"Listen," said Loki, months after.
"To you? Seems like not exactly the best idea ever," said Sylvie, because if she'd listened to him He Who Remains would still be among the living, and if she'd listened to him they'd be hiding in an apocalypse somewhere instead of having begun building a life on a moon that would never record one; and so far nothing terrible had happened, but she could hardly help but bristle at the slightest reminder. Really, he was lucky she hadn't stabbed him yet, or abandoned him in the night via the TemPad he never seemed to mind her being the one to carry.
"I'm trying to tell you something," he said, for once unwilling or unable to follow her down the trail to sniping at one another until they got tired of it and took each other to bed instead. Maybe that was her first clue that this was something serious. Or maybe the first clue was when he added, "It's important."
"So tell me."
So he did.
"Really?" she asked, though he was too serious to be telling her anything but the truth, nary a drop of mischief to be seen under his surface. "Are you sure?"
"Quite."
"You'd better not try to tell me it's mine." Already her mind was a flurry, and the sentiment at the center of the flurry was: run. Leave, before she could get even more trapped by him than she was already. Get out, before there was something other than her own skin to think of and drag her down. None of which made any great deal of sense, since the point of killing He Who Remains in the first place, aside from revenge, had been to be allowed to have things. A life. A family. A secure little apartment on a backwater moon with a version of her she should have hated, not because he was that bad, really, but because he'd still gotten to live far more of her life on the timeline than she'd ever been allowed.
But Loki didn't try to tell her any such thing. He just looked at her, wearing an impassive mask she hadn't seen before, and couldn't begin to read. "It isn't."
"Well, whose is it, then?" Being indignant made no sense, and what's more, she was awful at it considering how few opportunities she'd had to practice, before him. The indignation faded, though, as his mask wavered, just enough to let her glimpse what was underneath. She saw it, and knew he knew she'd seen it, and knew, too, that she was the only one he'd ever have let see that combination of bleakness and revulsion without trying to kill them afterward. "Wait. Were you--did something happen in the Void?"
She'd kill them all if something had, all those other selves. She'd set them on fire and watch them burn. She wouldn't even have to get pruned to do it this time. Her fancy new TemPad would take her there in an instant, and then--
"Not that Void. The other one," he said, but said nothing to deny the rest of the implication.
"Oh."
It took her a while to work through this, another while for him to come back from wherever he'd gone while she did.
"You didn't tell me we had a child on the timeline," she said.
"We didn't," he said.
She'd never intended to learn anything more about the life she hadn't been permitted to have--except then, weeks ago, she'd asked him. She still wasn't sure why. Now what had always been only his life felt like her own, even if she'd only gotten to live the merest fraction of it. Hence, we. Loki hadn't said a word about the change, or even looked superior, as she knew he was capable of. He'd just accepted it. It was one of the reasons she could stand him. The reasons seemed to be stacking up, lately.
"None of the others mentioned anything?"
"No," he said. "It wasn't part of Mobius's little slide show, either. It's possible no one ever knew. Perhaps it never progressed this far on the timeline, for one reason or another. I might have been exposed to the Tesseract for a bit longer; that could have affected it, I suppose. Or something else. I really don't know."
"You're a magician," Sylvie pointed out, as careful not to put any bite in it as he had been to make his face impassive, before. "You might've..."
"I might've," he agreed.
"Are you going to?" Carefully, as if she didn't mind one way or the other. Did she mind? It didn't feel like a we thing, anymore, didn't in the end feel like it was hers to mind about. It may have started on the timeline, but like her it was something different now, a new and strange thing that could never have taken root there for the simple reason that it hadn't.
"I don't know," he said, eyeing her with something new in his expression. Something seemed to contain quite a lot more anxiousness than it did uncertainty.
It was blatant enough for her to forget about caution, even if just for a moment. "Liar."
"--Pardon?"
"If you weren't sure, you wouldn't have looked like that, just now. And if you'd decided to magic it away, you'd have done it without asking me."
"Far be it from me to point out that I didn't ask you."
"You did, sort of," Sylvie said, because for them bringing up something this serious counted as asking. Or at least checking in.
Not that she'd have admitted that's what was happening, either, if it had been her.
"If you're so insistent on having an opinion, perhaps you'll share it with me at some point," he said, snidely but with something else running beneath it: dark waters Sylvie knew well, so that even if hers flowed from a different source, she knew she wouldn't have wanted to wade out into it, lest she be dragged beneath the undertow.
"If you want to have it, I don't mind." It was as startlingly true as the urge to run had been less than shocking, before. "If you decide differently later, I don't mind that, either."
"Ah, a complete lack of opinion. Very helpful."
In bed, later that same night, their clothes had been strewn about the floor. She was slick and aching between her thighs where he was red and rigid against his stomach. As always, their differences fascinated her.
There was even an extra difference this time, a slight puffiness above his groin and below his navel. She hesitated only an instant before letting go of his cock, the better to rest her hand against this new thing. He was soft and squishy there, in a way that could as easily have meant he'd been having second helpings lately as it could have meant this other thing. It was very nearly thrilling, except for the reasons it couldn't be, this thing that could never have happened on what had been meant to be their path; this thing that had surely been forced on him, though he had volunteered nothing else about the circumstance. She wondered how it would feel when he was rounder, firmer against her hand. How it would feel to have something inside him shoving back at her. But there wasn't more than a moment to dwell on it, because the moment her palm flattened against his lower abdomen was the moment the rest of him stiffened.
"I'm not certain I'd have noticed yet, if you hadn't said anything," Sylvie said lightly, hoping she'd guessed right: that he was more likely to be annoyed if she pretended she hadn't done it than if she met it head-on. Anyway, she wasn't in the habit of ignoring anything he did, and she wasn't about to start now, even if it were also true that she must go carefully.
But instead of being annoyed, his eyes went a little wider, and there was a definite strain in his voice. "You're--certain you don't mind?"
There were more questions there than Sylvie could make out, and she doubted she had the answers to half of them. Suddenly, she was struck with the desire to ask what would happen if she did say she minded; only she had a feeling that the answer might be his own run. It was a feeling that should have made her feel a lot less panicky than it did. Somehow, it still made her feel less panicky than the idea that he might decide to magic away something he wanted just because he'd gotten the idea she didn't.
"I am," she said. "But don't get in the habit of asking about it."
Before he could say anything else, she kissed him, long and deep. And as she kissed him, she straddled his thighs, and when she had enveloped him she pressed his hands down to the mattress, fingers entwined with her own, and went on to show him just how little she did mind, after all.