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bakerstreet2021-07-17 01:04 am
socktan) wrote in bakerstreet2021-07-17 01:04 am
Entry tags:
Hurt/Comfort Meme
Hurt/Comfort - Hurt/comfort is a fan fiction genre that involves the physical pain or emotional distress of one character, who is cared for by another character. The injury, sickness or other kind of hurt allows an exploration of the characters and their relationship.
- Post with Character Name | Series in the subject.
- Others respond. Gen, shipping, smut, everything goes.
- Roll 1-10 at RNG for a scene, play it out and have fun!
1. INJURY. You've been injured. Broken bones or bleeding out or maybe just a tiny little papercut. The choice is yours.
2. SICKNESS. You're sick and laid up in bed, at home or in a hospital. The severity is up to you.
3. FEAR/ANXIETY. Something is happening and you're scared beyond belief.
4. LOSS OF SENSES. Sight, touch, taste, hearing, smell, etc. You've lost some important sense or ability and now you're left to deal with it.
5. DESPAIR. Nothing is good or right anymore and you can't shake the depression. Maybe that friend of yours can help though...
6. BREAKUP. You've been dumped. You need someone to comfort you, possibly by the one who dumped you.
7. MAKE UP. Fight or break up, it's time to makeup.
8. RESCUED. You've just been held captive and/or tortured for however long and finally, someone has come to the rescue.
9. BAD ROMANCE. Fight, cheated on, abused, whatever the case is, someone else can clearly see you need comfort from someone who isn't your terrible lover tonight.
10. LOSS. You've experience a loss of some kind and need help getting through it.
11. INSANITY. You're seeing things that aren't really there, hearing voices, or you're just convinced you're at your wit's end finally and you're going to crack. Maybe someone can give you a helping hand.
12. TIRED. You've had a heard life recently and you're just worn too thin to really care anymore. There's no fight left in you anymore. Can someone help change your mind?
13. ADDICTION. Drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, or any other type of addiction has got you in its grasp. First time or relapse. Will someone be able to save you?
14. INSOMNIA. You can't sleep anymore, no matter how hard you try. Maybe someone can give you company.
15. NIGHTMARES. Or, on the other end of the spectrum, you can't sleep without gruesome, horrible nightmares. Either someone is stuck in your dream with you, witnessing it or they're just waking you up, soothing you out of it.
16. BLACKMAIL. You've been caught doing something you shouldn't and you were blackmailed because of it
17. SEPARATION. You're going to be separated for awhile or were separated for a long time. Either make up for lost time or try to spend every last moment together.
18. VIOLATED. You've been violated in some way. Can include sexual overtones or not. Can someone help you through it?
19. STRANDED. You've been stranded somewhere remote, with no help of anyone finding you for awhile. Can you survive this together?
20. SINS. You're feeling the weight of your sins and guilt clearer than ever. Can someone give you absolution or lessen the ache any?
21. SECRET. It's difficult having to keep that secret of yours, be it a relationship or something you just don't want to share with anybody else. Maybe it's okay to talk about it now though...
22. ADDITION. Babies should be joyous things unless you're in a situation where you know you won't be able to care for them. Either you've adopted or found out you're pregnant.
23. WILDCARD. Anything missing? Make your own, and tell us about it in your top level!.
Sylvie | MCU | OTA
not interested in 22 ]
randomly came up with this post-tv show AU timeline and i'm sorry
It's the way he breathes and subsists on sheer rage afterwards; the way ozone crackles around him and he can feel the electricity buzzing in his fingertips, pulsing in time with his heartbeat, his anger, and the ache of his still-missing eye. The way they throw themselves into the Infinity War for glorious revenge, and he half-expects it to go well and give him that bloodied catharsis he's seeking, because that's the way it always goes, isn't it? The stories always feature your heroes punching back and saving the day, avenging the fallen.
The way they all lose. Again.
Asgard has been decimated. Half of his people already lie dead, and an additional half disappears when the Mad Titan snaps his fingers. A culling, Thor thinks. The kingdom was only in his hands for so little a time, and this is what's already become of it.
After the dust settles, they hold a funeral in New Asgard in northern Norway, for Loki and for everyone else they've lost. But for Thor, it's mainly for Loki.
He stands at the front of the diminished crowd. There's no body, just like before. So he keeps expecting it to be another trick, another ploy from his brother; Loki faked his death once, so he could do it again, couldn't he? Thor keeps glancing over his shoulder and checking the corners, perhaps looking for a mysterious hooded figure standing on the cliffs— he's distracted, and only turns his attention back to the ceremony when Valkyrie settles an apologetic hand against his shoulder. His muscles have been tensed like a vise, and he hadn't even realised it.
He sags, like the air's finally gone out of him.
Thor makes a speech. He's never felt very good at speeches; prefers the heavy fist, the sheer simplicity of combat, but he does his best. He talks about a complicated relationship with a complicated brother. Talks about their sacrifices. About how Asgard isn't a place, it's the people—
( but three quarters of those people are now dead and gone— )
He's fairly certain the speech is terrible. And at some point during the ceremony, Thor notices a new, unfamiliar face standing at the back, behind everyone. Hooded; for a second there's that stupid idiot jolt of hope in his chest, before their face turns and he catches a glimpse of blonde hair. She doesn't look like anyone he recognises. You get used to the people around you, once you've lived a few millennia amongst the same population. And there are so few Asgardians now that he knows most of them by sight — because a good king knows his subjects and can greet them by name, clap them companionably on the shoulder. He's trying.
After the funeral is the wake, and the barrels upon barrels of mead. But rather than lose himself in it, after a while the disgraced king skirts the crowds and makes his way towards the new arrival. And before the woman can make an escape, he's caught at her sleeve. His voice is politely inquiring, but with a vein of steel beneath it, the voice for addressing a stranger who's just crashed his brother's funeral:
"Do we know you?"
no subject
And her victory... it feels hollow. The universe... no, the multiverse. It's free. And so is Sylvie herself. And yet... and yet it cost her everything. She can still feel his lips on hers, the cold track of tears on both their faces. The look of despair on his face when she pushed him through the door.
Turns out there's a flaw in her ability to return... anywhere. The Sacred Timeline still exists, it's just not the only timeline anymore. And the tempad she took off He Who Remains? It's not built for a universe. She can choose where and when to go - on the Sacred Timeline. Just like before. It's just that now, outside of apocalypses, her presence no longer causes a nexus event. Everything goes, now. But she cannot search for Loki across the multiverse. And she cannot return to the TVA that exists in the gaps between the multiverse, likewise no longer a space she can just hop into through a door. She pushed Loki there hoping for his safety, and she cannot follow him.
Perhaps it's for the better. Sylvie isn't sure she could face him now. Surely he must feel betrayed. Surely whatever was between them lies as dead as He Who Remains, victim to her revenge, victim to the choice for freedom and chaos over order. By now she knows that Loki knew what she was walking into - the hurt that comes over a victory that is hollow and leaves you alone and isolated. That's what he wanted to protect her from - it was never about a throne. But thousands of years of hurt and festering anger had to go somewhere. Sylvie regrets it - but she knows that she'd have resented him if she hadn't done it.
So perhaps she was right after all. They're Lokis - and they're bound to lose, one way or another.
Perhaps that is why of all the places in time she could go along the original timeline, this is where she finds herself after collecting her cloak and horns off Lamentis-1. Making sure she will never see another version of Loki face to face, because that would be unbearable. Instead, she goes where therer is no more Asgard, no more Loki. Just the rest of a people she can no longer remember, and a variant of her brother she only remembers in fragments of dreamlike flashes. Blonde, like his mother. Bright. There's little more. She doesn't see him in the man who corners her, only because it's been too long to recall the boy he might have been in a version of Asgard doomed by her very existence. It still hurts. It will never stop hurting, she thinks.
So she looks at him with blue eyes, steels herself and tries to hide the hurt, because what else is she going to do. She attended a funeral for a Loki who does not know her, but looked like the man she loves, the only true good-bye she will ever be able to have, now.
"No. You do not."
And she looks into Thor's eye and thinks she could enchant him, could show him what she is, and what she's done, and how his brother was gentle and kind beneath it all, and how she hurt him. And perhaps her life would end here, because she broke the world, and she broke Thor's brother, and she doesn't know what to do with herself now.
no subject
(Except, technically, here is one. As if the balance is still being maintained; as if, truly, only one of them is meant to exist in one place at a time.)
Thor frowns thoughtfully at her reply, his usually-jovial face carved into a grave and somber expression. It makes him look more like his (their?) father, particularly with that eyepatch to match. But Odin chose to sacrifice his eye for his fabled, all-knowing wisdom. All Thor had to do for wisdom was to suffer.
Now that they're standing this close, actually, he's realising he was wrong. The blonde colour must be some kind of dye, because her hair is dark at the roots. And it nags in the back of his head, as if there's something he's forgetting or a particular detail he can't put his finger on. Because there is something indefinably familiar about her: something to those thin, narrow features and the set of her shoulders. Another grieving Asgardian, and relative to someone he knows? Or a gawker?
"Are you from one of the nearby towns? One of the Norwegian Midgardians?" Adjusting, remembering: "Er, I mean humans."
But he doesn't really think that theory fits, either. There's something in her haunted expression which wouldn't make sense from a curious onlooker, simply come to rubberneck at this ceremony of the gods.
If this was an intruder, an invader, someone he could fight, that would be easier — that would be somewhere he could funnel his restless aching energy, that kernel of furious grief beneath his breastbone. With Mjolnir still destroyed and nothing to replace it, he still has no weapon — but he's learned that he doesn't need one. He could fight with his fists and that lightning in his veins, as he's done before.
This, though, he doesn't know what to do with: one woman, standing diminished, looking just as haggard as he does.
no subject
Sylvie shakes her head, nose scrunching as she hangs her head for a moment. There are words, but she doesn't know them. Compassion and warmth. Coming here was a mistake, like every other step she's ever taken. Just another regret in a long line of them, another miscalculation, driven by an old and ancient hurt. What had she been thinking?
So she takes a step back, puts a little distance between herself and that grave and somber expression on this man's face - kind, too hardened by grief. Her own heart spirals away from her, fragmented, and she doesn't know how to pull herself together. No one ever taught her how to handle feeling like this. How to handle feeling at all. She never grew into a princess, just into the ugly, twisted vestige of a timeline long culled, the survivor who shouldn't exist, and who sustained herself on nothing but rage and hurt for so long.
She keeps more distance between them, but she reaches out hesitantly, eyes flicking up to his face, and then places a careful hand on his arm, just like how she'd touched Loki on Lamentis-1. A soft brush of slim fingers. Her lip trembles.
"I'm sorry for your loss."
I lost him, too. I loved him, too. There are countless Lokis out there now, because I broke the universe, because there's nothing I can't break, and not one thing I can fix.
"I met him, once."
And she has to look down again, has to squeeze her eyes shut, and press her lips together, because grief hits hard. Her Loki is alive, but there's no comfort in that anymore.
no subject
There's her voice, the toothless condolences, so to any onlooker it looks like a completely average banal conversation on the outside. And yet there's a faint green glow at her fingertips and a thrumming beneath it all, like a faint vibration in his teeth.
But unlike the way Loki repelled Sylvie's mental intrusion, Thor has no such defenses: no magic of his own, no training from Frigga, and where Loki's mind has been guarded and closed-off, his brother has always been open and welcoming and trusting, often to his own detriment. His mind is a wide-open door, and so she walks right in.
I lost him, too.
It's the faintest flicker at the edge of his mind, a ticker-tape of rapid images flashing by too quickly for him to catch each one properly. His brother falling backwards through a golden door. A sky crumbling above them. That blooming warmth of love, the sensation of something new and precious, so rare and hard-won—
It looked like the slightest touch, but Thor staggers as if she's punched him in the gut. His own heavy hand reaches out, lands on the woman's shoulder, leaning against her to catch his balance.
"How— when—" he starts. "Did you know him when he was on Sakaar?"
Countless Lokis, Thor, come on. But dulled by that fog of grief as he is, he's still a little slow on the uptake, and he was never really looped into the multiversal memo.
no subject
Sylvie shakes her head.
"No. He never got to go that far. Listen to me... this world you live in, this... timeline, this universe. It used to be the only one. Because everytime someone, anyone, did something that wasn't meant to happen, they would be killed and their entire timeline destroyed. Every... every Loki who survived, or who won his throne, or who made peace with you. Every time that happened... someone interfered to make sure this would be the only outcome."
She crosses her arms, tight as if to protect herself.
"Like a tree. Only every time a branch sprouts, every time the tree tries to grow a different direction, someone cut it off. Leaving only one single trunk, like no variations existed."
And then she holds out a hand, lets green energy flow between her fingertips like smoke.
"I can show you."
no subject
But Thor looks down at the blonde's other hand, that green light coiling around her fingertips, and oh, he recognises that energy. That tuning-fork frequency is almost familiar, like hearing a song you knew once. Almost like someone he knows. Her words roil and wash over him, stunning in their implications, and he's still reeling trying to keep up. Every Loki who survived, or who won his throne, or who made peace with him—
Had that ever happened? Someone was stopping that from happening? He and his brother weren't meant to patch things up?
Sylvie's had a countless lifetime to learn and absorb these revelations, but she can watch those same realisations now rippling across Thor's open book of a face. The distrust sweeps in a second later, even as he's still frowning down at the magic: It could be a trap. This could be yet another horrid trap, maybe a ploy by the Frost Giants, or even Thanos' people, some way to get to Asgard's surviving ruler—
But. He's just so very, very fucking tired. Running in circles, chasing his own tail, always just a hair too late and inadequate. If this is a trap, let this be the last of them.
"Show me," Thor says, and he reaches out with his other hand and clasps it around hers, with the heavy, scarred knuckles of a warrior to her deft magician's fingers.
no subject
And for a moment she wonders if her brother would have grown up like him, tall and strong, a mighty warrior, and her enchantment stutters over an image of Asgard, faded because she cannot quite remember what home looked like, a woman and a boy both golden of hair, their features blurred, centuries beyond her memory's capability to remember their faces.
What she does remember is being pulled out of her chambers, away from playing pretend with figurines of dragons and Valkyries. A blur of images of the TVA, of Miss Minutes and her explanation of the timeline, of being sentenced to death for the crime of existing in a way that violated the way things were written and were meant to be. For a moment her memories flood with the rage of decades, of existing apocalypse to apocalypse with the knowledge that she isn't meant to exist, of being hunted every time she steps out of countless world ending events. Memories of learning that this is the fate of everything and everyone who ever makes a choice that goes against the pre-written order of things. If someone is meant to die, any version of them or others that would lead to their survival are deemed crimes against the timeline. Countless Lokis, and her just one of them, until she pours bleach into her hair and snarls her new name at anyone who will listen.
And then finally the cascade of memories swirls to Loki, who interfered with her plan to kill the timekeepers, who originally wanted to take over, Loki who ruined her revenge and Loki who spoke soft and gentle of his mother in a train car, and of his brother in a windswept shack in the Void, along with other versions of himself - because surviving is what they're good at, after all. Loki, who once removed from his own hurt and shown his future, was gentle and kind and soft. Who learned that his brother loved him through everything after all, and chose to be who his brother saw in him as a result. Loki who wept and wanted no throne, in the end, just for her to be okay.
He Who Remains, grandstanding and mocking her pain and fury and belittling it, who decided that the universe could only exist in this particular order and no other.
A broken universe.
But most of all, she shows him Loki. Singing on the train and holding her hand awaiting the end of it all, proud and defiant in the face of the subjugation of free will, gentle around his newfound friends and allies, with the hurt inflicted by his adopted father and the lure of a throne softened into finding a purpose for himself. He's beautiful and kind, and he is not dead, but she lost him all the same, and he is the Loki Thor knew, plucked from along his very same timeline.
She pulls her hand back and steps back and away, eyes wet but wary - he may well pass judgment. And she has never learned to trust again.
no subject
The brother she shows him is a Loki who both is and is not his Loki: so similar, just scooped up from the timeline when they were carting him back to Asgard in chains. That isn't how it happened, Thor recalls; he didn't slip away like an eel or a cockroach scurrying away, but now he's seeing the repercussions of the one that did.
And ultimately, Sylvie's Loki is closer to the Loki that Thor eventually knew. A wiser one, who sacrificed himself in another futile battle, snapping at Thanos' heels in an effort to do the right thing. One who cared. One who finally prioritised the rest of the world over himself. Her Loki — who has these weary, wise vestiges of his own — seems to be lost, scattered somewhere, shoved through a door and vanished across who knows how many timelines.
The Asgardian king doesn't know how her magic works. It could be a lie. It could be a trap. It could be an illusion spun up for his benefit, convincing in its realism.
But Thor has a habit of believing Lokis, and so he turns to Sylvie — realising now, fully, exactly who she is — and he seizes her arm again.
"Let's go find him," he says. Voice firm, resolute. "Those doors— that equipment, what do you call them, Time Pads?— there must be a way to get a hold of another. To keep moving between timelines. I know a time wizard we could consult. We could try."
Three-quarters of Asgard is still dead, as is half of the universe, and there's absolutely nothing he can do about that bleak canvas of despair, but perhaps they can do something about fixing this. Just this. One brother, one almost-lover, one man that they both adored.
no subject
"It's not just time," she huffs, blinking against the emotion. Is this what it's like to throw oneself into a reality with a Thor - boundless enthusiasm and blind optimism? Sylvie prides herself on always having a plan; having none is new to her, and there's still a hollow ache where once there had been purpose. But to just leap at the impossible? "The timeline isn't what it used to be, it's not just... there's countless versions of time, now. I put him with allies, but if he left, then there is no finding him..."
Sylvie tries to pull back, eyes desperate in the way they hold Thor's gaze - it's a fear not of failure to find Loki, but a fear of finding him, of having to confront her own actions and knowing, assuming, fearing, that she will be held accountable, that she will be judged.
And just like that, she snaps from the back foot to the front, because all Sylvie has ever known is to go on the offensive, to throw herself into her rage. Except it is despair, and hurt, and chasing something she does not yet quite understand.
"You should be angry. You should be disappointed. Isn't that how this is supposed to work? Isn't that how it has always worked, for every Loki that has ever existed? How can you say 'we', when you know what I broke?"
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And he knows exactly why. His throat clenches, like he's trying to talk through a lead rock. He's broaching a subject he hasn't actually spoken to anyone about yet, a guilt sitting heavy on his shoulders.
"You haven't reached this yet in your timeline— I think? I have no idea how any of this works— but I had an opportunity to kill a tyrant. And because I dragged it out, because I did not take that killing blow, half of this universe perished. Half of the universe, Sylvie, is gone. I should have killed him when I had the chance. So if we're comparing what we've broken..."
He shrugs a shoulder. Looks helpless.
"If there is one thing out of everything that we may fix, then I want to fix it, and find him."
no subject
Her eyes go bright, and she has to look down, squeezed them shut, and yet still there are tears.
"My timeline doesn't exist anymore," she confesses then, lost and helpless. "You have to understand there was a very specific plan for what role a Loki - any Loki - should play in the universe. He was always meant to be the villain so that others could be the heroes. And every version of Loki that existed and chose differently, they were culled. Their entire reality was deleted from existence. Just... gone."
She wraps her arms around herself. Remembers a crown of golden hair, but can't put facial features to him anymore. He'd been so young.
"I was told I was adopted, as a child. And my brother hugged me, told me to him I'd always be his annoying little sister." Her voice cracks, but the words come tumbling, raw with pain. She'd never told this to anyone. Not even to Loki. "I knew I would never get the throne. So I thought.... splendid. I get to be whatever I want. And I sat down with my toys. And then I was arrested for crimes against the Sacred Timeline. Found guilty, punishable by death. And when I was dragged away, my timeline was deleted. Everyone in that timeline died, Thor. Every single Asgardian. Every single Midgardian. Every planet through the entire galaxy. Purged from existence because something I did meant I was no longer compatible with my role as the villain. And everyone I ever knew paid the price for it."
She pauses, wipes her hands over her eyes, her cheeks, hasty and with trembling fingers. It still hurts to think about, after all these years.
"This Loki... is Variant L1130. That means 1130 Lokis did something different. Maybe worse. Maybe better. But for each and every single one, an entire universe was purged. And that's just the Lokis."
She presses her lips together.
"You're from the Sacred Timeline. That means these are the events are written, as they were meant to happen. If you'd killed your tyrant, you'd have been sentenced to death. And this entire universe would have been scrubbed from existence, fully and completely." Her jaw ticks. She can't look at Thor, stares at the ground instead. Tears still coming hot and fast. "You were set up to fail. Just like your brother was set up to die."
no subject
But his mental image of the other Thor stands out crystal-sharp to his eyes. It's disorienting, hearing tales of his alternate self; it leaves him wondering how things might have played out in these other timelines. What the other Thors are like. If they are all worthy.
What makes his own damned timeline so sacred, anyhow? What makes half a dead universe sacred?
"And your only crime was existing," Thor repeats numbly, and Sylvie can hear that answering grind of anger in his teeth. There is something so uniquely unfair about it, this dead-end she's described. His concept of the universe had been so simple once upon a time: Grow up big and strong, become a reknowned warrior, protect the nine realms against outside incursions. Simple. Easy.
But what do you do with this, when the slaughter comes from outside time itself? When it's not an invasion from outside, but it's embedded in the very bedrock of the reality you're standing on?
Turning his attention back to Sylvie, Thor helplessly watches the way she scrubs at her face but the tears keep spilling down her cheeks, her face downcast. His heart already ached, his chest having felt like a hollowed-out ribcage all day — full of his grief from the funeral, which is still clearing out, the Asgardians dispersing and heading back to their seaside homes. He accidentally catches Val's eye over the blonde's shoulders, sees her inquiring look, and he simply nods. It's okay.
And Thor makes another decision. He steps closer to where Sylvie is curled in on herself, and his broad arms reach around her narrow shoulders and draw her closer, and with all of his strength, he simply, silently folds her into a crushing hug.
And for once, he isn't actually worried about getting a knife in his side. Maybe he should be. But oh well.
He drags her into the embrace that he can't pull his brother into any longer; and which her own brother hasn't been able to do for so very, very long.
no subject
"No-..."
But the word is choked off, shocked rather than unwilling. She doesn't expect this, and it hits her fight or flight instincts hard for a moment. In his arms, he goes tense and stiff, every muscle straining against the way he holds onto her, like she's this close to trying to claw her way out of the hug.
The first and last person in a thousand years to have held her gentle is... was...
She makes a sound, choked in the back of her throat, something angry and desperate and oh so very, very hurt. An existence at the ends of a thousand worlds, an empty victory, and the loss of all she'd dare care about in oh so very long. She can still feel his hands, warm, on her shoulders. Can still see the tears falling. 'I just want you to be okay.'
And she'd pushed him away, unable to let go of the barbed wire squeezing the blood from her heart.
"... no..."
And Sylvie's trembling, shaking like she's about to come apart, like after everything she's found herself running on empty and is rattling to pieces, every single hurt she'd kept so tightly wound up in herself is unspooling all at once. How she'd tried to go back home over and over again, but she couldn't, and through trying had only doomed so many other versions of Asgard. How she'd had to survive on the run from the TVA and at the ends of all worlds from early childhood on. How she rejected her very identity for all it cost her.
If her hands find their way into the fabric of his cloak, clutching so fiercly the fabric comes close to ripping, no one needs to see. If she hides her face and tears against his chest, it's nobody's business but her own.
If for just this once, she lets herself not be alone in her pain and grief, it can be the first secret they share. Him, the wrong Thor to be her brother, and her, the wrong Loki to be his sister. And yet here they are. And all she has is his conviction, and all he has is her endless, burning drive.
Her voice is clearer when she hisses, low and fierce, a vow:
"Yes. We'll find him."
no subject
Then Thor finally lets himself crumple and his composure splinter open. Sylvie buries her face his chest and her fingers curl into his cloak, and he bows his head, tucks his chin against the top of her head. Some of his tears trickle quietly, silently, down his cheeks and into his blond beard and then her dyed-blonde hair. It’s a mess. She’s a mess. They’re both a mess, but her voice is sharp and ferocious when she speaks and accepts his vow.
He holds on for longer than normal.
Lokis have never been much for easy physical affection; where Thor was a boundlessly affectionate golden retriever, Loki had been a prickly and aloof black cat, only ever accepting touch on his own terms. It’s easy to think that Sylvie is the same, and that makes the embrace all the more special; he’ll take this rare comfort where he can get it. After everything, they both need it. The pressure of his arms could be claustrophobic, but in this instance it’s comforting: a heavy weighted blanket.
Finally, he lets go. Exhales a shaky breath (truly not befitting of royalty), and wipes the back of his hand against his eyes, swiping the tears away. Gods, what a day it’s been.
“I’ve been thinking of abdicating anyway,” he admits suddenly, with a strangled desperate laugh. The entire situation now feels hysterical and strange. “I know exactly who could run the kingdom in good hands, if I’m to go gallivanting across timelines in search of a lost brother.”
He shouldn’t get his hopes up. He shouldn’t. This is an impossible quest.
And yet. And yet. Having this small, tiny shred of hope — and someone to share it with — is a sudden and unexpected and precious lifeline to hang onto, one to seize with both hands.