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“I’m something of a Loki expert myself,” Mobius stage-whispered, as though it was some large secret that the alleged ‘Loki expert’ had an interest in, well, Loki.
“I can't believe you were Deebee Cooper! Come on!”
“I was young, and I lost a bet to Thor!” Loki protested, before even knowing what the TVA agent was talking about.
He played a short clip of Loki where—oh, that’s ghastly. Loki would never cut his hair so short—he winked at some sort of stewardess before leaping out of the flying vehicle.
The TVA agent named Mobius then proceeded to pause the video and gush about the man in it, who he referred to as Loki.
The only problem was that Loki himself, standing before the man, had no recollection of any such events having ever occurred. In fact, it was quite true to say that Loki had no idea what a Deebee Cooper was… but he was sure that it was getting him positive points in the TVA agent’s book.
And so Loki acted frustrated but played along.
Yes, he could be Deebee Cooper if it granted him an escape from this psychobabble Helscape.
“And the Bee-Em Cipher? Man!”
The TVA agent, Mobius, proceeded to play a video of some historical setting, wherein Loki was now present with ear-length hair—thank goodness for that—and a thick-clothed suit with a matching floppy cloth hat.
The Loki in the video had his face, without a doubt, but Loki once again found he had no recollection of ever having played out such an event. He certainly would have remembered if he had visited ‘the Queen’s land’ to commit petty theft, particularly if it involved something so crude as pickpocketing strangers.
Why would Loki have any need to do that? He certainly wasn't strapped for money!
“I love that one, can't believe you got away with it!”
“I don't see how any of this is relevant.” Loki turned his nose up, not knowing what else to say. The only way this made sense was if, by chance, the TVA agent was mistaking a different Loki for himself.
But that couldn't be the case, surely.
There was no way this TVA agent, an agent of a senior position in the organisation responsible for time variations and monitoring the multiverse itself, had misunderstood how timelines worked.
His alleged title regarding Loki himself meant that surely— surely —the man knew the difference between the Loki in front of him, and the Loki in his videos, which were not him, and had never been him!
“Ah, I know! ” the TVA agent dubbed Mobius wiped at the bottom lid of his eyes, extricating tears (of joy?). “You didn't consider it bad back then!”
Loki had never committed a minor crime in his life.
Not before—well, not before recent years, but the less said about those the better.
Loki watched with morbid fascination as the man put on a different video, of a Loki with reddish hair and drawn on—Norns, Loki hoped those tattoos were drawn on—facial markings. The man proceeded to raid some sort of festivity, once again appearing to be on Midgard.
The frame was paused on a particularly close shot of Loki (for that certainly was still Loki's face, merely not Loki himself) with his expression far too gleeful and tongue wagging in the air. Loki did his best not to think that he was being associated with a timeline that was clearly far, far removed from the truth of his. None of the illusory videos shown seemed to take place in the same timeline either.
Goodness.
Loki couldn't begin to imagine where the misconceptions began.
Was it this common for TVA agents—responsible for the timelines themselves—to have no understanding of the work they were undertaking?
Or was this particular agent—Mobius—just particularly daft?
Was this some kind of joke? A test by the Time Variance Authority to assess his sincerity in accepting their offer of salvation?
Would Loki even be able to provide assistance to an organisation so far removed from their duties that Loki was being praised for acts he never committed?
“Deebee Cooper is definitely my favourite,” the TVA agent reiterated. “The drink, the note… it was a masterful gambit!”
The agent’s eyes seemed to light up at the recollection of a video clip he had no doubt, by Loki's estimation, watched hundreds of not thousands of times before, and still missed the crux of, if he was referring to this Loki as that Loki.
“And the hair!” The TVA agent—Mobius—continued to waffle on.
No, please, Loki thought. Let us ignore the hair. Please.
“You cut it all off!” Mobius exclaimed with a horrifying hint of wistfulness. “Just for a bet!”
No! Loki wanted to protest. I would never! Never ever!
“What a riot!” Mobius laughed, unaware of Loki’s internal plight.
The TVA agent, Loki assumed, must be unaware of much more than such a small thing as Loki’s internal plights.
Still, Loki huffed, puffing his chest out with false bravado he hoped didn’t imitate Deebee Cooper Loki too closely. “There's no need to dwell on past escapades that have long since passed.”
Here, if it gained him favour in the TVA’s eyes, then he could be Deebee Cooper. He was, after all, conclusively, for all intents and purposes of the agent in front of him, Deebee Cooper. His eventual escape from the TVA society may even one day be reliant on being Deebee Cooper. It was not an advantage Loki could easily give up, even if it was not truly a past Loki had any recollection of (and Loki was sure he would recall such a past).
Mobius howled. “And the fancy Shakespearean talk! The pentamic register! Gosh, I love when you bother to bring that stuff out.”
“Youthful stunts are not why we are here,” Loki reminded, hating the very thought that his manner of speech was not the standard way any Loki would articulate. He detested it, that any Loki would express himself inferiorly, let alone with less dignity. Were those other Lokis even ‘himself’ in an abstract sense if they expressed themselves so differently? If they had lived out entirely different lives and committed entirely different crimes, why were they being misconstrued as this Loki?
He didn't need such disturbing praise for actions he never committed, no matter what manner of villain the TVA was convinced Loki was. And he would keep to his own way of talking, thank you very much.
“It's all you're ever about, you mischievous scamp!” The agent straightened in his seat, adjusting his legs in a way that made him look more professional than earlier; He still entertained a shine in his eyes as he gazed at Loki.
Loki looked straight down his nose at the short, greying man, completely outclassed in the arena of the Time Variance Authority and its workers.
He had his work cut out for him if he was expected to behave in a way that would cohere with every timeline’s Loki out there simply because his keeper was unable to differentiate the basis of their own authoritative organisations’ existence enough to parse that his past was not the same as every alternate version of himself.
Frankly, Loki didn't think that would be possible as a role. But if the agents he was to nod along with were all like this Mobius, he might be able to put on a passable act.
And with a persona aligned with the TVA’s expectations of him, he would be able to make an escape from the facility when the chance arose. Their lowered guard at ‘knowing’ who Loki was would only work against them and lay the scales in Loki’s favour.
He had experience in meeting toilsome expectations, and using that to his advantage was nothing novel for this Loki.