There was a texture of its own to the stillness in the darkness before the dawn — a kind of quiet that hung heavy in a house full of people asleep.
Ethan woke to his thoughts about the coming day.
It did not hold anxiety — only the focused clarity born of months of practice and a particular set of skills suited precisely to a particular environment and its rewards. It was a sun trip in two days and he looked forward to it — anticipated it in the genuine anticipation that accompanied a recognition of its importance, the importance of every week inside the actual sun adding to the week before to create a new self with each trip, a self meaningfully farther along the path that was being traveled than the last one.
He thought about Kallark.
He had been extending his ears over the course of the previous week — the range of sensory input that had increased with his solar absorption allowed distance itself to be heard with the fidelity and power of a listening device receiving distant signals with great clarity. Someone was coming through the solar system, approaching Earth, with the characteristic signal of an Asgardian construct — powerful, directed, unhurried. No immediate arrival expected — not that day at least. Probably days away. Maybe a bit more.
Timing played in his mind.
He would be inside the sun by the time it arrived.
No anxiety attended that prospect — he studied the shape of Raven sleeping in the darkness beside him, that of Jean on the other side, Rogue's arm reaching across him. What they were capable of had been observed by him in the months since he began observing them, the growth of each of them as an individual and a component of the group he had assembled. With their abilities as they currently were: Jean's mind, fully bonded with the Phoenix, among the most powerful psychics in existence. Raven's tactical experience accumulated in decades and an evolving magical capacity gained since Kamar-Taj. Rogue's Apocalypse enhancements and developing magical absorption. Limbo under the control of Illyana. An Asgardian sorceress in Amora. Whatever plans and expectations had been formed in response to his absence, whatever preparations might have been made in his absence, the arrival of Kallark would find something much more complex than the human with a Phoenix bond.
His girls were formidable. They could be counted upon and it was so. He reviewed the assessment and filed it in the part of himself where such assessments resided and closed his mind to sleep again.
---
Breakfast brought the house together to the table in the richness of a space that had grown beyond any one person's planning.
Rogue had prepared it and the food was good. The eggs were good. The toast was good. Rogue had opinions about both and expressed them in cooking. It was the preferred method of expression on her part.
Amora had one about the coffee.
"It is strong," she declared at the table.
"Stronger is how you prefer it," Rogue corrected with the directness of one making a statement of fact rather than offering criticism.
"I am perfectly aware."
"You can prepare the next pot."
She seemed to accept this gracefully in the way of someone who had learned that the discussion of food preferences with Rogue was generally unproductive.
Ethan drank his coffee.
"Two days," he said.
No grand gesture. Just the announcement of the fact, said aloud for everyone because everyone knew it and because the pretense that it was not known amounted to theatre in its execution.
Raven's hand went to her coffee. Her expression was warm and satisfied — the product of completed processing.
Jean looked at him intently — her attention the full presence of a woman absorbing something completely with the attention that she devoted to doing exactly that.
Rogue's reply was brief but decisive.
"I know," she said and immediately turned to distributing the toast, her contribution to the morning ritual.
"Illyana," he said.
Once. Enough.
Amora offered no response. Her face remained impassive — the kind of face that said as little as she chose to say.
Ethan noted this and took a bite of his eggs.
Thori raised his head from the floor beside the table.
"Two days is fine," he said. "You come back."
"I will be back," Ethan promised.
"Good." Thori put his head back down, leaving the matter for the rest of the room to process.
The guardian lion reclined beside Raven as he tended to do at the start of the day and Indominus patrolled the greenhouse area through the windows at the kitchen end of the table, his morning ritual of assessment continuing.
The table was full, the food was good, and the day had not even properly begun.
---
Rogue left for the garage after breakfast.
He gave her twenty minutes and then left the house and lifted off the grounds, ascending the private driveway to the road elevation slowly, unhurried and with the sun warming the air around him. She appeared soon after, emerging on the Harley and riding it out of the garage and onto the driveway. Its sound came to him instantly — the sound of its engine running precisely in a motorcycle that had been created to be hers.
She caught sight of his position next to her and acknowledged with a glance that he was indeed with her. Then she returned her eyes to the road.
They left the private road and followed the path of the forest road leading away. The trees were old, the kind that existed long enough to produce the thick canopy. The road was maintained with the regularity that a road received occasional traffic and ran dry after the previous week of clear weather. He could see that the surface was in excellent condition.
Rogue was an expert driver. Machines operated with the precision of a language she had learned to speak. She was not impressing anyone — she was simply riding, driving the motorcycle she had built and using all of her years of training and practice to do so. The engine was in perfect tune. The wheels rolled smoothly in a manner consistent with its balance. Her weight was distributed optimally and he could feel it. The engine ran cool.
Ahead was an extended straight section. She advanced the throttle.
Her Harley responded immediately with the surge and power that she wanted and needed. There was no struggle, no resistance in the machine. Everything was working as designed — it was merely running faster than it had been. The speed did not require effort to maintain and he fell in beside her and continued with ease, riding in the biokinetic aura.
He watched her ride.
She drove well and there was no effort to demonstrate anything. Every action she took was perfectly timed and placed, the result of months of careful and deliberate effort to build, tune, and adjust it. Her hands were relaxed as they should be. The throttle was applied as appropriate. There was a smoothness and efficiency to her actions as she rode the motorcycle she had created.
The dense forest opened out on either side and the road became straight and wide, leading into a clearing surrounded on all sides by tall trees. It extended for the length of a minute. She maintained the speed for half of that and then slowed down again.
She turned onto a road to the right, opening out into a large clearing in which a turnout had been provided. The road was gravel and well-traveled, with a sense of age to it.
She cut the engine.
There was a particular absence of sound as she shut down the motorcycle. The forest quiet was different when that sound was removed — birds singing in the tree tops. The rustle of leaves stirred by the passing wind. The metallic ticking sound of a cooling engine.
She sat on the motorcycle and looked at the clearing, at the trees that rose around them.
"Perfect," she said quietly.
Not because of success — not satisfaction. Just perfect in the way she used the word to describe the things that passed the test she had set for themselves before doing them.
He looked at her.
"You built something worth building," he said.
Her eyes met his.
"I did," she said.
Neither arrogant nor modest, just stating a truth she had earned.
And they waited as they sat in the clearing in the sunlight of a pleasant July morning, the Harley silent, surrounded by the green of the trees.
Eventually she started the engine again and they turned and headed back the way they had come.
---
Amora located him in the east sitting room in the late afternoon.
As much as anything of hers, it was planned rather than random. She moved with the spatial awareness that resulted in her ending up where she wanted to be most of the time. She walked in and sat down in front of him in the chair facing him.
"I've been studying your power," she said.
Neither as an opening gambit, nor as an attempt to communicate to him what she had been trying to figure out about it, but as an opening statement about something that had been occupying her and she was going to tell him about it.
Ethan looked at her.
"What have you found?" he asked.
She settled into her chair with the calm assurance of somebody who had done their homework and was thinking about how they wanted to begin.
"Asgardian magical perception reads stored energy as density," she said. "Not a number. As a physical property of the space a body occupies. The greater the energy contained in the body, the greater its density, and the more the perception of that energy manifests as mass rather than light." Her gaze held his. "Your body, from the standpoint of my Asgardian magical perception, is considerably heavier than anything that has ever lived in the universe in your size range."
"And the sun trips increase that density?"
"Expand it," she clarified. "And that is the distinction I want to make clear to you. You are not approaching a ceiling here. All the information we have from the Shi'ar and Asgardian records on beings that underwent prolonged solar modification indicates that this is a process that reinforces itself as it progresses. The more energy contained in the body, the easier it becomes to absorb additional energy. Your potential capacity for each subsequent solar modification increases from session to session, not because you have trained toward a certain limit but because the limit changes as your capacity changes."
For a second or two, Ethan did not say anything.
This was not surprising—he had been suspecting something like this; the accelerated rate of internal growth, in terms of his personal experience, seemed perfectly in line with what she was saying now, but for someone to state this explicitly based on their extensive reading of pertinent documentation…
"Are you saying there is no ceiling?" he asked, just to be absolutely sure.
"No, there isn't," she replied. "Or rather, the records just stop when the scholar documenting those beings did not have the language necessary to go any further in describing them. This is the point when a subject reaches a level beyond which the scholar could no longer describe him as anything that existed in Asgardian cosmology. That is different from hitting a wall."
He thought about this for a minute.
It meant he was going where no one had gone before—or at least no one had gone before leaving any documentation behind. Which was certainly something to be concerned about but not really shocking in a sense.
"That is useful to know," he told her.
She watched him with a combination of curiosity and interest. She no longer made any attempt to conceal her study of him that started when she came to visit them.
"Do you realize," she asked, "how extraordinarily exceptional you are? Not from a theoretical perspective but as a specific fact. Have you even thought about it?"
He held her gaze.
"I have a good idea of how exceptional I am," he said. "It's accurate, but it's not the whole picture yet. The process is not over."
Amora was silent for a moment.
He must have been expecting one of two answers—false humility or self-congratulatory bravado. Neither was particularly surprising from a highly powerful individual but for a moment, she saw something very different: unflinching honesty, an acknowledgment of exceptionalism without ego or embellishment. And then she realized that was exactly what she had gotten.
"Impressive," she said.
"As beings with powers on this level typically go, most are either unaware or incapable of retaining their identity while using their powers without transforming themselves in some way," she went on. "You don't seem to be either."
"I am just now getting to know myself," he replied. "But, apparently, maintaining awareness of myself has been preventing that transformation so far."
He was silent as she looked at him for several long seconds.
"You are very wise, indeed," she told him after a pause. "Or exactly as exceptional as I thought you were."
"Perhaps," he replied.
She laughed.
She rarely did that—not for strategic reasons or to achieve something. But the laughter was honest and unexpected, and it faded quickly as she collected herself.
"Thank you for explaining the absorption," he said.
"You're the object of the observation," she pointed out. "It's only appropriate."
She stood to leave.
"Good night," she told him, leaving the room.
Ethan watched her go in the July sunlight. Then, he turned his gaze toward the window again.
—
As the evening fell, nothing needed organizing.
Thori was lying on the couch. The guardian lion was lying nearby. Indominus was inside the greenhouse, at the door to the living area in his favorite place for summer naps. Mira remained outside, among the grounds, while Sable watched their new visitors from the edge of the room where she sat.
The television was on. Playing something they weren't watching, as was the case when a screen provided ambient atmosphere in a room with a family that was comfortable enough not to feel the need for one but was okay with having it anyway.
Ilyana had been sitting at the table with her book when at some point during the conversation, it turned to whether or not Rogue's ride had provided enough of an impression of the Harley's capabilities.
"She should test it on the highway," Ilyana said. "The drive is a long narrow passage with its speed limited by the entrance angle rather than the bike."
Everybody looked at her.
The observation had merit and even humor, because she delivered it without any attempt at levity in her flat tone. And it worked well because she was right.
Rogue chuckled, followed by Jean, followed by a genuine laugh on Raven's part.
Ilyana returned to her book. The expression on her face showed her unmistakable delight.
Ethan paid close attention to it.
He did not make anything of it but was grateful for the observation nonetheless.
At some point, during another conversation, Rogue looked at him across the room.
"Tomorrow," she said. "Just do whatever you feel like doing. Same with us."
"No plan," he said.
"That's right," she confirmed. "Just one last day. Good one."
"Sounds exactly right," he agreed.
She smiled at him. Ethan returned the smile in the way she liked when she did something she enjoyed and was willing to acknowledge it. And she turned back to the conversation that carried on through the rest of the evening, eventually leading them to bed.
—
The Space, the ship, post-solar modification event:
Reed was stretching.
Again, that's how it would have been interpreted if Reed hadn't been doing it. Because in fact, he was sitting in his seat and his arm was extending across the far side of the cockpit and through the wall and he was registering it with a portion of his brain that worked constantly. He withdrew his arm and repeated the gesture to confirm the results of the first. His arm passed through the wall with perfect ease, the physical barrier of the material no longer an issue.
The volume of information available to him was incredible.
Sue's hands were not there.
She watched the space where her hands should have been and found it occupied by nothing other than space. Her hands were completely invisible, presumably as a result of whatever changes occurred to her body during the radiation exposure and not because of damage or absence, as far as she could feel from within. She brought her hands back with effort of concentration and that indicated that the effect had an intentional component to it, something that was capable of being taught. Sue was learning it. She registered that she felt trembling and considered it a perfectly natural reaction to the circumstances, not a sign of weakness that required action.
Johnny's skin was hot. Warm, burning hot. Johnny felt his own fire under his fingertips as something internal and integral to him, not an external element affecting him, and he could not help but be fascinated by the feeling. He would have to be careful about touch for some time after that.
Ben remained motionless.
He'd been sitting in the same spot against the far wall since the event. His hands were resting on his knees, but no longer hands in the usual meaning of the word.
He was aware of this change since almost immediately after the event and he was sitting still, waiting for the moment when he would be ready to speak. For the time being, he did not seem inclined to do anything.
The trajectory had been calculated.
"We are going home," Reed said to everyone in the cockpit. "Going back home and taking the route to a private medical facility to see what happened to us in the proper conditions."
He was holding his notebook and filling the second page already.
"Sue," Reed heard her voice.
He looked at her.
She glanced at his notebook and then at him. A particular look of Sue Richards that said, in a way that did not require words, that he needed to be a person rather than a scientist.
He closed the notebook.
"We are all right," he said. "Not conventionally speaking, probably, but different doesn't mean we're in trouble. We are going home and seeing this through."
She looked at him.
"Together?" she asked.
He reached over to hold her hand, invisible or not, and Sue accepted it in turn, and Johnny was still gazing at the flames on his hands and Ben was motionless.
The ship turned in the direction of Earth.
The stars kept moving, rotating around them steadily, and below them the blue dot of a planet rotated into its seventh month and people there led their lives without knowledge of Fantastic Four's existence yet.
Reed opened his notebook again.