Chapter 2
Stephen barely held on until the spell knocked Tony out before whirling to pace across the open space in the infirmary. He was running things through his mind, tracking what could and couldn't be used medically before expanding out on potential ripples from the more immediate choices.
"Stephen?" the Ancient One inquired carefully. She had heard the suppressed care in his voice when he had recounted the potential futures her student and Stark had spent together.
"I need to stay with him Ancient One," Stephen said tightly, sounding like he was ripping himself apart to admit even just that much.
"Then you will," the Ancient One said simply. "It is right that the Guardian of Time stay with the Guardian of Infinity. The time loop explanation that Dr. Stark gave is just as valid a reason for you be posted away from everyone else to acclimate as it is to recognize your Mastery without further training. What of his medical status?"
"The magnet and the shrapnel have to come out, no question, but its not my specialty and if we aren't careful it can kill him. As a temporary measure the arc reactor and magnet isn't a bad one but he had problems after escaping back to the US and erratic behavior. I don't know what happened to fix it but he seemed more stable after the Expo mess. The problem is that we can't necessarily trust his memories if his mind has been tampered with," Stephen outlined in pure aggravation. "I can already tell you that his time in captivity can be covered on medical requirements alone. Using magic is going to be a stop gap but it might help in some ways even with his distrust of magic. A very reasonable distrust now that we know his mind has been tampered with rather than only having my personal suspicions based on hearsay. Healing magics don't always rely on the patient believing in them but it does have an impact even with mundane medicine."
"Hearsay?" the Ancient One inquired.
"The Red Witch was clearly insane but I believe she did admit to doing it at one point. Its muddled from the spell the boy cast and my own attempt to repair things. I had heard other rumors and things such as those she attacked defending her. It bothered me but I never managed to actually investigate," Stephen admitted. "Once I had time of a sort I was working on holding the universe together and the entire Order was busy fending off outside invaders due in large part to the cracks in the universe that weren't there before. Something like that Doctor Who episode of fixing the cracks across all of time and space and using Wedding superstitions to rescue the Doctor from being locked outside. Except we were having to work from inside and couldn't even come close to catching everything."
"I told you about enjoying that series?" the Ancient One asked, disconcerted.
"No, I found the DVD season copies in your rooms when I went in to make sure it was stable after your death," Stephen smirked. "The fact that the Pandorica and Big Bang episodes from 2010, the end of season five of the revival, being accurate to this analogy was simply easier than trying to describe it in technical terms. The fact that its far too accurate is irrelevant beyond being helpful."
"Hmm," the Ancient One said, unconvinced but allowing it to slide in favor of the matter at hand.
"It might honestly be simpler to open Stark up and remove his current heart along with all of the shrapnel before casting an overpowered regeneration spell," Stephen finally offered up reluctantly. "However, I suspect that the stones are going to insist on him retaining a version of the reactor in his body due to how closely it resonates with their energies. More specifically the fact the original design was based around aspects of the space stone."
"That does make sense and complicates things..." the Ancient One said thoughtfully.
"You would need to put him in stasis," a new voice pointed out.
Stephen started and then swung around to face the Master on duty in the healing hall. A man with rough scaring along the left side of his neck and lower jaw calmly approached them. He was dressed in typical Master rank robes but with a spring green sash to indicate his certification as a healer. Stormy blue-grey eyes looked at them from an older face with salt and pepper bushy eyebrows and a bald head. None of which took away from his gravitas.
"Master Garth," Stephen said in a strangled voice and a hasty respectful bow.
"I do not know you yet you clearly know me. From your reaction you must have been one of my more troublesome patients to keep intact or resting during recovery," Master Garth mused. "Time accident?"
"Yes, well this time the student wasn't playing with time magics or forgot to account for different time speeds across dimensional barriers," the Ancient One explained with a huff. "This time the amulet and the stone inside it decided the cost of a future battle was too great. It unilaterally initiated a form of long term time loop or a simple do over if we get things right on this second round. Master Strange retains his memories and Mastery from the previous loop. His patient also retains his memories as the focal point of the temporal event. I was gifted highlights of what he lived through by the entity who triggered the temporal travel and reversal. The Eye is apparently just as sentient as many of the older artifacts and is no longer content to play dumb."
Master Garth winced but immediately moved to check his new patient with Dr. Strange quietly giving a run down of Tony's condition. Master Garth listened closely even as he did his own check using both magic and mundane methods to examine Tony.
"Using an overpowered regeneration spell after cutting away the damage and debris would be the battle expedient method but it would put additional stress on the body," Master Garth started instructing Dr. Strange. "It would work for a time but it wouldn't be pretty or easy to fix afterwards. It would also leave intimate materials for enemies to use to target future spells and drain the patient of too much blood for true safety. Even if the spell work holds long enough to erase the original injury via healing the overall stress puts the patient at excessive risk. Using a targeted vanishing spell or a conversion spell is risky but doable in a pinch. A vanishing spell risks taking the surroundings with the foreign object(s) while a conversion spell has to take into account not only a similar risk but the risk that the new material would be more dangerous than the original objects."
"What about changing the metal to water? Or a saline solution? The body accepts those almost without question," Stephen suggested.
"Only if you channel the excess conversion energy into a generalized healing or cleansing spell or both," Master Garth said sternly. "The extra energy from the act of conversion has to go somewhere otherwise it acts as micro bombs being set off inside the body. It is also not a technique normally used for physical objects. Dissolving a curse? Yes, physical objects? No, since they are normally removed the mundane way for safety reasons."
"The shrapnel is too close to or actually within his heart for mundane methods from what I understand of the work already done," Stephen explained with a grimace. "To say nothing of the embedded electromagnet and patch job around it to help keep the rest of it out of his heart. He claimed there was no anesthesia but I don't know if they used anything else on him because the flailing that implies while he was worked on wouldn't be conducive to some of what obviously has been done. Even if they tied him down they would have needed to knock him out at some point for safety reasons. My certification is mundane medical but with brains, not hearts, Master Garth. I have no training for magic based medical techniques... yet."
"You will report to me for the next three months and we will see if you can be trained for the magical side," Master Garth decided.
"I am actively working at a New York hospital for my day job," Dr. Strange admitted carefully. "While I am interested in working with you and Dr. Stark is important to us I am uncertain yet if I can arrange to be freed from those obligations. In the first time loop... my hands were crushed in an accident and I lost everything before finding my way here."
"Which would be why I didn't snap you up immediately once I realized your training or perhaps I was never aware of your training," Master Garth concluded. "It would be difficult to notice your skill without being specifically told with your primary tools being mangled and adapting for that."
"Considering he is to be my successor I suspect I intervened," the Ancient One said dryly, having been forgotten by the two healers.
"Ah, that would change a few things," Master Garth conceded grudgingly.
"He can study with you during what would have been his normal apprenticeship if other factors don't interfere too badly," the Ancient One conceded with a wry smile. "I don't see why he shouldn't be certified in both sides of healing if that is his choice. For now Dr. Stark is our priority and his eventual revelation of Iron Man. His status as the Guardian of Infinity is... less immediate."
"I will likely still need to attend the katas and the practical combat training if only to blow off the rust," Stephen admitted with a wince. "To say nothing of re-establishing the muscle memory. My mind remembers, my body does not."
"Simple enough," Master Garth snorted. "I can just declare it as a medical issue and call it physical therapy. Everyone who has been out of the field for medical reasons deals with some form of it. Classing it as a form of medical restriction for why you don't go through a normal apprenticeship that everyone remembers also covers various issues in reintegration into the order. I can tell the other Masters that there was a time mess up that you fixed at the cost of our original memories of you. You passed the Ancient One's checks and reported in as soon as you could."
"Not untrue since I barely had my memories for twenty minutes before Wong showed up with a sling ring for me and we left for the Ancient One's side almost immediately," Stephen said wryly. "I had to excuse myself and clock out of work but that was a negligible amount of time. Back to Stark, can you help him or will I need to be his primary physician?"
"Oh you are going to be his primary healer," Master Garth chuckled. "Its clear that you won't give him up and I have no objections to leaving him under your auspices now that I know you have a mundane medical degree. So long as you treat any magical aspects as a specialization, with that we should work out fine. As to your ideas for removing the shrapnel... It would take some tweaking and a certain amount of spell creation so I doubt we could manage it quickly but as you said the magnet can act as a stop gap for that. What I do find concerning that I absolutely must have priority for are the traces of magical influence in his mind and memories. You were right to spell him into unconsciousness. It needs to be removed as soon as possible, preferably with him remaining unconscious."
Stephen cursed viciously and looked over at the comatose genius helplessly. He had almost no experience with removing mental invasions except within his own mind. Even that hard won experience had been done with lethal trial and error, reversed only by the time loops he had involved in the situation.
"It can be healed," Master Garth comforted him. "You will observe and ask questions as needed. If this needs to be done again in the future and you can't get him to me then you will have at least enough basics to give you time to get your patient back here."
"I should warn you my only experience with expelling a mental invader was done in regards to my own mind during a repeating time loop... I didn't often survive the attempts and only the reset allowed me to try something else while my opponent tried to drive me mad. It eventually got bored since the time loop only trapped it in one location rather than effecting it more greatly," Stephen admitted, carefully. "My recovery from escaping the situation wasn't the best."
"What treatment were you given afterwards," Master Garth glowered.
"Suicide watch for the most part since death was what reset the loop," Stephen shrugged. "I eventually figured out that if I had some type of injury to stare at that wasn't instantly healed after I woke up from a nap or passing out my mind was more likely to remember that I was out of the time loop. Dealing with the invader was almost my first act as Sorcerer Supreme so I only had Wong to help me through the after effects."
"Ancient One," Master Garth warned.
"I will have Master Wong report to you for a crash course in recognizing when he needs to fetch you for Master Strange and will include you as one of his advisors when officially registering him as my successor," the Ancient One agreed wryly. "Having only one confidant ready for him was perhaps not my wisest move."
"I may actually be older than you on just memories by this point," Stephen pointed out ruefully. "But not all of it counts towards experience since many of them blend together being of near identical times and peoples."
Master Garth snorted at that and, after sending the Ancient One on her way, started to teach Stephen how to heal Tony's mind from outside invasion. Treatment would take time but for now Tony was safely where he could get treatment and be protected by Stephen. It would be enough for now.