Bad timing

Blades of grass pressed into her back as Sylvie crouched low, holding her breath. Okay, yes, she was self-conscious of the sound of cars that she could hear behind her, but at the same time there were clothes hanging right in front of her. They were probably the most accessible garments Sylvie had seen for a long, long time.

So, almost inevitably, she hesitated. It was easy to imagine something just spontaneously going wrong. Too much had.

Sylvie shifted, flinching at the sound of distant voices. She pulled her legs closer to her chest, sheltering in the shadow of the small brick wall - there were strangers on the street walking past. So long as they didn't look down into the garden, she could wait for them to go, and then reach up and...

She stared uncertainly at the washing line. Certianly, nothing immediately seemed to be any kind of trap. She bit her lip, especially conscious of every second that ticked past.

Even just waiting while naked was nerve-wracking. She heard the footsteps grow closer, heart pounding at the idea that someone might look down and see her - she hugged both her legs to her chest, unsure of what modesty that offered, but at least hoping to hide.

Then the muttering grew quieter. Sylvie looked upwards, glad not to see anyone looking down at her, then shifted. She poked her blushing face up over the wall to look up and down the street; she couldn't see anyone looking at her just then.

Quickly, she stood up and mentally hoped no one took advantage of those seconds to suddenly look down and see her. She took a step away from the wall, one arm instinctively over her chest, and the rest of her body completely bare. Anyone who looked at the garden would get an uninterrupted view of the goddess's firm butt as she reached up with her other hand to tug down a shirt from the washing line-

And then the world whirled and changed. One moment, there was a naked blonde in the garden. The next, there were two TemPads where she'd left them in the long grass, a faint breeze fluttering the washing line, and nothing.

And a few states away, the naked Sylvie appeared out of thin air, for a moment too frustrated and indignant to even be embarrassed.

Oh come on! She'd felt that shirt, she'd been so close, and now-

Gone was the sunlight, the breeze, and the grass. Instead, she was somewhere dark, definitely inside; there were stone walls, bracketed by old wood. It wasn't completely dark, but it also wasn't completely clear where the light was coming from.

And she could hear voices. Sylvie frowned.

"You changed my spell! You don't do that, I told you-"

Sylvie grimaced, making a conscious effort to not cry out. What the hel was this?! One moment she'd been about to reach for an outfit, and the next she was... she didn't know where, with no TemPads, still very much naked, and she didn't even have the luxury of being alone.

The voices didn't sound far away - quickly, she darted sideways, trying to hide in a dip in the wall, behind an arch. Her foot brushed past a loose metal rod,and she froze, biting her lip to keep from gasping.

The muffled voices trailed off.

"What was that?" one said. That one, a younegr-sounding man, did sound oddly familiar. Sylvie hesitated, frozen in place.

The cool stone wasn't nearly as comfortable as the soft grass had been against the bare skin of her back. Doing her best to stay still, Sylvie's eyes darted around the room quickly, still trying to get her bearings.

"Stay here. Don't - don't - touch anything," the other, cross-sounding older man said. "There could be side effects to someone wanting to interfere with my spell."

Spell? Sylvie nervously looked around again - dark stone walls, a cold grey floor, old-fashioned implements, no hope of any actual cover except for the walls themselves. They weren't flat; as well as being curved, there were signs of what might have been old doorways, or just some artistic flourish, narrower archways that she could just about squeeze between. She did her best to keep in such a gap; if someone were to quickly glance down this tunnelway, they might not see her.

Though if someone were to walk down, there wasn't much she could hide behind.

There were footsteps. Then a man came into view, goateed, with a high-collared red cloak, coming to a stop as he saw Sylvie, blushing, bare, eyes wide and desperately trying to hide behind her arms.

"Huh," he said. "That's a new one, will admit."

Maybe she could just enchant him? Okay, his fasion sense was... eccentric, but she'd worn worse. Quickly, Sylvie darted forwards-

His hand twitched, and suddenly she was somewhere else. Again.

Sylvie groaned. Cold stone walls, again, with the except of what was unfortunately completely clear glass looking out onto yet more dungeon. She punched the wall in frustration, then winced and withdrew her hands - huh, most things on Midgard weren't normally that resilient.

Ugh, of all the places...

"Who are you?"

And that man with the goatee was striding into this chamber now - outside her cell, beyond that glass wall, was another room filled with vaguely mystical-looking implements. The man was walking into it like he owned the place, with a younger man a few steps behind him.

At him, Sylvie did a double take. What was his name? Peter-something, she'd briefly met him a couple of trips ago. Her face warmed at the memory. She didn't meet the same person twice that often - first he'd taken her panties, now, what, had he somehow stopped her getting dressed?

Sylvie quickly looked around her cramped cell, finding nothing but featureless stone. She squirmed, and resigned herself to once again hiding behind her bare arms, crossing one over her breasts and holding her other hand between her legs, looking as indignant as she could with a blush spreading across her face.

Whisked who-knows where, then magicked into a cell. If she'd just reached that shirt a few seconds sooner...

"There aren't many beings that could breach this sanctum," the man said. "Who are you? Who sent you?"

"Er, sir, she doesn't look like she... planned this," Peter said timidly.

The sorcerer did his best to look imperious, before taking in Sylvie's flush, and relented.

"Okay. Fair point," he said.

"Who am I?" Sylvie echoed. "Who are you?! One moment I was- doesn't matter, and the next I'm here, and you toss me in a cell, and... Argh!"

She came alarmingly close to throwing her hands up in the air. Still, she couldn't help but fidget as the two bewildered strangers looked in at her.

The TVA had better not show up any time soon. Trapped, no TemPad... She tried not to think about that.

"Strange," he said, eventually.

"You're telling me," Sylvie muttered.

"No, you asked who I- oh, never mind, I don't know why I bother," he said.

"And you!" Sylvie glowered at Peter. "I'm blaming you for this."

She squirmed, still, with no way she could possibly stand that didn't feel far too revealing. She hunched forwards slightly, as though it would let her hide much mroe of her body behind her bare, slender arms.

"Huh?" Peter said. "What? Why would you blame me? I didn't do this! I just kinda swing on webs, why would I have anything to do with you appearing somewhere else?"

"Hm. She may have a point," the sorcerer said.

"What?" Peter said.

"You interrupted my spell," he said. "And you, naked lady, you recognise him?"

Sylvie flushed deeper.

"We've met," Sylvie said. "He stole my- Doesn't matter."

"I didn't!" Peter said quickly. "We haven't- I didn't, I promise Mr Strange."

Strange frowned. He looked across the room - there was an odd box on the table, with a surging, sparkling, crackling _thing _of light trapped inside it. Sylvie squirmed.

"The spell was supposed to make people forget that you're Spider-Man," Strange said. "You made it misfire. Perhaps, instead, it started... summoning people that think that."

He paused. Sylvie scowled. Great, so she'd enchanted the wrong mind.

"You don't know her?" Strange said.

"Definitely not!" Peter said. He still didn't seem quite sure of where to look. "And I definitely wouldn't have, er..."

"Interesing," Strange said speculatively.

"I'm sure it is," Sylvie interrupted. "But would you mind letting me out already? Or, I don't know, handing me that cloak or something."

"Give me a second," Strange muttered, irritated.

The cloak twitched, the trailing back of it lifting up as if to glower at her judgingly. Sylvie blinked. Okay, that was new.

"Um, Mr Strange, maybe we should give her something to wear," Peter mumbled.

"Quiet! Thinking," Strange snapped.

Sylvie fidgeted again. She looked hesitantly around the cell, and the room outside. The glass wall completely covered the front of the cell, without even the tiniest strip of stone to try and squeeze herself again.

She didn't dare pace.

"The spell skims the border of our reality," Strange murmured. "There are... theories of a multiverse, worlds where different decisions were made, or different things happened - a lot of the laws of magic, and the way spells operate, suggests it, though any exploration has only found... absences where our knowledge indicates there ought to be something."

"Can I please not have another deep meaningful discussion while I'm stark naked?" Sylvie said, annoyed.

"You know him, he doesn't know you," Strange said. "The Sanctum can sense time displacement, but if you were... adjacent to our reality, that would explain why the spell prioritised you. Interesting."

"I really don't care," Sylvie said.

She paused.

"Wait, can I get the date?" Sylvie said.

"What?" Strange said.

"If you're casting a spell that's just going to summon me here, I'd really rather not get a repeat," Sylvie said.

"Trust me, we won't be doing this spell again," Strange said.

Well he was no help. Sylvie rolled her eyes.

"Well, if you've sorted all this out, can I go?" Sylvie said. She paused. "Ideally with a shirt, or something."

"If I send you back, you can't bring anything with you," Strange said. "Give me a moment, I'll see if there were any more intrusions."

Sylvie hesitated. He started walking away - Sylvie quickly moved close to the glass wall, kicking it.

"Hey!" Sylvie said.

"Relax, you'll be back to... whatever you were doing when I've looked up a few things," Strange said. "This is a priority."

"Er. Sorry," Peter said. He looked apologetically in the cell, realised what he was looking at, then coughed awkwardly and looked away. "Er, sorry!" he said again.

"You can't just leave me in here like this!" Sylvie said indignantly.

She fidgeted. Of all the...

And she'd been so close to actually reaching the washing line. She muttered a string of curses, and then sowly sat down once she was alone, back dragging down the cold wall until her butt reached the flat, smooth stone floor. She kept her legs pressed together, crossing her arms.

And then there was nothing to think about except for the waiting, and how the air felt as it settled against her bare skin. Sylvie swallowed, and hoped her blush would die down.

Then an orange gateway opened up on the far side of the room. Sylvie quickly jerked to her feet, flailing for a moment before crossing her arms. The familiar uniforms of two TVA operatives walked through the gap, surveying the chamber. Rather unsurprisingly, they did a double take at Sylvie locked in the cell.

"Er. There's another one," one agent said.

"Oh great... Wait. She matches the description we got of the perpetrator."

"Does she? Huh, oh, er, yeah. Sorry, wasn't looking there."

"Timekeepers help me..."

One hsook their head despairingly. Sylvie fidgeted, unsure what to say.

Normally she'd have gone for something cutting, or defiant. It was rather hard to think in thos terms just then.

"So do we pick her up?"

"You kidding? She's gone through a few dozen of us. I say, if she's trapped there, we keep her trapped."

Sylvie's eyes widened: one agent knelt down, placing the reset charge Sylvie had seen a few times before.

She remembered what it did with too much clarity. A beep, and it would erase the variant timeline, leaving everything as fresh and fixed as the TVA wanted it to be.

Sylvie eyed the wall of her cell, wishing she could see some sign of hinges or a handle. Meanwhile, barely looking at her, the TVA agents stood on the far side of the altar, setting the charge.

"Well, we can report back that we dealt with this. Wonder if we'll get a promotion. I swear, you don't get the judge running around places like this anymore."

The two walked back through the gateway and it closed, leaving Sylvie mutely staring through the glass wall at the tiny charge.

Beep. Beep.

She screwed her eyes shut, and swallowed, forcing herself to stare straight forwards with dignity - or at least, what dignity she could muster. Of all the ways for this to end...

The charge beeped once more, then activated.

It wasn't instantaneous. A ripple, like a wave, went out from the charge. Footsteps in the dust vanished, the world changed, and the wave approached Sylvie - and before it could reach her, it passed through the box on the table, and the sealed spell.

In a split second, the box was erased, the spell inside it flickering out of being. Whatever was meant to have happened in this sacred timeline wouldn't have seen it positioned there - the box vanished, the spell surged, and then the spell too was destroyed utterly, and undone.

And Sylvie vanished from the cell the moment before the wave hit her.

She stumbled as she found herself back in the snug garden, under a now-empty washing line, with a wide-eyed stranger in the house's doorway suddenly looking at the naked blonde magically returned to her garden.

Sylvie yelped, blushed furiously, and quickly crouched - she didn't know if the reset charge would reach this far, but she didn't want to linger. Trying not to think about what the stranger could see, she snatched up her TemPads, hastily fleeing the doomed timeline without a stitch gained.