Family is for all time, always [1]

Clever Girl

~~~Catherine's pov~~~

A few seconds after the whole incident, Hunter B-15 burst into the time theater, eyes widening when she saw Loki.

"What are you doing?" She asked us, as if we were lunatics instead of TVA employees just trying to do their jobs.

"Our jobs. Is it yours to interrupt?" I asked, my hands on my hips in annoyance.

She promptly ignored me and turned to Mobius. "We have a situation."

"There's always a situation." He sighed, gathering up our files and some notes he'd taken on the variant before heading for the door to talk with B-15 in the hallway.

"Don't go anywhere," I said to Loki firmly as I started to leave the room. Upon looking back, I saw that Linda wasn't following and was staying back with the variant instead.

I let her stay because she really seemed to like him for some reason and I needed something to occupy her.

~~~Loki's pov~~~

Focusing on trying to remember where I knew Catherine and Linda from, I didn't notice that she and Mobius had left me alone with the latter until I heard the door close behind them.

I'm not sure it's a natural progression from complete distrust to entrusting a random stranger with a small child, but to each their own.

Since we were by ourselves now, I decided to ask the girl about something that was bothering me.

"Linda, before when you told Mobius he shouldn't talk about things he didn't understand, what did you mean by that?" I asked, folding up the picture she had given me and put it in my pocket.

She shrugged. "I just think he doesn't know the whole story."

"Okay..." I looked at her strangely. Why was she so ready to defend me if she didn't know what happened herself? Or maybe she did...

There's something about her I just can't put my finger on.

I was about to ask her something else when she brought out a small device and used it to take my time collar off.

What?

I looked at her, perplexed. "What are you-"

"Go."

Wait. She wants me to escape?

"Don't ask questions! Just go! Hurry! Before they come back!" She pleaded.

I didn't move, causing her to roll her eyes.

She then pressed a button on the device that made a glowing door appear. She tried to push me through it, but I stood my ground.

When she realized I wouldn't leave willingly, she used the device to make the door appear under me so I would fall through.

Clever girl.

I fell through the door and ended up back where I started by the receptionist's desk in the lobby.

I saw a man I recognized from when I first got here and went up to him, ducking with him behind a cubicle to remain unseen by any guards.

"Hey! I know you! You're that criminal with the blue box!" The man exclaimed, pointing at me in horror.

Ouch.

The following conversation led me to believe that this man, Casey, may have been an idiot.

"What's your name?" I asked quickly, trying to formulate some kind of plan to escape.

Then it came to me. The Tesseract. I could use it to create a portal and get back to my timeline.

"Casey." He answered, eyeing me warily.