maybe it's a dream

[madimpossibledreamer]

Guess what movie I went to go see.  Again.  Despite the fact that I now own it.
~Dreamer~

Main Points:
Dr. Strange Genderbend
Summary: Stephanie has a nightmare.  Chris tries to help.
Word Count: 775
Rating: Gen

             Chris is usually a light sleeper.  It’s useful.  He developed it over the years of medical school; the ability to fall asleep at a moment’s notice because you never, never knew when you’d next get a chance to sleep and you never got enough but you had to at least stay functioning for your patient’s sake if not for your own.
             The tendency has only gotten worse since he started seeing Strange again.  Yes, Steph, he cares.
             At least she doesn’t see it as a weakness anymore.
             She’ll never be the meek wife his mother had wanted.  True, her hands might shake and she might never gain back the precise steel her hands were known for, but she’s gained something more and she will never back down from a fight.  Never meet an antagonist’s arguments without surgically cutting words of her own.  It’s a strength that he admires.  Finds attractive, to be honest.
             She’d preferred to live like a powerful ‘man’, whatever that meant.  Yes, he listened to the hospital gossip—sometimes there wasn’t anything else to do, and he got bored.  Though how anyone could look at her in one of her dresses or outfits and not see a woman boggled his mind.  But some people have trouble with her attitude.  Her general lack of compassion, or even care.  She’d refused any patients who were children, and that set the rumors going.  That she wasn’t womanly.  Again, whatever that meant.
             The problem was that she had power.  She was a genius.  She could perform miracles.  She knew it and didn’t hide it, didn’t bother with false humility.  And that intimidated most.
             Chris was attracted to her light when most were driven away.  Maybe that makes him the firefly, but he still found the absolute, deadly light of intelligence in her eyes irresistible.  (He wasn’t alone, according to the rumors, and utterly believes it—but he saw more than the beauty, the intelligence.  There was always something there, lurking beneath the surface.  He’s fairly sure she’s found it, now.  He’d been scared that she’d been a star going supernova, that she’d be swallowed up by the dark, but she burns bravely, brightly on.  …His metaphors are getting strange, but he’s still half-dozing, not wanting to move with Steph snuggled in his arms.)
             Now she fights dangers he can’t even always see using her mind.  She cares, and she's humble, and there's a strength to that, too.  It scares him, to be honest, but it also fills him with a childlike wonder.  He’s never loved her more.
             He’s not certain if it has to do with the magic.  It’s amazing, and he’s rarely seen her happier, showing off for him and watching him learn to love and not fear the world she’s fallen into.  The world in which she will probably soon be Sorceror Supreme.  It’s like her to excel, when she cares to put in the effort.
             Which explains how it’s going well between the two of them, despite her fears, and his, and what’s happened.
             It took her a while, but she eventually opened up.  In a hushed voice, told him bits and pieces of a being called Dormammu and having actually died.  Of a woman who’d tried to kill her, and her fear that she’d go after Chris, too, and having killed despite the oath. 
             Her hands had never shaken more, even right after the accident.
             He didn’t tell her it would be all right.  He knows she doesn’t care for platitudes.  He doesn’t…judge her, exactly.  He doesn’t have the right, not when he’d helped do the deed.  She’d done what she had to in self-defense.  That doesn’t make it right, but just perhaps necessary.  Instead, he just holds her, stroking her hair.
             It’s not easy.  Nothing worthwhile is, Chris has found.  What it is is right.  What it is is worthwhile.
             He finally realizes that the woman in his arms is limp and jerks awake, checking her to make sure her heart’s still beating.  It is.  She’s not breathing.  He’s not sure how that works, exactly, but he knows it means she’s in her astral form.  He carefully lays her head onto the pillow and works his way out of the blankets, padding out into the central foyer in bare feet.
             She’s exactly where he expects.  Floating in midair, legs crossed, spellbook in her lap.  Her eyes are closed.
             “Nightmare?” he asks, and her eyes pop open.
             “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”  She looks a little guilty. 
             “Don’t worry about it.”  He comes up to her, hugs her as best he’s able, and she leans her forehead onto his shoulder.