@stephen.strange | via morningstar network, a couple of days after cassius' post

[rehandle]

[ 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. ]

Comments

[wangxian]

[ ah. this is a tone he knows.

but, lan wangji is no conversationalist. he is no bright and engaging thing. ]

I am listening.

[ he pauses. not entirely as he has asked, sure, but: ]

I have no time limit.

[ sometimes this is the best someone like him can do. ]

[rehandle]

[ It's not dissimilar from what he expects he'd say were their situations changed. ... No, actually, that's doing the other man a discredit. Stephen Strange has never been a particularly patient, generous kind of person.

Suffice to say the sincerity of the offer shines through. ]

Thank you.

[ He'll ease into it. For now - ]

Who knew that actions have consequences?

[ A joke asked mainly at his own expense, but also one that's partly shared. They've shared a choice that came at the same cost. The point is that learning that particular lesson is a new trick for an old dog and he just isn't ready to take it on board. ]

[wangxian]

[ lan wangji is nothing, if not honest. sincere is a kinder word, reserved for those that lan wangji has taken some fondness to. no matter how it is that he attempts to not entangle himself so closely, it occurs. and it often occurs when lan wangji does not choose at first to acknowledge it himself.

funny how that works.

still, there is an acceptance of thanks in the silence toward it. it is not something he typically expects, something he is not always comfortable taking. ]

I would recall that is the nature of actions.

[ it's maybe a joke, maybe a slight chastisement. but, it is those things as much as it is a pointed knowing of his tendencies, shared as they might be in the correct circumstances. ]