Allison was only vaguely aware of the very comfortable bed underneath her with an equally comfortable comforter lying over her. Neither one felt like what they were given in the Derleth dorm rooms. Nor did the way the sun was streaming in and warming up her face feel the way it did when she woke in Butler Hall.
But Butler Hall was hardly a thought on her mind either when she finally stretched, feeling her dreams coming to an close. Nothing felt out of the ordinary in particular just then, even though the room she woke up in was definitely not anything they had in Derleth, but it took her brain to catch up, that by the time it did, she had already turned over to her other side -- and found herself face to face to someone else in her luscious king-sized bed.
Wait. This wasn’t Derleth. This wasn’t her Butler Hall room.
Allison yelled out in surprise, scrambling out of the bed backwards, nearly toppling over the side but managed to stand with the comforter clutched to her chest.
***
Between the yell and having the comforter torn off the bed, Stephen awoke with a start, eyes shooting wide open, his heart racing. Before he could determine who had made the noise, he realized that he wasn’t in his room on campus. He sat up straight and looked around, immediately spotting Allison, and then his jaw dropped.
“Shit.” It hadn’t been a dream. They’d actually been playing roles, assigned to them against their will. He flopped back down on the bed, rubbing both eyes with the palms of his hands. “Fucking Derleth,” he muttered.
His hands. He pulled them back to inspect them - they were as pristine as they had been prior to his accident, free from scars, Stephen contemplated the difference and how strong the illusion had to be to make these sorts of changes.
***
As Stephen looked down at his hands, Allison stared down at herself. Okay, she was fully clothed, no need to clutch the comforter so close to her. So she let it drop. She glanced up at her current bed-mate, blinking as the rest of the week just poured into her awaking brain.
They had a life together, a married life, a daughter even. A daughter that she now realized probably didn’t exist.
The thought was a punch to the gut, even worse than the fake marriage. Fucking Derleth indeed.
The hands that were gripping the comforter now hugged herself around her stomach. “Stephen?” she mumbled, looking up at him.
***
Stephen was no stranger (heh) to odd occurrences; as a sorcerer, it was practically his stock and trade. He’d traveled to different dimensions, faced cosmic beings, and altered the fabric of reality with his spells. But there was something very unsettling about Derleth. He wanted to know what was going on, yet even with his extensive knowledge and eidetic memory, he couldn’t say definitively what forces were in control of their lives. He enjoyed the control of wielding magic, but it was instances such as this that proved he had none. It reminded Stephen of the Ancient One’s lessons - humbling and aggravating at the same time, but in the end you had to accept it for what it was, and learn.
In a way, it was funny. Billy Kaplin as his son? Loki the mayor and his tennis partner? Sometimes Derleth had a sense of humor, he thought. Stephen would’ve chuckled if he hadn’t heard the hollow tone of Allison’s voice. Sobering, he turned his head to look at her, and it wasn’t funny any more. They had been married in this pantomime, and their emotions for one another also had felt very real.
Concerned, Stephen softly responded, “Yes?”
***
It felt a bit weird to use his name informally, even though she’d used it plenty of times earlier in the week with such fondness that it hurt to remember. They may have danced together at a party just last week, but their familiarity was still pretty new. They were just two people from different worlds stuck on a weird campus together, dealing with alien creatures and then a strange black building.
And then Derleth decided they had to have a whole dance family together.
“We don’t really have a daughter.”
It wasn’t a question, exactly, but she still needed that confirmation. Even if the confirmation would be like another jab in the stomach.
***
Their daughter. She had slipped Stephen’s mind. Supposedly she was the apple of her daddy’s eye, but now that he thought about it, did he ever see her? She’d been like an apparition, somebody he and Allison always talked about, even bragged about, but there was always some reason why she wasn’t in the same area as them. It was school, or music lessons, or she was sleeping, playing outside, or just in her room..
Actually, did she even have a name? Stephen lovingly referred to her as peanut, but otherwise she was just our daughter, or my daughter,, or their daughter. It should’ve been obvious in retrospect. But when Stephen looked at Allison, she was visibly demoralized.
“No,” his voice was monotone when he spoke. “We do not.” Even though he didn’t know her full story, he looked at her in sympathy.
***
“Oh,” Allison replied, a bit monotonously. Dropping her hands to her sides, she looked down at the comforter, then at the bed in which they had obviously jumped out of, absent-mindedly, trying very hard not to let the hole in her heart in which her real daughter was supposed to be overtake her completely.
Instead she took a deep breath and focused on random objects in the world as she tried to collect herself and remember everything Derleth had put in their memories. “Okay,” she finally said, just as monotonously.
And then after a pause, “I need a drink.” Even if it was a bit early.
***
Stephen did not blame Allison for wanting a drink. This was the same man who, after being mauled by monster aliens, reached for a bottle of Jack Daniel’s not long after waking up from the reset. Time was relative - it was never ‘too early’.
He sat up in bed. A moment’s concentration and a few simple gestures later, he realized. “Okay, I was going to summon something for you, but apparently my sorcery doesn’t work here.” Luckily for her, they wouldn’t need to go far to get some. There was a bottle of wine on the dresser that he was going to use for their cocktail party. Stephen left the bed, wearing light blue, cotton pajamas, to retrieve the bottle.
“I suppose it could be worse,” he said, trying to look on the bright side while twisting the cork off with a pop. He then went back to bed and handed Allison the entire bottle.
***
“Fair,” Allison said, grabbing hold of the bottle and pulling off the top. She did not take a swig right away but swirled the liquid inside the glass first. “My real daughter could have ended up in this pocket universe and gotten fucked over like the rest of us.” She didn’t look at Stephen as she said this but she did turn away and sit back down on the edge of the bed, letting the bottle rest on knee.
***
Real daughter. That explained Allison’s reaction. Stephen had to agree, “ Any child in Derleth would be horrifying, but even worse if they were your own.” Particularly two weeks ago, with the threat of monsters lurking. I don’t have children,” he remembered his whole interaction with Billy and added, thoughtfully, “At least none that I know…” He always felt he’d be an awful father, but he wondered … the emotions he felt for his imaginary daughter, and upon finding out he had a son… how authentic were they? Or was it just part of the act they’d been playing under a delusion? It hardly mattered now.
Stephen glanced over at Allison, and again was at a loss for words. At one point, Natasha accused him of having a reputation for atrocious bedside manner - he had to agree, but argued he was getting better. This could be his chance to prove himself, however what do you say under these circumstances? “I’m sorry you’re separated from her,” seemed to be a good start, followed by, “Do you want to talk about it?”
There. Ball was in Allison’s court.
***
Allison took a moment to take down a few more sips from the bottle before sighing and placing it on the side table on her end. She didn’t know much about Stephen’s personal life but she had a feeling that the story Derleth had given him -- an illegitimate child in the form of Billy -- was not true.
“I lost hope of ever seeing her again after I landed in the sixties,” she started, pushing herself back on the bed so she was sitting with her back to the headboard and her pajama-clad legs stretched out in front of her. “Five was rescuing us from an apocalypse back in 2019, I ended up spending at least two years in the past, before I landed back in the present. But we changed a lot of shit in the past and there was no telling what happened. Maybe I had never met my ex-husband in that new timeline. Or maybe we did and she was still with him after the divorce, and they assumed I was long gone after not hearing from me for that long.”
***
Stephen didn’t know much of anything about Allison, besides the one time he wrote to her over the network offering to help provide her with as much hot water as she needed to shower after monster week was over, and then their brief dance at the party on the Green before showing up here. From what he gathered, she was adopted into a blended family, and few of her siblings were around, including Klaus, who could communicate with the dead, Vanya who was the White Violin, and Five… who he hadn’t known was able to manipulate time until Allison told him just now.
As the former bearer of the Time Stone, he became interested to hear about the time travel aspect of the story, and as much as he wanted to begin questioning her further along those lines, he decided to lead with, He sat down on the edge of the mattress, opposite of Allison. “Mucking around with time is tricky like that. It’s heartbreaking as hell.” A pause, then, “What did you change?”
***
Allison let out a low chuckle at that. What hadn’t they changed, starting with the fact that Diego so badly wanted to save Kennedy and Klaus had started a cult and Vanya had become an experiment for shady and shitty government people which eventually set her off? “Worldwide? Unclear, because we had just gotten back to our adoptive father’s manor. But we had met him in the past and I guess he realized adopting us and raising us to be child superheroes turned out to be a failed experiment so he ended up adopting others instead.”
***
“Well, that sounds like a crappy father figure.” Made Stephen feel a little bit better about his own ability to parent, since the bar had been set low. “Superheros, huh?” He couldn’t hide his curiosity. “What’s your ability?”
***
Allison didn’t comment on how ‘crappy’ was a severe understatement. Instead, she drank. And then she gave him a slightly mischievous smile, tempted to simply demonstrate, but then realized there was no telling if her powers were around if Stephen’s were gone. “Mental manipulation. I can tell you what to do and you’ll do it, unable to resist.”
***
Her smile, combined with her revelation, made Stephen wonder if Allison was going to use her ability on him. He looked from her face to the bottle, waiting a few moments… and after he didn’t feel any strong compulsions to do anything, he determined she wasn’t.
There was somebody in his world with the same ability. Stephen never met him, but he read about it in the news. A whole support group had come together of his victims, people whom he manipulated. Killgrave was his name. It was frightening to think anybody could have so much power over others, going so far as to force them to do bodily harm against their own selves. But he didn’t feel afraid of Allison.
“If you’re going to make me cluck like a chicken, give me a little warning beforehand,” he deadpanned.
***
“Only if you give me permission to demonstrate.” She paused to remember the sit-ins she had done with her husband and their colleagues in the past. “Or if you can find me a bigot to take advantage of.”
She hugged the bottle to her chest briefly and then took a sip before continuing with her explanation. “I have to speak the words aloud. I usually preface the command with the words ‘I heard a rumor’ but intent also matters. Using the words grounds me better, because if you’re not careful with this power, it can get, um, a little out of control. Or you can get drunk off its powers. I don’t use it casually. Just in sticky situations when we need to save our behinds. Oh, and you also have to be another humanoid, can’t command alien monsters to leave us alone.”
***
Stephen smiled. “Maybe some other time.” He really didn’t need a demonstration, but thought it would be interesting to experience it, to see what it felt like. And though he thought the bigot comment was funny, and he chuckled, he still considered it would be wrong to manipulate somebody against their will, even if they were awful. If the reason was serious enough, then Stephen would consider it, but it would have to be a matter of life and death… like Allison said, not casually.
“I know what you mean by getting drunk off power. Sorcery can be the same, especially when it comes to Dark Dimension magic. There’s a lot of leeway, though. Telling those monsters a couple weeks ago to leave us alone would’ve been handy.”
He stretched out in bed, tucking both hands behind his head as he rested upon the pillow in thought. “I wonder if we’re stuck inside this town like we are in the Void, or if we can still go on our vacation?”
***
Allison snorted, thankfully after she’d already taken a big gulp of liquor and it didn’t come out of her nose. “You still want to go on vacation? When we have no idea what’s out there? I’m pretty sure we can leave the campus. The voids tend to be every other week but…”
She sighed and shook her head, swirling the bottle in her hand again. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to indulge, play pretend for a little longer as long as we make sure what’s out there is safe. Also, can you believe half the stuff we’ve been playing out? Loki as the mayor? Finally somehow getting his wish to be the leader.”
***
Stephen’s smile widened, pleased how he had made Allison laugh. “Naturally, we’ll make sure it’s safe for us to leave, but otherwise… why not? Four days from now, we’re going to be stuck in Derleth Right now we have a cozy bed, and a classic Chevy in the driveway. At the very least, we still ought to throw that cocktail party… you know how everybody loves a party.” He then remembered, “Oh shit! I ought to check whether or not that sceptre I won from Loki is real or not.” He gave it a moment’s thought, and decided he was too comfortable to move. “Meh. I’ll do that later.” He began stroking his chin, realizing he was still clean shaven.
“I wasn’t such a bad husband, was I?” he idly wondered, glancing at Allison out of the corner of his eye.
***
“Assuming he isn’t going to come crashing through here to grab it back,” Allison said, with a smirk, setting the bottle back on the side end. Was barely close to half of the bottle but she figured she ought to at least save some for her fake husband if he needed any.
At Stephen’s question, Allison laughed again. “You mean not counting for the time you risked our prized painting in a tennis match?”
***
“Oh, I’m totally expecting Loki’s going to try to get it back. If it’s real, definitely not handing it over. If it’s fake?” Stephen chuckled. “I’m still keeping it. It’s quite a trophy piece.” He fell silent, wondering if it was worth the backlash he’d get from Loki, but he’d worry about that when the time came. Anyway, when Derleth sucked them away at the end of the week it wouldn’t be coming with them.
“Hey!” Stephen playfully became defensive, pointing a finger at Allison. “You said you weren’t mad!”
***
“Just because I was not mad...” Allison started, pointing a finger right back at him, her body tilted toward him now. Her strict tone did not, however, match up with the smile on her face that she couldn’t hold back. “Doesn’t mean that was the proper husbandly thing to do!”
***
Laying down the sarcasm thick, Stephen continued to argue in jest, “Oh. I see. Proper husband. Personally, I think I did pretty damn well, if I do say so myself. Except, you know, that little flub. So tell me… Mrs. Strange... in your opinion what makes a proper husband?”
***
Allison laughed as she settled back into the pillows, bringing up her legs to tuck them underneath her as she properly turned to face her alternative universe husband. If you wanted to call him that. It was hard to tell exactly what the hell Derleth was doing to them anyway, and if this could be considered an “alternative universe.”
“Well, you’re making a good start with not running in the opposite direction because of my powers.” Not that Patrick or Raymond had done that either. Patrick had known her, however, as the budding celebrity she was in her time while Raymond hadn’t. And Raymond had the shock of his year when the racist cop simply walked away with her words. She considered bringing up the point of having been married twice already (what was this, Derleth, a sick joke?) but decided against it for now. Maybe later when the conversation wasn’t turning light.
“You know, honestly, I can’t complain. I mean, maybe a little bit about you having a son outside of this marriage, but that’s Derleth for you. Proper just means loving, supportive, communicative, loyal, can be as big of a dork as his wife… it was a pretty good marriage, darling husband.”
***
“I’m a sorcerer,” Stephen explained. “I’ve seen and experienced a lot of things. Mental manipulation is pretty intense, but I feel safe around you. I feel you wouldn’t hurt anybody, at least intentionally.” Like Allison, he wanted to keep the tone of their discussion light. He basked in the complements the same way a cat would lay in the sunshine. It was in this mood that he spontaneously asked, “Does that at least earn me a kiss?”
***
Allison laughed again, ducking her head down slightly, because was she blushing? She was not blushing. Their current week in Derleth had been mostly chaste, both of them busy with their work, although they already had shared some kisses here and there, but they had made a daughter -- sort of -- and so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility...
“Weren’t the kisses you’d gotten from me this week so far enough?”
***
How long had it been since Stephen was intimate with anybody? Not counting the time when he and half the universe’s population was dusted, over two years now. Not since before his car accident that left him impaired, which then led him down the path to studying sorcery. As a result, he was touch starved and more than a little bit insecure. Sure, he flirted with people in Derleth over the network and in person, but losing most of the sensation in his hands was a knock to his confidence. He reminded himself that he’d mastered the Mystic Arts, he had nothing to be concerned about.
Allison’s reaction seemed positive, so Stephen hid his nerves behind an amorous look. “Those kisses were just a taste,” he murmured. “I was hoping for something a little bit more?”
***
“Oh, really?” Allison tilted forward to prop her chin on her knuckles. It was a shift in her body that incidentally happened to bring her face closer to Stephen’s, however innocent she intended it to make it look. He was a very attractive man, obviously, and she hadn’t stopped herself from checking him out during the karaoke party right before they danced. Even if she wouldn’t admit it.
And plus, Derleth had fucked around with them enough, at least this was something they can easily control themselves. “I guess we made it this far, might as well see how hot we can get that shower then.”
***
Stephen took Allison’s movement closer as a positive indication, and her comment as confirmation. “Sounds good to me. Let’s start heating things up.”
Their lips were a mere fraction away from each other when a loud explosion, so close it made the decorative plates on the wall rattle, interrupted. “For fuck’s sake. What now?” Stephen angrily rolled out of bed to quickly look out the window. “Perfect. Flying saucers attacking the town with ray beams. We’ve switched genres from sit-com to B-movie.”
***
Allison was very much throwing herself out of the bed when the large sound went off, and she very nearly grabbed the nearest thing she could find to fight with -- that would have been the wine bottle and would have been an absolute tragedy. “Raincheck,” she said, grabbing a baseball bat from the closet instead. Damn their lack of guns in this place. “Let’s go help.”