At the end of the shift, the archivists say their goodbyes and head back to their houses. Loki retreats to his room and Mobius makes him promise not to make any rash decisions before he gets back from walking Ayshi to their house. They have a plan to make sure Ayshi isn't chastised and when they are within earshot of the supervisors waiting at the door, Mobius puts it into action.

"You know, I really need to thank you for all the help you gave us today. I don't think I would have made all that progress without your unique 'Ayshi perspective,'" he says, looking over to them as he walks.

Ayshi smiles, "Well I'm happy to help- if you ever need anything else, don't hesitate to call on me."

"You can be sure I will- it was a pleasure working with you," he offers a handshake and Ayshi accepts it.

One of the supervisors interrupts as they walk to the door, "You're late. And you weren't where you should have been all day."

"Oh, that's because I asked for their help," Mobius says, "And given how much we got done today, I might ask for them again." He grins, "You'd better not hold back my favourite archivist." He winks.

Ayshi laughs, "Well thank you, sir, for the vote of confidence."

"Anytime, Ayshi. You do good work." Ayshi enters the house and he once again addresses the supervisors, his voice low, "Look, the work we were doing is super sensitive- it's not even listed on my work docket. So you need to keep this quiet and if I call again, make sure it's Ayshi you send. I can't have this getting around."

The supervisors look between each other and then one of them speaks, "We'll do our best."

Mobius shakes his head, "No, you won't say a thing about this work. Make up an excuse to send them, whatever you have to do. But if I call for Ayshi, I expect it's going to be Ayshi who answers."

The other supervisor nods, "Yes, sir."

"That's more like it. You two have a good rest of your day. And don't you forget what I said. This stay between you and me." Mobius walks away, hoping nobody will look too closely into what he's said. The last thing he needs is Judge Renslayer asking him what his "super sensitive" work is.

Loki waits in his room for Mobius to come back from escorting Ayshi home. He fiddles with the edge of the blanket on his bed. Reading can't keep his attention and even if it can, the books he has aren't the ones he wants to be reading. There are comforts from his collection in Asgard that he dearly misses, one more thing he feels like has been taken from him in this new life. And as grateful as he is that he wasn't immediately pruned when he was brought to the TVA, he's still deeply saddened by all he lost in that one choice to pick up the Tesseract. Judith's death has him thinking of losses. Of her loss, of losing her. Of the loss in history itself of a woman who won in the face of a death. Of her daughter's loss. This spirals him off to thinking of his own family and to the reel of his life Mobius left in the Time Theatre when he first arrived. Pulling away from his family, losing his mother, betraying his brother time and time again. The moment he saw in which his father said he was loved, even with the anger between them. The way Thor still cared, even after he did terrible things. He thinks about what the other Lokis were like in the Void and wonders what they felt for their own families. He wonders how the child killed Thor and how the elder still missed him after all those years alone. All this has him considering the past and suddenly he remembers that there is no one back home to miss him. His timeline has been reset. There is no story in which he exists other than the one in which he exists to fail and harm others. Just like there is no one in Judith's timeline who knows she would have led a revolution to victory. But at least in her timeline, there are people who miss her. He can't help but think that after the explosion that ends his reel, there might not be anyone left to miss him.

Loki's head is spinning with grief and exhaustion and the weight of knowing that all he is becoming will never be someone his family sees when Mobius knocks softly on his door. He doesn't hear it. Mobius knocks again. Still, no answer. So Mobius cautiously tries the knob and finds the door unlocked. He steps in and locks the door behind him. Loki sits on the bed, his head in his hands, his back to the door.

"Loki? Is everything alright?"

"No, it very much isn't."

"OK. Um...what do you need me to do?"

"I don't know," Loki says, unmoving. Mobius walks over to the chair and starts to sit, "Don't."

"Don't sit down?" Mobius asks.

Loki shakes his head, "Beside me. Please."

Mobius does as he's asked, staying close, almost shoulder-to-shoulder with his friend, "So...care to tell me what's on your mind?"

"Everything."

"That...doesn't really narrow it down much, Loki."

"All my life, I've wanted to be someone they could be proud of. Someone who would be Thor's equal. Someone I would be proud of. But...my timeline ends before I find myself. I die the villain. And even in this wretched place, I'd started to think maybe I could be that someone. But Judith's death changed that. I can't be that someone here. I know what she could have been, Mobius- who she was until the TVA decided it wouldn't correct to be in line with the Sacred Timeline. An incredible person was stolen from out of time because she was too strong and would have remade the world. And I'm supposed to just...live with this? Uphold this place? Everything here is drowning in loss," Loki says, falling silent after, dropping his hands from his face, back still bowed.

Mobius sighs, "I don't know what to tell you. I don't always like what we do, either. I guess a part of me just tucks away the story behind all of it and focuses only on each job- catch a variant, restore the proper flow of time, case closed." He pauses, "You still haven't told me who Judith was and why she told you she was pruned."

"She was a revolutionary, Mobius. She lived during a time of genocide against her people and when she was sent to an encampment for torment and death, she, along with others, planned an uprising and they won. But they weren't supposed to. The Sacred Timeline needed them to lose. In her proper place, in how everything was reset, she was supposed to be caught and executed with her co-conspirators by firing squad against a wall stained with blood. But the TVA let her timeline play to see if other things would correct against them- would they be caught and killed another way? But they weren't. And when it was clear they weren't going to lose, that's when she was taken and the timeline reset so she would be caught instead. Tam, Cyd, Iris, and Ayshi resisted with her. And the TVA has pruned at least Judith more than once- she knew of others of her elsewhere in the archives."

"Do Cyd, Tam, Ayshi, and Iris know all this?"

"Yes. They know who she was. They know who they were. And they know the names they once had."

Mobius takes a deep breath, "This...is a lot to think about."

"I know. Judith came to me last night before she died. She told me who she was. And then she told me she'd always be with me, even if only in spirit. When she left...I just knew everything was going to go so wrong."

"Seems like I'm telling you this a lot today, but...I don't know what to say."

Loki sits up a little and turns his head to face his friend, "I'm scared, Mobius."

"Oh? Of what?"

"If the powers-that-be find out that Ayshi, Tam, Cyd, and Iris know who they were, if they discover that they know their nexus event and what their lives could have been...are they going to let that pass them by? Or am I going to wake up some morning and discover my friends are dead?" Loki asks.

Mobius face falls, "It's not safe here for them."

"Agreed. But where could we go? Where could I hide them so they would stay safe?" Loki says, voice starting to tremble ever-so-slightly, "Where could I take them where the TVA couldn't reach us?"

"Only one place I know of," Mobius says, "But I would hardly call it safe."

"I thought of that," Loki says, nodding, "But could you imagine any of them having the means to survive in that wasteland? In their memories, they've never lived outside the TVA. Whatever it was in them that brought them to be able to stand against the people who chained them, it's not where they can reach it anymore."

Mobius shrugs, "Well it's not like I had a lot of life-skills in running from angry cloud monsters, but I managed to not get myself eaten."

"I somehow think you're a little more adept at survival than four people who live between two places- a film archive and a dormitory of their peers. I know, I'd be with them, but...I can't shepherd them. I don't know how."

Mobius gently nudges Loki with his elbow, "So...maybe we could make it if we're both doing the shepherding?"

Loki sits up a little farther, "Are you telling me you'd actually consider returning to the Void?"

"Why not? Been there before, managed to get out, even got to drive a cool old car. We'll take a TemPad with us in case things get dodgy. We can always go someplace else. Hell, we know hiding in apocalypses works. If we absolutely had to, we could even do that for a while."

Loki shakes his head, "No. I'm not putting them through that. I saw what it did to Sylvie. I can't put anyone else through that which will harden them so."

Mobius rests a hand on Loki's shoulder, "Hey...it's alright. We're all in this together. We'll find a way to keep them safe. But first...we have to get there."

"I can't believe we're planning this," Loki says, "And I can't believe we're going to have to prune our friends to do it. It wasn't exactly a painless and pleasant experience the first time around."

"Yeah, I know," Mobius replies, "It sucked. But I think it's our only shot out of here. Not like there's a whole lot of other options."

"How do we tell them? How do we convince them this isn't safe and going to face Alioth is a better option?"

"Now that one, I have no idea," Mobius says, "Maybe we just have to be really honest. Tell them what you just told me about it not being safe because of what they know. Tell them how to stay alive until we can all find each other. Talk to them about what pruning's like. And then I guess we just have to hope they go along with it."

Loki nods, "I suppose you're right."

"Yeah, I suppose I am, too," Mobius says, smiling, "So...tell me. Do you feel any better than when I walked in here?"

"A little."

"Only a little?"

Loki sighs, "I still wish someone from home could see that I don't have to be bent on destruction. That maybe I could be Thor's equal, even if it wasn't in strength and war. I wish I knew that someone missed me."

"Well if you die in this crazy plot we're hatching, I can guarantee you there'll be at least five of us who will miss the heck out of you."

Loki gives Mobius a small smile, "Thank you, Mobius. I'm glad I mean something to you."

Mobius opens his arms and offers a hug, which Loki gladly slips into, "Come here. You mean a lot, Loki. Nobody else here is so fiercely loyal to the people they care about than you. And I'm so lucky I'm one of the people you care about."

Loki feels his body relaxing against his friend, "You're not the only lucky one. I've found kindness I didn't think I deserved."

"Everybody deserves kindness, Loki. Especially after what you went through."

"Just a scared little boy shivering in the cold..."

"Well I was thinking a little more recently, but yeah," Mobius says, "Even after all you did on Earth, you still deserve kindness."

Loki pulls back from the hug and nods, "Thank you. Again."

"No problem. But...I should probably get back to work. I don't need anybody getting weird and prying into why I'm spending so much time with my friend, you know? I already pretty much bailed on work today. Somebody's going to notice."

"I honestly don't care about work right now," Loki says, "So I suppose you're in a more tenuous position than I am."

"Eh, probably. But at the same time, I'm not too bad a liar. Not as good as you are, but...maybe I'll get there, in time. Fine-tune my skills." Mobius stands and rests a hand on Loki's shoulder, "Even if I can't come when you call, still, call. I'll be here as soon as I can make an excuse."

Loki nods and Mobius lets his hand drop, "What do I do next, Mobius?"

"You talk to the archivists. Start to figure out if we're doing this. And then...make some plans. Figure out what they want to bring along. Let's get this show on the road."

"Do you plan to tell Hunter B-15?" Loki asks.

"I didn't, but why do you ask?"

"Because she is the only other of us who remembers. And because of that, she could be in danger, too. If you think you can trust her, tell her, too. Invite her to come along. Besides, if we're going to be trying to stay alive in the Void, having another strong fighter might be a bonus."

Mobius nods, "Good thinking. I'll find a way to talk to her. But first," he says, "Get some rest. You look exhausted. Mobius steps back as Loki slides under the covers. He tucks the blankets up to Loki's chin, tells him to take some deep breaths and get some rest, and slips back out into the hall, hoping he's remained once more undetected.