After Loki and I decided to assist the TVA in their search for the elusive and dangerous Loki variant, we were each freed from our collars and assigned temporary sleeping quarters with a bed, bathroom and bookshelf. It was not a luxury, but it was enough to satisfy my need for sleep and hygiene.
In the bathroom I finally had a chance to examine my injuries properly and I was not surprised to see a large haematoma on the left side of my chest. Carefully I touched the area under my breast, after all I had to find out how bad the damage really was.
It was uncomfortable but it was necessary and I realised that at least the 6th if not the 7th rib was broken. So I would have to be a little more careful in the near future, if at all possible. Even though the gamma radiation I had been exposed to made my body far more resistant than that of a normal person and also heal a little faster, it was still better not to put anything at risk. I couldn't say for sure because I hadn't done any research on my own, but I suspected that the fracture itself would be repaired to the point where I could at least breathe and move normally again within the next two days, and that it would be completely gone in a week's time.
All that was left of the laceration on my head was the bloodstained and sandy scar that suggested there had once been a wound. To outsiders, it probably looked as if this wound was several days old, but it had only been a few hours.
My ankle still hurt too, but I was relatively sure that it was a sprain and didn't need any special attention. I would ask Mobius for a small bandage for my rips when the opportunity arose. I could tie those around my upper body for support, and it probably wasn't a bad thing if I had the opportunity to get a painkiller or two.
But, before I could do any of that, I first had to attend to my most urgent need and that was sleep. I had lost all sense of time here and therefore didn't know exactly how long it had been since I had gotten up. I was so tired though, that not even my aching ribs kept me from sleeping.
Unfortunately, that feeling of numbing tiredness didn't last. I didn't have a clock here, but I assumed that I had slept for no more than 3 hours before my body decided that lying down was no longer the best option for me. So I went to the bathroom, finally cleaned the traces of what I had experienced from my skin and put on the clean clothes that the TVA had provided me with instead of the jumpsuit. It was a brown tweet skirt that went a little above the knee, a white blouse and a brown tweet blazer.
For the sake of my ankle, however, I decided against the black leather shoes whose slight heel was anything but good for a sprained ankle. Instead, I took the white fabric sneakers that I had received with the overalls. When I had finished dressing, I didn't want to sit in this barren room any longer, so I decided to just walk towards the canteen. Mobius had explained where it was before leaving us to our rooms.
To my surprise, however, both Mobius and Loki were in the canteen, although only Mobius seemed to be eating something. Either I had slept longer than I thought, or they hadn't slept at all. I didn't want to ask, though.
Mobius handed me a plate with a sandwich and bit into his own with relish while Loki just sat rather sullenly on his chair and watched us. He almost reminded me of an offended child who hadn't got his way and was now sulking.
"What crawled up your ass and died?" I asked him, but Mobius pointed directly to a small poster hanging in the entrance to the canteen, which stated that we should keep conversations here to a minimum. When I read that, Loki raised his hands uncomprehendingly and I knew what his problem was. He loved to talk and probably Mobius had pointed out this poster to him more than once during the time they were here now.
"Since when so obedient?", I asked again and Mobius' eyes almost popped out of his head. I didn't know if it was because he couldn't believe I had just spoken or that Loki was actually following a rule rather than me. Maybe it was both.
"What's the point of talking if no one answers you?" retorted Loki, and Mobius waved his hands around in resignation while indicating that some people at other tables were already looking at us.
"You love to listen to yourself, so it's better if no one else says anything." That was enough for Mobius and he sat down at another table. Apparently these TVA people had a problem with having a conversation while eating.
"If you're going to mock me, this is an extremely bad time Avenger," he warned me of his bad mood. Apparently he didn't like working with an Avenger at all. The shame of the loss in New York was probably still too deep. When I thought about the fact that he had heard my name in the courtroom and could certainly make a connection, his reserve towards me was understandable.
I remembered that one of the most humiliating experiences for the Loki of my time had been to be flung from left to right on the stone floor like a doll and simply not being able to do anything about it. Even after they had saved Asgard from ruin together, he had avoided my brother as best he could.
"Why? Because my brother gave you a good spanking?" I just couldn't help it, even if I'd wanted to, it would have just slipped out of my mouth. But this Loki was just so wonderfully easy to tease and I saw how Mobius would have loved to just teleport out of the canteen. Loki stood up and leaned over to me so that I could feel the air escaping from his mouth as he spoke.
"Your brother isn't here, is he?" his words sounded like poison and I sensed there was almost abysmal hatred in his eyes. Without even giving him a moment to react, I lashed out with my hand, using all the strength I had, and gave Loki a resounding slap. After that, I stood up without comment and left the canteen. I didn't care that I didn't know where we were going afterwards, I just wanted to get far enough away from Loki.
His words had hit me, even if he couldn't know what a can of worms he had actually stirred up with those words. For the last five years I had been trying desperately to get over the fact that Bruce had been one of those who had disappeared at the snap of Thano's fingers. He had simply crumbled to dust right before my eyes, without warning, without anything. Now being reminded that I would not see Bruce again was like being dipped in hot lava.
With no real destination, I strode down the long corridor that led around a long circled balustrade. I just looked out into the incredible vastness of the TVA and wondered if it was really possible that we were dealing with the greatest power in the universe. After all, I had also seen that Loki had retrieved the tesseract, but he had not been teleported. I concluded that the cube had no power here and until now the Infinity Stones had been the greatest power in the universe for us.
I feared that there was far more than we all suspected and there would probably be some more problems coming to Earth. As soon as the universe had recovered from Thanos' actions the wars would start. And maybe even the TVA was just a small sideshow compared to what true power meant.
"If I had one, I'd tip my hat to you, Banner." It was Mobius. Apparently he had followed me after I left the canteen. "You're actually not afraid of him."
"Why should I be?" I wasn't the first to stand against Loki, I wasn't even the first human. Thor had once told me that Jane Foster had once slapped Loki across the face in Asgard for what he'd done in New York.
"Well, in your world, I'm a god." I faltered for a moment when I heard Loki's voice and I would have preferred to avoid him for the rest of the time here, but I feared that wasn't possible.
"I don't believe in God, and I certainly don't believe in the devil," I just remarked through clenched teeth and I saw Mobius looking back and forth between us, delighted. Apparently he found this conversation quiet amusing.
While I was careful not to pay attention to Loki for the time being, Mobius now led us into one of the open-plan offices of the circular building. In the middle there was a large monitor on which one could see a single white line, the sacred timeline, I assumed. In front of it was a large console at which three agents sat, apparently monitoring everything. On the sides were individual office cells, each with two desks. Mobius assigned us to one of these cells and asked us to deal with the protocols of the TVA.
Without saying a word, I sat down at the table whose chair faced the door of the office. If this Loki was anything like the one I knew, it would drive him crazy to sit with his back to the door.
"I never sit with my back to a door," Loki then said and I just looked at him wordlessly. It had to be clear to him that there was no chance, that I would get up and let him have the seat. He would sit behind me, with his back to me, and I would at least have some satisfaction. He just couldn't give up his control. He had probably already deceived or tricked so many living beings that he had to be afraid that they would take revenge on him as soon as he was careless for even a moment.
However, it was also unpleasant for me to have him sitting at my back. Even a peaceful Loki was someone you wanted to have under constant observation, let alone this version. I couldn't measure him yet, didn't know what he was up to and I certainly didn't want to be the target for his more or less harmless shenanigans.
To distract myself, I took the digital manual of the TVA that Mobius had opened on the rather old-fashioned computer. These machines looked like they were one of the first more compact models of computing systems used in computer centres in the past and the image on the screen reminded me of my father's work when Bruce and I had visited him there. He too had had an old computer and some of his files only worked in DOS mode and it looked the same here.
I tried to remember exactly how a nexus event occurred and then how, with the help of the reset charges, this branching timeline was reset to what should be the sacred timeline. I learned exactly what the red line at the top and bottom of the big screen meant and why you only had a certain window of time to reset each branch. The more I got to know about the TVA, the more it seemed to me like an administrative body that was so firmly anchored in its rules and regulations that you didn't have time to make any decisions yourself. You were just a lowly civil servant who followed the rules.
"That should be right up your alley," I commented, addressing Loki. "No free will and all that." Loki, however, did not respond to my provocation, at least not yet. He didn't seem to be taking the whole thing seriously at all either, for he had grabbed a magazine that had been lying on the table and was leafing through it, leaning back in his chair.
"I don't think you'll ever be able to make out any variant of yourself," I continued to provoke as he also propped his feet up on the desk and, sitting casually, came up several times with the back of his chair against mine.
"Oh yes, and where did you get that simple-minded idea?", he was annoyed. I could tell by the tone of his voice, so I had at least begun to achieve what I wanted. It certainly bothered him that he had just been trapped here with an Avenger, the Hulk's sister above all. He wouldn't take the defeat in New York and the humiliation at my brother's hands that easily.
"You don't have your magic, your army or your sceptre. Here in the TVA, you may live longer and be a little more robust than others, but all in all, you're just like everyone else." As he turned his chair to face me and also turned my chair so that I inevitably had to look him in the eye. I realised that I had pushed exactly the right buttons with my statement. Had he actually had his magic, he probably would have attacked me directly, however, he seemed to be as aware of the possible consequences of a fight as I was.
Almost as if someone was watching us, a hologram of that unbearable clock from the propaganda video appeared at that very moment and almost scared me to death. It seemed to want to ask us about what we had already learned.
"Are you real or just a programme?" asked Loki after some time, during which he had decided not to participate in the Q&A session, preferring instead to continue flicking through the magazine while I answered the questions.
"Uh, sorta both," the clock replied, bouncing on his desk. Driven by anger at my provocation and the urge to let some of it go, he then rolled up the magazine and tried to swat at Miss Minutes, which was the name of the strange clock, as if it were a fly. Of course, this apparently artificial intelligence was not amused by this and disappeared into Loki's computer, almost as if it were a ghost that could possess objects.
Then Mobius joined us and he wasn't exactly thrilled about Loki hitting the TVA mascot with his jet ski magazine. He looked at me with a reproachful look, almost as if he wanted to know why I hadn't stopped Loki, but I just shrugged.
"She was being annoying. My only job is to help you with that one," I said, pointing at Loki. As much as I loathed him at the moment for what he had said. Somehow we were in the same boat here.
Mobius rolled his eyes but then tossed us two jackets wrapped in plastic. "Gear up. There's been an attack," he said as we grabbed the jackets out of the bags. For me it was a mud-coloured coat that ended just above my skirt for Loki a parka in the same colour, which he put on straight away. In contrast to me, he had apparently not seen what was written on the back of the jackets yet and felt like a part of the TVA. I, however, had seen the "variant" printed in orange capitals and felt even more excluded than I already was.
This was also evident during the short pre-mission briefing. B-15 and her Minutemen made it unmistakably clear that we were worth absolutely nothing. The workers of the TVA had been created by the Timekeepers themselves and we were nothing more than cosmical mistakes in their eyes. It reminded me somewhat of the snideness with which Loki treated us humans, in which the New York Loki treated me. But standing here together like this, I had to admit that it was almost pleasant to have a familiar face with me and not be the only one ostracised in this way.
"We've grabbed enough temporal aura to know it's our Loki Variant," B-15 reported as she informed everyone that a previous team of Minutemen had disappeared on a reconnaissance. "But which kind of Loki, remains unknown."
"They're the lesser kind, to be clear," the present Loki interjected and I couldn't help rolling my eyes and snorting sceptically. In return, I earned meaningful looks from Mobius and Loki, though the two looks said something completely different. But our mission was serious and it was probably not a good idea to broach the subject of my doubts.
"Whoever this Variant is, we haven't been able to find him. So let's bring in the experts," Mobius said before Loki could start a discussion with me. Loki pointed confidently at the term 'expert' until he realised that Mobius had spoken in the plural and was apparently surprised that Mobius also considered me a Loki expert.
While we went into the locker room where the Minutemen were putting on their armour for deployment, we chatted with Mobius. We would not be in the front row, therefore we would not need armour.
"Do I get a weapon?", Loki then asked as he watched the Minutemen take their sticks and activate them for rehearsal. I could not help a sarcastic, "Sure give the snake back its fangs." I couldn't stifle.
"Well, I'll have my magic back. Is no one concerned about that?" Heck, I was! But apparently I was the only one. Loki's weapons I could dodge or steal from him. Loki's magic, however, I had nothing to counter and I wondered why Mobius and the others remained so calm.
"You know that we can catch you. And how's betraying us gonna get you any closer to the Timekeepers?" That got Loki's attention straight away. He was downright delighted at the fact that there was a possibility of stepping before the timekeepers. I had the feeling, however, that he was not only interested in a little chit-chat over coffee.
Well, Anni seems to be able to stand up to Loki and knows how to press his buttons quite well. Now the Avenger and the trickster are supposed together on a field trip. Will they be able to set their differences byside?