Chapter Text
Doctor Strange, in his two years of mastering sorcery, (well, now seven, but being dead for those five doesn’t really count), could have gone without knowing that there was a spacial multiverse as well. The man knew about the temporal multiverse, how it just broke out due to variants and nexus beings, but he still knew very little about it. Everyone knew very little about it, and it scared the shit out of him. And now, in an abandoned building in Japan, he came across a being not only not from this world, but not from this universe.
And no, this man wasn’t from a branch either, he came from outside everything else, proving how vast this multiverse really is if there are different types of it.
Strange wished he could’ve gotten more sleep, but his nightmares still feed into the peace he once had.
But as colleagues once said,
'Peace is bullshit.'
“It seems you’re intruding someplace you shouldn’t be. Or should I say, some world?”
Strange called out, weary but still held caution with his shaky hands. They held no malice, as both of them were by his side as he leaned onto a rusty beam, arms crossed as he laid eyes onto three wide-eyed teenagers and an adult who tilted his head sideways slightly before smiling tightly. The ex sorcerer supreme scrunched his eyebrows at the four. Because was one of them wearing a blindfold? Could he see? Is this a blind man?
(Christine told him after he came back from the dead how there's a blind vigilante somewhere in New York, and all the man could do is look longingly into her soft facial features. The wrinkles beneath the doctor's eyes as she smiled, how her hair had some grey tints to it (but that didn't dissipate Strange's love for Christine Palmer, it just showed how much he missed of her life, of his life, of everyone's life.) He missed so much of Christine's life, (and yes, the relationship was complicated, but why do his feelings feel so... simple around her?) , and it was her who suffered. The ER surgeon looked so tired, so dull from the last time he saw her. But then again, that was five years ago. And five years is a long fucking time.)
“Ah, well it seems this world isn’t so mundane after all,” Gojo called out to the being, soft smile still intact but in Strange’s eyes, they still held caution, still held a defensive stance. The white-haired man spoke English, words tinted with a Japanese accent. Strange held no tact to this man, as he would act the same if he was in a dimension he knew nothing of. Stephen also noticed their Japanese, and the man thanked his past self for learning linguistic spells.
“Nope, just seems like it,” Strange cracked his neck, speaking fluent Japanese with ease. This caused the girl with the hammer to grip her hammer more tightly, white knuckles screeching through her skin. Strange breathed in, knowing these people are armed, but not dangerous to him (as it seems), “No need for that, just here to bring you back home. You’re not supposed to be here.”
As Strange took a step closer to the four, the man with the blindfold stepped up as well, a protective arm out in front of his students as his smile dropped at Strange’s movement, “You step closer and I promise your head will be in a place it shouldn’t be.”
Strange snorted, “That’s the best you got? I know a kid that can come up with way better threats than that.”
And sure, Strange may not know Peter Parker well, but on Thanos' ship (Oh, how much Stephen loathed saying that name), the teenager was mumbling quick comebacks and wits to see if any of them would come up in the battle when they landed. Stark even pitched in on some ideas, trying to ease his nerves as, you know, the man was in a flying donut, in space, about to fight the most powerful entity on Earth. With reluctance and push from Tony as well, Strange also helped with the name-calling, in a professional manner of course.
He still remembered the majority of the Avengers getting patched up in Wakanda, how he had to help Peter sleep as he was scared to close his eyes. The child didn't need to say anything to Strange, but it was how his body shook and how his eyebrows were scrunched, a sweatdrop even piled on the side of his head. Strange, even though he rolled his eyes, gave the kid a sleeping charm to ease his shoulders. No one should have to feel like that, no kid should have to feel like that.
Last Stephen heard of the kid, he was headed to London? Who knows, Peter will probably update him on the daily messages that he sends Strange (does he read them? Yes, and only Wong knows because well, he's Wong).
Strange eyed the smile of the abnormal albino, finding him uneasy with him just grinning all the time. Really, it was weird.
The white-haired man just smiled, “Threats aren’t threats if they become fact.“
Before any movement can be jerked out of the man’s hands, Strange rolled his eyes before putting both of his hands in front of him, two fingers in a circle-like motion to open a portal right below all of their bodies. Strange has an ego, and though it got lower the more he lost, showing people of mass power that he’s just better does put a smile on his face.
‘Now that does put a smile on my face-‘
Strange closed his eyes tightly when the memory came back. Thanos' plaguing words would always seem through his mind whenever there was an open spot. Though that never happened, as it was an alternate reality that the time stone burdened him with, all of those possibilities still plague his mind. All 14,000,605 of them.
Or should he say 14,000,606? Their way of winning was tweaked just a tad because of last-minute thinking and Peter Quill (with help from the guardians) mentioning to him how multiple people can hold multiple stones. They joined skin contact like they were about to sing a campfire song, and Strange had to admit if the stones weren't so numbing, so draining , he would have grimaced at how cliche the whole thing sounded. Strange still couldn't believe how they all defied the Time Stone, but he shouldn't be surprised as 14 million ways are just a drop in the infinite outcomes he didn't look at.
The portal opened, and Strange could see the surprised and confused looks from the teenagers in from of him. All the blindfolded man did was raise his eyebrows, mouth agape ever so slightly as he tried to reach his students.
“What are you-“
“Gojo Sensei!”
“Hey! You mustache man-“
Multiple saying comes out at once from the four, but they all became muffled once they all dropped into the portal, leading back to the New York Sanctum. Stephen made sure to separate this “Gojo Sensei” from the three, as he seemed to be in charge of the rest. Strange posed them as no threat, even if they are to others.
Before Stephen made a portal for himself, he brought his shoulders back slightly, cracking them to make a single pop. A hand coated the back of his neck as he rubbed the sore spots. A mumble then came out of him as the cloak flicked some rubble off of his face, “I wish I got paid.”
And with no further ado, Stephen Strange was about to come in contact with beings from a different dimension. What a nightmare that was going to be.
————
Stephen was right, this was a nightmare.
Because separating this man from his students was a mistake.
Strange himself stepped through the portal, smug look (without smiling of course) across his face as the cloak tickled the back of his skin slightly, he paid no mind to it as he was used to the cloak against his nape, “The name’s Doctor-“
Now, what the man wanted to do was introduce, then scrutinize the man’s dimensional traveling. But apparently, that didn’t go as planned because this man had a couple of tricks up his sleeve as well.
Gojo held Strange to a bookshelf (more like thrown into really), causing the leaves and leaves of pages to fall on the ground. And God did Strange hate cleaning up messes that he didn’t create. He still remembered as it wasn’t that long ago for him when a certain blonde God and his moody brother decided to pass around these parts, “What did you do to my students? I won't ask again.”
His voice was dangerously calm, no stutter but all malice was tipped onto his tone. Strange sense a higher power to this man, something that makes him a human above the rest in his world. But the man didn’t think much as he was held against an invisible force by the neck, losing oxygen slowly. ‘Man does he really wish he could get a raise.’
The Cloak behind Strange quickly and easily escaped, pushing Strange forward easily to find the hand around his neck, not really around his neck. STrange then eyes this "Gojo" man in shock as it seemed like he wasn't touching Stephen at all. The cloak then tried to go around Gojo’s eyes but found that it wasn’t touching him, moreover hovering closely. Strange huffed in curiosity, squinting at the blindfolded Gojo man, “Well would you look at that.”
Strange knew of the multiverse, but the information about the topic was very little. There were just theories among theories, no hard facts. No nothing. It irritated Stephen, but the man knew to never test the theories of the multiverse, even if he was a man of science at heart.
But this weird-looking man had (who had pretty distinct features for a human by the way. Because how in the hell is his hair that white?), at what appears to be, an invisible blanket around him, shielding any physical touch to make any contact impossible.
“You might have sorcery here, but it is nothing compared to our world,” The man (who still hasn’t given a name, except his students did call out a “Gojo Sensei”) spoke in a low and threatening tone, and Stephen would have had a drop of sweat on his forehead if he wasn’t a master of the Mystic Arts and defeater of Dormammu. Now, Strange could have waited to see the man’s fingers enclose the red circle on top of his index finger fully, but the man just came back to life, he wasn’t trying to experience that again.
“All right, that’s enough of that.”
And just like that Strange’s hand glowed softly into his astral form before grabbing onto Gojo’s hand, pushing his other hand onto Gojo’s chest. The Jujutsu sorcerer's mouth went dry, saliva freezing into his throat as someone just touched him, through his infinity, without any sort of conflict. Gojo was flabbergasted at this foreign man’s ability, to be able to get through his infinity while being outside of it as well, it was rather weird, rather mesmerizing, rather frightening .
But Gojo didn’t have time to see what else was going on before he felt a warp right behind him, sucking his soul out of his body before flanging backwards drastically.
And right when Gojo was going to throw another power move, his head looked down to his hands, turning them around to look at the back of his palms as well. Everything was see-through and his abilities seemed to have paused inside of his body. His eyes widened when his other hand went through the left.
He was transparent.
He was a ghost.
“What the hell?”
Strange raised his eyebrows at the astonished man in front of him, hand rubbing the back of his neck as it became sorer than before, “Geez, you got some gimmick huh?”
“What?”
All Stephen did was smile lightly, leaning back onto the bookshelf with crossed arms, “Now, let me restart. The name’s Doctor Stephen Strange. And you are?”