Two tonight.
The work was becoming calibrated in a way that felt less like improvisation and more like craft — the difference between someone who had done a thing enough times to understand it and someone still learning the shape of it. He knew more of the network now than the network knew about itself, the fragmented picture assembled across weeks of interrogations into something approaching a complete map. Two more nodes removed, twenty-eight thousand dollars in the backpack, and home before midnight.
He lay on the hotel ceiling looking at the familiar white surface and thought about tomorrow.
Raven, said the relevant part of his internal organization.
Yes, said the rest. Raven. Sleep now.
He slept.
---
Xavier's office had the same quality it always had — the books, the chess games, the patient density of a room that had contained a lot of important conversations and had developed a gravity from them. Xavier himself had the morning alertness of someone who operated on consistent rhythms, the particular readiness of a man who was always, at some level, prepared to have an interesting conversation.
Ethan sat down across the desk.
"I wanted to ask something practical," he said. "I've been coming and going fairly freely. Buzzing the gate, being let in. Is that going to continue to be acceptable, or would it be better to establish a more formal arrangement?"
Xavier looked at him with the mild amusement of someone who had been asked a question they'd already answered in their own mind. "You're welcome here as you are," he said. "The gate is a formality for people I don't know. You've been adequately introduced."
"Thank you," Ethan said. He paused. "Are you familiar with SHIELD?"
The quality of Xavier's attention shifted — not with alarm, but with the specific focus of someone encountering a topic that had a history. "I am," he said. "We've had contact with them periodically. They have — interests — in the mutant population that require occasional management. We maintain a working relationship."
"I met with them a day ago," Ethan said. "We've established an arrangement. I handle targets they need removed, I verify the targets independently, and they pay me." He paused. "I wanted you to know, in case it's relevant to any of your dealings with them."
Xavier absorbed this. "And you trust them?"
"I trust my handler," Ethan said. "I trust myself to verify everything independently. I trust the arrangement specifically and not the organization generally." A pause. "Which is probably the right amount of trust for the situation."
Xavier looked at him with the expression of a man who had been reading people for decades without being able to read this one and had developed an alternative methodology of careful observation. "You're a careful person," he said.
"Getting more careful," Ethan agreed.
"Also i would like to offer my number for any emergencies you might encounter," Ethan said.
"There's also—" Xavier's expression moved through something that was not quite amusement but was adjacent to it "—a practical matter. Raven is in the back garden."
"I know," Ethan said.
"Of course you do," Xavier said, and the near-amusement clarified slightly. "Is she the reason for the emergency contact offer, or is that separate?"
Ethan looked at him. "If we'd never gone on a date," he said, "I'd still have offered the number. This place has people in it worth protecting, and I'm in a position to help if something comes up. That's independent of anything else."
Xavier looked at him for a long moment with the assessment of someone who was very good at reading what people meant rather than what they said, and who was currently working from evidence rather than telepathy.
"I believe you," he said. "Which is more meaningful than it might sound, coming from me."
"I know what it means," Ethan said. He stood. "I'll leave you to it."
"Ethan," Xavier said as he reached the door. He turned. Xavier's expression had settled into something warmer than the professional assessment. "She's been — different, these past few days. In ways I find encouraging." He paused. "I thought you should know that."
Ethan held this for a moment.
"Thank you," he said, and meant it more than the two words could carry.
---
The back garden in November had the skeletal elegance of well-maintained formal landscaping stripped to its structural bones — the hedges holding their shapes, the paths clear, the dormant flower beds patient in their winter configuration. She was standing near the far hedge with the self-contained quality he'd catalogued as her default outdoor mode: alert without appearing to be, aware of the full perimeter without seeming to watch it.
The blonde form. The coat. The morning light was doing the thing morning light did.
He walked across the garden toward her and felt, in approximately the same place he'd felt it every time for the past few days, the specific warmth that he'd stopped trying to categorize and started simply acknowledging.
"Hey," he said. There was something in the way it came out — a fraction of something he'd have called shyness if someone else had asked, though he was declining to call it that himself.
The corner of her mouth moved. "Hey, yourself."
"I have an idea for today," he said. "You mentioned wanting to try painting."
Something in her expression — not quite surprise, more the movement of someone encountering evidence that they'd been listened to and remembered. "I did say that."
"My hotel room is large enough," he said. "I can get supplies brought up. Canvases, easels, paint, everything. If you wanted to try it somewhere without—" he gestured vaguely at the mansion, at the general populated quality of it "—an audience."
She looked at him for a moment. "You want to paint together."
"I want to see if you're any good," he said. "And find out if I am."
The expression completed itself into something genuine. "All right," she said. "Yes."
She paused. "Why are you—" she looked at him with the precise attention she gave things she was actually curious about "—like that? The slight—"
"Shyness?" he said, deciding to be accurate about it.
"I was going to say something."
"I just want it to go well," he said. "All of this. These days." He paused. "I haven't — I should tell you something, because I think it's relevant and because you should have accurate information about the situation." He looked at her directly. "I've never been in a relationship. I've never been on a date before these last three days. I have no experience with any of this at all."
She looked at him.
"So the shyness," he said, "is just the honest state of someone who doesn't entirely know what they're doing but is fairly strongly motivated to not mess it up."
A long pause. Something in her expression that was doing something he didn't entirely have a read on yet — moving through several phases, landing on something that was warm in the specific way of something that had been surprised into warmth.
"You don't have to worry," she said. She said it simply, without performance. "You're doing fine."
"Okay," he said. "Good." A pause. "We can take your car, or—you mentioned wanting to try flying."
"I did," she said, with the slight deliberateness of someone who had been thinking about this and was confirming the thought was still accurate.
"I can carry you," he said. "Or just holding hands is enough for the lift. Either works."
She looked at him with precisely the quality of attention she used when she was making him slightly more flustered than he wanted to be. "What would you prefer?"
He answered before the management layer could review the answer. "The carry," he said. And then immediately: "But only if you're comfortable with it. Either is fine. Really. Whatever—"
"I'd like to be carried," she said. The tone had the slight warmth of someone who had noticed the order of those sentences and was choosing to focus on the first one.
"Okay," he said. "Now?"
"Now," she said.
He lifted her up.
The specific logistics of carrying someone were something his enhanced senses resolved before his brain had finished running the social analysis of the situation — the weight of her, the distribution of it, the automatic adjustment of his grip to something that was secure without being constraining. His bioelectric aura extended around her with the naturalness he'd come to associate with it, the field that made large objects carriable without structural failure doing the same for the smaller, more immediately significant object in his arms.
She settled. She looked up at him with the expression of someone taking stock of a new experience.
"Ready?" he said.
"Ready," she said.
He went up.
---
At two hundred feet, the city spread below them in its morning configuration, the Hudson catching the November light to the west, the grid of Manhattan resolving into its component parts. He was flying at a pace that was comfortable for conversation — well below his ceiling, the kind of speed that was fast enough to feel like flying and slow enough to feel like traveling together rather than transit.
"There's no wind," she said.
"My aura," he said. "It extends around people I'm carrying. The air moves around us rather than through."
She was quiet for a moment, looking at the city below with the absorbed attention of someone experiencing something genuinely new. "This is—" she started, and then stopped, which was not her usual pattern. "Peaceful," she said, eventually.
"Yes," he said.
"You fly every night?"
"Between jobs, mostly. Sometimes just to think." He paused. "It's the best place to think. Nothing is competing for your attention except the sky."
She looked sideways at the skyline moving past. "I can see that."
"The aura is the thing that makes the carrying work," he said, navigating toward the question she might eventually have. "It's what lets me pick up a plane without the plane tearing itself apart at the contact points. The field distributes the force rather than concentrating it." He paused. "It also means that people I'm carrying are — inside it, essentially."
She looked at him.
"It's a bioelectric field," he said. "My own. Extended." He paused, not sure if she'd made the connection he'd made.
Something in her expression shifted — not rapidly, more the slow movement of a thought finding its place. He could almost see the specific name forming in her consideration, the face that went with the question she'd just thought of. She didn't say it. She filed it, which was her pattern — file now, address when the moment was right.
"What are you thinking?" he asked.
"Later," she said. "Tell me more about the aura."
---
The hotel room took twenty minutes to transform.
The call to the lobby had been received with the professional efficiency of a hotel that had decided its business model included accommodating unusual requests without editorializing about them. Two easels, four canvases of varying sizes, a comprehensive collection of acrylic and oil paint, brushes in every range of size and stiffness, palettes, protective cloth for the floor, and a table for the supplies. The bellhop who brought it up had the expression of someone who had delivered stranger things and was not going to speculate.
They stood in the rearranged room, looking at the setup.
"So," Ethan said.
"So," she said.
"What do you want to paint?"
She looked at the canvases. She looked at the room. She looked at him.
"I have an idea," he said. "You could do anything — landscape, whatever comes to mind. But if you wanted a suggestion—" he paused "—we could paint each other."
She held his gaze for a moment. "Portraits."
"You'd have a good subject," he said. "If you want. And I'd have an extraordinary one."
The last three words landed the way he'd intended them to — direct, without the management layer this time, just the accurate thing. She received them without deflecting, which was its own kind of response.
"All right," she said. "Natural form?"
"If you want."
She shifted. The blonde form became the blue form with the ease of a breath — and in the hotel room light, with the morning coming through the window and the canvas and paints arranged, she was something that he had to make a conscious decision to stop looking at so he could pick up a brush.
He picked up a brush.
---
They worked in the comfortable way of two people engaged in parallel, adjacent activity — similar enough to share a space, different enough to require their own focus. She started with the bold gestures of someone who didn't know the rules yet and was therefore not constrained by them. He started with the careful foundation of someone whose enhanced vision and motor control were rapidly becoming apparent assets.
They talked.
He asked about Erik — about the early days with him and Charles, the specific texture of what it had been like to have two people in the world who explained her rather than reacting to her. She talked about it with the measured honesty she'd been bringing to these conversations, offering the shape of things with the careful editing of someone who was still deciding how much was safe to give and was giving more than she'd expected to.
She asked about his nights. Not the specific operations — more the feel of them, what it was like to move through a city as something other than human and clean it from the inside. He described it with the honesty he'd decided was the only register worth having with her.
She told him about the years she'd spent in other faces entirely — periods where she'd been someone else for so long the original question of who she was had become genuinely complicated. He listened without offering the easy responses that would have moved the conversation past what she was saying, and she noticed the listening and kept talking.
He finished first.
He turned his canvas away from her while she finished, which took another ten minutes, and she turned hers away until she was done.
"Okay," she said.
They turned them around simultaneously.
Her painting of him was abstract — not the architectural abstraction of someone trying to represent structure without representation, but something more personal, the kind of abstraction that happened when someone was painting what they were feeling about the subject rather than what the subject looked like. Shape and color, movement, something that was warmer than she'd probably consciously intended.
His painting of her was photorealistic in the specific way that happened when the person with the brush had visual acuity beyond normal human range and fine motor control beyond normal human parameters — the blue of her skin in the morning hotel light, the red of her hair, the specific quality of her expression from the past hour, which was the open, absorbed expression she had when she was somewhere she felt safe enough to be unguarded.
She looked at it for a long moment.
"Do you hate it?" he asked. He said it with the genuine uncertainty of someone who knew he'd painted something specific and wasn't sure how she'd receive being seen that clearly.
"I love it," she said. Quietly, directly, and entirely meant.
"Good." He looked at her canvas. At the warmth of it, the movement of it. "I love yours."
She turned to look at him with the expression that was becoming familiar — the one that happened when he said something she hadn't expected and didn't deflect from. Her heart, he noted, had done something slightly different for a moment.
"Really?" she said.
"Really," he said. "It has your mind in it. That's what makes it extraordinary."
A pause. "You're very—"
"A lot," he said. "I know."
She laughed. A real one this time — not the redirected sound, not the controlled corner-of-the-mouth, but an actual laugh, brief and genuine, and he thought it was possibly the best sound he'd heard since arriving in this world.
They decided to keep each other's paintings. He wrapped hers carefully, and she held it with the particular care of someone holding something that was going to matter.
He was looking at the canvases and thinking about something he'd been considering since the flight over — since the aura conversation, since noticing her file the thought away — and decided that the direct approach was the right approach, had been working consistently, and should continue.
"Can I ask you something?" he said. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to."
She looked at him.
"When you're in your blue form — or in any form — you're changing your skin to create clothing." He paused. "Are you — technically — wearing anything?"
The room was quiet.
She looked at him with the expression of someone watching a very specific kind of flustering happen in real time, and finding it somewhat delightful.
"The scales," she said, with the careful composure of someone enjoying this thoroughly. "They cover what they cover. In blue form, that's sufficient." A pause. "I wouldn't say I'm naked. The form is its own—"
He had looked away. Slightly.
"So in the form you've been in for the past hour," he said, at approximately the ceiling, "you're — essentially—"
"It covers what it needs to cover," she said. "I've never found it concerning."
"Right," he said. "No. Completely reasonable. I'm just—" he paused "—not used to this."
"I noticed," she said, and the warmth in her voice was the warmth of someone who was enjoying his discomfort with complete affection.
She crossed the room and hugged him.
He startled — not badly, not the startle of someone who hadn't noticed her moving, but the startle of someone whose nervous system had not been prepared for this specific event, regardless of his ability to track everything in his environment. The blue arms around him, the painting tucked carefully under her arm, her head at approximately his shoulder height, the warmth of it.
He didn't mind it.
He minded it so little that he was slightly embarrassed by how little he minded it.
"Another day after tomorrow?" she said into his shoulder.
He found his voice. "Yes," he said. "Absolutely. Yes."
She pulled back, portrait in hand, with the expression of someone who had made several good decisions today.
"Fly me back?" she said.
"Obviously," he said.
---
The mansion driveway in the late afternoon had the particular light of November at four o'clock, the early sunset of the northern latitude making everything amber and long-shadowed. She was in the blonde form again by the time they came down — he'd felt the shift somewhere over Westchester and had made the face he'd made last time without entirely meaning to, and she'd noticed it without commenting on it, which was its own kind of communication.
She was carrying the portrait.
They stood in the driveway with the quality of the past two goodbyes — the natural pause of something ending that wasn't ending.
"Day after tomorrow," she said.
"Day after tomorrow," he confirmed. "I'll come here."
"I'll be in the garden," she said.
She looked at him. He looked at her. The November light, the portrait under her arm, the mansion behind her.
She went up on her toes and kissed him.
Quick, deliberate, present — the specific quality of a choice being made rather than a moment being fallen into. Her lips on his for a few seconds, the warmth of it, the entire experience of it being simultaneously exactly as significant as it was and also somehow more than he'd fully processed in real time.
And then she walked away, up the steps, portrait in hand, not looking back, with the gait of someone who had done exactly what they'd intended to do and was done with the scene.
He stood in the driveway.
He stood there for a moment longer.
Did that—, he thought.
Yes, said the relevant part of his internal organization. That happened.
Okay, said the rest of him.
He stood there for one more moment, and then he went up, climbing into the amber-lit Westchester sky, and turned south toward Manhattan, and thought about the day with the specific, thorough quality of someone committing it very carefully to memory.
---
Inside the mansion, she made it approximately to the second-floor landing before the ambush.
Three faces appeared — Storm from the sitting room doorway, Jean on the stairs, Rogue materializing from the direction of the kitchen with the instinct of someone who had been keeping half an ear on the driveway sounds.
"How—" Storm started.
"Is that—" Jean said.
"She's holding something," Rogue said, looking at the canvas.
Raven turned the portrait around.
The three of them looked at it.
Jean made a sound. Storm put a hand to her mouth. Rogue stared at it with the specific expression of someone encountering something they weren't entirely prepared for.
"He painted that?" Storm said.
"In about two hours," Raven said. "While we were talking." She looked at it herself, from the angle of someone who had been looking at it since the hotel room and was still not tired of looking at it. "In my natural form."
"It looks like a photograph," Jean said. "It looks—" she paused "—it looks like how he sees you."
Raven didn't respond to this immediately.
"And?" Rogue said. "The date. How did it—"
"I kissed him before I left," Raven said.
Storm's expression completed itself. Jean smiled. Rogue's face did the complicated thing it did when she was genuinely happy for someone and simultaneously holding something quiet and personal about it.
"He didn't know it was coming," Raven said. "I walked away. He was standing in the driveway when I last saw him."
"He's probably still standing there," Jean said.
"I gave him maybe thirty seconds," Raven said, with the precise satisfaction of someone who had executed something well.
"Raven," Rogue said, and her voice had the specific quality it had on the stairs two nights ago. "I'm glad." She paused. "I'm really glad."
"I know," Raven said. She looked at her. "I've been thinking about something else. His aura—" she paused "—Anna, I want to look into it. Whether his bioelectric field might change things, for contact. I'm not promising anything. But I want to ask him."
Rogue went very still.
"Don't get your hopes up," Raven said, gently. "I'm just saying I'm going to ask."
"Okay," Rogue said, with the voice of someone performing equilibrium over something that wasn't equilibrium yet.
Storm was still looking at the portrait. "He sees you very clearly," she said.
Raven looked at the canvas in her hands.
"Yes," she said, quietly. "He does."
---
Ethan flew south over the Hudson with the city assembling itself ahead of him in the early evening lights and thought about the day.
The painting. The conversation. The hug. The fact that he had apparently stood in a driveway looking slightly stunned for a period of time that he was declining to estimate.
Good day, he thought.
Excellent day, said the relevant part of his internal organization, which was still slightly giddy about the driveway.
Tomorrow, Coulson said the practical part.
He thought about this. Tomorrow, he would meet a young Phil Coulson, brief him as a handler, and establish the working relationship that would structure his SHIELD operations going forward. This was interesting, and he was looking forward to it in the professional sense.
He was looking forward to the day after tomorrow in an entirely different sense.
He dropped toward the hotel and thought about the portrait leaning against the wall of his room, and thought about the one Raven was holding, and thought about the expression on her face when he'd told her he loved the abstract version of him she'd made — the one that had her mind in it.
He landed in the alley.
He went upstairs.
The day after tomorrow, said everything relevant about his current state of being.
I know, said the rest of him. I know.