Chapter Text
Stephen:
Stephen never quite understood his soul song. At first, it was because, despite what he’d gone through as a child, he’d never really needed any motivation to keep going. He knew he was smart, so he knew he’d do well. That certainty lasted until the crash.
When Stephen’s car crashed, it was like his whole world crashed with it. He could no longer do the one thing he loved most in the world, the one thing he was best at. The only thought that kept repeating in Stephen’s head like a mantra was: I could have done better. The Ancient One was a godsend. She taught him about worlds beyond his own and how to navigate them with ease. She taught him that he was worth more than his hands. All of a sudden, Stephen understood how Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing” was the musical embodiment of all he’d gone through to become the Sorcerer Supreme.
What Stephen still didn’t understand was who else had gone through experiences as horrible as his own. He definitely wasn’t expecting his soulmate to be someone as cocky and arrogant as Anthony Edward Stark.
Tony:
Tony understood how his soul song described his life. After all, an abusive father was just the tip of the iceberg. Once you factored in the kidnapping (and creating his first Iron Man suit out of scraps), the shrapnel in his chest (and the arc reactor he’d created to keep it out of his heart), the betrayal by Obidiah Stane (and the Iron Man suit that had been a result of it), carrying a nuke into space (and the fact that he’d lived despite the odds stacked against him), the PTSD and anxiety (and the not-quite adopted kid, Harley, he’d gotten because of it), etc. it became quite obvious why the song “I’m Still Standing” described Tony. But one thing still puzzled him. Who else had had such a terrible life that “I’m Still Standing” described them as well as it did him?
All Tony knew about Dr. Stephen Vincent Strange was that he was the best neurosurgeon in the state, maybe even the world, before his crash, a crash that rendered his hands useless and led to Stephen dropping off the grid. What Tony didn’t know was what Stephen had become after he went AWOL.