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Keeping track of his attempts to repair the Loom should’ve been easy.
Loki’s head is swimming with equations, theoretical physics bombarding him like a swarm of gnats. A few hundred years of studying will do that. It’s all a numbers game, and yet somehow, in the deluge of calculations and probability it seems Loki has managed to lose track of exactly how many times he’s had to go back to the beginning.
He tells himself it doesn’t matter, then wastes valuable seconds as he pauses to think. In the end the Loom explodes. Those seconds wouldn’t have made a difference. At least he doesn’t think so.
He goes back to the beginning and tries again.
***
Loki feels frayed around the edges, like a cable about to snap. They’re close, so close. Timely made it nearly the full length of the gangway last time.
His palm is slick and trembling on the microphone as he talks the man through each agonizing step. Not allowing himself to hope yet—if he lets himself get hopeful this early the disappointment will crush him.
Too slow.
His throat is dry. The light beyond the window bores into his eyes, carving afterimages that will linger beyond the next reset. Timely is nearly there, and Loki’s skin prickles with stubborn hope. He won’t allow it to creep up into his throat but it’s there, and it’s golden. He can almost taste the relief.
And then Timely sets the multiplier down, and Loki watches as a surge of temporal wind catches its unwieldy silhouette and sends it rolling, rolling, straight to the edge.
There’s no air left in the room. Loki stares, motionless, as it tips slowly, ever so slowly over the metal lip and falls into the nothingness below.
An exclamation, somewhere to the left, and several voices talking linger just beneath the static filling Loki’s ears.
He’s laughing, he realizes—helpless and breathy, stuttering as his body trembles.
It’s funny, isn’t it? No, it’s hysterical that something so ridiculous would ruin everything this time around. That he would unravel over something so pathetic after hundreds, even thousands, of chances to relive this same godforsaken series of events and still fail again and again and again…
Loki rakes a hand through his hair. Laughter bubbles up from his chest as though it’s been squeezed out with a vice, almost hysterical now.
His hands are numb. The room feels stretched out and far away, like the view through a fish-eye lens. Loki is suddenly very afraid that he might be losing his mind.
They’re all looking at him. Casey, O.B., B-15, Sylvie, Mobius. And there’s shock on all their faces, and confusion, and dismay—but there’s also concern, and it cuts deeper than a dagger.
So Loki does what he does best, and he hides. He stumbles away, away from the Loom, away from the prying stares, away from everything just for a moment—his breathing is shallow and far too fast, but he can’t stop it. He can’t stop anything except time, so that’s what he does. A flick of his trembling finger freezes everything, leaving him alone in a sudden, eerie silence.
All the time in the world. It’s too much and not enough.
Loki’s back hits the far wall with a painful thud. His limbs feel strange. Too long for his body; fuzzy and full of static. An ember of pain flares to life in his chest—he can’t breathe, and it hurts.
The unhinged laughter has faded to wheezing as he sinks to the ground. He could trap himself here forever, Loki thinks deliriously, repeating and repeating until time itself unravels. Never resting, never living, just acting out the same maddening repetition with no end in sight.
Maybe this is Hel. Maybe the fall from the Bifrost really did kill him and everything since has been an elaborately staged torment.
Loki’s head falls into his hands. Shudders run through his body as he wills his lungs to cooperate, but the sounds escaping his mouth only grow more strained. A horrible wave of chills surges through him, cold morphing into heat and sweeping him from head to toe.
He’s drowning. There’s a hand around his neck, squeezing the life from his body, he’s falling through empty space—
“—oki, hey, Loki, can you hear me?”
That voice, so close and so wonderfully familiar sends Loki’s eyes flying open. But relief quickly freezes into dismay as he realizes what it means for Mobius to be here, crouched beside him, and not across the room where he’d been frozen. Or where he should have been frozen, at least.
When had he let it slip? Did his time-stopping ability have limits? Loki’s eyes dart from his own shaking hand to Mobius’s face—
—to the still-motionless figures of everyone else in the room, right where he’d last seen them.
“Can you look at me?” that gentle voice is saying, and now there’s a hand on his shoulder, rubbing softly. “Hey. Deep breaths, okay?”
Loki’s eyes fall shut of their own accord this time. The harsh echo of his own breathing rings in his ears as all the exhaustion and overwhelm crashes over him at once. Sweat gathers in the creases of his palms and sticks to his collar as he tugs it away from his windpipe. A helpless little sound follows his next breathless exhale.
“You gotta breathe, Loki,” Mobius murmurs. “It’s all right. Everything’s okay, see?”
It’s far from okay, though, and Loki has to force back the building pressure behind his eyes as he considers the full extent of how not okay it is.
Something is squeezing his hand. It takes longer than it should have for Loki to realize that it’s Mobius, gently prying his fingers apart and replacing them with his own.
“Feel that?”
The analyst is sitting beside him now, close enough that Loki can feel the warmth of their shoulders hovering close together. He nods shakily.
“Good. That’s good. Focus right here, okay?”
The other side of Loki’s hand is enveloped in warmth as Mobius gently sandwiches it between his palms. He shudders again, so violently that it shakes both of them.
“Easy,” Mobius soothes. “Breathe in when I squeeze your hand, okay?”
He squeezes gently, and Loki would probably find the pressure and warmth grounding if he were in a better mental state. As it stands, he only manages a slightly deeper gasp before hyperventilating all over again.
“That’s okay. Try it again for me.”
Another squeeze. Loki lets his forehead fall to rest on his knees, lungs screaming for oxygen. He tries to follow Mobius’s instructions, he really does, but he’s so tired.
Hot tears prick the corners of his eyes as he huddles there, pathetic and shivering without even the dignity of solitude to console him. He wants—what does he want? He wants it all to stop, but it already has in the most literal sense, and it’s not enough.
And yet, as he drags in a breath that feels like a thousand shards of glass in his throat, the voice in his ear disperses some of the static. His hand spasms, and Mobius entwines their fingers so smoothly it almost escapes Loki’s notice.
“There ya go. Just like that.”
The next squeeze is warmer, firm but softened a little by the brush of a thumb across Loki’s knuckles. Back and forth, slow and steady. He takes another painful breath—or maybe less painful this time. Maybe it’s getting easier.
Several long minutes—or what feel like minutes; it’s hard to say when time is stopped—pass like this. Loki keeps his eyes shut in a vain attempt to maintain the delusion that he didn’t just have a breakdown on the floor, in the middle of who knows how many time loops, in front of Mobius who should still be frozen like the rest of them, but he’s not.
And they’re holding hands.
When Loki finally cracks an eye open, Mobius’s face swims slowly into focus beside him. The first thing he sees is a reassuring smile.
Warm. That’s what Mobius has always been. Warm and safe. Loki is a moth to his flame, slowly unfreezing as that warmth washes over him.
“Mobius,” Loki breathes, trying to swallow and finding his throat bone dry.
“Hey there.” Another squeeze of his hand, like an ember between their palms. “You’re all right. Take it easy, okay?”
“I’m not—“ Loki shakes his head, trying to jostle a coherent thought loose. “I can’t—“
The words tangle and lodge in his throat. Something hot and quivering holds them there, threatening to spill over, and it occurs to Loki that he’s teetering on the knife’s edge of falling apart completely. His breath hitches.
“Hey, shh,” Mobius notices, of course. Loki doubts he could hide anything from him at this point, even if he wanted to. “Deep breaths. You don’t have to talk, don’t worry.”
Loki thinks of all the failed repetitions. Running, scrambling, talking a mile a minute, fighting to shave off a second or two here and there. Perfecting his script. Reciting it to death. Trying to outrun the sense of doom nipping at his heels the whole way (too slow, always too slow).
A million and a half brave faces. He’s too exhausted to conjure another.
Loki heaves out a breath that sounds more like a sob.
“Mobius,” he repeats, unsure what it is he’s pleading for, exactly. There’s a hand on his back now, smoothing over his shoulder blades. It’s so gentle, so warm, that Loki swallows back the urge to recoil like he always does when kindness touches him.
Because he doesn’t have to. Mobius won’t hurt him.
If he weren’t so tired, if his muscles weren’t seizing up from shaking and hyperventilating, Loki might’ve fought it off. But he’s already losing the battle, even now. A heavy tear streaks down his face and drops into his lap.
“Right here with ya,” Mobius says softly. “C’mere.”
His hand moves to the side of Loki’s head then, cupping it gently, holding his other arm open in invitation, and Loki doesn’t need much more prompting. He lets those gentle hands ease him closer until his face falls to rest against that awful brown suit jacket and all he can feel is Mobius.
“There, you’re all right. Gonna be all right. I’ve got you.”
Loki knows he should be withering with humiliation right about now—and maybe some tiny part of him still is; the part that’s young and lonely and just wants his father to be proud of him. He hiccups a short, painful breath. Mobius isn’t letting go and Loki can’t afford to question his motives this time, not when he’s already fallen apart so completely.
He tells himself that he has nothing left to lose, and knows that it’s a lie. But he buries his face in Mobius’s shoulder and lets the tears spill over anyway.
Loki is near-silent as he cries, muffled by Mobius’s jacket and a lifetime’s worth of practice. He braces himself for the moment the gentle arms around him withdraw, or the comforting words cease, but they never do. Mobius is steady as a rock beside him.
Loki can’t make sense of it. No one ever stays. Not in the ugly aftermath of his failures, his weaknesses, his shame. Not even the people who love him. But Mobius doesn’t leave.
In the end, Loki can’t help but stay and let himself be held. Mobius’s palm draws comforting circles across his back, and he’s too tired, too wrung out to resist. He sobs weakly, then forces his lungs to expand in a long, painful shudder. The world melts into a murky backdrop, hazy through his tears and the overwhelming ache of everything.
“Hey, I gotcha.” Mobius murmurs. His voice is soft and sad. “You’re okay. You’ve—“ He pauses. Sighs a little. “You’ve been doing this for a long time, huh?”
Loki sniffles and raises his head a little in confusion.
“How did you…”
Mobius shrugs.
“Figured it out.” He reaches over and cups Loki’s cheek with one hand, so tenderly that it punches the breath from his lungs. Soft, careful strokes of Mobius’s thumb begin to brush away the tears on his face. “Wasn’t that hard to put two and two together. You knew the whole sequence so well, I figured you must’ve done it before.”
Loki’s body sags. He looks away and sniffs weakly, shame slowly curdling in his stomach as the panic fades and his rationality starts to kick back in. It was such a small thing that set him off, really, in hindsight.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps. “I don’t know why I…”
“Hey.” Mobius scolds gently. “None of that.“
Loki swallows the rest of his apology with a discontented huff. As irritating as it is, he’s come to expect comments like this from Mobius. It’s…oddly comforting to hear it now, though he’d never admit it.
A beat of silence fills the space left behind now that his self-deprecating ramble has been cut off. Loki scrubs the heels of his hands across his face in a vain attempt to erase the evidence of his tears and stares at the floor.
“How long have you been doing this?” Mobius finally asks, soft and concerned. “Trying to get the multiplier to work?”
Loki shakes his head and swallows hard around the lump in his throat.
“Don’t know.” he croaks. “I stopped counting a long time ago.”
He exhales shakily, feeling the residual panic and overwhelm still spiderwebbing through his chest. Mobius’s arm is warm and steady around his shoulders though, and it’s enough to keep the worst of it at bay.
Loki’s body slumps, and his head drops onto Mobius’s shoulder. The arm around him squeezes a little tighter. If the multiverse were kinder, maybe he’d get to stay like this forever.
Mobius takes a breath as though he’s about to say something, then pauses for a few heartbeats. When he does speak, it’s honey-sweet and gentle, drawing Loki in and soothing him.
“I’m glad you…ya know.” He nods at their frozen surroundings. “Let me in.”
Loki huffs wryly. He opens his mouth to speak, to tell Mobius that it hadn’t been intentional, just a slip of his panicked mind, but he doesn’t say anything. They leave so much unspoken, the two of them. But Loki doesn’t need to put words to it—it’s as clear as spun glass and refracted light in the unmoving air. An arm around his shoulders, a silent thank you for trusting me, and there’s nothing he can say to refute it, so he just nods jerkily against the stiff fabric of Mobius’s jacket.
He doesn’t know how it happened, but maybe it doesn’t matter, because Mobius is here.
Loki breathes through the hollowness in his chest. Blinks away the grit of salt clinging to his eyelashes and fights back the loudest impulse in his body, the one telling him to push Mobius away.
“…I should go back.” Loki murmurs reluctantly. His throat is dry and raspy. “Try again…”
The arm around his shoulders squeezes a little tighter for just a moment. Mobius hums softly—whether it’s agreement or sympathy, Loki can’t quite tell.
“Is the multiverse itself going to collapse if we stay like this a little longer?” Mobius finally asks. There’s a hint of a smile in his voice, the kind that makes the corner of his mustache quirk up. “Or do you think maybe you could use a break?”
Loki exhales shakily. It’s the closest thing to a laugh that his worn out body can muster.
“…No. I don’t suppose it will.”
He raises his head wearily. A strand of hair clings to the damp skin of his cheek. Mobius gently peels it away and tucks it behind his ear.
“That’s what I thought.”
His palm settles against Loki’s jaw, tracing softly back and forth with his thumb. Loki wonders if Mobius can feel the steady thrumming of his jugular vein as he leans softly into the touch. Instinct, he thinks. Like a plant toward the sun.
“…Just a little longer.” Loki murmurs.
Mobius smiles. Outside, the Loom is seconds from exploding, but here the frozen beams of light cast rainbows over his silhouette. So strange and beautiful, fragile as glass, and it’s so big, so impossible, that Loki feels as though he might shatter all over again for one terrifying moment.
“Of course.” Mobius soothes. The helplessness fades away in an instant, and it’s just the two of them again. Loki breathes.
“We’ve got all the time in the world.”