( catch-all ) can we just start over

[sorser]

WHO: Stephen Strange & Various
WHAT: Post-canon update shenanigans and other things.
WHEN: Throughout the month of August.
WHERE: Thorne & the Horizon

(( closed starters below! PM this journal or hit me up at aurajen if you want to plot something! ))

Comments

[sorser]

[Perhaps someday he'll enlighten her. Tell her about the Stephen who caused an incursion through overuse of the Darkhold. Or another, whose world was a cold and barren wasteland, who sought to kill him mere minutes after his visit. The belief of others that Stephen Strange was only ever a man who would cause destruction wherever he tread, in the wake of the decisions he made for others — the Illuminati certainly thought as much, clapping him in anti-magic irons as soon as they caught whiff of him.

But that discussion is for another time. Her apology feels like a shard of ice splintering right through him — and he knows exactly what it is: the useless feeling of being unable to do more than just stand here and make Wanda feel worse.

Maybe he still isn’t too far departed from the usual gamut of Stephen Stranges across the multiverse, after all.]

I know you regret it. [He never doubted that from the moment he stepped into her domain. That was never up for debate. Learning how to move forward is the crux of the issue here.] You don’t have to apologize to me.

[(Apologies feel like putting a bandaid over a bullet hole.)]

I’ll tell them what I think they need to know. Nothing more, nothing less.

[carmesi]

[if not him, then to whom?

there's that feeling—of being unable to win either way: her cries unheard, her apologies unwanted. it's a blurry line to be on, and wanda struggles with how she can't find strong footing either way. who is she, really? the person who did something awful, or the one horrified by the awful thing she did?

wanda doesn't know where to go from here, and so she is quiet, turning away from the sorcerer.]

If that is all, I would like you to leave now.

[she pauses, her expression distant.]

Good bye, Stephen.

[sorser]

[And like that, it's over and done with. Except it isn't, not really, a million dangling threads between still hanging and untended. If Stephen walks away now, he walks away from a problem still not solved—something that goes against the grain of his very personality—and for a moment, he hesitates.

But the request cements itself, known in the tiredness of his brow, the way that he steps back and away, hands raising not to convince her otherwise, but to cast the easy motions of a basic spell.]

Until next time, Wanda.

[He can at least leave her with that promise: no doubt that he’ll see her again. Maybe then they can smooth down these rough edges, or make them more jagged than before. It’s about a fifty-fifty chance at this rate, struggling to find common ground that won’t give under the weight of their opposing viewpoints.

His magic spreads, revealing that hidden door, outlined sharply against the falling snow. It swings open as he approaches, exiting, and closes behind him without the sorcerer bothering to look back.]