I don't own Doctor Strange or anything Marvel, save some comics, movies and action figures. Oh and a few posters. I just got tired of waiting for the next Dr. Strange film. Some of this story is derivative of the 2007 Doctor Strange cartoon. I don't own that either.
What do you Fear, Stephen?
Chapter 1:
Paul Edwards dropped his house keys on the bowl as he entered the front room. The house was silent…too silent. "Hun?"
It wasn't quite an old fear yet, that feeling of coming home, his wife suddenly vanished, their baby daughter crying weakly from the nursery. A fear that even the death of Thanos and the return of his wife hadn't completely conquered.
"Sweetheart?" he called louder this time. He held his breath, straining to hear past the rapid beat of his heart.
Before he could think, his feet were moving him deeper into the house. The noonday sun shining through the front windows. He'd started coming home for lunch once Emily had been brought back. For her it had seemed like a hiccup of time, not even a blink, but for him he'd mourned for five years, their baby was just about to start kindergarten.
The last few months had been a balancing act between the awkward to the familiar and everything in between. Emily found herself loving a stranger and he a memory. To rebuild what was lost, he'd started to come home for lunch, to sit and eat together and talk. He was about to head for their bedroom when Emily came out into the hall.
Her finger was pressed to her lips and her dark brown eyes were full of concern. "It's okay," she whispered to him. "It's okay. We're okay. Amelia wasn't feeling well, so I put her down for a nap." She threw her arms around him, knowing his quiet desperation. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to wake her. I'm sorry."
He clutched her to him, burying his fingers into her curly black hair. Despite the uneasiness, their stumbling relationship, he knew one thing to be true; he'd rather have Emily here with him in this world, than not.
Holding her at arms-length, he studied her face, the smooth dark skin, her full lips. Flesh and blood. Alive. It was a miracle. He gave her a watery smile. "No. I overreacted. One day this will all be a bad memory and you'll get to make jokes about your cradle-robbing husband."
She nudged him with a teasing grin, the one that made him first take notice over ten years ago. "Ah, it just puts us on even ground now. I've always been the more mature one."
Taking his hand, she led him to the kitchen. Food wasn't scarce, but the government had instituted a ration program once everyone had come back from the decimation. Canned food was the easiest. Most of it could last a few years, while farming and ranching worked to expand to the needs of a population redoubled.
He reached into a cupboard to pull out a can of stew and fought with the can opener. Just as he was emptying the contents into a pan, he smelt it. Fresh baked bread. It had been hanging in the air when he got home but his fear had blocked it out.
She grinned at his awe as she sliced two thick pieces. "How?" he asked.
"Ginger had some leftover flour and sugar. She said I needed to fatten up my man."
"That was kind of her. Antiquated, but kind. I'll have to thank her once I head back to the site."
When the decimation had occurred, there had been a lot of abandoned buildings, cars, and other property. Some became claimed by remaining family members, taken to storage facilities, others had been slowly gathered off the streets and catalogued. Much of it had been repurposed for families in need. Now though, they were working on reclaiming some of the property to the rightful owners. Those things that had been rusted over with time and disuse were now being reworked to build newer cars, refurbish homes that hadn't fallen to decay but needed reworking to be livable.
It was chaos, pure joyful chaos.
He poured them a couple of bowls and sat down to eat.
"What's wrong with Amelia?" he asked as he dunked his bread into the stew.
"Stomach bug, I think. She has a low grade fever and she complained that her stomach hurt. I gave her some Tylenol and helped her get to sleep. I'm hoping by tomorrow she'll be feeling better."
"You gave her the liquid she hates…"
"Hates the chewables, I remembered," she finished. "She called me mommy today."
She said it nonchalant, with the casual shrug of her left shoulder, but Paul knew how much that meant to her. It meant their little girl was finally coming to terms that her mother was back. He wished he could promise that she'd never vanish again, but despite the joy of most, there were others who were taking advantage of the chaos after their miracle. Those who would rather raid than work with S.H.I.E.L.D and Paul's own division. There had been too much violence already.
"That's great, hun," he grabbed her hand and rubbed a thumb over the back of it. "We're becoming a proper family again."
They finished their humble meal, talking about work, and Amelia starting school in the fall. Emily had started to looking at communications positions that had opened up in the few months due to the return of those decimated. She had an interview on Friday and Ginger had agreed to watch Amelia.
Eventually, he stood up and leaned over to give her a kiss goodbye. "I'll see you tonight."
That's when a scream of agony came from Amelia's bedroom. With a quick shared glance, they both bolted from their daughter's room. "What's wrong, baby?" Emily called. "Are you going to be sick?"
There was no response and as they turned on the lights, it might have looked like Amelia was sleeping. She might have been sleeping if her eyes weren't wide open.
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It had been a long night in the ER and Doctor Christine Palmer was looking forward to falling into bed and not waking up until her husband, David, brought her a steaming cup of coffee with a seriously unhealthy cheese danish. Those dreams were cut off when a distraught man carrying a young girl came through the ER doors.
"Help, please help me," he called, his deep voice shrill with anxiety.
Christine gestured to an orderly to grab a stretcher. She caught a glimpse of the girl and froze. Her dark brown eyes were open, but they seemed to be bouncing back and forth in a repetitive manner. It almost looked like she was asleep wither eyes open, her cycle set to REM.
The fact that she was supposed to be on her way out and home flew from her mind. "I'm Doctor Palmer, what's the problem?"
The orderly brought the stretcher and Christine guided the man to lay the girl down while she listened to him stutter out an explanation. "She cried out…she was feeling sick to her stomach…but she wouldn't respond. Her eyes."
"Okay, okay," she said, trying to calm down his hysteria. "Are you her father?"
"Yes," he swallowed. "Yes," he nodded.
"Alright, what's her name?"
"Amelia, Amelia Edwards."
"And yours?"
"Paul."
They were now moving into triage and the nurse came to the side to take Amelia's vitals. "When did you first notice her symptoms."
"I was at work. My wife went to park the car, she could tell you more."
Christine waved her penlight in the Amelia's eyes. Her pupils dilated, but she didn't flinch. Nor did she react when Christine clapped her hands close to her ear. Emily Edwards wasn't too far behind her husband and daughter. Once she had the full story, she pulled the nurse over and ordered a CBC, MRI and EEG.
As she makes her way back to her office, she rested a hand on each parents' shoulder. "We'll do our best."
Christine called David and told him she'd be sleeping at the hospital. He'd clucked his tongue with fond understanding and asked her if she needed anything. She slept for four blissful hours before her MRI results came in.
She rubbed tiredly at her eyes as she looked at the scan. She compared it the results of the CBC and the EEG. There was nothing in her bloodwork, nothing to indicate a virus or infection that could explain the swelling of Amelia's brain. But the EEG was the weirdest and most concerning thing. With a sigh, Christine picked up her phone. If it was a weird thing, there was only one man she could call.
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Three months after coming back to the living, Stephen Strange found that he still couldn't sleep through the night. There were potions, spells that kept the nightmares away. But it wasn't the nightmares, though those were horrible enough that kept him awake. It was the awful nothingness that seemed to crawl into him and not let go. The blank grey that never ended and promised to swallow him whole. He'd asked others that returned after the snap, but not even the other Masters could account for his reaction.
Wong kept him busy enough, the London Sanctum had recovered over his five year absence but required his and the rest of the Masters' skills to boost the wards that the three sanctums provided a barrier for Earth.
After Tony Stark's funeral, he'd spent a month keeping war from breaking out in the Kalwaxay dimension. When he was the most exhausted, he just slept, and the frightening nothingness did not encroach on his subconscious.
It was never gone for long.
So he wandered the halls of his Sanctum, checked in with the apprentices at Kamar-Taj, and searched out reasons to occupy his time until he reached exhaustion. Sadly, in the last week there hadn't been much unrest with the otherworldly or extra-dimensional citizenry. After Bruce Banner had undone the decimation it was more an earthly chaos. Not his area of expertise.
He was currently reviewing the recent relic inventory that the apprentices had made of the Hall of Wisdom. His lips curved in a smile when he remembered Wong's reaction when he suggested the inventory. He forbade any of the Masters from letting any of the apprentices in his library. He would do that inventory himself.
Stephen was half tempted to conjure a portal into the library and move some of the books around. It had been a while since he'd had a good laugh. Instead, he finished his review of the relics, marking the ones that he would discuss security with the other Masters and which ones would need to be brought to one of the Sanctums.
With the Sorcerer Supreme dead for the last seven years, the Masters of the Mystic Arts had been running Kamar-Taj and the defense of earth by consensus. While he'd been gone no Sorcerer Supreme had been named but most deferred to the other Sanctum Masters. Wong had been guarding the New York Sanctum. He'd been relieved to return it to Stephen's protection.
He started when his cell phone rang. With shaking fingers, he pulled it from his robes and looked at the display screen. His heart thudded. He hadn't talked to Christine since he'd first come back. Everything had been awkward between them in a way that not even he being an arrogant asshole had been able to produce.
"Christine?" he answered.
"Hey, Stephen. I need your help."