There is some non-sexual, non-explicit nudity in this scene. Also the dream sequence in this chapter probably won't make any sense unless you know the gist of Wandavision. (Wandavision spoiler below)

Basically Wanda made her own realities based on the sitcoms she'd seen when she was a girl. In my headcannon, she could have been seeing other universes with her children in them and bringing them into her own, but in the show she was making those different sitcoms with the power of her mind.

Stephen told the rest of them not to bother with any more searching through his magical tomes for the day. It was just too humid and hot to do anything productive until the sun started to sink again. Also, he didn't tell the others, but he was completely exhausted after coming back into his body and needed to do anything else but think about what he'd just found. Whatever dimension or universe that crack opened into looked absolutely horrific, at best, if he could even get into it at all.

"If we're not going to do anything for a while, people love to go down into the forest and hang out in the stream when it gets this nasty," said Mobius, fanning himself with the front of his shirt. "What do you think?"

"Sounds like heaven right now," said Christine, wiping sweat off of her forehead.

"Absolutely," muttered Stephen.

"I'll stay here," said Sylvie quietly. She got up and gave Loki a sad glance with tired emerald eyes. Stephen had noticed bags forming under them for the last day or so, and they were getting worse with the heat.

"I need to give Loki a cool sponge bath," she continued. "I don't want him to get too hot. I'll try to get some water in him."

"All right," sighed Mobius as he led Christine and Stephen out of the bedroom.

Stephen took a peek behind them as they left. Sylvie knelt down close to Loki's head and wiped some sweat from his brow with the corner of the blanket, whispering something gently to him. Watching her tending to him so sweetly was like seeing a mother bear with her newborn cubs: it was touching to watch, but if you did so much as glance at the cubs the bear would tear you to pieces.

Before they left the house, the rest of them changed into skimpier outfits, fit for a trip to the beach. Stephen and Mobius wore airy cargo pants, though they were too big for Stephen. He'd found a bit of rope to use as a makeshift belt. The original man of the house had left an unopened bag of cheap, sleeveless undershirts that the guys now wore. Christine found a nice, flowery knee length skirt and a tank top in the closet. Stephen decided to bring his Cloak of Levitation with him just in case, which looked hilariously out of place slung over his shoulder like a beach towel.

They walked out into the backyard, strolling barefoot past a reddish brown splotch in the grass where he assumed Mobius had smushed his corpse with the baseball bat, like he said he would. Stephen shuddered. The presence of his variant in a post-apocalyptic suburb made more sense now, at least. He must have been here to stop whatever had hunted the original people of this place, and possibly the world, judging from this Earth's lack of human life. Obviously, that version of him was not prepared for what he'd met, either.

He waited until they were into the woods and far away from the house before speaking to Mobius.

"So … I can't help but notice that Sylvie's not very social, is she?"

Mobius shook his head. "She grew up totally alone, running from the TVA since she was a little girl. To her credit, I've never seen a runaway variant last as long as she did without being captured. It's really hard for her to trust people and bond with them."

"She bonded with Loki, obviously,"

A grin grew across Mobius's face slowly, as if he knew something he wasn't saying. He chuckled and nodded, kicking a clod of dirt out of the path.

"Yeah. They are very bonded. Attached at the hip, practically. Soulmates."

They walked further down a gentle slope of forest, where the temperature fell several degrees thanks to the heavy tree cover. At the bottom of the valley was a picturesque little stream, with a tiny waterfall not taller than the average person that emptied out into a shallow pool. Both Stephen and Christine stopped in surprise when they realized several of the Tvanians splashing around in the water were buck naked. Mobius hadn't warned them, or even suggested it at all. Mobius continued downward, totally unfazed, and reluctantly the doctors followed.

They got to the bottom and Stephen tried his very best not to stare at anybody's privates.

"Mobius-" he began, but Mobius was already taking off his shirt and pants. Stephen was shocked. "What the hell! You literally told me when we met that you were too out of shape to be naked in public!"

Mobius glanced behind him and shrugged as he took off his underwear, making both Stephen and Christine turn their heads and murmur, "Oh my God."

"I don't consider this 'public'" he said, gesturing to the people washing themselves. "We had communal showers in the TVA. Same thing. Also, I thought surgeons saw naked bodies a lot, so you wouldn't mind."

"Yeah, well they're not flopping around. You could have said something!" hissed Stephen as a very large, hairy, naked man walked right by him.

Christine made a face somewhere between laughter and abject horror. "Do we have to get naked? Can we just wade around?"

"Oh, of course you don't have to get naked," said Mobius with a chuckle. "Just dip your toes in, if you want."

With that, he waded into the deep end closest to the waterfall, where the water just reached his waist. He sucked in a breath and winced.

"Co-old! Cold cold cold cold cold!" he whispered with a shudder.

"Bunch of hippies," said Stephen.

Mobius poked his head out from under the waterfall for a second, hair soaking wet.

"What was that?"

"Mobius, the people here share meals and housing, grow their own food, have unprotected sex, get naked in front of each other like it's nothing, and sing George Harrison songs. There is no way in hell you can't realize this is absolutely a hippie commune."

Mobius made a raspberry noise. "People lived like this for thousands of years before modern civilization and electricity and junk. Also, where the hell are people going to get condoms? People need to start making babies if we want to make a real colony here, anyway." He splashed some water onto his armpits. "It's not hippie nonsense, it's just logical."

Stephen spread his arms wide with disbelief. "You are bathing, butt-naked, in an idyllic forest stream like a freaking water nymph and you're telling me you're not a hippie?!"

"You know what?" said Mobius, pointing at Stephen sternly, which looked utterly hilarious given the circumstances, "You better lay off the hippie bullshit, okay? It's starting to piss me off."

Stephen and Christine exchanged a worried look, then Stephen shrugged.

"I give up. When in Rome … "

Stephen hung his Cloak of Levitation in a nearby tree branch. They sat next to each other at the bank of the stream where it started to narrow and dipped their feet into the water, which was blissfully freezing, even with a dozen people kicking up sediment and who knew what else.

Stephen took off his shirt and soaked it in the water, perhaps subconsciously-or not so subconsciously-hoping that Christine would notice that he'd been working out. He accidentally gave her a little glance before wringing out his shirt and putting it back on. The cold, wet fabric felt utterly fantastic on his bare skin and he let out a sigh of relief.

"I know what you're doing," said Christine flatly, looking straight ahead and not at him.

"Okay, smarty, what was I doing?" he asked with a smirk, hoping she wouldn't call his bluff. He should have known better.

"You wanted me to see your abs," she said, as if she could have predicted this would happen days ago.

"Oh my God, Christine," he said, rolling his eyes. "Is that really what you think of me?"

She splashed her feet around a bit, bringing her slender leg out of the water and dipping it back in. He hadn't seen her bare legs in too, too long, but he forced himself not to look.

"I don't think you're a lecher, Stephen," she said. "I just know you, that's all."

She was using his heart as a dartboard, he knew it. She got a bullseye every time, too. He couldn't help but feel a little mad and hurt, though he tried hard not to show it. A little spilled out, despite himself.

"You love doing this, don't you Christine?" he muttered.

"Huh?" She looked at him with genuine confusion.

"Nothing."

The heat of the day and the cool of the stream made everyone exceptionally sleepy in no time. Mobius-thank God-put his pants back on and led them to clearing in the forest surrounded by a patch of pine trees. Long, thin brown pine needles littered the ground, making a nice, soft ground cover. It smelled faintly of turpentine, sap oozing out of the trees around them.

The spot had a few ratty looking tents and a collection of beach chairs to lay on. A young couple, a man and a woman, hurried out of one of the tents, wearing only pants. They giggled at each other, then waved at Mobius and the doctors before running back up the slope towards the village.

Both Stephen and Christine gave Mobius a wry look.

"Okay, fine," said Mobius after the couple were out of earshot, picking out a chair and laying on it, "some of them act like hippies, but I don't."

"Sure," said Stephen.

He and Christine found separate chairs to lie down on. His, made of fabric strips and aluminum, had seen better days, and he hoped it could support his weight for more than a few minutes.

The three of them laid there in peaceful silence, birdsong and the distant sound of splashing water the only noises to disturb them.

Stephen blinked as a ray of sunlight burst through the lazily waving tree branches, shining down in splotches on the forest floor. The whole forest reminded him of his youth growing up in a rural town. Those were simpler, happier times. He and his sister, Donna, would play pretend and explore the forest behind their house all day during the holiday breaks. Remembering his younger sister's sweet face, her curly, brown hair, the angry expression she made when he'd show her a bug or a frog to gross her out, made a wave of sadness and nostalgia wash over him that almost overwhelmed him.

Donna had died in the forest in the winter just after her twelfth birthday. She'd fallen through an icy pond and frozen to death. Stephen was only fourteen then, but he still had pangs of guilt that he couldn't save her. Glimpses of that horrible moment flickered through his head, like a movie he couldn't shut off; hearing the ice crack, pulling her body out of the pond, screaming for their mom and dad, the feeling of utter helplessness as he stared into her frozen eyes, repeating over and over, "I don't know what to do."

Her death was what made him go into medical school, and ultimately end up where he was now. He'd still do anything to see her again, grown up, maybe married with kids. As much as he wanted to see that, he'd never dreamt of it, which gave him very little hope that there was a universe where she made it that far.

A heavenly burst of cool air moved over them, washing the pain from his mind for a while, at least long enough for him to close his eyes and take a nap.

Stephen was a child again in his dream.

Well, not a child, exactly, but he definitely felt like one, wearing a baseball cap and a red-and-white striped collared shirt tucked into shin-length trousers. It looked exactly like what he would have worn to school as a kid, except he was most definitely an adult. He still had to go to school, though. It made perfect sense to him. Everyone had to go to school forever.

The problem was he'd forgotten to wear his shoes again, for the hundredth time. And to make it worse, he'd gotten an F on his Geology test, one that he never knew he was supposed to take.

"Mom's gonna kill me," he muttered as he walked up the driveway. Canned laughter echoed in the background, like it always did when he did something wrong.

He walked through the door of his picture-perfect pastel pink ranch house to an explosion of applause.

"Mom, I'm home!" he called through the clapping.

A slender, graceful woman in a golden yellow paisley dress almost seemed to float through the kitchen door and into the living room. Her long, blonde hair came down nearly to her hips. There was something about his mother that day that felt off: too uncanny, as if she was two people at once. A silly, but unsettling image popped into his head of his mother completely and utterly bald, like an old man. But of course, that didn't make any sense. She was the same every single day. So why did she feel different all of a sudden?

She smiled warmly at her son. "Oh Stephen, how was school?"

"Great," he lied through a half-hearted smile. She tilted her head and looked at his bare feet on the shag carpet.

"Stephen … " she said, tsking at him. "Again?"

"Geez Mom, I'm used to it by now." Another burst of laughter.

"Well, come in the kitchen sweetheart, and tell me all about your day."

A sliced, de-crusted peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a tall glass of milk waited for him on the kitchen table. His mother picked up a spoon and stirred a pot of something on the avocado-colored gas range. Stephen took one triangle of his sandwich and stuffed it in his mouth greedily.

"Well?" she asked, adding spices to whatever she was making for dinner.

"Oh, yeah," he piped up, hoping she wouldn't see right through him. "Besides coming to school with no shoes on-"

"Again," she mumbled, to a murmur of chuckling.

"Besides that," he continued, "nothing bad at all happened at school and everything was pretty much normal. So … yeah, the end!" He grabbed the other half of his sandwich and whipped around, meaning to run straight up the stairs and into his room.

"Really?" Her tone made Stephen stop in his tracks.

"Yeah … "

She turned to him, spoon in hand, one eyebrow raised. "Because I just got a call from Mrs. Tarakowski about your test."

The voices chimed in with a low, "O-ooh." Sometimes he really, really wished that he could tell them to just shut up, for once, but everyone knew you weren't supposed to acknowledge the reactions, no matter what. It was bad luck. As long as there was laughing and 'ooh'ing and 'aww'ing and clapping, it meant everything was going to be okay. When the noises stopped, that's when you needed to worry.

His mother patted the seat of the kitchen stool. He knew what that meant. Slowly, guiltily, he walked back into the kitchen and sat on the stool, holding his head in one hand, elbow on the countertop.

"Now Stephen," she said gently, pulling up a chair and sitting next to him. "I want you to know that everyone forgets about important tests every once in a while. Even me and your dad."

"I know," he muttered.

"Why, did I tell you the time your dad completely forgot that he was taking a college calculus course and had to take the final without ever going to class?"

"He did?"

She laughed, "Goodness, that was a mess! But everything turned out just fine in the end. And another time-"

His mother's expression changed without warning. Her smile slowly faded, her eyes became serious and intense. He'd never seen anything like that happen before. She was always bright and cheery and knew exactly what to say.

"Mom?"

"Stephen," she said gravely. Her high, lilting voice dropped low and earnest. "I have very little time to speak to you here, but I know you can hear me."

"But you're always here when I get home from school," he said, growing frightened.

"This is a reflection of my voice in the Mirror Dimension, being projected from what's left of my energy, which is dreamwalking in the First Cosmos."

"That sounds … complicated."

He expected some sort of reaction, maybe the slightest chuckle, but it was utterly silent. Stephen was terrified now. Something was wrong. He looked off to the west side of the house, where the applause usually came from.

"Don't look at them," she snapped. "Look at me."

He whipped his head back around and stared at her, eyes wide.

She gestured to his backpack hanging on the edge of the chair. "Take out your test, Stephen."

"You're scaring me," he whispered, on the edge of tears.

"Do as I say."

He got up, still hoping that this was the build up to some kind of joke, and pulled out his test papers, all crumpled up and stapled together. Flipping to the first page, he couldn't believe what he saw. The word 'Geology' had been crossed out, and in bright, red letters, someone had written 'DEATH'.

"This doesn't make sense," he said, voice cracking. He turned to his mother, who was still as serious as a stone. "I swear it was a Geology test. I know it was Geology."

"Listen to me carefully," she said. "You are vastly unprepared for what you need to face. You don't need to study any more magic-"

"Magic?"

"Quiet!" she barked. He bit his lip. "You have all the magic that everyone could ever use at your fingertips. But that isn't what you need."

She got up and walked over to him, still graceful, but with such purpose he felt as if she might try to hurt him. He wanted to run far away, but he stood still in terror.

She put her hands on his shoulders, her grip firm, but gentle. "Study the poets, Stephen. Look to the philosophers. You cannot defeat this enemy. In order to pass this test-" she snapped the test out of his hand and held it up, the big, red 'F' and the word 'DEATH' glaring at him, "-you have to cheat."

"Cheat?"

"Cheat. Death. Stephen." Her eyes pierced right through him as she spoke. She lifted one slender hand and placed her thumb on his forehead, right between the eyes.

"Now, wake."

Stephen jolted awake as if he'd been shot into his chair through a cannon. One of the fabric straps broke, and his ass fell straight through the seat and onto the ground. Utterly disoriented, he flailed like a stuck turtle, waving his arms and legs around uselessly.

"Stephen," Christine yawned. "You okay?" Mobius snorted himself awake and looked around, blinking in the sunlight.

"Fine-I just-hold on-" Stephen grunted as he flipped himself on his hands and knees, destroying the flimsy beach chair in the process.

"I had the weirdest-"

"BA-AA-AA-AA!"

Stephen yelped and crawled backwards, making eye contact with a long-eared, black-and-white billy goat. It stared at him stupidly with its horizontal pupils, nibbling on a piece of fabric from his chair.

"God, what now?"

He stood up and dusted himself off. He had to remember his dream before it faded. He mumbled it out loud to himself so he wouldn't forget, looking like a lunatic in the process.

"The Ancient One was there and she was my mom, for some reason? And there was a test … death … and she said I had to cheat … philosophers and poets, that's what she said."

"What are you talking about?" said Christine, rubbing her eyes.

Before he could explain, a familiar voice echoed from the village down into the valley.

"Jimothy!"

John came sliding and puffing down the slope a moment later, his short legs barely keeping him upright. As he ran, he fell on the slippery pine needle covering, and Mobius jumped up to help him to his feet. The goat-Jimothy, Stephen assumed-gave a short, annoyed bleat and trotted away deeper into the forest.

"Damned stupid animals!" grumbled John as Mobius helped him. "They beg for food, and then escape every chance they get. Can't have your cake and eat it, too."

"I've got it," said Stephen. He willed his Cloak of Levitation to rise off of the tree branch where he'd hung it, then sent it flying like a magic carpet to chase after the runaway goat.

It didn't take long for the Cloak to catch up. With a clean, graceful movement, the Cloak swiped Jimothy's hooves out from under him and scooped him up, like a net. The goat bleated and kicked to no avail as the Cloak floated him gently back into the pine clearing.

"See?" said Stephen, "That was easy. Now, show me where to dump it before it makes a mess. This thing is spot-clean only."

"This way."

Everyone followed John back up the hill, though it looked like he might lose his footing and tumble back down along the way. They ended up in the overgrown backyards of Tvania, one of which was fenced off. Stephen could hear-and smell-the other goats before they got there.

The Cloak gently overturned Jimothy within the fence so he could join his herd, emptying out a few goat pellets in the process.

"Ew," mumbled Stephen, shaking out the Cloak and throwing it back over his shoulder.

John, red faced and panting, pointed to a spot at the bottom of the fence.

"See there? They've eaten a hole in the wooden part of it, then somehow bent back the chain link part, and now they love squeezing through it and running away." John threw up his hands in frustration. "Whoever designed this fence was an absolute idiot."

Stephen bent down and took a closer look. John was right. It was another work of Frankenstein style, like he'd noticed before all over this place. Half of the fence was made of red, wooden pickets, which made an irregular, curving line, like someone had taken a very precise chainsaw to it. The other part was regular steel chain link. Examining the part where they met, something struck him as odd … not just odd, but seemingly impossible. The chain link part was not stapled or nailed onto the fence. Instead, it looked like the chain link had actually turned into wood. The metal grew thicker and widened and even changed texture for about a half inch until it truly became painted red pine.

If this planet was actually Earth, then there was no way for that to be possible, except through magic. Some warning screamed through the back of Stephen's mind, but he simply couldn't place why, other than the fact that it was so unusual. Maybe it was a side effect of whatever the evil nightmare magic had done to this town, though he couldn't see how.

He put the thought on the back burner again, trying to focus on what he knew was most important: his dream of the Ancient One. He stood and turned to Mobius, who was scratching one of the doe goats under her chin through the chain link fence.

"Mobius, can you get me back to my universe for a little bit? I'm going to need to go to the library."

"The Sanctum's library or a regular library?" he asked. "Because we have most of a regular one not far away from here. Some of the books were too rotted to save, but we made sure to preserve the rest of them the best we could."

Steven gave a short sigh, embarrassed about what he was about to ask. "Do you have any … poetry?"

Both Mobius and Christine stared at him blankly.

"I can explain," he said, a little sheepishly. "It might not make any sense, but I can explain."