Loki is helping Tam out of the hatchback when their face lights up as they look past him, "It's Ayshi!" they say, excited.

Loki whips around, "Oh thank everything holy, they're alive." He starts jogging toward them. Then he sees who is following them and he breaks into a grin. He is nearly to Ayshi when Tam breezes past his shoulder and opens their arms. Ayshi jumps into their embrace and Tam twirls them and kisses their cheek, laughing, immediately ushering them back toward the other archivists.

Loki waits until both the alligator and the young man accompanying Ayshi are in front of him, "I'm so happy to see you both," he says, "I'd thought it a fool's hope that nothing had killed you in this time, but here you are and I just...thank goodness you're both here. Come, let me introduce you to these lovely people I've brought with me. Did Ayshi tell you how we all came to be here?"

"Yeah. But why did you and Mobius and the Hunter come?"

"Well we didn't feel like it would be right to bring them here utterly defenceless. And I didn't want to stay in the TVA and not know if my friends were living or dead. Mobius and I intended to come with them from the start. It didn't take much convincing for him to have Hunter B-15 ready to go, either."

"Is that really a name? Hunter B-15?"

"Until she decides it isn't, yes."

Young Loki nods, "Seems odd to me. But if that's the name the TVA gave her..."

"It is. And while Sylvie showed her a memory of her life, she doesn't know her name from before."

"Maybe she's lucky she doesn't."

Loki shrugs, "I don't know how she feels about it. She doesn't talk much about herself."

"Look," the younger Loki says, "I don't know if it's a good idea for me to go meet everybody. I think having us there would just make things weird. So I'll see you later, right?"

Loki shakes his head, "No. I'm not letting that be your reason. I owe you so much from the last time I was here and I left you with no one save for your alligator friend. That wasn't right. These people...they're wonders. Please, let me at least introduce you."

He sighs, "Alright. But only if you don't think having two Lokis in one place will be awkward."

Loki gestures for his companions to follow him and they do, lagging behind as they walk; when they are closer to the car, he smiles at the two behind him and waves to his friends taking inventory of their supplies around the car, "Excuse me, but I have two more people to introduce you all to."

Cyd smiles up at them from the ground, "Yay, new friends!" they say.

Tam stands and walks over to Loki, "Hello," they say, waving to the child before seeing the alligator beside him, "And hello to you, too."

The younger Loki looks at them quizzically, "You just greeted an alligator like he's...well, like he's one of you."

Tam shrugs, "Well our Loki said we might meet other variants of him and since the alligator has little horns, I assume he's one of you, too. It only seemed polite."

Loki turns to face the younger man and the alligator, "Loki, Loki, this is Tam. Tam is one of the archivists from the TVA brought here for safety."

"Not sure exactly how safe this place is by comparison," young Loki says, offering to shake Tam's hand, "But it's still good to meet you."

They accept the handshake, "It's lovely to meet you both. How do I express this to your companion?" Tam asks, "I don't know that alligators shake hands."

He smiles, "No, he doesn't, but you can pat his back and he'll appreciate that."

Tam kneels, "I'm going to do that now, if you don't mind. If you do, feel free to back away, but please don't bite me." They reach out and wait a moment to see if the alligator will move and when he doesn't, they pat his back. He makes a sound.

"He says thank you."

"Well you're very welcome," Tam says, still addressing the alligator. They stand as Iris walks over. Tam turns to them and gestures to alligator Loki, "So Iris, these are our new friends, a young variant of Loki and an alligator variant of Loki.

Iris bows slightly to each of them in turn, "Hi. Are you going to be wandering with us?"

Young Loki shrugs, "I don't know yet. But maybe. If it's not too awkward."

"Why would it be awkward?" Iris asks.

"Maybe because we're Lokis, too?" he says.

Iris shakes their head, "That isn't much of a reason for things to be awkward. Our friend, Judith, had multiple variants of herself working across the archives. We never knew just why they chose more of her than just the version we knew, but once we knew...we just accepted that we're variants and these things happen."

Loki nods to his younger self, "See? They're not going to feel this is strange."

Mobius walks over, "Hey! It's good to see you both! Glad you made it. How long has it been for you since we were here last?"

"A few years."

"Wow. It's been only a few months to us."

"Yeah, the one I came here said that, too. I didn't catch their name, though."

"Oh," Mobius says, "That's Ayshi. The one on the ground is Cyd. You've met everybody except," he waves over Hunter B-15," our former minuteman. This is is Hunter B-15."

She nods and offers to shake his hand. Young Loki takes it and Mobius gestures to where Tam has made themself comfortable next to the alligator. Hunter B-15 nods to the alligator as well. Then she returns to inventorying their supplies.

"Yeah, she's probably not going to be the most talkative," Mobius says, "She's kind of all business when she has to be, and right now she's focused on making sure the archivists survive. They've never really lived outside their archive and their housing."

Hunter B-15 calls to the Loki she knows, "Loki? Can you come here for a minute?"

He nods to his variants, "Excuse me a moment." He walks over to her, "What do you need?"

She opens one of the bags on the ground and tips the opening toward him, "What do you see in there?"

He peers into the bag, eyes growing wide, "Oh my..." He reaches in and draws out a glowing blue cube, "How...how did you get this?"

Cyd crawls over, "We stole it from your room when you disappeared. It was something we knew was important to you and we wanted something to remind us of our friend. We thought it might be important for us to have it with us, just in case everything went wrong."

Mobius walks over, leaving Iris and Tam with the other two Lokis, "Is that what I think it is?"

"Yes," Loki says softly, "And I think it might be our salvation out here. It won't be able to get us to a place the TVA can't find us, but...maybe it can take us somewhere we won't have any impact on the Sacred Timeline. I don't know. I wouldn't know where to find such a place, but the older Loki I met the last time I was here...he did. It's how he aged lived so long. He found a barren planet and lived there alone until he decided he missed Thor enough to seek him out. The minute he left, though, he was taken. He never got to see him again."

"That's terrible," Mobius says.

"Yes, it is. But I'm never going to see him again, either, so..." Loki sighs, "I understand that ache." He puts the Tesseract back in the bag, "But we do need to keep this absolutely safe."

"It's powerful, isn't it?" Cyd asks.

"Oh, very much so. And I hope those who seek it along the Sacred Timeline can't find it here. But were we to leave here...it might attract someone wholly unpleasant."

Cyd nods, "Yeah. The one who murders you."

Loki squeezes his eyes shut, the images from the Time Theatre coming back to him, "Yes."

"Guess we'd have to just make sure we went somewhen after he's dead," Cyd says. "We have TemPads. We can be super careful and make sure we check timelines. There's a few different things we programmed on them once Mobius showed us how." They see the worry on Loki's face and notice how his breathing has changed. It is slow, controlled, as if he's trying to keep himself pulled together. "Hey," they say, resting their hand on Loki's arm, "It's alright. We're going to keep each other safe, remember?"

Loki gently removes their hand from his arm, "Thank you. I'm just..."

"You're terrified of throwing everything away and dying the same way you were destined to?" Cyd asks.

He nods, "And I don't want to once again only become a source of destruction and pain wherever I am. If he were to come for this...none of us would survive and it would all be because of me."

Cyd sighs, "That would suck. But you've already made our lives better. So even if things end horribly...I hope you remember that. We came here knowing we might all die anyway. But at least if we did, we'd all face it together."

"I hate to break everyone's conversation up," Ayshi says, "But shouldn't we all get moving?"

Tam stands and offers Iris their hand, "Probably." They turn to the Lokis near them, "So...are you coming? We brought supplies and there's enough to add a few friends."

"How are we going to all fit in the car?"

Tam shrugs, "You can sit in the back with me, if you'd like, or you can sit up front and Iris and I can sit in the back. No worries. We always make room for one another."

Iris waves the Lokis to follow them, "Come on. We'll make it work. It'll be a little crowded, but that's OK. You can take the front by Mobius."

They return to the car. Supplies have been jammed wherever they will fit and Hunter B-15, Ayshi, and the other Loki all have bags wedged between their feet and others on their lap while the bags that can be sat on or leaned against are in the back where Iris and Tam sit, closing the hatch after they've wedged themselves in.

Mobius turns to the young person beside him, alligator clutched to his chest, "So...where should I go?"

The younger Loki points, "Let's head over there. The hideout isn't mine anymore, but there's somewhere else I think we an all shelter."

Mobius nods, starts the car, and heads in the direction he's been instructed to go.