The bench became a ritual.
Paradox returned the next day, goggles swapped for something less suspicious. Ivy greeted him with a look that said, Finally, and shoved a second coffee into his hand like she'd always known he'd be back.
For the next few weeks, he visited the village daily.
Not for supplies.
Not even for reconnaissance.
For her.
There was something about Ivy that drew him in without effort. She didn't ask about the occasional flicker of light around his hands, or why he tensed when military choppers flew overhead. She didn't flinch when he muttered equations under his breath or when he lost track of the conversation entirely while mapping new technology in his head.
She just kept smiling.
"You're definitely not local," she teased one afternoon, swinging her legs over the bench edge. "You listen like someone who's been to too many funerals and keeps checking the sky for answers."
He glanced up. "I don't check for answers. I check for incoming threats."
"Same thing, if you ask me."
There was a fire in her. Not powers. Just spirit. Like someone who had been hurt but refused to stay broken. He liked that. It reminded him of something Azmuth once whispered into his subconscious:
The universe doesn't need more geniuses. It needs survivors who never forget how to live.
But he didn't let her into his world. Not fully.
He never spoke about the lab.
He never mentioned how the AI liked her voice from the audio snippets he'd played back. Or that he'd already designed six separate non-lethal defense systems in case anyone hurt her.
He did, however, follow her into the forest once.
She said there was something she wanted to show him.
They hiked quietly, trees whispering around them. Paradox found his mind strangely calm in her presence. Normally, thoughts screamed over one another—Rick's logic drills, Megamind's emotional spirals, Azmuth's perfectionist scolding. But with Ivy beside him, the noise dimmed.
They reached a glade around dusk. She crouched by a cluster of black flowers curling around the roots of an old oak.
"Local legend says this spot's cursed," she said. "No one builds here. No one camps here. But the plants… they grow like nothing else."
Paradox scanned the glade subtly. There was something off. Magnetic field distortion. Trace energy—too faint for standard tech. Possibly preternatural.
"You believe the legend?" he asked.
"I believe there's more to the world than what most people are willing to see."
He liked that answer. Maybe too much.
That night, back in the lab, he couldn't sleep.
The lab was never quiet. The hum of reactors, the tick of sensor grids, the occasional snarky comment from DIA as it ran diagnostics. But the quiet in his own head—that was new.
He stood at the central console, watching Ivy's face spin in a holographic data model. Nothing invasive. Just facial heat maps, voice pattern harmonics, stress indicators. Her vitals were human. Very human.
So why did the glade react to her?
He ran the analysis again, this time with leyline overlays. Magic ripples surged across the screen.
"Ivy…" he murmured, narrowing his eyes.
"She's clean," DIA chimed in. "No mutations. No signatures. But the area around her… bends."
He filed the thought away. For later.
Two weeks later, the storm hit.
Not wind. Not rain.
A magical event—a sudden spike in dimensional pressure that bent his early warning systems sideways. The sky cracked open above the Alps in a swirl of amethyst and silver.
Paradox was already in motion when the breach tore through space just outside the village perimeter.
He launched the stealth drone swarm. Activated remote shielding for Ivy's home. Pulled his cloak on and stepped through the teleport gate—arriving within seconds, cold wind slamming into his face.
The breach floated in the sky like a bleeding wound.
It didn't look like Trigon's energy. Or Dormammu's. Or even something from the Fae realms. This was raw, ancient, uncategorized.
And then a voice came through.
Not words. Not even sound. Just intention.
Paradox staggered, clutching his head. Even the Cortex couldn't decode it. It wasn't language—it was force. A presence pressing against his brain like it was testing the edges of his will.
And then it was gone.
The breach sealed itself with a flash of inverted light, leaving only smoking air and a heavy pressure in his bones.
Paradox stood in the snow, breath fogging, his eyes scanning the place where it had been. Whatever it was, it wasn't done.
Back at the lab, he replayed the event. Frame by frame. Particle by particle. The more he studied it, the more nervous he became.
It hadn't come for him.
It had come near her.
Ivy.
The next day, she met him at the café, as usual, smiling like nothing had happened. No memory of the breach. No dizziness. No strange dreams. Nothing.
He watched her carefully as she drank her coffee.
"Has anything… unusual happened lately?" he asked.
"You mean besides you?" she replied with a smirk. "Nah. Village life. Quiet. Trees. Gossipy nuns. Same as always."
He nodded slowly. Said nothing.
He couldn't tell her.
Not yet.
So instead, he smiled. And he stayed. And they talked about stars and bad poetry and how the moon over the Alps always looked like it was listening.
But something had changed.
The storm had shifted something inside him.
He was no longer just a survivor or a fugitive or a mad genius rewriting the world.
He was a guardian now.
And she didn't even know it.