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There was a light tap on her shoulder. She turned around and found Mobius already walking away from her cubicle.
“Hurry up,” he said, taking a few steps backwards and pointing behind him at the corridors. “I think I’ve found something good.”
A-27 nodded, all but dropping the folder she was holding to the floor, got her jacket and scampered after him. “Where are we going?” she asked, close to running in order to keep up with his pace.
“Hearing chambers,” he said, handing out the files he was carrying. “If we do this well, we might get ourselves a Loki Variant.”
“That would be incredible,” she said, eyeing the details of the Nexus Event the Variant had created. “Oh – he’s a later Variant than we’ve had in quite some time. From Earth. 2012.”
“A mature Loki,” he said, grinning. “Closer to his proper Timeline than any other. This should be interesting.”
There was a kind of childish glee to Mobius’ demeanour. A-27 could not help a smile, his excitement proving to be contagious. She hurried the pace, nodding at a few other colleagues they passed through, to whom Mobius was utterly oblivious to.
The hearing chambers were, thankfully, right outside the AG-3 elevators, and they managed to slip inside right as Ravonna rolled her eyes at one of the Variant’s comments. Hunter B-15 held guard over the Loki and spared them a quick glance as the pair of them ushered inside the chambers.
There was a quick glance of acknowledgment between the two of them, ending in A-27’s grin as she settled alongside Mobius in one of the middle rows.
The Loki Variant was trying to bargain for his case with his silver tongue, much to the amusement of Mobius. There was talk of the Avengers, and A-27 stood a little straighter in her chair – she had personally overseen all calculations over that very specific timeframe. She’d received a sure amount of praise for her work, leading to her admission into an internship as Mobius’ assistant.
She was proud to note her work and dedication held strong against Loki’s accusations over the Avengers’ messing with the Sacred Timeline. A grin spread across her face, and she even got a discreet nod of acknowledgment from Ravonna. Mobius, on his end, seemed to be absolutely enthralled with the Variant’s antics, hiding his grin behind his hands as the demi-god tried to conjure his powers in order to escape.
“Classic,” he whispered. A-27 could only nod encouragingly. She thought back to the pile of signatures she still had left on her desk, and to the fact that she would probably have to work some over-time in order to get everything done by morning.
She was not surprised to see the Variant be sentenced guilty, and quickly followed suit after Mobius as he all but ran to Ravonna’s stand and pleaded for a chance to interrogate him. As Ravonna finally gave Mobius her ascent, A-27 stayed behind for a few minutes, shuffling through her pile of papers in order to find the correct form to hand out to the Judge.
Ravonna took it into her hands with a sigh. “I’ll get these signed for you,” she said, adding it to her own very impressive pile of paperwork. “You should have them by the end of the day.”
“Thank you,” she said, glancing over the door, past the security guards awaiting the next convict. “I should probably get going.”
“Yes. Mobius needs someone to keep his head in check.”
“It’s mainly paperwork,” A-27 stuttered, flushing from the praise.
Ravonna’s expression softened. “And don’t ever forget that paperwork is the backbone of the Agency. For all time,” she added softly.
“Always,” A-27 replied, and scampered outside the room, only catching up with Mobius and the Variant by sheer luck and the strength of her legs.
She caught up with the two with a slide, struggling to catch her breath.
“And where did you get off to?” Mobius asked her without sparing her a glance.
“You forgot the, uh, the permit, sir,” she said, daring one glance at the threatening form of the Variant who all but glared at her.
Mobius chuckled. “It’s a good thing I have you,” he said, and added for the benefit of the Variant: “My assistant, A-27.”
“Great,” the Variant hissed. “Another mindless pawn.”
“Aw, don’t be mean,” Mobius laughed. “She’s a good worker, on her way to a brilliant career as an analyst.”
A-27 flushed some more, the compliment sweeping away the stinge of the Variant’s comment. “I’m not there yet.”
There was some more groaning on the Variant’s side as they reached the balcony overlooking the city.
“I’m going to burn this place to the ground,” he stated menacingly.
“I will show you where my desk is,” Mobius deadpanned. “You can start there.”
A-27 chuckled and watched as the Variant took a step towards the edge of the balcony overlooking the complicated structure of the TVA, its looming buildings and bustling activity.
She was surprised to find her flat from this side of the agency – a tiny dot in the horizon, right over the Archives building, almost unnoticeable to anyone but to those who shared quarters there.
A quick memory of her first days at the TVA came back to her mind, of A-4 walking her around the place (not all of it, surely – the size of the TVA and its city was close to infinite), and how taken she had been with the sight of it, its immensity and grandeur and utter, precise and pragmatical inner-workings.
There was something similar to her juvenile awe in the Variant’s eyes; she allowed herself to observe him for a little while, a little starstruck – she had studied the entirety of his Timeline for years, revised all of its calculations, and came to a certain understanding of him. Not ever as close to that of Mobius, of course. Mobius had spent a few light years working on him, whereas A-27 had only gotten to the case a mere decade ago, at the very most. She was still young. Mobius had become a staple of the TVA. Everyone knew him – there were very few agents at the TVA who could be as lucky as to have been given their own names.
A-27 dreamed of the day she’d be given hers. She had a keen fondness for Matilda, or maybe even Luna, Clara— or even Lisa. Lisa was just lovely.
The Variant’s eyes dawned on hers. She quickly glanced away, flushing, hiding her embarrassment by shuffling with her papers.
“But I thought there was no magic here.”
“There isn’t,” Mobius replied.
There was a long silence, as the Variant turned his attention back to the breath-taking sight. “There has to be,” he muttered, still frozen in place.
A-27 could see the wheels turning in his head. She hid a smile behind her papers and shared a knowing look with Mobius.
He would figure it out soon enough.
She stood in the corner, ignoring the tension in her legs in order to hold her place in the whole affair. Ravonna had reminded her that paperwork was the backbone of the Agency – and it was. When it came to her role in the agency, to her and Mobius, she was paperwork incarnate. She stood tall as a reminder of its role, its power and oversight.
Even if she wanted nothing more than to steal a chair from the corridor.
She took notes of the “talk” in order to be able to file in the correct forms later and make sure everything was done properly. And it was quite something to behold – the Loki Variant and Mobius, their conversation turned something inevitably sour and harsh as Mobius relentlessly broke down all of Loki’s walls, tricks and barriers.
She could have almost felt sorry for him. She turned her eyes away from the screen as the Timeline showed the Variant the death of his mother and focused her intent on scribbling down the use of specific footage, reminding its timestamp to the second through hours and hours spent on analysing the file.
Anger coursed through the Variant – and it was more than understandable. He stood up and started pacing. A-27 tried to get herself closer to the wall, to make herself invisible to his anger, even if she knew that the time-collar would keep her safe. There would be no escaping his words, though, and she knew how biting they could be.
He threw a chair at the screen. A-27 recoiled, letting out an undignified squeak of terror. He lunged at Mobius and saw himself immediately looped back to the floor.
“You weren’t born to be a king, Loki,” Mobius said calmly, almost as if he were commenting on the weather. “You were born to cause pain, and suffering, and death.”
A-27 held her breath, heartbeat loud in her ears, legs only holding her up by the sheer force of her will.
“That’s how it is, that’s how it was, that’s how it will be. All so others can achieve the best version of themselves.”
The Avengers came on screen – a image which, A-27 knew, would have been fresh on the Variant’s mind. Time seemed to hold out for a while, as the Variant’s eyes slowly glanced away from the images, no doubt still painful, still a very particular sting over his pride.
“What is this place?” he asked softly, his voice almost broken.
She was relieved to see Mobius’ smile grow back on his face – a demonstration of compassion over the torment the Variant was currently going through. He held out his hand, and Loki pulled himself up, staggering a bit on his feet.
The door of the theatre opened, startling her. B-15 came into the room.
“We have a situation,” she said gravely, quickly glancing around the room so as to take in whatever Mobius had planned with the Loki Variant.
Mobius sighed. “There’s always a situation. Don’t go anywhere,” he added, brandishing a finger, and made for the door.
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” A-27 said.
Mobius nodded, glanced back at the Variant, who stood seemingly composed in the middle of the room, hands in his pockets. He paused, thought for a second, then turned back, picked up the Pruning Stick and handed it out to her. “Just in case.”
Her eyes widened. She had no idea how to use that.
She nodded curtly and waited for Mobius to leave after B-15 in order to turn her look back to the Variant.
He gauged her, from head to foot, making her undeniably uncomfortable and hyper aware of the poor choice of clothes she had made that morning.
“Are you… alright?” she asked, her voice a high pitch that made her cringe internally.
Loki’s raised an eyebrow. “Am I… alright?” he asked incredulously.
She fidgeted on her feet, holding her papers closer to her chest. “Yes, uh… Mobius can be pretty intense.” She bit her lip, glancing away from his burning gaze to the Avengers behind him. The Pruning Stick weighed heavily in her hand – foreign and deadly. She very much wanted to put it down. “I’m sorry. About your mother, I mean.”
“Yes, well,” the Variant said, clearing his throat, arms crossing against his chest. “This obviously is nothing more than a trick, so.”
A-27 winced. “It isn’t, though.”
“Right,” he said. “The Sacred Truth, all of its secrets and depths I am somehow meant to believe in from a vague attempt at cinematography.”
She paused. “Cinematography?” she repeated, the word foreign on her tongue.
The Variant blinked. “A movie.”
She did not reply. She was merely a decade old – she had not yet had the time to get familiar with aspects of Culture in the Timeline, if not for Mobius’ Jet Ski magazine she had managed to get a glimpse of from time to time.
“How do you not know what a movie is?” he asked, irritated.
“I know other things,” she said defensively. “I know your entire life by heart.”
“Of course you do,” he retorted, taking a few steps towards her.
A-27 did her very best to stand her ground, even though all she wanted was to flinch away from the man. Her hold on the Pruning Stick grew stronger – and shakier.
“What’s this?” he asked with a head jerk towards the papers she held close to her chest, almost all the way up to her chin.
“The forms needed for the consultation of your files,” she replied, a bit too quickly. “I handle them, so that Mobius can focus on the interroga—hey!”
The Variant had managed to tear them away from her hold, frowning as he took in her notes, inscriptions and signature on a few twenty forms.
“A-27?” he asked. “That is your… name?”
“Yes,” she replied, jerking her chin up.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said, almost disbelieving. “It’s a number, not a name. What does it even mean?”
She opened her mouth – closed it again after a few seconds. Uh. She had never actually thought about it before.
“A is for analyst,” she explained, even though Loki didn’t seem to pay any attention to her words, focused as he was on reading through the files with a deep-set frown. “Twenty-seven… is just my grade, I think. I used to be A-89. I became A-25 when I started to work for Mobius.”
“Fascinating,” he murmured, even though it really wasn’t. “This really is a big whole load of crap, isn’t it?”
She blinked, feeling slightly insulted.
“Alright,” he said, pulling something out of his pocket. “I’m out of here.”
A TemPad, she realised, only too late – he was gone from the room in the following second.
And he had taken her bloody forms with him.
By the end of the day, A-27 had only had vague echoes of what had transpired during the afternoon as Mobius, B-15 and her squadron searched for the Variant throughout the building.
She’d let the guards know of his disappearance and had been ushered to a lower floor, made to wait for possible new instructions which never came.
In the end, she found no other option than to go back to her cubicle, gather the forms she had lost to the Variant’s antics and refill them according to her memory, still fresh. It was not as good, not as precise – but in any case, worse come to the worse, it would be better than nothing.
The forms she had left with Ravonna arrived with the late-afternoon convoy, and A-27 found herself with plenty to do, plenty of paperwork to oversee, added to the massive pile of signatures she already had had to go through before the new Variant’s arrival.
She waited for any kind of news – any news would have been nice, a mere ping on her TemPad, a note sent up to her row of cubicles, anything.
Instead, she had to feed on office whispers. They were not that useful – she only came to understand that they had finally caught up to him as she was about to leave the office, a few hours past her usual time to take-off.
“There’s nothing more?” she asked the B-19 she’d heard the news from.
He shrugged. “I only heard it in passing. Not my division, you know.”
A-27 sighed and finally decided on gathering her things and head back home. The night-shift was about to take over the good work for the night, and she had a cat to feed.
Although her legs could barely support her anymore, it was almost a blessing to leave after everyone else: the elevators were empty and the passageways to the shuttle were easy to navigate. She found a seat easily, sat down and closed her eyes as the shuttle finally brought her back home.
Her cat meowed pitifully as she opened the door, going straight for her legs to plead for food and cuddles, almost making her lose her balance.
It was close to ten-o’clock and she still had to cook some food, bathe and organise her files for the morning. She opened a protein can for the kitty, put some vegetables to boil and went for the bathroom.
The doorbell rang right as she turned on the water in the bath.
She frowned. Never, in her five years of living in this flat, had she had any visitors.
A-27 quickly put on her robe and went to open the door – eyes peeking suspiciously through the opening.
Mobius beamed at her from the other side.
“Mobius!” she exclaimed, opening the door wide, only to take a step back as she found the Loki Variant patiently waiting by his left, hands in his pocket, a hypocrite smile plastered on his lips.
“What – what is going on? Sir?”
“I knew I’d find you here,” Mobius said, handing her a box of donuts from the cafeteria. She picked them up reservedly, almost expecting the pastries to jump at her face at any moment.
“Well – yes, this is where I live.”
“I just wanted to give you a heads up,” he said. “May I? We?” he quickly added, nodding in the Variant’s direction to acknowledge his presence. The Variant smiled graciously.
A-27 frowned. “Yes, sure, but… I don’t… my place is a mess.”
“Nonsense!” Mobius said, and walked in.
The Variant followed, silent, observing his surroundings with quiet reserve, until his eyes finally settled on the cat. A silent staring contest ensued.
A-27 forced her attention back on Mobius.
“I was worried all afternoon,” she said, only daring a hint of disapproval in her voice. “I never heard from you after the… incident.”
“Oh, it was nothing, really,” Mobius said, waving a hand in the air dismissively. “Nothing I would not have expected from a Loki, surely.”
The Loki in question snorted.
“But he’s come around, and is willing to help us track the other Variant.”
A-27’s mouth fell open. “Just… like that?”
“I mean,” Mobius started, struggling to find his own words. “It did take a good amount of soul searching and introspection, I would say.”
“If you want to call it that,” the Variant said, stepping closer to the cat with the back of his hand held out for the tiny beast to smell it.
“—And, also, finally understanding that there is no use in going against the Agency,” Mobius completed. “So!” Mobius clasped his hands, smiling at his intern encouragingly. “Loki here will need some training before the work can begin.”
“Training?” A-27 parroted.
“With our ways, the principles of the Sacred Timeline – you know, your memory must be fresher than mine of your early days. Go through whatever he needs to become a perfect mock-up agent.”
“But I –” she started, then bit her lip. I have other things to do, she thought, but could not find the courage to let it out. “It’s… what about the paperwork?”
Mobius spared a glance towards Loki, who was now engaged in scratching the head of her too benevolent cat. “He’ll help, won’t you, Loki?”
Loki shrugged. “I might as well make myself useful,” he said.
A-27 could not believe it. Yet, she said nothing.
“Oh! I was almost forgetting.”
Mobius walked back to the door and opened it, pointing to the flat facing hers. “Loki’ll be living right next door.”
A-27 blanched. “Is, uh, I mean – is that a good idea, sir?”
Mobius nodded. “Oh, yes. Nothing better than getting him acquainted with the workings of the TVA by having him live right at the very centre of it! With you, as his guide – he’ll become a valuable asset in no time.”
“Your faith in me is touching, Mobius,” Loki said, turning a beautiful smile in Mobius’ direction.
“Aw, look at him – already so willing to help.”
A-27 blinked. “Sir, you can’t possibly be falling for it.”
Mobius laughed. “I’m not! But that’s the best we can hope for, isn’t it?”
She managed to conjure a weak, weak smile. “I… I guess.”
“Well, that’s settled, then,” Mobius said, then let out a low whistle to catch the Variant’s attention. “Come on, Loki – we don’t want to overstay our welcome.”
“We don’t,” the Variant said politely.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” Mobius said, winking at her. “And nice job, today. Your notes were very thorough.”
A-27’s heart skipped a beat. “You found them?”
“Yes! Loki kept them close. Even he must have known valuable work should not be thrown into the trash.”
Another snort coming from Loki. “Right,” he said.
A-27 wished the cat had bitten him.
“Have a very good night,” Mobius said.
“You too, sir. For all time.”
“Always.”
The door closed behind the two of them.