there's a deal that i made
“So, Loki’s at the Citadel at the End of Time,” Mobius summarizes, once O.B. and Timely have finished their rant. They’re all standing in the observation deck now, having moved away from the prying eyes of the other agents. Mobius looks out at the now empty stretch of space where the Loom once stood and sighs wearily. “I mean, we kind of already knew that, though, right? It makes sense that Loki would be wrangling the timelines from the same place that He Who Remains did.”
“Right,” O.B. says, helpfully.
“Right…” Mobius repeats. “So how does that help us? Because I don’t know about you, Sylvie, but I’m not itching to be pruned again.” Sylvie scrunches her nose in disgust. Mobius nods and continues, “And now that Alioth’s gone, we have no way to even find the citadel, so…” He trails off, noticing O.B. just staring at him blankly. “What do we do?”
O.B. shakes his head sharply. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he replies, “but no one needs to prune themselves to get to the End of Time. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” He jerks into motion, leading them over to one of the dusty computers. “I’ve been doing some scans of the Temporal Loom debris—just scientific curiosity, you know. It’s not every day one of the greatest powers in the universe gets blown into space dust!” He shoots Mobius a baffling grin.
“Okay…” Mobius stares at the monitor, trying to make sense of what O.B. is showing him, but it’s all Greek to him. Well, not Greek—Mobius knows Greek. He does not know what the readouts on the little computer screen are trying to say. “So what did you find?”
“A lot of junk,” O.B. says cheerfully. “And–” he jabs his finger at a little blinking dot on the screen, “–an anomaly.”
“An anomaly,” Sylvie repeats. When it’s clear that O.B. expects them to be as excited about this as he is, Sylvie looks to Timely for an explanation. It’s a testament to how far the inventor has come that he doesn’t shrink back under her scrutiny.
“A r-rip,” Timely elaborates, “in the– the fabric of sp-space-time.” He takes the keyboard from O.B. and presses a few keys to zoom in on the blinking dot. A rough image comes into view and Mobius finally recognizes the readout for what it’s supposed to be: a map of the area around the gangway. Timely gestures to where the dot still blinks, bigger now. “Right at the v-very center of where the-the Loom used to be, there is a tear– a r-ripple, really. But–”
“It could be a door,” Sylvie seems to realize.
“Yes!” O.B. exclaims. “When Loki ripped apart the Loom, he ripped apart space, and that space didn’t fully heal behind him. I think we can use that wound in space to get through to the Citadel.” O.B. smiles at Mobius and, for the first time since this conversation began, Mobius feels like smiling back.
“Okay,” the agent says, putting his hands on his hips. “Okay, so how do we get there? Build the gangway back up, extend it all the way to the rift? Build some sort of craft that’ll launch us into it?”
Timely shakes his head. “Th-that’s the issue. We don’t-don’t have the t-time.”
“Don’t have time?” Sylvie demands. “What do you mean, ‘we don’t have time’?”
O.B. sighs. “Like any wound, the rift is trying to heal itself. It’s already getting smaller by the minute, and we might not have long before the tear is too thin to get through.”
“So we don’t have time to build something?” Mobius asks, looking from O.B.’s contemplative face to Timely’s sorrowful one. “Nothing at all?”
They’re all silent. Then: “Sylvie looks-looks like she h-has an idea,” Timely points out.
Mobius glances over, then waves his hand in dismissal. “That’s just her face. She always looks like she’s planning something.”
“No, actually, I think I do have a plan,” Sylvie says, turning to Mobius. “But you’re not going to like it.”
“I’d like to state, for the record, that I do not like this plan.”
They’ve all descended the stairs to where the airlock opens out onto the gangway. Sylvie explained her idea to them quickly, sounding in no way certain about it.
“You have a better idea?” she retorts.
Mobius shrugs. “There has to be something a little less…” he searches for a kind word, settling on, “shaky.”
“Look,” Sylvie sighs, running a hand through her hair in a distinctively Loki-like gesture. “I’m fairly certain I can create those steps like Loki did to get you over that gap to the rift.”
“And what am I supposed to do if I do make it that far? Do you really think it will be as easy as just stepping through?” Mobius argues.
O.B. steps up, handing Mobius a bulky robotic object. “We can worry about that later. Right now, I just need you to get close enough to take this machine and scan the ripple in space-time. Then I can extrapolate the data and figure out if it's safe enough to try to step through.”
“Like a-a reconn– reconnaissance mission,” Timely agrees.
Mobius sighs resignedly, taking the scanner from O.B. “But why do I have to do it?” he mutters.
O.B. shrugs, the picture of innocence. “The suit won’t fit me or Sylvie.”
“Well, what about Timely?” Mobius thrusts his hand out toward the inventor.
“Oh, no.” The man shakes his head. “No, th-thank you. No. He’s your– your wizard.”
“Yeah,” Mobius sighs, resigning. “He’s my wizard.”
And so Mobius finds himself back in that godforsaken astronaut suit. O.B. assured him that there was little to no residual temporal radiation left since the Loom’s destruction. He probably would even be fine without the suit, O.B. says.
“There’s only about a 10 percent chance there’s enough radiation left to leave lasting damage,” the scientist informs, then squints his eyes, thinking. “Maybe 15.”
“A 15 percent chance that my skin would peel off my body,” Mobius replies, pulling on one of the thick gloves. “I think I’ll stick with the suit.”
Once he’s all covered up, duct tape firmly stuck to the visor of his helmet, he makes his way towards the airlock. Sylvie stops him with a hand on his chest. “You don’t have to do this, though,” she says. “If you wanted to just go back to your timeline… Loki would understand.”
And Mobius thinks about it, he does. But eventually, he shakes his head and says, “Yeah, I know,” and then hits the button to open the gangway door.
The first thing he notices when he steps through the airlock and onto the platform is that it’s quiet. Eerily so, and a far cry from the last time he was out here. It’s no trouble at all to walk the length of the gangway; there are no roaring solar winds to battle or deadly radiation to worry about. But there’s still a heavy feeling of dread curling in his stomach and up through his throat as he puts one heavy boot in front of the other. He feels, as he approaches the jagged, torn-off edge where the platform drops off into nothingness, like he’s walking the plank. He knows the swirling mists and glittering stars that surround him are just debris from the Loom, but they look like distant galaxies, exploding stars. He feels like some sort of astronaut-seafarer: a space pirate sentenced to a drop into the abyss.
Except on the other side of that abyss is Loki, his Loki, and that’s enough to keep him moving forward, right up to the edge of the path.
“Okay, Mobius,” a tinny version of Sylvie’s voice echoes through his helmet. “You can step over. I think I’ve got you.”
“You think?” Mobius scoffs, his voice wavering as he leans over the edge and sees nothing but dust for miles and miles all the way down.
“It’s fifty-fifty, really,” Sylvie replies, and Mobius whips around to stare at her incredulously. He can just make out the enchantress through the window, but she’s smiling at him. She gives him a sarcastic thumbs up, and her hand is glowing green with power.
“Right,” Mobius breathes, turning back to face the path forward. “Here goes nothing.”
He takes his first step over the edge of the platform and, when he puts his weight down, a thin surface of shimmering green power catches him. He takes a deep breath and brings his other foot off the gangway, putting his entire weight on Sylvie’s magic. It holds.
He hears a soft cheer as Sylvie speaks into the microphone again. “I’ve got you, Mobius. You can keep going.”
And he does, taking step after step into empty space. Mobius doesn’t miss the irony of the situation—the fact that he’s trusting the same variant that he’d spent so much time chasing; placing his life wholly and entirely into the hands of a woman who has, in the past, tried to kill him. But he does trust her, that’s his fatal flaw. Mobius M. Mobius: truster of Lokis.
His trust is not misplaced, though, because Sylvie does not drop him. And as his trust and confidence grow he’s able to pick up speed. Quicker than he knows it, O.B.’s voice cuts through his focus.
“The rift should be right in front of you, Mobius,” the scientist says, his voice sounding cautious even through the filter of the mic.
Mobius looks up and sees…nothing. He doesn’t know what he expected—a big blinking gash in the fabric of reality or something—but there’s nothing there. Mobius isn’t an expert, but shouldn’t a rip in space and time be a little bit more… visible? “Where–” he starts, then cuts off as his head turns and he sees a flicker in the corner of his eye. He turns back to face where the rift should be head-on and there’s nothing, but when he turns to the side again he can almost see it, rippling in his periphery.
“Okay,” he breathes, a bit awed. “Okay.” He hoists up the scanner from where it hangs from a strap at his side, pointing it at the seemingly empty space in front of him and pressing the button on top, like he’s taking a picture. The machine begins to sputter and whirr. “You getting any of this, O.B.?”
“It’s coming through!” O.B. exclaims. “You should be able to get a little bit closer.”
Mobius looks down at the magical platform he’s standing on, still holding steady beneath him. “Alright,” he concedes. “Sylvie?”
“I’ve got you,” she responds.
Mobius shuffles forward, and the machine continues to click and buzz in his hands. As he gets even closer to the rip he thinks he can finally see it: a haze like a gauzy curtain in front of his face. He reaches out without thinking, sucking in a gasp when his gloved hand passes through and then disappears. He snatches his arm back and his hand reappears, whole and unharmed. A door.
“I’m going through,” Mobius decides, leaving the machine on but letting it fall back to rest against his side.
“Mobius–” Sylvie’s voice cautions, but Mobius shakes his head.
“I have a good feeling about it.”
“A good feeling–” Sylvie argues, but her voice is cut off as Mobius steps forward and through the tear.
It’s less quiet on the other side. Mobius is assaulted immediately with a sharp rushing noise, like billions of overlapping voices dialed down to a whisper, and another sound that can only be described as the cacophonous din of something growing. Mobius knows immediately that he’s in the center of the World Tree, though he doesn’t know how he can make sense of anything in the madness. Thick tendrils, each the size of a tree themselves, shoot past him in all directions, writhing and pulsing with green light like bioluminescent snakes. They’re impossible to look at for too long, and Mobius knows what they are are at thousands of individual timelines. He wonders what would happen if he were to touch one. Would he be able to see what was going on at the point he touched? Would he get sucked into that place in time? Or would the branch simply die? Turn black and crumble under the weight of his mortal hand? He doesn’t try.
His gaze slides past the infinite latticework of the timelines, mortal eyes growing weary at the sheer weight of what he’s looking at. It’s incomprehensible. Finally, his gaze finds a dark shape amidst the frenzy: a solid figure against the ever-moving backdrop of the World Tree.
“Loki,” he breathes, too quiet to be heard.
The other man sits atop a metallic black pedestal, clutching timelines and then letting them go as they grow healthy and verdant under his fingers. Mobius almost loses his breath at the sight of him. With the massive horned helm, the flowing green cloak—Mobius knew that Loki was a god, of course he did. But he had never looked so much like one. Never.
Mobius clears his throat. “Looks like you finally got your throne,” he calls, loud enough to be heard over the storm.
Loki’s head whips towards him and his face goes slack with surprise. Mobius almost takes a step back as the god’s eyes meet his: eyes that glow green and swirl like nebulous galaxies.
“Mobius,” Loki says. Then, sharper; “You have to go, it isn’t safe for you here.”
Mobius chuckles, nervously. “Well, that’s not the warm welcome I had hoped for,” he jokes.
The god doesn’t smile, just shakes his head sadly and raises his arms, like he’s going to blast Mobius back the way he came.
“Wait, wait,” Mobius stops him, holding his arms up in a placating gesture. He wishes he could take the his stupid space-suit helmet off: to look Loki in the eyes without the buffer of the cracked plastic. “Just let me say my piece,” he begs. “Please?”
Loki lowers his arms, but he doesn’t look any less wary. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he says, and it comes out cold, but Mobius, expert on Lokis, hears it for what it is. Loki is begging with him. Mobius tries not to let his heart break.
“What?” Mobius retorts. “Did you think I was just going to leave you here? That I was just going to go back to my own timeline—just be ‘Don’—knowing that you were– were here?”
“I did this for you,” Loki asserts. “For all of you.”
“Yeah, you said that already,” Mobius sighs. “But what about you, Loki?”
“This is my purpose!” Loki cries, throwing his arm out in a desperate gesture at the timelines surrounding them. “It was my purpose to sacrifice myself so that you—that everyone—could live their own stories. So that they could have free will.”
Mobius sighs, amending his previous statement in his head. Maybe he isn’t an expert on Lokis. Maybe just this one. “And I’m using my free will to do this.”
Loki doesn’t respond.
“That,” Mobius says—meaning Don, Ohio, 2022. He waves a hand. “That isn’t my story. Hasn’t been, ever since that day in the Time Theater.”
The god turns away from him, his jaw twitching like he’s grinding his teeth.
“Come back, Loki,” Mobius pleads. “Tell me how I can get you to come back with me.”
Loki shakes his head and turns to Mobius, his eyes softer now but still pulsing that radioactive green. “This is my place now,” Loki responds, then vows; “For all time.”
And with a sad smile, the god lifts his hand towards Mobius. Green mist begins to curl around his fingers.
“Loki, no!” Mobius yells, then he’s hit with a blunt wall of power and is thrown backward through the rift.