Loki accepted the tissues anyway, gripping them in one hand while trying to maintain his dignity.
It's definitely not because I'm excited about potentially seeing Thor naked, he told himself firmly. I'm just being polite. Not wanting to disappoint Mobius. That's all.
The rationalization felt weak even to him.
He settled back in the chair, preparing to examine the next segment with his usual critical eye—ready to mock whatever romantic melodrama the Sacred Timeline had in store.
Then his heart broke.
The footage showed him—arrogant, blind with jealousy, drunk on perceived betrayal—spewing poison at the people who loved him most.
"You are not my father!" his alternate self screamed at Odin, face twisted with rage and pain.
And Frigga, her eyes brimming with tears, whispered back: "Then am I not your mother either?"
Loki stood there watching variant Loki, speechless. For once in his life, the silver tongue failed completely. No clever retort. No witty deflection. Just stunned, wounded silence.
Am I really that stupid? Loki thought, watching himself stand there like an idiot.
Yes, another part of his mind answered coldly. You really are.
He thought about his own timeline. How Ben had given him a second chance on Sakaar. How that brutal, humiliating defeat had somehow become the catalyst for actual growth. How he'd learned—slowly, painfully—that strength wasn't about proving himself Thor's equal, but about becoming someone worth standing beside.
Without that intervention, without Ben Parker's particular brand of violent rehabilitation...
He'd have made exactly the same mistakes as the Loki on the screen.
"That's just how it is sometimes," Mobius said softly, his voice gentle with understanding. "People always subconsciously hurt those closest to them. We take their love for granted, use it as a license to be cruel. And we only realize the mistake much later."
He paused, watching Loki's face.
"Unfortunately, by the time we understand what we had, it's often too late to fix it."
We've only just begun, Mobius thought privately. You'll only truly understand the weight of the name 'Loki' after you witness your mother's death. After you see your father die alone and unloved.
Loki did see it.
The footage continued, showing the Dark Elf invasion of Asgard. And there—there was his alternate self, imprisoned but gleeful. The cynical smile. The barely-concealed joy at seeing his family's seat of power under attack.
Then Algrim asked a question.
And variant Loki, that spiteful fool, pointed directly toward the Shield Core room, effectively disabling Asgard's defenses and allowing the Dark Elf leader, Malekith, to reach the royal chambers.
The screen showed the confrontation. Frigga fighting with grace and skill, defending Jane Foster with the same fierce love she'd always shown her children. Malekith's blade finding its mark. Her body crumpling to the floor.
Dead because of him.
Because of his petty revenge.
Loki felt his variant entire body turn to ice.
His extremities went numb, fingers tingling as though circulation had simply stopped. His chest constricted—something blocking the blood vessels around his heart, making each breath a conscious effort. The air in the room suddenly felt too thick, too heavy, like trying to breathe underwater.
Is this true?
The question echoed in his skull, desperate and disbelieving.
"Is this my original destiny?" He turned to Mobius, and the agent saw something dangerous flicker in those eyes—grief transmuting into fury. "This was what was supposed to happen to me?"
The words came out strangled, barely controlled.
Loki had never experienced these events. Could never experience them, because in his universe, Ben had systematically eliminated every threat. The Dark Elves were dead. Hela was imprisoned. Thanos himself had been killed on Xandar.
All the people of Asgard now lived safely in Genesis and New Asgard on Earth, protected by the Plumbers and Ben Parker.
But despite knowing his own timeline had diverged—despite the intellectual understanding that this wasn't his fate—rage still flooded through him.
On what grounds?
Why is this Loki's destiny?
What authority does the Time Variance Authority have to decide a person's future?
He stood abruptly, chair scraping back, hands already moving toward the daggers that weren't there anymore, magic rising in his throat—
And in the next instant, he was sitting again.
Blinking in confusion.
"Don't get agitated," Mobius said calmly, holding up a small remote control. "No matter what you're planning, it won't work. I only need to press this button to rewind you back a second. Your little outburst? Never happened. The timeline here flows according to our rules."
He gestured at the suppression collar around Loki's neck.
"Besides, your magic is useless in the Time Variance Authority. The Nine Realms sorcery you're so proud of? It doesn't exist here. So don't even think about trying your illusion tricks on me."
His expression softened slightly.
"If you don't want to keep experiencing temporal rewinding—which I'm told is extremely disorienting—then sit properly and watch."
Loki breathed heavily, his chest heaving like a bellows. Each inhale felt like dragging fire into his lungs. The anger hadn't diminished—it had just been forcibly contained, compressed into a burning coal in his chest.
He tested what Mobius said, reaching for his magic.
Nothing.
The familiar pathways, the conduits through which cosmic energy flowed, the mental architecture of every spell he'd ever learned—all of it might as well have been carved from stone. Inert. Dead.
But then he felt something else.
The Mana Ben had granted him, the seed of power from the Genesis dimension—that still responded. Faint, but present. The TVA's temporal suppression couldn't touch it because it originated from outside their jurisdiction entirely.
Loki carefully masked his discovery, letting his shoulders slump in apparent defeat.
Good, he thought. Let them think I'm helpless. But this place isn't as secure as they believe. And when the moment comes...
For now, he forced himself to calm down. The Time Variance Authority was too complex, too layered with unknown variables. Acting rashly would accomplish nothing except getting him erased from existence.
Mobius, showing surprising empathy, paused the footage.
"I'm the one who killed her," Loki whispered, staring at the frozen image of Frigga's lifeless body. "She loved me so much. She defended me, believed in me, even when I gave her every reason not to. And I killed her."
His voice cracked.
"If she knew everything—if she knew what I would become, what I would do—she'd be so disappointed."
That's not necessarily true, Mobius thought, but he kept silent. No point spoiling what came later.
Instead, he just gave Loki a sympathetic look and restarted the playback.
The footage showed variant Loki faking his death yet again. While Thor spent years traveling the Nine Realms, quelling uprisings and preventing wars, Loki lounged on Asgard's throne in magical disguise. He'd banished Odin to an Earth retirement home and never once mourned the mother he'd gotten killed.
Instead, he indulged himself. Commissioned plays celebrating his own heroism. Lived in luxury while wearing his father's face.
Pathetic, Loki thought with disgust. You're celebrating yourself while she's dead because of you? How did you even look at yourself in the mirror?
And another thought: With your pathetic magical abilities, you actually managed to banish Odin? The All-Father let you. He was already dying, and he let you send him away rather than forcing a confrontation.
The "good days" didn't last.
Thor returned, saw through the disguise instantly—because of course he did; they'd been brothers for over a thousand years—and dragged Loki back to Earth to find their father.
But they were too late.
Odin sat on a cliff overlooking the Norwegian sea, his body already dissolving into golden light. The Odinsleep had finally claimed him, and without access to Asgard's magic to sustain him, death came swiftly.
Loki watched the screen with growing horror, piecing together the implications.
Odin had lost his powers. Had no friends or family on Earth. The retirement home where Loki had dumped him had been demolished, leaving him homeless and alone.
Somehow—through what must have been tremendous effort and suffering—this powerless old man had traveled alone from New York to northern Norway. Half the globe, crossed by someone who could barely walk without aid.
And why?
Because he wanted to die somewhere beautiful. Somewhere that reminded him of home. Somewhere his sons might find him, so he could say goodbye.
"I love you, my sons," the dying Odin said on screen, looking at both Thor and Loki with equal affection. "Remember, Asgard is not a place. It's a people. It's you."
He never blamed Loki. Not for the banishment. Not for the years of cruelty and rebellion. Not for any of it.
Even though Loki had screamed "You are not my father," Odin had never stopped treating him as a son.
But sometimes that's just how it is, Loki thought bitterly. Fathers and sons who spend their whole lives at odds finally reconcile at the very last moment. When it's too late to matter. When death is the only thing that can break through the pride and stubbornness.
Why does it always require death?
Then Hela appeared, breaking free from her seal. And variant Loki, in his cowardice, made another catastrophic mistake—allowing Hela to reach Asgard and reclaim her power as the Goddess of Death.
But both brothers ended up on Sakaar, where Loki charmed the Grandmaster and Thor fought in gladiatorial combat.
Is Sakaar some kind of cosmic rehabilitation center? Loki wondered. A place where Lokis go to finally pull their heads out of their asses? Because apparently that's the only place where I ever learn anything.
The footage showed their return to Asgard. The battle against Hela. Ragnarok itself—the destruction of the realm.
"Asgard is not a place, but its people," variant Loki said, echoing their father's words.
For the first time, he seemed to understand.
The refugees escaped on a massive ship. Things were looking up. Asgard's people had survived. The brothers had reconciled. Perhaps there was hope for a better future—
Then Thanos's massive ship appeared, blotting out the stars.
Loki watched himself try to trick the Mad Titan. Watched himself fail spectacularly. Watched Thanos's hand close around his throat and squeeze.
"You will never be a god."
The neck snapped with sickening finality.
"No resurrections this time."
Variant Loki's body hit the floor, eyes staring at nothing.
"This time he's really dead," Mobius said quietly. "This was your fate, Loki. The end written for you in the Sacred Timeline."
Silence stretched for several heartbeats.
Then Loki asked, his voice barely above a whisper: "What about Thor?"
He didn't ask who decided his fate. Didn't question the cruelty of predetermined death. At this moment, he only cared about one thing:
Did my sacrifice save them?
Mobius hesitated. "According to the rules, I'm not actually supposed to show you the rest of the content. The Sacred Timeline beyond your own death isn't part of your case file. But..."
He pressed his lips together, making a decision.
"Fuck the rules. You deserve to know."
He pressed fast-forward.
The footage blurred through events, then slowed to show the Avengers' desperate battle against Thanos.
Infinity War.
Loki watched heroes fall. Watched Spider-Man disintegrate in Tony Stark's arms. Watched half the universe turn to dust because they failed.
His stomach churned as he witnessed Star-Lord's catastrophic mistake—one punch, thrown at the worst possible moment, ruining everything.
"How could you possibly cause that with a single punch?!" Loki wanted to scream at the screen. "You absolute idiot!"
Then came the time heist. Tony Stark building a time machine to undo the Snap. The Avengers splitting up across history to retrieve the Infinity Stones.
"This operation—" Mobius gestured at the screen. "This is what allowed you to escape with the Tesseract. This is the moment your timeline branched."
He thoughtfully forwarded to Thor's timeline, showing the God of Thunder on Asgard during the events of The Dark World.
And Loki's breath caught in his throat.
Thor was obese. Disheveled. His eyes hollow with depression and self-loathing. This was a broken man wearing Thor's face.
But worse—so much worse—was what came next.
Thor spoke with Frigga. And she smiled at him with such love, such understanding.
"I love you, my son," she said. "And I know you're going to be okay. I can feel it."
Then, quietly: "I know about Loki. I know what he becomes. What happens to him."
Loki's hands trembled. The tissues Mobius had given him were crumpling in his grip.
"She knew?" His voice cracked completely. "She knew she was going to die? She knew her child would kill her?"
Tears ran freely down his face now, unchecked.
"But she never blamed me. Not once. Not ever."
"What mother would blame her child?" Mobius asked softly.