Learning my lesson from other multi-chapter fics, I did not publish this until I finished it. It will be 6 chapters long and updated at least once a week. In brief, the story will be about 30% plot, 30% whump, 25% character introspection, and 15% comfort/banter from friends. While the descriptions can be visceral, the whump won't enter any 'mature only' areas and the warnings will be thorough for those who may need them.
Written for the Stephen Strange bingo square "role reversal" and for the Bad Things Happen bingo, though the square won't be revealed until the end.
Important to note: I wrote some parts of this way before Endgame that I didn't really want to rewrite, so the Infinity War ended a bit differently. Along with it being an "everybody lives nobody died" fairytale end of the war, 5 years did not pass (no more than 1, if even that) and the defeat of Thanos involved turning back the clock to before the snap and letting all mortal beings uninvolved in Thanos's final defeat forget that the Snappening ever happened, thus writing over all that universal suffering, as well as not having to worry about the headache of what rebuilding the world probably looked like for the next couple years. That's for another story. Very powerful beings across the universe likely remember but they're not important in this story.
"I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a bloody red... I stood there, trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature."
— Edvard Munch
A phone rang.
Stephen Strange looked up from his laptop to his cell. When he saw who was calling, he frowned. "Clint?" he asked as he answered.
"Hey Stephen. Uh, do you have a few minutes to give a magical consult?"
He continued to frown. "I thought you were retired."
"Oh yeah, I am! I really am. But the parts I need for the bathroom aren't coming until later in the week…" Stephen put the phone on speaker and set it on the table, lips twitching in amusement as the man rambled. "...and Laura threatened to banish me to the couch if I started another new project without finishing one first. The kids are with their grandparents and Laura went on a spa retreat for a couple days so, yeah, I'm with Nat and Wanda."
"And you all just so happened to come across something magical," he replied dryly.
"Swear to the big man himself, we were just walking down a street in Des Moines when Wanda sensed something behind a window in an antique shop."
Stephen sighed. "Of course."
"Yeah— wait. What do you mean 'of course'?"
"Do you know how much of my time is spent scanning eBay's antiques category? You would not believe the number of mystical relics people have had for generations."
"You're shitting me."
"One of my colleagues claims that the moment eBay really started to take off, Kamar-Taj invested in computers and internet access not too long after Nepal passed their first telecommunications act. I think they managed to find more misplaced magical items that first year than they had in the last twenty."
"Is that why your home looks like a museum?"
"Probably." He put his laptop aside and picked up the phone as he stood. "Describe it to me." He made his way to the room which held a set of shelves with books dedicated to relics and other magical items.
"Uh…" Clint trailed off. "It's a really ugly doll, but it's not a voodoo doll. Sort of resembles a Chihuahua, you know, with the big bulging eyes?" A pause from his end. "Okay, Nat says that's a horrible description and that Chihuahuas are cute. Wanda thinks it looks like Gollum— oh, Nat says it's Gollum with former President Bush's ears."
"Senior or junior?"
"Does that— does that actually matter?"
"Not a bit. Beyond 'not a voodoo doll', all of your details are useless."
"Thanks for that."
Stephen laughed quietly to himself, then clarified, "By description, I meant its magical signature. What does Wanda detect?"
Another pause from his end. "She doesn't think it's Chaos magic. She says it feels almost Druidic in nature but that there's nothing natural in the doll for it to bind to. It's plastic."
He pursed his lips as he examined the bookshelf. "It may be a sort of hybrid that, while uncommon, is not entirely unheard of…" Stephen trailed off as Wong entered the room. His expression was stoic, but something within the downturn of his lips caused the doctor to say, "Give me a minute," and put the phone on hold.
Wong's voice was neutral. "They found her."
His brow furrowed when he left it at that. "Well?"
He didn't answer and a growing dread gathered at the bottom of Stephen's stomach. He placed the phone off hold and kept it short. "I'm going to have to call you back."
Her name was Neelufar. 'Call me Neelu,' was her cheerful introduction when she first met him about a week after his arrival to Kamar-Taj four years ago. 'Come eat with me; I heard you were American and I want to know more about America.'
They ate together once or twice a week after that. She learned more about America (she thought the idea of free soda refills was absolutely spectacular, but did not like how many meals were 'to go' and on the run). He learned more about her former part of the world (she once lived in a city in modern-day Iran, but called herself Persian. He learned there were over a dozen different peoples in Iran after he asked what the difference was).
Kamar-Taj was a relatively large complex that did not entirely obey the laws of physics. The surrounding traffic within the markets of Kathmandu were completely unheard in the two central courtyards, for one thing. Connected to the Master's section of the library was the room that held the Orb of Agamotto, hovering above a space that had doorways that led to Hong Kong, New York, and London. In the basement just under the main section of the library was a long passageway that spit its travellers out of a cave located in Tibet.
The cave entrance spilled out onto a barren bluff within the lower folds of the Himalayas. With the nearest village being a good half-day and several ridges away, and with no easy footpaths to reach its heights, the location was one that many in Kamar-Taj went to for peace and solitude. During the winter the high bluff was bitterly cold, but now it was late spring and the wild grasses were filled with blooms that engulfed the green with violet, pale yellow, and deep blue.
It was here that the Masters of the Mystic Arts buried, cremated, or otherwise honored their dead.
Near every sorcerer, master to apprentice, was gathered to pay their respects to the enshrouded body lying within the simple coffin. Only those that otherwise were on duty were not present. Wildflowers arranged in small bouquets of blue poppies, edelweisses, irises, and more that Stephen could not name were laid on the low flat stone upon which the coffin rested.
Stephen learned a bit more about her once he realized that Google Translate was absolute shit at translating Sanskrit (and when he discovered that not only was there more than one language with the word 'Sanskrit' in it, but that one of them was dead). It turned out that Neelu was a genius with languages.
'How many languages do you know?' he asked.
He didn't remember her entire answer anymore, but Neelu spoke a good half-dozen languages fluently and was comfortable with another dozen more. She could read and write in all the primary languages that filled the libraries at Kamar-Taj and the Hong Kong Sanctum, the latter of which she usually spent her days.
'I am working on translating all the books in the Hong Kong Sanctum to Cantonese first,' she once told him. 'Li is very good at English and wants to try to translate my translations after.'
'Can you translate my books?' he half joked.
'If Master Wong is already giving you advanced studies, then I will not be able to translate fast enough. It will be easier for you in the future if you learn Vedic and Classical Sanskrit now.'
This was not the first funeral he attended during his time in Kamar-Taj, but it was one of the few that hit Stephen in a way that made him feel a bit physically ill.
Maybe it was due to her age (32— he learned that today). Maybe it was due to knowing her since the beginning.
Maybe it was because Neelu's was the first death since he had been named Sorcerer Supreme. Maybe it was due to the manner of her death.
"A mugging gone wrong?" Stephen repeated. Beside him, Master Tina Minoru of the Hong Kong Sanctum pressed her lips into a very tight line.
"That's what it appears like," answered Hamir. He had taken the initiative to find her after it became clear that she had not been seen by anyone for over 48 hours (and only after a rather heated discussion that involved convincing Minoru he was better suited to the task; if the other Master had not been dealing with a bad case of interdimensional harpies in the Philippines, it may have gone very differently). "A blow to her head. All of her jewelry is missing. There were no signs of any magical or otherworldly interference."
"So some lowlife snuck up behind her and hit her so hard that he killed her?" he asked in disbelief. How could she be dead? From a mugger of all things?
Hamir frowned. "What is stranger is where she was found."
"Where was she?" Minoru asked, her patience at its end.
The elder man looked at Stephen as he answered, "She was discovered in an alley twelve blocks north of the New York Sanctum."
The funerals in Kamar-Taj followed the customs and culture of the individual being put to rest. If those were unknown, they were usually cremated.
Neelu followed the Bahá'í Faith. As such, she was left unembalmed, washed, enshrouded in white silk, given a specific burial ring, and laid within a hard wooden coffin. She was to be buried with her head towards Qiblih (located in modern day northern Israel, he discovered). As sorcerers, they were able to make the rectangular hole point towards the exact geographical location.
The preciseness wasn't much of a comfort.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of their order, some of the customs were impractical. After seeing her body for himself, he went to the Bahá'í Center in NYC (located just up the road on 11th— and only a few blocks away from where Neelu was discovered, which left him unsettled with both fury and sorrow).
According to the counselor there, she was to be buried 'within an hour's journey of where she died'. He, being him, asked, 'An hour by foot? By car?' and was told it did not matter. Sling rings, while they followed the letter of this law, outright laughed at the spirit in which this law was written; however, to deal with an American cemetery meant dealing with American authorities, which simply could not happen. In the end, Stephen figured she would prefer to be buried somewhere familiar instead of a country she did not really know.
It was the least he could do for her.
One day he caught her sleeves rolled up. Her left arm was covered in terrible contracture scars, blotches of white and red that looked like the remnants of some sort of chemical burn. He did not turn away in time before she caught his look of surprise.
"They found out I was Bahá'í," was her answer, which didn't answer anything for him. She smiled at his confusion. "It is a religion, though the government of Iran has never recognized it as so. We have been persecuted since the Revolution, but we try. Some are very brave and stay there openly. I am not that brave."
"No one would blame you for leaving to survive," he told Neelu.
She did not answer.
Unfortunately they had no other practitioners of the Bahá'í Faith within their ranks, and it would be in especially poor form to push a celebrant through a portal to read the required Prayer for the Dead, no matter how well-intentioned they were. She probably would have found that image quite funny.
As such, he had to come to a compromise regarding the required recital. He eventually settled on a recording of the prayer in Persian (her native tongue) to be played just before the coffin was lowered.
The service was simple; as was expected of him, he opened it with a few somber words about her being taken too soon, before speaking of the traits she was well known for: her wit, her drive for knowledge, and her great openness and kindness for all living creatures (of this world and others).
Stephen kept his own speech short before turning it over to Minoru, one of her immediate superiors and a Master who had worked with Neelu on a regular basis. She was always in Hong Kong or Kathmandu and had not traveled much elsewhere.
Certainly not to New York.
"Do you have any idea what she was doing in New York?" Stephen asked as they passed through the doors that led back to Kamar-Taj.
Minoru shook her head. "She had no reason to be there. I do not believe she has—" she paused, swallowed, then corrected, "had visited the New York Sanctum more than half-a-dozen times in the last few years, and I believe all occasions were to consult with you, Doctor."
"She would not leave the Sanctum," Hamir added.
"Not usually," he muttered in agreement as they came to the staircase that led to the cellars underneath the compound. They descended, then passed a few closed doors before entering the small stone room in which she was being kept. Stephen paused at the shroud before lifting it back to reveal her face. His shoulders slumped at the sight of the slack, lifeless expression. It wasn't Neelu anymore, not like this.
He did not bother to conduct his own magical examination; he trusted Hamir's findings and the trauma to the head was clearly a fatal wound. Sighing softly, he began to lift the shroud back up, then suddenly paused and brought it down again to her collarbone, frowning.
"Doctor Strange?"
Stephen continued to frown as he answered Minoru, "I was no pathologist, but I remember the stages of death well enough. Temperatures have been moderate in New York this week…" He pulled the shroud down to her waist and looked at her abdomen; his frown only deepened. As he raised the sheet back to her collarbone, he said, "Putrefaction has not started."
Minoru stared at him. "And that means?"
Instead of immediately answering, he asked them, "She was missing for two days before the search began for her, and it took another twelve, sixteen hours to find her?"
Hamir nodded, expression hard. "We were having a difficult time finding her magical signature. We suspected some sort of sorcery at work, but her body and the place she was found bore no signs of other magics. However, we were concentrating primarily within Kathmandu and Hong Kong at the beginning of the search, so perhaps it was a matter of distance." He did not sound convinced.
"Distance shouldn't have been an issue," Minoru replied. "There is something we are not seeing."
"I agree," Stephen said. "We're missing something." His gaze turned to Hamir. "It makes sense that you looked for her where you did, Hamir; I would have done the same. What doesn't make sense," and he turned back to look down at the face that once greeted him so kindly, "is that she was last seen somewhere over sixty hours ago, but has been dead for a few hours at most."
"What?" Minoru's expression grew harder.
He gestured to Neelu's face, then the rest of her. "Rigor mortis is only just setting in. It hasn't overtaken her whole body yet, and if she had died soon after going missing, she should be within the putrefaction process. She is nowhere near it."
Minoru stepped closer and stared hard at the dead woman who was once a core part of her Sanctum. "Two days unaccounted for."
Stephen stared at Neelu's expressionless features. Where did you go? Her expressionless face gave him no answers.
Neelu's friends and colleagues came up one by one to offer a few words about the woman. The sun slowly crossed the sky as the ceremony continued, and it was not until after the noon hour that the last of the speakers finished.
Stephen turned on the recording of the Prayer for the Dead, sound amplified so it echoed across the bluff. Throughout the next four minutes a haunting Persian chant vibrated about them, the speaker's sorrowful hymns calling upon God to bless she that has passed from this world and to accept her into the next.
When the chant ended, he nodded once to Hamir and Minoru and they levitated the coffin to place it within her final resting place. Each sorcerer then gathered dirt within their hands to throw upon the closed wood before the masters present finished filling it by their usual means. Minoru placed the headstone, into which Stephen had earlier carved her name, days of birth and death, and the nine-pointed star with the Persian writing of 'Bahá'í' enclosed.
With the headstone settled and the last of the dirt set, those gathered began to slowly disperse, either climbing the low slope towards the cave to head back to Kamar-Taj or creating portals to go back to the Sanctums. Soon he, Minoru, Hamir, and her closest friends were the only ones remaining. A soft sob came from one of the women at the graveside.
"I best see to Kamar-Taj," Stephen murmured to the remaining masters. A couple wordless nods, and he took one last look before turning his back upon the newest addition to the small cemetery, the light-colored headstone shining bright under the early afternoon sun set in a cloudless spring sky.
And now, the overly long endnotes.
Re: The first bit of the story. There is no way that the Masters of the Mystic Arts own property in two of the most expensive cities in the world and do not have a general fund stockpiled over the centuries for general "business" expenses (though that doesn't mean that the individual sorcerers in the Sanctum are at all wealthy of course). I'm also convinced that the Ancient One bought stock when she had a good feeling just for the purpose of making sure they'd never have to worry about making tax payments. :P They probably saved hundreds of rare Chinese artifacts during the revolution and can sell them anonymously in auction. Those robes they wear are really good quality too! So yeah. They buy magical relics when they find them for sale in the wild, in most cases. I need to write a case where there's one in Sotheby's….
When I started this story, I knew that it was gonna start with a funeral. The problem with building up an OC so that they have some sort of emotional impact when they're dead is that, by the time you're done building them up, you really don't want them to be dead. Sorry Neelu (and sorry Stephen).
The cellar that leads to Tibet was definitely playing on the fact that Kamar-Taj in the comics is within the Himalayas in Tibet.
I've never had the chance to meet someone of the Bahá'í Faith (considering it's such a small religion), but what I learned of it for this story was very interesting and enlightening. Different sources told me different things regarding the make of coffin and if the head or feet point towards Qiblih. I am unfortunately uncertain which is more 'accurate' or if both are accepted in modern times, as both sources were several decades old.
The New York City Bahá'í Center is really located about 9 blocks northwest of where the New York Sanctum would be. I chose the OC's religion weeks before discovering this detail. I can't make this stuff up.
I knew someone who was Persian in uni (not Iranian, but Persian— was quite clear) and met someone in Spain who had fled Iran for religious persecution. They both inspired Neelu, though thankfully neither of them were harmed in any way that I was aware of. Meeting both of them led to an increased interest in Iran and its very vibrant history and multitude of cultures, though unfortunately the details of the Iranian government and its current view on the Bahá'í Faith are based on fact rather than fiction.