For IronStrange Gift Exchange 2019.
Gift to: Mystical_Magician on A03
In a nutshell, the two prompts I got were:
1. Stephen was not quite human.
2. Stephen always tries to be unobtrusive, but Tony always notices him.
I kinda blended the two and came up with this.This is the first time I'm trying to write in present tense, so it might not be as smooth as I hoped. But, hey, I tried.
CHAPTER ONE: He Breathes Out Space Dust
000
If anyone ever asked Stephen about his earliest memory, he would say it was his mother's voice or his father's smile. He would tell of the tree in the backyard that he always climbed. He would tell of the library down the road where he used to go with his sister. He would say what any normal person would say. But the truth is, his earliest memory is a voice. A voice that was as deep as the void and just as ancient, that resonated through his entire body as it spoke words in a language he did not, and would not ever, understand.
The only thing he felt in his soul, the feeling that stayed with him throughout his life, was an inexplicable sense of inevitability.
Stephen was but a child then. It would take him years before he could put his experience into words.
000
Stephen likes heights. He likes when he can see the entire world from his dad's shoulders. He likes when he kneels on the window seat in his bedroom and sees the entire garden stretched out in front of him.
It's a fine day and he's climbing a tree. His concentration is broken by an ominous crack and he falls. As the ground is rushing towards him, he thinks, stop.
His mum is reaching towards him, fear written all over her face, as she hangs suspended in time. There is a bird which is mid-trill. The world is completely and utterly silent.
It's a miracle, they say, that he wasn't harmed.
The confused consideration in his mother's eyes is overshadowed by the stark relief at finding her child unharmed.
000
That is so cool, your sister says, awe clear in her voice.
What else can you do, your dad asks, apprehension and fear shining through.
You need to be careful, darling, your mom implores, filled with concern.
000
He learns to keep it quiet, keep it secret.
A sliver of iridescent green winds through his subconscious. He dreams of the stars being born, the mad screaming of the void, mischievous laughter of the nebulae.
And above all, when he wakes up, his chest is heavy with yearning and he has to choke back the lump in his throat, longing for something intangible, something just out of his reach.
000
It gets worse. Because, of course it does.
Did you think it'll be easy, little Stephen?
His dreams (nightmares) bleed into his waking hours. His parents find him hiding in the closet, hands clamped over his ears, trying futilely to block out the cacophony of space. He can't hear his family's voices, can't hear himself think and he thinks he is saying something (it hurts, please make it stop, please please please, it's so loud, so loud, please help me).
He can't hear his own voice even though he can feel his throat vibrating around his words.
He screams and screams and screams, hoping to drown out the ever-present call of the stars.
000
He finds that he can ignore (not fully, not quite so, but just enough to carry on living) the haunting melodies if he concentrates on something else, anything else, hard enough.
He usually has a music player with him everywhere he goes.
He listens to the people he's talking to, focuses on their words, their cadences so much so that they remember him for his intensity.
He goes into medicine, relishing the hard work it requires. He throws himself into his studies, learns the intricacies of a human body, all the while keeping a finger on the pulse of the universe.
He still wakes up with the yearning and the longing filling him to the brim that he can taste it on his tongue. But he also feels an odd urgency.
Something is coming, something is going to happen soon.
Stephen doesn't know if he should be filled with apprehension or excitement.
000
The first time he sees Tony Stark, it's on the TV.
There's a tug in his chest.
He puts it out of his mind. There are complicated surgeries to be performed by a skilled doctor, which he happens to be.
He pays no mind to the excited chorus that resonates from the corners of the universe.
He doesn't turn back to catch one more glimpse of the man. (He does.)
000
He loses everything in a turn he did not see, did not expect, did not plan for.
The haunting music, that forever pulses at the back of his mind, sounds mournful, melancholic.
He tells himself to stop imagining things.
000
On seeing the Eye of Agamotto, the stone glowing with the same verdant light that fills his mind every time he closes his eyes, he thinks, oh.
Oh, it's you.
I found you.
000
The first thing that strikes him when he enters the Dark Dimension is how silent it is. A moment later, he is shown how wrong his initial impression was when the agonised shrieking of a million voices tears at (into -hurtshurtsgodithurts-) his brain.
The stars that had been sucked into the cursed space had lost their starlight-spun melodies, but not their raw, grating voices. The madness inherent in the unholy sounds threatens to bring him to his knees.
He grabs onto the clear rhythm that is emanating from the Eye.
And using that pure ringing melody as a crutch, he says, Dormammu, I've come to bargain.
000
The Eye sings to him every night. It sings to him of the beginning, of the end.
It sings of eternity.
It is to these songs that he sleeps, constellations spinning over him. And when he is filled with terrors that swarms him when his defenses are down, the Eye smooths them away with soft crooning, embracing him within its endless notes, protective and possessive of what it considers to be its own.
000
He learns about the Infinity Stones.
He learns about the Time Stone.
And something clicks into place.
000
Thanos...
The very name causes the soothingly rhythmic song of the Time Stone to become jarringly discordant.
Usurper, traitor, oath breaker...
There's rage and despair woven into the symphony now.
000
He meets Tony Stark.
The world quiets down. The universe itself holds its breath for a moment, and Stephen's world turns on its axis.
But no, he can't focus on this now.
Thanos first, Stark later.
000
Stephen knows the exact second he crossed the Earth's protective embrace and fell into the greedy grasp of the space.
The stars sound exultant and hypnotic.
The pain of a hundred shards piercing his skin jolts him out of the trance he had fallen into, unaware.
His screams echo around the chamber.
The stars fall silent and he thinks, breathes out, Stark.
000
Millions and millions of possibilities.
(-the Avengers dying again and again and again, in so many different ways - planets burning - the stars falling silent - Tony standing alone on a dead Earth - I hope they remember you, Stark - an army of Iron Man armours - we've won but at what cost - civilisations gone - the grief of the people renders the universe mute - there was no other way -)
How many did we win?
One.
000
A snap echoes throughout the universe, galaxies shivering in its wake.
And Stephen looks at this one extraordinary human who makes it all right, the one human whose name will become legend and will be sung about forever, in the stories that people will tell and in the songs that the stars will sing.
He thinks, I didn't know I was waiting for you.
He thinks, you're the only one who can do this.
He thinks, Tony...
"We're in the endgame now."
000