The water pouring into the sink wasn't exactly the cleanest. Much like the mirror, which she knew she'd eventually have to look up into and take notice of her smudged makeup, of the puffiness of her eyes and the sand stuck in her hair, otherwise already stiff from the ocean and the chlorine in the pool, the water made the sink seem like it was yellowing out. A rotten prediction of the future.

But the dirt of a public bathroom improvised on the beach by the hotel resort they were spending their holiday in was not going to shadow over the brightness of Sierra Harss in a moment when, she could say, she was the happiest woman alive.

This was her happiest moment and it was sanctified on the beach of Taihiti.

Washing her hands in that semi-decent water pouring, her big thumb brushed over the new accessory on her ring finger. Gentle and suave, neither too extravagant, but not cheap either, it stood there, flickering shines at her and reminding the woman that she should look up now and get used to calling herself Sierra Rand, Mrs. Rand for special occasions.

Tears bubbled in her eyes again before she could look up.

Joy made her hiccup and desperately brought the dampness of her hands up, wiped her eyes until the stain of black came off and she washed it away into the yellowed sink. The bathroom was too small to actually bend over and wash her face properly, but this whole scheme of doing it step by step had to be enough.

Sierra looked up at last and into the mirror, behind her, stood Dr. Strange, freshly out of a portal still open behind him. She flinched, turning around and hitting her left hand on the sink, in the process of doing so.

"Seven Heavens, Stephen! Haven't you heard of knocking?!" Her voice was pitched in tone, a way she discovered she could cover her fright while she controlled it with a couple of breaths. A glare was inevitable, but perhaps not as much directed towards her friend, Stephen, as towards the sound of the busy New York City streets, overlapping with the clash of waves she's gotten so used to over just two days in Tahiti.

Stephen didn't even bother opening his mouth to answer. He counted in his mind up to Sierra's fifth breath and then nodded along as she pointed her finger at him, "This is a public bathroom. What if I was... indecent?!"

"This is an emergency-"

"And I am on a vacation," Sierra promptly cut him off, crossing her arms at her chest.

"Then let me congratulate you on your engagement first," Stephen continued, calmly.

Sierra's first instinct was to get ready to thank him, perhaps even get bashful that after years of pining, years of hesitations, Danny finally found the right time and got that ring out of the box and on her finger. As odd as it may sound, from the moment they laid eyes on each other in the astral realm, her in the sewers of NYC and him in a Sanctum, meditating away under the cosmic powers' frequency, they both knew they were meant to be.

That, eventually, they'd circle to this very moment in time and space when they'd become a family.

"How did you know he asked me?" Sierra asked instead, after also tasting reason... Danny brought their witnesses there and Stephen was not amongst them.

Stephen's apologetic smile made Sierra's heart grow cold and her mind to grow back into the ache of paranoia and always being on the edge. Battle after battle, war after war; this was supposed to be her holiday, but she should have known shadows followed her there, from the moment the damn cloak played tricks on her with the Darkhold.

"The whole world knows," Stephen ripped the bandaid off without any surgical tact.

Though a thousand questions immediately flared her mind in red, Sierra's only palpable thought was that of the name which uttered off her lips, "Danny..."

He didn't want to cause a media surge with their engagement, because he didn't marry her for publicity and a love in front of camera flashlights was not what he was after. His sweet whispers into her ear about how maybe one day they'll get married in front of Shao-Lao, at the place where he taught her tai-chi, suddenly turned to sweet nothings, a bitter ash of what could have been.

But there was no denying it, as the namesake of his company, Danny's social life in NYC was a requirement of attention.

Sierra rushed to open the door and as soon as she stepped on the beach, Danny turned around. He was on a phone call, panic in his eyes and in the way he had been pacing until then.

"I gotta go. I'll call you back," Danny mumbled to his phone, already lowering it from his ear just to swiftly get the entirety of his attention to his wife-to-be.

Sierra was quickly walking towards him when Danny closed the call altogether, right as Ward started screaming at him through the speaker. "Someone called the Magician had a magic show whose final act was revealing that we're getting married, hours before it happened," Danny told her all he could. "Ward has been trying to reach me since then, because he has to make a statement now that this woman thought it was relevant enough to tell everyone. Everyone thinks there's more to it."

People loved nothing more than rumors. A little gossip, the way Jessica had once put it to Danny, was enough to make anyone's shit day look like a child's play and any future concerns seem like yesterday's fibs.

In his K'un-Lun teachings though, Danny was taught to see gossip and assumptions as a spreading disease, rotting away the part of humanity called understanding.

Ward has been blatantly listing him all the rumors the media has already tried to ask him about since the show's conclusion, but Danny couldn't bring himself to give any of those words more of his energy, far less worry Sierra with them too.

"Who's this woman?" Sierra allowed herself to look back at the beach bathroom she left the door opened to. Danny didn't think much of it until he followed her gaze and realized she left it open for Stephen. Then, Danny had nothing left to do but furrow his eyebrows down in confusion. "The Magician," Sierra continued.

"Her first show, about a week ago, put on stage Wendy Weber's life, along with how she met Spider-Man..."

Now Danny's hands turned into fists, tensing up at the mere possibility of another Multiversal crack. The last one almost killed Sierra in fatigue. Sierra's eyes widened and her breath hitched, turning her back on her fiance and staring daggers at Stephen, "How did she know about that?"

Then again, the mention of the ripples they battled not too long ago reminded Sierra that she heard about "The Magician" before, when she summoned a council of the strongest mystical beings of the Multiverse to discuss what had to be done. She, however, doubted the old man she met, the ancient soul of immense power was the same Magician as this one.

"It's complicated."

"Uncomplicate it then," Agent W raised from his seat, unphased by the three cocktails he had had all through the proposal, the short celebration and the descent into a media hell. Things took an odd turn, but from his old school portable phone the size of a brick, he caught up with what had happened. "Are we dealing with a sorceress here?"

"Good question," Sierra nodded gratefully towards Agent W, then turned to Stephen. "Are we?"

"I cannot tell you right now," Stephen looked over Sierra's head.

The fact that the most powerful sorceress he was ever going to meet was as short as Sierra would never not seem amusing to him; but on the outside, Stephen Strange was an unreadable stoic man, who simply assessed the several familiar faces watching and listening to this unfold. He recognized the Defenders, whom he'd otherwise trust. But now... Marion asked for discretion.

"Seriously?" Sierra's tone dropped.

Stephen looked down into her eyes and saw how gently light danced inside their faintly bright color, now clearer due to the happy tears she'd shed previously. Inevitably, Dr. Strange recalled too vividly the vision of the future that Marion had shared with him. Sierra, this same Sierra who was a head too short to be taken seriously in most public situations, the very same Sierra who allowed gentleness to be carried into the light surrounding her, would glow so brightly she blinded her enemies. One day, she'd wield such power that people would quiver and reality would tremble at her steps.

He shivered and his cloak behind him tried its best to hide it. There was no hiding the rigidity in his jaw though.

"The Magician insists to meet you, and you alone, Sierra-"

"I don't like this," Danny blurted out and grabbed Sierra's hand. "This Magician knows far too much. It could be a trap."

"It's definitely a trap," Agent W has never not been famous for his paranoia and even now, as he stepped towards Danny and Sierra, he carried it proudly, behind a tropical shirt, unbuttoned by three spots.

"I doubt it," Stephen argued against them. "I studied the Magician, I had the situation under control... until she pulled this wildcard, desperately so, on her last show."

"Had it under control," Matt Murdock repeated. "And yet, Danny's public image is in peril."

"Come on, Sierra," Stephen bowed his head, hoping to find reason in the woman. "It's just one talk the Magician wants from you and then she will fix this mess. She promised."

"And you believe the promises of a stranger," Jessica pointed out from behind the cloud of smoke surrounding her head. Her eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses, even if it was night, but everyone knew she must have rolled them, tired of the games insinuated there. "Unless she isn't a stranger to you."

"Sierra," Stephen called her name again, making her look up at him at last. "Even if this is a trap... Do you really have anything to lose? She can fix this."

Danny's hand tightened onto hers, squeezing until Chi transferred through their skin and a connection formed, from him to her, telepathically. The inside of their palms warmed up and glowed in gentle yellow, still not strong enough to be visible. All Danny needed was a way to talk with her without everyone else hearing. "Stephen's acting strange... Stranger than usual, that is."

She agreed in an instant. It was so obvious that something was happening with Stephen and Danny knew Stephen for far longer than Sierra too.

The glow between their palms pulsed and the connection changed direction. This time, Sierra sent her voice into Danny's mind, "I need to see the Magician for myself. See what she's all about. If this is a threat, I will call you."

She gave Danny's hand a gentle squeeze, but she never, not for one second, looked away from Stephen. To him, a simple watcher, Sierra simply took her time with her answer and as she slowly came to a conclusion, her features relaxed.

In reality, it was Danny's voice which brought serenity to her face, softness to her cheeks, smoothing out the wrinkles of worry around her eyes and calming the curvature of her lips.

"Danny must go to Rand Enterprises and attend the press conference Ward is worried about," Sierra announced and without even a moment of hesitation, Stephen nodded at Danny -Mr. Rand's clothes turned to formal attire in an instant- then motioned circularly for a portal to open, right there, on the private beach of the resort. Several people now, from those not involved in their dramatism, started recognizing who they've welcomed amongst them.

The word superhero was muttered a couple of times, making the Defenders uneasy.

"Do me too," Agent W stepped in front of Danny. "I'm accompanying Mr. Rand, just in case..." His paranoia did not need a second glance nor did anyone need to question what he meant by that. Anything could happen and Agent W has always been the type to want to be ready, no matter what. So this time, Sierra waved her hand and with shining specks of light blinking around him, Agent W changed to his usual attire, that completely black suit with a turtleneck underneath and a bag around his shoulder, heavy with his usual equipment she did not approve of, but knew belonged to him.

"Do you need an outfit change too?" Stephen half mocked SIerra with the inquiry, stepping aside and opening a second portal for them.

"Of course not," Sierra straightened the creases on her summer beach dress with a simple brush of her hands down her body. She excused herself from her friends, but ultimately, followed through Stephen's portal.

There was no need for shoes or cleaning herself of sand if this Magician was as well meant as Stephen said.

Naive was a word which had defined Sierra for many years and even for a few months after she met Danny Rand too, but these days, she liked to consider herself past that point. She wanted to think that she outgrew that word, that she was wiser and better at finding reason in situations. However... When she stepped through the portal with Stephen yet woke up in a cozy room with a fireplace without him anywhere in sight, she should have known something was off about her friend.

He was no trickster, but yet here she was, forced to embrace the idea that his previous wording that the Magician wanted to talk with her, and her alone, might have already warned her that he won't be joining.

"Marion Hall," a woman with auburn hair, extended her hand towards Sierra. The latter looked down at the hand and realized, by stepping into this room, her clothes have changed either way, regardless of her lack of consent to it. They tailored themselves to fit into the antiquity of the environment and she felt their fabric to her skin softly embracing a high status of the late 1800s.

Pants, puffed shirt and a coat... all Sierra did not understand was why her clothes were all black, save for the pin on her chest, right side, where in bright whiteness, a lotus flower decorated the outfit. It felt like it should have meant something.

"I wasn't aware this was a costume party," Sierra joined hands with Marion and the latter averted her eyes the second Sierra's magic tingled the atmosphere and she changed her clothes back to a more casual closeness to what she liked to wear around the house. Sierra was, naturally, not kin on being forced down a path. That much Marion knew was the danger of what she was trying to do there. "I assume you already know my name then, if you wanted to talk with me so badly, Magician."

"How can I not want to talk with you?" Marion laughed nervously. "Sierra Harss. Or Rand. Whichever you prefer right now. The Guiding Light..."

Few knew that title Sierra gained, as she wasn't exactly as kin as her friends to flaunt an alias while she scarcely got out of the house to save someone anymore. Her protectie missions have always been on the bigger scale and out there, in the vastness of reality, there was no need to hide her identity. The Guiding Light wasn't just her then, but it was part of who she was.

So it was a surprise to be called that by Marion, but not a true shock. It allowed her to follow the Magician into taking a seat, on the very same armchairs Marion had used mere minutes ago to talk with Stephen. Now, another stringless person was standing across from her, in front of the same fire and more than ever, Marion was nervous.

"A Nexus being," she listed another title of Sierra's and this time, it got the sorceress uneasy.

The problem with beings such as Sierra was that their future was unclear, uneasy, unsettled. They could be swayed and reality would simply have to follow their twists, turns and breaks. But sway them in the wrong directions... Marion couldn't risk her fragile future's certainty from crumbling down just because of one wrong word.

The thickest string amongst her hundreds burned now as she strained the connection, to keep herself attuned to the future. She could only poke the woman before her so much and frankly, Marion was upset to have to admit Sierra was much more intimidating in person.

"The Multiverse-"

"What do you actually know about the Multiverse?" Sierra interrupted this title from being spoken. She wasn't a proud woman, unlike Marion, and taking laurs for her actions by being called some way was not in her nature. It never has been and she doubted it ever will.

"I know it's real," Marion allowed the conversation to flow that direction. "I know it broke and I know you fixed it, along with several other powerful sorcerers of other Universes."

"How do you know that?" Sierra furrowed her eyebrows.

"I also know that I am not from this universe," Marion continued without answering Sierra's new question. She watched, victoriously, Sierra's expression change. The second a gram of guilt was added on the plate, the chance of this being her responsibility morphed her demeanour away from defensiveness and into a docile need to listen. Marion could work with this, so she sighed back into her seat, "I know that you didn't send me back like you did others. Made me wonder... if it wasn't for a reason?"

"That's impossible," Sierra breathed out, sensing something was wrong, but being rendered nevertheless powerless in front of pointing out the lie. "I fixed all the cracks. The Multiverse is stable now."

"It is. But I am here, am I not?" Marion tilted her head to the side. "It's almost like I was meant to be here all along."

"That's impossible," Sierra repeated herself with an additional accent.

"I will be honest with you," Marion sighed, bowing her head before moving it and staring at the stick cracking fire, burning away and feeding warmth into the room. Her honesty was as sharp as a thorn deceiving with a grandeur-dipped flower. Her melancholic sadness was a fog, meant to clog and confuse drivers on the highway into speeding to their deaths.

Fire bringing life to the auburn hair of the Magician did not fool Sierra and though her heart clenched at the possibility of having left a crack unchecked for, she gritted her teeth, about to take everything Marion said with a grain of salt.

"The only reason I wanted to talk with you is because I know you're the only one who can help me get back to my universe."

"You want to go back to your universe then?" Sierra raised an eyebrow. "Then what was that about being meant to be here?"

"I was meant to be in your universe," Marion rectified, her sheepish grin hidden into the side profile Sierra wasn't seeing. The expression was altogether gone by the time Marion turned to face Sierra fully again. "Any universe has a powerful sorceress or sorcerer to send me back to my world. But you are the only one who can send me to a better world. It's far less than you did for Wendy, re-writing her-"

"I didn't rewrite her," Sierra shook her head. "The magic you are talking about is..."

"You wanted to say impossible?" Marion didn't hide her bemused smile. "You can't even call it what it is, even if chaos magic is calling out to you so clearly for so long."

As expected, the witch stood up. "Alright, how do you know about that?"

"All I need is for you to save my universe," Marion looked up at Sierra innocently. There was nothing innocent in her eyes though, no trace of well-meant behavior in her tone's hitch. "Then I'll be off your back, of course, not before posting a video in which I say I was hired to attack the public image of all who have been affected by my shows."

There was no answer from the glaring woman, so Marion took it for a green light and continued, "I'm a mutant. Mutants in my world are being slaughtered. I miss my home and I do want to go back, but you can make it fair again. You can free my people, bring back my dead-"

"Bring back the dead?!" Sierra shook her head. Perhaps tampering with reality to save mutants was something she'd be tempted to do. But to undo death through chaos magic... she was no fool. Sierra knew that required actually taking a look in the Darkhold. And that, she swore to herself and in front of Danny that she'll never do.

"It's no big deal," Marion insisted her tone only on a rise in intensity. "You could do it without breaking a sweat."

"No."

"What are yoy so afraid of?" Marion got up and Sierra took a step back.

"No-"

"Have you really never considered that you could control it?"

"Stop it," she barely whimpered, feeling the room grow darker with yet another step Marion took closer to her.

"That power is burning your veins and you would rather ignore it fear than use it for good!" Marion accused. "You're still such a coward-"

"Shut up!"

Pure light shone inside of Sierra's eyes and the beam traveled out of them in a shockwave bursting out and hitting Marion right in the chest. It went through her and expanded into the illusion of the chamber which shattered with a clicking sound of glass breaking. The cozy room turned into a mere deposit, empty, dusty and dark. With a glitch, everything nice about the room was gone and the two women were left in the dark, in nothing but an ordinary space backstage.

Marion staggered back. She held her chest, gasped for air and blinked rapidly, trying to get those black spots off her sight so she could see clearly again.

All the barriers and illusions Marion put up backstage came undone , so extending her hand to the side, Sierra unlocked the door and revealed Stephen Strange standing on the other side. He flinched, looked her in the eyes, then Sierra saw the gaze he threw Marion and a spark of hurt burst in her heart: Stephen had lied to her.

Dr. Strange's shock was not about the outcome of the conversation the two women had, but rather to see the room he's been in with Marion in its true form.

"I don't know what's happened between you two while I was on holiday, but Marion does not belong here, Stephen, and you know it," Sierra narrowed her eyes on the man she thought to be her friend. "As the Sorcerer Supreme, you should know better than to allow someone from another universe to exist in ours for so long. What if we jeopardise the Multiverse through this? No."

Dr. Strange wanted to speak but he couldn't. It did not take him less than a second to realize Marion was stopping him from interfering with anything that might have stopped Sierra's speech. She wanted this to unfold the way it was.

But oh, his chest was hurting. Lately, Stephen didn't feel too worthy of being the Sorcerer Supreme and Sierra was adding salt on an open wound with her words. He wanted to explain himself, to justify the actions he was confident were for the greater good, even if they did not look like it right now.

Sierra shook her head. Why did her disappointment have to matter so much to Stephen? He saw her and Wong, both underestimating his choices and Stephen was in agony that everything had to be a battle for glory once more.

Just a little longer, Marion thought, wishing she could transmit that to her fellow sorcerer too.

A steady brightness formed behind Sierra and from that point of singularity, a portal opened in white sparks forming a circle of luminescence. "You know the spell," she still looked right at Steven. "Do well and send Miss Hall back to her universe. I am sorry," there, her looked turned to Marion, "but I do not practice chaos magic, I cannot rewrite your reality. You got the wrong person."

Marion didn't argue. Stephen did nothing.

Sierra thought that was them complying so, with a heart at ease, for anything but the fact that Stephen allowed this show to go on for far too long already, she stepped back into the portal and left the backstage, left the whole building in fact.

Marion's quick spell released Stephen and he stumbled forward, sighing out. "Never do that again."

Marion met him coldly with extending her left hand at him with a piece of paper between two fingers. "I need you to do what's written on that paper for me."

Stephen took the paper from her with a frown. He did not appreciate being bossed around. Not in the slightest. Undoing the paper, there and then, he read something which made him glare at the woman who now, he was aware, she was grinning, satisfied with the outcome of this disaster.

"This is theft, Marion. I am no thief."

"God forbid," Marion immediately looked at him with a scrunched expression of disgust. "You're a fine man, Stephen Strange. My staff isn't though." She flicked the button holding her jacket tied open and drove her right hand into the shadow underneath it. From the space between the inner side of the jacket and her waist, Marion pulled out an entire staff.

The rune covered staff shone into the absence of light as if that is where it belonged. The runes glowed a docile blue, activated by the domestic presence of only mystical knowers. "Slifer's Staff," Marion explained to him while extending it forward.

Stephen reached out but his shivering hands stopped, eyes widened and he locked eyes with Marion. "The demon?"

"Take it," Marion's avoidance to answer him gave away plenty. She forced the staff into Stephen's hand and closed his fist on it for him. The magic within his grasp vibrated through his skin and accelerated the beats of his heart. It was a rush. 

Power will always be a rush.

For Sierra, someone who already had her fill of power, the rush was the wave of adrenaline which accompanied her fear the second she teleported herself in the middle of Rand Enterprises lobby only to find herself surrounded by dust, thickly gray clouds of smoke, cries, whimpers, sirens and... chaos. 

Chaos was all around her because the lobby looked like the place of a war. She looked to her left, at the street on which reporters gathered. She distinguished an ambulance, several police cars, even firefighters. Unable to understand what happened there and actively coughing from the smoke in the air, she stepped over the wreckage and realized, as she advanced through the lobby, walls have collapsed, part of the ceiling too. 

Then she almost stumbled over a wounded person. She knew them. Felicia, the second floor secretary. 

"Help...," she barely muttered, crushed under the weight of the boulder which fell over her. Half her neck was burned. 

No hesitation slowed Sierra down. Under both her palms, orbs of glowing white light formed and from their static swirl, white nets morphed around the stone. She maneuvered it off of Felicia, but another strand of her magic, as thin as a hair, separated from this process, went far above Sierra's head and exploded into a rain of dots of luminesce, stopping the chaos of the dust, dissipating the smoke and clearing the atmosphere.

She didn't care if authorities watched, if reporters took pictures. 

"She needs medical assistance," Sierra called back and stepped away from Felicia. That one step was all she needed to spot another familiar face, somewhere towards the elevators. "W!" 

Agent W was collapsed on the ground, blood on his shaved head, and into the four burns into his shirt, right over his chest. His hands were twitching, but he couldn't move an inch. Sierra knelt in front of him, careful not to step on his limped legs, still as stone. 

"What happened here?" She asked as he locked eyes with her. "Where is Danny?" She couldn't see him there. She couldn't see the one person which she couldn't live without. Rising her hand up, not yet touching the wounded friend, Sierra glimpsed in sorrow at her engagement ring. 

Agent W was conscious, wide eyed, but trying to speak, blood filled his mouth and his throat refused to fight the clog, refused to articulate words. 

With her suspended hand, Sierra twirled a smaller orb of light between her fingers and pushed Chi into it. The light gradually got brighter and it would continue to do so; aware of how Sierra's magic worked, Agent W closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. With surgical care, Sierra let the glowing light dive down, enter her friend's chest.

Agent W felt warmth build up inside of him, fill his veins. They glowed in brightness while his wounds started sealing up, turning into scars. With some Eldritch magic and just about enough Chi knowledge, Sierra could do for anyone what she had always done for Danny: speed up the healing process.

The light inside him faded and Agent W gasped out the relief of his system, opening his eyes and inhaling hungrily. "Sierra," his hands immediately grasped her arms, anywhere they could. The roughness of his voice dragged itself over her name desperately. 

"What happened? Tell me what happened..."

"They attacked us. We were ambushed... I saw nothing." In Agent W's eyes laid the terror of a man who had just been faced with his greatest fear: not being ready. In shame, his eyes quickly drowned in tears, something Sierra had never thought she'd gaze into. "They took Danny."

The world collapsed on her. Its weight broke her shoulders and their shards impaled her heart. The ring on her finger tightened on her lungs and she was suffocated on the spot to barely even comprehend more than the twist of emotion. When did she start crying? Probably before her mouth hung open and her body became overly sensitive.

She needed to be deserted from any touch so Sierra shrugged Agent W off of her and straightened up, got off the ground. A tremor shriveled the concrete and the wreckage around them.

Her breath hitched and now the ring was burning her. Burns turned to an itch and desperation made her eyes widen, search desperately the thin air of everything only to find nothing at all. This loneliness was an ocean and Sierra did not know how to swim it alone. Yet her fingertips shivered, tingled in the power she knew she had. 

Her hands grew into fists and she turned towards Agent W, decisive. Emotion went down the drain and behind was left only her most coldest glow. "Who took him?"

( new closing gif by @babyrobins )