Chapter Text
He consciously runs from it, this sadness, only to find himself subconsciously running back to it. Mobius finds a twisted, solemn humour at the irony.
In the tangle of sunlight, rain, wind, the vast percussion of busy town centre streets laced with the smell of diners and food-stands and blooming flowers, he thought he could process his feelings better. On Earth, where he is supposed to be from, he thought the flowing fresh air would easier enter his lungs than what came from the vents of the TVA's offices.
It didn't. It still doesn't, years on. He wonders if it ever will?
He finds himself at the mercy of the sharp wind on a grassy cliff outside New Asgard, standing before three memorials with enchanted bouquets that will only wilt when the caster dies. Mobius' entire attention is on one of the three in particular.
Loki's name is carved with care, a looping, dramatic cursive lined with gold. Although Mobius has paid little attention to Odin's memorial a-ways-away, it is starkly plain in comparison, a simple written epitaph designed with his traditionalist attitude in mind. There is one for Frigga too, despite her proper Asgardian send-off. Her plot has both the enchanted flowers of the others as well as fragrant wildflowers sprouting up and spilling into the memorials either side, her stone placed part-way between Odin and Loki's.
It's an interesting choice on Thor's part to place his mother at the centre of his family, a bright barrier of diplomatic flowers. Carvings of blooming flowering vines decorate the edges of her epitaph that is written in a language that wasn't Asgardian. Of Alfheim, Mobius suspects, although it wasn't his forte.
With a steadying inhale of biting air, Mobius smiles a watery one as he absorbs the complex, elaborate art of Loki's. In place of an epitaph, the God's name is woven through the branches of a tree consuming the entire stone.
The coincidence of tree imagery was bittersweet. Thor wasn't to know of Mobius' Loki's role in the formation of the beautiful, vast multiverse. Instead, Mobius suspects the tree is based on the one the two brothers would climb as children that earned them many scoldings from Frigga. It was the tallest tree in the Queen's garden with branches that thinned out at the highest points. This information was part of Loki's variant file - highlighting how he used magic in his earliest years. Mobius had skimmed it, humoured at how the young trickster God delighted in Thor's frustration at being unable to climb, reach as high, before the branches started bowing under his weight. Loki instead shape-shifted into all sorts of creatures to reach the highest point, a testament to his mother's early magic lessons.
Loki's memorial stone isn't lacking in threads of gold in the stonework, either. Among the tree, there are creatures - a cat, a snake, an owl, a butterfly, the engravings lined golden. The longer Mobius' searches, the more he finds.
Thor didn't have a skilled enough hand to do the carving but he'd put a lot of heart and thought into conveying the finer details of the the design to whoever had. If Mobius squinted, he could make out Asgardian runes, quotes from Loki's favourite literary works running along the branches, of books probably lost in Ragnarok - somehow, Thor had found ways to recover some or he had paid more attention in his literature classes than he'd originally let on.
Mobius smiles, falling down onto one knee by the memorial. "... Just your style, right?" He whispers, a puff of amusement escaping him.
It's a beautiful memorial in a small graveyard built to honor and remember those Asgardians that died at the hands of Hela and Thanos thereafter. A secluded spot. Quiet.
It's not Mobius' Loki that's buried here, obviously - but it's the iteration of him on the timeline that would have closest resembled the pruned timeline his Loki came from. This timeline, formerly the Sacred, now timeline 616, was everything his Loki saw in the time theatre, was everything Mobius interrogated him with, was the parent timeline of the vast majority of other Loki's out there.
And damn it, Mobius needed something tangible to mourn over on what would've been the day Loki believed was his birthday.
"Would ya look at that, it's been over two years since our last key-lime." Mobius murmurs around the resistance in his throat. "Time's passing. Too fast and too slow. Feels strange, ya know? I suppose you do know... or did," he clears his throat, feels pressure surge against his eyes when he corrects himself - still, despite the lump making talking hard, the stinging air filling his lungs swirls, circulates easier. "You knew. You lived in the flow of time before all of this. Suddenly being taken out of it must've been so strange."
He's met with silence. The wind dies for a moment and a breeze tickles him, brushes his cheek like a caressing hand.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do, Loki."
The without you goes unsaid.
Admitting it aloud doesn't provide any revelations or solutions about moving forward, but he's glad he's said them.
The words whip about in the air as the wind picks back up again, carrying them across the rippling grasses to reach accidentally eavesdropping ears.
"That's not the first time those words have been said here." A voice rumbles and Mobius stifles a jolt, rising up off his knee and turning to find the lumbering approach of a familiar face, although Mobius had never seen it in the flesh.
The ex-analyst peers at Thor, trudging through the grass, his lack of armour making him seem no less Herculean and Mobius wants to kick himself at his carelessness. Of course sentimental Thor would return to Earth on this particular day - why hadn't Mobius considered this ahead of time?
He's so startled by Thor's appearance that he almost misses the small girl skipping and leaping through the grasses a stride behind him, her tiny hands grazing and snatching at the tips of the blades as she goes, a colourfully graffitied bike helmet askew on her head.
Mobius, startled, blinks, musters up a casual smile and can only hopes his eyes don't look as damp as they feel. "Hey there, don't mind me - I'll be out of your hair in no time." Mobius assures them both, aware of the Tempad weighing down the inside pocket on his jacket. He'll have to walk a bit until he's out of sight before he can use it, but-
"You don't have to leave on our arrival. There's lots of space." Thor says, stopping a few meters away from Mobius and smiling fondly at the memorial as his daughter stops confidently at his side - no hiding behind dad, from this one.
"It's no problem, I was wrapping things up anyway." Mobius reiterates, tosses them a small wave. "The famous Thor, right? Nice to meet ya," the kid stares up at him from her father's side, demanding acknowledgement. "You too, kiddo."
"I'm not Kiddo. My name is Love." She corrects.
"Really? That's a pretty cool name." Mobius says.
"yeah, I'm cool." She says with blinding confidence. "What's your name, spaceman?"
"Spaceman?" Mobius wrinkles his nose, furrows his brow and blinks between the girl and Thor, the confused whisper barely heard that he he might as well have mouthed it.
Thor chuckles and although relatively quiet, the low timber of it booms. His look is a rueful, sympathetic one when he catches Mobius slight grimace, "we were hiking the hill up here when we saw you emerge from your orange light box. It seems like a very smooth teleportation device." Thor says with an unbothered demeanor and Mobius relaxes a little.
"Makes travel is as easy as pie."
"Can I try it?" Love asks.
Before Mobius has to disappoint the girl, Thor breaks the bad news. "It's not ours to use, Love. we only hijack other people's teleportation devices when we're backed into a corner, remember?"
"But I asked, Uncle Thor. I'm not stealing this time!"
"And I'm really proud of the improvement but that device is probably very precious to this spaceman. It's not a toy."
Love squints, considering her dad's words and assessing Mobius at the same time. "What's it like?"
"Just like stepping through a plain ol' door, nothing special. Real boring, if I'm honest." Mobius says, and to him, it is. The novelty was never there to begin with.
"Oh, okay! That sounds really boring. Doors are mostly boring unless I get to kick them and that door didn't look like I could kick it. We travel by Bifrost and it's better than all the rollercoasters here on this planet- " Love chatters, quickly losing interest and darting past Mobius to throw herself down and sit cross legged by Loki's decorated stone, layering grass stains on her already grass-stained trousers. "Hi Uncle Loki, I brought you a present."
"... ah, kids?" Thor comments ruefully, explanation enough. With a shrug, Mobius shoots him a reassuring smile.
"I haven't got whippersnappers of my own - but I have a feeling that the curiosity is a given, universally."
Multiversally, now.
Thor nods, his gaze once again falling on his daughter at Loki's memorial, there's both adoration and solemnity sharing a space on his face. Mobius is about to break the silence and finally bid a proper farewell when Thor opens his mouth.
"You came to see my brother on his birthday..." his brow furrows. "Thank you." The sincerity in Thor's face stops Mobius dead for a moment. "Few do. I don't know who you are or how you know him but I sense you were a friend - and a good one."
"Yeah. He was near and dear..." Mobius' throat constricts at that, slightly.
Thor hears the strain in his whisper, stands at his side as they watch Love re-arranging the enchanted flowers. She claps her hands once enthusiastically and leans back on her heels when she's done to reveal her new layout as laughter bubbles up around the lump in Mobius' throat.
"For you to flip in Valhalla, uncle Loki." Love says gleefully.
There's a tiny dagger arranged neatly among the flowers, as if it were always part of the bouquet. Mobius shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks on his heels, directing his laughter down at his feet so as not to draw attention to his teary eyes.
"That's an interesting choice." He murmurs.
"... I should probably explain this, shouldn't I?" Thor says, looking his way with an awkwardness on his face.
"Nah." Mobius says lightly, eyes wrinkling more and more in delight the longer he looks at the knife bouquet. "It would be right up his street."
"Love doesn't usually run around with daggers, she prefers axes." Thor attempts to explain anyway, not exactly helping his case in being a responsible parent. Fortunately, Mobius knew the wackiness of Asgardians and their children, irregardless of them being biological or adopted. "I feel like I really should explain this." Thor stresses.
"No puzzle pieces out of place," Mobius stresses, "You're Thor, Mr Thunder himself. I'm guessing your kid can probably take out entire armies and Loki really, and I mean really really, loved daggers."
"He really did love them, spaceman." Thor's laugh cracks a little. "For you to know that, were you ever at the end of one?"
"Fortunately not." Mobius chuckles, throat still tight. "Cause I wouldn't have stood a chance."
There's a long silence, at which Mobius looks up to see Thor peering at him, astonished. "You okay?"
"I'm curious," Thor confesses, tentative. "What is your name? If you'll volunteer it."
This Thor, from what Mobius can remember, is not perfect, but he is a good, flawed, steady soul. He only means harm if there is a reason, and Mobius wasn't going to give him any reason during this brief crossing of paths, which would be their first and their last.
"Mobius." He divulges, keeping his hand at his side.
"Mobius." Thor repeats, thoughtful. "Have I heard that name before?"
"Who knows? You're a well travelled guy, right? A spaceman yourself. Could've encountered someone else out there rockin' the same name." Mobius gestures vaguely at the sky above them.
Thor hums, considering it. "Could have. "
"That's a cool space name, spaceman." Love interjects, decisively.
"Thanks. It is, I guess."
"How did you know Uncle Loki?" Love quizzes, and Möbius has a faint fear it's just the beginning of a lot of questions he can't answer, "Only Uncle Thor and Aunt Val talk to me about him. Was he really a snake like they say?"
Mobius peers at Thor, who smiles ruefully at him, "By Val she means King Valkyrie of New Asgard here on Earth, if that means anything to you. I think Val and I might have used the term snake slightly differently..."
"I'm guessing you told stories of his shapeshifting and the king's were, well..." Mobius whispers, shielding his mouth from Love. He leaves the end of the sentence hanging but Thor gets the gist.
"Val's not wrong, but..."
Mobius shrugs, blasé, "He was a mischievous scamp through and through." He sighs wistfully. "I'll always love that about him."
Thor blinks at that, reading into the fondness and honesty in which it was admitted. Mobius misses the look, his eyes instead raking over the memorial.
"That's a real swanky design." Mobius comments of the stonework, "Just a tad dramatic, very artistic. Suits him to a T."
"How did you come to know him?" Thor asks, considerably less tentative now, gears more obviously turning behind his eyes. "He never mentioned a Mobius."
"Ah," with a scratch of his jaw, Mobius hesitates. "It's a bit complicated. Space?"
"Space, of course. Sakaar-space?" Thor asks. Mobius smiles cryptically and Thor chuckles. "One of his secrets. I understand. He had many of those." A flash of disappointment crosses the thunder God's face and Mobius sees it, turns a blind eye.
With his hands back in his pockets, Mobius nods distractedly as he rocks on his feet, eyes faraway and his mind on a time spent outside of time.
The day is a gentle one, the wind weak, the sun reappearing and disappearing, shy behind the clouds with courageous bouts. It's rays are bright but cold, the autumnal air salty. Churning waves of the vast Atlantic sea break at the base of the cliff but the face is too tall for the spray to reach them.
The sounds of this living world should be a lullaby - no ticking clocks, no incessant clicking from fire-fingers punching out meeting minutes on typewriters and computers, no jarring screeches of fax machines, no intercom alarms or beeping monitors or rustling pages or the repetitive clicking of his former colleagues pens over and over and over. There's nothing here to get under his skin, yet for all the beauty of vast Earth on the timelines, all the colour in it's landscapes and climates and cultures, Mobius would instead rather be traversing the dim-lit halls and offices of the TVA all over again with Loki by his side. It wouldn't matter that the organisation took him from his timeline, erased it, made him forget his original home to the point he stands on Earth and doesn't even feel human. That wouldn't matter if his Loki was around, toeing his foot and knocking his knee under the table, stealing sips of Josta and grimacing at the sweetness, prattling on about how shot Mobius taste buds were to like the stuff and "the next time we're out on the timelines I'll get you a real drink."
They'd never gotten that drink.
Mobius' cheek is wet and he swipes it away.
Damn it. The TVA with Loki had been a fleeting moment of contentment. It had felt like home.
Love babbles to Loki's memorial as if she once knew him in person. She recounts how Thor found Loki's dagger pair floating among Asgard's rubble, how he wouldn't let her use them in battle because they were Loki's pride and joy and they were too over-sized for her, which she calls bullshit on in a much politer way, citing how Stormbreaker was nearly as tall as her and a very easy swing. She tells Loki she named the miniature daggers Thor got for her to use instead. They were called Pokey and Pointy and she was giving Pointy from the pair to Loki because she thought it would match his helmet.
616 Thor must talk much of 616 Loki to his kid. It was sweet.
"The worst brother," Thor croaks. "Those were my last words as he died trying to do the impossible. Rarely a day goes by where I don't think about them. Since, I've thought about other words of my own over the years, careless things I must've said that he carried with him into Valhalla."
Mobius keeps his eyes ahead. He can't tell this Thor if this Loki truly did carry those words with him, if he forgave him at the end the same way this Thor has obviously forgiven Loki, but B15 was right, it does feel better to talk about it, to share.
"... when I said it was his turn, I didn't mean it like this." He admits of his Loki, the tree of time, the sheer amount of selfless sacrifice Loki was capable off. It is all so hard to comprehend - what his Loki is now, where his Loki is now. It's hard to get a handle on his own grief when he isn't sure if his Loki is dead, alive, some secret third thing. It feels like a betrayal to mourn who might be alive just as much as it feels like a naivety to pretend he is.
Mobius has cared for no one like he did this. The pain is too hard to comprehend.
Shouldn't time heal all wounds?
Mobius feels Thor's confused eyes on the side of his face. He won't elaborate. He can't. The Loki Thor mourns is not the same one Mobius aches for.
Thankfully, Love saves him from any questions Thor wants to ask.
"-and I think I'll play Mario Kart later with Auntie Val. Uncle Thor doesn't like Mario Kart but that's just because he sucks at it. He's really, really bad. You'd like Mario Kart, Uncle Loki. It has a rainbow road like the rainbow bridge of Old Asgard."
"I let her win." Thor lies discreetly while Love talks on and Mobius snorts in mild amusement.
"Gotcha." Mobius smiles a smile promising to keep Thor's secret. An easy silence stretches out between them before Mobius decides he ought to finally excuse himself, give Thor his space to pay his tributes, say what he needs to say without some stranger eavesdropping. Mobius has a feeling Love talks so much to 616 Loki's memorial because Thor himself does. She seems like a conscientious kid.
Mobius understands how it soothes. As crazy as it makes him feel, he does it out on the timelines all the time, says little things he hopes Loki is still around to hear.
"I think it's time for me to split," he says, pulling his Tempad from his pocket to return to the sleepy life he'd made for himself that didn't feel one iota like his, "You two take care."
"Wait, Spaceman!" Love exclaims suddenly, bounds to her feet and over to them as she conjures a flower in her hand, which she presents for him to take. Mobius realises with a start that it matches exactly the flowers of the enchanted bouquet on Loki's grave, something akin marigolds but more alien, that Thor was somehow teaching Love the magic of Frigga and Loki.
"For you. So you and uncle Loki can be matching wherever you go." She says as if it isn't the most devastating thing to his ears.
Suddenly painfully choked up at the offering, Mobius is at a loss for words as he peers at Thor, catches the thunder God jabbing a knuckle at the corner of one of his eyes, making a poor show at pretending they weren't damp. Quickly realising it was fruitless, Thor smiles, just as exasperated with his emotions as Mobius was, and Mobius gingerly takes the proffered magic flower.
Happy as a clam, Love dusts of her hands in a job well done, adorably pleased as Mobius tucks it into the front pocket of his jacket.
"Thank you for this. Both of you," He says sincerely, "Thank you."
"And thank you, Mobius, friend of Loki." Thor returns, hand extended. "Safe travels."
"Watch out for the space pirates, Spaceman!" Love warns, adorably.
"Roger that," Mobius assures her with a small salute, "With both my eyes."
Mobius shakes Thor's hand. As he does so, there is a flash of a memory that either didn't happen or wasn't his. A slender, pale hand firmly holding his. His own voice and his Loki's, exchanging words they never shared at the interrogation table when the TVA first brought him in.
Didn't they?
'Okay, it looks like someone's got a hold of the set list. How are you doing this?'
'Mobius, I need your help.'
The grass, already green with plenty of rain and just enough sun, greens further.
'Well, I'm listening.'
'How do you choose who lives and who dies?'
The sun peaking between the clouds, it shimmers emerald for a moment as Mobius releases Thor's grip, thinks he's finally losing it. That is, until Thor looks up into the sky too, brow furrowed, as the sunlight ebbs back to sherbet yellow.
The onslaught of strange memories, wispy and vague, a conversation Mobius couldn't possibly forget, they don't stop - but sharpen. He is suddenly looking at himself through someone else's eyes, can only describe the confusing fog in his head to be tinted with a shimmering green despite his clear vision.
It's disorientating.
'Most purpose is more burden than glory... and trust me, you never want to be the guy who avoids it, because you can't live with the burden.'
'... How do you live with it?'
Thor seems to be trying to shrug off the strange, brief change in light as he steps back. Mobius' wide eyes track a loose, fresh Spring green leaf dancing across his vision, swirling in circles across the ground in impossibly patterns despite the wind ebbing. He stares, suddenly aware that all the trees around them were shades of yellow, orange, red and brown.
'And by hard, I mean impossible. You know, there's no comfort, you just choose your burden.'
'Thank you, Mobius.'
The leaf stops at the front paws of a black cat with slow blinking blue-green eyes, sitting in the shade of a tree. When Mobius spots it, it rises, climbs into the heart of the tree to stare at him through the thinning branches.
Was he losing it?
'I need your help, Mobius.' Those words, the pleading edge to them, they reverberate over and over in his head as he tosses a wave at his company and opens the time door, shaken, steps through with a racing heartbeat and O.B's name on the tip of his tongue.
Mobius knew Loki was a creative at heart, a passionate advocative for the arts. In the lead up to the loom's total collapse, he had found Loki's sudden temporal engineering expertise increasingly strange. Beyond that, there was the mannerisms, the rushing, which was absolutely needed, but something hadn't sat right with Mobius, even with the stakes taken into consideration.
Sure, Loki could be eccentric, but to that extent?
It haunted him that he had tried to sus Loki out gently and failed. It haunted him that he had taken Loki by the lapels to rattle whatever he was up to out of him, only to find stubborn eyes peering back into his, steady and calm, and Mobius words, resolve, crumbled as Loki had held up a placatingly finger, told Mobius to trust him, to "watch", Mobius' eyes searched and searched for the answer he needed, had fallen to those lips pressed thin. he had been so overcome with a sense of urgency, yet he had stamped it down.
If he'd of known it was the calm before the storm...
Orange swallowing him, different and yet familiar halls of the TVA greet him. Miraculously, first face he sees is Casey's welcome one.
"Mobius?" Casey asks, stupefied at Mobius' sudden appearance, time door sealing behind him, "Welcome back-"
"Hey Case, where's O.B?" He asks, quiet but stressed. "Sorry- didn't mean to cut ya off. Nice to see you again, bud." He attempts to slow himself down, get a handle on himself.
"It's okay." Casey sets down some dismantled tech he's carrying on the nearest cubby desk, "I'm not 100% certain. With the ongoing overhaul, O.B spends a lot of time running all over the place these days, but he always puts up a notice on where to find him down in his workshop." Casey gestures below, blatantly perplexed by Mobius' tense demeanour, and who could blame him?
Mobius claps his upper arm gently in thanks and hurries off with a fleeting but thoughtful, "Super! pencil me in for lunch if you're free, I'll swing by, and pass on a message to Bee that I'm back, would ya?"
"Yessir! See you!" Casey calls after him,
Mobius asks anyone and everyone on O.B's whereabouts as he winds through the halls, gets contradictory answers, has every intention of descending into the bowels of the TVA when the lift doors rattle open to reveal O.B in the flesh.
"O.B, just the guy I need!"
"Mobius, hello! You're back!" The engineer chirrups in delight as Mobius gestures for O.B to join him.
"Sure am! Haven't decided for how long, though. You busy?" He asks as OB, who is absolutely and always busy and who makes an exaggerated noncommittal gesture despite that fact, steps out of the lift and joins Mobius at his elbow with a spring in his step, "I need your expert opinion on something."
Mobius stops walking and O.B follows suit, blinking awaiting eyes at Mobius, his intrigue amplified by his lenses as Mobius struggles to word what he wants to ask.
"I... hm. I want to pick your brain about the possibility of a time slipping soul... brain? soul... ya know? instead of the whole body moving through time and creating a duplicate. Or maybe the body does but it slips into the time-space of the past self, overwrites it- and I feel like I'm definitely lacking some critical vocab here. Does any of that make any sense?"
O.B's smile is splitting. "It does not!" He admits jovially. Just before Mobius can deflate or flounder or both, he continues, "So let's make sense of it!"