Trust is Secondary
Mobius pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry, I’m...I’m sorry,” he sighed, watching as confusion and annoyance flashed across this Loki’s face. He dropped his hands to his sides. This Loki didn’t know him, though he eventually would. Or would have. Timelines were complicated. It wasn’t his fault that Mobius wasn’t looking for him. That Mobius was tired and desperate and losing hope with every variant that wasn’t what he searched for. This Loki wore the full Asgardian wardrobe of a king, with sweeping green robes and golden adornments, a horned helmet atop his head. But this Loki...for all his grandeur, he needed help. Whether he knew it or not. Though the TVA agent wanted to just open the time door and leave him here, he couldn’t; his conscience wouldn’t let him. He was, after all, an analyst. “I’ll make time for it. For you.”
Loki was perturbed by the sincerity in his voice, and his brows furrowed imperceptibly, even as the strange man stepped forward, until the scepter was almost touching his chest. He didn't know that none of the other variants hadn't let Mobius get half as near. “I know you’re hurt,” Mobius said, “betrayed.”
“Stop,” Loki gritted out, knuckles turning white as he gripped the scepter tighter.
“It’s okay.” He slowly reached up, setting his hand on the golden scepter. “I know...another you. An alternate you. I know what you’ve gone through. Let me help, please.”
“You. Don’t. Know me.” The vulnerability in his eyes was clear, though he fought against his rising emotion. The scepter shook in his hands, even as Mobius pushed it down and away from him.
“You’re the son of Frigga. Son of Laufey. You’ve been lied to for so long.” The agent’s mouth had turned downwards in a sympathetic frown. “It was wrong, what happened to you.” He gently pulled the scepter from Loki’s hands, letting it clatter onto the rocky ground. He stepped even closer, watching carefully as he tensed. “I’m from a different place. A place where the past and the future hardly mean anything. I’ve been looking for the version of you that I know. I can help you, Loki.”
He was close enough now to see when the god summoned a knife, holding it up to Mobius’ chest. He let it happen, holding up his hands non-threateningly. He was close enough to see when tears formed in Loki’s eyes, the blue of his Jotun form creeping up his neck as his lips quivered almost imperceptibly. “You’re lying,” he croaked, but Mobius could see this for what it was: a last-ditch attempt to protect himself from what he feared.
“I know you,” Mobius told him, giving Loki the trust he’d never been given before. “It’s okay, I’m your friend, Loki.” The knife was shaking between pale fingers. With one hand, Mobius reached comfortingly for Loki’s wrist while the other went for his shoulder. “You’re not alone.”
A tired sob fell from the god’s mouth, the tears finally falling, blue consuming his form as he let Mobius take the dagger from him, tucking it inside of his jacket before rubbing his shoulders gently. Not enough to feel controlling, but enough to ground him. The agent didn’t dare try for a hug. It’d taken his Loki forever to accept one, and this Loki, who’d just lost everything, would never have allowed it. But it was a nice thought. He watched as Loki let himself drop to sit on the ground, shoulders shaking as he pulled the horned helmet from his head. Mobius sat a few feet away, watching as everything Loki had endured seemed to crash upon him all at once. He’d uncovered a terrible secret, exposing his life for the lie it was. He’d fallen from grace in the most spectacular way after doing everything in his power to prevent just that. He had no one.
It didn’t last, as Mobius knew it wouldn’t. This Loki was far too proud, too defensive, to let someone see him cry for any longer than he had to. The god stilled, collecting himself, carefully replacing his helmet and the glamor of his Asgardian form before looking up at the agent as a captured animal might view its rescuer. “Who are you?” he repeated, though his voice had lost some of its hostility, to be replaced with a kind of wonder. Anyone who could affect him so with words alone must be someone powerful, someone important.
“I’m ag- I’m Mobius,” he introduced himself with a smile, holding out a hand, though Loki only eyed it warily, so he dropped it back to rest on his knee. “I work for the Time Variance Authority- or, I did, at least. It’s kind of a mess at the moment. You’d probably be there by now if not for…” He huffed air through his nose. Stick to the basics, Mobius. “We existed beyond time itself, and we helped keep the timeline in check, ‘pruning’ branches off the ‘sacred timeline’. It was a good life, for a bit. We were taught that the multiverse couldn’t exist without chaos and death and war.”
“The multiverse?” Loki interjected, an eyebrow raised skeptically. His instinctual reaction to attack had been worn down, and now he was ready to listen. Really, he had nothing better to do, stranded here. Not to mention this ‘Mobius’ seemed to have some means of travel. No other reason, of course.
“Yeah, a tangled mess of every timeline happening at once. Every decision anyone ever made, split into alternate branches. Our job was to keep it from branching, consolidating it to a single timeline predetermined by our bosses. We’d take the perpetrators back to the TVA and reset the branch before it spiraled out of control. That’s how I met you- or at least, the other you.”
“The other me.”
“Yup. Well, I knew you before, sorta. I’d studied your life forwards and backwards.” He chuckled to himself, surprised by how far away that time of his life seemed. “You were so much more than I could have predicted.”
“So that’s how you knew those things about me.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement. It fit...somewhat. His whole world had been turned upside down only days ago. Why shouldn’t this also be true? “You know what happened...with my father.” He carefully avoided Mobius’ gaze.
“And your brother,” the agent added unhelpfully. “Up to a certain point, anyways. I only studied a singular timeline of your life, but you. You’ve diverged from it, somehow.” He smiled crookedly. “It’s always you, Loki. So unpredictable, even to yourself.” A sudden wave of bitter nostalgia washed over him, something akin to yearning, and his smile fell as he pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “The Loki...that I know,” he forced out, “He always managed to get away, just at the last minute.” Even from me.
Loki, with his brows furrowed, couldn’t figure out whether Mobius was angry, amused, or sad. Maybe he was a bit of a mix. Instead of trying to understand this new myriad of emotions, the god decided to try something else. “How do I know I can trust you?” he asked in a calm, measured tone. When the agent looked up, he was met with a carefully contemplative blue gaze. How could Loki trust him? It wasn’t easy for him. He’d been lied to for centuries, the betrayal still fresh in his mind. He’d gone so easily from the betrayed to the betrayer, lashing out in response to his own pain. Mobius almost wished he didn’t know it. The only way he’d ever gotten his Loki to trust him was through weeks of constant proof, and giving trust in return.
A lightbulb. “Come see,” Mobius told the god, tapping his index finger against his head.
“What?”
“You can see people’s memories, right?”
“Yes, but-”
“Come see. I’ll show you I’m telling the truth.”
An olive branch. No one had ever willingly allowed Loki inside their heads. In fact, he hadn’t had the chance to do it in awhile, not that it made much of a difference. He regarded Mobius cynically, as if searching for some sign of trickery, but the man only waved him forward. “I won’t bite,” he teased, and Loki squinted his eyes before pushing to his feet and stepping tentatively towards Mobius, who just sat there expectantly. The god crouched, reaching out his hands, pausing, before he pressed his fingers to the agent’s temples.
The images came to him in bright flashes, like they had been sitting there at the surface just waiting for him to dip his fingers into the current of Mobius’ mind. A screen, with squiggling lines. Orange doorways. A glowing, sentient clock. Bland walls. Rows of filing cabinets. People disappearing. And then a shock of black hair. Gentle hands fixing a tie. Himself - or another version of himself - shouting in an old midgardian village. Flashing lights and grocery store aisles. Panic. Worry. Something familiar: betrayal. Sincerity, on his own face. Pain, disintegrating. A car. A blond woman. An...alligator? Emotions clouding: fondness, jealousy. An embrace. Something more.
He was slammed back into his own mind, falling backwards as Mobius squeezed his eyes shut, running his hands through his hair. For a moment, he was the vulnerable one, his mind laid bare, and Loki stared at him with a new understanding. He’d been telling the truth, about the timeline, about the alternate version of himself. He was strangely, confusingly, attached to this other Loki. How anyone could grow close to him was beyond Loki, but he sensed no tampering with the memory, no fuzz around the edges. Just genuine history.
Mobius hadn’t moved. “I believe you,” the god said, finally, still studying the agent as he raised his head. Like Loki, he was careful to guard his expression once exposed.
“I’d hope so,” he chuckled drily in response, wiping a hand across his face as he composed himself.
“You’re searching for me, aren’t you? The other me.”
A nod. Pause. “Help me find him.”
Loki blinks. “Me?”
“Yeah, you. No better way to find a Loki than with another Loki.”
“Me, the one who just tried to trick his own brother and tried to steal the throne?”
A tug pulled at Mobius’ lips. An admission like that, the assumption of blame, had taken far longer to coax out the first time. An illusion conjured by the weak to inspire fear. A desperate bid for control. “The you I know,” he began, holding that green gaze firmly, “Had done far worse when I found him. And I’d trust him with my life.” He watched as Loki turned it over in his head, probably balancing his own selfish reasons with curiosity and a genuine concern. They were all the same, in some ways. It seemed that, before Thanos, before the Chitauri, he had managed to hold onto just a piece of that...trust. Odin’s lie had been a short term punch to the gut, but it had made sense to Loki, once he'd accepted it. It couldn’t compare to what this Loki would have been put through, had he gone through the void. Mobius wasn’t sure how he’d ended up here rather than on the rainbow bridge, but he’d managed to avoid one of the worst parts of his life.
“Fine,” Loki conceded eventually, “I’ll go with you. But only if you agree to one thing.”
“Which is..?”
“I want assurance that I can go back to Asgard whenever I want.” That earned him a laugh, and he scoffed in return. “It’s a perfectly reasonable demand. If I’m going to help you out with this all powerful agency business, I want to make sure I can leave whenever I want.”
“Alright alright,” Mobius sighed, bobbing his head as he patted at his jacket before pulling out an extra tempad he’d borrowed from B-15. He fiddled on it, then held it up for Loki to see. “You saw this in my memories, right? This can open a doorway from one point in space and time to another. I’ve set it to open a door to Asgard when you press this button. You’ll pop out inside your room at the palace if you decide to use it.” When he held it out, Loki took it, examining the thing, then let it disappear in a flash of green light. Mobius took that as unspoken acceptance. “Anything else?”
Loki thought for a second, then responded, “That will be sufficient. But know this; if you cross me, there will be-”
“Deadly consequences,” Mobius interrupted, waving his hand dismissively as he turned around, already opening a time door to the TVA as he put Loki at his back. “I’ve heard that before.”
He’d disappeared before Loki could even open his mouth to express his annoyance, leaving the god to follow. He huffed to the empty planet, making a swift judgement call, and sucked in his breath as he followed this new stranger into the unknown.