CW for euthanasia/suicide, technically

"No, Stephen! Absolutely not."

Christine and Stephen stood in front of the sliding glass door of the kitchen, Christine with her arms crossed at her chest in defiance. Stephen looked to Sylvie and Mobius sitting at the kitchen table, the philosophy books still piled chaotically around them, staring at him as if he'd suggested throwing himself off a bridge. He may as well have.

"I know this is the only way, Christine. I'm certain."

"I don't care!" she shouted up at him, her small frame becoming a brick wall. "I won't do it. I'd rather just go back home right now."

"There's no one else I could possibly trust with this."

"Stephen, you're asking me to help you kill yourself!"

He put up one finger, in a pathetic attempt to rationalize an unrationalizible situation.

"And then, bring me back to life," he added.

She huffed angrily and turned around, refusing to look at him.

"I am not Dr. god-damned Kevorkian," she growled.

"You're being disingenuous," he said, though he knew his tone wouldn't get him anywhere with her. She was right. His plan was insane. Mobius and Sylvie sat nervously, guiltily looking at their hands folded on the table, and not at them.

Stephen put a hand on her shoulder. She tensed, but didn't shrug him off. He hoped it was somewhat of a good sign that she hadn't slapped him yet.

"Christine," he said softly. "There's no other way to do this. If I don't get as close to death as possible, then I won't be able to even figure out what I'm fighting. I'm not just doing this for Loki, either. It's for everyone left on this planet, in this universe."

"What about our universe, Stephen?" she whispered.

"If we do this right, then we won't have to worry about that," he said, giving her a reassuring smile even though she still faced away from him. "We'll be at the hospital, in a controlled environment, with all the equipment you need right next to you. I'll make sure no one bothers us. Time goes so much slower in the Astral Plane that I won't need to be dead for very long."

She sucked in a breath at the word, 'dead,' and shook her head. He couldn't possibly blame her.

"There are too many risks," she said. "Even if I bring you back, being without oxygen for even a few minutes will cause permanent brain damage."

"You said five seconds in the physical world per minute there, right?" he asked, quickly doing some mental math. "I don't think I'll need more than thirty minutes in the Astral Plane, that's one hundred and fifty seconds. Just two and a half minutes, Christine. That's totally doable."

She chortled mirthlessly. "Doable. Sure, if I can bring you back to life again."

"You can," he said, gently turning her around to face him. "How many people have you saved from the brink of death in the ER? You can absolutely do this."

She looked down at his shoes and held her breath, her arms still crossed in front of her.

"If I can't bring you back," she said quietly, "I swear to god, Stephen, when I die, I'm going to find your soul and haunt your ass forever."

He chuckled. "Sounds fair to me."

Dr. Strange and company waited for nightfall to go through with his plan. The time of day seemed to sync between his and Tvania's universes, so he wanted to make sure they arrived back at Metro-General in the dead of night. The waiting was excruciating, though. The village was silent. No one did their chores or milled around talking or splashed in the stream. Notably, no one came by to offer lunch or dinner to them, either. Mobius did his best to feed them, but he only had a few cans of beans at his disposal. They shared two cans of expired black beans between the four of them for each meal.

"Sorry," he said, scooping a few spoonfuls into their bowls. "I really can't cook. I was saving these for an emergency."

Christine sighed as she ate her stale, flavorless beans.

"I really wish you still had the time stone, Stephen. I feel like I'm going to have an anxiety attack any minute."

"I wouldn't use it anyway. Waiting is not an emergency," he said, cringing as he laboriously chewed his food. "I'd think about it just to get through these beans, though."

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, night came again. Stephen changed into the hooded sweatshirt he'd given Mobius, not for the warmth, but as a small bit of security from prying eyes once they got to the hospital. The full moon rose early but was covered by clouds, leaving them with nothing but candles to light Loki's room. His breathing and tremors hadn't changed since they'd brought him back, though he looked even more pale than he had the first time Stephen saw him. There was nowhere for Loki to go but up-or straight down. It all depended on Dr. Strange, just like all the patients he'd worked on before him.

None of his former patients had needed him to die first, though.

All of them stood around Loki's bed, as if they were prepared to perform one last ceremony for him. The candles faltered and sputtered as a strong wind rattled the closed windows.

"Will I know when you've won?" asked Sylvie, sitting down on Loki's bed, brushing a bit of long, black hair away from his sweaty brow. "Will he wake up?"

"I don't know, Sylvie. I hope so," he answered as Mobius stood ready with his tempad. Stephen deliberated for a moment, then hung his Cloak of Levitation up on one of the bedposts. He really hadn't needed it for much, except to catch a goat and carry some books. He figured it would only get covered in bodily fluids if he wore it to the hospital for this.

"Are we ready?" he asked.

Mobius and Christine both nodded reluctantly while Christine bit nervously at her nail. Stephen gave a curt nod to Mobius, who punched in the coordinates, letting a burst of air conditioning breeze into the room as the portal flickered open. The light beyond the door wasn't much better than what was in Loki's room. Stephen was afraid it had opened into somewhere random, like Mobius said it might, until he realized it was the hospital's sub basement. That was actually a better place for them to land than anywhere else, in those circumstances.

They crept cautiously through the portal, and Stephen took one last glance behind him as he brought up the rear. Sylvie's expression was resolute and grim, as though she was watching a parade of soldiers bravely marching to their doom.

Christine fumbled around for a light switch and found an ancient one, clicking it on with an audible clunk. A few pathetic fluorescent lights flickered on overhead, illuminating a barren, cement brick hallway and yellow, speckled tile floor that probably hadn't been changed since the eighties.

"Basement's the lab, first floor is the lobby, two is the ER … " Stephen thought out loud to himself, his voice echoing down the deserted hall.

"How about the SICU?" said Christine.

"Surgical Intensive Care Unit?" guessed Mobius.

"Perfect," said Stephen. "They would have everything you need for a medically induced coma. It's usually not horribly busy up there, barring some kind of cataclysmic event."

"Knowing this universe … " mumbled Christine, rolling her eyes. "Where is the elevator down here, anyway?"

Stephen smirked at her and opened a portal with his sling ring to an empty SICU room.

"Oh. Of course."

"Ladies first," said Stephen.

The two doctors prepared everything as quietly as they could, turning down the lights and pulling the shutters tight. Mobius stood in a corner, nervously gripping his tempad like a pastor with his Bible. No one could see them from the hallway unless they were really snooping around, but as an added precaution, Stephen cast a simple barrier spell over the window and door that would make it look like no one was in the room.

"This spell breaks as soon as someone steps through the barrier, so be careful," Stephen warned them as he laid down on the hospital bed. His heart beat in his chest like a bongo drum. Christine pulled up the crash cart, got the stopwatch app ready on her phone, and prepared the pentobarbital drip next to his bed. He swallowed hard. The mortality rate of that drug was dangerously high-precisely what he needed, but never thought he'd have to use on himself.

"You should probably take off your shirt, Stephen," she said quietly, her face red, but not from blushing. She looked to be on the edge of tears.

He did as she asked, leaving the sweatshirt draped over the hospital bed, then put his hand on top of hers. She stopped preparing the drugs, freezing in place as he spoke to her.

"You're amazing, Christine," he murmured to her. "You can do this." He sucked in a long breath, held it, then let out a long, slow sigh. "On the off chance that the unthinkable happens, though, I want you to promise me something."

"What?" she whispered.

"Don't ever blame yourself," he said. "Don't stay up at night thinking you did the wrong thing. You didn't."

She cough-laughed, wiping her nose, though she hadn't begun to cry.

"Well, if I go to jail, then I guess I won't have any questions about that."

"You won't go to jail," he said, though the thought hadn't even come to mind until that moment. Another good reason this absolutely couldn't go wrong.

"If it's any consolation," said Mobius, coming up to the edge of the bed, "I'll be a witness."

"Let's please stop talking about it," said Stephen, trying to calm his frantic heartbeat.

"Just in case you don't … you know," said Mobius uncomfortably, "I just want to let you know that it's been an honor, Dr. Strange."

"No 'just-in-cases', all right?" he answered, with a bit more force than he meant to. "I'm coming back."

Christine placed the EKG sensors on his chest, revealing a fast, fluttery beeping and a jagged line on the monitor, which somehow made him feel worse. She hesitantly found a vein on his arm and stuck the IV in.

It started to work immediately. His skin prickled with flashes of terror, followed by an acute sense of lightheadedness, then a wave of dizziness so overwhelming it felt like drowning. Just before he went under, Christine hovered over him with a brave smile on her face. The light of the examination table shone behind her head, surrounding her face in a halo of light like an angel. She reached down and brushed a bit of hair away from his eyes.

"Good luck, Stephen," she whispered, her voice floating to him from far away.

He opened his mouth to say, "I love you," but before he could, he was swallowed whole into the sea of death like a bit of driftwood.

Stephen was nothing and everything all at once. The darkness of non-perception was blacker and emptier than the deepest vacuum of space. No thought, no sensation came at first, then in the far distance, a pinprick of light shone just for him, a beckoning star so gentle and soft he barely understood it, until it sent a bolt of fear into him.

This was it. He was really dying.

The light moved towards him, growing brighter and bigger, or perhaps he was moving towards it, he couldn't be sure. Either way the pull grew stronger, less frightening, more comforting … irresistible, even. He felt himself relax and moved passively along the current of wherever he was, like he had when he dreamed he was a butterfly.

"Stephen," a voice called out to him, high-pitched and unmistakably familiar, from a figure in the distance.

"Donna!"

The pull became deeper and faster, light growing like the sunrise, the current rushing to envelop him.

His sister smiled, her freckled cheeks round and rosy, her long, curly brown hair in a scrunchied ponytail. She wore a pair of acid wash overalls with a plain pink shirt underneath. Tears began to stream down Stephen's face. She was exactly like he'd remembered her at twelve years old.

"Hurry up, Stephen!" she said, standing on the porch and leaning on the screen door of their grandparent's old ranch home in Nebraska, where they used to spend a week of every summer. "Grandma made cookies!" she added, then opened the door wide and stepped through.

"Wait! Donna, wait!" he cried out to her, stretching his arms out. The pull was so strong, the light so blindingly beautiful, he felt nothing could possibly be as important as going through that door and catching up to his sister, seeing his dead grandparents again, eating lunch on a sunny June day with his family.

"I'm coming, Donna!"

His soul, his astral form, began to melt and deteriorate into specks of light, little bits of his fingers floating away like burning cinders into the current. Though he saw it happening, Stephen didn't care. He needed to see Donna again. He'd almost reached the door when another voice came, sharp and close.

"Stephen, don't!" cried a woman's voice from somewhere above him.

He couldn't have stopped himself even if he wanted to, but a hand grabbed him forcefully from his neck, like a cat scruffing a wandering kitten, and dragged him upwards and away from the light.

"No!" he yelled, trying to squirm free and back down, but he was ripped away from the current just as quickly as the light had tried to claim him.

Stephen emerged head first from a rushing river, gasping for breath instinctively, though he didn't need to breathe. He hadn't even realized he was swimming until he heard the sound of water surging all around him. The hand still had its grip firmly on his neck and dragged him through the water to shore, where Stephen crawled, coughing, onto a barren, rocky bank.

Next to him, panting, in golden, soaking wet robes, sat the master he knew, with a bald head and grim expression.

"Ancient One?" he gasped.

She gave him a tired smile. "You didn't hear me calling?" she asked, wringing out one of the sleeves of her robe.

Without thinking, he laughed, then wrapped his arms around her in a huge bear hug. He drew away suddenly, embarrassed for acting so childishly around the former Sorcerer Supreme, giving her a small bow instead.

"It is good to see you again, Stephen," she said, her smile warming.

"Are we where I think we are?" asked Stephen, glancing around them, then down at his hands, to find all of his fingers still intact. The rocky bank was at the bottom of a gently dipping valley with nothing in it except an expansive river that forked into two directions. They sat, dripping, in the land in the middle of the fork. The main river looked like normal, ordinary water, but the right side of the fork, where they'd come up to the surface, glowed underneath with pure light. The other fork became as dark as tar. He looked straight up and gasped. Instead of sunlight or clouds, thousands of massive, ovoid bubbles floated above him, each glowing dully with their own color of light, but enough to clearly illuminate the gravely wasteland below. It reminded Stephen of the floating blobs in a lava lamp.

"This," said the Ancient One as she stood up, gesturing around her, "is the First Cosmos."

"The afterlife?" he whispered, looking down with trepidation into the glowing river.

"Well," she said, "For most beings, that is the afterlife." She nodded to the churning water. "The First Cosmos is what cradles the Multiverse and Death, unless you're able to escape the river and find the place you really wanted to go."

Stephen shakily stood, realizing with embarrassment that he appeared here just as he'd died: half naked, shirtless.

"What-what does that mean?" he asked her.

"Look," she said, pointing to the lighted fork of the river. A shadow underneath seemed to be growing larger and larger, like a fish being reeled in. To his surprise, it burst from the water with a gasp, revealing a blue skinned, ogre-like creature with four arms. The being's soul floated away straight up into the sky, making a beeline for one of the bubbles hovering over them.

"Those smaller universes up there?" she said, pointing to the multitude of spheres. "Those are afterlives. Formed and tended by the countless gods of the multiverse."

"But not everyone gets out of here, right?" he said gesturing to the river, now shying away from it. The light had been so tender and welcoming. He never imagined he was actually drowning.

"No," she said. Without another word, she floated quickly through the air and downriver, like a piece of newspaper in the wind.

"Wait!" he shouted, running to catch up with her, then realizing he could simply float as easily as he could when he was in the Astral Plane.

They floated for a long way along the glowing fork, the light becoming brighter and brighter until it was impossible to tell the light apart from the water. At this point, no more souls burst from the churning river. The ground suddenly gave way to nothing, and the river fell into a gushing, yet somehow silent waterfall. The water, now turned into billions and billions of tiny points of radiance, fell away into the air, then rose up like countless, microscopic floating lanterns, spreading themselves randomly into the sky.

Hundreds of yards away, the dark fork of the river emptied into the same chasm, the water on that side transformed into glittering black shards, like bits of weightless flint floating into the air.

"This is where all energy, all magic, all life force comes from, Stephen," said the Ancient One, looking out reverently into the sphere-filled distance. "Eventually, all death comes to this, and becomes new souls, new worlds, new magic."

Stephen lowered himself to the ground and stood dumbly as the realization dawned on him.

"Do you mean pretty much everything that dies … gets turned into … " A chill ran through him. He took another look at his hands, remembering how his fingers had disintegrated from his body, just like when he'd turned to dust during the Snap. What's worse was that it hadn't mattered to him as it was happening. All he could think of was reaching his sister again.

"Yes," she said, utterly impassive. "Eventually, even the souls in the afterlives will come to this. Even me."

"What about ..." he trailed off and nodded to the dark fork, spewing out countless shimmering shards of obsidian.

"That's the bad ending. Where those with anger and hatred and desperation in their hearts are sent."

"But it all goes to the same place?" he said, watching the energy waterfalls floating into the sky, mingling together like a murmur of starlings until he couldn't tell them apart. It all felt so impersonal, despite its beauty. The sight of it, rather than filling him with awe, left him empty inside.

"Yes. It all comes together in the end," she answered with the smallest smirk. "The multiverse needs dark and light in order to function. But you know that, don't you?"

She put her thumb on his forehead, between the eyes, and Stephen felt a jolt of energy flow through him as his third eye opened wide.

She tutted him and shook her head, making his third eye snap shut again with a flick of her fingers.

"The Darkhold, Stephen?" she asked. "Even I dared not tread those waters."

He scoffed despite himself, making her raise an eyebrow. "You took power from the dark dimension to live for … how long? A thousand years?"

He looked back out onto the expanse of gray sky, lit with the glow of countless afterlives hovering above them, like placid, floating whales. A rush of anger came over him. He had the sudden urge to throw a rock and pop one of those beautiful bubbles, like a vindictive kid throwing a baseball through a stained glass window.

"Of course you didn't get sucked in," he said. "Not you. You figured out how to escape this-" he gestured to both sides of the river with both arms wide, "-and go on living, kind of, unlike everyone else."

"Stephen, eventually-"

"Yeah, sure. Eventually, everyone goes through the grinder." He paced back and forth across the gravel, his feet kicking up tiny bits of rock. "How is this fair? I couldn't have stopped myself from being ripped to shreds. I didn't know what was happening. You're telling me that the vast majority of souls get churned up into compost? Into hamburger meat? That sorcerers use for their magic? It's the spiritual equivalent of being turned into a chicken nugget!"

He was yelling now. He couldn't help himself. The Ancient One descended from the air and looked at him blankly, as if she couldn't understand why he'd be angry over existence playing such a dirty trick on humanity.

"Donna isn't really anywhere, is she? Or my grandparents. Their souls got shredded to bits on the conveyer belt of death. Whatever I was seeing was just a dog whistle to get me to go down the right tube."

"Who's Donna?"

Stephen stared at her, open mouthed. Her quizzical expression didn't change.

"Ancient One, you know more about the multiverse than ninety nine percent of living beings. How do you not know about my sister?"

"Because you never told me."

After a long, silent pause, he sighed and shrugged. "I guess that's a good enough reason."

"I am-was-a sorcerer, Stephen, not a mind reader." She gave him another of her wrygrins.

"You could have fooled me," he said. "Donna died when we were kids. She fell into a frozen lake. I wasn't able to save her."

"I'm so sorry," she said softly. They both took a moment to look out into the expanse of glowing afterlives and sparkling energy until she spoke again.

"What did they do with her body?"

Stephen wasn't prepared for a question like that. His mind went blank.

"What-what do you mean?"

"Was she buried? Cremated?"

"She was buried. Why, what does that-"

"And then what became of her?"

Stephen shook his head, baffled, before spurting out the first thing that came to mind.

"Her body decomposed and was eaten by worms, I guess?"

"And what became of the worms?"

"I-I don't know, maybe a bird ate one of them? Please tell me-"

"What kind of bird?" she asked, raising one knowing eyebrow, and Stephen let out a long, beleaguered sigh.

"A chicken?"

She nodded. "We are all just chicken nuggets, in the physical world and the next."

"Oh lord," he muttered.

"Are you angry that she's moved on, like she was supposed to? Would you be happier if her body hadn't decayed and gone back to nature?"

"No, I'm angry because she's dead," he said, feeling the sting of tears in his eyes. "I'm angry because I'll never really see her again."

"There's no reason to be angry about that, Doctor Strange," she answered. "The same laws that act upon the natural world act upon the spiritual, too. Magic can bend those laws, to an extent, but when they're taken too far, it becomes an act of greed and selfishness." Her smile fell slightly. "That was a lesson I learned much too late."

"Do you even remember your family?"

Stephen blurted it out before he could stop himself. The look of surprise on her face took him aback as well. He'd never imagined asking a question that could catch the Ancient One off guard.

"What?" Her normally dulcet voice took on a sharp tone.

Stephen could only open his mouth in idiotic silence. Finally he muttered, "I'm sorry," with a quick uncomfortable cough. "Never mind."

She rose into the air again, then floated slowly towards the dark fork of the river, gripping her hands tightly behind her back.

"Ancient One?" he said, floating to catch up with her. He couldn't read the expression on her face, but he'd felt as if he'd asked a forbidden question that required at least a year of apologies.

Suddenly, she stopped at the bank of the blackened water and lowered herself again.

"I suppose," she said to herself thoughtfully, "I suppose I could tell you." She gave him a stern, heavy look.

"But only you, Stephen. No one else."

He nodded and swallowed.

The Ancient One sighed curtly, and began.

"I was called Sorcha. I grew up in a small village in Dal Riata-what you know now as the Scottish Hebrides-in about … " she squinted and thought for a moment, "eight hundred A.D., give or take a decade or so. You'll forgive me, years were counted differently back then. It was before the clans of Gael even had names."

Stephen opened his eyes wide. His generous guess of a thousand years was still two hundred years short.

She smiled at him, a warm, open smile, as she recalled her memories.

"Our village was on a tiny island, surrounded by cliffs on all but one side, where our little boats were gathered. My family was a fishing family, and oh, how I hated it!"

She threw her head back and laughed, a tinkling sound that Stephen had never heard from her before.

"Fishing was the most boring thing in the entire world to me! When I was a little girl, I'd run to the highest cliffs and climb up and down them, like a bloody billy goat. It drove my parents mad. They'd send my brothers after me to take me home, but even they couldn't keep up."

"Brothers?"

"Yes," she said, her smile fading. "I had two older brothers. Ciaran and Malcom. I loved them dearly, and my parents, but my mind was a million miles away all the time, dreaming about what lay beyond the sea. One day, when I was about fourteen or so, a Danish ship came to our island to trade*, and I hopped aboard without a second thought."

"Danish?" asked Stephen. "So, wait, do you mean you stowed away on a Viking ship? As a teenage girl?"

"Mm-hmm," she said. "I couldn't stand it there any longer. I knew if I stayed another minute my mother would have me married off to someone or other."

Stephen raised an eyebrow and she waved her hand dismissively.

"That's just how it was back then. Anyway, I traveled to Europe, then explored all the way from France to the Middle East-the Holy Roman Empire had barely even been christened-then traveled along the Silk Road until I found Kamar-Taj, and well, the rest is history, as they say.

"From the moment I was born, I was always a restless spirit, Stephen, never satisfied until I turned over every last rock to see what was underneath. Sound familiar?"

She cocked an eyebrow at him and he chuckled.

"Very," he said. "Why can you only tell me this, though?"

She shrugged. "You have to keep the mystery alive, you know? My real name isn't nearly as important as the legacy I left behind."

"You don't want people to know the real you?"

She made a little face and shook her head. "Leave the biographical interviews for … what's her name … Oprah! That's it."

She floated easily over the gushing, black river with a little hop and landed gracefully on the other side.

"Oh. Oh shit. Shit!" said Stephen to himself as a horrible realization dawned on him.

"It's easy to cross, Stephen, don't worry," the Ancient One called out to him from the other bank. "I won't let you fall in."

"No, it's not that," he called back. "I got so caught up in everything that I forgot to keep time! How long has it been? How long have I been here?"

"I'm afraid I've no idea," she said coolly, shaking her head. "Time isn't my concern anymore. But if you need to do this quickly, you may want to keep up."

Without warning, she took a small leap into the air and took off flying like a dart, faster than he'd ever seen a soul move, straight toward the slope of the valley and over the ridge.

In a panic, Stephen did the same, pushing himself to fly as fast as he possibly could, hoping he had enough time, dreading that he may have all the time in the afterlife.

*The Danes/Vikings took over Ireland and Scotland about halfway through the ninth century, but they were trading as well, so I imagined they may have traded in those areas before conquering them.