clockwork Chapter 1: one, a loki fanfic

A/N: hello! i have had a brutal time with writer's block for a few weeks now but after seeing loki, i really wanted to write a story for mobius lol. this story will likely only need maybe 2 or 3 chapters total, depending on the finale. bit risky writing it without the finale but i am trying very hard not to give up writing and to ignore the pain of writer's block because when it happens i almost inevitably end up screaming into a pillow. anyways, please stay safe and enjoy! xx

clockwork

one

•••••

In the catacombs, the pitted sockets of skulls seemed to watch the search for the Variant. The ground was gritty in certain tunnels. Pebbles were wedged against the soles of my boots, falling off in a gentle skittering sound of stone against stone. The thrill of the chase had not left me; it crackled, it burned, it sizzled at those little hairs along my nape and it sparked at that otherwise dulled cold stone within my chest, because nothing could match a chase. It was instinct. Blood crashed against my eardrums. Honey filled my mouth. It was what hounds felt, leaping and barking with canines flashing.

The Variant was somewhere within the catacombs.

I had trapped her within the winding maze of tunnels. Up ahead, I spotted the faintest smoulder of orange light from another tunnel branching off from the main path. I heard stuttered breaths and the soft crumbling of dislodged soil and dust fluttering to the ground, which was then followed by the scuff of shoes dragged forward.

She was injured. I had bet that much already, but I had not imagined she was suffering enough blood-loss to be inching herself through the tunnel like she was, because I came around the corner and found her like that. She turned her head. Her right eyelid was swelling, sealing itself shut in a mound which shone dull purple against the yellowish light of the catacombs. Her mouth opened.

Out came a trickle of blood and a question: "One day you'll be the only left. So who will they send then?"

The trial in the courtroom was swift. It lasted less than a couple of minutes. The bench was hard, grinding against me. The Variant had a cut on her brow, but it would not bother her for long. She looked at the posters. She looked at the tiles. She never looked at me.

The faucet ran cold and frantic against the porcelain sink, splashing at the marbled countertops of the bathroom. I scrubbed at my hands, both marred in cuts and skinned at the palms from a painful fall before I had chased the Variant into the catacombs. It had been worth it, even if I felt that hollowness creeping toward me, the same hollowness which always followed a chase, like I had sprinted so hard that there was nothing left in me, nothing that matched that thrill of outwitting a Variant.

It washed against me like the water, this gushing dread that spread outward, battering against my eardrums like it did against the porcelain, an endless thrum that made my hands tremble from more than the simple burn of fresh cuts. I felt that I now had no purpose, no reason, nothing but another folder stamped and tucked away between all the others in the filing room, until another would find itself on my desk and it would start all over again. I washed and watched pinkish-red blood drip away and swirl against white. It was me beneath that faucet, running out of colour, running and running –…

"Good job, Malloy." Shuffling from a stall, Hunter V-63 buckled her belt and stepped beside me, smacking at the soap dispenser. "Really. Though you know you should have called for back-up before following that Variant into the catacombs, right?"

I smiled weakly. "Yeah. Rookie mistake. Sometimes, the only thing that seems to matter is that chase, you know? Catching them, putting them away. Tunnel vision, I guess. You ever feel that way?"

Hunter V-63 cleaned off the suds from her hands and grabbed some tissue, drying them off. She tossed it into the trash-can beside her but her eyes seemed to linger on that faint distant part of me where a smile had been; the lips, the mouth, neither of which felt much like mine right then. I had borrowed them, used up words that were not mine either. I chewed at a foreign tongue, stolen and wedged between my teeth.

Could she understand it? Was that what she sought, staring at me like she did?

It was only us, in that bathroom. She righted her baton. It glinted sleek and black. Something had happened and finished before I could fully grasp it. But it had been close. It had been the sting of scraped palms, the smarting of reddened skin. In the mirror, her reflection seemed sharper than mine. She had straightened her spine. She scooted around me and touched the door, pulling it open. Before she could slip out into the hall to join the other Hunters milling around there, she paused and glanced back at me.

"You're still bleeding," she said.

I looked at my hands.

"Your cheek," she said. "Guess you fell a little harder than you thought."

She closed the door. The bathroom had emptied. The stall doors were left ajar, the marbled countertops drying, the chatter from the hall muffled. I looked around and saw that she was right.

Against the pile of folders stacked upon my desk was a pink sticky-note with familiar handwriting scrawled across it: cafeteria, lunchtime. chocolate cake with your name on it – m.m.m.

The rods were humming overhead the cafeteria, humming in a dim off-white shade that reminded me of the Variant for no real reason. Yet I looked at the rods and had my skull filled with nothing but that humming. I could think only of the catacombs; looming, yawning, all around. I heard, beneath that low vibrating din, the scuff of my shoes against the polished tiles of the TVA but felt myself rolling like the carts pushed around this building all day long, squeaking from one department to another, laden with more and more files until I was chock-full.

What had changed?

Nothing, really. The posters pinned against the walls were no different: cartoonish figures winding clocks, encased in bubbled letters. It was my collar which suddenly chafed and itched, it was my shoes which stuck to the ground and pulled away, tacky and wet, which could be true because the floors sparkled in this place. The cafeteria cut through that humming with its wild, inane chatter.

And there was Mobius.

Sitting alone, he had taken the table which we had claimed as ours a long time ago. There was a soothing familiarity in seeing him. It was hard to miss his crop of grey hair, which had been grey in all the time that I had known him, and still, like clockwork I would tease him and call him an old man and, just to make me laugh, he would touch his grey hair and ask, when did that happen? Like he had never noticed, like it was the first time anyone had told him about it, just to make me laugh. Like clockwork.

In front of him were two bowls of salad, two bottled waters and a slice of chocolate cake which glistened dark and smooth against the artificial light. It was tradition that we share desserts. He liked tradition; always had.

He was tapping an idle rhythm against his own salad bowl, lips pursed. I thought if I stood and watched him, simply watched him, for the whole hour allotted to us for lunchtime, he would not touch that slice of cake because he was that sort of guy. He made promises, he kept them; always had. I wondered what troubled him, because his shoulders were tight. I could read him that way. I was aware of him, felt him and sensed him, like there was a special timeline somewhere out there just for us. I noticed Miss Minutes flit about a screen nearby. I pushed all thoughts of another timeline from my mind and hurried toward him.

I stepped around the table. He looked up and smiled. It crinkled his eyes, warmed his cheeks. "Mila," he breathed out. "You got the note."

"I got the note." I slid into the chair across from him. "If I recall correctly, I was promised chocolate cake."

"Figured that that would tempt you a whole lot more than an hour spent in my company."

"You figured right."

He chuckled. "I also figured that you could tell me all about finally catching that Variant while we ate. I heard it was one helluva run."

There was something in his tone that both amused and annoyed me; amused me, because I was certain he had already spoken with the Minutemen to find out all about that chase, and annoyed me, because it meant that he really had been worrying. His tight shoulders, his tapping at the bowl, all signs of his nervousness that he tried not to mention directly. Instead, he would drop light-hearted, neutral statements like he had just then, nudging me toward the truth but hoping he could avoid the question outright.

I stabbed at my salad, taking a bite, pursing my lips.

"And?"

Mobius swallowed a mouthful of water, feigning ignorance. "And what?"

"And what else did you hear?"

"Nothing." His smile betrayed him. "All right, you got me. Hunter L-17 told me you split off from the Minutemen. That was a bad move, Mila. The Variant was dangerous, she could have –…"

I groaned. "Please -… Like you never break protocol."

"Name one time."

"Oh, really? How about Tokyo? Remember that? Or when you almost got yourself killed chasing that vampire in New Orleans? And who could forget that time you tried to jump between balconies in –…"

"If anything, that just means I am the perfect person to tell you never to run off on your own."

"I caught her." I leaned forward and followed him as he scoffed and pushed back, shaking his head. "I caught her, Mobius. I wanted –…"

I trailed off, unsure of myself.

When he spoke again, the teasing tone had dimmed. Instead, he was soft and low, hushed so that it stayed between us. "What, Mil? What did you want?"

Chairs scraped against tiles. Trays dropped onto the metal carts behind him. Lunchtime had almost finished, but neither of us had a strict schedule to follow then, not once our cases had been closed and we were momentarily left without another to fill the void – and perhaps that was what it was, a strange little blank spot in our future that hovered and grew ever larger until another Variant disturbed the timeline.

I had begun to hate those blank spots and wished for more Variants, a sin if I had ever heard one. But Variants killed the monotony, brought that thrill of blood against my eardrums, honey in my mouth. Without it, I looked at the posters in the TVA a little too much. I heard Miss Minutes like she stood behind my forehead, hopping about between the creases of my brain, her cartoonish gloved hands prodding at those parts of me which seemed to malfunction now and then.

Mobius lowered his fork. He had that furrow in his brow which brought out the lines. He was almost always playful, but there came these little instances in which I even dared to wonder if he understood what I meant, if he could grasp it and hold onto it and show it to me.

"I wanted it over with," I told him. "She was – difficult."

"Difficult," he repeated. "Difficult how? I thought she was a pretty normal case compared to the highly dangerous, highly violent Variants you usually get."

I swallowed, aware of how my tongue fit within my mouth, how it suddenly pressed against my teeth. "I don't know. Just difficult."

"Mila," he said softly. It cut me despite its softness, its kindness. He said it again, as if to chop off that last hanging thread of resolve in me. "Mila."

"She –…" Again, my throat seemed to catch on a ragged inhale. "She asked me something that didn't make much sense, is all."

Mobius waited a beat, then huffed a quiet laugh. "Are you really gonna keep me in suspense? Put a guy out of his misery for once, would ya?"

Despite myself, I smiled, but my hands began to fiddle with the wrapping on the bottled water, tearing at it, seeking out parts to pull just that little bit harder.

"She said that one day, I would be the only one left. So who would come for me after that?"

Mobius' fork dipped and bumped against his bowl. He chewed and swallowed, mulling the words in his mind. I watched him so intently, hoping that he might tell me that it was all nonsense and that I had misunderstood her, that it had been the heat of the thrill building up and that I was thinking too hard on it.

Then, there was that other half of me which wanted him to explain, to break apart each word, each syllable, and show it to me as if he split apart some fruit to show the pulp within. I wanted to be taught and shown and made aware of something which was right there. I had known Mobius for so long. I cared for him. I wanted to know what it meant and what it meant to him.

"You know how Variants are, Mila," he said. "They'll say anything if it'll spare them. She probably just said the first thing that came to mind, hoping it'd distract you so she could make a run for it."

He had chosen the first option. I was resigned to blindness and so was he.

"She was injured," I said. "She could barely walk. I just don't understand it. Was it a threat? I mean, 'who' is she talking about? Other Variants?"

He pushed aside the salad bowl and placed the slice of chocolate cake between us, handing me a spoon while taking another for himself.

"Ladies first," he said.

I snorted but humoured him, cutting off the tip of the slice with my spoon and eating it. "Just as good as it was last Friday."

"You were late for that lunch, too." Mobius took some for himself. "I'm starting to think you're trying to tell me something."

"Oh, yeah? Like what?"

"That you would much rather be sitting with Jim and Mike from the Filing Department," he said. "Always knew I had competition."

I laughed. "Never."

"Never?" He whistled, shaking his head. "Now you're just toying with me. You know the Minutemen already give me enough crap about you –…"

"Hunter B-15 gives you crap," I corrected. "The rest just talk about you behind your back."

"And what do they say?"

"Nothing, really. Just that I have you wrapped around my little finger."

"That is total bullshit. If anything, I hold the strings here."

I hummed. "I don't know about that. I mean, you were the one who first asked me to lunch – …"

"Don't the guidelines tell us to look out for our fellow agents? I couldn't let you become malnourished."

"A-huh. And you also made sharing dessert a tradition."

"Who doesn't like dessert?"

"And you always leave sticky-notes at my desk."

His shoulders rose. "Hey, you can be forgetful. The sticky-note system works. I won't hear any criticism against the sticky-note system."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "And you worry about me – too much."

And his shoulders lowered. "Yeah," he said finally. "I do. I think that might be what turned my hair grey. When did that happen?"

Like clockwork.

"I like it," I said. "I think it adds character."

"Character," he echoed. "That's one way of putting it."

"Another way might be that you're getting old."

He hummed, taking a sip of his water. "You always did know how to keep me humble, Mila."

"I think that's why you keep me around."

"That," he said. "And a few other reasons."

Sometimes, I could understand each twitch of his cheek and sigh blown from his lips like letters printed on a page for me to read. I felt that I understood it then too.

"I worry about you too, you know," I said. "All the time."

"Yeah, I know," he sighed. He reached out, touching my hair. "That explains it. I think I'm seeing a few grey strands on you too."

I slapped his hand away, laughing. "You say that again and I'll make a memory so bad for you, it'll be what you see in the Time Cell."

Mobius drew in a sharp breath. "No wonder the Minutemen listen to you," he said. "So authoritative. Don't laugh – I admire it. Really, I do. Hell, you keep that up and you'll take Ravonna's spot."

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms, smiling at him. "You finally figured out my plan. Get to the top of the corporate ladder and throw you right off it."

"And take all the chocolate cake in the cafeteria for yourself. Brutal."

The cafeteria itself had emptied. There were only a handful of workers scattered around. I noticed the quiet scraping a fork against a plate and the crisp snap of a lid twisted from a bottle. We finished that cake but neither of us moved. We liked to pass time together; always had.

"You gotta let it go, Mil," he said. "What the Variant said. It doesn't mean anything. You gotta let it go."

"Is this the old man departing his wisdom bit again?"

He breathed out, a half-laugh lost in the tinkle of his spoon dropped onto his plate. "Can you promise this 'old man' that you won't split off from the Minutemen next time you're chasing a Variant?"

"I could. But I don't think you'd believe me."

He sighed. "You're right. I don't."

"How about I promise that I'll never miss our lunches? That way, you won't have to worry. You'll know I'll always make it back from a chase."

"Like that makes me feel better," he grumbled. "Besides, you're only saying that because you want to make sure I keep getting us chocolate cake."

"That, and a few other reasons."

His eyes met mine. He smiled. "Well, we oughta get back to work. Those Variants won't catch themselves."

"I thought I was the one climbing the corporate ladder."

"I only let you think that." Mobius stood, helping me to stack our bowls and cutlery on the tray. "See, that's my underhanded scheme to get to the top and knock you off."

Together, we dropped the tray off at the metal cart and continued onward through the hall. He kept his hands tucked in his pockets, posture held in a casual stance. I was not dragging my heels quite so much with him, but then Mobius could brighten any sullen mood. I even felt that I could brush off that last Variant, that I could focus on the next Variant, because there was eternally another Variant, their file overspilling, their paperwork needing signatures and stamps and meetings with the Hunters and their Minutemen to plan each chase.

It usually took a whole lot of sleuthing before we could follow the Variants and I was almost looking forward to it. His desk was tucked against mine, separated by a sole glass panel acting as a partition. He had taken to scribbling on the glass with black marker that he could wipe off during his brainstorms and I saw that the glass was once again clotted with numbers and dates and files.

"What was the name of your Variant again?" I asked. "Lucky?"

Mobius snorted and flopped into his chair, kicking up his shoes and reclining with his arms behind his head. "Loki. God of Mischief. Ring a bell?"

"You're having trouble with a God? I mean, shape-shifters have always been the ones I considered most difficult but hey, if you still have trouble with the little guys…"

"Oh, ha-ha. Go ahead, laugh it up. I can report this to HR, you know. This qualifies as bullying under the rulebook. I checked."

"Please, you threaten me with that every week. Really, I could always spare some time – if you needed my help, that is. Kinda seems like you do…" I said, trailing off in a sing-song tone.

"How you wound my ego."

I laughed. "I mean it. How many times has this one gotten away from you now?"

"Five," he muttered. He dropped his shoes from his desk and ran his hands through his hair. "This Variant is different. It feels like they're – plotting something, you know? Something bigger."

I shuffled the papers around my desk, searching for a paper-clip to hold them together. "Like what?"

"I don't know. Just – bigger." Mobius tossed me a paper-clip from his own stationary. "Reset charges stolen, a trail of dead Minutemen left behind. Seems like they're doing more than just trying to avoid getting captured."

There was a manila folder on my desk. It was Hunter V-63 who had left it there, filling out her own log of what had happened during the chase with the Variant, though she had kindly omitted the fact that I had run off into the catacombs deliberately. I dreaded flipping to the next page but it was necessary for all the trimmings on my part – the colourful tabs, the neat signatures and stamps pressed against the paper for the codes and numbers and dates and times.

I dreaded it because that was where the Variant's Polaroid would be, pinned against it. I had seen her photograph – I had seen her (wounded, limping, gasping) and so what did it matter if I saw her again? I was a seasoned agent. I had apprehended Variants so often that I boasted at least three long aisles in the library where their records were kept. Most agents chasing dangerous Variants hardly got that far.

"She was wrong, Mila."

I flinched, finding Mobius standing and straining over the partition between us. I cleared my throat. "What?"

He cast a cautious glance around himself, then snatched a file from his own desk and walked around to mine, crouching alongside me. I saw that gentle line on his nose, its soft curve, and it induced another strange sense of comfort within me. He held up the file as if it mattered, but I understood that it was for show, because it often seemed that the posters on the walls watched and read us more than we did them.

Mobius was close enough that there was a whiff of cologne and I wondered where he had gotten it, if it had been a gift, useless filler-thoughts that felt too automatic for me to fight against.

"The Variant," he said. "She was wrong when she said that you'd be the only one left, one day."

I searched his eyes. I was holding onto him without even touching him, knowing too that he was aware of it. I wanted him to say it, wanted him to tell me that I was silly and wrong and here was the reason, the beautifully simple reason.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because you're stuck with me," he said simply. "Always have been. Since day one, when the great Time-Keepers bestowed upon you the honour of having your desk against mine. So, you won't be the only one left, whatever she meant. Because I'll be there right with you."

It touched me, all that he had said, and I had to hide it because of those watchful eyes and the sense that it would only stir trouble for us, the stuff that we never talked about, that stood between us like that partition. I smiled, always trying never to smile too much at him, to not seem too friendly with him, more than was allowed within our office.

He hesitated, then touched my arm and that was it. He returned to his desk and I remained at mine and I wished, wished, wished that that partition would crumble and fall away and I could really see him, but I was afraid, for him and for me, even if I could not say what it was that frightened me, made my throat tight and sore, made me terrified not for myself but for him.

But when did that happen?

The poster behind Mobius read: A TIDY CUBICLE IS A TIDY TIMELINE. I stared at it until the letters blurred and the light around me seemed to dim. Then I returned to typing up the report, hearing Mobius hum, hearing the rolling wheels of carts passing, hearing and hearing.

The holoprojector had long since finished its third rendition of a life that had fizzled out hours beforehand. I reached for the button which would start it afresh, but hesitated, sliding back against the cool orange plastic of my chair and letting out a sigh. Truthfully, the vibrant, squared pixels had already shown me the death of that Variant in the catacombs more than enough times yet I kept playing it.

There was no need to watch it again. There had been no need to watch it all.

Her life had been quick, monotonous. She had broken her right arm, aged ten. She had worn braces until she was fifteen. She was left-handed. She had been reset. END OF FILE. She was born in November. She had loved her pet tabby-cat. She had mourned its death. She had broken her right arm…END OF FILE.

It went like that, over and over. I slipped the tape out and returned it to the little transparent bag with her name and details written across it, code-numbered: 10704.

I sealed the bag and told myself it would be the last time that I ever thought about that number.

Back at my desk, Mobius had left another note: another attack, 16th century france. guy gets around. tu me manqueras – m.m.m.

I smiled to myself, gently peeling it off my screen. I was touched that he had told me where he went. I found my diary, which was usually littered with stray notes of my own making just to remind myself to check that file or collect this chart. But there were a few pages at the back where I had taken to gluing the notes he left me, a mismatched collage of coloured notes overlapping.

I added the latest note, all the while promising myself that it was not sentimentality that made me do it but rather the desire for a clean, well-kept desk that matched the standards of the TVA. I leaned back in my chair, smoothing the crease in this new note and then placing the diary carefully on my shelf.

From the machine, a feeble dribble of hot chocolate sputtered into my cup. I was thinking about Mobius, which often happened whenever I finished a case and had not yet been assigned another, opening this gap in which I had no meetings, no brainstorming for strategies. I could stand in a hall, unbothered by a Hunter and their Minutemen charging toward me with word of our Variant appearing somewhere, unbothered by the clerks from the Filing Room asking if I had handed in this report or approved another.

The machine groaned, coughing out its last little spurt of hot chocolate, which made the cup wobble so violently that I reached out to snatch it, burning my hand. I cursed, releasing it, hopping about like that might help soothe the stinging burn. I turned, still whistling through my teeth.

There was a Variant at the end of hall, bursting from a loop that had dropped him in front of me. He had black hair and pale skin, already fitted in a collar that ensured he could not use his gifts, whatever he might have possessed before he had been apprehended. I squinted at him, wracking my brain, until a fuzzed Polaroid reached me, plucked from a collection that Mobius had been gathering in his search for a particular Variant. Not Lucky, but –…

"Loki?"

Spinning around, the Variant watched me, eyes ablaze. He strode toward me, shoulders hunched forward, his lips upturned as if mocking me.

"You," he said lowly, "will ensure my escape from this wretched fantasy evoked only to –…"

The cup smacked against his temple, cutting off his speech and throwing him sideways into the wall. The hot chocolate, still warm, seeped through his jumpsuit and crackled at the collar. The hit had startled him, perhaps because he had not anticipated anything from what he likely assumed was a lowly clerical officer wandering the halls. He was sharp, though. I struck him only once with a punch before he readied himself and gripped my wrist, hoisting me upward only to slam me right back into the marbled ground.

It was not the worst hit that I had ever taken in a fight with a loose Variant, but he was far more wily and powerful than it seemed, his jumpsuit clearly masking his frame. I rolled and kicked up at his jaw, knocking him back a fraction. He clocked me, a steady hit that sent me sideways. There was no taste of honey, only bitter copper. He was strong. I slammed my boot into his stomach, pleased that it forced him backward, only for him to swing at me and hit my collarbone. I bashed against the wall in a stumble, landing flat on my ass. On the other side of the hall, he fell too.

The Time Twister slipped from his grip, sliding across the ground.

Behind us, the elevator doors opened in a soft whoosh. The Variant looked at the Minutemen who spilled out into the hall, then at me. He had realised that he was in a poor position, pushing off the ground and rushing for the Time Twister. The Minutemen chased him, but he grasped it right before they could grab him. He disappeared in a warped burst of light.

I dipped my head back against the ground, letting out an aching sigh. I shifted my jaw back and forth. It was tender. I thought, for a few seconds, that the hall was filled with the scent of dried earth and stone, that it was strangely cold and its walls were pockmarked in pitted sockets.

Then, it passed. The hall was as it always had been. I had merely bumped my head a little too hard. I had fallen into that fantasy evoked only to –…

To what, exactly?

"Mila!"

From this upside-down view of the hall, I saw a pair of brown leather shoes emerge, squeaking against the marble. Mobius stood above me. He held out his hand for me to take and so I let him haul me upward, steadying me at the elbow when I wavered. He ordered the Minutemen to continue searching for Loki and they sprinted down the hall, though he could have teleported himself anywhere within the TVA.

Mobius gently turned my cheek toward the golden light of the hall, his mouth in a tight line as he checked for bruising.

"So, I take it you met Loki," he said.

I felt my jaw click. "He uses too many words."

"Believe me, I know. Likes metaphors, too. And tricking gullible agents."

"The God of Mischief? You don't say."

"Oh, really? We're doing sarcasm now?"

"When did we ever not do sarcasm? And what are you waiting for, anyway? Go after him!"

He nodded and jogged a couple of steps before he paused, looking back at me. "You sure you're good?"

"Yes, Mobius."

"Kinda seems like you got your ass handed to you back there. Like, majorly – I'm talking beatdown – Just embarrassing –…"

"Oh, yeah? Guess we'll see how well you do when Ravonna finds out the Variant escaped your custody. We can talk about who got their ass handed to them then."

"You're right. She'd go for the face," he muttered. "I can't risk that. Not with these cheekbones."

He grinned at me one last time before taking off after the Minutemen. Beside me, the machine gurgled and spat out a pitiful, brown sludge that overflowed from the holder and trickled along its edge, pooling on the marble. I cracked my neck, rolled out my stiff arms and limped to the elevator.

Before its doors could shut, I touched my cheek and smiled.

I flopped against my chair and glanced at the growing pile of folders left for me by clerks. I tipped my head back like I had before, taking a moment to mindlessly roll the chair back and forth. I pulled a tissue from my drawer, pressed it against my lip. I had not realised I had gotten a nasty cut on my lower lip until blood touched my chin.

Straightening, I looked at all the stationary neatly arranged around my screen, with only a sharpener full of forgotten shavings and the black led tips of broken pencils. I kept the tissue against my mouth with one hand and, with the other, reached out to pull the lid from the sharpener. I lay back. I rolled the chair around once more.

Then I promptly sat up, tipped the sharpener and watched the shavings spill out, scattered across the table. They landed on my paperwork. They clumped between the chunky letters of the keyboard. They made a mess. So too did the tips which rolled to the edge and fell, tinkling against the floor. I pressed the lid onto the sharpener and started up that dull spinning around again.

The poster pinned behind Mobius' desk flashed in my peripheral. Between mouthfuls of blood, I tasted honey.

Sometime later, I heard the biting clap of heels against the ground and stirred myself enough to seem as if I was terribly busy. It was Ravonna Renslayer, the judge of the TVA. She was holding a handful of fresh files that she promptly dropped in front of me. She leaned against my desk, crossing her arms, though I could tell that her mood was bordering between frustration and amusement, neither of which was meant for me. It was likely meant for Mobius. Truth be told, it was almost always meant for Mobius.

I licked my lip. It had scabbed and would soon heal, because I had been brought a little alcohol cleaning pad and some ointment. It had a horrid flavour. It clotted. It sealed my mouth. I looked up at Ravonna and felt grateful for that clotting, suddenly.

"I would like if you could help Mobius out on this one, Mila."

Behind her, the flat off-white shade of the office lights seemed much too bright. "I doubt Mobius would –…"

"He requested it," she said. "Even filled out the forms. If you want to, it could be just like old times, right?"

"Old times," I said.

"What do you say?"

I looked up at her. "Sure. All right."

Slipping off my desk, she righted her skirt, lips upturned. She nudged a file into my lap. "When you finish up with that, you might want to take a look at this Variant. Until then, I can assign another agent to oversee it. And Mila?"

"Yeah?"

"Good job on that last case," she said. "I know you'll do just as well on this one."

For a moment, she lingered; no words passed between us, no files opened and discussed, nothing. Then, she left.

Still alone, I said aloud, "Old times."

Like clockwork.

Standing in an old storage room, I waited for Mobius. I had left him a sticky-note this time around, smacking it right against his screen. I rested against a roller-chair, legs kicked up on a table with ink splotched across its grooved wooden surface. Soon, I heard the door creak and I watched his silhouette squeeze through the awkward gap between the door and some broken cabinets. The cabinets creaked, drawers opening like jutting mouths, slammed quickly into place once he fit through and closed the door behind him. It was not that secluded, really. I had found it. I had told him about it, which had led it to becoming this temporary sanctuary in the TVA where it seemed an endless stream of busybodies haunted the hallways. Mobius was holding files, files which were slopping from his grip.

"You asked Ravonna if I could help you on the Loki case," I said.

"Hey, you offered. Besides, I could use another pair of eyes on him." He paused. "Why? You don't want to partner up?"

"I would love nothing more than to help you with your case," I told him. "It means I can ignore mine for a little while."

"Good. Then – good. But did we really need to meet in the hide-out for this? It's a sacred place for me, you know that. I don't like to see it abused."

I rolled my eyes at him. "It smells like mold in here."

"Exactly. That's what makes it so special. It touches you right here –…" He tapped his chest. "… - well, not the heart. The lungs."

I licked my lips. "Mobius, what was our first case?"

Mobius recoiled, thrown by the sudden change. He was watching me closely. "What?"

"Our first case together. We used to partner up all the time. But I can't quite recall what that first case was. Can you?"

He caught a few scattered scraps of paper which slipped from the folders in his arms and hastily stuffed them back inside again. He seemed hurried, his hand reaching to smooth back his hair. He was handsome, even when flustered. Perhaps especially when flustered. It was not what the manuals told me was right to think about.

In fact, I could have recited several paragraphs forbidding romance and overt friendliness and all those other words that had been watered down, categorised and sorted into subsections, tabbed with bright colours so that I could easily flip to the parts that warned against all forms of association beyond grabbing coffees and chatting about cases.

It was likely that he sensed something, too, because he lowered those files and left them aside. It was a minute detail, one which could be dismissed. But I could not dismiss it, because no other agent ever made time for me like he did.

"It was a long time ago," he said. "Kinda fuzzy. Hungary, maybe."

"Hungary felt like it was months ago."

He snorted. "Yeah. Yeah, well, time passes differently in here, you know that. Look, I...I gotta get back to Loki."

"Bloodhounds," I said. "They catch a scent and never deviate from it."

"Mila," he said, more firmly. "What is this all about? The Variant spooked you. Fine. I get that. It happens to the best of us. But I told you to drop it."

"Drop what, exactly?"

"This." He waved around the room as if that might explain it. "Just – are you gonna help me or not?"

I wanted to drop it, if only because I didn't want him to be angry with me and I didn't want to be locked in this endless, confused state.

"I guess I could. If you say please, that is."

He scoffed, putting a hand on his hip. "Seriously?"

I rose a brow, challenging him.

"Oh, you are such a little kid sometimes, you – fine. Fine. Please, Mila? Pretty, pretty please, with cherries and sprinkles and –…"

I stood up, rounding the table and stopping in front of him. "All right, all right... I guess I can help out. Since you admit you need my help so badly. Enough to sign forms. Or so Ravonna told me."

He feigned offense, his jaw dropping. "Ravonna? That settles it. Nothing is sacred anymore. Not our hide-out, not the forms I signed. My world is falling apart."

He reached out for the door and held it for me. I pushed through the narrow gap and stepped into the hall. I took the folders from him, helping him push between the frame and cabinets. He bashed his head against the door while in a crouch, groaning as he emerged into the hall.

"You deserved that," I said.

"For what?"

"At least when I got smacked around, it was in a fight with Loki. You got beaten by a door."

"Yeah, a very powerful, very sturdy door," he mumbled. "Are you okay?"

I handed him his files. "I already told you I'm fine."

"And I already told you that I worry."

"You don't need to," I said. "You shouldn't."

The hallway was quiet. Somewhere there was a faint ding of an elevator and the rustling grind of wheels on a cart, turning and turning. I saw his shirt was a little creased, his tie askew.

I had this urge, this overwhelming urge to reach out and right it, to then cup his face in a manner unbecoming of agents like us, seasoned, weathered, who had been on cases together for so long (but how long?) that he felt like an extension of myself and I of him, intertwined (but had it been Hungary?) and now attempting to find some way for our work to overlap again, just so it might last that bit longer, that we might be together like we always had been (but why is it so fuzzy?).

He might have been mentally leafing through the rulebook and guidebooks and pamphlets and little brochures and manuals and quick-fix-guides that weighed in his mind as much as mine, telling him not to care, not to worry, not to want to be around me.

"I know," he said. "I'll do it anyway. What did I tell you? You're stuck with me."

(but why did we ever stop being partners?)