Searching
Mobius was distraught.
It’d been a week. A week in the TVA can feel like months or minutes, but to Mobius they feel like years. It’d been a week since he came back from the void to depose Ravonna, a week since Sylvie returned. A week since Loki didn’t.
She’d been so confused when she stepped through the time door, looking like she’d been to hell and back, an empty gaze on her face. When the door closed behind her without anyone following, the TVA agent had frozen. “Where’s Loki?” he’d asked, gripped with fear as he assumed the worst. When she looked up at him without registering his words, he strode forwards and grabbed her by the shoulders, preparing for any violence he might be met with. The scariest part was that she’d let him. “Sylvie, where is he ?”
“I...I sent him back here,” she stuttered, coming back to herself and shrugging him off. “I sent him through the door before I...you haven’t seen him?”
The relief that slid over him like cool water only soothed him so much. “Not yet,” he admitted. “How long ago did you send him through?”
“Three minutes ago, maybe?”
“Maybe we just haven’t found him yet.”
They never did find him. Mobius spent all week looking, every nook and cranny, pulling in favors from every corner of the agency just in case he’d gotten lost. The whole place was in disarray after finding out what they were, who had controlled them, and what Sylvie had done, so maybe he’d just gotten busy. But this was Loki they were talking about; he always found his way back.
Mobius was about pulling his hair out in worry. She’d sent him through a time door while the timeline was branching. He could be anywhere, and it was nearly impossible to find him now that variance energy was useless in the face of the multiverse. His presence would cause a branch just like the millions of others that formed every second. And the tempad Sylvie had used to send him away had gone on the fritz when He Who Remained had died, meaning they couldn’t retrieve the data from the last time door she’d opened. Where is Loki? He thought to himself for the umpteenth time.
Loki, it turned out, was everywhere. Nearly every timeline past the Midgardian year of 700 AD had a Loki in it, and even some from before. Some were obviously not his Loki - the ones that wrought destruction or lorded over whole realms. Those were not his Loki. Ones that differed in appearance were ruled out. Mobius kept his ear eternally to the ground, praying for a whisper of one that could be his. He spent day in and day out tracking any variant resembling his, jumping across the multiverse in the hopes that this was the one, sometimes with Sylvie or B-15, but mostly alone.
“Mobius.”
Her voice startled him out of his thoughts from where he sat at his desk, nodding off as he looked over yet another Loki’s file. “What?” he responded, meeting B-15’s concerned gaze as she pulled his rolling chair away from the desk, causing him to jerk as his elbows lost their resting place.
“Hey!”
“Get some sleep, Mobius,” she responded, ignoring the glare he shot at her when she reached across him to close the envelope sitting open on his desk. When he stubbornly crossed his arms, she rolled his eyes and gave the back of his chair a hard shove, effectively dumping him onto the ground with an indignant, “Ow!”
“You’ve been running on fumes for days now, I swear you’ve only napped at this desk, and earlier today you told Casey that you needed him to ‘jumpstart your free range doorstop’, whatever the hell that means.” When he rolled his eyes, opening his mouth in response, she cut him off. “Mobius, I know you miss him. I’m sorry. I know how much he meant to you. But you’ve got to take care of yourself, and I mean…”
He didn’t want to hear it. Not the thing he’d thought of a million times.
“Everything was so messed up, with the timelines branching, the unpredictability of the void, the turmoil here. It’s possible that he’s not anywhere .” Her voice had softened considerably, but she still couldn’t have predicted the venomous look he gave her once he’d stood up, the determination, the stubbornness.
“He’s not gone,” the analyst hissed out, backing away even as he waved an accusing finger at her. “He can’t be.” Wheeling on the balls of his feet, he stalked out of the room with all the presence of an agitated leopard. A hunter jumped out of his way as he stormed past.
B-15 sighed. He had shown her that he was set, set in his mind and set on his path. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t change his mind. He was going to see this through to the end, and all she could do was hope he would be able to cope with the fallout.
The time door snapped open in front of him. He’d calmed down, since B-15 had confronted him. Hell, he’d even taken a nap, curled in the corner of his apartment in an old, underused armchair. He was ready, now, after narrowing his search down to another variant, alone on a moon somewhere beyond Asgard’s planetary system. All he knew was that this Loki seemed to resemble his, that he was making no hostile moves, and that he appeared stranded. In all the chaos, the TVA had limited access to information about these new timelines. This was all he had to go off of.
He hesitated as he stared at the orange doorway. B-15’s words had brought to life his greatest fear: that Loki had been lost forever, and he’d have to face this new normal all alone. He sighed, tapping at the tempad, and closed his eyes. Be here, he begged silently, willing this Loki to be his. Be here when I need you the most.
He stepped through.
The terrain was rocky, purplish black beneath his feet. Looking around, he noted the jagged crests of mountains in the distance, various outcroppings jutting out at odd angles. It seemed that he was also on a slope of some sort, and the whole area seemed barren. No life, no movement. He closed the time door and tucked his tempad into the inner pocket of his jacket, then put his hands on his hips as he tried to decide in which direction to set out first.
He was about to turn down the slope when something pressed against his back, something sharp. “Who are you?” a familiar voice asked, all gruffness and command. Slowly, without cause for concern, Mobius began to raise his hands. Then, quick as a whip, he turned, using his left hand to knock the weapon away from him as his right pulled out the pruning stick, clicking it on as he moved to put distance between himself and the newcomer.
It felt like his breath was knocked out of him. The thing pressed up against his back had been a scepter, wrought in gold and ending in an intricate design with a pointed tip. The person holding it looked, on the surface, downright furious, though he hadn’t made any move to attack. Mobius knew that face, knew those expressions, and recognized that beneath all that anger was a wariness, and the remnants of sorrow. “Who are you?” he’d asked again, though the sound didn’t register, at first.
“Loki.” It was him. Or at least, the god who would become him. Younger than Mobius had known him, but only by a few years. It was him. And yet it wasn’t.
He looked taken aback, then quickly schooled his features into an intimidating glare. “Yes, I am Loki, Prince of Asgard and rightful king. I was interrupted in my conqu-”
“No.” Mobius had said it before he’d even thought to keep it in. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Excuse me? ”