Variant Variation
Author's Note: Inspired by Loki writer Michael Waldron's description of a deleted scene from episode 3. Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Marvel Comics.
Summary:
An alternate ending to Loki (2021). He Who Remains is not who Loki and Sylvie expected. Not at all.
Loki and Sylvie pushed out their weapons. The elevator in the Citadel at the End of Time cranked to their floor, and they waited guardedly for its door to slide open, in proximity of the three Time-Keeper statues and the one inexplicable statue that lay smashed on the floor.
Sylvie's whole life had built to this moment. Surviving on her own at the edges of the Sacred Timeline, made an orphan from her family and her reality, yet finally, it was here!
The door creaked sideways, revealing the man behind it all. The wretch who forced every living being to follow his script.
Only…the entity Miss Minutes called He Who Remains, He was no man at all.
"An armadillo?" Loki deadpanned.
"You sneaky little–!" Sylvie took several quick paces forward with her sword.
"You…know each other?" Loki found it utterly absurd he was asking this of Sylvie, a person, in relation to an animal incapable of higher speech.
"When I enchanted that young soldier from the TVA, there was failsafe the TVA put in place. A shield I had to break through, where her memories attacked me. This thing was the last snag to show up to try and stop me!"
"Are you telling me," Loki took an incredulous breath, "the TVA was created by a rodent?"
Ah, yes. He Who Remains: The cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear.
A low hum energized off the armadillo and escalated rapidly in volume.
"What's that?"
"Duck," Sylvie warned her Variant.
A blast of blue plasma missed them, obliterating what was behind them. Well! At least they knew where the cracks came from!
Loki stabbed Laevateinn in the direction of the armadillo as if offended. "A laser? A laser mounted on the armadillo? Someone must be joking!"
Sylvie sighed. "Except we're in a world of talking racoons, boozing ducks, and dogs in spacesuits."
"What? H-how? Why?" Loki exhausted interrogatives. "You're okay with this? We got this far, there's an armadillo running the Sacred Timeline beyond the end of time, and you're okay with this?"
"I mean, he's easier to kill."
And with that, Sylvie kicked the curled-up conqueror like a soccer ball. With her Jotunn strength, the armadillo easily soared out the Citadel and into the airless vacuum of space, a callback to Loki's fall through the abyss after his battle with Thor over the throne. The ring encircling the rock the Citadel rested on began to fray, and the God and Goddess of Mischief – the God and Goddess of Outcasts – watched the universe branch.
"So. Free will. What do we do with it now?" Loki wondered.
"Hel if I know. But that's the fun of it, isn't it?"