۞ Like What's Up Neighbour

[timestones]

WHO: Stephen Strange and MF #005 roomies/you?
WHERE: Maurtia Falls and around
WHEN: November, before the world ends
WHAT: Stephen, getting settled in
WARNINGS: Nothing so far.

Closed to Maurtia Falls #005

For most people, arriving somewhere at the end of the world would be a pretty bad day, all in all. But Stephen's seen a lot of stuff lately that there's something almost refreshing about appearing in another world's End Game. At least he's in the right mindset for it.

What is evident to Stephen is that he needs to get to work. There's a lot of ground to cover in a very short space of linear real-time.

When he arrives at the apartment he's been delegated, Stephen (and his cloak) take a brief glance around just to get a general sense of the layout, but after that Stephen makes short work of settling himself on the floor, cross-legged with his device and Time Stone, to get to work, creating a steady loop of time to enable him to go through the network in 15 minute bursts of reading. It's jolting work and each time it takes him longer to get back to the point he started reading from.

Anyone wandering in while he's in the middle of his work is likely to catch him looking a bit like a two frame looping gif, very slight twitching every fraction of a second.

Finally, Stephen doesn't have enough time in his loop to catch up to his mental network bookmark and breaks the effect, slumping with a deep sigh as he rubs his eyes. Some decent headway has been made, but he'll need to start the loop over.

Oh. There's someone there.

"Hi," he offers mildly, dropping his hand to look up, "Guess you'd be one of my roomies, huh?"

Wildcard.

[Come at me with something random, or hit me up on my OOC intro / Kralkatorrik if there's a specific place you'd like to meet Stephen and we can hash out some ideas for a starter :) ]

Comments

[nightmarist]

It's hard to tell how long Ronan has been sitting on the opposite side of Kylo. Maybe he's been there the whole time. He only draws attention to himself now that he slumps forward, draping his folded arms over the back of the pew in front of him.

Eyes fixed on the stained glass above the altar rather than Stephen, Ronan simply asks, "Why?"

[photophobic]

It's the only question. Isn't it. Kylo has nothing to add but his own tightly twisting discomfort and the steeled determination running through it. He says nothing.

Reconsider? What does Stephen think he's been doing since the idea first occurred to him?

[timestones]

So this is Ronan Lynch in the flesh.

Stephen doesn’t stare at him like a bug under a glass, or try to feel around inside him like some magical MRI.

Instead he just looks between them both—first Ronan as he leans forward, then Kylo. Frightened, volatile monsters who have been made that way through the experiences of life, the acts of others, and the lack of faith that monsters are doomed to creating only pain and suffering—both their own and others.

To Stephen, there is so much more available than that.

“Because neither of you actually wants to do it.”

[nightmarist]

Ronan rolls his eyes skyward, already exasperated, sure now of the course this conversation will take.

“What I want,” he hisses, “has nothing to do with this.”

Of course he doesn’t want to harm hundreds or thousands or millions of people. There is no goal worthy of that price. It will be an unforgivable action, if he takes it. But for Kylo and the rest of his loved ones? He’s willing to perform any evil if it can save them. If it has even the slightest chance.

[timestones]

“Of course not. But you asked why, and that’s the first and most basic of answers. And I’m a sorcerer, not a mind reader. I try not to make blind assumptions about people I don’t know and have only just met.”

It’s a delicate matter, dealing with young beings on the cusp of being something potentially omnipresent. It doesn’t help that they’re scared and hurting. Stephen doesn’t need to be a technical telepathy to know that. Almost-gods with the life experience of fire-forged adolescents, furious at the worlds for both fair and misguided reasons. Stephen can’t condemn that thinking.

“But more reasons why I’d urge you to reconsider... Because in the various different outcomes, it won’t be what you think it’s going to be.

“Because there’s no way of turning things back when it doesn’t necessarily match your shared mental fantasy, shared and individual.

“Because you won’t actually escape what it is you’re trying to flee from.”

Stephen has been looking at the window as speaks, not a word sounding like he’s begging.

“Because you’re right. And wrong. You already gave up so much and endured such great pain for them, and many of them don’t see it as enough, won’t acknowledge the value of that sacrifice, or can’t even hold it in their minds long enough to acknowledge it even happened at all. They see you as monsters, and because of that they view those sacrifices done for them as not only fair but right, as if suffering is only for certain kinds of people. And more than that—you should be willing, eager, to give everything you hold dear over to them again and again and again. They’re blinded by self-interest under the guise of what is right and just. And what they ask is unreasonable, what they’ve forgotten unacceptable. Conceptually, I appreciate why you both want this so much. And also why you don’t.”

Taking a deep breath, Stephen casts a slow look around the chapel. His eyes soften, like he’s looking at something beyond this moment.

“Because this is beautiful. What you have made here. This sanctuary. This expression of love and art, magic and wonder.

“But also because I have seen so many instances where you do something else, something more. Not better, not worse, but more. Your potentials, both singular and as a shared unit are...” he shakes his head, “immense. And incredible. And so is the potential for what you’re thinking of doing, but again, differently so.”

[nightmarist]

As Stephen speaks, Ronan collapses further and further, burying his face in the coil of his arms and sinking from the pew until he’s practically on his knees.

This is everything he’s been praying to hear. All he wanted to know is that it’s out of his hands and there’s nothing he can do about it. It’s funny, that circumstances have led him to wish for powerlessness when everyone else is surely praying for the opposite. But none of them have ever been personally in danger of consuming all life on this planet, either.

Of course, he’s not clear of the responsibility yet. There are infinite outcomes to contend with, and if he’s cornered by the terrible choices of others, he’ll be forced to make this terrible choice regardless. Much as he’d prefer to do nothing, he won’t stand by and watch his people die when he’s one of the few who can save them.

Unless Stephen didn’t come here just to talk. Ronan picks his head up to cast a miserable look at the magician. What does he see of their potential? Enough to understand they have to be stopped before any of it has a chance to develop?

[photophobic]

Kylo isn't relieved. Not yet. All he sees is Ronan's desperation to be given something, anything that will save him from the horror of his own potential, stretching out into infinity. He feels it in Ronan's past. He feels it, too, in his own.

And he knows enough of what Stephen is and professes to be that he already knows this is all he will give them willingly. Torment. More torment. He should never have let him come here. He should never have let him anywhere near Ronan, already suffering with the weight of everything he could do.

He wants to lay a steadying hand on Ronan's back, so badly. Aches to. But he isn't sure it would be comfort at all. Didn't he put this burden on him in the first place? Isn't this all his doing?

"I already swore it," Kylo says, his voice thick with misery crushed into steel. His words, his choice of the singular pronoun— everything, tight and deliberate. "That I would give them every chance. All I want is another way. Give me anything else. Anything. And I'll do it. You know I will."

[timestones]

This isn't something that gives Stephen pleasure. There's a special kind of torture in seeing the things Stephen has and then carrying them, unable to speak or share these experiences. It's not a burden he labours under, it's just a reality of the role he plays in the context of wider worlds.

Stephen's past life as a doctor has prepared him for holding lines he will not cross after stating what they are in plain terms. Doctor-Patient confidentiality extends to his handling of the Mystic Arts and as the Time Stone's keeper. He refused Anakin Skywalker and Jessika Pava information that would be used to pre-damn Kylo and Ronan before they undertook any action. Stephen refuses to provide fuel to a fire that would be used to justify thought policing.

But in a similar vein, he can't give Kylo and Ronan the answers they want, not here, not like this, not because they want and demand it in this moment.

"I know you will," Stephen confirms--Kylo willingness toward convictions is thick in the air around him like smoke, "But as I said, I can't tell you what to do, or what not to do. I can't tell you what actions to take, or not to take."

He looks to Ronan, to those sharp eyes that look like a melting glacier, the desperation and the pain. It reminds him of Peter Parker. Of the million different versions of despairing faces he's seen. It makes Stephen's face fractionally slacken with a brand of regret that he can do nothing to address.

"There's more on the spectrum of action than what you're thinking of doing and nothing. Even just being there is something, encouraging them toward a version of the ritual, correcting their ignorance, enduring their wish that they can make a trade and keep what they're trading. They will try your patience, make what you want to do feel more and more tempting every day with how they can't seem to hear themselves speak and how much their morals cloud the reality of what they need to risk in order to save something of this world. What you can both become beyond what you're envisioning right now isn't possible here and now, it comes with patience and time. It comes after all of this."

He shakes his head ruefully.

"And if I told you how to do that now, it will never happen; I can't give you general directions for roads that don't yet exist."

[nightmarist]

Ronan is inclined to believe he’s being lied to. It wouldn’t be the first time, someone managing him by telling him what they think he needs to hear. Maybe no alternative can be offered because no alternative will succeed. The promise of after is the only carrot that can be dangled in front of him.

He reaches over, laying his hand over Kylo’s and lacing their fingers together.

“They know what I can do,” he tells Stephen. “There’s nothing stopping them from coming here for my help, if they have some idea what to do with it. So far, they haven’t come up with anything. They keep saying they’ll just win, like a wish is the same as a plan.”

The carrot’s not working. Now, he knows, he invites the stick. “I’ll do what I can to see that ritual done right,” he continues. “But if they fuck this up, I’m going ahead with our plan.”

He’ll kill this world before Atropos has the chance.

A final thought flows into Ronan’s mind and straight out his mouth: “Redundancies breed success.”

[photophobic]

Kylo tenses as Stephen speaks, coiled up and ready to spring. He'll hurl himself at Stephen's mind. He'll rip and tear and claw away his detachment until he finds the answer, because the answer is the solace Ronan needs, and he would dig through solid steel with nothing but his own bloodied, broken fingers if that was what it would take--

--but Ronan's hand slides into place over his. Their fingers tangle together. And Ronan says, our plan.
Kylo's breath hitches.

Beyond the freshly steadied focus of his eyes on Stephen's face, he doesn't add a thing. Not a word. He doesn't need to. He and Ronan are of one accord, and he never should have let himself forget it.

[timestones]

Considering some of the things Stephen knows, he would expect both of them to coil in on one another and then lash out.

They have no reason to trust Stephen's words at all. He's appeared in this world in a flash and thrown himself into the fray with his introduction in the same breath as his assessment of the state of the worlds. How many hours went into Kylo and Ronan earning each other's trust as creatures disinclined toward opening up? How many dark scars opened? How many fatal wounds shared?

Ronan's answer, his compromise, is actually a precious gift. Stephen's eyes close briefly with subdued relief, but the depths to which it reaches flicker briefly through--eyelids squeezed a fraction tighter than a blink and the muscles in his cheek pulling momentarily taut, and an exhale through his nose that could be shaky with just a little more force.

And just like that, Stephen stands, the cloak moving with him in perfect union as he takes a moment to look around the chapel from this slightly altered vantage point once more.

"Thank you," he says, voice surprisingly steady now that he's readopting his Master of the Mystic Arts visage, "For your time. And for your endurance."

Stepping from the pew and to the aisle, Stephen's echoing step pauses once more.

"I hope there's an opportunity for me to come here again under less dire straits, in the future. Right now, it genuinely pains me to say I have.. a lot more work still to do."