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Let's be clear about something.
Claiming Hawk felt some deep maternal bond with Amy? Pure nonsense.
But saying he felt nothing at all? That would be a lie too.
So...
Expecting him to completely ignore Amy's circumstances and suffering? That wasn't realistic either.
From a certain perspective—
He was the one who had shaped his own present.
But the past couldn't be changed.
And as it happened—
Westview was a pretty nice place.
Excellent public safety.
Beautiful scenery.
Down-to-earth people.
A perfect spot for someone to live out their twilight years in peace.
Most importantly—
"Anya wants to meet her."
"..."
Gwen looked up at Hawk.
"You told Anya?"
"Yeah." Hawk nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. "This isn't just about me. It's Anya's story too. She has every right to know."
Gwen blinked.
"So... how did Anya react?"
"She cried."
Hawk kept it brief. Then, catching Gwen's expectant look urging him to elaborate, he shook his head. "She cried when she learned we weren't deliberately abandoned."
People were sorted into hierarchies.
Orphans were no different.
In the federal foster system, nameless kids with unknown origins—orphans who didn't even have a surname—sat at the bottom of the pecking order.
At the top? Children whose parents had lost custody.
Don't ask why.
At least those kids still had biological parents. Their folks had just lost parental rights, that's all.
So...
When Anya learned that she and her brother Hawk hadn't been discarded—that their mother had made an impossible choice out of desperation—she'd broken down completely.
But it wasn't grief. It was more like... how to describe it? The kind of crying that defied words.
After the tears subsided, even without Anya saying anything, Hawk could sense the shift. His sister had gone from not caring whether she ever left the Underworld to genuinely wanting to leave—if possible.
The reason was obvious.
She wanted to see Amy.
"Perfect timing, actually."
"Once Anya's resurrected, if she doesn't want to stay with us, she can go to Westview."
Hawk smiled at Gwen.
Gwen cradled her coffee cup in both hands. Hearing this, she glanced at Hawk and smiled faintly. "That's nice. She'll have options."
Hawk raised an eyebrow.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Gwen shook her head, then looked at him with a small smile playing at her lips. "I just assumed that once you resurrected Anya, you'd keep her right under your nose. Never let her out of your sight."
Everyone knew the truth.
From the very beginning, Hawk had done everything—taken every step that brought him to where he stood now—to resurrect his sister.
So...
Even Gwen had figured that once Anya came back, Hawk would want her within arm's reach at all times.
Hawk heard this and paused.
The next second.
He couldn't help but laugh.
Then his expression turned serious as he met Gwen's gaze.
"Gwen. I'm not a siscon."
"I know."
Gwen's emerald eyes—always so expressive—held his stare. But the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth was unmistakable.
Hawk opened his mouth to protest.
Gwen cut him off by changing the subject.
"SHIELD's cloning experiment isn't ready yet, right?"
"...Almost."
Hawk let the topic shift slide, thinking back to his conversation with Sharon yesterday. "If everything goes according to plan, three months from now."
He'd called Sharon specifically to check on the cloning project's progress.
One word summary: promising.
Clinical trials had already begun. The cloned embryo was developing well. All that remained was waiting for the two-month development phase to complete, followed by a one-month post-operative observation period.
Two months for clone development.
One month for observation.
Three months total.
"If nothing goes wrong after three months, then we're in the clear."
"After that, we can open the casket, extract Anya's DNA, and begin creating her clone body."
"Although..."
"We probably won't make it by Christmas this year."
"It's already August, after all."
"But that's fine."
"As long as Anya's here, every day can be a holiday."
Thinking about seeing a living, breathing Anya in three months—plus another three months—Hawk's face broke into a genuine smile.
Gwen watched that smile and quietly shelved her theory about Hawk being a siscon.
"Aren't you forgetting someone?"
"..."
Hawk snapped back to attention, glanced at Gwen, thought for a moment, then chuckled.
"You mean Andrew?"
"Yes."
Gwen nodded, then continued. "Phoenix stays Phoenix, Chloe stays Chloe—but Phoenix is also Chloe."
Nobody would look down on Westview just because Hawk called himself Phoenix while the town was full of Chloes.
At minimum, the five global superpowers who'd witnessed Hawk's one-versus-two dominance over the Atlantic wouldn't dare.
Far from looking down on Westview, they'd joined forces to renovate the entire town.
Even SHIELD had a station there—disguised as the local post office. The agent stationed in Westview was none other than Grell.
The same Grell who'd been first on scene at Amy's apartment. The same agent Hawk had once rescued, someone he'd crossed paths with enough times to consider reasonably familiar.
In short—
To the outside world, Hawk was both Phoenix and Chloe.
The reason for keeping "Phoenix stays Phoenix, Chloe stays Chloe"? Gwen understood perfectly. It was Hawk's promise to her.
Just as he'd said when he proposed.
Only descendants of their shared bloodline would inherit his power—and the surname Phoenix, which they'd chosen together.
So...
Hawk remained steadfast. And Gwen remained magnanimous.
"You've seen your father Andrew, but Anya hasn't. And if we're talking about a reunion, it should be the whole family together."
"The whole family..."
Hawk repeated Gwen's words, then shook his head.
"His soul isn't in Hell."
"What?"
Gwen blinked in surprise. "Not in Hell? How is that possible?"
Hawk shook his head without answering.
Gwen connected the dots—Hawk's past had been orchestrated by forces from Heaven's dimension. "Heaven?"
Hawk shook his head again.
"Not there either."
"Then..."
"It's still with the person who shot Andrew."
"..."
Gwen frowned deeply.
As they spoke, Hawk's consciousness descended into his Cosmo—still resplendent with golden brilliance.
Above his gleaming golden universe stretched a river of stars spanning the entire cosmos.
That was the River of Time belonging solely to Hawk and his Cosmo.
After contracting his timeline, he could navigate his own temporal stream even without the Time Stone.
However...
Within this galactic river stretching across his universe, he could see the past, observe the present—but the future remained hidden.
The Mind Stone, transformed into the phoenix's eye, radiated pale yellow light.
Hawk's mental power surged. His consciousness became a single point of light and plunged once more into the temporal stream that formed his Phoenix Galaxy.
Temporal checkpoint.
1995 - The day Andrew was shot.
BANG!
A gunshot echoed through the alley. Two white men—one tall, one thin—drew their weapons almost simultaneously. Three bullets buried themselves in Andrew's body.
Footsteps with an almost rhythmic cadence followed as both men ran toward Andrew's fallen form.
At that moment—
A soul emerged from Andrew's corpse.
The next instant.
Andrew's soul was absorbed into the silver cross pendant hanging around one of the gunmen's necks.
Hawk opened his eyes and looked at Gwen, nodding.
"Yeah. It's with one of the killers."
"Who are they?"
"No idea."
Hawk shook his head. "I'd already recorded both gunmen's energy signatures. I planned to track them down after returning."
Gwen blinked.
"But you couldn't find them?"
"No."
Hawk nodded. "I thought Father John would know their whereabouts. But you know what Father John told me?"
Gwen shook her head.
"What?"
"Father John said those two gunmen were just ordinary criminals. His mission was simply to distract Andrew."
"Ordinary..."
Gwen's expression turned strange. "Ordinary criminals who could capture Andrew's soul?"
Hawk let out a dry laugh.
"He didn't know."
"I didn't tell him either."
"But Father John wasn't lying."
"And it wasn't until I saw Father John recently that I finally figured out what those two gunmen really were."
Hawk paused, the corner of his mouth curving upward.
"An angel's power comes from their wings."
"An angel who loses their wings becomes mortal—no different from any ordinary human."
"But their essence still carries a fundamental distinction from regular people."
"And the two criminals who shot Andrew? Their energy signatures were identical to Father John's when I visited him at the church."
"So..."
"They weren't ordinary criminals at all."
"They were angels whose wings had been severed."
Hawk met Gwen's increasingly wide-eyed stare and continued. "Which means, on that day in my timeline, there wasn't just one angel. There were three."
One in plain sight.
Two in the shadows.
The two gunmen who killed Andrew must have been on Earth long before his timeline began, their wings already severed, making them indistinguishable from ordinary humans. That's why Hawk hadn't noticed them initially.
Gwen listened to his deduction, her mouth hanging slightly open.
"So... can you still find them now?"
"I don't know. But I know someone who should have leads."
"Who?"
"The patrol officer who handled the case back then."
"..."
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