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Tony already knew that Stephen was on edge as soon as the day began. He might have noticed that Stephen had been on edge the past few days, but he dismissed it for newlywed jitters (if there was such a thing).
He was determined to help Stephen enjoy this. They were on their honeymoon, after all. So if Tony’s husband wanted to have coffee down at the Piazza San Pietro on a morning when it looked like it was going to rain, then by gosh Tony’s husband was getting that coffee.
They had barely sat down when the first huge drops of rain fell. Tony laughingly grabbed Stephen’s hand and led him to the indoor part of the café they’d chosen.
But Stephen refused to enter. He broke away from Tony and stood outside the door, looking distraught.
“Stephen?” Tony called.
Stephen only turned and walked away from him.
Tony strode after Stephen. He caught up quickly but Stephen didn’t explain, didn’t even acknowledge his presence until they had reached a small side street with a large awning, comfortably isolated from the main road.
Stephen took shelter under this awning. Tony silently stood beside him, waiting.
“I wanted it to be perfect,” Stephen said presently, to no one in particular. “But I guess there’s always going to be one hitch or another...”
“What are you talking about?” Tony held out a hand to catch some of water in his open palm. “It’s just a little rain. And we’re high and dry. Hardly qualifies as a ‘hitch’, in my book.”
“I wanted to talk to you about something important, Tony.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Today was going to be the day for that.”
He seemed genuinely sad about something. Tony absorbed a bit of that sadness.
“Oh hey,” he asked, “why the long face? Is that ‘something important’ a huge deal? Like, you’re secretly an international spy and I’m your mark, and now you have to choose between killing me and betraying your bosses?”
Stephen narrowed his eyes at him. “What? No. Also, never write an action thriller, your imagination is lame.”
“Is your name actually Bond? Strange Bond?”
“It would be ‘Stephen Bond’ if you had your head on straight.”
“My husband, international man of mystery.”
“Stop.”
Stephen hid his face in one hand. Tony finally understood that humor wasn’t the best way to deal with this situation.
He threw an arm around Stephen’s shoulders, drew him close.
“We all have our secrets, love,” he whispered. “Nothing you say will make me think any less of you.”
Stephen touched the hand on his shoulder lightly.
“You may take that back after I tell you,” he said softly.
“Try me. Always try me. I like surprising you.”
For some reason, it was hard for Stephen to meet Tony’s eyes. It was never this difficult for him before, Tony noted.
Stephen pushed Tony’s hand off his shoulder and walked to the far end of the awning. It wasn’t as if he had a lot of walking room, but Tony let him go. As long as he wasn’t exposing himself to the rain.
“At one point in my life, I lost you. And not to old age. Not to disease. You were...taken. Right in front of me.”
Tony frowned.
“Past tense,” he noted. “Why are you using the past tense? Are you talking about a dream you had last night? If so, I’m not saying my dream is better than yours, but last night I dreamt of you naked except for a tiny little - ”
“Let me talk. Please.” Tony obliged by shutting up immediately. “After you were gone, I was devastated. I couldn’t function. Which isn’t the best thing to happen if you’re Sorcerer Supreme.”
Tony snickered.
“Sorcerer Supreme?” he echoed mockingly. “What is that, an ice cream flavor?”
“Yeah, love, just like Stark Raving Hazelnuts, only better.” Despite himself, Stephen smiled, just a little. “No, it’s...a job. Something that’s not from this world.”
“So what does stuff that isn’t from this world have to do with us?”
It took Stephen a while to find the right words to use in his reply. In the end, he chose not to explain anything.
He took a deep breath, and another long pause, before continuing:
“After I lose you...a very good friend named Wong tries to get me out of my funk. Months pass, with no change. He gets desperate. Supernatural threats are bombarding the earth, and the strongest magic user on Earth - the Sorcerer Supreme, as I’m sure you’ve worked out - is out of commission, because of grief.
“All remedies are tried - magical and otherwise - but nothing works. It’s time for something drastic.”
Tony noticed something, and he wasn’t going to let it slide: “Present tense now. That’s significant, isn’t it? Whatever this is, it’s still going on?”
The line of questioning took Stephen by surprise.
In the end, he simply smiled.
“So incisive,” he muttered admiringly, “every time.”
He faced Tony, finally.
“There’s a spell that locks a user in his own mind. You know the film Vanilla Sky?”
“Yeah?” Tony acknowledged. “Abre los Ojos is better.”
“I agree.”
“Go on.”
“The spell is meant to be a therapeutic one. It creates scenarios that would help a spellcaster deal with traumatic events, by recreating them in different settings, over and over. Hardly any time passes in the real world, so the spellcaster can live as many lives in their head as they can, and outside, where their mortal bodies are, only an hour or so would pass.
“It's kind of like Vanila Sky that way - or Abre los Ojos, if you prefer. You get stuck inside your head, while you deal with the truth of what happened to you. The difference is, the spellcaster is aware it's all a dream. The spellcaster remembers each and every time that a life revolving around that traumatic event is lived.”
“Why, though?” Tony interrupted. “It’s like a reset button, right? If I understand it right, you get to start over, but under completely different circumstances. What’s the point of remembering past circumstances if they’re completely different?”
“Every life has one constant: I already know that at one point, I’ll lose you.” Stephen smiled bitterly. “Lucky me, I get to remember every single time I lose you. To old age. Illness. Disinterest. Diverging paths. Other ways.
“It’s the end goal of every life to help the spellcaster cope with the inescapable. I’m supposed to get tired of you. To see you as small and insignificant, one life among many. To be done with mourning your loss. Since I will always lose you and there are worlds upon worlds that are bigger than you...”
As he spoke, his voice started to break. By the end, it wasn’t only his voice that was shaking uncontrollably, but also his shoulders, his hands.
“...but I can’t, Tony. I can’t.”
Tony rushed forward to trap his husband in a tight embrace.
Stephen was forcing himself to calm down - as if time was of the essence. As if the two of them didn’t have all the time in the world, as newlyweds on their honeymoon in Rome.
He needed to get out all the words he had to say to Tony. They were killing him.
“Every chance I get to not fall for you, I fall for you. And every time I lose you, I just look forward to when I get to fall for you again. Each new lifetime just adds precious memories to the one before. I can't stop, I don't want to stop, because you just burn deeper into me. Every time.”
“How many times?” Tony asked.
Stephen finally returned the embrace, drawing Tony closer.
“Five hundred now.”
Tony drew away. He stared at Stephen’s tear-streaked face.
“Are you serious?” he asked, incredulous. “Five hundred?”
“The spell is brutal, but generally effective,” Stephen continued. “On average, people give up after the tenth loss. Some people hang on for longer. But it’s been five hundred lifetimes, Tony, five hundred, and - ” He wiped the tears from his eyes with the heel of one shaking hand. “- are you going to ask for a divorce now that you know?”
“Providing it’s all true - are you kidding?” Tony chuckled. He ran his fingers through Stephen’s hair. “I’m even more crazy about you now. You wacko pervert magic stalker.”
Stephen laughed a bit and shook his head, smiling.
“ ‘Providing it’s all true,’ “ he murmured. “Yeah, the Tony Stark in my head will always take that into consideration. Providing it’s all true...the spell isn’t working. It’s time to end the spell now, and go to the backup plan.
“I’ve asked Wong to help. He has to turn back time. He has to make it so that in real life, you and I wouldn’t meet as soon as we did. I wouldn’t have a single memory of you until we cross paths at a later point. And I wouldn’t get to lose you as terribly as I did.”
“Messing with time,” Tony remarked, “sounds reckless and dangerous.”
“It is,” Stephen agreed. “Technically, only the Sorcerer Supreme, who has the ability to look into many different timelines, has the karmic license to do it - and even then, ethically speaking, they shouldn’t.”
There it was again, that silly name: Sorcerer Supreme. There was weight behind those words when they left Stephen’s lips, and Tony found he could no longer make fun of them.
“But, as Sorcerer Supreme, I know this is the best way. Saving the universe - saving many universes - depends on my not having met and fallen in love with you as soon as I did. It must be so that losing you won’t incapacitate me. And after failing to get better after five hundred lifetimes, I know I won’t be strong enough to make the time shift happen. It has to be someone else. It has to be Wong.”
Tony was silent. He was still wrapping his head around the notion that there was another reality where Stephen was a magic user, who cast a spell on himself to get over losing Tony.
(How? Lost Tony how? He was dying to know. And yet, unable to find an opening to ask.)
That Stephen existed in a world outside of this one.
And that this world, Tony included, was part of a spell.
Inside Stephen’s head.
Tony didn’t want to face that yet.
“Tell me about the first time,” he said. “How we really met.”
A mess of emotions flashed across Stephen’s face. Finally, he settled on a sad smile, as he looked inward into his memories.
“Here, we met on a tour of Florence,” Stephen began. “After a whirlwind courtship, we decided to leave our old lives, get married and stay in Italy. But the very first time we met, for real, neither of us had to leave anything. We were much younger. It was at the ribbon-cutting of the neurophysics research wing at Metro-General Hospital in New York.
“I hated being at that event. You could tell. You stood beside me and whispered jokes until I laughed. You made me hate it less to be there.”
He leaned back against the wall. Tony leaned back as well, beside him.
“We stayed together for years. We planned on getting married, but never got the chance. After I lost you and retreated into the spell, we’ve saved the world - many worlds - through many lifetimes, and I decided around life number 154 that it was pointless not to push through with our plans.
“So, in my head, we’ve been married for most of our lifetimes.” He held up his left hand, where a brand-new golden ring shone - only a few days old on his finger. “Sometimes you said yes, sometimes I said yes. But sometimes we just put the rings on each other and never said a word.”
Tony glanced down at his own left hand, at the simple gold band shining on his finger.
He was finally able to ask:
“When you go...what happens to me?”
Stephen reached for Tony’s hand, the one without the ring, and covered it with his own.
“Tony, this isn’t real. You aren’t real. None of this is real, except for the fricking rain.”
He looked up at the dark skies pensively.
“Maybe the rain isn’t real, either. I might have lost my ability to tell.”
He wrapped his fingers around Tony’s.
“What I’m saying is - it will all go away. As if it never happened. You and all of this and the rain.”
Tony pulled his hand back angrily.
“And I’m supposed to just take that?” he demanded. “Real or not, I don’t get a say?”
Stephen stuck his hands into his pockets.
“Well, it’s my head, Tony. My spell. My recovery on the line. But just for curiosity’s sake - if you did have a say, what would it be?”
Tony pulled himself off the wall to stand before Stephen, plant a firm grip on his arms.
“Stay,” he said, looking deep into Stephen’s eyes. “We’re not naïve kids here, love. You know how whirlwind romances work. You and me, we’re going to get tired of each other someday. Like we must have done at least a few times in your mind. But I want this chance to be selfish and happy with you. And when we’re done, when we’re not in love anymore, or when it's time for us to part ways however we must, you can leave. I won’t stop you.”
Stephen bowed his head, and Tony seized the chance to press their foreheads together.
“Don’t I get to ask for that?” Tony asked softly. “Just one more chance?”
A sob escaped Stephen. Another tear fell from his eyes.
Tony knew the answer then.
“It was supposed to be perfect.” Stephen struggled to get the words out. “I can’t blow it any more, love. Not again.”
He held on to Tony’s shoulders and pulled him in for a kiss.
It was not a passionate kiss. Or a happy one. Not like any of the kisses they’d shared since they met. To Tony, it seemed sad. Immeasurably sad.
And he knew what that meant.
Stephen ran the side of his forefinger across Tony’s cheek, wiping away a tear that wasn’t there.
“Goodbye, Tony. Thank you for every single chance to be with you again.”
He stepped back, away from Tony, and strode into the rain.
Tony ran after him. But as soon as he stepped onto the main road, Stephen was nowhere in sight.
***
Tears were already streaming down Stephen’s face when he snapped out of his very long dream.
His starved, pained, exhausted mortal form started to quiver. The remembrance of 500 failed lifetimes, of what he'd lost and could never get back, flooded in and reduced his already weakened body to violent sobs.
Wong had been standing by, waiting for Stephen to break the spell by himself. He had been waiting for hours - but the fate of the multiverse was at stake, and he could have waited longer.
When Wong asked him if it was time, Stephen couldn’t even muster the strength to answer. He simply nodded.
Wong nodded quietly in response. And gently lifted the Eye of Agamotto from around Stephen’s neck.
***
In their very first lifetime together, Tony was the one who spoke first.
His first words had been “You’re hanging around for the cake at the end, too, right?”
It was a dumb thing to say, by the man who was basically responsible for the establishment of Metro-General Hospital’s new neurophysics research wing. Stephen’s response was an appropriate half-hearted snort.
Tony plied him with corny one-liners until Stephen finally broke and one-lined back at him. It was a pleasant way to pass the time, while bureaucrats neither of them really cared about gave boring speeches.
Stephen couldn't tell when and how the banter became flirtatious. Only, at one point, it turned into an invitation to dinner, which was gladly accepted.
Wong had been told this story many times.
But Wong used the Eye of Agamotto - the Time Stone - to make sure that this story would never take place.
A traffic accident involving no casualties, but a heck of a lot of cars, would cancel young benefactor Tony Stark’s appearance at the ribbon-cutting. A persistent monk whom young doctor Stephen Strange wouldn’t even look in the face - and therefore, would not remember when they meet again in Nepal some years later - would pester him on the street, and delay his arrival at the event.
Stephen and Tony wouldn’t meet that day. The entire story would change.
His job done, Wong would return to the time point that he left - and find everything different. There would be no mystical threats looming over the Earth. No urgency to save the world with magic - at least, not so soon after the last time.
And, most important of all, there would be no Sorcerer Supreme.
It would take Wong a while to catch up, but he would manage it: Stephen Strange had found his way to Kamar-Taj under very different circumstances than he first remembered. After a fierce battle with the zealot, Kaecilius, the Ancient One had died, and Stephen had become the new Master of the New York Sanctum.
A Master of the Mystic Arts. Not a Sorcerer Supreme.
(At first, Wong feared Stephen had made a mistake by sending him back in time to change everything. An earth without a Sorcerer Supreme was already a disaster in the making.
But he had to have faith. Faith was all he had to go on, all this time.)
Only Wong would know that time had been rewound, and soon - by virtue of his magic being weaker than a Sorcerer Supreme’s - he would forget. And he would never know about the 500 lifetimes Stephen had lived with Tony in his head. These stories were all gone, never to be documented, never to be lived in any form.
To Wong, there was only the old story, and the new one.
And in this new story, Tony wasn’t the one who spoke first.
Stephen was, and his first words, spoken in a park in New York, in front of a couple soon to wed, were:
“Tony Stark? I’m Doctor Stephen Strange. I need you to come with me.”
***
And when it was time, when Tony was dying, when one more stroke would have finished him off in front of Stephen, he experienced an unexpected rush of panic.
He always had a backup plan. And here, when capturing Thanos failed, it was to sacrifice the Time Stone. Something he was fully prepared to do, to make sure that Tony Stark lived.
Tony had to live. Tony coming out of this encounter alive was the most important thing.
And yet, Stephen hadn't foreseen what he felt when the sword pierced Tony's stomach.
It was a different feeling from what he experienced as he watched it happen, through more than 14 million possible futures. Different, when it was happening before his eyes.
The ice in his gut. The chill down his spine.
Tony's gasp echoing over and over in his mind.
"Stop."
I can't lose you again. Not again. I've lost you too many times.
"Spare his life...and I will give you the stone."
***
On the morning of Tony and Stephen’s first meeting, Wong noticed something unusual.
“How long have you had that?”
Stephen followed Wong’s inquiring gaze to his left hand, and the simple gold band around his ring finger.
“What, this?” he asked innocently. “I dunno...a couple of days?”
“You’ve been skipping lunch lately,” Wong said accusingly. “How much did that cost?”
Stephen rolled his eyes.
“Relax, Scrooge, it’s not pure gold. It’s basically costume jewelry. Granted, it’s more expensive than regular costume jewelry, but...”
Stephen stared at the ring thoughtfully.
“...I don’t know. It just feels right.”
“Makes you look married, is what,” Wong pointed out.
“To my work, sure.” Stephen shrugged flippantly. “That’s more or less accurate.”
Wong frowned. It was still not the kind of accessory you'd wear on a whim.
At the back of his mind, he wondered: was this an echo from the time shift? He vaguely recalled that such things could happen.
Wong’s memories of the old life were growing fainter by the minute, and very soon they would disappear altogether - but he still distinctly recalled that Stephen from that old life never married anyone.
He had wanted to, though. It had already been planned out. To whom was he getting married, again...?
“Okay, look,” Stephen sighed, “just to prove to you this is nothing, I’m taking it off.” He did, but he kept the ring in the pocket of the sport coat he wore.
“Well,” Wong huffed, “I’m just happy you’re out of excuses to skip lunch.”
“I was not skipping lunch because of this, I was busy with my studies, but thanks for not believing anything I say.”
Stephen made his way down the staircase. Wong followed him, already aware that Stephen was headed to the deli downstairs, but he wanted to drive home the point.
“I’m here to help look after the Master of the New York Sanctum, so you have to prove to me you’re eating. One way to do that is by buying lunch for both of us, so we can eat together.”
Stephen’s eyebrow rose. “And why should I buy lunch for you, too?”
Wong sheepishly told him why.
Stephen chuckled disbelievingly. “Seriously, you don’t have any money?”