ᴅᴏᴄᴛᴏʀ sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇ (mysticism) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-11-22 09:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, marvel: wanda maximoff, ₴ inactive: stephen strange |
WHO: Strange Supreme & Wanda
WHAT: Strange Supreme is doing a bunch of magic so you all can have fun things to play with. Wanda follows him and there's a Destructive (Not)Lover's Quarrel - also a mountain explosion and, FYI, it's definitely visible if you're in the forest
WHERE: A remote mountain
WHEN: Morning of the 22nd
WARNINGS: Sadness. Fighting. Tentacles.
STATUS: Complete
The crown of Vallo, the whole island, here at the soles of Stephen’s feet - honestly, he couldn’t imagine a better place to get his work done. It was a remote mountain, far-off, something where onshore breezes off the deserted, pebbly beach below climbed the slopes until the air became cool enough to condense, vapor about to become rain - he could feel it in his tired, aching bones. The air was pristine and clean though, and he’d receive rejuvenation soon enough - because appearing in Vallo had been a blessing. Here, he didn’t have the Ancient One tsking at him, warning him about his mistakes. He could be free to do as he pleased. To take the power he needed, in order to reverse that absolute point in time. This mountain - it was a statement about how slow time actually moved, a symbol of the reality of the moment; humans and their ticking clocks. He recognized how precious time was. He knew he didn’t have a lot of it. The mountain rumbled like thunder and he unleashed his magic; it was a tidal wave exploding all around him, a sonar to pull other creatures from where they waited in the beyond - in other worlds, in other universes, in other places. It didn’t matter what they were - he just needed their energy, their life force, and he didn’t stop feeding on them like some kind of vampire - eyes glowing with an eerie light behind them, no space for any of who Stephen actually was to shine through. It was a whole damn light show, however, so he wasn’t surprised when it became clear he had attracted someone he didn’t intend to. Of course it was her. Stephen didn’t even turn around; his cloak billowed in the breeze, and he was still thrumming and vibrating with newly absorbed energy. “You’re too late,” he called out. “I’ve already started. And if you don’t leave, you’ll end up going the same way he did.” He’d found them in bed together that morning. How sweet. Well, sweet until Stephen did away with his other self. Big damn softie. It had been sweet, thank you - the day would have proceeded as normal most days where they would have woken up, together, morning breath kisses and all. Vallo had arguably softened Wanda up too, allowing her a life that was the closest thing to mundane bliss (even if magic heavily surrounded them, and things weren’t always normal with how this place worked) and a chance to explore her less catastrophic powers. Not only could she destroy but she could also create, and conjure and so much more. She had been exploring that here even if this place had a penchant for dampening the extent of her powers. Which, really, was good for this world. Maybe not good for this present situation though. Not that she really knew what this situation was about except that this was still Stephen, and she had started her day with the one she had peppered with kisses the night before wretched away from her and let’s be frank: anyone who took something from Wanda was bound to be at the receiving end of her ire. Crackling magic and scarlet-hazed eyes, a very real and dangerous threat with hands capable of catastrophe. Vallo hadn’t made her too soft, then. Imagine that. Finding him had proved to be a little more difficult than anticipated. That link she’d put in place to keep their minds tethered in case of threats - it was a thread that was barely hanging, but she could still feel him. Feel that grief, raging and roaring and she didn’t know where it had come from. There was this blackhole inside of Stephen, gaping wide and bottomless and she didn’t understand - what was this? Why? Wanda wanted answers, and she wanted Stephen back and wasn’t leaving this spot until she got both. “I will pass on that half-hearted attempt at mercy,” Wanda said, landing softly on her feet from her feet and dressed to fulfill her role - the Scarlet Witch, wild hair and dressed in red. Fierce, but not exactly fearless. “You took my boyfriend. I don’t take kindly to that.” “I needed his help,” was Stephen’s explanation, turning to face Wanda - he looked like Stephen, for the most part. There were some differences, however - the gauntness of his cheekbones, the way those bones jutted out like the mast of a ship. And of course the dark circles beneath his eyes, the ones that resembled bruises. He was hollow, dead inside in ways that really mattered - but he was filled to the brim with magic. With power. Yet he could always use more. The madness coursed through him - it was an armor but also offered the oddest sense of clarity for him, a jigsaw puzzle piece locking in and completing the whole picture. Maybe it was difficult to tell where he was at in the grieving process - certainly not at any kind of acceptance. Probably the stage where he felt like he was losing his mind and maybe he already had. But he couldn’t turn back now. “He didn’t love her like how I love her anyway.” The sight of him caused Wanda to stop in her tracks. He looked so tired and bone-thin, like his own body was at the precipice of withering away despite the power she felt within him wanting to burst free. Anymore and she was sure he was on the verge of actual self-destruction and she couldn’t let that happen. Wouldn’t let that happen, because she was done losing pieces of her heart. “You’re a Stephen from another time,” deduced the witch, her voice firm but with a softness. A Stephen that absorbed her Stephen after somehow coming through to Vallo, devastated because of loss. That was the grief he felt. A grief she recognized and knew all too well as hers never went away - it stayed behind as a dull ache she learned to live with. But, once, she had lost her mind too because of it. “And you lost someone,” Wanda added on. Her eyes still had that glow but it receded, letting the natural blue remain. “What happened to you?” Happened to him. He wasn’t even thinking of himself, not really - all Stephen could think about was Christine. You promised me crème brûlée, she said - her voice silky, her expression happy and twinkling. There was a lance of pain that struck him then and he squeezed his eyes shut to attempt to weather the storm of it all - this wasn’t the first battle he fought. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d wipe his own tears, or crash, or have to tell himself that he could fix this; grief had crawled into his throat and became a presence that wouldn’t leave, rage lingering within his body. “I lost Christine,” he choked out. “No matter what I did - no matter how many times I went back to change around the events, I lost her anyway. I relived it - over and over, the same car accident that took her the first time. The Ancient One told me it was an absolute point in time, that it couldn’t be changed. I’m - going to prove her wrong though. I just need more power.” He stepped closer to Wanda, daring to cradle her face in his hands - unlike her Stephen, those hands were pristine. They lacked the ugly red scars, they lacked the pain on rainy days or the shakiness that couldn’t be helped when he wrote his own name. “You have what I need too - and this way, you can be with him again after all,” he said; the closer he was, the more he felt it. Her own pain. Shared grief and loss - they understood that existence was suffering. They both knew what the other would do, the lengths they would go to, in order to keep what truly mattered. Wanda didn’t flinch from his touch - didn’t take a step back or recoil because how could she, when she knew his eyes? His touch still felt the same, and it was still Stephen with her Stephen existing somewhere within him. She felt him; she felt that link that existed between them suddenly strengthen again with how close they were, her hand going over his as her cheek tilted into his palm. Except she felt this Stephen more with all the anguish and misery - she had screamed those same exact feelings into existence and created a whole world for herself from the ground up. A family for herself with a husband and kids and a white-picket fence home. It was what she had always wanted. But there was always a catch in trying to bring back what is gone even if you want it so badly. Wanda trapped people. She hurt them even though she tried to tell herself that she didn’t hurt them too terribly. They were safe. They weren’t dead. It could have been worse, couldn’t it? Those were the lies she told herself that had sustained her - and like all lies, they had fallen apart. This Stephen was on a similar path. She knew it in her bones, and knew it from the feed of emotions he’d been filtering into her. In exchange she’d been giving him hers, flashes of her own mistakes and all she’d done to get Vision back that resulted in not having him at all. “I know what you’re feeling,” she whispered and looked up at him with love, and regret. “But I can’t let you do this.” Just like that - it was like a switch flipped. Gone were the empathetic blues of her eyes. They were red again, unforgiving and cold with everything around her suddenly red and pulsing too. Wanda’s hand tightened around his and with a wave of telekinesis, went to shove him onto his knees before her like some peasant dropping down to be at the mercy of a queen’s wrath. “You’re giving my Stephen back to me.” He’d been about to absorb her - to open his mouth and breathe her life force into him (she could have the other Stephen, it didn’t matter - they could be together in whatever lay in the beyond) but then she caught him off guard. Down he went, knees hitting the ground - he still held Wanda’s hand, but then he snapped his gaze up toward her and his eyes glowed amber-red, hot metal and a furnace. Magic burst out of him and he was a beacon for a moment, lighting up like the Vegas strip - where there was once his hand, now there were tentacles. Part of his monstrous form coming out to play - other Stephen couldn’t shapeshift, but this one could. “I’m not giving you anything,” he responded, voice gravelly like some kind of demon that just crawled out of the depths of a pit. “You’ll have to take him back.” And he squeezed, tentacles wrapped around Wanda, a boa constrictor against the ribs. “If you can.” Tentacles. Wanda wasn’t expecting tentacles. His magic was a vibration she had been intuned with after all this time but this - what he’d been absorbing, it was different. Raw and twisted and monstrous, and currently robbing the air right from her lungs that she couldn’t even afford a ragged gasp. Too much compression, too tight. Lucky her that she could escape. It happened with a poof, a crimson wisp of smoke left in her place. Behind him was where she appeared as she pressed against his back, arms wrapping around him like an intimate lover’s embrace and her eyes, still so red - like anger and blood. “Do you think Christine would have wanted you like this?” came Wanda’s words, hissed into his ear as her lips were right there. Magic sizzled and snapped with the intention of seizing him, and these scarlet strings that worked as ropes began to wind up his body. “What does she have to come back to if you are like this?” He shifted, those tentacles morphing back into hands - before the crimson bindings could get high enough, he cast again. Geometric patterns lit up their surroundings and floated toward the sky, the result becoming another burst of magic that snapped the bindings into pieces where they dissipated like mist and meant to blast Wanda herself back away from him. It was kind of a lot of energy, he unleashed a whole cascade of it (which meant he’d just have to absorb more from someplace else) - the blast connected with the rockiness of the mountain, cracking a portion of it in two and causing it to break off, where it soared toward the ground far, far below them. Everything shook after that, a mini-earthquake - instinctively, he reached out with his magic again and grabbed Wanda with tendrils of Dark Dimension magic; the other Stephen would never have tapped into such a resource but this one didn’t care - he’d do whatever it took to get Christine back. Only it seemed that the other Stephen was still there to some degree, his influence forcing Strange Supreme’s limbs into puppetry - hence why he grabbed Wanda before she could fall off the broken piece of the mountain. It just made this Strange even more annoyed though. His hands took her by the throat; he was cold and determined. “I can fix it,” he insisted. “I can save her. I can fix everything.” He didn’t have time for this - the other Stephen loved Wanda so much it was almost overwhelming even after absorption, but he couldn’t let it stop him. He wouldn’t. If only she could trap him for longer to needle into his mind, try to see if there was a way to split the two but Wanda didn’t have the time - his reaction was too quick, and he was bleeding out so much magic that it was almost suffocating. Stephen blasted her away but literally, seconds later, as she was on the precipice of officially losing her footing (which was fine, she can catch herself), she was reeled back. Part of her expected another gratuitous display of tentacles but this time it was his hands - she felt his thumb graze her pulse, and her breath hitched (with this unholy noise) before she began to feel his grip become a squeeze. She didn’t need her hands and fingers to move in some snake-like charm dance to bring forth her magic. It just happened, pooling into a hand and before she allowed him to literally choke her out any further, Wanda used all that collected power to fist him right in the stomach and send him flying into the broken edges of the mountain. Now she floated in the air, chaos magic flashing around her like lightning bolts and tainting the sky above the shade of her namesake. “At what cost, Stephen?” she forced out, her words straddling this spot right between desperation and fury. A ball of energy was forming in her hands in preparation to strike. “You won’t be able to fix what you break if you bring her back!” Well, fine. If she wanted to throw the equivalent of magical fireballs at him, Stephen would rise to the challenge. Literally (once he took an actual breath after having the wind knocked from him - she punched hard with chaos magic, he would give her that and couldn’t wait to absorb that power too) would rise - he floated as well, cloak billowing out around him as he gathered enough steam to fight back. Another blast, bright orange in a burst of what looked like a miniature sun - he aimed for Wanda, he aimed for the rocks. The mountain crumbled again, dirt and debris flying every which way and his eyes glowed as if they were illuminated from within - like he was just this vessel for unfathomable amounts of power, everything that made him uniquely Stephen having been stuffed down and squelched. His heart. Not like he needed that anyway. “When I bring her back,” he growled. “Not if. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same - like you haven’t done the same,” he added, extending his hands as they circled each other in the air, and more magic literally spewed forth. And that mountain shook. That mountain did shake, and her back made an impact with a jagged side of it that had her vision blackened for a few seconds at best - as if Wanda ever stayed down for long. Even amidst the cloud of debris that surrounded her, eyes could be seen twin rubies gleaming and glaring and when the dust gave away she was encased in this rippling bubble. A forcefield to keep her protected so she could take a breath and ignore the aches her muscles felt and the spiking throb in her head. It was a short-lived break. The shield receded and now both her hands held these bolts and her arms swung, and she threw them one after another - an onslaught of these chaos bullets she wanted to rain on him like a meteor shower. “I have - and where is he?!” Wanda shouted. Losing Vision wasn’t this hurt that suddenly vanished because she had loved again, no - it would always be a sore spot because she couldn’t save him, and she could never bring him back. Not in a way that would ever last, and not in a way that was truly ever him. He was gone. And yes, she had accepted that. Wanda had moved on. But it had been a tough, bitter pill to swallow and it was the same pill she was prepared to shove down Stephen Supreme’s throat if it meant getting through to him. “I could give myself everything I want - everything I’ve ever wanted but it all comes at a cost, Stephen! And that cost isn’t worth it, you know it isn’t!” “She’s worth everything!” Stephen snapped, yelling too - some of those hits he took (it sizzled, magic burning like a raging inferno, his temper a swelling of a stormy sea) and some more he dished out; the combination of his and Wanda’s magic - orange and red - resembled fire when it met and exploded outward, flashes of light atop the mountain that was quickly being vaporized with the combined force of their hits. The rock and stone couldn’t withstand these fireworks - in addition to the pyrotechnics there was also dust and rock debris, swirling around in this cyclone of doom. The next magical blast hit something integral, a large part of the foundation of the crumbling mountain - there was a rock slide, an avalanche of it, and Stephen knew they’d both be buried if he didn’t act. That was why he teleported closer to Wanda and seized her in his arms - then just shot up like a rocket, toward the sky, toward the clouds. He wasn’t sure where he was going but he needed to get away - from the harsh reality of the situation and her words (the truths of which he swiftly rejected) and away from the mountain. He wasn’t sure how high he went but there was a sudden BOOM, like an explosion, when he hit - something. Some kind of barrier - The shock of it caused him to begin tumbling back toward the sea, soaring at a fast downward clip; the Stephen he’d absorbed clearly panicked again from somewhere, forcing the other’s limbs to move - to cast a protective spell over Wanda. The golden symbols sank into her skin, forming a bubble that would shield her from harm as they fell further and further. There had been little time to even attempt dodging; some hits she was able to block, others she absorbed into her skin in ways that shocked her system and then, for Wanda - Must have blacked out a little at some point, because she didn’t remember how she went from slinging waves of magic in attempts to wear him down to the sensation of Stephen’s arms around her, catapulting up right into the sky and then it was like they hit this invisible steel wall that brought them back down, falling. Wanda had enough senses to realize she needed to control the situation and move back to solid ground but her mind was stuck in a haze and her muscles ached. But there was this flash, and symbols, and what she thought was a blow to really tear her down while she was low was actually - protection? Wanda’s eyes opened, and the red that consumed them had faded. “Stephen?” she called out, hand reaching out to him right before she made that impact into the sea. When things went black this time, they stayed black. They hit the water as a very sweet couple, two matching bricks - or hippos, really, not very graceful. But the protective runes meant that there wasn’t much of a devastating impact; it was like they just sort of bounced, and didn’t go sinking like stones into the depths of the sea. “Wanda,” Stephen gasped in surprise, but - was that really him, or was it other him? Strange Supreme knew the answer to that inquiry but he attempted to shake it off (because there was no way his other self could still be capable of making him do anything - there was just no way, he’d been absorbed and Stephen felt the surge of Eldritch magic ripple through him, it was a done deal). He flailed in the water for only a moment, noticing that Wanda was floating there - she wasn’t awake and for a second that other presence had an additional moment of panic. “She’s just unconscious,” Stephen growled, and he wouldn’t admit that he wasn’t saying it out loud for shits and giggles - it was to soothe something (someone else). “Come on, Wanda.” Sloshing to the shore, he cast another spell which allowed them both to dry off - then he had her in his arms, still, carrying her bridal style as he shot into the air again, but not so high this time. This time, he just flew back to the Sanctum and let himself in. He left her where he’d found her and the other Stephen that morning, on their bed - he even arranged her hands neatly, folding them on her abdomen, and adjusted her crooked Scarlet Witch crown. Then he was gone. That was enough mercy shown, and he had work to do. |