Work Text:
Sylvie doesn’t know what exactly allows her to drift to sleep on the train, seated across from another version of herself who is more than likely her enemy, and more than likely her only way off and back on her mission. It’s embarrassing, really.
She’s learned to survive on little sleep for almost as long as she can remember. Apocalypses aren’t the most restful of spots – always the chance you might oversleep and die with everyone else around you. Always the chance that some desperate soul who calls that apocalypse home might attack you. Always the chance that the fascist organization hunting you might finally catch wise to where you’ve been hiding.
The rumble and sway of the train on the tracks is soothing to someone used to sleeping through screaming sirens, earthquakes, and the booming of thunder or less natural explosions. She’s sitting down for the first time in what feels like (and probably is) days, working for her grand plan to come to fruition. The Loki sitting across from Sylvie still has her TemPad, but relies on her expertise, so she’s fairly certain he won’t run off.
She closes her eyes, just for a few minutes.
Dreams aren’t something she’s really used to – if she remembers them, she remembers only jumbled bits, shadows of something usually frightening, unnerving, or unutterably sad. And this isn’t exactly a dream, she realizes, tiptoeing across palace floors with all the stealth of a child.
It’s a memory.
It’s some time before she’ll be abducted, before everything and everyone around her will cease to exist, for a “crime” she hasn’t ever been able to figure out. Thor is still beside her, and they’re racing in their nightclothes toward the din of celebration. There was a great battle earlier, and Asgard emerged triumphant, warriors returning home to the cheers of its people.
She and Thor had been sent to bed two hours ago. But mischief runs supreme in this one, and it doesn’t take much convincing to pull Thor from his bed and down the halls, sneaking past guards and into a corner, crawling under a trestle table where they could observe the merrymaking in their father’s hall. Thor retrieves the loose hem of his nightshirt from where it snagged under a hobnailed boot. He isn’t quite so good at his sister at sneaking, relying heavily on her to cue him when to run, when to be silent. She doesn’t mind – it wouldn’t be half as much fun without him.
Sylvie sniffs the air, suddenly hungry again at the scent of roasting meats, savory gravies, and fruit pies that pile high on the tables. She can also detect the sweet scent of mead as it slops on the floor in puddles, warriors laughing above them. Musicians play a raucous tune from an upstairs gallery, and she can feel the percussion in time with her beating heart. It’s difficult to discern a coherent story from the cacophony above them, but she thinks they’re speaking of the enemy cavalry. How they broke formation and ran.
It's the very best chaos she could ever imagine.
Their mother and father are certainly here, somewhere. Sylvie turns to look at Thor, grinning with triumph. “We made it!” she whispers. Thor grins back, then puts a finger to his lips.
The group above them shifts, something about more mead, and the two children shift to keep their hands and toes from being stepped on by heavy boots. Thor uses the distraction to carefully reach a hand up onto the table, returning with a bun, glossy with butter and smelling heavenly of yeast. Sylvie prepares to sneak her own, but Thor shakes his blonde curls and breaks the roll in half, giving one to her. Each wolfs down their share as if half-starved.
“A song!” cries a voice from another side of the hall, interrupting their impromptu feast. “We need a good song! Too much conversation, and these young fools turn ten kills into a boast of ten thousand!”
There’s a burst of laughter, and Sylvie edges forward to peer out at the party. Attention is focused away from their section of the hall, and she dares to poke her head up a bit, look at the speaker.
Instantly, she recognizes Astrid Bjornsdottir – it’s hard to miss the bright red dress of the woman who is so often a fixture in her mother’s solar, setting the fashions and helping direct the band of players who put on theatrics in the hall. Beside her, smiling indulgently, is her wife, Hilda Bjarnadottir, still clad in dented mail and clutching a horn of mead.
But Astrid shouts something at the crowd, skipping about the floor, her skirts rippling about her ankles as she claps her hands at the players in the upstairs gallery. They seem to understand, and pick up the beat on lyre, skalmajen, and drum. A cheer breaks out across the hall, and Sylvie realizes that this must be an old favorite.
The clapping starts, Sylvie’s ear picking out the few people unable to keep time with the beat of the music. Beside her, Thor pokes his head up.
“What are they singing?” she asks, unable to place the melody.
“It’s a drinking song,” Thor replies with authority. “You sing it as mightily as you can, then you drink.”
“But what is it?”
At that moment, a burst of song issues forth from the crowd around Astrid. She picks up the song, singing back something in High Asgardian. Through the din of drunken carousing, though, Sylvie can only pick up something about the trees dancing. It’s hard to discern the actual words through all the clapping.
But like tinder catching fire, the singing grew stronger, louder, rising above the din of clapping and laughing. It’s a mix of the common tongue and High Asgardian, a song meant to mix all its singers, no matter which language they were more fluent in.
“Jeg saler min ganger!” Astrid sings lustily in High Asgardian.
“When she sings, she sings, come home!” the entire hall roars back in the common tongue.
“Jeg saler min ganger!” Now Astrid toasts her wife with a horn of mead. Hilda smiles secretively at her wife and joins the chorus.
“When she sings, she sings, come home!”
The chorus repeats a few more times, the crowd well and truly under the spell of the music. Sylvie watches, enchanted. Her mother has hinted to her that she will begin magical training in a few years, but this – this is a magic all its own.
Astrid then motions for silence, with echoes of “shhhh” rebounding across the hall. All attention is focused there, and Sylvie dares to poke her head up a little further. Thor does the same beside her, as enraptured as she.
“I stormsvarte fjell, jeg vandrer alene, over isbreen tar jeg meg frem,” Astrid has captured the mood of the hall, and now she deftly changes it, steering the merry carousing to tender longing. The player on the tagelharpa coaxed yearning notes from its strings.
Sylvie looks around. Just a moment ago, nearly everyone in this place was singing joyfully. Now some of them have eyes glistening with tears, including Hilda.
“I eplehagen står møyen den vene, og synger: ‘når kommer du hjem?’” Astrid is now singing the song directly to her wife, who looks back at her with a tremulous tenderness that spoke of tears below the surface.
Astrid’s own expression…Sylvie had no words for it. The wide eyes, the pleading lips, the longing writ large across her face. She only knew that she hoped someone would look at her that way someday.
All thoughts break off then, as the table above her and Thor’s heads is yanked away and a pair of large arms seize them both about the waists. Both children protest loudly, but find themselves carried swiftly through the crowd towards the center.
Sylvie twists around in the arm that has her tight, only to see a pair of silver eyes peering down at her with amusement. Heimdall, perceptive as ever.
Around them, the crowd is joyously finishing the refrain in the common tongue. “When she sings, she sings, come home!”
Sylvie twists her head back to get one more look at Astrid and Hilda. They dance in a slow circle about one another, arms around each other’s waists, seeming to hear a slower beat to the music than everyone around them.
The Gatekeeper deposits them at the feet of the king and queen. But Sylvie knows how to charm her way out of this, as she does every other bit of mischief she gets herself into. She grabs Thor by the hand and begins dancing with him, kicking him in the ankle lightly to get him moving. Her father and mother roar with laughter, looking at the two of them indulgently.
“Good save, sister,” Thor murmurs as he twirls her inelegantly on the cobblestones.
“I did get you into this,” she returns, grinning. “Only fair I should get you out.”
“Let’s dance with Mother and Father!” Thor cries out, dropping her hand. Sylvie turns to see him racing back to their parents. And it’s no longer the tattered bits and pieces that she carries with her after decades of sprinting across apocalypses, from volcanic eruption to flood, from warzone to warzone.
Thor runs up and embraces their father. Mother’s hand reaches down to ruffle his golden hair as he turns to grin back at her. Mother and Father smile fondly at their daughter, open their arms for her to follow. After all, her father said to her, one look at her and they fell in love with her capacity for mischief, her impish smile. How could they not bring her into the family?
It’s a whole portrait, golden, gleaming, happy. Asgard was happy. Her parents and Thor were happy. She was happy.
But the song is continuing around her, and on some level she knows this is wrong – it should have ended a while ago.
But Sylvie wakens to a world soon to be destroyed, and a variant of herself who is getting properly sloshed with the richest of Lamentis-1. The song continues, and as she blearily focuses on the bar before her, she realizes it’s because Loki is leading everyone in it, making a right spectacle of himself and attracting the wrong attention.
The song…
Sylvie’s insides quake. She sits up straight, gossamer bits of her dream fading away as she immediately recognizes the danger. She looks toward the doorway immediately, habit ingrained from centuries of pursuit.
Nothing dangerous so far. She turns her attention back to Loki, who is commanding the attention of everyone within range of his loud voice. Did Lokis want to attract attention? Had she ever wanted that? She honestly couldn’t remember. She’s spent the majority of her life trying not to be noticed.
She narrows her eyes. He isn’t in his uniform – he’s back in that ridiculous TVA getup, their attempt at making the organization look benign. Sylvie tries to wave her hands at him, to discreetly get his attention, then less discreetly as he doesn’t seem to notice.
To her utter dismay, he waves hello in a way that’s sure to draw attention to her as well.
“Where’s your uniform?” she hisses, in a voice that surely won’t be heard across the din. Loki does, however, catch her movement, stays focused on her, despite his idiotic little dance, but continues the chorus.
“When she sings, she sings come home! When she sings, she sings come home!”
She turns from one direction to another, surveying the crowd, trying to judge the mood. Had they noticed Loki’s clothing change? Did this group of rich toffs think there was something off about the singing man with the bedraggled suit? Just because people knew their world was ending didn’t stop them from eyeing one another with suspicion, still trying to guard their horde of accumulated wealth to the very end.
Distantly, she hears Loki shushing the crowd – but her attention is more focused on a grim-looking man who surveys the tableau with distaste. He gathers his robes about him, leaving the bar, and Sylvie knows there’s about to be trouble.
“I stormsvarte fjell, jeg vandrer alene,” Loki has taken up the song again, leaning with studied casualness against the bar. He’s focused solely on her.
There’s a ringing in her ears, and she doesn’t know what that’s about. The man with blue robes and critical eyes is forgotten.
“Over isbreen tar jeg meg frem.” he continues, lingering over each syllable with relish. He’s looking at her, almost…hungrily?
Was this what Hilda had experienced, once upon a time?
“I eplehagen står møyen den vene.” The words, some of the first she’s heard in their language in centuries, fly from his mouth tenderly. The recollection of speaking that tongue, singing in it, thinking in it…the language of her innocence.
“Og synger: ‘når kommer du hjem?’” Loki delivers the final lyric haltingly, his gaze never breaking from hers. Did he have a memory attached to that song as well? Something that brought tears to his eyes as well as hers? One of his lovers who hadn’t lasted? Why else would he look like that?
She knew her face must look a sight. What was she supposed to do? What had Hilda done? Why did she have tears blurring the corners of her eyes – she hadn’t cried in at least a century? She’s stuck in indecision, the urge to run almost undeniable.
Fortunately for her, Loki made the decision, much as Astrid had, and led the crowd back into the raucous chorus, clapping madly and waving his goblet around.
“When she sings, she sings come home! When she sings, she sings come home!” He ends with a flourish and gestures in her direction. “To Sylvie, everybody!”
“Hear, hear!” “To Sylvie!” Sylvie hadn’t even known she could feel embarrassment anymore, but the urge to blush is undeniable as eyes swivel in her direction.
Undaunted, Loki throws his head back and downs his goblet, then smashes it on the floor with a resounding crash. “Another!”
She’s got to get to him. She’s got to get them out of there before he can blow their cover any further. He obviously has little experience with long-term stealth. And she has little patience with trying to shepherd someone who isn’t taking the end of the world as seriously as she.
But as Sylvie reaches him, grasps his elbow firmly to get his attention, he looks up at her with those eyes.
Astrid’s eyes.
A look that was unmistakable in any language or time.