It was always cold in the TVA.

Not truly—not the kind of cold that gnawed at the bones or froze the breath mid-air—but a hollow, sterile chill. Like the temperature was filtered through a bureaucracy. It wasn’t designed to comfort, just to be. Like everything else in this place.

Time didn’t move here. Not really. It ticked forward on paper and on screens, but Loki had stopped feeling it long ago. He didn’t know how long he’d been here. Weeks? Years? Days? The TVA didn’t care. The TVA didn’t count like that.

He was Loki Laufeyson, Variant L1130, subject of arrest and rehabilitation. The burden of glorious purpose reduced to paperwork, temporal scans, and beige hallways.

It wasn’t punishment in the classic sense. Not like the prisons of Asgard or the dungeons of Jotunheim. But it was cruel all the same. It was a place designed to tell you that you didn’t matter. That your version of life was a mistake.

And gods help him, maybe it was.

He didn’t fight them anymore. Not really. After the first dozen outbursts—after Mobius had grown tired of the dramatics and the guards had proven entirely immune to threats—Loki had retreated into something quieter. Something watchful.

He kept to himself. Drank the bad coffee. Read the same four books in the TVA archives. Sat through the orientation videos that treated him like a half-witted child. Played nice. Played patient. Played dead.

And all the while, he wondered:

Was this it?

Most variants were plucked from their branches before soulmarks or soulmate voices could ever bloom. The TVA didn’t believe in bonds like that. They believed in time. And sacred order.

But he had. Once. Desperately.

Even when the universe offered nothing back, Loki believed he was destined to have someone. Someone who could understand what the burden of thinking too much felt like. Someone who would not fear him. Someone who might even want him.

But it had been silence. For centuries. Like the whole universe had taken one look at him and decided, “No. Not this one.”

He didn’t even know what her voice might sound like. He used to wonder, in secret. Dream, sometimes. A voice like silver. Like storms. Like home.

But now? Now he sat in a quiet TVA corridor on a battered bench, head resting back against the wall, watching the time-stream graphics flicker across the ceiling. His thoughts were low, muttered things no one heard but him.

"Mobius is going to try that damned jet ski speech again, I can feel it. If he does, I swear I’ll... gods, he’s so exhausting. Always smiling like a fool with something clever to say, like I’m meant to just forget the fact that I was dragged here in chains. That I was meant for more than this. That I ever mattered at all."

Everyone else had someone. Thor heard his soulmate the day he held Mjolnir. Even in the Time Theater, that memory stung.

Why not me? Why have I always been—

It happened then. So soft, so sudden, it nearly slipped by.

A thought that was not his. Like a ripple in still water. Not invasive, not loud. Just... there.

He blinked.

Sat up straighter.

The TVA didn’t have ambient voices. No sound traveled through their timeline shields. Nothing leaked in. It was impossible.

So how in the hell was someone in his mind?

Another thought followed it. Not clear words, not yet. Just the shape of someone else’s thoughts, pressing gently into his own.

His hands twitched. His magic flared under his skin like it had missed the air.

For the first time in what felt like a hundred stolen years, his breath caught in his throat not from rage, not from panic—but from hope. Wild, stammering hope.

Could it be? Here, of all places?