Chapter Text
Prologue
The aftermath was worse than he’d imagined.
Stephen Strange sat alone in the New York sanctum’s library, piles of books scattered around him haphazardly. It was the middle of the night, but he couldn’t sleep. The nightmares never ended. Every time he closed his eyes he saw it again and again. The smell of burnt flesh still lingered in his nose, the tang of blood thickly coating his tongue. Empty brown eyes haunted him, a constant reminder that he owed a debt he knew he could never repay.
Christmas was rapidly approaching, 2024 just on the horizon, but the universe was still in mourning. People were adjusting to their new lives. Families were reuniting. Old wounds were reopening. Thousands had perished before, during and after the snap—more than even he could have anticipated.
Planes plummeted from the sky, cars piled on the freeway, hospitals lost surgeons mid-operation. Entire buses filled with people plunged off bridges. Boats and cruise ships were lost to the sea. Suicides skyrocketed. Thanos had been entirely wrong when he’d called it mercy. The death toll on those left remaining after the snap was tremendous, and the numbers only rose when the snap was reversed.
Stephen curled in on himself in one of his frequently increasing moments of weakness, jaw clenching tight, right hand coming up to wipe at the tears threatening to escape his tired eyes. Guilt had been eating away at him, gnawing through skin and muscle, fat and bone, making its way down and down and down until it could feast upon his very soul. Soon he felt there would be nothing left of him.
He would not be able to rebuild himself this time.
Much of the public wanted statues made in honor of the fallen Avengers. Some kind of memento to remember the heroes who’d died to bring people back from the dead—who’d gone up against logic and reason and even time itself to come out victorious. Stephen desperately hoped that any statues were erected somewhere—anywhere—else but New York. There was no way he could possibly go out into the world and pass by large stone replicas of the people he’d killed.
And there was really no other way to look at it, despite what Wong or Peter or anyone else tried to tell him. Stephen had looked into the time stone on Titan and chosen a timeline where he knew people would die. He’d purposefully given up the stone so that Vision could have his forehead caved in and trillions of people could be turned to dust. He’d orchestrated the deaths of Natasha Romanoff, Steve Rogers, and Tony Stark.
A few years ago, working as an asshole neurosurgeon in New York, Stephen probably wouldn’t have been bothered if any superheroes died saving the world. That’s what they were supposed to do. Right?
But after living through fourteen million iterations of that day on Titan, Stephen did nothing but feel bothered.
He’d been stupid to think that he was above attachment. Being a master of the Mystic Arts had not made him as impervious to the nature of the human mind as he’d thought. Never would he have imagined that he could fall so far from grace by doing something that was, technically, the right thing. The lesser of two evils, he’d told himself.
But his humanity reared its ugly head in the time stone, as he watched Tony Stark throw himself protectively in front of others over and over again, and he fell in love.
He’d had to make a choice that didn’t seem fair; a choice that should not have been his to make. And with every step Stephen took after returning to reality, into Tony’s careful arms and worried eyes, he was filled with the painful reminder that he was murdering this man who trusted him so wholly.
He’d told Tony there was a winning timeline, and Tony had taken his word as gospel. They’d only known each other for two days and Iron Man was ready to die on Stephen’s command if it meant that they saved half of the universe. There was no reason for him to have any faith in Stephen, and yet he did. It would be his last mistake.
In the end, Tony’s selflessness and trust in Stephen had been his demise. He must have known as he’d laid dying on the battlefield, skin charred and veins pulsing with radioactivity, that Stephen had killed him. That Stephen had known from the beginning that every step he’d coaxed Tony into taking had been a step further towards his own death.
Like puppets, the Avengers moved how Stephen pulled their strings. Natasha threw herself off a cliff, Steve stayed in the past, Tony snapped his fingers. It was designed this way.
And yet, rotting in the sanctum’s library for weeks reading and studying, Stephen could not help but look for a way to fix what he himself had broken. If he could send a message back to 2016, warn himself of what was to pass, their outcome could very well be different. Tony Stark could live, be with his family and prosper as a father and husband. Natasha could build a life of her own, find the love and family she so desperately craved. Steve could learn to carve out a space for himself in the future; realize that he did belong there after all. Vision could live a normal human life in the suburbs with Wanda, like they'd planned.
Stephen sniffled, uncurling himself enough to stare down at the thin book in his hands. It was old and weathered. The front cover was filled with odd symbols that only a sorcerer could understand.
Self-Projectation.
It was a stupid name, he thought. But it was what he had been looking for.
A master of the mystic arts can, under duress and using considerable magic power, forcefully send a projection to a past version of themselves.
The circumstances seemed fitting enough. Stephen flipped ahead to the page that demonstrated how to conjure the spell. He’d been trying to get the courage to perform it for several hours, but self-doubt had begun creeping in his mind. He was unsure if accidentally killing himself trying to change the past was a very good idea. He already knew what Wong would think of it.
Wong had tried to get Stephen to let him into his head, to lock away the memories like they’d done with Dormammu. Stephen wouldn’t let him, couldn’t let him. The thought of losing those memories had sent him into a panic. He wished he could give up and accept things as they were—as he’d made them—but he couldn’t.
Now there was nowhere else for him to turn, and he was breaking. The chance of seeing Tony live a happy life seemed cause enough to try, even if nothing else changed. A horribly selfish thought, he was aware, but it was his truth. He’d read through so many books, and this seemed the safest bet.
It would not fix this world, Stephen knew. There was no mending this future. However, creating a branch of the past where he may possibly have a happier outcome was well worth the risk.
Steeling himself, Stephen moved to the floor of the library, getting into a lotus position on the worn red carpet. The book hovered in front of his face and he mimicked the movements on the page. The mandalas that appeared around and under him glowed softly, chiming like otherworldly bells as they moved.
He no longer had the time stone to ease the way, and his magic had greatly decreased in recent months, but he would manage. Even without his usual tremendous magic reserve, he should be capable. If he could just give enough of his magic to complete the spell without totally draining his life force, he would be fine. Magic was replenishable, after all.
Stephen opened himself up to the spell, offered his magic freely.
The feeling of his magic being taken was odd. He felt like a well having its water suctioned out. Like a dam with a hole in it. The spell took and took and took. It fed from him with a gluttonous speed that he could have never foreseen.
A tingling sensation began in his extremities. He was losing too much.
Stephen ground his teeth together as the spell continued to take. Pain began to seize his body in waves. His physical form vibrated under the duress and a loud shout began to tear its way from his throat, but he kept an image of Tony in his mind’s eye as a reminder to keep going. The cloak of levitation kept him steady. Blackness crept into the edges of his vision, and he resigned himself to the impending death looming over him.
But then the mandalas clamped down around him and he felt himself floating out of his body, soul ejected to a strange place that he had never seen. The whole space was an off-white, and there was a transparent grey platform leading up into the nothingness. He followed, the cloak helping him stay stable on his feet.
Memories floated by. His own memories, playing on honeycomb-like screens as he walked along. He closed his eyes tight, tried not to think of them. He needed to walk past until he could reach the year he wanted. He’d already figured out where he needed to project his memories.
Obviously he had to project them to a time where he was already a sorcerer. He’d ended his training at Kamar-Taj in mid-2016. Not long after, Dormammu attacked earth and he used the time stone to save the planet. That still had to happen exactly as it did—he couldn’t risk screwing up those events up.
However, there was a time not long after he defeated Dormammu that seemed to fit the bill. In late 2016, Stephen had had a month of respite before the new year began. He was a full-fledged master of the Mystic Arts, recently promoted to Sorcerer Supreme. That version of Stephen was most likely the best option to project the memories onto.
Stephen opened his eyes after he’d passed the harsh memories of 2023. He passed the 2018 encounter with Thanos next as fast as he could, trying to will the heartbreak away. Further and further back he walked, until finally he found what he was looking for. A hexagonal screen showed himself sitting at the sanctum’s kitchen table one morning with a cup of tea, looking tired and bored.
It must’ve been somewhere around late November or early December of 2016. This version of himself was less stressed, with no bags under his eyes and less trembling in his fingers. The extra time he would have to himself should allow him to find the memories, however they ended up projecting to him.
He would have to do.
Reaching out and touching the memory, Stephen’s hands sunk inside of the honeycomb screen and he focused hard, breathing deep in concentration. Accessing the inside of his mind, he found the memories inside his head that would hopefully be enough to prompt past Stephen into action with over a year of extra time to prepare.
He knew himself enough to know that the memories alone may not be enough to convince him, so he sent along with them a gift he was sure his past self would love. He’d read the meaning of it in a book, and heard Wong talk of it happening to the Ancient One once. The smell of sulfur. A bad omen, a warning of impending doom.
The fight on Titan broke free from his mind, replaced by a splitting headache. Stephen felt so tired, legs shaking as he screamed with the last threads of his energy remaining. He gave a solid push, willing the projection onto his past self. The sound of it snapping into place ricocheted loudly in the empty space around him.
Stephen collapsed to the platform below. The cloak eased his fall, draping itself over him in a tight embrace. Bells chimed from somewhere far off, echoing faintly, beautiful as they sang. Like church bells calling for a special event, mesmerizing and inviting. If they indicated a wedding or a funeral, he didn’t know.
Either way, he’d done what he’d intended to do. It was a last-ditch effort to change what he’d previously believed unchangeable; a desperate final attempt at saving the life of the man he loved. Everything was in the hands of another version of himself now.
Stephen was so tired. He had nothing to hold onto anymore; no purpose. He listened to the bells beckoning him and let his heavy eyelids close. There was peace.