#mcu spoilers ahead

[farfromstrange]

Foreigner's God | m.m

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Chapter Forty-Six: Human

Summary: The court of public opinion is a cruel thing. The press would rather paint her as the villain than the villain itself, but there is no going back now that the Hydra files are out there. She thinks the plea and preliminary hearing are going to be the hardest challenge, but someone comes the way that proves to her that the worst is far from over and Viktor Volkov is the least of her worries.

Warnings: ANGST, SMUT (oral f!receiving, fingering), Multiverse, Doctor Strange Spoilers, bad lawyer talk

A/n: I'm so sorry for the long hiatus, my life is a huge mess right now. This has been sitting in my drafts for two weeks, but I didn't get around to posting it until now. I'm trying my best to finish all my requests, but I'm lacking time and inspiration, so it's gonna take a couple more days until those are finished! As I said, this has been sitting in my drafts for a while because it's been done for a while. I was actually excited about this chapter because I've had the idea of this introduction for quite a bit, and the character that appears here will play a crucial part in how I portray Season 2. I mean, we're already in it, might as well roll with it. Timeline and canon be fucked, I'm gonna do this my way.

Breaking news: 

The FBI just announced in an official press conference that they arrested a man named Viktor Volkov who is suspected of leading a sub-group of the terrorist organization Hydra. They first made headlines again in 2014 when it was revealed that Hydra infiltrated SHIELD and burned the organization from the inside out. It was reported that Hydra fell with the destruction of SHIELD. All parties responsible were arrested. He is facing serious murder, espionage, and illegal human experiment charges, among other things. 

“Are you sure about this?”

The night was cold and dark, the lights of the city hidden behind the brick wall as they stood over the empty barrel on the roof of Matt Murdock’s apartment. 

She grabbed the cardboard box off the ground and flipped it over the barrel, emptying the contents into the abyss. It thudded against the metal. Following the cardboard was a pile of leather clothing. The face mask stayed behind, but the suit and the matching gloves landed with the rest of her belongings on the floor of the barrel. 

“Yeah,” she said, taking the bottle of gasoline from his hand, “I’m sure.”

Eliza poured the fluid over everything she had once owned in another life and dropped the lit match into the barrel. Her belongings caught fire, lighting up the night with bright orange flames and a ghastly smell of burned leather and paper. 

Matt wrapped his arm around her shoulder as she stared into the flames and he felt the heat on his cold face. “I’m proud of you,” he said. 

She ignored his words, leaning into his shoulder in an attempt to escape. Her body filled with dread; it caused her pain. Setting her life on fire had been easy, but she knew that the new life she had was in danger of burning alive, too. 

“Things are only going to get worse from here on,” she voiced her horrible thoughts, and it still wasn’t enough. 

He squeezed her hip. “I know, but we’re going to stand through it together.”

“You and me against the world?” 

“You and me against the world,” he said, pairing his words with a gentle kiss to her temple. 

The explosion at the apartment complex of the infamous Avenger Eliza Bennett who long went by the alias The Red Angel was Hydra’s doing, as we have just been told, and all of the crimes she was accused of a couple of weeks ago were actually executed by the men answering to the suspect Viktor Volkov. 

In the eye of a hurricane, there is quiet. She watched the news and everything around her went dead silent. The storm was heading straight for her, but there was no sound, only the faint beating of her heart reminding her that she was still alive. 

The phone on Karen’s desk was put on speaker and the voice that sounded from the other end was welcome, but it didn’t break the silence. It didn’t break the silence in her head, the emptiness in her chest, or the looming fear that came in the form of a hurricane.

“I’m trying my best to control the damage the publication of that file caused,” Tony spoke from the other end of the line. “I usually cause the damage myself and then find a way to pay myself out of it, but fuck, Nick Fury, that asshole, made it ten times harder for me.”

“I made that choice,” Eliza said, and she was surprised at how stable her own voice sounded. 

“I know, kid, and I understand why you did it, but I can’t fix this with money.”

“I know you can’t. I never asked you to.”

“Let me do this for you. I’m going to try my hardest to somehow get the press to shut up. Public court of opinion can fuck with this whole case. Am I right, lawyer brigade? The front line not looking so peachy there, huh?”

We just got word that a huge pile of legal files has been published, laying the crimes of Hydra open and accessible to the public. The base also known as the White Room has been destroyed and the leader Viktor Volkov has been officially charged by the District Attorney. 

Matt stood with his hands on his hips, Foggy leaning against the door to his office with the file, and Karen, sympathetic as she was, stood next to the phone with her eyes on Eliza. She was the only one who looked at her. She felt her gaze burning through her skin and she wanted the pity to stop. The world already knew what happened, who she was, and what Viktor had done; Karen wasn’t supposed to treat her differently just because she was a victim, but humans can’t help but show pity when another person has suffered. It is a natural response and she had a whole collection of those.

Adding to Tony’s voice, Happy appeared and it made her nauseous. “It’s bad enough she has to testify,” he prompted. 

“The press is doing everything to get details on this case, and most of them are more than willing to destroy Eliza in the process,” said Karen, “because they want to be right about mutants. They want to be right in labeling you as a monster.”

“We won’t let that happen,” Matt said, his voice determined and his hand reached out as he gestured, “Stark will continue doing damage control while we focus on the legal aspects, but no one is giving up.”

Tony hummed, “I like him.”

“The feeling is not mutual.” He pressed the hang-up button. 

Foggy glared at him. “Dude!”

“He was pissing me off,” he said. 

“He didn’t do anything,” he retorted. 

“He was breathing, that’s enough.”

The stakes were high, they were all on edge, but they still somehow managed to work together, even with their differences in mind. However, Eliza was nowhere near mentally present for any of it. She went along, but she only felt numb no matter what she did, and Matt’s gentle loving didn’t manage to pull her out of the dark hole she had fallen into, not this time.

Just in: Hydra files reveal not only the crimes of the newly apprehended Russian spy Viktor Volkov, but they also reveal the many crimes the Avenger Eliza Bennett committed in the name of the said terrorist organization. They go beyond what the former Hydra operative was pardoned for seven years ago. Though reports from the DA’s office state that she has been granted immunity in exchange for her testimony to put Viktor Volkov behind bars. So far, only the FBI and NYPD have gotten involved, but the Department of Damage Control will soon follow. 

She needed to forget. The reports only got worse the closer the court date came. The plea hearing didn’t include her, but she would be there, she wanted to be there. Her testimony would only first come important at the preliminary hearing if Viktor truly plead not guilty, and then it was on the prosecution to prove that a trial was absolutely necessary. And after that, the decision, if he went to prison, was on the jury and the jury alone. 

Her mind was so full all the time, full of information, full of tasks, full of demands, and she started to lose the air in her lungs. The weight was pushing her underwater and slowly suffocating her from the inside out. Her legs were flapping and she tried to swim to the surface, but the weight kept on dragging her down. 

They were laying next to each other in bed. His lips ghosted gentle kisses over her neck and collarbone, a way to distract her from the noise only he could hear, but she could feel it. She could feel everything deep in her bones and it was too much to handle.

His nose brushed over the sensitive spot behind her ear. “You’re not okay, are you?” he asked. 

There was no use denying it. She shook her head, tilting her head to find his lips. Her hand tangled in his hair, and she did something she had never done before. She was afraid of asking what she wanted, but this was a necessity. She needed to forget. 

She pushed his head, hoping he would get the hint. His lips slipped from hers and toward her breasts. Nope, he didn’t get that. And he knew better than to tease her. Sometimes, he needed a second to understand, especially so late at night.

She pushed a little harder. “Can you just-” she swallowed. 

“Eat you out?”

She nodded again. “Like after our date, please.”

It had rendered her mindless then, it would surely work now. 

She guided his head down until he reached the hem of her panties. She was wearing nothing but his t-shirt. He didn’t waste time peeling her underwear off. Instead, he shoved it aside and flattened his tongue over her folds. 

“Guide me,” he said, “show me how you want it and I’ll give it to you.”

On command, she started rocking her hips against his face. He greedily lapped at her folds, pushing his tongue into her hole and relishing in the way she tasted. With every thrust of her hips, his nose bumped against her clit, and he could smell her now, too. She sent his senses into overdrive and his eyes rolled back as he moaned; she was using him and it was delicious in more ways than one. 

Her back arched, letting out the tiniest of whimpers as her hands fisted the sheets. She forced his mouth closer, a little higher until his lips hovered over her clit and he took it as a sign to suck the bundle of nerves into his mouth. 

Through a strangled moan, she reached for his arm that lazily rested over her lower stomach, stroking his hand over the skin at the same time he licked and sucked at her slick core. 

He hummed in confusion when she practically shoved his hand away. “Fingers,” she stated. 

“As you wish,” he purred against her cunt. He covered his middle and index finger in her arousal and shoved them in slowly. She took him almost greedily, grinding on his mouth and forcing him deeper. He only had to curl up ever so slightly to hit the spongy spot inside of her that felt just right. 

“Shit,” it was the first curse that came out of her mouth that night and he felt the rough tone of her voice creeping up his spine and into his reddened ears. 

The hand that had fisted the sheets moved to the pillow above her head, her back arching dangerously high as the pleasure inside of her abdomen did the same, climbing higher and higher and higher until she stumbled toward the edge of the cliff of absolute euphoria. 

Not a single thought was left in her mind, only Matt and his mouth and the orgasm that chased after her. She chose not to run, she chose to submit. She chose to let herself stumble, tumble and then fall. 

She came crying out for him, holding onto his hair and the pillow for dear life as the pleasure wrecked her entire body. The white-hot pleasure tore right through her, turning red and her vision black. Her eyes rolled back, thighs shaking next to his head and keeping him locked against her, and he licked up all the cum she gave him. He was starving and she was what he needed to eat. 

Her entire body quivered. If it was her state of mind or his mouth that made the orgasm so much more intense, she wasn’t sure, but the relief and the now missing weight on her shoulders allowed her to break the surface and breathe fresh air. 

Matt gently pried her thighs from his head. Her knuckles cracked. She was still holding onto the pillow, her eyes screwed shut. He chuckled, making his way up the length of her. 

“You okay?” he asked. 

She whimpered. 

“Not quite there yet, huh?”

She managed to shake her head a little. The aftershocks were nothing like what she usually experienced and only after a few minutes did she manage to loosen her grip on the silk. Her legs shut and she curled into a ball on her side. 

His hand gently guided her head to his chest and she latched onto him like a koala. “You’ve never been this spaced out before. You okay?”

“I’ve never-” she shivered. “So intense.”

“It’s okay, you were wound up. Orgasms can feel like explosions when you’ve been stressed for a while.”

“Did I soak the sheets again?”

“Small price to pay,” he said. 

She took his hand and intertwined their fingers over his heart. “Stay with me?” she said. 

He kissed the top of her head, “Where else would I stay?”

Eliza Bennett has blood on her hands! As we found out earlier, it isn’t even her real name. She is Russian and always will be. She killed in the name of a terrorist organization, stole government secrets, and killed innocent people. Her mutant powers may stem from human experimentation, but that only makes her so much more dangerous. We saw what she could do in the video clip released four weeks ago, and we saw it during the Battle of New York. Her violation of the Sokovia Accords was stricken from the record. Are the District Attorney’s office and the government trying to cover up their involvement, or is she really just that good at manipulating law officials into giving her a second pardon?

Foggy watched the man on the screen with narrowed eyes. “The Daily Bugle really has no shame or respect, huh?” he said. 

“He has nothing left over for heroes,” said Karen. “He is a horrible, judgmental man. And his mustache is a fashion disgrace.”

“Hey, do you think I should call them? Just to check in on her.”

She took one of the files from her desk and handed it over to her. “You better prepare to prepare her for the preliminary hearing. They need their privacy.”

“What do you me- oh!”

“Sex is an amazing stress relief.”

“Thank you,” he blinked wildly, turning toward his office, “That is not a picture I needed in my head today.”

Karen’s tired yet amused laugh rang out and filled the otherwise empty office space with some lightness instead of the harsh, painful reality that lay ahead of them. 

District Attorney Reyes went on the air again that day, answering a crowd of reporters about what her office revealed. “We strive for justice for the families of the children that were tortured at the command of Viktor Volkov and his organization. We are going to fight for the families of the murder victims that also died at his hand. And we are going to fight for those names to finally be heard, and to bring Hydra’s terrible acts to light,” she said, and it was sorted as her official statement to the accusations against Viktor Volkov. “We need to protect the nation and the people and in the process avenge the lives that were lost. We’re not doing this for publicity, we’re doing this for justice. A man as dangerous as Viktor Volkov needs to be put into special containment, and we are working closely with the DODC to form a viable case.”

Rumor has it that Eliza Bennett is considered a key witness since she is one of Viktor Volkov’s many victims. So far, no more information has been released, but it is said that she might just be the key to getting him behind bars. 

“At least they called me a victim this time,” Eliza murmured as she read over the article in the Bulletin.

Matt appeared behind her with a cup of coffee, replacing the paper with the mug. “Stop reading the news,” he berated her. 

She poked her tongue out. “I need to know what’s going on. Reyes won’t tell me anything.”

“That’s because we need to protect you from the court of public opinion.”

“There is no protecting me from that,” she said, “and you know that.”

He sighed. He left it uncommented because he couldn’t say anything that wouldn’t have been a lie. She already stated the truth. He couldn’t protect her, not from this.

Instead, he said, “I love you.”

She smiled back at him, tired but it was a smile. “I love you more,” she said.

“Impossible.” 

Volkov’s attorneys stated in an official report that the accusations are outrageous and they are going to fight to keep their client out of jail. It is said that the evidence of the defense will cancel out all the prosecution has. They are certain that the case is not viable and they have information that a judge is going to be more than interested in. Information surrounding his arrest and the contents of the file. What it is, they refuse to say, but we are going to see soon. 

The date for the plea hearing in the case of the Hydra operative Viktor Volkov has been set and it is as soon as tomorrow. The DA rushed the date due to the case’s urgency, and she told Fox News that she is going to do anything in her power to make sure he stays behind bars. A deal has not been made, and Volkov’s attorneys refused, so it is up to the court now to decide whether or not this case will go to trial.

The big day was closer than ever. They already knew he was going to plead not guilty, but there was still hope for a change of mind on Viktor’s end or at least the possibility that he might change the plea after they turned down the DA’s deal offer. Now that they refused, Reyes was ready to destroy the defense completely, but for that she needed Eliza. Without her, the case was a bust. The media didn’t need a full report of the events to figure that out. Her immunity depended on it. 

“I’m curious - Eliza Bennett is an Avenger, she broke the Sokovia Accords, she is a mutant and she still got pardoned? The information she has must be fatal if the DA was so willing to grant her immunity.”

“A person like that poses a danger to society. We should get her off the streets.”

“Eliza Bennett is and will always be a hero. She doesn’t deserve all of this backlash and she should be praised for what she is willing to do to put this criminal behind bars. Her story should be told and people should view her as a human being who suffered a large trauma instead of a dangerous mutant that is out of control. It is simply not true.”

“An Avenger as a key witness. Can we even trust them anymore? Stark has not spoken up and neither has his company. I doubt he is going to play a part in this. He’s always had a way of getting himself out of trouble and letting others do the work for him.”

“Whether or not Eliza Bennett is a danger to society, the DA is positive she will blow this case wide open, and Volkov’s attorneys are scrambling to find a reason to get her testimony thrown out. This is going to be one of the most public court proceedings since OJ Simpson, and we are going to be there to report life on the direction this case is going. Back to you, Janet!”

Eliza slammed the laptop shut. One more day until the plea hearing. One fucking day and she couldn’t even escape the talk about her when she tried to watch something else for a change. Her search always led her to the news, or in this case, a whole collection of News channels that were set out to ruin her. 

She was used to being criticized by the public, but the backlash she received was a death sentence to any mutant out there if they lost the case. 

She decided to go through the mail to kill time. Matt would be home sometime later, having told her to take the day off, but she was dying of boredom. Her thoughts weren’t any better. 

The mail consisted of a pile of bills and advertisements, including the daily paper, and when she saw her name on the front page she groaned in frustration. She shoved it away. She was done reading about herself as an evil spawn. Think what you need to think, she decided. She wasn’t put on this earth to please anyone but herself. And by speaking her truth she had done a good thing, the right thing. 

From the pile she was holding, a small contact card soared out and landed on the floor. She bent down, picked it up, and took a look at it. 

221 Bleeker Street.

As far as she could remember, the address on the card was in Brooklyn, where Bleeker and Sullivan crossed. It was a long way from Hell’s Kitchen - that was an overstatement. It wasn’t that far. 

There was no name on the card, only the address. Suspicious didn’t even cut it close. Eliza should have thrown it away. It could have been the address of a serial killer, for all she knew, but there was a reason it landed in her mail. She felt compelled to check it out, even if it was just to check if a serial killer was after she or the press decided to play a cruel joke on her. She was curious and curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. 

Matt would once again kill her, but it didn’t matter if a serial killer did it or her boyfriend for being a reckless idiot. She was done pleasing other people for the sake of being liked. She owed them nothing. 

Viktor didn’t get to destroy the person she was, and if the media couldn’t see that, at least she could hold onto it. 

The hood of her jacket hung low into her face. Curious eyes stared after her, but they weren’t sure if it was truly her. The whispers haunted her and fingers pointed at her. She was an animal in a zoo and everyone was watching her. They didn’t see her as a person, she was more of a spectacle than a human, and they made sure to treat her that way. 

Bleeker Street was quiet, thank God, and there were hardly any people who cared about someone with a hoodie walking the street. She crossed, approaching the gigantic doors to what appeared like a fancy brownstone, but she couldn’t quite believe it. The window at the top of the building seemed a little far-fetched, too. Old architecture made it look like someone utterly special was living there. So perhaps this was a trap constructed by the media, after all. 

Eliza wouldn’t have been Eliza though if she didn’t go ahead anyway. She lost all of her fucks a couple of days ago. She might as well have some reckless fun if her life was about to be over and her reputation completely destroyed. 

As Taylor Swift once said, ‘They’re burning all the witches even if you aren’t one’, so she might as well fuck around and have some fun. Her reputation was ruined, anyway.

She knocked on the door, but instead of waiting for someone to answer, they opened at her touch. “Creepy,” she muttered to herself. 

The corridor was gigantic. She expected a lot, but this wasn’t it. A huge staircase led to the second floor, parting in the middle to allow you to walk on either side. The walls were high and decorated sparsely. The walls themselves looked ancient, made out of wood and stone and the paintings were something to get used to. There was a fireplace, for whatever reason, set into the wall. Why would an entrance hall need a fireplace? The entire building reminded her of an old mansion or an old art museum. The statue next to the stair looked like a pot - whoever lived there was certainly not an interior designer. 

She felt the presence of someone behind her and the knife she had already slipped from her sleeve turned out to have been a good choice. Eliza took a deep breath, then turned around and went after whoever snuck up on her with her backhand. The knife cut through thin air. It took her too long to notice what was happening. Fabric reached for her and she flipped her weapon over the invisible arm, trying to injure whoever was hiding behind whatever was attacking her, but she hit the air again. Instead, the red fabric wrapped around her wrist and the other end hit her in the nose. She stumbled with a surprised yelp and hit the ground, her knife sliding to the other end of the room. 

Holding her nose, she dared to look up. Did she just—

“Well, now that was just sad to watch,” a male voice sounded from the top of the staircase. Her attacker disappeared and she stared after it, face wiped clean of the anger she had displayed, she was simply confused now. 

Her head turned to the stranger descending, the red fabric wrapping around his shoulders as it had never in the first place. His get-up reminded her of a children’s costume, but a cool one. 

“Did your cape just attack me?” Eliza asked. 

“He’s a cloak, not a cape, and yes, he did attack you.”

“He?”

“Are you going to lecture me for gendering my cloak? ‘Cause I heard that’s what your generation does.”

“This raises so many questions.” She rose back to her feet with a grunt. “Do I need to get my knife back or are you not planning to kill me?”

The knife in question disappeared suddenly, floating toward the man. He shoved it into his back pocket. “No need for sharp weapons,” he said. 

“Says the one with the floating cloak that just happens to have serious anger issues.”

She never thought a piece of fabric could look offended until the one on the man’s shoulders lowered its edges. 

“No offense,” she added. “No, actually, full offense.”

“I suppose you got my card?”

“Yes, that is why I’m here. Why else would I come?”

“I don’t know, we’ve been having a little trouble with posting lately. Mail that doesn’t reach the person it should go to and vice versa. I’m still waiting for my Amazon package,” he said. 

She frowned even deeper. “What?”

“Oh, right, I totally forgot. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Doctor Stephen Strange and I asked you here because you have something very valuable in your blood that you don’t seem to understand.”

It sounded as if a beat dropped in the distance. Silence settled in between them, her eyes roaming his face and costume. “Yeah,” she said, “I’m not following.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” He made a distinctive move with his fingers and the necklace he wore around his neck, the one that looked like an eye, opened up. She stared at it. As soon as the metal parted with a rattle, the sharp pain in her frontal cortex reappeared. Her fingers tingled, her eyes glowed, and her veins seemed to burst with power. But most of all did she see the green shards she had dreamed about floating around her head and disappearing into the galaxy. 

Her arms shot out, “Woah!”

The green stone was glowing at the same time her hands did. It was subconscious and yet felt so neutral, as if she had been in control all along. The whispers in her ear grew louder, once again speaking a language she didn’t understand. Her forehead screamed and burned and it pulled her toward it, but she refused. 

“Where did you get that?” she asked. In her mind, she told herself to calm down and make the glow go away, and it somehow did because when she glanced at her reflection in the stone, the point on her forehead was gone. 

Stephen descended the last two steps. “It was given to me by someone who understood the power and importance of the infinity stones, and it is my job to protect it,” he said. 

“Okay, I know your outfit makes you seem like some magical wizard who does balloon animals for children’s birthdays, but can you try to be a little less ominous and just flat-out tell me what the fuck is going on?”

She had a problem with authority. 

“Ah, you’re everything I thought you’d be.”

“What’s that?”

“Annoying and reckless.”

“So I’ve been told,” she said. “How exactly do you know about me and where I live? Are you planning to kill me? If so, can I have my knife back to even the stakes?”

He chuckled. “I’m not trying to kill you. If I wanted that, I would have shown up at your apartment instead of sending you my card. No,” he said and stepped forward, to which she took a step back, “I asked you here to talk about what’s in your blood, Eliza.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Everyone does. With your face all over the media, it’s really no surprise.”

She pouted, “Touché.”

“Let me introduce myself again so that even your childish brain can understand, I am Doctor Stephen Strange and I am a master of the mystic arts, which, in your simple words, means magic of a higher order. I am the protector of this Sanctum and your reality.”

“Right, right,” she didn’t buy it, “So you’re not just a wizard without a hat, is that what you’re trying to tell me? You’re actually just very schizophrenic and think you’re some sort of superman?”

“I think you understand, you just don’t want to see it,” he said, and at this point, he was getting rougher with his words. “You know better than anyone the concept of reality and how fragile it is, so you must take my words to heart.”

“Do I?” she retorted.

“You don’t have a choice.”

“I always have a choice, and this is not it.”

“Eliza, we need to talk!”

“Talk to your cape,” she said and turned around to head back through the door she came through, but the cape she mentioned wrapped around the handle before she could leave. “I said talk to it not make it stop me from leaving!”

“I can’t let you leave, not before you hear me out.”

She narrowed her eyes at the cape—cloak. “You are a loyal piece of outerwear, aren’t you?” She couldn’t believe she was talking to it. 

Perhaps she had completely lost her mind, after all.

Turning around again, Eliza looked Stephen up and down again. Her nostrils flared and she huffed. “What do you want to talk about?”

Stephen nodded in satisfaction. “As I said, I’m in charge of protecting our reality. Part of that is unlimited knowledge. I know you, Eliza. Or should I say, Alina?” he said. “I heard about Hydra, I followed what you did, I knew you almost died. I’m impressed, but I’m also concerned. You need to understand who you are. That’s why I asked you here. You want answers, I’m here to provide them.”

When was he before she talked to Viktor? She could have spared herself quite a lot of pain. Then again, she confronted him and it felt good. She asserted her dominance. She needed that. 

If this stranger could give her answers, whoever he was and however important he might be, who was she to turn it down? The cloak wasn’t human, and what the man himself could do wasn’t either. The stone in his necklace called for her. He knew more about the infinity stones than she did. She had to listen to him, he was right, because she was slowly losing herself and if her head continued splitting, she would soon drop dead. 

She hesitated, and he noticed.

“You pose a potential threat to the universe. Your powers are raging freely and you have no means of controlling the true extent of them,” he stated. “If you know what’s good for you, you stop arguing and allow me to explain it to you. You don’t have a choice, kid.”

“I’m a risk?” Eliza sneered. “What the fuck does that even mean?”

“You long for answers, I know it. Someone like you isn’t easily satisfied with half of the truth. You have two options: Follow me and let me talk to you, or I will have to restrain you. I really don’t want to have to do this the hard way. You’re not the only one who’s tired.”

“You’re an asshole. I appreciate it.”

“Thank you. I try my best.”

“Clearly. Well, I really don’t have the power to argue, so ten minutes,” she said, “That’s all you got. As long as you tell your loyal piece of outerwear to let go of my hand before I burn it to ashes–“ it turned to her, then let his edges fall again, pointing toward the floor. “Oh, don’t look so offended. You’re fabric. You shouldn’t be able to have feelings.” She rolled her eyes when it started to hang even lower. “I’m sorry,” she couldn’t believe she said, “You’re a nice cape– cloak, I mean cloak.”

It finally let go of her hand, flying back to the shoulders of its owner.

“This entire thing is so fucking weird.”

“Then you’re going to absolutely hate this part. Watch out!” He circled his hands on the hair, bringing them together in the middle. The energy sizzled and when she opened her eyes from blinking, they were standing in what seemed to be a library. The window she saw from the outside was right in front of her, overlooking the skyline.

Eliza wobbled. She caught herself on the bookshelf to her right. 

“Woah!” she gasped. “What the- how did you just do that?”

“Magic,” Stephen stated. “Want some tea?”

“I-“

They moved to a table, again with the flick of his wrist, and a tea kettle appeared on the table. Their cups were brewing with the hot liquid, creamer, and honey already stirred inside.

Her mind exploded. She wasn’t sure what she watched, but it was nowhere near natural. She wasn’t either. There was a world beyond hers, one she didn’t have the willpower to understand, but he somehow seemed to believe she did. He acted almost as if this was natural — it wasn’t.

“Sit down,” he pointed to the chair across from him, the one she stood behind, “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“You’re not the type of guy to spare my feelings, are you?” she said.

“No. I prefer the radical approach because I don’t really care what you think.”

“Fair.“ She sipped her tea. It wasn’t poisoned, so that was a start. “So, Doctor Strange, what is it that you have to say about my existence? Make it quick because I have someone waiting for me at home who’s going to raise absolute hell if he’s unable to find me.”

“Yes, Daredevil. I’ve heard about him too.”

She somehow expected this to happen. He didn’t lie when he said he was a sorcerer, magic of the highest order. After an alien attack, a sorcerer wasn’t so far off. Magic wasn’t so far off. The infinity stones supplied her with enough energy to manipulate reality and that was not natural, either. Her mind exploded but her curiosity multiplied.

“I should be offended, but I think someone like you knows how to hide a secret. You’re honest, I feel it. So yes, Daredevil. He almost lost me once, he’s not gonna let that happen again,” she said.

“Lucky for you, I have no intention of keeping you here forever. But the reason you’re here is serious and I need your undivided attention.”

She clinked the spoon against the mug. “You’ve got me tea. I don’t have a choice.”

“Great. The reason I asked you here is that the reality stone has been acting up and therefore has caused your powers to gain a strength that a person should not possess, but it somehow chose you, so it is a part of you now. What’s dangerous is the fact that you can’t control it.”

“No one taught me how to.”

“History calls it the Aether. You might know it as the reality stone. A friend of yours, Thor Odison, mentioned it before.”

“He did.”

“The Dark Elves managed to turn the reality stone into liquid – somehow, after it got trapped in stone, parts of it landed on earth. I don’t know how, but your parents found it. An object this powerful is in a million event,” said Stephen. He sat leaned back in his chair, legs crossed and his elbow propped up on the armrest as if it was the most natural thing.

“They’re energy sources. I suppose that’s how they found it – they were scientists, and analyzing the atmosphere was part of their job description. Eliza, your mother bore the entire force of an infinity stone,” he said, “No human being has ever survived a blast like that. The reality stone makes people sick because it’s too strong for humans to handle. We’re the weaker species. Your mother was bound to die the second she touched that rock. You’re the only human being who ever survived being subjected to the power of an infinity stone. With the reality stone, it’s a slow disease that inevitably kills you. You stayed alive. Your mother got sick, but you didn’t. The stone killed her, not you. You were just a fetus and you survived. It’s not supposed to be possible but it happened.”

She grew more confused by the second. “Just tell me what it means,” she begged.

He put his finger to his lips. Patience, he silently told her. It’s a virtue. 

“The reality stone carries the ability to protect itself against potential threats. If you anger it, it tends to hit back. The Aether became one with your blood. That’s why it’s no longer trying to protect itself; it’s trying to protect its keeper, and that’s you. You’re one with the infinity stone and that makes you one of the most powerful beings in the universe.”

“Hold up,” she sat down her tea, “I am what now? No, no,” Eliza said, chuckling, “You’ve got it wrong. I’m nowhere near as strong as you say. I mean, what have I done that could be considered all-powerful? Right, nothing. This is stupid.”

A strange force pulled her back into the chair, trapping her there.

“I’m not done,” Stephen said in his most demanding voice. “You saw what you can do. You didn’t know the power was inside of you at first because the stone was trying to protect you, and that’s exactly why you haven’t been able to control it. Hydra messed your head up good. The experiments on your Amygdala gave you the ability to manipulate emotions, but the Aether inside of you keeps you alive. It is partly responsible for the way your powers manifested. Without it, none of this would’ve worked. But then you almost died and your brain recovered, leaving you with the reality stone.”

She slowly started to piece the puzzle together. “Emotions are basically part of reality. That’s why I could see the story behind their emotions and manipulate it. I changed reality over and over again,” she said.

“Yes. Reality as we know it works a certain way, but there’s a subjective reality, it’s what we see and think of the world. Hydra only made you stronger.”

“God.”

“Now that the reality stone is no longer trying to protect itself but rather you, it doesn’t react as harshly. It reacts when your body reacts. You now know what’s inside of you and what you can do, now all you have to do is learn how to fully control it. You’re messing with powers you don’t understand yet. The Aether may protect you, but it’s still too powerful for any human to handle. So if you don’t learn how to control it and use the powers it’s granting you, you can cause more damage than good. And it’s an infinity stone, the power belongs to the universe – the universe was never meant to cause any harm. The stones were made to protect said universe not destroy it. Although they have the power to do so if they happen to fall into the wrong hands.”

He opened the cage of the green gem again. The shrill frequency went straight to her head and she hissed, holding her throbbing forehead.

“It’s like it’s—“ she searched for the right words, “calling for me. Talking to me,” she said. “Why?”

Stephen was quick to explain, “You’re alike. The stone inside of you communicates with the time stone. It’s normal. While the reality stone is still out there, you’ve become a version of it that’s just as powerful. The time stone knows that it feels drawn to you the way you feel drawn to it. I’m here to protect this stone with my life, I learned how to use it, and you have to do the same. You have to learn how to handle yourself.”

“God, I didn’t sign up for this! Why is it always me? I just wanted a normal life.”

“With great power comes great responsibility,” he said.

“Bullshit!”

“Hear me out. You can’t do it on your own and since I’ve sworn to do everything in my power to prevent threats such as yourself to mess with the universe, I’m here to help you control the power of the stone. Because if you learn to use it the right way, you’re gonna be unstoppable. Your fate could change millions of lives. It’s a good thing, but all good things have a dark side. That’s why you’re here, to make sure that dark side stays in the dark and doesn’t come around to bite you in the ass. If it comes down to it, I won’t hesitate to put the universe before you. And I don’t want to have to do that.”

At least he was honest, but she didn’t like what his honesty entailed. She had to get out. He was messing with her head and the time stone was messing with her bloodstream. Her brain told her to flee and she considered it. If she stood a chance, she wasn’t sure, but the power was astronomical. If she was who he said she was, she stood more than a chance against him.

She swallowed the last sip of tea. “No thank you,” she said then, as civilized as she could. “I’d rather not be shaped into something I am not again.”

He sighed wearily. “Honestly, if you weren’t threatening actual lives, you’d be more of a nuisance, really. But your existence is threatening the universe, your dreams are starting to warn you about what could happen, and you don’t really have a choice but to let me help you,” he told her, “because as the sorcerer supreme, it’s my duty to make sure no one threatens the universe.”

“I’m not a threat. I don’t hurt people, not anymore.”

“You don’t have to do it consciously. You know how fragile you are, don’t play it down.”

“Shut up!”

“I’m getting under your skin. Good, are you starting to see the full picture now or do you need me to portal you to the North Pole?”

“I’m leaving,” she decided. “Thanks for the tea though.”

“She has manners. But manners don’t buy me anything,” Stephen said. 

As she got up, he flicked his wrist again and sent her hurdling forward into the library. She landed on her ass.

Eliza groaned, rising back to her feet. The whole portal-ing made her dizzy and nauseous. “Why won’t you just let me leave? I heard you out, but I don’t like what you’re insinuating because it’s simply not true!”

“Your head is splitting.”

“It is, but there has to be another explanation,” she said, already sounding desperate. “There has to be an explanation that doesn’t portray me as a monster.”

“Strength doesn’t make you a monster,” he said.

“You’re making it sound like the universe is gonna die if I don’t let you turn me into whatever it is you want to turn me into.”

“I want to teach you how to control it.” He stood before her now, arms crossed and sighing like a disappointed father. “Would you just let me?” he said.

She ground her teeth. “Why are the stones warning me?” she asked. “And why do I keep seeing broken pictures as I fall through what appears to be a multiverse, which is so far-fetched that I’m starting to think you’ve manipulated me so I’d listen to you.”

His posture stiffened. He didn’t seem to have known that. “Multiverse?” he questioned.

“Or it’s something else, I don’t know. Does it matter?”

His voice dropped, “What did you see?” 

“Blue and purple, space and time, memories that weren’t mine but somehow are, things that could happen but never did, and then there was this mirror I fell through—“

“The mirror dimension,” he murmured. His head lifted and he asked, louder this time, “What else did you see?”

“The stones,” she said.

“What else?” Stephen bared his teeth. He seemed more on edge than he had before and she realized that this wasn’t just about her anymore, this was about her dreams that could easily turn into visions.

He was confusing her. If her dreams were as dangerous as he made it out to be and her powers posed a threat, she had to let him teach her, but then again she hadn’t seriously hurt anyone and lately it seemed as if she was in control of the darker parts of her, so he could just have been exaggerating.

With her head already split in two, she wasn’t sure what to believe and her mind instantly categorized Stephen Strange as someone who wanted to trap her like Rapunzel in a tower and make her dance to his beat because he was apparently so much more special than her. She didn’t want to fall for the games of a man like that ever again, not after she was so close to putting Viktor behind bars. 

She was her own person and she would find a way to do this with Matt or on her own.

“There was this purple guy, but I only saw him briefly and I couldn’t make out his face,” she told him.

He began to mutter something under his breath. “Now it’s even more important you let me analyze your powers and teach you how to use them in a way that could protect the universe from potential threats,” he said then.

She shook her head. “Not gonna happen.”

“Eliza, you don’t have a choice, and I mean that.”

“I mean it too when I say that I won’t be anyone’s toy anymore. No matter what you say or do, I won’t believe you.”

“These visions you’ve been having… There is a multiverse but it is supposed to be safe, not breaking. The mirror dimension is not supposed to be breaking. I can’t believe I haven’t seen it before—“

“Yeah, right. You know, I’m starting to think your entire magic thing is just a fancy trick. There is only one God so there is only one universe, which makes you a liar and me a little more fucked up than I am, but then again I have an infinity stone inside of me, so perhaps I gotta trust where it leads me. Just because you can manipulate time doesn’t make you any more special or better than I am. So if you know what’s good for you, you let me leave, Doctor Stephen Strange.” 

Her hands started to glow, but he was the last person to get scared of that. His fists knocked together before he brought them back out, now holding two plate-sized red circles that held runes she had never seen before. 

He sighed, “Do you really want to fight me on this?”

She stared at him through her red eyes. Threat, her body screamed. He backed her into a corner, she felt like a bird in a cage all over again, and it terrified her. Her fight-or-flight response was activated, and as soon as that happened, whatever was in her blood was ready to defend her. 

“You don’t want to make me angry,” she bellowed. 

“You do realize that your powers could either annihilate the universe or yourself, right? This isn’t a joke. This isn’t some childish game that I want to play with you just because it gives me a kick. I asked you here because you not knowing who or what you are, at least not to the full extent you are eventually going to grow to, poses a danger both to the reality I’m trying to protect and to you and everyone you love! Think about your boyfriend–“

Her teeth bared and the color in the palm of her hand grew. “Keep his name out of your mouth,” she said, and while she stayed calm with her voice, the threat in her red eyes became clearer at the mention of him.

“You can twist and turn reality however you choose,” Stephen continued, taking another step toward her. He looked so confident, not at all scared like everyone else, and that made her even angrier.

Her body screamed to run. Her mind reeled and her veins were on fire.

“You can do that and so much more,” he said, “which is precisely what you should beware of. Because a power like that is nothing to be played with, and I am trying to be reasonable with this because I don’t want to hurt or restrain you, but I will if you don’t choose to let me help you out of your own damn will.”

“I don’t answer to you.”

“You see, that is not your choice to make. Not anymore. Not after what you told me and what I’m seeing in your terrified little eyes right now. There is something so strong inside of you, it’s twisting your mind and that is going to be the death of you.“

“Fuck you! You don’t get to decide who I am. I make that decision. I won’t be your prisoner and I am not your test rabbit.”

“Eliza, think this through,” he said. “Only one of us is in full control of their powers, and it sure as hell isn’t you!”

“Oh, Stephen,” Eliza brought her hands up, “I have never been more in control.”

“Okay, let’s do this another way.”

The world around her changed suddenly, it split in two and grew in glass around her. She stood amid endless mirrors, the world outside unreachable. 

Threat.

She looked around in panic, the pictures of her dreams returning in her head. She saw herself in the mirrors, her red eyes and hands, and she multiplied wherever she looked. There was no way out. Stephen stepped through the glass and in front of her, that much was real, but the mirrors seemed surreal, like a nightmare come true and she would wake up any second. 

Upon the move of his hands, the bookshelf split apart and started spiraling down. That was enough for her to act. She wasn’t sure what compelled her, but she did the same thing that she did when she fell – she broke through the mirrors, her hand pushed out at her side and the red hitting the glass with such a force, it splintered. 

Stephen seemed taken aback. Whatever had been done to the bookshelves stopped and the glass soared through the floor. The first set of books flew toward him.

“How is that possible?” he growled, dodging the attack. 

Eliza panted when she told him, “Let me go!”

“No can do-”

“Fine!”

At the same time he conjured up the glowing red strings, she channeled her anger into her hands and pushed forward. Both of their powers met in the middle, the same way the alien tech had clashed against hers, but she was stronger than him this time and it only sent him flying back, and Stephen crashed into one of the displays. 

She stared at her hands, shocked and partly impressed. He was still breathing, his groans told her as much, but she didn’t have the time to stick around. She needed to get out. She had made him angry and he would trap her if she didn’t run, she was sure of that. The panic drove her down the stairs and toward the exit. 

From behind her, his faint voice rang out, “You can’t run from who you really are!”

He obviously had never met her.

How long had she been in the Sanctum? New York had gotten dark outside, the lights of the city offering some guidance on her way toward the more crowded street. Her phone started to vibrate and she pulled it out. Somehow Stephen must have intercepted her service because she had several calls and text messages on her screen, most of them from Matt, but there were also some worried questions coming from Foggy’s end. 

She sighed heavily, her hand reaching out to flag down a cab while she deleted the notifications and pulled out her credit card instead. “Hell’s Kitchen,” she told the driver. 

His eyes got stuck on her. “Oh, my God, you are-”

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” she said, already having expected that reaction, but the more they waited the closer Stephen would get, “Now drive!” 

He hit the gas. 

During the thirty-minute drive, Eliza typed in Foggy’s number and waited for him to pick up with a bouncing leg. “C’mon,” she murmured. 

Finally, after what felt like forever, his voice rang out, “Liz, where the fuck have you been?”

“Is Matt still at the office?” she asked.

“No, he left about two hours ago. Seriously, we couldn’t reach you for hours. Where are you?” 

“I did a very stupid thing,” her breath hitched, “and he is gonna be so mad at me. Did he say he was, y’know, going out to find me?”

“He didn’t say anything, he just said he needed to make sure you didn’t get yourself killed. What do you mean you did a very stupid thing? And don’t ignore my question now.”

“Oh, fuck me! This is not gonna end well. I’m in a cab right now. I can’t answer your question, not right now, so just— I need to get home and talk to Matt. He’s probably gonna kill me, but right now, I don’t really care. Thanks, Foggy. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Liz, wait—“

He was cut off by the line clicking and going dead silent. She hung up on him. 

The cab dropped her off a couple of blocks from the apartment. She paid and made her way to what she suspected was her certain death. 

She quickly unlocked the door, storming through and locking it back behind her. She closed all possible deadbolts and even then it didn’t seem enough. The light in the apartment was on, to her surprise, but she couldn’t care less about that right now.

Matt jumped from the couch. “Where the fuck have you been?” he asked, the worry clearly written on his face. But most of all, he was angry.

She ignored him, quickly moving onto the windows and pulling all the curtains shut. 

“Eliza,” he urged.

“Just hold on a second,” she said. She jumped up the stairs to the rooftop access door and locked that one too. In the bedroom, she closed the window and the curtains. She made sure all entrance points were locked before he forcefully pulled her in front of him and glared at her. 

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“I did a very bad thing.”

“Oh, what did you do?”

She bit her lip. “Can you let me go?” His fingers dug into her upper arms. “You’re hurting me.”

Matt blinked out of it, instantly letting her go. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to–“

“Would you believe me if I told you that a wizard without a hat but a floating cape is after me?”

“What?”

“Yeah, I reacted the same when I first saw him, but then he continued talking about how he knew me and he knew a lot of things that the media didn’t state, so he seems to really have unlimited knowledge, and he told me that magic is very much real. And he has the time stone, which is– they’re all calling for me, but seeing one in person was, like, so intense,” she said. “And then he continued talking about how the reality stone came to be, how it got into me, and how I should not have survived, which kind of makes me special because the universe chose me, but I also pose a threat to said universe because my powers are so strong and I need to be controlled because he’s supposed to protect the universe and he’d put it before my life if I ever became a threat, so yeah, a wizard just threatened to kill me if I don’t learn how to control this power raging through me and he wanted to keep me there to shape me into whatever he wants me to be, and I said no.”

“Eliza, slow down–“

She wasn’t planning on it; her body was burning brightly with adrenaline. 

“And then he kept talking about how my dreams were some sort of vision and that there is a multiverse, which I told him is ridiculous because you said there is only one God and I believed that, so I blamed it on him, which also seems plausible because he sent me a card that led me there and he knew who I was, so I suspect he gave me those visions to make me feel like I’m going crazy and he can use me for whatever perverted purpose he has for my powers or something like that because he is a wizard after all. After aliens, that’s not so far off and that’s not what struck me. I mean, look at me, I’m not human either, so he could have given me visions, definitely. I refused to let him persuade me to follow him because I am done following men the way they want me to, and then we fought, I kind of broke some sort of mirror dimension, which also should not be possible, and then I fought a wizard and his cape and then I ran, so now I’m here. Don’t be mad at me, please, I am very terrified right now and I don’t know how to place my emotions so I am about to break down and I fear that if you don’t hug me, I might fall apart.”

He opened his arms. “C’mere.” Her arms wrapped around him and squeezed tightly, her eyes crowding with tears and then she was crying again, and he held her because he wasn’t sure what else to do.

She sobbed, “I’m scared, Matty.” She never admitted she was scared. 

He rubbed her back, lips pressed to her hair. “I know, baby,” he said.

“Don’t let him take me, please.”

“I would never, you’re safe here. I’ve got you. He won’t touch you.”

“I’m so sorry I left.”

“Don’t worry about it. What matters is that you’re safe. I just need— I’m confused too, I need a moment to process what you said, but I got you.”

He held her face and she whimpered. Kissing her tears, Matt tried not to panic. Her words made sense to her, but not to him. He was confused and he was scared that he couldn’t understand. He wasn’t made for this kind of life, and she had told him that once. It had been an emotional reaction, something she didn’t mean because she had endless faith in him, but he started to lose faith in himself and God because this world completely wrecked his brain. It drove a bulldozer over his belief system. 

He tried to be strong for her, but it was only getting harder. She was crying and she needed him to hold her, to be strong and make the fear go away, protect her from the ghosts and demons of her past and present, but how could he help her if he didn’t even know what he was helping her with?

Matt set her down on the sofa. She was still shaking violently. He took the comforter from the backrest and wrapped the plaid around her shoulders. 

He kissed her forehead. “I’m gonna grab you some water. Sit tight.”

Her eyes focused blankly on the wall before her, the painting that hung there, and the cracks in the stone. She pulled her legs up to her chest. Her head was splitting and she felt the hole in her chest. She felt the power and it ran her dry. She needed more while at the same time, she needed nothing at all. She wanted the spiral to stop.

And she began to think, as she thought back to what she had done to Stephen and what he showed her, perhaps he was right. Perhaps there was something about his true words and she needed help. She knew she needed help, but the kind he had offered was. Or did she? 

He handed her the water bottle. “Can you explain it to me again?” he asked. “Slower this time so I can understand.”

“I don’t–“ she swallowed, admitting honestly then, “I don’t understand.”

“Take a deep breath and then tell me exactly what happened. We can go from there.”

Eliza took a deep breath. She could remember what happened, she remembered everything and so she recalled everything that happened at the Sanctum and what Stephen said and did and told Matt every detail. She still didn’t understand what she was talking about, but the story met his ears and he started thinking about it. The more she said, the more the hairs on his arms stood up. Goosebumps covered his skin. His heartbeat was up to his throat.

In the end, she was wracked with sobs again. “I’m so sorry,” she cried, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Viktor’s gonna plead not guilty, which means I have to testify and I have to face him and I really thought that was it. I thought I would never have to worry about being wanted for what’s inside of me ever again. I’m so scared, Matt, and I don’t like being scared because it messes with my head.”

“He called you a threat, but he doesn’t know you as I do,” he said.

“But he’s a wizard, he has the time stone. What if–“ Eliza took a sip of the water, “What if he’s right and I pose a threat to the universe? I can’t possibly understand what I’m facing, what he’s facing, what we’re all facing. He does. So either he’s a master manipulator or he’s right.”

“Baby, I’m gonna be honest with you, I didn’t understand a thing of what you said. All of this– it’s new to me and I’m scared, too. I’m scared that I can’t help you and it’s killing me inside, but I do know one thing, you are not a threat and you are not a monster. He had no right pressuring you like that and you did the right thing running because he doesn’t get to have power over you. No one does. It’s your choice and you said no, which is exactly what you should have done.”

She took in a shaky breath. “Okay,” she nodded slowly. “So I’m just gonna have to sit it out and hope he doesn’t come after me?”

Matt smiled softly. “Yes.”

“How? I mean, he could come back any second. He could haunt me in my dreams. He’s a wizard,” Eliza said. “He can do the weirdest shit, I saw him do it, so coming to get me and chaining me to his little palace for all eternity wouldn’t be so hard.”

“He’s not going to get you. He can come, but he has to go through me and I am going to put up one hell of a fight. I’d rather die than let him get to you,” he said.

She sniffled. “You’re gonna be here to protect me?” 

“Always.”

He settled down next to her and pulled her into his chest. His heartbeat calmed her, she focused on that and she focused on his steady breathing. She allowed her heartbeat to align with his, finally relaxing enough to breathe.

Her eyes fluttered close eventually. It was a small nap, probably only fifteen minutes before there was a knock on the door. She shot up, eyes wide. “He’s here,” she breathed.

When she jumped from the couch, Matt reached his arms out in a soothing motion. “No, you’re okay, it’s just Foggy,” he said. He could hear his friend’s familiar heartbeat on the other side. 

“Are you sure? Maybe he’s just pretending to be Foggy to fool you into letting him in.”

“No, baby, I’m sure. His heart sounds a certain way and he smells… well, I can’t explain it, but you can’t fool me. In that regard, my heightened senses are foolproof. Just breathe, alright? You’re okay, you’re safe.“

She remained standing, eyes narrowed at the door. He unlocked it, allowing Foggy inside, then locked all the deadbolts as she had before. 

Eliza reached for the fruit ball on the dinner table. He opened his mouth to greet her, but instead Foggy was met with an apple straight to his chest. The fruit pearled off of him and he followed the trail, clearly confused. He didn’t fight, he didn’t change forms, he simply stood there, lost and confused.

“Did you just throw an apple at me?” he asked eventually, regaining some of his composure.

Her defensive stance slacked. “Tell me something only you would know,” she said.

Foggy exchanged a confused look with Matt who only nodded, a silent plea for him to indulge her because she was scared, she was sweating and her heartbeat sounded through the roof. He needed her to calm down and if this was what it would take, he had to play along.

He took a second to collect himself. “Matt likes to stuff his sweatpants into his socks because he hates it when the temperature of his ankles and the rest of him are different. It triggers his, uh, super senses? I don’t know what they’re called,” he said. “But he does it every time he wears sweatpants, which doesn’t happen often, he’s always liked to walk around with as little clothing as possible. Now please–“ Foggy pointed at her hand, “would you put the banana down?”

Eliza relaxed, she put the fruit back in the bowl and straightened up. “It’s really you,” she said, sighing a breath of relief. “I thought you were– I’m sorry. I had to make sure you were real.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked. 

“My bad decision is coming to bite me in the ass.”

“What exactly did you do?”

“You wouldn’t get it even if I explained.”

“Try me.”

For the second time that night, she gave a recap of what she went through with Stephen Strange, the Doctor who also happened to be a sorcerer. 

Foggy looked just as distraught as Matt, and the latter was even more confused upon hearing it a second time. His fist tightened around the tea he had brewed for them. He handed one mug to Foggy, the other to his girlfriend and he held the other to his chest.

Foggy blinked the fog in his eyes away. “So basically you just met a wizard who wanted to force you to stay with him so he could train you because of that stupid infinity stone that’s in your blood?” he said.

She nodded, “Pretty much.”

“Cool. That’s cool. Cool, cool, cool–“

“Something tells me it’s not cool,” she said.

“Because it is not!” He threw his hands up. “A multiverse, are you kidding me? What is this? Scooby Do? The Matrix? Fucking Avatar? What the fuck, Eliza?!”

“Dude, I don’t know!” Eliza retorted. She shrugged so high, her shoulders hurt. “I’m just as confused as you are, except all of this isn’t all that new to me. But I am freaking out and telling you everything doesn’t just make me gain infinite knowledge. I am scared, Foggy! I’m scared and I hate my life. So whether or not we understand doesn’t matter, I just don’t want Stephen Strange to come in here and get me so that he can trap me like he told me he would. I wanted answers, what I got was much worse and now I’m even more confused than I was before!”

She broke down again, head in her hands as she sobbed. Matt instantly wrapped his arms around her, shooting a warning glare in Foggy’s direction.

He sighed. “I’m sorry, you’re right. This wasn’t– I didn’t mean to react like that.”

She waved him off.

“Hey,” said Foggy, “You had every right to get out of there. He’s an asshole. He doesn’t get to tell you who you are. Bad enough Viktor already fucked with your head. No,” he took her hand, “You did the right thing. Fuck him and fuck his floating cape!”

Her chuckle sounded broken but somehow Foggy always managed to lighten the mood. “Thank you,” she said.

“You have more important things to worry about.”

“The hearing.”

Eliza gnawed at the inside of her cheek. She completely pushed it away. “I hate that I have to see him,” she admitted quietly.

Matt sat back down beside her, Foggy settling on the other side. She leaned her head on her boyfriend��s shoulder, her best friend holding her other hand. 

Lips pressed to the crown of her head. “We’ve got you,” he murmured. “And once that is done, we focus on the wizard.”

“You think he’ll come after me?”

“I’d like to see him try,” Foggy said.

“If he hasn’t come to get you yet, he’s not going to tomorrow,” Matt told her. “And even if he does, I’ll protect you with my life.”

She was satisfied with that answer. She could worry about him once Viktor was locked away. She could worry about herself once she put the man who ruined her life behind bars. 

You pose a threat to the universe.

She scoffed. Stephen Strange could fuck himself.

At 221 Bleeker Street, the mood was lower than usual, but it wasn’t ill intent that laid in the air. Hurt pride cut it the closest.

Stephen Strange got to his feet, snapping his fingers to put the glass cage back together. He had barely brushed the shards off when Wong came sprinting up the stairs.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What happened?”

“Eliza Bennett happened,” Stephen answered through gritted teeth.

“You got her here? Where is she?” Wong looked around, but his friend merely sneered.

“She left.”

He took a moment to eye him closer. “Why do you look like you’ve just been thrown into a wall?”

“She wouldn’t listen, so she left. That’s all you need to know.”

“So, a kid beat you?” he said.

Stephen lifted his finger, his eyes wide and lips pressed into a thin line. “She did not beat me!” he said. “And she’s not a kid, she’s an adult.”

Wong laughed. “She did beat you.”

“That’s a lie. I let her go.”

“If you actually did that, you’re dumber than I thought.”

He sighed in exasperation. “I underestimated her,” he admitted. “Seems like her mind knows what to do. The stone is communicating with her, keeping her in check and in control. And the dreams she’s been having… Wong, if this keeps happening, we might have a bigger problem at our hands than that girl.”

“Then we should get her back,” said Wong. “Right now, we’ll get her and force her to help us.”

Stephen shook his head. He stood at the top of the stairs, turning to his friend before he said while descending, “She’s gonna come back.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because she was simply scared. As soon as she realizes she can’t do this alone, which she will, she’s gonna come back, begging at my feet.”

“Oh, even though she didn’t hesitate to beat you?”

Halfway down, he twirled around. “She did not beat me!” His voice echoed off the high walls, but Wong’s laugh only filled the room once again as he disappeared.

“She totally beat you.”

"Wong!"

[under-a-shady-ash-tree]

DC crossover with Daredevil and The Punisher where Frank refuses to stop calling Matt “Red” despite the fact that Red Hood and Red Robin are right there and everyone is very confused

[anxietyriddenbutterfly]

Agatha All Along Episode 5 spoilers ahead

Everything about episode 5 was just fucking perfect. I don't think I'm ever going to move on from the Teen identity reveal. The fucking blue magic? Him throwing the witches into the sinking mud? THE YOU'RE JUST LIKE YOUR MOTHER AND THEN THE FREAKING MAGIC CROWN. Playing You Should See Me in a Crown by Billie Eilish right afterwards throughout the credits. Teen has to be Wiccan 100% believe it now, the crown matched Wanda's. Ugh this episode just has me in all the Maximoff family feels again and I can't wait until next week

[thebreakfastgenie]

Pro-spoiler people are so annoying. They are orders of magnitude more annoying than the MCU no-spoilers people. Because pro-spoiler people are arguing with a strawman that doesn't exist. Every single one of those posts is like "ew imagine needing to not know anything about a story to enjoy it!" Even the MCU's weird production practices (which I suspect are exaggerated for marketing purposes) are not that because the MCU still has trailers. For all the "don't spoil the endgame" spots and stories about actors being lied to (and yes that was dumb) it was still known and advertised that Avengers: Endgame was about using the Infinity Gauntlet to defeat Thanos. I'm pretty sure the fact that time travel was involved was known, too.

[saryasy]

it's funny because like I kept waiting for it all to build up to something to have a reason for existing. but literally nothing happened

[tamtamho]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: GOTG have the smoothest, most planned, movie series with a satisfying ending.

[SPOILERS]

It shows that:

- the main male lead and female lead doesn't have to end up together

- endings doesn't have to be tragic or sad to be remarkable

- heroes deserve to be saved too

- people change, and that's okay

- keep the character arc constant throughout different movies

- give villain's minions some character and thoughts. When High Revolutionary's subordinate went against him? And that Ura girl? Amazing.

- some villains can have no sob backstory and justification of what they done and still be a good villain (story-wise), and audience don't need to empathize. It's ok if they just want to cheer heroes as they kick the villain's ass

- You can make good jokes WITHOUT undermining the emotional aspect. Go ahead, joke, but know where to stop. I feel that's what new MCU movies lacked lately.

[pruesgaultier]

lets talk: agatha all along finale

ahead: spoilers obvi, and my VERY annoyed thoughts read at your own risk. and remember something VERY important: these are MY thoughts, MY opinions on MY page.

before i get into the bad, which there was a lot of imo, lets talk about what i loved

☆ i loved that jen got away and got her powers back. i really love her character and i hope we see her again. still crazy how agatha is the one who bound her like omg ???? good for her love that diva

☆ i love the agatha and nicky scenes. and then creating the ballad together, soooo sweet. she was such a good mom im so sad

☆ i love the alice part as heartbreaking as it was

☆ the part where billy created the makeshift grave for alice, lilia, and sharon

☆ "MY LOVE" "YOU LOVE ME" "WHY DON'T YOU WANT ME" im sickkkk they're absolutely insane and i love them so so much

☆ rio planting the flowers over agatha's grave, im sickkkk

☆ AGATHARIO KISS !!! was so so beautiful and passionate i love them.

☆ ghost agatha is sexy, don't know how i feel about her hair tho. some angles i like it, some angles i dont

now what did i hate, just about everything else.

☆ i hate how the first time we get a lesbian kiss in marvel, one of them dies. the bury your gays trope is so fucking tired. wrap it up. i don't care about male gay rep because they already had it in the mcu with eternals, it's not fair that when lesbians finally get rep, we don't get to keep it.

☆ not only do i just not fucking like billy, i hate how so much of this show centered around him, like if this was supposed to get me excited and into billy, it failed drastically. FUCK BILLY ??? WHO CARES ??? the show is called agatha all along and i feel like it was billy all along in too many parts. we didnt even get to see too much of her because of HIM. ALSO her sacrificing herself just to end up basically being his ghost side kick is also stupid. because while i get agatha not being able to face her son again, then why kill her ? why not let her live, what because he's a maximoff that we're supposed to see in later projects ??? like who gives a shit.

✧ they put entirely too much of this show on wiccan / joe's popularity and it didnt work nor make sense.

☆ also, on the topic of billy, i don't get why agatha just didnt drain his power and kill him. i know she made the deal with rio and stuff but he could've reincarnated into another body and they could continue wiccan's journey like that but in a different body. it honestly just seems like marvel sacrificed agatha to keep joe locke and its like who fucking cares.

☆ i hate how im left with more questions than answers.

✧ how and why did rio and agatha get married? agatha has been killing witches for so long, and im assuming rio appeared everytime, when did they get together?

✧ rio referes to nicholas as nicky, why? from what we saw in those 6 years agatha and nicky were together, she wasn't there.

✧ why did they make it seem like we would see them raising nicky together?

✧ they described agathario's history as "long and complicated", yet we never saw that or the aftermath of their relationship after rio took nicky? did rio and nicky meet before? because he seemed to know her or at least not be scared enough to feel "stranger danger" like what happened.

✧ in episode 4, we get agathario almost kiss and hat seemed like a healing moment for them and in the end we get agatha never wanting to see rio again ? why ? what happened that we didn't see for this seemingly drastic change.

✧ in ep 5, rio very clearly hates agatha's mother and refuses to let agatha go with her, and obviously we as an audience can infer the reason why, agatha told her what happened but still.

✧ how did the agatha trading nicky for the darkhold rumor even start ? agatha gave birth alone in the woods and gave him a completely different name, who knew about her son ? how did they find out ? im sooo confused by all of this

i love this show, or at least the concept, but i don't love the execution. it was supposed to be about us learning and getting to know agatha and i honestly feel like i don't know her at all. i loved eps 1-4 and ep 7, everything else, eh.

thanks for coming to my ted talk !

[castielsprostate]

VENOM 3 SPOILERS AHEAD!!! and veryyyy unorganized thoughts below the cuttt!!!

first of all. OH MY GOD. genuinely this was a beautifully executed storyline, with the most bitter, heartwrenching ending. tom hardy when i fucking GET YOU!!!!!!!!!!

okay. im in actual, real life tears over this movie. venom saved eddie's life within, what? 3 days of knowing him? a week tops? and venom brought eddie back from the fucking dead!!!!!!! DESPITE KNOWING!!!!!!!!! WHAT WOULD HAPPEN!!!!!! despite knowing he would trigger the codex, venom still saved eddie's fucking life! which is especially interesting considering the symbiote in mulligan, which i am assuming was in him for a WHILE, left him to die (fair!) at the end of the second movie! venom saved eddie's life. without a second thought.

also this definitely was a love story between eddie and venom. they literally had their break up arc in the second movie(!) and this tied a beautiful, bitter end to their very tragic story. venom saying, to eddie, what martin said. "until we meet again", genuine tears in my eyes. it showed venom's humanity, everything he learned, from eddie and others. to me, personally, venom is still with eddie. they're living symbiotically, with eddie on one side of the door and venom on the other. nierka(??? i totally butchered that lmao). eddie saying i will never forget you buddy while looking at lady liberty. GOD. eddie isn't alone anymore! eddie won't EVER be alone!!!!!!!!!! despite what everyone told him!!!!!!!!! eddie has venom, maybe not physically right now, but he still has a part of him!!!!!!!! they're both free. they're both. GAH.

also there still is a bit of venom left. in a tiny test tube, at the bottom of area 55. don't think i forgot about that!!!!! he's still there, they never showed us that it actually got destroyed. and EYE believe that venom found eddie, after they blew up. and it somehow, in some marvel magic sparkles way reset the codex. they still have each other, until the end!!!!! TILL DEATH DO THEY PART!!!!!!!!!!!!!

genuinely, the writers cared. tom hardy cared!!!!!!! i don't know how many people he had to keep under gunshot to get this, but he gave us a beautiful trilogy about love and friendship and humanity and finding each other. the queerness of it all, the found family (except the chickens. how DARE eddie give the chickens away. for that alone he should've died).

eddie saying he was born with it [the weird arms] also just. god it added another layer didn't it? also what actually happened to that guy. like. he got his bar destroyed, and then he got fucking tazed lmao??? what did they do to him????? also the WAY that in the "sacred timeline" the bartender looked all cleaned up and put together despite the fucking snap 💀💀💀💀 and how the bar was nicer. the disney filter!!!!!!!!!

that also left a very veryyy clear way for them to bring eddie!venom back but in the MCU, because they didn't show the TVA resetting the timeline! venom saying eddie would've made a great father. well. you had carnage and i think it's best you don't try again huh.

i missed anne, but i think that her not being there was. good? it was good. she and eddie truly loved each other as friends and whilst i hoped they'd at least have a phone call or a singular scene together, i do get why they didn't! she moved on with her life, and it was time for eddie to move on with his. her telling venom to keep him safe at the end of the second movie. and he did! he gave his own life for eddie's, he kept his promise. i just. GOD. venom keeping eddie alive as the symbiotehunters kept coming and coming and coming. keeping eddie from looking back, and healing him one. last. time. HE DIDN'T EVEN NEED TO SAY I LOVE YOU!!!!! EDDIE JUST KNEW!!!!!!! EDDIE!!!!!! KNEW!!!!!!!!!!!

eddie saying "but i need him". it had me bawling. BAWLING. but i need him. oh eddie. EDDIE. 😭😭😭😭😭 anne said he was too afraid of commitment and yet. AND YET. he was willing to DIE for an alien!!!!!! and to then say he needs him. god.

was the movie a bit retconn-y? maybe. did they use this as a segway for more movies with different characters? absolutely lmao. was it an ad for crocs? yes that too. but i think that this was a good end. they won't drag it out, they won't destroy a good comic for more money (for now). the song choices were also OUTSTANDING. the symbiotes coming together to save eddie and venom, because they knew!!!!! THEY KNEW!!!!!!!! eddie nor venom sparing a second look at sexy ladies!!!!!!!!!!! the dancing with mrs chen!!!!!!!! GAH

to me, right now, eddie and venom are sitting on a beach, toes in the sand, finally sipping the bloody mary that venom didn't get to drink at the beginning with miss chen on one side, anne and dan enjoying the ocean, and agent mulligan on the other side. alive, happy, together. and the bartender. he's there too. for funsies.

[dodger-sister]

Wrote this after seeing the movie last weekend but forgot to post - was distracted by board game night fun - but this is my Deadpool & Wolverine review: Go see Deadpool & Wolverine. If you are a fan of Deadpool, go see Deadpool & Wolverine. If you are a fan of Wolverine, go see Deadpool & Wolverine. If you are a fan of the XMen movies, go see Deadpool & Wolverine. If you are a fan of the MCU, go see Deadpool & Wolverine. If you are a fan of any Marvel movie made in the last 30 years, go see Deadpool & Wolverine. If you are a fan of Ryan Reynolds, go see Deadpool & Wolverine. If you are a fan of Hugh Jackman, go see Deadpool & Wolverine. If you are a fan of Ryan Reynolds & Hugh Jackman’s friendship, go see Deadpool & Wolverine. Avoid spoilers & don’t look at IMDB ahead of time. Just go. Now. (& stay until the very, very end of the credits). … Why are you still here? Let’s fucking go!

[iam93percentstardust]

one of the things that really bothers me about modern franchises, and in particular over the last 5 years or so, is their refusal to commit. what i mean here when i say this is that it's not uncommon for a major franchise to make a decision, whether about the plot or the characters, that should have had huge, world-changing consequences... and then just never address that again or worse, immediately go back and undo it. and i'm gonna pick on star wars and the mcu here because those are the two big franchises i'm into at the moment (and i think they're kind of the worst at this), but i don't want you to walk away from this thinking that this is solely a disney thing. i've seen this happen with game of thrones and supernatural and plenty of other non-disney franchises. spoilers ahead, you've been warned:

in ant-man & the wasp quantumania, scott and hope make the life-altering decision to stay behind in the quantum realm and defeat kang instead of going through the portal to return to their world. this should have been a huge meta decision for the mcu, and when i first saw it in theaters, my immediate thought was wow, what is this going to mean for the mcu going forward? are we going to get a movie/miniseries about scott and hope helping to rebuild the quantum realm? how are cassie, janet, and hank going to react to the losses of their loved ones (in some cases, for the second time)? is cassie going to become the "first" young avenger because she has to take her father's place among the team lineup (and i only say first because as of this moment, none of the other young avengers introduced to the franchise are official avengers yet)? except nope, because less than 2 minutes later, cassie had fixed the portal that had broken way back at the beginning of the movie and brought scott and hope back.

and it felt like such a cheat. i was so disappointed in that theater, not as someone who was invested in these characters on a personal level (because yay, cassie gets her dad back!), but as someone who has spent years investing themselves in the story of the mcu. what was the point of wasting screentime on scott and hope accepting their new lives in the quantum realm if it was just going to immediately be undone? the entire scene could have been cut to scott and hope making it back bare seconds before the portal closed and it would have had the same emotional impact. there was nothing added by making scott and hope (and us) think that there was no way back only to rip the rug out from under us and go "gotcha! you really thought we were gonna give this movie a sad ending? haha! you're so dumb!"

and this isn't the first time the mcu has done this. one of the biggest complaints about endgame was the decision to set it five years in the future with no consideration for how that would actually change the setting of the mcu. characters were brought back to the exact place they disappeared from with no consideration for how things might have changed in the interim five years (like planes that weren't in the air anymore, buildings no longer standing, even just something as simple as a chair being unoccupied). and then the mcu didn't even really have the courage to address how this would have shaped the world other than a few jokes and making the bad guys in the falcon and the winter soldier people who cared about how the world had screwed them over during the blip.

and things like this happen over and over and over again. the accords are put into place in civil war, but by the time we get to she-hulk, they're gone with no explanation because, as best as i can tell, the writers didn't want to have to deal with the worldbuilding that went into the accords. gamora is killed in infinity war, but heaven forbid quill not have an emotional investment in a film he appears for maybe 10 minutes in so now she's back in endgame. steve got to go live in the past with his ex-girlfriend (which is in itself a refusal to commit after the mcu both gave her a different husband and had the woman herself tell him to move on) but we need to establish that messing with timelines is bad because that's what the entire next phase hinges on so actually his ending was predestined and it's only everyone else who can't change time. whoever took this entire town and also wanda hostage and forced them to live out a sitcom fantasy is bad and needs to be stopped but wait, it's actually wanda and she can't be the bad guy yet, we need her for doctor strange 2, so actually everyone's going to defend her now and say that no one else could ever possibly understand her grief. thor has decided to accept responsibility as king of asgard, but we can't use him for any more movies if he's stuck in asgard, so actually he's decided to pass it on to someone whose entire leadership capability is developed offscreen. i could list more examples but this is making me angry, so let's move on to star wars instead.

with star wars, i look at first the oft-quoted meme, "somehow palpatine has returned." yeah, i shouldn't really need to go into detail on how that counts as a refusal to commit but. the last jedi was a study in how johnson refused to commit to anything that abrams had laid down in the force awakens, but rise of skywalker was almost like abrams had looked at the franchise and said "screw you for taking it away from me, i'm going to come up with the most bullshit stuff just to spite you for doing that in the first place. and i'm going to start by undoing the most important plot point of the first trilogy: the emperor dies." and yeah, disney's kind of tried to salvage this by dropping hints into the bad batch and the mandalorian about cloning, but that only really works if you're watching the franchise chronologically and not considering that both of those series came out after rise of skywalker.

and then there's the mandalorian, my sweet summer child, who is, in my opinion, the worst at backtracking their plot points. i'm not entirely convinced that any of the higher ups for this show really knew what they were doing when they started working on it and i'm not convinced that they know what they're doing now. yeah, there's the tie-in to the last season of clone wars, but the mandalorian has managed to walk back pretty much every single major plot point it's had. din is this legendary warrior who can't be beat, but no one will watch this show if he defeats everyone too early, so he's constantly getting beat up (tbf, sometimes some of the fights he loses makes sense like the krayt dragon and the mudhorn, but a lot of them don't. at all). moff gideon is dead, no wait no he's not, now he's imprisoned, no wait no he's not, now he's definitely dead, you can totally believe us this time guys. grogu can use the force and must be placed with the jedi, but wait, the only person still actively teaching the way of the jedi is luke and all of his students will be brutally murdered ten years from now, and we can't have that, everyone will be mad at us for killing off such a cute character and no one will buy baby yoda dolls (and also we have to set up luke's character degradation from hopeful, believes-in-love cinnamon roll to "i'm going to kill my nephew") so in between seasons let's have grogu decide to go back to din (and don't even get me started on how frustrating it is that a casual mandalorian watcher also had to watch book of boba fett to understand why grogu is back). din has the darksaber now which makes him king of mandalore, that's totally going to be important and what the entire series has been building up to, right? wrong! he might have spent the first two seasons making connections, learning about the world outside his sheltered upbringing, and demonstrating the various qualities that would make for a good leader, but the entire third season will be about din realizing that actually he's super unworthy and the darksaber should actually go to someone who... saw an animal in the water.

and it's really, really frustrating as a viewer! because how am i supposed to get invested in any of these plot decisions when they almost always get reversed? why should i care that mj and ned have forgotten peter when ant-man 3 has shown me that they'll remember him the next time they're all on screen together? why should i care that tech is dead when half of the last season of clone wars was about how echo was actually alive? if none of these decisions have any permanence, then where are the emotional stakes? why should i watch your movie if all you're going to tell me is that nothing matters?

[tevanbuckley]

Honestly genuinely a little mad about the ofmd finale. MAJOR SPOILERS ahead!

Because as it stands Izzy is bury your gays, it's basically the trope to a t, and the fact that izzy is surrounded by other queer characters doesn't really change that.

Very clearly repressed queer man -> does fucked up shit to cope -> learns about/semi accepts his queerness -> still needs to be punished for his crimes -> has to die. Like that's literally the formula for how queer characters had to be written in the past.

And look i've defended other controversial character deaths before (i did my time in the mcu folks!) as being satisfying/necessary from a narrative perspective, but this isn't. Because we've all seen that cycle above a thousand times before, and I'm just so frustrated because I thought we were finally safe! I thought oh I'm actually going to get to watch this fucked up little queer man be happy at the end, but no he's just dead, again.

Who knows, maybe buttons is gonna sea-witch him back to life in s3. Maybe izzy really is indestructible. I don't even think it's an unlikely scenario, the same way I don't think it was ever really in doubt that lucius survived s1. But if he's going to survive then I don't really know what the point of him dying in the first place was? Apart from a cheap gotcha moment a year on at the expense of the audience.

[farfromstrange]

I watched Antman And The Wasp: Quantumania last night and I have some thoughts!

If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want to be spoiled, I’d suggest you don’t push the ‘read more’ button. If you have watched it or are nosy (like me) go ahead! And if you're currently not the biggest MCU fan, just letting you know that it's a good review, so do with it as you will.

Okay, let’s get into it.

I watched the movie in 3D and English, thank God, so I got the full experience.

I want to start off by saying that I had both low and high expectations, the former coming from a fear of Marvel screwing up Phase 5 and making me not enjoy their movies as much as I used to, and the latter because of the same reason because I don't want Marvel to screw it up and I hoped Antman would be as good as the trailer promised. I also hoped for Marvel to do their best at starting off Phase 5 after so much talk about how exciting it was going to be and that the future of the MCU was looking up again. I hoped for that.

In the end, Antman wasn't as good as it was promised in the trailer and the many reviews of the first screening I've read before.

It was better. Much, much better. And that comes from a personal place, of course, and how I viewed it, but let me just say, the entire room was burning (in a good way) and I wasn't the only one blown away.

Now that I've said it, I have to explain why I think that way. Or, I want to because I'm annoying and I like to share my opinion on things that no one asked for. (And most of you voted for more Daredevil thoughts no one asked for in the poll I made - this may not be Daredevil or Matt Murdock related, but in the end DD: Born Again will be part of Phase 5 so Antman actually plays an important part. It just set an example for what's about to come.)

1) I went into this movie with the fear that Marvel rushed the CGI again and completely missed the point (I liked Thor: Love And Thunder but the special effects and world building could have been better) so I kind of went into it with the fear that they ruined it. It, however, did not disappoint. Marvel did not disappoint with the CGI or world building. They did an incredible fucking job with it. And whoever is leaving terrible reviews on Rotten Tomatoes... have you watched the movie? Because from what I've read, we've seen two entirely different versions. And I'm not saying this because I'm prejudiced (okay, maybe I'm holding onto too much hope, but whatever, I've viewed this movie entirely objectively because I was not convinced that Marvel would actually pull it off). The movie did exactly that. They pulled it off. Which brings me to…

2) They outdid themselves with the world building. I watched it in 3D, as previously stated, and I felt as if I was actually there. The Quantum Realm was so well-made, I can't really describe it. It partly looked like I was staring at the corals under the sea, then there were obviously some of the elements that we saw in Multiverse of Madness when they, like, entered the broken Multiverse. It was a lot, but it was well-made. Anyway! Watching it, I found myself thinking back to when Endgame came out and I watched the big battle scene. You know, when Marvel didn’t rush their projects? They did amazing and I bow down to the team. It was great, it gave me many different vibes and I just felt so enchanted at certain points because they created something magical with this. I might be exaggerating, everyone is going to have a different opinion on this movie, and that’s okay, but in my opinion, this was an amazing start and I hope Marvel continues doing what they did with Antman in their future projects.

3) The details. Let's talk about the details. The Quantum-People (I will call them that now) weren't overdone. They looked as real as something that actually doesn't exist can look real, and I was in love with the creature without holes (I have no idea what else to call him). The detail with the "ooze" that made them understand the language of the Quantum-People was also an amazing addition and of course, a necessity; I would not have sat through two hours of gibberish. And when it came to the Quantum Realm and the core, I could have sworn I saw hints at the mirror dimension. It looked like mirrors floating around anyway. And the probabilities that split Hope and Scott into several parts of themselves? Yeah, it really looked like I was staring at a million Paul Rudd's. I'm not kidding, if Marvel had done it like She-Hulk, I would not have been convinced because it would not have looked as real as it did. There are other details that I can't quite remember, I would have to watch it again to go deeper, but who knows, maybe I will. I loved it and I would so watch it again.

4) The balance between comedy, darkness and drama was perfect. We know Scott Lang is a funny guy and Paul Rudd was born for that role, but they incorporated jokes at just the right moments, and they weren’t overdone. It made the entire cinema laugh, and didn’t feel forced. Not to speak of the battle scene at the end, it had me at the edge of my seat. I thought Cassie was going to die, then I thought Scott was going to die, then I thought Hope was going to die... I had a lot of thoughts all the time. They really made it so that you wouldn't suspect anything. I thought the villagers would lose; they didn't. I thought something might happen to our protagonists; nothing happened. Or, something did happen, but no one died. And then I thought Kang would still win, especially when he pulled Scott away from the portal and beat him senseless. I was almost crying because I thought Marvel killed another Avenger, but then Hope came and she saved the day. And they still managed to make me laugh throughout even the parts that had me scared for everyone's lives, and then I cried when the portal disappeared and I was like: NO GOD PLEASE NO. But they’re safe (for now). They came back. They made it out. That's all that matters for now. We are not looking into the future because God forbid, I am scared for every single MCU character - no one is safe!

5) I really loved Cassie. That’s it. I don’t have more to say. She was perfectly badass while sharing her father’s humor and attitude (which I completely support) so they did a great job with her too.

6) The Ants. They did the movie title justice. It wasn't just some timeline slash multiversal mess, they actually incorporated the ants and Hank's connection to the ants. And the way they started building their own technology? We need to appreciate the intelligence of ants because they're not just smart in the movie, they're also pretty smart insects in real life!

When they came to save everyone’s asses in the end? I was like, ‘You go ants!’ And I liked Hank in this movie too. Jane not so much, but with that I mean her character and not the acting performance. They did all remarkably well.

I’m not a movie critic, so I don't have a professional view of things or whatever, but it was really great and they exceeded my expectations with how the characters were portrayed, what they did and when they appeared. And the casting of Kang is *chef's kiss* honestly. I thought it when watching Loki and I'm even more convinced now that he is going to absolutely kill it in Phase 5. Amazing villain, amazing actor, well done! (Now I sound like one of those critics, but I promise, I'm not. I'm just an obsessed fangirl who doesn't know much, she just likes to watch movies, and now also reads comics, and who's just chronically obsessed with Marvel and everything relating to it.)

6) The foreshadowing at the end, at first, made me think, I knew this would come; the fear of Kang and what he said about everyone dying and Scott worrying about it. I expected that much, but then the mid-credit scene came on and I was like ‘hold up a minute, WHAT?’ When all of Kang’s variants got together to conjure up some evil plan. I did not expect that.

7) AND THEN LOKI IN THE POST-CREDIT SCENE? I thought to myself, maybe we’ll get the trailer for season 2 (and I’m really not that excited for it because of the last season, but I’m still gonna watch the shit out of it), and then the scene came on and I saw Loki AND Mobius together, sniffing out Kang, and I gasped. I audibly gasped. ‘Cause it was an entirely different timeline and I’m not sure if those were our Loki and Mobius or variants, but I guess we’ll find out in the show. And Kang will return, so he IS gonna be the villain of Phase 5 (which we all already knew) and I think that’s awesome.

Maybe I’ll talk some more when I’ve processed what I watched. But for now, that’s what struck me the most.

[seekerofpatterns]

I have way too many emotions to coherently process the season finale of Loki right now, so instead I pose a mythology-based question while I sort through my feelings. SPOILERS AHEAD YOU ARE WARNED.

So. When Loki combines the branches they take the form of Yghdrasil, the world tree, and he places himself in their midst. In mythology, Odin hung himself from Yggdrasil to gain knowledge and power. At the end of the finale, the letters in Loki's name slowly flicker away until only the O is left

So is Loki basically the new Odin? The all-seeing all-father of the MCU? Is that what they're pointing to? If so I find some hope in that, because Odin eventually got off the tree in the myths.

[narriose]

Thoughts on Veilguard so far:

Preface: I’m ~50 hours in with a handful of endgame spoilers.

My general values are: Story > Characters > Gameplay > Romance > Rep > Visuals.

My rating of the previous games: DA2 > DAO > DAI

Spoilers under Cut:

What I expected: Having to deal with an unappealing art style and clunky gameplay with leftover multiplayer and live service era elements that they couldn’t get rid of for the sake of the story and characters.

What I got: Well…

Let’s Start with the negatives:

-Dialogue: I want to know what happened there. Ik for a fact they had veteran BioWare writers on the team and it feels like there was a decision to dumb everything down to the point of me immediately having a line in my head that would sound better in universe every time someone spoke. It proved especially grating once I heard Morrigan speak. And when people compare the writing to MCU I cannot really protest. “Dragon Age has always been unserious” yes but like. Not every other line was a joke or relatable™️ millennial awkwardness . When jokes did happen they became memorable moments for the fandom. It’s often very difficult to listen to. Especially when Rook talks. It is getting marginally better though.

-Tone: Dragon Age has been compelling to me because it wrote conflict and trauma and corruption in a way that felt developed enough to feel grounded and believably horrific. Even with all its faults. DATV mellowed out the horrors and seems to gloss over a lot of sociopolitical dynamics and lore. Stuff like portraying crows as vigilantes and not showing the evils of Tevinter slavery. The tone itself just feels like theyre trying to make an easily marketable sanitized IP out of it to cater to a wider audience.

-Character Writing: A lot of characterization has been “Tell not show” because I’m disappointed in Lucanis and Neve. The story says one is a serious killer and the other is a cynic but both have only been friendly soft and positive which is like??? I feel like a lot of their intro has been cut out or something where they establish those traits on screen. Another thing is: there don’t appear to be actually detestable and controversial traits in characters or even internal conflict they need to overcome. They’re just dealing with some kind of external thing thrust onto them and that is very shallow to me personally.

-Intro: I know we’re not getting Origins style personalized intros again but it felt like too much is handwaived into people making their own OCs and forming headcanons when the game doesn’t let us RP much at all outside identity stuff anyway. Like how do we know Varric? Why should any of the pep talks he gives us mean anything when we haven’t experienced anything to warrant the complements he gives us?

-Villains: possibly the worst part of the story: they lit act like theyre in a preschool cartoon down to body language. No nuance no controversy no actual horror to them when in previous games the evil felt so much more pronounced because some of the villains felt human enough to be a shitty person irl.

-Rep: Sigh. Even as a transmasc I might be a little too internally transphobic for the rep in the game. It feels like so many steps ahead of what the story should be handling. Like fix the slavery problem in a meaningful way then start philosophical gender discussions about what a gender binary even is. And it’s very cringe to me when it’s spoken about in game. Like yeah I love that there’s no way to dispute what the characters are but it also feels so entirely uncreative using modern day terminology for this stuff. And I don’t mean “replace it with ambiguous sad baby talk” but something more. Like is it terrible to want that? Even if you were planning on using the word nonbinary, at least tell us what a binary even is and how it was instituted as an idea into this world. Like I do adore Taash, I just wish the gender stuff wasn’t so clumsy.

-Visuals: It’s hard man. As an artist who sees human bodies as proportion reference points, the bodies still look off to me. Like it was worse and I’m getting used to it but it’s still painful. And I’m all for trying to stylize but this particular heroforge direction was not something I would have picked.

-OST: At first I couldn’t tell Zimmer/Balfe’s stuff apart from Morris’s but yeah, the new stuff is more boring(Sans the Rivain part)

-The 3 choice thing: yeah not a fan of that. I feel like perhaps it was a part of the multiplayer era where they would not be able to import much if everyone had a massively different world state so they limited it to the tiny MC choices. Still sad that the romance thing only really matters if you romanced Solas because the Dorian cameo wasn’t anything to write home about. Kinda feels like they added him in last minute because someone pointed out how much Solas-skewed the choices were. Idk. I so expected Josie in Antiva but alas.

Now Onto the Positives:

-Codices: The very way-too modern simplified conversational dialogue style carries over to the codices. And while I despise that as a creative, I do find myself actually reading them as they come because they are so easy to absorb. I feel like a lot of people would benefit from not skipping them because there are some references and plot reveals worth checking out.

-Story: If you deafen the dialogue style, the story itself is top. Gets way better as you play and from the spoilers I’ve heard, yeah. It’s good. Can’t wait to find out more.

-Gameplay: Listen I have a massive preference for DA style combat even if most ppl call it a slog. The turn based element, the pause button, the hoarding skills I never use. It’s like coming home to me. I hated DAI combat for the amount of anxiety it induced and I usually hate fast-paced action combat in most other games. DATV made me eat my boots. Its combat is insanely fun and engaging and often times I’m looking forward to fights more than quests themselves. Very colorful, very flashy, and very effective. The pause button gives less freedom but it’s there. The combos are fun. It is like Mass Effect except I did not find commanding the companions in Mass Effect as intuitive. Tho I wish non mages had less magicey feeling attacks.

-The CC: Yeah it wowed me with the options. I like how much can be done with the facial sliders and how good the hair looks.

-Puzzles: Listen the puzzles are extremely stupid in this game. But I also am very stupid and lazy when it comes to solving them. I have looked up the vast majority of puzzle solutions for DA games. No more DA2 Fade Barrels and no more trying to circumnavigate the ad infested Fandom Wiki to get to the Kitty’s prison solution. Crafted specifically for me.

-Mechanical Things: The game is optimized insanely well. Both when It comes to your PC and the gameplay. I’m amazed how well it runs on my PC when games like BG3 and Cyberpunk make my CPU scream. Love that. As far as gameplay goes: everything is super streamlined and designed to be as un-annoying as possible. No carry weight, no collectibles as annoying and unrewarding as the shards and mosaics. The maps are easy to parse. The game does not bombard you with useless NPCs, banter can’t be interrupted and characters catch up on banter at the Lighthouse if you’ve been avoiding certain party comps by accident. The quest locator is actually helpful. Skill points can be refunded. Looting is easy and finding shit feels rewarding.

-Characters: Honestly they do have some interesting things going on and while most characters feel a little hollow so far, I was pleasantly surprised by Davrin and Bellara. Davrin is the one I’m romancing and while the actual romance isn’t groundbreaking I’m glad I chose him. Yes, his character has a lot to do with Assan and his arc, but he does have stuff going on of his own. He’s very refreshing because some of the things he says low key both makes you think and also worry about him. He’s also not your usual preppy jock type. He can be a little mean sometimes. He’s artistic and principled. He has some remnants of “opinions I don’t agree with” that I love early DA for. When it comes to Bellara, she absolutely breaks the sort of Manic Pixie/Quirky Awkward young coded girl mold. It is the fact that there is self awareness and hints of history of failure and isolation in her words. There is also masking and over-clarification that I can relate to personally. I hope there is stuff like that to other companions when I get to know them better.

Visuals: the UI and Locations are stunning. The outfits the best the game has had so far(tho wish the overall look was less stylized) The blighted stuff(sans the ogres) and the Crossroads. Beautiful.

-Dwarf Lore: started out as fucking cheesy but I just finished meeting Valta and I’m seated.

-Solas Stuff: Hated the man for a while. Caved and made a solavellan to import to get more story stuff. NGL he is actually tolerable/interesting to me in this game.

Overall: A sickly sweet combo of Disappointed and Impressed. And I’m still gonna be playing. I am used to not liking something about every DA game. That’s part of the fun for me. But damn is this one testing me. Am I having a lot of fun playing it? Absolutely. Am I finding it difficult to get through a concerning amount of dialogue…yeah. It does still feel like a DA game but also like if someone made a pg-13 live action of Inquisition and then made a supplementary game based off that. If I forget that it’s supposed to be a sequel and just treat it like an action game with plot then it’s easier. And like I’m sure at least half of what I listed as a negative can be attributed to EA meddling or prev iterations of the game being inseparable. Anyway. Can’t wait to see the ending and I will add more thoughts when I’m done.

[mccdimples]

SPOILERS FOR AGATHA ALL ALONG EPISODE 6 AHEAD

Okay, I have so many thoughts and theories about this episode, here's some of them:

I feel like we definitely didn't need a 50-minute episode all about billy, especially when episode 5 was a 25-minute episode about agatha's trial, you know... the main character of the show.  There was so much going on last episode and everything felt so rushed, all leading to the big "reveal". I wish they could've explored agatha's scenes with her mother more, maybe if evanora accepted her and taught her how to control her magic we wouldn't have the agatha we have today. I know they needed to explain everything involving billy, but it just felt too long for me. When agatha showed up to interrogate him, it felt like a breeze of fresh air, it quicky became one of my favorite scenes of the show. And can we talk about kathryn's acting ?? she really is the moment.

I actually liked that billy is looking for tommy and not wanda. If wanda appears in the show, that would be amazing, but if she doesn't, that would be totally fine to me. 

The ralph appereance was so good, seeing evan peters on my screen is always a treat, specially when he plays crazy people. I always love to see the aftermath or the damage that the heroes, or in this case agatha, leave behind.

The black heart thing, I honestly think is just a coincidence. How on earth was agatha supposed to know that eddie sends black hearts to billy ? I know it was lilia who wrote the names, but it was agatha who was supposed to assemble the coven, so the names had to make sense to her. And her reaction to the 4th name/drawing matches the whole "I have a heart. It's black and it beats for you" scene, plus her deflection when lilia says it was a black heart written on the paper. And to top it off, they need an earth witch to complete the trials, and as far as I know, billy is not that. Eddie sent a black heart because his boyfriend is a goth obsessed with witches. 

We were such clowns with agathario this episode. I really think we're getting that kiss, probably in the last episode in a dramatic way, but I really wanted it to be in this one. It kinda sucks that billy got to kiss his boyfriend first other than agatha (the main character) and rio having their on-screen kiss, but hey, all representation matters. I'm actually glad marvel is finally having the courage to be free with a character's sexuality on screen.  

I really want to see how the show will end, when we first learned that ep 06 was a billy centered episode it got me thinking that maybe agatha wasn't going to survive in the end. Maybe this show was a way to catapult billy onto the mcu, so the young avengers could be formed. But after this episode, I think agatha will become billy's mentor, just like she was a mentor to wanda in the comics. 

And to end things, where the hell is rio ?? Apparently the last trial is hers, and I definitely think it will have to do with nicholas, he will probably be the way to tie agatha and rio's story together and show us their history. Do I think rio will say he was her son too ? No. Do I want to be wrong ? So bad.

[dani-luminae]

Another HM moment I really liked

There is also another moment in the Haunted Mansion movie that I really want to highlight and (slight spoilers ahead) that is the moment where Bruce interrupts Ben's mourning of Alyssa with his "think of the cholesterol on [your wife!]" Which triggers a massive fit of laughter in the entire room.

Unfortunately it has become a common theme in many live-action movies (looking at you, MCU) to ruin any moment with even the barest potential for some deep emotion with a joke. Like they can't think that a moving and emotional moment cannot be funny. And yet, Haunted Mansion takes that trope and turns it on its head.

Because Bruce's joke isn't the typical, groaning "oh god, here comes the emotion train, can't have that! (insert some half-baked sarcasm or bland joke here.)" It is Bruce looking around at his new friends, knowing that they are trapped in this place ruled by a malevolent spirit who feeds on grief, and Ben, the person who was told point blank that he will be the doomed 1000th spirit, mourning about his wife, telling them about her, her favorite snacks - the same kind she was going to get when the accident happened. And there is a long and silent pause, and some tears.

So Bruce brings in a little cathartic laughter, because silent sorrow isn't going to get them anywhere. So it's "Imagine the cholesterol on that woman!"

Yes, it is a pragmatic moment. But it isn't Bruce shutting Ben down or diverting the situation with a joke; he's just bringing in a lighter twist. Because sometimes, laughter can also be a part of healing.

It is a sorrowful, emotional moment. It becomes a funny moment. It does not lose the emotional impact. Yeah, it seems like another moment of "Bruce being a determined, oblivious, senile old potato" - but I'm pretty much convinced that Bruce knew exactly what he was doing.

(Also, I feel like pointing out that most of the rest of the group tries to restrain their laughter at Bruce's interruption... until they see Ben smiling and starting to laugh too. Then it's all-around laughter. The entire group respects Ben's grief and sorrow! There is never a moment where he is told off or dismissed for mourning his late wife.)