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There is a moment of utter silence where Stephen, down on his knees, buries his face in tangled locks and tethers the unconscious child to him so her head could nestle in the crook of his neck where he could count her labored and raspy breaths.
It’d be a lie to say the anger he feels now is unrecognizable as his hands struggle in an attempt to not wring together as he keeps her head tucked, and a protective, binding hand in the middle of her shoulder blades.
Irritation he harbored more than rage usually. For now he’s okay to give it the lead, because he is fuming.
Fuming that this monster had hurt her. He didn’t give a damn if Mordo tried and failed again and again to take his life, but harming America?
Stephen wanted him dead.
“You cannot be trusted with that kind of power,” Mordo tries to explain, blind to the fire burning the former sorcerer supreme inside out.
“And it can be trusted in yours? It’s her power and I won’t let anyone take it,” Strange vows, malice clouding not only his judgment but evidently his mind as well.
He didn’t understand why Mordo seemed to consider her power his. Then again, he didn’t often try to put his mindset in that of a mad man’s.
Mordo seems to pick up on his confusion, stating his next words as if it was obvious and it was astounding he didn’t see it:
“She’s your child, your ward. Her strength is your strength,”
“So you tried to kill her?” Strange bites back, lips pulled into a snarl. His growl shakes the girl in his arms, a subsequent whimper pressing into his skin.
The master of mystic arts ignores the truth to the man’s words, knowing them to be true especially with the way the small noise America elicits makes him to hold her closer.
Scarred and still quaking fingers, no longer as nimble as they were in the past, idly fight with the knots.
“Death is more of a mercy than you are,”
Stephen feels the words as if they were physical strikes. The air in his lungs struggle to come to the surface.
The fear that America’s misfortune would be born from him had been apparent since she dropped into his world with that monster in tow.
It is no less prevalent now. Stephen knew in his guilt-addled heart and self-deprecating head it’d never go away. Not truly.
His relationship with fear had formed him. It’d made his decisions, drove him to be a better doctor, and it had kept him from true greatness for so long.
He thinks he’s well and truly ready to make it stop, because he couldn’t let his fears harm her. Not more than they already had.
It’s chaste, barely there as his lips brush her temple and he carefully sets her down. Using his sling ring hurriedly in sending her back to her room in the sanctum.
He couldn’t take the chance of keeping her with him for the rest of the fight. She’d already taken one spell too many, and she’d suffered greatly for it.
It couldn’t continue and it wouldn’t.
“That’s for her to decide,” and it really was, he knew he could very well aid in her doom. Mordo certainly could too (wanted too), yet Stephen was more and more aware by her adamance, she was with him to stay.
Smacking his fist together, Stephen conjures the Tao Mandalas to defend against Mordo’s Eldritch Whip and went to war.
A wet rag is set on her forehead when she wakes. Her limbs feel frail and her body can’t stop the onset of shivers.
“You got hit with a powerful spell,” comes quietly to her left, the remorse in Strange’s tone audible.
There’s an apology on his tongue, she can feel it there like a sixth sense, an apology she doesn’t let him get out.
Now while she attempts to sit up, the rag falling, a sodden mess in her lap, as a hand settled on her shoulder.
“Hey, hey. Easy kid,” Stephen warns, seemingly frightened at her sudden maneuver.
“Your body is still recovering. That hit took a lot out of you. You’ll be down for a bit, so no classes or training,”
His touch is tentative, instinct telling her to curl into him, but she relents. His own labored breath, not born of his fright since it didn’t fluctuate in the way hers had before, caught her off guard.
Turning her head is a strain in itself as her cheek grazes his knuckles which were still sat protectively on her shoulder.
Her mattress is dipped with his weight as he sat, his shoulders weighted down with fatigue rather than truly lax.
There’s blood crusting against his temple, the crimson dyeing the edge of his grey streak of hair.
There’s a bruise forming on his jaw, a slight hue of blood crusted under his nostrils as if he’d absently wiped it away but not properly.
It’s very likely that’s exactly what happened, because if he was here tending to her. He likely hadn’t taken much if any time to deal with his own injuries.
“Are you okay?” She has to ask, knowing each bruise, bump, and stained bit of skin was born of his protection of her.
She knew it wasn’t her fault, if she even for a second thought it was he’d have told her otherwise anyhow. Which is why she’s able to assess him getting hurt for her was his decision, and not her responsibility.
Mordo had done this.
His baulk at her question is a common response, one he does almost every time she prods at his well-being.
They had that in common, being cared for a foreign feeling neither knew if they’d ever feel used to.
That didn’t make them appreciate it any less.
“Yeah kid,” he returns, the honesty there when in the past few months she could still hear his usual answer: I always am .
“No you're not,” America returns idly, reaching out with an absence of strength.
It not mattering in the end as his chin turns easily enough in her grasp. He raises a brow that is more amused than smugly inquisitive as she checks for anything she might have missed.
“I’m a doctor, you know? I can promise you I’m alright,”
“And I also know in every universe, doctors are really bad at diagnosing themselves,”
He outright laughs at that, enough that her hand falls away back into her wet lap - the rag still there - and smiles tiredly with him.
“Why don’t you change and get some more sleep, kid?”
America nods, nose crinkling in a way Stephen can’t help but admit is adorable and endearing.
So much so he’s forced to turn away, feeling more paternal than he had any right- Stephen stalls, cutting out the thought because he did have the right.
He did because she chose him, and Mordo was right. She was his ward, his kid.
Suppressing a groan as he gets to his feet, his bruised ribs protesting the action wholeheartedly.
Strange starts with a paternal act he allows, brushing her hair out of her face before she can get to her feet to change into something more comfortable and bids her goodnight.
Wong demands he take a few days off, there were plenty of sorcerers at the Sanctum Sanctorum that could act as its defender as they recovered.
America is more than pleased, like any child excited to get some time off to catch up on TV and games.
And he really meant catch up considering she wasn’t from this universe at all.
The things she hasn’t seen is an absolute travesty that thankfully in his time off he can rectify.
Compiling essential films, albums, and even books Stephen makes sure to bring them to her even if she chides him for potentially exasperating his own injuries. (That of which she still didn't know the full extent.)
Still she smiles with gratitude that was more sincere than even the thankful family members of patients he’s saved in the past.
She’s eager to get ready into her delve in media, and he’s all too content to watch and discuss when she’s done and ready.
It isn’t like him to fall asleep in the midst of a movie, then again he is in recovery.
His ribs still feel tight, the position he’s in not one he recognizes as he’s slightly reclined back.
America slumbering half way over his chest which explains the more hindered feeling.
Logically he should move her, let his airway run smoothly and clearly. He doesnt.
Doesn’t dare disturb her sleep even if he rasps with each exhale. Turning off the TV, Stephen uses his hand to give a simple snap of his fingers.
The cloak of levitation comes flying, settling over them, mainly America, not that he minded.
He’d called the cloak over for her anyway.
“You were going to kill him,” Wong states, it an observation rather than admonishment.
“If you hadn’t come and scared him off, yes,” Stephen’s admits, not feeling any shame in it.
Mordo had taught him Kamar-Taj’s very own rule, it was kill or be killed. In that moment it had been not only his life on the line but America’s as well.
“He’s going to come after her now in the same way he pursues you,” Wong notes, hitting Stephen’s newfound concern right on the head.
Solemnly Stephen nods, itching to go and check on her even when he knew she was in safe hands.
In fact when he’d left her to go have this visit with Wong, she was sitting on Rintrah’s shoulders and directing the Minotaur by the horns.
The shere happiness on her face as the Minotaur lifted her sits fondly in his mind: “He knows not to try again so soon, we’ll have time to prepare for him,”
Wong agrees, “I’ll send out another alert. We’ll see if we can catch him before he strikes again,”
Feeling at least a little assured, Strange bows, and heads back to his ward. It did them no good to be too far apart.