The Variant's Shadow - LokixOC - ONGOING

* Protocols *

"Of course," Ophelia mumbled, looking at her notes. "Let's erase that, too." She turned a few pages and scoffed. "Hey, you're smart, do you want to forget about it ? No ? Well, too damn bad."

She threw the notebook away and grabbed the next one on the pile. A few days ago, she'd been wondering why her mood would deteriorate that much when they made it back from the time slipping without anyone being injured. Now, she had way too many reasons to be in an awful mood. Worse, she was doubting her entire existence. 

The TVA wasn't her real life, no matter how certain she'd always been that it was where she belonged. After looking through her notes going back hundreds of years ago, she'd decided to take a break and ask OB to hack the Archives for her. They'd found her file. Herself, somewhere in the Sacred Timeline. She went through it, realized that her real life had been just as uneventful as her life in the TVA, and threw it away. She was born, lived a very boring life, and disappeared one day. Nothing after that. No one even bothered to write how she'd died. 

Her life in the TVA might have been something if someone hadn't made sure to erase everything from her memory. Once, she'd found out about it. Pages and pages of warnings about a clock. Ophelia had always thought that it was about Time. Clocks were about giving the time, and she was sure that she had to look into it. That was how her obsession with Time started, and she'd never questioned it before. Never, until her past self had mentioned 'the clock' when they talked about Miss Minutes. She was warning herself about Miss Minutes. 

Entire notebooks, filled with coded sentences. There was no doubt that she'd found out about the memory wipes at some point. Ophelia knew that she'd never live long enough to read through all of these notes, and there was no way she'd ever ask for help when a few of them clearly mentioned Loki at a time she'd never met him. 

Everything she'd ever believed was a pile of lies. A future version of herself had tried to change things by telling her to hold onto Loki and she still ended up in the same spot. She was, and it was now a certainty, no one. She was no one, in a place full of real people with real lives and real purposes. Ophelia was now dealing with the realization that she didn't matter, and it wasn't getting her simply in a bad mood. No, she was properly furious. 

She slammed the door behind her and bumped into someone. "Look where you're going, for-" She stopped when two hands grabbed her shoulders. She looked up. Loki and Mobius were standing in front of her, quiet and concerned. She briefly glanced at the door. "Were you following me ?" she angrily asked.

"See ?" Mobius told Loki. "Not the right time, I told you."

Loki sighed and looked at her. "We're worried about you."

"Why ?" Ophelia freed herself from him and let out a long sigh. "Everything's great. My life was awful, it still is, I'm a very little piece of nothing, and OB isn't going anywhere with the Loom. He doesn't want my help, I can't change the future, and the more I read things I've written myself, the more I want to sit in a corner and wait for my time to go prune myself."

"Okay," Mobius calmly said. "Breathe. What's in there ?"

"Nothing," she immediately replied, pushing them away. "I'm fine, let's go."

Loki moved away from her and pushed the door open. She closed her eyes, waiting for their questions. They never came. They both remained silent, looking at the walls of her private room. The only thing she'd managed to keep secret for eons, and now it was probably going to get written off her memories, too. 

She walked back and cleared her throat. "It's not that bad," she started. 

"I didn't know you were that obsessed," Mobius sighed, staring at the clocks on the walls. "Explains all the batteries."