Chapter 3
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<So, I just heard the strangest thing.> Mobius wrote and sent through the time door.
<Do tell.>
<Well, B-15 was out on a mission hunting a He Who Remains variant, and she said he got a hold of her time stick. Had her cornered, was about to prune her and ! Suddenly the time stick vanished right out of his hand.>
<How curious.>
<Loki>
After a pause, a time stick, fortunately turned off, slid through the time door on the tray, a note pinned beneath it.
<Completely unrelatedly, I found this. Tell B-15 to be more careful. Shouldn’t leave time sticks lying around in timelines. Someone could get hurt.>
Mobius smiled.
<So you can pull things from timelines, huh?>
<It’s significantly more complicated than that.>
Yeah, it probably was.
Despite having studied Loki’s entire history and the future that had been written for him, Mobius still didn’t really understand his magic. And he really didn’t understand his timeslipping or his apparent manipulation of timelines into growing, living, mutually viable branches.
Mobius knew Loki’s magic was powerful, but what he had done was so far behind anything achieved by any Loki variant he’d studied. It was beyond the magic of Frigga or the powers of Odin. It has nothing to do with his true nature as a frost giant. Maybe he learned something from He Who Remains.
“B-15!” Mobius called out as she walked past his cubicle, raising the time stick towards her, “You might want this back.”
She accepted it slowly, “How did you…?”
“Loki.”
“Loki?!” she looked around quickly, “He’s back?!”
“No,” Mobius said sadly, forcing a smile, “Wish he was though.”
B-15 looked at him with that sympathetic expression he had rarely ever seen her wear before Loki left, and rarely now saw her without.
“No, he’s not here. He’s still…you know…” Mobius gestured to the screen showing the tree and all the timelines, “But O.B. rigged up a tempad so we can talk. Sorta. We can send messages to each other.”
“That’s…nice. Weird, but nice.” she smiled, shaking her head, “So he’s okay then?”
“He’s still our Loki,” Mobius replied, “Anyway, looks like he’s able to extract objects from timelines.”
“Without messing them up?”
“I’m guessing he’s being careful,” Mobius shrugged, “Sticking to apocalypses.”
“And dangerous variants?”
“Guess so. Only stuff that won’t mess up history or get in the way of free will. He is pretty smart.”
She smirked, “Well, tell him thanks. He saved me back there.”
“Will do,” Mobius smiled and turned back to his desk, writing B-15’s thanks quickly to send them through before returning to his work.
Getting through the reports, background reading for timelines in need of analyst attention, writing paperwork…it had become a lot easier since Mobius had been able to talk to Loki again. Obviously Loki didn’t actively help with any of it, but just knowing he was still there. Being able to talk…
A scrunched up ball of paper flew through a suddenly open time door and hit Mobius’ pen, knocking it slightly and sending the ‘t’ he was writing wayward.
Mobius glared at the tempad.
He was starting to suspect Loki had been lying when he said he couldn’t see inside the TVA. His ability to aim projectile notes to cause mild irritation was getting really good.
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<Hey, do you want me to tell Sylvie? About this? In case she wants to talk to you too?>
They’d been talking like this for a while now. Sending notes back and forth through an unstable, small time door.
Mostly it was the same sort of idle and sometimes bizarre conversation that had typically filled the, admittedly limited, downtime they’d had between trying to save then overthrow then fix the TVA. Sometimes more meaningful things or discussions of what was going on in the organisation that Loki couldn’t see.
But in all that time, Mobius hadn’t even thought to tell Sylvie. He really should have, but he was so caught up in his own happiness at being able to talk to Loki again, it just didn’t occur to him. Not until he saw fries in the TVA cafeteria one day, reminding him with a wave of intense guilt that he should have told her as soon as this line of communication had opened.
She and Loki had a complicated relationship. Mobius didn’t really know what it was, if it was even definable, but they were close. She needed to be told.
Loki disagreed.
<Please don’t tell her. She has her own life on a branch and she’s happy there. It’s what she wanted. To be left alone to live her life, a life she chose. If you tell her that she can talk to me here, she’d either feel under obligation to do so despite, or guilty because she chooses not to. Either way, her peace and contentment is disrupted. She’s had to go through too much pain already. I don’t want to cause more.>
<You sure? Maybe it wouldn’t disrupt anything. She misses you too.>
<I know, but we need to leave her alone. We’re a part of her past, not the story she’s writing for herself now. She wanted to be left alone to live her life, and we need to let her have that.>
A scrunched up message flew through moments later.
<She’s in a relationship, you know. It’s been going on for nearly ten months.>
<How does that make you feel?>
<The human she’s with seems kind. They care for her a lot. And if they ever show signs of not doing so, I will choke them with a cloud of ash from Vesuvius.>
<She might have something to say about that.>
<Oh, I think she’ll understand.>
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Mobius was at his cubicle, as usual, going through reports from one timeline with two currently growing branches, when the small time door opened and the tray slid through with a message. A welcome distraction from the work until Mobius read it.
<In all the branched timelines of my life you saw, did you ever come across one where Odin went through with his plan? To use me to help unify Asgard and Jotunheimn?>
Mobius’ heart sank.
He had seen the psychological damage done by Loki’s discovery of his true parentage. Raised with stories of the frost giants as monsters, lied to by the very few people he trusted. It had broken him.
So it worried Mobius that Loki was thinking about this again. And now, when he was completely alone somewhere no one else could reach.
<Why?> Mobius wrote back, unwilling to support the opening of that wound without knowing what Loki sought.
<I was so angry at first. And then I was preoccupied with other things. New York and all that preceded it, then the TVA. Only now have I thought about it, and how utterly absurd that was as a plan. Odin was no fool, and yet he claimed that I might be used to help find peace. Laufey abandoned me. Left me to die. He didn’t want me, so what use would I have been in any manner of negotiation? I don’t understand Odin’s logic, so I want to know what might have happened it he had found the chance to follow the plan through.>
Mobius thought for a moment before replying. It was a reasonable question, and nothing in Loki’s words suggested the discovery was still raw. He had matured and changed a lot since then after all.
So maybe he could answer.
Actually, answering could be pretty fun.
<There were two branches like that I know of, but both got pruned, and I don’t think you’ll like what happened in either.>
<Come on. How bad can it be?>
<Okay. Well, in one, Odin eventually told you the truth and sent you into Jotunheim as an assassin and a spy, able to withstand the climate and with the abilities of an Asgardian witch.>
<Not a witch and you know that. What about the other one?>
<He had you marry Thor.>
<WHAT?!>
<Told you you wouldn’t like it.>
<I don’t.>
<You made a pretty cute couple.>
<Stop it.>
<I might be able to find some printed images of that timeline…>
<I will destroy the tempad.>
<Wouldn’t stop me sending them to you.>
<And people call me a villain.>
<:p>
<What the hell is that?>
<You’ve never seen an emoji before?>
<Oh, I have. People do not usually write them by hand though.>
<Suddenly you’re the expert on emojis? You don’t even know what candy is.>
<Those are two completely unrelated things. And, I simply have a more refined taste in delicacies than you.>
Mobius smirked. This was an argument he could win. Easily.
He just needed to find the right apocalypse.
Praline seashells from Earth. Manufactured for several decades before the company that made them got bought out, and they started to be made with poorer quality ingredients that were cheaper. Still sold for the same price, but tastes worse and only brought real pleasure to the company CEOs.
Mobius just had to find some catastrophic event between the decades of that candy being made properly, then try and find some shop with a box of them. It was a wider year range than Kablooie, sure, but earlier in Earth’s history when major climate disasters were slightly more rare.
Still, it took a while, digging through the files on his own, and then having to check three different natural disasters to find what he was looking for. But Mobius did it. Loki would probably have seen, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t know the treat he was in for.
Mobius didn’t bother with a note this time. Just the box of praline seashells, which he placed on the tray with a smile already preempting Loki’s reaction. Hoping the chocolates wouldn’t suffer from some sort of strange temporal stuff en route, he opened a time door and slid the gift through.
A few minutes later, the door reopened, the box was returned, half the chocolates gone and a note left on top.
<I yield.>
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<Why do the people of Midgard insist on furnishing their homes with objects that talk?>
<Are you ever gonna call it Earth?>
<Why on Earth would I do that?>
<Funny.>
<I know.>
<What do you have against talking objects? You love talking.>
<Not to inanimate objects, and certainly not to any that have been furnished with any form of synthetic intelligence.>
The door closed and immediately reopened, a balled up piece of paper tossed through.
<I mean, AI cooking devices, AI cleaning robots, AI refrigerators. All of which talk to you. All of which predict the owner’s apparent requirements, as if people are incapable of knowing such things themselves. And perhaps they are. Certainly they will be should they continue this trend. Up until those AI devices go rogue and we both know how that tends to turn out.>
Mobius laughed to himself, <I enjoyed that rant.>
<Shut up.>
<Would pie make you feel better?>
<It wouldn’t hurt.>
<I'll have Miss Minutes whip us up some.>
<Truly your wit knows no bounds.>
Seriously though, Mobius mused as he wandered towards the automat, he should probably talk to O.B. and Casey about failsafes in case the AI cartoon clock went rogue again.
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No matter how much Mobius talked to Loki like this, there was still an undertone of grief that shadowed his every waking moment. It wasn’t the same as having him here. Loki was still gone and he could never come back. There was still so much Mobius had never managed to say or do.
The melancholy hit the hardest when Mobius was on his own, outside of the busier areas of the TVA. In the archives, the automat or his own room. Then the reality of the situation, and the empty spaces where Loki should have been, were at their most prominent. And most painful.
Loki wasn’t there, but he wasn’t gone either. Those things left unsaid could still be said.
Sitting alone at a desk in the archives, no one around that he could see, Mobius set aside the file he was reading and wrote a note. His hand felt heavy, his chest aching, as he scribbled across the top page of the notepad.
<You know, we never really had time to talk about things before you left.>
He opened the time door and set the message through.
The response was fast but not immediate. A slight delay.
<I know.>
They had talked, of course. Some moments of earnest and serious conversation unrelated to the impending temporal meltdown, but mostly just little things. Comfortable, happy conversations that avoided anything too serious because it was all getting too much, and they needed to take some time to not really think at all.
But they hadn’t talked about what Loki was about to do. His decision to take all the branches and weave them into something eternal, to leave with the certainty of never coming back.
And there was still a hell of a lot Mobius wanted to say but never could.
Now he had the chance.
<When did you decide what to do? You said you knew what you wanted, the god you needed to be. But how did you figure that out? When? How did you know how to do whatever it is you did?>
And why didn’t you tell me? Let me say goodbye, hug you just once more, tell you all the things I wanted but never could?
He didn’t write the questions that really stung. He couldn’t. Not yet.
<It was you, Mobius, who helped me understand what I needed to do. We talked in the time theatre. You told me that most purpose is more burden than glory, that one must choose one’s own burden. I chose mine. The temporal loom couldn’t be saved and I couldn’t kill Sylvie. This was the only way you all had a chance to live the lives you wanted.>
<When did I say that? I don’t remember that.>
<It didn’t happen to you. It was. The whole thing is complicated. I learned to control the timeslipping. I was able to move through space and time. I tried to use it to find a way to stop the temporal meltdown, but it was impossible. Once Sylvie killed He Who Remains, there was no way to contain the branches. The loom’s capacity could never have been scaled enough to contain the infinite possible branches. Sylvie wouldn’t be talked out of killing him either, and I couldn’t kill her. She was angry and had a right to be. She was doing what her every instinct told her to do, and nothing I said could have ever changed her mind. I knew this was an option after I don’t know how many times timeslipping and trying and talking. But I could never have made myself choose this path were it not for you. I asked you for advice, in the past, in the time theatre, before any of it started. You listened to me. You didn’t know what was going on, but you understood, and you helped me understand what I had to do. You saw me Mobius. Saw who I could be, not who I believed I had to be.>
Something about the way the handwriting, usually a perfection of cursive script, devolved into a more scribbled, unsteady form cut Mobius to the core. It was the Loki talking frantically with increasing urgency and emotion, just as he had when he first appeared from the end of time and seemed unable to form full thoughts or sentences, almost hyperventilating as he spoke.
Beneath that sheet was another, brief, note, the sentences blurred from the tears in Mobius’ eyes. He wiped them away, but it was no good.
He cried properly for the first time since this communication had started.
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