~~~Catherine's pov~~~
We all trailed after O.B. as he hurried out of Repairs & Advancements to begin searching the clutter-lined walls of the hallway for something.
I was about to ask what he was looking for when I felt Linda tug on my hand, trying to get my attention.
"What's up?" I asked her, kneeling to her level with a smile.
"I just wanted to give you these before I forgot." She said with a slightly mischievous smile.
"You know you have the same 'mischief face' your dad does, right?" I asked, raising a playfully suspicious brow. "What are you up to?"
Look, I'm married to the God of Mischief and we have a daughter who is the Goddess of Chaos and Tricks. If there is one thing the two of them bond over, it's mischief. It kinda covers all the bases. Chaos and tricks included.
"Nothing." She shook her head. "But now that you guys have your memories back, you should have these." She placed something into the palm of my hand and when I opened my hand, I saw my wedding and engagement rings.
I let out a small gasp at the sight of them, my heart swelling. "I thought I lost these forever... How did you..." I stared at her in shock.
Right before Renslayer had my memory wiped, any jewelry or personal items I had on me were confiscated. I was told they were destroyed...
"When I saw you for the first time after the memory wipe, I noticed you didn't have your rings. So I checked the evidence room and there they were." She smiled at me. "I wanted to hold onto them just in case you ever got your memory back."
"Linda, this means the world to me," I told her honestly. "Thank you so much." I hugged her tightly and when I pulled away, I pressed a kiss to her forehead.
"I found Dad's too." She whispered, revealing Loki's wedding ring in her other hand. "It was in the Void." She handed it to me alongside my rings.
The Void? How on earth did she find one ring in that wasteland?
You know what? I've just learned to not question her at this point. She has her ways. Ways that will remain a mystery to just about everyone until the end of time...
~~~Loki's pov~~~
O.B. finally found whatever he was looking for and we continued down the hallway to get to... I don't actually know.
Just as I was going to pose that exact question to the inventor, Catherine walked up beside me, a large smile on her face.
"What are you so happy about?" I asked, noticing the stark contrast in her emotional state from what it had been a few minutes before.
"Here." Her smile remained as she placed something in my hand.
My wedding band.
My eyes were wide as I looked at her. "How do you have this? Where did you find it?"
I lost this when I was pruned at the park. It shouldn't be possible...
"Linda gave it to me." She shrugged, much to my surprise. "Along with these." She lifted her left hand to reveal that she had her engagement and wedding rings back. "Apparently they were in the evidence room and she held onto them. And she said she found yours in the Void. Which is.....interesting."
"How did she manage to pull that off?" I questioned, extremely impressed but also confused.
The Void was nothing more than a glorified junkyard. How did she find one specific ring in the midst of all that?
"She's your daughter." She nudged me playfully. "She has a knack for pulling off the impossible."
I smiled to myself, knowing that she was absolutely right.
We walked a few more feet before O.B. finally started to fill us in on the situation.
"So, the timeline is branching now? I bet that's what's causing the power surges. And maybe your time-slipping." He theorized as we exited the long hallway and entered a larger room that was connected to an elevator.
"Really? How?" I questioned, hoping to solve my time-slipping before I was taken back to the past again.
Seeing Linda go through that pain once was more than enough. The last thing I want is to go back just to watch her suffer more.
Just then, the elevator door opened and B-15 walked out to meet us. Mobius had paged her a few moments beforehand, saying we needed everyone on this.
"Things are a mess upstairs, Mobius. This better be important." She said, slightly annoyed as she walked up to the analyst.
"It is." He assured her and gestured for her to follow us as we continued forward, Catherine joining them in the back of the group.
"The branching is overloading the Temporal Loom," O.B. explained, still not making much sense.
Surprisingly enough, it made sense to Linda though.
"That's not good." Her eyes were wide as she moved to walk beside me.
"You know, the Temporal Loom. It's in the TVA Guidebook." He continued, much to my confusion.
"The what?"
He didn't answer as he began typing something into a keypad that rested next to a set of orange steel doors.
"There's one on every desk here." Linda looked up at me while we waited for the doors to open. "It's basically a detailed list of all the mechanical things in the TVA. And instructions on how to work and repair them." She summarized, handing me a small orange booklet with the words 'TVA' on the cover.
I flipped through it quickly, baffled by the illustrations of all the different machinery and the details that accompanied them.
"You have one too?" I raised a brow, handing it back to her.
She just shrugged. "You know I love to read. And there wasn't much selection here, so I just kept rereading this. Turns out O.B. actually wrote it." She explained as the inventor in question finally managed to get the doors open and we continued forward, further down the dimly lit hallway.
"Okay, O.B., this piece just came off right here," Mobius spoke up from behind us, still holding the Extractor. "Is that important-" He was cut off as a large light fell from the ceiling, shattering as it hit the floor and spraying glass everywhere.
My fatherly instincts kicked in and I quickly pulled Linda behind me, trying to shield her from the glass that was scattered about the hallway.
"Did any of the glass cut you?" I asked her, concerned as I looked her over, kneeling at her level.
Much to my relief, she shook her head. "No, I'm okay."
My relief was short-lived however as a loud rumbling sound echoed from behind the orange blast doors in front of us.
I exchanged a look with Catherine as we all moved to walk through the slowly opening doors, a blinding light escaping through them.
Linda's hand tightened around mine as her eyes adjusted to the brightness that was undoubtedly overwhelming her senses.
O.B. seemed unbothered however and just walked over to what looked like an older model of a computer console. "The Temporal Loom is the heart of the TVA. It's where raw time is refined into a physical timeline." He said as he activated something to dampen the lights so that we could see our surroundings easier. "And it's not constructed to weave together so many new branches, so it's overloading. I've never seen it like this."
My legs carried me forward as I approached a large window and the lights faded enough for me to finally get a look at the Temporal Loom.
To put it simply,
"It looks like a disaster," I murmured.
Linda held my hand tighter and gave a small nod as her voice filled with fear. "It is a disaster."
Catherine looked over the multiple computers, examining the clear build-up of dust. "You don't get down here too much, I guess."
O.B. just shrugged. "I never had to. Miss Minutes took care of everything. I just ran diagnostics every few hundred years."
That's not comforting...
"So, what do we do? How do we stop the meltdown?" Linda asked O.B., still staring out the window.
"We need to prune those extra branches."
B-15 was opposed to this notion immediately. "That means the death of countless people. We can't do that."
The man sighed, reworking the problem in his head. "Then I'll need to close the blast doors to protect the TVA while I figure out how to retrofit it to handle those branches."
"What about the time-slipping?"
"Once those doors close, we won't be able to re-sync you, so it's now or never." He turned to me, handing me a time stick, and at the sight of it, Linda visibly flinched away from the weapon.
As I witnessed this, I thought back to something I had seen all those weeks ago when I was first brought to the TVA.
She had the same reaction when she saw me in the lobby. When a hunter had raised a time stick towards me, she had winced, staring with a mix of fear and anxiety that I hadn't seen very often from her.
A wave of sadness washed over me as I realized that her reaction was mostly likely due to some form of PTSD she had suffered from after what happened at the park.
We haven't spoken about the subject much, but that was the moment when I knew that Catherine and I had to absolutely sit down and talk with her about this. It was far too great a trauma for her to deal with on her own. Especially at her age.
I looked down at her, dread filling me when I finally realized that she would have to watch me get pruned again.
"I have to prune myself right now?" I wanted to put it off for as long as possible. Or at least until I found a way for Linda not to watch me disappear for a second time.
"Now isn't for a little bit," O.B. answered. "We still gotta get Mobius into position. But first," He looked over at Mobius who was writing the word 'skin?' into the dust on one of the computers. "Mobius, to fix Loki's time-slipping, you'll go out there and launch the Extractor, which will pull Loki from the time stream before I need to close the blast doors."
The analyst gave a hesitant thumbs up, clearly not looking forward to the possibility of his skin getting peeled off.
O.B. turned back to me and handed me a large stopwatch/timer in my free hand. "Loki, this timer is synced to the Loom. You'll stand by to prune yourself within moments after this turns green. Green means Mobius succeeded. Green means prune. If you're too late, you will be lost to time forever."
His choice of words sent my five-year-old daughter into a panic, and she grabbed my hand again, clearly terrified.
Excellent job, O.B. Just perfect.
I looked down at Linda, squeezing her hand reassuringly before I looked back at O.B. "O.B., is there any other way you could put that, that doesn't make anyone panic unnecessarily?" I questioned seriously, glancing repeatedly at Linda.
The inventor remained oblivious however and continued. "Nope. And also, Mobius would lose all of his skin."
This isn't getting any better.
"Okay, you've got about an hour." He started, but then the glass that we were standing beside started to crack. "You've got about five minutes." He corrected himself and then quickly walked to the opposite side of the room. "Anyway, I'm gonna get everything ready."
Just as I was about to trail after him, more questions at the ready, D-90 entered the room out of nowhere, extremely out of breath.
I subconsciously glared at the hunter, thinking back to the last time I had seen him. The moment my memories had been restored and he pruned Linda in front of me and Catherine.
It didn't make it any better that his original target had been Catherine.
"Dox and her crew are raiding the armory." He panted, most likely running here to deliver the news.
Dox... Wasn't that the woman from the War Room?
"They have to be going after Sylvie. That's their only lead." Catherine concluded, still standing over one of the computers.
B-15 looked back at us before turning to D-90. "I'll go handle Dox. You guys fix whatever this is." And with that, she left with him to deal with that issue.
This was gonna be a long day.
A few moments later, Catherine called Linda over to help her and O.B. with something on the computers, so I took the opportunity to talk to Mobius about something. Something important.
"Mobius, if I... If I don't make it back, I need you to..." I struggled to find the words as I gripped the time stick in my right hand and the timer the other.
If I didn't make it back, I was terrified of what that would mean for Linda. She's already been through too much and she can't lose me again.
I'm not even sure if she could survive that...
~~~Mobius' pov~~~
"You'll make it back." I shook my head.
"Right, but when I use this thing, I might not make it back, and I need to know that Catherine and Linda will be okay if I don't. Which is why-" And with that, he time-slipped.
Impeccable timing, really! Just the best!
Linda, having seen what happened, ran over to me with her mother, her face white with fear.
"Did he just time-slip?!" She panicked, and then her eyes went to the time stick that was now on the ground where her dad once stood. "Oh no..." She backed away from the weapon in horror.
Catherine noticed her panic and quickly knelt to her level. "He'll make it back." She assured her, pulling her into a hug.
I wasn't so sure...