He blinks and the spell twitches again. "That did come up, actually. We swapped cloaks. The Cloak of Levitation tried to strangle him, so I think I came out fine overall, but he did outdrink me so some drunk portalling may have resulted. This is, of course, highly sensitive information."
Stephen had never lived at the Avengers compound like Wanda had — the Sorcerer Supreme had always been an ally, rather than an official member of the team — but his paths had crossed with them often enough. Turns out when you help a Norse god track down his missing father, you remain in his general good books and get invited to his next party. And Thor was the most fun Avenger: interactions with the god had been more friendly than Strange's few bristling interactions with Tony Stark, at least.
The water is retreating and retreating, and it's almost gone: the legs of the credenza and the chairs have settled onto the floor of the foyer again, touching solid ground once more.
And since the topic's come up, he indulges in some curiosity.
"Is the team still..." He doesn't really know how to broach this delicately. But Strange doesn't make a habit of sugarcoating things, either, so in the end he doesn't. "Is the team still much of a thing, after Stark's death?"
Now, that's a question that keeps Wanda's gaze focused straight ahead. She wishes for some of the water to rise again, and although it does bubble as if interested in meeting her command, she ensures that none of it reappears in the Sanctum. His furniture is already ruined enough by her attempts at controlled and less chaotic magic.
Any mention of Stark will always make something prickle uncomfortably in her chest. After everything she's done, after every chance she thought Stark would take to be the hero his friends and teammates claimed him to be, she's still standing where she started her Avengers journey in the rubble of Sokovia. Attending his funeral didn't bring about the closure she had been secretly hoping for.
"I wouldn't know," she says, ensuring to keep a small smile on her face. The Avengers seem to still exist in spirit, but given the lack of phone calls and invitations to team lunches, Wanda thinks it's over. It has to be. While she may never have truly belonged with them and was always either commandeered to her room or the corner, the idea of them meeting and plotting without her stings a little.
"I think Sam and Barnes are working together if the news is telling the truth. But I don't think the Avengers have reunited since the funeral." The funeral that wasn't for Vision, and technically didn't seem to belong to Natasha, too.
Glancing at Strange, she shrugs, "I think they all lost hope after Steve and Iron Man."
Wanda's good at mustering her shield back into place, but that smile still feels like fragile-spun glass, on the verge of splintering. And he almost immediately regrets his words.
(He wasn't always capable of that kind of regret. He used to leave people stinging and humiliated in his wake, and never bothered with something as quotidian as other people's feelings. Nowadays, though—)
"Well," the sorcerer says, and clears his throat. "He always was the more inspirational Steve, by all accounts."
It's a bit of useless pithy humour, to try to paper over that stilted little moment. But they're reaching the end of their cleanup: the shattered-mosaic look of the flooring is starting to return to view, visible once more through those last inches of water as it drains away. The distraction is petering away with it, and he's just left with this: his words, his hands, and he's never quite sure what to do with those meager tools. Should he offer a companionable clap to the shoulder? An apology if he stepped all over a sore subject? Just ignore it and press on?
He's never been very good at this.
In the end, Strange settles for what little olive branch he can offer. "Anyway, it's a moot point from where I'm standing. You'll always have a place here, if you want it."
She can't help her very pleased smile. Wanda turns to look straight ahead and feels the water is gone more than she sees it. Now that she's no longer so focused on ensuring her part of the clean-up is perfect, it's come to her easier. The Sanctum is wet—feels wet and even smells it with the lingering scent of the sea—but it has been successfully cleaned of its water and crabs and most of the sand.
She's grateful for that. The Sanctum has become a refuge, a little home away from home. His words make her feel warm all over… veery similar to how she had felt when she and Vision had seemed to finally find a rhythm that worked in Scotland.
Tilting her head up, she regards Strange with a playful smile. "Even when I pick Wong's Spotify playlist over yours?"
It does seem to be a point of contention between the two sorcerers. (Sometimes Wanda picks the playlist she doesn't want to hear solely for the dramatics of both Strange and Wong.)
He glances over at her and smiles back, a fleeting glimpse of warmth. "Even then, yes. This place accepted me when I was at my worst, which means anyone else is fair game, terrible music taste or not."
Kamar-Taj had taken him in when he was broken, grieving, lashing out at others like an injured dog snapping its teeth. The order had a habit of taking in people who were shattered both literally and figuratively (or perhaps budding sorcerers had a tendency to blow up their own lives; either way, the Sanctum lived up to its name). Considering the type of people who had come and gone through here, Wanda Maximoff piecing herself together fits right in.
Strange walks the rest of the way down the steps then, back onto the floor to survey their work. He nudges some of the sand with the toe of his boot. It's still wet and there'll be water damage, but now that she's done the lion's share of the work, a fellow master should be able to wring the last water particles out of the wood for them. Strange can also assign some novices to sweep up the sand with brooms. (No Fantasia antics, he'd have to remind them. Do it by hand!!)
"Well done," he concludes. "See? No harm, no foul. We didn't open a permanent gateway to the Pacific and flood the city."
Wanda follows him, albeit several steps behind. She's grateful to be at his back so she can hide her wince. His home looks waterlogged in the worst of ways... all thanks to her.
But she's beginning to learn that such thinking isn't accepted here. Mistakes happen, and as Wong has told her numerous times (to the point where his voice has begun to crack from exhaustion), learning to walk comes from stumbling about a thousand times. Wanda thinks she's reached the nine hundred and eightieth stumble.
"Shame it didn't find Atlantis." She laughs.
Glancing around, she wrings her hands together before she pulls them apart. With a flick of her wrists, the windows and doors gently click open and she summons a breeze similar to the one that had dried her wet home in Westview. The wind this time isn't quite as brutal in its intensity. It's a summer breeze that sweeps in and gently taps the legs of drenched chairs and fluffs saturated pillows.
She doesn't particularly want his home to be sagging due to being previously underwater. It wouldn't do for his cape to sit on a dripping rack hook, after all.
Fall, fail, climb, get up, try again. Fuck up again. Try again. Again. It's the way of things here, and no one knows it better than Strange.
When the windows open, he tilts his head backwards and takes a deep breath. The wind is refreshing and nice, sweeping away some of the stuffiness inherent in an aged old building with history steeped into each plank of wood, each tapestry, each mural.
"There's always tomorrow for finding Atlantis," Strange says with a wink. He straightens his soggy collar, then snaps his fingers and all of his clothes dry out in moments. The cloak flicks a coattail, satisfied with the change, no longer looking quite so downtrodden. He swipes distractedly at his forehead where the mindflayer had lashed him, and the cut seals itself up too.
Damage reversed. Summer's on its way, and tomorrow's another day and another, and— dare he think it?— things seem okay.
He exhales. "So. How about that celebratory drink?"
There's always tomorrow here. Wanda keeps expecting her calendar to run out of days, but each time she turns to it, there's always tomorrow and sometimes next week. There are no expiry dates in the Sanctum, even if she thinks there should be.
And there are always invitations, too. Even if she was to try to sideline herself, she knows Strange, Wong and even Strange's mystical cape wouldn't allow it. It's unusual for her to be welcomed and belong, but Wanda doesn't wish to knock it back one too many times.
So, she smiles and nods happily. "I think we deserve it, especially since your walls won't need to be replaced yet."
There's always tomorrow to ruin those.
"Should we call Wong? I think he will come if I ask him." She leans closer to him and playfully whispers, "He likes me more." She does, after all, pick his Spotify playlists.
Before he can think better of it, Strange bats back, warmly and unthinkingly: "Oh, of course he does. Who wouldn't?"
There's a few different ways one could take that statement: that it could be about the near-married-couple bickering between the two sorcerers, their comfortable well-worn dynamic, the way Strange finds ways to needle at his friend's temper. The Spotify war. Stephen Strange's general crotchety nature. So of course Wong would choose her over him.
Or maybe it's just about how eminently likeable Wanda Maximoff is.
He recovers quickly enough (she's essentially a widow, a grieving widow, Stephen—) and papers over that fondness before it can look like anything else. It's only about the Spotify playlists. Of course.
And so he adds, "I'll send him a message, although the duties of the Sorcerer Supreme keep him busy. Sometimes I think he just prefers the Hong Kong Sanctum. The building's fancier."
Readjusting the sling ring on his knuckles, he starts carving out a portal to transport them to the Bar With No Doors.
Despite her best efforts, Wanda blushes. Her own self-perception has been drastically awful. Even in WandaVision where she had every opportunity to demonstrate all the ways she was good—that she wasn't dangerous to society, that she wasn't someone who used her powers to punish anyone—she hid from them as she hid from herself.
She thinks that if anyone can understand that, it's Stephen Strange. She may not know as much about him as she does Tony Stark—despite his medical accomplishments, Strange isn't a billionaire playboy throwing his money around in technology and weapons manufacturing—but from her own observations and inklings... He has a hard time seeing himself in a good light, too. Wanda's concluded that's why she gravitates more toward him than Wong.
Glancing at the way he moves his hands, Wanda looks up at him and studies his profile for a moment.
"How do you deal with that? You were the Sorcerer Supreme before the Snap. Surely, you would be it again?"
There are better times to ask this question. Over dinner. When he's cleaning up one of her messes. Disturbing him when he's reading. But Wanda has never been good with her timing.
It's better to not distract him when he's doing a spell. But if Stephen Strange is as good as they say he is (and as good as Wanda knows him to be), surely, he can multitask.
There's only the slightest pause for a second, a tilt of his head. "I'm bitter about it," Strange says frankly, while he keeps working and multitasking.
This one isn't like the slippery, all-encompassing spell he'd tried for Peter Parker. The portals were the very first bit of magic Strange had ever learned, and the most commonly-used throughout his everyday existence. (Almost to the point of exploitation: such a banal application of magic, using it to grab a snack from the fridge when you were simply too lazy to get off the couch, or popping your head through a portal to pass a message to a startled disciple who shrieked and accidentally dropped the vase they'd been carrying— oops.)
By this point, Strange could do portals in his sleep. So he finishes creating the dimensional gateway, and they can both see through it into a darkened vestibule, an entrance hallway leading towards a bar which, quite literally, has no doors to the outside world. It sits in its own closed-off corner of a dimension, requiring magic to access and to enter.
Then he turns and looks at Wanda, and considers her question more thoroughly. The admission comes delicately. It's not a bit of humility he wants to say to Wong's face, but he can safely say it here to someone else.
"Between you and me, though? Wong's been at this longer than I have — he's more experienced, he was in training at Kamar-Taj long before I arrived, and then he held up the mantle while I was blipped. He inherited it on a technicality, but I inherited it in a crisis. There's not supposed to be room for ego when it comes to the defense of the multiverse. So I like to think we're partners. Co-Sorcerers Supreme." A contemplative pause. "Although maybe I just tell myself that to feel better about losing it."
No matter how many times he creates a portal, Wanda always regards it with wonderment. This portal is no different to the last. She can feel that magic; it's the same as the one Wong appears and disappears into. It's solid and confident, and Wanda doesn't doubt that if she was to step on its threshold that it would hold her until she was ready to take a step into the Bar with No Doors.
Even though she doesn't take a step forward to scrutinise it, she looks at it with curiosity to ensure that it is, in fact, a bar. Not that she would know if it was the right one. While she may trust Strange to not lead her astray, Wanda is still out of place and much a square trying to fit in with a coven of circles.
She instantly sees that it lives up to its name.
But she doesn't step forward, slightly worried that if she does, this conversation will be lost and Strange will be left lingering on a slightly more vulnerable than usual note.
"I don't think you truly lost it." She presses her lips together and shakes her head as if that is that. As if the Sorcerer Supreme title is something that can still exist between two people—and she thinks it can. Just because the other sorcerers may look to Wong now doesn't mean Strange holds it any less.
"It doesn't seem like something like a pen that you can lose." Wanda shrugs and regards the portal as if it's more than a basic display of magic. "Does a sorcerer who used to be Sorcerer Supreme stop being Sorcerer Supreme? I don't think so. It's like how a general stays a general even after he's retired."
And a hero stays a hero even long after he's succumbed to his bullet wounds.
"And how presidents are still referred to as Mr. President even after their term has ended? I'll still be Mr. Sorcerer Supreme?" The corner of his mouth twitches into a smile — a little sardonic, as ever, but he feels some vise in his chest loosen slightly, appreciating the words of reassurance. It's good to hear.
"Thank you for that, though. But ah, if only I were close to retirement. I think my watch is just beginning."
He actually doesn't know how long he went up against Dormammu; it could have been subjective centuries, which makes his whole tenure feel strange (ha) and immeasurable. He's been on the job both forever and not longat all. Time works in gnarled, tangled ways around here.
He tries to shake off his contemplative mood like he's shaking out his coat, shaking off the dust, the sea water. He throws an arm out to the portal, the red cloak draped theatrically from his sleeve. "After you, miss Maximoff."
Tentatively stepping through the portal (her uncertainty doesn't stem from the belief his portal would be flimsy; she's simply not used to travelling through them, no matter how many she may step through), she ensures to move out of the way so Strange and his cape can sweep in after her.
The Bar with No Doors is strange to be inside. It's exactly as she had imagined it—doorless. Funny how truly literal the name actually is. Wanda's so used to titles and names being, well... either on the nose or simply don't match the person or establishment. But she imagines the lack of doors is to keep those who aren't magical users out. What better way to keep the magical underground a secret than to simply make it impossibly hard for those who aren't magical to enter?
"So, everyone in here is a..." She furrows her brows. Most of the patrons appear so... normal. "I've never seen this many." Wanda's never been around this many magic users ever.
To say Wanda's a touch overwhelmed would be a tiny understatement.
The bar isn't as crowded as a regular Manhattan bar at happy hour — thankfully the patrons aren't packed in cheek-by-jowl, crammed in against each other, having to shout to be heard — but there's still more than you'd ever expect, when you were born into a civilian life and hadn't fully grasped just how much magic there was in the wide universe. The fact that it's not Earth-bound helps: there are aliens, a few Asgardian witches in the back (who nod to Strange as he appears), and someone at the end of the counter who's just an incorporeal floating spirit from the astral plane, sipping on some kind of gaseous drink. There's even a couple disciples from Kamar-Taj in their traditional red robes, and they jolt at the sight of Strange and Wanda, spines straightening, trying to look like they're on their best behaviour. He ignores them.
"I didn't believe in magic. Even when I saw it for the very first time, I thought I'd been dosed with LSD." Standing beside Wanda, he sounds a little bemused. He'd grown inured to it, but looking at the bar now and imagining how it must look like to her, he's struck by the novelty all over again. "It didn't exactly track with the life I'd had before. But then a door opens, and—" Strange gestured at the room. "You start getting accustomed to things like this."
For being a magical speakeasy, it looks... astonishingly like a tiki bar. There's palm fronds and eclectic decor everywhere, and no single lamp looks the same as another.
Not bad. Not horrible. Not discomforting. With what Strange has said in mind, Wanda looks around again and takes it in for what it is. It's a piece of solace amongst a crazy and tightly tangled mess of a world. She's only begun to explore the surface of magic, and yet she knows that there's so much more to it than what she's discovered thus far.
She smiles contentedly. "It's a lot quieter than the Compound." That large building had been quiet in ways that rang loudly in Wanda's ears. The silence was always a loud and discomforting reminder of how alone she was in the United States. Being here… while it's noisier than the Compound had been when most of the Avengers were not in town, it's quiet.
It's comfortable.
"Where do you usually sit?" Rising to the tips of her toes, this time when she looks around, it's to try and discern the best spot. Strange seems like a bar type of person… and a shadowy corner type of person, too.
"This is quieter? I thought the Avengers Compound was supposed to be massive. Spread-out." He had only seen it the once: the day it was destroyed during the Battle of Earth, the day they won, the day he sent Tony Stark to die. Strange had held back a lake over the wreckage of that building, all twisted metal and collapsed storeys, and he'd only been able to imagine what it had looked like in its prime.
"And that's my favourite corner," Strange says, leading the way towards it, the slightly fire-blackened table (what had happened there?) with its wobbly chairs. "You can see the entrance, such as it is."
He'd been more for the bar counter, once upon a time: schmooze and be seen. He hadn't been a playboy as a neurosurgeon — simply hadn't the time for it, there was a reason his last fling was someone he worked with — but he'd still been flashy. Spending money, buying drinks for his coworkers, chatting to a group. Nowadays, though, he likes to take a backseat. Sit somewhere he can keep an eye on things.
Wanda follows him, looking around as she does so. She wants to take it all in, and absorb it so that it feels familiar to her. It makes sense to her as to why he picked this corner; seeing the entrance is important. Despite being able to read the minds of anyone, Wanda's always preferred having her back to the wall and her face towards the door. There's always the opportunity to miss out on the one voice that's too quiet and subtle and dangerous.
She sits opposite him and rests her elbows against the table, steepling her fingers together. She rests her chin on her hands and surveys the bar from this angle. She can see almost everything from this corner. Does every other corner have the same vantage point? A part of her is hopeful she'll be able to find out.
With her gaze lingering on the bar, she smiles a touch sheepishly. "Will you judge me if I say wine? I know it's boring, but it's how I judge a place. If it has good wine..." She comes back.
It'd been something fun she'd employed when sneaking around with Vision before, well... everything. It's a piece of that time she likes to keep active and in her embrace.
"I don't judge. It sounds like a fine enough metric," Strange says. He's settled back in his seat — only for an expression of surprise to cross his face as he accidentally sits on the cloak, and it recoils like he's trod on a cat's tail, and they wrestle with each other for a second, then finally get comfortable when the cloak settles over the back of his chair. He straightens his sleeves as if the undignified moment never happened. (This is a common occupational hazard.)
"On my end, I usually drink a single malt scotch in the city, but here, I always get the mai tai."
After they order and when it eventually shows up, it's going to be in the most obnoxious tiki drink vessel like some ancient carved wooden idol, with a bright straw and colourful umbrella, the liquid smoking mystically for no apparent reason. It's fantastic.
He's eased in with an elbow slung over the back of his chair, surveying her. There's often something watchful and assessing in Strange's gaze when he looks at Wanda. Not like he's tiptoeing around a bomb about to go off (which so many people had done, handling her with kid gloves after Sokovia, Lagos, the Raft, Westview) — more like she's a Rubik's cube he's still trying to sort out.
"The bartender's usually a low-level telepath. We can just project our drink orders to them," he adds.
She smiles down at her drink. Holding it up, she tilts her head to the side as she studies the face that her cup wears. At first, it looks angry, but upon closer inspection, it simply looks… well, a little drunk from this angle. Perhaps it's all about perspective. Maybe Strange looks at the tiki drink and thinks it looks like a face that's tasted a sour lemon.
Once again, she's experiencing something new. Wine drunk from something that isn't a see-through glass is bound to be an experience.
Placing her wine down on the table without taking a sip, she glances around as if expecting the entire bar to simply stare at her. They aren't. No one is, no one other than Strange.
She's caught him looking at her a few times with what she feels is a pensive expression. Initially, she'd thought he was waiting for her to attack him. Slip into his mind, change a thought or two, and without remorse effortlessly control him as she had the people of Westview. But she's since learned that Strange doesn't look at her with distrust.
It'd be easy to understand why he's looking at her, but Wanda doesn't wish to take what doesn't belong to her.
"And if someone was to project their own drinks?" She looks to the bar and wonders if they can sense her thoughts. She doubts it. She'd like to think she'd be able to discern if someone was trying to pry deeper into her mind for more than just her drink order. "I feel that would be rude," she mumbles. Still looking at the bar, she presses her lips together in thought. "Maybe it will be nice to be able to come here and be near someone like me."
Strange is about to blather something about drink orders and convenience, but then his attention is caught quickly enough by something more interesting at hand: his gaze follows hers, towards the bar, the rows on rows of exotic liquor bottles, the mildly psychic bartender, the clusters of witches and warlocks and magicians and aliens bending their heads in conversation. That thoughtful expression on her face at the sight of it all.
"I was hoping it might be," he says. "There are heaps of people with different kinds of magic here, so it all seemed relevant to your interests. The Asgardian witches don't have your exact capabilities, but they can tap into people's minds, so they're probably worth a conversation at some point, too. The more knowledge and the more frames of reference you have, the better."
Sometimes, he still sounds an awful lot like a doctor, despite the fact that he left medicine far behind. You can whisk the man away from science but you can't take the science out of the man, apparently.
And, apparently, he's still not too interested in being delicate. He chews over it for a moment, before he finds himself blurting out: "What's it like? The telepathy."
Invasive. Troubling. Disconcerting. She supposes those may have been the descriptors of the allegedly lower level telepaths. If she was heeding her script, she'd utter the same. They're the key words. They're the words she knows would make Darren feel somewhat comfortable with Samantha. But Strange would see right through her like a very clear and cleaned window.
While all three of those words are true, Wanda's answer is deeply layered. Telepathy is an invasion of the privacy of the person she reads. It can also be a door to understanding someone so closed off and unapproachable that it can often be responsible for nourishing a tether. Sometimes it comforts her when she has no social confidence. Knowing she's not alone and is surrounded by people, even strangers, is a comfort.
"It's…" She studies the bartender for a long moment, wondering what they'd say. But there is no party line for her to regurgitate. If Strange was discomforted by the fact he's housing a telepath, she's certain he wouldn't have encouraged her to stay.
Picking at her nails, she leans her arms on the table and purses her lips slightly without thought. With a furrowed brow, she regards the corner of his cloak on the chair.
"It's unbalancing," she opts for. Wanda lifts her gaze from the cloak to Strange, still frowning thoughtfully. "It's hard to ignore the hum of thoughts. It's tempting, like having wine for breakfast or eating all of the chocolate in the pantry. It can feel tiring, like spending an evening with too many people, and it can be completely lonely. Sometimes being in someone else's head is a lot nicer than being in mine."
And she likes the control, the knowing of things no one else knows. Ever since Stark's bombs, she likes knowing what's potentially coming. It helps her prepare. Though, her telepathy has greatly let her down in armouring her for suffering great loss.
While Wanda talks, he's unconsciously leaned forward as well to mirror her as he listens, elbows propped against the edge of the table and chin tipped pensively into his hand.
Strange respects her more for that honest (and complicated) answer. Something pat and trite would have been an over-simplification, and a ducking of the truth. There was no possible way her feelings about this particular ability would have been simple. And he catches that self-deprecating beat — a lot nicer than being in mine — but doesn't know what to do about it just yet. Files it away for later consideration.
"I'm... familiar with immoderation," Strange says, with that rueful twist to his mouth which came from painful experience. "And it's particularly easy to get greedy with magic, I think. Obviously I can't do the same things you can, but I felt the same way — tempted — when I first started plumbing the possibilities. Like drinking from a fire-hose. How noisy is it by default? Do you have to consciously work to block others out, or do you have to consciously work to hear them?"
Out of all the spells and abilities and relics available to him, mind-reading had never been on the table. Even the Ancient One hadn't been able to literally peer into others' thoughts: she'd just been wise, with the canny intuition which came from centuries of reading people.
She ponders his question for a moment with a thoughtful frown. Vision's asked her similar questions before—ones that are a little plainer and meant to give him an answer that he could so easily file away within his own system's files—but that had been before. When Vision had asked her, she had only started to tune the thoughts out. She hadn't the level of control—or power or reach—that she does now.
"I used to have to make the effort to block everyone out. When I first got my powers, the facility was so loud." And it was comforting, at least, to know Pietro was there. H.Y.D.R.A. had been as cold as its walls and as depressing as its grey walls, but hearing Pietro's thoughts had given her comfort in a decision she was beginning to regret. She doesn't tell Strange she thinks she's learned to tune them out so she can tune out the loud absence of Pietro's thoughts. "But I think I've learned to tune them out. I didn't even realise I was responding to thoughts in Westview until…"
Pressing her lips together momentarily, Wanda inhales deeply through her nose. It hadn't been until Vision pressed and pushed and refused to take the lines she fed him as truth for her to realise what she had done. Being forced to look Monica Rambeau in her forgiving eyes had only been the icing on an already acidic cake.
"Until it was brought to my attention." Looking down, she sighs quietly. "It has become effortless. Like texting without looking at the keyboard."
"Practice makes perfect. That's always been true, in my opinion. Which I always thought was a good thing, but— maybe autopilot has its risks, too. Like conducting a surgery you've done a thousand times before and so you stop paying attention and you get sloppy. Maybe it's important to stay conscientious and intentional."
He takes another sip of his mai tai: spicy rum, sweet orange curaçao, the sharp tartness of lime, the whole cocktail almost cloyingly sweet compared to the man's stern-looking demeanour. There are other contradictions around them: while they're chatting in the corner, what can only be described as a demon strolls past, winged and horned and wearing Bermuda pants and an aloha-print shirt. Strange doesn't even bat an eye.
"I can imagine the silence must be soothing, though. Being better-able to turn it all down. Do you ever hear my thoughts?"
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Stephen had never lived at the Avengers compound like Wanda had — the Sorcerer Supreme had always been an ally, rather than an official member of the team — but his paths had crossed with them often enough. Turns out when you help a Norse god track down his missing father, you remain in his general good books and get invited to his next party. And Thor was the most fun Avenger: interactions with the god had been more friendly than Strange's few bristling interactions with Tony Stark, at least.
The water is retreating and retreating, and it's almost gone: the legs of the credenza and the chairs have settled onto the floor of the foyer again, touching solid ground once more.
And since the topic's come up, he indulges in some curiosity.
"Is the team still..." He doesn't really know how to broach this delicately. But Strange doesn't make a habit of sugarcoating things, either, so in the end he doesn't. "Is the team still much of a thing, after Stark's death?"
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Any mention of Stark will always make something prickle uncomfortably in her chest. After everything she's done, after every chance she thought Stark would take to be the hero his friends and teammates claimed him to be, she's still standing where she started her Avengers journey in the rubble of Sokovia. Attending his funeral didn't bring about the closure she had been secretly hoping for.
"I wouldn't know," she says, ensuring to keep a small smile on her face. The Avengers seem to still exist in spirit, but given the lack of phone calls and invitations to team lunches, Wanda thinks it's over. It has to be. While she may never have truly belonged with them and was always either commandeered to her room or the corner, the idea of them meeting and plotting without her stings a little.
"I think Sam and Barnes are working together if the news is telling the truth. But I don't think the Avengers have reunited since the funeral." The funeral that wasn't for Vision, and technically didn't seem to belong to Natasha, too.
Glancing at Strange, she shrugs, "I think they all lost hope after Steve and Iron Man."
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(He wasn't always capable of that kind of regret. He used to leave people stinging and humiliated in his wake, and never bothered with something as quotidian as other people's feelings. Nowadays, though—)
"Well," the sorcerer says, and clears his throat. "He always was the more inspirational Steve, by all accounts."
It's a bit of useless pithy humour, to try to paper over that stilted little moment. But they're reaching the end of their cleanup: the shattered-mosaic look of the flooring is starting to return to view, visible once more through those last inches of water as it drains away. The distraction is petering away with it, and he's just left with this: his words, his hands, and he's never quite sure what to do with those meager tools. Should he offer a companionable clap to the shoulder? An apology if he stepped all over a sore subject? Just ignore it and press on?
He's never been very good at this.
In the end, Strange settles for what little olive branch he can offer. "Anyway, it's a moot point from where I'm standing. You'll always have a place here, if you want it."
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She's grateful for that. The Sanctum has become a refuge, a little home away from home. His words make her feel warm all over… veery similar to how she had felt when she and Vision had seemed to finally find a rhythm that worked in Scotland.
Tilting her head up, she regards Strange with a playful smile. "Even when I pick Wong's Spotify playlist over yours?"
It does seem to be a point of contention between the two sorcerers. (Sometimes Wanda picks the playlist she doesn't want to hear solely for the dramatics of both Strange and Wong.)
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Kamar-Taj had taken him in when he was broken, grieving, lashing out at others like an injured dog snapping its teeth. The order had a habit of taking in people who were shattered both literally and figuratively (or perhaps budding sorcerers had a tendency to blow up their own lives; either way, the Sanctum lived up to its name). Considering the type of people who had come and gone through here, Wanda Maximoff piecing herself together fits right in.
Strange walks the rest of the way down the steps then, back onto the floor to survey their work. He nudges some of the sand with the toe of his boot. It's still wet and there'll be water damage, but now that she's done the lion's share of the work, a fellow master should be able to wring the last water particles out of the wood for them. Strange can also assign some novices to sweep up the sand with brooms. (No Fantasia antics, he'd have to remind them. Do it by hand!!)
"Well done," he concludes. "See? No harm, no foul. We didn't open a permanent gateway to the Pacific and flood the city."
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But she's beginning to learn that such thinking isn't accepted here. Mistakes happen, and as Wong has told her numerous times (to the point where his voice has begun to crack from exhaustion), learning to walk comes from stumbling about a thousand times. Wanda thinks she's reached the nine hundred and eightieth stumble.
"Shame it didn't find Atlantis." She laughs.
Glancing around, she wrings her hands together before she pulls them apart. With a flick of her wrists, the windows and doors gently click open and she summons a breeze similar to the one that had dried her wet home in Westview. The wind this time isn't quite as brutal in its intensity. It's a summer breeze that sweeps in and gently taps the legs of drenched chairs and fluffs saturated pillows.
She doesn't particularly want his home to be sagging due to being previously underwater. It wouldn't do for his cape to sit on a dripping rack hook, after all.
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When the windows open, he tilts his head backwards and takes a deep breath. The wind is refreshing and nice, sweeping away some of the stuffiness inherent in an aged old building with history steeped into each plank of wood, each tapestry, each mural.
"There's always tomorrow for finding Atlantis," Strange says with a wink. He straightens his soggy collar, then snaps his fingers and all of his clothes dry out in moments. The cloak flicks a coattail, satisfied with the change, no longer looking quite so downtrodden. He swipes distractedly at his forehead where the mindflayer had lashed him, and the cut seals itself up too.
Damage reversed. Summer's on its way, and tomorrow's another day and another, and— dare he think it?— things seem okay.
He exhales. "So. How about that celebratory drink?"
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And there are always invitations, too. Even if she was to try to sideline herself, she knows Strange, Wong and even Strange's mystical cape wouldn't allow it. It's unusual for her to be welcomed and belong, but Wanda doesn't wish to knock it back one too many times.
So, she smiles and nods happily. "I think we deserve it, especially since your walls won't need to be replaced yet."
There's always tomorrow to ruin those.
"Should we call Wong? I think he will come if I ask him." She leans closer to him and playfully whispers, "He likes me more." She does, after all, pick his Spotify playlists.
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There's a few different ways one could take that statement: that it could be about the near-married-couple bickering between the two sorcerers, their comfortable well-worn dynamic, the way Strange finds ways to needle at his friend's temper. The Spotify war. Stephen Strange's general crotchety nature. So of course Wong would choose her over him.
Or maybe it's just about how eminently likeable Wanda Maximoff is.
He recovers quickly enough (she's essentially a widow, a grieving widow, Stephen—) and papers over that fondness before it can look like anything else. It's only about the Spotify playlists. Of course.
And so he adds, "I'll send him a message, although the duties of the Sorcerer Supreme keep him busy. Sometimes I think he just prefers the Hong Kong Sanctum. The building's fancier."
Readjusting the sling ring on his knuckles, he starts carving out a portal to transport them to the Bar With No Doors.
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She thinks that if anyone can understand that, it's Stephen Strange. She may not know as much about him as she does Tony Stark—despite his medical accomplishments, Strange isn't a billionaire playboy throwing his money around in technology and weapons manufacturing—but from her own observations and inklings... He has a hard time seeing himself in a good light, too. Wanda's concluded that's why she gravitates more toward him than Wong.
Glancing at the way he moves his hands, Wanda looks up at him and studies his profile for a moment.
"How do you deal with that? You were the Sorcerer Supreme before the Snap. Surely, you would be it again?"
There are better times to ask this question. Over dinner. When he's cleaning up one of her messes. Disturbing him when he's reading. But Wanda has never been good with her timing.
It's better to not distract him when he's doing a spell. But if Stephen Strange is as good as they say he is (and as good as Wanda knows him to be), surely, he can multitask.
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This one isn't like the slippery, all-encompassing spell he'd tried for Peter Parker. The portals were the very first bit of magic Strange had ever learned, and the most commonly-used throughout his everyday existence. (Almost to the point of exploitation: such a banal application of magic, using it to grab a snack from the fridge when you were simply too lazy to get off the couch, or popping your head through a portal to pass a message to a startled disciple who shrieked and accidentally dropped the vase they'd been carrying— oops.)
By this point, Strange could do portals in his sleep. So he finishes creating the dimensional gateway, and they can both see through it into a darkened vestibule, an entrance hallway leading towards a bar which, quite literally, has no doors to the outside world. It sits in its own closed-off corner of a dimension, requiring magic to access and to enter.
Then he turns and looks at Wanda, and considers her question more thoroughly. The admission comes delicately. It's not a bit of humility he wants to say to Wong's face, but he can safely say it here to someone else.
"Between you and me, though? Wong's been at this longer than I have — he's more experienced, he was in training at Kamar-Taj long before I arrived, and then he held up the mantle while I was blipped. He inherited it on a technicality, but I inherited it in a crisis. There's not supposed to be room for ego when it comes to the defense of the multiverse. So I like to think we're partners. Co-Sorcerers Supreme." A contemplative pause. "Although maybe I just tell myself that to feel better about losing it."
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Even though she doesn't take a step forward to scrutinise it, she looks at it with curiosity to ensure that it is, in fact, a bar. Not that she would know if it was the right one. While she may trust Strange to not lead her astray, Wanda is still out of place and much a square trying to fit in with a coven of circles.
She instantly sees that it lives up to its name.
But she doesn't step forward, slightly worried that if she does, this conversation will be lost and Strange will be left lingering on a slightly more vulnerable than usual note.
"I don't think you truly lost it." She presses her lips together and shakes her head as if that is that. As if the Sorcerer Supreme title is something that can still exist between two people—and she thinks it can. Just because the other sorcerers may look to Wong now doesn't mean Strange holds it any less.
"It doesn't seem like something like a pen that you can lose." Wanda shrugs and regards the portal as if it's more than a basic display of magic. "Does a sorcerer who used to be Sorcerer Supreme stop being Sorcerer Supreme? I don't think so. It's like how a general stays a general even after he's retired."
And a hero stays a hero even long after he's succumbed to his bullet wounds.
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"Thank you for that, though. But ah, if only I were close to retirement. I think my watch is just beginning."
He actually doesn't know how long he went up against Dormammu; it could have been subjective centuries, which makes his whole tenure feel strange (ha) and immeasurable. He's been on the job both forever and not longat all. Time works in gnarled, tangled ways around here.
He tries to shake off his contemplative mood like he's shaking out his coat, shaking off the dust, the sea water. He throws an arm out to the portal, the red cloak draped theatrically from his sleeve. "After you, miss Maximoff."
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The Bar with No Doors is strange to be inside. It's exactly as she had imagined it—doorless. Funny how truly literal the name actually is. Wanda's so used to titles and names being, well... either on the nose or simply don't match the person or establishment. But she imagines the lack of doors is to keep those who aren't magical users out. What better way to keep the magical underground a secret than to simply make it impossibly hard for those who aren't magical to enter?
"So, everyone in here is a..." She furrows her brows. Most of the patrons appear so... normal. "I've never seen this many." Wanda's never been around this many magic users ever.
To say Wanda's a touch overwhelmed would be a tiny understatement.
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The bar isn't as crowded as a regular Manhattan bar at happy hour — thankfully the patrons aren't packed in cheek-by-jowl, crammed in against each other, having to shout to be heard — but there's still more than you'd ever expect, when you were born into a civilian life and hadn't fully grasped just how much magic there was in the wide universe. The fact that it's not Earth-bound helps: there are aliens, a few Asgardian witches in the back (who nod to Strange as he appears), and someone at the end of the counter who's just an incorporeal floating spirit from the astral plane, sipping on some kind of gaseous drink. There's even a couple disciples from Kamar-Taj in their traditional red robes, and they jolt at the sight of Strange and Wanda, spines straightening, trying to look like they're on their best behaviour. He ignores them.
"I didn't believe in magic. Even when I saw it for the very first time, I thought I'd been dosed with LSD." Standing beside Wanda, he sounds a little bemused. He'd grown inured to it, but looking at the bar now and imagining how it must look like to her, he's struck by the novelty all over again. "It didn't exactly track with the life I'd had before. But then a door opens, and—" Strange gestured at the room. "You start getting accustomed to things like this."
For being a magical speakeasy, it looks... astonishingly like a tiki bar. There's palm fronds and eclectic decor everywhere, and no single lamp looks the same as another.
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Not bad. Not horrible. Not discomforting. With what Strange has said in mind, Wanda looks around again and takes it in for what it is. It's a piece of solace amongst a crazy and tightly tangled mess of a world. She's only begun to explore the surface of magic, and yet she knows that there's so much more to it than what she's discovered thus far.
She smiles contentedly. "It's a lot quieter than the Compound." That large building had been quiet in ways that rang loudly in Wanda's ears. The silence was always a loud and discomforting reminder of how alone she was in the United States. Being here… while it's noisier than the Compound had been when most of the Avengers were not in town, it's quiet.
It's comfortable.
"Where do you usually sit?" Rising to the tips of her toes, this time when she looks around, it's to try and discern the best spot. Strange seems like a bar type of person… and a shadowy corner type of person, too.
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"And that's my favourite corner," Strange says, leading the way towards it, the slightly fire-blackened table (what had happened there?) with its wobbly chairs. "You can see the entrance, such as it is."
He'd been more for the bar counter, once upon a time: schmooze and be seen. He hadn't been a playboy as a neurosurgeon — simply hadn't the time for it, there was a reason his last fling was someone he worked with — but he'd still been flashy. Spending money, buying drinks for his coworkers, chatting to a group. Nowadays, though, he likes to take a backseat. Sit somewhere he can keep an eye on things.
"What's your poison?"
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She sits opposite him and rests her elbows against the table, steepling her fingers together. She rests her chin on her hands and surveys the bar from this angle. She can see almost everything from this corner. Does every other corner have the same vantage point? A part of her is hopeful she'll be able to find out.
With her gaze lingering on the bar, she smiles a touch sheepishly. "Will you judge me if I say wine? I know it's boring, but it's how I judge a place. If it has good wine..." She comes back.
It'd been something fun she'd employed when sneaking around with Vision before, well... everything. It's a piece of that time she likes to keep active and in her embrace.
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"On my end, I usually drink a single malt scotch in the city, but here, I always get the mai tai."
After they order and when it eventually shows up, it's going to be in the most obnoxious tiki drink vessel like some ancient carved wooden idol, with a bright straw and colourful umbrella, the liquid smoking mystically for no apparent reason. It's fantastic.
He's eased in with an elbow slung over the back of his chair, surveying her. There's often something watchful and assessing in Strange's gaze when he looks at Wanda. Not like he's tiptoeing around a bomb about to go off (which so many people had done, handling her with kid gloves after Sokovia, Lagos, the Raft, Westview) — more like she's a Rubik's cube he's still trying to sort out.
"The bartender's usually a low-level telepath. We can just project our drink orders to them," he adds.
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Once again, she's experiencing something new. Wine drunk from something that isn't a see-through glass is bound to be an experience.
Placing her wine down on the table without taking a sip, she glances around as if expecting the entire bar to simply stare at her. They aren't. No one is, no one other than Strange.
She's caught him looking at her a few times with what she feels is a pensive expression. Initially, she'd thought he was waiting for her to attack him. Slip into his mind, change a thought or two, and without remorse effortlessly control him as she had the people of Westview. But she's since learned that Strange doesn't look at her with distrust.
It'd be easy to understand why he's looking at her, but Wanda doesn't wish to take what doesn't belong to her.
"And if someone was to project their own drinks?" She looks to the bar and wonders if they can sense her thoughts. She doubts it. She'd like to think she'd be able to discern if someone was trying to pry deeper into her mind for more than just her drink order. "I feel that would be rude," she mumbles. Still looking at the bar, she presses her lips together in thought. "Maybe it will be nice to be able to come here and be near someone like me."
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"I was hoping it might be," he says. "There are heaps of people with different kinds of magic here, so it all seemed relevant to your interests. The Asgardian witches don't have your exact capabilities, but they can tap into people's minds, so they're probably worth a conversation at some point, too. The more knowledge and the more frames of reference you have, the better."
Sometimes, he still sounds an awful lot like a doctor, despite the fact that he left medicine far behind. You can whisk the man away from science but you can't take the science out of the man, apparently.
And, apparently, he's still not too interested in being delicate. He chews over it for a moment, before he finds himself blurting out: "What's it like? The telepathy."
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While all three of those words are true, Wanda's answer is deeply layered. Telepathy is an invasion of the privacy of the person she reads. It can also be a door to understanding someone so closed off and unapproachable that it can often be responsible for nourishing a tether. Sometimes it comforts her when she has no social confidence. Knowing she's not alone and is surrounded by people, even strangers, is a comfort.
"It's…" She studies the bartender for a long moment, wondering what they'd say. But there is no party line for her to regurgitate. If Strange was discomforted by the fact he's housing a telepath, she's certain he wouldn't have encouraged her to stay.
Picking at her nails, she leans her arms on the table and purses her lips slightly without thought. With a furrowed brow, she regards the corner of his cloak on the chair.
"It's unbalancing," she opts for. Wanda lifts her gaze from the cloak to Strange, still frowning thoughtfully. "It's hard to ignore the hum of thoughts. It's tempting, like having wine for breakfast or eating all of the chocolate in the pantry. It can feel tiring, like spending an evening with too many people, and it can be completely lonely. Sometimes being in someone else's head is a lot nicer than being in mine."
And she likes the control, the knowing of things no one else knows. Ever since Stark's bombs, she likes knowing what's potentially coming. It helps her prepare. Though, her telepathy has greatly let her down in armouring her for suffering great loss.
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Strange respects her more for that honest (and complicated) answer. Something pat and trite would have been an over-simplification, and a ducking of the truth. There was no possible way her feelings about this particular ability would have been simple. And he catches that self-deprecating beat — a lot nicer than being in mine — but doesn't know what to do about it just yet. Files it away for later consideration.
"I'm... familiar with immoderation," Strange says, with that rueful twist to his mouth which came from painful experience. "And it's particularly easy to get greedy with magic, I think. Obviously I can't do the same things you can, but I felt the same way — tempted — when I first started plumbing the possibilities. Like drinking from a fire-hose. How noisy is it by default? Do you have to consciously work to block others out, or do you have to consciously work to hear them?"
Out of all the spells and abilities and relics available to him, mind-reading had never been on the table. Even the Ancient One hadn't been able to literally peer into others' thoughts: she'd just been wise, with the canny intuition which came from centuries of reading people.
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"I used to have to make the effort to block everyone out. When I first got my powers, the facility was so loud." And it was comforting, at least, to know Pietro was there. H.Y.D.R.A. had been as cold as its walls and as depressing as its grey walls, but hearing Pietro's thoughts had given her comfort in a decision she was beginning to regret. She doesn't tell Strange she thinks she's learned to tune them out so she can tune out the loud absence of Pietro's thoughts. "But I think I've learned to tune them out. I didn't even realise I was responding to thoughts in Westview until…"
Pressing her lips together momentarily, Wanda inhales deeply through her nose. It hadn't been until Vision pressed and pushed and refused to take the lines she fed him as truth for her to realise what she had done. Being forced to look Monica Rambeau in her forgiving eyes had only been the icing on an already acidic cake.
"Until it was brought to my attention." Looking down, she sighs quietly. "It has become effortless. Like texting without looking at the keyboard."
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He takes another sip of his mai tai: spicy rum, sweet orange curaçao, the sharp tartness of lime, the whole cocktail almost cloyingly sweet compared to the man's stern-looking demeanour. There are other contradictions around them: while they're chatting in the corner, what can only be described as a demon strolls past, winged and horned and wearing Bermuda pants and an aloha-print shirt. Strange doesn't even bat an eye.
"I can imagine the silence must be soothing, though. Being better-able to turn it all down. Do you ever hear my thoughts?"
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yrs to wrap? ♥
end!! ♥