WHAT: Carol tries to chat with Strange Supreme and, uh, fails entirely - but doesn't get absorbed, so yay! WHERE: Mountaintop WHEN: This morning WARNINGS: Language, snark, fighting, and TENTACLES STATUS: Complete
It was really a good thing Carol didn’t tire easily. She’d been in the air more often than not the past twenty-four hours or so, scoping out every inch of Vallo in search of wherever this alternate version of Strange might be lurking. Wanda had cautioned them all to be careful, warned them that this Strange was massively juiced up and had quite literally absorbed his Vallo self without so much as batting an eye. With that kind of power, there was no one here that wasn’t at risk, Carol likely included.
But she didn’t care. She and Stephen hadn’t known each other terribly well back home, but they’d become fast friends since she’d arrived in Vallo. She may have slotted into a state of semi-retirement, outside of her Defense patrols, since her arrival, but she couldn’t sit back and let others handle this when she could help. She might be one of the few who could hold her own against him, being cosmically charged up and all.
Most of the Defense teams were preoccupied by the mounds of creatures brought in at Strange’s behest. She’d dealt with a few herself — she’d spent a good hour on the ground this morning blasting through these round robots on spider legs trying to laser people, and she swore she’d even spotted a few demonic-looking Furbies running around. But her personal mission was the big guy himself, and she wasn’t one to give up easily.
Eventually, she spotted him entering a cave deep in the mountain range — just a flash of the cloak from a distance, more of a purple color than the deep red she was accustomed to seeing — and she lowered herself to the ground and slowly approached.
“I come in peace,” she called out, tapping on the rocks at the mouth of the cave. “As long as you promise not to eat me.”
He had to keep moving, that was what Stephen knew. At the very least, people seemed to have heeded the advice of Wanda (no doubt) and mostly left him alone - they didn’t come near him the way she did. Instead, they dealt with the creatures he’d pulled from behind the drapes of reality - he’d just kind of reached in to see what he could get and there was a lot. They were meant to be his fuel, his power source that he plugged into, but if he kept running out...
Well. He’d just have to keep finding other things to consume. Other brands of energy.
But while he figured that out, he also kept moving - there were various drones and bits and bobs of technology trying to find him, and he didn’t want to give them a chance to do much of it. Teleporting himself elsewhere without much of a schedule, essentially placing himself on the run, was sort of exhausting though - he’d just found a new cave to hunker down in for the time being, where he could rest for a moment (he didn’t really need sleep, and didn’t the bruises beneath his eyes scream as much?) when he heard that he had a visitor.
An actual person. One brave enough to follow him.
Stephen emerged from the cave (one of many - there were dozens of caves to choose from, stalagmites and stalactites that looked spindly, curtains made of glistening limestone and bands of color that resembled bacon) cautiously. The deep purple cloak fluttered with apprehension - he looked unwell, and that was putting it mildly. His cheekbones were sharp, too sharp; they still protruded like sharp, jagged rocks and his eyes were dark and overrun with shadows.
“What do you want?”
Well, that wasn’t quite the response Carol was expecting. Even though she’d approached peacefully, some part of her had been expecting to be instantly grabbed up with magic and have to put up a fight. She was glad that wasn’t the case, obviously, and she’d go with it. She had no true desire to blast Stephen to pieces unless she was provoked and had no choice.
And honestly, looking at him, she was surprised he was functioning at all. He looked, as her mother would say, like death warmed over. There was no color in his face; he hardly resembled the healthy Stephen who had gotten his ass handed to him at laser tag barely a week ago. If she was the type to scare easily, she’d be scared now. But if anything, she felt bad for him. She knew what his story was from what Wanda had to say, and she knew how much pain he had to be in.
She wasn’t going to come at him with that, though. She had a feeling trying to go all bleeding heart on him wasn’t going to win her any points, and she’d rather stay free of magical tentacles unless it really came down to it. She was better at quips and snark in these situations, so that would be her starting point.
“Just, you know, making sure you’re not eating anybody,” she replied, stepping in a bit closer. She was still leaving a good bit of space between them, but she looked him straight in the eyes, unafraid. “I hear that’s your thing now.”
Was it his thing? Well, sure. He supposed it was. But people just wouldn’t let him get his work done, so he stubbornly dug his heels in. It had all started with a small garden gnome, evolving into summoning a giant cockroach (he didn’t absorb that one but he did take its cloak), a six-eyed blackbird shrouded in blue flames, scaly crimson serpents, a ram with two heads, a partridge in a pear tree - maybe not that last one, but everything prior and more. Creatures that were just as monstrous as him - he took them into himself, taking what they could give, like he was some kind of jackal. He’d consume them all - blood, bone, spirit.
“I’m just trying to bring her back,” Stephen said, though he was dimly aware that he sounded a little insane - the madness of grief sank into him; it tasted like copper and iron and salt. It was tears and screaming until your throat was as raw as your nerves felt. “Christine deserves that. We’re supposed to be together.”
His eyes narrowed, looking over the woman - he recognized her. She was from his universe too. “Are you here to stop me, Captain? I have to warn you - that might not go so well.” Or at least, it wouldn’t turn out like how she may have intended.
Christine. Carol knew the name, but only from what Wanda had explained to them, what she knew of this version of Strange’s motivations for behaving this way. She knew Christine had been his girlfriend and he’d lost her, and he’d tried and tried to save her and couldn’t. But he was still trying here. Sometimes grief could be overwhelming; she got that. Losing Maria still hurt her, but she’d known better than to try to bring her back. She’d known letting her go was best, even if Monica wasn’t there to say goodbye and how unfair was that.
“Not unless you make me,” she replied, and she meant that. She would get involved, was ready to in a split second if it came down to it. But she didn’t want to have to fight him, not with her friend deep down in there somewhere. “I was hoping we could talk. I was pretty decent friends with the Stephen you sucked up when you got here.”
Logically, she knew talking wasn’t going to be a fix-all. This wasn’t some cheesy feel-good movie where the power of friendship and having a nice chat about grief made him turn around on a dime. But she was still willing to try. And at least while she was keeping him occupied, he wasn’t sucking up all the powerful beings he could get his paws on and Defense had the chance to catch up with the madness he’s brought out.
Pretty decent friends. Stephen snorted a laugh, because what did that matter? He didn’t have friends. Maybe the other Stephen did but he definitely didn’t -
Regardless. The other Stephen’s presence still radiated throughout his whole body - in the marrow of his bones, his veins, his head. Dark, hushed whispers - or was he imagining those? Either way, there were memories - if not the exact images, then the feelings of them - that continued to palpitate like a candle’s flame, and he knew that she wasn’t lying; his other self was fond of her.
Which was why this Stephen didn’t immediately blast her onto the next mountain (it wouldn’t even phase her - talk about power; she had a lot of it).
“Leave,” he demanded, voice low and dark - with a touch of desperation too, maybe? If the other Stephen was still there (he was) he was exhausted. Scared. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Even if she wanted to, Carol couldn’t deny that the tone of voice he took with her was alarming. She didn’t care if he laughed at her — that seemed about right for this weird villain shtick he’d picked up — but that singular word put the hairs on the back of her neck on end. It wasn’t a threat, but it was hard not to feel threatened nonetheless. He felt dangerous in a way the original Strange never had.
Still, Carol had never been very good at following orders. She did her own thing, the right thing, and she couldn’t leave without making an attempt to set things right. If it ended with another mountain collapsing, so be it. She’d taken on stronger than Strange, and she’d live to see another day. She may not be entirely invincible, but she was damn close to it.
“Rather you hurt me than anyone else.” It was spoken casually as if they were having a regular, everyday conversation. But her hands, clenched into fists at her side, were heating up, preparing for the inevitable. “You need to stop this, Strange. I know how much losing someone you love fucking sucks, but you have to let it go.”
“Let it go?!” Stephen snapped, harsh as the rusty hinge of a coffin - maybe he might push himself into one eventually, but ultimately he didn’t believe that. He could fix it. He could fix everything. He just needed more power. More time.
He needed people to stop coming up to him and acting like they had any idea of what was going on in his head. “You have no idea how I feel,” he growled and matched Carol’s glow with one of his own. His fists didn’t glow but his eyes did, pupil and iris burned out by the brightness of his magic - his body shifted too, hands twisting and beginning to form tentacles-from-fingers, extending outward.
Those tentacles grabbed hold, wrapped around her, then flung her away from him before releasing - away from the cave, off the mountain. She could fly. It’d be fine. “Sure. I’ll let it go.”
So quippy, even when grief-stricken and half-mad.
Yeah, it was fine. Carol didn’t get a chance to break free from his tentacle-y grip (which was…new but had been mentioned by Wanda and Peggy), but she only flew at his velocity for a few seconds before regaining control and righting herself. She even had to give him credit for his comeback — he’d certainly let it go, though that wasn’t quite how she’d meant it.
She hovered in the air for a moment, considering her next best move. He hadn’t really hurt her, and if anything, she’d disrupted him in his little hidey-hole when he might have been doing nothing. But she didn’t and couldn’t trust that. He was here on a mission, had already absorbed their Stephen, and from the sound of it he’d come close to doing the same to Wanda. And maybe a part of her still hoped there was some piece of him in there that would talk to her.
So, she zoomed forward again, landing a good six feet in front of him on the same mountaintop outside the cave. “Cool party trick. Wanna see one of mine?” This time, her eyes glowed, bright and golden as the sun at its highest, and she thrust both her hands forward, hitting him with a mighty powerful photon blast. There was no way he wasn’t tripping off that mountain now.
The blast hit Stephen, causing him to stumble and skid back, soaring past the cave - but it also made impact with the projective shield that he'd cast over himself, golden runes that sank in and then ballooned out again, dispersing the energy from the photon blast; it ricocheted off the rocks nearby, cracking some - but not to the point where the mountain would begin to crumble again. Giant bat forbid that he piss off any of the other mountain huggers who scrambled to fix the giant rock in the middle of nowhere.
No, they weren't who he had his focus on - right now, he was solely focused on this.
"Is that all you've got for me, Captain?" he demanded, Cloak catching him and allowing him to float in the air so he could be on equal footing. Symbols flashed, his arms uncrossed, and he hurled his own percussive blasts of Dark Dimension magic right back at Carol. Maybe she was goading him, but he was fine with goading her too.
Maybe he liked the thrill of it all. So few things brought him thrills these days.
Carol rarely got to be in her Captain Marvel element these days. Sometimes she got to use little bits of her powers, sure; she’d been guilty of speeding up the afternoon tea process for Emme with her hand on the pot to heat up the water inside. But she’d been calling this place a vacation since she got here, and so far, that had held true. This was the most chaos she’d come up against during her three-month stay, and there was no denying it was a little thrilling. This Strange gave her a run for her money.
But this wasn’t some game or a moment of fun between pals. Strange was causing problems, even if he had his reasons, even if he didn’t seem to completely realize he had kind of lost his entire mind. She wasn’t going to get through to him with words, so if this was what it came to, fine. She could handle him. She didn’t wear down easily at all with the power of the Tesseract flowing through her Kree blood-infused veins.
She couldn’t resist his taunting no matter how hard she tried, anyway. She wasn’t that big of a person. If he wanted her at full power, he would get it.
His magic was a force to be reckoned with, and it knocked her back, no doubt. But she pushed right through it, quite literally pushed her fists through the symbols before him, and gritted her teeth as she slammed him with another blast of power — up close and personal this time, no escaping it. She wasn’t looking to kill him, but she would very happily break him.
They were up close and personal for sure - that was enough. That was what Stephen needed; he grabbed Carol, hands wrapped around her glowing fists with all that power literally packed into a punch. And punch him it did - it slammed right into him, rattling his bones and his organs and making him feel like his muscles were being ripped into shreds.
But he also wanted it.
So he opened his mouth and sucked it back, sucking up that cosmic energy as if it was a milkshake from a straw, swallowing it like some kind of life-force vampire with eyes that burned with starlight and the cosmos. He kept taking it, as much as she had to give - she wanted to unleash her power, and he would let her. Because it only fueled him.
Carol herself was basically an endless well of infinity stone juice - but Stephen also didn’t want to kill her. Or at least, one of them didn’t. He shoved her back away from him, with as much force as he could muster, and then it was like all of that energy caught up to him and everything began to tip off-balance. He lost control of the Cloak and fell, knees hitting the rocky surface of the mountain, hands digging into the dirt and smaller pebbles - though he managed to glance up, trying to see where Carol was. As if he cared.
If it hadn’t been clear to Carol that she needed to stop before this, it was crystal fucking clear now. She wasn’t stopping Strange in his tracks; she was literally feeding him her power. She may have made some good strides with that initial impact, but as soon as he regained control, he looked like he was swallowing a goddamn Slurpee. There was a science-y part of her brain that was fascinated, but another part of her was insulted.
Seriously, how dare he not take the damage she wanted him to take.
Thankfully, when he pushed her back, he got himself all knocked out of sorts, too. She very seriously considered punting him off the mountain while she could. He was right there, on his knees, and even if he went crashing over the side, she doubted it would do more than just create a crater in the ground. Not only was he powerful from all the crap he’d been devouring, but he’d just taken in her power, too. She had been kicked across galaxies and survived.
Instead, she decided to make an attempt to be the bigger person, the proper world-saving Avenger and approached him. “Last chance to stop,” she warned him, the glow leaving her eyes to reveal sharp, annoyed brown instead. “I might not win, but I can wear you down. I’ve got the stamina for it.”
Stephen wasn’t going to stop. Deep down, he knew that. But he was also - scrambled, in a sense, because of this skirmish. He felt rattled - and it was enough to quiet the Strange Supreme takeover, at least for a few precious seconds; they hadn’t merged yet, he and the other Stephen. It was more like a fight for dominance and control - maybe that’s why Strange Supreme was about to be pushing the boundaries of exhaustion too. There wasn’t enough coffee in the world to handle how his other self just wouldn’t lay down and be quiet.
He glanced up, and the glow to his own eyes had faded as well, leaving behind a glassy blue that looked like a dead ocean. Calm water, empty and confused. “Tell Wanda that I’m staying,” he rasped - it would make sense when she heard it.
One of the nights Iryna was here, they’d talked about hardships to come. Wanda asked if there’d be anything he wouldn’t be able to forgive her for - something transferred over from the dumpster fire that was their universe. It didn’t matter. He said I’m staying, and he was going to - he only hoped she was going to stay now also.
The Cloak wrapped him up in its embrace and then Strange Supreme wrenched control back - he wasn’t going to stick around, however. His parting shot was him literally disappearing, leaving the coldness and chill of the mountain behind.
Carol knew the second the glow faded from Strange’s eyes that this was the right Stephen. Their Stephen, Wanda’s Stephen. Those last words, desperate and hoarse, were all the confirmation she needed. She nodded at once and tried to reach for him, to give him some sort of reassurance, however small, that they would fix this. But before she could make contact, he was gone.
She straightened up, steeling herself despite the emotion that swelled in her chest and threatened to overwhelm her. She hated this, knowing that her friend was trapped in this mess, held hostage by his alternate self and barely able to break free. And Wanda — fuck, she could only imagine how Wanda was feeling right now. Helpless, probably. That was a feeling Carol was all too acquainted with and very much not a fan of.
Right now, though, she had a new mission: a message to deliver. If what Stephen said gave Wanda even a little bit of hope, all the better.