Many Other Musings of Mine

He swore he heard it, right by the front door, enough that he turned in his seat with a frown. A knock at the front door of the building It couldn't be Wong; despite being out on an errand of his own Wong would just use one of the many hidden portals around the place to come in. When everything remained silent, Strange turned back to his list with a sigh.

"Right. Either way; I'd much rather not get involved with robotics I can avoid it," he dictated to the magical quill penning down his words, "having to navigate around Reid Richard quirks is tiresome enough, I am not keen on repeating that by needing the opinions and expertise of Anthony Stark, which I- oh, for the love of-!"

The knocking had returned with an urgency he couldn't ignore, despite how much he wanted to continue to just bunker away in his study. With a simple handwave he opened up a portal to drop him off by his own front door, opening it with a lot of irritation in his movement.

"Do you have any idea what time..." his voice trailed off as soon as he realised that whoever decided to disturb his late night study work wasn't face to face with him, and it was only when he looked further down that he saw a figure dressed in all white on their knees clutching their head in desperation

"... Specter?" Strange asked, head tilting in confusion. Of all the people to show up on his doorstep the last one he expected was Moonknight. With the full moon out the way it was, wasn't this Marc's preferred nightsky to do his own viligante work under?

"Make it stop," the voice that came out of the man before him sounded like Marc- if he had decided to take up an act where the point was ridiculing the average London accent. It only made Stephen raise an eyebrow.

"I'm... sorry, what?"

"Make it stop!"

Stephen instinctively stepped back at the sudden desperate outburst, flinching just slightly when Marc looked up at him- his eyes flashing between a deep brown and a eerie glowing white as if they couldn't decide what to settle on. With a yelp of pain, Marc just clutched his head all the more.

"It hurts," and Stephen believed him simply from the tone of his voice alone, "it's too much! Feels like- going to explode, you, brain, medical, help!"

"I never was that kind of doctor, Marc," Stephen said with a grimace that only grew when Moonknight let out another wincing cry of pain, "but I can-"

Going dead silent, Stephen stared out into the street where the breeze caught his attention. If it had been a natural one, it would've gone past him, messed with his hair and clothes as well as the man in front of him; and the eye wouldn't be rattling underneath his shirt and against his chest in the way it was if this wasn't magical. With a complicated hand gesture, he activated the Eye, being rather unimpressed when long, thick strands of cloth were wrapped all around the vigilante on his knees as they were pulled back by the God he had a deal with.

"Khonshu," Stephen's voice dropped to a warning tone, "let him go."

"I need for him to put Marc back in charge! We have work to do, we have a deal," the haunting voice of the moon god spoke, immediately annoyed with how unimpressed Strange seemed.

"You are going to shatter his mind like this, and you will render your avatar completely useless. Is he really worth more to you in pieces than he is whole?"

"I wouldn't have to do this if I could just get the one I need to take control of the body again!"

Stephen looked down, at the kneeling man in front of him still clutching onto his head and begging and pleading for whatever was going on to please, stop. Mystically glowing green eyes looked into the hollow nothingness of the bird skull, while Stephen raised both his arms up with a sigh

"You are hurting him," he concluded in a strict, nearly parental tone, "I am not going to stand idly by while you torment a man on the steps of my home or ignore his cries for help. So this is no longer a request, but a demand; let him go."

Silence fell between them as the two were matching themselves up to each other; patiently waiting for the other to make a move. Khonshu moved earlier, trying for one last yank on the cloth ribbons but immediately letting out a yowl of annoyance when his hands got caught in two seperate spells. Strange wasted absolutely no time in disarming the God, using all of his willpower and magical grip to yank him down to the ground much in the same way Moonknight had been on his knees.

The latter fell to the floor in the fetal position, only further strengthening Strange's resolve to do something about the problem delivered to his doorstep as he yanked the Egyptian moon god further down to the ground.

"Okay, alright, you can have him!" the skeletal bird sneered, "but make no mistake, magician; I will be back. Marc and I have a deal he cannot escape from, no matter who he tries to rope into it to weasel his way out."

Stephen stumbled for a moment as the weight he was pushing down vaporized into little more than dust in the wind, the Eye finally shutting down and returning him to his own abode where the vigilante was still very much knocked out on the steps to his home. Squatting down and taking his pulse, Stephen was happy to report to himself that Marc was still very much alive. Now, to get him indoors and preferably into one of the guest room beds.

"I wish I could help you," Stephen muttered to himself as through the use of portals he carefully managed to put down the knocked out man in one of the beds, "but I'm not a psychiatrist, so I'm not entirely sure why you decided I was the best person to stumble to for help. If it was just Khonshu's influence putting you in this much distress you would've woken up by now."

Pressing the soft pad of his finger right at the highest point of the bridge of Marc's nose, before slowly moving it up to rest between the eyebrows, Stephen softly muttered a spell to himself to gently will the other's mind to let him in.

"What is going on in there that has you so torn, Moon knight?"

For a moment, all he saw was the bright white light that let him slip into the world the mind of the vigilante had created for itself, the minds of his friends and acquaintances no different to him than slipping into one of the many pocket dimensions that surrounded the universe. What was more surprising to him is that when he regained his own sense of vision and looked down, his hands were clad in familiar feeling latex surgical gloves, a quick look in a nearby mirror showing him the blue scrubs and white doctors coat he now wore.

"Hm. Haven't worn this in quite a while," he muttered to himself, pushing his glasses back up his nose to a comfortable spot, "but fair enough. If it's a doctor you require, I guess I can play the part."

Leaving the room he had been dropped in, Stephen took a moment to just observe the area around him. Sterile, white, pristine and clean; a full on hospital with rooms upon rooms he probably shouldn't start snooping around in in case it worsened the mental state of the host. The eerie silence around had him on edge as he wandered the silent, empty hallways until someone popped out of an adjacent room.

He would've jumped had he not carried himself with the grace of a veteran surgeon.

"Doctor!" the tanned man with pleading dark eyes in front of him sounded so incredibly desperate, "I am so glad you're here!"

"It is good to see you too, Marc," Stephen answered, "though I have to admit I was quite surprised to see Moonknight show up at my home in the middle of the night. What happened, what frightened you so that you sought me out?"

"I'm.... not Marc... I'm Steven."

Ah, right, he had entered the mind of a vigilante with DID, so he should’ve expected others to inhabit this mind. He just hadn’t figured one of them would share the same name; like that wasn't going to be incredibly confusing to both of them or anyone else who might still be wandering around the hallways of this brain. Surely there was a way around that so Stephen at least didn’t have to feel like he was talking to himself the whole time.

"Right... I think you'll find I'm Stephen as well. Stephen Strange,” Stephen muttered before moving the keycard on his lanyard up to himself, frowning lightly when he saw the surname upon it.

".... Sanders," he then corrected himself before shrugging, "whichever you prefer, I suppose. And you are Steven..?"

"Grant," Steven answered in an uncomfortable tone, rubbing his arms in discomfort.

"I see. Mr. Grant, do you mind telling me what happened?”

"That's just the thing!" Steven responded more fiercely than Strange had expected, " I don’t know! Khonshu was trying to pull him out, by force, but it just hurt as Marc can’t seem to, I-I-"

Strange could see the rising panic in his 'patient', placing a supportive hand on his shoulder, but pulling back the moment Grant tried to shake it off.

"I don't know where he is. I… we need to find him, you have to find him."

"I will," Stephen promised to the teary eyed man in front of him, “even though I’m not entirely sure why I was the one called here-“

"You're a doctor! That’s why I came to you! You can help fix this. You can fix us," the hopeful brown eyes the other man had were almost heartbreaking, but Strange had long since managed to not let the emotions of others influence his own. One didn't make it through the throes of medicine if they had a bleeding heart for everyone who came on their path.

"I am not that kind of doctor, Mr. Grant. Really all I wish to do is see why Marc isn't coming out even at the willing of Khonshu to the point of being nearly detrimental to the whole," Stephen looked at the ground as he spoke, interested in the way the pathways seemed less like the straight and narrow hallways of a properly organized hospital and more like the patterns he remembered when he was still actively operating on people's brains, “any idea where he might be residing?"

Steven Grant seemed to shrink further in on himself if that was still possible, shaking his head.

"I can't find him anywhere," he admitted softly, "I just hear him, distant, shut in; he wanted to answer Khonshu, but he couldn't."

Strange hummed in acknowledgement, gesturing at Grant to follow him as he wandered the paths that started to look more and more familiar to him. Old studies of the brain emerged back to the forefront of his own mind, helping him navigate what was no doubt a total maze to even the people inhabiting the place. But he recognized the pathways neurons would travel along, and hoped that would eventually bring them to wherever Marc was stuck.

Even then, it would've been too easy to assume just following the pathways would bring him there. Before long, he ran into someone desperately trying to break through a very much shut and locked hospital door.

"... Marc?" Strange carefully asked, trying to not jump out of his skin when the man turned to him holding the fire extinguisher he was trying to use as a battering ram towards him like it now functioned as a makeshift weapon.

"No, no no no!" a voice from behind him came in as Grant placed himself directly between the doctor and assailant, hands up in in a show of not being armed, "don't do this! he's here to help!"

"Get away from him, Marc," the unknown man growled out, taking a step forward in... a protective manner, Strange noted.

"No, I'm not Marc, I'm Steven," after hearing that the man seemed to pause, before turning back to the shut door and hitting it again with the fire extinguisher.

"And I suppose you are not Marc either," Strange calmly remarked, "so with whom are we now conversing?"

".... Jake," the spitting image of Steven Grant muttered, before continuing his attempts to break down the door, "and if that is not Marc with you, then he's still stuck further in this building. And I have to get him out. He needs me."

Looking over to the scanner by the door, Strange calmly wandered over and more out of habit than anything else pulled his keycard down the slot. The doors gave way, and before Jake had even gotten ready to take off in a run alarms started howling all over the place. Both Steven and Jake fell to their knees clutching their ears to try and block out the sound of the alarm and the harsh voice over the speakers

To Strange, the sound was all too familiar, a call to action he had answered several times while still in the early days of his training and career, and a call that even now in his days of retirement from medicine still stirred the once idealistic doctor inside him to action

Code Blue.

Instinctively he started to run, somehow knowing the way to the room the announcement was calling for. It was only when he got there that things got, well, strange. When he pushed the door to the room open it didn't open to a hospital room, but rather to a wide stretched desert his own feet immediately sunk further into than he liked. Getting back out the doorframe he came in was a far heavier action than he anticipated, having to pull his feet up with considerable force to get back.

He finally understood the crux of the issue when a hand emerged from the sand, clawing its way out until the head of the man he had been looking for popped out like someone desperately trying to keep their head above water.

"Stephen!" the call sounded so much more desperate than either Steven or Jake had been, with Marc desperately stretching his arm as far as it would go to the doctor, "help me!"

It only took seeing how the sand was trying to overwhelm and bury his acquaintance to make Stephen lunge forward and grab the hand still sticking above the desert. Putting one of his feet right outside the doorframe to give himself more leverage, Stephen pulled with all his might until the sands finally let go of the price it had caught.

Flung into the hallway and landing on his stomach, Marc rolled over to his back as he desperately tried to catch the air his lungs had been desperately for while Stephen rather ungracefully sat down beside him, looking him over.

"... What happened, Marc?"

"... I went in there thinking it was one of my memory holds. Turned out it's more like a desert of regret that didn't want to let me go once I stepped in. Even Khonshu's calling couldn't get me back out. He freaked out trying to get me to front.. I don't know what happened after that."

"My best guess is that Steven took control as Jake was too busy trying to find you. And Steven came to me as Khonshu's constant pulling from a distance put too much strain on your mind to the point it was about to break."

Silence fell between the two men as Marc stared at the hospital ceiling, blinking away the few tears that burned in his eyes.

"Stephen...." he eventually started, "can you not.. fix this? All of this is so.. tiring. I feel like a prisoner of my own mind. You fixed brains all the time, can you really not do anything about mine to make me.. I don't know, whole? better? … cured?"

"No. I was a neurosurgeon, Marc, I am not qualified to deal with a DID patient. All I know is that your brain is doing its best trying to protect itself from harm. That is not something I can solve or fix, and it definitely cannot be cured."

"You have no idea what it's like, do you? Having medicine fail you to this degree?" Marc quietly protested. Stephen threw him a glance, before removing the gloves around his hands. As he figured, they still showed the scars of his own accident; the memory of them incurable even by the magic he had used to heal them enough that they were no longer visible to the naked eye in the waking world. A long silence fell between them as he showed them to Marc, while their eyes locked in a strange level of understanding.

"I know better than anyone what it's like when modern medicine can't help you. I have gone bankrupt trying to fix my hands back to the level of the peak of my career."

"I'm sorry," Marc muttered, genuinely apologetic.

"So am I. The only thing I personally, as a friend, can advise you to do is make peace with your alters. Steven knew to come find help when he couldn’t find you. Jake was ready to tear this place down to the ground to find you. Both are meant to help and protect you, so try to find a way to no longer block them out. It'll give you more peace of mind, if nothing else. Now, it is better if I take my leave before I mess anything delicate up in here; I'll see you when you wake up."

Brown eyes slowly blinked open, looking around an unfamiliar room until the shape of a person came into their vision, his ears only barely picking up their greeting of: "Good afternoon."

Marc let out a tired and pained groan, only now registering the soft bed he was laying on as the shape of the person started to look more and more like Stephen Strange with each blink.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like I got hit by an army truck. Or maybe a tank," Marc huffed, trying to sit up and immediately being pushed back down by Strange

"Am I speaking to Marc, right now?" Strange asked, and Marc just nodded slightly as his body very much welcomed the softness of the guest bed he was pushed back into.

"Good. I plan to keep you here a bit longer just to make sure you are okay. I'm not entirely sure why your mind was calling a code blue."

"I was drowning in sand," Marc dryly note, “I think your medical expertise would class that as respiratory distress at minimum.”

"Be that as it may, you are staying here until I'm sure your body hasn't decided to put you into actual cardiac arrest or respiratory failure to match the chaos your mind was in," Stephen crossed his arms as he was speaking, "if you insist on turning me into the doctor I used to be then I decide when you can be safely released from my care."

"Fair enough," Marc conceded, "and Stephen?"

"Hm?"

"Thank you, for helping me and the others out."

A small smile appeared on Stephens face at that as he made a slight nod of acknowledgement.

Without saying a word Gambit yanked the usb stick out of her hand, while his free one hooked around one of her arms to pull her along into a run. They couldn't make it through the weakened part of the gate surrounding the area where they had gotten through before to get into this facility; so instead Gambit used his bo staff to pole-vault himself over.

He turned only to see Miranda leap onto the fence, clamber over it like a nimble cat and hop down with equal grace. A small smirk appeared on his lips as they were still running

"Bleu's training's paying off, huh?"

The answer was a gunshot that hit the ground between them, and it startled Miranda into her invisibility so she sounded like a haunting ghost when she answered:

"Less talking, more running!"

It was only when Gambit's pace slowed down that Miranda turned around, seeing waving flashlights on the horizon and hearing the sounds of the guards coming after them. When her back collided with his, it startled her back into visibility, quickly peeking around him to see why he had stopped.

A cliff edge dropping straight down, and now that she focused on it she could hear the water of the river down below. She looked back to the horizon where two flashlights had broken off from the main group and were heading their way.

"What are our chances of shaking them off if we jump in? Is the water manageable?" she asked, eyes strictly on the two distant guards as she took a few steps forward to see them.

"Gambit?" she asked with urgency as he didn't respond, quickly looking over her shoulder to see him standing there, and when she looked back and forth between the two targets several times and still hadn't gotten an answer, out came a far more urgent and panicked:

"Remy?!"

He snapped out of his thoughts, red eyes finally breaking away from the river water below, as Gambit took enough steps backwards for their backs to collide again. He shook his head, unsure if he was denying her questions or shaking off his own thoughts. Miranda had turned around to see him shake his head, looked over to the flashlights that were steadily approaching, and a pit opened up in her stomach

This was not the kind of guard situation where they would be happily locked in a cell to wait for rescue or wait for Gambit to find a way to get out: these people had already been actively shooting at them. She glanced down at her hands, and then to the back of Gambit's coat.

It should work. How often had she turned Kurt invisible with little to no effort these days? But Kurt, compared to Gambit, was a lithe built 5'9 guy barely taller than her and only slightly broader in frame. Gambit stood higher, wider and her invisibility coating wouldn't stick to the metal bits of his outfit even if she did manage to hide the rest of it. But as the shouting got closer, it was their only hope.

"Take your cuirass off."

Gambit blinked at the sudden demand, looking at Miranda with a raised eyebrow that became both eyebrows raised in surprise when he saw how determined she looked.

"And the boots," she added, as Gambits hands easily clicked open the clasps of his metal chest piece.

"What are you-" he started, but she hushed him and nodded to where the flashlights were coming frightfully close.

"Just trust me," she whispered, "hurry up."

"What was that splashing sound?!" one of the guards called to the other as they arrived on the scene, while the other one was looking at the many foot tracks in the muddy soil.

"You think they jumped?" he asked

"If they did, they're as good as dead."

As they were about to turn around to head back and declare the area clear, both were grabbed from behind. As they turned visible, Gambit made quick work of the guard he grabbed by putting them in a headlock until he passed out; and after dropping him he was alerted by the yelp of his friend as the guard she grabbed roughly elbowed her to try and get away.

All it took was one well timed punch from the Cajun for the other to be out cold as well, while he shook his hand and cracked his knuckles.

"You alright, Fif?" he asked as she came to stand by him, her injured side deliberately turned to him.

"Yeah. I dont know about you, but I'm ready to get out of here," as she was speaking she used the device around her wrist to call for an extraction, "you still have the usb?"

"In my coat pocket," Gambit remarked.

As the jet hovered above them and Kurt was send down to be the easiest lift up into the aircraft, Gambit's mood lightened just a tad when he saw Miranda soften at the sight of her partner. Feeling Kurt's hand on his shoulder did also relax him a little bit more, as the fuzzy elf easily teleported all three of them back inside to go home.

After arriving back home, Miranda was observing Gambit. He still seemed strangely tense, strangely wrapped up in his own thoughts in a way that seemed so alien to his normal self. She said nothing, just held out her hand to him and making a "give" gesture as he looked down at the hand sticking out to him.

He silently dropped the usb in her hand.

"Take five," Miranda said softly, "I'll turn this in with Scott. Get some rest, big guy."

Gambit left wordlessly, and Miranda felt Kurt leaning on her shoulder as his eyes followed his friend while he left.

"What's wrong with him?" Kurt asked, concern in his voice, "what happened?"

Miranda shrugged in defeat, not having the answer herself. She looked at the usb in her hand, and winced when she automatically put her hand to her side and directly into the sore spot the elbow had caused. A much softer, delicate hand replaced hers against the spot

"What's wrong? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, just got roughed up a bit in the fight," Miranda assured him, before tossing one last glance to where Gambit had left the room, "... Kurt, will you come along with me? I'd rather not explain to Scott on my own why he's going to need to budget in a new cuirass and pair of boots for Gambit."

"What happened?"

Oh, those golden eyes would never not melt her heart with how he looked at her. Miranda couldn't stop herself, stealing a soft kiss from her lover for her own comfort