Show Yourself Into The Unknown

Summary: The one where Thanos is dead, Tony has weird dreams instead of nightmares, the Avengers watch dubious Disney movies and mystical creatures are more than real. Oh, and the Cloak totally ships it.

Finding Tony was apparently the easier part of this particular quest Stephen found himself on. The engineer's very soul, bright and burning and lovely, was right there in front of him, within reaching distance which Stephen was quick to cross, but the man was as catatonic here as he was in the outside world.

Or at least he appeared to be at first glance.

In truth, the genius was sat in front of a huge ice mirror floating in a crystal clear lake that seemed to be reflecting all of creation itself, watching scenes that unfolded in said mirror and Stephen himself was fascinated by what he saw. This was clearly a harmless experience, or at least he hoped so, as it seemed to be connected to the man's nature as a dragon summoner and was probably also experience meant only for him and not any outsiders. But, then again, Stephen was hardly an outsider now. He was so deep inside Tony's soul that, when he looked around, he could see various things that represented this man - a huge room, half laboratory, half meeting room, half a huge, stylish greeting room in a fancy mansion with a fireplace and a grand piano, robots and Iron Man suits all around, a cave in the distance, a bunker much too close for Stephen's liking, an open sky above their heads showing the grand universe and an all too familiar planet that was not their own - if all covered in ice, probably as a result of the frozen heart.

He could have only gotten this deep inside if the connection between them had slammed straight into existence faster than either of them could have expected. That should have been a relief, given how dangerous soul bonding attempts could turn out to be, but he couldn't feel the bond at all and that honestly bothered him. He was no expert but he had researched the subject in his studies as soon as he realized that souls were actual things and not constructs of imagination meant to give people false hopes and platitudes for their brief existence and inevitable death. A soul bond like theirs, young and new as it might be, should have been obvious to his senses the second it had formed.

He did not like the implications behind the lack of feeling.

He could guess the most likely cause, though. The ice was obviously still very much present in Tony's heart and now that he was here, it was up to Stephen to melt it away, to stoke the flames awakened by the man's connection with Elsa, though he could find no evidence of it. Probably only Tony himself knew where to find it, which meant he had to wake him up from whatever trance that ice mirror in the puddle had put him in to. Probably not the safest thing to do at a time like this, but Stephen was desperate and the time to save Tony was limited.

With no more time wasted, Stephen walked over to his new soulmate and boldly grabbed Tony's shoulder, intent on shaking him awake, but the second he touched the brunet, he got a glimpse into what the mirror was showing him. Stephen had never seen so many beautiful and so many horrendous things in one place at once except that time when the Ancient One had sent him careening through the multiverse to make a believer out of him.

A beautiful landscape, beyond his or even the best writers or artists imagination, lay before him. Mountaintops and hills and meadows and forests and seas and lakes and rivers, all made of pure, untouched magic. Untouched by the world, millennia old, ancient for even time itself. Hundreds of dragons within immediate sight, of all shapes and colors and elements and natures and magics.

A war, bloody and destructive, bodies everywhere. Magic lashing out. Dead and dying, living and surviving. A dragon roars in the distance, defiant, threatening, warning. Another roar elsewhere, dying, grieving, pained. A hue dragon falls right out of the sky, a spear through their heart, all but dead and yet in their last dying breaths protecting the person who had been on their back, breaking their magnificent wings in the landing just so the person could survive. The person's own cry of anguish when the dragon's soul fire is extinguished is haunting. The warrior that comes up behind them is familiar and Stephen blanches as he recognizes an Asgadian, beheading the grieving summoner.

Death seems to have been a mercy.

The landscape from before appears again, dissolving, falling apart. Polluted. Dragons don't hesitate still to go in and out, saving the rest of existence from itself at the cost of their own home. Stephen mourns the perfection that is ruined.

He mourns as he watches more and more dragons be killed throughout the multiverse. Why were they doing that? Dragons were peaceful! Is this Tony's fate?

'I won't allow that,' he promises to himself as he jerks his hand away. Tony had been his to protect from the moment he had set the man up to sacrifice himself for the universe and now was not the time that will change. If anything, his affections for the genius only made him all the more determined now to allow anyone to ever hurt neither Tony nor Elsa. 'I just need to get us out of here to drive that message home to anyone who might try.'

Easier said than done when it will be required for him to touch Tony again to wake him up out of the trance. Strange idly wondered if the man will remember all that the ice mirror is showing him when he wakes up or if it will all remain inside of his subconsciousness like an instinct to help him survive. He sighed and braced himself, thinking a burst of magic will be enough to shock the man awake and he touched Tony's shoulder again -

"Kill them!" A vaguely familiar figure shouted, ordered, pointing at the five distinctly dragon figures flying in the sky, defensively guarding the sixth making a break for it towards a rift in reality in the distance. "Kill them all! Let none of them escape!" The figure that was shouting the orders Stephen quickly recognized as the man that had downed Elsa and Tony in their last battle, meaning that these were Empirikul and that man was the Imperator and Elsa and Tony had not been the only dragon/summoner pair he had faced.

The robots, the Eyebots something whispered in his mind, went after the dragons. The five met them head on, magic and general fire or whatever other element they controlled, not letting even a single robot through. There were various beings fighting with them, on their backs or on their heads, wielding different weapons and using magic much the same as their partner dragons. The dragon in the distance vaguely reminded him of Elsa and it carried a human clinging to its neck. They might have been free of the Eyebots but the Witchfinder Wolves chased after them. Horrible, terrifying things, though they could not fly. The human, a middle aged woman if Stephen had to guess from the looks of her though she could be thousands of years old already, kept firing magical arrows at them to slow them down, probably because the gate was low enough that the Wolves would be able to reach.

He realized that this was all planned. This, whenever it had happened, had been planned. One dragon, no doubt Elsa's mother, would escape the carnage on this foreign battlefield at the cost of five others and no doubt their summoners. It had been a calculated risk, a desperate move that meant life or death for the multiverse.

"The Imperator will not listen," a voice whispered like a recent memory. "He has orchestrated hunts on our kind for years now. We have tried reason and reason will not succeed. War is not for us. Flee we must, to survive. You are the last carrying dragon. Your egg must survive. Take it away. Hide it. Earth has a Sorcerer Supreme. They will be obliged to protect your child. The summoner will come in due time. Run! There is no time left to loose!"

The scene changed the second that the dragon made its way through the portal. Stephen could not even recognize the forest surrounding the Temple of Ahtohallan. The temple that later became the above mentioned glacier hidden Temple stood before him, visible for all. Old Northuldra sorcerers led the dragon and summoner inside and stood to the side, watching in awe as the dragoness drilled a hole into what could have been the center of the Earth with her magic, only to disappear inside moments later. Stephen suspected only Tony will ever know what the Well looked like at the bottom, where Elsa had been hidden for centuries. When the party existed the now magically protected Temple, the Ancient One stood in wait, grim expression on her face. Stephen's heart ached at the sight of her.

"You have brought danger to my planet."

"We have brought salvation, to you and to the multiverse, Sorcerer Supreme," Elsa's mother's summoner stated gravely, daring the bald woman to tell them to leave. "She is the last dragon."

"You and your companion live still," the Ancient One pointed out but Elsa's mother shook her head.

"I have spent the last of my magic and strength to transfer what is left of Ahtohallan into a space where my hatchling will one day be able to access it with their Ib. I shall die in a matter of hours. I refuse to do so here, so close to my egg, where anyone can track it."

"And I refuse to let Idina die by her lonesome," the woman at her side insisted and rejected any of Idina's attempted protests. "I have brought you into this world and I refuse to let you depart from it in solitude. Not when my soul will reach for you and you will not allow it to be there to comfort you."

"So be it, Ayako." The summoner smiled sadly and mounted her dragon. Idina regarded the Sorcerer Supreme before her. "This place is outside of your jurisdiction. Heed my words. Should you try to enter it, not even your dark contract will keep you shielded." Then she flapped her wings once to get in the air, twice to gain altitude and on the third beat of her wings, they were gone in a flash of stars and galaxies and dimensions. Leaving Earth far behind, safe.

And in her wake, a glacier formed and covered the temple, going right to the very edge of the cliff behind it. A glacier that no force of nature could create as it had no source in mountain river water or any sort of slope to create the build up of ice.

Stephen was snapped back into Tony's head as soon as the vision ended and the ice mirror cracked, shattering, the shards spreading around the little pool, just floating there oh so innocently. He was breathing hard but he barely took note that the surrounding area was melting, almost no ice left. It was starting to hum with life as though it had never been frozen still in the first place. The current Sorcerer Supreme couldn't help but marvel at the downright freaky string of events that had happened in what felt like seconds, instances.

~Good morning, Sir,~ a voice, British and vaguely familiar if more robotic than he was used to, said out of thin air, startling Strange into making a couple of mandala shields in defense, taking up a protective stance in front of the still crouching Tony, looking for the enemy. He blinked when all he found was a big orb of glowing strings of code, the colors of which actually nearly matched the color of standard Eldritch spells. It was just floating there, harmless, welcoming. A memory, perhaps. ~It is currently Friday, January 31, 2020, two a.m. You are inside of the Avengers Compound, in the medical wing. The current weather outside is a strong blizzard and snow, wind speed at 60 mph and freezing temperatures of minus twenty degrees Celsius. Colonel Rhodes is in the waiting room with Ms Potts, Mr Hogan, Mrs Parker, Mr Parker, Major Danvers, Ms Nebula, Mr Vision, Mr Wong and Director Fury. Mr Keener and his family have relocated to the safe house outside of their town, as per your instructions in case of occasions like these. Agent Coulson is still 'playing possum' in New SHIELD HQ. Dr Wu and Dr Cho have relocated to the safe houses you have constructed for them in case of emergencies. Doctor Strange and Elsa are currently in the room with you.~

"I- What?"

"That's JARVIS," a new voice said and this time when Stephen whirled around, he found a bald man with thin glasses dressed like a college professor smiling at him in an easy manner. "He runs this place."

"Who are you? How did you get in here?" Stephen asked, suspicious. This was Tony's mind. It's quite possible both these beings were constructs of his mind but only sorcerers of great skill and discipline may create such 'guides' or defenses in their own minds. Tony, despite having been gifted with some degree of magic upon awakening Elsa, was no sorcerer. He had no training, he didn't even know the basics beyond the spells Stephen sometimes ranted to him about! So while the orange mass might be right at home in here, this man could easily be an intruder.

"Don't you recognize me, Doctor Stephen Vincent Strange?" The man asked curiously, smile never leaving his face. "Though, I prefer to keep this form when keeping a tie with this human. He is rather interesting, is he not? A human, so fragile, so breakable, and yet all of existence rests on his survival, on his life. He'd proven we have chosen correctly once already, has he not, Stonekeeper? My sibling has been right to choose you. You have chosen our champion well."

"Soul Stone," Stephen realized with a shudder when the Stone dropped all pretenses and the energy of it registered in his magical senses. "What are you doing here?"

"Usually, I have no say nor glimpse into a dragon Ib's soul. It was an opportunity not to be missed. I created a place for me here so I may linger and watch over a soul so bright it can only be bonded with a dragon's. It drew my attention and roused my curiosity when I felt you, who has a connection with my sibling Time, enter here."

"Am I to expect the Mind Stone to be here as well? And what form did you take? I don't recognize this man."

The Soul Stone looked down at the body it had taken before waving him off, still with that easy smile in place. "Mind is not here. Only I am. I like to keep tabs of the only soul in centuries that did not belong to me. Anthony is quite an interesting individual."

"The form," he prompted, perhaps a bit too impatiently given that this was the manifestation of one of the creating forces of the universe. Then again, he was in the mind of one of the last co-protectors of the multiverse where the Soul Stone should not be. But his soul belong to it, in a way, even if Tony's did not. It must have come to check out an occurrence as rare as dragons these days, meaning next to extinct.

"Ho Yinsen. Anthony met him, hm, twelve years ago, give or take a few months." Stephen froze upon hearing the name. He knew it. Of course he knew it. He was the first assistant in creating an Iron Man armor. A friend in a cave that is the reason Tony Stark survived Afghanistan. The reason why Tony became the man he is today, guilt and gratitude alike. "Anthony likes him. Finds comfort in his presence. Him and JARVIS, but JARVIS is out of my domain so I take this form. You have a question, Stonekeeper. AN important one. Ask it."

"How do I wake him up?" He took the offered assistance immediately. His distrust of this infinite power is not more important than Tony's life. "Surely you know the predicament we find ourselves in. I need to wake him up. How do I do that? And why can't I feel our bond?"

"You love him. Love is fire, which is why only those who love as fiercely as dragons can summon them from their eggs." The Soul Stone pouted in Yinsen's form and Stephen wasn't even sure if that should be weird. "The best souls are always out of my reach. I never get to properly bask in their warmth, in the glory of their precious existence. Through you, though, I am now given a new, not-to-be-missed opportunity."

"You're still not answering my question," Stephen bit out, annoyed. The Ancient One would probably wack him over the head with one of her oh so beloved fans if she saw him now. If he ever tells Wong he did this, the man will probably do it with one of his thickest, hardest books. Traitor.

"But I did. You are his soulmate. And you love him. The bond is in place. Yet you do not take advantage of it to achieve that which you wish." When he sent the Stone a deadpan look, it actually rolled its eyes at him. He wondered if it had taken a form just so it could do that. Weirdo. "You are a soulmate to a dragon's Ib. They are those who love as fiercely as a dragon. What does that tell you as a requirement to offset the bond properly in all planes of existence? You need to show him that you love him. He is not in a state to feel as much himself as he is now. He's just been shown the entire history of his other soulmate's people in one setting and that is a lot more history than even us Infinity Stones know of. You need to jump start him."

"I need to what!?"

"Kiss him, Doctor Strange. You need to kiss him." The mind construct - because that one is just that - of JARVIS explained, leaving the sorcerer in question gawking. The Soul Stone sent the construct a playful air-kiss as though in gratitude.

"Yes, thank you. Do you understand now? It's not just a random person forcing a soulmate bond on a poor, unsuspecting victim of a frozen heart that can be turned into a cure. You must care for the one you are trying to save. The stronger the love, the stronger the bond."

"Generally or just in the case of dragon summoners?" He asked, kind of dazed.

The form of Yinsen gave him a deadpan look. "Only dragon summoners, as you call them, can survive long enough to receive any help, so yes, generally. Now pucker up and get out of here. You have much to do outside."

"I can't just-! Not like that!" He was flailing. Since when did he flail? Him, Doctor Stephen Strange? "I don't even know if he likes me!"

"Did I not just say that soulmate bonds can only exist between two people who care for each other?" The Soul Stone asked snappishly and Stephen snapped right back because he was so done with this bullshit.

"No, you didn't!"

"Well, I did now, so smooch and get it over with! I want to see what happens next! This is the first time I actually get a glimpse into how a dragon-Ib-random outsider soulmate bond works! Ib usually never take a soulmate after they had hatched their dragon!"

"We're not a soup opera for you to gawk at!" He snapped even as he moved back to Tony and knelt in front of the genius, opting to focus on him and ignore as best as he can the damned Stone that shouldn't even be here in the first place.

"But I'm bored!"

"Then do the world some good and make more dragons. Now shoo." He sighed, wondering why this hadn't been in the job description when he had accepted the title of Sorcerer Supreme. "Well, here goes ... everything."

He dipped his head down and kissed Tony square on the mouth, hoping the man won't kill him for being so presumptuous.

The second their lips touched, the world fell out from under his knees.