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mechanicalmegg · 4 months ago

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In the Margins of Poetry Sonnets

This is my first time posting here from Ao3. Hope I've done it right!

After his little foray into the Multiverse, Stephen Strange is tired. He's moved on from Christine and met a very complicated woman from the Dark Dimension with whom he enjoys occasional sex, but something is missing in his life. Something is always missing. He's playing pseudo-father to America, best friend to Wong, and is often found holding the weight of the world on his shoulders (not to mention Cloak.)

Caroline Summers meets with couples in love almost weekly, and although there is nothing more beautiful than a wedding, she is tired. Always the planner, never the bride. It doesn't help that she's been in an on-again-off-again thing with a man who runs at the scent of commitment, and she feels that something is missing in her life. Something is always missing. She's practically helping to raise her nephew and feels the crushing, brutal expectations of her older sister at all times.

Something is always missing. But perhaps if they look closely and read between the lines, they may find what they're searching for in the margins of the poems that have inspired love for centuries.

Read it on Ao3!

Chapter One: There Are Moments...

~Caroline~

I know instantly that something is wrong, the way one instinctively reaches for something falling or the way goosebumps form when it's cold out. I am aware, yet I cannot act fast enough to save myself.

It's raining, fat heavy drops that my windshield wipers can't fight off, which means I'm driving with a missing sense. Visibility is horrendous, and I can hardly see the front of my car as the tick of the wipers reaches its peak. They can't go any faster. It's daylight out, which helps, and I know that I'm driving well under the speed limit for Greenwich Village. I bring my car to a steady stop at the intersection and take a laborious look around me in all directions.

It's a cold rain, an Autumn rain, and my heater is blasting to ward off the chill. My nephew sits in the back, preoccupied with the fidget toy he'd gotten at the science museum. I'm being extra vigilant because he's with me. Precious cargo. I stay fully stopped for a tick longer, and as I let off the break and move forward down Bleecker Street, that's when I know everything is wrong.

There are moments in life we look back on to understand how we got from point A to point B. Moments in which we wrestle with the flow of time, the steady beat towards death, where we beg and plead to change things, anything. Time is a thief, that's the philosophy. We waste precious moments on our phones, buried in work to make a living, not telling those around us that we love them, and one day we look up and realize that life moves on without us. Well, this moment, the moment I drive into the intersection of Bleecker Street and Fenno Place during heavy rain on a Wednesday afternoon in November, is the moment that changes my entire life.

The accident is quick in reality. I don't experience it that way, however, and as you're reading this, I'm sure that sounds dramatic. But, if you've ever found yourself in a moment like this, where your physical world and form are being tossed about, but your mind and consciousness are rapidly attempting to save you from future trauma, nothing lines up. I see his car barrel through the stop sign on my left, a flash of red, and I turn to look at my nephew as we’re struck so hard that it flips my Elantra on its side.

The glass shards in front of me reflect the rain, I feel the world slowly tip on its axis, and watch Bleecker Street tilt in my field of vision. As I pull my arms in to protect my face, all I can think about is Max in the backseat. The crunch of metal meeting metal is abhorrent, the sound you'd expect it to make, but worse and it's deafening. I don't believe in God, and if our reality hadn't established that Asgardians were living beings, I would tell you I don't believe in any god from any religion. It doesn't stop me from begging for Max's life and safety as my head slams against the caved-in side of my vehicle and the world goes black.

News reports would later say that two other drivers, the man who hit me, and the weird occult guy from Bleecker Street were in the street in seconds, battling the rain to attempt to get us.

First, I feel the rain on my face. That's it. Freezing raindrops on the side of my cheek. Then warmth, sticky and slow moving from my temple and it trickles directly into my mouth. The next sense to return is my hearing, Max screaming and crying from somewhere so far away, I'm terrified I'll never reach him. I can't move, I can't speak, it's just blood, rain, and the pleading of my nephew for someone to save his aunt. That guts me, and years from now, it'll still feel powerful and raw.

“Hey! Hey, can you hear me?” A voice reaches me, and it's deep and focused. Male. I can indeed hear him.

I don't know how I do it, but my eyes are open. Although I know that what I should be seeing is glass and twisted metal and blood, my brain protects me, and all I see is the white of the airbag.

“Come on! Can you hear me?” I hear again, and I look up, my eyes straining to take in the man peering down at me.

We stare at each other for a moment, and I know my brain is barely functioning and that maybe I'm dying, but he's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my entire life. He's rain-soaked, with dark salt and pepper hair plastered to his forehead, and facial hair around a mouth that's partly open in surprise. I blink away the raindrops I can't combat with my hands.

“Good,” he replies loudly when we can see I'm alive.

I know I'm hallucinating when the man taps his wrists together and creates disks of light around his closed fists. Maybe he's not real, and my mind is distracting me with pretty images as I die. The discs are pretty. Intricate and glowing, and solid apparently, because he tosses them over him and the rain hits them, shielding us.

“I'm going to get you out of here. Do not move! It's incredibly important that you do not move.”

I don't nod, I obey the pretty man with the pretty discs. I haven't felt pain yet, and I'm nearly paralyzed with fear at the thought of it. I can hear Max somewhere crying. I'd know the sound of that cry anywhere, I'd been there when he was brought into the world.

“My nephew,” I say with wide eyes, and talking feels like I've swallowed the shards of glass that cover me.

“He's safe,” the man says, looking down at me with a firm stare, and I believe him.

He lays yellow hands on the crushed doorway above me. No, not yellow hands, I realize, he's wearing gloves. I don't pretend to understand, nor am I able to fully comprehend how he does it, but those pretty orange sparks are there again, and he lifts part of the A-frame where my window used to be off my mangled car. Where he puts it, I don't see, nor do I care because he reaches down and gently cups my head.

“Steady,” he says, looking into my eyes. He's focused, searching, checking for a concussion, I realize. “What's your name?”

“Caroline.”

The sound of sirens cuts through the rain and thunder, and I'm suddenly terrified. I could die, or be paralyzed, or have a traumatic brain injury. I feel my lips tremble.

“Alright, Caroline,” the man hushes me. He must sense my fear. It would be hard not to because it's palpable. “That's the ambulance.”

“Am I going to die?” I ask him, and I feel like he knows the answer. Those discs are still above us, acting like protection from the rain.

The beautiful man shakes his head and is careful not to jostle me. He would be a very pretty thing to look at if I were dying.

“No, you're not going to die,” He assures me, and I can see that my blood has messed up his gloves. “I'm going to get you out, and you're going to be okay. I'm going to keep hold of you like this until the EMTs can help because you've hit your head and you have a concussion. You need to stay steady.”

His assurance that I will make it calms me, but in the next few moments as my adrenaline begins to fade, and that natural pain deterrent does too, I can feel an intense lighting strike down my arm. I whimper, moving my eyes to try and see what's wrong, and a small caress of the man's gloves thumb breaks my focus.

“It's broken,” he says, matter-of-factly. “The EMTs are here. Just hold on.”

There's so much noise suddenly. The man holding my face speaks to someone behind him with the air and language of someone who knows exactly what's going on. He's a doctor, or a nurse, or something medical because the words he's saying feel as if he took them directly from a medical text.

“Hi, Caroline,” A female EMT says, dunking under the shield umbrella to peek in my car at me. She's soaked, too. “I'm Rachel. We're gonna work to get you out, okay?”

“Alright,” I whimper, and she carefully switches places with the man, her hands replacing his.

He's gone, moving out of my field of vision, but his large orange discs remain. Rachel’s hands are cold, and although her blue rubber gloves are a barrier between her cold skin and mine, I miss the man with the leather yellow gloves. I can hear things happening around the outside of the car, and the ambulance lights reflect off the rain and onto Rachel's face. But, what takes my focus is the orange sparks I see again, and the man looks down at me quickly. He's wearing a red cloak, and I can't discern if I'm imagining it or not.

“This will be weird, but you're completely safe and I need you to not panic. Stay as still as you can, Caroline.”

Weird. It doesn't describe what happens at all, and part of me is angry at the man for not choosing his words more carefully. It's strange. There's a quick sound of my poor Hyundai being cut in half, and although I can't see much, the moment the back half of my car is gone, I can see the man with another huge disc on its side like a circular saw. The cold hits me hard and I start to shiver. It's a good sign, it means my body is responding to stimuli.

With better access to me, the EMTs can carefully lower my front seat back, Rachel's hands still holding onto my head. They work as a unified team, and as my seat is lowered flat, I'm finally able to see the destruction in the street. There's flooding, water rippling over everyone's shoes as bystanders gather on the sidewalks to gawk. I see Max for the first time, sitting in the back of the ambulance with a man who is looking him over.

The need to call out to him is so great, it burns in my lungs, but suddenly that beautiful, strange man is standing over me, shielding me from the rain as the EMTs prepare to move me. He has blue eyes, the color of mountain mist and the ocean. He holds my gaze as I'm expertly slid from the front seat of what was once my car, and lifted onto a stretcher. There's pain, and it's fierce, but I watch as he furrows his brow reaches out with a gloved hand, and carefully pushes my hair away from my eyes.

Then I'm being moved towards the ambulance, and he's standing there in the rain by the disaster on Bleecker Street.

“Aunt Caroline!” Max calls out as I'm maneuvered into the ambulance, his little hands in mine.

“Boo,” I whisper, and I can see he's practically unharmed. A scratch on his cheek is the only thing I can see, and I start to cry. He's okay. “Buddy, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry.”

He stays by my side as the medics hop into the back with us and close the ambulance doors. They start an IV, and Max is forced to let go of my hand. My sweet baby, he's so brave and strong, and I whisper that to him as the EMTs do their job. I can see out the rain-spattered windows, the man still standing in the middle of the road, speaking to a police officer. The ambulance lurches forward, and I realize I have no idea who he is.

“The man that helped me,” I say, and it still hurts to speak. “Who was he?”

Rachel smiles as she begins to clean up some of the blood from my face, and I am still aware of the metallic taste of it in my mouth.

“That was Doctor Stephen Strange. New York City's own Master of the Mystic Arts.”

Doctor Stephen Strange. Master of the Mystic Arts. Sorcerer of Bleecker Street. The most beautiful man I've ever seen, and he'd just likely saved my life.

~Stephen~

The rain is a welcome reprieve from the past few days in the city. I've run myself ragged dealing with low-level threats, again and again, like a record that's on autoplay. Most days, I hardly step back into the Sanctum before I'm forced to open a portal and turn right back around. I'm tired and I know that I need a break, but I'll never admit it outright.

Yesterday it was a group of idiot neo-zealots who were causing chaos in a park in Brooklyn, kids who swore up and down they only read about Kaecilius’ teachings on 4chan. The day before that, I’d been forced to rationalize with Clea, again, and tell her that the Dark Dimension was her business as long as it wasn't threatening Earth. The sex was incredible, but that's neither here nor there. She stays in her lane and I stay in mine unless we feel the need to battle it out in the bedroom. The point is, I'm thoroughly enjoying my tea and my book on this rainy afternoon.

When I hear the chaos out in the street, Cloak is on my shoulders in an instant, and I pull back the curtains to see that there's been a car accident, practically on my doorstep.

“Shit,” I hiss, and I don't even bother using the front door. I portal out directly into the street, and I'm soaking wet in an instant.

Witnesses hop out of their cars and race up to the scene, splashing water as they go. It's a bad wreck, a sedan is on its side, and an SUV has it pinned up against a lamppost that's leaning precariously. That's my first order of business. I quickly do away with it, making sure it can't topple over, and I send it off into a pocket dimension where all your missing socks end up. The city can whine about it later, and I'll send it their way when I feel like it.

“Did someone call 911?” I call out as I race over to the vehicles.

“My wife is on the phone with them now. The SUV just ran straight through the stop sign,” an elderly man says, and I quickly direct him back to his car. He doesn't need to be out in this.

I hear the crying next and snap my head back towards the wreck.

“There's a kid in here!” Another man shouts, and he has a cut on his forehead, blood and rain dripping down the bridge of his nose. The other driver, I presume.

“Go sit on the steps,” I direct him, pointing to the stoop of the Sanctum as I rush forward. “You're injured.”

He does as I say, thankfully, and the other witness, a woman, begins to attend to him. I don't even have to let Cloak know what I need to do. I'm lifted, hovering over the sedan. Cloak is a champ in the rain, but I know it's irritating. I can see the kid in the back, wailing and tearing at his seatbelt. There's glass in his curly black hair, a superficial cut across his cheek, and he's reaching forward to whoever is in the front seat.

“Kid, it's okay,” I say over the sound of the rain, my hands out in front of me so he doesn't freak out.

His little eyes look up at me and he hardly misses a beat.

“My aunt!” He cries, and I look closer at the person in the front seat. She looks like she's in bad shape, and the airbag has gone off but I need to get the kid out first.

“It'll be okay,” I promise, and Cloak lowers me enough so that I'm able to lay my gloved hands on the half-crushed door. “Hold on, bud.”

The energy that I channel into the door tingles, and I can feel the metal give way and break off from the frame of the vehicle. A swish of my hands, and it’s off to that little pocket dimension that likely looks a mess by now. The kid doesn't question it, he’s too concerned with his aunt, and I have to find a way to calm him down long enough to get him out.

“Hey! Listen to me, kid. I have to get you out first, okay? So can you be brave for just a few minutes?” I ask, reaching down into the car to take his hand.

The rain has flattened his curly hair to his face, and he looks up at me with determination I hardly see in adults. His little hand is in mine and I snap, releasing his seatbelt before pulling him out of the wreckage. The kid clings to me and I lower to the ground, my boots kicking up rainwater in the process.

“Cloak, take care of him,” I mutter, and my relic is off my shoulders and wrapped around the little boy quickly. “This is Cloak. It will not hurt you.”

I can feel how pressing it is to get to his aunt, and I don't waste any more time as Cloak moves the kid off toward the woman on my stoop. I'm back to the car, heart racing now, as I lift myself and stand on the pieces of undercroft to look down at her. Her nephew is wailing for her, and I implore the Vishanti to let the woman be alive.

“Hello? Hey, are you alright?” I shout. She's soaked to the bone, a head wound at her left temple that’s oozing blood, and her arm is shattered. “Hey! Hey, can you hear me?”

I get nothing. Shit! Where the hell is the ambulance? I've half a mind to portal the entire emergency department directly to Bleecker Street. This isn't the first instance of an underwhelming response time.

“Come on! Can you hear me?” I ask, almost pleading as I reach down to touch her, but I watch her eyes move to look up at me.

Beautiful chocolate brown eyes, staring back at me. I don't move for a moment as I fight the urge to gawk. She's gorgeous . Dark blonde hair, a nose piercing, the prettiest lips I've ever seen, and I'm letting her get pelted with rain. There have been moments in my life that have shaped my character and molded me into the man and sorcerer I am today. My sister’s death, my fast-track residency acceptance, the mutilation of my hands, and the loss of my life's work. Losing my friend and mentor. These moments coalesced, got together for happy hour, and talked amongst themselves about who I would be moving forward.

As I look into the eyes of this injured woman, trapped in her vehicle, I have an eerie sense that this will be one of the moments that defines my life. It strikes me as a man who sees a beautiful girl in need of help, and as a sorcerer who feels the undercurrent of the world around him at all times.

I know exactly what you're thinking as you read this, and first, I implore you not to judge me. I'm just as confused as you are. I don't typically take one look at the people I’m sworn to help and fantasize about them. I'm not a pervert, I'm a focused Master of the Mystic Arts. Second, if you choose to continue reading, I will ask that you suspend your disbelief and take me at my word. There's nothing unreliable about me, not anymore, and I promise you, as I peer into this mangled Hyundai at the woman caught inside, I swear on the Vishanti, I'm in love .

She could be dying. I know I'm an idiot at the best of times, but I'm tired, which makes me an even bigger idiot.

“Good,” I reply over the rain, relieved that she's alive.

I activate my mandala shields and set them in place above us, and the rain stops. I know I have to get her out, she likely has a TBI, and if I can get a look at her pupils I could establish her Glasgow Coma Scale score before the EMTs arrive. God, she's beautiful.

“I'm going to get you out of here. Do not move! It's incredibly important that you do not move.”

I need to touch her to understand the full extent of her injuries, and I am not able to get to her with this crumpled A pillar in my way. Where the fuck is that ambulance?

“My nephew.”

Her voice is strained as if it pains her to speak, and between how frantic the kid was and the fact that her first words are for an update on his well-being, I can see how much they mean to one another.

“He's safe,” I say firmly, not wanting her to panic needlessly.

Whoever manages the pocket dimension where I'm doing away with all this junk is going to write Wrong and I a strongly worded letter. If it's Nostro, he sure as hell can deal with it. I promise to try and return all your missing socks, though. The barrier of her door is gone, and I reach down and carefully take her face in my gloves hands.

“Steady,” I whisper, watching her pupils. Anisocoria. Sluggish reaction time. She's concussed. “What's your name?”

“Caroline,” she tells me, and Christ, her name reverberates around my brain like it's the only thing I've ever known.

Caroline. Caroline. Caroline.Caroline.Caroline.

Sirens, finally. A block away.

“Alright, Caroline. That's the ambulance.”

“Am I going to die?”

How many times has a patient asked me that? Countless. I learned in med school how to answer this in a crisis, during triage. We keep people calm, "Your condition is serious, and we are doing everything we can. However, I want to be honest with you that we are very concerned." Now that I have some connection with her, despite having my gloves on, I can feel that she's going to get out of this alive.

“No, you're not going to die,” I tell her softly, and I explain exactly what’s going to happen. Informed consent. I'm going to get her out of here.

The anxiety in her subsides, but it makes way for pain, and I see it reach her eyes as she tries to look down at her shattered arm. I caress her cheek, and I don’t mean to, it just happens as easily as breathing. The sirens are behind me now, and I feel a little more in control of the situation.

“It's broken. The EMTs are here. Just hold on.”

Looking over my shoulder, I see Rachel Perez rush over to the wreckage, the rain hardly a detriment to her focus. Good, I've worked with her many times before. I like her, she's a hell of a medic.

“Stephen,” she says, taking in the scene and pulling her bag off. “In front of the Sanctum?”

My hands are still holding Caroline’s face, and I must look like an idiot with my arms halfway in this torn-up Elantra, standing on the chassis. Two other EMTs make their way over.

“This wasn't me. Just a regular accident. One patient, roughly late twenties or early thirties, Female. Anisocoria, scalp laceration, TBI, GCS score of twelve, left fractured distal radius, and a few broken toes.”

Rachel nods and steps under the shelter I've set up, pulling herself up onto the chassis to see Caroline and tell her what the next steps are. I know when to step away, when playing doctor is over, so I allow Rachel to take my place. I'm back in the rain, taking another look at the scene, and I know Caroline and her nephew are lucky. People have perished in less serious wrecks. The sigh that leaves me is relief mixed with confusion, and I usher Cloak to me as an EMT attends to the kid.

“Good job, buddy,” I say, giving its collar a small pat. “Let's get her out of this, hmm?”

I analyze the angle of her car and ponder the best way to get her free. The seats in these Hyundai's are easy to lower, if I can remove the back end of the vehicle and get her seat down, we can pull her out and get her on a stretcher. Cloak moves me closer and I hover off the ground to poke my head into the car.

“This will be weird, but you're completely safe and I need you to not panic. Stay as still as you can, Caroline.”

When I pull back, I press my hands together before slowly pulling them apart as energy builds and crackles in the space between my yellow gloves. It grows and doubles in size, and when I'm satisfied, I squish that Eldritch magic to flatten it out to a large mandala before tossing it off toward her car. It slices the metal in half, and the back end wobbles for a moment until it falls over. I call the mandala back to me like a boomerang, catching it in my flattened hands. Goddamn, I'm good.

I walk the EMTs through my thought process, and there's an appreciation amongst us. As much as I would like to do everything myself, and as much as I am fully aware that I easily can do everything myself, I can't. My jurisdiction is magical and mystical threats to this universe. This is a car accident outside my home, and I'm more than capable to help. But, as they lower that seat down, and Caroline is flat and tipped on her side, I feel panic bubble up like reflux. I don't want her alone.

I'm by her side quickly, making sure she's covered and not being soaked by the rain anymore. Her gaze reaches me, reaches my soul, and I'm able to see her better in the daylight. God almighty, she's a vision, but I can see she's in pain, and it pushes me to help the medics get her onto a stretcher. I keep a mandala shield over her, ensuring she's as dry as she can be.

That pain washes over her face again, I watch it happen as her body is carefully moved and readied to be loaded into the ambulance. It's instinctual, as I reach out and brush her hair back out of her pretty eyes. There's blood all along her hairline and down the side of her face, and I want to remove it for her but then she's being pulled towards the ambulance and I'm left standing in the rain like some pathetic puppy dog.

There are moments in life we look back on to understand how we got from point A to point B. Moments in which we wrestle with the flow of time, the steady beat towards death, where we beg and plead to change things, anything. I've played with time. Meddled with it in ways that no person should ever be able to, and never for my benefit. The Infinity Stone with which I've been entrusted has been used only when our reality is threatened. Right now, I'm just a man who is acutely aware that every single atom in my body is telling me that the woman being hauled away in an ambulance is the love of my life.

I need you to believe me.

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