InsaneJournal

Sharon didn't know why it wouldn't be. She hadn't done anything to undo it, and she supposed Loki could have, but she didn't feel as if she'd seen him much. And she had meant to go checking on him, but she had instead thrown herself into the data that Mobius had left behind.

It was absurd, perhaps, but she felt closer to him when she was working with it. Like, maybe Mobius had just stepped away for a bit and he was coming back soon.

But he wasn't, of course, and she'd worked later than she should have, but she didn't really want to go back to the room, which was why she was here. And maybe the room had the same feeling as the data, just a little, like if she stayed here long enough, he'd walk right through the door again.

She hadn't talked about Mobius much to anyone, really. It wasn't her way. And while it wasn't a secret, and she suspected people who knew her well at all might have guessed, she never was one to talk about private life things. In many ways Loki was the only one who knew, and she should have gone to check on him already.

Sharon sighed, slipped out of her shoes by the door, and pulled off the jacket which she folded over once, and then dropped on top of the shoes. It wasn't like her to not be neat, but she didn't think it really mattered. Mobius wasn't going to show up. She stepped across, picked up a pillow, half hoping that maybe it would still smell like him. And if it did, before she even really could concretely think the thought, she knew she was going to slip under the sheets and fall asleep here tonight. She could return to the data in the morning.

It would be there. Mobius would not.

In truth, Loki had considered dismantling the room. Destroying every inch of it. Every single thread in the sheets. Every sliver of paper on the walls. Every ounce of magical illusion. He didn’t want to see it anymore. Didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t even want to remember it. He wanted that entire chapter of his time in Derleth to be gone. Wiped away like his memory of Fandral. Not that that was successful in the long run, but the temporary peace had been enough to help Loki find himself again. Enough for him to bury his feelings beneath a stronger exterior. That’s what he wanted to do now. That’s what he wanted to do with the room.

But he might come back, a little voice in his head said.

And it wasn’t just his room either.

Loki hadn’t been back to the room since the disappearance notification. The idea of it left an empty pit in his stomach. Like his insides were made of lead. He hadn’t really spoken to Sharon either. Sure, he’d reached out. In that haphazard way that two people with an intimate third party between them reached out. But that may have just been politeness. Etiquette. The tiny flicker of humanity that Loki had gained in his time since his death. Not that it mattered. Sharon had turned down his offer to talk. Probably for the best. Since Loki hadn’t wanted to talk either.

He didn’t know what to say.

And he didn’t have the will to hope.

But he did have some things he wanted to keep. Things he’d left in that room. Things he wanted to have just in case—

In case he comes back.

He stepped into the room like it was a tomb. Soundless. Somber. Then he stopped. He hadn’t thought—he rarely did thanks to his selfishness—that she might be there. And for a split second Loki considered turning around and leaving her there alone. On the bed. Their bed. Her bed. His bed. Mobius’s bed. Loki’s eye twitched and his jaw clenched.

Then he stepped into the room further, making his way to the opposite side of the bed. He wondered idly if he and Sharon had shared the same side or if Mobius had switched. The thought caused the glands in his throat to thicken and he swallowed back his own saliva to prevent that sensation from rising to his face where it would no doubt tease tears from his eyes. Then, without a word, he crouched down and reached under the bed, searching for something.

Sharon was too good a spy to not have noticed him coming in, but she didn't turn right away. It would be Loki, of course, it would only be Loki. She didn't know if anyone else knew of this space, but it was also theirs - the three of them. They'd put it together, well mostly Loki. But she'd helped, somehow. He'd pulled her in, and in so doing she had never felt as if she was unwelcome, or an imposter, or that she was taking time away from Loki.

She pulled in her breath, swallowing a sigh, and then she turned over, so that she could watch.

Guilt slipped in, because if there was one person in Derleth who could understand what she was going through, it was Loki. Although even that thought was something she wanted to bat around, to try to explain away - she hadn't been as close to Mobius as Loki was, for instance. But she wasn't even certain that was true. It felt like trying to deny something to herself.

The truth was that she had promised Mobius that she'd look in on Loki should something happen. But at the same time, she hadn't really thought about how. And Mobius had left a hole between them, something she didn't quite know how to cross. But then, maybe she hadn't ever really known how to cross the cavern between them. Maybe it had always been something that had surprised her when she did. And somehow - she and Loki? They had seemed to cross it. This room was evidence of that.

She didn't want to talk about things, yet this room had somehow always felt like a safe place to do so - with Mobius and with Loki both, and maybe it was time she at least attempted - instead of hiding behind mountains of data and organizing people and hand-drawn tempad specs.

She thought about asking him what he was looking for. She thought about asking him how he was doing. She thought about asking if she was in the way. But in the end she just opened her eyes, watching him, and finally said softly, "Hey."

Loki had to lie flat on his stomach and stretch his arm almost to the back wall in order to find what he was looking for. His fingers bumped it and it made a quiet clattering sound. The ring. The one Mobius had created during the fantasy world week in order to help Loki control his unicorn appearance. The one that had no magic left in it. No real magic anyway. Nothing that could be extracted or felt or used. Whatever magic was left was merely emotional. Sentimental. And now, with Mobius gone, nostalgic.

Loki grabbed it and crawled out from under the bed. He stood up, wiping a bit of dust off his shirt, and slipped the ring into his pocket. Not on his finger. Not anymore. That didn’t seem appropriate for some reason. Or maybe he was just afraid that wearing it would make it all too real. That it would prevent him from getting over it.

She was looking at him then. He looked back, his expression drawn into a solemn stare. Loki, for once in his life, didn’t know what to say. So he just followed her lead. “Hello.”

It felt … wrong. There should have been more. Sharon was the only other person who could guess how he felt. The only other person who knew. And while they hadn’t yet crossed a place between them where they might have indulged all of their secrets—as they had both probably done with Mobius—Loki had always felt that the potential for something more lingered in their future. And now, nothing.

“I’m sorry if I disturbed you. I’ll leave now.” But he didn’t move. Not immediately. He paused for a few seconds before slowly walking around the bed towards the door.

He was watching her, and she couldn't figure out what emotions were, or what she felt. She wanted to reach through whatever barrier there was, the thing she couldn't quite name or see or put together, and pull him in maybe? But she didn't quite know how to do that. Sharon wasn't exactly amazing at putting emotions together, and maybe it was amazing that she had with Mobius at all. Maybe she needed more wine and her 1980s Cover Girl drugstore make-up palette and she'd be able to do this with Loki too, but the more important thing was this: She didn't really want him to go.

Surrounded by people all day, she was able to put off thinking about Mobius too much. Sure she'd think about him with the data, but she could focus those thoughts on actually solving the problem. On stepping in and directing the people who had volunteered. On thinking about what Mobius would have said, or what direction he might have taken, and when she did that, it was better.

Tonight she'd come in here because maybe it would feel closer to him, and there was some truth to that, but as much as she felt closer she was also reminded that he wasn't here. Sharon had never been someone who couldn't handle being alone. She'd been forced into it so many times, after all, but also: "Stay," she breathed instead.

She'd originally been thinking 'don't go', but it had come out differently. Not a command that assumed the probability of absence, but one that hoped for presence.

For a large portion of his life, the only commands Loki listened to were those from his parents. Demands by more powerful gods. And even that had been fleeting. His rebellious period had been legendary. Far longer than that of any Midgardian teenager. But something had changed after Derleth. Perhaps it was because he was given a second chance at life. Maybe it was because he was trapped with so many of the same people week in and week out, forced to work together in order to survive the bizarre unknowns of every reset. Whatever the reason, Loki had become more receptive to other people’s needs. He didn’t always show it, particularly not on the network, but he’d begun to learn that sometimes demands weren’t actually demands. Sometimes they were requests.

Like Sharon’s response.

Stay.

Loki hadn’t anticipated that. It surprised him. And, for a split second, he just stood there and watched her, waiting for the joke. For the malicious twist. For her to change her mind. Of course, she didn’t. And Loki was once again overwhelmed by the idea that other people sometimes wanted his company. Or needed his company.

“Okay,” he said after a pause and sat down on the opposite side of the bed. At first he kept his back to her, staring off at the opposite wall with the elaborately decorated wallpaper he and Sharon had designed together. Then he swung his legs up onto the mattress and laid down beside her.

It was quiet. Too quiet.

“Do you think he’s with other versions of us right now?”

Sharon's first thought was of not with another version of her. Mobius had known Loki before, and Loki - or a version of him - had known Mobius before. But while Mobius had known of Sharon, she knew she'd never known him.

But the second thought followed quickly on those heels. A version of Loki didn't mean that the one right next to her had known Mobius, and perhaps, it wasn't ridiculous to think that maybe they were.

"It's a big multiverse," she finally responded. "I think it's possible. Of course that just makes me jealous of those other versions of us." Her words were light, but no less truthful. She turned over from her back to her side so that she was laying facing him, and could watch him.

Most of the things she could think of to add that were light, were also deflections from what she was feeling, and it might require more energy to deflect from the truth than it would take to simply allow it to settle.

"I've been on my own for so long, you'd think it wouldn't bother me."

A headache felt like it was creeping up along her temples, and she wondered if she'd spent too much time staring at data this week. How many weeks ago had the dinosaurs been? Sharon found herself unable to really conceptualise the time - a month? Longer? It hadn't been so long that it felt as if it should matter that much. But Derleth felt as if it worked on its own timeline, and maybe in the end that didn't even matter that much. You felt how you felt about someone, and time wasn't the primary driver of that feeling. Not really.

She let out a breath in a sigh, and looked at him. "You checked in on me last week, and I think I was supposed to be checking in on you." She offered a sheepish smile, that faded out. "But nobody else did. Check in last week, I mean. So."

Jealousy.

Not long after he’d first arrived in Derleth, someone had said something to Loki about relationship jealousy. Loki had been envious of many things and people in his life, but never with regards to a romantic relationship. Then again, he’d never been in a romantic relationship that meant anything. They were always just fleeting nights and forgotten names. Most of them were acts of mischief. Loki had never understood the concept of jealousy when it came to a physical relationship. The person he’d told that to refused to believe him. But when he thought of Mobius being with another version of himself or another version of Sharon, he didn’t feel jealous. He didn’t feel anger or concern or loss. He just felt lonely. He just felt like he’d failed in some way.

But Loki was used to failure. The only reason this situation hurt was because he’d allowed himself to open up. His heart. His soul. His feelings. He’d made himself vulnerable in a way he hadn’t been with another person before. Then they were gone. And while that left an ache in his heart that would take time to heal, he wasn’t envious of the idea of Mobius returning to his timeline and being with a variant. Not even the variant. He wanted Mobius to be happy. He had a life to live. Loki didn’t.

Loki only had Derleth.

Derleth and the eternal void of death if he were to ever return to his universe. Because while he hoped he’d done enough to earn a place in Valhalla, there were no guarantees.

Just as there were no guarantees that love in this pocket universe would last.

“I think most people would say that it’s a good thing that you’re bothered by his absence. That means he was important. That what you had was important. And real. That it meant something.” But Loki didn’t know if he believed his own words. Maybe for Sharon he did. But for himself? He was beginning to think he didn’t belong with anyone.

Loki tapped his fingers on his chest. He could feel her watching him, but he kept his gaze firmly planted on the ceiling. He tried not to think of what it had been like lying there beside Mobius, but the occasional memory flickered through his mind, distracting him. Trying to make him crack.

“I never expected you to check in on me. You had enough going on,” Loki said before rolling over onto his side to meet her eyes. “People only check on me because they’re afraid of the backlash. Of my temper. Of what I might do in my outrage. They’re not wrong, of course. But it’s not the same thing as worrying about me. So, in that case, I’d rather people not check in at all.”

He picked at a loose thread on the bedspread. “Are you going to be okay though?”

Loki had a nice voice. When he wasn't sneering or trying to rile someone up, when he wasn't playing the villain, or commanding or demanding, it was a pleasant voice. She wondered if he'd read her something? -- let her fall asleep like she sometimes had used the sleep app to do. But what he said lingered.

Sharon knew that there was truth there. Mobius had been important to her. And Mobius had offered her a quiet acknowledgement of what she'd done to survive, seen that tendency to take whatever was offered to try to survive, and still turned around and offered her a hand and friendship, and eventually himself. And she'd never really told him how much that had mattered. Certainly not in so many words.

And there was a big of an urge to confess that, to ask Loki if he thought Mobius had known, but she swallowed it down, even if the question probably lingered all too present in her eyes. It wasn't as if she was in spy mode - trying to hide things. She just didn't want to talk about them, or know how to talk about them.

"Maybe they're not wrong, but maybe they're not entirely right either," Sharon ventured and then paused, trying to figure out exactly how to put what she meant by that. "I mean, I assume you didn't reach out to me because you were afraid I was going to do something in my outrage. But I'm not the good girl next door, exactly. And you're more than just your outrage. I should have checked in before. Not because of your outrage, but because we both lost someone who saw that other part of us maybe. The one we don't usually show."

She sighed, slipping a hand up through her hair. "And now I'm being far more honest than I intended to be. But yeah, I'll be okay. I've been alone before. I'll survive. I'm pretty good at surviving."

“I just didn’t know what to say,” Loki admitted after a pause. He and Sharon had been in a tenuous place with each other before Mobius disappeared. They were carefully getting to know each other. Cautiously trying to discover if they had something in common or if it was just Mobius that bound them together. Loki sometimes wanted to get to know her better. Both with Mobius and without. But once Mobius disappeared he didn’t know what that meant for them. Would they be friends? Had they ever been friends? Or was this just a temporary alliance because they’d both loved—guh that emotion—the same man?

Loki didn’t even know how close they really were. He didn’t know if he was supposed to offer her a hug or wrap an arm around her in a comforting embrace. He didn’t know if he should hold her hand or give her a shoulder to cry on. Not that he expected her to do that. He couldn’t do that either. Not in front of anyone else.

Then everyone would know how much pain he was truly in. And Loki couldn’t show that kind of weakness. Not now. Maybe not ever again.

“Surviving…” Loki scratched the side of his face. “I guess we’re both good at that. I don’t know about you, but it’s starting to get a little tiring just surviving. Maybe that’s the point. Learning how to appreciate more about life than just surviving. Derleth doesn’t make that easy though.”

Loki rolled over onto his side so he could look at Sharon. She was pretty. He could see why Mobius was attracted to her. She was smart, too. Witty. And she had a wry humor that could match his own. He felt worse for her than he did for himself, but he didn’t know why.

Maybe because Loki had already lost Mobius twice. Maybe because he knew there was another Loki in the universe looking out for him. But who was looking out for Sharon?

He reached out and placed a hand gently on her upper arm. “What can I do for you? How can I help?”

The question was so unexpected that the lump in her throat took her off guard.

Sharon hadn't cried, but in spite of that, or maybe because of it her eyes felt frustratingly damp.

This empathy was a thing she'd slowly started to uncover about Loki. There was what she'd known of him - that he alongside the alien army he'd allowed to arrive - had destroyed a good section of midtown. But then there were the things she hadn't known. And she wasn't always certain what to do with those things. But then she also knew that she might not have destroyed half of midtown, specifically and intentionally, but had she enabled chaos through the things she'd brokered? Probably.

And all of that maybe didn't matter because he was staring at her with eyes that were a lot more gentle than any straight up villain's had the right to be.

She swallowed, pushing the lump back down, although she wasn't quite ready to answer him. Maybe because she didn't know.

Or maybe it was because she did.

She bit down on the inside of her lip, it helped with the tears that had threatened, because she didn't really want to cry. Maybe less because she was worried about what Loki would think of her, than just because she didn't want to tonight.

She took a breath. Her initial words felt more shaken than she wanted them to, but she pushed through, regaining some control.

"Mobius would want us to do more than survive anyway."

She shifted, so that she could move her hand up to take the one he'd placed on her arm and she slipped her fingers into it. "What are we without him connecting us?" She asked the question softly. "Or… if he was the sun we were both orbiting…" this felt at once overly dramatic, while somehow also completely accurate. The thought made her almost smile, because maybe she had spent too much time with Loki if she was heading into overly dramatic territory. "Do you want us to stay connected even if we're no longer orbiting the same sun?" She looked up at him, trying to read his mood. Her thumb traced the outside of her hand, and she added. "Because I think I do."

Magic was the only thing keeping Loki’s eyes from watering. Like Sharon, he’d managed to hold back the tears ever since he’d heard about Mobius’s disappearance. This was mostly stubbornness on his part. Also a bit of ego. But crying meant he had to accept what Mobius meant to him. And consequently what he had to face without him. Loneliness. Regret. Fear. And an ache in his chest that had persisted through the reset.

Loki also had to accept that he wasn’t the same person he was before he met Mobius. He was changed. Different. Some people might have called it growth, but Loki wasn’t so certain. He was more vulnerable now too. Not that he hadn’t been before. But he’d been able to hide it in the past. Now everyone knew he had a softness about him. A weakness. And that was something that could be exploited. Or looked down upon.

It was a lot for someone like Loki to process.

He held his breath waiting for her answer. In truth, he didn’t know what he could do for her. He couldn’t be a replacement for Mobius. He could barely hold a candle to him. And Loki came with so many complications. So much baggage. So much drama. He expected Sharon to turn him down. To tell him there was nothing he could do.

Once again he was surprised by how much he’d managed to connect with someone in Derleth. Once again he was astounded to discover that someone actually wanted to remain in his orbit.

Even if their sun was gone.

Loki looked down at their entwined hands, his longer fingers woven through hers. That was a big step for them too. Touch. Closeness. And he couldn’t help but wonder what Mobius would say.

Nothing, his thoughts answered. He would have said nothing and smiled.

“I can’t speak for Mobius, but I think he would be disappointed if we walked away from each other. We once talked about—” Loki cut himself off. He wasn’t certain if he should share their private conversations. But Mobius was gone. And they were left behind. Along with a room that was supposed to mean something to all of them. “I had hoped that we would get to know each other better eventually. That we might, at the very least, manage a friendship.”

Loki didn’t know if it could be more than that without Mobius. He’d never dismiss the possibility, but it was difficult for him to imagine. Then again, he’d formed some surprising relationships since arriving in Derleth. Perhaps he merely required time. And time was something they had in spades. Provided Derleth didn’t return them to their fates.

He gave her hand a small squeeze. “I know we have some walls between us. Things we never talked about. Concerning the past. Concerning Mobius. But if you’d like to stay connected then maybe we can start there.”

Sharon nodded at this, her gaze meeting Loki's and holding there. She knew that Mobius would have wanted them to have stayed connected, and she'd always told herself that she would keep an eye on Loki, for Mobius. Or at least, that had been what she had said in the beginning.

But that had been before sparring, and wit, and this room, and this moment.

Maybe the truth was that while Mobius might have been the thing that connected them, the star they both were orbiting if you would, maybe there was gravity left pulling them together still. She'd felt it at times, when they were dancing, or exchanging wit, with a quickness that might have suited Shakespeare. And every time she had, there had been that wonder. The question of what if, and maybe.

She wasn't willing to push it further tonight.

Which was, perhaps, its own strange thing. It would have been easier to have leaned in and shifted the mood. She didn't even really need to know if Loki would be interested or not, because either way it would push the vulnerability to the side. He'd leave, or they'd kiss, and she wouldn't have to think about the walls, or the past, or any of it. But maybe Mobius had left her wanting more, and you couldn't get more without a friendship.

She squeezed his hand gently, glancing down at it. Long slender fingers were slid between hers, and that touch was nice. She didn't think she'd really been touched since before Mobius had left.

"I think a friendship is…" she hesitated, her throat feeling tight again. When it passed she gave him a smile. "A start, but maybe not a finish. Who knows. But, Loki, I think you're right about surviving. I've done it for a very long time. I want to find that stable timeline Mobius hoped for, and I want to do more than survive."

Loki didn’t know what he wanted. Even when he was with Mobius he had his doubts. Doubt had ended his chance with Natasha. Doubt had ruined any possibilities with Julia. Doubt even played a role with Fandral although there were other circumstances there as well. Loki had spent so much of his life convinced that he couldn’t have what other people had, that he ended up sabotaging his opportunities. Perhaps if Mobius had been around longer, Loki would have destroyed that as well. Out of doubt. Out of fear. Out of an estranged belief that he was less deserving. It sounded foolish. He was a god, after all. Why should he question his worth?

But a thousand years of self-esteem issues didn’t disappear overnight.

Could he and Sharon mean something to each other beyond the boundaries of friendship without Mobius gluing them together? Loki didn’t know. But Loki also knew that it was dangerous to make long term plans in Derleth. Life changed by the day. By the hour. Sometimes—like now—by the minute.

But Sharon was right. Friendship was a good place to start. And then they could see what the future had in store for them. If it had anything. But if a close confidant was all Loki managed to gain, then that would be enough. That would be more than he had the majority of the time.

And to be honest he didn’t know if he could handle anything more. Certainly not now. Perhaps not for a while.

But holding hands at least helped him feel less alone.

He looked away from her, turning his attention towards the ceiling. Dark shadows crawled across the plaster. “We’ll find it. And we’ll make something good of it, regardless of how it looks when we get there. We have some of the most powerful and intelligent beings in the entire multiverse here. We’ll turn it into something brilliant. Something Mobius would be proud of.”

Loki wouldn’t have it any other way.