Archive of Our Own ^beta

At this point in his magical education, little surprises him. It doesn’t take him long at all to figure out what the new things are. They’re long ropes stretching out from everyone’s heart, shooting off into different directions, of various colors and apparently invisible, as they don’t seem to interfere when someone moves through them or waves a hand through them. When Stephen Strange reaches out for his own—thick, nearly pulsing, and so, so red—he can almost feel it, lifelike and warm beneath his fingers, before they pass right through like air. There are few books about it in Kamar Taj’s library, but the ones he finds are informative.

Compatibility bonds. There are various colors, all meaning different things, and Stephen spends a day ravenously researching, furiously looking for an answer to why or how or what to do about it. The answers are unsatisfactory and frustrating, but at least there are answers. He’s grown used to asking questions without answers in his time at Kamar Taj, and he just lets out a sigh when Wong raises his eyebrows at him when he returns his huge stack of books.

Wong’s compatibility bond is broken, withered up and blackened. According to the books, that either means his soulmate is dead or the bond is broken. Stephen finds himself looking at it as he slides the books across the table.

Wong is a remarkably talented sorcerer and it’s not a surprise that he knows what Stephen is looking at. “You see them?” he asks, as gruff as ever.

Stephen nods, glancing up at him. He raises a hand, touches his own vibrant red bond with a shaking finger, watches as he phases right through it. If he focuses hard enough, he can almost feel it. “Do you?”

It’s mostly a rhetorical question, but Wong nods anyway. He looks down at the books Stephen brought back to him, glancing over them to make sure their condition is good. “Have you met them?”

Stephen thinks about Christine, wonders if she’s at the other end of his bond, if she has the same vibrant, pulsing red bond binding her heart to his. He has a feeling she doesn’t. He shakes his head. “Would I know if I had?”

One corner of Wong’s mouth curls up. He sets the stack of books aside and presses his hands to the table in between them, leans on them as he looks at Stephen. “Even without seeing the bonds, you would know. Your mind may not have been open before, but it is now, and you would be able to find them now if you had met them before.”

“What, I could use the bond to see through to the other side of the planet?” Stephen scoffs. Wong just stares at him, expressionless.

“Yes. You would be able to send an astral projection to them. It is one of the reasons we have the bond, to keep them safe.”

Stephen scoffs mentally at that. He’s busy enough keeping himself safe; he doesn’t need to worry about some stranger. He thanks Wong for the information, glances at the broken bond hanging from his chest, and excuses himself.

Other than finding out that no, his compatibility bond does not lead to Christine Palmer, and thankfully not anyone else he’s ever worked with, Stephen Strange does not find his soulmate. He never meets them. With the end of the world and all, he tells himself it’s a distraction, that he can find them when it’s over. There will be time enough after Thanos.

Stephen Strange picks through the rubble surrounding the destroyed Avengers Facility and grimaces as he unearths another body. Behind him, Wong is floating chunks of buildings and spaceships out of the way, various Kamar Taj sorcerers doing the same thing across the battlefield. Now that Thanos is gone and dusted and they’ve achieved the impossible, reality has fully set in, and it is cold and hard and unfriendly.

He sighs as he uses his magic to dig the body out, floating it over to the clear field on the other side of the destroyed Facility where the bodies are being identified. Hours and hours of work and they’re not even close to part way done.

There’s the sound of someone coming up to him and at the same time, something wrenches within his chest. Stephen frowns, raising a shaking hand to rub over his heart, and he looks down to see that the compatibility bond is shining so bright that it almost hurts to look at. What in the world?

“Stephen,” Wong says, almost sounding shocked, and Stephen turns to look at him, but instead his eyes land on his compatibility bond, no longer stretching out into infinity, but squarely into the chest of a tired-looking man picking through the rubble towards him.

This is—

“You’re Strange, right?” the man says, and the bristle of arrows poking over his shoulder and the bow in his hand tell Stephen exactly who he is without having to ask. His soulmate is—is—fucking Hawkeye? Clint Barton? What kind of trick is this?

“Doctor Strange,” Stephen corrects without thinking about it, but Barton just smiles tiredly at him, nodding a bit. His hair is wild, a bit of it flopping down over his forehead, and he’s lit up from below from the bright red bond connecting the two of them. “What—you’re—”

“Hawkeye, yeah,” Barton interrupts. “Listen, you do the portal thing, right?” He doesn’t wait for Stephen to nod or say anything, moving one of his hands in a circle like he’s copying the technique to open a magical portal. “I need to get to my house and I don’t have enough time to wait for a Quinjet or anything. My wife and kids are back and I need to see them.”

Wong sucks in a sharp breath and Stephen briefly squeezes his eyes shut, as if to cut out the redness and realness of the bond between them. Wife and kids. His soulmate is married.

Romantic bond or otherwise, his soulmate is married.

“Of course,” Stephen replies, glaring at Wong before he can say anything, ignoring the bond between them as he steps closer to Barton. His heart feels like it’s forgotten how to stop beating, pulsing pain in his chest. He should’ve known, should’ve looked for him sooner. There was probably a chance for them years ago, some chance they could’ve met back then, back when Stephen was still a surgeon, back when Barton was a SHIELD agent, back before all this. “Where do you need to go?”

Barton smiles at him. “Iowa,” he says, digging in his pocket with his free hand to pull out a phone. “You need an address?”

“No,” Stephen tells him, staring hard at him, wanting to commit every detail to memory. He’ll figure out how to break the bond; he’s the Sorcerer Supreme, one of the most magically powerful people on the planet. He’ll find a way, or he’ll make one. He’s never seen a bond this red before, this powerful, but it doesn’t have to mean anything. Barton never has to know. How would he even tell him, anyway?

For a moment, Stephen thinks about opening a portal to the New York Sanctum Sanctorum, thinks about taking Barton there, explaining everything to him, telling him about the bond between them, even showing him, but then he shakes his head at himself. He does better alone. He has Wong, he has Christine, he doesn’t need anyone else.

With one last look at his soulmate, he opens a portal.

He expects Barton to give him a wave as he walks through, but the archer hesitates, searching his face, and then he holds up his phone. “You mind if I get your number?” He glances over his shoulder and looks through the portal, eyes going wide at whatever waits for him on the other end.

“I don’t have a phone,” Stephen replies awkwardly, glancing at Wong, who rolls his eyes and walks closer, gesturing for Barton’s phone. Wong plugs the Sanctum’s number into his phone and Barton thanks them before giving Stephen a grateful smile and walking through the portal, orange sparks of magic spinning off into the air and then disintegrating as Stephen releases the spell.

He lets out a long breath. Wong uncharacteristically pats him on the arm and then they silently turn and get back to work.

Stephen doesn’t let himself think about it. Or so he tells himself; he can’t seem to get Barton off his mind, no matter what he does, and the place where the compatibility bond enters his chest seems to ache all of a sudden, and Stephen finds himself absently rubbing the spot as if he could make the pain go away.

Wong doesn’t say anything and Stephen doesn’t either.

He meets Laura Barton and their three children at Tony Stark’s funeral. Laura’s compatibility bond is light orange for family and extends to all three of her children, and Stephen does his best to be charming as he shakes her hand. He can barely look at Barton; all he can see is the red of the bond between them, how the light coming off it means so much yet nothing at all.

After the service, Barton pulls away from his family, goes to stand by himself at the edge of the lake. Stephen feels wrenched towards him, almost goes to speak to him, but Wanda Maximoff—and isn’t she something; Stephen can feel the grief and magic pouring off her in waves, almost to the point where she feels dangerous—beats him to it, joining Barton at the water. He doesn’t know what they talk about but it isn’t hard to figure out; the lack of Natasha Romanoff’s presence feels like a missing tooth.

Stephen doesn’t know the details, but he knows enough: the two of them went to Vormir, one of them came back, Soul Stone in hand. He doesn’t know what kind of man his soulmate is, but Stephen would like to think that he’s not the type to kill his friend for—

“Do you know what happened to her?” comes Laura’s kind voice, breaking him out of his thoughts. Stephen turns his head, blinks at her. “Natasha. Clint won’t tell me.”

“I…” Stephen trails off, shakes his head. “I don’t know the details. All I know is that she’s gone.” He doesn’t know if she knows about the Soul Stone or Vormir, and he doesn’t want to take that decision away from Barton, who has his arm around Wanda’s waist and is leaning on her. Stephen’s shaking hands curl into painful fists; irrationally, he thinks that should be him. Why isn’t Barton leaning on him? Can’t he feel the pulsing, wrenching bond between them? It almost feels like an extra limb now that Stephen knows where it leads.

Laura swallows so loudly that Stephen can hear it and she nods. “She was a...she was my friend,” she says finally. “I just want to know what happened. Where she’s buried.”

Stephen turns to her. He doesn’t know Barton, doesn’t know her, doesn’t know anything other than the wrenching in his chest, the burning over his heart. “I know she was brave,” he says, and she searches his face, nods. “I know that whatever happened, she made it so we’re here now. We won because of her.”

Laura keeps his gaze as she nods. “I hope you’re right,” she murmurs, and then her attention is pulled away from him when one of her kids needs attention. Stephen lets out a sigh of relief as she turns away from him; he doesn’t want her to see the longing on his face, the desperation, the red that he must be drenched in because of the bond splitting him in two.

He leaves before Barton comes back.

The next few months are unrelentingly busy as the sorcerers help fix up the mess at the Avengers Facility, as well as Stephen’s work on ensuring the timeline is safe and secure. He had seen millions of possible outcomes but somehow they’d achieved the truly impossible: defeating Thanos, although what’s left over doesn’t feel like much of a victory.

There are extremist sects on all sides of the issue—people who think those Dusted never should’ve been brought back, that Thanos was right, that the Avengers should’ve never interfered in the first place, that they should’ve gotten together sooner, that it was all a hoax or Thanos hadn’t existed at all and half the population had been taken by the government for five years—and Stephen pays little attention to them, only taking note of what could potentially interfere with his work. Wong updates him on some of them, and he almost leaves the Sanctum entirely when Stephen admits that their one-in-14-million chance hinged on a rat.

Luckily the timeline seems secure; whatever Steve Rogers did by staying back in time, he didn’t mess anything up. Stephen wanted to lecture him on it, but he’d already disappeared by the time Stephen had felt the rift of two timelines rubbing up against each other, and Sam Wilson had been holding a new Captain America shield in his hands, James Barnes next to him. Stephen’s too busy to get involved in whatever those two have going on and all he does is warn them to stay out of trouble, which is rich coming from him.

Barton calls on a Tuesday. Stephen’s been running himself ragged for the past few months in order to keep himself distracted, but he knows exactly who is on the other end of the call when the phone starts to ring.

His hands are hurting more than normal so Stephen levitates the receiver out of the cradle and magically holds it up near his ear. He swallows thickly. “Doctor Strange speaking.”

“Yeah, this is Clint Barton?” Stephen doesn’t know why it’s a question. He squeezes his eyes shut. “I met you a few months ago? After the battle?”

“Yes,” Stephen manages to get out. The bond pulses and Wong was right; Stephen can astral project and follow the path it creates and can see Barton standing out on his porch, coffee in one hand and phone in the other, but the image fades before he can examine the look on the archer’s face. “I remember. Did you need something?”

“I wanted to ask a favor of you,” Barton says, sounding a bit unsure.

Stephen would give him the entire fucking world. “What do you need, Mr. Barton?”

Barton snorts. “Christ, don’t call me Mister, for one. I, uh...is there any way you can portal me there?”

Stephen freezes, glancing down at his tunic. The Cloak of Levitation senses his sudden rise of anxiety and flutters a bit around his legs. “I’m busy now,” he says, “but we can make an appointment for later this week.”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Barton replies. They make an appointment and Barton hedges around the actual reason why; Stephen gives himself a brief moment of fantasy to think about Barton knowing about the compatibility bond between them and wanting to figure out some sort of timeshare where Stephen gets him three nights a week and his family gets him four.

Barton hangs up first and Stephen stares at the receiver for a moment before his magic nearly drops it and he has to grab it out of midair and slam it back into the cradle. His hands alight in a sudden burst of pain and he hisses, pushing to his feet and going to the kitchen, where Wong has a vial of soothing potion in one of the cupboards.

He can get the vial out but can’t open it.

Wong finds him a little while later, vial abandoned on the floor next to him, where he sits up against the kitchen cabinets, hands in his hair and his face pressed to his knees. Wong doesn’t say anything, just picks the vial up from the floor and easily opens it, tugging Stephen’s hands out of his hair to gently apply the potion. Stephen breathes out a sigh of relief as he begins to feel a bit of relief from the pain in his hands.

“A bond such as yours cannot be denied or pushed away,” the librarian says quietly. When Stephen scoffs at him, he tightens his grasp on Stephen’s scarred fingers until he lifts his head and glares at him. “Nothing good will come of this.”

That just affirms the decision to ignore it, confirms that he’s doing the right thing. He’s the Sorcerer Supreme. What the hell does Wong know?

Stephen ignores the broken, withered bond hanging from Wong’s chest, doesn’t let himself think if Wong has personal experience in the matter. He pushes Wong away and leaves him in the kitchen without so much as a thank you.

Stephen wants to reschedule their appointment but he also doesn’t like thinking of himself as a coward, so he spends the day anxiously waiting for their appointment and doesn’t get anything else done as he paces around the Sanctum. Wong busy with something that he hasn’t told Stephen about and Stephen hasn’t asked, but he pops in a couple times to warn him not to do anything stupid, which pretty much guarantees that Stephen will do something stupid.

The phone rings once and then cuts off, their agreed-upon signal for Stephen to open a portal at Barton’s house. For a brief moment, he considers not opening the portal and instead throwing himself through one of the Gateways in the Rotunda. He likes to think he’s stopped running or pushing people away, that he’s learned his lesson and matured, but he clearly hasn’t. Most powerful sorcerer or not, he’s still fucking scared.

Stephen opens the portal and for a brief moment, looks through to the farmhouse on the other end. That should be his life, he thinks. He should be home there. Laura stole his life and he doesn’t know how but she did. She simply got there first.

He wonders what the missed moment was; maybe when he was in college and Barton was in SHIELD and they were supposed to run into each other on the street, or maybe when he was older and Barton was checked into his hospital but he was too busy or he’d called out that day or something else got in the way. Stephen’s learned that millions of little actions make up the larger actions that define a timeline separate from others; it could be anything. He could’ve gotten up a minute late one morning and missed his chance or got on the wrong bus or gone down the wrong aisle in a grocery store.

There are places in between other dimensions, places where other timelines touch, places where he can go and see what changed, where he went wrong. In the grand scheme of things, one missed compatibility bond is nothing. It’s meaningless. Stephen should be able to accept that, accept yet another sacrifice for the world he’s protecting.

Sometimes things just don’t work out. Sometimes things that are meant to be just don’t work out. No matter how hard someone tries, no matter how much they work at it, no matter how much they want it, it simply won’t happen. Stephen has seen that for himself, has lived that. He accepted that his hands, his life before, was a sacrifice he had to make.

He just didn’t realize he would have to find his heart and then sacrifice him as well.

The compatibility bond pulses and fills the room with light, and Stephen looks up to see Barton walk through the portal. It flickers and dies behind him, cutting off the life that was taken from Stephen before he even knew it was something to lose.

Barton smiles at him, turning to look around. The second floor of the Sanctum contains the library of both mystical and mundane books, the kitchen, his bedroom, the room Wong stays in when he’s around, an extra bedroom, and the pride and joy of the New York Sanctum: the Occult Artifacts room. His Cloak can sense Stephen’s sudden rush of emotion and it swirls around him as Barton looks around, even moving around to poke at a few objects.

Stephen is overwhelmed with the desire for him to stay, and he briefly squeezes his eyes shut, grounding himself. He should’ve known this was a bad idea. What a preposterously stupid risk to take—

His Cloak brushes over his cheek and Stephen opens his eyes. “You asked for a favor,” he says into the silence between them, watching as Barton moves around the room, looking closer at a few artifacts but doing nothing more than poking at them, not daring to pick them up. He has no visible weapons on him; Stephen wonders why, wonders if he feels safe or if he just doesn’t think Stephen is a threat.

Barton stops on the other side of the empty display case that once held Stephen’s Cloak. “Yeah,” he says, looking at him through the glass and then coming around. He looks so painfully earnest that it makes Stephen’s heart hurt. The bond has turned the air between them bright red, pulsing and throbbing and it aches where it enters him. “I wanted to see if you’d do something for me.”

Anything, he wants to say. He will cut out his heart and let Barton eat it. “Oh?”

“Natasha sacrificed herself for me. For the Soul Stone. I need you to undo it, to make it so I was the one who died instead.” Barton has the audacity to smile at him, like he’s doing Barton such a huge favor by even considering it.

Stephen feels as if he’s been struck and then struck again. He blinks, shakes his head, takes a deep breath. Briefly he thinks that it would be an easy solution to his problem; no more soulmate, no more bond. Pain lances through him at the very thought and he doesn’t know how he got so attached but he has; he’s shaking his head before he’s even aware of it. Stephen’s hands are shaking as he summons a tea tray and gestures Barton to the nearest pair of armchairs with a small table in between them.

Barton sits, only feet away from him, and this close, the bond is blinding, the rope between them thick and bright and so alive. It’s nearly another person in between them; Stephen can barely see past the light. He thinks briefly that the red will drive him mad, that he suddenly detests the color, how it means everything he can’t have.

He sits and pours them tea. Barton sloshes his cup with milk, smiles at him as he takes a sip. Stephen’s hands shake too much for him to lift the cup on his own, so his magic does it for him.

He takes a deep breath, grounds himself, says, “You understand what you’re asking of me is bordering on the impossible.”

“I thought that was your whole thing,” Barton replies easily. He’s relaxed, unbothered by what he’s asking. From what Stephen can tell so far, he’s a calm man. “Achieving the impossible.”

The bond is so bright between them that Stephen can barely see his face. All he sees is red.

“I suppose so,” he replies, trying to keep his tone casual, ignoring the way he feels like preening at the compliment that isn’t quite a compliment. He doesn’t know how Barton can look at him with all the red between them, how Barton can even see him. “You’re going to have to tell me precisely what happened.”

Barton’s eyes go wide. He puts his tea cup back on the tray before he drops it, rubs his palms over his black jeans. He looks away from Stephen, eyes on the floor, and then he lets out a sigh that sounds like it comes from the very depths of his soul. “Everything?” he asks, voice soft.

“From the beginning.”

“I…” Dark eyes pin him to his seat. Stephen suddenly finds he can deny this man nothing. He can barely see him past all the red. “Then you’ll be able to help? Fix it?”

“I am a doctor, after all,” Stephen replies, lips twisting. “I will do my very best.”

“Good enough for me.” Barton nods once, fists his thick fingers into his jeans, and then abruptly gets to his feet, paces in a jerky fashion for a few long moments. “We were sent to retrieve the Soul Stone,” he grits out, fists at his sides. “We knew Thanos went there with his daughter, Gamora, and when he left, she wasn’t with him. But we didn’t know what happened.”

Barton glances at him. Stephen watches him patiently as he continues to pace; it seems like the words have to be wrenched out of him.

He realizes this is the first time Barton has told the entire story to someone. He’s told a little to others, to explain why Natasha was gone, but this is the first time he’s bared his soul. He hasn’t even told Laura.

Stephen’s chest tightens at the thought that Barton trusts him more than he trusts his wife.

Barton explains that they landed on Vormir and walked across the otherwise empty, flat planet to the single mountain with the two spires on top. They hiked up the mountain, unsure of what was at the top but certain it was the only way to get the Soul Stone. Then they met the Stonekeeper, the Red Skull, who told them that they had to sacrifice someone they loved for the Soul Stone. An everlasting exchange, a soul for a soul.

“He knew my mom’s name,” Barton tells him, sounding torn. “He knew Natasha’s dad’s name. She didn’t even know his name.”

“What was her name?” Stephen asks. “Your mom.”

“Edith.” Barton smiles a bit as he says it, but then the look fades, replaced with heartbreak. “I wanted it to be me,” Barton tells him, voice broken. Stephen fists his hands in the Cloak to stop himself from reaching for him. “It should’ve been me. I’d give up anything for her. Natasha deserved to live more than me.”

Stephen disagrees, but he doesn’t say anything. He waits for Barton to finish.

“I had a grappling hook arrow on my belt,” Barton tells him. “She knew that. She knew me better than I know myself, and she managed to attach it to me as she activated it, attaching me to the cliff. I couldn’t—I couldn’t.”

Stephen waits for him to continue and jumps to his feet when Barton squeezes his eyes shut, looks like he’s going to fall over. He helps him back to the chair, careful not to touch his skin, and then sits back down, waiting patiently for him to be ready to finish the story. Barton presses his hands to his face and then takes in a deep breath, looks up at him with hollow eyes in a gaunt, lined face.

“I grabbed her as she fell. There was no way to hold her and to cut myself loose. She told me—she told me it was okay, to let her go, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t okay.” Barton sucks in a deep breath, nearly hyperventilating, and Stephen’s Cloak slips from around his shoulders and tugs away from him, floating through the pulsing red bond between them and laying itself over Barton’s lap.

Does it know? Can it sense the magic between them, the bond?

Barton lets out a harsh breath that’s almost a chuckle, digging his fingers into the Cloak’s fabric and hunching down over it. He’s so red that Stephen can barely see him. “She kicked away from the wall, wrenched herself away from me. I couldn’t watch it. I couldn’t.” Barton looks up at him, agony writ so clear across his face that Stephen can’t help himself; he goes to him, goes to one knee in front of him, puts a hand over his.

Barton looks at him, searches his face; Stephen wonders what he sees, if he can see him through the tears and the red compatibility bond thrumming between them.

“She fell. I couldn’t hold her. I looked down and she was there on the altar at the bottom of the cliff. Then I closed my eyes and when I opened them, I was in a pool of water, alone, and there was the Soul Stone in my hand.” Barton squeezes his eyes shut, two tears tracking down his cheeks, and Stephen wants to brush them away, wants to cradle his head in his hands, wants to hold him, promise him it’s not his fault. But he doesn’t. Barton doesn’t wear a wedding ring but Stephen can see his wife all over him; the red between them is so bright Stephen can barely see his face but he can still see her in his aura, see her imprint on him. Barton’s already chosen her.

He’s already lost long before he even knew there was something to lose.

“I was alone,” Barton continues, turning his head and looking away from him. Stephen feels sick for focusing so much on his own feelings during this; Stephen pats his hand and pushes to his feet, retreats back to his own armchair. A few feet away, the red isn’t as blinding. “I’ve never been that kind of alone, y’know? As far as I could tell, the Red Skull was gone. I even hiked back to the top of the mountain, tried to throw myself off it, but some magic caught me, took me back to the top. I tried to give the Stone back, but it wouldn’t take it. I tried everything.” Barton turns to him, pushes the Cloak off his lap. It catches itself before it hits the floor and floats up into the air, back towards Stephen.

“I need you to take me back. We went back to 2014, before when Thanos and Gamora went there the first time. So that means we can go back again. I have to change it so I’m the one sacrificed instead of her.” Barton shakes his head, roughly scrubs his hands over his face. “You have to.”

“The Time Stone is gone,” Stephen tells him.

Barton scoffs. “Like you don’t have other spells for time travel.”

He’s not wrong. “The magic for what you’re asking would kill me.”

Barton stares him down. “Kill me instead. Take whatever you need. Life force, manna, whatever it is, it’s yours if you bring her back.”

Stephen licks his lips, nods, taps his fingers on the arm of his chair. “I’m going to need to do some research,” he hedges, Wong’s warning against doing anything stupid ringing in his head. “I can’t make any guarantees.”

Barton surges forward, grabbing one of his scarred hands, his left one. He’s surprisingly gentle and his fingers graze over the spot on Stephen’s ring finger where a wedding ring would go, which makes Stephen’s breath hitch in his chest. “Whatever it takes,” Barton tells him, staring into Stephen’s soul. He’s swimming in red, choking in it, drowning in it. Stephen has never realized how bright a singular color could be before now. “Whatever it takes.”

The bonds between people tell Stephen far more about them than their words or actions. A compatibility bond is generally between two people, but sometimes three: Tony Stark, for instance, had been bonded to both Pepper Potts and James Rhodes. That triangle had been all red. Other bonds were familial: those between Laura and her children, for instance, although two of her children had bonds reaching away from them and not to her, which meant that bonds weren’t always reciprocal. He’d seen the red bond between Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson, and then the same strength of red bond between Sam and James Barnes. The broken, withered, blackened bond hanging from Thor’s heart, although sometimes Stephen could see green magic at the ends, and it would sometimes flicker red for the briefest moment.

He’d seen the full bond between the brothers when they were in his Sanctum, huge and flushed red, brighter than anything he’d seen before, nearly as large as the gods, encompassing the breadth of their love for one another. There had been nothing like it, before or since. Now Thor’s bond is a thin black rope trailing in front of him, sometimes hanging around his neck like a noose.

He sees more, sees the bonds between strangers, sees strangers sitting next to each other at different tables at a coffee shop with blue or purple or green or red pulsing between them and they never even look at each other. He looks at a man like Sam Wilson, with a heart big enough to love two very different men in their own ways, and he looks at a god like Thor, who gave all his love to Loki and nearly died from the loss of it.

He looks at himself and he sees nothing. He sees red, pulsing and yearning and straining, and he sees the unattainable at the other end of it. But why him? That is the question Stephen cannot answer. What would Barton do for him that no one else can?

He sees himself, someone who pushed everyone away, someone who wanted nothing more than to be the best because he was scared he wasn’t worth it. He’s been unworthy his entire life. He’s the most powerful sorcerer on the planet and he is still not enough.

Will he ever be? Can he ever be happy?

As far as he knows, if he wants to break the bond, one of them has to die, and Stephen won’t take his own life and can’t kill his soulmate for him. It’s not possible. As he explains to Barton, there are Absolute Points in time, things that happened that set the timeline in stone. If they are changed, it creates a branch, which immediately becomes unstable and generally ends up imploding on itself. Natasha’s death is a fixed point in time around which all other points rotate. Like Stephen’s car crash. Like Loki’s death. Like the Snap, like the Blip, like the Decimation. Like the Ancient One’s death, like Baron Mordo, like Kaecilius. Like the death of Stephen’s sister, like the death of Barton’s parents, like so many other gut-wrenchingly painful things that have happened to them. Like the color red.

An Absolute Point in time is immovable, and even though Stephen is an unstoppable object, it cannot be changed.

Barton punches him, puts a hole in the wall, knocks over a table. He tells Stephen that he’s a coward, that he is useless, that he should be able to do this and he should’ve tried harder. If there was anything else to try, Stephen would have done it.

Stephen cannot go back. He can’t wrench a hole in spacetime and climb through it with no repercussions on the place he’s leaving behind. He even tries and feels the expanse of all time stretching out before him and behind him and within him, and he feels as if he’s lost part of himself in that place, in all of time. There is impossible and then there is a step beyond that, something that can’t even be considered, something so beyond impossible that it’s not even a thought. Those things are things that even Stephen can’t comprehend, can’t change. No matter how he tries, no matter what he pushes at, no matter the magic he summons and throws at it, Natasha Romanoff stays dead.

Time moves differently for him than it does for other people, even without the Time Stone. He has some mastery over time without the Stone, given his experience with it—spending months or years looking into over 14 million alternate futures would’ve been enough to give him mastery over time to have some skill, as well as the decade or so he spent with Dormammu, and added to his own already formidable abilities makes him particularly skilled in time magic—and can manipulate it to a point. But actively traveling through time? To change an Absolute Point? To kill his soulmate? Even Stephen has limits.

He experiences it all at the same time: saying no, trying again and again, even wrenching a hole in time to go to Vormir himself but being stopped by wanting to live and not expend all of his magic fighting against time, and then Barton punching him and breaking a table and putting a hole in the wall and leaving. He patches the wall with a wave of his hand and lifts the table back up and puts his hand on the spot where Barton punched him.

Stephen sighs. The brightness of the compatibility bond between them dulls the farther away Barton gets, thinning out as he moves away. He could follow the bond if he wanted, make sure Barton stayed safe, kept an eye out for where he’s going, but he turns away from him instead, goes to the kitchen, pours himself a cup of tea.

He stares into the dark liquid as his mind swirls. He can sense Wong’s presence before he speaks.

“Were you stupid?” Wong asks. Stephen smiles a little, turns to look at him over his shoulder.

“Aren’t I always?”

“Yes,” Wong replies gruffly. He sets a paper bag on the kitchen table. Stephen floats a couple plates and cutlery over, the two of them piling food on their plates before joining each other at the table. Wong pats him on the arm and Stephen smiles slightly at him, twirling noodles around his chopsticks.

“I broke my bond,” Wong abruptly tells him a few minutes later, not looking at him. Stephen looks at him, all thought of food abandoned for the moment. “I could not live with it.”

Stephen’s never been good at treading lightly, but Wong is his friend, so he tries. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Wong looks troubled and haunted, not looking at him. “No,” he replies. “But I will. He was...I loved him.” Stephen thinks someone else would reach across the table and pat his arm or hold his hand, but he’s in no mood to get punched. “More than anything.” Wong leans back in his chair and they both look down at the frayed and tattered bond coming out of his chest. It’s blackened and broken and dead. “He was a sorcerer.” When Stephen opens his mouth, Wong holds up a hand. “If you interrupt, I will not continue.” Stephen motions that he locks his lips shut, which makes Wong roll his eyes. “I was raised in Kamar Taj after my parents died when I was young.

“The Ancient One took me in and began to teach me. I was an insatiable student, hungry to learn, and I found my soulmate in the library.” Wong’s normally stoic face brightens in a small smile and Stephen can’t help but smile back. “He was beautiful, Stephen. One of the most talented sorcerers I’ve ever seen.”

“One of?” Stephen can’t help himself, which makes Wong glare at him. “Sorry, sorry.”

“But he was drawn to the darkness, and instead of following him, I found a way to break the bond.” Wong’s eyes fall to the pulsing red rope extending from Stephen’s chest. “It nearly killed me.” He already knows what Wong is going to say before he even says it, and Stephen doesn’t know what his answer should be. “I will show you how, if you wish.”

He nods, ducks his head, stares at the food on his plate, suddenly not hungry. “Thank you, my friend,” he says. Wong just looks at him. “I’ll...let me think about it.”

“Of course,” Wong says, turning his attention back to his food.

“He wasn’t Kaecilius, was he?”

Wong snorts. “Do you think that little of me, Stephen?”

Stephen smiles at him. “Just wanted to make sure.”

There are a few names for the time after the Blip: Rebuilding, Reconstruction, the Deception, the Unveiling, the Return. There are people who think it was all fake, people who returned who think it was a government plot, that they weren’t really gone for five years, people who lived through the Blip and the Decimation who think it was all a lie. Stephen likes to call it the Rebuilding. They’re building a new world from scratch, pulling together the people who survived those five years with the people who were dusted.

Rebuilding is painful. It’s agonizing. Stephen was gone for five years; Wong stayed behind, kept Kamar Taj and the other Sanctum Sanctorums standing during his absence. He was practically a Sorcerer Supreme in his own right; he argued with Stephen before, but he’s more forceful now, harder even, more stubborn. Stephen appreciates it; he needs someone who puts him in his place, doesn’t let him chase all of his flights of fancy and knocks him down a peg or two. Or ten. Or just doesn’t let him climb the ladder to begin with.

Stephen’s selfish but self-preservation has never been his strong suit. He’s always been a risk-taker, always pushed the limits, always pushed the boundaries. He pushed himself to get his medical degree and doctorate at the same time, and he threw himself into his career to the detriment of everything else in his life. Poor Christine; she’d always deserved better than him.

He and Wong throw themselves into the work of Rebuilding. Wong has other duties, those at Kamar Taj and then his own personal hobbies that Stephen isn’t involved in, but he also works at helping Stephen with Barton’s request, and is there for him when Barton leaves when Stephen admits he can’t do it. Stephen’s attempted to create a spell that adds an extra hour to the day and found it impossible; sometimes he thinks Wong found a way, as the man doesn’t seem to sleep.

Time only moves in a straight line when someone else is there to show him the way. He can follow time forward when the compatibility bond is strong, but with Barton gone, he can’t trust that anymore. So he leans on Wong, who is strong and capable and strangely willing to take the burden.

He realizes that he’s missed something when Sam Wilson calls him and when they get together, the man is wearing a new Captain America outfit. “How long has it been?” Stephen asks Wong as Sam flies overhead.

“Since?”

“The battle.”

“Eight months.”

Stephen rubs a hand over his face. “Is this a side effect?” he asks, gesturing to the throbbing soul bond coming out of his chest. “The time loss.”

“No,” Wong tells him. “That’s something else.” He gives Stephen a concerned look and Stephen ignores it.

Stephen nods, greets Sam as he lands in front of them. They’re outside the Avengers Facility, which is in the process of being rebuilt. There’s a man skulking near the front door, watching them from the shadows, and Stephen briefly focuses his magic on him, opening his third eye, and recognizes him as James Barnes.

His third eye is still open when he turns to look back at Sam, who pauses briefly when he sees the glowing green eye on Stephen’s forehead, and then he visibly shakes the shock away and welcomes them. He has two compatibility bonds, a withered one to Steve Rogers, and the new vibrant one to Barnes. Stephen can also see his aura, see his heart on the outside of his body, see the exterior of his soul and the creatures from parallel dimensions that are attached to him. The ones he can see are good, nothing harmful, feeding off his courage and heart and faith.

Interesting.

Sam explains to them that the Snap originally caused instability in other worlds and the reverberation of the energy used affected planets; Wong chimes in that it affected magic and other dimensions as well. Sam nods, continues that returning so many people at once did the same thing.

Stephen was one of those people.

He realizes that there might be something wrong with him. Something very wrong.

“Excuse me,” he says, stepping away from them. Wong frowns at him.

“Is everything alright?” Sam asks, concerned.

Stephen opens a portal and returns to the Sanctum. He walks through the halls, touches artifacts that should be familiar but aren’t. He finds his Cloak of Levitation back in the display cabinet, opens the door to run his fingers over the familiar fabric.

“What year is it?” Stephen asks, burying his face in the soft red fabric. “What timeline is this? What dimension am I in?”

His Cloak wraps around him and carries him to his bedroom, settles him on the bed. Stephen crosses his legs underneath himself, closes his eyes, and sinks into meditation so deep that when Wong returns a few days later, he briefly thinks Stephen has died.

“You were meditating for nearly a month,” Wong tells him as Stephen stumbles out of his room. The bedrooms are close to the kitchen and Wong is waiting for him, cooking something on the stove. He doesn’t bother to help Stephen to the kitchen table, which is fine, since Stephen’s Cloak carries him most of the way. He pours himself into a chair and slumps over the table.

“It felt like I was walking through fog,” Stephen says, lips moving against the cool wood of the table. “Did you keep me alive?”

“No,” Wong replies, levitating a cup of tea over to him. “Your magic did that. Be thankful for it.”

Stephen raises a hand, conjures up some orange sparks. Good enough. “I am,” he mumbles, sitting up enough to take the cup of tea and take a small sip. “Why did I—”

“You’re stupid,” Wong interrupts. Stephen scowls at him. “I told you not to do anything stupid, and here you are.”

“I’ll have you know my IQ is—”

The look Wong sends him is so pointed that Stephen’s mouth shuts of it’s own accord. Wong points a stirring rod at him. “Stupid,” he repeats. “Now tell me what happened.”

For a brief moment, he doesn’t know, and then he thinks about the various time spells he used, the holes he dug through spacetime, the places he carved out of himself in order to fill a hole caused by his realization that Barton was at the other end of his compatibility bond. Stephen buries his head in his hands. Wong is right, he is stupid. “It was a spell,” he says, voice muffled by his palms.

Wong just sighs.

“Or many spells.”

“I gave you an out, and you still pulled yourself to pieces,” Wong mutters. Stephen drops his hands from his face and frowns at him.

“You didn’t give me another way until after.”

“Get your mind straight, Stephen. That came before he came to the Sanctum.”

By the Vishanti. “You’re sure?”

Wong levels him a flat look. “Yes,” he says. “I’m sure.”

Great. Fantastic. “I wasn’t able to change an Absolute Point in time, then.”

He’s pretty sure Wong is on the verge of throwing whatever he’s cooking into Stephen’s face. “No,” Wong replies tightly. “Even you cannot change an Absolute Point in time, Stephen.”

He nods, looks down at his shaking, scarred hands. He can feel a bristly beard itching his cheeks and he can already tell that he’s lost weight, weight he can’t really afford to lose. He hasn’t showered in a month either; Stephen’s a little impressed that Wong can stand to be in the same room with him right now.

He looks further down and wilts. The compatibility bond is still present, as bright and red as ever. It almost hurts to look at, it’s so bright. It stretches off into infinity, and Stephen could follow it to Barton, but he doesn’t.

Instead he thanks Wong when the man brings him a bowl of soup and he promises to do chores for a week and even do the grocery shopping and organize the part of the library they’ve been putting off. Wong even pretends to believe he’ll actually do it, which makes Stephen even more determined to prove him wrong.

Later, he shaves off his beard, trims his goatee down, showers and stands under the warm water and wonders what other parts of himself he’s going to lose to a soulmate who doesn’t care about him in the slightest. He wishes he could choose his compatibility bond, wishes he never had one at all, wonders why he lost his chance before he even knew he had one.

Thor returns to Earth a few months after he left, with no Guardians in tow. He stands outside the Sanctum and bangs on the door until Stephen figures out that the knocking noise is actually coming from the front door and not one of the myriad of other doors and rooms in the house and lets him in. Thor’s lost weight and Stephen is pretty sure that his biceps are bigger than Stephen’s entire head. His hair is long again and he looks less depressed, although there’s a haunted look to his eyes that Stephen finds very familiar.

His bond is also alive again, although it’s changed, and Stephen has to open his third eye to figure out why. It’s still broken, but red again, vibrant and full of life, and his third eye shows it shrouded in green magic.

“This is why you’re here?” Stephen asks before Thor can say anything. Thor frowns at him. “Loki is alive.” Mismatched eyes go wide. “You don’t know how you know, but you do, and you want me to help you find him.”

“Yes, witch,” Thor growls, pushing past him inside the Sanctum. “Help me find him and strangle him for dying on me.”

Going by the color of his soul bond and the way it pulses when Thor says him, strangling him isn’t the only thing on Thor’s mind. Stephen nods, mind already racing on how to find the other half of a broken soul bond, and he reaches out to run his fingers over Thor’s broken bond, but Thor reaches out, grabs his wrist before he can. “Don’t,” Thor rumbles. “That is not yours to fondle.”

“Fondle,” Stephen repeats incredulously. “I have to examine it, Thor.” Then he frowns. “You can see your bond?”

“Only when you reach for it,” Thor replies. He shifts his huge muscled bulk uncomfortably. “I am the son of a witch, and I have some of her sight.” He gestures towards the blinking green magical eye on Stephen’s forehead. “And my brother was Asgard’s most powerful sorcerer. You...pick up on things.”

Stephen sighs, steps back, gestures for Thor to go upstairs. “Let’s talk,” he says.

“You have access to magicks that I do not,” Thor is telling him as Stephen hands him a large clear mug that soon fills with beer. If Stephen reaches for it, he can already see the answer to the question Thor has not yet asked. The broken bond trailing from the god’s chest is red, bright red. It casts a shadow over Thor’s face and makes him look haunted. “I know he yet lives but I cannot find him.”

Stephen nods, picking up his own cup of tea and taking a sip as he thinks. He’s closed his third eye but now that he knows the magic is there, he can see the remnants of Loki’s magic on Thor’s bond. Finally he says, “There are timelines and dimensions laid over our own. It is entirely possible that a Loki from another dimension has entered this one.” He wouldn’t put it past a Loki to achieve the impossible. Stephen gestures to the broken bond coming out from Thor’s chest and Thor looks down at it, raises his eyebrows. “A compatibility bond is meant to connect two souls. I could theorize that if one soul exists but is not the precise same soul, the bond could exist but not automatically connect them.” He taps his shaking fingers on his cup, glances up to see Thor frowning mightily at him. “You would have to find him to connect the bond.”

“The bond is irrelevant,” Thor announces. Stephen’s mouth thins. “All that matters is finding him, if he lives.”

“Very well,” Stephen decides. He puts his cup down and Thor swallows down the rest of his beer, smiling slightly when the mug automatically refills. Stephen knows Wong would tell him this is a bad idea, which is mostly why he’s going to do it. He gestures for Thor to follow him downstairs to a magically warded room that is safe to practice spells in and won’t bring down the Sanctum if he opens a gateway to another dimension.

“There are constants in every dimension,” Stephen explains as he floats a meditation pillow and a flat bowl of water to the middle of the room. He sits on the pillow and points Thor to an unobtrusive corner of the room as he continues, “Universal constants. The Avengers, for one. Asgard and the Nine Realms.” He touches a tip of a finger to the water, sending ripples across the flat surface. He looks up at Thor. “You and Loki are universal constants. Even in timelines where Odin did not take him from Jotunheim as a child, you are still connected.”

Thor blinks a few times. “You know about that?”

Stephen knows a lot more than that. He just nods, turning his attention back to the water. “The universe tries to correct itself when it loses a constant,” he continues. “Perhaps it opened a hole for another Loki to come here.”

“Wouldn’t that create a…” Thor waves a hand. “A black hole or something?”

“Or something,” Stephen agrees. “It could create a perpetuating cycle where a Loki is pulled from each dimension into a new one, causing chaos and dissent wherever he goes.” Thor chuckles at that. Stephen touches the water again. “Or he could have come on his own.”

“Why would he come here?”

Stephen raises his head from what he sees in the water, eyes finding the pulsing bond exiting Thor’s chest, the green magic surrounding it. On the other side of the room, this far from him, the red of Thor’s bond isn’t as blinding. Stephen’s own is a dull red, muted by distance from Barton. He wonders if Thor can see it, if Aesir have similar skills to see magic. Stephen’s Cloak floats around him, levitating him in midair, and the bowl of water floats with him.

He doesn’t know how to answer the question because his only answer is: if Loki had died, would Thor not tear apart every reality he could find to get him back? But Loki had died and Thor had done nothing. Finally he says, “Perhaps you died and Loki could not live with it.”

That throws Thor for a loop and he goes quiet, giving Stephen a moment to focus. He uses the water in the bowl as a focus point, finding the tendrils of green magic around Thor’s compatibility bond and spreading out to find the source. It’s not difficult but it’s time-consuming; first he has to see if there are any neighboring timelines who have lost a universal constant, and then when he doesn’t find anything, he has to turn his attention back to their timeline and see what’s changed.

Strangely enough, nothing.

Stephen frowns, pulls himself away from the search, shakes his head as he comes back to himself. He turns to look at Thor, who has sat down against the wall and has fallen asleep, letting out low, rumbling snores. Stephen drops to the floor, sending the cushion and the bowl of water away, walking over to Thor to wake him up.

Mismatched eyes blink up at him and Stephen waits for Thor to stand up before he says, “I haven’t found him yet.”

Thor frowns at him. “He is not here? Or not from another time?”

Stephen’s eyes drop to the broken yet still living bond coming out of Thor’s chest. Thor follows his gaze. “I have to examine it.”

“No fondling,” Thor warns. Stephen smiles at him and promises there will be no fondling involved.

“A Variant,” Stephen repeats, staring at Wong, who has absolutely no expression on his face. “Like a...different version of him.”

“That’s the accepted definition of the term, yes,” Wong replies calmly. He’s eating a sandwich; sorcerers who wield as much magic as they do eventually have their bodies adapt in strange ways to the use of that magic, and Wong’s body has changed that he occasionally needs inhuman food. The sandwich bread is two other dimensional tongues and the meat is various tentacles, and he’s also put lettuce and some condiments on it. Stephen has tried some of his food and while disgusting, his magic came more easily afterwards. He’s wondered why they didn’t feed him food like that when he was struggling with accessing magic when he started at Kamar Taj. “He is the Loki that existed here but something changed; he splintered off from the original version somewhere along the timeline.”

“And now he’s back.”

Thor enters the kitchen, brow furrowed in a frown. He sits at the table next to Stephen and glances at Wong’s sandwich before turning to glare at Stephen, who just sighs at him. “You say the Loki that is in this world now is not my brother.”

“No,” Wong replies. Then he frowns as he thinks, finally decides on, “Or yes. We don’t know yet where he diverted from the timeline.”

“His death is an Absolute Point in time,” Stephen says. “So he had to come from before.”

Wong taps his fingers on the table as he finishes his sandwich. He pats his mouth with a napkin and uses it to wipe up some crumbs before folding it up on the table. He turns to look at Thor, who stares at him. “The Avengers went back in time to retrieve the Infinity Stones to defeat Thanos.” Thor nods at this, mismatched eyes narrowing. “Perhaps something happened with a Loki.”

“I was not told,” Thor replies, tone short. “I saw him in his prison on Asgard but it was too painful to confront him.” He sighs, turns his head away from them. Outside the Sanctum, thunder rumbles through the sky. “You would have to ask...Banner, I believe. Or the insect man. They are the only ones left.”

“Ant-man?” Stephen clarifies, which has Thor nodding in agreement.

“I have been working with the Avengers,” Wong says. “I can ask them.”

“I’ll go with,” Stephen decides, Wong nodding in agreement. “Do you have a phone, Thor?”

“No,” Thor replies. “Send a raven.”

Send a raven. Stephen will get right on that.

Barton is at the New Avengers Facility. Stephen hasn’t seen him in weeks or months or days or however long it’s been since Barton left the Sanctum; time still feels a bit screwy for him. It’s also entirely possible that this is before Barton came to the Sanctum; Stephen doesn’t know how to make sure of the date. Calendars make his eyes hurt and he can never seem to focus on them or hold a date in his head. His eye throbs when Barton looks at him, drenched in red. He can’t see anything else other than red when Barton is in the same room as him so he stays away, unable to focus. Perhaps it’s a good thing that Barton isn’t his; Stephen wouldn’t get anything done.

He doesn’t ask why Barton is there and not at his farm. He doesn’t care. It’s not his business and he’s failed the man once already; there are impossible things that even Stephen cannot achieve, and making his soulmate happy is one of them.

Banner has been struggling with integration of his human form and his Hulk form. He spent months in a gamma radiation chamber during the Blip and was able to coax Hulk out and merged their forms, but now he and Hulk want separation. It’s like the worst form of divorce Stephen can imagine, except they have to stay together afterwards.

He and Banner spend two days in a meditation chamber that’s almost a sensory deprivation chamber, and when they leave, Banner has better control over his Hulk form and is in his human form for the first time in years. He can’t hold it all the time but has a better handle on it; anything is an improvement.

They’re drinking water in one of the small kitchenettes near the private quarters for the Avengers when Scott Lang walks up. Stephen nods to him and offers him a bottle, but Scott turns it down. “I already told Wong,” Scott tells him, “but we know that when we went back to 2012, that Loki was able to get the Tesseract.”

For the love of—

Banner makes a choked off sound. “I don’t remember that,” he says, rubbing a hand over his forehead.

“Your memory may be fuzzy and inconsistent between forms,” Stephen reminds him, glancing at him before looking back at Scott, who has a thoroughly sheepish look on his face. “What else?”

“That’s why Steve and Stark had to go back to 1970,” Scott continues. “To get the Tesseract from Stark’s dad.”

Norns above. Stephen rubs a hand over his face. “Where’s Wong?” he asks.

“He left this morning,” Scott says. “Oh! He wanted you to call him when you woke up.”

Stephen looks up as Wong walks through the portal, glancing around the library before pulling a chair over and sitting across from Stephen. Stephen’s hidden away in the Avengers library, pretending to do research but in reality avoiding Barton. “They said it was an alternate 2012 Loki,” Stephen says without preamble. “He has the Tesseract.”

Wong nods, pulls the book Stephen has been paging through away from him and looks through it. “Loki with the Tesseract would be plenty powerful enough to leave his disintegrating timeline and come back to ours. It would make sense.”

“Wouldn’t he and Thor be bonded?”

“There’s another Thor in the timeline he left. He’d still be connected to that Thor until he met this one. Ergo, he must be avoiding him, or has already run.”

“What do we know about Loki from that era?” Stephen asks. He’d been in surgery the day of the invasion; he’d come out of the operating room after saving someone’s life to find that the world had been invaded by aliens and then those aliens had been defeated during his surgery and he’d been none the wiser. Wong had been at Kamar Taj; Stephen assumes he came to New York and was defending the Sanctum, just like what the Ancient One had done.

“Insane,” Wong offers up, closing the book and pushing it away. “Bent on destruction.”

“He was influenced by Thanos and the Mind Stone,” Barton speaks up from the doorway to the library. His face is shadowed in red light, eyes bright. “I was mind controlled by him for two weeks before the Chitauri invasion. I probably know more about his motivations than anyone else alive.”

“You’d tell us about that?” Stephen asks, not meeting his gaze.

“If it helps you find him so Thor can stop his angst-fest, absolutely.” Barton sucks in a deep breath, pushes his shoulders back. “We’re a team, right? We help each other.”

Stephen nods, curls his fingers into fists, fingernails biting into his palm. He’d love to spend time with his soulmate in order to help someone else find their own. Absolutely love it.

“It isn’t entering the mind,” Stephen assures Barton, who looks like he’s about two seconds from bolting out of the room and running until he hits the ocean. “It’s...just grazing the edge of it.”

“No,” Barton repeats. “No mind stuff. Had enough of that, thank you.”

Thor grumbles from across the room. “This magic is not necessary,” he tells them. Next to him, Wong just shakes his head. “Just track the Tesseract. Loki will not be rid of it.”

“You can’t track the Tesseract until you have an idea of where he is,” Barton replies. “Do you know how big Earth is? It’d take us decades to search the whole planet for one little—”

“We already have wards up around the planet that will alert us to use of the Tesseract,” Wong cuts in, cutting Barton a sideways glance. “There’s no way to know if he used it before, but we’ll know if he uses it now.” Barton’s mouth twists but all he does is nod. Wong looks between Barton and Thor. “We need to know everything about Loki from that point in time. His motivations, where he’d go, where to begin to look for him.”

“And what we’re going to do when we find him,” Stephen adds in, voice low. He can’t look away from the green magic swirling around Thor’s compatibility bond; when he looks at Wong, he can see the librarian sees the same thing.

It’s no surprise when Loki appears out of thin air a few moments later. Stephen and Wong are ready with magical shields, Stephen automatically moving to shield Barton, who pulls knives from his belt or thin air, Stephen isn’t quite sure. Thor ignores all of them, moving to stand in front of Loki, holding out a hand to the side. Stormbreaker slams through the door a moment later.

Loki is dressed in a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up and black slacks, as well as black dress shoes, his long black hair in wild disarray. He has the Tesseract in one hand, a sword in the other. His eyes are green, bright green. The compatibility bond leaving his chest is broken as well and so very, very red.

The bond between Thor and this new Loki snaps into place. Behind Stephen, Barton sucks in a breath, and when Stephen turns his head to look back at him, he’s staring at Thor’s chest, where the bond has straightened out and has connected with Loki’s. The room flares with red light, brighter than anything Stephen has ever seen, and when he looks back at Thor and Loki, they’re staring at each other, bathed in red, the bond rippling and bubbling between them, massive and unlike anything Stephen has ever seen.

“Brother,” Thor rasps, surging forward, Stormbreaker falling from his hand, and he doesn’t hesitate to wrap Loki in his arms even as the god plunges his sword into his side. “You died.”

The sword falls from Thor’s side, covered in blood, as Loki nods and clutches Thor back. “I saw,” he says. “I—I’m—” he stops himself, seeing Wong and Stephen and Barton. Green eyes narrow.

Stephen makes the executive decision to be a little impulsive and he lowers his magical shield, ignoring Wong’s hissed, “Are you stupid?”

He should know the answer to that by now. Stephen steps forward as Thor pulls back from Loki, putting himself in between Stephen and his brother. Stephen mentally rolls his eyes. “You found him,” Stephen says. “Or he found us. What now?” He might be the Sorcerer Supreme but he also knows that these two are gods; he might’ve gotten one over on Loki the last time he was on Earth, but Stephen knows that’ll never happen again. Unless this Loki doesn’t remember that…

“Now we leave,” Thor tells him. “I needed you to help me get him back. Now I have him.” He holds his hand out and Stormbreaker leaps into his grasp. He doesn’t even seem to notice he’s bleeding.

“Wait,” Stephen says, moving towards them. “On one condition. Loki comes to the Sanctum and explains what happened, then you can go.”

Wong hisses his name and Stephen ignores him. Loki scoffs and Thor shakes his head. Stephen takes the chance and slices a hand across the room, opening a portal between Loki and Thor, dropping both of them into his locked and warded meditation room in the Sanctum. He knows Loki can use the Tesseract to leave, but he can track him through the reestablished compatibility bond.

Once the portal disappears, Wong drops his shield, coming forward to smack Stephen on the back of the head. “Hey!” Stephen exclaims, ducking away from him. “What was that—”

“You sent two pissed off gods to my Sanctum,” Wong snaps. “Do you expect it to be standing by the time we get back?”

“It should be fine,” Stephen muses, rubbing the back of his head. He looks around the library, gaze falling on Barton, who hasn’t moved except to press a hand to his chest right where his compatibility bond connects him to Stephen, the two of them drenched in red. “Barton?”

“The—the red thing,” Barton says as Wong mutters something under his breath and portals away. Stephen means to follow him but he has to—he can’t. Stephen turns to the archer and looks at him. “What was that?”

“They’re called compatibility bonds,” Stephen replies. “Soulmate bonds, you could say.”

Barton nods, still looking down at his chest. “Do I have one?”

Thank magic he can’t see it. Stephen breathes a silent sigh of relief. “Yes,” he says, bringing up a hand to touch the red bond exiting his own chest. He shivers when they’re both touching the bond at once, their fingers brushing through all the red.

“Who?” Barton asks, meeting his desperate gaze.

He thinks about Wong’s warnings, thinks about all the suffocating, drowning red between them, thinking about the way Thor and Loki found each other again in a way that should’ve been impossible. Thinks if it means anything for the man standing in front of him.

“I don’t know,” he lies.

Barton wilts. “Oh,” he mutters. “But it’s there? It’s not broken?”

“It wasn’t Natasha Romanoff, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Barton nods, grimaces, glances up at him through his lashes. “Sorry about that, by the way. I took my issues out on you and I shouldn’t have. And thanks for trying, I do appreciate it.” He touches his face in the same spot where he punched Stephen. “Sorry for punching you, too.”

“You’re forgiven.” Stephen inclines his head and turns to open a portal back to the Sanctum, which does seem to still be standing for the moment. Cursing his own recklessness, he turns to look at Barton over his own shoulder, “Coming?”

Barton grins at him, sharp and rakish and just as reckless as him.

With Barton in close proximity, the compatibility bond begins to burn. Literally burn him. He has blisters on his chest and gets sunburn on his face when Barton spends too much time near him. Stephen has to balance spending time near him and avoiding him for his own safety. The archer doesn’t seem inclined to leave the Sanctum after they get the whole Thor and Loki deal sorted away—Loki hands over the Tesseract, they don’t imprison him, and he promises not to try and take the planet over again, a promise Thor swears to hold him to; Stephen gives him about a week—and Wong says they have an extra bedroom, so Barton just moves in.

Barton seems obsessed with the compatibility bond, asking both of them about theirs, asking for books and constantly talking about it. He admits that his wife left him and he was living in the New Avengers Facility and helping out some while he was trying to figure out what to do next. For now, he seems set on finding his soulmate. Wong brings him a stack of books from Kamar Taj, the same stack of books that Stephen read when he was first learning about the bonds. Luckily, Barton has no interest in learning magic; Stephen theorizes it relates back to his mind control under Loki, which they haven’t touched on since Thor took his brother back to New Asgard in Norway.

Stephen is putting aloe gel on his burned face when Barton pokes his head into his room. Stephen meets his gaze in the mirror. “Yes?” Is knocking no longer a thing?

“Can you see my bond?”

Stephen squeezes his eyes shut for the briefest moment before turning to him, setting the tube of aloe gel back on his dresser. He doesn’t know how helpful aloe is for his minor burns but he’s trying anything at this point. “Yes,” he replies.

“But you don’t know who it connects to.”

Stephen shakes his head. “No,” he says. “If you haven’t met them, I won’t be able to follow it to them. Just the way the magic works, unfortunately.”

“Could you see it at the funeral? Stark’s funeral?”

Slowly, Stephen narrows his eyes at the archer and nods, unsure of what he’s asking.

“Is Laura my soulmate?”

Stephen lets out a sigh of relief. “No,” he replies, shaking his head. “You...there’s evidence that you’ll know when you meet the person you’re bonded to.”

“Yeah, I read that. What happens if you meet them and don’t tell them you’re bonded?”

“There is no...singular experience,” Stephen finally manages. The bond between them is so bright that his eyes are starting to water. He can barely see Barton through all the red. “For instance, it’s entirely possible to meet someone and not know of the bond between you. Most do not.”

“But if you did know,” Barton presses, stepping further into his bedroom. Stephen’s hands twitch and he wants to summon a portal and bolt to the other side of the planet. “What would happen?”

“None of the books are clear,” Stephen tells him. “Pain is common.” There is so much red he thinks he may very well be blinded from it.

Barton says something, but Stephen can’t hear him through all of the red. He shoves past him, runs from the room, locks himself in his meditation chamber and wards himself in with every spell he knows. He curls up on the floor, presses his face down and closes his eyes. His Cloak wraps around him like a blanket.

He’s going to ask Wong to show him how to break the bond. It’s his only choice. That’s all he’s wanted from the beginning: to know there was a choice and to be able to make it. He’s done sacrificing himself for a man who doesn’t care about him. He doesn’t know why Clint fucking Barton is his soulmate, but he’s done. He doesn’t care.

Under the Cloak, Stephen opens his eyes, breathes in the hot dark. Even without Barton in the room, all he sees is red.

“No,” Wong replies mildly, reaching across the table to take food off Stephen’s plate. “I should not have told you it was possible to begin with.”

“Tell me,” Stephen says again. “You have to.”

“No,” Wong repeats around his mouthful. “Not unless you tell him and you both agree that breaking the bond is the right decision.”

Tell him. Stephen would rather cut out his own tongue. His gaze falls to the withered bond falling from Wong’s chest, wishes instead they could’ve been bonded together. Wouldn’t that have made more sense? The two of them? Isn’t this a choice Stephen can make for himself? To choose someone other than the man chosen for him? He can break the bond and choose Wong.

Wong is staring at him. Stephen glances at him and then looks away, pushes some of the food on his plate around. “No, Stephen,” Wong tells him. “This is not your decision.”

“How is it anything other than my decision?”

“Until you both agree, which he won’t, I do not agree. And whatever you’re thinking about, my answer is also no.” Wong touches his broken, withered bond and sighs. “Stephen, I...you are my friend. My brother. The universe does not make mistakes. You have to believe in it.”

“How?” He puts his shaking, scarred hands on the table between them. “This is what was done to me. This is what the universe did to me. It took everything.”

Wong nods. He reaches across the table and pats one of Stephen’s hands. He touches one of the surgery scars and Stephen winces as nerve pain echoes out from his touch. “There are no mistakes. I chose to go against my compatibility bond and have dearly paid the price. You cannot. I will not let you.”

“Unless we both agree,” Stephen finishes, and Wong nods. “I...I’m sorry. I push my problems onto you and I’m sorry.”

“That’s what friends are for, Stephen,” Wong tells him, grabbing his plate and dragging it across the table. Stephen shakes his head, smiles at him. He gets up and digs through the fridge and finds a bowl of octopus hearts from another dimension. He picks through the bowl and eats a few of them raw, using some of his magic to cook them. “If you continue to do it, however, we will have words.”

Stephen smiles at him. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Who were you and Wong talking about the other day?” Barton asks. Stephen is meditating in his overstuffed armchair in front of the Anomaly Rue window, his Cloak of Levitation floating nearby. His third eye opens first and blinks at Barton, who just raises his eyebrows in return. Stephen slowly pulls himself out of his meditation and looks up at him. The red between them is suffocating.

“When was this?” Stephen asks, swimming through time and space to reach him.

“A couple days ago,” Barton says. “You were eating in the kitchen.” He frowns. “You two eat a lot.”

“A side-effect of our magic use,” Stephen says, picking up a glass of water from the small table next to his chair and taking a long drink. “I do not remember the conversation.”

Barton lets out a long huff. “Bullshit. You two were talking about your compatibility bond. I want to know who you’re bound to.”

“That’s private information.” Stephen pushes to his feet, his Cloak swirling around him and settling comfortably over his shoulders. “If you’ll excuse me.”

Barton reaches out, grabs his wrist. The bond between them burns so bright that Stephen feels as if his eyes are going to melt out of his sockets. He recoils away and Barton yelps. “What the hell was that?”

“Nothing,” Stephen snaps through gritted teeth. He tries to wrench away from Barton but he’s inconceivably strong, fingers digging into his wrist. “Let me go!”

“Not until you fucking tell me what’s going on, Strange,” Barton growls, wrenching him around. Stephen can barely see him through all the red; he can feel his skin burning. “Now.”

“Why did your wife leave you?” Stephen asks, the question coming from somewhere deep; he didn’t even know he was going to ask it until it came out. Barton’s grasp on him falters for the briefest moment and he uses the chance to pull away, get a few feet away so he can talk without being burned alive.

“I wouldn’t tell her what happened to Nat,” Barton replies, eyes dropping to the sudden burns appearing on Stephen’s neck and lower jaw. “Are you—what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Stephen tells him. “What else?”

Barton sighs, shakes his head. “I was a vigilante during the Blip,” he admits, barely audible over the roar in Stephen’s ears. “I hurt people. Killed people.”

“What kind of people?”

“KKK, the mafia, cartels, Yakuza. People who took advantage of the Decimation.” Barton shakes his head. “I couldn’t live with it. I had to stop them. Laura, she...I told her, and she couldn’t handle it. She knew about the work I did for SHIELD but…” He lets out a long breath. “Last straw, I guess. She didn’t want a killer in her house, raising her kids. She kept asking me if one of them was going to turn out like me, if they’d pick up a sword and not put it down. So she kicked me out, got a lawyer, the whole deal. Told her I’d sign no contest if I could see my kids a couple times a month. She’s figuring it out.” Barton’s eyebrows raise and his look turns pointed, crosses his arms over his chest. “Well? That good enough?”

Stephen grimaces, lifts a hand to his face, brushes his shaking fingers over the burns on his cheek. He’s never heard of a bond doing this; why is he being punished? For wanting to make a choice? For being too late? “Fine,” he grits out. “Thank you for telling me. But no, I won’t tell you who we were talking about.”

He turns away and strides towards his bedroom, but Barton’s voice stops him, “It’s me, isn’t it?”

Stephen turns back to him.

A year after the Battle of Earth, Sam Wilson, wearing his Captain America gear and with the shield on his arm, steps up to the podium. A few steps away is James Barnes, looking up at Sam, affection a raw wound on his face. The bond between them is nearly vibrating with life. It’s dripping red.

Stephen Strange and Wong are standing off to the side, away from the hassle of reporters and the gathered people. There’s been discussions on taking down the erected monuments to those lost in the Snap and Sam is going to recommend keeping them up to not attempt to erase what they’ve all been through. Sam’s name is on one of those monuments, same with Stephen’s and Christine’s and Clint’s family and half of the entire goddamn world.

A hand slides into his and Stephen turns his head, a smile creasing his face when he sees who it is. “Stephen,” Clint murmurs, reaching up on his toes to press a kiss to Stephen’s cheek. “He start yet?”

“He’s getting ready,” Wong replies for him.

Sam clears his throat and everyone goes silent, turning to look at him. “One year ago today, at precisely this time, Bruce Banner put on the Stark Gauntlet and brought back the half of the population that had been dusted by Thanos five years earlier. Within 24 hours later, Tony Stark sacrificed his life in order to destroy Thanos and all of his armies, using the same Gauntlet. We also remember Natasha Romanoff’s great sacrifice that gave us the Soul Stone.” Next to him, Clint stiffens at her name. He’d been the one to buy her gravestone and find a tree to put it under. They’d gone to see it a few months back and Clint had left her flowers and a candle and a small stuffed bear.

Sam continues talking about the changes they’ve dealt with in the past year and he also announces the formation of the New Avengers under new agreed-upon Accords that lend government oversight but in a manner that isn’t overbearing. There’d been compromise on both sides and while Stephen hadn’t signed them—what were they going to do if he didn’t? Take his magic away?—he’d agreed with what Sam had come up with. The world needs the Avengers, after all.

Stephen spent most of the past year patching together the new timeline without the Infinity Stones. There’s been less disruption to the timeline and their dimension than he would’ve thought; time seems to continue forward with or without the Time Stone, just as soul bonds exist and continue to exist and are still made without the Soul Stone.

He turns his head and looks at his soulmate. Clint can feel his gaze and turns his head to look up at him, smiles at him. The archer and the sorcerer. The mystical and the mundane. He thinks about the books in his library, the novels next to the spellbooks. Stephen still doesn’t know the why, even after all this time. But he thinks he’s learned to live without it, learned to understand that everything comes in time, that there was no chance to miss what he has now.

Hopefully.

“You?” Stephen repeats incredulously. “Why would it be you?”

Barton’s chin lifts. “Fuck if I know. You think that’s what I want, Strange? Some witch who is the most arrogant asshole on the planet? You need to tell me if it’s me.” He gestures between them. “I’m not stupid, even if I don’t have all your education. It’s not like I’ve missed the fact that you look like you’re too close to a fire whenever I get too close.”

Stephen scoffs. “I’m under a curse,” he replies flippantly. “You simply do not see the other effects of it.”

“Bullshit.” Barton steps closer and Stephen winces as the bond between them begins to flare, red bleeding out, burning his skin. “Tell me the truth, Stephen.”

“No,” he begs, shaking his head. “I’m making the choice for you.”

It’s more of a confession than anything else. Barton’s head flies back, eyes going wide. “You’re—you’re what?”

“Wong knows a way to break it,” Stephen tells him, turning away from him. “It will be painful, but survival is likely. No more dangerous than anything else we do.” He lifts his chin. “It’s my choice.”

“You know who else made choices for me? Loki,” Barton growls, darting forward to grab his arm. Stephen’s head snaps back as if he’s been slapped. “This isn’t a choice, this is cowardice.”

“Cowardice!” Stephen scoffs, wrenching his arm back and pushing Barton away. “I faced Dormammu, I fought Thanos, I have spent every hour of every day fighting—”

“You’re running!” Barton barks. “Running before you even have a chance to know the answer.”

“I already know the answer,” Stephen snaps, turning to look at him. “You made your choice. You picked her. I was never even an option.”

Clint surges forward and kisses him. His mouth is rough and his hands are desperate as he clutches Stephen’s face, tilting him down so he can reach. The bond between them burns so bright that Stephen sees red even when he closes his eyes, and he can’t help but wrap his arms around Clint’s waist, hold him close.

His mouth is on fire, as is his skin, as is his face, as is his torso. As is his body. Stephen is swallowed by the flames. He will burn alive, he can feel it.

Clint opens his mouth and Stephen slides his tongue in, and feels drenched in water. He gasps, knees going weak, but Clint is strong enough to hold him up. It has never—he has never felt like this. He floats on a lake, Clint’s mouth moving against his own, lips opening and welcoming him in, and the red fades, the burns receding, and he can feel the beat of Clint’s heart against his own.

There is a rope running between them, wrapping around them, tying them together, and Stephen can feel it tightening between them, can feel the magic and the compatibility bonds wrenching them close, and he’s never letting go.

“It was like a hand in my brain,” Barton tells him. They’re sitting across from each other in the New Avengers library, talking about Loki’s mind control. Stephen blinks at him, looks around, feels like he just stepped into a different world. Barton sends him a concerned look and he shakes his head. “Cold fingers. But not...making me do anything. Just a nudge in the direction he wanted. It felt like he reached into my mind and flipped a switch that made me loyal to him.”

Time slips strangely for him even now. He knows Thor was there before, but he doesn’t know where he’s gone, or why Barton and him are alone, talking about Loki. But then it comes back a moment later: Thor and Loki’s broken bond, Loki being a Variant, Thor wanting him back. Barton offered to give him information about Loki’s mind control so they could understand his current frame of mind. Stephen can’t resist the opportunity to be around Barton, so he’d taken him up on the offer and Thor had left them alone while they talked.

He gives Barton an encouraging smile. Barton’s mouth twists in something that could be considered a smile if it was less bitter and forced. “What else?” he presses. “You said he was influenced by Thanos and the Mind Stone. Was he controlled?”

“No,” Barton says, shaking his head. “He invaded out of his own free will, if you could consider free will to come after torture, which I don’t. But he wasn’t magically controlled by the Mind Stone, just influenced.” He clears his throat. “He didn’t know the Mind Stone was in the Scepter, so it had influence over him that he wasn’t prepared to fight.”

Stephen nods, thinking it over. He’d used the Eye of Agamotto without realizing it contained the Time Stone, and had later felt the effects. Even now, his use of time magic has it’s effects. “What was his plan? Outside of the use of the Scepter.”

“The Tesseract,” Barton confirms Stephen’s theory. “He was sent to Earth to retrieve the Tesseract for Thanos. He was going to double cross him and steal the Tesseract.” Stephen had guessed as much.

“Would he have been successful?”

Barton hesitates, hands curling and uncurling underneath the bright red bond spearing between the two of them. “Maybe,” Barton finally settles on, which isn’t really an answer. “I think so. All he wanted was an escape.”

Stephen can understand that. He’s known for pushing everyone away before they can hurt him. If he can hurt someone before they can hurt him, he’s happier that way. Or not happy, but less worried they’re going to realize how unworthy he is. Stephen shakes his head at himself; he’s relating to Loki of all people. Ridiculous. He focuses back on Barton, who smiles a little. The red bond between them burns, the compatibility bond brighenting Barton’s face until he’s all Stephen can see.

Barton is brave, perhaps suicidally so. He’s admitted that he believes himself cowardly for not watching Natasha fall to her death, but Stephen thinks him brave. He went to a foreign planet out on the edge of space, flew a spaceship that was unlike anything he’d flown before, and fought to die so someone he loved could live. How could Stephen not think him brave, heroic even?

Stephen claws through time for him. He digs his claws into the fabric of reality and pulls until it’s crumpled and tattered at his feet. He opens reality and steps onto Vormir himself, watches again and again as Barton tries to kill himself for Natasha and how she gets one over on him—Barton tells him that she was always better than him, both in skill and as a person—and attaches him to the cliff wall so she can fall to her death for him. He knows Steve Rogers came to Vormir to put back the Soul Stone, but Stephen has eyes only for Barton.

Barton tells him about the tragic bookends to her life: he saved her life when they met, and she killed herself so he could live. She wanted to save the world but to do so, she had to save him, and Barton doesn’t know how to live without her.

Stephen wonders who her soulmate was. He never met her, although he saw her in other times, but magic couldn’t show him both the past and her compatibility bond at the same time. Perhaps that could’ve given Barton relief, if she’d had a soulmate and known them.

He likes Barton, Stephen finds. They’re both reckless, both impulsive, and although Stephen has more formal education than him, Barton is plenty intelligent. Barton even gives him a couple lessons on using the bow, and Stephen even feigns incompetence—something fully foreign to him, although using the bow does make his hands hurt, even if he can supplement it with magic—in order to get Barton to wrap his arms around him and bodily show him how to position himself to hold the bow in the most efficient and proper way.

Stephen can only spend so much time per day searching for an answer to Barton’s request to exchange him with Natasha, and if he spends too much, it will rupture his mind. There is the possibility he gets lost in time if he spends too much time between dimensions; it can even permanently affect his living experience with time, make him experience time non-linearly. Baron Mordo had warned him that tampering with time and natural laws would only turn out poorly; even if Stephen’s soulmate doesn’t want him, wants to leave him so his friend can live in his stead, he has no desire to die.

He didn’t understand why Barton would’ve been chosen by the universe to be his predestined partner, and perhaps there’s no exact reason that he can ever quantify. But the more time he spends with Barton, the more he feels...worthy of him. They’re both scarred in their own ways, and while his childhood was better, they have similar traumas.

Barton settles on the couch next to him, holding out a bowl of popcorn. Stephen’s Cloak settles over their laps and Stephen floats the bowl between them. He starts the movie and kicks his feet up onto the coffee table. They reach for the popcorn at the same time and their fingers brush; between them, the bond shines so bright that Stephen feels as if he goes blind for a long moment.

He glances at Barton when he sees him rubbing his eyes, as if he looked into a bright light. Barton shakes his head at his concerned look, stretches his arms overhead, casually drops one behind Stephen’s shoulders. Stephen rolls his eyes, doesn’t pull away when Barton’s knee nudges into his thigh, and he finds himself tipping, leaning over until his head is resting against Barton’s chest. A warm arm wraps around his shoulders and Stephen lets himself have this, even just for a moment.

He can already feel the pain in his cheek from where Barton is going to punch him, but it doesn’t matter. When it comes, or if it’s already happened, Stephen will deal with it in time. For now, the room is red, and their hearts beat in time, and their bond is pulsing and glowing and alive.