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"Oh my god." Christine blinks. Tries to wipe at her eyes. "I'm just- I'm dreaming. That's it. That's all that's happening."
She doesn't know how she got here, but one thing was for certain: she was at the Sanctum Sanctorum. Not in New York, but still in the Sanctum.
She walks. The place doesn't shift around her feet, but remains quiet and still instead. There are no glowing portals appearing, bringing Wong or Stephen with the delivery dinner. There is only silence, the kind that one hears in the wake of a flatline.
She pushes open doors, doors that led into completed rooms, doors that led into semi-completed rooms, and doors that simply opened into yawning darkness. Those, she left well alone.
Finally, she reaches what she recognises as the relic room that Stephen favours. Here, she can almost recall the peculiar smell of incense and tea that lingers. Books lay open, paper and pen weighing down the pages and half-written pages of notes in Stephen's shaky cursive scattered on the table. A cup of tea sits in a saucer, the drink long gone cold.
The room is the opposite of a liminal space. The few times that she had entered the Sanctum, the room always looked different. It always spoke of continuity, of change.
Of life.
"Christine. You're... you're here."
Christine spins around, ready to... to fight? To flee? Nothing in the Sanctum would ever harm her, but she startles at the sight of Stephen anyway. He looks domestic, dressed in one of more casual robes and draped in a different cape.
"Stephen?" She gasps. "Where am I? What are you- what did you do?"
Stephen flinches. There is no other way to describe it. He recoils from her words as though she had slapped him across the face, his face so open and raw for a moment that Christine felt sorry.
She knew, then. She knows. Perhaps she always did, when it came to Stephen Strange. This wasn't her Stephen. This one had a different set of wounds, something that was directly connected to her.
"Are..." Stephen wrings his hands together, rubbing his wrists with his fingers. An old habit? "Are you... real?"
"What?" Christine breathes. "What are you talking about, Stephen?"
"Please. Tell me if you're real, Christine, I- I can't." Stephen shakes his head. "I can't. Please."
"I am real, Stephen." Christine says softly. She approaches him, and he shrinks back from her. If the situation didn't rankle her, she would have laughed; a man at least two heads taller than her was backing away, staring at her like she had put the fear of God in him.
"Hey. Hey, Stephen. Breathe with me."
"Don't." Stephen snaps, before he looks horrified. "I- I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that, I meant-"
"Stephen. You're panicking. Breathe. We can talk later." Christine takes a deep breath, making sure to exaggerate her breaths. "See? Inhale. Exhale. Come on, Strange, this is easier than neurosurgery."
Stephen makes a sound that was half laugh, half sob, but he copies her, inhaling and exhaling until his panic attack recedes.
"Better?"
Stephen didn't even bother to reply, staring at Christine with a look of such terrible pain in his eyes that Christine had to look away. It felt like she was looking at a wounded animal, those eyes begging her to just get it over with already and end his suffering.
"Stephen..." Christine says slowly. "This isn't the New York Sanctum, is it?"
"No." He agrees readily. "I think you're... I'm not sure. Astral projecting? Travelling through the multiverse due to a weakened barrier because of America?"
Christine laughs. When she catches Stephen's inquisitive look, she simply waves him off. Stephen Strange, admitting that he didn't know something? It must be the end of the world.
"America, huh?" She had met the girl sometimes, when visiting the Sanctum to unwind (and that was a phrase she'd never thought she would ever use), and she was a lovely, if polite and slightly distant person. She did tease Stephen about adopting a child, bringing up their old conversations about how he claimed to never want children.
"You know America?"
"I've met her a few times, when I dropped by to chat with Stephen. She seems nice."
"She is a wonderful young woman." Stephen looks almost wistful when she says that. "She comes here to talk to me, train with me. It's why I created the Sanctum."
"Stephen... are you alright?" Christine asks. "You look... tired."
Stephen chuckles and stares down at his hands. His smooth, unblemished hands. "I don't think I remember what it feels like to be tired anymore, Christine. But I am. I'm tired."
"Then rest." She urges. "This isn't healthy, Stephen."
"But what if you go away?"
The simple question catches her off guard. Go away? For a moment, she thinks that maybe, he was talking about her eventual departure. But from the way he says it, it feels like he means something deeper.
Christine thinks back to the expressions that she had seen on him, the way he flinches when she blames him, and the vague inkling of an image starts to form in her head.
"Oh... Whatever you did, Stephen, it wasn't your fault."
"But it is!" He burst out. "I was the one who caused all this—" A wave at his surroundings. "—to happen! The Ancient One- Wong warned me, all of them did, even myself, and I didn't. Listen."
"Then I forgive you."
That brings Stephen to a standstill, and gives Christine enough courage to step up and cup his cheek with her palm. His eyes flicker to her hands, terror and hope warring in equal measures. "I forgive you, Stephen."
Stephen makes a sound like he was being strangled, and carefully, leans his face into the touch, his eyes fixed on Christine the entire time.
"How could you?" He mumbles. "I don't even forgive myself."
"You think of yourself as incapable of failure, Stephen. But I'm sure you have a reason."
"I did it for you." He whispers. "Everything I've done, it's all for you, Christine."
"I know. I know." And perhaps she did know. In her universe, Stephen Strange fixated on surgery, on his career. In this universe, Stephen Strange loved her with a fiery passion that rivalled the sun. Loves her, still.
A tear slips down his cheek. "I am so, so sorry, Christine."
["I am so, so sorry, Christine." Another Stephen Strange says, spread out on the operating theatre and bleeding from a chest wound.]
"Shh. You'll be okay." Gently, she manoeuvres him into a hug. It was made slightly awkward by their difference in height, but she pulled Stephen down to rest his head on her shoulders. His hands flutter nervously, before coming to rest on her waist.
"Stephen?"
"Hm?"
"Say my name?"
"Christine." He breathes, with the reverence of a worshipper at the altar of their god. She could tell: he truly loves her, but Christine... Christine doesn't. She can't. Her love was purely platonic, and look what happened to them when they tried to take it further.
"Stephen. I am so sorry-"
"Shh, shh. It's not your fault. It's not your fault." Stephen shushes her. "I have a feeling that this is how it's supposed to be."
Christine laughs quietly. They've started swaying, as though dancing to an unheard song. "That doesn't sound very nice."
"For me. For you, Christine, you're always happy."
"Really?"
"In every universe."
Christine pulls away. Studies his face and traces the sharp relief of his cheekbones. "But are you happy, Stephen?"
Gently, he grasps her hand and presses a kiss to her knuckles. "It's not about me, Christine."
And Christine thinks that the universe is unfair. Her happiness, in exchange for this man's? But she has to admit that the humbled version of Doctor Strange clicked better with her. In the past, their conversations mainly consisted of surgery techniques, or medical journals. Now, ensconced in the empty warmth of the Sanctum, she makes a decision.
"I love you, Stephen." She says decisively. "Maybe not in the same way you love me, but I still love you. I think... I think I always will."
Stephen smiles wryly. "I suppose you could call us soulmates, then. Blessed to find one another, but doomed to fail in the end."
Christine laughs. It's joyful and bright and relieved. She kisses Stephen on the cheek, eliciting a pleased smile from him. "Who said that this was a failure?"
When she wakes up in her own room (in New York, she's back, she's back-), she has tears drying tacky on her cheeks. Outside, the world goes on, and in Christine's flat, she carries a new weight in her heart.