fiction | Part of the journey is the end

6. Lamentis - 2

On the train, someone was pouring drinks.

Steve scoffed. "People are going to die out there and they're pouring drinks in here."

Sylvie and Loki boarded; Loki said he couldn't go backwards on a train, and Sylvie said she never sat with her back to a door.

Natasha could understand. She never sat with her back to a door or window either.

Loki said there were doors on both sides, and Sylvie told him to sit down. Sylvie said that dressing as a guard and getting on a train was just doing a thing, not a plan.

"It worked, didn't it?" said Thor.

Sylvie yawned and Loki told her to take some rest. She growled and he looked amused.

"Two Lokis pissing each other off," said Tony, fascinated. "The multiverse is amazing!"

"I can't sleep in a place like this." "You can't sleep on a train?" "No. I can't sleep around untrustworthy people." "That me?"

"Obviously," said Loki.

"I'm not gonna waste my time rooting around for the TemPad when someone taught you fairly decent magic." "My mother."

Loki raised an eyebrow. "Mother didn't teach her? I find that hard to believe."

Sylvie scoffed. After a moment, she softened and asked what she was like.

"Sylvie doesn't know?" Thor asked as he felt a wave of sadness. "When did she diverge from the timeline?"

"Must've been when she was a child if she didn't know how our mother was like," said Loki.

"She was a Queen of Asgard. She was good. Purely decent."

There was a lump in Thor and Loki's throats.

"She was," whispered Thor.

"Are you sure she was your mother?" "Oh, no, she's not actually. I was adopted."

"Just because we're adopted doesn't mean she's not our mother," Loki snapped.

Thor nodded in agreement.

"Is that a bit of a spoiler for you? Sorry about that." "No, I knew I was adopted."

Loki and Thor's jaws dropped.

"WHAT?" Loki yelled. "They told Sylvie she was adopted?"

"You didn't know you were adopted, right?" Wanda asked Loki.

Thor and Loki winced and glanced at each other. Loki cleared his throat, "No, I didn't."

"Although, Mother and Father should've told you," Thor said. "They should've told us a lot of things," he muttered.

"Yes, they should've," said Loki.

"And instead of the entire convoluted plan you created, you could've just told me your concerns about me becoming King."

Loki raised an eyebrow. "Would you have listened to me?"

Thor winced. "Probably not."

"Brother, there's a lot of things I regret in my life, but getting you banished was not one of them."

"Is that why the TVA arrested Sylvie?" Steve asked, getting back on track. "She would've diverged from the timeline then."

"Perhaps," said Loki. Why would their parents tell Sylvie the truth and not him? What changed their minds in Sylvie's timeline? He wondered how his life would've gone his parents had told him he was adopted from the beginning. How would his life have changed? Would he have been happier? Although, he supposed there was no point in thinking about it since the TVA wouldn't have let that happen because he apparently only had one role to play on the Sacred Timeline — an evil, lying scourge.