[open & closed] and when that day comes

[thereneverwas]

WHO: Barrow & friends
WHAT: ye olde lyrium detox in its various stages
WHEN: vaguely Wintermarch
WHERE: the infirmary
NOTES: I'll be adding a few starters at a time since I want later developments to feel organic and make sense. please feel free to request something if you don't see it here!

Comments

[portalling]

At first when Strange stayed by his bedside, it was pure monitoring: making sure the man didn’t seize again, didn’t choke on his own tongue, didn’t lapse into something worse. Without the steady beep of monitors and alarms to summon him as needed, it’s all horrifyingly manual. He hovers and frets until the breathing settles, until it seems like Barrow isn’t actually going to die.

Through the woods, he thinks, and it should be a relief, but the failure tastes bitter on his tongue.

He dozed, eventually, in a chair drawn up into that cramped little side-room, arms crossed and head tilted back against the wall. It’s a shallow, fitful sleep, and so he eventually stirs at some noise from the templar’s bed. Cracks open his own eyes. Everything in his body aches from sleeping upright, but he’s in no position to complain, comparatively.

[thereneverwas]

A groan heralds Barrow's full return to consciousness, and his first instinct is to prop himself up on his elbows, but the incredible pain in his midsection prevents it. He flops back down with a wince and a heavy sigh, but the faintest smile dances onto his face-- he's awake, and not shaking, and remarkably lucid. He can deal with pain.

"Doc," he lolls his head to greet Strange in a rasp, clocking his presence, "what's new?" Is this what the other side looks like? Is it the sore serenity that follows the days and nights of misery, of disjointed, half-dream-half-lived moments he can't quite remember?

Has he done it?

this is so rude

[portalling]

It’s the hopeful expression on Barrow’s face, that flicker of a smile, which hurts the most.

Strange doesn’t have experience in this part: the failure. He’d never really had to stand there and wring his hands and dole out the bad news to patients or grieving family members in the hospital. A perfect track record. But he’ll muddle through, because he has to.

So he meets the other man’s gaze with a steady, flat expression, neutral rather than celebratory.

“You almost died,” he says.

:^)

[thereneverwas]

The declaration is met with a little scoff, the likes of which can only stem from this sort of situation: you almost died. Of course he did.

"Least I didn't finish," he rasps, his smile growing helplessly. That's happened once already, no need to repeat it.

[portalling]

“Yes, well.”

This is perhaps the most disconcerting thing about the interaction: Barrow has always seen Stephen Strange joking, sarcastic, using too much levity even in the gravest of circumstances. You could hardly prevent him from cracking a shitty joke. Now, though, he’s too serious; doesn’t rise to any of the other man’s warm humour. In the end:

“You’re back on the lyrium, Barrow. It was a choice between putting the substance back into your body or watching your body shut down and die without it. I’m sorry. It was too much strain on your system.”

[thereneverwas]

It’s a slow, creeping process in which Barrow’s smile dwindles, beginning at the corners of his mouth and ending with his eyes, which were so warmly focused and now gaze past Stephen with a faraway quality. He turns his head, looks at the opposite wall. Says nothing.

Oh.

[portalling]

Yeah.

Strange has straightened in his seat beside the bed, but his expression remains just as flat. If he tries for sympathetic, he’s not really sure what his facial muscles will do, some spasmodic twitch, so he doesn’t even try.

You could try again another time, give it another shot, he wants to say, except he knows the grim math. Coming up with the initial nerve must have been hard enough. And Barrow’s fifty-four years old. Coming up on sixty, sooner or later. If it didn’t work now… Putting his body through all of that, all over again, might well kill him the second time.

[thereneverwas]

It takes a long time for Barrow to speak again. When he does, it’s a single, rasping, “then—“ that escapes him before he trails off again.

Then this was all pointless, then this isn’t happening.

[extortionate]

"Then fuck it,"

Lazar's been quiet until now. Easy to mistake it: Slouched with his eyes shut, arms crossed; looking for all the world like a great indolent dog. But he sleeps light. But he can listen plenty well (you didn't finish, yeah, hear that happens to geezers —)

Barrow rasps, and it's that crack that finally slings him upright.

"You're not dead."

Empathy's never been his strength. Lazar pushes out of the chair, and then the room. Barrow's awake, Barrow's alive; whatever they gotta say, they can say it alone now.

[portalling]

It’s practically a relief, having the other man puncture the awkward strained silence like this. Not that Strange has much else to say, not like he knows how to clear the air after something like this, but —

He gestures after the doorway Lazar disappeared through.

“Eloquent as he is, he’s right. You’re not dead. You’re still alive. That’s the most important part.”

[thereneverwas]

Before panic can set in over the fatigue and the gloom, there's Lazar, and with his presence follows a sort of trepidation instead. Something happened, perhaps-- the little hairs on the back of Barrow's neck stand on end, caution cutting through as he looks at his friend. He can remember the smell of Lazar up close, and doesn't want to interrogate why.

"I'd," he mumbles, dragging his mind back to the topic at hand and his gaze back to Strange, "like to be alone. Please." This seems a poor combination of people to have emotions around, if he must have them.

🎀

[portalling]

The worst combination, really.

But: “Of course,” says the Head Healer, and he rises to his feet. Pushes the visitor’s chair back into the corner and feels his shoulders crack as he straightens up again.

It’s almost — no, definitely — a relief to have the conversation dismissed like this, to be given a reason to withdraw and not have to see Barrow’s facial expression anymore, to grant the other man his space and his privacy to react in whatever way he needs to.

Failure doesn’t sit well on Stephen Strange, and he retreats quietly, closing the door behind him.