An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
The dawn sings in Stephen Strange’s ears when he is born.
The dawn and the fields and the souls of his mother and father and the watch his sister buys him on his ninth birthday—it all sings, countless melodies written into the universe. There are songs and there is the boy, and there seems to be no way to separate one from the other.
Stephen listens and pretends he cannot, and he lives in safety as a surgeon and a success. But he can only hide from the unknown for so long. The search for answers leads him into a dance of spies and realms and conspiracy, side-by-side and saving a man with a song like a falcon spreading its wings.
There is a watch and a suit of impossible armor and a cosmic balance that might be threatened forever.
And always, there is the song.
What is silence, really?
-
Oh oh, it’s a new project...
@ironstrangehaven
Big Bang posting season has come, and I humbly offer what I’ve been working on throughout the year! It is, of course, longer than it should be, but hey. Give it up for my wonderfully patient and helpful artist: @aelaer !!!
Hi! So for mcu fanfiction game ask, let's see, ant-man, guardians of the galaxy and ironman 3!
Also totally unrelated but I love your stories, they are so inspiring for me as an amateur writer:)
Hi! Thanks for the ask :D. And I’m so glad you like my stuff--it’s really such an honor to inspire. Keep on writing, my friend! You can do it; hold onto the joy you have for stories and ride it into the sunset, haha!
Anyway, let’s see here...
Ant-Man - send a few headcanons of your favorite characters!
Oh, this is a fun one!
- Tony has circular burns on his palms from early versions of the repulsors; they would heat up after extended use.
- Peter hadn’t left New York very often before Germany. He still hasn’t; one of the reasons the trip in Far From Home was so important to him was because he wanted so badly to know what the stars looked like without light pollution.
- Stephen is very, very old. So old, mentally, that those who cannot die call him immortal, and those who can see his magic balk at the millions of lifetimes he’s had to hone it’s power. Stephen and the Asgardians get along particularly well because of how long they’ve lived and how much they’ve experienced--even if, in Stephen’s case, those experiences occurred in alternate realities.
- Loki and Stephen will have hearty discussions on what it feels like to die in various ways. It concerns Thor. A lot. (It’s not a competition on who died more. One death is enough, and finding another being who knows what coming back from multiple is so utterly relieving and validating for Loki and Stephen).
- Tony is so used to seeing cities from above that he often gets lost when he’s navigating at street level. FRIDAY teases him about it.
- Peter doesn’t get angry very often. Usually, his instinctual reaction to hardship is fear--which makes his bravery all the more admirable.
- Stephen learned to finger-knit as physical therapy after the crash, and has kept with it since after finding he enjoyed the process. It’s meditative for him, and he often sits down to just make long chains of yarn as he thinks through a problem or an emotion. He makes a lot of scarves--Tony has one.
Guardians of the Galaxy - be honest. would you want someone from marvel to read your fics?
No XD absolutely not. I don’t need the conflict of interest.
Iron Man 3 - underrated fanfic trope?
Fantasy AUs!!! Especially in the ironstrange and Thor-adjacent fandoms; there are a plethora of amazingly unique and creative fantasy/royalty au premises that deserve so much love. People come up with the most interesting politics/magics/worlds for fantasy aus, and the freedom of it means the characters don’t feel warped to said settings. They just feel like they’ve been released out to explore it. There are very few fantasy aus that aren’t worth the read, in my experience!
Reposting this for organizations sake; I, uh, saw the prompt about the snap wiping out everyone, including Thanos, (barring Stephen and Tony) from @ironstrangeprompts (#976) and.... things happened...
Here’s a link to the prompt. And here’s my ramble!
<><><>
“We aren’t going back to Earth.”
Tony’s hands freeze atop the cold metal of the ship’s engine. It never seems to warm up under his hands--not as he works with it, not as he clings to it. Tony isn’t surprised. He hasn’t any warmth to give.
He turns, feeling his expression slide into something cold and dark. The damaged ship lights flash across the tall form standing in the broken doorway, and for a moment the shadows make its limbs seem clawed and disproportionate. Skeletal. It looks like the monster Tony know it is.
“Where were you?” Tony demands. He’s on his feet, and he doesn’t remember standing. He presses a hand to his side. Even after two months, his abdomen still aches where Thanos had impaled him, though the wound is long since healed.
The figure, the sorcerer, steps into the space. Strange looks awful--haggard and malnourished and somehow still glowing with that sense of knowing that had drawn Tony to him once, but now just makes him sick. Strange’s whole form is soaked in ash. He tracks it in from the barren land outside into the meticulously cleaned threshold of Tony’s ship, Tony’s lair. It feels like an invasion.
“Not far,” Strange says. He rests against the wall, his eyes fluttering closed.
“Not far? It’s been two months, wizard!”
Two months. Two months of dark anger and frozen loneliness, two months of being the last creature left alive. Two months of that hope Tony had tried so hard to coax dwindling to nothing--two months of slowly realizing that Strange hadn’t been lying. It truly is the whole universe, gone. The unlucky fifty percent didn’t happen to be everyone on Titan except the two of them, no. The two of them are all that’s left.
Tony still wakes up clawing at the ash he can feel on hands every single morning. He still wakes up praying this was all a cruel joke, a twisted reality. And he’s still wrong. Every single time.
This is the world he lives in, now.
The world this wizard chose.
“You were productive,” Strange says. He looks under his brows at the spaceship, stitched together under Tony’s hands for the last eight weeks.
“Yeah, I was,” Tony spits. “And where were you?”
“I told you.” Strange just looks at him, face impassive. Tony used to be certain there was a soul underneath there somewhere, after he’d seen it shining in sorrow and empathy. Now he isn’t sure. “I wasn’t far.”
That familiar, desperate rage curls through Tony’s throat. He jerks forward. His hands curl into fists, one of them still coated in nanotech. “You left me alone, Strange.”
Strange turns to face him fully--and Tony can see, then, the waxy burn scar that creeps around his left eye. “We both know I had to.”
He’s right--but Tony’s sick and tired of hearing about what he had to do. He’s sick of dreaming about those impossible eyes flickering to him as Strange offers the end of the world to Thanos on a silver platter. He’s sick of remembering the way Strange had knelt and watched Quill and Nebula and (Peter Peter Peter--) dissolve into nothingness, repeating “there was no other way” like that made any difference.
Tony had waited for Strange to disappear, too. Waited for there to be some fairness in the universe, some justice. But Strange hadn’t. He’d knelt there, solid and real and alive, and looked at Tony like he knew what was about to happen.
He’d let Tony take the shot. But he hadn’t let Tony finish the job, drawing one last handful of the ash that was all that remained of his Cloak through his fingers, and disappearing in a flash of orange magic. And he hadn’t come back.
He’d been gone, all the days when Tony needed to kill him. All the days when Tony needed him alive.
Tony should kill him now and complete his transition into the monster he can feel building beneath his skin.
Should kill him now and be truly and completely alone.
Tony turns away, shoulders falling. He twins his hands around the ship’s controls again, feeling the way the newly repaired engines purr at his commands. “I should leave you here,” he says.
Strange doesn’t answer. Tony wonders if he agrees.
There’s no one else in the universe.
Tony should leave and return to Earth to scavenge what little hope he can. Because he might be clinging to the dregs of his spirit, might be coughing up ash, but there’s one thing that the end of the world can’t strip from Tony Stark. It can’t take the fundamental in his ribs. He’s going to fix this. There’s no question in his soul, no question in his future--he’s going to fix this, or he’s going to die trying.
And there’s no one else in the universe.
“I’m taking off tomorrow morning,” Tony says, his voice flat and resigned. “Be on the ship if you want. See if I care.”
Then he turns on his heel and leaves to check the engines.
-----
Stephen only lets his form crumple when Stark has gone.
When the man’s footsteps are far enough away that Stephen’s constantly ringing ears can no longer pick him out, he finally sinks down against the side of the wall and buries his head beneath his arms. It’s so much warmer in here. Stephen swears he can sense the air touched by Stark’s body heat. Stephen’s even starting to shiver again, which is remarkable.
When Stark is gone, he tucks his shaking hands into his hair and lets the Count spill from his lips again. It isn’t pride that keeps him upright around Stark. It’s self-preservation, pure and simple and animalistic. If Stephen looks dangerous, looks like he might be some sort of threat, Stark is less likely to kill him. If Stephen offers some sort of use to the man, Stark is less likely to kill him.
Not that he shouldn’t.
But the universe isn’t about justice, anymore. Stephen doesn’t get the luxury of being killed by Tony Stark, of being redeemed. He has to save the universe.
He always has to save the universe.
Stephen sits and waits, listens for the next Scene. He prepares his lines, letting them assemble in his mind beneath the Count. The hours slip by to the deafening ringing in his ears. Slowly, the numbness starts to fade from his extremities, warmth sliding through his veins like fire.
It hurts. It hurts, and so it feels wonderful. Stephen sighs, clenching his fists tight to shock the pain intense enough he can feel it in his shoulders.
Then he lifts his head and looks around the ship. He’s left ashy footprints where he walked--after two months alone in Titan’s sands, he practically wears the stuff. He’s still alone--
Of course you are. There’s no one else, remember?
--and so he Counts out loud. He’s up to five million, one hundred and fifty-six thousand, seven hundred thirty-six, now, after two months. He has an infinite distance left to go. An infinite number of lives he took. They ring in his ears, even still.
Stephen stumbles a circuit around the room of the ship. This is the largest area, and it will do well for what he needs. Stephen picks out five relatively evenly spaced areas of flat metal. He scrapes some of the ash off his hand, then disconnectedly pats himself down until he finds the scabbed cut on his thigh were he’d sliced himself falling down one of Titan’s ravines. Digging his fingernails beneath the scab, he slicks his hand with blood.
Then he starts to write.
He’s on the fifth sigil when the voice shocks through his concentration. “What are you doing?” Stark’s furious tone demands.
The Count pauses itself in Stephen’s mind, and he buries thoughts and anticipation and frozen, frozen fear beneath the practiced lines of the Scene. “Blood runes,” Stephen says simply.
Footsteps tell Stephen Stark has stalked closer to him. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“They’re wards,” Stephen explains. “They complete an aura of protection. The strongest there is.”
“What do they have to protect against? You killed everything in the universe, remember?”
Stephen doesn’t flinch. “The energy of the creatures who died remains. It will manifest, when there’s no life around to absorb it. Much of what forms will be vengeful, built on the fear and anger of the last moments of the universe.”
“So they want to kill you.”
Stephen finishes the rune with a flick of his wrist. “Yes.”
Stark doesn’t dispute that they should. “But they aren’t a danger to me.”
“That’s correct,” Stephen says. His voice is empty. “With water and elbow work, these runes can be scratched away without issue, and you’ll be rid of me.”
Stark inhales--a shuddering breath of rage that makes Stephen’s shoulders tense instinctually. “I don’t let magic do my dirty work, Strange,” he hisses. “I don’t load the gun and hand it off to someone else. I don’t give the Stone away and let someone else snap.”
He scoffs, and its full of enough disgust that Stephen almost thinks he’s back in the cold of Titan again. “Do whatever you want,” Stark says. He turns, already stretched to his breaking point in Stephen’s presence.
Stephen waits for the last line. The end of the Scene.
“Finish your runes. Live, if that’s what you want.”
Stark’s words echo even after he’s gone.
Stephen looks after him for a long, long moment, trying to swallow down the bitter disappointment that Stark didn’t just kill him.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
There are some humans who understand the magic, and they call themselves sorcerers. They say that some aspects are too powerful to sustain. They imbue objects with them, allowing the relics they form to take the strain they cannot.
So I have created another one-shot. It’s one of those “how do the 14mil futures effect Stephen and while we’re at it why not question the meaning of life?” ones that I like so much. I abuse verb tense for the sake of vibes, y’know, the usual. I love Strange and I love you. <3 Enjoy!
I want to write a fic where each of the 14000605 futures are more than just memories; because they were seen and created with the Time Stone, they’re in fact knots in the timeline creating pocket universes nestled inside the larger dimension. In the multiverse, there’s no real meaning put to size or scale, so these memories are basically their own dimensions.
And Stephen owns them. He has an entire sub-multiverse in his memory, and it ties his existence to the world after Thanos snaps. Now, Stephen wanders immaterially through the dimensions, with a collection of timelines as his bartering force and passage between them. He’s rich in the currency of the multiverse. Stephen trades his memory-realities away to get between dimensions, burns them as fuel for interdimensional spells, and attracts dangers because of the sheer quantity of them. No single being is supposed to own that many universes.
Maybe he’s bringing the Essence with him (the realm where the Dusted people went in this AU instead of being snapped out of existance?) and protecting it as he makes his way back to earth. There’s no scale when he has no form, after all.
The lovely Sarobando on Discord gave me permission to post their equally lovely title design for Prophets in the Graveyard! (yes it’s based on Panic at the Disco; we’ve been referring to the story as P!itG, and now it’s a running joke). Gorgeous work.
