Chapter Text
December 23rd, 2012
Earth
Somewhere over Colorado
“Hey, excuse me.”
“Yes, sir?” The flight attendant stopped, halting her cart.
“You wouldn’t happen to have more of the peanuts, would ya?” He put down his crossword and craned against his neck pillow to look up at her, dusting off the ol’ charm with a smile. He knew he shouldn’t be asking for more, but he hoped she’d make an exception for him ‘cause he had been the only one to say ‘thank you’ for his drink.
“Of course, let me check,” she whispered. See? A little bit of kindness still goes a long way. Even here, even now.
“Here you are.” She took out a basket full of the little purple packets of peanuts he’d been craving for the last hour.
“You’re a lifesaver.” He grabbed one. “Actually, can I go ahead and…” He grabbed a few more. She wrinkled her brow at him. “Love these things,” he laughed at himself. She nodded and left down the aisle. As soon as she was gone he dropped his smile. Tired eyes and tired fingers, he tore a packet open.
Did Don love prepackaged snacks, too, or did Mobius bring that with him from an eternity of vending machine meals at the TVA? A case of chicken and egg, probably.
He popped a handful in his mouth, grinding them nervously. This was his first time on a plane. At least the first time he could remember. Maybe his last. Either way, he was never supposed to be here.
He pulled his bag out from under his seat and took out the cheap Sony camera he bought for this trip. He knew phones had cameras in this timeline, but the TVA in him missed the clunky inefficiency of one gadget per task. And he didn’t get the craze for smartphones. They felt like toys. Lots of applications that led to lots of nothing. And nothing much interested him in this time and place. Sure, maybe he would’ve liked it here in the end, but he had something more waiting for him.
Someone.
He checked the camera lens by looking through the viewfinder. Through it he happened to see a couple a few rows ahead of him. They were pointing out the window at the mountains miles below them, smiling. Newlyweds, it looked like. They kissed.
He put the camera down.
It had felt strange kissing her on the way out the door that morning. She thought he was leaving for a two-week sales convention, but if everything went as planned, she’d never see him again.
He felt bad about that.
She’d been patient with him. He’d changed from the guy she was gonna marry to some stranger who never touched her. And when he had to kiss her to keep up appearances she must’ve known his heart wasn’t in it. It was obvious she wasn’t happy anymore. He could tell she was getting ready to leave within the next few months. Maybe it worked out for the best that he was leaving first. He would’ve done it a lot sooner, but when you don’t have a TemPad you gotta wait for the ‘right time’ the long way like everybody else.
Instead of leaving right away, he had just let their timeline slowly wither. By getting on this plane he was ending the life she was supposed to have stone-dead. They were probably meant to get married, have kids, and grow old together, but if things went right tonight, she’d never know what happened to ‘Don’ after he left for the airport.
He should probably feel worse about that. The man he was before ‘Mobius’ was plucked out of time and shoved behind a TVA desk loved her. Maybe he could have, too. Maybe it was written in this body somewhere. Maybe that’s what He Who Remains wanted? Maybe he put him here so he could forget about everything and lead the life he was ‘meant’ to lead. That’s not what the crazy guy said in that fortress at the end of time, but after not hearing a peep from anyone outside this timeline for seven months… Mobius had to consider whether the lunatic lied.
He crumpled the empty peanut packet and stuffed it in a cupholder.
He'd thought about it a thousand times. This could've been the real plan. Maybe this was supposed to be the end of the line for ‘funny ol’ Mobius’ and the start of ‘Don.’
Mobius hadn’t let that happen, though. He had millennia of practice not feeling much. He knew how to turn off what he needed to turn off in order to get through long swaths of time without getting too attached to anything or anyone. But, he’d admit it: it was harder to switch off after everything he learned to feel with a certain someone.
Still, he managed it.
He was comfortably empty again.
A wind-up toy on a mission again.
He fidgeted with the camera lens, wiping dust away.
It took a week or two, but he had taken to living on a timeline pretty easily. After a stint where he drove through the night to get to New York the day he woke up here, only to find all the Avengers had left behind their Chitauri mess and no way to get a hold of them or their prisoner, Mobius had had to make a choice between either homelessness or pretending to be Don Donaldson for a while. Yeah, ‘Don Donaldson’. Who was ‘Mobius Mobius Mobius’ to judge? And it turned out Don was a surprisingly easy guy to be. He woke up at the same time every day, ate the same things every day, drove to work every day. He got to spend all day selling Bombadier AC-7572s and talking shop with people who loved personal watercrafts almost as much as he did. There was also some good food and lots of quiet.
Yeah, slipping into Don’s life had been like putting on an old shoe.
Someone else’s old shoe.
But while he spent his days as Don, his nights had been for Mobius. He barely slept for weeks after he got here. He was up all night researching, from memory, which possible timeline he had been flung to. Spent weeks researching whether he was on a branch and what kind of branch. He lost even more sleep when he realized that all signs indicated this was as close to The Sacred Timeline as he could get. Maybe he was even on it. The only anomaly he could find was, well, him.
He brought in his elbow as two old ladies shuffled down the aisle.
It still didn’t make sense, though. This wasn’t how time doors worked. You don’t walk into the body of someone with a life on the timeline. But when he walked through He Who Remains’ time door, created with that strange TemPad, he had walked into Don. And the real Don was nowhere to be found. Mobius had waited for him for weeks. Hoping his doppleganger would show up and kick him out of his life. No such luck. Instead, it seemed like his and Don’s atoms overlapped or combined or something. Mobius had tried to figure that out, too, but he wasn’t much for the science side of things. He was a people person. And all he could tell was that the guy he replaced was just… gone. A sacrifice to the madman at the end of time who set this whole thing up. It wasn’t surprising He Who Remains wouldn’t care about Don, the jet ski enthusiast. Still, the poor guy was annihilated just so Mobius could look for any possible way to get out of here again.
He opened another peanut packet. His hands still smelled like smoke.
For the last half year he had filled a dozen journals full of things he tried to remember. He had used them to jog his memory of possible intersection points that could get an Ohioan salesman an audience with Asgardian royalty. He knew one life on the Sacred Timeline, in particular, like the back of his hand, but everything else? What the Avengers were up to, where’d they be, and when? That was a bit fuzzy. After a while he had pulled a few memories out of the hat, though.
That’s why he was on this plane.
“Excuse me,” a man walked down the aisle from behind Mobius’ seat, pardoning himself after bumping into someone’s arm. Tall with long black hair. Slender and muscled.
Mobius held his exhale.
“You a photographer?” The guy seated next to him asked him a question.
“Huh?” Mobius looked over. His neighbor pointed at the camera in his hands. “Oh, no, it's just, uh-” Mobius watched the man in the aisle.
“A hobby?” His neighbor was sixty-something in a Hawaiian shirt and sandals, traveling alone and looking to chat. Mobius would normally appreciate that, but he was distracted.
“You could say that.” Mobius didn’t blink, staring.
The raven-haired man stepped aside to allow someone to pass him, revealing a profile that looked nothing like a certain prince.
Mobius looked away.
He had been spotting the Asgardian in crowds for the last 7 months, 2 weeks, and five days. He had heard his voice on the wind. Caught the scent of silver oak oil on the nightly walks he took to clear his head. He felt him in his dreams. In those dreams he remembered his hands, fire light, and the weight of him against his chest.... But it was all starting to feel more like a dream than a memory. He had once known the god’s face better than his own; he had watched him for so long, and for a short, bright, moment he had experienced him up close. In a way no TVA agent or Timeline being ever had.
But there was something about this place. Something about waking up at the same time every day, driving to work every day… it was turning things inside out. Making those memories feel like fantasies. Because, when you’re chatting with coworkers about pay raises and commission rates over the Dunkin donuts Karen, the receptionist, brought in for Steve’s birthday only four months after you were running from cannibal marauders with a god of mischief who pruned himself to follow you into the Void, it made you feel like you were going crazy. Like none of it had actually happened.
Maybe this is what happens when you live on a timeline too long? Spending too much time with people who don’t know who you really are. Your neurons start losing what doesn’t belong in that time and place.
Now, when Mobius searched for the god in his memories, he mostly just saw flashes: fingers fixing a collar, hair being swept behind his ear, long legs dashing to help, sleeves rolled up his forearms, his TVA dress shirt stretched over his frame when he leaned and lunged while fighting. He could remember the smile the prince gave only to him. Broad and nervous. That one Mobius was careful not to lose. But he knew he used to remember a lot more.
There were moments when Mobius did catch a real glimpse of the face he was always looking for, but it was in grainy news footage of the ‘menace who invaded New York City.’ Pictures of Loki online and in newspapers, surrounded by hate, taunted Mobius. He had been everywhere for the first few weeks despite being further from Mobius than ever: half a galaxy away, stuck in a dungeon with no TemPads between them.
“Wherever these send us, I’ll find you. Alright? Just stay where you are and I’ll come find you!” That’s what Loki told him to do. Mobius had stayed put as long as he could. And the longer it went on, the more everything outside of Don’s life was getting harder to remember. Who knows, maybe he'd lose it all if he waited too long.
Wherever Loki was, whatever he had gotten himself into on Asgard, it must have been bad.
Now, it was up to Mobius to find a way to him.
Somehow.
So, last night, he burned his journals, all except the one in his jacket pocket, and, this morning, he created a nexus event by boarding this plane.
He Who Remains didn’t lie about one thing: the TVA wasn’t pruning branches anymore. He definitely hadn't been living exactly as Don had. And, today, Don should’ve been at work three hours ago but no one had come to prune him yet. He was free to do what he wanted. It felt wrong. Like standing on the edge of a cliff.
It also made anything he did invisible.
The TVA wasn’t interested in his nexus event. They weren’t gonna storm the plane and take him back to the TVA where he could nab a TemPad and find Loki by lunch. Mobius was stuck in the middle of a multiversal ocean. Overlooked, infinitesimal, and empty-handed. All he had were his wits and, maybe, some free will.
But free will was a lot scarier without someone to be free with.
“Take a gander.” His neighbor had been rummaging for something out of his own bag. “I’ve got my Nikon. I’ve had it twelve years! I usually take a trip to New York this time of year to get some pictures. Nothing like Christmas in New York. But I’m not trying to get abducted by aliens, you know what I mean?”
Mobius faked a chuckle. “Yeah.” If only.
“So, I figured I’d go to the opposite end of the country. Get some sun for Christmas. You got family in L.A.?”
“No, no family.” Mobius looked down at his camera. “Just something I gotta do.”
The man lifted his Nikon. “I’m planning on taking a picture of all the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this time,” he smiled.
Mobius sat up when he heard that, “Uh, I wouldn’t go there tonight if I were you.”
The man gave him a look.
“Just, uh, heard there’s gonna be tons of construction,” Mobius improvised. “Traffic’s gonna be killer,” he tried to chuckle. That’s all he could say without going too far, probably. Variance energy didn’t mean anything anymore, but he didn’t need to start a panic about something he needed to happen.
“Boy, don’t you know it,” the man laughed. “It’s been getting worse every time I go. L.A. used to be empty, you know. It was great. Wish I could hop in a time machine and go back.”
“It ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
Mobius knelt down and inspected the dirty, gum-riddled concrete. Families of tourists milled around him. The late afternoon sun was bright and warm on the back of his neck. Too warm for a couple days before Christmas, but that’s L.A. for you. Or at least that’s what he had heard people say in the TVA video files. This was his first time seeing it in person.
Christmas music twinkled over hot speakers, vendors shelled out sunglasses and star maps. A man painted silver pretended to be a statue for spare change. On the Walk of Fame sidewalk, performers dressed as dime-store Thors and Iron Men were taking selfies with tourists. Again, the people he needed to talk to were everywhere and nowhere for a peon like him.
Mobius squinted up, making sure no one was looking at him. He pulled a piece of chalk from his pocket.
“X marks the spot,” he muttered to himself, drawing a bold ‘x’ on the ground in front of him.
He stood up again, backed up several paces and pulled his camera up to his face. He nodded at a family who awkwardly shuffled between him and his target. They left and he focused the shot.
Click.
He reviewed the photo. The ‘x’ on the concrete was clear in the middle of the plaza and the spiky red architecture of the Hollywood Chinese Theatre was unmistakable in the background.
“Alright.”
Mobius walked further into the plaza. He judged the angles between the sunglass vendor and the entrance of the theatre. He found the spot he was looking for. He drew another ‘x’ on the ground. Shot another photo.
He found a bench. Took out his laptop. Connected his camera to his laptop and attached the two photos to an email. He hit ‘Send.’
Email sent.
And that was it. That’s what he flew 2,300 miles and broke the Sacred Timeline to come here to do.
“This better work.” He had waited over seven months for this. He remembered this possible intersection the week he got here but he never thought he’d actually be here long enough to have to try this.
If this didn’t work, he was going to have to wait at least another year for an opportunity like this. An ‘opportunity’ that might get him imprisoned, experimented on, tortured, or killed before it got him what he was after.
Actually, this might’ve been a bad idea.
But someone taught him once that bad ideas could be the best ideas.
“Hang tight, Loki,” he said to himself.
He watched people come and go. Nothing like wanting to be found to make you realize just how small you were. He watched the fake Avengers wave at crowds of people on walking tours. They were quickly crowded by dozens of smiling faces.
Real heroes didn’t have to wait seven months for a chance to get noticed, a chance to get back to who they were supposed to be.
The sun was starting to set.
He picked up his things, bought a couple street tacos from a cart, tipped extra, and found a comfortable seat across the street.
He took the journal out from his pocket, reviewed his notes, and waited for the pieces to fall.