Rise of an Immortal

Chapter 195 195: Letting Go

[Carter Residence, New York, Late Night, Into Morning]The fourth episode of Supernatural ended, and nobody made any move to stop the fifth from starting.

Jean had tapped out somewhere around episode three, kissing Ethan on the cheek and murmuring something about pregnancy and sleep schedules before disappearing toward the bedroom with one of the blankets trailing behind her.

Anna, Diana, and Ethan had no such excuse, he even used his Authority of Time to reduce the time flow inside his house by tiny margin and by the time the sun started threatening the horizon they had somehow worked their way through five complete seasons, a truly alarming quantity of popcorn, and at least three separate arguments about which season was the strongest.

"Season four," Diana said firmly, around four in the morning.

"Season one had the cleanest concept," Anna argued, eyes still fixed on the screen despite the hour. "Everything after that is just escalation for the sake of escalation."

"Escalation is the point," Ethan said. "It is a show about brothers who refuse to stay dead fighting increasingly large theological problems. Of course it escalates."

'And also it is almost beat for beat what I remember from my previous life, give or take a few details, which means I already know exactly how this argument should go and I am choosing not to use that information because that would be cheating.'

He kept that thought where it belonged.

Eventually, somewhere past five in the morning, the three of them went to bed.

He woke up a few hours later to Didi standing at the foot of the bed.

"We need to talk about the twins," she said, without preamble, the moment his eyes opened.

Ethan rubbed a hand down his face and sat up slowly, careful not to disturb Anna, who was still deeply asleep with one arm thrown over her eyes. "Good morning to you too."

"Good morning," Didi said, and waited.

He got up, pulled on a shirt, and followed her downstairs to the kitchen, where she had already made coffee, which told him this was a conversation she had been planning for a while.

"Pietro is not listening to me anymore," Didi said, once they were both seated. "He uses his speed to cheat on tests. He stays out late and comes home smelling like other people's perfume, and I do not mean the perfume of girls his own age. He treats every conversation I try to have with him like a formality he is enduring until I finish talking."

She wrapped both hands around her mug. "And Wanda is somehow worse, in a quieter way. She has not done anything reckless. She simply keeps... distance. She did not come to the party and barely speaks to me beyond what is necessary. I do not know what changed."

Ethan listened, turning his own mug slowly between his hands.

'She has been Death itself for longer than human language has existed,' he thought, watching her. 'She has overseen the ending of stars. And right now she sounds exactly like every exhausted parent who has ever lived, worrying about a seventeen-year-old who will not return her calls.'

He liked her enormously for that, though he kept the observation to himself.

"I will talk to them," he said. "Today."

Didi's shoulders eased slightly. "Thank you."

...

[Maximoff Residence, Queens, Late Morning]

The house sat a few blocks from Midtown High, modest and unremarkable from the street, chosen specifically for that quality after weeks of negotiation between Didi and two teenagers who had found Carter Residence, with its protection wards and its general atmosphere of barely contained cosmic activity, completely unbearable to live in full time.

Ethan and Didi stepped out of a portal into the living room.

He extended his senses briefly, a courtesy more than a necessity, and got a quick read on the house.

Pietro was upstairs, fully absorbed in a video game, his reflexes making the controller look almost decorative. Wanda was in her room with a book, though her attention did not seem entirely on the page.

"Give it a minute," Ethan said quietly. "Let's call them down."

"Pietro! Wanda!" Didi called up the stairs. "Can you both come down for a moment?"

Pietro arrived first, descending the stairs at a speed that was technically faster than necessary for someone who simply wanted to be done with a conversation.

He dropped onto the arm of the couch with the studied disinterest of a teenager determined not to look like he cared about whatever was coming.

"What's up," he said, not quite a question.

Wanda took considerably longer. When she did appear at the top of the stairs, she had changed her shirt and done something to her hair that had not been done five minutes earlier when Ethan had sensed her reading in bed. She came down at an ordinary pace, composed, and settled into the armchair across from the couch.

Her eyes moved to Ethan once, quick and almost unnoticeable, before she looked away toward the window.

Ethan noticed but gave no sign that he had.

Didi, on the other hand, caught the look and raised an eyebrow slightly, filing it away for later consideration.

"Since we all value our time," Ethan said, settling onto the couch across from both of them, "I am going to be direct."

He gestured toward Didi. "She is worried about both of you. The late nights, the way school is going, the distance. She loves you both and she is genuinely concerned."

Pietro crossed his arms. "We don't need a babysitter. We're not babies."

Ethan nodded slowly. "You're right."

The room went still.

Pietro blinked, clearly having braced for an argument and finding none arrived. Wanda's eyes came back to Ethan, sharper now, waiting for the rest of it.

"I could not agree more," Ethan continued. "You are both seventeen. You should be living your lives, making your own choices, figuring out who you are without two overpowered adults hovering over every decision you make."

He looked between them. "Isn't that exactly what you both want?"

Didi looked at Ethan with a small frown forming, clearly unsure where this was heading.

Pietro, sensing an unexpected victory, nodded immediately. "Yeah. Exactly."

"Good," Ethan said. "Then we are going to give you that... Full freedom. So, from now on, we are stepping back."

He raised one hand and snapped his fingers.

A faint white wave rippled outward from him, washing briefly over the walls of the house and fading into nothing.

"That was for the protection ward around this house," Ethan said. "It's disabled now. As of right now, you are exactly as protected as any other teenagers living on their own. No safety net and no invisible hand keeping the dangerous parts of the world away from your door."

He shrugged lightly. "Teenagers should learn to manage their own lives, after all."

Wanda's mouth opened slightly.

Ethan snapped his fingers again before she could speak.

"And your allowance has been adjusted," he said. "Enough to live comfortably. Not enough to fund whatever Pietro has been doing with his evenings that requires more cash than a seventeen-year-old should reasonably need."

He glanced at Pietro, whose expression had shifted from satisfaction to something more uncertain. "Independence comes with budgeting. That is part of the deal."

"Wait," Wanda said. "That's not what I—"

"And from this point forward," Ethan said smoothly over her, "we will not interfere in your lives unless your safety is genuinely at risk. No check-ins and no oversight with full personal space."

He looked directly at her. "Isn't that what you wanted?"

"That is not what I meant," Wanda said, her voice rising slightly.

Ethan checked his watch. "Wow, look at the time," he said before standing up. "I have a date with my wives and girlfriends today, and I am told it is rude to keep cosmic-powered women waiting."

He looked at both of them, and his voice softened just enough to take the edge off the performance. "We will see you both whenever you want to be seen. Until then."

He gave a small salute. "Sayonara." Then snapped his fingers, and he and Didi were gone.

The living room sat in silence for a moment.

Pietro blinked at the empty space where they had been standing. "That guy is unbelievably full of himself," he muttered. "Who does he think he is?"

"Our legal guardian," Wanda said quietly, still staring at the spot. "And one of the most powerful people on the planet."

'And my first secret crush,' she added silently, and immediately hated herself a little for thinking it.

Pietro looked at her for a second, shrugged, and stood up. "Whatever. We don't need his protection. We've made it this far on our own."

He paused, considering. "But we're definitely still using his money. That's just smart."

He blurred back up the stairs to his game.

Wanda stayed in the armchair, looking at the empty living room, the silence settling around her in a way that felt different from before, lighter and heavier at the same time.

'Maybe this is for the best,' she thought, pulling her knees up to her chest. 'If I have some distance from him, maybe these feelings fade. Maybe I stop noticing the way he talks, the way he somehow makes every room feel less dangerous just by being in it.'

She closed her eyes briefly. 'He is married... To two incredible women and has three girlfriends on top of that, and one of them raising us. There is no version of this that makes sense, Wanda. There is no version of this where you are allowed to feel what you feel.'

She opened her eyes and looked toward the stairs where Pietro had disappeared.

'This is actually good,' she told herself again, with less conviction than before. 'Distance is exactly what I need.'

...

[Carter Residence, New York, Same Time]

Ethan and Didi reappeared in the living room of Carter Residence, the portal closing silently behind them.

Didi looked at him, arms crossed, a small smile tugging at one corner of her mouth despite herself.

"So that was the plan," she said. "Let them grow up. But that little speech about freedom and budgeting and not interfering, that was a lot of theatre for a simple point."

"I know you want to give them everything," Ethan said gently. "But humans rarely understand the value of something until they come close to losing it. Teenagers especially. They need room to make their own mistakes and figure out their own lessons. I would know."

He paused. "I went through exactly that phase myself, a long time ago."

'In a life they will never know about,' he added silently. 'Which makes giving this advice slightly ironic, but the principle still holds.'

Didi sighed, the worry still sitting visibly behind her eyes. "I know. I just... fine. Let's observe for now and see how they handle it."

"That's all I'm asking," Ethan said.

Didi then asked with a teasing smile, "And from the way Wanda is looking at you... and the fact that she even did her hair before coming down—"

But Ethan cut her off.

"Hey, I'm not the one with the problem here. Sorry, but I'm built different. Girls just seem to fall for me."

Didi sighed. "I can tell, considering you already have two wives and three girlfriends. But tell me honestly, Ethan." She narrowed her eyes. "You're secretly enjoying this, aren't you?"

Ethan kept a perfectly straight face. "Nope. I already have my hands full with enough women. I don't need any more."

But internally, he was wearing the biggest smug smile imaginable.

One of his crushes from his previous life actually had a crush on him now. He was practically celebrating inside.

And honestly, could anyone blame him? Wanda looked like Elizabeth Olsen, and the fact that someone he once admired from another life was now interested in him was a little too satisfying.

Footsteps came down the hall, and Jean appeared in the doorway in her sleepwear, hair tousled, blinking against the morning light with the specific drowsiness of someone who had gone to bed sensibly while everyone else stayed up until dawn.

"Morning," she said, looking between them. "Did I miss something?"

"Nope," Ethan said, smiling. "But get ready. I'm taking everyone on a trip today. It's going to be a surprise."

Jean raised an eyebrow at him, intrigued despite the early hour.

Didi's smile shifted into something quietly knowing, and Ethan caught it immediately.

'She already knows about Mars,' he thought, watching her expression. 'Of course she does. No surprise there. But the rest of them are going to lose their minds.'

He grinned at the thought and stood up, already planning the next stop.

"I'll go grab Sue from the Baxter Building," he said. "Everyone get ready. We're going somewhere none of you have ever been."