chapter eleven
new york, same shit

        There aren't as many stars in New York as there are in Kathmandu.  The bright city lights make it impossible to completely scope out the night sky.  New York is also louder than Kathmandu and it doesn't fall silent, not even in the dark of night.  New York is perpetually alive, crawling with activity.  New York is so big.  Buildings loom above her, much higher than any building back in Kathmandu.  When Sabrina opens the front door, they step right onto the bustling sidewalk of New York.  The food is different there, too—much different from Nepali cuisine.  It takes Sabrina months to get used to New York, and still, there are surprises around every corner. 

Roof access is limited in the New York Sanctum.  There's a dilapidated pigeon coop and rotting planters on top of the New York Sanctum, both abandoned long before the time of Master Drumm.  It's so sad and desolate up there, high above the pavement of New York City with no company but the moon in the sky and faceless windows of the New York skyscrapers, and the sound of New York traffic down below.  Sabrina used to go to the rooftops to escape from the rest of the world because up there, it was silent.  Up there, it was just her and the stars in the sky—but now she doesn't even have the stars. 

It's different in New York.  Sabrina still can't decide if it's a good or bad different.  She just knows that it was for the better that she relocated to New York.  She knows that she could not have gone on living within the walls of Kamar-Taj.  Not without Wong.  Not without Stephen.  Not without The Ancient One.  The thought of The Ancient One still leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.  It's always one step forward and three steps back with the ghost of The Ancient One.  Her therapist tries to help Sabrina to let go of the forgiveness that she still carries deep inside her chest, but it's out of some child-like stubbornness that Sabrina clings to the forgiveness she carries as if one day, The Ancient One might come back just to apologize to Sabrina.  But then, there are the days when she's filled with nothing but bitter rage and it takes all of her willpower not to snap her in half because thoughts of The Ancient One plague her, and Sabrina knows that The Ancient One does not deserve her forgiveness.  They do not owe The Ancient One anything. 

In New York, Sabrina is called Sabrina Strange because legally, Sabrina on their own does not exist.  Luckily, there's a man who is willing to help people like Sabrina.  His name is Nick Fury and Sabrina only meets him once. He wears an eyepatch over his eye (when Sabrina asks him what happened, Fury grows quiet and changes the subject.  He mutters vaguely about how he had trusted someone, and Sabrina decides not to pry.  Some things are better left unsaid and she fears that she's struck a nerve and Fury will refuse to help them).  Before he leaves, he recommends a therapist specifically for special cases like Sabrina (they do not enjoy how Fury refers to them) and that is the last Sabrina sees of him—whether it's forever or not, Sabrina doesn't know, but she vehemently hopes that it's the former option.

At first, the presence of Strange tacked to the back of her name is alien and an extra weight that she stumbles underneath.  She had only ever introduced herself as Sabrina.  Just Sabrina.  Because that's all that she had ever been.  Just Sabrina.  But things are different now, and the presence of Strange soon grows to be a comfort and she cannot imagine Sabrina without the presence of Strange behind it.  Stephen and Wong help Sabrina pick a middle name to go on her birth certificate.  Sabrina settles for Wong, because if Stephen has become a part of her name, then she wants Wong there too.  Sabrina alone leaves the taste of bitterness on their tongue. It was the name that The Ancient One had given her—Celtic, just like The Ancient One—but this new name, Sabrina Wong Strange wraps Sabrina up in a blanket of warmth and makes her feel loved.  Names are powerful things because now, she has no doubt that Stephen and Wong love her just as much as she loves them.  They're a small family now—the three of them—and even if they do not fit the nuclear family mold, they love each other just as much as any other family would.

The kitchen is empty as it usually is at this time of night.  Sabrina wants to get medication for her insomnia, something more than Melatonin, but Stephen says that it's best if she doesn't.  She listens because if there's anybody that knows about medication, it's Stephen.  Sabrina thinks that he sees a lot of himself in her and he doesn't want her ending up like him—desperate, hungry for medical procedures to fix her.  Except there's nothing about her that to be fixed, not really.  The hem of Sabrina's pajama pants drags across the floor.  The clock on the oven reads 12:23 AM.  Sabrina stands in front of the fridge for a few moments, debating whether she should open the freezer and eat a tub of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream or open the fridge and eat the rice pudding that Wong had made.  She ends up taking both because there's nobody there to stop her (and even if Wong and Stephen were there, they would not stop her—they were both adamant that Sabrina got to make her own decisions.  They were there to advise and guide her and nothing more—they would not dictate her life). 

"I hope you plan on sharing that," A voice says from behind her.

Sabrina jumps with both the Ben and Jerry's tub (Half-Baked, and arguably the best flavor) and the bowl of rice pudding in her arms and a spoon in hand.  She turns around sheepishly to see Stephen hovering in the entrance and shakes her head.

"Can't sleep," Sabrina says.

"Me either," Stephen replies.  "Get another spoon."

Sabrina grins and grabs another spoon for Stephen.  She had intended on taking the ice cream and pudding back to her bedroom and wait until sleep claimed her, but company was always preferred over solitude.  She slides the spoon across the counter to Stephen and takes a seat on the barstool opposite him, placing the tub of ice cream and bowl of rice pudding in the space between them.  They never eat at the counter—at least, not during Wong's waking hours—in the kitchen—Wong's kitchen—there is a place for everything and everything should be in its place, Sabrina and Stephen do not have a place in the kitchen, and therefore they should not be in the kitchen for longer than they needed to be.  It's the only way that Wong can function (Sabrina thinks it's leftover instinct from guarding the Kamar-Taj library so diligently). 

"Anything, in particular, going on in that head of yours?" Stephen asks, popping open the Ben and Jerry's lid.

Sabrina shrugs, removing the saran wrap from the bowl of rice pudding.  A hand ghosts over where she thinks a scar should have formed in the Dark Dimension.  "Same old, same old, I guess."

Stephen nods.

"What's up with you, Doc?"

Sabrina calls him Stephen, now, mostly.  She feels comfortable enough to do it.  Doc is saved for more intimate situations like these.  It had once been used to distance herself from him as if attachment to him in the form of a name would drive him away.  Now, Doc is merely used as a term of endearment.  They'd called him Dad once, quietly, so quietly that Stephen had not heard.  It had been an accident—a happy one—but an accident nonetheless.  It had been a good day, the day Sabrina had become Sabrina Wong Strange.  Stephen took her to Coney Island through the center door of the Rotunda of Gateways and they stayed until the sun set over the horizon and their cheeks hurt from grinning so widely all day.  They didn't return to the Sanctum until darkness had set in and the moon was high in the sky.  He'd bid her goodnight when they reached the second-floor hallway where the path to their bedrooms split apart.  She'd bid him goodnight and Dad had slipped out at the end.  Stephen was already too far down the hallway to hear.

"It's been getting harder to sleep," Stephen admits after a few moments.  "Ever since..."

He trails off, but Sabrina does not need him to finish his sentence to know what he's referring to.  The phantom pains of death still linger from time to time, showing up in the middle of the night and at random times during the day.  Their deaths did not stick—not in this timeline, anyway—but you do not come out of a situation like that unscathed.  Just as Stephen's tremoring hands will always be a part of him, Sabrina thinks that these phantom pains will always be a part of her.  Her therapist tells her that they're psychosomatic pains and that they'll disappear eventually if Sabrina allows her to help them.  But Sabrina thinks that they're more than that.

(But what does she know?  She's still just a kid.  She still has a lot to learn).

Sabrina nods in understanding. 

They only have each other when it comes to stuff like this.  Of course, Sabrina's therapist does help.  She helps so much and Sabrina owes so much of her recovery to her, but even though her therapist is trained for people specifically like her (they'd learned that Tony Stark of all people talks to her), her therapist would never be able to understand Sabrina's experience as acutely as Stephen does.

"You know, I think you should look into therapy, too," Sabrina tells Stephen.  "Lauren helps a lot."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

A few moments of silence pass as Sabrina slides the Half-Baked tub towards her.

She looks back up at Stephen across from her and reaches across the counter to put a hand over his own trembling hand.  The scarred mass of sinewy flesh and muscle feels strange underneath her own hand, but she doesn't mind.  We all have our own scars.

"It's okay to not be okay, Stephen," she tells him softly.

"I know, kiddo," Stephen replies fondly.  "Thank you."

The oven clock reads 1:37 AM when Stephen and Sabrina go their separate ways on the second floor of the Sanctum—Stephen to the left and Sabrina to the right.  Sabrina's bedroom is on the opposite side of the Sanctum from Wong and Stephen.  It hadn't been a comforting thought at first, as it felt as though Stephen and Wong were half a world away.  She had been used to the tight quarters of Kamar-Taj where your neighbor was just a few feet away, bunking on the other side of the walls.  Here, in New York, Sabrina has privacy that she's never really had before.  She has more things that she can call her own.  She can express herself in the ways that she wants.  She can decorate her room how she wants to because it's hers and nobody can stop her. 

Her bedroom is always at the end of the hallway.  Sometimes the trek is longer, sometimes, it's shorter.  Sometimes there will be a new passageway or a new turn, but eventually, all paths lead to her bedroom.  Sabrina likes to think of the New York Sanctum like the TARDIS—considerably roomier on the inside.  The Sanctum likes to rearrange itself sometimes, due to its mystical nature, creating a labyrinth of distorted time and space.  Tonight, the Sanctum has taken mercy on her as she trudges down the hallway, squinting through half-lidded eyes as the Melatonin finally kicks in.

An oak tree grows in the center of Sabrina's room, it is tall and gnarled but brings her a familiar sense of comfort.  It had been there long before she had, and Sabrina has no doubt that it will be there long after she leaves.  It gives her a sense of permanence, that she hadn't had back at Kamar-Taj.  The ceiling reflects the sky outside, tonight, it is a swirl of cosmos in the deep abyss of outer space.  Here, she can see the stars that she cannot see outside with all the lights in New York City.

They collapse into bed and stare up at the cosmos above until sleep claims them.

✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.☆.*｡･ﾟ✫*

Sabrina rubs the sleep from her eyes as she perches on the couch in Lauren Whitlock's office. She's become well acquainted with the room, it takes weeks for her to finally open up to Laruen, and had instead chosen to drink in the room that she'll no doubt find herself in once a week for the rest of their life. She stifles a yawn as she subconsciously lists the books on the shelf in perfect order. She'd awoken in the middle of the night from a nightmare of Dormammu with the phantom pains lingering in her chest and legs. For a moment, she had thought she had seen the glowing purple eyes of Dormammu and lay there, frozen.  Lauren, perceptive as she is, doesn't fail to notice the stifled yawn that Sabrina tries so hard to conceal.

"Nightmares again?" Lauren asks.

"Yeah," Sabrina replies softly. "Are they ever going to go away?"

"Eventually," Lauren replies.

"I feel so stupid," Sabrina sighs. She leans back against the back of the couch and throws her head back with a loud sigh that tears at her vocal cords. "Why can't I just get over it?"

"Sabrina, you died. Hundreds of times," Lauren reminds her. "That isn't something you can just get over. It'd be more concerning if you had no problems with that. It's okay to not be okay, Sabrina."

Sabrina bristles at how the words she had given to Stephen the previous night are bounced back against her. They've found that they're good at that—giving people the words that they need to hear but then does not apply them to herself. It's an endless cycle of self-deprication and self-destruction; holding herself to a higher standard than holds anyone else. They are allowed to feel how they feel because they are only human, but Sabrina shouldn't because she wasn't supposed to before and how does she learn to cope with it now?

"I know that you weren't told that growing up, so you're trying to minimize your problems," Lauren continues, "but you need to learn that it's okay to not heal right away. It's a normal process, and it isn't linear."

"Stop psychoanalyzing me," Sabrina says with a huff, crossing her arms over her chest.

"It's my job," Lauren reminds her.

"How's Lydia?" Sabrina asks after a few moments, idly toying with a loose thread on the hem of her sleeve. Lydia is Lauren's wife (and the other mother of Georgia Potts—the daughter of Pepper Potts, the CEO of Stak Industries). Sabrina doesn't know much about Lauren, but she knows this: Lauren listens to true crime podcasts in her spare time, it takes fourty-five minutes to drive from her house to her office on a good day, she has a tabby cat named Barnaby, and she loves her wife and step-daughter more than anything. She'll ask about Lydia and Georgia and Barnaby every now and then because it helps her to feel more connected to Lauren. They can only make progress if they have that establishment of trust between them.

"She's doing good," Lauren answers. "We actually got another cat yesterday, so she's at home with her."

"Aw, really?" Sabrina asks with a grin. "What's her name?"

"We haven't decided just yet," Lauren replies.

"Well," Sabrina says with a smirk, "I always thought Sabrina was a really cool name."

"We'll keep thinking about it," Lauren replies, shaking her head with a small laugh.  Sabrina senses the subject change before Lauren even opens her mouth to speak.  "School start soon?"

Sabrina lets out a sigh.  "Yeah."

Sabrina started her freshman year at Midtown School of Science and Technology back in April because it takes months for her paperwork to be sorted, and so just as quickly as it begins, it ends.  She can breathe easily for the next few months because it's summer.  School resumes again next week, and she dreads going back because at school, there are more expectations she has to abide by than she has had to her entire life.  No longer does she have to be conscious of balancing her emotions, now she has to be conscious of balancing her schoolwork.  She needs to learn how to fit in again—this time with kids her own age, and for some reason it is harder to fit in with them than it is to fit in with the adults at Kamar-Taj.  For the first few days, Sabrina was a fish out of water, but then she met her people.  They make her feel safe and assure her that she belongs.  They don't know much about where Sabrina comes from (she mentions a few vague details about Kamar-Taj in snippets of conversation) but there's an unspoken understanding between them that Sabrina is struggling.  They are the only reason Sabrina doesn't beg Stephen and Wong to let her homeschool again.

"How do you feel about that?" Lauren asks.

"Aaaahhhh," Sabrina answers because it's the best way that she can articulate the flurry of nerves that erupts in the pits of her stomach every time she thinks about having to return to Midtown High School.

Lauren nods.  Sabrina thinks she understands.  After all, Lauren was a kid once, too.

"I was the same way," Lauren tells her.  "Trust me: its gets better.  And soon, it won't even matter."

"It sure seems to matter an awful lot right now," Sabrina replies.  "'Keep your grades up because colleges are going to look at them and if you don't go to college you're going to be a total failure...' yadda, yadda, yadda.  But there's plenty of people who didn't go to college who are totally fine, right?  I mean, college isn't my only option.  If you catch my drift."

"I thought you wanted to leave saving the world behind," Lauren replies.  "And look into interning  at the hospital."

Sabrina shrugs.  "Yeah, but when you save the world enough times, people kinda just let you take their stuff."

"I...that's a very interesting take," Lauren finally replies after staring at Sabrina for a few moments, trying to decipher whether or not they were being completely serious, and finally decides, for the sake of her own sanity, that Sabrina had made a joke.

(Sabrina had been completely serious, but Lauren doesn't need to know that).

Time passes by idly after that.  Sabrina only has an hour-long session.  She doesn't think that she can do much longer than that.  She describes her nightmares for Lauren and how she thought she had seen Dormammu's eyes.  They tell Lauren about their friends—the brightest lights in their life, along with Stephen and Wong.  They tell Lauren how they plan to spend their last week of summer. 

Stephen is waiting patiently for her in the lobby, just as he always is.  Today he's flicking through a two-month-old copy of the New York Times highlighting the events of the Sokovia Accords and the subsequent fall-out between the tightly-knit group of superheroes that the Avengers had once been.  Sabrina thinks it's tragic how quickly a legal document could cause such inner turmoil between the members of a group that she had once thought to be a family that it tore apart from the inside out.  Those who chose to support the Sokovia Accords remain, and those who chose to defy it have melted into the shadows.   

Stephen nods in greeting to Lauren, who smiles and invites her next patient in.

"Good session?" Stephen asks.

"Yeah."

The answer is always the same.  Even if it wasn't true.

"Let's go home, then," Stephen says.

Sabrina nods.

Home.  She quite likes the sound of that.

author's note: long time, no see!!  i apologize.  all my efforts have been going into my cal kestis fic (yes this is a shameless self-plug, go read it if you're interested, i'm really proud of it!!!)

welcome to sabrina's new york era!!!!  her relationship with stephen is actually one of my favorite things ever currently.  ik it might not make sense because she knew wong longer, but he's always been more of a friend and mentor figure than a parental figure to her if that makes sense???  in the same way that mordo was more of a friend and a mentor to sabrina than a parent, wong is more on that end of the spectrum.  she still loves him though.  i adore this tiny chaotic family.

also new character alert/mention!!  georgia 'joey' potts(-stark) is my messy chaotic genius mirrorball child.  i don't plan on her appearing at any point throughout this fic because she's currently like 10 or something, but she does exist.  i know her introduction sentence was definitely confusing but lydia (joey's other mom & lauren's wife) is transfem and came out after joey was born (just to clear the air the pepper/lydia breakup was mutual and had nothing to do with lydia being trans, and lydia is still a big part of joey's life).  so basically joey has like three moms and i love that for her.

i am basing the new york sanctum a little more on its comic iteration (the sanctum sanctorum) bc i think it's really cool and magic houses are just like so very cool to me, like i love the concept so much.  also, because sabrina is technically part of the dark dimension, she does have the same abilities to warp reality that kaecilius and the other zealots did, which should be explored at some point!!