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“What if everyone forgot who I was?”
“What?”
“They're here 'cause of me, right? Because I'm Peta Parker? So cast a new spell: but this time make everyone forget who Peta Parker is. Make everyone forget... me.”
“No.”
Once upon a time, there was a man who had the power of gods in his palm, dedicated to the protection of reality, but he fell in love with a girl who had the powers of a spider and gave up his universe rather than sacrifice the memory of her.
An infinite number of people who knew Peta Parker was Spider-Man came bleeding through the cracks of a splintered skyline, just as Dr. Strange predicated. All at once, all too many.
Wong arrived shortly, along with an army of master sorcerers and would-be sorcerers—would-never-be sorcerers.
Peta looked down at the ground, down at her friends. Fear froze her feet to the spot.
Dr. Strange, the most powerful man she knew, conjured a dozen spells to thwart the intruders, each one stronger than the last. His efforts were in vain. He then summoned beasts and demons from other dimensions, ones he had tamed and claimed, to prolong their defence against the inevitable invasion.
In all honesty, there wasn't much of a battle. All Peta knew was: one second she was leaping down to fight the frontrunners of those who knew her secret identity, and they kept coming and coming, never letting up; and then there was a roaring in her ears, and then—
Planet Earth shook—a terrible, terrible rumble of seismic proportions.
She was knocked to the ground, painfully, desperately, dirt and rubble digging into the ridges of her spine. Something fleshy and warm was pressed to her front, something resembling a hand gripping the nape of her neck and cupping her head, pushing her forward. Facial hair scratched her forehead, and she knew, even without her five human senses, without her spider tingle, she knew she was being held by Dr. Strange.
Her saviour.
By the time the world stopped shaking, it was already dead. Reality had melted into nothingness, time ceased to exist, life turned to ash.
There was just Peta, eyes scrunched tight, face forced into the junction of Dr. Strange's neck, his large palm cradling the back of her head. Peta and Dr. Strange—his weight pressing her down, his body encasing her, trapping her against him.
The quiet was deafening.
Hot carbon dioxide was all that she could taste, could feel, could fucking comprehend at this juncture. It's true, though, what they say about breathing into paper bags to calm down—in spite of the whole bad-for-the-environment rap it got, carbon dioxide did wonders for stopping panic attacks.
Centuries came and went before they eventually shifted their position, Dr. Strange loosening just enough for her to wiggle free from his death grip.
“What happened?” she gasped, chest tight, winded.
He disentangled himself a limb at a time, unravelling before her very eyes, blocking what remained of their world.
He reached down, extended a hand.
She took it.
She immediately wished she hadn't.
Bones littered their surroundings, what were once human beings decomposed in a shattered second, reduced to mere skeletons, whatever humanity remained stripped from them.
Questioning, Peta turned to Dr. Strange, her protector, the man who prioritised her above all others. Shell-shock: that was what they called returning soldiers from the Great War, the ones riddled with trauma. Funnily enough, that was how she would describe her reaction right about now.
“We're the eye of the storm,” Dr. Strange told her. His spell in her name—the composite of which shattered the very fabric of reality.
Peta vomited.
Dr. Strange was kind, kinder than she thought he should have been. He calmly held her hair as she hunched over on the spot, and violently threw up stomach acid and dried blood from injuries she had swallowed.
God, that fight felt like a lifetime ago.
Coughing, she stood tall on shaky legs, the tears in her eyes only in part due to the rough bodily action.
Dr. Strange offered her a smile, or what she thought was a smile. It must have started off as a smile, only to then get confused halfway through the process and wind up as a kind of tragic grimace.
Nonetheless, she offered a brand of her own.
“Come on,” he murmured, choked. When she spared a glance at him, she saw his grey eyes rimmed red.
She took his hand in hers, lacing their fingers together tight, tight, tight. Never letting go, not ever, because it was her and him—here at the end of the universe.
In silence, they walked.
The Sanctum Sanctorum stood alone, crumbling and destitute, bricks suspended, melting into inky blackness, but still intact.
Dr. Strange's hand could have crushed hers, but she was strong. Her body was made to test power.
He led her through the gates, hand scorching a brand at her lower back.
She didn't know how long they'd taken up residence in the ruins of his Sanctum. She had no way of knowing—it wasn't as though night and day existed anymore, not even as theoretical constructs. Time and space just... disintegrated into the nothingness that was their home now. Honestly, she preferred it like that. Made it all seem like one, horrible, drawn-out nightmare that, like all nightmares, would eventually end.
Except this wasn't a nightmare. This was her new reality.
Peta did her best to avoid the good doctor. He confined himself to the top level of the Sanctum, so she silently made the lower levels her own, sleeping down in the undercroft.
“The undercroft,” Ned repeated, face alight with wonder, imagining the magic and mystery of their world. Forever remaining in a now-obsolete past.
Banishing that memory from her head, she set about redecorating.
Every day, she had new clothes to wear. She suspected Dr. Strange was behind it, employing some kind of weird magic to make it so that she always had clothes to wear. Same went for food, as well. Apparently materialistic items are the easiest form of magic.
She left voicemails. Messages for Ned and MJ, her dearest friends, and for May—a study in faux normality: general updates on life so far, a rendition on the events of what occurred, lame jokes that would have had Ned laugh and MJ roll her eyes
And so many apologies she choked on them.
Five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
Peta wished she could say she handled it well—what happened, what was happening, what would now always happen. Time was irrelevant, here, she found. Dr. Strange made his presence known, made sure she knew she wasn't alone. Something that would once have made her warm all over now made her simmer, anger hot in her blood.
She screamed, cried, pleaded. She told him she hated him, blamed him; told him it was his fault. She was selfish and she was cruel and she was scared, and for dark, horrible, twisted reason it was easier to put it all on him.
And Dr. Strange took it. Took her anger and her rage, took it and shaped it around himself like armour, absorbed all that passionate energy she was so willingly expending and never once reciprocated. Fashioning weapons from it, his fingertips blackening.
But Peta wanted him to bleed. She wanted him to rage with her, against her, wanted to see his expression darken, his eyes as cold and grey as steel; wanted to see him as furious as he had been when she webbed him in his own dimension.
It was wrong, and she knew it, and she hated herself for it—but she couldn't stop. Dr. Strange was there, and refused to perform the reality-saving spell for her, and the universe shattered as a result.
Say what you will about him, Thanos had the decency to leave half of the universe alive, and Peta needed Dr. Strange to hurt so she didn't have to.
Eventually—
Her throat rubbed raw.
“It's my fault.”
Dr. Strange stopped: dead.
Breath shuddering, she repeated—shock and disbelief and so, so much regret— “It's all my fault.” Capitulating under the weight of a universe, billions of lives worth of guilt, she doubled over.
All at once, he came back to life.
He caught her, protecting her superhuman body from breaking into a thousand pieces. He fell to the floor with her, lowering her gently, making sure she was unharmed and safe and in his arms.
“Just put it all on me,” Dr. Strange ordered, commanded, cracking at the seams. “Put it all on me, Parker.”
“Stephen...” she sobbed, broken. She hadn't used his name since he told her to call him sir. It had made her feel special when she was relegated to first-name basis, and then like a slap in the face when he took that privilege away so easily as her incompetence reared its ugly head—hadn't felt she should.
Now, she needed him. Needed Stephen, and not the doctor. Needed him on a personal, intimate, biological level.
His voice caught as though she had reached up and crushed his windpipe with her bare hands. “Put it all on me. I can take it. Let me take it for you.”
“I don't understand, I don't,” Peta hiccupped, lulled by the rhythmic glide of Dr. Strange's hand against her back. “You told Tony you wouldn't hesitate to let either of us die to protect the Time Stone.”
She could feel the rumble of his words as he agreed, “That's right.”
“So then why did you—why wouldn't erase everyone's memory of me, I don't—”
He sighed, then.
“Why don't you get some sleep?” he said instead. “Hm? You need rest, Peta. Let me take care of you.”
She gripped him, hard. “Don't leave me.” Please, she wanted to beg, but her tone spoke for itself.
There was something dark dancing there in the grey of his eyes, something she should be frightened of, she knew, but for some reason all it made her feel was safe. “Never.”
She didn't know where he went, where he was always going, but this was where he was now: with her.
He led her, strong and gentle—up, up, up into his bedroom, his room of rest. Peta, grateful, followed him.
That night, she found her rest at the steady thrum of Stephen's heart.
In spite of the terrible atrocities that devastated their reality, life in the grave of the New York Sanctum wasn't all bad.
Stephen was good to her, treated her well—treated her as someone other than the girl whose foolish actions tore the universe apart. In all honesty, she was expecting anger and disappointment to decorate Stephen's features, but to her surprise he belied none of that.
He left, just as he did every day since—well, since. Peta occupied herself the only way she knew: by acting a complete dork.
Example: she tried to teach herself to dance—badly. It was, obviously, a terrific mistake, but she took it on the chin. It wouldn't do to moan about all the things you weren't good at. Practice makes perfect, Aunt May would say.
Would have said.
Her senses didn't warn her, no longer recognised him as a threat, and Stephen snuck up on her from behind.
His arms were snakes around her waist, warm and secure. Peta immediately relaxed in his hold; safe.
“Where have you been?” she murmured, wrapping her arms along his, fortifying his embrace.
A shadow of a kiss pressed atop her head. “Just sorting a few things out. Don't worry, kid.”
Something about the statement rang false to her; an experiment in feigned normality that did not produce viable results. However, she quickly shunted those thoughts to one side. She trusted him.
“Dance with me,” was her only requirement, her solution to remove those few traces of doubt that lingered in her mind. There was no music, but he could soon fix that.
With a swish and a flick, music filled the expansive emptiness of the Sanctum Sanctorum. He proffered his hand, a smile playing along his lips.
Peta took it.
He spun her around. She fell into his grasp laughing, hand on his chest. It didn't escape her notice that he kept it there, and she wanted: tragically, cruelly, selfishly.
Lust burned away at her higher brain functions, incinerating all sense of normalcy. Attraction was to be expected, she reasoned, considering they were—quite literally—the only two people left in the entire universe, and life will out, as they say. But she got the impression that this went beyond evolutionary human instinct.
His hand dropped to her waist, and she danced.
She had always known Stephen to be an attractive man, if completely unobtainable. Sure, she didn't have much time to properly acknowledge how handsome he was back on Titan, but then she died and came back on his orders, and she felt again.
Imprinting, she called it then. He was the first person to touch her body after she died, the first person to touch her as she drew her breathe once more—the importance of skin-to-skin contact could not be overstated.
“What do you want for dinner?” Stephen asked; voice uncharacteristically rough.
Startled, shaken from her reverie, it took her a few moments to recover enough to say, “Um. Pizza?”
Another example: it concerned the time she spent trying to make a cake using ingredients Stephen managed to salvage.
Well... she said, make a cake. The reality turned out to be: Peta mixing cake batter.
And then eating it. You know, like she was five again.
Don't worry. Stephen was equally alarmed at her efforts.
“You do know,” he started, out of nowhere, his voice the only way she knew he was there. “Cake batter is one of the worst things you can eat. And yes, Peta—I know what face you're going to make—you can trust what I say. I'm a doctor.”
“Oh, my god, you're a doctor?” Peta retorted, mouth full of cake batter. “Why didn't you say so before? I would have actually respected you.”
Stephen's laugh, light and carefree, made her chest tighten, her gut tremble.
He pressed himself to her back, and her heightened senses could feel every beat of his heart.
His lips were hot against her earlobe as he murmured, “Just lose the cake batter, would you?”
Peta laughed.
That night, she was awoken by the most disturbing nightmare; a dream made real.
A boy: her age, probably, his face split open, eyes bloodshot, standing in front of a mirror begging her to, “Please, don't let him do any more damage. Please, you're another me, so I know you understand me. And I know, I know how this must sound. But I swear, this is not a dream. This is real. It's happening right now. Just look at his hands. He needs to be stopped. Doctor Strange. Stephen. He's destroying my—” A loud bang echoed from somewhere; Peta could feel the aftershocks even here.
Other Peter—because that had to be who he was, there was no other plausible explanation—turned manic. “He's caused an incursion in my universe, Peta. He's destroying everyone's universe. Only you can stop him. Stop him from dreamwalking. Quick! Make sure he cannot access the Darkhold. The Book of the Damned. Please!”
Peta awoke with a start, tears in her eyes, heart thundering like a death knell.
This is real, that's what Other Peter said, and, fuck, but she instinctively believed him.
Stephen was blissfully asleep. Holding her in his arms, keeping her safe.
She peered at his slumbering frame, raking her gaze down his sleep-twitching limbs, watching and waiting for any acknowledgement that her Stephen was responsible for the death of a thousand universes, even a fragment of a hint that would tell her of his actions.
There wasn't one.
Wait a minute—
The Darkhold!
Dream male her mentioned the Darkhold in the nightmare, and Peta would bet her arm its secret was buried somewhere in the grave of Stephen's Sanctum.
Ergo: she went searching, carefully extracting herself from his grasp. Her tingle was mostly intact, guiding her to places she would rather not set food in, but that's beside the point.
Her expedition led her across a door; a door that, with every fibre of its being, resisted her urge to understand it, propelled her away from it.
As always, Peta resisted.
She opened the door, finding candles adorning the centre of a large, spacious room. Something she imagined would the masterpiece of some second-rate horror film, but—what did she know? Maybe he had a perfectly reasonable, plausible, explanation for this surprising interior design.
God, she hoped he did.
She really fucking hoped.
Walking further into the room, her whole body tingled, every nerve dialled up way past eleven. The input was off the scales. Unapologetic dark evil lurked in this room, the whole room stinking of it: a place not even a spider would spin a web.
There, in the middle of the candle circle she found a book. A large, hefty tome, crafted in a Latin tongue. There was no way she could begin to understand it, and all she was looking at was the cover.
Nevertheless, as if possessed by some mystical power, she moved to open the book, and—
A hand snatched it clean out of her grasp.
Gasping, Peta turned to the source of the unexpected movement, the force that had taken even her spidey sense by surprise, and was horrifically unsurprised to see Stephen standing there: chest bared; hair sleep-tousled; eyes flat, angry and afraid, downright terrified.
Her eyes snapped to his: shock and horror warring for dominance. “This is the Book of the Damned, and—”
“And I'll be damned if I let you look at it,” Stephen retorted, sharp and cutting.
“But,” Peta protested, infuriatingly weak, losing her mind to magic and confusion.
“Look at me,” he breathed, rough, more of a hiss than a whisper, white-hot and scathing. Spoken with a dragon's breath, not a man's. “Just: look at me, Peta.”
His hand touched her cheek, cupping her in his palm. Her face was so tiny in comparison, trapped in his grasp.
Her eyes, as if on autopilot, locked on to his, her pupils dancing between his irises, hauntingly grey. Hypnotising.
A crow of death.
And he knew. He knew—
“Show me your hands,” was the first thing she said, the command spilling from her mouth; a reflex she could not deny. Her voice shook, anxiety ruining the effort.
Because—she had seen them. She was sure of it. Blackened, charred, damned. His hands: blackened fingertips, necrosis spreading the longer they existed in this nightmare. How the hell had she not noticed this sooner? Every time she opened her mouth to comment on them, the words were stolen away from her. Almost like he... almost like he was deliberately averting her eyes from them, halting her vision from perceiving the sheer wrongness of it all.
Stephen's face did not change, but that mattered not. Her eyes were already trained on his hands, his fingers, the blackness that corrupted his skin. Jesus, how it stained him. Tainted with the brush of evil.
“You've created multiple incursions,” she whispered, unmitigated fright turning her words into whispers, having heard the word echoed in her dream.
Stephen was utterly without remorse. “Thousands.”
Her gasp morphed into a sob.
Before she had a chance to spin one of her own, Stephen caught her in his web, arms coming up to hold her tight, tight, tight.
“You have to stop,” she whispered.
“If I stop now, all those universes I've killed, their sacrifice will have been for nothing,” he stated: cool, calm.
“Their sacrifice?” she repeated, disbelief not half a strong enough word to convey the tone she used; the English language failing her as she failed the entire universe, and universes beyond. “They didn't consent to this. You—you're—”
Stephen's face was a canvas: blank, awaiting her palette to bring colour to his cheeks. “I'm what?”
A monster.
The truth was right there. Tip of her tongue.
Except: no, she couldn't say it. Not that; never that. This wasn't his creation.
It was hers.
As she struggled to vocalise her thoughts, Stephen continued:
“I fell in love with you on Titan,” he murmured, and as soon as he opened his mouth she knew she was lost. “Observing all those futures, do you know how many of them you sacrifice yourself in?”
Speechless, all she could do was shake her head.
Stephen continued, narrating, “I saw realities in which you sacrificed yourself for the Guardians, people who originally attacked you out of nowhere. I saw ones where you valiantly push Tony Stark out of the way of the Power Stone, ones where you volunteer yourself for a suicide mission, ones where I sacrifice you for the Time Stone.”
Peta looked away, uncomfortable in the face of his adoration.
He cupped her jaw harshly, keeping her tethered and leashed to him. His face was a study in melancholy: wretched heartbreak and a rage borne of grief decorating his features.
“Do you think I bend the rules for just anyone?” he added, and he was talking about the Runes of Kof-Kol, now; magic she all but begged him to perform in her name. “That I perform dangerous spells just because I was asked?”
Blindsided, she was frozen to the spot.
“I do it for you.”
Peta's breath hitched: love and anguish and devastation a horrible picture on her face.
“If you think I would let myself forget you,” Stephen said, hissed, so utterly depraved, so utterly wrecked, “then you are mistaken.”
Peta, trying not to, swallowed ash.
He traced a blackened fingertip down the apple of her cheek. “I would let a thousand universes collapse before I give you up.”
His hands came to cup her face, so big in relation.
“I'm doing this for you,” he said, unfathomably vulnerable. “I'm restoring our universe to what it was. I just—need a little more power to get there.”
Peta's eyes flickered between his.
“I love you,” Stephen breathed.
“I know,” she said because she literally couldn't help herself. Then, hunched in body and voice, “I'm sorry that you do.”
Then:
She kissed him.
Misattribution of arousal, she remembered reading once—if in a high-anxiety situation, the body can physiologically respond to fear with arousal. And, fuck, but if this wasn't a wretched cacophony of tragedy and romance; of love and fear.
She feared him.
She loved him.
“Peta,” he grunted as they broke apart, a string of salvia joining their mouths together. He looked wrecked, tortured, as though she had just driven him to the brink of insanity with nothing more than her lips on his, hanging on by a whisper of a thread. “You don't have to.”
She kissed him again—sweet, this time, chaste. “I want to,” she whispered, promised, and delighted in the feel of his hands creating bruises at her hips.
He grasped her waist, and she hoisted herself on to his frame, letting him bear her weight in its entirety. Lips pressed against the lobe of his ear, she muttered, hot and heavy, “You can see into my head, can't you?”
Stephen released a shuddering breath.
“Good.” She kissed his cheek, fear making her bold. “I want you to. Look.”
She wanted him to see all that she had to hide; all she felt about him.
He deposited her on the bed, and immediately crawled on top of her: body-on-body, leaving no space for air.
“Please,” she whimpered, because for a heartbeat of a lifetime she could forget the devastation Stephen left in his wake, the terrible damages he inflicted on ignorant universes. She was allowed that much. Surely?
(Peta would never call herself the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man ever again.)
Carefully, he stripped her of her clothing, and her tentative, inexperienced hands did the same to him.
He was a wonder: a statue exuding so much power it took her breath away.
Stephen brought her to ruin with his mouth.
“Sorry,” she gasped, ashamed at having come in mere seconds. “‘m just sensitive.” She couldn't contain a needy whimper as she felt the vibrations of Stephen's throaty chuckle where he rested against her thigh.
“Don't be.” He sucked a mark into her flesh. “I like it.”
He caught her gaze, and—
She realised: this is a god. She had a god above her, grey eyes dark with promise and vengeance, power and evil marked in his soul. An angel and a devil.
And he was hers. He did it all for her. Everything.
Her legs fell open, wide.
She couldn't picture her friends' faces, but she knew what Stephen Strange looked like when he came.
He was restoring their universe, she told herself in the days, weeks, months, time afterwards—restoring their reality. All other universes paled in comparison. So what if he had to hop into another Stephen Strange’s body, steal their power for his own, risk destroying a random universe for the sake of theirs?
He was her universe's protector; not theirs.
(God, she hated herself.)
Stephen showed her a glimpse of their universe—made whole again under his knife:
“Look,” he said then, and the world exploded before her eyes.
“It's beautiful,” she had breathed, the only sign of life among his intricate illusion. Her throat threatened to clamp shut, overcome with traitorous emotion at the sight of their universe after so long.
She felt his eyes on her. “Yeah. This will be ours soon. I promise. Just a little longer.”
In any case, if this was to be her life now, she couldn't very well live in a shrine to the former. There was no way she would survive.
And she couldn't leave him alone. No matter what he'd done—she had done it, too. They were in this together. Now and forever.
“How long have we been here?” Peta tentatively broached one day.
“Years,” he said before heaving a sigh. “Years and years and years.”
As the beginnings of a frown carved their way on her face, he clarified, “I suspended our biological clocks,” and, god, it was the easy, cavalier manner in which he addressed it that made something inside Peta anxious.
They were playing at a life on Eternity's dime. And he hadn't yet told her the cost. Somehow, she doubted he ever would.
She wondered if she should be more outraged, more incensed. It was true, he had made life-changing decisions about her life without consulting her, and yet-
She was just: so tired.
Maybe for once it was okay to surrender control.
Of course, he didn't always come back by the time she went to bed. Sometimes, he had to stay longer in another Stephen's body. Other times, he was contending with a demonic force of untold power, wrestling with it, subjugating it—gods and demons equal prey to him.
On the nights he wasn't there, she wore his blue tunic to sleep.
“Are you wearing my clothes?” he asked once after he slipped in halfway through her sleep. He wrapped an arm around her tummy, his chest snug at her back, trapping her. He sounded absolutely exhausted, but just conscious enough to retain his unflinching curiosity.
“Smells like you,” she mumbled into the pillow, smothering her smile at his barely-there chuckle and the imprint of his kiss on her clothed shoulder.
After that, he never failed to keep spare clothes of his around for those fitful, dreamless nights.
Sometime in the vast expanse of time and space and death, she told him about Uncle Ben, Aunt May. The lives her actions stole from her.
The aftermath was quiet, mood sombre and still.
“I had a sister,” Stephen surprised her by saying.
Peta didn't breathe for fear accidentally making him stop.
His head came to lean against hers, the burden of it heavy on her crown. “She died, and I couldn't—”
He cut himself off, the remainder catching at his throat, refusing to give.
Peta felt tears prick her eyes at the note of blame evident in his tone, and for the first time in... however long it had been since their universe died, she found herself thinking of Aunt May. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel warm blood drying on her hands, a single, solitary tear sliding down an unresponsive body.
She reached down and clasped Stephen's hand in hers. Fingers entwined, she ignored how the Darkhold had desecrated his.
Peta woke up screaming.
Stephen was there, holding her shivering body, gently shushing her, running a soothing hand up and down her spinal column until her lungs remembered to respire at a regular pace.
“What happened?” he whispered after a few moment's pause.
You better go say your goodbyes, you don't have long.
Thank you, sir.
Call me Stephen.
Panting quietly still, she shook her head.
Stephen made a noise. “Look at me,” he said. “I felt that spell. Don't worry, it didn't affect us here.” He kissed her crown. “I made sure of it.”
Dread pooled in her gut at the dark look in his eyes, at the sharpness of his grin, at the way in which he said, “Perhaps I'll pay him a visit myself.”
“No, don't,” Peta whispered, brushing his hair away from his eyes, because she knew the implicit meaning behind his threat, knew what it would cost her dream counterpart's universe. Peter Parker had already suffered too much. “Please. Not that one. I don't want...” she bit her lip, letting him see the plea in her expression. “I don't want that Peter to blame himself.”
Like I do.
The sentiment was thick in the air, cloying. Peta tried to swallow; failed.
Stephen's exhale was harsh, but he nonetheless acquiesced.
He made to get up, to begin his dark ritual on an unsuspecting universe to revive theirs.
“Be safe?” she said in a voice she wished came out stronger.
Stephen paused before he left, looking down at her, still naked under the covers where he left her.
His smile was soft. “I'm always safe,” he said, the corner of his mouth quirking up slightly. It was enough to bring a short smile to Peta's lips.
She kissed him goodbye, and watched as he left for the one room she was forbidden from entering, sin thick on her tongue.
One time he came back bleeding.
“Oh my god,” she breathed, hearing him crash outside the damned room, racing to his side.
He collapsed into her, entrusting her to bear his weight.
“What happened?”
Stephen muttered something unintelligible.
Her brain switched into damage control. Quickly, she ferried him over to their bedroom, settling him down atop the covers. His face was flushed, eyes scrunched in a pain too visceral, a pain defying words.
She ripped open his bloodied tunic with little care, the fabric tearing easily at her command, and—
Peta froze.
Thick, oozing gashes found their mark along his abdomen, draping a sheet of sweat across his entire body. He was shaking, shivering, teeth chattering, breath hissing.
Stephen growled in frustration, his wounds red and angry. Penance for their sins.
She dressed them as best she could, grabbing a washcloth and some water to soothe the fever that was already beginning to break out on his forehead.
“Come on. You get to play doctor whenever you want,” she said, ignoring his weak attempts to brush her aside. “It's about time you hand me the knife.”
Grumbling, his efforts did cease, though she got the sense it was testament to his fatigue than any real want. Within moments, he slipped away into unconsciousness, having been stolen away by dreams. She hoped and prayed they would not come to take him away.
She kept a watchful eye on him, her own sleep be damned.
These were serious, life-threatening injuries. Stephen was lucky to still breathe.
It occurred to her then that they were the bad guys. Whoever had done this to Stephen did so because they were protecting their world, their reality. A feat she and Stephen had done before.
And now they were the monsters. Now they were some other universe’s multiversal threat.
Perhaps it was the variant he possessed; another world's Stephen Strange who inflicted mortal wounds on his own body, sacrificing himself so his powers could not be stolen.
Bile clawed up her oesophagus, burning the fleshy inside, scratching at her throat.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions—isn't that what they say?
And yet—
Stephen had committed these atrocities all for the sake of her.
So: who's the real villain, here?
Stephen recovered.
Just as she had been every night since she tended to his wounds, Peta was nervous, wondering, waiting for him, eyeing the darkness at the contrast of candlelight.
Then:
The shadows coalesced into the shape of a man.
He wrapped his arms around her. “I'm sorry I was late.”
“It's okay,” she said in response. She grabbed his hands and pulled them around her; firmer, harder, needier. “I missed you.”
His kiss was like a brand, defiling the skin at the nape of her neck. “Missed you, too, sweetheart.”
“Promise me you won’t.” She cut herself off with a bite to the lip, the sentence left chewed up, spat out in disgust.
Except Stephen was unwilling to let it go. “Promise you what?”
Clearly, he wasn’t about to ignore her ask. On the contrary, whatever slight fatigue she registered upon his entrance—residue of his injuries, no doubt, but she wasn’t a physician—dissipated into nothingness. The very nothingness that consumed their entire existence.
Exhaling as slowly as she possibly could, her own stupid attempt to prolong her pathetic, selfish want, she reluctantly muttered, “Promise me you won’t leave me.” Repeating the plea she had uttered in the very beginning, back when she was ignorant of his malpractice.
Much as he had that time, he promised, his grip on her deathly.
Of course, their tentative truce would eventually come to an end. Peta's guilty responsibility and Stephen's dark resolve could only co-exist for so long. There could only be one winner.
Spoiler alert: it wasn't her.
It was Stephen who shattered it. One morning—or their version of morning, anyway—he simply turned to her and said, “You're not happy.”
Peta opened her mouth to refute his observation, but no sound came forth.
His chuckle was a rasp that grated on her eardrums. Sometimes, she looked at him, and thought: who are you?
“You think I don't see the way you look at me?” he continued, muttered, advancing on her. “The way you look at my hands?”
Peta breathed shakily.
He paused, a hairsbreadth away from where she stood opposite him, letting loose his own sigh. “You fear me.”
“I—”
“It's okay,” Stephen assured her after a beat, her heart pounding away, the drumbeat so deafening she was sure he could see it thrum at her jugular. “I understand.”
Peta was at a loss for words. “I love you,” she offered, terrible truth decorating her confession; the only answer she had at her disposal—the one certainty she had left to her name.
Stephen smiled. Those sharp eyes of his roamed over every inch of her face, of her lightness in contrast to the darkness she'll soon feel. She thought she could see a shade of remorse hiding in the shadows of his face, but it was gone before she could properly register it.
“I'll make you feel better,” he offered. “I'll make you happy. I promise.”
Her heart briefly lightened, and she knew he would, trusted him with every spidey sense, every tingle she possessed, because one day: Peta would finally find rest and watch the sun rise on a grateful universe.