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

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

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.

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A twitch at the corner of his mouth, a kind of rueful grimace-smile. He’s done his own share of blunt and blunt, so he doesn’t sound offended. Just dry: “Nope,” Strange says. “Car accident. Much less exciting.”

And as a bit of tit-for-tat, a way to ghost around the subject, he gestures to the scar across her chin: “How about you? Battle?”

It takes a moment for Clarisse to process his answer, and then—"Oh."

Wow. Stupid of her, but she'd almost forgotten that bad shit can be as mundane as a car crash.

"No," she says, in answer to his question. "I was fighting something, but it wasn't really a battle." Just a monster, down in the Labyrinth. It's not something she particularly likes remembering, but she did ask for it by bringing up the scars on his hands first.

His shoulder tips into a shrug. They’re both walking around those particular memories, but that’s more than fine: it’s easier to stick to safer ground, steadier footing.

“That must be pretty par for the course, for the daughter of Ares,” Strange says. “Fighting, I mean. It’s still relatively new to me. ‘Do no harm’ and all that.”

Which is ironic, considering who he’s talking to.

"So you're like an actual doctor," Clarisse says. "Not just the PhD kind. That's cool."

That's gotta be useful around here, she figures. Sure, there's magic healing in Thedas and all, but she can't lie and say it doesn't make her feel better knowing there are at least a few people around who know modern first aid. And it makes the very limited supply of nectar and ambrosia she's been squirreling away in her room seem like less of a huge deal.

“Yep. Non-practicing,” Strange flutters a hand, a gesture to those scars, the car accident must have been worse than it seemed at a glance, “but I still remember the fundamentals. So maybe ‘medieval GP’ is actually my future career path, who knows.”

Which, actually. He’s been wondering about this and maybe a warrior like her would know— “How’s the healing in this world? Is it too much to hope they can wave a wand and automatically magic away entire wounds?”

"I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to use you for, like, field first aid and stuff."

Clarisse is just assuming. She hasn't actually needed to visit the infirmary since she arrived, though she knows that's just down to luck. Still. There's a fucking war going on; it's not like Riftwatch is just going to say "cool, don't need you" to an actual fucking doctor, even if his methods aren't exactly the same.

His question has her snorting, though—"Oh, yeah, magic wands. Lemme just call Glinda the Good Witch over here to demonstrate."

“Sooo, that’s a no,” he says, dryly. And not without a touch of mild disappointment— it’d have been so much easier if the healing magic here were above and beyond the rest, sealing up cuts before one’s eyes, rolling back the clock on grievous injuries.

“Bad luck. Figures the rifts wouldn’t have dropped us in a world with air conditioning and preternatural healing.”

Ugh, don't remind Clarisse of air conditioning. She rifted in in the middle of summer. At least these days the weather's cooling off.

"I mean, when I got here someone offered me a healing potion." Which she didn't accept, for the record. "So there's magic involved somehow. But I haven't been out of the Gallows enough to see how it really works."

It had been fine, at first—she hadn't wanted to talk to anyone, much less go on missions. But by this point, it's clear in her voice that she's itching to start doing War Stuff.

Which is, really, the opposite of his own approach to the missions. The moment Strange is allowed out to roam, then he’s going to roam, like someone leaving the door cracked open and the cat goes speeding opportunistically outside for a grasp at freedom.

“Is your quarantine not over yet?” he asks. “Don’t get me wrong, the Gallows are large enough that I don’t feel like I’m under house arrest, but— cabin fever’s still a goddamned problem when you’re used to having the world as your playground. I used to be able to hop across the continent for lunch. Being grounded’s a pain.”

"It's been over," Clarisse says with a dismissive wave of one hand. "I didn't want to sign up right away, so I just hung out and pissed people off instead."

It might sound weird, for the daughter of a war god not to be all gung-ho about throwing herself into a war, and she seems to be aware enough of the weirdness to look a little bit ashamed of it. "I know what happens to conscriptions, that's all."

“Does that really—” There’s a flicker of surprise across the man’s face, Clarisse facing him with a thought which honestly hadn’t even occurred to him. They’d been lucky, back home. All of those heroic warriors had signed up for the battle and astonishingly few had died. He hasn't had to be faced with what happens to conscripts.

“Well, that’s an idea. Clearly I’ve got my next research project: reading up on Riftwatch casualty rates and how they’re distributed. Hopefully it doesn’t mean rifters are the local equivalent of redshirts since the universe can just throw more of us in.” Does Star Trek exist in her universe? Either way.

“I think we do have an obligation to do something useful here,” Strange muses, “but I don’t think that means you have to rush in before you're ready. Demi-god of war or not. I doubt a reluctant soldier makes for a very effective one.”

Okay, but... what if being a soldier is the only way you know how to be useful? Huh?

"I'm ready," she insists. "I just needed time to get used to being here. I mean, before I fell through the sky, I was just going to college, so—" So this whole thing is weird in a way she hadn't been expecting.

"You get it, though, right?" Since he was just hanging out being a doctor, or whatever.

“Well…” Doctor Strange trails off; almost looks a little sheepish at having to explain this part. His world’s gotten so accustomed to turning an unblinking eye to all the madness and magic running around, but he’s too-aware that it sounds completely batshit to anyone not used to it. He had been that person, once upon a time, with cold hard skepticism.

But she’s the literal daughter of a god, so maybe her world’s similar enough—

“I was a doctor, but I was also a sorcerer. Part of an arcane order called the Masters of the Mystic Arts, dedicated to defending the world against paranormal and extradimensional threats. So this sort of thing is… I mean, I won’t say common exactly, the elves are new and so is the war, but it is up my alley.” A beat, a feeble attempt at relating: “What were you majoring in?”

Clarisse is taking in his explanation, nodding. A sorcerer, okay. Magic, she's familiar with that. She's got a bit of her own—less now than before she fell through the rift, but still enough to consider herself pretty capable.

So... not just a doctor, then. His story sounds more like something out of her world than she expected.

And his question makes her laugh. "Uh... undeclared?"

Not that his question matters anymore, really; those shreds of normalcy like midterms and exams are far away, left behind in another universe entirely. But Strange still gives a rueful smile at her laugh. “I guess it’s ‘punching demons in the face’ now, whatever it would’ve been before.”

Down the hall, a harried servant passes by the pair, having to squeeze past them in the corridor while lugging a couple heavy pails of water. Strange steps back against the wall and out of the way. Aware, then, that he should probably stop clogging up the hallways and monopolising this girl’s time when all she’d done was almost trip over him for it.

“Alright. Figure I should probably let you get going — I think it’s almost mealtime — but it was nice to meet you, Clarisse. I expect we’ll be seeing each other around on assignments, anyway.”

"I like punching demons," Clarisse says with a shrug. It's fine with her if she never goes back to school. (Going back home, well, that's another thing.)

She steps back to let the servant pass by, leaning up against the opposite wall from Strange, and nods at his assessment that a) she should probably go, because b) it's almost mealtime. She is hungry.

"Okay. See you around, Doc." She gives him a little salute as she turns to continue on her way.

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

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sry shaking off the rust

no worries!

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poss yours to wrap?

👍