"They say dragons never truly die. No matter how many times you kill them."
-S.G. Rogers, Jon Hansen and the Dragon Clan of Yden

The planet breaks apart, the cold, dead rock crumbling at last, becoming so much debris. More space rock, more space dust.

The planet was long dead by then. Life gone, unsustainable.

Except for him.

The last of his kind. The last of any living thing in that corner of the universe. Everlasting, eternal, he curls in the void of space, shielded by enormous, leathery wings, limned in starlight and unaffected by searing cold, by the lack of air, water, or food. He is the last dragon, too old to remember his name if he ever had one. Too old to remember if he was the first as well as the last, or whether that is simply an affectation.

Perhaps this is simply another turn in an endless cycle. Perhaps, should he wait long enough, an eon or two, life will reform around him once more.

Time has no meaning when nothing truly changes. But eventually, he becomes aware of a...something. A Presence.

The sensation of time trickles back as xe does nothing but watch. Gradually, his awareness sharpens. He feels a sort of itch, beneath scales and skin. Something he hasn't felt since life had gone and he had been left alone. Curious, he identifies at last. He is curious.

He considers further, as stars breathe and die. Boredom. He was bored. He isn't so much, now.

Why are you here? he asks the Presence.

Interesting, Xe responds.

He accepts. He is interesting, after all.

But now he is aware, awake in a way he has not been in quite some time. And he finds himself...discontent. There was more, once. He desires more. Of anything.

Anything? Xe asks.

He finds himself thinking of the bipedal creatures who had lived on the planet-that-was. So curious. So hasty and confusing and frightened and violent and unexpectedly ingenious. The marks and monuments they had left had long since worn away. But for such tiny, short-lived things they could be so mighty. They certainly never seemed bored.

Would you give up eternity for mortality?

Why not? he wonders, as galaxies are born and space debris collide. He has never given much thought to eternity. He simply is. Now, faced with the choice, it seems such a simple thing. He's tried eternity and it's not to his liking. Perhaps mortality is better?

Would you give up your wings and your fire?

He hesitates. What is the point, if I will not be myself?

You will always be yourself at your core. Nothing will take that away. But you will be changed, transformed into something different.

No wings or fire, he muses. What will they become? What will he?

Why? he asks.

Interesting, Xe repeats.

He uncurls at last. Tail sweeping back, enormous wings stretching wide, head lifting as dragon eyes open to see the truth of Xem. Xe is a power, a force, beyond flesh and blood, untouched by time. New and old at once. It would not be a mistake to call Xem a god.

And Xe has an idea...a need, for a tipping point. A fulcrum on which the multiverse turns. He might be necessary, or he might be irrelevant. Xe can only put him into play, but his choices are his alone.

Interesting, he agrees. Something new. Something more. He cannot clearly remember the last time he has been so intrigued. It will be worth it, if only to feel alive once more.

Xe is satisfied. Xe knows what he has chosen.

Transform me.

Xyr being explodes in a supernova of light and power, so bright that even his eyes cannot stand it.


For as long as he can remember, Stephen Strange has always dreamed of fire and flying. The reason why trickles in slowly - the human mind cannot hold the memory of eternity, and a child's mind is completely unequipped to even try - but over time the knowledge settles. The instincts, of course, were always there. A fascination with knowledge, with fire, and a tendency to hoard pretty, shiny things, from coins to rocks to stickers. Because at his core he is always, and will always, be himself.

He was a dragon once. He has a dragon soul.

But that knowing takes a backseat to the troubles of puberty, to the cage of his father's abuse.

And it doesn't help to prevent his sister's death.

That is agony for a boy who loves with the ferocity of a dragon, who has never lost someone before, with a soul that does not remember ever having someone to lose.

He hoards knowledge, then, and skill in medicine, with such intensity it might almost have been his Hoard. Some days he thinks it might be, but it doesn't settle quite right. It is a hoard, but not his Hoard.

Regardless, he pursues his goal of becoming the best neurosurgeon with single-minded intensity. Mortal lives are already so fragile and fleeting. They have no time for anything - he has no time - and it is not right that something or someone should cut such a short thread even shorter.

Stephen's colleagues call him cold-blooded. He smiles thinly and doesn't say that it is unusually perceptive of them because that would be giving them too much credit. Their intelligence once again falls short. Oh, he knows that he is in many ways a cold man. His arrogance and lack of empathy, for one. The iron control he has over his temper, his passion - his fire - that was reinforced at his father's hand, combined with the endless patience of a once-immortal began the rumors of his unfeeling nature.

Truly, Stephen doesn't understand how feeling will make him a better surgeon.

But calling him cold-blooded and not actually connecting him to any sort of cold-blooded creature is just plain irritating.

Christine, at least, has been perceptive enough to notice that he does care in his own way. While she has more cause than most to complain about the lack of consideration for her emotions in a number of situations while they date, she had been surprised by his attention to caring for her physically. Though Stephen often forgets or neglects his own welfare when he is busy, he always seems to know when she herself has missed a meal, or takes on too much, or just needs to get away for a moment and breathe. And he somehow manages to do so unobtrusively, almost without her noticing. He isn't a mother-hen by any means, and it is an almost proprietary sort of care. But he does care, and the behavior continues to a certain extent even after they break up.

Stephen, for his part, cannot help the possessiveness that is as much a part of him as his arrogance, or his intelligence. When he desires something or someone, they become his, and he takes care of what is his. With his fortune it is easy enough to gain whatever catches his eye - he's never quite curbed the impulse to hoard whatever sparkling thing catches his interest and he's built up quite a collection of watches lately - but it could have become quite a problem when it comes to people.

If his father hadn't taught him what not to do. If his sister, while she lived, hadn't taught him what was too far.

Stephen is human, has been human his whole life, subject to human laws, human body chemistry, a human mind. He may have vaguely dragon instincts, and thoughts, and blurred memories, but they don't control him. They are a part of him, perhaps the core of him, but not all of him. And anyway, there are people who are fully human and know nothing else, who are far more monstrous than he can imagine becoming himself.

Stephen flies high, careless and callous.

And then he falls.

Fast cars are as close as he can get to the feeling of flying these days. Ironic, then, that that is how he irrevocably damages his wings. His hands.

He roars impotently, his temper exploding unchecked, and he would do anything, try anything, to fix his hands. He sells his home, his hoard, and pushes away the only one who tries to help. Christine, the only person left who is his, and he can't stand for her or anyone else to be near him. Can't stomach her kindness, her inability to understand, her pity. At least once he drives her away he doesn't have to hide the bottles of pills or alcohol. Anything to dull the pain. To circumvent his photographic memory and forget, even for a little while.

Depression, addiction, homelessness… He barely recognizes himself anymore. Stephen falls so much further than he ever imagined he could, and he blames himself most of all. He wonders now, more strongly than ever, whether his last memories of his previous life were delusion. If there hadn't been some random Being after all, but simply a dragon with too much magic, driven to madness by eons of unfathomable aloneness. His own fault that he exists in a universe seemingly determined to beat humility into him.

Kamar-Taj is the last desperate gamble of a dying man. No pills, no money, no home. He's already suffering from withdrawal, and he knows that detox is going to be painful. He's in a foreign country without resources, without even knowing the language, and with no idea where to get more drugs if or when he gives in to his addiction. Detox could very well get him killed.

It certainly distracts him. It takes Stephen an unforgivably long time to realize just what he's stumbled into. Not until he sees – really, truly sees – the Ancient One, does he register the first inkling that this isn't some strange form of therapy or experimental research.

They look at each other. She sees something of the truth in him, and he sees something of her nature. But they both have their parts to play.

Stephen can't really fault the Ancient One's reluctance to teach him. He doesn't know if she has gone so far as to identify his dragon soul, but if he's being honest, he wasn't all that great of a man either. Or, no. He had been a great man, but no one had ever accused him of being a good one.

He stays. Sits at their door and waits, because he cannot give up so easily and he has nowhere else to go. This is his last hope, and he clamps his jaws down on it with the knowledge that to let go is to die.

He spends his first days in Kamar-Taj in agony, shuts himself away to ride out the pain, and determinedly detoxes alone. He's feverish, delirious, and barely able to keep hydrated, never mind clean up his mess. But he's stubborn enough to get through, and grateful that he had been given the time to 'adjust'.

The lessons in humility continue, naturally. He knew he had wielded magic once, and so of course he had tried to do so before. When nothing happened no matter what he tried, he had concluded that either magic didn't exist on this world, or else humans were incapable of wielding it. Or perhaps humans simply couldn't use dragon magic.

Now, knowing that magic exists, that humans can use it, and having thoroughly studied the theory, Stephen can only conclude that either his hands are interfering or his dragon soul is. The other students draw glowing mandalas in the air, perform the spells with practiced competence, and he can barely make sparks. The memory of how instinctive magic had been once simply enhances his frustration.

Then the Ancient One shoves him from the nest, to fly or die, and at last Stephen breaks through the block that held him back. He surrenders…

He flies through texts and theories and spells. There's not enough time, there's never enough time, and learning astral projection is a blessing when he can remain productive while he sleeps. Perhaps it's not the healthiest lifestyle, but he's come to realize that he's more of a 'do as I say, not as I do' type of doctor.

In his curiosity, his drive for knowledge, he ends up holding time in his hands. It shouldn't be surprising that that's about the time everything begins to spiral out of control.

He listens to Kaecilius twist his rhetoric into something he believes would sway a doctor. He obviously believes he's scored some sort of point, but Stephen is just struck speechless by how completely wrong he is. Stephen remembers eternity. A world without death sounds to him like absolute boredom. Like stagnation. Like…nothing.

Humans barely survive to their first century. They are not built for eternal life. And somehow, they always seem to forget that means life beyond the end of their world, the death of their planet. Until the heat death of the universe and beyond. Stephen is hard-pressed to think of something less appealing.

It's possibly for the best that he doesn't get a chance to say all of this to Kaecilius.

But for all that Stephen accepts death as a necessary and natural part of life, he draws the line at dealing it. He is a doctor; his identity since he was a child has centered around healing, around restoration rather than destruction. He may have forgotten his original motivation over the years, may have become the man his father molded him into, who cared more for reputation and material goods and nothing for people. But he didn't choose his cases just so that his record would remain impeccable and unbroken.

He can accept that death is a part of life, but he cannot accept a person dying under his knife. He can't handle it.

It's even worse to deliberately kill a man. Not even accidentally, during or post-surgery, but to knowingly lay his hands upon a man and determinedly end his life. And Wong, Mordo, and the Ancient One aren't helping, acting as though he is the unreasonable one. As though something is wrong with him for protesting, for balking at the violence, at cutting another's life short. As though self-defense, or protecting this reality means it shouldn't trouble him so much. As though disagreeing, protesting, his reluctance makes him weak. Makes him a coward.

Maybe he is. But he took an oath that has become a core part of his existence, and he refuses to feel ashamed for trying his best to uphold it.

There's no time. There's never any time. Mortal life speeds along so quickly, the Ancient One is gone (she wasn't quite his, but he thinks he might have been hers, and it hurts regardless), and the Hong Kong Sanctum has fallen.

So Stephen makes time. He reverses as much of the destruction as he can, and then realizes what he needs to do. He allows himself one last glimpse of what he's trying to protect before entering an alien landscape.

As he adjusts the spell around the Eye of Agamotto, it clicks.

Oh no, he thinks. No.

He's discovered his Hoard, and it's bad, it's impossible. An entire world, the people of Earth, they are his Hoard.

Hoards are meant to be protected, kept safe and out of sight. A dragon is meant to know every piece, every mark, everything it is possible to know about his Hoard. To know the instant anything goes missing, to maintain every part flawlessly.

None of that is possible for Stephen, not with an entire world of people as his Hoard.

But they're his to care for, regardless. His to protect. And no one steals from a dragon's Hoard.

He puts his selfishness, his possessiveness, to good use, refusing to give in as he dies over and over again at the hands of a being so much more powerful than Stephen is, and less than he was. When Dormammu at last relents, it takes everything he has not to break down. Too much. It's too much. Karl's abandonment is just one more blow he can't handle yet.

Push it away. Block it off. Keep moving.

He can't break yet.

If nothing else, at least he has wings once more.


I have no idea where this came from. Sometimes I like thinking about ways in which Stephen Strange is like a dragon, and then - bam! - suddenly he was.