dr. stephen strange (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rehandle) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
meadowlark2020-05-22 02:56 am
rehandle) wrote in meadowlark2020-05-22 02:56 am
@stephen.strange | via morningstar network, a couple of days after cassius' post
[ It isn't real. That's a fact upon a fact: none of it is real, but this even less so.
Usually, knowledge matters. It had for a while here too. Taken him from staggering frantically down part-collapsed tunnels over obstacles whose names he didn't know, calls giving way to bellows, in search first of life and then just of obstacles whose names he did know— to sitting quietly, raking thick air into his lungs, body too beleaguered to be good for more than waiting for the day to end.
And eventually he'd slept. And the day did end. And when he woke and turned on his flashlight to gear himself up for greeting the millions who ought now to be staggering back down into the tunnels, fresh from their reset - he'd found them exactly where he'd left them.
This will not be ending soon. This will not be over until somebody makes it so. But his thoughts won't be gathered into shape. The wall at his back is still hot from the blast. The air is cloying. His skin sloughs under his touch.
The quiet is too heavy. He needs the reminder. ]
Talk to me
Please
[ ooc: for those in the sim, none of the things described in the above brackets will be visible to anyone but him, but Stephen will have been seen by some about half a day before this post searching haphazardly around the tunnels, calling both in general and then specifically for people, then staring very intently with varying expressions of grim hopelessness at patches of nothing, and eventually giving that up for sitting very quietly on the ground in a tunnel somewhere. He's non-responsive to attempts to interact with him throughout and wouldn't previously have been replying to any attempts to contact him via the network either.
Feel free to assume your character has spotted him or been aggressively bumped into by him or heard about him being Weird, or on the flipside to have no idea he's been acting like he's having a really bad trip. ]
Usually, knowledge matters. It had for a while here too. Taken him from staggering frantically down part-collapsed tunnels over obstacles whose names he didn't know, calls giving way to bellows, in search first of life and then just of obstacles whose names he did know— to sitting quietly, raking thick air into his lungs, body too beleaguered to be good for more than waiting for the day to end.
And eventually he'd slept. And the day did end. And when he woke and turned on his flashlight to gear himself up for greeting the millions who ought now to be staggering back down into the tunnels, fresh from their reset - he'd found them exactly where he'd left them.
This will not be ending soon. This will not be over until somebody makes it so. But his thoughts won't be gathered into shape. The wall at his back is still hot from the blast. The air is cloying. His skin sloughs under his touch.
The quiet is too heavy. He needs the reminder. ]
Talk to me
Please
[ ooc: for those in the sim, none of the things described in the above brackets will be visible to anyone but him, but Stephen will have been seen by some about half a day before this post searching haphazardly around the tunnels, calling both in general and then specifically for people, then staring very intently with varying expressions of grim hopelessness at patches of nothing, and eventually giving that up for sitting very quietly on the ground in a tunnel somewhere. He's non-responsive to attempts to interact with him throughout and wouldn't previously have been replying to any attempts to contact him via the network either.
Feel free to assume your character has spotted him or been aggressively bumped into by him or heard about him being Weird, or on the flipside to have no idea he's been acting like he's having a really bad trip. ]
no subject
[ No, actually, now she's given him some direction - ]
How are things going?
[ A search for the specifics of life continuing on. ]
no subject
[ (Doesn't help that when she touches people and tries to diagnose what might be wrong with them that she herself emits said glow. Medical gloves have been a lifesaver in that regard.) ]
Some of those same people are volunteering for supply runs. I'm trying to meet up with as many groups of them as possible when they get back. There's also been a uptick in mentions of vertigo in situations that were already high stress.
no subject
[ Well, that's either going to be a blessing or a disaster. Time will tell. As for the rest, his immediate instinct is panic, is finding a way to find a way to call it off. He and Clarke had prepared for this, for the point at which enough was enough. He'd agreed with himself that the earliest sign of retaliation would be that time.
But that had been when he still believed he was heading up the effort, had the reins mostly in his own hands. He's not in the picture anymore, and still it goes on.
Maybe there's merit in it afterall. Maybe futility isn't what landed him here. ]
It's more dangerous than it was before. They'll need all the support they can get.
[ If there was ever a time to forge alliances, to lift one another up, surely it's now. ]
Is there anyone who can help you?
no subject
[ Ah. This gets tricky. ]
The clinic is staffed but I'm unclear on how many people have any experience in that sort of thing. And now people are anxious about the supply runs, understandably, and don't want to talk about them or talk about people that have gone on them.
no subject
[ And there's nothing he can do to help. Can't even uncloud his mind enough to dredge up a semblance of a plan. ]
I'm sorry. I wish there was more I could do.
[ Mostly he wishes he hadn't whipped up the beginnings of a volunteer army that's now a long way outside of his control and impacting people beyond its initial brief, but such is life. Lessons learned by doing don't always teach what you'd hoped. ]
no subject
You should try resting. If you can.