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“Interfering with memory can have serious repercussions,” warned Wong. “If performed incorrectly, it could alter your personality and induce a permanent state of amnesia.”
“Well then, I trust you’ll take great care not to perform it incorrectly,” answered Stephen.
“Even when done right, removing too much will still cause many problems. Erasing fourteen million futures -”
“I don’t need you to erase all fourteen million. Just one.”
At that, Wong shot him a sympathetic glance. “I take it this one is significantly worse than the others?”
Stephen closed his eyes and sighed. “Must we discuss this?”
“You are asking me to gamble with your mind, Strange. There is less chance of complication if I know exactly what I am erasing.”
Stephen paused to consider his friend’s statement, weighed the pros and cons, then sighed again before opening his eyes.
“No one future was more gruesome than the rest,” he said. “All of them were pretty damn awful, except this one. I wish I could forget them all, but even ignoring the risk, I know I can’t use the mystic arts to escape feeling pain.”
This answer seemed to somewhat mollify Wong. “You are correct. The emotions would not be resolved, only buried. But then what do you want me to remove?”
“I want you to erase this timeline.”
Wong’s expression grew puzzled. “You want me to erase good memories?”
“Everyone else gets to live things as they happen. I can deal with the flashbacks and the panic attacks from the other futures - knowledge comes with a price, and this is my debt for looking into the Time Stone. But I feel like I’m an actor reciting from a script that no one else has read, and it will continue for the next twenty years unless you erase my memories.”
Wong looked as if he were about to interrupt, but Stephen continued quickly. “Next week, I’m going to ask Tony out on our first formal date. He’s going to say yes. I remember every single detail, from the flavors of the food we’ll eat to the color of his shirt. But I don’t want to remember. I want to ask him out because I want to, not because I know I will. Years from now, when I think about our first kiss, I want to remember how his lips felt on mine, not what the back of my head looked like.”
The man’s gaze grew softer. “I understand, Strange. You must feel isolated, being on this path. But are you sure that the benefit is worth the risk? If there are complications with the removal, you risk changing the future.”
“There shouldn't be any risks,” Stephen asserted. “Past events have made all the other timelines I saw impossible, and I certainly did not have amnesia in this one.”
“Did you see your nightmares and flashbacks, in this future?” Wong pressed.
The look of uncertainty on Stephen’s face was answer enough.
“By looking into the Time Stone, you have altered the path. Events that do not involve you will remain the same, but there is no telling what ripples your actions may cause. So I'll ask again. Is living life in the moment worth risking your mind?”
For a few moments, Stephen hesitated. Would it really be that horrible, to always know what would happen next? The constant dissociation he experienced now was quickly growing unbearable, but to jeopardize his future with Tony…
But was it really the future if he’d already lived it? To him, it would always just feel like a repetition of the past. There would be no surprises, and no need to ever feel out of control.
Looking back on his own life, Stephen had recently realized that he'd always been obsessed with maintaining control: of himself, of others, of everything around him. He’d become a doctor to gain mastery over the human body, over life and death. He had stopped for nothing until he was the best neurosurgeon in the world so people would trust that his hands could work miracles which no one else's could, so he could pick and choose which patients he operated on and there was never a chance that he would fail. He always had to be in charge of his personal relationships, and if there was even the slightest indication that the other person was beginning to drift away or resent him, he pushed them away first. Even his dedication to studying the mystic arts had been born out of his bone-deep need to be in control. He’d gone to Kathmandu to regain the use of the hands that had betrayed him, and to reclaim authority over his life in the process. Instead, he’d done one better: he’d gained the ability to physically manipulate space and time to his desire.
One of the countless things he loved about Tony (but shouldn’t yet know) was the way the man had slipped past those defenses. In viewing this future in the Time Stone, Stephen had been fascinated by the way Tony saw straight through the emotional walls he’d spent his entire life building - as if they were made of so much smoke and mirrors. He’d gotten Stephen to feel, to abandon the protective numbness he’d encased himself in long ago. In that future he’d seen himself grow comfortable giving up the control he’d once craved, trusting the other man with his life and his heart.
And if Stephen always knew what was going to happen… he’d always remain in control. Tony would never be able to take him by surprise, as he knew the other man delighted in doing. He would always know the other man’s secrets before he was entrusted with them. He would never be able to surrender his entire self to his future husband - and he didn’t want to know with absolute certainty that they’d be married three years from now, damn it. There would always be a part of him that was holding back, steering them toward the timeline as he’d viewed it in the Stone.
“Will you do it?” Stephen asked.
He saw Wong hesitate.
“Can you do it?”
His friend gave a long-suffering sigh. “Yes.”
“Then erase it,” he asked, his voice growing softer. “Please.”
Wong’s eyes tightened and his lips thinned, but he nodded. “Think of the timeline,” he instructed. “Recall a strong memory from it in as much detail as you can.”
This wasn’t a problem for Stephen. He quickly selected one of his favorites - a trip they’d taken to the Grand Canyon for his his 43rd birthday. Tony had refused to hike from rim to rim, claiming his shortness of breath was due to a chest cold, but when Stephen teasingly called him an old man he’d quickly donned the Iron Man suit and flown them down to the bottom. He remembered the sounds and spray of the Colorado river below them, and the sheer height of the layered cliffs on either side. He remembered his surprise at the signs of wildlife at the river’s edge, and the lush green of the trees that dotted the North rim. He remembered how the sunset lit the red rocks ablaze with color, and the pure silver of the stars that only revealed themselves far from city lights.
But most of all, he remembered his desperate hope that, someday, he would be able to experience what it was like to fly in Tony Stark’s arms. He remembered the look of absolute trust on that future Stephen’s face, secure in the knowledge that the man carrying him would never let him fall, and wanted to feel it for himself.
And even after Wong had carefully removed all traces of that one, perfect timeline out of 14,000,605 from his mind, that desire to spend a lifetime with Tony building those kinds of memories remained.
He wasn't sure what he meant by those anymore, but he knew he'd recognize them when they came.