-PRESENT DAY-

"Mobius, do you know where you are?"

"Oh for pete's sake. Yes, I know where I am. Why are you where I am?"

"You scared your task force half to death when they came back and found you passed out on the floor, that's why," she replies, although the tension in her voice ebbs a little as Mobius sits up with no assistance required. He rubs the back of his neck gingerly. "One of them freaked out and just group messaged every member of the special council, since the infirmary is all automated and they had no idea what else to do other than ask for help."

"Yeah, good call there. I dunno when the last time was we even thought about the infirmary, much less used it for anything," he mutters, wheels already spinning. "We've got to redo those manuals and procedures, you know. We should have an on-call staff, at least. And we need to create a triage training module for interested volunteers, especially if war is coming –"

"You're unbelievable." She shakes him by the shoulder like a dog with a kitten, firm but playful. "Stop thinking for like, two minutes. And tell me what's going on with you."

"If I knew, I would. Tell you," he adds, exhaling slowly. "I think it's just the time lag, honest."

"Or the fact that you've apparently logged work hours literally, and I mean literally, every day for the last almost two years." Her tone is calm, but there's a thread of worry winding tight and tense through it, close to snapping in their faces. "Even for someone working solely from a time-locked location, that's not healthy, Mobius. And you've been going back and forth between two different locales for over a year now, plus your little side projects you think we don't know about in Artifact Confiscation."

"Okay, you got me. But I'm still within regulations, or I'd get tattled on by that little orange menace. It's not always a whole day's worth of hours, and I have plenty of time in between the shifts. I'm not stupid, B."

"That's looking increasingly debatable," she retorts. "Mobius, the regulations are there to prevent incidents like this. If they're no longer meeting the needs of the current workforce, they need to be re-evaluated, not pushed to the very limit of human endurance by one senior analyst with a hero complex and zero self-preservation to balance it!"

"Heard." He grumbles a little under his breath before staggering back to his feet and trying to dust off his jacket and pants, with varying degrees of success. Concrete and sawdust just do not want to come off TVA-issued polyfabric, for some reason. "I'm gonna be more careful, I promise."

"You're going to get a full medical examination right now, is the only thing you're doing this afternoon."

"C'mon, there's no need for that." He bends over to pick up the clipboard which had fallen from his hands at some point, but the room blurs out again when he straightens back up. Only her quick jump forward prevents him from taking another embarrassing header toward the ground. "Mmh. Okay, you win," he mutters into her shoulder, closing his eyes to stop the vertigo. Why is it so difficult to breathe?

"Honestly," she mutters, but pulls his left arm gently over her shoulders and steers them both toward the Time Door one of the architects has been holding. "Agent, you're in charge until O.B. can wrap up in Repairs and get over here," she says sternly, and the young man snaps to attention on the instant.

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Safety first," Mobius adds tiredly, because while it should be obvious, it probably isn't. He must look better than he feels, because the architect nods with appropriate solemnity instead of looking at him like he's something fragile cracking down the middle. "Seriously, have everyone slow down a little and be careful. It's not worth anyone getting hurt, okay?"

"Yes, sir!"

"And stop calling me that," he mumbles, but the first couple of words are swallowed by the Door, and the last couple trail off in an unsteady exhale as the now-familiar head rush from entering Central makes him stagger alarmingly against his human crutch. Fortunately, the Door was opened right into the aforementioned and under-utilized infirmary wing, and there's an empty bed less than three feet away.

B-15 drops him on it like a particularly troublesome hot potato and then beelines to turn on the nearest medical unit, a clunky orange robot that looks like something you'd see in Zaniac II, not the most powerful agency in time and space.

Despite its somewhat dusty appearance, the unit chirps a tuneful acknowledgment as it boots up for the first time in who knows how long. It then waves three mechanical arms at the bed with what seems to be ominous enthusiasm while inputting computer commands with the remaining arm.

Patients must not move for the duration of the scan, it drones cheerfully. Please advise if restraints are required. Scan will commence in fifteen seconds unless manually suspended.

"Uh," Mobius says, staring up at a blindingly bright, horizontal orange laser-beam that hovers menacing overhead.

"It's really just a simple comprehensive scan, calm down," B-15 says, startling him when she pops back up near his head. "And close your eyes. You don't need blindness on top of whatever's going on with you."

But the tone is affectionate more than admonishing, so he does as instructed without argument. He can see why she made a good medical professional on her own Sacred Timeline, even if she specialized in children (which blew his mind the first time she mentioned it). Then again, the idea that Mobius himself actually had children of his own somewhere is equally incredible, because he's never really even thought about the idea, so. He's still not sure how he feels about that.

A slightly warm tingling sensation travels briefly from head to foot, followed by a dull click and the light vanishing from the back of his eyelids. The lightheadedness is well past, but the jittery feeling he's been ignoring for days is still there, lurking at the extremities and crawling under the skin like so many tiny ants.

And he's just so tired…

-ONE HOUR LATER-

"Are you sure?"

"Very. You can read the results as well as I can, maybe better."

"Not if it's not medical in nature, I can't. I can tell you what it says, but not what it means. And I have no idea what I'm looking at with an aura scanner, O.B."

"Well, that's why I'm here."

"You have to be sure. This isn't one of your gadgets you can just reprogram on educated guesswork alone."

"I can't be sure, if it's something we've never actually seen before! But that's my most educated guess with the knowledge we have."

"So what does it mean?"

"It means this is bad. This is very bad." O.B.'s voice is a sharp beat of staccato rhythm, and three shades short of outright panic.

It's enough to fully wake Mobius up from what was a pleasant, dreamless nap. The panel over his head beeps in betrayal of his return to consciousness, and the voices snap off as if a switch has been thrown. Confused, he blinks a few times to clear his vision and then swings his legs over the side of the bed.

"Whoa, hey! You're not going anywhere, Mobius, stay down," B-15 orders, the words snapped tersely across the room from where she stands in front of a computer, frowning at the screen.

"What, why?" he asks, slightly annoyed at the peremptory command. "I'm just kinda rundown, geez. No need to be all up in arms over a little overwork."

He notices now that the robotic unit has been powered down or put to sleep, and both B-15 and O.B. are scrutinizing a printout on the desk.

"Guys?" He hates how uncertain his voice sounds, and he's not having this conversation lying down, thank you very much. The room wobbles for just a second as he stands, but quickly stabilizes. "It is just overwork, right?"

O.B. looks up over his glasses, and his tense expression (and presence here when he has zero medical training) tells Mobius everything, and at the same time nothing.

He moves across the room and sits heavily on the closest stool. "Okay. So if it's not overwork, what is it, then."

"We're not sure." B-15's eyes are actually worried, and that's enough to scare him a little.

"It sounded like you were pretty sure," he counters, arms folded. "O.B.? Are you reasonably sure?"

"Uh." O.B. pushes his glasses up in a nervous gesture, but finally nods. "I think so, yeah. To the best of my knowledge. It makes sense, given what we know."

"What does."

"Well. You don't have any kind of diagnosable medical condition, first of all."

"You'd think that was good news, but something tells me it's not that easy. So what is it?"

O.B. sighs, bracing both hands on the counter-top. "Temporal," he finally says, with a pained shrug. "It's a temporal issue, Mobius. Your temporal aura is in a state of constant regenerative flux."

He stares at them both, uncomprehending. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"In simple terms: The cells in your body are experiencing an unprecedented and continuous cycle of entropic decay and rapid regeneration," O.B. says. He points a pencil at the printout, which Mobius only now recognizes from the aura scanners they use in Arrivals. "That's why you aren't sleeping well, and you're constantly exhausted, and I'm guessing you're in constant low-level pain. You're burning up your body's resources at a rate it can't sustain indefinitely."

"Okay…That sounds fixable, though."

"It's not that simple, Mobius," B-15 sighs. At his puzzled look, she continues. "If O.B. is right, this is a direct result of your work across the timelines, the traveling you've been doing multiple times a cycle. What you're calling time lag? Is actually your body telling you it's dying slowly."

"Oh, come on. That's ridiculous. Surely we've seen this before, O.B.?"

"I have. Well, something similar."

"And?"

"It's what happens when someone starts time-slipping," he says, matter-of-fact. "That's where I've seen similar readings. I documented them during that compilated temporal aura mapping project last year."

"So I'm time-slipping? Wouldn't I notice?"

"You're not time-slipping," O.B. reassures him. "But your body thinks you are. It's basically stuck in an endless cycle of preparing your physiology to be torn apart at a molecular level, only to then abruptly reset itself wholescale when you re-enter the time-locked TVA Central. Because entropy doesn't work the same way here, the body thinks you're in a constant state of time-slip. This is why we have regulations about how many field ops agents are allowed to go on, in a set period. There's a point where your body just can't regulate it anymore."

"Like the bends," Mobius muses, because it does make a kind of sense. "It's an issue with things like deep sea diving, on Earth," he adds, when O.B. frowns in confusion. "You rise too rapidly to the surface of the water and things start going hinky with your bloodflow. I think. I don't remember the science of it, just that it sounded unpleasant."

"Well, that tracks, because temporal flux is also unpleasant. If your trips were less frequent, or maybe if you were spending longer in each place, the effects might not be as severe."

"But I'm not." He leans forward, elbows on the desk, and rubs his forehead. "I can't."

"I believe it's time to rethink that," O.B. replies. "You're draining all physical resources, and honestly, I have no idea what other effects it might be having on you. You could be in danger of actually time-slipping, or your temporal aura could degrade enough to start causing mental issues. Your aura could fluctuate and strand you somewhere because the Tempad can't get a lock on you. You could be aging now, Mobius. I just don't know. It's like trying to travel to a branch without using a Time Door."

"Is that even possible?"

"Not typically, and absolutely not safely," O.B. replies. "The whole purpose of the technology behind it, is that the Door recalibrates the body, preparing it to sync with the time passage and entropy rates of the destination, rather than the starting point. Traveling without that syncing process, or traveling with a version of it that can't keep up with the changes, is very dangerous."

"You have to start using a standardized Tempad, and stop going back and forth to the Void. At least until this is under control," B-15 says.

Mobius shakes his head. "Sorry, no can do."

"I wasn't asking."

"Well, I wasn't agreeing. I just have to figure out how to manage it, that's all." He shrugs under O.B.'s incredulous look. "You can fix this, can't you?"

"Eventually. But I have no idea how long it'll take, or if there's any kind of quick solution. Other than letting your body re-calibrate to a normal entropy rate and healing the physical damage before we move forward; that has to be the first step."

"Uh-huh. Well, I have faith in you, O.B." Mobius stands with an air of finality, tugging his jacket back into place as he does so.

"Sit. Down." B-15's voice is terrifying, even if she hasn't raised it at all.

Mobius slowly sits, and scoots the stool back an inch for safety.

"I'm not giving you an option here," she informs him, matter-of-fact. "You're on indefinite medical leave, starting an hour ago."

Horrified, he scoots forward again with a screeeek in his haste to protest. "You can't do that!"

"I already did it, right before you woke up," she retorts. "Don't test me any further, Mobius."

"You don't understand, I - I can't. There's too much to do, and it's already taken too long!" He knows desperation is rapidly eclipsing any other emotion in his voice, and it's clear indication he's long lost his objectivity. "You've gotta let me do this, B."

She looks up at the ceiling as if praying for patience.

"Please," he finally whispers, a last and desperate request. "Please don't take this away from me."

B-15 finally moves around the desk to take the other stool, scooting up way too close in his personal space, and takes one of his hands.

"I'm sorry," she says quietly. "I know this is what's been driving you, the only thing that's been driving you. Giving you your own kind of purpose, ever since things changed. But I'm not going to let you kill yourself for him." She squeezes his hand gently. "You want us all to have as much faith as you do, for the long haul? You have to be here, for that to happen, Mobius. This all hinges on you. It starts and ends with you. Not without you."

It's kind, and it's gentle, and at the same time it expertly extinguishes whatever spark of hope and defiance had been carrying him through the long weeks, to this point.

Now, everything is just sort of…gone.

"Besides, if I let something happen to you, I'm not actually 100% confident the rest of us would escape unscathed," she adds. It's the tone of one who is speaking in jest, but also maybe not, completely. "I don't want to anger the gods, Mobius."

He tries to smile, but it probably just comes out looking sad, because she shakes her head and grips his hand tighter. "So. You're going to take a little sabbatical to recover, while we find a solution for this. Or at least create an action plan that won't keep killing you slowly."

"Come on. I'll go nuts just sitting around this place waiting to be re-cleared for duty."

"That's a negatory. You can't recover here," O.B. pipes up, from where he's scribbling notes in the margin of the printout. "There's no measurable entropy or time-passage in the central TVA, so you won't actually start to 'heal' from this within its walls, in anything resembling a normal human time frame. And the Void is an even bigger issue right now. You need to be on a branch, and you probably need to be there several days, minimum."

"Good. You need some distance from all of this, anyway." B-15 ignores his baleful glare with practiced ease. "It's not up for debate, Mobius. And the quicker you cooperate, the quicker you'll be on your way back. By then, hopefully we'll have a more sustainable solution."

"You'd better," he mutters.

"So. Ten days, you do nothing but rest."

"Now that's a negatory. How about three days."

"Nine, and I'll let you take one file with you."

"Seven, and I take all the files I want."

"Deal." She looks over at O.B., fairly radiating smugness. "Are you taking notes on how to deal with this in the future?"

"I am," O.B. replies, grinning. "It'll have its own section in the next guidebook if it happens again. You've been warned."

Mobius slumps to put his head on his arms, folded on the desk. "I hate both of you. For all time."

-TWENTY HOURS LATER-

The beach house is pretty much just as he left it, although the back deck is covered in a fine layer of sand and the furniture inside an even finer layer of dust.

His cabinets and refrigerator were filled earlier today by someone in Acquisitions, the power and water turned back on before he arrived, and O-55 had at least made sure everything was in order, securing a perimeter with a remote alarm system and making sure no dangerously bad weather was in the forecast, before she had to return to the TVA for a retrieval mission.

For all his complaining, Mobius does appreciate the whole sad mess. In some ways, it's nice, being cared for.

And in some ways, it's not, because that's not a luxury any of them can really afford, right now. Such things are in short supply, and even shorter demand, these days.

The difference in time-passage is almost immediately evident, though, because he'd be lying if he said he was anything other intensely, excruciatingly exhausted. The kind of devastating fatigue that sinks deep under the skin and drains the soul. He'd planned to unpack the small assortment of trinkets and personal items he'd brought with him, dust and rearrange the living room shelves, then clean up the deck and watch the sunset. Try to relax before heading to bed. Maybe watch a silly sci-fi movie, a little tranquility amid the chaos to drive away far too many intrusive thoughts.

But the unpacking and rearranging take just a minute too long, and before he can find the outdoor broom, it starts pouring down rain, because of course it does. It's too cold to be comfortable, and too loud to be soothing; so he drags himself back inside and digs out a couple blankets from a slightly musty cupboard. Briefly considers making something for dinner, and decides it's not worth the effort.

He's asleep on the well-worn sofa before he can even turn the television on, and dreams of nothing.

-SOME TIME LATER-

Something wakes him up.

It's a momentarily terrifying jolt, a looming feeling that someone's in the room with him, when that's impossible due to the TVA's insistence on remote monitoring. A crawling, prickly sensation that he's being watched, even though the house is silent, the storm having rolled over hours ago.

Maybe it's just a reaction to living again in a place where time passes normally, this heightened sense of restlessness? Whatever the reason, he feels a little better when he manages to find the switch for the end-table lamp and banishes the looming shadows to their corners.

(It somehow escapes his immediate notice that one of them doesn't flee before the light.)

He does actually feel a bit better, overall. The dizziness of earlier is gone, and his appetite seems to have returned. He is still unreasonably tired, but that too should fade over the next couple of days, provided he 'behaves himself' as promised.

In lieu of the coffee he's craving, he settles on tea; mostly because it's the middle of the night and he'd promised O.B. to minimize the caffeine intake until they're sure the stimulant doesn't exacerbate his condition. It kind of tastes like grass, but it's not horrible once he dumps a bunch of honey into it. He carefully rinses the spoon and puts it in the automatic dishwasher, then returns to the living room with his prize.

However.

He may not have been a hunter for centuries now, but he still has the observational and self-protective instincts that come along with that intense field training.

And there's nothing in this room that should be throwing a shadow that has horns.

-FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER-

"C'mon," he coaxes for the tenth time, trying to make sure he looks way calmer than he feels. (It's not working.) The tea has long since been discarded haphazardly on the nearest coaster. "I'm gonna need a little more than a shadow puppet, if you can manage that."

It's so quiet, he can hear the sink faucet dripping in the kitchen. One, two, three, four. Five, six –

With zero warning, a green-tinged apparition appears two inches in front of his nose.

The jumpscare has him backpedaling with a startled yelp, flailing to keep his balance when the afghan curls around his ankles like a cable-knitted snake. "Holy shit!"

To be fair, the ghostly doppelganger looks equally startled. It peers curiously at the back of its hands, and makes a sort of bemused hmph.

"Loki?"

The apparition's head jerks up suddenly. "Wait, can you see me?"

"Yes!"

"And hear me?"

"Also yes!" That response, at least, sounds slightly less hysterical. "What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" Loki snaps back, and the greenish haze surrounding the holographic figure flares up briefly, then fades. "I look away from your branch for three minutes and when I return, I found you had completely vanished into the multiverse!"

Mobius blinks. "What?"

"I've had no idea if you were even alive, Mobius! I assumed you returned to the TVA, since there was no sign of you anywhere else, but I had no way of verifying that, now did I! Do you have any idea how long it's been?"

"Wait, were you stalking me while I lived down here?"

Loki's eyes roll so hard it's almost audible. "You carry a Tempad at all times containing your precise coordinates in both space and time, along with comprehensive travel history and arguably invasive medical information. Do tell, which of the two can be accurately categorized as stalking."

"It's stalking if the person being watched doesn't have any idea they're being watched." Mobius gestures vaguely all around him. "So the answer you're looking for is yes, Mobius, I was stalking you!"

"Yes, Mobius, I was stalking you, because I had no power to do anything else and I –" The ghostly figure looks so distraught, it's horrible. "I'm sorry."

"Ah, geez." Mobius takes two quick steps forward. "You've got nothing to apologize for, okay?"

The apparition gives one despondent head-shake as Mobius reaches out, and reaches through, the image's holographic arm.

"Definitely illusion, then," Mobius muses, taking a step back to look closer.

"Yes." Loki looks back at him for a moment, steady. "And I don't know how long I can sustain even this paltry representation. It requires more concentration than one would assume, to maintain a dual presence to the extent required for full visibility. And I am somewhat out of practice with the art. I've not even attempted a more tangible projection."

"Hmm." Mobius does a quick inspecting amble around the figure, which seems to amuse Loki greatly, and ends up back in front. "But with enough practice, you think that could change?"

"Of course. I am a god, after all. With all the power of Time itself at my fingertips." But there's something inestimably sad in the words. Something very old, and very tired.

Still. As much as Mobius wishes otherwise, they probably don't have time right now for anything but a prioritized data transfer. And if either of them wants that to ever change, they have to make the most of these precious minutes. Someone has to keep hold of the big picture, no matter how difficult that picture is to hold.

He moves back to the couch, beckoning for the specter to follow. After a moment of hesitation, it does, and perches awkwardly in the upholstered chair.

"How long has it been," is Mobius' first question.

Loki clears his throat, and looks down at the rug for a moment.

"I already know it's been a whole lot longer for you than it has for me, or anyone at the TVA," Mobius says quietly. "But I need to know how much longer."

"Why."

Mobius nods toward the thick file folder sitting on the end table. "Because it's a variable I don't have."

"I don't follow you."

"Humor me, and I'll try to explain. How long?"

"I don't know, Mobius."

"You don't know, or you stopped counting?"

Loki looks away from him, and for a second the image flickers in and out like a glitched hologram. He appears to be deep in concentration for a moment, and then finally returns to relative solidity.

"The latter," he finally admits, and there's the weight of all the worlds in all the universes behind it.

Mobius leans forward, wishing that he could at least offer some kind of physical reassurance. But he can't.

Not this time around, at least.

"Stopped counting after how many?" he asks softly.

"Two thousand."

"Days?"

"Years."

"Good lord." Mobius drags his hands down his face, because that's even worse than he'd anticipated. "Loki…"

"It's all right!" The figure reaches out, and then seems to remember it's only illusory. But even so, its tone is relatively calm, even cheerful. "My lifespan is extended, remember. When we met I had already lived over a thousand years by your human standards. Time doesn't have the same connotation for me. Really."

Mobius looks up at him through blurred vision. "Are you trying to convince me, or yourself? Because you're sure not convincing me."

Loki seems to shrink into himself a little.

"Okay, second question – you say you're out of practice. So at some point you were practicing the whole illusion casting thing, and you stopped?"

"Are you seriously performing a routine temporal interrogation right now?"

"Yes," he replies, unbothered. "Don't tell me the All-Seeing God of Time has gotten too full of himself to bestow the gracious gift of knowledge on a poor mortal?"

Loki glares at him, but finally, grudgingly, answers. "It is illusion projection, and yes, I was. For quite some time, after you…decided to move on."

Oh.

"Because I left without telling you?"

"Because for all I knew, there had been a coup in the TVA, and you'd just stepped back into a war zone, or worse. I can't see the TVA, Mobius! You went to the one place I couldn't follow."

"I know."

"I tried so hard," Loki murmurs, and it's heartbreakingly small. "I tried."

"I know that, too," he says gently. "And if it helps, you did manage to project some kind of illusion, I think. About two dozen times over a thirty-cycle period, in the TVA."

"You saw me?"

"We saw something. Thought you were just haunting the halls for a while. But O.B. eventually had to patch the weak spots in the time-lock, which is how you managed to get through to begin with, we think. There hasn't been a sighting since then."

"So he is all right?" Loki asks, looking relieved. "I've seen nearly everyone else on the timelines here and there, but not him."

"Oh yeah, he's doing great. He actually thought your appearances were just residual phantasms from looping so many thousands of times that last day, particularly since the images were concentrated around R&A –"

"Wait, you know about the looping?"

"We know it happened, and roughly how long it lasted," Mobius says. "No real idea what you were actually doing for four-hundred-odd years, though. I really want to hear that story when we have more time. Hey, what's wrong?" He leans forward, and out of reflex reaches for the apparition's arm, only to remember just barely too late that he can't make contact.

"I just." An unsteady inhale. "Assumed you had no context for my actions. That you most likely thought I was so eager to prove my path was my own, that I would leave everything else behind. Leave all of you behind, because I was seizing the opportunity for a throne."

"Aw, hey. I know you better than that."

"Do you, really?" The words are genuine, and almost melancholy. "I remain unsure if even I fully understand my own motivations."

Mobius puts a hand on the arm of the chair, in lieu of being able to do anything else. "I understand that you went through hell and back, thousands of times, just to save us. And you got nothing out of it in return except the ability to do some fancy lightshows, and an eternity of loneliness. Sounds like a bad deal to me."

Loki barely smiles.

"You saved the world, Loki," he adds softly. "All nine realms, all infinitely scaling branches. For all time."

It's the always which lies unspoken there, that truly terrifies them both.

"Anyway. I do wish you'd told us about the looping, instead of us having to piece it together afterwards."

"There wasn't time, Mobius, I swear."

"All that power, and you couldn't just pause everything for thirty seconds? To explain, or at least say goodbye?"

"I didn't dare." The words are almost inaudible.

"What do you mean?"

"I could not bring myself to do either, Mobius."

"Why?"

Loki looks up at him. "Because I would never have been able to walk away from you. Because you would have told me that we would find another way, when I knew there was none remaining. You would have given me permission to be selfish, told me that I had the right to think of myself, when the only solution was to sacrifice that very right."

Mobius frowns. "I guess I would have," he admits finally. "But you don't know that."

"I do know that. Time loop, remember?"

"…Time loop, do not remember," he says, and grins when Loki snorts appreciatively.

"A fair point. But I assure you, any delay would have been fatal. I discovered that more than once."

"I just – I wish we'd been able to help, Loki. All those loops, all those years. And we ended up useless to you."

"No," Loki's illusion responds, with unusual earnestness. "Never useless, I assure you."

"Sure seems like it."

"Only because you have no memory of it," Loki replies quietly. "There were many times you were the only reason I did not completely break down on the spot, or abandon future attempts in utter despair. This I promise."

That's something, he supposes.

Loki shakes his head, pensive. "You seem to have a rather strange affinity for repeatedly finding me at my lowest, and telling me I do not have to remain there. It is quite remarkable."

Mobius shifts uncomfortably in his seat. "I dunno about that."

"I do. Mobius, you were the first person to ever tell me I did not have to play the part that had been scripted for me before birth. That I could rewrite that ill-fated story, if I truly did not wish to be the villain of it."

"And look at you now," Mobius whispers.

"Indeed. You believed in me when there was no sensible reason to do so, and insisted that others do the same. And you are the only one who ever has done this, so unconditionally."

"Belief isn't always enough."

"It is for me." A brief chuckle. "Faith is all that is required to sustain a god, after all."

"That, I did know." Mobius half-smiles at the suspicious look he receives. "Let's just say: with the cat away, the mice've been playing. I've got a lot to tell you about. I've been busy."

"Clearly." Loki frowns, and glances around the room, eyes lingering on the alien objects decorating the shelves, the layer of dust on the sound system, the pile of folders and books on the coffee table. "How long has it been for you?"

"I was down here for about 14 months, then after that…I think it's been almost two years, so. Three years, give or take a few days. Feels like a lot longer, but definitely not centuries," he adds quietly. "And I'm sorry I didn't realize how it'd look for me to abandon ship here, so to speak."

"I thought that you'd found a life here. That you were happy here."

"Loki." His voice is gentle. "If you really were watching me. Is that what you think happiness looks like?"

"You know I have no frame of reference for such things," Loki whispers.

"I do know, and I hate that. I just…I had more important things to do, than stick around here watching time pass."

"More important than taking your life back? I did this for you! For all of you," Loki adds, and the hazy apparition wavers slightly. "I rewrote history itself so that you would be able to live, Mobius. To take back what was stolen from you."

Mobius can't help it, and if he never gets a chance like this again, he has to do what he can now. He reaches up, and cups a hand around the apparition's pale cheek, despite the fact that it can't be perceived. An illusion of his own making, so to speak.

"No. You did it so that we had a choice, Loki." His lips turn up in a small smile. "You just can't wrap that big brain around the idea that someone's first choice might be you."

Great, he's probably the first person in all of multiversal history to make a Loki variant cry in public. One single, silent moment of shared pain and loss. The ghostly hand that comes up to rest unsteadily over his for a moment has no physical sensation, but it'll have to be enough.

For now.

But then the figure wavers visibly, and Loki's features twist in either panic or divided concentration.

"Whoa, hey. We're just getting started, don't flick out on me just yet."

"I don't – I can't hold it, Mobius. I'm being pulled back."

"Okay, okay," he soothes. "Just listen quick, then. I need you to do something for me."

"Name it."

"I need information about where you are, Loki." The image fades out for a second, and then returns, but hazier. "Any variable you can measure, I need it. Atmospheric conditions, physical and temporal coordinates, radiation levels, time-passage parameters, entropy rates. All of it. Find a way to get that information to me, if you can." Another flicker. "Did you get that? It's important."

"I did," Loki responds, though he seems to be only half-attentive now, as if he's actively fighting something else in concentration. "Though I don't…I don't understand this intensity, Mobius."

"You will," he responds, with a strained smile. "And –"

The image abruptly winks out, leaving the room back in soft, lamplit contrast. It's clear after a few seconds, and then a few very, very long minutes, that it isn't going to return any time soon.

"You will," he finally repeats, a fervent vow to fading shadows. "Whatever it takes."

Across the room, the Tessaract half-hidden behind a stack of books pulsates a little brighter, just for a moment, and then subsides to a steady blue glow.

See you in Part III, and thank you for reading!