Stephen Strange was proud to say that it took a great deal to rattle him.
It was an occupational hazard, after all.
Fear was a liability when your job required you to throw yourself headfirst into life-threatening disasters, one after the next. The Masters Of The Mystic Arts trained to overcome fear on the regular by dint of the job requiring level headedness and so much more beyond that. Couple that mentality with a few years of experience and very little could phase him.
So the creeping cold wariness he could feel threading through his form spoke volumes to his current situation.
"Wanda?"
"Hmm?" She smiled, all gentle warmth and kind eyes, the sun shining softly down on the little meadow they had walked through as they talked, the smell of flowers and wildlife gentle and alluring.
It should have been a comforting gesture.
It wasn't.
Something was wrong
He'd been reluctant to visit despite everything. Wanda had exiled herself, cut herself off from the rest of the world and as much as he had hated to acknowledge it, she had damn good reasons.
Many had suffered in the aftermath of the Infinity War, but Wanda's pain had been exorbitated, and made that much worse by her powers lashing out in ways he had yet to understand and endangering an entire town's worth of innocent civilians.
Suffice it to say, the results had been... deeply damaging, and had it not been for America's plight he likely wouldn't have approached her at all. She'd more than earned the right to her privacy, and while it may not be healthy to encourage the kind of absolute isolation he suspected she was forcing herself into, Stephen was self aware enough to admit that he wasn't exactly a paragon of good mental health himself. He had no right to throw stones from his glass house, or so the saying went.
Still.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, and he'd buried his reservations and chosen to try bring his former colleague into the fold. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but the moment he laid eyes on Wanda it was immediately clear that something was deeply, viscerally wrong. and it felt as though his spine was made of ice. His blood ran cold at the mere sight of her.
"Why don't you bring America here?"
Had circumstances been different, had he not been clinging to her every word to gain an impression of her state of mind, he may have missed the damning slip up.
"I asked you to help the girl."
And she had seemed receptive when he told her of America's plight. When he told her of her powers. But there was one thing he hadn't told her.
"Yes?" She shook her head, confusion crossing her features. "Stephen, I already agreed to protect...ah"
"Wanda-" The warning in his tone was faint but unmistakable, and he mentally readied himself for anything. She ignored his reaction, though, and chose to flash him a resigned smile
"You never told me her name, did you?"
And that was all the confirmation he needed. One question answered. A thousand more promptly took it's place.
"No." Why did always come to this, in the end? "No I did not."
He didn't want a fight, but damn it all, Wanda was hunting a child. He needed to know, and he called his energies into being, sparks beginning to coalesce-
"None of that."
He nearly doubled over, the breath driven from his lungs as the unnatural sensation of his unwoven spell being torn out of his control wracked through his body and his nerves lit up with agony.
What was...
He paled as he processed what had just occured.
She...She hadn't broken his spell, she had unraveled it entirely. And if she could nullify magic in such a way-
Abruptly, he remembered Tentacle Monster and it's apparent ability to neutralise arcane forces. If Wanda was the one who'd granted it the ability.
He reached for his powers, trying to accumulate even a modicum of energy to work with.
Nothing happened, and his senses were blank. It was like the magic wasn't there at all.
Oh, he was so absolutely fucked it was almost funny.
Wanda smiled again, and though she had yet to cast a single offensive spell he had very little doubt she knew the direction his thoughts had taken.
"I'm sorry, Stephen." Her tone was polite, conversational even, and that made the cold look in her eyes all the more jarring. "That was an overreaction. Let's be civil."
The implied 'or else' in her words was loud and clear.
He smiled with confidence he didn't feel. "Call me old fashioned, but as far as I'm concerned a civil conversation between friends should be built on honesty."
She tilted her head in consideration, then she shrugged. "Fair enough."
He clamped down on the sudden fear as her eyes flashed blood red, thinking he'd gone too far.
But she didn't attack, merely raised her hands-
And then reality was reshaped, the lush meadow and gleaming sunlight washed away like paint as the lies were stripped away, revealing the twisted wasteland her mere presence had created.
Devoid of life, dead and blackened earth below a blood red sky. A land forever tainted.
And it didn't end there, for Wanda herself was changed.
Skin pale and shallow, hair a shade too dark and features edging on gaunt, all accented by the crown she wore with an unnatural grace.
She chuckled softly as she caught sight of his horrified expression, deciding to give a little twirl before settling her hands on her hips.
"I take it that you don't appreciate the makeover?"
"What have you done to yourself?"
Stephen doesn't do a damn thing to tamp down on the horror lacing his words, and he's somewhat gratified when her smile finally slips.
"Done to myself? I finally found myself, Stephen." The smile doesn't make a reappearance, but the satisfaction and victory dripping off of her words was every bit as nauseating. "Found out who I really am, and what I have to do to make things right."
"And the first thing you come up with is hunting down and terrorising a child?"
Internally, his thoughts were a screaming mess, because he knew Wanda. She was a hero, a good person, he knew that for fact, so what in the actual hell was wrong-?
And then he caught sight of the objecthovering just behind her, and a great many things start to make a twisted kind of sense.
"The Darkhold." He spoke flatly, tone about as dead as he felt inside. "My god, Wanda"
"You know of my little treasure?"
She sounded fucking delighted and he wanted to hurl.
"I know enough to recognise the Book Of The Damned." He gritted out, thoughts whirling furiously. "Enough to know that it is evil and that it corrupts anyone it comes into contact with."
He gave her a meaningful look, but she rolled her eyes and waved him off. "So you know of it's reputation."
"Reputation?" He asked with incredulous disbelief "You make it sounds as though it's unearned. Wanda, it is literally titled, in big bold letters, the Darkhold."
"But do you know of what it can do? What it had already done for me?
"No, I don't." This conversation was heading into dangerous territory "Because that would involve me reading the, again, literally damned thing and there are far easier ways to fuck myself over for all eternity."
She didn't skip a beat.
"Well, you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?"
He couldn't help but flinch.
"You destroyed your relationship with a woman who genuinely respected and loved you." Her tone was caustic, and the cruel smile that played at her lips betrayed her delight. "You destroyed your career, you alienated your friends, and when you gained your magic? When you were granted the power to stand above mortal men as their protector?"
The smile vanished just as quickly as it had come, her features darkening like thunder clouds.
"You failed. Half the universe gone with a snap and the other half choking on the ashes because of your constant, ceaseless failures."
I am inevitable
It was the only way.
He took a deep breath.
"...Believe it or not, I know that I made many mistakes. Some that I can never make up for." He raised his head and met her maddened gaze with his own. "None of that is news to me, and I'm still trying my damned best regardless. So what exactly are you trying to prove?"
"Prove?" Her words are cold. "I'm not trying to prove anything. And you mustn't misunderstand me, I don't blame you for what you thought you had to do. I know better than anyone what it means to try so hard, to fight with every bit and every kind of strength you can muster, and fall all the same. It's not fair."
She laughs then, long and hard.
"You of all people know what's like. You of all people should understand what motivates me now. You say the Darkhold has corrupted me?" She shook her head. "It's finally evened the playing field. My fate is min to control now, no one else's. No more undeserved suffering, Stephen. I've always had the power, you see, but the Darkhold has given me the knowledge I need to use use it effectively. To regain everything I lost."
...
He...
He...He couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"Wanda, do you hear yourself? The book is manipulating you, making you thinkyou need it for god knows what-"
He could already tell that his attempt would fall on deaf ears, but it doesn't make the blow any softer.
"No." Wanda's immediate response was unrelenting, and the obsession in her words was suffocating in it's own right, "No, the Darkhold is the key to my getting everything I want."
No!
"What do you want?" His sudden burst of fury is evident, and her features sharpen as he makes no effort to disguise his glare. Fear had no place in this conversation. "What could possibly justify this!?"
He gestures to the ruined landscape, to the cloying, suffocating miasma of power she'd created, and she doesn't stop smiling.
But he did get his answer the very next moment.
"I'm going to take America's powers." She murmurs softly, but it's audible all the same. "And I will leave this wretched universe and travel to one where my children live."
...
Oh.
Oh.
It was almost funny, how quickly anger could shift to pity.
"Wanda." He opened his mouth, then closed it again. He was fairly certain that his next words will hurt in ways that very few other things have ever managed. "Wanda, your children aren't real."
Just constructs, he wants to say, constructs made of magic and desire and grief fit to rend the world in two. But the words don't come and she's already responding with confidence that demands his silence regardless.
"But they are." She spoke like a fanatic, he realized, like a true believer lost in religious zeal. "The Darkhold has given me perception beyond the limits of the mortal mind, Stephen. I can see infinite realities. I can see my children, living and breathing and waiting for their mother."
"I know you believe that-" He tried-
"IT'S TRUE!"
-Abruptly, his luck runs out.
She screams and the world momentarily shudders as she visibly struggles to regain her composure. "I know what you think of the Darkhold, but I know it's true."
No, she didn't know anything at all, but he for the life of him Stephen can't think of anyway to knock the sense into her when he was powerless and she could erase him from existence with a stray thought.
"Listen to yourself." He pleaded with her. "You're intelligent enough to see the inconsistency here. The book grants you the ability to see infinite realities in a way that no other sorcerer can imagine, yet somehow it covenantally can't aid you in traveling across them with your own power? Does any of that make sense to you?"
He didn't believe for a second that that hellish book wasn't actively impairing her judgement, but his heart fell as he realised that she wasn't listening to him. The words didn't even seem to register as she met his eyes with her own, tears suddenly visible and desperation marring her features.
"I just want my boys back, Stephen. Please. Why can't you understand?"
In that moment, it was so very hard to see the monster in her actions. Desperation can twist anyone beyond recognition, he knows that well enough.
Then he thought of America, of what Wanda's dreams would mean for her, and he finds the strength to harden his heart.
"What you propose to do is a violation of every natural law." Her features harden, the brief flash of vulnerability erased as suddenly as it appeared. "And even if it wasn't, I will not allow you to sacrifice a child."
"You won't help me?"
"I will not."
"You won't bring me the girl?"
"I will not."
"And nothing I say will persuade you, will it?"
"I think we both know the answer to that question."
She hums thoughtfully. "I suppose we do."
He was already trying to leap to the side as she raised a hand and blood red light lanced out and struck at him, the wave solidifying into chains that wrap around his limbs with crushing, unrelenting force.
"Gah!"
He felt his power coursing through his body, whatever nullification effect she'd placed on him vanishing in the moment, but when he attempted to free himself he found the sensation akin to trying move a mountain with a spoon.
Damn it all.
He was yanked up, helpless, and dragged through the air where Wanda hovered unrestrained by gravity. Her eyes shone with same malevolent crimson light, the Darkhold trailing behind her as she floated closer to him, expression flat and without emotion.
"I'm afraid this conversation is over, Stephen."
No
"Wanda, please don't do this."
"I'm done listening to you." The words literally died in his throat. No matter how hard he tried to speak, no sound emerged from his throat. "I will not be denied. I will not be persuaded, or talked-down, or convinced. Not this time."
The chains tightened as she drew even closer, close enough that he could almost taste the the twisted intent she radiates with every movement.
"For the sake of the friendship we once shared, I will allow you to live, Stephen. Return to your sanctum and prepare to hand the girl to me by dawn, and we will have peace. Try to hide her from me, try to fight the inevitable?"
She smiled cruelly.
"One way or the other, In life or in death, you will all bow before the Scarlet Witch."
...
Stephen made it back in one piece, but only as a herald of the coming storm.
When he stumbled through the portal, Wong had been glaring at three children, Eli and America and a third that he didn't recognise, and all three had seemed to be trying their best not to laugh for one reason or the other.
Than they turned to him, saw his disheveled state and the look of helpless desperation he wasn't quick enough to tamp down on, and all the smiles died.
"Stephen?"
Wong looked at him, and he didn't see an alternative. The kids would find out in either case, so he spoke.
He told him everything.
When he was finished, Wong nodded, and he returned the gesture in turn.
The meaning was unmistakable. They couldn't let this happened. They would not let this happen. An unrestrained Wanda Maximoff armed with the Darkhold was armageddon in the making, and Masters of the Mystic Arts were duty-bound to stop her on principal.
Regardless of the consequences, they would stand their ground and fight to the very end. If death was the price they to pay, then so be it.
(He ignored the bitter tinge of defeat and despair to his thoughts, born from the knowledge that he would have to fight a friend who'd been broken by the cruelties of the world, cruelties that his choices had contributed to, and by the dreaded dear that they would not be enough.)
It was time to prepare.
As the children were escorted to safe quarters, a message was sent and the die was cast.
Kamar Taj came alive as the Masters of The Mystic Arts prepared for war