The phrase "time flows differently at the TVA" couldn't have felt more true as Loki tries to keep track of the amount of time since he last saw Sylvie. It seems like the date should be important, even if he'd only known her for such a short time. But one thing Loki does know, even if the number of days somehow seems entirely muddled, no matter how hard he tries to keep track, is that he'd made a friend all on his own and that friend is out there somewhere, possibly in trouble, and he can't reach her. Or even find her.
Mobius comes by at least once a week, twice, if he can spare it, to bring him any news and to occasionally also consult with him on cases. But Loki can't bring himself to approach the work the way he did before. The entire idea that he is working with an organization that sends entire timelines to be consumed by Alioth makes him feel sick when he stops to think about it. The best he can do is to keep his work to the library, pulling files, finding small tidbits of information they ask for, and trying not to think about the lives they are changing, fates they are ruining, along the way.
Because of this, he doesn't often visit the archive to check on Jemmi, Tam, Iris, and Cyd and he has no idea how to try to find them any information on Ayshi. When he does visit, they are focused on their work and while they always offer tea and he always takes it, they sometimes find themselves sitting in silence. He doesn't mind silence, but he often wonders if it is awkward for them to know he's there, drinking tea, watching them work. They assure him it isn't. It's nice to have someone who cares who they are, they say, who understands they exist, even if it is quiet.
Sometimes they share little tidbits about the lives they are organizing into reels for the analysts. A story that interests them, a conversation they can't just skip, but fall into and watch until its end, or a moment that makes them feel longing for some part of the lives they know they had. When his time with them is up, they take turns walking him to the door, often having a short conversation with him while away from the others. Cyd likes to ask about things he discovers in the library and he tells them what little he learns he feels safe sharing. Tam tries brainstorm ways to find out if Ayshi is still alive and working with the Jotunheim and Vanaheim archive, though both of them know that finding Ayshi is going to be harder than just thinking of solutions at the door. Iris is always silent as they walk, never wanting to say much, but always offering quiet companionship and sending him off every time with a reminder of the friendship of the archivists. And then there is Jemmi, who asks personal questions and tries to appear happy, but who, to Loki, clearly isn't. He wonders if the others see what he sees of them, or if this is so normal they simply take Jemmi's moods in stride.
One night, Loki wakes to someone knocking at his door. He gets up and opens it to find Jemmi on the other side, their face obscured by a hooded cloak as their eyes dart back and forth down the hall, looking for signs anyone else knows where they are. He ushers them into the room and offers them either the chair or to sit on the bed. They choose the chair.
Loki sits cross-legged on the bed across from them, "Jemmi, what's wrong?"
"What makes you think something's wrong?"
"You're at my room in the middle of the night."
They laugh, "I suppose that did give it away, didn't it."
"So...what's wrong?" he asks again.
"Everything. This place. I can't stand being here anymore, Loki. I feel like I know too much."
Loki tilts his head, inquisitive, "Oh? What do you mean?"
Jemmi shrugs, "Just think about it. If entire timelines can be reset, can vanish, if these people control all of what is and what will be...it's not just our free will that means nothing. It means all the horrific things in history are allowed to happen. Meant to be. All in the name of...whatever all this is," they say, gesturing around the room. "Some of the worst parts of history were allowed to happen because it has some greater purpose."
Loki sighs, "I know. I've been thinking often about timelines and what our places are in it. When we met the man beyond time, he said something that stuck with me. He knew. He knew what we were going to say, he knew we were going to find ourselves in the room with him. He had pages with our words written on them, the very conversation we were having. There came a point beyond which he didn't know what was going to happen, but..."
"But what's the point of all this if no matter what we do, it's predestined by one person?"
Loki reaches over and offers his hand, "Well...we don't know what we're destined to do. I know it sounds hollow, but if we're living in this world, even with things being known and managed by someone else, perhaps knowing we're in this place together is enough?"
Jemmi shakes their head and takes Loki's hand, "I don't know if it is, though. Loki, they took music from us. We can't watch other lives, we can't learn about the people out there in the world beyond. I can't see the world through the eyes of artists and I can't stand on the stage and be a part of great performances. I can only live this life and they've told us we can't even live it fully. We're only archivists. That's all we are, that's all we ever will be."
Loki thinks for a moment before squeezing Jemmi's hand, "I'm so sorry. I don't know what to say."
"I guess that makes two of us. I wanted to come here, but...I don't really know what I want to tell you."
"How did you leave? I thought you were all confined to your homes or the archive?"
Jemmi smiles, "I sneaked out. I'm very good at getting places unseen. It's how I know things I shouldn't know, too." Loki raises his eyebrows, inquiring. Jemmi's face turns serious, "I know who I was. My name. My life. And I know why I was torn from that life and brought here."
"How did you find all that?"
"I found my life reel. And once I knew who I was...I went to the library. I made a deal with someone and got my records."
Loki shifts how he is sitting and leans his back against the headboard, "I didn't know you those records were easily accessed."
"They aren't," Jemmi answers, "Like I said. I made a deal."
"Ah. I see."
"My name was Judith," Jemmi says, resting their hand on the inside of their forearm, "And my life was too short. I had a family. My father was a leader in our local religious community. My mother taught the children and, when I was old enough, I did, too. And I was a librarian. But there were laws put into place to restrict us, identify us, and arrest us. We kept living, though, for a time, though my mother's hat shop was shut down and we couldn't gather together like before." Jemmi pauses, "It's strange to watch your life and not remember any of it. But there it was, on the screen, and I was learning who I was in a different life, so long ago. Some of it I don't really understand- I don't know the history. I don't know the religion. But I know the looks of fear on other people's faces. I know the reaction to the men in uniform with guns who came to put people on trains. I know what happened to my husband and toddler when he tried to run with her. I watched them die. And I took my two other children on the train. When we arrived at the prison, I said goodbye to my son and knew it was our last words- you can hear it in my voice on the film. That isn't a goodbye that is going to have a return." Jemmi sighs and turns to Loki, "I don't have to tell you this if you don't want me to. It's just a story of a life I lived and died in, nothing that really has any bearing on who I am now."
Loki shakes his head, "But it does. It means something to you to know it, or you wouldn't have committed it to memory. If it also means something to share it, please, do." He reaches over and gives her hand a squeeze before letting it go.
Jemmi nods, "I found out later that my daughter survived the war. That she went on to look for justice from the horrible things we'd experienced and she dedicated her life to making sure it never happened again. I watched some of her reel. She was a strong and beautiful person and I'm proud to know I gave life to someone who stood fought back against such deep evil. And it was evil. I watched some of what happened to me. I know I was done to me to change my body, to scar it, so that I could never bear children again. That's why we look the way we do. All of us were a part of this place. I found my life's reel first. It wasn't hard to spot the others. Tam's name was Miriam. Cyd was Abraham. Ayshi was Abija. And Iris was Ruth. We lived in hell, Loki. A place of damnation, disease, torture, starvation, and humiliation. Things no human should have to endure or even know it's possible for other humans to do to one another. Even in this place, we resisted. We organized. We wanted to fight back, despite our physical weakness. And that is also how we died. We were caught and we were dragged out to stand against a wall where we were shot, our blood staining the bricks, our bodies dumped in a pit."
Loki stares, horrified, at Jemmi, "How...how did you stand watching all of this? And how are you so calm while telling me?"
"Because it both was and wasn't my life. I'm a spectator to it, Loki. I don't remember any of it. I can only watch it from the outside and know it is truth, but because I don't know anything other than this place, I almost don't feel as though I can trust that it's real," Jemmi answers. "But...can I tell you our nexus event?"
"Our?"
"Tam, Cyd, Iris, Ayshi, and I were all pulled at the same time. And there were others, too, and I see them in the archives. I know them. And I know there is more than one of me here which means something about how I've organized the archives was important enough to bring me back again. But back to our nexus point. We didn't get caught. Over and over again, there were times at which history should have corrected for it- moments we should have been found out. We staged an uprising, killing the guards, stealing their weapons, and laying siege to our torturers. We won, Loki," Jemmi's voice changes from dispassionate to a fierce determination, "We won against the murderers that kept us chained and I killed the doctor who did this all to me," they say, gesturing to their body, a hand coming to rest over where their uterus should be. "But again, my file doesn't stop there. It goes on. They let us keep living this. There are notes in my file about wanting to see if history would correct itself. If they could just see what would happen, if the army would come to stop us, if the transport trains would be our undoing, any number of things, but they didn't. We smuggled people out and stole people into safety when we could. They took me when it became clear that we had liberated ourselves, fortified ourselves, and were never going to back down unless it was in an incredible battle for our lives that, itself, would change the course of history. We were stolen, our victory culled from the narrative of the war, because we were too strong. The first of me- they don't know who they are. But I recognize them. I know they were a first because there is a number on their arm and mine...and other mine's, were removed before we woke to this life. I guess whoever made that decision didn't want us to all realize that we were the same person. But...that was our moment, the moment we all were brought here to run the archives. I don't know why us and not the thousands of other people who died. I can't have been the best librarian in the whole world, but somebody saw something in us and made that call."
Loki is still stunned, speechless, for a few minutes before he finds the only words he can think of to say, "I'm so sorry."
"For?"
"I don't know...maybe because you had to learn you could have changed the lives of so many, but they reset you. Did anyone else rise to do the same work?"
"No. The resistance did keep going, but...nothing like what we tried."
His face falls, "It had to happen that way, for the Sacred Timeline. It was determined that your hell was worth enduring in the name of the preservation of a single stream of reality."
"Millions of people died because they had to," Jemmi says, "Because that part of history was meant to be. But it didn't have to be. I read the files. I read of cataclysmic resistance organizations that fought back at all points. I read about people who saw what was happening and assassinated leaders, blew up buildings, and sneaked information to military powers who believed them and acted quickly. I saw entire cities that rose up and liberated themselves. I've read about realities where things are so different that the people who tore into my country and tried to kill every last one of us never even had the chance." Jemmi tucks their legs up under them in the chair, "But regardless...those timelines are wrong and millions of people died brutally, their bodies dumped or burned or stacked like cordwood."
"I hate this place," Loki says, tears in his eyes as he envisions what these other realities endured, what Jemmi endured in the timeline they preserved, "With every ounce of my being. But I don't know what to do to dismantle it. If one dictator falls, another will rise and take his place. One version of He Who Remains to discover the same things and to rise until someone else sees the folly of the multiversal war to follow and decides to stop it all by trimming the branches back as brutally and effectively as possible."
Jemmi sighs, "I was one small speck lost in a genocide that the TVA thinks was necessary. The atrocities were necessary. They have the power to undo that suffering and yet...this was the course they chose."
"Now what?" Loki asks.
Jemmi stands and stretches, "Tonight, I'm still Jemmi. But when I wake tomorrow, I want you to remember I'm Judith. I'm a she. And I fought back then, I'm going to fight back now."
Loki pauses, there is something in the way Jemmi is talking that has him worried, "I'd like to use your name tonight, if you will let me." They nod, "And may I call you 'she'?" Another nod, "Judith...am I going to see you in the morning?"
She shrugs and slightly shakes her head, "I don't know. But...whatever happens, Judith fights back, in this timeline, in others, and even in the story from which my name originates. I might not win, but...I will at least make this mean something."
Loki reaches for her and takes her hands, rising to stand in front of her, "Please be careful. I only have so many friends left."
She squeezes his hands and gently kisses his cheek, "Did I do that right? I want you to know I'm always going to be with you, whether in spirit or in body. I want you to carry that with you, no matter what happens."
"Thank you," he says softly, "Whatever happens...I will."
She steps in and hugs him tightly, "Goodnight, Loki. You told me once as we left the archive that you couldn't be trusted, but you can be, and you are. By all of us." When she steps back, she abruptly turns to the door, puts up her hood, and briskly walks into the hallway. He can't move for a moment, his heart sinking, knowing that whatever she has planned, it won't end well. He dashes to the door and throws it open, looking for her. But she has disappeared and he knows he won't find her. She is an expert at sneaking.