Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Seizures may guide me, insanity found me.

I smile as your vanity sings us to sleep.

Spring, 2012, before the Battle of New York

This is a mistake.

I shouldn’t be here.

I should have died.

It had been months since Loki let himself fall from the Bifröst. He’d intended to die. Instead, he was stuck in a sort of purgatory, tumbling through countless galaxies, fading in and out of consciousness, and tormented by thoughts of his family. He was both a god and a Frost Giant, which made him very hard to kill. The chill of outer space might have frozen a warm-blooded being solid and freed them from their torture. Loki did not have that luxury. He was the monster under the bed, a blue-skinned, red-eyed, Jotun reject who couldn’t freeze to death if he tried.

So, he fell.

And he fell.

And he fell.

He might have fallen forever had Thanos not plucked him from the aether.

He sensed the pull of foreign magic, which was always an odd feeling. It felt sort of like a stranger stepping into your house. Normally, he would have fought the intrusion tooth and nail, but he was too weak, and it washed over him without his permission.

Then, everything went black.

When he came to, the first thing he noticed was the hard stone on which he laid, and he gasped with relief. I’m not falling anymore. The Jotun slowly pushed himself up, but when he tried to stand, his knees buckled underneath him. He collapsed to the ground once more. It didn’t matter. Keeping up appearances was the least of his concerns. His cape hung in tatters from his battered frame, his armor had tarnished, and he was as pale as Lady Death herself. Kneeling would have to do.

He looked down at his shaking hands, splayed out on the gray stone, and saw the faintest tinge of blue there, staining his fingertips. He laughed at it, a grim, sardonic, exhausted laugh that turned to tears within seconds. He had maintained his glamour through all those long, torturous months. That he was detestable and disreputable, he knew to be true (he believed to be true), but he refused to be a monster. The mask has slipped, at last, he thought, turning one of his hands over to watch the blue creep along his fingers. The monster steps forth from the shadows.

He didn’t bother to fight the ink stains that crept up his arms, leaving raised marks behind them. They looked like scars. They disgusted him.

Why would anyone save me?

Loki raised his head and his gaze landed on a large, mauve man, whose name and title Loki did not yet know. In his rescuer’s hand was a gold and silver scepter. Mounted in the scepter's hooked, spear-like head, was a glowing, blue stone. It was clear they weren’t on a planet. It was much smaller, little more than a meteor, but it was enough. Loki had solid ground underneath him. He was safe. The god attempted to speak. He wanted to thank his gracious benefactor, but speaking felt like swallowing razor blades; the crying didn’t help in the slightest, either. He was grateful when the man raised his free hand to stop him from speaking. The man was imposing, and his rocky home sparse, but for a moment, as he descended from his throne, Loki believed he had helped him as an act of charity. The Trickster almost managed a smile when the man stopped in front of him.

Any trace of joy vanished when his rescuer let the deadly point of the scepter rest on Loki’s chest. The Trickster realized all at once how great a fool he’d been. Why would someone save me out of the kindness of their heart? I’m nothing but a trinket to add to a collection or to trade away. He swallowed hard. His mouth had gone completely dry. The mauve man’s hideous, malformed vassals looked on from beside his throne, their eyes drilling into Loki, who dared not move. They looked like they were itching to kill, and he didn’t want to give them any reason to try. He knew that, in his state, they would likely succeed, and he would much rather die on his own terms. He hoped to avoid the disembowelment the Mad Titan’s lackeys would gleefully provide.

“It’s very nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you,” Thanos said, his voice a low rumble, as uninviting as space itself.

“Is that so? Well, I do hope I’m not too much of a disappointment,” Loki replied, voice rough and painful from disuse. He summoned up as much of a smirk as he could manage. Exhaustion and white-hot fear, unlike anything he'd felt before, tempered his bravado and charm.

“Oh, no, I expect you’ll do just fine, but I do have a question for you.”

The tip of the weapon was all Loki could think about, but he refused to look down, to give away outright that he was terrified. He had a sinking feeling the man wasn’t there to grant him death, or for that matter, life. “Ask away,” was all the Trickster managed to say. Thanos smiled and leaned close. Loki couldn’t stop the way he trembled when he felt the tip of the scepter push harder against his armor.

“Would you do it all again?” the Mad Titan asked.

Loki swallowed. He’d had plenty of time to think about that question as he plummeted through the stars.

Would I try to kill my brother?

Would I murder my real father?

Would I try to destroy my birthplace to impress Odin?

Would I do it all again?

Loki exhaled an unsteady, icy breath. He held Thanos' gaze.

“I don’t know.”

The Mad Titan’s grin grew wider.

“Really? Then let me help you decide.”

He grabbed the god roughly by the arm to hold him in place as he pressed harder with the scepter. It pierced Loki’s armor, and when the razor-sharp point dug into his skin, the feeling of a thousand icy tendrils racing into his heart overwhelmed him. The Mind Stone held his heart and soul in a death grip. He gritted his teeth and fought, slammed shut every door in his mind that he could, but he could feel their cold grip in the tips of his fingers and all up his arms, around his spine, crawling up his throat, choking him, pulling him under, drowning him...

Mischief gave way to volatility. Confusion gave way to violence. Fear gave way to anger, to pure, unadulterated rage.

You thought you were nothing, whispered voices in the back of his mind. He tried not to listen, but the voices were everywhere, and the more he ignored them, the louder they got. You were a fool, they screamed at him.

You are everything.

Deep inside, some part of him wanted the throne, wanted to be feared, wanted to be hated as much as he hated himself. Those baser instincts rarely showed themselves, though. They were usually kept in check by the things that would someday make him a hero: his love for his brother, his love for Frigga, and his love for Asgard. No longer. The Mind Stone forced to the surface the person he would be if he lacked inhibition, lacked a heart, and the real Loki disappeared under the waves. Suddenly, the desire to kill, subjugate, and conquer didn’t seem so unreasonable to him. He relished that feeling. Under normal circumstances, he wanted many things - acceptance, love, respect - but he didn’t truly believe he deserved any of them. These were far from normal circumstances, though.

Desire gave way to entitlement.

The Mad Titan handed the scepter to Loki, and the Trickster replied with a fearsome grin.

“Get me the Tesseract, and I will give you the means to make Earth your own,” the Mad Titan said. With an obedient nod, Loki pulled himself to his feet and disappeared into a wormhole.

The Sacred Timeline is the official, preordained story of the universe. On the Sacred Timeline, Loki fails to subjugate Earth, inadvertently kills his mother, sacrifices himself for his brother, earns his father’s love and approval, and becomes a hero. Then, the man who drove him mad with the Mind Stone murders him. Being so independent, Loki believes, right up until the end, that he had a choice. He believes that who he is as a person drives his actions. He sees himself as an autonomous individual who can impact the world with his free will.

What Loki and all the Avengers and Revengers of the universe are not privy to is the fact that, in a universe where there is a Sacred Timeline, there is no choice.

For example, what if Loki had been born in a world where he was told from birth that he was adopted? That wouldn’t work. He needs to be conflicted. What if Loki retired from the villain game altogether and reached old age? No dice. Moving to Florida doesn’t make for a very good story. What if he’d been turned into an alligator by a witch? Alligators generally aren’t very good at sacrificing themselves.

The proper flow of time, including the story of Loki’s life, is all kept in check by the Time Variance Authority. The TVA is supposed to track down Variants, prosecute them for their crimes, erase them from existence, and reset the stray timelines they create. They are supposed to catch the Lokis who are slackers, or who prefer to present as women, or who work to save the day from the beginning.

They are supposed to catch the Lokis that are cruel and rotten even without the Mind Stone because that’s not really who he’s supposed to be.

Supposed to.

Spring, 2012, before the Battle of New York

Thanos smiled and leaned close. Loki couldn’t stop the way he trembled when he felt the tip of the scepter press harder against his armor. He was trapped, kneeling before the Mad Titan, and vulnerability was not something he coped with well.

“Would you do it all again?” the Mad Titan asked.

Loki swallowed. He’d had plenty of time to think about that question as he plummeted through the stars.

Would I try to kill my brother?

Would I murder my real father?

Would I try to destroy my birthplace to impress Odin?

Would I do it all again?

Loki exhaled an unsteady, icy breath. He peered down at his hands, which had nearly turned entirely blue.

Something inside him snapped like an overtightened violin string.

Loki looked up at Thanos. Resolutely, he declared, “No. I can do better.” The god forced himself to his feet and the scepter slipped from his chest. “I want to destroy Jotunheim, and Asgard, and anyone who’s ever wronged me. I want them all dead.”

Amused, his rescuer asked, “Really? And why didn’t you do that from the start?’

“Because some idiotic, childish part of me thought I could impress them, but no, I can’t. I wanted to be Thor’s equal, but after so long, alone, falling, I’ve realized that’s impossible.” Magic crackled between his azure fingertips, and he sneered. “If I can never have what I’ve wanted for a thousand years, then why not burn it all to the ground?”

Thanos opened his mouth to reply but closed it again as his stare met something behind Loki. Loki turned and watched as sheets of shimmering, translucent glass rose up out of the rocky ground. At first, they appeared solid, but then black-clad soldiers began to stream through, each of them armed with a baton and a small bronze device. The soldier at the front, presumably their leader, poked at his device for a moment, then, with a great sigh, he addressed the Mad Titan’s guest.

“Loki of Asgard?” The soldier at the front asked, the annoyance in his voice palpable as he read from the device in his hand.

“Not anymore. Who are you?” Loki asked, eyeing the strangers suspiciously.

The soldier rolled his eyes. “We represent the Time Variance Authority. I hereby arrest you, Loki of Asgard, for crimes against the Sacred Timeline.”

“What crimes?” Loki spat.

“He asked you a question, and you didn’t give the intended answer.”

Loki laughed, a scratchy, half-mad cackle, and waited for the other shoe to drop, but it never did. The man wasn’t joking. The Trickster stalked toward them. “I’m being arrested for answering a question wrong? What was I supposed to say to him? ‘I don’t know?'”

“Yes, you were.”

Thanos cleared his throat. “You must work for someone very important to be able to arrest people for answering questions wrong,” the Mad Titan said calmly. He stepped forward to stand next to Loki and addressed the soldiers’ leader. “Go on, tell me about this Authority you represent.”

“Listen, I don’t have to explain anything to-”

Loki pulled a dagger from the aether in a flash of green and launched it at the frontmost soldier’s device. It exploded in a shower of sparks and the soldier holding it cried out as blood began to pour from a large gash in his palm. The glowing portals behind the soldiers snapped closed.

“Answer the question, or it’ll be your head next,” the god threatened, and then, to the other soldiers, he hissed, “Set your weapons and those devices on the ground. Make any move to escape, and I will kill you where you stand.”

The soldiers made sure to move extra slowly. Thanos laughed.

The soldier at the front, through gritted teeth, answered, “We make sure the Sacred Timeline flows as dictated by the Time-Keepers to prevent multiversal war.”

“A noble cause. I imagine it would be hard to keep infinite universes in balance,” Thanos replied. One of his enormous hands spread over Loki’s shoulders. He felt like an insect being petted with a boot. “It sounds like the Time-Keepers have an awful lot of power, do they not? Exactly how much power do they hold?” the Mad Titan mused.

The soldiers’ leader hesitated, but after Loki glared at him, he said, “Infinite.”

“Oh, that sounds nice. Who needs Infinity Stones when there’s the Time Variance Authority, ripe for the taking?”

Loki turned to Thanos. “I can take it for you. I will give you the Time Variance Authority if you grant me the power to destroy my enemies,” he bargained.

“Will you, now? And why should I trust the God of Lies not to keep this Authority for himself?”

“Because to keep it, I would have to rule it, and there’s no one out there worth ruling.”

Thanos crowed and slapped him on the back, almost knocking him over. “Very well. Use this.” Thanos held out the scepter, and Loki took it without hesitation. He could feel the magic thrumming in the stone, and just holding the weapon seemed to firm his resolve.

“You’re most gracious, Lord...”

“Thanos.”

Loki smiled darkly. “Lord Thanos,” he finished with a bow.

Thanos returned to his throne. “Maw, take care of those soldiers. Jotun, overthrow the Time Variance Authority, and I’ll give you the means to erase your enemies from existence.”

One of Thanos’ vassals, Ebony Maw, stepped forward, and at his signal, the visitors from the TVA all collapsed, dead. The Trickster approached them and picked up one of the bronze devices. He turned it over in his palm and flipped it open. On the screen, he saw a green offshoot from a wavy, white centerline, and his image was in the upper-righthand corner, looking as put together as ever. Can’t go conquering with dirty clothes, he thought. In a flash, his clothing was renewed, and he looked much like he had on Jotunheim. On the screen, he also saw a blinking symbol shaped a bit like a grenade, and beside it were the words URGENT. REDLINE IMMINENT. RESET TIMELINE IMMEDIATELY. He looked at the bodies, and sure enough, he found grenades strapped to the dead soldiers’ belts. Loki grinned.

Reset?

He navigated through the menus on the device until he managed to open a Timedoor to the TVA a short distance away. As he approached the Timedoor, he made a small motion with his fingers like plucking a guitar string and triggered all the reset charges at once.

And, you know what? I think I’ll use that infinite power to destroy Asgard and Jotunheim myself. That’s much easier than serving a master.

He stepped through the Timedoor, and the branch was reset. The Sacred Timeline carried on as intended.

Chapter Text

Burning from both sides, secrets we can't hide.
That halo you're wearing, it's not yours to keep…

Spring, 2012, after the Battle of New York

Loki always loses, and yet Loki always survives. In 2012, following the Battle of New York, Loki once again found a way to survive.

He was bound, gagged, and destined for what he could only assume was execution. On the elevator ride to the ground floor of Stark Tower, surrounded by his captors, he thought of all the things he’d never be able to do again once he was sent to Hel. I’ll never wear another crown, never claim another throne, and dimly, in the back of his mind, a thought he couldn’t quite grasp briefly rose to the surface: I’ll never speak with my brother again. This thought disappeared almost as quickly as it had come, though, and he carried on whining in his mind. The chip on his shoulder deepened by the second. That was his fifth day straight running only on adrenaline and the magic of the Mind Stone. He was beyond exhausted. The mantra of glorious purpose, which had played on loop in his mind during his whole conquest, was driving him mad. He wouldn’t be able to handle the strain much longer.

The elevator doors opened, and he and the Avengers stepped out into the bright, high-ceilinged foyer of Stark Tower. He knew something was wrong the moment a tidal wave of Tony Stark’s cologne hit him, roughly double what he'd become accustomed to.

No, exactly double, he thought.

And that’s another thing I’ll never do again: Tony Stark.

Then, several things happened in quick succession.

Stark tried to have a heart attack. 

The case containing the Tesseract skated across the floor, seemingly of its own volition.

A stranger picked up the case and walked away, leaving a trail of Stark’s cologne behind him.

The Hulk burst into the room, complaining about stairs (presumably because they’re always up to something). This knocked the case out of the potential Tony-duplicate’s hands.

The Tesseract tumbled out of the open case and landed right in front of Loki.

If Loki is anything, he’s an opportunist. He grabbed the Tesseract, and in a puff of smoke, he was gone. He wasn’t entirely sure where he was going, only that he wanted to go away, and his apathy led him to the Gobi Desert.

About 20 meters up.

He plummeted to the ground, his landing only somewhat cushioned by the sand. The Tesseract tumbled from his grasp and landed far out of reach. For about 30 seconds, 30 glorious seconds, he was free. There was sand in his collar, the persistent drilling sensation he’d had in his head since he met Thanos was only getting worse, and all that fine Asgardian leather wasn’t doing him any favors in the oppressive heat, but he was free. 

And after those wonderful, albeit uncomfortable, 30 seconds, it was over.

As he sat up, flat, opaque sheets of glowing glass appeared before him, and despite appearing solid, people began to filter through them. Several soldiers in black uniforms stepped through, and an unassuming gray-haired man in a brown suit brought up the rear. The influence of the Mind Stone was strong and long-lasting. No matter how hard Loki pushed, he couldn’t defy its hold on his mind. Its spell puppeteered him to his feet and forced him to ignore the urge to ask for help from the strangers. It suppressed any doubts in his mind - they were less than him, and he deserved to rule them. He was sure of it.

He was also exhausted, in enormous pain, and couldn’t control his own actions. What he really wanted, deep inside, was what he wanted when he fell from the Bifröst.

Death.

But the Stone wouldn’t let him ask for that, so, with all the menace that remained in his battered body, he forced the manacles from his wrists with a magical pulse and spoke to the weaklings in front of him.

“Kneel before me, for I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with gl-”

“Oh, there he goes!” The gray-haired man spoke over him, without even an ounce of fear in his voice. He nudged one of the nearby soldiers with his elbow, and, as if sharing an inside joke, he added, “I knew he’d say it.” The soldier didn’t react, but the man either didn’t notice or didn’t care and carried on giggling to himself.

Incensed, Loki stared him down and growled, “Excuse me?”

“Shoot, sorry, I interrupted you. It’s just, I’m a big fan, and I get a kick out of this line. Go ahead.” The man held up his hands in apology. He then made a zipping motion over his lips and dropped an invisible key into his pocket. He even had the gall to smile up at the god. 

A smile? That’s not right, Loki thought. He felt a (rather confusing) flash of fondness as he looked down at the man, one of the only positive things he’d felt in several days of endless fury. The pain in his head sharpened in response. He did not feel fondness. It wasn't right, not for a king.

He blinked and refocused. They can’t smile at me. They are weak. They must fear me.

“I am burdened with glorious purpose,” the god proclaimed, his voice deep and commanding.

The pain eased slightly.

The gray-haired man studied Loki for a moment, still chipper, but before the god could cast a spell that would stop him from ever smiling again, the man in the suit turned on his heel and headed for one of the glass doorways.

“Thanks for that,” he said over his shoulder. “B-15, grab him.”

As the man left, the soldiers approached. Loki, totally confounded, was rooted to the spot. “What? What do you mean - hey, release me, you curs!”

But it was too late. Two soldiers had him by the arms, and a third wrapped a collar around his throat. A fourth grabbed the Tesseract and a fifth set what looked to Loki like a grenade on the ground. As they forced him through the doorway, he looked back over his shoulder. He watched with awe and fear as the device erased all their footsteps, the imprint his impact had left in the sand, and the shackles Thor had placed him in. It rendered the area untouched. It was like they'd never been there at all. It was unnatural.

In the half-hour that followed his arrest, the Tesseract was abandoned at the empty front desk, his fine Asgardian leather was destroyed, he learned about the TVA, the Sacred Timeline, Variants, and the multiversal war, found that he had no magic, and was unceremoniously dumped into an interrogation room, decorated only with a table and two chairs. On the table sat an orange, globe-shaped device with a small keyboard and a screen, and on the far wall was a sort of projector screen made out of glowing tiles. He sat in one of the chairs, and for another half-hour imagined all the horrible, terrifying people who could be coming to interrogate him. Odin could waltz in and reveal that this was all an elaborate test to determine if he was truly evil. It could be Thanos, come to punish him for failing to retrieve the Tesseract for him.

It could be the Hulk, back for another round.

Loki shuddered at the thought. 

“You say you’re ‘burdened with glorious purpose.’ Tell me about that,” said a familiar voice.

His eyes snapped to the doors. The gray-haired man entered with an armful of files and a baton. One end of the baton came to a sharp point, and the other could turn people to dust with the slightest touch. He’d unfortunately seen that functionality demonstrated on another Variant while being processed.

He wondered what the point of the spear-end was if the other end of the weapon could disintegrate people.

Loki sat motionless, jaw clenched, eyes fixed on the baton as the man crossed the room to set his things down on the table. Loki flinched when the baton rolled close to him, but the man grabbed it before it could fall into Loki’s lap. 

“Don’t worry, it’s not on. You’ve got to kind of yank on it to get it to do anything." The man appeared to startle himself with his own words. He laughed. "Oh, that sounded a bit naughty, didn’t it?” he said. He extended his hand for Loki to shake. “I’m Agent Mobius, by the way.”

Loki only glared at the man who had dared to mock him (had dared to smile at the rightful King of Jotunheim). After waiting just long enough that it was awkward and Loki considered shaking his hand anyway, Mobius withdrew his hand and settled into his chair. Loki eyed the man while he fiddled with the orange device on the table, and wondered if that had been intentional.

If so...that was good. Very good.

As Mobius worked, he pressed again for an answer. “So, glorious purpose?”

“What about it? You said you’re a fan. You must know my philosophy.”

“Yeah, but I’d like to hear it from you in person.”

Loki sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Freedom is an illusion, one that I would like to wipe away. I deserve to rule. I-”

Suddenly, the man looked up from the device to fix Loki with a gaze so open and so friendly that the Trickster lost all his focus. No one should look at me like that, he thought. The drilling and throbbing in his skull grew stronger, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the TVA agent. He started again, slower, unsure.

“Well, I, um, deserve to rule-” 

“You said that already.”

Loki blinked. He didn't like to be interrupted. He tried his best to continue.

“I was born for it, I was wrongly denied the chance by my father and brother, and again denied on Earth, when, um, wh-when I...” he rambled, unable to find his resolve.

This speech had seemed so clear to him earlier in the day. Where have the words gone? he thought as he stared into Mobius’ eyes. He'd acted without a second thought because he was right. He killed Laufey because he deserved it. He tried to destroy Jotunheim because they were monsters, and monsters like them, like him, deserved to be purged from the universe. He fought the Avengers mercilessly because they were all less than him. He felt betrayed and angry. They denied him his birthright, his right to rule...

Mobius hit a key on the orange device, and the sudden din of screams drew Loki’s eyes to the screen on the far wall. The tiles that made up the screen reassembled themselves into footage of him brutally removing a man’s eyeball (and smiling while he did it), then footage of him killing Coulson, killing innocents in the street, and his attempt to murder Tony Stark. Death, after death, after death, ceaseless violence that, just a few hours ago, had felt right, had felt good, had felt glorious.

Watching it back, though, made his heart hurt.

His thoughts became sluggish as conflicting ideas, guilt and aplomb, warred in his head. “My glorious purpose is to rule. Obviously," he said, quietly, and mostly to himself.

“Obviously?”

“Obviously. I did what was necessary. I will ascend to the throne, crown myself King of Midgard, King of Asgard, king of everything, and-”

The screen flashed and the sound of his own voice interrupted him.

I never wanted the throne, I only ever wanted to be your equal.

Mobius paused the footage there. Loki saw the tears streaming down his not-much-younger-self’s face. He saw the desperation and raw fear in his eyes, all a reminder of the time before Thanos. He struggled to fully remember the time before Thanos. He couldn’t understand why he would say something like that. Panic began to rise in him. It was like he was falling again. He saw TV static at the edges of his vision, and his breath quickened.

I’m not falling anymore, he reasoned, the Mad Titan rescued me and showed me the way. I'm okay. I'm safe. My feet are on the ground.

“For you, this was about a year ago. Where did this guy go?” Mobius asked, leaning forward, but Loki refused to look at him. When Loki didn’t reply, Mobius continued, “At the TVA, we can see everything, your whole past, your whole future. I know exactly how every bit of your story is supposed to go.”

Loki shook his head. “That’s a lie. I choose my own path.”

“Nope, sorry. You don’t have that freedom. No one does, but-”

“Stop. You’re lying. You're nothing but a stumbling block, a footnote to my ascent,” Loki accused, heart racing, head pounding. He’s lying, he’s lying, he’s lying-

“-but despite all you’re supposed to be,” Mobius soldiered on, “I know for a fact that this whole ‘glorious purpose’ routine isn’t you.” Mobius rose and moved to stand next to Loki. He pointed at the screen. “That’s you. The prince who didn't want the throne.”

“I was misguided. I know the truth now,” Loki spat.

“Oh, really? Tell me, what changed? How did you go from ‘I don’t want to rule’ to ‘king of the universe’ overnight?”

Loki gritted his teeth as the icy grip of the Mind Stone crushed tighter around his heart. His head hurt terribly, and he was tense to the point of shaking - it felt like the room was shrinking, is the room shrinking? I can’t breathe, I’m going to die, I can’t breathe, I-

Mobius put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it gently. Loki threw it off, but Mobius was insistent and put it right back. Loki flinched. No one touches me. No one should want to.

“Loki, you’re okay. Breathe.”

“Don’t you dare tell me what-”

“You’re panicking, Loki. Does a king panic?”

Loki bit back a retort and did as he was told. He closed his eyes and took several deep, stuttering breaths. Mobius’ hand served as a fixed point, an anchor to reality. He’s trying to help you, the remaining scraps of his conscience screamed from the back of his mind. The influence of the Mind Stone beat back those words, but with less fervor than before.

“You’re a smart person, Loki. You know nothing you’ve done in the past few days makes sense. He forced it to make sense to you, though. He used the scepter to make you believe things that go against everything that makes you who you are.”

Loki found his focus drawn to the slow and steady path Mobius’ thumb made up and down his shoulder. He breathed with that motion, and while the panic subsided, the pain mounted. He leaned into Mobius’ touch, a lifebuoy against the Mind Stone’s insistence on drowning him.

After what felt like hours, Mobius asked, “What are you thinking of right now, Loki?”

“I’m thinking of you.” Because if I let myself think of anything else, I will drown.

Mobius chuckled. “Anything else?” the TVA agent prompted.

“I can’t.”

“You have to, Loki.”

I can't.

Deep breath.

I must. 

Loki reached out and took Mobius’ hand into his own and gripped it tightly. He knew it would be uncomfortable for the agent since his skin was colder than a human’s, even with his glamour, but he needed the contact, the connection to reality. Mobius shifted to kneel beside Loki’s chair and took Loki’s free hand in his own, and he squeezed right back.

I must.

He thought back, put himself back where he was, before he let go, before he was on the bridge at all.

“I’m thinking about how terrified I was to sit in Odin’s throne. I tried to look confident, but I was scared out of my mind." The throne was so cold, and he knew, deep in his heart, that he would never lead a kingdom the way his father had, the way his brother might. He thought of the throne, then the battle with his brother, and the tears, and the hammer on his chest weighing him down as he fought all his deepest fears and lost. He thought of the fall...and the rescue. He spoke once more, very softly. "And I’m thinking of New York," he said.

He opened his eyes and tilted his head down to look at the agent.

“I don’t like hurting people, Mobius.”

He loved his brother, more than words could truly express. He felt so very young in that moment. The face on the screen - that young, fearful face - was his. So young, and so scared. He felt tears welling in his eyes.

He took an uneven breath and forced himself to keep looking at Mobius, to stay in the moment and ignore the pain in his head and the unbearable cold in his chest, cold that threatened to freeze even a Jotun. He spoke, barely above a whisper.

“And I don’t think the universe owes someone like me a damn thing.”

He said it, and it was true, and all at once, the ice drained from his veins and the pain in his head evaporated. He could think clearly for the first time since he met Thanos. He could think of home again. He could think about his brother, his mother, and the beauty of Asgard without pain.

Mobius beamed up at him. “We get more Variants out of New York than from any other part of your life. It's so against your nature that you can’t help but break away.”

Five days without sleep caught up with him at once, and his vision swam. Loki didn’t have the energy to fight the tears pooling in his eyes and said, softly, “Thank you.”

“My pleasure. You know, when you did this to the bow-and-arrow guy, they had to whack him on the head to make all that go away.”

Loki looked at himself on the screen once more. The Mind Stone had pushed those wounds aside, still undealt with. All that turmoil came rushing back in like a tidal wave. What a fool I was. What a fool I am. “If you would like to beat me over the head, I wouldn’t blame you. I deserve it.”

“No, no, I don’t think you deserve that. I can’t blame people for doing exactly what they were supposed to. On the Sacred Timeline, you cause pain, and suffering, and death. It’s written in the story, and it happens again, and again, and again.”

“Is that all I’m good for, then? Hurting people?”

Mobius released one of Loki’s hands. “Out there,” Mobius said, pointing at the screen, “for a lot of your story, yes.” Then he leaned forward with a mischievous smirk that could rival one of Loki’s own. “But in here? With a range like yours? The sky’s the limit.”

“So, what? Is the TVA adopting me? Don’t tell me you go through all this with every one of me you meet.”

With surprising intensity, Mobius replied, “Believe me, if every time I met you, I could save you, I would, but it’s not possible. This time is different, though. This time, I need your help, and if you agree, then just this once, I can save you.”

Loki had never felt more defeated, more distraught, more guilty in his life. He struggled to meet Mobius’ gaze, for the look in the gray-haired man’s eyes was too kind and welcoming. How could a stranger be so willing to defend me, to help me? Loki knew he didn’t deserve that. “How many of me have you met?” he asked.

“Dozens, so many that we started coloring your branches green so everyone knows what they’re getting into. You really don’t like it when the Sacred Timeline cramps your style.”

Smirking halfheartedly, Loki replied, “I suppose that sounds like me. If I’m so much trouble, then what would you need my help with?”

“Recently, attempts to prune branches caused by Lokis have gone wrong.”

“What do you mean they’ve ‘gone wrong?’”

“Somehow, the Variants are escaping, and Minutemen are dying. Some are being killed by the Variants, and some...” Mobius trailed off, his voice stricken with grief.

“What?” Loki asked, the smirk wiped clean from his face.

“Some of the Minutemen are killing each other, and at times...themselves. We can’t tell if it’s a drug, or magic, or some sort of hypnosis, and we have no way to protect our people against the Variants. Not every Loki is escaping, but when they do, everyone dies.”

Loki's heart dropped. Some of those Variants had to be offshoots of him - emotionally wrought, immature, and so, so very sad. His heart ached for them, and for the Minutemen they killed. “I’m so sorry," he said, and he meant it. Really, really meant it.

“Don’t apologize for their actions, Loki. They aren’t you.”

“But they represent some part of me. That’s why Thanos could control me, because those urges were already there.” Loki closed his eyes. Swallowed. Breathed. Did not let the tears fall. “I wanted to kill you. You smiled at me, and I wanted to kill you for that." He felt his hands shaking. "I can't tell if that was the scepter or me.”

“Do you want to kill me now?”

Loki swallowed. “No. Never. I never want to kill again.”

“Then you and I have nothing to worry about. You aren’t evil, but a lot of Loki Variants are. If I’m going to work with a Loki, I’d take you over most of them.”

“Bold of you to assume we’ll be working together."

“They’ll prune you if you don’t.”

Loki grinned darkly when he countered, “I didn’t fall from the Bifröst. I let go. I’m not exactly enthusiastic about living.”

“Alright, then what do you want? How can I convince you to help me?”

“Get me different clothes.”

Mobius laughed. “Of course, we’ve got to satisfy the Trickster God’s vanity. Anything else?”

“Let me see the rest of my story. Show me what all these Variants and I will never experience.”

The color drained from Mobius’ face, and he urged, “You don’t want to see that.”

Loki knew exactly what he wanted, though. Regretfully, he pulled his other hand free from Mobius’ grasp (so kind) and shook the tension from his arms. He sat back in his chair, crossed his legs, put on the appearance of calm and comfort, and ignored the tears that pricked in his eyes.

“Loki-”

“I need to know, Mobius. Show me.”

Wordlessly, Mobius nodded. He patted Loki’s knee, crossed to his seat, and hit a key on the projector device. Then, together, they watched the rest of Loki’s would-be life. 

Should he live as he is supposed to, he fights alongside his brother, inadvertently causes the death of his mother, and appears to die valiantly in a war against the Dark Elves. In reality, he secretly usurps the throne of Asgard, his thoughts and desires still muddled by the effects of the Mind Stone. Later, he finally gets what he’d wanted his whole life, the love and approval of his father. By then, the Mind Stone no longer controls him, and he reunites with his brother. They fight side by side once more. He manages to make a friend or two, and for the first time in his life, he feels like he belongs somewhere and is loved. He does good for the world, and then to save his people, his real people, the Asgardians, he summons Surtur and triggers the end of the world, Ragnarök. He takes the Tesseract with him as his home burns around him.

This flash of greed and mischievousness leads Thanos right to them. Loki goes for the head, and Thanos breaks him. He lays there paralyzed, his brother cradling him in his arms. As he becomes too weak to keep up his glamour, his usual sickly pale fades into a deep azure. 

End of file.

The sickening snap of his own neck ricocheted through Loki’s mind as he approached the screen. He didn’t even hear Mobius follow him, and only realized he was right beside him when he felt the TVA agent’s hand return to his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Mobius said.

Loki didn’t reply. The End, he thought. If I hadn’t picked up the Tesseract an hour ago, I would have killed my mother. I would have heard my father say he loved me. I would have died horribly.

All because I thought I was a monster. I did this.

“Loki, are you alright?” Mobius asked, his hand sliding down to squeeze the god’s upper arm reassuringly. Loki looked down at the hand and saw his own pale skin beneath. 

“Magic doesn’t work in the TVA, so why do I still look like myself?”

Mobius shrugged. “Stubbornness, probably.”

“I, Loki, am the only being stubborn enough to bring even a mote of magic to the TVA. Aren’t I special?”

“Well, yeah. You are special. You’re the Loki who’s going to save the universe instead of destroying it.”

The tears he’d been holding back finally rolled over his cheeks. He turned to Mobius, the first person to show him true kindness in a very long time, and told him, “I can’t say I deserve a second chance, but I will help you.”

Chapter Text

Stolen, and maybe broken,
Since all that you left
Is a life that can never be whole again.
Fallen, I heard the warning,
'Cause all that I had was a life
That can never be whole again…

They spent the rest of that day just talking about anything and everything that wasn’t to do with Thanos, the Avengers, Variants, or the Sacred Timeline, and after a while, even though Loki was stripped of his magic, wore a prison jumpsuit and a souped-up shock collar, and was totally separated from everything he knew and loved, he felt more like himself than he had in a very long time. It was odd, too, talking to a stranger that knew so much about him, but Mobius’ familiarity with his life made it feel like he was talking to an old friend.

Try as he might, Loki couldn’t find an ounce of deception in the man’s friendliness, which shocked him more than anything else. People only help me because they want something. Odin and Thanos showed me that in spades. It was a difficult pill for the god to swallow, that someone could be kind to him just because. He’d already agreed to help, but Mobius still talked to him.

Their conversation eventually had to end, though, when Mobius’ other responsibilities came knocking. Loki found out while he was being handcuffed by a hunter that Mobius hadn’t actually gotten permission from his boss, Ravonna Renslayer, to bring him on to help, but the agent promised he’d win her over. The Trickster desperately hoped he could.

After another day waiting in a holding cell while Mobius fought with Renslayer to not execute Loki, the God of Mischief officially became a consultant for the TVA, as promised. In the week after his title was conferred on him, there was paperwork, another argument with Renslayer, several lunch breaks with Mobius, training he didn’t really pay attention to, more paperwork, more arguing with Renslayer, and finally, toward the end of his last day of training, the change of clothes he was promised: pants, a white button-up (with a frankly confounding collar), and a jacket with the TVA logo on the front and VARIANT emblazoned on the back.

As he pulled on his new clothing, he thought about the days before and was left dizzy by all the turns his life had taken in less than a week. One minute, he was the brainwashed prospective King of Midgard, and the next, he was being led out of real life by a kindly man in an ill-fitting suit to become a consultant for a group of omniscient space lizards.

Loki’s life had never been normal, but even for him, this was pushing it.

And then there was the TVA agent.

He liked that man, Mobius. He liked him quite a lot, actually. Mobius had saved his life, after all, in more ways than one. Loki knew that, as he was, there in the TVA, he would never reunite with his brother or personally receive Odin’s love like he was destined to, but he counted himself lucky that, at the very least, for the time being, he had Mobius. Mobius had taken his snarks and jibes in stride, and had returned the favor on several occasions, proving himself nearly as sharp at the Trickster God himself. There was no denying that, in his heart, the god felt terrible. He was a monster. He was a murderer.

And yet, Mobius still smiled at him.

He realized he’d stopped moving with his jacket only half on, he was so distracted thinking about the TVA agent. He cleared his throat, embarrassed despite being alone, and left the room he’d been told to change in, praying that he hadn’t gone and done something silly like blush.

“Having VARIANT written all across my back isn’t exactly subtle, is it?” Loki said when he rejoined Mobius, who had waited patiently in the hallway while he changed.  

“And the Christmas-tree-chic you had on before was?”

“Hey, I worked very hard on that! Conjuring such detailed armor isn’t easy, you know.”

“It looked like a Halloween costume, Loki.”

The god bristled. “Well, at the very least, I felt cool.”

“You felt cool in that? Your shoulder pads made you look like a pontoon boat.”

“My armor was great,” Loki pronounced, clutching at pearls he didn’t have on in protest.

“Sure, it was.”

“Agree to disagree,” the god declared, then, quieter, “but I’m right.”

Mobius rolled his eyes.

“Fine, you want to feel cool?”

Mobius stepped close and reached up toward Loki’s neck. Carefully, the agent upturned Loki’s jacket collar, his fingers ghosting over the sides of Loki’s neck as he did. The Trickster simply stood and watched, entranced. It seemed the agent was intentionally giving him things to daydream and blush about.

“There, cool.”

Then he gently brushed away dust from Loki’s shoulders they both knew wasn’t there and blinked up at him like nothing had happened.

And perhaps nothing had happened.

He only touched my collar…

…And me.

“Thank you, Mobius.” Loki was shocked at just how quickly the agent had won him over. If Loki didn’t know any better, he would have thought it was magic. Mobius gave him a small smile and turned to move away, but Loki stepped just a bit closer, and it was Mobius’ turn to freeze as Loki reached forward to straighten his tie, which they both knew looked fine. When the god took just a bit too long to take his hands away, Mobius cleared his throat. Loki snapped to attention.

“Are we all dressed?” Mobius asked with a laugh.

They were close enough that Mobius had to look up to make eye contact. It wasn’t often people trusted Loki enough to let him stand that close. For most of his life, his penchant for pranks had made people wary of him, but after he was revealed to be a frost giant, no one even wanted to speak to him. And who would? Loki thought. While Mobius looked totally at ease, Loki could only imagine how he himself appeared. He was so focused on the agent that he could be turning blue for all he knew. (He peeked at his hands just in case; they weren’t blue, to his massive relief).

“I think we are.”

“Then come with me. It’s time for the grand tour.”

Mobius turned and walked swiftly away, and Loki had to jog a bit to catch up, not expecting him to bolt away like that. Perhaps Mobius wasn’t as calm as he’d appeared, Loki thought, but his attention was quickly drawn elsewhere, namely to the sheer scale of the TVA. He’d already been around a bit to speak with (see: be yelled at by) Judge Renslayer and to eat, but now he got to see, for the first time, not just how far and wide all the halls and offices sprawled, but also the enormous city that surrounded the TVA.

“That’s where we all live. As hometowns go, it’s pretty nice,” Mobius explained, sounding almost bored as they passed by a wall of windows. There were thousands of buildings, and flying tramways. It looked like magic, yet it was all mechanical, and that fascinated the god. How Mobius could bore of something so beautiful, Loki didn’t know. The glittering lights, the golden buildings, all the people…

“It looks like Asgard,” Loki muttered.

Earlier, he’d started to put together a list of things he’d never do again. That had been when he thought he was going to be executed, but most of them still applied now that he was removed from reality. He added See Asgard to the list. Perhaps that was for the best, though. His return would have directly caused his mother’s death. Mobius noticed that Loki had stopped and strode back to his side.

“You know, if I can find a way to at least let you visit home, I will,” Mobius said. Loki desperately searched for deceit, but there was none. Mobius meant every word.

“I believe that Renslayer woman would hang you before you got the chance,” Loki teased, looking down at Mobius warmly.

With a wink, Mobius replied, “Then let’s hope she doesn’t have any rope.”

They kept moving, with Mobius pointing at and naming the various places they passed.

“That’s the Nightmare Department, there’s Mephisto’s Lounge, and at the top of those steps is the Shuma-Gorath Center. Oh, and don’t use that bathroom. It’s stuck in a time loop, and we haven’t figured out a way to fix it.”

“How did that happen?”

“Someone dropped their Time Twister in the toilet.”

“Oh.”

Eventually, there were no more windows, and the hallway widened into a room Mobius jokingly called mission control. The space was full of desks, all aimed at one large screen suspended from the ceiling, which showed a white centerline, and a multitude of branches, some of which were orange, but the vast majority of which were green. Loki was nonplussed.

“Wait, so, you people only gave my branches a special color? What about Thanos, or, I don’t know, someone else the humans like to punch?”

“You’re the hardest to deal with, and there’s lots of you, so we only changed yours,” Mobius answered. He forged ahead, dodging the office workers who scuttled around with armfuls of paper.

I don’t know if I should be honored or offended, Loki thought.

As they passed by the screen, he watched as some of the green branches winked out of existence while they were still short, but many of them carried on, stopped only millimeters from the red line, the point of no return. He wondered if those Variants were doing to the Minutemen what Thanos had done to him, making them prisoners in their own minds with an illusion. I did that to people, too…

He chose not to look at the Timeline anymore.

The next area they entered was the reception area. The Tesseract still sat on the front desk where one of the hunters had dropped it off a week before. The receptionist looked up from his desk as they walked by and waved excitedly.

“Hey, new guy!”

Loki stopped and looked around, and when no one else replied, he pointed to himself. “You mean me?”

“Yeah! We talked before; don’t you remember?”

Loki furrowed his brows as he thought. He specifically remembered no one being at the desk when he arrived.

 “Everything alright?” Mobius called over his shoulder, waiting once more for Loki.

“Yes, everything’s fine. I think this man is confusing me with someone else,” Loki answered, ignoring the way the man behind the desk pouted. Mobius shrugged, and they kept walking. The large rooms narrowed back down to claustrophobic hallways until, finally, they stopped in front of an unassuming and unlabeled door at the end of a hall. Mobius pulled out a key and jammed it in the lock. With a jiggle and twist, the lock clicked, and the door swung open.

Loki poked his head inside.

“And this is?”

“The final stop on our tour, my office. I figured you should know where it is.” He motioned for Loki to enter. “And I thought we might like a private place to talk.”

Loki stepped inside and felt more at ease there than he had anywhere else in the building. The office was small but comfortable, cozy even. Mobius’ desk was covered in papers and, oddly enough, several issues of Jet-Ski Monthly. Bookshelves lined the walls, in the corner sat a coffee maker, with which Mobius busied himself, and mounted on the wall was a sword that the god recognized: Gram.

Gram was a piece of home he never expected to see again, a mythic blade once wielded by Sigurd but destined to belong to Loki that could, ironically, exorcise lies. Much like his brother’s hammer, Mjölnir, it could only be claimed by Loki if he was worthy, and in his thousand years in the real world, he’d never felt that he was. Just once, he did try to take it, but it seared his skin when he grabbed it. After that, he only looked at it.

If he closed his eyes, he could envision the path to Gram. One would walk down the steps, avoid looking at the Casket of Ancient Winters, turn right, right again, left, up the steps, and there it sat, up on a dais, resting in a simple wooden stand. Loki stepped forward to run his fingers over the Asgardian inscriptions on the blade. It didn’t burn at all, and for a fleeting moment, Loki thought that he was finally worthy of the bane of lies. Then reality dawned on him. There’s no magic in the TVA. Even Gram doesn’t work here.

“How did you get your hands on this?” Loki asked, fascinated by the fact that one of Asgard’s most treasured, most powerful relics could be rendered powerless.

Mobius didn’t look up, too focused on the coffee maker. “Get my hands on what?”

“This sword, Gram. It should be in the vault under Asgard.”

“Oh, yeah, a Loki Variant dropped it at one point.”

“And you just…kept it.”

“Yeah.”

“So, that man at the front desk…”

“Casey?”

“Yes, Casey. He had the Tesseract. Does everything leftover from conflicts with Variants go through him?”

Mobius nodded.

“Including Gram?”

“Including Gram.”

“So, you had to go out of your way to get ahold of it after he was done with it, right?”

Loki could have sworn the agent blushed a little as he nodded again, which made Loki smile.

Mobius thrust a cup of coffee at him, evidently intent on changing the subject. “I thought you might like some. It’s been sort of a long week for you.”

Loki frowned at the brown liquid. Unlike his brother, who adored coffee, he wasn’t overly fond of the drink. He’d only had it once before with Stark (there was a lull in the fighting, things happened), and he hadn’t particularly enjoyed the taste, or the appearance, or the smell, or really anything about it, but since it was Mobius offering it, he accepted it. There was only one chair in the room, so Loki settled for sitting on the edge of the desk with the office chair beside him for Mobius to take, which he did after pouring himself a cup.

“Long week? That is the understatement of the century,” the god said after his first sip. It was significantly sweeter than when Stark had made it, but he wasn’t certain that was an improvement. They sat in companionable silence for a while, sipping their drinks, until they were interrupted by pounding on the door.

Mobius sighed, crossed the room, and opened the door. Loki looked over his shoulder and saw Hunter B-15, his least favorite TVA employee, standing in the doorway. She’d been the one to grab him in the desert, and in his week at the TVA, she’d made her distaste for him excruciatingly clear. She glared at him in the hallway, was intentionally late retrieving him from his cell (where he was still forced to sleep, despite technically being an employee), and made sure to remind him every chance she got that he was just a Variant.

“Another Variant has escaped, sir,” she said, and the instant she noticed Loki, she fixed him with a dirty look. “I hope you don’t intend to bring your pet with you.”

“I’m in charge of this investigation and I can bring my consultant anywhere I please. Now, go on ahead. We’ll be with you in a few.”

Loki dared to stick his tongue out at the hunter, but before she could retaliate, Mobius closed the door in her face. Loki could hear her grumbling to herself as she stomped away.

Mobius walked back around the desk and stood in front of Loki so he wouldn't have to crane around to see him. “Before we go, I just want to warn you, it’s not pretty out there. These Variants aren’t exactly kind.”

“Sorcerers rarely are, I’ve found.”

“That’s actually part of the problem. Not all Lokis are sorcerers. That’s why the Minutemen’s behavior has been so confusing.”

Loki raised an eyebrow. “There are Lokis without magic?”

Mobius reached past the god, very much invading his space in the process, to grab a file from the desk. He held it out for Loki to take, and much to his disbelief, when he flipped it open, he found the image of an alligator…with golden horns.

“This has to be a joke,” the Trickster said.

“I wish it was. Somehow, an alligator convinced our people to kill each other.”

What is my life? Loki asked himself. He answered himself with a resounding I’m not entirely sure.

Loki sat the alligator on top of a pile of other files full of his Variants. “I’ll have to see this for myself. There has to be something you all are missing.”

Mobius grinned. “That’s what you’re here for.”

The agent made for the door, and Loki followed. They wound through a dizzying number of hallways until they found a group of hunters waiting, including B-15. As soon as they arrived, she launched into a speech about the danger of Variants, and how they might still be hanging around, so be on your guard.

“And Mobius,” she said, “L1130 stays with me.”

Mobius held out a protective hand in front of Loki. To B-15, Mobius declared, “Oh, no. He stays with me.”

“Really? And why is that?”

“Because I’m the Loki expert here, and I’m best equipped to handle him. Besides, you’ve got a twitchy baton arm, and I don’t want you vaporizing our greatest asset.”

Greatest asset? Loki smiled until B-15 caught him doing it, at which point he forced his expression into something much more neutral. B-15 smirked at him.

“Fine. Just don’t let your boyfriend kill anyone.” With a wink, she opened a Timedoor and stepped through, and many tittering hunters followed her through.

“Don’t listen to her. She gets mean when she’s scared,” Mobius said, but Loki’s focus was elsewhere.

“Am I really your greatest asset?”

With no preamble and no doubt, Mobius replied, “Yes.” Then he, too, stepped through the Timedoor. Loki trailed after him.

They arrived in the backstage area of what appeared to be some large outdoor event. The first thing Loki noticed was the return of magic to his body, and it felt incredible, like a drink of water after a lifetime in the desert. The very next thing he registered was the American national anthem, which played above their heads at an obnoxious, earsplitting volume. The curtain was closed, but he could hear an angry crowd milling about on the other side. Loki looked around, and covering every surface were posters, and mugs, and t-shirts, and buttons that all said one of two things, BeLIEve or Vote Loki.

Loki looked around the room with his mouth hanging open. “Is this what I think it is?”

Mobius gave him a look of exasperated fondness, clearly getting a kick out of the god’s dumbfounded expression. “A rally for your presidential campaign? Yes. Come on. We’ve got a crime scene to investigate.”

The god followed but continued to look around as they moved. “Why…? Why would I ever do this?”

“Apparently some version of you thought U.S. President was an easy job to get. He wasn’t wrong.”

They moved through the backstage area until they found a small tent covered in TVA logos. The instant Loki stepped inside, he was overwhelmed with the scent of magic. Powerful magic. Familiar magic. The bodies of dead Minutemen littered on the ground, some impaled with their own batons, others bludgeoned, still more run through with some large blade that was no longer at the scene. Loki’s heart pounded, and TV static washed over his vision. No, no, no, I just escaped this. Don’t do it again. Please, please, don’t do it again. Loki reached out for Mobius for stability, and the agent took his arm at once. He put his other arm around the god’s waist.

“What’s wrong?” Mobius asked.

“The Mind Stone. It was used here.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m absolutely certain,” the god breathed. “I can feel it in the air. No wonder you all missed it. None of you could even begin to sense this.” He forced himself to look at the bodies once more. They were impaled. The memory of killing Coulson flooded his mind, and at that moment, he knew what was going on. “That’s how an alligator does magic,” Loki muttered.

“What?”

“With help! An alligator does magic with help!” Loki’s vision swam. “I have to get out of here,” he said. Mobius looked alarmed, and at once, he opened a Timedoor.

“Reset the Timeline. We’re going back,” Mobius declared. Before anyone could protest, he helped Loki through, and they were back in his office. The Timedoor snapped closed behind them, and Mobius helped Loki into his office chair.

“You’re okay,” the agent cooed, taking the Trickster’s hand.

Panic thrumming through his veins, Loki whispered, “The Variants. Someone is helping them. Someone with the scepter.” He looked desperately to Mobius. “What if it’s Thanos?”

“If it is, then we’ll handle him. Right now, though, my concern is you. Just breathe, okay?”

What did I do to deserve this kindness? Loki thought as Mobius traced circles on the back of his hand with his thumb. He forced himself to focus on Mobius and not his overwhelming urge to catastrophize, to imagine all the horrible harm that could come to him, or, and this thought shook him thoroughly, Mobius.

What if Thanos is coming back for me? What if Mobius gets hurt because of me?

No.

Focus.

Breathe.

He squeezed Mobius’ hand and mustered a small, tired smile. “Thank you. I promise I’m not just doing this to get you to hold my hand.”

With a bit of a blush and a bit of a smirk, the agent replied, “Even if you were…I don’t mind.”

Loki blinked. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, bemused. He really likes me, doesn’t he? In a week, I haven’t found even a hint of dishonesty in this man. He even went through the trouble of speaking with that idiot Casey to get Gram…

“New guy!”

Casey…

Loki suddenly grabbed Mobius by the shoulders. “We must talk to Casey.”

Chapter Text

Will you wait in my honor?
Save what's left of it
In vain, when it's there
For all to see...

“What? Why?” Mobius sputtered.

“He met whoever’s helping the Variants.”

Loki made for the door and Mobius followed without question, matching Loki’s pace immediately. Casey smiled as they approached despite Loki’s previous cold shoulder. The Tesseract still sat beside the man, gleaming, untouched since it first arrived several days before.

Loki grabbed the Tesseract and held it up to the receptionist. “Casey, was the first time you spoke to me before or after this arrived on your desk?”

“Oh, way before. That was just there after I took my lunch one day. I wonder if I’m supposed to log it…”

Loki groaned. “Right, so what exactly did you and I talk about?”

Casey thought for a moment.

“Well, you said you wanted to meet whoever was in charge, and I told you that meeting the Time-Keepers is basically impossible, and then you poked me in the chest with a very scary-looking stick. You looked kind of annoyed, and then you asked what it would take to get to where they are, and I said it would take an army, but that was totally a joke. And then you used your TemPad and disappeared.”

Loki ran his hands through his hair and desperately resisted the urge to tear it all out. Mobius looked equally distraught. The scepter. An army.

“By the way,” Casey said, totally unaffected by the dire moods of the men in front of him, “I noticed you’re wearing a Variant jacket. Did they run out of the normal ones?”

Loki summoned up the remainder of his patience. With his eyes closed to center himself, he said, “Casey, I’m wearing a Variant jacket because I am a Variant. So was whoever you spoke with before.”

“You’re kidding!”

The god’s voice dropped an octave. He leaned in. “Do I look like I am?”

“Well, no…”

Loki sighed. Get it together, Loki. He can’t help how dumb he is. Just think of him like he’s a child.

“Casey, did you happen to hear anything about Lokis going missing after that conversation?” Loki asked, far more calmly, though he gripped the Tesseract hard enough to pose a serious danger to its structural integrity.

“You know, I think I did. What a coincidence!”

“What a coincidence indeed,” Loki muttered. He looked down at the Tesseract. “I’m taking this,” he declared.

Mobius didn’t try to stop Loki, because he couldn’t do anything with the Tesseract even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. Escape didn’t sound all that appetizing to him, especially since what awaited him on the Sacred Timeline was death and destruction. He was better off with the TVA. They returned to Mobius’ office in dumbstruck silence. Mobius sat in his chair, and Loki sat on the desk, as before, though this time, neither of them were in a very good mood. Their abandoned coffee was stone cold by then.

“So, there’s a Loki Variant building an army of Loki Variants,” Mobius finally said, sullen, eyes fixed on the wall.

Loki added, “And the Variant leading the charge has the scepter. He has to be from New York.” Loki turned the Tesseract over in his hands. How hard did I fight for this, and now it’s just an oversized paperweight? He sat the Tesseract on one of Mobius’ bookshelves. Might as well add it to his collection.

“Not necessarily. Anything’s possible.”

“He looks like me and he has the scepter. He probably is from New York, which means he practically a feral animal, and everyone’s in grave danger.”

“Yeah, there’s a good chance of that, too. We’ve just got to find him.” Mobius stood and pointed to the door. “Come on. We’ve got to tell Ravonna.”

Loki sighed, and they trudged their way to her office. Like the times Mobius went to speak with her before, Loki sat outside and stared at the floor, politely ignoring their shouting. How everything devolved into a fight with them, he didn’t know, but he also had no interest in knowing. He’d had quite enough shouting matches in his life, and he was happy not to have another for what remained of his life. He knew Mobius considered Judge Renslayer a friend, and perhaps their friendship was a bit like his relationship with Thor, where Loki loved Thor more than anyone in Asgard, but they butted heads like rams. That was the only way he could rationalize Mobius’ defense of the woman despite the way she treated him.

He tuned out their fight, which filtered through the surprisingly thin walls, and his mind drifted back to the fact that there were infinite Lokis floating about on the Timeline, all of them vigorously resisting the mandate of the Time-Keepers. He thought of the dozens of files on Mobius’ desk, the dozens of variations of him that had passed through the TVA. All of them had been arrested and pruned.

But first, they had to make a little green line.

Mobius stepped out of Ravonna’s office, a bit red in the face and clearly upset. Loki didn’t give him time to calm down before he pounced.

“Mobius, the Variant has a TemPad.”

“Yeah, what are you getting at?” The agent snapped, frustratedly loosening his tie.

“And he’s using it to seek out all those conveniently labeled Lokis to recruit them.” Loki placed his hands on the agent’s shoulders. “So, what if we don’t need to find him?”

Mobius blanched. “What are you getting at?”

“Use me. Let me draw him out, find out where they’re hiding, and I can reset them all at once. We can end this.”

“No. No way.”

“Why not? It’s a good plan.”

“Because, if he figures you out, he’ll disappear, and we’ll be back where we started,” Mobius sucked in a breath between his teeth, “or he might just kill you.”

Loki grinned. “Then I’ll just have to be very convincing, won’t I?” Mobius did not return the smile. Loki sobered at once. “I saw all that branching. You know as well as I that this is the shortest path to what we need. I’ll come up with a disguise, I’ll make it work,” Loki insisted.

“Ravonna will never let it happen. You’re a Variant. There’s no way she would let you out on your own.”

“I’m not just a Variant. I’m the God of Mischief, too, and I don’t really ask for permission.”

“Oh, yeah?” Mobius stepped closer, nearly bumping chests with the god. “What if he uses the scepter on you? Are you really willing to risk that?”

This gave the Trickster pause. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, unable to find a suitable retort.

“There has to be a better way, Loki.”

Is there? Is there really?

The Trickster sighed. “Alright,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I get the urge. I showed up in the desert, after all.”

“You did, and you openly mocked a man who you were relatively sure would try to murder you.”

“But then he didn’t, and now we’re a team,” Mobius said, smiling sweetly up at the god, whose heart swelled with fondness. He could smell the agent’s cologne, something oaken and extremely pleasant, and it made him want to hug the agent, to hold him close. All he would need to do is shift his arms down to wrap them around the smaller man. Just a week, and I feel this way…

“So, what now?” Loki asked. He peered at the walls to find a clock, but he couldn’t find one. “I don’t even know what time it is.”

“It’s pretty late. Want a drink?” Mobius suggested.

“That sounds wonderful.” Then the god looked around like someone might be listening, and leaned in to ask, “But can we go into the city for it?”

Mobius thought about it for a moment, then answered, “I guess so. Technically you work for the TVA, now, so it probably doesn’t break any rules.”

“Probably? You’ve gotten a bit laissez-faire about the rules, haven’t you, Agent Mobius?”

“Did I ever really follow the rules?” Mobius said with a smile on his face. It’s a shame Ravonna is so good at making him frown.

Loki had only ever moved around the TVA with an escort since he was considered volatile. To use the elevators, one had to scan their TemPad at the top of the control panel, and then the buttons for the floors they had access to would light up. Loki had noticed early on that, even though Mobius appeared to be somewhat important at the TVA, relatively few buttons lit up for him. Only once had Loki seen the buttons at the very top of the panel light up – when Ravonna had ridden with them. He suspected the topmost button led to the Time-Keepers. He wondered if he would ever get a TemPad, or if Renslayer would find an excuse to prune him before that time came.

After the elevator ride, they stepped out the front doors of the TVA, and, for the first time, Loki entered the city surrounding the TVA. Up close, it looked far less like Asgard, but it was still beautiful. Loki still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the idea that sitting outside the mainstream universe, outside of space and time, there was a whole city full of people, people with lives and jobs and friends, and he had become one of them. Like the people created to work for the TVA, he was no longer welcome in the real world. He had mixed feelings toward this fact. Sure, he couldn’t hurt his family anymore, but he’d also never see them again, not without attracting the attention of the TVA. He wondered if there were families in the city, or if children could exist there at all. This was all created by the Time-Keepers? It just doesn’t seem real.

Then again, I’m pretty fantastical, too, aren’t I?

Eventually, after a few minutes of walking with little conversation (where Loki was just happy to be near Mobius), they arrived at a small bar tucked between two large office buildings. Loki read the name of the bar, Time-Waster’s, from the door as Mobius pushed it open for him. They stepped inside, and the wooden floor creaked beneath their feet. He couldn’t be sure if the building had truly aged, or if the Time-Keepers had designed it to be a facsimile of real life. The wooden, high-backed booths were a bit worn, and the tables a bit scratched, but the bar felt warm and loved. A fireplace on the back wall cast an orangey glow over the whole back half of the bar. Nearly every booth was full, and there were only a few empty seats at the counter, as well.

The agent’s hand found the small of Loki’s back to lead him to a booth at the back of the bar, and Loki had to admit that he did walk a bit slower than was strictly necessary to keep it there a little longer. He knew he was found out when Mobius gave him a knowing look and his fingers crept around the god’s waist. When they reached the table, the agent let his hand trail up Loki’s back as the god sat, causing his heart to skip a beat or two. For a thrilling moment, Loki thought Mobius might sit next to him, but, alas, the TVA agent sat across from him. A waiter wandered over to them.

“Hey, Mobius, what would you two like?”

“I’ll have my usual. Loki?”

Loki hadn’t spent much time in Midgardian bars and had little familiarity with what they might have. Sheepishly, he asked, “Do you have mead?”

“What’s that?” responded the waiter.

“Just give him an ale, something sweet,” Mobius said, coming to the god’s rescue.

The waiter nodded and meandered away. A short while later, he returned with their drinks. “One bourbon and one ale.” He turned to leave, and just as Loki took a sip of his drink, the waiter said quietly to Mobius (but loud enough for the god to hear), “Enjoy your date, Mobius.”

Loki choked on his drink, then looked up from his glass to find Mobius smirking. Did he get that from me? I think he got that from me.

“What?” Mobius asked innocently, and the god’s cheeks reddened.

Alright, two can play at this game, Loki thought. He took another drink and looked up through his lashes at the agent. “Do this often, do you?”

“I have my moments.”

“You have enough of them that when you show up with a tall, dark stranger, the waiter knows right away what’s going on? You’ve got a type, Mobius.”

“So do you,” Mobius teased.

“Oh, and you think you’re it?”

“I’ve seen your whole life, Loki. I know I’m it.”

For all his confidence, Mobius’ cheeks had steadily flushed throughout the exchange. Loki liked that he could do that to him, make him smile, make him laugh, make him blush, and he loved even more that Mobius could so easily do the same to him. Loki had had relationships with many people, romantic or otherwise, but none of it had ever felt real. This, though, was the most real his life had ever felt, despite the unreal circumstances.

“If you’ve really seen my whole life, then you know I like variety. The competition is steep,” the Trickster goaded.

“Challenge accepted,” Mobius said, and then he clinked their glasses together.

Loki couldn’t stop his smile. It was rare for someone to speak to him with such boldness, and he’d never expected it from Mobius. Up until Mobius had said out loud, in plain English, that he didn’t mind holding the god’s hand, Loki had truly believed that Mobius was just nice. To his delight, though, the agent had quashed that belief with shocking finality. He wasn’t just nice – he was interested. He was both delighted and terrified by that fact.

“You know, I feel like I’m at a disadvantage here, Mobius. All I know about you is that you like jet-skis, you were created by the Time-Keepers, and your taste in people is extremely poor.”

“Poor? What makes you say that?”

“I’m a Loki.”

“No, not a Loki. Just Loki.”

“Really? And what separates me from the rabble, hm? I’m mischievous, I’m a Jotun, and I hurt people.”

“Well, yes, but-”

“But what?” Loki asked, suddenly desperate for an answer, because this was the heart of it all. He killed more than seventy people in New York, and he had to live with that forever. If Mobius really wanted this, then he would have to live with it, too, and Loki wasn’t convinced Mobius really knew what he was asking for. Even knowing that he hadn’t been in control of himself didn’t help. I was vulnerable to Thanos because of what I tried to do to Jotunheim. New York was my fault.

Mobius reached across the table and took his hand. “You aren’t cruel like they are. You aren’t greedy.” He took a deep breath. “And I know you would never hurt me.”

Mobius looked at him with great intensity, and the expectation of a reply, but Loki didn’t trust himself enough to agree. I never wanted to hurt Frigga, and look at how that turned out. He downed the rest of his drink and shouted over his shoulder, “Another!” When he looked back at Mobius, he couldn’t quite parse his expression. Is that disappointment? Probably. A great silence came between them, one that made Loki want to drink, and he was endlessly thankful that he didn’t have his brother’s alcohol tolerance, else the pin-drop quiet between them might have been unbearable.

The two of them drank steadily for quite a while, until, eventually, Mobius had to go to the bathroom. When he returned, he found all the patrons dancing and laughing, and at the head of it all was the god, quite drunk and leading them all in song. With his long, curly hair and a smile spread wide, he was the picture of happiness. Mobius chose simply to observe. In all his time watching the Trickster’s life, he’d never seen him act so free. Even on Sakaar, where to be fair, he had enough fun for a lifetime, his actions had been measured and calculated specifically to win favor with anyone and everyone important. In Time-Waster’s, though, he seemed truly happy.

“Når hun synger hun synger kom hjem. Men trærne danser og fosserne stanser,” Loki sang, twirling a blushing woman as he did. The crowd joined him to half-sing, half-shout, “When she sings, she sings ‘come home.’ When she sings, she sings ‘come home!’”

Like a choir watches their conductor, the crowd followed his every movement and quieted at once at his signal. Softly, sadly, with his eyes closed, he sang, “I stormsvarte fjell, jeg vandrer alene. Over isbreen tar jeg meg frem. I eplehagen står møyen den vene, og synger ‘når kommer du hjem?’” The god took a deep breath, forced a smile, and once again, with the chorus of patrons, he sang, “When she sings, she sings ‘come home.’ When she sings, she sings ‘come home!’”

He took a large drink from the glass beside him, then he cheered, “To Frigga, everybody!”

The audience whooped and hollered, and in the corner, the barman turned on the sound system. Loud music blared overhead, and the patrons started shifting tables around to make more room to dance and carry on. The woman Loki had danced with gave him a kiss on the cheek and disappeared into the crowd, and then Loki spotted Mobius, leaning against the wall, watching. At once he headed toward him. He ignored all the patrons who vied for his attention as he moved through the crowd, politely bobbing his head at anyone who addressed him. His focus was on Mobius only.

“Unnskyld,” Loki said boyishly as he approached the agent. Loki’s tie was loosened, the top button of his shirt undone, and for once, he managed to maybe look a bit human.

Mobius laughed. “You speak Asgardian when you’re drunk?” Though Mobius seemed chipper enough, even a drunk Loki could tell that the man’s focus was elsewhere.

“Nei!” Loki blinked. The cogs turned very slowly in his head, and eventually, he corrected himself, “Eh, I mean…no.” He added a moment later, “And I’m not drunk. I’m full.”

Mobius rolled his eyes, took the god by the arm, and started to lead him out of the bar.

“Hva? Why are we leaving? Jeg vil ikke dra.”

“You’re lucky I speak every language on the Timeline.”

“You do?”

“Uh-huh.” Mobius pushed open the door to the bar, and when they stepped outside, Loki realized that the TVA didn’t get cold at night. What’s night without cold? The door closed behind them, and the moment the sound and joy from the people in the bar disappeared, all the god’s focus landed on the arm looped through his.

“So, you know what I sang,” the god stated, suddenly somber.

“I do,” Mobius replied softly, “and I don’t want you to feel alone anymore.”

There weren’t many people out on the street, and the people that were out and about appeared too tired to care that there was a TVA agent walking arm-in-arm with a man who had VARIANT written all across his back. At night, Loki was just another person, not a threat, not a problem, just a person. He felt like he could breathe, and he was relieved to see when he looked up at the night sky that there were no stars. After he let himself fall from the Rainbow Bridge, he found it quite hard to look up at a starry sky, even when he knew there was solid ground under his feet. It left him dizzy and panicky, so to look up and see blackness was, in a way, calming.

As they approached the main building of the TVA, Loki stopped. Mobius stopped with him.

“Mobius, I never want to lie to you.” The Trickster took a deep breath and took Mobius’ hands. He said he wouldn’t mind if I held them…

“Well, that’s good.”

“No, no, earlier you said I would never hurt you, and I couldn’t agree, because I can’t make that promise. If I can’t even promise that to my own mother, then I can’t risk promising it to you.” He took a step toward the agent and held their clasped hands to his chest. “I am the God of Lies, but I refuse to lie to you.”

The god swallowed. Now or never, he thought. He began to lean down, to close the distance between them to express with a kiss just how much he cared, how badly he wanted to do the right thing, just this once…when Mobius’ TemPad beeped loudly from his pocket. With regret in his eyes, the agent pulled away and checked the device. He paled.

“What?” The god asked, unsure of what to do with his hands now that Mobius had pulled free.

“Three sets of hunters in a row were attacked. He’s speeding up.”

Loki reached out and took Mobius by the shoulders. “We need to solve this sooner rather than later, Mobius.”

Mobius shook his head and twisted out of his hands. He began to walk away and said, “No, we’re not doing this again.”

The Trickster matched his pace and pleaded with the agent, “What if we have to, Mobius? People are dying, and I can stop it! For once, I have the means to help people.”

“Loki, it’s off the table. I’m not signing your death sentence.”

“Fine, fine. I won’t bring it up again.” Until tomorrow, he finished in his thoughts. They turned on a side street, which took them away from the TVA, and they arrived at a plain-looking apartment building. The god asked, “We’re not going back to the TVA?”

“Do you really want to spend another night in a cell?”

“Well, no, but I also don’t want to impose…”

“Then you can sleep on the couch.”

Loki had no retort, and Mobius once again opened the door for him. After a short elevator ride, they were in his apartment. It was a small, unadorned one-bedroom with a mostly untouched kitchen and a cozy living room. There were jet-ski magazines on the coffee table, and while the space was unembellished, it felt lived-in. Mobius floated tiredly toward the bedroom, but when he reached the door, he stopped and looked back.

“Your singing…it was very nice,” Mobius said, removing his jacket.

“Thank you,” Loki replied softly. “My mother used to sing it.”

“What was she like?”

“Kind. Purely decent. I wish I could show you some of the magic she taught me. You’d love it.” Memories of the way his mother’s magic felt overcame him, and tears pooled in his eyes. Her spells tasted like cinnamon and felt like home. He remembered the time he revealed to her that he didn’t always feel like a son, and at once, she taught him to shapeshift, so he could transform himself into what he felt inside. She taught Loki that he, she, they could be anything, as long as they were Loki. Loki took a stuttering breath. “She treated me like I was really her child.”

The TVA agent watched him for a moment, then crossed the room to wrap his arms around the god, who at first did not react from pure shock. Mobius lifted his head to speak into Loki’s ear. Quietly, he said, “I don’t have any magic to help you with, but at the very least, I can do this for you.” At once, Loki replied in kind, one arm around the agent’s waist and the other around his shoulder blades. The god let his eyes close and reveled in the feeling of being held.

“You’re cold,” Mobius murmured.

Loki’s heart dropped. “I’m sorry, I can’t help it, you don’t have to-” Loki tried to pull away, but Mobius only hugged him tighter and buried his face in the Trickster’s neck.

“No, it’s nice. I like it.”

Mobius’ hair was soft, and it tickled Loki’s nose. The agent was warm, and holding him, being held by him, was everything Loki ever could have asked for. He could probably count on both hands the number of times he’d been hugged in more than a millennium, partially because no one felt like they could trust him (for good reason, of course) and partially because most people found it uncomfortable anyway.

“Does it bother you that I’m a Jotun?”

“Should it?”

Loki was awestruck. The man’s reply had been so simple, so nonchalant. He’d said it without hesitation. Loki had been raised to hate the Frost Giants, to despise them and everything they stood for. When he’d grabbed the Casket, the only word for what he felt when the inky blue overtook his skin was horror. He shouted down his father, and when Odin fell unconscious, he hesitated to take his hand, to comfort him in a time of clear need, because who could ever take comfort from a Frost Giant?

And then there was Mobius, who wasn’t bothered at all, who touched him, and held his hands, and hugged him willingly.

Should it bother him?

Loki took a deep breath and pulled away, forcing Mobius’ hands from his waist. The agent looked up at him, confused, concerned.

Should it bother me?

Loki closed his eyes and focused. There was no magic in the TVA, so the tiny sliver he’d managed to bring with him through sheer force of will was hard to grab a hold of. All he needed, though, was to find just one loose thread…

…and pull.

Like ink on fresh, white paper, a deep azure spread over his skin, starting from his fingertips, and moving up his arms. As the blue consumed the sickly pale, raised marks appeared on his skin, spiraling like tattoos. When he finally opened his eyes, they were a haunting, blood red, but when he looked at Mobius, the TVA agent didn’t even flinch. Mobius stepped toward him, closing the gap Loki had put between them. He reached out and took one of the Jotun’s hands in his own, and even though it was surely cold to the point of discomfort without the glamour, he held on, and traced his fingers over the marks he found there. Loki tried his best to keep the cold at bay, but it was difficult. The knowledge that he could leave Mobius with a horrific ice burn if he didn’t maintain his focus terrified him.

“You really aren’t scared, are you?” Loki asked.

“It’s just you, and I'm not afraid of you.”

Loki breathed in sharply. It’s just you, and I'm not afraid of you.

It’s just you.

Mobius yawned. “You know, if you’d rather take the bed, you can, or, you know, we could both…”

Loki chuckled. “You go lay down. I’ll join you in a bit. I’m not very tired.”

Mobius gave him a small smile, released his hand, and disappeared into the bedroom. Loki moved to the couch, and for a short while, he flipped through Mobius’ magazines. He couldn’t focus, though. Every few minutes, Mobius’ TemPad would sound, alerting him of another set of hunters lost to the Variant. Loki pushed the azure from his skin and blinked the bloody red from his eyes.

He knew what he had to do.

There was no time to come up with another plan, no time to even sleep. The Variant was killing people, and if he ran free for too long, he would bring down the TVA. There were people dying out there, dying because of some version of him that was too cruel, too simple to realize that there is more to life than power. There’s happiness, and laughter, and song, and love, love that can make your heart grow three sizes in a week, love that can, for the first time, make you feel like you aren’t alone.

He flipped idly through magazines but mostly stared at the floor as he waited for Mobius’ snoring to filter through the bedroom door. Quietly, he crept into the bedroom. He approached the agent, and carefully pushed aside his hair to give him a gentle kiss on the forehead. He then grabbed the TemPad off the nightstand and opened a Timedoor. He looked back at the sleeping man who he wanted, wanted desperately to treat with the love and care he deserved, and then he stepped through the door.

Chapter Text

Hear,
The sound of violence.
It's a beat that
Makes us dance.
You sway,
And I follow your lead.

The Variant stepped from Thanos’ home into the TVA, and the lack of magic hit him like a city bus made of stale air. He approached the first person he saw, the kind and eminently dumb receptionist, Casey. 

“Oh, hey, are you alright? Your hands are blue. You should go to the infirmary," said Casey.

The Variant ignored him. “I demand to speak with whoever’s in charge.”

Casey smiled. “You must be new here. You can’t talk to the Time-Keepers unless you have high-level clearance, or if they invite you, or-”

The Variant tired immediately of listening and pressed the scepter to the receptionist’s chest. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing.

He had the distinct sense that these exact events had occurred to him in another life.

“Ow. Why are you doing that?” Casey complained.

The Variant pressed harder. When it still didn't respond, he replied, “It’s supposed to glow and…do stuff.”

“Well, there’s no magic in the TVA. Did you watch any of the training videos?”

The Variant struggled for words. How am I supposed to invade this place without magic?

“Not really, no,” the Variant finally stammered. Totally put out, he asked, “Do you think anyone could ever overpower the TVA?”

“Yeah, I guess so, if they had enough people. Like, I don't know, an army." Casey giggled and gave the Variant a friendly clap on the shoulder, which he winced at. "Joking! Obviously!" Casey said.

At that moment, a green-clad, golden-horn-wearing woman came through a Timedoor across the room. She wore manacles around her wrists and soldiers gripped her arms. When she tried to sprint away, one of the soldiers twirled their thumb on a small device, and she reappeared exactly where she’d started. She tried again, and the same thing occurred. 

Casey tsked. “Those Loki Variants are something else,” he said.

“How many of them are there?” The Variant asked while he watched the woman thrash. She managed to bite one of her handlers.

“Oh, Loki leaves the Timeline all the time. There are probably as many out there as you can imagine. Just look for the green branches on your TemPad. They’re all over the place.”

The Variant did as asked and flipped open the TemPad. There he found dozens of green branches. He zoomed out and found hundreds more. Infinite Lokis? The Variant thought. The hunters manhandled his feminine double down the hallway, and when she headbutt the nearest guard, a plan took shape in his mind. He grinned.

“I've got to go," The Variant pulled his shoulder free from Casey's hand. There’s an army out there, waiting for a leader.

He could count on alternate versions of himself to be selfish and foolhardy. The scepter would win them over easily, and he beamed at the idea that his war was already half-won. All he needed was to gather his recruits. He navigated to a random green branch, opened a Timedoor, ignored Casey’s goodbyes, and stepped through.

The variety the Variant found in those branches shocked him.

For example, the first branch he visited after his stop at the TVA landed him in the throne room of a much older Loki. He wore furs and a green tunic, and while the horns on his helmet were battered and aged, they were as sharp as daggers. He even held Gungnir, the symbol that marked him King of Asgard. King Loki looked down at the younger man with equal parts malice and curiosity.

“You’re not supposed to be here, runt,” the King said as he stepped down from his throne. 

The younger man stood his ground and looked up at him, but did not move. “I could say the same about you. I don’t have much interest in ruling.”

“Child, I’m not you. Once, but not anymore,” the King said through a smile, his teeth like old tombstones. The Variant could tell this man was bad news, like him. What he needed for his army, though, were idiots and losers, Lokis who were sacrificial, who couldn’t succeed without a general leading the charge. King Loki was his own general, and for that matter, his own army. He wouldn’t do at all. The scepter likely wouldn’t even work on him.

The King’s eyes landed on the TemPad. “Is this little toy what you need to move through time?” He asked, but did not make a move to grab it. “How cute.”

“It is, and I’ll be going now.” He pressed some buttons, and the Timedoor appeared, but when he took a step toward it, the room shimmered around him. Suddenly, he sat on the throne with Gungnir in his hand, the scepter in King Loki’s hand, and the TemPad nowhere to be found. King Loki looked on from below and laughed at the younger man’s scowl. His laugh was a scratching sound that reminded the Variant of broken glass.

“Look at you,” King Loki chided as he stalked up the steps. “You aren’t even phased, are you?” The King looked half-impressed. “You’re trouble, runt.”

“I have to agree,” said the Variant, tossing Gungnir aside. “Give me the scepter and the TemPad.”

King Loki glanced down at the scepter. “Your magic is weak, weak enough that you need an Infinity Stone to get anything done.” He stalked up the steps. “The look in your eyes is hard, boy, but you’re inexperienced. I can tell. You haven't the power or the skill to back up your attitude.”

In the distance, the Variant saw more Timedoors spring up. Through them walked several surprised hunters. Their faces made clear that they only expected to find one Loki there. King Loki looked over his shoulder, and with a flick of his hand, all the hunters stopped walking. Their eyes glowed green, and the Variant knew immediately by the feeling of the magic in the air what he had done; he was showing them some illusion, and from the taste of the spell in the air, he knew it wasn’t something pleasant. King Loki turned his attention back to the younger man.

“Why are you here?” King Loki asked.

“I don’t need to tell you anything. Now, give me my things.”

King Loki stepped forward and reached out. “Alright, then I’ll find out myself,” he declared. 

When the Variant tried to step away, King Loki lashed out and grabbed him by the front of his armor, and placed his fingers at his temple. The Variant was rooted to the spot as the events of his whole life played like a movie in fast forward before his eyes. At first, he felt the emotions and pain of a thousand years of sadness and a few moments of genuine happiness. It came at him fast and hard, its pace and intensity dizzying. Then there was the whiplash of his fall through space, where everything seemed to stop. It was during his fall that he stopped caring about anything, including himself. Still, the deluge of memories was too much for him to handle. When King Loki was finished, he let go, and the Variant dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. He clenched his jaw and stared up defiantly at King Loki. 

“Was that fun for you?” the Variant asked with a forced grin. His head hurt, and against his wishes, he felt a twinge of guilt in the pit of his stomach. It was brief and quashed immediately, but it was there. It was possible.

“Oh, yes, very. You and I are quite similar, you know, only you want to burn the world, and I want to rule it. If our interests were more aligned, I would join you. Alas, our passions differ.” King Loki flicked his wrist and the TemPad appeared between his fingers. “I wish you the best, runt.” He held out the TemPad. 

The Variant took the TemPad, then held out his other hand expectantly. “The scepter, too, if you would, your majesty.”

King Loki laughed and handed over the scepter. “Of course, I forget myself, rightful King of Jotunheim. What use have I for Infinity Stones, anyway?” He grinned. “You know, with enough practice, you won’t need toys like this, either. If you come back from your quest alive, drop by. I can teach you a thing or two.”

The Variant rose to his feet. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“So, what comes next? You start a war, you take the TVA, you level your homeworlds, and then what? In your mind, I felt indecision.” 

“Maybe I’ll retire. Maybe I’ll find another bridge to jump from.” He smirked. “I prefer to play things by ear.”

“Good luck, boy, and may your devil-may-care attitude serve you well.”

The Variant nodded, picked a random green branch, opened a door, and stepped through.

On the other side, he found yet another Loki standing before him. This Loki wore much shorter horns, a suit that was torn at the shoulder, and two large campaign buttons. One button read Vote Loki and the other BeLIEve. People with badges and headsets rushed about all around them, not seeming to notice the person who had popped out of a portal. He realized they were backstage at some event, and in the distance, he heard a crowd gathering.

The man in the suit eyed The Variant curiously. “And who might you be?” he asked, poking at The Variant’s armor.

The Variant answered, “I’m you, and I’m here to recruit you for an army. We will do battle with the TVA.”

“TVA? What’s that?”

“Time Variance Authority. They’re sort of like…time police.”

“Time police? What, are they mad at me for showing up early?” The man in the suit laughed like he’d told the funniest joke in the world.

“Quite honestly, they might be,” The Variant replied, deadpan.

The candidate snorted. “Yeah, alright, I’ll do whatever you like as long as you promise to vote for me,” the prospective President of the United States said with the smile of a practiced politician (or of an ancient God of Lies). The smile disappeared and his eyes blew wide with shock, though, when Timedoors appeared once more, and a set of hunters stepped through. With a squeak, the candidate turned Loki around and held him by the arms, using him as a human (well, Jotun) shield. 

The Variant sighed and pulled himself free from the candidate, who jumped back with a yelp. The Variant took a swing at the first hunter who approached him and nailed the woman in the head with the scepter. The strike made a sound like a thundercrack. The next hunter was far more reluctant in his approach, preyed on this by brainwashing him with the Mind Stone. The hunter’s eyes glowed an eerie blue, and at once, he turned on his companions and pruned them all. Then, unsteady, he ran the pointed end of his own baton through his abdomen, and he collapsed.

The Variant found the candidate cowering on the ground some distance away. He reached down and grabbed him by the horns, which appeared seemed affixed to his head with magic. With no more discussion, he pressed the tip of the scepter against the President-to-be’s chest. The candidate’s eyes lit up with that same eerie blue.

Now, where can I hide them? The Variant thought. On a remote island? No, one of them might chop down a tree they aren’t supposed to. In a desert? They might all just…die.

What about at the end of the world?

The legends all said that the destruction of Asgard would come during a cataclysmic event called Ragnarök, the Twilight of the Gods. The circumstances under which it was to occur were murky, but they almost certainly didn’t involve the TVA. The destruction wasn’t complete, though. The Twilight of the Gods was meant to be a rebirth for the realm. That wasn’t what the Variant wanted, though. He didn’t want Asgard reborn – he wanted it atomized.

Still, it may make a serviceable hiding place, at least until I can do the job correctly. They can’t cause any lasting damage if the whole city is coming down anyway. He scrolled through menus until he found Ragnarök, opened a Timedoor, shoved the candidate through. He then stepped in after him. They arrived in the Asgardian throne room, and he could hear fighting outside. He rushed to the balcony, and below was his brother, blazing through undead soldiers on the Rainbow Bridge. He even thought he could see his own horns glinting in the crowd. Me? Fighting alongside Thor?

I guess he felt like pitying the runt, this day.

“Why are we in Asgard?” The candidate asked from behind him. “Asgardians can’t vote in United States elections, can they?” Even brainwashed, he acted remarkably like himself. The Variant wasn’t sure if this would come to be a problem or a source of entertainment.

The Variant turned to face the candidate. “The TVA won’t be able to find you here, no matter what you do, because neither Hel nor high water will stop the start of Ragnarök in about…” He looked down at the TemPad, which presented him a very convenient countdown timer, “twenty-five minutes.”

“What?” was all the prospective president could say before the Variant was gone, disappeared through another Timedoor.

That was how the recruitments went. He would approach a Loki, poke them in the chest, and drop them off in Asgard. He found in his travels, though, that Lokis responded differently to the Mind Stone than humans. Humans’ brains turned to malleable goo instantly, whereas Lokis always maintained their snark, but took directions marginally better than usual. They could cause plenty of chaos, which was all he needed. Still, he found their stubbornness and personality in the face of the Mind Stone more surprising than finding out there were alternate versions of him floating around the universe. When the countdown timer on the TemPad hit five minutes, he would shepherd them all through a Timedoor back to the moment his brother summoned lighting without his hammer (which figuratively shocked the Variant the first time he saw it), thus resetting the timer.

The whole process of hunting down and convincing Lokis to join him was maddening and exhausting, but necessary. He’d felt the complete absence of magic in the TVA, and knew he couldn’t fight his way to the top on his own. Thor, Odin, Asgard, Jotunheim, all of them would pay for the way they’d treated him, and any version of him willing to help any of them would pay, too. He toiled for what felt to him like weeks, and every minute he spent enacting his plan, his glamour faded more and more. By the time his army was nearly complete, the raised marks and deep blue of his real Jotun skin had traveled up his throat to his jaw. With the dark circles under his eyes and the paleness of the glamoured skin that remained, he looked frostbitten and ill. 

He’d avoided King Lokis for the most part, since they were too independent. There were plenty of pissed feminine-presenting Lokis, including Enchantress and one self-titled Lady Loki, who all already had a bone to pick with the TVA. They were happy to help. He found overpowered children, moody teens, plenty of snarky adults, and a surprising number of animals. He brainwashed them all. Each time he returned to Ragnarök, he found them all milling about, showing off their horns, laughing, and at times, arguing. He’d never seen so many people so unbothered by mind control. The sound of a hundred Lokis all talking at once was enough to make a person, even another Loki, tear their hair out, and the Variant in charge of the whole mess was happy to leave it all behind to retrieve his last mark. 

He stepped through a Timedoor into the beating sun of the Gobi Desert, and before him, bound and gagged, stood a man who looked nearly identical to him, but for the scratches on his face and the armor he wore. He looked like he hadn’t slept in months, he was as pale as Lady Death herself, he had an insane glint in his eye, and…

Oh. The Variant grinned. This one’s me, or something close.

With a growl, the man threw off his gag, held out his shackled wrists, and fixed the Variant with a dark glare. “They dampen my magic. Mind helping me?” he said, his voice a low, angry rumble, tinged with fatigue.

Let’s hope I don’t regret this, the Variant thought as he waved his hand and the shackles disassembled themselves into their requisite pieces. The scraps of metal hit the ground with little thumps, the sound quieted by the sand.

“So, how did you get here? This is a long way from home,” the Variant asked. 

“Thor tried to take me back to Asgard, but I used what little magic I had to summon a dagger, stab Thor, and escape the Bifröst. I expect the brute will be coming any second now.”

“I’m sure he will. Tell me, have you met Thanos, yet?”

His double raised an eyebrow. “Yes. In fact, he gave me that scepter you’re holding to conquer Earth.”

So, that’s what was supposed to happen, the Variant thought. I couldn't care less about Earth, but he intended to use me to take it for him.

“Listen, someone much more troublesome than Thor will be coming for you soon, and I can help you get away.” The Variant stepped closer to his double, leading with the scepter.

“And who might that be?”

“They’re called the Time Variance Authority, and they’re coming to arrest you right now.”

“Well, this is quite a time variance, isn’t it, have two of me in the same place?”

On cue, Timedoors and hunters appeared. Before he knew what was happening, his double was behind him and there was a dagger at his throat. The Variant groaned. If I could resist the urge to talk, these things would go faster.

“Stop right there or I’ll kill him,” his double hissed. The Variant felt blood dribbling down his throat. Of course, it’s the last one I go after that’s going to kill me, he thought.

“That’s fine,” one of the hunters said. “Your temporal energy signatures tell us that neither of you should be here. Come with us, or we will prune you. Or, even better, kill each other and save us the work.” The hunters activated their batons and advanced on the Lokis.

“I don’t have to listen to you,” his double spat.

“God, I’m annoying,” The Variant muttered. He clenched his jaw, then went to work.

The Variant whipped his head back as hard as he could. He had to admit, the feeling of breaking his double’s nose was quite satisfying. The other man dropped the daggers and stumbled back, clutching his bloodied and broken nose. The Variant took the moment of distraction to lash out at the hunters, brainwashing half to deal with the other half. With them at each other’s throats, he shifted his focus back to his double just in time for the man, who looked truly deranged with all that blood pouring down his face, to tackle him at the waist. They fought viciously, and eventually, the Variant was on top. He took the scepter and jammed it against his double’s chest. It took a moment, but eventually, the icy blue crept into his irises, and he relaxed.

“Now, behave,” the Variant said as he forced himself to his feet. He opened a Timedoor, grabbed the Variant by the front of his armor, and dragged him through.

Chapter Text

Drained, like a landmine
Armed and primed.
Your words,
They sound like mine.

Loki had not thought this through. Then again, he wasn’t famous for thinking ahead, he was famous for making things work. He knew he didn’t have long after dropping himself back in the Gobi Desert to turn himself into a Loki worth recruiting. So, who would he be? Would he present himself as kind and unassuming, with his white dress shirt and an armload of papers? Or perhaps he should play a prince, handsome, noble, starry-eyed, and a bit sullen? Or maybe a child, a little girl, innocent but powerful?

No, he thought, those won’t do. He’s building an army. He needs someone who could pose a threat to the TVA.

He sighed. New York. New York would be perfect.

He wanted nothing to do with that vicious, selfish mindset, but it would work. A Loki without inhibition. That’s what the Variant needed, someone emotional and unrestrained to take advantage of with the Mind Stone. The disguise would be easy, and Loki is the God of Lies. Playing a character would be no challenge at all. The only problem, then, was the Mind Stone itself.

Thanos had found him when he was at his weakest. He had been drained of magic, hadn’t slept in months, and was more than a little morally compromised. He’d wanted to commit genocide, and when that didn’t work, he tried to kill himself by dropping from the Rainbow Bridge. He was a broken person and the magic of the scepter filled in the cracks.

He’d changed, though. He wasn’t alone anymore.

He rolled his shoulders back, and his appearance changed at once to what it had been just before he stepped off the Sacred Timeline with the Tesseract. Cuts peppered his face, his wrists were cuffed, and there was a muzzle over his mouth. It wasn’t like Loki needed to speak to do magic. Thor had put it there because no one wanted to listen to him. He wondered what his brother would think of him, now that he worked as a consultant for a set of omnipotent space lizards. A Jotun prince working in an office? It was absurd.

He put on his meanest scowl and waited, but not for very long. A Timedoor rose up out of the sand a few meters away, and through it stepped the Variant.

Immediately, Loki began to dissect everything about him. His clothes signaled that he likely came from a time before the Battle of New York, but he had the scepter, so he must have jumped off the Timeline after meeting Thanos. The most striking thing to Loki, though, was the blue that coated the Variant’s hands and crept up over his jawline. What happened to you? Loki thought. The way the inky blue lazily bled through the Variant's skin suggested he wasn't doing it on purpose. It was like his glamour had sprung a leak, and he hadn't bothered to fix it.

Then, Loki noticed something disturbing.

The Variant’s eyes weren’t that chilly blue that marked a victim of the Mind Stone. Mobius was right. He wasn't from New York. He wasn't brainwashed.

That was not a good thing.

It meant he was hijacking minds and killing of his own volition. He’d needed no convincing to go on his rampage. Loki had thought at first that this man was a bit like him, and just needed a good conversation or a knock on the head to come to his senses, but no. The Variant was fully in control of his faculties. 

Loki suppressed a shudder. He tore off the gag, held out his bound wrists, and then fixed the Variant with a dark glare. “They dampen magic. Mind helping me?”

One thing led to another, and, before long, Loki's nose was thoroughly broken, and the Variant had him pinned to the ground with the scepter poised over his chest. Loki swallowed. Moment of truth. 

The Variant pushed the tip of the scepter through his armor, and an all-too-familiar feeling of coldness filtered through his chest. This time, though, he was stronger. He had conviction. He thought of his mother, and of home, and of Mobius. He held in a death grip the idea that, in his heart of hearts, he didn’t like to hurt people, didn’t want to rule, and wasn’t owed anything.

So, the Mind Stone tried a different path this time. 

You betrayed him, it whispered. His heart pounded. You love that man, and yet you left him. He hates you now. 

He hates you.

He hates you.

He hates you.

This caught him off guard. He balled his hands into fists and squeezed his eyes shut. 

You are nothing. You are a fool. 

You need a leader.

His head ached from the strain. He took a stuttering breath.

No, thought Loki.

His eyes opened. They were a glacial blue, and he smiled.

But it wasn’t because of the Mind Stone. He’d done it himself, the simplest illusion he'd ever cast. The magic of the Mind Stone retreated and the cold drained from his body. 

Whether Mobius hates me or not is out of my control now. I made my choice, and now I'll live with it.

The Variant peered down at him, studying Loki's eyes and expression. Appearing convinced, he nodded and stood. He then pulled Loki to his feet by the front of his armor and dragged him through a Timedoor. On the other side was a room overflowing with Lokis, all sporting icy blue irises and a sickly pallor. There had to be more than a hundred of them, all milling about, some fighting, some (unfortunately) flirting, but most of them bragging and snarking. Loki looked around and recognized at once where they were: the Asgardian throne room. The Variant let go of Loki’s armor and busied himself with his TemPad.

Loki's shoulders slumped with relief. Having survived the Variant, his only task was to record his temporal coordinates and escape back to the TVA unnoticed. He began to walk away, only for the Variant to reach out and grab him by the shoulder. Loki froze.

"You," said the Variant, "I'd like to speak with you. Follow me."

Loki swore internally but did as asked. To refuse a direct order would be to admit that he wasn't really under the control of the Mind Stone. He needed the illusion of control to last long enough to get away, that was all. He trailed after the Variant and tensed when they went down a long flight of stairs and through a set of tall, ornate doors - the entrance to Odin's Vault. The doors slammed shut behind them with a great crash, and they were alone. His gaze landed on the Casket. It had been about a year since the day he'd picked it up and found that he wasn't Asgardian. He wondered sometimes what his life would have been like if he'd chosen to ignore the fact that a Frost Giant's touch couldn't hurt him.

It's just you, and I'm not afraid of you, echoed Mobius' voice in his mind. He wasn't sure he would be happier being left in the dark.

His focus returned to the Variant. “Why are we here? Don't you think someone will notice all the Lokis wandering around?” Loki asked as they worked their way down the steps, forcing his voice to stay even. Gather information. Leave.  

“The TVA can't detect us at the end of the world. Think of it like burning the evidence of a crime."

"End of the world? So, is this...?"

"Ragnarök? Yes."

So, I'm out there, fighting on the Rainbow Bridge alongside Thor. He allowed himself a small smile at the thought of his beloved brother but quickly dropped it when the Variant raised an eyebrow at him. They turned right, then right again, and walked down a long hall.

"You didn't answer my other question," Loki stated. "Why are we here?"

"We're going to invade the TVA."

“That’s it? There has to be more to your plan than that.”

The Variant grinned. “I’ve told you all you need to know.”

I’m one of the rabble, and the less he tells, the harder he is to betray. 

An awkward silence overcame them, and Loki took the opportunity to (painfully) reassemble his nose with magic. He was lucky to be able to mend bones, but pain relief had never been a specialty of his. They turned left at the end of the hall, and even though Loki had walked that path a hundred times, he only realized they were approaching Gram once the glittering golden blade came into view, perched on a dais at the top of a short flight of stairs.

They climbed the steps and stopped in front of Gram. The blade was beautiful. It was no wonder Mobius had wanted to keep it.

The Variant leaned in close. "Take it," he commanded.

Loki looked to the Variant, startled. He had allowed his double to walk him right into the slaughterhouse. If Loki were to refuse to take the blade, it would be clear he wasn't under the control of the Mind Stone. If he took Gram, though, the blade that could exorcise lies, would erase Loki's illusory irises to the same end.

Loki bit the bullet and took Gram by the handle. For a moment, it seared his skin, but once the false blue left his eyes and the fake cuts disappeared, it didn't hurt at all. His heart skipped a beat. I'm worthy, then? Imagine that.

"That was good," Loki said, tilting the blade in the light. The Asgardian etchings shimmered and seemed almost to move. "Very clever."

The Variant shrugged. "You flatter me." He then leaned against the dais and watched Loki carefully, eyes full of mirth. “You know, I had a feeling you’d resisted the Mind Stone. That's very impressive,” the Variant announced. "I mean, what kind of Loki must you be that you can resist the power of an Infinity Stone?" The Variant reached out and Loki let him run his fingers over the blade. It was clear it hurt, but the Variant carried on smiling. "You're strong. You'd make a good lieutenant."

"Would I?"

"Oh, yes, unfortunately, you can't be controlled, and if I can't control you, then I can't allow you to live."

"Then we're at an impasse, because I can't allow you to invade the TVA."

Loki's form shimmered briefly as he conjured his TVA uniform. Notably, his jacket no longer said VARIANT; he’d come to quite like the ensemble but didn't care for the kick me sign printed on his back.

The Variant’s eyebrows hurtled toward his hairline when he saw the TVA logo on the front of Loki’s jacket. Through an exasperated laugh, he said, “You work for the TVA? Is this a joke?"

Loki took a step back, Gram held out defensively in front of him. “No, not at all. You’re causing untold damage to the Timeline, and we can’t allow that. Look at your TemPad. You must have noticed all the branches. They’re crossing, doubling back on themselves. That can’t happen.”

“Says who?”

“The Time-Keepers.”

“And why should I care?”

“Because this is bigger than you! If this goes on, there will be another multiversal war and nothing you do will matter anyway!” Loki took another evasive step back. “Tell me what you intend to do.”

Grinning, the Variant explained, “I’m going to take control of the TVA and destroy everyone and everything that has ever hurt me. Asgard, Jotunheim, and when I'm done, I could tear apart the TVA, too.” The Variant crept toward him, forcing Loki farther down the stairs. "They'll all pay," the Variant whispered. 

Loki’s heart dropped. He wants everyone dead. Odin, mother, Thor...he doesn’t care. He’ll destroy his homeworld, tear apart the place he grew up, and trigger multiversal war for the fun of it.

The Jotun's presence was overbearing and frightful, and worse yet, he had the high ground. His wild eyes and fading glamour made for a chilling sight. He was truly the monster parents tell their children about at night.

Loki shook his head. “You broke out of the Timeline, you have all the freedom in the world, and yet here you are, doing exactly what we always do. How can someone so smart be such a dolt?”

“I would say the same of you! Am I seriously supposed to believe you’re working with the TVA out of the kindness of your heart? For once in your life, don’t lie,” the Variant goaded.

“I’m not lying. That was the one promise I made.”

Cackling, the Variant teased, “The God of Lies promised to tell the truth? Promised to whom?" He covered his mouth daintily and gasped. "Have you found someone? Do you look forward to breaking their heart?"

Loki did not reply.

"Oh, look at that. A pressure point. Will I get to meet them?"

"And you called me annoying."

"I consider that self-awareness." A loud beeping erupted from the Variant's pocket. He pulled out his TemPad and frowned. "I'm afraid we'll have to cut this short. Twenty minutes until fireworks."

"That's not much time. Still plan on killing me?"

"Oh, of course."

Loki swallowed. He held the Variant's gaze for a moment longer, then he launched into a dead sprint. He needed to hide long enough that he could open a Timedoor and escape back to the TVA. He knew Odin's Vault well, and quickly found the doors back to the main palace, where he hoped to lose the Variant in the labyrinthine halls. He forced open the doors to the throne room, and the Lokis on the other side all turned their heads, their eyes landing on the logo on Loki's jacket. All at once, they summoned weapons. He looked back, and the Variant was fast approaching.

"Don't harm him. He's mine," the Variant roared.

The Variant flicked his wrists as he stalked into the room and daggers appeared in his hands, to the joy of their many spectators. Loki backed up, and the crowd parted behind him. The audience whooped and hollered as the Variant neared, and the crowd closed in on them, forming themselves into a makeshift arena.

“Everyone will pay, and you'll be the first,” the Variant sneered as he lunged at Loki. He made contact and sliced open Loki’s arm, and Loki replied with a jab that caught his double in the shoulder. Their blades clashed, and Loki parried all the attacks he could, but his double was vicious. Their blades sprayed green sparks over the crowd with each contact. It was impossible to tell who the spectators were cheering for - "Loki!" simply wasn't specific enough.

Fighting himself was a great deal harder than he thought it would be. His goal in the desert had been to lose. This, though, was a battle for survival, and Loki knew he wouldn’t win. The Variant fought him with daggers, not the scepter, as if to say, I don't need an Infinity Stone to make mincemeat of you.

A different strategy was in order, then. 

"Don't you think this is taking 'killing yourself' too literally?" said Loki with a smarmy grin. He knew his own weaknesses. Time to use them.

"Oh, be quiet!" The Variant swung and missed.

"You failed to impress Father and then you failed to off yourself, but you think you can take the TVA? You're deluded!"

The Variant swung once more, but hit his mark this time, and left Loki with a nasty cut across his cheek. Loki simpered, his blood a stark crimson against his pale skin. "Have you ever thought that maybe Thor really was the better son?" He taunted. He was thankful Thor wasn't around to hear him say those things. It would have broken his heart.

The Variant growled, and the daggers disappeared. In their place appeared the scepter. No more showing off? Okay. The Variant raised it to fire an energy blast at Loki, but Loki used his magic to pull a horned helmet from the head of one of the spectators. The gleaming headpiece sailed through the air and struck the Variant on the back of the head with a loud crack, and the Variant pitched forward. The crowd laughed.

"You think you can kill all those people? No. You can't. You should have let Thanos brainwash you. Believe me, it makes it much, much easier," Loki said, voice breaking at the end. 

The Variant stopped and looked up at him from the floor, kneeling. The blue and the Jotun markings crept toward his mouth.

Loki stepped toward the Variant "'I could have done it, Father!'" Loki mocked, his voice high and tight as tears pricked in his eyes. "We could have, then. And maybe you could still get close because that stone has never been in your head. But you haven't watched Mother die. You haven't seen your own death. You know nothing. You're so sure you're right that you'll murder countless innocent people, and bring all of us down with you."

There was a long pause, where not even the audience dared to make a sound.

Loki pleaded with his double, "Look around you. You don't have to do this. Free them, and run. Live the life we're never meant to live."

"What have I done to them? What does the Mind Stone feel like?" The Variant asked, gazing down at the scepter.

"It's like...it's..." Loki swallowed. "There aren't words for it."

"Then I suppose I'll have to go in blind."

The Variant turned the scepter over in his hands. He took a deep breath, and pointed it toward himself, jamming the tip of the weapon through his chest plate. He shuddered, and the Mind Stone glimmered.

"No!" Loki cried out as Variant's eyes filled with blue, just like his army.

The Variant smiled and relaxed. Loki acted on instinct. He smashed the Variant in the temple with the butt of his sword, then kicked the Variant square in the chest, knocking him to the ground. As the Variant forced himself back to his feet, Loki saw that the blue still remained in his eyes. He'd have to hit harder. Loki squared his shoulders and focused. With a skill he rarely used because of its difficulty, he struck his double with a great telekinetic force. The Variant flew into the air and landed hard on his head and neck, tumbling tail over teakettle on the cold marble. The crowd descended and forced the Variant to his feet, and while he looked dazed and struggled to stand on his own, he also didn’t look like he planned on giving up. 

And still, his eyes glowed blue, the mark of the Mind Stone.

Loki was running out of options, and out of magic. He hadn't had it back for long, and already he'd pushed it to the brink. He felt dizzy and nauseated. The only option, then, was retreat. He jammed his hand in his pocket and yanked out the TemPad. He hastily punched at the keys and opened a Timedoor, but the Variant waved his hand and the TemPad leaped from Loki's grasp. It landed at the Variant's feet. The dazed Jotun smirked.

Loki glanced over his shoulder. The Timedoor still stood open. Sorry, Mobius, he thought, but I have to cut my losses. Loki summoned a dagger and bolted for the Timedoor, and as he threw himself through it, he launched his dagger at the TemPad. The Timedoor snapped closed just as he disappeared through it. The TemPad smoked and sparked on the ground, Loki's dagger having pierced the screen and part of the keypad. The blade stuck in the stone floor from the force with which he'd thrown the weapon.

The Variant laughed.

He laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and all the while, his magic healed his wounds. Before long, he could stand on his own. His mind felt so clear. The cold of the Mind Stone was refreshing, and he felt free. To be controlled by another using the Mind Stone is to be made a slave in one's own mind. It's rare that a being uses the Mind Stone on themself, though. That changes things.

To be both master and slave is to make oneself into a living, breathing perpetual motion machine.

The Variant pulled the dagger free from the marble floor, the TemPad still stuck on the end. He turned to his followers, and with a smile, he told them, "Ladies, gentlemen, and variations thereupon, it's time to go."

Chapter Text

We all shall repent

What we've done

In time.

Loki hit the ground with a disconcerting thump. His landing knocked the wind out of him, and he smacked his head on the tile floor hard enough that he saw stars. With the cuts on his face and arm and the remaining bruises from his broken nose (he hadn’t had the time to heal everything completely) he knew he must look pitiful. He lay there for a moment, counting body parts, ensuring that nothing got caught in the Timedoor; he hoped to never find out what it would be like to have some part of him still in the Timedoor when it slammed shut. Would it be like a guillotine, or would it cauterize? The thought alone made him shudder, and he forced the thought from his mind. Loki struggled to his feet, blinking the stars out of his vision, and stumbled to the reception counter, breathless, exhausted, and very, very sore.

“Oh, you don’t look so good…” Casey noted unhelpfully.

“Where is Mobius?” Loki spluttered. When Casey took too long to answer, he pointed Gram at him, the blade dangerously close to the receptionist’s face. “Where is he?!”

Casey froze, stiff as a board. “Uh, I think he’s with Judge Renslayer. She seemed pretty mad at him earlier.” Casey shifted his rolling desk chair back a few inches.

Loki bolted for her office. The TVA was the single most confusing building he’d ever been in, but his memory was strong, and he’d been to her office enough times with Mobius to have a rough idea of where it was. Hunters and other employees yelled at him as he dashed past, though none attempted pursuit. He was bloodied, bruised, carrying a sword, and didn’t exactly look friendly – he didn’t blame them for leaving him be. He soon reached her door. When he found it was unlocked, he burst in. Mobius and Renslayer sat at two small couches that faced each other, with a coffee table between them. They both had glasses of some dark liquor, but Mobius, who appeared disheveled and depressed, had twice as much in his glass.

He looked like he hadn’t slept at all that night, and a bolt of guilt ran through the god. The Mind Stone had been right, after all. He loved that man, and yet he was the one to break Mobius’ heart. He loved him with his whole heart, and he was the one to put those bags under the agent’s eyes, to make him want to drink. Mobius and Renslayer looked to him, the agent with shock and the judge with fury.

“Loki, you came back,” Mobius said. He appeared genuinely surprised. The agent’s shock left Loki speechless. Mobius drained his glass in two large swallows and looked at the floor.

When Loki tried to approach Mobius, Renslayer grabbed the baton from the table, activated it, and leaped to her feet, the baton swaying dangerously close to the god. “Where the Hell have you been?” she shouted. She stood with her stance wide, ready for a fight. “You stole a TemPad and left the TVA without permission. I should prune you, Variant.”

“Do whatever you wish later. I’m sure I deserve whatever you dream up, but at least hear me out first.”

Mobius looked up. “What did you find, Loki?” The agent asked, his voice small. His gaze bounced between the god and Renslayer. Renslayer looked ready to kill. Mobius looked ready to run interference. In his expression, Loki saw a maelstrom of emotion: fear, disappointment, and maybe even relief. Loki couldn’t be sure, of course. He’d disappointed enough people to know that what at first looked like relief may really be pity.

“I found the Variant and his army. They’re hiding in Ragnarök, and we couldn’t detect them because Asgard was going to be destroyed anyway. They couldn’t cause Nexus events there if they tried. It’s like throwing over-seasoned food out of a window - it doesn’t matter if it tastes bad, because it’s all going out anyway.”

Renslayer scowled. “How long do we have?”

“I don’t know. If we’re lucky, twenty-five minutes. If we’re not…about ten.”

Renslayer encroached on the god, baton pointed at the center of his chest. “How do I know you aren’t working with them?” She asked, her gaze hard and suspicious. As much as he disliked her, he also couldn’t blame her. My record isn’t exactly stellar.

“Because I get to do the right thing. I can act without the Time-Keepers meddling with my choices. I can help stop a war, and I can protect the TVA.” He looked to Mobius, who was as tense as a drumhead. “I can protect you.”

Renslayer rested the baton on Loki’s shoulder, leaving a scant amount of material between him and the glowing, insidious tip. He could hear it buzzing with energy and he dared not move. She needed only to shift the weapon an inch or two, and he would be dead. Mobius, so kind and so tired, could only watch, gripping his glass tight enough to turn his knuckles white.

“If I find out you’re lying to me, L1130, I will prune you myself,” Renslayer threatened, then she removed the baton and looked to Mobius. “I expect you in the armory in five minutes, Agent Mobius. Leave the Variant here. He’s a liability.” She then stomped out of the room.

The door slammed shut behind the judge. “I’m beginning to think she doesn’t like me,” Loki breathed.

Mobius let out a half-hearted chuckle. “You think?”

Loki crossed over to Mobius and offered a hand to the agent. “Five minutes,” he said, hopeful. Mobius hesitated briefly, but took Loki’s hand and let the god pull him to his feet.

The agent looked down at the god’s hand and traced over where his Jotun markings would be. “I dreamt about you last night,” Mobius said, his tone wistful.

“Was it pleasant?”

He met the god’s gaze. “No.”

Loki struggled for words for a moment. There wasn’t time to come up with the perfect thing to say. Mobius looked utterly defeated. I gave him nightmares, Loki thought, his mouth suddenly going dry. He had broken the man’s trust, and there was no way, in five short minutes to rebuild that trust. He figured, though, that the best place to start was an apology.

“Mobius, I am so, so sorry.”

“I know you are, but, it’s just…” Mobius shook his head. “You didn’t lie to me, not really, but you left, Loki. That hurt. That hurt a lot. I thought it had all been a trick.”

“No, no, never a trick. Everything I said, I meant.” Loki let his glamour leak away from his hand, and a small smile pulled at Mobius’ lips. It was difficult to restrain the full force of the cold without the glamour, but for Mobius, he would (and could) do anything. “I broke your trust, and I don’t expect you to forgive me for that. The only thing I can do is earn it back. You give kindness easily, but I want to actually be worthy of it, worthy of you.”

Mobius didn't reassure Loki, or say I forgive you, or even speak at all. He only smiled.

“I have to come with you, Mobius.”

“No. You heard her. She wants you gone, and this is her chance. If you disobey her, she will kill you.”

“I can’t send you out there alone.”

“You have to.”

“I’m not good at sitting still, Mobius.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

Mobius raised Loki’s hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss against the god’s knuckles, then, after one more long look at Loki, he dashed out of the room. Loki’s head swam with equal parts relief, fondness, and fear as he watched him go. Was this how Mobius had felt? Helpless and overwhelmed with love and care? Had he felt the kiss the god had given him? Loki pulled the stopper from the liquor and took two substantial swigs, letting his Jotun cold chill the bottle. His heart pounded, his nerves were frayed, and he wanted more than anything to follow Mobius into battle.

Then again, who was he to break Mobius’ heart again by ignoring his pleas to stay put? He sat the bottle down on the coffee table and noticed that, on Ravonna's side of the table, there was a TemPad. He’d destroyed Mobius’ TemPad, so the abandoned device could only belong to Ravonna. He flipped it open to confirm, and sure enough, he found her name in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. He pocketed the device and contented himself with staring at the floor for the next ten minutes, thinking about all the danger Mobius would be in. He wondered what the agent had dreamt about. Had it been about the promise to join him? Or about his absence?

Then, eardrum-shattering alarms blared overhead, breaking the perfect silence of the judge’s office. Red lights flashed overhead, casting crimson over the whole room. He heard screams outside. Fighting. Running. Slamming doors. Pleading.

Mobius is out there.

He could be dying.

He could be dead already.

Loki ran a hand through his hair. If any hunter were to believe him to be a part of the Variant’s army, he would be killed on sight.

If he didn’t go out there, though, Mobius would be in substantially more danger.

The choice was easy.

One last drink from the bottle of bourbon, and he was out the door, Gram in hand, ready to face down the world. All Loki had was a sword and his wits, but he’d be damned if he couldn’t keep Mobius safe. In the distance, mingled with the sound of the alarm, he heard fighting. Hunters and agents and office workers swarmed around him, some running toward the battle and many running away, but Loki ignored all of them and pushed his way through the crush of employees, following the sounds of violence.

He stopped just inside the reception area. There, he found an all-out war. Loki after Loki poured through a Timedoor in front of Casey’s desk, and while the hunters tried to prune them all as they came, they were coming too fast. A few Loki Variants had even managed to grab batons for themselves and were pruning hunters, erasing them from the world in a shower of sparks. It was a visual spectacle, all glinting golden horns, swirling green capes, and eerie blue eyes. Most fought with daggers, but some had swords, and one even had a baseball bat full of nails. Loki counted them all lucky that there was no magic in the TVA. The battle would have been over before it even started if the Lokis had their magic.

Then he spotted Mobius across the room in a tangle with a Loki. Renslayer fought nearby, but she had once been a hunter and handled herself well. Mobius seemed to know his way around a baton, too, but he wasn’t as dexterous or as fast as his opponent, who fought only with fists and who couldn’t easily make a mistake because of the influence of the Mind Stone. Mobius’ opponent dashed toward him and pinned him to the wall, hands wrapped around his throat. Loki’s heart stopped. He grabbed the nearest small object (a Time Stone Casey had been using as a paperweight) and hurled it at Mobius’ opponent at top speed and with deadly accuracy. The stone nailed Mobius’ opponent in the back of the head, and they looked back, furious. Mobius took the opportunity to prune them.

“Thanks,” Mobius called out, out of breath. “You shouldn't be out here,” Mobius said as Loki strode toward him. The agent looked both frustrated and pleased, which Loki supposed was his general mood around him. He wore a bulletproof vest, and while he didn’t exactly look natural holding a weapon, he appeared at least comfortable with it. The sight of a man like Mobius in combat gear was odd. He was the funny little man in the ill-fitting suit, not a warrior.

“I heard alarms. I told you, I’m not good at sitting still.” Loki reached out and wiped a spot of blood from Mobius’ lip with his thumb, and the agent practically melted. “Besides, it looks like you could use the help,” Loki suggested, cupping Mobius’ jaw.

Mobius sighed. “Please don’t get killed.” Mobius leaned into the god’s touch.

“I’ll try my best.”

Mobius’ eyes went wide, and Loki’s hand dropped. He looked over his shoulder.

The Variant, the one person Loki hoped not to run into, emerged from the crowd.

His glamour had finally given way to his true form. His eyes were the most striking – blood-red with blue tendrils like cracked ice running through his irises, and there was venom in his stare. He stood straight-backed and confident, drinking in the chaos. With the scepter in his hand and a small smile playing at his lips, he looked every bit a king. A mad king, but a king, nonetheless. He showed no sign of injury from their previous fight, and if anything, he looked better, more monstrous. No doubt, the Mind Stone had given him a boost, made it easier to ignore his limits. Whoever left him to die as a baby would certainly feel foolish looking at the Jotun now.

Mobius reached out and squeezed Loki’s free hand reassuringly, and despite the circumstances, Loki’s heart managed a flutter.

Mobius stepped forward to stand beside Loki. “So, you’re the one in charge?” Mobius said, recalcitrant.

The Variant grinned. “Yes, mortal, and I would assume you’re the one this weakling has been making promises to. Is that right, human?”

Loki pointed his blade at the Variant. “Stop this, now. I don’t want to have to kill you.”

“Is that right? Then get me an audience with the Time-Keepers. You do that, and all this stops,” the Variant bargained.

“Stop your attack first.”

The Variant sauntered forward, the scepter glinting in the light. “Oh, no,” he said, “you’re not deciding the terms here.” He smirked, and his frightening gaze dropped to Mobius. “If you're going to be difficult, then perhaps I should raise the stakes.”

The Variant then lashed out with the scepter, a formidable weapon even without the power of the Infinity Stone. Loki pushed Mobius away and caught the scepter by jamming Gram in the claw-like head. The Variant grinned and turned the scepter, forcing the blade from Loki’s hand and twisting his wrist painfully in the process. He then knocked Loki to the ground with a firm boot to the chest (payback for earlier, no doubt), and kicked him hard in the ribs, once, twice, three times. The god heard (and definitely felt) something snap, and he groaned.

The Variant continued on his warpath to the TVA agent. Mobius tried to flee, but the Lokis and the hunters all swung their batons with reckless abandon, creating an impenetrable gauntlet all around him. Attempts to escape would be suicide. Renslayer’s opponent had put up a strong fight, but at last, she pruned her. The moment she spotted Mobius and the Variant, she was on guard once more. No matter how much they fought, it seemed the woman cared enough about him to at least defend him from certain death. For that, Loki was thankful. Mobius held out his baton defensively, and Ravonna stayed out of reach, watching, ready to jump in.

“Don’t you dare touch Mobius!” Loki roared as he worked his way onto his hands and knees. He whipped his hair out of his face and struggled to his feet. Every breath, every movement sent lightning strikes of agony through his torso, and it was a struggle to focus on anything other than the white-hot pain. He could take a beating, but apparently not from another Jotun. Even the Avengers hadn’t had the strength to cause him too much damage (Hulk notwithstanding).

Renslayer joined the fray, then, lunging with her baton, but the Variant grabbed her by the arm and held tight, the icy cold causing her to cry out in pain and drop her weapon. The Variant pushed her aside, and she tumbled to the ground, sobbing over her deeply frostbitten skin. Loki spared Renslayer only a sympathetic glance before he used the distraction to dive after the Variant. They hit the ground in a heap, the Variant on his back, Loki pinning him to the ground. Loki tore the scepter from the Variant’s grasp, but the Variant grabbed him by the hair and tossed him away with extraordinary strength, fueled by anger. Loki landed on his side, back against Casey’s desk, and pain rocketed through his body. His vision dimmed, but he refused to fall unconscious.

His Jotun double rolled over and stood once more. As he stalked toward Mobius, the Variant bent down and picked up Gram, which lay abandoned on the ground. Loki used the scepter to stand, and called out Mobius’ name, but it was too late. The Variant knocked the agent's baton aside and grabbed Mobius roughly by the collar, then held the sword against his throat.

“Take me to the Time-Keepers,” the Jotun threatened, speaking into Mobius’ ear. He shuddered, maybe from fear, or from the cold, or perhaps both.

“I can’t. I don’t have clearance,” Mobius said, looking up at the Variant defiantly. Not fear, then, just the cold, Loki thought proudly. Loki took a few tentative steps forward. The Jotun watched him intently.

“Then who does?”

When Mobius didn’t answer, the Variant shifted his hold, gripping Mobius by the back of the neck. The agent’s eyes blew wide with shock at the extraordinary cold, and then at the intense pain that followed.

Visions of Thanos torturing his brother came to mind.

“Wait! I can take you to the Time-Keepers,” Loki cried out.

The Variant’s hand dropped back down to grip Mobius’ collar, and he tilted his head like a dog, expectant. Mobius took several quick, shaky breaths and fought to maintain his calm against the tidal waves of pain. Loki ached to heal the agent’s wounds, but without his magic, there was nothing he could do. There were few things he hated more than feeling helpless.

“I’m waiting,” the Variant replied in a sing-song voice.

“L1130, what are you talking about? We aren’t going to negotiate with this psycho,” Ravonna quavered, sitting up slowly. She cradled her injured arm and there were tears running down her face, though her expression was resolute.

“I’m sorry, but...” he said as he pulled her TemPad from his own pocket.

Renslayer’s eyes went wide, and she patted down her own pockets with her free hand. The realization that it was her TemPad hit her like a train. “You can’t bring him to the Time-Keepers,” she begged, breathless.

“I’ll figure something out,” he muttered, “but my first concern is Mobius.”

Loki turned back to the Variant, who grinned when he saw the TemPad. Loki addressed his azure double. “If you hurt him, I will destroy this, and then I will kill you.”

“Fair enough,” the Variant purred, and Loki led them to the nearest elevator. He swiped Renslayer’s TemPad over the array of buttons like Mobius had earlier, and the buttons lit up. This time, though, the button at the very top lit up, and Loki pressed it before putting the TemPad back in his pocket. The elevator ride seemed to take forever, and one could cut the tension in the air with a knife. Loki watched the Variant like a hawk and gripped the scepter tightly. If he made any move to harm Mobius, he would not hesitate to spear him through with the scepter.

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. The trio stepped out and took in the scene before them. Three figures in aged yellow robes sat on thrones perched high above them. The room was filled with fog and smelled like metal and burnt plastic, and two guards, surprised by the trio’s arrival, activated their batons at once.

“Wait!” Mobius cautioned, “Just hang on a minute. He just wants to talk, isn’t that right?”

The Variant laughed. “For now,” he replied, and tossed Mobius aside. Loki rushed forward to catch him, straining his broken ribs in the process, but he couldn’t care less about his own pain. He put his arm around Mobius’ waist, pulled him close, and planted a kiss on his temple, determined never to let him go again. Mobius leaned into him and allowed the god to wrap his arms around him protectively. Every touch felt like their last, and Loki yearned for a time when he could enjoy the man’s company without the threat of imminent doom.

The Variant stepped forward, bowed before the Time-Keepers, and with the grandiloquence with which he might address Odin, the Jotun spoke to the mysterious founders of the TVA. “Masters of the TVA, most gracious Time-Keepers, I’ve come to offer you a choice. Give me control of the TVA, or my army and I will kill you and take the TVA.”

He twirled the sword in his hand like a ringmaster and continued to advance on the Time-Keepers. One of the guards decided he’d come too close and attacked. His partner joined him, but the Variant dispatched them at once, impaling one and pruning the other with their own batons. He grinned.

“As you can see, the second option wouldn’t provide too much of a challenge for me, so please, choose whatever is convenient for you.”

One of the Time-Keepers spoke up, his voice a gravelly rasp, barely louder than a whisper, “You and your bravado are no threat to us, Variant.” His voice sounded far away and manufactured, like it was coming through speakers. Loki looked down at Mobius, who seemed to share his confusion.

“Then you are fools,” the Variant chided, and without warning, he launched Gram at the Time-Keeper who had spoken. The blade slammed through its face, its head rocking back with the extraordinary force of the blow, but no blood issued forth. The Time-Keeper giggled, the sound distorted and mechanical, and his compatriots joined him, then, all together, with a great whirring sound, their heads dropped. The light in their eyes went out. Electric sparks jumped from the impaled Time-Keeper’s head.

“What?” The Variant said, furious. He reached down to grab the dead guard’s abandoned baton and whirled around to face Mobius and Loki. “You tricked me,” he growled as he charged toward them.

“We had no idea!” Loki shouted back, releasing Mobius to raise up the scepter with both hands since his ribs caused him too much pain to support it with just one arm. The Variant didn’t dignify him with a reply and lunged with the baton, but Loki, injured as he was, wouldn’t have been fast enough to react. Mobius knew that.

So, the agent stepped in the way and vanished in a cloud of golden sparks when the luminous end of the baton slammed into his chest.

Time seemed to stop for a moment. For an instant, Loki felt nothing.

And then, all at once, he felt everything.

He summoned up all the strength that remained in his body and without pause, without even a second thought, he rammed the end of the scepter through the Variant’s chest. “I should have done that from the start,” he said, unbidden tears pooling in his eyes. He pulled back the scepter, and the Variant crumpled to the ground, his deep blue skin beginning to go gray. He gasped for air, blood pooling around him, and after a few seconds of struggling, his body went slack.

The elevator opened behind Loki, and a troupe of Minutemen, led by Ravonna Renslayer, whose arm was crudely bandaged, marched in. He gripped the scepter hard enough he was surprised he hadn’t crushed clean through the metal. He tried to relax his grip, but he couldn’t.

“Variant L1130, put the weapon down,” she commanded. “You’re under arrest for conspiracy against the Time Variance Authority. Your punishment is death, to be served immediately.”

Loki let out a stuttering breath. “This has to be a joke,” he said, tears rolling over his cheeks.

“You disobeyed direct orders, led attackers to the TVA, and directly caused the destruction of the Time-Keepers.”

“The Variant would have attacked anyway, and the Time-Keepers weren’t real.”

“L1130, I know Mobius let you-”

“Mobius is dead! He was your friend, and now he’s dead!” He screamed. Ravonna flinched but carried on.

“I know he let you think you were different, but you aren’t. You’re a Variant. Variants get pruned.”

Loki stumbled back, nearly tripping over the still-activated baton, which was coated in his double’s blood, and held out the scepter in front of him. “No,” he said, his voice broken and thick with tears, “You’re wrong. I’m not like them. I’ve seen the worst. I’ve been the worst, and I’m not like that.”

He cast his eyes down to the baton, then back up at Renslayer.

“I quit.”

He reached down, grasped the end of the baton, and disappeared in a shower of gold.

Renslayer sighed and approached the spot where Loki had been, and where the Variant still lay. She picked up the bloodied baton and pruned the corpse, too. Dead or alive, Variants were waste to be disposed of.

Chapter Text

Confession in real-time,
Lies could have been mine.
Naked are words that
Are dressed up in truth.

Light up with voices
Screaming your choices
All that was lost just
To keep you from harm

He touched the baton, and at once, extraordinary heat (but oddly enough, no pain) traveled up his arm and spread across his body. When it reached his face, his vision went white, and for a moment, he felt peace. This was what he had hoped for when he let himself fall from the Rainbow Bridge. Release.

Like in the desert, though, this moment of peace and calm was too short. He wondered if he would ever find peace and calm, or if, by nature of being Loki, he was destined to live under constant threats of violence and stress.

His eyes opened, and he saw a cloudy, gray sky. He felt grass under his palms and smelled magic, strong and thick in the air. The magic had a cool, smooth feeling, like water, and a wintergreen scent, just like his own, only there was too much of it around him. The scepter lay beside him, glowing and humming, chilling the air around it, much like he did. His ribs ached, his eyes felt swollen from crying, and slowly, painfully, he pushed himself up onto his elbows, only to come face to face with a small group of people and a few animals.

By their golden horns, he could be sure they were Lokis.

Among them was a tall, lithe, feminine-presenting Loki who stepped forward and leaned over him. She had long, raven-black hair, and wore a headpiece with prominent golden horns, a long, fur cape, and skintight, green scale armor that accentuated her delicate waist and substantial bust. It was a look Loki had only toyed with over the years. Perhaps she’d been pruned for wearing it at the wrong time.

“Is this Hel?” he asked her. “Am I dead?”

“No,” she replied, coy, “but you will be if we don’t get moving.”

If I’m alive, then maybe Mobius is, too. His heart leaped with joy.

I wonder what Mobius would think if he saw me looking like her…

She didn’t offer to help him stand, and instead wandered away, the other Lokis dutifully following her. He forced himself upright, grabbed the scepter, and raced to catch up with her, shoving his way to the front of the pack, past a Loki who wore a torn suit and campaign buttons, a small blonde with a broken horn, and the alligator he’d seen in the file, whose back bore a small rider – a frog, carrying a tiny hammer.

Carrying a tiny Mjölnir.

Loki choked on his own spit.

Every step sent a jolt of pain through him, and it didn’t help that they were going uphill, so he set his magic to work, mending the bones, healing the bruises, closing the cuts. In his pocket, the TemPad felt warm, and he pulled out the device to find it sparking. He flipped it open discovered that the screen had melted into the keys, probably from being pruned. It was useless. With a sigh, he chucked into a bush as they passed. When he made it to the front of the group, he reached out to the woman, who dodged his hand.

“Is there something you need?” she asked, annoyed.

“An explanation of anything that’s going on right now would be nice.” They walked quickly. Loki was out of breath. The woman seemed unaffected.

“We’re going to our hideout, and when you’re pruned, you don’t die. You’re dropped off here,” she drawled.

“And here is?”

“The Void.”

“What’s the Void?”

“Here.”

Loki sighed. “Are your answers to questions always this unhelpful?”

She shrugged. “We’re the same person. You tell me.”

“Well, there has to be more to it than-”

But Loki stopped dead when they crested the hill, and he saw for the first time why they were walking so briskly. In the distance was an enormous beast made of smoke and lights. Large, tentacle-like spurts of fog swept out over the land around it, atomizing everything in its path. The other Lokis jostled him as they continued to follow the woman at the front, but one stayed behind, the blonde with the broken horn.

“That’s Alioth,” she offered, and she grabbed him by the arm to urge him to keep walking.

“What is it?” Loki asked, unable to take his eyes away from the thing.

“We’re not really sure. All we know for sure is, if he touches you, you’re gone.”

Loki frowned at the creature. “Lovely.”

“That’s what I said.” She offered her hand for him to shake. He obliged. “I’m Sylvie, by the way,” she said. “Sylvie Lushton.”

“Is that some sort of alias?”

“Nope. That’s just my name. I’m not a Loki, not strictly speaking, anyway. It’s complicated.”

“It never is easy with us, is it?”

She grinned up at him. “Never.” He couldn’t help but return her smile. She seemed sweet and genuine. He could tell just standing near her that she was extremely powerful, the magic spilling over the edges like a pot set to boil, yet she chose not to fix the broken horn on her headpiece, and that endeared her to him. With the blonde hair and the cheeky grin, she reminded him a lot of his brother. He thought it unfortunate that she had to be pruned.

“You know,” Sylvie said, “I think I’ll call you Office Loki.”

“Pardon?”

“We found out really quickly that just ‘Loki’ gets confusing when that’s everyone. So, we came up with nicknames.” She pointed to the woman at the front. “That’s Lady Loki,” then pointing at the man in the torn suit, “that’s President Loki.” Finally, she pointed at the alligator and the frog. “Those two are Alligator Loki and Throg.”

“That seems like a mouthful.”

“Yeah, but it makes talking shit way easier.”

Her honesty caused Loki to burst out laughing, and Sylvie laughed with him. Loki being so unwilling to trust other people, it was rare that he felt such an instant camaraderie with another person. Perhaps it was because she wasn’t really a Loki. Perhaps Mobius’ kind mien had rubbed off on him. Perhaps Loki had changed all by himself. When their giggling petered out, she spoke once more.

“By the way, you look a lot like the guy who, you know…” She motioned to the scepter and then poked him in the chest with her finger. “Though, I guess he was a bit bluer.”

He glanced down at the weapon. If my magic works, then the scepter must, too. Just the thought of using it made his stomach do somersaults and he vanished the weapon in a shimmer of green. “You won’t have to worry about him anymore,” Loki said. “He’s dead.” He shuddered at the thought - the memory of the Variant’s pained wheezing, the feeling of taking a life, even an evil, corrupt one. He’d hoped never to kill again. It appeared to him that option wasn’t on the cards.

“Oh. That’s probably a good thing. We were all lucky whatever he did to us wore off when we were pruned.” Her charm and humor waned for a moment. “That magic definitely didn’t feel nice.”

“Believe me,” he said, touching her shoulder gently, “I understand.”

He’d been so focused on the conversation that he hadn’t paid attention to where they were going. He looked away from Sylvie, and discovered that they were approaching a duplicate of Stark Tower buried almost entirely in the ground, with only the very top floor of the structure, the penthouse, poking out of the dirt. Loki gasped.

“They can prune whole buildings?” Loki asked incredulously.

“If there’s a will, there’s a way,” Sylvie answered with a shrug.

Sylvie and Loki followed the rest of the group up onto the balcony, then through the glass door into Stark’s top floor lounge. The déjà vu was oppressive as he looked around the space: the bar where Stark had offered him a drink, the door to Stark’s bedroom, the window he’d thrown the poor man out of. He even had the scepter, again.

“Are you coming?” Lady Loki called out to the two of them, who had stopped in the main room. The rest of the group had boarded the elevator.

Loki waved Sylvie on. “You go on ahead. I’m going to stay here for a few minutes.”

She gave him a nod and a concerned look and followed the other Lokis into the elevator.

He stepped behind the bar and pressed a secret button under the counter that Stark had shown him (or, rather, Stark had pressed the button and Loki noticed him doing it), and a part of the countertop slid away to reveal a hidden compartment. To his great surprise, there was still a very expensive bottle of Scotch inside. Stark had bragged all about what it took to acquire the bottle, and while it was all Greek to Loki, he had to admit, it certainly tasted nice. He poured himself a glass and sat at the bar. To his knowledge, he was the only Loki present who knew anything about the Battle of New York, and that was a comfort. He knew it would be a very long time before he would be able to truly accept what had happened during that time, which, for him, had only happened about a week before.

He hadn’t been in control of himself, and that fact was beginning to sink in, but he still felt he had some debt to pay for the pain he caused. He wished he could apologize to his brother, but just short of turning up as Thor died, there would be no way to make an apology that would last. He would just have to accept that his only apology could be the life that another self would lead. Perhaps that was his punishment, then, the fact that he survived his own death, but could never experience the joys of his fated life. He had to leave that to some other Loki, one who wouldn’t step off the Sacred Timeline and would live long enough to die.

He took a sip of his drink and summoned the scepter. There was still blood on the end of it, and he wiped it away with a flutter of his fingers, returning it to the untarnished state he’d received it in. The icy blue stone, the silver against the gold, the delicate lines and curves, the blade at the end, sharp enough to make the Grim Reaper blush - it all added up to one hauntingly beautiful weapon. It had no right to be so perfect. His heart ached with guilt, and he wondered if something so powerful could ever be good. Doubtful, he thought as he vanished it and drained his glass.

The sound of a revving engine drew his attention outside. In the distance, but closer than before, was Alioth, whose gaseous form blotted out the entire horizon. Just ahead of the beast was a car, racing for Stark Tower. Loki approached the glass and squinted. In the passenger seat appeared to be someone with dark hair, and when they turned their head, something glinted in the light. Horns, no doubt. The driver, though, had much lighter hair, perhaps gray.

Loki’s breath caught.

Mobius.

He raced outside and watched in horror as Alioth swung its smoky arms wildly to try to claim the vehicle. The engine whined and fought against the strain of their great speed, and they wouldn’t last long if something didn’t slow Alioth down. Loki jumped over the railing onto the spongy ground below and sprinted out into the open.

If a car can draw its attention…then so can this.

He raised his hands and thought of the magic Frigga had shown him. He also thought of the many months he’d fallen. Like she had when he was small, a millennium before that moment, he painted auroras in the sky and spattered them with twinkling stars. The lights danced and swirled; some of the stars blinked like pulsars, and others burst into brilliant showers of glittering stardust. Magical meteors launched themselves from the swirl of lights and stardust and burst in the distance. Alioth’s focus was quickly drawn to the display. The vehicle raced past Loki and ground to a stop some distance behind him.

The sight of stars at night made him feel sick, but his mother had thought the night sky to be the most beautiful thing in the universe. In her honor, he threw every bit of magic he had at the illusion. He could never speak to her again, or hug her, or see her funeral, so he poured his heart and soul and mourning into that illusion. He used what she taught him to do some good. He pushed the display into the distance, drawing Alioth away from Stark Tower.

Planets and galaxies, nebulae and supernovae, he made his living nightmare from scratch, and Alioth loved it. The creature tried to bite it, to slash at it, to wrap itself around the illusion, but no matter what it did, for each star it consumed, another one appeared. When the beast was far enough away, Loki closed his hands into fists, and the whole display burst into a million fireworks, bright enough to leave white spots in his vision and forceful enough to shake the ground below. Alioth tried to catch them all in its mouth and collect each spark with its smoky tendrils, but it couldn’t, and when it failed at its task, it flowed away into the distance, having completely forgotten about the car.

Loki let his hands fall and took large gulps of air. He’d barely had any access to his powers in a week, and that was after months straight of falling and very little magic. He hadn’t created an illusion that complex in a long time, and his head swam. He stumbled backward.

And someone caught him.

“You weren’t lying. What she taught you was beautiful,” Mobius said, and Loki turned around the agent’s arms at once. He began to speak, but the agent silenced him with a kiss. It was urgent, and for their first proper kiss, it felt far too much like a last kiss for his liking. Loki double-fisted the agent’s lapels and hauled him closer, the only thoughts in his mind being I missed you, I thought you were dead, I killed for you. He savored the smell of his cologne and the warmth of his hands. He tasted like coffee and felt like home. Mobius shifted one of his hands and buried it in the god’s hair and pulled just a bit, enough that Loki gasped, and when Loki replied in kind with a bit of tongue and teeth…

…someone cleared their throat.

Mobius pulled away to look over his shoulder, back toward Stark Tower. Loki, leaning forward, breathing heavily, considered sinking his hands into the agent’s hair and drawing him back. Then his gaze landed on the small crowd that had developed on the balcony. Lady Loki (who he assumed had done the throat-clearing), President Loki (who had removed his horns as a sign of respect), Sylvie (who was clapping excitedly), and even the alligator and Throg all stood there, watching. There were even a few more people, who he assumed came from inside the tower, including a man in furs with a knockoff Mjölnir, an older man in a green leotard, and a teenager who wore a long, green coat with a fur collar.

“Please tell me the little man isn’t one of us,” Lady Loki chastised.

Loki could only shake his head no, his brain completely hijacked by joy.

“Good,” she said. “That’s one of the few rules we have here.” She looked down her nose at them. “We’re on the ground floor when you two are finished.” She turned on her heel and disappeared into Stark Tower.

All the other Lokis followed, except for the teenager in the green coat. The teen waited with a smarmy grin on his face, and when Mobius and Loki reached him, said “So, I guess this is the Loki you were looking for?”

Mobius rolled his eyes. “Good guess. You use magic or something to figure that out?”

“No, just my extraordinary powers of deduction, and the fact that you talked about him the whole time we were in the car.” The teen looked to Loki. “The blonde said I should introduce myself as Kid Loki. You’re, what, Salaryman Loki?”

Mobius nudged Loki with his elbow. “Time Cop Loki,” he offered through a grin.

“How about just Loki? One of us has to be,” Loki pleaded as they entered Stark’s penthouse.

“What you did out there was pretty heroic, so I think Just Loki could work,” Mobius teased.

Loki sighed. “No, not just like Captain America, I mean just like-” but Kid Loki had already reached the elevator and left without them. “Whatever,” Loki muttered under his breath.

“I meant that, you know,” Mobius said from behind Loki. “That was incredible.”

Loki turned and faced him. The agent looked at him with love in his eyes and a smile on his lips. His clothes were rumpled, and when Mobius turned his head, Loki could see the frostbite, dark and ugly, marring his neck. The god reached out and brushed his fingers over the injury; he closed the wounds and repaired the skin as painlessly as he could, like he’d wanted to at the TVA. Mobius hummed with relief as the pain disappeared under the god’s kind touch. He was low on magic, but for Mobius, he would spend even the last drop.

“Well, I did owe you one,” the Loki said. “Probably more than one, actually.” He cast his eyes to the floor. “Truly, I am sorry for what I did. All those Minutemen were dying and I just…I couldn’t bear it.”

Mobius stepped forward and put his hands on Loki’s waist. “You came back, and that’s what matters to me.”

“The Variant pruned you because of me, Mobius. I thought I’d gotten you killed.”

“No,” Mobius replied with conviction. “I chose to step in the way, and I would do it again. You’re kind, noble, and, what did you call her? Purely decent?” Mobius chuckled. “You’re the wordsmith. What I’m trying to say is…you’re worth saving.”

Loki, overcome, replied with a kiss, soft and sweet. That single action spoke far more clearly than any words he could drum up. Odin had saved him to use him. So had Thanos. In a way, so had Mobius, at first, anyway. With Mobius though, there had never been malice, and Loki never expected there would be.

When they parted, the agent simply smiled up at him, and together they made their way to the elevator, hand in hand. On the long ride down, Loki showed off a bit, projecting illusions, and even pulling his horned helmet from the aether. “Oh, I have always wanted to see this in person,” Mobius said, looking at the helmet like a kid on Christmas. Loki handed it to him, and Mobius nearly dropped it from the sheer weight of the thing. “How do you wear this?” Mobius asked.

Loki waved a hand, and suddenly the helmet was light as air. Even though he’d seen all of Loki’s life, he still positively glowed at the sorcerer’s display, and Loki found himself blushing. With another wave the helmet vanished, and in its place, a rose appeared in the agent’s hands. The agent laughed, and his laugh was so infectious that Loki couldn’t help but laugh along with him. The elevator landed, and they stepped out into the foyer of Stark Tower, giggling and gasping for breath. All around them were Lokis, chatting and carrying on, just like in Ragnarök, only this time, there was markedly less mind control. It was an odd bunch, that was for sure. Loki is, by their nature, extravagant, so Mobius and “Just” Loki were actually the sore thumbs, with their drab colors and banal office attire.

With all the people, and the wall of soil pressing against the glass exterior of the ground (now underground) floor, the space felt claustrophobic, and Loki’s laughter ended quite abruptly. Some part of him expected the Variant to breeze out of the crowd and kill them where they stood. Mobius noticed the shift and led him to a nearby couch, and squeezed his hand reassuringly.

“Did the Variant get pruned like us?” Mobius asked. He scanned over the crowd, on guard.

“No…I killed him” Deep breath. “And I didn’t get pruned. I did it to myself.”

Mobius froze, and his eyes filled with sadness. “I’m sorry, Loki.” He shifted so that he could pull Loki’s head down onto his shoulder. The god obliged. Mobius asked him, “Are you okay?”

Loki shrugged. “I’m not sure what I expected, really. I tend not to be the best at dying.”

“And it’s a damn good thing.” Mobius gazed at him with profound sadness, but Loki didn’t want to lie to him or mislead him. At that moment, his heart had been broken, and he made a choice. Perhaps not the best one, but a choice nonetheless, and one he was willing to admit.

Loki gazed around the foyer. He wasn’t sure what about this version of the building didn’t suit the Sacred Timeline, but that didn’t much matter to him. Maybe Stark hired a different plumbing company than was intended. Even so, with the Time-Keepers proven well and truly fake, was there even a Sacred Timeline at all? Was there a point to the TVA? Loki wiped their logo from his jacket.

Not too far away, he spotted Kid Loki talking with Sylvie. The teen spoke loud enough that Loki could hear clearly what he was saying: So, we’re stuck here? Forever? There has to be a way out of here, Sylvie.

That sentiment made his chest tighten with anxiety. “You know, it’s odd being back here,” Loki said. “Now it’s going to be the rest of my life.”

The building around them shook violently, and even so far underground, Loki could clearly hear Alioth’s roaring.

Mobius sat up. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be.”

“What do you mean?”

Mobius put a hand on Loki’s knee and looked him in the eyes. “We are in a room full of some of the powerful and talented mages ever to exist. There has to be something you can do.”

There was a fire in the agent’s eyes, a fire that Loki didn’t want to see put out.

Loki stood and climbed onto the nearest table he thought would hold him. He then magically projected his voice over the din. To the crowd, he said, “Attention all Lokis!” His eyes fell on Sylvie, and he added, “And Sylvie!” The blonde smiled fondly. Kid Loki stood beside her, arms crossed. The teen studied Loki like he was a puzzle to be solved.

“What?” Lady Loki called back, annoyed.

Loki ignored her. “How many times have you all attempted to escape this place?”

They chattered amongst themselves, and President Loki replied, “Uh, I’m not certain we have tried.”

“You’re all sorcerers, and none of you have tried to leave?”

“There’s nowhere to go,” Lady Loki called back. “I feel like if there were exit door, we’d have found it.”

Mobius piped up behind Loki. “What if you can’t see the door because there’s a giant smoke monster in the way?”

Loki looked to Mobius in shock. “You think Alioth is hiding an escape route?”

“I don’t just think he’s hiding it. I think he’s guarding it.”

Another wave of chatter spread through the crowd. Kid Loki smirked as if he’d already figured it all out. “What do you propose we do, then?” Kid Loki said. “Have you got some ace up your sleeve?”

Loki blinked. “As a matter of fact,” he started, and the scepter appeared in his hand with a shimmer of green, “I do.”

All the Lokis (and Sylvie) looked at the scepter at once, some with wonder, others with shock, a few with recognition, and in the case of Kid Loki, with desire. Loki didn’t like the idea that someone so young would covet something so powerful. Then again, the Kid could be much older, and youth was a costume he wore. With Loki, one could never truly tell.

“What is that?” President Loki asked, eyes locked on the stone. Loki knew right away he’d been easy for the Variant to brainwash. He could feel the stone reaching out to his mind, and he reigned it in, forcing the ice-cold magic back into the scepter. If he was going to wield the foul weapon again, he was going to do it right. It was his responsibility to restrain its chaos as he’d failed to before.

“This scepter houses the Mind Stone, one of the six Infinity Stones. It is extremely powerful.” The building rumbled around them from another of Alioth’s blows, and dust filtered down from the ceiling. “And I think I can use it to control Alioth. I’ll need help, though. That creature is strong and volatile. I will need your aid to get close.” Loki looked out over the doubtful crowd and continued, “I know the last person you all want to trust is yourself, but just this once, give it a try. Are any of you with me?”

Sylvie was the first to step forward, green sparks crackling between her fingers as a mark of her excitement. Kid Loki soon followed after, then President Loki, Alligator Loki, and Throg. Leotard Loki and Fake-Mjölnir Loki wandered away, as did a small, blue child with curly horn-like tattoos on his forehead. In fact, most of the Lokis left without a second thought, leaving only Lady Loki at the back of the room. She glanced between the groups, the quitters and the fools. After some deliberation, she chose the fools and moved to stand beside Sylvie.

“Glad you could join us,” Loki said, a bit intimidated by her hard, unforgiving stare.

“I’m not. What’s the plan, then?” Lady Loki asked. “Don’t tell me you’re just going to bodge it.”

“I’m afraid that’s my only choice. I don’t actually know if this will work. Alioth might not even have a mind to control.” He looked over his small group of compatriots and frowned. “This could be a way out, or this could ensure your deaths. I refuse to promise you anything because even I might not survive this. If I can’t promise my own life, I cannot promise yours.”

“You’re awfully honest, for a Loki,” said Kid Loki with a smirk.

“And you’re awfully trusting,” Loki fired back. “Your magic feels strong, so you'll protect Mobius. I can't imagine he'll be willing to wait around here.” He glanced to his side and found Mobius nodding in agreement.

“Oh, what about me?” Sylvie asked, bouncing up and down.

“Help me with the scepter. I have a feeling you’re the strongest out of all of us, and I don’t have the power to control its full strength, or anything even close, by myself.” He hopped down from the table and looked to the remaining Lokis. “The rest of you, you’ll be the distraction. Draw its attention in as many directions as you can, and please, don’t die.”

Chapter Text

Spoken, like you told them, for all that I
Left was a battle that I'll never fight again.
Show them we're above them,
For all that I have is heart unsure
If even time can mend.

The walk was long and silent. There was little need to discuss strategy, since most of them were Lokis, and great minds think alike. Loki, for one, was terrified. His companions looked more or less at ease, but his mind was racing about at a thousand miles an hour, bouncing anxiously from idea to idea. Will Mobius be okay? Will the Mind Stone even work on Alioth? Could I still convince Mobius to go back? I didn’t even try before. Will Sylvie be okay? She reminds me of Thor. I miss Thor. What would he think of me now? Will we be able to control the Mind Stone? Will Kid Loki be able to protect Mobius? What will we do when we get back? What will happen to me? What will happen to Mobius?

Over and over, his mind retraced its steps back to Mobius, who at that moment gave the god’s hand a squeeze. He forced Loki’s thoughts back to the present, back to the things he could see and feel, not questions he had no hope of answering. There were a few things he knew for certain at that moment, as Alioth loomed in the distance. He knew he could rely on Sylvie. He knew their chances of survival were low. He knew they needed to succeed despite that.

These three truths he held close to his chest as they approached the beast. Comforting or not, they were things he knew to be true, and surety comforted him more than wishful thinking. Alioth seemed to swell in size as they approached, as if puffing its chest. The wind began to whip around them, and Loki clenched his jaw, fear and determination thrumming through his veins in equal measure. The yellow sky and dark expanse of Alioth reminded him of images he’d seen of himself on his first day at the TVA, from a trip he was supposed to make to the Dark Elf homeworld. He turned to Mobius and kissed his hand, and memorized the hopeful look on his face. He envied that man and his endless hope. Regretfully, he let go, then nodded at Sylvie and Kid Loki, and everyone naturally found their places. Sylvie and Loki surged to the front, while Kid Loki took his place in front of Mobius, who stood proudly with the line of distractions.

Thus, the show began. President Loki started whooping and hollering, throwing firecrackers and glimmering campaign banners into the sky, while Lady Loki cast a projection of herself, 20 times her size into Alioth’s field of vision. The moment Loki saw Alioth’s attention shift to the distractions behind them, he took Sylvie’s hand and raced forward, dodging the beast’s inky black tendrils, which lashed out mindlessly. The creature’s arms struck stray cars, trees, and buildings, cutting through all of them like a hot knife through butter. He only just saved them from one uncharacteristically accurate swipe by tackling Sylvie to the ground.

“Thanks,” she muttered, winded.

“Any time.”

“Please don’t tackle me at any time.”

High on adrenaline, he actually managed to laugh, and they hid behind an abandoned bus until Alioth was distracted enough for them to bolt again. Loki risked a glance back and saw the President Loki had disappeared, and Lady Loki was clearly strained. He thought he saw Throg still bouncing around.

By some miracle, Loki and Sylvie made it to the body of the creature, or what could loosely be called its body. The smoke was dense there, too dense to see through.

“I think this is as good as it’s going to get. Are you ready?” Loki shouted over the hurricane-force winds.

Sylvie grinned and planted her feet. Loki couldn’t help but smile back before he thrust the scepter into the smog. He closed his eyes and shuddered as he felt his mind touch the Infinity Stone. Every part of him, every inch of his mind and body screamed to get away, to run from the scepter and the stone, to escape before it grabbed on and refused to let go, but then he felt Sylvie’s magic. It passed over his chest like an electric shock, and the tip of the scepter sparked green. Suddenly it was a whole lot easier to tell the stone what to do. Through it, he could feel Alioth’s mind. Its thoughts were scattered and amorphous, at one moment thinking of hunger, the next of colors, and the next of frustration, but it thought without language. In the flurry of emotional, animal thoughts, there was one that made Loki smile: fatigue.

Loki focused on that thought and made Alioth focus on it, too. Sylvie seemed to feel right away what he intended to do, linked as they were through the scepter. Together, they took Alioth’s fatigue and amplified it, told him without words how tired he was, made the thought and the feeling of utter exhaustion echo through his mind until it was all he could feel. Just like falling asleep, the beast faded away, slowly, and then all at once. The fog settled into the grass and then disappeared into nothing. Loki dropped the scepter at once and dropped to his knees, dizzy and disoriented, for it appeared that there was a castle in front of him, surrounded by twinkling stars and interstellar filaments. There was a harsh line between the grass of the field and the cold stone of the bridge leading to the floating castle.

“Sylvie, I think I’m hallucinating…” Loki mumbled, swaying.

“I don’t think you are,” breathed Sylvie, sounding equally awestruck. Loki blinked hard, but the vision didn’t go away. The view of the castle was fuzzy around the edges, almost like looking through a partially-frosted window. He reached out to touch the hard cobble of the bridge and felt rough stone under his fingertips, real stone.

There was a sudden pounding of footsteps, and Mobius was on his knees in front of the god, reaching out, pulling him into a bone-crushing hug, not a care in the world for the castle in the sky. “Are you alright?” He asked, out of breath, voice quavering.

“I will be.” He looked over his shoulder and found only Kid Loki, arms crossed, a frown on his young face. Lady Loki, President Loki, Throg, and Alligator Loki were all gone. “Did anyone make it?” Loki asked, meeting Kid Loki’s cold stare. There was something off about the teen, and it was becoming more obvious every second he was near him.

“Alioth got them all,” Kid Loki answered, without even a trace of sorrow. With Mobius’ support, Loki stood, eyes fixed on the teen. Kid Loki reached down and grabbed the scepter to hand it to Loki, the blade at the end facing his own chest. “You dropped this.”

Loki took the weapon by the handle, but the teen didn’t let go right away. Through the scepter, he felt a flash of something. It was hard to place since it was so fast, but if he had to a put a word to it, Loki might have said conceit.

“Who are you?” Loki asked. He felt Mobius' grip on his arm tighten.

Kid Loki grinned. “You.” He let go of the scepter and stepped around Loki and Mobius to begin the long walk across the bridge to the castle. Loki glanced at Sylvie and found there were tears glistening in her eyes. She looked over the expanse of the field, her breaths shallow. The other Lokis had been her only friends. They weren’t pruned. They were gone. Well and truly dead. While Sylvie wasn’t truly a Loki, per se, she still acted quite like one, choosing to turn on her heel and not think about the problem. She quickly caught up to Kid Loki, who strode confidently away, hands in his pockets, and not a care in the world.

“Something’s wrong with that child,” Loki said as he watched his long coat swish away into the distance.

“He was friendly enough when I was driving him around earlier,” said Mobius.

“He needed something from you then.”

They began to walk toward the castle but kept their distance. As much as Loki wanted to catch up to Sylvie and comfort her, the instinct to stay away from Kid Loki was far, far stronger, and he knew his instincts were rarely wrong. Something had changed in the teen, a switch flipped, a disguise shed.

“And you think he doesn’t need us anymore?” Mobius asked, shifting to hold Loki’s hand rather than his arm as Loki’s dizziness subsided.

“Or he’s very close to not needing us, and he’s getting excited.” He squeezed Mobius’ hand. “Stay close to me and don’t trust a word he says.”

Tense, they crossed the bridge and caught up to Kid Loki and Sylvie, who waited for them in front of a towering set of double doors. Golden cracks trailed like ivy up the polished stone surface of the castle’s walls, giving it the appearance that it had been smashed apart and then painstakingly glued back together. Clouds of sparkling gas and dust swirled overhead. It was beautiful, that castle at the end of the world.

“Are we ready?” Asked Loki, tightening his grip on the scepter. He looked to Sylvie. The tip of her nose was red, and she looked shaken and small, nothing like the fiery girl he’d stood beside not ten minutes before. She was crushed.

“Ready as we’ll ever be,” Kid Loki purred, and he pushed open the doors to the castle. The doors made a great groaning sound, as ancient hinges fought against the small god. They relented, though, when he put his shoulder into it, and forced them open, revealing a dark, cavernous foyer. The only light came from the skylights above them, which let in the scant starlight, and the eerie glow of the Mind Stone. Massive statues of hooded figures towered over them, and every one of their careful footsteps echoed like gunshots.

Without any discussion, Kid Loki took the lead, and Loki chose not to argue this. Kid Loki took bold steps, unconcerned despite being unarmed, and let them through the entrance hall, under an archway, and into a receiving room. It was smaller, the vaulted ceiling lower, but it was no less imposing because now the statues were at eye level. Loki couldn’t shake the childish thought that they might move if he blinked.

A loud thumping and rattling sound brought their attention to the back wall, and they watched, frozen, as a piece of the wall slid away, revealing an elevator, and a man wearing luxurious robes. He munched on an apple, and when he stood from the bench in the elevator and walked toward them, he moved like a kid, bouncy and unrestrained. Loki held fast to the scepter but made no move to attack. Kid Loki, on the other hand, brash as he was, summoned a perfect replica of Gram and held it out in front of him, the tip of the weapon pointed at the heart of the man with the apple. The man held up his hands in surrender.

“Whoa, whoa, now, there’s no need for that. I’m sure we can all talk like adults,” said the man. Watching the sword like a hawk, he brought one hand down to take a bite from the apple.

“Who are you, and what is this place?” asked Loki, trying to posit himself as the friendlier of the two Lokis. One of them had to be the reasonable one.

“Well, it’s been a while since I’ve had a name, if I’m being honest. I like to think of myself as He Who Remains. Sounds like a comic book character, or something.”

“That’s stupid,” said Kid Loki, taking a step toward the man.

“You two call yourselves the God of Mischief, and you’re telling me that’s better?” said He Who Remains.

Kid Loki rolled his eyes, but Loki was intrigued. “You know us?” he asked.

“I know everything, Loki, including why you’re all here. Come on, I’ll show you.”

He Who Remains turned and headed back toward the elevator. As Loki passed his younger counterpart on the way to the elevator, he grabbed the sword by the blade and vanished it. It might have been worth a chuckle if he wasn’t convinced the teen was dangerous. Sylvie followed quietly behind and stuck close to Loki. The girl reminded him so strongly of Thor, and yet, in moments like these, he felt like an older brother for once, a feeling that was foreign, but not altogether uncomfortable. He desperately hoped their escape could include her.

He hoped He Who Remains could provide an way out to begin with. It hadn’t escaped him that it all might be fruitless, that this man might have no way to help them, or worse yet, no desire to help them. The elevator ride was excruciatingly quiet, and Loki longed for the background hum of the TVA. He couldn’t believe he missed it, but he did. The Void was painfully quiet, and he hated it. Even Mobius looked uncomfortable, and he wasn’t normally one to struggle with quiet.

Mercifully, the doors opened a moment later and they all stepped into yet another dark space, though this time there were more windows, through which they could see the expanse of space, and in the foreground, a long trail of glowing gas and dust which wrapped around the castle. At the center of the bookshelf-lined room were a desk and four chairs. The desk was littered with papers, and so was the floor around it. Loki bent down to pick one up. It had a date, May 4, 2012, and time, 4:36 PM. Below it was a short bit of text: Loki arrives at the TVA. Loki thought back, and at the very least the date was right. He had a feeling the time was right, too.

He surveyed the chairs. “You knew we were coming, didn’t you?” Loki asked, approaching the desk to set down the paper. He Who Remains took his seat behind the desk and smiled.

“I told you, Loki, I know everything.” He paused, then looked down at a small, watch-like device on his wrist. “Well, I know everything up until 2 minutes and 16 seconds from now. After that, that big old timeline outside?” He pointed over his shoulder to the stream of interstellar dust outside the windows. “It’s all a mystery to me.”

Loki sat, and the others, seeing that he didn’t evaporate, joined him, Sylvie and Mobius on either side, Kid Loki at the end beside Sylvie.

“And how is it that you know everything?” Mobius asked, voice tense, “Because that’s sort of my department, or at least the TVA’s department.”

He Who Remains grinned. “It’s funny you mention the TVA, because I’m the guy that made the TVA.” He put his feet up on the desk. “I’m sure that’s an easier pill to swallow since you saw the Time-Keepers destroyed.”

Kid Loki’s eyes lit up in a disconcerting way. “So, you control the TVA?”

“You could say that. Really, I let middle-management do most of the-”

“And what happens when you die?” Interrupted the teen. Loki’s breath stuck in his chest. Oh, no…

“Well, if that person is feeling up to it, they can take over, I suppose. I’ve never tried it out, though, dying. I’m very long-lived, you see, me and all my Variants. If someone doesn’t take over, then the Sacred Timeline is destroyed, there’s endless branching, and everything’s very unpleasant.” He twirled his fingers over the device on his wrist, and a Timedoor opened beside him. He left through it for a moment, then came back with a book, which he tossed haphazardly on the desk. “I could monologue about it, or you could just read about it. Don’t want to bore you to death.”

Sensing that Kid Loki might do something they’d all regret, Loki interjected, “So, can you get us out of here? You can put us back at the TVA and you don’t even have to think about fitting us into the Sacred Timeline, right?”

“In theory, yeah.”

Loki smiled at Mobius. Finally, he thought, home.

“But that won’t happen,” finished He Who Remains.

Loki looked back at the man, confused. “What do you mean?”

He Who Remains picked out one of the papers on his desk and pushed it toward Loki. “Scheduling conflict. I told you, 2 minutes.”

Loki read:

May 12, 2012, 2:23 PM

The death of He Who Remains.

When Loki looked up, it was already too late. Loki dove to protect He Who Remains, but the teen knocked Loki aside with a wave of his hand, sending him tumbling to the floor. With another wave, he sent Sylvie and Mobius’ chairs sliding backward across the marble to slam into the back wall. Before they could get their bearings, Kid Loki summoned a sword and pounced, bounding over the desk to plunge the sword through the chest of He Who Remains, who didn’t have time to even make a sound before he was dead. The teen yanked the weapon from his chest and straightened up to his full height, perched proudly on the desk. He appraised the blood on the weapon.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Sylvie shouted as she stood, the tips of her fingers sparking green. Loki tossed his hair out of his eyes and raised himself up onto his elbows to look out the windows. He Who Remains had been right. It was starting slowly, but the Timeline was branching. Lines of dust flowed away from the main stream. It wouldn’t be long before they began to cross, and while he hadn’t paid too much attention to his training, he knew that wasn’t a good thing. Worse versions of him would find power. People would die. It would be anarchy.

Kid Loki laughed. He let his sword arm drop, and Loki watched in horror as a green shimmer started at the tips of the teen’s fingers and traveled up his arm. His fingers darkened to a royal blue, and his clothes transformed into gleaming gold and green Asgardian armor.

“No,” Loki whispered as he stood, disbelieving. His grip on the scepter tightened. “I killed you.”

The Variant laughed, high and wild. “You certainly tried” He turned slowly to face Loki, fixed those horrible, Mind-Stone-touched eyes on him, and then, with his arms spread wide and a mad grin on his face, he proclaimed, “but not hard enough. You made your dramatic exit, and I made mine. I healed myself in the Void, approached Mobius, and the rest is history. Thank you so much for not having the guts to do the job right. Because of you, I have a throne…the most important throne in the universe.”

“You can’t. Not you,” said Loki, trying to keep the fear from his voice. I should have known it was him.

I let him near Mobius.

“Why not? You don’t think I would make a good king? Clearly, I’m hardworking, charismatic, very good look-”

But Sylvie didn’t let him finish his sentence, instead swiping him off the desk with a sparkling green burst of energy. Loki looked at her and found that she was positively radiating magic. Her eyes glowed and her skin seemed iridescent. The Variant hit the floor with a disquieting thump.

She stalked toward him. “You. You were the one in my head.”

The Variant giggled. “Guilty as charged.”

“You made me kill people.”

She’d dropped the subject quickly earlier, but Loki hadn’t missed the haunted look on her face when she brought up the experience. He wished he’d spoken to her more about it before.

Mobius rose from his chair, rubbing the back of his head where it had smacked against the wall. “Wait, Sylvie, hang on. If you kill him, then there won’t be anyone keeping the Timeline from branching.” He sounded panicked.

Loki gave him an incredulous look. “But if we leave him in power, he’ll just let it branch anyway.”

“He might not. I have watched every day of your life and-”

“That isn’t me!”

The Variant lunged at Sylvie, but she dodged his approach easily. She blinked, and he was suddenly paralyzed, held motionless in midair by some invisible force.

“Mobius, he will kill people. He is all the worst parts of me, all the pieces of me I didn’t indulge in, all the things I wasn’t. If we let him control the Timeline, people will suffer.” He took Mobius by the shoulders and saw fear in that man’s eyes, unlike anything he’d seen from him before. Mobius had been his rock, and here he was, finally crumbling under the strain.

“What’s worse, Loki? Anarchy, or multiversal war?” Mobius asked.

The Variant hissed and spit. Sylvie wrenched his sword from his hand and placed it against his throat.

What is worse? King Loki? Or infinite King Lokis?

There was a pleading look in Mobius’ eyes, and Loki knew he was right. A chance at a single bad timeline was better than guaranteed infinitely worse ones.

“Sylvie, stop, please. Let’s talk about this,” Loki called out, taking long strides toward her. Blood dribbled down the Variant’s throat as she pressed the sword harder and harder against the thin skin there.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Loki.”

“Please, I know you’re hurting. Thanos did it to me, too. I know what you went through, and I know what he made you do, but killing him will only make things worse.” He risked reaching out to touch her shoulder.

“So, you’re saying we should just let him win? Is that a joke?”

“He could stop the branching.”

She turned to Loki, the green vanishing from her eyes for just a moment. There was a deep look of sadness there. “So could I.”

“What?”

Sylvie lunged for the scepter, and Loki stepped just out of reach. She wasn’t strictly a Loki, and perhaps because of that, her magic was far more refined than even his, and he considered himself quite talented. Even as she pursued him, she kept the Variant locked in place, frozen in the air. Loki could hold his own against someone who was more or less a copy of himself. He knew the Variant’s weaknesses because they were his weaknesses. Not so with Sylvie. She was fire and lighting, scorching and fast. She launched volleys of magic at him, which he just barely dodged or blocked. The few swings he made at her were close, but not close enough, and she quickly backed him into a corner.

“Give me the scepter, Loki,” she said, crowding him against the wall.

“I can’t. I can’t let you kill him.” He vanished the weapon. “You can’t take He Who Remains’ place. You don’t deserve that. You’re just a child.”

This gave her pause. She looked away from the scepter and met his gaze. “Is that what you think?”

“Well, it’s not like you can be the Variant, too.”

“No, no, when I said I wasn’t a Loki, I meant it.” She shook her head. “I’m not you at all. I was made by another Loki. An old man. A king. He made me from raw magic.” She grabbed Loki’s wrist, and squeezed, her fingers digging uncomfortably into his arm. Green sparks skittered over his skin, and he grit his teeth as foreign magic jolted through his body. Without his permission, the scepter appeared in his hand. He gasped as she pulled the weapon from his hand.

“How…?”

“You’ve never met the man who made me, and now you never will, because I’ll make sure even he can’t ignore the rules of time.”

Loki’s instinct was to follow her, to fight to the last to stop her, because he didn’t want her trapped in the Void for eternity. She was too kind. In just a day she’d proven that.

Then again, he trusted her. He’d trusted her right away. She was loyal and had a good heart.

He closed his eyes when she pierced the Variant’s heart. Unlike Loki, she made certain the Variant was dead before she withdrew the weapon from his chest. She crossed over to the desk, and with a snap of her fingers, all was tidy, save for the blood on the scepter and the Variant’s lifeless body on the floor. Perhaps she intended to dispose of him in a more satisfying way. Loki looked out the windows and found the stray tendrils of smoke withdrawing into the main timeline; the Void had accepted her right away. He met Mobius’ gaze across the room. The look on his face was ambiguous, part relief, part shock. Loki crossed the room and wrapped his arms around the agent, who readily accepted the embrace.

“None of this feels real,” breathed Mobius. “Am I just supposed to go back to work now, after all this?”

“I don’t know,” replied Loki, with his chin on top of the agent’s head.

“I do,” Sylvie interjected. The agent and the god turned to look at her. She put her feet up on the desk and smiled at them. “I’m disbanding the TVA,” she said. “You’re both fired.”

“You can’t do that,” argued Mobius. “How are you supposed to keep the Timeline intact?”

“I’m a whole lot more powerful than the previous guy. I can do all it myself.”

Mobius looked up at Loki hopefully. “Then what happens to us?”

“Anything you want,” she answered easily.

For the first time in a long time, hope flooded the god’s heart. “So, Mobius, what will it be?” Loki asked.

“You choose.”

Loki traced a thumb over Mobius' cheek. “I can’t. You’ve lived your whole life at the TVA. You deserve to choose.”

“No, that’s why you should choose. You have things you miss. I know you do.”

Loki paused, and for a moment, all he could think about was how hard his heart was beating. All the things I’ve ever loved…

Mobius smiled.

I can have them.

“Asgard. Send us to Asgard. With Mother, and Thor.” And then, with a chuckle, he added, “and jet-skis.”

Mobius grinned, and then kissed him, half-laughing as he did. It was lovely.

“Easy as pie,” said Sylvie. She closed her eyes and focused. Behind her, through the windows, a short segment of the timeline glowed.

Loki looked to her, heart aching at the thought of her being all alone for the rest of time. “Are you going to be alright, Sylvie?”

She smiled, but there was an underlying sadness and age that poked through the surface. “I will be.” She sighed. “I have to be.”

Before anyone could say goodbye, Sylvie waved her hand, and everything disappeared around them.

For a moment, there was blackness all around them, and the only thing Loki could feel was Mobius in his arms.

He breathed.

In.

Out.

In.

Out…

And then there was light, blinding light. Loki squinted against the brightness and held Mobius tighter. Slowly his eyes adjusted.

There was gleaming gold and shimmering water. People milled about, laughing, talking, and smiling. It felt like spring. He could smell flowers. He looked to his left, and his eyes landed on the Royal Palace of Valaskjalf, the Palace of Asgard. On the balcony stood his mother and brother, standing side by side, smiling at him. He planted a kiss in Mobius’ hair.

He was home.