-Unbetaed so please kindly point out any mistakes.
-Warning: Some creepy behaviors, languages, inaccurate medical treatments, anxiety attacks.

"The movie by Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh?"

"I know you would know that movie. How awesome were they?" Tony wriggled his eyebrows. On other people, it would look obscene. On Tony, it looked, well, seductive which Stephen found disturbing.

Stephen shuddered and shook his head which was a mistake as he added dizziness to the list of illnesses he was currently suffering from. "What have that movie got to do with me?"

"Well, you're Allison Jones and your villain is Hedra Carlson."

"What?! I'll close my eyes until you start making sense."

"Come on Stephanie, don't pretend that you don't know the plot of Single White Female. Your villain is super-obsessed with you. He has your pictures across his walls. I bring them here."

He opened his eyes and took the pictures from Tony. He was apprehensive but also morbidly curious as he looked at the pictures. A lot of those pictures were taken when he was out in the public either dressed in his robes or civilian clothes doing mundane tasks such as getting his coffee or going to the dry cleaners. Some of the pictures were taken when he was interacting with the other Avengers like Tony Stark or Steve Rogers. The earliest pictures were dated three months ago.

Stephen grew more and more uneasy with each picture as he was not even aware that someone had spied on him for three months.

Tony patted his shoulder sympathetically. "I would've been jealous for all the attention you were getting if I didn't have my own shares of stalkers and admirers. Adrich Killian came on top of my mind."

"Who's Adrich Killian?" As the doctor asked, he saw the last few pictures which were the pictures of him unconscious, shirtless, without pants, and tied up in the warehouse. He dropped the pictures on the floor and started to shake uncontrollably. He already felt bad enough as it was but looking at the helpless and vulnerable state he was in drove the point home. He curled himself into a fetal position.

"Stephen, calm down. You're safe. You're with me, Tony Stark, the most awesome and handsome Avengers. Hey, it rhymes. Thor, Cap, and Spider-Man are also around. You're in a safe place. Keep breathing."

The doctor just needed something solid to do to take his mind off so he kept breathing as instructed by Tony. After a lot of deep breaths, his mind was back to the present moment and he was fully aware that he was not in the warehouse anymore. He uncurled himself and rubbed his face repeatedly. "I'm sorry. I thought I was in control of my own mind but I was wrong."

"What did I say about apologizing?"

"Don't?"

"Exactly! So you were listening. I shouldn't bring all these pictures especially the last ones. I was just in hurry after arresting those damn HYDRA goons and came here so haven't got the time to sort these pictures."

"No, it's not your fault. It's good to know the whole truth. My mind is just not strong enough."

"Are you kidding me? You've been drugged and brainwashed. If I were you, I might've drowned my sorrows for a few days. The fact that you can still form proper sentences after all of these amazes me."

"Can we not talk about the state of my mind for now? Who's Adrich Killian?"

"Oh no, Stephanie. Adrich Killian was in the past. I'll tell you next time when I'm ready. It's about your villain, not mine. Where should I start?"

Stephen was curious with Tony's answer but if the man didn't want to talk about it, he respected his decision. "From the beginning will be nice."

"Back to your sarcastic side. I like it. Do you want to start from how I found out about their base or from when he started to get obsessed with you?"

"Whichever is fine."

"The Avengers got involved once Peter called me." There was another yelp from the kitchen which Tony promptly ignored. "SHIELD got the fingerprints of all those people in the warehouse. I hacked into SHIELD and then the police database to find out the details of those villains. Using the K-means clustering algorithm which I suited to my need and I whipped out like in five minutes and installed on Friday, I managed to find the same cluster of villains. In layman's terms, I found out the associates of the villains that have been arrested. With a little bit more digging though the CCTVs and credit card transactions, I managed to find their lair. I told the Avengers the location and the rest was history. I know it sounded so simple but it wouldn't have been if it was not because of my brilliance."

Stephen's thoughts alternated between impressed and perturbed as Tony finished his tale. Tony could easily hack into any system so easily so no data was private. He definitely would not think about how any sorcerer worth his or her salt could easily read people's mind. Surprisingly, he could actually follow what Tony talked about because the billionaire used the terms that he understood. He was glad that Tony didn't dumb down his explanation too much.

He smiled. "As humble as usual. That's what I like about you. It's impressive that you can achieve all of those in short amount of time. Thank you for helping me out."

Tony blinked in surprise. "Really? No reproach for showing off or further question about my method? Are you sure you didn't bump your head in the warehouse? You're welcome. Awesome Facial Hair Bros should stick together."

Stephen winced. "Please don't use that phrase again. So who was behind all of these?"

"Lucius Dilby." Tony passed him a picture.

It was a picture of a small nondescript man wearing glasses. "I've never seen this man in my life. I haven't heard of him either."

"I know. But he has heard of you."

"When? I've never heard or met anyone with such a name before. I'd have remembered with such a unique name."

"Well, this is the interesting part. Do you remember performing a mass exorcism near a club called CBGB around three months ago? There were apparently a lot of light works and special effects ending with all those 49 demons sucked into a portal which closed up immediately."

CBGB did ring a bell because it was a unique name. Besides, it was not every day he managed to do mass exorcism without any glitch aka he came out unscathed. "It rang a bell. But I removed the memories of all involved so they thought it was only a bad dream."

"Apparently not everyone! A little girl saw the whole thing from an apartment across the street. She told her parents and her brothers but nobody believed her. She was so upset until her uncle, Lucius, came to visit her. Lucius is the black sheep in the family and he is really into occult things. He was super interested in the whole thing. He asked her if she knew your name. She said she heard you called yourself Doctor Strange. I know your insistence on people calling by your title will be your undoing."

Stephen massaged his temples. "I've been sloppy. I didn't even know about the little girl and she had seen and heard the whole thing."

Tony looked at him incredulously. "Really? That was what you took out of the whole thing. Not about you not bringing any backup or the fact that you wiped others' memories easily like writing in sand?"

"I was in hurry and I had done my share of exorcisms. I knew what I was doing. For their peace of mind, it's best that they didn't know the horrors that await them in other dimensions. Being possessed is also quite a traumatic experience." He shuddered. He chose not to share that he had occasionally been possessed when he was vulnerable. "At least I didn't hack into the SHIELD and police database."

"That's a low blow, Strange. I guess both of us are not squeaky clean, huh? Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Lucius started to get obsessed with you, he dug out more information about the mysterious Doctor Strange. He also found out your name in the HYDRA's database because of course you were one of the lucky people targeted by Project Insight. He started to convince some of his HYDRA buddies about 'Make HYDRA great again' if they managed to use you as their weapon. So they've put you under surveillance for a while."

Both of them shuddered for different reasons.

"How do you know about this? Did you get all this info from the computers as well?"

"Nah, he confessed. He said he would tell us more what he knows about HYDRA if he let us meet you and if possible touch you to know that you're real."

Stephen suddenly felt much colder. He drew Sophie and a blanket closer to him. "Stark, don't!"

Tony opened both arms wide. "Hey, I was just the messenger. I was a little bit curious about what other HYDRA's secrets he could tell us if we allowed him to meet you but Cap put the end to the idea on the spot. He said we need to protect the innocents and the vulnerable in this case it was you. Hey, those were Cap's words and he didn't mean to insult you. He just meant that you've been through enough."

"I understand what Cap meant and I'm thankful for that."

The inventor pouted. "So Cap saying something like that and got a free pass but I don't?"

"Tony. I also don't give you any hard time." Looking at Tony's expression, he added, "That you don't deserve. Besides, I thought you like to seek me out because you enjoy our regular banters."

"That I do. Lucius didn't tell us about other HYDRA's secrets but he couldn't stop boasting about his own plan. Did you know he planned to capture you again by providing an ambush team outside your Sanctum?"

"I heard that Thor has apprehended them. I should thank him as well."

Tony pouted. "You would thank everyone but me."

"I have thanked you several times today."

The engineer rolled his eyes. "Of course you kept count. Anyway, Lucius' plan was to lure you out by using hostages." Stephen gasped at that but didn't comment. "They've tried to infiltrate your Sanctum but apparently it has its own defend mechanism. Those HYDRA goons seem to be quite afraid of your shrubbery."

"They should be afraid of my shrubbery," Stephen muttered darkly.

Tony shrugged. "Right, and people said that I overreacted for installing an intrusion detection mechanism on Friday to protect the Tower. Back to Lucius' plan, he regretted that you managed to escape but he predicted you'd be able to do so. He seemed to think so highly of you. He would use hostages to lure you out and he would overpower you by using an anti-magic device that he asked HYDRA to invent. I've confiscated the device in case you were wondering."

"Are you not curious in the mechanism of the device? Are you not going to improve upon it?"

"Yes and yes. Strange, you know me so well. But don't worry, I won't use it against you unless you turn evil or worse I turn evil." Tony shuddered.

"That's reassuring."

"Don't you worry your pretty little head about that for now. Just rest and get well."

"Thank you for all your help despite the legality."

"You're welcome, Stephanie, my awesome Fa-."

"Stop it! I wonder what would happen if I fell into his hands the second time with his magic cancelling device."

"Stephen, you won't. He has to go through us, the Avengers, first. Besides, knowing you, even in your weakened state, you wouldn't go unprepared the second time. You'll have something up your overlong sleeve. Don't put yourself down too much! I think that's enough pep talk from me for now. I'll see who's up next."

"Thanks again, Tony. When you go to the kitchen, can you send Spider-Man back home? It is way past his bed time and his parents would kill me."

Tony wanted to say something but stopped himself.

There was a loud yelling in the kitchen. "It's not my bed time yet. Besides, I want to hear what Thor and Cap get to say."

Tony chuckled. "You really didn't know the bedtime for teenagers nowadays, did you? You do have a good point though, it's time for Underoos to go home. Bye, Stephen. See you soon and hopefully in a happier circumstance."

"Bye, Tony."

Notes:

-The joke about Stephen's shrubbery was from the comic. The shrubbery and the Sanctum indeed can protect itself. Poor Stephen has also been possessed a few times in the comic.
-The anti-magic or magic repellent devices are canon in the comic. I believe that Tony doing research on anti-magic is in character. After all, he invented the Hulkbuster and the comic Tony cloned Thor in case if Thor ever went evil.
-Lucius Dilby is a canon comic villain: marvel dot wikia dot com/wiki/Amazing_Spider-Man_Annual_Vol_1_14 The difference is he was not HYDRA in the comic. He managed to kidnap Dr Strange and planned to use him as a sacrifice, before capture, Strange sent a SOS message that didn't go through the Avengers or Fantastic Four because they were off the planet so it went to Spider-Man. I actually started to write this arch first then I found about this comic so I used Lucius as the villain.
-I just rewatched "Doctor Strange" last night and here is my thought about it i-sudoku dot tumblr dot com/post/168996310553/upon-rewatching-dr-strange
-I think this chapter is the last one about creepy behavior in this arch. Next will be Thor which I planned to be more light hearted with some references to Ragnarok. The talk with Spidey will be two chapters after Thor because of course Cap hadn't given his pep talk.
-Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Here is a Marvel Christmas special from the comic: i-sudoku dot tumblr dot com /post/166138450863/marvel-holiday-special-2005-something-like-this
-Comments and feedback are welcome.