Love is exactly like a dagger
You either use it to stab someone in the back or they stab you with it in yours.
Loki isn't sure which one applies to their current situation though.
Because the look in Mobius's eyes upon hearing the truth was so utterly crushed and betrayed but Loki was the one who felt like their heart was stopping in their chest.
“You’re lying.”
“Not this time.”
Loki knows what it's like to be lied to. That's part of the reason why lying to anyone and everyone never ever became any easier for them. But they wonder if maybe they'd been right to choose lies all along because the truth can't be worth hurting this man.
“Let me show you,” Loki says and reaches forward placing a hand gently on Mobius’s temple.
The time theater fades away.
It’s 1993 in Palm Beach Florida.
A salesman sitting at his desk looks up and is struck by the sudden urge to leave. He can’t explain where it comes from, only that it’s the sort of idea that springs up and takes root before you have any say in the matter.
He tries to ignore it. Focuses on his calls, meeting his quota, keeping his head down.
He looks up and out the window. He imagines what it would be like to get up out of his desk, break through the glass and fly away.
He looks back at the numbers on his computer screen.
He glances at the blue cloudless clear sky over the tops of the buildings.
He splits the difference. Pushes away from his desk grabbing his keys and goes for an early lunch. As he leaves the building he’s struck with a kind of thrill thrumming beneath his skin at the feeling of breaking routine and being spontaneous.
He’s not far from the beach, he thinks, when he gets to his car. With the extra time he’s given himself he could get there and back. Probably. What the hell, Why not?
He parks near the boardwalk and buys an overpriced hotdog to eat as he walks.
He loosens his tie and takes it off, shoving it into a pocket. He takes off his suit jacket next, draping it over an arm and rolling his sleeves up to his forearms, loosening a few buttons while he’s at it. Much better.
It’s hot out, the sun is beating down on pale skin that has seen fluorescent lights and cubicles more often than sand and surf. He closes his eyes and turns toward the sun like he’d done when he was a child, taking in the colors it makes dance across his eyelids.
He doesn’t notice another pair of eyes watching him curiously.
He decides to buy a slushy, sour apple and bright green that he knows will stain his tongue.
He smiles and wonders when it’s become such a novel feeling.
He turns towards the beach proper and walks into the sand ignoring the grains he can feel already worming their way into his shoes. He sees tourists and locals alike, lounging, playing volleyball, two women playing chase with their dog shrieking with delight as the dog shakes water and sand in every direction.
He sits where the dry sand meets the wet and sips at his icy drink fending off a brain freeze.
Getting back to work doesn’t seem quite so important.
He watches the waves and feels at peace.
A shadow falls on him momentarily chasing away the warmth of the sun. He looks up, shielding his eyes and meets the gaze of a man. Tall, pale, long dark hair, severe eyes, somehow less dressed for the beach than himself with black slacks and a black button-up shirt.
‘Pretty.’ The salesman thinks to himself.
“Sorry to interrupt.”
“Not at all.” The salesman replies.
“May I sit with you?” the stranger asks.
“Yeah sure, go ahead.”
The stranger sits, primly arranging their long legs and not quite relaxing next to the salesman.
It may just be the salesman’s imagination, but though he’s no longer in the stranger’s shadow he still feels cooler somehow even under the full brunt of the Florida sun.
A few more waves crash before the stranger speaks again.
“You are opposed to companionship.”
“Excuse me?”
“Everyone here has brought someone with them. Families, friends, pets, lovers.” The stranger points to examples of each around them as they list. “Yet you come and choose to sit alone. Why?” The stranger has a lilting accent. British if the salesman had to guess.
The salesman heaves a sigh. “You know, I honestly don’t know. I’m supposed to still be at work but all of a sudden I got this feeling that I just didn’t want to be there. So I left and here I am.”
The stranger turns towards him now, eyes flicking about and cataloging his appearance, lingering on the bright green drink.
“Want some? It’ll cool you off.” He extends the drink and the stranger takes it slowly, wrapping their lips around the straw and giving it a tiny sip. They hold the cup up studying it with an indecipherable face of judgment before they begin slurping it in earnest.
“Careful, you might get a brain freeze.”
The stranger just rolls their eyes but stops slurping enough to pick up the thread of conversation.
“So are you often prone to such flights of fancy then?”
“Nope. That’s the thing. I’m just a salesman. I go to work every day at the same time, sit at my desk, sell jet skis, then go home.”
“Jet skis?” The stranger replies, tasting the word as though they’d never heard of such a thing.
The slight pinch of their face with confusion is just too endearing.
“I take it they don’t have jet skis in Europe.”
The stranger quirks an eyebrow at the question seemingly amused.
“I can honestly say I have no idea.”
The salesman goes into his pitch, explaining what they are, throwing in the line he’d repeated dozens of times a day since he’d joined the company. ‘A beautiful union of form and function.’ He smiles despite himself.
“Ever been on one?” The stranger asks. The salesman notices that at some point during his explanation they’d relaxed more, leaning closer. The buttons on their black dress shirt are loosened now showing a long pale column of neck and a smooth unblemished chest, their sleeves rolled up to show lithely toned forearms. The salesman has the nonsensical thought that the stranger looks like temptation.
He clears his throat before speaking. “No, no. Like I said, I just sell them.”
“Sounds like quite the dull life indeed,”
This startles a laugh out of the salesman. “Alright, mister fancy pants I’ll bite. What’s your story then?”
“I came here to observe...people...I suppose you’d call them.” Before the salesman could comment on the strange phrasing the stranger continued a darker kind of look in their eyes at their next admission. “And to escape my family.”
“Do they treat you badly?”
The stranger scoffs, expression shuttering as they turn their attention back towards the waves, jaw clenching tight.
“They merely fail to see my true worth.”
The salesman remembers the family he’d had once upon a time back in Texas before he’d left them behind.
“That’s one thing we have in common then.”
The stranger’s head whips back around to face him, their gaze turning curious. Another idea takes hold in the salesman’s mind as he sits there fixed under those pale blue-green eyes.
“I really should be heading back to work...but...what if instead I play hooky and buy you another one of those slushies and you tell me all about it.”
The stranger’s eyes sparkle conspiratorially and they lean close, bringing that inexplicable cold with them and causing a shiver to run up the salesman’s spine.
“It’s a rather long story, I would hate to bore you.”
“Somehow, I don’t think you ever could.”
The two share a smile and the stranger rises first, extending a hand.
“I’m Loki.”
Just before the salesman can make a move either to take the offered hand or introduce himself reality splits open.
An orange doorway appears on the beach with a hum of energy that vibrates through his teeth. ‘That’s impossible,’ he thinks and he watches dumbfounded as soldiers in tactical gear step through. The soldier who leads them, a woman, looks down at a screen in one hand and in the other she holds a glowing baton.
“I have identified the Variants.”
“I beg your pardon.” The stranger- Loki- says as they turn to face the soldiers.
“On behalf of the Time Variance Authority, I hereby place you both under arrest for crimes against the sacred timeline. Get him up!” She barks out the last order towards two of the guards next to her who surge forward to grab the salesman, wrenching him up out of the sand and to his feet.
“Unhand him at once!” Loki yells and in the next few seconds everything happens at once.
Loki lunges forward at the woman a knife somehow appearing in their hand but the woman is quicker and catches them with the baton.
Loki disappears in a shower of sparks and energy that cuts off a final scream.
“No!” The salesman yells, trying and failing desperately to shake off the unyielding hands clasped around his arms.
The woman turns then placing the baton in his face.
“This branch is growing unstable. This is your last chance, Variant, come quietly or meet the same fate as your friend.”
He stops struggling, chest still heaving with adrenaline and yet nowhere to run and no way to fight whatever this is.
They drag him through the door and he watches the woman place a small canister in the sand before following. As the door closes the canister ignites, wiping away their footprints and disappearing all evidence of their presence. The salesman watches as an overturned cup of green slushy disappears in a small shower of sparks before he’s roughly turned away.
“Timeline reset.” The woman says, glancing down at her screen before meeting the salesman’s eye. “You should have just stayed at work, Variant.”
The memory slows then stops.
Mobius’s eyes stare forward seemingly empty but Loki knows he’s still trying to see a life long since stolen by the TVA.
“You were there. It was real.” Mobius’s expression crumbles as he meets Loki’s eye. “I met you. I met you and they took you away. They took me away.”
Loki pulls him in close. “Shh. I know Mobius, I know.”
“That’s not even my name I- I never got to tell you my name.”
Mobius looks so lost and broken and Loki doesn’t know what to do.
Loki has seen him angry and even thrilled privately at being the cause and ruffling Mobius’s seemingly unflappable exterior. Now they wish desperately for that fire to come back. When Loki reached into his mind and showed him a glimpse of the life he’d lived and proved their claims about the TVA that fight had simply disappeared, leaving a husk of the man that Loki has come to know.
The man who they need to get out of this place.
“That’s not important now. We need to leave. Renslayer and her Minutemen will be here any second.”
When Mobius still didn’t respond Loki reached inside his pocket placing the tempad in his lax hands and curling Mobius’s fingers around it.
“Take us away from here. To an apocalypse, anywhere. We can’t stay here. Please!”
Mobius focuses on the tempad in his hand and nods. He’s keying in a time and location when the door to the time theater bursts open.
Renslayer enters with a group of minutemen hot on her heels.
Mobius looks up from the tempad and places himself subtly between Loki and the group.
“Ravonna, What's going on?”
She merely stares back, lips pressed tight with barely contained emotion.
There’s no time.
No way to get the door open and get through without someone following. Loki still has their time collar on. Mobius turns to face them with an apology on his face behind his sad smile.
“If I could go anywhere. I’d go back to the day we met.”
“Prune him.” Renslayer barks.
A minuteman lunges forwards with his baton and Mobius disappears in a shower of sparks.
On the sacred timeline.
In 1993 in Palm Beach Florida the God of Mischief was visiting from Asgard, having slipped away in the wake of a disagreement with their brother.
They walked along the boardwalk, staring distastefully at all of the smiling loud mortals running around in packs together.
They didn’t see a man alone turn his face up to feel the sun or grab a bright green slushy to sit quietly and enjoy by himself. That man was still at his desk in the city, working away diligently and keeping his head down.
They felt a profound sense of loneliness surrounded by those lesser creatures who couldn’t possibly be worth their time and no one was there to change their mind.