This story has very minor spoilers for Loki Season 2, it's based on a leaked set photo. There are also themes of familial abuse, homophobia, manipulation, and delusions.
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
-"Time", Pink Floyd
Loki stepped through the golden light of the tempad portal and into the busy streets of London, to the wondering stares of dozens of people.
He'd dressed himself in a dark brown pea coat he'd stolen from a detective, hoping to blend in more with the new version of the TVA Sylvie had pushed him into and hide his bloody arm. His hair and armpits had been soaked with sweat when he'd first arrived, panting and panicking and bleeding, trying to explain to Mobius what had happened, only to find out he was in a new place entirely. The TVA he'd left was not the TVA he'd returned to. The Mobius he knew was not the same one he'd tried to speak to. Everything was seemingly the same, yet completely different.
Inwardly, he mourned for his friend who had suddenly disappeared and been replaced by a copy. But if he was to survive, he had to keep moving. He had to find her, warn her, protect her from what she'd done.
A spare tempad and a time displacement collar, abandoned in the chaotic crisis of dozens of branching timelines, lay on a cubicle desk, along with a dark coat draped over the edge of an office chair. He took all of them and searched for her among the seemingly endless variants of himself listed on the tempad. Sylvie, the only female face, popped up on his orange-tinted screen, with coordinates in the middle of London, England, the year nineteen seventy-eight.
Loki was there at that moment, searching all the faces staring back at him in terror and bemusement. She wasn't any of them. But she had to be here, somewhere. The tempad couldn't lie. It was beeping like mad, signaling she was close, like a metal detector.
After getting his bearings, he looked up to see he'd landed directly in front of a restaurant. Bright yellow double arches framed the entrance, the outside walls painted in garish red.
He cringed. A … McDonald's? Why in the nine realms would she be in a McDonald's? He'd never had the food, but what he'd seen of it looked worse than scraps you'd feed to a dog. Of course, being a prince, most processed Midgardian food gave him the same impression. He had no idea how this 'McDonald' person had secured thousands of restaurants in every single country in the world, but they must be the richest human on Earth.
He walked through the glass doors, trying to look casual. The décor was depressingly sterile and plastic, everything in shades of brown and beige and burnt orange, not unlike the TVA. It smelled heavily of grease and scented cleaning liquid: bleach or ammonia, something of that nature. The speckled tile floor was vaguely sticky. At the counter, three bored looking female cashiers took customer's orders, opening their registers with a clang, sorting out money, handing back change, and shutting them with another loud slam.
Loki sucked in a breath. The cashier on the right, wearing a stupid, red and white striped paper hat, was Sylvie. She looked just as bored as everyone else, automatically handing back change as robotically as the register she commanded. The lines on her cheeks were deeper than usual, her hair cut a bit straighter and more layered than it had been before. But of course, she was a Loki. She could disguise herself as easily as changing clothes. Sylvie really sold herself as a nobody, looking like she'd done this job every day of her life.
He waited in line, trying to blend in, glancing nervously behind him through the windows, expecting to see another portal open in front of the store, hunters coming through to capture him, or Sylvie, or possibly both.
When Loki got to the counter, he put both hands in front of the register and leaned in.
"Sylvie!" he said in a half whisper.
Jolted from her robotic movements, she backed away slightly from the tall, imposing man hovering over her. She blinked a few times, then looked down and touched her metal nametag, which had her name engraved on it.
"Uh, yes, sir?"
"Sylvie, you can stop working now, we need to get out of here!"
She stared at him, lips parted slightly in a dumbfounded expression. Her eyes were soft in their surprise, like a cow's dull stare, without the sharp edge he'd noticed in the Sylvie that he'd just fought. She looked no more intelligent than the other humans ordering food.
"Sir, I don't know what you're on about. What do you mean, 'Get out of here?'"
Loki gave her a tight, sardonic grin, leaning in even more. His patience was ground thin from adrenaline. He couldn't handle any games. He was prepared to use the time displacement collar on her, if he had to, though he didn't like the idea one bit.
"You've done a great job blending in, you even have the garbling accent down-"
"Garbling?" she interrupted, offended.
"-Exactly. It's spot-on. Brilliant. But you can stop playing around now. We have to leave before the TVA finds you, or us. I don't think you understand how much danger you're in."
"Pardon me," said an old lady from behind him, "But are you quite finished? I'd like to order."
Loki, eyes wide and threatening, slowly turned around to face her.
"Wait your turn, you old bird!" he growled.
The lady, far from afraid, scowled and scoffed at him right back.
"I never!" she said, then looked at Sylvie and said, "You shouldn't serve this man. You ought to get someone to throw him out!"
"I'll throw you out the fucking window!" he hissed. That finally registered to her as a threat, as she shuffled out the door as quickly as she could, still muttering angrily to herself.
"Sir, I'm about to call the police," said Sylvie, her face now filled with fear.
Something awful occurred to him, the thought smacking him like a taut bow string snapping in two. He leaned back, away from her, his expression softening, eyes growing wide.
"Sylvie," he said, his voice and heart breaking. "Tell me you know who I am. Please."
She stood frozen with the cowlike expression still on her face. She shook her head ever so slightly.
"Sorry," she whispered.
Loki's shoulders slumped involuntarily, still leaning heavily on the counter. He couldn't look at her anymore, this human imposter staring back at him like the alien he was.
He finally left the counter and sat down in a plastic bench at a plastic table, surrounded by vinyl and Styrofoam and all the unnatural, manmade trappings of an age at the beginning of its own demise. He wanted more than anything to tear out the tables, crush the tiles beneath his feet, break every window festooned with yellow arches, throw burning french fry oil on the stupid Neanderthals eating their disgusting ground beef, watch their polyester suits melt into their skin.
He didn't. The woman he thought he'd loved was one of those Neanderthals, still standing at the counter and staring at him through the little wooden window next to his seat. Even if it wasn't actually her, somehow, he couldn't harm her. The tempad beeped in his pocket, and he took it out, slamming it on the table. It had to be a fluke. He searched through the database of known Loki variants, all the hundreds of faces flickering by, until his finger hurt from scrolling, until the faces became less and less humanoid, until the variants barely had what one would call a 'face' at all. Loki stopped at the last entry, some kind of amorphous blob called L-583672, and sat there with his thumbs hovering over the tempad. After a moment, realizing no new entries would pop up, he turned off the beeping and thrust the tempad back in his coat.
A wave of horror and sadness swept over him as reality started to sink in. Sylvie, the prodigal Asgardian princess, was gone forever, stolen by the rearrangement of the timeline that she herself had caused. Loki leaned over the table holding his head in both hands and wept, little shudders pulsing through him with each sob. His tears made tiny saltwater puddles that pooled neatly on the shiny plastic table.
He had no idea how long he'd been there, how many gallons of tears he'd cried, before he felt someone sit down across from him and heard a dull clatter of a plastic tray. Sylvie, her eyes now with more pity instead of fear, had brought a brown serving tray with two little Styrofoam burger boxes and two pouches of french fries. She handed him a paper cup full of some brown, fizzy soda.
"I didn't know what you might like, so I got you a Coke and a Big Mac," she said gently.
"Why?" he asked.
She shrugged as she stuffed a fry in her mouth. "You've been here for ages. I just finished my shift. It's dinnertime. Aren't you hungry?"
"Go home, Sylvie," he said, voice cracking. Even saying her name hurt, like a hand squeezing his throat. Without her, there was nothing left to live for. He may as well go back to the new TVA and turn himself in.
"I can catch another bus," she said, opening her box and taking a bite of her burger.
He slammed a hand on the table, but she barely reacted, chewing her burger methodically, looking him over with a measured gaze he didn't expect. Nonetheless, he had to scare her away for her own innocence.
"Leave," he growled. "I am nothing you want to trifle with."
"How do you know me?" she asked through a mouthful of burger, narrowing her eyes.
"You'd never believe me, my dear."
"I'd like to know."
He took a deep breath, wishing this shoddy duplicate would simply leave him to wallow in his misery, but she'd made it clear she was staying put. Perhaps the truth would frighten her away.
"You are a variant of me. You are what I could have been, in a different timeline, one that was allowed to flourish. We are one in the same."
She stopped chewing, but didn't seem as frightened as he'd hoped. Maybe, at least, if she thought he was touched in the head she would leave him be.
"So ... I'm you?"
"Yes."
"And who are you?"
He paused a moment before answering. He couldn't keep a tiny smirk from flashing across his face. The absurdity of it all.
"I am Loki Odinson, Prince of Asgard, God of mischief."
That finally seemed to surprise her. She put down her burger and thoughtfully washed it down with a sip of Coke, refusing to make eye contact with him. Good.
"Where is Asgard?" she asked with a nervous little cough. "Sounds Swedish."
"Asgard is one of the nine realms, the realm of the Gods. Earth is called Midgard."
She nodded slowly, venturing another cautious glance at him.
"When you say 'realm'-"
"I'm from another planet, Sylvie," he blurted curtly.
Her lips parted and curved up in an open mouthed smile, as if she would burst into laughter. She held back, only letting out a single scoffing chuckle.
"Rubbish," she whispered. "Utter rubbish." Her smile never faded, but there was an anger behind it. She gathered the remains of her meal on the tray as if she was ready to chuck it all in the garbage, but paused and gave him an impatient look, sort of a silent challenge. Do something. Put up or shut up.
Loki almost felt sorry for her. The truth made no sense, and the whole of it would send her running. That's what he'd been aiming for ... he thought.
He decided to try some of the french fries quickly turning cold on the tray. They still had a bit of crispiness to them, and were mouth shrivelingly salty and greasy. Not awful. Not half bad, in fact. He dipped another in ketchup, salt on salt. One sip of absurdly sweet soda washed the ketchup taste away.
He was stalling, and they both knew it.
"Do they have fries on your home planet?" she asked sarcastically, tilting her head.
He nearly retorted that it was her home planet, too, but he bit his tongue. It wasn't. Earth was this Sylvie's home.
"And you're a god, too," she continued with a wry smile. "Wow. Amazing. I once met a bloke on the Tube who said he was Jesus Christ, but a god? Incredible."
That was a step too far for Loki's fragile sense of pride.
"I am a god," he said, not too forcefully, but not so casual she'd think he was joking.
"Oh, I know." Her mocking tone was suddenly gone, confusing him for a second until he realized she still didn't believe a word he'd said. "You are absolutely a god. And I have a bus to catch."
She stood to leave, and before he could stop himself, he blurted, "I can prove it."
She paused and raised an eyebrow at him, then sat back down with a sigh.
"Look under the table," he said, as he used one hidden hand to create an elaborate scene of Asgard's royal palace. He didn't want to draw any more attention to himself.
She glared at him and stood up again quickly, taking the tray and her spaghetti-strap purse with her.
"Pervert!" she spat, then took two steps before Loki grabbed her arm. She tensed as if to jerk away, but stopped instead.
With her body blocking the view from the other customers, he brought his hand from under the table to show her the magical diorama floating above his palm. She gasped, nearly dropping the tray, then put it on another table and gawked at the miniature palace, glowing in green and gold. She touched it delicately, her fingers momentarily breaking the illusion like a reflection on water.
"How are you bloody doing that?" she whispered. "Do you have a projector under there or something? Like a laser show?"
He chuckled, grief momentarily forgotten at her childlike wonder.
"It's magic."
"No … "
"Yes."
He winced in pain and had to dissolve the illusion of the palace. He'd used his injured arm for magic, which made his wound hurt as power pulsed through his body. Gingerly, he removed his brown coat, and Sylvie gasped again at the sight of the deep cut on his arm, dark with dried blood.
"Oh my god!" she said, grabbing a big wad of brown napkins from a dispenser and giving them to him to press on his wound. As he held the napkins to his arm, something in Sylvie's countenance changed, from distrust, to wonder, to a nervous anticipation. She sucked in her breath a few times, anxiously adjusting her purse, looking around as if she wasn't sure if she should bolt or not.
Finally, she stammered, "Do-do you have a place to stay?"
"I don't," he said, removing the sticky, bloody napkins and putting fresh ones on. It took him a moment to realize what she was suggesting. She didn't need to say it out loud. They both stared at each other for a long moment, her eyes wide, her mouth undecided between a frown and a nervous smile.
"Um … my bus will be here in a few minutes."
Loki was a bit amazed. Whether she knew it or not, she'd caught him in a little trap made of his own foolish pride. He had to show her that he was truly a god instead of frightening her away, like he'd meant to, and now she waited for him to follow her home like a stray cat.
With that, Loki stood, she dumped the uneaten food in the bin, and they both walked out into the street to wait at a bus stop a block or two away.
It was a bustling, dreary day, the sky threatening to rain at any moment, but Sylvie didn't seem the least bit perturbed as she took a package of cigarettes out of her little purse and lit one. When she noticed him looking, she offered one to him, though he had no idea how to respond and simply continued to stare at her dumbly. She quickly stuffed the cigarettes back in her purse and crossed her arms under her chest. Her outfit, an oversized, polyester blouse of crimson red with matching slacks, engulfed her slender frame, looking more like uncomfortable pajamas than a work uniform.
"You shouldn't smoke," he said, more to break the awkward silence than anything. "I've heard it takes a decade off of a human life."
"I know," she responded. "I've tried to quit, but it's so hard. My whole family smokes. My grandpa smoked like a chimney, made it to ninety-two … "
She trailed off and blew a cloud of smoke away from them, bouncing on one knee.
"Do they smoke on your pla- I mean, Asgard?" she asked, keeping her voice down, leaning in and glancing around at the other waiting passengers.
"Not really," he replied. "They do drink, though."
She chuckled, making the lines on her face deepen. He'd seen so few genuine smiles on the Sylvie he'd left behind that it seemed unnatural.
"You'll fit right in here, then," she said. "Honestly, from how you talk, I would have guessed you were from Knightsbridge or Chelsea anyway, someplace like that."
"Is that where your royalty lives? I was under the impression that they lived in a palace, unless that's changed."
She burst out in a fit of giggles, the apples of her cheeks turning pink as she held up her hand to her mouth. He had no idea what he'd said to make her laugh so hard, but it put him slightly at ease, though he had a feeling he'd embarrassed himself, somehow.
"Do you … live alone?" he asked awkwardly. He should have thought of that before accepting her wordless invitation to stay at her home. He hoped to the gods that he wouldn't have to meet her parents, as well. If she had to work at a fast food restaurant, they certainly couldn't have been variants of the king and queen of Asgard, or even Jodenheim, for that matter. This Sylvie must have been adopted by a family with no wealth or status.
"Yes, I live alone. Just me and Freddy. Freddy's my dog. Do you like dogs?"
Loki absolutely despised dogs-slobbery, loud, idiotic animals-but kept his mouth shut and his expression level.
"I'm sure I'll be fine."
Suddenly, she stopped smiling and let her arm drop. Ashes fell from the tip of her cigarette to the sidewalk.
"My God. I'm bringing you home and you don't even know my full name or anything. Sylvie Black," she said, holding out her free hand.
Without thinking, he took her hand delicately in his own and lifted it, kissing the back of her hand before realizing she probably meant for him to shake it, instead. She let out a strained breath, like a giggle that had been choked to death, and blushed nearly as red as her uniform, but didn't take her hand away.
A man next to them on the bus stop bench gave them a dirty look, then buried his nose deeper into the paper he was reading.
The red double-decker bus rumbled up to them just then, and Sylvie paid both their fares with a few coins. On the ride home, Sylvie enlightened him with the details of her mundane, dreary little human life, how she'd grown up with her parents and brother and grandfather in a small flat in a place called Peckham, how her mother was part-time cleaning lady and her father worked in a factory, how she'd wanted to go to college and travel but never had the time or money, and how she now lived in an even smaller flat in Brixton.
"Yeah, I've never lived north of the Thames," she said, finishing her cigarette. "Barely ever left London, except on holiday. I've been to Birmingham, and the seaside a few times, and Edinburgh-Edinburgh is just lovely in the summer-but that's it, really."
"Those are all places in this kingdom, if I'm not mistaken?"
She leaned her elbow on the edge of the window and nodded.
"You've never left this island?" he asked incredulously.
Sylvie shrugged and stared wistfully out the window, as if she didn't want to talk about it anymore. They both stayed quiet for the rest of the short trip until Sylvie rang the bell and the bus ground to a halt.
They walked up to a row of apartments, all identical in brown brick with white trim and a little cluster of soot-stained terracotta chimneys on top, the homes squished together so closely they looked like a giant had crushed them sideways.
Sylvie opened the front door and they ascended up several flights of stairs to the very top, where a dog barked and howled and scratched from the other side of the door. Loki braced himself as a shaggy, baying mutt, about as tall as his knee, squeezed through the crack in the door and jumped all over his khakis. He put up his knee to keep it under control, lifting his hands so it wouldn't slobber all over them. The thing looked like a dirty mop that had come to life and learned to bark.
"Down, Freddy!" said Sylvie, smiling as she took him by the collar and distracted the dog with belly scratches. "This is Loki! He's a friend!"
She took Freddy's hairy face in both hands and cooed at him indulgently as the dog reached out his disgustingly long, pink tongue to lick the tip of her nose.
"I forgot to bring you some fries, Freddy-weddy! I'm so sorry!" Loki nearly gagged as she kissed Freddy's wet nose. He wasn't too far off to assume that McDonald's was dog food.
She led him into the living room of her tiny little flat, only about as wide as three of him with his arms spread apart. The walls were lined with garish yellow wallpaper, almost as bright as the golden arches they'd just left behind. She had a small selection of wooden, cloth-upholstered furniture that included two matching orange chairs and a couch along the wall. A little television sat on a flimsy looking table next to a small shelf of books and a record player with a selection of vinyl. White curtains, stained beige by cigarette smoke, hung at a narrow windowsill, closed tightly against the tree-lined street.
She directed him to the few rooms of her flat as Freddy shook himself, gave Loki a few more cursory 'boof's, then jumped up on a chair, tail wagging madly. The place was so small she didn't even have to walk around to guide him through it. He poked his head into each of the rooms-the bathroom, which she called a "WC", the kitchen, and the bedroom-and noted that each of them sported different colored wallpaper just as gaudy and horrid as the living room.
He didn't speak his distaste for her décor, of course, but her flat wasn't even as big or nicely furnished as the servant's quarters in the palace he'd grown up in. Hell, it wasn't even as big as his smallest closet.
Another pang of sadness gripped his heart. His palace, his kingdom, his planet was no more. Even if the timeline had somehow resurrected Asgard here, he couldn't go back to it, back to his old life. He had never belonged to this timeline in any part of the universe.
Sylvie hung up her purse on a coat tree, went into the kitchen and rummaged around in her olive-green refrigerator, pulling out two tin cans with red and gold labels.
"Beer?" she asked. "It's not great, but I'm out of coffee. Or a cuppa?"
"Cup of what?"
She blinked at him, frozen in place, then squinted and tilted her head like a dog hearing a strange noise.
"Cup of tea?"
"Just water," he said, sitting down on an uneven metal chair, hoping she wouldn't have to go and pull water out of a well.
"I keep forgetting you're not actually British," she mumbled.
She took two glasses out of the cupboard and filled one with water from the faucet. It was warm and tasted slightly rusty, but he really didn't care at that moment. He caught a glimpse in his minds eye of the beautiful mountains of Asgard, cut by pristine rivers from springs that had flowed since the beginning of time.
Sylvie pulled a little metal tab off the top of the can of beer. She poured it into her glass, took a few sips, then sat down at the little wooden dinner table and gave him another quizzical look.
"So, I told you about me. What about you? You're going to have to explain the whole 'We are one in the same,' thing."
"The what?" he said. He'd barely registered what she was saying. He'd had no idea how thirsty and tired he was until he sat down.
She leaned back in her chair, her confused look turning more serious.
"You weren't just rattling off nonsense, were you?" she asked. "I knew you weren't crazy, but I guess you could still be a liar. A really good one."
He scoffed inwardly. She had no idea.
"It's just very complicated, Sylvie," he sighed. "I don't think I'm supposed to be alive. And you … " he stopped himself from telling her she'd somehow died. She was Schrodinger's princess: alive, staring him in the face with her long, blonde hair falling across her eyes, and dead, her very existence erased from the universe.
"Well?" she asked, eyebrow raised expectantly.
"I can't right now," he whispered, ashamed. He put his head in one hand, feeling a pounding headache coming on.
"You need time to come up with more bullshit?" she asked flatly.
"My life just fell apart!" he exclaimed, making Freddy run into the kitchen and bark at him again. Sylvie shushed him and picked him up, cradling the hairy beast like a baby. He restrained himself, feeling the back of his throat close up as he spoke.
"Everyone I know and love is dead, or they never existed. Everything I know has been deleted and replaced, so forgive me for being tired. I'm bloody exhausted. I can't explain myself right now."
He moaned a little, took a few deep breaths, and put up both hands in a defensive gesture, quieting his voice so the angry mop in her arms would stop growling.
"Thank you for your hospitality. I do appreciate it. But I just need some time, Sylvie. I can't …"
After a long silence, she finally nodded and put Freddy back on the floor.
"I was wondering why you were crying in a McDonald's for three hours straight," she said, taking a sip of beer. "I suppose I don't have to ask, now. I'm sorry, Loki."
She held out one hand to him across the table. He took it tentatively. It was like holding a bird, so delicate and soft he was afraid he might break it if he squeezed too hard, which was surprising knowing that she'd worked for at least half of her life.
She pulled away and used that slender hand to move her hair out of her eyes.
"Right. I need to take Freddy for a walk. You're welcome to anything I have to eat; beans, toast, I think there's a scone or two left. There's tea if you want it, obviously. You should sleep on the bed, you're much too tall for the couch. Has your arm stopped bleeding yet?"
"Yes."
"Good, I was afraid you'd have to go to A&E. There's aspirin in the medicine cabinet. There's books and records and tele-"
"I'll be fine," he interrupted her with as much of a smile as he could manage.
Sylvie nodded, then left him alone in the kitchen. She baby-talked to Freddy, who whined excitedly at the word 'walk', then there was a jingle of the leash, the creak and slam of the door, followed by silence. He was alone, trapped in the tin-can apartment, the enormity of his situation weighing down on him without a warm body to talk to.
"Maybe I will have a beer," he said quietly to himself.
He found the can in the fridge, which was bare, save for some questionable looking butter and a wilted head of lettuce. He tried to use the metal tab to pull open the can, but only succeeded in snapping it off.
With an annoyed grunt, he used magic to cleanly rip off the top. It tasted absolutely awful, like piss water mixed with fermented backwash. He swallowed what he could and poured the rest down the sink, feeling bad for wasting what little she had. If he had to steal food for her, just so they'd have something more nutritious than McDonald's hamburgers to eat, then he'd do it.
They. He was already thinking in terms of both of them, together. That was idiocy. He was starting to think like his big brother, who'd fallen head over heels for a human girl, bound to die in a few decades, if not sooner.
She'd been gone three minutes, but already he couldn't stand the silence. He involuntarily let out a sob, just to hear a sound, feel something, anything at all besides the black hole growing inside of him. Completely unable to control himself, he crawled into her bed like a lost child, letting tears stream down his face, weeping into her pillow. The smell of her sheets, tobacco mixed with musty perfume and floral shampoo, eventually soothed him into a sense of security, then into a deep, dreamless sleep. He didn't even hear her come home or feel her presence in the bedroom, nor registered that she'd turned out all the lights for him and closed the door.