Chapter Text
For the majority of people, life went on. Rebuilding after “The Blip” was time consuming, exhaustive work. People with such work did not have time to wallow over their loss. Moving on just happened. A hero was dead, but he had saved them all.
For the family and friends of Tony Stark, those who knew him and were touched by his brilliance, it was harder to move forward. The world had become dimmer without his light. Yet Stephen did not think even they understood the full impact of his passing. ( Maybe just one little spider. ) The man’s own wife had told him to rest in his final moments, saying goodbye with a resigned kind of sorrow. ( How could she? ) She had apparently been waiting for him to go for many years.
Stephen could not let go as easily. As a dimensional sorcerer, he saw and could tap into the spark of soul woven into every copy of himself in the multiverse. He did not just ride along in someone else’s body through the Time stone, he was that Stephen, he was that spirit in every copy of himself that sprung from the moment he opened the Eye of Agamotto on Titan. It was all him just as much as it had been every time Dormammu had murdered him in the dark dimension. The beauty and curse of his calling.
In all of those futures, he had known Tony Stark.
It did not take his foolish heart more than a few lifetimes to fall in love with the man, and it had only taken that long because the first few had been ridiculously short.
In just over 6 million futures he had been loved back, either as a friend or more ( so much more ).
Nearly 100 futures had existed where they had been blissfully happy together (in what was left of the universe after Thanos). There was one such future that was so, so very close to having been his chosen.
In that future, they had managed to damage the Infinity Gauntlet on Titan. When Thanos had gone to Earth and performed the initial Snap, it was not strong enough to channel the energy required and the stones had rebelled. Instead of turning half the universe to dust, they had eaten the Titan up alive. The only consequence of this seeming victory: a wide swath of the continent of Africa had been reduced to scorched earth, with everyone and everything within the blast radius reduced to dust.
This had created devastating consequences for the planet. The majority of Earth’s defenders had been taken out in one fell swoop, including people important to Tony. Colonel Rhodes, Bruce Banner, Vision but a few. The loss of the Rogue Avengers as well was a bittersweet pill to swallow. There had been a lengthy period of recovery, but the damage had been limited to Earth alone, so Stephen had counted it a win initially.
So much had been lost, but it was without a doubt the future where Stephen had loved Tony the most. They had grown so close so quickly, the catastrophe bonding them together, and Stephen had refused to let the other man push him away as he navigated the grief and anger of losing so much at once. They had worked together to move past it, to focus on the future, to grow and train a new generation of heroes to protect the world. ( The little spider had called him Doctor Dad. It was his favorite title, right next to Doctor Wizard. )
Despite the heavy losses, they had found hope and peace together.
Stephen had been so close to choosing that path, but in the end the words of the Ancient One had echoed strongly in his ears: It’s not about you .
He had to focus on the facts, not what made him happiest.
He had to pick the universe with the least loss of life, with the least destruction, with the strongest future.
Despite the initial snap taking out half the universe, and then the second snap to fix it 5 years later- the future Stephen ended up choosing was objectively the best. When Iron Man snapped that third time, he did more than take out Thanos and all his minions. He erased them from existence in a way that echoed throughout the multiverse. The Mad Titan had been a scourge that had destabilizing effects far beyond a single universe that Stephen had not even seen until he had been completely eradicated. The good that would come from that one action had sealed the deal, and that had been the only future which had it.
So his choice was made, and this universe lost Tony Stark, the greatest man ( greatest love ) he had ever known.
The only question left was if this universe was going to lose its Sorcerer Supreme as well, because Stephen did not know if he had the strength to live in it.
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When he had crashed the car and mangled his hands, Stephen had known depression. He had been through all the stages of grief and back out the other side. He had contemplated, and even planned suicide on multiple occasions before finding Kamar-Taj. So he knew what it felt like to be at the end of his rope with life and everything in it.
Or he thought he’d known, at least. Then came a Mad Titan, and he lived millenia in an instant.
The man who had come back from that was a different beast.
There were more than a handful of futures where Stephen had killed himself. With so many possibilities, that had been a given. Of course, extreme situations would occur that would tax even the heartiest of souls. There was a certain level of objectivity involved in knowing that some of the futures were highly toxic to life in general, not just to himself.
He knew that this was not one of those futures. This future was objectively good. Life would flourish, the balance would maintain, and people would be happy. (Just not him.)
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Of the many different discarded lives he’d lived, too many of them contained the death of Iron Man. Stephen had watched Tony die more times than he wanted to acknowledge by admitting the number out loud.
Every time it was painful.
The ones where he’d loved and was loved in return always hurt the most. It seemed like this universe, where he was stuck after everything, hurt the absolute worst. They’d never had a chance to develop even a friendly relationship here. But Stephen remembered others, and ached.
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Wong was a pillar of strength that Stephen relied on more and more since that day. Wong had not been dusted and thus had lived through The Blip. When everything returned and with it, Stephen, the other sorcerer had been uncharacteristically emotional and had hugged him fiercely for one very awkward moment.
After the Hug that Shall Not be Mentioned, there had been no time to talk. Battle had reigned.
Stephen did not think Wong really knew why he had returned from that battle so changed. Everyone had come back from The Blip a little different, or rather- they came back the same, but the world had changed around them- but for Stephen it was more. So much more.
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When they had returned to the Sanctum, Stephen had been undeniably shell shocked. That in itself was not wholly unfamiliar to Wong, who had seen it before after other battles. He had performed his cleanup and first aid on autopilot, with glassy eyes and quivering limbs. All responses were single word replies, and he initiated no conversation. It was not unexpected when he shut himself away in his private rooms to rest.
What was unexpected was him not coming out for 3 days.
Wong had given him the first day, as he himself had been exhausted and needed time to recharge.
The second day, he paced for a little while in front of Stephen’s door, considering. He had missed his friend, and for 5 years he had wondered about the full story of what had happened when he’d been abducted to space. In the end, he let him be.
On the third day, Wong found Stephen sitting in a dark corner of the kitchen when we went to make tea. He eyed him for a moment, and then simply went about making tea for the both of them.
“Thank you.”
Wong studied the man in front of him as he sat at the table with steaming cups. Stephen’s voice had been little more than a whisper. There were dark circles under his eyes and he seemed altogether shrunken in appearance. Three days of rest and meditation should have had more effect.
“Are we going to talk about it?” Wong didn’t beat around the bush.
Stephen looked at him then. When their eyes met, he realized there hadn’t been focus in them before. There was now. Wong waited for a response.
The other man stared for an uncomfortable minute. When he spoke it was no louder than his earlier attempt. “I have nowhere to begin with this. Perhaps if you ask me questions I will answer.”
Wong blinked. Stephen was not usually so cryptic. Very well. “Chronologically perhaps. You were abducted to space.”
A snort, and then a chuckle. That was good, more life out of him? “Chronologically. That- no,” he shook his head and let out a bit of a wild laugh. “That is such a joke.” Stephen ran both shaking hands over his face and leaned forward into the table for a long moment. Wong felt a bit thrown off-center by his behavior, uncertain what it meant to see his usually stoic friend so unbalanced.
He had a suspicion. “You used the Eye.”
Stephen sat up and looked his way again. “You don’t say,” he drawled. “Of course I did.” His hand hit the table in emphasis with the last word and Wong realized the Cloak was not in its usual place around its master’s shoulders. Where had it gone? He hadn’t seen it since they had got back. He tabled the thought for now.
“Stephen, what happened on that ship?”
“Oh that’s the quick part. They followed me. Tony and Peter. They rescued me from some minor torture and killed the alien.”
There was a lot to unpack there, but Stephen’s voice had steadied and he seemed willing to talk now, so Wong would not linger on it. “What happened after they killed the alien?”
Stephen’s face contorted, and Wong could not tell if it was rue, anger, pain or a mixture of all and more. “There were possibilities there but I didn’t check them. I didn’t understand the impact yet. I didn’t know that it was going to be so important. I didn’t use the Eye on the ship. I just let everything happen. I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t use the Eye on the ship. So you left the ship?”
“Tony thought-” Stephen’s voice cracked, and he swallowed thickly before continuing, “he’d known, he said we had to take the fight to them. Away from Earth. I believed that. I saw the sense in it. Protecting Earth was the goal.”
“Where did you go?” Wong knew only the barest of details. Stark had shared only that they had met the Titan, and they had lost, that Stephen had fought, but had given up the Time stone in the end. Had just handed it over. It had been a confusing conversation, and Wong had come out of it with more questions, but unwilling to badger the obviously wounded and PTSD-riddled man who might not have even been able to answer them. Now he had Stephen back, and the state of his friend left him needing answers more than ever.
“The ship took us to Titan.” Stephen was back to whispers. He looked down and seemed to remember his tea, lifting it in shaking hands for a long drink.
Wong sipped his own tea and tried to calm his thoughts. Stephen seemed to compose himself after a second and continued.
“On Titan we met the Guardians. Allies. More variables in the mix. They had information. I upgraded the threat. There I used the Eye.”
Wong was familiar with the process of using the Eye of Agamotto - the Time Stone - to check possible timelines. The Ancient One had done it often enough, and he had read the texts. He knew that depending on the skill of the wielder, it could be anywhere from a blurry skim for vague details to a completely immersive experience. The texts cautioned heavily against full immersion, or against reading too many timelines at once, but few in the history of the Order had been able to reach that level of skill, so there was little information on side effects.
Looking at Stephen now, understanding dawned. Wong felt his heart thud in his chest and his stomach fall. The other man was sitting now, quiet, staring into his tea cup. His hands were shaking madly, an outward sign of considerable stress. Stephen was a magical prodigy who had been born for the mystic arts. He’d had an immediate connection to the Eye and had used it flawlessly from the day he’d first touched it.
“Stephen… how many futures did you see on Titan?”
“14,000,605.”