Work Text:
There she is, slumped against the wall and vacantly staring into nothing. Loki had all sorts of ideas as to how the Scarlet Witch would manifest itself into existence. Visions of a three-headed beast, a malevolent chimera, would always pop into his head. A red woman bearing a crown rather similar to the demon Surtur, a giantess born of the very fires of Muspelheim to bring forth annihilation. The mighty daughter of the elder god Chthon, who would one day free him and spell the end of all reality. Except none of that was true now, the cosmic horror he had once heard stories of is prostrated on the floor of her cell, a broken woman as one would say, with her pallid face and sunken eyes. He could even see her fingers, blackened with ash, remnants of the dark magic she was using trailing upwards like faded wisps of black velvet. He had visited mortal witches in the past, and he knew the signs of corruption, usually they’d summon him for favours. Never ended well.
For them, anyway.
“She destroyed every single Darkhold,” Mobius had informed him over lunch. “In every reality. Not to mention the bloodbath she left in one universe, killing the Illuminati and disrupting that timeline.”
“And this affects me how, exactly?” Loki inquired of him, a rigidity set in his tone, he’d felt more like a puppet here - par for the course for him, really - than a danger to their ‘Sacred Timeline’. On top of having to help hunt down this mysterious version of himself, Loki began to feel the familiar stirrings of frustration and forced compliance - things he hasn’t felt since his days as an Asgardian Prince, trailing after Thor like a loyal pup.
Mobius had only given him an elusive grin, a grin Loki was starting to hate. “Well, you’re some type of a wizard, right?”
Loki couldn’t stop himself from making a repulsed expression. “Do not insult me,” he hissed. “I’m a god, not some decrepit mortal prancing about with a wooden stick yelling nonsense.”
“Oh my bad, your godliness,” Mobius rolled his eyes, fork and lunch temporarily abandoned, as he clasped his hands together and leaned forward. “Well this is where you come in. They’ve decided against pruning her.”
Loki crossed his hands over his chest, a tiny frown pulling on his lips as he recalled the memory of his first encounter with “pruning”. “They were going to erase her?”
Mobius shrugged. “Yep. But they changed their minds. Wanda Maximoff is a conundrum. We only have one Scarlet Witch and the Time Keepers know she’s a big deal, so she gets to stay. Woohoo!”
The man raised his hands in mock cheer.
Loki merely raised a brow at this. “I fail to see why I’m supposed to care about—“
Mobius had cut in, now grabbing a fork and digging into his salad once again. “Oh yeah, so because we’re gonna let her go and all, we need you to erase her memories of the TVA.”
“I beg your pardon—“ Loki’s mouth fell open at the order.
“I mean, we’d do it ourselves,” Mobius continued on, as if Loki had never spoken at all, his words slightly muffled by the food in his mouth. “But we don’t really know how chaos magic works, plus we need this place completely wiped from her memories, and since you’re the resident magic expert here, who better to get inside her mind than Mr Godly Wizard himself.”
This odious, irritating man had the audacity to smile at him. “I have told you that I am not—“
“Thanks, Loki, you can go back to whatever you were doing now,” Mobius dismissed him with a wave of his hand, fully focused on eating.
“I recognize you,” her voice startled him out of his memory. She was staring at him from where she was sitting, head lolled, weary eyes staring deeply into his own. Loki swallowed, whether in fear or nervousness, he couldn’t really tell. Nor did he want to give it some thought.
“Oh?” He managed to say, voice smooth. He read her file, the particulars of her abilities, watched key events in her life - the impressive power she displayed, defeating the witch Agatha Harkness, battling some feeble sorcerer.
( some part of him felt awed, even now, as she sat there gazing up at him, he can feel pinpricks of energy tightly wound, coiled, calling out to him. magic calls to magic, as he had learned long ago)
It took him…weeks, months, however long? Time doesn’t matter to the TVA anyway, an ironic supposition, given all that they deal with. With his vast knowledge of seidr , and extra studies made to a witch’s capabilities, he had come up with a complex spell - hard to break, of course.
“Loki, right? Thor’s brother.” She said listlessly, eyes moving to stare into nothing again. “I watched you destroy New York on TV once.”
Loki fought the urge to flinch, instead letting a smirk crawl onto his face. “You like what you saw?”
You like what you saw? Oh for the love of the Nine, why did he—
She lifted her head, and for the first time since she’d been incarcerated here, he looked at her truly. Clad in witch’s armour, with her crown perched atop her forehead, messy auburn hair, glazed eyes with the look of the dead and the standard issue Time Displacement collar around her neck. He also noticed her bound wrists, handcuffs tightly locked. She looked haggard ( she looks serene ) and unwell. He supposed a pile of rubble atop her would do that.
“Did I like watching you kill innocent people?” She deadpanned, then she let out an insincere chuckle. “I can’t talk anymore, anyway. I’ve done far worse than you.”
He was quiet. He didn’t really know what to say to that. Normally he’d fall back on his silver tongue, but faced with the anomaly he’d never thought of meeting, he couldn’t come up with a single word to utter. How strange.
He opted for commiseration. “You…had done it out of grief, I understand—”
“ Don’t ,” she snapped at him, her eyes narrowing in anger. “Why the hell are you in here? Did they send you here to torment me? I’m supposed to be dead , don’t you see? Dead! ”
Her anger must have given her a burst of energy because she had stood up, and pulled on his tie with her bound hands, forced to look down at her, their faces uncomfortably close. ( he could smell her, fragrant like perfume, but beneath the surface he can sense the familiar rage-white-hot-anger-it’s palpability nearly drawing him in ) Loki had to remind himself that she couldn’t harm him. She couldn’t do magic. He shoved her away, fuming. He watched as her back hit the wall, anger flooding his steps as he walked towards her, but then he froze.
Her face crumpled in agony as she slowly slid down, tears marking a wet trail down her cheeks.
“I wanted to die,” she said it so softly that if Loki were mortal, he wouldn’t have heard it at all. “I just wanted to die.”
Loki felt something strange stirring in his gut, something that roiled deep within, uncomfortably so. He didn’t like watching women cry, contrary to popular belief.
( he never liked it when his mother cried after all )
Before he could even think about what he was doing, he was beside her, lowering himself to the ground. At her level.
Wanda looked away from him, wiping what she could of her tears with her bound hands. “I’m sorry,” she attempted to say coolly.
“There is no need for apologies,” Loki’s tone was soft, and he found he couldn’t look at her, though he didn’t really know why.
“Okay,” she nodded. Then she gestured towards his collar curiously, “How long have you been here?”
Loki turned his head to look at her and he felt his mouth dry up a little. It seems as if this emotional outburst had put some colour to her cheeks, made her eyes soften as they glistened—he then forced himself out of those thoughts.
He winced. “I’m not entirely sure, if I’m being perfectly honest. I was captured by your Avenger nitwits not too long ago, and now I’m here.”
Wanda grew silent, but Loki could see she was taking in this information, thinking, fitting pieces of a puzzle together. “I guess you must be…a variant? That’s what they call it, right?”
“Well, the smartest one, yes,” Loki nodded, unable to resist the quip.
“Hmm,” she hummed in response. “What do they want with us?”
“How much did they tell you?” He asked her, uncertain what he should reveal.
“Got the welcome package,” she said dryly. “Apparently, I screwed up multiple timelines. Destroyed the evil book that I wasn’t supposed to destroy.”
“Oh, so you also got that spiel about their one and only Sacred Timeline, preserve at all costs, do not interfere, imminent doom, blah blah?” His lips quirked up into a smile before he could register it. Somehow, the conversation was flowing a lot easier now, even though the atmosphere is still strained, a little tense.
“Oh, I see I wasn’t as special as I was led to believe,” Wanda said in a guise of boredom, eyes slightly wide now, less lifeless . “What landed you here, really?”
Loki sighed. “Well, the nitwits captured me, then somehow lost me.”
Wanda chuckled, a bit humorless, “The Avengers can be many things, but they don’t just lose someone.”
“I beg to differ,” Loki muttered, thinking of his past misadventures with Thor.
“Okay, fine, they lost you,” Wanda shrugged now, not really caring to debate the point any further. “Explain one thing to me.”
“Alright,” he readily agreed, wondering if he would regret doing so.
“Why are you inside my cell right now?” Wanda’s expression turned serious. “And don’t lie to me. I’m really not in the mood.”
Loki debated whether he should just tell her everything. What did he care of Mobius and the Time Variance Authority and those blasted lazy sorry-excuse-for-gods Time Keepers? He was being kept here against his will. Forced to hunt himself. Well, a version of himself.
“They’re letting you go,” Loki said, though he couldn’t explain what he was feeling right now. Definitely not fear. Mobius never told him to lie to the Maximoff girl after all. ( he didn’t want to either ). “You’re what they believe to be a Nexus Being, a unique happenstance, you are known to many realities but you exist only in one.”
She looked at him now, and he could see the fluttering of her eyes ( he wouldn’t mind, just inching a bit closer, just so he can be closer, so he can see better ), the furrowing of her brows as she absorbed his words. “So it’s because I’m the only Scarlet Witch in all of the multiverse?”
“Yes,” Loki affirmed with a nod. “You will be returned to the point in time you were taken from.”
Hesitating, he continued, “I am…tasked to bring you there.”
Loki wanted to tell her but he couldn’t. Not out of fear, no. He had witnessed the many unfortunate circumstances Wanda Maximoff had forcibly found herself in, the many losses she endured. The fracturing of her mind, splitting into a deluded self-made fantasy of a happy life with children she molded from her magic, the slow rot of the Darkhold as it gained entry into the darkest parts of her being. No, Loki will do this one act of mercy, and he will omit the true nature of his visit - the impending violation of her mind.
“So death will come for me, after all,” Wanda leaned her head back against the cold stone wall and closed her eyes, as if finally resigned to her fate.
“You long for death so strongly,” Loki swallowed, keeping his eyes on her pale face, trying not to think of how peaceful ( beautiful ) she looked.
She opened her eyes slowly and turned her head to face him. “I have nothing to live for. Once…” she looked down, fighting the sorrow from blanketing her features, but it was a losing battle and Loki could feel the waves of exhaustion pouring from her. So heady, the sight of it - even feeling it - it made him heavier. Weighted. “I had a family. Slowly they were taken from me one by one, and everytime it happened, it just..felt like parts of me died.”
A tear snaked its way down her right eye, and if Wanda could feel it, she certainly didn’t draw any attention to it. “I’m already dead. I just made it real.”
Loki didn’t know when he did, but his thumb wiped the tear away from her cheek, and when he expected her to withdraw, to rage, to pull away, she only stared at him in quiet shock. His gaze drifted from her right cheek to her eyes, he saw a hidden consternation and a sudden softness. ( perhaps he likes that about her, how she can express a thousand different things silently, or perhaps it was just in his mind, but it was no matter, he was touching her now ).
“If there is anything that I have learned, in all my time, is that death is not an end point, Wanda,” he told her as he continued to gaze into her eyes. “Irreversible, yes. But the parts that you thought had died within you, are still some of the best parts that you’re carrying. An amalgamation of the best parts of their life, that only you can touch.”
He heard her emit a soft gasp, saw her mouth part. He leaned closer, darkened eyes on her lips, and it is so-so inviting and so warm . He stroked her neck as her mouth caressed his own, the soft kissing turning into something desperate, nipping her bottom lip with his teeth, swallowing her moan–until she broke the kiss and looked at him with something akin to a question in her eyes, desire lingering in the aftermath. He knew she was fighting with herself, an internal battle of whether to give in or to sink into her own melancholy with memories of Vision dancing in the undercurrent of her pain.
He gave her a sad smile, stroking her cheek again, murmuring the beginnings of his spell.