The Variant's Shadow - LokixOC - ONGOING

* Uplifting words *

It occurred to Ophelia that since everyone was currently focused on saving the TVA from its impending implosion, that it was where her focus should've been. It also occurred to her that the reason why Sylvie hadn't made contact with them could've been because she was still stuck in a time slipping situation with no one to save her from it.

She however decided to ignore all of this and focused on what really mattered to her. Her brain, and what was missing from it. But the more she was pacing around the room, bumping into boxes full of electrical components, the messier her thoughts were getting.

She looked at OB as he was sitting on the floor, and stopped walking in circles. "Must've been you," she said out of the blue. She grabbed the small cube he was searching for and handed it to him. "You came up with that machine, and you put me inside of it. I swear if you did long term damage to my brain…"

"Do you think you would have been screaming ?" he asked without looking up from the device he was working on.

"And kicking, yes."

"Then I would remember that, but I don't." He looked at her and adjusted his glasses. "It would be better to ask Miss Minutes," he said. "She knows everything, and you used to be friends, you were always following her everywhere."

Ophelia sighed. "I've followed a lot of people, and I don't think any of them consider me a friend. Why would my memories matter so much to them anyway ? I'm probably the most useless employee around here," she added with a laugh. "I wouldn't have had time to follow so many people if I had ever been useful anywhere."

"You're good company," OB replied, already back to his device.

"Wow, thanks. I've been brought to the TVA because I'm good at keeping company. I'm a great pet. Yours, and now Mobius'."

She started walking again, imagining a team of hunters coming to her little house in France. An entire team had been deployed because OB needed company in R&A. Was that her biggest accomplishment in life ? It couldn't be. Ophelia didn't want this to be. No one could ever be so irrelevant.

"Do you remember how you found the right Loki ?" OB asked, probably tired of her company by now.

Ophelia frowned. "What do you mean ?"

"After you left the past TVA to come back here," he explained, "you from the past tried to find him. It was all you were doing, I even had to take care of the damaged Tempads for you. I think you said something about the Welcoming Lane once."

"Right !" Ophelia shouted. "I told her about it, she must've looked for that room after I left. But I don't get what Loki has to do with this."

"You used to tell me how the variants you were meeting weren't the right ones."

Another thing Ophelia had no recollection of, and it didn't make sense. Why would anyone care how many of Loki's variants she had met before ? She was getting tired of all this. "And one day I stopped looking." She walked over to the computer on the counter. "Did you keep tabs on when I was coming back with the data from the Loom ?"

OB jumped back on his feet and looked at the screen. "You want to cross reference the Loom's data with your memory losses ?" She nodded, making him smile. "That's a great idea, but how can you know when they happened ?"

"I guess that's how I started collecting my clocks," she replied with a shy smile. "Earth time is actually the easiest to transfer to the TVA since it only requires batteries and the system calculating time is built in the device itself. If one breaks down, I still have another hundred to take its place."

"That's very smart," he said with a smile, sitting back on the floor next to her legs.

Ophelia smiled back at him, however still convinced that no one other than OB had the ability to take others' memories from them. She'd been the only one to ever work with him, and it seemed that no one had their memories erased more than herself.