Disclaimer: I don't own Dr. Strange.

Chapter 12

With Wong's books and Stephen's intermittent lessons, Casey slowly began to pick up on a few useful spells. However, balancing school, half-hearted attempts at a social life, and learning ancient mystic arts was proving to be a little more difficult than she had expected. After a couple weeks, she was drowning under homework, magic lessons, and keeping up with social media.

"What do you mean I can't post any pictures of the inside of the Sanctum?" Casey demanded, pointing her spoon defensively at Stephen. They were sitting in the kitchen, Stephen with a tablet and her with a spell book and her cell phone. Stephen was actually wearing jeans and a band t-shirt, which she had noticed he did more often than she had first realized. His weird wizard outfit stuck out so much in her mind…

They had both been quietly enjoying bowls of cereal for dinner (cooking was not a strong point for either of them) until Casey had taken a picture of her bowl, intending to post her woefully inadequate meal to Instagram.

"I know I mentioned this at some point," Stephen said.

"Nope, don't think so," Casey said, "Besides, I've already been posting stuff."

Before his look of outrage could turn into something more dire and yell-y, she raised her hands to slow him down. "Just in my room! My room looks normal, like a real person's room. Nothing magic-ish." Actually, her new room looked pretty bare. She wanted to decorate it but…that seemed to be too hard. Every time she thought about it, she decided to do something else.

"Except your books," Stephen said, waving a hand at the book in front of her.

"Yeah, well I made sure they weren't in the picture," she said curtly, "So there."

"Casey, I can't stress enough how important it is to keep the true nature of this whole building a secret," Stephen said, pressing his fingertips together. She narrowed her eyes at him.

"I know, you've told me seven million, two hundred thousand, and fifty one times," Casey said. There had been multiple lectures about the Sanctum when she first got there, and the main takeaway had been: tell NO ONE. Not really a hard thing to remember. "And if you put some kind of silence spell on me, I'll never forgive you."

"Maybe I should just take your phone away," Stephen said, frowning back at her. "If you can't use it responsibly."

Casey tilted her head to the side. "You're not serious."

"Incredibly so," he said. He shook his head. "I don't even actually have to take it. You're on my data plan now, so it's just a phone call."

"I'm not posting pictures of the Sanctum!" Casey said, "Not the magic parts, I told you!" She gripped the edge of the table, the taste of Lucky Charms going sour in my mouth. "The bowl isn't magical, it's not giving anything away."

Stephen shook his head. "No more pictures. I'm sure you can handle that simple rule."

Casey glowered at him and then stood up. "Fine," she hissed, slamming her phone down on the table. She snatched up her bowl of cereal and turned on her heel. "Whatever you say, sir."

"Casey—"

"I said fine!" Her spine rigid, she marched herself out of the kitchen and down the hall, not sure where she was planning to go but desperate to put space between them. Most of the Sanctum was still off-limits to her, so she headed to the second floor. There were enough nooks and crannies around the cases and rooms there that she could maybe manage to avoid Stephen for a while. Unless he knew some kind of locate person spell, which seemed like something he would have available to him. But most likely he didn't even care that she was upset and would just disappear into his books in his attic level study and forget about her.

Unexpectedly, Casey found a sunny little corner with an open window that was spelled to show a sunny beach scene from somewhere far away from wintery New York. Maybe Fiji? The last time she had seen this window it had been set to somewhere in the Swiss Alps, but now there was a light breeze drifting through the window, and she could smell the saltwater brine on the wind. A thick long cushion had been thrown on the wide seat under the window, and there was a set of forgotten books on the floor. She narrowed her eyes. Stephen must've been reading here at some point, and she decided to move on, at least until the warm breeze caught her hair. The sunlight was fading in a deep colorful sunset, and before she could stomp off, she found herself settling onto the comfy cushion and folding her arms over the windowsill.

Resting her chin on her arms, Casey took a deep breath. Unexpectedly, hot tears nipped at the corner of her eyes. Her Gramps had always liked sunsets more than sunrises. Reaching up, she roughly brushed her knuckle under her eyes, mad at herself. Thinking about him always made her weepy. She wondered about how people said grief only needed time, that she would eventually heal. It didn't feel like it then. And wouldn't it be an insult to him to heal? No, he wouldn't want her constantly dwelling on him.

A seagull called, pulling her out of her thoughts, and she lifted her head from her arms. The beach looked so nice and relaxing…

Standing up, she leaned out the window, breathing in the sea breeze. It looked like a deserted cove, rocks lining one side, and the window was only about five feet off the ground. Pulling her head back in, she looked around and then listened to see if she could hear Stephen's footsteps.

When she didn't hear anything, she put her hands on either side of window and lifted her foot to the sill. Stepping up, she stood for a second in the window, thinking about how smart or stupid this decision was. It would be nice to get out of the house and away from frigid New York for a few minutes. Sitting down on the sill, she gave herself another few seconds before she turned and lowered herself down toward the sand. Her spaghetti-noodle arms had a hard time holding her up, and she had to let go quickly. Landing hard, she managed to keep her balance and instantly regret not taking her socks off.

"Ugh." She reached down and ripped them off before balling them up and hurling them back up through the window. Which was actually really high up from this angle.

Casey closed her eyes for a moment, cursing herself. Really? She hadn't thought about getting back up to the window. At five foot four, she was just eye level with the windowsill. Pull-ups weren't exactly her forte, but maybe she could manage one to drag herself back inside. People did it in action movies all the time.

Whatever. She wasn't going to worry about it right now. Shoving away the concern, she looked around, remembering that maybe glancing to see if people were around would be a good idea. It didn't look like anyone was at the beach. Casey could just about bet that the beach was a deserted one. Stephen was ridiculously smart, so it wasn't likely that he would stick such a low dimension-warping window in a place that would be easily visible to, er, muggles. Was she a muggle? Not anymore, she guessed.

Casey wandered toward the beach, her eyes on the crystalline sea. Waves lapped at the shore, a steady in-and-out, like breathing. She was somewhere in the Pacific, right? It was getting dark over the Atlantic, so this had to be the Pacific?

Sorcery was weird. A month or so ago, she never would've believed that magic was real, which was probably an ignorant thing for her to cling to. She had survived an alien invasion and a number of other crazy things that had happened to New York. Really, anything was possible, wasn't it?

Her brain darted toward the memories of the Chitauri attack, and she shoved those away as well. She didn't want to remember the acrid burned smells, the pieces of spaceships falling from the sky, the blank eyes of people and aliens. Hurrying forward, she rolled up the legs of her loose yoga pants past her knees and stepped into the water. It was comfortably cool, and she let the waves pull the memories away, letting the world go back to when she was little and aliens and magic and people with superhuman powers were only found in books and movies.

She was aware that her mind was in some kind of overdrive mode, that maybe she had just experienced too much over the past few weeks. Astral projection, teleportation, creating lights, meditation, those were just the tip of the newness that surrounded her. Only a couple nights ago, she and Stephen had gone to Paris to get crepes and coffee just because he was craving it.

Getting used to living with Gramps was hard enough, but learning how to navigate the magical world was making it even harder.

And there were Stephen's rules. Don't go here, don't touch this, don't try that without him, don't do that, study this. Part of her, the rational part, knew that his request that she not take pictures in the Sanctum made since. It was like the Statute of Secrecy in Harry Potter, or whatever it was.

It wouldn't be good if they had to sorcery everyone in New York just because she posted an Instagram video of Stephen levitating up to the top shelf of a bookcase. But it felt ridiculous, and she wanted to fight him on it. She wasn't stupid, and he didn't need to treat her like she didn't have any sense.

Sitting down in the sand, farther back from the waves, Casey looped her arms around her knees. It wasn't that she didn't like learning magic. She actually really liked it. The books were sometimes hard to understand, but Stephen was usually open to helping her out with things she didn't get. Like arcane symbols and passages in Latin and that kind of stuff. And he was sort of patient with her. More patient than he probably wanted to be. Life had just changed so fast, she felt like she had whiplash. Going from your average high school student to sorcerer's apprentice wasn't exactly an every day kind of occurrence. It'd be nice to have someone her age to talk to about it, but everyone at Kamar-Taj was older. Maybe she would ask Wong about younger apprentices the next time she saw him. They would have to go back soon so she could get new books.

Flopping back into the sand and closing her eyes, Casey let the sun soak into her skin, not caring if she got a sunburn that would be hard to explain at school. It felt good, and she took a deep breath before slowly letting it out. She focused on breathing until her mind stopped churning and she lived simply in the moment.

Or she did until a shadow fell over her. She blinked her eyes and found Stephen standing over her.

"This isn't an attempt at running away, is it?" Stephen asking, sounding only a touch sarcastic.

"I did crawl out a window," she answered drolly, "But seeing how I didn't pack a bag, I'd say no. More like a momentary escape."

"I'm curious about how you planned to get back inside," he said. He sat down in the sand next to her, only hesitating for a moment before stretching his legs out in front of him.

"Superhero pull-up." Casey sat up and brushed her hand through her hair, scattering sand from the black and blue strands.

"Right," he said, glancing over at her, silently judging her weak arms.

She frowned back at him and then looked out at the ocean. Part of her wanted to fuss at him for coming out the window after her, and the other part didn't want to start another fight. The beach was too calming, and she didn't want to ruin her semi-relaxed mood.

"I'm sorry."

She flicked her gaze at him. He didn't look back at her, instead keeping his own eyes on the ocean. She waited, fingers digging into the sand.

"I shouldn't…" He sighed and shook his head. "I've never done this before, I don't have any kids. I don't know anything about raising a teenager, so I'm going to mess up."

"You're not really raising me," Casey said, trying to keep the bite out of her tone. She didn't want to hurt him deeply, but she didn't mind if it stung. "My Gramps did. You're just keeping an eye on me."

Stephen was quiet. After a while, he nodded. "I guess that's right, but I do feel responsible for you. You're living in the Sanctum I'm in charge of, and your grandpa wanted me to make sure you could take care of yourself. I'm trying to do that."

"Yeah." Casey lifted her hand from the sand brushed it off on her sweatpants. "You're not—you aren't the absolute worse."

"Oh, well that's great," Stephen said, rolling his eyes. He looked over at her. "I'm modifying the picture rule. If you can make sure to keep all magical things out of the pictures and restrict yourself to taking pictures of normal things, it's fine."

"Really?" She narrowed her eyes at him. "You aren't going to change your mind?"

"Yes, if you post magical things, then I will put some kind of spell on the Sanctum that will break your phone when it takes pictures." He half-smiled. "But I was thinking, it would be weird if you didn't post anything of where you live. People would get suspicious."

"Very true," she said, smirking, "But I guess I can't take a picture of this."

"Definitely not," Stephen said, "You're not supposed to be in the Pacific on a Tuesday night."

She gave a soft laugh and shook her head. "There are some perks to being a sorcerer, aren't there?"

"A few," he said, a smug smile on his face. He looked out toward the ocean and the gentle waves, and she did as well, basking in the quietness of her small victory.