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There will be no time for sleep. Not fully, after that meeting concludes, where gods and famed legendary wizards and French women depart.
Wanda sits on the bed, her coat slung over the back of a chair to be brushed down and rubbed by oils or protective touches. Gloves peek from its pockets. Crossed belts holding pouches and knife sheathes hang over it, in ready appearance. The black shirt is peeled off, another one completely ruined, her boots in dire need of a cobbler. Pants, replacement for the other ruined ones, are similarly folded up. It's just the cotton robe and the corset and appropriate shorts.
It helps to know mending spells, though they are not something she touches for whatever reasons.
The score of bruises and scratches on her upper back is why she can't have nice things. She uses a wooden comb to drag through her hair, getting the remnants of twigs and grass out. Pollen. Staring at nothing, her expression is grim as she stares at one little bit of black seed fluff on a bloody handkerchief.
An hour before the meeting, she hacked it out of her own skin. The wound has healed over, no proof of its existence, the only spellcraft she dared.
"You handled the meeting well."
*
"Hmm." Strange stands before the bedside stand, the line of the bed brushing his thigh, as he stares out the window that stretches along the wall. Evening has fully fallen. He plucks anxiously at one of the ties to his battle-vest even as his eyes narrow more towards the distance, towards the siren-like screech of the Hellmouth that continues to grate on his subconscious. "Thank you," he finally adds, belatedly, clearly emerging from dark musings by the expression he's trying to wipe from his face. "It went as well as I could have hoped."
Turning in his spot, his steel-blue eyes land on her person and then on the contents of the handkerchief.
He's not slow, really, he isn't - just distracted. "What happened then?" he asks very quietly as he walks over and kneels down before her on one knee, placing himself just beneath her line of sight.
*
The good Doctor does not offer a healing spell, not yet. It feels…intrusive of him to offer, especially with the cloud hanging about her.
*
His stress calls to her. Wanda is hardly immune, for all she wishes she were. The unstable scar ripped through her aura is slowly healing, but at a lesser pace than satisfies her. "A shapeshifting dead woman attacked Pietro and me in the park," she says, focused on bald truth. "First a raven, then wearing the form of a young woman. She made the very earth blood-drinking and seeking the living. I denied her twice, so she struck with a mind bolt."
The comb is tugged harder through her hair, pulled down. Smoldering eyes narrow, shot through by a streak of wine.
"It shattered my shield. A talented and skillful mage, then. The magic stank of rot and evil, not like the Hellmouth." Still she keeps combing through her curls, hacking into the rat's nest with no care about breaking strands. "I may have been unhappy when she charmed Pietro. I may have disliked her filthy grass and its black seeds trying to corrupt the living. I may have been angry."
Another snag and she makes an irritated sound, the comb stuck, helplessly moored among the chestnut tangles. Her teeth grind, jaw set, and she swears in Russian.
*
He had shifted to kneeling now, resting weight on heels and hands on thighs. His posture straightens as Strange listens, eyes going flinty with a protective surge of emotion far too late to be of any service to Wanda.
When the comb appears to get snarled up in the tangles of her hair, he winces minutely at each of her angry tugs. Finally, he can't stand watching her yank in frustration and pushes himself up to sit on the bed beside her in one smooth and graceful move. He then reaches over to place a gentle hand atop hers, attempting to arrest the motion of the strained comb and capture a touch of her within his warm grasp.
"First off, is everyone okay? Are you okay?" A softer tone in that second query. She's not okay - he can tell. Perhaps letting her explain further will help lance some of the boiling light in her irises.
*
The mechanical lift and fall of her hand is supposed to straighten her hair. It is supposed to straighten out the tangles in fate. The movement puts order over the wild, the chaotic, but fails to serve that purpose when the nexus of many knotted points resists being smoothed and fixed. His hand closing over hers halts Wanda, one or two futile tugs up or down doing nothing to free the teeth of the comb.
"Sometimes I think I should chop it off," she murmurs, a scathing review of the bountiful chestnut and flame-licked curls. Her hand trembles under his, where it should be solid, freed from the grievous neurological damage that halted Doctor Strange's future to be a different doctor, a metaphysical one.
The happy path forked off the moment she met a crow and thought to parlay rather than drop a teleport gate under it. "She hurt him. She spilled his blood." These are words given through a flat tone, because the air is starting to mildly vibrate in the tensed rage chained with straw.
"He suffered. I bid her go." Her teeth scrape and she stares up to his flint and steel gaze, half expecting… It's not clear what. Judgment, probably. "She went. I think I tore her… part of her… out of her body."
*
A slant to his brows indicates pity, an acknowledgement to her frustration, a hint of sad amusement in that she'd ever consider shearing off the beautiful locks. He thumbs a loose wave caught between his fingers and thumb even as he continues holding on to the hand that trembles beneath his.
"It would be a shame to-"
Strange holds his tongue to listen to her and those dark brows slam together once more. Lightning flashes distantly in his eyes even as he inhales in a hiss through his teeth. Her aura is beginning to prickle at him, to dance along bared skin like tiny static-inclined insects, and he now places his free hand on her thigh. A low counter-hum of his own magic can likely be felt. The effects are intended to draw focus to the now, to him fully.
Dark eyes meet light, hold, and he speaks quietly. "If you're asking me about whether you were right or wrong, that isn't for me to decide. However, I would have been equally aggressive were I in your place." The hand on her thigh rubs back and forth, soothing repetitive motions that then become centered in the shifting of his thumb, like a metronome. "You tore part of her self out?" Self as in soul, essence.
His fingertips curve to fully grasp her hand and comb and attempt to bring them down and away, just for now, until she's calm enough to avoid hurting herself accidentally.
*
The tricky comb is wound up in her hair, needing some tugging for freedom. Wavy hair with a slight tendency to curl exposed to water and sorcery, then put through the wringer of being assaulted, does not like to give up its prizes freely.
Nor does the witch. Wanda hesitates but permits Strange to extricate the wooden instrument, setting it aside. She still holds his hand, resting her palm and his against her shoulder, arm crossed over her chest.
Validation of her anger matched with calm words does little to settle the maelstrom one way or the other. His visible reaction warrants a hardening line of her mouth, teeth chewing the inner corner of her lip. A shaking frisson races through extremities, rippling down to fingers and washed back towards the core, her heartbeat staggering drunkenly. Glowing filaments swirl through the void of her black eyes.
"I do not know." The hardest four words she might ever speak are ground out after an inappropriately long pause. "She threw him into the path. Too late to twist it from a dimensional shift. So it took on different form."
Since when does sorcery change shape based on outcomes, except in highly elaborate rituals keyed to a varied sort of circumstances? The cascade of if then statements requires powerful hooks, a detailed spell, one clearly not riding her, awaiting its trigger.
Well. Sorcery can. It can anything. But Pandora and her mystic box are both darkly distressed. "The grass ate her body. It took the blood from her like it would have me. Pietro is secure for a moment. But the bitch is dead like the living, not the undead she was before. Her body was alive. She should have no soul, but it separated, I saw something. Maybe into the Hellmouth right there." Wishful thinking, she knows it.
"We don't know what happened to him. He still has the speed. He has things that should to be."
*
His thumb slowly continues its soothing rubbing across the back of her hand as he listens, eyes never straying from her face.
"It sounds like you separated the animation from her undead body, whatever that animation was," he says in the silence that follows her explanation. "I can go see what to make of the area, see if the residual magic will tell me anything more. Tell me where it happened and I will do this." A saddening of his face draws crow's feet of weariness. "But your brother - Pietro," he corrects himself. A memory of the silver-haired string bean flashes before his eyes. The echoing reply of his words lingers in Strange's mind even as he brushes a wave of hair from Wanda's face. "Where is he? What…things shouldn't he have?"
The good Doctor dreads hearing the answer. He won't pray, but he will hope fervently that his mantle will have no play in this outcome of fate.
*
"It wasn't magic."
No. That sort of response comes with the quiver of her shoulders and the morphing of her mouth into a downward arc. Her fingers curl around his, holding onto that lifeline without thinking about it. Of course the contact makes sense; babies sharing the universe together form tangible connections. They never really are alone. Others who fall into that spectrum might be subject to the same rules. Connections matter. Connections can be all they have, all they are.
"Near the Hellmouth, within the field, beyond any of the trails. Four blasted trees like dancers. I can show you the place." He isn't asked to go there alone on her account. "She opened his trachea with her fingernails. I tore them apart. Her last strike was showing me the bone. The flaying." As the words fall with ominous purpose, they crash into an orchestral movement of dolorous insight, cymbals and percussion vibrating through the spheres as Uranus swirls on its axis and the stars quiver in their revolutions across the everlasting dark.
Her aura is moving through a larghetto on its way to a requiem.
"I saw it. The bones. What she did came undone, when he got to his feet and I told her… I don't remember what I told her."
*
Once Strange sees her shoulders quiver, his heart sinks.
In an attempt to soothe and offer a sense of controlled surroundings, he waits until she's finished speaking before releasing her hand. All of her, angles and curves, lanky legs and tremulous arms, all of her is gathered into his lap. She'll be sitting sideways, legs hanging from one side of his thighs; he tucks her torso against him, her arms carefully bent and folded before her. One of his arms wraps around her to steady her leaning, the other meshes itself within the confines of her palms.
"I'm sorry, Wanda," he murmurs into her hair, kissing her forehead where he can reach it. What else can he offer but succor after such a harsh revelation? It seems like her aura may have quieted, but perhaps it's only because it's held closer to his person, possibly beginning to weave into his, which he allows to expand with the touch of a warm spring breeze.
"Your brother is alive though, right? Through your…not magic?" Two questions he'd like to have answered, no heavier weight between them.
*
Such anger floods through her that will not be denied, the complex alignments of sorcery, emotion, and a breaking heart dangerous enough. They are patched together in part by what she does not know: whether her other self is torn to pieces or mostly intact, if she caused it, if they can repair the damage. Guilt and fury, revenge and hate are chipped off her.
Pulling her in causes her to blink, bestirred from memory. Reviewing those harsh memories over and over, with a clinical light, doesn't help her to understand any better what cannot reveal itself. The whole pivot happens without much knowledge, another of those new things. Wanda does take better to it than might be expected; Pietro moves so fast he tends to put her wherever he likes, and she accepts how she ends up easily. So curled up against Strange, leaning into his chest… that is new.
"I should be sorry. To him. I did something to him. He thinks he is alive. I am not so sure." Dreadful words show as the palms of her hands grind into her closed eyes. "Have I made him what we hate, and hunt, I will undo it. I have to undo it. It isn't possible to make him undead like that, it cannot happen. But if it has, I will take it away again. What I do can be undone." Agatha's education, there, shows itself. Clean up your own messes, girl. The voice practically rings in her head.
"Unless it is something else." Her eyes are still shut, even as she tries not to lean too much. Lean, not lean, these are difficult demands for someone who is trying to hide from her own weakness, and has no idea how to show vulnerability. She does not know, and it's up to him to teach her that lesson. Or endure her failing again and again at it. "Maybe something in him was different, and warped what she did."
*
She probably can't see Strange's eyes, angled as they both are, and he closes them slowly with a sense of pain-stricken relief as he listens.
Alive. Make him undead. Undone. He is different and warped what she did…? So…Pietro is alive, but…not-alive. Because of her. Oh…that is far too familiar to him.
He can feel the fine thrum of her muscles resisting his containing hug, whether through fear or stress or ache he doesn't know - perhaps all of them. With quiet persistence, he interlaces his fingers with at least one of her hands once more, pulling it against his chest. His heart is beating hard enough, having never really slowed even after the cessation of the Council. She should be able to feel its steady rhythm as well as the deepening breaths he offers in subtle attempt to induce a mirroring in her.
"I…understand, in a sense," he hedges, voice growing hollower as he continues. "My brother was killed in front of me. Hit by a bus." His words are clipped, sentences foreshortened to preserve his composure. "We argued over our father and his temper led him to walk into the street without looking. I don't know what I could have done and cannot undo it." His throat is cleared as he meets her eyes. "At least you are able to undo what you did. I can help as best that I can. All we can do is try and give our best. What more can the world ask of us…?"
It's a plaintive sort of question, offered to reality as a whole and perhaps even to the gods.
*
Smoky voice flooding in a hint of pain, the brittle shape gives sounds the only funnel they have from running waxy over her palate in a mess of hiccups. Worse. Never show weakness, never; it's a maxim she fights for even without giving anyone a fair shot of sabotaging or diverting her focus elsewhere. "We always risked becoming our prey. Stalk monsters and sometimes you lose. You die. We were ready for that. He kills me if I become a monster, or I took him." Quite the brutal view on things. "I failed to do my best. He is Pietro, but what if he is not? Did my magic awaken the curse in us, and am I going to have to take his life if I fail? A different spell. A different vision, it would have changed…"
Would have, would have. Should, would, and can't. She bites her tongue to avoid continuing on like a prattling child.
Her eyes shut and she pulls in a shuddering breath, rubbing her cheek against his hand. Strange's flattens hers to his chest, the added pressure driving them together. From his vantage, it's easy to see the many bruises overlapping like some weird tropical garden coming into bloom upon her skin. Her back bears the brunt of where she landed. His heartbeat steadies her, a mingling of steadiness. Drowsiness has no place, but after time, however long, it will calm her enough to sink into him.
"I'm sorry. For how your brother died, and how you must feel after." Her voice is very small, barely a whisper. "I cannot take the pain. The words are not enough."
*
Strange could never imagine having to make such a pact. Fate tore his family from him without any sort of forewarning or offered chance to say otherwise. No doubt she feels the bobble of his throat against her hair even as he kisses at the locks once more in silent apology for something he had no hand in.
"There are no words for such a thing," he replies, his words equally small. He's had many years to come to grips with the deaths of his loved ones, but it aches, much like an old war wound in the cold, every now and then. "I think…all we can do sometimes is endure." The good Doctor pauses, having to collect himself for a moment. "Endure and rest. Would you like some tea?"
He can offer the gift of a certain blend, one he uses when he needs to consider nothing but the silence of heavy sleep during the night hours.
*
Apologies given for things not done. What happens when they transgress against one another? Will there be such easy transmissions?
Her eyes close. "Tea?" The very notion of it is so ordinary, so unbelievable that she is left at odds, Wanda grappling for a shard of sanity. "I… That probably would be wise. No fighting on an empty stomach." Even though she has done it many times. Her father used to abandon her and Pietro with nothing in the woods, and make them not only reach shelter, but hunt the very horrors that fill stories and myths with little better than their hands. They weren't even ten, then. Nor together, for that would be an advantage.
Her tongue moves over her dry lips, trying to recover some semblance of humanity when there is none. She pats his ribcage, feeling that steady heartbeat. Its boom reminds her of something she would rather not say. Something she would rather not confess. Tell. Tell. Tell. A bell ringing in the dark, a reminder.
Always things they do not want to do. Wanda draws the short stick. "Your plan to take the Morgan woman." The flat statement, a segue. "She wants you. You are too important, too critical. Like putting a general on the front of the line, as the French girl said." The one who believes fate is immutability, that fate is all. She doesn't know the half, and the brunette is living proof. Her hand opens, a flower taking shape, glowing petals peeling back to reveal the thin stamens and speckled magic inside. "You have another option. Send me out. She will be unlikely to care, at first." Her mouth tightens. "Until I say my name. I can lie to her, and give her a truth. She will know what I am, and it won't take much. That you planned to use me to seal the Hellmouth is almost the truth. You have a card she doesn't know you have, yes?"
Her eyes shut. The flower burns incarnadine, flame and eldritch lines, raised up. "The National Socialists… the Ahnenerbe… were not the ones we ran from after they made us. Not really."
Thud. Thud.
"The one behind the Hellmouth…"
Beat.
"He did."
*
Strange returns the gentle tapping on his chest with a single pat of his own to the back of her hand. It's an odd movement to him. Perhaps it's a nervous gesture on her part; Wanda is frazzled as a whole, even if there's a noticeable drain from the starting level, minutes ago that feel now to be hours. Sympathy colors his once-over of her and he begins the process of removing her from his lap.
Oops, nope - pause, she has more to say. No reason to dislodge her and wander off for tea just yet.
Well, yes, he considers himself a general. He's leading the charge in this particular fight. An antiquated concept, sure, but a noble one. The good Doctor has seen his fair share of impossible obstacles removed by his own hands before - after all, the impossibilities are endless for him. He'll gladly fly the banner of his crimson Cloak and cry havoc as he enters battle. It's when the young woman offers her suggestion that his interested moue begins to slip into one of concerned opposition. The vermilion fleur-de-magique is a pretty distraction, but he immediately focuses back to her as he listens, brows knotted fiercely.
The silence rings in the wake of her admission. There's a faint silvery light about the centers of his irises, even as he chews on the inside of his mouth. If she was waiting for some dramatic response, she'll be disappointed. The Sorcerer Supreme tilts his head to one side as he leans away from her, resting his weight now on his hands. Her position on his lap isn't revoked. She's given the neurosurgeon's searching look. His apprentice hates it, for he tends to peel back any lies to reveal the truth when placing his target beneath this visual microscope.
"You are god-touched. Unfortunately, by Chthon." Oh yes, he has no worries about saying the name. Let the Elder God take note and be wary if he can hear its utterance by this man's lips. "I would expect nothing less of him if he's tried to capture you in the past. The gods don't release lightly what they've touched." He's a clear example of the molding of the Vishanti and their fingerprints lie on him in the silvering of his temples, lambent light in his eyes, and weary slump to his small smile. "The fact that you can enter the Sanctum, much less be in my presence without the wards tearing you to bloody shreds or even be subject to the magic of the Eye -" and he nods down to the quiescent diadem hanging from his neck, "-means that I'm not worried right now, Wanda. I'm not."
He adjusts the angle of his arms, locking his elbows as he narrows his eyes. "Now, this business about you running in recklessly and taunting Morgan? No." A steely note in his tone, one that books no argument. "Absolutely not. No one will be risking themselves needlessly. Holding Morgan's focus is my responsibility alone." He adds, to soften things, "I have another way you can be of aid."
*
There will be things to be grateful for, that he still keeps his arms around her and allows her to remain where she is. The only thing Wanda can count on is her silent acceptance for what must come, perhaps a touch fatalistic, but she's been raised in the Balkans to Tibet, caught in the long shadows of ideology.
While Strange speaks, she makes not a sound, except the one audible gulp. His voice shapes a rainstorm, not the violent boom or crackle of thunder, but the beginning sheen of a shower that eventually sprinkles precipitation upon the parched landscape of her being. Rainfall has its rhythms, and so does the doctor's steady explanations. When he confesses not being surprised, her eyes widen a little. Mouth goes tight, too.
But as trees don't defy the sky, she does not interrupt him, her face shuttered in thought over the chewy matters at hand. Her teeth sink into her lip in that habitual place, bruising the inner corner, leaving rough texture behind. A kiss is likely to betray it, if that comes to pass.
His shirt is smoothed over by her palm, setting it back to rights instead of being crumpled up in her fist, where she captured the fine cloth without quite realizing it. The only thing Wanda can set to rights, but she tries, at least. More notably, she dares to meet that gaze.
See me as I am, that lift of her chin declares. What has she to hide except nothing and everything? The fault lines are already there.
"Yaga thought so too. That we would never be left alone." Her voice is still quiet. What does he read in the wrack of the musica universalis, howling in its beautiful alignments to stars and spheres and galaxies?
Morgan. It comes back to her, strange half-sister in spirit if not everything or anything else. "Not recklessly running in. Selectively planned at a point of interest, or dangled in front of her. I am more easily lost than you are. If you are lost, what about the rest of the world?" He calls her reckless, she calls the pot and kettle the same thing. "I can be something unexpected. If it puts her off, that is an advantage. But you have your plans." Silence again, forfeiting the stage.
*
ROLL: Wanda +rolls 1d100 for a result of: 92
*
"And you will be something unexpected," Strange continues from her hanging statement. Another shift to take some strain from his wrists, forwards now, so her shoulder nearly brushes against his sternum once more. "I will be her sole focus. I intend to make her dance," and he grins; it's nearly a snarl, full of anticipation to a true fire-fight of wills and spells.
"But someone needs to end the dance. Your daggers." He nods towards where her belt hangs over the back of her chair. The barest metallic edge of a dagger shows from one of the leather sheathes. "If they contain iron, you can end this, Wanda. I beard the lion, you take the shot. Should Prince Thor allow for Lady Sif to join us, that's one sword. Illyana, despite clearly not receiving my summons," - or ignoring them, this is a possibility, but he doubts it as she would never turn down a chance to swat things with a Soulsword - "will be present wielding her weapon. I even have a sword for Lady Sif to borrow," he adds as a sort of spoken half-thought, half-reminder to himself.
His steel-blue eyes meet hers once more. "Assassination. From the shadows, destroy her physical body. I will take care of the rest. Merlin can even cast an illusion on you, protect you further still until you get your chance."
His lips, closed, move in a little motion suggesting that he's mauling the inside of his cheek momentarily. A little huff of a laugh, the minutest pained frown that flashes over him, and he cants his head a little to the side once more. "The world won't lose either of us. My mother used to tell me, when things got difficult, that I was given this life because I was strong enough to live it. You - it's the same for you. That we're both still alive is testament to this." A final sigh, seeming to signal the conclusion of his thoughts, along with, "Everything will be fine."
*
"Your gods can hear you, and mine too," Wanda murmurs, sinking a little lower into the cradle of Strange's lap. Her bare legs slide over the bed slightly as her knees rise, fitting them slightly closer together. A hiss mellows the bite of the corset against her bruised shoulder blades; she needs more than a little love to recover from that harsh landing. "You get any notions about sacrificing yourself, I will take your place." She turns her face towards the staring eye, inert as it may be.
"I vow in blood and spell, I give myself freely. I would like it to hurt a little less, but that's asking too much."
And they say arrogance only runs in warlocks? Or something other than pride, something far, far away from pride.
That much seems to be settled for her, the brunette pushing her tangled hair off her shoulder. Conviction takes strange shapes. She rubs her hands together as though to warm them, the banished flower leaving a hailstorm of sparks and black rose on the air. Tipping her head up towards him, the good doctor gets a long, searching look of his own turned upon him. The way her pupils dilate and flick back and forth suggests she reading something.
And she is, reading probabilities. Things beyond things.
"You know I will be cross to be left at home, tied up, or you go and try to leave us all behind." Like jumping through dimensions. But it may be the cost and consequence. Lips licked and blotted, she bumps her forehead against his jaw, emotionally battered beyond belief, bleeding from a thousand new psychic wounds. "Choose carefully. Some of us lo… Very much - ah - worry. Merlin has illusions she cannot see through?"
*
ROLL: Strange +rolls 1d100 for a result of: 98
*
Wait. Waaaaiiiit a second. Did he…? Nah. Nah, couldn't have been.
Why is his heart up in his throat? His eyes betray him, constricting and then widening once more, as they hold hers.
"Yes, ones that she cannot see through," he says slowly, as if using the spoken words as handholds on the sheer cliff face of his shock. She just basically told him that she was going to throw an elbow in his ribs if he tried anything stupid and take the killing blow.
Cognizant speech keeps shoving down the sudden maelstrom in his stomach. "Wanda, it is my duty as Sorcerer Supreme to deal with Morgan. You won't be helping me if you go into the battle thinking that I'm going to get myself killed. Come on, have a little faith." A sardonic smirk of sorts curves his lips along with one eyebrow. "And why would I leave you here, in the Sanctum? We have an agreement. I promised you a home." His voice drops in steadiness and his aura crackles with the faintest distant thunder. "I promised you that you wouldn't be alone. I don't want to be alone. I want you there…by my side."
His throat shifts as he swallows. She has the capacity to wound him on a soul-deep level here. Tit-for-tat, he's lowering the thickest shield of all in his life on the chance utterance of an unfinished word.
*
"And it is my duty as me to see you don't die." It wouldn't be an elbow to the ribs; she might simply bend reality around him in answer to whatever Morgan Le Fay cares to conjure on the brink of damn action. Wanda acknowledges she has no authority there, none binding over the Sorcerer Supreme, and those ephemeral trinity behind him determining where he will go and when and how.
This is so far beyond familiar territory, she might as well be upon Mars. The languid turns are gone, and she is so braced, crude mountainous terrain drawn from the peak of her knees down to the deep valley between thigh and stomach, another rounded crest higher, and her shoulders drawn at angles. So too her elbows, braced on his leg to keep her upright.
Nothing to the staccato heights soaring around her in the sight, the tempo cranked out of its usual serene pulsations to a wilder remonstration against fear and restraint. Soaring melodies mingle together, the playful harmonies plucked between stellar vibrations as the strings section. Enchanting notes sweep up in a hopeful crescendo, chased by the heartbeat pattern plucked out in shimmering glissades on the harp, if Sirius such. Allegro accelerates into a vivace, spinning out trails of nebulous carmine to enfold him under her invisible mantle.
The cloak already proves he likes to wear red.
Her fingers steal higher, landing to perch upon his cheekbone near his silvered temples. Strange is given the longest of looks, and the orchestral swells tumble over, filling troughs in a sonic ocean and gathering again to brush over his senses in a mingling of woodwinds fed by the solar winds, breath of life.
"I don't know what home feels like," she states simply, her palm barely grazing his skin and stealing away the coolness that might lie there. She burns hot.
And if he dares to look away, it won't change anything. "This other heaviness in my heart, I know. You have bewitched me." If it could be any more convoluted, it would not be the witch figuring out her truths. "You make me want. You are this need. It is yours, then."
His free hand is pressed to her chest, in case he should have any doubts. It may be a very bad choice on her part, a liability too far, too soon. Too late.
*
The thrum of her heart is fast beneath his palm, where it now rests with heel on skin and fingers across her collarbone. Her aura is another thing entirely, one that rolls slowly over him and meshes with his own crack-snapping cloud of lightning-blue magic.
A blink and his Sight kicks in to wash his eyes in silver. It's all a flood of interstellar colors through the air around them, in incarnadine sweeps and glacial hues, amaranthine where the Mystic energies weave in and out as playfully as otters in a calmed sea.
"I think we could argue about who has bewitched whom," he murmurs, holding her eyes in return. In the distance, in a sense of sound, Strange can hear a tremulous music playing - now he can smell the musk of black roses filling the space around them.
Turning his head towards her hand that rests so tentatively along his cheekbone, he shifts his weight and captures it within his own, presses a single kiss to her knuckles. "I'll take it."
And that's that.