۞ 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

[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."