Chapter Text
This was a mistake, bringing her into the New York Sanctum. Strange cast a heavy glance at Christine of Earth-838 and then at Wong, whose arms were planted across his chest. Behind him, America fidgeted with her jacket buttons, unable to look up.
"Wait a minute, okay?"
His hand lightly brushed Christine's forearm, and she gave him a quick nod. The very idea of her being there eased some of the tension in his shoulders, though it did nothing to bring his heart back from his throat. Wong's gaze boring into him didn't help either. This was an exceedingly stupid idea.
"I... I ask for one day. Just to rest up. Patch up, before America opens a portal back to Earth-838." He stubbornly looked into the Sorcerer Supreme's unmoving face and counted the seconds. Wong's eyes narrowed, and Strange's chest tightened.
"One day. After that, she must return to her world. Strange, it does not do to meddle with the fabric of reality. You know that."
Strange managed a broken chuckle. "Yeah. Better than most."
He caught America's gaze and managed a wink. Straightening up a bit, she squinted slyly and smiled back before Wong gruffly gestured for the universe traveler to follow him to the West Wing vestibule back to Kamar-Taj.
"What's going on?" Christine asked after a moment with a touch of concern.
Strange turned to the source of his recent tachycardia and took a few hesitant steps toward her. He pressed his lips together, and tense wrinkles formed at his eyes as he tried to manage a reassuring smile. He struggled to find the right words. A mute plea of "stay" flickered in his expression.
"You know this isn't right, Stephen."
"I know." His gaze snapped to the floor. Anywhere but her treacherously familiar eyes. "I'm always doing something wrong."
Christine blinked, and her tone softened. "This will hurt us more."
Strange was broken, tired, and barely able to think straight. He drew in a deep breath and immediately regretted it. A lance of pain shot through his aching ribs, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
"I know," he repeated.
All the former verbal bravado was flying ash in the wind. This was the only way to snatch an extra minute with her before her presence, too, would be ash dissolving in air. It was unthinkable how, just when reality gave him a teaspoon of happiness, he couldn't keep it, let alone share it.
With Christine gone back to another universe, the Christine living on the same planet as him would be happy with another man. He himself, if he didn't fall apart, would regret for the rest of his days that he could not stop time and speak his mind in deafening honesty—at least once.
"I wish you could stay."
Her expression darkened, and she looked at him critically. The superficiality and futility of his opportunism went through her limbs like an adrenaline rush. Yet she would have given anything for her own Strange, irreparably unfeeling toward her and irreparably dead, to tell her as much. It was all made worse because, everything he should have given her, she was receiving so easily from another Stephen.
With each second of silence passing between them, a chimera of denial and temptation roared the warning of incursion louder in her ears.
"We have everything to lose."
The statement was deeply rhetorical. Strange twitched the corner of his lips nervously. Two desperate loners meet, collide for a fraction of a moment, and diverge in diametric directions. The knowledge rattled under his ribs with a pinching pain and the weight of their past. It was a foretaste of inevitable solitude.
"One day, Christine."
"One day, Stephen."
Christine released a long-suffering sigh and put her palm on the pocket between his chest and shoulder. The attempt at a comforting gesture was lousy. Her hand was icy, and her gaze remained focused on a loose stitch on his cloak. Strange placed his hand over hers briefly, giving it a squeeze, before lowering it and gently tugging her toward the Sanctum staircase.
They would be together, if only for a little while, and that meant the world.