Summary: Superior Iron Man visits Sinister Strange
Ko-fi | Masterlist | Word count: 1.5k | Part 1 | Part 2
Chapter’s Notes: Here‘s the last part of the mini series. Probably the most unhinged energy of all the Tony and Stephen combinations. Have fun.
Tony had monitored the journey of the Sorcerer Supreme who had fallen into his universe. He knew that Stephen got in that small waste place between the universes. And that he met another version of himself.
Tony was curious to explore other worlds. His own was great, it was perfection - Tony Stark didn't settle for anything less.
He wanted to see how others ran their worlds, and then he wanted to laugh at their bumbling. Maybe he would 'help' them up. Tony was good at perfecting worlds.
He would start with the world of that other, the third Stephen Strange, because it seemed to be a world without a Tony Stark. He couldn't meet another Tony. Not yet. He would have to kill them. There could only be one Tony Stark and he was the superior one.
But that was a task for another time.
Tony wanted to meet that Stephen, who was the last being in his universe. Because - honestly - it sounded like heaven, like perfection. There was no whim of nature left.
But, alas, when Tony entered that world, he was disappointed. It was on the verge of collapse. Everything was destroyed, decayed. Whoever was responsible for this did one shitty job.
Tony found the Sanctum Sanctorum, a single building in the vastness of nothing. He flew up the steps. Space and time were particular things and it was interesting to see how they changed when falling apart.
There wasn't much left of the Sanctum. The room he entered was dark and carelessly arranged. It screamed of hopelessness and obscurity.
He heard a familiar voice.
"Are you here to mock me?"
The Stephen Strange of this world was not dead, not even close. He wasn't that easy to kill. Whoever the Darkhold had in its clutches, it held. Just as itself could not be destroyed, at least not permanently. The same was true for the Book of Vishanti. The powers behind them were too old and too powerful.
That did not mean that being impaled had not been a painful experience. But Pain was an old friend for Stephen. He had watched everything around him fall to death - he would almost have been glad if he had actually died.
After his variant had disappeared, he had dragged himself back to the Sanctum. It was the only safe place in this world for the time being. The wards around it protected the upper rooms from extinction. It was the place from which he will watch the demise of his universe. In the meantime he had a lot to do.
The appearance of the other Doctor Strange however had changed his plans. He could hardly wait to meet him again. Stephen couldn't physically leave his own universe, but there were other options.
But now he had another visitor. Maybe he should put up signs and charge admission fees.
This one was different though. This one was a Tony Stark. A face that was torturing him, haunting him in his dreams. At the sight of him, Stephen felt something in his heart for the first time in a long time, it pierced right through it.
Tony looked at him, took in his appearance. It matched the state of this world: run down. Broken.
"You really did a number on your universe. You hold the power and you do this?" Tony gestured to the window, through which the black shadows of destruction could be seen. "Pathetic."
Stephen's eyes narrowed. His patience hung by a thread.
"You have no idea!" He hissed. "I did this for you! I lost my Tony. I tried everything to get him back. I tore my world apart for him!"
Tony tilted his head and he understood, realized what really happened.
"I’m flattered," he said and he really did. Not even his own Stephen had done something remotely similar. With a flick of his hand a small unit of his nano bots darted to the sorcerer. "However, I'm looking for a Stephen who is more powerful than that."
The sorcerer moved his hands and the bots disappeared through a portal whose counterpart could not be seen. In turn, he summoned mystical flames, which he threw at Tony.
The Iron Man suit automatically created a shield that repelled the attack and Tony set about attacking the doppelgangers Stephen created.
"This is fun, but I don't have time for this."
"Bold of you to assume, I'll let you leave. I've waited too long to get hold of one of you. I won't let this opportunity pass. I won't lose you again."
Tony was more agile and nimble in his suit and Stephen was furious. All the emotions were boiling up, from meeting his other self, piercing his chest and now a Tony of all people had shown up. The rage gave him power, but it also distracted him.
It wasn't long before Tony had him pinned by his throat against the stair railing. Their faces just a few inches apart.
Stephen growled. „If I can't have you, I'm going to kill you!" With these words he reached for the Darkhold hanging from his belt. He knew it by heart, had studied every single spell in it.
Before, he had held back in the fight, a weakness that only Tony Stark could bring out in him, but now his back was to the wall - literally.
The third eye opened on his forehead and he blasted Tony off him.
Tony was thrown several feet through the air before his suit stabilized him. It had absorbed the energy, but damn he had felt that magic punch.
"Now, that's where the fun begins," Tony muttered. He was intrigued. He knew what a Stephen with a Darkhold was capable of, had seen it with his own eyes. Maybe this Stephen wasn't so weak after all.
They fought. And thank god there was no one else left in this dying world, because they were two destructive forces. Tony cold and calculating, aiming for a perfect and murderous strike. And Stephen with more raw and dark power than he could physically grasp. Two opposite forces, coping very differently with the same grief of losing their significant other, the only one who ever understood them.
Tony blasted Stephen through the round window, which shattered into a thousand shards. It was the second time in a short time that the sorcerer fell. He regretted that he had lost his cloak of levitation; there were hardly any relics left in this world.
Nimbly he moved his hands for a spell and threw a red glowing rope that wrapped around Tony just as he stepped up to the hole in the building. The force wasn't enough to knock him off his feet. His Iron Man suit was too strong for that.
Tony put his glove around the rope.
Stephen feathered his fall with magic and landed safely on his feet, the other end of the rope still in his hand. Their eyes met and the corners of Stephen's mouth curled up.
Black shadows shot up the rope and grabbed Tony. He tried to blast them off but it went straight through as if the shadows had no mass. But then the blackness solidified and yanked him down.
With no way to fight back, Tony crashed to the dusty ground.
Stephen stepped to him, keeping the spell firm.
"Tempting to watch the end of a universe, but I'll pass." Tony's suit at least managed to get him to sit up. He looked at Stephen with his ice-blue eyes. "I've other plans, But how about you tag along? I can show you the worlds, shining, shimmering, splendid."
"I've seen the expanses of the multiverse," Stephen spat. "I've wandered through it and seen many versions of us. Did you know that we come together in almost every universe? We are an unstoppable force. It was disgusting. I killed so many Stephens, trying to take their place. It broke the Tony's. They didn't recognize true power."
Tony was grinning his best evil tyrant smile. "You and me, we're going to have so much fun together." He stood up and walked right out of Stephen's spell, as if it was nothing. The sorcerer was taken aback, but stood his ground. He wouldn’t die. Not that easily.
But Tony didn’t attack him. "I am superior. No shackles can hold me. Now, are you coming with me?"
He extended his hand to Stephen, who looked at it suspiciously. Without taking it, he nodded, willing to give it a try.
But he didn't quite trust him, Tony realized. Smart move. Finally someone with somewhat of a brain.
"I've got one condition," Stephen said. "There's a version of me I want to visit. There has been a… disagreement."
"I think I know the one." Tony was only more than willing to agree to that condition. 616 won't even know what's coming over him. "Are you hanging on your beard?" he asked Stephen as he made the calculations for the jump across the multiverse.
"I won't get rid of it," Stephen growled, then paused. "I may trim it - if you ask nicely."
Oh, Tony really liked this one.
"How do you feel about contact lenses?" Stephen pointed toward the steel blue eyes of Tony, who laughed tonelessly.
“yeah sure I could ‘go into the light’ as you so eloquently put it, but let’s be analytical about this. worst-case scenario, the afterlife is real and I get cast into some version of Hell for being a nonbeliever. slightly better-case scenario, it’s a reincarnation-based afterlife, which means I end up having to do the whole Existence thing all over again, which frankly seems like a huge roll of the dice. enormously risky, given the low quality of life many people experience, and that’s setting aside philosophical issues of identity, e.g. without the memories and experiences that shaped me, would I even still technically exist as a version of myself I could identify? reincarnation aside, let’s bear in mind there’s no actual evidence there’s even a so-called ‘afterlife’ waiting on the other side–for all we know, my consciousness will just dissolve into nonexistence. again, huge roll of the dice. and even in the best-case scenario? wherein I somehow pass an Arbitrary Morality Test I didn’t sign up for and get accepted into some sort of magical Heaven or whatever? well. consider it from my point of view. all of a sudden I’d be a member of a strange and unfamiliar society, subject to a completely new set of rules and regulations that I probably don’t get a say in. Is ‘Heaven’ a democracy? will I still have access to free will? will I have meaningful choices regarding lifestyle and occupation? what do the holy books say about that, huh? I could be forced to spend a literal eternity worshiping a deity who has made some extremely questionable and problematic decisions regarding the universe. I’m not signing up for that! how is that any better than my current situation? listen buddy, I spent 80 years living in a capitalist hellhole before death Itself finally freed me from all the obligations and restrictions of modern existence. I don’t work, I don’t pay rent or taxes, I just wander from place to place keeping my own schedule, doing my own thing, beholden to neither laws nor peer pressure. as purgatories go, that’s a pretty sweet deal! and what guarantee do I have that any damned afterlife is going to be more tolerable than my current not-existence, huh? none! none whatsoever. skeptic? damn right I’m skeptic! not to mention this whole Heaven-and-Hell dichotomy seems extremely manipulative if not outright abusive, as moral systems go. that’s no way to parent a species! nope. just, nope. this whole religious afterlife nonsense sounds like a whole lot of unnecessary stress and risk. I’m perfectly comfortable staying right where I am, thanks ever so, so you can tell your exorcist to write that out in latin and shove it up his ass”
“the power of christ compels ME?” bitch just because YOU choose to subscribe to a oppressively christian-centric world view doesn’t mean I have to dedicate my afterlife to following the rules of your false gods. if you’re so desperate to get smoke blown up your ass i’m happy to help you shove that thurible way on up there
(Ik. It’s been years. I’m sorry. I’m stuck in the past.)
Other than the fact that Tony’s side of the Accords is the non-contested accepted correct side in the entire fucking world except the USA (seriously, the entire world is telling you you’re wrong and you still insist otherwise? Maybe y’all’s really do belong on Team Cap), let’s dissect every Team Cap fan’s POV and rebut them.
1. The government should not impose on powered people’s freedoms.
Aside from the fact that this shows a fairly concerning blatant ignorance of the United Nations and all forms of international government, I can name on one hand the number of countries where “freedom” is portrayed as it is in the USA. Do you know what the stance on freedom is in the rest of the world? Your personal freedom ends at the safety of the community. (This is especially interesting during COVID and the vaccine and masking) Your life is your own, do whatever shit you want to do. No one gives a fuck if you want to eat ham or turkey for dinner. But when your “personal freedom” starts putting other’s lives at risk, it’s a fucking problem. It’s not “personal freedom” when you’re marching into a school wearing bombs. It’s not “personal freedom” when you start carrying a machine gun and threatening anyone you think is wrong. That is effectively what most of the Avengers are. They’re walking around with weapons and threatening anyone that doesn’t agree with them. And if you can’t see why that’s problematic, I don’t trust you.
2. The Government should not monitor individuals.
All governments monitor individuals and if you think otherwise, then I’m sorry but what fantasy world are you living in? Governments monitoring individuals is, usually, what leads to them catching terrorists before they blow up your local gas station or school. Governments monitoring individuals is an everyday occurrence in the entire fucking world and for due reason when people start threatening to murder world leaders or hate crime minorities. The Avengers getting monitored by the government is no different than any other civilian but for the crucial factor that the Avengers can and have acted on their threats based on personal disagreements.
3. The Government is corrupt.
This again just shows a blatant ignorance of international law and the United Nations, and, frankly, entitlement. The Accords were never going to give the United States government complete control over the Avengers when the initial problem was that US citizens were parading around with their weapons without any regard to international concerns. Further, even if any government is corrupt the way Hydra infiltrated the US government, the United Nations consists of 193 countries, 117 of them voted for the Accords, all of them would still have a say in what the Avengers do. Tell me, and use your logic please, how it could possibly be easier to corrupt 193 countries, the entire fucking world, than it is to corrupt 6 weaponized individuals all US citizens?
4. General Ross is known as the bad guy and therefore the Accords are bad because he supports them.
Correlation not causation. The Accords were written by at least 117 countries and amended by all 193 of them. Under international law, every country is allowed their representatives of their choosing, but all representatives must be present for something to actually pass. Meaning, yes, the US representative was a corrupt piece of shit, but there’s at least 192 other representatives (some countries choose to have multiple), thus, again, we go back to the argument of, is it easier to corrupt one individual or a whole board?
5. The Avengers would never have been deployed because countries have opposing decisions.
The Avengers were never supposed to be deployed for Earth-level threats anyhow. “So when the world needed them, they could fight the battles we never could” ~ Nick Fury. Key words: when needed, never could. In other words, the Avengers were not supposed to be constantly on missions, only when there was a need for a team of heroes. Further, they were not meant to fight the everyday bad guy, not terrorists or thieves or murderers, the Avengers were made to fight Extinction-level threats. It takes years of training to learn how to correctly, legally, and safely catch the everyday bad guy. None of the Avengers have gone through that training, and them being involved in such missions has canonically resulted in mass casualties. And when it comes to extinction-level threats, darling, not a single human is going to go, “well, I want the planet I’m living in to explode”, therefore, the Avengers will be deployed for those, aka: their correct purpose.
6. Some countries can’t fight their bad guys.
If you cannot see how this is blatant American Imperialism propaganda, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s true, some countries struggle with crime rates, but it is still their right as a country to decide when and how to ask for help rather than have it be imposed on them. Are you also walking around saying “we had to send our military to Afghanistan and blow up their lands, they couldn’t deal with their bad people” or “we had to take over Iraq, Syria, etc”? It’s not the place of the US government to choose how other countries deal with crimes, and it is most certainly not the place of 6 weaponized (white) US citizens to do so either.
7. Some countries are corrupt and choose not to fight their bad guys.
This effectively makes the Avengers political weapons (one of the valid concerns of the Accords), and proves exactly why the Accords are needed. Are the Avengers supposed to assassinate any world leader they deem corrupt? Because that is what it would be, assassinations. How is that not abuse of their powers? How can it be justified in any shape, way, or form? What would make them different than dictators then? “If you don’t agree with me, I’ll assassinate you and replace you with someone who does”.
8. The Superhuman Registration Act is a bad thing in the comics and the Accords are in its place.
True, the Registration Act was a terrible thing, but it comes under very different circumstances in the comics than it does in the MCU, and to ignore the political climate and story of the MCU is downright idiotic. The MCU is an entirely different story and universe than Earth-616. Why are you watching the MCU if you just want the story of the comics? Go read the comics then. This screams either one of two:
A. A lack of cognitive abilities.
B. A child throwing a fit because they didn’t get exactly what they want.
And honestly, neither is a cute look.
Did you also throw a tantrum when they replaced an orientalist racist depiction of a Chinese villain by a white man in Iron Man 3?
9. Captain America is an amazing hero in the comics.
Again, in the comics. Not the MCU. In the comics, Peter Parker’s best friend is Harry Osborn, not Ned Leeds. In the comics, Pepper Potts marries Happy Hogan, not Tony Stark. In the comics, Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are Romani-Jewish, not white. In the comics, Alexei Shostakov is Natasha Romanoff’s husband, not father. Catch my drift? The comics are different, and MCU Steve Rogers is not 616 Steve Rogers. To pretend otherwise is boring.
10. Team Cap is hot.
Honestly, the blond blue eyed look isn’t my cup of tea, but I get it. What I don’t understand is why you have to justify all their actions to love them? I adore Tywin Lannister. I’m not walking around justifying him wiping out entire families and ordering the sexual assault and murder of Elia Martell and her children. You can like someone and admit they’ve done some fucked up shit. It’s not that deep. It’s deep when you try to say they’re in the right for the fucked up shit they did.
11. Bucky.
Honestly, Bucky is his own whole complex post and if I get into it here, this post will last for days, so I won’t. I will admit that Tony was in the wrong for some parts of that, but even yet, Rogers was entirely in the wrong for everything he did “for” Bucky, and this whole dilemma could have been prevented if Rogers had for one singular second thought to go about everything the legal way. (I could make another post if I’m encouraged enough)
12. The Avengers are the good guys.
That’s the Doylist explanation. We as outside viewers know that. The Watsonian explanation is entirely different. World governments in the MCU don’t know for sure the Avengers are the good guys. What they know is that the Avengers have been involved in the complete destruction of government buildings, intelligence buildings, an entire country, and more. Do you know what we call people who blow up governmental and intelligence buildings full of innocent civilians here? Terrorists.
13. The Accords.
This isn’t an argument I’ve seen per se, but more of a general misunderstanding I’ve seen on both sides. It doesn’t surprise me though. Civil War shows one single thin file as being the entire Accords, that Rogers flips through quickly and decides is a mistake. There is absolutely no way that is correct for the United Nations. UN documents can be thousands of pages long, they’re written by legal professionals from at least tens of countries, they cover every possible scenario and they’re open to amendments. They’re worked on so long that it takes years for them to be passed. They’re filled with so much legal jargon that one singular flick will result in you understanding nothing. More likely though, Rogers was given a brief introduction and summary. Thus, him immediately deciding he doesn’t like it without even knowing what it is, gives the same energy as a child throwing a tantrum for being forced to try kiwis for the first time.
It is possible that I’ve forgotten some arguments, I’m only human after all, but if you, (respectfully. I will not be answering anyone who throws slurs or hate speech), have any, I don’t mind dissecting them.
Lastly, to wrap up my post, all I have to say is one question. Is it possible that the whole world, that at least 5-6 billion people, are wrong, and Steve Rogers is correct?
Mordo: Welcome to the 'Fuck Stephen Strange' support group, where we gather to say a collective 'fuck you' to that stupid asshole. But first, a few words from our newest member!
Tony, edging toward the door: I think I may have misunderstood the purpose of this group.
