Doctor Strange & The Anomaly

Three • Sun

Kathmandu was mild and warm, the city surrounded by mountains and clear blue skies. The streets were busy, with merchants on every corner, the roads packed with traffic and bustling crowds. It was the perfect place to be invisible.

When the people who lived near the temple first saw Juno, they called her pahēlō ām̐khā mahilā - the yellow-eyed woman. She would sneak out and play with the children, entertain them with her ability to move things with her mind and make pretty golden light pour from her fingers. She would sit with market traders and try to learn the language, explore narrow pathways and hidden gardens, anything to avoid returning to her small room in Kamar-Taj. Over time, they began to call her Sunaulō instead - Golden - and after two years, they simply called her Sun.

She walked along the road, waving to the locals as they passed by. They didn't see her often, but when they did, they would always call out to her with a smile.

"Ah, Sun!"

"Namaskāra," she replied, still unsure if she was pronouncing it correctly.

The further she got towards the city, the more she began to disguise herself, hiding her eyes behind a pair of sunglasses and wrapping a sheer black scarf over her head. In the thick of the city, she couldn't be Sun. There, she had to be no one. She could handle the chastising from the sorcerers when they discovered she'd left, the frustration on Stephen's face when he came to scold her. But if someone were to recognise her as the mutant from New York, it would all be over. And she didn't think she could handle that.

As she wandered through the busy streets, she noticed a crowd huddling around a market stall, a small television perched on a chair. She joined the crowd, keeping her face hidden as she peered over their shoulders at the screen. It was a news station reporting on an attack in the US. She recognised it immediately. New York City. Her heart sank as the camera panned across the smoke and rubble, the ambulances and police cars lining the devastating scene.

...

She arrived back at the temple, discarding her scarf and glasses and rushing through the halls. Stephen was there, she could feel him in the air around her, following her senses like a compass until she found him walking the grounds outside.

"Hey," she said breathlessly as she hurried towards him. "What the hell is going on in New York?"

"How do you know about that?"

"It was on the tv in the market."

"Well-" He stopped walking and turned to her. "You left the temple? After I explicitly asked you to stay inside?"

"You've been asking me to stay inside since I first got here. I think we've established I don't like to do as I'm told."

"Juno, you can't keep-"

"Ah ah ah," she said, holding her finger up at him. "You're deflecting from my question. What's happening in New York? Is this something to do with those... dark things you saw?"

"I'm looking into it," he replied.

"That's all you're going to give me?"

"That's all I have to give right now."

He continued to walk, eyeing her at his side as she followed.