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whoppert · 2 months

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Sunna 9 (loki/reader) (stephen strange/reader)

◂ previous chapter first chapter ▴

4499 words

warnings: the after effects of mind violation; canon-typical violence.

AO3 Masterpost

“You said you could handle Stephen,” I whisper at Wong as we descend into the undercroft. The two of us had fallen behind the god and Sorcerer Supreme, who are too busy pointedly ignoring each other to take notice of us.

“And you believed me?” Wong replies, clutching onto my arm as I wobble down the steps. “When have I ever been able to control him?”

Stephen had insisted on staying while Loki worked went into my mind, though I would have preferred if he had left us, since he had done little but argue with Asgardian, the methods and place and magic, he'd had a problem with all of it. It had been especially bad when Loki had mentioned the terms 'diagnostic' and 'exploratory', suggesting that there may be need for more than one session. I hadn't been able to bring myself to speak. It had gotten heated enough that Wong made the final call and they'd both shut up, glaring at each other. They agree on a method Loki explains something about the layers to the mind, but I'm mostly too nervous and ashamed to say anything.

AO3

The curving stone stairs spiral downwards. The four of us had mostly trudged in silence, minus the whispering between Wong and I. Stephen is still brooding and still unable to look at me. My gut knotted uncomfortably every time the sorcerer came into my line of vision. I couldn't shake this sinking feeling that I had ruined our friendship as I knew it. Between the kiss and this betrayal...

Loki reaches the door to the undercroft first, throwing it open and disappearing. Stephen soon follows, and I pause, allowing Wong to enter before me. I'm just about to pass through the doorway when I hear a voice behind me.

“There you are, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Turning on my heels, I found Loki a few steps behind me, illuminated by the golden light at the entrance on the stairwell. When I don’t move, he takes a cautious step down closer to me, empty hands outstretched in peace as though he wasn’t a weapon in his own right. “We already started the spell, remember?” His voice is more tender than I'd thought him capable of. “You’ve attached your psyche to the last memory before you went under,” and he gestures behind me to the door.

Following his direction, I glance at the door to the undercroft, and found it closed, though Wong certainly wouldn’t have shut it on me. My eyebrows furrow. Loki’s outfit had changed. He had arrived in Asgardian robes, a green cloak over dark leather and adorned in gold jewellery, but the Loki above me had ditched the finery in favor of jet black trousers and a matching belted overcoat that worked for the autumn winds outside.

Now that Loki had mentioned it I was getting a sense of déjà vu.

I believe him, recalling the rules that Stephen had outlined for me in the moments before I'd gone under: firstly, the only safe way to view a new memory is to go through a door; and secondly, though he had looked troubled at the concept, Stephen had expressly warned me not to leave Loki’s side.

“Let's get this over with.” I step off the bottom stair. “Where do we start?”

“We go through the door,” Loki replies, reaching past me to twist the knob, pushing it open. “After you.”

There was a dead body in the Sanctum’s Weird Hallway.

Despite what you might expect, Memory-Me doesn’t scream. It was just a body - confronting, for sure, but at that point, I'd been at the Sanctum for a couple of months, well, it's called the Weird Hallway for a reason. The hallway isn't there all the time, appearing as a new door off of the kitchen every now and again and to be perfectly truthful, in the desiccated state it was in, I didn't think a dead body posed much of a threat.

Walking half the length of the hall, Memory-Me approaches watchful, but calm. The eyes are open and visibly dry, the skin on his eyelids stretched thin. Completely and utterly dead.

And yet, an eyeball swivels to observe me.

That’s when I'd screamed.

The body pulls itself up.

My knees just give out, and I regain control of them just in time to stop me from completely collapsing, but instead Memory-Me is sent shoulder-first into the nearest wall.

“Hey,” Memory-Stephen must have heard me cry out. “Are you-? Oh. Shit.” As soon as Stephen and the corpse noticed each other, a new energy had been renewed in the rotted body and it leapt to its feet with surprising vigor.

This is the fifth memory we've had to watch and it hasn’t been any more helpful than the others.

“This is useless,” I shove my hands in my pockets.

Loki sighed, rolling his eyes, talking slowly like I'm a toddler. “Your memories are leading us where we need to go.”

“They’ve led us nowhere.”

“It’s a process,” he groans, sauntering up to the door that Stephen and the zombie had disappeared through, wrenching it open. “Do I challenge you in your areas of expertise?”

“Yes! You do. Consistently.” I stomped passed him into the next memory. “I’ve met you twice before and both times you challenged my comprehension like I was an idiot. I have fucking brain, you absolute jackass.”

“I never said you were an idiot! I only imply it.”

“Oh my god, I’m going to kill you-”

“I have to tell you something,” Memory-Wong stands in front of me, blocking access to Stephen’s office.

“Come on Wong, I’m in a rush, I need to get my book back. The museum is gonna kill me if they find out I snuck out a manuscript.”

“He can't be disturbed-”

Memory-Me huffs impatiently. I was sleep-deprived from cataloguing sanctum artefacts. “I don’t care what Stephen's doing in there! I don’t have time for this, I’m going to be late for my shift. Kellye told me not to be late again.”

“Even so, I need to-”

Wong hadn’t anticipated that I would actually push past him.

I'd burst through the door to find Stephen deep in meditation, legs crossed yogi-style, hands in his lap, eyes shut, and hovering three feet above the floor.

His eyes fly open, including the third, which promptly vanishes as Stephen falls on his ass on the floor, letting out a yelp of pain or surprise or both.

“What the actual fuck?"

Loki doesn’t bother to hold back his laugh as we observe the fifteenth memory.

I'd long grown tired of his constant conversation. Recalling the exercises Stephen had given me to practice strengthening my mind when I first started training with him, I decide to make a list of Loki’s qualities to see if I can recall them all later. Right at the top of my list, I imagine the word ‘aggravating' in big looping letters.

“Thought a prince would have been taught better manners than to laugh at other’s misfortune. Distasteful.” My arms fold across my chest. Irritating. Annoying.

“Of course! Forgive me my haughty attitude,” his voice is rich with sarcasm. Loki leans on the memory-table. I'm surprised it's solid. “Because Strange has never held back the opportunity to make a joke out of me. So composed. So gracious, your Sorcerer Supreme.”

I bite my tongue. He's not wrong. “Why do you two hate each other so much?”

“‘Hate’ is a strong word,” Loki’s mouth stretches into a wide smile, as he checks his manicure. “Highly accurate though. And little of your business.” Avoidant.

Behind us, the people in my memory are having an argument about magic and this takes my attention away from Loki. I watch as I pick a fight with my friends. To be fair to my passed self, my anger wasn’t directed at them, it was the result of a series of unfortunate incidents all in a row. At the time I was exhausted, late for work and in fear of the repercussions, and I had just discovered that I wasn’t alone, that others held magic too.

I have a rather explosive approach to emotions.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me- don't you think you should warn potential housemates that your a fucking witch?"

"Sorcerers," Stephen and Wong correct in unison.

"Both of you?!"

"Secrets, secrets," Loki muses.

“I moved in a week before that,” I say, more to myself than anything.

Loki perks up at the comment, his shoulders squaring, “how long had you known them?”

I shrug, “by now, almost a year, I think.”

“But how long before you moved in with them?”

“Two or three months, why?”

Loki is silent. I can't tell what he's thinking.

"What?" I ask.

Memory-Stephen performs a series of gestures, a crack in reality forming, the entrance to the Mirror Dimension. The three of us stepped through, vanishing.

Am I I just realizing now that I never called in sick to the museum that day? I can't believe Kellye didn't hand my ass to me on a platter.

Loki approached the crack to the Mirror Dimension, indicating for me to follow, but I hesitate. “Stephen said only to go through doors.”

“He also said to follow me,” Loki replies, disappearing through the crack, leaving me little choice but to follow.

Rather than entering the mirror dimension, we step straight into another new fresh memory.

Memory-Me writhed in bed, gasping for air. It was the night after Stephen had found me, after Loki had turned my brain into ham and pea soup.

“Hurry up, my dear,” says the voice from my dreams, echoing around the room. “You would not do well to have to join me in my clouded cage.”

My memory flings the sheet off of herself, launching out of bed with barely enough sense to put on some pajama shorts before rushing off to Stephen's room.

I freeze in place, blushing at my memory's lack of clothing. To his credit, Loki turns his gaze away from the sight, just a gentlemanly dip of his head.

The door shuts behind my fleeing figure.

With a wave of his hand, Loki causes the scene to start again.

“What are you doing?” He had not done this to any of the other memories.

The memory is paused in the beginning, capturing my face in a panicked expression.

“There is a magical presence in your dream,” Loki says. A wave of green washed outwards from him, illuminating the previously invisible purple energy. It is centered around Memory-Me, but the steady flow is crawling in from the open window.

“It looks like…” I hesitate. I'm scared to be wrong, but it looked like-

“Your magical signature.” Loki frowns. He looks bothered. “Any idea about why it’s coming to you from an external source?”

“I barely know my own name at this point, why would you think I'd have an answer to that." If the floor could swallow me up, I would have begged it to. I know nothing. About my magic, about magical in general, nothing more than the bits and pieces I had picked up from Stephen and Wong. How embarrassing it is to realize you are simple in the presence of a god. “You’ve been in my head, you probably know me better than I do. I don’t know anything about this stuff.”

There is a prolonged silence, in which Loki watches me and I make eye contact with anything but him.

“Well," he begins, "the following is a generalization, but magical signatures are like radio frequencies. My seidr comes from Asgard, and every one who channels seidr is on the same frequency, so to speak. Wong and Strange’s magic is derived from the energy of the multiverse, which is channeled through their gods. That's essentially its own frequency, as well. Your magic would have had its own unique signature.”

'Would have had'. Past-tense.

"We will learn more once we have located your power well."

"You don't think it's entirely lost?"

"No. I don't. My consciousness remains with this form," Loki gestures to himself, "but I can sense the presence of magic here."

Something released in my gut.

"Any idea where your powers come from?"

"I, uh, never knew, where, or… who was using the same frequency... I get the impression I searched out answers. I think it's what I was hoping to find out through academia, but I never found anything." I cringe at the statement. I wanted to be more definitive, tell Loki exactly how I had searched, but I couldn't offer anything other than vague inclinations. It's prior to my living memory. "Stephen searched everywhere, but nothing, ah, either."

I'm genuinely surprised that Loki doesn't use that as an opportunity to rag on Stephen, or boast of superior tracking skills.

"Can’t we just follow the magical signature back to its source? Like follow it out the window? Then we’d know who was talking to me in my dream.”

“In real life maybe, but in here, I’m afraid it’s not that simple - this is a vision of the past, a ghost of an event that has already happened and been imprinted as memory. We only have access to the parts that directly involved you, and from this slice of your life, I can't tell if you were drawing the magic to you while you slept, or if it was seeking you out. I wouldn't know where to begin."

I nod, it sounded like a stupid suggestion when I said it.

"Actually... I may have an idea." He straightens his lapels. "I cannot track your magic to the source from inside your mind, but if we treat it like an artifact that exists across memories... I might be able to connect each healthy memory of your magic to another. A thread that may lead us to your well of power." He doesn't wait for permission, Loki beginning to hum to himself.

It's a simple and rather beautiful as a form of magic and at times I swear I can hear two or even three notes as once. He is bathed in what I can only call black light.

"Are you ready?" Loki asks, his voice reverberating slightly. The light does not dissipate, instead it hovers around him, his eyes wholly black.

"I guess."

He looks otherworldly. This magic is different from his seidr. "Do you know what would happen if we tried to follow this flow of magic out the window?"

I shake my head.

"See, it's- oh- I'm not sure if you can see it from there- come here. That's it. Now, look over there, can you see-?"

Loki pushes me through the window. It doesn't break, warping against me until I phase all the way through with a pop.

I land on my ass with a yelp, but am lucky that I only fall two or three feet. The window was a door.

"Asshole," I mutter.

This scene is very similar to the last

Again, Memory-Me was in bed, but this time the dream didn’t seem to be quite as disturbing.

“Come now,” it's the same voice as in the previous dream, warm and slightly-accented. “You remember this, just practice.”

From the moment we entered this memory, Loki had drawn the magical signatures in the room to visibility. The purple that was coming in the window previously is still there, but it swirls with my own magical energy

Without warning, my memory's body flickers and disappears, Memory-Me's magical signature disappeared with me.

“Ages of Thunder,” Loki reeled back, surprised, looking back and forth between the memory and my real self. “That is a pretty unique incantation, sunna.”

I ignored the remark, my face scrunching up. “I don’t remember that dream. I learned an invisibility spell from a dream, but when I woke up, I couldn’t remember anything but the motions to perform the magic.”

“I am not sure I conveyed my surprise enough, I have never seen an invisibility spell that works like that,” for emphasis Loki restarts the scene, creating a repeating loop of my flickering form. “You see? You aren’t simply vanishing, you are disrupting your mass in some way.”

When my body vanishes, the comforter, which is draped over Memory-Me, drops entirely, like I had vanished completely. When my memory's body reappears, she is on top of the linen.

“So, it’s more than just turning invisible?” I wonder aloud, placing my hand on the arm of Memory-Me, and sure enough, when her body disappeared, my hand slipped onto the mattress like she had never been there. There wasn’t even an indent in the bed where my bodyweight should be.

Another memory begins to tugs at the edges of my brain, the thread Loki was working calling us, and in unison, Loki and I approach the door leading from my bedroom to the hallway.

We step into the Sanctum gym.

“That was good. The spell I mean. I didn’t realize the extent of it.”

Stephen looks nervous. I hadn't noticed when I lived this memory.

“What do you mean?”

“You were gone-”

“Uh-huh, that is what is usually meant when people say ‘invisibility spell’.”

“Ha-ha ,” Stephen rolls his eyes and begins packing up his sparring equipment, “but I, in all my infinite power, couldn't even feel you. Your presence. Your magic. Anything. It was like you popped out of existence.”

“When you perform this spell, what does it look like from your perspective?” Loki asked, turning to face me.

The memory restarts. Memory-Me vanishes again.

“I don’t know, like how does it feel, you mean?” I shrug. “It’s like looking at the world through a water bottle. I could still feel my body, like it wasn’t like I turned into gas or anything,” I nodded my head to the vision as Memory-Me shoves Memory-Stephen. “I could still interact with the world, but it took effort. I remember-” finding the words to describe the experience was a challenge, “I remember trying to talk with Stephen when I was invisible, but he couldn’t hear me? And his voice sounded so far away.”

Loki’s hand absentmindedly came up to rub his jawline. When he wasn’t parading around like a prized peacock, he was almost tolerable. Add that to the list - ‘almost tolerable.’ 'Relatively knowledgeable' when he'll share.

We walked without talking through several other memories, following the artifact thread along.

It's like glimpsing the most boring parts of your life. Memory-me eats, sleeps, reads, practiced magic and catalogued. Rinse and repeat.

The most confronting part is that, just as I feared, I don’t have any other friends, even anyone else I was close with. It seemed that as soon as I had met Stephen, as soon I found the Sanctum, either I just dropped any friends I had or I just plain didn't have any. No one checks on me, not friends, not coworkers. I move in with the sorcerers without saying goodbye to old neighbors... It's like I was a specter in my own life.

“I must have been so lonely,” I don't really mean for it to be said out loud, “but why don’t I remember feeling lonely, even in the beginning of my memories, when I had just met Stephen. I was living in New York for god-knows-how-long, and I had no one? So why didn’t I feel lonely? Or at least relieved that I finally made friends?”

Loki looks at me with a lifted brow. “Your whole life does seem to be rather Strange-oriented.”

I don’t know what to say to that. He's right.

“Are you in love with him?” There it was, that tenderness again. I am automatically distrusting of it.

“Why would you ask that?”

Loki smirks. “I’ve been in your mind, sweetness. I’ve felt what you’ve felt. You are drawn to him almost against rational thought.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I, Sunna?”

“Again with that stupid nickname. That’s not my name.”

“It means ‘sunshine’, I’ve given it to you in honor of your sunny disposition.”

"Don't."

"So, do you love him?"

My frustration at my situation solidifies, cast into a new form. My hands curl into fists at my side.

The black light surrounding Loki flickers out, and he looks down in bewilderment.

I'm not supposed to leave Loki, but in order to avoid hitting him and causing him to potentially leave me stranded in my own mind, I turn on my feet, walking back to the museum’s entrance and away from him.

My feet echo on the marble floors as I round the ticket booth and pushed the glass door, stepping through-

And halting immediately. No, no, no, no, no.

The night was dark, lit only by the pinpricks of hundreds of stars as the lazy wave of color begins to trace across the sky.

“Well, isn’t this romantic,” Loki mocks.

“I don’t want to be here,” I snap, turning to step back through the portal, through which I can see my bedroom.

But Loki slipped in between, stopping me from leaving. “You manifested it.”

“Let me leave.”

“Why, does something…?” Loki trailed off, his eyes locked on the scene behind me.

I'm frozen, only in the memory I can't feel the cold.

“Ah,” his gaze turned back to me, green eyes dancing with amusement. “Too embarrassed to watch your rejection, I see. I have to admit, you are braver than I thought, to kiss him and handle his rebuttal. Such a lack of explanation would have driven me mad.”

“Fuck off,” I said, attempting to shove him out of the way, but even with my entire bodyweight behind the action, he doesn't move at all.

“Well, this development has completely eviscerated my theory.” Instead of renouncing the scene, Loki strolls right up to the edge, pulling himself onto the rock Stephen and I had shared, and started the scene again with front row seats.

“Hey, cut that out!” but my outrage fell on deaf ears.

“See, I think that the circumstances in which you came under Strange’s care are suspicious enough, obviously, because of the whole diversion-mind-invasion situation, but now that I know he doesn’t feel for you the way you feel for him... Frankly I’m struggling to identify his motivations.”

The kiss. The rejection.

“What are you talking about?”

“The most straight forward answer is that Strange accepted you into his life, his home, because he is in love with you. That he could fall entirely in love with someone in two months goes against his suspicious nature, but that is the only reasoning I could come up with. The desire to help you, to protect you, to be around you constantly,” Loki's tone is torturous, he's trying to get under my skin. “But clearly, the man does not love you. I am at a loss.” Another list word - cruel.

He's just trying to get under my skin.

‘Can’t wait to see what kind of pedestal Strange stores you on.’ That’s what Loki had said the first day I'd met him, like he was already convinced Stephen loved me, even then. My gut twists.

I had thought we were close, but do I even really know Stephen? Clearly, I am not very good at reading him, because I thought we were having a moment under these stars, but why had I thought that? Historically Stephen kept me at arm’s length, he hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with himself. Was I delusional?

“You moved in with the man a few months after meeting him? Just joining him on missions and slotting into his life perfectly? Just like that?” Loki snapped his fingers in emphasis.

“I- I don’t know what that has to do with-”

“What about the rest of your life? What about everything else?”

“I still go to work, and- and I have hobbies! Like- like-” I scrambled, trying to name a single thing that I had done since meeting Stephen that would pass the Bechdel test. “It doesn’t matter! I don't have to explain anything to you.”

“Don’t you think that’s just awfully convenient? That Strange finds you one day, a poor lost magical kitten, and just absorbs you into his life without having to make any significant changes? But everything that was you beforehand is mysteriously lost?”

“He’s not a villain, Loki!”

“Of course not,” Loki smirked. “He’s just a man, who has managed to separate you from everyone you know and love, isolating you from your life before him, and now, with your memories lost, has managed to create a permanent form control over you.”

I look away for one second, but when I turn back, Loki is gone, and standing in his place is Stephen. “Is this what you want?”

“Stop it.” I could barely form the words.

“I love you, Sunna, I want the world for you, Sunna. You are my one true love, the star in the night that guides me,” Loki-Stephen crooned.

“I said stop,” I shoved the prince with everything I could muster, and to my surprise he actually staggers back a few steps.

His true form flickers for a second before he appears in front of me, a perfect copy of Stephen down to his scarred hands on my face. “Do you trust me?”

A thumb brushed my bottom lip. Stephen’s eyes held the same pain that I remembered and I gaped like a fish out of water, because this was too close to the real thing. Stephen is too close.

His face is leaning in, and I can’t help but move away like two magnets of the same polarity, his breath fanning across my nose until the last second when his brings his mouth to my ear, his breath warm. “Why do you trust me?”

My eyes are shut tight. I felt Stephen stepping around me, circling me, but not once putting an inch more space between our bodies. It's easy to believe that it's Stephen. He even smells like Stephen, lemons and earl grey.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you regret meeting me?” Stephen asks.

“Is this all a game to you?” I back away from him, desperate to be away from Loki’s appropriated warmth.

“Everything is a game to me. Do you ask a fish not to swim?” Loki's voice comes out of Stephen's mouth.

“What do you even want with me? Do you just want to torture me? I get it, Stephen doesn’t have feelings for me, I already knew that, I didn’t need you to tell me, I know. It was humiliating.”

Loki finally gives me an inch of personal space, a satisfied expression across his features.

Insecurity and embarrassment turned to rage and I slap him hard across the face, so hard that I'd slapped the Stephen off of him.

Loki reels. It looks as though it actually hurt.

For a moment everything pauses and I then I am flooded with pure terror. The ground cracks around him with the force of his seidr.

A step forward and I take a matching step back. Green crackles in the air between us. Another step forward.

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AO3 Masterpost

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hoardlikegoldenirises · 2 months

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tonal whiplash—a scene out of context.

Trying to draw 616 Scarlet Spider Kaine is so hard for me 😂 I think my problem was the cheekbones, which I tried to fix, so I think he turned out alright here. I'm just so used to drawing him smashed up. Obviously. Also. It's really hard to draw windowverse Kaine's nose in profile. I need to find some reference photos or something.

It's smeared off to the side lol (different WIP/sketch, making a scar reference lol—it actually came in handy for this pic a little bit)

Anyway, here are the lines without any colors—

beef

I did not necessarily originally intend to blanket everything in solid black, so there are lines that aren't visible lmao — but in the dream sequence thing this is part of there is a lot of pure darkness and voids of negative space so i was like, you know, i should probably invoke that here. I GUESS I could have colored 616 Kaine's pants dark gray or something but I decided to leave it all invisible so I could keep the palette simple and focus more on the... copious quantities of blood lol

tfw your hair is just soaked with blood. I was just about to say "in the nature of dreams, this isn't realistic, and his hair isn't actually soaked in blood irl" but then I thought about it for a sec and... no, it definitely is soaked all the way up to the back of his head because of the fact that he ends up lying in a pool of his own blood for like... at least fifteen minutes. if not longer. maybe thirty minutes?

it gets chopped to chin-length after this (when he gets ✨hospitalized✨ because he's ✨dying✨) on account of the blood being a radioactive biohazard and also a hazard in general (tripping hazard, tangling hazard, etc.)—the buzzcut in some other sketches I've posted is not until a week or two later and is something he does because of some complex emotions.

they go to a renfair like three weeks after this 😂

Anywho~

he is m— he is my poor little meow meow,,,

#This is AU!Kaine and 616 Kaine but it could also be read as like. 90s Kaine and 2010s Kaine I guess #ftr there isn't actually any multiversal stuff in windowverse it's just an extension of kaine's visions and prophetic dreams and stuff #though i suppose you could argue that this might still be the crossing of a threshold into another universe possibly.#nadiart #kaine parker #came in through the window last night #rough art #sort... of...#Man these semi-cleaned up sketches are really throwing a wrench in my extremely black and white tagging system XD #i like doing them though #fanadiart #blood #using kaine's hair to censor gore—actually i didn't think this through entirely when i was sketching it and had forgotten about the blood #and then i was like #wait #are his wounds still wounds in the dream or is he just covered in blood with scars—i still don't know #but i think the intent is that it would be so dark you wouldn't really be able to tell anyway? so this works #anyway it's important to get a little bit homoerotic with a dreamscape alternate universe version of yourself #as a treat

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metalbvcky · 6 months

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in all seriousness this is the best thing Marvel has put out since... i don't know, since phase 4 began? the writing, the storytelling, the cinematography (the record store scene my GOD), all of it is just phenomenal. this is by far Tom's best portrayal of Loki TO DATE. like-- i haven't felt this way about an MCU film in ages not even TFATWS had my heart rushing this much are there things that need to be wrapped up? yes!! do we need a season 3? double yes!!! are we going to be emotionally okay while Loki is all alone until that happens? NO 😭😭😭😭

#loki series #loki #loki spoilers #loki season 2 #mandy talks and stuff #god damn it fuck fuck fuck i'm going insane #i kept it together in the post but i'm unleashing my emotions in the tags #i need to write a fic #my modern au series i don't care there are endless TIMELINES #THEY SAID SO IN THE SHOW #THEY FUCKIN MENTIONED 616 #MULTI!!! VERSE!!!!

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616phyla · 11 months

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i get so upset about the fact they replaced Phyla, a character who is characterised by her strong emotion and impulsivity, who makes mistakes and fails but is always trying to live up to her view of herself and her legacy, who does the most to help her loved ones and the universe and is always trying her hardest - with an AU version of herself that is “perfect” and went through none of her hardships or trauma, and is implied to be better off due to that. what does make it worse is that they are expecting us to act like she is the same character - that her without any of her past or history or flaws is the same because they have the same name. and it's like maybe they could explore how it feels for the others to have this AU version of their friend who died, or how she feels being like a universal replacement, but it's largely been nothing. Phyla is such an interesting character so to reduce her like this is frustrating...

#my ramble.... i have so much thoughts about her #ideally i would have just resurrected her during the same time they brought AU version in because like YOU COULD HAVE #and 616 phy has soo much plot threads you can explore with the guardians and adam and her family - especially because genis is back now #lots of thoughts always #lin.txt

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amagicdoctor · 5 months

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Dayum... not Clea taking care of some deadbeat parent's kids x2!!

#doctor strange #strange academy #clea strange #doyle dormammu #avengers #marvel comics #earth 616 #baby strange #idk little girl name yet lmao #clea single mother au #doyle and clea wont meet in canon?#thanos voice:#fine ill do it myself #concept art

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wildglitch · 5 days

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No one: Hey Wild, how do you imagien WIZ!Peters suit? You must have changed it cause of the 8 months right?

Me: what? No, hes just wearing his normal outfit from the episode, why would I-

Me: *gets flashbacks to this masterpeice*

Me:....Fuck-

#peter parker #616 suit #mcu #zombie au #au #wiz!au #hc #i guess this is my life now #making hc for this au #its fine lol #im having fun #no cause I though of it and now I have to just accept that he ruined Karen and only has the bottom half now #and honestly #im perfectly ok with that

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ozzinbloggin · 5 months

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This is what they call a Character Establishing moment.

ASM #37

#norman osborn #616 Norman Osborn #Harry Osborn #j jonah jameson #ditko Spider-man #ok so I've been logging the cameos so not his first appearance but this is essentially his introduction as a character #JJ adopts Harry AU #I mean Harry's going to get real sick of Jameson later but it's cute now #Actually I might tag this dynamic #Harry & JJ Saga #NormanJonah History #The Osborn Family Drama #Ditko Norman

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pandagirl45 · 1 month

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Ultron: pa *sitting on the counter licking a spoon*

Bucky: yes? *look at him putting cookies on a sheet*

Ultron: *points to hank pym ultron* why is there another me? I think

Bucky: *chokes on spit looking at h ultron*....

Hank ultron: why do you look at me like winter soldier

Tony: *walks in then pauses*...why... what?

H ultron: stark, you worthless man

Ultron: hey! *climbs off the counter* don't be mean to my parents*

H ultron: *calculating*

*they figure out that h ultron is from a different universe. Au Tony arguing with 616 hank pym*

Bucky; *listening eating a bowl of cereal watching ultron and h ultron drawing*

Ultron: I don't like the Easter bunny, his eyes can see souls

H ultron: we shall conquer all these Easter bunnies *drawing plans for world domination*

#this is dumb #lol #tony stark #bucky barnes #winteriron #tony stark x bucky barnes #ultron #616 ultron #look this is chaotic #imagine my au tony and bucky just adopting 616 ultron because yes #au ultron just dragging that ultron to their 3rd grade class #dont take it too seriously #all for good fun #incorrect quotes

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cowboyhorsegirl · 1 year

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wait what if iron man really WAS a robot?? like Tony created a suit to get out of Vietnam but then he realized the chest plate wasn’t enough to keep the shrapnel from killing him over the long-term so he retrofits the suit into a robot and programs an AI that’s as close to a living legacy as he will ever get and then Iron Man the robot is who helps found the Avengers???

#and like I’m imagining that Tony models Iron Man’s decision making priorities after his own battlefield experiences #so the AI is based on tony and because it’s a learning AI it becomes more & more ‘human’ & like tony the more it has to make tough choices #both on & off the battlefield #and some of those choices will inevitably involve fellow Avenger Steve!!!!#who falls in love with this robot and by doing so teaches the robot to recognize that what it’s doing by placing Steve at a higher & higher #protection priority is love too!!!!#IM being the ghost of tony that Steve falls in love with without ever having known the creator oh gosh #616 #stevetony #Iron Man #my employer's opinions #AIron man au

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drawnasour-ray · 11 months

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(I gave up in a background) God This thing took time

ANYWAY, have this drawing of a Ninjago Au from a discord server I'm in, featuring Maya and Nya! (Yes that beast is Nya, long story)

Click for better quality (please)

#Ninjago Au #Elemental Beasts Au #if you want you can ask questions about it i guess #The creators of this au are @/Impulsivewriter and @/angeldrawsstuff #and occasionally @/fanfalc-616 too i think

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whoppert · 2 months

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SUNNA 10 (loki/reader) (stephen strange/reader)

◂ previous chapter first chapter ▴

4945 words

warnings: the after effects of mind violation; canon-typical violence. minor gore; depictions of wounded animals

AO3 MASTERPOST

With that, we see the world through Loki's eyes . . . .

Another step towards the shirking Midgardian.

The right side of my face relinquishes the sting for a long steady burn. Oh, I don’t blame her for the slap, not really, she’s shown a penchant for explosive bouts of emotion, but the unexpected pain makes the uncivilized part of my mind react murderously.

"I'm sorry," she says, hands out in apology. "I'm sorry for hitting you."

I actively reel in the desire to kill her. I am provoking her for more than one reason, I remind myself. I need her mad. “I am willing to admit, transfiguring into the sorcerer was perhaps a bit harsh-”

She stops backing away unexpectedly, and I almost collide with her.

Her shoulders draw back, face contorting with anger. “A bit harsh? A bit harsh!? Are men not taught manners in Asgard? God, why are you such a fucking tool?”

AO3

"You know nothing of my background, I think all Asgardians are tools in one way or another.” I match her energy, each one of us refusing to back down, glaring at each other. Good. “I apologize if I upset you, but it certainly wasn’t personal. All in the spirit of fun.”

“That wasn’t personal? If you upset me?”

"That is what I said."

She is genuinely flabbergasted. "God, you're such a-! What did I ever do to you?"

"What do you mean? I'm here! Against my will! Fixing your mess." I gesture around us. This I genuinely believe. This is not my mess.

She's waving her hands in the air in front of her. "Woah, woah, what? You're still half responsible bud! I need you to be like so for real right now, this is your mess." Right fingers tap on her left palm in beat with her words.

“If I caused you harm it was indirect, I'll admit that much culpability, but I have been practicing magic for longer than your bloodline has existed. There's never been a problem before.” It's true.

“Indirect?” She's almost nose to nose with me on the sloped ground.

"Yes, indirect. If you hadn't been enchanted, then my involvement wouldn't have resulted in this. The enchanter - that is where fault lies."

"Okay? You can't just go into people's heads like that!" She's infuriated. I can feel it, feel all her emotions, hear it in all her thoughts. So... so close.

"Huh. Why can't I? Tell me, I implore you." I know how to sound audibly arrogant. I know the affect that has on someone already frustrated.

"You don't really plan to listen, Loki. We met, and granted I was a little rude, but who just meets someone and then stages a whole shitty diversion just to break into their head? How entitled do you have to be to do that to a person?"

Mind magic is a complicated thing. While I'm in her head I'm bonded to her. When entering a truly fragile mind, it's necessary to bond the guest consciousness to the host, it makes it easier to read the connections and to heal broken bonds. It tricks her mind into thinking I am one and the same. My magic will linger on her for days afterwards, stopping her mind from rejecting the supplementing power.

Such a long time has it been since I have attempted to heal a mind... I have been quite unprepared, forgotten what it is to feel as another feels, hear what another thinks without escape.

It means I feel the throbbing of her pain. I don't like it.

"Do you really think that that's okay?”

I am forced to steel myself. There is a higher purpose to this. Her pain as long as I feel it is my pain, and it makes me want to bite like a wounded dog. I channel that feeling, as I have done so for a millennia - from lashing teeth to a single precise blade. "Sunna, I have met hundreds of thousands of peoples, in different realms and different places. Your kind are born and grow old in the blink of an eye to me. You are nothing to me. I care little for the vapid sensibilities of the common man, just as you cannot weep and wail over every insect killed in your presence because you will never be able to carry on. I am a god and you are a girl. Do you blame a gust of wind for blowing down a castle made of sand? No. No amount of tact could make such a truth easily digestible, and you simply will not be able to induce guilt in me for it."

"Fuck you."

Again, I don’t blame her for the punch. It is the risk you take with provocation. Her fist never makes contact with my face though, I am still quicker than she is, wrapping my fingers around the assailing wrist and holding it firmly in my hand. Unsuccessful attempts to wrench out of my grip were made, and it's harder to restrain her than it technically should be. Perfect. Sunna’s anger is making her stronger.

“So you just mess with people- what- because you can?”

“More or less."

She is preparing another strike.

"Time ever marcheth forth and when you live as long as I do you find entertainment wherever you can.”

I grab her other wrist as well, halting the right hook.

Genuine surprise weaves through the timbre of my voice, “your swings have good form. I refuse to believe that Strange taught you how to fight. That buffoon couldn’t throw a half-decent punch to save his life. Stop it, you’re going to strain a muscle."

She swears at me again.

Something in the air shifts, enough to pull my attention to our surroundings, only for a second but long enough that she pulls me off balance, forcing me to take a step forward. She uses the momentum to grind her heel down on the top of my foot. In real life, this wouldn't have hurt, wouldn’t have caused me to yelp in pain as I did. Every other form I take, I take with me the durability of an Asgardian.

“No matter what I do, what questions I ask, you spin into conspiracy theory, like trying to poison me against Stephen, I know what you're doing-"

"Acknowledging reality is not poisoning."

"You are actually crazy! Like I knew you dressed well, but the way you accessorize the tin foil hat - that's crazy. You wanna talk about bugs? Talk about animals? You’re like a fucking animal skulking around, lying and chipping away at my sanity piece-by-piece. You didn’t put this spell on me, fine, you didn’t intend to cause me harm? Fine! But you fucked up that spell, you fucked up my head, and everything would have been fine if you didn’t feel entitled to other people’s brains and business, so forgive me if I couldn’t give two shits if you did it directly or indirectly. You owe me a solution!”

There's a pregnant pause while she waits for me to say something, my foot tender and throbbing. “You think I dress well?”

Another shift in pressure. The memory around us fades away.

The night sky around gives way to masonry, mortar appearing before bricks, sprouting out of the ground like some bamboo made of only right-angles, the bricks grow in, strange rectangular fruit. The roof was the final thing to form, snapping on and blocking the newly risen sun.

Encased in the walls of the top of a stone clock tower, she shows Memory-Strange some magic she had learnt as a child, waving a hand through the bell that signaled the changing of the hour. A purple glow has washed over her features. It seemed to catch in the sorcerer’s eye.

“This is my mind,” the real her contended. “You do not get to act this way in here, this is my head.”

The walls of the tower crack and the ground jolts, shards of another scene loitering behind the set. She is almost there, unwittingly close to a breakthrough.

The automatic door to the local gelato shop slid open with a beep, complete with a welcome mat outside, with the words ‘ice to meet you!’ emblazoned in pink. The inside of the shop was almost empty, but she sat with Wong in one of the shop’s pastel tables, eating their gelato and talking.

“I don’t care what you do out there in the rest of the world but you don’t get to come here and laugh at my memories and torture me because you got bored. Get it together! I have no memories, Loki! My brain is so broken! My body could give out on me any second, everything hurts and my magic is gone. I’m scared, so you need to step up! I need you to step up. You owe me.” Color blooms high across her cheeks.

The gelato shop shudders, splintering away, thrusting us into an intoxicated New York city night.

The lights were too bright, so much so that they hurt her eyes. She could hear every sound around us, every hum of a motor vehicle, the rustle of trash being kicked on the sidewalk, and people speaking to each other in various tones all of which were so intrusive that they thudded against her skull but still she couldn’t make out a single word of conversation.

Ah, here we are. The underlayer.

Her pain transports me. Once when I was small, Odin took me out into the forest to hunt. I did not take to physical endeavors in the same way that my brother did and I was acutely aware of how this made me lesser than Thor. Still I was young, and was always chasing the ghost of approval that Odin gave occasionally - not enough to sustain me, but often enough that I was haunted with the need to make him proud of me. Desperate for more.

I did not rejoice in the killing of animals. More often than not it would do little more than to wash me with nausea, but that day we had laid a trap for a bear, a clamp with so much force that it would be able to restrain the beast long enough for Odin to kill it. We sat in wait until the sun set and rose and set and rose again, the time being of little burden to us.

We sat until a reindeer, antlers freshly shed, wandered near. He called for his kind, but there came no reply.

“He is lost,” Odin said.

So profoundly alone, just as I was.

Odin knew of the magic mother was teaching me, and had forced me to render us invisible to the forest, he had said he didn’t want me to be a distraction when the bear came. Through the lens of an adult as I now am, I can see that it was more important for him to model to me what he thought a great warrior should be, to stroke his own ego, because surely the reason I was such a disappointment is because I had not seen him kill personally. But this was no bear. This was a reindeer, lost and alone, and stepping awfully too close to the trap. For a moment I forgot about the spell and I moved to stop him, to chase him away.

“Halt,” it was a simple command from my father, and it was all that it took to freeze me in place.

The deer was going to step in the trap. “Please, father,” I could not drag my eyes from the beast, “we came to conquer a bear, not this. This is not worth our time,” my voice sounded more practical than I felt.

“Watch.”

The deer made only one misstep, and the teeth of the clamp reared up. This trap was made to subdue a creature much bigger and stronger than a reindeer, so the first sound to echo through the forest was the snapping of delicate bone. The second sound, a scream of agony.

I could not move. I was not allowed to. Odin insisted that I watch. If it were a bear caught, he would have charged in and killed the beast (not without show), but death would have been swifter than the slowly encroaching starvation and blood loss. The trapped animal moaned and cried out. Time passed, how much I did not know, but even now, a millennia later I can see the animals panic and terror shift into anger as though it were before my own eyes once again. Asgardian animals are often more conscious than their Midgardian counterparts and I swore I could see the moment that it decided to gnaw off it’s own limb, now broken in several more places from its wild thrashing. Blood pooled around it. After hours of suffering, it tore through its own sinew and muscle, the gore lashed between its teeth.

It was free... but only managed one shaking step before it collapsed. It had lost too much blood, exhausted and in shock. Even with the lengths it had gone to to free itself, it would die soon anyway. Finally, Odin sent in his wolves to end the deer’s life, and my eyes shut tight, so I could spare myself a fraction of the horror that I had been forced to see.

“Open your eyes and watch, boy.” Odin’s words echoed through my mind, and I am brought back to the scene in front of me, bright lights and loud noises, Sunna standing in front of me, the only respite from the calamity.

“Fine. I agree. I’ve behaved out of line, I apologize.”

She did a double-take, trying to figure out if I was being sincere. It was an expression I had seen on many faces over the years. "Why?" She asks.

I do not answer her.

We had broken through to the underlayer of her subconscious, to the memories she could not access by natural means, and it is represented by the New York cityscape stretching out in front of us.

I swept a hand out gesturing down the never-ending block. “When we first entered your mind, we could only access the memories closest to the surface, the ones we knew you to possess, solidified in your mind, untouched by the spell or by the actions of... unaware third parties. We now find ourselves in the deeper layer of the mind, so to speak. This layer is only accessible through a deep emotional outburst.”

"I guarantee that if you have let me know, I could have had a sufficient mental breakdown without all of that. So I'm still mad at you."

"It has to genuine, raw," I insist.

She rolls her eyes, and the expression is quite attractive on her.

“You're so cruel.” It wasn’t an accusation, more of a statement, without mirth.

She is not the first and would not be the last to tell me this.

“I would say it was unbecoming of a prince, but your reputation is built on cruelty. The old stories, the Battle of New York, the way you treat Stephen. Cruel. An apology doesn't hide it.”

“Did you hope to wound me with that comment?”

She swallows. “Yes.” It's honest.

Each memory we watch is framed with a kind of ease after that.

Nothing flows as it should in here. It is starting to become alarming.

Her mind should respond to her intuitively, but it does not. There are no full memories, only fragments left and distorted.

I can feel her frustration lap at me, threatening to boil over any minute.

For the second time I channel the häxeri, witchcraft. A gift from my dearest mother. The darkness flows as I hum. Let me find the threads of her core. Show me the damage. Show me the bonds broken that I may heal them.

Around us, pieces of her bedroom flow into place like smoke. It is a memory of me, the memory of me.

We watch as she snatches the laptop from my hands.

Suddenly I see her perspective of me, tinged with frustration and fear, as I loom over her. She is a reindeer nearing a trap.

Memory-Loki is forced into the armchair, but her powers are unrefined, and she's using anger as her motivator. A burst of green light knocks her to the floor, and in response she aims a surprisingly well placed kick at my legs, which knocks me down hard next to her. She'd hit her head on the ground, and the memory fabric itself became hazy.

One of my own memories flashes behind my eyes, of Thor killing his goats. A predator. An impending doom approaching a trapped animal.

She jolts as I remove my palm from her forehead. Nothing had appeared out of the ordinary. Sunna stormed out of the Sanctum, her phone shoved hastily in her pocket before getting as far away from me as fast as she could.

The real Sunna stands in front of me, and she regarded the scene in front of us blankly. “I used to remember this, like really clearly,” she chewed on the skin of her bottom lip, “so vividly in the hours after it happened. Out there, I mean. But it disappeared like a slow leak. The details are fuzzier. I still remember, but it feels like all of the memories I've got are so fuzzy now.”

I feel sick.

"So how is what you do different from what Gorron does?" she repeats the question.

The first time she asked escaped my attention. I turn my gaze towards her, hyper-aware of her presence here with me. Every mind is different but this mind is so peculiar. "Gorron looks at your physical brain," I clear my throat. "He can watch a memory via osmosis by pressing on the brain tissue, but nothing so deep as this. I am inside your mind right now."

There is something she is feeling that I can’t identify. "How does it compare to the last time you were in my mind?"

"It doesn't."

"Well, how do we fix it?"

“I don’t know yet,” I answer. It's honest. She didn't believe me I could see it in her face. She feels as though I am holding out on her.

"How do you decide which questions to answer and which ones to cryptically avoid?"

"I flip a coin in my head."

The scenery changes around us. The walls of the Sanctum morphed into a place I have never been.

She was writing furiously on a clipboard, taking very detailed notes of the exhibit in front of her. The dark violet of the museum uniform blazer compliments her well.

It took several long moments for her to notice Strange from where he watched her, his face a mix of emotions. Finally, and with much convincing, he approached, stilling a few feet away. “Excuse me…”

She turns, immediately erupting in a smile. “Hi! Did you need some help?”

It took him a few too many seconds to reply. “Uh, yeah. I- I was wondering if you could tell me where the entomology wing is?” He was nervous.

"Of course!" She rattled off some directions, but when the confused look on Strange's face doesn't clear she endeavored to just show him herself.

We followed them to the entomology unit, watching their very first interaction.

"Big fan of bugs are you?" Sunna strikes up a conversation effortlessly.

"Uh, I suppose. Are you?" He looks at her so intensely.

They arrive at their destination.

"No, afraid not. I can't stand them to be honest, but the exhibit is really cool, there's a lot of really passionate people working that one!"

Strange thanks her, but as she walks away he calls out to her, "actually, this is embarrassing, but I totally, uh, spaced out. I meant- the Babylonian exhibition?"

"Oh, well, that's alright, I'm actually heading that way." She gestures for him to follow. "What brings you there?"

"The art, I guess. Big fan."

"That's cool! I don't think it gets the recognition it deserves."

"Oh yeah, me neither. I don't know anything about it. Maybe you could start me off?"

The pair talked for hours, completely absorbed in each other's company, touring the museum. Their humors seemed to mesh, and they have a surprising amount in common, fiercely academic, competitive, intelligent. Not once did anyone come check on her, to find out why she wasn't doing her job. Nor did her coworkers so much as glance in her direction. Finally, Strange managed to detach himself from her side long enough to leave.

"What woman talks to a stranger for hours at work without attempting to end the conversation?" I ask, turning to face the real her. "What woman isn't uncomfortable with this level of attention? Presumably you have things to do, you can’t just spend all your time talking with patrons, especially not just one."

She didn't reply, too busy staring at herself.

If there wasn't a soft rise and fall of Sunna’s chest, one might have wondered if she had been instantly petrified. The light behind her eyes had vanished completely. She did not move, had not moved after Strange left, but the other people of the memory continue on about their business, walking through the Cultures of the World exhibit, ignoring her. It was as if she wasn’t there.

We both stare for a few moments, until the background noise of the museum fades and silence grows louder and louder.

"What’s going on? Why aren’t I moving?”

“I don’t know.”

The lights of the museum blink off one by one. The doors are locked and still she does not move.

As though caught on a breath of wind the memory is gone.

“What the hell was that?”

“Do you remember anything like that?” I ask.

“Well I remember meeting Stephen,” she puzzled, “but I specifically remember finishing work, because the whole time I was super distracted by the idea of visiting the Sanctum. The Bleeker Street occultist is kind of a local legend and I had a professional curiosity in Stephen's collection of antiques- anyway, my boss called me out for not putting an artefact back into storage properly.” She ran her hands through her hair. “Like I remember, I never forgot. It was really embarrassing. Could that memory that we just watched be wrong?”

"If your mind is missing a part of a memory, it may distort it. Fill in the gaps, so to speak. Minds naturally do that all the time. It's possible that as sick as you are, it is unable to fill in those gaps and this is what it looks like.

She's uneasy. I'm uneasy.

We continue our way down the block. New York is an ugly, smelly place, and this has translated well into her memory. Still, even to the untrained eye this was, at best, a copy of the city, even excluding the piercing nature of the lights and the chaos of noise. Things hid in the shadows here, intrusive thoughts, feelings that she could not accept - though I drew attention to neither.

Another memory forms, growing from the roots up. A vast field of yellow wheat stretching out as far as the eye can see. Buzzing of insects and the humming of machinery somewhere far off. A cerulean sky spread like drop of ink in water.

“I- I don’t remember this.” Sunna corrected, “It's not in my living memory. Could this be a memory that I lost?”

I speak the word for 'yes' in her language, but I do not know.

The Memory of Sunna is next to us. She was not perturbed by the plants, nor the hot sun on her skin. In the distance appeared a woman, walking through lines of wheat to get to her.

We observe in silence for the five or so minutes it takes the woman to arrive.

She had long curly, light hair that seemed to poof up as though it defied gravity. Her skin was dark and almost tinged blue, as though it was reflecting the cloudless sky. But it was her eyes that drew us in bright with false joy. When she opens her mouth to speak, her voice matches the woman that had visited Sunna in her dream, who had come to warn her and teach her.

Sunna and I exchange a glance.

“You don’t know me, but I know you,” the woman called.

“Who are you?” Memory-Sunna asks.

“A friendly observer,” her laugh was delicate. “But I would like to offer you some advice.”

“Which is?”

“Run. Get away and never look back, don’t come back.”

“Come back where?”

“Home.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The cloud-woman smiled, but it was only a mask over heartache. “And you won’t remember this when you wake. I can only hope that Strange will be able to extract this dream.”

“If I won’t remember, tell me your name.”

“Kuema.”

The field vanishes, giving way to the city again.

"Or I don't remember it because it was a dream and no one remembers their dreams."

"Some do." I can't help it, but I don't tell her, because Strange can ruin his life on his own. "We have a name that carries a lot of power. It must be her magic that brings your dreams to you. Sister signatures. She must get her power from the same place yours comes from."

“Is she behind all of this?”

“Perhaps, perhaps she is another pawn, much like yourself,” I ran my fingers through the tall stalks of wheat. “On the bright side, this will all be a great story for your memoirs."

She gives me a look and I feel the accompanying feeling, but I can't decipher it.

Another memory begins to form around us.

An apartment. It was small, and had too many coats of paint, but still the light switches have a spot where the grease from hands had rubbed through the unsightly beige. The apartment itself was quite messy. Clothes and takeout containers were spread across the room, the kitchen had a sink of dirty dishes and the open door leading to the bedroom framed an unmade bed and a cold cup of coffee left on the bedside table.

The most curious thing of all was that the apartment is empty. No matter the memory, Memory-Sunna had always been there. This mind is unstructured. It's unsettling.

"This is my old place," Sunna remarked. "I lived here until I moved to the Sanctum. Is there any sign of a signature?"

A wave of my hand and the room is engulfed in purple. The surprise caused her to take a step back, bumping into my chest.

She looked up at me, eyes wide and apologizes.

"It's nothing," I reply but neither of us move. I get the impression that she is too frightened to, like she can feel something I can't.

"I don't think this is real," she said. Confusion.

For a beat everything is silent.

Without warning, the apartment disappears like sand down a storm drain. Again we are plunged back into the city, but all of the fragments that had been hiding in the shadows were emitting a piercing screech. Our hands clamped over our respective ears, but it was no improvement.

"Make it stop-" but Sunna is cut off.

A monster, the color of ash burst through a building, coming straight towards us. I used the seconds before impact to shove her out of the way, but the four legged beast clipped my shoulder and sent me staggering. The creature smashed through the front window of an office and skids across the marble floor.

We run in the opposite direction.

"What the hell is that thing?" She yells over her shoulder.

"Whatever it is, it's in a bad mood." I rub my shoulder. Ouch.

There's an alleyway ahead, I push her down it, following closely behind.

The sound of breaking glass echoes behind us as the monster makes its way back outside.

"Can't you do something about it?" A squeak escaped her when the creature made its way down the too-small alley, powering through the brick like it was snow.

"It's your mind! I have limited powers here," I snap.

"Well, use your limited powers to kill it!"

"I could give it a try and just hope that you don't die when I do that."

We burst from the alley and into a forest, the smell of moss surrounding us.

The monster did not follow.

She doubles over, her hands on her knees while she catches her breath. "You said that none of this is real, so that thing can't hurt us. Right? Please tell me that's right?"

"Would you like to test you theory?" My shoulder aches. "It's real and it isn't. I'm not just trying to be enigmatic. We can definitely get hurt here."

"So if that thing dies, I might die. And if we die in here, we might die out there."

I nod sharply.

In the distance birds begin to cry. Trees are being uprooted. Something huge crushes through the flora.

Again we run, but the beast is on our tail too quickly. It roars are visceral and loud.

A tree falls, the shadow on us growing larger and larger.

I send a wave of seidr at it, throwing it backwards and onto the animal with a disturbing crunch.

Beside me, Sunna yelps in pain. I feel it. She can feel the monsters pain, so I really can't kill it.

The trees began to thin, turning into wisps of smoke.

Fire overtakes the environment.

Fire rages on, and so must our protagonist . . . .

AO3 MASTERPOST

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goodoldfashionedengineer · 2 months

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I am watching Daisy Jones & the Six rn, a fictional band which was really popular in the 70s but had a fallout and no one answered why, until 20 years later when they interview the band members and people involved with them, a documentary of sorts.

And I love that sort of thing.

So, idea: Bruce was a brilliant scientist and one day, he disappeared from the face of the earth (on the day of the gamma bomb test). They make a documentary about Bruce Banner in the 80s/90s.

None of his still living family members wanted to participate.

They pull in some other people.

Elementary school teacher: "He was gifted from a young age. Always on top of his class. Could read before he was four years old. But he wasn't really sociable. He didn't have any friends, no. The other kids quickly saw him as a target and ganged up on him."

"It was usually his mom who picked him up. Brian Banner, his father, was known to... Not be a pleasant person. A very angry and also insecure man.”

Former neighbor, “The neighborhood wasn't really a community. Except for church services, maybe. But yeah, you could hear screams from the Banner house very often. Mr and Mrs Banner went out a lot and the boy stayed with the Nanny. Highly unpleasant person as well. You didn't see her often but you knew that you just didn't want to talk with her.”

Bartender, “Brian Banner was a regular. Nobody liked him because he got really aggressive when drunk. And loud. He would often complain about his son, making claims about him being a monster. It was at these moments I was glad he was at the bar instead of at home.”

Former neighbor: “Rebecca did sport a black eye every now and then, no amount of make-uo was going to conceal that. Plus she wore long-sleeved shirts even in summer. She was a good woman. She didn't deserve what happened to her. But yes, the clues that something like this could happen were there.”

Reporter: “What happened?”

Police Officer #1: “We got a call. An accident with one person dead. We arrived at the scene and we all knew that this was no accident.”

Police Officer #2: “He was still kneeling beside her bleeding body. His hands, his face, his clothes, they were all covered in blood. I gave him a blanket, guided him away to our car. He didn't show any signs of emotions. But tears were running down his face. Suddenly, he said ‘She didn’t slip. "He killed her’.”

Police Officer #3: “I remember him. I couldn't ever forget that case. I was with him at the station while we waited for his aunt. He was sitting there all alone, wrapped in a blanket so I decided to get him a hot chocolate. You could see that he had it tough in life. There were bruises on his arms, some handshapped. I brought the hot chocolate over to him and he was holding out his arm. Was muttering something along the lines of ‘I can't find it’. I never understood it.”

Reporter: “You were his middle school teacher?”

Teacher #1: “Yes, I was.”

Reporter: “What do you remember about him?”

Teacher #1: “He was a real troublemaker. Not because of his grades, but he would cause scenes because he only ever wanted to work alone, which backfired multiple times. And his constant mumbling!”

Reporter: “Mumbling?”

Teacher: “Yes! He would talk to himself so often, even during class! And then he had the audacity to not even pay attention to the lesson!”

Schoolmate #1: “I was in the same class as him.”

“Ohh, yes, he mumbled to himself so often! Not even himself, his imaginary friend. Imaginary friend! We were teenagers and the guy still had an imaginary friend. Probably because no one else would willingly spend time with him.”

“Hulk. He always called him Hulk, yeah. Even wrote that name down in his notebook he always carried around.”

“He had this notebook and he would write in it whenever he could. Even during class.”

“I don't know what he wrote in it anymore. Some sort of equations.”

Carla, schoolmate: “He stepped in when Ken, the school bully, harrassed me. He didn't have to do that, but he did anyway.”

“Well, they… they beat him up. He had to go to the hospital. Broken ribs. But once he came back, he asked me if I was okay!”

“What I said? Erm, stuff I regret saying. I don't want to talk about it. We were teenagers and I had a lot to deal with already. I had my own insecurities and your reputation was really important back in school. It wasn't fair, yes, but I was just a girl.”

“He was a good person. Sure, he was weird, but he did not deserve to be bullied. Nobody does.”

Reporter: “How do you know Bruce Banner?”

Former college student #1: “We were roommates during college.”

Reporter: “What was he like?”

Former college student #1: “Smart. Passionate. Awkward. He was great at what he did, a real favorite amongst teachers. He studied with Stoddard, another gamma scientist. Stoddard was always jealous of Banner, because he worked much harder but Banner was the one who got all the praise.”

“It wasn't that Banner was lazy, he was just a genius who just instantly understood everything it seemed. When he had a problem, he would immediately try to solve it.”

Reporter: “How do you know Bruce Banner?”

“We were friends during college.”

“We had a study group in college and we would spend the weekends together too sometimes.”

“We were all nerds, which is why it was so easy to talk together. The rest? They didn't understand us. But we understood each other.”

Former college student #3: “We had fun sharing our interests, sharing knowledge, getting into rambles, going into hypothetical scenarios.”

Former college student #2: *rubbing the back of his neck* “What we would do in our free time together? Ehh.”

Former college student #3: “Drugs.”

Former college student #2: “It was the 70s and burnt out college students. I’m sure that’s all that you need.”

Former college student #1: “Once, I hadn't seen him for three days. I didn't think much of it until he came back. He looked really shaken up and spaced-out. Told me he was at a cafe three towns over. Apparently he had no idea how he got there and just walked back.”

“If he went to parties? Usually not. Except when he did. See, most of the time he was really timid. He was sure of himself, but still introverted. But when he did go out? The guy went all the way. Would even ask me if I wanted to come with him, which I declined. He was like a completely different person.”

Former college student #2: “We had a great time together. Parties were so fun! He really knew how to charm the ladies. It was like Clark Kent and Superman, one second an unassuming guy, the next, he knew how to read the room and what to say to people to get what he wants as if he could read their minds.”

Former college student #3: “Sometimes we would drive to a casino, he would make some money and afterwards we would get something to eat.”

Former college student #2: “And sometimes… Sometimes it seemed more like possession than a superpower. I remember one time we were in the car, mentally not 100% present and he asked really panicked ‘Where am I? How did I get here?’. And that whole confident demeanor? It was gone.”

Former college student #1: “Yes, this was not the only occurrence. Sometimes he would become… childish? He would talk in a few word sentences. I blamed it on sleep deprivation but when I asked him about it, he told me he didn't remember.”

Journalist: “What happened after Dr. Banner’s college time is mostly speculation. What we do know is that he tried to get funding for his research but was declined. As to what his idea consisted of, we have no idea. Eventually he would join the government and this was the last officially known thing about him. His contact with friends and family members became less and less. Of course, he had co-workers that would probably know more, but even the ones working with him are mostly classified and the ones we do know of were unable to be contacted. Eventually a missing person report was filed - and immediately closed. Did he die? Is he held captive? Did he see something he was not supposed to see? As of now, we don't have the answers. But there is hope that we one day will.”

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