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Mobius wakes up… somewhere.
He’s lying on the ground, limbs still twitching painfully from being disintegrated. God, it had hurt a lot worse than he’d expected. He’d always been taught that pruning was painless but this had been agonising, as though he’d been torn apart from the inside out. He supposes that was just another lie the TVA had told to retain control.
Mobius opens his eyes and sees the sky. The clouds are grey, hinting at rain. He can smell smoke on the breeze.
He props himself up on his elbows and groans, aching. Every breath he takes sounds deafening in the silence.
A crocodile waddles past through the grass, wearing a small golden helmet complete with two curved horns. Mobius blinks and shakes his head, forcing himself to close his mouth where it’s fallen open in shock. Being pruned has made him lose his mind.
After a long moment of hesitation, he stands up and follows the crocodile. It leads Mobius through an empty wasteland, littered with twisted metal and tongues of flame licking at the skeletons of the buildings they pass, all of them hollow shells, crumbling and faded. The silence is painful to listen to.
The Avengers Tower is burning on the skyline, smoke coiling up into the sky, and Mobius falters, shocked. This is New York. A warped, post-apocalyptic version of New York except… the TVA saved New York. Mobius was one of the agents who was sent out on the mission.
Where was he? This didn’t make any sense.
He follows the crocodile, shivering as he passes through the blanket of mist cloaking the city. He thinks of what Loki told him and falters, abruptly overwhelmed. The crocodile disappears in the long grass and Mobius lets it go. He can’t make himself take another step.
His whole life is a lie.
He was a Variant, just like every single one of his colleagues. God, he’d had a life once, with friends and family; a real life with a house and a job, and… and maybe even a jet ski. All Mobius had ever wanted was to ride on a jet ski and now he realises that he’s lost so much more than that.
Everything he’d ever loved… wiped away in a single moment… all of it taken from him.
His eyes sting with tears and he chokes back a sob, forcing himself to take another step. He tells himself it’s just the smoke burning his eyes and carries on walking, one foot in front of the other, mechanical. He feels like a ghost.
Mobius stumbles through the grass, through a ruined New York, through a world on fire. He feels lost and alone, and just when he begins to think that there’s no way out - that he will truly lose his mind in here, wherever here is - the silence is broken.
He sees a group of figures huddled up ahead, murmuring quietly as they stand around a body on the ground. They’re all dressed in some variation of the same outfit: emerald capes, horned helmets, leather doublets… and there, lying sprawled in the grass in front of them, is a figure Mobius knows only too well.
“Loki!” he cries, jubilant.
All of the figures look up at him and Mobius falters, wrong-footed.
The Loki on the ground - his Loki - staggers to his feet and closes the distance between them. He’s weak and shaking, and he falls against Mobius’s chest, his trembling hands settling on Mobius’s forearms. Loki is warm and alive in his embrace, and Mobius lets out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding.
“They pruned you too?” he asks, sympathetic. Loki’s cool eyes shine with tears.
“Yes,” Loki says, shuddering. He has experienced many ‘deaths’ - Mobius has watched them all - but this one in particular seems to have shaken him. “They have Sylvie, Mobius. We have to go back.”
“We’ll find a way,” Mobius tells him, soothing. He rubs Loki’s back comfortingly and peers around at the burning city, his teeth worrying at his lower lip. He feels calmer now that Loki is so close and he stamps down on his anxiety, his fear, his grief. There will be time to mourn what he lost later.
For now, they need to find a way to survive, to get back to the Sacred Timeline, to tear the TVA down from the ground up.
“I’m glad you’re not dead, Mobius,” Loki says in a small voice, tearful and unusually gentle. “When I thought they’d killed you, I - I couldn’t -”
Mobius shivers and now it’s Loki’s turn to hold him closer, tucking Mobius’s head away into his neck with a hand resting gently on his short silver hair. Mobius wonders if he imagines Loki’s lips brushing the top of his head.
“Are we still… friends?” Mobius’s voice trails away awkwardly. It must be a foolish question because the look Loki fixes him with is one which many people direct towards Casey: indulgent, wistful, a little sad.
"Of course we are," Loki says gently.
He cradles Mobius’s face between his hands and peers into his eyes, blue on blue. Loki smiles and it’s the softest Mobius has ever seen him, softer than any of the memories he’s been privy to, softer than any of the moments they’d spent together at the TVA.
Mobius has never had a friend before. Not a real one anyway… not one he remembers.
It feels good to have one now.
Mobius hopes he doesn’t lose Loki again.
He's glad he has the God of Mischief in his corner, protecting his back. He's glad he has Loki here beside him, where Mobius knows beyond doubt that he’s safe. Judging by the expression on Loki’s handsome face, he’s thinking much the same thing.
Mobius supposes that shouldn’t shock him. They’re both Variants after all. They’re the same.
“We need to find a way back,” he says and Loki presses his lips together as he straightens.
“And we will,” he says decisively, entwining his fingers with Mobius’s. “Together.”
Mobius and Loki turn to face the burning city, the Loki Variants filling the meadow before them, and Mobius feels the determination flowing through him like steel.
Whatever is coming, they’ll make it through in one piece. It’s their only option.
With Loki beside him, Mobius feels no fear.
He knows Loki will do his best to protect him, just as Mobius will do everything he can to keep Loki safe.
That’s what friends do.