Chapter 5: Uatu's Secrets.
(General P.O.V)
The door blew off the hinges.
Before Mathew could even lift his head, black-suited S.H.I.E.L.D. agents swarmed in, weapons raised, movements sharp and practiced. Natalia Romanoff—Black Widow—stepped in last, gun drawn but not pointed.
"Mathew Malloy," she said, "you're under arrest for the suspected murder of Charles Xavier."
Mathew didn't move.
Two agents rushed forward and pulled him to his feet. He let them. They locked suppression cuffs onto his wrists, draining what little remained of his power. He didn't say a word.
He didn't fight. He didn't ask questions.
They marched him out of the apartment, down the stairs, and into a waiting Quinjet without resistance.
A transinfinite distance away, inside the nexus of reality, a figure watched in silence.
The Watcher.
His voice carried through the cold vacuum, but only to those meant to hear it.
"Some men are born with power," he said, "and some are born with misfortune. A rare few carry both."
Images formed behind him—flickers of Earth, shifting timelines, lives in motion.
"Take Peter Parker. Genius intellect. Strength far beyond what he lets the world see. But burdened. Always burdened. By guilt. By duty. By loss. He uses his pain to find purpose."
The image changed. Mathew Malloy. Silent. Cuffed. Head down in the SHIELD Quinjet.
"Mathew had no Uncle Ben. No guiding words. No lesson etched in blood. What he had… was Jules."
A pause.
"And he just found out that she doesn't exist. Not in this version of his life. Maybe not in any."
The scene shifted again. Loki's face, half-lit by the glow of red flashes. Mathew's power.
"And the one tool he might've used to find her again—his power—was traded away."
The Watcher's voice dropped.
"And now, Mathew Malloy is about to lose the last thing he has left."
Back in the Quinjet, Widow sat in the front, arms crossed, gaze flicking between the controls and the man seated silently in the back.
"We'll reach the Helicarrier in five minutes," the pilot reported.
Her earpiece buzzed. A secure video call opened. Fury's face appeared on the screen, jaw tight, voice low.
"Change of plans," he said. "Execute Mathew Malloy. Now."
Widow didn't move at first. "He's cooperating. He hasn't said a word. The suppression cuffs are holding."
"That is an order, Romanoff," Fury snapped.
But something was wrong. His tone, his cadence.
Her eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"
Fury's expression twitched. Then it unraveled.
The image distorted into green threads, shifting and reshaping into a different form.
Loki.
"Well done," he said, smiling faintly. "You just lost your only opportunity to rewrite the story."
Before she could respond, a violent explosion rocked the Quinjet.
Alarms screamed. The pilot shouted over comms. "One of the Helicarrier's engines just went critical—debris inbound!"
The Quinjet tilted hard as Widow grabbed the stick.
"Something's headed toward us. Fast."
Through the front windshield, she saw it—twisting metal, swirling like a tornado, surrounding a figure coming straight for them.
"Magneto," she muttered.
She pulled the Quinjet hard to the right, but it was too late. The blast hit them midair. The vehicle spun out of control, spiraling toward the city below. Red lights flashed. Metal buckled. Power cut out.
Mathew's body slid against the wall, limp under the weight of the cuffs. Widow gritted her teeth, trying to stabilize the descent.
Then blackness.
Her vision flickered in and out.
The last thing she saw through the ruined shell of the Quinjet was Magneto, tearing through the fuselage like paper, his face dark and silent. He reached out with one hand. Shards of metal twisted in midair and wrapped around Mathew's body.
Then everything went black.
(Mathew's P.O.V)
Everything felt far away.
I could barely hear the wind. Or maybe it was the fire. The ringing in my ears made it hard to tell the difference.
My legs didn't work. I didn't need to look down to know why. One was twisted at the knee in a way that bones don't naturally bend. The other—well, it wasn't there. Or it was, but it didn't belong to me anymore. Torn flesh, bone, fabric. Useless.
There was blood in my mouth. I tasted it before I noticed it. A drip, sliding down from somewhere above. It hit my lip. Warm, metallic.
I tilted my head and saw the piece of metal sticking out of my stomach. Just a sliver, barely wide enough to notice. But the pressure around it told me it was deep.
I laughed. Quiet, short.
I was standing.
How?
The answer was around my wrists. The suppression cuffs. The metal coils, still magnetized, were keeping me propped up like a marionette. I wasn't standing. I was being held upright by dead weight.
Through the haze, something moved.
A figure. Close now. Magneto. His face was pale with fury, his eyes darker than I'd ever seen them.
He was yelling.
I couldn't hear the words at first, but then it cut through.
"You made me do this!" he shouted. "You killed him! You killed Charles!"
I blinked slowly. "I think I have a concussion," I said. "So you might want to speed this up."
He stared at me, stunned.
I think he expected tears. An apology. A reason.
Instead, he got sarcasm.
"You're right," he said, low now. "You're absolutely right."
He took a step closer. His hands lifted, fingers twitching with the pull of metal.
"I'm going to pull every last drop of blood from your body," he said. "Through every single pore."
I didn't flinch.
"Do your worst," I said. "I don't care anymore."
He believed me.
It started slow—pressure building in my temples. Then my fingers. Then behind my eyes. My skin stung. My bones cracked. I felt every vein light up.
Then came the tearing.
It wasn't a sharp pain. It was dull, prolonged. Like being unraveled. Like something sacred was being drained without care.
I didn't scream.
I didn't move.
The world tilted. My knees buckled.
Eventually, I wasn't standing. I wasn't being held up.
I was collapsing.
The last thing I saw before the light gave out was Magneto's hand closing into a fist.
The husk that used to be my body crumpled.
He crushed it into dust.
My last thought was simple.
Jules.
Please let me see her again.
Then the light disappeared.
But the darkness didn't come with silence.
I was still aware.
Floating. Nowhere. Nothing.
Then a voice.
"I am Uatu. The Watcher."
A shape formed in the void. A face. A presence.
"And I am here to show you the purpose behind your story."
-0-
I was a fool.
That was the first thought to form clearly in the darkness.
I wasn't angry that Magneto killed me. I wasn't even angry that he hated me. I was angry that Loki gave me hope.
That was the real betrayal.
"You were manipulated," Uatu said. His voice didn't echo, didn't boom. It just existed. "Loki used you to acquire something he could never reach on his own."
I didn't respond. Couldn't. I was a formless figure with no mouth.
"His power as the God of Stories allows him to warp perception. Names. Appearances. Thoughts. What people remember. What they believe. But he cannot change truth. He cannot change what is."
I saw it. Fury, thinking he gave an order. Magneto, thinking he made a decision. Me, thinking I chose to surrender my power.
That son of a bitch.
"Loki arranged your death," Uatu continued, "because the ability he wanted—your ability to distort death—only activates upon death. He hoped that killing you would let him take all of it."
I projected my thoughts the way Uatu said I could.
'He got what he wanted, didn't he?'
"He took a fragment," Uatu answered. "A single thread from an ocean. But the rest remained sealed. Isn't that right Mathew?"
'So now what?'
"You know he will come for the rest. He is aware you will return. He will not hesitate this time."
I didn't hesitate either.
'You're right.' I said. 'Everyone thinks I've shown them everything. But what Loki took was a drop. They've seen me warp space-time. Now they'll watch me manipulate all of it.'
Uatu said nothing. He didn't have to.
I was already on my way back.
-0-
Outside, in Times Square, chaos had erupted.
Magneto stood in the center of a growing ring of destruction. Police cars overturned. Buildings scarred. The crowd kept their distance. Cameras rolled, but no one dared move too close.
"They wanted a villain?" Magneto shouted. "Then I'll show them one!"
He lifted debris into the air—signs, poles, shattered steel—and hurled it like shrapnel across the skyline. Explosions flared. Sirens howled.
From the wreckage below, Natasha Romanoff—bloodied, breathing hard—fired a round directly at his head.
Magneto caught the bullet midair.
He pulled her up with the sweep of his hand, metal from a broken car door coiling around her like a claw.
"You already saw me as a monster," he said. "Now I'll show you what a true monster looks like."
Then came the sound.
A slow groan.
The Quinjet behind them began to collapse inward, pulled apart in segments. The pieces froze midair, then turned—floating toward a single point above the ground.
A tight, super-compressed ball of iron hovered there, spinning above a shape.
A body.
Mathew.
Twisted, skeletal. Skin barely stretched over bone. Eyes glowing an unnatural green. Red energy cracked across his shoulders and spine.
Someone in the crowd gasped.
"Who is that—?"
Mathew walked forward.
Each step pulled metal from the surrounding debris, feeding it into the ball that hovered above his hand. Magneto stared in disbelief.
"Impossible."
He launched everything.
Poles. Wreckage. Parked cars. Barricades.
Mathew caught none of it. The metal simply twisted midair and joined the sphere. He kept walking.
Magneto's eyes darted. In panic, he hurled Natasha toward him like a weapon.
Mathew raised a finger. The air bent. Natasha stopped midflight, her body pulled gently away, cradled by a swirling current. She landed safely behind the perimeter.
"You think this matters?" Magneto shouted. "I've survived worse. I've lived through genocide. I've fought gods. You're nothing compared to what I've seen!"
Mathew finally spoke.
"You like metal so much," he said, voice low, calm.
"Become it."
The ball above his hand shifted—liquefying, flattening, unraveling into tendrils that launched across the square.
They struck Magneto before he could move.
The first wrapped his legs. The next his arms. Then his chest. His scream was cut short as the metal slipped under his skin, filling his body, replacing tissue, locking down muscles.
He clawed at his own face, but it was already too late.
The last thing anyone saw was his mouth, wide with terror, before the final layer coated it in silence.
Magneto stood frozen. Gleaming. Silver.
A statue.