Chapter 5
Morgan ate while Uncle Strange lectured. How could she forget her time spell? How could she get so distracted she forgot to set her anchors? Finally, the most important question.
"How did you get home?"
Morgan swallowed her bite of sandwich.
"You helped me," she said and Uncle Strange arched an eyebrow at her. "Well, sort of you. Another you. From another reality."
"Do you mean another timeline?"
Morgan nodded, smiling.
"There are no other timelines. There are other dimensions, but only one timeline with infinite possibilities. Alternate timelines are only a legend."
"Then I guess I talked to a legendary version of you," she said with a shrug and took another bite of sandwich. She chewed and swallowed while Uncle Strange glared. "I called for you and, well, he answered. He said he wasn't my uncle, but he was Doctor Strange. What else could he be?"
Uncle Strange stopped and searched her face. His eyes narrowed and with a sad, sinking feeling, Morgan felt something flutter inside her head. He was reading her mind. She dropped her sandwich back on the plate and looked away.
"You can trust me, Uncle Strange. I wouldn't lie about this. Not to you."
A moment of silence passed and Uncle Strange sighed.
"What you describe is impossible, but I didn't think you had lied to me. I thought it more likely something on the astral plane tricked you. That may still be the case."
Morgan shrugged. "You'd know better than me," she said, but her tone held resentment. She knew who she had talked to. She had felt him, the way she'd learned to feel Uncle Strange during her training. They were the same, but not. Like the minuscule differences in DNA between identical twins.
"Are you done with your sandwich?"
"I'm not hungry anymore," she mumbled.
"Good." Uncle Strange shoved her back on her bed, pushing metaphysically as well and she found herself floating outside her body. He shrugged out of his own body, letting it crumple to the floor. "Take me to see this other version of myself and we will see what you've found."
"I could have done that, myself," she grumbled, gesturing at her prone form.
"Complain later," he said, jerking his chin toward the ceiling. With a sigh, Morgan turned away from her room, set an anchor and soared through the cosmos, Uncle Strange hot on her heels.
She hadn't expected to return this soon and she lamented that she couldn't enjoy the trip like she had, before. She almost regretted setting the beacon. If she couldn't find the other Strange again, then Uncle Strange couldn't…couldn't….couldn't what? What was she afraid of? That he wouldn't like the other Strange? Why would that matter?
She thought furiously as she followed the beacon and set her anchors, acutely aware of Uncle Strange watching her as he followed. Maybe she was afraid he might be right. What if the other Strange was just a trap? What if she was the bait, luring Uncle Strange away? She was Tony Stark's daughter and had been taught from as early as she could remember how she could be kidnapped and held hostage for money or to manipulate the powerful heroes that knew and cared about her. She wasn't discouraged from making friends, but potential new friends were always carefully vetted and researched for ties to known enemies.
This potential new friend would fail every background check out there. He'd destroyed his own reality.
As the sphere appeared in their perception and they drew near, something inside wasn't right. There were too many limbs. The creature was easily double the size she remembered and the way it stood made her feel nauseated, like abruptly stumbling on the broken and shattered body of someone you cared about.
"Dark Strange?" She asked in a trembling voice. She couldn't call him Uncle Strange. Doctor Strange felt too formal and Stephen was out of the question. Dark Strange felt right. Especially now.
The thing turned and yellow eyes in a grotesquely deformed face grew wide. There were too many eyes. There were horns and tentacles. Her eyes couldn't make sense of the mess before it flickered and shifted. The monster peeled away to reveal the gaunt cheeks and silver streaked hair she remembered.
"Lost one." The guttural words held an echo of the familiar voice. The monster shrank back down to the size of the man, tentacles slithering into flesh and he shuddered as he shrugged back into a human form, like putting on a coat. "You came back."
"What did you do?" Uncle Strange growled the words as he drew near and Dark Strange's eyes shifted to him. Uncle Strange reached out to run incorporeal fingers just outside the wall of the glass sphere. "What did you do to this reality?"
"I changed an absolute point in time."
"That's impossible. Nothing has that kind of power."
Dark Strange lifted his chin, glaring down his nose at Uncle Strange. A red glint shined deep in his eyes before he shuddered and gagged, a shadow with a beak and too many eyes overlapping his face for a moment. He lifted clawed hands to his head and seemed to press the shadow back. The claws retreated from his fingers and he gasped like he had been holding his breath.
"I'll repeat myself. What did you do?"
Dark Strange glared like Uncle Strange had woken him from a hungover sleep with a brass band.
"I spent centuries absorbing interdimensional beings. I absorbed them and their power until I could undo Christine's death." Dark Strange convulsed and great, webbed wings sprang from his suddenly scaly back for a second before sucking back into the flesh. "You have to understand. I loved Christine! It wasn't worth living without her!"
Uncle Strange floated around the sphere, examining it from various angles. "And was it worth it? Did you get her back?" Dark Strange shook his head, bringing his hands up to clutch at his hair. A low, inhuman keen rumbled out of his throat. "Was it worth destroying an entire universe for this?"
"No. No, no, no." Dark Strange sank into a shivering heap, holding his head in his hands. "I didn't want... I didn't mean to… I'm sorry! So sorry!" He sobbed, curled around his misery and despair. Morgan reached out to touch the sphere but Uncle Strange seized her wrist.
"Don't. He's suffering a fate wrought by his own choices. It's only a shame that so many others had to die because of those choices."
Dark Strange flinched and curled tighter on the concrete slab. Uncle Strange stared at him, his expression a curious mixture of pity and satisfaction.
"It's time to go home. I have research I need to do."
Morgan glanced at the quivering, sobbing heap of sorcerer and promised herself she would come back again. He had done a terrible, horrible thing, but she didn't think he deserved…this. He had just wanted to save someone he loved. If she thought she could gather enough power to save her mom, would she try? Maybe. Maybe.
Wong was waiting for them when they returned.
"What's wrong?" Uncle Strange asked, rising to his feet as though pulled by strings.
"The Seal of Hazzoth has cracked. They just discovered it, but it looks like the crack has been there for a while."
"What? Those idiots. That seal is supposed to be checked daily."
Wong shrugged. "Apparently, it wasn't."
"That's not great." Uncle Strange put a hand out and the cloak of levitation flew through the door to settle on his shoulders. He turned to Morgan with a scowl. "I still intend to research what we found, but this takes precedence. We don't need another plague on our hands. If you need anything while we're gone…"
"I'll tell Friday. I don't know what the seal of Hazzoth is, but it sounds important. I'll be fine."
"Good. We'll be back as soon as possible."
Uncle Strange swept through the door with Wong on his heels. Before long, the sanctum sat empty and quiet but for her.
Morgan tucked her feet up onto the bed in a lotus position and relaxed her shoulders, closing her eyes. She had already projected onto the astral plane twice that day and she could feel an indescribable weariness drag at her as she separated from her body. It wasn't physical, or mental. She couldn't tie it to any category the English language recognized, but she knew she was taking a risk. She didn't know what would happen if she couldn't complete what she was attempting, except that she might not be able to return to her body. If that happened, her body would die while she drifted on the astral plane and she would never return to physical existence again.
It didn't matter. She had to check on him. Uncle Strange had hurt Dark Strange and she felt oddly protective of him. She had to make sure he was okay.
Setting her anchor and honing in on her beacon took mere moments. She zoomed through dimensions and realities with a bare thought. She found a pile of tentacles, webbed wings, eyes and teeth in the glass sphere. It barely looked coherent, like it might split apart into a thousand separate entities at any moment.
"Dark Strange?" She whispered it, not sure if startling him would help or hinder. The blob of body parts shifted and keened softly. It formed into something more humanoid with the wings on the back, one head with too many eyes and a lower body that was little more than a nest of tentacles that would put a squid to shame. The eyes blinked at her, a mouth full of crooked, pointed teeth opening.
"Lost one." The voice held so little of the voice she strained to hear that it took a moment to understand his words.
"Morgan. My name is Morgan," she said, watching the tentacles writhe across the concrete. What kind of beings had he absorbed? Did he look like one of them right now or bits and pieces of many of them? She suspected the latter. What would bring him back? Could she bring him back?
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring Uncle Strange here. He made me bring him when I told him about you. I didn't realize…I didn't think he would be so mean."
Dark Strange shuddered and the extra eyes and wings melted back into his body until the man she remembered stood there. His cloak wrapped around him as though to keep him warm.
"Morgan." Dark Strange stared up at her and she floated down until she was more eye level with him. "Your…uncle? He spoke only the truth. I allowed my arrogance to kill an entire reality. None of them deserved that fate. Only me."
He sighed, crossing his legs as his cloak levitated him a foot above the ground. "Tell me. In your reality, is Stephen Strange related to one of your parents?"
"What? Oh! No. I call him Uncle Strange because…well, he's like my uncle. After dad died…" She rolled her lips between her teeth and looked down. "After dad died, Uncle Strange helped mom a lot. He was around all the time. I just started calling him uncle."
Dark Strange nodded. "And you called me Dark Strange?"
Morgan blushed and rubbed a finger down the crease of her jeans. "I don't mean anything bad by it. You're just…"
"Dark," he finished for her.
"I'm sorry. I just…you're not Uncle Strange and it would be weird to call you Doctor Strange or use your first name. I can call you whatever you want…"
"It's okay." He held a hand up to interrupt her. "I don't mind the name. It's fitting and it helps you distinguish between the two of us."
Morgan smiled at him, relieved that she hadn't offended him.
"I know you said you kind of deserved what uncle Strange said to you, but I think you're both wrong."
"Really? How?" Dark Strange tilted his head as he searched her face with those piercing eyes.
"You made a big mistake. Like, massive. But, you were trying to bring back someone you loved. If I thought I could bring my mom back, well, I might do anything!"
Dark Strange gave her a sad smile. "Would you? I spent centuries gathering this power, ignoring every warning that those wiser than I gave me. I fought and destroyed my other half when he tried to stop me. Even with the world melting into nothing around me, I pushed my objective, so convinced of my own superiority, I thought I could fix it all. I couldn't. My hubris brought me to this. Your Uncle Strange is right. I deserve this."
Morgan scowled, thinking furiously. "Okay. Maybe you deserve it, but if you could go back and fix it, change it, make another choice, would you?"
"Don't you think I tried that?" he asked, gesturing at the Eye of Aggamoto hung around his neck. "Time in this reality shattered with the rest of it. There's no changing what I've done."
"No. That's not what I meant," Morgan said, waving her hands as though to erase the statement. " I meant, if you could, would you? Do you regret what you did or would you do it again if you found yourself back where you started?"
Dark Strange hesitated, something indescribable crossing his features. He reached up to touch a small lump under his tunic that she hadn't noticed before.
"That is a more difficult question to answer than I think you understand. Circumstances fell out after the fact in a way that required the power I gained at the expense of my reality. Without that power, every life in the multiverse might have perished. But if I could gain that power without harming my reality, I would. I certainly would not do what I did simply to try to save Christine."
"See? You changed. You're better than you were." Morgan pushed the myriad of questions his answer had spawned into the back of her head. They weren't the point at the moment.
Dark Strange frowned, studying her face. Whatever he saw there made the scowl melt away and a small smile curled his lips.
"Perhaps you have a point. It doesn't matter, but you may have a point."