the_variant | (no subject)

(no subject)

While Sylvie has given up trying to find a source of power for the TemPad, she hasn't given up trying to get out of this place. Everyone tells her it's impossible, but she has to believe they just aren't smart enough to manage it, that they've become complacent, comfortable, and don't bother trying. She isn't going to stop, though. She can't stop. The rest of these people don't understand just how important it is that she get back to the TVA.

Her current plan, besides anything she might be able to manage with Walter's help, is to find a thin spot in Darrow. They have to exist. If she can find one, she'll be able to leave, slip between worlds, find herself a proper source of power for the TemPad she has tucked in her jacket, and make the bloody thing work again so she can have some hope of undoing what she's done in the first place.

Although, no multiversal war has come to Darrow just yet, which she has to assume is a good thing.

Still, she's trying. Dressed in a pair of stretchy black jeans, black boots, and a deep green shirt beneath her black jacket, Sylvie has traced a source of power to downtown Darrow and realized a little too late that she's sensing some other powered person in this place rather than something that can actually help her get out of here.

Too late because she's inside a dance club. Too late because she's already in the crowd, the music pumping, bass pounding, drunken idiots stumbling around, feeling each other up in dark corners and on the dance floor. Some big guy is nearly humping some poor girl who looks like she's barely able to stand and Sylvie steps hard on his foot and puts herself between them, then shuffles the girl back off toward her friends. This isn't why she's here. She isn't some do-gooder hero like Loki tries to believe himself to be. She needs to get out.

The big guy looks confused, but simply turns to find someone else to dance with. Which is when he sidles up next to Sylvie. He's smaller than the other man, his hair is dark, pushed back from his face, which is pale, with sharp angles, hollowed cheekbones, and for just a second Sylvie's heart skips in her chest.

But then the features resolve. Become someone else. Attractive enough, but not the man she was hoping for in that moment. Her gaze flicks over him, unimpressed, and then she pushes past.

"Hey, wait," he says, grabbing her wrist. "That was really cool of you, helping that girl."

"Let go of me," Sylvie says, wrenching her wrist from his grasp. He backs off a few steps, holding his hands up, then disappears into the crowd. And that's when someone grabs her from behind. Big hands on her hips, a warm body pressed against her back. It's all under the guise of dancing, but Sylvie's not an idiot, and she can feel every bit of the intention in the move. Without thinking, she throws an elbow back and it slams hard into a man's nose. Then she turns and a green blast of energy flies from her hand to his chest, plowing him back through the crowd on the dance floor.

A few people protest, but even then, almost no one has even noticed what's happened.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He's uncomfortable with his size, Sylvie notes, something she might have noticed upon their first meeting if she hadn't been otherwise distracted. And his size is, to be honest, impressive, but he wears it almost as if someone who isn't used to it. Like someone wearing high heels for the first time.

She smiles a little, trying to imagine him wearing high heels.

"And plenty of people who look at you and see someone physically able to toss them around, if that's what they're into," she teases with a smirk, reaching out to tap his chest with just one finger. Not one day of her life in Darrow has been good, but at least, right now, she can be entertained.

Luther swallows hard-- a gulp, he'll be able to admit in less embarrassed times. He's wise enough to admit Sylvie scares him a little, and sometimes more than others. Someone could probably make something of the way that he handles that, emotionally, the way it draws him. He couldn't really argue with that.

So there's just a little whiplash, between that state of mind and the way she taps his chest.

His cheeks get hot, and he's not sure, in that moment, if she's making fun of him. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing someone so hellbent on getting out of here would do, but he can't be sure.

"I guess that's true," he says, low and quiet (at least comparatively so). "For better or worse."

She could reach out so easily. Touch his face, enchant him, get inside his head and see where all this comes from. It's tempting because Sylvie likes to have information. Knowing things is what has kept her alive for this long, it's what kept her free of the TVA, and having something on a person usually means they'll be happy to owe her a favour. So long as she doesn't tell.

But she's afraid doing so right now might reveal too much of her hand. Darrow's inhabitants don't know who she is or what she can do and she would prefer to keep it that way for as long as possible.

"So how'd you get so big?" she asks, head tilted as she flicks her finger up from his chest to tuck under his chin, lifting his head slightly. "Did you eat your Wheaties?"

Yeah, he's in trouble here.

Luther's aware that he's allowed to make a lot of different choices here. He could lie, or brush it off, or he could just... shimmy back into the crowd. But something about the power in that single, slender finger keeps him from choosing anything but the truth.

"I almost died on a mission. Saved by an experimental serum, but..." He shrugs, glancing away, jaw tightening. "It changed me." No extra embellishment-- she can see what it's made him into, why he would want to forget the extra bulk and the stares. "I never really liked Wheaties," he adds, with an almost imperceptible shrug, as if this is an important detail.

A mission. That's a specific choice of words, not the sort used by someone who almost died doing something utterly normal and it catches Sylvie's notice, though she leaves it for now. Instead she just gives his chin a gentle tap with the pad of her finger and then drops her hand.

"How long ago?" she asks instead.

How long has he been this uncomfortable in his own skin? How long since he's last felt like himself? It's a sensation Sylvie understands in a certain sense, because while she's perfectly comfortable in her own body -- and the body of anyone else she needs to inhabit -- she's never felt like she belongs anywhere. Not since her home was destroyed.

Most of the tension rushes back out of him at that light touch, the music seeming louder again, the bass in his bones. Up until this very particular exchange, he'd have put money that she was as likely to throttle him as anything else.

"Depends on if we're counting the couple of years I spent in an alternate timeline," he answers, again sticking to honesty. "Six years if you don't, eight if you do. I go with eight, and mostly try not to think about how that isn't going to add up right if we ever ended up back in the right place and time."

Luther lets out a slow breath, the music gone out of him even if he's relaxed again. "I'm going outside, if you-- if you wanna--"

Does she want to?

There's nothing in here for Sylvie, nothing interesting, nothing of note. The only source of energy is the other big guy by the bar, the one even bigger than Luther, but Sylvie is rather certain he's some sort of god and she has no interest in tangling with another one like that. So she nods.

"You were allowed to spend two years in an alternate timeline without anyone coming for you?" she asks. "You must have altered so much of history."

Luther waits until they're outside to answer her, finding himself not exactly surprised that she'd ask such a relevant follow-up question. He thinks maybe he's more surprised to be the one getting the question (despite the fact that he's the only one here to ask). With blue lights catching his features where they leak out from the club, he gives Sylvie a sheepish grin.

"My brother was the one who sent me there. By accident, and my other siblings. We got scattered over a period of a few years, and Five was the last one to show up. He was definitely trying to keep us from wrecking the timeline, but more in the sense of preventing the Apocalypse than just changing history." An awkward shrug. "I guess we wreak havoc on pretty much all of our timelines."

"The day my mere existence started to disrupt the timeline, I was arrested and my reality was erased," she says, sounding both annoyed and impressed. The TVA should have destroyed all of them from what Luther is telling her. That they were allowed to continue existing is infuriating and incredible.

"I was playing with my toys," she tells him. "I was... well, old by your standards, but only nine or so by Midgard years. What child can be such a disruption that their entire reality needs to be erased when there's a whole bloody lot of you running around over the course of years?"

It's rhetorical, she doesn't expect him to have an answer and this is why she hates the TVA so much.

"Arrested? Who would--" he starts, and the comes to the quick realization that it must be something like the Commission. "We had a group that was monitoring the timeline, but they were way worse at their job. Which I guess turned out better for us."

Luther walks next to her in silence for a moment, no particular destination on his mind.

"I'm sorry that happened," he says, and even if it feels like he's apologizing all of the time, to everyone, he can't help but express his sympathy. "My siblings and I were bought. Sounds worse than it was," and he shoots her a flitting, sad little grin. "Out father wanted a team of superheroes. He never cared we were kids either."

Sylvie doesn't know what to do with his apology and she shakes her head, acting as if she's just ignoring it. In truth, it worms its way into her, making her think about things she'd rather just forget.

"So you have super powers, then?" she asks, focusing on Luther and his information instead. "Beyond just being big?"

He had been on a mission when he'd nearly died, resulting in the state he's in now, so she has to assume there's something else going on with him. Something more interesting than big. Alioth had been big, too, and she'd broken through his defenses.

"Yeah," Luther answers, pushing his hands into his pockets. "I mean, the kind you'd expect, maybe. Strength. Durability. Not durable enough, that one night, but enough to be useful." Because that's what it had come down to, hadn't it? He was the most useful, with his combination of powers and whatever malleability Reginald Hargreeves had found in him, and used.

He shoots her a small, wry grin.

"Just let me know if you need a meatshield, I'm in."

"Never offer something like that to someone like me," Sylvie says, a genuine bit of advice before she takes three long steps to put herself in front of Luther, then turns so she's facing him and walking backward. With a dangerous looking smile and a shimmer of green energy that passes over her from head to toe, Luther is suddenly walking toward himself.

She keeps walking backward, matching each one of his steps with one of her own, mirroring him in his own body.

It's just a glamour, nothing more, a simple shapeshift, but she still loves doing it.

"Besides," she says in Luther's voice. "I can be my own meatshield."

Luther has a moment to admire that dangerous smile before she changes shape. A surprised laugh escapes him, and though he struggles to meet his own eyes, he can't help the smile he aims at her feet. Which are his feet, at the moment. "Okay, yeah, I get it," he says. "No need for a lowly henchman."

Self-deprecating, maybe, but the longer he's in Darrow, the less venom in it. He catches himself more times in a day than he'd like to admit, measuring his usefulness. More of those times than not, he comes up short of whatever imaginary measure he's implemented.

He probably needs therapy, but he's just going to wait until Vanya floats him onto some shrink's couch with her powers.

"Turn back, will you?"

The green energy shimmers over her body again and it's Sylvie walking in front of Luther once more. She turns on the ball of her foot, setting herself back in place beside him as they walk.

"You wouldn't want to offer yourself as a henchman to someone like me anyway," she says. "I'd take you up on it and wouldn't flinch when I got you killed."

That's not entirely true. Sylvie hates what Mobius has done to her. What Loki has done to her, making her care, making her want to be better. She doesn't want to hurt people, not like she had been in the past, even if she still wants her revenge on the TVA.

Luther breathes easier when she’s her own self again, ducking his head with a pleased expression as she walks alongside him. He knows he’s obvious, in about everything he does, but he’s also mostly come to peace with that.

“I don’t know that it would be different from working for… anyone else who’s given me orders. I guess maybe my dad flinched a little, but he also dosed me up on experimental serum and sent me to the moon when it failed.” He shrugs.

"Your own father," she says, almost thoughtful. It's been so long since Sylvie has seen her father than she knows she can't rightly say what he might have done for her, but the memories she does have, of both Odin and Frig, they fill her with warmth. With light.

Her parents had loved her. Odin wouldn't have asked her to fight, not as a child anyway. But then he had been erased by the TVA and none of what he would or wouldn't have done mattered any longer.

"Lucky for you, I have no reason to kill you," she says, trying to push past those thoughts. "It isn't as if I have a mission here."

"Yeah, he wasn't... wasn't a great father," Luther says, shrugging again, feeling how awkward and clumsy his shoulders feel. He's relieved when they're both ready, it seems, to move past that, focusing on her words at this moment. He smiles, still a little on the wry side, glancing up at the sky, like the moon might know him here.

"I can say I'm really glad you don't have reason to kill me," he offers. "Is that what kind of-- your missions usually involve killing people? Five did that, for the Commission. Protect the timeline. I haven't really told anyone, but there's a good chance he killed JFK. If you know who that is."

"American president during the Cuban missile crisis," Sylvie answers. "At least in one timeline. I never spent much time in Dallas in the sixties, though, I was too obviously out of place."

The TVA had always found her in places like that, where her very appearance would cause a divergence in the timeline. Once she had learned to use apocalyptic scenarios, though, they'd lost her completely.

"I didn't work for anyone," she says. "My mission was one of vengeance."

She says it without the slightest hint of irony. If it sounds dramatic, then it's only fitting, given who she really is.

"Oh, good, you know him," Luther says, well aware it's a dumb thing to be pleased about and being pleased anyway. "Yeah, after we sort of accidentally blew up the moon and part of it hit Earth and we had to go back in time, we ended up in Dallas." He doesn't know if he can make himself say, in light of their conversation, how easily he'd fallen into working for Jack Ruby.

"I can't say we did much better there, but the moon stayed in one piece."

He doesn't want to admit, either, how much blame can be pinned on his mistakes. If only he'd listened, if only his siblings were louder in his head than his father....

"But vengeance, that's... understandable. From what you said. It's a pretty good mission."

"It was," she agrees. "Is."

Is it still her mission? She's been trying to get out of here and get back to the TVA, but she's well aware that what she'd done, the choices she'd made, they hadn't brought her any peace. There had been no relief at the end of it all, no sense of fulfillment. The vindication had never come and though she's been spending all her time in Darrow trying to get back to the TVA, a small voice inside her head says perhaps she's been trying to get back to Loki.

"No," she says a moment later. Her chin tilts up, moonlight catching her features, looking willful and prideful, but it's a mask. "I thought it was a good mission, but it made no difference in the end. The dead were still dead, the erased were still erased, and all I did was betray someone who... who cared for me."

Luther glances down at her, surprise etched clear on his features, remaining quiet as she speaks. His smile, much as he tries to hide it, is probably a little fond-- part of the reason he tries to hide it, actually. At this point, he's taken in enough about Sylvie to know he's not really supposed to like her, that it would be discouraged by Sylvie herself.

Too bad then, that she happens to be very likeable.

Too bad for who?

"Yeah, you've got a point there," he murmurs. "Dead, I get, but... erased?"

"Poof," she says, with a little explosion of green light from her fingertips, like a firework going off in the air in front of them. Not as good as Loki's tiny fireworks display, not that she'd ever admit to it.

"The Time Variance Authority," she says, the words coming out crisp and hard. "The protect the sacred timeline. Their words, of course, their mission, handed down to them by some god-like authority they never once questioned. When someone in one of the infinite timelines does something that caused a disturbance, they go to that timeline, arrest the variant causing the issue, and erase the rest of the timeline. Like it never existed at all, except for the variant they took from it."

It still hurts, thirteen hundred years later and although she works to keep any of that from her voice, she knows she isn't as good at hiding it as she'd like to be.

"Holy shit," Luther says, his hand coming to rest on her shoulder before he can think to stop it, a gentle squeeze before it drops down to his side. "That sounds pretty fucking awful. Like, the Commission, sure, they killed people, but erasing timelines?" It takes him a few minutes to fully grasp how this fits with her mission, what what he knows of her story. "Wait, so, that's what happened to you, then. Something was wrong-- they thought you were the thing that was wrong, so they took you and erased everything. And then they kept you to, to work for them."

He feels a little sick, though it's probably some of his own issues mixing in with what he's learning.

God, he wants to just give her a hug.

"I--" With no idea what to say, he casts the net wide. "Usually this is where I'd eat my feelings. We can do that, if you want, or-- let me take you somewhere?"

The hand on her shoulder causes her to tense a little, though she thinks it's a step forward that she doesn't immediately break his wrist for having presumed to touch her. It isn't even the touch she doesn't like, but the comfort, and maybe it's not even that she doesn't like it. Comfort isn't something she knows what to do with, having never really experienced.

No one has ever said they're sorry for all she lost.

She frowns faintly, not wanting to deal with any of what's going on inside her when it comes to that, then she shakes her head at his comment. "No," she says. "They didn't keep me. I escaped. I kept out of their reach for thirteen hundred years and yes, I think I'd like to eat my feelings very much."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only