Sylvie Laufeydottir (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
enchantricks) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
inksquad2022-12-02 06:46 pm
enchantricks) wrote in inksquad2022-12-02 06:46 pm
enchantricks) wrote in inksquad2022-12-02 06:46 pm
The Road So Far
The Citadel at the End of Time
For centuries, she's fought onwards with singular purpose - and a not even remotely glorious one at that. Has fought for her own survival, clawed her way through time and space just to keep existing for another moment, another breath, another step towards shutting the whole system down. Never did she bother to make friends along the way. For what purpose? The very nature of the way the TVA hunts her means that anyone she meets who might remember her will be culled from the timeline anyway. She's a solitary ghost, and for centuries the burning need for revenge is enough.
The faces she doesn't remember keep her going. Dozens of Thors and Odins and Freyas pruned from existence because Loki, just a child herself then, kept trying to go home, kept trying to find an Asgard that was hers, dooming dozens of other Asgards in the process.
Loki did that. Sylvie remembers it, though.
And now there's someone who is supposed to know her, someone who is supposed to understand her and have her back. Who promised that where she went, he would come. And in the end, that is not enough. In the end, he hurts her all the same. Asked for her trust and gave her his, only to end up no different than her own worst expectations. Just wants her to be okay - but wants to take her revenge from her.
She's bled and cried for this. She's died for this, too, so many times over. She's lived like vermin in the gaps of existence.
In the end, Sylvie severs t he tentative bond. The only happy memory she has, and she kisses it onto his lips and shoves him through the orange glow of a door through space and time. Her blue eyes are blurred with tears even as He Who Remains taunts her. She doesn't notice that his gaze flicks behind her as more players enter the room, as for one of the few things she's had to do in her life, she is not alone - and unaware as of yet. Her small, thin frame shakes with a sob, her grip on her sword tightens.
And then she lunges.
So does the man concealed in the shadows, intent to strike her down. Another Kang, come to claim the throne for himself and kill the Enchantress, who is meant to liberate the multiverse.
It's a split second in which other, unexpected parties can react...
no subject
He Who Remains straightens his posture, his tired and sardonic expression finally clearing into surprise for the first time in uncountable years as he looks upon his own face. All of his variants have been in check for so long, but now time is collapsing; possibilities rippling outward. The Enchantress readjusts her grip on her sword, and lunges forward just that other Kang bursts into movement at the same time; the Nathaniel Richards whose trail they’d followed here.
To the Enchantress, the Liberator of the Multiverse.
For that split second, Strange wishes he still had the Time Stone, so he could hit pause on the whole goddamned scene and have a moment to consider his next move. But in that ever-shrinking moment, he can still remember Wong’s voice. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Ensure that the opening of the multiverse still happens as it should, otherwise our whole reality withers and rots as a paradox. Ensure that the Enchantress survives, and succeeds in her mission.
Well, one out of two ain’t bad. Better than nothing, right?
So. He reacts. One arm flung out, a glowing shield interspersing itself between the Enchantress and the Kangs; her blade crashes uselessly against the barrier, prevented from going between He Who Remains’ ribs. There’s the humming whir of some sort of armoured gauntlet from Richards, an unnerving glow from his power-armour which doesn’t bode well at all — why the hell are eccentric billionaires always building power armour? — and Strange reaches out with a tendril of glowing orange energy. It catches the Enchantress’ arm. Lassos her. Hauls her backward, away from the others —
(away from her mission)
— but he yanks her out of the way and Richards’ explosion of energy lands uselessly on the stone where she’d been, a hair’s breadth away from being blown into her component atoms. And, much sooner than he expected, Strange immediately has a woman-shaped problem on his hands, thrashing and kicking and trying to get back to her quarry, to kill him, to complete her mission.
And she does have to do it, is the thing, but they need to make sure she lives first —
“America! Punch it!” Strange hollers, telekinesis straining to hold the blonde’s sword in check, trying not to get stabbed himself. Time to open another portal and get out of here, get out of here, to anywhere.