Walking elegy( tensura/ MCU true dragon self insert): chapter 16: Tea, Parables and Time

"Your tea is sublime."

The Ancient One's lips curved, barely, but enough to register as pleasure. "Thank you. It is made from rare plants capable of holding magic within themselves, drawn not from the sun but from the ambient energies that suffuse all living things."

I took another sip, let the liquid rest on my tongue. There was something underneath the flavor, something that tasted like moonlight filtered through silver leaves. "Is that so? I am glad to see that you would use such a thing for me."

"Of course." Her cup rose to her own lips, and over its rim, her eyes held mine. "Only the best for a goddess."

The word hung between us like incense smoke.

I smiled wider. "Tell me, does this particular blend have a name? Or is it one of those jealously guarded secrets, kept close to the chest lest unworthy hands attempt to replicate what they cannot truly understand?"

"All knowledge is meant to be shared," she replied, setting her cup down with deliberate care. "Though some knowledge requires... preparation before it can be properly digested. Otherwise, one might find the flavor overwhelming. Bitter, even. Potentially toxic."

"Ah, but bitter can be medicinal." I traced the rim of my own cup with one finger. "Sometimes the most effective remedies taste worst going down. The question becomes: do we avoid the medicine because it's unpleasant, or do we swallow it anyway, trusting that what comes after will be worth the immediate discomfort?"

"That depends entirely on who prepared the medicine." Her head tilted slightly. "And their intentions. A skilled herbalist can brew salvation. A poisoner can make death taste sweet."

"How fortunate, then, that we're both herbalists here." I raised my cup in something like a toast. "Both of us familiar with which plants heal and which harm. Both of us capable of brewing either, depending on need."

"Indeed." She refilled her own cup from the pot between us, steam rising in lazy spirals. "Though I wonder about the gardens where you learned your craft. Different climates produce different plants. Some thrive in shade, others require full sun. Some need constant tending, while others grow wild and untamed, choking out everything around them if left unchecked."

"Are you asking if my garden is well-maintained?" I accepted her pour, watched the liquid fill my cup with almost hypnotic slowness. "Or if I prefer to let things grow as they will, consequences be damned?"

"I'm asking what fruits your garden has produced." Her gaze never wavered. "Sweet or bitter. Nourishing or poisonous. And whether you share those fruits freely, or keep them for yourself."

"My garden..." I paused, considered. "Has produced both, in equal measure. I've cultivated beauty and horror in the same soil. Fed them the same water. Watched them grow side by side until even I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began."

"A dangerous garden, then."

"Only for those who don't know which plants to pick." I took another sip, longer this time. "Though I suppose that's the risk, isn't it? You invite someone into your garden, hoping they'll admire the roses, and instead they reach for the nightshade. Or worse—they mistake the nightshade for the roses and wonder why their throat closes up."

"Then perhaps," the Ancient One said slowly, "one should label their plants more clearly. For the sake of the guests, if nothing else."

"Or perhaps," I countered, "the guests should learn to recognize what they're looking at before they start picking. Personal responsibility and all that."

She smiled at that—a real smile, with teeth. "Touché. Though one might argue that a responsible gardener wouldn't plant nightshade next to the tea roses in the first place."

"One might argue that. One might also argue that a truly skilled gardener understands that nightshade has its uses, and that banning it entirely simply because it's dangerous is the act of a coward rather than a master of the craft."

"As long as the gardener remembers that nightshade, however useful, will kill her guests if they consume it."

"Only if they consume too much." I set my cup down, met her eyes fully. "The dose makes the poison, Ancient One. Surely you, of all people, understand that."

"I do." Her expression shifted, became something harder to read. "Just as I understand that some gardeners become so enamored with their dangerous plants that they forget the purpose of a garden in the first place. That it's meant to sustain life, not end it."

"And if the garden exists on a battlefield?" I asked softly. "If soldiers trample through it daily, crushing whatever grows there? Is the gardener still obligated to plant only peaceful flowers? Or is she permitted to grow thorns? Poison? Things that might actually defend the space she's trying to cultivate?"

The Ancient One was quiet for a long moment. Then: "I suppose that depends on whether the garden is truly under siege, or whether the gardener simply believes it is. Paranoia can be as destructive as any army."

"Can it?" I leaned back slightly. "Or is paranoia simply pattern recognition functioning at peak efficiency? The ability to see threats before they fully manifest?"

"There's a difference between caution and obsession."

"Is there? Or is that just what we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night, pretending we've drawn a clean line between reasonable preparation and madness?"

She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she refilled both our cups, the silence stretching between us like pulled taffy.

Then the atmosphere shifted.

The playfulness bled away. The metaphors died on our tongues.

When the Ancient One spoke again, her voice was hard, harsh, stripped of all the whimsy and laid-back attitude it had held before. "How did you know that sentence?"

I blinked, deliberately obtuse. "Which sentence?"

"The one Strange would give to Dormammu." Her eyes bored into mine. "How do you know the future? How are you absent from the sacred timeline? Why can't you be seen within it? And much more importantly—are you a threat to this universe?"

Ah. There it was.

I sighed, lifted my cup, and drained it in one long swallow. The tea burned going down—hotter than it should have been, but I welcomed the pain. It gave me something to focus on besides the weight of her questions.

I set the empty cup back on the table between us with a soft clink.

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio," I began slowly, "than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Her expression didn't change. She waited.

"Once," I continued, settling into the cadence of storytelling, "there was a woman who lived in a world of perfect information. She knew every outcome, every possibility, every permutation of cause and effect. She could see the future as clearly as you or I see our hands before our faces. And with this knowledge, she became the world's greatest guardian, steering events toward optimal outcomes, preventing disasters before they could begin."

I paused, traced patterns in the condensation on my cup.

"But perfect information is a prison, you see. When you know exactly how everything will unfold, choice becomes meaningless. You're not making decisions anymore—you're executing a predetermined script. The woman found herself hollow despite her power, empty despite her certainty. She'd saved the world a thousand times, but she'd never truly lived in it. Never allowed herself to be surprised, to fail, to stumble into unexpected joy."

The Ancient One's fingers tightened slightly on her cup.

"One day," I went on, "something happened that she didn't predict. Couldn't have predicted, because it came from outside the system she'd been observing. A stranger arrived—someone not bound by the rules she understood, someone who existed in the margins of her perfect vision. And suddenly, for the first time in longer than she could remember, the woman didn't know what would happen next."

I met the Ancient One's eyes.

"She had two choices. She could try to eliminate the stranger, restore her perfect information, return to the comfortable prison of certainty. Or she could... let go. Accept that the future had become unknown again. Accept that she might fail, might make the wrong choices, might watch people suffer because she couldn't see the paths anymore."

"Which did she choose?" The question came out barely above a whisper.

"She's still deciding." I smiled without humor. "But she's leaning toward the latter. Because even though uncertainty is terrifying, even though it means she might fail catastrophically, at least she'd be choosing again. At least her actions would matter, would have weight, would be hers instead of the universe's. She'd be trading safety for freedom, guaranteed acceptable outcomes for the possibility of something better."

I leaned forward slightly.

"Or something worse. That's the gamble, isn't it? Once you step off the predetermined path, you might find paradise. Or you might find hell. But at least you'll have walked there yourself, instead of being pushed."

Silence fell between us, thick and heavy.

Finally, I spoke again. "I understand that you're worried. Had I been in your place, had anyone been in your place, they probably would be worrying too. But I think what makes you worry even more is this: if the Eye of Agamotto, if the Time Stone can't see me, if its sight is not perfect, doesn't that mean that everything you thought you had certainty about might not happen? That all those carefully laid plans, all those 'acceptable losses' you've made peace with, might not be necessary after all?"

The Ancient One sighed—really sighed, the kind that carries the weight of centuries. "Yes. It is indeed the case. There would be suffering. Losses. Things would not be perfect. I would die. People who don't deserve to will die. But at least, even if the path was fraught with pain, things should have ended relatively well."

She fixed me with a look that could have cut glass.

"But here you are."

"Here I am," I agreed, sardonic smile tugging at my lips.

I looked down into the bottom of my teacup, at the patterns left behind by the leaves. They formed shapes that meant nothing and everything, random configurations that people had spent millennia trying to read significance into.

"I learned not long ago," I said softly, "the bitter taste that comes with having to accept the way things are. To accept how things hurt, and hurt, and hurt, until you feel hollowed out. A husk of your original self. People like to say things are the way they are for a reason. Maybe that's true. But just because something has a reason doesn't mean it's a good reason. Things being the way they are stops them from becoming worse."

I lifted my gaze, met her eyes.

"But they also stop things from becoming better."

The words hung between us like a challenge.

"If nothing that would matter is certain anymore," I continued, "if nothing is guaranteed, then everything matters. Every choice. Every action. Every moment becomes significant again instead of just another step toward a predetermined end."

"It's not that simple." The Ancient One's voice carried an edge I hadn't heard before. "Never was and never would be. Do you really think none of us tried to make things better, even when we shouldn't have? Do you think I didn't try?"

"I'm sure you did," I said, gentle now. "I'm sure you all did."

I paused.

"But you didn't have me."

The Ancient One lifted an eyebrow. "A powerful deity with unknown motives. An unknown past. Who is able to avoid being seen by a piece of infinity itself. And who clearly wants something from me. How seemingly trustworthy."

She sighed, leaned forward on her arms, and for the first time since I'd met her, she looked tired. Old. And dangerous in the way that cornered animals are dangerous—unpredictable because they've run out of options.

"You're my best bet to make things better," she admitted. "But let it be known: I won't sacrifice a certain future where things would be good enough for one where everything might be perfect if I don't like the answers to the two questions I'm going to ask."

Her eyes hardened.

"What do you want from me? And why do you want it?"

I held her gaze, let the silence stretch until it became almost unbearable.

Then: "I want to use your Infinity Stone."

Her eyes narrowed. Her entire body tensed, muscles coiling beneath her robes like springs compressed to their limit.

I continued as if I hadn't noticed. "And the reason why is that... I was given many last wills. From people who cared about me. Cared too much when I hadn't shown—hadn't proven that I cared enough in return. They asked me to live. And I can't live the way I need to, the way they would have wanted, if I'm not more than what I currently am."

I leaned back, let some of the tension bleed from my shoulders.

"I am an existence that could rightfully be called supreme. Primordial. And yet it's not enough. So for your second question—why I want to use the Infinity Stone, it's because I have to live for them. No matter how hard it is. No matter what it costs."

"Living for regrets and in regrets isn't a way to live." The words were both soft and harsh, somehow simultaneously comforting and cutting.

"I know." My smile turned bitter. "It's wretched. But no matter how wretched it is at its core, it's still mine."

The Ancient One was quiet for a long moment. Then she spoke, her voice taking on the cadence of story again.

"Once there was a person who felt hollow inside. Empty in ways that couldn't be filled by normal means. So they sought power, thinking that if they became strong enough, vast enough, significantenough, the hollowness would go away. They accumulated might the way others collect coins—obsessively, desperately, convinced that the next acquisition would finally be the one that made them feel whole."

She poured herself more tea, but didn't drink it.

"They conquered kingdoms. Learned ancient secrets. Mastered forces that would have destroyed lesser beings. And with each new power gained, they told themselves: This is it. This is what I needed. I'm complete now."

The cup sat steaming between her palms.

"But the hollowness remained. Because it was never about power. The emptiness inside them was shaped like something else entirely, something power couldn't fill, couldn't even touch. They'd been trying to solve an emotional problem with a physical solution, and no amount of might could bridge that category error."

She finally drank, slow and deliberate.

"In the end, they had everything. And they had nothing. Because they'd spent so long accumulating power that they'd forgotten what they'd originally wanted the power for. The means had consumed the end, and they were left as hollow as they'd begun. Just... stronger. More dangerous. More capable of causing harm to themselves and others in their endless quest to fill an unfillable void."

The Ancient One set her cup down with a finality that sounded like a gavel.

"The Infinity Stones are power," she said quietly. "Perhaps the purest power that exists in this universe. But they're not medicine for the soul. They won't make you whole. They'll just make you stronger while you break."

I didn't respond immediately. Couldn't, really. The story had landed too close to home, cut too precisely through defenses I hadn't realized I'd raised.

Finally: "Maybe. But I have to try."

"Why?" Real curiosity colored her voice now. "Why do you have to? What makes this obligation stronger than the wisdom of walking away?"

"Because they died." The words came out rougher than intended. "They died so I could live. And if I don't honor that—if I don't become worthy of their sacrifice—then what was the point? They might as well have let me die with them."

"And if honoring their sacrifice destroys you?" she pressed. "If it turns you into something they wouldn't have wanted you to become? Is that still honoring them?"

"I don't know." Honest, at least. "But doing nothing while I'm this weak, this useless—that's definitely dishonoring them. So I'll take the risk. I'll accumulate power. And if I end up hollow at the end..."

I shrugged.

"At least I'll be a hollow thing that can protect what's left."

The Ancient One studied me for what felt like an eternity. Her expression was unreadable, carved from stone or maybe jade—beautiful, ancient, and fundamentally inhuman despite the flesh it wore.

Then she sighed.

The sound carried more weight than any sigh should. It was the sound of surrender and acceptance and resignation all mixed together, the sound of someone making a choice they knew might be wrong but making it anyway because all the alternatives were worse.

Green light began to bloom in the room.

It started at her chest, where the Eye of Agamotto rested. The artifact's eye opened, literal and metaphorical both, and emerald radiance spilled out like dawn breaking across an alien sky.

The light grew, expanded, filled the space between us until I could taste it on my tongue—sharp and bright and old, carrying the weight of causality itself, of time as a concept made physical.

"Is this," the Ancient One whispered, and her voice held something I couldn't quite name, "what the serpent felt when he gave the apple to Eve?"

The green light intensified, and I felt the Time Stone's attention focus on me as if it was a living thing, as if I was before the gaze of a sleeping god slowly opening its eyes.

"I suppose," she continued, "we're about to find out."