Stephen decided to let everyone get settled before breaking the news to them. No one could get back to sleep, not after that, but there was less than an hour left of night left, anyway. The storm had ended and daybreak lit the sky with hues of purple and indigo, the stars still peeking above the blanket of atmosphere. The first waking birds began their songs, wet leaves sprinkling miniature showers as they took off from their perches. In the stillness, a few early risers came out of their houses to collect rain barrels and clear fallen branches from their yards.
Finally, when the rooster came out once more to announce the dawn, albeit with less gusto than his usual bugle call, Stephen gathered everyone into the living room, now slightly damp from the rain blowing thorough the windows. He stood in the middle of the room while everyone else sat around him and he told them what needed to happen, like a prosecutor explaining his case to a jury.
"No." Mobius sat up straight, looking defiant and betrayed. "You said you couldn't force us. You said-"
"I know what I said," replied Stephen firmly. "But there's no other option, now."
Sylvie, exhausted from the night's excitement, sat staring at the fluttering curtain of a broken window, the bags under her eyes now deep and purple.
"You're not even going to try," she croaked, without anger or malice. It wasn't a question, but a statement of fact.
"If you want Tvania to live, then you'll do it," said Stephen.
Mobius sucked in a breath, groaned, and shook his head, like the idea was wiggling its way into his head even though he didn't want it to. Someone walked past the house, dragging something along the pavement that sounded like a rattling cart.
"Then go get that girl you were talking about," said Mobius.
"I can't. She's gone missing again. We have to use the tempad."
"It won't work!" Mobius shouted, even startling Sylvie. The rattling noise outside stopped. "You saw what happened when we did it! It could shut itself off in the middle of someone passing through it and slice them in half, or just never open again, or put us in the middle of the ocean somewhere."
"It stayed open without the batteries in it, Mobius, I don't see how-"
"If it's not working right, the portal stays open automatically for thirty seconds as a precautionary measure, but after that … zhoop!" he made a zipping noise and mimed the sliver of light disappearing with his hands. "You can't fit two hundred people through it in thirty seconds. I don't know how many more times I can get it to open, and I was saving those to get you home."
Stephen was prepared for this. He turned and walked to the front door. Mobius followed suit, followed by Christine, but Sylvie sat glued to the spot, not taking her eyes off the billowing curtains.
"What do you think you're doing?" yelled Mobius as the three of them walked out the door and across the puddle-filled asphalt.
Beatriz was the one who had stopped in front of the house, rolling a child's red wagon down the street with a huge, plastic barrel of rainwater in it. She put down the wagon handle and followed them into the heart of the neighborhood, Dr. Strange leading the way.
The few Tvanians that were out early tending to their barrels paused to look at Stephen and company as he stomped up the drive.
"Everybody, wake up!" he bellowed, his voice carrying in the still morning air. "I want everyone out here!"
As the Tvanians scrambled, Mobius caught Stephen by the shirt, as if he was ready to start a fight.
"What's wrong with you?" he whispered hoarsely, nervously glancing at the villagers gathering around them.
"I'm taking charge of this situation, Mobius," Stephen replied, roughly removing Mobius' grip. "Because you won't."
When most of Tvania had made it outside, Stephen began.
"Your village is in danger!" he announced, to scores of gasps and whispers. "The demon that is hurting Loki will come back here, and it won't spare anyone next time."
"Demon!" cried Evgenia, covering her mouth and grabbing Hasan's arm.
"Mobius, you said Loki was getting better," said Hasan. "You didn't say anything about a demon." All of Tvania looked to him, expressions of fear and betrayal growing on their faces.
Stephen held up a hand for silence from the buzzing crowd.
"Everyone needs to listen to me. I need everyone to pack their things, essentials only, and then meet us-"
He was cut off by a rough punch to the shoulder blade that knocked him to his knees, straight to the pavement. The crowd cowered backward and cried out. His arm fell limp with pain for a moment, and he feared the punch had dislocated his shoulder until he lifted himself up with two hands, with much difficulty.
"You're a coward!" Sylvie shrieked from behind him. "You won't even fight this thing! You're just going to make us leave our home and let Loki rot! We won't run!"
Stephen saw red, unable to control himself.
"What is wrong with you?" he screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. Christine and Mobius jumped and took a step back from him. He didn't care how he looked. This was a long time coming. "I've done everything I could since I got here and you've done nothing but berate me and call me useless!" He pointed to her, his battered arm aching. "You are the useless one! You are the sick, nasty creep who married your brother or cousin or whatever the hell he is!"
"We're not related!" she screeched back. "We're both variants of-"
She gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth, all her anger gone in a flash. She stared at the crowd of Tvanians, who stared back at her like a flock of sheep watching their shepherd go crazy.
"Variants … of the same person?" said John. The rest of the village was unusually quiet, letting him speak their judgmental thoughts for them.
"Who cares!" a high-pitched voice screeched from the middle of the crowd. Chelsea spoke up again, looking around at everyone in sheer panic. "Who the hell cares what they are? We're going to die!"
"But we can't leave!" yelled Beatriz, which triggered an explosion of arguments and terror, like another burst of thunderstorm.
Stephen watched Sylvie flee back to the house while Mobius put up his hands.
"Quiet! Everyone quiet!" Mobius shouted above the bedlam. After a few moments, everybody finally stopped yelling to look at him.
"We're going to get through this together, okay, and Dr. Strange is going to fight this thing." He shot a glare at Stephen, daring them to tell them he wouldn't. Of course, Stephen kept quiet. "But I don't think we need to go right away. Let's give the doctor-"
"But he said we have to go now!" said the pregnant woman, one hand supporting her enormous belly.
"Which is it, Mobius?" another male voice called from the crowd.
"Do we leave or not?" asked Beatriz, eyes filled with terror.
There was a long moment of uncertain silence, everyone in the crowd holding their breath waiting for an answer from their substitute chief. Mobius' hand faltered.
"I … I think," he stuttered, glancing around into all the panicked faces. "It's probably not … "
He took too long for them. The arguing and shouting and yelling began again, expanding from the middle outward, growing louder and louder until no one could hear Mobius over the uproar.
Stephen tried to silence them again as well, but it was sheer chaos now, the shouts turning into an angry mob. Christine looked as helpless as he felt. Stephen left Mobius to deal with his people on his own and headed back to the house. His arm was beginning to bruise already. His muscles were on fire as he lifted a hand to reach the doorknob.
"Sylvie?" he called out as he entered the empty foyer. There was only one place she'd be now, he knew it.
As he approached Loki's room, he expected to find her curled up next to him, or rocking his pathetic, emaciated body in her arms, crying. Instead she stood several feet away from his bed, looking at Loki with a faraway, glazed over stare, as if she was seeing a total stranger, her lips tight and pale. She'd opened the curtains wide, early morning sunlight and the echoes of yelling Tvanians streaming in.
"Sometimes I wish … " she began, trailing off, faltering, then starting again, "Sometimes I wish one of us weren't here anymore."
"What?"
"I wish one of us would just die already." she muttered. No tears came to her eyes, no emotions appeared on her face. The yelling outside grew weaker, like the crowd was moving away from them.
He forgot all about the pain in his shoulder. After seeing her do nothing but care incessantly for him, Stephen assumed her love for Loki had no bounds. He sat down on the chair in the corner.
"Why would you say that?"
"You've never had a soulmate, doctor," she said witheringly. Once again, it wasn't a question.
He only shrugged. "I guess not."
"He's in so much pain," she said, going to the edge of his bed and kneeling next to him. "I can feel it, sometimes. I don't think any two people in the multiverse have a bond like this. I love him, and I can't stand it.
"I've always been alone since I was a little girl, fighting off everyone who tried to get too close. And then, all of a sudden, I wasn't alone. I couldn't be. I had friends, and a new culture and people to be part of, and I had him. I still have that urge to run away, sometimes, but it would kill me to leave. And he'd die, too."
"What … what are you to each other, exactly?" he asked haltingly. To his surprise, she didn't stare daggers at him, or react at all.
"We're both Loki variants. We're the same person."
Stephen couldn't answer for a moment, dumbfounded.
"The same person? But how? You're definitely not identical. I've met a few variants of myself and you could have switched us around, no one would have guessed."
"Not all variants look identical. They're barely even genetically related, really." She brushed a lock of blonde-dyed hair behind her ear, a ray of sunlight catching her glistening, emerald eyes. "Mobius explained it to me once. He said if you put one of our mothers with the other one's father, you wouldn't get a Loki, or even a half sibling of a Loki. More like a fifth cousin." The slightest smirk twitched at the corner of her mouth. "He said the metaphysical relationship turns a Punnett square into a Punnett dodecahedron."
"But I'm guessing two variants being together isn't normal, by TVA standards?"
Her smirk disappeared.
"No. In fact, it's unheard of. Mobius said it's so rare for variants to be of opposite sexes, and even rarer for them to interact much, that no one knows what all the consequences are."
"All the consequences?" said Stephen, raising an eyebrow. "You know some of them?"
"One," she said, then put her forehead on her intertwined hands, as if she were about to say a bedtime prayer. "Doctor, do you promise not to be furious at Mobius and I?"
Stephen felt the blood drain out of his face, but he kept his cool and gave her a sarcastic chuckle.
"I'm not the one going around punching people, am I?" She didn't return his smile.
"When Loki and I are together, it makes some sort of … beacon."
"Beacon?"
"Yes. It makes a huge temporal spike so sharp that it's unmistakable. I don't know if anything but the TVA can sense it but … " she took a deep breath and held Loki by his stick-thin arm, like a child grabbing her teddy bear for comfort, "… I'm so afraid that we did this together. That we brought this demon here just by loving each other."
Stephen started to put the puzzle together before she'd said it out loud.
"The nightmares happened on the night of your wedding, when you … consummated your marriage, I assume?"
She nodded and turned her face away from him, ashamed.
He crossed one leg on top of the other and leaned back in his chair, much more astonished than angry, like a parent hearing their kid's elaborate reason for lying to them.
"That probably made a huge spike," he murmured. "Does the average Tvanian know that happens when variants get together? Does Mobius know?"
"He does, and everyone else could figure it out pretty quickly, I'd reckon," she answered. "If someone were to use the temporal disturbance setting on the tempad near us, it would be clear as day. One of us should have left this place, to keep it safe. But we couldn't leave each other, not after everything we'd been through. And we couldn't leave them, either. So we decided to keep it quiet and just pray that nothing would find us."
"Well, I guess the good news for you is that Tvania has much bigger things to worry about right now."
"But later?" she said, shooting him a worried glance. "Someone will find out, eventually."
"You really think they'd throw you out, Sylvie? I didn't see stocks in the town square, or a gallows for hangings."
She looked out to the unnervingly silent streets of the neighborhood, brow furrowed, her face iron and unforgiving.
"I don't know," she whispered. "But I do know humans can be nasty when they're desperate."
"That's true enough." He got up and knelt at the bed, right next to her. "You know, I grew up in a pretty small town. It had its pros and cons. Everyone knew each other's business. Gossip ran rampant at the first hint of anything unusual, because there wasn't anything to do but talk shit and stare at cows. On the other hand, everyone had your back if you needed help. None of the gossip mattered when you were about to lose your house, or … or when a loved one died."
He sighed deeply and fiddled with a hangnail on his finger while Sylvie watched him with the softest expression he'd seen on her yet.
"People don't care about the gossip, not if they remember what you've done for them. You gave them their memories back. Loki led them to freedom. That's what they'll remember."
"I'd like to believe you, Stephen," she said, addressing him by his first name for the first time, to his surprise, "but I know there was quite a long period in history where humans burned innocent healing women at the stake for barely any reason at all."
"Oh, yeah. That."
The door slammed downstairs and two pairs of footsteps entered, quietly making their way to Mobius's room.
"Sylvie," he told her, "I promise I won't make you and Loki separate. I'm not going to let him rot. And I am going to fight this demon, somehow."
She nodded, stoic and determined, then he stood and left the room, leaving Sylvie and her husband to a moment of privacy. She murmured soothing words to Loki that he couldn't make out as he made his way downstairs.
Mobius and Christine sat on the sagging bed, their faces full of discouragement. Mobius rubbed his forehead and squinted, obviously fretting, and Christine's brown doe eyes were as wide as saucers.
"What is it?" Stephen asked them. "Where did the villagers go?"
"They're having a vote in the woods, away from the neighborhood," Mobius replied, "without us, specifically."
"That doesn't sound good," said Stephen, and Mobius shook his head.
"I can't give them the tempad, Dr. Strange," said Mobius. "It's not just the portal I'm worried about."
"I know. Sylvie told me everything about her and Loki." Mobius opened his eyes in surprise at that. "She's scared of what a fearful, angry mob might do if they understood the implications. I can't say I blame her."
"We need time," sighed Mobius, getting up to pace nervously around the small room. "We need an excuse, anything."
"I'll think of something," said Stephen, hoping that he sounded much more decisive than he felt.
"Can you think of something in ten minutes?" whispered Christine.
Stephen sat down again at the child-sized desk and stared at the little bookcase, half-full of the priceless ancient tomes of the Sanctum, the other half filled with thin children's books. All of it seemed utterly futile. There were no words left to read, no poems or philosophers that could help. He could fight an octopus demon easily, or negotiate with an immortal being of darkness, but he was facing something he didn't know the name or face or motivation of, with no time left for research. It was his fault, too. He'd trapped them all into this predicament in his haste and, he hated to admit, his cowardice.
Something brought the Ancient One back into his head, holding the test in her hand. Cheat. Death. Suddenly he remembered other things she'd said in the dream that he'd lost before, like a river washing away layers of dirt from a buried treasure.
"This is a reflection of my voice in the Mirror Dimension … dreamwalking in the First Cosmos."
"First Cosmos?" he mumbled to himself, tapping at the desk rapidly with one finger. Mobius and Christine glanced up at him with confusion and hope.
Stephen took out a huge, heavy volume of the Cyclopaedia Majica so large that it dwarfed the tabletop and hung over the sides of the desk when he opened it. Flipping to the "F" section, he found what he was looking for, which one of them had already bookmarked with an ugly dog-eared page. He smoothed it out as best he could, but the ancient parchment crumbled apart, leaving a little triangle in his hand.
"God damn it," he muttered, then flicked the bit of paper away and found the passage.
The First Cosmos is said to be made of the remnants of the First Firmament, which was broken apart at the beginning of time by forces unknown in order to create the Multiverse. It encompasses the Multiverse itself in the space between universes, much like the Astral Plane encompasses and buffers the physical realm. The First Cosmos has only been reached by the most powerful sorcerers, who have said that it connects to the furthest edges of the Astral Plane, and even the realm of death, itself.
All the pieces fell into place before him, though they formed a picture he didn't want to see. The Ancient One's directions were very literal. Wherever the Ancient One was, Loki's soul was nearby, and the demon … and so was death.
Sylvie rushed into the room suddenly, panic written all over her face.
"They're coming."
He heard it then, the sound of dozens and dozens of footsteps marching discordantly up the street and towards their house. All four of them looked at each other, all of them surely wondering the same thing: answer to the mob or stall? Before Stephen could gather a plan of action, a loud, hurried knock came at the front door.
Mobius stood slowly and swallowed, leading them all to the door, like a prisoner being led to his execution.
Hasan was the one who'd knocked, the entire town gathered behind him, spilling out of the front yard. Far from an angry mob, the Tvanians looked frightened and lost.
Hasan and Mobius stared each other down, neither of them looking like they wanted to be there, but each keeping their composure just the same.
"We took a vote," said Hasan gravely. "We're following the doctor's orders. We can get packed and ready as soon as possible. And if you're not going to give us the tempad, Mobius … "
"Wait."
Stephen stepped forward and moved in front of Mobius as if to shield him.
"Give me just a little more time," he said to Hasan, but loud enough so the rest of Tvania could hear him. "I'm going to need Mobius and the tempad. You don't need to leave yet, but be ready."
The crowd only stared at him in dispirited silence, their faces just as full of anxiety as he was sure his was.
"Please," he said gently, only to Hasan. "You voted to trust me. So trust me now."
Hasan looked between Stephen and Mobius, expressionless, then slowly turned and walked back down the porch steps and to his wife and the rest of Tvania. There was some muttering Stephen couldn't hear, followed by a bit of commotion that Hasan quieted again. Tension hung in the air like thick smoke, until the Tvanians started to disperse with their loved ones.
"Let us know, doctor," Hasan called out to Stephen as he walked away, his arm over Evgenia's shoulder. "We'll be ready."
Mobius let out a breath and closed his eyes.
"Please tell me you actually have a plan, Stephen."
"I do," he said. "I don't like it at all, but I do."