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Wanda – raw, unbridled chaos and darkness coalescing into one being – snatched the kid Stephen spent the better part of two days protecting and defending, and hurled them down,
down,
down,
into the abyss.
Stephen grunted when he landed, stomach churning. He caught Christine with his body, blocking her from smacking into the ground.
“You alright?” he asked, frantic, scanning for any sign of injury.
Panting, she nodded.
“Good.” He helped her up, ignoring the protest of his ribs. Fuck, he could have landed a little better. He was too old for this.
“Where are we?” he inquired, looking around at this brand new universe.
This brand new universe that looked... amazingly like his own. Those streets were New York born and bred, a wide assortment of people perusing them.
“Oh, no,” Christine interrupted.
He turned to look at her, and immediately wished he hadn't.
Pure, untainted terror shone in those bright eyes of hers, dampening them, besmirching them. Ruining her.
She pushed him into a dirty alleyway.
Stephen frowned. “What? What is it? Do you know which universe we've gone to?”
Christine's face was pale-white, ashen, terrified. Christ, he had never seen her so shaken. Whatever this universe was, it was the stuff of nightmares.
“Stephen—my Stephen, he said—” Christine bit her lip. Trepidation coalesced in his gut. “He had dreams of this universe. Nightmares.”
“It's okay,” Stephen said after a beat, a frown prominent in his tone, apprehensive. “What did he say?”
Christine looked him in the eye and said, “The Stephen Strange of this universe is a monster. He must have been a good man, once, but he fell in love with a girl who had the powers of a spider, and destroyed his universe rather than sacrifice his memories of her.”
There was a ringing in Stephen's ears. There was only one person who had the powers of a spider, and that was Spider-Man.
There was another echo in his memory, another fragment of a memory permanently etched on to his memory: the Statue of Liberty.
Stephen's head hurt.
It took him a second to realise Christine hadn't finished:
“He would go on to consume beings, demons, evil spirits, before he turned to the Darkhold and began dream-walking into his other variants, taking their power for himself.” She took a breath, steeling herself. “Eventually, he became powerful enough to steal the Phoenix Force from 314's Jean Grey, corrupting it and giving himself the power to create a new universe in his design.”
Chancing a look around their surroundings once more, it was disconcerting to see the New York landscape Stephen was intimately familiar. It would appear this monstrous version of himself followed a similar timeline.
“And the girl, this Spider-Woman?” Perhaps if Strange did all this in her name, then she can help make him reasonable. “She was with him when he did all that, committed those atrocities?” The Spider-Man Stephen was familiar with would never follow a dark path; selflessness was his nature, a suit he wore with high esteem.
Christine bit her lip. “I'm not sure. My Stephen never mentioned her as much.”
Stephen nodded, half-dazed, all-musing.
“So, basically,” he said, relegated to playing catch-up. “This Stephen Strange destroyed his universe for a spider-person, and sacrificed countless just to restore it to its former glory?”
Just before Christine could nod an affirmative, a voice broke out among the dark—
“Yeah, no,” a voice argued in the shadows of a grim New York alley. “That's not it.”
Stephen and Christine both jumped, turning to the source of the noise.
A red-and-blue clad person was perched along the backdrop, clinging to the wall in a fashion no human could ever mimic. Their eyes – so white, so bright – were trained on them both.
Spidey's voice, though. No doubt the kid used a vocal modulator to disguise her higher pitch, which— smart. Very smart. He knew how precious Spidey's anonymity was, even if he didn't quite understand why the kid was determined to continue existing in a double life.
Stephen knew, even without any further acknowledgement, who he was dealing with here.
“Cool story, though,” Spidey continued, voice as light and breezy as the one Stephen was familiar with back in his universe.
“Wait,” Christine interrupted before this alternate Spider-Man could web off. “Could you help us?”
Stephen snapped his neck in her direction. After everything she just imparted, anxiety clawing at her throat— she wanted to request the help of the woman his evil variant condemned several universes for?
Christine shot a look at him, and Stephen knew better than to meddle in her diagnoses.
“Sure,” Spidey replied, and it was all heart, no tricks. So completely earnest. “Follow me. I'll lead you to Dr. Strange.”
Christine swallowed, and Stephen tracked the movement. But determination clung to her, every pore reaching out, and he knew to trust her instincts.
“The Phoenix Force can travel the multiverse,” she hissed at him, and he knew Spidey could probably hear it, too. “Perhaps he might be magnanimous if the request comes from her.”
Well, he couldn't fault her reasoning. He only hoped she was right.
“You know who I am, then?” Spidey continued conversationally, paving the way to the Sanctum Sanctorum amongst a backdrop of New York citizens, too self-absorbed to care for random trespassers and their resident friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man.
“I know that you have the powers of a spider, and that you're a...” Christine faltered, “a Revenger?”
“Close.” Spidey lead them down a back alley, away from the crowd. “I was a temporary Avenger. Once. But I've since found I'm more suited to being just your average street-fighter.”
Ah. Sounds like Stephen's universe. Also appeared that this arachnid-styled superhero shared a similar penchant for attracting multiversal danger.
They reached this universe's Sanctum Sanctorum.
Spidey led them through the gates, the door opening invitingly at her entrance.
Apropos of nothing — “I'm Peta, by the way,” Spidey introduced, apparently unperturbed by the notion of her identity being rattled. She took off her mask, revealing a youthful face, beautiful in the light of this reality, but something was missing.
For a moment, Stephen could understand why he foolishly thought he could take on the multiverse for her.
They entered the Sanctum.
Peta peered at him. “It's strange. You look a lot like him, though. It's uncanny.”
“Gee, I wonder why,” Stephen muttered under his breath, well aware that her enhanced senses would pick up his sarcasm, but not in the mood to give a damn.
Christine shot him a look, however, so perhaps he wasn't as subtle as he prized himself on being.
“So,” Christine said, attempting to make conversation. “What name do you go by, here? Spider-Woman, is it?”
Peta cocked her head. “Spider-Man.”
Ah, right, of course – a multiversal moniker, if ever there was one.
“Here we are,” Spider-Man declared, throwing open the doors to the Sanctum Sanctorum with abandon.
Stephen made a show of looking around the Sanctum Sanctorum. Interestingly, it looked a great deal like his. “So, where is this version of me?”
“I... don't know,” she responded, confusion evident in her tone. “He's normally here.”
“Great,” he muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes at Christine, who gave him a weak smile in response, still nervously scanning every inch of the place.
Right. This is super-duper scary Strange's reality. Gotta remember that.
A portal materialised just off the side. Stephen chanced a look and—
“Hey, Wong,” Peta said. “Where's Dr. Strange? It's just, I got this, uh, other Dr. Strange, and...” she faltered, turning to Christine. “I’m sorry, what's your name?”
“Christine.”
“Right, sorry. I got a second Dr. Strange and a Christine, here, and I have a feeling actual Dr. Strange might wanna take a look at them.” She looked back at both of them, and murmured an apologetic, “Sorry.”
Apology not accepted, Stephen felt like arguing but ultimately dropped. They had bigger things at stake, here.
“Oh, good god, there's another one,” Wong muttered under his breath. “I do not get paid enough for this.”
Peta frowned. “I thought the Sorcerer Supreme didn't get paid.”
“That's beside the point.” Wong gestured at them before turning back at Peta. “Just chuck them in Strange's personal quarters, just down the hall there. He'll soon realise.”
Wong opened a portal and, just as quickly as he appeared, he was off again.
“Okay,” Peta said, unconvinced. Nevertheless, she summoned a charming smile and brightly ordered, “Follow me.”
She led them to his personal sanctuary, and it didn't escape Stephen's notice that she knew exactly where that was located.
Nebulous though it was, Peta found it as if it were made for her. Ushering in both Christine and himself, he couldn't help but feel unsettled.
There was a ringing in his head that begged for attention – a shadow that walked alongside Peta, ensnaring her with every footstep.
“Does it bother you?” he found himself asking.
Peta frowned. “Does what bother me?”
Both he and Christine took a wide sweep of the place, and she said, “That this world doesn't make a lick of sense.”
Peta stared at them for a second.
Then, in a voice as cold as ice, as resilient as vibranium, said, “I don't know what you're talking about.” No room for argument, spewing what she believed to be hard fact – the absolute truth.
He fell in love with a girl who had the powers of a spider, and destroyed his universe rather than give her up.
Jesus. Whatever shit his variant put her through, it was rough as fuck.
Her posture changed; offensive.
Stephen opened his hands, displaying palms up. Christine stepped back.
“I can show you,” he said, calm. He took a step back, and was relieved when she allowed him to come to her. The Spider-Man of his universe was a hero and if anybody tampered with his mind, he would not hesitate to help him.
And, by all accounts, Peta was a good person. Stephen could not leave her with this darkness suppressing her perception of reality. Because it was coming from her mind, her brain. He could feel it.
“Show me what?” she retorted, blank, flat. Defensive in her reply as well as her stance – an instinct he suspected someone else manufactured.
“I can help show you the world,” he said, “as it is.”
Peta remained unconvinced.
“It's true,” Christine added, tone warm and inviting – exactly as he knew her to be. “Please: let him show you.”
Peta, a Spider-Man to the last, looked fear straight in the face and nodded to Stephen her acquiescence.
What Stephen saw was—
Darkness. Pure, unadulterated, heart-breaking darkness; a black hole of a man in the centre of it sucking
Strange was inside her head. He had put himself in her mind, monitoring her, stalking her, manipulating her.
Her mind was a labyrinth: an impossible, inescapable puzzle determined to keep her entrenched deep within its shadowy hold, and the longer it did that the worse it became. Fragments of memories came splintering through the cracks, bursting forth from beneath the oppressive cloud. Memories that were forbidden to be remembered.
A universe that was forbidden to remembered, so that she would never understand what had happened lest she put up a fight.
Stephen touched one such memory: fragile, made of glass, one delicate moment away from shattering: a reality cracking at the edges, people in the sky, a plea for what if everyone forgot who I was— and this Stephen Strange refusing as the universe crumpled around them.
Peta cried out.
Pain flooded her mind, looping back into Stephen's. Immediately, he retracted his presence from her head, his own mind spinning with all he gleaned from behind the manipulation.
This version of him – he coveted her. She was coveted, treasured; priceless.
And in his worship, he ruined her.
“I'm sorry,” Stephen opened his mouth to say but was overruled.
Suddenly, he was hurled across the room, invisible shackles of dark magic wrapping themselves around his ankles. A quick glance at Christine showed the same scenario.
Peta was frozen – stuck between clutching her head, and wanting to help them.
Then, he heard him descend down the stairs. Furious, anger sticky and red-hot and melting.
Peta's Dr. Strange.
“What– What are you–” Stephen heard her frantic pants, powerless and fearful and pained.
Grimacing, restraints biting dark into the flesh, he watched as this reality's Dr. Stephen Strange broke the Hippocratic Oath.
First, do no harm—
Strange ignored the both of them, attention focused solely on the young girl.
"Don't worry," Strange murmured baby-soft, love encased in the command: do not worry.
Peta made a plaintive sound, gaze torn between her Strange, and he and Christine.
Strange shushed her gently. “Don't look at them. Look at me.” He chucked her chin. “Look at me.”
Peta's eyes snapped to his, and he had her.
“There's my girl,” he murmured reverently, veiling her once more in his shadow; protective, possessive. He raised a hand to her cheek, and she leaned into his touch, welcoming it, seeking it.
He pressed a pretty, delicate kiss to her forehead, and breathed against her ear, the sweetest, most corrupt carol known to man, “Go to sleep.”
Immediately, her countenance failed her, succumbing to his desire. “No, please, please don't,” she slurred, struggling uselessly over the sound of his quiet shushing, body becoming pliable at his mercy.
“I've got you,” he said, “I’ve got you. Rest.”
She fell, and Strange cradled his bride in a twisted mockery of the hold.
Without sparing so much as a passing glance at Stephen and Christine, Strange simply carried the girl he caused an incursion for over to the sofa, settling her down there with such a delicate grace it was disconcerting to see.
He shrugged carelessly, and the Cloak of Levitation left his back to drape itself over Peta's sleeping form, protecting her from harm.
Strange smiled, hauntingly fragile, gazing down at the unconscious form of the kid he sacrificed a thousand universes for. “She doesn't even know who I am. Not really,” he whispered, soft. He raised a gloved hand, tenderly brushing her hair back.
He stood up, then, and Stephen could feel it; the shift in the atmosphere. Strange's anger was palatable, thick and hostile.
Stephen's eyes then fell to Strange's hands as he stripped them of the gloves, slowly, as if he had all the time in the world.
Christine sucked in a sharp breath as Strange's hands came into view: black all the way to the last knuckle, rotten to the core.
All at once whatever niceness existed in this wretched version of Stephen Strange evaporated; he had left all his goodness with her.
Strange rose: a vengeful god beside his queen. Haunting, breath-taking, darkness imbued into his very soul.
“You hurt her.”
“It was not intentional,” Stephen was quick to refute, hoping to dissuade his variant of any ill intent on his part lest Strange take his anger out on Christine.
Stephen only had to take one look at the his doppelgänger to know this: whatever good in this man was left to atrophy, succumbing to the thrall of the dark – all in the name of a girl who held no memory of his dark deeds.
“You're a poison,” Stephen said, persistent to the last. “A poison in her mind.”
“I make her happy,” Strange hissed; a viper. “She's happy here with me.”
Correction: her brain was dependent on him for survival. She didn't have a thought that wasn't pre-screened. If Stephen had succeeded in breaking the connection, her mind would fail.
“You've enslaved her,” Stephen breathed; shock, raw, unbridled horror glistening the syllables. “The mind can only take so much before it breaks. You... you're going to rip her apart.”
“I will not,” Strange snapped, and reality bent at his aggression. “I will protect her. She needs me.”
Stephen swallowed, risking a glance at Christine. Heaven only knew what he would do if she were placed in harm's way – he could only imagine the desperation Strange must have felt ensuring Peta's safety.
Nevertheless, the Spider-Man Stephen knew would never take this lying down. If, for nothing else, Stephen could appeal to that, then perhaps Strange could be reasoned with.
(...yeah, there were a lot of could's in that reasoning.)
“I once told Tony Stark that if it came down to a choice between him, the kid and the Tine Stone then I would not hesitate to let either of them die,” Stephen said. “Because—”
“The universe depends on it,” Strange finished, bitterness engulfing the syllables, distorting them, hissing. A sardonic half smile graced his lips, grey eyes sneering as they met Stephen's. “Looks like we have similar realities.”
Stephen made a show of looking around. “We did, yes.” Sucking in a breath, he added, “Such a shame your Spider-Man doesn't remember that fact.”
He was expecting Strange to react with anger, firing vitriol like bullets, but his alternate self remained sober, business-like as he explained that, “If she knew, if she remembered, the truth, what I built our reality on, it would kill her.” So without remorse, so without guilt. “It would eat her alive.”
“Yes,” Stephen argued because he literally couldn't help himself. “She gets free will to exist in a narrative you decide. What happens when she deviates from the script? You yell 'cut' and the scene is rewritten.”
He was expecting to incite his alternate self to rage, to something that required no higher brain power, all emotion. Only... this Stephen Strange saw right through him.
“You know what's funny,” Strange laughed, all gallows humour, all wrong. “Yours was the one universe I promised I would never dream-walk into. She begged me not to, saying that your Peter Parker shouldn't have to pay the price of universal collapse.” His expression turned to steel: unforgivable, impenetrable, cutting. “Not after what you made him sacrifice.”
Dust. Stephen's would-be words turned to dust in his throat, gone before they could talk.
“I suppose I should be grateful, then, that you've come traipsing into mine,” Strange continued, wicked smirk defiling his face. “Begging for my help.”
Beside him, Stephen could feel Christine's nerves. He longed to soothe them.
Strange cocked his head, patronizing. “Did you really think you'd get it?”
“As someone who holds the Phoenix Force,” Christine said, “it's in your best interest for us to stop the Scarlet Witch.”
Strange chuckled: a dark, insidious display of noise and teeth that had Stephen on edge. Fire flashed in his eyes, irises burning molten gold; blinding – a king's metal. “What makes you think I wouldn't be able to defeat the Scarlet Witch? Besides, in this world, Wanda doesn't have her make-believe kids.” He paused. “Why would I help you?”
“Because Peta believes you're a good person,” Stephen said, desperation making his words hurried.
“That's true,” Strange concurred, and it was all too easy, far too genial. “She does.”
Then, he leaned in, and nefarious, villainous evil whispering, “What she doesn't remember can't hurt her.”
Ice froze in Stephen's veins when Strange continued in that same dispassionate, unemotional tone of voice: “I've absorbed countless of us over the centuries. I'm sure one more can't hurt.” A grim, ironic half-smirk besmirched his face, shadowed and evil. “One more for the collection.”
“Because, you see, the thing is: you came here,” he sneered, cruel, “into my universe. Threaten it with an incursion once more, hurt the woman I love, and you have the audacity to call me the villain.”
Undiluted, unadulterated rage dripped off of every syllable, drenched in acrimonious venom.
“I don’t think you quite understand: I have been good. I have retired the Darkhold; built walls around this universe to protect against foreign invaders, and here you are anyway.” Mania gleaned in those dark eyes of his, and Stephen bit back fear. “What do you expect me to do about that?”
“We were forced here,” was the only defence Stephen had to their name. “We didn't choose to come here.”
It was Christine who argued this, attempting to fight a variant of Stephen beyond hope, and Stephen feared: “Peta believes you're a good man,” she echoed, “and I also know that deep down you're a good man, for whatever that's worth.” She paused, swallowed. “Please. The Scarlet Witch is the biggest threat in the entire multiverse.”
“Don't worry your pretty little head about it,” Strange mocked, patting Christine's head like he would a dog. Stephen fought against his restraints, eyes hard and narrowed.
Perversely, Strange only seemed to delight in Stephen's reaction.
“Nonetheless,” he said, the adverb cocooned in a sigh. He stepped back. “You're right, of course. Peta does believe I'm a good man, and I'm not about to break my promises to her.” He thought about it for a second. “Not any more, anyway.”
He released them both from their restraints with nothing more than a flick of his wrist.
“Although, come to think of it,” he continued, pure shadows spilling from his mouth, “I never made those promises to either of you. And you'll soon find there are a lot of us out there more sinister than I.”
And with that, before Stephen could begin to compute the true meaning behind that statement, Strange summoned the power of a dark phoenix, and hurled them both into another reality.
Peta awoke with a hand gently shaking her shoulder.
Her sleep dissipated at his command, and she stirred back to life, blinking eyes to the sight of her favourite Master of the Mystic Arts. And the Cloak of Levitation, which had apparently been draped across her like a child's blanket.
Remorse coloured her cheeks. Falling asleep in front of another person was always a cause for embarrassment, but falling asleep in front of someone you—
Anyway.
Dr. Strange didn't allow her to dwell on it too long. He handed her a cup. “Tea?”
She took it gratefully, her quiet thank you whispered along the rim.
"What do you remember?" he asked; clinical.
“Um.” Peta wracked her brains. “I was just patrolling, and I remember fighting these carjackers, but... I can't remember anything else.”
Her heart quickened when Dr. Strange brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, wanting to see her face.
“That's alright,” he whispered, low, comforting, and she felt so incredibly guilty for how immeasurably good his reassurance made her feel.
Then, he continued: “You were attacked by multiversal trespassers. I apprehended them, but they attacked you. They hurt you.”
The lingering affects of a concussion were felt keenly in her skull. She resisted the urge to clutch her head; she didn't want to feel more of a child than she already did.
Fuck, but she wanted to impress Dr. Strange with her spider abilities. Yet all she managed to do was create more problems for him to solve.
She ducked her head. “I'm sorry.”
His hand, gloved, yellow, because he never showed his fingers, not ever, froze where it was resting at her cheek. “You don't have to be sorry for anything,” he rasped: wrecked, broken. “Not ever. Do you hear me?”
Earnest, Peta nodded.
“Good.” Dr. Strange smiled. “What do you say we get you to bed?”
He plucked the tea from her hand.
But I'm not— she went to say, but her reply was clouded in a yawn.
Huh. Weird.
Dr. Strange rose to his feet, extending a hand to her.
She took it.