My brother is a tree?

“Seriously, Sylvie?” Mobius replied. How long had she been watching to know that Thor had been parroting what his lady friend had said? And what did she mean that he had to ‘get a life’? “What are you doing here?”

She’d been very clear she wanted nothing to do with any of this, and yet, here she was. “I was about to ask you that.”

“I take it you didn’t come here because you changed your mind and want to help now.” A bit on the late side, if so. With her cooperation, they might have been way ahead. Or not. In the end, it was all just a load of guesswork. 

“Help you back to your senses maybe.” She folded her arms. “You weren’t listening to me. It’s not any single part of the plan you should give up. It’s all of it.”

Mobius lifted an eyebrow. “Why would I do that?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, you glorified bureaucrat.” She threw back her head in annoyance. “This is no good. You’re not helping anyone. And if you really must run around on this pointless quest, by all means, but this is over the line.”

“What do you mean, pointless? And ‘not helping anyone’? Were you listening to anything I said?” 

She dropped her arms and took a few steps closer, lowering her voice. “Mobius, he wouldn’t want this.”

There was one possible reason behind her words that would make sense. He hoped her act of knowing so much more than him was no more than an act. “You say that as if he’s dead.”

“He could be,” she said calmly. “But he’d want us to assume he is. Live as if.”

“Wha- Oh, because you know what Loki would want better than everyone else, right?”

“Are you kidding me?” She scrunched up her face in offense. “Of course I do. I am Loki!”

That very same second, the god of thunder had her by the collar of her coat, yelling, shaking her, and demanding explanations. His utterances were royally sprinkled with accusation, expletives, and profanities. By the sound of it, he’d taken Sylvie’s statement at face value and was now convinced she was Loki, albeit in disguise. While in the barest essence, she was Loki, but also not. 

Alas, that was not easily explained in the time it would take for this to escalate. Meanwhile, the goddess of war, hider behind the rock and creator of comprehensive two-liners, made no move to separate the two. Mobius himself did not feel qualified to physically separate the two, so he resorted to shouting, “Wrong Loki!”

But Sylvie had already taken matters into her own hands. As he said it, her heel hit Thor’s knee twice in rapid succession. As he inevitably keeled over, she proceeded to land an uppercut. Lady Sif now felt the need to intervene, but found- upon arrival- the tip of Sylvie’s sword conjured just an inch from her chin. 

“Put that down, Loki,” Sif said. “You’re coming with us.”

“My name’s Sylvie.”

“You just said you were Loki. Loudly,” Sif pointed out wryly. “And this is what you think you’d look like as a woman? Bit of a poor rendition, don’t you think?”

“Excuse me? This is what I look like!” She turned abruptly. “Urgh.”

Thor positioned himself in her path. “Loki, this is not the time for one of your phases.”

“It’s Sylvie now.”

“Okay, fine. I don’t know why you picked some random human name, like why does everyone do that? But fine. You’re a woman for now.” Thor made a grab for her wrist and got his hand swiped aside. He seemed slightly confused during the second attempt. “You’re still coming with us.”

“Yeah, well. Good luck with that.” Sylvie simply stepped away when Thor tried to grab her collar instead. She blinked and looked at Mobius. “Wait, what did he mean with ‘phases’?”

Poor choice of words. It was more like a natural fluctuation of an innate trait. Natural fluctuations as an innate trait? But well, she’d know better than him. “You never had those?”

“Oh, those.” She shrugged with a smirk. Before she turned away, she threw Thor a last look. “Sorry for the confusion, but I’m not who you think I am.”

Thor smiled threateningly. “Last warning.”

She chuckled and twirled the sword in her hand. “Bring it.”

However amusing, this was getting out of hand. Mobius stepped in between them, hoping for the best. He looked Thor in the eye. “Remember what we talked about?”

Now, Thor grabbed his collar and shoved him aside. “He- she is definitely in a place where you can reach h- her- like, right here- so what were you talking about?”

Sylvie made a cautioning jab at Thor’s hand. 

“Easy,” Mobius told her as he shrugged himself free. “That’s still your brother.”

She threw him an irritated glance. “I don’t recall.”

‘Wait, actual amnesia?” Thor asked. "Was the time travel a metaphor?”

“No, uhm. Let’s just go back to the concept of multiple, coexisting timelines.” Should he call in Miss Minutes for the explanation video now or would that just make everything worse? “When things can go multiple ways, timelines branch out. One becomes two or three, which can become nine or twelve and so on. A being, a version of one, can exist on each of these timelines. Variants, different versions of the same person. You’re following?”

“Ah.” Sif squinted to study Sylvie’s face. “Wrong Loki.”

“Yeah so,” Mobius said. “Sylvie’s timeline branched off all the way back during-.”

“My birth,” Sylvie said. 

“Her birth,” Mobius repeated. “Because she was born female.”

Thor fixed his eyes solely on Sylvie. “But you are Loki?”

“We never shared a timeline. I don’t even remember you.” The nonchalance with which she said it culminated in a chuckle. “So hold your horses and find something else to yell at.” She moved the tip of her blade to Sif’s direction. “And yes, this is what I look like. Problem?”

Thor held up his hands and stepped back, squinting as if reading quadratic formulas. “What about the Loki from this timeline?”

“Died when Thanos snapped his neck. Nothing is going to change that.”

Thor dropped his shoulders and sighed. “The Loki the TVA abducted from New York?”

She chewed her lip. “Where he chose to be and to stay.”

“We don’t know that,” Mobius pointed out. “We don’t know anything.”

Sylvie’s look and moment of hesitation was telling. “Don’t go down that rabbit hole.”

“Wherever he is now, he’s alone.” 

She glanced at Thor, then back to Mobius, and shook her head. “Just take it from someone who understands him better than anyone else possibly could.”

Since when did you have to share a temporal aura to understand someone? Before he could ask, Sylvie opened a time door and pointed a finger at him before entering. “I’m going back to living my life now. You should do the same. Or at least, don’t interrupt me doing so again.”

Thor watched the door close with a heavy and distant look in his eyes. “Do we now go to this TVA?”

Mobius waited a second to make sure he’d heard that right. “So, you have no more questions?”

“Less that I need answered than before.”

Thor looked at computer-generated, 3D visualization of invisible energy swirling far down in the void behind the glass, threads weaving together to form a distinct shape. This time wizard Mobius had not exaggerated the improbability of the situation. “You’re telling me my brother is a tree?”

“That’s one possible explanation, but personally, I think he’s inside of it.”

“Let’s go through this one more time. Beyond this glass, there’s a manner of radiation living beings cannot survive. And yet, Loki walked in there with no protection and is now stuck in a tree that may or may not be made out of timelines?”

“In a nutshell, yes.” The man scratched his head. “But no one really knows. We can only guess. He never stopped to explain what he was trying to do.”

A most interesting matter, the reason behind this madness. A matter he intended to address forthwith. “He went onto that gangway?”

“Yes.”

“Down those stairs and through the doors, right?”

“Wow, easy there,” Mobius blocked his path. “You can’t just go out there.”

“Is that not what you brought me here for?”

“Yes, after we run some tests. We need to make sure that you can without turning into skinless spaghetti.”

That was oddly and worryingly specific. “You said the most likely reason that Loki survived that radiation is because he’s a god from Asgard. Well, so am I. I’ll be right back. With Loki.”

“He’s also part frost giant, which may have had something to do with it, and you are not.” Mobius side-eyed him. “And did you remember when I told you he disappeared into some kind of portal or black hole? Would you perhaps like the estimated coordinates of where exactly that was before you go?”

A frost giant who saw the location of this portal, eh? Wouldn’t that be ideal? “What about Sylvie?”

“Uncooperative, as you might have noticed.”

“They clearly spent time in each other’s presence.” How often he’d wished Loki would run into a copy from himself, just to see how infuriating he could be. For it to have literally happened, that could not have gone well. “Did they fight for dominance?”

Mobius sighed with more than a hint of despair. “I’m not even going to try to describe what those two had going on.”

By all likelihood, it was beyond description anyway. He just wondered which one of them had lost, but that was a matter for later. He looked back to the diagram of the tree. “Just why did he do this to himself?”

“He just said this one thing.” Mobius’ eyes traced over the gangway. “That he knew what kind of god he wanted to be.”

That didn’t exactly clear things up. “The kind that’s stuck inside a tree?”

“Look.” Mobius dropped his shoulders. “There’s more to it than I can explain in an hour, or even a day. If you’re interested, I can give you the educational videos. But first, do you think your friend’s done interrogating every single person in here?”

“Depends, how many people are in here?”

A small man in a mechanic’s outfit was talking when Thor and Mobius entered the basement floor, “The time loom-.”

“Again,” Sif interrupted. “I don’t care about this time loom. Just answer the question.”

“The time loom is fundamental-.”

“I still don’t care. What exactly is it that Loki did here that ended him up as a tree?” 

“It all started with the time loom.”

What is a time loom? Thor looked to Mobius, but the man had wandered off to two more men in a dark corner of the garbage basement. Or maybe it was an art studio. Almost everything here looked a century out of date. Thor followed in time to hear one of the men say, “B-15 dumped her on us. Said we needed to keep her out of everyone’s hair.”

The other, donned clothing more than a century out of date, “If I may ask, why did you bring the Miss to the TVA?”

“On special request.” Mobius threw Thor a pointed look. 

Thor went to steer Sif away from the mechanic man, who seemed utterly unfazed. “What’s a time loom?”

She sighed. “It seemingly has something to do with how Loki managed to turn himself into a tree, but don’t ask me the details. Something about weaving time.”

“Well, that’s kind of in the name,” Thor pointed out. “Time loom. Loom for time.”

“But how and why would one weave time?”

Thor waved at the mechanic. “Hi, hello, I have a question. Could you perhaps explain what this time loom has to do with Loki?”

“Definitely,’ the little man said. “It appears that Loki now is the time loom.”

“Uh?” Sif blinked. “I thought he was a tree.”

“He’s inside of a tree,” Thor explained. “But what was that about him being a time loom?”

“The tree is the time loom,” The little man said. "Probably." 

He groaned. “So, Loki is the tree after all?”

“No, he’s the loom.”

Thor just nodded politely and led Sif away, towards the other three men. “I don’t think he actually knows anything.” There, he asked, “Could any of you good sirs explain what a time loom is?”

“It converts raw time energy into physical timelines,” One of the other two men said. He appeared more than just a century out of date. 

“Alright, why does raw time energy need to be converted into physical timelines?”

“Currently, we are uncertain,” the man said. “The files are incomplete and inconsistent.”

The other man pulled a face. “I hate to say it, but when you put it all together, it kind of looks like it was rigged to blow.”

The second man said, “But that would have destroyed the TVA and possibly every timeline.”

“More like bottlenecking it down to the one timeline.”

“If that was possible,” Mobius said. “Why even create the TVA? That’s a lot of management and logistics for something a machine could’ve done.”

Sif held up her hand. “So this time loom was a machine? Someone built something that not only weaves time, but could’ve destroyed it all too, or just most of it?”

Mobius shrugged. “Looks like it.”

“Who?”

“He Who Remains. Arrogant thing to call yourself, but it sounded like an arrogant man. Who happened to remain at the end of time,” Mobius said. Meanwhile, the third man jabbed his thumb at the second for some reason.

“Let me rephrase this,” Thor said. “How is this time loom relevant to how my brother became, if not a tree, stuck inside a tree?”

Mobius blew out some air. “If you want the details, you’ll really have to talk to Ouroborus. If anyone understands, it’s him.”

Thor felt his jaw drop. “Jörmungandr?”

“No, Ouroborus, our technician. You were just talking to him.”

Thor waited for Loki to saunter around the corner and announce the brilliance of this latest trick. Nothing of the sort happened. “May I have a look at these educational videos you mentioned?”