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There’s some movie, made at least ten years ago, about a superhero and his arch-nemesis. The superhero has a butler, and the butler says something very pertinent to Mobius's current situation. He thinks it's something to the effect of some men just want to watch the world burn.
Mobius is generally a peaceful man. He stays out of conflict if at all possible, does his job, and reads about jetskis. It’s a nice life.
Or it was, anyway. He’s starting to agree more and more with the some want to watch the world burn line these days.
It’s all Loki’s fault, like a lot of other things are. Before him, Mobius had been happy with the simple life he led. Somehow, though, Loki lit some sort of fire (it’s the only real metaphor that works for someone like him) under him, and now it threatens to consume him whole.
Mobius knows Loki. He knows him like he knows the backs of his hands, like he knows the jetskis in the one magazine he owns. Once, at the beginning of all this, he felt only innocent curiosity toward Loki. Now it's gone, replaced by a dirty, dark feeling that crawls up Mobius’s throat and threatens to choke him. It's satisfaction at its most base form- satisfaction found in the fact that no one, with maybe the exception of the Timekeepers, knows Loki better than he does.
He thinks he can trace it all back to the protectiveness he felt when Loki fell asleep in front of him. He knows Loki well enough to say that he doesn’t sleep in front of people he doesn't trust. It felt almost heady to be trusted that way, to know that for all that Loki bites at the hand that feeds him, when it comes down to the wire, he still trusts them. Mobius can't think of it without the choking darkness swirling up his throat, but he thinks of it so often that he's hardly bothered by it anymore.
The part of him that clings to before, to what he was before Loki, is afraid, screaming in terror of the darkness that occupies Mobius’ body now like an eldritch monster fitting inside a human vessel. But it's a very small part, these days. Just small enough that Mobius can disregard it completely.
Mobius hasn’t changed, not really. He’s just reexamined his priorities. If Loki asked him today, Mobius would probably let him burn the TVA to the ground. Maybe he would even help. He imagines the flicker of the flames against the sharp lines of Loki’s face (he'll look like a god, standing in the ashes of those who tried to control him) and the smell of smoke and enjoys every second of it.
Screw the timeline, he thinks, suppressing a wicked, sharp-edged smile.
But there is, of course, the worry he has over where Loki is, what he’s doing. He could have left- disappeared into the timeline somewhere. There are infinite possibilities of that. But he knows somehow, deep down, that Loki didn’t want to leave.
Not knowing where Loki is should eat at him, but it doesn’t. They trust each other, and Mobius has all the hope in the world that Loki is doing the right thing, whatever he feels that may be.
He dreams of Loki almost every night. Sometimes they are about the destruction of the timeline and the Timekeepers and everything Mobius has ever known. Sometimes they're of Loki living a life without him in it. But other times they're more than that- they're of Loki's hands on his body and his hair in his face. They are simultaneously the best and the worst of all of them. God, Loki's hands are everywhere in those dreams- on his chest, stroking over his cock and his nipples, and he whispers sweet things, promises of freedom and the wind in his hair. Even as he tells Mobius to get on his knees for his god, he sees the need in Loki's eyes and revels in it. Gods need devotees, don't they? And Mobius has been playing by the Timekeepers' rules for longer than he can remember. He has been their worker, their devotee.
Now, though, he thinks it's time to kneel at a different altar.
For the moment, though, Mobius does his job, smells smoke on every inhale, and dreams of Loki. Let no one say he is not a patient man.