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America realized Stephen Strange had made a new habit of drinking tea in the afternoons.
When she was done with lessons at the temple, he would be sitting under an overcropping near her room with a book and a pot of fresh po-cha. After she had settled into the New York Santorum, he would be in the Green Room after school with iced chai teas, one for her and one for him to barely sip before giving to her.
The Green Room, she thought, was also new. When she first started following him through the portals, hiding in the basement until Stephen was too busy to notice her wandering, there was no Green Room. The mansion was large and full of cryptic things she was not going to touch, but there were no plants outside of the little plot on the roof. It wasn’t creepy, per se, but it did feel empty.
The basement, though; that place was off. Creepy, like a normal basement, yes, but she eventually stopped hiding there. Partly because Wong had bullied Stephen into giving her a room, her own room, in the Santorum. And, well, she didn’t like how Stephen acted down there.
He didn’t go down often; usually just for laundry and specimens, and then back upstairs without a hitch. But before she had a space, and after he realized how often she hid in the same spot, he would go looking for her down there. And he would usually find her, smirk about how surprised he was that she was there of all places, and unceremoniously drop her through a portal onto the training grounds of the temple before closing the portal with a wink.
When he walked a little deeper into the basement, into the space where the older stones were, America would see a shift. As if he had walked through a door, forgotten why, and was trying to remember what he was there for. Or what was missing.
When Wong was home he could bring Stephen out of his trance just by standing close and saying his name. Strange’s head would pivot to Wong, eyebrows creased in uncertainty, and then return to a gentle smirk before moving to grasp Wong’s elbow in greeting. Neither would acknowledge it, and America didn’t want to bring it up.
While Wong was more direct with his words than Strange, he was gentle when talking with her. He would greet her with a nod, openness in his eyes, and ask how she was settling into this universe. Eventually, she got tired of responding with “Fine” and started sharing.
Her favorite pizza place was the one just down the street, but she wished money wasn’t such a big thing in this universe. Stephen was teaching her how to cook, but the local takeout restaurant now knew their order by heart. She was at a third-grade reading level in school, and she felt embarrassed about it. There was a girl around her age, with black hair and purple clothes, and she didn’t know how to talk to her yet. The one plant Wong kept in the Green Room was doing well, but she missed the flowers from her home Universe and how the bluish-white ones smelled like chocolate. Wong would listen, nod, and maybe follow up with some sort of reflective question that somehow soothed her. It was frustrating, in the best ways, to be so easily understood.
A week after that last conversation a new plant had appeared in the Green Room; little yellow flowers that, when the sun hit them just right, smelled like cocoa and vanilla. Stephen hadn’t acknowledged it, and neither did America, but it shared a table with Wong’s plant, a green bush with red flowers, and America took care of both of them when Wong was gone. When he would return he would thank her for the care, and they would walk through the rest of the plants, slowly talking. If she caught him in the right mood, he would talk to her about the plants in the Green Room; where they came from, how to care for them, and how to use them medicinally.
When Stephan was with them, sitting at one of the oversized chairs, he would comment on whatever Wong said. Whether it be to correct, repeat, or just to annoy Wong, it didn’t seem to matter. Throwing his opinion in would start their back-and-forth dialogue; America saw it as a game between the two to see who would break the banter between them first. To her surprise Wong, even with his more quiet and grounded nature, often lost. Wong’s neutral presence would break with a grin, an annoyed tsk, or a rare laugh in response to whatever Stephen had said to goad him. If Stephen did lose it was because Wong had said something that sparked his mind. He would rush out of the room to take action, leaving them behind, America would rush after Stephen to join in on the adventure, and Wong would run behind her; grumbling under his breath.
They were a chaotic group. America, with her powers, could break through dimensions if she was too stressed. Stephen couldn’t stop himself once an idea was in his mind, often with world-changing results. Wong was- Well, he grounded them. He encouraged her to meditate, calmed her before she even realized she was on edge, and gave her space to discover her own needs at the moment. For Stephen, he was someone to bounce ideas off of, a moral compass when the reality of things was questionable, and a loyal friend Stephen trusted more than most.
For the first year of her time in this Universe, she had wondered what Wong got out of his relationship with them. For her, it made sense. Yes, to an extent she was his responsibility as the Sorcerer Supreme; ensure that the cause of cross-dimensional chaos would not continue to cause cross-dimensional chaos. But he wasn’t just interested in managing her power. Usually, he was more concerned with what she was learning at her New York school, whether Stephen was taking proper care of her, those sorts of things; like a parent. America knew she was just missing her parents. But she felt at times that he was being sincere; that maybe he really did just care about her.
Stephen was like that too, in his own way. When he visited the temple there would be responsibilities he had to address, but he would check on her first. America would see him standing on the edge of the grounds, talking with a teacher about her form or chattering at Wong’s side as they observed. After training was done, and the tea was finished, they would escape the temple, ideally without Wong knowing. It could be to the surrounding city, another country, or someplace completely unexpected. Stephen would swoosh the tea set away, and say something like “So, America Chavez, have you seen a sunrise from the top of the world?” It wasn’t all adventures, sometimes he would take her to museums after-hours for a private tour, or to watch a performance in a language she hadn’t learned yet.
America, after years of being thrown across the multiverse, was behind in her classes. She felt like she was behind on basic topics, but also lightyears ahead compared to her teachers, and it sucked to not be able to explain that to her classmates. To not fit. With Stephen’s adventures, she didn’t have to worry about catching up. She got the sense that he just wanted to share experiences with her, to learn what she learned from them. And during these adventures, she felt like she could be challenged in ways that weren’t graded, or compared to other people her age. America didn’t feel lost, or bored; she felt encouraged.
It helped that this Stephen Strange was rarely boring. He wasn’t like the first Strange she had met, though it was difficult to pin down how. He could be stoic and wise, shifting the air of a conversation or a fight with a few well-chosen words. But he was also childish and silly; charming rude people into punching their own faces, or finding new ways to sneak America out of the temple without Wong noticing. Or better, tricking Wong into coming with them.
Stephen would drag Wong with them to long, dusty bookstores in the U.S., where Strange would sneak romantic comedies into Wong’s bag because he knew Wong wouldn’t buy them for himself. Or to the coastlines of New Zealand, to watch the whales swim along the shore, usually with America running ahead as Wong and Stephen walked shoulder to shoulder behind her. And once he dropped them all into a booth at an opera house in China, casting them appropriate outfits for the occasion when Wong had given him a weighted look. Once settled, Wong had whispered the plot to America as they leaned over the edge of the booth, Stephen taking a rare few hours to just listen to him as they watched together.
And Stephen could just listen, in rare moments. While Strange clearly loved a curious audience, and America was determined to learn everything about how powers, there was rarely silence when they were together. On clear nights, though, when she couldn’t sleep and would carry her comforter up to the roof to stare at the city lights, he would come to sit with her. The weight of the silence was present, and it would only take a few minutes for her to start talking. Talking about her mothers. Her homeland. Wondering if she would ever know what happened to them. If she could ever fix what had happened. She would let all the thoughts she couldn’t let herself think during the day out into the space between them until she had nothing left to say. Until she sagged against the roof's edge, eyes tired, nothing on her mind. Only then would Stephen move, cracking his hands before kneeling down in front of her, a solid presence.
“Heavy thoughts, kid. Feeling better?”
If she was awake enough she would nod, he would help her up, and walk her back to her room. Sometimes Cloak would carry her. But he always came with, didn’t leave until she was asleep.
That was how he was different than her first Stephen Strange. Both talked, a lot, and really did think they were much funnier than they were. Both clever and ethically questionable in some areas, but- Well, this Stephen had learned something the other hadn’t. America had no clue what had happened to change things, but this one had people he cared about. People he wants to matter to, as more than just his role. He wanted to be there for her.
So most afternoons, after training or after school, she would sit and have tea with Stephen Strange. America would talk about what she had learned that day, and he would tell her what her teachers didn’t know. They wouldn’t talk about her grades or the others kids at school, but what was she going to say when she finally got the nerve to talk to the girl with black hair or what was happening in the comic series she was reading. Maybe think through dinner plans, knowing that unless Wong showed up it would be take-out or Stephen's attempt at a healthy meal, followed by take-out. And some nights Wong would join them, bringing food from the temple. They would watch a telenovelas, laugh at Stephen’s terrible translations, and eat on the couch America demanded they move into the Green Room.
And when they were done she would head up to her room to work on homework, or sleep, leaving Wong and Stephen lounging on the couch together. Wong listened as Stephen talked through a new spell, a comfortable weight between them.
It was good; it was home.