Sir Saladvocate - Lokius

🥑 They went in and out of each other's minds without any effort.

Tasting the salad has truly helped to build empathy on Loki's end of things. His tongue will not forget this. He is afraid he will keep the sensation of soda-and-salt-lettuce in his mouth for the rest of this timeline, even past his own death. The end of the world has never tasted so unfortunate.

For some reason, he keeps thinking about the salad. Loki finds himself constantly plagued by it, and not because of his discovery regarding apocalypses, but simply because he ruined a salad that Mobius wanted (at one point) to eat.

It comes to his attention that he is actually experiencing empathy, goddammit. Goddamn Mobius wriggling his way into his goddamn heart. And why? For what? How?

Does he feel bad about the salad? Yes. Is there reason to? Not really.

And yet here he is, breaking his way into the lounge and stealing someone else's refrigerated tomato, because he's in the mood for fixing this anyway.

Mobius, on the other hand, has forgotten about the salad because he currently does not know where Loki is, which could turn into a potentially Very Big Problem if not addressed quickly enough. As he asks around, he finds that nobody has seen the variant in hours. Due to this, he becomes concerned and begins to walk importantly around the building in search of any clues as to where the god may have slithered to.

One of his coworkers, a tall one that he's forgotten the name of and is too embarrassed to ask, offers her most helpful piece of advice and says that he'll find Loki in the last place he looks. Mobius thinks that this is stupid because it insinuates that other people, after finding what they've lost, will continue looking in other places for it. Of course he will stop looking when he finds him. But all he says aloud is some sort of string of false appreciation before he's on his way.

The variant is located by mistake, actually, when all of Mobius' important walking has tired him out and he goes to get a small paper cup of water.

"Oh," says Mobius as the door swings open and he sees Loki with a knife and a tomato at the third-nearest table. "Okay."

Loki himself is visibly distressed, perhaps irritated, as he drops the knife in defeat and slumps back in his chair. "Mobius, I can't cut the damned tomato."

Mobius fills a small cup of water and leans against the wall. "Is that a cheese knife?"

"Well, no, it's a sterling knife, clearly," Loki spits back fervidly as the squished and stretched fruit wobbles away from him and rolls onto the floor. "I wanted a sharper one, but someone hid them all."

Mobius nods. "Mm-hmm." He is the one who hid them all.

They stare at what has become of the floor. Seeds have spilled all over now. Juice and peels have separated across it.

"See? The knife they left me with does less cutting than the floor does," Loki complains at the sterling cheese knife, as if it can do anything about it. "They don't trust me with ordinary blades."

"I don't even trust you with a tomato, Loki," Mobius counters, "so, hey."

He does not ask why Loki is attempting such an odd task in such an odd place for the said task. Although he has been assigned to interrogate this man, he decides that there are some things that may be best not to know. Additionally, he has never been one for interrogating children.

"Hey, by the way, next time you run off, at least tell me you aren't trying to hide or break out," Mobius says with a change of subject. "I've been looking for you since lunchtime. That's, like, four hours."

Loki glowers at the table. "You said time is different here. It may have been only moments."

Mobius shrugs. "Or years."