open | if every constellation above us has a counterpart below.

[portalling]

WHO: Stephen Strange & you
WHAT: yet another new rifter arrival
WHEN: nowish and throughout his quarantine period
WHERE: Around the Gallows
NOTES: Catch-all spot for the month and to continue TDM arrival threads; feel free to tag in tho!

arrival (a variety of prompts).

It begins as an anxiety dream.

He’s experienced no end of nightmares about no end of trauma, but this time the stakes are banal: Doctor Strange is dressed sharply in a formal suit with a scarlet pocket square, giving a speech at a medical conference, standing at a podium staring at the hundreds of faces staring back at him, and finding that his iron-trap memory has suddenly failed and he’s forgotten his entire damned speech. It’s almost a relief when the enormous tentacled eyeball monster barges into the conference center, sending people screaming and scattering, and just as the Cloak of Levitation reappears around his shoulders, Strange finds himself —

somewhere else —

What ensues is a disorienting battle on the outskirts of Orlais, with a rifter appearing in anachronistic formalwear and a red cloak gone inanimate, with a conference lanyard hanging around his neck and a little adhesive nametag (‘DR. STEPHEN STRANGE, MD, PHD, NEW YORK METRO-GENERAL HOSPITAL’ now rendered in Thedan script). And in the fight, Strange realises that almost none of his magic behaves as he expects it to. It’s not the first time he’s found himself unexpectedly dumped in another universe, but this is the first time his own capabilities have failed him. Even after the battle ends, wraiths banished and his dream-monster killed, he keeps trying to light a spark of fire between his hands and finding it more difficult than it ought to be. On the carriage ride back to Kirkwall, with both him and the Riftwatch agents covered in horrid black ichor and gore from the eyeball monster’s innards, at least Strange has the decency to look a little sheepish while the other agents scrutinise him.

“Done this sort of reception a lot?” he asks, lightly, while he keeps unconsciously kneading at his left palm. His hand aches. This is normal. What isn’t normal is the green shard embedded in it like some kind of ethereal splinter, and it makes the usual pain in his scarred hands even worse.

Afterwards, during his quarantine, he can be found in the library at all hours, surrounded by stacks of books, devouring them even late into the night – he’s an avaricious student, and wants to learn everything about his new circumstances. He breaks the polite silence when a glob of hot wax from a candle lands on his wrist, and he curses with a sudden sharp “Oh, what the fuck.”

Strange goes for long walks around the Gallows. You might literally run into him where he’s crouched in a hallway in the lower levels, examining the cleansing runes embedded in the floor which prevent the growth of red lyrium, puzzling over the clearly-magical symbols, feeling that faint hum of magic in the back of his teeth. “Do you happen to know what these do?”

He also inevitably winds up poking his head into the infirmary, morbidly curious; one might walk in on him peering through the bottles of potions and jars of dried herbs, and surveying the surgical tools with a thoughtful little hm in the back of his throat.

wildcard.

feel free to toss me anything (late-night insomnia wandering the halls? new dorm roommates? mealtime in the dining hall?) and i’ll roll with it! or hmu @ quadrille to confab. i’ll match prose or brackets.

Comments

[notathreat]

"Okay."

Ellie sounds relieved, of all things. That more universes aren't breaking open and spilling into each other, that the problem seems more or less contained.

She looks up at Strange, catching him catching her, and lifts her shoulders as if to say, got me.

"First, that's a really fucking cool superhero power and I wanna hear all about that, actually." Just for the record.

"I'm asking because I had one stop before this one. Earth, but hundreds of years in the future. Vacations homes on the moon, shit like that. It's the only other place where I've heard of people without any magic waking up in another reality."

Another shrug.

"It's different if you were doing it on purpose. Ish. It's good to know the Rift thing isn't happening in a bunch of different universes."

The idea of reality unraveling is more than a little terrifying, thanks. It's nice to think it's contained.

[portalling]

“It is really fucking cool,” Strange concedes, with a ghost of humour in his voice as he echoes her. Ellie and America would get along, probably. “They’re glowing blue star-shaped portals, even. Quite the sight. Although that’s remarkable, that you’ve been through all this before. I haven’t even experienced a vacation home on the moon, for shame.”

And then, unhelpfully, because his bedside manner was always terrible and he’d never really mastered the art of sounding soothing—

“Well, there was this other time. Where it was, mm, on accident.” Now the man sounds oddly sheepish, fidgety. “A spell went awry and it started pulling in visitors from other worlds. Seemingly very much like the rift situation here, and it was at risk of destabilising our entire reality until we sent the visitors back. I barely contained it. Now I find myself being one of those interlopers. But it sounds like these ‘rifters’ are fairly commonplace here? It’s been happening for a while and the world hasn’t fallen apart?”

There’s that unspoken yet clearly dangling yet? at the end of his sentence. It’s a reasonable concern, having seen what he has.

[notathreat]

Ellie gives a low whistle, but gives a shrug in a manner that is hopefully offhand and not giving away that she's still salty about it: "I didn't get to go to the moon. Friend of mine took a picture of it for me, but he was a dinosaur who didn't know how to work a camera."

She hopes Joel can hear her. Thinking of him almost doesn't hurt.

"Yeah, it's been a while. Five or six years? Maybe more? I've only been here for a year and a half."

Ellie shrugs, a little.

"You'd have to ask someone in Research, maybe Tony or Cosima. They've been studying the rifts for ages now. They open up now and again, but we're usually there to close them up before they get too big."

Ellie indicates the anchor in the palm of her hand.

[portalling]

If he weren’t still reeling from that time-scale Ellie just mentioned, he might’ve asked more about that name, and wondered. But Tony’s a common enough name. It’s a big world out there. So, instead:

“Only a year and a half?” Strange repeats, somewhere partway between marveling and scoffing and incredulous, even as he flexes his fingers around that smaller shard of green in his own hand. Hand curling together over that marked, physical manifestation of the rifts themselves. “I don’t know about you, but that’s a hell of a time. My last tour into another universe was in the scale of hours. A couple days. I certainly hope mine isn’t going to be as long as yours, no offense.”

Oh, for the naiveté and arrogance of a newly-arrived rifter, who doesn’t get it yet—

[notathreat]

"No, I get it. You've got stuff."

Giant eyeball monsters and cities to save and things to magic.

"But... not to be a downer or anything, but there's no way to go back on purpose. A lot of people have been trying for a long time." And there's so much she could get into, all the metaphysical bullshit and the frankly terrifying theories about them all being projections of the Fade and not actually people at all but-

Well.

The dude's been here for like an hour. She'd rather not emotionally traumatize him right out of the literal gate. That's more like something you slowly ease into once you're ready to ask about that shit.

"And while you're waiting, the people here could use your help. And this sort of thing sounds like it's up your alley."

[portalling]

Strange is on the verge of delivering a quick, pithy reply — A lot of people aren’t me, or something else equally disastrously arrogant — but, at the very last moment, he reins himself in. Forces himself to actually weigh what she’s saying. Remembers to not be an asshole.

He’s on a carriage rolling towards a city called Kirkwall. Incursions have apparently been happening here for five or six years, so probably the universe won’t destabilise if he stays. There’s that automatic assumption that everything will be fine, America’s probably going to punch her way into this world in a few days’ time, she and Wong will retrieve him, they’ll tease him about going to the local renfaire, he’ll be home again soon. But if he’s not…

There’s a thoughtful “Hm,” and she can practically see the man chewing over that reality-check. There’s no way to go back on purpose and the implied You’re stuck here. Strange is adaptable — he’s been trapped in another universe before — but.

The people here could use your help.

She’s managed to land on the right combination of words to give him pause, to not go immediately haring off to research portals and trying to slam his way through universes again. What does he even have waiting for him back in New York? Not much.

(Later on, he’s going to look back on this journey and be grateful that Ellie Williams was the one to retrieve him, to gently ease him into it.)

In the end, he finally asks: “The other guy said there’s a war on. They need assistance?”

[notathreat]

Everyone thinks they're the exception to the rule. The problem with the people who fall through the Rifts is that usually they actually are. Ellie has her own theories about the people they end up with, but she's no scientist, just casual sci-fi nerd who read a lot of faded, torn, water-damaged comic books.

Strange gives away a lot of who he is just in that reaction, and Ellie takes the measure of him. She's a good read on people. Comes from her survival hinging on it way more than once.

"They really do," she says, with soft sincerity. "I've seen the shit Corypheus' armies do." Ellie's mouth pinches in a wry smile.

"I don't, like... believe in fate, or luck, or anything. But if we're here, we might as well get something done."

[portalling]

It’s all so much to take in. Strange has landed in other universes and hot water before, but hey, at least this time he’s not being chased by someone trying to kill him. So. Progress. And at least the constant in life remains young women giving him good advice.

“I do believe in fate, these days,” the man says contemplatively. “Not as trite bullshit saying everything happens for a reason,” but in a way, wasn’t that what the Ancient One had taught him? if he hadn’t shattered his hands and his life, then he wouldn’t have become Sorcerer Supreme, then he wouldn’t have been present for Thanos, and it would have turned out worse. A chain of dominos. The suffering led somewhere. It was a kind of comfort.

“But I believe in it in the essence that once something has happened, that’s how it happened. Even with time travel, you can’t actually go back and change it — it creates a new branching timeline, you’re only ever going forward in your own chronology while the original remains unaffected, the suffering isn’t technically averted—”

He’s going on too long, his mouth running away with him. “Anyway, that’s besides the point. I’m getting too deep into the weeds. Point being: If I’m here, then I’m here, and that’s what’s happened. Best to do some good with it. I get it.”

[notathreat]

Time travel, he says, like that's something so easy to swallow. She's seen shreds of it here and there, has seen the way it bends and folds and plucks people out of where they were.

They meander in that thought together, the both of them splintering off into possibilities, memories. Parallel lessons learned in vastly different and interconnecting ways. Nobody ever learns that shit so thoroughly without screwing it up more than once. It's raw and hard-won.

"Then you're ahead of a lot of people I've met."

[portalling]

The corner of his mouth twitches. A smile which is also a little pained. “Experience,” he says, “is a rough teacher.”

Stephen Strange has died so many times. He’s lost count. Dozens, hundreds with Dormammu, and then millions with Thanos; carrying around those memories of your own death gave you a certain maturity over time. He can still be a complete ass, but it’s cut through with a streak of ineffable cosmic responsibility. Grim acceptance.

“You also seem wiser than your years, kid,” he points out after a second, heedless of how blunt that might be, a pronouncement on a complete stranger— but the thought’s there, so he’ll say it. “Must be the whole zombie apocalypse thing.”

A pithy way of putting it, but.

[notathreat]

The harder edges fade off Ellie's smile, and for a second she just looks kind of tired. She comes in glimpses of different ages; sometimes she still feels fourteen, sometimes she feels painfully older than the people around her.

It occurs to her that Strange probably feels that way, too.

"Sometimes," she allows, shrugging her shoulders. "Other times I don't know what the fuck I'm doing."

Maybe that admission is wiser than the rest of it. Wiser than she knows, certainly.

[portalling]

A snort; he laughs, then, for the first time since getting vomited out of that livid green rift in the sky. Short and curt and a little bleak, but it’s just out of darkly humorous understanding:

“Honestly, who the fuck does. If anyone claims to know precisely what they’re doing, they’re lying. Even when you can literally, magically, see the future, it’s still a gamble to make it happen the way you think.”

And as Strange says that, he suddenly realises the funny silver lining of it all: without the weight of the Masters of the Mystic Arts behind him, no one’s expecting him to have his hand on the till of the universe. There isn’t the weight of being expected to know all the answers. He’s eventually going to behave like he does, of course, it won’t take long — but in the meantime, for right now, he’s new and wet behind the ears and no one, absolutely no one here thinks he’s all that special.

It’s a little freeing.