Archive of Our Own ^beta

Things have never been so completely, horribly quiet before. And they’ve never been so loud either. 

The TVA is bustling with life and energy. People Mobius has never even seen before are coming up from the lower departments, eager to pitch in with the new order (or chaos) of things. People chatter with each other as Mobius walks through the halls, his eyes trained on the ground and an empty box in his arms. The machines around him whir and hum as Casey and O.B direct operations from the front. He can hear the swish of air through the vents, and the squeak of his shoes against the floor. 

And yet, things feel silent. And slow. Every step he takes feels like it lasts for minutes. Every sound is muffled and distant. Because one sound is missing. The one that he’s grown the most used to. The one that would follow him around at all hours, incessant and agitating and endearing all in one. 

Loki’s voice.

There should be a snide remark here, Mobius realises as he passes O.B and Casey, both of them leaning over a pile of papers. They look up and greet him at the same time. 

There should be some sort of completely absurd philosophical point as he walks down a bare hall, meant to try and bait him into an argument. Because someone used to find this a little too amusing. 

There should be a nonsensical and random angle to one of their current problems that might actually help, as Mobius approaches the section that serves as TVA analyst’s rarely-visited living quarters.

There should be Loki.

Mobius sets the box in his arms down to unlock the door to his own TVA-issued living space. He has to try multiple times to get it right. His hands are shaking.

It’s been almost a week since Loki, well... 168 hours. 10,080 minutes. Technically. Time does work differently, here. But for the first time, that doesn’t matter. Time works differently, but memories stay the same. 

Unless someone’s tampered with them.

Mobius pushes open his now-unlocked door, stepping into his room. It’s a simple one, with a bed against one wall and a kitchenette against the opposite. There’s a desk and a chair. And an ugly, orange rug. That was the only decoration Mobius had ever put in it. He never spent enough time there to properly personalise it. His desk had always served as a much better bed.

He takes the box from where he had left it in the hallway, and he sets it down on the desk. He goes to his closet first, opening it up and pushing aside his own clothes, until his hand settles against a familiar fabric. He pulls it out and holds it up. It’s a plain-collared shirt. Loki’s shirt. Mobius had kept all of Loki’s clothing with him, because it wasn’t like the God had anywhere else to put them.

Mobius brushes his fingers over it. Then he folds it up and puts it in the box on the desk. He goes to his cabinet next, which contains only two mugs. It used to contain one. He lifts up the second one, tilting the side that’s slightly chipped towards himself. Loki had accidentally bashed it against a desk in an excited gesture after putting lists of information successfully together, while running on less than an hour of sleep. Mobius puts this in the box too.

He goes to his desk last. There’s a pile of papers there, written in Loki’s elegant hand. He lifts up the pile. Flips through it. His throat feels like it’s closing, and he quickly drops it in the box with the other items. 

Loki had left his own little marks on Mobius’s room. Just like Mobius’s heart. 

He picks up the box again, holding it close to his chest. It barely weighs a thing. Loki didn’t leave much behind, in a physical sense. But he’s left so much behind otherwise. He’s left hope. A future. A chance.

And he’s left Mobius broken. 

He’s gone, Mobius fully realises, as he looks down at the box in his arms. He’s not coming back. He’s given hope to everyone but himself. 

And suddenly, Mobius wonders why he couldn’t have just been selfish. Why he couldn’t have said no, and chosen the easier option. Sure, maybe everything would have died. Maybe time would have ended in a whisper. But maybe it would have been better, for Mobius right now, in this moment, and -

He shakes his head. No. No, he’s not going to question Loki’s decision. He’s going to respect it. At some point. Maybe not now, but someday. He knows that. 

His legs shake. His eyes grow heavy and hot. He wipes at them with a hand. Then he puts the box back down on his desk and hunches his body forward, tears leaking from his eyes. He lets them. His shoulders shake with muffled sobs, his vision growing misty. 

He stops as soon as he starts, and he takes in a few shuddering breaths, wiping tears from his face. He sniffles, smoothing his hair. Then he takes the box, putting it in the bottom of his closet and closing the door. He was going to throw it out, originally. But he knows he has to keep it. 

He has to keep the last pieces of Loki in his life. 

He goes to O.B later, standing beside him with a mug in his hand. O.B continues working at his desk, not even looking up. Right. Mobius puts a hand on his shoulder, the other man’s head snapping up, “oh, hi Mobius!” 

“Hey,” Mobius sits down beside him, squinting at the screen he’s looking at, “Miss Minutes, huh?”

“Yes,” O.B swivels around in his chair, “she could be valuable to bring back, with a few important… adjustments. We’re working on that right now. I have a team!” 

Mobius smiles at the tone the other man takes. O.B had been alone for a long time. And he hadn’t seemed to mind most of it. But it’s good to see him around other people now, getting to see with his own eyes just how much he’s helped them. 

“B-15 told me about that, yeah. How’s it going? Everyone getting along?”

“Yep!” O.B types a few lines of code into the device in front of him, tapping his foot against the ground as he does so. He looks over after a minute, tilting his head, “did you need something, Mobius?”

“Kind of. I just have a few questions,” Mobius leans back in the chair, crossing his arms to his chest. He looks at the tracker of the timelines, hanging in the front of the room. They all were part of that beautiful, tree-like shape now. 

“Go ahead,” O.B looks back at his device, his fingers beginning to move at rapid-fire pace. 

“I don’t know how some of this stuff works, but… is he alive? The tree is pulsing and strong, but that doesn’t mean anything in terms of what’s at its core, does it?”

O.B’s fingers freeze. He’s quiet for a moment, before moving to turn off his device. He turns to face Mobius. “He’s alive. I’m almost sure. The technology here is trained to track the creation and perpetuation of life. We recently reworked our scanners so that they can reach the new timelines, even if we can’t. And we’re still getting a signal of life from the area inside. Something, someone alive is holding them together, we can be sure of that.” 

“So, yes?”

“Yes.” 

“Okay. Loki can hear what’s going on in all of those timelines, right?” Mobius sits up straighter, taking in a shallow breath. 

“Yes, most likely. Though I’m not sure how much he can block out, in that case, or if he can choose what he’s listening to. If not, it’s probably overwhelming. Like when everything around you gets so loud that it just turns into a buzz. Or, so I’ve heard. I don’t exactly have much experience in that department.” 

“Yeah… Can he hear us?”

“Well…” O.B pauses, tapping a finger to his chin, “no, I don’t think so. He’s the keeper of the timelines and of time itself. Time works differently here. When anyone goes out in the field though, it’s probable that he can hear them then.” 

Mobius nods. Swallows. Then, he asks his last question, though it had been the first to come to his mind. “Is he… is he in any pain?” His voice cracks at the last word. 

“I don’t know,” O.B says, reaching out a hand and resting it against Mobius’s shoulder, “he’s holding steady though, whatever it’s like for him up there.” 

“Yeah. Yeah, thanks,” Mobius stands up.

He spends hours in the observation room later, looking out at that damned tree. His eyes glaze over as he becomes lost in his own thoughts. The timelines glow from just outside the window. Everything is so alive. Right now, this is Loki’s world.

But it’s all out there. All outside the durable glass. All just out of Mobius’s reach. Everything is. Loki was out of his reach. And even when he had been within Mobius’s reach, Mobius hadn’t sorted things out enough inside to tell him how he really felt about him. That he was proud of him. That he wanted to spend everyday with him. That he loved him, so fully and truly, and in a way he had never loved anyone before. He should have said that. But he’d run out of time.

It’s been a week, it’s been 175 hours, it’s been 10,500 minutes, since Loki left this observation room and walked outside. Since he chose to be brave, for the sake of them all.

Mobius needs to make a choice now too. Things aren’t going back to the way they were. That’s good. Change is good, in this regard. Things have changed for Mobius too. He can only reflect on death, as he fights for life. He needs a new perspective. He needs a new purpose, one of his own. 

He knows what he has to do.

Another week later, he does just that. He goes to his spot on the timeline. One of them, anyway. He watches what could have been. He reflects. 

And then, once Sylvie has gone to live her own life, once a few nights have gone by, once he’s done watching? 

Then he sits down on a grassy hill, a breeze stroking his face as it snakes by. He smiles. And then he speaks. “Hey there. I don’t know if you can hear me. O.B said you might be able to, from here. Maybe.” Nothing responds, of course. As far as Mobius knows, he’s talking to nothing. 

He tilts his head back, looking up at the starry sky above, the heavens black with night. “You should see how things are at the TVA. You really changed everything. You have from the moment we brought you in. Always bucked everyone’s expectations.” Mobius flops the rest of his body down against the grass. It’s a little wet, but he doesn’t mind. He’s not particularly attached to this outfit anyway.

He takes a moment to remember. To remember all of the things about the other man. 

Loki’s smile, sly and mischievous, and sometimes genuine. The sound of Loki’s footsteps against the floor, quiet and quick. The feeling of Loki’s head against his shoulder, after the other man dozes off while analysing a problem for hours.

Mobius digs deeper. 

Loki’s sarcastic remarks as they work side-by-side. Loki’s weird spoken stream of consciousness that he sometimes slips into when he’s really focused, detailed enough that Mobius can almost hear the gears turning in his head. Loki’s surprisingly high-pitched cry of surprise, from that one time Casey had accidentally snuck up on him. Loki’s flushed cheeks and half-lidded eyes, from the time he’d randomly gotten sick. Loki’s laugh, from the time he and Mobius had sat across from each other with an old chessboard between them, cutting through the tension of the game.

All of these little things had helped make Loki who he was. Those little pieces of happiness. Of emotion. Of life.

“I loved you.” The only thing keeping Mobius from shouting this at the top of his lungs is the threat of being reported from one of the residents in the nearby homes. He whispers it instead. “Not ‘I loved you.’ I love you. Because you’re not gone, you’re still out there.”

Only the crows respond, cawing as they fly overhead.

“You made a choice. Wasn’t like you had much of one to make, but you still took control. You were still brave. You still chose hope. I can respect your decision. But I’m not coming to peace with it. You wouldn’t have done it for me, and I’m not doing it for you. I’m gonna find you. No matter how much time it takes,” Mobius sits back up, “I promise. I promise this to you.” 

He tucks the promise away in his heart.

Unbeknownst to him, from within the strands of time held tightly together by his aching mind and hands, Loki hears an echo.

And he smiles.