Doctor Strange and the Magical Turkey Sandwich
Sam, by now, should have learned that you can’t trust kids to do anything. Especially not the random children he was acquainted with. Namely, especially not Peter Parker and Maggie Hayes.
He and Bucky had been waiting at the rendezvous point for ten minutes when they started to get really worried.
“They can take care of themselves, but it shouldn’t be taking ‘em this long. They should be here by now,” huffed Bucky. He sat down on the sandy road, recoiling slightly at the grains rubbing up against his legs. The rendezvous point was near a beach. Sand spilled from the shores up to the street, and past the street to the grassy clearing on the other side of the road and beyond.
Sam sat down next to him. “You wanna go back in? The place seemed pretty damn quiet when we left.”
“Yeah, after we’d taken down, like, thirty “bad guys” with guns. And they’d found Peter and Maggie. You even had to tell them on your intercom because you were worried that they would get hurt.”
Sam nibbled his lip. Bucky had a point. “Okay. Let’s go back in, I guess. Beat up whatever people are still left standing in there.”
“Sounds good,” replied Bucky. They both stood up and began jogging back to the compound. After a few minutes of tense speedwalking, though, their paces both quickened to sprints. Sam felt himself subconsciously speed up as he thought and worried more about Peter and Maggie. He suddenly felt a nauseating, sick feeling at the pit of his stomach, a threat of fear welling up in his gut. Sam ignored it. He kept running.
They reached the base after a few minutes. All was quiet outside; the trees sang with birds as morning arose on the property. Smoke and ash choked the air, spiraling from the wreck of cars and planes that had been destroyed in the skirmish. A very persistent and high-pitched beeping sound came from an old-fashioned buzzer mounted on the wall beside a door. Bucky stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth very slightly open. Sam stopped too and looked at him.
“What is it?”
Bucky was silent for a few more seconds. “Morse code,” he said finally.
“Can you understand it?”
“Yeah, we used to use it a few years ago- uh, during the war.” He listened still, his brow furrowing in concentration. Finally he spoke very quickly. “They’ve still got people here. North-west hall. They say the intruders are still here.” He listened again for another moment, translating in unison with the beeps. “S…O…S.” They looked at each other again, and very quickly sped into the darkened building.
-
They made it to the north-west hallway in a matter of minutes. There were clear signs of a fight; bullets were lodged in walls, blood smeared on the floor, a part of the ceiling partially collapsed, and most noticeably, a faint air of unease and tension, lingering in the air like smoke after a fire. The gray concrete of the floors lent a barren chill to the atmosphere, working in tandem with the monochromatic gray walls. Everything was uneasy, unfinished. Sam could tell something was wrong the minute they rounded the corner. He was, at the same time, selfishly aware of Bucky next to him. It was as if everything was amplified when Bucky was near him. He could feel his own heart beating, he could feel his hand brushing the air a millimeter from Bucky’s, he could hear - however imagined it may have been - Bucky’s heartbeat, steady and safe.
Ever since the battle at SHIELD headquarters all those months ago, after the spur-of-the-moment love confessions, the two of them hadn’t been sure where to go from there. Neither of them had any idea of where to start. And so they let it happen: they saw more of each other, they spent nights at each other’s houses. He became more aware of Bucky’s personality and of his flaws and of all the things that made him wonderful. But even after spending the past year and a half together, almost inseparable, there was still a space between them. From the time they had begun this whole adventure, and then had to go on the run, and through the final trial-by-fire, there was an instability between them. Sam could feel it. He knew that he still had a ways to go before they could move forward. There was still so much left to know.
Sam brushed away the sudden thoughts, though. He had to focus on the matter at hand. His friends were missing, and he was prepared to make a fuss about it if they didn’t find them soon.
Bucky cautiously entered the room first. He dashed inside, and there was a brief sound of someone else struggling, and then silence. Sam came in, too. Bucky was, with one arm, holding down a very odd-looking man with broad shoulders and yellow hair. Bucky’s face was rather pinched, as if he were holding a soiled diaper. The young man let out a strangled squeak. Sam surveyed the room very quickly, and then went over to stand next to Bucky, looking down at the yellow-haired young man.
“Who’s this guy?”
Bucky shrugged. “Not really sure. He was here when I walked in. It looked like he was futzing with that machine over there.” He gestured to a hulking device in a corner of the wrecked room.
Sam glanced at it briefly, but couldn’t make heads nor tails of what he saw. There appeared to be a mass of wires, all hooked up to a glowing tube of blue light. The machine was ensconced in a circular dais of some sort, with shining metal circlets arranged around the central wire-mass. It was pulsating faintly, as if it were breathing. The very sight of the machine sent chills up Sam’s spine. He regarded it for a moment, and then turned back to Bucky and the yellow-haired man.
“Where did the two kids go? The ones your people were chasing?” snarled Sam at the terrified man. He let out another squeak, and continued to gawk up at Sam. He threateningly raised a fist, with no actual intention of bringing it down, but when the man began to laugh gleefully, Sam’s resolve drained entirely, and he punched the sneering man right in the nose. “Where the hell are they? What’ve you done with them?!”
The man, cowed, looked up at Sam fearfully again. Then he began to chuckle. The sound of his quiet laughter was almost worse than his sneer. “Oh-h-h, they’re lo-o-o-ng gone,” he hissed, drawing out each word in a twisted and drawling fashion. “Weren’t our fault, they got themselves transported!” The man cackled.
This time Bucky’s fist connected with the man’s jaw. He squeaked - for the third time now - and glared up at Bucky and Sam. “The hell do you mean by that?” asked Bucky menacingly. But the man shook his head.
“You’ll never see them, buddy. Nev’r gon’ see them again,” whispered the yellow-haired young man, his speech slurring together. Then his eyelids drooped and closed.
Bucky sat back. He released the front of the man’s shirt. “Okay, so… that’s one hell of a dead end. We’ll find them, Sam. I swear to you we will.”
But Sam was dejected. He looked back at the machine again. “This room is the last place where their trackers pinged from. I checked, on the way over. They can’t have just… disappeared.”
“D’you think that has anything to do with it?” Bucky nodded towards the machine.
“I dunno,” replied Sam. “But I’m starting to think so.”
Bucky sighed. “I don’t know the first thing about glowing HYDRA technology. Just… this is… there’s no leads from here. I’m not really sure what we can do from here.” His voice cracked at the end. “What’re we gonna do?”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Sam, brightening. “I have an idea. I know exactly what we can do.”
-
The plane ride back to New York felt immeasurably long. Every few minutes, Sam checked the projected arrival time in the cockpit, and then went back to the seats and sat down. It wasn’t a fancy plane, but was a military-style transporter (on loan from Nick Fury). It didn’t go very fast. Sam got fed up after an hour or so. Sam, also, had wings with attachable jets. One thing led to another, and eventually Sam hopped out of the plane and set his mechanized propellers on full speed, attaching them to the plane. He climbed back inside and sat down again. They arrived back in New York approximately twelve minutes later, cutting down their flight time by at least an hour.
They left the airstrip in a rented car, and drove into the city, where the weather was significantly worse. It was pouring rain and cloudy and cold - generally bad weather. They parked the car just outside of a grand old building, run-down and sheltered by dead and dying trees, adorned with snakes of ivy and a massive, circular window set into the bricks, like a skylight, with decorative metal latticework embedded upon the dirty glass. A small brass plaque was posted next to the door, but the words were so weathered that they were no longer discernible. Oddly, though, the place seemed immune to the rain, as if the drops bent around the bricks and sloughed off without leaving any trace of moisture on the grounds. Sam and Bucky ascended the low stone steps up to the massive doors, but before either of them could knock, the doors were flung open, and they found themselves stepping inside. This was the New York location of the Sanctum Sanctorum.
The first thing that struck any visitor to the Sanctum was the impressive grandiose of the trailing staircase that arose from the center of the entry hall, paved in patchy marble with a bannister of gilded iron. The second thing that struck most visitors was a turkey and cheese sandwich, usually to the head. Sam and Bucky both turned around, weapons drawn, when the sandwich connected flimsily with their heads, and then were very surprised to look down and see a turkey and cheese sandwich on the floor at their feet.
“Who threw this sandwich?” pondered Sam aloud, utterly bewildered.
“I don’t know,” said Bucky. “But I would like to know why they decided to throw a sandwich in the first place.”
“Right,” said Sam. He bent down and studied the clod of cheese and bread and turkey. “Who would waste a perfectly good turkey and cheese sandwich like this?”
“I would!” declared a voice from high above. Stephen Strange then descended from the heavens (the ceiling of the Sanctorum), like a red-cloaked angel, and perched definitively on the bannister, his legs dangling over one side. He had another turkey and cheese sandwich in his hand. He seemed defensive. “State your names and your business here!” He leveled the sandwich at them.
“Um. Sam Wilson, and this is Bucky Barnes. We saved the universe together?”
“Wait, the three of us did?”
“Yeah, from Thanos. Do you not remember any of this?”
Dr. Strange stared at them for another moment, and then sighed dejectedly and shook his head. “Sorry, yes, I remember. I have had-” he huffed “-the longest couple of weeks. Skurtlebees keep trying to come in, and so I’ve been standing watch here for like-” he checked his watch “-two weeks, making turkey and cheese sandwiches, and throwing them at Skurtlebees whenever they try to get in. Skurtlebees are extremely repelled by non-kosher sandwiches. Sorry about throwing one at you guys. What can I do for you now that you’re here? I haven’t had company in so long because of this damn Skurtlebee infestation. All the other wizards have more or less retreated to Kamertaj and London and Tokyo. So it’s just me here. Well- Wong pops in every now and then to make sure I’m not dead by means of Skurtlebee. But other than that, I’ve been very company-deprived.”
“Well-” began Sam, offput by the rant, “- we need some help. It’s really important. In fact, it is an emergency,” he said very seriously.
Strange nodded. “Tell me what your problem is. I’ll see what I can do,” he said tersely. “But someone has to keep watch for Skurtlebees still, so I guess we’ll have to do it upstairs at my ‘Skurtlebee-lookout-post’. Are either of you hungry? I can make you one hell of a good turkey and cheese sandwich.”
“I’m good,” said Bucky, with barely concealed distaste. He took another look around the great hall, noting the haphazardness with which ancient and beautiful artifacts were displayed: at random intervals, and upon tables of varying design. He could pick out a Victorian-era side table holding a large, carved axe, standing directly next to a table that appeared to have been taken from a cheap patio outdoor furniture set made of chipped metal lattice and carrying a creepy mask. The mask’s eyes seemed to follow Bucky as he moved, and he was oddly disconcerted by the thing’s presence.
Strange cleared his throat. “Just up here. I have so much fucking turkey up here. So much fucking cheese. So much bread. It’s actually horrifying. I think I’m slowly going insane from all the Skurtlebees.”
“Yeah,” said Sam, visibly nervous. “I think you may be.”
Strange turned around very quickly to look at Sam with all the seriousness of a surgeon telling a patient that they were going to die, and spoke snappishly: “My mind is still sharp as ever, Wilson. I’m just being charismatic. Wong said I should try to be more likeable so that’s what I’m doing. Now do you want my help or not?”
“I do. Yes, we do, for Chrissake.”
The doctor stared at him for another prolonged moment. “Just up here, again.”
They climbed up to one of the tall balconies overlooking the front hall. The three of them sat down next to a makeshift bed set up on a couch, between several bookshelves and glass cases containing more artifacts. True to his word, Strange had impressive amounts of turkey and cheese there, too. The campsite overlooked the front hall and the door; it was the perfect spot for Skurtlebee-watching. Sitting down, Strange flung his cloak off, and it drifted into a corner shiftily. “Now what can I do for you two?”
Bucky began uncertainly. “Well, it all started when we were helping to act on intel gathered by Nick Fury that HYDRA was reassembling a branch down in Dallas. We traveled over there with a couple other people- Peter Parker, Spiderman, the little shit who runs around shooting webs and being a jackass. We also brought my friend from… my friend Maggie. She’s just a kid. She wanted to help out. We brought them with, they went off on their own, and now they’re missing. It’s as if all traces of them have been wiped from the face of the earth. We need your help to find them.”
“Hold on,” said Strange, looking askance. “You let some random child tag along with you and your superpowered buddies to defeat a massive military organization because she wanted to help out?! What the fuck is wrong with-”
“No, no, she has superpowers, obviously. Maggie’s, like, crazy good with guns. She also is a half-super-soldier. We’re not totally insane.”
Dr. Strange paused, sucked in a long breath. “And thank god for that. Continue.”
“Oh- that’s it. We don’t know where they are. Can you figure out where they are? Who they’re with?” Bucky looked at him cautiously.
He sighed. “Fine. Only ‘cause I know Parker, and he’s not too bad. You two, on the other hand…”
Ten minutes later, they sat in a circle together on the floor. Golden sand drew impressive patterns upon the floorboards. Dr. Strange sat, cross-legged, on the floor, a mysterious object in each hand. One of the objects was the fearsome mask from earlier that Bucky had noticed. Now, Strange held it firmly in his left hand, and in his other hand sat a glassy orb. It seemed to be rotating in his fingers, although his hands were not moving.
“Close your eyes,” said Strange. “Be quiet.”
They all did exactly that. Sam’s breathing slowed to a meditative pace, and the prickling feeling on his arms and along his neck subsided into blind oblivion. He did not process exactly how much time they all sat there. His eyes flew open, however, when a loud gasp came from somewhere to his right.
He and Bucky both started, and looked at Strange, with an abject terror froming between the two of them. “What is it?” hissed Bucky. “What did you see?”
There was a strange look on Strange’s face. “I’m not entirely sure,” he said.
“Can you give us a summary?”
He cleared his throat, disquieted and sweaty. Then he began. “I couldn’t find them at first. I…” He glanced at Bucky’s worried face, and kept on. “I couldn’t find them now, on this earth, and not on any other earth. So I looked at their history. I looked back as far as I could, and I saw something out of the ordinary.”
Sam felt a sinking feeling in his chest. Something was about to go horribly wrong.
“Their timelines only existed before now. Much before now. Past couple of years, then of course the five-year blip, and then years before that to… early 2000s. And then there was something else past that. Just a dot, an anomaly. Way past where it should have been, and if that wasn’t strange enough, it was growing. Getting longer. They were staying at that stepping-off point for longer and longer and time was moving forward and leaving their imprint there. So I took a closer look.”
“I saw Dallas. It was November. Peter was running-” he grimaced, as if stricken by a bad thought “-running, and he was scared. He climbed up through a window. He went down a hallway, then he went down stairs, he kicked in a wooden door. There was a room. There were wonderful books on the shelves. There was a girl, a man and a woman there. They were drinking tea. The girl had been shot - she was bleeding - but she seemed okay.” He paused for breath. “They were drinking tea.” And then he sat down with a defeated expression. Finality lowered like a weedy curtain upon the group.
“Hold on.” Sam raised a finger in protest. “You said it was November. What do you mean? It’s the middle of November right now.”
Strange shook his head. “No. It was November. Not this year. Some… other time.”
Bucky stood. He was terrifyingly angry. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
“It wasn’t-” Strange frowned and shut his eyes. “It wasn’t now.” His expression darkened. “What I saw all happened almost sixty years ago.”
“1965?” asked Sam, growing worried. A thick cloud of fear seemed to be creeping into his vision, and he couldn’t seem to shake it, no matter how hard he tried.
“No,” replied Strange. He looked nauseated, as if he were sickened by whatever he had seen. “1963.”
“How the hell are Peter and Maggie in 1963?”
Dr. Strange, for the first time in his life, was at a loss for words or explanation. “I don’t know. But they’re there.”