The Consequences
“MOBIUS!”
Mobius genuinely thought he would for once have a normal lunch, until he found those two lost souls in the hallway (well, three counting the dog), screaming his name at the top of their lungs. It wasn’t that he regretted helping them, he was simply irked that such a meeting had to take place right before his lunch. Being hangry was a bad trait of his, and he preferred to keep it hidden from his coworkers by making sure to eat before his grumpiness overtook him. Oh well. Perhaps fate just wasn’t on his side.
Regardless, the moment he saw them there, so hopeless and miserable, he knew lunch would have to wait. Naturally, the first thing he did was to get them both to his office. It was much too dangerous for them to be out in the open, and he knew the girl needed to rest.
“That’s a really nasty injury.” He muttered, squinting at Zozo’s broken leg as if he was about to gag. A broken bone was definitely not the prettiest best thing to look at, and if he were to be honest, Mobius didn’t want to know how exactly it ended up all bent and disgusting, but of course, the two didn’t spare him.
“You never should have kissed him.” Loki grumbled, holding the girl’s left hand with his right. “If you didn’t kiss him, none of that would have happened.”
“I’m not sorry at all, it was totally worth it.” Zozo responded, smiling at him with playfulness in her eyes. Mobius couldn’t really tell what the conversation was about, but he felt a strange sense of dread, as if this meant something bad. Hopefully, if time allows, he will check this out later.
“Yea, well, hopefully this won’t change your mind.” He said, lifting up a creme from his pocket and unscrewing the cap. “Now stay calm, this will sting a bit.”
Zozo was very much not calm when he set the bone, and started spreading the cream on her leg.
“Kurwa mać!” She screamed, “This isn’t stinging, you fucking asstwat! This hurts worse than actually breaking that bone!”
“You’re being overdramatic.” Mobius sighed, still applying the cream, until the entire affected area was completely soaked in it. Loki was watching, his curious gaze mixed in with horror, which caused Mobius to take another deep sigh and explain. “This is a special cream that basically takes your cells back in time, to moments before the injury when they were still intact. We use it after especially risky missions, it’s completely safe.” He eyed Zozo again, whose face was still twisted in pain, eyes glued to the place of the injury, as if expecting it to heal in a matter of seconds. “It does, however, take up quite a lot of energy from the injured person, so I’d suggest taking a quick nap, because you’ll start feeling drowsy real soon. And maybe mister protective… What is he to you, boyfriend? Brother? He looks kind of young to be your dad-”
“Friend.” Loki corrected, cringing at Mobius’s word choice.
“Best friend.” Zozo corrected, through gritted teeth. Mobius couldn't care less about the nature of their relationship, or the smile on Loki’s face when he heard that.
“Sure, mister protective best friend, maybe he will look after you, while I go get some lunch.”
And with that, he left.
It hurt to see Mobius leave, and it hurt even more to see him so indifferent to him, but at that moment, Loki didn't care. All that mattered was the girl sitting next to him, her injured leg outstretched, her eyes already heavy with exhaustion. Without much thought, Loki took off his cape and gave it to her as a blanket, then sat right by her and allowed her to rest her head on his shoulder.
“It’s going to be okay. Rest.” He whispered, pressing a quick kiss on the top of her head.
He felt Zozo shift slightly at his words, as if she was trying to forcefully fight the tiredness.
“But… but what if Renslayer comes? I… I’ll be asleep and then-”
“If Renslayer pays us a visit, I will be there to protect you. You needn’t worry about things like that when I’m near.” Loki took her scarred hand in his, connecting their blood pact marks together. “I did pledge to have your back no matter what, didn’t I?”
It seemed as if Zozo didn’t have much more to say to that, because she simply slumped down on his shoulder, and soon enough, she was sound asleep. And though Loki would never admit it to her face, he found peace in looking at her peaceful slumber, and after Charlie settled down by his knee, he couldn’t help but drift off himself, into a shallow, dreamless sleep. Surrounded by his friends, as he always should be. It seemed as if he, too, was good at making them.
And then heaven was breached by Mobius tapping him on the shoulder angrily.
“What?” Loki hissed, not appreciating the harsh way he had just been woken up. Clearly, Mobius did not care, as he looked at him with fury in his eyes.
“Do you have any idea what you two have done?” He whispered, holding a file in his hand and waving it around way too close to Loki’s face. “God, this is impossible! Everywhere you go, disaster follows. I get it, and I don’t care, it’s your life, not mine. But now I can’t even eat lunch peacefully without your shenanigans catching up to me!”
Ouch.
“I don’t see what the problem is.” Loki whispered back, trying to place Zozo’s limp body comfortably somewhere else. Her leg seemed to be improving rapidly, which was good. Mobius smacked the paper onto the table, then started digging around his pockets and pulled out a whole lot of other trinkets that Loki presumed were used for storing information.
“See, I had a little hunch about the two of you.” Mobius started. “That there’s something bigger going on here, something you’re escaping from…”
Oh no, Loki thought, This is it. He will now force me to pay for my wrongdoings, or worse, get me to face the very problems I have been trying to escape from.
“...And so I decided to run some tests on what happened to the girl, because I had her blood on my hands and therefore access to her DNA, and what came out was just an absolute trainwreck.” Mobius finished, then blinked in confusion when he saw Loki sigh with relief. “I don’t know why you’re doing this, it’s a serious matter. I mean, come on, Asgard? I had to check this out, because there’s no way the two of you just came and went without notice, and do you wanna know the extent of your tomfoolery?” He gestured to the paper, which Loki noticed was labeled with some number and a series of letters. “A whole new, huge branch!”
Loki didn’t understand.
“I don’t understand.” He said, staring at the paper as if it was possessed. “The multiverse was already open when we arrived. Why is this so bad?”
“It’s bad, because you’re creating more paperwork for me.” Mobius explained, which really didn’t explain anything. “From what little information I could gather about you from your files in a really short time, your role on the sacred timeline is to bring out things in people, whether it’s their worst or their best. Now, combined with miss sleeping beauty over there, this is a really dangerous game. I mean, you almost set her powers free, do you understand how much damage could happen if you were to do that? She’s supposed to stay insignificant for a reason.”
“Wait, hang on, powers?”
This was new. As far as Loki could tell, Zozo didn’t have any powers. She was just a normal teenage girl from Midgard, focused on university and making friends, and definitely no studies of magic of any kind. Quite the opposite, actually, as when he was very close to her physically, his urge to use magic softened, and he more often than not found himself doing things by hand. And even when he did, casting easy spells took up way too much energy, which he of course blamed on his emotional state, but now that Mobius brought it up…
“Did you really not notice?” Mobius asked, with a raised brow. “She consumes the magic around her, or as you call it, seiðr, like a vacuum. It’s why her family and anyone within close proximity of her wasn’t affected by Thanos’s snap. Now, this version of her,” he gestured to the sleeping girl, “wasn’t made aware of that ability. That’s why it’s like a vacuum turned to the lowest setting, only catching the slightest crumbs, and you basically can’t even tell it’s there. But if she were to somehow discover this… let’s just say, that wouldn’t be great. The vacuum would suddenly become self aware and it would lose control. That, and lots of very dangerous people would come after her for her abilities.” Mobius straightened his back, and cleared his throat, looking at Loki with that look in his eyes which meant only one thing- an interrogation. “Now, you made a blood pact with her, correct?”
“Yes, we pledged eternal friendship with blood.” Loki answered, showing off his scar proudly.
“That’s sweet, would be much sweeter if you were sober.” Mobius muttered under his mustache. “A blood pact is a very important oath for the Jötnar, it causes you guys to become super attached and protective over the other person on a neurological level, and it’s why it’s used by some extremists during marriage vows. Same for Asgardians, and on a much lesser scale with light and dark Elves. Anyways, do you currently have an instinct to protect her and, in your own words, always have her back?”
Loki swallowed, not liking where this conversation was going.
“Yes.” He admitted, which made Mobius sigh with relief, and hand him a couple of papers stapled together.
“Great. Then you should probably take a look at this, and read it very carefully, because it might be the only thing you can do to keep her safe for now. I’ll go do some more research on that branch you guys created.”
Again, Loki felt the need to swallow when he skimmed over the contents of the first page. The pages were a neatly organized file of everything about Zozo’s magic (or rather, anti-magic), and a journal of what exactly would happen to her in the next couple of years if she was to return home soon, starting from September 2021. The moment Mobius went out again, without much hesitation, Loki started reading.
By the time Zozo woke up, Mobius had returned, and Loki had long finished his lecture. And while Loki seemed happy and at peace, Mobius was quite literally fuming, which looked almost foreign on his typically calm demeanor. Still, he didn’t say anything when he watched Zozo’s eyes flutter and open slowly, or when Loki sat down by her side and started whispering jokes in her ear to make her laugh. Then Zozo laughed a little too hard, said something involving Lightning McQueen and pegging, and moved her leg, which was now perfectly fine and definitely not broken, and Mobius snapped.
“Nice to see you’re feeling better.” He congratulated her, irony dripping from his words as he stared down at the girl. “Now, both of you, get over here. We’ve got to have a little talk about the consequences of your actions, eye to eye.”
Surprisingly, Zozo responded by sighing obnoxiously, and sliding down onto the floor.
“Don’t be like that, Mobius.” She whined. “We did our best.”
Mobius wasn’t having any of it, as he gestured towards the table for them to sit down.
“Yea, well, sometimes our best is just not good enough. And in your case, it’s really, really far from good enough, so take a seat.”
Completely unphased by Mobius’s harsh words, Loki helped Zozo stand up, and walked with her to the chair, marvelling about how well her previously broken leg works. It took way more time for them to actually get there than Mobius would have liked, which paired with his hunger and resulting bad mood, nearly caused him to burst.
“What’s up with the file?” Zozo asked, once she was seated, curiously eyeing the file Mobius had set before her. “Those big numbers plastered on top look really cool, like we’re in a spy movie.”
“Oh, let me show you what’s up with the file.” Mobius grumbled, then shuffled a bit with the projector and up on the wall appeared a perfectly clear image of a tall woman in her late twenties, dressed in Asgardian armor and blue silks, her short blonde curls adorned with a silver tiara. It probably wouldn’t have been so shocking, had she not also had Zozo’s face, and the exact same blue eyes that were staring at her in shock, seemingly stared back.
Loki blinked in surprise, unable to take his eyes off her. He was right, in all his contemplations about how she would look in Asgardian fashion. She looked like a queen.
Mobius cleared his throat again.
“Now you see-”
“Yo, this hairstyle is fucking dope!” Zozo squealed, poking Loki in the arm to get his attention away from her variant, and onto herself. “I should totally dye my hair like this. And cut it too. Lokes, do you think maybe if we took some bleach-”
“Are you done?” Mobius asked, in a tone that left no room to argue. “You’re gonna have to start taking this seriously, do you understand?”
Somehow, this irked the girl, who sat back in a defensive manner and crossed her arms.
“No, I actually don’t. I have no cosmic importance, you said that yourself. Why is this so important all of a sudden?”
With her eyes glued to Mobius, or rather glaring at him, she didn’t notice the way Loki looked down at the floor. Mobius only rolled his eyes, and pointed to the image with his finger.
“You don’t, but she does.”
He then rewinded the tape inside the projector, to instead show a picture of Zozo as a little girl in her pink dress in New York. Except this time, she was sitting on top of Loki’s shoulders, who looked as if a burden had been lifted off his chest, her small hands grabbing the horns of his crown for balance.
“He waited for you, after that little kiss.” Mobius explained. “He waited for a thousand years to meet you again, and when he finally did, your words were enough to break the control that Thanos had over him. I won’t even go into detail about how many things this messed up exactly, but let’s just say, it caused quite a stir, history-wise. The best part of it all is that he didn’t even like you, always pushed you away, you barely spoke to him at all before you turned eighteen and moved to Asgard. But then you grew up…” he fumbled with the tape more, until the projector showed another image of that universe’s Zozo in her mid twenties, her clothes and hair completely soaked as she and her Loki sat under a roof of some sort, snuggling together on the wet grass.
“You are pulling that face again, the one you always make when you’re deep in thought. What exactly are you thinking about?” The woman asked, clearly chewing on something. The way she looked at her Loki was so tender, that it was almost disappointing when instead of kissing her, even on the cheek or the forehead, he shrugged, and moved slightly closer to her, to only embrace her.
“Just theorizing on whatever it could be that made Thor so upset, that’s it. I wouldn’t want you to get sick.”
“Well, that’s an incredibly sweet lie.” She muttered, swallowing the thing in her mouth and laying her head on Loki’s shoulder, a gesture that in turn filled his eyes with the sort of affection only a person in love can hold.“You are way too much of a scoundrel to care about my well-being. I bet if I died right now you wouldn’t even bat an eye.”
The Zozo in the TVA stared at that scene in fascination. This was the Loki she kissed. He was seemingly in love with this older, much cooler version of her, and she reciprocated! The way these two held each other… it was just so sweet. Even though there was a sort of jealousy in her, she was still so very happy for them, and hoping they would eventually work out, as clearly the love had not yet been confessed.
“Yea, this isn’t even the best part, look at that!” Mobius teased, possibly due to seeing that the Loki beside him started blushing, and his face now resembled a fresh tomato.
The scene that appeared next was different from the other, depicting Loki cradling his Zozo in his arms, in some sort of frozen tundra. She was bundled up in two cloaks, but was nearly frozen solid, her lips purple, her skin white. Her Loki seemed to notice too, as he was crying, his warm tears melting the snow from her cheek.
“I cannot lose you now that I finally have you. Do you understand me? I haven’t spent my sleepless nights hating you with every inch of my soul just to have you ripped from me the moment you’re finally mine. I haven’t endured the pain of loving you and coming to terms with it, for you to die in my arms.” He cried, his voice breaking as he desperately tried to warm her frozen body up.
“That’s one hell of a confession.” Zozo admitted, finally turning to Mobius, “Please tell me she survived.”
“Unfortunately, she did.” Mobius said, “And because of that, this happened.”
An image of two very young frost giant boys appeared, and Loki’s heart nearly stopped. Each of them had similarities to both him and Zozo, one having her natural brown hair, while the other’s curls remained black like his father’s. Their eyes were red, and yet when they smiled, their noses scrunched up exactly like Zozo’s did. There was no doubt in Loki’s mind that these boys were their children. Or rather, the children of those variants.
“Oh. My. God.” Zozo whispered beside him, “They are so cute! I want ten of these!”
“That’s doable.” Loki agreed, still slightly in shock. “We can do it like in that film, “Seed of Chucky”, where they use the turkey baster for that.”
“I like your thinking.” The girl agreed. “You get the cup, I’ll get the turkey baster-”
“Absolutely not!” Mobius stopped them, “There will be no turkey basters or cups. These children are not supposed to exist, period. Because of them, your variants basically destroyed their universe, and because they know about the multiverse, we have two very dangerous people on our hands.”
Silence. Complete and utter silence, for perhaps the first time since Zozo woke up. No wonder these two have caused such chaos, Mobius thought. Watching them interact was like witnessing some infinite wheel of nonsense be propelled to go faster and faster by two insane chaos goblins. He silently thanked every deity he knew for allowing him to catch them so quickly, before they could cause even more irreparable damage, or worse, an infinite amount of paperwork for him to complete. Surprisingly, it was Loki who broke the silence.
“Well, what will you do about that?” He asked, “It’s much too late to prune the branch, so is there anything you could possibly try?”
“There’s one thing.” Mobius said. “Now, Zofia, your mom has this saying for when you get overwhelmed, she says “get back to the roots.” I like that saying, it’s very smart. While there’s very little we can do about your variants going insane due to grief and destroying universes, there’s definitely something we can do to prevent something like this from happening again.”
The slight dread on Loki’s face ever since he heard about the new branch became more visible. It was clear that there was no escape now. He will have to face what he has done, and stop running away from the problems he has caused. And now he dragged Zozo into it as well. Very gently, almost apologetically, he put his hand over Zozo’s, trying his hardest to show her that he is there for her, and whatever Mobius wished to do, she is not alone.
“And what would that be?” Zozo asked, turning her hand over and squeezing Loki’s hand in hers. Mobius eyed their connected hands with a questioning look, and slid another file their way. A file they hadn’t seen before, but one that looked familiar, as they’ve explored many, nearly identical ones. A file that held Zozo’s name, and the number indicating her timeline. The timeline they were searching for.
“Taking you home.” The agent answered.