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

[sprent]

Gela, unthinking, looses a small giggle. Embarrassing! Reassuringly, "I'm not goin' to call you that." She may privately think that the Rifters can be an odd bunch at times, but she wouldn't go about calling them strange to their faces... that's a bit much, "How about your name? Mine is Gela."

She holds out her hand, to shake. Not the one with the blood lotus bottle in it, mind, even though his reaction is a positive one. "It can mean either," she says, and smiles, "Dependin' on how much you add to the tea."

Ha ha.

[portalling]

Her words ping something, some buried recollection in his memories, a voice saying Oh, we’re using our made-up names? but when Strange tries to remember how Spider-man had initially introduced himself, the details are gone. Like it’s smudged charcoal. But he doesn’t have time to think about it too closely, because he’s distracted by the misunderstanding, amused.

“No, that is my name.” Why does this keep happening to him? “Doctor Stephen Strange. A pleasure, Gela. No surname or family name?”

Like Cher or Bono or Beyonce, but he can’t crack that joke again, let alone with someone unfamiliar. He’s realising the single names more common here with everyday people than back home.

He reaches out and takes Gela’s hand, gives it a firm and professional squeeze; his grip is sure but there are ugly scars running down the lines of his fingers and the back of his hands. (And he hasn’t forgotten about the drugs, there’s still a pin in that—)

[sprent]

Well then.

Gela makes a funny face but supplies her own back to him: "Baynrac," without thinking. He won't recognise it. There's no reason that he would but it still makes her heart skip a beat, to have said aloud something that she is not supposed to tell people about.

Pushing through it, ignoring the clammy feeling on her palms when they shake hands, she grasps for anything to shift the conversation toward instead. They best be off the business of names. Their scarred hands are not unlike each other: Gela's are smoother, but she bears old, jagged skin along her knuckles. She notices his. "Looks like we've both been through the wars."

[portalling]

His expression remains reassuringly blank throughout the introduction of her surname, just a blank nod, complete non-recognition; although he does file it away, with that steel-trap memory where he’s been noting as many details as he can recall about everyone he’s been meeting here. Faces, names, other worlds, he’ll practically need a rolodex to keep it all straight.

The distraction works, though, and he glances down where Gela’s looked at their near-matching scars. He arches his own eyebrow.

“Literally, maybe,” Strange says. Having let go, he flexes his hand self-consciously. “The elfroot’s for this,” he adds, voice carefully breezy and neutral. “Nerve pain. It’s been a few years. Doesn’t really get better.”

A beat, then: “Does that mean you’re a fighter? In Forces?”

[sprent]

Gela clucks her tongue in sympathy, and takes her hands back too, keeping them loose at her sides, hopefully not so awkward. "Maker," she laughs, "No, not me. I'm in Diplomacy. Much better at talkin' my way out of things than I am fightin'."

And completely unwilling to pick up a weapon besides, shh. She sizes him up for a moment, determining, and then asks, "Could you be in Research, I wonder?"

He looks like a studious person to her.

[portalling]

“What gave it away?” Sardonic, a little, but gently so. Strange tucks his hands behind his back, spine straight. He does have the look: built tall and lean, fingers long and delicate even besides the scars.

“Still making up my mind, actually. I could probably go into Forces if I felt like it. Slinging fireballs, cracking eldritch whips, it’s all old hat,” he’s joking, probably not realising how terrifying those things sound to someone not really accustomed to magic, Stephen,

“but it’s not really what I’m passionate about. I’m more interested in how everything ticks under the surface. Research, as you say.”

[sprent]

Gela laughs over a sudden wash of dread: this is what she finds the hardest to bear of mages. Knowing the extent of their power and that they can unleash it at any moment; should he 'sling' a fireball at her right now...

She's already regretting all the little jokes she's made.

"Good," she says, forcing herself to sound both warm and friendly still. She's had much practice at it over the years. "We're very glad to have you here." On our side. Gulp! "I am not from Kirkwall, but I am from here. If you need anythin' else, want to know the use of a plant or two, I could help you with that."

lol whoops i forgot he was holding a jar, fixes that

[portalling]

“It’s appreciated. Genuinely.” One hand behind his back, the other cradles the jar against his chest for added support, not trusting himself to hold it without suddenly losing his grip strength and dropping it. It’d be just the thing, accidentally shattering the damn jar right after Gela had been kind enough to hand it to him.

And Strange doesn’t notice how ill-at–ease she is. That laugh and that smile is warm, and he’s bad enough with people that it’s easy enough to take on face value.

“The plants aren’t the same here — it’s not just a naming thing, they’re physically different from anything I’ve ever seen — but the days of the week are, somehow, the same. Fascinating differences, really. But this’ll teach me the difference between a painkiller and a poison, so. Thank you.”

And now he knows how to get a little high later. Y’know, as a treat.

jarring experience

[sprent]

"Any time." Truly. She's happy to help people out is truthful, but in this particular circumstance it also endears her to him. Makes her less of a target. Gela has been doing this for years now, digging out spaces wherever she goes and making herself small inside of them. She is harmless and agreeable to all who come across her. It is exhausting, but it tends to work.

"Best keep movin'," she says. Need to come back later, when nobody is around! Just for a look, a snoop, to see what the infirmary is all about, and Strange need not worry why. "But good meetin' you. I hope the root helps, with the pain."

wrap!

[portalling]

“Until next time,” he says, mildly, because it’s a small organisation and relatively small set of towers and so they’re bound to rub elbows eventually and run into each other again. And the woman scurries off, and he duly turns back to poking around the infirmary and waiting for one of the local healers to show up; a little impatient, but resisting the urge to dig around too much. It’d be the quickest route to piss off a fellow professional by rearranging their workspace, even if they are probably medieval as hell and into, well, leeches or something.

And in the meantime that’s one more name and face of one more Riftwatch colleague, committed to memory, jotted down for later: Gela Baynrac.