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Stephen stumbled through the sickly green mist and instantly knew he had fucked up. Messing with powers he didn’t understand had gotten him into this mess and as he had been warned, the consequences were steep. The bill had come due and he didn’t have the means to pay.
He traversed the void in which he was now trapped. There was nothing else to do. The ground was as crystalline as the backlash from the time stone that brought him here when he was restoring the Book of Cagliostro. The mist gave just enough hope that there would be something else out there. That this desolate wasteland held something else and that Stephen wasn’t trapped for eternity because he thought he could handle an infinity stone. He only hoped that Mordo and Wong were not dragged in here with him. Stephen had heard his mentors running up behind him when they realized what he was doing. God, what were they going to tell Tony? Even if he managed to get out, Stephen was going to be murdered by his boyfriend on sight.
Before Stephen could be drowned by the intense emotions welling up in him, a blue light in the distance caught his attention. Beckoning him closer through the sea of green. He started towards it before a thought stopped him in his tracks. It was an old story his mom would read to Donna and him when they were children. How to stay on the path and don’t let the wisps cause you to stray or you were surely doomed.
“But there’s no path here.” He murmured, slowly taking another step towards the light like a battered ship returning home through a harsh storm. As he inched closer, suddenly the hesitation melted away when he realized what it was.
“Tony…” He called out. The glow of the arc reactor framed his lover’s face as the man waved at him with a grin. Suddenly finding the motivation, Stephen sprinted forward only for Tony to disappear into smoke between his fingertips. “Fuck.”
The sorcerer wasn’t surprised that this prison decided to torture him with what he may never have again, but as a familiar blue glow lit up in the distance, Stephen didn’t care. He may be in hell but he had always said he would follow Tony to the ends of the earth. His guiding beacon in the roughest waters. Even if Stephen couldn’t get out of here himself, he just had to have hope that he could be rescued.
In the meantime, it couldn’t kill him to follow the light…