Don't do this, don't do this, please. His mind was screaming. There has to be another way! Don't do this, please. You can see inside minds. See inside mine now. Please! We can find another way if you just wait. He tried to remember how enchanting Alioth had felt, tried to remember how they'd prised their way into its thoughts, how he could do the same and make her listen, but the knowledge was just out of reach. Heartsick, he could feel tears of frustration and despair mingling on their cheeks as they kissed.
She brought her hand to his chest as she broke the kiss. He braced himself. Here it came, the inevitable betrayal every moment of their journey had drawn them towards. The pre-destined end point he refused to accept. As she pushed him away he flung himself forward to counter it, reflexively grabbing at her arms. He wouldn't follow anyone's script but his own any longer. Equilibrium lost, they tumbled helplessly together, gracelessly missing the desk as it grated away from under them, crashing to the stones. The orange glimmer of a portal winked out as they landed.
He looked, dumbfounded, from the space where the madman had sat moments before, down to Sylvie beneath him. She looked dazed, hands trapped awkwardly between their bodies, the time controller digging painfully into their chests.
"What have you done?" Loki whispered, panic rising. "What have we done, Sylvie?" Eyes wide and glassy, she blinked, struggling to focus on him. His head swam and the world shrank to the golden sunrise dawning in her eyes. Then everything was swept away, and the multiverse blossomed in splendour into their minds.
They sat on the floor, propped against the bookcase beside the fireplace. Neither of them had been able to walk; they'd shuffle-crawled wordlessly over to the cluttered shelves and leaned together, hands clasped tightly to anchor themselves to reality. The time controller lay on the flagstones between their outstretched legs, inert now. It was to a Tempad what a nova was to a lantern. The power contained in the thing was terrifying to contemplate. Where once he would have rejoiced - He, Loki, possessed an artefact so mighty that the infinity stones were mere trinkets in comparison! - now utter dread weighed him down.
He could feel the tangle of magic and awareness left behind by the flood that had raged through them buried deep in his chest. He was pretty sure Sylvie must too, but when he asked she merely shook her head tightly, unwilling to acknowledge the change that the time controller had forced upon them. Had He Who Remains done that as a trap, a means to have his revenge on his killers from beyond the grave? Let them believe they had won, then burn them out in revenge? Or was it an unintentional side effect of their magic being in contact with the time controller? Either way, their magic had protected them from the overload that the time controller would have almost certainly induced in any being without it.
"I was a Valkyrie." He wasn't sure if she'd spoken, or if it had been a stray thought of his own, but then she continued. "I returned them to their rightful place as the sword-arm of the King. I was killed by our sister as I released Surtur to bring about Ragnarok when all hope was lost."
It was another anchor. Focus on something small, something personal. Their own nexus moments and what they would have led to. Something a mind could grasp, something to push back the enormity of having seen it all.
"I was a minor detour. A variation so small that my timeline was absorbed back into the original nearly immediately. Barely a ripple." But that hadn't been all, had it? He'd gone on to experience everything Mobius had shown him. Every bad decision, every consequence. Thanos. But she would know that, in the same way he knew every step on her path to meet Hela's spear and fling herself into the flames with her dying breath.
"But those lives weren't ours. Who are we now?" She paused, uncertain, unable to ignore the change in their magic entirely. "What are we?"
He released her hand and picked up the time controller. It felt much heavier than it looked, but how much of that was physical weight was hard to judge. Such power had a presence of its own. He held it out to her, willing her to take it. Somewhere at the back of his mind the ghost of his earlier self screamed at the foolishness. You only just got it you idiot. Think of the power! But she recoiled from the device as if it might burn her and shook her head sadly, closing his hand around the controller with both of hers.
Of course. He could almost cry at how ludicrous it all was. Some sort of cosmic fucking joke. A life spent in the futile pursuit of control over others, destroying himself over and over in his blind lust to rule, never realising that he'd had no more control over his own decisions than those he sought to subjugate. An automaton in service of what someone else had decided was the right path. And now he had power beyond his wildest dreams handed to him, all he wanted was to throw it into the nearest star. Destroy it so utterly that no-one could ever recreate it. And he couldn't. Because even after all this he still had no choice. If he refused it, someone would recreate it and this whole nightmare would repeat forever.
"I think we may be the Timekeepers." He grimaced. "Well, what the fake Timekeepers were meant to represent."
She smiled weakly. "You get to be the one with the moustache."
The thought of the three robots was unsettling when faced with the knowledge he'd had as little choice as the artificial rulers of the equally artificial sacred timeline. What if I were a robot and didn't know it? He Who Remains must have been so entertained by that little bit of theatre. Suddenly restless, he startled Sylvie by standing and going to retrieve their swords from where they'd discarded them what felt like eons ago.
"He lied about most of it." Sylvie didn't have to specify who she meant. "His motivation. The TVA. But not his variants. They're everything he claimed. I… we have to stop him or all this will have been for less than nothing."
He pulled her to her feet, returning her swords. Re-armed, she seemed a little less on edge. He wished having Laevateinn at his back again had soothed him as much.
"What did you do with him?" In his mind Loki flicked through possibilities, each more gruesome than the last. He didn't doubt that Sylvie was at least as creative as him.
"I dropped him into a very short loop until we're ready to deal with him. Which," she grinned evilly, "might just be never." Loki felt a shiver he wasn't completely certain was from fear or anticipation. He may have talked Sylvie down from outright killing, but her urge for vengeance was still as strong as ever. He'd been able to put aside his own fury to try and think this through, but now they had the upper hand could he stop her? Did he want to?
"I hate this place," she said softly. "This tomb. He sat here like a spider in his web, rearranging everything to suit himself. Ripping us from our lives like puppets, leading us through the quest," she spat the word, "to make us worthy in his eyes."
He might not be able to fix the damage He Who Remains had done, but he thought he could change this much for her. He held out a hand. "Help me?" She hesitated, unsure what he was asking, but followed him to stand before the window.
He reached forward, placing the time controller against the centre of the glass. Bowing his head, he closed his eyes and remembered. Remembered a home that was his. Remembered an old man, tiny before a vast unfathomable cloud, whose last thoughts had been of the same home. Remembered home as seen through infinite eyes; children, men, women, strangers, friends, foes. Remembered laughing, crying, raging in a cell. Remembered a million versions of himself thrusting the crown of Surtur into the flames to bring down destruction. Reigned supreme, died hopelessly as the walls fell, was cut down by Thor, cut his brother down in turn, was snatched away before he was even grown. He staggered back, breathing heavily, and opened his eyes.
Honey-gold stones shot through with branching golden veins were bathed in the light of the multiverse that streamed through the window. Behind him, Sylvie was turning slowly, taking in the change they had wrought.
"I know this place," she breathed, caught up in wonder. "This is home." She corrected herself. "Almost home. There's no throne."
Above them soared the ceiling of the great hall of Asgard, the murals a mismatched patchwork of fragments edged in gold. They stood on the raised dais where the throne would have been, but here it was just an expanse of stone before the circular window which was all that was left of He Who Remains' citadel.
"When I said I didn't want a throne I meant it." He turned the thought over, wondering at the strength of feeling behind it. He'd always known at the heart of it that it wasn't the throne he craved, just what he'd thought it represented, but now he questioned even that. Had that urge been cultivated against his own judgement, nurtured and trained like some twisting vine by He Who Remains?
"So what are you going to do when you sit in judgement as Timekeeper?" she said archly. "Hop in place?"
He couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculous image, but there it was, the unavoidable truth. Throne or no throne, they had inherited the duty of preventing the ascent of tyrants and an unimaginable war. Protecting the glorious chaos of possibility from stultifying order. A duty that they'd be unable to uphold alone. The dread still remained, knotted and tangled with the tiny burning sun in his heart, but a wild and giddy exhilaration was growing alongside it. They'd survived this far, and they'd continue surviving, each step in turn. It couldn't be any other way.
"We have to go back to the TVA, assuming Mobius and B-15 have left it standing. Find a way to make this work." He scrubbed both hands through his hair, steeling himself for a dispute that never came. Instead, Sylvie merely observed him thoughtfully for a moment.
"Wait." She caught his arm and bit her lip and frowned in concentration. "I never really cared about my appearance so I didn't use this all that often." She flicked her fingers towards him and nodded in satisfaction. "Better. Your shirt wasn't going to make it much longer." He hadn't even realised he was dotted with cold spots where his clothes were torn until her spell washed over him.
"Trust me?" His heart leapt when she didn't hesitate before accepting with a nod.
It was needless theatrics. He knew that. He knew she knew that too, but did it anyway; swept her off her feet and kissed her as fiercely as she had kissed him earlier. Kissed her until she stopped laughing against his lips and clung to his arms for support. Eventually he set her back on her feet, somewhat unsteady, he noted with satisfaction, and turned her gently to face the window.
Reflected in the glass, she was haloed by the branching universes, her scuffed and battered armour replaced by the gleaming finery of a valkyrie in green and gold. Behind her, he was a shadowy figure in the long dark coat she'd conjured. She'd given him a crown to mirror her own. Unbidden, his hand drifted up to touch it, the time controller at his wrist catching the light and reflecting as a dawning starpoint above his shoulder.
"The new Timekeepers," he said. "At least we shall look the part when we meet our loyal subjects."
"Or they'll immediately recognise the two variants that caused them so much trouble and we'll be fighting for our lives again." She seemed almost eager for the latter. A problem that could be solved with a sword.
"Maybe we should meet them half way?" He clicked his fingers and smirked at her with the walrus-like Timekeeper's face. He waggled the prodigious eyebrows suggestively.
"You're ridiculous."
"And you're a pessimist," he countered, dropping the illusion. He offered her his arm with a slight bow. "Ready to face our new domain, my lady enchantress?" She graciously inclined her head, and took his proffered elbow. "As I'll ever be."