ᴅᴏᴄᴛᴏʀ sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇ (mysticism) wrote in valloic, @ 2022-03-29 17:40:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, marvel: carol danvers, ₴ inactive: stephen strange |
The orange sparks, reminiscent of charcoal and striking flint stones, faded out when the portal closed behind Stephen - he’d taken one to Morningside, the eleventh floor, but he stood there on the other side, the Sanctum’s library, and stared at the non-descript hallway through the circle of the portal for awhile too. Because it was just really, really difficult to move - to make his limbs work. Depression had settled over him like a fog, separating him from the other figures in his life who were important - that fog was thick as pea soup, a heavy blanket, and it didn’t burn off. It remained, sweeping over and eddying around him. Stephen couldn’t see it but he knew it was there - the cobwebs in his brain, dust kicked up from shuffling things around to fit all of this new information, also felt like they were choking him. Everything, even breathing, felt like it was choking him. But he went through the portal because he wasn’t sure where else to go - he needed to tell someone from his own universe about what happened, however. If only to voice it out loud, to say it, to try to put into words how terrified he was because he knew if he held it in it would just end up exploding and the emotional debris and shrapnel would no doubt cause more damage. Besides, lying around in a near-comatose state wasn’t going to help anything either - this was a low point, and he would find a way to claw out of it. Somehow. So he knocked on the door, since simply portaling into a person’s private domicile - even if they were a friend - was just plain rude. Carol had always been a light sleeper, an early riser, and someone who never really tired. Even before the Tesseract (and therefore, the Space Stone), she functioned on six hours of sleep, if that, without any trouble. Now, she didn’t really need sleep at all, and there were nights she decided she was just too awake to even try. This was one of those nights. She always went to bed with Emme, of course - always kissed her goodnight and made sure the cats weren’t pestering her, at the very least - but then she’d get up and slip out into the living room to occupy herself. Emme was a light sleeper herself, so she tried to stay as quiet as possible, and she usually had Goose flanking her while she entertained herself. She’d become more of a homebody in recent months, and Carol was grateful for that. She could be a menace out there in the wilds of Vallo. She’d chosen to read a book tonight, instead of one of her favorite vices: video games. Her tendency to get competitive made her get loud when she was playing, and she was doing her best to be respectful of her girlfriend’s attempts to sleep. The book was pretty good, too - one of those dystopia-masquerading-as-utopia things. Sad and sort of fucked up but easy to get immersed in. The last thing she expected at this hour was a knock on the door, and her puzzlement was clear on her face when she opened the door and found Stephen standing there. He looked a little worse-for-wear, like he’d been holed up for days and barely dragged himself up. His hair even looked a little funky. “Hey, come in,” she told him. She didn’t ask what was wrong or why he was here - not yet. Those questions could be saved for once she got him to sit down on the couch. It looked like he needed that. She stepped aside, ushering him in, then asked, “You want tea?” Stephen nodded, unable to really put much of a voice to anything - there were tears in his eyes and they felt like shame, like lava, and they threatened to spill over; he was definitely aware he looked like shit. The Cloak of Levitation had transformed into a scarf, even though it wasn’t exactly scarf weather - it was spring and that meant the nights were warm, pleasant, good for wandering the streets without much of a care (though he had plenty of cares). He was also wearing sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt, comfortable clothes, lacking the robes and the fabric criss-cross designs up his arms - he should be sleeping. But he wasn’t. “Tea would be nice, thanks,” he mumbled in reply, scrubbing a hand over his face. Tea should be fine - maybe it’d be close enough to drinking water, which didn’t really offer any nutritional benefits and was mainly just for rehydration. Standard coffee, however, would tear up his stomach, and maybe he should just stick with alien booze. Something literally out of this world - something that would knock him into a state of unconsciousness that was a black velvet tunnel and he wouldn’t wake up until he could start to make sense of all this. So awhile, then. “Figured out what’s going on back home, by the way.” That was a decent opener. Probably. One of the many benefits of being a living heater was that making tea took her 98% less time than an average person making a cup of tea - no waiting on water to boil. She filled up the teapot, pressed her hand against the stainless steel body, and the kettle was whistling in five seconds flat. She joined him with two cups of black tea a moment later. She knew all about his dietary restrictions and had even eased up on the teasing once she’d heard the details. He seemed to be doing well on the new diet he and Alex were working out, at least. She could only hope a cup of tea wouldn’t hit his regurge button; she had alien booze, too, if all else failed. “What happened at home?” she asked, sitting down beside him. There was no hint of her usual lighthearted sarcasm right now. She was concerned for his personal well-being, that much was obvious by the straight line of her mouth and worried eyes. But this was more Captain Marvel, maybe some small vestiges of Vers, than Carol. She knew already, by the words that he’d chosen, that this was about more than just his personal troubles. The Cloak-Scarf hung loosely around Stephen’s neck, one end lifting up in a proper wave at Carol - but even the usual jovial sentient fabric seemed a little depressed too, as it went still a moment later and Stephen took the tea with hands that were slightly shaky. He sat on the couch and let the heat from the mug seep in, trying to think about how to start all of this. Where to start. “Peter Parker came to me to ask me to help him - he needed everyone to forget he was Spider-Man,” Stephen uttered quietly. “There’s a spell called the Runes of Kof-Kol - a spell I’ve performed many times. We used it at parties at Kamar-Taj, it wasn’t...supposed to be a big deal but it went wrong because the fabric of reality had already been tampered with. The barriers of the multiverse were thin - I...broke it and things kept coming through so I had to fix it...” He was well aware, however, that whatever had happened with Loki and his ilk had contributed to everything being so unstable. While the TVA were running things, any multiversal side effects of spells like the Runes of Kof-Kol would have been nonexistent. For all the warnings and taboos that sorcerers put on powerful magic, Stephen knew they never had to worry about how their spells affected other universes before. Until now. “I did the spell again but made it so that everyone forgot who Peter Parker was instead. But the damage was done with the multiverse and I’m going to have to answer for that. For that and everything I did with Dormammu using the time stone and Thanos and I gave up everything for an Order that screwed me - for a world that screwed me,” he clenched the mug tighter, until the pressure began to hurt his hands. “I protected the world but it’s not going to matter.” Because he didn’t do it the right way, apparently. Carol took all of that in with a quirk of her brow and a slow nod of her head. This was messy. Back home always was, really. There was always something apocalyptic going on, whether it was centered on Earth or in one of the infinite galaxies and realms that existed outside of their tiny planet, where people thought so highly of themselves. She couldn’t pretend to be attuned to what was going on mystically - it wasn’t her area, and she didn’t want it to be. She had enough to worry about in her travels. But it all came down onto Stephen’s shoulders, affected him, and that concerned her. She could tell it was upsetting him; not only was he nearly in tears, but his fingers seemed to keep tightening around that mug. She reached out to extract it as delicately as possible; any longer, and it very well may have combusted from the pressure. Looked like Stephen might do the same. “You didn’t break anything, Stephen,” she told him. “You didn’t realize reality was so broken that a spell you’ve used at parties was going to fuck things up worse. It’s not your fault.” So much had been happening back home that could twist and distort the fabric of the multiverse, and none of it had been at his hands. “Fuck your bosses if they’re going to give you shit for fixing what you didn’t break. They suck, and if there’s any chance to speak up, you better believe we’ll be there to back you up.” She could only hope, obviously. She didn’t know where she was in this situation, where the Avengers were. But Stephen had helped them, and she had to assume none of them would leave him hanging. Maybe he’d gone about some things the wrong way, but he had the literal weight of the multiverse on him. It was a miracle he hadn’t broken a long time ago. The thought of the Avengers helping him made him laugh, a bitter-as-brine undertone, saltwater in the desert. Stephen didn’t think that would be possible - the ones that remained (and the ones that had died were because of him, because he dared to travel that one path out of fourteen million - to nudge the outcome in that direction) had no interest in him or what he did. He wasn’t friends with any of them. He didn't have a friend of his own at all, save for Wong who didn’t even want him to do the Runes of Kof-Kol in the first place. And Peter Parker - well, even if Stephen wanted to check on him, to look after him, to see him off to MIT? He couldn’t. The memory of Peter was erased, burned up, disintegrating like a meteor. Maybe he was wrong though. Maybe this was something he wouldn’t have to handle on his own - yet he had a feeling he would have to lone wolf this. Or he’d seek out Wanda, and the thought made his heart twist painfully in his chest. “I don’t know,” he said. “Wong is Sorcerer Supreme because the world needed one when I was blipped and I know it’s just a title - that I don’t need it or the burden to do good, but I feel betrayed. Alone. Maybe it’s stupid to feel that way when I always knew I would be.” When he’d chosen protecting reality over any semblance of a normal life. “And I’m terrified,” he admitted, which was a hard thing to say. “Of what I may do to fix the mess - I’m terrified I won’t be able to walk a lot of that back. Or Wanda won’t. It’s - I don’t think we’re going to team up to fix it either.” This was hard. Carol didn’t know what to say; she had no idea what was going on back home - her last memory was hearing about what had happened with Wanda and Westview. Everything else was what she’d picked up here, from Mobius, Stephen, even what little she knew of Kate Bishop. Most of it sounded not great, and listening to Stephen explain what he’d just remembered - what he’d gone through - made that even clearer to see. “Look,” she began, her tone firm but not clipped, “I don’t want to be dismissive, but here and now? There’s nothing you can do about it. Vallo has kept you here, and even if you remember home, you’re not there. You’re not dealing with it. The you that’s there will handle it because he’s awesome, with or without the Avengers and with or without being Sorcerer Supreme.” It was funny to think they weren’t close at home because, here, they had become tight. Stephen was one of her best friends and her closest bonds. She would step up for him in a heartbeat, have his back because she knew he was good and trying and that was what mattered. But she didn’t know him back home - not well, anyway, because he’d been Blipped by the time she joined the Avengers. Maybe he was alone. She hated that. “I know it’s hard,” she continued. “I know what it’s like to have something so heavy weighing on you. But just remember that here, you don’t have that burden. It’s not your responsibility to keep this reality intact. You don’t have to answer to some asshole Powers That Be.” She reached out to clasp his shoulder, one finger falling on the Cloak-turned-scarf around his neck. “I know you’re processing, and it feels really fucking hard right now. But you can get through this.” Egotistical. Pretentious. Arrogant - these were words that others might have used to describe Stephen and formerly? He wouldn’t have disagreed. Hell, he didn’t even really disagree now - he knew what he was. Knew his own flaws, like he knew the backs of his scarred, Frankenstein hands all cobbled together with steel and pins. But he’d evolved from the simplicity of just sheer arrogance alone into someone who, ultimately, was going to give himself up for other people. For the world. For the universe. And Vishanti’s sake, he was so tired of doing that. “I never intended to make this my life,” he said, with an aimless gesture around him - indicating the Cloak, magic, being a sorcerer. “I just wanted to fix my hands. Now here I am.” He hadn’t been willing to take risks to help or save others, but that had changed too - now he was all in. Maybe that was why all of this hurt so much. Because he gave and had nothing left because of it - how was a mind supposed to cope with five seconds in real time but millions of potentials explored during those few ticks on a clock? Honestly, he was surprised he hadn’t broken before all of this too - before the snowstorm in the Sanctum, before Peter Parker came into his life, but he hadn’t. He kept holding on. Held that crack in the multiverse closed too, purple energy that was as bright as neon mulberry stains glaring through. “But - I’ll try,” he added in a promise; it was what he would have said to Rosalind or any of his loved ones (he had said similar things to Rosalind, in fact). He would have said they could get through it too - that he knew it felt as impossible as adapting to a world that was changing and being ravaged, storms that worsened fires and turned flames into towering infernos; these personal infernos were bad too. However, they could get through it. Stephen would also. “I want that future with Iryna so badly.” He really did. A future where he didn’t give two fucks about being Sorcerer Supreme - a future where the biggest thing he had to worry about was what Vallo would rain from its skies next, candy or blood (who knew, honestly). Carol understood that, too. Captain Marvel wasn’t something she could even have fathomed when she was coming up in the Air Force back in the day. She wanted to fly and fight the good fight, sure; she’d never imagined she’d fly like this, never imagined she’d be fighting that fight on frontiers she’d only ever fantasized existed when she and her brother spent nights in the backyard stargazing. It was more a calling than a choice. Something that was thrust upon you, and you really could do nothing but answer it. Her time with the Kree had made it impossible for her to turn away from the atrocities they’d committed without trying to right them and beat the people she’d once thought had nothing but the best of intentions. But the life she had here? The future she’d seen, with Emmeline? Yeah, she wanted it. She wanted it as badly as she’d wanted that life she had with Monica and Maria, once upon a time. She’d lost her chance there, thanks to the light-speed engine, Mar-Vell, the Kree - but she had it now. She had the possibility of a wife, a home, Marley, and she wanted that much more than she’d ever wanted to be an intergalactic superhero. “You’ll get it,” she told him, taking on a much fiercer tone. She was trying to convince him, because he was in such a state she knew he needed it. “You and Wanda deserve that, okay? You’re gonna have it, I know you are.” Obviously, she knew no such thing, but she was holding on tightly to that hope, that belief. “You get to choose again here. If you want to be Sorcerer Supreme, you can be it. If you want to just be Embarrassing Dad, you can be that. Or you can be both.” She waved her hand this time, doing her best impression of his mystical finger movements. It was not very good, but she didn’t care. Cosmic blasts didn’t require that sort of precision, okay? “The world is your oyster, Stephen Strange,” she told him, her voice turning sing-songy and playful, her mouth curving into a wide, encouraging smile. “And you’re the pearl.” Stephen rolled his eyes, fondly, yet also managed a bit of a laugh. It wasn’t much, but it was something - more like a wheeze, really. And he reached for his tea to be able to pick it up and drink it again - without squeezing the cup so hard he broke it and got ceramic shards stuck in skin. “You’re too much, Danvers,” he snorted. She sounded so confident. So sure. And usually Stephen was the one overflowing with self-assured feelings and self-confidence to boot - he just didn’t have it now. So he was glad that someone else did - someone who was a friend, and whom he could count on. He really wished that he and Carol had gotten closer back in their world. Not like it mattered since, as she said, it was the here and now that was important. “You have any alien booze I can spike this tea with?” he asked hopefully. Maybe he’d just drink straight from the bottle, come to think of it. There was no disputing that from Carol. She liked that she got a laugh out of him - or something that almost constituted one. It wiped the mopey expression off his face, and that had been her goal, no matter how brief it may end up being. She wasn’t trying to diminish how he felt about home, because she had no doubt it was bad and those feelings would linger for a long time. But she was here to remind him of right here, right now, too. “Who’re you talking to, Strange?” she scoffed, getting to her feet to return to the kitchen. She came back a moment later with two bottles of alien beer. She was always stocked up on these because human-strength beer didn’t do shit for her with how cosmically charged up she was nowadays. “Don’t spike your tea with this, it wouldn’t taste good. I think you deserve straight booze for this one.” She popped the cap off both bottles and presented one to her friend, raising her own slightly as she took her seat beside him again. “To less fucking drama, huh?” “To less fucking drama,” Stephen echoed, and clinked the beer bottle against Carol’s. He took a long swig, knowing it was compatible with him and wanting to just get as fucked up as possible, and - Hoggoth’s hairy balls. It tasted like something you’d make in a bathtub during the Prohibition era - where grain alcohol and juniper berries were steeped, something with a golden tinge to it and resembling the color of cedar planks that would cause the feeling of the average person’s throat going up in flames. For Stephen, it was great. He drank it. Drank it all. Drank the bottle until it was done and then asked for another, and didn’t even bother to mix in actual water because he wanted to get as drunk as possible, as quick as possible. “Hey,” he said when he was halfway through that second bottle, and a lump of limbs on the sofa. “Did you know that a straw is a test tube but with an extra hole on the bottom?” What memory dump? Did he experience a memory dump? Nah. As opposed to Stephen, who was really going for it, Carol sipped on one beer and just kept an eye on him. Goose had decided he needed her presence in his life and had settled beside him, her front legs draped over his knees and her eyes closed while she purred away like a tiny motorboat. She knew the tuna man well - they were long-time besties. She had to laugh at the random fact he spouted out, settled into the opposite end of the couch with her legs crossed in front of her. “Is that true? Something about that doesn’t sound right. Pretty sure test tubes are at least stronger plastic than straws.” Did it sound right? Stephen didn’t know. He didn’t know a damn thing besides floating on cotton candy clouds and it was perfect. There he remained, sprawled on the sofa with Goose near him - he gave the Flerken-disguised-as-a-cat a few pets, scritching behind her ears and listening to the comforting sounds of her rumbling purrs. “I dunno,” he mumbled, finding a pillow to lay on; he needed to tip his head back and close his eyes, so the room and the ceiling stopped spinning. Likely he wouldn’t puke, but he was also very close to passing out into something blissful. Drink until he couldn’t feel feelings - check. Not something he did often, yet he felt as if he was owed this indulgence right now. “Maaaaaaybe?” he drawled, giving Goose another scratch, then added, “...’sit okay if I crash here tonight?” Because even inebriated Stephen didn’t know if he’d manage to portal home okay. It was possible he’d end up on top of a Wal-Mart again or something, like he did with Vax that one time. “Yep, you’re fine right there,” Carol confirmed with a chuckle. They had a blanket draped over the back of the couch for this purpose - or similar purposes, at least. Peter (other world Peter) had crashed here his first week in Vallo, but she brushed off that thought before it brought that little pang of sadness back. He was gone now, and although his stay had been brief, it had been meaningful. She thought she could understand Stephen’s attachment to their Peter, too. She drew herself up from the couch, setting her half empty bottle on the coffee table and reaching for said blanket. She scooched Goose aside for a moment to throw the blanket delicately over Stephen, and as soon as she had, her annoying little Flerken was right back beside him, half her body now sprawled along his side. “Sleep good, bud. I’ll make you French toast in the morning,” she told him with a playful smirk. She wasn’t sure if he was still awake enough to see it, but she had one of those audible smirks - you knew it was happening even without it gracing your eyeballs. “Mmm, French toast,” Stephen slurred, and he was going to be real sad when he couldn’t eat that without barfing - but he could smell it, at least, and maybe that’d be good enough? But no. No, it wouldn’t - he didn’t think about the disappointment now, however. Just closed his eyes, curled up beneath a blanket and with Goose (her warm body and furry self kept him feeling snug), and soon he was out. Blissfully not dreaming - he’d had enough of those for the time being anyway. |