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The inn is a rather far cry from the house that is the nicest on the block, but it seems clean and Mobius has seen much worse conditions, so he decides that he’ll make do.
Before this, he’s never been on earth for lengthy periods of time all at once. He knew that if he stayed too long, he would eventually feel exhaustion, hunger—all of the things that didn’t exist within the timelessness of the TVA.
Now, he sets his bag of belongings onto the inn’s bed. There’s a few files within: one of his variant and his children, and one more of Loki. It’s an old one, from back when Loki had first been brought in and Mobius had kept the file just-because, even though he’d already memorized it from front to back.
Not very useful, really. Mobius has spent so long studying Loki that no file in the TVA is going to offer him new information that he doesn’t already know. Besides, it seems that he didn’t understand Loki as well as he thought in the end, because Loki had left just like that. Without an explanation. Without a goodbye.
There is something missing, Mobius knows there has to be, but he doesn’t know what. And Loki is no longer here to tell him.
He’s not gone. If Mobius closes his eyes, he can almost feel Loki still here, because he is, in a way. The timelines clutched in the heart of his palms, each branch a brilliant, emerald green. He can hear the whisper of his laugh in gusts of wind, and sometimes, in his periphery, he swears he can see the shadow of something that wasn’t there before. In everywhere, in everything, just not—here.
Or it could be his mind playing tricks on him. Either way, it’s not the same as before: Loki, sitting across Mobius’ desk in the TVA, or in the Automat, his stupidly long legs bumping against Mobius’ because he always sits in that stretched-out way of his. The sound of the fork scraping against the plate; Loki just won’t eat his damn pie.
Figures. Mobius had tried a pie shop just down the street and it had tasted much better than the key lime served at the TVA.
He looks at his files. The pinned picture of Loki.
Mobius sighs. He sets his files aside on the bedside table, lies down on the too-soft mattress, turns off the light, and closes his eyes.
***
He sits across Loki in the Time Theatre.
Ah. Mobius remembers this. He must be dreaming.
This Loki had been predictable. He was everything that was written in his file; everything Mobius studied. Each and every move Loki made followed a pattern of behavioral traits that Mobius could guess from a mile away.
“You wanna be king?” he asks.
“I don’t want to be king, I was born to be,” Loki replies. He tilts his chin up like so, arms folded across his chest. Rather like a petulant child, Mobius had thought back then, although it brings an ache to his chest to revisit this now. Beneath the bravado and the quicksilver words is uncertainty and wariness. Loki masks his fear better than most, but he’s not immune to it either.
“I know, but king of what, exactly?” Mobius shoots back. “Okay, so, let’s get into it. The man who would be king—”
Loki shifts forward. His expression changes. In a split second, there is nothing haughty or disdainful in his eyes. His shoulders slope from the tense line.
“Mobius, stop,” he says.
Mobius wants to, because this isn’t how their first meeting went. He remembers it too well, and besides, Loki says his name with deep familiarity, like he does so often these days. He knows immediately, intuitively, that this isn’t the Loki who had just arrived at the TVA. This is his Loki, the untrustworthy god Mobius has spent much of his life studying, yet ended up trusting with his life.
But he isn’t in control of his dream self, it seems, because he leans forward instead and says, “Stop? We just started. We gotta keep going.”
Loki shakes his head. He flexes his hands, no longer crossed, and splays them flat against the table. “No, no, no,” he says. “I know what this is. You want to know what makes Loki tick?”
“Yes,” he replies, but no, he doesn’t need to know, he wants to ask Loki what’s wrong, why this is different from his memories, why he’s really here. There’s sorrow etched into the line of Loki’s mouth, his eyes searching, and yet Mobius keeps on answering him with these callous responses.
“You want to know why I do what I do?” Loki continues. “Why I have so much range?”
“Yeah.”
Loki leans back in the chair. “You’re gonna make notes,” he says. He’s smiling, but it isn’t a harsh smile. Just a little bit resigned. “And then you’re going to click that button on that machine, and then you’re going to play out scenes from my whole life—how it’s meant to be, past, present and future.” He pauses. “Burdened with glorious purpose. My life was a waste of time.”
“Okay, looks like someone got ahold of the setlist,” Mobius responds. He’s saying all the things he doesn’t want to say, and he can’t ask a single thing he wants. “How are you doing this?”
“Mobius,” Loki says, his voice softening around the edges of Mobius’ name. “I need your help.”
Mobius wants to reach across the table, take the bend of Loki’s arm into his hands, and close this polite distance between them. The polite distance of strangers. He hates to think that right now, Loki is clearly the stranger to him, while Loki looks at him with age-old familiarity. If only, if only, if only, Mobius thinks—if only he could just reach out.
Instead he settles back in his chair; further, not closer. “Well, I’m listening.”
Loki inhales softly, then exhales, even quieter. “How do you choose who lives and who dies?”
The conversation continues on. It feels as though Mobius is watching the world from someone else’s eyes. He tells Loki about the mission he undertook as a hunter—the last mission he had undertaken, when he had looked at the eight year old boy and hadn’t been able to prune him because he had simply looked so young and so scared.
It’s a jarring thing to witness and talk about. Back when he had first met Loki, Mobius had been unaware of the TVA’s deception. He had obeyed orders because he had always been told to do so; he’d accepted his place as a cog in the wheel that turned the grander scheme of things. But he understands now: the preciousness of the lives on each timeline, the importance of choice, things that Loki had shown him, all because this Loki had been too stubborn and clever to live in the path that was always preordained for him.
“Most purpose is more glory than burden,” he tells Loki instead. “And trust me, you never wanna be the guy who avoids it because you can’t live with the burden.”
Loki’s lips thin into a line. A miniscule action, but Mobius has learned all of his little tells from decades upon centuries of studying his life. He swallows. Grief swims in his eyes, just short of spilling from his waterline. The Loki from the very beginning would have averted his gaze, hiding this sign of what he would deem weakness. And yet he never looks away from Mobius.
“How do you live with it?” Loki finally asks.
Mobius thinks of his guilt, buried behind paperwork, field missions, the reassurance that he was following the TVA’s righteous and noble mission. He thinks of the hunters that had gotten killed because of his negligence to act, but also of the frightened little boy and his entire timeline that had been destroyed.
“Scar tissue,” he replies quietly.
Another exhale permeates the silence. Loki breaks eye contact. “What happened to your partner? The Hunter who pruned the boy you couldn’t?”
“Oh, things worked out fine for her,” Mobius says. “She actually became a judge. You know, she’s the reason you’re here today instead of dust in a TVA vent.”
Realization, underscored by a hint of tired amusement. “Renslayer.”
“She knew the hard thing to do was the thing that had to be done,” Mobius continues, “and by hard, I mean impossible. There’s no comfort, Loki. You just choose your burden.”
Loki’s eyes close for a brief moment. Even though these are words from a dream, Mobius can’t help the thrum of foreboding dread that settles in his body. Seeing Loki like this, speaking to him—it gives life to the aching hollowness in his chest that has taken growth the moment he watched Loki walk through the blast doors, and he can’t help but feel as though he’s somehow responsible for it.
There’s no comfort, Loki. Had there ever been, for him?
But in response, Loki only nods. His eyes are wet. Mobius wonders how his own aren’t.
“Thank you, Mobius,” he says. He stands up from the chair and offers his hand.
Mobius mirrors his actions. Loki’s fingers wrap around his own in a tight grasp, as if he can’t quite bear to let go. Mobius doesn’t think he can either.
He wants to pull him closer, ask him what’s wrong, tell him these words Mobius just spoke are no longer true. That Loki doesn’t have to choose his burden, because he’s had so many throughout the lifetimes he’s lived.
Instead, the dream begins to fade around him. The last thing Mobius remembers is the open sincerity on Loki’s face, painful in its honesty.
He wakes up in the dark room of the inn, alone.
***
Mobius returns to the pie shop down the street the next morning and orders a slice of key lime. He almost orders a second slice but ultimately decides against it. He can’t finish both and Loki isn’t here to pretend he likes sweets while he scrapes around his untouched plate with a spork.
So he eats his pie with no one and sits across from no one and thinks about the way Loki’s legs would always bump against him when they shared a table and a meal at the Automat.
Mobius spends what he hopes is a reasonable amount of time in the pie store until he can no longer justify occupying a seat with an empty plate. Right before Mobius is about to leave, he feels something bump against his knees.
For a brief, hopeful moment, he lifts his eyes to the chair across from his.
But it’s empty, just like it had been a moment before. Mobius chastises himself. Then he goes and gives the plate back to the woman behind the counter.
***
He returns to the inn in the afternoon with nowhere else to go. The TemPad is in Mobius’ pocket and it means that technically, he can go anywhere, anytime, and yet he can’t bring himself to leave this small, suburban neighborhood even though he doesn’t belong. It’s the greatest irony: the variant of himself fits in like a glove, and yet Mobius looks at himself and has never felt more out of place.
At the inn, he takes out his files again and reads them over and over, until he has learned every detail of his counterpart’s life—a life that perhaps was once his.
It’s so… simple. Never look, never know. Now that he knows, what the hell is he supposed to do with the information?
In his periphery, the air shimmers green for a moment. Mobius turns around immediately, instinctively searching for Loki’s familiar figure.
Empty. He is the only one in the inn. Some cruel trick of the mind, then.
“Great,” he says aloud to himself because this silence is getting too heavy, but also because maybe, maybe, someone will answer. “Now I’m seeing things.”
Perhaps it’s better he doesn’t stay alone at the inn for the rest of the night, or he really might start hallucinating much worse. Grabbing his coat, Mobius heads out again.
***
Mobius is dreaming again.
He’s standing in front of his house—or, more accurately, the house of his variant. The nicest house on the block. The driveway is covered with children’s toys and the air smells like burning but at the same time it looks like a home, something he has never had in the TVA. Or at least not until Loki.
When he glances down, he’s holding a handful of toys, wearing an unfamiliar outfit, and—
“Hello.”
Mobius turns around. Loki is standing on the other side of the driveway, squinting in the bright afternoon sun, wearing the brown suit Mobius had given him.
“Hey,” he responds. “Oh, you were at the shop earlier.”
“That’s right,” Loki says. He smiles, expression brightening, and for a second Mobius forgets that this is a nonsensical dream and takes in the way Loki’s features soften around his smile.
“You live around here?” he asks. “Or… did you follow me home?”
“Oh, no, no,” Loki says. He laughs, but there’s a touch of chagrin to it that is so unlike him. Mobius is accustomed to his quicksilver words and witty remarks. “No, I was… I was actually just on my way to—” He makes a vague pointing gesture, then clasps his hands and chuckles again. The stuttering and stumbling is stupidly endearing. “—to the, uh, and I just happened to see you so I just… I just thought I’d come by and say that I’m sorry I couldn’t stick around back there. I was—I was in a bit of a time crunch.”
Mobius wonders how he managed to conjure this Loki up in his dream.
“Yeah,” he agrees slowly. “You were looking for ATVs.”
Loki winces. “The TVA,” he says.
“Yeah.” Mobius sounds as if he’s given up on correcting Loki even though the thought of Loki looking for ATVs is absurd. “You know, are you still in the market? Because I’ve got something I wanna show you. Come here.”
With a clatter, he drops his armful of toys and turns towards the garage. A few moments later, the doors are rolling open, Loki standing right next to him as they look at the two jet skis parked neatly in the garage.
If he had any control, Mobius would’ve laughed at this entire scenario. It is so insane. In what universe was Loki Laufeyson standing in the garage of Mobius’ jet ski salesman variant, all while Mobius tried to sell him one?
“Now, ordinarily, I wouldn’t dream of parting with these beauties,” he continues, apparently absolutely oblivious to the sheer inanity of this whole situation. “But the wife is long gone and I can’t ride two of them. Plus, the boys are probably gonna need braces and math tutors and God knows what else.”
Loki points at a jet ski. “A beautiful union of form and function,” he says slowly, and Mobius is going to lose his goddamn mind.
“Oh, that’s lovely, yeah,” he agrees, as if he hadn’t been the one to tell Loki that in the first place, so long ago. “Yeah, they really are and it breaks my heart, but what are you going to do?” He pauses. “Hey, you want a drink? Can I get you a beer?”
“No, no, no, I’m fine.” Ever-polite, Loki adds, “Thank you. I’m afraid I’m not here to buy a jet ski.”
He tilts his head. “What are you here for?”
“Listen,” Loki says. He takes a small step closer, eyes never leaving Mobius’. “I’m going to tell you something that’s very hard to understand, Mobius.”
Mobius. His heart skips a beat or five at his name, and instead of watching the scene passively play out by itself, Mobius struggles to wrestle just a bit of control from his dream. It’s me, I know you, tell me why you’re here.
He opens his mouth, Loki’s name at the tip of his tongue.
Right before he can finally say it, the sunny afternoon melts away in the blink of an eye. Mobius snaps awake with a sharp inhale, staring up at the ceiling of a dimly lit inn room. “Loki,” he says.
He holds his breath for a few moments more, if only to hold onto the exact cadence and tone of Loki’s voice when he had said Mobius’ name.
No one answers.
***
When the old woman who works at the pie shop recognizes Mobius the third time he visits, asking him if he’s taken a midday break from the jet ski store, he knows he’s stayed here for too long.
Still, he gets one last slice of pie. Key lime, for old time’s sake.
The pie is good, but Mobius can’t work up much of an appetite, which is quite frankly ridiculous because at the TVA, it always felt like he didn’t have enough tokens for pie. He scrapes his fork around the plate, and although it won’t do anybody any good, he wonders where Loki is and how he’s feeling. If he’s lonely. If he misses Mobius in the same, aching way Mobius misses him. It’s an absurd thought to entertain, because Mobius has always needed Loki more than Loki needed him.
It’s weird with Loki gone, isn’t it? Sylvie had asked him.
Weird doesn’t even begin to cover it. This is a perpetual wrongness, the hollow absence of a once-was, and Mobius can’t imagine how anything can fill it. Much less the passage of time. He hadn’t realized just how lonely the world could be until Loki left.
Something bumps against his knee. The leg of the table, probably. It keeps wobbling.
“This one’s a lot less radioactively green,” a too-familiar voice says.
Mobius lifts his gaze so fast he almost gives himself whiplash. Sitting on the chair across from him, head tilted, is Loki. He’s dressed in the same outfit as when Mobius had last seen him: a dark, moss-green cape, draped around his shoulders. There’s faint linings of golden thread at the edges, but it’s a much more modest display compared to how he used to dress himself back when he was the prince of Asgard. No armor in sight, either. Even the horned helmet is a darker shade.
“Loki,” he breathes, and Mobius misses even the way Loki’s name fits in his mouth, he misses this, misses him. His voice catches in his throat in a way that would’ve been otherwise embarrassing, but it matters very little right now.
Loki tilts his head the other way and smiles. It’s reminiscent of the way he’d done so when they were in the Automat, after Mobius had said, Well, you’re the God of Mischief, aren’t you?
Mobius blinks, a thousand words welling up. How are you here? Why are you here? How are you doing?
When he opens his eyes again just a split second later, here’s no one sitting on the chair across from him.
For a long few seconds, he stares at the space in front of him, wondering if he’s truly, genuinely, gone insane.
Loki does not reappear, and to Mobius’ credit and a rather astonishing display of self control, he doesn’t repeat Loki’s aloud again in hopes of summoning him back.
Instead, Mobius returns to his pie. He prods it with his fork a couple of times.
It is a lot less radioactively green. “Okay, okay, I’ll give that one to you,” he says to no one in particular. “Hallucination or not.”
***
Packing up is almost depressing by how quick and easy it is. Mobius stares at his TemPad for a few moments and wonders where he should go next.
Perhaps he should return to the TVA. Never look, never known—now he’s looked, now he knows. And he also knows he can’t stay.
But he can’t shrug off the feeling that he needs to stay on the timeline, any timeline. The TVA exists outside of time. If just for a sliver of hope, Mobius wants to stay somewhere that Loki will be able to see him. Wait, for a little while longer.
He thinks back to that instance in the pie store, where he had seen Loki sitting across from him so clearly, even if it had been no longer than a split second. It looked too real to be a trick. Mobius can still hear Loki’s words echoed back to him, loud and clear.
It felt real. But was it? If X-5 were still here, he’d probably raise the suggestion of introducing Mobius to that therapist he brought up to Loki.
Then again, considering the fact that Loki had torn apart the Temporal Loom and promptly disappeared with all the timelines in tow without so much as an explanation, maybe entertaining the notion the possibility isn’t too out of the world.
Mobius sighs and sits back down on the bed. He feels so out of his depth these days. He misses how things used to be. He misses the days at the TVA when the entire balance of the multiverse was at stake and yet—and yet.
He isn’t sure how he worked so tirelessly all those ages before Loki, because now Mobius can barely bear the TVA without his presence.
Mobius turns to fix his gaze at the tree outside his inn window. “If you can hear this,” he says, “then why don’t you start by sticking around long enough so we can discuss my pie choices instead of giving me one-sided criticism?”
He feels a bit foolish immediately after. But also a little vindicated, too.
***
Mobius is back in the house that’s not his, in the life that belongs to a stranger.
Except this time, he’s looking at it from a distance. There’s a hand on his back and another on his arm, Loki’s careful grip steadying him as he steps through the familiar orange flicker of a time door. To his surprise, O.B. stands a few paces behind him, holding what looks like a TemPad, albeit a couple times larger than its regular size. He’s not wearing his typical mechanic’s uniform: instead, a light brown jacket and brown pants. It’s a strange sight.
“How…” he starts, looking at the time door, then back at Loki. “How did you…”
Loki lifts his hands, like he’s about to reach for Mobius but changes his mind halfway. “Reality isn’t what you think it is,” he says. The words are spoken carefully. “And this isn’t the life of the man I know.”
Mobius shakes his head. “I don’t know who you know. I don’t understand.”
“I know you from a place called—”
“No, you don’t.”
“—the Time Variance Authority.”
His dream self shakes his head again in disbelief, breaking eye contact. Mobius feels as if his consciousness is bubbling beneath a cage, begging to be let out, begging to speak up and reach for Loki. Instead he remains trapped.
“You saved my life when I first arrived,” Loki continues resolutely. The words are firm, but there’s a vulnerability to them, a carefulness in the way they’re delivered. Mobius knows, better than anyone, that Loki isn’t one to bare himself open so easily. “You saw something in me that I hadn’t seen in myself.”
Mobius isn’t sure if he wants to laugh or cry or if he’s going to end up doing a mix of both. What an egotistical dream, he thinks, for his brain to conjure up Loki saying all these words to him. Yet he can’t help the way his heart skips a beat at the way Loki looks at him—so sincere and fond, as if Mobius is the only thing that matters to him.
“Are you really my friend?” he asks, barely over a whisper.
“I am,” Loki promises, equally soft.
He opens his mouth to respond, to affirm, anything. Before he can, the dream flickers and Mobius is opening his eyes once more to the waking world.
He still hears the echo of Loki’s words in the back of his mind, terrifying and wonderful all at once.
“Sweet-talker,” Mobius grumbles, and he can almost hear the way Loki laughs.
***
The second time Loki appears to him, Mobius is browsing the grocery aisles of Roxxcart, a year before the apocalypse.
He isn’t sure what brought it on, but the sudden urge had struck him to visit all the places he and Loki had once been. So he’d chosen this, just for a little laugh about how it was the first and last place Loki betrayed him.
Mobius is the only one in the candy aisle when he hears, “Kablooie, really?”
This time, Mobius doesn’t even have to turn far—Loki is right in his field of vision, decked in the moss-green cape and long horns curling from his new helmet.
Mobius stares at him for a good couple of seconds. He would have pinched himself if he remembered how it was to move any of his limbs. Then, stupidly, he blurts, “I think that’s your longest set of horns yet.”
Loki looks surprised for a brief moment, and then his lips curve into a smile. “I’m flattered that you noticed,” he says.
Then it hits Mobius that Loki is here and Mobius is speaking to him and Loki is responding. All the disbelief, the denial, all those days of missing him and wondering and not receiving an answer—all of a sudden, they’re pushed to the very back of Mobius’ mind. Loki is here and nothing else matters.
“How—” He gestures at Loki. “How are you doing this? Are you real?”
“I’m here and talking to you, if that’s what you’re asking,” Loki replies. “And the pie shop.” He raises his hands. “Not a hallucination.”
“The pie shop,” Mobius agrees. “You know, the TVA’s pie might have been radioactively green, but it was still a good pick-me-up. It’s a real pity you didn’t appreciate it.”
Loki turns his chin up in a look of haughty distaste. “It was like eating a spoonful of sugar,” he says. “If I hadn’t been a god, that much sugar would have made me sick. Did it not make you sick?”
“I think these are objectively worse,” Mobius says. He picks up a packet of Kablooie and offers it to Loki. “Maybe you’d like it, huh?”
Loki eyes the candy as though it had personally offended him, and Mobius wants to laugh at how familiar this is, how easily they had settled back into old habits. It’s as though every painful stretch of waiting finally has meaning, just for this one moment in time.
There’s a thousand more things he needs to ask Loki, and even more they need to talk about. Before Mobius can say any of it, Loki’s form flickers, more of a ghostly apparition than flesh and blood.
“Loki?” he asks.
Loki’s gaze flickers over him briefly. He offers a small smile before he’s gone, as if he had never been there in the first place.
Mobius stands motionless in the middle of the candy aisle, still holding the Kablooie in his hands, feeling rather dumbstruck now that Loki’s gone and the facts have time to settle in. Disbelief wars with a mixture of joy and giddy relief. Above all, he can’t believe the first real conversation he’s finally had again with Loki was about pie and candy and quite literally nothing else.
Something like a laugh escapes him. After Mobius has finally convinced himself that Loki isn’t going to reappear in the aisle again, he goes to the cashier to check out his packet of Kablooie.
***
The hotel accommodations in 2049 are considerably better than the inn in 2022 suburban Ohio. Mobius thinks that he ought to visit the future more often.
For one, the sofa in the corner is much more comfortable. The bed doesn’t creak every time he wants to change positions, and the blankets actually smell quite clean. Mobius is unpacking his little bag of belongings when he catches the flicker of green in his periphery again.
This time, he isn’t as unprepared, even though Loki’s presence comes as a shock. “Jesus,” he manages, turning around to face him fully. “You gotta start appearing in front of me instead of behind me.”
Loki grins. “Where’s the fun in that?”
It’s a halfhearted attempt at teasing, even for him. There still remains too many things that are unsaid, and it seems that both of them are keenly aware of that.
“Loki—” Mobius starts, at the same time Loki says, “Mobius.”
They both go silent. Then, ever polite, Loki gestures at him. “You go first.”
Mobius presses his lips together, suddenly feeling a little at a loss for words. It wasn’t as if he’d ever forgotten Loki was a god, but with the TVA’s suppression of magic and their little everyday routines, Loki hadn’t felt… untouchable, like he does now.
And yet. All of the timelines clutched within his hands, and somehow, for some reason, Loki is here, appearing before Mobius. That realization alone brings courage enough for Mobius to speak.
“How are you here?” he finally asks. “You didn’t exactly clarify the first time.”
“Duplication casting,” Loki says, then he raises his eyebrows. “I’m not sure you recall the difference between it and—”
“Illusion projection, yeah, yeah,” Mobius says. “Illusion projection involves you depicting a detailed image from outside yourself, which is perceptible in the external world. Duplication casting is recreating an exact facsimile of your own body in its present circumstance, which acts as a true holographic mirror of your molecular structure.”
Loki’s eyebrows go higher. “I’ll admit I am impressed,” he says. “That was almost word-for-word.”
“I figured I wouldn’t give you a second chance to be a smartass about it,” Mobius replies. “Okay, so how are you duplication casting right now?”
“I’m able to see into every timeline,” Loki says. “I suspected that there must be a way for me to interact with the timelines. So I started trying.” He shrugs, then spreads his arms. Always that flair for the dramatic. “Duplication casting. I’m still smoothing out the specifics, but I’m managing to stay for longer periods of time now.”
He says it like it’s simple, and Mobius wonders if it is, or if Loki is conveniently omitting the full truth like he had about the timeslipping, and how painful it was for him.
But Mobius doesn’t want to press into it now, not when it seems so much less important. What matters is that…they have time. They have time to tangle out those unsaid words. It doesn’t need to all be laid out today, if ever. Mobius would be content with just this: just being able to speak to Loki again. To see him again.
So instead, he asks, “What were you going to say to me?”
“Ah, yes.” Loki shifts his weight. For a brief moment, he looks hesitant. Then he smiles. It’s achingly genuine, something Mobius can’t help but marvel at. For all of Loki’s life, he had guarded himself behind his sharp tongue and clever tricks. Mobius had assumed he’d seen all there was of Loki, but this Loki—his Loki—still ends up surprising him time and time again with the simplest of gestures. “I wanted to ask how you were doing.”
It’s such a simple, uncomplicated question that Mobius almost laughs. Odd, too, because before this they were rarely apart for long enough to ask each other such a thing.
I missed you, he could say. I miss you when I dream about you, I miss you when I’m awake. I would miss you forever and then for all the forevers after that.
“Oh, y’know,” Mobius says. “Don’t know if you remember, but I’ve had my fun burning down the TVA, so now it’s time for a well-earned vacation.”
Loki chuckles. “Oh, I remember,” he says. “In case you’ve forgotten, the spark was all me.”
***
They’re back at the Automat in this particular dream.
Loki’s knees bump against Mobius’. He sits with his perfectly untouched slice of key lime pie, save for the whipped cream on top, with which Loki is taking his time scraping across the remaining expanse of his plate.
He really doesn’t like that pie, Mobius thinks with a hint of helpless affection. Maybe he can file a request to the higher ups to start providing grapes and nuts in the Automat. Just one little section for Loki, since he can’t think of anyone else in the TVA who would prefer fruits over pie. Then he remembers belatedly that this isn’t real—he’s left the TVA, and Loki is no longer here to eat (or not eat) pie with Mobius. It is just a dream.
“See,” Mobius says around a mouthful of pie, “I don’t know what your problem is with the pie. It’s really good.”
Loki glances up. “I don’t have a problem with the pie,” he says rather unconvincingly. History’s most reliable liar is apparently getting a little rusty.
Mobius fixes him with a stare for a few seconds more before Loki gives up. “Alright,” he relents. “The crust is dry and the filling is unbearably sweet. Honestly, Mobius, I can’t comprehend how you can eat it so many times and still enjoy it.”
Mobius takes another mouthful. “It’s about the little things,” he tells Loki. “Who knows? You might even like it if you actually tried taking a bite.”
“I have taken a bite before,” Loki says haughtily. “It is astoundingly disagreeable.”
They bicker about the pie a little bit longer. Loki purposefully knocks his knee against Mobius’ a little harder, and they end up laughing.
Mobius almost forgets he’s dreaming until he wakes up, and even then, it feels too real to have been his own imagination. He lies in bed for a little while longer and tries not to wish for something that he can’t have back.
***
Loki’s visits become more frequent, longer. They talk about every topic under the sun except the difficult things that Mobius wants to address, but also can’t quite bear to bring up. Sometimes he thinks that Loki almost starts talking about it too, but then he draws away at the very last second.
Today, they sit under the shade of a tree at the edge of a sunny beach. Mobius has since learned that he can’t touch Loki—duplication casting isn’t the same as illusion projection, but one thing that remains is that Loki has no physical body. Just a mirage: if he lifts his hand to what should be flesh and blood, he feels nothing but thin air.
“You know,” Loki says. His voice is light—carefully so. Mobius turns away from the ocean to look at Loki. He’s hilariously out of place with his robes and horns, especially in the humid beach heat. “I looked for my own variants sometimes. In other timelines.”
Mobius nods, encouraging him to speak. Loki rests his hands on his lap. “In some timelines, I make the right choices,” he says. “I realize that I loved my brother more than I resented his greatness, and I bring him home instead of sending the Destroyer to kill him.” He smiles, both sad and fond. “In others, I come to my senses quicker. My mother doesn’t have to pay the price for my anger.”
“She loved you regardless,” Mobius replies. “In your timeline, too.”
“Yes,” Loki agrees. He lets out a laugh, this one more self-deprecating than anything. “That’s the one thing that never changes.”
There is a long pause of silence. Loki appears more thoughtful than anything else. Then, he says, “I’ve also seen your variants.”
It’s Mobius’ turn to raise his eyebrows. “Is that how you spend your time nowadays?”
“Can you blame me?” Loki grins, teasing. “You’re always interesting no matter what timeline, and I have to find some way to keep myself amused.”
“Okay, fine, shoot,” Mobius says. “What am I up to?”
Loki’s grin widens as if he’d been waiting for Mobius to ask. “In one timeline, you’re an actor.”
Mobius can’t say he expected that. “Did I make it bigger than X-5 did?”
“Oh, yes,” Loki says glibly, all mischief. “Much bigger. Every one of your movies were greater hits than Zaniac, too. Naturally.”
“Naturally,” Mobius agrees.
“You’re a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in another,” Loki adds. “That one was quite jarring, I’ll admit. Although you were quite decent at your job.”
“A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent,” Mobius echoes. “Hey, does that mean I met you when you tried to take over earth?”
Loki is quiet for a few moments, prompting Mobius to peer at his expression again. His eyes are fixed off in the distance, as though he’s looking at something that Mobius can’t see.
He doesn’t look physically older, but there’s something ancient in Loki’s eyes that wasn’t there when he left.
“No,” Loki finally admits, his voice softer. “I didn’t come down to earth in that timeline. We never met.” He pauses. “We never meet at all, no matter where I look.”
It takes a few seconds for Mobius to process those words. Infinite universes. Infinite possibilities. And yet…
He wants to say that surely, surely, there is one where their paths intersect. And then Mobius realizes belatedly there is one, and it’s this one.
“Mobius,” Loki says, his eyes flickering over.
“Yeah.”
For a moment, Loki looks as though he’ll say something. Then his form flickers, the solid green colors turning translucent.
“I have to go,” he says. “Next time, then.”
“Okay,” Mobius agrees. “Next time.”
***
The Temporal Loom is melting down. Mobius never thought he’d be in a rush against time in the TVA, yet here they are—fighting against time, with each ticking second bringing them closer to somewhere they can’t return from.
Except Loki had just left without a word, chasing behind Sylvie right after she’d torn into Mobius’ deepest fears and flayed them to the light like it was nothing. Foolishly, Mobius can’t focus on the immediate problem of the Loom.
A few seconds have passed since the two of them left. Then, to his surprise, footsteps sound down the hallway again, followed by Loki’s familiar figure.
“Mobius,” he says.
This isn’t how it went. Loki had disappeared for much longer, and Mobius gave up waiting for him to return and got himself a cup of hot cocoa. A pick-me-up. A little bandaid smack-dab over the gaping wound of hurt caused by Sylvie’s words, but also because of the way Loki had left without saying a single thing to him.
Another dream, then. Some strange figment of his imagination of how he wished things proceeded.
“What?” he asks, a bit sharper than he intended. A split second later he can’t bring himself to feel an ounce of frustration at Loki, because Loki’s looking at him with apologetic eyes and Mobius is caving almost immediately underneath that expression. He scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m sorry,” he adds. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“Sylvie’s frustrated,” Loki says. “And hurt. But that doesn’t mean what she said was right.”
What if she was? Mobius wants to reply, but he ends up saying nothing at all.
“She’s afraid of losing what she has,” Loki adds. “That’s why she lashed out. Sylvie… Sylvie grew up in apocalypses. She’s used to being alone, and she’s used to everything being taken from her. All of this—it’s all new to her.”
Something bitter and ugly stirs in his chest. Loki isn’t wrong, of course, and Mobius doesn’t like the sour taste of jealousy—but he feels it nonetheless.
“I was like her not long ago too,” Loki says.
Mobius looks up. He tries to strike a lightheaded tone and thinks that the most he achieves is something barely a step above petulance. “I’m gonna need a bit more elaboration.”
Loki looks hesitant for a moment. Then, slowly, he starts, “After my brother’s banishment to earth, he came back different.”
“I know,” Mobius replies on an exhale. “I watched all the scenes adjacent to your life. To get the big picture.”
“Yes,” Loki muses. “I suppose you did. You know, then, that I mocked him for it afterwards. I told him it was weakness. I thought it made him unfit and unworthy.”
His dream self is apparently much braver than he actually is, because he catches Loki’s gaze and holds it. “And now you no longer consider it weakness?”
“If it is, then maybe I’m weak too,” Loki replies. There’s a touch of a smile on his face, this one a little bittersweet. “But I don’t think it was anymore.”
***
Mobius considers telling Loki about the dreams, but then he feels like it’ll be a bit silly.
He also considers asking Loki why Loki keeps on visiting him. He could see anyone, be anywhere. Yet he chooses to stay with Mobius. He also decides against that, because it doesn’t seem like something they can talk about until all the unspoken words have been said and every missing piece is laid bare before them. But Loki guards those secrets carefully, and Mobius is afraid that prying into them will somehow make Loki leave.
The dreams continue, bits and pieces that all seem like an altered version of events that have already happened. Loki is in every one of them.
They’re not always happy. Sometimes Loki is hunched over the steps of the control room, his face pressed in his palms as the Temporal Loom shudders and creaks behind the glass windows. Mobius stems a hand between his shoulder blades, holding him steady before the Loom explodes. He jerks awake, breathing erratically and heart pounding. It feels so real.
Tonight, they’re somewhere in the 2100s. The skyline of New York City spreads out before them, dotted with a mix of neon and white lights. Everything is bigger and brighter than it had been a century ago.
Mobius has since grown accustomed to Loki’s presence coming and going. He barely bats an eye when the air sifts around him, and Loki sits down next to him in a flurry of his dark green robes.
“It still doesn’t compare to Asgard,” Loki says, gazing upon the sprawling cityscape.
“Yes, yes,” Mobius agrees non-committedly. “Although I hope you recall that you tried taking this exact city over, so surely you saw some redeemable qualities here.”
“Consider it a momentary lapse in judgment,” Loki replies, and Mobius can hear the smile riding on his voice. “I settled for second best. Though I’m not sure if this even qualifies for second best, to be quite honest.”
This feels… almost perfect. The only small flaw is that Loki isn’t truly here beside him. He may be talented with magic, but even magic can’t replicate the same feeling that Mobius has grown so accustomed to with Loki. The quiet sounds of his breaths, the rustle of fabric when he moves. The brush of his arm against Mobius, the miniscule movements you can only notice when you’re in close proximity with someone.
It’s like water in road cracks freezing over as the temperature drops. Suddenly something tiny isn’t so small after all, and the discomfort worms into the very corners of Mobius’ heart until he can’t take the tiptoeing and the avoidance any longer. It’s an accumulation of all these days: the days he spent without knowing if he’d ever see Loki again, but also the more recent ones, where they sit side by side and pretend and pretend that everything is the same when it isn’t.
“Aren’t you lonely?” he blurts.
Loki blinks, looking a bit taken aback by the sudden question. “I beg your pardon?”
“In that—tree,” Mobius says. “Whatever it is that you’re confined in, holding the timelines and all. You’re just… all alone. Did you know that when you just turned around and left? Without telling us a single thing or explaining why?”
Loki looks at him with an indiscernible expression. It reminds Mobius a bit like all his messy, nonsensical collection of dreams nowadays, when the Loki he dreams of is so familiar and yet it’s no more than made-up figments of his mind, spun so realistically that it still makes his heart skip a beat.
For a few moments, Loki doesn’t reply. He wets his lips, uncharacteristically nervous.
“Mobius,” he says at last. “There are some things that I haven’t told you.”
Mobius thinks his heart is beating too-fast and he’s not quite ready for this conversation yet, not when Loki isn’t really here, not when he doesn’t know if he’ll ever really see Loki again— that is, truly, truly see him. But he nods. “Okay.”
A deep breath. He can’t feel the exhale, but he sees the rise and fall of Loki’s shoulders.
“The Loom was a failsafe,” Loki explains at last. “He Who Remains put it there. If it was ever overloaded with timelines, it was meant to delete all the branches that aren’t supposed to be there—everything but the Sacred Timeline. The TVA, all of the people inside, that was all collateral damage.”
Mobius shakes his head. “I don’t understand. When did you learn that? O.B. told us—”
“—that the Throughput Multiplier would make the rings bigger. Adjust the Loom to the new timelines.”
There is an insistent, growing suspicion in the back of Mobius’ mind. He shoves it down. “Yeah.”
“O.B. was wrong,” Loki says. “We all were. Even if the Loom wasn’t designed to be a failsafe in the first place, you can’t scale for infinity. There were just too many timelines, and the Loom was a finite device. It was doomed to fail from the very start.”
There is a heavy span of silence. The city is nothing but a blur of bright lights in the distance. All Mobius can focus on is Loki. The weight of his words.
“So you took it upon yourself to fix it?” he asks. “You didn’t try asking us for help? We would’ve. I would’ve.”
“I know, Mobius,” Loki says, and this time, the calmness in his voice breaks. “I know you would’ve, you all would’ve. But it had to be me.”
It’s petulant and childish. Mobius hates feeling so out of control, but ever since Loki left, he has been untethered to the things that had always kept him grounded. “Why did it have to be you?” he asks, barely over a whisper.
Loki thins his lips. He blinks a few times, then turns his gaze towards the bright lights ahead of them.
“Glorious purpose, remember?” he asks. “I realized that most purpose is more burden than glory.”
Mobius’ first response is to say something to lighten the mood—all grown up now, aren’t you? before the gravity of the words hit him. They’re familiar, but not in a way that they should be. They’re familiar, because he’s dreamed of it, that very first dream that started the rest. Sitting across from Loki in the Time Theatre, a reprise of their first conversation.
Thank you, Mobius. Loki’s hands are cool as his fingers wrap around Mobius’, his grasp tight as if he can’t quite bear to let go, but also won’t allow himself to close the distance.
It feels as though someone had yanked the floor from beneath Mobius’ feet. If he had been standing, he probably would’ve fallen right over.
“How do you know that?” he demands.
Loki looks bewildered by his outburst. “I’m sorry?”
“Who told you that,” Mobius repeats.
“I don’t…” Loki shakes his head. “Why is that important?”
This isn’t the first time that Mobius has suspected there are many things that Loki isn’t telling him, but this is the first, real, unignorable proof that has turned simple speculations into something a lot more real. The weight of the realization is dizzying, too much and too sudden all at once.
“I told you that,” Mobius says. “In the Time Theatre. Didn’t I?”
He watches Loki’s expression carefully—and there it is. His eyes widen: caught. Unlike before, though, he doesn’t bother to cover it up. Instead, sounding rather stricken, he asks, “How did you know?”
An incredulous laugh escapes Mobius. “Dreams, Loki,” he says, and this is all too insane to think about. “I keep on dreaming about you. About things that never happened. But that’s not true, is it? They did happen. Except none of us remember it but you.”
There is another pause of silence before Loki’s shoulders slump ever so slightly in defeat. It’s a strange kind of concession to see from Loki, especially when he used to hold onto his illusion of indifference to the bitter end.
“Time-slipping,” he finally admits. “I learned to control it, so I kept on going back in hopes of finding a way to fix things. But this was the only way.”
“By sacrificing yourself.”
“It was this or nothing, Mobius. The Temporal Loom would—the Temporal Loom did destroy everything.”
Mobius’ head is still spinning from all of these new revelations, but the only real thing he can focus on is that very first dream, the one in the Time Theatre. He had spent days upon days wondering how Loki would leave without even an explanation, much less a goodbye. The reasons, the what-ifs haunted every waking thought. Yet Mobius was the one to push Loki towards this final step: There is no comfort, Loki. You just choose your burden.
“Why did you have to go find me in the past?” Mobius asks, even though he thinks he already knows the answer.
Loki smiles. It’s sad, but the final nail in the coffin is the acceptance behind it. “I was afraid it would be too difficult to say goodbye.”
Mobius fights down the urge to ask him why. He doesn’t think he’s ready to hear the answer, not like this.
“Mobius,” Loki starts, reaching out. “I truly am—”
His fingers pass through Mobius’ arm, the illusion flickering. Loki seems to realize only belatedly that he isn’t really here. He drops his hand and doesn’t complete the rest of his sentence.
The silence weighs for a few moments more before Mobius opens his mouth and turns to Loki. “Loki,” he begins, the words at the tip of his tongue. It’s alright. I know why you had to do it. I’m just glad to be able to see you again.
But Loki is already gone.
***
The TVA’s entire building trembles and quakes from the Loom. Lights shutter as he and Loki walk down the hallway with swift steps.
“—Timely,” Loki is saying. “If we can—”
He stumbles to a halt. It’s a miniscule difference, but now, Mobius knows what he’s looking for: the shift from the time-slipping, although much more subtle than when it first began, is still obvious.
Not a dream. A memory.
“Loki?” he asks, turning towards him. “Are you alright?”
Loki blinks a few times. His gaze flickers over Mobius before his eyes race around their surroundings, as if cataloging where he is. Or when he is.
“Mobius,” he says, sounding a bit out of breath. “I need to tell you something.”
“Okay,” Mobius says simply. They’re running on borrowed time, but there’s a touch of panic in Loki’s eyes, so he reaches out and takes the bend of Loki’s arm in his hands. It seems to anchor him, because his eyes stop flitting around and stop on Mobius’ face. “Hey, hey, take a breath. What’s wrong?”
Loki does as he asks until his breathing evens out. He opens his mouth, shuts it, and works his jaw. Mobius waits a few moments longer before prompting, “Did something happen?”
The tension in Loki’s body seems to shatter. His shoulders slump forward, something painful crossing his face. “Not now,” he mutters, more to himself than Mobius. “I can’t ask you here.”
“What?” Mobius asks. He taps on Loki’s arm to get his attention. “What can’t you tell me?”
Mobius knows now. He recalls his very first dream back at the Time Theatre, when Loki had asked him about burden and purpose. I was afraid it would be too difficult to say goodbye. He hadn’t entertained the possibility that Loki might have tried to ask him some other time, only to return to their very first meeting, long before Mobius had become too compromised by affection to see the bigger picture.
He wants to take Loki’s hands in his own and tell him: It’s okay. It’s okay. I already know.
Instead, Mobius watches as the dream fades into nothing around him, unsaid words strangling his throat until he wakes up with a gasp.
***
Mobius doesn’t know why he’s back. He’s already seen everything he needs to see.
But here he is again: standing across the road of the best house on the block in a suburban neighborhood in Ohio. A life that isn’t Mobius’. Not anymore. If it ever was in the first place.
Just like his dream, the driveway is littered with an assortment of children’s toys. Mobius wonders what Loki thought, the first time he had met this variant. He had been all fond smiles and soft words when he said, You saw something in me that I hadn’t seen in myself.
He wishes Loki would just come back, so Mobius could explain that he was never truly mad at Loki. Frustrated, perhaps, by how little he had been able to do. Upset because Loki had carried all of this by himself—but how could he remain upset? Loki hadn’t just saved them, but all of the timelines. One final sacrifice.
Except for Mobius, it still feels like too high of a price to pay. It’s selfish and he knows it—the world in precarious balance, and all he can wish for is for Loki to return.
Across the street, the garage door rolls open. There are two jet skis parked inside. Mobius’ variant walks out, rounding the vehicles, and then starts to pick up the toys that litter the driveway.
“Don tried to sell me one of the jet skis,” Loki’s voice says.
Relief soothes over irrational fear. They’d left things tense and incomplete in their last conversation, but it wasn’t like Loki to walk away and never come back because of it. Still, the immaterial nature of his presence has seeded tides of messy unease in Mobius. He hates feeling messy, especially between him and Loki. Yet here he is.
“Yeah, I know,” Mobius replies. “You had me pretty convinced you were gonna buy one.”
“Perhaps I would have if the fate of the universe hadn’t been on the line,” Loki replies. “Or if I had any money on me. Although I will admit, Don was quite the convincing salesman.”
“Of course he was,” Mobius says. “A beautiful union of form and function.”
“I was the one who said that.”
“Only because I told you before,” Mobius corrects. “If anyone managed to sell you on the idea of buying a jet ski, it was me.”
“At least Don actually knows how to ride one,” Loki shoots back.
They stand quietly for a few moments more. Don finishes picking up all the toys, tosses them haphazardly into a pile, and then yells, “Dinner in five!”
The garage slides shut again. One of the kids—Kevin—races around the corner of the house, stomps noisily up the steps, and disappears into the house.
Mobius breathes in deeply. He’s put aside this conversation for far too long. He had convinced himself in the beginning that it wasn’t necessary, but as time passes, he realizes he can’t leave so many things unsaid between them.
“How long were you trying to fix the Loom?” he asks Loki.
A pause. Mobius turns his gaze away from the house so he can face Loki directly; take in all of him. “A few centuries.”
“Centuries,” Mobius echoes. He almost laughs, but it gets stuck in his throat. “You’re unbelievable, you know that?”
Loki’s wince is slight, but visible. His eyes flicker back to the house. “I know I should have—”
“No, Loki, look at me,” Mobius interrupts. “Yeah, I wish you would have told me why, but I understand what you did. I know it must have been difficult. And honestly, I don’t think anyone else could have pulled off what you did. It was stupid and impressive and brave and I’m proud of you. That’s what I mean.”
Loki’s quick to hide the uncertainty that crosses his face, but Mobius is familiar with his little tells. “So I take it that you’re not mad at me?” he asks. It’s carefully light, but he doesn’t entirely succeed in covering up the undercurrent of worry.
“No,” Mobius says, and it’s the truth. “I don’t think I could be even if I wanted to.”
The small furrow between Loki’s brows smooths out. When he speaks, it’s on the tail end of an exhale, a soft, almost tentative secret. His eyes are sincere, though—overwhelmingly, achingly so. “You were the hardest goodbye, Mobius.”
The wind whistles by them, a gentle summer breeze. The late afternoon sun casts long shadows that stretch on the grass.
All those painful weeks of waiting, of wondering, of not knowing, of fearing—it seems so insignificant now, pushed to the back of Mobius’ mind so he can focus on the now, now, now. Loki looks at Mobius like he is the most important thing in the world, and oh, Mobius has almost forgotten how right it has always felt between them.
“It’s alright,” he says. “Since it wasn’t a long goodbye, after all.”
Loki laughs. It’s a bit shaky. “Mobius, I…” he starts. For a moment, it looks like he’ll drop it. Then he squares his shoulders. “What I told you here in this timeline. To Don. I meant it from the bottom of my heart. You saved my life, but you also…” He blinks quickly. “For the first time in my life, I had someone who saw all of me and still accepted me. And despite all of that, you still trusted me. You made me feel like I could be trusted.”
Outcast. Liar. Monster. Villain. Mobius has heard the things people have called Loki. But he’s also seen the parts that others haven’t, or never bothered to notice: care and concern hidden behind expectations and masks and self-loathing, but it was there if someone dug deep enough to see.
“Give yourself some credit, Loki,” he says, laughing too, because if he doesn’t he might actually cry. “I wouldn’t have trusted you if I didn’t think you could be trustworthy.”
Companionable silence settles for a few moments more. Mobius has run through variations of this conversation too many times in the past few weeks, and yet the perfect words had never come to him. This time, right-here-right-now, it is suddenly so easy, so obvious to say.
“I missed you, in case you didn’t know,” he confesses. “I missed you so much at the TVA, so I came down to the timeline, and I missed you all the same. I could finally go anywhere I wanted and do anything I dreamed of but I just wanted to see you again.”
Loki’s gaze softens. He reaches out, as if he has forgotten that he can’t touch Mobius. Mobius hasn’t forgotten, but he lifts his hands anyway so he can meet Loki halfway.
For a brief moment, Mobius feels the brush of cool fingers against his palms. Then bright green light pulses as Loki’s hands pass through Mobius’.
“I think I missed you more,” he says with a touch of cheek, because it really wouldn’t be Loki if he didn’t turn every damn thing into a competition.
Mobius laughs wetly. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Well, I’m feeling generous today, so I’ll give you that one.”
***
Later on, they sit side by side underneath the stars of some foreign planet. Mobius can’t remember what it was called, but Loki had said the galaxy was easily seen through the atmosphere here. He’s right. Two moons adorn the sky, which is a brilliant kaleidoscope of colors, heavy with the splattering of stars.
“When you said we never meet on any timeline,” Mobius says, “are you a hundred percent certain you checked every one? ‘Cause there are infinite possibilities, and I’m not questioning your attention to detail, but infinity…”
Loki raises an eyebrow. “So you are questioning my attention to detail.”
“I’m just sayin’, there’s a possibility. And we both know how impatient you can get.”
“I’m impatient?” Loki asks, feigning offense.
Mobius gives him a look. After a brief staring contest, Loki lets out a laugh. “I kept on looking for us across the timelines,” he admits. “But I always found myself returning to wherever you were.”
“I guess I can’t help the fact that I’m your favorite variant.”
Loki looks at him expectantly. “And?”
“And what?”
“You’re supposed to say I’m your favorite Loki variant now,” Loki says, a hint petulantly.
“Second favorite,” Mobius corrects. “Right behind the alligator Loki. A close second, really.”
Loki makes an affronted sound. Mobius glances over at him and can’t help but laugh. He’s forgotten all about the galaxy in the sky and the two moons and how they were initially here to stargaze, because there’s nothing he’d rather have than this.
“Loki,” he says after a little while.
“Yes?” Green eyes attentive, head tilted ever so slightly—something syrupy and warm spreads in Mobius’ chest just looking at Loki.
“I’ll find you,” he promises. “At the End of Time, or wherever it is you are. Tomorrow, or in a month, or in a year, however long it takes. It won’t always have to be like this.”
Loki shifts slightly so that he can close the space between their fingers. The illusion flickers green, but holds.
Then he smiles, familiar and fond, in the way Mobius has grown to love. And Mobius can’t help but think how lucky he is, to be the one to have met this Loki. One single chance in infinity.
“Okay,” Loki says simply. “I’ll wait for you.”