"You got me for the gift exchange?" Oh, that makes it even better: she's ridiculously pleased. And, silently, touched that he would consider her somebody worthy of spoiling. That knowledge is better than everything that he got her, truly.
"Jone gave me a mace." Something she's very taken with, considering it's the first to be mentioned, "I got some great books, too." Tacked on, as if an after-thought: "Margaery got me a comb, for my hair." The way her gaze darts away from him and out into the middle distance is just as unsubtle.
"You?" She knows exactly what he's doing, but she'll let him play his little game for a minute longer.
"I did." Loki grins at Abby; he'd been more than pleased when he'd gotten the name off someone he knew and likes.
He taps a finger against his lip. "Jone is the redheaded woman who does weapons training?" Fitting, that she'd get Abby a weapon. He also catches that glance Abby, and chuckles about it.
"How are things with the lady?" Last they talked about Margaery, Abby was questioning how to know if she was liked.
Abby admires her, an emotion that has taken some time for her to formally name. Jone is a very capable person, an incredible fighter; she got Abby out of more than one tight spot back during the skeleton ambush. She needs to think of a way to repay her for watching her back. Saving her ass.
"Good," she answers, automatically. She isn't going to tack on an I think? or give Loki an inch, because she's decided that she's impatient, actually.
There's a humming noise of consideration and raised eyebrows before Loki ducks his head for a moment, takes a breath, and looks toward the sky.
"It's good, I think. Complicated. But good." He rubs at his jaw a little. "I care about her a lot and I'm half certain that is going to bite me in the ass rather directly any moment now, but...good."
Bashful is a great look on him. Abby grins in response, glances down, and finds the puppy trailing them at a lazy distance: he's called back, for a second time, to her heel. He got into something back there while she was distracted... his paws and legs are all muddy. His face is too, from where he obviously shoved his nose into the smell. Damnit.
"Wags," she protests, but he only grins at his own name. Dogs.
To Loki, "What makes you think that? You're a catch."
"Goodness, Wagner," is said to the puppy. "Please keep your rather filthy but still impressive paws well away from me and my clothes, will you?"
Ever so politely.
"I'm not a catch; I'm a person with a monstrous past, didn't you know?" He shakes his head a little. "Something will go sideways. I don't know what I'm doing, really; she's married to the native variant of me, which, I don't know. I tell myself it's the same as what I would do, but is it? Would it be? We aren't the same; he left her here, to investigate something or another and cause trouble."
Huffing out a laugh that has no mirth to it. "I don't think I could do that. And that should terrify me." A beat. "It doesn't. That does terrify me. Inevitably something will go wrong. Things go wrong all the time, especially here."
Abby swallows a laugh when Wags tilts his head from side to side at the sound of Loki's voice, staring intently at him- he immediately darts off, as they start to hit more open and empty space, longing for a good run. She lets him go this time, he'll come back if she shouts.
Besides, this deserves her full attention.
And he's told her off for being self-deprecating. Abby's smile slips. "I do know," she says, after a beat. "S'why I like you." People with monstrous pasts should stick together. Remind each other not to make the same mistakes.
She isn't sure if he wants her advice, or her ear, but he's getting the former. He'll always have the latter anyway. "Kinda sounds like you're trying to talk yourself out of it. Why do you think you're going to fuck it up?"
Honest question. Gonna... circle back to this 'native variant' thing.
You ever wonder if people like us deserve good things is on the tip of his tongue before Loki manages to bite it back. If she said that, he would argue with her. And he doesn't exactly want to argue.
He's not sure what he wants. Someone to listen. Someone to tell him he's catastrophizing. Someone he can trust to be real and honest with him.
Abby suits that need.
Having thus reassured himself that he's not gone off and started a conversation he can't possibly see through, he turns her question over in his head for a moment. "Because I fuck up...everything." A shrug. "I get people killed, or plots unravel and people stop trusting me, so I've tried not...plotting anything, and I suppose that's going fine, but I don't really know how to tell?" He watches Wagner tear across the earth, chasing birds that hang out near the docks. "It's only been six months, more or less. I'm mortal now, so, a year matters, half a year matters." Another shrug, and he blinks, shaking his head. "Why wouldn't I think I was going to fuck it up?"
What he says hurts in more ways than one: he's a friend, most importantly. She cares about him, and it's sad that feels this way about himself, but those exact things could have come from her mouth and rung just as true. I fuck everything up. I get people killed. People stop trusting me.
She looks at the dog running down seagulls, his ears flapping madly in the wind.
Why wouldn't I think I was going to fuck it up?
You're a piece of shit, Abby. You always have been.
"I get it."
She really does, is the thing. More than he knows. "But other people pick up on stuff like that. Sometimes it can get really obvious. If you think it's going to happen that much, you could end up... engineering it." If that makes sense. Abby's pushed enough people away with her bullshit, she should know. "You owe yourself a better shot at it than that. This is important to you. Don't sabotage it now."
Loki puffs out his cheeks and sighs loudly, turning his gaze to the horizon. "We've talked about it, Alexandrie and I. About my propensity to sabotage the important things and my fears about it." He flares his nose, hands in his pockets. "And it's not terrible, when we talk about it. Not entirely, anyway. But the fears remain, and the feeling that if I don't sabotage it myself something worse will come along and take it from me anyway also remains."
It's that central fear he doesn't know what to do with. He knows that fear can undermine even the best laid plans and his plans aren't often the best laid, by experience.
"I'm trying very hard not to sabotage it, I think." It's hard to tell. It feels like work, anyway; difficult and uncomfortable. "But what happens if that doesn't matter, if it all falls apart anyway?"
Abby's lip curls a little. It isn't humourous, but rueful. The scenario he's describing has already happened to her, and she can attest to it hurting. Thedas took Lev away from her when she was trying so very hard to keep him. She wanted to learn how to be somebody he could count on and that opportunity is gone, forever. The injustice of it sits on her chest, like a weight pressing the air out of her lungs. It's so terrible, and unfair.
"If it does fall apart, it won't be because of you." She's twisting her hands together, her gaze momentarily flickering to him. His expression is unfathomable to her, but she can guess at the tangle inside of him. "So all you can really do about that is stay with her." Present, and there, not lost to what ifs. Easier said than done, but Abby believes in him. He's stronger than he thinks he is.
"She knows that you care, you know that she cares. If something does happen, you'll fight like hell to keep it."
Her arm nudges up against him, a tiny bit of affection, "I'm not gonna say it'll be fine and nothing will ever go wrong, cuz I don't wanna jinx it." A slight huff, before she adds, "But if it does, I'm here for you, you know. You won't have to deal with it by yourself."
His nostrils flare a little as she glances at him, but Loki holds his tongue in order to keep listening to Abby's advice. Which is what he's here for, isn't it? Someone to listen, and someone to be honest with him. Even though it terrifies him from all directions: having friends. Listening to advice. Someone being honest with him.
The possibility that he could do everything 'right' and still lose Alexandrie.
Terrifying, truly. It settles in his chest like an ice cube in his veins, settled in his heart.
"I will fight for it, no matter what happens." Unless Alexandrie asks him not to, which seems unlikely? Somehow? Even though in the back of his mind he expects it will happen, eventually. Her husband will come back and she'll realize it's too difficult to juggle two of them. She'll come to her senses, somehow. Abby brushes against his arm breaks him out of his spiraling thoughts, and so he takes his hand out of his pocket, wrapping his arm around both of her broad shoulders, giving her a squeeze.
He's very loud over there. Abby can hear him buzzing with thought as he spins himself through every terrible possibility, all the bitter what ifs. It reminds her of something that Owen used to tell her whenever he lost patience with her single-minded approach to training: That's your problem, Abs. You don't know how to switch off.
Is this what it looks like from the outside?
This conversation has made her realise how similar they really are, and there's both an awful kind of comfort in it, and an uncertainty that furrows her brow, but it isn't bad, that he takes a moment to pull her close. She leans into him, a quick press of weight against his side before she straightens up like she never did it.
"It's nothing." She's looking at Wags again, wondering if she should call him back already, "You'd do the same for me."
The problem with always scheming, always thinking, is that turning it off is near impossible; the problem with that always thinking, always scheming, turning inward on the mind of the person who does the plotting is that there's a long list of reasons why things may go awry. One knows the dangers because one is often the catalyst for danger towards others.
It warms him a little that she leans back into him. The contact is too brief for him, honestly, but he'll take it without complaint.
"I would," he admits, putting his hand back in his pocket, but that's such a weird thing. Would he have, before the TVA? Before Sylvie? Before arriving here? Hard to say. "Or I'd at least try my best."
It's too brief for Abby, but she isn't sure how to ask for more. She's never been shy and still isn't, but there is a hesitance that goes hand in hand with this comradery when the wounds from losing her friends back home haven't healed. She's never felt so aware of a relationship before, or been this beholden to not fucking something up; like stepping out onto an icy lake, and hoping it has frozen all the way through.
He's trying too. Loki is right out on the lake with her.
Abby clears her throat, stepping briefly ahead of him to bellow for the dog. He comes running, tearing across the grass to get back, and leaps up the moment he reaches her, painting her pants with his muddy paws. "Wags– no, bad–"
Might want to step back for a moment while she gets him settled.
Loki does step back because filthy, wet, and muddy pawprints all over his clothes are definitely not the look he's going for today. His hands stay in his pockets as he watches the two of them, expression distant and eyes slightly unfocused.
His mind is definitely elsewhere.
He's thinking of Asgard and its people. How there's an entire timeline of people he's never going to see again, like his brother. His mother. If he does ever see them again, they won't be exactly the same as the ones he left behind.
It makes him wonder what Abby's family is like. If she misses them.
But once Abby has Wagner settled down again Loki approaches once more, taking steps carefully measured as to get the least amount of mud on his boots as possible. "I'll admit, the 'you won't fuck this up' part was not what I expected you to open with."
She's pretty muddy once she gets him seated, but she can't stay exasperated with him, it's just so hard to be mad at a face like that... she gives a frown, and a huff, but her heart isn't in it. Moments later, she's allowing Wags to lick her chin.
"Yeah?"
Loki is back by her side, and the puppy is wriggly when she pushes him gently down to sit. He looks attentively between the two of them when she stands.
"What did you expect me to open with? I wasn't gonna agree with you." No pity parties allowed, not in this case. He hasn't lost anything, and so they shouldn't indulge in worrying.
If being this muddy and dirty is what it takes to properly raise a dog, Loki will be opting out, thanks.
He is a very sweet and intelligent creature though; Loki can see the appeal.
"Hm. Well. Something something husband something something disapproval something something what are you doing is what I expected the opening salvo to be, honestly." But, you know. There's something refreshing about being surprised in a pleasant direction.
Abby snorts humourlessly, and bears through an uncomfortable recollection of Owen and the boat with a strange look on her face before she answers him. She's staring at the puppy; eventually her expression softens again.
"It would be hypocritical if I judged you for your relationship choices." Mutter, shrug... "So."
Nice, honest advice instead. You're welcome! "But what does her husband think of you? And what does–" What term did he use? Oh, yeah, "'Native variant' mean, anyway."
"Doesn't stop most," he points out, albeit gently, because he doesn't exactly want Abby to change her practice towards him and his...unconventional relationship choices. Like, at all. But he still feels it requires note. "Not that I want you to be like most people."
Most people would not be his friend.
"I don't know what he thinks of me; he's currently missing." Loki weighs his hands. "It means...it means that I know there are versions of me in different worlds. People like me, with different lives but similar arcs, if that makes sense? Some of them may even have my name. This one does.
It's part of the multiverse. Well. It would be the theory, except we are living examples that it is more than that."
"I'm not most," she agrees, giving him a funny look, "Do you want me to tell you I'm disappointed in you, or something?"
Lest he forget she comes from a place where people you love can be ripped away from you at any moment; if he has happiness with Alexandrie, he should grab it in both hands and take it.
And his explanation makes more sense to her than it really should.
Abby worries her lower lip for half a second, thinking hard. "Yeah. It– I think there are other versions of me, too."
The one that Ellie talked about. The one she fought with in Santa Barbara. "Is it normal?"
"While the familiar can be very comforting... no, not really."
He would internalize that, if she said it, and part of him would really rather not go through that process. To be haunted by the specter of disappointment of others has driven him near to madness before.
Fairly, he'd prefer to avoid that this time around.
She makes a face, while she's biting at her lip, which makes Loki wonder what she's thinking of exactly. Has she encountered some timeline divergence, between herself and her enemy here? "It's... common; I don't think it's abnormal. You don't tend to know about it until you do."
"Good," she says, watching him, expression suddenly softer, "I wasn't gonna." It's hard for people like them to ask for affection, she knows that. Just as much as she knows they desperately need it anyway.
It would be nicer to stay in that moment than stew over the variant thing, but Abby has far too many questions to be able to let it lie. "Don't tend to know about it until the person who does bothers to actually tell you about it, you mean."
Loki raises his eyebrows. Yes, that does answer his question, though he follows it up with: "I take that to mean your enemy, here, has some temporal variance that you don't? Memories that go beyond your own, or end before yours do?"
He gives a one-shouldered shrug. "I know things that the Provost didn't, when I arrived. I don't know if that's still true. I doubt he'd let me know."
"She told me some of it." The worst part: Abby's certain she wasn't being fucked with. The story cast Ellie in a bad light; worse still, she can't think of why Ellie would want to fuck with her at this point. They did terrible things to each other, but they've never lied about it.
Another glance at Loki, and this time she lingers, seeking reassurance. "... Do you find it hard? To be here with him?"
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"Jone gave me a mace." Something she's very taken with, considering it's the first to be mentioned, "I got some great books, too." Tacked on, as if an after-thought: "Margaery got me a comb, for my hair." The way her gaze darts away from him and out into the middle distance is just as unsubtle.
"You?" She knows exactly what he's doing, but she'll let him play his little game for a minute longer.
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He taps a finger against his lip. "Jone is the redheaded woman who does weapons training?" Fitting, that she'd get Abby a weapon. He also catches that glance Abby, and chuckles about it.
"How are things with the lady?" Last they talked about Margaery, Abby was questioning how to know if she was liked.
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Abby admires her, an emotion that has taken some time for her to formally name. Jone is a very capable person, an incredible fighter; she got Abby out of more than one tight spot back during the skeleton ambush. She needs to think of a way to repay her for watching her back. Saving her ass.
"Good," she answers, automatically. She isn't going to tack on an I think? or give Loki an inch, because she's decided that she's impatient, actually.
"And yours?"
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"It's good, I think. Complicated. But good." He rubs at his jaw a little. "I care about her a lot and I'm half certain that is going to bite me in the ass rather directly any moment now, but...good."
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"Wags," she protests, but he only grins at his own name. Dogs.
To Loki, "What makes you think that? You're a catch."
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Ever so politely.
"I'm not a catch; I'm a person with a monstrous past, didn't you know?" He shakes his head a little. "Something will go sideways. I don't know what I'm doing, really; she's married to the native variant of me, which, I don't know. I tell myself it's the same as what I would do, but is it? Would it be? We aren't the same; he left her here, to investigate something or another and cause trouble."
Huffing out a laugh that has no mirth to it. "I don't think I could do that. And that should terrify me." A beat. "It doesn't. That does terrify me. Inevitably something will go wrong. Things go wrong all the time, especially here."
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Besides, this deserves her full attention.
And he's told her off for being self-deprecating. Abby's smile slips. "I do know," she says, after a beat. "S'why I like you." People with monstrous pasts should stick together. Remind each other not to make the same mistakes.
She isn't sure if he wants her advice, or her ear, but he's getting the former. He'll always have the latter anyway. "Kinda sounds like you're trying to talk yourself out of it. Why do you think you're going to fuck it up?"
Honest question. Gonna... circle back to this 'native variant' thing.
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He's not sure what he wants. Someone to listen. Someone to tell him he's catastrophizing. Someone he can trust to be real and honest with him.
Abby suits that need.
Having thus reassured himself that he's not gone off and started a conversation he can't possibly see through, he turns her question over in his head for a moment. "Because I fuck up...everything." A shrug. "I get people killed, or plots unravel and people stop trusting me, so I've tried not...plotting anything, and I suppose that's going fine, but I don't really know how to tell?" He watches Wagner tear across the earth, chasing birds that hang out near the docks. "It's only been six months, more or less. I'm mortal now, so, a year matters, half a year matters." Another shrug, and he blinks, shaking his head. "Why wouldn't I think I was going to fuck it up?"
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What he says hurts in more ways than one: he's a friend, most importantly. She cares about him, and it's sad that feels this way about himself, but those exact things could have come from her mouth and rung just as true. I fuck everything up. I get people killed. People stop trusting me.
She looks at the dog running down seagulls, his ears flapping madly in the wind.
Why wouldn't I think I was going to fuck it up?
You're a piece of shit, Abby. You always have been.
"I get it."
She really does, is the thing. More than he knows. "But other people pick up on stuff like that. Sometimes it can get really obvious. If you think it's going to happen that much, you could end up... engineering it." If that makes sense. Abby's pushed enough people away with her bullshit, she should know. "You owe yourself a better shot at it than that. This is important to you. Don't sabotage it now."
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It's that central fear he doesn't know what to do with. He knows that fear can undermine even the best laid plans and his plans aren't often the best laid, by experience.
"I'm trying very hard not to sabotage it, I think." It's hard to tell. It feels like work, anyway; difficult and uncomfortable. "But what happens if that doesn't matter, if it all falls apart anyway?"
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"If it does fall apart, it won't be because of you." She's twisting her hands together, her gaze momentarily flickering to him. His expression is unfathomable to her, but she can guess at the tangle inside of him. "So all you can really do about that is stay with her." Present, and there, not lost to what ifs. Easier said than done, but Abby believes in him. He's stronger than he thinks he is.
"She knows that you care, you know that she cares. If something does happen, you'll fight like hell to keep it."
Her arm nudges up against him, a tiny bit of affection, "I'm not gonna say it'll be fine and nothing will ever go wrong, cuz I don't wanna jinx it." A slight huff, before she adds, "But if it does, I'm here for you, you know. You won't have to deal with it by yourself."
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The possibility that he could do everything 'right' and still lose Alexandrie.
Terrifying, truly. It settles in his chest like an ice cube in his veins, settled in his heart.
"I will fight for it, no matter what happens." Unless Alexandrie asks him not to, which seems unlikely? Somehow? Even though in the back of his mind he expects it will happen, eventually. Her husband will come back and she'll realize it's too difficult to juggle two of them. She'll come to her senses, somehow. Abby brushes against his arm breaks him out of his spiraling thoughts, and so he takes his hand out of his pocket, wrapping his arm around both of her broad shoulders, giving her a squeeze.
It helps to be tall.
"Thanks, Abby; you're a good friend."
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He's very loud over there. Abby can hear him buzzing with thought as he spins himself through every terrible possibility, all the bitter what ifs. It reminds her of something that Owen used to tell her whenever he lost patience with her single-minded approach to training: That's your problem, Abs. You don't know how to switch off.
Is this what it looks like from the outside?
This conversation has made her realise how similar they really are, and there's both an awful kind of comfort in it, and an uncertainty that furrows her brow, but it isn't bad, that he takes a moment to pull her close. She leans into him, a quick press of weight against his side before she straightens up like she never did it.
"It's nothing." She's looking at Wags again, wondering if she should call him back already, "You'd do the same for me."
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It warms him a little that she leans back into him. The contact is too brief for him, honestly, but he'll take it without complaint.
"I would," he admits, putting his hand back in his pocket, but that's such a weird thing. Would he have, before the TVA? Before Sylvie? Before arriving here? Hard to say. "Or I'd at least try my best."
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He's trying too. Loki is right out on the lake with her.
Abby clears her throat, stepping briefly ahead of him to bellow for the dog. He comes running, tearing across the grass to get back, and leaps up the moment he reaches her, painting her pants with his muddy paws. "Wags– no, bad–"
Might want to step back for a moment while she gets him settled.
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His mind is definitely elsewhere.
He's thinking of Asgard and its people. How there's an entire timeline of people he's never going to see again, like his brother. His mother. If he does ever see them again, they won't be exactly the same as the ones he left behind.
It makes him wonder what Abby's family is like. If she misses them.
But once Abby has Wagner settled down again Loki approaches once more, taking steps carefully measured as to get the least amount of mud on his boots as possible. "I'll admit, the 'you won't fuck this up' part was not what I expected you to open with."
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"Yeah?"
Loki is back by her side, and the puppy is wriggly when she pushes him gently down to sit. He looks attentively between the two of them when she stands.
"What did you expect me to open with? I wasn't gonna agree with you." No pity parties allowed, not in this case. He hasn't lost anything, and so they shouldn't indulge in worrying.
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He is a very sweet and intelligent creature though; Loki can see the appeal.
"Hm. Well. Something something husband something something disapproval something something what are you doing is what I expected the opening salvo to be, honestly." But, you know. There's something refreshing about being surprised in a pleasant direction.
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"It would be hypocritical if I judged you for your relationship choices." Mutter, shrug... "So."
Nice, honest advice instead. You're welcome! "But what does her husband think of you? And what does–" What term did he use? Oh, yeah, "'Native variant' mean, anyway."
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Most people would not be his friend.
"I don't know what he thinks of me; he's currently missing." Loki weighs his hands. "It means...it means that I know there are versions of me in different worlds. People like me, with different lives but similar arcs, if that makes sense? Some of them may even have my name. This one does.
It's part of the multiverse. Well. It would be the theory, except we are living examples that it is more than that."
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Lest he forget she comes from a place where people you love can be ripped away from you at any moment; if he has happiness with Alexandrie, he should grab it in both hands and take it.
And his explanation makes more sense to her than it really should.
Abby worries her lower lip for half a second, thinking hard. "Yeah. It– I think there are other versions of me, too."
The one that Ellie talked about. The one she fought with in Santa Barbara. "Is it normal?"
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He would internalize that, if she said it, and part of him would really rather not go through that process. To be haunted by the specter of disappointment of others has driven him near to madness before.
Fairly, he'd prefer to avoid that this time around.
She makes a face, while she's biting at her lip, which makes Loki wonder what she's thinking of exactly. Has she encountered some timeline divergence, between herself and her enemy here? "It's... common; I don't think it's abnormal. You don't tend to know about it until you do."
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It would be nicer to stay in that moment than stew over the variant thing, but Abby has far too many questions to be able to let it lie. "Don't tend to know about it until the person who does bothers to actually tell you about it, you mean."
Which may answer his question perfectly.
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He gives a one-shouldered shrug. "I know things that the Provost didn't, when I arrived. I don't know if that's still true. I doubt he'd let me know."
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"She told me some of it." The worst part: Abby's certain she wasn't being fucked with. The story cast Ellie in a bad light; worse still, she can't think of why Ellie would want to fuck with her at this point. They did terrible things to each other, but they've never lied about it.
Another glance at Loki, and this time she lingers, seeking reassurance. "... Do you find it hard? To be here with him?"
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/covers this timestamp my god
i see no timestamp
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