[The Plaza Hotel, Manhattan — 17th Floor, September 2010, Evening]
The seventeenth floor of the Plaza had been transformed for the evening into something that sat comfortably between elegant and warm. The lighting was low and golden, the tables carried food and drinks in abundance, and a string quartet played at the far end of the room without demanding attention. The collective sound of people who genuinely liked each other filled the space with an easy, layered energy.
Ethan owned this hotel. He had renovated the upper floors himself with a combination of good taste and structural enhancements that no ordinary contractor would have been able to explain.
The seventeenth floor was his preferred venue for anything that needed to feel significant without feeling stiff, and tonight it was doing exactly what he had built it to do.
The guest list had stayed contained, which had been the plan. Bobby Drake stood at the drinks table getting his second glass of something amber and clearly enjoying the process more than the first glass had justified.
Kitty Pryde and Angelica Jones had found each other within minutes of arriving and had not separated since. Professor Charles Xavier sat near the window in his chair with the composed presence he carried everywhere, speaking quietly with Hank McCoy, who had dressed for the occasion with the particular effort of a man who appreciated formal events and had a complicated relationship with sleeves.
Logan stood near the back wall with a beer bottle, wearing his version of dressed up, which was a clean shirt with no visible tears, watching the room.
Scott Summers stood with his wife Madelyne, their five year old son Nathan running a controlled orbit around their legs with the focused energy of a small child who had been told to behave and was interpreting that instruction with considerable creative latitude. Scott had his arm around Madelyne's shoulders and was talking with Storm, who looked extraordinary in a deep blue dress that made her silver hair look deliberate rather than unusual.
Ben Grimm stood across the room with his girlfriend, both of them laughing at something, Ben's human hand wrapped around a drink. He still occasionally looked at his own fingers with a quiet, private satisfaction. Johnny was three tables away from Ben and currently deploying what appeared to be his complete arsenal of charm at a woman who seemed moderately interested and largely entertained by the effort.
Near the entrance, Yuriko Oyama stood with her back to the wall and her eyes moving across the room in a steady, systematic sweep.
She had dressed appropriately for the occasion, which meant she looked like someone attending a party while simultaneously being prepared to address any threat that came through the door.
Ethan had told her twice to relax and enjoy herself. She had nodded both times, like she had registered the instruction and placed it in a file labeled things other people do.
'She is going to outlive everyone in this room through sheer professional discipline,' Ethan thought, watching her from across the space.
Jean, Anna, Susan, Didi, and Diana were gathered with Kitty and Angelica near the center of the room, Elizabeth beside them, she's being introduced to more people than she was used to at once. The introductions were going smoothly. Kitty was talking with her hands, which meant she was telling a story, and Elizabeth was watching her with genuine focus.
Ethan moved through the room at an easy pace, stopping where it felt natural with glass of wine in hand. He could not get drunk. His body processed alcohol with the same efficient neutrality it processed everything else.
But the taste of a good wine was still a taste worth having, and this particular one was well chosen. It was the one category of drink that still held any real appeal for him. Everything else had lost its flavour entirely after his adaptation moved past a certain threshold. Wine, for reasons he had not fully worked out, still delivered something genuine.
Then Bobby Drake caught him passing the drinks table and turned with his second glass raised.
"Only ten days of marriage," Bobby said with a broad grin, "and you've already grown out a beard and gotten Jean pregnant. I don't even know whether to congratulate you or be concerned, man."
He shook his head with theatrical appreciation, as though he had rehearsed the line beforehand. "Look what marriage does to a guy."
Ethan looked at him. "Bobby."
"I am just saying," Bobby continued while glancing at Kitty, "some of us have been putting in years of work to build a successful relationship with considerably less dramatic results. Meanwhile, you somehow managed to maintain successful relationships with multiple women at the same time. What's the secret, man? I promise I won't tell a soul."
"Define dramatic results," Ethan said, already noticing that things between Kitty and Bobby did not seem to be going particularly well.
"You know what I mean."
"The beard," Ethan replied, "is Anna's preference. Jean's pregnancy is a separate and entirely unrelated development."
"Sure it is," Bobby said dryly.
Ethan smiled innocently and took a sip of his wine. "When you get Kitty to tolerate you long enough to develop preferences about your facial hair," he said, "then come talk to me about dramatic results."
Bobby pointed at him. "That was almost an insult."
"Almost," Ethan agreed pleasantly, and moved on.
...
[The Plaza Hotel, Near the Window — Same Evening]
Professor Xavier and Hank McCoy were in the middle of a conversation that had the quality of two people who had been approaching the same subject from different angles for years and were genuinely glad for a third perspective.
Ethan pulled out a chair and sat down between them and both men looked up with warm expressions.
"Ethan," Xavier said, "congratulations on becoming a parent. I know it's a huge responsibility, but I have faith that both you and Jean will be great parents."
He then looked toward Jean. "Jean looks like she's having the time of her life, and you look settled. That's a good thing to see."
"Thank you, Professor," Ethan said. "Thank you both for making the time. It means something to have you here."
"We would not have missed it," Hank said warmly. He smoothed the front of his burgundy jacket, which had required custom tailoring and showed it. "Though I will say the news about Jean caught me somewhat by surprise. You move at a considerable pace."
"Life moves at a considerable pace," Ethan said. "I try to keep up with it."
Xavier smiled and folded his hands in his lap. "I have been meaning to speak with you about the MSS," he said. "The Mutant Stabilizer Serum. The impact over the past years has been measurable. Acceptance rates in several states have shifted. More mutants are living openly in communities that would have been hostile to them before."
"That is good to hear," Ethan said.
"It is," Xavier said, and then paused with the particular honesty of a man who had something more complicated to add and was not going to leave it out. "Though I will be direct with you, as I always am. The idea of suppressing the mutant gene as a path to coexistence sits uneasily with me. It feels like asking someone to be less of what they are in order to be tolerated by people who should be learning tolerance instead."
Ethan nodded. "I understand that position," he said. "And I respect it. The serum was never meant to be the final answer or the only answer. It gives people a choice they did not have before. Some mutants want to live without their abilities defining every interaction they have. Some do not and never will. The point is giving people the choice. Not making it for them."
Xavier considered this for a moment with the measured expression of someone genuinely revising their framing. "That is a reasonable way to hold it," he said finally.
"Besides," Ethan added, "two of my wives are mutants. My investment in mutant wellbeing is not theoretical."
Xavier smiled. Hank laughed, open and genuine.
"Which brings me," Hank said, leaning forward with his elbows on the table and his expression shifting to something more direct and personal, "to something I want to say to you without dressing it up."
His blue eyes were steady. "I am proud of you, Ethan. You sat in my lab, asked questions I did not always have good answers to. You studied under me for a period and took everything seriously. And then you went and created a serum I spent years trying and failing to produce." He paused. "That is not a small thing. I want you to know I mean that."
Ethan looked at him for a moment. "I had a good teacher," he said simply.
Hank accepted it with a nod that held more than it showed.
Xavier shifted the conversation with the practiced ease of a man who managed transitions as a professional skill. "There is something else I wanted to raise tonight," he said. "Genosha."
Ethan raised an eyebrow.
"Eric is hosting a peace gala," Xavier said. "The official United Nations recognition of Genosha as a sovereign mutant nation. A historic occasion, if it holds as intended. I am attending, and I would very much like you and your family to join us."
Ethan was quiet. His expression stayed easy but underneath it his mind was moving quickly. He knew about Genosha from his previous life. He knew what had happened there in the main timeline, the massacre, the scale of it, the brutality of an attack on a place that was supposed to be safe.
He did not know if that outcome still held in this timeline. Too much had already changed for certainty in either direction. But the possibility existed, and the possibility was worth taking seriously.
He also knew that Madelyne was at this table right now, across the room, laughing at something Scott had said, alive and present and unaware of what the original timeline had held for her. He did not know if that still applied here either.
'It seems like going there would be a good choice,' he thought. 'Not just for the politics. I need to see with my own eyes how the meeting unfolds. Sure, I could use Chronokinesis to see what might happen, but that would only show me possibilities—not which one will actually come to pass.'
A faint smirk formed on Ethan's face internally, 'Besides, I'm very interested in seeing the look on Mystique's face when she meets me.'
"Does Magneto actually want me there?" he said. "We have history that is not entirely diplomatic, Professor. The last time we occupied the same space, he came considerably close to not surviving it."
Xavier, possessing the patience of a man who had spent decades managing relationships between people who had once tried to kill each other and still believing in the possibility of what could come afterward spoke calmly.
"Eric has changed," he said. "These past years have genuinely moved him. He wants peace for his people and he has abandoned the violence because he believes there is a better way, not because he was forced to. That distinction matters."
He looked at Ethan steadily. "I am not asking you to forget what happened between you. I am asking you to come and see who he is now. A peace gala is exactly the right context to begin something new."
Hank leaned in. "Raven will also be in attendance," he said. "I thought a proper conversation between you two, in a neutral setting, might close some things that have been left open."
Ethan thought about Raven. She had barely left her room for months after visit to the Hell Dimension. What he had done to her psychologically in that place had been thorough and he had known it even while doing it.
Jean had gone in with her telepathy and carefully repaired the damage, which had taken time and precision, and Raven had emerged from her room quieter than she had gone in but functionally intact. He was genuinely curious what a direct conversation with her in a setting like Genosha would look like now.
'It will be interesting at minimum,' he thought.
"Thank you for the invitation, Professor," he said, and his smile was genuine. "I will be there."
Xavier looked quietly satisfied, the way he got when things moved in the direction he had worked toward.
...
[Few moments later, The Plaza Hotel, Center of the Room — Same Evening]
The girls were having a considerably louder time.
Jean stood with a glass of sparkling water, because she was being responsible about the pregnancy in public, and was in the middle of receiving congratulations from Angelica.
"You are going to be such an incredible mother," Angelica said, squeezing her hands. "I mean it completely."
"Thank you, Angie," Jean said.
Kitty materialized at Jean's elbow. "Has anyone done the actual math on what this child is going to be capable of? Because Jean Grey's genetics combined with whatever Ethan is at this point is either going to produce the most powerful individual alive or someone who just catastrophically excels at every single thing they attempt."
"Kitty," Jean said.
"I am being scientific," Kitty said.
"You are being alarming," Jean said.
"Those are not mutually exclusive," Kitty said, and took a sip of her drink with complete satisfaction.
Across the room, Anna was beside Diana, both of them in conversation with Storm that had moved from the party itself to training philosophies to what appeared to be a detailed comparative breakdown of power discipline between different warrior traditions. Storm was listening to Diana with focused attention.
"In Themyscira," Diana said, with measured certainty, "we trained from childhood with the understanding that every weapon is an extension of will before it is an extension of the hand. Discipline comes first. Power follows discipline. Always in that order."
"That is not entirely unlike how Charles approaches the development of psychic ability," Storm said thoughtfully.
"Most truths about power," Diana said, "are the same truth wearing different clothes."
Anna glanced across the room and caught Ethan's eye for a brief moment. He raised his wine glass slightly in her direction. Her expression softened and she looked away.
Didi stood with Elizabeth slightly apart from the main cluster, Elizabeth holding her drink and managing the room of new faces with more ease than she had shown an hour ago. Didi was watching everything with her characteristic quiet attentiveness and occasionally saying something low to Elizabeth that made the younger woman nod or smile with the expression of someone receiving useful information.
Susan was near the window with Hank, and from the gestures she was making the conversation had turned to what the Mutant stabilizer serum will do to a mutant body.
Hank was listening with the expression of a scientist who had just been handed a research question he very much wanted to pursue and was already composing the first questions in his head.
Jean looked around at all of them and felt something settle in her chest that was content and solid and uncomplicated.
Then she let her attention drift inward for a moment, toward the practical reality sitting underneath the warmth of the evening. Ethan had plans. She could not see the specifics but she could feel the shape of them the way she always felt the shape of his thinking, broad and ambitious and moving faster than he had said out loud yet. Whatever he was building toward was going to take significant time and significant focus.
Which meant the company needed handling.
She looked at Anna. Anna would need to return properly to the Widows operation. Elena and Melina had been holding it together with competence and dedication but that was not a permanent arrangement and everyone knew it. It needed Anna's direct attention and it needed it soon.
Didi had the Afterlife Bar. That was its own full undertaking.
Jean's eyes moved to Diana, who was still talking with Storm and Anna with the composed authority she brought to everything. Diana was the answer. Jean was certain of it before she had even finished the thought.
"So," Kitty said, reappearing with fresh drinks distributed to the immediate circle, "who is actually going to run Aeon Biotech while Jean is occupied with the small matter of creating a new human being?"
Jean smiled. "Diana," she said.
Diana turned from her conversation without missing a beat. "I will handle it," she said, as if the question had always had a simple answer and the only question was when someone would ask it out loud.
Jean looked at her with genuine warmth. "I know you will."
"Elizabeth should also join the company," Anna said, looking across to where Elizabeth stood with Didi. "Learn how it runs. Help where she can. It will be good for her."
Elizabeth's head came up at the sound of her name. "Me?"
"You," Anna confirmed.
"I do not know anything about running a biotech company," Elizabeth said carefully.
"None of us knew everything when we started," Jean said. "You will learn. And you will have Diana to work alongside."
Elizabeth was quiet for a moment. Then she straightened slightly with the particular expression of someone setting aside uncertainty in favor of purpose. "If it helps Ethan-sama," she said, "then I will do it."
The reaction was immediate. Laughter first, warm and collective, then the specific brand of knowing commentary that passes between women who have spent enough time together to have developed their own shorthand for exactly this kind of moment.
"Ethan-sama," Kitty repeated, with complete delight.
"She said it again," Angelica confirmed.
"I do not understand why that is funny," Elizabeth said, her cheeks going pink.
"It is not funny," Didi said serenely, from across the small circle. "It is extremely cute."
Elizabeth covered the lower half of her face with one hand and looked at the ceiling while the laughter around her continued with no sign of stopping.
...
[Carter Residence, Ethan's Personal Room — Late Night]
The house was quiet in the way homes become after a good evening, a silence that felt warm and full instead of empty.
Ethan lay on his back on the king-size bed in his personal room, hands folded behind his head, wearing only his underwear, staring at the ceiling.
The room was dark except for the soft orange-grey ambient light coming through the curtains from the city outside.
He had enchanted the house when they moved in. A layered runic structure woven into the walls and floors that gave each of his girls their own complete and private space. Their rooms were genuinely their own. They could come to him when they wanted, sleep together when they wanted, keep their own space when they needed it.
Tonight they had all drifted to their own rooms after the party. It happened sometimes, and he understood it without taking it personally. They had their own inner lives and they knew he respected that.
He did not mind having the room to himself. The silence was useful.
He stared at the ceiling and let his mind run through everything that was waiting.
For his company, he already knew what the next project was going to be.