faderift | player plot: when my time comes around, pt. 2.5.

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player plot: when my time comes around, pt. 2.5.

WHO: Stephen Strange, Tony Stark, Viktor, Wysteria de Foncé, feat. James Flint, Yseult, and sundry!
WHAT: A sleepless month.
WHEN: First week of August
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Partially open! Within are some closed threads for time travel solutions and geniusing, but feel free to use this post as a catch all if you wish to RP about time travel and sciencing or talking to people about time travel and sciencing.

Something is happening!

And at first, who could possibly say what, with the research workrooms kept closed? But the sounds of other voices muffled on the other side can be picked up at just about any hour. Eventually, this becomes more erratic, but only because there is the sound of metal grinding, clanking, and quiet conversation drifting and pattering up through the lyrium-glowing stone passageways that funnel down into the basement of the Gallows.

Eventually, an announcement is made, and the cause for at least four of the Research division being utterly consumed by work becomes apparent. Do feel free to stop by, whether to register your disapproval, make sure they are eating, or to lavish upon them your tearful gratitude, but don't expect to stay too long regardless.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Not that Mobius necessarily wants to distract someone who might, by some wild offchance, be able to actually pull this off. But he's not sure how much he'll be able to help, really, and also there's a certain mania to all of this that he doesn't really like.

Is it all that different from his reaction, the books and books and books that Viktor called him out on, trying to learn a little bit more about anything and everything until it all felt like it was pouring out of his head? Is this how damned annoying he seemed to everyone else around him? And damn it all, now that he's attempting to help this harebrained scheme, is he all that different from Stephen now?

He leans over, hands flat on the desk. "You don't have your Time Stone here. You might have been researching magic here since the day you landed on our doorstep, but our magic and your magic back home are fundamentally different. And you yourself said it might be too much power." For one person, which this is not just one person. Mobius is choosing to overlook that part. "You really think this could work?"

Genuine question.

"Do you really think it should?"

Also genuine.

Is it more reassuring if he answers too quickly or too slowly? The word is already on the tip of his tongue, but that heartbeat of a pause is merely Stephen trying to assess what’s the most socially-acceptable response, and what will make him seem least like some wild-eyed irrational madman.

And so it comes after a brief, thoughtful beat. His voice steady and precise as a scalpel, unwavering as his hands once hadn’t wavered.

“Yes,” he says, “and yes. I know you read about the Blip back in New York — they didn’t really publish the nitty-gritty of how it was accomplished, but did I ever mention,”

he hadn’t, not yet,

“that I’m only alive here today because of something like this? I was on the other end of this. I was dead, I was dust, and Tony Stark brought me back. I set the job in motion and he finished it. So if anyone can re-learn how to do it again in a second universe, it’s us.”

(Arrogant. Hubris. Those ravens, pecking and pecking at him.)

"He also died for it." Just pointing out what does not need pointed out. "And we don't have the same resources here." Which he had already pointed out to Stark, who did seem to understand the concern but is also too smart and too Thedosian worldly for his own good.

Feels like a case of desperation. And he understands that. Riftwatch has never felt so small, so fragile. Is this really all it takes to bring them low? An army who lost the same number would barely feel it (fighting force wise).

"We can rebuild from this. We don't have to tinker with the dominion of gods just because we're all sad about it."

“Strictly speaking, no one has to do anything. But that doesn’t mean we have to sit on our hands doing nothing, either. My world lived under the heel of that grief for five years, rebuilding, learning to move on, before they managed to saddle up and correct the mistake — I like to think we’re just faster about working the problem this time. Now that we know it’s possible.”

This had started off as debate. Stephen’s pretty sure it was debate, anyway: question-and-answer, picking each others’ brains, something he and Mobius have done cheerfully for so many long months now, but there’s a rising edge of something in the conversation, some faintly bristling tension in the disagreement. Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation, the late hour, the touchy subject, those memories of Arlathan rolling around in his skull, or all of the above.

“Isn’t it at least worth the try? We have to try before giving up. They deserve that much. The attempt.”

More words rattling in his head, the ghost of a voice saying: Even if I die, I’d just rather die trying to do something about it.

Too prescient. Too soon. The rest of them ought to try to do something about it, too.

"At what cost?"

The process has already started; it's far too late to stop anything now. He can stand in the way of a rumbling, rolling carriage, horses whipped and frantic, and be run over. Or he can stand aside.

No reason he can't put up some fight first before he steps out of the way.

"How long do we work at this, and how many tests do we run, before we decide it's safe enough to actually attempt? How many people do we risk on this? When mages need more power, the draw of blood ends up awfully tempting. Do we risk bringing that into the equation?" So like maybe don't tell him about the dragon blood, hm...

"Do we risk our souls trying to play god to fix this one thing--and then, what if it works? It works, they're saved from ever being ambushed in the first place. And then what do we do? Do we keep going back? Fixing ever mistake instead of living with it the way we were meant to? What gives us the right to meddle? How do we agree on what to change when we don't know the outcome of those changes?" He leans closer. "It's too much power, even if it does work."

What gives us the right, Mobius asks, and it’s too much power, he says, and it’s the same worries which nip at the doctor when he’s trying to sleep, when he’s stewing over his past decisions, wondering if he made the right call.

But he’s always been playing God. He’s been playing God ever since he first picked up a scalpel and decided to do something about it. Even earlier: ever since he helplessly watched his little sister drown, bashing his hands bloody against the frozen lake ice, and decided to do something about it next time.

“Do we risk our souls? Yes. A thousand times, yes,” Stephen says without missing a beat. He’s straightened in his seat, sliding backwards, away from the stacks of texts to look straight at Mobius’ gaze instead. He hasn’t needed to back up this decision with Tony or the others since they were right here with him, but it turns out he’s ready, the words rising up as if this were his thesis defense.

“I told you once that I carried the Time Stone. For years. I know the temptation, believe me, and I have the discipline to not rewind for any frivolous setback: the trick is to know when it’s worth it. This? This feels like the Snap for Riftwatch. It’s worth it.

“And relatedly, there’s also— in matters like this, there’s a concept called an absolute point. A fixed point in the timeline, something which must always happen, and the impartial universe will always find a way to ensure that happens no matter how tragic.”

In another world, in another universe with another Stephen Strange, Christine Palmer’s death was that absolute point. Happening over and over and over despite his attempts to change it, bashing his hands bloody against fate.

“So. I’ve weighed this question, Mobius, and it’s a worthy question to ask — I spent my professional life as a sorcerer safeguarding the timeline from undue meddling — but, frankly, this time, I think it’s due some meddling. If it turns out that Granitefell was an absolute point and it’s going to happen no matter what, then, fine. Maybe I’ll accept it. But not without trying first.”

"You don't get to make that call." There's a flare of--more than just the indignation that would crop up when he simply disagrees with Stephen. Simmering anger, maybe. One person doesn't get to just up and decide that risking their souls is worth it, and not even simply theirs but those of everyone lost as well. Stark doesn't get to decide that for everyone, either. That Flint's apparently been convinced is just--

Well, it should speak more to their desperation, maybe, except Flint has never struck him as a desperate man. Something about all of this is convincing, somehow. Even if it's just the numerical practicality of losing so many of Riftwatch.

It simply feels like meddling in things far greater than they were ever meant to. If man gets dominion over time, over who lives and who dies by simply turning back the clock, then--what's the point? What's the point. Of his own faith, in a sense. If there's no need to worry about what comes after. If all mistakes can always be fixed with no learning and growing. It's a frightening, lonesome concept.

"And if you can figure out how to do it, so can others. And then we start playing chess with magisters in a whole new dimension, and are you gonna stick around to safeguard this timeline? Is there anyone other than yourself keeping your arrogance in check?"

Well, I have made the call, so,

but thankfully Stephen reins himself back in time, biting down on that whiplash sting of irritated pride before it explodes. His arrogance has always been his undoing. But he doesn’t want this night to end with the two of them shouting at each other and maybe Mobius throwing a book at him and his closest friendship here fracturing. For a surreal moment, he finds that he misses the Ancient One; misses Wong. Maybe Doctor Strange always needs that level questioning voice at his shoulder, a Jiminy Cricket keeping him in check.

He is, after all, a man who once rewrote the entire world’s memories just because a kid asked nicely —

Stephen sighs. It’s not anger; he just sounds tired. “If that does happen. Wouldn’t you rather that we crack it before Tevinter does? It seems there’s already been inroads. Riftwatch saw their own future. A Magister did some sort of time travel at Redcliffe, years ago. And in the meantime, we don’t even know if this will work. If it does work, we don’t know if we’ll be able to reproduce it afteward, so arguing about it now is putting the cart before the horse. Maybe the overload of magical power will make the Magrallen explode and be unusable afterward. God knows.”

His gaze drifts down and lands on the corner of his desk: the small chapbook of Orlesian poetry sitting there, bound in twine. He hadn’t shoved it in a drawer and out of sight, out of mind; being within sight is the whole point. It sits there like a thorn in his paw, a perpetual reminder, a way to keep stubbornly propelling himself forward. Pressing down on the metaphorical wound until it hurts, and it reminds him.

“I can abide trying and failing, and trying and failing again,” he says quietly, “but I can’t abide doing nothing, Mobius.”

Honestly, he's expecting a fight. Maybe even antagonizing partly on purpose, to incite one. Not in any physical sense, of course, but a verbal knock down drag out, because fuck, if he can't yell at Andraste enough to make Her ears bleed on the other side of heaven, then maybe he should yell at anyone else and see if he's even heard.

It feels better, doesn't it? Anger, bitterness, than the slog of grief and despondency that slows the world to a crawl and numbs everything down.

But Stephen doesn't get angry, doesn't rise to his own defense by putting up an equal fight. He lets the exhaustion get to him, to show it, and explains himself simply. Mobius is only distantly aware of Redcliffe--and the thought of the Herald stings, even now. Another chosen, another good person slain with no help from on high. Like she was an afterthought. Or a mistake.

Not rising to it almost gets him angrier, like if he could just keep pressing, then he might get the kind of reaction he wants out of this exchange, but he can't keep that kind of energy up. Not against someone he genuinely likes. Their spirited debates, the way Stephen tends to say the most wildly distressing things that could come out of a mage's mouth like it's the same as lighting a candle, the secrets shared. Not exactly wise to try and piss off someone who's probably going to be in charge of his care when the lyrium really starts taking toll.

Or to piss off someone he wants to help when the end of his days come. Which. That needs to come up, now that he's spoken to Ellie, and now is either the best time or the worst time.

Ha. Time. One thing at a--

"Moving forward," he says slowly, deliberately, trying to ground himself without grinding the words out, "the way the Maker intended is not doing nothing."

It's how everyone else on this godforsaken planet has to deal with it. Are they special and get to do otherwise?

Are they? (He can hear the echoes of a demon with a mocking voice, did you think you were special?)

He feels like he creaks when he moves, leans back, takes his hands off the desk. They're all so damned tired. Stephen's gaze tracks to a book that isn't actually part of the collection. Not, he thinks, from the library. Which means it must be a reminder. Of someone. Because they have all lost someone.

When he takes a breath, it feels like razorwire. "I get it." Quiet. "I miss hi--" A stutterstop. "Them." Correction. Course correction. But his tongue suddenly feels like lead and like his throat is stoppered up, with the only further sound he's capable of making being a short hum. He does miss Abby; he does miss Barrow. But he misses one like there's a leaking hole that can't be patched. Mobius clears his throat to little avail, sits heavily at his desk.

"Them," eventually, trying again, "too. Don't think that I don't. Guess I just gotta be the one to worry about the metaphysical consequences, if there are any."

Perhaps it would even have been useful to shout at each other, like venting the pressure from a steam valve, but Stephen’s never been hot-headed in that particular way. His quick spitefulness means occasional snide sarcasm, occasionally magically punishing a stranger who’s pissed him off, but not yelling at his friends. Not over this, which he wants so desperately to work. (He wants to be useful. Diminished as he is, he wants to believe that he can accomplish this, can bring some of his hyperspecialised experience and skills to bear. If this isn’t the right occasion in which to use a time sorcerer, then when the fuck else would it be?)

“I value you worrying about it,” he says. Admits, then, “Wong used to be the one to remind me of the metaphysical consequences. The real Wong, not the simulacrum you met. It’s good to ask the question and to at least consider the implications, even if I’m still a stubborn bastard at the end.”

The tension’s punctured a little, and so he relaxes a little too, an elbow against the table. “I’d been on the verge of playing that card, don’t you want to see them back, but it’s unfair — I know you must. More than me, you’ve been here longer.”

And oblivious as Stephen can sometimes be, he did catch that little hitch in Mobius’ sentence, the abandoned word, the pivot. If they were more like strangers he might let that lie and not be nosy, but they aren’t, and he’s curious. He’d asked Derrica the same thing.

“Him. Anyone in particular?”

Mobius is difficult to rile up, and even then, it tends to come out as pettiness, his own snideness, bitterness. It doesn't tend to lead to anger. But these are extraordinary times, and dealing with extraordinary events. He can rant and rave in a chapel full of innocent bystanders at every god that's ever existed, but doing it to someone who's physically there needs to be something egregious.

"You've all managed to convinced the heads that this is a worthwhile thing to try no matter what, so it isn't like anything I have to say is gonna change your mind miraculously. And maybe their spirits are sitting in the Fade bored out of their skulls, or maybe they haven't gone anywhere at all, or maybe they've simply disappeared, dissipated. There are theories what happens to Rifters." He's not a Mother in her chantry fretting over the souls of her flock, but if anyone's going to worry about what this all might mean, it'll be him.

"The Maker doesn't make miracles happen, anyway. People make miracles. The definition of miracle might just be different for some people."

Mobius gives a little scoff at what Stephen almost-but-didn't say. Yeah. Unfair. Now that would've been petty. It doesn't really deserve a comment. The question, though.

There's a wolf's tooth under his shirt, dangling around his neck. Jude hadn't initially seen it as the gift that it was when he was given the same thing. It was mortifying but hilarious at the same time. He's not great at Satinalia gifts. He'll need to be better in the future. For Stephen, now, but...maybe for Jude. If it works.

He reaches out a hand and lightly taps the little bound chapbook. "Anyone in particular?" Volleyed back.

Oh, touché. He should’ve expected that one.

Stephen’s expression freezes on his face, with the kind of automatic instinct to brush it off with his usual bland smile and lying through his teeth, because it’s irrelevant and it shouldn’t even matter, he doesn’t have the right to feel any sort of way about this,

and yet. If he can ask Mobius for this piece of personal information, digging his greedy fingers into that wound and expecting an honest answer, then he’ll just have to answer honestly too.

“A friend,” Stephen says, even as he wonders: would she even have called him a friend in return? Is he allowed to think that? Christ, this is more difficult than he expected. He still feels ephemeral sometimes. (You’re not some special class of person no one’s going to get attached to, Strange.)

There’s a kind of unaccustomed hesitancy to the man now, weighing his words and trying not to make more of it than it is, trying to explain: “Gwenaëlle. She gave me a list of favoured poets, so I brought it back from Research’s trip to Val Royeaux. I kept meaning to drop it off, and then—”

Time ran out.

“I find it does wonders for focus. That and Cosima’s desk.”

Stephen actually answers. Honestly. Even through the difficulty of it. Which means more turnabout will be fair play.

Of course, Mobius could be the one to take his own usual approach, the not answering but not lying. Deflecting and going about things sideways, avoiding at an angle. He's thinking about it.

"It's awful in the library, not having Abby around. I keep--forgetting myself now and then. Ask for her to help fetch something." She had been absolutely brutalized. At what point does a body just become a mound of flesh, stop being the person? Is a person only a person when a spirit inhabits it, gives it life and joy and wonder?

"A friend." Echoed back. Because that's what they were, friends. Nothing more than that. He can't think about the way Jude felt like the calmest, deepest ocean, or else he'll start getting all poetic. "Jude's pancakes haven't quite worked out just yet, but we're getting there. It's the ingredient ratio that's throwing us off."

And if that seems a little close, even in the distance he tries to keep, he has a good pivot to all this: "I didn't know what he wanted done with his body, but I'm not sure he cared all that much. What do you want done?"

Ah. Jude; and Stephen files that information away, but accepts the pivot almost gratefully, considering how dreadful he is with this sort of thing. Also because it’s such an unexpected question to turn to; he tilts his head, considering it. He’s been kicking himself over the fact that he didn’t know the burial practices for his charges, making a note to poll the population once all of this is less raw, and yet hadn’t really pondered it for himself yet.

“I’m not particularly spiritual,” he says. “Burial is customary in my family, and I’ve buried myself before,” Stephen you are such a fucked-up conversationalist sometimes, “but I don’t think I care much either way. It’s just meat; it’s not me anymore. But I do have a question, about the whole thing of demons possessing dead bodies— how common is it actually? Superstition or genuine risk? If the latter, I’d be fine subjecting to the local practice.”

Burn his body like an Andrastian, keep the intruders out. He’s used to them too often as-is.

"You're gonna be the reason my heart decides to just give out one of these days," muttergrumbled. Because we don't have time to unpack whatever nonsensical and really startling aside Stephen just uttered. Come back around to it, at some point, yes, because Maker forbid he leave any stone unturned.

Ellie had been upset by the same idea. Of the things that can happen to a body after the mortal coil has been shuffled off. Mobius heaves a sigh.

"Look," which is never a great way to start, "if you weren't a Rifter, and if you weren't in Riftwatch? I'd say the risks are extremely low. Being what you are and doing what you do, on the other hand..." When they run around fighting Venatori and maleficar, when they interact with the Fade enough as it is? "Better to not take the much higher risk."

“Hmm. Alright.” A thoughtful pause, shifting to steeple his hands thoughtfully beneath his chin. Suddenly remembering the Ancient One hanging on in her very last moments, spinning ten seconds into a thousand simply because she wasn’t ready to let go.

“If it happens, your first move should be to fix it, of course,” Stephen says, gesturing to the workroom around them, indicating the mad ambitious mission they’re currently on. “Bring me back. Undo it. Do what you can. But if that fails: then yes, burn me. That’s fine. I’ll leave instructions.”

"Pretty sure you'll be burned first and then it'll be fixed, if this time around is any indication." Flatly. Like this is just typical shenanigans to expect. "Also? Pretty sure we're not doing all this for just one person. But then that gets into questions about how many people is worth it, and I am not up for debating that hypothetical right now."

Or maybe ever. (Okay, he is almost always up for debating fucked up hypotheticals. Just definitely not now.)

"I'd like you and Ellie to be in charge of taking care of me when I go. I'll have some instructions in my notebook, but it won't be much. Burn me up. Don't really care so much about my ashes. Distribute my things as seen fit. I'm easy like that." Also like it's no big deal. Like it's something normal and casual to say. "I'm only talking about when I die. Not if anything else happens." Things that Stephen knows; things that Ellie doesn't know.

"If you're up for it."

Oh, Stephen thinks, caught off-guard.

Unofficial verbal directives are one thing: they’re just discussing, the way that he and Mobius discuss so many things under the sun. But Mobius purposefully appointing him and Ellie to be in charge of his post-mortem affairs, in specific, jolts him. Makes it oddly official. It’s an easy enough thing to agree to, it’s not like Mobius has an expansive estate to dispose of — but it is, too, a responsibility and a sacred one.

“Yes,” he says, “of course. Glad to. Well, not glad but— you know what I mean.”

There’s a beat. He hasn’t mentioned this aloud to anyone else before, but: “There’s a note in my bedroom. Always under the stack of books on the desk, beneath Beyond the Veil: Spirits and Demons. I don’t own much, mostly it just says to distribute my few belongings back to Riftwatch and I’ll add the request for a pyre, but the same goes for you. If you’re up for it. I’d trust you and Tony to do whatever’s right.”

Funny: even back in New York, he doesn’t have that much to arrange. All of his riches were long-since sold off, penthouse and grand piano sold and Lamborghini totalled, pieces of his old life carved away and disposed of, traded in for a monastic existence. The sling ring and his Cloak of Levitation would presumably go back to the Masters of the Mystic Arts. What’s he left with, in the end? An expensive wristwatch. That’s about it.

"Yeah. Also gladly-but-not." With a brief wince of a smile. None of this is easy. None of this is fair. It's sliding back into a pinch of exhausted malaise, where the anger at least felt so much better in that it was so much brighter and more alive.

"She doesn't know about-" He makes a short sweeping motion across his face. "-what'll happen if I don't kick the Maker's milk bucket, but that can be a problem for another time. I--"

know what she wants done, which isn't something someone her age should have ever had to worry about in the first place, he doesn't say. But it's clear something grips him around the heart, and he waits a few breathless beats, blinking it out.

"You got anything spiritual, religious, faith-based you want done or said?" Is where he goes instead. "Obviously keep everything intended written down, just...it never sounds like many of you Rifters keep much faith. I don't know if that means anything."

He shakes his head, possibly a bit too quickly for tact. “No. Not particularly spiritual, as I mentioned. Just say honest things about me, and that’ll be enough.

“Maybe it is curious, though, why so many of us are faithless heathens. I don’t really know if there’s a connecting thread besides that in my world, at least, I suspect people went through some religious crises once they saw other gods descending from the firmament and trying to kill them.”

Maybe this technically isn’t the right time to discuss end-of-life affairs, either, when Stephen’s running on fumes and 97% of his attention’s hardwired to the conundrum of time travel and breaking reality, and not petty things like food or drink or sleep or companionship. But, also— when the hell else would they talk about it? No time’s gonna be the right time to discuss wills.

Or religion.

“I’m not…” Stephen starts, stops. He doesn’t especially want to discuss this. He never wants to discuss this. But he’s just tired enough that his walls are crumbling, and a piece slips out. “My father was intensely religious. Closed-minded, fire-and-brimstone judgment. He and I didn’t get along. So I went in another direction.”

"I'm sorry."

What he means, what he tries to mean, is something along the lines of sorry your father was like that or something pithy about fathers and sons, as though he has any experience about that. And he doesn't, not really, besides from observation, and even that's not been overly much. Obviously closed-minded is bad. The fire and the brimstone are slightly out of his understanding, but it sounds like a more, hm, active form of punishment.

Does that make this version of religion and godliness and afterlives better? Or worse for knowing so much of it is actually certain to an extent?

He's sorry, too, that he's bringing this all up. As he'd said to Ellie, if they don't talk about all of this now, then when? Any of them could die tomorrow. Any of them could be part of the next Granitefell. Catch an arrow between the ribs. Heart giving out. Anything. This entire plan could backfire and wipe out a good bit of the research team. But it's shit timing.

They can joke about it, through the exhaustion and grief and anger and numbness, but it's so damn hard. It simply feels heavy. He flexes a hand, a motion he can't feel save for the muscles and tendons up into his arm, and thinks about his rage at the heavens. Sometimes it's hard not to take what's really random chance as some kind of personalized attack. Is it all just another terrible event to weather, or is it a sign to give up?

"Andraste chose you all, and I just don't understand why it doesn't seem to make much difference." Unless, of course, Andraste didn't choose anyone.

There’s the rub, isn’t it?

There’s so much to discuss here — and so many ambiguities, too, with the edge of spirituality Stephen absorbed via osmosis from the other sorcerers, and learning at the elbow of the Ancient One — but it’s not a can of worms he wants to open at this exact moment. It’s complicated. It’s also not strictly relevant to the problem immediately ahead of them.

Either he’s glad he mentioned it to Mobius, or he hates it, or maybe both at once.

He’s shifted in his seat, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. There’s a headache brewing, or perhaps he’s had one this whole time. “If we pull off this miracle,” he points out, “I think your faith in Andraste’s choice and our faith in ourselves will be well-validated, either way.”

Miracles are for man to perform, not for the Maker to provide. It's one of those vexing little details. If they can pull this off, does it actually go against the Maker, if it's something they are able to do and is not strictly against the word of the Chant? (The Chant, he is reminded, that was written by man's hands, and translated and re-cobbled together so many times that it's nearly impossible to know what the real truth of the Chant is. Just look at the mess that's Threnodies.)

He looks at the little book of poems. Presses a hand to his chest to feel the necklace press to his skin. Pulling off something that could be a miracle, even if it seems like it flies in the face of logic, common sense, reality, decency; even if it feels like playing god with forces they were never meant to dip their hands into. Rewarding faith. Has he got it all backwards?

Seems like the kind of thing, ten years ago, he would've been called on to stop. And surely, surely sixteen people can't make or break their resistance. That's a drop in the bucket to everyone else slaughtered over the years. Do they get to do this? Do they get to try?

In the end, they will each of them be left alone with the things that they have done and be judged on that.

And if he doesn't try to save good people...

"What are you gonna do if it works?"

“Take a nap,” Stephen says immediately, without missing a beat, because he’s at least self-aware enough to know how much he’s unravelling without rest. At Kamar-Taj, he’d used to double-up by astral projecting in his sleep to keep his studies going; here, he doesn’t have that luxury.

“High-five Tony and then sleep for a week, probably. Deliver that book. Ask for a raise. I prefer not to count my eggs before they’ve hatched, though, so— one thing at a time.”

To that end…

He glances over the tables of books and frenzied scribbled notes, and sends Mobius a level, assessing look. Remembers the broad shape of the thing that Research have outlined on that project wall, and what they’ve projected to be the necessary ingredients for the journey through time. They’re fine on mages, but —

“If it does work, we’ll need someone with magic nullification abilities. We haven’t a volunteer yet.”

Hint, hint.

Mobius lets out a breath that's laugh-adjacent at the answer. Fair enough all around. If it works and this miracle gets pulled off, maybe let the time magic scientists slap their names on famous papers and live lives of riches and glory. They'd deserve it. For all that Mobius knows, he doesn't know a lot of shit about this. (General knowledge. Viktor had not been unkind regarding his desire to learn a little about everything rather than dedicate himself to any one thing specifically. Still, the lack gets to him at times.)

It's when Stephen lands that serious (but not stern) look, looking, assessing, doing mental calculations that had at least briefly been set aside for their conversation, that Mobius starts to worry. And he gives a single startled blink at the suggestion.

And pushes back against the memory of explaining his situation, the situation of all partaking Templars, ex- or no, to Stephen. Since their powers have incredible use.

"What do you figure you need that for?" And then, in the same breath: "In case something goes wrong and the whole thing needs shut down." He rolls his shoulders. "Sure, I can stand around and keep vigil on your wily magical affront to all that's holy."

Because obviously that's what Stephen is asking him to do.

--except. Surely. Surely it is, right? But Stark's message, briefly argued with, when he'd asked for a few good people that were needed, hadn't he implied a little more involvement than that...? If Mobius starts to suddenly look a lot less sure about what he just said, it's fine it's fine it's fine.

player plot: when my time comes around, pt. 2.5.

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