Loki sat in his holding cell, nervously picking at a hangnail on his thumb, while Sylvie paced in the cell next to him like a caged lioness. Her footsteps were the only sound in that unnervingly quiet room lined with jail cells, save for a faint hum from the fluorescent lights overhead. He and Sylvie were the only occupants. He was afraid they'd be kept apart, after going once again through the humiliating experience of being stripped and scanned and forced to sign pounds of paperwork. Loki grabbed his naked arms, disgusted at the beige potato-sack of an outfit variant prisoners were forced to wear.
As they'd been marched down the hallways after being processed, the faint echo of confused TVA employees had floated up to them. Apparently, Sylvie's capture had solved the TVA's problems across every division. All the sirens had ceased throughout the whole sprawling institution. Division Nine was especially elated. Loki heard Mobius' name tossed into several excited conversations in the hallways as they were led to await their certain doom. News moved fast, it seemed.
Good for him, thought Loki dourly. Mobius, the hometown hero.
All of Loki's cunning and lies had led to nothing, all of his luck had run out. No thanks to Sylvie. If she would have just played along like he'd wanted her to, then perhaps at least one of them would be free at the moment. But what then? Would they have run into the streets of London, chased by the TVA until the branching timelines tore everything apart? Would he have let Sylvie be captured and tried to figure out a way to release her? That chance seemed astronomically slim.
Sylvie, dressed in a beige jumpsuit identical to his, suddenly let out a frustrated grunt and punched the door of her cell, made out of some kind of glowing orange forcefield. It absorbed the punch easily, and the next few that Sylvie threw at it. The same transparent forcefield made up the shared wall of their cells. Loki watched as she treated the door as a punching bag, her considerable Asgardian strength not even making the cell door shake.
"That's enough," he grumbled at her, knowing full well she could hear him. He sat down on the small bench in his cell, but Sylvie continued punching and pummeling the door, as if he wasn't even there. Her grunts grew louder as she threw all her weight behind every hit. Her hands certainly had to hurt, but she showed no sign of slowing down.
"Enough!" Loki shouted. She paused only for a moment, giving him a glare that could kill, then started kicking the door instead.
Heat rose to Loki's face. He slammed against the wall of his cell with his fist, finally surprising her into stopping.
"Stop acting like a caged ape!" he yelled. "Calm down! We have to think!"
"There's nothing to think about. We're screwed," she replied, voice gravely and low as she gave the door one last half-hearted kick with her white slip-on sneakers.
"You're the one who screwed us!" he said, pointing at her, he himself now pacing just as she had been moments ago. "I was trying to save you. That's all I've done for you, Sylvie, try to save you from your own bad decisions."
Her emerald eyes opened wide. "My decisions? You were just fine with my decisions until it meant that you couldn't have power."
"I never wanted power, Sylvie!" he cried desperately. Tears sprang to his eyes, though he tried hard to blink them away. Sylvie noticed, her stance becoming less defensive, with perhaps an expression of guilt or pity beginning to form on her face.
"Look," he began again, getting his emotions under control. "I wanted him to pay as much as you did, but you've made a mess that the TVA was bound to clean up. Did you think they would just ignore it, that you'd get away scot free?"
"Yes!" she hissed, coming close to their shared wall. "I thought the TVA would fall when he died. I didn't think it would erase everyone's memories."
"Erase memories?" asked Loki.
"Mobius!" she said. "How does he not know us?"
Something in her face fell, her angry mask revealing the hurt and pain underneath. He knew that feeling and couldn't help but sympathize. As awful as things were, as mad as he still was at her, he wanted very much for them to be in the same cell together before being judged guilty and thrown back into the Void. It would be another lifetime of running, not from the TVA, but from Alioth, the horrible monster that ate everything at the End of Time.
Before Loki could explain his theory about being in an entirely different version of the TVA, someone walked in the door. Mobius strode over to them, sans his brown agent's coat and with the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up to his elbows. He spun a chair around and sat down, looking over both of them with a stony gaze. As viciously sterile and cold as that concrete room was, Mobius' stare was colder.
"There are a few things I know for sure," he said in his quiet, signature drawl. "One: you both somehow know who I am. Two: you know each other." He pointed at Loki. "Three: you're a Loki variant who somehow snuck into the TVA, wearing an employee uniform, no less." A little smirk formed on his face, as if he was impressed. "Who'd you kill for that, huh?"
"No one," Loki replied simply, raising his chin in defiance. If he'd said the truth, that Mobius himself had issued him a TVA uniform, he couldn't imagine it would have a positive effect on his sentence. Was anyone ever judged innocent there?
"There are also a few things I need to know," he continued, speaking now just to Sylvie. "Most importantly, what did you think you were doing by making the timeline branch at more than five dozen points?" He spoke as if the question hurt, rather than make him angry. "I've never seen a timeline bombed like that. And that's just in my division alone. There were more all over the place, all at the same time. What did you do? Why?"
Sylvie wisely kept her mouth shut, biting her lip and refusing to look Mobius in the eye.
"Now, I realize you think it would be a bad idea to spill the beans," he said. "But it could help the TVA prevent things like this in the future… so to speak. It's valuable information to us. Which means a potentially reduced sentence, if you cooperate."
Mobius was playing his game quite smart and simple, too. He didn't mention what a reduced sentence meant for the TVA. A time cell, perhaps, instead of pruning?
"May I ask a question?" Loki said. Mobius gave him a single nod. "How do you know me?"
Mobius leaned easily back into his chair, making it creak.
"Oh, your reputation precedes you," he said mockingly, making Loki's cheeks burn. "Lokis are one of those beings that keep trying to branch the timeline all the time. Return customers, we call them."
"And you prune them?"
Mobius opened his mouth to answer, but then the smile fell from his face and he leaned forward again, squinting.
"You know what pruning is?" he asked, apparently surprised out of his usual agent routine, before catching himself and returning to his poker-faced stare. "Interesting. So you've definitely tangled with the TVA before. Maybe more than once, if they actually talked to you."
Loki inwardly cursed himself for giving even that smidgen of information away. Sylvie looked flushed even through the orange tint of the forcefield, as if she was about to explode.
"That's especially interesting, because I've never been assigned to a Loki case," he said. He bounced his knee a bit, perhaps giving away some nervous energy. "Lokis are definitely not telepaths. And yet, you know me by name."
"Mobius," Sylvie whispered, tears beginning to fall down her face. Loki gave her a hard, silent glare, but her eyes were now fixed on Mobius, pleading, dark circles forming under them.
Keep it together, for the love of everything holy, Sylvie.
Mobius, seasoned agent though he was, seemed to soften the slightest bit at Sylvie's tears. So this version wasn't just a soulless machine.
"Ready to give me something… what was your name again? Sylvia?"
Sylvie lowered her head into her hands and began to bawl. Even Loki couldn't help but feel sorry for her. She'd kept up an ironclad persona for so long, and so well, Loki forgot that she was vulnerable and scared, just like he was.
"Mobius," she repeated through stifled sobs, "Don't you remember anything? What did they do to you?"
Mobius' knee stopped bouncing and he continued to stare, though with more curiosity than pity.
"Sylvie… " Loki whispered a warning. He had a bad feeling deep in his gut that grew with every passing second.
She pounded a fist against the orange forcefield of her door with such wild strength that her blonde hair fell over her eyes. She grimaced painfully as she spoke, her voice grinding out of her in a growl.
"You hated this place! They took your freedom away, too, don't you remember? You were going to burn it to the ground!"
Loki's heart leapt to his throat and he felt suddenly dizzy, needing to sit down on the bench. She'd done it. They were dead now. Mobius' eyes narrowed into slits and his mouth scrunched into a tiny, confused 'o'.
"What?" Mobius whispered.
"Please, try to remember."
Mobius immediately shook his head and stood up. "I had been trying to go with the 'good cop' routine," he said, unrolling his shirt sleeve and buttoning the cuff, "but now I'm thinking an actual interrogation might be in order."
Loki gasped. "No!" he blurted, coming to the front of his cell. A stream of almost senseless words tumbled out of him that he was unable to stop. "Please, Mobius. I know this doesn't make sense, you have to trust us. The man I told you about is real, he's behind all of this, we're all trapped by his machinations, and you wanted to fight with us, but it wasn't you… you were our friend, too. You were my friend." His throat closed up and tears stung his eyes as he forced the last few words out of him. "Don't let them interrogate us, please. They won't just prune us if they find out, they'll kill us. Please, Mobius."
Mobius stood as if frozen to the ground, one shirt sleeve half unrolled, not even blinking as he stared at them. It was hard to tell through the orange tint, but it looked almost as if he had gone a bit pale. Mobius let out a breath, tugged down his sleeve, then left quickly, without another word.
Loki sank to the floor. Interrogation would be certain death. Even if they believed pruning was akin to death, surely someone higher up… some monstrous iteration of He Who Remains… would want to know they were dead for sure.
"He's not… our Mobius, is he?" asked Sylvie quietly, a few moments later.
Loki scoffed. "You finally get it?" he mumbled. "Only a minute too late. Pity."
"Do you think they'll interrogate us?"
"Why wouldn't they?" he replied. "We're dead, Sylvie."
"They'll only prune us again."
"And that was a walk in the park?" he threw back at her, still sitting hunched over on the ground.
"Hiding from Alioth would be better than running from the TVA for the rest of my life," she said. "At least you know where it is."
Loki stood up, fists clenched with rage. "What's wrong with you? Are you some kind of psychopath? You killed the man that controls time itself, then you go get a burger? You're just fine with getting thrown back into the Void?"
"As if you're Loki the Lionhearted," she retorted sarcastically. "You're no different from any other variant. All Lokis have crimes under their belts. What's yours? Who have you killed, Odinson?"
Loki drew back in surprise, biting his tongue. He couldn't believe he'd forgotten. She hardly knew anything about him, about his past life, what he'd done. How he'd tried to kill his brother, and succeeded in murdering his birth father. How he'd been half-forced, half-bribed into following Thanos' order to take over Earth. Gouging out someone's eye in front of a crowd of people for access to a secret, smiling as he did it. Forcing the mob of innocent people in Berlin to kneel to him. Killing that man all the Avengers loved for some reason, Phil what's-his-name. If he hadn't been pummeled by the Hulk and captured, if he'd somehow won the Battle of New York, then his first action afterwards probably would have been to get something to eat, or a drink from Tony Stark's impressive home bar.
Would she be just as horrified by his actions as Mobius was when he'd first been shown his life reel?
"It's… no concern of yours," he replied sheepishly. "But it wasn't as bad as completely ripping apart the flow of time, I can tell you that. Don't you feel guilt?"
She threw her head back and let out a defensive, mirthless bark of a laugh, though her eyes shone with bitter tears.
"Guilt? What's that? Never heard that word in my life."
"I wouldn't deny you revenge," he said softly, coming to the shared wall of their cell, "but frankly, you ruined everything, Sylvie. There was a way out of this, and you burned the bridge instantly."
"Shut up," she growled, voice quivering.
"If we'd taken his offer-"
"I said shut up!" she screamed. The feral look in her eye should have frightened him, but it didn't. It was a mask for her pain. He knew too well that feigned madness worked to keep those he loved at bay. "I take no responsibility. I feel no guilt. I did what I had to do, and it made me feel… " she trailed off suddenly, letting her angry mask melt away into a trembling lip.
"It didn't solve anything," Loki finished for her.
A single, painful sob escaped her. She hugged herself tightly across her chest, then came to the shared wall and laid her forehead against it. Tears streamed freely down her cheeks. He wanted dearly to hold her one last time, before they were separated, or interrogated, or pruned, or whatever was about to happen to them. All he could do was lay his hand against the forcefield. She did the same, her small fingers dwarfed in comparison to his. No warmth came through the orange forcefield.
"No matter what happens, Sylvie," he whispered to her, "I will always care for you. In this life or the next. Always."
She pressed herself against the wall, as if she desperately wanted to feel his touch just as much as he wanted to feel hers.
"I've hardly ever had a friend, all these years," she said. "I'm not even sure what love really feels like. But I think…"
Before she could finish her thought, a small squadron of guards burst through the door. One of them unlocked their cages with the single push of a button on his tempad. The orange forcefield disappeared.
"Come on," he said gruffly, grabbing Loki by the shoulder and slapping a pair of handcuffs on him. Another guard did the same to Sylvie. She barely resisted, head down, all the fight sucked out of her.
"Where are we going?" Loki demanded as the guards roughly pushed them down the short corridor and into the hallway.
"Trial," was the only word Loki's guard said. He was confused, but at least very slightly relieved they wouldn't go through interrogation first. Had they gotten through to Mobius? Would he be at the trial? Loki didn't know what would be better or worse; knowing Mobius might put his life on the line for them, and failing, or knowing he would only be there to watch the spectacle and gloat.
Loki's head spun. He felt empty as the guards led them down the carpeted hallway to what felt like their certain doom.
Mobius left the room with goosebumps forming on his skin. He'd heard that Lokis were notoriously full of lies and tricks, but none of what this Loki had said, or his girlfriend-sister, maybe?-felt false to him. He'd interviewed thousands of liars, knew what it looked like when desperation made nonsensical confessions fall out of them. That's not what had just happened. The woman, especially, gave him the heebie-jeebies.
They took your freedom away, too, don't you remember? You were going to burn it to the ground!
"So, what do you think, Mobius?"
He was jolted from his thoughts by his superior and friend, Ravonna Renslayer, who looked up at him expectantly. Her curly, brown hair was in a tight, neat bun plastered to her head, as always, and she wore a wide-shouldered jacket and pencil skirt with a patterned ascot tied around her neck: a judge's uniform, without the orange sash she would wear during a trial. Her finger tapped against the edge of her tempad, ready and waiting for a suggestion.
Mobius opened his mouth and shut it again quickly. Every ordinance, every protocol he'd ever learned at the TVA would lead him to interrogate immediately. They knew something, something big.
…we're all trapped by his machinations…
The look in their eyes, though. Pleading, terrified. He'd seen those looks countless times from other variants, but now it was different. Personal.
He wanted to know how in the world they both knew who he was, for his own curiosity, but he was afraid to know, as well. They could implicate him in something he'd never said or done. Surely, his spotless record would be enough to exonerate him, but still. Something was wrong with this whole mess. Very wrong.
"Mobius?"
He forced himself to answer. "No interrogation," he blurted.
Ravonna raised one dark eyebrow in incredulous surprise.
"Really? They told you everything that quickly?"
"Yes," he said, feeling like a heel. He had to think of a lie, and fast. "It wasn't a timeline bombing at all."
"It wasn't?" Ravonna lowered her tempad. Mobius swallowed the knot forming in the back of his throat.
"The woman didn't know what she was doing," he said. "She'd messed with some reset charges before, took them, figured out how to turn them off. She had no idea what they were. That set off a chain reaction that tied her to the other branches."
"And the male?"
There wasn't much he could say to make him sound innocent. "He was trying to save her. They're an item. I'm impressed, though, he's a slippery bastard, sneaking into the TVA like that."
"This is a huge security breach, Mobius," said Ravonna, placing one hand impatiently on her hip. "We need to know how he got in."
Mobius smiled to himself. Ravonna's roots would still shine through, on occasion. He was happy that she'd worked her way up the ladder all the way from a hunter, to an agent, to a judge, but he still missed working with her on the harder cases. Not this one, though. He needed to keep her at arms length. When she'd been an agent, she would grab onto leads like a pit bull and wouldn't let go.
Mobius scoffed a bit and shrugged nonchalantly. "There are thousands upon thousands of agents in the TVA, and you can't tell me you don't think one of them is sloppy enough to leave their jacket hanging on a chair during an investigation? He stole a jacket with a tempad in the pocket, that's all. I'm sure it's happened more than once. Pests get in all the time."
"Yes, pests, like animals… rats, sparrows, those weird giant flying bugs from Hala." Ravonna shivered at the thought of them. "Not people."
"What can I say, Ravonna?" he said, hiding his own discomfort behind a reassuring smile. "This is a big place. Mistakes happen."
She let out a curt little sigh, finally done with her own interrogation, looking disappointed that it hadn't turned up something more explosive. She pressed a few buttons on her tempad and spoke into its intercom system.
"We need a squad of guards up to Division Nine, section T4R, containment room four. Variants going to trial. Do you copy?"
"Copy" replied a voice immediately. "T4R, room four, sending guards."
She stuffed her tempad into her jacket pocket.
"I only wish I could be the judge at that trial," she said, with the slightest grin curving the edge of her lips. "If only to see the looks on their faces."
Ravonna's relentlessness surprised him sometimes. Good thing for those two variants she wasn't assigned to them. Either way, the trial surely wouldn't be kind, no matter who the judge was. That was unfortunately beyond his grade. He'd done what he could do as an agent, and had to trust the system to take care of the rest fairly.
"Good job again, Mobius," said Ravonna, giving him a pat on the shoulder. "Way to think outside the box. Maybe they'll finally make you a judge."
Mobius made a raspberry noise and shook his head. "What fun would that be?" he told her, with a little wink and a sly grin.
She returned his smile and left down the hallway, in the direction of the elevators. Mobius hung around for a moment, pondering, hands in his pockets. He stared at the enormous, magnificent statue of the Timekeeper, looking out across the TVA like a god admiring his creation. Mobius vaguely remembered the first time he'd seen that statue when he'd taken his first tour of the TVA, how it had taken his breath away. How many Null-units ago had that been? And how many years was that?
He remembered, too, catching a glimpse of the Loki variant staring up at that statue just before he took off with B-15 towards the archives. The variant had looked pale, horrified, mouth agape.
He planned everything. He's seen everything. He knows everything.
A chill ran down Mobius's spine. Maybe there were some skeletons that were better off buried, no matter how morbidly curious he was to dig them up.