Archive of Our Own ^beta

The rain feels frigid, soaking through their clothes, through their skin. Deeper, if that is even possible. B-15 thought the rain from a hurricane would be warmer, would be warm like the summers that brought them, but she’d been wrong.

She was wrong about a lot of things, though, she thinks bitterly. She was wrong that the TVA is doing work for the greater good. She was wrong about believing that the TVA is all that has ever existed for her, that she’d been lovingly (or at least carefully) crafted to do something good and righteous. No, she’d been so, so wrong. It isn’t her fault, of course. She knows that too, but that doesn’t make it sting any less. That knowledge doesn’t make the rain any less cold.

“I’m sorry.” B-15 croaks out.

Sylvie stands to her right, under the paltry covering of what had once been a small seating area outside the Roxxcart front entrance. B-15 receives a cautious glance, but even through her fuzzy vision, she can see something incredibly sad there. “Pardon?”

Sylvie is mad still, yes. Mad doesn’t even cover it, she’s furious, she’s burning with a fury that could blow the fuse on the obnoxious neon lights that surround them in the Roxxcart parking lot. Hundreds and hundreds of years of running because the TVA smelled her blood in the water and wouldn’t let up. They stole her life. But they stole B-15’s life too. No, they stole Beatrice’s life.

“I don’t–” Beatrice sighs, something so heavy it’s like she can feel the weight. “I know that they stole me, brainwashed me, changed me, whatever they did to make me this way. But, I still hunted down innocents. Killed them. I hunted you.”

Sylvie stays quiet for a long moment. She’s trying, with everything she has, to channel her fury into the ones at the top, the Time Keepers. They did this. This person next to her, with the hardened gaze, is a victim too. Truthfully, Sylvie doesn’t understand how the morality of these hunters, clerks, analysts, and judges hasn’t won out, how they can’t see why it’s bad to kidnap and prune beings from the timeline, erasing them with such sudden finality that the sparks drift away and become dust in the atmosphere before you can even blink. How do they not feel guilt for murder? But, she is trying to see, she really is, how being told that the ends justify the means, being told that it isn’t murder, it’s just cleaning, fixing simple cosmic mistakes, all that can shape a person’s morality and understanding of the world when those lies are whispered in their ears from the moment they wake up in the TVA, with a fresh mind clear of all petty things like dreams, love, passion, and hope.

Though Sylvie supposes that in the end, she has been driven to kill too, when she realized that running wasn’t enough. Maybe, she considers, they were both just trying to survive, however they believed they had to do that.

So, she doesn’t fully get it, and she doesn’t think she’ll ever not be angry at the circumstances and the world as it is, but the woman beside her doesn’t deserve the brunt of that anger. Sylvie had seen with her own eyes the life she’d reconstructed for Beatrice, the way that now solid glare had been soft and warm, trained on a toddler that had been bouncing around the room, waving a bubble wand and giggling. She had felt the warmth of Beatrice’s solid hand entangled with her own, a tad rough but comforting as she slotted herself into the role of her partner that sat across the broad wooden table. They had sat in the kitchen that was straight out of a sitcom, complete with outdated yet oddly charming blue floral walls covered in family photos and knick-knacks that were almost all from the tiny gift shops from the vacations they took each summer.

Sylvie had felt raw electric energy when she’d entered the mind of C-20 as she probed her for the information she needed, but with Beatrice, she only felt peace. A calm and happiness so pure Sylvie allowed herself to even feel it for a moment. She typically stayed alert and on mission when inside someone else’s head, she couldn’t risk getting too tangled up and not being able to leave, or worse, not wanting to. But there in the deepest crevice of a memory that had been squashed down, where Sylvie wasn’t trying to get information or fight for control, she’d allowed herself to let that peace to cover her like a blanket for just the short time she had.

“You did bad things, but you’ve been just a puppet.” Sylvie finally replies, still having to almost shout to overpower the pounding rain. “I’m angry, but not with you.”

If Sylvie is honest with herself, which she’d rather not be but feels she must while in this roaring cesspool of rain and debris, she feels a deep, almost painful empathy for Beatrice. She can’t quite explain why, maybe it’s the peace she’d felt in her reconstructed memories, maybe it was the way Beatrice had sought her out, gone against the relentless programming to break the rules when she’d felt something snap, or maybe Sylvie is just going soft like Loki. But regardless of why, she feels the urge to be supportive, to guide her through the pain of having her life taken. Even if Sylvie had it happen to her in real-time and hasn’t ever forgotten, she still knows that persistent sting, that feeling of raw unfairness that burns and burns until it either scorches you alive or lights a fire under you.

And for Beatrice, that pain is fresh. Sylvie has had years and years to sit in the rage, let it grow and morph and become something she can work with. Beatrice got to live a whole lifetime in just a few minutes.

Sylvie reaches out her hand and grabs a hold of Beatrice’s hand, without looking at first, lest she breaks her resolve. Just as she had when making that first contact to show her the life she’d lost, she grips it and squeezes. Eventually, when she feels Beatrice’s eyes boring into the side of her face, she turns slightly to meet her eyes. Beatrice just keeps a steady gaze on her, and Sylvie can see the rawness of her eyes even though the tears just mingle with the rain.

“None of this is fair,” Sylvie states. “You didn’t deserve this, to have your life stolen.”

Beatrice swallows hard.

“But this isn’t over yet. I’m not done with my mission. If the TVA thinks they can be rid of me this easily, they’re stupider than I thought.”

Beatrice cracks a smile at that, however faint and perhaps forced. She can feel the ferocity rolling off Sylvie in waves, she knows she isn’t giving platitudes or false hope. Beatrice doesn’t know Sylvie all that well, but she doesn’t think Sylvie is the type for those fake niceties anyway.

“Thank you.” Beatrice squeezes the hand Sylvie had engulfed. “For showing me my real life. For giving me something real to fight for. Something truly good.”

“Anytime.” Sylvie manages a small smile of her own.

There is a long moment that is almost silent, save for the howling wind and thrashing rain. Beatrice straightens herself out, trying to force the fear up and out of her as if she can quite literally let it roll off her back. She looks at Sylvie and nods once.

“Now, let’s get out of this weather,” Beatrice says, and doesn’t drop Sylvie’s hand until she has to reach for her TemPad to set them a path to the TVA.

They step through the Timedoor and the weight and gross stickiness of wet clothes are immediately apparent. Sylvie goes about drying off the best she can, wringing out her hair and letting the water pool on the floor, before shaking herself off like a dog. She is, quite frankly, beyond the point of caring about having the dignity to look poised while drying off.

Beatrice is similarly caught up in drying herself, with a bit more of the orderly precision Sylvie would expect from a hunter, with her smoothly unclipping her vest to squeeze out what she can and running a careful hand through her hair to empty it of water before scrubbing it across her face to erase the remnants of what few tear tracks hadn’t been eroded by rain.

“I’m with you.” Beatrice finally says, breaking the silence.

Sylvie raises her eyebrow slightly. “Yeah?”

She doesn’t hold her breath on anyone being on her side at this point. Too risky. But despite that, she’d let Loki in, hadn’t she? She still doesn’t understand all of what is happening with that, but she’s grown closer to him than she’d typically allow, and so quickly, too. And now, with Beatrice, she’s unwittingly allowed herself to grow the slightest bit attached as well, from the moment she realized Beatrice hadn’t dragged her into the rain to fight her, but to put her mind willingly into Sylvie’s hands to learn the truth.

“Yeah,” Beatrice sighs, clipping her vest back on and retrieving her helmet, visually falling back into her role as a soldier. “I have some plans, though I have to play along for just a bit longer. But just know, I’m on your side. I trust you.”

Trust. The crux of it all. Unfamiliar and wildly unattainable, at least she has thought so for centuries. Perhaps not so much anymore, though she won’t give it out in spades. Only in small, manageable pieces that she can still afford to lose if things go south, which they often do. So, for Beatrice, the one who has broken free and vowed to fight for good despite it all, she’ll allow one of those pieces.

“Good to know,” Sylvie manages a small smirk. “I’ll see you on the other side of all this, once I’ve torn this place down.”

“Sounds great.” Beatrice’s smile is tight and intense, but real.

Beatrice steadies herself and steels herself to walk out like nothing ever happened, like she didn’t just have her world turned on its axis, and like she isn’t still reeling from it. But she’s got a mission to execute, even if it’s brand new, and that’s what she does best.

Sylvie gives her a lazy two-finger salute as Beatrice leaves, settling down onto the hard plastic chair, kicking her feet up on the table with a clatter. She knows that when Renslayer or some of her pathetic lackeys come to get her at some point, to torture her, to try to prune her, or whatever other nonsense they try, they’ll see her still wet hair and clothing and know something fell out of place in their perfect little world. Though the thought of Renslayer’s intense distress at the imperfection makes her a bit giddy, she hopes Beatrice has her plan in order, because she knows the dominos are about to fall.

And for once, the job doesn’t feel like it’s all on her.