Loki woke to a gentle, wet feeling on his arm, rhythmically wiping his skin, like a warm, very soft washcloth. He opened his eyes slowly and the room took shape again; the television, the books, and the record player changing from blurry brown blobs into real things. Sylvie must have dragged him into the living room and lifted him onto the couch, at least halfway. His long legs stuck out awkwardly below the armrest and she'd propped his head up on the other one with a couple of pillows. Freddy was sitting in front of the couch, licking Loki's arm like it was the most delicious thing he'd ever tasted.
Loki jerked his arm away and tried to lift his head, only to feel dizzy and let it plop back down on the pillows.
Freddy jumped up on the couch and carefully laid down next to him in the very narrow space that was left. His tail wagged gently against Loki's legs. He had no energy to shoo the dog away, but at least tried to keep his face out of the way of Freddy's horrible breath.
Sylvie's footsteps came thumping up to him and she appeared hovering above him with a mug of tea in hand, deep wrinkles of concern cutting into her forehead.
"Oh, thank God you're awake," she said. "I didn't know whether to call an ambulance or not."
"No need for that," he said, forcing himself to sit up even though his head was pounding. Freddy jumped down, but jumped back up to reposition himself across Loki's lap. The dog acted as if Loki had raised him from a pup.
"Freddy wouldn't leave your side while you were conked out."
Sylvie sat on the other side of the dog and cradled the mug in both hands. She held it out to Loki without a word, and he took it graciously. His mouth was dry. The tea was a little strong, not enough sugar or cream, but he didn't mind.
"Last night, when I closed the door to the bedroom, he slept right next to the door instead of with me," she continued, with a little smile. She patted Freddy, who looked back over at her and panted, his brown eyes hidden under a curtain of hair. "Most people think dogs are just dumb animals, but they're not. He knows when something's wrong. He understands. This hairy mutt has given me more comfort than any boyfriend I've ever had. Haven't you, Fred?"
She scratched his bottom and Freddy's leg jiggled involuntarily.
Loki smiled a little through his pain and put a hand on Freddy's head. He supposed he might not have minded having a dog growing up, if it was like Freddy.
That reminded him of why he'd fainted in the first place. He must have been much more fragile than he thought to be overwhelmed by something so trivial as a description of her family. It wasn't the descriptions, though, but what they implied.
"What on Earth made you so poorly so fast?" she asked quietly. "Was it something I said?"
"It was," he sighed back, "but it's not your fault, Sylvie." Some part of him wanted to put it out of his mind forever, but he knew he couldn't. It was better to rip off the bandage than let the wound fester.
"Do you have a picture of your family?" he asked.
"Are you … going to faint again?"
"No. I promise."
She got up, rummaged around in a cabinet drawer, and brought out a polaroid photograph, which he took gingerly from her hand. There were three people in the photo sitting around a tiny table covered in candles and food and drink, wearing ridiculous paper hats that looked like crowns. The irony wasn't lost on him. In the darkened background, he saw a familiar Midgardian holiday symbol: an evergreen tree covered in baubles. Christmas. Their faces were oversaturated with the camera flash, looking candidly surprised, and totally unmistakable. They were tired, older, fatter, but they were nearly identical to his family. Thor-Theo-wore a tee shirt that barely held his huge arm muscles, leaning over the back of a chair, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and his golden hair cut short. Sylvie's mother wore a blue apron and a tight smile, her face wrinkled with age lines that his own mother would never have had. Her father scowled vaguely at the camera, which he presumed Sylvie had been holding, his long, gray locks gone, but with a patch over his right eye, exactly like Odin.
It was true, but it didn't seem real to him, still. He thought for certain she'd been adopted by some random, unimportant nobodies. How could the variants of Asgardian gods be a family of peasants? They didn't even sound like his parents. Odin valued knowledge almost as much as victory, and Loki's obsession with reading was one of the only things his adoptive father would openly praise about his son. Frigga would never be so bigoted and short sighted as to shun her own child for who they loved, never in an eon. And Thor … well, actually her description of Theo was spot on. They could have been twins, except for the smoking habit, of course. Though it seemed that Theo would never need to learn any lessons about humility.
He couldn't keep tears from streaming down his face as bittersweet memories of his own family flooded back to him. His arm dropped down to his lap. All the fights, the love, the bitterness … all of it gone in an instant, for Sylvie Odindottir's revenge. Sylvie Black was what remained, stunted by tradition and shame and the grinding reality of a life that required eternal labor to survive. Her dreams were crushed before she had a chance to dream them. She didn't even want to leave the place that had put shackles on her soul. It was all she knew.
"You said you weren't going to faint," she said gently as she took the picture from his hand. "You look a bit off-color."
"I won't. I promise," he said again, wiping tears from his eyes. "I just … miss my family. That's all."
"What were they like?"
He gave her a small smile. "Probably a lot like yours. We have the same family, Sylvie."
She opened her mouth slightly, eyes wide with amazement, not even able to ask how it was possible.
"Like I said," he continued. "You are what I could have been. We are one in the same."
He settled into the couch and petted Freddy as he reminisced about his life as a young prince of Asgard, how he spent his youth playing pranks on his brother, fighting with him, fighting next to him, with all the roughhousing and endearment that comes with sibling rivalry. He spoke of his sweet, tender mother, who loved him dearly despite his constant misbehaving. He was a bit more reticent about his father, who had the highest expectations of him, despite the throne never being his to have, even if Thor abdicated.
"Why not?" she asked, completely engrossed in his story.
"Because I was a child of the enemy, too," he said. "I'm a frost giant. Odin turned me into an Asgardian, much like your parents turned your German heritage into an English one."
"Er, I don't think that's the same thing. I mean, I'm still the same species."
He shrugged. "Close enough. Either way, our lives are mirrors of each other."
"But how do you know?" she asked. "How did you figure out I was you? And why?"
The back of Loki's throat closed up involuntarily. He wanted, very much, to tell her how he'd found her, trying to destroy the TVA, how they'd slowly gained each other's trust, how his heart fell for her, even if hers was still as cold as a frost giant's … but no words would come. It felt too enormous, like it had to come out all at once or not at all. He looked away from her, unable to meet her gaze.
"It's all right," she said quietly, but with disappointment written all over her face. "You don't look well at all. Can you stand?"
He nodded and did so, moving Freddy out of his lap, and walked just fine across the room. He was just tired. So excruciatingly tired.
"You should probably go to bed early. I don't know if Asgardians get concussions, but I don't think you have one."
Sylvie moved the box of her grandfather's clothes into the bedroom and laid out a pair of striped flannel pajamas on the bed. He wasn't thinking as he removed his shirt in front of her to put on the pajama top. Taking a glance in her direction, he saw her cheeks go bright red, the corners of her mouth aching to smile, but keeping themselves level.
"I'll leave so you can … put your trousers on," she said quickly, then coughed and turned around to leave. The dog followed her out, but before she closed the door, she peeked through again.
"Loki?" she said.
He finished up the last button. "Hmm?"
"Thank you."
"For what?" he scoffed. "Pissing off your neighbors? Losing consciousness on your kitchen floor?"
"No," she said, smiling. "For telling me your story."
She shut the door, leaving him with nothing but the lamplight and a vaguely astonished look on his face.
Loki didn't get out of bed at all the next day after he'd fainted on her floor, except to use the bathroom. He truly was sick. He'd never experienced any sickness like it, though. It wasn't the acute fear of being caught by the TVA, or the adrenaline from his recent adventures. He simply couldn't function, couldn't do the easiest things, which made him feel more awful.
Freddy came to him, whining and pawing at his arm draped over the side of the bed.
"No," he mumbled, pushing the dog away. Freddy responded by jumping on the bed and barking at him, right in his ear.
"No!" Loki shouted, pushing Freddy off the bed with such force that he tumbled to the floor and hit the wall. Loki gasped, but Freddy was fine. Physically, anyway. He got up, shook himself off, then gave Loki a terribly guilty look and slunk out the bedroom door to sulk in the living room.
He didn't want to see the inside of his head anymore. The only things there were failure and pain and darkness, a sense of helpless anger that wouldn't go away. The tempad was sitting right in his coat pocket, but there was no use in leaving. Where was there to go that held any meaning, anymore? Not Asgard, certainly. It was even useless to find Mobius again. He was just as much a copy as Sylvie Black.
And yet, it felt dreadful staying there in that world, in Sylvie's little hovel of a home, knowing that her life offered nothing greater than a promotion at McDonald's. He'd fallen from a prince, to a thieving god, to a renegade variant, and now to a nobody, wasting away on an awful version of Midgard. He couldn't even drown his sorrow in the horse-piss beer they drank. He missed fine, Asgardian mead, and roasted meat, and the songs of victory feasts.
More than anything, he missed his mother.
Loki lay there, stuck in his own head until the early evening, when Sylvie came back from work.
"Hello," she greeted him through the bedroom door, an oblivious smile on her face. "How was your day? Was Freddy good?"
Loki wanted to scream. Her cheerful demeanor and meaningless questions felt like little pins poking into his eyeballs. He refused to answer, flipping around on the bed to face away from her and cocooning himself in blankets.
"You all right?" she asked, coming into the bedroom. She stank of cigarettes and grease. Sylvie laid her bag down on her cluttered table and sat on the edge of the bed.
She said nothing for a long while. The only sounds in the dismal flat were Freddy's jingling collar and the crunch of his kibble as he ate.
"No, I'm not all right," he grumbled.
"What did you do today?"
"Why the fuck do you care?"
She paused again, but didn't yell at him, or even raise her voice.
"Did you at least eat something?" she asked.
He didn't answer, wishing more than anything for her to just let him lay there and shrivel up.
"I brought you something to eat," she said, going to her desk to get her purse. "They're my favorite, so I thought you'd-"
"What? A cold bag of fries?" he sneered from under the blanket. "A smashed up Big Mac? A barrel of grease?"
She scoffed then, giving him the slightest satisfaction.
"It's not a Big Mac, and it's not smashed, thanks very much."
"I don't want it."
She went to the bed again and laid her hand on his shoulder, with a gentle sigh. Anger rose in his chest and up through his throat and face. How dare she pretend to care about him. How dare she mock him with sympathy, with love. She wasn't his mother.
"Loki," she began, "I think I have some idea of how you feel-"
"I don't want it!" he screamed with all his might, throwing off the blankets, making her jump out of bed. Freddy came running in, howling and barking.
Every object that wasn't nailed down in the room floated into the air, held aloft by Loki's rage-filled magic, even the furniture. He held his hands out to his sides, fists clenched, ready to turn the room inside out at the drop of a pin.
"Loki!" she screeched, staring at all of her possessions hovering around the room.
"You have no idea how I feel!" he screamed at her, towering over the mousey, slender waif of a woman, nothing more than another human in the sea of billions. "I am a god, brought down to nothing! My royal birthright is gone! What the hell have you ever had in your whole, pathetic life that could compare to what I've lost?"
To his surprise, this woman, who he'd backed up against the floating table in the corner, lowered her head and gave him a ferocious scowl. The mouse in her had suddenly become a lion.
"You're one to look a gift horse in the mouth, you are!" she screamed right back at him. "If you want to be brought down even lower, out on the streets, then you know where the door is!"
His magic faltered as she took a step nearer. Her voice cracked as she practically bared her teeth at him.
"You think I don't want to flip my lid every day, all the time? I don't get that luxury, your highness! I'm not afraid of you! You want to make yourself feel like a big man, eh? You think I can't take a hit?"
With that, Sylvie shoved him as hard as she could, which wasn't much against an Asgardian. Loki unclenched his fists, horrified as he realized what she was suggesting. Objects began to clatter noisily to the floor, but she kept on, her eyes wild and intense, tears beginning to fall down her cheeks.
"Go ahead, hit me! Do it, you fucking-"
Loki grabbed her wrist, letting everything else fall to the floor with a deafening crash. The typewriter smashed against the table, the furniture landed with sickening crunches and thumps. Freddy yelped and squeezed himself under the bed.
"Sylvie," he breathed. In the silence, the only sound was her shaking breath, punctuated by angry sniffling. "Sylvie," he said again, bringing her other hand in front of him, holding them gently together. "I would never. Never."
The anger and terror seemed to melt out of her, then, replaced with shame and tears.
"Why would you think I was going to hit you?" he asked.
"Because," she said with a sniffle and a shrug. "That's what fights usually come to."
"Who hurt you, Sylvie?"
She shook her head with a sad smile. "Everyone."
She drew away from him as tears formed in his own eyes.
"Look, it's not a big deal, okay?" she said, sitting on the edge of the bed. Freddy cautiously came out from underneath the bed and approached her, tail between his legs. "I don't mean 'everyone', I guess. But my family just … got in a lot of fights. Especially Theo and I."
"Theo?" Loki gasped. "But he's three times bigger than you!"
"You got in fights with your brother, too, didn't you?"
"Yes, but that's totally different!" he said, taking a seat next to her. "We're brothers. I had my magic. Thor would never, ever beat up his sister-" he paused, remembering that Hela existed. He hoped very much that none of them would ever have to meet her Midgardian variant, if she was alive here. He'd only seen a glimpse of her through his memory reel, but he couldn't imagine how nasty her variant would be.
"It's not like I didn't hit back," she retorted. "There were five of us at one point living in a two bedroom flat, Loki. Tensions were sky high all the time. The whole family came to blows. Dad hit mum, mum slapped him, and us, Theo and I fought. Grandpa tried to beat up everyone, which was more sad than anything when he got old. I don't know a single person in my life who didn't get the belt, or get beat up in school. It's just … what happens."
"It's not 'just what happens.' It didn't happen to me. I couldn't imagine my mother laying a hand on anyone."
"Well, it made me a stronger person, I think," she said, defiantly crossing her arms over her chest. She gave him a little smirk, one that felt so much like his old Sylvie that it gave him a pang of grief. "One time-I was about eleven or twelve-I was in the school dining hall, and this little bitch called me a bint and pulled my hair, so I stabbed her with a fork. Made her bleed."
Loki let out an involuntary chortle, even though he was still horrified that her life had literally beaten her down.
She lifted her chin with a bit of pride. "No one ever bothered me after that. I know I don't look like much, but I've survived a few scraps."
"So have I," he said, putting his hand on top of hers, "But they were because of my own actions. I didn't have to fight to survive."
"Well, humans do," she said. "Or at least, I'm used to it."
She got up and started to pick up pieces of a little ceramic tchotchke that had fallen off the table and broken.
"Oh, no, let me clean up," he said, quickly rising and gathering random objects off the floor, even though he'd never cleaned anything in his whole life. "This is my fault."
She didn't answer, but just stared at the little broken figurine in her hand with a sad, distant look in her eye. He magically levitated the pieces out of her grasp, then with a flick of the wrist, put them all back together again and sealed the cracks to form a little figure of a dog that looked just like Freddy, like brand new. He handed it back to her with a smile. She wonderingly took it from him and placed it back on the dresser.
"Can I tell you something?" she mumbled.
"Of course." He stopped picking things up, not certain of where he was supposed to put them, anyway.
"I-I wasn't quite sure you were real until we got to the flat."
He paused, and blinked at her, not expecting anything like that.
"You talked to me the whole bus ride home."
"Yes, but … well … I don't know, I thought I could have been so lonely that I just made you up, or something," she said, with an uncomfortable laugh. "When I was a girl, I was always deep in my own fantasies, so I could block out the rest of the world, I suppose. I wondered if I wasn't doing the same thing again, or if I hadn't finally cracked. I knew you were real when Freddy reacted to you. That … may have been part of the reason I invited you here. Not completely out of the kindness of my heart. I'm sorry."
"No worries," he said gently, putting everything in a heap on the lopsided table. That was about the state of the room before he nearly tore it apart, anyway. "Sylvie," he continued, treading carefully, "you had to make up a world just to get away from your own?"
"I would read a lot, and listen to radio plays," she said hurriedly, as if she was deflecting what she'd just said into something that sounded less … mad. "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, War of the Worlds, Journey to the Center of the Earth, stuff like that."
"If your world was so awful that you had to escape it, then why don't you want to leave?"
She stumbled over her words, then grunted angrily at him and tried to arrange all the things he'd laid down on the table. "Everyone needs a bit of fantasy sometimes, Loki. Not everyone can be royalty." She stopped and pulled a strand of hair out of her face. "I suppose I wouldn't mind a holiday, if I could get the time off … "
"Time off?" he exclaimed. "You don't need time off, you need a new life!"
"I already told you, I won't just-"
"But you have nothing here at all! Your job is awful! Your family doesn't even care about you!"
She gasped at him, then glared, almost as ferocious as she'd looked before.
"How dare you," she growled. "How dare you assume to know the first fucking thing about my family."
"But they abused you!"
"That doesn't mean they didn't love me!" she blurted. She planted herself firmly in front of him. Her slim stature was an immovable force. "You have no idea how human families work. Yes, my brother hit me, but he'd break the arm of anyone he saw hurting me. My mother hit me, but she constantly wants to know if I'm doing all right, and she feeds me, and says she'd have the other bedroom ready for me if I ever needed to move back home. My dad hit me, but he gives me money to survive when I can't make rent, even though they sometimes barely have enough themselves. Just because I didn't get coddled, like you … you think that's not love?"
Her face had turned bright red, but she kept her tears inside. She wasn't really asking him, but it didn't seem like enough to offset everything else she'd described; the guilt, the shame, the harm she'd suffered through these people who had shaped her into a slave. They were slaves themselves, who didn't know any other way to live.
"I'm sorry," he said, though in reality he knew that her stubbornness made his efforts a moot point. She'd made her decision. "I suppose I don't know much about human families."
"I suppose you don't," she replied, with a self-satisfied look, then found her purse and fished something out of it. "Here. It didn't get smashed," she said, handing him a small paper carton.
The warm, strange, oval-shaped box had a little window in the middle of it, which showed a crusty pastry on the other side. The package read 'Apple Pie', though it didn't look like any pie he'd ever seen. He opened one side of the carton and took out a self-enclosed pastry, like a baked dumpling that fit in his hand. He gave Sylvie a questioning look.
"Go on, take a bite," she said.
He did so, and tasted cinnamon and brown sugar and fruit, the gooey brown filling inside dripping over his fingers.
"Mmm," he said, licking the sauce from his hand before it dripped on the floor. "It is good. It's really good. I like it."
"I knew you would."
He finished devouring the pie, they finished cleaning up the mess he'd made, then Loki left the bedroom with Freddy to let Sylvie get dressed. He sat there sprawled out on the couch in his smelly pajamas and greasy hair and sticky hands, not having taken a bath, feeling like the most useless jerk who'd ever lived.
The situation solidified in his mind, the stages of grief churning from depression to acceptance. Loki silently made a vow to himself to never violently lose his temper around her again. He promised to try harder, even though he didn't feel like trying at all. She needed something to hang onto in this lifeless life, a spot of hope in a dreary world. It was completely ironic, though, that fate had splattered him, of all people, into her path, like a bug on a windshield. The god of mischief, the harbinger of chaos, was here in London to give a single, solitary human peace of mind.
Sylvie woke him up late the next morning, not by barging in and fishing her work clothes out of the closet once again, but by noisily making bacon and eggs in the kitchen. The delicious smell of roasted meat wafted into the bedroom and made his mouth water, but the high-pitched whistle of a kettle was what finally got him out of bed. He took less than a dozen steps to the kitchen, still wearing the same pajamas from the day before. Food sizzled in pans crowded on her tiny gas stove, not just eggs and bacon, but tomatoes, too. She unplugged a brown, plastic kettle from the wall, which finally made the whistling stop.
Loki sat at one of the chairs and waited expectantly, Freddy at his side, doing the same. Sylvie turned to him, with one hand on her hip. She wore an oversized tee shirt and little else.
"Oh, so you thought you were getting breakfast, eh?" she said flatly. Loki thought for a moment that she was addressing the dog, but then realized with a shock that she was talking to him.
Before he could protest, or apologize again for his outburst the day before, she snorted and doubled over in a short bout of laughter. "I'm kidding! I'm kidding!" she chuckled. "Have as much as you want."
Loki knew that her parents had only sent her home with a dozen eggs, five of which were cooking, sunny-side-up, on the range.
"Just one or two eggs," he said sheepishly. "And a slice or two of bacon, and a bit of tomato." He could have eaten everything she was cooking in about three minutes, he was so hungry.
She served him food and tea, threw a little bite of bacon to Freddy, and sat down at the kitchen table with him.
"To what do I owe the pleasure?" he asked.
She took a short sip of tea. "The pleasure of what, exactly?"
"Your presence?"
Sylvie only stared at him, like he'd started speaking Japanese.
"I'm off today. Is that what you mean?"
"In so many words, yes. How many days are you free, per week?"
"Two."
Loki scoffed. "How generous," he said, rolling his eyes.
"That's pretty standard everywhere. My days off aren't always together, though. I don't like that."
"Two days," he repeated, muttering to himself as he sipped his tea. "They may as well chain you to the wall."
"That is how it feels some days, to be honest," she said, resting her head in one hand. "But I'll take what I can get."
Loki bit his tongue. She could have more than she ever desired, if she could only see the chains holding her to this place. Tamping down his indignance, he stuffed a strip of bacon in his mouth.
"I'll just be lonely five days out of the week, I suppose. Freddy's not terrible company, but unfortunately, he doesn't know how to talk."
Freddy perked up his ears at his name and cocked his head at Loki.
"'Five days out of the week'? Does that mean you plan to stay?"
His heart beat a little faster in his chest, and they stared at each other for a long, uncomfortable moment. He wasn't planning on her refusal. He also wasn't accustomed to begging. In fact, he'd rather die.
"If ... if you'll have me," he said, with as much humility as he could muster.
She let out a little breath and smiled, as if she was relieved. "I'll figure out how to introduce you to my parents later, I guess."
Loki closed his eyes and tried not to groan. "That can wait," he said.
Her smile vanished. "Oh. I forgot about ... never mind."
"Does that mean you forgive me for what I said about your family last night?"
The look on her face seemed conflicted as she leaned back in her chair and crossed one naked leg over the other. She didn't answer, which made Loki's heart beat faster again.
"I am sorry, you know," he said.
"I know," she replied, looking thoughtfully into her tea, as if the leaves held the future in them. "I understand why you'd think that way. My childhood wasn't exactly unicorns and rainbows."
"You know your life better than I do, Sylvie. But the thought of someone the size of Thor bearing down on someone like you … "
He stopped himself, feeling a pit of anger turning his stomach. He wanted to be able to enjoy his breakfast somewhat, without anxiety gnawing at him like a starving rat.
"I suppose I don't know what it's like to be royalty, either. You probably had loads of responsibilities and pressure I could never dream of."
Loki nodded and looked away from her. In reality, being the 'spare', as it were, meant that he hadn't the foggiest idea of what responsibility even meant, until he'd bungled his very short rule of Asgard in Thor's absence.
"If you get lonely all by yourself, you could make friends with Marjorie," she said, with a sly little grin over her cup of tea.
"I'd much rather set myself on fire," he replied, matter-of-factly. He bobbed the tea bag up and down in his mug, embarrassed by what he was about to ask.
"Sylvie," he said, "while you're off, if it wouldn't be too much of an imposition ... " he let out a self-conscious sigh. "Could you teach me how to use the kettle? So I can make tea while you're away?"
"That's easy as pie. You just-"
"And can you teach me how to use the toaster so it doesn't burn the toast?"
"Sure, that's not-"
"And I think I might have scratched your record pretty badly trying to figure out the record player, and I'm not sure how to fix it."
She narrowed her eyes. "Which one?"
"The Kate Bush one."
She drew a breath through her teeth and shut her eyes.
"O-kay," she groaned. "That's fine. I'll just buy another one."
Loki cringed. He needed to be more careful with her things. He'd grown up either getting new stuff every time he broke something, or leaving destruction in his wake that he didn't have to clean up.
She crinkled her nose and coughed. "First thing though, you need to learn how to use the tub."
Loki, mortified, realized he hadn't bathed in nearly a week. "I'll figure that out on my own," he mumbled.
He took a long, hot bath after breakfast in her very short, narrow bathtub, only a bit wider than a coffin. Loki felt like a fish flopping around in the slippery tub, trying to reach every bit of his gangly body. Finally he finished and dressed himself in Sylvie's grandfather's clothes, which still smelled faintly of mothballs. He wouldn't complain: they were warm at least, made of wool instead of nasty, thin polyester, and the weather hadn't warmed up, like Marjorie said it would.
Her grandfather had to be a variant of Bor, Odin's father, but honestly, he had no wish to see pictures of the old man wasting away in his dotage, who had been one of the greatest of Asgardian legends. He'd never seen the man alive, and he was fine with keeping it that way.
He came out of the bedroom to model his new outfit to Sylvie. He'd picked out the baggy wool trousers held high up his waist with the belt, a brown, long-sleeved pullover with a bold yellow collar, the navy vest over that, a plaid gray scarf, and to top it off, an olive green newsboy cap.
"Oh, dear," she giggled, hiding her face with one hand. "Aren't you dapper?"
"Is it that bad?" he asked. "Is it the cap? It's the cap, isn't it?" He removed the cap, then put it back on so she could compare. "It all looked awful together, no matter what combination I tried."
Sylvie only shook her head. "It's my fault, I guess. I didn't pick anything that matched, I just threw whatever I could find in a box. You look like you're going to go thirty years into the past to play golf."
"I could," he muttered. "Seriously though, is it better or worse with the cap?"
"Oh, keep it," she said, rolling her eyes and getting up from the couch. "Let's go to the park or something. I'm itching to get out of here."
Freddy jumped and whined excitedly at his favorite word. Sylvie got dressed and threw on a plain gray coat, clipped the leash on Freddy, and they walked together, arms touching, but unattached otherwise.
It was cool again, but the knitted pullover and vest, as hideous as it looked, kept him toasty warm. He stuffed his hands in his pockets to keep them from going cold and took deep breaths of the humid air. The place really wasn't so bad, though the houses and apartments looked like they'd all been made from the same mold. They were silent as they walked, stopping to let Freddy sniff everything along the sidewalk. Someone passed them by, a young woman pushing a black pram, and Sylvie nodded to her in greeting. Whether she meant to or not, Sylvie surreptitiously slid her free hand around his elbow and held his upper arm. He looked down at her in surprise, but she walked on, as if it was the most natural thing to do.
Well, perhaps it was, anyway. He'd told Marjorie they were living together. Her grip on his arm soothed whatever pangs of anger and guilt were left over from last night, and he couldn't help but smile a little. Domestic life with her might not be so terrible.
"Is it weird for you?" she asked quietly as they walked. "I mean, we should probably act like a couple."
His heart sank just a little at the word 'act', until he remembered that that's precisely what he'd meant to make people think. And yet … he wasn't sure what he was supposed to think, still, or if there was a right answer, or what he wanted Sylvie to think.
"Well?" she asked. He hadn't realized he'd taken so long to answer. Her grip loosened just enough to slide down to his elbow.
"You're right, we should," he answered hurriedly. "It's only proper, I suppose. Marjorie has it in her head that we're on the cusp of marriage. I told her my name was Luke Skyman, by the way."
She smirked up at him. "Luke Skyman? That sounds like that movie everyone's gone mad for."
"Which one?"
"Star Wars."
Loki threw his head back with a short laugh. "That's where I heard it from."
"That's not the character's name, though," she said, rolling her eyes. "It's Skywalker. And how do you know that, but you don't know what 'a cuppa' means?"
"Star Wars comes up more than tea in polite conversation, for some reason," he said.
"Really? But it just came out," she said suspiciously.
Loki stumbled over his words. "Well, yes … um, you see … never mind," he muttered. He wasn't prepared to explain how he'd time traveled there, as it would involve telling her about the TVA, and the other version of her. It was a wound he didn't feel like ripping open again so soon.
She huffed a little, unsatisfied. As they continued down the street, Loki ever so slowly took his warm hand out of his pocket, removed her hand from his elbow, and held it, enveloping her fingers as gently as catching a butterfly. They both tried not to stare at each other as they walked.
At the park, young mothers sat on benches and watched their children play on the bare, metal jungle gym and swing sets. Children gleefully threw themselves down a metal slide held up by nothing but a few steel poles. Freddy met a little Scottish Terrier being walked by an old man, and he and the other dog carefully sniffed each other's butts before deciding to go their separate ways.
At one of the park benches sat a familiar, wrinkled face, throwing crumbs to a small army of pigeons and sparrows.
"Ugh, fuck, it's Marjorie," whispered Sylvie through her teeth. The path would take them straight past her, and they were too near to veer away without looking suspicious. "Maybe she's too blind to … nope."
Marjorie lifted her head and adjusted her glasses, giving them both a very tight smile, as if she wanted more than anything to growl at them just as much as Sylvie did. Sylvie smiled right back.
Without being asked, Loki shifted positions so that he was between Sylvie and the old woman, acting as a shield, of sorts. Freddy gobbled up the stray crumbs on the ground that the pigeons hadn't gotten to.
"Lovely day, innit? Still a bit cold," he said as they approached, imitating their accents as best he could. Sylvie's eyes went wide and she put a hand over her mouth to hide her words from Marjorie.
"A little thick, Luke," she whispered.
"Mr. Skyman … Sylvie," she greeted them, her voice lower and less chipper than it had been before. She gave Freddy a suspicious glance as he sniffed and snuffled around the edge of the bench.
"Sylvie, my dear, I have something to tell you, if you don't mind." She patted the seat next to her, and Sylvie's eyes went even wider, somehow. Before she could answer, Loki spoke on her behalf.
"You can tell us both, can't you?" he asked.
"I'm afraid not, Mr. Skyman," she said briskly. "It's a bit … personal. Besides, it looks as if your dog may need to do his business."
Loki looked to Freddy, who was indeed sniffing a patch of sidewalk very slowly, as if he was ready to go right then and there. Loki gave Sylvie a glance, which she returned with a little breath and a nod.
"It's all right, Luke," she said, giving his hand a squeeze, then letting go. "I'll be all right."
Loki briefly considered magically giving the old woman a heart attack so Sylvie wouldn't have to deal with her, but decided against it, taking Freddy away to the grass while Sylvie sat down next to Marjorie. When no one was looking, he made a little spell that would let him hear their conversation from far away, like tying two tin cans together with a length of string.
They sat next to each other, prim, fake smiles plastered on both of their faces.
"Darling," Marjorie began, "I am terribly worried about you. I heard quite a commotion yesterday, lots of screaming and banging around. Are you quite all right?"
"It was nothing, really, Marjorie," Sylvie answered quickly, and not altogether convincingly.
"I don't think your beau is as nice as he pretends to be, dear," she said, still smiling, but giving the slightest glance to Loki as he stood far away, pretending to be more interested in Freddy than them. "He said some horrid things to me a few days ago."
"I know precisely what he said to you," Sylvie answered, her expression and polite tone never changing. Loki looked up, intrigued. "You told him about a bit of my business that was never yours to know."
Marjorie's smile melted away, her mouth becoming a small, thin line.
"I was only … "
"No, you were not only. There's no excuse. However he insulted you, I'm absolutely certain you deserved it."
Loki couldn't quite tell from so far away, but it looked as if Sylvie's grin was growing bigger, her eyes growing wider, in almost a pantomime of a smile. A scowl was beginning to form on Marjorie's face.
"You've done nothing but make me miserable ever since I moved in," Sylvie continued. "You hate my dog. You hate me. You think being single and working a fast-food job makes me some kind of lowly rat creature, or something. You tell my mum very personal things under the guise of good, Christian, neighborly care."
Marjorie sputtered a little. "That's because I do care!"
"No. No you don't," Sylvie said, shaking her head, never raising her voice. "Marjorie Reid," she said, leaning in to whisper to her loudly, "if you breathe a word of what you told Luke to my mother, I guarantee I will become the neighbor from hell. I am utterly sick of your meddling and gossip. I'll only tell you once: keep your nose in your own business, or I'll make you wish you'd never known me."
Marjorie's mouth turned into an open frown, her lower lip quivering with indignance. Loki had to keep himself from bursting into applause. She was a fighter, after all.
"You two ghastly people were meant for each other," growled Marjorie, as she stood, grabbed her cane, and hobbled away as fast as she could.
Sylvie let out a long breath and walked back over to Loki. Freddy had done his business without Loki even realizing it, he was so entranced by the scene before him.
"You're good?" he asked. Her smile was wide, relieved, and genuine. She held his hand once again without hesitation, intertwining her fingers with his.
"I took care of it," she answered. "My god, that felt amazing."
"Now, just tell everyone else in your life to bugger off and-"
"No!" she laughed, playfully jabbing him with her elbow as they walked on, the biggest smile on her face that he'd ever seen.
They spent the quiet afternoon together, Sylvie patiently teaching Loki how to do human things he'd need to know: making tea, where to put clean and dirty clothes, answering and dialing the phone, how to use the television and change channels. There was nothing of interest playing on the wood paneled box, anyway. Fears of economic recession and union strikes and bombings held little significance to him, though Sylvie watched the news worriedly, turning up the volume if anything particularly gruesome came up.
Loki couldn't take any more drivel. He reached over her to turn the power off.
"Do you think you could teach me a bit of cooking?" he asked.
"Cooking?" she said, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. "My, you're going for the advanced stuff, now, aren't you?"
"Is it hard? I assumed it was easy-" he stopped, realizing he was about to make himself look like a self-righteous prick. As if he hadn't already. When he was a very young child, he truly believed food simply appeared out of thin air for the servants to carry to him. He'd only been to the palace kitchens to steal pastries before dinner, and never bothered to watch the chefs as they sweated and chopped and carefully prepared the meals he was ruining with dessert.
"Oh, it's not really hard. I'm only a bit worried about burning the flat down, that's all."
Nevertheless, she showed him how the stove and oven worked, how to use pots and pans, and what type of dish was right for what type of meal. She took out a large pot and filled it with water from the tap.
"All right," she said, hefting the pan onto the range with a clatter. "Your first challenge. Boiling water."
He gingerly turned the range on, and with a click and a hiss, blue flame alighted under the pot.
"Wonderful!" she said, gleefully spreading her hands wide. She meant no harm by it, but it made him feel small and pathetic.
He rolled his eyes. "Sylvie, please," he said, "No need to be patronizing. I'm not a toddler."
Her smile faded and she shrugged. "Well, you're starting from the very beginning. Just trying to be encouraging."
She took out a box of spaghetti from the cupboard and threw a large handful of noodles into the pot. "How in the world did you manage on Earth if you didn't know how to do anything but … talk, I presume?"
Without her prompting him, he took a large wooden spoon and began to stir the noodles as the water boiled, like he was certain he'd seen people do before. He stirred just a bit too hard, though, and a little water splashed onto the range and made the flame sputter and hiss, but it didn't go out, to his relief.
"I could talk my way into just about anywhere," he said with a smirk. "With the right disguise, I could turn myself into an aristocrat, or a courtier, or a lord, or a successful businessman: anything at all. All I needed to know was where the elite gathered, and I could blend in as if I was born to them."
"Ah," she said, adding a pinch of salt to the pot. "And the elite don't cook and do laundry."
"Precisely."
"I bet you have some tales to tell," she said, with a sly glance up at him as she fished for a jar in the cupboard.
"Do you really want details that gritty?" he asked. "I wasn't coming here for cruises and charity events, you know."
"Oh, right, well," she sputtered and stumbled over her words. "I only meant … I'm sure lords and ladies aren't as fancy as they seem, once they're behind closed doors."
"They're only human, Sylvie. They fall to the same tricks and flattery as a common farmer would. But they throw some raucous parties."
She smiled expectantly, two plates and two forks gathered in her hands. Realizing she wanted a story, he felt a bit shy, all of a sudden. It was only sex, sure, but he didn't know if he wanted to recount the time he'd made love to every person in the court of King Louis XVI, just a week before the King of France fled from Paris to Varennes, in fear for his life from the French Revolution. Those were some heady times. Existential fear made a strange, but motivating bedfellow, somehow.
Instead, he pointed the steaming spoon at her. "Do you know about D. B. Cooper? Now that-"
"Wait," she said, eyes wide with sudden terror. "Wait. Shit, I can't believe I forgot!"
She ran into the living room and switched the television back on, leaving Loki utterly stupefied with the spoon in his hand. He couldn't see what was playing on the television, but he heard an overeager announcer talking about a place called 'Sainsbury's'.
"Sylvie?" he said uncertainly, watching the pot steadily boiling faster.
"Good, it's still on the adverts," she said from the living room, running back into the kitchen. "It's the series finale. I can't miss it."
"I've no clue what that means," he replied flatly.
"It's the last episode of a show I love, Blake's 7. Have you heard of it?"
Now it was Loki's turn to stare at Sylvie as if she was speaking a different language.
"I think I understand the idea of 'episodes'," he said, making quotes in the air with the hot spoon still in hand, "but I was about to tell you something much more interesting …"
She put up her hands and began breathlessly, talking even faster than the voiceover in the advertisement thrilled about the price of furniture. "Okay, so the show is about this guy called Roj Blake, right? And it's set in the future. Everyone on Earth lives in these domes and it's ruled by the Federation, which is like the government, but much worse."
"Uh huh-"
"And Blake was the leader of this resistance that wanted to stand up to the Federation, but they captured him and erased all his memories, but then someone finds him and invites him to a resistance meeting, and the Federation kills everyone. Everyone but Blake, obviously."
"Um … " The pot was roiling now, the bubbles slowly rising. Sylvie kept on, as if she'd die if she stopped talking.
"So he gets arrested on false charges, and they send him off to a penal colony on another planet, and there's other prisoners there on the prison ship too-they're going to be Blake's seven. Jenna's my favorite one of them, she's a smuggler and a pilot, but anyway-"
"Sylvie?"
"-Blake tries to get everyone to take over the London-that's the prison ship-but they can't, but then the captain sends some of the prisoners to take over a salvage ship, so they take control of that one and escape-"
"Sylvie!"
In quick succession, Loki pointed to the pot nearly ready to boil over, she gasped and reached for the knob, turning down the flame, and a loud sting of brass music blasted from the television.
"It's on!" she said, practically bouncing back into the living room, leaving Loki behind, forgotten. He left the stove and peered around the corner, where Sylvie sat cross legged on her couch, watching the little screen intently as the intro music blared.
"Sylvie," he whined. "I don't know what to do! You have to help me!"
Eyes still glued to the screen, she answered hurriedly, "Just turn off the pot when the noodles are done, then drain it and dump the spaghetti sauce on. It's easy."
"But how do I know-"
"SHH!" she hissed so loudly it scared both Loki and Freddy. "It's starting!"
Loki let out a loud, annoyed sigh, loud enough that she'd hear it over her precious show. He was more than a little miffed that she'd chosen a television program over him, leaving him stranded in the kitchen to figure out cooking all by himself. He lifted up a barely-limp noodle and let it slide off the spoon and back into the pot.
"This is going to take forever, anyway," he muttered.
He left the pot bubbling gently on the range and peeked back into the living room. Even more interesting than the space drama unfolding on the screen was Sylvie's face, studying the characters as if they held the answer to life itself, listening to their words as if they held infinite wisdom. Loki caught a glimpse in his mind of what she must have looked like as a young girl, listening to a broadcast over the radio or with her nose in a fascinating book, and it made him smile. They were different enough, and yet exactly alike in some ways, no matter the species or gender or upbringing.
He watched her watching the television, studied her face with the same intensity in which she studied the screen. Something ached in her. He could almost feel it himself. He could tell just by looking at her that the dangerous, bleak, but exciting fictional world she watched on the television was everything she wanted, no matter what she told him.
He decided then and there that he had to get her out.
"Radiation poisoning," she whispered excitedly.
"What?"
"He just said that's why the crew is sick," she replied. "Oh, they'd better not kill off any of the main characters," she added grimly.
"You know, I stole two hundred grand and jumped out of an airplane ... "
"Uh huh," she said, eyes still glued to the screen.
"And I've made love to kings and queens, sometimes both at once."
Sylvie furrowed her brow and gave him a disconcerted glance.
"Were any of them English?"
He paused, wondering if he should let his tryst with Prince Albert and Queen Victoria stay under wraps. The couple had so many children together he was a little worried that one of them might have been his.
"Oh, well, it's been so long," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "Never mind that story. But I've traveled through time, too. That's how I know about you."
That finally caught her complete attention. Instead of the eagerness with which she'd awaited his other stories, though, she seemed almost afraid to hear this one. She still turned down the volume.
He sat down on the couch and began to tell the story of his time in the TVA: how he'd been captured and given a second chance, as long as he helped them find a variant of himself that had been running for years and ruining the timeline. He was too absorbed in his own story to notice, but Sylvie's eyes slowly grew wider, her face paler as he spoke.
"And so," he told her, "we tracked down the variant to some department store in Alabama, I believe, during a massive hurricane. The variant had booby trapped the place, but I was able to find her-"
"Her?" said Sylvie, her voice a strangled whisper. She looked wan, leaning over her lap, staring at nothing at all. She seemed sick, as if she might vomit at any moment.
"Yes ... are you all right?"
"Say it."
"Say what?" Loki was very concerned now. Sylvie's eyes were full of tears, though he had no idea what he'd done wrong.
"It was me."
Loki couldn't breathe for a moment. "It was you, Sylvie, but not actually you. She was stolen as a child by the TVA ... how could you possibly even know? "
Sylvie started to rock back and forth, ever so slightly, shaking her head, beads of sweat forming on her face.
"No, it's not real," she murmured. "It's not real. You're not real. She's not real."
She stood shakily, then walked to her bedroom, muttering under her breath, Loki close behind.
"You've been begging me to tell this story. Why are you-"
Sylvie shut the bedroom door loudly in Loki's face. He grabbed the handle, but she'd locked it immediately. It would be nothing at all for him to simply rip the door off its hinges, but after what he'd done the day before, that was a foolish, terrible idea. He banged on the door instead.
"Sylvie?" he yelled. "Sylvie, please! Why are you acting this way? Tell me what's wrong."
"No!" her ragged voice yelled from the other side. Her breath came in fast, sobbing gasps, audible even through the door. Loki's concern turned into anger. If she'd known something this whole time, and suddenly decided to feel guilty about it, that was no worse than him keeping part of his story a secret from her.
"How do you know about the other Sylvie?" said Loki, with another few bangs on the door. "How do you know her? Sylvie Black, open this door! Open it!"
The door shook on its hinges as he pounded on it, making Freddy run under the couch for safety.
He heard nothing else from her side of the door, as if she was holding her breath, waiting for the monster under her bed to go away.
"Open the door!" he yelled, his voice cracking with rage. "I swear by Odin's beard, open the door or I'll ... "
He trailed off, his anger ebbing away. He couldn't hurt her, couldn't even let the threat come out of his mouth, not only because she'd been hurt by everyone before, but because he wouldn't dream of laying a hand on her. Loki couldn't deny it anymore. Sylvie Black was all he had left of his heart. He loved her, or wanted to, anyway.
His face burned with the last dregs of anger and shame flowing from his chest. He pushed his feelings back down and ran his fingers through his long, black hair, pacing the room, caught once again in a trap of her making, whether she knew it or not.
He sat down helplessly at the kitchen table, then looked to the spaghetti, still bubbling in the pot. For some reason, he got up automatically, without thinking, like Sylvie using the cash register at work, turned off the range, and drained as much water as he could by keeping the noodles in the pot with the spoon. He wasn't hungry. He never wanted to eat again. He dumped the entire steaming pot of noodles into Freddy's food dish and dropped the pot into the sink.
Surprisingly, Freddy didn't come running at the sound of something slopping into his bowl. He had come out from under the couch and laid himself in front of the bedroom door, like a fuzzy doorstop. He looked to Loki, wagged his tail once or twice, then laid his head back down on the floor, refusing to leave his spot.
Loki laid down on the couch, which was much too small for him, smushed a pillow over his face, and screamed into it. Sylvie Black would be the death of him.
poorly = ill
off-color = also ill, or as my mom would say, "green in the gills"
bint = derogatory term for a girl or woman
series = season