Chapter Text
CLASSIFICATION: confidential. Level 4: Analyst Clearance Required.
File Number: TVA-BETA-2021-0212-001x28.
Date of Incident: February 12th, 2021 (Beta Sacred Timeline).
Incident type: Timeline Variant Analysis / HR Documentation.
LOCATION: TVA, Mobius’s office.
Chronological Reference Points: 9 years after the last verified Bifurcation Point (2012). 4 years since the onset of Odin's Sleep and the commencement of Thor's reign as King of Asgard (2017).
Protocol approved and revised by: B-15 (Hunter First Class)
It was Friday. Mobius and B-15 had just about finished everything on their agenda for the day. Only one item remained. They took a moment to breathe. B-15 looked at her partner with pity. He looked exhausted and clearly in pain. They hadn't yet removed the stitches from the knife wound he'd gotten at the beginning of the week. The attacker still hadn't been found, but Sylvie's detective department was working tirelessly to figure it out. It had been an assassination attempt on the TVA's chief analyst during his field work.
"You look terrible," B-15 said. "When does your vacation start, exactly?"
"Tomorrow. I've already packed."
"Please don't skip it. Just beware, if I see you here on Monday..." She crossed her arms. "You need rest, Mobius."
"Yeah," he winced, pressing a hand to his side. "I’ll tell you something – getting stabbed? Not a fan. Really lets you know you're alive."
"I would have let you go already, but there's one thing I can't do without your approval." She gave him a meaningful look. "Martin finished his masterpiece."
Mobius, despite his exhaustion, felt a second wind.
"Really?"
"Yeah, he wanted to do the presentation himself."
At that moment, a good-looking young man with red hair and an infectious smile burst into the room. He was out of breath.
"Sorry, didn't knock, Mobius. Was afraid you'd left early, you know, because of the vacation."
"Yeah," Mobius smirked. "Everybody in the office knows. It's like a second New Year's Eve."
"Mobius, we've had a New Year every year since our New Sacred Timeline started," B-15 said flatly. "And I don't remember the last time you took a vacation."
"Maybe a century ago," he guessed. "Alright, Martin. Let's get started. Remind us of the technical specs."
"Yeah, of course!" Martin dropped his bag on the desk and began pulling out large sketchbooks.
"Okay, so, what the main problem was. After a few unfortunate incidents, we lost a lot of agents with high security clearance. We needed to choose and promote some of the new recruits. For our HR department it was a total nightmare trying to get them up to speed."
He started flipping through one of the sketchbooks as he talked.
"First, because, you know, everything that’s happened since Loki took the throne at the End of Time. Kinda makes the old manuals obsolete. And second..." he lowered his voice conspiratorially, "our newbies? Mostly TikTokers. Great kids, but getting them to read our historical documents? Like pulling teeth. Their test scores were a disaster. Below baseline. Way below."
He tapped the open sketchbook triumphantly.
"So we decided to get creative. Put together something new to help them onboard." He spun the book around to show them. "And here it is. We made a comic book!"
Martin saw them hesitate. Right. Generation gap. Of course.
"I mean, it's just the first draft," he added quickly, flipping through the pages. "Lots of stuff needs polishing. Obviously."
He placed a printed copy on the table. It was a standard A4. The interior pages were fully colored, but the cover itself was still blank.
"Cover's still in progress," he explained, glancing at B-15's unreadable expression. "If you, uh, sign off on it, we can send the first issue out. But only if you're both good with it. No pressure."
Mobius gave a nod, and Martin took it as his cue to continue.
"Actually, it was a real challenge to explain all the new rules. So much has happened. So many events. We had to condense a massive story!"
Martin was clearly nervous. B-15 smiled approvingly.
"Martin, take a breath and just show us already."
"Okay... showtime!" he said, and opened the first page. A gorgeous splash page, green and glorious, revealed Loki on the throne at the End of Time.
"No AI, by the way. All human work." He tapped the page proudly. "So, where do we start the explanation? Our Variant Loki made a heroic sacrifice. He placed himself at the End of Time as the Living Weaver of the Multiverse. He took the Multiverse strands to set us all free, to keep it from collapsing. Everything was fine... for a while. But then the fluctuations began."
"Kangs happened," B-15 said darkly.
"Exactly, here you can see him." Martin flipped through the pages, revealing an action scene. "He wanted revenge on Loki and the TVA, so he set his plan in motion. It caused some nasty incursions; we even lost several universes. But his main goal, almost maniacal, I admit, was to get to Loki himself."
He paused for effect.
"Eventually, he found security breaches and launched a massive attack on the TVA. His Variant..." Martin tapped the page. "Here, you can see him, in full glory. He got dangerously close to his target. If not for our brave detective department and their chief, Sylvie, another Loki, by the way..." He pointed to a small portrait in the corner of the panel. "There's a reference to her profile. So, if not for Sylvie, everything would have been ruined. Total chaos."
"We knew Kang wouldn't stop. Ouroboros came up with a hypothesis, based on Gödel's theorem. It's a bit mind-bending, but stick with me."
Martin took a breath.
"When Loki took the throne at the End of Time, he placed himself outside the system. He became the observer. But here's the problem: his own life, everything he was before that moment, was inside the system. All his choices, all his pain, all his chaos – it was a part of the timeline he's now supposed to just... watch."
B-15 frowned. "So?"
"So, he brought his Free Will with him. You can't leave it behind – it’s not a coat you can just take off. It's him. But he didn't give himself permission to use it. He decided: 'My part is over. I just hold things together now.'"
Martin tapped the page where Loki sat on the throne, alone.
"That creates a paradox. He's both inside and outside at once. Mathematically speaking, that shouldn't work. And when you have a paradox, you have a pressure, or a seam in reality that's weaker than the rest."
He looked up at them.
"Kang found that seam. He didn't break through the system; he found the one place where Loki was already broken. It was not because Loki had failed. It was because he was too human. Too much of himself to ever truly let go."
Mobius finally broke the silence. He rubbed his temples.
"Do you really think we need to explain all this here? It's just a theory. Look, there's so much text on these pages. It's like reading a manual."
"Yes, Ouroboros designed these two pages. Well, he didn't draw them, just wrote the text. Said it makes more sense this way."
"Maybe cut it?"
"I'll figure something out," Martin said, already in work mode, and made some notes for himself.
"We desperately needed to do something before Kang's next move. We needed a mentor. So we got creative." Martin flipped a page. "We went back in time on the Sacred Timeline and paid a visit to one of the wisest beings in all of story. Odin himself."
Odin looked back at them now from the page, with his own eye.
"We told him everything. He said he needed time to think. Then, one day, he called us. He couldn't find a solution, only one. And he was terrified to even suggest it. But he decided to do it. For no one other than Loki himself. He went to the Norns."
"He definitely felt guilty about his upbringing," B-15 offered.
The next picture was something... special. Three very old, very terrifying ladies hunched over a massive spinning wheel. The illustration looked like a scene straight out of a horror movie.
"Are you sure that's what they look like?"
"I don't know. Obviously."
"Maybe add some shadows here," Mobius suggested, tapping the page. "So we don't see their faces fully."
He paused, then added with a sly look:
"You know, Martin... your fate is in their hands too."
Martin froze mid-sentence. His face went pale.
"Right. Yes. I'll... I'll fix that." He swallowed hard. "You don't think they've already seen it? I mean, it's just a draft. But what if they're already offended?"
"So Odin came to them and asked for help. And conveniently enough they had been waiting for him. They showed him the process: weaving the fates of all living beings. Himself included."
"Oh my. Gorgeous!" B-15 exclaimed.
"You're really gifted, kid." Mobius patted him on the back. "The Norns have definitely forgiven you. I'm sure of it."
"They said there was one thread they couldn't place in the pattern. It kept slipping through their fingers, couldn't be woven anywhere." Martin paused for effect. "Of course, it was our Loki's."
He took a breath.
"Odin explained everything. And they proposed only one solution..."
And then Martin closed the book.
Mobius and B-15 stared at the back cover, then looked up at him expectantly.
"We needed a cliffhanger," Martin said innocently. "Don't panic yet! We've already started the second issue."
He placed another comic book on the table in front of them.
"First thing: they were going to unknit the whole pattern, but not until 2012. Too many knots, by the way."
"2012." Mobius nodded. "Our bifurcation point."
The next page showed the familiar scene: Stark Tower, Loki in chains, the Tesseract – that was a moment before Hulk bursts out of the elevator. Or doesn't burst out. Depends on the Variant.
"Second thing: they were going to loosen the thread tension. So the Free Will Law would be in full force. But here's what's most interesting – we, the TVA, were going to become a synchronized part of the story. Not forever, obviously. Just until the next bifurcation point. Though nobody knows when that'll be. Even the Norns don't know. Because again, that Free Will Law."
"And now here we are, in the TVA, watching the birth of a whole new story. Most of it is pure improvisation. It's breathtaking. We can't access the future yet, because there is no future yet. Except, of course, for that core of our Loki, the one still holding the other end of the weave. But we know that's not the whole Loki anymore. The Norns took most of him and placed him back at the Bifurcation Point, combining his Variant and the original. It was the only way to weave his thread back into the pattern. A little complicated to explain."
The next page showed Loki layered like a diagram from an alchemy book, body, soul, mind, each on a different plane.
"So his body, his soul, and his mind returned to 2012. They live there now, inside the story again. But the deepest core of Loki still remains at the End of Time. Not as a man on a throne - more like a knot in the fabric of reality that keeps the threads of the multiverse from unraveling. The Norns say it is perfectly stable. Magically speaking. And Ouroboros claims it works because of superposition."
"The Norns said there was only one complication." Martin's voice softened. "Someone needed to become an anchor for our sailor. To keep him tethered to the timeline."
He looked up at them.
"We knew the answer from the beginning. The love of his whole life."
A pause.
"Sylvie."
"Odin, though, thought there was more to this story. Loki was still a man who had made mistakes. Back in 2012, he was just that guy again, with no memory of his TVA case. Our Loki needed redemption. And with all this Free Will chaos, Odin saw a threat. Especially from someone so important to the timeline."
Martin turned the page.
"So he invented a punishment. For all his doings. He sealed his magic. Stripped him of all knowledge of his Asgardian life. Left him almost a blank slate, a man who doesn't even know he's not mortal."
"That was personal," B-15 commented flatly. "Revenge."
"Finally decided to be a father," Mobius agreed, his voice dry.
"But Odin didn't abandon him. It was a clean slate, not a death sentence." Martin pointed at the next illustrations - a series of warm, mundane scenes. "Loki wakes up among his relatives. His brother. His friend Mobius. Soon he meets Sylvie and of course he falls in love with her the moment he sees her."
He paused.
"Though he thinks they're all just Midgardians. Thor is a football coach. Their parents - academics. And Sylvie?" Martin almost smiled. "Just a consultant."
"Oh look, Mobius, it's you!" B-15 exclaimed, pointing at the page. "You were dancing."
"Their wedding day," Mobius said, and smiled. A real smile. "Frigga, still alive and Odin himself were there. Under disguise as mortals, of course."
Martin turned to a page dense with tiny text.
"Here you can see all the arrangements we made to create a secret cover for his life on Earth. In England. Nottingham." He tapped the page. "Of course, we couldn't interfere, because..."
"The Free Will Law," the three of them said in unison.
Martin grinned. "Exactly. So was it interference? Not really. No direct actions. Just... some materials happened to disappear from their servers. People have a habit of burning down their own libraries, deleting and corrupting information. Our new IT department ran calculations, AI predictions..." He shrugged. "No real danger to the future."
"What about Loki? He has a family. A house. A loving wife, with a secret second TVA life, of course. Two kids. A brother who also doesn't tell Loki who he really is. Every time Thor comes to their small town, the magic turns him into someone other than an Avenger. To Loki? Just a coach. A football trainer."
Martin paused for effect.
"And the most intriguing part? Loki became..."
He turned the page. There was Loki, standing in front of a lecture hall, pointing at a blackboard covered in equations.
"...a professor of cosmology at Nottingham University."
"There was just one crisis ahead. The Malekith case." Martin flipped a page. "This time, Sylvie interfered and saved Thor. So future's safe again. She just did what Loki did in the alpha version. But without the spectacular dying and all that drama."
He smiled.
"Thor was so glad to find out Sylvie's a wizard herself. Apparently, he cried almost a whole day from happiness when he learned about his sister-in-law’s small secret. Guess he really missed having past Loki-self around."
His voice softened.
"One bad thing, though: Frigga died again. And some time later, Odin went into his sleep. Thor became the new King of Asgard."
Martin closed the book and tapped the back cover.
"After that, references. Personal files, different levels of access."
Mobius beamed. "Good work, son."
"Thank you, sir."
"Still, don't forget about the Norns picture."
"No way, sir." Martin shuddered dramatically. "Honestly, I feel weird. Like someone's walking on my grave."
"Don't stress, Martin. Breathe," B-15 advised. Then she looked at Mobius. "We approve everything here. Yes?"
Mobius nodded. "Of course. The Frigga part? Heartbreaking."
Martin let out a long breath. "Oh, I'm so tired, honestly. Didn't sleep well. Too much coffee. Tried to finish before your vacation."
Mobius stretched. "No sleep, yes. That's how we live now. Waiting. Guarding from the shadow of our royal family."
He smiled tiredly.
"Secret watchers."
The same moment, an alarm went off.
One second they were relaxed, nostalgic - and the next, alert and tense to the limit. A guy rushed into the room.
"B-15! We've got a situation. It's Dr. Strange. He somehow found out about the Multiverse earlier than he should have. We haven't figured out how yet. But he's very, very interested in Loki's lecture right now."
B-15 frowned. "What lecture?"
Mobius facepalmed.
"Of course. I forgot. But he should pardon me anyway. I've listened to it so many times."
"Mobius." B-15's voice was dangerously serious. "What lecture?"
"The one about the Multiverse fluctuation equation." Mobius waved a hand vaguely. "The one he got, like, several PhDs for in the month after his awakening. He calls it 'the equation of Multiverse love.'"
He stood up and grabbed his suit jacket.
"And where do you think you're going?" B-15's voice carried a real threat.
Mobius paused. "Come on. The day's not over yet. I'll just go there, intercept our annoyingly inquisitive Strange, and be back by the end of the day."
"Your vacation, Mobius."
"I remember."
B-15's eyes narrowed. "I remember too, Mobius."