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

[portalling]

WHO: Stephen Strange & you
WHAT: A sorcerer returns to being a doctor, although he never really stopped.
WHEN: Harvestmere
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Catch-all for the month and a spot to stash scenes; open prompt in the comments about his promotion to Head Healer, but feel free to toss wildcards or anything else in here, and hmu if you want something bespoke. ♥

Comments

[sprent]

This is a lot of information to take in all at once; the moon feels like the sticking point, here. The lunar cycle, the transformation taking place at a known time—the same time, each month. Horrible, to think of it happening that often, but at least you would know and you could prepare.

If Gela knew that about herself she could leave before it ever happened and nobody would have to be in danger.

Maybe Strange will help her pinpoint that moment, wherever in the future it is.

"Yes. There are stories about werewolves, but—" they're stories. She can't exactly say something like that... She frowns at the desk in front of her, the scattering of notes. "Fereldens think they're only wolves, possessed by rage demons."

[portalling]

“Maybe they are. Although that doesn’t seem like it fits your circumstance— I feel like we’d know, by now, if you were possessed by a rage demon.”

Strange doesn’t sound accusatory, just: quizzical, and gathering information. Trying to find the rest of the pieces to fit this picture. Then, broaching that dangling mention: “What triggered the first transformation? And who cast this on you?”

It’s probably far too much to hope they could just send a polite letter asking them to reverse it —

CW kidnapping, experimentation mentions

[sprent]

"It isn't a rage demon," Gela agrees. She feels very little by way of anger, actually. Perhaps there are anxiety demons. Or guilt demons?

"The first time was brought on by the spell itself." She pauses nervously, her head turning so she can check over her shoulder. The door is firmly shut, as it has been this entire time. Looking back, swallowing, she continues. Her voice lowers to a little above a murmur. "It was—Marais, is the name. Ferrant Marais, I'll spell it for you, if you like... He is Mortalitasi. Or was, I don't..."

Memory issues impact the telling, but his name feels stamped on the inside of her eyelids and she cannot forget it. "I was travelling home from Nevarra city and he ambushed me on the road. It wasn't dark, but nobody else was there, nobody saw it—and there were others there too, we were all in the same cage together, but I don't know what happened to them or where they went afterwards. He turned us all and..."

She pauses, brow furrowing.

"I don't remember," she says finally. "There isn't anything there."

Only darkness, and the sense of big things moving in it.

When she says, "There was a child," her voice breaks.

[portalling]

Perhaps, doctor, you should have expected something like this. From her reticence, the cautious reluctance with which Gela finally picks at this scab and makes it bleed afresh.

“Oh,” Strange says, and there’s that startled little sound of someone who is tremendously bad with shows of emotion, feeling an unfair rising strangling panic upon hearing that wobble in Gela’s voice. What does he do with this?

But he will write down that name, and get the spelling, and carve it into his memory later. Mortalitasi. A spell to turn others into werewolves. What a nightmare—

“Gela,” he says, and his hands flutter in an aborted gesture, at a loss for what to do. He should have made tea. Or had a bowl of sweets on the desk. Something, anything to stopgap this moment. There is nothing in this room he can give her except his own words, and that doesn’t feel like it’s enough.

He opens his mouth; closes it again. She doesn’t know what happened to the rest of the group. There was a child. Two items of information, awful in their proximity.

“I’m so sorry that happened.”

[sprent]

"Ah," Gela says, voice thick. She is trying so hard to hold on to her composure that she's gone still and tense across from him, breathing very little through her mouth as if anything deeper might loose all the tears stuck behind the lump in her throat. "Thank you. Me too."

Sorry that it happened? Very. She thinks about those other people all the time and wonders where they are, and if they're in a similar situation to her, maybe sitting across from somebody trusted and telling them everything. She'd give anything to find and talk to them, but if they're like her they're hiding too. They're pretending everything is fine and holding life away at arm's length.

Still struggling, she looks at his desk and the papers gathered. She leans across the table and points with a trembling finger at a word he's written down.

Quietly, "... It's two rs. F-E-R-R-A-N-T."

[portalling]

Strange dips his head in acknowledgment, and works on correcting the name. It is slow, and methodical, each letter taking so much longer to write in his careful, wobbly, childlike scrawl. But the focus on getting this one right — FERRANT — gives Gela a few moments to swallow, and breathe, and for both of them to hopefully reassemble some of that composure.

On the one hand, he has no idea what to do with this or how he can help,

on the other hand, he can’t imagine what it took to come here today, and so he must do something.

“I can do some research,” he offers. “Try to understand more about how such a curse works in Thedas, and… how one might manage it, or control it, or banish it.”

[sprent]

Sometimes it's too hard to remember all of it at once. Sometimes you have to pick something small and focus on that so that you don't completely lose your composure while sitting in the office of the head healer; sometimes, you have to point out the wrong spelling of a name and watch as it is painstakingly corrected. Gela feels a great squeeze around her chest, an invisible fist clenching. It loosens up as she's allowed to sit in silence and breathe.

Her voice is still tight when she speaks, stressed. "I've been trying to do my own research for a while now. I've seen a lot of healers but — I never told them anything, so they could only help so much. None of them could find anything the matter with me. They all turned me away."

She doesn't get it. Strange is different, though. "I would appreciate that. I'm sure you'd find something I missed."

[portalling]

“I would have been lost, myself, if you hadn’t opened up. And you’ll need to keep me apprised in future: any time you start feeling off, or unusual, or like it might be sneaking up on you, then we can do a checkup. And another thing you could do in the meantime, if you’re afraid of losing time again,” and if she’s grasping for some sense of agency, something to do which isn’t helpless futility and twiddling her fingers waiting for the next thing to happen, “is to start keeping a journal. Record each date, even if not much has happened. Record your dreams in the morning, if you can remember them, and soon enough you should be able to remember them better as well.”

Strange is so terribly aware that it isn’t a cure, and he wishes he could hand her something better, but: “It’s a small effort, but it might at least help with fearing that time… slipping away from you.”

[sprent]

Gela allows this advice to wash over her, nodding, it's — actually a really good idea, journaling, and the more he explains the purpose of it the better she feels about it. She'll be able to look for patterns as well, in the dreams.

"I will," she says, resolving to look for a book today so she can start as soon as possible. "Do I need to show it to anybody?"

She would rather not, but if Strange is researching this thoroughly perhaps he'd like to see it.

poss yours to wrap? :>

[portalling]

“Nope. Only if you particularly want to, but I think this sort of thing probably works best if you get to think of it as a safe space, an extension of your own mind; writing for no other audience than yourself. You and I might want to go over a specific section if you do experience any missing time, but that’s up to you. Otherwise,” Strange offers a small smile, “it’s all yours.”

He did learn some mindfulness exercises at the Ancient One’s side, all those months.

slaps a bow on a week later

[sprent]

"Okay."

She feels slightly calmer, though she'd love nothing more than to surrender this conversation and retreat hastily to her room, maybe crawl underneath something and hide, pretend not to be in. She needs to sort this development out in her mind, she needs to sit with the thought of Strange researching this, researching her.

Trying to help. He's just trying to help, she asked him to.

"Okay," she says again, not quite looking at him. She is rising up out of her chair. "Well — I think I'll go, then, if that's all you need from me."

And she doesn't really give him much time to refute that before she's reaching for the door. Right before she opens it she says, "Thank you," and then she's gone, leaving as nonchalantly as possible, though it very much does feel like she throws herself out of the office as fast as she can go.