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𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐎𝐧𝐞, 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐎𝐧𝐞

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┝┈┈───╼⊳⊰ ४ ⊱⊲╾───┈┈┥

 >By this point in time Ivy Knight has been pulled from her normal life, pulled to various time periods and planets, been to the End of Time, discovered the secret behind time, and yet this very moment running from a dozen TVA guards was the most scared she has been in who even knows how long.

Mobius didn't know who Ivy and Loki were, Hunter B-15 didn't know who they were, hell no one seemed to remember them at all! Ivy figured things might be a bit different when her and Loki got back but she didn't think this much would be different.

Ivy and Loki ran side by side as they were chased by Mobius, Hunter-B15, and a dozen or so TVA guards through the hallways of the TVA until they were being boxed in by another group of guards.

"Hold it right there, Variants!" One of the guardsmen yelled once the two were caged in.

"What is going on?" Loki pleated, almost completely out of breath from running halfway around the building. "Mobius, it's us."

"I don't know you." Mobius stated.

"It's Ivy and Loki!" Ivy tried to remind him. "Don't you remember us?"

Suddenly Ivy felt Loki's arms wrap around her tightly. Before she could ask what the hell he was doing, he stated, "Hold tight and trust me!"

"What-" Before Ivy knew it, she and the god were free falling off the side of the TVA building. They were cornered and Loki decided to use the one escape plan he could think of within moments notice. Jump off the side of the freaking building.

Thankfully, or close enough, the two landed on a flying transportation vehicle instead of free falling forever. Fortunately for Ivy, Loki broke her fall by landing on top of him.

"I am going to kill you Loki if they don't kill us first!" Ivy threatened as she tried to haul herself up.

Loki tried to help her up as he himself tried to stand on the moving vehicle. "I probably fully deserve that. But let's first-"

The driver of the flying car suddenly veered sharply to the right as they were about to run straight into the giant statue of the man at the End of Time. But they weren't quick enough and ended up cutting a line through the statue's cheek which sent the car to fly straight through a window of the nearest building.

This time Ivy wasn't as lucky and went sliding out of the vehicle's bed and rolled out onto the TVA's floor. The pure fear and adrenaline in her system caused her to be completely unaware of the various new cuts and bruises she just received from skidding along broken glass.

Soonly Loki tumbled out of the vehicle as well. "I'm fine. I'm fine. Are you fine?" He said to the half a dozen TVA workers who just watched them crash-land.

"Highly debatable." Ivy groaned as she got herself up.

"She's fine. We're fine. Morning!" The vehicle behind them then began to teeter back and forth on the ledge before falling front first, the driver screeching as it fell. "She'll be fine."

Ivy flinched as she heard the car hit something. She would have immediately ran to the rescue of the driver, but alas, she was already focused on keeping herself and Loki alive.

Loki seemed to suddenly have the realization that he was the only non-human there and that Ivy, a normal human, shouldn't suddenly jump off of a building and then crash through a window. He quickly spun towards Ivy, grabbing at her hands and arms to inspect and newly made wounds.

"You're hurt." Loki noted, voice heavily laced with worry.

The SHIELD agent surprisingly found it within herself to softly laugh, "It's alright, I've been cut by glass many times before."

Loki's eyes snapped up from her arms to her face, "Many times?"

"I'm an agent, remember? You have no idea how-" Ivy suddenly saw a familiar face from the corner of her eye. "Casey?"

"Have we met each other?" Casey seemed to be just as confused as everyone else on who the two were.

Ivy turned away from Loki and walked towards Casey. "Please tell me you have even the slightest idea what is happening here?"

This snapped Loki out of his thoughts and he too turned towards the TVA worker. "Don't you remember us?

For a long moment Casey stared at the two in confusion before his eyes began to light up. And for a split-second Ivy and Loki felt a sense of hope until, "I got them. I got the intruders. I got the intruders!" Casey had called into his TemPad.

Before any guards could show up Ivy was suddenly hit by a wave of severe pain she would image is the equivalent of getting hit by a bus. She hunched over in pain as the wind was completely taken out of her.

"Holy shit." Ivy gasped as the pain subsided. The wind knocked out of her once again when she jumped from feeling a hand on her shoulder.

"Sorry, sorry." It was Loki who reached out, also looking like he too felt like he was just hit by a bus.

"Loki. Ivy." A voice from afar caused the two of them to look up. The room was now almost completely empty for a few workers, including a shocked Casey.

"What?" Loki gasped. "Just a second ago, you didn't know us." He then ran up to Casey and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Casey. Casey, something terrible is happening. We're being pulled from..."

Loki spotted mid-sentence, his focus now on the middle of the floor. Ivy peered down at the ground beneath her feet to see the cracked tile the two of them caused just moments before. The odd thing was that this crack seemed to be as if it had been there for decades.

"Has that always been there?" Loki questioned.

"The crack? It's been there as long as I can remember."

"We were in the past." Loki stated.

Something clicked in Ivy's head when Loki said this, it made complete sense to her. Them being in the past just now would explain why all of a sudden there were statues of He Who Remains and everyone not remembering them. Being pulled through time would also explain why she just felt like her insides were just ripped out.

"Where's Mobus? B-15?" Loki questioned Casey.

"They're probably in, uh," Casey began to walk to show the two were. "Chrono Bay Three, so..."

With a yell, both Ivy and Loki were once more pulled through time.

****

Once again Ivy felt like every organ in her body was being smushed as she was pulled through time and space. Fortunately, while in "real time" it had been a few minutes since she and Loki disappeared, it had only been a few seconds for her. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to ease the pain in any way.

"Are you alright?" Loki questioned Ivy, oblivious to the fact that they just scared Casey shitless.

Ivy panted, a hand over her chest as if her heart would fall out, "Couldn't be better."

After taking a moment to catch his own breath Loki finally noticed Casey standing to the side. "Casey! Mobius. Where is he?"

"He's in the War Room." Casey gulped.

Loki then quickly started walking to find the War Room. Ivy followed behind after quickly saying sorry to the poor TVA worker who looked as if he'd just had a heart attack.

****

As Ivy and Loki turned the corner to the hallway that held the War Room, they again for the third time were pulled through time and space. Every fiber of their beings felt like they were being set on fire, but the pain didn't feel as bad this time. This time they had an end goal of finding their friends and getting to the bottom of the ordeal with the man at the End of Time.

So, when they arrived in front of the doors to the War Room they did not hesitate to push past the doors as fast as they could. Unfortunately, when they did so they were met with an empty room. And from the faces of He Who Remains carved into the metal wall it was clear that they were back in the past once more.

An eerie silence filled the room. There was so much to say but also too little at the same time. To avoid escalating their anxieties and fears more, Ivy and Loki decided to scope out the room for any hidden deals or clues that could help them discover what was going on or what already happened here.

As Ivy paced the room she made note of the triangle table and matching ceiling lights. The shape motif reminded her of when she noticed all the circles in the TVA when she arrived what seemed like forever ago. A sad smile spread across her face at the remembrance of the last moments in her life before it all went beyond downhill.

"You are quite a marvel." The sudden voice of He Who Remains filling the silence made Ivy jump. Loki had found what seemed to be a tape recorder built into the room's walls. "I will be proud to lead with you. You made a difference in this war. Thank you for being on my team."

Ivy and Loki shared similar looks of confusion at who could the man be possibly talking to. The SHIELD agent noticed another recorder on the wall spinning closest to her and so she paused the current recording and then twisted a diel back to sooner in the recording.

"For us. For All Time."

"Always." Another familiar voice came through on the recording.

"Ravonna Renslayer, you are quite a marvel. I will be proud to lead with you."

Before either of the two could ponder what in the world He Who Remains and Renslayer were discussing they were for the fourth time sucked from one time period to the next.

This time they appeared right in the middle of a meeting Mobius, B-15, and a few TVA leaders were having in the War Room.

"Loki? Ivy?" Mobius yelled out.

"Mobius. You know us!" Loki ran towards the TVA agent, ignoring the other hunter yelling for him to stop. "A moment ago, you didn't know me."

"Please for the love of everything great, please tell us you remember who we are!" Ivy followed closely the god.

Quickley the room was filled with chaos. Everyone equally as confused as each other, all talking at the same time to get any type of answers. Suddenly a woman's voice yelling caused everyone to fall silent and look in her direction for a moment.

"Mobius. We found him." Loki whispered.

"Who?"

"Him."

Ivy tilted her head to the side, eyebrows pinching together, "Okay, maybe you should be a bit more specific Loki."

Loki decided to ignore the advice and suddenly marched over the TVA guard and grabbed his pruning device, holding it up to the man's face. "Get back!"

Before anyone lunged at the god or question what the hell he was doing, Loki spun the device around and stabbed it at the wall. Immediately the top layer that once displayed a tapestry of the TVA "leaders" began to melt away to reveal the carved-out metal faces of He Who Remains. Mobius and the other TVA workers all gasped as their jaws dropped in confusion, alarm, and disbelief at what was unfolding in front of them.

"That's who built this place!" Loki yelled. "That's who stole your lives! That's who's coming back!"

"Okay." Mobius spoke softly, a bit scared of setting Loki off even more. "Easy, put it down."

"She was going to kill him." Loki stated.

"Bit vague again there." Ivy cut in. "He means Sylvie."

"Sylvie?" The woman from before questioned in alarm. "Where is she?"

"We don't know." Loki answered, still seemingly dazed with alarm over the whole ordeal happening.

Mobius then began escorting both the god and the SHIELD agent out of the room quickly to avoid any more tension that was building in the room.

"She kicked us through a Time Door." Loki muttered.

"It's okay. It's all right. Come on." Mobius attempted to calm the man down as he pushed him towards the door. Ivy too tried to calm Loki down even in the slightest bit by holding onto his arm tightly.

"Who's she? What does she want with Sylvie?" Loki questioned once they were all out of the room.

"General Dox. Don't worry about it. Are you okay? What happened with the cloud monster?" Mobius questioned back as the trio began to pace down the hallway.

"Alioth? Alioth was a distraction." Loki explained.

"Turns out he was just a guard dog for him, but we did manage to get by." Ivy added. "We found him in a Citadel at the End of Time."

"But where's Sylvie?"

Ivy shrugged, "No idea, probably still back there."

"I just wanted time to think. It was an impossible choice, but she seemed so certain. How could she be given the possible consequences? I just wanted time to think."

"Hey, hey." Ivy tried to settle the rambling god down by grabbing his arm again and stopping at the end of the hallway. "Love, Loki. Just take a breath for a second before you give all of us a panic attack."

"Yes, you wanted time to think, so, let's think. It's okay." Mobius continued.

"Mobius," Loki paused to catch his breath. "We got to the man at the End of Time, and he made sense. We thought it was about freeing the timeline, but that brings only more malevolence, more violence, more war. More of him. They're coming. They're all coming."

"Who?"

"'You came to kill the devil'." Loki ignored Mobius and pulled away from Ivy, beginning to pace again. "Maybe he was. But maybe he wasn't. A-and he was convinced he was. We fought, Mobius, and she kicked us through a Time Door."

"Well, I'd ask who won, but..."

"It was a draw." Loki defended.

"You all kicked each other through Time Doors, simultaneously?"

"No. We were actively trying not to fight her." Loki defended again. "We were trying to stop her. She was gonna kill him."

"Hey, I'm just having a hard time hearing she kicked you both."

"Loki just admit we got duped." Ivy cut in quickly, tired of these two continually arguing. "Bickering about this isn't going to suddenly stop the consequences of it all or delay it."

"Yeah, okay. Just forget about it." Mobius agreed. "Look, Renslayer kicked me down some steps, too. Listen, just calm down."

"I just wish I had tried harder; I wish I'd had more time."

Ivy wanted to grab the god by the shoulders and shake him vigorously. To avoid him just pulling away once again she decided against the idea. "Look, Loki, I too feel awful about how things ended. I too wonder if I just tried just the tiniest bit harder then maybe, just maybe, Sylvie might have understood us better. But we both have to accept that Sylvie made her choice and there's nothing we can do about it now."

Loki seemed to finally take in what Ivy was saying and for the first time since the two got back to the TVA he seemed to actually catch his breath and calm down a little. "You're right, you're right. What's done is done. Thank you."

For the first time in forever Ivy found it within herself to actually smile. You're welcome." She let out a small laugh. "Only took you half an hour to say that."

For a brief moment Ivy and Loki just stared at each other with a look neither of the two could fully understand. They both stood with mirroring soft smiles and eyes that could say a million things.

Mobius on the other hand just looked between the two several times, trying to understand what in the world was happening right now. Did they both develop telepathic minds while at the End of Time?

"Hey, uh... can either of you tell me what you've figured out?" Mobius spoke up.

This seemed to snap the Ivy and Loki out of their trance as they both scooted back and looked everywhere but each other.

"Uh... That!" Loki painted at the paintings on the wall depicting many identical figures fighting. "That is what we know. War. And it's on its way."

"The pruning and everything, the preservation of the Sacred Timeline. It was all supposedly about preventing more of him being created." Ivy continued.

Mobius turned to Loki, "And that's what you showed us in there?"

"He Who Remains. This is his kingdom." Loki answered. "And he said he keeps us safe, but how can you believe that? He built this place."

"No, how would I not remember that? How could he..."

"Because he wiped your memories." Loki cut him off. "And he obviously did it more than once."

"Trust me, I've seen and heard crazier things. If some wannabe crime lord in the middle of nowhere can wipe a couple of people's memories. Then an interdimensional, supposedly all-powerful person could definitely do it."

"They have to listen to us." Loki spoke as he began to march back to the War Room.

"Hey!" Mobius grabbed Loki back. "Believe me, they listened to you, okay? We heard you loud and clear. You both have to explain to me exactly, how did you just appear in there? I mean, did you come straight from the End of Time?"

"No, we appeared in the past at first. Well, more like crash landed in the past really." Ivy explained, side-eyeing Loki at the last part to which he side-eyed back.

"What do you mean, in the past? Where in the past?" Mobius questioned.

"Here, the past TVA." Loki answered.

"No, there is no past TVA. Time doesn't work like that here."

"Well, it does now whether we like it or not." Ivy cut in.

"Leaning heavily towards 'or not'." Loki noted.

Mobius was still having a hard time believing this. "It's impossible!"

"It's possible."

"No, it's not."

Suddenly both Loki and Ivy glitched out of reality for a moment once again, leaving a very frightened and confused Mobius in their absence. The only good thing about this time was that it showed Mobius that they were telling the truth and that they reappeared in the present time seconds later.

"Did you see it?" Loki questioned once the two reappeared.

"Yeah, I saw it."

"Yeah? What does it... How does it look?"

"It looks... I mean, how does it feel?"

"It's not that bad." Loki responded the same time Ivy said, "Like I was just hit by a bus."

For a moment the two looked at each other before turning back to Mobius and repeating what the other had said.

Mobius leaned back in shock and was highly concerned. "Uh, okay... I guess it doesn't look that bad, but we definitely gotta get you both some help." He then began to open his TemPad. "Let me call Miss Minutes."

"No! You can't trust her!" Both Loki and Ivy whispered yelled at the same time.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, we're pretty sure." Ivy answered. "She was there at the End of Time with him."

Mobius shook his head, overwhelmed with so much new information being thrown at him. "We gotta get you two checked out." He seemed to suddenly think of something. "Let's swing you two by Repairs & Advancement. Come on. They'll have a look at you both."

"Repairs & Advancement?" Ivy repeated as Mobius led them to an elevator. "Isn't that just for, I don't know, just for devices?"

Loki nodded in agreement. "Yeah, Mobius, I know you're trying to help, but we need to deal with the bigger problem here. He Who Remains."

Mobius hit the button on the elevator to one of the bottom floors. "I understand and we'll get to that. In order to do that I need a Loki and Ivy Who Remains."

"That was quite clever." Ivy was going to add that joke to her vocabulary.

"Thanks." Mobius seemed to be proud of the joke as well. "Now, we need to address you both disappearing."

"What? I don't keep disappearing. We don't have time..." The universe, or possibly multiverse, seemed to think this was the perfect time for just Loki to disappear and then reappear again.

Ivy tried to hold in a laugh as she patted Loki's shoulder. "Incredibly awful timing there, love."

"I can't... I can't keep looking at it 'cause it's horrible." Mobius looked to the floor as if to avoid seeing it happen again.

"What?"