faderift | he's keeping busy as he's bleeding stones, his machinations and his palindromes.

"I can't remember most of them," she supplies, feeling anxious as she watches his expression like a hawk for any minute changes. Even when she does see them they don't really help. She doesn't know what an arched eyebrow means when it comes from him.

This all makes sense, though. It was a period of profound stress. She listens attentively, trying to understand what these big, new concepts mean, like memory encoding. Very cautiously, hands clasped in her lap, Gela takes a breath in.

"What about... curses?"

His tangent could so easily lead into another — she's nearly starting it, we'd absolutely fucking never sell that to the mages — but he startles her into a laugh with at your first convenience and she flops backwards into the nearest pile of cushions in her conversation pit, pushing a hand through her hair.

“Ouais, sure, ” she says, gazing up at the ceiling and the finish on it that she'd spent several hours of her life going over the fine details of with the best that ducal money could buy. “I don't know if my uncle's was with all the others the Inquisition found, but he was missing for so long, probably not? Maybe?”

She squints her good eye.

“He showed up about when it was all kicking off. You'll have some of his records— Gervais Vauquelin.”

(Somewhere, there's a form he'd prepared for consenting to the study of a removed anchor limb.)

“I wasn't in the thick of it with mages, then.”

Edited 2024-01-02 07:27 (UTC)

The idea of Tony's theoretical bandage-rolling device gets a small smile from her, but it fades a bit as he continues. "We've been shrinking for a while," she says, after a short pause. "So in some ways heavier, in other ways ... I've just got to get really aggressive with prioritizing. I think once I settle in, I'll reach out to division members, see where their heads are at. It may not fully make the call for me, but worth knowing either way."

She looks down at what she's rolling so she can tuck in the ends in correctly. "I don't remember if I told you. The first time I came to Thedas I was sick. I was in the infirmary a lot. I think it means it's always a little more on my mind, I guess, than it would be for some people. We were still with the Inquisition then, things were different in a lot of ways."

It’s like two versions of Stephen Strange suddenly do very brief internal psychic battle in this moment: the doctor who remembers sitting in a chair very much like this and wants to scoff no, of course not, there’s no such thing as curses, every malady has a perfectly natural cause and anything else is mere superstition,

and then, in the back of his mind, a voice reminding himself gently: To show you just how much you don’t know.

Anything is possible. He does magic, for fuck’s sake.

So he reels himself back in, remembering where he is now. How much bigger the world is now. “Okay. Yeah, in fairness, that can happen too. What makes you think of curses?”

Edited 2024-01-10 04:44 (UTC)

Stephen’s already dived back in and started rustling through the papers after her mention of records, his photographic memory having remembered the shape of the signature and the firm, solid print more than anything else. GERVAIS V.

“He and Wysteria would’ve gotten along. No wonder you two do,” he says, moreso thinking aloud, as he flips through the papers again. The copies of related records are an especial treat: four years old, and yet Tony’s voice rings through it as if the words were penned only yesterday. The sorcerer can’t help the ghost of a smile which flickers across his face.

He hadn’t meant to ask this particular question, but those tangents—

He looks back up, from her uncle’s writing to the angle of Gwenaëlle’s cheek, her gaze turned skyward. “Would you ever chop it off? Your anchor. You have one of the oldest, as you’ve mentioned, and as is exhaustively documented here.”

“You hadn’t, no, but I read your notes on the blood plague, I was actually just refreshing my memory on that for rather obvious reasons—” The head healer glances back over his shoulder, to the desk and the stack of papers and reports he’s taken out on loan, but then pauses. Parses the particular way she’d phrased it; the way it had sounded like something specific to Cosima herself, and not something run rampant through the entire organisation, affecting templars and rifters alike.

“Unless— this was something separate.”

"Well," she hedges, knowing she might stumble over the words, because they're still so new to being spoken aloud, "I think of it because, a while ago now, somebody cast a spell on me against my will and it—uh, lead to the memory loss, so I... I wonder."

It can work like this, Gela peeling the story back layer by layer until they get to the raw, beating heart of the thing. She can do this.

She is quite still now, looking at the desk rather than him, like a child admitting to wrong-doing.

"No," she confirms. "Not blood plague, everyone got to enjoy that one together. This was." She exhales. "OK, do you want the long version, or the relevant-to-this-conversation version? I don't mind either, but I don't know how much of a side track you want to go down with me about it." It sounds like there's a substantial amount, but she's also fairly confident she can sum up the most critical bits.

Strange starts to wind a skein of bandages, automatically and thoughtlessly busying himself with his hands even as he mostly looks over at her, more of his attention riveted on Cosima herself.

“We’ve got time,” he says. “Also, I’m prone to side tracks, and I’m interested in medical things. Gimme the long version.”

She gives him a little, wry smile as if to say brace yourself, Strange, and says. "OK, I can't remember if we talked about it, but you were with us when we hopped between those Fade-versions of a bunch of rifters' worlds about a year ago, right? I remember seeing your Times Square, wild. So ... you probably didn't miss the other women hanging around with my face."

Depending where he was when, he could have encountered any combination of Alison, Sarah or Rachel; the Canadian soccer mom, the British con artist or the British evil corporate executive all different enough from Cosima to make an impression, presumably.

"I don't remember if I said at the time, while we were in there we were kind of goal-focused and Alison doesn't like people to say 'clone' in front of her, but ... yeah. Human cloning was viable as of the 1980s in my universe, and I'm the proof. Well. A fraction of the proof, anyway." She glances over to gauge. It probably says something that she truly can't remember if he knows this or not. It had been something so monumental at home, but as long as she's been in Thedas, she's mainly used to people not really getting why it's a big deal. It's made her more casual about it herself, in some ways. At least until she remembers she's talking to a medical doctor who actually understands what that would entail, for whom this will hit differently if it's news.

Gwenaëlle doesn't immediately move from where she's lain in cushions; doesn't immediately answer, so he could imagine that she hasn't heard him, or simply doesn't wish to. She's thinking of — we didn't always, you know, or any of the many other ceilings she's looked up at since her life changed, or all of those who came and went in the meanwhile. Not the rifters, but Thedosians— joined this cause and then left it, for whatever reason, to whatever end. Watching their retreating backs, or not, only hearing of it after the fact; all of them who could leave when she cannot.

“In the first year or so,” she says, eventually, “I wondered if Solas didn't already know how to remove the anchor without an axe.” A theory she has, over the years, largely kept to herself; it was a long time before she entirely let it go. (Now, she thinks: if he could have claimed that power for himself before he left, he would have done it.) “I thought— well, from the beginning, removing the anchor was never the most pressing goal of the Inquisition. When Trevelyan held the whole thing, alone, it was just. Hers to bear.”

Necessary.

“I thought in his position, I wouldn't tell anyone, either. Even now. What happens if everyone does that? My shard is one of the few strong enough to close most rifts alone. That hasn't become less pressing in the interim. It'd be...” She screws up her face, shaking her head though at this angle the gesture means little. “If it's the only option when we don't need them any longer— a conversation for then. It's one thing to allow that as an option for those who don't use them in the field.”

By her tone, more troubled than censorious, she's still not completely at ease with the idea of allowing that, voluntarily, though she adds conscientiously: “If it could have been cut out of that elf it killed, it should have been. And I'd rather have Poppell de Fonce down an arm than have us be down her, obviously.”

It just seems to her that perhaps those should be the only circumstances—

To Stephen’s irritation with himself, he realises he hadn’t actually been considering that angle. He’d instinctively been thinking about it in medical terms: the shard as cancerous tumour to be excised, to be cut out before it advanced too far and devoured too much of the body. Remembering Wysteria’s reasoning in cutting off her own arm: The anchor had become dangerous. They do that. They are quite capable of destroying the body they’ve been embedded in.

And what a dreadful shame it would be, if Mademoiselle Baudin were destroyed through it.

But in terms of a war: what does that do to their scrappy organisation, if they ever learn (if he ever learns) how to remove it safely without amputation? Both good and ill. It would remove the literal anchor keeping people here, and remove their only way of closing up rifts and holding their steadily-fraying world together at the seams. Like preventing incursions, and he thinks for the first time: perhaps that’s the difference between Thedas and the world a Stephen Strange had carelessly broken. Here are anchor-bearers, patching up the holes.

And this is what Gwenaëlle’s like: the sort of choice she makes, day after day, over and over, regardless of the cost. He gazes at her a little too long. Then he pushes through it, recapturing that thoughtful cast to his voice instead:

“I was thinking about it from the Head Healer standpoint, the how about we don’t get devoured by our own shards someday angle,” he says, “but, true. For now, we still need it faster than it’s slowly killing us. It remains a grim necessity.”

A beat, then adding: “But if the day ever comes that it does start going necrotic, please do let me know. Rather an eye or an arm than a life, as you say.”

Strange blinks again.

And then, an exhale of breath: “Oh my god, Gela, you really could’ve led with that—”

He makes a few fervent strikeouts in his messy notes, pen scraping out some of his more outlandish theories. He doesn’t sound genuinely annoyed or exasperated, just bemused, but he consciously tries to gentle his tone a moment later. This is delicate territory, apparently, and he is at least trying not to trample all over it:

“That could very well do it. I’m not as familiar with Thedosian magic, but where I come from, there are hexes, curses, enchantments, all sorts of things which could leave a lasting effect.”

He’d levied more than a few at his enemies, too. Sometimes just people who’d gotten on his nerves.

“What else can you tell me about the spell?”

Gela offers an apology so tiny it's almost lost in the striking out, the paper shuffling. She looks a little stunned, a lot upset. "I've never led with it before."

This is the most she's said without being any shade of direct. It feels like her words are hanging in the air between them (also, he's just written them down).

What else can she tell him about the spell?

How will he react, right now, if she tells him the spell turned her into a monster? And that it will happen again, and she has no control over when? At the very least he would warn her division head; at worst, the Gallows.

Gela shakes her head.

It hits— not exactly like a tonne of bricks, but at least tripping on a rake and having it smack him in the face. Because Strange takes in that piece of information, and feels a complete ninny: “Is it ridiculous if I said I thought three of you were triplets? Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation had seemed the most viable. Christ. I didn’t even second-guess it.”

But for all that it’s a startling relevation, mostly what it gets from him is a thoughtful expression, chewing over those implications.

“You probably noticed on the trip through my and Tony’s world: we’re more technologically-advanced in general than some of the other twenty-first century Earths. I wouldn’t be surprised if some biotech subsidiary of Stark Industries would’ve gotten there eventually, with cloning. But to my knowledge, we hadn’t cracked it yet. So it’s… commonplace, where you’re from?”

Strange has finished scratching out his various theories, now replaced with just the one-word CURSE??, but he notices after a moment that Gela has been suspiciously quiet. He looks back up again at her, then: seeing her mute, head shaking, shutting down.

And, if he thinks about it, he can’t really blame her. He’s hardly forthcoming about some of his more sore personal details, either.

The pause drags on a little too long, as he figures out how to school his expression, keep his voice gentle but straightforward: “I’m sorry. I appreciate you telling me,” he says. “I know it might be… unpleasant. But if we’re to understand what happened to you— and how to help you— it’d be useful to hear as much as you can recall, Gela. I know we’re meeting in my capacity as a doctor, but as a sorcerer, I’m familiar with curses.”

Her laugh is a little rueful. "No, definitely not common. So, I don't even know all of it, but... in the 1980s, there was basically a coalition between a military program, a biotech company and some like, I guess, cultists? It's a big mess, but the highlights are that they set up two programs to experiment with human cloning. The one I came from, Leda, put nearly all the clones with unwitting parents. Mine were using IVF, and I think that's true in a lot of cases. They didn't have any reason to think I wasn't theirs. In other cases, the program used surrogate mothers and then put the baby in an adoption system. They wanted to do ... a fucking lot of contradictory things, but I think this part of the approach was about epigenetics. Nature and nurture. They spread us out far enough geographically that the likelihood we'd ever run across each other by chance was supposed to be really low."

She exhales. It's a story that doesn't get any less wild for the retelling, and picking what to summarize and what to gloss over is weirdly challenging. (At least she trusts that Strange won't hesitate to ask follow-up questions.) For now, she goes on:

"I found out because one of my sisters was a cop in Toronto. She'd been contacted another clone after there'd been a spate of killings in Europe that targeted us. The Canadian, Beth, she ran a facial recognition search. Got a few of us from North American driver's licenses. Believe me, I did have a minute to appreciate the irony of finding out I was a clone while I was working on a dissertation on epigenetic influence on clone cells, like, wow, on the nose much?" A flash of a rueful smile. "But. Anyway, this is a really long answer to your original question, but ... it turns out that I got pulled into the clone stuff really fast and really hard because most of the clones had a genetic disorder. Progressive and eventually terminal."

Strange listens intently. Evolutionary biology and genetics aren’t his field, just as neuroscience or general medicine isn’t Cosima’s, but he’s tapped in enough to be deeply interested: the insane ethical violations, the implications. She gets to see him do a double-take at cultists?? but he doesn’t interrupt, and instead lets Cosima finish.

After she tapers off, he sorts through his reaction like shuffling a deck of cards. His hands had gone still on the piles of fabric; he only realises it after the fact, and then spurs himself back into motion to keep winding those bandages.

“So… not quite so viable,” is what Strange settles on, which isn’t exactly the most tactful thing to say, but he’s blanking on how else to address it. “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like, devouring resources looking for a cure to a problem—” He stops, cuts himself off, because this isn’t about him. “So its effects were still lasting even here in Thedas, if you were spending a lot of time in the infirmary? What changed?”

"Yeah," to the not quite viable comment. Her tone is a little wry. "They wanted to make us sterile, so they kept control of the experiment, but the infertility tinkering set off an epithelial cell disorder. It killed a few of us that I knew of. I was symptomatic, and that came with me the first time I was here. Weakness, coughing up blood, occasionally a seizure. How I transferred that to Thedas ... I still have a lot of mechanical questions about that, to be honest. But ..."

Something occurs to her. "Wait, I don't think we have any anymore. Have you run into 'spirit healing' as a concept yet?"

He nods crisply, and there’s a kind of world-weary flicker across his face, the impression of spirit healing being that darn roadrunner which remains dangling just out-of-reach.

“It’s been mentioned to me, I’ve heard it described, and I’d love to study it. But it remains a perpetual thorn in my side that we don’t have any specialists with Riftwatch currently, that I know of. It’s the sort of magical expertise I was probably searching for back on Earth, too, and never really found there either.”

Yes, he is a doctor and a mage; that's why she is here. He is a new sort of option, an avenue unexplored. Gela tells herself this firmly, speaking to herself as she would one of her younger brothers. Don't be cowardly. Say what you mean all at once.

"Okay," she says, prefacing it. The next words stick in her throat. While she works them loose again she rubs the back of her right hand, thumb working into the dip of a deep scar there.

"It made me into a wolf," hangs for a moment between her and Strange's desk. Soon it will be at his notes. Gela gulps a breath.

"It hurt. I couldn't remember things very well as a wolf; I was wild, and even when I turned back into myself that didn't fix it. I don't know much of what I did, only moments here and there. Nothing detailed."

All things told, Strange absorbs the factoid werewolves exist here with remarkable composure. (It helps, perhaps, that vampires and werewolves are a thing back home too, the mystical underbelly to the surface world everyone else knows.) So the pen doesn’t move. He sets it down; considers those implications. They actually make a hell of a lot more sense than the neurological issues, the mystery ailment.

“That… explains things,” he says. “So these memory lapses or fugues— they’re actually transformations? Does anything specific seem to trigger it, like,” oh, he has to say it, “the lunar cycles? The time of year, or your emotional state?”

"... It does?"

She wasn't looking at him for fear or some big reaction, an accusation; horror, anger, fright, anything. Something. When she looks up, she sees his pen sat to the side of his notes and the word CURSE taken down boldly on the paper, but nothing else underneath it. He is looking at her like he's been handed the final piece of a puzzle.

Gela clears her throat.

"The first one was." It feels too soon to be relieved but he must have heard of this happening before. If so, how terrible for that other case, how good for her. "But I don't know what brings it on, exactly. I haven't found out yet."

“With the requisite disclaimer that obviously our worlds aren’t identical and won’t line up exactly,” Strange starts, donning that explanatory tone of voice which goes so well with the title doctor, “Turning into a wolf is a well-known concept across history, where I come from. Or even just animal shifters in general, in folklore, mythology, oral stories. The most common idea is that it coincides with the full moon, a transformation once per month — although that’s additionally complicated by the fact that Thedas has two moons and I don’t know what that does to a lunar cycle.

“They’re usually believed to be fiction, but although I didn’t know any werewolves personally, I do know that there was truth to the stories back home. The Sanctum’s books made mention of it, that such a curse does exist. I don’t know precisely what the landscape is like here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s similar— if some common concepts just recur across universes—”

Focus, doctor. He laces his fingers together, still looking at Gela now rather than his scattershot notes.

“Is there any similar lore or history about animal transformations here, that you’ve ever heard of?”

"I couldn't tell you much about how it works mechanically, though not for lack of asking questions. But ... yeah. I got regular spirit healing treatments while I was here the first time. It didn't cure me, but it kept my condition stable. Nothing was progressing, at least."

She sets down the bandages, neatly coiled, and reaches for another batch. She's not ungrateful to have something to do with her hands during this. (It's struck her that it's contrary that she always his the urge to smoke when she thinks about the disease that had been shredding her lungs. Contrary or not, it happens.)

"So then I vanished from Thedas, right? And when I came back," or a new her had arrived with the old Thedas-Cosima's memories, a distinction she's not sure really matters in this instance, "me-at-home. Original Cosima. She'd found a cure. That's what I. She? God we need a better vocabulary for it, but back home, the last thing I remember before this time through the rift was that my partner and I were traveling the world, getting the cure to the other clones so they'd never have to worry about it."

he's keeping busy as he's bleeding stones, his machinations and his palindromes.

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Please enjoy this raft of Orphan Black spoilers

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cw for brief mention of blood

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