#sofiastrange

My family is not as picture perfect as we seem to be on the outside. I haven’t seen my mother in months, I know my brother only through pictures and very brief interactions every now and then when he could bother to come to our father for help, and my father keeps his work closer to his heart than his family at times. Our portraits show the lie of who the Stranges pretend to be, pristine features, eyes bright, smiles pulling at taught features as my mother tries her damndest to keep her hand against my fathers own. They filed for divorce two months ago but the public doesn't know yet, it's been hushed to keep the face of the mystical protectors looking perfect. No one wants the earth's protectors to be unable to keep their own life intact.

Stephen Jr. smells like pot, we all pretend not to notice. He runs around pretending to be our father in dimensions where he’s kicked the can early on. He calls himself Doctor Strange because there’s no one around to say he’s not. Dad doesn't say but it pisses him off. He blames Clea, claiming that if she hadn’t let him vanish then he would have had a better attitude now, that he would have been a better son. Stephen Jr. hates me, but I don’t care. That makes him hate me all the more. We ignore one another, finding no reason to bother breaking our radio silence. Though now, as a photographer prepares to take our portrait we look as if we’ve been best friends since diapers. Dad’s had to pull us off one another before, broken noses and busted knuckles as a ghetto southerner meets a backstreet junkie who called her a bastard bitch. None of us will forget that, the slight twist in stephen Jr’s nose makes sure of it.

Yet still, even after throwing the first punch, I remain the ‘poster child’ of our family. Mom loves her son, dad loves his daughter. Every family deals with favorites, the Stranges aren’t excluded from that stereotype. It could be worse, I know that very well. We could be like Will and Tommy, or Wanda and her brother. There’s several members of superhero teams that have had it so much worse than I have so i try not to let the resentment between my brother and I get to me. We all hold the family together for a few moments as a flash ties the moment down. We all pull away, smiles fading and hands pulled back to their sides as the different members of our small but broken family disperse. I won’t see my brother again for quite some time, after that, he’ll end up dead. Mom will go back to her dimension, fight with my great uncle Dormammu for quite some time, maybe lose the throne in the process before claiming it once more. Dad will remain sorcerer supreme, ruling over his students as a king in his own right. And me? I stick around, making friends with young mages along the way until the time comes for me to take up my father's mantle.

The earth feels soft here, grass like tiny tendrils of silk brushing against my cheeks as I lay still in the warm embrace of the sun.

Somewhere far off I hear birds chirping, people talking, a woodpecker hitting a tree in search of something. It’s hot outside but Louisiana summers are always so, so I find it easy to let myself relax.

But something hurts on my side. It’s a dull pain at first, same with the feeling of something clutching to my shoulder, but as the thrums of a woodpecker becomes the beating of a gun I get a sudden feeling of clarity.

The new mages had been fighting something and I had been struck down, cut and bleeding under my shirt but unable to move, I had fallen asleep ( or am I still asleep? ) I couldn’t open my eyes, simply listen as the birds came to drown out the sounds of some distant soul calling my name...

❝I wanted to be a hero. My life pushed me away from the path, my own aunt did her best to keep me from it but really, my parents were both hero’s to the world. ❞