Chapter Text
For one brief, shining moment, Stephen Strange thought he finally had a handle on this day.
That handle certainly didn’t come at the beginning of the day. Or technically, the moments before the day officially started and he dreamed of…trying to kill a young girl before a monster claimed some power of hers, near a portal and a book. Or something.
It certainly didn’t come at Christine’s wedding. Though that was at least one horror show he had ample time to prepare for enduring. Unlike the horror of a one-eyed demon marching through the city. Or the greater horror of the girl in his dreams showing up in reality.
The girl’s attitude certainly didn’t give him any handles to work with. Not even after he and Wong saved her life. And especially not after she started talking about the multiverse.
Though between the revelation of dreams being windows into other universes, and the mention of that…fuzzy ordeal he had with Spider-Man a while back, maybe it was more about the girl’s knowledge than the girl herself.
But even that was nothing compared to the knowledge of her name. Which she finally gave them at the fast-food restaurant, in between all her multiversal information dropping.
A name both Stephen and Wong had heard before. Or rather, Wong heard firsthand and only bothered to tell Stephen about later. In between a few other things he didn’t bother to promptly tell him.
For one moment, hearing the name America Chavez come out of the girl’s mouth, was the most unsettling thing so far. On a day with Christine’s wedding and a demon visiting the city, no less.
But for one moment after that, Stephen finally thought it all made sense.
America Chavez. The girl Stephen saw racing across the multiverse in his dream. The girl another Stephen apparently almost killed in that “dream”, before something else could claim her power to race through the multiverse.
The girl with a power someone else wanted not too long ago. Someone Wong believed to be dead. But of course, it couldn’t have been that easy.
And of course, there really was no way she would just give up such an evil, chaotic, destructive dream after all. In that one moment, Stephen finally saw clarity.
As such, when he felt an unnatural chill in the air and the sound of someone else entering the fast-food joint, he felt no fear. Only certainty for the first time in this…more wretched than even he had anticipated day.
In fact, before even looking up, he’d halfway said the name of the person who was surely here right now. Who had surely sent the demons after this girl, who had surely never given up her quest to consume her power, and who had surely not destroyed the Darkhold across the universe as Wong claimed. As if someone like her could.
“Wand-”
But before Stephen could finish saying Wanda Maximoff’s name, he finished looking up.
And what he saw was not Wanda.
What he did see – who he saw – eliminated the last hope of clarity, and the last hope of having a handle on anything, that Stephen Strange would feel for a good long while.
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She had long white hair, a purple costume, purple eyeliner, and energy all around her that screamed of unspeakable, uncontained power. Yet no one could sense it but the two sorcerers in the dining area. And the girl sitting with them only felt uneasy because she saw their own unease.
Unease she hadn’t even seen from the last Strange. Even and especially when he tried to kill her. Of course, it didn’t mean this Strange was that much better by comparison. Not much else about him suggested that so far as it was.
But compared to this…stranger woman coming right towards their table? It might be a fairer fight.
Yet fighting, along with pretty much everything else, was far from Stephen’s mind right now. For once, his mind was as close to a complete blank as it could ever get. At least too much of one to figure out why.
He should have already drawn out defensive plans, escape routes and spells to use by now, like with any other potential threat. Like the threat he already defeated today. Yet with this directly oncoming threat, and its far less monstrous on the outside appearance, he couldn’t make heads or tails of what to do.
Except sit there as she now stood in front of his table.
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“Don’t get up. I insist,” she stressed pointedly as she took a chair nearby and sat herself down, without any invitation. Just as America didn’t invite her to pluck out and eat one of her fries, and Wong didn’t insist she take and sip from his drink. But she did anyway.
The sorcerers and the girl were too weirded out, at best, to move. And no one seemed to be taking mind of it all either.
“You know, this place is either more resilient, or more tragic, than I gave it credit for,” the woman started.
“After so much loss and madness, it’s so…numb now. So numb that my dear departed Gargantos can rampage all over town, you can cause so much property damage in killing him, and no one even bats an eye. So to speak. And right here and now, the two most powerful…men in your world can have lunch with the girl who brought such destruction upon them, and no one notices that either.”
The woman gestured to the fellow fast-food junkies around them, who indeed either weren’t noticing or caring who was among them.
“I’m sure there’s something very depressing in that. But maybe that’s why I find it remarkable too.”
“Okay…” the younger female at the table spoke. “If this is gonna be some grown-up philosophical debate, I don’t think I need to be here.”
“Like I said, I find it remarkable,” the older woman repeated, in a tone that commanded the younger to stay still, without saying it in such words.
“But still, if I were to…slaughter everyone in this building if you, or your new versions of your old friends, tried to leave? I don’t think they’d be so ignorant then.”
“Well, we don’t necessarily need to leave this building to leave the building…” Wong warned. At that, Stephen finally snapped into action, almost relieved to be back in somewhat familiar territory now.
Along with Wong, Stephen got up and transported the woman and the girl with them into the Mirror Dimension. Something which greatly alarmed the younger one and almost…seemed to amuse the older one.
“Actually, this works out just fine.”
The woman pulled out a dagger, which hardly seemed a weapon worthy of battling current and former Sorcerer Supremes. But it was never intended to cut them.
Instead, she slashed it right through the air next to her. Which opened up something never meant to be opened.
In the middle of the Mirror Dimension, was a hole that revealed an entirely different dimension beyond it. One with sights Wong had only read about, but never seen in person before.
And one with sights that Stephen had only got out of his nightmares – his far less confusing nightmares – right before Thanos attacked.
“The Dark Dimension…”
“Wait, that’s what’s freaking you out here?” Yet America and her lingering shock and awe over the Mirror Dimension was barely heard, over the shock triggered from the other dimension.
A dimension that was never supposed to be this easy to see. A dimension that was certainly never supposed to be cut into from the Mirror Dimension, let alone the Earth. A dimension with far stronger barriers from all other worlds and realms than this. Or so it had been believed.
“This shouldn’t be…” Wong stated the obvious.
“That’s exactly right. Now let’s go back to your dimension, and I’ll explain why it is. And who’s responsible.”
The woman waved her hands, somehow managing to close the Dark Dimension’s newfound entrance as quickly as it was made. With no other choice right now, Stephen and Wong waved their hands to exit the Mirror Dimension, bringing them and the females back to Earth as if nothing happened. And to everyone around them, nothing had.
America envied such ignorance as she settled back in her seat. On the other hand, Stephen and Wong were far less fond of it.
“Who are you?” Stephen at last felt ready to directly address the woman.
“So you really don’t know me. But I know you,” the woman laid uncomfortable layers into her word choices again.
“Stephen Strange. The man who saved the universe after letting it stay half-dead for five years. Because there was no other way.”
Without bothering to check his reaction, the woman turned to see the girl’s already stunned face. “America Chavez. The girl who stranded her poor mothers across the multiverse. With the very power that threatens all other mothers now.”
Without bothering to check America’s shocked and angry face, the woman zeroed in on the last unchecked face. “Wong, the Sorcerer Supreme by technicality. You’re here too.”
“And who are you that’s special enough to know so much?” Wong brushed off the disrespect, in a skill he’d mastered more than usual since 2016.
“Call me Clea.”
Without bothering to check that Wong understood, Clea came full circle to face Stephen.
“I do believe you knew my uncle. He savored the freedom you gave him. All the way up until your alien friend’s snap took him away. Then all the way up until I killed him when your…human friends brought him back.”
“Dormammu…” Stephen latched onto. “How can you be his…how can you have…”
“That’s not important. What’s important is the Dark Dimension is mine. Your various tricks over the years helped make it possible. And now one of those tricks has put my kingdom, my home, in great danger. Because you created an incursion.”
“What are you talking about?” Wong interjected.
“Your predecessor and his spider-boy cohort opened the multiverse months ago. The resulting incursion shattered the fabric of reality. More importantly, it weakened the boundaries between your world and mine. That’s why I can cut into it from any dimension. And that’s why my dimension will not survive if nothing is done.”
“How come I don’t know anything about this?” Wong directed at both Clea and Stephen.
“Scratch that, how come I don’t know?” Stephen shot back, eventually shooting directly at Clea. “I don’t remember doing any of that! There was something with Spider-Man in that time period, but it couldn’t have done all…that! I didn’t do all that!”
“Huh,” Clea voiced, completely unconvinced. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Your memory, or lack thereof, is not important. What’s important is you helping to fix what you broke.”
“Maybe the fact this sounds like it has nothing to do with me is important too! So…” America thought she had the chance to worm out of this. Only for Clea to glare at her and shatter that hope, even before saying a word.
“Oh, we’re getting to you. You, who can single handedly cause incursions all by yourself. You, with the power to create enough incursions to shatter worlds. Including and more importantly, mine. You, who tried to find a book that would help you master these powers…master the destruction of my world. But by the grace of my uncle, I destroyed it in time.”
“That was your monster that destroyed the Book of Vishanti…” America caught on. “And your monster that tried to kill me here…and, so, what, now you’re here to finish the job yourself?!”
“Which I promise to do as painlessly as possible. If the Sorcerers Supreme will cooperate.”
“And why would we even consider doing that?” Wong demanded.
“This is a threat none of us can repair alone. No matter our worlds’…past differences. We need to work together to save both our realms. But unfortunately, repairing our worlds’ incursion only puts a band-aid on the larger problem.”
“The problem being a young girl,” Strange summed up.
“She’s just the biggest problem in front of us. The larger threat of incursions, across the multiverse…is something much worse. But we can’t take them on, unless we first fix the problems that we can right now. And right now, a girl with powers to create incursions that she can’t control, is the threat we can contain right now.”
“So killing her is much easier than, oh, I don’t know? Letting her read the only book that could have helped her control this incursion crap? Or realizing these are powers she never wanted to use, or to have, in the first place?!” America sought to enlighten.
“Or maybe, here’s a fun thought! Realizing if I was in the same universe with my moms again, I would never need to use them again! Maybe we could have cut a deal before you sent the freaky cyclops to kill me! That’s fun to think about too, maybe!”
“Hell, since you and Strange have a child murder first policy, maybe you are meant to fix the multiverse together!”
At that, Stephen schooled himself to stay perfectly still, while Clea’s poker face took far less effort.
“None of this is fun to think about. It would be if it wasn’t my world on the chopping block. But the fact is, it is. And the fact is, as long as you and any trace of your power is allowed to live, there are no deals to be made.”
“For the greater good of the multiverse, that power and all that’s attached to it…must be completely destroyed.”
“Yeah, no, sorry, that’s not gonna…”
The one time it would have been helpful to make a portal out of fear, and of course it didn’t happen. America started inching out of her chair as a backup, but the second Clea briefly flashed...what looked like purple flames from her right hand, she stayed right where she was.
“The monsters and destroying the book were Plan A. Now it’s time for Plan B.” To that end, she turned right back to Stephen. “But you don’t need me to spell it out, do you?”
“At least enlighten the rest of us,” Stephen said with more visible false bravado than usual.
“You, your so-called boss, and your magic club may think you need to protect the girl. I’m here to tell you that you don’t. In fact, it would be a gesture of good faith if you turned her over to me, willingly.”
“And you think I would willingly turn a girl over to be murdered?”
“I know you would. And by now, you know it too. And what you think I know about you…doesn’t come close to the half of it.”
Stephen didn’t know what he was more unsettled by. Clea’s more chilling, almost admiring certainty that she was right…or the more fearful, haunted look on America’s face that showed she thought Clea was right too. Perhaps since she really had seen it up close from another him…
But by a narrow margin, Stephen chose to endure Clea’s gaze as she continued.
“Now you may think you can protect her at Kamar-Taj. I admit, that’s not a bad place for her to spend her final hours. But if I sense you’ve brought her anywhere else, I won’t kill her first. I’ll kill everyone within a 20-mile radius, no matter how highly populated the area. And I think you know I can.”
That certainly didn’t make Clea’s gaze easier to handle. But Stephen willed himself to keep listening to her. No matter how it felt to do so.
“I’ll give you till mid-day, Kamar-Taj time. That should be enough time for you to think clearly. By then, you should have worked out that your only option, for the multiverse if not yourselves, is to hand her over. By then, I will be there to collect her. In whatever way you force me to do so.”
By then, Clea’s gaze was completely on Stephen. As if the actual Sorcerer Supreme and her actual target weren’t even there.
“You know there’s no choice to make. You know there’s no other choice you would make. And you know you owe a debt. To your world, and to mine.”
“You know in the grand calculus of the multiverse, the only way to save it is by working together. If we can do it in an…admittedly unsavory matter such as this, as you know we have to do…then there will be nothing we can’t do. No worlds we can’t save. And no happy ending we can’t achieve.”
By most anyone else’s analysis, Stephen’s face was completely stone. To those like Wong, and apparently to those like Clea, the little movements it was making might as well have been hysterical screams. Which were seemingly loud enough to make Clea leave her seat.
“Mid-day, Kamar-Taj time. If you’ve thought it through by then, you will give me the girl. You will start doing your part to fix what you shattered. Or you can continue holding the knife on your own, and see how many more you can sentence to death that way.”
With that, and after plucking one more stolen fry from the girl she would steal much more from, Clea left like she was any other customer. But she wasn’t.
Whatever she was, whatever she said and whatever she meant, she was…nothing Stephen could wrap his head around. Yet he tried.
Enough to at least block out America’s pleas to go somewhere besides Kamar-Taj, Wong’s attempts to sooth her, and even Wong’s promises that Stephen would not turn her over or kill her on his watch.
Eventually, Stephen followed both Wong and a reluctant America through a portal to Kamar-Taj, and followed Wong as he told the other sorcerers what was coming. By then, he had enough distance from their little fast-food summit, and all that was implied from it, to come to a strategy.
Not that the real name of the strategy was one he would admit to. Not to himself or anyone else. But he would implement it nonetheless.
Total denial.
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“It’s Wanda,” Stephen continued pressing, after checking again that America was too far away to hear him or Wong.
“Wanda is dead,” Wong continued to insist just as quietly. “And even if she wasn’t, she gave up her designs on that girl. Enough to destroy every version of the Darkhold, may I remind!”
“So we think. And so you choose to believe,” Stephen doubled down. “If you choose to think someone like that, with her destiny and track record, could really do something that impossible…”
“Break free from and destroy the Darkhold? Just because none of us could have done it?”
“Give up on having fake children.”
“They were not fake to her,” Wong seemed determined to correct.
“She was going to kill that girl, take her power and abduct copies of her copy children! How real could her love for children, any children, be?!”
“As real as that other Stephen’s before he tried to kill America too?”
“That’s different, that’s…” Stephen waited for the words to come. When they didn’t, he changed the subject with many other words.
“Look, what that woman said…it can’t be true. Not all of it. In fact, it’s so crazy, it has to be mostly made up. Just so we won’t suspect it when it turns out Wanda made the whole thing up, used it as a smoke screen, and used whatever Darkhold power she must have preserved from Wundagore to drain the girl after all. Nothing else makes any sense!”
“It can’t if it doesn’t to you? About Wanda, the multiverse, this Clea, or whatever this Spider-Man thing is? Or all the above?”
Again, words didn’t come to Stephen like they normally would. Not new ones, anyway. “Nothing else makes any sense…” he repeated.
“Well, while you wrestle with that, I’m going to fortify our defenses. And make sure America is properly cared for. If that doesn’t make sense to you, you can stay out of the way or just leave until the deadline. By then, I hope you have something more productive to contribute.”
There was nothing productive Stephen had to say before Wong left him alone. Nothing Wong would listen to, anyway. Nothing that made more sense and was easier to comprehend than…the alternative.
So Stephen decided to both stay out of the way and leave. To head back to New York, go to the Sanctum, and figure out something that would make this more manageable. But first he probably needed something to eat, so his brain would be the only vital organ in knots right now.
So Stephen went to the nearest deli to get a reliable, knot clearing pastrami. With a nice, even amount of change. A few neat and tidy dollar bills that would…
That would…
Normally not have such a strong, magical signature coming off of them. And would normally…be real.
Completely magical, counterfeit money. It was a wonder the more criminal sorcerers, or ex-sorcerers, hadn’t made that more often. Maybe some of them still thought they were too high and mighty to do so, even at the heights of their hypocrisy.
But that wasn’t the criminal example Stephen needed to focus on right now.
With a few bits of detective work, a few detections of other magical signatures, a strong detection of similar magic in an apartment building, and a loose lipped landlord claiming someone named “Lizzie” lived in the room at the center, Stephen’s focus seemed ready to pay off.
It would pay off when he found Wanda Maximoff there. When he proved Clea was just the distraction from the real witch behind the curtain. When he proved Clea didn’t know what she was talking about, all this stuff about dreams and other murderous Stephen’s wasn’t real, these incursions were just a magic trick, and that this was all about Wanda snapping into the monster she was always supposed to be.
And nothing else.
It didn’t pay off immediately, when Stephen got into her apartment and saw no one there. It didn’t pay off for the next four hours when no one came in to find him.
But when the door finally opened late at night, to reveal Wanda and some anonymous kid coming in, Stephen knew it would pay off then.
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“How am I supposed to believe, you, of all people, with your history, destiny and recent mommy madness, could wipe out the Darkhold when no one else could? How could I believe you, of all people, would abandon your family whims forever and not have a loophole like this set up? How am I supposed to believe you broke its spell over you, not once but twice, when no one’s ever done it once?”
“Be honest. Knowing everything about you. How am I supposed to believe you could do all that?”
“Because she’s Wanda Maximoff. That’s why.”
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“You know what…screw it. Tell him. No, that won’t work. Show him.”
“I don’t know who you think you are. But I’ve already got one kid with an attitude on my plate. Plus a dangerous and rather frustrating woman after her, another even more dangerous woman who’s a suspect, and accusations of a multiverse-breaking team-up with Spider-Man that I barely remember! Oh, and then I have to find Spider-Man at some point when I’m done here!”
“So if you think you’re someone who really needs to pile on all that, I suggest you…”
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“Stay.”
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The botched spell to forget Peter Parker was Spider-Man. The multiversal villains. The battle to keep Stephen from sending them back to their deaths. The 12 hours at the Grand Canyon. The cackling green guy. The other Spider-Men.
The spell to make everyone forget Peter Parker.
All these memories returned to Stephen, after he received an equally painful download of Wanda’s memories.
Her memories of blocking out the forget Peter Parker spell. Her suspicions it had been done to target her. Her stumbling onto Peter’s nightmares about everything…including May Parker’s death.
Her spending more time with Peter – or rather, “Benjamin” – than with the Darkhold. Peter spending more time with Wanda – or rather, “Lizzie” – than lamenting a world where no one knew or loved him. Wanda abandoning her plans to harm America after bonding with Peter.
The Darkhold forcing her to get back in line afterwards. Wanda destroying the Darkhold – at least the book copy in this world – back at her old cabin. And then the firsthand memories that backed up Wong’s claims about his ordeal with Wanda at Kamar-Taj. Then at Mount Wundagore, where she finally destroyed every trace of the Darkhold everywhere.
All because she remembered, and then got to know, Peter Parker. Something which apparently she only revealed to him tonight…after seeing a Broadway show. Huh.
It was all true.
Which meant everything Clea said was all true as well. Which meant there really was a Clea from the Dark Dimension, out to not just capture America, but to kill her. All to save a crumbling Dark Dimension from multiversal incursions Stephen and Spider-Man might have caused.
Incursions Stephen and…and…
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“Peter…”
“Yeah, that does sound weird from you. Stephen.”
“I’ll allow it…”
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“Oh, kid…how are you still standing?”
“Me?! Barely. And if your spell had worked on Wanda, I wouldn’t be standing at all. And she’s the one who shouldn’t be standing. But she is. So I think you owe her an apology. For a few things.”
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Stephen Strange knew nothing.
For a time, the Ancient One convinced him of that. Somewhere along the way since she…left, he forgot it again. Now look where he was because of it.
Look at Peter Parker. A Peter Parker nobody knew anymore because of him.
Look at Wanda Maximoff. Who Stephen…never really knew. Maybe no one did. No one still alive, anyway. Maybe no one but Peter now. And look what came of it.
Everything he assumed about her was wrong. She could have implanted him with fake memories, and maybe even done so to Peter too. But in this current context, it seemed a little too far-fetched now.
If he was so wrong about her. About what he had done to Peter and Spider-Man. About…
But it wasn’t about him. That, the Ancient One still managed to ingrain into him. Narrowly. Maybe it was time to start rewarding her for her faith again.
Maybe it was time someone else finally got some credit too.
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“Clearly I underestimated you. And clearly it’s not the first time I’ve dismissed you. Or written you off. But with what you did for the multiverse, and now apparently for Peter…and even for America so she made it this far…I was wrong. More than once.”
“So, if only so you have nothing to hold over me…I am sorry. For my assumptions…for not offering my support when I could have…for Vision, for your children…all of it. And I suppose this is something you’ve been owed for a while too.”
“Thank you. On behalf of the universe, and him…thank you.”
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Seeing Wanda take in such praise, as if she didn’t know what to do with it…and she almost surely didn’t…felt both rewarding and tragic all at once.
So maybe it shouldn’t take so long for her to earn it again.
Maybe this whole thing was out of Stephen’s depth. Maybe the only way to survive it was with something different. Maybe something which hadn’t had a chance to be a full, complete hero instead of a suspected villain – rightly or not – in a long time. But maybe it was time now.
Maybe America’s best hope of surviving her new attacker…was her former prospective one.
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“I know we should have offered help, long before making you help us. You and Parker can rub that in later. But right now, me, America, this universe and maybe all others…we could all use an Avenger.”
“Maybe they could use two.”
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“Look, you don’t really need me there. You don’t need anyone. You can probably beat her all by yourself. But it might be easier on you, or at least faster, if someone helped you speed things along. If you had, like…a partner.”
“If you really need her, then we’re a package deal. If she goes, I go too. Sir.”
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And there it was. Dr. Strange and Spider-Man together again – to fix another multiverse crisis right after they caused it.
Spider-Man and the Scarlet Witch together for the first time. At least as friends and partners.
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“Shall we, Scarlet Witch?”
“After you, Peter Parker.”
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And Wanda Maximoff and America Chavez together for the first time. Weeks after they would have been brought together by Wanda kidnapping, power draining and likely killing her, before Clea could have taken a shot.
But before Stephen could see how that went after they arrived at Kamar-Taj, he figured he should get telling Wong everything out of the way. Maybe immediate honesty – at least in this current context – would get his scolding time cut down, before they had to focus on the real fight to come.
But with his track record today, it was probably a long shot.
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“And why are you here too?” Wong asked a still masked Peter.
“It’s a long story. And hopefully when I’m done, you’ll remember there’s no time for scolding right now.”
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“You can call me Spider-Man if that works for you too. And this is the Scarlet Witch. But calling her Wanda Maximoff is pretty cool too.”
“Hello, America. I’ve…heard so much about you.”
“You know about me, huh? So what should I know about you?”
“She’s a friend. I promise she knows how to save you. And she’s going to help me, Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme and all these people save you too. Because that’s what we do.”
“Yes. Yes, we do.”