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: This chapter is where the warnings for mild sci-fi-esque body horror come in. Stay safe!
Chapter Five: Reunions (social distancing edition)
"So you're absolutely sure this is gonna work?"
There's a small "hm", from his earpiece. Which is just great. "I'm one hundred percent sure I can unsync you."
Mobius raises his eyebrows, halting in adjusting his glove strap. "So why'd you sound like that, O.B.."
"Because the resyncing is the hard bit. And –" his voice dances between guilt and matter-of-factness "I haven't actually managed to reform any of the inanimate test masses we sent over. But I think that's because their signatures are weaker. So we have to risk it."
Mobius' reply is markedly bitter with foreboding. He kicks his heels into the floor, drawing a clang that echoes around the drop-room, making sure the boots are fastened securely. "Perfect. Wonderful."
"But at least we have time to try you out on a normal timeline first. If you unsync there and the resync doesn't work, I might be able to reform you in a century or so, when our technology catches up."
"And if the timeline dies while I'm unsynced?"
"Oh." Again, that measured composure. "That would be unfortunate."
Mobius really wishes he'd convinced literally anyone else to try this first. But, for reasons that are apparently obvious to every other potential candidate, he seems to be the only suitable choice. And everyone has an 'urgent, pre-planned, rigid scheduling clash' which means they are currently unavailable, hence why it's just him and O.B. for the pilot test of this new suit. Though he's pretty sure everyone saw it marked on the calendar and proceeded to scramble to arrange aforementioned timetable conflicts.
To be fair, B-15 was the only person he thought even vaguely possible to convince, and she laughed him off with a, "he's your god," which presented both a very true and inarguable statement, and also somewhat of an ongoing internal crisis over why that statement is so inarguable.
Problems for another time.
Because the current problem of potentially disconnecting from both time and space is a tad more pressing.
He tightens the velcro around the glove one last time. "'Kay, think I'm ready. Physically ready. Not mentally."
Footsteps ring faintly from above as O.B. moves around the Observation Room. "You can still back out."
"Not a chance," Mobius replies, hoping he sounds majorly more confident than he feels. "If this works, I will personally ensure… I don't know. I'll take you to meet Einstein or something."
"I don't know who that is."
He sighs. Easy to forget that – as an ex-hunter and senior analyst – he's had a hell of a lot more access to the real universe than most people here. "Yeah, don't worry about it. Just hurry up before I actually do back out, because my knees are about to give up on me." Come to think of it, the nerves have spread into an array of physical symptoms, the shaky legs and raised heartbeat the most pronounced. The sickening anticipation of intolerable pain – O.B.'s words – is more than enough to smother any hope for what will happen if this works.
"I'm locked onto the branch. Last chance to back out." O.B., for the first time in a while, sounds worried.
"Hey, I'll be fine," he reassures him, looking up towards the ceiling panels as if he can gauge the level of fear they're dealing with, "I trust you."
"Okay," comes the reply, far quieter than usual. Timid. "So, uh, it's the same mechanism as timeslipping, so the whole thing takes about five seconds. You'll reform branchside. Hopefully."
"Hopefully," Mobius echoes.
"If that works, we can try the full shift out."
The full shift. To Loki.
That's what he keeps in mind as he straightens. "Got it. Go for it."
O.B. gives a half-hearted attempt at a countdown, but tails off as he reaches the single-digits. The nauseating silence hits before the shift even begins.
Then it happens.
Contrary to last time, Mobius doesn't really have the capacity to recognise what it feels like in great detail.
It's mostly just, ow.
But, for a second, he's everywhere in the multiverse, at everytime in the multiverse. Body broken into a myriad of atoms, flung equally across everything that's ever existed.
And then he's nowhere, at no time, out-of-time, beyond time.
Then he's on his knees on a lifeless branch, curled over in pain, body reunited but running through a never-ending cycle of tremors.
"– obius? Mobius?"
Air trapped in his lungs, flickering images of everything run through his head like pictures on a praxinoscope, tossing him about in an otherworldly game of seasickness. He finally manages a weak exhale, short and inaudible. Each fibre in his limbs shakes, molecules straining to break free of their confines. He gives an unbecoming spasm.
"Mobius?" O.B. sounds distraught. "Mobius! Please tell me I haven't killed you –"
Out of nowhere, a different voice. One far more familiar and far more confusing. Far closer. "Why in all of the Nine Realms did you not just use your TemPad?"
Loki.
This is enough to break through the haze of agony. At least partly. "Holy – agh." He attempts to lift his head, leaning on his palm in the grass, but the small shift sends shockwaves through his bones.
Loki's previous mild bemusement gives way to aghast concern, voice urgent above where he's curled back up on the ground. "Are you alright? Mobius?"
He comes into view as Mobius finally manages to push through the torment and raise himself to sit back on his heels. Still as non-tangible as ever, the illusion projection strengthens briefly as Loki reaches out to steady him, though of course he pauses before the contact inevitably fails. "What happened?"
"Don't – god –" he struggles to his feet, an embarrassing noise of pain falling from his lips, "– don't worry, I'm all good. Just… just testing some new tech out."
"If it has you in this state, then I advise you tell Ouroboros not to implement it again," Loki says darkly, face still contorted in distress.
O.B.'s nervous swallow is audible through the comms. "I take it you did live, by the sounds of things."
"Yeah," Mobius replies, "I'm fine. Really… I really did not enjoy that."
"Whatever is so terribly wrong with the TemPad system that you had to appear here like that?" Now the alarm has broken away to a poorly disguised fury, warranted given Loki has no idea what they're trying here. "I assure you, new technology or not, I would rather you did not put yourself in any scenario which makes you look as you did a moment ago."
"Relax, will you? We needed to test it out on a normal branch first." He raises a hand to shield his eyes and glances about them at the rolling hills, a light wind lifting grain dust from the drying yellow plants dotted at ankle height, a dark imprint where he'd fallen from nowhere. "Which clearly worked, so that's good, right O.B.?"
"Absolutely. I'm confident to try the full shift if you're up for it."
The full shift. Drawn inevitably to Loki, Mobius' eyes linger a little too long as he considers this. His answer, decided even at the vaguest possibility, sits as it always would, at the tip of his tongue.
"Now you're looking at me far too strangely for my liking." Loki's eyebrows have drawn together, a furrow forming between them. "What are you planning?"
To O.B., Mobius says, "I say we go for it."
Loki, eyeing him with ever-growing trepidation, takes a step back, then reevaluates and steps forward, shoulders set. "Go for what? What are you doing?"
Mobius settles for giving him a knowing smile, feeling that describing in detail how he's about to potentially permanently unsync from reality may not tempt a joyous reaction. No use either to sow hope of rescue when they're so close – might as well wait for either the good or the bad to hit full-force. "Wait and see."
"Gods, you're so insufferably cryptic." But clearly he's hit the right sort of tone, because his indignation melts to surface-level rather than overly combative. "Fine, do as you wish."
He steps away, giving up the metaphorical floor. Mobius swallows. "I, uh – I need you to let the branch die for this to work. I need to be in an empty timeline."
"You need what? Are you quite out of your mind?"
"The suit protects me, we've been over this literally five times."
"But what possible function does such a venture give? I believe, in your own words mind, you implied it was risky as hell."
Mobius, unfortunately, does remember saying those exact words. And doesn't have a suitable rebuke. He settles for a raised eyebrow. "Do you trust me?"
"Unequivocally," comes the answer, instant. "I trust you to do well by me. Yourself? I have less faith."
"That's rich coming from you," he rebukes, a surprising amount of weight slipping through the cracks for all it's intended lightly.
A succinct upset flashes across Loki's face, so fast it looks like hurt, smoothed over into neutrality as quick as it came. "Regrettably I cannot argue my case on that one. So I relent."
Without another word, he vanishes. Mobius, torn between amusement and remorse, goes to apologise, knowing his words will echo out of time and reach Loki's ears despite.
But now he's not here, he's not around to stop the timeline dying quickly.
And it is definitely dying quickly.
"O.B.? Am I good to just –"
"It's taking a second to load up. You're fine to just stand there."
"Okay," he breathes, an unfortunate shake running through his fingers. It was one thing to anticipate the unsync when it was this strange, unfelt experience, a promise of affliction rather than a memory. Now his mouth is dry, a little voice in his head telling him to back out back out back out. But he'd go through it a million times over if it meant getting there, so however terrified he feels now, he fixes himself on that goal.
Dissolving around him, the branch is giving way to that blinding white. Reality falling apart into threads of green and yellow where the ground had been dusty threads of grass, and a light grey-blue where the sun had been rising on the horizon.
"You ready?" O.B. says, as the last sparkling coloured particles vanish into nothing, and Mobius is left in that unending void.
"As I'll ever be."
He doesn't get a countdown this time.
Instantly, he no longer has a body or a time. What little conscious thought he has beyond the pain is wasted on the enormity of everything he sees.
Five seconds feels like thousands of years and nothing at all.
He lands similarly to last time, an unfortunate thud onto cold rock sending additional pain through his knees.
"Did you make it?"
He regains ability to speak faster than before, and decides to cope with the residual burning agony via a barrage of choked swearing on the ground.
"I'll tick that off as a yes."
"Fucking hell –" he huffs, "– I do not want to do this ever again."
"Noted."
Now there's no imminent call to move, he spends an embarrassing length of time huddled over, gritting his teeth. Once it's dissipated to a dull ache, he raises his head, glancing at where he's been deposited. His heart stops halfway between beats. "Holy," he murmurs. "O.B., I think you did it. I think it worked."
"You're not showing up on any of my scans, so you're definitely not with us anymore. What do you see?"
He staggers to his feet, heart drumming a race against his ribcage. Ahead of him, a vast centrepiece nestled amongst broken rock faces and jagged islands holding strong against the dark nothingness below, is the Tree.
The real Tree.
No manner of preparation could sate how colossal it stands, how infinite, the magnitude reaching beyond cosmic. This close to the heart – only half a kilometre or so away – it looks less like a Tree and more like a universal mass. Which it is.
Above him the branches form a canopy that covers his entire sky, a blazing tangle of green blocking out the nothingness beyond. He spins, and finds that even facing directly away from the trunk, the upper timelines reach well into the horizon, a single line of black visible where the void begins. It must be eighty kilometres at a bare minimum, and probably far, far more than that. Peeking through the gaps in the rock, the timelines delve downwards like roots, less far-flung, arrowed away in equal fervour.
"I don't – I can't really explain it. It's just… wow."
"You're really there?"
He laughs, voice glassy and fractured. "Yeah, I'm really here. And by here I mean I'm a ways off the actual centre. But close enough." He studies the floor before he takes his first steps away, ascertaining the stability of the foundation. "Looks pretty easy to get over, there's kinda a pathway leading to it."
"Be careful."
"Oh, no, I was planning to recklessly plunge into the void," Mobius says dryly. "My bad."
It turns out to be more than easy. About halfway into the trek, he finds an obstacle in a tall mound of rock – climbable, but not an activity he's looking forward to. But as he analyses the footholds in the upper sections, plotting a route up, the stone gives a curious shimmer and proceeds to melt away, the molecules tumbling over each other in their haste to make a path.
"Oh," he says simply.
And then he continues on his way.
All in all, it takes about ten minutes to reach the trunk, a staircase breaking an archway through the bunched timelines. Breath heaving, he elects to curse Loki in his head for the remainder of the climb, because he could have at least magicked up some even steps.
Near the top, the suspense morphs into an unbearable tightness in his chest. Only a few steps more. Two more. One more.
For a second, as he finally breaches the trunk and enters the hollow space, like an eerie hall swallowed by Time, it's too bright to see.
Then his eyes adjust.
"Oh."
"What's happening?"
"I think –" his breath, stoppered in his throat, catches. "I think I've found the problem. The whole problem."
"I'd ask you what it is, but for the sake of mental preparation: how bad is it on a scale of one to one-hundred?"
He swallows. He takes a step closer. "I think – I think I'm gonna go with…" A helpless pause. "Hundred and one?"
"Ah."
Another step forward. Onto the precipice of the throne
Before him, in a twisted image of majesty, sits Loki. Briefly he recalls the mosaics in the atrium, a figure of green in the hollow of the Tree's trunk, Time expanding outwards and away. But, always, a space in the centre, an area devoid of Time where he sits. A bubble of nothing in the heart of everything.
Turns out the mosaics failed that depiction.
The nothingness doesn't really exist. The space between Loki and Time is null – which is to say, the branches intertwine with his limbs, curling over the stone, around like Virginia creeper, a gradient of green to sickly white in place of foliage.
But intertwining isn't the correct word, and with each step forward this becomes evident. Mobius, treading carefully over lounging threads of the multiverse, can't tear his eyes away from where Time meets the body of the god holding it together.
Touching isn't the word either.
Melding is something closer to it.
The lower half of Loki's body, his legs and stomach, are free disregarding a stray timeline or two. His shoes – Mobius has no clue why he picked those of all the footwear in the universe – are visible, planted firmly on the floor. But further up, where he clasps the branches tight, Time has melted into his skin. There's no division between flesh and universe. The outline of his fingers blurs, the tips lost in the immaterial of the branches. These continue upwards, coiling around his forearms, burning through the thin fabric of his clothing to get at the skin, frayed stitching against searing white.
Mobius takes a step closer.
The timelines have effectively pinned him to the throne at his shoulders, tight woven, around and around the rock. Advancing towards his neck, they taper off, only shoots of blossoming timelines stuck to the skin: barnacles gripping to a whale. Mobius thinks he could peel those away, if he tried – they aren't yet embedded inwards. But that could destroy them. Billions of lives. He shoves his hands in his pockets to resist the urge.
A final step. As close as he can be without risking toeing a branch.
He crouches, looking upwards to Loki's face.
Frightfully still, his eyes shut as if in sleep, he looks almost suspended in glass. Skin a deathly pale – bloodless and wan against the green illumination. A tightness in his jaw, head tilted downwards. Hair tangled, the same length as when he left all those years ago, because of course things like that don't change in a timeless place, but it's unnerving. He'd rather the physical difference was more apparent, if only to prove that this has happened. That this is real. That he's been trapped here so long.
Long enough for a branch of the universe to grow into the side of his head.
Mobius can only just see it, winding under the barrier of the horned crown and creeping up the side of his face, implanting itself just behind his left temple. There, the timeline becomes a grainy colour progression from the soft sage of time into the sickly white of Loki's skin. No boundary between one and the other. Inseparable.
To make matters worse, when he shifts to the right, he can see the other end growing out of his skull, puncturing the area above his ear, effectively impaling him. Beyond that the branch twists outwards, rejoining the mesh of timelines above as if it hasn't bored through Loki's brain.
If Mobius didn't know he was alive and conscious enough to broadcast himself across the universe, he'd think he was dead. So it's good he knows that's not true, otherwise this discovery might've caused somewhat of a breakdown on his part.
He stares long enough for the visual feed to overcome the lag, and hears a soft "oh" from the comms.
"Yeah," he says grimly. "Oh."
"That would explain a lot of things."
"And makes things a lot worse?" he adds, because he knows enough science by now to know this is really, really bad.
"Yeah. Pretty much."
Mobius allows a despairing breath to escape, before he steels himself. "We can talk about that later. Anything you need me to do while I'm still here?"
"Uh. I suppose we should still try waking him up, if that's –"
"While he's like this?" He can't hide the incredulity overcoming his voice. "O.B., if he doesn't know then I'd rather he doesn't find out. Not until we have a solution, at least."
"Mobius, I need to know if he's still feasibly alive in his body. For all we know, his consciousness could have disintegrated into some sort of fractal echo throughout the universe. I need to know if rescue is even possible."
"And if it has? Disintegrated?" he replies, mouth dry. Dread coils tight in his stomach at the time between question and answer.
"Then – then we… we'll – we'll have problems."
He thanks the only god he cares about that O.B. has learnt some social delicacy, because put bluntly he has a feeling whatever the problems are might be fairly crushing.
"Right," he mumbles. "Okay then."
He filters out the crackling in his ears, refocusing on the pressing silence of this place. His breath comes up short, loud against the quiet. For a heart-stopping moment, he realises he can't hear Loki breathing with him. But there it is, the soft rise and fall of his chest through the tangle of timelines.
"Hey, Loki?" he says, voice reverberating in his chest, cutting through the stillness. "You hear me?"
No answer. Not a twitch.
He tries again. "Loki?"
Briefly, there is no reaction. And then a rattling of airflow, more than before, coarse and guttural. His eyelids flicker, and Mobius, kneeling as he is before him, has never seen a more beautiful thing.
"Hi there," he continues softly, as Loki gives an almost imperceptible shift, a crease forming between his brows. His eyelashes cast long shadows over his cheekbones as they finally move, eyes flitting open. They fly shut almost immediately, despite only a sliver of the whites becoming visible.
"Norns," comes his voice, rough and dry and real. Real. Mobius feels as if he could reach out and touch it. He hears it settling in his heart. "That's bright."
He laughs, breathy with relief, and keeps his voice low. If the dim light of this place is enough to hurt him, he can't imagine the pain a loud noise might cause. "Good to see you too, Loki."
As if only just clocking his presence, Loki opens his eyes again. A rheumy quality shimmers on the waterlines, and Mobius can't tell if it's tears or overstimulation after years smothered underground. He elects not to dwell on it, because he has a feeling he looks much the same.
"How –" Loki's voice breaks, all further thoughts dying on his lips, "how?"
"You want the full rundown? 'Cause it's a little too much to explain right now."
His non-answer goes wholly ignored. Fixed on the point, Loki's endeavour to speak with clarity falls short, his voice trembling and scratchy. "This – this should not be possible. I was so certain it wasn't possible." In his conviction, he nudges forward ever so slightly and Mobius winces as the branches shift with him, clinging like cleavers to his skin. Pinning him back. Loki, his slowness speaking of incalculable lethargy, doesn't notice the restriction. But it's a matter of minutes, Mobius knows this.
"Why were you so certain, huh?" he asks. "Ye of little faith."
"I – It's…" he coughs weakly, and the confined seizing of his shoulders pushes him towards discovering the nature of his captivity. He draws his eyebrows together and breaks eye contact, gaze flickering before him, not lucid enough for the revelation yet. He continues, "It's… how did you put it? A little too much to explain right now."
And there it is again. That feeling he's not retelling the story in the shining accuracy he'd have them believe.
But he is right. They don't have much time.
Namely, Mobius doesn't have much time before Loki realises the inevitable.
"O.B., I take it you're getting this?"
"I am. This is good, Mobius. He's still tied to his body. This is really good."
Relief settles, a light dusting over his tense limbs. He exhales shakily, breaking eye contact and blinking quickly at the floor. Even the stone seems a pale green – bathed in an unearthly glow.
"I can scarcely believe you're here." Loki's voice draws his gaze upwards again. "I hadn't – I do not remember this place beyond when I first arrived. It appears the timelines pulled me in unbelievably quickly, if not instantaneously."
Mobius grimaces, the physical implications of the sentence unintentional on Loki's part, but all the more accurate for it. "Yeah, we weren't sure how deep the consciousness projection ran."
"Is that why you did not alert me to your plans?" His lips twist into a parody of a smile, weakened by a churning mix of sorrow and joy evident in the creases near his eyes. "I would have made a greater effort had I expected a guest."
"I dunno, the outfit is charming enough." Mobius raises his eyebrows. "But the shoes need work. The place is quite nice."
"It is." Loki lifts his chin, considering his surroundings. Every movement is measured, the tax on his energy relevant enough to hinder that previous quick excitability. A head weary of wearing the crown. He still hasn't looked at his body yet. "I'll admit to not considering decor, but it's oddly more beautiful than I expected."
"So you really haven't seen it? This whole time you've been here, you were just watching the universe?"
When Loki meets his eyes, it's with something frighteningly ancient. "I see everything at once. It is hard to maintain focus beyond infinity."
"That sounds pretty overwhelming."
"I have highlighted its various difficulties previously." Loki shrugs – or presumably attempts a shrug. The branches gleam as they catch the light differently, weighing the movement down until it's barely detectable.
This finally tips the balance in favour of the problem.
Before he can begin a slow realisation – which is no doubt what will occur if left any longer – Mobius interrupts. "Loki?"
"Mobius?"
To hear his name said, aloud and solid in the air, throws him off. Just for a second. "I – there are some issues that we figured out now I'm here. That we hadn't considered before."
"Oh dear. I am not keen on your tone of voice. That's your 'trying to break the news nicely' voice."
"Hah." He shuffles awkwardly. "Old habit."
Loki tilts his head, and the timeline tilts with it, the skin pulling slightly.
Mobius' eyes flicker to it. "Aw, hell. I've not got a damn clue how to put this."
He recognises the shift in Loki's demeanour. A mask falling, eyes narrowing as an unnerving calmness comes about him. "I have my own suspicions. Do these issues have anything to do with my current lack of mobility?"
Mobius gives a nod.
"Interesting," Loki replies simply. His eyes remain fixed on Mobius. As if not looking will make it go away. "I had theorised something similar upon learning of the timelines failing. I imagine O.B., too, may have thought this may be the outcome of your search for my physical presence."
Mobius expects rebuttal from the comms. But instead he's greeted with an eerie, guilty silence.
A hypothesis he wasn't privy to, then.
Breaking through the cool visage, Loki's voice sounds a lot smaller when he speaks again. "How bad is it?"
Mobius sits back on his heels, allowing his gaze to stray from his face and to the mesh of timelines chaining him to the throne, tearing into his muscles and refracting him outwards. "It's... not great."
"What has actually... what are the branches..."
"They've sort-of... blended with you. Merged, I guess. I can't see blood or any physical intrusion, so I don't think they've dug into you, but it's like you – you've radiated outwards, and they've radiated inwards. I think."
"Oh." Loki answers simply. Through that word, somewhere behind the forced levity of it, a dangerous level of discomfort seems to sit, betrayed only by the slight tug he gives of his right arm, attempting to dislodge the timelines planted firmly in his bicep.
"Hey," Mobius soothes, raising his hands placatingly, "don't. You could hurt yourself."
"I'll admit, the foresight of theorising this outcome does not improve the morbid intimacy of actually being in the situation."
"I know. It's pretty horrible, and I'm just looking at it."
"Thank you kindly." A jibe thrown to cloak visible panic, growing about him almost as vividly as the branches, a tree breaking through the darkness and encircling him in the heart of it. A short inhale. Another.
"Okay, breathe. We're gonna try to focus on something else. I don't want you moving until we've got some research into this."
"Months for you are infinity for me. It is possible –" he swallows, stuttering over the explanation, but Mobius appreciates his attempts to recontextualise the growing terror, "– that any time you spend absent may result in further absorption at an accelerated velocity."
"I can think of a way around that. We can think of a way around that. O.B.?"
"Noting it down."
"You say you thought this might be happening?" He holds back the accusation that tails so easily after those words, a 'why didn't you tell me', and takes a more practical line of questioning. "What tipped you off?"
"The initial disintegration of the timelines. It happened to coincide, quite precisely, with when I began to lose a grip on corporeal reality."
"So... the universe started breaking apart when –"
"When my mind started breaking apart? Yes, that is one way to phrase it. A Jotunheim mind isn't much better equipped to hold the entirety of the universe than a Midgardian one." Loki says this with a watery smile, then takes in an anxious gasp for air. "Apologies. The distraction is not really working."
"No, you're good. You're doing so well." Mobius pauses, struck by indecision. Tentatively, he directs a question to O.B.: "Can I touch him? Or will that... will that break something?"
"I'd avoid it unless absolutely necessary. We don't know the extent they're interlinked. It could be that contact would be the equivalent of touching all of the timelines. At once."
Loki's eyes drift close in the short time taken for the exchange, returning to the state in which Mobius found him, betrayed by the sharp clench of his fists, nails digging into his palm around the branches clutched between his fingers. A delicate portrayal of peace, put on for show. "I take it the answer was no?"
He grimaces. "Yeah. Sorry."
Mobius would be content to sit with him, just as they are, for far longer. Forever, if necessary. But already a dull chill climbs up the furthest points of his body, fingers cold despite the internal warmth of the suit. Beyond, the timelines their various shades of white and green entice warning alerts on his arm-worn interface, the radiation readings pinging amber.
"Loki?" He senses a voiceless request for him to continue. "I'm gonna have to head sooner rather than later."
A complicated emotion flashes across Loki's face, unreadable when paired with closed eyes. "Despite all personal objections –" his voice breaks, and he clears his throat before he continues, "– I agree that is sensible. The atmosphere in this place tends to counter human survival."
"I'll be back soon, I promise. Besides, you can see me anytime you want. Whenever you want."
"Mm." Not a convincing reply.
"I'm working on a more permanent way around that, too. A way to make it easier, to stop the timelines dying when we talk. I've got a solution that I think will make this bearable, just until we get a plan to get you out for good."
Loki opens his eyes. For all his pride, for all that arrogance he wears like a second skin, the veneer seems to fall open just as easily as the branches breach the barrier between flesh and Time. "But that's not real." A breaking whisper. "I can't – I can't even tell anymore, when we meet, whether it's me talking to you or if it's a Variant, some version of me meeting some version of you on some branch that isn't us. A scenario I have seen somewhere in the multiverse and been so confused I thought it was me, and –"
"Hey." Mobius straightens, drawing closer, the heat of the timelines resounding through the material of the suit. "I get it. I do. But you know this is us. I'm here with you, beyond Time. And that can't be a Variant, can it?"
"And what if I've made this all up? It would not be the first time, I assure you," he answers, looking startlingly close to crying, eyes a wet shade of green, like damp moss. "Of my millenia alive, far too many have been wasted on dreaming."
His enunciation is decidedly wretched, a disturbing amount of misery leaking through the mask.
Mobius' entire being urges him not to sit idle. Biting his tongue in violent indecision, the reckless majority of him gives out.
He raises his hands upwards, towards Loki's face.
A sharp warning from the comms.
He ignores it.
He cups the air around his chin and pauses, not an atom making contact, suspended there in a half-measure of comfort. Unable to go further, no matter how much the large, selfish part of him wonders:
Why not?
There's only the entire existence of everything at stake, and what does that matter when it all comes down to it? Everything he loves is outside of Time, everybody tucked away in the corridors of the TVA or here on this pedestal of rock.
Surely, after everything, he deserves a chance to do this.
But, as it tends to do, logic overrides the want swilling in his heart. Responsibility for billions of lives. For everything.
Loki, caught up in the action despite the incompleteness of it, has clamped his eyes tightly shut, leaning into the non-contact as much as he is permitted. The merest centimetres of freedom.
Finally they're close enough to touch.
And they can't.
And they won't be able to for a long time.
Mobius holds his hands there, the strain in his elbows pronounced from raising them above where he's resting on the dias. His voice comes as a wet whisper. "I know. I know how bad it is. And I know how hard you're trying. I just need you to hold out a little longer. You can do that, I know you can."
Loki delivers a weak attempt at humour, betrayed by the breaking of his voice. "I'm afraid I'm terribly busy with my other numerous engagements." Then, with pained sincerity: "I'll wait forever if need be."
"I'm hoping the timescale won't be so bad as all that. But 'spose it's good to know you've got spirit."
Loki gives a stiff nod. He reopens his eyes, and there are definitely tears falling down his face now. Mobius longs to wipe them away. It's with the restraint of a man used to patience that he doesn't.
Soon they'll have that.
Soon.
"Mobius. I'm getting some warnings. If I recall you now, the suit will be in better repair, and I can shorten recovery time."
Loki, analysing him with a keen, strengthened vigour, senses the closing of their reunion. "Please do not risk your wellbeing here on my account."
"Don't flatter yourself, your Highness. I'm just doing some sightseeing."
A faded grin in return. "I'm afraid the only thing of interest in this location happens to be me."
"Not the multiversal Tree? The temporal marvel itself?"
"Fairly uninteresting. Dwarfed by my wit and great beauty." Said through the aftershocks of an incredibly self-contained breakdown, these words don't carry the same arrogance they should.
"Saving the world has not done anything good for your ego." Mobius, for all the lightness in his voice, can't help but feel cold. He imagines the places reversed. Alone, out here on the rock, with nothing but the company of everything. A veritable ghost of the multiverse.
As far as nightmares go, it's pretty bad.
He withdraws his hands, preparing to stand.
Unsettled, Loki writhes, each jolt twisting the nearest branches, wrenching at the surface layer of skin.
"Loki, I need you to stay as still as possible. Tugging out these things will probably cause some kind of catastrophic universal meltdown, and hurt you in the process. So not great. Just... don't move."
He stills obediently, blinking at him sorrowfully. "And if they're growing? If you return and I'm –"
"Not happening. We've got a linear measurement of the weird Time here now, so we can track the growth to a certain extent. Won't speed up the rescue process, but we'll know if I need to come back here with a lopper and cut you out."
"A heroic weapon of choice," he replies weakly. "Though I imagine that would not be ideal for the universe."
"Damn the universe." He's scared of how strongly he means it.
Loki blinks at him again, just once, a mixture of dissent and stunned gratitude across his face. "Okay."
"Mobius? I'm really sorry, but I –"
"It's okay. I'm ready when you're ready. We're ready." He gives Loki a smile, though he's sure it probably looks very sad and very tired. "Nice to see you?"
"Nice to see you." Loki's eyes form crescents, an older, more familiar twinkle in his pupils. A promise of endurance. Survival.
And then the scene winks out into nothing.
A/N: Thank you for reading! Feel free to review if you enjoyed :D