LET TIME PASS.

  his fingers found a familiar place to clutch onto mobius’s clothes as loki rested his chin over his shoulder, lungs trembling with an exhale.   it was like a miracle manifesting right inside his arms.   there he was, mobius, after all this time.   inside his embrace.   “how i’ve missed you, mobius.” he murmured, quiet.   the shape of reality seemed to slip away as loki closed his eyes.   he felt no gravity pulling them down, no oxygen drifting around them.   just mobius and he, existing independently of anything else.

  “i had to,” he squeezed.   “i had to go.   i could not let any of you die.” again, and again, and again.   he’d not.   between the branches and the citadel, loki’d rather condemn himself.   that had been his choice, as he simply had exhausted every other possibility of keeping this dear face alive.   whether mobius cried and begged and waited—at least, he was alive.

and he is hungry — mobius has never been a hungry sort of creature. the tva agents aren't made like that. they don't encourage desires and wants in the null time-zone. there is only ever a goal, a job, a duty. sure, sometimes there are ... sometimes there are good conversations. intelligent ones. even delightful ones. the agents made comrades out of each other. even stripped of the timelines' usual wants, they'd huddle among each other for a semblance of companionship. mobius supposes there is only so much even he who remains could do, would do, to the people he's taken to become his soldiers.

but this... mobius closes his eyes at the warmth, at the solidity of it all. loki has always been... sturdy. a frost giant wrapped in the illusion of an asgardian through and through, the mass of him is undeniable. mobius remembers this, the little memory he has of touching loki, of holding him. they don't ... they don't make a habit of touching, loki and him. but when the god's frantic, when they're in a hurry, mobius could get away with it: a hand around his elbow, his palm over his back. it's a guilty pleasure, something he revels in quietly, privately, although thinking about it now, in this context, makes him take in all those instances with more guilt than pleasure.

had he taken advantage of loki then, he wonders ? ( was this why he went away ? )

but loki dispels the idea, rushed with the explanation. he had to go, he said. he can't let anyone die. and mobius can feel his own voice swells, wanting to fight: then how about you ? how'd you know you wouldn't die ? it wants to demand. you should've still talked to me, loki. you should've said something. we could've figured it out together. — but it's easy, far too easy, to let loki have the space to speak, because mobius knows this routine all too well. or maybe he's just selfish. with loki's voice so near, it's hard to put a stop to it. mobius has waited for so long. ...



Thor spins a lesson he’d be wise to hear before he does, thinking of Mother’s sense.

’ And Loki, ‘ whichever one. Bleeding cold in his arms, chasing Frost Giants, undead by all accounts, then, anywhere but here, ’ keeps the branches from falling to complete ruin. ‘ You would risk this.

— by choice. Now they’re in agreement: not the brother he knows.

Would that be the sacrifice. Sitting still? That Thor could pluck a string and have them both back, have all of them back, if.

He’s met his fair share of self-fancied ‘Last Guys Standing’. Not much of them was left to stand when he was done. He’s short on challenge, these days.

he thinks he should be more proud, should be bursting with pride. maybe he is. maybe underneath all that desperation, there is nothing but an admiration of the potential he'd always known loki could achieve. but before that, there is only sea-wide grief, mingling with continents of guilt. mobius feels it all, like he's been injected with lead; he's heavy with poison.

he wants loki back. he just- he's selfish. he just wants to know if loki's okay.

but thor—

❝ you think i'm searching for him because i want revenge ? ❞ disbelief echoes inside his voice, laced with the rage he couldn't express with loki gone. everyone's treating it like it's a good thing, the fact loki saved them all. but who's checking on loki ? who's making sure loki is saved ?

the thought burns.

  loki knows he can go back.   but he doesn’t want to live in the past.   he wants to live in the now and he wants it to be by mobius’s side.   please, he begs inside his head.   let me in.   and mobius, as though able to read his thoughts, does.   loki heaves, eyes blinked shut when his head drops, leaning into the man’s hold.   loki turns his head, just a little, for his lips to press against mobius’s palm.   “so i figure,” he smiles, chuckles.   it’s a wet sound, railing with an anxious tremble as he brings up his own hand to plaster over mobius’s right one, holding it pressed flush against his cold skin.   he aches for this warmth, lulling him to a more peaceful state of mind.   whole.   it doesn’t matter whether mobius means his insult or not.   loki knows he means no malice with it.   after all, in the end, he turns it around, rewrites it into affection and loki can’t help the smile that spreads onto his thin face, a chuckle erupting from his chest.   “your loki,” he echoes, as he steps closer.   he has crossed the door;    now, he can rest his forehead against mobius’s.   “that’s right.”

apart of mobius is still fighting. it wrestles with self-doubt. it remembers, the wide-eyed expression he wears when he waited and waited by that control room, by that observational deck. he was there when he watched the darkened timelines shift : brimming with a power that sylvie had muttered felt familiar, while it wound and grew and splintered and grew root. OB had been transfixed, so had casey, and verity, and even timely at the sight. they watched in silent at the beauty of it all, unfolding like cards; mobius watched only for the god that it swallowed. and remembers having kept asking : what happened ? where's loki ?

( and he remembers what happened after that, too. sylvie looking at him with a look of sadness and relief and understanding. an acceptance mobius did not understand why she wore so easily quickly. he's not coming back, mobius. and denial climbed up his throat like a poison that couldn't be digested, desperate to get out. of course he's coming back, he had replied to her then, stubborn and determined and heartfelt. he was a balloon belief, blood full of faith. loki'll come back. because that's what he does. he will get away, he will come back. )

yet. yet. the fight feels like it's a loss anyway, especially when the cold of loki's finger touches his pulse, it drags with it every breath he former analyst shudders out. and mobius thinks : can he make temperature up ? he can't, can he. so this must be real. it has to be ... right ?

❝ now you're just makin' it hard for me to stay mad at you, ❞ he chuckles out, wet — and he wants to. god, does he want to. anger feels like a justified shield now; feels like a ground he could get a hold of, could stand straight upon. but, all the same, at that damn voice, ( so familiar, so similar. it has to be real, right ? please let it be real. ) mobius feels every foundation for rage crumbles. all he wants is to soothe loki's worries, to kiss any sorrow away. did you eat ? did you get any rest ? wherever you went, was it safe ? did it cradle you to sleep at night, did you find peace at the centre of it ?

(Norwegian lyrics + English translation)

I stormsvarte fjell, jeg vandrer alene Over isbreen tar jeg meg frem I eplehagen står møyen den vene og synger “når kommer du hjem?”

Men trærne danser og fossene stanser når hun synger, hun synger “kom hjem” When she sings, she sings “come home”

-

In storm-black mountains, I wander alone Over the glacier I make my way In the apple garden stands the maiden fair and sings, “When will you come home?”

He has half a mind to pry at this illusion with his bare hands. It would be like Loki to come in dressed as a commoner to awe at a shrine of himself. To pain Thor before he’d offer relief-----

-----from inside Thor’s chokehold.

’ Quite enough of its dangers. ‘

Long after Father’s conquests turned legend and dream food for princes, the multiversal was to be left alone if one wasn’t terribly fond of ruin. If one weren’t balancing interrealm peace on the tip of a moving blade like Thor is.

The old tenderness returns. He knows he should not.

He knows always will.

( that isn't all he wants. what he wants, he- he can't speak of it. not anymore. it used to be so simple: a jetski. one afternoon on the water. he doesn't know since when that image has intermingled with loki in the peripheral, but the god's there now. always. except he isn't. that's the curse. that's always the curse. )

when mobius breathes, it's shrapnel. it hurts everything on the way in.

❝ the multiverse doesn't always exist the way we know it. ❞ mobius starts, because he figures that's a good place to start as any. ❝ it used to be a singular universe — one, because there was this guy — he who remains, last man standing — that dictated so. he... he kidnapped a bunch of people, erase their memories, and created an organisation. an organisation which guards that specific timeline. ❞

is thor following so far ? god, he hopes so.

❝ any branches ? any variances ? they cut it. your- the loki i knew ... he was from one of those branches that was cut. that couldn't make it. long story short, he- i guess he and another variant of his managed to kill the last guy standing, but when they did, we had... we had a problem with maintaining the branching timelines. the machine that created the singular one couldn't take it. ❞

a pause; a breath.

❝ so loki... sacrificed themself. ❞ as loki does, and that hurts. because nothing's changed. there's free will, and loki never strays from his doomed narrative. mobius feels like that's on him, for not noticing sooner. for not stopping it. ❝ he used his magic to- to- i guess, to make sure all the timelines could exist without any machine. that the multiverse could exist. but he's out there, alone, cut off, and i- i need to get to him. ❞

To speak of a need for Loki. Who has one more profound than Thor?

’ My brother—- ‘

whose likeness is mocked up in multitudes all around, images still and moving, youth to grown, Æsirlike in all of them but for being half Laufey’s size in some. His crimes are on display. His favoured furs. He in stone, shoulder to shoulder with a carving of Thor himself.

None of these museal depictions come from Thor’s memory, only others’. What is his remains so.

Loki looms above them, pompous and horned in his mural.

’ —-is long dead, nomad. ‘

but how could thor have known of that ? his loki is dead. he had cradled his version of loki in his arms; he had mourned that death.

mobius hasn't mourned his. he's still fighting — he has to.

( and loki isn't dead. he's just- gone. )

❝ this isn't the same brother you know. ❞ is all mobius chooses to reply with. the mural of loki feels like it's burning right into mobius : like the statue knows, like it's judging, or like it's accepting. accepting of this martyrdom when mobius couldn't; like he'll fight gods themselves, all of them, if it means he could deny loki his doomed fate.

why is everyone so accepting of it ? why is no one angry ?

“i know.   i did and i’m sorry but mobius—” both of his hands trail lower, grasp onto mobius’s wrists, his palms and squeezing, shaking them.   “please.   you know who i am.   you aren’t dreaming.   you are not being tricked.   this isn’t an illusion, it’s me.” loki swallows down.   his heart trembles inside his chest.   he finds that he prefers this heartache to never-ending nothingness.   he’d rather stay here, convincing mobius over and over, begging for a sliver of his faith which he has now lost, over watching him wandering weightlessly into a mental grave.

  oh… he’s being selfish again, isn’t he?   by the heavens.

a frantic looking person. wild hair. dishevelled clothing. the tva doesn't have a past but somehow even loki could unlock that. ( and of course he would. he was never meant to just be the king of earth. he's so much more, he always has been. mobius just wishes it doesn't have to mean that he has to remove himself from everything; that he has to be the one to walk the line, to be at the end of it, alone. ) and a plea, a voice: mobius, it's me. and he could almost hear it right back, his own response—

i don't know you.

is it real ? or is it fabricated ? another thing his mind has sewn onto him, plagued him with, ever since he makes a home here, in the timeline. ( it is always that last moment. hey, he remembers calling loki, but the god moves on. he barely looks back. he goes down the stairs. he shuts the door. and then he does. he finally looks back, and it isn't a goodbye or anything. it's a promise. and it's a damning promise, and mobius should've known. he should've known. he's the loki expert. a trickster, a liar, an escapist — a martyr. always the goddamn martyr. they should've called him loki the selfless. but it's him, mobius. he should've tried harder. he should've known. he saw the signs, and he didn't— )

it's me, he says. your loki.

and finally, like a breath, like a scolding, ( are you really gonna say you don't know him again ? ) mobius reaches out onto that trembling faith, onto that painful hope. my loki, he thinks, as he brings his hands upwards and he- he holds loki. he holds loki like he told everyone in the group therapy, to frigga, that he would, if he had the chance: gently, achingly. he reaches and touches the sharpness of the cheeks there, the slope of those bones. loki have always had long eyelashes, beautiful. and the file could never get the colour of his eyes right. blue, green, red. in this shadow though, it's the colour of the top of the lake: something that holds things deep, and it has been holding them for a long time.

❝ ... you're an asshole, did you know that ? ❞ he isn't, not really, but mobius can't help it. still, he pulls until their foreheads touch, loki's colder ones against his own. when the former analyst inhales, it's a shuddering action. fragile. ❝ my asshole, though. my loki. ❞

  “sylvie may be cruel but she’s not vile.   she’d not spent energy on such brutish tricks, mobius, i assure you, she’s enjoying herself far from here.” she was still on earth, the last time loki had looked at the multiverse before standing from his seat.   as well as countless other lokis.   some scouted the universes, others died, others uncovered forgotten artifacts.   it felt both bitter and relieving to watch.   still… once again—loki could not help though feel robbed.   of something—he did not regret it, no, he did not.   he knew what he wanted.   he wanted all of them to live.   he wanted to preserve their own defense against the conquerors.   that does not mean a god does not long to experience his creation.   that did not mean loki didn’t long, still, for a smile to spread on mobius’s face like it used to.

mobius feels his heart pounds. it's louder now than it's been. sylvie—loki—is too animated. too ... there is that arrogance to him that mobius recognises, that sylvie doesn't have. no, sylvie's arrogance is... is in her skills, in what she's done. that's always been her point of pride: that she had a revenge plan, and she was the one who executed it until the end. this... there is an elegance here too that's achingly familiar. arrogant and elegance, the perfect form of a regal prince, who once walked the golden halls of asgards; who knew all the glitz and glam of what it's like to be apart of long-reigned royalty. when mobius blinks next, his vision stings with tears. his heart caves just as the words, mobius, i assure you, she’s enjoying herself far from here, lands in his ears.

the call of his name is the worst. it's so familiar. god, it's so—

❝ who are you ? ❞ he whispers, though his own voice sounds foreign to him : broken and crumpled over. like a glass that's been shattered and someone's trying their best to stitch it all up regardless. but how can they ? they're shattered. some of them have turned to sand. ❝ if you're not sylvie ... ❞ he looks down to where this- this loki- is touching him, and it's searing. mobius' heart aches. all those times he'd held onto loki, all those moments— it's too late now. he should've known it then; should've been quicker with it. should've kept loki away from the doors—