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It is his last resort.
The TVA is not the one he left, and he doesn’t understand any of it. He can’t make sense of it, and now, with no Sylvie, and a Mobius who might as well be a stranger, there is no place for him there.
And so he returns to familiar ground.
The skyscrapers are gleaming in the sunlight, and people walk around completely unperturbed by the fact that their whole universe is about to collapse beneath their feet. Some of them give him a wide berth as he strides along, while others are engrossed in phones, conversations, or shop windows.
Bleecker Street presses in upon him, the narrow route cast into shadow by towering stone-clad buildings. He knows the place as soon as he lays eyes on it, its rounded window sticking out like a sore thumb on an otherwise angular street. He climbs the steps, his shoes thudding against the concrete. He is exhausted. Beside the brief nap in the library, he can’t remember the last time he slept.
Before he can raise a hand to knock, the door snaps open. He recognises the haughty face complete with goatee, and he doesn’t manage to get a word in before Strange questions him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m not here to fight,” he tells him, his voice cracking. “I…didn’t know where else to go.”
He looks up, shrewd eyes assessing him, searching for lies, but after a few moments, he steps aside, allowing Loki to cross the threshold.
“Any fast moves and I’ll send you on another little trip,” Strange tells him with a hint of satisfaction.
It takes Loki a moment to register what he’s talking about — a blip on his file that hadn’t taken up nearly as much space in his mind as the fact that this man is the keeper of the time stone.
Though what use that is to any of them now, he doesn’t know.
“That didn’t happen to me,” Loki tells him, looking around the dimly lit interior of the entry hall. It reminds him of the vaults on Asgard — now destroyed, obviously — with its hoarded relics on display.
“What do you mean?” Strange asks, then apparently deciding that the answer might require more comfort, adds: “This way, come on.” He gestures towards a door, and Loki follows him through. There are armchairs, fabric wearing thin on the arms where people have seemingly run their fingers across it absentmindedly, year after year, decade after decade.
“I stole the tesseract after the attack on New York,” Loki confesses, sinking down into one of the chairs. Strange takes a seat opposite him, listening carefully. Beams of sunlight stream in through the windows, falling short of the farthest wall, while dust motes dance in the air, forever suspended in limbo.
“Yeah,” Strange replies. “Scott did mention that little tidbit.”
Loki doesn’t know who Scott is, but ploughs on anyway. “The timeline branched, but I was pruned.”
The whole story comes flowing out of him — abridged for the sake of time and dignity. Strange absorbs it all, index finger circling a faded button on his chesterfield armchair. It feels better to release it all, but he has no idea what they could possibly do next. The TVA is completely compromised — as far as an already corrupt organisation can be — and He Who Remains is beyond anything he’s ever had to face down. A man who laughs at the concept of infinity stones is bad news for all of them. But if the universe is going to fall apart, he doesn’t want to stand alone.
“Do you know where Thor is?” he asks quietly. His voice sounds so small in the heavy silence, and the traffic outside is only a very distant rumble.
“He’s with the Guardians of the Galaxy,” Strange tells him.
“Who?”
“I know, ridiculous name.”
“That’s a bit rich,” Loki replies automatically, earning himself a grudging twitch of amusement from Strange.
“They’re a…ragtag bunch of loose canons. I mean, they’re idiots.” His gaze wanders, and he seems lost, caught up in memories at the back of his mind.
“Ah, so Thor will have fit right in.” It’s a churlish retort. His heart’s not even in it. He just wants to see Thor, to speak to him again before the world comes crashing down, and the last shreds of his life are obliterated.
A twitch of another smile. “They have a talking racoon.”
Loki frowns. “What’s a racoon?”
Strange fixes him with a look, then shakes his head. “So this…war is coming? Or it’s already happened? Or it’s happening now?” Strange asks, brow creased as he tries to wrap his head around it. But Loki doesn’t know, he has no idea, only that the thought of it terrifies him.
But before his mind can dwell on it any longer, a time door appears, glowing faintly orange. Immediately, Strange is on his feet, conjuring shields and ready to fight. But out walks Mobius, TemPad in hand.
“Hi there,” he says with a smile to Strange, immediately causing the latter to falter. When Mobius to turns to Loki, he can tell that he’s the wrong one, his short-lived elation vanishing in one lousy heartbeat. He lets out a shaky breath, his disappointment tugging his brow into a frown a he looks down the floor, hands tightly clasped together as he tries to hold his nerve.
Seeing this imposter is like losing the real Mobius all over again.
“Hey bud.” The voice, close, as Mobius has now crouched down to Loki’s level, sounds different. He can’t pinpoint it, but there’s something in it that just feels hollow. He pulls away from the hand on his shoulder but Mobius holds him firm. “Why don’t you come back to the TVA, we’ll talk about everything, okay? Emotions are running high, a lot’s happened, you’ve clearly been through it, so let’s take a breath, let’s regroup, and figure out where we’re headed. How does that sound?”
Loki shakes his head. Fake Mobius is so close to the real thing that it burns him. His stomach is twisting into knots, the universe playing a cruel trick in giving him something so close and yet so far.
“Don’t,” he says, standing abruptly, Mobius's hand falling from his shoulder. He grabs the arm of the chair to steady himself and Loki walks over to the window. He can feel his throat clogging up. Any discussion would be in cracked tones that no one needs to hear. He tries to swallow his grief down but it’s so acute that all it does is get lodged in his windpipe. It feels like he might choke on it.
Outside the world carries on at a normal pace. Yellow cabs inch past the window, people chatter, unaware that the universe is once again hanging in the balance. How complacent they must be, even after the snap. The snap that seems like a warm up act in comparison to what’s coming.
He senses the footsteps more than he hears them — a quiet gait across a well trodden rug. And then Mobius is at his shoulder once again. Loki looks towards the sky, leaning forwards into the bay window to try and catch a glimpse of blue above the rooftops. He cannot stop the tear that trickles down his cheek, falling hot and fast just like all the others he has cried these past few days.
He’s so tired.
“We can talk about things here if you’d like?” His voice is soft and quiet, the tone he always saves for when they are particularly close, for those conversations that are just for the two of them and no one else.
Loki presses his lips together and shakes his head. His face is hurting from tensing his muscles, trying to force himself to hold it together just long enough for this Mobius to get bored and leave.
But he’s still here.
“I don’t want to talk.” The words are hollow and empty, and he presses the heels of his palms against his eyes, breathing deeply.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not my Mobius!”
The outburst, full of anguish and resentment for a universe in which always has to lose, takes Mobius by surprise. He takes a couple of steps back, and Loki realises he’s never seen fear in his own Mobius's eyes.
It hurts.
“I’m sorry,” he says, tears falling freely now. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. It’s not your fault.”
Mobius looks at him with the same compassion that the real one does, the incident immediately cast aside.
“Tell me about your Mobius,” he says.
Loki shakes his head, his vision blurring as he looks down at the floor again. It’s all still too fresh, the grief too raw. He has lost him twice in a matter of…hours? Days? He hardly knows the difference. There are no sunrises at the TVA.
“Help me to understand.”
He shrugs. He hardly knows where to start. So he starts with the obvious.
“He loves jet skis.”
“Well snap,” Mobius says with a grin. “Has he talked your ear off about them already?”
There is a brief respite from the aching grief in his heart, and his lips are tugged into a faint smile. He nods, his hands finding their way into his pockets, holding the material of his trousers tightly in his fists as he concentrates on his own Mobius, about what makes him just right.
“He’s…” he frowns, trying to find the right words. “He’s cracked it.”
“What?” Mobius takes half a step back towards Loki now, concern etched all over his uncanny face. “What has he cracked?”
“Caring about me.” The last word tears through his throat, raking its way along his vocal cords and out into the open. But it feels better to say it aloud, like sucking poison from a wound. “You have to understand,” he says, holding Mobius's gaze for the first time. “I’m difficult to care about. Really, very difficult to care about. And people have tried. But he’s…” He trails off once more, his speech petering out now that he’s back on the subject of Mobius, rather than explaining his own flaws. “He makes it look so easy.”
Loki wipes at his face with the back of his hand, smearing his tears across his cheekbones.
“I’ve pushed him away, and I’ve let him down and he still doesn’t stop and I don’t know how he can possibly think it’s worth it but he still does.” Regret floods through him as he thinks of cruel words flung out of spite, all the times he messed things up, forced Mobius to put his neck on the line. The whole time at the TVA, Mobius was the only thing stopping him from being sent to the end of the universe.
And he never appreciated that.
“I’m sure you’re not as difficult to love as you think,” Mobius says quietly, reaching for his shoulder, but Loki turns away. He has no idea.
“You don’t understand…you couldn’t. After all that, you’re standing here with his face and his voice but you look at me like I’m a stranger. You don’t even know my name.”
The ‘bud’ had been a distraction tactic, and it had wailed like a siren in his head. Mobius — the real one — always uses his name. He has a particular way of pronouncing it, a way that makes Loki feel at home.
“Tell me your name,” Mobius says softly.
He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to give up this part of himself to a man who doesn’t understand him. But his desire to hear it one more time overwhelms him.
“Loki,” he concedes.
Mobius nods, and then repeats it back to him. “Loki.”
It’s gentle, and kind. But it’s not the same.
“I’m sure he’s trying to find you.”
The platitude means nothing — less than nothing. It’s a hollow promise made by a man who has no clue what he’s dealing with.
“The TVA has fractured,” Loki says, his voice cracking. “Instead of there being just one singular entity there could be thousands, millions. And on top of that, millions of timelines. How could he possibly find me?” He pauses for breath, and presses his hands against his face. He feels sick. Exhausted. His body is finally giving up. Thanos. New York. The TVA, Alabama. Lamentis-1. The Void. All of it is just too much.
“He’s never felt so far away.”
Mobius's gaze softens, and there is a flicker of something — perhaps pity — in his blue eyes.
“Loki, listen to me.” He takes Loki by the shoulders before he has a chance to step away, and holds him fast, moving closer towards him. Loki can hardly bear to look at him, the earnest expression so close to the one he’s so familiar with. But Mobius gives him a shake, focusing his gaze. “If he cares that much about you, I guarantee he’s looking for you. And I guarantee he won’t stop until he finds you, all right?”
It’s hard to believe him. With the enormity of not just one universe but millions stretching before him, and the real Mobius hidden in shadow, it’s hard to have any hope at all.
“I can’t do this on my own.”
Saying it aloud only hammers home the truth. That he is better with his Mobius, less destructive both towards himself and those around him. And now he is adrift once more, at a time when it’s more important than ever that he doesn’t mess things up again. But as the sorrow wallows in his heart, he glances up to meet Mobius's eye — twinkling, creased at the edges. There’s a small smile hiding behind his moustache.
“You won’t have to, I promise.”
He holds out his arms, and Loki hesitates, but he is so desperate for reassurance that even this pale imitation will do for now. There are some things about him that haven’t changed, and he wonders if in every universe, Mobius is a constant. He, Loki, is all over the place. He’s an alligator for crying out loud. But Mobius surely always looks exactly the same.
“That’s it, bring it in big guy.”
Loki holds onto him tightly, the material of Mobius's suit jacket gripped in his fist.
“Don’t call me big guy,” he whispers. “It sounds weird.”
Mobius chuckles against his shoulder, and Loki half wonders if he said it on purpose.
“What do you say, we sit down, talk about what’s happened, and try and figure out where we are with the timelines, huh?”
Loki nods and releases him. He returns to his chair, and Strange hands him a small cup.
“Tea,” he says. “With honey. Drink it, you’ll feel better.”
It’s a tall order for some tea, but Loki drinks it all the same, only half listening while Mobius details his own version of events to Strange. The words filter in and out, and he wonders if his Mobius is really looking for him. The sacred timeline has branched beyond all repair; he’s bound to have bigger problems on his hands than Loki being missing.
The more worrying thought, the one that has drilled so deep into his mind that he can almost pretend it’s not there, is that his Mobius doesn’t even know he’s missing. His Mobius might think that he’s still there, with Sylvie, at the end of the timeline, claiming the throne between them.
He might think that Loki’s chosen that.
Strange asks question after question after question, and the street outside starts to lose the day, shadows spreading as street lights blink into life. He’s given up listening now — Mobius has been explaining reset charges for half an hour, and Loki is falling asleep, his face just about propped up by the heel of his palm.
A flash of light jerks him out of his doze. Strange is on his feet, shields already formed, and Loki stands, pushing the fake Mobius behind him and drawing his dagger. His heart pounds in his chest. He waits to see the face, to hear the maniacal laugh, to take his last few moments on this plain of existence before he is wiped out by a reset charge.
But it’s not He Who Remains. Nor is it any of his variants.
“There you are,” Mobius says, shoulders sagging as he lays eyes on Loki.
Loki drops his dagger and throws himself towards Mobius, gripping him tightly. He buries his face against Mobius's shoulder, and takes deep steadying breaths as relief floods through him. Not death. Not vengeance. Not today. Today the universe has given him something back.
“Y’all right?” Mobius asks quietly.
“She killed him,” Loki says, for lack of anything better to say.
“Yeah I figured,” Mobius replies as he gives Loki a final squeeze and pulls back from him. He looks tired — even more dishevelled than when Loki last laid eyes on him in The Void. His tie is loose, shirt collar in disarray, and the lines on his face look a little deeper than before.
“He’s terrifying,” Loki tells him. He needs to know. He needs to understand what Sylvie has unleashed on them all. It’s his own fault too — he hadn’t been smart enough to see through her, hadn’t anticipated one last act of betrayal. He’d let it happen. “He’s utterly insane — he offered us the throne, complete control over everything —”
“And you didn’t take it?” Mobius frowns, his voice shifting up a semi-tone in pitch.
“Why would I want it?” The idea is ridiculous to him. Ruling over every decision that everyone ever makes, choosing who lives and who dies on a whim. It’s not the kind of throne he ever wanted. He couldn’t bear to end up like him, alone, and insane, with nobody knowing your name.
Mobius laughs. The strap of his bag shifts on his shoulder, and Mobius lets it drop to the floor. “You’re a real funny guy, you know that?”
“What, you think I should have taken it?” Loki asks. He doesn’t understand. All he ever wanted to do was to understand exactly what kind of wolves would be howling at the door, he never wanted that kind of control for himself.
“No, I don’t. I’m glad you didn’t. You’re just full of surprises, that’s all.”
“You’re not scared of him,” Loki breathes. Either Mobius is an idiot, or he doesn’t understand what they’re dealing with at all. “He makes Thanos look like a school bully.”
“Oh good,” says Strange. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”
Mobius shrugs, his lips tugging into a smile. “What’s to be scared of?” he asks. “You and I have already been wiped out of existence at least once, and yet here we are. I mean, there’s two of me for cryin’ out loud!” He gestures over to the false Mobius, who tilts his head in agreement. “We’re gonna be fine.”
“You don’t believe that, surely.”
“Well,” Mobius says thoughtfully, his hands in his pockets as he muses on the situation. “What’ll happen’ll happen. He won’t be here for a while yet, so let’s take a breath, get cleaned up, and get a good night’s sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.” He reaches forward, and gently tugs at Loki’s torn shirt sleeve, the crimson stains already fading with wear. “Brought you a fresh suit,” he says with a smile, then nods towards the bag. “Figured you’d need it after…” He pauses, frowns, then looks to the other Mobius. “How long’s it been?”
“Four, five hours?” Mobius replies. “Give or take.”
The real Mobius smiles down at his shoes. When he looks up at Loki, the dark circles under his eyes are more evident than ever.
“How long’s it been for you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Mobius says offhandedly.
Loki parks that line of enquiry and tries another. “How do you know he won’t be here for a while? Are there records at the TVA?”
Mobius shakes his head. “There are millions of timelines. It took me long enough to find this one, and I knew what I was looking for.”
Loki frowns. “What were you looking for?”
Mobius's face creases in confusion. “You,” he says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Loki doesn’t know how to process that. And he’s saved the trouble, because the fake Mobius gets up from his chair and in hushed tones says to the real one, “I’ll let ya take it from here.”
The real Mobius gives him a nod, while the fake one claps Loki on the back and opens up a new time door with his TemPad. “See y’around, big guy.”
He vanishes, the time door flickering into nothing behind him.
“Why’d he call you ‘big guy’?” Mobius whispers. “That’s so weird.”
“Yeah really weird,” Loki replies in his own whisper. “I don’t like it.”
Mobius puts an arm around him, and the silence hangs over them.
“How long did it take you to find this timeline?” Loki asks again. He needs to know, he needs to understand just how big everything has become in just a short while.
“Long enough,” Mobius replies. And when Loki opens his mouth to dig deeper, he quickly cuts him off. “I don’t really wanna talk about it, okay?”
Loki’s questions die in his throat, and he puts his own arm around Mobius's shoulders. “Are you all right?” he asks. His fingers fiddle with the shoulder pad in Mobius’s jacket while he awaits an answer.
“Yeah,” Mobius says at last, turning to Loki with a sad smile. “I’m all right.”
Strange lets them use the bathroom to clean up. After Mobius’s quick shower, Loki sinks into a hot bath, scrubbing away the lingering dirt from Lamentis-1 and The Void. The cut on his arm smarts when he submerges himself, but the pain fades, and eventually the tension in his body eases. If he closes his eyes, and ignores the distant sound of car horns, he can pretend he is back in Asgard. He imagines high ceilings and expansive marble floors.
But all of that’s gone.
He wishes he could have showed Mobius. But maybe Mobius has been to a timeline where Asgard is still in one piece. Maybe he has seen it. Just with another Loki.
The thought rankles, and Loki pulls the plug, the bath water gurgling as it starts to drain away. He dries himself off, and opens Mobius’s bag, pulling out the neatly folded change clothes he had brought with him. It’s the same standard TVA suit as before, but this time, Mobius has brought him a jacket. There’s no orange lettering emblazoned across the shoulders, but when he puts it on, he feels a lump in the inside breast pocket. He pats his hand over it, frowning, wondering if it’s something that a previous TVA analyst had left behind. But when he reaches inside, he pulls out half a packet of Kablooie.
His curiosity piqued, unwinds the paper a little more, tearing it carefully before he can get the next piece out of the pack. It’s an obscene shade of turquoise, but he puts it in his mouth nonetheless and chews. It’s sickly sweet, and far too rubbery for his taste, but he chews it regardless and swallows it down.
When he glances in the mirror before leaving the bathroom, he sees a faint blue stain on his lips, then opens his mouth to find his tongue has changed colour entirely. It’s all very droll, he’s sure.
He rinses his mouth with water from the tap but it has zero effect. He briefly considers casting an illusion, but decides against it. He’s tired, and he will allow Mobius his little joke.
Loki leaves the bathroom, and when he turns, he sees Strange, climbing the last few steps of the staircase.
“I’ve spoken with Mobius,” he tells Loki. “I think it’s a good idea that you both stay here for the time being, until we know what’s going on.”
“Are you trying to imprison us?” Loki asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t think I could even if I wanted to,” Strange says with a shrug. “I’m just offering you a place to stay in this timeline. We’ve got a couple of spare rooms, it’s not a problem.”
“Oh,” Loki says, content with the idea of the merest element of stability. Even for one night, something to eat and somewhere to sleep would be a vast improvement on the whirlwind of the last few days. “Thank you.”
Strange nods. “Do you want me to try and get a message to Thor?”
Loki lets out a breath of laughter. “I’d be impressed if you could.”
“Well, I’ll try,” Strange says. “But he’s not exactly big on texting.” He smiles, but it fades quickly. “You okay?” he asks.
Loki shrugs. He doesn’t know how to answer that question. There is an intangible threat looming over them, permeating every single millisecond of every single reality. He doesn’t know when it will strike, and he doesn’t know the damage it will cause. Worst of all, he doesn’t know how they could possibly defeat it.
“I’ve ordered some food,” Strange says in response to his silence. “And I’ll have the beds made up. We can start making plans tomorrow. This is a long game, we shouldn’t rush into anything.”
“Okay,” Loki says. Though how Strange knows for certain it’s a long game is beyond him. He wants to sleep, is looking forward to a night in a half decent bed for the first time since Asgard. But he has no idea how he’ll be able to switch his brain off long enough for him to slip into slumber. Everything in his head is so noisy. The maniacal laughter of He Who Remains echoes around his mind. He rubs his face and lets out a heavy sigh. He won’t be forgetting that sound in a hurry.
“Go downstairs,” Strange says. “Fix yourself a drink, make yourself comfortable. I’ll be down in a little while.”
Loki nods and utters a quiet “thanks”. He slips his hands into his pockets and heads for the stairs, descending them slowly. He finds Mobius in the living room, nursing a brandy. He drains the last of it and lets out a quiet hiss — the alcohol must be burning his throat on the way down.
“Top up?” Loki holds out his hand for the glass, and Mobius passes it to him. He wanders over to the drinks cabinet, picks up the brandy and pours a generous glass before returning it to Mobius. When he tries to choose something for himself, he ends up picking up half a dozen bottles in turn, unscrewing the cap, sniffing tentatively, and then rejecting the contents. He settles on a carafe of claret, pours some into a glass, then sinks down on the couch next to Mobius.
“Did you try the Kablooie?”
Loki turns to him and pokes his tongue out. Mobius chuckles at the sight of it.
“What did you think?”
Loki swirls his wine around in his glass. “I didn’t much care for it,” he tells him. “It was really chewy.”
“Well it’s gum,” Mobius says. “It’s supposed to be.”
Loki shrugs.
“You didn’t swallow it did you?”
He pauses for half a second, before answering, “No, of course not. Why?” He looks over to Mobius, who’s skewing his lips to one side.
“Well you’re not supposed to swallow it, you’re supposed to chew it, and then when you’re bored of it, or it loses its flavour, you spit it in the trash.”
“Right,” Loki says. And then, after a short pause, “What happens if you swallow it?”
“Well you can’t digest it,” Mobius explains. “So it stays in your stomach for like seven years.”
“That can’t possibly be true,” Loki replies, the words tumbling out of him in a rush. But even as he says it he can feel a rubbery weight in his stomach, as though the Kablooie is lodged right at the bottom of it.
“Doc?” Mobius calls. Loki looks towards the doorway and sees Strange coming down the stairs.
“Yeah?” he calls back.
“What happens if you swallow gum?”
“It stays in your stomach for seven years,” Strange replies without missing a beat. Loki looks at him, searching for any hint of deceit in his face. His reply had been so quick that Loki had hardly had an opportunity to look for clues in it — the crack of his voice, a slight hesitation, the twitch of a muscle that belies the smooth exterior.
But nothing.
“It’s fine don’t worry about it,” Strange says, lips pulling into a smirk. “But spit it out next time.”
“Well there won’t be a next time, because I didn’t like it.”
Strange shrugs, but then a bell rings, announcing the arrival of dinner. The food comes in foil trays and paper bags. It’s nothing like anything Loki’s had before, but he wolfs it down regardless. The TVA had been so out of step with the rest of the universe that he hardly knows how long it’s been since he last had a decent meal.
Later, Strange shows him and Mobius to their rooms. Loki’s has a reasonable bed, a dark wooden dresser, and more antique rugs like the ones downstairs. The high window has slatted wooden shutters — neither keep out the rumble of traffic below, which is frequently accented by impatient horns and the heavy growls of larger vehicles. The lights from nearby billboards cast multicoloured fragments of light on the wall. It’s soothing in its own way.
He mumbles a goodnight to Strange and Mobius, then gets ready for bed. Strange has lent him some clothes to sleep in. They’re loose and soft, and reminiscent of the sort of thing he might have lounged around in on Asgard, in the time before everything went wrong.
As he lays in bed, he waits for sleep to take him. He had expected to fall softly into it, like an overripe peach falling from a tree and landing in the soft grass below. But it doesn’t happen. Sleep doesn’t reach out from the darkness and drag him down. Nor does it lull him gently into unconsciousness, like a boat drifting out to sea.
In time, his eyelids grow heavy, and the traffic becomes a comforting purr. His breathing slows, his grip on the spare pillow tucked against his chest loosens just a little. But then he hears the creak of the door.
He sits bolt upright, heart pounding in his chest, and conjures a suitably impressive dagger.
“Sorry,” Mobius says, standing in the doorway. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Loki sinks back onto his pillow, dagger vanishing in an instant. His hands are trembling, and he covers his face as he tries to even out his breathing. He can feel his pulse pounding in his ears, and with every second that passes, it slows back down, the false alarm fading away.
“Are you okay?” he asks. Even in his haze of exhaustion and confusion, he had been uneasy about Mobius. His avoidance of Loki’s questions had only heightened his concern, a nagging voice growing louder in the back of his head. But he has no idea how to deal with that. If Mobius doesn’t want to talk about it, Loki has no intention of making him.
But he doesn’t know how to help him.
“I just can’t sleep,” Mobius says, stepping across the threshold and closing the door behind him. The creaky hinges sound much quieter now Loki’s awake, and it makes him feel both silly and reassured. “It’s all this dang noise,” Mobius adds, gesturing vaguely to the window. “We don’t have that kind of racket at the TVA.”
“D’you want to swap?” Loki asks. “It might be a bit quieter in here.”
“Nah, I just thought I’d come and see if you were…and you were sleeping, sorry. I’ll just…” he reaches for the door handle, but Loki shakes his head.
“You can stay in here if you like,” he tells him.
“Really?”
“Of course,” Loki says. “There’s plenty of room.” The pillow he’d been holding onto is slightly misshapen now, so he gives it a quick shake to revive it, and puts it back in its original place.
Mobius pads over and pulls back the bedspread. Loki releases some of his claim, and there’s a bit of shuffling while they make themselves comfortable on a mattress which has certainly seen better days. He glances over to Mobius, who has his arms tightly folded across his chest. There’s no way he’ll fall asleep like that, and Loki has to resist the urge to reach out and move them into a more restful position.
Instead, he thinks of Asgard, of the great cavernous room that had been called his bedroom, and how enormous it had felt when he was a boy, waking from nightmares about Frost Giants and Dark Elves. Oh how times change.
His mother used to cast illusions for him — Yggdrasil, with all its worlds turning smoothly as days, months, and years passed before his eyes until he slipped into dreamless sleep. He closes his eyes and concentrates, trying to recall every star dotted like flowers across the branches.
The soft exhale from Mobius tells him he’s done it.
He opens his eyes and it’s exactly how he remembers it. Though there’s stardust up there that he knows wasn’t there all those years ago. Even now, she lives on through his magic, always present, even if he doesn’t always realise it.
“Those are the nine realms,” Loki tells him softly. “I don’t know if you ever studied this at the TVA. But that’s how we were taught about the universe. Asgard, Midgard, Vanaheim…” He continues talking, centuries of history and learning pouring out of him. Mobius doesn’t utter a word, but when Loki looks towards him again, he has one arm behind his head, the other loosely arranged across his stomach.
“I’m not boring you, am I?” Loki asks. His mental list of interesting things he can say about Yggdrasil is wearing thin, but Mobius is still very much awake.
“No, not at all,” Mobius says quietly. “I like it,” he says. “It’s very beautiful. But you can go to sleep, don’t worry about me. You must be exhausted.”
As he says it, Loki realises he’s yawning and quickly tries to suppress it, which only makes Mobius’s shoulders shake with a silent laugh.
“I’ll leave it up there,” Loki tells him, and mentally plants the illusion in the back of his mind, where it can tick over for the rest of the night. It’s only as his mind starts to wind down again, that Loki remembers Mobius’s love of jet skis, and wonders whether he should have conjured him a beach instead.
The world begins to slip away once more, fading at the edges as the shadows grow, cloaking everything in darkness.
“Loki?”
There is something about the way his name forms in Mobius's mouth that sears his heart. The density of the K, perhaps, and the delicacy of the rest of it, are sounds that only his Mobius could make. Any annoyance is immediately soothed by the mere utterance of it.
“Yes?” Loki turns his head on the pillow, sleepiness falling away from him. He can see Mobius, still gazing up at the ceiling, but his fingers are fiddling with the bedspread now. His brow is twitched into an anxious frown, his lips skewing as he considers his next words.
“What is it?” Loki asks, rolling over to face him properly. His voice is croaky from the slither of rest he’s had. He wonders how much later it actually is.
Mobius lets out a slow, shaky breath. “What if…”
Loki watches and waits, but in an instant, the expression vanishes, a smile forced into place.
“No I’m being silly, don’t worry about it. G’night.”
He starts to roll onto his side, turning away from Loki, but Loki grabs him by the arm, halting him. “Mobius, what’s the matter?”
Mobius doesn’t say anything, nor does he try to move away, but Loki still keeps a loose grip on his forearm, the fine hairs soft against his thumb.
“Well,” Mobius says, returning to his original position. His eyes are still fixed on Yggdrasil, glowing above. “What if I…” He fidgets, shifting his shoulders against the mattress. Loki can feel Mobius's heart rate creeping up, the pulse in his wrist thudding against Loki’s fingertips.
“Tell me,” he says softly, and Mobius's eyes glance towards him, and then back up to the ceiling.
“What if I find out who I am,” he says slowly, “and it turns out I wasn’t a nice person?”
Loki can feel the tension in Mobius's forearm, the muscles taut and strained, anxiety riddling its way through every inch of him. And Loki knows. He knows what it is to lose your identity, to discover the monster lurking in the dark was your own self all along. He knows what it is to be shattered by a devastating truth.
But for Mobius, of all people, he knows it’s impossible.
He won’t find a monster. The TVA might be able to erase memories, flood minds with their doctrine, but they cannot rewrite a soul.
“For what it’s worth,” Loki murmurs, and Mobius's eyes flick towards him once again, but this time they stay put, watching his reaction. “I don’t think, that in all the millions and billions of universes out there, there is a single version of you who is cruel…or spiteful…or lesser in any way.” He pauses, and looks down at his hand, still wrapped around Mobius's arm, and he wonders when he lost the ability to let go.
“But that’s coming from me so…” he trails off, acutely aware that he’s the last person qualified to give reassurances of goodness and morality.
“It means everything, coming from you,” Mobius replies softly.
Loki can feel Mobius's gaze still on him, but he daren’t meet it. His own heart is speeding up now, and his grip on Mobius has tightened in an attempt to quell the tremble in his fingers.
He has invaded worlds, and yet this ridiculous, innocuous man has the ability to strike terror into the very core of him.
It happens before his brain can intervene. His lips meet Mobius's own, briefly, lingering for just a half second before Loki looks down, focusing on the folds of the blanket tucked under Mobius's arm. He waits for it — the reaction — his shoulders tensed and braced for impact. He waits for Mobius to push him away, to utter his disgust, to reject him completely, to leave altogether and return to the TVA alone. Loki waits for the world to crumble around him once again.
But that’s not what happens.
What he gets instead is a steady hand delicately tilting his chin up, then soft lips, the lingering taste of spearmint toothpaste, and the gentle prickling of Mobius's moustache.
The End