Chapter Text
Lies are woven into the very fabric of the universe.
Sunken deep into the roots of rotting stars, hanging over flayed horizons before they collapse into oblivion. All there is and all there ever will be tethering the cosmos together are lies.
Lie after lie after lie.
From the tenuous beginnings of time to beyond the void at the bitter end, reality itself is the biggest illusion. Eclipsed by erosive agendas and fabricated foundations, formulated by the man in the spire that must become the pyre.
This will burn. It has to burn.
Because these lies are what keeps blundering bureaucracy afloat, caging people in a darkness that is never truly illuminated. These lies ruthlessly ripped Sylvie from her timeline, displaced thousands upon thousands of others. And that can never really be rectified, it can only be ravaged by all the turmoil returned.
This is not an eye for an eye, or a life for a life. What will be delivered cuts deeper than that because it deserves to.
A well-crafted lie can last millennia if spun right, a web both extravagant and elaborate enough to stick. The silk is shimmery and alluring and spineless souls will tangle themselves up in it again and again and again.
When a lie succeeds to this degree, people forget how to question, how to fight back against a system sheathed in unapologetic tyranny. Instead, they are shackled to it. Unravelling one lie merely leads to another that is far more meticulous in nature. Harder to expose.
People believe in what is easier, for their own sake. Submission disguised as self-preservation for a promised paradise that doesn't even exist. They overlook who designed these very threads, stare doom in the face and eventually might even thank it. All whilst the parasite binds their wrists tight, holds them to words they didn't speak and actions they didn't take.
Sylvie wanted to be proven otherwise, she really did. For a moment, she almost put faith in somebody besides herself. But all of this is a grim reminder that people show up in her life for two reasons: to seize or to destroy.
It's only ever been about what is owed. Be it a throne, or a neatly closed casefile. A cosmic stain wiped off the timeline. Sylvie only ever amounted to that much, and it stings.
So it is no wonder then, that the one behind it all sat up in his ivory tower is a gargantuan fraud. This master of manipulations has etched intricate patterns into the universe that didn't need to be there. Not really. These measures are there for power, control. But at the end of the day, it's just a sham.
What else could it be, anyway.
Good thing Sylvie is not so easily fooled.
He Who Remains thrives on oppression disguised as order. Sylvie sees him precisely as the conniving clown he is, playing his part to perfection. And only she has the gall to crash this circus, only she could have put an end to his games.
Yet still, he belittles her blade when it slices through skin, reduces her lifelong mission to some contrived noble quest orchestrated by another's hand.
Her life on the run is no more than collateral damage. To keep the universe safe.
Nothing personal.
Oh. Sure. Of course. There's nothing personal about being cleaved out of your own reality, torn away from your only home as a child and sentenced to death for reasons that never get fully explained beyond vague holier-than-thou nonsense. None at all. That is truly the valorous work of a benevolent ruler.
And what a noble cause to die for - the greater good. Please. The sanctimonious drivel gets worse the longer Sylvie endures it.
Perhaps the worst part of all, Loki entertains it. No - he actually believes it. A cosmic liar ensnared by a professional liesmith to the point he no longer sees himself caught in the chasm. He falls for these parlour tricks as if they are real, swept into the misguided heroism.
But this isn't holy, this isn't sacred.
This whole thing is despicable, and it deserves to burn. It will burn.
It's going to burn.
Sylvie won't forgive He Who Remains for what has been done, for how he has turned Loki into the ultimate snag in her plan. A swansong is shrieking where the tune once felt unbearably hopeful. Maybe the monster revels in that, coaxes it further into existence.
There is desperation in Loki's eyes as they clash, Sylvie hears the devastation their conflict ignites beneath his bones. That pain is mirrored tenfold despite the resolve she wears in the face of this undoing. Loki isn't alone in his despair. Sylvie feels it too, the agonising ache of this anarchy prying them apart.
Senseless, spiteful. Every moment at odds is gutting in a way so tangible the wounds breach her quivering heart. This is the worst possible conclusion to the mission she must complete.
Sylvie wanted to see this through with him, she wanted them to tear it down together. For the remarkable solace they found, the friendship they cultivated, the bond that thrived when it should have never survived.
But Loki is lost and Sylvie won't lose.
She just can't.
Because this is personal, it always has been. The bigger picture doesn't exist, not when it looks exactly the same as her story. He Who Remains smiles at the notion of erasing an entire universe's autonomy. Like this is how things simply have to be, like he really pulls the strings and they are but lowly puppets parading around his playground.
Sylvie won't have it.
Destiny is a deception, fate is a fiction and Sylvie is not a disposable pawn on some board positioned strategically for the long haul. Sacrificed at the glittering altar, all at the expense of some insidious illusion. No. No. Just no.
That isn't how the story goes, that isn't what her suffering dwindles down to. There is grief and there is rage and make no mistake, Sylvie will topple the tower with the force rattling her bones.
Sylvie will do the hardest thing she has ever done to the one person who actually gives a shit and stick the landing anyway.
I just want you to be okay.
Through bitter tears and a splintering heart, she will do whatever it takes. Running a race like this teaches you one thing - once close to the finish line, you don't quit just because it gets tough. That would render her resolve meaningless. It has to mean something. It means everything.
When all is said and done, Sylvie will have ended the lies woven into the fabric of this universe.
Not for the greater good, for the actual genuine shred of good that matters to real people. Out there in the stars, out across the galaxy marred by this malice.
If Sylvie has to do it alone, so be it. If she has to take Loki out of the equation in a disarming sleight of hand, she will. She is no stranger to the sharpness of solitude, she always knew in her gut its absence was a temporary thing.
The bruising sincerity Loki extends her way is a bold and brazen vulnerability beyond anything she has ever really known. In all their time together, Loki has been a weird and wonderful presence. Irritating and insistent, he quickly took the emptiness surrounding her and filled it with something that felt familiar.
He believes, he trusts, and then he surrenders. Armed only with beseeching eyes and earnest words in the pivotal moment that could change everything. As much as Sylvie yearns to have someone on her side, nothing comes above the mission.
So perhaps love is a dagger after all, and the only way Sylvie knows how to wield it is to leave a mark. Make it hurt enough to keep everyone back. Love in all its forms is not a thing that reaches her, the shape is always wrong. It isn't supposed to have serrated edges, it shouldn't waver when it counts.
She has no family, she has no friends. She has nobody.
Now Sylvie is entirely alone, with the blood of the autocrat on her hands. In this messy aftermath, the lies begin to disintegrate - just not in the way she expects.
Gasping for air, Sylvie collapses to the floor. Loki's dagger sits tauntingly within reach. But he isn't here. Her fingers curl tentatively around the hilt, a relic of a bond totally shattered.
In the golden reflection, she meets her own watery gaze. Silence fills the room, but her soul is screaming. For a brief moment, she glimpses only a scared child. Lost and alone.
Strength yields.
Sylvie tosses the blade across the floor. A strange sound escapes her, a sorrowful sombre thing that climbs up her spine and has her shivering.
This is all wrong.
Burrowing her face into her knees, she heaves. Each breath burns, doesn’t quite fill her lungs. The payoff was supposed to feel worth it, like all the running had been for something. It had to have been for something, anything.
Just not this, never this.
A void of her own design.
"Why so adust, dollface?”
The voice jolts Sylvie out of her perilous plight. Head snapping up, she eyes Miss Minutes warily through stinging tears she refuses to blink back. An animated hand taps at six O’clock, swathing the room in jarring synthetic orange.
Of all things, Sylvie finds herself crawling backwards. As if she could somehow get away from this nebulous nightmare. But it's real. She is starting to grasp that now.
“Hmm," Miss Minutes hums thoughtfully. "Now could it be cos you single-handedly started the multiversal war all over again?”
Right. Nevermind. Back to the lies, then.
Sylvie sucks in a vicious breath of air, spitting it out just as fast. The sensation is vindicating. Her shoulders lock, fingers curling into fists that only know how to fight. The last thing she needs is a weird sentient clock getting sassy, especially when there is no proof of a war.
Chaos, yes. That had been expected regardless.
War, no.
That declaration had been a desperate play for control, obviously. Not to prevent incoming violence, to suppress the vengeance Sylvie came to deliver. Murderer, he said. Hypocrite, he proclaimed. What about atonement, or reparation.
Freedom comes at a price. Sylvie didn’t spend her life existing solely in apocalypses without learning a thing or two about the true nature of the universe. It isn’t fair. A moral compass won’t always point so graciously north. The only person you can ever depend on is yourself.
But one glance out the window to the timeline shakes the composure carved out from fury. Fear snakes into her veins, refusing to abate. Out there, it doesn’t look like infinite branches or even a nexus event.
There is no logic to the meandering madness. The timeline is ruptured beyond recognition.
No. Wait. It isn't ruptured. Sylvie restored the balance. Now the timeline is freed from its sacred chains, returned to a blanket of twinkling fragments fanning out slowly. Each moment, each lifetime now independent and unattached. There will be no TVA and there will be no stifling order.
"Quite the cocktail of calamity, isn't it?" Miss Minutes muses, far too jovial about the whole thing.
She must get that from her master.
Sylvie sniffles, wiping the palm of her hand against her sore eyes. This is no time to cry or wallow. She wholly committed to her cause, despite the odds stacked against her. And she doesn't need validation from others to fluff up her feathers. Not from Loki with his open admiration or Mobius and his inherent fondness.
Except she does. She doesn't just need it, she's deluded enough to want it. Even now after all this.
Within the splintered sky is a foreboding stillness Sylvie knows well. That beautiful biting pause before inevitable peril. Much like the alluring glow before the meteor shower of Catharitos-12 rained down or the golden horizon before the 2089 solar flare.
The look of solace by the lake on Lamentis.
Oblivion doesn't seem like a lie anymore. But Sylvie cannot accept that, she just can't.
"Ya satisfied now, Little Miss?"
“Ugh!" Sylvie grunts, frustration overriding the swell of unease churning mercilessly through her veins. "What do you want.”
“I’m here to deliver a message at his request.”
Sylvie leaps to her feet with a snarl. There's still some fight left in her, and the cataclysmic tug of war within her subsides enough for it to surface. So he was lying through his teeth about the threshold, after all. He Who Remains really thought he could fob them off with a grand convoluted story.
How pathetic.
Somehow, Miss Minutes catches the train of thought and swiftly derails any gloating. She shakes a gloved finger in Sylvie's direction. The patronising undertones are not appreciated in the slightest.
“Ah, ah, ah. No lies skulking around here - He Who Remains just liked to prepare for all eventualities.”
The words whip up the frenzy Sylvie has been grappling to contain this entire time. Lie after lie after lie can't be followed by a truth. It makes no sense. That isn't how the universe works. Unless it is. Unless all this time, there may have been greater stakes beyond her tumultuous tunnel vision.
Can't you see this is bigger than our experience?
Steeling herself, Sylvie glares at the ridiculous clock. Time to tell it where to go.
"You don't scare me," she manages shakily, swallowing down the larger quiver that threatens to wreck each syllable.
Barely. What a mess.
Waltzing through the air, Miss Minutes hovers over the upturned desk. She delivers a final fleeting message before taking her leave.
“Aw - I'm not trying to scare you, hun. But you should check the drawer to the left if you're seeking out thrills!"
Heeding the words with caution, Sylvie makes her approach. Of course there would be no loose ends, even in death. Begrudgingly, she has to admit He Who Remains had been thorough. Nothing seemed to faze him, not even the brutality of his demise.
I'll see you soon.
Lips pursed, Sylvie opens the drawer. A black box fastened with a golden bow resides there, addressed to her. The handwriting is eloquent, a well-practiced cursive. Tearing at the wrapping, Sylvie grits her teeth hard. Just because he got fancy about all this doesn’t mean she has to be grateful.
It hasn’t escaped her attention that her name alone is on the box. There's no message for Loki. Nothing. Almost as if He Who Remains knew all along things might head this way, that Sylvie would be the last one standing at all costs.
That revelation feels far too mocking.
Do you think you're even capable of trusting anyone at all?
Sylvie flings the box absently over her shoulder, tossing the contents onto the desk. There are two items of interest. The first is similar to the TemPad once clapped to his wrist, the one Sylvie used on Loki. The second object is unfamiliar - a small silver cube that absorbs light at all the wrong angles.
Whatever this is supposed to be, Sylvie can't find any comfort in it. Amidst the panic she continues to suppress, the anguish in her chest, this is what almost tips her over the edge. But she won't crumble, like Hel will she give her foe the satisfaction.
The cube is ice cold to the touch. Her probing seems to be the switch that sets a chain of commands into motion. Suddenly, it glows. A low buzzing emanates from the centre because it's a trap. This has to be a trap.
Jolting back, Sylvie scans the room for her best vantage point. Her blade is still lodged deep in the chest of He Who Remains. Part of her isn't ready to face that. She grabs one of the hefty books on the shelf, whacks the cube with force.
It does nothing.
Light erupts from the cube in the same unnatural way it sucks it in. And then a familiar, impossible laugh echoes through the room. The sound chills Sylvie to the bone. Never has she dreaded being at least two steps ahead in her life. Until now, until the bitter end of all things.
“Sylvie, Sylvie, Sylvie…”
Firing off a burst of her enchantment towards the source, Sylvie spins on her heel. It goes straight through him.
“My oh my. Whatever have you done?”
He Who Remains.
Somehow, he's here.
Hands clasped behind his back, he saunters across the room slowly. Sylvie tries to attack again, hurtling books in his direction. He gives no response, no reaction. Her frantic efforts do nothing to deter the oncoming storm.
Staggering backwards, Sylvie juts out her chin.
“This is a trick. You can’t be here,” she spits, striving for sharpness and falling short. “Wanna know why?”
Head cocked up in a challenge, she levels him with the only truth that can possibly exist. This is the best she can do in the face of a tragedy she won’t accept. A war she refuses to acknowledge. Her story is supposed to be a triumph amidst terrifying odds.
Not this. It’s not supposed to be like this.
She isn't the villain.
We’re all villains here-
“Because I defeated you. I ended your little game.”
“Behold!” He Who Remains interjects abruptly, not seeming to have heard her pointed words at all.
Sylvie clenches her jaw, glancing over to the glowing cube.
A projection, then.
“It is I,” hands tucked into his chest, the projection wiggles his fingers. “The ghost! Of - He Who Remains… mwahaha.”
The melodramatic warble of his voice is completely unnecessary. Sylvie holds her nerve, because she has to. She has nothing else left at this point. His eyes don’t quite land on her, which is a meagre reassurance.
Yet another fiction.
“Just kidding. Alright, alright-ta. That was a little cliché and a lot creepy, you don't have to tell me. I know, I know I know I know I know. So how 'bout this?”
Swishing the purple coat across his face, He Who Bloody Remains - even now after certain inescapable death, apparently - continues in a bizarre exaggerated accent. Ever the performer.
“Call me, Count Conqueror.”
Unsatisfied with the ruse, he flings the glossy coat back.
“Mm - nah. Not keen on that either, sounds a little gaudy. Tell you what, Sylvie - seeing as it’s juuuuuust you and me, me and you, out here in this place I’ll let you in on one of my more-”
A hand curls elegantly through the air, as if royalty is announcing themselves.
“Renowned names.” Pause. “Kang.”
“Kang,” Sylvie repeats dubiously, chewing the newfound information over.
It has a bitter taste, a real and raw edge to it. This man is no longer mysterious and elusive. He's fashioned into something else by that name. Something ominous.
“Really. That’s what you’re going with?” Sylvie drawls in spite of her fractured confidence, knowing it’s futile.
Pretending she has the upper hand in the situation is all she can do. Fitting - how lies become truth only to become lies all over again. Such a vicious cycle. She can't fold now. Not yet. But there is only so far she can run, so long she can keep this up.
Sylvie is strong, she also has been weathered.
“Sure, um, yeah - sure.”
The words spew out rapidly, flourished with dramatics.
“Went out with a bang, what remains is Kang. Kang-boom. Ka-boomang? Oh!" He snaps his fingers, eyes ablaze with misplaced amusement. "Ka-boomerang, that's the one. Get it? Cos I'm coming back, like a boomerang. Well - not just one, an infinite amount. But I'm assuming we already walked through the options."
If you think I'm evil, well, just wait till you meet my variants.
"Anyway!”
Hands smacking together with enough force to somehow resound across the room, Kang beams. Even now, there’s a chilling cheeriness to him that doesn’t fit the scene or match the tone. Facing it alone at the edge of time, the sole witness to carnage beyond description, is far more unsettling.
“You did it, didn’t you? Ohohoho, you really did it!”
Something jarring happens then. Kang stops right in front of his own corpse, as if somehow knowing this was where he was going to die.
It isn’t sad or sombre - it’s sinister.
“Look at that, Sylvie! Look at that.”
Sylvie doesn't want to look. She can't.
Gesturing to the exact spot he had once sat, Kang smiles. Each word is punctuated forcefully.
“Right. Through. The. Heart.”
Kang crouches down as if to meticulously observe her handiwork. For a brief terrifying moment, Sylvie almost expects him to pull out the blade and reveal himself to be real. He doesn’t, because he isn’t here. He isn't real. Not yet, at least.
But maybe he is real somewhere else, in many somewheres.
Maybe he's on his way. Just like he said he would be.
Sylvie hazards a glance out the window, assurances lessening more and more by the minute. There is no peace to be found. In the wake of her actions is cataclysmic chaos. The very thing this Kang spoke of. His warning had not been in vain.
It had not been a lie.
That realisation is harrowing.
“Holy sheshkabababooshkaboo.” Pause. “Wow! You really do give love a bad name, though you don’t even know what love is do you? Mm. Mhm. You’ve never had it and at this rate you probably never will.”
Hands on hips, Kang exaggerates his reprimand. At least he's no longer hovering near his deceased self. Sylvie watches him traipse across the room. It's a little difficult to keep track of him with her blurring vision, the terror plaguing her.
Loki was lost, Sylvie couldn't lose.
But Kang - He Who Remains - won.
There is no mistaking the devastating defeat barreling into Sylvie in the face of this man's piercing projections. She might have bitten off more than she can chew this time, her pride has retreated enough to admit that.
“Bad, bad Sylvie - go sit on the naughty step, go on! You’ve got plenty of choice for that, check out the spiral staircase in the East Wing. It Is Quite…hmm…”
Kang nods, pensive and amused all at once. Their eyes meet. Sylvie shudders.
It's just a trick, it isn't real, it's not possible, it's all-
“Enchanting.”
Waving a hand, Kang laughs hard enough to crinkle his eyes. He leaps back up to full attention, swaying merrily on his feet.
“Relax, relax, relax. I’m just messing with you. Better me than my variants, am I right?”
Sylvie hitches a breath, gaze flickering from the lifeless man in the chair to the spirited hologram. Both are catalysed by her. As are the infinite number fated to arrive across the whole of time. For the first time since setting foot in this citadel, she sees the lies for what they truly are.
Clemency.
It doesn't absolve the heinous crimes of the TVA, context doesn't make anything better for the life she has been forced to lead. To be honest, it makes it all so much worse. This is too much. Overwhelming.
It isn't fair.
“You know, I have a feeling soon you’ll even come to…” trailing off, Kang’s voice lowers to a hushed reverent whisper. “To miss me.”
The softness is not kind, unravelling into neutrality. A subject studying their finest specimen.
“Though I do wonder,” he asks. “What did your mission cost, hm?”
The answer relentlessly rams into Sylvie. She cannot speak it into existence. She won't. Maybe he wants that, or he takes pleasure in all of this. Grunting, she unleashes the fury churning beneath her veins in full force. A swell of enchantment bursts from her with a wrangled cry, enough to collapse the bookshelf entirely.
Far from done, Sylvie lunges for the cube and hits her palm against it. Maybe she can make this stop, put an end to this infernal nonsense. Get this projection to bugger off. Just stop. Please stop. But nothing works, not even a shaky branch of her enchantment.
Branching. That would be preferred to whatever the Hel is happening out there. But the universe is not kind or accommodating. The universe is shattered. Lost.
Sylvie squeezes the cube tight in her hands. Nothing happens.
It won’t work why won’t it work why won't it stop-
“Alone again, I presume. Incredible. Inspired. How do I know you’re alone at the end of it all, I hear you ask?” Kang shakes his head, tutting rhythmically. “Sylvie! Come on - When. Are. You. Not?”
Composure crumpling, Sylvie sucks in a ragged wet breath. She's crying now, actually crying. An ugly unhinged messy disposition. The grief mercilessly crashes into her wave after wave after wave. But she can’t fold, she won’t.
“And I guess that’s a wrap. Didn't mean to gloat - if it came across that way my bad. Well technically your bad first, ha. I had to give you a little teaser for what's on the horizon. Not going to take it personally again, are you?"
Those words have no business cutting this deep. This needs to be over. She gets the message, she finally understands.
Sylvie wants this to stop.
"You want this to stop, right?”
The words perfectly match her exact thoughts. Horrifying. But t here's no way he knows, no way he could possibly know so much. He doesn't know her. Nobody does.
Kang shakes his head, feigning sympathy.
"It'll never stop now. The show has begun."
It'll never stop now.
There is no making peace with that, no way to reconcile. If he's right - if this is the terrifying truth behind the curtain.
Winking, Kang shimmies towards the window. His hand is pressed to his chest, the exact spot Sylvie plunged her blade.
“Take a gander, go ahead. Soak it in deep. It’s a whole new world out there, baby.”
Enough.
Sylvie has had enough.
Frantically, she starts up the TemPad left in her name. Her hands are shaking, it's hard to get them to move the way she wants. But she can't stay here, she can't be here. Kang is looking in her direction so intently that it burns. Exactly the way she intended to burn him. The way she thought she had.
He can't see her. He doesn't see her.
Because He Who Remains is dead.
He's gone. In his absence, more will come.
There is an infinite number of locations Sylvie could run to. Yet the first that comes to mind is utterly ridiculous. Foolish. The one place that never welcomed her, that started this whole thing. Still, she plugs it in desperately. Maybe her presence won't be welcome, maybe Loki won't ever forgive her and their friendship can’t be repaired, maybe the whole universe has gone to shit.
But Sylvie is selfish and scared and she will take whatever she can get. All these years alone, she doesn’t think she can endure it much longer. Not when it feels like this. Not when the darkness might actually win.
They could figure it out. Together. Even in sharp separation, that tiny spec of hope is inviting when it shouldn't be.
"I’m giving you a head start, Sylvie.”
Her name sounds like a promise, in all the wrong ways.
Sylvie picks up Loki's dagger, then takes the biggest leap of faith of her life. Final haunting words chase her through the portal.
“My variants, they won’t be so merciful.”