This is adorable. I probably shouldn't say so about my own work, but it is!
No copyright infringement is intended. As ever.
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There were many surprising things about having a baby in a Sorcerer's Sanctum. Problems and delights no one in their right mind (or anybody insane either, for that matter) could have ever seen coming. This situation, however... this bit anybody who had a head at all attached could have predicted.
Namely, Christine came home from surgery to find her seven-weeks-old baby girl cradled protectively by Stephen's coat, and when she stepped up to relieve the magical cloak of her baby girl, it protectively folded the hem across the child to keep her out of reach.
Hearing footsteps behind them, Christine stated matters calmly. "A magical cloak refuses to let go of my baby."
Elice laughed. "It does that, yes. I think it might have picked it up from Stephen - Wong wanted to hold her and he just flat out refused... A few sorcerers came over from Kamar-Taj yesterday and Crimson actually flew up and hid with her in the rafters. We might keep strangers away for a bit, safe as I'm sure she was that bit was alarming.
"When will you return for your residency? You'll do it at our hospital, won't you?" Christine opted at changing the subject instead of trying to think too hard upon how her little baby was being raised. She was safe, her mother had no doubts about it, and would probably be better off having at least one sane parent - which surely wouldn't be her if there was too much talk about the magical community and her baby held in the rafters by magic fabric.
Elice, astute if she was anything, smirked as she stepped up and ran a hand over the Cloak's fabric. "Stop it," she told it kindly, "don't smother her!" The folds of fabric receeded immediately. The apprentice blinked at the mother and doctor as she stepped back. "Just a few weeks now. Stephen will get other help - he's very supportive of me following my other career... but you already knew that."
Stephen came home late after undoing an ancient curse a few idiot students had set loose, listened to Christine's message that she was going to be late, relieved the apprentice who was babysitting in Elice's place so that she could study, and finally battled his cloak who had snatched the baby from the terrified sorcerer-to-be as soon as they'd set foot in the sanctum.
Settling in a chair with a glass of cider and his sleepy firstborn, Sorcerer Doctor Stephen Strange yawned and watched his baby girl. She wasn't smiling yet - she was still too young, on all accounts - but he would do anything when she was looking at him with those intelligent, strangely insightful eyes. They were a piercing blue, like all babies' eyes were. Maybe they'd stay that way - maybe they wouldn't. He couldn't say that he cared one bit either way. She was theirs, and she was perfect.
Laughing as she yawned too - probably not as a response to him, he knew that - he held her yet closer and felt peace. He hadn't known it at the time, but he thought that maybe it was for her, that he had suffered death by the hands of Dormammu so many times. Died over and over so that she could know life. Any parent would say that they'd die a hundred times over for their child, he had actually done so. And perhaps it was more telling than anything that he would still do so again. Knowing the cost of that sacrifice more intimately than any parent before him ever had, it changed exactly nothing.
As if it sensed his morose thoughts, the Cloak choose that second to swoop down and drape itself over his shoulders where he sat, one fold of fabric touching the baby's cheek with just the tiniest whisp of pressure.
"She's perfect, isn't she." It wasn't a question, but the Cloak couldn't agree more.
