this takes place after the Loki season two finale
One thing Mobius would have liked to have been informed of before he pruned himself is that Alioth is not dead.
Nobody ever actually told him what happened when he went back to the TVA and left Loki and Sylvie to deal with the whole Alioth situation. He heard about He Who Remains, of course. He's heard a lot about He Who Remains. But Alioth? The other Lokis? The alligator? He has no idea what happened to them.
That's the shitty thing about being the loser in a friend group of gods: nobody ever tells him shit.
He almost made it, though. He made it to the Void. He made it to the monster that guards the citadel. He almost made it. But with the giant cloud puppy looming over him, he rather reluctantly – and rather quickly, preferably before he's eaten – decides it's time to go home (using that word loosely, of course; he doesn't really have a home anymore).
He pulls out his TemPad and sets it for the TVA. It's either that or go back to Earth, but jet skis can only do so much to heal his soul. And that's not to say that jet skis aren't cool.. They are! They are amazing! They are everything he ever wanted them to be and more, and he will forever be grateful that he finally got the chance to ride one. But unfortunately, his love of jet skis comes second to his grief.
He's about to go back. He has the TemPad set. He opens the door. He's ready. He really is. He really does plan to accept this as the failure it is and go home.
But then Alioth fades away.
And before him lies the ruins of the citadel.
Mobius finds himself frozen, staring out at the weird, beautiful, confusing sight before him. He doesn't even know what he's looking at. It's just... green. Everywhere. At least he knows he's in the right place. Who else would have left all these green, glowy spaghetti noodles floating around if not Loki?
He lifts his gaze, following the noodles to the top, but there is no top. It's just... noodles. Noodles that almost make a tree shape? He won't pretend to understand it, but hey, trees are cool. He can get behind that.
Admittedly, the idea of getting any closer to their glowy spaghetti tree is kind of terrifying, but as far as he knows, Loki should be somewhere around here. If he left, if he could leave, he would have come back. So he's still here. He has to be.
Somewhere.
He hopes.
So he marches onward.
("March," of course, being a general term for somewhat-fearfully sauntering into what looks like the type of place one does not have the opportunity to saunter out of – but he tries not to think about that.)
There's not much to look at here. The whole place is, quite honestly, a mess, and just looking at it makes Mobius want to go into interior design – which is going to be difficult because there isn't even really much of an interior here, but he could still do better than this.
These bad jokes aren't doing much to lessen the near-paralyzing fear he feels walking into his place. At least he knows that if he dies, though, he can take comfort in knowing that he's going to die doing what he loves: chasing after Lokis.
This is probably an awful idea, but he's, like, ten feet away from this spaghetti tree and still, nothing is happening, so he might as well do it.
"Hello?"
He looks around.
Nothing.
Great.
He turns around, and he doesn't know if he's afraid something is going to sneak up on him or if he hopes something will, just to show him that he's not as completely, hopelessly alone as he feels.
And, to be fair, there is something behind him now. It's just Alioth, blocking his exit and paying no mind to him. That doesn't help very much. At least he still has the TemPad.
"You shouldn't have come."
Mobius whips around, slapping a hand over his heart as though he can physically hold it back from pounding out of his chest. The spaghetti noodles have moved, he sees, creating a clearing in the middle of the noodle tree trunk, and, sitting right inside of it, is Loki.
Somehow, this is both the most relieving and the most terrifying moment of his entire life. Loki's here. He's alive. He's okay. He's more than okay, it looks like – he's gushing with power, with life. He is life. He doesn't know how he knows it, but he does. Loki is life itself.
And yet he looks absolutely miserable.
Still, it's Loki – it's his Loki; his all-time favorite of the hundreds of Lokis he's met – and he'll be damned if he's going to let him wallow here in misery all by himself. So he cracks a smile, gives him a lighthearted shrug, and says, "Well, I don't think your guard dog got the memo, 'cause he just let me right in."
Loki takes a deep breath, in and out, but he remains silent.
Mobius has to admit, he doesn't feel all that welcome right now. But that's fine. This is fine. Everything's just fine. He'll make this work, one way or another.
"It, uh..." Mobius tucks his hands into the pocket of his jacket and looks around. "It's a nice place. Could use some work."
Loki doesn't move, doesn't even blink. He just looks at him, silent, wordless, expressionless. It's weird, seeing him like this. He's usually so full of life, so full of energy. Now, he just looks drained.
"How's it going up here?" Mobius asks. If he just keeps saying things, Loki has to answer eventually, right? He's not just going to stare at him for the rest of eternity? Because he doesn't know how long Loki thinks he can hold out, but he knows for a fact that he can and he will hold out longer for even the slightest chance of seeing Loki crack a smile.
"I can't leave," Loki says, as though he's answering a question he hasn't been asked.
"Well, I didn't ask you to leave," Mobius says, "so I guess that works out." He flashes his friend a smile.
"You're going to," Loki says, his voice even, level. "You're going to ask me to go back with you, and I can't."
Mobius chuckles, a bit nervously. "What, you have mind-reading powers now?" Because that sure was exactly his plan. He didn't think it would work, but it sure was his plan. And if Loki could see him thinking about that, he doesn't want to know what other thoughts he's seen, because there are some that he would very much like to keep to himself.
"I saw you talking to B-15," he says. "And she was right. You shouldn't have come."
"Yeah, well, I did, so..." Mobius shrugs. "Guess you're stuck with me now."
Loki sighs, dropping his gaze and lowering his head. "Go home, Mobius."
"What home?" he asks. "What, you want me to kill Don and steal his kids?" He shakes his head. That's not his life. None of that is his life. Not the house or the kids or the jet skis. That's not home for him. That's never going to be home.
Loki lets out a long breath, but otherwise, he's silent.
Mobius rolls his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. "You're so moody," he says. "Come on, cheer up."
Loki just shakes his head to himself.
Mobius sighs. He knew that wasn't going to work. He just doesn't know what else to do. Loki's not really working with him here.
So, out of options, he just sits down on the stairs and props his head up on his hand.
And now he waits.
He doesn't know what he's waiting for. He might be waiting for Loki to say something. He might be waiting to think of something he should say himself. He has no idea. He just knows he's not ready to leave. He's not ready to give up.
They sit there in silence for a while. He has no idea how to quantify that "while" – longer than he would like to be sitting here in silence, at least – but there's not much he can do about it short of just walking away and giving up, and that's not an option right now, so this is it. He's just going to sit here and wait.
For a very long time.
And for no time at all, given that they're currently at the end of time, but somehow, it's still a very long time.
It's Loki who breaks first. "What are you doing here, Mobius?" he asks. He sounds so... defeated. That's about how Mobius feels, too.
"I don't know," Mobius admits.
"Go home."
"I don't want to."
"You can't stay here."
"Sure I can."
Loki sighs.
And then it's quiet again.
Mobius taps his fingers against his knee awkwardly. This is fun. This is great. This is exactly what he'd hoped would happen when he decided to chase after him: absolutely fucking nothing.
This time, it's Mobius who breaks the silence. "So, what do you do here?"
"This."
Mobius nods slowly.
That's...
Great.
That's great.
This is great.
Mobius reaches a hand up, fingers stopping just before they touch one the strings of tree above him. "What are these?"
"Timelines."
"Oh."
Pause.
"That's cool."
Pause.
"I thought they were noodles."
Loki huffs, just a quiet sound, but it's enough to put a small smile on Mobius's face. A glance up at the god shows that he's not the only one, though the faint hint of a smile on Loki's lips fades as quickly as it appears. Mobius doesn't care. He got a smile out of him, however small it was. He almost got a laugh out of him. So he's okay with this.
"Can I touch one?" Mobius asks.
Loki shakes his head to himself and rolls his eyes, but then he nods once. "Just one."
Mobius reaches up high, and he lets the backs of his fingers brush against one of the timelines. It feels funny. It feels like static. He's not sure what static feels like, except that somehow, it feels like this.
He hooks his pointer finger behind it and pulls it out, and though it breaks the formation of the tree, the other timelines waste no time to fill in the gap. Mobius wraps his fingers around it, and it almost feels like it's vibrating in his hand. He can feel the power surging through it, surging through him. It's weird, but...
"Don has a daughter," Loki says.
"Hmm?" Mobius looks up at him. He got a little distracted by the glowy timeline noodle.
"On that timeline." Loki nods toward it. "Don has a daughter. Gracie, he named her. He's been wrapped around her finger since the day she was born."
Mobius nods slowly. Okay... "And Don, that's... me?" That's his Variant? He's seen the guy, but he doesn't really know anything about him. He doesn't know what he's like. He doesn't know his name. It's not like he could just go up to him and talk to him – and, honestly, he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to know what he doesn't have. He doesn't want to know what he's lost. He has enough of that.
Loki nods. "In another life," he says.
"Well, I'm glad it's not my life," Mobius says. "I could never be a Don. That's a stupid name."
Loki looks down at him out of the corner of his eye, and Mobius swears he sees the faintest hint of a smile on his lips.
So he keeps going.
"I could see myself as an Owen, though," he says. "Is there a me named Owen out there somewhere? I feel like he'd be a cowboy – or a race car driver. Is there a timeline where I drive a race car?"
Loki chuckles quietly. "Not yet."
Mobius makes a show of perking up at that. "But there might be, is what you're saying," he surmises. "Someday, there could be a Mobius M. Mobius driving a race car."
"Maybe," Loki says.
"I could do it," Mobius remarks. "I could go take a race car for a spin right now."
"You could," Loki agrees.
"I think I'm a little old to learn how to drive a race car, though." He's got, what, thirty years of his life left? Assuming he settles down in a place where time passes? And a good portion of that will be spent as a fragile old man, so that doesn't help. Race car driving is probably out of the picture for him.
Still, Loki says, "I think you could do it."
"I think I'd be more likely to die trying," Mobius replies.
Loki huffs. "That may be true."
And then it's quiet.
Mobius is out of fun, lighthearted topics to discuss, and he's fairly certain he can't count on Loki to provide the conversation, so it's time to go back to wracking his brain for something to talk about. And, at this point, he doesn't even care what it is. He's half-tempted to crack a joke asking Loki about lottery numbers or winning sports teams, just so they're saying something.
He looks up at Loki, his lips curving downward in a slight frown. He just looks so uncomfortable, sitting up so straight, so stiffly in his chair. His hands rest firmly on the armrests, his feet planted firmly on the floor. He looks straight ahead, always straight ahead. He's not sure Loki's truly looked at him at all since he got here. He can crack as many jokes as he wants, but it's not going to change the fact that everything about this is wrong.
He hates this. It means everything to him that he's able to see Loki again, but he hates this. He hates that what they once had is gone. Loki used to be so fun, so energetic. What happened to that? What happened to his Loki?
Mobius lets out a long breath. It's not the happy, lighthearted conversation he'd wanted to have, but it's the conversation they need to have.
"You know," he says, "you could've told us what you were doing before you did it. You could have at least said goodbye."
"No," Loki says, "I couldn't have."
"Why not?" Mobius asks. Didn't they deserve at least some semblance of closure? It wouldn't have made this okay. Nothing could make it okay. But he would have felt better. It wouldn't have felt like a gaping hole in his chest.
"Because you would have told me not to do it," he says. He looks down at him, a small smile on his lips, and in the dim lighting of the timelines surrounding him, Mobius swears he sees tears in his eyes. "And I would have listened."
"Well, that just sounds like another reason you should have talked to us," Mobius says. "If you knew we were right–"
"You wouldn't have been right," Loki interrupts. "I had to do this. I didn't have a choice. But if you asked me to stay, I would have, a million times over."
Mobius lets out a long breath. "Oh."
Loki nods solemnly.
"I take it there's no point in asking you to leave with me, then," Mobius says.
Loki shakes his head. That's fine; he'd known since before he came that this is the answer he'd get.
"Well," Mobius says, "then I guess I'll just stay here." He shrugs. He's okay with this.
Loki sighs. "Don't do that."
"Why not?"
"Because you're not supposed to," Loki says. "You're free – free to do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it. You can stay at the TVA, or you can explore the universe; you can do anything you want. For the first time in your life, you have choices."
"And what if my choice is to stay here?" Mobius asks.
"Then you're an idiot," Loki says darkly.
Mobius shrugs. "I'm okay with that."
"No, you're not," Loki says. "You don't know this place. You don't know what it's like. It is nothing. It is emptiness. It is the root of all life, but it is the most dull, lifeless place known to man or god. You think it's okay because you cannot fathom the idea of spending eternity in a place like this."
"Yeah, well, I can't fathom the idea of spending the rest of my life without you, either, so I guess we're at an impasse."
Loki's face softens, and for a moment, he's no longer God of Stories, Bringer of Life, with all the responsibilities of the universe on his shoulders. For a moment, he's just Loki – his Loki, the one who followed him around like a little puppy, who's fought with him and for him and against him, whose mere existence has been the culmination of his entire life's work. Everything Mobius has ever done has led him to this, to them, and he can see that so clearly right now.
"I don't know what you thought was going to happen if you did this," Mobius tells him, "if you thought I was just going to stay at the TVA and move on and pretend none of this ever happened, but I can't. So if you're gonna be stuck here until the end of time, I'm going to be stuck here with you, whether you like it or not."
"Why?" Loki asks. "Why would you do that to yourself?"
"Because I'm not going to leave you," Mobius says simply. Because I love you. He can't say that, obviously. It's just going to make things weird, and the last thing he wants right now is to make things weird with the guy he wants to hang out with in a run-down citadel at the end of time with for the rest of eternity. But it's true. He loves him, and he's not going to leave him.
"I don't want to take your life from you," Loki tells him.
"You took my life from me the minute you decided to hole yourself up here," Mobius tells him. "I'm here to get my life back."
Loki smiles, a tearful smile, but one filled with sincerity. "That means a lot," he tells him. "But I love you too much to let you do this."
"Yeah, well, I love you too much to let you stop me," Mobius shoots back.
Wait.
Hold on.
Did he...?
Mobius looks up at him. "You love me?"
"Of course I do," Loki says. "Isn't that what this has all been about?"
Mobius furrows his brows.
Is it?
What is it that's happening right now?
He's very confused.
"I love you and I want what's best for you," Loki says, "and what's best for you is to stay far, far away from me and all of this."
Mobius stares at him.
"I'm sorry, hold on, can we back up?" he asks. "When you say 'love,' do you mean...?"
Loki cracks a smile. "Yes, Mobius, I love you," he says. "Exactly as you think I mean it. I'd always been afraid to tell you – though I'd assumed you felt the same so I don't know why it was so daunting." He huffs. "Everything seems so small now. All of my problems, all of my fears. The things that used to consume me hardly matter now."
Mobius nods slowly. "Oh." That's... fair, he supposes. When you're in charge of literally keeping everything alive, the little things must seem really stupid – little things like fear and love and all those stupid things. He's transcended all of that, and that's... great.
So... now what?
"What does matter when you're king of everything?" Mobius asks. What's important to the most important person in existence?
"That the people I care about are happy," he says. "And for the most part, they seem to be – everyone except you."
Mobius shrugs sheepishly. "What can I say? I miss my Loki."
"I know that," Loki says. "Consider yourself free to explore other Lokis."
"Well, I don't want to explore other Lokis," Mobius says. "I want my Loki."
"Mobius, there are millions of Lokis out there – better Lokis; better people than I."
"I don't care," Mobius says. "I want my Loki. I want you."
"Well, you can't have me," Loki snaps, and Mobius recoils at the sudden coldness in his voice. "I cannot be with you. I am stuck here, for all of eternity. It is a sacrifice I had to make, and it is a sacrifice you have to accept."
"Okay, fine," Mobius says with a huff. "Then I'm going to make my own sacrifice and stay here for the rest of eternity, too."
Loki props his elbow up on the armrests side rests his head in his hand, exasperated. Mobius considers that a success – partially because Loki is pissing him off, but mostly because it means he's getting a reaction out of him. The stone-faced god who sits tall on a throne and speaks in short, monotonous sentences is a stranger to him, but a Loki who gets fed up with his badgering? This feels more like it.
"So, what, " Mobius says, "are you stuck in the throne or just stuck in the Void?"
Loki heaves a sigh. "In the citadel."
"Good," Mobius says. "So you can still get up and walk around."
"Mm," he hums.
"Then I'm gonna go get us some stuff to do," Mobius says. "Is there electricity in the Void? I'm assuming there's no internet, but we can at least get away with, what, a Gameboy? Smartphones? At least a deck of cards." He pauses thoughtfully. "Do you think I could get away with grabbing some books from Asgard? Or should I stick to Earth books?"
"Mobius." Loki lifts his head to look at him, and his exhaustion is clear on his face. "You can't stay here."
"Why not?" Mobius asks.
"Because you can't," Loki says. "I won't let you give up your life for this."
"But I want to," Mobius insists. "I don't know what to do with myself if you're here and I'm not. I tried to live a normal life, and I could barely keep myself entertained for a week."
"But you love your jet skis," Loki reminds him.
"I love my Loki more," Mobius replies.
Loki sighs, running his hands down his face in exasperation, and finally, he says, "If you do choose to go to Asgard, please bring me something to eat. Your TVA food has not been satiating in the slightest."
Mobius grins.
He knew he could do it.
"And you don't have to stay," Loki says. "Please don't think you have to stay. If you are sure you want to, I will let you, but you can leave whenever you want. You don't have to ask. You don't even have to tell me. I will understand."
"The only times I'm going to leave are to get snacks," Mobius tells him – and, now that he thinks about it, he really could go for a snack right now.
"Mobius, I'm serious," Loki says. "I don't want you to feel that you have to stay with me. I would never and I will never ask you to spend eternity in this prison."
"Good, because you don't have to ask me," Mobius says. "I'm staying whether you like it or not."
Loki lets out a long breath. "Alright," he says. "If you're sure."
"I sure am sure," Mobius replies. "Now, what do you want me to bring?" He has to think about that himself. "Food, obviously. I definitely think a deck of cards is a good idea. You can do a million things with those."
"I do like the idea of bringing books," Loki says. "If you do go to Asgard, though, I imagine they won't take kindly to you stealing from their library, so please be careful."
Mobius waves that off. "That's what I've got the TemPad for," he says. Easy in, easy out. "I might go back to Roxxcart, too," he adds. "I'm gonna need a toothbrush, toothpaste, and maybe some breath mints because I am going to kiss you but I will make it perfect first."
Loki chuckles. "I look forward to it."
"Okay, good," Mobius says, "because it would have been really awkward if I said that and you didn't want to kiss me."
"I have wanted to kiss you for an embarrassingly long time," Loki tells him, "so I assure you, that is not something you need to worry about."
Mobius grins. This is exactly what he wanted to hear. Short of literally dragging Loki back to the TVA with him – which he'd mostly known would be impossible – this is the absolute best he could have hoped for when he decided to prune himself to find him.
"You know," Mobius remarks, "I never thought I'd say this, but magical things really do happen beneath the green spaghetti tree."
Loki chuckles. "They do indeed."