The problem with being short and human in a world full of gods is that Mobius is very easy to catch up to.

He expects it to be one of his Lokis following him, either to apologize for ruining his morning or to hound him further (or both; he wouldn't put it past them), but instead, it's Thor who greets him. That's certainly a surprise.

"Hi?" Mobius looks up at him uncertainly as he walks. He likes Thor, and he'd like to think the feeling is mutual, but still. This is weird.

"I just wanted to make sure you're okay," Thor tells him. "That was a very tense conversation."

"Oh, yeah, no, I'm fine," Mobius says, waving a hand dismissively. He's absolutely, totally fine. He's not concerned that he's being peer pressured into putting Asgard's king and queen at risk at all. This is just great.

"I'm glad to hear it," Thor says. "I understand that you're hesitant, but we really do appreciate your help."

Mobius forces a smile. "Well, that's what I'm here for." The price of being mortal in Asgard, it seems. He's good for information, and it's starting to feel like he's not good for much else. And he is fully aware that he's overreacting. He's dramatic; he's not an idiot. But it doesn't make him feel too much better right now.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Thor asks.

"I don't think so," Mobius says. "It's just paperwork. That's more my field than yours."

"That's probably true," Thor admits, "but it's my family that you're trying to save. If there's anything I can do to make this easier for you, I would gladly do it."

That's actually kind of touching, if also incredibly useless. "I think it's kind of a one-person job," he says. He already knows the information. He's just going to find the exact dates of everything so he can leave it entirely in their hands. "If you're just looking for an adventure, you're welcome to come with me, but it sounds like your day's pretty packed."

"I could go with you to your base outside of time?" Thor repeats, brows raised.

Mobius shrugs. "If you want to." He wasn't really expecting him to be interested, but he was just talking last night about wanting to make more friends (in that conversation that he now has to pretend never happened because Lokis really never can make things easy), so he certainly won't complain.

"How long do you expect to be gone?" Thor asks.

"Depends on what you mean by 'gone,'" Mobius says. "The TVA's outside of time, remember, so we could spend years there and come back and it'd be like we never left."

"But you don't expect this to take years," Thor says cautiously.

"No, no, not a chance," Mobius assures him. "Maybe a few hours? But you wouldn't have to stick around the whole time. You can head back whenever."

"And you're going to come back to the very moment we left?" Thor asks.

Mobius sucks in a breath through his teeth. "You can come back to right when we left," he says. "I'll probably come back tonight."

"Tonight?" Thor repeats. "Why so late?"

"Eh, I got nothing going on today," Mobius says with a shrug. "I figure I'll disappear long enough for Loki and Sylvie to start feeling bad that they ran me off and then I'll come back."

Thor huffs a laugh. "I can respect that," he says. "If I didn't have so much to do today, I would do the same. But if you truly don't mind, I would like to see this TVA."

"Yeah, no, I don't mind," Mobius assures him. "It's a sight to behold; I'll tell you that much." Even for a god who's lived in Asgard for a thousand years, it's a sight to behold. It was for Loki, and he'd like to think Thor will feel the same.

"I look forward to it," Thor says.

They chat for a bit as they head toward the guest rooms, and as they're nearing his own, he mentions to Thor, "I don't know how anyone is going to react to me being back there. I'm not necessarily on good terms with them anymore." He shrugs, a forced sort of nonchalance to his movements. "But I'm sure it'll be fine."

Thor raises his brows. "In my experience, those words are most often spoken shortly before everything is not fine."

"Well, I've got a TemPad and I've got you," Mobius says, "so I'm not too worried about it." Besides, the man at the end of time who created the whole operation is apparently rooting for them to enjoy this second chance they've been given. He'd like to think that basically makes him invincible. As an afterthought, he adds, "Oh, and magic doesn't work in the TVA, just so you don't go in thinking you can magic your way out."

Thor waves that off. "I've been without my powers before," he says. "I can do so again.''

Mobius opens the door to his room and gestures for Thor to step inside first. Thor makes some sort of unpleasant face that Mobius tries not to read too much into. He doesn't know what he's looking at, and he's not sure he wants to.

Unfortunately, Thor tells him anyway. "These are the rooms they have you staying in?"

"Yeah, they're great, right?" Mobius says with a grin. They're so fancy. He feels like a prince – like a boring, stuffy prince who wears exclusively variations of blacks, whites, and tans, but a prince nonetheless.

Thor just looks at him, an eyebrow raised.

"What, you don't like it?" Mobius asks. He thinks it's great. It's certainly better than any place he's ever lived before. It's so much bigger and grander than his room at the TVA. He has things here. It's fantastic.

Thor shakes his head to himself. "Well, if you like it..."

Mobius decides not to read too much into that. He does like it, and he's going to continue to like it, regardless of what Thor may think.

He grabs the TemPad, sets it for the TVA, and then looks over at the god. "Ready?"

"I am," Thor replies.

So Mobius opens the Time Door.

Thor gasps softly, taking a step back as he looks at it in awe. It's weird to think that this is shocking to him. He travels through the Bifrost, but an orange door is strange. But then, when the TVA is all Mobius has ever known, he probably sees it a bit differently.

Mobius flashes him a grin. "See you on the other side."

And then he's home.

Mobius has only been in Asgard for a few days, but somehow, he's already forgotten just how dull and boring the TVA looks. Part of it, he's sure, is that it never used to feel dull or boring to him. It's all he's ever known, after all. But compared to the extravagance of the Asgardian palace, the TVA doesn't look all that nice.

Still, a glance at Thor's awed expression says that he doesn't mind. They haven't even made it to what Mobius expects to be the impressive part – looking out over the rail in the hall at just how big the TVA actually is – and Thor is already captivated. It bodes well for how this little day trip will go.

"Mobius!"

Hunter B-15 hurries up to him, and Mobius greets her with a smile that disappears when he processes just how unsmiley she is herself. He hadn't given much thought to how the TVA was doing while he was in Asgard. He has a feeling he's about to find out.

"Where have you been?" B-15 asks, but she doesn't give him time to answer before continuing, "The TVA's in shambles. The Sacred Timeline is changing. No one knows why or now–"

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Mobius interrupts. "It's just Loki and Sylvie. They found the man who built the TVA, and he basically let them go make a new Sacred Timeline."

B-15 scoffs. "I thought they were going to destroy the TVA. I thought that was the point."

Mobius shakes his head. "Apparently, the TVA is the only thing stopping some big multiversal war?" He rolls his eyes. "I don't know. They kind of brushed over it." He has a vague idea of what happened, but they seemed much more focused on getting out – and Mobius was admittedly a little distracted by the thought of possibly seeing Asgard in person.

"Well, I'm glad you're back," B-15 says, but then she pauses, looking up at Thor as though she's somehow just noticing this giant man next to him. "Who's this?"

"Oh, this is Thor," Mobius says.

Thor smiles awkwardly. "Hello."

"Uh-huh," she says slowly. "And, again, who's this?"

He fights the urge to roll his eyes once more. "He's Loki's brother," he says. Even if she didn't recognize the name – and he'll admit that he does sometimes forget that not everybody knows everything about every Loki – the outfit should have given that away. "I'm taking him on a little field trip."

B-15's face deflates. "You're not back, are you?"

Mobius grimaces, sucking a breath in through his teeth. "I'm back for a few hours? If that counts?"

B-15 sighs, shaking her head to herself. "The Lokis roped you in."

"The Lokis roped me in," he admits.

B-15 pinches the bridge of her nose, exasperated. It's probably a fair reaction. But nobody's tried to prune him yet, so he feels like he's doing pretty good.

"How's Ravonna handling it?" Mobius asks. He tries to phrase it like he's interested in the business aspect of it. In reality, he just wants to know if he can go see her without the fear of being pruned once more. If things have calmed down, he could really use a drink – or a hug.

"No one's seen her since it happened," B-15 tells him.

Mobius's shoulders slump. "Oh."

B-15 gives him a weird look. "Didn't she prune you?"

Mobius shrugs sheepishly. "But she's my friend." And with how the last 24 hours have gone with his Lokis, he could really use his other best friend.

B-15 shakes her head to herself, but she keeps her judgment to herself.

"Anything you need a hand with while I'm here?" Mobius asks.

"Not if you're not staying," B-15 says. More sincerely, she adds, "But I'm glad you're okay."

"I'm glad you are, too," Mobius says.

And that's the end of that conversation. He'd say it went pretty well – though the bar is fairly low; as long as he gets his information and doesn't get pruned in the process, he'll consider this a success, no matter how poorly the rest of the day goes.

Mobius claps his hands together once. "Alright, we're off to the library," he tells her. "If you need me, you know where to find me."

They bid each other farewell, and then Mobius and Thor begin their trek to the library.

"Mobius," Thor says as they're walking.

"What's up?"

"You told me before that you wouldn't tell me about Thanos," he begins.

"It's really not my story to tell," Mobius says. If one of the Lokis – his own Loki, he'd assume; not Avengers Loki – wants to tell him what happened, that's their decision to make, but Mobius isn't going to do it himself.

"I understand that," Thor says. "And I won't ask for any details. But you said that this Thanos kills my brother."

"Not in this timeline," Mobius says. "We're going to make sure that doesn't happen."

"But is this something we should be acting on now?" Thor asks. "If this man is supposed to kill my brother–"

"There's nothing you can do to stop him right now," Mobius tells him. "And believe me, I wish there was. The universe would be a better place if you could. But you don't have the manpower for something like that." Maybe in a few years, they can go on offense if they really want to, but they're going to at least want the Scarlet Witch and Captain Marvel on their side, and right now, the former is just a scared, powerless kid in war-torn Sokovia and the latter is galaxies away.

"But he is stopped," Thor says uncertainly.

"He is," Mobius replies, and that's all the detail he wants to give about that. He doesn't want to get into the Blip right now. He's not even going to get into Thanos's obsession with the Infinity Stones yet. That will go somewhere on the very long document that Mobius gives Loki and Sylvie so that they can all decide – presumably with Odin – how to best proceed.

Thor's quiet as he processes that, and though Mobius had known all along that throwing all this information at them – Thor, Loki, Sylvie, their family – at once was going to overwhelm them, he still feels a pang of sympathy for him. This really is a lot. And they haven't even gotten to Thor's long-lost sister or his father's history of colonization yet.

As they're nearing the library, Mobius asks him, "Do you want me to talk you through the files, or do you want to just watch it and get it over with?"

"What do you mean?"

"We have your entire life on file," Mobius tells him. "I can pull it out and show you the important bits on the projector – if you're more of a visual learner. It's up to you. Some of it's pretty... graphic." Like his mother being stabbed, or his brother having his neck snapped.

"I'd like that," Thor says.

Mobius has been to the library thousands of times, so it doesn't take very long for him to gather what he needs – the video of Thor's life, the files on Loki's life, a pen, and a shit-ton of paper. He'd probably do better to use a typewriter if he's expecting them to read everything he's about to write over the next few hours, but carrying a typewriter around just sounds like so much work. If they want their answers this badly, they're going to have to deal with his increasingly messy handwriting.

It's only a few minutes later that they're getting settled in the Time Theater. They both take a seat at the table, and Mobius sets the projection up. It's almost second nature at this point. If he'd moved to Midgard in the 1980s instead of Asgard in the 2010s, he would have been so prepared.

"I'll start with how Loki's little Earth-conquering fest was supposed to go," Mobius tells the god. "You're welcome to skip around. If you've got any questions, I've got answers."

"Thank you," Thor says.

Mobius lets it play from right where he, Loki, and Sylvie interrupted their timeline, shortly after Thor first arrived on Earth. It'll give Thor something to keep himself entertained, and it'll give Mobius the chance to get some work done.

Where should he start? Does he have to explain in detail how Thor fixes the Nine Realms? That doesn't seem overly important. Maybe he'll just start with a little note at the top about how Loki is supposed to be in prison and Thor is supposed to be out and about. That seems like enough detail. He can give a general idea of what's gone wrong over the last year so Thor knows what he has to fix, and it'll be fine.

Then it's time to write about what he considers The Dark World saga – everything from Jane touching the Aether to Thor telling "his father" (who's secretly Loki, of course) that he's going to settle down on Earth. This, he's going to need the files for. He knows vaguely when this all happens – November of 2013, if he remembers correctly? – but he's going to give them the exact date so they can't blame him if they're not ready for it.

"He was doing this for Thanos," Thor remarks, a questioning tone to his voice.

Mobius raises his gaze from his papers to look at him, though he finds Thor's gaze still on the screen. "It's complicated," he says. Because he was doing it for Thanos, but in a way, he was doing it for himself, too. Loki said it himself: it was a cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear; a desperate play for control. And with what he'd been through, it's hard to fault him for that kind of desperation.

Thor hums quietly. "I think I will ask him," he says. "Perhaps as we review what the future holds, we can revisit the past as well."

Mobius is fairly certain that their secret sister is going to take precedence over anything that happened in the past, but that's a conversation they can have when Thor gets to that part.

He gets to detailing out The Dark World. He adds dates. He adds time stamps. He writes out everything. He wants them to see how everything connects. It's not going to matter, he's sure, in the end. They're going to ignore all of this. Thor is going to make sure Jane never touches the Aether, and then nothing else Mobius writes is going to hold any relevance because that one little difference is going to change everything. Nothing he knows is going to be useful, and he won't know of any danger that may be coming because they've changed it all.

"How many people died?" Thor asks.

Mobius glances up at the screen. It's the midst of the Battle of New York that he's watching now. He answers with a vague, "A few hundred." He forgets the exact number. There should be a report about it somewhere in here, if he had the motivation to look for it.

"Oh." He doesn't sound thrilled with that. It's a fair reaction.

"I don't know if this makes it better or worse," Mobius tells him, "but 77 of them were you and the other Avengers' faults, not Loki's." And, to be fair, Loki probably would have killed more than 77 other people if the Avengers hadn't stopped him, but it doesn't change the fact that technically, Loki did not kill those people.

Thor frowns. "I don't know if that makes it better or worse, either."

And then Mobius is onto writing out what he considers the Age of Ultron saga of events. He's a bit less descriptive on this one just because it really is all Tony Stark's fault and can be avoided very easily, but he makes a point to nail home that they have to find the Maximoffs. Even if they do it early – as long as it's after the fall of SHIELD and after the Maximoffs touch the Mind Stone – they have to find them. They're going to need Wanda on their side. (Does HYDRA have the scepter? They don't, do they? He'll have to see about fixing that, if only because they'll need Wanda Maximoff's help if they're going to defeat Thanos one day.)

Thor continues watching the film, and Mobius continues working. He has to stop a few times to give explanations or to show Thor when he can skip ahead because nothing of importance happens, but otherwise, it feels like a pretty productive arrangement for them both. And he takes his mother's and his brother's deaths in The Dark World shockingly well, which is fantastic because Mobius wouldn't know how to make him feel better if he didn't.

He expects to get a lot of questions when the Ragnarok saga starts, but Thor is silent as he watches, taking it all in wordlessly. He doesn't skip through it as much as he does the other ones – though he does skim through much of what happens on Sakaar – so it takes a while, which Mobius appreciates. He's getting to the end of his own work. He'd hate to have to stop so close to the finish line.

Mobius actually finishes writing before Thor finishes watching, so he organizes his papers, then sets his sights on the screen just in time to watch Thanos's appearance. He wonders briefly if he should stop the video now; if he should just tell Thor that he's seen all he has to see. He's sure Thor would understand if he knew who was about to board the ship. He's certainly understand if he knew what he was about to watch. But he's already seen so much; it feels wrong to stop him now.

But he can't just let it play without saying anything, so he pauses the video, earning a confused look from the god.

"Thanos is about to murder half of the people on this ship," Mobius tells him. "And then he's going to torture you until Loki gives him the Tesseract – which he had to take from the Vault if he wanted to make it to the ship with you – and then Thanos is going to kill Heimdall and Loki and then the ship will explode with you inside it. You don't have to watch it if you don't want to."

Thor considers this for a few moments, letting the gravity of the situation sink in, and says, "I'm going to watch it."

"Suit yourself," Mobius replies. He turns the video back on. "You can change your mind at any point."

Personally, Mobius does not want to watch this. In all of his time studying Loki, he's never actually seen this part in full. He's never watched Thanos and his people slaughter the Asgardians, just as he's never watched much of what Thanos did to him in the Sanctuary. He never had the stomach for it.

Even with his eyes closed, carefully avoiding catching even a glimpse of the film, he can hear the screams, the cries, the squelching of blades through the flesh of innocent people. He could never be an Asgardian. There's a reason his job involves paperwork and not pruning sticks. He doesn't do well with violence.

And then it stops.

Mobius looks up, brows furrowed, to find Thor staring straight ahead at the paused projection, his face blank, expressionless. Mobius just watches him for a few moments. This is... weird.

"Thor?" he says cautiously.

Thor takes a deep breath and tears his eyes away from the projection. "I think it's time we went home."

"That's probably a good idea," Mobius agrees. He turns off the projector before it can traumatize Thor further – and he truly does believe that the little bit that he's seen does constitute trauma. He's seen a lot of people die throughout his lifetime, but to watch his own people be murdered in such a brutal way, one after another after another, has to be its own kind of pain. "Before I send you back to fend for yourself, do you have any questions?"

Thor sighs. "I'm certainly questioning how I'm to go about my day after this as though nothing has changed, but..." He shakes his head solemnly. "I feel as though I should talk to my father, but after what I've just learned, I don't know that I can."

Mobius looks at him sympathetically. He knew telling them everything was a bad idea. Even when he was trying to break Loki down, he didn't show him everything. He knew it would be too much for them.

As a poor attempt at consoling him, Mobius says, "If you need a few minutes to get your head on straight, we could go grab a bite to eat." With a slight smile, he says, "They have great key lime pie here."

Thor hesitates, but then he nods once. "I suppose I would like that."

"Alright, c'mon," Mobius says. "This'll cheer you up." (It probably won't cheer him up, if he's being totally honest, but maybe if they pretend it will, it will at least help a little bit?)

Mobius leaves everything in the Time Theater. He can take care of this later. Right now, his priority is getting Thor (and himself) some key lime pie.

It's a quiet walk to the pie room. Mobius would try to break the silence, but he suspects it's what Thor needs right now. He's still working his way through a lot of new information that he really shouldn't have right now. And he watched it, too, which must make it worse. It's going to overwhelm everyone who hears about it, he's sure, but none quite as much as Thor.

There's nobody else in the pie room when they arrive. There very rarely is. Mobius likes to think that's because this room was made specifically for him, and everybody else knows it. It's not true, of course, but a guy can pretend.

Mobius gestures for Thor to take a seat, and he grabs them each a piece of pie and a fork before joining him. Thor thanks him – his princely manners at work – but then it's quiet again.

So he just eats his pie in silence. Every now and then, he'll spare the god a glance, but his gaze is glued to his pie, so Mobius leaves him be. He didn't invite Thor to pie so they could talk. He invited him to give him something to do other than going back to Asgard and talking to Odin after learning about his history of colonizing the other realms through bloodshed and violence and the abuse he put his daughter through.

Thor breaks the silence eventually. "I don't know where to go from here."

Mobius gives him a small shrug. "Where do you want to go from here?"

Thor shakes his head helplessly. "I don't suppose you have any words of advice."

"My words of advice were to leave the future alone," Mobius reminds him. Obviously, it's a little late for that, so he says, "My honest advice would be to follow the Sacred Timeline as closely as you can for now, but I'm also not an idiot. You're not going to be able to focus until you talk to your dad."

Thor nods slowly, thoughtfully.

"I guess the choice you have to make now is whether you want to do it alone or with Loki and Sylvie," Mobius says.

Thor lets out a long breath. "I suppose you're right," he admits. "You frequently are, it seems."

Mobius gives him a small smile. He is usually right, isn't he? More people should recognize his rightness. (He chooses to briefly ignore, for the sake of this conversation, all of his wrongs from his time working for the TVA.)

"I feel it's a conversation I should have with my brother by my side," Thor says, "but if I'm honest with myself and with you, I think I would rather do it alone."

"Then do it alone," Mobius says. "And Loki and Sylvie can do it later, after they've read through everything."

"And you don't think they'd mind?" Thor asks.

Mobius shakes his head. "They've got each other," he says. "That's all they need."

"Well, and yourself," Thor says.

Mobius chuckles. "Uh-huh," he says sarcastically. They definitely need him. They are definitely not complete without him. Nope, not at all.

Thor frowns. "I hope you don't take your argument this morning to mean they dislike you."

"What? No," Mobius says quickly. He's definitely not under that impression. "No, I mean they're obsessed with each other. They don't mind having me around, but they don't need me."

Thor furrows his brows. "What do you mean?"

"What, you haven't noticed?" Mobius asks. "They're in love with each other." He'd thought it was obvious. Everything about them, even just the way they look at each other with their lovesick little puppy dog eyes, screams I love you. Thor may not have seen the Nexus event on Lamentis or their snuggle session in the Void, but surely he's seen enough to piece it together.

Thor's confusion only seems to grow. "But they're... related."

"No, they're the same person," Mobius corrects him. "They have the same temporal aura, the same role on the timeline, but genetically, biologically, emotionally, they're not related."

Thor just looks at him. "But they have the same parents."

"Their parents have the same temporal aura," Mobius says. "But, in the literal sense, their parents are different individual people. Your parents aren't their parents. Technically."

Thor blinks.

Mobius sighs. "I know, it gets weird when the parents are involved," he mutters under his breath. Whoever's writing this story should have thought that through before making Frigga one of the things they bond over most. "They're almost 'related' the way you and Loki are related, except if you hadn't met until three days ago. You'd have the same idea of who your parents are, but you still wouldn't be biologically related, and since you wouldn't have grown up together and wouldn't see each other as siblings, it wouldn't really be weird."

Thor makes a face at that. "To an extent, I understand the metaphor," he says, "but the mental image you just put in my head of myself and my brother makes me wish I didn't."

Mobius chuckles. "Yeah, sorry." (He's not really sorry.)

Thor shakes his head to himself. "As long as they're happy together, I suppose I have no problems."

"I'm sure they will be happy together," Mobius says, "once they get their heads out of their asses and talk to each other."

Thor cracks a smile at that. "They're not together yet, I presume."

"They might as well be," Mobius says. "I give it a week – two tops."

"I'll be interested to see it," Thor says. "My brother has had his share of relationships, but never would I have said that he's 'in love.'"

"This is different," Mobius tells him. "You'll see."

"I believe it," Thor says, "but it makes it no less surprising." With a slight smile, he adds, "But then, this new Loki seems to be full of surprises. He's quite different than the Loki of my world."

Mobius is always ready for some pro-Loki propaganda, so he says to the god, "My Loki's had time to work through things that your Loki hasn't. Your Loki still doesn't feel like he belongs here. He's basically been dragged back to Asgard with no closure about all the reasons he left, and with the other Loki here, it's like he's being replaced just, because he wasn't ready for this and doesn't know how to handle it."

Thor frowns. "Did he tell you this?"

"More or less," Mobius says. He's not really one to talk about his feelings, but he's basically admitted that Mobius is right. That counts, right?

"Hmm." Thor ponders that. "I hadn't thought about this. I suppose I should go talk to him."

"I think he'd like that," Mobius says. With a slight smile, he adds, "I think he needs his best friend back."

Thor gives him a small, brief smile for that. "Are you going to tell him everything you told me, or should I?"

"That's up to you," Mobius says. "Who do you think he'd want to hear it from more?"

Thor shakes his head. "I don't know," he admits. "You know more about it than I do. If he has questions, he'll probably prefer to talk you."

"But you know him better," Mobius reminds him. (He's not actually sure that's true, but he'll pretend for now that it is.) "I might have more answers, but I think he'd feel better asking questions to you." He shrugs. "It's up to you, though. I don't think it'll make too much of a difference for him. It really depends on whether you want to do it or not."

Thor lets out a long breath. "I suppose I should," he admits. "Especially with what I've learned about our father. I think he would rather hear that from me – and should he have any questions I can't answer, I'll direct him to you. Does that sound fair?"

"It sounds good to me," Mobius says. "Good luck."

"Thank you," Thor says. "I suspect I'll need it."