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

[propulsion]

There's a twitch to Tony's mouth at Battle of Earth. Little obvious, but.

"Yeah," he confirms, wandering aside to where there's a chair stationed at another desk. Casually, idly hooking it closer, hefting it over. "Cutting it kinda fine there, Stephen. All that, coming down to a," finger wiggle, setting the chair down, "nasty little wrestling match in the dirt." Because there's just a lot of ordinariness that sticks in his brain. Between the shift in air pressure at the opening of a billion portals and the searing radiant pain of activated Infinity Stones burning half of him away, there's also just

the odd dull thunk of Thanos' knee hitting his armor, the tin can rattle of being knocked across the ground, the fresh spring of blood that felt cold on his face. And then the rest was truly history.

He sits, indicates the stack of books. "If we could do it different with this world, I'd appreciate it."

[portalling]

There’s a complicated ripple across Stephen’s expression. Something on its way to becoming a grimace before he bites it back, his expression going prim and tight and strained.

If there was one ghost he’d never expected to run into again — had closed that door and shut that book and considered the case closed and not emotionally prepared himself at all for the possibility of facing this particular well of insidious guilt — it was Tony Stark. And much as he wishes he could just sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened, there’s necessary ground to be covered here.

“It’s not like I actively wanted it turn out that way,” he says, and there’s a crisp defensive snap to his voice. Before he stops. Pinches his brow. Too many people have been questioning his actions lately: Nicodemus West, Wanda. (And himself, himself on sleepless nights, staring up at the ceiling.)

Seeing the other man’s face has brought it all back in sharp relief, when he’s been pointedly ignoring those memories and trying to shove them aside: the battle itself. The trickle of blood down Tony’s face as their gazes met again across the battlefield. Stephen’s trembling hand, gesturing: one. This was the one path. The only way. Tony’s burned-out husk afterwards, having thrown himself on that pyre for all the rest of them.

— Did it have to happen that way? Was there any other path?
—No. But I made the only play we had.

— Is it the justification you use? When you gave Thanos the Time Stone?
— That was war, and I did what I had to do.

He exhales. Tries to recapture some of that placid meditative calm which the Ancient One had been so good at, and which he’s so terrible at.

He doesn’t really succeed.

“But you’re right. I’m not particularly itching for a repeat. Once was enough.”

And he wasn’t even the one who died.

[propulsion]

Tony watches Stephen's face journey with a fixed kind of fascination, but one that doesn't seem like it's looking for anything in particular. The release of something, nearly, before it's locked down again. Crispy at the edges in his tone. Tony is, apparently, unbothered, maybe even,

you know, amused? It's funny? It's not. But it is. Because he's allowed to find it thus. There is a weird unreality to this meeting that probably comes from being here for three years and never meeting a person that's stood close to his personal epicentre. Like maybe Strange will vanish even faster than Fitz, than Loki, right before his eyes. Neat magic trick.

"You're fine," he says. "You did good, kid. That's what we wanna hear, I think, all of us. I think I was holding out for it from you, actually."

Crazy, right?

"But if we got newspapers and retrospect, that's a pretty good sign."

[portalling]

Stephen’s on the verge of seething at that particular phrasing, kid, what are you talking about, you’re only a few years older than him—

But the next few words let his hackles settle again, even if his skin is prickling with self-consciousness. How can something be both patronising and genuinely comforting in the same breath? He had been waiting for that validation. From someone. Anyone. And if he can give any of it back…

“You did good,” Stephen confirms, echoing the other man’s words right back at him. “If you’ve been here for three years, I don’t know if you care about what’s going on back there, if hearing about the outcome even matters—”

but if it had been him, he would have wanted to know everything. Grasp every greedy bit of information he could, just to not be in the dark.

“The Sparknotes is, we won. Because of you — and several hundred other combatants, let’s not sell them short — but, in the end, because of you.” Credit where credit’s due. If he can tee up Tony for the chopping block, then Stephen can give him credit for suffering the swing of the axe. “There’s a documentary about you and everything. Heart of Iron: The Tony Stark Story. Rogers has an inspirational musical about him. We’re all heroes.”

But beneath that dry, almost-humour, is the underlying message: It worked.

“The logistics are a goddamn mess, but the crux of it is still: billions of people came back and get to live their lives. Trillions, if we count off-Earth.”

[propulsion]

It matters. The outcome.

Tony doesn't have to say it, in part because Stephen guesses right and starts to explain, but it's also clear in his expression. A flicker of transparency. There's a fair amount of discourse that Strange will come to enjoy about the nature of rifters and their worlds, concerning how real such places are, how real they are, and three years is a long time when it comes to subscribing to any of those newsletters.

But it matters and it's what Tony's heart tells him is true and he does way more thinking with that particular muscle than he'd prefer to be known for, so he settles in and listens, resigned to this conversation.

He says ha re the documentary.

"I told Rogers," he says, "the unitard look lends itself to the song and dance treatment. And did he listen? I mean, whatever, I'd take it. You could probably land something in Vegas if you miss Broadway."

Not to maintain the fiction that anyone's going home, or anything. But it's better to ramble about nonsense than get stuck on picking apart who deserves the credit. He already handed out his one (1) compliment of the day.

"How long after are you? Before coming here."

[portalling]

“Please,” Stephen scoffs. “One of Kamar-Taj’s rejects has been running a cut-rate knockoff magic show. If I ever wind up with a Vegas residency like his, that’ll mean I’ve hit rock-bottom. Might as well literally start doing children’s birthday parties.”

It’s so much easier to roll with these mock-ruffled feathers, the ghost of humour, rather than saying anything about the other consequences. The small print. All the time lost; the unrest; the people who came back in the wrong place and died for it; the ones who came back and didn’t have a home, or found that their family had passed away in the meantime. And then there’s all of what happened with Wanda, with the Avengers off the clock. So he keeps it simple, and he’s specific, because it’s hard to forget the exact date you were resurrected from the void:

“For me, it’s been a year and a month since Thanos. Is there anything you’d like to know? I don’t mind being the Christmas newsletter, in this instance.”

It’s the least he owes him.

[propulsion]

Tony looks up at the ceiling, hanging back at the hinges of his neck as he thinks. After all this time, someone at least moderately Avenger-shaped traipses his stupid way through a rift and is willing to put out on the first date, and he feels bizarrely unprepared.

A year and a month.

"Satinalia," he says, on a delay, slightly strained from his contemplative flopping back. "No Christian holidays at this renfaire. First of fantasy-November, which is Firstfall, which is soon. Everyone does gifts and a party. So you should probably prioritise that."

Tony straightens his spine back up.

"Write me a blank check. I'll get back to you."

Uncomfortable. He should probably be more curious. He should seem more curious. But right now, it's already taking a lot of his considerable bandwidth to internalise that everything worked out okay.

[portalling]

It’s a lot. Stephen doesn’t expect a dead man to be instantly okay with any of it. So he just nods, says, “My handwriting’s shit, but I’ll mail one to you.”

There’s an awkward beat. A silence which sits heavy and stifling between them, because they never actually managed to make their way to friendship — everything had been slapdash, panicked, in the middle of a fight, with the apocalypse breathing down their necks. But he’s still so indescribably, inexpressibly relieved to see a familiar face here.

The pause lingers a bit too long.

Then, because he’d heard the title floated around and Stephen’s finally connected the dots that he knows the local Stark after all—

“So. ‘Provost’?”

[propulsion]

"The guy before me picked it. The title."

Obviously, Tony would have selected something much cooler.

Also: glad to hop on this off-ramp. Practical, necessary, different. Present, as opposed to the weird mesh of past and future that is talking about their shared turf. He resettles in his seat, corner of his mouth going up.

"Comes with a nice office and an extremely long and never ending list of stuff the Research department is expected to singlehandedly solve despite having the least amount of people on it. Decent brains on the team, but quality over quantity was never my favourite paradigm."

Why not both, etc. "I'd ask for my usual consultation rate but I don't think they've invented that number yet. You thinking of joining the brain trust?"

[portalling]

“Depends. You offering me a job, Stark?”

— is the tongue-in-cheek question in return, probing around safer territory, even as Stephen does genuinely chew over that idea. And then admits, “I’ve been mulling over Forces versus Research. But as much as I can still conjure a sword and stab someone with it, I probably have to face the fact that I’m not the Sorcerer Supreme here, I’m just another mage.”

Which rankles a little. (Or a lot. That professional pride is stinging, rolling over in its grave.)

But even as a neurosurgeon, he’d put more of his time into research and studies and writing papers, rather than the day-to-day work of scalpels and blood. Considering himself advancing the big picture and the field as a whole, rather than saving one life at a time. It had been a constant point of contention between him and Christine. So, of all things, it seems he’s facing that very question again: where can Stephen Strange be of the most use? Where can he help the most people? Where are his skills best utilised?

And, with a kind of dawning realisation, he finds himself having to swallow the inherent discomfort of asking Tony Stark to join his team.

“I’d be useful in Research,” he says.

[propulsion]

Tony, having expected something different, tucks his chin in at the mention of some kind of split decision between joining Research or Forces.

Doesn't laugh. And the urge to kind of do so isn't because Dr. Strange isn't formidable in battle, or anything, never mind what amount of rift-nerfing he's been through. No, it's just the thought of this guy pulling guard duty alongside rectangles like Barrow and Abby, tolerating Flint's businesslike disinterest.

Fortunately, Tony doesn't have to do either himself nor Stephen the indignity of making a case.

"You'll like it more," is a consolation prize, and also a given. "Than Forces. Also I'm extremely bad at keeping track of what everyone is working on at any given time, and I just figure you're probably doing something right when I start getting complaints in my inbox."

He parts his hands. Tada. "Anything you wanna know?"

[portalling]

A tilt of his head, considering.

Stephen Strange is like a thrumming engine of tremendous intellectual energy with nowhere to direct it, devouring the books in this library and storing up knowledge, like a greyhound just waiting for the starting pistol to go off and to tear down the track. And blessedly, magically, here is Tony Stark to pull the trigger.

“I hear that Project Felandris has been,” how did Wysteria put it, “unattended for a while, and that it might be in my realm of interest as a rifter. Can you tell me about it? I’d like to dig through your prior notes.”

He’s still kicking himself a little for not having put two-and-two together before this. Mister Stark had been innocuous enough, simply one name in a pile of names and a tsunami of new information to process (Corypheus? Antiva? Nevarra? wait, there were zombies in Nevarra?) such that it had slid him by. He hadn’t been expecting to see a familiar face here; but here it is, and here is Tony Stark providing him with a potential direction. All Stephen’s ever wanted is direction.