elegiaque: (013)
𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞. ([personal profile] elegiaque) wrote in [community profile] faderift2025-01-01 08:24 pm

closed. the number of hours we have together is actually not so large.

WHO: Gwenaëlle, Stephen, and special guests.
WHAT: Gwenaëlle and Stephen go to visit her family for First Day.
WHEN: First Day.
WHERE: A small cottage in the woods, the Free Marches.
NOTES: Content warnings for dealing with lyrium addiction and decline, family member dementia, end of life care, caregiver burnout, grief, loss. Potentially a huge downer of a time.




portalling: ᴅᴏᴄᴛᴏʀ sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇ. (pic#15621542)

[personal profile] portalling 2025-03-18 01:11 am (UTC)(link)
The thing about this roadtrip, on horseback rather than by car, is that they have even more time to kill time and talk. They’ll meander across no end of topics, accidentally stumbling into this more complicated one while the horses meander on.

And because he’s the type of person he is, Stephen jumps straight to considering solutions, even if it might be territory that she’s already been over and over in the her own head.

Is there anyone else you could ask to find out her maiden name?” he muses. Relatives is a loaded gun, but: “Tracking down a former employer, perhaps?”

Not her father, for obvious reasons.
portalling: ᴍᴜʟᴛɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ ᴏf ᴍᴀᴅɴᴇss. (pic#15781065)

[personal profile] portalling 2025-03-18 01:31 am (UTC)(link)
Names matter; Stephen knows this. It’s his stubborn insistence on being called doctor even in a world where his multiple degrees don’t mean shit; it’s his stiff adherence to surnames before someone eventually earns the right to use his first one. It’s her lord father and lady mother and l’Duc. It’s Vauquelin going up in flames.

Now that Gwenaëlle’s laid it out, he understands why she might be chewing over the matter. Surname concerns.

“Old neighbours, from before she moved into the estate? There must be someone who knew her in Halamshiral before. Neighbours, babysitters, greengrocers, a landlord.”
portalling: ᴅᴏᴄᴛᴏʀ sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇ. (pic#15624633)

[personal profile] portalling 2025-03-18 01:49 am (UTC)(link)
Stephen hates an unsolvable problem, especially when the scale of this one feels like it ought to be solvable on the surface, even as it keeps going deeper. Did Thedas have private eyes? Would a detective be able to find and pull on some thread Gwenaëlle hadn’t thought of?

In the end: Probably not. A needle in a stack of needles. Their neighbourhoods had burned.

But he glances over. “How so?”
portalling: ᴍᴜʟᴛɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ ᴏf ᴍᴀᴅɴᴇss. (pic#15781084)

[personal profile] portalling 2025-03-24 02:22 am (UTC)(link)
“I wish,” Stephen says, quietly, “there were more of a paper trail. Anything else for you to follow.”

Because even at a distance, you can tell that Gwenaëlle’s holding onto as many scraps of her birth mother as she can. It’s quite literally the very first thing you see as you enter the houseboat.

“Despite the fact that Earth has a bigger population, I think it was easier to find people in the cities. There’s more mechanisms for it, whether through bureaucracy or technology or magic. I once scryed for a man’s missing father using a strand of hair from his head.” Then, remembering that she knows of the people involved, he adds: “Loki’s father, actually. It was his brother’s hair.”

Another Stephen Strange in another world, with more magic to flex at his disposal, would have been able to help her better.
portalling: ɪɴfɪɴɪᴛʏ ᴡᴀʀ. (pic#15613391)

[personal profile] portalling 2025-04-21 03:11 am (UTC)(link)
“True. And I’m glad you have— this, whatever this turns out to be.”

Even if it winds up being shitty and complicated. And now thinking ahead to what she does have, rather than what she’s already lost, Stephen cants the subject sideways in a different tack: “So going in, what should I know about,” Coupe and Vauquelin? oh, that sounds weird and too clinical and professional, let’s try —

“Uh, Luwenna and Gervais?”

Nope. That sounds even weirder. Christ, he doesn’t know how to do this.
portalling: ᴅᴏᴄᴛᴏʀ sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇ. (pic#15621547)

[personal profile] portalling 2025-04-29 09:17 pm (UTC)(link)
“I saw some of his writing in Riftwatch’s old records. I liked it; he’s witty.” Because of course Stephen Strange was nosy, and he’d gone digging through every last piece of Tony Stark in Thedas he could find, and there it was: Gervais Vauquelin in the margins.

Unlike a man with a stammer, Stephen talked, and talked a lot, and tended to run roughshod over people in conversation even when they could keep up. He makes a mental note, a small reminder to himself: slow down later. He can relate, a bit, to the frustration in being cut off from entire avenues of communication. He used to pin his thoughts down on paper, ideas decisively wrangled into essays, medical papers, and scholarship; part of him has missed having that outlet, no permanence to his words, every bit of writing taking ten times longer than it ought to.

“He’s Emeric’s brother— when did he and the Commander get involved? Did you grow up with either of them in your life, or was all of it it more recent?”

He wants to know what Gwenaëlle’s relationship to aunt-and-uncle looked like; he’s not sure how much it’ll help, but maybe it’ll help him navigate what’s waiting for them at the end of the forest road.
portalling: 𝘯𝘰𝘯-𝘮𝘤𝘶. (pic#15870347)

[personal profile] portalling 2025-05-05 12:54 am (UTC)(link)
And the conversation continues: Stephen picking Gwenaëlle’s brain and ransacking her family memories, trying to gather a sense of the couple they’re about to see, girding himself for the complicated situation awaiting them. He doesn’t have a family anymore for her to meet, and even if he did, they’d be inaccessible an entire universe away. So he’ll have to do his damned best to make a good impression here.

The conversation meanders just as they meander, and it eventually winds up on other topics. By the time they reach the small town they’re overnighting in, midway to the cottage, his ass hurts from the horseback ride and he’s ready for a rest. Clambering off, stabling their houses, paying for a room at some shabby inn along the Marcher road, ordering food brought up to them later.

It’s not until they’re in their private room and the door’s firmly locked behind them that Gwenaëlle’s finally able to loosen her clothes and shrug off her coverings. By automatic rote habit, Stephen moves to stand behind her, helping to unwind the wrappings pinning her wings to her body, and nimbly ducks his head out of the way when they unfold and stretch. He presses a kiss to the nape of her neck, unspoken support.

Tomorrow. They’ll get there tomorrow.

And then, the thought suddenly occurring to him, as he looks at unfamiliar walls and an unfamiliar bed and a small overnight bag to unpack and knowing that once upon a time, this would’ve been expensive sheets and a piping-hot shower in some Ritz-Carlton suite —

“You know,” he says, “I just realised, this is sort of our first trip as a couple. I mean, there was visiting your grandfather, but that was mostly under the guise of a work trip, and we had the eluvians to get the fuck out whenever we wanted.”
portalling: ᴍᴜʟᴛɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ ᴏf ᴍᴀᴅɴᴇss. (pic#15781118)

🎀

[personal profile] portalling 2025-05-09 07:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Stephen laughs at her withering tone, and drifts to the side as Gwenaëlle nimbly helps unbutton his coat, quicker and easier on his hands. “It’s perpetually amusing to me that I like the parties more than you. I can take one for the team, next time we have an invite.”

It’s simpler for him: he’s the foreign rifter curiosity, but there’s less court baggage, no family history to trample on.

They settle into the inn’s bedroom; comfortable, a little rundown, but the business is glad of the patronage, their guestbooks having suffered so near occupied Starkhaven.

First trip as a couple. They’re collecting the milestones as they go, more and more for the stack: often going about it all backwards, first a hookup then the relationship, moving in together then deciding to live together. First time meeting her family, again and again. First Satinalia in bed. (First anniversary. First fight.)

He should be terrified, probably. Navigating a relationship like this is still alien and unfamiliar and frightening, but— it’s worth it.