“If you ever do hear some whispers during book club about the division heads having some secret plan of, I don’t know, blowing up the phylacteries come the end of the war— do pass on the gossip. I’m invested and on board for rabble-rousing.”

Heretical and blasphemous to suggest even as a joke, maybe, but he’s less guarded around Gwenaëlle these days.

And invested is an admission, an understatement. It’s his very existence on the line. It had taken a full calendar year before Stephen Strange finally took this last step and threw his hat in the ring and accepted the mantle of responsibility again; like carving off that vestigial hope which had kept him from committing at first. One metaphorical foot out the door, always halfway expecting to find some way home, even when years of rifter history said otherwise. Even when Gwenaëlle said otherwise.

He’d finally listened. Accepted that for better or worse, his future lay here now.