His Little Shooting Star [2]

"You can still save her."

~~~Loki's pov~~~

The sudden time-slipping took me by surprise, and I was left gasping for air as I steadied myself in what was presumably a new time.

I furrowed my brows as I looked at the unfamiliar setting around me.

This wasn't the same place I'd been before. I hadn't just switched times, but location as well...

That's new.

I was standing behind what looked like a large stack of boxes and wooden crates inside what looked to be a large warehouse.

Was this even the TVA?

Cautiously, I ventured out from my spot behind the wall of cargo and almost immediately noticed a man kneeling on the ground a few feet away, his back facing me.

I approached closer, and as I did, I noted that the man was wearing a TVA uniform similar to mine.

As a matter of fact, he looked a lot like me as well...

And then he turned around and I saw his face.

He was me.

His shirt was covered with splattered blood, tears streaming from his eyes. But that wasn't what made my heart stop.

Linda was in his arms, completely lifeless.

Blood turned to ice in my veins as I stared into her face, blood coating the front of her shirt, the crimson red a stark contrast to the paleness of her skin.

My breaths came quick and unsteady as I took a shaking step back, overcome with shock and sudden grief.

I was in the future. And in the future, Linda dies in my arms.

"You can't stop." The future version of me spoke, his voice broke with the grief-stricken sobs he was holding back. "You need to keep going, or you'll lose her. For good. Please." He begged me, tears flowing heavily. "You can still save her. Please save her."

"I..." My head was spinning and I felt like my lungs couldn't get enough air. "She......." No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't bring myself to look away from my daughter's still form, her body lying limp in his arms.

She was dead. She was dead and I hadn't been able to stop it in time.

Before I could even fully process what I was seeing, I time-slipped again.

My breathing still uneven and erratic, I looked around to find myself back where I started. I was back in the TVA, but Catherine and Linda were nowhere to be seen.

Wiping the tears from my eyes, I saw that the 'skin?' message that Mobius had written out was there on the side of the computer console.

This was still the future.

Alarms blared in my ears as I looked down to see that while I still had the timer that O.B. had given me, the time stick was gone.

~~~Linda's pov~~~

He had to make it back. He had to...

I kept repeating those words in my head, but as much as I thought them, some part of me still didn't believe them.

"If I'm understanding this correctly, once these doors open, the temporal radiation will start aging away your suit." Mom said to Mobius, snapping me out of my thoughts as we prepped the TVA analyst for his trip down the gangway.

O.B. nodded. "That's right, so you have to get down the gangway fast, lock the Temporal Aura Extractor into place, and hoof it back here the moment I tell you to."