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This part of the story isn’t true:
Loki runs after the variant – the other Loki – and he runs through the time-door just before it closes and finds himself in another apocalypse.
The variant… Should we call her Loki? Would that not confuse any audience who cared to listen to this tall tale? How to refer to Loki-on-the-run? The other one. Her.
She is not best pleased to find that she has been followed, but by showing both wit and wisdom Loki wins her over bit by bit, and as the adventure unfolds they find themselves with some time to kill before this world ends, in… in one venue or another, the setting is in many ways unimportant.
On a train, let’s say.
And on that train Loki continues to be wise and witty, and inevitably (how could this story head in any other direction?), perhaps after a few alcoholic drinks (this is a fancy train), Loki is pulled abruptly into some dark corner (a large, fancy train) and She kisses him until he is half-stupid with desire, and She has her wicked way with him, and he has his with Her, and if this not a Happy Ending it is at least a mutually-enjoyable interlude.
(There is sure to be a Happy Ending of some sort; Loki has not yet thought up a conclusion that satisfies him but there must be an end to this version of events, eventually.)
But, as mentioned, none of this actually happened.
In reality Loki did not follow that other Loki to her destination, having moved too slowly, without sufficient haste, and having been caught by the collar and dragged backwards at the last moment, an unruly kitten grabbed by the scruff and deposited away from danger.
Loki is glad, of course, that Mobius caught hold of him just in time and stopped him acting on the foolish urge to flee with the variant, who would certainly have killed him if he had made it through that door with her. Murder is to be expected of Lokis in general, and She is one of the worst and has already killed so many of those the TVA sent out to capture her.
Loki is grateful that Mobius managed to save him from himself (in more than one sense of that phrase), and is going to express that gratitude by helping them find that terrible, heartless killer. The worst of Lokis, the most ruthless of them all.
Because he is not like Her at all. He can be good.
-
It must be admitted at this point that in the debriefings that followed that trip into the field, Loki withheld one or two details from the TVA. That he is still lying to Mobius (mostly by omission, although this is no defence at all).
Loki is a liar because all Lokis are liars. What else can Mobius really expect of him?
So, Mobius does not currently have all the facts that might help him catch the variant.
For one thing, he does not know that She is a she.
-
This means that Loki is a step ahead, or at least a step in some direction – any will do, quite frankly – that might lead him away from the TVA for good.
He sits in a plastic chair in a paper-filled archive and he listens to Mobius’s theories, and he nods at some and shakes his head at others. He makes suggestions, some of which are even good ones, and he does his best to be helpful.
To an extent.
One of his lies, or perhaps it can be phrased more positively than that as ‘one of the secrets that he is keeping for Her,’ is this: the TVA must already know who She is. Even with Loki’s little linguistic deceit it is clear that She – even were she a He – has a TemPad in her possession, and enough knowledge of the TVA to know what she wants to take from the bodies of those of them she kills. And as Loki can himself attest the TVA are extremely difficult to escape from, so there is every chance that Mobius’s attempt to rile Loki was unwittingly true and She really is the superior Loki. The quickest and the most cunning. The one that got away.
Beneath a table bearing the files that tell of the variant’s exploits, Loki shifts in his chair, suddenly sporting an erection that he does not want anyone else to know about.
(Perhaps he should have left that part of the story out, then?)
Luckily, he manages to steer the conversation away from Her impressive achievement and onto related but far duller topics, such that his cock has long since lost interest by the time Mobius announces that it is getting late and he needs some rest and so Loki must return to his cell.
Mobius does not use the word ‘cell.’ Mobius is a good man who means well and works hard, and he would not work so hard for an employer that referred to Loki’s cell as a cell. So, Loki returns to his room.
Which is, of course, a cell.
-
The sequence of events has been misrepresented already; there were in fact a number of other events between Loki’s aborted early departure from the Roxxcart apocalypse and his afternoon in the archive in Mobius’s good graces.
These have been left out due the distressing nature of most of them, and to the declining state of Loki during those events, as a result of which he can no longer be considered a reliable source of information.
Here is an unfortunate, tragic truth: Loki is no longer always aware of which of these stories are lies.
Another truth, which might be worse: Loki is almost certainly happier this way.
-
She at least is always kind to him, all soft words and tender touches. She offers comforting lies - “You’re going to be okay, this’ll be over soon, I promise” - and good advice - “Just sleep on the side that hurts less” - and in all honesty Loki has no idea what he’d do without Her.
He tells Her how much he needs her - “I’d probably go mad without you here” - and he thanks Her for all her help, and She laughs and shakes her head - “I wouldn’t even be here if you weren’t mad, you idiot” - and kisses him until he stops babbling on about his feelings and until it’s time for her to go back to wherever she hides when Mobius is around.
It is so important that Mobius doesn’t see Her, and that Loki lets slip not a single one of the secrets She allows him to keep for her.
If Loki can be good for her, if he can keep her safe, then she will come for him and then he will be safe as well.
-
Mobius is exceptionally good at his job.
Loki knows this because the punishments Mobius thinks up for him are themselves exceptional.
Loki doesn’t think that Mobius is unusually cruel, or that the man enjoys causing pain, but the simple fact of the matter is that Mobius knows Loki (singular or plural) better than anyone else ever has, so he knows exactly where to strike to make it really hurt.
First he sits Loki down in a time-theatre and impresses upon him the need to change his ways. Look at what he has done before, and at what he would have done if he were not here with Mobius, being offered a shot at redemption.
“Look, Loki.”
Mobius shows a selection of Loki’s Greatest Hits: Loki letting the Frost Giants into Asgard and leading Thor into banishment; Loki bringing destruction to Midgard; Loki directing the Dark Elves to where they will murder his mother…
The show continues in this general vein for some time; Loki has done many foolish things and he can offer no excuse for any of them.
Or rather, he offers any number of excuses but Mobius refuses to accept them.
Mobius never hits Loki, but there are other people who will, who wear different uniforms from Mobius and who don’t have their own desks with paperweights on them and magazines about jet-skis under those paperweights.
On balance, though, Loki thinks that Mobius’s punishments hurt more.
So, Loki wipes the tears from his eyes and he apologies to Mobius and he swears on his own life that he will be good from now on.
“Okay,” says Mobius, and he squeezes Loki’s shoulder with a strong, comforting hand and allows Loki to return to his cell for a few hours.
-
The lights in the cell are never dimmed but Loki’s mind has always been a dark place and so, on average, the lights in his room/cell are low when She straddles him on the camp bed that isn’t anywhere near sturdy enough for it and fucks him gently, and then less gently and with not enough regard for the need to be quiet.
Loki covers her mouth with his free hand. “Someone might hear you,” he cautions. “I don’t know how I can hide you if they hear you and come in to see what’s going on.”
She bites his fingers and he pulls them away with a startled yelp, and he doesn’t try that move again, not even when she starts moaning so loudly that even the dead TVA workers that She has left in her wake would be able to hear her.
Loki opens his eyes to find that he has come all over his blanket like a randy teenager, and he doubts anyone at the TVA will be willing to grant him a new one. They’ve never seen fit to clean any of the blood from it, after all.
He closes his eyes again, but She has had enough of him for now and refuses to spend any more time in his head.
It’s disappointing, but entirely understandable; it’s such a mess in there even at the best of times.
-
Here is another of his fantasies, a recent favourite:
Loki kneels on the floor where Sif has – yet again (again, again, again) left him injured and alone, and Mobius – who towers above him like an implacable titan – decides (again) that Sif has not yet done enough, and he announces his intention that Loki shall have to face her again (there is no end to again here, it seems) and he takes a step back, ready to leave.
(That part really did happen. It has happened many, many times.)
But this time when Loki sees those neat, polished shoes move away he surges forwards, grasping for a chance to obtain some measure of mercy, and he wraps himself around Mobius’s leg, cheek against thigh and tears in his eyes.
Mobius, of course, is irritated at first and tries to shake off this sad little limpet, but the slight delay to his departure is enough to allow Loki enough time (ha!) to make a new offer.
He slides a hand up Mobius’s leg, stopping with fingers just brushing the crotch of those TVA-issued trousers and says, “I can be good.”
Mobius is a clever man and gets the idea at once; “Good, huh?” He strokes a hand through Loki’s hair. “How good?”
“Let me show you.” This is a plea, not an offer, but it gets results. Mobius nods, and allows Loki to demonstrate.
And, oh, Loki is eager to do so! Perhaps Mobius is not so implacable after all, perhaps he can be won over or at least convinced to end this endless encounter with ever-angry Sif.
Loki pulls himself up a little, into a more dignified position (if one can ever be truly dignified while on one’s knees and at the doubtful mercy of another) and carefully - so carefully - unfastens Mobius’s trousers and tugs his cock free and strokes an almost-steady hand over it, back and forth until Mobius grows impatient and Loki wisely begins to use his mouth instead.
He looks up at Mobius while he sucks him; when he was younger Loki spent a number of hours inventing a supposedly-bashful gaze that has never failed to work to his advantage, and it does so now as well, winning Mobius’s approval with a careful flutter of his eyelashes.
The hand placed at the back of Loki’s head is a gentle guide, with a grip on his hair that is never too painful to bear, even when Mobius loses patience again and tugs Loki forwards to meet thrusts that drive his cock halfway down Loki’s throat.
(Here is an amusing reference to another reality: on the Sacred Timeline Loki dies by strangulation, his life choked out of him and his story brutally snapped to a stop. Would it not be ironic if this Loki choked to death on his captor’s cock? How much funnier would that outcome be if he were actually enjoying himself at the time?)
Loki sucks and sucks and licks his tongue over the cock in his mouth until Mobius at last finds a release from all this tension and spills himself into Loki’s mouth, holding his prisoner in place and telling him to swallow it down, which Loki was going to do anyway, of course, but he flutters his eyelashes again (what a manipulative slut) and tries to give the impression that this is something he hasn’t done before, even though he knows that Mobius must know this to be another falsehood.
When he at last lets go of Loki, Mobius neatens himself up again before reaching a hand downwards to poor, pathetic Loki.
“Come on,” he says, “let’s get you out of here,” and Loki takes the offered hand with the greatest gratitude, and follows Mobius from the time-cell, back to the wonderfully dull office environment that Mobius usually inhabits.
(This is not the nicest of Loki’s fantasies. The fact that he enjoys this one so much might be a bad sign, actually.)
-
“Get up.”
Mobius kicks at the rickety bed until Loki lifts his head from the pillow and blinks in the harsh light of his cell.
“I’m sorry,” says Loki, without thinking.
Mobius sighs. “Wrong record, Loki. Try another one.”
Loki sits up, awake enough now to feel ashamed of the stains on his blanket and to push it behind his back to hide them. “I don’t… Do we have work?”
“We always have work!” Mobius sighs again, a bit more softly this time. “What did X-5 do to you when… No, actually, don’t tell me. I don’t need to know everything that goes on around here.”
X-5 is not the cruellest person at the TVA. He is considerably crueller than Mobius, but he is also far less able to hurt Loki in any way that really matters.
Loki is aware that it might be better for himself if he doesn’t share this fact with either of them.
He gets to his feet, running his hands over his clothes in a futile attempt to remove some of the wrinkles. It hardly matters, anyway; he’s due for some new clothes any day now.
And now Mobius feels that the business of the day can properly commence; “I had an idea,” he says, with a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “About our variant and how he picks out which apocalypse to hide in.”
“Oh?” Loki feigns both interest and disinterest. It is of the greatest importance to him that Mobius does not find Her, but he has very little interest in the interminable search for ‘him’ in old files and dying worlds.
“You’re gonna be impressed!” Mobius is proud of whatever thought he has had, and puts a hand on Loki’s arm to steer him out of the cell. He pauses at the door, however, and stops Loki with a hand on his chest. “We’ll get you a new shirt first,” he says.
About time too, this one is absolutely filthy.
-
There is an important question that Loki has thought to ask only once during his time at the TVA:
“What happens to me when you’ve caught the other variant?”
Mobius shrugs. “That all depends on how much you had to do with us catching him.”
“Well, I’m doing my best,” says Loki. “How is this going to be measured? Are there written guidelines, with little boxes that I need to make sure someone ticks off?”
“It doesn’t matter,” says Mobius, in that too soothing voice of his.
“It matters to me!” This response is delivered too loudly for the archives, so Loki makes sure to lower his voice in case this should turn out to be part of the criteria for his future survival. “I’d just like some sort of assurance that -”
“Can’t give you any,” says Mobius, simply. He smiles, then. “Guess you’ll just have to make sure we get our man.”
Loki persists for just one more line: “And then?”
“And then we’ll see.”
Not long after that Loki has other things to worry about and so this question, which once seemed like the most important of all, gets lost in an increasingly untidy mind.
This may or may not be important later.
-
“Do you talk in your sleep?”
“How would I know?”
She rolls her eyes at that. “Has anyone ever told you that you talk in your sleep?”
Loki shakes his head, still baffled. “No.” But then he gets Her meaning. He shakes his head again, this time in a fervent denial. “Someone would have mentioned it by now if I did. Wouldn’t they?” There is an edge of hysteria in his voice when he points out that he can’t just stop sleeping.
This is a step too far! He needs to sleep. He deserves those precious hours of nothingness! If he doesn’t sleep he will -
“If you say the wrong thing, they’ll find me,” she says, very calmly. “Even if you say it by accident. You said you’d keep me safe,” she reminds him. “You promised.”
He did. He did make that promise. He can see now that he probably shouldn’t have, since he isn’t really in a good position to be keeping promises for anyone, but…
Well, he’ll just have to stop sleeping, won’t he?
-
Mobius is wrong, and Loki pretends to be as disappointed as he is by this latest failure.
“I’m sure you’ll find…” This lie is cut off by a yawn, and Loki sways a little on his feet, enough that Mobius reaches out to lay a steadying hand on his arm.
“They’re not doing the sleep thing with you, are they?” asks Mobius, with obvious concern. (Though who his concern is actually for is rather less obvious.) He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Damn it! I told them not to do that! How much use are you supposed to be if they’re not letting you sleep?” He poses this question to some unseen, likely non-existent, observer.
Mobius is very good at calming himself, however, and at finding unorthodox solutions to the many problems that the TVA create for themselves.
“You can sleep in my office,” he says, because he is a kind, thoughtful, and most of all very practical man.
“I can’t,” says Loki, though after several days without sleep it’s becoming ever more difficult to remember why he can’t afford to accept such an offer.
Mobius is in no mood for an argument about this. “If you’re not able to help with the case, then you’re useless. And if you’re useless…” He allows the threat to make itself by implication, but when Loki does not react as Mobius wants, he is forced to spell it out; “You’ll get pruned.”
“But you like me!” protests Loki, though it comes out as a mumble and a barely audible one at that.
“Which is why I’ll get someone else to do it,” says Mobius, who sounds tired himself now. “Come on, Loki, let’s get you some rest. You’re right, I do like you. I don’t want you getting pruned over something as dumb as this.”
And neither does Loki! They’re in agreement on this issue, and Loki really is very tired.
-
In the very nick of time, She makes good on her promise to save him, crashing into and right through the TVA, leaving the place an utter shambles and taking Loki with her when she’s done.
This is surely how the story ends, no?
No.
It doesn’t end like that at all.
-
Loki is shaken awake by Mobius, who has crouched down next to the ugly-but-comfortable orange sofa so that they are on the same level.
“How long was I asleep?” asks Loki, who feels a bit less exhausted now but who also feels a vague, unformed worry nagging at his sleep-clouded mind.
“About an hour,” says Mobius, and he rushes on before Loki can complain about that. “I had another hunch, though, and it turned into an idea, and that idea developed into what we might call a theory.”
“Right,” says Loki, who simply does not care about any of this.
(Not yet, anyway.)
“I’d been assuming – and that was my first mistake, right there – that our variant picked up a TemPad after one of the attacks. But that can’t be right, can it? So I figured, hey, this is someone who knows about the TVA, who’s had access to our tech.”
“No,” says Loki, though he says it too quietly to break into Mobius’s excited monologue.
“We’ve brought in a lot of Lokis over the years, but we’ve also pruned a lot of Lokis, so -”
“No.”
“- but we never throw out a file, and if a Loki managed to escape, then -”
“No!” This is said with rather more force, and with more than a note of panic.
Mobius holds up the file in his hand, showing off his cleverness. “Not many people escape from here. It’s her. It has to be.”
“No. No, no, no. No. It’s not… No.”
It might be best if we ended the story here.
Right here.
Because if we don’t…
No, we’ll just end it here.
-
On the train, Loki grabs Her suddenly, and kisses her until she seems to melt against him, her hands hot though the fabric of his TVA shirt, a thin and flimsy barrier between her and his heart.
In Pompeii, She is the one doing the grabbing, pulling him from the obliviously doomed crowd in the marketplace, and they fuck against a wall painted with an image of Vesuvius that will cease to be an accurate depiction in mere hours.
On another world, one he doesn’t think to ask the name of, they lie next to each other on the grass and stare up at the sky, watching as one by one the stars dim and fade to nothing.
“That’s wrong,” Loki objects, long after he should have noticed something so obvious. “Why are the stars going out? If this world is ending -”
“All the worlds are ending,” She says, and she squeezes his hand with hers before lacing their fingers together. “All of our worlds, anyway.”
Loki tries to think back; “I was at the TVA…”
She turns onto her side, away from the dying night sky. “I won’t let them hurt you again,” she tells him. “No one is going to hurt you again.”
Well, what can anyone say to a promise like that?
“Thank you,” says Loki.
She blocks his view of the stars when she leans over him to kiss him, but he doesn’t mind.
He doesn’t mind at all.