Chapter Text
Before their first date, their first kiss, or their first exchange of “I love you”s, Stephen Strange watched Tony Stark die over, and over, and over again.
And he would never be able to forget a single one.
~~~
The first 1,037,492 futures that the Time Stone showed Stephen as he meditated on Titan left him vaguely upset, but not distraught. As a doctor, he was no stranger to death. Though he had sensed an equal in Stark when they’d first met, had been excited to finally match wits with someone whom he suspected was his equal in both intellect and ego, the man’s death was hardly unexpected. Tony Stark was a self-made superhero with a proclivity for dramatic saves and self-sacrificing stunts. In each of those 1,037,492 possible timelines, his death was of his own doing. He took unnecessary risks, performed melodramatic maneuvers, and laid down his life to save different members of their ragtag team.
In timeline number 1,037,493, Stark died to save Stephen.
He told himself that it didn’t matter. Stark wasn’t the only one to die in those timelines, after all. In each, Thanos overpowered Stephen, took the Time Stone, and half the universe turned to dust. So really, when he thought about it, the loss of one more life mattered little.
Upon viewing these futures, Stephen saw that the effects of The Snap truly were random: changing the timing of Thanos’s move changed the outcome. If Thanos immediately took the Stone and returned to Earth, all those on Titan but Drax, Groot, and himself survived The Snap. If Thanos was delayed from getting the Time Stone, different permutations of their numbers lived and died. It was like watching high school statistics and probability lessons demonstrated on a very, very large scale.
During the 2,566,798 iterations that followed, a branch of possibilities in which Thanos didn’t stab Tony with his own nanite blade, Stephen paid close attention to which heroes perished if Thanos snapped at any particular moment. In each of those approximately 2.5 million timelines, instead of meeting a violent end, Tony Stark turned to dust. Every single time.
And in each of these first 3,604,291 total timelines, the surviving group of heroes failed to regain ground following The Snap. The universe descended into chaos and never recovered. Every. Single. Time.
~
Once they reached timeline 3,604,292, Tony began to die more prolonged deaths. In these scenarios, Stark survived the mass extinction, only to fall victim to various other maladies:
- In 774,372 iterations, he died of injuries sustained in the fight prior to Thanos’s use of the gauntlet.
- In 2,800,636 iterations, he and the other survivors of Titan suffocated due to depleted oxygen supplies while attempting to pilot Nebula’s spaceship back to Earth. These were the futures where Stephen had already died, either from The Snap or from injury.
- In another 1,090,854 iterations, the ones where both Tony and Stephen survived, they all portaled back to Earth to take up the fight against Thanos alongside the remaining Avengers and Masters of Kamar-Taj. Tony lived for days, weeks, even months in these possible futures, but he eventually always died a painful death.
Stephen wasn’t sure why he was so focused on what happened to Tony Stark in each of the 8,270,154 timelines he’d viewed thus far. He was only one piece (albeit a powerful one) in an extremely complex game of chess - a knight, perhaps, due to his unconventional fighting methods and adherence to codes of chivalry and self-sacrifice. But he was a chess piece, nonetheless.
Stephen had to continually remind himself that Stark’s individual fate wasn’t of consequence. It didn’t matter that he’d grown to like the man in those eight million possible scenarios. It didn’t matter that he admired his tenacity and his brilliance, his sarcasm and egotistical sense of humor that perfectly complemented Stephen’s own. More important was the fact that no matter how the situation played out, Thanos ultimately prevailed.
And then…
They won.
And won.
And won.
And yet Stephen couldn’t help but feel for Tony Stark. Because in each of the 4,510 possible futures he’d just viewed where the Avengers prevailed and The Snap was prevented entirely, he still died. By sacrificing himself in increasingly bloody ways, Tony Stark became the martyr who saved the universe. While he doubted that Stark wanted to die, Stephen knew the man’s ego would at least appreciate that his death meant something.
At this point, Stephen had seen 8,274,664 variations of the same fight. They won in 4,510 of them - a 0.05% success rate. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t zero either. He realized he could stop looking into the Time Stone, now. He knew which precise sequences of events would allow them to win, and there was even room for error. It was okay if Peter missed one of his jumping attacks as he leapfrogged through portals, Stephen could manipulate time to correct it. It didn’t matter if Tony failed to launch a full-on assault on Thanos, as long as someone else managed to draw the monster’s blood.
He should stop his meditation and begin to prepare their team, before Thanos returned to Titan. He had a foolproof battle plan, a guaranteed way to save half of all living beings in the universe.
He should stop.
But he didn’t.
Stephen tried to rationalize his urge to keep searching the Time Stone for alternative ways to beat Thanos. Surely there were other timelines in which they won, he said to himself. Maybe there was a particular action he or someone else could take that would ensure a higher success rate, and provide even more protection against error on any of their parts. It would be wise to invest his time and mental energy looking into the Stone until all possible permutations had been exhausted.
He quickly abandoned that particular line of excuses, though. 4,510 paths to victory against such a dangerous enemy was a larger number than he’d dared hope for. No, his reluctance to stop searching was strictly personal.
Because by now, he couldn’t ignore the fact that he wanted Tony Stark to live. His grudging admiration for the man had grown into something harder to identify. Tony had sacrificed so much, both during this fight and prior to it. The man had a startling lack of self-preservation, and against his better judgment Stephen found himself wanting to protect Tony from himself.
Tony Stark deserved to live. He had given up enough. Surely there was a path to victory that didn’t require him to give up his own life, too.
So Stephen kept looking.
~
For the next 1,599,201 possible futures, he was back to watching Tony turn into dust. At least it was better than watching him bleed to death, but not by much. They weren’t able to overturn The Snap in those timelines, either; Quill’s confrontation of Thanos nearly always damned them.
Nearly.
Because at timeline 9,873,865, they won again.
And this time, Tony lived.
He was bruised and battered, he was permanently scarred and suffered more than any man should have to, but he lived. Stephen watched this possible future with exultation, committing to memory the steps needed to achieve it.
Since he was pressed for time, rushing to finish his meditation before Thanos arrived on Titan, Stephen hadn’t viewed any future past the point where it became apparent that they either would succeed or were hopelessly doomed to fail. But this time, something made him linger. After watching Tony Stark die 9,873,864 times, Stephen wanted to watch him grow old.
In this timeline, after Tony and the other surviving Avengers reversed Thanos’s massacre, Stephen returned to the safe, albeit lonely silence of the Sanctum. What he hadn’t anticipated was that Tony would follow him. A throwaway comment about nightmares led Stephen to offer him a mystical solution, a method of redirecting his energies to ensure a dreamless sleep. Tony appeared on the Sanctum's doorstep one day to learn the technique...
...and never really left. He found excuses to return frequently, and Stephen found excuses to make him stay. The gaps between his visits there grew shorter and shorter, until finally Ironman abandoned his quarters in Avengers Tower and moved in altogether.
Stephen watched as this future version of himself fell in love with Tony Stark.
And he watched as Tony Stark fell in love with him.
And for the first time in a long, long time, he felt something.
It had been so long since he’d let himself feel something.
He felt excited, and nervous, and insecure, and hopeful, and determined, and more than a little scared. But most of all, even watching from a distance like this, Stephen Strange felt loved.
He watched the way Tony kissed his hands as if they weren’t horribly disfigured, as if they were beautiful rather than damaged. And he watched as this future self did the same with the faint scars on Tony’s chest, a reminder of the arc reactor that once resided there.
He listened to Tony open up about the fear and anxiety that lingered long after Stephen and Peter and trillions of others were freed from the Soul Stone, and heard himself do the same.
He saw that Tony eventually trusted him enough to use his portals (only his, not even Wong’s), and saw himself overcome his fear of cars if it Tony was behind the wheel (only him, not even Happy).
As he watched them from afar through the following months and years, Stephen felt as though he were spying on something intimate and precious. He was a bystander to their relationship: a ghost who hovered behind them on their jogs through Central Park and who watched from the doorway as they cuddled on the couch. He committed each second to memory.
He was only able to force himself away because he was eager to see what possibilities the other timelines held for the two of them. Would their relationship always take the same course, he wondered? Or would it vary greatly with the slight changes in circumstance? Were there futures where he proposed to Tony rather than the other way around? Did their first date always go so horribly, horribly wrong?
~
The next timeline proceeded much like the last.
Each move in their game of chess went perfectly:
- He told the group that there was only one future in which they were victorious.
- Each blow in the following fight landed just as it should.
- Quill interrogated Thanos about Gamora.
- The moon Thanos threw at them hit at the necessary angle.
- And Tony was provoked into an outright assault when Thanos overpowered Stephen and began to choke him.
But the timing. The timing was different, Stephen realized. And so was the look in their enemy’s eye. He watched this future version of himself hand over the Time Stone…
…and watched as Thanos went against his word.
He looked on helplessly as Thanos slit Tony’s throat, severing too many arteries and veins for Stephen to be able to put back together. He tried listing all their names in his head as their blood began to spill, desperate to convince himself that this was just another image in his textbooks or cadaver in the morgue. External carotid. Internal carotid. External jugular...Internal jugular…...Common carotid……...
It didn’t work, of course. The man Stephen had just fallen in love with, the one whom he could no longer picture his post-Infinity Gauntlet life without, was now lying face down on the rocky surface of Titan. The blood pouring from his wound made a dark red clay as it mixed with the planet’s orange dust.
Just like Stephen knew he would always remember every moment of the future where they’d lived and loved and grown old together, he also understood that he would never be able to forget a single detail of this one.
After watching Tony Stark die 9,873,864 times, he should have been used to the sight of the light fading from his chocolate brown eyes.
But he was no longer numb. And it was Tony’s fault.
~
The universe had done something perfect, he thought, by bringing them together. It had felt amazing and easy and right , even watching from a distance.
Apparently, though, the universe didn’t agree. Because it only happened once. There was only one timeline where Tony survived to see a world without Thanos. In only one of 14,000,605 possible futures did they get to be happy.
And so he had to watch Tony Stark - the love of his life, whom he’d never even had the chance to kiss or hold - die 4,126,740 more times, until the Stone reached the end of its calculations. Stephen had never felt so helpless. Though he hadn’t practiced medicine in years, suddenly it felt like he was back in the operating room, standing by while a patient’s stats plummeted because they’d signed a DNR.
But this was worse. Because it was Tony.
In this branched path of 4,126,740 timelines, a future Stephen Strange chose not to trade the Time Stone for Tony’s life. It was like looking into some sort of cold, twisted mirror, watching this alternate version of himself stare impassively as Thanos dealt the man a killing blow.
But their success rate for this path was 50.89%. It was the best odds of any possible branch by far, and gave them more than enough room for error.
All he had to do was allow Tony Stark to die.
~~~
When Stephen emerged from the depths of the Time Stone, the first thing he saw was the deep brown of Tony’s eyes. They were bright and warm, filled with worry and curiosity, and most importantly they were alive. It took every ounce of willpower he possessed to keep his emotional turmoil hidden. He made no outward displays of affection or grief in the single timeline where Tony survived (or any timeline, for that matter), and was afraid of the ripples doing so may cause.
Stephen only had one chance to do this right.
Everything had to be perfect, down to the syllable and inflection of every word he said. If he was a second too fast or too slow, Tony would turn to dust, or have his throat slit, or something equally unacceptable.
He’d never been so grateful for his eidetic memory before, not even in medical school.
“You're back,” said Tony. “You're alright.”
The man’s concern for him made Stephen’s heart ache.
“Hey, what was that?” asked Peter.
“I went forward in time to view alternate futures,” he explained carefully. He felt like an actor reciting lines from a script. “To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict.”
“How many did you see?” asked Quill.
“14,000,605.”
“How many did we win?” asked Tony.
Stephen stared intently at the man for a moment, silently rethinking his decision to start them down this path. Was he willing to risk the fate of the universe to save Tony Stark’s life? There was a 99.999993% chance that he would fail.
Before looking into the Time Stone, his answer would have been an immediate no. And Stark would have understood. He’d risked his life innumerable times to save Earth before, after all. He seemingly had no sense of self-preservation, and for all his egotistical banter he treated his own life as if it were of little value.
It would be so easy to ask Tony Stark to die so that the rest of the universe had a much better chance of living. And without a doubt, he would have said yes.
But now…
Stephen couldn’t.
He could not get his lips to form the words that would have given them the highest odds of success. Because in every timeline where they prevented or overturned The Snap - apart from the one where Tony survived - he told the truth. They had 2,104,860 ways to win.
If he lied, he would be committing them to a single plan of action. There would be no turning back, and no room for even a single mistake.
But it wasn’t a complete lie.
There may be 2,104,860 paths to defeating Thanos, but if Tony Stark died… Stephen could never count that as a victory.
“How many did we win?” Tony had asked.
“...One.”