You should probably read at least the first chapter of Wings and Fire, or it might be a bit confusing.
"O to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of Heaven - of silkworm size or immense; at times invisible."
-Marianne Moore, O To Be A Dragon
Part of Stephen knows better. Of course he does. Even if he had only ever remembered being Stephen Strange, he would know that such spells were dangerous and irresponsible for a novice to attempt unsupervised. But he remembers more than just Stephen, knows better the dangers, and still is tempted.
Curiosity has always been his double-edged blade.
It's reckless even for him. But it seems Dormammu and the events surrounding him have affected Stephen more deeply than he would like to admit. He has a hard time caring about consequences, or maybe he just has a hard time believing that there will be any. After all, his own death had been reversed thousands of times. These days he feels unmoored. Untethered. If being human isn't working, then maybe being a dragon again will be better.
Or maybe it will be exactly like his memories. He'll stop caring, stop feeling, and just sleep. Right now, such an existence doesn't seem so bad after all.
The grass is always greener, he thinks with an ironic twist of his lips, and then channels dimensional energy into arcane configurations.
It's not a good idea.
Stephen does it anyway.
He's braced for pain, but, surprisingly, it isn't painful. Just strange and uncomfortable as his spine elongates and he drops down onto all fours, while a wave of dark blue scales flows over his body. His belly grows warm with a more literal fire, and his sight grows sharper as his perspective changes. His sense of hearing is so much stronger now. Stephen sinks to the ground to ride out the disorientation, wincing as his tail sweeps out and knocks over one of the chairs. It reminds him that he has talons, and Wong is going to be very upset if he's gouged holes in the floor of the library.
Another surprise. It seems he's succeeded in changing fully on his first try.
He cranes his head to inspect his new body, wishing he'd thought to do this near a mirror. It doesn't feel quite as natural as he'd half-assumed. But it's no wonder, really. He's smaller than he remembers being, before, although still much larger than his human form. Lengthwise, anyway. He thinks his body shape is longer, more serpent-like than his first. His horns feel longer, and he seems to have whiskers as well. If he had appeared to be more of a Western dragon before, now he seems to have Eastern influences.
Stephen still has wings, though, folded against his back. His front paws don't hurt either, not even holding up the considerable weight of his body. He's a little afraid of the implications.
He struggles to move his wings, to spread them, and he wants to think it's because he's simply unused to the muscle movement. He wants that to be all.
Of course it isn't.
His wings are obviously damaged. Heavily scarred and tattered, there are so many gashes torn open in the thin membrane that he doubts they would even slow his descent, should he fall from any height. They don't tremble the way his human hands do. But there is something wrong with them still, aside from the obvious. They don't move quite right. It takes Stephen several tries before he manages to fold them up comfortably once again.
He can feel fire climbing up his throat in frustration and he holds it back, snorting smoke. He's not going to set fire to a library. He's not some out-of-control fledgling; he'd let Wong eviscerate him if that happened. And besides, he half-expected extensive damage to his wings anyway.
Curse his timing, that's about when Wong returns. He twitches at the sound of energy shields drawn into existence and twists around with surprising grace as he tries to speak. But of course, dragon tongues are not created for human languages, and Stephen hastily attempts rudimentary telepathy. 'Wong, it's me.'
Wong freezes for a moment, and then his expression gets stonier. He looks like he wants to hit him even more.
"Strange, what have you done?! Change back. Now."
The blistering lecture is almost worse than the realization that, whoops, he can't. He hadn't given much thought to the details of returning to human form, just assumed he could. So much time and effort spent in studying the change, undoing it had slipped his mind. In hindsight, he should have realized that any hand-signs would have been virtually impossible, as well as recalling just how much trouble he'd had when first learning magic, given how different it was from dragon magic.
Stephen sulks a bit but adjusts to his new body quickly, overcoming a mild feeling of dysphoria. He might have dragon memories, but he has been physically human all his life. It helps that for all of Wong's dire warnings, Stephen cannot bring himself to believe that he is stuck permanently. No doubt much of it is arrogance, but he feels that he has an advantage over those past examples that serve as warnings. Students who had gotten ahead of themselves and had perished or been trapped forever, either losing their sense of self or going mad.
Truth be told, the power of his new-old body, the permanent armor of dragon scales, is reassuring. He feels less exposed. Less vulnerable.
That…may contribute to the inability of a group of Masters to change him back. As well as interfering with his own initial attempts.
He hadn't been able to return to his human form, but, much to his surprise, he had discovered that he could change his size. He doesn't get much bigger, but he can shrink enough to curl comfortably around someone's neck. Despite his irritation, Wong hadn't attempted to shrug him off. He had, however, bitched about his claws puncturing his robes and skin on the initial leap from the table. Stephen does feel a little guilty about it, but his surprise that he'd actually correctly gauged the jump and followed through distracted him.
With everyone resigned to his new form for the time being, Stephen shifts his attention to other details. He doesn't know how his nightmares will translate to his dragon-shape, but he doesn't want to risk accidentally setting his bedroom on fire or destroying the furniture. The search for temporary accommodations is quick and easy. The Sanctum directs him to a door that opens into an empty stone cavern about the size of his office.
Stephen spends about a week in there until he's fairly sure that he's in control enough not to destroy his bedroom in the midst of a nightmare. The small collection of treasures he sleeps on by that point had been slowly and surreptitiously accumulated from various parts of the Sanctum – including a tapestry that keeps watch on Stonehenge, a rug that can become a trapdoor into a pocket dimension, and a crystal goblet that neutralizes poisons, among other such relics. He shamelessly transfers all of it to his usual bedroom with the Cloak's assistance and arranges it just so. His usual bed is gone, creating enough space for him to nest comfortably.
He ignores Wong's heavy stare. He's a dragon. He hoards. He can't exactly bring actual people into it – truly, why must his Hoard be so troublesome – but the treasures of his den are the next best thing, and he won't apologize for it. And the look on Wong's face when he noticed the addition of an orb called the Worldeater to Stephen's bedroom was definitely amusing.
It actually takes Stephen about three weeks to manage the change back to human. He switches back and forth a few times to make sure it isn't a fluke, and then settles back into dragon-shape. There's no reason he absolutely has to be human right now, surely. With a few adjustments, his usual routine hasn't been any trouble. He feels more relaxed (safer) as a dragon. And he still has to practice attacking and using magic in that form, anyway. No use being able to shapeshift if he can't defend himself. If he can't live as a dragon just as competently as he has as a human.
Or, perhaps, more competently. To be honest, he's kind of a disaster as a human.
Wong figures it out in a little over a month. He looks rather concerned that Stephen prefers to be a dragon, but as long as he trains regularly as a human as well, the librarian lets it be. Stephen can't afford to be helpless, out of practice, or uncoordinated in either form, after all. And it's not like a human form is required when traveling to other dimensions.
Eventually most of the other Masters also figure out that Stephen isn't stuck. The ones who don't, well, they spend very little time in Kamar-Taj so he supposes he can't be too critical of their ignorance. Regardless, they're all concerned by his new preferred form.
He brushes them all off. It's fine. He's fine.
By the time Thor and his brother stop by, Stephen has progressed to spending about half his time in his human shape. He considers greeting Thor as a dragon, but considering Norse mythology, passages in ancient texts that mention Asgardians, and several years of news coverage, he'd rather his presence not provoke the impetuous god into an immediate attack. Thor wouldn't win, of course. Not in his own Sanctum, unless he was extremely lucky and Stephen extremely distracted. Still, the sorcerer would rather avoid the unnecessary stress.
The stress – panic, honestly – comes not too long after sending the brothers on their way. Banner crashes through the Sanctum roof and is greeted by a dragon the color of the evening sky. The rich red wings with a strange, almost cloth-like texture are half-flared, and would be more distracting if the man wasn't traumatized by Thanos and shocked at coming face to face with a dragon. Wong and his shields hardly register.
Stark almost manages to take Stephen's existence in stride once he is distracted by the intergalactic threat. Almost. He's certainly not so intimidated as to stop acting like a douchebag. And neither man can help staring when the Cloak of Levitation twists and unfolds from Stephen's wings. He isn't sure whether it's the Cloak itself, or the scars and ragged tears. Probably both.
He folds them away and tries not to feel self-conscious, puzzling briefly over the emotion that flickers in Stark's eyes. He puts it out of his mind as Wong explains the Infinity Stones, and opens the Eye of Agamotto embedded in the scales of his breast to briefly display the Time Stone.
That's when things really go to shit. He can't tell whether or not Thanos' children are surprised by his shape, but they adjust quickly if so. They're aliens. Bipedal humanoid is probably not the only, or even the most common form in space.
The field of battle is to Stephen's disadvantage. Part of his focus is on minimizing damage, at least to the buildings where people are likely hiding from the carnage. He tries to herd the Maw towards the park and away from civilians with some success. So far as he can tell, it's the cars and road rather than people that are destroyed. Subduing or defeating his pursuer, however, proves…troublesome.
The first attempt to restrain Stephen uses thick cables. His scales protect him from asphyxiation, but he's not quite strong enough to rip them apart. Not right away. He lets Maw approach and try to rip the Stone from him, only to discover that it is further protected by spells. Even Stephen's death wouldn't release them.
He exhales dragonfire into Maw's face. Immediately after, he grows to his maximum size and manages to claw off the restraining cables when they soften thanks to the heat.
Unfortunately, Maw isn't dead. He barely seems inconvenienced, much to Stephen's frustration. It's embarrassing to be abducted not long after, and alarming to be separated from his Cloak. Whether or not Thanos or the Black Order expected a dragon, it certainly doesn't slow them down.
The needles aren't inserted into his soft spots, not at first. Though he cannot ignore the threat as they hover before his eyes and nostrils. First, the microscopic points find their way between what should be impenetrable scales, and however he is bound it does not allow for much thrashing. Stephen hisses and snarls in pain.
It's a shock to be suddenly sucked toward a hole in the side of the ship, too quickly for his mind to catch up. He reacts on instinct to the flash of red in the corner of his eye, shrinking down so that the Cloak can carry him. He's too slow, or the pull of space is too strong. He barely has the time to register that he's about to die when something else binds him and pulls tight. Spiderman, he realizes, right before collapsing when the hole in the ship is patched.
Stephen returns to his base size as he picks himself up and Stark approaches. He'll give the superhero this, he isn't afraid to shout and argue in a dragon's face.
By the time they reach Titan, the Cloak has once more folded and stretched into a membrane covering his wings and he's decided upon his course of action. He needs to know what comes next. It's too dangerous to leave the fate of the universe to chance. So while the Guardians and the much-reduced Avengers argue over a plan, Stephen activates the Time Stone and looks through their possible futures.
When he comes back to himself, Stark is dangerously close to a twitching, distressed dragon. A hand is pressed to the scales below his eye, and it would have been far too easy to maim him with teeth or fire without meaning to.
Mine, his possessive heart snarls as he meets those dark eyes, fear and regret like ice in his veins.
Stephen's gaze touch on each of his companions.
Mine, his treacherous instincts whisper.
His mind desperately tries to deny all of it as he tells them what their chances are.
Everything happens as it should. They're on the brink of retrieving the gauntlet, and Stephen does nothing to prevent their plan from falling apart. His instincts scream at him to stop this, to save them, and he's fighting himself almost every step of the way on top of Thanos.
Because this is the only way to save them all. They have to lose the battle.
Tony has to win the war.
The others fall, until Stephen is the only one in Thanos' way. Finally, he can go all out. Heat causes the air to shimmer, the ground to practically melt into lava. He attempts to rip into the warlord, to rend him apart, but at last Thanos manages to grasp his horns and twist him to the side and to the ground. Like a bull in a rodeo, and he thrashes in rage and fear, trying to bathe him in fire despite the bad angle. He doesn't feel the Cloak quivering, wanting desperately wrap around his enemy, rip him away, and bash him against the rock and twisted metal. But it stays, as its chosen nearly begged it to. One future in over 14 million. They only have one chance.
Stephen screams when a large hand rips the empty Eye from his chest, crushing the ancient metal in disgust at the attempted trickery.
Then Tony is there as Stephen struggles to clear his thoughts and move past the pain. Everything happens as he saw it. He clenches his teeth and bites back a growl. Timing is everything.
Stephen can't tell whether he's terrible at bargaining, or amazing at it. But when it counts, he's always managed to get what he wants.
Thanos leaves with the Time Stone, and Tony's life is spared. The man certainly won't thank him for it, and Stephen doesn't blame him. Especially when he knows what is to come for him.
Stephen doesn't dream of asking for his forgiveness. Knows he doesn't deserve it. But he tries to give Tony the barest glimmer of hope.
There was no other way.
