Was in my plans for a Fluffbruary prompt and veered into straight-up H/C instead. Oh well. Enjoy, if you're so inclined.
"We need to find Sylvie."
His mind has been racing for what feels like hours now, pinging from one horrible event to the next in an almost nauseatingly fast reverberation. Back and forth, up and down, inside and out. As if his brain were that which is time-slipping, not his body. Has it only been a day? Does Time pass the same in the Void? Has it been weeks, months, years? Seconds?
Why had Sylvie been there, in that elevator of all places? Is she even now plotting to bring the TVA down from within? Did she betray not only Loki, but Mobius as well, in that she never intended to allow the TVA to continue? That future TVA had clearly been evacuating from some impending catastrophe, had she finally succeeded in setting that plan in motion? Why did she appear to be looking for Loki? And who had pruned him? For what purpose? Why had he time-slipped to the future in that one final instance, instead of the past? What does it mean?
Mobius's vaguely inquiring noise is muffled by the protective helmet, as he finally sits up and fumbles for the latches of it with clumsy hands.
Norns, Mobius.
"I was late," Loki snarls, as he fairly tears the helmet off and begins angrily fumbling at the glove-releases. Something snaps sharply under his fingers, but he ignores it. Breaking things is strangely therapeutic, and he never wants to see this horrid piece of insufficient temporal armor again.
Mobius blinks a couple of times against the return of non-tape-obstructed vision, takes a deep breath of non-recycled air, and then frowns at Loki as his words register. "Huh?"
He tosses the second glove to the side and begins tugging at the chest fastenings of the suit. It is almost completely shredded away in places, indication it was never intended to be used in such dangerous conditions and clearly cannot be used again without extensive repairs.
"I was late, Mobius. Several minutes too late. I don't even know who pruned me when they did. So what the Hel were you still doing out there on that gangway when I was pulled from the timelines?"
"I was on my way in," Mobius protests, as he shrugs out of the main part of the suit and scrambles unsteadily to his feet with Loki's assistance.
"On your way in?!" Loki gestures toward the heavy, shielded door that they had barely barreled through a few moments ago. "You should have been well inside! You would never have cleared the gap in time! What were you thinking?"
"I dunno, but I'd like to not be thinking about it right now." Mobius' voice is unusually shaky, and his hand still hasn't left Loki's arm, clamped on like he thinks he can physically prevent another time-slipping incident if he just tries hard enough. "Anyway, what happened? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine!"
In truth, Loki is feeling rather ill, and not just from mental strain. Time-slipping might be bearable, if excruciatingly painful, at the time the phenomenon is occurring, but the aftermath seems to be almost as agonizing. It is as if every cell in his body is still attempting to regenerate after being violently torn apart, which might actually be what is happening. Several different sets of memories are warring for dominance in his head, and it would seem his physiology might also still be attempting to make sense of the physical contradictions. No doubt, these are uncharted waters for the TVA and its well-ordered rules.
And all that, after he'd been ingloriously trounced by Sylvie in a magical sword-fight, pruned again (for the second time in as many days), flung back to a much harsher, clearly less merciful TVA under the direct regime of He Who Remains, thinking he'd lost this ridiculous human for a second time…
No, he is very much not all right.
But Mobius' face is nearly as white as his shirt, and the hand still clutching Loki's forearm is icy cold, and trembling noticeably now.
"Sit down," Loki directs him, in a gentler tone, and it's alarming how he gets a jerky nod and immediate compliance. He turns to pound on the sealed door, shouting through it to get Ouroboros' attention.
A scratchy squawk sounds from a hidden speaker, somewhere overhead. "You guys okay? The decontamination process still has another minute to go!"
Interesting. He had not even noticed any such process happening. Some kind of futuristic technology able to do the job without something so crude as a decon shower, apparently. He glances back at Mobius, who is now sitting with his legs drawn up, head tilted back against the cold wall and eyes closed, clearly focused on some kind of breathing exercise.
Loki drops to one knee beside him. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah," is the immediate response, which is somewhat reassuring. Mobius exhales and opens his eyes. "Yeah, I think so. Just a little shaky. Adrenaline's a hell of a drug."
No doubt. Loki has seen this before, on Asgard. It is not uncommon even among the bravest of warriors, to stand steady as a rock for the duration of the battle, and then have such a reaction only once the crisis is well past.
And this one human is as courageous as any Asgardian warrior, even if his weapon of choice is a defensive one.
To lose absolutely everything one has ever known in the space of mere hours, to be betrayed by both friend and co-worker, to face execution and wake up to find even that, too, had been a lie – to endure all this, and still come out the other side unshaken, unyielding, and willing to do it all again?
It is remarkable.
Even if Time does not move the same way in the TVA, the fact remains that all of this has happened in a matter of days, at most. More likely, mere hours. It is a miracle of the gods and the aforementioned adrenaline that both of them are still standing, metaphorically speaking. The physical has yet to be determined.
"And hey," Mobius adds, and waggles both hands briefly in the air. "Skin still here, and everything!"
He is obviously trying to appear completely unaffected, and is just as obviously not succeeding.
They are, neither of them, unaffected.
But first things first. There is a clank near the flight of steps, some kind of seal breaking, and a snakelike hiss of hydraulics as the door finally opens.
The man known as Ouroboros hurries inside, and beams at the sight of them. "Mobius! I thought for sure you weren't going to make it. I'm glad to see you in one piece!" he exclaims.
"Uh." Mobius swallows, a bit thickly. "Yeah, everything worked out fine, O.B. This suit's probably a goner, though."
"Oh, yeah, I was expecting that." O.B. picks up the helmet and examines it briefly. "Glad it worked. And I got all kinds of readings that'll help with the next iteration!"
"Yes, good. O.B.," Loki interjects, when another ramble looks like it's about to commence. "I believe we both might be in need of medical attention. Is there such a facility in this part of the TVA?"
"I do not need medical attention, geez."
"Then stand up, unaided," Loki says, with a pointed look. At the baleful glare he receives from the floor, he shrugs. "I thought as much."
"I just need a power nap, that's all." Mobius pointedly ignores Loki's proffered hand, using the wall instead to lever himself back heavily to his feet. "You're still bleeding, though. And you don't look any better than I feel."
"It is a scratch, only," Loki says dismissively, pinching the bridge of his nose. "But yes, that is why I said both of us. O.B.? Medical?"
"Oh yeah! There's a medical wing. But I dunno when the last time was it was used." O.B. frowns, face scrunched slightly in thought. "Honestly, I can't remember anyone ever needing it, other than the occasional case of time-travel sickness or like, a field op going bad. See, there was that time when –"
"O.B."
Something in Mobius' strained voice seems to finally register, and Ouroboros clears his throat sheepishly. "Right. Anyway, yeah. Thirty-third floor, the TSE-008 section. You know where that is?"
Mobius nods, but glances at Loki, who obediently commits the reference to memory as well. Not that he has any idea what it means, since the elevator button labels are as incomprehensible as the alphanumeric designation.
"Thanks." Loki is already halfway up the steps from the gangway entrance, and Mobius is quick to follow. "We'll come back by later to compare notes, after we've patched ourselves up and got some shut-eye."
"Okay! See you soon!"
Despite his frenetic appearance, Loki is waiting for him at the door to the observation room, shuffling back and forth and fairly vibrating in place with nervous energy.
"C'mon," Mobius says with a sigh as he walks by. "Let's get this over with, then you can tell me what that was all about, with Sylvie."
"We need to know what Dox and her army are doing," Loki says, almost absently, as his brain whirs through potential explanations for why Sylvie would have come back to the TVA. "If they are searching for her, we must find her first."
"I dunno if that's actually what they're doing, since it doesn't make much sense logistically," Mobius points out. "There's no reason why Dox would leave the TVA to go look for her on the branches. No matter how long it takes to locate her, if she's on a branch we can just pick the time and place to drop in, from here. Even if Dox does locate her, we could still be an hour ahead of them. It could take ten years on our end, but it wouldn't matter – we'd just go to the branch at a time point before they get there."
That's a fair point. Perhaps there is Time for a small, very small breather. There is still much work to be done, but they do not have to do all of it right now. Mobius about five minutes from an actual breakdwon, and neither of them have processed anything which has happened in the last couple of days, if it's even been that long.
They just need a little Time to breathe, to absorb this new Truth and all it implies about the worlds. Surely the universe, the multiverse, can permit them that much.
The elevator door finally closes behind them. Mobius jabs a sloppy elbow at one of the buttons, and then slumps back against the wall, eyes closed, as the lift begins to move, a trudging mechanical climb up almost forty stories. Loki paces the length of the small elevator car, left to right to left to right to left again, and only stops when his fourth circuit is aborted by Mobius' firm tug on his arm.
"You need to calm down."
"Calm down? Knowing that thousands of variants of Him will be on our doorstep soon enough, and we wholly unprepared for that?"
"It's not gonna happen right away. We'll be prepared."
"You have no idea! And besides that, I saw her. This time I slipped to the future, not the past. And she was there, Mobius. I don't know why."
"Sylvie?"
"Yes. She was here, in the heart of the TVA, as it was being evacuated for some reason. She could be planning to burn this place to the ground even as we speak!"
Mobius finally cracks one eye, and his lips twitch in a sly grin. "Do you even hear yourself?"
"This is not a joke, Mobius!" Oh, that is an almost manic edge to his voice now, which is not at all dignified. Perhaps he should stop talking entirely.
But it is as if a hundred thousand insects are crawling under the skin, buzzing and disorienting and exceedingly unpleasant. His vision keeps clouding up at the edges, and even he is not normally this cold in this ridiculously temperate, middle-of-the-road TVA. It feels as if he has been running relentlessly, unmercifully, for weeks on end.
The thought suddenly broadsides him – what if he'd been pruned in that Past TVA, as he no doubt would have been had he not made his escape when he did? Sylvie would have cut the timelines free, Loki would have ended up in the Void with no way out, and the TVA would never even know what happened in the Citadel. They would be wholly unprepared for what is on its way.
Although that brings up something he hadn't actually considered until now. He turns to Mobius, brows furrowed. "On that subject – I thought you were returning here for the purpose of bringing the organization down. Did Renslayer talk you out of it?"
"No, that was all me. And it was a bad decision to confront her." Mobius sighs, and sways slightly as the elevator jolts a bit. "I thought maybe I could make her see reason, maybe we could work together."
"You are fortunate you did not see the end of her pruning stick," Loki mutters. "Again."
"If she'd wanted to kill me, she sure could have. I'm not good at the hand-to-hand combat stuff." Mobius opens his eyes to continue the conversation. "But to answer your question…yeah, at first I was angry enough to tear the place apart brick by brick. But then the timelines started branching, and B-15 clued me in on what'd happened, and I realized something a whole lot bigger than all of us was about to go down. I'd calmed down by the time I reached Ravonna's office."
"And?"
"And I don't think burning it down's the right thing to do, anymore," Mobius replies quietly. "In a war, there are always casualties. And no one in this place deserves to be collateral damage in a pointless plot for vengeance. They deserve a chance, Loki. We all deserve a chance. Don't we?"
Loki shakes his head, and then runs both hands through his unkempt hair in a gesture of exasperation. "Your inherent goodness will get you killed someday."
"Maybe." A vague shrug. "But until then, we got a lot of work to do, and I'm gonna do it." That sharp gaze flickers over him rapidly. "You're still hurting, aren't you."
"I'm fine." Loki folds his arms across his chest, and hunches back into the corner of the car. "I simply…it simply has been a very long day."
"Understatement of the millenium. Has it really only been a day?"
"I've no idea. How long were you here before I re-appeared?"
Mobius looks up as the elevator dings to herald their imminent arrival and the opening of doors. "I dunno, maybe ten hours? Twelve? It's hard to tell. Not long. How long were you in that Past TVA?"
"Long enough," Loki mutters, and strides past him out of the elevator.
They traverse the corridors in silence, for the most part, footsteps echoing eerily off the walls and polished flooring. There is not a soul to be seen, probably because this wing is rarely used. No need for medical attention in what amounts to a complex temporal terrarium. No one here gets sick, or is injured, or is even overworked. All factors remain perfectly aligned to create a balanced equation, and anyone who might create imbalance is quickly dealt with.
It does not help the general atmosphere that the lights are motion-activated, and so flicker on only when the two of them get close enough (and off again behind them, leaving the path beyond under total darkness in each direction).
"Okay, this is spooky," Mobius mutters, edging a little closer when there is a dull thud and some distant shuffling in a cross-corridor. One too dark to see into.
Loki's brief smile of amusement fades just as quickly, because he is still thinking about that other TVA. One so far in the past it did not appear as if anyone recognized him yet; no variant of him had come across either analyst or archivist desks. How far back had he actually gone? His own variant designation was 1130 – had there really been that many of him, in the years between? And if that was the Past, and Loki had met Mobius there, why did he not remember that, as Ouroboros clearly had after the time-slipping incidents.
"I owe you an apology," Loki ventures at last, as they turn a corner and follow the signs for Infirmary.
"Hm? What for?"
"I took undue amusement at your attempt to bluff your way through pleasantries in that first conversation with O.B.," Loki replies. "In retrospect, it is obvious that your lack of remembrance is due to a memory wipe by He Who Remains, which is no laughing matter."
"Oh. Yeah, I guess so." Mobius frowns. "That'd be why I don't remember ever meeting you in a past TVA."
"Truly, a tragic loss. However did you cope."
Mobius chuckles, and nudges him with an elbow. "Well, I hope past me, at least, wasn't a total jackass to you."
Loki swallows briefly. "He was good at his job," he finally settles on saying, because the competency had been immediately evident. In fact, Loki had barely managed to evade the small army which had somehow been mobilized against him in a matter of seconds, somehow summoned while he'd been distracted with the changes in the TVA setup and the fact that the one person who might possibly be an ally here was very clearly not.
"Hm." Mobius' non-answer is dangerously thoughtful, and Loki has learned the hard way that this human sees everything, even the smallest detail. So to avoid any awkward follow-up questions, Loki hastens to enter the medical wing they seem to have arrived at. The large placard saying "Infirmary" and a faded brown poster warning about the dangers of time-travel sickness would seem to be a giveaway.
The infirmary, as it is so termed, is as deserted as the corridors had been. Granted, it looks somewhat more modern than the rest of the TVA complex, and is painted stark, sterile white instead of the brown and green shades which the rest of the décor seems to favor. A dozen machines and what look like they could be medical droids (all completely shut down) circle the perimeter of the outer ward. There is no entropy within the TVA, so there is not the layer of dust one would expect to see in a long-disused room, but the dearth of life is almost physically palpable, nonetheless.
"Yeesh. So spooky," Mobius repeats, but there is some color returning to his face now that there is a potential task to focus on. He steers Loki past the outer ward and into a smaller room – more a cubicle than anything more luxurious, but it will do. "Okay, sit here a spell and I'll go find a kit for that arm, at least."
"I am perfectly capable of –"
"I got it."
Mobius' firm hand on his shoulder pushes him firmly down to sit on the medical cot. The mattress creaks with disuse, but it at least smells clean, and there is a pathetic little fleece blanket in TVA orange folded neatly at the foot.
"Look," he adds with a sigh, when Loki's second protest mounts, "if I stop moving I start thinking, and my think tank is basically empty. I need to do something, so I don't freak out about all of this."
Loki nods, silent. This is a feeling he understands all too well.
Mobius disappears around a corner, deeper into the ward, and the ghostly silence presses back in, mercilessly cloying. Loki leans back, hands braced on the opposite side of the bed, and then decides his patchwork dignity is not worth the effort of remaining upright.
The mattress is far harder than he would prefer, but he has slept in worse places, and in far less safety. Not that sleep will be quick in coming, right now.
So many, many things could have, and indeed did, go wrong today. Yesterday? It seems a lifetime ago that he last departed this place via pruning stick, that he shared shelter with a variant of himself only to have that variant betray him in a manner he is all too familiar with, that somehow his time-slipping finally landed him in the one place he needed, wanted desperately, to be, only to then prove near-impossible for him to remain there.
He had been prepared to die, with undeniable finality, when the temporal indicator turned green and he was not pruned on schedule. It had never crossed his mind that Mobius might be so foolish as to wait at the end of the gangway, long past the safety margin, and so would never have made it back in the building in time.
He does not blame O.B. for shutting the blast doors. Loki had fully expected them to be closed due to his own error, and it was obvious they'd only been triggered at the last possible second. But to realize that Mobius would have died out there, still waiting far beyond the threshold of safety?
It turns his stomach, an unpleasant reminder that dehydration is likely a factor in the physical symptoms, as is the sudden cutoff of his magic when he re-entered the TVA. Neither really explains the shortness of breath or dizziness, but those are manageable symptoms in the grand scheme of things.
But…he realizes now that it is far too quiet, even for an unoccupied medical ward.
It takes a full ten seconds to savagely shove the fatigue back, to ignore the pain that still fires off in every cell, dragging him down into the thin mattress with seductive promises of rest and comfort. But he has withstood much worse, for far less important reasons, and so he forces himself back to his feet and sets off through the small medical wing. He is hard-pressed to do so without relying on the wall for support, but for the most part stands upright, and is perfectly fine.
Fine, however, is definitely not a word to describe what he finds in what looks like a small waiting room off the primary corridor. This room is painted yet another shade of beige instead of white, and generic photographs of equally generic pastoral landscapes dot the walls in an attempt to muddle the stark monotony.
A small white case with a red symbol on it sits discarded on a small table next to an uncomfortable-looking chair, whose occupant appears to be having a very quiet, very self-contained breakdown.
Face in his hands, elbows braced on his knees, Mobius startles violently when Loki crouches in front of him and hesitantly reaches up to put a hand on his shoulder.
"I need a minute," he finally gasps, muffled in his hands. "I just need a minute."
He needs a lifetime, the one which had been stolen from him without his knowledge; but Loki knows saying that will do no good, nor would offering to return those memories, at this time. Perhaps later, but not now. Not now, mere hours after this human sat calmly in the Void, surrounded by beings known for their treachery, communed with them regarding their grievances against the TVA, apologized for his part in those grievances, and still offered them an escape on his way out. Making the journey back alone, knowing he was re-entering potentially hostile territory in the vain hope of fixing what might just be unfixable.
Kindness, in the midst of betrayal. Order, standing bravely alone in the chaos.
"All those timelines, all those years." Loki can feel a convulsive shudder accompany the broken words. "Centuries, where we thought we were doing the right thing, and we were actually committing genocide. What have we done?"
There is really nothing he can say to that which will mitigate the guilt, or bring any measure of real comfort, and so he remains silent, hoping it will be seen as commiseration rather than mere apathy.
"Would you like me to call someone?" Loki finally asks, hesitant. "B-15?"
"No." A ragged exhale, and Mobius shakes his head, finally emerging from behind his hands. If his eyes are suspiciously red, Loki is certainly not going to comment on it. "No, I just…it's a lot. Hit me real hard all of a sudden, once nobody was looking. That's a little embarrassing."
Eyes soft, Loki tilts his head in tacit acknowledgment. "For what little it is worth…I do understand what it is like, to learn your entire life has been a lie, told to you by someone you should have been able to trust," he says quietly. "Would that I had shown your fortitude in the face of that knowledge. You are far stronger than your folksy demeanor would indicate to one who did not know you well."
A congested snort. "That's a nice way of saying I need to toughen up for what's coming." Mobius tugs absently at his jacket sleeves, almost as if to re-don invisible armor.
"No, that is a nice way of saying you are incredibly dangerous," Loki replies, seriously. "There is nothing so deadly as a good man preparing for war."
"I'm not so sure I'm either of those things." Mobius says quietly. "Or if I even can be."
"Someone once told me I could be anything I wished to be." Loki sits back on his heels for a moment. "And I would not take it kindly if you were to call him a liar."
Mobius' eyes stay on his hands. "Maybe he was."
"Or maybe he had just learnt a monstrous truth, one that could topple empires, crumble entire regimes into chaos. And essentially died moments later for trusting the wrong person. Such things take time to assimilate."
"Time may be something we don't have."
"We have enough to regroup, at least. Come." Loki rises to his feet, and then subtly plants them a little further apart as the room spins in a slow, swooping circuit. "I believe you mentioned something called a power nap."
"We need to fix you up first." Mobius finally accepts a hand up from the creaky chair. "'Cause you're not fooling me. You're about to crash, and crash hard."
"Another reason why I would prefer not to be in this sterile environment once the choice is removed from me entirely," Loki replies. He scoops up the white box and tugs Mobius in the direction of the wing exit. "Where are we in relation to your living quarters?"
"Closer than the Loom is. Thank goodness."
"I would question the intelligence of your architects if that were not the case," Loki mutters, but it is one less thing to worry about, logistically. "Might I appropriate your couch for a few hours?"
"I mean, sure, it's fine with me. But there's plenty of guest quarters, if you want your own now, and they're a lot nicer than my sad little place. I –" They stop as the outer door of the infirmary opens, and B-15 appears in the doorway.
"Well, you both look awful," she says, without preamble.
Mobius gives her a sarcastic little two-fingered salute that makes Loki hide a smile, though he immediately returns his attention to the here and now. "What of Dox, and her associates?"
"We've got a trace going on them, and are still looking for Renslayer. Miss Minutes is still AWOL. Nothing so far on Sylvie, which isn't surprising. O.B. says the Loom is under control for now and the blast doors are holding, so we've bought ourselves a few days at least, unless things keep getting worse."
"They will. The man at the top is dead, and the timelines have been freed. There is no going back to what was, before."
B-15 nods, a curt gesture of acknowledgment without inherent blame. "I was going on that assumption. What happened to you, anyway? Where is Sylvie?"
"I don't know," Loki says wearily. "We fought about the fate of the timelines, about freeing them by killing the man at the top. He Who Remains, who had created the TVA and its systems specifically to maintain one timeline only, the Sacred Timeline, and thereby avert a multiversal war among all of his variants.
"He said he was the most merciful of the lot. I wanted to hear him out, and Sylvie only wanted revenge. But she…distracted me, and then pushed me through a Time Door, into a past version of the TVA. I assume she killed him, then, as the timelines immediately began multiplying through no action of mine."
"Got it. So she's probably on the run again?"
"I don't know. She might be tracking down variants of Him, she certainly seemed eager enough to. She might have just gone to ground, to live whatever life she chooses, free of the TVA. But I…I have no idea." Loki rubs his eyes briefly, because the haze at the edges of his vision is getting worse. The crawling, buzzing feeling under the skin is spreading to an unpleasant ringing in his ears.
"Loki, you okay?" Mobius' voice is worried. "Sit down for a second."
"I'm fine." He shakes his head to clear it, and looks back up at B-15. "I'm fine. I am of course willing to give a more detailed de-brief, but if I might be quite frank, I don't know how much longer I will remain standing." In reality, he has no idea if he will be capable of getting up again, if he does sit.
Deflection is the best option, in such cases.
He gestures in Mobius' direction. "He is not in any better condition."
"Yeah, given what O.B. said about the effects of exposure, along with everything else that's happened, I fully expected you both to be sacked out completely in here," she replies, in a gentler tone. "You look dead on your feet. Go get some rest, we can re-convene tomorrow."
"B, there's too much to do," Mobius interjects, and there are ten lifetimes of weariness in it. "We gotta figure out how to approach this and get the panic under control, tell everyone what happened, figure out what to do if they want to get back to their lives on the timelines…"
"All of which can wait ten hours, or I can handle it," she responds, not unkindly. "Right now, everyone still has a job, and we're having them continue to do that job until we have a clearer plan. There is no mass panic, and there is no weeping and wailing, not yet at least. We've already met with department heads, and they're coming up with a list of questions we'll need to sit down and answer together. It's not going to be easy, but it'll be okay, Mobius."
"You sure?"
"Yes. You're not going to be any good to any of us if you don't at least sit the next few hours out and rest. Chrono-radiation exposure is not something we mess with, around here."
"At least someone has sense in that area," Loki mutters, and dodges the elbow aimed at him.
Oh, that is a tactical error. The rapid movement seems to slide on and never stop, continuing in a dizzying revolution that sends nausea rushing over him like the inexorable flume of a melting glacier.
"Whoa, easy. I gotcha." Strong hands on his shoulders, and suddenly there is what feels like a bench underneath him. His legs are lifted to the end of it, elevated on something soft. He can barely hear the conversation going on above over the ringing in his ears.
"Is he all right?"
"I think so. Just wiped out from the whole mess." Mobius' voice sounds no less exhausted, but it's steady enough now. There's a brief hand at his forehead.
"'M fine," Loki mumbles, swatting ungracefully at him.
A brief chuckle, and then a heavy creak as Mobius sits somewhere nearby. "Also, for the record. Pruning's no joke, let me tell you."
"We were always told it was quick and painless," B-15 says after a tense moment, voice strained. "The most humane way possible to do the job."
"I know," is the subdued response. "Just another lie to add to the pile, I guess. Let's just say…it's not."
"Good god."
"Yeah."
A heavy exhale. "That's something to deal with once we're not all running on empty here. Do you need help getting back to your apartment?"
"I don't think either of us'd make it, at this point. And this place is nice and quiet, we'll just crash somewhere in here for a while, out of the way." Mobius' smile is clear in the next words. "You're a badass, did I ever tell you that?"
"Nope," she replies, though there's more affection than exasperation in the word. "I guess learning the truth's going to change a lot of things around this place."
"Can't wait."