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Minutes after he had saved Loki's life, Mobius had a paperwork question.
"I have a paperwork question," he announced, tapping rapidly at his TemPad as he did.
Loki, who had been leaning against the corner of the elevator, poking himself to ensure he was corporeal, and imagining all of the peaceful princely times he had squandered, looked up.
"The Time Keepers are robots, He Who Remains is dead, and your superior is missing in action. Who could you possibly be filing paperwork for?"
"Technically, you," Mobius replied. He looked up from his tapping. "If you're here for a longer haul, we should get you on the TVA docket. You could grab clothes, food tokens, walk around at will…your own TemPad, if I can swing it. The whole enchilada." He made a little circle with one hand in a lazy flourish. "Coworker."
Loki blinked, leaning over Mobius to read off his TemPad. Sure enough, it was a form that read '23X.4 - Change of Working Circumstances'. Currently, Mobius was typing into the "TEMPORAL PAD REQUESTED?" box. Loki saw words like "justified", "prudent", and "earned".
"Usually, used for someone switching out between departments. I’ve put 'Variant' as a department, so that's not my quandary." Mobius scrolled up to the very top of the form. There was a box that read "NAME: ", which was currently empty.
Mobius looked up at Loki expectantly. Loki stared at him. Mobius was trying to gift Loki one of the most powerful and dangerous devices ever created by sentient hands.
And employ him.
"I don't work here," Loki said.
"No?" Mobius said, clearly amused. "Where's the bathroom on floor 3FG?"
Loki knew, but he wasn't giving Mobius the satisfaction. "How is that at all relevant?"
Mobius shifted his TemPad in his hand so he could tick things off his fingers. "You came back. You're helping us with the branches, at your own risk. You know half the people in this department and half the floors in this section, but you don't want a new shirt to go with it?"
"Obviously I want a new shirt, Mobius, this one is scarcely better than a rag. I'm here to help , not to live in a cubicle for the rest of eternity."
Mobius shrugged his shoulders. "Like you said, Loki, I'm just filing paperwork into a hole. Nobody's going to read it - ‘sides the nuts over at TemPad Designation. As far as I'm concerned, you can take it and leave if you want.”
The elevator slid open at 3FG, and Loki found himself making the familiar walk back to Mobius’ desk. The floor was deserted, with upended chairs and scattered Infinity Stones across the ground. Loki wondered how many had run to help, and how many had defected. Mobius idly kicked a Power Stone into a tipped-over mug, where it clattered.
“Score,” Mobius said. He bent over and pulled the Power Stone from the mug, which read ‘COFFEE BREAKS ARE 2 MINUTES MAXIMUM’, and dropped it back on the ground, scooting it towards Loki with the toe of his shoe.
As Mobius sat down, Loki kicked the object that had decimated Xandar and slaughtered billions of lives into the mug. It glittered, forlorn, beneath a grey film of coffee foam.
“One-all,” Mobius said. “He’s a rookie, Chip, but he’s got potential.”
Loki sat down in the spare chair that Mobius had, in spite of everything, retained in place besides his own. He ran a hand backwards through his hair, met Mobius’ gaze.
“Do you truly believe the TVA would hand me a TemPad and then ever let me leave again?”
Mobius opened up his TemPad again, and as if to demonstrate something, put it down on the desk and left it unguarded between them, pointed towards Loki. The empty box at the top of the form had a blinking cursor next to ‘NAME:’.
“The old TVA? You know they wouldn’t. But if anyone’s going to survive this, the TVA needs to change.” Mobius’ kind, easy tone grew tense. “We need you with us, and you can set the terms.”
Loki didn’t answer, because he knew as well as Mobius did that there was a comment beneath that comment: a livewire he wasn’t ready to touch. He instead reached out to the TemPad, took the heavy brass weight of it in his hands: slow, easy. The first time he hadn’t had to rip it from someone’s hands, or lift it from their pockets.
Mobius sat at ease.
Loki scrolled through the form. All the expected cross-departmental paperwork nightmares that Loki had grown used to when trying to access the archives, with some added draconian red tape surrounding the specific request for a TemPad. Loki wasn’t quite sure, but he believed there was something in the fine print implying that Mobius could be pruned just for making the request frivolously.
All filled out with Mobius’ TVA-native speed and efficiency, and his Mobius-original trust and faith in Loki’s ability to live up to a description of his “complete trustworthiness in respect to TVA branch integrity”. All save that empty box, with a blinking cursor, next to the request for a name.
“You know my name,” Loki said eventually.
“I do,” Mobius agreed. “I don’t know what name you want. ‘L1130’ is on your paperwork here, but it doesn’t roll off the tongue. Laufeyson, Odinson, you have a right to both of those. Or… you can choose something new.”
Loki tapped in four letters. The cursor blinked. He hit the spacebar. He thought.
He got as far as typing in ‘Loki Friggaso’ before he backspaced rapidly, jabbing his thumb at the screen. He stared at his name again, then tried to find anything else at all to talk about.
“I don’t know your name,” Loki said to Mobius then. “I just know your first.”
“False,” Mobius said, his sky-blue eyes twinkling the way they did when he had a killer punchline coming round the corner, “ and true.”
He turned to the drawers next to his desk, rolled one open and rummaged through files, slid out a paper. He slid it onto the desk, and Loki looked, and then put down the TemPad to laugh. There was a simple, joyful, glorious absurdity to the name written on this antiseptic ticker tape page: it was so at odds with the nightmare they were both enduring, something kind and living and winking at authority, and after all he’d so recently faced, it for some reason made him laugh harder than he had since before Jotunheim.
Loki wiped a tear from his eye, and smiled up at his companion. “Mobius M. Mobius?”
Mobius looked proud and even somewhat abashed at the way Loki was still laughing at his own name. “You’ll never guess what the middle name is.”
“Monotonous?”
“Hush, you. Well, it might not be the name I started with, but if the TVA was going to give me one, it may as well be so good they named me thrice.”
“They didn’t do this,” Loki said, because while Mobius knew Loki’s life second for second, Loki was getting to know Mobius right back, and each new detail was a genuine pleasure. “You added two of those yourself, this is what you find funny.”
“Yeah, it is,” Mobius said, soft, pleased. They were skirting too close to the livewire again, and Loki dipped his head back to the TemPad, picking it up and returning to the blinking cursor.
“This is filing paperwork into a hole,” Loki said, pointedly. “There are no gods or masters at the TVA to enshrine this: just other variants.”
“Exactly,” Mobius said, eyes sure and sparkling in his way of offering earnest approval that was surely going to get Loki killed one day.
“I don’t work here,” Loki repeated.
“Of course,” Mobius agreed, in the conciliatory tone one used for children and the infirm.
“Shut up,” Loki said, and Mobius chuckled and put his hands up in surrender. “There has to be something half-decent to wear here somewhere, and I intend to find it.”
“And when we get you the suit and the desk golf set,” Mobius said, teasing, “What’s it gonna say on the tag?”
Loki had little left to his name. He had to make the most of what he had.
He tapped it in before he could think a second longer on it and handed the TemPad back to Mobius.
Loki knew that his joy at seeing Mobius smile was a dangerous thing to grow attached to, but if he was staying here a while longer— on a strictly consultative basis— then he saw no reason not to make the most of the few joys he had. Mobius slapping a hand on his knee and filling the empty room with his sure, warm laughter was, Loki reflected, well worth the grief it would cost him to lose it.
“Loki L. Loki,” Mobius said, looking at him, as if reintroduced. “Well, welcome to the gang. You know what you need? A monogrammed towel.”
“I’ll settle for something not covered in fetid mud,” Loki said, and, renamed, he let himself be led onwards, a warm hand at the crook of his elbow, through his eternal workplace.