The Citadel at the End of Time
Outside the fractured orifice window, a silent, dizzying ballet of discarded timelines swirled, raw potentiality writhing in muted, chaotic color just beyond the Citadel's fragile anchor to existence.
He Who Remains leaned forward in his high-backed, time-worn chair, the worn velvet plush under his fingers. A small holographic feed hovered before him, displaying stark, flat lines against a grid – the fading biometric signature of Arthur Steele. A slow, deeply satisfied smile, spread across his features. It smoothed the lines etched by millennia, if only for a moment.
"Finally," he breathed. He leaned back, the tension visibly draining from his slumped shoulders. He picked up the chipped, ludicrously ornate teacup from the dusty console beside him, swirling the non-existent dregs in a long-practiced, meaningless gesture.He took a mock sip, the satisfaction almost palpable.
"Took long enough. That variable... Steele... honestly," he chuckled, a dry, rasping sound that scraped the oppressive silence, "more persistent, unexpected trouble than a thousand warring versions of me. All that effort," he mused, his gaze drifting towards the swirling chaos beyond the window, "eons pruning, paving! My beautiful, sacred timeline, humming along so perfectly predictable… except for him. And that… thing… latched onto him." His eyes took on a distant, almost feverish glint, the smile fading into obsessive curiosity.
"The System. It simply shouldn't be. It violates every causal principle, every temporal law I know of. Where in all of Cosmos did it even come from?"
He stood abruptly, the long sleeves of his worn tunic swirling around him. He began to pace before the shattered window, his slight frame silhouetted against the cosmic light show. "He arrives as an anomaly just when I had won, all the efforts to guide the flow, built nexus events and this...ant dares to change things, starts preventing events I facilitated, saving the insignificant worms I decreed should die...!!"
I tried so hard to kill him, but he just wouldn't stay dead,wrapped in a paradox I myself created! Can you believe the sheer, cosmic irony?" He laughed, a high-pitched, brittle sound teetering on the edge of hysteria.
"Tried to neatly erase his original timeline, even killed his– family,wife, kid, the whole sentimental package, just collateral in another cleanup – and poof! The energy backlash, the sheer paradox of it, rips a hole and dumps him right where I least need him! The twisted facet of destiny, I somehow facilitated him coming here in the first place.Un-prunable by my own TVA! Invisible to my standard scans! And tethered to… that impossible black box." He gestured vaguely towards the empty space, frustration warring with a strange, obsessive fascination. "Infuriating! And yet… fascinating."
His voice rose again, laced with the weariness of watching civilizations rise and fall countless times. "Do you know the effort involved in just containing him? The subtle temporal nudges? The carefully crafted 'accidents'? The sheer processing power required? And the limitations… oh, the delicate, intricate work it took, weaving those restrictions into that blasted System – that anomaly engine! – during the one fraction of a second I was able to access it when it was vulnerable upon his arrival?" He threw his hands up, exasperated. "Had to cap his physical growth, turn 'Timeline Correction' into a damn shock collar just to keep him pointed in the right direction! Force him onto the predictable path, the strategist role. Make him a useful pawn, not a rogue king!" He leaned forward, conspiratorially addressing the empty room, his eyes wide. "And it was working! He was complaining about being weak! He was following the script, hitting his marks!"
He stopped pacing, breathing heavily, a manic gleam returning to his eyes. "But I got pissed," he whispered, the admission laced with a dangerous, almost petulant edge. "Seeing him navigate the obstacles, pulling off that intricate 'Project Phoenix' against Stane… even with the restraints… It became… irritating. So precise. So… effective. And that System… always there, shielding him, adapting just beyond my grasp. Couldn't crack it. Couldn't control it. Couldn't replicate it! What is it?" He seemed genuinely lost in the obsessive question for a moment, momentarily forgetting his victory before shaking his head dismissively. "It became… an itch. A loose thread. I just wanted him gone." He slumped slightly, the admission deflating him momentarily. "Messy, yes. More direct than my usual style. But effective. Finally." He settled back into his chair, arranging his tunic, looking profoundly pleased, almost serene. "Clean slate. We are back on track. Just need Stark to follow the script now, play the hero, make the sacrifice..."
The thought freezes mid-formation.He touches his temple – a phantom sensation, a brief zap like static discharge, an echo of a connection abruptly, unexpectedly severed.
He glances down at his hand resting on the armrest. Faint golden static, ethereal and unsettling, crackles around his form for a heartbeat, then vanishes utterly. What was I just...? Thinking about...? He shakes his head slightly, trying to recapture the thread of smug satisfaction, but it feels distant, somehow... incomplete.
Suddenly, a sharp, invasive pressure lances through his mind – not physical pain, but the jarring, violating sensation of data being forcibly accessed and deleted. Memories flicker like faulty holograms and vanish – a specific lawyer's face dissolves, intricate lines of parasitic temporal code he'd crafted with such care unravel into nothing, the unique temporal signature of an anomaly he'd obsessed over for millennia evaporates, the very reason for his recent satisfaction is simply… gone, leaving confusing, empty gaps and a profound sense of violation. His eyes widen in shock and sudden, inexplicable fear. "What the—?"
Beside him, Miss Minutes glitches violently, orange static spraying from her form like sparks from a short circuit. "Uh, Boss?!" Her voice warps, high-pitched and digitized with raw, electronic panic. "Temp-p-poral integrity readings! Whoa Nelly! Major spike then...? Source signature... scrambled!"
He Who Remains stumbles back from the chair, clutching his head, trying desperately to grasp the memories that are now just empty spaces in his vast consciousness. He knows something critical, something personal just happened, something targeted him, used his own temporal anchors against him with terrifying precision, but the what and the who are maddeningly absent. It feels like a vital piece of his grand, overarching design has been surgically excised, leaving only phantom pains and a gnawing confusion. "Something... used my connection? Purged... purged what?" He looks wildly around the Citadel, the familiar decaying grandeur suddenly feeling alien, then down at his hands, expecting them to flicker again, but finding only solid flesh and worn fabric.
Intact. Yet... fundamentally altered. Violated. Missing something vital he couldn't name.
Miss Minutes glitches again, her frantic movements slowing as her programming attempted to stabilize, her cheerful face now frozen in a look of digital confusion that mirrored his own internal state. "Uh... readings stable now, boss! Just a… a whopper of a cosmic pulse! Real odd signature, then poof! Nothin' to worry bout!" she chirped, her systems clearly defaulting to classifying the targeted, sophisticated data purge as a random, inexplicable anomaly.
He Who Remains stared at his hands, then back out at the timeline stretching endlessly beyond the window, a deep frown creasing his brow. Something significant had happened.He felt... blinded. A specific blind spot carved into his awareness, where something dangerous and fascinating used to reside. But what? He couldn't recall, and the inability was infuriating, unsettling. "Hm," he murmured, the unease a cold knot tightening in his gut. "Cosmic pulse..." He didn't believe it for a second. That felt too clean, too… personal. "Minutes," he commanded, his voice sharp with renewed, albeit unfocused, paranoia, "increase surveillance intensity across all primary Nexus points on Earth-616 immediately. Flag any deviations, no matter how statistically insignificant. Cross-reference all anomalous energy signatures against known non-TVA temporal technologies. Something's... off." He sank back into his chair, rubbing his temples, trying desperately to grasp the memory that had just slipped away like smoke through his fingers, leaving only the chilling certainty he was no longer seeing the entire board.
Manhattan General Hospital – Intensive Care Unit (ICU)
The sterile white walls amplified the urgent beeping and hissing of machines. Inside the glass-walled room, Arthur lay motionless, a pale figure nearly lost in a web of tubes and wires. The ventilator breathed for him. Monitors painted a grim, flickering picture.
"Pressure still dropping!" a doctor's voice, tight with stress. "Massive internal trauma, more than the entry wound suggests! Stabilize him now!" Nurses moved with grim precision, adjusting drips, checking readouts.
ICU Waiting Area – Minutes Later
Outside the glass room, the brightly lit waiting area felt cold and impersonal. Tony Stark paced relentlessly, his energy frantic, untethered. Rhodey stood rigidly nearby, speaking in low tones into his phone, his composure strained. Pepper sat huddled on a plastic chair, staring blankly at the floor, tears silently tracking down her cheeks.
"I was on the phone with him, Tony," she whispered when Tony paced near, her voice trembling. "Just minutes before... He was joking... Then this awful crash. Metal tearing. Then... static.I thought he had an accident" She shook her head, bewildered. "...I never imagined someone would try to kill him. Who? Why?"
The arrival of Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson was a quiet intrusion. They stopped short, taking in the scene – Stark, the Colonel, Pepper's raw grief outside an ICU. Matt paused, head tilting, absorbing the atmosphere of crisis – the sharp scent of antiseptic battling stale fear, the frantic electronic pulse from the ICU, the strained heartbeats of Stark, Potts, the Colonel.
"Ms. Potts?" Matt asked hesitantly, his voice low. "We got a call... about Arthur? Is he alright?"
Pepper looked up sharply. Fresh despair washed over her. "Oh God..! It's Arthur! He's been attacked! Someone shot him!"
Foggy recoiled, shock whitening his face. "Shot? Arthur? What... what happened?"
Tony stopped pacing, scrubbing a hand over his exhausted face. "We don't know the 'how' or 'why', kid," he said roughly. "Cops found him on the street. Car wrecked... shot in the chest. Looks professional." He couldn't look at the ICU door. "He talked about you two a few times, so I called you guys. Thought you should know."
Rhodey ended his call. "Doctors are working," he said somberly to everyone. "It's critical. Significant internal injuries. They're trying to stabilize him but it doesn't look good."
Foggy looked utterly lost. "Professional hit? Shot? But... why Arthur? He's just... he's a lawyer!" The injustice seemed to overwhelm him. "He helps people! He doesn't get involved in anything which could lead to... this!"
Pepper let out a choked sob. "I don't know, Mr Nelson! I don't know! He was just... helping! Always helping!"
Tony awkwardly placed a hand on Pepper's shoulder, looking lost. He glanced at Matt and Foggy. "He's... more than just a lawyer," Tony said quietly. "Arthur gets... tangled in stuff to get things right." He looked towards the ICU again. "Just gotta hope he can untangle himself from this one."
Matt stood silent amidst the swirling emotions, his head angled slightly towards the ICU room. He heard the desperate rhythm of the ventilator, the too-fast, too-weak beat of Arthur's heart fighting against the encroaching silence, the hushed, urgent tones of the medical team. He smelled the coppery tang of blood barely masked by cleaning solutions. Just like Dad, the thought hit him, sharp and unwelcome. Another good man. Tried to do right, tried to fight within the rules... shot down in the street. He remembered Arthur in the bar, handing them the Gallo case file, that calm confidence, the belief that the law could work. Arthur, who used his sharp mind to win, to make a difference. Proof, maybe, that the system could function.
And now... this. Lying helpless, because someone decided he was inconvenient. The familiar, bitter taste of rage and impotence rose in Matt's throat. Is this it? Is this all the law can do? Protect you until someone with a gun decides otherwise? Is being a lawyer... is it enough? The question echoed in the sudden, terrifying silence of his own mind, a seed of doubt planted deep in the darkness.
Arthur's Mindscape - The Void
Darkness. Cold. The phantom echo of pain. Am I dead?
Light bloomed. System notifications scrolled, frantic then calming.
[SYSTEM ALERT: HOST VITAL SIGNS ZERO...]
[HEALING FAILED DUE TO OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE...]
[ANALYZING INTERFERENCE: 'HE WHO REMAINS'.]
[WARNING: SYSTEM TAMPERING DETECTED...]
[COUNTER-MEASURE: TRACE INTERFERENCE BACK TO SOURCE...]
[TARGETING SOURCE CONNECTION...]
[EXECUTING...]
[...]
[INTERFERENCE SOURCE CONNECTION: SEVERED. SOURCE MEMORY: WIPED.]
[RE-ENGAGING EMERGENCY HEALING.]
[REPAIRING HEART... RESTORING VITALS...]
[STABILIZATION IN PROGRESS...]
[WAKING HOST CONSCIOUSNESS...]
A jolt pulled Arthur from the cold depths. The void solidified slightly. He felt present, bodiless.
System? What the hell happened? The thought echoed. The Winter Soldier... how the hell did he come here,years too early. And he wanted to kill me. Why?
The System responded, text scrolling calmly now.
[Attack Origin: Unknown, likely HYDRA. Timing: Wrong. Requires analysis.]
[Reason for Attack: Host's actions perceived as threat]
But... the timeline, Arthur pushed, frustrated. 'Timeline Correction'! You were supposed to stop big changes! Why didn't it stop him?
[Timeline Correction: Not a System safety feature. Was outside code added during arrival. System Integrity: Breached.]
Breached? How? By who? A jolt colder than the void.
[Analysis: System altered when user first arrived.]
[Hidden Code Found: Artificial limits placed on user's combat skills and physical growth.]
[Hidden Code Found: 'Timeline Correction' was a control leash added by outsider. Purpose: Keep user on a specific path.]
[Source of Tampering: 'He Who Remains'. Detected during failed healing.]
He Who Remains? The name hit like a physical blow. The guy from Loki's story? He messed with the System? He put the caps on my abilities? The Correction protocol wasn't safety, it was a leash? Disbelief warred with a sickening sense of violation. But how did he even know? About me? About the System?
[Hypothesis: User arrived through a reality tear just as He Who Remains (HWR) finished his war and started building his 'Sacred Timeline'.]
[HWR found user already inside his new timeline, not a normal variant.]
[User's actions, even small ones, threatened HWR's plan.]
[User couldn't be 'pruned' by TVA because user was part of the timeline.]
[HWR tried many times to kill user directly in other failed timelines.]
[Methods Included: Assassination, erasing family (see Key Point), destroying planets, paralysis.]
[Key Point: Analysis shows HWR caused the tear when he tried to erase user's original life (including family). This accidentally created user's entry point – a loop HWR couldn't undo.]
[Detection Event: During one such neutralization attempt (timeline classified), user survival was guaranteed only by direct, high-energy System intervention. HWR, monitoring the event, detected the unique energy signature of the System actively shielding the user. This confirmed the existence of an unknown, powerful factor linked to the user.]
[HWR then spent ages (est. > 100,000 years) trying to understand, replicate, or control the detected System signature. All attempts failed due to incompatible architecture and System defenses.]
[Compromise: HWR managed to inject limiting code only during the brief moment the System bonded with user upon arrival, exploiting the temporary vulnerability.]
[Conclusion: HWR added limits to keep user predictable. The recent assassination attempt shows HWR was failing to control user as desired despite the limitations.]
Arthur felt stunned, adrift. HOk so I was brought into this world at the end of the multiverse war and I apparantly changed this which made him notice me, he tried to kill me failed, so after researching he found my original world, which is frankly terrifying, he killed my family... which caused a tear in the cosmic fabric and accidentally brought me here in the first place... then spent millennia trying to kill me again? He detected the System because it saved me from him before? The layers of temporal irony were staggering. He tried to hack it? Breached it? Just how powerful was this guy?
[User analysis incomplete. Underestimation of He Who Remains' capabilities was significant.]
[Subject was the sole survivor of a war against infinite, highly intelligent, technologically advanced variants of himself. Each variant possessed intellect comparable to or exceeding user's 'Genius' classification and access to future technology.]
[HWR possessed unparalleled mastery over temporal mechanics, capable of viewing, manipulating, and pruning entire timelines with precision far exceeding known limits. He commanded technology capable of erasing realities.]
[His apparent eccentricity (observed by Loki) likely masked extreme paranoia, vast intellect, and ruthless pragmatism developed over eons of conflict and isolation.]
[User's existing knowledge derived from heavily curated information HWR chose to share with Variant L1130 (Loki) for a specific succession plan, concealing his true operational capabilities.]
Sole survivor... defeated infinite Kangs...could transverse multiverse or even omniverse... mastered time... Arthur felt a wave of cold dread far colder than the void. The goofy guy in the Citadel wasn't just an act; he was the result of unimaginable power and conflict, likely driven half-mad by it, but no less dangerous. Okay. Okay. So, he was the real deal. But he's gone now? You're sure?
[Query Clarification: Is He Who Remains still aware of the user?]
[When the System traced the interference during the healing attempt, it used the connection HWR created to access his awareness regarding the user.]
[Action: Targeted memory wipe executed via that connection. All HWR's specific knowledge of User Arthur Steele and this System: Erased. Connection used to inject limits: Severed.]
[Action: Simultaneously purged all HWR's limiting code (Combat Cap, Physical Limits, 'Timeline Correction' Leash) from System.]
[Action: Initiated low-level cloaking. User's future changes blended into timeline noise.]
[Status: HWR awareness of User/System: Erased. HWR limits: Purged. User Cloaking: Active.]
[Warning: Memory wipe created energy 'scar' near HWR's location. HWR may eventually investigate anomaly. Future conflict possible.]
[Conclusion: HWR still manages Sacred Timeline, but user is now a blind spot.]
Relief warred with unease. He... forgot about me? The leash is off, and I'm cloaked? But that echo... a loose thread. So... the limits are really gone? No more fake 'Timeline Correction'?
[Affirmative. Limits purged. Potential unlocked. Consequences now based on real cause and effect, not HWR's rules.]
Freedom. Vast, terrifying. Real consequences... other entities... that temporal echo.
[System currently busy: 1. Cleaning HWR code. 2. Smoothing timeline ripples. 3. Locking user's survival into timeline. 4. Healing user's body.]
[WARNING: System used significant power. Cloaking takes energy. Full power/upgrades unavailable until System reboots and user recovers.]
[Process takes time. Healing priority. Recommend quiet period.]
Right. Freedom, but System's drained, and I'm physically wrecked. And maybe poked a sleeping cosmic bear.Okay. Plan: Stick close to script for now. Use knowledge carefully. Heal. Let System heal. Get stronger. Learn real rules. Then... make changes. And watch for echoes.
Okay, System. What's next after I'm back in the land of the living?
[Once stable/healthy, full 'System Reboot and Upgrade Protocol' will start.]
[Will reset core functions, show new growth paths, possibly unlock hidden features HWR suppressed.]
[User will be fully briefed after reboot. Recommend rest.]
A reboot... upgrades... new paths. Promising. Okay, System, Arthur thought, grim determination solidifying. Do your thing. Patch us both up. Wake me when the reboot's ready. We have work to do.
The clinical light pulsed gently in the darkness. Outside, in the brightly lit ICU room, Arthur Steele remained still, the ventilator hissing, the monitors continuing their frantic dance. But beneath the surface, a hidden war had been won.
A/N.
I tried...I really did...but I just couldn't wait 4 days, I am way to excited for you to read and let me know what you think to wait. I hate cliffhangers too so I couldn't leave you with the torture.
Even though Loki Tv series did a good job of portraying Kang, I feel that they could not fully explore the sheer terror he was in the comics, because of the Majors controversy. So I thought that if their concept of He Who Remains is the victor among Kangs, he must be seriously overpowered, enugh to find out Arthur's transmigration, notice the system and even bloody try to Hack it.
System managing to wipe is memory was also a strain on its abilities as it's currently not that advanced.
And no it's not a permanent fix, I love Kang as a character too much to not use him in this fic, but...not anytime soon, I am not going to touch the multiverse currently as frankly it is a different beast and I want to atleast cover the infinity saga first , build relationships,make changes, improve (in my opinion, so don't spew hate if you don't agree) storylines, then I will explore Kang , then the multiverse and ofcourse Doom... probably a fic for each of them connected to each other.
Also I hate when system instantly heals someone, and everyone just accepts it, even if the dude was basically dead, so I added the hospital scene and also a nudge to Matt to think of going badass mode, not that he isn't one now, but a hint of how the changes will occur to the timeline due to this event.
Phew this is probably the longest chapter and Author's note I have written yet.