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After the fact, long after the fact, Stephen goes to visit Tony Stark.
Mostly, they've vanished. The Russian spy, the one-armed man, the alien creatures, they've all disappeared back to where they came from, infinity stones once more scattered to the seven ends of the universe. Captain America punched Iron Man - again - and left, followed by the one with the wings, and Stephen really can't keep up with how many enhanced humans seem to be popping out of the woodwork.
He gets his Time Stone back, which is really what matters, and he spends long days and longer nights patching up his cloak, weaving the magic back into it, and the care and the curses that make it what it is. He rebuilds his house. He listens to a lot of Beethoven.
Mostly, of course, he's alone, but he thinks he might be okay with that. He's been introduced to a lot of people that have died, and he never knew many of them well to begin with, but he can still hear that boy - Tony Stark's boy - saying I don't feel too good... And it had been Stephen, that had forced the world along that timeline. Even though it was the one that worked, even though they won, even though the boy is safe now, it still echoes around his head. Many things do.
Thinking of the boy is what makes him think of Tony Stark.
Because the three of them had been on that ship, had they not? When Stephen said he would gladly save the Time Stone over Tony or the boy, and Tony had made a joke, and later -
As the ship was crashing -
"If he's in danger, and you do nothing because you wanna save your lump of goddamn kryptonite..." the threat had tailed off because Tony realised they were all probably going to die, but Stephen heard it all the same.
So when he feels like the Beethoven and the loneliness might kill him with their weight, he goes to Tony Stark. He doesn't know why. Maybe it's because of the boy.
"Hello, Strange," says Stark. He's sitting alone in a French restaurant in Berlin, wearing a suit from the Savile and Italian loafers, and Stephen just has to crack a smile at the ridiculous blend of countries combined. "What's up? Stone gone walkadoodle? Need me?"
"No," says Stephen. He sits down, just in case a waitress thinks he's a fan come to bug the famous at their dinner.
"So why're you here?"
Stephen frowns.
He doesn't know.
"I'm getting escargot," Stark says, after the silence hangs ugly and long and awkward. "We can share, if you don't mind snail. It's not as bad as everyone thinks, and if you feed them garlic they taste like garlic."
So Stephen eats garlic escargot with Stark, and they talk about the shape of the sugar bowl and they talk about the musak playing in the background and they talk about the horrific price of Italian suits these days. They talk about meaningless nonsense - although Stephen notes the bags under Stark's eyes and the gaunt hollows of his cheeks and the crack in his laugh, and he's sure Stark notices a million minutiae about Stephen, too - but all the same they talk about nothing, and it's one of the best things to happen to Stephen in a month.
It's a weird sort of existence, is Stephen's. But he doesn't care. He swore an oath, did he not? He did.
"This oath of yours," says Stark. "Who did you swear it to? Is it some weird Buddhist thing?"
Stephen fights the urge to rip a hole in time and go away - he doesn't like being followed, especially by people like Tony Stark. "Why would you think that? Can't I just have a sense of duty?"
"Most people have a backstory," shrugs Stark. Stephen is on a stairwell leading up to a block of flats, just because from here he can see most of the city without most of the city seeing him in turn. "I got the troubled childhood, Captain America got the war, the kid-"
"Let's talk about the kid," Stephen interrupts, leaning against the wall, his cloak clinging to his elbows to leech the warmth to him. "Why did you bring him?"
The ship. The fight. Star-lord and the grey guy, whoever he had been, and the one with the feelers. And Stephen knowing that Stark had fucked it all up, had ruined it, and then Stephen had given him the Stone. Not him-Stark. Him him.
And the kid died.
"He has a name," Stark says. Armani suit again, top button undone, sunglasses shoved up above his head, arc reactor glowing a steady blue underneath the material of his shirt.
"Nobody told me what it was."
Stark measures him, Stephen sees. Then he sighs. "Do you like coffee?"
"I'm a doctor," Stephen says. "What do you think earned me the PhD?"
And he's rewarded with a raised eyebrow, a bemused scoff. "That was a joke?"
"Your powers of deduction are legendary."
Stark laughs again. "Let's get coffee, Mister Strange."
"Doctor will do."
"Whatever you say, dude."
Stephen is expecting a coffee shop, a bistro, something elegant and foreign where shots of espresso cost an arm and a leg and the waiters are all Italian and know Stark by name. But when Stark suits up - thuds the reactor to get the nanotech to evolve around him - and beckons, Stephen follows through the air, the sight of two men flying across the New York skyline no longer such a surprise as it once was. Hell, the sight of Iron Man is commonplace, and now the lack of the suit every few days gets people into a panic about Tony's whereabouts, and Stephen has to watch the whole sad affair on TV. He wonders how flying is for Tony, inside there - when Stephen flies, his cloak wrapped around him for insulating heat, he's just him and the wind and the pulse of the energy flooding past his skin.
They land on the top of Stark Tower.
Avengers Tower.
Stark Tower.
"Welcome back, sir," purrs a gently feminine voice from the ceiling. "And Doctor Strange, too, of course."
"Say hello to Friday," is all the explanation Stark offers, and Stephen doesn't ask for anymore. He casts around for a camera, and nods briefly at it before following Stark into the belly of the dragon - for coffee, apparently.
Stephen is expecting - something, maybe. Some materialistic nonsense the Tibetan monks would never stand for, some horrendous dungeon in chrome, red, and gold, some shiny edifice to the worship of commodity culture and other things like that.
It's not that.
There's a kid asleep on his homework, and a ruffled-up looking sort of a man dropping ice into a glass of orange squash. "Hi, Tony," says the man. Bruce Banner, Stephen realises. God. The research papers, the - the developments, the science - there's a brain really worth picking.
"... And, uh..." Bruce Banner's eyes drift from Stark to Stephen, and he curls up, looks abashed. "Sorry. I forgot your name."
"Stephen Strange," Stephen holds his hand out, his cloak rustling behind him, the only one in the room dressed for the occasion. "Doctor Strange."
"Oh."
"He was on Titan with me and Pete," Stark extrapolates. His kitchen - is this his kitchen? - is big, open-plan, nice lavender lampshades dangling from the roof, a kitchen island surrounded by barstools taking centre stage. An oven. A sofa. Some beanbags, tossed next to the TV. It's on mute, but How To Train Your Dragon is playing, with subtitles. There's a bowl of popcorn kernels half-chewed next to the kid sleeping on his homework, and the fridge has magnets on it, living evidence of a magnet war. Tony sux // bruce = pansy // petr pakr wuss // u all sux and other things Stephen can imagine a busy household using to relax, to communicate, to banter with. It's all very alien next to the image of Stark himself, Armani, French gourmet in Berlin, a super-suit built into his very body. This is domestic.
(Stephen has a house in Tibet. That's where he goes to sleep, anyway, but he likes to think his home is wherever he makes it.)
"That child isn't the boy from Titan," Stephen says.
"Well observed. That come with the PhD, or is that all me?"
"Natural talent," Stephen floats back, and Stark grins. Like a shark, or a cat. Or a kitten. Odd.
"Titan, huh," says Banner. He's got a bowl of cereal, and a pen sticking out behind his ear, and his jacket is too big for him, and he looks sort of small. "Did you do okay? Sorry we never, like, officially met. I'm pretty sure I did something to your house."
"You fell through the skylight, but we fixed it," Stephen waves his hand to let glowing discs float in the air. "See?"
"Oh." Banner looks sidelined. "Oh. That's good."
Stark is doing something complicated with the french press, and Stephen suddenly realises - this is breakfast. He's been strongarmed into breakfast at the Tower, with Stark, for some reason, and maybe it is his own fault for following Stark without question, but still. This is all odd. Uncanny.
"It's almost nine, Tony," Banner says.
Stark reaches behind him while the coffee is brewing, and taps the kid on the head a few times. "Yo. Yo. Tommy. Hey. Wake up, dude, school's in like, five seconds-"
"Whszzfiszataas," the kid falls off the stool, grey hair flying wild, and then he stands and then he's running to one side of the room and the other and the other and the other and the other and then in front of Stephen. "Whothefuckareyou?"
Stephen raises an eyebrow at Stark.
"Tommy, school, Christ, the deal was I help you with your algebra and you don't get detention, go-go-go-"
"Icanbethereinfivesecondsflat," says Tommy, apparently. Vibrates on the spot like a hummingbird. His hair is a little too long, shaggy and grey, and his nose is long and his lips are quirky and his eyes are sparkling with mischief.
Stephen watches the kid gather books and pens and an apple from Stark's outstretched hand, and then the kid flings himself out a window and there's a faint yahoooooooo echoing back at them. "Am I to gather that, in the months following your saving the world, you've opened a creche? Or do you just have more illegitimate children than I thought you did, perhaps?"
"No, and no," says Stark. "How do you like it?"
"Black, please."
"Same. Bruce is milk all the way, the heathen."
"Bruce is all the way back to his bio lab," Banner says mildly. "Have fun, Tony. Remember to call Pepper."
"Yeah."
And then it's Stephen and Stark in Stark's kitchen.
Surreal.
"Coffee," Stark slides the cup over to him. "And a chat, if you want it. How've you been? How's it hanging in Tibet, with all those... religious guys, and the stones and shit?"
"Monks," Stephen says slowly. He sips the coffee, and it is good, thick and bitter on his tongue. "I'm sorry, Stark, what is this?"
"Coffee," Stark says archly. "And I wanted to know what you thought about the decor in here, because I let Banner have free reign and, honestly, I don't think the sofa cushions go with the lampshades."
Stephen finds himself talking about cushions and lampshades until morning clocks into afternoon, and at one point Stark pulls out sampler sheets and Stephen starts Googling the colour palette for closer reference, and neither of them mention how the other's hand is shaking, and both of them are grateful.
It's a while before Stephen realises that it's his turn.
He meets Steve Rogers in Wakanda, where Rogers tells him every single wrong thing Tony Stark has done in his life, and then tries to get Stephen to join his group. Rogue Avengers, possibly. New Avengers. Stephen isn't paying attention. He thanks Rogers kindly for the offer, and then says no, and opens a void in time before Rogers can turn another recruiting spiel on him.
Stephen goes into space, where he finds Quill and the others. Quill sits back and lets the raccoon talk, his eyes distant. He's humming Footloose.
Stephen knows when not to ask.
He's keeping himself away from Stark, firmly away from Stark, because the last thing he needs is some sort of fucked-up crutch in the shape of a man he suspects is seeking a similar support. Christ, the man is keeping superhuman children in his house, or running a homework support club, and he's housing Bruce Banner, and he invited Doctor Strange in to help him with interior decorating.
(Stephen doesn't think about how he started this, really, with garlic snails and Beethoven.)
He finds Tony Stark in Queens, although he wasn't looking (he was) (no) and he finds Tony Stark behind the wheel of a bright orange Audi that hurts the eyes, drumming his fingers on the dashboard, waiting amongst a crowd of mothers in four-by-fours and expensive people-carriers.
"Hi, Strange," says Stark.
Stephen makes himself comfortable in the passenger seat. "Is this a pickup for a kid you helped create, or just one you've collected?"
"My kid, sorta," Stark says. "What do yo- oh, Tommy. The other day?"
Three weeks ago, Stephen wants to say. He doesn't. "Yes, I suppose. Who was he?"
"Tommy Shepherd. He's... a kid. He... Wanda, and Vision... god, it's a long fucking story, but he's got super speed and no clue how to deal with it, so I was helping him. He can't sleep much."
"Can anyone," Stephen murmurs. Stark's car smells nice - leather, and bagels, and some nice neutral air freshener, not something horrendously corrosive and stinking of fresh pine.
"Got me there, Strange."
"So we aren't waiting for Tommy Shepherd, then."
Stark flashes him a strange glance at the we, and Stephen is tremendously happy that the man decides to drop it, rather than needling away at the point. "Nope. This is the kid himself. The legend extraordinaire."
please, mister stark, i don't want to die
Stephen clenches his fist around his cape. He did that. He did that. It doesn't matter that he knew what he would have to do - by a stroke of fate, everyone on that planet would die except Stark, and Stephen was the last to go. He saw him. Stark. He saw Stark, looking crushed, holding the air where the boy had been.
This boy.
"When does school let out?" Stephen asks, instead of anything else he could say. An apology would be good, but he doesn't think he could stomach it, and he doesn't think Stark would accept it in any case. So here they sit in his car, with neutral air freshener and the scent of the coffee cooling in the cup holder, in aching silence.
"Five minutes," Stark says, after an eternity.
"I saw Quill," Stephen says. He doesn't mean to. But he says it.
"Oh."
"He didn't talk much." Stephen doesn't blame him, can't blame him, not after everything was fixed, but that doesn't appear to have stopped Quill from blaming himself, as though there isn't enough self-hatred spinning through the multiverse at the moment. "Rocket thinks they might have found a gateway into the astral plane, so they're going there to try and retrieve the - Gamora, wasn't it?" He's seen her die in fourteen million different ways, a streak of green and hair and falling, but he's never been able to catch her name. Thanos loved her. And she died for it, and Quill paid for it, and Thanos -
Stephen wonders if he regrets.
"I hope they find her," Stark mumbles. Kids are starting to flood out of the gates. "Hey - hey, if the kid acts weird, it's not 'cos he's weird. I mean, he's weird, but not really weird. He just gets tongue-tied around superheroes."
"He is a superhero," Stephen says slowly.
"Hah. Try telling him that."
"He doesn't think so?"
Stark sighs, reclining against his seat, his hands folded on his stomach, his eyes troubled. "I think he doesn't. I made him his suit, but he made the rest himself, and he's a better human than me - wait, no, he's like... augmented. Mutated. He got bit by a spider, when he was little, and it gave him-"
"Spider-man," Stephen says.
"Exactly."
"But that's more superhuman than Iron Man," Stephen waves his hand at the glowing blue chunk in Stark's chest, "Not that Iron Man isn't admirable. But surely this kid knows he's-"
"This kid's convinced everything is his fault," Stark says bluntly. The words are thick - they bruise the air.
"I guess he couldn't have picked a better role model."
There's a brief pause, and then Stark barks out some sort of a laugh. "That a joke? A good one. Yeah, I guess so, though having Banner around helps a bit. The guy is good at pep talks, y'know?"
"So are you."
"How would you know that?"
Stephen thinks of Titan - of all the times on Titan. Of the times Stark died. Of the times Stephen crushed the Time Stone. Of the times when it didn't work out, and they pulled the gauntlet off Thanos, and Thanos destroyed the world. There's a universe somewhere out there where Stephen and Stark died in each other's arms, after a long, slow starvation on a planet far away from home, keeping each other awake with insults and stories of their favourite things about Earth. (Stephen, in that universe, told Stark about the monks, and Stark told Stephen about this boy. Peter. Although Stephen isn't meant to know his name.)
"Maybe I just know."
"Aw, fuckin' superpowers. I'm regular ol' me."
"There's nothing regular about you," Stephen says, and Stark takes it for the compliment it is, and looks at him with something funny in his eyes before the kid opens the backseat of the car and slides in, talking a thousand miles a minute.
"-And so then, right, right, right, oh god, you're gonna love this, then Ned said he was like that dude that says Miiiister Andersen real funky from that film with that guy, and then, and then, and then right, right, right, Happy texted me and I got the thing as my ringtone so it made the noise and dude, dude, Flash totally like, shit his pants or something, I swear it made my day, and then MJ, and - oh, dude," the kid sees Stephen, and hardly falters, "Dude, I - are you Doctor Strange?"
"The one and only," Stephen says. He waves, and the kid waves too, looking starstruck. "Peter, aren't you? Spider-man?"
"Dude."
"Pete, it's not a damned surprise, the guy was with us on that ship," Stark says with the hint of a laugh in his cheek. He starts driving, cutting ahead of a woman with a van full of kids. "How was school?"
"Okay. I mean, yeah, pretty cool. Did I tell you Ned and me-"
"-and I," cuts in the AI, Friday, from the radio -
"-Ned and me, we built Stark Tower outta Lego, and Ned figured out a way to do this thing with heat sensors and shit so anytime Flash walks by the model, the Tower spits Lego bricks at him-"
Stephen relaxes as Stark and his kid (the kid, not his kid, the kid) swap stories, like some dad picking his son up from school. Neither of them draw attention to Stephen in the front, but neither do they ignore him, as though it's normal for Doctor Strange to be in the front seat of Tony Stark's Audi picking up some random kid from school.
Hey, maybe it is normal.
Stephen thinks that maybe he'd like it to be.
He's lying on his back above the Atlantic, and suddenly Tony is flying above him.
"Hello," Stephen says, after a bit. "How did you find me?"
"I guessed."
"Fair."
Tony grins, flipping up his faceplate for a brief second. "I tell a lie - actually, I've been flying round here for ages. Bright red cloak tends to stand out, though, when everything else is blue."
"Why did I never think of that before."
"Cos I'm smart, and you're dumb."
"Indeed."
The waves down there are probably bigger than Thanos was, Stephen reflects. And yet Thanos could have got rid of them, if he'd wanted to - he could have got rid of it all, if he really wanted to. They stopped him. How far does the madness go, when Thanos was only one Titan? Sometimes, in moments of boredom, or in fits of manic fear, Stephen rifles through the multiverse, his mind alight with fear for something he can never name. Sometimes he sees himself, killing people in their droves.
"What's on your mind?"
Stephen looks sideways. "Does there have to be something?"
Tony shrugs. "There usually is."
"Thanos."
"Direct. I like it. But - yeah, I can see... why," Tony flips onto his stomach, floating face-down looking at the water. "We coulda drowned him in an ocean like this, but the fucker just had to go down kicking, right?"
"They don't call him the destroyer of worlds for nothing," Stephen supposes.
They float.
In the Tower, Stephen makes a pot of filter coffee, and pours a milky cup for Peter, leaving it out on the island for when the kid inevitably sleeps in. He's started staying over on the nights he has too much homework, and Banner helps him with it - although Peter can do it fine on his own, he insists - and Stephen buzzes around, and nobody seems to mind.
Tony has stopped wearing sunglasses around him, and sometimes Stephen sees him at odd hours of the day and night, in sweatpants and socks sitting on a balcony, his bare chest glowing blue.
But then, Stephen wears jeans and shirts around Tony, now. Things are changing, and he isn't sure why, but he doesn't want to question it just in case they stop. He finds himself enjoying the friendship, for what it's worth, and the oddness of the something-more that both of them have to have felt -
But a something-more dangling, in the passing of a coffee cup, in the touch of a shoulder, in the smile over French cuisine in a German eatery.
And in how Stephen picks Peter up from school and brings him to his house sometimes, back in Tibet. And in how the various waifs and strays Tony collects all know Stephen by sight, by name, know him from movie nights and soft sleepy mornings.
And in -
a million other ways.
"Did you ever?"
"With Steve?"
They're in an Italian restaurant this time, curling pasta around dainty little forks as a candle sputters softly between them. Tony got the fish, Stephen got the vegetarian, and there are little flecks of thyme covering the pale ceramic plate. This costs a lot, but Tony is paying, and it's Stephen's turn to supply the after-dinner treats (he has a plan, and a Belgian chocolatier that he thinks might owe him a favour, and if that falls through then they can go back to the house and eat stale biscuits and talk about interior decorating, or Spongebob, or Limp Bizkit.)
"I didn't," Tony says slowly, leaning back, chewing. Stephen knows what he's doing, giving the question his full attention, for both of their benefits.
"But you considered it."
"Wouldn't you?"
"I suppose," Stephen sips at the wine - he's hopeless at the vintage stuff, but he thinks Tony might have picked them out something good. He thinks they might be on a date, or whatever the equivalent is for two middle-aged men as emotionally stunted as the next bloke. (The next bloke being Bruce Banner, which says - nothing.)
"We didn't," Tony says. "We were different, that's why we fell out."
"The Accords?"
"Just a means to the end, if the end was the breakup... although you can't call it that when there was nothing there to begin with, so I don't know what you'd say happened. Something did, and then it didn't anymore."
Stephen nods - he won't pretend he wasn't paying attention to current affairs, even as preoccupied as he was with his own drama, and he knows the rocky relationship the Avengers began on. "But you didn't ever engage romantically."
"Jesus, you sound like my robots."
"You know what I mean."
"I didn't," Tony says again. "Steve's hung up on his Bucky, the Winter Soldier - James Barnes - and I look too much like my father, and I act too much like him, too. That fucked Steve up, I think. And we didn't get - on. Didn't meld. He's a soldier, right? And so's Natasha and Clint, and I think that's what pulled them away - but Bruce, he's just Bruce, and Rhodey, and... well, and then there was a punch up in a parking lot." Tony laughs around his pasta. "Sounds dumb, doesn't it?"
Stephen shrugs. "I've heard of dumber."
"Steve tried to kill me."
Now that's a statement.
"I don't know if he did," Tony follows up, quiet. "But he was aiming for this." Tap-tap-tap, fingers against the arc reactor, and twitching. "I told him how I got it - y'know, waterboarding, the works, the fuckin' works, and I told him about Obie pulling it out, and he still tried to smash it."
Stephen pours him out more wine.
And they go to his house for chocolate and chat.
"I've been wined and dined," Stephen says, at three in the morning over truffles and turkish delight (proper turkish delight), "And I want to know - am I being wined and dined?"
"If you want to be," Tony says. Stephen hasn't turned on his light, so the only real source of it is the glow in Tony's chest, blue (cold) and yet warm, despite all that. "Do you want to be?"
After the fact, long long after the fact, Stephen says yes, just as he had the first time and the time after that and all the times in between.