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girlafraidinacoma · 7 days ago

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Honey and Lavender

In which Lucanis grapples with his feelings for Rook after their near-kiss in his bedroom (AO3 Link)

(Rook Ingellvar/Lucanis | 3,586 Words | No CW, romance progression spoilers)

“Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you: But when the leaves hang trembling, The wind is passing through.” —Christina Rossetti, “Who Has Seen the Wind?”

No matter what he’d told Rook, stepping out of the dining room did not help Lucanis clear his head. No matter where he stood, it would always be too loud, too cramped.

“Go back,” Spite snapped.

Lucanis wrapped his hands around the wood railing and squeezed, trying to shake the sensation of Rook’s breath on his cheek. She had been so very close—close enough to breathe her in, to feel the brush of her clothing against his. Close enough to touch, though he had not done so.

“No,” he said.

Spite loomed in his peripheral vision, his face pinched.

“No,” Lucanis repeated, his grip tightening until the uneven wood pressed hard into his palms. “We have to stay focused. Getting attached without—no. No, it is a poor idea.”

“Liar,” Spite spat. “Make up your own reasons later. I want to touch her. Go inside.”

The demon’s grip tightened, like a fist around the base of his neck. Lucanis gritted his teeth and pushed back. Waking from sleep to find himself already standing, the taste of strange words on his tongue, had become all too familiar.

Rook’s presence when he woke was also not unfamiliar. He wished he knew how to feel about that.

That was, in the end, the problem: he didn’t know how to feel. He didn’t know which of them wanted Rook, or for what. When he thought of setting his hand on her shoulder, was that his or Spite’s? When he imagined how her bare hands would feel on his face, was that something Spite wanted, for reasons beyond Lucanis’s understanding? Or worse, was it the remnants of infiltration training he’d rarely cared to use?

How could he hope to understand when Spite would not stop saying that?

“I said no,” Lucanis told him. “She isn’t for touching. She is—”

A what? A client? A friend? An associate, he had called her when Teia had flirted with her, and realized too late that she’d only done it to prod him. Rook was none of those things; she defied easy categorization. Rook was a threat when threatened, a friend when friendship was offered, a leader when leadership was called for, his voice of reason when it seemed easiest to believe the worst of himself…

Rook was important. He would never pretend otherwise. It didn’t make any of this less of a distraction.

“She wanted to touch. You wanted to. I felt it,” Spite said, and Lucanis felt the demon’s grip tighten at the base of his neck. He gritted his teeth against the pressure and tightened his grip on the railing.

“It does not matter what I want,” he said, and with some force pushed the demon further away from his mind again.

Alone for a moment, Lucanis pressed his knuckles to the trickle of blood that already dripped from his nose.

She is not for touching, he’d told Spite.

He wished he knew if he believed it.

Lucanis would have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t watching Rook more closely in the aftermath of the near-kiss, but such a lie would have been pointless. Spite saw everything he did and nobody else seemed willing to ask about it. Who would he have lied to?

At first, he might have thought there was no change in her behavior. She still followed her general routine, sparring and cooking and seeking ways to fight the gods. She still took him with her when she and Neve hunted Venatori in Minrathous and still joked with him when they were around the others. When he walked unsleeping in the rotunda, he could still hear the haunting strains of her violin from the meditation room.

There should not be any difference, yet he would have sworn that something was amiss. Rook was more prone than usual to drifting silence, gaze fastened somewhere in the distance, a frown furrowing her brow. It wasn’t until several days later that he overheard her speaking to Neve and put the pieces together.

“Hey, there. Something bothering you?” Neve asked. The door to the dining room creaked shut. “You haven’t seemed like yourself these past few days.”

There was a long silence, which Lucanis disregarded. Whoever she spoke to, it was not his current concern. He needed to prepare for—

“Do you think people are capable of changing?” Rook asked.

Lucanis, who’d been in the middle of a long series of stretches, paused and listened.

“Rook!” Spite said.

Lucanis resisted the urge to tell him to be quieter; nobody would hear the demon but him.

“What sort of change do you mean?”

Soft sounds, liquid pouring (“Eugh—smells like burned coffee,” Spite muttered, and Lucanis could not blame him), and a quiet sigh. Lucanis slipped silently to the door and stood very still just before the threshold.

“Because,” Neve went on, “I have a hard time believing some people can change. You know, lifetime of power and murder makes it a little hard to start thinking that other people matter, for example. But if you’re talking about, say, learning to like a new food? I’d say yes.”

Rook laughed slightly. Something scraped—a chair pulling away from the table. When she spoke again, her voice was much quieter. Lucanis had to strain to hear her.

“I mean—do you think we’re doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again forever?”

A pause. Footsteps—Neve’s.

“I’ve got a lot of experience in being where I’m not wanted,” Rook went on. “I mean, it’s sort of what has to be done when it comes to our current situation. But even before that, I was used to people—I mean people I cared about—I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m asking, I suppose.”

“No, go on,” Neve said, and a second chair scraped over stone.

“You’re a detective,” Rook began, and paused.

“I am, yes.”

“How do you know when you’re putting clues together and when you’re reading into something that isn’t there.”

Spite hissed.

“Ah,” the syllable carried a heavy weight.

Lucanis braced his hand against the wall and bent forward, anchoring himself to the sensation of solid stone against his fingertips. Something that isn’t there. She could mean anything. He wasn’t willing to try to fool himself into thinking she meant anything other than whatever was happening between the two of them.

“I lay out the facts,” Neve said at last. “Clear as I can. What was actually done, what was actually said, what I know about the situation as a whole. I write it all down together, get everything I know in one place.”

Someone sipped from their cup. The hearth on the other side of his wall crackled faintly—almost time to add a log. He did not think he would do so while they were still talking.

“Right,” Rook said at last. “Right. That makes sense.”

“I try to stay out of my head about it,” Neve went on, voice lowered. “Easy way to get distracted from the facts. That’s when you get into trouble.”

“Out of my head,” Rook repeated. “It sounds good in theory, but I’m not sure how I would achieve something like that.”

Neve laughed.

“Sounds about right,” she said. A chair scraped across the floor again. “But if you want my opinion? Just between the two of us?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not imagining it.”

Soft footsteps—Neve’s—and the creak of the door. Slowly, it creaked closed again. In the other room, Rook sighed and pushed her chair away from the table. Her footsteps were quiet—barefoot again, even after she’d scraped her foot on the wooden steps to Davrin’s room last week. They hardly grew louder when she approached his room.

Lucanis, still leaning against the wall, curled his hand into a loose fist and tried to decide if it was worth pretending he’d been doing something else. Maybe he would resolve this instead, make it clear he’d heard her. That he thought…

What did he think?

That he’d only really slept once since they’d almost kissed and he’d dreamt of pressing her back against this wall and tasting her? That he had been wondering what her hair might feel like caught between his fingers? That Spite talked over everyone but her, that his fascination with her had probably been sparked by Lucanis’s? That he was no longer entirely convinced that he felt like this only because of Spite?

That it had only occurred to him to want to do this once before and it had been a disaster?

His door creaked slightly, as if Rook’s hand rested upon it. This close, he could hear the soft intake of her breath. She was only a few inches away—less than a foot. He could open the door himself. He could tell her…

The door rattled slightly as the pressure on it released, followed by a soft sigh and footsteps moving away.

“She’s walking away,” Spite snapped, surging for the door.

Lucanis reached for the handle before he caught himself, violet sparks burning in the corners of his eyes. He shook his head and stepped back slowly, deliberately. His hand stretched forward against his will, grasping for something it could not reach.

“Let me talk to Rook,” Spite went on, as he so often did. “Open the door.”

Rigidly, Lucanis walked back to his cot and sat, wrapping one hand tightly around the other. In the next room, the door swung open and closed again.

“She’s leaving. Now!” Spite said, seizing his hands.

The demon warred with him for control. Lucanis pushed him away, but the effort took several minutes and left him exhausted. Temporarily alone, he pressed a hand to his face and took several long, slow breaths.

If he could touch her without touching her—if there were some way to make his feelings clear while holding her at a safe distance…

Unbidden, he remembered the way she’d smiled at him that first time in the cafe. Surprised, cheeks slightly flushed; he had not had her measure then. He was not entirely sure he had it now, for she spoke so little about herself. But she had smiled at him and said—

That was it.

Lucanis stood, remembering precisely which set of stretches he’d left off on before the conversation in the other room. He had a plan now. Now, he had only to wait for the right time to set it in motion.

“Do you think Harding believed you?” Lucanis asked from the other side of the fireplace.

Rook, midway through dumping her pile of vegetables into the stewpot, glanced at him.

“About the letter from her mum? ‘Course she did. There was an actual letter.”

“Oh?” he lifted a brow and angled his head to the side. The firelight traced the lines of his face the way she would’ve liked to, painting dark hollows under his eyes and limning the angle of his nose and cheekbones with gold. He was just so—

Shouldn’t be watching him like this. It’d been days since they’d almost kissed. She’d been strong. Focused. Had kept things aboveboard and friendly, no matter how much she wanted to ask him…

What? What could she say, really? How’s your head feeling these days? Pretty clear? No, that was silly. There was too much else to be worrying about to worry about whatever was between—whatever she’d imagined was between them.

“You’re not imagining it,” Neve had told her, but it felt awfully dangerous to believe her. The consequences for believing her and being wrong would be far worse than she could handle right now. Worse than all of them could handle, if she was being honest. More than anything, it was her responsibility to make sure that they all held together. There was no room for her to make a mistake that big over her own feelings.

“Well, I remembered it was Lace’s turn to cook,” she told him, focusing on the cutting board with far more attention than was warranted, “and Davrin may have mentioned something about an alarming amount of cheese earlier…”

“It was for a cheese soup, I believe,” Lucanis agreed, and his hands moved in her periphery. Taking another sip of coffee, presumably. She suspected it was a proportionately significant component of his blood content at this point. She wasn’t going to watch the way his lips moved when he pressed them to the rim of the cup.

“You can’t be serious,” she said, though she knew he was. Lace had been most of the way through grating a block of cheese when Rook had walked in.

“You don’t think her capable of it?”

Rook laughed at that, settled the lid on the pot, and turned away again. There was half a block of grated cheese to do something with now—a troubling thought, since none of the rest of them were Fereldan and thus did not share the scout’s love of cheese. Maybe she’d just set it aside and Bellara would make khachapuri again.

“Well, in any case,” she went on. “The letter came in a little earlier. I may have waited until she’d started cooking to let her know.”

“Devious.”

“You wouldn’t be the first to say so.”

She tapped her hips, surveying the available ingredients before selecting a likely-looking loaf of bread. Lucanis shifted in her periphery. Despite herself, she looked at him. He’d pressed a hand to his face, forefinger and thumb pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Spite?” she asked, and he nodded. “He want to say anything in particular or is he just hungry, too?”

The muscle in his jaw twitched. Slowly, deliberately, he set his mug on the table beside him.

“It is nothing worth sharing. I will brew more coffee. Would you like some?”

What could she say? Pity would shame him and sympathy was hardly better. She sometimes wished she had Emmrich’s talent for hearing spirits. Perhaps if she could address both of them at once…but no. Maybe letting him do something for her would help. He seemed comforted by taking care of the people around him in that way.

“If you’re making it.”

“Sweet with cream, yes?” he said.

The soft sounds of metal and glass to her left told her he’d already begun. Could he see her smiling? Surely not. She’d turned her head enough that she wouldn’t be caught.

“You remembered.”

“How could I forget?” he said.

She laughed. He didn’t, but Rook was distracted enough in retrieving the bread knife that she hardly noticed. Water bubbled in the kettle and was poured into Lucanis’s coffeemaker. The fire crackled between them, its sound like a warm blanket over her shoulders. All at once, for no apparent reason, she felt—well, it was strange, but she could almost say she felt a sense of belonging, of rightness, like she was meant to be here at this moment with him. Her hand stilled on the knife, as if moving too much would dispel the sensation.

Had she ever felt like this before? Like she belonged anywhere that wasn’t the Necropolis? Maybe it didn’t matter if he wanted her or not. Maybe it was enough just to be near him, to know that he cared. Maybe it was enough to be in a place where people cared about her and told her so, where she cared enough to cook for them and worry about who would eat what.

A place where somebody remembered how she liked her coffee.

“Rook?” Lucanis asked, abruptly beside her.

“Sorry,” she said, straightening. “Did you say something? I was…lost in thought.”

Whenever he looked at her, she had the odd feeling that he was reading something far deeper than her skin. She often wondered how much he saw, how much he understood without ever asking.

“Your coffee,” he said at last, and held out one of the delicate coffee cups that’d appeared in the kitchen shortly after his arrival.

Rook took it, still trying to cling to that feeling of comfort. His hand lingered on the mug, brushing against hers. His skin was warm, unexpectedly so. She wished that she could linger in the heat of it, but perhaps the warmth of the mug could satisfy that want instead.

“Thank you. You make the best coffee—but I’m sure you know that.”

“Nobody else here has the experience,” he agreed, and drank from his own cup.

Lenore blew across the surface of hers and took a sip, wary of the heat. Lucanis seemed less sensitive to it than she was and she’d burned her tongue on his coffee more than once. Caution had made her careful.

There had been no reason for her caution; this was the perfect cup of coffee. It was slightly cooler than boiling, perfectly sweet (though it was a warm sweetness that could not have come from sugar), and tasted faintly of…what was that? She closed her eyes and drank more deeply, trying to name the flavor.

Coffee, honey, cream, and…something floral.

Lavender! That was lavender. Oh.

Honey and lavender cream, sweet and intriguing, he’d said at Cafe Pietra. Like a first kiss.

When she opened her eyes again, Lucanis was still watching her, index finger tracing the whorl in the ceramic cup he still held. Two steps away—that was all. Such a small distance. She could have closed it so very easily.

“Honey and lavender cream,” she said. Her breath seemed to have deserted her; the words came out in a whisper, so quiet that someone standing on the other side of the hearth would not have heard them.

His eyes were—she never stopped thinking about them, but they seemed especially deep, especially fathomless in that moment. She wanted to touch his face, to trace the dark lines of his beard, to cup the angle of his cheekbone. She wanted to watch his eyes change when she kissed him, wanted to know if that self-contained focus of his would dissolve or sharpen in response.

“I can make you something else if you would prefer,” he said. His voice was as quiet as hers had been, but so gentle it hurt her heart to hear.

“This is perfect,” she said. She drank again while he watched. The coffee was just as sweet and luscious and strange the second time. She’d never tasted anything like it.

“Perfect,” she repeated. “The best I’ve ever had, I think. Thank you.”

“It was my pleasure,” he said.

She wondered if Lucanis would turn away and break the moment, but he did not. He stood very still and watched her instead, his own mug cupped in his hands.

I lay out the facts, Neve had told her. Get everything I know in one place.

Maybe they were both working on too little information. Maybe the only way to fix that was to put all the facts in one place.

“What are you thinking?” she asked impulsively, clutching her own mug in mirror to him. Lucanis angled his head, longer strands of hair slowly drifting over his shoulder.

“I am thinking,” he said at last, “that it may be a poor substitute for the alternative.”

A slow breath. Her heart raced on anyway, refusing to be calmed. The coffee warmed her cool hands and the taste of lavender and honey still lingered on her tongue.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Lenore told him. “I wasn’t exaggerating when I told you it’s been a very long time, and even then I wasn’t any good at it. If this is something you—something you want…I’m not in any rush.”

A ridiculous thing to say, considering the forces arrayed against them and the tight timeline they were always working under. It didn’t feel ridiculous, though. It felt right, in the way that cooking in the same room as him had felt right. Facing the idea of some sort of romance head-on made her feel faintly ill, as if looking down on the world from some great height. But this? It might be roundabout and oblique, but it felt good anyway.

Lucanis opened his mouth to answer, but the door to the dining room opened and Bellara rushed in.

“Is it my turn to make dinner? I can’t remember where my copy of the list went. I think it might have gotten stuck under something again. Hi, Rook!”

“Bellara,” Rook said. “No, you’re fine. It was Harding’s turn, but I took over for her. If you don’t mind, I’m running a little behind. Could you slice the bread while I finish with these?”

“Sure!” Bellara said, slipping between Rook and Lucanis. The latter set his cup on the table and returned to the hearth.

“I will keep this from burning,” Lucanis said, lifting the pot lid and looking inside.

It already is, Rook thought, for there was heat from her cheeks to the tips of her ears. She said nothing aloud, but took one more sip from her mug before setting it aside.

As first kisses went, it was certainly better than her last one, and given with a great deal more care and attention. I don’t think you’re imagining it, Neve had told her. Lenore had to agree. This—whatever it was, whatever it would become—was entirely real.

“What are you humming, Rook?” Bellara asked a moment later.

Rook, who hadn’t realized she was humming at all, smiled.

“I don’t think it has a name yet,” she said, “but I’m working on it.”

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girlafraidinacoma · 2 months ago

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BEYOND THE VOID — !

1. THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

( MASTERPOST | AO3 | SPOTIFY ) summary: torn from time yet again, it's thursday. six months pass. while you grapple with a newfound uncanny ability to premeditate, loki grapples with the fact he's slipping back into his old self without you. enter brad wolfe. now playing: a whole lots gonna change by weyes blood word count: 3.3k pairing: loki / f!reader, established in from the void, with love tags: enemies to friends to lovers, soulmates, we-are-in-love-in-the-future but how did that even happen, angst & comfort, redemption arc, lots of time travel, loki season 2 (2020) spoilers a/n: finally, they return in "beyond the void". i can't thank everyone enough for the unending enthusiasm for this little project of mine. it's fitting to have the first chapter release with an eclipse. this is for all of you :) the beautiful gif for this chapter is from this set by @tomshiddles.

"Okay."

There's a long stretch of silence between Darcy Lewis and Jane Foster.

In the liminal stretch of the apartment building's hall, there's little sound except the loud drone of some horribly, desperately sad song beyond the door of Unit 1131. The two women share a long look with one another, and then Darcy gestures urgently to the door.

"Go ahead," she nudges her colleague.

"What?" Jane asks in a harsh whisper, "No, you knock."

"You were the one that said we needed to do an intervention—" Darcy argues back in an equally low tone.

"Oh, so now this is on me?" Jane fires back, "She's our friend—"

"Our friend who has been babbling nonsense about things that have not happened and has been seriously obsessing with that Low-key dude—" Darcy rushes out, bringing her face closer to Jane's, "I don't even know what we're walking into here!"

Jane inhales. She pinches her brow. With a long rub of her face, she exhales. Then, she knocks.

She gives Darcy a 'happy?' look before stepping back and crossing her arms.

Almost immediately, the music stops. There's the sound of a shuffle. A meow. And then, the door opens only wide enough that one exhausted eye can peak through the chained gap.

"Heeeeeeeeeey, girl!" Darcy chides, waggling her hands in the air, "Surprise!"

On the other side of the door, your heart clenches.

It feels a little bit like a cruel joke, y'know?

All that wishing, begging, clawing to go home and — well... you are. You're home. You've been home. For six months, you've been home in New York City. You're back in that little studio apartment, with Sigurd, with your research, with your doctorate.

ALL I WANT TO DO IS GO HOME.

You try your best to give both Darcy and Jane a smile, but it comes out mangled and exhausted and not quite right. You've been crying. Sort of par for the course these days.

"Oh, uh... Hi guys."

Sigurd meows.

"You got a sec?" Jane asks, raising a folder in her hands, "We, uh... Erik gave us some new anomaly data to look over and we figured... you're the one for the job! Y'know? It's... kinda... your thing... have you been crying?"

Your eyes dart between them both. You wet your lips.

"No. Nooo, no. It's..." your mouth hangs open as you search for a reason, "...Allergies."

There's a beat of embarrassing silence, and then Darcy moves fast as lightning. She wriggles her arm through the gap and unlocks the chain — almost as if this is definitely something she's mastered before — before pushing her way through the doorway of your apartment. Jane follows close behind, and Sigard squawks as he scurries away from underfoot.

The infiltration is almost immediately regretted because... woah.

Like, big woah.

Darcy has seen crazy. Like, she has an Uncle on her Dad's side who is totally in on the whole "they're coming for our thoughts" thing and does not leave the house without at least six layers of Great Value tinfoil stuffed under his baseball cap. She knows crazy. She works for Erik Selvig.

But this?

This is, like, soooooo above her pay grade.

Jane's jaw is slack. The folder is immediately forgotten on the kitchen island in favor of the wall-to-wall documentation of... whatever the hell this was.

LOKI MISSING? in the center of it all, with string and equations and runes and news articles and tabloid pages. There's an alarming amount of photos of the God in question pinned up beside ramblings on... Time? And... Quantum mechanics...?

There's another loooooong stretch of silence. And then, Darcy and Jane both turn slowly to look at you pressed against the door.

You swallow.

Your face is set in horror.

"It's not what it looks like—"

"Uh, dude, it totally is what it looks like—" Darcy starts, stepping closer to the board and pointing a black, manicured finger at a paparazzi photo of Loki being carted off from the now-Avengers Tower, "What's with all the Loki paraphernalia?! Need I post a lil' throwback Thursday to when he tried to kill us all?"

IT'S THURSDAY AGAIN.

You wince. "You wouldn't understand—"

Then, it happens.

The same thing you've experienced dozens upon dozens of times these last six months happens again: A rush of chatter in your mind, a cacophony of whispers that claw at your thoughts and flood them with has-beens and will-be's. A million things all at once, a little bit of everything from all of time, and then— one thread. One thread that stands out against them all.

"Jane, don't."

Across the room, Jane's fingers pause on the contact number for that pretty S.H.I.E.L.D. agent they've met once or twice now — the one who is managing the Asgardian anomaly cases. With Loki missing, S.H.I.E.L.D. has been desperate to track him down. If this is a lead... If you know where he is...

Jane's face freezes.

Her brows knit.

Your face is split in panic. "I know you think calling Agent Hill is the right thing to do, but—"

"...How did you know I was...?" Jane's voice falls off, her eyes searching your face.

Your voice splinters as you step forward. "If you call Agent Hill, she is going to section our entire division within the week. Thor will be exiled from Earth on conspiracy four days later. We will sit in a cell for five years until they decide we have nothing to do with Loki's disappearance from Asgard."

Darcy's eyes bounce between you and Jane.

"Why are you saying all that like you know it's going to happen?" Jane asks slowly, putting her phone down and closing the gap between you. "Doc, what's going on?"

Your eyes flicker with fear.

And then exhaustion. The walls you've built to keep this away from the others crumble with one worried look from Darcy, and you crumple against the kitchen counter.

Your voice is far away.

"It all started that Thursday."

You thought it would be better now that someone knows.

Truth be told it might be more trouble than it's worth if not to soothe the burden of secrecy — because Darcy keeps treating you like a Magic 8 Ball that, when shaken, is going to spit out readings on the future.

It isn't that easy. I mean, if it was, you would have definitely done everything in your power to avoid the commute traffic this morning.

You don't know why it happens. Or how. You have a theory it has something to do with Alioth, but... without any sort of control, there's no way of knowing. All you know is that in those moments, you're presented with a weave of potential sequences. And in those moments, you can choose to act. Or not.

So far, acting seems to be the best course of action.

But, yea, no. No fortune-cookie-level stuff. No crystal ball, no tarot cards. Just... weird time-whispers. And a migraine that seems to never go away. And dreams. Really vivid dreams. Dreams that happen? And dreams that don't.

If it was a horoscope sort of thing, maybe you wouldn't have missed your morning bus after waiting in line at that coffee shop three blocks down. They always make your coffee a little too bitter, but the girl behind the counter is an NYU grad student you recognized from a mechanical engineering lecture you sat in on three months ago. You've got a soft spot for her. She's always nice to that guy in the baseball cap who seems unhoused.

You hope it all works out for her in the end.

But, Christ this coffee is bitter.

You buzz into Stark Labs at 9:37 am, and you're setting your stuff down at R&D by 9:43 am.

Bruce Banner looks up briefly from his work to slide you a welcoming smile. You return it gently as you settle down on your stool and reacclimate yourself to last week's work.

Mondays, man.

Tony is, as always, later than anyone else. His entrance is followed by the usual boisterous chatter meant as a morale booster. More often than not it's a genius-level comedy routine built on absolutely torturing Dr. Banner. You opt, more often than not, to refuse to enable the bad behavior.

Any laughter is buried deep into these readings from the Tesseract.

And so this has been home��for the last four months.

Avengers Tower. R&D. Erik Selvig's Research Team. Theoretical Physics and Quantum Mechanics. Day in, day out.

No TVA, no TemPads, no Sylvie, no Mobius, no Capybaras.

...No Loki.

But, plenty of whispers.

It rocks you out of your focus, iced latte halfway to your lips as you're rooted in this little pocket of voices and threads and whisps of time. There's a thousand, then a hundred, then one.

Your voice is soft.

"Bruce, try the equation again."

From across the room, Tony's voice dies down and Bruce's eyes rise to meet yours. He points to himself, with a questioning raise of the brows.

You nod, then continue to take a sip of your coffee.

And so Bruce does. Wordlessly. And, after a minute, he looks up with a grin.

"So it was right."

"Woulda never known if Iron Dick over here didn't shut up for one second."

Tony's grin is bigger than Bruce's as he meanders over to your lab table and throws an arm around your shoulder. He squeezes you gently. You avoid his eye contact — and in doing so, you miss the momentary grace of concern.

(Tony has known you for a few months now. He knows you adequately enough to gauge that your triple-shot espresso should have been a sextuple. The bags beneath your eyes are dark. There's an edge there. Something jumpy. You're exhausted.)

"Now, that was mean."

"You're torturing him," you fire back lightly, non-the-wiser to his scrutiny.

"It's called exposure therapy—" Tony croons, leaning back and thumbing through some of the notes on your desk. You allow it.

Good. Still sharp. Still better than anyone else at what you do.

"Exposure to workplace terrorism?" You rib back with one cocked brow, "No offense, Bruce, but I like you better not green. Okay, Tony?"

"None taken!" Dr. Banner calls lightly from across the room. He's working on the second part of that equation now.

"Sure, sure, alright, Doc," Tony heads your words, raising both hands and stepping back, "I guess someone hates fun."

"Absolutely," you say blankly, chewing your straw; you point at him, "No laughter."

"None," Tony waggles a finger.

"Not a peep," you remark causally as you spin in your stool and snag your pen from the drawer behind you.

"Any news on the other green guy we hate?" Bruce asks slowly, eyes bouncing between you and Stark.

Your blood goes a little cold. Just like always. It's hard not to react — especially when that other green guy is all you think about day and night.

WHEN YOU LOSE HIM YOU WILL DO ANYTHING TO GET HIM BACK.

You wordlessly shake your head. You shrug. Bruce turns to Stark. Tony is hunched over his bench. His words are a bit muffled by the soldering project he's turned his attention to.

"None. According to Thor he just up and poofed. He was in the middle of atoning before the Buckingham of Asgard and... just warped on out."

So you've heard.

"Hill has been working every lead she can but... the Asgardians are a little touchy-feely on the whole 'earthlings in the domain of the Gods' thing."

"Understandable," you mutter absently.

Tony sits up. "Only time will tell."

...Indeed.

Home.

Unit 1131.

Lonely.

It wasn't before all this... It was full to the brim with contentment. It was comfort, it was bliss. It was indulgent mornings slept beneath the covers and bright music in the kitchen. Cheap wine from the liquor shop on the corner and homemade meals. It was "I finally made it".

Now, it's none of that.

Because he's out there — and you know that you don't belong here anymore.

You drop your bag by the door.

Your boots follow in a trail.

Sigurd mews expectantly, and you scoop him wordlessly into your arms as you weave through the chaos of papers and books. Your carpet is hidden beneath a layer of obsession masquerading as research.

But, there's one thing that pulls you back in each time.

It's that photo.

The one Darcy had pointed at earlier.

Loki is being carted off from the now-Avengers Tower. He's looking back at something, and his expression is broken.

It's you.

You know he's pleading with Thor at that moment through a muzzle, desperate to call your name. He's looking at you, being whisked away by S.H.I.E.L.D. as they clear the area, and your voice is silenced by grief.

You wish you had called out to him then — told him you'd find him again.

Regret is a hell of a thing.

Grief, too.

How do you mourn something you never really had? Not here, not in this timeline.

So you stand there, in the dim lights of your apartment, staring at the photo. And you cry. Just like every night, for the last six months.

In your desk, that magical little daisy made of grass waits.

If they find Sylvie, they find you.

That's the mission.

Mobius M. Mobius thinks it's funny — back then, man if only he would have known that lil' hunch of his was right. Maybe a part of him did. And... Now? Things are different. I mean, everything is different. The TVA is different.

Loki is different.

They say to be loved is to be changed an' all that.

The first thing out of Loki's mouth was your name when Mobius finally saw him again — and then a word vomit of panic, induced by the death of He Who Remains and... time-slippage as OB called it. Lotsa moving parts. Lots to keep track of. But, ultimately, they're in a better spot than they were yesterday.

1.) Loki is no longer falling through the metaphorical cracks in time.

2.) Mobius did not get toasted alive when standing before The Loom.

3.) He never, ever, ever has to do that again.

And now!

They're in London.

1977, huh. Zaniac.

If they find Sylvie, they find you.

...Unless you find him first.

Loki isn't exactly thrilled.

No, Loki knows better than to get his hopes up. Sylvie isn't here. He already told Mobius that. It's too safe. It's a damned movie premiere. There are no radiation burns, no falling stars, and no rampant gunfire. It's too quiet.

It's a movie premiere and you're out there, somewhere, alone. You're... you're lost. He can't protect you here. He can't protect anything. You... You're all he has and you're gone.

And he's here, wasting his damn time.

Brad Wolfe is about to waste more of his time.

Loki's gaze is sharp. His strides are long, and as they approach the fray, the God stands amongst the tallest of guests. He cuts a mean profile. It's times like these that Mobius remembers he is a God.

(It's times like these that Mobius can also see the ever-increasing edge in his partner-in-time. It's a little... worrisome. But understandable. I mean, rip a God's soulmate from his hands and see what happens, right?)

"So, he's an actor now?" Loki comments off-handedly, his irritation grating his heartstrings in a way that reminds him of who he was before all this. He hates it. But, he's angry. He will get you back. Without you...

Without you, he doesn't know what he'll do.

"Or he's undercover."

As they weave, Loki's brows knot in distrust. "Looks pretty real to me."

It smells like cigarettes and perfume, and the flashbulbs bite sharply into Loki's peripherals. The raven-haired trickster winces, tucking his hands into his slacks.

On the red carpet, X-5 moves from interview to interview. Occasionally his laughter rises above the clamor. Each time, Loki's nostrils flare and he rolls his eyes.

It's when he reaches the end of the line that Mobius moves in.

"Will there be a Zaniac Two?"

The look on Brad's face says enough for Mobius to know there's more going on here than just an undercover bit. Brad's laugh, as equally pained as his smile, just cements the fact.

"Mobius! Woah!" A clap on the shoulder, a big hug. "I used to work with this guy!"

Still a show. Still a weasel trying to survive on his little slice of time.

"We're going to need to catch up," he begins, backing up slowly, "You know, why don't we chat after the show?"

"How about now, maybe?" Mobius counters just as Brad turns on his heel and comes face to face with Loki.

The God sneers.

"Woah. Okay, ha, whole gangs here!" he chirps, "Isn't that... great? Wow. I mean, you look — you look great, Loki."

"Why thank you, Brad."

Brad's eyes are manic, and he's searching the crowd quickly — no doubt looking for an exit. Then, they catch something. When Brad claps his hands together and pats them on both Loki and Mobius' shoulders, the two TVA agents pause.

"Everything alright?" Loki asks, head tilting in faux concern.

"Everything is great, actually, because when I was here," he begins, words quick and anxious as he tries to weave some sort of story, "I met a mutual friend!"

"Sylvie?" Mobius asks tightly.

"No, no, uh, better—"

Loki's jaw tightens. Enough of this. "We have some mutual friends back at the TVA who would like a word, as well—"

"Doc!" calls Brad after finally finding her in the sea of people, turning on his heel and calling out over his shoulder, "I got people I need you to meet!"

And just like that, it's like Loki's whole world splits wide open again.

In the fray of photographers and journalists, in the fray of drinks and the haze of smoke, there's you. You're smiling at Brad, positively beaming. You're bright as a star and Gods, there's no one in the room when you step forward with a laugh.

Your dress is green. Your hair is different.

There's a beauty mark on your left cheek. His version of you has a scar that lies there. A mistimed gift from Sylvie before their period on Lamentis.

"Doc, these are some of my friends from work," Brad points, his hand falling along your waist in a way that makes Loki's blood boil; the ex-TVA Hunter leans close to your cheek, "They're the real deal."

You laugh into your drink, then extend your hand to Mobius. He's trying his best to hide his growing dread. "It's a pleasure."

Mobius takes it and shakes it gently. "And how do you have the pleasure of knowing our starlet, Brad?"

Damn it. He's losing Loki in real time here.

"Doc here did all the practical effects on set for Zaniac," Brad's eyes connect with Loki's — but the God is focused on only you... Her. Until Wolfe digs in with a low murmur meant to do just what it does, "She's a real wiz with her hands."

The God's face snaps. He will kill Brad, he decides. But, then this other-you moves to offer her hand and he can't help but melt.

His fingers are trembling when he touches her skin.

"Have we met before?" comes the soft lilt of her voice — this Variant's eyes are brown. They search Loki's face for a shred of recognition but all that's there between the two of them is raw attraction. A law of time and space unhindered by meddling hands. No matter where, no matter when, you will find one another.

Loki's mouth is dry. Your lipstick shade is a dark rogue. He thinks about that kiss back in the Void. He's stuck there, with your hand in his, when Brad bolts.

Her face contorts in confusion. She pulls away. But, Loki lingers.

He has to... He...

He needs you back.

Now.

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