[M&C Hotel, Rooftop – DC Universe, September 28th, 2010]
The rooftop was open and quiet under the morning sky, the city of Washington stretching out in every direction below them, unhurried and unaware of what had taken place the night before last.
Ethan stood with his hands easy at his sides, his awareness doing what it always did without his having to direct it.
A calm, practiced sweep extended outward from him, touching every mind in the surrounding blocks with the lightness of a hand brushing over still water. Every memory of a party the night before, of guests arriving, of faces that had no business being publicly linked to a gathering at all, quietly smoothed over and set aside without disturbance.
The CCTV cameras in the nearby areas had been handled before the party even began. Dark screens, clean logs, no footage worth finding.
And deeper than that, for anyone who had been in proximity and might have begun to wonder, he had ensured they did not even form the question in their minds. The curiosity simply did not arise. There was nothing to investigate because there was nothing that had registered as unusual.
'That,' Ethan thought with quiet satisfaction, 'is how you use telepathy correctly. Not as a weapon but as a scalpel when needed.'
He had explained the plan to every invited guest beforehand. The reasoning was simple and airtight. The entire Justice League had been in one room. If a single identity leaked, the chain of exposure that followed would be both rapid and catastrophic.
Batman had not liked it. He had stood with his arms folded and that particular expression on his face that communicated a precise list of objections without stating any of them aloud. His instinct was always to maintain his own security on his own terms.
But he had agreed in the end after some persuasion. Because Bruce Wayne understood, more thoroughly than anyone else in that room, exactly what it cost when the wrong person learned the name behind the mask.
He had built his entire existence around that knowledge. It would have been contradictory to refuse protection that offered the same result.
So as far as every external record and every nearby mind was concerned, the party had been attended by a group of people no one recognised and no one thought to question. Clean, contained, and complete.
Ethan then turned his attention to the rooftop.
Lena, Eve, and Pamela stood on one side, composed in their own ways. Jean, Anna, and Elizabeth stood across from them. The morning light sat warmly across all of them and the occasion, a farewell dressed as a perfectly ordinary morning, carried a quiet weight that nobody was pretending wasn't there.
Lena stepped forward first and pulled Jean into a firm, sincere embrace. "Take care of yourself," she said. "Both of you."
The look she gave as she pulled away was warmer than anything she usually let slip past her defenses. She shared a quiet moment with Anna and then Elizabeth, her hugs carrying a desperate sort of weight. It was clear she had a speech prepared, but in the end, she let the silence and the embrace do the heavy lifting
"I wish you could stay longer," Lena said, looking between them all. "A few more days would not have hurt anything."
"Under normal circumstances I would agree," Ethan said. "But I'm not adding unnecessary variables to a pregnancy. Every extra day here is a variable I don't need."
Anna raised an eyebrow at him. "You haven't even seen what a truly overprotective father looks like yet and you're already like this." She turned to Jean. "Is he going to be this way the entire time?"
Jean sighed, fond and resigned in equal measure. "He has checked on the baby through his awareness at least fourteen times since yesterday."
"Fifteen," Ethan said. Then, after a pause, "Possibly sixteen."
"I read about this," Anna said while crossing her arms with a satisfied expression. "Pregnancy phase protective fathers. There are entire articles about it online. I did not expect him to manifest the symptoms this quickly."
"I prefer the word vigilant," Ethan said.
"The articles used different words," Anna said pleasantly.
Lena pressed her lips together to contain something. Eve did not quite manage to conceal her smile. Pamela made no attempt to conceal anything and laughed outright.
Jean looked at Ethan with an expression that was entirely too amused for his comfort.
'I am being outnumbered at a farewell,' he thought. 'Before we have even left.'
"Moving on," he said.
Eve stepped forward and embraced Jean with warmth that was entirely genuine, her usual composed reserve set aside for the moment. "It has been far too short," she said quietly. She moved to Anna and Elizabeth in turn, unhurried and sincere. "Please come back soon. All of you."
"We will," Jean said, and meant it.
Pamela, who had been noticeably quiet, stepped forward last. Her eyes were bright with something that sat right on the edge of emotional.
She took Jean's hands in both of hers, held them for a moment, and then pulled her into a close embrace. "I am going to miss the birth," she said, the theatrical mournfulness in her voice not fully concealing the real feeling underneath it.
She pulled back and fixed Ethan with a direct, expectant look. "Please send us pictures of him the moment he arrives. And when he is old enough to travel safely between universes, you bring him here."
"Her," Ethan said.
"Him," Pamela said, without hesitation.
"You're wrong here, I have a feeling about this," Ethan said. "That's a strong female one. Based on what I sensed."
"And I have a feeling," Pamela replied serenely, "that my god of plantation is about to be proven wrong."
"Ethan," Anna said, "you are outvoted three to one and we haven't even asked Elizabeth yet."
Elizabeth, who had been listening from the side with her characteristic composure, simply said, "Boy," without looking up.
The laughter that followed was genuine and warm. Even Ethan gave in to it, shaking his head slowly.
"Fine," he said. "We will revisit this conversation after the birth."
"Yes," Pamela said, with serene confidence. "We will."
The goodbyes continued for a while longer. Jean and Lena spoke about the company in quiet tones, and there was a real trust between them that had been built over time and showed now in the ease of the exchange.
Anna and Eve are whispering somethings. Elizabeth and Pamela spoke briefly about the greening initiative in terms that suggested they had found a mutual respect somewhere along the way that neither of them had announced.
Ethan stood back and let it run its course. Eventually, he reached into his inventory and took out the Omni-Watch.
The silver pocket watch sat in his palm, cool and familiar, catching the morning light along the casing's edge. He held it for a moment and looked across at Lena, Pamela, and Eve.
"Take care of the company," he said to Lena. "And keep your eye on Lex. Quietly."
"Always," Lena said.
He looked at Pamela. "Keep greening the world."
Pamela pressed a hand over her heart and gave him a look of absolute devotion that he had long since accepted was simply part of how she operated.
He looked at Eve. "Make sure those two don't forget to sleep occasionally."
Eve's expression carried a small, warm smile. "I will do my best."
Jean, Anna, and Elizabeth exchanged their final words and Ethan opened the watch.
The dial moved with its quiet, unhurried precision, the Roman numeral I clicking smoothly into position.
There was no sound of great machinery, no dramatic buildup. Just a pulse of bright, clean light that expanded outward from the watch and swallowed all four of them in an instant.
The rooftop was empty.
Lena stood in the silence that followed, looking at the space where they had been standing. Eve was beside her. Pamela had gone very still, her eyes on the air where the light had been.
"Just like that," Eve said quietly.
"He really doesn't do anything halfway," Lena said, with the tone of someone who had observed this fact from multiple angles and reached a settled conclusion about it.
Pamela lifted her chin slightly. "They'll be fine," she said. "He is Ethan Carter." She looked at the empty space a moment longer, then turned toward the rooftop door. "Now. We have a company to run and a world to green."
They left the rooftop one by one, each carrying the quiet hope of seeing a baby Ethan in nine months time.
...
[Dead End Bar, Hell's Kitchen, Marvel Universe – September 28th, 2010]
The bar had only been open for three days and it already felt like it belonged there.
It had that quality about it, the particular warmth of a place that understood its purpose. The lighting was low and amber-toned, honest rather than atmospheric.
The bar itself was solid and well-stocked, and the woman behind it moved through the space with an ease that suggested she had been doing exactly this for a very long time.
Which, in a manner of speaking, she had.
The Dead End Bar sat in the middle of Hell's Kitchen, and Hell's Kitchen had not been a quiet neighbourhood before she arrived. The crime rate had been persistently high for years, reducing slowly and reluctantly.
She had chosen this street deliberately. Not because she needed the income. Because the people here needed somewhere to come and someone to listen.
She had done this before. In her home universe, the one Ethan called the DC universe because they had comic books written about some of the people who lived there, she had run a bar called the Afterlife.
She had listened to endings. Given them a space to settle and breathe. Here, in this universe also, she was listening to the middles instead. The ongoing complaints, the small indignities, the weight of lives that were harder than they needed to be. It turned out the middles needed just as much attention as the ends.
As for the practical side of establishing herself here, the formalities, the paperwork, the introductions, the name Aeon alone had been enough to speed run all of it. Doors that might have taken weeks to open had opened in days.
It had been three days and the bar was already half full on any given evening.
Didi poured herself a small measure and took a quiet sip, leaning back against the bar with her thoughts settling around her like old friends.
It had been ten days since Ethan and the others had left for the Honeymoon trip. Ten days of relative stillness in her corner of this world, and she had used the time well.
Diana had left not long after them, heading out to test the God Slayer armour Ethan had gifted her before the honeymoon.
The armour had gotten its test quickly. Reports filtered back through telepathic channels Ethan made which Didi kept open, suggesting Diana had encountered demonic forces crossing over from several of the hell dimensions that pressed against Earth's borders.
Given the frequency of those crossings, she had eventually decided that the most efficient approach was to go directly to the source. Specifically, to pay a visit to Mephisto's dimension in person and make her position on the matter of Earth invasions very directly and very physically clear.
Didi imagined Mephisto, the Hell Lord, had not expected to be on the receiving end of a goddess in new armour, and found the thought moderately satisfying.
Susan had not left anywhere. She was buried in the runic knowledge Ethan had gifted her before his departure, working through its depths with the focused patience she applied to everything that mattered to her.
Between that and her responsibilities with the Fantastic Four whenever the situation required it, her schedule had been full.
At least Ethan had resolved the Mutant Stabiliser Serum situation before leaving, handing its supervision over to trusted employees at Aeon Biotech.
If he had not done that, Susan would have been stretched dangerously thin across too many responsibilities at once.
And then there were the twins. Didi smiled at her glass.
Wanda and Pietro Maximoff were sixteen years old and, for the first time in a long while, living like it.
School, ordinary arguments, the occasional flash of wonder at a world that had more in it than they had previously been permitted to experience.
Didi had visited them twice in the last week. She had also quietly sorted out the misunderstanding that had been building between them and Tony Stark, smoothing it over before it calcified into something harder to undo.
They were good children with extraordinary futures ahead of them. She intended to make sure the road between here and there was as clear as she could make it.
And then there was herself.
She had opened this bar. She was listening to this neighbourhood. She was trying to give the people around her something to hold onto when things were heavy. It was the same work she had always done, just in a different universe, under a different sky.
Then she touched the necklace at her throat.
The pendant was small and unassuming, a simple silver chain with nothing remarkable about its appearance.
But beneath that appearance sat something vast and patient. Ethan had stored a massive reserve of his life energy inside it before leaving, a deep well of it pressing gently between her presence and the world around her. It covered the leak of her nature.
Death of the Endless, from a different universe, walking among the living, was not something that could simply go unnoticed without a very specific kind of intervention.
Before the necklace, suppressing her presence had been an act of constant effort. Ninety-nine percent of what she was held tightly inward at every waking moment, like spending every day in clothes two sizes too small. Every movement constrained. Every breath measured. Now the necklace did the work and she could simply exist without bracing against herself.
She took another sip and let the thought of it settle with quiet gratitude.
'I owe him for this,' she thought. 'Among other things. A fairly long list at this point.'
"That's a very beautiful necklace."