A/N - There is some gross body horror in this chapter. Also, this is the last week I will be posting this story on the r/fanfiction Weekly Fic Showcase, so if you're coming from there, bookmark this story for the future. Thanks

Stephen pulled up a chair for her next to the fireplace in the Sanctum's foyer, then gave her a warm towel and lit the fireplace with a snap of his finger.

"Hungry?" he asked wryly. "I know you're tired. You have to be, after annoying me literally all day."

Christine pulled the towel around herself, drying out the soaking ends of her strawberry-blonde hair. "I took a couple of power naps and ate a few granola bars in between. My seething indignance kept me going."

He couldn't help but laugh. He sat down at another chair opposite her, watching the flames flickering and cracking in the fireplace.

"You know there's no way in hell I can let you go there alone."

"I know," she replied so nonchalantly it surprised him.

"Oh," he said, leaning back in his chair as the realization dawned on him. "Oh, you are clever, Christine. You knew I couldn't let you go alone. You knew I'd have to go with you. You were gonna make sure I helped him, right?"

She stopped drying her hair and gave him a look that made him regret opening his mouth. "It's always about what you can do, isn't it? I did figure you would come with me, but I also figured I'd be the one doing the work, since you said you wouldn't."

"Jeez, Christine," he said, "I didn't mean-"

"I can hold the knife sometimes, if you'd let me."

He paused for several seconds, not sure what to say, then shrugged. "Okay. Fine. Take the knife."

"You don't think I can do it, do you?"

"Can we not do this, please? I'll hand you the knife, if you want it. You have nothing to prove to me. You're a great doctor, but you're just not the one he was looking for."

They sat together for a bit longer, stewing in resentful silence as the fire crackled.

"Are you going to get America?" she asked finally.

He sucked in a breath through his teeth. "I don't know if that's the best idea anymore."

"The best idea? Stephen, it's the only idea. It's the only way to get there, now that Mobius isn't here, right? Why can't we use America's powers?"

Stephen rubbed the back of his neck. "Her powers are … kind of like a homing pigeon, at this stage."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"She can get to random universes really well, and no matter where she is, she can always find her way back to this one, and maybe one or two others, but it's getting to a specific universe that's the problem with her. If we bopped through the multiverse for a while, we might be able to find Mobius's universe, but then when she came to get us, she might not be able to find it again."

"That's a simple problem to fix, then. Just bring her with us."

"Can't do that either. She's got a truancy problem, too."

"Lord," muttered Christine, putting her head in her hands.

"She loves skipping lessons and portaling wherever she wants, whenever she wants," he said. "We don't know how long we're going to be gone. It could be days, could be weeks, months, who knows. She's on very thin ice with Wong, despite what I try to tell him. There are no make up classes on Kamar-Taj."

Not to mention, though he didn't say it to Christine, that he didn't think Wong would like the idea of using America to help save Loki's life, not unless there was some urgent cosmic need for it.

''America sounds like a handful," she said.

"She's not a handful, not really. Just totally undisciplined." His face fell a little. "She lost her parents at a young age. Before she found another universe's version of me, she was alone, homeless, raising herself, basically. She doesn't make bad decisions because she's a bad kid, but because there was never anyone around to tell her no, or guide her, or teach her how to take care of herself."

"Poor kid," said Christine. "To play devil's advocate though, her power sounds like a teenager's dream. You can literally go anywhere, and nobody can stop you."

"It is a teenager's dream, and a grown up's nightmare. Having no one to tell you to brush your teeth or go to bed on time or make sure you go to school or eat real food, sort of snowballs into an adult who can't take care of themselves or hold down a job, or stick with anything in their lives."

"'Eat real food'?" Christine repeated.

He rolled his eyes and chuckled. "This girl eats nothing but pizza. I've never seen her eat anything else. Pizza and soda, and occasionally water."

"Oh my god," Christine gasped. "She's going to die of congestive heart failure at forty."

"That's exactly what I told her," he said. "You know what she said?"

"What?"

He tossed his head and did his best sassy America impression. "'Like, forty sounds pretty old, right?'"

Christine opened her eyes wide. Stephen just nodded.

"Well, I guess she's lucky she found you, then, huh?"

Stephen chuckled and shrugged, not sure how to answer that comment without looking like the know-it-all she'd just accused him of being.

Christine put her wet towel across the arm of her chair in front of the fireplace, so it could dry.

"I thought you hated kids, Stephen?" she asked, not looking at him, as if she was ashamed to ask the question.

"I hate mean, stupid kids," he said, trying not to think of the reason she might have asked him that. "At least, mean, stupid kids that have no excuse for being mean and stupid. And toddlers." He made a face. "They're just sticky and loud and they can't be reasoned with."

She smiled weakly and looked into the fireplace, as if her mind was thousands of miles away. He wanted to bring her back so badly, to break the silence, but she spoke before he could.

"So how do we get there?"

"I have an idea," he said. "It's a longshot, but it might be the only shot. The thing is-" he paused, trying to make sure she wouldn't see through the lie he was about to tell her "-I have to do this ceremony. And it's very, very sacred. I have to like, cleanse the area of bad energy, and everything has to be just right for it to work."

She lifted one eyebrow. She might not know exactly how he was lying, but he knew he'd already been found out. He had to keep going, though. There's no way he could explain dreamwalking to her without frightening her.

"So what I need you to do, is just stay out of the room I'm going to be in," he said. "Far away, preferably on the other side of the building."

"Other side … ?"

"Yeah. And if you hear anything weird, ignore it. And if Wong shows up for any reason, please don't tell him what I'm doing."

She was concerned now, he knew, but all she had to do was not be a busybody.

"O-kay," she said, after a very long pause. "You do whatever you have to do, Stephen."

"You know I will."

What he needed for the spell lay under the kitchen sink cabinet: a freshly dead rat stuck to a sticky trap. Carefully, he pulled the poor thing's corpse from the trap by its naked tail, ripping off chunks of hair and skin as he did. He groaned with disgust and nearly lost his dinner.

"This better work," he muttered to the tiny corpse.

In a storage room far off on the east end of the Sanctum, Stephen lit and gathered candles around him in a circle, as many as he could find. He made sigils around himself, ones not made of clean, golden energy, but burning red like the fires of Hell, and a salt circle to capture the thing he was about to summon. Placing the dead rat at the center of the circle, he sat cross legged in front of it, and with every bit of strength and courage he could muster, summoned the corruption of the Darkhold within him.

Energy shuddered through him, pain and pleasure and violence all mixed together in an intoxicating cocktail of evil, slithering over his mind, looking for ways to creep inside. Stephen's third eye opened wide in the middle of his forehead. The corruption he'd experienced from the Darkhold ran deep, but he knew if he kept his soul clear, he could fight its influence on him and use that energy for himself. He just needed a catalyst, some small bit of pure dark energy to start the spell. At least, his theory was that he could dreamwalk that way using the Darkhold's leftover power inside of him. He knew the risks, but surely just doing it one time into a random post-apocalyptic universe wasn't going to hurt much. If it didn't work, then he was about to do something disgusting to a dead rat for nothing.

With pulsing evil power, Stephen levitated the rat, sinking himself inside the pea-sized brain. He made the rat move with rudimentary kicks and spasms, its tail and head twitching randomly. It looked like a horrible little puppet dancing in midair.

"Hello, my baby, hello, my honey, hello my ragtime gal … " Stephen sang softly to himself as he puppeteered the corpse, to ease his own fear of what he was about to summon. "Come on," he whispered, "Come out, you little bastards."

Nothing. The candles' flames didn't extinguish themselves. There wasn't even a whisper of evil in the room, besides what Stephen was making himself.

"I'm violating the sanctity of de-ath," he called out in a singsong voice. "Practicing necromancy. You guys hate this. Come on out … "

"What games do you play, stupid human?" hissed a raspy voice, startling him. The ghost of a black, skeletal creature crept from around Stephen's back, floating slowly upwards to look him in the third eye. A Soul of the Damned, and thankfully only one.

Stephen grabbed the thing by the throat-not that it had a throat anymore, just a neck-and held tight as it writhed and shrieked horribly. The thing tried to scratch and bite like a rabid, feral cat.

"Don't worry," he said to the creature flatly. "I'll make this quick."

He squeezed tight, so tight that its bones snapped under the pressure, but it still lived, flailing and screaming. Stephen absorbed all of the soul's evil energy through his hand, his mind sucking it in greedily like marrow from a bone.

"Tell your friends not to mess with me anymore," he said.

The thing let out a few strained, hoarse whimpers, then hung limp, before slowly turning into dust in Stephen's hand. The dark energy from only one of those things was like a shot of pure adrenaline straight to the heart. His chest pounded, his third eye rolled back with exhilarated pleasure, he even felt his muscles strengthen. A rush of energy overwhelmed him and he laughed despite himself, almost losing his cool in the heat of the moment. There was definitely enough dark energy now. The spell would work, he knew it.

"All right," he gasped, smiling. "Now we're cooking with gas."

He summoned a projection in front of him of all the universes he could get his mind on, reaching out for them, peering into the glowing orbs of red light like tiny crystal balls.

"Show me Mobius," he murmured.

The new gravely nature of his voice surprised him a little, but it excited him, too. He knew now why witches flew around on broomsticks, cackling like maniacs. If he had a broom there at that moment, he would have been tempted.

He caught a glimpse of himself and Mobius in the same universe. Perfect, just what he needed. He channeled his consciousness into that universe's version of himself, and threw himself in, mind first.

The stench of rot hit him first, hard as a sack of bricks. His body was in a pile in the middle of the woods. He hated having to use this damned trick again, especially since this body seemed to be rotted to almost nothing, even worse than the one he'd used to fight the Scarlet Witch. His left eye was blind, and a cursory glance behind him with his good eye made him gasp with what was left of his lungs. His bottom half was completely rotted away, severed from the spine by decay and animals ripping him apart. In front of him sat the distant backyards of Tvania. Below him in the pile lay nothing but ashes and bones. Human bones. They'd been burned. Loki, Mobius, and the rest of Tvania must have done it, whatever the hell it was. Had they destroyed more than just the TVA?

With much difficulty, Stephen pulled himself from the pile, dragging his top half away from the bottom. Sickening squelching noises came from his abdomen, little bits of rotting viscera falling out as he crawled painfully towards the backyard of Loki's house.

"Gross," he said, and as he did, his decayed jaw fell wide open, threatening to fall right off of him. Stephen had to catch it with his hand.

Still gripping his jaw in place, he muttered, "This is going to suck."

It felt like hours before he reached the tall grass of the backyard. It was like crawling through broken glass while dragging five hundred pounds of weight. His damned body was ready to fall apart on its own.

Finally, he crawled up to the edge of the porch, just out of sight, and called out, "Mobius … Mobius … "

After what seemed like forever, he finally heard footsteps cautiously creeping across the porch.

"Hello?" whispered Mobius. "Someone there?"

"Mobius … in the grass … don't scream."

Above him, Stephen saw the edge of a baseball bat carefully part the grass where he lay. Mobius's eyes went wide, his face went gray, and he opened his mouth.

"Don't scream!" Stephen demanded. Mobius clapped a hand over his mouth, slowly sinking to the ground onto his knees, letting out a high pitched whimper like a balloon deflating.

"This isn't … what … it looks like."

"Oh, we're all gonna die," he moaned, starting to cry. "I knew it. We're all gonna die."

"I … am … not … a zombie!"

"Then what in the flying Sam Hill are you, and why shouldn't I bash your god damned head in right now?" He held up the bat threateningly.

"I am Dr. Strange … the one you just met … speaking through … my dead body … in this universe."

Mobius let his mouth fall open and stared at him for several seconds.

"Huh?"

Stephen grunted and readjusted himself, making Mobius scramble backwards and hold the bat ready.

"Wait," said Mobius, relaxing just the slightest bit. "This body. It's Strange's body?"

"Yes," Stephen said, wondering if he would be able to keep his rotting brain matter going, even with powerful necromancy.

Mobius gasped. "I … I didn't know. I had no idea. It was already-" he stopped to retch, "-it was already pretty decomposed when we found it."

"Explain later," said Stephen. "No time. Come … and get me … in my universe."

"Bring you here again?" said Mobius, letting the end of the bat rest on the ground, but still holding it, just in case. "Does this mean you'll help Loki?"

"Yes. I will help Loki." Stephen sank lower to the ground, unable to prop himself up any more. "Can't … stay here … much longer … "

"One more question."

"What?" Stephen growled.

"Are you going to need this body once you're done with it?"

Stephen rolled his good eye. "No."

"Okay, because I am absolutely going to smash the shit out of it."

"Whatever makes you … feel better … Mobius."

With that, Stephen let himself out of his rotten flesh prison, all the muscles and bones falling to the ground with a lifeless thud.

Stephen returned to his mind with a shudder running down his back, thankful to be able to see and feel his legs again. He wiggled his toes, just to make sure he was really connected to his bottom half.

He let go of the dark energy swirling within his brain with a little difficulty, but eventually banished it to wherever it went when he wasn't using it. The candle flames flickered and became their normal warm yellow glow. His third eye snapped shut and disappeared.

"No more dead bodies," he sighed, getting up and blowing out the candles one by one and putting them back where they belonged. "No more zombies, no more necromancy. I swear off of dead bodies forever."

After cleaning up, Stephen found Christine in a study room in the west wing, cozily leafing through a Time magazine in an enormous, plush velvet armchair with her feet pulled up under her. She glanced at him and stood when Stephen entered.

"Did it work?"

"It did," he said, hoping she hadn't heard any screeching from the Soul of the Damned. "I was able to contact Mobius and tell him to come pick us up."

"When?"

"He probably needs to … clean up some things first."

"What do you think I should bring?" said Christine, rearing to go. "I have a huge first aid kit, I could bring my old pathology textbook-"

"We need more than that," he said. "Christine, this might be even more dangerous than I imagined. Mobius isn't telling me something about this situation. I still don't know if he's just omitting the truth or outright lying." He paused and looked her in the eye. "Are you willing to steal some things from the hospital?"

"What?" she exclaimed. "I could get fired for that, Stephen! I could lose my license to practice!"

"I know, and I'm sorry to ask, but I have some supplies to gather myself before he gets here. We need isolation equipment. All the PPE you can get your hands on: N95's, gloves, hair and shoe covers, face shields, gowns, everything, not to mention examination instruments and sanitizing stuff. Rubbing alcohol. Get tons of rubbing alcohol, too."

"Okay, okay," she said. "I'll do it. I don't feel good about it, but I'll do it."

"And … you might want to buy a gun."

Christine only stared at him in stunned silence. "A gun?"

"Yeah."

"You're the one with immense magical powers, and you need a gun?"

"The gun's not for me, it's for you. Just in case things get really, really ugly."

"I am not buying a gun."

"Christine-"

"No, Stephen. I am not buying a gun. I'm putting my foot down. I don't even know how to shoot a gun."

"Okay, all right, fine," he said. "I just thought it might be a good idea."

Her brow was furrowed with worry, even if she refused to admit she was scared.

"Are you sure you still want to come?" he asked.

After a moment, she nodded with a gulp.

"Yes. Let's do this, Dr. Strange."