Chapter Text
“Who was he? The one shouting your name?” For the first time there was a hint of softness and curiosity in her voice. “Your boyfriend ?”
Loki turned back to where the portal had been.
It was long gone.
And with it, any chance to go home.
He swallowed, shut his eyes to force the threatening tears back in, then sucked in a breath.
“He was my roommate.”
It was only once the words were out of his mouth that he realised where they had come to, above him emergency lights flashed, over the loudspeakers orders were given, not knowing that the escaped ‘dangerous’ variants were in their midst.
He turned to find his other self, only to find she’d already left, he let out a groan, turning to follow her, before turning to face the lockers.
Was it fate or coincidence that had brought him here, three lockers down from Mobius’, from the knives Mobius had reluctantly locked away after Bee told him that the orders were that Loki was to have no weapons.
Mobius’ locker was identical to all of the other orange-fronted ones filling the large room, his was completely unscuffed, his name engraved in the metal, ‘Mobius M Mobius ’, Loki wanted to run his thumb over the name… but that was no longer his right.
Loki fiddled with the lock, he had watched Mobius open it, though Mobius had told him not to watch. “Five… six… five… four,” he murmured.
The lock popped and the door swung open.
A lump in his throat as he saw that Mobius had tacked up a photograph of the two of them, both soaked with rain in front of Big Ben in London, both faces lit up with beaming smiles, in the very background a variant they had caught was being led away.
A muscle in Loki’s jaw twitched.
He snatched his blades from the shelf, slamming the door shut. He stormed from the room in search of the Variant who didn’t like being called Loki, breaking into a run to get away from the locker and to that pull of fate.
It turned out all he had to do was follow the sounds of screaming and the littered bodies of knocked out Minutemen to get to her.
He slowed to a stop panting slightly, she spotted him and gave him a dangerous look, he flipped the dagger and caught them again, a nervous tick and a warning.
She took out her sword, he felt kind of stupid at the difference in weapons, but he had faith in his proficiency with blades. “A few questions,” he told her, holding one out in a defensive posture.
She sighed and took a step towards him, which he met, “Have you really got nothing else to do?”
Loki pulled a face, this was like Thor refusing to let him play with him when he was 600 or so, but worse because they were both Lokis. “Rude.”
The pair circled each other, Loki’s knives out, the Variant’s sword in her hand, ready if need be.
“Are you sure you’re a Loki?”
“You’re in my way,” she told him, bored of his conversation already.
“You are my way!” he spat.
He was full of frustration at the fact she didn’t seem remotely interested in him, and that she didn’t seem to feel this pull of destiny which she must be feeling… and because he had just thrown away the only thrown he’d had since he had lost Odin’s favour as a child, he had thrown away the first chance at something real , and she didn’t care.
Her sword swung to knock his outstretched blade but he was ready, moving it out of her way, stepping back, countering it… only to be shoved down the corridor by her, tripping him on her food as he fell.
He turned back, flipping his hair out of his face, preparing again, Lokis did not give up. “I thought perhaps we could work together,” he gestured to himself using the tips of his knives, remembering his mother’s words to never do that. He held out his arms (and his blades by connection) in a ‘what do you say?’ sort of way.
She kicked him square in the chest.
He stumbled back again. He let out a grunt of frustration, but righted himself again, she was worse than Thor, he had decided. “But now I see,” he panted, trying not to show how much her careless fighting had affected him, “you lack vision.”
She let out an annoyed groan, turning away and walking away as though he posed no threat.
Loki followed her, “So either you’ll come willingly…” he placed his hand on her shoulder.
Before he could get out the threat her hand grabbed the one on her shoulder, twisting his arm, she went to stab him with her sword, this time he was successful in dodging it, he span as elegantly as the ballerinas his mother had loved so much, he grabbed her arm as he did, twisting it behind her back. “Or you won’t,” he trapped her arm, smiling in victory through his pants, “Either way, that’s how I get to the Time-Keepers.”
He could get to them, he could use diplomacy to get his freedom, and the freedom of Mobius… if Mobius would take it… maybe Loki could still make this right. Only Mobius and Bee and some Minuteman had seen him run through the portal after himself, he could explain it to them, they could keep it quiet, could play it off as him helping… he could stay… he could make it up to Mobius…
The next thing he knew the Variant had thrown herself back into him, forcing them to both fall to the floor, he was dazed for a second, but he forced himself up, his blades had been lost at some point, she still had her sword, he raised his fist, like it would do anything.
The two froze.
“Hey!”
Loki turned his head to look with a small gasp. Shit. Now he was really in trouble, Renslayer already didn’t like him, presumably put up with him because of Mobius, but here she was with two Minutemen, all three of them with pruning sticks.
Loki felt ice run down his spine.
His arm was twisted, he let out a noise of fear without meaning to, the edge of the sword blade pressed to his chest.
“Come any closer,” the Variant snarled, “I’ll kill him.”
“Go for it.”
Loki couldn’t help but roll his eyes, “I always knew you didn’t like me!”
He watched Renslayer begin to run, he slipped his hand into the Variant’s pocket, remembering where she had put it…. Yes…. he had to be fast…
He pressed at random buttons, and the floor fell out from beneath them.
He fell onto his back, the Variant beside him, he let out a small groan.
He knew he needed to move, he wasn’t safe, the TemPad was no longer in his hands. He moved at the same time the Variant did, apparently she had thought the same thing, she scrambled past him and he just used his instincts to grab hold of her leg, pulling her back, he wrapped his arms and legs around her leg as she tried to free herself.
“Get off my leg!”
“No!” Loki yelled back at her petulantly, this time as she tried to kick him off of her leg he sprang forward, scooping up the TemPad as he did. “Aha!” He held it in the air in victory…
… then he felt her hand on the back of his head , and the next thing he felt was being slammed down, face first, onto something metal.
“Hey!” He let out in a whine, “that wasn’t very sportsman-“ his words fell as he turned to see a devious smile on her face as she held the TemPad.
“Goodbye Variant.”
Loki squeezed his eyes shut as she pressed the screen, not sure if she was leaving or if he was being sent to some form of Hel.
Nothing happened.
“Goodbye Variant.”
She pressed the screen again.
“ You’re outta juice .”
Loki almost smiled at the annoying southern drawl coming from the pad, he watched panting as she frowned at the screen, at least this was giving him a chance to catch his breath.
“It’s not working,” She said almost to herself.
Loki pushed himself to his feet, flipping his hair out of his face. He had hoped she’d be too distracted, but she drew her sword again.
He moved his hands, flexing his magic like a muscle, he disappeared from in front of her, reappearing behind her and shoving her hard into the wall, diving for the Tempad, and this time succeeding.
He stared down at it, he hadn’t technically ever held one, the last time he had appeared in Italy to surprise Mobius he had bribed Casey into using one to open up the portal, but it looked easy enough… if it would stop announcing that it was out of power.
“Give it back to me!”
He shook his head at her demands, “ No .”
“You don’t even know how to use it, idiot!” She held her hand out for it.
“Of course I do.” He walked with it, sparing her a smug smile. “You’re not the only tech savvy Loki.”
“Stop calling me that.”
Loki frowned, tilting his head to the side, “Tech savvy?”
“A Loki .”
“Why?”
“None of your business. Now give it back to me,” She reached for it only for it, only for him to magic it away in a puff of green light. “Bring it back now, dickhead.”
“Sure,” he smirked as he made it appear in one of his hands… only to magic it away again.
“So, you’re just fully a magician?” She sneered, “Seriously, has anyone ever taught you to fight without magic tricks?”
Loki glared at her, thinking back to his mother teaching him, to his father not telling him that he was too weak to use a sword to fight, Thor had tried to teach him but had soon lost interest in his younger brother when he made friends with Sif, Volstagg, Hogun, and Fandral…
Bee had taught him to spar a little, so had Mobius, but the pair had been training for longer than he had been alive.
He really shouldn’t rise to her bait…
“Fine for my next trick,” he drew his blades out, savouring that scraping noise they made, “I’ll make you disappear.”
He was immediately hit with a blast of green magic, throwing him back, he let out a groan as she stood above him, hand raised, “Oh, c’mon .”
Because was this seriously going to be it, killed by himself ? And the most annoying version of himself, seriously, where even was her charm, her grace.
He had been called a narcissist several times, yet that was flatly untrue, for many reasons, but especially as he hated her and she hated him.
“Give it back to me.”
“So you can abandon me?”
A ball of white hot fire fell next to his head, his eyes flickered to it, only to see a rock, he glanced back up at this Not -Loki, curious… but already fearing the answer “Is that one of your powers?”
“Where did you send us?”
If looks could kill , Mobius said inside his head, he was glad they couldn’t cause she would be done with him by now.
She ran from the tent they were in, Loki stumbled to his feet, rushing after her. She was annoying and had no style, but she clearly knew how to survive, and he didn’t want to be alone… not that he would admit either of those things out loud.
He couldn’t help but look to the sky, the sky with the moon slowly (or not so slowly, he thought, how fast did moons fall?) falling from the sky, rocky debris falling into fireballs from the speed, landing all around them.
“You idiot ! This is Lamentis-1!”
“I don’t know what that means!” Loki’s voice was strained with fear as he shouted back to her, it turned out that moons falling from the sky were loud.
They gasped as a large rock fell between them.
“This is the moon that that planet is about to crash into and destroy!”
The two began to run.
“Of all of the apocalypses saved on that TemPad, this is the worst! No one makes it off here!”
Loki froze as a rock narrowly missed him… this was much worse than a thunderstorm, he decided.
“Watch out!”
The next thing he knew he was being pulled, her hand tightly holding his ‘VARIANT’ jacket as she forced him to run as fast as she was, heading to a small metal container.
“I’m sorry, Madam,” he snapped back as best he could, panting as they ran, “Didn’t exactly have time to scan the brochure !” He didn’t have to see to know that even as they ran she would be rolling her eyes, “Watch out!”
She dodged the rubble, pulling him with her. “I don’t need your help!”
“You’re so weird!”
They reached the door, out of habit Loki opened the door and prepared to step aside to let her inside first, he had been raised to be polite, after all.
“Get inside, dickhead.”
Loki was unceremoniously shoved inside first, he stumbled like a newborn giraffe, righting himself as she made sure that the
“You saved me,” Loki managed to beam through his panting breaths, “So, we're a team now?”
“The only reason I helped you at all is because I don’t know where that TemPad is, if you die it dies and then I die on this boody moon.”
Loki sucked in air, leaning back against the wall, trying to recover, trying to formulate a plan, any plan really, and trying not to hear Mobius’ voice calling his name as Loki had walked through the portal.
The Variant smiled as she walked towards him, placing her hands on his cheeks, Loki at first thought she was trying to comfort him.
But he felt the tingle of magic in his blood.
He slowly looked up, meeting her eyes, and trying to see what was behind her eyes, trying to figure her out, “What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?”
“You tryna enchant me? It won’t work.”
“Why? Cause you’re a magician ,” she tried to mock but she was clearly frustrated as she walked off rolling her eyes.
“No, because my mind is too strong!” He tried to clip back the whine in his voice, he was tired, Mobius always said he whined a lot when he was tired, Mobius had liked that whine… said it was adorable… which was definitely patronising and not at all sweet or nice to hear…
“ Fine .” She turned back to him, drawing out her sword… again .
His blades came out just as fast.
“Seriously?” Okay perhaps he wasn’t as successful at hiding the whine this time, “Here? Again? ”
It did make her lower her sword slightly, “What do you propose instead?”
“I don’t know...How about a truce?” His voice full of exasperation and sarcasm, he forced himself to quell it. “Neither of us is getting off this rock unless we get the TemPad on.”
Apparently this was the wrong thing to say as she lifted her sword in a vague threat of ‘I will stab you’, gritting her teeth as she forced her question out, “ Where do you have it hidden ?”
Fine, if she didn’t want to be civil and grown up neither would he, “In my heart .”
“Then I’ll cut it out .”
“Nice. Very droll. Lovely.” He said more to himself than her… who he supposed was also him… gods this was messed up. “Okay, yes fine , I do have the TemPad, but I’m not gonna get very far if you keep trying to KILL me every thirty seconds!”
“You’re full of it, because you need me to get that thing recharged!” She yelled back, quieting her voice slightly but it was still full of fire as she said, “That’s the only reason you tried to save me out there.”
Loki frowned. “No it wasn’t.”
She gave him a disbelieving look, there was something dangerous about that, warning Loki that the truth wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
“Maybe. Fine, yeah, maybe it was. I guess we could just slaughter each other here in this abandoned mining shack; What d’you say?”
“Good for me,” she mumbled, annoyed, but not as annoyed as she had been at the inference that he cared about her.
“Yeah, well me too, sure.” He was approximately five minutes away from sticking his tongue out at her. He sighed as he fell back against the wall again, gritting his teeth and staring at his shoes.
“The plan you interrupted has been years in the making. Years .”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, not really meaning it, this was just like when Thor got mad at him for destroying his carefully set up Valkyrie toys by turning them into frogs.
“As soon as that TemPad is working again I’m going back to the TVA and finishing what I started.”
He looked up slowly, he wanted to barter for Mobius’ life, and Bee’s, she could destroy the TVA for all he cared… but he couldn’t, she was the sort of person who would use his love against him… it was what he would have done.
“I’ll kill you then.”
Was that a spark in her eye? “Maybe I’ll kill you.”
She let out a scoff and began to walk towards the door.
“Where’re you going?” His words tumbled out of his mouth, sounding more nervous about being left than he had planned, to his surprise she turned back to him.
“There’s power somewhere on this moon, look at the lights, they’re on. We just need enough of it to travel through inter-dimensional time and space.”
Loki opened his mouth, the metal shack rumbled and shook as a rock fell nearby. It sounded much too like a storm, he thought, as he gasped and looked around nervously.
“Oh jeez,” she grumbled, heading out of the door. “Are you coming or what?”