No bargain with death (MCU x reader)

14. Decisions

Strange was a good listener. You couldn't be sure if he always was but when you told him about your mother and how you had killed her, wiped her from the earth's surface, undone her very existence, he did rather well. He didn't interrupt (big plus when you are ranting about something. It makes it easier to talk for interruptions may end in you forgetting an important part of your tale), he just looked at you and listened. He didn't judge but nodded when appropriate and frowned when necessary. And when you'd finished and deflated into a miserable heap of tears and sobs he pulled you closer and hugged you, holding you tight.

"You didn't kill her" , he said after a while, when the tears had stopped streaming down your face and you could breathe normally again. You frowned. It wasn't the typical 'Everything is going to be alright' nonsense adults love to throw at others, knowing that things might not be alright and that an alright in the future didn't undo the current 'bloody far from alright' situation. But his words were a lie none the less.

"Of course I did!" , you protested furiously, glaring at Strange.

"It was me who turned her into nothing. She could have had a nice life and she would have had a nice life, many years to come, if I hadn't interfered! I took her life from her! She didn't even want me to, like many others. I forcefully took it from her. That's what I would call 'kill someone'! It's just like in the textbook! What if she was in pain?! I can't imagine that crumbling to dust feels nice! Probably like acid burn and even though I haven't tried it yet, I'm pretty sure that that is very painful. I wouldn't want anyone to have to go through this and still, I put my mother through it by giving a life to a creature which's life had been over!"

Strange stared at you for a second, his expression unreadable.

"You know, I was a highly qualified doctor once" , he began and you wanted to yell at him. You didn't care what he had once been! Why would you care what he had done once?! It didn't change what you had done!

Your anger seemed to show on your face for Strange lifted an arm in a placatory fashion. You didn't feel any calmer but you also didn't feel strong enough to get up and run away from Strange. Your little breakdown had taken too much of your energy.

"As I said, I was a highly qualified doctor once. But highly qualified as in highly skilled not in good. Because I was far from good. I was a dick, to be totally frank" , he stated.

Wow, he had been a dick once. Enough so that he realised it and admitted it to you. He must have been horrible. But that didn't change that you had killed your mother. How could a doctor that wasn't necesserily nice to everyone be compared to first degree murder? You were pretty sure that if there was a 'bad things' scale that murder was pretty high up there while being unkind was rather low in the spectrum.

"Like, I was really bad. I was fond of myself and so proud of my skills that I wasn't willing to perform surgery on the easy cases. Or on the ones I already thought to be lost. I was conceited enough to promote myself to be the judge of life and to decide who to save and whom not to. I signed death penalties, back in the hospital, (y/n). And I didn't do it only once. I did it multiple times, on a regular basis. That was how I operated and I didn't even know that I was doing something that was utterly wrong. I just did what I thought what was best. Not for others but for me. My little world, my little universe was all about me and about me only. There was nothing else there. It made me a lonely man but that is not what I am going for, I'm just saying that I killed people too and I did it knowingly. You didn't. It was an accident for you."

You didn't know what to say or do. You just sat there and stared at Strange, thinking through what he'd just stated. It was impressive. You'd seen him in a rather bad light and now that he'd revealed his truly dark side you saw him in a light, much brighter than before.