"Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging up your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do-the only thing-is run."
-Lauren Oliver, Delirium

Stephen hovered on the threshold, trapped by warring instincts. He wanted to turn his back, to walk away and put everything out of his mind. To – not flee, Stephen Strange did not flee – but to escape. He couldn't forget, not with his memory, but was it too much to ask to just not think about it?

Something pulled him forward, all the same. Perhaps he should have been frightened, because he felt it was something outside of himself that nudged at his attention. That almost called to him, except that was too strong a word for what he felt. But Stephen just…didn't have the energy for fear. It had been burnt out of him, any fear that wasn't directed at Dormammu. He would probably recover eventually, but he was far too exhausted and traumatized to care.

So here he swayed in the doorway, all sense of time ironically lost as he stared at the Eye of Agamotto on its stand.

It nudged at him in his quieter moments, like a niggle in the back of his mind. Just enough to make him aware. To remind him that it was there.

Why?

Stephen was mindful enough to realize that it wasn't his curiosity, his own attachment or desire. Not entirely. So what did the Eye – or Stone, really – want of him? Not to use it. He tested that thought and flinched away at the nightmare that was his last use of it. So just…what? To wear it? To check on it? To remind him that it was there, as if he could forget? Or was this just something that happened to anyone who used it so often? So extremely?

What do you want? he wondered silently.

The nudging became, not insistent, but more obvious. Stephen finally took a step into the chamber, boots scraping against stone.

Then the sound of approaching footsteps and low conversation caught his attention, and he darted away like a startled deer. He couldn't say why. It wasn't as though he would have gotten into trouble. But he couldn't stand for anyone to see him near the Eye. To look at him in connection with it. To make what he had gone through any more real, any more evident, even if only in his head. In case they made him talk about it, even tangentially. A few of the Masters had made not quite casual comments, passing mentions of mental health or invitations for conversation that Stephen had ignored.

He hovered indecisively in the library entrance for a long moment, mind flitting to all of the books he could return to, the different tangents his research had taken him down. He'd spent the last several weeks ensconced in the library, or barricaded in his room when Wong kicked him out. His research binge had begun with silencing spells and Infinity Stones, and spiraled into an obsessive compulsion to research everything to do with defensive magics, with a break to try to figure out why nightmares only sometimes affected his astral form, and all of the neurological and physiological effects of extended use of astral projection, until Stephen ended up half wondering if it would really be so bad if he ended up a vegetable should he try a spell of forgetting that ended poorly, and whether any of his memories were too important to risk, really.

Now the walls seemed to be closing in on him, his chest constricting as his heart raced. Curiosity wasn't strong enough to keep him here, not now. Even Kamar-Taj felt too stifling, too triggering, and the area around the temple, even the market that he had several times fled to for space, was too close.

Stephen portalled blind, no specific destination in mind other than away - one of the first things the Masters repeatedly warned against when teaching the technique.

He let the portal collapse behind him as he closed his eyes and just breathed, trusting the Cloak to yank him out of the way of any danger if necessary. The air was cleaner, without the scents of incense from the temples or pollution from the streets. It was a few degrees warmer as well, just enough for him to notice. His racing heart slowed, eventually, and at last Stephen took in the view.

He could see bright green terraced hills, the glint of sunlight off water, and barely picked out scattered evidence of wooden houses and grazing livestock made miniscule by the distance. The brightness of the greenery darkened nearer to where he stood, growing sparser while trees appeared smaller and more crooked. He was probably still in or around Nepal, as the sun didn't seem to have moved, and the geography further south appeared similar to the hills around Kathmandu. Looking around, the mountains seemed to be about where Stephen expected, if somewhat closer than he was used to. He thought he might be somewhere between the hilly and himal regions of the country.

The area appeared largely uninhabited, luckily enough. Now that he was calmer, he could only imagine what could have happened had he ended up in a major city or been recorded on CCTV.

Actually, how did sorcerers not get caught on camera when portalling places? And how often did other sorcerers use their sling rings, anyway? Was there something inherent to them that kept them from being noticed, or were there spells that Stephen could use on himself to at least keep himself from being recorded? He made a mental note to research this line of thought further. And avoid doing anything in other countries that would have officials searching for records of his entry into that country.

Stephen paused at that thought, and turned it over in his head. He could go anywhere, so long as he had a picture of that place. Kamar-Taj had been a refuge when he had nothing – was still a refuge, in between his episodes where it was also a reminder of new and incomprehensible trauma. It was a bastion of learning, a safe place to return to, but it wasn't a home. Perhaps years in the future, perhaps once he found his place, felt like he belonged, then it might be. But it hadn't even been a year since he started studying; hardly enough time to consider such a place home.

What had he ever considered home, anyway? Certainly not his apartment. It had really only ever been a place to sleep, and sometimes not even that. The sofa in his office had been a perfectly serviceable place to collapse and catch a nap when he'd been working for more than 24 hours at a time.

The Cloak interrupted his increasingly morose thoughts by nudging his back. Stephen tensed as he brought his attention back to his surroundings, magic rising in preparation for a threat.

He did not expect to be confronted with a dog, a cat, and… Stephen blinked. Was that a mouse – hopefully not a rat – on the dog's head?

"Okaaaay," he muttered, drawing out the word as he pondered the bizarre sight. Mundane, or something he should be worried about? The Cloak of Levitation seemed fine, and it had proven to be rather more knowledgeable about these things. It had helped him in the library often enough (to Wong's chagrin) that he knew that knowledge wasn't just limited to other relics.

The dog barked, wagging its arched tail. It was thickly furred and mostly black with light brown fur on its legs and patches of lighter fur on its powerful chest. Stephen had seen a few like it wandering around town, and was fairly sure that it was a Himalayan sheepdog.

Stephen crouched, holding out his hand for the dog to sniff. This close, he saw that yes, that was a rodent sitting comfortably between floppy ears, right where Stephen would normally pet it. Well, he'd definitely seen stranger. Instead he buried his trembling fingers in the ruff around the dog's neck. He leaned into Stephen's hand for a moment, and then trotted away a few feet. The cat turned to leave as well, flicking its tail and disappearing into the grass, while the dog paused and pranced back to Stephen and then away again, barking insistently.

The sorcerer suppressed a joke regarding Lassie and wells, following with a sigh; he was in no mood to tempt fate, or Murphy, or who-knew-what-else.

It wasn't a long walk, thankfully, and it was a good day to be outside anyway. The sun shone down on his head, warming his dark blue robes. A breeze rustled through the grass and the trees as Stephen wandered, crossing a faint dirt path and circling a mossy boulder only to come upon a hidden pond. The cat was already waiting by a small, grey shrine on its shore, the stone eroded by water and time. The edges of its tiered roof had been worn away, the tiled eaves only suggestions now, the carvings surrounding the rounded opening too faded to make out what they had once depicted.

The rodent bounded down off of the dog and scurried across the ground to the tiny shrine. It paid the cat no mind, and the cat only watched with disinterest.

Bizarre creatures.

"Oh, no," Stephen said when the rat disappeared inside the structure, voice slightly hoarse from his long silence. "I am not sticking my hand in there."

The cat almost looked like it would roll its eyes if it could, and the squeaking from the rat took on a distinctly scolding sound. But then there came a scraping noise, and the rat emerged, pushing some sort of rock in front of itself.

Stephen crouched to examine the thing more closely, and saw that it wasn't a rock after all, but a fossilized shell. He reached out to touch, and then paused, until the rat nudged it closer to him. The Cloak wasn't reacting in any negative fashion either, so he picked it up and turned it over in his hand, wondering what was so significant about it. It looked like an ordinary fossilized shell to him, well-preserved and unbroken.

"Thanks?" he said dubiously.

The cat stretched and yawned, brushing against his legs as it stalked past and disappeared once more into the grass. The dog barked and licked his hands, rat already perched on its seemingly designated ride, before trotting off after its third companion.

Stephen watched them go and stood with a groan, frowning down at his strange 'gift'. "Do you know what the hell that was about?" he asked his Cloak.

It just poked at the shell curiously.

Stephen shrugged to himself, and poked at it curiously with his magic.

Then yelped and yanked his magic back in at the sheer power packed into the tiny object barely the size of his pinky finger. Unfortunately, he jerked physically as well, and the shell slipped from his weak grip. Heart racing with panic, he fumbled for it and missed, freezing as it hit the ground. He'd half expected an explosion or something, terrified it had chipped or broken, but nothing seemed to have happened.

Stephen sighed in relief and bent to pick up the shell, determined to research what on earth the thing was, and maybe ask some of the Masters if they knew anything (and maybe not mention that he'd been carelessly poking at random, unknown mystical objects). It was only when he twisted to carefully place it in the pouch on his belt that he noticed something out of the corner of his eye that hadn't been there before. He whirled around, hands in loose fists, and stilled in shock.

There was some sort of palace behind him. Small, for a palace. But still rather enormous.

"Oh. Shit," Stephen said weakly. Oops.

A quick spell confirmed the building as empty, and then he opened a portal to the library, rules be damned.

"Wong!" he shouted.

When Stephen messes up, he messes up big :)

This relic was inspired by the story "Wish-fulfiller shell" from the book called From the Mango Tree and Other Folktales From Nepal. I plan to do research into the myths, folktales, and geography of the places Stephen ends up in for this story, so updates will not be quick. And I can't guarantee accuracy. But I will try my best.