Her fault. Her fault. Her fault. He was going to die, and it was all her fault. Hands pressed desperately over his middle, trying to staunch the bleeding that flowed endlessly, Fox tried to save the life that was already slipping away between her fingers. Shredded muscle and sinew twisted with the tattered remains of his robes, weaving together around her incapable digits like a grotesque mockery of a cat’s cradle. Maybe with medical equipment, earthly objects from that life left behind, his life would be spared—but there was nothing. Nothing she could reach for or grab, no one to call, there was nothing she could do. The great Doctor Strange was dying and the world would be lesser for it.
“Please, please,” her arms were shaking as she begged for that tiny spark of something to appear. Concentrating, digging as deep as she could for any shred of healing power or magic or whatever it was. The shaking became worse. The edges around him, laying prone beneath her unlit hands, began to fade. Melting into a darkness she fought to keep back. Blood dripped from her nostrils, a splitting headache brought forth a spasm of pain, and still she tried. Frantic for anything and lacking in everything. There was no fighting the dizziness that sent the world around them spinning, meshing every color together until all she could see was black.
A deep red glow filled the space and from it walked a woman. Spine straight, moving unhurried to kneel beside the dying Strange. “We clung to our warp weighted loom,” she began softly. “By the time we were done, we were woven in. Such constriction from a self-made trap.” It was Fox and it wasn’t. She was different. Perhaps a little older, confident, oozing with the darkness of power, and looking down upon him with the softness of seeing an old friend. A hand, fingers sooty with darkness, rested over his wound. Again, a glow began, pulsing a deep orange where it had once been gold. The pieces of him that had fallen apart began to weave back together once more. Cells healing in a way that seemed wholly impossible.
With her other hand, she pushed the hair back from his brow. “And on these antlers, dry-rot cracks through.” As if he was crowned or meant to be. This Fox, she glanced to the other beside him. Unconscious and incapable. “I left myself too open for you,” she reflected before turning her attention back to him. “So, by now I know what decay is.” There was a sadness in the way she said it, as if all three had been connected in some mysterious way that had led her down the darker path. The corrupted path. Wanda Maximoff was not the only witch tempted by that which she could not have.
“I’ll lay on waves until the night channels end,” Fox stated, as if telling him where she would be. Where he could find the beginning to the end that would not come for him. Not now, at least. She leaned close to him, his body nearly healed completely beneath her hand. “Future love,” she whispered against the shell of his ear. “Don’t fall apart.” As quickly as she had come, she was gone. Disappearing into the fading glow like a figment of a twisted imagination.
@mistrdctr: you ever put your arms out and spin really, really fast? (For Tony)
“I used to do that when I was a kid,” his response follows a thoughtful hum, head tipped back as he observes the night sky through the window. As much as he loved New York, the light pollution hiding away the stars was kind of a deal breaker to him returning to this town. “Then I got too busy with school and university and working for the company day in, day out. And then nothing could compare to the feeling of flying in the armor, so I never tried it again. Why? Do you propose we do that now?”
Tony doesn't exactly remember how he ended up where he was, well he recalls Stephen practically carrying him to the bedroom and the very feverish make out session before that but the rest was a bit spotty. Now Tony knew that naturally he had always been a bit of the flirt, it came with his persona and he always thought it was fun to make people blush after receiving a playful wink from the one and only Iron Man but usually it was just flirting.
The Avenger had given up his very promiscuous lifestyle after Afghanistan and he tried to be a little bit more selective in his choice of partners, but he liked Stephen Strange. Actually, he really liked Stephen Strange.
The Sorcerer wasn't afraid to talk back to him, he challenged him and quite frankly Tony thought that was extremely attractive. It also didn't help that the man as a whole was very handsome with his perfect cheekbones and air of mystery surrounding him. God he sounded like a crushing school girl when he thought about it like that.
So maybe it wasn't too much a surprise that he ended up in the Wizard's bed, he was more surprised that Stephen hadn't turned him down. Tangled up in the Mystic Art Master's red velvet sheets and sprawled out on the bed like a lazy cat does he watch at the younger man walks off. "You don't happen to have the time on ya? Do you?" The inventor gently inquires as he tried to poke his head up to see if he could spot sunlight streaming in through the curtains.
Part of his pardon meant Bucky had to go to therapy. Mandatory. No way out of it. And Bucky didn’t like talking about his feelings, although he felt he did. Sort of. When he was with Steve—everything was easier when Steve was around. Until he wasn’t. And then he was left all alone to keep figuring things out.
It was a lot, honestly. The blip? Five years being who knows where and showing up out of nowhere to kick Thanos’ ass and see society rebuild itself and somehow see the world going back to a new normal. Everyone fell right back into it except for him and for a moment he thought perhaps he was cursed to be forever out of time.
So, Bucky went to his therapy sessions bullshitting his way through for forty five minutes, not a minute more, although his therapist saw right through it. She was good, and honestly Bucky liked her but not enough to share how he truly felt. And insisted he was making amends, working on his list, trying to adapt.
But every day and every night Bucky was hunting. Avenging. Trying to fix the things he did as the Winter Soldier, which was far from making amends but it was the only thing he truly thought he had control of. And he had to, God, he had to be in control of something for once or else he was going to lose his head.
So during an autumn night in New York City, that was exactly what he was doing: chasing someone he believed worked for HYDRA and his years as the Winter Soldier had given him access to secrets, weapons and things that made him a killer Bucky just had to take down no matter the cost but they were…sneaky. And after a fight that lasted less than thirty seconds on the rooftop of a building, Bucky felt the entirety of the killer’s foot on his stomach and a push that sent him at least one block away from their initial battleground, going through a window and crashing it in the process, and landing on a carpeted floor.
That man surely had the serum, just like the other super soldiers in Siberia…
Bucky groaned, slightly sore but not that much as the serum helped with minor details such as those. But once he blinked and looked up he noticed he wasn’t exactly familiar with the ceiling and upon looking left and right while still on the floor, he realized he must have crashed into someone’s house.
And he had no ‘I’m an Avenger, get me out of jail’ card either.
America can't help but be touched by his reply, the sincerity caught her off guard as she wasn't expecting him to accept it so eagerly. In the past few months she had been in this new universe Stephen had been a friend and mentor, someone to talk to and tell stories to about her training at Kamar-Taj but also someone she felt safe with. It was a new and welcomed thing in her life.
It didn't take the sorcerer long to catch onto why she had brought it up so suddenly, realizing she'd been caught does the young girl's eyes begin to dart around the room hoping to look at anything that wasn't directly at Doctor Strange. "I uh.... was hoping I could hang out here for a few days?" She feels bad asking him, guilty for taking advantage of Stephen's kindness as she knows the trouble both him and Wong had gone through for her.
"I won't bother you, I promise. I'll be quiet as a mouse and I won't touch anything dangerous. I just wanted a quiet place to study for a while." Though it's true that she does miss him from time to time America feels bad that it isn't the entire reason she wanted to hide out in New York. Telling him would mean having to endure his judgement, which was an embarrassment she was sure would kill her instantly. "Please? Can I stay?"
Prompts from Post-Cotial, In Bed, or Honey Come Back memes -> Accepting -> @mistrdctr -> "I was thinking about redecorating the living room." (literally whoever you want to throw lol)
Oh, this ought to be good. She rolls over from her side to her stomach, folding her arms in front of her and props her head on top of one of her wrists. The warrior glances her way around the bedroom but she knows the state of his living room; once upon a time her living room had looked the same. Mystical accoutrements put on display as well kept in glass and warded by any form of magic.
She's not a sorcerer, a magician, a witch, or any kind of known spellcaster. No Scarlet Witch or Doctor Strange by any means, but being the mythical werewoman Tigra of the Cat People came with its own inherent understanding of monsterdom and magics. Once a former apartment of hers was adorned with relics, artifacts, and mystic tools associated with the Cat People, warded by their own spell work until it was robbed from her.
Green eyes squint toward Stephen, a light laugh starting on her lips. ❝ Really, you going to try make it more appealing for guests? ❞ A tease because she's a guest herself in this house today. None of it bothered her, felt right like an old home. Other occasions, she's an ally of the Sanctum and of great value too; no one was a better tracker than she was. ❝ I think you're lacking in curses that render any grubby hands into mewling kittenflesh. ❞
Wanda didn't know anything about magic, making her uniquely unqualified to undertake the mission she'd set herself to discover who and what she was. But she did know someone who knew about magic, which is how she came to be standing on the steps of the sanctum late at night in the pouring rain. Her hood barely kept her hair and face dry anymore as she lingered at the door, hand on the door knocker.
Before she could lift it however, the doors swung open by themselves. Too wet and cold to reject help when offered, she stepped inside and clutched the mysterious book Agatha had been hoarding to her chest, wrapped in its velvet coverings that didn't seem to get wet. As she stepped into the lobby, she let her clothes change to something less formal and dry, leaving her hair damp.
