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It starts as nothing at first. Stephen is blinded by the pure narcissism and tabloid personality of Tony Stark, that he cannot distinguish what's for show and what's real. The ego, the confidence and the arrogance. It's like looking into the mirror of 2014 Stephen Strange and that's a bitter pill to swallow. But, he does it anyways with forced politeness and sass-saturated banter.
It's an unanimous decision between Tony and Stephen, and that's okay. That's been their un-discussed arrangement for the last hour that they've continuously been in each other's presence. So, Stephen moves on, from there.
When he feels the small and prickly sensation of glass needles piercing into his face on a minuscule level, it hurts. When he's saved by the Spiderling and Tony Stark, there's a different type of stinging. He faintly recognizes that to be his pride and pushes away. When he makes eye contact with Stark, for a second there is a faint glow of gratitude. Then, it's gone.
When he declares that the Stone has more value than Tony Stark and the Spider-Kid, it doesn't sting that much. Peter's horrified one and Stark's almost enraged face. What's two life against the universe? So, Stephen moves on.
Then, Stephen opens the eye in a fluid, practice motion. He sits on a rock, then assumes a comfortable position—or what could be the most comfortable position against jagged rocks and rubble—before floating and diving into future possibilities. Stephen dies and dies again, keeps drawing power from the Time Stone as if it was a drug, again and again, and keeps moving on. Until he doesn't.
(Dying and dying. That doesn't matter. Dying and dying, it doesn't matter until it does.)
Stephen makes it to future 603,279, before he sees a small shard of a repetition. Either Tony Stark is a masochistic, self-sacrificing fool, which he is, or there might be more heart under the suit than Stephen had first assumed. (There was no rule that hadn't said that it couldn't be both.)
Tony Stark jumps in front of a Power Stone-powered beam for Quill. That's his 401,598th death. Actually, he jumps in to save every one of them. Even Stephen, who had done nothing, but repeat the fact that he will not hesitate to choose Tony's life over the Time Stone. Tony, who chose Stephen—everybody on Titan, with the exclusion of Thanos', over his own.
Maybe that is where every shifted. Stephen doesn't remember anymore, and he doesn't really care to.
(He does. He does, he does so much, in that moment and that time frame. He does. Every detail, every fleck of gold in Tony's wide brown orbs. But, it doesn't matter anymore.)
Stephen jerks with a gasp, 14,000,605 lifetimes sifting and blending together into an ineffable mesh, that would give Stephen a migraine if he tried to hard to distinguish and remember each and every one of them. So, he doesn't. But, when Tony Stark catches him with concern shining in his eyes, all Stephen can remember is wide brown orbs with flecks of gold in them.
He remembers them, and everything else, and he doesn't move on. It stays, burning deep and festers. It is the first, real seed.
And then, Tony is stabbed through the chest with his own creation. (A victim of one's own design, Stephen thinks bitterly, hands throbbing just a bit more prominently.)
And, oh. That narrows the possibilities down to a less than fourteen million and more than thirteen million lifetimes. But, that's not enough.
Yet, Stephen still gives up the Time Stone anyways.
And that's enough.
(Flake by flake. Death by death.)
Stephen smiles tight and pained. He apologizes, because he's just narrowed down the possibilities from a 13 million to an 11, and one of those could have been "the one." But, it doesn't matter, now. Stephen Strange doesn't move on.
But, he explodes in a cloud of dust and the winds of Titan carry him away into nothingness. Half of the universe is gone, but Tony Stark isn't one of them. And, that's okay.
Like almost a third of the possibilities, they lose.
There's a saying about winning the war and not the battle. But, when Stephen's eyes had connected to Tony's wide and desperate brown ones, he didn't have any faith about that saying. Because, fuck, they screamed of gratitude and why did you save me at the same time. Stephen looked away, and closed his eyes, counting.
3...2...1...
(Another one bits the the dust, he morbidly thought.)
The rocky surface of the rubble he's laid himself against digs into his side and arm, but the minor inconvenience is nothing when Mantis speaks up. And then it starts.
Slowly, she disintegrates into ashes, looking back at her team in horror. Stephen doesn't have the heart to look for the 3 millionth time. By now, Drax should have turned to look at Quill.
"Quill?"
And then, Quill, himself.
"Oh man..."
And then,
Stephen turns to look at Tony, eyes desperate. "Tony... there was no other way," he murmured, and waits to join the rest.
Instead he didn't. Instead, he doesn't, he doesn't turn to ash. Stephen looks down at his form, contemplating. Another deviancy in the sequence that led to this future. But, where? What went wrong? No, the question he should have asked instead was—
What went differently?
"Mr. Stark," Tony, who had turned to give Stephen a painful stare had whipped his head towards Peter, horror wafting off of him in waves. "I don't... I don't feel so good."
The Spiderling stumbles and trips, a jarring experience to sense the incoming death. As painless and merciful as Thanos was in his decimation, death was death. Tony catches him, desperately trying to ease him with reassurances, but Stephen didn't know if the billionaire was trying to reassure the kid, or himself. He doesn't say anything and watches as Peter Parker turn to dust.
And then they were two.
They don't make it far. (Where did the android go?)
Stephen looks ahead at Titan. What went wrong? He doesn't really know.
Steve Rogers died too early. Years too early.
Stephen feels agitation. The survival of Steve Rogers is out of his control. Perhaps, next timeline.
So, he moves on, and hops into another possibility.
(Brown, wide eyes. Why did you save me? Why did you save me? Whydidyousaveme? Whydidyousaveme? Why?)
(Stephen could say that he didn't know. He really didn't. Not for a couple million lifetimes, at least.)
gladiolas can be taken as "i'm sincere"
In multiple futures, Stephen doesn't speak about it. Tony goes on his way, busy with his own life and Stephen shoves his attention onto his work. Working, resting, working, fighting, dying, looped back, working, resting. A systematic routine that is slowly driving Wong mad, but Stephen doesn't really care. In some futures, Tony and Stephen strikes a friendship under the guise of discussing the Accords and being integrated into the Avengers' roster.
That's okay. Because their banter is no longer dipped in assumptions and tabloid-driven sass. They're no longer acquaintances, they're friends. But, Stephen can't stop heaving our petals and blood. In some, their friendship stop, because that Stephen can't take it, he hasn't made as far as Stephen has. That's okay too.
He works himself to death, and nobody is the wiser.
Sometimes he gets a confession out. Exhausted and ready to just give up under the storm of flowers and roots. Of blood and battle, hair graying from stress and many nights scrutinizing ancient tomes.
"I love you," is whispered so tantalizingly slow and soft.
That Stephen doesn't hear a reply, and there is none. Stephen watches as Tony slowly drift away, watching that version's Stephen trepidation. There is no reciprocated love, there is no love. He moves on to the next timeline.
Tony is alive, they've won, and that's an okay ending, but that's not the ending Stephen had wanted. So, he drifts into the next possibility.
Stephen Strange has always been a selfish man.
One Stephen treads dangerously close to love spells.
Love spells and manipulations stray too close to what Tony has been placed under by the Scarlet Witch once. Instead of wisps of red, threatening nightmares, remembrance of bad decisions and future fears—there is only glows of pink, signifying manipulated feelings and mentality. Stephen feels great anger rise deep from within him seeing that Stephen so close to that.
His hands are showered in tremors, cramping and straining. It almost spasms so badly, showing a need to wanting to strangle that Stephen Strange.
Stephen doesn't stick around for long. He's too much of a coward to see through to what his alternative self would do.
Purple, red, orange, red, white, yellow, green—everything. Petals, flowers, blood and spit. Sometimes vomit. They're all there.
Down and down, they fall. Down and down, Stephen falls. Closer to death every heave, every petal, every flower, every thorn, every. Yet, never closer to Tony.
a poem by stephen strange,
ILOVEYOU. AND I'MSOFUCKING SORRY.
(There are splatters of blood, tainting the page, which had desperate and rather depressing words scribbled harshly on. Stephen had looked upon it and felt pitiful. Petals flew out of his mouth and decorated the page, as if to mock him.
Not even a few minutes later, it's ripped out and disintegrated.)
Maybe next time.
There is no next time.
pines can means symbol of hope,
or on the other side of the spectrum,
it could also mean pity.
snapdragons may signify deception.
Tony Stark is the CTO of a multi-billion dollar company thats pioneering the tech world. He's a retired, and very much so beloved superhero, Iron Man. There is also a tiny blip in his timeline, in all of his versions, where they tangle with Stephen's—because Stephen is a fucking asshole who resorts to looking into the future for the sake of the universe. His life was also saved by Stephen, who willingly gave up an Infinity Stone, for it, out of necessity. (And something more.)
He's also getting married to Pepper Potts, the CEO of his company. (He's also way out of Stephen's league, for multiple legal reasons and multiple non-legal reasons. Well, Stephen had retained some of his bedside manners, which were also confidently named, socially inept, that he had refrained himself from wrecking the soon-to-be marriage.)
So, he smiles small and tight, as he dresses in the finest suit he has, something he's worn for 7 million lifetimes, for different occasions, and stands as Pepper walks down the aisle. Wong is by his side, giving him the most disapproving glare the librarian had ever given him, because he knows. Wong always knows or he always finds out in record time.
All Stephen can do is give a dead look back and swallow down the bile that mixes with blood and petals, and hops that nothing escapes.
(It's also that he knows from all the years of being Stephen, really, only friend—that Stephen Strange wouldn't go to some a trivial wedding of a man he had openly despised, not even 3 weeks ago.)
He disappears after they're allowed to leave and burns the suit. The last time he's had to wear that, he was going to a funeral.
Tony and Stephen hover just close enough to have their social circle touching, but never melding. They're there, one click away, one portal away, but never really interacting, one-on-one, or long. Wong gets testy whenever he has to clean up another puddle of blood and flowers and bloodand flowersandbloodandthorns—
Stephen doesn't really care and he knows the that Wong knows that. It's the major source of the librarians ire, if he's to be honest and well, Stephen not really helping with his minor—major—angst.
A child is on its way. Created out of love and created by Tony Stark and Pepper P—sorry, right—Stark, Pepper Stark. He hears the news, smiles and congratulates Tony, even if he doesn't mean an ounce of his words. The man is radiating with joy and basically glows.
Marigolds decorate his flower vomits from then on. Joining in with the purple hyacinths, carnations, daisies, everything.
He sarcastically points out to Wong to keep the flowers and maybe one day, he'll make a bouquet out of it. He won't, and Wong knows he won't.
They don't keep the flowers, mixed with blood, and spit, or the occasional vomit.
Someday I'll show you my bouquet. That I've made, for you.
marigold—jealousy.
"I love you, Steph."—
He jerks.
"Love you, Pep."
Yeah. That seems about right. Not at that house, not in the timeline, not there.
Sometimes, he wishes he were. It'd make him stop vomiting flowers, and blood. It'd stop him from unintentionally creating bouquets. But, he's not.
"Why did you do it?" Tony had asked, one night, curled up to Stephen.
Stephen had particularly favored these futures, but he knew they were a pipe dream. Not with the road he was taking himself on and unintentionally dragging Tony Stark along to. No.
"Tony," He whispered. "It was the only way."
"Stephen, I know you. And I know you're lying about something. We've been at this for years."
It was the only way that I could love you like this.
"I'm sorry."
He moves on to the next timeline and is dragged back to the orange hues of Titan.
The baby is a girl, and she's named Morgan. Morgan Stark.
She looks so much like Tony.
"Mr. Wizard, sad?"
He chuckles lowly and calm. Sad.
"Do you, Anthony Edward Stark, take this man as your wedded husband. In sickness and in health, for worse, for better. To love and to cherish?"
"I do."
"Do you, Stephen Vincent Strange, take this man as your wedded husband. In sickness and in health, for worse, for better. To love and to cherish?"
"I do—"
He blinks, and the world slowly unravels between them. And then, suddenly, he's to the side, in the stands as a priest reads out the vows for Tony, and then to Pepper. Oh.
He doesn't get far before Stephen has to removes himself.
His mouth doesn't follow open before a barrage of flowers flow out. Tears gather at the corner of his eyes and blood drips from his open mouth. He gags.
(It's a little funny. How Stephen's sitting by a toilet vomiting out his unreciprocated love, in the form of bloodied flowers, and Tony Stark is not even a few miles away, about to marry the woman of his dreams. What a nightmare.)
He wipes the blood clean, flushed the toilet twice before appearing by Wong's side again.
"Idiot," Wong hissed.
He isn't wrong, Stephen relented in thought.
anemone—goodbye, forsaken.
One could say that Stephen love, which could also be read as mildly disturbing fixation, obsession, or crudely, stalkerish behavior, for Tony Stark started at the end of the world. Some could say that it started during the end of the world, on an alien planet that was tilted off it's axis, and time was ticking, with people they didn't know, people that Stephen came to know as more than mere acquaintances.
But, that was only for Stephen to know. 14,000,605 futures together with those idiots, the kid and Tony. While they had only known Stephen for, really, a day—the sorcerer has known them for decades. Days upon days, months upon months, years upon years. But, those timelines, their relationships, the experience, their friendships, meld together and away into a ball categorized at what "could have been" in Stephen brain while he's alive in a timeline known as "what is".
Still, Stephen presses on, even if he's making bouquets during his spare time, and feeling as if the weight of the world has pressed itself onto him heavier every time he has to even look at Tony Stark, know that everything the man is now, what he has become, what he has—there is no room for Stephen Strange and his heavy load.
They are co-workers at best and distant acquaintances at worst.
Wong is getting even worse in attitude. Stephen can't blame him. If another were have to go through what he is in his presence, he would have chucked them into the Mirror Dimension years ago. Except, Wong had a heart underneath and Stephen is a cold-hearted bastard.
Still, the flowers and their deeply embedded roots, which dig deeper into his organs everyday, is starting to hinder his work, his skill—his life. He can't go on and battle, defend the earth, be Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, without having flowers rise to his throat and threaten to just expose him in front of the world every few minutes. It's maddening and Stephen is at his wits end.
The New York Sanctum is practically decorated in the stray and rather clean-of-blood flower petals that Stephen leaves behind. Wong had left them, exposed and not disposed and Stephen doesn't know how to feel about that. So, he doesn't, and continue on as best as he could.
He can't.
Memories from millions of lifetimes press onto him, like a shadow claiming it's hold on him, creeping behind his back and hovering—never letting go. It breathes down his neck and chills Stephen to his core. So, he does what Stephen Strange, human who has gone to the deep end, whose mind will implode from the millions of lifetimes he's lived, yet never will.
He runs away from it.
[Christine - 4:09]
Christine: Stephen? What's up? You never call when you know that I have a double shit tomorrow.
Stephen: Christine... I need a favor.
Christine: Stephen Strange asking for a favor?
[She sounds almost smug, and curious all the same.]
Stephen: [...]
[The phone is placed miles away as Stephen coughs his lungs out. Flecks of blood stain the fully bloomed flowers and spit drench them. There's silence as the coughs quiet.]
Christine: Oh my god, Stephen, are you okay?
Stephen: That's what I'm calling about, Christine. I need your help—I need you to perform a surgery on me. I need you to—
[Violent coughs from the other side makes Christine wince, as she proceeds to clear her schedule. Stephen Strange never asked for favors lightly and she knew, from the coughs, that this wasn't anything good.]
Christine: Stephen, Stephen, only if you come by tomorrow and tell me the full diagnostic.
[The phone call ends with a small tap and quickly, flowers pour out of Stephen's mouth, as if it's aware of it's incoming demise, so it's set out to kill Stephen faster than Stephen can kill it.]
(Stephen doesn't know which is worse as tomorrow comes in hours.)
Hey Tony,
You're never going to get this letter, but... I just need to write it before I forget. I—
Stephen breathes in, feeling the roots press into his lungs and the suffocating feeling of vomiting flowers for the last time. And then, he closes his eyes as he feels himself being put under. Itsokayitsokayitsokay.
It's not.
(I, Stephen Strange, love you so fucking much that I'm coughing up enough flowers to create dozens of bouquets.)
I don't know where I'm going with this, but since this is the last time I'm going to stay like love-struck Stephen Strange, I have to say that I love you so much. How ironic. I love you. I love you. It comes out so easy on paper, but whenever I want to say, no matter the future, I clam up and can never say it easily as this. But, sometimes, I do. And you say it back. It's sad. You know, Morgan had asked
me why I was sad before, in her own little baby way. I didn't really have an answer for that before. I just laughed, and tried not vomit flowers in her face. I do now.
I've seen six million versions of myself saying, "I love you," to you, but I will never be able to. Not like this. Not now—not ever. So, maybe, be writing out all these love confessions is a way to make up for that. Because, I certainly won't feel anything for you once I come back. Cold Stephen Strange, focused on his work, his life, the universe and nothing else. How lonely. But, not sad. Not in the way I am.
We were married, in another timeline, you know? All just possibilities, negated by the path taken now, jumbled in my head as something I've done in my life to protect the universe. I went over 14 million futures just to get the one where everybody won, just a bit. But, me, mostly. Because I'm a selfish bastard. We didn't win once. We didn't win twice. We won millions of times. But, they weren't really my victories. Blah blah blah, selfish Stephen Strange strikes again. It doesn't matter. The future I wanted, is forever locked away in my head and once a daydream, will now be looked at with indifference.
That's okay.
This is okay too.
I'll be going now. I'll see you later.
The letter is stained with blood Stephen couldn't get out, and didn't really make an effort of. It's signed crookedly, as oppose to how he had used magic to neatly write everything else. Instead of being tossed out, Stephen had glanced at it, shaking his head with a huff of amusement. Pathetic. And, had instead folded it into a paper crane.
They said that if you had folded a thousand paper cranes, your one wish would come true. Stephen didn't fold a thousand, but he folded one with magic, and that was enough for him.
"Love you," he muttered, "and... bye."
It was time to get going.
"Strange!"
Stephen blinks and turns to look as Tony approaches. There's mild concern and worry in his large, brown orbs as the billionaire approaches him, Stephen noted. (Flecks of gold in brown.) Stephen raises an eyebrow, feeling nothing at all.
No gut-wrenching feeling as the sight of a sparkling, well-taken care of wedding ring. There's no bloom of ILOVEYOU at the sight of the man, and flowers aren't rising in his throat, ready to just explode in full bloody glory.
"What?"
"What? Jeez," Tony sniffed, "This much attitude coming from a man who's been AWOL for seven weeks?"
"I had..." been in surgery to get rid of flowers because I loved you too much. I don't now, by the way. Except, he couldn't say that. "The Masters residing in Kamar-Taj needed my expertise for a while."
"No." Stephen immediately says before Tony could get out any word and the man shoots an incredulous glance at Stephen.
"But, I didn't even say anything!" He sputtered.
"You were going to ask. I know you were," Stephen said in a clipped tone, rolling his eyes and turning to put on the sling ring, ready to just to go home and sleep.
Tony rolls his eyes in return, "Yeah, wizard, I get it. Mind bending and telepathic, all that shit." He muttered.
Stephen snorts. "You're just predictable." He retorted.
(Also the fact that I have memories of lifetimes spent with you.)
Golden sparks appear before them, before they spin madly in a circle, showing the Sanctum. "Excuse me." Stephen had said and closes the portal on Tony's face.
There's nothing, just a perpetual void. And that's okay. No more flower arrangements.
Stephen's made enough bouquets for millions of lifetimes.
End.