InsaneJournal

Who: Wanda, Dr. Strange
What: investigating instabilities and infinity stone links.
When: present
Where: Sanctum, astral plane
Rating/Warning: Green

After talking to Stark about a phone that was received last night and a trip to the astral plane for confirmation, Stephen made a few decisions. He wasn't sure if they were the right ones. The only way to know for sure was if he used the Time Stone. Not an option, now that the instability was more pronounced.

Something was coming, indeed.

He concentrated for a moment until he could locate Wanda inside the Sanctum, opening a very small portal and waving one hand around through it to get her attention. He wasn't looking, in case he was intruding.

Stephen's voice could be heard through the hole hovering in mid-air, "I know we've got training scheduled for today. I was wondering if you have a moment to talk about something else. If you're busy, I'll be in the kitchen conjuring some tea."

A hand through a mystic sort of hole, that was new. The sudden appearance of such a thing surprised her a little, but still managed to bring a wan smile to her face. And it wasn’t as if Wanda had been doing anything scandalous, or sans clothing - she had on a simple red dress, thigh-high stockings, and no shoes. It was drafty in the Sanctum though, so while she’d been reading a book (as part of their lessons, in fact), she sat with a blanket tucked around her.

But the invitation for tea caused blue eyes, glacial meltwater, to lift from the words on the page and flicker toward the general direction of the kitchen. She marked her place (with a proper bookmark - doggie ears on ancient paper that was as thin as onion skin was rude) and then headed downstairs, meeting the doctor in the kitchen.

“I can conjure cookies,” she offered, with a smirk. “I baked them recently, I mean.” Chocolate chip and soft sugar - she’d been feeling down lately, so it was something that seemed to help.

Stephen was already conjuring two cups of tea when Wanda entered the kitchen. He knew he wouldn't be able to handle pouring them the way everyone else would. His hands still felt weak and ineffectual with mundane tasks, as much as he tried to cover it up with an air of self-sufficiency. There was always the occasional tremor in mid-pour, always the tendency for a spill. This way was easier.

Everything was easier with magic. Magic was like wielding a scalpel of energy, directing it where it needed to go. There was no weight to lift. There was no pressure that needed to be applied. It also opened up a whole new realm of sensing what was going on unseen, in the background. Which was why Stephen eyed Wanda for a moment with a calculating squint, made more friendly by the wry smirk twisting at the corner of his lips.

"Chocolate chip's the best cookie to conjure," he joked, moving aside so that Wanda could sweeten her tea. "Hope I didn't interrupt your studying. You've been translating things quickly. Wanted to let you know that Wong's tracking down a book of spells to help people read ancient texts. Once he gets his hands on that, you'll really be in business."

Speaking of business, Stephen knew her powers came from the Mind Stone. With his link to the Time Stone causing him to feel more disjointed in time, and Loki having that Space Stone locked in his personal magical storage space? He hypothesized that anyone with a link to the stones might be feeling something.

"Not to rain on our whole tea and cookies moment," he added, after an awkward pause. "I want tea and cookies. But I was wondering if you've sensed anything different lately. Around us."

Wanda added a little bit of sugar to her tea, stirring it gently, the spoon clinking against the ceramic. She pushed the plate of cookies toward Stephen, and she happened to think they turned out pretty well - crispy on the edge, soft in the middle. Maybe she was learning a thing or two from her job at a cafe and bakery (though these cookies were far from vegan - butter being a main ingredient). And maybe she wasn’t even really an Avenger anymore either, useless when it came to helping others - but she could bake, and listen. Not everyone knew how to listen.

“Yes, I do. The air is charged with an odd sort of sensation,” she said, pausing to lift the cup to her lips and take a sip of tea. “It lingers just out of my reach, out of my realm of understanding - if I stand very still, I can feel it. Just a hair away...but never really touching.”

And her own self. She felt different too. “I dreamed, I felt myself disintegrating into nothing but dust. I felt relieved. I wanted it to be over. I thought...if I went fast enough, I could catch up with Vision. With Pietro.”

It hadn’t happened like that, or at least - she didn’t think so. Here, in this universe, she remembered Tony saying Vision was in Wakanda and safe. Pietro was still dead. But she remained unsettled, and morose.

Stephen took a cookie and took a bite, chewing it as he mulled over her observations. All of which were valid, and for a second, his mind latched onto that moment of disintegration. The cookie was actually really good. The mutual knowledge of dying, that sense of something looming like the shadow of an encroaching storm? That wasn't good at all, and he found it a little hard to swallow.

Not that Stephen would show that on the surface. He still retained that trace of arrogance, of self-confidence, that surrounded him. It was like a self-contained, unbreachable suit of armor. Even if he was wearing it well, it didn't stop him from wanting to help others. Including wanting to help a fellow lonely soul who lost someone the same as he did.

"You're not the only one," Stephen said, after taking a careful sip of hot tea. There was no gentle way around this, although he hated burdening a burgeoning student of the mystical arts. "I have a theory about that feeling. About how it links into those with magical abilities, or a link to a stone. The Eye's been...infringing lately. I'm convinced it took me back to when my sister died."

For a fleeting second, he felt as though he was being prodded that time was running out, but it wasn't a compulsion formed in his own mind. He instinctively glanced down at the amulet around his neck. The Eye remained closed, as it should be. And he continued speaking, slowly, to avoid any uncomfortable discussions about Pietro Maximoff or Donna Strange.

"I had the same thing happen in my dream. Of turning to dust." He didn't want it to happen. There was a quiet acceptance of it, the knowledge that it truly was for the best. "If you want to know what's truly terrifying? It was in front of Stark. Not exactly the dream person you imagine last looking at, before you let go."

This was punctuated with a small sarcastic smirk, to let Wanda know he was joking. Maybe.

“You turned to dust in front of Stark? I do not envy you,” Wanda chuckled dryly, but any baby smile she might have been forming fell a moment later. And she set down her teacup, though she continued to watch the liquid inside. “I watched him kill Vision for the mind stone. I had to kill him to destroy the stone first, but Thanos - he just rewound time and killed him again. I failed to protect him - and Thanos comforted me.”

It was obvious how disgusted Wanda sounded. She sat mournfully beside Vision, the guilt and her failure a bitter fruit. Difficult to swallow - one bite turned her stomach into knots, dreaming it turned her stomach into knots. The feel of the giant’s fingers in her hair, like he was merely petting a small kitten, it made her shudder.

“How do we stop it from happening now?” she asked Strange. “These disturbances we feel, these connections to the infinity stones - they are not coincidences.” Then she realized what else he said, and finally looked at him. “I’m sorry to hear - about your sister, I mean.” The death of a sibling was a different kind of grief - for one who had suffered loss after loss, she could distinctly pinpoint the differences between how it felt to lose Pietro, and how it felt to lose Vision.

Strange knew that sort of loss, when it was right in front of you, and he knew it was a weight that you carried with you always. But to have someone you cared for killed twice and then were consoled by the killer? That was a special sort of hell that Stephen never considered before.

He rested a hand on Wanda's shoulder. It wasn't something he often did, his hands were clumsy and he felt the metal pins in there, all of the time. Yet it was a show of silent solidarity. Of stability. And if he could offer that to Wanda, that was the least he could do in this situation they now found themselves in.

"Thank you, for your condolences. And....I'm sorry. You went through that." Stephen didn't touch his tea or cookie, and they went ignored after this. The topic was too weighted, too heavy for sweets and tea.

"We can't," he said about stopping it. "Stop them. But you're right. They aren't coincidences. I think the Eye was hinting at something. It disjointed time to take me back to a specific point in time. I've been on this path the entire time. Where her death, medical school, the car crash, magic....these are all linear steps happening in a specific sequence, leading to one moment."

He looked at her for a moment, considering.

"How do you feel about taking a short trip out to the astral plane?"

The hand on her shoulder surprised Wanda - she was just so hollow and withdrawn lately, sadness that came in these wintry waves. All interspersed with her trying to get through her everyday routine, such as it was - and much of that routine involved avoiding human contact. She wasn’t exactly free with physical affection either - but she needed to mourn. She needed to not remember her dreams, the trauma forcing her awake. There was a space beyond, a universe out of her reach - it called to her, like the mind stone did, all stretched out like a painted canvas beyond this existence.

It looked so orange. But it was where death awaited, and she almost wished for that.

Her tea was abandoned too, when she threw her arms around the doctor and embraced him, her chin resting on his shoulder when one tear escaped and slid down her cheek. Then she pulled back, nodding.

“I will go to the astral plane.” Wanda had never been, but if he thought it would help she’d do it. “You wish for me to tell you...what I see?”

It had been....a long time since anyone hugged him, and he awkwardly, carefully, hugged Wanda back in return. The last person had been Christine, and that was different. That was a goodbye. This? Brief though it was, and despite the differences in ages, it was the sharing of mutual grief. The gravity of that moment left him quiet for a few additional seconds before he could reply.

"Ok. I'm going to take you to a specific spot. Hold on." Stephen barely touched her shoulder again and they were suddenly they were sitting in chairs, with him facing her. "This isn't it yet. And relax. This will only take a second to get there."

He closed his eyes, his face instantly relaxed so that he looked to be asleep. By the count of ten, Stephen was already out of his body, floating to Wanda and knocking her soul out of her body with a push to the heart chakra.

They weren't in the Sanctum anymore. Stephen was floating ahead of her, the colors of his clothes muted and his body see through in areas. He always thought that the astral plane was like a cross between swimming and flying. The flying because of the ease one could move but the swimming because parts of it had resistance. And this was an area of resistance, as though if they got any closer, it would be swimming upstream.

Around them was a deep dark mist, tinged purple and green throughout, and behind him was, a gaping maw of infinite black. The same crack that Stephen had put his head into, and came back with 14,000,604 doomsday scenarios. And one that supposedly undid them all.

Then came the sound. It was like two galactic glaciers of glass scraping against one another, low at times then screeching in the distance.

It was so murky, like swimming but yet getting sucked back into quicksand. Everything moved slowly, but Wanda was fascinated at how the world - this world - resembled a watercolor painting, with the colors running in a way they did not in the physical realm.

She followed Stephen, tumbling, floating, gliding upon what felt like a sonata of air bubbles. It almost made her giggle, but the sight of the onyx mass that lay ahead stopped her immediately. She would keep going though - there was a stubborn streak in Wanda, a fierce one. A brave streak. And she was not a stupid girl - she knew what she was doing, getting into this.

The darkness ahead did not emit light or even energy, from what she could see - it was mysterious, invisible, a peerless void. Yet she too moved closer. “It’s like I can sense the mind stone more through here,” she said. “I can feel, I can see...everything.”

Knowledge. Visions. Information. Puzzle pieces slotting together. All of it pouring in, this darkness as a conduit. “Collect the stones and bend them to your will. If they are already ours, they can’t be his.”

But there was something else too. “For dust you are and to dust you shall return,” she recited sadly. Red tendrils of mist curled free from her, twisting and turning until she began to build a wall. A barrier. To try to shield them all from what was inevitable, to buy them more time to get those stones, but she couldn’t - another ring, more walls, more red bricks, spiraling upward. Blood leaked from her nose, her teeth chattered like it was a stormy spring afternoon, every muscle burned and ached as if she had a fever. The power of this void was endless and unstoppable - and that power flowed through her like oxygen, until she could not contain it any longer and the wall she built shattered.

Well, at least she’d tried to shield them.

Where Wanda was brave, Stephen was a pillar of steady willpower. Stephen adopted an observational stance throughout most of this, watching and listening to what was said of the connection, absorbing it all. Wanda's reaction was immediate, powerful, and most of all, terrifying to behold. Or it would be, for lesser people than Stephen Strange.

Her message wasn't expected. The connection, he observed, was definitely a mental one. What he was given was pieces of time from another place, through this impenetrable tear in the background of their reality to another place.

He gathered what she was doing, and followed suit to help bolster her magic with his own. Wanda's power was vast, limitless when on the astral plane, just as it was in the mirror dimension. Inwardly he wondered at the way she manipulated the reality around her during this attempt. It gave him pause before he tried, as she did, to stop the flow of dark energy. He began to shore up the wall with a quickly casted array of Eldritch shields as it began to break away, but those too erupted into a shower of fiery sparks, embers spinning away and sputtering out in the non-existent atmosphere of the astral plane.

He flew forward, reaching out one hand to catch hold of Wanda's arm.

As quickly as they were in the astral dimension, they were jolted where they sat in the chairs, 'safely' back in the Sanctum. Stephen stood up and conjured a cloth, bending down to hold it gently against her bleeding nose, and he guided her hand up over it so she could apply the pressure, telling her to lean forward a little and press down. It was the inherent reaction of a medical professional to someone in need.

"Worth a shot," he told her, and there was the barest trace of a wry smirk on his face.

His suspicions about the individual links to the stones were true, even if he didn't expect Wanda to go that far. He was proud of her though because she was up to pace with everything she had lost from before. That meant he had one more person to consult, from a magical and prophetic perspective.

Stephen looked Wanda in the eyes and told her, "You just gave us our best chance."

She let him tend to her bleeding nose; Wanda was still a little dizzy but she centered herself, fingers that were deceptively calloused (you wouldn’t think, but she played a lot of guitar - or she used to, before she ended up in an alternate reality that was rapidly fraying at the seams) grasping his wrist. And she rested her cheek against the palm of his hand, watching Stephen with a sort of bright intensity that was all fireworks on a cold winter’s day.

Next she sniffled, reaching up to dab at her nose with the cloth. “Then we should take that chance,” she said. “I’m okay.”

No lie there. She really was, and she wanted to continue to help. “Whatever else you need me to do, I will,” she added dejectedly. “If something were to happen, like what I saw in my dreams, you will not leave me?” Wanda reached for his hand again, and she wanted to make sure.

"No, Wanda. I won't leave you," he promised, leaving her hand there to reassure her of a steady presence, to help ground her after a harrowing experience. It wasn't something he often did, not being a tactile person beyond the tools of surgery or when he had his watch collection. That was a lot of winding. Needless to say, he didn't need to do that anymore.

He wasn't sure what would happen. The message seemed to be from another place. They'd been lucky so far. It was only dreams. Memories. Nothing tangible.

In that moment, he never felt the weight of responsibility for his role in the grand scheme of things, as a protector, as he did then. He felt protective as a mentor to a student would. And she was someone who had lost too much already, that imagining that person undergoing any further loss would be...impossible to fathom.

As impossible to fathom as their dreams actually coming true in this reality.