A/N - I really hope our Doc is gonna be the cameo/guest appearance in Wandavision ngl I just feel like it would fit yanno? 😭

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"I hope you know what you're doing." Wong warned the sorcerer in a hushed tone as they waited for Tessa in the room where the fixed dimensional portal to Kamar-Taj was, "If something goes wrong – "

"Wong, I'm doing this to try and prevent things from going wrong." Stephen sighed, "I know I haven't been doing this long but, please, trust me."

"It's not you I distrust."

"Ready to go?" Tessa interrupted.

As the two men turned to look at her stood before them, a khaki backpack slung over one of her shoulders and a jacket over her arm, they smiled – well, Stephen smiled, Wong just stared - that smile/stare of 'we totally weren't talking about you behind your back'. Of course, she could sense otherwise.

The librarian still does not trust us.

It would take time to earn his trust, she reminded the Entity silently. Tessa had lingered by the door to hear what Wong had to say and it hurt her to know that such a dear acquaintance didn't trust her. She understood that keeping the Entity would look reckless, but she truly believed that Tee could change. Hopefully, Wong would eventually come to put his faith in her again.

Stephen nodded, "Are you and the Entity ready?"

No. We should not go.

"Yep." She nodded too, "Well, not the Entity but I am."

I hope we do not live to regret this.

Stephen looked at Wong, "I know I can trust you to watch over the Sanctum while I'm gone. We'll come back every now and then."

"How long do you plan to stay at Kamar-Taj?"

"I was thinking...a month? As long as that's okay with you, Tessa."

"Yeah, sounds fine." She paused, heading towards the fixed portal, "So are we going or not then?"

"Yeah, I'll be through in a moment if you want to go so long."

Tessa watched the two for a moment, aware that more would be said behind her back, but she gave a nod and stepped through, waiting around the corner for the sorcerer.

Stephen turned back to his friend.

"Everything will be fine, Wong. Tessa clearly has control over the Entity – "

"And yet it can take control when it wishes to. What happens when it decides it wants control for good? A being as powerful as an Entity bonded with a naturally talented sorceress has been shown to rewrite their sorcery to that of much darker powers. What happens when it's decided it has had enough of Tessa?"

"The Entity said it wanted to protect Tessa."

"For now, yes." Wong paused, "Do not let your naivety and wish to value all life be your weakness, Stephen. If something goes wrong, you need to have the nerve to do what you must, even if it is one for the sake of many."

Stephen's jaw clenched at the thought of something going so wrong that he would have to find a way to end the Entity – and consequently Tessa. What he was doing now, taking them away so that they could learn more about their bond, that was supposed to help stop a bad situation from occurring.

Wong continued, "We have had encounters with Entities before at the sanctums. I said we were able to ward most of them away successfully but there have been times when we have sorely lost for our victories. More sorcerers and sorceresses will distrust her on the basis of what they have lost to a being such as the one that inhabits her. If you wish to sway their opinions, you best do so before they find out themselves." He paused, "Go. She will be waiting for you."

*  *  *  *  *  *

Stephen appeared around the corner minutes later to see Tessa leaning against the wall, phone out and reading random news articles off the web. For a moment, he lingered, waiting to see if she would say anything and, for a moment, she waited for Stephen to say something too, eyes still on her phone.

"Took your time." She finally mumbled.

"Sorry. Wong needed to speak with me about...how to alert me in the event of a - "

"I know." Tessa looked up at him, understanding written all over her eyes, "I know he doesn't trust the Entity. There's no need to hide it. He made it clear before."

The sorcerer looked at her sympathetically.

"Entity's have attacked the Sanctums before, I know. And I know they caused a lot of people here pain, but Tee isn't like that. If Tee was anything like that, they would have attacked my father and they would have attacked the Sanctum when they first arrived, but they didn't. They're different. I can feel it."

"No one else has the connection with the Entity like you do. People will be skeptical."

"It's not people being skeptical that worries me. It's the people who won't give us a chance that do."

Stephen understood this worry. In fact, after that conversation with Wong, that thought played around anxiously in his mind too. But the more they could learn about Tessa and the Entity, perhaps the easier it would be to explain. Perhaps the easier it would be to find a solution should they discover this to be a problem. He hoped it wouldn't be. He hoped they could all make it work. But there was always the possibility that it wouldn't.

The sorcerer motioned for her to follow him, not daring to reply to her statement in the fear that verbal confirmation of his optimism would merely jinx the circumstances they would find themselves in.

I will try to make this work.

*  *  *  *  *  *

Nineteen-ninety-three.

The Hong Kong Sanctum shook violently as their opponent attacked the structure. Wong, who was merely an apprentice at twenty years old, rushed down the corridors in his crimson robes, ushering novices to safety when he bumped into Gin, running towards him, towards the fight, instead of away. The apprentice urged the novices to keep going and to head towards the fixed dimensional portal that would lead them to the safety of Kamar-Taj.

"Gin? What are you doing, you heard what the Ancient One said – "

"Get the novices to safety. I know. But they can do that themselves, Wong. The others need help."

"We do not know the litany of spells to help them well enough – "

"Then all we can do is try." She looked at him in all seriousness, "I won't blame you if you help those who are unable to fight, but I can fight." Gin gazed at him sympathetically and raised a hand to his face, "You have a good heart. Help them. And I'll help you by watching your back."

She lightly pecked him on the cheek, pulling away with a soft smile. She reached around her neck and hurriedly took her necklace off, grabbing his hand and placing the flocked-cord and pendent into the palm of his hand. The look she gave him told Wong that she wanted him to look after it. He nodded. Gin then sprinted off down the hall, pausing to give Wong one last longing look before pressing on.

The apprentice stood there for a moment, the thought of how fierce Gin had looked, lingering in his mind adoringly as his fingers delicately traced the spot on his cheek where her lips had been moments before and caressed the necklace in his one hand. After, he would tell her. He would tell her how he truly felt.

An explosion down the hall sent a blast of air straight towards him and he found himself slammed against the wall by the force of it. For a moment he groaned but then his attention focused itself again when he heard the cry of one of the children.

Gin crossed his mind as he looked back down at the destroyed corridor.

But Gin's words also crossed his mind: help them.

He looked down the other side of the corridor as he heard the small cries for help coming from outside. Gin would be fine. She was a strong mystic combatant. She would be okay, he reassured himself as he pushed himself up to his feet and stumbled down the corridor to find the source of the tiny yelling...

Hours passed.

After a gruelling battle, the living disciples and masters had finally put an end to the chaos brought about by an ancient being known as the Entity.

Now, all they had to do was find their wounded and their dead and rebuild. It sounded so simple when put like that, but this was the hardest task of all. No, not the fight but the aftermath. Who had lived and who had died?

Wong trekked over the rubble in search of Gin, fondling her necklace as he did as though it would grow somewhat warmer if he neared her.

He spotted a shoe.

One eerily reminiscent of Gin's own shoes, amongst a pile of dusty debris.

The apprentice hurried over, pulling the debris off whoever this person may be for he refused the idea of it being Gin. Other people had similar shoes and while he wished this fate upon no one, he most certainly wished it not to be her.

Once he had pulled the last piece of rubble off the sorceress, he stopped, his eyes sadly looking upon the face, of the body, of the woman he loved. Her fiery hair had lost its shine amongst the grime of the debris, her head was bleeding, and her one arm was twisted unnaturally. Wong fell to his knees and pulled her close to his chest as he cried and caressed her dishevelled hair.

The Ancient One slowly approached the young apprentice, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.

*  *  *  *  *  *

Back at the New York Sanctum, Wong sat on his bed, stressed, his eyes fondly brushing over the picture of Gin that stood on his bedside table. He reached over and grabbed the necklace that lay beside it, appreciating the craftsmanship of the golden circular pendant that possessed an embossed tree on it. His thumb brushed over the design as he remembered her.

He would never know if she had felt the same.

Wong didn't want these feelings of 'what could have been' to happen to anyone else here if he could help it. Entities had long been a creature he truly despised and to think one of the sorceresses wished to live with such a merciless being...he couldn't comprehend it, not when the same cosmic beings had taken so much from him.

Gin was the reason he continued his path into the mystic arts. Her words, her character, her passion had filled him with a sense of his own determination. Gin had said he had a good heart to help those who struggled to help themselves so that's what he decided to do – help. In memory of her, he learnt and taught and fought, all out of respect for his lost love.

But now with an...abomination in the sanctums, who would he help?

A being that shared the same thirst for chaos as the one who had taken Gin from him?

Or the people that had also lost loved ones because of the destruction caused by an unforgivable being?

*  *  *  *  *  *

Two weeks since he had disappeared and, panting, Marcus found himself pelting through the thick jungle, nimbly missing protruding roots that could end his speedy gliding within a snap second and ducking to avoid the branches that dared to painfully whip his face. He looked a state. His sandy blond hair was wild and his beard straggly, sweat noticeable through his garments and smudges of dirt on his face, eyes wracked with grief and yet also determination as he made his way through the overgrown vegetation.

He stopped. Paused. Eyes scanning the area around him.

He could feel it calling now – the solution to this mess, it called to him.

Marcus frantically reached down into the satchel he had grabbed from his room before leaving the New York Sanctum, roughly pulling out a journal he had taken from the library. It was guide of all sorts of different relics, discovered by the ancient sorcerer Alazarin Hex (think Indiana Jones but the mystical wizard version), those housed by Sanctums and those housed by other places, some used for good, some used for bad, others for both.

The relic he was looking for was hidden in a cave in one of the Nepalese mountains. But then why was he in a jungle?

You see, the thing is, if there was an extremely powerful relic, capable of taking and imprisoning people's souls, it was hardly like they were going to make it easy to get there. So, the entrance to a cave in the mountains was placed somewhere entirely different in environment, somewhere no normal person would ever think to look and was hidden by magic.

Marcus studied the spell before him, looking up briefly to draw himself closer to the tree with the broadest trunk. He looked back down at the book again, then at the tree and nodded to himself. Yes, he thought, he was definitely in the right place. Closing the book, he slipped it back into his satchel before chanting an ancient incantation to summon the entrance to the cave.

The smooth trunk split in half, a golden, sparking line separating the two sides. The magical line appeared to grow and widen until it filled up the width of the trunk. Through it, he could make out a wet stony ground and could hear the echoey dripping of water. He pulled a torch from out of his satchel and entered.

The portal drew closed behind him.

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A/N - What's your fave Doctor Strange character apart from Stephen himself?

Ancient One all the way for me boiz 😭✌