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“Don’t freak out.” Those words should’ve been Mobius’s first warning.
In one of the many offices in the TVA, B-15 caught Mobius on his break. Time flows differently in the TVA – it doesn’t quite flow at all, honestly – but enough of it had passed that the memory of Loki only produced a gentle, bittersweet ache in the hearts of his friends.
“There is very little that could make me freak out, B-15,” Mobius chuckles. The worry on B-15’s face doesn’t ease.
“You remember how there are still a few wild Sacred Timeline lunatics on the loose?” She asks.
“Separate from Dox’s loyalists, yeah. We finally catch the stragglers?” Mobius leans against his desk, crossing his arms.
“Not quite. We caught one, but not before… Not before they took someone here with them.”
“Ah, shit…” Mobius mumbles. While the TVA had become a more accepting, open work environment – more worker’s benefits, less indentured servitude – they still did their best to remain as a force behind the scenes. In the very rare case that a typical (they decided that calling them variants felt wrong) found their way to the TVA, they couldn’t simply send them back. New protocol lately has been teaching them the ins and outs of the TVA before offering them a choice: help out or get sent back, memories wiped. “They decide to stay?” Mobius asks.
“Not quite. Haven’t finished giving him the talk, just the basics.” B-15 pauses. “Listen, Mobius… I thought long and hard about this. I almost decided not to tell you about all this, but after consulting OB and Timely and, God forbid, even Sylvie…”
The lines on her face deepened, only concerning Mobius further. “Spit it out, B-15. What is it?”
B-15 pushed off the desk she was leaning on, gesturing for Mobius to follow. “Probably best if I just show you.”
The tension between the two grew tighter and tighter every turn and elevator the pair took. Eventually, she stops in front of an interrogation room. B-15 grabs his wrist when he reaches for the door handle.
“Jesus, B-15. You can’t keep leaving me in suspense like this.” He says it lightheartedly, watching the way she avoided his gaze.
“Let me tell you before you open that door – it isn’t him.”
Mobius feels the blood drain from his face. He pulls his arm free from B-15’s grasp and opens the doors to find Loki Laufeyson sitting at the table. The projector was on, playing back his life from the formerly Sacred Timeline. Loki doesn’t seem to have noticed that the doors have opened.
Mobius turns back to look at B-15, pain etched into every line in his face. All she can do is give him a tender look while placing a hand on his shoulder.
It’s not him, she mouths.
Mobius swallows thickly, rubbing his beard as he straightens his posture. He clears his throat and knocks on the door, grabbing Loki’s attention.
“Mind if I join you?” Mobius asks. His voice was a little strained, but he hoped his natural rasp covered it up. On the screen, Loki watches as he dies at the hands of Thanos. From there, the tape switches to the variant’s life at the TVA – to his Loki’s life. Mobius remembers watching it back alongside all his friends, to truly see and understand what Loki went through in those moments leading up to his sacrifice.
It turns out, there was a lot Loki was doing when he was timeslipping.
“I was destined to die anyways,” Loki breathes, interrupting Mobius’s thoughts. He was trembling, teary-eyed, not at all unlike his variant’s first reaction to watching his Sacred Timeline life. Mobius sighs, reaching over to pause the recording, showing the variant in front of Judge Renslayer. “All that… just to die pathetically in the hands of a tyrant?” Loki laughs drily, incredulously.
“Not… Not quite.” Mobius leans in, putting his weight onto his forearm on the table between them. “That’s just one possibility – one branch in the timeline that your life could’ve taken. Unfortunately, it is the only branch we have a recording of here in the TVA. That, and, well…” Mobius trails off, dragging his gaze back to the screen. The variant’s back was to them, facing up defiantly at Mobius’s old friend.
“You did good here, Loki. Well, not quite you. That version of you,” Mobius points at the screen, “was actually from an earlier point in your life. He was angry, bitter, lusting after a throne, prattling on about–”
“Glorious purpose?” Loki interrupts. He watches as Mobius’ face flashes with an old, weary pain.
“Just that,” Mobius confirms. He reaches for the playback device, hesitating over the play button. “He was – is the most incredible man I’ve ever known.” Loki raises his eyebrow at the correction.
Mobius resumes the tape and stands to go. “I assume B-15 gave you the lowdown about the whole situation. When typs find themselves here, we can’t exactly just send them right back like nothing happened.” He stops at the door, looking over his shoulder. Loki’s focus was on the screen as he watches the variant and Mobius’s first meeting.
“B-15’ll be around. Let her know your decision.” He pushes open the door and steps out. “And take your time. We have eons to spare in the TVA.”
“Do you understand now why I said ‘don’t freak out?’”
The automat is uncharacteristically empty, much to Mobius’s relief. He picked at his key lime pie.
“You know, I think I would have preferred it if you had just told me that the typ brought in was a Loki,” Mobius hissed. “Particularly the fact that he’s basically the same one that saved our asses!”
“I didn’t want to overwhelm you! After whatever happened with the Loom and Loki, you weren’t yourself, Mobius.” B-15 wasn’t sitting with him, rather standing against the wall, arms crossed. “I didn’t want to put you through that again if I didn’t have to.”
Mobius pinches the bridge of his nose and drops his fork on his plate, letting out a long exhale. Suddenly, he lost his appetite. “Well, in the end, you told me, and I’m grateful you did, B-15. Everything’s sorted, just gotta go through the motions. He make up his mind yet?”
B-15 shakes her head. “He was taken off the Asgardian ship. Quite literally right before his Sacred Timeline death.” She’s fiddling with her TemPad, fact checking herself. “Knowing what we know about him at that point in his life, he’s probably weighing his options. Who would want to go back just to immediately be killed?”
“He finish watching…” Mobius can’t bring himself to finish the sentence. B-15 does it for him.
“Loom Loki’s file? Yes. Probably also factoring into his decision.”
Mobius looks down at his pie and then across to the empty chair in front of him.
“Do you remember that time I was so angry with my father and my brother, I went down to Earth and held the whole of New York City hostage with an alien army?”
Mobius chuckled.
“Tried to use the Mind Stone on Tony Stark. It didn't work, so I threw him off the building! I mean – let me tell you something – wasn’t tactical. I lost it.”
He glanced down at the pie in front of him.
“Sometimes our emotions get the better of us.”
B-15’s TemPad beeped quietly with her inputs from across the room.
“Let me ask you something. X-5… You know, he obviously touched a nerve, right? You’ve never wanted to visit your place on the Timeline?”
“Mobius.” B-15 had moved to his side. “I need to check up on some Minutemen. They have a lead on another fanatic. Join us when you’re up for it.” She gives him a small nod before heading out.
Mobius leans back in his seat, pulling his pie closer to him. As he ate, he thought. At the time Loki asked, he couldn’t afford to think about his origins, what his life was like before he was kidnapped and put to work at the TVA. He was afraid to find something good that would cause him to be torn between the life he knew and the life he deserved. He loved his work and the people in it – it just wasn’t worth risking just to see what he could’ve had.
But after Loki’s sacrifice, he finally had a moment to breathe. Loki had a point.
So he went to his place on the Timeline. A domestic life – that’s what was robbed from him. Two boys, a job he was passionate about, and a well-loved house. He didn’t deserve to be taken from that. No one deserved to be taken from that. But to Mobius, what’s done is done. He was thankful that that version of him got to be happy and loved in sleepy Cleveland, Ohio. He was also thankful that he himself is happy and loved by B-15, O.B., Casey… and at some point, Loki. Maybe not in the way Mobius loved him, but he was loved nonetheless. And besides, there’s no way to know now. Loki was lost to the Temporal Loom, to time—
Behind him, there’s a clearing of the throat and two sharp knocks.
“Mind if I join you?” Loki wears a mischievous grin, but it doesn’t hide the exhaustion in his eyes.
“Please.” Mobius gestures to the seat across from him.
“Sorry to bother. I was going to speak with the woman – B-15? – but she was in a rush somewhere and directed me here to speak with you instead.” Loki sits down as he speaks.
“Yeah, yeah, for sure. What’s up?” Mobius pushed away his empty plate, making a point to give Loki his full attention.
“I’ve made my decision.” Loki pauses, gauging Mobius’s reaction. “If it’d be better if B-15 were to be here–”
“No, no. It’s fine. I’ll just let her know afterwards.” His heart clenched. He didn’t know what would be worse – losing another Loki or replacing the one he already lost.
Loki takes a deep breath as he looks around the automat. “I recognize this place. From the recording.”
Mobius chuckles. “Yeah. He really gave me an ass kicking about my past life, huh?”
Loki doesn’t laugh. “It got me thinking. Everything I – he – did here. He…” Loki clenches a fist and purses his lips, pained. “He found his purpose. His glorious purpose. Like you told him: most purpose is more burden rather than glory. I’ve walked around the TVA. It doesn’t seem like he’s exactly heralded as the hero of time.”
“After He Who Remains, forgive us for not putting any one individual up on an unreachable pedestal. It’s a thankless job but…” Mobius looks out the automat’s doors. “We know what he sacrificed for us. As long as we know, I think that’s what matters.”
Loki is silent for a while. Mobius lets him sit with that information.
“He loved you, you know,” Loki finally says.
“He loved all of us. That’s why he did it.” It comes out a lot more defensively than Mobius intended.
“Indeed. But you were the person he looked for first, every time. After killing He Who Remains, after timeslipping to the future, to the past, to completely different timelines – he looked for you first.”
Realization dawns on Mobius.
“And I see he meant a lot to you too.” Loki stands, walking over and placing a hand on Mobius’s shoulder.
“I’ve decided to return to my time. Like you said: more burden rather than glory, but who else is going to bear the burden?”
Mobius chokes back a sob, placing his hand over Loki’s on his shoulder. “You’re a lot like him.”
“Oh, please,” Loki scoffs. “I am him.”
“Hey, Loki.”
The last time Mobius had been down to the remains of the Temporal Loom room was when he returned from his one and only visit to his home on the Timeline. He looks through the thick glass windows, now coated in dust – the only evidence that, maybe, time does pass in the TVA.
“Had a variant of you pass through here just now. He’s just like you. Of course he would be, but…” Out the window, Mobius looks up the gangway to the end, where he last saw Loki.
“I don’t think I ever thanked you for what you did for us. Centuries spent learning temporal science, watching us die over and over again – and then to make the most selfless decision one could make,” Mobius chokes, placing a hand on the glass. After a moment to catch his breath, he continues.
“I know you urged me to go back. Live the life that was taken from me. But the truth is, this is my life now. B-15 and O.B. and Casey and, God forbid, D-90… and you, Loki.”
He leans his forehead on the glass before pulling away, leaving a clean spot where his hand and forehead touched. “Thank you, Loki. For being the god we needed, but not the one you should have had to be.”
And somewhere at the end of time, the God of Stories cries.