Chapter Text
B-15 stopped at the edge of the row of cubicles and stared suspiciously at Mobius’ desk. The variant was there, out of his prisoner jumpsuit and in an analyst’s suit Mobius must have dug up somewhere, supposedly reading the training materials but really leaning back in his chair and tossing a ball of paper lazily at the ceiling. Mobius was nowhere in sight, for now.
She strode up to the desk and slapped the file in her hands onto it to grab his attention. “Where’s Agent Mobius?”
The variant looked down from the ceiling and gave her a smug little grin she was, unfortunately, already far too familiar with. “Ah, Hunter B-15, what a pleasant surprise, it truly is a pleasure - “
“Where’s Mobius?” she repeated.
His smile slipped a little before he recovered. “He stepped out for a bit, but I’m sure he’ll be back soon for your,” he looked down, “file.” He managed to make the last word sound like he was talking about something he’d stepped in. In a way, she supposed he had - Asgardian princes or whatever the hell he was probably didn’t have much paperwork.
She pulled the file away and looked around for Mobius again. There was no way she’d leave any kind of information with this variant.
The variant in question maneuvered his way out of his chair and up next to her. “I’m glad, actually, we have this chance to chat,” he said, his voice pitching up into a light, lilting tone. “I wanted to see, since we are going to be working together to, ah, protect the Sacred Timeline, a very noble goal, that there were no hard feelings about that whole Time Collar incident.” He put his hand on his chest and affected a sorrowful tone. “My deepest apologies.”
She grabbed the hand on his chest and used the angle to push him into the cubicle wall. Looking him in the eyes and keeping her voice low, she said, “If you try anything like that again I’ll prune you on sight, no matter what Mobius says.”
For a brief moment, the variant flinched, and he stared back at her eyes wide and a little shaky. Like a wounded animal. Almost like a person.
Mobius’ voice cut in from the side, “Hey, hey, everything all right here?” He was heading towards them from the side, hands out and head tilted in his usual placating gesture.
B-15 released the variant and stepped back as Mobius came up to them to stand at the side of the variant, putting his hand at the variant’s elbow, then quickly moving it to the small of his back. The variant’s face snapped back into a vague smirk, but his shoulders dropped their tension and he leaned into the touch.
“Everything’s perfectly fine, Mobius,” he said, “Hunter B-15 and I were just coming to an understanding.” He straightened his tie.
B-15 glared at him, but gave a small half-nod. So the variant did listen, when it suited him. She handed Mobius the file. “Here’s the writeup on the last five variant attacks. You know, by the other version of him .”
“Yeah, yeah, we get the picture, thank you,” Mobius said, taking the file. The variant tried to peer over at it, but Mobius moved the hand on his back to his waist to push him back. “You have training videos to finish,” he said, his voice low.
The variant made an agitated little ‘tch’ sound but moved where Mobius’ hand pushed him, almost melting into the motion.
B-15 decided she had quite enough of that and turned around to leave, catching sight of the jetski magazine on her way out. She kept walking, narrowing her eyes at the uneasy feeling itching at the back of her neck the way she felt right before a branch was about to hit redline.
B-15 wouldn’t say she liked her job itself one way or another, but she did like that she was good at her job. There was a satisfying sense of purpose in the cut and dry morality of what she did - identify variant, capture variant, prosecute variant. No wiggle room for the morally gray at the TVA. No margin for error when the Sacred Timeline was on the balance.
Mobius, she knew, was another story. He followed the dictates of the Timekeepers, yes, he did his job and did it well enough to capture dangerous variants and prune branched realities, sure, but there had always been something more complicated than that hiding in the clench of his jaw or the light in his eyes when he figured out the mindset of a variant. It had never been B-15’s business to dig further, but she did have eyes. She saw the drive he had, his tendency to try to be soft to the bystanders in branched realities. As if it mattered, when they weren’t supposed to exist. As if it mattered, when the reality would be reset in minutes anyway.
He was the worst about his Loki variants, everyone knew this, sometimes treating their actions like some kind of sports game he was watching, though he always caught them in the end. “It’s interesting,” he’d said to her once, chasing down a Loki that had run off on Sakaar, “He has a game within a game, but he always runs back to someone. Look at this one - he’s running back to get his brother.” Mobius hadn’t been there when that one had been pruned. He wasn’t there for most of the prunings.
In the connecting corridor outside the offices, she almost ran into Casey pushing a cart.
“Hey!” he said, seeing her, “It’s you!” He hunched over his cart. “Don’t prune this one.”
B-15 rolled her eyes, and almost kept going before Casey spoke again.
“You know, you could apologize! That variant that got away from you, even he apologized.” Casey frowned. “And then he tried to show me a picture of whatever a fish was, but it just looked like a weird ugly shiny thing, so I told him I thought he was lying? Then he left. But still!”
B-15 glared at him until he ducked his gaze and left, muttering to the floor, “I liked that other cart.”
B-15 stayed in the corridor for a minute and took a breath, thinking not for the first time how fervently, deeply wrong it felt to have a variant freely wander the halls of the TVA. That wasn’t how it was supposed to happen, that wasn’t where variants were supposed to be.
She turned on her heel and headed down a side corridor, ending up outside Judge Renslayer’s office as she was coming out of it. Renslayer took one look at her face and sighed. “This is about the Loki variant, isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question.
“I have some concerns.”
Renslayer threw her hands in crisp movements out to the side. “I have concerns too. I have a lot of concerns. But the Timekeepers signed off on it and they want it to go ahead, so that’s what we’ll do.”
“And we’ll just see what happens?”
“Yes. We’ll just see what happens.” Renslayer tilted her head. “What part are you worried about the most?”
B-15 paused for a moment. “I just...don’t want people to forget what he is. And what’s going to happen once his usefulness is over.”
“...People?”
“Yes. People.”
There was one Loki variant Mobius hadn’t known about until they were already pruned. They were a teenager up in the mountains of Asgard on a hunt with Thor. They were supposed to stay with their brother. Instead, they stayed behind just a second too long and saw a villager fall under a cart and tried to help. They cried when B-15 had grabbed them, they cried at their trial, they cried when they were pruned. When Renslayer had seen B-15 come back from the mission, variant in hand, she’d murmured to B-15, “Don’t tell Mobius yet.” Mobius avoided her for a while after he found out, though he’d never have admitted it if asked.
Renslayer shrugged. “So you don’t want...people to forget what he is. I would agree. Any suggestions?”
B-15 thought of the variant earlier at Mobius’ desk, leaning into him wearing the same brown suit clothes as any analyst. If anyone looked at him without knowing what he was, they would think the variant was any one of them.
“I do have an idea,” B-15 said, “How do you feel about jackets?"