Christine Palmer stood at the front desk of the ER, filling out some papers to calm her nerves. She felt she needed it after the afternoon she'd just spent.
It had been one thing to see her ex-boyfriend again after months of radio silence. But it had been a whole other thing to see him in some strange monk's outfit, stabbed in the chest and then floating out of his body, having joined what she seriously believed had to be a cult of some kind, and finally disappearing into a magic portal in the broom cupboard. A woman could only take so much.
But her attempt at normalcy and peace was shattered once more as a very familiar voice yelled above the general noise of the hospital.
"CHRISTINE!"
"Are you kidding me?" Christine groaned before turning around resignedly. Only for her eyes to pop wide and her mouth to drop open.
"Oh my god."
Christine ran toward the strange pair that ran beside the gurney that was being wheeled rapidly down the halls of the ER.
Both were dressed in strange robes, Stephen still in the dark blue ones from just an hour earlier while the woman opposite him was dressed in purple ones with a yellow inside tunic that matched the colour of the robes the newly arrived patient was wearing. Both Stephen and the purple-robed woman had wild hair as though they had been in a tussle recently. But most importantly, both seemed desperate to save the woman on the gurney, a woman who was bleeding profusely, particularly from the head.
Maya barely noticed the female doctor, or as Stephen shouted something to the woman. Christine said something back, a question that Stephen confirmed, but all Maya could focus on was how the Ancient One's heart was barely beating and her body remained unmoving.
She couldn't be dead, her Ama couldn't be dead, she just couldn't be...
They hit a snag at the door when a doctor stepped forward to prevent Maya from entering the operating room.
Maya didn't even say anything as she threw the man over her shoulder violently and with far more force than anyone else had been expecting. Stephen looked back in alarm at the crashing sound and screams from the people in the waiting room, and he hurried Christine along into the operating theatre without him before he turned back toward what he quickly realized was a hysterical Maya.
"Maya, Maya, listen to me-"
Stephen tried to get her attention, tried to plead with her, but she fought even his grasp as she tried to go after her adoptive mother. Realizing there was nothing else for it, Stephen grabbed her wrists and pulled them down, forcing her to face him.
"Maya, listen to me!"
She looked at him, tearful and half wild with grief. His hands tightened as best as they could on her wrists given how unstable his own hands were.
"We will save her." Stephen swore to her. "Okay? Maya, I swear to you we will do everything in our power to save her."
"Please, I can't stay behind, I have to see her-" Maya sobbed, reaching past him and toward the operating room, and Stephen wished he could let her follow.
But not only would she be more of a hindrance than a help, it would never be allowed. So he begged.
"Maya, you have to trust us. This is the best team in the world, okay? We'll do whatever we can but you have to let us do our job. Please - wait out here. Just wait for me, okay?"
Maya turned to stare at him with agonized amber eyes. But finally, she nodded and Stephen released her.
"Stay here."
With that, he left Maya crying in the waiting room while he rushed to catch up with the other doctors. No-one questioned it as Stephen strapped on surgical gloves while Christine worked over the Ancient One's body, strapping her to a ventilator and prepping her for surgery.
But Stephen stopped when he reached to pick up a scalpel and he stared at his shaking hands. It was another earth-shattering moment as he remembered, realized, he couldn't do anything to help Maya's mother. But there were others who could; and despite the bitterness that rose in his mouth as it always did when he remembered his hands were not what they were once, Stephen's voice was unwavering as he called for the other surgeon in the room.
"Nick?"
Dr. Nicodemus West turned at Stephen's call, and the doctor unsuccessfully hid his surprise when Stephen handed him the scalpel and informed him, "We need to relieve the pressure on her brain."
Dr. West took the scalpel although he stared at Stephen as though seeing him for the first time in his life. But, for all that Stephen had mocked him once, Dr. West was still a doctor at the end of the day. And with a dying patient in his care, he quickly focused on his task while Stephen watched anxiously from the side of the room and the Ancient One's heart monitor flat lined.
"We're losing her!" Christine yelled as she ran to get the defibrillator and Stephen called worriedly, "You need to increase her oxygen!"
"I need a crash cart!" Christine called while Dr. West pumped the Ancient One's heart.
"Her pupils have dilated!" A nurse called and another reported, "No reflexes. We're not reading any brain activity."
Stephen stared at the heart monitor in despair before his eyes narrowed as he saw the machine flicker slightly as if it had suddenly been infected by a virus… or something otherworldly had passed through. Stephen glanced at the Ancient One before his mind put the pieces together; taking a deep breath, he fell back into himself and pushed his astral form out of his physical body.
Time slowed around him and Stephen looked around just in time to see the Ancient One's astral body disappearing through the operating theatre wall.
"What are you doing?" Stephen asked as he followed her quickly, but she disappeared away down the hallways without looking back.
Stephen chased after her, calling after her astral form in frustration.
"Come on, you're dying!"
Stephen followed the Ancient One to the outside balcony, where she had stopped and was staring out at the dark sky. The black thunderclouds had rolled in by now, covering New York City in gloom. Stephen hesitantly stopped beside her as the Ancient One gazed out at the sky where the beginnings of a lightning bolt could be seen amidst the darkness.
"You have to return to your body now." Stephen urged, not understanding why the Ancient One was here and staring at the sky when her body was lying on a gurney and her adoptive daughter was likely crying in the waiting room. "You don't have time-"
"Time is relative." The Ancient One cut in almost absently. "Your body hasn't even hit the floor yet."
Stephen bit his lip uncertainly, not knowing what to do as the Ancient One continued to stare out at the sky, when she suddenly spoke once more.
"I've spent so many years peering through Time, looking at this exact moment. But I can't see past it. I've prevented countless terrible futures. And after each one, there's always another. And they all lead here, but never further."
Stephen stared at the Sorcerer Supreme, understanding dawning at her words.
"You think this is where you die." He said slowly. She didn't respond and they lapsed into a brief silence as Stephen struggled with what to say.
"Do you wonder what I see in your future?" The Ancient One asked after another moment.
"No." Stephen answered immediately. But when she didn't say anything else he finally caved and answered honestly.
"Yes."
"I never saw your future."
Stephen frowned at the Ancient One's answer but she wasn't done.
"Only its possibilities. You have such a capacity for goodness and that is why I pushed you, despite telling off Maya for trying to do the same thing. You always excelled, but not because you crave success, but because of your fear of failure.
"It's what made me a great doctor." Stephen said uncomfortably.
"It's precisely what kept you from greatness."
The Ancient One's swift reprimand silenced him and Stephen could only listen as the Ancient One continued.
"Arrogance and fear were the traits about you that Maya doubted, why she was always harder on you than she should or probably even wanted to be. And they still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all."
"Which is?" Stephen asked, feeling a little bit annoyed by how the Ancient One was belittling him. He also couldn't help but think it was also rather hypocritical of her to keep bringing Maya into the conversation clearly to disarm and discomfort him when she had failed to go to see her daughter. Not to mention how she talked of greatness when she refused to even try to stop her own death.
As though sensing what he was thinking, the Ancient One turned to look at him with kind but weary blue eyes, eyes that had seen too much.
"It's not about you." The Ancient One said softly and Stephen was once again silenced and chastised.
The Ancient One seemed to understand as she looked out at the sky once more.
"When you first came to me, you asked me how I was able to heal Jonathan Pangborn." She said rather suddenly and Stephen nodded slowly, trying to understand why the Ancient One was bringing that up now. "I didn't."
He stared at her in shock at her admission before Stephen's face fell into thought as the Ancient One explained, "He channels dimensional energy directly into his own body."
"He uses magic to walk." Stephen murmured in realization. The Ancient One nodded.
"Constantly." She murmured. "He had a choice, to return to his own life or to serve something greater than himself."
Stephen remained quiet for a moment before he asked in a voice so low he wondered if she would hear him, "So, I could have my hands back again? My old life?"
"You could." The Ancient One nodded, not looking at him as she kept her old gaze on the sky far above. "And the world would be all the lesser for it."
"Why are you telling me this?" Stephen questioned, fixing his gaze on her as he sought the answers she seemed intent on denying him. As usual. "Why not Maya? Why are you here and not beside your daughter?"
"I cannot go see her - not like this." The Ancient One answered, sighing and closing her eyes briefly.
"Won't she sense you are out here anyway?" Stephen protested, thinking back to how Maya had been able to find him easily in his astral form that one time in Kamar-Taj. The Ancient One smiled sadly as she looked at him.
"No, she will not. I have ensured she cannot sense us out here." The Ancient One replied. Stephen lapsed into brief silence at that and he examined the mysterious woman before him.
"She'll forgive you, you know." Stephen said at last, his tone tentative. The Ancient One laughed.
"Oh, I always knew she would… eventually." The Ancient One replied fondly. "She would be shocked, of course, but Maya isn't nearly as cold and logical as she likes to think she is. Rather like you, I think."
Stephen bowed his head in acknowledgement while the Ancient One looked up at the bolt of lightning that was slowly inching its way down toward the Earth.
"But I cannot use this kind of magic near Maya, just as she must never use her magic near me when I am like this."
"Why not?" Stephen asked, confused. The Ancient One looked at him, a fond smile on her face although her blue eyes were sorrowful. It was a strange expression, one Stephen didn't quite understand, as the Ancient One spoke.
"There are still many things that you don't know, Stephen. Many things I wish I'd had the time to explain to you; to Maya. But I trust that when the time comes, as it surely will, you will understand and you will do what you must. Just as I did what I thought I had to."
Stephen frowned, puzzled, while the Ancient One paused and she looked out toward the sky once more.
"I've hated drawing power from the Dark Dimension." She admitted. "Lying to Maya about it. But as you well know, sometimes one must break the rules in order to serve the greater good."
"Maya and Mordo won't see it that way." Stephen pointed out but the Ancient One disagreed.
"Mordo's soul is rigid and unmovable, forged by the fires of his youth. He needs your flexibility, just as you need his strength. Only together do you stand a chance of stopping Dormammu."
Stephen paused at that before he asked slowly, "What about Maya?"
The Ancient One smiled that sad smile again.
"Maya is not as headstrong as Mordo. Since she was a child, Maya has always been open minded especially with those she loves and trusts. She has suppressed it in her admiration of my stern tutelage and tried to strip herself of it after Kaecilius broke her heart, needing the strict rules to justify to herself that he was wrong and she was fine without him."
Stephen lowered his gaze again, while the Ancient One sighed as she thought of her adoptive daughter's change after the man she'd viewed as a father had abandoned them and their beliefs. The way Maya had battle-hardened herself, had become a copy of Mordo taken to the extreme where Mordo had softened after coming to Kamar-Taj. The Ancient One's eyes lifted to the lightning bolt that was now branching out and halfway down its trajectory toward the Earth.
"But it will always innately be inside of her to see the soul of a person to measure their worth and with the right push she will remember what I taught her to do. She is not so rigid she will fail to see past what Mordo sees as a mistake. She will follow you."
Stephen shook his head.
"I'm not ready." He protested.
But the Ancient One turned to him again and she answered gently.
"No one ever is. We don't get to choose our time. Death is what gives life meaning. To know your days are numbered, your time is short."
The Ancient One looked from Stephen back to the sky.
"You'd think after all this time I'd be ready." She murmured softly, and Stephen's heart tugged at the wistfulness in her tone as she gazed at where the first raindrops were beginning to fall down after the lightning bolt.
"But look at me: stretching one moment out into a thousand, just so I can see my daughter one last time in the only way that I can."
Stephen turned to look at the sky as well, just as the rain began to fall from the sky, some of it turning to snow now that the weather was cold enough. He only turned his gaze away for a second, but when he looked back to the Ancient One all he found was thin air.
And Stephen found himself blinking back tears as he turned numbly back to look at Maya's namesake. He'd never asked and he supposed now they might never know - but somehow, he knew that it had been raining the day the Ancient One had found Maya on her doorstep and taken her in all those years ago.
In the operating room, the doctors slowly removed their hands from the body they had been working so hard to try and save. A flat beep was the only sound as they stepped back, fitting as it was the only sound in the world that could convince a good doctor that it was futile to try any further.
Stephen's body jerked upright in the corner, unseen by anyone else as the doctors' sole focus had been on their patient. He took one look at the Ancient One, lying still with her unseeing eyes wide open, and then he turned and left the ER.
He dreaded the next meeting and would have done almost anything not to face it, to delay it even. But he knew it should not be prolonged. He'd already stolen a daughter's chance to say goodbye by not calling her earlier, despite the Ancient One's rebuffs - he would not delay this.
Maya didn't need him to say anything. One look at his face when he reappeared in the waiting room had her collapsing.
Stephen caught her as her legs gave out, and he held her close to his chest as Maya began to shake while her tears flowed thick and fast like the rain now pounding on the windows.
"Ama. Ama!"
Her wails filled the air, echoing throughout the hospital and seemingly the universe as Maya cried out for the woman she had thought she would never lose. The only family she had ever known.