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Please, please know me.
His breaths puff out from ragged, deflated lungs as his feet pound against the linoleum. There are loud (too loud, too much) sirens blaring in his ears and reverberating around his chest like a thousand ricocheting bullets.
Please, be a dream.
I want to wake up.
"Stop!" A voice shouts from behind him, and he swears he can hear the electric buzz of the Time Sticks like a bug zapper on a porch. He feels like a fly, an insect, desperately searching for an open window. "Stop him!"
He hits a corner and he skids to a stop, one hand pushed against the wall before he's shooting off of it.
A wave of panic sweeps through his body and he feels like passing out, or throwing up, or something that feels like falling apart. The thundering horde following him is his worst nightmare, and there's nowhere to hide. Absolutely nowhere safe to go.
He couldn't run forever. He knows they'll prune him on sight. There's no reason not to, nothing he could say or do or--
He hits a dead end. He presses himself to it, spinning like a trapped animal to face his pursuers.
The panic is pulling him under. Black spots dance in his vision and he wants to spit curses.
He doesn't deserve mercy. Not really, not after what he'd done, who he was. He's a fool for thinking otherwise.
Please, be merciful. Be quick. Please, just don't let it be Mobius that burns my soul from the shell of my body.
Not the analyst with powder blue eyes and the voice that could ask him to do anything.
My chest is burning.
I've never been this lost.
Mobius parts the sea of panting, searing mad hunters, and the look on his face sends Loki to his knees. The floor is hard and cold and unfamiliar against his old bones.
It hurts.
It feels like stuttered lies and a false love confession.
At least, if he dies, he will die kneeling before the one man that never asked him to.
"How in the world did you get here," Mobius asks, wheezing out his breaths, "and how are you so damn quick?"
"I already told you, you know me." Loki whispers. "Please."
A rabbit caught in a snare
surrounded by wolves with teeth dripping blood.
"I already told you, I don't know you."
A dagger through the heart would hurt less. He's sure of it.
"Prune him." Mobius orders, rolling his eyes. He's callous, passive, indifferent to Loki's living or dying, and something cracks deep inside him at the betrayal.
It's a cruel taste of his own damn medicine.
"No, no, I swear!"
Ribs split like skinny tree branches, piercing the delicate skin of the warm fig that pulsed behind his sternum.
Such a small cruelty, to not be known.
There's a sudden itch flaring against his skin, and suddenly he's being pulling apart at the seams like a piece of fabric. He's being pulled apart, bones crunching and warping so, so painfully it makes him cry out.
He thinks he sees the frightening expanse of the universe before his body is wrenched somewhere else.
He hits a cold floor and it sends a shockwave up his spine. The room is warmer, darker, and the soft orange lighting makes it hard for his eyes to adjust. It feels different and... where is he? It's still the TVA but Mobius and the hunters are gone, and--
Mobius.
He had sentenced him to be pruned. He hadn't even looked at him when he said it, like he was trash or some... some snarling, foaming animal to be put down.
Loki's still heaving and his blood won't stop pulsing in his ears.
They're going to find me and I'm going to die.
He can't move even as he's telling his body to run. Pleading with it to save him. It's all too much, Sylvie and He Who Remains and Alioth and himself dying over and over and over again. To watch your own demise is against nature and it's all agony.
He felt all of it.
Loki felt the way their skin burned from the swirling acid cloud that was Alioth, the roiling pit of boiling fear in their stomachs and the sharp rocks choking their throat. How they ran, tripped, and pleaded with the monster to leave them alone. To give them one more second of time.
The caustic, acrid stench was still in his nostrils and throat and his nerves were still on fire from meeting him...
Everything was collapsing and Loki was not an exception. Mobius was the last straw.
Better to let it burn, he had always said.
Mobius, though? The one person that brought him his coffee just the way he liked it, the one that held his gaze so kindly when something panged in his chest--
The one person he had faith in?
Loki always struggled with that part. He's always believed that love was similar to faith, but faith is not always love. He had learned at least that much early on in life, that you didn't just trust someone because you loved them. He feels something close to both for the analyst with a dopey smile and half baked plans. He knows that as well as he knows his own name.
And god, does he trust him.
His gaze swings wildly around the hallway. The end of time was just the beginning, he was sure of it. Something else was coming, and he had to find someone, anyone, who could help him.
Time and trust. Two things he seemed to be lacking.
If he found him again, if he found Mobius, would he be the same person that had pulled him from the flaring edge of a time stick so long ago?
Or the one who's lips dripped his death sentence like gooey, rancid honey tinged red with blood?
Loki swipes the sweat from his face and clenches his shaking fingers around his forearms.
He just had to--
"Loki? Hey, why are you on the floor?"
The familiar voice hangs in the air like a warm, sacred incense and Loki feels every atom in his body responding to it.
"Mobius?" His palms press hard against the old brown tile as he gazes up at the man before him. He tries to rise, tries to move his stupid, fragile body, and his back meets the wall harshly. His legs are shaky and weak and he curses himself for it.
At least he's standing, now.
"You're back." Mobius mumbles, the gentle corners of his mouth twitching up into a relieved grin.
His throat constricts and his heart swells and suddenly, hot tears are running in rivers down his cheeks and he can taste the vinous salt of them against his tongue.
Mobius startles. "Whoa, whoa, what happened, Loki? Tell me what happened."
His large palms squeeze Loki's shoulders and he's a piece of shattered glass crunching under them.
I already told you, I don't know you.
"He's terrifying, Mobius." He chokes out. Mobius' brow furrows and he shakes his head and, as weird as it is, Loki wants to grab him by the hair. Feel the delicate, silver strands between his fingertips.
"Who? Who is?"
"He Who Remains. He's a...a Levithan dressed up as a clown." Loki stutters out, his words slurring together with the enormity of the information. The room is beginning to spin and he's starting to feel that same tearing sensation in his skin again. He pushes it down somewhere buried, forgotten and overflowing.
"Okay, just, tell me what happened. How did you get back?" Mobius questions. His hands are warm and steady against the thin material of his now-ratty button-up and Loki could just melt into it forever.
"She kicked me through a time door. Then, I don't know, I was at the TVA but, it wasn't this TVA." He rambles, "Then I was on the floor here. I don't know, but Mobius, it hurt. I could see time. I could feel it ripping through me like, like a million threads pulling my skin at once."
What he didn't say was that slipping through time was nothing compared to those words.
I don't know you.
"Hey," Mobius grabs Loki by the elbow and pulls, shocking Loki from the web of thoughts and panic and the tight noose of dread that's slowing winding it's way around his neck, "I've got you. Okay, Loki? You're safe now."
Mobius' chest is warm and solid as he's pulled into it, and he thinks he's never felt anything as close to home before.
To make a home out of someone else seems foolish until it happens.
Loki is suddenly very, very tired, and Mobius' shoulder is very, very comfortable. He hopes he's not hurting Mobius with how tightly he's gripping onto him.
"We'll figure it out." Mobius mutters it into his hair like a prayer into folded hands.
The air is still and reverent and Loki can trust it, just for a moment.
"You didn't know me."
He pulls back to look Mobius in the eye. There's something defensive in his voice, he can feel it, but he knows Mobius doesn't mind.
"What?"
"You didn't know me. There. In the other TVA."
Mobius pushes out a breath of air that sounds almost like a laugh, and looks at him with sad eyes. "I'm sorry, Loki."
He apologizes, just like that.
He actually means it, too.
Mobius swallows, and Loki shivers at the way his eyes keep flickering to his parted lips. Loki's never seen him so sincere and if it scares him, he doesn't let it show.
"God. I'm just so glad you're back." Mobius laughs, and the breathy sound wraps around Loki until he's floating. He lets it sink into his skin and warm him, and he understands now why poems of love and death are often written with the same ink and pen.
"Me too. You have no idea."
He wants Mobius to taste the tears on his lips.
Loki's stomach flips when Mobius' eyes settle heavily on his, and sit there with agonizing veneration. He's as concentrated as he's ever seen him and it sends shivers down his spine, heavy emotion swirling between them. It's suffocatingly tempting.
He's so close.
Loki' fingers dance along Mobius' shoulder, his elbow, down his forearm, until they glance against the outside of his hand.
A spark of understanding ignites in Mobius' eyes and suddenly, he's weaving their hands together and squeezing.
In the next breath, their foreheads are pressed together and Loki swears he's never felt a deeper desire.
It feels right when Mobius ghosts his lips over Loki's.
The sigh he breathes contains a word that sounds something like 'finally'.
Loki's heart stutters as Mobius' mouth runs softly over his jaw, an inebriating fire spreading through his blood. Mobius' lips were softer and warmer than the rest of him, Loki realizes, as they close against the suprasternal notch of his throat. He tries not to groan lewdly as Mobius' hand runs along the long expanse of his neck, the tickle of his facial hair against his skin making his breath flutter.
"Help me forget." Loki breathes.
That's all Mobius needed to hear, because in the next second, Loki's back is pressed against the wall by rough, unbridled hands that run under the collar and hem of his torn shirt. Mobius' fingers are bruising and fervent against his cold skin, which he's immensely grateful for.
He doesn't think he could handle that sort of gentleness, right now. He wanted Mobius to take him apart and put him back together just because he knows how to.
"I'm never letting you go off by yourself ever again." Mobius growls out, "Do you understand?"
"I understand." Loki whispers between them, the tips of their noses pressed together.
Loki leans back and lets him pop the buttons of his shirt, one button at a time. He's surprisingly strong, and a little rough, like he's been waiting to have Loki pliant and wanting under his hands for a long time.
"I was so worried for you." Mobius mumbles it into Loki's mouth and it makes his stomach collapse into a black hole. He sounds so sincere and so like Mobius, so concerned and open and vulnerable that it makes him gasp.
"You were?" Loki asks.
"I was scared as shit, Loki."
Mobius' hand cups his cheek. He rubs it up and down the sharp edges, plays with the fallen strands of black curls that brush against the tip of his cheekbone, pressing Loki's soft, gentle lips as he kisses his thumb.
"I'm so glad you're back."
Hearing that is almost too much for him. Just a while ago, Loki was running for his life, hoping to be back at the TVA with Mobius sipping some awful cup of coffee, B-15 and Casey arguing about something stupid in the background.
He was back.
Loki slips down against the wall, letting Mobius' strong arms hold him up.
"You didn't know me." He says into Mobius' chest, feeling tears rising in his throat once again. "You didn't know me, Mobius. You-."
Mobius smooths his tangled hair as he holds Loki up, shushing him as he breathes raggedly into his chest.
"Oh, Loki." He has absolutely no idea what Loki went through, but he knows it wasn't good. He knows it takes a lot for Loki to fall apart like this and he feels strangely sick seeing it happen in front of him. Because of him.
"Come on." He swipes a thumb across his cheek to wipe away the hurt on his face, and supports him down the abandoned hallway.
They arrive at an apartment door, and Loki has to steady himself against the wall. He's exhausted. The time slipping, the fear, the end of time...it all was too much for one day.
Mobius' couch is scratchy, like he remembers, but it swallows him in a comforting hug after the events he's been through.
As he sinks into the sandbag like couch, the quiet settles around them. It's louder than the chaos of the day he's had, a moment of reprieve and a place to breathe.
Mobius' concern is almost palpable. The furrow in his brow and the way he paces gives him away.
Mobius sits beside him then, his presence reassuring to the weathered god. He gazes at Loki with a mix of concern and awe, able to look past the dark circles and hard lines of age. Past the deception and false bravado.
"You've been through the ringer." Mobius mumbles, settling down onto a sagging couch cushion. There's a careful consideration in his tone and Loki could just let his eyes close then and there, lay back against the cushion and let exhaustion take him.
Mobius understands.
Trial and burden.
Loki looks small, almost fragile, amidst the cushions. His defenses are worn paper thin.
"You need rest," Mobius murmurs softly, his hand coming up to brush Loki's unruly hair back from his forehead.
Loki nods weakly, his eyes heavy with fatigue. "I just need a moment."
Mobius doesn't press further. He just sits there, a silent presence. Loki doesn't know how many minutes pass, but the tension slowly dissipates as his fatigue wins. Eventually, Loki shifts, nestling closer to Mobius. He wraps an impossibly strong arm around him, and it makes Loki's heart soar.
"You're safe now," Mobius whispers, the words a soothing melody in the tranquil room. "I won't let anything happen to you."
Whispered solace in the depths of night-- it was all he had ever wanted.
As they sit together on the familiar couch, surrounded by the quietude of Mobius' very bachelored apartment, there's an unspoken pact exchanged between them. It's a silent promise to weather the storms together, to find strength in each other's presence amidst the chaos of the TVA and of their intertwined lives.
He's not alone, anymore.
He's not alone.