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

[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.