Work Text:
“Was it really a citadel?”
“Yes, I’ve told you,” said Loki as he paced the length of the corridor. “A citadel at the end of time.”
“What was it like?”
Loki paused, temporarily distracted by Mobius’ incessant questions. For the space of a heartbeat he almost forgot about the rippling aftershocks of pain that made him want to curl in on himself, cry out, collapse in a shuddering heap on the floor.
“What do you mean, ‘what was it like’?”
“Describe it for me.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant.”
“‘Cause I’m picturing a ruined castle, just so you know. Flying buttresses, leering gargoyles…”
“It was an impregnable stronghold built by an omniscient dictator who controlled the whole of time and creation.” Loki waved his hand impatiently. “The architectural details are beside the point.”
“Only it wasn’t impregnable,” Mobius quibbled. “I mean, you and Sylvie—"
“Mobius,” Loki groaned in frustration, running a hand through his tangled hair. “The timelines are branching faster than we can track them, the TVA is on the brink of self-destruction and every second we delay brings us closer to multiversal war. He Who Remains – he’s coming, countless different versions of him, we need to find Sylvie before it’s too late, we need to prepare…”
“Shhh, Loki, just slow down, take a breath. It’s gonna be okay…”
Loki dimly registered the change in Mobius’ voice, the sharp edge of panic beneath the soothing words. He wanted to lash out, shatter that carefully constructed calm, almost as badly as he wanted Mobius to lie to him, comfort him, make him believe that it was still possible to fix this.
“We don’t have time to ‘slow down’. We need to—"
He doubled over with an agonised gasp. It felt like someone had reached inside his chest and pulled, like a fist closing around his heart, and suddenly all the air was being squeezed out of his lungs, limbs hideously stretching and contorting, blood rushing in his ears—
The last thing he saw before the world went dark was Mobius reaching out his hand, mouth forming silently around the shape of his name.
“You’re okay, Loki, just keep breathing for me, nice and slow. That’s it, you’re doing great…”
Loki clenched his jaw as the aftershocks reverberated through his body, every nerve ending alight with pain. He’d been yanked from outside Repairs & Advancement and pushed back again so fast his head was spinning, the world a bewildering blur of subterranean blues and bilious greens.
He braced himself against the wall with a shaking arm. Mobius was still speaking to him, saying something about trying to relax, his voice infused with concern. Loki wanted to ask how he could possibly be expected to “relax” when he might start time slipping again at any moment (a deceptively innocuous phrase to describe the experience of being violently pulled in a million different directions at once, stretched and scattered and compressed again, ripped from reality atom-by-atom and reconstituted in the blink of an eye), but right now he didn’t trust himself to talk, let alone form coherent sentences.
“C’mon,” Mobius murmured, gripping his arm and steering him gently but firmly down the snaking corridor. “There’s a spare office down here somewhere, just a few more steps…”
Loki gulped a shuddering breath and allowed himself to be led, grateful for the warm pressure of Mobius’ hand, solid and reassuringly real. His legs trembled so badly he could hardly stand upright, as unsteady as a newborn foal. He felt wrung out, exhausted, and at the same time strung too tight, practically vibrating with tension and the sustained effort of (quite literally) holding himself together.
It was pointless trying to get his bearings. The underbelly of the TVA was bewilderingly labyrinthine, with half the exit routes blocked by large metal filing cabinets and towering stacks of mismatched equipment overflowing from OB’s workshop. Vaguely threatening posters lined the walls (“17 minutes is sufficient”, “minimise chit chat in the cafeteria, please”, “temporal radiation: know your limits – inspect suit prior to use”). Loki spotted a faded reproduction of the triumphant triptych that hung outside the War Room: the one that opened with alarming scenes of warfare and destruction and ended with the Timekeepers presiding serenely over the newly created Sacred Timeline – three false gods weaving order out of chaos, dictating the flow of time by sacrificing infinite branches, infinite lives.
We got to the man at the end of time. And he made sense.
Loki’s heart rate spiked. Fine tremors coursed through his limbs, pain and exhaustion warring with the adrenaline flooding his veins. The lights flickered ominously overhead, an unwelcome reminder that the multiverse was on the verge of a catastrophic meltdown, the branching timelines causing the TVA itself to become dangerously unstable. If they didn’t find a way to fix this, it wouldn’t just be Loki who broke apart, it would be everything…
“Nearly there,” Mobius promised, tightening his grip on Loki’s arm.
“Where are we going, exactly?”
“You’ll see. Just trust me, okay?”
After several more twists and turns Mobius ushered him into what looked like an abandoned-office-turned-glorified-storage-cupboard. The limited space was almost entirely taken up by a large desk shoved against the far wall, piled high with an assortment of broken and discarded office supplies. One of the ceiling panels was hanging loose, disgorging a writhing mass of multicoloured electrical wires. There was something unsettling about the sight, almost grotesque, as though the TVA’s pristine façade had been stripped away, leaving the entrails open and exposed.
“We need to go back,” Loki insisted, trying very hard not to think about OB’s unhelpfully graphic description of the consequences of being sucked into a black hole. “If we don’t make it to the Temporal Loom in time—”
“We will,” said Mobius soothingly, pushing the door softly shut behind them. “You heard OB, he needs a few minutes to recalibrate the Extractor. It’s been a couple hundred years since he built it, maybe it's a little rusty.” He shrugged. “Besides, I figured you could do with some breathing space.”
Loki frowned, his clouded mind struggling to process the latest in Mobius’ seemingly endless repertoire of Midgardian colloquialisms. “‘Breathing space?’”
“You said you wished you’d had more time to think back there at the citadel. So let’s slow down, take a moment.”
“OB told us he needs five minutes to recalibrate the Extractor, Mobius. Five. The window of opportunity is closing, we can’t afford to delay.”
“Five minutes, huh?” said Mobius softly, reaching up to brush a stray strand of hair from Loki's eyes.
Loki swallowed, impossibly distracted by the warmth of Mobius' fingertips lingering over the stinging gash at his temple. “Maybe less,” he whispered.
A smile ghosted over Mobius face. “Then we better make the most of it.”
Loki was suddenly conscious of how closely they were pressed together in the narrow room, practically standing on top of each other. Mobius showed no signs of wanting to reclaim his personal space. Quite the opposite: he couldn’t seem to stop touching Loki, hands fluttering restlessly over his arms, his chest, his face, cataloguing each cut and bruise, like he was trying to reassure himself that Loki was still there, still in one piece.
The only sound was a low persistent thrumming, a rhythmic vibration that shook the walls: the workings of the mysterious Temporal Loom at the heart of the TVA. The name conjured up visions of Asgardian weaving, nimble hands forming complex patterns from thousands of delicate, shimmering threads.
Loki suspected the reality was far less comforting.
“You’re shaking,” Mobius muttered, rubbing his hands up and down Loki’s arms like he was trying to warm him up.
“It’s nothing.”
“It isn’t nothing.” Mobius spoke with a quiet intensity that made Loki’s breath catch. “You’ve survived being pruned and waking up in the Void, you enchanted a dimension-spanning cloud monster and met the all-powerful dictator the end of time, you got yourself kicked through a Time Door” – Loki opened his mouth to object to the word "kicked", but Mobius pressed on before he could speak – “and you’ve been time slipping ever since you made it back to the TVA. When was the last time you slept?”
“I’m a god.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
Loki thought about arguing. Instead he slumped against the wall, overwhelmed by a wave of tiredness. It always took a few minutes after time slipping for the adrenaline to subside; once it did, it left him utterly drained, lightheaded and barely able to keep upright. Currents of sleep tugged gently at the edges of his consciousness, and he wanted nothing more than to let himself be pulled under, sink into blissful oblivion, finally give in to the impulse to rest…
“Loki?”
Loki blinked, meeting Mobius’ concerned gaze.
“You still with me?”
Loki nodded wordlessly, though he wasn’t entirely sure it was true. He felt strangely disconnected from reality, like some vital part of himself had been left behind in the empty space between time slips, dark as the night sky if all the stars had burned out.
“You need to sit down.” Mobius glanced around the room, apparently calculating whether it might be possible to clear some space. The rust orange carpet was almost entirely obscured by stacks of sealed cartons emblazoned with the TVA logo, and the only chair – also rust orange, listing to one side, with stuffing poking out of the seams – was piled high with boxes of unused envelopes. “Maybe if we shove some of these cartons out into the hall…”
“I don’t need to ‘sit down’. I’m not an invalid, Mobius.”
“Uh huh. Then why do you look like you're about to keel over?”
“I'm fine,” Loki repeated, more firmly this time. “If I don’t keep standing, I…”
I won’t be able to get up again.
Loki didn’t finish the thought out loud, but Mobius seemed to understand without the need for words. He took Loki’s hand, silently weaving their fingers together. Loki let out a shaky breath. The gentle pressure helped him feel anchored to the present, quieting the constant fear that he was about to be violently ripped away again.
For a few moments they stood together in silence, hand in hand, listening to the rumbling of the Loom. Loki could feel the reverberations deep inside his chest: he didn’t need OB to tell him that the Loom was under overwhelming pressure, radiation levels worsening with every second they delayed. He kept his eyes fixed on Mobius, a still point amidst the spiralling chaos, allowing himself to savour the small miracle of finding him again: his Mobius, with his mind and his memories intact; the man who knew Loki inside out and still, impossibly, believed he was worth saving.
“Does it always sound like that?” he asked eventually. A creaking groan shuddered through the air, followed by a startlingly loud bang.
“The Loom? Nope, that’s new.” Mobius spoke lightly, but his grip on Loki’s hand tightened.
Loki frowned, willing himself to focus through the haze of pain and tiredness. Mobius was still smiling reassuringly, but his forehead was creased with worry, his shoulders tense.
Guilt twisted Loki's stomach. The TVA was crumbling, the Timekeepers had been toppled from their pedestals, the Temporal Loom was failing; Mobius had barely had a chance to process that he was a variant with a past life on the Sacred Timeline, let alone the fresh revelation that the TVA had been subjecting its workforce to routine mind-wiping, and now...
Mobius shuffled his feet, averting his gaze.
The reality of what they were about to do dawned on Loki with sudden clarity. Mobius had agreed to risk his life without a second thought, and Loki had been about to let him, swept up in the urgency of the situation and OB’s dire warnings that time was running out. Everything had happened so fast – he hadn’t given Mobius time to so much as pause for breath, hadn't stood still for long enough to even consider whether there might be other options.
“Mobius, look at me.” Loki disentangled his hand and gently tilted Mobius’ chin upwards, encouraging him to meet his eyes. “You know you don’t have to do this.”
“By ‘this’, I’m guessing you mean venturing out into a temporal maelstrom so OB’s Extractor can yank you out of the Time Streams?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Risk getting my skin peeled off by prolonged exposure to unprecedented levels of temporal radiation?”
“Can we please stop talking about skin?”
“Easy for you to say,” Mobius muttered. “You’re not the one who’s gonna be flayed alive out there.”
Loki narrowed his eyes. He was the god of dissimulation and deception, lies and illusions; he recognised deflection when he saw it.
“Stop deflecting,” he commanded, standing upright with an effort. He wasn’t above using his full height to his advantage, not that it had ever made much difference where Mobius was concerned. The man was infuriatingly stubborn.
“I’m not deflecting.”
“Clearly that isn’t true.”
“C’mon, Loki…”
“The risks are too great.” Loki crossed his arms decisively. “I can’t allow you do this.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not your decision.”
“We’ll find another way.”
“Did you miss the part where there is no other way? OB’s a genius, if he says this is the only way to fix this, I believe him.”
Loki bit back a groan of frustration. “Fine, OB’s a genius. Even geniuses aren’t right about everything. You’re always talking about ‘thinking outside the box’. We can head to the archives, investigate alternatives—”
“There aren’t any alternatives.”
“Then one of the Hunters can take your place,” Loki argued. “There must be someone in this authoritarian nightmare of an organisation who’s trained for this kind of emergency.”
“No one’s trained for this. Time slipping isn't possible inside the TVA, remember? None of this is meant to be happening.”
“And if I refuse to participate in this farcical and absurdly dangerous so-called plan?”
“Loki, listen.” Mobius’ voice was quiet, urgent. “You said it yourself, we’re running out of time. The radiation out there’s only gonna get worse. We’ve got one chance to get this right. If we don’t do this, you’ll keep being yanked through time, maybe forever, never staying in one place for more than a few minutes, being turned inside out and back to front and ripped to pieces…” There it was again, the ragged note of anxiety bleeding back into Mobius’ voice, filling Loki with an almost desperate desire to offer reassurance. “I can’t keep watching it happen, it’s horrifying. It’s like one of those mediaeval paintings with demons torturing the souls of the damned.”
“It’s okay, really. It isn’t that bad.”
“You keep saying that, but it doesn’t look okay. It looks…” Mobius trailed off helplessly.
“Mobius, you’ve seen my entire life. I’ve survived worse. Much worse.”
Mobius shook his head. “Worse than being stretched across dimensions and contracted again? Not knowing when you’re gonna disappear, not knowing if maybe this time you won’t make it back?”
“I can handle it,” Loki promised, with as much conviction as he could muster. “I’m getting used it, actually. I think I’m starting to figure out how to stay in one place for more than—”
A jolt of pain tore through his chest, sudden and savage as the twist of knife. Loki gasped, instinctively reaching for Mobius, but reality slipped through his fingers like mist. For an endless moment he was tipping forwards into emptiness, flailing, falling...
He groped blindly. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing but the all-consuming pain of his physical form being stretched beyond its natural limits, the sickening sense that his internal organs were somehow on the outside of his body, blood and bone and sinew laid bare.
He stumbled as the world reasserted itself, nearly sinking to his knees. The storage closet had transformed into a fully furnished office; a startled woman sat behind the desk, eyes wide with alarm, but this time Loki barely had a chance to draw breath before it was happening all over again, limbs twisting and convulsing, thoughts scattered and dispersed…
It felt like dying. It felt like being born, struggling out of the darkness naked and bloodied and gasping for air. It was too much, he couldn’t stand it, he needed to grasp hold of something solid, he needed to breathe—
He snapped back to the present with a strangled cry. Mobius was standing slightly further away, face etched with mingled horror and concern. Loki got the impression that he was forcing himself to look at him directly.
“You were saying?”
Loki braced himself against the wall, lungs burning and throat raw from screaming, muscles tensing involuntarily with each shuddering spasm of pain. He had to clench his hands, digging his fingernails into his palms to keep from crying out.
Panic clawed at his throat. It wasn’t just the ache of drawing breath or the crawling sensation under his skin or even the oppressive knowledge that this was all his fault, that Mobius’ faith in him had been misplaced; it was the fear of losing himself entirely, of an eternity without the touch of another hand or the sound of another voice, of not knowing where he began or ended or even his own name.
The fear of being utterly alone, existing everywhere and nowhere, haunting the TVA’s hallways like a ghost; not dead, but no longer truly alive.
“Fine,” he gritted out. “Fine. I can’t handle it. Is that what you want me to say? It’s agonising. It feels like being twisted In a hundred different directions at once, like being torn apart piece by piece, and it doesn’t stop, it doesn’t stop – every time it happens the pain gets worse, it’s… Mobius, it’s blinding, and if I have to endure this for much longer I think I’ll go mad, or – or…”
Suddenly he was being swept into a hug, fierce and protective, Mobius’ arms wrapping around him so tightly that Loki wondered whether he ever intended to let go. He could almost believe Mobius’ warm, reassuring grip might be enough to keep him tethered to reality, stop him from disappearing again.
“I’ve got you,” Mobius murmured over and over, one hand moving to the back of Loki’s neck. “I’ve got you.”
Loki sank into the embrace with a shuddering sob, burying his face in Mobius’ hair and breathing in his familiar scent. He was shaking so badly he half feared his legs would collapse from under him. Even now that the worst was over, the pain was almost more than he could tolerate, especially without access to his magic. He clung to Mobius like he was drowning, clutching the coarse wool of his jacket and drawing him closer still, until he could feel the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest.
Mobius held him through the worst of it, rubbing his hands over Loki’s back and murmuring soothing words as the ripples slowly ebbed. Eventually he drew back to cradle Loki’s jaw, brushing his thumbs over Loki’s cheekbones in a slow, repetitive motion. Loki’s breath hitched.
“Does it hurt?” Mobius instantly stilled. “Gods, Lokes, I should’ve asked. Does it hurt when I…?”
“No,” said Loki hurriedly, grabbing Mobius’ hand and pressing it to his cheek. “No. It… it helps.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Please, don’t stop.”
“Okay,” said Mobius softly, with a tentative half-smile that made Loki’s stomach flutter. He let his eyes drift closed, focusing on the pleasant shivering sensation of Mobius’ blunt fingernails over his scalp, tense muscles slowly relaxing as Mobius began stroking up and down his shoulders and arms with a firm, consistent pressure, like he understood exactly what Loki needed to feel safe and contained and whole…
And then Mobius was kissing him with an aching sweetness, pressing him against the wall with the warm weight of his body, hands cradling his face, holding him still. It felt as natural as breathing. He melted into the kiss without hesitation, as though this wasn’t the first time, as though this was something they did, like bickering and solving cases and sitting across from one another in the archives and dismantling each other's illusions piece by piece.
Loki opened his eyes, lips tingling. He caught a fleeting glimpse of something new in Mobius’ expression; a depth of feeling that was almost adoration, gone in an instant. Loki wanted nothing more than to see that look again, but there wasn’t time; and if they didn’t find a way to stop the multiverse from collapsing in on itself, there never would be.
“When all this is over I’m gonna take you someplace to rest, get you cleaned up a bit,” Mobius murmured, smoothing the hair from Loki’s face. “We can head back to my apartment. It’s not much, not compared to a palace in Asgard, but it’s better than nothing. A shower, some fresh clothes, a hot meal. How does that sound?”
“I— it sounds…” It sounded perfect. Like everything he’d ever wanted, and so much more than he deserved. Loki blinked the tears from his eyes. “I met another version of you,” he confessed shakily. “When I first materialised back at the TVA – after Sylvie pushed me through Time Door. He – you… didn’t know me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Mobius. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“You chased me through the TVA.”
“I did? Huh. I don’t remember that.”
“You were faster than I expected. You nearly caught up with me. I had to jump out a window to get away.”
“Wait, you jumped out a window? You mean you just… smashed through the glass?”
“And landed in one of those absurd flying cars,” Loki confirmed.
Mobius dissolved into laughter, hiding his face in the crook of Loki’s shoulder. “I wish I could’ve seen that,” he chuckled. “I mean… okay, I guess I did see it. Wish I could remember it, though.”
“I’d much rather you didn’t. It was far from my most elegant escape attempt.”
“You always figure something out.” Mobius looked up, smiling with undisguised affection, and something else… something deeper. Faith, Loki realised with a pang. “This time won't be any different.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Call it a hunch.”
Loki shook his head. “I can’t lose you,” he whispered fiercely. “Not again.”
A flicker of surprise crossed Mobius’ face, as though Loki’s vehemence had caught him off guard. “You won’t. No one’s getting lost, that’s why we’re doing this. Best case scenario? I don’t lose my skin, you don’t get spaghettified.”
“And the worst-case scenario?”
As if on cue, the Loom let out another creaking groan.
“Shhh, don’t think about it.” Mobius pulled Loki into another hug like it was the most natural thing in the world, gentler this time, but steady and sure. “Just keep breathing,” he murmured in Loki’s ear. “Focus on my voice.”
Loki surrendered to the touch, trying not to think about the eerily flickering lights or the rumbling Loom (was it his imagination, or was the thrumming less rhythmic than before?) or the fact that OB must have finished recalibrating the Temporal Aura Extractor by now and was doubtless impatiently awaiting their return. Mobius murmured nonsense about the TVA’s endless rules and regulations (apparently there was a hierarchy of desserts, with different flavours of pie costing between one to five tokens according to an arbitrary classification system devised by Miss Minutes, strictly enforced for reasons no one fully understood) and the subtle differences between near-identical models of personal watercraft. Loki closed his eyes again and let himself drift on the gentle current of Mobius’ words, waiting until their heartbeats settled into a matching rhythm.
He didn’t know how much time had passed when a disembodied voice came crackling into the room, apparently emanating from what looked like a broken transmitter on the desk.
“Hey, where did you both go? Is Mobius time slipping now, too?” OB kept talking without waiting for an answer or even drawing breath, his cheerful voice clipped with urgency. “Anyway, I don’t want to rush you guys, but we need to hurry. I’ve recalibrated the Temporal Aura Extractor, we’re good to go. See you in” – there was a brief pause – “thirty seconds.” Another pause. “Make that five seconds.”
The crackling of static stopped as abruptly as it had started.
“Guess our time’s up,” Mobius sighed, gently disengaging himself. Loki resisted the urge to instantly reel him back in.
“How long have we been gone?”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Mobius soothingly. “OB would've cut in sooner if he’d needed to. Maybe he wanted a little breathing space too.”
“He hasn’t had any visitors in four hundred years,” Loki conceded. “He probably grew accustomed to the peace and quiet.”
“Then we show up and ask him to fix something that isn't even meant to be possible inside the TVA. You time slip back to the past—”
“—and all those memories come flooding back in the present. OB finds out the Temporal Loom is in catastrophic meltdown and the TVA is on the verge of imploding.”
“It’s gotta be a lot to process. I bet OB’s grateful we snuck out for a while.”
A tingling warmth spread through Loki from top to toe. How was it possible that this ridiculous man could make even the most desperate situation seem hopeful? After all, there was no reason this wouldn’t work. All he had to do was wait until OB’s absurd handheld timer went green and then prune himself – how hard could it be?
Mobius stepped back, carefully smoothing the front of Loki’s filthy, sweat-stained shirt before reaching for the door.
“Mobius, wait,” said Loki suddenly, grabbing hold of Mobius’ arm. “I need you to promise me something.”
Mobius turned, instantly snaring Loki in that piercing blue gaze, open and questioning; the expression that seemed utterly guileless, though Loki knew it was anything but.
“If I’m not fast enough, if I don’t prune myself in time—”
“You’ll be fast enough,” said Mobius confidently. “It’s gonna be fine.”
“I know, it’s going to be fine. But in case it isn’t – don’t stay out there for any longer than absolutely necessary.”
“Set up the Extractor, head straight back. Got it.”
“Promise me,” Loki commanded, clutching at Mobius' sleeve. “When OB says it’s time, don’t hesitate.”
“Okay, okay, I promise,” said Mobius easily.
Too easily.
Loki opened his mouth, prepared to argue for as long as it took for Mobius to see sense, when an invisible hand reached inside his chest and squeezed, stealing his words and scrambling his thoughts. The room seemed lurch sideways. Pain radiated through his limbs, his vision went black, and for a split-second he was sure he was about to be ripped away—
Then the darkness lifted, the squeezing sensation subsiding as abruptly as it had started.
“I thought you were gonna disappear again,” Mobius muttered, ashen-faced.
“So did I,” Loki admitted shakily. The room was still spinning, blood rushing in his ears.
“You said it yourself, you can’t take much more of this. And frankly, neither can I.”
“But—”
“We’re gonna fix this, Loki, I promise, but you can’t save the timelines if you’re blinking out of existence every second, and right now OB’s plan is the only one we’ve got.”
Loki took a deep, steadying breath and willed himself to relax his grip on Mobius' arm. Much as he hated to admit it, Mobius was right. He couldn’t track down Sylvie like this, let alone try to bring the multiverse back from the brink of chaos and destruction. He’d extract another promise from Mobius once they reached the Control Room, make him swear to follow OB’s instructions to the letter; for now their brief period of respite was well and truly at an end.
A stack of envelopes slid across the shaking desk and fell to the floor with a thud, punctuating the thought.
“Ready?” Mobius asked quietly.
After a moment's hesitation Loki nodded, bracing himself for whatever was coming next. “Lead the way.”
Mobius' relieved smile was its own reward. He opened the door and peered out into the flickering corridor.
“C'mon,” he said, hand settling firmly at Loki's waist. “Let's go put you back together.”