Not a spider specifically, but in general? Often enough. You came in a bit too late, you just missed the giant tentacled eyeball monster. I actually preferred this one— the eyeball was in the middle of Manhattan, so I had to keep most of my attention on limiting the collateral damage. It's harder when there's bystanders around.
[ Strange's attention drifts to the scarred stars and he can't help himself from automatically counting them for her level. Wondering, of course, why they're obliterated now, but perhaps the polite thing is to not ask about it. (Oh, he's going to cave soon and ask about it, even though he knows the questions will probably follow from her in return. Tit for tat. Equivalent exchange.) ]
The Masters of the Mystic Arts protect this dimension from magical threats. Most of the time the danger is smaller, other times it's greater but we manage to restrict it so no one even knows what happened. The duties vary.
[ He cocks his head again, listening, extending his magical senses like a cat stretching its limbs into a yawn, claws reaching out. He can't hear the spider-demon down in the basement but when he concentrates, he can feel it down there. ]
It's in one of the containment cells downstairs now. The transport spear worked.
[ A giant tentacled eyeball monster. Yeah, she's not sad she missed that one. It sounds beyond gross.
But the part about protecting people... That resonates with her like nothing else ever has before. When she'd started learning magic, it had been a thrill, exciting and addictive and something she needed like air. Addictions so often turn deadly, though, and hers was no exception. Hearing about a group of people who use their knowledge and abilities to do good strikes her as the right thing to do. ]
It's good it worked. It would've been really shitty if you'd gone through all this and it didn't.
[ The comment is conversational and a bit distracted as she turns to dip the towel back into the water and wring it out again. A hue of pink stays behind, fine whispy trails of blood arcing through the bowl, and she tries not to think about it. He doesn't need her baggage in addition to his own. ]
You know, for magicians, it's... different. Not always in a good way. [ She dabs the towel gently around the wounds, trying to get the last stubborn streaks of blood. ] Everyone does their own thing and it's all very... Selfish. Not many I've met want to make the world a better place, or a safer one.
[ Turning the towel in her hand, the blood is vibrant against the white cloth, reminding her of— Her jaw clenches and she closes her eyes for just a moment before returning the towel to the bowl and picking up the disinfectant. ]
So I've gathered. From my interactions with various alumni. No offense, but the fact that Brakebills-trained magicians are set loose into society with all that power but without instilling any idea of community service at the same time— well, it's practically a danger. I easily could've been just as much of an asshole if Kamar-Taj hadn't taught me better.
[ Because his own initial pursuit of magic had, of course, started off as selfish too. One shudders to think what Doctor Strange would've been like if he could just seize what he wanted and then left, and if the Ancient One hadn't taken the time to shatter those notions first. Break him down and then build him back up again. ]
Then again, Brakebills is like the Ivy League of magic, and the Ivy Leagues are full of selfish assholes too. [ There's a Columbia University mug in the kitchen downstairs; it's not much of a surprise who it came from. It certainly wasn't Wong. ]
[ He makes a very good point about Brakebills. The hedges at least have a sense of community, they work together and protect their own. With Brakebills, it always feels like it's each magician for themself, only collaborating when it's personally beneficial. Even Fogg had only helped her because she'd been his student in thirty-nine other timelines. ]
As a fellow Columbia grad, I can confirm.
[ Yeah, she'd noticed the mug.
Julia goes quiet for a moment, her gaze visibly finally straying to his hand and all those horrible scars. Just looking at them makes her want to cry. She glances up at his face, just a flicker to gauge whether it would be okay, and then she asks her question while disinfecting the wounds he got while being a hero. ]
They're what brought you to magic, aren't they? Something happened and you were trying to fix it.
[ There's no judgment or pity in the words, only sympathetic understanding for what must have been a truly horrible situation. ]
[ A fellow alumn— he's about to follow that safer train of thought, but ah, there it is. The inevitable question. ]
Smart girl.
[ It runs a very thin line of sounding patronising, maybe — always a risk with Stephen Strange — but there's a serious enough cast to his voice. He just sounds quiet, and contemplative, and a little somber. As Julia looks down at his hands, he turns one of them over, his crooked fingers splayed: it quivers and trembles and can't stay still, and so he closes the fingers into a clenched fist instead. There's a sharp twinge of pain and so he loosens the grip again.
Even now, after years' worth of healing, it's a whole web of scars carving their way up and down his fingers, curling down his knuckles, marking where the metal pins and joins had held him back together. A map of his wounds: the occasional palsy, the tremors. ]
A doctor's handwriting is already notoriously bad, but I can't actually write anymore. I have to use telekinetic magic to hold a pen. I use speech-to-text on my phone more often than not.
[ Offhand. It's a way of easing into the truth of it, and how much he lost. Strange takes a deep breath; readies himself for telling this story, while Julia's hands are so gentle on his own. ]
I suppose it's actually pretty simple, when you get right down to it. I was in a car crash — it was my own fault — and my hands were ruined. And I— didn't accept it. My career was gone, and my career was the only thing I knew, it was the most important thing to me. I couldn't hold a scalpel like this. So I tried everything possible. Experimental treatments, groundbreaking surgeries.
That's where all the money went. Procedure after procedure after procedure. More operations. None of them took. In the end, I started casting the net wider. I found out one of my former patients had made a miraculous recovery, and so I demanded to know how he did it, and he told me about Kamar-Taj. I thought Eastern mysticism was a complete pile of superstitious bullshit — reiki, healing energies, all that — but I bought a plane ticket to Nepal with the very last of my money. And I found them.
They wouldn't let me in at first, but I was stubborn. Sat on their doorstep all day. Refused to leave until they told me. And through them, I finally discovered magic— real magic. I trained for months thinking I would use it to fix my hands, but in the end I chose to stick around. [ His nose crinkles; this is the part which sounds horrifically self-aggrandising and he can't touch on it without feeling mortified, even if it's the truth. The way he chose duty and the greater good over his own healing. He can't phrase it that way. ] I became a sorcerer instead of going back to being a surgeon.
[ A car crash. A normal fucking car crash had ruined his life and led him to a new one. It makes her want to scream and rage and cry to listen to his story, and it takes intense focus on her work to keep her from doing any of the above. Because this isn't about her — it's about him and his pain, both emotional and physical, past and present. Her entire purpose in this precise moment in time is to be there for him in every way she can be and she takes that very seriously.
She finishes disinfecting the cuts on his forearm before he finishes speaking but she waits until he's done before she sets the disinfectant aside and gives him her proper attention. ]
You chose to protect the world instead of going back to the life you'd always known. That's big.
[ They're honest but those aren't the words she needs to say to him. What she needs to say is so much bigger... so much harder. But she has to do it; she owes him this much.
Julia doesn't know if he'll let her hold his hand but she has to try. With just one hand, she slips her fingers under and around his palm, her grip loose enough for him to pull away but firm enough for him to hopefully know this isn't some empty gesture. ]
I know that when most people say "I know how you feel" it's because they're searching for some sort of platitude to get through a tough conversation when they really have no fucking clue how you feel, but— [ She falters, her voice breaking with emotion. ] That pain and loss, that... struggle to find your way back to who you are and then discovering you can't be that person anymore...
[ Her own emotions are laid bare to him as she takes in the lines of his face, imagining the suffering he endured for so long. ]
I get that. I understand. And I am so sorry it took all that pain to bring you to who you are now.
[ The kneejerk skittishness is there: the strangled urge to yank his hand out of hers, and withdraw from this unexpected surge of vulnerability. He might be sitting shirtless beside her but this conversation, more than anything else, is what makes it feel like his ribcage has been pried open and she's caught an inadvertent glimpse of his beating heart. That tin shell, being ripped open.
But it's nice, too. Feeling that muted pressure against his fingers, even if it feels like pins-and-needles and the sensation isn't as solid as it would've before the accident. Julia's hand curling around his. He squeezes back, once. ]
I appreciate the non-trite, non-platitude sympathy.
[ Stephen's not a happy man. He'd been grilled about it often enough, recently, to finally come to that realisation and accept this fact about himself. But something feels different about someone else calling it out and fully understanding, too, rather than simply pitying. Getting sympathy rather than empathy. Anyone could have Googled him and learned about the accident, but they wouldn't see the second half of the tale: the meandering path to magic, the obsessiveness, the worldview splintering into something new.
He's often had the sense that there's a lot Julia hadn't been telling him, either, those still waters running deep. Every hedge has a story.
He takes another deep breath. And he reaches out with his free hand, pressing his fingertips lightly to the constellation on her forearm, like he's mapping those stars. ]
[ He doesn't pull away from her and that means... so much. There's no distance between them, and when he touches those stars that used to be her entire world, she feels like she can tell him anything. It's a little bit terrifying if she's honest.
She's quiet after his question, the seconds ticking by in thunderous succession, and then she smiles sadly. ]
The beginning. Close enough to it, anyway.
[ His shoulder still needs to be cleaned and bandages need to be applied, but she can't bring herself to move and break whatever this is that's binding them together. So she keeps talking, watching his hands because some part of her is terrified that he'll judge her for the person she used to be. ]
My best friend, Q, and I took the Brakebills exam together. He got in and I didn't. I managed to resist the spell to wipe all memory of it from my mind and as soon as I woke up, I started searching. I tried so hard to find that school because I couldn't just go back to being normal when I knew magic was real, and when I found out Q was already there, I begged him to get them to give me another chance.
We weren't in a good place. I was desperate and cruel and he wanted to be special. The hedges found me. I joined the most powerful safehouse in the city and the head witch offered me a way to get a little revenge.
[ Thinking back to that time is hard. It feels like a lifetime ago but it still hurts like yesterday, the guilt still just as strong. ]
Q nearly died in the dream we created and when I turned to Fogg to help get him out of the spell, I was kicked out of the safehouse. That's when I got really desperate.
[ Kicked out of Brakebills and she'd somehow resisted the mindwipe and kept going. Kicked out of a hedge safehouse and she'd kept going. It's the kind of obsessive, stubborn, bloody-minded persistence which he knows so well that it almost hurts: that sensation of bitter understanding and recognition, of looking into a shattered mirror and seeing his own face reflected in her actions. Desperate and cruel was an apt summary for how he'd treated Christine, too, at his nadir.
Stephen leaves his hand resting against her forearm, just as she keeps hers around his palm; equally reluctant to break the spell, whatever this is. ]
If the Ancient One had been less patient and less understanding with my own flaws and she'd thrown me out again after getting so close, I would've become desperate, too. God knows I gave her more than enough reasons to give up on me. I was already half-crazed and desperate with it even when I was in training.
[ Breaking into the woman's private library, stealing forbidden tomes, and casting the spells without heeding the warnings was not his finest moment. From the sounds of it, he suspects Julia could have done with a more principled mentor. Perhaps, in the end, that was where the differences lay. ]
[ All those times she'd seen glimpses of him that she recognized, every instance when she'd related to some perceived similarity between them... It really hadn't all been in her head. Their stories were so different in the details but so much the same at their core. ]
I fucked up. Over and over again. [ The agony and regret in those words are impossible to miss. ] I started going to every safehouse I could find, demanding to see whatever spells they had. It wasn't enough. I tried internet magic that backfired. I fucked someone to get information and the asshole wiped every trace of me from my boyfriend's mind. I met another hedge who'd been cast out and I came up with this stupid plan to steal spells from Marina, the one who cut us off, but it was a trap and it got Hannah killed.
[ She can still hear the screams, still see Kady's face when she told her how her mother died. She still feels every ounce of guilt and shake for the part she'd played. ]
I ended up in rehab because I didn't have anywhere else to go. I met a man who showed me that I could magic to do good and he invited me to join his coven.
[ Her voice becomes quiet and lost. ] They're all dead now.
[ Everyone except Kady. Her best bitch who'd stood beside her through the worst weeks of her life and who hates her now because of the choice she'd made. ]
[ He tries to imagine what it would have felt like if he had found this home with the Masters of the Mystic Arts, his own equivalent of a coven, only to have them die. The casualties from the Scarlet Witch's attack had been bad enough, but it still hadn't been all of them. ]
I'm so sorry.
[ In a way, he's glad that Thanos' coinflip had landed on turning him into dust. It meant Stephen hadn't been around for those five years and seeing the damage rippling out from his choice, and having to look in the eyes of the people who had lost everything. Perhaps that's cowardly, but.
Stephen's hand rises, makes a half-aborted motion towards Julia, but then drops again — he's self-conscious about the gruesome ugliness of his hands, doesn't feel quite comfortable enough yet to touch her face, her cheek, as he could with Christine, who had already seen him at his rock-bottom worst. So instead he takes one of the gauze pads, presses it to the cut to his arm which she'd already cleaned out, stemming the rest of the bleeding.
And his next question might sound like a heartless one, a matter of cold intellectual curiosity, but he is curious. As someone who had gone to great lengths himself— he always wonders. ]
Was it enough, in the end? You're a magician now, so— something must have eventually worked.
[ Free Trader Beowulf had been... everything. They'd welcomed her in without hesitation, sharing their life stories and not judging her for hers. Each member had supported the others through their pain and joy, and they'd been so sure they were doing the right thing. They'd never even guessed—
Julia tries to keep things in perspective as much as she can. Sure, her life had been beyond shitty for a while now, with one thing after another piling up to crush her into the ground, but what was her pain in the face of what the world had endured during those five years. (It's still so completely wild to think that aliens are real, but it had certainly made it easier to embrace magic, because why wouldn't it be real too?) Even with that perspective, though, there are days when she struggles not to drown in that dark ocean of grief that lives inside her. Grief for her friends, for the people she hadn't been able to save, and for the woman she used to be.
His question feels like a knife slowly turning in her chest, awakening old wounds and making them fresh again. She knows that hadn't been his intention, he's not that cruel, but the pain is enough to make her finally pull her hand away from his, that emotional distance immediately rushing in. ]
That's...
[ Standing, she reaches for the wet towel again, wringing it out so she can work on cleaning his shoulder. The water has cooled slightly since they began but it isn't cold yet, so she stands beside him for a better angle as she very carefully begins dabbing at the sticky streaks of blood on his skin. ]
We tried to petition a god. Our Lady Underground. [ The words sound flat and like she's speaking of someone else, but maybe it's better that way. Better flat and empty than broken. ] Everyone had something they— Mennoly was dying of cancer, Silver suffered because she'd been born in the wrong body, Richard wanted to find his son who'd died. I just wanted to help my friends.
We believed it would work. We followed all the signs and believed in her. But when we finally did the summoning, she wasn't the one who came. He murdered my friends, raped me, and then just left. I had to scrub their blood off my floor... I lost my shade in the abortion and spent the next few months hunting him while he murdered dozens of other hedges. When I finally found him, when I found a way to kill him, when I had him right there, Our Lady showed up and begged me to show mercy because he was her son.
[ It's better that she has something to do with her hands. There's a numbness that's taken the place of the seething anger she'd carried with her for months but it still hurts to talk about. It probably always will. ]
That's why she gave me back my shade. Then a few days later, I really did help kill a god. Ember, the god of Fillory, because he'd grown bored of it and wanted to just destroy it and start over. An entire world full of sentient beings who deserved to live. So we stopped him, even though I'd been warned that killing a god has consequences, and now the Old Gods have taken away magic.
[ Sighing quietly, she turns to rinse out the towel again, already numb to the memories the red water brings up. ]
I think all that gets me through the day now is the hope that I can still do some more good because without that, I...
[ He hadn't been expecting to have the full story already, but perhaps it's like ripping off a band-aid: getting it all out there in one rush, rather than Julia having to mete out her story in drips and drabs over the next several weeks or months. Maybe it's better to get it all done with at once.
She's standing just beside him, dispassionately working on his shoulder, and Stephen understands how useful it is that he can't see her face from this angle, and that he doesn't have to think about how to rearrange his own expression upon hearing these horrors. 'I'm sorry that happened to you' doesn't encompass it. He can't even conceive of it. So instead, when he finally speaks, his voice has a thread of sympathetic anger: ]
Fuck those gods. It sounds like you did the right thing, even if they retaliated. If there's one universal constant causing misery, it's beings who carry an inordinate power over others. They treat humans like ants. They misuse our desires. I've seen a man gone half-mad with grief over losing his family, trying to summon a god to be reunited with them, even if it would destroy our dimension— that god brought him to more misery in the end. I'm starting to suspect they always do.
[ He swivels in his seat, reaches up and catches her elbow; just enough to draw her attention back to him. ]
Julia. Listen. You'll always have a home here, if you need it. I grouse about them sometimes, but the Masters of the Mystic Arts can and do do good. They can be annoyingly principled, even, but I'd rather that over the alternative. They took me in when I was at loose ends and didn't have anywhere else to go. So if I can at all offer the same to you—
[ Because in one dizzying moment, it feels like he's looking at an even more shattered and broken version of himself. A chance to reach out the same helping hand which had lifted him up from the dirt. ]
[ Now that it's out there, she feels better for it. No more skirting around secrets and keeping things carefully out of context. There's no taking it back, she'll have to live with whatever the consequences of her confession might be, but at least she doesn't feel like she's hiding anymore.
Stephen's response surprises her in the best way. Fuck those gods, indeed. Gods are assholes, there's not anything that could convince her otherwise, and his agreement on that point just raises her estimation of him.
And then he breaks her heart and puts it back together in a way that hurts a little less. She can feel her soul healing with every uttered syllable and it makes her feel... ]
Thank you.
[ Wonder and gratitude fill her voice, giving more importance to two very simple words. She can't follow them with the typical you have no idea what that means to me because he does know. More than possibly anyone else on this entire planet, he knows how much those words mean to her, and because of that, she knows he doesn't say them lightly.
Lifting her free hand to rest gently on the back of his head, she leans in and presses a kiss to his hair. Normally, she'd hug him, but since he was just filleted by a giant spider, this will have to do instead. ]
[ After having doors being slammed in their face over and over, he knows the value of an open door, a turned key. He knows the value of having a place to land, and somewhere which promises answers. He'd latched onto it as a safety line for a drowning man, in a way he wouldn't have been able to predict beforehand. The Sanctum Sanctorum's name was more true for these two than most: a sanctuary, a sacred location.
That kiss to the top of his head is unexpected, too, but he finds it warming some old and forgotten hearth in his chest. Stephen was often so prickly and acerbic that casual physical affection didn't come easily to him, or others often didn't feel comfortable offering it. So he shifts on the chaise— a little skittish, like a cat unaccustomed to the fond contact, but he flashes her a reassuring smile to show it wasn't unwelcome.
He's still reeling from all that information, spinning loose as he jots it into his mental catalogue on Julia Wicker. And he has his own addendums they haven't covered yet — did I ever tell you about the time I died fourteen million times? — but they've probably plumbed enough awful shit for today. There's time.
Which reminds him— ]
I really did think I'd get us a bottle of wine or something before we had to talk about any of that.
[ That smiles helps. It clues her in that it wasn't a misstep, just maybe a little too much for the moment. She can work with that, factor it in, and change course accordingly. Which is easy to do when he shifts the subject like that.
Giving him a bright smile in return, she grabs the disinfectant for his shoulder. ]
Rain check. [ A pause, then her expression shifts into a smirk with just a hint of mischief. ] Unless you need something now to take the edge off. I'm sure these hurt like a bitch.
[ Though his tolerance is probably very different than it used to be, given what he went through with his hands. She can't even imagine the months he must have spent in constant pain as he went through one surgery and treatment after another.
[ Pain is an old friend, he thinks, as he girds himself for that acrid sting of disinfectant in the shoulder.. ]
It's fine. I'm used to it.
[ Because she's right: considering those long helpless months after the accident, and even the daily throb of nerve damage in his hands and which doesn't respond to average painkillers... these gouges were nothing. One of the most recurring tools in Stephen's arsenal was his ability to weather pain, and to suffer. It turned out that dying well was a skill like any other. ]
But there's a difference between need and want. I'll fetch us something after you're done here. What's your poison?
[ He's right, there is a big different between need and want. She's glad to know he realizes that — for more reasons than one. ]
If we're going straight: whiskey. Mixed: vodka gibson.
[ Julia knows her way around a bar, okay? She's tried just about every type of alcohol there is and experienced a full exciting array of hangover symptoms in the process. (The latter hadn't been nearly as much fun as the former.) Visiting the Physical Kids' cottage at Brakebills was always nice because even if everything was going to shit, the alcohol always flowed freely. ]
But I'm really not that picky. I'll drink anything that isn't super sweet. What about you?
Martinis in general. But if you really want to get on my good side, I'm partial to a lemon drop martini. Once we get you to the Bar With No Doors, [ and it was once, not if, because somewhere along the way he'd simply decided that he was going to score her an invitation to the exclusive, magic-users-only Manhattan bar, ] then you'll find that the menu there is all mai tais and tiki drinks. I've grown partial to them as a result. You might hate it if you're avoiding sweet things, though.
[ When Julia finally starts to apply the antiseptic, despite his insistence that he was fine, Stephen recoils a little; neck stiffening and shoulders curling in on himself, muscles tightening with the pain as he hisses. His fingers dig into the overpadded cushions of the chaise. It's always a shock, even if you're used to it and even if you're expecting it. ]
Remind me to bring more supplies next time someone calls me up talking about a spider. I thought it would be much smaller.
[ The Bar With No Doors. Of course he had an invitation to the swanky exclusive bar she'd only ever heard about in hushed conversations between those denied access. She'd always found their bitterness amusing, truth be told, and never really questioned why a magic bar had to be ultra-exclusive — she'd grown up rich in NYC; exclusivity is a way of life for her mother's people. ]
Sorry...
[ She murmurs the apology as she continues applying a generous coating of antiseptic, not wanting to take any chances after his earlier mention of toxins because, really, there's no telling what kind of germs that thing might have. But even with the practicality of the measure, she hates seeing the physical signs of the pain it's causing him. So, distraction time. Keep him talking through the worst of it. ]
What exactly were you expecting? A dog-sized spider monster? Something you could catch with a net?
Well... yes. A spider isn't typically larger than a fist, so dog- or wolf-sized would already be larger by several orders of magnitude. I wasn't expecting bison-sized.
[ Keeping the patter going is a perfect distraction while Stephen runs with it, his mouth still nattering away while Julia works; he sounds mildly aggrieved and maybe even a little affronted by the size of the creature, but there's a laugh hidden somewhere behind the complaint. ]
[ Sorry, Stephen, but she can't not laugh. Shelob nonsense. That's not something she would be a fan of either, and suddenly she has to wonder if those books are true too, and— Nope. One not-so-fictional world from her childhood is really all she can handle, thanks. ]
Maybe I've spent too much time in Fillory, but when I hear "monster" I expect it to be house-sized and require some ridiculously hard-to-find magical weapon to kill it.
[ Shaking her head in amusement, she caps the disinfectant and returns it to the table. ]
You'd make a good nurse. The bossiness goes hand-in-hand.
[ Stephen shifts on the chaise again, removing the gauze pad from his arm and then obligingly holding out his bare arm to be wrapped up in bandages. It wouldn't look much different from the arm-wraps he already wore as a sorcerer; the material just differed.
But, more to the point, his expression had rearranged itself into amused incredulity at her other comment. ]
Julia Wicker, have you fought house-sized monsters with hard-to-find magical weapons?
[ She's not surprised to hear that nurses tend to be on the bossy side. They're the ones who deal with patients on a regular basis, after all, and the ones who have to Get Shit Done when the doctors are off... doing their doctory things. It's not something she'll ever mention to Stephen but she's always had more respect for nurses than doctors for that very reason.
Removing a sterile bandage pad, she sets it over the wounds and then with a smirk starts wrapping the rolled gauze around his arm. ]
Well, he had a house-sized ego. But no, I've missed most of the actual monster fights so far. It's just been gods and goblins for me. And the occasional batshit evil magician.
Oh, I've got one of those too! His name is Mordo and he's dedicated his life to eradicating sorcerers.
[ Stephen says it lightly enough, managing to skim over it and make it sound like a joke, even if the other man's betrayal still stings. They had been friends; they had been brothers.
He holds himself still while Julia winds the gauze, but he really can't help but ask: ] What are goblins like?
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ourladytrees) wrote2022-06-18 12:21 am
no subject
[ Strange's attention drifts to the scarred stars and he can't help himself from automatically counting them for her level. Wondering, of course, why they're obliterated now, but perhaps the polite thing is to not ask about it. (Oh, he's going to cave soon and ask about it, even though he knows the questions will probably follow from her in return. Tit for tat. Equivalent exchange.) ]
The Masters of the Mystic Arts protect this dimension from magical threats. Most of the time the danger is smaller, other times it's greater but we manage to restrict it so no one even knows what happened. The duties vary.
[ He cocks his head again, listening, extending his magical senses like a cat stretching its limbs into a yawn, claws reaching out. He can't hear the spider-demon down in the basement but when he concentrates, he can feel it down there. ]
It's in one of the containment cells downstairs now. The transport spear worked.
no subject
But the part about protecting people... That resonates with her like nothing else ever has before. When she'd started learning magic, it had been a thrill, exciting and addictive and something she needed like air. Addictions so often turn deadly, though, and hers was no exception. Hearing about a group of people who use their knowledge and abilities to do good strikes her as the right thing to do. ]
It's good it worked. It would've been really shitty if you'd gone through all this and it didn't.
[ The comment is conversational and a bit distracted as she turns to dip the towel back into the water and wring it out again. A hue of pink stays behind, fine whispy trails of blood arcing through the bowl, and she tries not to think about it. He doesn't need her baggage in addition to his own. ]
You know, for magicians, it's... different. Not always in a good way. [ She dabs the towel gently around the wounds, trying to get the last stubborn streaks of blood. ] Everyone does their own thing and it's all very... Selfish. Not many I've met want to make the world a better place, or a safer one.
[ Turning the towel in her hand, the blood is vibrant against the white cloth, reminding her of— Her jaw clenches and she closes her eyes for just a moment before returning the towel to the bowl and picking up the disinfectant. ]
no subject
[ Because his own initial pursuit of magic had, of course, started off as selfish too. One shudders to think what Doctor Strange would've been like if he could just seize what he wanted and then left, and if the Ancient One hadn't taken the time to shatter those notions first. Break him down and then build him back up again. ]
Then again, Brakebills is like the Ivy League of magic, and the Ivy Leagues are full of selfish assholes too. [ There's a Columbia University mug in the kitchen downstairs; it's not much of a surprise who it came from. It certainly wasn't Wong. ]
no subject
As a fellow Columbia grad, I can confirm.
[ Yeah, she'd noticed the mug.
Julia goes quiet for a moment, her gaze visibly finally straying to his hand and all those horrible scars. Just looking at them makes her want to cry. She glances up at his face, just a flicker to gauge whether it would be okay, and then she asks her question while disinfecting the wounds he got while being a hero. ]
They're what brought you to magic, aren't they? Something happened and you were trying to fix it.
[ There's no judgment or pity in the words, only sympathetic understanding for what must have been a truly horrible situation. ]
no subject
Smart girl.
[ It runs a very thin line of sounding patronising, maybe — always a risk with Stephen Strange — but there's a serious enough cast to his voice. He just sounds quiet, and contemplative, and a little somber. As Julia looks down at his hands, he turns one of them over, his crooked fingers splayed: it quivers and trembles and can't stay still, and so he closes the fingers into a clenched fist instead. There's a sharp twinge of pain and so he loosens the grip again.
Even now, after years' worth of healing, it's a whole web of scars carving their way up and down his fingers, curling down his knuckles, marking where the metal pins and joins had held him back together. A map of his wounds: the occasional palsy, the tremors. ]
A doctor's handwriting is already notoriously bad, but I can't actually write anymore. I have to use telekinetic magic to hold a pen. I use speech-to-text on my phone more often than not.
[ Offhand. It's a way of easing into the truth of it, and how much he lost. Strange takes a deep breath; readies himself for telling this story, while Julia's hands are so gentle on his own. ]
I suppose it's actually pretty simple, when you get right down to it. I was in a car crash — it was my own fault — and my hands were ruined. And I— didn't accept it. My career was gone, and my career was the only thing I knew, it was the most important thing to me. I couldn't hold a scalpel like this. So I tried everything possible. Experimental treatments, groundbreaking surgeries.
That's where all the money went. Procedure after procedure after procedure. More operations. None of them took. In the end, I started casting the net wider. I found out one of my former patients had made a miraculous recovery, and so I demanded to know how he did it, and he told me about Kamar-Taj. I thought Eastern mysticism was a complete pile of superstitious bullshit — reiki, healing energies, all that — but I bought a plane ticket to Nepal with the very last of my money. And I found them.
They wouldn't let me in at first, but I was stubborn. Sat on their doorstep all day. Refused to leave until they told me. And through them, I finally discovered magic— real magic. I trained for months thinking I would use it to fix my hands, but in the end I chose to stick around. [ His nose crinkles; this is the part which sounds horrifically self-aggrandising and he can't touch on it without feeling mortified, even if it's the truth. The way he chose duty and the greater good over his own healing. He can't phrase it that way. ] I became a sorcerer instead of going back to being a surgeon.
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She finishes disinfecting the cuts on his forearm before he finishes speaking but she waits until he's done before she sets the disinfectant aside and gives him her proper attention. ]
You chose to protect the world instead of going back to the life you'd always known. That's big.
[ They're honest but those aren't the words she needs to say to him. What she needs to say is so much bigger... so much harder. But she has to do it; she owes him this much.
Julia doesn't know if he'll let her hold his hand but she has to try. With just one hand, she slips her fingers under and around his palm, her grip loose enough for him to pull away but firm enough for him to hopefully know this isn't some empty gesture. ]
I know that when most people say "I know how you feel" it's because they're searching for some sort of platitude to get through a tough conversation when they really have no fucking clue how you feel, but— [ She falters, her voice breaking with emotion. ] That pain and loss, that... struggle to find your way back to who you are and then discovering you can't be that person anymore...
[ Her own emotions are laid bare to him as she takes in the lines of his face, imagining the suffering he endured for so long. ]
I get that. I understand. And I am so sorry it took all that pain to bring you to who you are now.
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But it's nice, too. Feeling that muted pressure against his fingers, even if it feels like pins-and-needles and the sensation isn't as solid as it would've before the accident. Julia's hand curling around his. He squeezes back, once. ]
I appreciate the non-trite, non-platitude sympathy.
[ Stephen's not a happy man. He'd been grilled about it often enough, recently, to finally come to that realisation and accept this fact about himself. But something feels different about someone else calling it out and fully understanding, too, rather than simply pitying. Getting sympathy rather than empathy. Anyone could have Googled him and learned about the accident, but they wouldn't see the second half of the tale: the meandering path to magic, the obsessiveness, the worldview splintering into something new.
He's often had the sense that there's a lot Julia hadn't been telling him, either, those still waters running deep. Every hedge has a story.
He takes another deep breath. And he reaches out with his free hand, pressing his fingertips lightly to the constellation on her forearm, like he's mapping those stars. ]
Was that part of it?
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She's quiet after his question, the seconds ticking by in thunderous succession, and then she smiles sadly. ]
The beginning. Close enough to it, anyway.
[ His shoulder still needs to be cleaned and bandages need to be applied, but she can't bring herself to move and break whatever this is that's binding them together. So she keeps talking, watching his hands because some part of her is terrified that he'll judge her for the person she used to be. ]
My best friend, Q, and I took the Brakebills exam together. He got in and I didn't. I managed to resist the spell to wipe all memory of it from my mind and as soon as I woke up, I started searching. I tried so hard to find that school because I couldn't just go back to being normal when I knew magic was real, and when I found out Q was already there, I begged him to get them to give me another chance.
We weren't in a good place. I was desperate and cruel and he wanted to be special. The hedges found me. I joined the most powerful safehouse in the city and the head witch offered me a way to get a little revenge.
[ Thinking back to that time is hard. It feels like a lifetime ago but it still hurts like yesterday, the guilt still just as strong. ]
Q nearly died in the dream we created and when I turned to Fogg to help get him out of the spell, I was kicked out of the safehouse. That's when I got really desperate.
[ That's when people died. ]
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Stephen leaves his hand resting against her forearm, just as she keeps hers around his palm; equally reluctant to break the spell, whatever this is. ]
If the Ancient One had been less patient and less understanding with my own flaws and she'd thrown me out again after getting so close, I would've become desperate, too. God knows I gave her more than enough reasons to give up on me. I was already half-crazed and desperate with it even when I was in training.
[ Breaking into the woman's private library, stealing forbidden tomes, and casting the spells without heeding the warnings was not his finest moment. From the sounds of it, he suspects Julia could have done with a more principled mentor. Perhaps, in the end, that was where the differences lay. ]
What happened then?
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I fucked up. Over and over again. [ The agony and regret in those words are impossible to miss. ] I started going to every safehouse I could find, demanding to see whatever spells they had. It wasn't enough. I tried internet magic that backfired. I fucked someone to get information and the asshole wiped every trace of me from my boyfriend's mind. I met another hedge who'd been cast out and I came up with this stupid plan to steal spells from Marina, the one who cut us off, but it was a trap and it got Hannah killed.
[ She can still hear the screams, still see Kady's face when she told her how her mother died. She still feels every ounce of guilt and shake for the part she'd played. ]
I ended up in rehab because I didn't have anywhere else to go. I met a man who showed me that I could magic to do good and he invited me to join his coven.
[ Her voice becomes quiet and lost. ] They're all dead now.
[ Everyone except Kady. Her best bitch who'd stood beside her through the worst weeks of her life and who hates her now because of the choice she'd made. ]
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I'm so sorry.
[ In a way, he's glad that Thanos' coinflip had landed on turning him into dust. It meant Stephen hadn't been around for those five years and seeing the damage rippling out from his choice, and having to look in the eyes of the people who had lost everything. Perhaps that's cowardly, but.
Stephen's hand rises, makes a half-aborted motion towards Julia, but then drops again — he's self-conscious about the gruesome ugliness of his hands, doesn't feel quite comfortable enough yet to touch her face, her cheek, as he could with Christine, who had already seen him at his rock-bottom worst. So instead he takes one of the gauze pads, presses it to the cut to his arm which she'd already cleaned out, stemming the rest of the bleeding.
And his next question might sound like a heartless one, a matter of cold intellectual curiosity, but he is curious. As someone who had gone to great lengths himself— he always wonders. ]
Was it enough, in the end? You're a magician now, so— something must have eventually worked.
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Julia tries to keep things in perspective as much as she can. Sure, her life had been beyond shitty for a while now, with one thing after another piling up to crush her into the ground, but what was her pain in the face of what the world had endured during those five years. (It's still so completely wild to think that aliens are real, but it had certainly made it easier to embrace magic, because why wouldn't it be real too?) Even with that perspective, though, there are days when she struggles not to drown in that dark ocean of grief that lives inside her. Grief for her friends, for the people she hadn't been able to save, and for the woman she used to be.
His question feels like a knife slowly turning in her chest, awakening old wounds and making them fresh again. She knows that hadn't been his intention, he's not that cruel, but the pain is enough to make her finally pull her hand away from his, that emotional distance immediately rushing in. ]
That's...
[ Standing, she reaches for the wet towel again, wringing it out so she can work on cleaning his shoulder. The water has cooled slightly since they began but it isn't cold yet, so she stands beside him for a better angle as she very carefully begins dabbing at the sticky streaks of blood on his skin. ]
We tried to petition a god. Our Lady Underground. [ The words sound flat and like she's speaking of someone else, but maybe it's better that way. Better flat and empty than broken. ] Everyone had something they— Mennoly was dying of cancer, Silver suffered because she'd been born in the wrong body, Richard wanted to find his son who'd died. I just wanted to help my friends.
We believed it would work. We followed all the signs and believed in her. But when we finally did the summoning, she wasn't the one who came. He murdered my friends, raped me, and then just left. I had to scrub their blood off my floor... I lost my shade in the abortion and spent the next few months hunting him while he murdered dozens of other hedges. When I finally found him, when I found a way to kill him, when I had him right there, Our Lady showed up and begged me to show mercy because he was her son.
[ It's better that she has something to do with her hands. There's a numbness that's taken the place of the seething anger she'd carried with her for months but it still hurts to talk about. It probably always will. ]
That's why she gave me back my shade. Then a few days later, I really did help kill a god. Ember, the god of Fillory, because he'd grown bored of it and wanted to just destroy it and start over. An entire world full of sentient beings who deserved to live. So we stopped him, even though I'd been warned that killing a god has consequences, and now the Old Gods have taken away magic.
[ Sighing quietly, she turns to rinse out the towel again, already numb to the memories the red water brings up. ]
I think all that gets me through the day now is the hope that I can still do some more good because without that, I...
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She's standing just beside him, dispassionately working on his shoulder, and Stephen understands how useful it is that he can't see her face from this angle, and that he doesn't have to think about how to rearrange his own expression upon hearing these horrors. 'I'm sorry that happened to you' doesn't encompass it. He can't even conceive of it. So instead, when he finally speaks, his voice has a thread of sympathetic anger: ]
Fuck those gods. It sounds like you did the right thing, even if they retaliated. If there's one universal constant causing misery, it's beings who carry an inordinate power over others. They treat humans like ants. They misuse our desires. I've seen a man gone half-mad with grief over losing his family, trying to summon a god to be reunited with them, even if it would destroy our dimension— that god brought him to more misery in the end. I'm starting to suspect they always do.
[ He swivels in his seat, reaches up and catches her elbow; just enough to draw her attention back to him. ]
Julia. Listen. You'll always have a home here, if you need it. I grouse about them sometimes, but the Masters of the Mystic Arts can and do do good. They can be annoyingly principled, even, but I'd rather that over the alternative. They took me in when I was at loose ends and didn't have anywhere else to go. So if I can at all offer the same to you—
[ Because in one dizzying moment, it feels like he's looking at an even more shattered and broken version of himself. A chance to reach out the same helping hand which had lifted him up from the dirt. ]
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Stephen's response surprises her in the best way. Fuck those gods, indeed. Gods are assholes, there's not anything that could convince her otherwise, and his agreement on that point just raises her estimation of him.
And then he breaks her heart and puts it back together in a way that hurts a little less. She can feel her soul healing with every uttered syllable and it makes her feel... ]
Thank you.
[ Wonder and gratitude fill her voice, giving more importance to two very simple words. She can't follow them with the typical you have no idea what that means to me because he does know. More than possibly anyone else on this entire planet, he knows how much those words mean to her, and because of that, she knows he doesn't say them lightly.
Lifting her free hand to rest gently on the back of his head, she leans in and presses a kiss to his hair. Normally, she'd hug him, but since he was just filleted by a giant spider, this will have to do instead. ]
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That kiss to the top of his head is unexpected, too, but he finds it warming some old and forgotten hearth in his chest. Stephen was often so prickly and acerbic that casual physical affection didn't come easily to him, or others often didn't feel comfortable offering it. So he shifts on the chaise— a little skittish, like a cat unaccustomed to the fond contact, but he flashes her a reassuring smile to show it wasn't unwelcome.
He's still reeling from all that information, spinning loose as he jots it into his mental catalogue on Julia Wicker. And he has his own addendums they haven't covered yet — did I ever tell you about the time I died fourteen million times? — but they've probably plumbed enough awful shit for today. There's time.
Which reminds him— ]
I really did think I'd get us a bottle of wine or something before we had to talk about any of that.
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Giving him a bright smile in return, she grabs the disinfectant for his shoulder. ]
Rain check. [ A pause, then her expression shifts into a smirk with just a hint of mischief. ] Unless you need something now to take the edge off. I'm sure these hurt like a bitch.
[ Though his tolerance is probably very different than it used to be, given what he went through with his hands. She can't even imagine the months he must have spent in constant pain as he went through one surgery and treatment after another.
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It's fine. I'm used to it.
[ Because she's right: considering those long helpless months after the accident, and even the daily throb of nerve damage in his hands and which doesn't respond to average painkillers... these gouges were nothing. One of the most recurring tools in Stephen's arsenal was his ability to weather pain, and to suffer. It turned out that dying well was a skill like any other. ]
But there's a difference between need and want. I'll fetch us something after you're done here. What's your poison?
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If we're going straight: whiskey. Mixed: vodka gibson.
[ Julia knows her way around a bar, okay? She's tried just about every type of alcohol there is and experienced a full exciting array of hangover symptoms in the process. (The latter hadn't been nearly as much fun as the former.) Visiting the Physical Kids' cottage at Brakebills was always nice because even if everything was going to shit, the alcohol always flowed freely. ]
But I'm really not that picky. I'll drink anything that isn't super sweet. What about you?
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[ When Julia finally starts to apply the antiseptic, despite his insistence that he was fine, Stephen recoils a little; neck stiffening and shoulders curling in on himself, muscles tightening with the pain as he hisses. His fingers dig into the overpadded cushions of the chaise. It's always a shock, even if you're used to it and even if you're expecting it. ]
Remind me to bring more supplies next time someone calls me up talking about a spider. I thought it would be much smaller.
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Sorry...
[ She murmurs the apology as she continues applying a generous coating of antiseptic, not wanting to take any chances after his earlier mention of toxins because, really, there's no telling what kind of germs that thing might have. But even with the practicality of the measure, she hates seeing the physical signs of the pain it's causing him. So, distraction time. Keep him talking through the worst of it. ]
What exactly were you expecting? A dog-sized spider monster? Something you could catch with a net?
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[ Keeping the patter going is a perfect distraction while Stephen runs with it, his mouth still nattering away while Julia works; he sounds mildly aggrieved and maybe even a little affronted by the size of the creature, but there's a laugh hidden somewhere behind the complaint. ]
Absolute Shelob nonsense. I'm not a fan.
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Maybe I've spent too much time in Fillory, but when I hear "monster" I expect it to be house-sized and require some ridiculously hard-to-find magical weapon to kill it.
[ Shaking her head in amusement, she caps the disinfectant and returns it to the table. ]
All done with that part. Bandage time.
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[ Stephen shifts on the chaise again, removing the gauze pad from his arm and then obligingly holding out his bare arm to be wrapped up in bandages. It wouldn't look much different from the arm-wraps he already wore as a sorcerer; the material just differed.
But, more to the point, his expression had rearranged itself into amused incredulity at her other comment. ]
Julia Wicker, have you fought house-sized monsters with hard-to-find magical weapons?
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Removing a sterile bandage pad, she sets it over the wounds and then with a smirk starts wrapping the rolled gauze around his arm. ]
Well, he had a house-sized ego. But no, I've missed most of the actual monster fights so far. It's just been gods and goblins for me. And the occasional batshit evil magician.
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[ Stephen says it lightly enough, managing to skim over it and make it sound like a joke, even if the other man's betrayal still stings. They had been friends; they had been brothers.
He holds himself still while Julia winds the gauze, but he really can't help but ask: ] What are goblins like?
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