Work Text:
The sky thundered, dark and purple, cracking under the weight of Stephen's spell.
Down below, the kid was contending with a moral dilemma, but up above Stephen was doing his everything in his power to fix his, their mistake. A mistake that should never have seen the light of day much less actively come into fruition; a mistake the likes of which Stephen had never made before. A mistake he made in the name of Peter Parker.
(It was all for him.)
His hands trembled as the reality of their universe came apart at the seams, unable to put humpty-dumpty together again. No matter what he did, he was never good enough.
He should have known. Should have– should have foreseen this eventuality, even without the Time Stone. Spider-Man wasn't the type to let others suffer, not if there was any chance, no matter how infinitesimal that chance may be, he could help. It was the reason why Stephen...
Anyway.
He grunted under the strain of exertion, muscles tense as the first of Peter's unwanted trespassers gleaned into their reality.
Christ, this kid was going to be the death of him.
Ever since Titan– ever since all those futures, all those possibilities stored away in the eidetic memory of his brain. It would drive anyone half mad themselves.
Fourteen million, six thousand and five futures Stephen lived in and died in, over and over again.
Somewhere in between the thirteenth thousand and the one million mark, he fell in love with Peter Parker.
How could he not?
He never meant for– never intended– shit, the kid was a child. Sixteen at the time, Stephen would never have dared. He called Tony Mr. Stark, he tried to shake the Cloak's hand, he saved Stephen's life with an Aliens reference and dumb luck.
So he kept his distance, kept his shields up, kept his attention firmly away from the kid in red-and-blue. Ignored the kid's grief-stricken face at Stark's funeral, his own heart tight in his chest, his guilt a smothering pillow. Ignored the way Peter tried his best to settle into post-Blip life, just as Stephen failed to adjust to a life as a mere Master of the Mystic Arts. Ignored how Mysterio and his band of disgruntled ex-Stark employees framed Peter for crimes Stephen knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he did not commit. Ignored how Peter suffered at the mercy of the court of public opinion.
But what he couldn't ignore:
Peter came to him.
He was the one person Stephen could never refuse.
“Stephen,” he called him, and he vehemently denied the way his heart sang to hear his name spill from the kid's mouth.
Instead, he said, “That feels weird, but I'll allow it.”
Peter wanted his help to restore his anonymity, and Stephen complied, changing his spell every time Peter wanted a concession, destabilising it, corrupting it. Although, the kid wasn't wrong. He only changed the spell five times.
Stephen added the sixth.
See, theirs was a fundamental difference in philosophy. Irreversible. Neither could both be right – there must always be a winner.
Or perhaps, he mused dryly as he took in their reality's poor prognosis, they would both be losers.
“What's happening?” Peter came, panting, fresh blood staining in his face atop the Statue of Liberty.
“They're starting to come through, and I can't stop them,” he grunted.
Peter started blathering on about Stephen performing the spell again, “but the original way, before I screwed it up.”
“We're too late for that, they're here,” Stephen snapped, patience worn thin. “They're here because of you.”
The kid sobered up as his words registered, but Stephen sighed, turned his head away, mind already going through a thousand and one contingency plans for how the fuck they were going to counter this mess, when...
“What if everyone forgot who I was?”
“What?” Stephen scoffed, only half listening.
He listened now, as Peter fucking Parker prattled on about self-sacrifice.
There was only one answer to give: “No.”
Peter was unperturbed, earnest foolishness his only ally. “But it would work, right?”
Yeah, it would work.
“That's not the point,” he said instead, refusing to even entertain the proposition.
Frustrated bewilderment came alive on Peter's face. “Then what is the point?”
“The point is: I'm not going to sacrifice you!”
Stephen's impromptu confession was as much a shock to the kid as it was to him. Get it together, Strange.
Peter shifted. Softly, he said, “It's the only way,” and it made Stephen want to laugh, made Stephen want to cry.
In the end, he did neither of those. Anger, however, was an appropriate emotion to lean on in his time of need, and he was going to exercise that right as of now.
“The only way? What about earlier, when I explicitly warned you of the consequences of your foolhardy expedition, and you didn't care to listen?” he seethed, fire made flesh.
He was expecting some of that trademark Parker backbone, but what he got instead was something so pure and precious it sucked all the fight out of him. Peter had his king, checkmate.
The kid reached up, and tenderly, reverently, and cupped Stephen's cheek in the palm of his bloodied, bruised hand.
Their reality was coming apart, and Stephen couldn't take his eyes off Peter.
“I love you,” he confessed his sin, choked. Surrendered; he pressed his face into Peter's palm.
Mischievously, the kid retorted, “I know,” and despite the utter devastation that surrounded them, Stephen couldn't help but grin.
His grin faded with the kid's following statement:
“You know you have to do this, don't you?”
This time, it was Stephen who said, I know.
But first, he made sure to impress on Peter the severity of the spell; the consequences he would be forced to live with.
“I know,” he said, beautiful and heroic and everything Stephen wasn’t and everything Stephen loved. “Do it.”
Stephen averted his eyes. “You better go and say your goodbyes. You don’t have long.”
“Please,” Peter panted, grief etched on to his face, neck craned and arched in presentation, desperately seeking Stephen's mouth. “Please. Just once. Please, before–”
Before Stephen erased his existence from life's memory.
Powerless, Stephen kissed him. The salt of Peter's tears lay bitter on his tongue.
He pressed their foreheads together, harsh, sure to bruise. Good, he thought with vicious intent. Let their skin purple and blacken, imprint, paint their flesh.
“Tell me,” Stephen hissed, his words a viper set to strike. “If I do this... you have to promise me you'll tell me, Parker.”
“I promise.”
Only–
Peter never told him.
His heart beat a discordant melody in his ears. Blood surging through his veins, banging the drum of remembrance.
“Dr. Strange?” America piped up, tentative. He could feel her gaze on him, worried and unsure, but he took no further action to appease her. How could he?
Stephen's mind was a kaleidoscope. All throughout his ventures through the multiverse, all throughout his history lesson of mishaps and mistakes he'd made in various universes, all throughout reuniting with Christine Palmer – his mind was on Mr. Peter Parker.
“What if everyone forgot who I was?”
Spider-Man.
“No.”
“I guess you were right. Spider-Man is more man than spider,” America said, a failed attempt at injecting some lightness – a sweet gesture, but nonetheless a pointless one.
“But it would work, right?”
Stephen's exhale was rough and ragged.
Because that face... that kid... had no business making Stephen's heart knock painfully in his chest, stifling his every impulse to reach through that godawful memory projector and berate this dumb, gorgeous teenager – and whoops, there's the other thing because, fuck, this kid's a teenager, and he's making Stephen feel like that, and– and–
And, in the grand calculus of the multiverse, Peter Parker's sacrifice meant more than the memory of his existence. Stephen sacrificed him for the greater good.
...was this what having a panic attack felt like?
“Come on,” he said, spat, saliva suddenly all too much in his mouth. He swallowed. “We don't have time for this.”
Ignoring his instruction entirely, America jumped on the memory projector, and they watched as her mothers were sucked into the multiverse.
Stephen found himself resisting the urge to hug her.
They found other, other Stephen in the form of a bronze statue. They also found Mordo guarding the Sanctum Sanctorum.
He had to admit: the tea wasn't as good as his.
Eventually, it all culminated in the long-awaited reunion of Stephen and Christine. Not his Christine, of course, but a near approximation.
It was an odd notion. All he'd dreamt of for so long was having Christine Palmer standing once more in front of him, sassing him and encouraging him, loving him and bantering with him, and now that he had her–
Now that he had her, all he could think of was a plucky kid from Queens with the powers of a spider, and the biggest fucking heart in the galaxy.
It just: wasn't what he imagined.
“You always had to be the one to hold the knife,” she explained gently, exactly as she had before.
Exactly as he held the knife that cut away Peter's existence.
He felt like a fraud.
Stephen swallowed down the guilt, the anger, the sadness.
Wanda kidnapped America, and threw them down, down, down into the dark of Stephen Strange.
But, hey, at least he got the Book of the Damned. So that was something.
(...shit. Since when did he start being so optimistic, and since when did that optimistic part of his brain manifest a Spider-Man persona?)
They say the Darkhold manipulates the reader based on the individual's deepest, darkest desires. For Wanda, it was the idea her children were in danger. For his Illuminati variant, it was born from a desperate need to save his reality. For his rather more sinister self, it was the dream of a world where he was happy with Christine.
But for Stephen, it was:
Peter.
He was hanging, suspended, dreaming, caught in the Darkhold's fist. Hearing its chants, its whispers, its rallying cries.
He could be in a world where he and Peter were– happy.
Except: Peter wouldn't be happy if he manipulated magic to engineer the situation. Stephen knew that for a fact. Spider-Man was far too chivalrous, far too self-sacrificing to take such a grand gesture for himself.
It was one of the many reasons why Stephen–
Nope. Nuh-huh. No was neither the time nor the place. Not when former allies begin threatening the stability of the multiverse. Personal troubles would have to wait.
When Wong instructed, encouraged, begged Stephen to seize America's power for the greater good, Peter Parker's face flashed in his memory: bloodstained, wrecked, so selflessly heroic. Stephen didn't have the heart to inflict that damage onto another teenager.
So Stephen issued his own command: “Trust your power,” he told America, and if this body had its facial nerves he would have smiled when she did as he bid.
Peter would be proud.
The thought materialised out of nowhere, and somehow simultaneously brought him relief and great dissatisfaction.
Because–
Peter had no idea Stephen remembered. For all he knew, Peter was counting on Stephen's forceful forgetfulness; was counting on it.
Else: why would Peter willingly allow Stephen to perform that spell?
Peter didn't want anyone to know who he was.
That included Stephen.
In spite of the fact he made him promise. In spite of the fact that Stephen only performed the spell because Peter willed it, and because he promised he would tell him.
And he never did.
Suddenly, Stephen knew where he stood.
Unrequited love was a bitch, certainly, but he'd made it through once before with Christine. Soo enough, Peter Parker would be just another name to add to the collection.
See, here, the problem wasn't that Stephen held the knowledge of Spider-Man's true identity, held the clinical knowledge of their, god, their feelings for one another.
The problem was: the memories. They haunted his every moment, the ghost of a memory placing a curse upon his soul. Tiny little fragments of a conversation long gone; blurry images of a courageous young kid with the most expressive pair of eyes preparing to face the Titan; the ghost in his mind's eye.
Like, for instance:
“‘In space,’” Wong quoted in a light-hearted rendition of the events of the Blip. “‘No one can hear you scream’.”
“What's that?” America inquired, curious.
“It's from a really old movie,” Stephen said without thinking. Every muscle in his body tensed when it registered.
Wong eyed him funny, but thankfully did not press the issue. Stephen would have a hard time explaining that one.
Just– lots of little things like that. Peter Parker had pervaded every corner of Stephen's brain. Stephen put up walls, fortified his defences, and Peter found a way to circumvent each and every one.
It was maddening. Truly, heartbreakingly maddening.
Not helped when another teenager kept hounding him for information in regards to the whole clusterfuck.
“What are you gonna do?” America asked him once everything was done and dusted, and she found a place at Kamar-Taj under Wong's tutelage.
Frowning, he asked what she meant.
“About Spider-Man,” she said rather loudly. She murmured a hasty apology to the annoyed recruits who turned at her exclamation. “About Spider-Man,” she stage-whispered. He got the impression she thought she was being discreet.
Spoiler alert: she really wasn't.
Shrugging, he simply stated, “What is there to do about it?”
“What do you mean, what is there to do about it?” she retorted, purposely deepening her voice in what he imagined was supposed to be a mockery of his voice. It was too bad to be offensive. “You know the truth now. You know what happened up on that statue. You need to go and find him, and make it right!”
“America,” he said, placating her enthusiasm. If she channelled as much energy into conjuring portals as she did on this foolish spider-hunt, she would be wearing blue robes in a heartbeat. “It's not that simple.”
“Screw simple,” she exclaimed, drawing attention to them once more.
Heaving a sigh, he manoeuvred them off to the side, away from the watchful eye of the other recruits.
“You have a chance to make things right,” she continued, unperturbed by his obvious irritation.
“America,” he warned.
Ignoring him, she pressed on, “He's all alone out there, and no one even remembers who he is. I'm sorry, I just don't understand why you're waiting so long to go and see him.”
“Because this is not a topic that concerns you. What happened between myself and Spider-Man is a private affair that occurred months ago, and how I conduct myself in the aftermath is not any of your business. Now, please stop asking me.”
Her expression crumpled. He felt a twinge of guilt for his harsh tone. Forget bedside manner, he really needed to modify the way he talked to kids these days.
“This is why I never had kids.”
“Look, I'm,” here, he sighed, allowing a tiny glimpse of his weariness to squeak through the cracks of his façade. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take it out on you. I'm just... I don't know. What I'm going to do.”
Downcast, she nodded. “It's just that– you get that chance, you know? You get to fix it again. I–” her voice cracked, pain filling the void. “You've got a chance, and I don't have any.”
His heart broke for her.
“America,” he started, paused. This was a fragile, tender thing; he couldn't be Stephen Strange with something as precious as this.
But what he could be...
Spider-Man would know what to say.
“It's different,” he said, slow, cautious. “With great power comes great responsibility,” he said, merely parroting; a charlatan playing at being a hero. “And your power, it is incredible. But that isn't to say that the responsibility should be equal that.”
“You just said that–”
Jesus, he was butchering this.
“Just, let me.” He coughed, categorising the words he was about to say. “What happened to your parents was not your fault. It was a power you were not prepared for, nor understood. But it is a power that allowed you to defeat the Scarlet Witch. I glimpsed it in the Book of Vishanti.”
He made sure to catch her gaze when he said, "And it is my belief that your power will reunite you and your parents again."
America smiled.
Stephen did his best to reciprocate.
Sniffing, he at last suggested, “You should get back. Those portals aren't going to reveal themselves.”
Look. Here's the thing:
It wasn't that Stephen didn't want to find the kid, shake him down, yell, ask him why he didn't think to tell him despite promising to do so. Because he did. Every fibre, every atom, every goddamn molecule practically hummed with impatient energy, determined to go and find Spider-Man and demand an explanation.
But it was his head he led with, not his heart. The heart was one organ that did not bode well for great choices; it was far better suited to pump blood in from the atria and out via the ventricles. That was its biological purpose – not dispensing ill-fated romantic advice.
And because: Peter didn't say it back. Stephen's love, newly-recalled though no less true, was unrequited. He was in love with a teenager, and that love was unreturned.
Besides, New York was a cesspit. There would be no way of finding the kid again. At least, not as Peter Parker.
Spider-Man, on the other hand...
Coincidentally, it was the Cloak of Levitation who found him: broken, bleeding, discarded on some grim New York alley. Left to rot.
It carried him inside Stephen's Sanctum, Spider-Man's red hiding the blood Stephen was sure was covering his body, judging by the deep, sharp cuts that littered the kid's slim frame.
Jesus. Whoever did this wasn't messing around. They were out for blood.
Muttering a thank you to his trusty cloak, he set about fixing Peter up as best he could. He had to remove the kid's mask to get a good look at his head; it's what he was most skilled in treating. The rest appeared to be flesh wounds, nothing too serious by themselves. But his head...
His head was Stephen's domain.
Peter looked exactly as Stephen pictured– imagined– remembered.
Hey, no matter what title he held now, he was a doctor first and foremost – primum non nocere, and all that. The Hippocratic Oath guided his movements.
Peter was unconscious throughout the ordeal.
Small mercies, and all that.
Except, halfway through a particularly vicious stitch in the kid's cheek, Peter awoke in a flurry, limbs flying haphazardly.
Stephen had to use a spell just to calm him down.
(Anaesthesia was so old-school.)
“I wonder whether you might tell me what happened,” Stephen said testily, refusing to register the magnitude of what had just occurred. He'd removed the only safety net Peter had; whatever security and comfort he derived from having a mask to obscure his face was rendered null and void in the face of Stephen's clinical practice.
Just as well it should be.
“Ah, just the usual,” Peter said with customary Spider-Man peppy cheer, hissing slightly when Stephen stitched together a particularly unruly piece of flesh. “I was protecting the citizens of New York, and this guy dressed like a mummy decided to undo all of my hard work.”
“Uh huh,” Stephen mumbled, only half listening. “And does a typical New York night resemble The Mummy?”
“Now that you mention,” he retorted testily – note to self: don't antagonise the arachnid-enhanced individual, Strange. “Yes.”
Stephen shot him a look.
It fell on flat eyes.
“Apparently he was protecting the travellers of the night, or some shit,” Peter tried to say, tried to laugh; failed.
Stephen wanted to admonish him for trying to talk while he was stitching up his wounds, but the words stuck in his throat. He couldn't get them out.
He had only felt this powerless once before, and that was... that was...
“Everyone who knows and loves you, we– we'd have no memory of you.”
It took him a moment to realise he had stopped stitching. It took him even longer to realise his hands wouldn't stop trembling.
“You know,” the kid murmured softly, sad and wistful all in one. “Don't you?”
Stephen didn't even need to confirm. Peter was all over it.
“Thought so,” he said, tragic and sardonic all in one.
Opening his mouth to speak, Stephen was ashamed to say his vocal chords ran dry.
“To be fair, you only gave me the warnings after the spell,” Peter muttered.
“To be fair,” Stephen counted slowly, the beginnings of a smile breaking across his face. Banter, he could handle. “The warnings come after the spell.”
Affront clung to Peter like his little spidey suit. “What?” he sputtered. “Who designed that? That's just stupid.”
Stephen shrugged, quickly finishing the stitches now he regained the mental fortitude to manage such an ordeal.
“I'm just saying,” Peter grumbled. “Shouldn't the warnings come before the spell?”
“Alternatively,” Stephen drawled, wrapping up his work. It was a masterpiece, if he did say so himself. He set down his instruments. “You could listen to the master sometime. Might save you in the long run.”
Peter scoffed. “No wonder you sorcerers end up webbed in the mirror dimension if you–mph!”
Unable to keep away, Stephen kissed him.
It was–
Holy fuck, it was incredible.
Peter was shy, nervous, but so doggedly enthusiastic it made up for his lack of technique. Stephen took charge of the kiss, cupping Peter's cheeks just so, tilting his head to suit his liking. A hint of tongue, a swallowed whine, a taste for more.
They drew apart, panting heavily. Stephen eyed the pretty pink flush on Peter's cheeks, the half-lidded expression on his face, with more pride than was strictly appropriate.
“Uh,” the kid finally managed to rasp. “Hi.”
Stifling a chuckle, Stephen repeated, “Hey.”
Peter breathed a few harsh exhalations before he shook himself out of it. “You didn't answer my question,” he accused, and even with his photographic memory, Stephen's brain took a few seconds to reboot and remember what had just transpired.
“Yes,” Stephen admitted. “I remember.”
Peter's face turned ashen, downcast.
Whatever reaction he had been expecting– hoping for, it sure as hell wasn't that.
“How much?” Peter quietly asked.
“The spell,” Stephen confessed. “The final spell. Although, I am remembering more of what happened before.”
Peter nodded, but otherwise remained silent.
Stephen could barely take it.
“Say something.”
Peter bit his freshly-bitten, gorgeously swollen lip. “What do you want me to say?” he asked, and suddenly Stephen was made of fire.
“I don't know, Parker. Perhaps you might begin with why you broke your promise to me.”
Shame decorated the kid's bruised face, enough so that Stephen half-regretted his temperament.
“I didn't mean to,” he whispered. “Honestly. I meant to tell you. Only...”
“Only what?”
A pregnant pause.
“I didn't know how.”
Just as Stephen opened his mouth to scoff, Peter continued:
“I didn't know how to tell you who I was, what you– what you said to me. How to convince you. I wrote notes, I planned a speech and everything, I just...” he shrugged, unwilling to meet Stephen's eye. “I got scared.”
“I understand,” he said slowly. Hesitating, but needing to get this out of the way, needing to know the truth, one way or the other, he broached the subject of, “Was it because I told you I love you? Is that why you never told me the truth?”
Peter was as statuesque as the false monument in Supreme Strange's honour, the tribute just as hollow.
“I understand, Peter,” he continued, soft, making damn sure to keep any untoward feelings in check. “Being told someone loves you is a shock at the best of times, let alone someone decades older than yourself. When you tell someone you love them, you deserve to be sure in your affections.” A lame attempt at humour followed: “You can't just give it out to every Master of the Mystic Arts who performs a dangerous spell in your honour.”
Horror dawned on the kid's face the longer Stephen talked. “Of course I love you,” he confessed, breathless, wondrous. “How could I not? I–”
“You never said it back,” Stephen said, deliberately keeping his voice as even as possible. He was the adult here, loathe as he was to admit it. It fell on him to retain some semblance of decorum.
“I didn't think I had to,” Peter said.
“You love me,” Stephen repeated dumbly. Then, stronger, rapturous, “You love me.”
Peter met his gaze, shy. “Yeah. I really, really do.”
This time, it was Peter who initiated the kiss, and Stephen held tight, tight, tight for fear of letting go.
(Maybe America was right, after all.)