DISCLAIMER: I claim no ownership of Marvel's Loki or affiliated branding (sadly).
SUMMARY: Three hundred and fifty eight TVA cycles after Loki's unexplained disappearance into the Void with the timelines in tow, the universe begins to collapse. Metaphysical horror. A fix-it (of sorts).
NOTES: See end.
Chapter Nine: Mental breakdown... oh wait
"So… not great?"
Mobius collapses into the chair, burying his head in his hands. His fingers find his hair and grip tightly onto the strands, drawing a prickling of pain. It's grounding. "No." He straightens. "Not great." He fumbles with the laces of his shoes, left untied in his haste to be rid of the suit and get out of the drop room, winding them a few times before it works, still shaky from the unsync. Or maybe the findings of the post-unsync.
"It didn't…" O.B. appears to attempt some tact, but quickly surrenders to efficiency. "It didn't look fixable. Not on my end."
"It definitely didn't look fixable to me either," Mobius mumbles. He brushes a hand over his eyes again. The ghostly image of Loki, pinned to the throne with the timelines embedded deep into his body – his throat and his jaw and his face – completely unresponsive, a cosmic figure rendered to a lifeless relic on some stretch of rock… that memory is going to stay branded into his eyelids for a long while.
Of course, Loki himself is stood on the other side of the room, at least in some illusionary manner. Mobius finds himself staring for too long, reassuring the terrified parts of his mind.
Something in the relentless scrutiny must betray his unease, because Loki wanders absently across the stretch of space to stand near, his presence a comforting line of colour in his peripheral vision. The rest of the team has scattered themselves about the room. Even Sylvie has turned up, sat on a counter with her head tilted to one side, listening intently.
"Okay," B-15 whispers, when nobody says anything for an uncomfortable stretch, "what now?"
O.B., for once, looks at a loss. "I… I don't know."
"O.B.," Loki says, steadfast, but with a gentle padding to the end of his words, "what options do we have?"
Persuaded by the not-so-concealed weight of that consent, O.B. exhales. "The – the right answer is for us to swap our focus to the entanglement extraction, to effectively… well, draw you out of the universe to break the ouroboros."
Loki sees Mobius open his mouth to throw out an automatic rejection and raises a hand to silence him, murmuring, "Mobius." Proven effective, he nods O.B. onwards.
"It would kill you. But it would also remove you from the equation, so stop the universe disintegrating, and we can just slot the power source in."
"That seems as though it might be the most successful option, at current."
"No," Mobius cuts in, ignoring another attempt at quietening him, "we can't just give in now, not so quick."
"Mobius –"
"What are the other ideas?" he presses, taking a step towards O.B. as if he can force a better option into existence.
"We don't have any. All of what we tried didn't help, and what little we have left to attempt won't work now. It probably wouldn't have worked anyways."
"So we've got to figure some new stuff out. Is there no way to work this in our favour? Use the full absorption to make it easier?"
O.B.'s face is not one of faith. "I can try, but now it really does feel like we're prolonging the inexorable. And we don't have that time, Mobius, not weighed against how many branches are dying."
"So what? We just give up?"
No answer. Everyone in the room has elected to either avoid eye contact, or stare at him with an infuriating mix of commiseration and sympathy. He exhales in one long breath and turns to the side, away from the group, resting a hand on his forehead to cool the mounting pressure of a headache.
"Mobius," comes B-15's voice, wet with sorrow, "why don't we go for a walk?" It grows louder as she approaches, resting a gentle hand on his elbow. "This way."
He sighs, but doesn't fight particularly hard. She tugs him firmly, grip soft enough that he could break away if he truly tried, but strong enough that he doesn't think he wants to.
It would be really nice to let someone else hold him together for a while.
Nobody else follows.
"Here we go," she says, having allowed him to make the journey in a haze of deep-set acrimony, breaking it only upon reaching the Automat. "I thought we probably weren't going to get anywhere in there, so it felt cruel to make you stay," she adds, by way of explanation.
Mobius, placing his hands in his pockets, gives a single nod, swallowing. "Yeah. It was getting a little hard to think." He raises his head. A little humour returns at the state of the room – stark and empty and cold. "You want anything? It's on me."
B-15's lips curve into a smile, the offer completely arbitrary given the meal tokens aren't in circulation anymore. "How kind of you, Agent. I'll have whatever you're having."
They end up with two slices of apple pie, the lattice perfectly structured, probably down to a mathematical function, and the pastry flawless. That's one thing about the meals here. Not got a measure of heart. Still, the food does wonders for settling his churning stomach, although thinking about Loki threatens to backtrack several large steps on that front.
B-15, despite being the one to initiate the getaway, really is the only person he thinks he can face talking to right now. She's not sat across the table, not in the way Loki would: she's drawn her chair around the edge so she can be closer, not as direct in her scrutiny.
"Is there a reason you didn't go back to your old name?" he asks, when he's finished his pie and she's picking at the final bits of hers. At her intrigue, he continues, "You're still B-15, even though most other folk use their old one or picked something new. Unless I missed a memo and I've been calling you the wrong thing this whole time."
She laughs, "Yeah, don't worry. Still B-15." She pierces a piece of pastry with her fork and it crumbles. "I didn't want to take the old name. The old me… she still feels like a different person who's living in my head. Felt like stealing. As for a new one, there's just… not enough time. Too much choice."
He hums in thought. "It was easier for me. Mobius is normal. Kinda."
"Maybe when this is all over I'll give it some more thought. Until then?" She shrugs. "B-15 is who I am."
Mobius gives a small smile.
And then he thinks about how different it will be when this is all over.
And what that might entail.
And how soon it might be.
"Oh god." He rests his elbows on his knees, and cradles his head in his hands. It all hits at once, far fiercer than in the Observation Room.
"Yeah," B-15 replies, her voice sounding about as close to shattering as he feels. It brings less of a clinical comfort, and more of a realisation that they're both in here with the same dilemma, which ends up being far more grounding than any sympathy could be.
He takes a deep breath. Then another. "What the hell do I do?"
"Do you want my advice as a colleague or as a friend?" she asks, her voice thick. When he looks up, the light catches her eyes in such a way to highlight the sheen of tears, blinked back even as her words tremble, "because those are two very different answers."
"I don't know." He closes his eyes. "I just can't do it. I can't pick the right option here. I know which it is, but I can't… I don't know how to –"
"I know," she replies, "but you have to learn to. The team won't do it without your permission; they care about you too much. Both of you."
"Loki's so set on it. I think he has been for ages now, since it started looking like this wasn't going to work, but I'm not – I can't just give up. I can't."
She inhales sharply, pressing her lips together. Once a semblance of composure has returned, her voice remains a soft whisper. "Mobius, I know you care about him. I know. For what it's worth, my vote is on holding out for a little longer too."
This surprises him. More than. He studies her across the table, inviting elaboration.
"You're right," she continues, "we do need some time to try a couple of new things. But I also think… I think we need to pick a deadline. One we can't push back."
"How can you justify that? Wasting time?" Mobius asks, and it's anything but accusative. A desperate stab at pulling his own justification from the mess of emotion.
Her voice breaks. "Because I like him. He's my friend. And I really don't want to have to do… this." A pause. "It's scarily easy to rationalise when the most of the death we see is numbers on a screen."
"Yeah," he breathes. "It's freaking me out."
He lowers his head again, shutting his eyes and clenching his hand into a fist. He digs his nails into his palm.
B-15 reaches across the table and pulls his fingers until they unfurl to sit flat on the surface, resting her hand over his own. The pressure is warming, and centering. He shoots her a grateful smile, voice hoarse. "Looks like we got a hell of a trolley problem on our hands."
A fractured laugh. "It does seem like it."
"Turns out this discovery through grief thing really is just a whole load of grief, huh?"
"I marketed it pretty good." A smile softens the beginnings of tears spilling from the corners of her eyes, falling only now the worst has passed. "I did hope it would be easier, when I brought you back. I wouldn't have done it if I knew this is how –"
"No, I'd rather it this way. I wouldn't want to be oblivious, I guess.
She doesn't reply, but her gratitude is evident.
"I know we didn't – we didn't know each other much before this, but you're my best friend, B. First friend, probably. So thank you."
She squeezes his hand. "And thanks for saying it. It's hard to tell where anything stands in this place."
"Yeah. I'm lucky to have you."
She tilts her head, eyes bright with sorrow. "And I'm lucky to have you."
A nod. "Whichever you choose, I'll back you. But promise you'll try to think rationally. Try."
"I will. I promise," Mobius replies.
"And whatever happens, we'll be with you on the other side. We can work through it together. That's my promise."
That's an assurance sorely needed, and though it does little to soften the potential fall, knowing there will be some semblance of cushioning at the bottom is heartening. "Thank you," he says, weakly.
The conversation tails off into silence, but it's a gentle silence. A gentle bubble of calm in the middle of everything.
They stay there for a long time.
The team settles on a linear two weeks.
Two weeks to balance scrambling for a final plan. To try their limited new options. To construct a careful farewell, just in case it's necessary.
At the end of the two weeks they'll activate the extractor: saving the branches, but killing him.
Two weeks.
Loki gleefully refers to it as the 'execution'. Mobius tries not to have a breakdown every time he does. This, for whatever odd reason, only makes him say it more.
"I think he's worried about you." Sylvie sidles up to him as he's skimming through the third book of his unwieldy pile. She's clearly spent some time on a branch – her hair has grown out from the roots, her natural brown mismatched with the darker dye, and she's sipping on an iced beverage from a plastic cup.
"Where the hell have you been?"
"Coping," she says pointedly, indicating the drink, "and doing some branchside research."
"Anything good?" he asks, well assured of the answer.
She shakes her head. "Nothing we didn't know already. Going to head down to O.B. to see if he's got anything else I can help with."
Mobius isn't sure how she integrated into the team quite so covertly. Or when it happened. Or why she let it happen. But he's glad to have her around. "Sounds like a plan."
She raises her eyebrows. "You're doing that thing you always complain about me doing." At his blank look, she twirls her index finger around. "Spinning the conversation away from yourself."
"I'm not spinning anything," he retaliates, "that's just how conversations work. Y'know, moving between topics."
Her expression is distinctly unamused. "Loki's pushing your buttons for a reason."
"Yeah, because he's worried. You said."
"I think he's doing it because you're closing yourself off from him."
"Gee, wonder why I'm doing that," Mobius says, returning his attention to his page.
Sylvie huffs. She reaches out and clasps the book's spine between her fingers, yanking it out of his hands and snapping it shut.
"Hey!"
"I've got your page saved," she says, indicating where her index finger is keeping mark, "so we're going to talk or I'll shut it properly."
Mobius doesn't have the strength to tell her he always memorises his current page number, so the threat is fairly null. He sits back, folding his arms. "Go ahead."
She smirks, then shifts his coffee mug so she can sit on the desk, legs folded neatly. "Loki's pushing your buttons to try to get a reaction."
"When is he not?"
"Well, yes, but now he's doing it to try to get you to actually show any negative emotions in front of him." She runs her hand around the rim of her plastic cup, popping off the lid and setting it beside her. It leaves a ring of condensation on his topmost report. "I think you're freaking him out because you're not freaking out, if that makes sense."
He narrows his eyes. "Since when did you become a behavioural analyst?"
"I'm great at it, right?" Sylvie drawls, raising the cup to her lips and tilting it to finish the dregs, a millimetre of liquid and a wealth of crushed ice. She places it next to the lid, leaving yet another ring on his work, and crunches on the ice as she waves her hand absently. "No, he keeps asking me about you, if you're coping well outside of his company."
"Which I am."
She tilts her head, eyebrows raised and nose scrunched. "Really?"
He sighs. "Well enough."
She shrugs. "Works for me. I just wanted to tell you that I think you're doing the right thing by not having a catastrophic collapse in front of him. Probably better to keep that separate."
"If you're acting as a grief counsellor in this conversation, aren't you meant to tell me to open up? Talk my feelings over with him?"
An exasperated look. "Yeah, and how would that go?" Her voice morphs into a scarily accurate all-American accent, "'Yeah, I'm really sad you're about to die. I'm the one organising it. I'm effectively killing you. See you never.'"
"I don't sound like that," he mumbles, "but please never do it again."
"But you see my point. Not exactly effective closure."
"Well if he does end up not making it, I'll have the rest of time to freak out about that. I'd really rather not do it in front of him beforehand."
"That's the spirit," Sylvie replies, her face spending a brief second on melancholy, before morphing into a satisfied smile. She hops off his desk, placing the book face down on his correct page, and rounds the back of his chair, making for the cubicle exit – evidently content she's received the confirmation she came for.
He smiles. "Thanks for looking out for him."
She freezes and turns back, a hand on her hip. "I am not. This is purely selfish. I'm tired of watching him piss you off for no reason."
He debates various replies of varying honesty, settling on the very truthful and equally dangerous, "Yeah? You're as bad of a liar as he is."
For a moment, it looks as though she might kill him for his trouble. Then the irritation thaws into embarrassment. She turns on her heel, shoving her hands in her pockets as she strides out. "You are so annoying."
Mobius is pretty sure that's true, so he lets it slide. Besides, she left her empty plastic cup on his paperwork, so he's definitely got the moral high ground.
Most of his spare time is spent working on the body-duplicator, because lack of other progressive options makes that one seem as though it's astoundingly productive to attempt.
Not that it's markedly successful.
"Try it again."
Loki is scowling at the pen, rather than him, but the weight of his ire has infected the room with a palpable ice. Despite his obvious reservations, he reaches for it once more, his fingers drifting through the object and out the other side.
"Okay," Mobius sighs, "that didn't work."
"Oh?" Loki grits out. "I didn't realise."
Adding an entry to his notepad, he offers a patient smile. "I know this sucks." The acknowledgement dissolves some of Loki's vexation. "Let's give it another couple of tries and then we'll call it a night."
He fiddles with a dial, re-inputting a variation of the previous code. It takes long enough to work it around the numbers that Loki rests his head on folded arms, dozing off, a few metres away on the worktop.
"Okay," Mobius says softly, when he's finally got the device reset, rousing him. "Try again?"
Blearily, Loki fumbles for the pen with his eyes half-shut, swiping his hand over the surface a few times before he returns to how he was previously. "I'll assume by the lack of contact that it didn't work again."
Mobius, who watched Loki's hand travel through the pen several times over, exhales. "Yeah, no, it didn't work."
"Can I make the entirely self-centred request that we give in on this venture?" His voice is muffled by his arm.
"You got something better for us to do?"
"Not waste time on this when it won't matter in the end. I only suggested it as a comfortability modification, when I thought we'd have a greater period between then and the disconnect."
Mobius tilts his head back, folding his arms as he traces the geometric ceiling patterns with his eyes. "I just want to be doing something. I can't sit here making zero progress. At least this is pretty relaxed, and I can do it together with you."
When he looks back down, Loki has straightened, a seriousness to his expression. "My apologies. I didn't consider your reasoning. By all means, continue."
"I did mean it when I said only a couple more tries, then we can give up," Mobius replies. "Middle ground."
A nod, and a smile. "I do appreciate your insistence to condition me into a Pavlovian fear of common writing implements."
"At least you'll have a reasonable excuse for not finishing reports ever again."
"Oh, I assure you, if I get out of this I will not be doing paperwork. I didn't save the multiverse to be relegated back to administration the moment I return."
"You know what? That's reasonable."
Mobius fumbles with the duplicator, fighting the clumsily-built activation controls. Loki watches him for a while, then gets up and stretches, wandering over to the other side of the room.
The device gives a beep. "Ah-hah," Mobius says. "Make yourself useful and toss me that screwdriver."
Loki, on the correct side of the room to pick up the tool, attempts to follow the request through. Once again the particles don't make contact, the illusion breaking into nothingness around the handle.
"Worth a shot." He clambers to his feet and makes the lap around the room to collect it himself. He returns to the device. "One more try. Then I'm gonna throw this thing into a wall and we're never looking at it again."
"Good plan," Loki agrees. He watches, unblinking, as Mobius works through the motions.
Some time later he gets all the data setup done. For about the fiftieth time, he switches the device to 'set', not expecting anything to come of it.
What he gets it's a loud sizzle, a muffled exclamation as Loki's illusion morphs into something, and about eight different alarms blaring at once. He leaps to his feet, then comes to his senses, and swiftly deactivates the device.
Loki's form returns to humanoid, though the loud screeching of the alerts doesn't cease until Mobius heads to the terminal and manually shuts them off. Loki, face alight with confusion – and no little dry amusement – reads the notifications over his shoulder. "Oh, congratulations, it appears you've set off every carbon monoxide detector in this sector. I didn't even know that was possible, given how often O.B. activates very poorly built generators here."
"It was only a little mistake, stop complaining" Mobius retorts lightly. He returns to his workspace, scanning the device. "I think that actually worked. It's just initialised wrong, didn't swap from the set state for some reason. Give me a sec, I'll try again."
"Be my guest," Loki replies drolly, "though I'd appreciate it if you attempt not to turn me into a poisonous gas."
"Hilarious." He picks up his pen from where he threw it onto his notepad. He chucks it playfully in Loki's direction.
It's at this moment that the device chooses to whirr into life, the small light flipping from amber to green as the command line spews out a scrolling mass of 'active' alerts.
Of course, the pen is halfway through its inevitable airborne arc as Loki's form goes from translucent to solid, no time to sidestep. It hits him squarely in the chest, bouncing off and rolling down the three steps to the Observation Room's centre.
They blink at it.
Loki looks an unflattering picture of both pleasantly surprised and miffed. "I suppose I should say ouch, but that is fairly exceptional progress." He takes the single step to his own workspace – and Mobius can tell, already, by the compress of his shoe on the floor and the faint tap of his heel that this is going to work – and wraps his fingers around the test pen. Instead of brushing through they cling solidly around it. He lifts it skyward, turning it over and over, before flipping it into the air and catching it again. Only once all this has worked does his face break into a smile.
"You can't actually feel anything, can you?"
A responding head shake. "Still an illusion, on my end."
Mobius walks over to him, heartbeat deciding now is the time to be traitorous. He takes a breath, and raises his hand. "Can I?"
A nod, hesitation evident in a hitched inhale, smoothed over.
He carefully cups Loki's jaw with his palm, fingers reaching up to brush his cheekbone. His skin is cold, in the way he always used to be, radiating a surprising amount of life in that dropped temperature. Mobius can feel every muscle, every slight movement, real under his hand – the small tug as Loki smiles, and then the pressure of him tilting his head into the contact.
He exhales. "It works."
"It works," Loki agrees. He lifts his hand and carefully layers it on top of Mobius' own, holding him there, the grip light. Though he can't feel the touch, his face paints the same picture as if the opposite was true, a fusion of elation and longing.
Mobius allows a breathless laugh to escape. His other hand wanders to a stray curly falling over his brow, brushing it behind his ear, revelling in the way it follows the movement through, tucked back with the rest.
It takes a great deal of willpower to step back. "What if you change? Does it –"
Before he even finishes, Loki shifts, particles dissolving and knitting into the cloak and horns, heavy upon his shoulders. He raises his arms in invitation.
Mobius reaches out and tentatively grips the green fabric, finding it just as unyielding under his fingers, lifting it and then letting it fall. "Wow. It really does work."
Loki, transforming back, reaches out a shaky arm. He grips Mobius' elbow firmly, a soundless laugh when the fabric scrunches under his touch.
A clatter from the entrance. Both of them spin to face the doorway, where an astonished O.B. is staring, open-mouthed, at the hand on his jacket. A scattering of folders on the floor suggests he dropped some in his surprise, clinging on to the remaining ones.
"Oh. Hello," Loki says, giving a short wave.
O.B. continues to gape at him, knuckles white around the few undropped files, as if he's grown a second head. Which, Mobius supposes, isn't entirely untrue. "What… what?"
Loki, a glint in his eye, moves his hand from Mobius' elbow up to rest on his shoulder, just to fan the fire.
O.B.'s incredulity visibly grows, their physical connection impossible to chalk up to a trick of the light now that Loki's hand is heavy on the edge of Mobius' jacket collar. "You're not actually here, are you?" he asks, although it's posed less like a question and more like an unwavering certainty that no, he cannot really be here.
"I'm afraid not," Loki replies. "If I were, I fear I would not waste my time in this room. I've grown rather bored of it."
O.B. turns to Mobius instead, raised eyebrows inviting explanation, displaying far less anger than upon his previous discovery of a secret undertaking. "Another side project?"
He nods. "Molecule emulator."
"Oh, that's fascinating! I didn't think of combining the fields like that." O.B. gives Loki a prod, then circles him. He stands still, unusually tolerant of the dissection. "It actually maps the illusion?"
"Uh-huh. Again, Casey did about eighty percent. I was just there for the Loki-based magic consultation."
"Is it recreating in real time?"
Loki looks to Mobius, who waves a permissive hand. As before, he shifts into the horns, and then into a set of armour reminiscent of Asgard, the gold plating shimmering atop of leather, before he returns into the TVA shirt.
O.B. gives an approving look. "What about physiologically?"
Loki morphs into a feminine-presenting form, facial features shifting ever so slightly, hair falling below her shoulders. She spins, and then transforms into a snake, curling on the ground between them.
"That's insanely cool," O.B. says, hushed, as Loki returns to his original appearance.
Mobius hums in agreement. "Seems pointless now, but I started it a while back, would've been silly not to try to finish."
"Pointless?" If anything, O.B. sounds more incredulous about this description than every other revelation uncovered in the discussion. "Mobius, this is the opposite of pointless!"
"Woah," he says, as O.B. rushes over to the nearest monitor, "the enthusiasm is lovely, but a little unwarranted, so unless you're seeing something fancy about this that we missed then –"
O.B. stops typing, looking up at them. "Did neither of you think, given the one issue we're having with the entanglement extraction is the lack of a body, that this technology might be a tiny bit useful?"
Mobius stares at him. Loki does the same.
He raises a hand to his forehead, taking a rare moment to look every bit the frazzled science coordinator he should be given the circumstances. "That's another chunk of cycles lost to bad project documentation. Remind me to pester the Council for some teamwork management sessions when this is over."
The statement sounds so unlike O.B., who much prefers to veer towards frantic individualism than structured development, that Mobius shakes off some of the shock. "I didn't… I didn't think of how it might link to anything bigger."
"The whole issue with my extractor is that we no longer have a body to sync it to. That was the entire reason this thing was going to kill you, because I was going to have to draw you into the void," he says, looking at Loki. "But now –" he gestures at the very solid person in front of him "– a body, plus a functioning extractor –" he indicates the palm-sized device in his hand, a metal disc flashing between colours, "– plus a power source."
"Oh." His heart is making a slow acceleration from steady to uncomfortably nervous, seeming to skip every other beat. He inhales shakily. "What does that… what are you –"
Loki asks the question for him, the line in between his eyebrows denoting a heavy worry, the widening of his eyes speaking more to a faint, tentative hope, far too quick to trust. "O.B., you think we can use this?"
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure! I'd have to iron it all out; I figure the finer details might take a few cycles, but I'm a hundred percent confident in the extractor, so we just have to hope the emulator holds up."
"It will," Loki says, voice so full of unwavering faith that Mobius' fast-beating heart almost stutters to a standstill. "It will hold."
Mobius reaches out to grip the countertop, fingers going white as he clutches it to steady himself, lowering his head and closing his eyes. He inhales. Exhales. Inhales again. Carefully slow.
"Mobius," Loki whispers, and he sounds far, far too optimistic.
"Don't," he breathes. "Don't let me get my hopes up. Please."
A short laugh, so light and full of relief – relief that they finally have something – that the joy leaks through the shield Mobius has hastily thrown up to protect the part of him that is terrified of believing in anything better any more. "Mobius," he says again, and this time there's reverence to rival worship, breaking through the wall entirely.
Maybe this will actually work.
He opens his eyes. "Okay." A small smile. "Okay. O.B., do what you need to do.
O.B., teetering on the tips of his toes as though waiting for permission to proceed, grins, proceeding immediately towards the monitor he'd abandoned. "I'll send out a message. Casey can smooth over any technical issues, if you say he already knows the device. Then we can actually test this out!"
Mobius raises a hand, saying, "What happens if this doesn't work? If something goes wrong?"
"He'll just die," O.B. says cheerily, "and given that was our plan anyways, that's really not too bad of a risk assessment."
Mobius puts on an equally cheerful, if far more sarcastic, smile. "Great."
"If we time it right, we can do it the same cycle we'd planned, and he'll either die or get out fine. Whichever way – I think we'll be saving the multiverse." He pulls out his TemPad, frantically clicking a message onto the screen.
Mobius raises a hand to his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. He wanders away from the two of them – a hurried, excited exchange taking place – and heads to the windows. He leans on the edge of the workspace, looking out to the void beyond.
If anything, he feels more terrified, his heart in his throat and his limbs oddly weightless – as though disconnected. He'd been so sure, despite all that falsified push to keep going, that nothing would come of their further efforts. It had been a certainty in the centre of his mind – that Loki was going to die – surrounded by a bubble of bravado, of unrelenting perseverance that he never really believed in.
And now there is a real, tangible chance to believe in. To trust.
It's petrifying.
A cold hand encircles his own. He startles.
Loki, snuck up beside him, unnoticed through the daze of fear, intertwines their fingers. He squeezes, the pressure real, grounding.
Mobius scans his face, making eye contact for a brief second before he grasps his hand back, just as tightly.
Maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't.
They have to try.
A/N: This chapter tried to kill me multiple times over. Feel free to review if you enjoyed :D
