The draft of this story was called 'Flying Donut'. Titles are hard.
I always thought the undercurrent between Stephen and Tony from straight after his rescue to crash-landing on Titan was different tonally. It really felt like they came to some sort of understanding on the ship that we didn't see on-screen. I've been wanting to see what that conversation could have looked like for some time, so here we are. (Peter, of course, had his say as well. And really kick started it. Bless you, Peter).
Written for the "Rest" square in the Stephen Strange Bingo.
My thanks to several health sites, wikis, and encyclopedias for the medical information. Couldn't have gotten this angst without you.
Upon the human head are a set of thirteen nerves that emerge directly from the brain and brainstem. These are known as the cranial nerves and they send signals to different parts of the face. Each pair is labeled with Roman numerals numbering from the terminal nerve (CN 0, and so recently discovered that it was not part of his undergrad anatomy textbook) to the hypoglossal nerve (CN XII).
The trigeminal nerve (CN V) is the largest of the cranial nerves with three major branches that span from the scalp to the mandible, reading and sending sensory inputs from the majority of the face to the brain for interpretation. Two of these three major branches provide purely sensory functions; they tell the brain when those areas were being touched, temperature differences, and if something was painful.
He had, of course, met patients that had the misfortune of experiencing intense pain within the trigeminal nerve that took the form of cluster headaches, trigeminal neuralgia, or something similar. He sympathized with them and when his surgical prowess was able to offer them a modicum of relief, he was genuinely pleased.
After the accident, he was too busy thinking about himself to compare his lot in life with his former, chronically-pained patients.
But now he could not help but think of them. A good ten minutes had passed since those atrocious instruments had been pulled from his face and his cheeks (especially his left) still burned and his head throbbed at the point where the needle had sat within his temple. His thoughts strayed upon these past patients in his former life; he wondered if this is how they felt most of the time. The pain was different than the ache that often encompassed his hands. It wasn't a pain he would wish upon anyone.
God, what he wouldn't give for some hydrocodone.
Stephen Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts and Possibly Unluckiest Man to Survive the Shit Life Threw At Him, took a couple minutes in the privacy of his nook on their who-knows-how-long trip to Titan to feel very sorry for himself. Here he was in the middle of space, abducted from his home and tortured, and in the aftermath left aching with an insufferable billionaire and a naive, wide-eyed boy for company. On top of all that, his stomach was starting to protest its lack of promised sandwich.
Yes, now was as good a time as any to throw himself a little pity party.
Seeming to sense his mood, the Cloak softly squeezed his shoulders and curled one of its ends around his hand. He allowed himself the indulgence of stroking its lining with his thumb.
He permitted himself to mope for a couple minutes longer before his mind ultimately moved onward, as it was wont to do even before the accident. Stephen did not dwell upon his pains; instead, he searched for solutions to his problems until the problem was no longer an issue. He would have never made it through seven surgeries and the flight to Kathmandu without that mindset.
(That lingering thought brought him to think of the not-entirely-solved problem of his hands— but no, this was not the time to think about that. There were items of significantly greater importance at play right now, and it was time to move on from his self pity.)
The sorcerer leaned to the side and glanced over his shoulder. After he gave his ultimatum to Stark, both he and his— whatever the boy was to him— left to inspect the engine room to see if they could get a better idea of the ship's workings. In reality, Stephen suspected that Stark was interested in putting some distance between them for a while.
This had worked perfectly fine with him; he was in no mood for company, especially Stark's. He then had ended up settling in a cranny on the edge of the round platform, where he gently pressed the left side of his face against a cold metallic structure that supported part of the enormous steering mechanism. The cool metal helped the ache for the first few minutes.
Stark and his ward— Peter, that's what he said— were still nowhere to be seen. This was also fine. If anyone could figure out the workings of an alien spacecraft, it would be Tony Stark. He was more than happy to leave that job to him while he rested.
He moved his gaze from the rest of the deck and straightened again against the structural beam. He pushed his thoughts onward and forward to consider the immediate future. Whether he liked it or not, Stark had a point about bringing the fight to Thanos. The less casualties on Earth, the better. Still, he had no idea what to expect of this Titan. It was an alien planet. Would he even be able to breathe on its surface?
Well, as the air inside the ship was breathable, all signs pointed to yes. Small favours. It seemed numerous intelligent lifeforms needed the same atmospheric conditions of Earth to thrive (the Asgardians being another example). The similarity was perhaps a topic to ponder further in the future.
Assuming he survived this journey, of course.
Stephen settled the side of his face once more against the cold surface of the beam, grimacing to himself as the muscles in his cheek spasmed. Death: that was something to seriously consider, especially considering his current charge. What if he did die? Who would guard the Time Stone?
… that was not a thought he wanted to dwell on further, either. He knew the answer to that question. Perhaps his death would impart upon Stark the severity of the situation. Pleasant thought.
Not that he was unused to death, of course. One could say that death was a friend, holding hands with pain as the three of them spun about in a merry circle about the cosmos in defense of the universe.
He was becoming maudlin once more.
A brief moment later, he felt more than saw a blur of a figure fly by in his periphery and the cloak uncurled itself from his hand. Stephen lifted his head from the support structure and moved his gaze to the right to see the kid— Peter— balancing rather precariously on some beam over a gaping metallic abyss. He looked oddly comfortable as he squat there.
"Uh, hi."
The doctor raised his brows. "Hi."
Peter shifted a bit. "You uh, you okay?"
He exhaled. 'Okay' was relative, but he was alive and no longer a prisoner. That was something to work with. Stephen tried to allay the teenager's concerns and answered with a soft, "Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay."
A quick nod was the response he received for his answer, and Peter's eyes darted from him to look out the strange window that engulfed the space in front of them. "That's pretty cool," he started. "That window, I mean. It reminds me of Jell-O. Mr Stark thinks it might be some sort of form of matter manipulation that we haven't really discovered yet."
His eyes moved towards the window again. Sure, he could see Jell-O.
The silence sat for a brief moment as they both watched the passing of stars. Part of him wondered if any of these stars were ones visible from Earth. Perhaps one of the stars at their back was their own sun and solar system. Maybe even their own galaxy. Wasn't that a thought.
"I'd not be mad if you had to let me die to save the universe. Just so uh, you know."
Stephen startled out of his thoughts at the broken silence, and as his brain processed what was said, he internally winced. "I thought you were too far away to hear that."
"Oh, well, normally yeah, I would be, but uh, I can sort of hear better than normal. But I just wanted to say that I wouldn't hold it against you, 'cause it's the universe and all. That's pretty important."
Another slow exhale. "Look, kid, you have spirit; but what we are likely going to face on Titan is unlike anything you've ever seen in New York. There is a chance that not all of us will make it back home."
Peter glanced down at his hands. "Well, I'd rather not die, but I'm an Avenger now and I have a job to do, no matter what happens."
His gaze softened at the statement. "That's a noble and selfless sentiment."
A shrug. "It's the truth."
"It is not a path that most would choose to follow," he said in return, but pursued the subject no further for the time; his head was starting to become irksome again. He used the base of his palm to massage his temple just above the needle insertion point in a vain attempt to relieve the ache.
"You sure you're okay?" He heard the concern in his voice even more now.
"I will be." Hopefully.
He looked unconvinced. "I mean, I heard you scream just before Mr Stark jumped down and, and it looked painful." Stephen raised his brows at him and Peter continued quickly, "Sorry, I didn't mean to remind you. What I'm trying to say is that it's okay if you're not okay, Mr Doctor Strange, sir."
At first he had no idea how to respond, so he turned his gaze again to the Jell-O window. The kid was perceptive, Stephen would give him that. Eventually his thoughts fell into his comfort zone and his answer reflected what he knew best.
"The areas he targeted on my face are primarily connected to the trigeminal nerve; he stimulated the nociceptors to send pain signals to my brain, but the lack of blunt force trauma and his targeting of purely sensory nerves leaves me to believe that his goal was to inflict pain with minimal damage. If this is neuritis, it is more than likely temporary." God, let it be temporary.
Peter didn't immediately answer, and Stephen glanced over at him to see a glazed look over his face. The kid then blinked a couple times and squinted at him. "How did you— are you actually a real doctor?"
He huffed something that, optimistically, might have been the beginning of a chuckle. "I was a neurosurgeon."
"So when you said your name…"
"Doctor Stephen Strange."
"... oh." He cleared his throat. "Sorry, Mr— erm. Doctor. Doctor Strange."
He shrugged minutely. "It's not the first time." Probably wouldn't be the last, either.
"So do you heal people with magic or something?"
He huffed again. "Not quite, no. The doctoring was more of my job before the mystical arts came into my life."
Peter's brow furrowed. "Why'd you stop?"
This time Stephen sighed, and he raised his right, slightly quivering hand upward, the thick hypertrophic scars facing outward. "Can't be a surgeon with hands like these," he said dryly.
His eyes widened. "Oh, I— I'm sorry—"
"Don't be." He'd come to terms with it. And he really did not want to hear anything resembling pity from the kid.
He thankfully stopped trying to apologise and the silence sat between them once more. However, Peter seemed little deterred from the briefly awkward moment and he started the conversation anew. "But how'd you go from being a doctor to a wizard?"
"Sorcerer," he corrected. "And by a string of coincidences and luck, at first. The Ancient One may have even said fate." He made a brief face at the thought.
Peter looked at him expectantly, and, well, he saw no reason why not to say on. "My physical therapist claimed that he knew a man who had a complete spinal cord injury— he was paralyzed from the waist down— that stopped showing up to appointments. Months later, he saw him again walking. Such a feat in medical science is considered completely impossible. I told him I didn't believe him. He found the files to prove he existed, then I found the man— a man who was supposed to be paralyzed— playing a game of basketball. He told me of Kamar-Taj."
"Kamar-Taj?"
He offered him a slight smile. "There I learned the ways of the Mystic Arts. Or, as it is commonly referred to, magic."
The teen opened his mouth to speak again, likely to ask another question, but was interrupted. "Hey kid." Stephen looked over his shoulder to see Tony Stark a few feet behind them with an unreadable expression upon his face. "Go explore more. See if you can find anymore interesting bits of alien tech." Peter nodded and, with the burst of his web shooter, was swinging away within a blink of the eye.
Stephen exhaled softly and turned to look forward again, leaning back against the support structure once more. He had no energy to spare for banter with Stark; he needed to preserve his strength for whatever they would encounter upon Titan.
He heard the other man settle down beside him. "It didn't come to me until just now, but I have heard your name before." Stephen couldn't help but look at Stark from the corners of his eyes as the billionaire spoke. "Last year, a good friend of mine, he— he was injured in a fight. Incomplete lumbar spinal cord injury. I asked the head surgeon who removed the shrapnel and arc reactor from my chest if he could recommend any neurosurgeons. Immediately said your name— then doubled back, said you had retired recently."
He turned his head fully to look at Stark, and Stark was openly staring at his scarred hands. "Some retirement gift."
What could he say to that? That there was no guarantee he would have operated on his friend if he found it damaging to his perfect record? That it was his own stupidity that brought on the early retirement?
Stephen avoided talking about himself altogether. "How's your friend now?"
"It was a long road, but I invented some braces for him that allow him to walk rather well. Rhodey's happy with his progress; he's convinced me to talk with the DoD about getting these units produced for vets that have partial paralysis. Apparently they're better than anything currently out there. Not that that's really surprising, come to think of it. Maybe I could even do something for complete lower body paralysis, you know, once we're done saving the universe."
He snorted softly in reply, but Stark was not yet done. "But that might not be necessary if your magic can take care of complete paralysis just like that."
Stephen narrowed his eyes. "How long were you listening?"
His reply, unsurprisingly, was flippant. "Oh, I came in on your origin story. Don't worry, I didn't overhear any deep, dark secrets between you and the kid." Before he could reply, Stark continued, "But seriously, how does that work? Did someone chant a spell at this guy and he's as good as new?"
"Not exactly." He could feel Stark's eyes boring into the side of his head and he looked upward in exasperation. "He channels dimensional energy inward to walk."
"And by 'dimensional energy', you mean…"
He exhaled and considered the simplest way to explain this. "Are you familiar with quantum physics?"
"You do realize who you're talking to, right?"
Stephen rolled his eyes. "How could I forget?" He continued quickly before Stark could retort. "There are several theories within physics that explore the idea of the multiverse. While modern science only touches upon the surface of it, the Masters of the Mystic Arts have known about and explored the multiverse for thousands of years. Magic is but the ability to tap into the dimensional energy from these different planes of existence."
"That sounds… surprisingly more scientifically-based than I was expecting."
"Magic is just science we don't understand yet." He bit back a smirk at Stark's look.
"Very funny. But back to my point: this paralyzed man is using his own abilities via this 'dimensional channeling' to make himself walk again?" Stephen nodded. "And from what you were saying earlier, it sounds like anyone can learn to do this? He wasn't born a wizard or something?"
His brow furrowed. "It takes study and practice, and a person has to have the mental prowess and discipline in order to dedicate themselves to learning it, but… yeah, theoretically, anyone could learn it." If Stark was going to ask him to teach him magic…
But Stark didn't, at least not right away. He fell quiet and Stephen took the time to study the other's profile; his thoughts were clearly elsewhere. While he hardly knew the man, it seemed he was internally debating something. He left him to it and brought his gaze back to the stars swimming past the window. The deep darkness of space appearing so brightly blue was an interesting visual and there was something calming about the passage of the distant solar systems. The calm before the storm, in a way.
They passed the next few minutes in silence and the sorcerer allowed himself to relax further. His head was aching less; he carefully prodded his cheek and inwardly grimaced. Tender; the bruising would end up being spectacular. He lowered his hand and brought his attention again to the wide expanse beyond the ship. The repetitive rotation of the stars soaring past the window set his mind at further rest. He closed his eyes and let himself fall into a meditative state.
"Could you teach Rhodey?"
The question was soft-spoken; it was only for the silence around them that he heard it at all. Stephen blinked himself out of his light meditation and looked at Stark. "Sorry?"
"My paralyzed friend. Rhodey. After all this," he waved a hand about the ship, "could you— see, the brace is good. It's very good. Great, even. But he still has to take it on and off and he's still— he deserves the best, no matter the source. One of the best men I've ever known. No idea why he still hangs around me, honestly."
Stephen's brow furrowed in surprise at the self-deprecating humour, but remained mum about it as he considered the question. "If he did learn it for that purpose, he would not be able to perform any other magic while stabilizing his own body."
"Yeah, I figured. I'm not sure if he'd be really into the whole spell-casting thing, anyway." The doctor quirked a questioning brow and Stark added, "He's an air force colonel. He flies things and shoots things. We like to do the same stuff; I think that's why we get along so well."
He huffed softly in reply, then remained silent while he mulled it over. "He would need to be approved by the other Masters and remain in Kamar-Taj for the training, but I don't see why he could not. If he agreed to take an oath of silence to never reveal the true cause of his 'miraculous cure' to all others, especially those within the military and government, I think something could be arranged."
"I suppose you don't want everyone and their mother coming knocking on your doors to learn magic."
"Preferably not," he agreed dryly.
The silence fell between them once more and, to Stephen's surprise, it was a comfortable one. He had seen the anger in Tony Stark's gaze as he gave him his verdict concerning his priority to the Time Stone above all else— their lives included. That they could have a polite conversation and sit in amicable silence not even an hour later was admittedly a turnout he was not expecting.
Stark was the one to break it again. "I need to ask a favour of you, Strange." Stephen turned his gaze to him once more, brows up in question. The other man kept his gaze forward towards the window. "I know that the whole 'fate of the universe' and everything depends on that little stone in your magical necklace. I get that." He swallowed and then turned to look at him straight-on. "But if it's between me and the kid, the kid comes first. Always."
Stephen's brow furrowed at the request. "Stark, I—"
"Please."
The look in his eyes nearly made Stephen look away, but he managed to keep his gaze steady. Instead, wordlessly, he nodded in agreement.
The nod seemed enough for Stark. He immediately looked away and said, "Good." The man pushed himself to his feet and his sight wandered, but it did not go back to Stephen. "I'm gonna see where he's run off to. You uh, you rest. We'll probably need your hat-tricks once we land."
Stephen huffed in reply and with that Stark left, leaving the doctor to, as he said, rest. He watched the mechanic depart before reclining against the support beam once more
Perhaps Stark wasn't that bad after all.
While I do research to the best of my ability, I am not anywhere near a medical professional. If there are any in the field who see an error and can point out a correction, I greatly appreciate it!
It has been confirmed by director Scott Derrickson that the spinal cord injury mentioned just before Strange's accident was not Rhodey. I go with that same canon here.
I also go with the explanation of magic that was given in Doctor Strange as opposed to the comics. I like the sciency base, especially as this magic is not necessarily innate but can be learned. Pure magic to me is more of a Harry Potter, born with it ability.
"Magic is just science we don't understand yet," is said in 'Thor' and is a riff from science fiction author's Arthur C. Clarke's third law from his essay first published in Profiles of the Future (1962).
I haven't seen any other authors connect Pangborn and Rhodey's very similar injuries. If anyone knows of a story that has done it, please point it my way!
Comments are super appreciated. 100 people read the last Infinity War one-shot I posted less than a week ago and there were no reviews and it made me sadface. Writers do truly eat up reviews like, uh, cookies and cake and other delicious, sweet things. :)