A/N: So, I think this is probably the time to put this part in. When I started writing this, the last two episodes of What if...? had not come out. I have incorporated those last two episodes, after the fact, but some stuff may feel a little off. Also, I'm sure Spider Man, No Way Home, will probably completely change this timeline, so just assume this story deviates from canon post Loki/Wandavision/What if...?
Toodles. :D
Ch. 4
Morgan leaned over the metal boot in front of her, examining the internal mechanism. She had missed something in the prefabrication and the print hadn't come out right. She could go back to the drawing board, but why, when a tweak with magic might do the trick?
Behind her, the hissing, sparking sound of a portal opening told her Uncle Strange had tracked her down.
"Your lesson was supposed to start thirty minutes ago." The sorcerer crossed the garage-like interior of her work room to watch her tinker.
"I know, Uncle Strange. I'm sorry. It's just that…I've almost got this working." She never took her eyes off the boot and the soldering tool she was using. "There it is." Holding the tool in place, she brought her other hand up and made a gesture somewhere between a gang sign and a vulgar word in American Sign Language.
A tiny loop of golden energy spun out and slithered into the aperture. Something in the cavity of the boot glowed for a moment and then the boot exploded with violent energy, flying across the garage into the far wall. Morgan fell back, a black scorch and deep scratch across the lenses of the safety glasses she wore when working. Uncle Strange lifted an eyebrow. He hadn't taught her that trick. She hadn't really learned it from anywhere except trial and error.
"It worked!" Grinning and completely ignoring having almost lost her vision, Morgan leaped up and ran to retrieve the boot. She stuffed it into a cavity of Friday's interface and closed the door. "Friday, scan and catalogue."
"Yes, Miss Stark." The computer whirred to life, lights flashing in the scanning cavity.
"Did you reprogram her to factor in the magical adjustments you made?" Uncle Strange asked. Morgan grinned and nodded. She had changed so much in the short time since she came to live with them. She had grown and the remnants of baby fat she'd still had from a sedentary childhood had melted away to whipcord muscle and sinew. She now held her own in her practice sessions with Wong. She could spin a portal to any place she had a current and accurate picture of and she had begun experimenting with using the mystic arts to supplement her technological projects. She was well on her way to becoming a relic smith, even if she didn't realize it. It might not be the path Stephen had imagined for her, but it made more sense.
"So…that scan is going to take a while. Do you want to do the lesson or am I in trouble?" She seemed pointedly unperturbed by the idea she might be in trouble. Trouble didn't stop her. It never really had.
"Have you finished the Fang'tri treatise?"
Morgan's shoulders dropped. She stared at the floor and smoothed a finger down the seam of her jeans. "No. It's dry and I still have to translate it to English to make any sense of it."
Uncle Strange chuckled. "I don't think I know anyone that is truly fluent in Shi'stani. That dialect died out in the Qin dynasty." Morgan shrugged and still wouldn't meet his eyes. Stephen's gaze narrowed and he suspected she had barely touched the document. "Well, that will be your lesson for today. Translate and study the treatise."
Morgan groaned, shoulders slumping comically. Uncle Strange crossed his arms. "You will read and understand the warnings before you attempt the next part of your training. That treatise is the most comprehensive examination of the dangers of astral projection." Morgan perked up at the words 'astral projection' and Strange knew she hadn't really even touched the document if she didn't know that's what it was about. "You will translate it, read it, study it and comprehend it. Only then will I teach you the rest."
Morgan's eyes were wide, now, staring up at him with anticipation. This was what she wanted. Something about the astral plane fascinated her and she had pestered him to teach her that particular skill nearly every day since he started her training. It's why he had Wong lock all the books on astral projection in a warded vault from day one. He didn't need her to replicate his stunt and teach herself. He suspected she wouldn't be content to just study while she slept like he had and he didn't want to lose her to the astral plane. The thought twisted something up inside him that he had no words for. He might not share genetics with her, but Morgan Stark was his daughter as certainly as if he'd raised her from infancy.
"Okay, Uncle Strange! I'll study it! I promise!"
Golden sunlight filtered through the front window of the sanctum, into the relic room. Strange paced back and forth in front of Morgan's floating form. She was concentrating on a levitation spell while answering his rapid-fire questions. She would need that level of concentration to keep her wits about her on the astral plane.
"How long can you remain on the astral plane before your body risks brain death?"
"You've already asked me that, Uncle Strange. Three times." Morgan's eyes flicked under her eyelids as she dipped a bit, but she recovered.
"That's because it's important. How long?"
"Twenty-four hours."
"And how do you track time on the astral plane?"
"Internal time sense or time tracking spell."
"For you, you will use the spell," Uncle Strange said in a voice that brooked no argument. Morgan cracked an eye open and almost lost her concentration on the levitation. Her body dropped before recovering only an inch from the floor.
"Why?"
"Because you do not seem to possess the innate wariness for the astral plane that is inherent in most humans. Your internal time sense may not work the same on the astral plane and it already doesn't work that well here in the physical realm. I've seen you get so caught up in studying or working on a project that you forget to eat and sleep."
Morgan opened both eyes and dropped to the ground, but at least it was a controlled drop this time.
"I think imminent brain death will be a little more pressing than a growling stomach."
"Or an urgent bladder? Don't think I don't know why you installed that toilet in your work room."
Morgan looked away, her face flushing crimson. She had hoped no one noticed that particular incident.
"Fine. I'll use a time keeping spell."
"Yes. You will. Where will you not go?"
"Anywhere near the dark dimension," Morgan said with a sigh. That one, Uncle Strange had harped on since they started.
"Morgan, I'm serious. I no longer have the time stone to trap Dormammu if you tangle with him. Stay away."
"I'll stay away, but you'd find another way, Uncle Strange. You always do."
"Some things, even I can't change or fix," he said. Morgan shrugged.
"The only things you can't fix, no one can fix. They're meant to be and there's no point in worrying about them."
Stephen sighed but Morgan was right. He didn't have to like it, but she was right. Some things had to happen, even if he hated it, like her parents' deaths.
"Just…stay away from the dark dimension. There's going to be enough trouble for you to get into without that."
"I said I would."
"Alright." Uncle Strange reached up and pulled a stack of books out of empty air. He thumped them down on the table next to her. "You've read the warnings. Now, you read these. I'll help you once you've reviewed these, but you seem to establish the best foundation by reading for yourself."
"So glad you noticed," Morgan said, staring at the books with bright eyes.
"And practice your concentration."
Morgan just grunted at him and spun up a portal to her workroom before picking up the books and disappearing through it.
Morgan spent the next five days reading and getting by with minimal sleep in the chair in her workroom. Uncle Strange had to track her down three different times to make sure she ate. The first time she successfully shrugged out of her physical body, she deemed it all worth it. The astral plane was every bit as fascinating the second time as the first. She traveled her own cosmos first, flashing by planets at speeds light could only dream of, leaving a psychic bread crumb trail in her wake, like the books described. It was her way home. She thought she might have caught a glimpse of Captain Marvel in some far off galaxy, but she didn't take time to investigate. There was more beyond her own universe.
She couldn't describe the boundary between the dimensions in a way that made any sense. It wasn't a physical thing. The dimensions overlapped even as they were distinctly separate. She felt a little like she felt when she first tackled calculus. She could see it, but she couldn't explain it. It was a multi-dimensional tessellation of realities. She dived in, fascinated by the kaleidoscope of possibilities, of beings, of life and power.
Colors and shapes that defied description rushed around her. Distantly, she felt the strain of too much information, too much input, but she couldn't stop. Didn't want to. Wonders that boggled the mind bombarded her and for a space of time, she just floated within existence. She was one with everything and it felt wonderful. And then she remembered she had forgotten to set the timing spell.
Metaphorically, she sat up, incorporeal senses stretched wide. She turned in a circle, or imagined she did. Where was she? Where was her psychic trail? When was the last time she had dropped a marker? How long had she been gone? Was it already too late? Cold dread sliced through her being.
"Uncle Strange?" She spoke into the vastness of uncountable realities and her words echoed back to her. "Uncle Strange!" Nothing.
The vastness of the astral plane hadn't sunk in until that very moment. Suddenly she felt how minuscule she was in the grand scheme of things and it brought her low, highlighted her mortality and frailty in a way that no amount of warnings had managed.
"Uncle Strange? Please? I lost my trail and don't know how to get home."
"I'm not your uncle."
The voice was familiar and alien at the same time. She turned toward it, grateful to have a point of reference to focus on.
"Uncle Strange?"
"I'm not your uncle, but if you're looking for Doctor Stephen Strange, he's me. Or was."
She was moving before the voice finished the sentence. It didn't feel like the direction she had come from, but the voice and the feel of the presence was familiar enough to bring her to him.
She didn't find home. Instead, she found a fractured sphere of bluish glass that encased a crumbled chunk of concrete. A figure curled on the unforgiving stone, a black and gold cloak wrapped around the huddled form. As she neared the sphere's edge, the head lifted, framed by the spiked collar of his cloak. There, the familiar silver streaks at the sides of his head,, stark against the dark hair, and those high cheekbones she knew so well, but Uncle Strange's cheeks had never been that gaunt nor his eyes that sunken.
This seemed to be Doctor Stephen Strange but certainly not her Uncle Strange.
"Who are you?" she asked, looking around the crystalline sphere. It glowed with a soft light that cast blue and purple shadows across his features.
"Me? No one. Not anymore." He pushed himself up to get a better look at her, but never quite achieved a full sitting position. "Once, I was Doctor Stephen Strange, but now I'm nobody."
"What is this place?"
He looked around at his surroundings as though taking them in for the first time.
"This is my prison. It's what remains of my reality. The reality I tore apart."
"What? Why? How?"
The other Strange chuckled, the sound bitter and sharp as broken glass.
"Power," he said. "I sought power to change what could not be changed. I sought to reverse an absolute point in time and destroyed everything in my efforts."
"An absolute point in time?" She sucked in her breath with surprise and he cocked his head at her.
"You're familiar with the concept?"
"My mom. Her death was an absolute point in time. Uncle Strange tried everything, but nothing worked. He said there wasn't anything anyone could do to stop it."
His eyes widened and he sat up straighter. "Your mother? Christine?"
"What? No. Are you talking about Uncle Strange's surgeon friend? Not her. My mom is Pepper Potts. Was Pepper Potts."
She drooped at the memory but the other Strange scrambled to his feet.
"You know Christine? Christine lives in your reality?"
"Umm…yeah?" The feverish light in his eyes sent a chill down her spine. "She and mom were kinda friends. We went to her wedding."
"Wedding?" The light faded from his eyes. "I gather she didn't marry the Stephen Strange of your reality?"
"No. She married some guy named Frank. I never really got to know him but he seems nice enough. She's happy with him. Why are you asking so much about her?"
He sat like his legs just gave out under him and leaned forward to put his head in his hands.
"Christine was my absolute point in time. I destroyed an entire reality trying to bring her back from death and in your world, she married a man named Frank." He chuckled and then laughed. The sound skittered down her nerves like spiked slime, sharp and slithery at the same time. It made her shiver. "I deserve this. Insult on injury. She was never mine. I didn't deserve her anyway." He keeled over onto his side and curled into a ball, sobbing softly.
Morgan looked away, wishing she had any idea how to help him. He seemed so broken and dark. How long had he been here, all alone?
"I'm sorry it's not better in my reality."
The other Strange's sobs petered off and he turned his head to look at her.
"It's not your fault. Before, you were calling for help."
"Uh, yeah." She reached up to scratch the back of her head, unable to meet his eyes. "I'm sort of lost. It's my first time on the astral plane by myself."
The other Strange frowned and sat up.
"Did your mentor forget to teach you how to leave a trail to follow home?"
Morgan ducked her head.
"He taught me. I got distracted. I don't know where I last left one."
"You allowed yourself to become so distracted on the astral plane that you stopped leaving a trail to find your way home? How long have you been gone?"
"I…I don't know."
The other Strange sighed and rose to his feet. For one moment, he was exactly like Uncle Strange, exasperated with her. He leveled a glare at her and darkness lurked in the depths of his eyes.
"The trail you leave is like a guide rope for mountain climbers. Unless you've done something to destroy the anchors, you should still be tethered to the last one you left. Feel for it. If you can find it, you can follow it home.
Morgan concentrated and sure enough, she felt it, like a distant yearning in a certain direction. She tugged on the feeling like it was a physical thing. The sphere retreated, but she scrambled back to it.
"Thank you! Are you… do you need help? I could talk to Uncle Strange. See if he could help you."
The other Strange shook his head and took a step back. "I'm where I belong. I can't do more damage here than I already have. Although…" He looked up at her, face full of raw need. "Maybe you could visit again sometime? Just to talk? You're the first person I've talked to in…well I don't know how long. Time is meaningless here."
Morgan's heart broke for him. Of course he was lonely, trapped in a prison without even a warden for company.
Setting her jaw to concentrate, she traced a line in the air, golden sparks following her movement. The line became a circle and then a pattern until she shoved an intricate, golden mandala toward the sphere. It didn't touch the glass. It wasn't meant to. It simply hovered there, a beacon to help her find this place again.
"I'll try to come back," she promised, feeling for her tether again.
"That's all I can ask for," the other Strange said, sinking into a lotus seat on the concrete. His face and voice didn't hold much hope and Morgan vowed to herself that she would come back, somehow.
Turning away from him, she grasped her tether and pulled. Layers and layers of reality spun around and past her, dragging her to the last place she had set an anchor. It was a greater distance than she should have allowed. One by one, she followed her anchors home, dissolving them behind her so something less savory couldn't follow her home. She had read the warnings, after all.
Nearing the last anchor, set within her work room, she saw Uncle Strange glowering down at her body, arms crossed. If he had come looking for her, she had missed a meal, which meant she'd been gone longer than she liked. She dived into her body and opened her eyes with a gasp. Uncle Strange's glare was just as piercing as it had looked from the astral plane. She smiled sheepishly up at him.
"How long was I out?"