Author's Note: Hello again! Thanks once more to those who favorite/followed this story! If you guys could possibly leave a review to let me know how I'm doing, that would be great! Please enjoy! (I don't own Marvel)

The city's in shambles, Gwen thought as she looked through the taxi window. Her and her father were headed for the airport to fly to Kathmandu. They were driving through Manhattan and observing the damage done by the recent alien invasion.

Nearly a month ago, aliens had invaded New York under the direction of Loki. Luckily, the day was saved by the Avengers. A team of superheroes dedicated to protecting the earth. They included Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Hawkeye, and Black Widow.

The whole invasion thing had sent Gwen's head spinning. All her life, she had been convinced that aliens didn't exist, and neither did gods. Now, in only a few days, both theories were proven wrong. Thor and Loki were both Norse gods who hailed from other planets. No one could deny their existence now.

Gwen felt it was just lucky that they had the Avengers to protect them.

They pulled up to the airport which had luckily not been damaged by the alien invasion. Her father paid the taxi driver while Gwen grabbed their bags from the trunk.

The airport was fairly busy. They had to shove through the large crowd to catch their flight on time.

Once they finally boarded the plane, Gwen took out a thick book, while her father pulled out a pen and some paper. He was constantly practicing writing his name, in the hopes that it would help heal him. It worked a little bit. He had more control over his hands than he had started with. But they still couldn't straighten, and they still shook.

Gwen watched him out of the corner of her eye, but focused mainly on her book. She was currently reading The Iliad by Homer. It was a difficult read, but she didn't read it for entertainment. She read it so she could claim that she had read it. It made her seem smart, which was the air she wanted to give off. She enjoyed reading, but she also knew that reading made her seem intelligent. In school, she had definitely been a teacher's pet. She had been the captain of the academic decathlon team, and in the school class presidency, as vice president. She sucked up to everyone and did her best to succeed in every area. She craved success and had anxiety about failing. If she got a grade below a B, she had panicked, thinking that was bad. It's what made her a good student, in her mind. Her refusal to accept failure. It was what would make her a good doctor.

Little did she know how much that made her like her father.

They arrived in Kathmandu early in the morning. Gwen and her father were both exhausted, but they had no money for a hotel. Their only hope was to find Kamar Taj.

They walked through the busy streets, calling out the name. "Kamar Taj? Do you know where Kamar Taj is?"

Occasionally, Gwen would call out in Nepali. She didn't know how to speak Nepali fluently, but when she had learned they were going to Nepal, she had learned two simple phrases in Nepali. "Where is Kamar Taj?" and "Do you speak English?"

Gwen called out in Nepali while her father used English. "Kāmara tāja kahām cha? Kāmara tāja kahām cha? (Where is Kamar Taj?)"

Only a few people replied. When they stopped to talk to her, she couldn't really understand them, so she had to ask if they spoke English. "Kē tapā'īm angrējī bōlnuhuncha?"

Only two people spoke some English. They guided the two Americans as best as they could, but most had never heard of Kamar Taj. They gave suggestions, but couldn't give an exact location.

By afternoon, they still hadn't found Kamar Taj. They were just wandering around aimlessly, unsure. They kept repeating "Kamar Taj?" in both English and Nepali, but no one ever responded.

Eventually, they wandered into a back alley. "Are you sure this is the way?" Gwen asked her father. She didn't like the look of this back alley, but to be fair, she had no idea where this Kamar Taj was either.

"I don't know," he mumbled in frustration. It was then that several men approached them from the front. Stephen immediately grabbed Gwen's arm and turned them around, but there were more men behind them too. Stephen pushes Gwen behind him as they got closer. Gwen prepared herself to run away, or to fight. "Look guys, we don't have any money," Stephen told them.

"Your watch," one of them said fiercely.

"No. Please. It's all I have left."

"Your watch," he repeated menacingly.

One of them gave a bark of laughter. "Or your daughter. Your choice."

Gwen felt Stephen grip her hand even tighter. She took a step forward, and Stephen's hands couldn't keep a good grip on her. She got closer to the one who had spoken, and spat in his face.

He wiped away the saliva and gave a small cry of rage. He lifted a fist, but Stephen punched him as hard as he could first. Stephen gave shout of pain and gripped his wrist tightly. Then, all the thugs started beating on them. They swept the legs out from under them and started kicking them as hard as they could.

Gwen tried fighting back, but couldn't get herself in the right position to retaliate. So she lay there, groaning in pain and frustration. She tried covering her dad's body with her's (he was injured after all), but she didn't have to. Because it was then that someone showed up to save them.

He was dressed in a dark green cloak. He used some type of karate to punch and kick the guys, causing them to fall to the ground. Only one got away, and he ran fast, giving cries of fear.

Gwen stood up first (Stephen had taken the bulk of the kicking) and helped her father to his feet. The stranger grabbed Stephen's watch and held it out to him. "Thank you," Stephen told him.

The man took off his hood to reveal his face. He had dark skin and matching eyes. He looked kind, but at the same time, courageous. "You're looking for a Kamar Taj?" he asked in slightly accented English.

"Yes," Stephen said.

The man nodded. "Follow me." He started to lead the way without another word. Stephen and Gwen made eye contact before following the man.

"How's your hand?" Gwen asked. She saw how he was gripping it and turned her attention to her father. She reached out to touch his hand while walking backwards.

"It's fine," he told her. Gwen didn't turn around. She pulled his arm away from his chest to examine closer. "Really, Gwen, it's fine. Besides, there's not much we could do if it wasn't."

"I could tell if it was rebroken," she argued. "Then we could go see a doctor."

"That's what we're doing," Stephen retorted.

"Fair enough," she conceded. She let go of Stephen's arm after testing if it was broken in anyway. As far as she could tell it wasn't, but then again, she was only a CNA, and not a doctor.

They walked through the streets, following the stranger. He was not hard to keep track of. His green cloak stood out in the crowd. It was nearing sunset by the time they arrived at their destination. "You sure we got the right place?" Stephen asked, seeing the door they were stopping at. "That one over there looks more Kamar Taj-y."

The stranger did not laugh. He merely shook his head. "I once stood in your place," he informed them. "And I too was disrespectful. So, I'll offer you some advice: Forget everything you think you know."

"He stole that from a movie," Gwen muttered. Only Stephen heard. He did a fair job at keeping the grin from his face as they walked into the building.

"The Ancient One will see both of you now," he told them.

"The Ancient One? What's his real name?" Stephen asked. The stranger only stared at him. "Right. Forget everything I think I know. Sorry." They were herded into a room where the Ancient One sat. "Thank you, Ancient One, for… Oh." Some people had come to take their jackets. "Ok. That's a thing. Uh, thank you for… Oh. Thank you." They were now being poured tea. "Thank you, Ancient One, for agreeing to see us…" but the one they had assumed was the Ancient One was leaving.

"You're very welcome," said the lady who had poured them both tea. She was not terribly tall. She had kind eyes and a bald head. She wore a cream colored cloak, and had a British accent. She was certainly not what Gwen expected when she heard the name Ancient One. "Thank you Master Mordo, thank you Master Hamir," she called to the two men who were leaving. "Mr. Strange. And Miss Strange," she greeted politely.

"Dr. Strange," Stephen corrected her.

"Well, no. Not anymore, surely," she said with a soft laugh.

"Actually, yes anymore. He still has a doctorate degree, even if he isn't practicing medicine," Gwen retorted with a roll of her eyes.

The Ancient One turned to look at her. Gwen stared back, though she felt uncomfortable with the look she was being given. "And that's why you're here, isn't it?" Ancient One asked, still smiling. Gwen was unsure how to respond. Most people didn't remain calm once she turned sarcastic. They started getting exasperated, which made Gwen smirk inside. But not this Ancient One.

"It's good tea," Stephen commented, trying to diffuse the tension in the room. The Ancient One didn't respond, so Stephen continued. "Did you heal a man named Pangborn?"

"In a way," she told them.

"How did you correct a complete C7 C8 spinal cord injury?" Stephen asked, completely amazed.

"Well I didn't correct it. He couldn't walk. I convinced him that he could," the Ancient One told them.

Gwen allowed herself a snort. "Are you trying to say that it was psychosomatic?"

"When you reattach a severed nerve, is it you who puts it back together or the body?" The Ancient One focuses her attention on Stephen, though she kept an eye on Gwen. Gwen couldn't tell what that look in her eye meant. All she knew was that she didn't like it.

"It's the cells," Stephen replied.

"And the cells are only programmed to put the body back together in very specific ways, right?" Stephen and Gwen both nodded. "What if I told you that your own body could be convinced to put itself back together in all sorts of ways?"

"Cellular regeneration?" Gwen asked right away.

"Yes, Miss Strange."

"That's bleeding edge medical tech," Stephen said, in shock. "Is that why you're working here? And without a governing medical board? I mean, just how experimental is your treatment?"

"Very," The Ancient One informed him, handing Mordo a cup of tea.

"Are you telling me that you found a way to reprogram nerve cells to self heal?" Stephen then asked in disbelief.

"No, Mr. Strange. I know how to reorient the spirit to better heal the body," she explained.

Gwen looked at her like she was crazy. What did that mean? It sounded like something a magician would say. It was ridiculous. Of course they shouldn't have come here! Pangborn must've healed himself some other way.

And yet… as Gwen thought, she pictured the aliens that had flown over New York only months ago. Before that, she would've called the idea that aliens were real ridiculous too. Yet they were real. They were as real as anything she had seen. Was it so crazy that magic would exist too?

Her natural response was to reject the possibility. Magic couldn't be real! Didn't that Loki guy have magic? A voice in the back of her head brought up the counter argument. In the myths, Loki was a practiced magician or wizard or whatever he was. And he was real. It was entirely possible that magic could exist, if he existed.

Gwen tunes back in to the conversation. "You're a man who has spent his whole life looking through a keyhole, trying to widen. And now, upon hearing that it can be widened, you reject even the possibility," The Ancient One said to Stephen.

"I reject the possibility because I do not believe in fairytales," Stephen retorted.

Before he could continue on his tirade, The Ancient One spoke to Gwen. "I wonder, Miss Strange, if this is the first time you've ever doubted your father?"

Gwen looked up in shock. "Well… I… wait, what?" she asked, unsure what was being asked of her.

"You believe it. Or you at least accept the possibility," The Ancient One said earnestly. "I can see it in your eyes. You know that I speak the truth."

"Er… I'm… well I'm not really-"

"Explain it to him," The Ancient One insisted. "Clearly his mind is not as quick as your's."

Stephen turned to her, looking both confused and frustrated. He waited for an explanation. "Think about it, dad. For the longest time, we were sure aliens weren't real. Now, we've had an alien invasion in New York. The head of the invasion was Loki. In the myths, he was practiced in magic. Therefore, we can assume that magic is real. Is it really such a fairytale that this woman can practice magic?" Gwen looked eagerly at her father. If he believed it, than Gwen could be sure she wasn't just going crazy.

Stephen turned back to The Ancient One. "You think you see through us, don't you?" he mocked. "Well you don't. But I see through you!" He reached out to gently hit her, but The Ancient One retaliated. She grabbed his hand, twisted it, then pushed him with her other hand. Stephen fell over, looking like he was knocked out.

"Hey!" Gwen shouted, and she took a step forward. She was suddenly grabbed by Mordo and his hand slammed against her chest too.

The next thing she knew, she was having an out of body experience. She could see her body being held up by Mordo from an arm's length away. The Ancient One was doing the same thing to her father. Gwen looked at her hands and saw that she looked like a ghost. The Ancient One used the word spirit. Gwen's gaze turned to her right and she saw her father. He too looked like a ghost. She only saw him for a second, though, before they were both pulled back into their bodies.

"What did you just do to me?" Stephen asked once they were back into their bodies.

"We pushes your astral forms out of your bodies," The Ancient One explained.

"What's in that tea? Ciliciban? LSD?" Stephen questioned. Gwen was nodding breathlessly, but deep down, she was wondering how they both could be hallucinating the exact same thing.

"It's just tea," she said. "With a little honey."

Stephen breathes out and looked at his hands. "What just happened?"

"For a moment, you entered the Astral Dimension. A place where the soul exists apart from the body."

"Why are you doing this to us?" Stephen asked.

"To show you both just how much you don't know," the sorceress answered. "Open your eyes." She reached out and touched both of their heads.

The next thing Gwen knew, she was flying through the air. She screamed in terror as she looked at how high up she was. She was flying through the clouds, over the skyline of New York. She could see the Avengers tower in the distance, as well as their apartment building. The next thing she knew, she was soaring through the atmosphere and into space.

However, space didn't look like the pictures she had seen taken by telescopes and things. It was full of colors like rainbows and strange planets. The stars were bright, and they seemed to be on fire. A pigeon landed on her shoulder and cooed softly. Gwen reached out to touch the bird, but she was then yanked away, pulled into some other dimension with a loud scream.

This one had odd plants and crazy looking animals. In the back of her head, Gwen heard The Ancient One's voice. "You think you know how the world works? You think this material universe is all there is? What is real? What mysteries lie beyond reach of your senses?"

Gwen felt herself fly through space some more. She saw dimensions that were darker in color and others that were like rainbows. She tried to grab something, anything, she suddenly phased through things she thought were solid. She was suddenly faced with multiple clones of herself, all screaming their heads off. Was she screaming? She couldn't hear herself anymore. Then the clones disappeared and she was facing a large version of her father. He was staring blankly into space. He looked as though he were dead. Gwen started to shout his name when she was suddenly hurtled through his eye and into a pool of black water. However, she could breath in this water. She swam around, trying to break the surface, until she was pulled further under by some unseen force.

The pool of black water turned out to be a big bubble of water. Surrounding it were other bubbles filled with different colors of water. Gwen was sent flying through each of them, coming out soaking wet. She was then sent to a freezing cold planet where she completely froze until a boiling hot volcano exploded beneath her, releasing her from her cage of ice. In the background, The Ancient One was still talking. "At the root of existence, mind and matter meet. Thoughts shape reality. This universe is only one of an infinite number. Worlds without end. Some, benevolent and life giving. Others filled with malice and hunger. Dark places where powers older than time lie ravenous and waiting." The next thing Gwen knew, she was faced with a large face that looked like a rock. It's skin was rippling and it's hunger filled eyes were the color purple.

Only then did Gwen return to reality. "So, who are you going to be in this vast multiverse, Miss Strange?" The Ancient One asked her.

Gwen, shaking, looked up at the bald sorceress. "How did you do that?" she asked, her voice barely audible after all the screaming she had done.

Before The Ancient One could answer, her father (whom she hadn't noticed was next to her) spoke up to agree with her. "Teach me. Teach us."

The Ancient One slowly shook her head. "No," she told him. "Not you." With nothing more than a nod to Mordo, Stephen was dragged from the room, his cries of protest were ignored.

Gwen waited for her to be dragged out but it didn't happen. The Ancient One merely observed her quietly. Gwen spoke up. "What are you doing?" Her eyes then widened when she realized that they were separating her and her father. Gwen launches herself to her feet and towards the door, but The Ancient One blocked her path. "Let me go!" Gwen demanded. "Bring him back in here! I'll call the police! I'll… I'll…" she trailed off.

"Guinevere Strange, you have spent your whole life being compared to your father," The Ancient One said. Gwen couldn't think of a reply, and she made no retort. "Everyone you know has told you that you are just like him. That you sound just like him and you act just like him. But there is one area in which you are very different. Do you know what that is?"

"What the hel-?"

"Faith," The Ancient One answered, interrupting Gwen. "You have the quality of faith that he has failed to develop. Your father refuses to accept anything unless he sees it for himself. He calls faith blind. But you know that faith is not blind. After all, how could you? It is only by faith that you trust your father so much. It is only because of faith that you are standing here in front of me. Your faith allowed you to accept the reality of the mystic arts, despite your ego. Therefore, I will give you a choice. You can stay here and study, or you can go back with your father. It's your choice."

To her own surprise, Gwen actually considered the proposal for a moment. The idea of it was interesting. She could learn magic and become as powerful as this Ancient One. That all sounded appealing. But then there was her father. She could hardly leave him on his own. He couldn't function by himself. Not properly, anyway. Besides, the idea of leaving him was repellent to Gwen. She couldn't live in another country while he stayed behind in America. She thrust the very thought out of her mind.

She backed away from The Ancient One. "You don't know a thing about me," she retorted. "Now, I demand you and your little jazz hands club," she shook her hands sarcastically, "bring my father back in here and you teach us both, or you can throw me out that door right now."

The Ancient One's eyes fell only slightly. But then, she gave a nod of her head and Gwen was then dragged from the room.