fiction | Part of the journey is the end

7. The nexus event - 1

The Royal Palace of Asgard was shown.

Thor and Loki took a sharp breath.

"Once Ragnarok happened, I thought we would never get to see Asgard again," said Thor. "But we've seen Asgard twice now."

"It's a gift," Loki replied.

Everyone else looked at Asgard with wide eyes. They had seen Asgard already when 2023 Thor and Rocket went back to 2013, but it was still breath-taking to see it a second time.

In her room, a young Sylvie was playing with her Valkyrie toys. She had brown hair.

"Sylvie!" Thor beamed. "And she has Valkyrie toys."

"Like your super cool friend who has a flying horse?" asked Peter.

"She was my friend first," Bruce reminded everyone.

"Yes!" Thor exclaimed. "I wanted to be a Valkyrie when I was younger, but Loki told me I couldn't be since they were all women."

"And you dramatically locked yourself in your room, sobbed, and wouldn't come out for days." Loki rolled his eyes. He took a closer look at Sylvie's room and blinked in surprise. "That's my room."

"Well, Sylvie is a Loki variant, so it makes sense she would have your room in her timeline," said Stephen.

Loki noticed that Sylvie's hair was brown. He wondered if she dyed her hair blonde to honor a certain brother of theirs.

"Dragon swoops towards the palace, the Valkyrie flies over, defeats the dragon, and saves Asgard."

Thor nudged Loki. "Do you remember when we used to pretend we were Valkyries and defeat all the dragons?"

Loki's face turned a funny shade of pink.

Bruce's eyes lit up. "You two used to pretend to be Valkyries?"

"No!" Loki hissed as Thor said, "Yes!"

Bruce snickered. "Does Val know?"

"No, and she never will," Loki threatened.

A Timedoor opened behind her. Renslayer as a Hunter and a group of Minutemen walked through. "There's our Variant," she said as she checked her TemPad.

Everyone's eyes widened.

"This was when Sylvie was arrested," Wanda realized.

"But what did Sylvie even do?" Tony asked, shaken. "She was just playing with her toys. She didn't even do something big like taking the Tesseract." His stomach churned as he imagined the TVA taking Morgan like this.

Sylvie looked frightened as the Minutemen arrested her for crimes against the Sacred Timeline.

Scott glared at Renslayer. "I'm so tired of hearing that line."

"She's a child!" Thor and Loki yelled.

Renslayer grabbed Sylvie and commanded the Minutemen to reset the timeline as she dragged Sylvie through the Timedoor.

"They took Sylvie from her room!" Thor growled.

The reset charge disintegrated Sylvie's toys.

Everyone's heart dropped at seeing that.

"And then Sylvie never saw Mother, Father, or I ever again," Thor said, his eyes teary.

Clint shook his head. "This is so fucked up."

Stephen shifted uncomfortably. Obviously, he didn't want a multiversal war and the TVA claimed to prevent that, but arresting children for not following the Sacred Timeline? He wasn't heartless; he knew it wasn't right. There needs to be another way to prevent a multiversal war than by arresting children. Did the ends justify the means in this case?