Sylvie Laufeydottir (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
enchantricks) wrote2021-11-20 09:15 am
enchantricks) wrote2021-11-20 09:15 am
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For @icasm
[ Sylvie blinks up at him, shoulders losing a little of the tension she always, always holds when Loki follows the tug. Lets her set the pace, lets her remain in control. It thrills her. So little has ever been in her control, at her beck and call, her whims always dictated by survival and never by pleasure and indulgence.
And if perhaps the way his eyes don't even leave her face when he calls the view beautiful pleases her, well... who could blame her? Charm he has, when he wants to. And beautiful he is, always. ]
You enjoy things that are a danger.
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[ That statement is punctuated with a nod and a swallow. After half a beat Loki sinks to his knees in front of her. If there were any doubts that he was giving her full control over this situation, this might dispel those doubts. ]
Enjoyment might be putting it a bit too lightly, I'm afraid.
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Sylvie reaches out, combs her fingers through his hair. Lets him feel the light drag of her nails - not enough to scratch, to hurt, just enough to tease. ]
You'd do anything to please me, wouldn't you. If I let you.
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I would.
[ There's no shame in that admission. She could injure him, but he trusts her not to hurt him in the ways that would count or matter. He is not, by nature, a controlling sort of lover.
He is intrinsically interested in being her's. ]
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Up. Come along.
[ She walks away from him without looking to see if he'll follow. On the threshold to the bedroom, Sylvie tugs on the sash hold her robe closed, letting the thin fabric fall open and then off her lithe form. It flutters to the ground, delicate, and she keeps walking, offering Loki only a brief glance over her shoulder.
She doesn't tell him to undress or when to stop, but seems to expect he'll know on his own while she sits on the edge of the bed, sipping her wine and looking out the massive window front to observe the storm that come tomorrow will devastate this planet fully. ]
Do you trust me?
strange worlds.
The Masters of the Mystic Arts have always gotten their magical abilities from extradimensional energy, leaching off the cracks between the dimensions, but now that same energy is spiking and roiling, and the barriers between worlds have softened and blurred. The masters rewire the Rotunda of Gateways in each Sanctum, reconfiguring the spell parameters until they're able to peer into alternate universes.
Whispers gather and spread. They compare notes with their compatriots in 838, benefiting from the other world's extended research and studies into the multiverse. They share information, and 838 talks about their monitoring of the multiverses and what they witnessed: an explosion of energy, a proliferation of nexus events, the universe pivoting on its fixed points and anchors as more and more possibilities opened up. (This type of knowledge-sharing between universes is, in fact, what has happened before and this will all happen again—)
It is all very, very complicated, and Stephen already has a headache.
It really was too much to hope for some quiet time. Wong has sat them down for a mission briefing, sipping tea in the parlour. Beside the two men, America is sitting restless in her chair, her foot juttering against the floor.
"Everything about the history is vague, but some rumours persist," Wong explains. "Whispers of the mighty Enchantress, the Liberator of the Multiverse, who made all of this possible in the first place. And we have reason to believe she and her great act are in danger, and that means the multiverse is in danger. Again."
"As if once in recent memory wasn't enough," Stephen says; quipping, but internally despairing.
Wong continues as if he hasn't heard him. "Our roles as defenders of this dimension have expanded. There's a man in our world, Nathaniel Richards, he used to be a competitor of Tony Stark — anyway, after all our trouble with visitors lately, word is the scientist has been building a machine to break into these other realities. For hostile purposes. You need to follow him, and stop him from this course of action."
"Richards like... Reed Richards, that guy in 838?"
"They're related, I think."
"I'm not really sure waltzing into the man's board room will convince him to stop this research. Shouldn't we—"
"He's already activated the machine," Wong cuts in.
Stephen almost chokes on his tea. "Then what the hell are we supposed to do?"
"Outside time and space, you still have time to stop him. The Sorcerer Supreme can't leave Earth. It is my job to protect it. But you, Strange— you can go look into this. Ensure that the opening of the multiverse still happens as it should, otherwise our whole reality withers and rots as a paradox. Ensure that the Enchantress survives, and succeeds in her mission."
Which is how, eventually, the sorcerer stands ready to embark on yet another journey. They've pulled America out of her studies at Kamar-Taj; he's reluctant to get her involved in another perilous, reality-shattering situation, but they have no other way to cross over. They're standing in the rotunda, in front of a view into an eerie-looking empty blasted landscape, a towering gothic citadel.
Of course it's always goddamned gothic citadels.
"You ready?" Stephen asks, looking to the girl. It'll be her first real use of these abilities since their encounter with the Scarlet Witch.
"I'm gonna have to be," America says with a grin, cracking her knuckles, bouncing on the balls of her feet. And after winding up her arm, she rears back and slams her fist forward, and in a shattering of glass she punches
a star-shaped hole
★
in the universe
and on the other side, they find —
no subject
It looks wrong, to them. It doesn't look like the multiverse is meant to.
Time and space coil around the star shaped hole, this peek into a place that exists outside of time and reality itself, and the edges of the hole reverberate with moments in time as if the Citadel is trying to stitch over this gap with everything that was, is and will be.
America looks at Stephen, eyes wide and lips thin with nerves, but she smiles to smooth over her own nervous energy. The Citadel looms, and America finds her bravado in herself and her companion alike.
"When this is over, I'm getting you a Duolingo course for Spanish. That's my price for all this. Deal?"
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In part because he knows that his other self was fluent, and he can't abide the thought that another Stephen Strange has mastered something that he himself hasn't yet. Perhaps it's unhealthy to be so competitive with your own alternate selves, but whatever.
And then he hops on through.
It's not the same as the first few times they went through America's star-shaped portals. Then, it was being blasted through like some immense power had punched them in the gut, America's abilities shoving them out of the way and to safety, ripping them from their realm. This time it is, in fact, controlled: stepping through a doorway which pulses raggedly around the corners, America's power still a little untidy, but in the end it's just as steady as stepping through a sling-ring portal.
"Well done," he says, and the Cloak high-fives her. And then they start slowly picking their way across broken blasted rock like some forgotten asteroid, heading towards that citadel. It prickles some faint, familiar memory. It reminds him of the ruined version of the Sanctum: an impossible ocean lapping at its shores, the wreckage of an entire world hanging in the air, watched over by one lonely, bitter, twisted Doctor Strange.
Ah, but this is the wreckage of so many worlds.
"You could just wait down here while I go deal with... whatever's up there," Stephen says, even as he knows America will likely scoff at the suggestion. This girl is many things, and ridiculously brave is one of them.
surprise, using the right journal now
"What, and leave you all alone out here? Oh, please. What would you do without me?"
A flash of a bright, cheeky smile. They know of course that he hardly needs her help. But that's not all backup is about, truth be told. this man needs someone to come with so he doesn't do something stupid. Or at the very least, so they can do something stupid together. Ride or die, buddy.
Preferably ride.
"If you have X-Ray vision, this would be the time to tell me, by the way. And use it."
Because that's a spooky house, and she would bet that it's as sinister on the inside as it is on the outside. Who knows what kind of trouble this mysterious but totally-probably super elegant and awesome Enchantress woman is getting herself into here?
Yeah, America has high expectations for someone who sounds that kind of important.
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As they reach the entryway, they get a better view of those cracked and splintered doors, which swing open to reveal a stone foyer of statues, a series of hooded figures all facing the center. “Bit ostentatious, isn’t it?” he asks. And then there’s a flicker, a ripple in reality, and— a bright orange cartoon clock appears.
“Hey y’all!” she chirps, cheerful and Southern and completely inexplicable. “I’m Miss Minutes, and welcome to the Citadel at the End of Time!”
He jerks backward, hands up as a defensive spell sparks into existence in front of him and the girl as a shield, but the clock simply rolls her eyes and seems unfussed.
“Now, listen, you really should get a move on if you’re tryin’ to help out upstairs. Time doesn’t really matter outside here, but in the bubble… some things are going down.” There’s a deep tolling bell, a rumble through the multiverse — the sound of them crossing a threshold. Miss Minutes’ mouth purses. “Take the elevator upstairs, and it’ll open right onto His office. You probably don’t want to portal up there. Space gets wonky here.”
And she vanishes at a run. Strange exchanges a look with America, dubious, but he presses the button for the elevator regardless. Maybe it’s a trap, but it does seem like upstairs is the place to be, for whatever’s about to happen.
“You ready for this, kid?”
no subject
Ready as she'll ever be, and that has never stopped her before. America runs head first through walls, jumps before she checks how far she'll drop. It's worked out so far, so she's not going to stop doing it. Caution is for the old and wise and sometimes boring.
And oof, Stephen already has white in his hair. Gotta keep him on his toes. They know from experience that he does not make a pretty corpse.
Her enthusiasm comes to a grinding halt at the world's slowest elevator ride. America rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet, blows a few strands of hair out of her face.
"They don't even have music..." she mutters, except then the jumpcut from movement to standing still in a slow moving box becomes a lot more interesting - voices, filtering through to them as they approach the office.
A woman speaking, despair verging on anger that sometimes makes her voice drop to an angry hiss. Someone sounding horrifyingly jovial. The tearful voice of a man - and that one... that should be familiar to Stephen.
The elevator doors open without the dulcet tones of a cheerful 'ding' to a brief flash of orange glow through which a body disappears and then...
to be continued.
For @icasm
She takes He Who Remains' own tempad, and it takes a while, but eventually she learns to modify it, to free herself of the fortress at the end of time. To let it tap beyond the measures of past and present on the sacred timeline, and give it some capacity to travel alongside the webbing strands of existence that she can see outside of his office.
It's awkward, to live on the man's stores and eke out an existence in the meantime, with his cold and stiff corpse in the study. She never bothers moving it. Let him be a warning to anyone who comes here from here on out. Sylvie isn't concerned about that - she has other places to be, and soon. Knows that before long, either a version of him will show up for vengeance, or else the TVA. And Loki...
There's a part of her that thinks she'll see him. That after fixing the TVA him and Mobius will come for her, one way or another. Perhaps for vengeance. Perhaps for love, in Loki's case. Perhaps there's little difference between the two anymore. Maybe she needs to be stopped.
Doesn't mean she'll make it easy for anyone. Doesn't mean she'll roll over and die.
Even if perhaps she wants to.
Even if perhaps she spends some of her undefined time in the manor thinking she has earned that sweet, sweet slumber, too, now that she has her vengenace, has gained and lost in unequal measure. Shouldn't it have been the last time?
But survival isn't just a momentary choice. It's a habit, by now, written in the very fabric of her. And so Sylvie spares herself no more than a few hours on the cold hard floor, for her tears and her hurt, for her heart and her breaking point.
And then she gets up and gets to work.
By the time she opens another glowing orange door, she has more control over where it moves her. Refuses to wonder if there's a chance she sent Loki somewhere he wasn't meant to end up with no way of ever coming back - she has no intention to finding out, and so the speculation does little for her will to live that she can afford to entertain.
And so, before long, it's back to old habits. Back to hiding at the ends of a thousand worlds because what else is there, where else is there, how else can she exist? Using blockers and suppressants to keep herself moving, to keep herself a non-entity in worlds upon worlds of catastrophes. She knows she could try to taste the freedom she's afforded the multiverse, could be part of the chaos she has unleashed, and yet can't bring herself to become just that. There's a comfort in the familiarity of endless misery, and a thrill in the wild open potential of all other avenues of existence that Sylvie cannot consider facing like this.
On her own.
Without...
She returns to Lamentis, sometimes. Roxxmart, too. Different versions of them, but only ever the doomed ones. Why is there for her in the ones in which the shore is calm when she sits at it, in which doom doesn't hang thick in the air and makes it crackle with an almost moment, an almost lover, an almost life she could have had...
No. What use is there to any of it. ]
no subject
Being behind enemy lines is one thing; being behind enemy lines when you have someone to find, a war is about to begin, and the person you love is somewhere else? Hel. It's Hel.
Loki's plan is only to stay long enough to determine that this Mobius and the man he already knew are similar enough that the new variant will help him. It doesn't go quite as planned... in part because he's an Omega covered in what he is constantly told is some kind of impossibility, a false scent (what is that about, honestly? he has no idea and no time or room to give it much consideration) but after a few hiccups and perhaps an escape attempt or two, Loki has the means to embark on his own search for Sylvie.
Immediately he's stymied. So much of the multiverse at his fingertips. Where would he go? Home. Where is home for Sylvie? (Insert larger question-marky feelings here.) Would she go back to Asgard? Possibly, but unlikely. She probably already did that. It would be different, yes, but familiar? Loki wasn't gone from his Asgard for nearly as long and it doesn't feel familiar anymore, but...
This is where he second-guesses himself too long. Traveling through various instances of the Kingdom of Asgard, seeing it decline in the way of any stagnant culture, seeing Hela destroy or overrun it, encountering numerous people with a vendetta against him, against the royal family, against Omegas? It's all a bit much.
It all takes up too much time.
Which is to say it's a while before he considers looking at the places they have in common, other than the TVA (best to avoid that hornets' nest for now if he can): Roxxcart is the first stop. The realities in which everyone there is hale and healthy and whole are fascinating, but turn up no real clues to Sylvie's existence.
Lamentis-1 seems too hard, and yet. Eventually, exhaustion and hopelessness win out over the fear that he's being more sentimental than sensible right now. The one he steps out on is having a different crisis than falling meteorites... the atmosphere is dangerous to humans, now, due to a major mining catastrophe. Loki meanders through empty shopping centers and homes, looks at the abandoned homes and forgotten lives, and eventually makes his way to the Lake.
He doesn't expect to see her. He does expect that he's hallucinating. He knows the atmosphere won't kill an Asgardian or a Frost Giant for that matter, but that doesn't mean it can't affect him. Besides, there are other things to worry about.
Like how he smells something both familiar and not, and the intensity of it has him at his knees before he can even properly make out the figure at the lake's edge. ]
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That is, she has no clue until the scent hits her.
And just like that, she's home. The strange comfort of ozone and petrichor undercut by something sweet. And she knows she shouldn't find that as irresistable as she does, that she's not who this scent was designed to attract and lure in. And yet in the intensity of their time together, Sylvie cannot deny that she's grown oh so very fond of it, that something feral and unsettled in her had felt so soothed for the first time in centuries in his presence.
Of course, just her luck that she is just about the only creature in existence he could have picked who is unable to give him what he needs and deserves. Sylvie has no illusions about Omegas not being more than just capable - here she is, after all, and does she not have most people fooled just based on how she carries herself?
But she never told Loki that it's just an act, that it's just survival. That all Lokis are omega because all Lokis were designed to hate themselves, to feel othered in as many ways as possible.
And now, here... She turns around before the sound of his knees hitting the ground even registers. Feels heat licks at her insides, like a sudden spark of a fever, light liquid lightning down her back, and her lips part on a soft gasp as she can feel herself get wet, like a woman starved for it. And every ache in her body intensifies tenfold as the world fades to a backdrop, nothing more important than the way he smells like the answer to all her questions.
And Sylvie wants to scream. ]
You can't be here.
no subject
Her words stop him. There's a strained, high noise, and he realizes that it is coming from his own throat and has to visibly swallow it back.
She hates him. It's clear. He wants and needs and loves her and he fucked it up, so much so, in the name of her protection that she can't stand to see him again. ]
I'm sorry.
[ He doesn't know what else to say. How to make her understand. He whines again, unwittingly, and curls his arms around his stomach. ]
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So Sylvie instead rakes her hands through her hair - the dark roots have grown up a little more than he remembers, a starker contrast to the bleached ends. Suggesting that she could look so much more like a Loki if she chose that for herself.
He's so close it hurts, and Sylvie nearly doubles over, has to press her hand against her mouth so as not to scream. ]
I can't... I can't. You're blind, and a fool, I could never be what you want.
[ She spits the words, but they die on a whimper. Pathetic - and needy, oh so needy. A whine in her voice, because right then and there she wants nothing more than to be everything he needs to sate his own needs, and fill hers while he's at it. ]
no subject
Do you hate me?
[ It comes out quiet, that question. He can hear so many things. The way their panting breaths are in unison even though they aren't in contact, even though neither of them tried to cause that to happen on purpose. He can hear her boots on the ground, and the wind blowing through abandoned creaking spaces around them. Lamentis-1 developed further, here, in this timeline. ]
You don't have to tell me. [ He swallows, and struggles to his feet. ] I'd leave but I can't. So just... I don't know. I need you. But that doesn't mean I have to stay if you want me to leave.
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The running never stops, hopping from one planet to the next. It’s only inside the TARDIS that the Doctor can catch a couple of breaths before he pulls the lever.
He walks around the control panel, pulling and pushing different buttons and switches. Even for a Time Lord, choosing the next destination can feel like a daunting task. It’s almost like deciding whether you want to have a shower or to have a meal first thing in the morning. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone to tell you where to go next. A small smile grows on his face, thinking of a clever English teacher from Blackpool. All she wants to see is some “damn planets,” he can hear her say from the side of the console.
That’s his answer: Hop to the next Wednesday in Clara’s calendar year. Pick her up and have another run around a galaxy.
He sheds the grin and makes a beeline for the coordinates panels, setting it to the same place The Doctor always greets Clara. Midway into inputting Earth as his next destination, he stops mid-switch.
There is something odd about the air. ]
no subject
Sylvie hates when that happens. Her survival depends largely on things going right as opposed to things going wrong. For someone whose entire existence is chaos manifesting in a shackled universe, a lot in her life hinges on precision. Finding the right apocalypse to hide in, staying just long enough not to die in the apocalyptic events, plotting against the TVA and slowly but surely circling closer to being able to dismantling the organization.
Except... then something goes wrong. She uses the tempad to open a glowing orange portal, intending to step from a volcano eruption in the 25th century to Lamentis-1 temporarily to shake some TVA agents on her trail. Except when she steps through, suddenly she finds herself falling instead of stepping, and smacking painfully into a metal console, followed by the floor.
From the Doctor's perspective, the scene is no less strange or wrong - the TARDIS flies, but then suddenly her sensors seem to go haywire and then very, very still - and then a rectangular orange portal opens above the center console, and out falls a woman. She hits the center console with a loud bang and then topples to the floor in a painful looking heap of limbs.
She grunts, snarling as she pushes herself up, looking around with wide eyes. A few things are notable at once - the strange cloth and leather armor she wears under the loose traveling cloak, the chipped diadem sitting on her brow, the fact that she looks very human but is very clearly not human.
Her blue eyes narrow when they land on the Doctor, and without missing a beat she pulls a sword from her hip, forged of strange metal and adorned with runes from jotunheim. ]
Are you with the TVA?
[ Whatever language she speaks, his universal translator gives her a british accent. She sounds angry, though. ]