...
The old universe had vanished. Anna worked the laws of death into what was left, and a new universe started to form.
A phoenix shape became clearer in the cosmos. Its eyes were made from cooling dark matter, and its tail glowed with leftover radiation. Each time its wings moved, a branch of the parasol tree stretched out, slowly linking to the new universe.
That link wiped away the last signs of Marvel's main multiverse. Everything was being rebuilt: spacetime, death, and even time itself. Death allowed this new beginning, but the universe still needed time to come alive. Luckily, Hawk knew just the goddess for that.
"Ancient One." He turned toward her and made an inviting gesture. "Please, give this universe a proper timeline. Let it finally move beyond these endless resets."
The Ancient One smiled and disappeared from his side. Moments later, the laws of time appeared at her command, joining the creation happening all around them.
Normally, life takes ages to evolve, and universes are just as slow. But with the Ancient One's help, that long stretch of time became something they could see. What should have taken a Big Bang and billions of years happened in a blink.
With the four elements of creation at work, clouds of cosmic dust spun, twisted, and joined to form new worlds. Planets lost in the old universe came back, including Earth. Destroying the planet had taken just a moment, and making a new one was just as quick.
The Ancient One's control over time sped up the rise of life. Early humans on Earth ate raw meat and wore little, but soon they were shaping stones into tools. They learned to control fire, and language grew from simple sounds and gestures.
Watching from space, they saw changes happen almost too fast to track.
Villages turned into cities. Huge stones became temples and walls, and people wrote laws and stories on clay and papyrus. Wagons rolled by, ships set sail, and kingdoms fought each other. Most of Earth's history was about war. When people weren't fighting, they were preparing for it.
"Mom, look." Something on Earth caught Jean's attention, and she pointed.
Wanda looked where her daughter pointed. In ancient Egypt, pyramids rose from the desert. The young Apocalypse was now Egypt's king, watching with cold eyes as workers built his pyramid.
"What about it?" Wanda asked, looking back without any apparent surprise.
"That's Apocalypse, right?" Jean frowned. "I thought he wouldn't be in the new Earth. He almost hurt Dad."
"You can explain this one, right?" Wanda asked Hawk with a smile.
"You can't change the past, sweetheart." Hawk shook his head and gave a soft laugh, turning to Jean. "No matter what you do, what happened still has to happen."
Changing the past usually made the future worse, unless someone stayed in your timeline to watch for changes every time you interfered. Hawk could do that. Most people couldn't.
The mutants after Days of Future Past showed this perfectly. Wolverine changed the past, but their future only got worse. The X-Men's last stand proved it.
"Apocalypse has to be here," Hawk went on. "He's why your mother and I ended up together. But his ending doesn't change. He dies, and your mother will always kill him wherever he shows up in my timeline."
Hawk didn't mind explaining. Jean was his oldest daughter, and the more she learned now, the more she could help her younger siblings later. That would give him and Wanda more time alone. The kids were a happy surprise, but he and Wanda were the real love story.
He looked at her, and she knew exactly what he meant. She almost rolled her eyes, but instead, she smiled warmly.
Jean pressed her lips together, nodded, and looked back at Earth. While they talked, Apocalypse had vanished from his pyramid, and the grand building was already starting to look old. Now, he was asleep inside.
Time was the harshest force of all. It made heroes older and turned women's hair gray, while the Ancient One kept pushing the universe forward.
Soon, Earth entered the age of steam, steel, and early electricity.
Wolverine showed up again, remembering the original future, and tried to change it once more. With time moving so fast, even that fight was over in a moment. Then it was time for Hawk and Wanda's story, though Jean would arrive first.
"No. No way." Jean saw her parents looking at her, guessed what they were thinking, and shook her head hard. "I'm not doing all that again."
"Then she doesn't have to," Hawk said, sharing a look with Wanda and shrugging.
"You spoil her," Wanda said, rolling her eyes.
"Of course he does!" Jean laughed, linking her arm with Hawk's. "I'm the oldest Phoenix daughter."
Wanda shook her head at them but didn't argue. She lifted her hands and used her scarlet chaos magic. Strange flames came down to Earth, changing reality and creating the Jean who was meant to appear at that moment in history.
The girl on Earth wasn't the real Jean, but now she was part of that world.
'Wait a second. George and Helen Stacy, and Gwen's two younger brothers—did you create them the same way?' Hawk asked, speaking directly into Wanda's mind.
'Of course.' She turned to look at him.
'But how did you know so much about them?'
'Gwen told me.' Wanda smiled. 'While you were off in space taking the World Tree, she spent days telling me everything about your life together. And everything about her own life, too.'
Hawk nodded, thinking it over.
While they talked privately, Jean's arrival in this universe had already happened below. Now it was their turn.
"Want to go down there and relive some of it?" Hawk asked, looking from Earth's place in history to Wanda.
"Relive what?" Wanda laughed. "The part where I entered your timeline and that rush of time you created tore me apart before I could blink?"
"Sorry," Hawk said, backing off right away. "My mistake."
"Although..." Wanda's smile shifted as a new idea came to her. "We could do it again. This time, let's switch roles."
Hawk paused. The look on her face made him uneasy.
"Whoa, wait. You know I don't get time. You said it yourself—I've just been finding shortcuts the whole way."
"Relax. I just want you to feel what I did when I jumped into your timeline," Wanda said with a bright smile.
"Maybe it'll help with that macho side of yours."
"I'm your kept man," Hawk said.
"Then stop acting like you're in charge." The more he argued, the more Wanda liked her idea.
"You have me, the Ancient One, and Anna here. With the goddesses of time and death watching over you, you couldn't die now even if you tried."
Wanda looked like she had decided. Hawk stared at her, feeling both exasperated and amazed, and tried one last time to change her mind.
"Honey, I gave you this whole new universe as a gift."
"I know," Wanda said. "And now I'm going to open it."
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