Mobius thought things were going so well with the new recruit. Loki had seemed almost happy, at times, doing well with the office work, learning the roles required of him as an agent of the TVA. And then...then he disappeared. Mobius didn't understand why. If things were going so well, if he was succeeding, if he'd broken the big case...why did he run after the Variant? Was he hoping to catch them himself? Why throw away all he'd worked for?

It is a puzzle he's fairly sure he can't answer.

This process doesn't usually fail. It's how he came to the TVA. A spared Variant. Someone in whom was seen a bright spark, someone deemed trustworthy enough to enforce The Way Things Are and to know the big secret of the TVA.

They're all Variants. All of them recruited for a job related to what they were good at in their lives. Everyone from archivists to librarians and researchers to soldiers and investigators. People good at solving problems.

Only the few agents knew what happened when a Variant was needed for their skills. Recruit. Wipe. Reset. Train. It worked without fail, most of the time, and when it didn't...when it didn't, they could be pruned, same as anyone else.

Mobius was one of the few trusted enough to bring in new recruits, to know what went on behind the scenes, to know the great lie of the TVA. It wasn't created from the beginning with all the people ready to work, ready to maintain the Sacred Timeline. And Loki, the newest recruit, had been fitting in so nicely. Nicely enough that Mobius had been questioning the need to wipe his memory when the time came.

The process is different for agents. There are things they need to remember about how life works outside of the TVA. And if they're also recruiters... For Loki, Mobius had initially planned the traditional agent route. Recruit. Train. Selectively wipe. Move to the field under his supervision. He'd had a few other recruits this way, trained them to be excellent field agents, then moved them into other departments to handle Variants on their own. They never suspected that they were just like everyone else, and if they did...there was a procedure in place for that as well.

Mobius checks the TemPad and watches the divergent timelines, wondering where he'll find Loki next. Apocalypses. He'll be hiding in them, tracking the Variant. Or something. He's not really sure.

But if Loki is, as he assessed, just a scared little boy in search of answers, he's even more dangerous than the Variant they were hunting. His mind will be working things out, puzzling over what he knows, possibly quizzing the Variant on what they've figured out and how they know it. Mobius drops his head to his desk. He could work out too much about the TVA. He's too clever. But at the same time...he seemed more validation starved than anything. Uncertain of his roots, of his place in the universe, and understandably so. After all, he has no place in time.

Mobius' research has shown him a few things- a bored Loki is a mischievous Loki. A hurting Loki...a hurting Loki will stop at nothing to soothe his heart, even if what he does is rash, unthinking, or outright ridiculous. And this man who has released himself into some unknown apocalypse is exactly that- scared, hurt, and inquisitive.

Mobius can only hope that one of two things happen: That he gets to Loki first and is able to talk to him, to bring him around, to learn what went wrong, even if it means he will prune Loki in the end, watching all the time he's spent go up into dust, the expression on the other man's face likely one of dismay, pain, and anger all mixed together. Or...or that the apocalypse kills him, solving the question of if Mobius can kill someone he was starting to almost think of as a peer and taking out the problem of Loki possibly taking the secret of the TVA with him to the grave.

It isn't a situation Mobius really wants to think about, but he wants to think even less about what would happen if Loki and this other Variant were to show up together at the TVA and succeed in whatever plan they had after they got to the golden elevator.

Any outcome regarding that completely terrifies him.