possible endgame spoilers - the dr strange open post.

[rehandle]

give me mcus or au your crosscanons into the mcu or weird space cross-dimensional magic them there I'm easy I just want to play a magical, magical man with too many responsibilities who is also a shit

pre-IW, post-endgame, an au where everything's simpler, weird side pocket universes or suspended states where characters can have some chats, space, the sanctum, post-ml au for those who are/have been in a game with me, etc. the world is your oyster and any kind of thread starter or thread genre is fair play.

drop me a starter or a prompt or just a theme/genre or idea in the body of the comment, or leave it empty and give me free rein, I'll come back at you when I have the get up and go.

please also let me know whether or not you'd be happy to have spoilery themes involved in the thread if the tag-in doesn't already make it obvious.

thanks let's get MAGIC and STRESSED

Comments

i havent seen endgame but HIT ME WITH SPOILERSs

[batricide]

[ Stephen Strange probably wasn't accounting on becoming responsible for a wayward assassin turned hero. Hafid al Ghul - Damian Wayne - has more than enough guilt in his life to make it hard to give up heroism, even two worlds removed from the one he called home. The snap hit him and he was gone, gripping Stephen's arm and hissing through grit teeth that he wasn't done yet until he was little more than sand on thewind. And yet the world kept turning, and turning, and turning - until it's all rolled back and two are buried so that untold trillions could live.

He's used to this. What it means to weigh each life you stand with, knowing not only that they may die, but you might be the one to cut them loose so everyone else can live.

He can't say they are. Not on this scale. Not with these stakes.

He leans comfortably against the wall of Stephen's study, pried out of his armor by social obligation and a vague certainty that he could kick the asses of anyone here with minimal effort, magical bullshit notwithstanding. His hair is too long, too messy, but freshly combed and pulled back from his face, his gaze on the wizard attempting to be gentle but coming across uncomfortable and pained.. ]

If I said I'd have made the same call, would that help or make it worse?

[rehandle]

[ the Stephen Strange who sits in this study is a time paradox in and of himself. physically, he's younger than he was when they left New Amsterdam, by half a year or so. really a couple of days older. 5 years younger than he ought to be, with a head full of the echoes of millions of futures he's now seen narrowed down to one lived reality.

the Stephen Strange who Damian speaks to isn't quite the same man he had been when they left. the same instincts in there but a different slant to his heart. a different weight to his silences.

very few people knew for a while the precise details of his choice, why he did what he did, exactly how much he knew when he made that decision. Stephen himself hadn't known it was coming before he'd left New Amsterdam. but Damian came back with him to the exact point he left, plummeting down to Titan, and it meant he was there when the fight with Thanos broke out, when Quill struck out and blew their chance, when Stephen sat and searched through the future. when he told Tony the odds.

he knows that Stephen knew that there was one possible path to undo the half universe annihilation Thanos was to bring about. that he doomed them both for it, for a time. and that the faith he found in the Avengers and their allies saw them through... at no small cost.

so when he says what he says, Doctor Stephen Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts and keeper of the New York Sanctum doesn't look up for a while from the small planetary map glowing in gold in the air in front of him. he turns it, inspecting each, until he's done and only then does he will it away.

if they're to have this conversation, Damian deserves his full attention.

he died for the future Stephen hoped for. he fought for them in the battle that helped it come to pass. he's owed.

the smile he gives is small but earnest, perhaps a little amused. typical that he should drag Damian into the middle of a war for the universe and the kid still finds it in him to be kind in the bluntest way you could be. ]

It doesn't make it worse.

[ which says nothing of whether it helps.

some lost their lives for this, some gained wounds that won't heal the way they should, some lost family and friends - his only real sacrifice is the new weight of his conscience.

it can be borne. ]

Why would it?

[ he knows why. because of the things Damian feels about himself, about his own morality. but if they're to talk about this, they may as well talk about all of it. Stephen's inclined to say there's nothing to talk about but Damian clearly thinks differently, watching him like he's seen something... and Reality knows he's listened to enough of his own thoughts in the past 48 hours. better to let somebody else have a turn. ]

[batricide]

[ He doesn't understand what brought him here, rather than back to his own world. Maybe it was because he didn't want to go back - that there was nothing to go back to. Nothing, nothing at all. Stephen Strange wasn't his first choice to go home with - he wanted to go back with Dick, or with Jason. To be with the family fate yanked away from him.

But he's lived long enough to know he doesn't ever get what he wants. And it's a miracle to get something better than what he had before. This is better, complicated and awful as it might be. Guilty as he may feel for no longer being in his own world, this is better. ]

A train comes barreling down the tracks, fifty people are tied to one track, two to the other.

[ He pulls off the wall and crosses the room, taking a seat across from him. ]

Everyone says they would flip the switch to save the many, but when the time comes, most just freeze and let it happen. Because if they flip the switch, in their eyes they're as much a part of the murder as the negligent conductor.

[ He doesn't need to say he doesn't have that problem. That doubt. It's shown in his every action. Human life is more than numbers, and of course he understands that - but numbers still count for something at the end of it all.]