"Take it easy, you're an analyst, right? What division are you from? Who are you, what's your name? Who are you?"
Loki felt the world cave in around him, distantly heard Mobius asking him who he was over the ringing in his ears. He stared at the statue replacing the three Time-Keepers that had been there before, giant and menacing and final.
Mounting understanding crashed through him, yanking him down with the weight of it. It had been a trick, an illusion. The illusion that free will was ever even on the table, ever even within their grasp. Everything had been scripted according to his grand design, even his end, leaving him somehow more powerful in death. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that Sylvie had killed him after sending him back to the TVA, so that only meant one thing: they'd made their own bed, and now they were lying in it. This was on them.
He turned back to Mobius, desperate to see the familiar face that had been the only unchanging thing at the TVA that hadn't frightened him with its steadiness. Mobius's face was easy to predict, usually either tilted up at him with that perpetually amused smile or angry and intent, an intense singular focus that always made Loki feel vulnerable and flayed bare, not entirely in a bad way. There was focus now, but none of it on him, none of it familiar. Mobius looked empty, stripped even of the little quirks that had made him who he was before.
Loki felt the tide rising around his ankles, heard a rushing in his ears that wouldn't go away. He wanted to succumb to the hopelessness, wanted to cut his losses, take a TemPad, and go fucking anywhere but here. They were living in a shiny new multiverse, after all; there were endless Asgards for him to run to, endless Sakaars for him to go hide on, endless places to go try and forget anything and everything that had happened since New York.
Mobius glanced back at him, eyebrows furrowed. "Can you hear me? Who are you?" He asked. Loki didn't think he could forget anything, no matter how hard he tried. He almost envied this Mobius, this one who had been restored to someone with an easy, simple, all-consuming purpose. He felt Mobius's loss like a physical ache, layering atop the feeling of the trust broken between him and Sylvie to encase him in an icy layer of sheer dread, far too cold for even him to bear. He needed the warmth, needed the spark, needed the man who'd half-smiled and told him he was going to burn the TVA down. He needed Mobius. He thought distantly that he had always needed Mobius, had always needed someone steady and attentive and there. Someone who was an anchor even at both of their worsts.
He took a breath, thought about what Sylvie had told him on Lamentis. Grab hold of their mind. If they're there too, create a fantasy from their memories. He thought about the feeling of latching onto Alioth, the feeling of pushing with his magic until it hooked something larger than himself, untangling something as vast and complicated as consciousness until the storm parted and the hidden pathway was revealed. He just needed to get to the hidden pathways, needed to undo the TVA's magic the same way that Sylvie had. If she'd done it, he could too.
"My name is...Louis. I'm an analyst...Earth division. Sorry, I panicked." He took a breath, tried to look calm and normal and trustworthy. "I need to show you something, Agent Mobius. If you'll allow me."
Mobius tilted his head, assessing. "What is it?"
"You'll have to follow me. Just to the nearest Time-Theater."
Mobius looked uncertain, looking back at B-15. "Look, I dunno, we've got a situation here. Don't you have a different Agent to report to?"
"I promise it's worth it." Loki said, clasping his hands together. "It will help fix the branches."
"I don't think anything will help fix the branches." Mobius said, rolling his shoulders back stepping towards him. "—But alright, lead the way." He turned back to B-15. "Keep in touch."
She nodded, still speaking urgently into her TemPad.
The TVA was in shambles, hunters running around with their batons raised and infinite new Variants to try and catch on top of the ones who had already been in custody, now loose and doing their best to escape. Loki ignored all of it, focused on his breathing and on the feeling of Mobius walking next to him. If he just listened to the sound of him breathing he could pretend that they were doing this together, that there was no need to lure him somewhere with lies to begin with.
The second the door to the Time-Theater shut behind them Loki started talking, it getting harder and harder to hide his nerves. "Alright, where was the last place you went using your TemPad?"
Mobius stared at him. "Um, basically the middle of nowhere. Alaska. There was a Variant there before this all started."
"Perfect. I need you to take us there."
"Why?"
"It holds the key to all of this." Loki said, trying to look believable.
"You know, I'm getting the feeling that I can't trust you. Why did you take me away from B-15?"
"You have to trust me, Mobius, please. You can prune me if I'm lying."
Mobius stared at him for a moment, thinking it over. "...Okay. But you're going through first."
Loki stepped through the Timedoor into the swirling snowflakes of an empty, barren stretch of land. He wasted no time once Mobius stepped through, moving to stand close enough that they were almost nose-to-nose.
Mobius seemed confused more than anything, fumbling with his TemPad and blinking at him, eyes wide and painfully blank with lack of recognition. Loki raised his arms before Mobius could stop him, pressing his fingers to his temples and shutting his eyes, focusing on the feeling of his magic roiling underneath his skin and waiting to discharge, to knit back together what had been unraveled, or maybe to unravel what had been knit back together. He pushed forwards past the first mental barriers, pretending that he had Sylvie beside him, her magic melding with his and making him stronger.
Mobius pushed back, his consciousness refusing to bend to Loki's. Okay. Create a fantasy. He reached into Mobius's memories, delving across eons of time spent experiencing other people's lives, an endless kaleidoscope of perspective that Mobius's own life was woven around. He reached across multiverses of Mobius's, versions of him that were all slightly different, reaching and reaching until…
There.
Loki grabbed ahold of the memories and wiggled a key made of his own memories through the lock, pulling at the thread until it all gave way at once, memory and feeling so intense it almost made him buckle. The hundreds of years he'd lived seen through someone else's eyes, the flood of emotion when they reached the end, threatening to drown Loki if he let himself feel all of it at once. He saw himself through Mobius's eyes, lips curved in a knowing smile that seemed to compel him forwards, made him want to drop everything he'd ever known for this Variant who he knew he couldn't trust, this broken thing who he couldn't help his soft spot for. Loki latched onto the memory and focused on its tangibility, willing the walls within Mobius's mind to turn into those of the TVA's. He pictured it as best he could, pictured the table between them and the grey walls and the soft lamplight.
Loki opened his eyes and saw Mobius across from him, sitting with their legs tangled and his hands folded on the table. "What were you saying?" He asked, looking slightly disoriented. "Something about free will?"
"Actually, I believe you were talking about Jet Skis." Loki said, resting his chin on his palm and trying to look normal, curious.
"...Oh. Right." Mobius smiled, leaning back in his chair. "It's just that most of history is dumb. Everything….everything gets ruined eventually…." He looked confused at that, like there was something eating at him that he needed to remember. He shook it off with a blink. "But, in the early 1990s, for a brief, shining moment, there was a beautiful union of form and function, which we call the jet ski…" He trailed off, eyes warm as they looked at Loki but eyebrows knit in confusion, like Loki was a puzzle he couldn't figure out.
"Yeah?" Loki prompted.
"You know what's weird?" Mobius asked.
"What?" Loki asked, still trying desperately to hold onto the threads of the memory.
"You would think that as an agent I wouldn't get déjà vu, you know? That's a person thing, it comes from the echoes of pruned timelines. But I do feel it sometimes, nagging at me…"
"Mobius." Loki leaned forwards slowly, reaching his hands out and taking Mobius's in his own. "I need you to remember."
"Remember what?" Mobius asked, staring down at their joint hands like it held the answer he couldn't find.
"Me, Mobius. I need you to remember me. I need you to know me."
Loki felt the pressure of the memory threatening to crumble around them, to fold in on itself and slip away like the dregs of a forgotten dream. Loki funneled all of his magic into Mobius, felt it weave itself through his mind and form a fragile membrane for them to balance upon. "I need your help here." He whispered, squeezing Mobius's hands so tightly that he knew it probably hurt. He tried to hold onto the memories even as they fought to escape, layer upon layer of the TVA's strange magic muddling the certainty with which Mobius had experienced them. Loki avoided the older memories, the ones of seasalt and spray and sunshine, whatever life he'd lived before. Those were important, too, but he didn't know if he could pull them out without messing things up. He just needed the Mobius he'd had before, the one who'd followed him to Pompeii and pulled him from the Time Cell and hugged him in The Void. The one who knew him.
He used his last burst of magic to try and pull it all out of him, to spill the carefully contained colors all over Mobius's freshly black-and-white world. He took a breath, opened his eyes. Mobius was still across from him in the snowy grey nothingness, hand on his TemPad and eyes wide. They were wide with something different than before, though. Something endless and all-encompassing and so familiar it hurt. "Mobius?" Loki said, voice catching.
"Loki." He said, and kissed him.
Loki wondered distantly why everyone felt the need to kiss him all of a sudden but didn't think he minded this time, thoughts slipping away entirely at the feeling of Mobius against him, warm and steady and safe. The fingertips that had been on his temples melted into Loki holding Mobius's face in his hands, kissing him back with a desperation to lose himself in what was certain, what was sure, which had always been Mobius.
Mobius pulled back, blue eyes blinking rapidly as he tried to take everything in at once. "Um, sorry." He said, coughing and tugging at his tie. "Felt like the thing to do, you know?"
Loki stared at him, lips parted. "Don't apologize."
"Okay." Mobius said, gently pushing him forwards so that they weren't so close. "You look very distracting right now, though, and we're kinda in the middle of a crisis."
"Crisis is a monumental understatement." Loki said, smoothing his hair back and trying to fight the panic that was already flooding back in.
"Loki, it's okay. You have me, okay? You have me."
Loki nodded, breathing slowing down again. He had Mobius. He'd always had Mobius. "I'm very glad to have you," He said, starting to pace, "But—"
"—We're fucked?" Mobius finished for him, eyebrows raised.
"A bit, yes."
"Well, we've both been fucked bef—" Mobius seemed to realize the direction that sentence was heading in "—We've both been in tough spots before. We've both made it out of them against unbelievable odds before—"
"Oh, Gods, are you doing another pep talk?"
"I thought you wanted a pep talk."
"You always think I want a pep talk."
"Loki, listen to me. You reached across the multiverse to pull me back. You undid whatever magic was in place. It was the same in The Void, when you and Sylvie did that with the angry cloud, right?"
"...Right."
"Okay, so, we need lots more of that. And what does a multiverse give us access to?"
Loki raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Shitloads of Lokis."
"Pure chaos." Loki said.
"Exactly. What do you say? Want to unleash a little more chaos?"
Loki felt something bubble up within him, something huge and terrifying and almost exciting. He reached out and adjusted Mobius's tie, tugging on it once. "Always."