The party stayed small, and it stayed warm.
Winky laid out a spread that made Tony's caterers quietly question their life choices. And it was somewhere around the second hour that Elena could not hold the secret in a moment longer.
"Daddy. Can Pietro show him? Please? Uncle Tony's never seen it."
"Seen what?" Tony asked, pausing with a drink halfway to his mouth.
"The speed." Elena was vibrating nearly as badly as her brother. "Pietro's fast now. Faster than your cars, Uncle Tony."
"Pietro's always been fast," Tony said dismissively. "Track kid. Good lungs. But I wouldn't exactly go so far as to say—"
He didn't finish the sentence, because Pietro was no longer sitting in his chair.
There was a crack of displaced air, a silver blur off the terrace and down the long curve of the drive, out to the distant gate and back, and then Pietro was standing exactly where he had been. Except that he was now holding Tony's sunglasses, which had been on Tony's face half a second earlier, and a single flower from a bush forty yards down the cliff.
He held both out, with enormous, dramatic dignity.
"For the lady," Pietro said smoothly, handing Pepper the flower.
The terrace went silent. Happy, passing with a tray, had stopped dead in the doorway.
Tony raised a slow hand to his own bare face, where his sunglasses had been.
"Okay," he breathed. "Okay. Is that a neat magic trick, or is Pietro actually running faster than sound right now? JARVIS. Did you track that? Please tell me it was a trick."
"It was not a trick, sir," JARVIS replied in his ear. "Peak velocity was two hundred and thirty miles per hour. I have the footage, should you wish to review it slowed down."
"Two hundred and thirty." Tony looked at Pietro with wide eyes. "Since when? Was he always like this and just hiding it from me?"
"Recent development," Arthur said casually.
"Recent. Right. Superpowers are just a totally normal thing that happens now." Tony rounded on Wanda. "What about you? I can see it clearly on your face. You've got something too. Come on. What have you got?"
Wanda stepped forward, lifted one hand, and let the scarlet rise off her fingers in slow, heavy ribbons. She looked at an unused pad of sticky notes on the table, and did not so much lift them as convince them they had always meant to fly.
A hundred scarlet butterflies peeled apart and rose off the table, scattering up into the dusk over the Pacific, glowing against the last of the light.
Even Tony had nothing to say to that.
Pepper made a small sound, one hand at her mouth. Elena was applauding. Tristan watched the butterflies go with perfect calm. To him, this was simply a Saturday.
"That's absolutely beautiful," Pepper said softly, turning to Wanda. "You're remarkable."
"Thank you," Wanda smiled softly.
"Yeah." Tony's voice had gone faint. "Yeah. Okay. I am going to need a much, much bigger drink, and then I am going to need you to explain everything to me, Arthur." He glanced sideways. "Pietro. Get me my drink."
Pietro was gone and back before Pepper could even open her mouth to object. Tony took the fresh glass with the wonder of a man who suspected he might never get tired of this.
"I could definitely get used to this," Tony said, taking a sip. "Pietro, you should stay here. I can allow you to take my cars out whenever you want."
Pietro's eyes lit up, and he was halfway to agreeing when he felt a wave of scarlet displeasure rise behind him.
Without a single word, he vacated the scene in a silver blur.
—
Much later, near midnight, the lively atmosphere on the terrace finally quieted down.
The children were asleep in the guest rooms. Through the glass, Pepper and Eileen sat by the fire, heads bent together over the serious business of baby names, nursery plans, and all the thousand little worries that seemed to arrive the moment someone learned they were going to be a mother.
Tony walked out to the edge of the glass balcony where Arthur was leaning against the railing. The vast, dark expanse of the Pacific Ocean stretched out infinitely below them, the sound of the crashing waves providing a steady, rhythmic background noise.
Tony handed Arthur a fresh glass of scotch and leaned against the railing beside him.
For a while, neither man spoke. The waves did enough talking for both of them.
"You have been watching the news," Tony said finally. It was not a question.
"Every morning."
"My scrubbers can't keep up with the spread anymore. Neither can SHIELD's." Tony turned his glass slowly. "Someone powerful is pushing this narrative hard. The whole world is talking about the people in the shadows now."
Arthur stared out at the dark water. "The exact same thing is happening in the wizarding world. The radical factions are getting louder. They are tired of hiding from a world they think they're better than. They want the veil dropped completely."
"So both sides are actively trying to tear down the wall." Tony exhaled a long breath. "It is a powder keg. It's all just one tiny, stupid spark away from igniting."
He looked sideways at the wizard. In the thin moonlight Arthur looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.
"So," Tony asked quietly. "What's the grand plan?"
Arthur took a drink of his scotch.
"I don't have one."
Tony actually turned to face him. "Excuse me? You always have a plan. You have contingency plans for your contingency plans."
"Not this time." Arthur looked back toward the water. "I had a plan. The good version. Reveal both worlds together, immediately after the invasion, while everyone could still feel the alien army breathing down their necks. A common enemy. A reason to stand in the exact same room and realize we need each other." He offered a small, defeated shrug. "I coordinated it for years. With Amelia. With Fury. You know the shape of it."
"I knew the shape of it."
"The world simply didn't want it. Turns out you can hand people the gentlest possible truth, and they will still spit it violently back in your face if it frightens them." He turned the glass slowly in his hand. "So the good plan is gone."
"Okay," Tony said, his engineering brain trying to fix the problem. "So you go to the next plan."
"There isn't a next plan, Tony." Arthur said it without drama, which was worse than drama. "I'm not a wise old monk on a mountain. I never was. My plans are simple, because I'm simple. Find the problem, hit the problem. That's the whole of me when you strip the rest away." A thin breath. "I had exactly two ideas after the good one. Do you want to hear them? Because you won't like either."
"Hit me."
"One. I hunt down the loudest, most dangerous radical leader on each side. And the next one. And the next. Forever. Until absolutely everyone is too terrified of me to start a war." He let that sit. "And it will work. That is the awful part, Tony. It would actually work. A whole world holding perfectly still because of the monster on the hill watching them."
Tony was quiet. "That's not peace."
"No. It's a held breath. It is obedience. People are just waiting in the dark for the day I get tired, or distracted, or dead." Arthur shook his head slowly. "I would honestly rather burn the world down than rule it like that. So. Bad idea number one is off the table."
"...And two?"
Arthur didn't answer right away. He watched the water.
"Two is worse," he said finally. "Two is that I do absolutely nothing. That I let the spark catch."
Tony frowned. "Let what catch?"
"All of it." Arthur's voice had gone very even. "Maybe the trouble was that the alien invasion ended far too cleanly. I caught it early, the others caught it, Carol burned the fleet to cinders, I rescued and healed the trapped ones, and it was completely over before anyone had to bury enough of their own to learn anything from it. Everyone just went home, turned on the television, and forgot."
He paused, and the next part came out quieter. "I keep coming back to a line I overheard from somewhere. That only the people who've truly known pain ever really want peace. And I look towards the future of this planet, and I wonder if our clean little victory was the worst thing I ever did for them. If what they actually need is to walk all the way up to the bloody edge themselves, and look over, and be terrified into choosing peace."
The crashing waves filled the heavy silence.
"...Yeah," Tony breathed, rubbing his face. "That is dark, man. That is a deeply dark thing to be carrying around in your head."
"It is."
"Like, put-it-down dark. The kind of thought that—"
"Tony." Arthur looked at him, mild. "Your company armed half the wars on three continents for thirty years. You don't get to clutch your pearls at me about what constitutes dark."
Tony pointed a finger at him. Opened his mouth. Found absolutely nothing in it. Closed it.
"Fair," Tony allowed, lowering his hand. "That's entirely fair." He took a long drink. "Okay. So option one makes you a global tyrant. Option two makes you a monster who watches innocent people die just to teach them a harsh lesson. Both off the table, I am assuming."
"Both off the table." Arthur said it firmly, and it was clear he'd had to say it to himself more than once. "Which leaves the only answer that was ever any good. The slow one. People choosing, on their own, not to be afraid of each other. Cooperation." His mouth twisted bitterly. "And it cannot come from me. The exact second I am the one who forces it to happen, it isn't peace, it is just a bigger, magical fist holding everyone still. It has to be theirs. They have to actually want it." He looked back out at the dark horizon. "And right now, on both sides, they just don't."
Tony stared at him, and finally understood what had been bothering him all evening.
It wasn't that Arthur lacked a plan. It was that Arthur Hayes had finally, painfully accepted that there were some human problems he simply wasn't allowed to magically solve. Not because he couldn't. But because he shouldn't.
For a man like Arthur, who had spent a decade doing his best to make the world better, that realization looked dangerously similar to surrender.
Tony hated it. He hated how grown-up and mature it sounded. He hated how undeniably right it sounded. But most of all, he hated that there wasn't a single flaw in the grim logic that he could immediately punch.
"I really hate mature personal growth," Tony muttered, swirling his drink.
Arthur barked out a sudden, genuine laugh. "I know."
"It's awful."
"The absolute worst."
Tony raised his glass toward the ocean. "To crippling wisdom."
Arthur touched his own glass against it with a soft clink. "To crippling wisdom."
They turned away from the edge and went back inside together, walking toward the warm light and the precious people they had each decided to build a life around.
Behind them, out past the dark, endless water and the warm, safe windows, the fragile world went on quietly tearing itself in half. Exactly the way it had all month. Exactly the way it would again tomorrow.