THE MAGICIAN ( dr. strange.. )

000. PROLOGUE..

"The circus is not doing so well without you there anymore, dad."

As distant as the voice, the laughter echoed. Sound waves reflected themselves against infinite surfaces, creating waves of noise in different frequencies, all of which drowned the listener into their memory. The tick of a wristwatch persistently timed this trance into the void-like darkness behind closed eyes.

"Oh! And those should be my friends. I hope you don't mind them joining us for dinner."

Echoes are parallels to ideas, to feelings, to events and facts. The duplicate until the ink of reality is gone and their essence has lost their glow to a corrupted fading which no longer stands for the core of what it used to be. So were her memories, scattered across a space which bubbled with no stars above to guard the thicket of storm clouds.

Their grayness got shredded for the splitting hue of sulfur, callusing over red rocks and deserted fields and mountains, depleted seas and unruly villages made of havoc and ruled by chaos. Floating rocks surrounded her.

She heard back the screams which followed in her train of memory. Several coaches were missing, but she still remembered oh, so clearly the moment she heard the crack. Unseen monsters were chasing her when the sky of this dimension split and her mortal eyes glanced at what she should have never been able to see.

"Reality is a prism of endless possibility, where a single choice can branch out into infinite realities, creating alternate worlds from the ones you know..."

"I swear, that's exactly how I found her," Illyana Rasputin, known on Earth as Magik, but to this realm as its ruler, leant down against the massive Soulsword in her possession, the key to Limbo, spreading panoramically around her and her travel partner. Pink bubblegum formed a bubble out of her concerningly dry lips. It popped soundly as a gust of wind blew some dust through the golden shine of her sword and through that same crop texture of her long hair. Thick bangs remained unmoved on her forehead.

Beside her, the partner was just as disinterested in seeing the Otherworld. It wasn't his first time following Illyana on a crazy stroll she now had to do periodically, unless she wanted another conscious demon incident. Nothing good happened when this pocket universe's inhabitants gained stability... or a mind of their own, for that matter. Visits made at least once a week did well in reminding them they had a queen to dedicate their whole loyalty too.

And that queen happened to be Remy LeBeau's friend.

His unruly hair flinched in the breeze of Limbo, nose picking the ever present energy of the place, stagnating into a dangerous neutrality. It was his collar-lifted brown coat which fluttered some true sound for their scenery in which they were the sole speck of color, posted before a portal in the shape of a door, still opened behind them.

Through that door, the faint sound of a bar filled with chatter carried through.

"How long do you think she's been here for?" Remy asked, looking up at the same sight as Illyana. They've started working together perhaps as soon as she was fresh out of her demonic kidnapper's grip truthfully, but despite the crazy they've seen, staring up at a woman floating in the sky of Limbo managed to strive rather high on their list of shock-worthy things.

She looked young. Illyana could tell at least that much past the imponderable movements of the auburn hair. Such flame-like shade made her check immediately for a resemblance to Jean Grey, out of an odd instinct of wanting to make sure that Phoenix vessel was gone for good. But the reassembly was not present.

This woman had more rounded features, plump, rosey cheeks with a bit of dirt too. She was wearing a slightly overused old dress. The type Victorian reenactment actors on TV would wear. Only she didn't look like a lead, but rather more like the servant or the unimportant face on the background of the street where it all happens.

Illyana's narrowed eyes relaxed and she shrugged, "Not too long. She shows no signs of corruption yet." That was how the Otherworld worked... No matter how strong the mind which walks in it is, given the time, the vile actions this place requires from them to survive corrupts anybody into giving up their soul and turning to the demonic.

She'd know better; because that's exactly what happened to her.

Then the floating woman's eyes opened. Light brown reflected a faint shade of pink before they returned to a slowly blinked normal. It wasn't until her gaze fell down on the watchers that the two realized their enigma was wide awake.

Illyana lifted the Soulsword lazily, whilst Remy didn't move an inch, not in a visible way anyhow. In the pockets of his coat, his black leather gloves creaked.

Eerily silent, the woman landed on the ground, leaving the floating rocks alone in their wind flowing dance. She locked eyes with Illyana first and Remy was the confused witness at how the tip of the massive sword tilted back towards the ground.

The stranger started walking towards them.

Before he could tell himself to avoid eye contact, it had already happened and a blink away, the sight of the woman no longer concerned him. Didn't he already know her? Yes, of course he did. How could he not know Marion?

"I am so glad to see you," Marion cried out after both of them lowered their guard. Only then, her hurried walk turned into a skipped run, ending with a tight embrace, one arm around Illyana and the other around Remy.

She held onto them like she hasn't seen a human in decades.

Perhaps she hadn't.

Maybe all that Marion has ever felt for far too long were the claws of demons on her soul, the burden of too much knowledge and the loneliness of searching into an empty space, transcending the very barriers of existence to reach the 'where' and 'when' she was at now.

It didn't matter though. Not anymore. Not to her.

Marion grasped only a little tighter, feeling a faint response in the embrace from both of them at last. Before letting go, she placed a kiss on each of their temples.

"Come on, my dear Chuckaboos," Marion took their hands instead. "We have a show to make and only ten years to make it right." Remy and Illyana both smiled back at her.