Love is a dagger , he’ll say a mere 18 hours later. And he’ll probably mean it too, despite his minor inebriation and despite the utter nonsense his mirror will declare it. But now, as he sits on a hard plastic chair, eyes unwillingly drifting toward the vaulted glass windows--toward the absolute horror this reality is: looming buildings stacked one on top of the other, bloating out the sky, if there’s even a sky--he’s not thinking of love.
Love is a notion he left a lifetime and void ago, and it will not be one he remembers until his mirror sits across from him, his brokenness and despair reflected in her green eyes. It’s only then, as he looks at her and wonders what, were you not ever loved? are you so far removed that you’ve forgotten the notion? that he’ll remember that perhaps there was a time in the not-so-distant past where he too had thrown away the concept as a childish lie.
But right now, he’s not thinking of love. He’s not thinking of hate either though, and that’s the puzzle he’s currently trying to decipher.
Years of hate filling his bones--years and that strange not-time in the void, that time that hadn’t been a time , because how could a place with nothing possibly adhere to time?--and now it’s gone, dispensed from his body like jam from a squashed pastry.
For the first time, in a very, very long time, Loki’s head is clear.
Or, as clear as it can be with the anxiety and the suspicion overshadowing his mood.
He leans forward, braced on his forearms, and absentmindedly watches as Mobius dispenses a paper packet of white grains--sugar perhaps?--into his drink and stirs it with a metallic instrument. The man hums lowly in his throat--pleased--at the taste of it and leans back in his chair, eyes drifting toward the windows.
A quiet, not unlike the one that had blanketed the archives while they researched, has once again fallen over them. It’s a strange kind of limbo, Loki thinks. He likens it to the feeling one has when they are awake at a time they shouldn’t, part-taking in a meal at an odd nightly hour with a friend or companion; a hush fallen over them, as they are aware of the sleeping world.
It reminds him of a time--when Odin had been off to Vanaheim and his mother knowingly had turned a blind eye--long ago, when he and Thor had snuck out of their chambers and wandered the palace, sweets in one hand, their fingers entwined in the other. Despite the corridor's bright lights illuminating their path, a hush had fallen over the two.
Liminal spaces , he thinks, eyes casting about the strange place. Liminal spaces that he’s desperately trying to shrink from, rather than fill.
And that too is a puzzle Loki is trying to decipher. The last few days--Midgard, the tesseract, Thor --Loki has been trying to fill the spaces, trying to make himself feel bigger, to fill the void in his chest that had been carved out by the void he’d fallen into months before.
He has filled it with many things of late. Anger. Vengeance. Greed. Jealousy. Fear, even. But now, those emotions serve him poorly in this place. He’s held onto them for as long as his pride will allow, but with each disappointed glance or patronizing sigh from his new companion, Loki lets these vices slip away, leaving him unsure of his footing.
Without the burning hatred in his chest, what is there left to keep him going?
What do you want ? A voice--sounding annoyingly like Mobious--mocks in his mind. He pushes it to the side, banishes it away, but the echoes are still there. What does Loki want?
Loki’s been so focused on falling, fighting and sheer survival that he’s forgotten that there’s still room in him for other emotions to take root. Other wants .
Infinity stones are useless here which means...which means-
So is Thanos.
Norns , so is Thanos , his brain races with something akin to excitement and sheer, embarrassing , relief.
Which is why everything had suddenly come to a grinding stop, all of his selfish ambition and underlying fear had completely vanished since his revelation a day or so ago, leaving an empty husk of a creature, desperately trying to grasp what he wants, what he feels .
Right now he feels mostly just tired. A weariness, borne of his fight with the Avengers and his more recent failed fleeing of the persistent TVA, weighs him down. Despite his brief rest in the archives, the lethargy lingers, blurring the edges.
Some of him thinks it’s the atmosphere.
The TVA is shrouded in solemn greys and sickly beiges and horrifically high windows that reveal a never ending sky of buildings and towers. There is no night and there is no day and Loki is slowly starting to understand what Mobius had said about time being different here, because he’s rapidly losing track of how long he’s been trapped within the suffocating walls of his new prison.
And yet. And yet, despite his anxiety at being trapped within this place and his despair at being barred from his--his fucking timeline --Loki finds himself slipping into a state of docility that he would have found shameful a few hours ago.
He’s not safe. Never that. Even though Thanos is existances away, his powers useless in a place like this, Loki can’t remember the last time he felt safe --safe enough to fall asleep in front of someone else (it was probably Thor or his mother, but that life seems so far behind him, so long ago, that trying to grasp a memory of it is like trying to the remnants of a dream. The more he tries, the faster it escapes him) and yet he had found himself drifting off, lulled to sleep by the smell of books and the sound of paper turning and the occasional yawn or huff of his newly minted companion.
He had dreamt of nothing. When Mobius woke him, it was neither violent nor startling. It just was.
The human--if even that, but Loki hasn’t deciphered the history behind the TVA and its workers to its fullest yet--is now sitting across from him again, on an equally uncomfortable plastic chair, fingers occasionally tapping against a glass filled with an unknown orange liquid. He looks tired, which Loki can relate to. He looks thoughtful, which Loki can also relate to.
Loki rests his chin on his forearms, a mirror image of himself in the archives, and watches Mobius through half-lidded eyes. There’s a low hum that’s followed them about the place--it’s electrical most likely, whatever’s powering the metropolis they’re surrounded by, but the sound is eerie. Unnerving.
Uneasy, Loki sets his thoughts upon where his eyes are currently staring.
Mobius M. Mobius is quite a study, if Loki’s being honest--which he rarely is, but he’ll make an exception just this once. The man clearly values honesty, but has a manipulative edge that he thinks he’s clever at concealing. Loki would love to call him out on his hypocrisy, but finds himself more curious than irritated at the flaw.
Mobius is also a man who values his work. Believes in it with a shocking amount of faith for someone who appears so grounded in reality. Or-or not reality. If the past day has taught Loki anything, it’s that he’s woefully uneducated in the intricacies and paradoxes reality has to offer. He liked to think of himself as so clever, as so educated in the duality that reality had presented him. He certainly understood the mysteries of the universe(s) better than the warrior race the Aesir made of themselves.
All that knowledge and cleverness has proven itself to be useless in the face of the truth, however. Reality was far more inaccurate than Loki had believed-- ha! belief! --it to be and here he was, floundering in the face of it.
Oh, he puffed himself up and spouted nonsense to hide the panic and confusion slowly taking hold within, but the truth was that truth itself was arguable.
Loki closes his eyes tightly against the headache slowly blooming behind his eyes.
“You okay there?” his companion asks casually, a tinge of concern underlying the easiness of his tone. Loki immediately feels irritated.
Eyes still closed, he hums, trying to convey his annoyance with the shortness of the sound.
“Okay then,” Mobius says, but it’s doubtful. At least, Loki thinks it is. When did reading people become so difficult? Why is grasping the motivations, the meaning behind this one mortal evading him? Mobius is clever--far cleverer than he presents himself--possibly purposefully--as. What does Loki have to offer someone who obviously--as much as it rankles Loki to admit it--doesn’t need him. This man is clearly quite the contradiction, one that Loki wants to poke at until something happens.
He opens his eyes lazily and finds Mobius frowning at him, eyebrows pulled together in thought. The expression clears quickly, leaving behind the relaxed, unruffled demeanor Loki has slowly adjusted himself too.
Loki almost glares in his suspicion. “Yes?”
“Try the kombucha,” Mobius says, instead of answering him. He slides a glass across the table. It’s also filled with that strange, orange liquid that the man has been slowly consuming. Loki eyes it, sensibly wondering if it’s poisoned.
It tastes awful. And it’s probably not even alcoholic for all the trouble it gives Loki’s poor taste buds. Nonetheless, he forces his grimace down and gingerly places the mostly-filled glass back on the table.
“It’s an acquired taste,” Mobius says, once again reading through Loki’s centuries-crafted mask. “Let’s try some coffee instead.”
Two minutes later a steaming cup of Midgardian drink is placed before him. It’s not terrible.
“Second time’s the charm,” Mobius says, toasting his drink in the air after deciding that Loki does in fact like the coffee.
Loki’s running out of words to describe how irritating it is to be read so easily.
And he’s not one to run out of words.
Loki leans back unconsciously imitating the posture of the man across him. One of his legs presses against Mobius’s, as there is not much room under the small table they’ve procured, but the other man doesn’t seem to mind. He continues to absentmindedly drift his attention about the room, eyes occasionally flitting to Loki’s, but mostly just focusing on the neverending sky of metal outside the glass walls.
If Mobius notices the scrutiny being laid on him, he doesn’t let on.
Loki tries another tentative sip of his new drink. It’s sweet and bitter at the same time. A strange duality that Loki can appreciate. Eager to break the spell that’s fallen over them, he pushes the drink toward the middle of the table and asks the conversation that’s been teetering on the edge of his consciousness for the past few hours.
“By the way,” he starts, “on your desk-that magazine.”
The strange mood that had passed over them breaks as Mobius turns his full attention to Loki. As they strike up the rather frustrating conversation--where Mobius is being purposefully obtuse--Loki lets his weariness and pride fall to the side best he can. It will not serve him here.