#isge19

Stephen compartmentalises better than most.

It’s a learnt trait of a medical professional, he supposes, and personnel who can’t compartmentalise properly tend to not make it far in the profession. Doctors can’t break down every time they misdiagnose or accidentally kill a patient, after all, and for all Stephen’s arrogance, nurses have it worse since they do the bulk of the work. Compartmentalisation is imperative to a person in the medical field or they’ll lose their mind, and Stephen had had a lot of practise from his restrictive, borderline abusive childhood to boot.

Tony, on the other hand, doesn’t compartmentalise well in the slightest.

It’s glaringly apparent, and has been since Iron Man first took to the skies to destroy illicit weapons built by Stark Industries and sold to terrorists. Tony takes every single cent of damage to heart, every person who wakes up screaming from nightmares after suffering through calamities brought about by SI weapons or Avengers business, every lost business or city that is destroyed in a firefight, every death that results from something Tony could have somehow prevented. It’s a lot of guilt and trauma and self-depreciation, originating from that piece of shit father and his kind but neglectful mother, and it kills Stephen to know that it’s never going away, that Tony will never be able to develop the neural connections that enable him to forgive himself.

Stephen’s kind of always known this since he had first seen Tony Stark testifying on Capitol Hill on C-SPAN, though not to his current fidelity, and he’s become more familiar with it since coming into possession of the Time Stone and experimenting with it. He’d gone forward in time just enough to see the Civil War break out, see the lengths Iron Man and Captain America would go to (in some instances, even the killing of one or the other) in order to follow through, and he wonders what the world would be like if he had looked further ahead or even gotten involved personally to mediate the conflict.

He knows it intimately now, though. He’s seen every deep scar and bleeding wound in Tony’s psyche, seen every tear and drop of blood and sharp scream of agony torn from Tony up close and personal, and he’s seen it 14,000,604 times.

With almost every iteration of the future, he sees Anthony Edward Stark find comfort with Stephen, even as war rages around them, and sees Tony healing as much as he can until he’s finally found some semblance of peace. He sees them sharing the remainder of their lives together, always fighting but still finding love and companionship with each other at their sides. He sees meals being shared and secrets being given, sees long looks across battlegrounds and bodies twining together in passion, and every single part of Stephen wants. He wants that forever, wants a future with the most generous and kind-hearted human being he’s ever had the pleasure of knowing throughout 14,000,604 ultimately short lifetimes, and it aches that he can’t have it.

Because in every single one of those iterations, Tony dies, and half the universe follows suit.

The only anomalies to those countless futures are when Tony dies on Titan, instead of on other planets or Earth itself, and that’s almost as terrible as losing him once they’ve fallen into each other’s arms because Stephen still knows what he’s missing, what he could’ve had with such a monumental, half-broken man. Those futures are just as unacceptable, because Thanos still wins and Tony still dies, so he throws out that iteration and starts another, desperate to save both.

There is only one timeline where they beat Thanos and Tony Stark lives, and the only way to win is if everyone else dies first.

It will be corrected, of course, because Tony is brilliant and clever even when he is destroyed and beaten, tortured and full of grief. Corrected, yes, but not before he has to watch his friends die and pseudo-son turn into dust in his arms, not before he starves and nearly asphyxiates in the cold emptiness of space just like he had been shown in Maximoff’s vision, not before he has to suffer the screams of a devastated aunt at the death of her nephew, not before he has to plan a funeral for half of the Avengers, not before he has to work himself into the ground for the answer to victory, not before he has to suffer through riots of why didn’t you do more why didn’t you save us you could have saved us! just like in his nightmares, not before Pepper Potts miscarries their unborn child due to stress and trauma when she sees Tony lose half his body after wielding the Infinity Gauntlet. No, Tony has to suffer through the weight of the world at Thanos’s hands, at Stephen’s hands, before he can set the world to rights, and saving the world before the end can even come to pass doesn’t erase the grief and sorrow, the pain and agony, of his experiences. Stephen knows that from personal experience, dying and dying and dying at the hands of Dormammu.

And giving up the Time Stone for Tony’s life is the choice that will destroy any and all chance of a future happiness, because Tony will never trust or love Stephen after he wakes up from his coma.

Stephen chooses life over giving Tony a brief, but ultimately fatal moment of peace.

He doesn’t have another choice.

—

When Stephen first opens his eyes after dying, he simply reacquaints himself with existing.

When he’s lightheaded on the smell of dust and tea in the air, when he’s over-warm with the sunlight that streams through his bedroom window, when he can feel the shiver of the Cloak around his shoulders and the soft sheets of his bedding against his tingling palms, when all he can hear is his steady breaths and the heavy thud of his heartbeat in his ears, he finally understands that he’s succeeded, that Tony has succeeded, and that all hope hasn’t been lost after all.

Stephen breaks.

—

His title and abilities as Sorcerer Supreme means that he remembers everything.

No one else besides Tony remembers what happened to the universe, other than Stephen himself. Tony had reversed the Snap – as well as everyone’s memories of it – out of pure mercy and kindness, but Stephen’s mastery of the Time Stone plus the time loop Stephen had applied before dying had ensured that his memories were untouched by Tony’s reversal. He likes to think that it had been to cover his arse just in case the loop hadn’t worked, giving Stephen the ability to correct a possible mistake if needed, but mostly it’s to punish himself. After all, Stephen had committed the most violent and sadistic violation of the Hippocratic Oath and his own personal ethics, in the sense that he had subjected a single man to the weight of the universe’s pain and forced him to suffer for it, breaking him beyond all conceivable measure.

The bittersweet pain of those impossible futures with the love of his life, the unbelievably brave and imperfectly perfect Tony Stark, only worsens Stephen’s guilt and heartbreak.

He doesn’t know if Tony’s aware that Stephen still lives with his decision, but it doesn’t matter in the end. At the end of the day, Stephen would make the choice again if he had to, and while he regrets the pain and suffering that he’s inflicted on Tony, he doesn’t regret the choice itself. How can he, when the universe hasn’t been cruelly cut in half? How can he, when he sees Spider-Man slinging his merry way through Greenwich Village occasionally as he chases some baddies, very much alive and ready to make the world a better place? How can he, when the Avengers are reunited and save the world from continuing threats? How can he, when Tony is alive, surrounded by people who love and cherish him even if it can’t be Stephen himself, people who can lift Tony up when everything feels like it’s too much and the horrors of the past are tearing him apart.

He can’t regret a decision like that, even if he knows that Tony’s drinking again, and his relationship with Pepper Potts was never revitalised, and he always looks exhausted and haunted in the papers. Stephen loves Tony Stark more than anything in this world, but choosing Tony’s happiness over the survival of trillions of innocent souls is even more unforgivable.

The sorrow and heartache weigh heavily on Stephen’s own soul, and as he watches CNN rehash an Avengers battle – Tony intentionally putting himself in harm’s way, throwing himself into potentially fatal situations, like he’s trying to kill himself – he can’t help but wonder whether he made the right choice anyway.

It hurts, and Stephen’s not sure if he can survive this pain himself.

—

The first time Stephen sees Tony with his own eyes after waking up, it’s during battle.

Doom’s a magic user with a dangerous artefact in his possession, and that is Stephen’s area of expertise. Doom’s also deliberately attacking the Fantastic Four like he always does, which has resulted in quite a bit of damage and chaos in the Lower East Side, and so the Avengers had assembled as per usual. The only team that’s not in the general area is the X-Men, and while the help would be appreciated, it would also oversaturate the battlespace and God knows they don’t need that. It’s already hard enough targeting Doombots when there are civilians to evacuate, not to mention an abundance of friendlies flying around everywhere that get in the way of spells and attacks.

Stephen’s apprentices and various masters are mostly being delegated to civilian evacuation, with self-defence as a secondary mission parameter, mostly because a good majority of them can clone themselves and also because the Doombots are machines connected to an advanced AI. That’s more in the specialty of the Fantastic Four and Avengers – particularly Tony, Banner, and Reed – and Reed has his team fighting Doom directly, since the arsehole has a specific grudge against Reed. Still, Reed’s a bit distracted trying not to die (or get Sue killed), and Tony’s apparently on a one-man mission to personally destroy as many of the Doombots as he can get his metal hands on, which leaves Banner, who’s flying around as the Hulk and obviously can’t hack into the AI basecode. FRIDAY is probably working on it on the side of helping Tony in the air, and he’s sure that the Vision is as well, but taking out the AI won’t necessarily turn the Doombots off and besides, it’s not like Doom doesn’t have the ability to self-destruct them manually.

It takes a long time before Stephen gets the jump on Doom, sending him to Hell to rot (not that he won’t find a way out eventually, the weaselly bastard), but he’s only able to get that jump because of Tony flying in from stage left, attacking Doom with a blast of repulsor energy when Stephen had been cornered, and all he’d said through his armour when he’d unleashed the blast was “The only person who gets to kick his ass is me!”

Stephen’s exhausted and heart-sore by the end of it, panting heavily as sweat pours down his face and spine – he distinctly remembers Doom being less powerful, and that’s going to need some researching – and he helps take down the last remaining Doombots before he’s portalling out of there as fast as he can, into the safety of his personal quarters so he can fall apart.

He doesn’t know how long he cries, choking on his own tears and snot and feeling like he’s burning inside his skin, but it’s long enough for him to fall asleep from the strain of it, still in his torn and filthy robes and covered in grime.

Mercifully, he doesn’t dream.

—

The next time is face-to-face, a few months after that encounter with Doom.

He wakes up in Kamar-Taj, bones and flesh aching from magical strain and the severe beatdown, and it’s the worst he’s felt since the car accident. There’s a flash of fear – am i broken am i paralysed am i unable to be the sorcerer supreme anymore is my body too broken – and then another answering flash of relief – no more hurting people no more failure this is what i deserve – before everything eases into a calm blankness, because even paralysed and broken he’ll still do his duty until he dies permanently, even if all he wants to do is sleep forever, because that’s what he was born to do. He was born to shoulder the weight of the universe just as much as Tony Stark was, born to suffer and break as long as it protects and shelters others, and in that, they will always be connected. A shared destiny, and without the comfort of sharing it with each other.

He opens his eyes, swollen half-shut and crusty around the edges, and focusses his eyes on Tony Stark, standing at the window to the snow-capped mountains of the Himalayas with curved shoulders and heavy eyes.

He wonders how Tony even knew Stephen was at Kamar-Taj in the first place – he doesn’t file most reports and missions with the Avengers, let alone the U.N., and it’s not like Tony is friends with any sorcerers – and then decides it’s irrelevant. It ultimately doesn’t matter, because Stephen knows why he’s here, a year after the Snap was reversed and the universe forgot the sacrifice Tony had made.

It’s not like the pictures or books or stories; they don’t stare at each other for a long time, eyes blazing and hearts racing, before they exchange words like why did you do it and i’m so sorry until there’s nothing but tears and dramatic grasping of bodies as their mouths connect in a conclusion meant for epics, because they’re Meant to Be and Hopelessly in Love.

No, it’s much simpler than that.

“Do you regret it?” Tony asks, quiet and even.

“Yes,” Stephen replies, and it’s a struggle to keep his own tone careful and smooth, “and I would do it again.”

Tony nods once, eyes distant, and whispers, “So would I.”

Then he turns on his heel and leaves.

—

Stephen sees Tony Stark many more times over the course of his life.

Always separate, always distant, but their eyes always meet over briefing tables and battlefields nonetheless. Stephen wonders if Tony’s aware of the possibility between them, the capability of love and devotion and companionship they could’ve shared, but it makes no difference. To Stephen, Tony is the soul he had to sacrifice to save the universe, and to Tony, Stephen is the soul who condemned him. No amount of wishful thinking or unfulfilled futures can change that, or erase the trauma they’ve both suffered, and because of that, they will never be able to bridge the gap and heal from it with each other. There’s just too much in the way, in the middle of such possibility.

Maybe they could’ve tried, come together to scream and yell and get on their knees to beg for forgiveness, but Tony’s too broken to reach for a semblance of peace again, especially with the man that sentenced him to his fate in the first place, and Stephen’s too weak to try. Facing Tony every single day, knowing what could have been and what he had done in exchange, is too much for even him to compartmentalise, and he can’t put everything he is into one man when he has a duty to perform. Being with Tony how he wants to be will take every single molecule of him, every iota of his mind and self, and he can’t be the Sorcerer Supreme if he’s compromised. He cannot protect the universe from the mystical and spiritual if he allows himself to truly be with Tony, because then he would allow himself to prioritise one man over everything else.

It never stops hurting, and it never fades to something manageable.

Stephen’s made his choice, and he has to live with that choice for the rest of his life.