Chapter 119: Move the New York Sanctum to Hell's Kitchen
"If you become Sorcerer Supreme," the Ancient One said, "the Sanctum is yours to do with as you see fit. You have the Stone. You have the capability. Convincing the other sorcerers would be the difficult part — but you've managed more difficult things."
She said this with complete serenity, which was how she said everything. Ethan had been watching her long enough to understand that serenity and calculation were not mutually exclusive.
What she did not say, and what she was thinking: The moment you accept, I can finish dying properly. And the Sanctum's fate is no longer my problem.
Ethan looked at her for a moment.
"No," he said.
She absorbed this without visible disappointment.
"Strange is better suited," Ethan continued. "He's going to go through the thing that makes a person into what the Sorcerer Supreme needs to be. I'm already what I'm going to be. He has more room to become the role." He picked up his tea. "Let him become it."
"You're quite certain."
"I'm certain I don't want to run both a Hell's Kitchen community school and the global defense against dimensional threats. One of those is already enough."
The Ancient One looked at him with something that might have been amusement, if amusement was something she allowed herself.
"Very well," she said. She stood. "I have one more request. Two days from now — come with me."
"Where."
"Asgard," she said. "To meet Odin."
Ethan paused.
He understood the logic immediately. The Ancient One was on a timeline — her death was coming, and she knew it, and she was arranging the pieces she'd be leaving behind. Strange would take over the mystic defense eventually. But Strange was still a neurosurgeon, not yet a sorcerer, and the gap between now and when he'd be ready was a window in which Earth needed someone else visible to the powers that watched from outside.
She wanted to introduce Ethan to the cosmic community as the person who would hold the line while Strange was still being made.
She also wanted to do this because Ethan was Strange's friend, which meant once Strange arrived at Kamar-Taj, Strange's teacher would be a woman who had already brokered a relationship with someone Strange trusted.
She was building redundancy into her succession plan.
Ethan thought about Loki. About Thor, who hadn't come to Earth yet. About Odin, who was — to put it gently — a complicated figure who responded well to strength and less well to anything that felt like a challenge.
He thought about the possibility of making useful contacts in Asgard before the situations that required them.
"Alright," he said.
"And the other universe," she said. "Earth-42. Don't forget."
"I haven't forgotten."
She gave him the look that meant you had somewhat forgotten, then stepped through a portal that she'd opened without ceremony and was gone.
Ethan sat in his room for another minute.
Asgard, he thought. And Odin. And probably Loki, depending on the timing.
And Wanda is going to want to come.
He was already thinking about how to have that conversation when she knocked on his door.
"Food's ready," she said, when he opened it.
He looked at her.
"I can tell you've been up here dealing with something," she said. "You have the face you make when you've agreed to something that's going to take significant effort."
"The Ancient One wants me to visit Asgard."
Wanda looked at him. "When."
"Two days."
"I'm coming," she said.
He had been going to argue this. He did not argue it.
"Fine," he said.
The table was full.
Three tables, actually — the Homestead's expanded interior had produced enough room for everyone, and everyone had found seats with the organic sorting of people who had been talking to each other all afternoon and knew where they'd ended up in relation to each other.
Doc Ock and Tony at one end, mid-sentence about something photon-adjacent. Sandman and Frank Castle nearby, talking about school logistics with the focused practicality of people who had both spent time on the wrong side of institutional authority and had arrived at similar conclusions about how to make institutions work. Matt Murdock and Caine, who had apparently developed a whole conversation about sensory compensation and the application of refined awareness to combat, that neither of them was going to stop having any time soon.
Little Ye, Richard, and Jessica at the children's end of the arrangement, which had self-organized without anyone directing it.
Pietro in his seat with the expression of a man who had been awake for approximately forty minutes and had consumed enough food to make peace with this.
John Wick with tea.
Ethan sat down.
Fisk stood.
The room settled.
"We're here," Fisk said, "because of Ethan. Most of us would be somewhere considerably worse without him, or wouldn't be anywhere at all." He held up a glass that had started the evening as beer and had evolved through several conversations. "I've watched him work for long enough to have opinions, which I'll share with anyone who's interested. The short version is that he's stubborn, frequently inconvenient, and the closest thing to a genuinely good person I've met in sixty years of occasionally difficult living."
He looked at Ethan, who had developed the expression of someone waiting for the other shoe.
"He's also, as far as I can tell, completely useless at accepting gratitude, so I'll keep it brief. He makes the impossible seem obvious. That's a talent." Fisk raised his glass. "To Ethan. And to all of you — for being the kind of people who end up in a place like this."
"Ethan," everyone said, in the varied registers of eighteen-odd people who had arrived at the table from different universes and different circumstances and had found a reason to be in the same room.
They drank.
The food came in waves — May had apparently understood that tonight was unusual and had prepared accordingly — and the conversation did what it does at tables where people actually want to be there.
Wade was the one who broke the comfortable equilibrium, because Wade was always the one.
He stood up, wearing the expression of a man who had been sitting on an idea for several hours and had decided it was time.
"Alright," he said. "Friendly competition. Ethan, you've been training Spider-Kid. I've been training Harry. Who has the better student?"
The table found this interesting immediately.
Ethan looked at Wade. Then at Peter Parker (Tobey), who was looking across at Harry with the expression of someone doing a rapid and somewhat apprehensive self-assessment. Harry was looking at Peter with equal parts confidence and competitive anxiety.
"If Ethan's student wins," Wade continued, "I have to do something for him. If Harry wins, he gets to ask me for something." He paused. "I may have spent some time thinking about this."
"That much is clear," Ethan said.
He looked at Peter. Peter straightened slightly, which was the physical equivalent of a decision being made.
"When," Ethan said.
"Now," Wade said. "Furniture moved. Tables pushed back. This is already a much bigger room than it looks — let's use it."
Peter and Harry looked at each other across the table.
Harry said: "I'm game if you are."
Peter said: "You're going to regret that."
The furniture started moving.
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you