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aelaer · 4 years

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Whumptober 31: Embrace

And somehow I've completed every prompt for @whumptober2019 with this final one here. Even more crazy, I basically completed NaNoWriMo with this series, only, you know, in October. The Google Doc all my fics live in for this series is at 51,299 words with the following fic's completion. Considering I was absolutely not attempting the challenge when I started this, I'm counting that as a complete NaNoWriMo, even if it does include a lot of the author's notes in that word count. Doesn't matter, it's still my writing!

So thank you very much to the mods for putting this together, because I would have never come up with all of these stories (which includes three series) otherwise.

I'll have the full list linked on my "bingo list" post, and the works have been slowly going up on AO3 for easier reading (and AO3 is only about a week behind at this point) - all the links will come probably in the next week or so. I'll reblog it when it's ready.

This one is the last one in the "demon" series within these prompt fills. If someone told me on the 2nd that my experimentation in first person would lead to this I wouldn't have believed them because I wouldn't have thought I was crazy enough to do every prompt while working a full time job on the freaking fly. *shakes head*

The series: Part One: 20 - Trembling Part Two: 22 - Alt 6 - Lost Part Three: 25 - Humiliation Part Four: 29 - Numb (and fanart(!!!!!) from dragonnan here, tw blood/wounds)

31. Embrace

Christine looked up at the Sanctum doors with a soft frown. Out of all the times she had been to Stephen's weird new home, this was the first time she could remember that she was coming without an advance notice of any sort.

The thing was, though, that after that… that thing (she really didn't like to think about it too much) over three months ago, Stephen had been acting odd. And even if they didn't tend to see each other more than once a month (and sometimes not even that), they kept in touch fairly consistently through texts. She knew he used her as a bit of a remaining connection to the so-called real world and she was happy to provide it. Besides, it was fun to share hospital gossip with him.

But for a while he had been very limited in his conversation until he stopped replying entirely two weeks ago. She texted Wong to see if he was especially busy "being a superhero" but he assured her that it's been relatively quiet since "the demon issue" (ugh, she really didn't want to think about it).

So here she was, come to figure out why the hell he was suddenly ghosting her.

After a moment of hesitation, Christine ascended the two steps up to the doors and firmly knocked upon them. After waiting for thirty seconds with no response, she bit her bottom lip and looked at her purse; maybe she should text someone, see if anyone was available—

Suddenly, the door opened… but she couldn't see anyone on the other side of it.

Magic house, right, she thought dryly as she stepped in. She knew a little bit of the weirdness that encompassed Stephen's new home, but generally speaking the building had acted like a proper, regular building every time she visited (and, to her own credit, she never went into any of the rooms that Stephen told her to leave alone. That made perfect sense to her, but apparently not everyone had her common sense, at least according to Wong).

Long story short, this was different.

"Uh, hello?" she called out into the empty foyer. "Stephen? Wong? … anyone?"

Yeah, it was completely empty. This was… this was definitely unusual.

Still, she had been at his house— the so-called Sanctum— enough times to remember where Stephen's study and the library were, so she decided to search those two rooms. Since the house had let her in, she figured she was more than welcome to.

If she wasn't, well, she'd blame the magic house.

She ventured first towards the library, careful not to touch anything sitting on the shelves or hanging on the walls. Even with her familiarity with the Sanctum, many of the items in the building's collection continued to look rather otherworldly or just felt outright wrong to her.

(Christine had learned early on, maybe her second or third time within the Sanctum, that they had a surprising amount of dangerous things on display for aesthetic purposes. At her remark about that, Stephen had pointed out that they didn't exactly have any children within the Sanctum to worry about. Wong later said that having magical items on display was a fantastic litmus test to weed out any really idiotic and self-destructive novices and apprentices, though that the test had somehow failed with Stephen. Stephen had flipped the bird at that remark, but she had seen it was in good nature, and it definitely made her happy to see the somewhat reclusive man making friends with his new cult.)

The library doors were closed. She knocked, then tried the handle; it opened and she peeked into a library that still looked like it was stuck somewhere in the nineteenth century. It was completely empty.

Now that she thought about it, it was a little weird she had yet to run into anyone. While Stephen's new home was rather empty the first few months he was there, it did not become uncommon to see the occasional passerby, though only a few people stopped to talk with her when she was with Stephen. When she really thought about it, she couldn't actually remember the last time she hadn't seen other people in the Sanctum.

Weird.

Christine shut the library doors again and started towards Stephen's study. It was closer to his bedroom (which she only knew because she came over to bring him soup when he had to cancel a meetup because he was sick, thank you very much), so she went up a level and headed there.

Stephen's study door was closed, too. She knocked and heard some sort of noise just beyond the door. Christine waited, but when nothing happened, she knocked again. "Stephen? It's me. Can I come in?"

Silence. She frowned and tried the door, but it didn't budge. "C'mon, Stephen. Even if you don't want to see me, at least reply to me." Even though she tried to pretend to be genuinely unbothered, the silent treatment did sting. He was meant to be a friend, after all.

The knob on the door jiggled and it opened, but all she saw in the small gap was shades of red. Why was the Cloak opening the door? Was Stephen hurt? At that alarming thought, Christine pushed the door fully open, the Cloak sweeping aside to give her full access of the room.

Stephen was… Stephen was sitting in the air, meditating, it looked like. Her shoulders relaxed when she saw he was okay, but her lips began to downturn as she stepped a bit closer. There were dark shadows under his eyes and it appeared like he had lost a bit of weight. Didn't Wong say that things were currently calm and uneventful? At the moment, Stephen looked something like he did after the alien invasion in 2012, only somehow worse. (She had, of course, seen even worse than this, but she refused to think back on the months after the accident. He was a different man, a much different man now.)

Christine took a couple steps back so she didn't startle him when he came back from wherever he went to when he was meditating. "Is he okay?" she whispered to the Cloak. It still astounded her how communicative the fabric could be.

And she really didn't like how it down-turned to bow its collar, only to end up shrugging its shoulders in a gesture that spoke of uncertainty. Her frown deepened and she went back to watching him and, finally accepting that he might take a while, asked the Cloak, "Are there any books here in English that are safe for me to read?" The Cloak tapped at several options, and she picked one at random to read.

It turned out it was about souls, of all things. She had keyed in that they were very much real things after… after everything that happened with the world in the last few years, but beyond that she only had a vague grasp of what it was, or what she thought it was, from the occasional visit to church as a kid.

The first five pages of the book were both incredibly dry and fascinating at the same time. It reminded her of many medical textbooks; no wonder Stephen was so good at this magic stuff, if this was the tone of the material in all his books. Christine settled down into a rather plush loveseat and got comfortable; her record for waiting on Stephen to "come back" was forty-five minutes, and during that wait Wong had proved to be surprisingly entertaining, funny, and kind. If anything, getting to know him better had made Christine feel a lot better about Stephen's very strange (hah) new role in life.

This time it was just after twenty minutes when she heard Stephen say in clear confusion, "Christine?"

She looked up from the book; he was now standing and his expression matched his tone. She offered a smile. "Oh, there you are."

"What are you doing here?"

If she didn't know him better, she might have been a bit miffed by that greeting. However, she did know him, knew him very well, and he sounded honestly puzzled. Still, she was more than happy to respond to bluntness with bluntness. "I came here to see why you're ghosting me."

Stephen looked startled by the accusation. "I'm not ghosting you— or certainly not intentionally. I've been too busy to check on my phone in a couple weeks."

"No, you haven't," Christine countered, and her comment surprised him so much that she was able to continue without interruption. "I asked Wong if things were busy and if you all were overworked with your jobs. He told me it's been so quiet that he finally got to catch up on the last two seasons of 90 Day Fiance and the newest season of Botched, and I still can't believe he enjoys trash TV so much."

He blinked and shook his head. "I knew you two talked sometimes, but— but that's not the point." He walked over to his desk; the Cloak followed him halfway before stopping in the middle of the room, and turned from him to her, and then back to him. He rounded the desk and flipped through several pieces of paper, looking them over as he said, "It's been quiet, yes, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been busy. There is always work to be done and I just don't have time for other things."

She narrowed her eyes at him and placed the book down before standing. The Cloak was again facing her as she took a couple steps forward. "Other things like the occasional break? Talking with friends? Sleeping?"

Stephen narrowed his eyes at her. "I've been sleeping just fine, thank you."

"Stephen, I can see the dark circles around your eyes from here. You're not hiding it from anyone."

He blinked and quickly strode over to a small mirror on the wall, back to her. "Fuck," he muttered under his breath, but it was quiet enough in the room to hear. When he turned back around, the bags were completely gone and he looked fully refreshed.

Christine gaped. "You're using magic to hide your exhaustion? I can't believe you!" Actually, on second thought, she could very, very much believe he would do something like this. As one of his friends, he drove her absolutely insane sometimes.

"I do what I must," he retorted. "I am still relatively new to my position and there is entirely too much to do and learn, and I cannot show any faltering to the students of Kamar-Taj."

"What about your peers?" she retorted right back. "What about Wong or, or any of the others, these Masters? Does anyone know what you actually look like or what you're putting yourself through?"

"There is no need for them to," Stephen answered, lips pressed into a thin line. "Now if you'll excuse me, I do have work I need to do, as enjoyable as this little conversation has been."

Christine recognized that biting sarcasm a mile away. She pulled out her phone and looked for Wong in her contacts.

"What are you doing?" Now he sounded alarmed.

"Telling Wong that you need a damn babysitter," she snapped.

She managed to type a couple words of her text before she heard sparks and then a golden rope wrapped around her right wrist. It didn't hurt, but its sudden appearance caused Christine to drop her phone in surprise. Her eyes shot up at Stephen, who looked just as shocked as her by its presence in his hand. A beat later and the magic rope was gone and Stephen was stumbling backwards, clear horror in his eyes.

Okay, that was… not good he did it in the first place, but clearly he realized that and looked on the verge of panic. She pushed the issue to the side to talk about later and instead addressed what was in front of her right at this moment. "Hey, hey," she said slowly, calmly. She left her phone on the floor and took two slow steps forward. "It's okay, Stephen. You didn't hurt me. Not even a mark, see?" She lifted her wrist to show him. "It's alright."

"That was not alright," he said. He made it to the back wall and leaned heavily against it. "That was not alright at all."

"I am not angry at you," she answered slowly in a slow, calm voice. "Everything is okay."

"No it's not," he gasped, as if struggling for air. He slid down the wall until he was sitting, and Christine finished crossing the distance between them to sit a few feet away. He stared off for a moment, then met her eyes. "I could've hurt you."

"You didn't," she reminded him.

He shook his head. "But I— Christine, this is why we can't— I can't see you anymore. I only bring danger whether it's through my own actions or due to who I am."

"You are not completely yourself right now," she reminded him gently. "You're clearly exhausted, and even then you caught your temper immediately. That's a vast improvement from a few years ago." He snorted in self-derision, and she pressed on. "As for who you are, I've known for years that there might be risks. I'm okay with that."

"I'm not," he whispered.

She offered him a small smile. "You don't get to decide who wants to be your friend, Stephen. And I know you and your level of stubbornness, but you know I can be just as stubborn if I want to be. And you're worth the effort."

He closed his eyes and shuddered. "I'm not so sure I am."

"You are," she retorted a bit more strongly. Lips downturned in thought, she considered his words. "Is this about that… that demon thing that happened three months ago?" Come to think of it, that did about match the timing when he started seeming a bit off, at least in texting habits.

Stephen pressed his lips together. "That should have never happened. I failed to place basic protection about you and it was a gross oversight on my part."

"Congratulations, you're human," Christine deadpanned, then softened it with a small smile and added, "no matter how much you'd like to think otherwise." He took another shuddering breath and leaned his head back against the wall. In the corner of her eye she saw the Cloak hovering, as if anxious. And she definitely understood that feeling.

But this, this was a start. "Stephen," she said softly, "I think it's time you told us what exactly happened after you got me back home." He stilled, and she couldn't quite read him, but she said, "Please, Stephen. Let your friends back in." She reached out and laid a hand on his calf.

Again he shuddered and, after a moment, he slowly nodded. She gave him a small, encouraging smile before offering her hand. He took it and together they got back up on their feet.

She led him to the loveseat and had him sit down. She sat beside him and asked, "Is it okay if I have Wong join us? Or will that be too hard?"

Stephen closed his eyes and again pressed his lips together, but a moment later responded, "You can call him. He probably deserves an explanation as well."

Christine gently squeezed his forearm, then stood up and went for her dropped phone. She abandoned the text and tried calling Wong instead.

He picked up on the third ring. "Christine," he said in greeting. He didn't sound surprised (she wasn't sure if he ever allowed himself to sound surprised), but she'd like to think that he at least knew she wasn't calling for no good reason. They texted, not called. That was what they did.

"Hey Wong, are you busy?"

"Not with anything I cannot finish later," he replied. "Do you need something?"

"Not me," she answered, walking back to Stephen. He had his head bowed. She placed a supportive hand on his shoulder. "It's Stephen. He could use another friend here, if you don't mind."

A pause that, again, she couldn't read. "Certainly," he answered. "Where are you?"

"In his study. And um, if it wouldn't be too much to ask, could you make that tea of yours?" He made really good tea.

"I can," he answered, and with that he hung up. Succinct, as always.

"He'll probably be here as soon as the tea's ready," she said as she sat back down beside him. "I like his tea."

Stephen slowly nodded. "It's very good tea," he muttered.

Christine peered at his face. "Are you going to wear the mask around him?" she asked.

He exhaled, long and slow. "Not much point if we're having this conversation, is there?"

"It's okay to be human, Stephen."

He shot her a grim smile, and slowly the mask that covered his exhausted face dissipated. The Cloak closed the distance it had to the couch and hovered at Stephen's side.

A couple minutes later, a portal opened straight from the kitchen and Wong floated a tea tray into the study before following it in. The golden sparks disappeared behind him and he turned to look at the two of them on the couch. He stared at Stephen for a moment, then exhaled. "I suspected something," he muttered, almost as if to himself. He let the tray settle on the table in front of the loveseat and summoned the chair from the corner of the room to sit across from it, and from them. Wong settled in the seat and poured out three mugs of tea, keeping Stephen's only partially full. He gave them both their cups wordlessly, then sat back and looked at Stephen with silent, but unjudging expectation.

The man in question huffed as he grabbed the mug and took a short sip. "Now all I need is a blanket to get real cozy," he muttered.

The Cloak, in turn, twisted its way between Stephen's arms and legs and settled across both his and Christine's laps.

She laughed softly at his slight frown at the garment and patted the red fabric on her lap. "Good Cloak."

They fell into a patient silence after that, both Christine and Wong quietly drinking their tea as Stephen gathered his words. She could see his struggle in his small microexpressions that she had only learned after knowing him so well after so many years. Wong, she suspected, could read him nearly as well, if not equally.

Eventually he cleared his throat and began to speak. "In return for Christine to get back safely to Earth, I agreed with the demon Mephisto to play games of his choosing for the next twenty-four hours…"

Christine listened in growing horror as he described each game, seeing how this creature had somehow known about Stephen's innate need to protect and rescue innocents and how he dangled souls that, no matter their decisions, he would certainly see as people taken advantage of in desperate, awful times. Throughout his recollection she occasionally looked at Wong; the man's expression was completely frozen in a soft frown. She had a feeling that it was a mechanism to keep the absolute horror off his face. Goodness knew that she was doing her best to appear supportive and sympathetic as opposed to absolutely horrified.

It only got more difficult as Stephen's account went on. By the time he finally got to where he was let go back to Earth with the six souls he managed to save, her free hand was gripping the Cloak so tightly that she felt that she might rip through it, were it not the Cloak.

"I've replayed those hours time and again in my head," he muttered as he stared down at his shaking hands; the quivering had incrementally increased throughout the tale. "All I can think about is all the ways I could have done more, done better, saved more innocents. It was only due to his whims that I was able to save any."

"Oh, Stephen." She leaned towards him and, without asking for permission, engulfed him in a large hug. She felt the Cloak wrap around her side and she was sure it was pressing against Stephen on the other side.

She felt him let go for a moment and indulge in the embrace before pulling away, and she let go and gave him his space again. She watched him as he looked up to Wong, who had managed to keep his amazing poker face with only the slight frown throughout the conversation. "Wong," Stephen started, "I couldn't— I couldn't bear telling the other Masters about my failures in my first real test as Sorcerer Supreme. And I promise you, I've been doing everything in my power to bridge the gaps that remain in my knowledge and power so that I may be more capable in meeting such threats, whether I have the aid of the Vishanti or not."

Wong exhaled and clasped his hands together. "The experience you call a failure, Stephen, is what all of us consider a success," he started. Stephen immediately opened his mouth to argue, but Wong quickly said, "Let me finish, and try to listen to my words and not the doubt that plagues your mind as I speak." He leaned forward. "When you first left with the demon that refused to name itself, we thought it a lesser one that a sorcerer of your caliber could deal with, even on its own plane of existence. Any one of us present would have been able to, though it would not necessarily be easy. It was with that thought in mind that we left you with advice rather than protests, though Master Hamir was correct in his suspicions that the demon was unusually more powerful than those we've encountered in recent memory.

"I know you have been doing a lot of research on demonology, Stephen, and what information we have upon the greater demons known as the Hell-Lords. There is a reason that, despite thousands of years of collecting knowledge, what we know of them is so little. Hell-Lords are very powerful due to the number of souls they have attained over the uncounted millennia in which sentient, reasoning lifeforms have existed. They gather more souls to be ever the strongest, but they are not desperate for every sentient being they come across. Hell-Lords are unlike lesser demons in that they will kill if they don't think the person's soul is worth the effort."

Christine grabbed at the Cloak again and looked again to Stephen; he, in turn, was looking at her with a tight expression.

They both turned to Wong as the man continued, "Had we known this was one of the Hell-Lords, we would have done as much as we could to stop you, perhaps even by force— though I doubt that would have worked in our favour. So we would have seen you off and declared you dead, more than likely."

Stephen's brow furrowed. "Dead? Immediately? Why?"

"The last time a Sorcerer Supreme fought a Hell-Lord within their own domain and lived was the first one in Agamotto. The last time anyone encountered one was the Ancient One in Germany at the end of WWII. From what I understand there were three Hell-Lords present in the spring of 1945 in that country, but as they were upon Earth's plane, they were manageable. Facing one in its own dimension is unprecedented in modern history. That you were able to play its games with enough wit to not only survive, but to also bring back six souls that would have otherwise been lost, is a great victory."

Christine watched as Stephen's gaze fell to his hands, still trembling. "It did not feel like a victory," he mumbled. "Each test, each game I failed in some manner."

Wong shook his head. "Each test was specifically designed to take advantage of what Mephisto would consider your weaknesses, though I assure you your passion for the soul of the individual is considered one of your greatest strengths by all of us." Stephen lifted his head in surprise, but Wong continued on. "Consider this: if it had been Hamir in your place, one of his tests would have involved something that would give a person with two hands a distinct advantage. If it had been Minoru, you know there would have been something with spiders." Stephen's lips twitched upward, and Wong raised his brow pointedly. "The point, Stephen, is that this demon is known as a deceptive trickster. He twisted his so-called games to place you in the worst possible position and keep you in a position of doubt."

"Out of all of this, what I do find concerning," Wong admitted, "is that he knew you so well. It is possible that he has been watching you for some time."

Stephen's brow furrowed. "Why would he do that?"

"It is hard to say," he answered. "Demons are soulless creatures with no concept of time beyond the souls which they trick and enslave. It is thought that some have some greater perception of the wider multiverse and their realities; it is possible that Mephisto has some small knowledge from that."

Christine did not like where this conversation was going, and there was still one rather important thing to address at that time. "I think what you should get out of this, Stephen," she started, "is that you are most certainly not a failure. You can't be so hard on yourself."

He gave her an imploring look, as if willing her to understand him. "I have a great responsibility to this world and I cannot—"

"No, she's completely right," Wong interrupted. "Kamar-Taj calls for devotion wholly to defending reality, but you can't do that if you're half-dead from exhaustion."

"I'm not—"

"You wouldn't be using glamour if it wasn't an issue," Wong pointed out, and Stephen had nothing to retort to that. "And," he added, "the occasional lunch or ice cream break is not only permitted, but encouraged to retain one's sanity and reminder as to why we do what we do."

Stephen gave him a long look. "Are you saying you do it for ice cream?"

"And so that reality TV may flourish unhindered," Wong replied, and Christine quickly covered a surprised laugh. "If there are indeed areas you believe you may be lacking in knowledge, all the Masters will be more than willing to assist you, though I feel that you are equal if not more knowledgeable in most fields. But we can talk about that tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? Why tomorrow?"

"Because you look absolutely awful and clearly need to sleep for the next twenty-four hours," he retorted.

Stephen frowned. "I'm awake and functioning."

Christine wrinkled her nose. "Barely. Get some sleep!"

The Cloak lifted itself off their laps and waited expectantly beside the study door, causing its keeper to make a face at it.

Wong stood up and walked over to him, offering him a hand. "Listen to your friends. We can discuss more details about what happened and where we need to go tomorrow, but for now, you need to rest. No matter what you have been telling yourself, you do deserve it."

He hesitated, but for only a couple seconds before taking Wong's proffered hand and letting his friend hoist him up. "Don't let me sleep too long," Stephen muttered.

"You're sleeping for the next week if you have to," Wong retorted.

"I can get some drugs that would do that," Christine quipped as she got to her feet.

"No need; we have spells that can do the same, but thank you for the offer all the same."

"You're both terrible," Stephen moaned as he trudged to the door. The Cloak fit itself snugly across his shoulders.

"You're welcome," she said in return, and he glanced at her with a soft, but very warm smile that still made her heart do things that it shouldn't do, all these years later. Damn that man. "I'll text you."

"You'll hear from me," he promised, and then he turned and let Wong and the Cloak usher him towards his bedroom for some much-needed sleep and, for the first time in a long time, a peaceful time of rest.

—————

(Anndddd the series is done! Wooow. Whoda thought this was going to be a thing, because I certainly didn't.

You can take the headcanon that Wong is an enthusiastic fan of trashy reality TV shows from my cold dead hands. Definitely inspired by my two co-workers I work with the most, though I have had the occasional reality TV show binge watch.)

#whumptober2019 #no.31 #embrace #stephen strange #doctor strange #christine palmer #wong #doctor strange fanfic #genre: angst #genre: friendship #my writing #my fanfiction

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