Work Text:
It’s something he feels like he’s never had, but there he is. There he is, with two kids and a nice house in the suburbs. Here, right in front of him, is this version of him, who has two boys and a house and this family. He has a job selling jet skis, and he comes home to his boys every night.
It’s not Mobius. He doesn’t know if it could ever feel like him—if he could ever be a dad who lives in a house like that and—and is like that. A father and an ‘all-American man.’
Sylvie leaves him there, and he stands there. He watches. He watches through the window when the boys go upstairs, notice him staring after a few minutes, and then one of them closes the curtains. It seems like they didn’t notice that he looks like—well, sure, looks like—a twin, a carbon copy of their father.
Mobius clears his throat when the curtains are closed, and he looks away from that house for what feels like the first time in hours. It’s getting a bit darker, the sun beginning to set in the horizon, and Mobius didn’t even realize that he’d been here that long until now.
--
He wanders around in the streets for a while, and it’s something he can barely recall doing in his life. He sees kids playing in the street, getting called in for dinner. He sees parents and husbands and wives coming home from work, getting out of their cars, and hugging their partners and kids before they all go inside together, smiling.
It all feels like a fantasy. Like he’s dreaming this all up. He’s never seen it before, like this—not without some form of separation from it all, one way or another, and this… this, feels surreal.
Mobius has never really needed money, in all the places and times he’s been to—never really been on them or in them long enough to need to actually purchase things like that with whatever currency is being used at that time or place—and if he ever did have need of it, for a job, the TVA would provide it—but he wants to stay around here without going back to the TVA—for now—and so he figures out that he might want to get a hotel room, or something to eat, at least.
He manages to walk into a more robust section of town, albeit well after evening has come and the sun is no longer shining in the sky.
He walks into the hotel reception area, looks around, and then realizes that this is positively idiotic, because why would they give him a room if he has no money?
The receptionist looks at him as he walks in, a short greeting on their tongue. Mobius sighs, then turns right back around and walks out of the hotel reception. He walks out the door to see Sylvie, leaning against a car in the parking lot less than a few feet away.
He laughs when he sees her, because he just can’t help it. She looks at him, a small smile on her face, almost a smirk. She’s got a burger in one hand, and she takes a bite of it as she stares him down.
“Well, well,” he starts, coming closer to her. “You came back quick.”
She scoffs, then takes another bite while she shrugs. “Yeah, well,” she starts, swallowing. “Figured you needed a little—guidance.”
“Guidance?” he says, incredulous. “From you? As if you could get along better in this world than me—”
“I can, actually,” Sylvie says, and she finishes her burger up, having eaten it at an almost alarmingly fast rate, and she throws the wrapper onto the ground. “I did, you know.”
Mobius is quiet for a moment, the weight of her words a bit tense in the air, before he just says, “Sure,” as he tries not to test those waters right now. That sore spot, that wound that they both have for different reasons.
She nods her head towards the hotel, then says, “Trying to get a room, then?”
“Um—” he starts, the thought of whether he should even tell her or not running through his head for a moment, then, “Yeah. Yeah, I was, but I don’t—”
“Have any money?” Sylvie asks, a smirk on her lips. Mobius sighs, bleeding into a scoff, before he nods his head a bit sheepishly.
“Here,” she says, straightening herself up from where she was leaning against the car. She pulls out a wad of bills from her coat pocket and holds it out in front of her, motioning it to him.
“I—” he starts, almost about to argue, but she turns her head at him in a way that is stubborn and mischievous and almost distinctly a Loki thing to do, and it makes him want to sob with how it all rushes back.
“Okay,” he says, taking the money and stuffing it into his pocket. He swallows down a lump in his throat in an attempt to not break out into a full-blown crying fit, and he’s not even sure if it’s working.
Sylvie looks at him, almost studious. She shifts on her feet, tilts her head a bit, then says, “Are you—”
“Am I what?” Mobius says, a bit too loud and a bit too harsh, but Sylvie doesn’t look surprised, scared, or particularly offended.
“Are you okay, Mobius,” she says, a bit too soft for her, and Mobius worries that it is a game, a trick, but he doesn’t even know what trick she would have left to play, like this—with the way things all turned out.
“Sure, yeah,” Mobius says, wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his suit jacket. He turns away from Sylvie just slightly, his side facing her instead, and he tries to compose himself.
Sylvie comes around in front of him, like she’s not letting him hide from her. She puts her hand under his chin and tilts his head up just slightly, so that he’s focusing on her, and it jars him. He breathes in, the air catching in his throat, as he meets her gaze.
“Is it him,” Sylvie says, her hand still just under his chin. Her eyes are searing as they stare him down. “Is it—do you miss him?” she says, like it’s even a question.
“Of course I do,” he says, finally pushing her hand away, but staring straight into her eyes. “Of course I miss him, and—and I—there’s a family on that street that—it would be me, could be, but it’s not and I don’t even know if I ever could be that or want to be that anymore, but it’s gone for me, regardless. That’s not me, it’s all so ridiculous and—and he’s gone. What is there to go back to now, huh? The TVA?” he says, a scoff on his tongue. “What is left, exactly?”
“Freedom,” Sylvie says. She works her throat like she’s holding something back, like she doesn’t quite mean it that harshly.
“Do you miss him?” Mobius says, his voice rough and tearful and a bit spiteful, and Sylvie looks at him. She looks at him, and she doesn’t answer for a moment—for a few beats too long for it not to be hesitation.
“I—I do. I—” she says, and Mobius laughs, something with barely any humor in it.
“You don’t,” Mobius says, quick and harsh, then, “You like being free more than you miss him, don’t you? What is your freedom like, huh? Is it like mine? You’re free to—to what, go to McDonald’s for the rest of your life, right—”
“Shut your mouth,” Sylvie says, cutting him off, and her voice is a warning and her eyes are sharp as daggers, but it still feels a bit too empty of a threat for Mobius to take it as anything true.
“I know you miss him,” Mobius says, quiet. Her eyes look a bit tearful, too, now that he notices it beyond the sharp look that permeates it. “I know you miss him, but you’re glad to not be running anymore, but aren’t you still? We’re all still running, from one thing or another. We’re still broken, TVA or not, timelines together or apart or whatever. We’re still—it’s not going to be that simple, you know that. You have to know that, don’t you?”
“I do,” Sylvie says, like it’s venom. Like she knows it’s true, but it’s poison on her tongue. “I do. I know that my freedom doesn’t get me my family back, or true revenge, and that I’ll never feel like I actually made it, or fought enough, or any of that. It’s not going to be over, I get it, I know that, but I can at least know that while no one tries to kill me or eradicate me from existence, and I can do that at a McDonald’s if I want. I can do what I want, now—”
“Oh, yeah? Good, glad you can, glad I can, ‘cause Loki can’t, now. He sacrificed himself, and you—”
“He’s—he’s a ruler now, sort of, what sort of a sacrifice—”
“It is still a sacrifice, because he’s—he fixed it, Sylvie. He gave us all free will like you wanted, saved all those timelines, and all you can say is ‘he’s a ruler now,’ so—'”
“Enough,” Sylvie says, cutting him off again. “Enough,” she repeats, quieter.
“I’m not—” she says, then sighs. “I’m not here to argue about this.”
“You’re here for…?”
“To help you out. Thought you might stay around, wander a bit. Thought you might need some money to do—stuff, that you’d probably want to try, so here I am.”
“So here you are. To give me free money, apparently.”
“Oh, shut up,” Sylvie says, a bit of a smile on her face, even in the still-tense atmosphere that lingers. “You can pay me back later.”
“Sure,” Mobius says, and he assumes that he’ll never pay her back, and he wonders if she’ll hunt him down for it. Probably not.
“Well, then,” Sylvie says. She takes out her TemPad and creates a time door, right there in the parking lot.
“See you,” she says, then steps through, and the time door vanishes.
Mobius watches her go, then pulls out the money she gave him, staring at it like it’s going to do something all on its own.
--
The hotel room is an unnatural type of too quiet. He can hear the whir of the fan above him, the rustle of the sheets when he gets into bed.
The sheets and blankets are scratchy, and the room feels cold. He has all the lights out, utter darkness around him, except for the stream of moonlight filtering through the room from his open window.
The walls are painted green.
A dog barks outside, and he hears a car horn honk in the distance. He’s hungry, but he doesn’t feel like going and finding food or coffee or anything right now, really.
He lays there in bed, sleepless, until the sun starts to paint the horizon again.
--
He comes out of his hotel room just to see Sylvie on the balcony outside. The somewhat shoddy balcony offers a view of the parking lot below, and then the road and buildings beyond.
She’s leaning over the side, her elbows on the railing, looking out at the parking lot. He can hear her chewing on one thing or another.
She hears him open the hotel room door and step out, apparently, because she turns her head to him when he steps outside, leaving the door open behind him.
“Sleep well?” she says, shoving a fry in her mouth and loosely holding a bag of fries in her other hand, from what Mobius can see.
“Yeah,” Mobius lies, and Sylvie tilts her head at him, a look that tells him that she knows he’s lying, but she doesn’t actually say it. She turns her head back out to the parking lot, and he comes up beside her, leaning his elbows on the railing too.
“Why are you coming here so often?” Mobius says, after they’ve stood there in silence for just a bit too long.
Sylvie looks over at him, another fry in her mouth. She swallows it down, then says, “I’ve only come here twice, to this hotel and all—this being the second time, obviously.”
“Yeah, but—”
“’Yeah, but’ what?”
“You don’t—don’t you want to go back to your ‘McDonald’s land,’ and all that?”
Sylvie laughs, surprisingly. She tosses her now empty fry bag onto the floor of the balcony. Seems she’s become fond of littering.
“Just checking in on you,” she says, and Mobius scoffs.
“Oh, sure,” he says. “Leaving your ‘freedom’ to come check in on me.”
“It’s not ‘leaving’ it,” she says. “I’m still free here, too, you know. No one trying to kill me in the place that has your kids, and no one trying to kill me in ‘McDonald’s land,’ either.”
The ‘kids’ comment stings just a bit, but Mobius tries not to let it show, and he shuts his mouth.
They’re both quiet, for a time. A father and son walk to their car from one of the hotel rooms, and Mobius gets a bit wistful, but draws himself back before it can take hold of him.
“Do you think he’s alright?” Sylvie says, so, so quietly. He looks over at her, and she’s watching that father and son, and now, that couple coming out of one of the rooms, too.
“I think he’s alone,” Mobius says, then clears his throat. He feels like he’s trying to choke back tears, but at this point, he doubts Sylvie would be all that surprised.
“He never wanted to be,” Sylvie says, then, “Alone. He—”
“He didn’t want to be alone,” Mobius repeats. “He was scared, I think. Wasn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Sylvie says, and she wipes at her eyes with her sleeve. She clears her throat like she’s doing the exact same thing that Mobius is. “Yeah, I think he was scared. Courageous, but scared.”
“I would be,” Mobius says. “Scared, I mean. Probably not courageous.”
Sylvie laughs, although it is a broken thing.
“Me too,” she says. “Scared, but not courageous.”
The father and son leave in their car, and the couple walks off, along the walkways and into one of the shops nearby, their faces all smiles. The lot is reasonably quiet again, and the sun is just creeping up over the horizon. There are birds chirping all around and cars on the street ahead, and the world is alive— because of Loki.
“Well,” Sylvie says, after a while, as she pushes herself off of the railing. She gets her TemPad out and creates a time door again.
“See you,” she says, again, and then steps through it while Mobius watches her leave, and then the time door disappears.
He picks up her fry bag, still there on the floor, and throws it into the trash bin just beside his hotel room’s door.
--
He goes back into his hotel room, finds a pen and a notepad left in there, and he starts writing.
He writes and he writes, balls up the note he was writing on and throws it into the trash bin right beside the small desk in his hotel room, and then writes some more.
He finally lands on:
Hey, guys.
Hope you’re all doing well. Having fun and enjoying yourselves and all that.
And then realizes that this all sounds pretty creepy coming from someone these kids don’t know at all, and the fact that it’s just going to show up in their mailbox with no envelope.
Maybe he should get an envelope, put the note in there, and then put it in their mailbox?
“Damn it,” he says, then balls that note up and throws it in the trash, too.
He doesn’t need to talk to them. To any of them. It’s not his place, and they’re doing well already. That’s not his family.
This is a waste of time, isn’t it?
He sighs, then gets up from the desk. He doesn’t even know what he wants to do next—ride a jet ski, maybe. That’d be fun, right? He’s always liked jet skis, hasn’t he?
Except that ‘Don’ sells and rides jet skis, and that’s not—no. He can’t do that right now. Not when it—not yet.
He walks out of his hotel room, and all the notes he wrote are still laying there in that trash bin. He locks the door behind him and leaves the keys in the check-out box, and then he wanders around in the town beyond.
He still has money from what Sylvie gave him—enough to get something to eat, maybe see a movie, or something.
He goes to a movie theater after about an hour or so of just wandering, and he buys some popcorn, a movie ticket, and then sits down in the packed theater. It’s a Sci-fi movie, and it almost makes him sick, somehow.
Mobius makes it to the end of the movie, very little of his popcorn eaten, and then immediately gets up and leaves the theater. His stomach is churning—it’s not like these Sci-Fi movies have this science and time stuff right, or anything, but it’s too familiar and it’s too much and he just can’t.
The air outside the theater is cool—cooler than inside it, at least—and a breeze blows gently around him. There are cars and people everywhere, people out here living their lives, and Mobius has to find a bench nearby and sit down.
He watches everyone go by him without a word, and then Sylvie is there, again, walking through a time door. She pays no mind to the startled stares when she appears in the middle of the walkway right beside him. She walks through, closes the time door again, and everyone goes back to their business with a rather confused look on their faces, but still, they don’t ask her about it.
“Hello again,” she says, sitting down beside him on the bench. She has no food in her hands this time, and is no longer in her usual garb, instead dressed in a McDonald’s uniform.
“Are you following me or something?” Mobius snaps out, and Sylvie shrugs, unaffected.
“Keeping some tabs on you, sure. Why not?”
“What about freedom, huh—”
“Oh, come off it,” she says. She pulls out her TemPad again, but doesn’t open another time door yet.
“Want to join me for a meal at my place?” she asks, and Mobius laughs, something a bit bitter and a bit confused and maybe just a bit manic.
“Aren’t you—on the clock, or something?”
Sylvie shrugs. “Sort of, but they won’t mind. Come along,” she says, then uses the TemPad and opens up a time door. She motions for him to come along, get a move on, and people are starting to stare.
He sighs, then follows her through. The parking lot of that somewhat-familiar McDonald’s restaurant greets him.
She closes the time door and walks right inside the restaurant, acting like she knows he’ll follow along, and he does. She goes in, someone behind the counter greets her, and she says something small and oddly nice back.
“Sit,” she says, motioning towards an empty table for two, and he obeys wordlessly, partially out of curiosity as to why Sylvie is doing this at all, and partially because why not, now?
She goes towards the back of the restaurant and into a hallway that he can’t see the end of, and gets two burgers from the kitchen, presumably, and then comes back out to the table and sits down across from Mobius. She lays one of the wrapped burgers down on the table in front of him, and the other in front of her.
“So, um—” he starts, looking from his burger to her face, then sighs. “What are you doing, exactly?”
She starts unwrapping her burger. She gets it out, takes a bite, then says, mumbling, “Eating. What about you?”
“Stop,” Mobius says, gritting it out. “Stop it. Tell me why—why are you checking up on me like this? You’re free, now, why don’t you just—”
“Because I don’t want to,” she says, swallowing down a bite. She sighs, then puts her burger down onto the wrapper on the table and she looks at him. “Because—freedom does come at a price. Loki—” she says, then stops, like she can’t say any more of that.
“You don’t want to be alone, huh,” Mobius says, and her eyes are daggers, and they burn, fire and flame, a Loki through and through, and it kills him.
“I don’t,” she says, then scoffs, looking away from Mobius and up at the ceiling, and then back. “I—it’s harder than I thought it would be, this. This freedom, but without anyone else—anyone close.”
“Yeah,” Mobius says, swallowing. “It is, isn’t it.”
“I don’t—God, this sounds so stupid,” she says, shaking her head like she’s annoying herself, and Mobius listens.
“I don’t want us to be ‘best friends forever,’ or anything, Mobius. I just—there’s no one else who knows, you know?”
“I know,” Mobius says, and her eyes are more sincere than he thinks he has ever seen them.
“I know,” he says, again, then, “It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” she says, and she’s tearful again, but she’s holding it back. “It’s not okay, but it’s what we’ve got. The hand we’ve been dealt.”
Mobius almost wishes that he could be Don. That he could be a dad to two kids and sell jet skis for a living—almost wishes his life could be that simple, in that way—that he could have that life.
But he’s not Don. He’s not Don, he’s Mobius, now, and Loki is gone—as a savior to them all, as a ‘ruler,’ as the gateway to ‘freedom’—and Mobius is broken, with no true place or true home, but all of this, the whole world, is what he’s got, and if Sylvie is the only one outside the TVA that knows—all those things about Loki, the TVA, time—then so be it, he supposes. It’s the hand they’ve been dealt.
“Then we’ll play it well,” he says, and Sylvie smiles, something a bit broken and tearful, but so much more genuine and unabashedly real than he truly expects.
“Yeah,” Sylvie says. She looks around at the restaurant, and all the people buzzing about.
“We will,” Sylvie says, and she reaches over and pats his shoulder gently—for her—before she takes her hand back and continues eating in relative silence, even if there are tears in her eyes still yet.
Mobius can hear birds chirping outside again, people talking, cars rolling around on the lot out there. It sounds alive, albeit foreign.
He sees a cardinal in the window, just beside them, and he doesn’t think he believes in superstition—and even if he did, it wouldn’t quite fit, would it, because that’s for death, not… this—but it makes him think, anyways.
The world around them keeps moving, by Loki’s hand, and Mobius decides to play the cards he has been dealt, regardless of if he is destined to lose or not.