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lailyn · 3 years

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Bird Noises

Written for @kimmycupcreates' Lokius Bingo

Summary: Wounded and trapped deep in the trenches, Loki wonders if he has been abandoned yet again.

"Loki!" Mobius whispered, but there was no sign of the Variant anywhere.

All around him, enchanted and very armed personnel roamed the grounds, their bayonet-mounted rifles glinting in the moonlight, and calling attention to himself would be suicide.

"Loki!" Mobius hissed again, but either Loki was lying about having super hearing or he was ignoring Mobius.

Of all the apocalypses the Loki Variant (the one they were chasing, not the one Mobius was currently missing) chose to hide in, they had to choose the Battle of the Somme, the largest, bloodiest battle of World War I, if not in all of human history.

Mobius should have trusted his instincts, should have said no to doing things Loki's 'way' for once. All it took was one look in those bright green eyes and he turned to putty like some greenhorn.

They should not have separated. Allied soldiers were being gunned down in droves; Loki would probably survive a chest full of bullets, but not Mobius. Definitely not Mobius, and probably not Loki too, realistically speaking.

An exploding artillery shell had flung them apart so maybe they did not separate on purpose...but it still pissed Mobius off. If Loki had not found him by now, he had either

A. Gone and done his own thing, tracking down the ELV (aka Evil Loki Variant) by himself. Never mind the fact that they still had no idea what ELV looked like now, having been on the run for years, a very, very successful run that was making the Time Keepers really, really uncomfortable.

B. Decided to join in the foray.

"Why aren't we doing anything about this?" Loki had asked in a mix of horror and mild fascination just as soon as they stepped out of the Time Door. They were not dressed for the muddy, minging weather, let alone for stepping over dead bodies and shrapnels.

"We can't change the course of history, Mobius reminded him. "The ghastly death toll here today actually provided a stepping stone to victory for The Allies."

"How?"

"It would influence subsequent decisions to take the fight away from the Western Front and onto the seas. Submarine warfare brought United States into the war."

An odd look came over Loki's face then.

"A necessary war." His lips curled in disgust. "How ugly."

Which brought Mobius to the last, but not necessarily the worst scenario:

C. Run off. Loki could shapeshift to look like anybody, speak almost all the world's major lingua francas. He may look and sound like a pompous British aristocrat most of the time, but he could pass off as French, Austrian, German, whatever he wanted. Guy was a fucking chameleon.

A tall, loud chameleon whose head or tail Mobius had not seen for an alarming total amount of twenty minutes. Tme was ticking and Loki did not have a TemPad and if Mobius left a Variant stranded here in 1916…

A true fear gripped his heart and Mobius could feel a scream crawl his way up his throat, frantic and desperate. "Loki!!!"

The deafening boom of a cannon exploding somewhere to his right drowned out his shouts. Mobius waded through the clouds of dust and debris, his vision drastically reduced down to no more than twenty yards, he could barely make out his own feet.

He heard a faint sound, a sound that did not belong here, not in this place, not in this time.

Mobius forced himself to hold his breath, he could hardly hear anything between the buzzimg in his ears from the explosion and his own harsh gasps -

There it was again, a short, quiet but high-pitched sound...the crying call of a songbird.

Mobius' legs began to move.

Keep calling, Loki, he prayed, but with every yard he covered, the call grew weaker.

Mobius hastened his search. He knew he was not running in the wrong direction, for on every tree he passed, there were bloody palm prints of someone fleeing.

Mobius would recognise those hands anywhere, he had just held them last night under the covers.

Warm, safe covers.

An artillery shell dropped out of the sky and landed a few feet away from Mobius' feet.

His heart stopped. He waited.

And waited.

When it did not go off, all breath left his chest in one explosive gust and Mobius sank to his knees, his legs turned to jelly.

"What the hell am I doing here?" He mumbled. "Oh dear god, help me…"

"Mobius?" A voice called out, faint and feathery.

"Loki?" He whirled around. Strength restored like magic, Mobius scrambled to his feet.

"Loki, where are you?" he whispered fiercely.

"I'm here," the voice led Mobius to a trench dug ten feet deep into the earth.

Loki's face was milk white, his dirty front completely soaked in blood.

"What happened?" Mobius demanded.

"She stabbed me," Loki gasped.

"She?"

"The Variant. Enchanted - him - "

Loki nodded at a corpse of a soldier lying face-down on the ground a mere feet away. Hidden so deep in the shadows, Mobius could not be certain who the soldier was or how long he had been trapped in the trench, the only clue being the graffiti carved into the chalk all around him that spoke of a love left behind in Abbey Village.

A moan reeled Mobius in back to reality and he hastily took off his jacket. He bunched it up into a ball and pressed it Loki's stomach. He could feel it squelching under his fingers.

"Can't you heal yourself?" Mobius realised just how stupid the question was the moment it left his mouth. If Loki could, he would have, instead of lying here bleeding to death from a gut wound the size of his fist.

"I tried," Loki panted, shaking his head weakly. "Magic blade."

Mobius' mind raced. "We have to get you out of here. Take you back to the TVA, we can patch you up there."

"Go." Loki swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down erratically with an unbearable thirst. He had lost far too much blood to get very far. "Leave me."

"Never," Mobius said with a fury he very seldom displayed. "I don't leave anyone behind."

"I'm sorry, Mobius." Loki's teeth chattered. "I let her get away."

"Yeah, we can talk about that later. Now shut up, I'm trying to think."

Should he return to the TVA and come back with help? No, there was no guarantee the Time Door would open onto this exact spot and now that he had found Loki, the thought of leaving him alone was unthinkable.

Loki's bloody hand scoured the air and Mobius caught it. "Loki, hold on."

"Shhh." Loki closed his eyes and tried to concentrate; as long as there was in life in him, there was still magic, and as long as there was magic…

A green glow shimmered over the God of Mischief's form, and a few seconds later, Mobius was holding a handsome peregrine falcon in his arms.

He bundled the wounded creature up in his bloodied jacket as warmly as he could,

(Warm, safe covers)

He fumbled with the TemPad and nearly dropped it from his blood-slick hand in his panic.

A bird of few noises, the falcon made a sharp, rasping kack-kack-kack staccato and nuzzled its head into Mobius' chest as if to say, It's okay. You've got this.

The Time Door materialised in front of them.

Mobius threw one last look at poor dead William, and wished he could make a stop in Abbey Village to tell sweet Adaline how much young William had loved her.

Maybe once Loki was well, they would make that trip together.

#lokius #fic #loki #time husbands #frozentime #wowki #loki tv

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