What Remains

The briefing room was too bright. Fluorescent light hummed overhead, flattening everything into sterile white. Mobius stood, not because he wanted to, but because B-15 hadn’t sat down. She had her hands braced on the edge of the console like it was the only thing holding her back from pacing. Behind her, the window showed the Void of the TVA—no stars, no time, no anything.

“Cleveland,” she said. “A mall parking lot. A Tuesday that keeps trying to collapse without him in it.”

Mobius rolled a pen between his fingers. “Define ‘him.’ We getting poetic now?”

“Loki,” she said, and something flickered across her face. Not fear. Calculation. “Or what’s left of him.”

Mobius kept the easy smile. He put it on like a tie when things were bad. “Well, that’s a fun set-up. What are we talking about? Variant? Duplication cast? He’s slippery.”

“Catastrophic amnesia.” She didn’t soften the words. “His temporal signature matches. His physiology matches. It’s him. Just… wiped. Clean.”

The pen stopped. “Clean.”

“Agent who found him says he didn’t resist. Didn’t know his name. Kept repeating what he read off the intake chart. Kept saying ‘Loke.’”

Mobius swallowed around nothing. The lights felt like they were being turned up. “And the timeline branch?”

“We neutralized the branch. We can’t neutralize him.” B-15 tapped the console, pulling up a grainy recording. The image showed a tall figure in a gray jumpsuit sitting in a folding chair in an empty room. The way he folded himself—shoulders bowed, wrists tucked in—was unfamiliar and brutally familiar at the same time. He looked at nothing. He looked like he didn’t know how to look.

“I didn’t order the memory wipe,” B-15 added. “No reset collar deployment. No reset charge, no extraction tools.”

“Then who?” Mobius asked.

She held his gaze. “That’s what we need to find out.”

He tried to focus on data, not the person sitting with his hands lax between his knees like he was waiting for permission to move. “Vitals?”

“Stable. Pulse elevated when left alone. Low response to stimuli. No apparent injuries. No sedation on board. Our med techs think this was magical in origin. Extensive.”

“So you’re telling me we’ve got a god who doesn’t know he’s a god.” Mobius set the pen down because it was going to snap in his hand. “You want to put him in containment?”

“For now, he’s in a suburban asset safe house. No windows on ground level, perimeter surveillance only, HVAC filtered. I want him off our floors until we understand what this is. And—”

“And?” He heard it coming.

B-15’s mouth went flat. “You’re assigned as handler. On Earth. Effective immediately.”

He laughed once, short enough to hurt. “Because we’re friends.”

“Because you’ve had success with him before,” she said, as if success was a measurable thing like kilograms. “He’s going to be frightened. He doesn’t trust us. He barely understands us when he does. He knows you.”

Mobius almost said, He doesn’t know anything. He didn’t. “What’s the protocol?”

“You get him stable. Keep him out of sight. Document everything. If his magic resurfaces, you report it. If he becomes volatile—”

“He won’t.” It came out too fast.

Her eyes cooled. “If he becomes volatile, you have discretion to call in a reset team. That is not a choice you make alone. We are trying to keep the universe from unraveling. Do you understand me?”

He stood a little straighter. “I understand that you’re making me the babysitter.”

“Protector.” The word was precise. “And observer. And insurance policy. Don’t mistake sympathy for strategy.”

Mobius let that dig. He deserved it. He’d always let Loki in more than he should have. “I’ll need a TemPad scrubbed from standard channels, supplies, civilian gear. Nothing TVA-branded. If someone did this to him, I don’t want to lead them back to us or the house.”

“It’s already staged.” B-15 flicked another projection into existence: a slate of a beige hallway, a door with a brass 4 on it, a couch that had seen better decades. “Cleveland. Nondescript. You’ll have neighbors. You’ll be boring. That’s the point.”

“Any idea why there?” Mobius asked. “Why a mall? Why a Tuesday?”

“Pattern doesn’t fit his usual chaos,” she said. “Feels… placed. Like someone wanted him found. Not by us necessarily, but by someone.”

Mobius nodded once. “So he’s a message.”

“Or bait. Or a test. Or all three.”

They stood in the white light for another heartbeat, the hum of the room loud in the absence of everything else. Mobius pressed his tongue to his molars and tasted metal.

“I’ll go,” he said. He’d known he would the second the grainy recording stuttered into life. “I’ll keep him safe.”

“Keep yourself safe,” B-15 said. “He’s not a pet. He’s not your redemption arc.” A beat, softer: “Don’t make me pull you out.”

He managed a crooked smile. “You couldn’t if you tried.”

“I could,” she said, and finally gave him the TemPad. It was heavier than standard issue. Clean. Off-grid. He slipped it onto his wrist and felt its weight like an oath.

He took the elevator down through nobody’s time to the deployment bay. The supply locker was already tagged with his name. Jeans, shirts in neutral colors, a jacket that would blend, sneakers in a size someone remembered. A key on a ring. A manila folder. The manila folder felt like theatre, but he took it anyway, tucking it under his arm. He stood there for a second with his hand on the rolled hoodie, realizing he’d thought about this—about a house, about normal—long before this assignment. He’d thought about it and felt stupid for thinking it.

He didn’t see Loki in the holding room again. He didn’t ask. There was no point. The first look would be in the field, away from the sterile hum of the TVA, in a room with carpet that hid stains and windows that looked at a street lined with identical mailboxes.

On the transport pad, he keyed in the coordinates: Cleveland, Ohio. The safe house would smell like dust and something citrus. The couch would itch. The bathroom tiles would be cracked. The man inside would be tall, wrong in a gray jumpsuit, and Mobius would have to teach him how to sit with his hands not clenched, how to drink water, how to sleep.

“Handler,” he said to nobody, tasting the word. Protector felt truer in his mouth, old-fashioned and absolute. It had edges he liked.

He pressed his palm against the TemPad to confirm the jump and looked up at the empty bay one last time.

“Don’t make me pull you out,” B-15 had said.

He smiled, empty and full. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he murmured, and stepped into the light.

The air on the sidewalk had the damp chill of a place that rained more than it needed to. Mobius walked past a recycling bin and a clay pot of dead geraniums, slipped the brass key into the lock, and paused with his palm flat against the cheap door. Inside, no movement. He let himself in anyway.

The safe house matched the photo like a memory you’d rather forget. Beige carpet with a path worn from couch to kitchen. A bland print of boats on a wall. The smell of dust and lemon cleaner and something clinical underneath, like the med bay had followed them here and gotten stuck in the vents.

He closed the door softly. The living room opened onto a short hall. At the end of the hall, a bedroom door was ajar, light cutting a pale strip across the carpet. The hair rose across Mobius’s arms despite himself. He told his pulse to slow down, pitched his face into that easy calm that had gotten him through interrogations and worse.

“Hey,” he called, low, not stepping into the doorway yet. “It’s Mobius.”

The figure in the chair didn’t react.

Mobius stepped in.

Loki sat with his back to the bedroom window, light turning the edges of his hair into a dull bronze. The TVA jumpsuit hung wrong on him, the gray making his skin look too pale, his wrists too thin. His knees were spread awkwardly, toes turned in like he hadn’t figured out where to put his legs. His hands were draped between his thighs, fingers slack, nails clean and too perfect. He stared at a point on the wall like it might give him instructions if he obeyed it long enough.

“Loki,” Mobius said, softer. He took a step, and the chair’s legs scraped. The man in it flinched—shoulders up, chin jerking, his eyes cutting to Mobius fast, ready to run even though there was nowhere to go.

The look hit like a body blow. Nothing familiar in it. No arched amusement, no narrow disdain. Only fear so immediate and clean it felt like standing on ice that hadn’t finished freezing.

Mobius opened his hands, palms out. “It’s okay. I know it’s a lot. I’m just…” He swallowed. “I’m here to help.”

The eyes tracked his hands instead of his face. Jade, edged with gray, blown wide by adrenaline. There was a faint shadow of a bruise at his temple, not from impact but from stress: the kind that lived in clenched muscles and sleepless nights. His mouth parted like he was going to say something and then didn’t. The jump of his throat betrayed the reflex of swallowing.

“Do you know who I am?” Mobius asked. It was a stupid question. He asked anyway.

A beat, then the smallest shake of his head. No.

Mobius felt something he didn’t want to name. “Do you know who you are?”

Another small shake. Hesitation. The glance toward the dresser, toward the file folder someone had left there with a thick black marker name across it. He latched onto it like a lifeline, his lips shaping it soundlessly first, then out loud, careful and flat: “Loke.”

“Loki,” Mobius corrected, gentle. He had to make it land without making it hurt. “With an i. It’s all right if it doesn’t… fit yet. We’re not in a rush.”

The man flinched again at the sound of his own not-quite-name, like the syllables were a draft under a closed door. He shifted, chair creaking, and Mobius realized he’d tucked his feet back as far as the chair would allow—ready to push, to spring, to escape the uncomfortable gravity of conversation.

Mobius took one slow step closer. The fear sharpened, visible in the tendons standing out on Loki’s wrists. He held very still. “Can I sit?” he said, not moving more than necessary, and tipped his head toward the edge of the bed. “Just there. I’ll stay here. You can keep the door behind me. No surprises.”

Another hesitation. Then a fractional nod, the kind you could miss if you weren’t counting breaths.

Mobius sat on the edge of the bed, hands laced loosely, elbows on his knees. He angled his body so it wasn’t squared up in the way that made people feel cornered. “You’re safe,” he said, and felt immediately like a liar because he didn’t know if that was true. But the room was quiet. The house was ordinary. He could make it true enough for now. “No one here is going to hurt you.”

Loki blinked slowly, gaze hitching around the room like he was cataloging exits, objects, anything that might give this a name. The blinds. The lamp with a plastic shade. The speckled nightstand with a water glass sweating on a coaster. He looked back at Mobius, pupils still too large. “Who are you?” His voice was low and smooth and wrong without any confidence in it. Stripped of affect, it sounded new.

“I’m the one who found you,” Mobius said, choosing this version of the truth. “I… work with an organization that tries to fix things when they go wrong. You were found, and I volunteered to keep you safe while we figure it out.” He shrugged, tried to make it smaller. “I make coffee. I argue with people. I’m very boring.”

The corner of Loki’s mouth twitched, bafflement flickering into a ghost of what might one day be wry. It slipped away.

“I don’t remember,” Loki said.

“I know,” Mobius said. He let that sit between them. “You don’t have to. We’ll build you something to stand on anyway. Did they give you water?”

Loki looked at the glass like he’d forgotten it existed. He reached for it too quickly, knocking it. Water sloshed. He hissed, he didn’t know why, and jerked his hand back like he’d been burned.

“Easy,” Mobius said, standing, but he stopped when Loki recoiled. He showed his empty hands again and then bent slowly, keeping his movements predictable, to steady the glass. “It’s just cold. It’s all right. Here.”

He slid the glass within reach and sat back on the bed, leaving the space of a body between them. Loki watched him, then wrapped his long fingers around the glass as if it might jump. He lifted it to his mouth and drank with the concentration of someone performing a task he felt graded on. Water dripped down his wrist, beaded in the hollow of his thumb, soaked into the gray fabric at his knee in a dark crescent.

“There you go,” Mobius murmured. He hated the way it sounded, like talking to a frightened animal, like something tender and humiliating at the same time. He wanted to be better than that. He wanted to be what the word protector demanded.

Loki’s breathing eased by increments. His shoulders dropped the smallest measure. He looked at Mobius again, not over his shoulder, not at the door. At him. “You said my name wrong,” he said, quietly stubborn. “The paper says Loke.”

“The paper’s an idiot,” Mobius said before he could help it, and got a flash of something alive, startled amusement that vanished too fast. “Sorry. We can use that, if it feels safer right now.”

A long pause. Loki’s eyes skipped away, then back. “I don’t know what feels safe.”

“I’ll help you figure it out,” Mobius said. He didn’t reach. He didn’t move. He just set the promise down like the glass on the coaster, something with boundaries, something that wouldn’t tip if you bumped it. “We’re going to take it very slow. I brought clothes that aren’t that ridiculous jumpsuit. I’ll sleep out there so you can have this room. I’ll show you where the light switches are. You can ask me questions, or not. You get to set the pace.”

Loki breathed in, out. The simplicity of choices seemed to settle over him like a blanket that didn’t itch. He nodded once, small and decisive this time, and Mobius let the relief warm his chest without showing on his face.

He stood carefully. “I’m going to get the bag from the living room. I’ll come right back. You’ll hear me. I won’t touch you unless you say I can.”

He took a step backward into the hall. Loki’s gaze followed like a tether. Mobius left the door open, counted his steps, forced himself to be audible, predictable, a metronome in a house that had held its breath.

When he came back with the nondescript duffel, Loki hadn’t moved. But his hands were no longer clenched. They lay open on his thighs, the tendons soft, palms up like he had almost convinced his body the threat wasn’t immediate. Mobius put the bag on the bed within sight, unzipped it: cotton tees, soft, gray and blue; sweatpants with a drawstring; socks.

He held up a shirt without approaching, like a shop clerk at a cautious distance. “These are yours. If you want. We can—” He stopped himself from saying change. “We can try them later.”

Loki looked at the fabric with the same wary concentration he’d given the glass. He reached, then stopped halfway, fingers hovering, then pulled back, deciding that decision could wait. His eyes met Mobius’s, and something in them steadied.

“Mobius,” Loki said, trying the name out, the syllables careful. “You said that. Mobius.”

“Yeah.” He swallowed, surprised at how it landed in him. “That’s me.”

Loki nodded again, as if filing that away in the smallest drawer of a cabinet he didn’t know yet how to open. He flinched once more when a car outside backfired, then breathed through it, the way a person does when he’s watched someone else breathe through it first. Mobius wished he could be two places at once—at the window, checking the street; and right here, anchoring.

“We’ll make dinner,” Mobius said, because you needed rituals. “Something simple. I’ll be in the kitchen. I’ll talk while I do it, so you always know where I am.”

Loki didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no. He watched Mobius with those wide, careful eyes and didn’t lean away when he moved toward the doorway. That would do for now. Mobius stepped into the hall, the sound of the house settling filling the quiet, and let the door stay open between them like a promise he intended to keep.

Mobius kept his voice level. “Okay. Just a few basics.” He pulled the dining chair from the wall and turned it so he could sit sideways in the doorway, in Loki’s line of sight but not blocking the exit. He took out a slim notepad, the kind that made everything feel procedural and safe, even when it wasn’t. His pen hovered. “What’s today’s date?”

Loki’s brow folded. He looked toward the window like the sky would tell him. The light outside was creeping toward evening; the lawn lay in that suburban hush between day and night. He swallowed. “I don’t know.” He sounded frustrated that he didn’t even know how to guess.

“That’s okay.” Mobius noted a line. “How about your age?”

Loki’s mouth twitched, almost a grimace, fingers flexing on his thighs. “I—” He glanced down at his hands as if they could betray him. The tendons stood out, elegant and unfamiliar to him. “I don’t know.”

“Any aches? Pain anywhere?”

“The back of my head feels… tight.” His hand lifted and hovered an inch from his temple, like he was afraid to touch. “Ungood.”

“Headache?” Mobius supplied. He didn’t let his worry show. “On a scale from one to ten?”

“Three,” Loki said after a moment. He stared at the wall clock, registering the ticking as if hearing it for the first time. The steady click seemed to irritate him, then soothe him, then irritate him again. His eyes returned to Mobius. “Is that right? Three?”

“That’s right if it’s your number,” Mobius said. “Any nausea? Dizziness?”

“No.” Loki blinked. “My stomach is… loud.” As if on cue, something rumbled softly. He looked startled, then faintly embarrassed.

“Hungry,” Mobius translated, writing it down. “Good sign.”

Loki’s gaze flicked to the folder again and he spoke, abruptly, as if pushing the word out before it could catch in his throat. “Loke.”

Mobius let the syllable rest. “If that’s what you want to be called right now, I’ll use it.”

Loki nodded with awkward relief, like he’d passed a small test. “Loke,” he repeated, firmer, making the made-up name into a raft.

Mobius kept going, gentle pace. “Do you remember where you grew up?”

Loke’s mouth opened, then closed. Something moved behind his expression—like a muscle remembering a forgotten movement. His lashes lowered. “There was… a room,” he said slowly. “Tall. I was small in it. It had—” He stopped, pain carving a line between his eyebrows. He shook his head quickly, aborting whatever else was coming. “Nothing.”

Mobius wrote: fragment—room—scale. “Do you remember any family? Names?”

“No.” The word was flat and immediate.

“What about languages—do these words feel native to you?” Mobius asked. “English, I mean.”

Loke considered that. “It feels like I learned this morning and forgot by afternoon,” he admitted. “It feels thin.” He frowned at his own mouth, as if the shape of sounds offended him. “There are other sounds that want to be here.” He tapped his throat. “They don’t come.”

Mobius drew a slow breath. He consciously eased his posture, the way you did when you saw a wild animal tense. “Can you count for me?”

Loke nodded. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.” His cadence was effortless, precise. He paused and kept going in a second rhythm that surprised them both. “Elleve, tolv, tretten…” He stopped, startled, as if he’d tripped over a word and was suddenly looking down at the ground he stood on. “I don’t know what that is.”

“That’s good,” Mobius said, and meant it. “Your brain knows more than it can tell you yet.” He put a small check next to a mental box: multilingual base intact. “Do you know what year it is?”

Loke shook his head again. His hands tightened on his knees. The tendons went taut. “I know what a year is. I don’t know which one is ours.”

Mobius didn’t flinch. “Do you know the name of this planet?”

A beat. That flicker again, like a match in wind. “Earth,” Loke said slowly. He glanced toward the window again as if to confirm. “Earth.”

“Good.” Mobius gave him that win cleanly. “Do you know your favorite food?” He let a smile ghost his mouth, an easier question on purpose.

Loke looked lost for a heartbeat, then almost offended by his own blankness. “I don’t know what food I’ve had,” he said. His throat worked. “I remember”—he stared at his hands—“texture. Something hot. Sweet. It was red?” He squinted, frustrated. “Or gold.”

“We’ll try a few things,” Mobius said, writing: hot, sweet, red/gold—possible spice? He didn’t let his hand shake. “Do you remember your birthday?”

“No.” The word came out small.

“Do you know your height?” Mobius lifted his palm to measure himself. “I’m five ten.”

Loke looked at him, looked at the doorframe, then stood in a quick, efficient motion that let Mobius see how fine-tuned that body was—trained to move. He stepped to the jamb and stood tall. The crown of his head just brushed the area Mobius knew was marked at six foot two from when the house was built. “More than you,” Loke said, and the barest hint of dry humor edged the flatness.

“Noted.” Mobius marked it, refusing to let the spike of affection show. He dragged the chair back an inch so Loke wouldn’t feel contained and kept his voice even. “What’s the last thing you remember before waking in this house?”

Loke stared at the paint. His fingers tightened at his sides. His jaw clenched once, twice. “Nothing,” he said, a little too fast. Then, grudgingly, “White. Light. A noise like everything folding.”

Mobius didn’t look up from the page as he wrote that down. He knew if he met Loke’s eyes, something would give in his face—too much recognition, too much grief for all the nights he’d spent arguing with a man who liked to be two steps ahead and had never once looked this helpless. Professional. Keep it small. “We’ll stop there.”

Loke’s shoulders eased. He looked like he had expected a test he would fail and was surprised to have the paper taken away before the red pen came out. He shifted his weight. “What do I do?” he asked, helplessness scraped raw, made honest.

“You breathe,” Mobius said. He set the notepad down and, carefully, lined up the pen with its top edge, something discrete and mundane. “You drink more water if you want it. You sit with me in the kitchen while I make something we won’t burn. You can tell me if the clock bothers you and I’ll take the batteries out. You can walk the hallway and count your steps.”

Loke’s gaze drifted to the clock again, then back. “It bothers me.” It sounded like a confession.

Mobius stood slowly, hands visible. “I’ll take care of it.” He stepped into the room, watching the way Loke’s spine straightened, the way his hands opened instead of closing. He reached for the clock, lifted it off its nail, and slipped the battery out. The tick went silent. The quiet after was a soft thud against the ears. Both of them breathed easier.

Mobius set the clock face down on the dresser and turned his head enough that Loke could see his mouth. “How’s that?”

Loke’s throat moved. “Better.” He looked at Mobius’s hands, then at his face. “Loke,” he said again, less like a correction and more like he needed to hear it.

“Loke,” Mobius affirmed. He let the name sit, unchallenged, something the man could hold. He hesitated a fraction. “May I—” He stopped himself short of reaching to touch his shoulder. “May I stand here while you choose a shirt?”

A long beat. Then Loke nodded. It was small, but it wasn’t fearful. He stepped to the bed and touched the cotton like it was a foreign animal, soft and harmless. His fingers sank into the fabric, and his mouth loosened slightly. He lifted the gray tee, bringing it to his face like scent might solve what memory couldn’t. He inhaled and nodded to himself, decisive in a way that steadied Mobius in return.

“Good choice,” Mobius said, and stood exactly where he’d promised, the doorway between them and the rest of the house a boundary he held open, the questions put down like tools on a workbench, ready to pick up again when Loke could bear a few more.

Mobius showed him the bathroom, the light switches, the way the faucet handle felt a little loose. He kept his voice low and practical, not filling the air with anything Loki couldn’t hold. He stacked a couple more shirts and one pair of soft joggers at the foot of the bed, left the gray tee where Loki had laid it. The master bedroom felt too large around him—neutral carpet, three windows, a queen bed with a plain headboard. A mirror on the closet door. Mobius angled it so it faced the wall.

“You have this room,” he said. “Door can stay open or closed. Your call.” He waited until Loki looked at the doorknob and back, weighing it, then nodded once.

Mobius stepped out and pulled the door mostly shut, leaving a generous gap. He told himself the way the hall light cut a trapezoid of gold across the carpet would be a good landmark for a man meeting his own edges for the first time.

He set up the cot in the living room with the sort of care he gave to broken machines—every joint checked, the thin mattress unrolled, the sheet snapped and tucked. He plugged in the cheap lamp and turned off everything else except the kitchen night-light, a blue rectangle under the cabinet. He brushed his teeth while standing at the sink because leaving a toothbrush in the bathroom felt like a claim he wasn’t ready to make.

Through the wall, a slow rhythm began: boards creaking with steps measured and then shortened, like someone learning the limits of a cage by touch. Mobius lay down and put his forearm over his eyes. He listened to the house breathe, to the refrigerator cycle, to the occasional car out on the suburban artery a few blocks over. The pacing didn’t stop. It turned and turned.

He waited as long as he could. Ten minutes. Twenty. Forty. He got up once and opened the front door to look at the dark street, the sprinkler-click of a neighbor’s lawn system, the glow of a porch light across the cul-de-sac. He closed it softly and slid the chain. He went back to the cot, lay down, sat up. The sound of Loki’s feet kept time with something low in his throat, not a word, not quite a hum—more like breath trying to even itself around the edges of fear.

Mobius stood again and walked to the bedroom doorway. He didn’t knock. He leaned his shoulder to the jamb and stayed outside the threshold, the way you do for skittish animals and grieving friends.

Loki was pacing the length of the rug with bare feet, toes catching on the nap every other pass. He’d put on the gray tee and the joggers. The shirt clung to a chest that worked too fast; the rise and fall of it telegraphed panic he was trying to flatten. He would walk to the window, stop, not look at the glass, pivot, walk back to the bed, put his fingers on the mattress as if to anchor, then pull his hand away like it burned. He’d repeat. The door made him flinch in his first step back; he checked his movement with visible effort, then looked up at Mobius.

“I’m not tired,” Loki said immediately, which was not the same as saying he didn’t need to sleep. His eyes were too bright in his pale face, pupils large in the low light. Sweat darkened the hair at his temples.

“You don’t have to sleep yet,” Mobius said. He kept his voice even, soft enough not to scrape. “You can pace if it helps.”

Loki looked down at his feet like he hadn’t considered it could be allowed. He nodded once and kept moving, but slower, like permission had taken some of the panic’s top edge off. He made three more passes. On the fourth, he stopped by the bed and pressed his hands to the mattress again, fingers spreading, feeling the give. He swallowed. “When I close my eyes it’s white,” he said, like confession or weather report. “I don’t like white.”

“We can change the bulb,” Mobius said, realizing Loki meant more than the lamp. He let the line sit anyway. “You don’t have to close them yet.” He paused. “Do you want the door open?”

Loki’s gaze snapped to it. His mouth worked, then settled. “Open,” he said. His voice broke on the word, then steadied. “I want to hear you.”

Mobius nodded once. “Okay.” He reached into the hall and grabbed one of the heavy glass coasters from the console table, set it on the floor to prop the door so it couldn’t drift shut. Loki watched his hands do it as if cataloging a ritual. The air moved between the rooms, a gentle interchange.

Mobius leaned back into his original spot. He didn’t try to make it better with talk. He stood and let the minutes count themselves, letting Loki see that he was willing to be still as long as it took.

Loki’s pacing shifted again, smaller arcs now, less like an animal in a pen and more like someone warming up unused muscles. He drifted closer to the doorway on one pass, then further on the next, calibrating distance. The sweat on his forehead cooled in the air, leaving his skin a little clammy. His jaw unclenched incrementally. He slipped into the bathroom once, turned the sink on, turned it off, came back out with wet hands and smoothed them down his thighs like rain.

“Do you want water?” Mobius asked when Loki’s eyes flicked toward the kitchen, mouth dry. Loki nodded, an embarrassed tilt of his head.

Mobius went to the sink, filled a glass, and brought it back. He held it out slowly, giving Loki time to choose to take it. Loki took it and wrapped both hands around the cool cylinder, drank without swallowing at first, then remembered how. A rivulet escaped the corner of his mouth and tracked down his jaw. He swiped it with the heel of his hand, frowning like the sensation surprised him and then annoyed him for surprising him.

“Thank you,” he said, too formal, as if translating a courtesy from a book.

“Anytime,” Mobius answered. He stepped back into the hall, ceding space.

The water seemed to settle Loki. He set the glass on the nightstand with deliberate gentleness, as if not to wake something. He sat on the edge of the bed and only stayed for two heartbeats before standing again. He grimaced, disgusted at his own restlessness.

“You’re allowed to be a mess tonight,” Mobius said. “You woke up in a life with no edges. It’s a lot.” He let himself add, “It’s not going to be like this every night.”

Loki’s throat bobbed. “You don’t know that.”

“I don’t,” Mobius conceded. “But I’ve seen worse settle.” He managed to smile. “And I’m very stubborn.”

Something like a huff of a laugh came and went, quick and unpracticed. Loki’s mouth relaxed for a second. He turned, looked at the bed again, then at the corner where the closet was. He glanced at the mirror he couldn’t see and then seemed to guess. He moved to the closet door, put his palm on it, felt the cool slide of paint. He didn’t open it. He walked back to the bed and finally, carefully, moved the pillow from the center to the side, a practical thing, not symbolic, but Mobius felt the shift anyway.

“I’m going to be in the living room,” Mobius said. “The cot squeaks. Sorry in advance.”

Loki nodded. “The… clock,” he said, and faltered. “Thank you.”

“Sure.” Mobius kept the door where it was and went to his cot. He lay down and deliberately didn’t close his eyes. He stared at the ceiling and let his breath be audible. He wanted Loki to hear it, steady and human in the next room.

The pacing resumed, softer. Then it stopped for a while. Mobius almost counted to a hundred. The boards creaked again. He rolled to his side and looked toward the wedge of light. He could see a slice of Loki’s knee when he passed, then nothing, then the give of the mattress and the sigh of springs under weight. He listened to the sound of the sheet pulling. He heard the whispered rub of fabric as Loki shifted, as if the sensation of cotton over skin was new and needed cataloging too.

Minutes collected. The house settled. A neighbor’s dog barked once, the kind of lonely sound that carried across lawns. Somewhere in the dark, a train horn blew so faintly it barely existed, just a suggestion of distance.

Loki didn’t sleep. Mobius could tell from the way the bed creaked at intervals, from the way a breath sometimes came sharp and then was forced to slow. Once, there was a small sound, almost a whine caught and swallowed. Mobius pushed a hand over his face and made himself stay where he was, trusting the thin thread of sound between them to hold.

The hours stretched. The wedge of light thinned as the hall lamp’s bulb warmed and cooled around its filament. The air got colder. Mobius tugged the throw over his shoulders and let his eyes close for a handful of breaths at a time, never more. When he opened them again, the house was the same, except the pacing had become a periodic turn of the mattress, a restless shift.

He waited. He let Loki be a lost ghost in a strange house with company just close enough to touch if he needed to, and not touching as a promise he wouldn’t until asked. The night stayed long and patient around them. The first, thin hint of morning blue began to press at the edges of the blinds, soft and indifferent. The wedge of light on the carpet turned from gold to gray. Loki’s breathing hitched, then evened, hovering just below sleep, not trusting it yet. Mobius lay there with his eyes open to the ceiling, keeping the quiet as steady as he could.

The sound that made him get up wasn’t pacing. It was the absence of it, followed by a small thud and a scrape like skin against glass. Mobius stood, his knees stiff, and crossed the hall. The door was propped, the room a dim aquarium of early gray. Loki stood at the window, one hand splayed on the pane, the other hovering near his chest like he’d forgotten what to do with it. The blind was half up, the glass reflecting him back in a faint duplicate layered with the faint shapes of the cul-de-sac.

He wasn’t moving. His eyes were huge and locked on the surface in front of him. His breath came shallow and quick. He looked like someone who had seen a ghost and was trying not to startle it.

Mobius stepped inside slowly, head tilted, palms visible as if approaching a skittish animal, which in a way, he was. “Hey,” he said softly. “Loke.”

Loki didn’t look at him. “There is a man,” he said. His voice was quiet, flat with concentration. “He is in there.”

Mobius stopped two strides away, close enough to touch if needed, far enough not to. He followed Loki’s gaze and saw the tall figure in the glass, the pale face, the dark hair, the gray tee in the low light. He saw Loki seeing himself and not knowing it. It hurt in a low, dull way, like a bruise he kept finding with the edge of furniture.

“That’s you,” Mobius said, gentle. “It’s your reflection. The glass is a mirror right now because it’s darker inside than out. It bounces the light back.” He kept it simple. “Like water. Like when you hold a spoon and you can see a little you in it.”

Loki’s jaw moved once. He didn’t blink. “It’s moving when I move,” he said, testing the hypothesis out loud without believing it. He lifted his right hand, hesitant. The man in the glass lifted his left. Loki flinched so hard his knuckles bumped the pane. He hissed like the cold shocked him. “He copies me.”

“He is you.” Mobius took one more step, slow enough for permission to be withdrawn. “See the window frame? See your shoulder against it, same angle. See the crease in your shirt. Same place. Take a breath. Watch his chest. Same rhythm.”

Loki’s gaze flicked down, then back up. He opened his mouth and then closed it, as if words required remembering a code he’d lost. He mirrored himself again, raising both hands this time, and the ghost in the glass did the same. He wavered forward the slightest bit, enough that the tip of his nose nearly brushed the pane. Fog bloomed in a small oval from his breath, and in that oval the features sharpened: the elegant bones of a face he didn’t recognize, the arch of his own eyebrows, the faint line between them where worry had dug in tonight.

His expression slipped and then went blank, a clean sheet pulled over something. He looked, and Mobius felt the exact second he realized he was looking at no one he knew. Terror rippled through him fast, not loud but total. His fingers flattened harder on the glass as if that could keep the other man from coming through. “Who is he?” His voice dropped. “Who am I?”

Mobius kept his hands at his sides, because putting them on Loki right now might break something. “You’re Loki,” he said, all warmth he could muster in a word that had been a weapon and a joke and a title. “You’re the man in the window. The reflection is a trick of light. It’s not a person trapped. It’s just the surface telling you what it sees.”

“Loki,” Loki repeated like he was trying on a coat, like it scratched his skin. “They said that. You said that.” He swallowed. The sound was loud in the quiet. He turned his head just enough to catch Mobius in the edge of his sight. “And the rest?”

Mobius could see the whole blank white of him then, the way his mind was a room stripped of furniture, walls newly painted and still smelling faintly of chemical, no nail holes, no scuffs, no lived-in marks. He had been telling himself all night that blank could be peace, could be relief. Seeing Loki with his palm against his own face in the glass, Mobius felt how blank could also be terror: nothing to push against, nothing to hold. It hit hard enough to take his breath for a moment.

“We’re going to fill it,” he said. That was too big. He dialed back. “Right now, we’re going to step away from the window. You’re going to sit. I’ll sit. I’ll tell you about reflections. About how light works. About you, when you want it. We can start with small things. Names of things in the room. The color of the curtains. The word for that sound the refrigerator makes.” He offered a little smile. “I’m good with small things.”

Loki didn’t move. His eyes were bright and dry in the low light, the way eyes get before they break. “He looks like a…like…” He searched and came up empty and it was so stark Mobius had the impulse to turn off the lamp, to make the room gentle, to lower the glare of failure. “I don’t know the word,” Loki said, and the tiny embarrassment of it punctured the fear, let it hiss out for one heartbeat.

“Man,” Mobius supplied, soft. “The word is man. Or person. If you want to be general. Or you. You works pretty well.”

Loki closed his eyes. The fog on the glass faded. He opened them again and looked at the pane as if he expected it to have changed, as if a different face might have arrived while his eyes were shut. It hadn’t. It was still him, and he did not know him. “I feel…nothing,” he said, sounding appalled at his own emptiness. “Like looking at furniture.”

“I know,” Mobius said. He didn’t add that he remembered the opposite—Loki staring into reflective surfaces with a satisfaction like a cat, admiring the line of his own mouth. He didn’t add that not-recognizing was a kind of violence. “We’re going to borrow recognition from other things for a while. Look.” He put his own palm up, inches from Loki’s hand on the glass. He didn’t press. “This is my hand. That is yours. They’re different. You can learn the difference and it will start to feel like something.”

Loki’s throat worked. He looked at Mobius’s hand and then at his own. His fingers curled slightly, then flattened again. After a breath, he peeled his palm off the pane. The sudden lifting left a print there, a ghost hand that slowly faded. He stared at that too, as if it were a clue. He stepped back one small step, then another, like the floor might tilt if he moved too quickly.

Mobius took that as permission. He slid two fingers under the blind and tugged it down, making the glass dull and less reflective. The man in the window vanished into a murky suggestion. Loki exhaled like he’d been underwater too long.

“Come on,” Mobius said. He gestured toward the bed, toward the edge nearest the door. “Just sit with me. We’ll keep the door open. You can see the hall, hear the house. You don’t have to close your eyes if you don’t want to.” He added, “You can watch me breathe if that helps.”

Loki looked at the window once more, as if to check the man couldn’t climb out of it now the light trick was gone. He drifted to the bed and sat carefully, like a perched bird that could take off at any second. Mobius sat on the opposite corner, angled toward him but not crowding, knees far apart, hands loose on his thighs.

“This is a bed,” Mobius said, and somehow the plainness didn’t insult either of them. It was a foothold. “Those are curtains. The thing buzzing is the fridge. That smell is laundry soap. I’m Mobius. I’m right here.”

Loki let out a half-breath of a laugh that wasn’t humor. “I’m Loki.”

“Yeah,” Mobius said. “You are.” He kept talking, low and level, about light and angles, about mirrors and how they can lie in funhouse ways, about how this one had been honest. He named objects. He kept the words small and the pace slow. He watched Loki’s shoulders lose a fraction of their angle. He watched his fingers unclench on the bedspread.

The house went on breathing around them, the new day pressing against the blinds. The terror didn’t leave entirely. It edged back and forth like a tide. But the room held, and the man in the window was gone, and the man in the room, empty as he felt, stayed. Mobius stayed with him, feeling the blankness like a cold draft and choosing, over and over, to sit in it until it warmed.