Some time later:
I woke up in the physical world.
My headache was gone. My body felt — for the most part — like my own again. Even the Mind Stone had gone quiet.
I looked around. Jean's and Felicia's room. Jean was asleep beside me. I reached out and pressed two fingers gently to her neck — temperature normal. But that wasn't what I was worried about.
The Phoenix.
There was no doubt in my mind about what I had witnessed. Jean's true power was awakening, and the idea of it consuming her — of her losing herself to it — frightened me in a way that had nothing to do with my own safety and everything to do with hers.
Jean Grey was famous in the stories I had grown up with for two things: how she died, and the fact that she stayed dead. Other versions of her existed. Other timelines had brought her back in various ways. But the pattern held more often than not, and it was a pattern I refused to accept.
She had given everything for me. She had left her friends, her family, her home — everything she had built before I ever came into her life — because she loved me. And what kind of man would I be if I didn't fight just as hard for her?
I closed my eyes and shifted into Web Vision, examining her carefully. Her aura looked the same — mostly. But underneath it, just barely visible, was something new. A small ember, burning like a single flame in a snowstorm. Bright. Fierce. Alive.
She was already on the path.
It would be my responsibility to make sure she didn't die on it. Jean would not fall to the Dark Phoenix. Hope would be raised with a mother. I would make certain of it — even if it cost me everything.
I turned my Web Vision on myself next and found the golden strings around my brain no longer wild — they were knotted and held, anchored and still.
I pressed a gentle kiss to Jean's sleeping lips. Then I carefully pulled myself out of bed, legs wobbling slightly from the sudden blood rush, and made my way down to my lab. Science might not hold all the answers here, but it was where I always thought best.
"Peter?"
I turned. Wanda and Felicia were sitting on the couch in the hallway, both nursing ice packs held to their heads.
I smiled. "Hey."
"Peter!" Felicia launched herself off the couch and crashed into me, wrapping both arms around me and holding on. She was crying — quietly, the way she always cried when she was trying not to. "I thought I'd lost you both."
I held her tightly and rubbed her back. "I'm sorry, Kitten. I'm so sorry for worrying you."
"What happened in there?" Wanda asked as she walked over, ice pack still pressed to her temple. "Why did you push us out?"
"You wouldn't have been able to withstand it," I said quietly, pulling back from Felicia just enough to look at her. "I couldn't let you get hurt. I'm sorry."
"And Jean?" Felicia asked. "You didn't push her out."
"Jean is a far more powerful psychic than I am," I replied. "She could handle it — and to be honest, she didn't exactly give me the option of pushing her out."
"What actually happened?" Wanda asked. "One minute you were fine, and then—"
"Franklin's powers finally activated," I said. "And I'll be honest — I did not expect anything like that."
"Too powerful to control?" Wanda guessed.
"By a significant margin," I said.
"Are you alright now?" Felicia asked, searching my face.
"That's what I'm going down to my lab to find out," I told her. "Someone should probably keep an eye on Jean in the meantime... just in case."
Felicia nodded immediately. "I'll stay. Wanda — go with him. You know more about this psychic stuff than I do anyway."
Wanda nodded. "Right. Come on then, Spider. I want to see what we're dealing with." I promised Felicia I'd call the moment anything happened, and then headed downstairs with Wanda.
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"Sexy," I grunted, pushing open the lab doors, "full scan, please."
"Right away, Peter," the AI replied. My clothes dissolved and reformed as my suit, which began running its internal diagnostic sweep immediately.
I climbed up onto the operating table, lay back, and stared at the ceiling. I was breathing hard — not from exertion, but from the residual disorientation of it all.
"Need something? Water?" Wanda asked from beside me.
"No, thank you," I said. "Well, Sexy? What's the verdict?"
"Your mind appears to be producing a sustained theta wave burst at an unusual rate. It's interacting with your physiology in a manner I can't fully model — I don't have the parameters to understand what's happening, Peter."
I frowned and looked down at my hands. I could feel something moving. Energy, but different from magic — it had the same baseline signature as my own life force when I conjured weapons, but the quality was off. Foreign. New.
I closed my eyes and let Web Vision take over. I saw the threads from the crown in my mind flowing down and across my body like channels finding their bed for the first time. I could feel them. And now that I could see them, I thought I might be able to shape them.
Acting on instinct, I reached with my mind and tugged on the flow — and it responded. It began to shift, drawing together, layering over my body like a second skin. The threads wove together as they gathered, building something coherent.
I opened my eyes.
A form of deep red energy covered my right hand and forearm — shaped roughly like a limb, but unmistakably not flesh. About twice the size of my real hand. It floated there, solid-looking and faintly luminous.
"Holy—" Wanda went very still, her eyes wide.
"Sexy — analysis?"
"It appears to be a structure composed of solid theta wave output, though I cannot account for how this is physically possible based on any framework I currently have."
*Solid theta waves.* "Psionic energy," I said slowly. "I think I inherited a fragment of Franklin's ability to form psionic constructs — a kind of second skin made of focused mental energy." I flexed my fingers experimentally and the red form flexed with them. Then I focused on changing its shape.
The energy responded instantly — the hand elongated, thinning out, stretching into a spike roughly five feet in length. I jerked my wrist back and it collapsed into a long, loose whip.
"Kinky," Wanda remarked. "Does it move like an actual whip?"
I swung my wrist forward. The psionic extension cracked outward, wrapped around the door handle across the room, and went taut.
I stared at it.
"Holy— this is unbelievable!" I threw my other hand up in excitement — and the whip pulled hard on the door handle, wrenching the metal clean out of the frame and sending it rocketing toward my face.
Wanda snapped her fingers. The door handle stopped in midair, an inch from my nose. She lowered it gently to the floor and looked at me with an expression caught somewhere between amusement and professional concern.
"Maybe a bit more careful going forward," she suggested.
"Yeah. Thanks for that." I looked at my hand and let the psionic energy dissipate. The red glow faded, leaving only my regular hand behind.
I sat with it for a moment. Franklin had staggering powers — time manipulation, reality distortion, things that bent the cosmos at will. I had always known I wouldn't inherit all of that. But psionic armor? Energy constructs? That was genuinely useful. Maybe more than I had expected from the lottery.
"Everything under control?" Wanda asked, studying me with what I could only describe as carefully concealed concern.
I smiled at her. "Worried about me, Witchy?"
"Still a terrible nickname," she said. "But yes. Are you actually okay?"
"For the most part," I nodded. "I seem to have a reasonable grip on it already. I don't think we'll see another episode like that." I paused. "I hope."
"Let's hope." Wanda glanced at my hand again. "Can you bring it up one more time? I want a closer look."
I held my hand out, focused, and let the psionic layer rebuild itself — this time covering my entire forearm and forming a vaguely shaped limb roughly four times the size of my natural one.
"Remarkable," Wanda murmured, reaching out and touching it with careful fingers. She ran her hand along the structure, tapping lightly. It rang with a faint hollow sound. "It feels real."
"Can you read it with your abilities?"
"I can try," she said, closing her eyes. A few seconds passed. "...Yes. I can feel it. It's there — it has real presence." She opened her eyes. "It feels almost like an extension of your own mind."
"Can you interact with it directly?"
"I don't think so," she said, withdrawing her hand. "It's too distinctly... you. And to be fair, Jean is the real psychic between us. I'm just a collection of oddities." She tilted her head. "What else can it do? Is it fixed to that form, or is it flexible?"
"I'm not sure yet," I said. "Let's find out."
I gathered the energy inward, pulling it from around my arm down into the palm of my hand, shaping it around a mental image. A sphere. The energy obeyed — it flowed and compressed and settled into exactly the shape I had pictured. I closed my fingers around it. Solid. Dense. Like gripping a ball of fiberglass.
"What else?" Wanda asked, curiosity overtaking any pretense of detachment.
I didn't answer — I focused instead, turning the sphere through shapes one after another. A dagger without a hilt. A crescent moon. A small hammer. Then, with a smirk I couldn't quite suppress, a red psionic version of Mjolnir.
"Incredible," Wanda breathed. "What are its limits, do you think?"
"Honestly? I think the only real limit is concentration," I said. "Whatever I can visualize clearly enough, I can build. The more complex the structure, the more strain — but it's similar to casting a spell, not exhausting in a fundamentally different way."
Wanda nodded slowly, filing it away. "We should study this properly at some point. But for now — let's go back upstairs. Jean will wake up soon, and Felicia has been alone long enough."
I nodded and got to my feet, following her out of the lab.
As I walked, I turned the question over in my head. What exactly was the nature of these new abilities? The analogy that kept surfacing was Green Lanterns — energy constructs generated by willpower, shaped by imagination. A rough parallel, maybe. A starting point.
I would need to fully understand what I could do with this. And that would take time.
But time was something I intended to use well.
Because Thanos was coming. And whatever I was going to be when he arrived, I needed to be more than I was today.