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

office hours | ota.

[portalling]

Doctor Strange makes himself available.

He’s spent a year crammed into the Research division workrooms, sharing space with other nerds and only having a desk to himself, but now he finds himself airing out the Head Healer’s office in the Central Tower. Tidying up the paperwork, laying out the quills and ink even if he’s not likely to use them without assistance, setting everything neatly and precisely to his liking. Pride-of-place goes to a bronze dip pen with fine filigree, placed at right angles to a well-thumbed herbal reference compendium.

Tongue-in-cheek, he even gets someone to write a sign to hang outside the door: THE DOCTOR IS IN. He flips it to be visible.

Your chronic ailments, your lyrium addiction, your hayfever, your deathly peanut allergy, congratulations, commiserations? To his grudging acceptance, he’s here for all of it.

The infirmary was already put in order a few weeks back, but you could find him there as well: reorganising supplies, fussing with the design for a cartoonish illustration extolling the virtues of handwashing. The lopsided stick-figure sketch is wobbly and barely legible. This is why he needs an artist’s touch.

gwenaëlle.

[portalling]

They’d signed up for Wysteria’s madcap experiments together, Stephen standing in front of the sheet and Gwenaëlle needing to be the one to write down his name for him, at which point she’d also mentioned offhand the extensive notes she’d taken on her anchor. Years’ worth of them(!)

Which is how he finds himself here: one full calendar year after she first gave him a tour of the houseboat, plus-or-minus some subjective weeks in the Fade, all come full circle and a little worse for wear, seated in the cushioned depression in the middle of Gwenaëlle’s parlour. There are concentric rings of papers and notebooks ranging out from his position like a constellation, and he’s been studiously reading through them, busily cross-referencing and adding annotations or questions through dictation to his sending crystal. He works his way through Gwenaëlle’s personal archive with all the delicacy of an archaeologist, peeling back the layers of her life in this very particular context: the anchor-shard pinned down for dissection and scrutiny, tracking its size and capabilities, days when the pain was more or less, the way it behaved after closing particularly sizeable rifts, and when it grew stronger.

It’s a good record. One remembers, sometimes, that she used to be a writer and once chronicled the Inquisition.

Occasionally Small Yngvi, possibly Stephen’s favourite denizen of this place, picks his way through the maze of paperwork and has to be shooed away from prickling his claws through the mistress’ notes.

Stephen loses track of time, which is what happens when he’s absorbed in his reading material. The hours crawl across the sky and the sun starts to set and his eyes start straining, until Gwenaëlle loops through almost unnoticed and starts lighting the lanterns. At which point— He finally realises how dark it’s gotten, then puts down the notes and sinks back against the cushions.

“You’re very thorough,” he says, rustling the papers.

It sounds like a compliment.