Summary:
"We find a way.."
He recalled her words and the warm feeling inside him returned instantly.
Her voice was the last thing on his mind before he closed his eyes and settled into the meditative state in which he could regenerate.
"It's a promise"
~~~
"Are you willing to share information with us and..if necessary..help us utilize these people in whatever way we can?"
Ravonnas eyes were fixated on the still image before her eyes. There was no need to think twice about that question.
The answer was as simple as it was devastating.
"Whatever it takes."
~~~
"Maybe we're looking at the whole thing from the wrong perspective," O.B remarked, putting the Tempad aside.
"What do you mean?" came from Mobius.
"The Tempad was one way of travelling to the End of Time, which is obviously no longer possible.." Ouroboros explained as truthfully as it was frustrating.
"..but maybe there's another."
~
Mobius was just about to drift off into the land of dreams when he heard someone hammering at his door.
"Mobius!!!"
What the hell?
"Mobius, open up!"
Groaning and drowsy, he put on the first thing he could find and headed for the door.
Calling the look on Sylvie's face irritated would have been an understatement. She looked at him as if she had expected to find him in a suit and tie in the middle of the night.
"Um.." she began and grinned, "..nice bathrobe.." she pointed to his left chest, where the TVA logo was clearly embroidered into the fabric. Then she peeked over his shoulder into the room, "you don't have any visitors, do you?"
"From the Sandman, maybe..." the analyst replied and yawned, "yes, I do actually exist without a shirt and tie."
Sylvie snorted with a grin, "For real? I thought you TVA people were born with your suits..."
Without waiting for his invitation, the goddess scurried past him and straight into the apartment.
"Sure, come on in..." he said when she was already standing in the middle of the room, "to what do I owe the honour of your late night visit?"
"I met Loki!"
At her statement, Mobius turned around instantly and the expression he now saw on her face was an absolute novelty. It was probably most comparable to the moment when Thor, her long-lost brother, had pulled her into his arms completely unprepared.
A mixture of joy, feeling overwhelmed and peace..
But now, in this moment, there was also a spark that you definitely don't get while hugging your brother.
"You went back? In your dream?"
If she had been there..that meant he was still alive, right?
But Sylvie shook her head and the blissful smile grew even wider, "No..he came to me..to Oklahoma. He suddenly stood there..in the middle of the street.."
Her voice trembled with excitement and so did her hands.
Mobius looked at her with widened eyes, "He was there?!"
Besides all the joy he felt for Sylvie and shared with her, he still felt a little pang in his chest because he hadn't been there to see him himself, "Did you..could you..was he really there?"
But even while asking the question, it already felt stupid. Of course, it wasn't possible for Loki to physically get up from that throne and leave the place.
If it was that easy, a lot of problems would be solved already...
Sylvie's headshake confirmed his thoughts and at the same time something began to cloud her radiant gaze, "He wasn't physically there. We couldn't touch each other. It was a projection.."
Mobius suddenly felt the need to sit down.
He went to his table, dropped into one of the chairs and took a deep breath. As he exhaled noisily, he felt something heavy fall away from him and relief spread throughout his body.
Loki was alive.
As before, he had felt it deep inside him. But sensing something and actually knowing something were two completely different things.
Now they had the certainty.
"He's alive.."
"Yes."
Sylvie sat down opposite him and when their eyes met, demigoddess and analyst fell into a relieved laugh at the same time.
Still a little incredulous and yet eased, he looked at her, "Can he..will he be back?"
"I don't know, Mobius..but it costs him an enormous amount of energy to create a projection on a branch. That won't help us to reach our goal.."
Mobius nodded, lost in thought, and glanced at the clock on his bedside table, "It's too late now.." he muttered to himself.
"..but first thing in the morning we'll go straight to O.B."
~~~
As she walked down the massive stone staircase, she heard the voices echoing off the walls.
She could already recognize some of them. A few of them were bodyguards, servants..lickspittles who circled around him like moths to a flame. There were also his advisors and spies who came regularly to report to him.
The voice that spoke now, however, was unfamiliar to her.
"He's dead.."
She hated it when something eluded her, when she was in the dark. And yet she knew it wouldn't stay that way for long. Sooner or later, all secrets would be revealed.
Sooner or later, everything would come to light.
And she had sworn to herself some time ago that no one would ever deceive her again.
"The girl and the weapon are still on Earth.." the voice continued in a tone that disgusted her. You could hear the obsequiousness in every single word, "..but we found something else."
When she entered the throne room, the whole room fell silent.
Part of her enjoyed this fact.
It was the part within her that remembered the feeling when she had entered the TVA courtroom. In an instant, all conversations had fallen silent, all eyes on her.
That aura of authority, the respect they had shown her.
That had been her fuel.
And even though she knew that now and here, in this room, it was mainly mistrust that triggered the silence, the attention still was like a balm for this very prominent part within her.
"You wanted to see me."
She made sure that her voice was significantly different from that of the crawler who had humbly reported to his master a few moments ago.
And under no circumstances would anything ever turn Ravonna Renslayer into a sycophant.
She walked confidently and quickly towards the pharaoh, who had risen from his throne in the meantime, putting on a smile.
The monarchs face was traditionally painted black and gold, his eyes thickly rimmed with charcoal, the crown on his head symbolizing his supremacy as their ruler. Once God-King of Egypt in his universe, his branch. Then, at one point in the history of this world, banished to the Void by the TVA.
No..
The TVA had only been the executive force behind it all..it had been someone else who banished him.
His counterpart, the one who had decided at some point that his own kind were the greatest danger to the multiverse and that eliminating them was the only logical solution.
And she had been at his side.
So she had to admit that the mistrust of these men was probably justified.
"Ravonna..."
The expressive, alert eyes, the smile, the handsome figure.
It was him..
..in a slightly altered form.
When she arrived at the throne, he took her hand in his and breathed a tender kiss on it. Ravonna tried not to let the hint of irritation show, because it should actually be her who made the gesture.
Once again, she wondered what her role in all of this was.
He had found her when she was literally lying on the ground, had taken her in, given her food and fresh clothes and she had jumped at the chance.
Not only because she was desperate and half-starved, but because she had a goal in mind.
And she would achieve this goal by any means necessary..
She gave him a friendly nod, while out of the corner of her eye she saw the glances exchanged by his advisors and also heard the quiet whispering. Hardly anything escaped her heightened senses, sharpened over the eons by being a hunter and judge.
And her memory was as well trained as her senses.
There was little she forgot.
And even less that she forgave.
"We were just talking about our brother's mission.." Rama-Tut told her, guiding her with a small but firm movement on her lower back to a table on which an object unknown to her, was laying, "unfortunately, we lost him.."
Ravonna watched the men around him suspiciously and how they all bowed their heads in exaggerated humility and condolences.
I wonder how many hypocrites there are among you..
"However, we have discovered something else.."
~~~
He couldn't remember leaving something has ever felt this difficult.
Leaving someone..
To return, not knowing when or even if he would see her again.
And yet it had been impossible to stay...
For all the power that he had now, the energy at his disposal was limited and projections, as he had found out, consumed a lot of it. With a pounding heart and the all-encompassing warm feeling that had spread through his entire body, he had returned to his physical self.
This place, this presence, the throne on which he was sitting..all of this had never felt this strange..this wrong.The branches felt it and reacted to him and his aversion.
They twined wildly around and through his fingers, agitated, almost reproachful.
As if they were afraid he would leave them.
"It's alright," he whispered to them, although it wasn't really necessary, because their symbiotic connection implied that they were constantly communicating without words anyway.
When he thought about it, he had to admit that his words were rather directed at himself anyway. Talking himself down, reassuring that everything was the way it should be.
"We find a way.."
He recalled her words and the warm feeling inside him returned instantly.
Her voice was the last thing on his mind before he closed his eyes and settled into the meditative state in which he could regenerate.
"It's a promise"
~~~
"And you're sure that wasn't a dream?"
Casey looked at Sylvie with a skeptical expression. In that very moment, as they stood here, it felt like déjà vu.
The whole team reunited.
Except for one who was sorely missed.
O.B was examining the Tempad of He who Remains, while the rest of the group stood around the counter in the workshop.
After the roles the two had taken on as a matter of course during the loom drama, it had only been consistent to provide them with a shared office (or 'tinker's oasis' as Verity and Mobius affectionately called it).
All eyes were on Sylvie now.
"Of course I'm sure. The key element of a dream is that you usually wake up from them, Casey," the enchantress answered the question with a raised eyebrow, "unless I'm still asleep of course.."
She pinched Mobius' arm, which the analyst commented with a surprised, "Ouch, you have to pinch YOURSELF, not me!"
"Hm," Casey mumbled quietly, obviously not yet completely convinced by Sylvies story. He started to examine the Tempad, while O.B. had gone in the back to look for something.
"It's not unusual, is it?" Verity interjected, glancing back and forth between Sylvie and Mobius, "after all, it's part of a Loki's skillset, isn't it? Illusions, projections..."
"But not over this distance..let alone into different realities," Mobius began, glancing at Sylvie, "although it wouldn't be the first time a Loki surprised me."
Sylvie smiled at his statement, but looking straight through them all, lost in her own thoughts. The sparkle in her eyes was as unusual as it was enchanting.
Yes, this was definitely not the first time a Loki would surprise him.
~~~
The monarch pressed a button on the surface of the table, whereupon the object began to lighten up and a hologram appeared in front of them.
This moment made her realize once again that although the pharaoh and the world he initially came from may be originated in the past..but they were all time travellers in some way, moving through space and time across many eras and futures.
A man now appeared in front of them on the hologram, holding a little girl captive in his grip. Behind them she recognized an open portal. He too was one of them, a variant. His gaze was determined, but something seemed to frighten him.
His fear was confirmed the next moment when he was hit by a massive wave of energy and thrown against the nearest tree.
It was green.
Ravonnas hands clenched into fists as she fixed her gaze on the screen.
"Sorry to interrupt, but can't let you go with her."
Then she saw her..
Sylvie Laufeydottir, safe and sound, her beloved machete in her hand. The one she had rammed into her stomach.
She walked towards him, her goal in sight. Full of conviction, full of drive, as always.
The black-haired woman felt anger and contempt slowly creeping into every cell.
"..see you soon."
And with a single push, she sealed this man's fate and ended his mission.
A few moments later, the two women and the child were joined by another man, whom Ravonna identified as Thor, God of Thunder.
Then another man appeared on the scene.
A man in a suit and tie.
"Mobius," Ravonna muttered to herself through clenched teeth as her eyes narrowed to slits.
Then the hologram in front of them froze.
"You know these people?"
The pharaoh had turned to face her and so had the other men.
Ravonna nodded, "A former.." she thought briefly about the right word to describe the man she had once called 'friend' without thinking twice and from the bottom of her heart, "..colleague"
"And the woman?"
Renslayer let out a disgusted sound, again searching for the right word, "A murderess, a terrorist.." then her face twisted into a vicious little grin.
"..a cosmic mistake."
Rama-Tut crossed his arms in front of his chest and looked at her, "We have information from a reliable source that these people could be important for our plan."
His gaze was penetrating and it was obvious that she too was under scrutiny here, "Are you willing to share information with us and..if necessary..help us utilize these people in whatever way we can?"
Ravonnas eyes were fixated on the still image before her eyes. There was no need to think twice about that question.
The answer was as simple as it was devastating.
"Whatever it takes."
~~~
By now, both tech nerds were bent over the Tempad and a large computer at the same time, while Sylvie and Mobius had sat down around the workbench, yawning.
Neither of them had gotten much sleep after Sylvies nocturnal appearance and all the excitement.
"When did it stop glowing?" O.B asked the tired enchantress, who was sipping at her coffee.
"Right after Loki destroyed the loom, actually," she replied, thinking of the many times she had sat in front of it and stared at that thing before deciding to banish it from her life along with her thoughts and feelings.
"When Loki destroyed the loom and the citadel, he also destroyed the Tempads' anchor point at the end of time.." O.B mused to himself as he typed something on his PC.
"Yes, we already knew that," Mobius reminded him, "what are you staring at all the time anyway?"
O.B. clicked a few more times, eventually turning the screen so that everyone could see it. He clicked one last time and what appeared on the screen in this moment took everyones breath away.
Thousands and thousands of small green lights flickered all over the surface, gathering together and with the thickening in the middle and the many individual branches reaching upwards, forming the tree.
From one moment to the next, Sylvie forgot her tiredness completely and went to the computer as if magically drawn to it. The lights were flashing incessantly, moving like little pixels, separated from each other but still all connected.
"Is that.."
"That's the miniature representation of the tree," Casey answered Veritys question enthusiastically, while Sylvie ran her fingers over the screen as if she was in a trance.
"We finished it two days ago," the technician added proudly, "to be more precisely, it's the exact code from Yggdrasil, transmitted down to the second, so ultimately..."
"...a live transmission from Loki," O.B finished his colleagues circumstantial sentence with simple words..which was a huge revelation at the same time.
After a brief moment of absolute silence, in which all eyes stared spellbound at the screen, Mobius regained his composure first.
"Wow.."
He looked over at Sylvie and then back to O.B, "But if the Tempad has no anchor point anymore..is it even possible to get to the End of Time?"
Now all eyes were on the two tinkerers and the nervousness that accompanied Mobius' question was palpable.
"Well.." Casey began and Mobius' heart sank a little.
O.B and Casey exchanged glances, looking at the Tempad, looking at each other again.
"What?" Sylvie interjected impatiently into the atmosphere of silence and contemplation.
"Maybe we're looking at the whole thing from the wrong perspective," O.B remarked, putting the Tempad aside.
"What do you mean?" came from Mobius.
"The Tempad was one way of travelling to the End of Time, which is obviously no longer possible.." Ouroboros explained as truthfully as it was frustrating.
"..but maybe there's another."
"Enlighten us, please!" Mobius interjected almost pleadingly.
"It was possible to get there once before," Casey began, "Loki himself did it."
"The bridge.." the analyst concluded, frowning, "but that's been destroyed too.."
The two technicians exchanged knowing glances and nodded to each other again before O.B came out from behind his desk, walking towards the door and waved at them to follow him.
"No, not entirely."
~~~
Hey there,
I hope the three different POVs aren't too difficult this time.
Thank you for your hearts and for reading. I would love to hear/read from you and what you think =)
Mysecretgarden95 ~ Yeah!! It was soo good to hear from you! :) Yes, you're right. I mean, I didn't hate MoM but it was definitely not one of my favourite Marvel movies. I'm glad that you like how I wrote America and even happier about your words on the last chapter - the "kind of" Sylki Reunion. It's always so good to hear that I managed to get across the emotions and love between these two! Let's see where it's going. Thank you for your Reviews and glad that you are back!