user r_n_g_are_dead. Thanks for reading!

Turned out, love was a dagger.

It was a weapon that had been wielded far away and up close. He saw himself in it. It was beautiful. And then it made him bleed. But, ultimately, when he reached for it, it wasn't real.

Except that it very much was. (Is?)

Loki rolled over to face the wall of the small dorm room he had been assigned for the evening. The cot was practical, though certainly not comfortable—something akin to what one would find in Asgard's prison quarters. He was still grateful for it, though, and expressed that to the best of his ability to the TVA employee who had walked him to the room. Because even as everything was falling apart around him, there was still a need for sleep. If that was even possible.

The day (had it only been a day?) had been one long waking nightmare and though he desperately needed rest, he was almost afraid to close his eyes because he was genuinely afraid he would wake up to something even worse. If that was even possible.

Loki had spent most of his adult life angry, and that feeling was still crawling about his insides as he lay in the dark. Anger wasn't at the forefront of his thoughts, though. Yes, he was angry that this massive thing he tried to prevent still happened because Sylvie wouldn't (couldn't?) trust him and the logic he presented to her about why it would be better for all existence if they didn't kill He Who Remains. But a numbing sense of loss combined with the heaviness that came with feeling utterly alone (mixed with that dagger-sharp pain of love) weighed massively on the heart Loki had resolutely shielded from others until only recently.

Mobius not recognizing or knowing him hurt. What happened with Sylvie was beyond awful and Loki had needed someone who knew him to listen and he had no one. The man Loki knew as Mobius was still very much Mobius, but wasn't the Mobius variant Loki had grown to call a friend. This Mobius in this TVA hadn't spent his career tracking down Lokis. He was still kind, though. Maybe all Mobiuses were He took Loki to a Time Theater, got him a drink, and listened patiently as a very panicked man with a fancy accent told him about a Tesseract, his TVA experience on what must have been a different timeline, his own variant, her plan, and what she must have done to create so many new branches on Kang's timeline. Only the panicked man hadn't called him Kang. Apparently he was a nicer Kang variant. And there were more, more evil, Kang variants on the way to do who knows what.

Simply put, it was bad news.

Mobius could see that this Loki guy was really having a hard time, so he said he'd set him up with some food and water, an on-site dorm room, and a fresh set of clothes to sleep in, promising that they could meet back up with each other first thing in the morning so Loki could assist him and the other higher-ranking TVA analysts with troubleshooting next steps.

When that Mobius stuck out his hand for Loki to shake before the misplaced God of Mischief was to be escorted to his quarters for the night, Loki exhaled unsteadily and shook it. It was only after the door to his room was shut and locked that he allowed himself to sink down onto the floor and brokenly sob, remembering the hug he had given the Mobius he knew (and who knew him) in the Void and wishing for the first time in his life that there was someone who could hug him now. The only person who had hugged him regularly (if not always wanted) as a child was Frigga and that made him cry even harder. Loki wondered if Frigga existed on this new timeline and if she was even his mother.

This new timeline.

New timelines.

Still in his torn button up and tie, Loki's choked down the bland meat sandwich that was somehow both too dry and overly moist at the same time. Having had several meals in the Sacred Timeline's TVA, he was not surprised that the food tasted nothing like what he had been used to as a king's son, but at the same time it was welcome and appreciated.

Loki had never been one to appreciate things and the feeling was still quite new to him. Food and shelter had never been in question when he was growing up. Excess was his normal.

Nothing was normal now. Time as he knew it was no longer. He had seen his future, and even his own death, but that might not be his path anymore with what just happened. The glimmer of hope that he might not die at the hand of Thanos was snuffed quickly as he wondered what new levels of hell were in store for the nine realms now that someone even more dangerous than the mad Titan was literally pulling the strings.

A full stomach begat a slightly clearer head and Loki dragged himself to the small en suite bathroom where he found thin crisp white cotton towels of several sizes stacked in a small pyramid on the sink's counter. Tiny clear bottles with orange gels in them marked Shampoo and Conditioner sat next to a plastic wrapped orange rectangle of soap marked Soap. It was the same as his first night at the Sacred Timeline's TVA back when he was first taken in, but so, so different.

In a different time than that (timeline, he thought to himself), Loki would have complained that there wasn't a larger, more elegant wash tub and thick bath sheets of fine Asgardian cotton for him to use. For the time (timeline) being, the almost-hot water weakly spurting from the lone shower head in the stall barely big enough for one person was an actual godsend.

The orange shampoo gave off a medicinal smell as Loki half-heartedly worked it through his hair and into a lather. Tears mixed with the frothy suds as they hit his chest.

He scrubbed at his body, though, as if the harder he swiped the soap across his skin, the surer he could be that he was still alive and that this wasn't all some cosmic charade. That the cut on his arm was real. That the grime on his hands was real. That the hurt in heart was real. The small bar of soap was worn down to something the size of his thumbnail by time he was finished.

The largest towel was a fraction the size of what he was used to, but he was too tired to care. He dragged the itchy material across his body and squeezed some of the excess water out of his hair.

Loki tugged on the white t-shirt and white undergarment shorts he had been given, leaving the brown leisure pants folded on a lone chair that was the only piece of furniture in his room besides a long, thin cot and a table smaller than the one he had sat at with a Mobius in a Time Theater.

Loki folded the TVA uniform he had been wearing when he got pruned and had been wearing ever since. He cringed at the final result, knowing his pants would be even more wrinkled the following morning than they already were. It seemed like such a small and insignificant thing in the grand scheme of what was going on, but it made Loki angry and sad.

Loki had never felt more alone than when he was lying on that cot that night. No one knew who he was. No one cared that he was Loki of Asgard, or that what he had once thought was his glorious purpose actually meant absolutely nothing to anyone. No one knew that he was genuinely scared—not just for himself, but for Sylvie—and that that fear was rooted in something he had never felt for anyone else, let alone himself, for over a thousand of years.

Love.

That odious dagger had settled itself between Loki's ribs and it made every inch of him ache.

Loki wasn't in love with Sylvie the way that Thor said he was with Jane Foster. And least he didn't think so. (But perhaps he was?) Loki had never been in love before, but he knew he loved Sylvie in that he cared for her and wanted her to be okay in every sense of the word. He wanted her to be happy and safe and autonomous in her choices. To be able to live to enjoy life and not merely live for survival. To not have to jump from apocalypse to apocalypse to evade the TVA, but to live freely on her own timeline toward her own future. That was love, wasn't it?

Which meant, to a degree, that Loki wanted that for himself (and maybe even loved himself). To be happy and safe and autonomous in his choices. To be able to live his life for his pleasure as opposed to just survive it. He hadn't had to live from apocalypse to apocalypse like Sylvie had. He had had a family (albeit one who lied to him for most of his life) and it was only now that he understood he should be holding onto that instead of constantly fighting the people who had told him they loved him.

In a weird way, Sylvie both felt like family and a stranger. She was a Loki, but she wasn't Loki. They were the same, but so, so different.

The things Loki admired in her he realized he could admire in himself, like their cleverness and shared determination for survival. But their mutual stubbornness and trust issues got the better of them and ripped them apart (when, more than anything, he wanted to stay by her side).

Staring at the wall while on his cot, Loki replayed every moment with Sylvie in his head over and over again, wondering if there was something he could have done or said differently to get her to trust him. He had never been more honest and open with someone in his entire life, including himself, than he was with her. He wanted to be a better person because of her. For her. For himself.

To his own surprise, he had grown to trust Sylvie. In that short time he had spent with her, he felt that he could trust her with his life because there were ample times when she could have turned on him. They had threatened each other, sure. But neither of them actually acted on it.

And he thought she trusted him too. Though he knew she had no real right to do so besides his word (which, even he knew was dicey at best on a normal day), he thought they had connected.

Because they had connected, right?

Something had shifted on Lamentis-1. Loki felt it at the very core of himself—like every part of him had dissolved inside a cocoon and reconfigured themselves to form some sort of evolved being that had emerged from the tragic shell of who he had been for most of his life. For once he wasn't just thinking about himself, but this other person who had so quickly become someone he felt compassion for. He had concern for her and worry for her and a fondness for her that was entirely new. It wasn't scary, though, even though it very much was. These new feelings made him feel stronger and more in touch with parts of himself he hadn't given much thought to or allowed himself to access in the past.

Being around Sylvie knocked Loki down a few pegs and, to his surprise, he found peace in it. She reminded him a bit of his adopted brother when they were both younger—constantly butting heads and challenging every little thing about each other. And while that was completely frustrating at first, Loki recognized Sylvie's survival instincts as his own, pre-TVA. She wasn't being contrary to be contrary; it was the only way she knew to get by in any given situation. When you're the only one looking out for yourself, you do what you need to do. Loki understood that feeling—he knew what it felt like—and wanted Sylvie to know that it didn't have to keep being like that.

She didn't have to be alone anymore. They didn't have to be alone anymore.

Yes, Loki had betrayed everyone who had ever loved him. But he had changed. He knew he had changed, even in that short amount of time. (Was it a short amount of time, though? Time made no sense to him ever since being at the TVA.) Mobius, his friend Mobius, had said he could be whoever he wanted to be—even someone good—and that had been at the back of Loki's mind ever since.

Being a good person was not Loki's default setting, but he knew it was a choice he could make again and again if he wanted to. And he found himself wanting to do that for Sylvie. He had wanted to help her take down the TVA. Burn it to the ground, as his Mobius put it. But once he encountered He Who Remains, Loki knew that the best way to choose good and protect Sylvie and the whole of existence was to leave things as they were. Share the throne together and keep the wretched TVA afloat (at least until they could think of something better… because there had to be something better, right?).

But that's where daggers came into play.

Fighting alongside Sylvie was preferable to fighting her, but Loki was going to protect himself if it meant protecting Sylvie from herself. In He Who Remains's office, Loki wasn't fighting to hurt her and didn't think she was fighting to hurt him. Not permanently, anyway. But how do you get someone to stop and listen who has been on the run for almost her entire life hen all she knows is to trust only herself and keep moving forward because doing anything else would be certain death?

But, again, Loki understood that. He knew that feeling. And he thought maybe, just maybe, that grounding her with his open hands and heart, pleading with her to stop because he knew there could be another way, would be enough.

It wasn't, though. She accused him of betrayal and pulling a long con on her. (He hadn't.) She told him to kill her. (He wouldn't.) She nearly cut his throat open when he put himself between her sword and He Who Remains and yet he still dropped his dagger.

Through tears he told the truth—his truth—about how the didn't want to hurt her and that none of this was for a throne. The only thing he wanted was for her to be okay.

Loki rolled over on his cot and raised a hand to his lips.

She was the one who kissed him. And it was beautiful. That moment was beautiful. But that's all it was—a moment. (And then she said she said she wasn't him and shoved him through a Timedoor that left him in a Time Theater at the TVA.)

Loki had been kissed before, but not like that. Not by someone who had actually seemed to care about him. Though Sylvie had joked about them, there were would-be princesses and princes aplenty on Asgard who cozied up to Odin's (adopted) son, thinking that was a surefire ticket to a life of luxury. He had indulged them because he could, but it wasn't real.

What had happened with Sylvie was real, though. He had been sure of it. There was no tricking a trickster, even if the person doing said tricking was also a trickster (and not just any trickster, but a variant of himself).

It was real. Until it wasn't.

(But it was.)

Sylvie was frustrating, but she wasn't cruel.

That kiss meant something. Maybe it meant something different to Sylvie, but Loki knew what it meant to himself—that though he was lost, he wasn't a lost cause. That it was worth it to care about something. Someone. That he could change and he had.

Loki didn't even consider what Sylvie did in He Who Remain's office to be a betrayal because it was done out of fear and anger, not malice. They had grown alongside each other on their quest to take down the TVA, but not entirely at the same pace. Her lack of trust in him wasn't a failure on his behalf (even though it sure felt that way), but something she still needed time to get over. And time had run out.

Time.

As someone who could live for multiple millennia, time wasn't something Loki had ever been really worried about. But ever since he had been taken into custody by the TVA, it was ever-present in his thoughts.

Loki rolled onto his back and stared at the hourglass pattern on the ceiling.

The TVA. The Time Variance Authority. Something he had never heard of until he was brought there, yet they claimed to be the keepers of the timeline he had lived on his entire life. That all those horrid things he had done in his past were meant to happen until he took the Tesseract again.

If only he had accepted that his brother and the Avengers were the rightful victors in the Battle of New York.

But while the TVA charged Loki with breaking the Sacred Timeline for taking the Tesseract in the lobby of Stark Tower, He Who Remains made it sound like Loki was supposed to do that because he was supposed to end up at the TVA to find Sylvie and then the pair of them were both supposed to end up in He Who Remains's office exactly when they did. That he was the one who actually kept the timeline.

None of it made sense, but at the same time all of it did.

Kind of like Loki's feelings for Sylvie.

Sylvie.

Tears slid out of Loki's eyes and down the side of his face to his ears as he wondered if they would ever see each other again. (If that was even something Sylvie wanted.)

With the palm of his hand, Loki wiped the remnants of the tears away and turned on his side, curling up like how he used to sleep when he was a child. He didn't know what was ahead of him, just as he didn't fully know how bad things already were. What he did know, though, was that he was going to do everything in his power to help the Mobius variant he would be meeting with in the morning. Choose to be a good person on this timeline. Be someone's hero instead of everyone's villain.

Find Sylvie and make things right between them.

For all time. Always.