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Contrary to lore, the TVA did have a sun to mark the beginning of the day. Artificial or real, that remained to be seen, but it might as well be real, for the effects were the same.
The morning birds sang their tune, their dawn chorus rousing Mobius out of his dreamless slumber.
Except this time, when he opened his eyes, the room was still pitch-dark, the hallways as silent as a tomb.
Was a few hours of shut-eye too much to ask for? Mobius grumbled to himself, knowing full well it was anxiety that was keeping his mind on an around-the-clock alert.
Judging by the little noises Loki was making and all the squirming he was doing, Mobius was not the only one awake.
"Loki? You awake?"
Loki only grunted. It was neither a yes or a no, and that was suspicious in itself.
"What's wrong?" Mobius asked.
"It's nothing," Loki said tightly. "Go back to sleep."
"Doesn't look like nothing," Mobius grunted, pushing himself up on one elbow to turn the bedside lamp on.
In the dim light, he took in the god's sweaty pallor, the shallow panting, and the most telling of all, the death grip around his middle.
Mobius had seen this before, back when they first met. He had even given it a name, the Kablooie Effect.
"Do you have a stomachache?" Mobius asked.
"It's not that bad."
"Loki, you're crying."
"No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are. I can see tear tracks on your pillow."
Loki sniffed angrily. "Don't you humans cry from stomachaches too sometimes?"
"Sure, if you're five," Mobius said, his light tone masking his concern not all that well. "All we had was pie."
"Did you not see the colour on that thing? It looked radioactive."
"Well, I'm not sick."
"I guess you're made of tougher stuff then," Loki retorted.
" - and you left, like, half of it on your plate. I haven't seen food waste like that since the Great Egyptian Famine of 1643," Mobius nagged. "It's not a victimless crime, you know."
"There was no famine in Egypt that year," said Loki suspiciously, whose memory was very much intact, despite the appalling state of his digestive system.
Mobius rolled his eyes. "Of course not. It was a branched timeline, wasn't it? And we pruned it, didn't we?"
"Mobius, you didn't know any better."
Mobius could not help but smile; trust Loki to try to make him feel better when he was the one lying in bed looking so pitiful and pasty.
"You have a kind heart, Loki. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise."
"Don't need a heart," Loki groaned, curling in on himself. "What I need is a new gut."
"Yeah, we'll go bug O.B. first thing in the morning and see if he can't give your internal operating system an upgrade."
"No need," Loki said breathlessly. "I'll live. I always do."
"This isn't about the pie, is it?" Mobius asked quietly. "It's about what Brad said."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"What Brad said back there…he touched a nerve," Mobius said. "A very, very big nerve."
"Yes, I think we've established that, since you suckerpunched him in the face," Loki reminded him.
"It was a slap," Mobius said indignantly, "A tiny, tactical slap - "
"Right," Loki nodded. " Of course. Very tactical."
"And I was talking about your nerve, and you know it," Mobius said.
Loki's forehead furrowed as he tried to concentrate. "What was the question again?"
"Does it hurt very much?"
"Be more specific, Mobius," Loki said, fatigue bleeding from every pore in his body. "Which part?"
Mobius sighed. He got out of bed carefully, trying not to jar Loki and, God forbid, cause him more pain.
"Where are you going?" Loki asked, sounding mildly panicked.
"Stay there."
"Oh, don't worry. I'm not going anywhere," Loki mumbled. "I can't feel my legs."
Mobius appeared ten seconds later, brandishing an orange box with a big, red cross on it.
Loki craned his neck to better peruse the contents of the tin. It was some kind of medicine chest, filled to the brim with bottles, identical in every way down to the nondescript white round pills, all unlabelled.
Mobius plucked one out at random and upended its contents onto his palm. "Here, take one of these."
"What is it?"
"It's the eierlegende Wollmilchsau of medicine." Mobius' eyes shone. "The panacea of all ills."
Loki blinked as he waited for his Allspeak to process what Mobius just said. "An egg-laying, wool milk sow? In pill form?"
"You're so literal sometimes, it's adorable." Mobius shook his head. "No, you are looking at yet another one of TVA's well-kept secrets. Guaranteed to make you feel better in no time."
Loki squinted at the round pill in his hand. "Isn't this just Tylenol?"
"I assure you, Tylenol it is not."
Loki rolled the pill between his thumb and forefinger. "Feels like Tylenol."
"But it isn't. Just like Kleenex can feel like Kleenex but can be something else."
"So it can be cyanide?" Loki asked hopefully. "A bespoke medicine, customised to alleviate any suffering specific to the sufferer?"
Mobius decided it was time to take matters into his own hands; he retrieved the pill, puckered up Loki's cheeks with one hand, and plopped it into Loki's mouth with the other.
Loki's mewls of protest soon turned into sounds of awe, for the effect was instantaneous. The agonising cramps started to loosen, as did his nausea, and he laid himself down gingerly, moaning in sheer relief.
"Alright?"
"Alright," Loki agreed, and took another breath, deeper now that he could fill his chest again. "That's magic."
"Told ya."
"How does it work?"
"Don't know," Mobius shrugged.
"You're not curious?"
"Why? If it works, it works."
"Something that good, surely comes with side effects."
"Longevity is probably one of them. Might explain why I'm over four hundred years old."
Loki was quiet for a while. "And you're okay with that?"
"What are you trying to say, Loki?"
"Sorry. That came out wrong."
With the return of his strength now that his stomach ache was all but gone, Loki pushed himself into a sitting position. "What I meant to ask is, how do you feel about that?"
"No one's ever asked me that before."
"Well, now I'm asking," Loki said. "Do you have an answer?"
Mobius stopped to think. "It's liberating in a way that it makes you worry a little less about dying."
Loki nodded encouragingly. "I sense a but coming."
"But also anxiety-inducing. Like, what am I gonna do with all that extra time, you know?"
"It's a lot to unpack, sure," Loki said.
"Yeah…" Mobius drawled. Sure enough, he soon drifted into pensive mode again, just staring off into the distance.
"Hey." Loki took Mobius' hand. "Are you okay?"
"Hmm? Yeah, absolutely," Mobius said a little too forcefully. "How are you feeling?"
"Great," Loki said, smiling as widely as he possibly could, oblivious to the fact that Mobius was privy to all his tells by now. "I feel fantastic."
"Yeah, I bet you do." Mobius tugged on his arm. "Come on. Lie down."
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?"
Mobius smiled into Loki's hair. "I don't get to be the big spoon very often, so yeah, I guess you can say that."
Loki let out a sigh; be it out of discomfort or content, Mobius did not know.
"I'm sorry Brad said those things to you."
"You shouldn't be," Loki said. "You didn't say them. And the things he said, they weren't exactly untrue."
"Still. It must have hurt." Mobius unconsciously began rubbing Loki's stomach; the pill may have taken care of the physical component of the pain, but he was not as sure of its efficacy on the psychological element of it.
"Life hurts. Short or long." Loki sighed again. "He doesn't like me very much, does he?"
"Who? X-5?"
"Brad," Loki corrected.
"He's a Hunter. You're the reason why he has a job." Mobius quickly amended, "Had a job."
"He said he read my file."
"Loki, everyone's read your file. We may not read the TVA guidebook, but I assure you, your file has passed through every Hunter's hands."
Loki closed his eyes against Mobius' forearm, grateful for the warmth and protection it offered. "He blames me for standing between him and the life he could have had."
"Then he's blaming the wrong guy," Mobius said. "You weren't doing anything but existing."
"My existing…has hurt a lot of people. Still hurts a lot of people."
Hot tears spilled over his arm, and Mobius tightened his hold around Loki. "No. That is not true."
"I'm a villain. Always have been. Always will be."
"It's just a label, Loki," Mobius said fiercely. "You can take it off, you can even not put it on in the first place, like the pills."
"The pills," Loki echoed.
"Call it cyanide, tylenol, whatever. What matters is intention," Mobius said. "Too much tylenol can kill you. Eating one or two cherry pits probably won't."
After a short eternity, Loki wriggled in Mobius' arms until they were chest-to-chest proper.
"Okay?" Mobius boomed, face still red from the tirade.
"Okay, Mobius," Loki finally acquiesced to his conviction. "Okay."
"You have a kind heart."
"I have a heart."
"A kind heart," Mobius said firmly. "We're not budging on that."
As miraculously as his long-forgotten stomachache, Loki's tears dried.
What a magical place this was. He was beginning to understand why Mobius was so insistent on staying.
Loki kissed him softly on the forehead. "Thank you, Mobius."
"Can I have one more?" Mobius requested. "On the lips this time, if you don't mind."
"I don't mind." Loki dipped his head to do as Mobius wished, "I don't mind at all."
FIN