Chapter 3
Sigyn had intercepted him on his way to his cubicle. Mobius accelerated his pace as he continued to sip from his coffee, forgetting that she was more than capable of keeping up with faster speeds than his. The moment she worded her request, he reacted with a loud hum muffled around the rim of his cup.
"Hm! Absolutely not."
"Wh— You need as much help as you can get," she reminded him. "Give me one good reason why not."
"Just the one? 'Cause I could give you plenty of 'em," Mobius replied, as they reached his desk at last.
"You're in over your head. Your only other hope is an even brattier version of him, who you had to convince to cooperate with you, and he hasn't made a single useful contribution."
"He's not—" The analyst realized he might have jumped to Loki's defense a little too enthusiastically, stopping for a beat to nod his head, agreeing that there was some truth in that. "Okay, that's a bit of an understatement. I'm making progress with him…"
He took a seat on his chair just as Sigyn leaned over his desk, placing a hand upon it in order to negate him the possibility of using paperwork as a distraction and was therefore forced to look at her instead.
"Oh, congratulations, you've reminded him that he's adopted and has unresolved issues with his mother, quite the breakthrough."
Mobius exhaled a sigh of defeat, his way to remind her that he was perfectly aware of the flaws to his plan, as if claiming to be open to any smarter suggestions should she have them.
"That Variant is out there wreaking havoc now! He's killing your agents!"
"Oh, no, no, no," he stopped her at last, getting on his feet so he could properly meet her eye-line. "Don't try to make this about the Variant, you think I don't know what your angle is here?"
She scoffed, but did not disagree, glancing away as she crossed her arms over her chest.
"Yeah, we both know how you love yourself a fixer-upper, and that guy sitting over there's about as broken as they come." Neither one of them looked in direction to that other desk where the subject in question sat, and yet they both knew who Mobius was talking about. "I may be crazy enough to bring the two of you together again, I'll give you that, but I'm not stupid."
Still extending no defensive argument in response, Sigyn merely rolled her eyes, much like a grounded teenager who is coming to terms with the consequences of her actions.
"You're not a part of this case, alright? And, you know what? I don't trust you around that guy, in fact, you're not allowed to interact with him without my supervision."
By the end of their argument, they had raised their voices, enough to call Loki's attention from behind a distant partition though not enough for him to make out what they were actually saying. The top half of his face peeking curiously showed over the partition and without meaning to, Sigyn locked eyes with him as she walked away in a huff.
"Well, it sure sounded like it'd gone well," he teased her in order to vex her further.
"That tie looks ridiculous," she snapped back without missing a beat as she whooshed past his desk.
The Prince actually paused for a moment and glanced down insecurely at the item in question, brushing it down with his hand as he observed it, trying to convince himself he looked as dashing as he ever had in a button-up and tie before.
Even though he asked Mobius immediately what that had been about as the analyst stopped by his desk to check on his training, he received no response. Instead, Mobius asked how went his familiarizing process with the case at hand. Loki's response made him exhale an exasperated sigh as he reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose.
"You two are gonna be the end of me, I tell ya'."
And thus, he accidentally let slip what his conversation with Sigyn had been about. For an instant, the God of Mischief considered thinking about a reason why the Asgardian might have made a request similar to his own, but upon taking a glimpse down that particular train of thought, he realized its destinations appeared sentimental, far too much for his liking, and so he shook his head in order to push past it.
"Look—" he insisted instead. "Our nexus events have been reset, right? There's nothing we could do from here on out that would affect the Sacred Timeline."
"Seriously? A couple of lessons and you think you can explain to me how things work around here?"
"What I do think is that when I looked into the future you showed me in the Projection Room, she was nowhere in sight. So who is she, why is she here?"
"What's the matter, you disappointed you're not the only Variant from Asgard I decided to keep around?" Mobius teased.
Loki rolled his eyes, much to the analyst's amusement. Something about successfully getting on the nerves of a guy whose vocation was mischief itself made him feel oddly proud of his own sense of playfulness. After a few seconds of reflexion, the raven-haired Variant was ready to make his case.
"You said I should familiarize myself with your Variant as thoroughly as possible, yes?"
"Yeah, that didn't work for her, it's not gonna work for you either," Mobius warned him.
"Look, she has my mother's ring," he insisted, raising his voice in order to speak above his interruptions.
"Alright, I gotta give it to her, the mommy issues thing checks out," the analyst whispered despite having intended to keep that comment to himself.
"What?"
"So she's got a ring, what does that gotta do with anything?" Mobius amused him, if only in the hopes to successfully blow past it.
"If any version of myself would give that ring to her, she must mean a lot to them— She could mean a lot to your Variant too."
The other would have loved to disagree but truth of the matter was that had been the main reason he had kept Sigyn around in the first place, that was what made her so useful to the TVA. Not only had she proved herself to be a more than decent researcher, and incredibly perceptive as well, the talent of hers in which the analyst's was most interested was her kinship with the God of Mischief, having run into several scenarios in which she had been their only weakness. Even though he had been trying to avoid it, perhaps it was time he took that particular aspect of her to their advantage, since this Variant was proving himself to be specifically hard to catch.
Seeing in his face that he was beginning to cave, Loki went on.
"I'm sure you've got a perfectly good reason to keep us apart—"
"Oh, you sweet talker, you," mocked the TVA agent, his way of demonstrating he was very much aware that Loki was just sucking up to get his way.
"—but I should still get to know her."
"How do you figure?"
"Because if she happens to be the key to catching this Variant after all, I'm gonna need to know as much as I can about their bond. Who better to tell you how a Loki feels about someone than a Loki himself?"
Again, he was presenting him with rock hard arguments, for that had also been the reason, Mobius realized, why he had asked to keep this other Variant around as well. He realized all his work in convincing Judge Renslayer there was a purpose to such unorthodox procedure would have been in vain unless he actually made use of them.
"Alright, you can have access to her file, but listen to me—" He pointed warningly in the Prince's direction. "This isn't like looking a couple of years into the future, you're about to look into thousands of years worth of history. A lot of it is gonna look familiar and sound familiar, but you gotta remember that it's someone else's life."
"I think I can handle it," reassured the God of Mischief with an air of superiority, doubting that a mind as strong as his own could be so easily impressionable, especially by something as ordinary as sentiment.
"And not a word to anyone, especially not her. I already told 'er and now I'm telling you: You can't interact with her unless I'm there." Loki leaned back in his seat triumphantly with a smile.
"You have my word."
"Your word? Yeah, that's reassuring," muttered the analyst sarcastically.
Soon enough, Loki found himself sitting at the Time Theatre once more only with an even further enhanced guard standing on the other side of the door to keep him from leaving and with Mobius coming and going in an attempt to keep an eye on him while simultaneously being productive on his own end. The younger Prince of Asgard had never thought he'd see the day in which he grew tired of reading; the moment he opened the binder and found pages and pages worth of reports for him to read, he immediately dismissed them, exhaling a small grunt of disgust at the mere thought of reading any further on that tedious format.
From underneath it all, he extracted a bulky envelop with contained what looked like a roll of film. That must have been, he realized, those segments of moments or memories or whatever they had shown him upon his arrival at the agency. After much inexpert fiddling with the machine —in his defense, that was his first time handling that sort of technology— at last he was able to get an image to actually project, although he was still working his way around controlling what exactly to see and for how long.
At first, he landed on the image of himself as a child sitting next to who he imagined was Sigyn. He tried to forward past it, for he doubted it was anything of relevance, but it took him some time to figure out how to operate such unfamiliar mechanism.
The boy held out his hand, his palm facing the sky and from it emerged a single green sparkle that faded away after having reached a few centimeters in altitude. The girl giggled delightedly.
"I'm sorry," said he, embarrassed as he retrieved his hand. "That was supposed to be fireworks."
"I liked this better, actually," stated the girl with a bright smile.
Loki paused for a moment and then shook his head, pushing himself to move on. At last, he discovered how to scrolling past memories he considered irrelevant, stopping only after he reached the first quarter of that file, selecting a moment randomly.
There was Sigyn again, a younger version of her though not by much, and she was making her way across a meadow with a gentle smile. She reached the arms of a soldier; he was tall, with a frame comparable to Thor's, only with dark skin, a shaved head and brown eyes.
"You look as lovely as ever," he said.
Sigyn, looking bashful yet hardly enthused, shyly lowered her gaze, maintaining her tense, slight smile. Rather unexpectedly, the young man pulled her close by her waist and kissed her. At first, she seemed visibly taken aback, although pleasantly so. A moment later, she brought her hands up to his face as she kissed him back, only to pull away almost immediately to look into his eyes, like someone who had made an abrupt realization.
"You complete imbecile," she spat, turning away from him as she walking away.
A glow of green swept over the soldier as he transformed back into Loki, wearing a triumphant smirk despite the fact his subject of desire was rushing to get away from him.
"It's hardly my fault that I am that much more memorable a kisser than he is."
"What you really are is insufferable." Even though she had slightly lifted the skirt of her dress so she could walk away even faster, Sigyn's effort was for not, for immediately the master of magic manifested right in front of her, cutting off her path.
"I miss you," he confessed in a whisper.
"Not my problem," she whispered back, walking around and past him.
A glow of green later, Loki was, once more, standing in front of her. The only reason Sigyn stopped this time —though not without an audible sigh of exasperation— was because she thought she had seen all mischief abandon his countenance for a moment.
"And I know you miss me as well."
"Unbelievable," she muttered bitterly, refusing to meet his eye-line and making it very evident that she was actively avoiding it, glancing to a side as she crossed her arms tightly over her chest.
The God of Mischief remained persistent, appearing unfazed by her constant and visible dismissal. Far from discouraged by her rigid demeanor, he approached her slowly, one step at a time.
"Don't marry him." She exhaled a chuckle, yet her expression remained undoubtedly sad, her eyes beginning to glisten with forming tears.
"Why, so you won't lose your personal little devotee you've been toying with capriciously for years on end?"
"Because I love you."
Without missing a beat, Sigyn smacked him across the face, hoping to have knocked such audacity right off his head.
"You don't get to say that to me," she whispered indignantly.
Even though he had composed himself rather quickly, needing only to faintly shake his head as to rid it from the stun of the strike, it was Loki now who avoided her gaze at all costs, having realized he was indeed out of line. He saw now that he should have known better than to assume Sigyn would automatically bestow unto him again such sentiment when the last time she had, he had resoundingly refused it.
"Sig," he insisted nonetheless as the maiden walked past him once more, turning swiftly on his heel so he could catch her by the wrist.
Taking the momentum of his pulling her back towards him, Sigyn retaliated by swiftly extracting from her concealed holster her dagger, which she agilely positioned up to his throat the second he turned her back around.
"Lay a hand on me again and you shall lose it," she warned. Still holding onto her wrist, he lifted her hand, bit by bit so she had all the time in the world to tug away from his hold, until at last it had reached his face.
Like he had a hundred times before, he rested his cheek on her palm, leaning into her touch with closed eyes. Sigyn struggled to remain firm but she was noticeably becoming overcome with emotion.
Succumbing to the very calling urge Mobius had warned him about in terms of adopting as his own an experience that only appeared to be his but was not in actuality, Loki got on his feet and slightly approached the projection so he could watch the gesture more closely. Feeling as though he could actually remember what that touch felt like, his lashes fluttered in spite of himself, like he was trying to relive it.
He pressed something into her palm.
"Consider it a counteroffer."
"I'm not for sale," she affirmed, having gained some resolve after a deep breath.
"A wedding gift, then."
Upon Sigyn's hand was Frigga's ring.
It was at that moment that the door behind the Variant was slammed open. Once again, Sigyn had managed to get past the Minutemen standing guard; after all, they cared very little about disobeying orders that came from an analyst and that did not particularly have any tangible effects on their mission of preserving time as it was.
As she stormed in, Loki practically leaped in front the device as he put a stop to the projecting, like a child who had been caught reading someone else's journal and was now shoving it under their pillow for safekeeping.
"What do you think you're doing?" Sigyn demanded furiously, heading straight for her file.
"Research," answered Loki clumsily as he cut her off, placing himself between her and the projector.
"This is not yours to watch, it's got nothing to do with you!"
"Well, forgive me for disagreeing, but I believe I was brought here to extend my perspective—"
"Not on this," she punctuated.
"—on all things Loki-related," he argued.
"Oh, please," scoffed her. "Don't pretend this is about some new-found sense of purpose."
"Let me guess, you know better than to believe me."
"Don't try to guess what I know."
"Then don't try to guess my purpose."
Caught between a rock and her own logic, Sigyn could only sigh annoyedly as she thought of a rebuttal that wouldn't make her a hypocrite.
"I won't if you can look me in the eye and tell me you're not just looking for information to use against me."
"I beg your pardon?" asked Loki with at least a look of indignation; whether it was sincere or not was another matter entirely.
"You saw I had your mother's ring, now all of a sudden looking into my life becomes crucial to the investigation?" She paused, as if challenging him to disagree with her; when he didn't, she went on. "I don't know what your little plan is, in fact, I don't think you know yet, but I do know how you like to make yourself little allies wherever you are in case they should be useful."
"You know, for someone claiming myself and the person she knew are so different, you do seem to think you're rather familiar with my intentions." "I told you, there's only one difference between you and the Loki I knew."
"Yourself."
She replied by offering him a half-hearted smirk and an arching of one of her eyebrows.
"Now that you've shared what you think," he went in all seriousness —at least in appearance— as he approached her. "I think you know better than I do that we complement each other. Better yet… I think the TVA knows that as well. Or does it not strike you as odd that they should try to keep the two of us apart?"
"As a matter of fact, it does not," she replied with contempt. "After what you tried to pull at the Renaissance fair, they are obviously afraid I'll be stupid enough to let you have me wrapped around your finger."
"Why would they ever?"
"I couldn't tell you."
"Probably because you've still got my ring wrapped around your finger."
"That ring is my husband's, not yours."
"Oh!" exclaimed Loki with false surprise, pretending to raise his eyebrows in amazement as he glanced at the projection behind him from over his shoulder and then back at her again. "Well, that's quite a bit of a spoiler, isn't it? I haven't even reached our wedding yet."
"I'm not joking," sentenced Sigyn, all trace of playfulness left behind.
"Then what are you?" Loki demanded with as serious a demeanor, stepping further towards her until they were face to face. Her guard seemed to have dropped to her feet. Looking as if she were untrusting of her own restraint, she watched him approach her, she even let him lean in closer to her.
"I'm warning you," she whispered, all of a sudden returning to her previous state of unyieldingness. "You're not the only mischief master in the room anymore, darling. Be careful who you toy with."
Just as she walked out of the room, Mobius walked in.
"Hey!" he protested, being thoroughly ignored by Sigyn, who just rushed on past him. The analyst then turned to the other Asgardian, exhaling a sigh of disappointment. "It's just in one ear and out the other with you two, isn't it?"