Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Asgard, 2013, The Sacred Timeline

Night had fallen, and stars twinkled merrily in the sky above the golden city of Asgard. It had been a peaceful day, as had the vast majority of the days since the aftermath of the Dark Elves. Asgard was prosperous, the people were happy, and it was all thanks to the one who ruled them.

Loki entered Odin’s room and immediately dropped the spell, allowing himself the satisfaction of being himself. 

Being King wasn’t precisely difficult, but being Odin was. A more mercurial, hedonistic version of the man, sure, but that could have been chalked up to grief and coping with the loss of his wife, his son, and that his only living heir had decided to stay on Midgard with a mortal.

If Loki thought it would last, he’d have cast an illusion to make people believe that Odin had fallen into the Odin sleep once more, and with Thor again on Midgard, it left only the recently pardoned Loki to assume the throne. But Sif would never buy it and probably spend her every waking moment searching out the lie in Loki’s tale. That would probably, eventually, lead to Thor coming to know of it, which would cause Loki to endure his wrath, and he would once again lose the throne.

A throne he was beginning to find he really didn’t want.

Funny thing, that. He was so good at lying, even to himself, that he convinced himself after letting go of Odin’s staff that it had been the gilded chair he wanted. Not to be Thor’s equal, not to just be respected and maybe even liked, but to wear a crown and rule a people.

Now here he was, doing the job he’d been trying to do one way or another since Thanos sent him to Earth, and he sort of loathed it.

Though he may have just loathed it because he had to be Odin.

It was really hard to tell these days.

He ventured away from the doors, thinking of a bath he could conjure for himself and a book he could indulge in, when movement caught his eye. Something shifted in the shadows, putting him on alert and causing a dagger to appear in his hand.

There was no sense in shifting back into Odin; whoever it was had seen the truth by now. So it was just a matter of eliminating the threat.

“I know you’re there,” he said to the shadow. “We can do this-“

“The hard way or the easy way?” An unfamiliar voice replied, humor wrapped around every word. 

“I was going to say quickly or painfully,” Loki replied, frowning in the direction of the voice.

“Yeah, well,” a man stepped out from behind a pillar, hands shoved in the pant pockets of a hideous brown suit. He grinned fondly at Loki from beneath his mustache, his silver hair glinting in the candlelight as he turned adoring blue eyes on Loki. “Never know with you, I suppose.”

“You’re a mortal,” Loki realized, the confusion heavy in his tone as he looked the man over again, realizing he was dressed like a Midgardian.

“And you’re a god, but like I’ve told you before, I forget that about you sometimes.”

Loki frowned.

“Have we met?”

“Not really,” the man replied, inching closer. “I knew a version of you. Well, I know lots of versions of you, but this version is closer to my version.”

“What are you prattling about?” Loki asked, suddenly remembering he had a blade in his hand. He raised it, pointing it more fiercely at the mortal. “How are you even here?”

“I have my ways,” the man said with a little shrug before he withdrew his hands and showed Loki his palms. “Sorry, I can leave you be. Just… thought I’d try something.”

“What did you think you could possibly try?” Loki asked, indignation, curiosity, and derision all mixing together.

“Just,” the man gestured helplessly. “I thought I would try and see if there was some of my Loki in you.”

That had Loki’s attention, eyes going wide and eyebrows arched high.

His Loki? A version of himself that somehow belonged to this mortal man who found his way to Asgard in a terrible suit?. He could see it, sort of. The man was handsome, taste in clothes aside. There was a little bit of mischief in those blue eyes, an affable nature surrounding him that made Loki want to gravitate toward him regardless of the danger he would likely find there. 

“What’s your name?” He asked curiously, wondering if maybe he had somehow crossed paths with the mortal already.

The man appeared torn, like he wasn’t supposed to give the information away but desperately wanted to. 

After a beat, and then a breath, he quietly replied, “Mobius.”

“Mobius,” Loki repeated, liking the way if felt on his lips. He didn’t miss the way the man sighed softly, a sadness tarnishing the smile he gave Loki before minutely nodding.

Before Loki could look into that further, there was a knock on the door. 

Loki turned, calling, “Yes,” in Odin’s voice. 

“Sorry, your highness,” A maid called from outside, “dinner?”

Loki turned back to Mobius, a command on his tongue for him to stay where he was, only for it to die when he found the man gone.

The TVA, 1 AL

So you’re a variant.

Mobius looked at the new manual sitting on the corner of his desk and frowned. The cover was essentially a duplicate of the posters they had had plastered around intake in the days before. It was not what anyone who ever dealt with variants would call comforting. Frankly, it made Mobius want to crawl out of his skin. Still, he set the green coffee mug he’d taken to using on his desk, a good couple of feet away from the manual and the rest of his mail, before he tentatively picked up the dubious literature and began to flip through it.

The content, at least, wasn’t awful. A kind introduction gently reminding or rebreaking the news to everyone that they had once been a variant, but were chosen for one reason or another to remain an employee at the TVA. That there were, for lack of a better word, therapists that anyone could talk to about how they felt about that and many other things - mostly just former hunters who were great at listening and giving decent advice. It gave instructions on how they could go about finding their variant file, what to do if what they discovered unsettled them, how to possibly return to the lives they lived on the timeline, or how to leave the TVA to live on a branch with a new life.

The manual wasn’t exactly thick, but Mobius supposed there really wasn’t much else to say. 

He placed it back down on his desk, then flopped down in his chair. 

For a brief moment, he wished he had a window. Not that it would really show him much, or at least it wouldn’t show him what he wanted to see. Or, maybe it would? After all, what he wanted to see would technically be reflected in all the lives still chugging along inside the TVA, as well as on the timelines. 

But it wouldn’t show him who he wanted to see. 

At least not in the flesh.

“Hey,” B-15 said gently as she approached his desk. “I know you’re busy-“

“Drinking coffee?” Mobius quipped, having not really had a moment to analyze anything.

B-15 huffed and flashed him a fond but annoyed grin before she continued.

“There’s a branch that seems off somehow,” She explained. “Like it isn’t growing the way it should. We’re not sure what’s happening on it. Thought you wouldn’t mind a closer look.”

“Not really the sort of thing you get me to look at,” He noted as he reached for the file in her hand.

B-15 handed it over, mouth pressed in a thin line. 

“Yeah, well, I had a whole department set up to look these sorts of things over, and then the head of it decided he wanted to build an unsanctioned time ripper.”

“I heard about that,” Mobius said as he set the folder on his desk. 

“Who hasn’t?” B-15 retorted. “Worst part is we’re no longer sure Paradox’s whole theory about an anchor being was right. I can fill you in on the details later, but for now?”

“Yeah, I’ll have a look,” Mobius assured her. 

B-15 grinned with appreciation before she turned and headed off to wherever she was needed next.

Mobius watched her a moment before plopping into his chair and opening the file, hoping he wasn’t about to read that his pop out on the Sacred timeline did something to divert it.

He had tried living on a different branch for a while. Mobius had sort of lost track of how long it had been, but he figured it would have at least half a year. But when it came down to it, Mobius found that eons at the TVA made him more of a company man than most. 

That, and encountering a Loki that embraced his Jotun side, made him think life on the timeline might not be for the weak of heart. And he certainly felt weak, even if most would argue otherwise.

To his immense relief, it was a different branch entirely. Mobius looked over the data printout, pulled a file he had in his desk drawer from the sacred timeline, and began to compare them. From what he could see, there wasn’t any reason why the branch wasn’t growing the way it should. It didn’t click until his third read through that the numbers on both branches were nearly identical.

“Huh,” he said to himself, looking from one to the other, seeing only one digit off from each in some of the stats.

He reached for his cup, took a deep drink, and set it down with a thoughtful frown. Mobius ran the information through his head another couple of times before he got up, closed both folders, and tucked them against his side.

OB was no longer confined to R&A, which was both a blessing and a curse. The poor guy got to get some human interaction now, but it also meant he wasn’t in an easy-to-find location. Mobius first went through the bull pen, then made his way around to where Casey’s desk used to be at reception. Mobius then went up to the higher offices, peeking into open doors until he knocked on B-15’s door with a sigh. 

“Enter,” She called, and Mobius turned the knob. He stepped in, holding on to the door to signal his intention not to stay long.

“Where can I find OB?”

B-15 frowned.

“Did you check the formal temporal core control room?”

“Why would I have ever checked there?” Mobius asked, exasperated.

“Because it’s not far off from R&A and it’s usually where OB does his research now.” B-15 countered with the patience of a saint.

“Well, I didn’t know that. Why would he want to even work there? It’s so….”

“Mobius,” B-15 said gently. “All of us have been back there except you. You’re the only one who avoided the room after.”

“And Sylvie,” He countered to be contrary.

“Sylvie wasn’t ever an employee for the TVA in any capacity.”

Mobius huffed but resigned himself to having lost an argument he never needed to make in the first place.

“Thanks, B.” He said with a wave of the folders before turning and shutting the door.

He paused in the hallway, pulling himself together before he made his way down to where OB was likely hiding.

His mind wandered first to the last time he was there, then Mobius forced himself to think of something else.

The burgundy eyes of the Loki that wasn’t his came to mind. The way the God of Mischief on that timeline felt to utterly different from the one Mobius had known so well. 

Variants, for the most part, had always been painfully similar to each other, the older they were. There were exceptions, of course, like Sylvie, who had been taken so young, and the older Loki in the void who only managed to make it to the age he had by living alone, far from any events that shaped the timeline. But for the most part, a Loki was a Loki, like all other variants. 

But now with the timelines growing and expanding without pruning, there were more variations than anyone could feasibly keep track of. That Loki, the one who embraced his Jotun form and blended it with his Asgardian one, had been as unsettling as he was beautiful. Unsettling only because he couldn’t imagine Loki being so warm and friendly with a stranger. 

A stark contrast from the Loki he snuck a visit to recently. Granted, that Loki had been disguising himself as Odin, which would make him more tetchy than usual. 

Still not his Loki.

None of them would ever be his Loki.

The elevator dinged, snapping Mobius back to the present. 

“OB!” He called as he stepped off the elevator, hoping to hear a response coming from the workshop. When nothing happened, he sighed and headed off toward the temporal core control room.

Dread crept up his spine the closer he got to the hated room. It haunted his nightmares, where scenes of the loom exploding played out as if Mobius had lived it over and over again. It had him white knuckling the folders in his hand by the time he crossed the threshold and spotted OB sitting at a computer running data.

“Hey, OB, I gotta question.”

“Mobius!” OB greeted with the same enthusiasm he had the first time after the analyst came back. “It’s good to see you! What’s your question?”

“It’s this,” he said as he approached the station OB had been working at. He set the folders down and opened them both to the data page. “Why is a new branch nearly identical to the Sacred Timeline?”

“It’s not,” OB said without even looking at the pages.

“But it is,” Mobius insisted, pointing down at the papers so OB would transfer his attention to them. “Sure, there’s slight changes in data, but not anything significant.”

“It’s significant enough,” OB said. “Those changes in data signify that moments once considered crucial to the Sacred Timeline no longer happen, but that all true major events did. See, it’s like this….”

OB started to explain what he meant, which Mobius normally would have given his full attention to. He understood the basics of what OB was saying, of course, but he still liked understanding things to the fullest extent possible.

Something shifted in the corner of his eye, however, and Mobius glanced up.

At first, he could have sworn he’d seen Loki standing in front of the window that once gave a view of the temporal loom. Back to them, hands in the pockets of that brown coat Mobius was sort of envious of but didn’t think he could pull off as well, Loki had been looking at something off in the distance. But then Mobius blinked from the shock, and the image was gone. 

If it was even there to begin with. 

He knew the room was haunted, but he thought that had just been metaphorical.

Or, he was losing it, which was also entirely possible.

“And that’s why they aren’t identical, just very, very similar.”

“Right,” Mobius said, turning back to OB as if nothing at all had happened. “So, is that why it’s not growing like it should? Because there’s too many changes? Or is it an anchor being situation? I heard that was a theory floating around for a while, but now we aren’t sure?”

“It’s neither,” OB said with confidence. “Though, to be honest, I never thought the anchor being theory works. One person shouldn’t be the center of any universe. Besides, branches on a tree can die off on their own. It’s possible that the branches of time that are now free to grow will also die off.”

Mobius didn’t want to think about why that would happen with a tree made from time and fed from the magic of one god.

“Right. So I gotta look into this, then,” Mobius said with a sigh as he collected the files. “Thanks, OB,” He said as he lightly slapped them against the edge of the desk. 

As Mobius turned and left, he glanced back at the windows where the phantom of the God of Mischief had lingered for a few seconds.

He was relieved and heartbroken that there was nothing there.

Chapter Text

Cleveland, Ohio, 2018, Branch 832

If there was one advantage to his ascension, it was that Loki could now know Mobius in a way that Mobius had known Loki.

Time at the end of Time either didn’t exist or couldn’t be felt, and so Loki had no true idea of how long he’d sat in the center of the timelines, listening to everyone’s stories unfold around him. Sometimes, he merely peeked in on a random person, just to see what sort of mundanity they would get up to. Often, he looked in on the lives of the people he knew, both in his life on the timeline as well as his life in the TVA.

Mobius, of course, was a particular favorite. When he’d lived on the timeline, Loki watched him voraciously, sometimes to excess, once or twice past the point in which he should have looked away.

And time, being what it was and wasn’t, Loki knew he could find him anywhere and anywhen he came back on. Which meant that Mobius could be on multiple branches at this very moment or on none of them at all.

So, after he’d left branch 17352, Loki turned his attention to Mobius’ counterpart: Don.

Don was more like Mobius than Loki originally thought. At least, a younger Don was. Consistently, he was a scamp. The class clown, as he was so aptly named, during his school years. The sort that got up to no good on the weekends, or when his parents trusted him to be on his own while they went away. He was also intensely keen, sharp-eyed, and read people as well as any book slid in front of him. All of it carefully masked behind a bit of folksy charm and a disarming smile.

What surprised Loki, even if it shouldn’t have in hindsight, was how much of a Casanova the man was. Though the word wasn’t quite right since Don had not limited his seduction to women. He kept that discreet, especially as the places he lived were not open-minded in the least.

In nearly every timeline where he marries her, Don never tells his wife. Cheryl thinks she has found herself the perfect, all-American man. That Don’s ambition isn’t grand doesn’t matter; he’s handsome beyond reason, charming and kind, and treats her like a queen. 

Loki sort of hates her for it, even though he has long accepted that Mobius might have started out as Don, but he is no more Don than Loki is the same Loki that lived and died on the Sacred Timeline. 

But as their marriage crawls on, Don gets comfortable. Not neglectful, not by any stretch. He just doesn’t flirt with Cheryl the way he did in the beginning. His acts of love are more subtle instead of grand. He empties the dishwasher without being asked, and mows the lawn when she’s out to brunch with her friends. He gets the boys up and ready for daycare or school, and makes sure there’s a lunch packed for her before heading off.

Loki can see her growing disinterest, her longing for the wildness of their youth. Their marriage is over before the birth of their second child, but neither of them see it. It would be nearly five years after that it all comes to a head.

On the Sacred Timeline, and every timeline, it happens on a Tuesday.

“So, I was talking with Claire, and she said that, um… well, you know how Barney and Lauren always have that pineapple upside down in their window on Saturdays?”

“Yeah,” Don said cautiously as he closed the dishwasher.

“Well, I guess it’s because they’re swingers? And, anyway, Claire was saying she and Phil gave it a shot. And, I don’t know, maybe it could be fun? She made it sound fun.”

“It sounds fun?” Don asks incredulously, turning to look at his wife, who just shrugs.

“Well,” She waves her hand about. “It’s a way to spice things up, right? Make it all exciting. And Lauren’s really pretty, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind having a bit of fun with her while I get to know Barney better.”

On the Sacred Timeline, and nearly every timeline, Don says, “Yeah, sure.”

His smile is always barely there and brittle, knowing deep down that this will be the catalyst for the divorce filings.

Loki suspects the Nexus Event that led Don to become Mobius was very similar to what happens on this branch. 

Because on this branch, Don does not force a smile and acceptance. He looks at Cheryl, hands on his hips and his head tilted in a way that is so painfully familiar it makes Loki’s heart ache.

“What if I wanted a turn with Barney?” Don asks Cheryl, unafraid of her reaction, for perhaps the first time in his adult life.

There are a few, of course, where this still happens, but Cheryl brushes it off as a joke, too, in her own head, about how she plans on spending her time with Barney.

But on this branch, and probably the one where the Nexus Event happened, Cheryl forces a laugh.

Which causes Don to say, “I’m serious. Barney’s attractive, and I really wouldn’t mind having a tumble with him so long as he doesn’t mind the bit of soft I’ve got going around the middle.”

Cheryl narrows her eyes and asks, “The hell, Don?”

“What? It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been with a guy.”

This, Loki suspects, is where the TVA of old rained down on Don’s life and took him away to be charged with crimes against the Sacred Timeline. Because he knows, now, from watching so many versions of this one man’s life that Don was never supposed to admit to being a swinger of sorts himself, and Cheryl isn’t supposed to leave him because of it.

He’s seen it enough to know how it ends, but Loki is always so very fascinated by this particular version of Don’s reality.

Cheryl leaves. Not with Barney, not on this timeline. She just packs her things and leaves, not even giving Don the courtesy of filing for divorce as she goes. He ends up needing to do that with her in absentia, along with revoking her parental rights when the courts agree that she neglected her parental duties when she left the whole family.

Some of their mutual friends stop talking to Don and instead give him disgusted looks when they pass him in the grocery store. Most, thankfully, hold nothing against him.

He raises his boys on his own, doing the best he can.

It’s all well and good, and for the most part, it doesn’t deviate from Don’s life on the Sacred Timeline. Except, around the time Kevin turns 9, Don meets Loki.

Except this Loki doesn’t call himself that. He’s been hiding since his encounter with Thanos, having avoided getting his neck snapped with a well-executed illusion. No, on this timeline, he adopted the name Vilhem and made subtle enough changes to his person that most people don’t even realize who he is.

It takes Don until the Avengers bring back everyone from the blip for him to put the pieces together, but he does. The Loki of the timeline doesn’t even realize it happened until the third time Don calls him by his real name. Loki, as the God of Stories, has watched their time together, as well as Don’s time by himself, more times than he would ever admit to, to try and figure out when Don had figured it all out. It might have been during a recap of past events playing on the news one night, or it might have been the history project Sean has to do. Whenever it happens, Don doesn’t even blink. 

He does get a bit angry with Loki for lying and not saying anything, but he never asks the god to leave, never calls things off between them, and still calls him Vilhem when they’re out together in public.

It’s beautiful in a strange sort of way. That that Loki had wanted to see all of Midgard and ended up in Don’s town, in Don’s shop, and found himself intrigued. That that Loki would choose to stay because he had nowhere else he needed to be and a little amusement never hurt in the past. That that Loki would watch the boys grow older, adapting how he looked to age with Don until it became far too clear that Don was succumbing to a mortal life.

It was heartbreaking to see that Loki make the choice to leave Earth before Don grew frail. It pained him to watch their goodbyes before Loki left for good, and Don faked Vilhem’s death for the boys’ sake.

There were moments when he was tempted to slip into that Loki just to see if he could. To see if he could take control and get him to go to New Asgard and ask for the one thing that would grant Don the life of an Asgardian. Not that it would do any good, Loki had witnessed the conversation between Don and his variant enough times to know that Don would not do what Cheryl did and leave his sons in any capacity that he could control.

Don and this particular variant were not the only ones who would find each other. There were hardly any timelines in which Don and Cheryl stayed together for the kids, and maybe only two that Loki found where they managed to save their marriage completely. So the vast majority had Don a single dad, like he was when Loki first met him while he was time slipping. For the most part, Don ends up remarrying eventually. Sometimes with a man, sometimes with a woman, occasionally with someone who is both and neither. But sometimes, before he meets the one with whom he spends the rest of his life, he encounters a Loki. 

It was fascinating to the God of Stories to see how there never seemed to be a rhyme or reason for why or how things progress. It could be a one-night stand or a whirlwind romance, but the end was always the same. No matter how much Loki wanted to change things, he couldn’t or even shouldn’t. 

His counterparts didn’t always die alone, but he had to wonder if they thought of that mortal man on Midgard and simply never gave voice to it.

They must. Much as Don wasn’t Mobius, there was enough of Don in Mobius that Loki was sure they left an impression on whatever version of the God of Mischief they encountered.

He supposed he knew one way to find out.

Manhattan, New York, 2014, Branch 17352

The workshop was somehow perfectly kept yet littered with chaos. Loki couldn’t say he was surprised by the sheer amount of chrome and steel that made up the place, but he was surprised to find how his variant presented while in the room with Tony Stark.

Loki had looked into this timeline, especially when it was the one Mobius had seemed to settle in on for a time. A part of him was jealous that this Loki, like Sylvie, got to know about his heritage early enough in his life that he could come to accept it. That he embraced it so thoroughly while maintaining much of his Asgardian form was unsettling.

Loki watched with fascination as a furrow formed on that lined face, the variant giving a tilt of his head almost as if he were trying to listen to something in Loki’s general direction.

“Hey, Loki-dokie.”

 Stark snapped the variant’s attention back to the present, the unnerving burgundy eyes focusing in on the man across the workbench from him.

Stark smirked fondly at him, wiggling the tool in his hand before he gave half his focus back on the Iron Man helmet.

“You’ve been in your head since the whole thing with the spaceship.”

“Apologies,” The variant said, glancing away from Stark. First toward Loki, then to the worktop.

“Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

“I’m afraid if I do, you’re the one who’ll turn into the green monster,” The Variant quipped with a smirk.

“Hit me with it,” Stark replied with a shrug, and Loki wondered if he was truly indifferent to whatever the variant was about to say, or if he was merely putting on a different sort of mask.

The variant looked off to the side again, narrowing his eyes as if he could see what was on his mind more clearly.

“There was a man,” He started.

“Not sure if I’m into threesomes these days,” Stark quipped.

“Even if that was where I was going with this, I saw him leave through a portal not unlike those that the practitioners of the mystic arts use. I encountered him first on the street when the ship touched down.”

“If you want to call it touching down,” Stark said as he turned to his transparent device sitting on the worktop next to him. He tapped it a few times, a bevy of windows popping up briefly before they all collapsed together into a loading bar.

“He looked at me at first like I was a ghost, but also like he’d never seen me before in his life.”

“Handsome?”

“Yes,” The variant replied without hesitation, gaze snapping back to Stark. “I think we both know I tend to like my mortals around middle-aged.”

“Um, excuse me, I might be middle-aged, but” Stark said as the screen shifted. Before Loki could see what was on it, Stark tapped the image, causing it to float between him and the variant.

It was a picture of Mobius from the incident.

“My hair? Not a bit of silver.’

“That you can see,” The variant smirked. “That’s him, though.”

“Interesting. JARVIS?”

“Running facial recognition now. Also, Miss Potts is upstairs requiring your signatures on documentation that can no longer wait.”

“Okay, tell her I’m heading up,” Stark said as he set the tool in his hand on the workbench. He pointed to the variant as he backed toward the door. “No running off while I’m gone.”

“Where would I go?” The variant replied with mild exasperation.

Stark never gave him an answer before he turned and left the workshop, leaving the image of Mobius floating in the air.

Loki watched his variant stare at it, waiting to see if he could tell what his other self was thinking. But either this Loki was painfully practiced in the art of concealing his emotions even when alone, or the blend of Asgardian and Jotun features made him impossible to read by comparison. 

If Loki could reach out, maybe enchant his variant somehow to see what he was thinking.

One moment, Loki was looking at his variant, reaching for him. The next, his variant was gone, and Loki found himself looking at the workbench.

He felt strange. It wasn’t that he had stopped being aware of his body, but Loki hadn’t been cognizant of it in so long. Now he was very aware of having one. 

“Loki? Are you alright?” JARVIS asked as Loki raised his hand.

He was horrified and amazed to see the pale skin with raised lines like those of the variant. 

He turned to a cabinet with a glass door, breath catching as the face looking back at him was not his own, but that of the Variant.

Panic shot through Loki’s veins, both his own and the Variants, as for a moment he worried that he’d somehow time slipped away from his throne at the end of time. But he could still sense the branches in his hands; he could still feel his connection to the multiverse. 

“I’m detecting high levels of unknown radiation,” JARVIS added as Loki willed the lines in the skin he was wearing to smooth.

They did, the blue tones they brought were dulling slightly. He watched his reflection as he shifted his eyes to their normal blue-green. He rolled his neck as he shifted the clothes he wore - a green tunic and black leather trousers - first to those Loki wore on his throne without the crown, then to that he wore during his final days at the TVA.

“Loki?” JARVIS asked more alarmed. 

“Yes, and no,” Loki replied, hearing his own voice in his ears. “Both to being alright as well as being Loki. Your Loki, anyway.”

The reflection hadn’t spoken. Its mouth didn’t move except to mimic a fish. Loki shifted his head slightly and realized that while the reflection looked like him, it didn’t mimic him.

“You should know I’ve alerted Mr. Stark,” JARVIS warned, and the reflection turned toward the door with hope in its eyes.

“By all means,” Loki said as he turned to the door as well, knowing that Stark would storm the workshop regardless of what Miss Potts had for him. 

Sure enough, as Loki put his hands in his pockets, Stark was opening the door aggressively, one hand in a gauntlet, and aimed at Loki. His eyes widened, and Loki read the hesitation in his stance at finding no one else in the workshop.

The device on the worktop beeped, the search for Mobius’s identity coming up empty. 

A nowhere man with no identity.

“He never existed on this timeline,” Loki realized. “It’s why he picked it.”

“You know this guy?” Stark asked, gesturing to the image with a tilt of his head.

“His name is Mobius,” Loki said, his voice breaking as his lips wrapped around the name for the first time in so long. Not since he’d said goodbye to him in a reality that doesn’t exist. Heartache and longing washed over him, but buried underneath was an understanding that Loki knew was not his own. 

A pressure he hadn’t fully realized was pressing against his mind eased, and a hint of curiosity lingered at the edges.

“Right, ‘kay. Who is he? And better yet, who are you? And how did you possess my Loki?”

Loki gave a startled laugh and shook his head.

“Your Loki. I have seen countless timelines and countless lives I never lived, and hearing anyone call me theirs is still startling, especially when it comes from someone like you.”

“The hell?”

“There’s a timeline where Steve Rogers is painfully infatuated with me, I’m not even sure why or how, since he's still so utterly self-righteous.”

“Bucky’s old pal?”

“Him, too, actually. All of the Avengers, I regret to say. It never gets any less strange.”

“So who are you attached to, then? Maybe I can find a way to return you to them,” Stark said casually, but Loki could see the way he was starting to get nervous. 

“No one. I belong… to no one.”

Even as he said it, Loki looked at Mobius’ image and couldn’t help but hear the lie in his own words. Or, rather, the half-truth. 

The variant attempted to soothe him, and that was enough for Loki. 

All yours, he thought as he took a step back, willing the proper Loki to keep himself rooted so they could separate. 

Sure enough, Loki could see the back of the variant’s head. A second later, and a wash of green shifted the form Loki had carefully curated back to what it was: all raised lines, blue undertones, and no doubt burgundy eyes.

“Loki?” Stark asked cautiously.

“I’m me,” The variant replied. “I’m me again.”

Stark dropped his hand and came around the workstation, shedding the gauntlet as he went. He took hold of the Variant’s arms and studied that alien face with relief.

“What the hell happened?” He asked.

“Another Loki. Or the shadow of another Loki, I’m unsure how to describe it. I don’t think he meant to do what he had. I think it was an accident,” The variant replied, and Loki moved around so he could see his variant’s face as he spoke.

The variant glanced around the room, but his eyes landed just to the left of where Loki was standing. There was a wrinkle to his brow that further pronounced the ridges on his forehead, but the Variant was far from self-conscious about it. 

“He wanted to know what I thought about him,” the variant said, gesturing to the image of Mobius. “He misses him. Like I missed you that short time I returned to Asgard.”

That was enough for Loki, and he left the branch, returning to his throne. 

Around him, the branches swayed, hummed, and buzzed with the sound of countless conversations from countless realities. The green glow of his own magic radiating from the branches illuminated the space around him, giving him a slight break from what would otherwise be infinite darkness.

He had been on the timeline. He touched, could probably taste, and talked. Loki could live for brief moments on the timeline without leaving his throne.

Timeslipping version two. Only he didn’t physically travel away from the tree.

There were so many possibilities around him, and as he imagined stepping foot onto countless branches, he could hear the echo of his friends humming back at him from any number of realities.

It could be dangerous, reckless, selfish. 

Loki had given up so much to allow the multiverse to thrive, and after eons on a throne, away from everything and everyone he ever loved, he deserved brief moments away, didn’t he?

A part of him said no. He couldn’t risk it, he shouldn’t even imagine taking the chance.

A part of him said yes, because he wouldn’t physically be leaving, and that was the most important part. As long as he was there, feeding the tree his magic and not draining himself too severely, he could be anywhere, anywhen he wanted. 

He just had to find a Loki, first.

Chapter Text

Manhattan, New York, 2012, Branch 9359

When Mobius stepped onto the branch, he was immediately smacked in the face with one clear, obvious way the timeline had changed.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he said as he looked up at the billboard across from the alley he emerged in.

Re-Elect Brad Wolfe for President.

With a Hollywood smile, X-5 grinned down at him. Older, of course, because this was a Brad who would never have been brought to the TVA from the 70s. Unfortunately, he was still handsome. Also, still very, very punchable.

Shaking his head, Mobius pocketed his tempad and stepped out into the street proper. 

There were no obvious changes that Mobius could see when it came to infrastructure or technological advancements. There were no flying cars. There was still an overabundance of metal and glass skyscrapers. Stark Tower still loomed as it should have a month before it would start its shift to the Avengers Tower. 

Mobius found a quiet cafe and popped in, noting that nothing there had changed, either. Coffee was still coffee, at least.

“Hey, can I get a medium house blend, and,” he glanced in the case, “a key lime muffin.”

The barista nodded and rang him up, Mobius grateful that electronic payment was still a thing since he wasn’t sure his cash would actually match what this branch had. 

As he waited for his food and drink, he looked at the TV mounted in the corner by the door that was playing the news with a crawler spewing the headlines of the day.

President Wolfe and Mathew Ellis head-to-head in polls

Stark Tower set to run entirely on clean energy

DB Cooper released from prison

VKT Inc. Celebrates 1st Anniversary with record stock price

Unrest continues in Sokovia

RPG hits air force pilot

It wasn’t until Mobius sat down with his coffee and muffin that one of those headlines really stood out to him.

He took out his tempad, hoping anyone looking too closely would just think it was some weird tech. After a quick glance around the cafe, and looked up the branch. Specifically, he looked up variant L-9359.

This Loki still lost his bet to Thor, which meant he had to do the whole plane thing as it happened on the Sacred Timeline. But before going to Midgard to enact it, he overheard Odin make plans with a delegate from another realm who wanted one of his daughters to marry one of the princes. 

On the Sacred Timeline, the daughter refused them both. Loki, because he was the second son, and Thor, because she had overheard the crown prince telling Fandral that not only was she not enticing enough for him, but that clearly Loki deserved her, and it wasn’t said in a kind way.

On this timeline, in a bid for revenge against his brother for likely cheating on the bet (and if not, simply for the crime of winning), Loki opted to stay on Midgard and serve time.

Odin had attempted to convince him to return home, but that had only made Loki double down. Plus, the God of Mischief had more than a little fun making other inmates cause trouble, causing all sorts of chaos to break out in the prison. Meanwhile, he himself remained a model prisoner in the eyes of the guards. One that, much to Hydra’s fascination, never aged.

Hydra, of course, was very unsuccessful at their many attempts to first convince, then strong-arm one DB Cooper into joining their ranks. They even went so far as to put him in a cell with Isaiah Bradly, convinced that one would kill the other.

That didn’t work out in their favor, either.

It turns out that this Loki found himself rather fond of mortals and was especially attached to those who were treated terribly.

Mobius skimmed the rest of the file, finding Loki had been transferred back to another federal prison where he would share a cell for five years with a Frank Morris, then transferred again with the intention of sending him to the raft when his sentence ran out. It was more than a little hard to keep a criminal with such a stellar record behind bars when his time was served.

And if he wasn’t on Asgard when Thor was banished, then he couldn’t find out about….

Mobius flipped to Thor’s file on the branch, seeing he had not, in fact, been banished on this timeline. Which would mean he would never humble himself, and would probably lead Asgard to war. What would happen with Loki when he returned? Would he return?

Mobius supposed a bright side to Loki not being on Asgard meant he wouldn’t likely fall into Thanos’s clutches. So he wouldn’t ever attempt to take over New York. But if Loki didn’t try and do that, and if Thor never managed to make it to Earth, what happened with the Avengers?

An hour turned to two as Mobius drained first one coffee, then another as he went through the next ten years of events. The Avengers still form, with one Asgardian traded for another, and with Nebula sent to Earth rather than Loki. Nebula was a lot more forthcoming than Loki was as to who was pulling her strings, and that had them getting far more prepared for what was coming. Sokovia still happened, because how could Tony Stark not try and build something like that while knowing what was out there. The Sokovia Accords still happened, or tried to happen, but before everything went down, Thor decided he wanted to wage War on Midgard once word got back to him that Earth had defeated more than a few off-world enemies. 

Thor and Loki come to a sort of agreement, peace is achieved, and nowhere does Thanos show up. 

Mobius brought up Thanos’ file only to find that the Reality Stone evades him. It made sense. If Jane Foster never meets Thor, she’s still trying to prove the theory of an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. The convergence certainly would draw her attention, but it might not lead her to London like it had. Or if it did, maybe she just doesn’t get close enough to where the realms merge to fall into the place where Bor hid the infinity stone.

So, not the Sacred Timeline, like OB said. In fact, Mobius couldn’t have been more wrong in his assumptions, and wasn’t that just humbling? Still, there were enough common events that he could see how it would look so similar on paper. The one key thing that really diverted it was Thanos. 

He could stay in the cafe, hunker down, pore through the files, and see if Thanos ever makes it to Earth, but he was sure he was probably starting to reach his time limit with the baristas.

Getting up, Mobius straightened his jacket before reaching into his pocket and taking out his wallet. He focused on the screen, which showed a black and white image of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes with the headline of “Where are they now?” He took out a bill and dropped it on the table, choosing not to even humor the curiosity over whether this timeline had the super soldiers together or not. 

Putting his wallet back in his pocket, he maneuvered around the tables toward the exit, noting someone behind him making for his vacant spot.

The door chimed before he had a chance to open it, and he was moving just fast enough that he didn’t have a chance to stop.

“Oh, sorry,” He said, looking up with a smile that quickly faltered.

“It’s fine,” Loki replied. Or, DB Cooper, Mobius supposed.

He hadn’t even tried to mimic making himself age, which actually made the whole idea that Loki spent decades in prison funny. In fact, had it not been for the short, slick-backed hair, Mobius would have assumed he was looking at the Loki who would have taken over New York.

DB Cooper looked him up and down, a slow drag of his eyes over Mobius that made him feel a bit hot under the collar, if he were honest.

“I like your suit,” DB said, though Mobius couldn’t tell if that smirk was because he was being mocked or if DB picked up on his fluster.

“Thanks, it’s… all I had,” He said stupidly. “I have to, um,” He gestured behind DB before scratching at the back of his neck nervously.

DB gallantly stepped aside, gesturing for Mobius to pass. He could feel DB’s eyes on him as he stepped through the door and all the way down the sidewalk. He made sure to have his tempad out and a timedoor ready in the alley in case the former convict got it in his head to track Mobius down and flirt with him. 

He turned the corner into the alley, and just as he stepped through the time door, Mobius could have sworn he heard DB call after him. But that couldn’t have been any more than wishful thinking since Mobius never gave him his name.

Taking a second to pull himself together, Mobius rolled his shoulders and then straightened his tie. 

“Hey, Mobius,” Casey said with a wave.

Mobius looked around, noting he at least didn’t pop up around reception, but just outside the war room.

“Hey, Casey. B-15 in there?” He asked, gesturing to the closed door.

“Yeah, they’re having a meeting about Paradox.”

“Then I’ll give my report later. Not like there’s much to report. Which, come to think of it, do you think OB was a program that would help me sift through all the known branches? I want to check out a couple of variables to see if I can spot why some of the branches are failing.”

Casey shrugged.

“If he doesn’t, he probably will when you ask him about it.”

Fair enough, Mobius supposed. He’d head down there after a lunch break. He needed to eat something that wasn’t sugary, and maybe drink something that wasn’t coffee.

~*~

Fed and properly hydrated, Mobius made his way to R&A with a can of Josta in hand. 

OB was sitting behind his counter, feet propped up on the edge of it, leaning back a bit in his chair while tinkering with some sort of gizmo in his lap. Mobius wasn’t even going to guess what it was, or whether the other parts littered over the countertop went with it.

As Mobius got closer, he noted Miss Minutes hanging out by OB’s feet, her feet swinging like two pendulums going in opposite directions. She noted him first, giving a bright smile that still made Mobius a bit on edge with worry that she was about to murder him.

“Hiya, Mobius!”

Miss Minutes’ greeting caught OB’s attention, making him glance up in surprise.

“Back already?” 

“Back already? I haven’t seen you since yesterday.” Mobius replied as he approached the counter.

OB paused his tweaking and turned to Mobius with a frown.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I went and told B-15 what you told me, went back to my apartment, had dinner, went to bed, woke up, had breakfast, came to the office, and then left to head out to the branch. You were right, by the way, it was similar to the Sacred Timeline, though I think the couple of ‘verys’ you threw in there were more than a bit excessive. Anyway, I was wondering-“

Beep-beep!

Mobius looked down at the nearest device as it blinked and beeped at him. OB and Miss Minutes turned their attention toward it, too, though both of them seemed more than a little alarmed.

“What does that mean?” Mobius asked even as he dreaded the answer.

“Temporal radiation,” OB replied with wonder.

“That’s not good,” Miss Minutes said what Mobius was thinking.

“Where’s it coming from?” He asked wearily, putting his free hand on his hip while taking a fortifying drink of Josta. 

“I think it might be comin’ from you, hun,” Miss Minutes said cautiously.

OB picked up the device, bringing it closer to Mobius.

It beeped far more frantically than it was a moment ago.

OB then got to his feet, shifting around his chair and the boxes behind him so he could walk backward away from Mobius while still holding the device out.

The beeping slowed down until it came to a complete stop.

“Huh,” OB said simply before inching back over toward Mobius. The device started to beep again as he got closer, the beeps coming closer together the nearer he got. “Interesting. You haven’t been around any temporal looms we haven’t noticed, have you?”

Mobius stared at OB, perplexed, before he shook his head.

“I went to a branch, but that’s as close to any sort of temporal anything I….” He trailed off as the memory of licentious blue-green eyes popped up in his head. “Well, I suppose I saw Loki.”

“You what?” OB asked, eyes going wide. Miss Minutes went rigid, seeming to forget to act corporal as she popped up to OB’s shoulder to better gape at Mobius.

“Not-not our Loki. A Loki, I guess I should have said.”

“A Loki probably wouldn’t leave any temporal radiation,” OB reasoned, still rather calm.

Mobius glanced at the nervous-looking AI at OB’s shoulder and couldn’t help but ask, “Do I need to start worrying about my skin?”

“Probably not,” OB replied immediately. 

Mobius slowly nodded in relief before taking a drink of Josta to help settle his nerves.

“The amount is trace at best, but any amount would have set off the Laufeyson Counter.”

“The what?” Mobius choked out, coughing and spluttering a bit as the carbon made his eyes water.

“Should I have called it the Odinson Counter? I thought Loki didn’t use that name.”

“You named it after Loki?”

OB shrugged. “He’s the one who took over the branches. He’s the reason we don’t even really need to worry about temporal radiation anymore.”

“Except I have it on me somehow.”

“Which is really interesting, especially if nothing else happened while you were on the branch. Maybe we should do an experiment, find another Loki, and see if all Lokis have temporal radiation.”

Mobius took a deep breath as he tried to imagine any number of Lokis encountering OB for the first time.

“Maybe we should start small.”

Broxton, Oklahoma, 1983, Branch 3311987

If Mobius wasn’t on a branch - or, more accurately, if Loki didn’t immediately notice which branch he was on, he would watch over the other people he cared for.

Thor was a particular favorite, of course, but it was hard for Loki to reconcile the Thor of the Sacred Timeline, or any timeline, as his Thor. His, he supposed, was long lost to the void like so many of his timeline simply for existing on it when he had made the faux pas of using the tesseract to get away. 

Or, rather, further away than what he was supposed to have gone. Which he got to see through watching his once brother find Loki back up in Stark’s penthouse, face down in the same crater the Rage Monster had put him in before, the tesseract a mockingly close yet still too far distance away.

Regardless, he watched the Thor of the Sacred Timeline. He grieved with him when their mother died, followed Thor’s life with his mortal on Earth, and mourned the loss of Asgard just as his brother had. Loki looked away when he knew Thanos’ ship was approaching the Statesman, not wanting to bear witness to his death a second time. From there, he watched Thor unravel, wishing he could have done something more for him. He watched as Thor lost his mortal, and understood that pain intimately. He did not envy him the daughter, though Loki supposed an infinitesimal part of him thought it might not be a horrible fate.

The other person Loki watched often was, of course, his favorite variant.

Sylvie. 

She thrived on the timeline despite the monotony of it. Her life was utterly unremarkable. She got up, made breakfast if she wasn’t on the morning shift. She fed a cat that was just as aloof as she was, then would either go to work or do whatever she needed to do to maintain her abode. After work, she would go see Lyle at the record shop, or perhaps catch a movie at the cinema, then go home in preparation to start it all over again the following day.

Currently, she was in the record shop, listening to a record Lyle recommended. If Loki wanted to, he could listen in on it. Sylvie’s musical tastes varied in ways that he never quite understood. Instead, he chose to watch her reaction, amused by the tapping she did against her knee, likely not even fully aware she was doing it. 

It was peaceful, seeing her being able to breathe without the fear of the TVA coming after her, or the threat of an apocalypse looming over her. Admittedly, Loki barely knew her. He’d spent more time with those of the TVA than he had with Sylvie. Much as she may be a Loki, they couldn’t be more different in many aspects. But he could see that the hunted look in her eyes was gone, and had been since she left Mobius looking at a life that was no longer his.

From the corner of his eye, Loki noted two people entering the shop. At first, Loki thought perhaps he was seeing things wrong, or that Don had somehow gone forty years without aging. It wasn’t until Loki registered that it wasn’t likely that A.D. Doug would also manage to appear the same as he would later in the timeline, or that the two would know each other, that he realized who he was truly looking at.

They were both in appropriate era clothes. Mobius in loose khaki trousers with a brown collared shirt under a dark green sweater. OB was in some sort of bright, multicolored jumpsuit that made more noise than Asgardian Armor.

Mobius went over to Sylvie while OB scanned the room with something, making Lyle look at him askance.

Sylvie startled at the tap to her shoulder, then did a double-take before warily taking off her headphones.

“Hi,” She said cautiously.

“Hi. Promise, I’m not here because there’s any sort of danger or catastrophe. We’re just testing a theory.”

“And you thought you’d test your theory while interrupting my happy little life?”

“Well, we sorta needed you to test it.”

Sylvie was off the couch in an instant and turned to face Mobius with a vicious scowl.

“No,” She said firmly.

“You don’t even need to do anything,” Mobius assured her with a kind smile.

“It’s still a no.”

“Well-“

Beep!

OB turned to Sylvie with a grin.

“She has it!”

“Has. What?” She demanded, crossing her arms.

Curious, Loki began to make his way around the room toward OB, even as he desperately wanted to be closer to Mobius.

“Temporal Radiation! You see, Mobius ran into a Loki-“

“Lyle,” Sylvie interrupted OB, turning to the shop owner with as kind, patient, and as friendly a grin as she could probably manage at the moment. “Wanna pop down and get yourself a coffee? I can watch the shop for you.”

“Yeah, alright,” Lyle said, glancing at OB and Mobius with apprehension. “You open the door and shout if you need anything, though.”

“I’ll be fine, promise,” Sylvie replied before turning a scowl at Mobius. As soon as the door was closed, she reached out and gave him a shove. “What the hell are you doing? Are you looking for Lokis? Why?”

“It was an accidental encounter,” Mobius assured. “I was investigating something for B-15, and I literally bumped into him.”

“Did you, now?”

“Yes! God, you think I wanna try that again?”

“Again?”

“Again?” Loki also questioned. Yes, there were moments when Mobius could have slipped onto a timeline and past his notice. He nearly had when Loki found him on the branch Mobius was referring to, or at least that’s what Loki was guessing. But he’d been too late to find his variant, the man in a cafe with short hair and a criminal record. By the time Loki was able to take control, Mobius was too far gone to hear his name.

“Uh, guys,” OB said before Mobius could explain. “The energy signature isn’t coming from Sylvie anymore. It’s coming from over there.”

OB pointed where Loki had paused, causing the god to feel oddly frozen in place.

“It what?” Mobius said as Sylvie dropped her arms to her sides and stomped over.

She stopped just in front of Loki, looking up almost as if she could see him. If it weren’t for her gaze being just to the left, Loki might have thought she did.

Sylvie lifted her hands, tendrils of green dancing along her fingers and palms. She had a good idea where his head was, but Loki leaned in, hoping that whatever she was attempting would make contact.

For a moment, he thought he was about to slip like he had with his Jotun and criminal variants. Instead, Sylvie remained just at the edges of his mind, and he at the edges of hers.

Not like melding, but like two magnets with the same poles facing one another.

“I’m here,” he said to her, thinking it, too, for good measure. “Let them know I see them, see you.”

Sylvie’s eyes searched where his face was for a moment before she turned away.

“Nothing,” She told them. 

“Are you sure?” Mobius asked.

“If there was something there, I would have been able to enchant it. Or at least read it. I think it’s just an anomaly.”

OB furrowed his brow before turning to Mobius.

“Maybe we need a Loki closer to the one we knew.”

“Or maybe you just let it go,” Sylvie countered, crossing her arms again. “Loki gave us a chance. I don’t think bringing him back or whatever it is you’re attempting to do is a good idea. And if he sees you doing this, I think he’d agree you should leave it well enough alone.” To Mobius, she said, “Move on.”

“We’re not attempting to do anything,” Mobius assured before Loki could voice his displeasure, not that anyone would hear him. “I swear, I just had a run-in with a Loki, and when I got back to the lab, OB detected the radiation. We’re running a theory here.”

“And what was your theory?” Sylvie demanded, but she wasn’t as biting as she had been.

“That all Lokis contain temporal radiation,” OB said, like it was obvious. “Loki wasn’t just able to go out and destroy the loom without the temporal radiation melting his skin, but he was able to handle the branches. I hadn’t considered why that might have been the case, but when Mobius said he’d encountered a Loki on a branch, and it left traces of radiation, I had a hunch. But you don’t have the trace, though it is in this room.” OB tilted his head. “Maybe it’s from time slipping?”

Sylvie’s jaw clenched, and she glanced away. 

Which made Loki wonder if she remembered when he’d sought her out after the first time the loom failed, before he learned to control the time slipping.

“Maybe,” Mobius agreed, but he didn’t sound sure. "Thanks for humoring us,” he added to Sylvie.

Loki watched her watch them start to head for the door before she dropped her arms back to her sides and looked up at the ceiling.

“Mobius? Don’t do anything reckless,” She said, not unkindly. “You might have decided to go back to the TVA, but there are countless people who chose to live on the timeline, whether in their old lives or new ones. Don’t jeopardize everything because you miss him.”

“I won’t,” Mobius promised before leading OB out the door, the bell overhead chiming.

“Don’t encourage him,” Sylvie said once she was alone. “Don’t send Lokis to cross his path. I know you’re here, watching us. I know you can hear me, and I’m telling you, Loki, I’m grateful. I’m so grateful for everything you gave up so the rest of us can have this life, but if you do something selfish to destroy it, I swear I’ll use my tempad and see if I can get to where you are just to do to you what I did to He Who Remains.”

Loki blinked, not as surprised as he probably should have been that Sylvie had lied to Mobius to some degree.

“It’s not my intention,” He told her, even though she probably couldn’t hear him.

After a moment, she huffed, heading back to the couch and the record player. She slipped the headphones on, but sprawled on the couch in such a way that she could watch the door over the back.

Loki left her to it, searched for Mobius on the branch, and found he was already gone.