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Mobius stood beneath a low, unblemished sky and watched himself.
The other him trudged across an unkempt but jewel-green lawn into the big, beautiful house with one child attached to his back like bookbag and another hooked playfully under his arm. The three of them went inside and disappeared, but their smiles stayed in Mobius’s eyes like sunspots.
Beside him, Sylvie said, “It’s weird that Loki’s not here, isn’t it?” Her voice jarring, like music from a passing car penetrating a funeral.
“Yeah.”
Sylvie watched the big, lived-in house for a moment longer then said, “Well, see you around, I guess.”
Mobius looked at her, tried to see something in her that felt familiar. Part of him wanted to reach out to her, to grasp on and not let her go. But at the very same time, he wanted viscerally for her to leave. It hurt that she was him, but not him. The same being, and yet so completely wrong. “Where you gonna go?” he asked.
Sylvie shrugged, the tight smile on her face speaking to a much larger one hiding underneath. Her eyes sparkled in a way Mobius had never seen before, as if she were facing a light at the end of the tunnel for the first time in her long existence. At this moment, they stood in the same place, side by side, but Sylvie seemed to glow in a sunlight that didn’t lay a single finger on Mobius. He couldn’t bring himself to be happy for her. “You?” she asked.
Mobius turned to face the house again. White siding, shutters, two car garage. Kids’ toys in the yard, light coming from the windows. He searched inside of himself for an urge to go inside, to explode the halls of his proper timeline like a museum, to see the faces of the children that should’ve been his… But there was none.
Even more startling, he felt no urge to go back to the TVA, either. He didn’t want to go…anywhere.
“I might just wait here for a little bit,” he said softly. “Let time pass.” He tried to tell if he could feel otherworldly, green eyes on him…but all he felt was the heat of the sun through his suit.
Sylvie squinted at the house, and for all her desire for a peaceful life, he knew she didn’t think much of it. The grass was probably too unkept, for her. Too many toys in the yard. The kids were too loud for her. Sylvie probably looked at this life and thought, Ugh, too hard.
And yeah, she’d be right. Mobius couldn’t remember ever being a father, or a jet-ski salesman, or any of the difficulties he must’ve faced on the Sacred Timeline, but he understood that they would’ve been hard. Sylvie didn’t see much beauty in the hard thing in life.
She squeezed his shoulder, then was gone. The Time Door closed behind her, and Mobius sighed. He wasn’t sure if it was a sigh of relief or sorrow. Another Loki gone. Forever.
He slipped his hands into his pockets and stayed where he was. Just letting the time pass.
It passed slowly. And that, in itself, was a marvel to Mobius, who never spent more than an hour or two outside the TVA at one time. The air grew slightly colder on his cheeks and fingers as the shadows shifted on the house and on the trees, and Mobius felt his legs grow weary from standing for hours. He watched the shadows stretch across the quaint little neighborhood and admired the pools of orange light that interrupted them when the street lights flickered to life.
Mobius got hungry. Thirsty. Tired. Not entirely new sensations but still unfamiliar ones; time was passing for his body, as well as for the rest of the world. Eating and sleeping at the TVA were pass times, hobbies, and luxuries. Not necessary, but pleasurable. He looked around, found a nice-looking old oak tree, and went and sat beneath it to watch the world turn dark-blue and quiet, to watch the stars come out. He fancied that one of them might be Asgard – though he knew it wasn’t.
Mobius was nearly asleep when someone began crunching through the grass, coming toward him. He jolted awake and picked himself up with a grunt, slow as the old man he appeared to be, and brushed himself off. “Oof, look at the time,” he said, forcing brightness into his voice. “I musta’ dozed off! Ha-ha.”
The lie was for the benefit of whoever was coming over to him. Probably a cop or neighborhood watchperson, here to ask what a strange man was doing sleeping outside under a tree. Was he homeless? Was he casing that house to rob it? Then Mobius remembered what he looked like and thought, Maybe not so strange, after all.
When he turned to face the newcomer, he had a mouthful of lies even the God of Mischief would be proud of. Clean forgot my keys at work and locked myself out of the house! What? Nah, the kids are sleeping over at a friend’s house. No, no, I’m okay. I already called a locksmith, just waiting for her to show up! I’ll forget my head next!
But when he saw Loki, resplendent in flowing green robes and shining gold horns, standing before him—just out of reach—every single unspoken word in his throat dried up and turned to dust, which crumbled down into his throat and choked him.
Mobius made a short, strangled sound. His eyes stung and filled with water.
Loki smiled, but it was a pinched, maybe slightly pained smile. “Mobius,” he greeted, his breath low and soft as dry leaves rustling.
Mobius’s heart leapt into his skull; his ears pounded with blood as he stumbled toward him.
He tripped, nearly fell. His legs had almost fallen asleep, he realized, and the blood rushed back into them with a terrible, buzzing tingle as he staggered over the remaining two feet of grass and tree roots toward Loki.
“Mobius, hang on. Wait, don’t—”
Mobius didn’t hear the words over the rushing in his head. He was on the edge of sobbing with joy as he threw his arms around Loki…then promptly hit the dirt as his body phased right through him.
“I’m sorry,” Loki whispered. “Mobius, I—I’m not really here. This is a projection.”
Mobius leaned his forehead into the dirt and squeezed his eyes shut. Pain was shooting up and down both arms and through his hip; nothing was broken, but he’d probably get some stellar bruises out of this… They felt like nothing, though, like bee stings, compared to the lurch that went through his chest at Loki’s words. “Yeah, I figured that out,” he rasped. Then, with a grunt, he pushed himself up.
He was almost afraid to turn around. What if Loki wasn’t really there at all? What if he was a dream?
He was there, though. When Mobius glanced back, there he was. But now, Loki was dressed in his brown TVA suit and tie.
“Are you all right?” Loki asked, the barest hint of a smile in his voice, if not on his face.
“I’ll live,” Mobius said, rubbing his back. Lower, he added, “Thanks to you.”
Loki slid his hands into his pockets. “I’m glad,” he said. He sighed heavily and put his head down, for a moment. “I’m so glad.” The pain and bone-deep exhaustion in his voice was a shock.
Mobius stepped toward him. “What about you?” he whispered urgently. “Are you okay? Where—where did you go, Loki? You went through that slit in time and just—” Disappeared. “I thought you’d…I don’t know, melted into time itself or something. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. Where are you? How can we get to you? How can we get you out?” How can we get you back?
Loki lifted his head and gave him a grim smile. “I did,” he said.
“Did—did what?” Mobius stammered. He blinked and Loki looked different again. This time, he was wearing armor. Green and gold. The horns were back. He looked…younger, somehow, even though his face hadn’t changed. Loki from New York, he realized vaguely.
What was happening? Why did he keep changing?
“Melted into time,” Loki explained. “Although, I suppose saying I ‘became one with time’ is probably more accurate. And less…candle-esque.” He tried for a smile again, and this time, he damn near succeeded.
Mobius bit back the urge to cry. Swallowed it down. He didn’t want to cry in front of Loki, not when he’d sacrificed himself to save all of them. All of existence. Trillions of lives. Mobius should be throwing himself at Loki’s feet in gratitude. He didn’t want to seem ungrateful.
“What is it like?” Mobius said quietly, not trusting himself to speak any louder. “Where you are?”
Loki paused and looked around, at the trees, at the road, the nice houses, and wide lawns. “It’s…loud,” he admitted, that strained look returning to his face.
“Show me,” Mobius whispered, stepping even closer. This close, he should be able to feel the heat coming off Loki’s body. He should be able to feel him, to smell his skin and the leather of his armor. But this was a projection, an illusion, and it had none of those things.
Mobius’s hands itched to feel him, real and solid under his fingers.
Loki looked at him with alarm. “Mobius, no,” he said softly.
“Yes. I want to see.”
“It won’t make you feel any better.”
Mobius’s stomach twisted. “It’s that bad?”
“No, it isn’t bad. There’s nothing bad here, at all. It’s just…a lot. All of time, all at once. It’s…chaotic. It’s loud, and overwhelming, and probably frightening to someone who’s not…part of it.” Loki’s voice told Mobius clearly that even being part of it didn’t stop it from being frightening.
“Show me,” Mobius repeated sternly. Stubbornly.
Loki grimaced – but obeyed.
Suddenly, Mobius was standing in Hell.
There was nothing around him but black nothingness and screaming wind so powerful it blew the air from his lungs. As he staggered, struggling to breathe, things raced past him in the dark. Snakes, he thought at first, desperately throwing his hands out to knock them away. But his hands went through the things, and remembered that he was a projection now too, as formless and unreal as the Loki that stood before him in the little neighborhood. And anyway, they weren’t snakes, they were branches. Braids of time that flashed by faster than his eye could follow, and occasionally pulsed with eerie, green light.
“LOKI?!” he tried to scream, but his voice was taken by the wind. Not wind, he realized with a flash of terror. Time.
He spun, disoriented, and his eyes fell on the only solid thing in this whole hellish place. It was a chair. A throne, he supposed. It was gold, but though it might have been opulent and rich on Earth, here it felt terrifying like everything else. Loki was seated on it, fistfuls of the speeding braids clenched in his hands. He was gritting his teeth, visibly fighting with every ounce of his power to control the wild branches as they tried pulling in millions of different directions, threatening to rip Loki to pieces.
Just as quickly as the image appeared, it disappeared. Mobius was back on the timeline, standing outside his Variant’s house, breathing calm night air and facing a Loki who now wore the heavy manacle and chains that he wore when presented to Odin after his arrest on Earth.
It was such a fitting sight, and the experience he’d just had was so disturbing, that Mobius sobbed outwardly. He had hardly any breath in his lungs, and his legs shook like he might collapse. He was glad that he didn’t.
“As I said,” Loki murmured. “Frightening for the unprepared. I shouldn’t have shown you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t,” Mobius choked. He pressed his hands into his eyes, dug them in to stop the tears. “Don’t you ever apologize for anything, ever again. Not after what you—what you did for us.” He wasn’t succeeding at keeping the tears at bay.
Loki stepped toward Mobius with a hand out in reassurance. “It’s really not so bad.”
Mobius gave him a miserable look. “Don’t lie to me, Loki. Not to me. I always know.”
Loki’s paused his steps, a sad smile touching his lips. “Yes, I suppose you do.”
Mobius reached for him…but his hand passed through Loki’s arm and curled around only empty air. He gave a mournful whimper. “I want to touch you,” he said.
Loki’s jaw tightened as he, too, fought the urge to sob. “I do, too.”
Mobius moved closer to the projection and put his head down, closing his eyes so he could pretend this was real. “Bring me back,” he said. “One more time. Just for a moment. Just so I can—”
“No, Mobius.” Loki’s voice was so gentle it hurt.
“Please.”
“No…”
“Loki, please.”
“I can’t, Mobius. You’ll die. You’re not meant to be here.”
“Neither are you.”
Loki shut his eyes. He turned his face and, for a moment, appeared to be thinking about leaving. Panic coursed through Mobius, and he jerked forward, reflexively reaching for, and again failing to touch him. This time, the noise Mobius made was more frustration, more anger. He bent down and grabbed the first thing he could find—a fist-sized rock—picked it up and hurled it as hard as he could at his perfect, dreamy Timeline house.
The rock sailed through the air before hitting the parked jet-ski pulled halfway out of the two-car garage with a great SMASH. The vehicle’s windshield shattered.
Mobius breathed hard and stared, with some backwards satisfaction, at the damage he’d caused. His vision narrowed to it. Before he knew what he was doing, he was stalked toward the garage, intending to go inside, find the heaviest tool he could lift, and use it to smash the vehicle to pieces. It would feel like revenge (on who?), like vindication, like a suitable self-punishment.
Before he could get two steps, however, Loki’s hand closed around his wrist.
Startled, Mobius jumped and stared at the fingers wrapped around his arm. Solid and real. Then, in the time it took him to lift his eyes to the god’s face, he was back.
Darkness had swallowed him, half-invisible branches of time lashed in the shadows, and the wind stole the air from his chest. But Loki was there too, all emerald green and curving gold, closer than he had been before, and he was half-standing from his morbid throne, one arm thrown out and hanging onto Mobius. Really touching him. He was really here.
The braids of time still threatened to draw and quarter Loki, but he wasn’t straining as hard as before. His focus was split now, but the strands stayed close, even when he dared to let some of them go in order to grab Mobius. To stop him from hurting himself that way. They simply coiled around him of their own free will, truly like glowing green serpents around his neck.
Loki marveled at this new discovery, his eyes alight with that intelligent, questioning fire Mobius loved so much. As Mobius watched, he slowly released his other fistful of branches. They swirled, briefly, alarmingly, out of his reach like kites taken by the wind… Then slowly returned to him, one at a time, swirling around him, and above him, and below him. Like this, Loki looked like a great, green star in the void of infinity. And when he turned and looked into Mobius’s eyes, Mobius knew—abruptly, like the sudden start of a new universe—why his name meant infinite loop. He would do this all again—Renslayer’s betrayal, Sylvie’s rage, the Loom’s destruction, all of it—and again, and again, and again—if it only meant he would get to end up here, outside of time itself, held in Loki’s grasp, for a few more seconds.
“I don’t know…what this means,” Loki said, his voice echoing. The powerful wind blew his hair and cloak, nearly knocking them both down. They managed to keep their footing by clinging to each other. Fists in each other’s clothes, heads bent together against the storm of time.
When their mouths closed together, it still felt like they were shielding each other from a hurricane. Mobius squeezed Loki like he was afraid the wind would take him, gathering fistfuls of cape, and leather, and long hair, and Loki cradled Mobius’s face and kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him like he was trying to breathe for him.
“I don’t know what this means,” Loki repeated between kisses. “I can’t leave or it all comes undone. If I let go, it all unravels.”
Mobius wanted to say, You already let go and look – time is still flowing. But he didn’t have the air to speak. In fact, he was feeling dangerously breathless. His lungs burned, and his vision was dark on the edges. Loki saw this, and Mobius saw him see it and the pain that followed.
Mobius couldn’t stay here or he’d die.
And Loki couldn’t leave, or they would all die.
In the end, nothing had changed. Nothing except—
“Breathe, Mobius. Breathe. It’s all right.”
They were back on Earth. Mobius felt solid ground under his feet, and he staggered, gasping and choking as he fought to get air into his lungs. He knew his face must’ve been bright red, maybe even purple. He staggered, sat down heavily in the grass, and panted.
Loki stood still and watched him. He was a projection again, not really there. “Are you all right?”
Mobius touched his mouth. It was still damp and swollen from Loki’s lips. He wiped his eyes. “I’d be better if you were here.”
“I can’t.”
“What was it you said to me? You’ll never know if you don’t try?”
Loki made a small sound that might’ve been a laugh.
Mobius looked up at him. Loki was wearing a beige prison jumpsuit. He had a time collar around his neck. His hair was a mess, and he looked…lost. “I’m not gonna stop,” Mobius said lowly, frowning at him. “If you think I’m gonna leave you there, if you think any of us would leave you there…” He shook his head. “You’re not alone anymore, Loki. You hear me? You do not deserve to be alone. And I’m not gonna stop until I find a way to bring you home.”
Loki took a shaky breath. He swallowed. “I don’t know if that’s possible.”
But Mobius was unshaken. “I’ll make it my life’s work,” he vowed, almost angrily.
“You already have,” Loki whispered.
It was a shock. A jolt to the system.
Still, Mobius was firm. “You changed that,” he said. “You destroyed the Loom, untied the branches. There’s no telling what’ll happen now. You gave us free will, Loki, and I intend to use mine to get you home. Understand?”
Loki’s eyes were full of water. The cords of his neck stood out, but he nodded. “I may be a god,” he whispered. “But I’m not so full of myself as to think that I could stop you from trying.”
Mobius stood and brushed the grass off his trousers. He faced the projection, and said, “I don’t suppose…as the God of Time, you could…point me in the right direction?”
Loki’s mouth stumbled into a smile. He gave a wet laugh. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t see it. That story is still being written.”
Mobius considered that, then nodded. He reached into his pocket, took out his tempad, and opened a Time Door. “Damn right, it is,” he said, then he turned and walked in the TVA with sparks in his eyes. He was hunting a Loki again, after all. That meant he would need his team.