Chapter 2: Lost Memories.
(Mathew's P.O.V)
Smoke covered everything. It hung in the air like fog, thick and heavy. I couldn't hear anything except the wind moving through broken ground and distant metal groaning under its own weight. I stood alone inside a crater the size of a city. Because it was a city. Or used to be. New York was gone.
I felt the number. The one that never stopped ticking in my head. Eight billion reduced by hundreds of millions. Entire regions wiped out. Rhode Island, Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn...
Gone like they never existed. Gone because of me. I dropped to my knees and stared at my hands. There was blood on them. Dirt. Ash. Skin raw from the blast. I couldn't look away. My breath came in short, sharp bursts.
"What have I done..." I whispered. I didn't mean to say it out loud, but it came anyway.
Not again.
I rocked back on my heels, clutching my stomach like I'd been gut-punched. I didn't need anyone to explain it. I knew exactly what had happened. Xavier's mind probe hadn't just cracked open a memory. It had torn down a wall. And now I remembered who I was. What I was. What I'd done before.
I was a killer. A walking breach in reality. A mistake that kept repeating. I wasn't just powerful—I was unstable. Dangerous. The kind of threat people built contingency plans for and never spoke of again.
My mind played the old ending like a reel on loop. The last time I lost control. The screaming. The implosion. The silence that came after.
I curled forward, hands over my ears. As if that would stop the noise in my head.
No matter how many second chances I got, I always ended up here. Smoke. Death. Regret. I was built to ruin things. And maybe the universe was trying to correct itself. Maybe this time was supposed to end with me buried under the wreckage.
But then I saw her.
Not really. Just the memory. But it was sharp and clean, untouched by the noise.
Jules.
She had that look again, the one where she was holding back a laugh, just to see if I'd catch the joke. Her voice wasn't loud, but I heard it like she was right next to me.
'You've always been too hard on yourself. That's why you break. You set limits that no one else puts on you.'
I swallowed hard. She wasn't wrong. She never had been. She saw the good in me even when I didn't. If she'd been there the first time—before my power awakened—maybe everything would've gone differently. Maybe I wouldn't have snapped.
I closed my eyes and focused on her. Her calm. Her warmth. The way her hand rested against my neck when I couldn't sleep. I remembered everything. Every word. Every time she pulled me back when I almost fell apart. She was my anchor. I'd just been too far gone to feel it until now.
I opened my eyes. I was still kneeling in the wreckage. But something shifted in me.
I could fix this.
I was a reality warper. That wasn't just destruction. That meant creation, too. I wasn't bound by linear outcomes. Jules believed in me. So maybe I could believe in myself, just this once.
I stood up.
Before I could take a step, the air in front of me shimmered. Then it twisted. A door formed, glowing with yellow energy. It opened like a curtain parting, and a squad stepped through in perfect formation.
TVA. The Time Variance Authority.
They raised their weapons but didn't fire. One of them spoke, voice flat.
"Mathew Malloy. You are in violation of temporal stability protocols. You are under arrest."
I didn't move. Not right away. I felt time around me like a tight thread pulled to its limit. I didn't need a portal. I didn't need a machine. I was the machine.
I focused. Not on them. On myself. On the moment. Seconds before I lost control. Right before everything went wrong. I could reach it. I could be there.
The TVA moved forward.
I blinked out of view.
The only way to fix this was to go back.
I knew that the second the TVA showed up. Reality warping gave me a lot of control. Space and Time. Life and death. That's the Triange. Most people think it means I can do anything. It doesn't. I can bring myself back from death, sure. But I can't do that for anyone else. I can't rewind what's already been broken unless I go back to the moment before it broke.
That left me with one choice.
I aimed for seconds after the X-jet landed in the park, before the argument, before the headache, before the world cracked open.
I arrived in the exact spot I remembered. Same trees. Same wind. Same tension in the air.
I stayed hidden, just outside the visible range of anyone's awareness. I didn't warp light. I didn't go invisible. I just bent perception. They wouldn't notice me unless I wanted them to.
Xavier, Magneto, and the others started their approach. They were heading straight for the version of me still sitting on that bench. Past me. The one who didn't remember who he was yet. The one about to commit the greatest mass murder in history.
I couldn't let him see me.
Interfering directly would destroy the thread. If past me became aware of future me, the entire timeline would splinter. It had to play out the same, at least up to the final moment.
I watched the conversation unfold. It didn't go well. I didn't expect it to. I didn't say much back then. I was still processing too much. Xavier tried to push. Magneto postured. Jean was already on edge. No one really knew what they were dealing with. They thought I was unstable. They weren't wrong. But they never asked the right questions.
Especially Xavier.
He plays the calm one. The wise man. But I remember what he did. That wasn't the first time he tried to "help" me.
Back when my powers first awakened, when I wiped out half a city by accident, Xavier found me. He didn't offer comfort. He didn't offer support. He tried to shut my mind down. Like I was just a switch that needed flipping. When that didn't work, when I resisted, he went back in time and made sure I never existed. Made sure my parents never met, effectively killing me by erasing the possibility of my birth.
I only came back because something—someone—brought me back. Brought me into this new alien timeline.
Now here he was, trying again. Acting like nothing ever happened. Trying to play savior.
I kept my distance. I had to. Even when past me started to lose control. Even when I felt the first pulse of power roll across the park. Even when Jean and Storm flinched and the others braced for impact.
I whispered, "Here we go, Jules."
The explosion began. I could feel the wave of annihilation build—space curling in, air collapsing, matter folding.
I acted.
Time slowed to a crawl. Not for the others—for me.
I reached through space, through time, and pulled. Every person in the park. Every X-Man. Every civilian in the city. I shifted them all forward. One second, then another. And another. I moved them far enough that the wave would pass and leave nothing behind.
All of them.
Except one.
Charles Xavier remained frozen in place, just at the edge of the blast radius. On the ground, unaware of what was coming.
I walked up to him.
I didn't gloat. I didn't yell. I didn't scream at him for everything he'd done. There was no point. He wouldn't understand. Not the way I needed him to.
I just looked at him.
"You earned this," I said.
Then I turned and left.
I returned to the exact second I'd left. The TVA were still stepping through the yellow door. The crater still smoked.
But the timeline?
It was intact.
Even so, the moment I'd stepped back into my original time, the TVA moved. Their formation tightened. Weapons drawn. No hesitation.
Then everything changed.
The crater vanished.
The ruined city was gone. And it was easy too. My power worked on will and imagination.
In its place, a bustling New York street stretched in every direction—cars honking, people moving, lights blinking. No signs of destruction. No memory of what had happened. It was like the explosion never existed. Like time itself had been overwritten.
I floated above it all.
And I smiled.
I had done it. I had saved them. It took a little belief in myself, just enough to not let the fear win. My power listened. The death toll was smaller now—only one. Xavier. Everyone else had been pulled forward, alive and intact. The city was still breathing. I could feel it.
I distorted the space around me so no one below could sense me. I had to. Couldn't risk setting off another panic. Not yet. My power helped with that too. It wrapped around me without needing to be asked. The air bent slightly, the shadows covered me. It was eager, like a hound ready to be let off its leash.
Red energy leaked from my hands, steady and warm.
"Chaos on a leash," I said under my breath. It fit.
But I didn't know how long this control would last. Maybe it was a one-time thing. A lucky alignment of will and need. Still, I wouldn't have reached this point without her.
Jules.
I felt her in every second I held back. Every thought that kept me centered.
This was my second chance. Magneto had called it that. He wasn't wrong.
I closed my eyes and focused on home.
Not the world. Not the city. Home. Our home.
The apartment with the yellow walls she hated. The coffee stain on the kitchen counter. The sound her keys made when she dropped them into the bowl.
I reached for it and let the space pull me in.
But when I opened my eyes, I wasn't home.
I wasn't even on Earth.
I stood in a different dimension. The floor beneath me shimmered like polished glass. The sky above didn't exist. Only a swirling darkness, filled with shapes I couldn't name. Ahead of me sat a throne, simple but vast. And on it, a man.
Older. Wearing lots of green. And a horned crowned. But his face carried time.
Not the Loki people feared.
Not the trickster.
The storyteller.
The God of Stories. The knowledge appeared in my mind like a part of my memories despite this being the first time I'd seen him.
In his hands were glowing green threads, each one pulsing like veins. He twirled them between his fingers like a bored puppet master.
"Hello, Mathew," he said, calm and casual.
He leaned back in his throne and smiled.
"I hope you don't mind a little chat about cosmic do's and don'ts."