A/N: in a very short space of time I have gone from wondering whether I want to write this fic to becoming consumed by it, and so here is another chapter<3 

...

You stumble through the strange glowing doorway, flanked by two guards, the bossy woman striding ahead of you. The room which you're led into is a horrible combination of mud orange and brown, and when you turn to look back the way you'd come the doorway has vanished. Thor has vanished.

Loki has vanished.

Your head is spinning; the two guards holding your arms are actually having to hold you upright.

The woman ahead of you stops and turns around, regarding you coldly.

"I'll need any weapons you have on your person."

You genuinely, honestly don't know if you have any weapons on you. You don't even remember what you're wearing.

The woman rolls her eyes and begins to search you; you let her. Even if you'd wanted to, you're sure you wouldn't be able to stop her.

Apparently you're weapon free, because her search is unsuccessful. Weapon free apart from your magic, of course. Knowing that you have your magic is little consolation. Nothing is consolation. Loki is... he's...

An odd sort of choking noise leaves you and tears blur your vision as you're dragged forward once again, this time towards a circular desk, behind which an overly eager looking man sits. Your whole body feels as though someone has recently taken to it with a cricket bat. Embedded with nails.

The guards on either side of you release you, and leave. It's all you can do to stay upright, grabbing hold of the desk for support.

"Is she alright?" the man behind the desk asks, peering at you curiously. If you were in any fit state to be observant, you would see that his name badge reads 'Casey'.

"Log this as evidence." the woman says, ignoring Casey's question completely, tossing something on the desk in front of him.

A loud metallic scrape makes you look up, and you see the gauntlet which had minutes previously been on Thanos' hand, crushing the life out of Loki – you squeeze your eyes shut, letting out another pained groan.

"Oh... can you at least tell me what it is?" Casey asks, pulling it towards him by one massive index finger tentatively. The woman already has you roughly by the arm and is leading you away towards a door.

"Be careful with it." you croak, making brief eye contact with Casey before getting dragged away.

"In here." the woman says to you, pushing you through the now open door before you. You stumble through it and fall to your knees, the door shutting swiftly behind you, leaving you in darkness.

There's barely time to gather your thoughts before the lights come on and something is plucking at the top of your cape. You swat whatever it is away without looking, flinching when your knuckles hit solid metal.

When you do look up, you wish you hadn't. There's a huge robot in front of you, dominating most of the room which you're in, a terrifying robot face smiling down at you.

"Please stand up." it asks you, politely enough. You suppose you'd better do as it asks, lest it vaporises you. Although, that wouldn't be the worst thing that's happened today.

With Herculean effort, you manage to haul yourself to your feet and stand swaying before the horrifying robot face. Oh good, you think as you observe it. It has pincer arms.

"Hold very still." it speaks again, in a tinny robotic voice.

You close your eyes as it zaps you, marvelling at the fact that you don't care what happens to you. When you open your eyes again you're standing in your underwear.

You open your mouth, and then close it. And then you fall through the floor.

The pain which explodes through your limbs as you land is... something, you suppose. There's nothing going on anywhere else inside you. It occurs to you that you're wearing clothes again, a horrible beige set with the letters TVA printed across one side of your chest in garish orange writing.

And there's some sort of collar sitting heavily around your neck, moving uncomfortably against the base of your jaw and chin.

You feel a pang of loss for the Asgardian armour you were wearing – you remember now that's what it was – before you're empty again.

"Please sign to verify this is everything you've ever said." a voice tells you.

When you look up, you see a desk at ground level, and a cat. You struggle to your feet again, and meet the owner of the voice, sat before a large stack of paper. He looks inherently bored.

You move tentatively towards the stack of paper and peer at the top sheet.

'Be careful with it.' is the most previous thing written. And above that, a singular word: 'No!'. Then several lines of the same word, over and over.

Loki. Loki. Loki.

You stop looking in case you throw up all over this bored looking man's desk.

"Please sign." he repeats, gesturing to the pen. So you do.

You should predict what's coming next, but the second fall through the floor comes as just as much as a shock as the first one. And it hurts just as much, too.

"Stop dropping me through floors!" you exclaim angrily, the words grating painfully against the inside of your throat. You hear yourself speak, and wince at how pathetic you sound. How weak you feel.

"Please confirm that to your knowledge you are not a fully robotic being, were born an organic creature, and do in fact possess what many cultures would call a soul."

An entirely humourless laugh escapes you at the last part, but it might have also been a sob. The man who had spoken gives you an odd look, and you give him one right back.

A soul? Not anymore, you think to yourself, the only person left to think to, as you step through the large metal structure before you, half hoping that you are in fact a robot and it will vaporise you on the spot.

It doesn't. It just hums loudly and emits a bright flash, before printing something out which the man takes from the side of the structure. You find you don't care what it is.

"Through the door, please." he says, gesturing ahead of you, and you comply.

You emerge into a large room of the same disgusting orange and brown colour scheme, queuing barriers snaking their way around the space as though this is an airport and not some freaky, hellish alternate reality. Because you're sure that's what this is.

The room is completely empty, save for one singular guard standing to your left.

"Take a ticket." the guard says.

You look to the ticket stand in front of you, and back at the guard.

"Are you serious?" you ask, imagining as you do so the bored man upstairs recording the sounds created by your vocal chords.

"Take a ticket." the guard repeats. His words are probably, somehow, being recorded too.

"I'm the only person in here." you say bluntly.

"Take a tick-"

"Alright." you snap, ripping a ticket from the box in front of you and starting to make your way through the maze of queuing barriers.

What should have been a ten second walk takes you about two minutes as you weave your way in and out of the barriers, fighting the urge to blast them out of the way with your magic. You doubt you have the strength for it anyway.

There's an annoying American accented voice coming from one of the TVs on the wall. You assume you're supposed to be watching and listening, so you don't.

When you finally reach the end, another bored looking worker, a lady this time, holds out a hand from behind another desk, this time set behind a wall with a small opening above it.

"Ticket."

You swallow your disbelief at the stupidity of it all and hand her your ticket. She glances at it briefly before doing something behind the desk which makes two guards appear through a door and take you away.

There's no point trying to remember the way you are taken, all of the corridors are the same, and what is there to get back to anyway?

It's so alien to you, being in a situation like this and not having a plan, or at the very least, panicking. But this is so far from anything you've experienced before; you're immensely out of your depth.

And you just watched Loki die.

So you don't bother, just letting the guards take you where they will.

As it turns out, where they will take you is a courtroom. You're led to a small podium, where you look up to a judge behind a high bench. She's looks kind enough, but she also looks like she won't mind sending you to your death.

She also looks bored; everyone here looks so very bored.

"Next case, please. Y/L/N. Variant E1540, AKA Y/N Y/L/N, is charged with sequence violation 4-60-37. How do you plead?" the judge addresses you.

Please let me wake up. Please, please let me wake up.

"Variant." the judge snaps, and you open your eyes.

"How do you plead?" she repeats.

"I don't even know what I'm charged with." you tell her, once again loathing how small your voice sounds in the large courtroom.

"Violating the laws of the sacred timeline. Altering the correct flow of time."

You laugh flatly. It hurts.

"I haven't altered any correct 'flows of time'. I don't know what that means."

The judge smiles thinly.

"There is only one correct 'flow of time'. And you wouldn't be here if you hadn't altered it, Miss Y/L/N." she tells you, before repeating, "How do you plead?"

"Not guilty." you say, uncaring. The judge raises an eyebrow.

"I'm afraid the court finds you guilty, and I sentence you to be reset." she says, and picks up her gavel. Reset?

You open your mouth in protest, but before she can bring it down or you can speak, someone else interrupts her.

"Judge Renslayer – if I may..." a male voice carries past you, and you turn to see a grey haired man with a crooked nose stepping out from between the pews of the courtroom. He has an armful of official looking files, and his tie is lopsided, his shirt untucked at the back.

"Mobius, this is the second time today you have interrupted a verdict." Judge Renslayer snaps, the gavel hovering halfway down towards it's block.

"I know, I know, I'm sorry but -" you don't hear the rest of Mobius' sentence because he hurries past you up to the bench and lowers his voice. You close your eyes again, digging your fingers into your arm.

Ouch.

As if anything could be any more painful than what you've endured today. If anything was going to wake you up from a dream, no, a nightmare, it would be Loki dying right in front of your eyes.

He can't be dead. He can't be, not Loki –

"Variant. Come with me."

You do as he says.

It's Mobius who escorts you from the room, waving aside the guards who move to accompany the two of you.

You walk in silence for a while, not speaking, trying not to think.

"Hey, I know you're grieving, but I do need you to talk to me." Mobius says, in an oddly kind tone of voice.

You look up to ask him how he knows you're grieving, and catch sight of... you don't know what. It's enough to stop you in your tracks: a spawling citadel spread out beneath you, but it looks as though it stetches on and on for miles. It could be as large as a whole country.

It would be beautiful if your world hadn't come crashing down around you in the last half an hour. Has it only been half an hour?

"Pretty amazing, isn't it?" Mobius says, and you find yourself unable to reply.

"What is this place?" you finally manage.

"What, you didn't listen to Miss Minutes' talk in the ticket room?" Mobius asks you. You look at him blankly. Mobius sighs.

"Alright, I'll tell you on the way."

And he does. You get an elevator down to... somewhere, and while you do he explains that you're in the Time Variance Authority, the TVA. They apprehend people, variants, who break off from the sacred timeline, causing Nexus Events.

"When you went all crazy and murdered Thanos, you caused a Nexus Event. It was actually just before that that you caused it, but Thanos' death was when the branch really started diverging. It was almost at a right angle to the sacred timeline when B-15 got to you." Mobius tells you as the elevator doors ping open and he strides out.

"What?" you say, following him.

"Loki's death pushed it further away too, but that wasn't such a big deal. Loki variants die all the time, but a Thanos variant dying..." here Mobius whistles, "You really – Variant?"

You're stood several feet down the corridor from Mobius, blinking white spots of rage out of your eyes. Your head is spinning again.

'That wasn't such a big deal.' Loki dying, 'not a big deal'?

"Come on, let's get you sat down." Mobius says, walking back to collect you. He's lucky that he doesn't try and touch you.

'Loki variants die all the time.'

All of a sudden you start to care a little bit. You want answers.