The Variant's Shadow - LokixOC - ONGOING

* A New Mystery *

Mobius had denied Ophelia's request for some light. It was dark, and she was positive that he was finding her very reasonable fear of sharks and krakens deeply amusing. She didn’t buy his excuse of needing to be discreet. They were in the middle of a lake, no one was about to notice them. Now, all she had to check on the water’s population was the moon and the dim glow of Loki’s magic. 

They had tried to keep her mind away from the water, mostly by having her repeat every single single she’d heard from Timely, Renslayer and Miss Minutes’ conversation, but it didn’t work. She was still very much obsessed with what was under the fine layer of wood she was currently sitting on. 

“So she knows what’s going to happen,” Mobius said. He pulled Ophelia back to him when she was getting too close to the water and snapped his fingers at her. “No sharks,” he repeated. “We’re all on our own path, I don’t mind she said that. But saying that He Who Remains will have to be scared of you, that’s the confirmation we needed.”

“You did learn something important about him,” Loki added. He leaned towards her and frowned. “Ophelia, are you listening ?”

She finally looked away from the water and sighed. “She didn’t say that he’d be scared,” she corrected. “But she laughed. Renslayer called me inoffensive, and she laughed. I mean, does everyone have to insult me like that all the time ?”

“I don’t think she was laughing at you,” Mobius replied. “If she knows things we don’t, it’s possible. Don’t take it the wrong way, but everyone can agree that you’re pretty inoffensive.” Ophelia rolled her eyes at him. “See ? You’re taking it the wrong way.”

“How am I supposed to take it ?”

“No one would laugh at that, because it’s true,” he insisted. “If she laughed, it means she knows something. Another confirmation.”

Loki looked around the boat before turning back to Ophelia. “It’ll take a while before we reach the other side,” he said. “There’s nothing to do about them for now, you could start by telling us about your life.”

Ophelia looked at him and briefly shook her head. “Not relevant.”

“Try us,” Mobius insisted. 

She sighed. “Boring,” she simply said. “I was just as inoffensive on the timeline as I was at the TVA. Nothing interesting ever happened to me, and then the file ends when I disappeared one night in 1935.”

“When the TVA took you,” Mobius said. 

She nodded, but Loki quickly stopped them. “That’s not possible,” he said. “The memory accessed was from 1937, you looked it up.”

“I can assure you my life ended in 1935,” she insisted. “I memorized the whole thing. It’s very short and boring, I’ll spare you the details.”

Mobius glanced at Loki before looking back at her. “First lesson is to follow your instinct. Was there anything unusual, anything that caught your eye ?”

Ophelia scoffed. “Yeah. Turns out I’m so inoffensive I didn’t even branch the timeline.”

Loki and Mobius both leaned over. “What do you mean ?” Mobius asked. 

“Sylvie said you were all variants,” Loki added. 

“Not me,” she replied with a shrug. “All timelines are given a number for reference. It’s not new, it’s because of the paperwork when they were being pruned,” she briefly explained. “My file’s number doesn’t have that reference, it only says ‘Sacred Timeline’. I never branched, I’m not a variant, I’m just the most boring and inoffensive person ever born.”