( closed prompts )

[carmesi]

Who: Wanda and others
What: Eclipse, magical madness, quest
Where: Solvunn and Horizon
When: A bit after the eclipse, mid-March.
Warnings: Will include in top levels if necessary.

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[sorser]

[This is the last thing he needs right now.

He is already feeling uprooted with the unreliability of his own magic. Testy when he used to be more patient, helpless when his abilities slip away from him altogether, anxious and frustrated when they spike in full force, and everything backfires. Attempting to cast, groping for an anchor point to guide his magic again — when in reality, he can grasp nothing. It is like trying to hold onto something unseen, and it has made him agitated. Skewed the world in an unflattering light, centered it on himself again.

And now? Now, he feels her presence like a dread thing, and up the stairs he’s walked in trying to pin her down. Shoo her out, would it be so easy. But the way the whole Sanctum darkens until there is nothing but her, cast in impossible, barely-there silhouette despite the void encroaching all around, tells him that he will not be seeing this unwanted guest out as quickly as he’d like.

She’s not— something’s off. Dimly, some small fragment of awareness that knows the same applies to him, informs of this fact. She is as wavering and unsteady as his magic, as the state of his hands, now.

Still, turns to face her. The skylight jitters and becomes static. Despite everything, Stephen still sounds annoyed.]

Wanda. I don’t have whatever it is you’re here for.

[In normal circumstances, untouched by the Singularity’s influence, he should offer kinder words. More questioning ones. Not now.]

[carmesi]

[that is the thing, isn't it? doctor strange never really has anything that she would ever need, but he decidedly approached her first, wanted to ask from her: help him fix what's wrong with the singularity, work together, save the world. it is not her responsibility. what has the world given her, if nothing but pain and suffering—more and more every time.

she steps away from where she disappeared to, within the darkness, and walks slowly around doctor strange, keeping herself close to the walls.]

You can answer something for me. [—he's always been patient enough with her, but she wonders (just as she wonders about everyone else).] What do you really think of me?

[her voice ricochets from different directions, her position hard to pinpoint. but the motivation behind her question—she needs to know if she is being considered a toll, a means to an end, or just a liability, the way men like general ross saw her, the way she doesn't doubt tony stark thought of her at some point. perhaps everyone just sees her that way?

a ticking time bomb, ready to explode.]

[sorser]

[He scoffs, an echoing noise. That's a portent of its own, indicative of Stephen's own state, lacking patience and unwilling to blunt his words. Even if she is dousing his domain in darkness, circling around him like some dread shadow.]

You care about my opinion? Flattering.

[Stephen raises his hands in an attempt to summon up his own magic; Eldritch spellwork is light-based at its core, and should work to ward off all this darkness, but his gestures are unsteady. His magic does not come to him, only small sparks fizzling out at his fingertips.

Frustration billows, gnaws at his stomach.]

Where should I start? I think your magic reflects you more than it should. Impulsive, emotional, something bursting at the seams, waiting to be released.

[He drops his hands, hard eyes trying to track her movements.]

And in just the wrong circumstances? Dangerous. Is that what you're trying to prove to me now?

[carmesi]

[part of her was hoping that it wouldn't come down to this reflective honesty of the worst kind. doctor strange had always been careful around her, but he had generally been kind, treated her with respect despite her wrongdoings and mistakes. it is all the things she would expect to hear from the government officials that tried putting a leash on her—ross, hayward. it's what she would expect to hear from tony stark.

wanda stops, stands back, hurt by his words more than she wants to admit.]

I thought you were different.

[when her words escape her lips, they sound wet, like she's living up to that 'emotional' label doctor strange has so easily placed upon her. perhaps, upon the realization that her powers weren't altogether there, her mood erratic, she had come here with the expectation of receiving his help.

he was a doctor after all, right?]

As if you're so levelheaded at all times?

[strings of scarlet have pulled from the threads of doctor strange's consciousness in the horizon; overlapping over barely-there memories, carefully creating a narrative. it displays as if from a projector, onto the skylight, sheer in color. spells gone wrong in kamar-taj, the green of the time stone circling his arms, portals that barely swirled to life.]

—what makes you less dangerous? You care for the world, but do you care for the actual people in it?

[sorser]

[That she might have wanted to ask for help, more than come here with accusation in her heart, does not so much as occur to him — later, it will, and he will regret not being able to see what a more empathic heart could pry from this darkness, clear as a bell. But for now, he raises his eyes to the splay of memories playing in vivid light before them; the skylight twists and turns slowly, projecting them in a disjointed slideshow of old experiences that she has no right to access.

His desperation at Kamar-Taj, waiting hours to be let in at the door. His failing magic, sparks where there should be gaping portals instead. The Time Stone’s green-hued energy, encircled around his wrist. The dread form of something looming above him, a face hewn out of a Dark Dimension.]

Oh, and you just know me so well, don’t you?

[He bites back. He can feel her magic coiling around his mind, pulling out these images and putting them on display. They become all the more erratic, emblematic of his state.]

You made up your mind the moment you saw me in this world. I could extend all the care I wanted, and I’d be given a handful of distrust for my efforts, wouldn’t I?

[His memories play sharply. An operating table, with a woman in yellow laying atop it, unconscious. The lines of New York City skyscrapers, folding into themselves. The vast landscape of a dead alien planet, and Stephen plucking a green star from the sky, revealing it as a stone, offering it away. The glinting water of a pool in the wretched summer heat.

He brings his hands up, tries again. Tries to dispel whatever she’s doing to him, and his magic is summoned in an uncontrollable burst of amber light, bright and illuminating the darkness, if only temporarily.]

Don’t dismiss my want to help people just because you’ve failed more than you’ve succeeded.

[carmesi]

[the burst of light removes the shadows, momentarily, from their vice grip of the sanctum's walls. wanda is nowhere to be found, should doctor strange turn to look to find her position; instead, she will stand in front of the skylight, a framed memory locked in place.

a dead alien planet, titan, and doctor strange plucking a green star from the sky, revealing it as a stone, offering it away.

it replays, over and over, wanda's eyes scanning the image. she rewinds it, repeats it, draws closer to the green stone. she pulls the image away, follows the stone as it floats away from his hands—through the orange haze and dust, and her heart catches in her throat.

a purple hand, fingers that pull the stone closer to the infinity gauntlet.

thanos.

"one to go."

don't dismiss my want to help people just because you've failed more than you've succeeded.

her hand presses against the glass of the skylight, her chest heaving, shoulders shaking, her breathing loud as tears stain her cheeks. the world bursts red, illuminating all the darkness away; doctor strange stands now amidst her red magic. her words are thick, filled with shaking rage.]

You—

[the skylight, untouched by her magic, displays a memory of her own now: vision knelt before her, their conversation ringing like an echo in this magical chamber. i can't—you have the power to destroy the stone—we are out of time—i can't—you can—if he gets the stone, half the universe dies—it shouldn't be you, but it is.]

—gave him—

[in the memory, her magic starts to attack the mind stone, a steady stream of power, her fighting off thanos long enough to have the stone break, an explosion in the forest and wanda left to pick up the pieces of her broken heart as thanos all but uses the green magic of the time stone to bring vision back—take the stone from him.]

—the stone!

[there is an explosion of glass as the skylight breaks in tandem with her scream, flying towards doctor strange with her hand outstretched, pulsing with scarlet, psionic energy pushing towards him with the intent to knock him right off his feet—or worse.]

[sorser]

[It was a miscalculation, but he is not of the right mind to make calculations at all. Where he had once been hesitant to speak of his connection to the Time Stone, now it displays on loop for her to see, and he makes no attempt to explain, no attempt to stop it, only watches with disdain as the images impress upon them both. His, and then hers -- the death of Vision, words exchanged that would tear at his heart on a normal day.

Today is not a normal day.

Her anger is heated, swirling with scarlet, and Stephen raises his hand to summon a shield to counter her attack. His movements, quick and nearly natural, betray his early reading of her intent -- and how much he had not cared to rely on persuasion first, magic second. He is agitated, frustrated, and his magic reflects his intemperate mood. It's satisfying, even, to know that his Eldritch magic has managed to conjure anything at all, the collision of two forces verifying it thoroughly.

Until, as has been the case, it cracks and fades and flickers and disappears altogether, leaving him facing what remains of her force. There's plenty, apparently, and it knocks right into him. Sends him flying, careening into the back wall with a winded grunt.]

[carmesi]

[chaos magic and eldritch magic collide, strings of energy, apparently flimsy, only to knock against each other with the force that fuels them from within each of its users. it certainly is different, in the horizon, but there is no denying that they are both making use of magic within this space.

and wanda knows she cannot hurt him, not physically. not here.

when her magic connects and he careens back with the force of it, wanda uses her magic to keep herself off the ground. the scarlet that surrounded floor and wall and ceiling falling back like static, forcing her to her feet as it struggles, against the backlash of her emotions, to keep steady.

but she does not stop, a barrage of red spell after red spell thrown out of her hands as she approaches him, waves of red thrown towards him; some hit, some fizzle out, they don't even keep to the same shape and size. with every step, another attempt at a red spell forms in her hands.]

He begged me to kill him, and you just gave Thanos the stone!