Are you familiar with the concept of multi-verses? Hermione asks, and something complicated crosses the sorcerer’s expression.
“Intimately,” Strange says, and he connects the dots, the pieces landing in place.
And perhaps this might be a more disorienting concept for someone else who hasn’t literally studied the multiverse and already crossed it, but this is a man who has met himself, who has peered into other worlds and knows what some of those diverging roads look like for him, and so instead there’s just that restless antsiness in his reaction as he thinks: well, it’s about time.
“I knew one rifter like that,” he says. “She went to another, more futuristic world than her own and developed powers, before she eventually came here. So this isn’t your first rodeo?”
She nods, having anticipated he would connect the two dots into a straight line, clever man he is. Granted, she wouldn't have put it in terms of rodeos, but - Americans.
"It isn't, although I had the powers before that other world, and it was very much not futuristic," the latter part of that, in reminiscence, she almost smiles at. Some parts of it had been modern enough, but Taravast? Ke-Waihu? It had been as if they were travelling back in time, and sideways, and in loop-de-loops.
"Magic," she adds, making a gesture to the wand currenly stuck in her hair, where it secures positively wild curls into a bun. That added, she moves on - because that was the point to this whole thing: "And, from my perspective at least, it wasn't your first rodeo either." A beat. "We've met. I've met you."
Usually Strange is so quick to throw out his questions, with few barriers to his scalpel-sharp curiosity, but this time there’s an uncustomary hesitation. There’s simply no elegant way to ask, Was he a haggard homicidal maniac or was he, like, normal.
He. I. What an odd sensation. It’s like knowing you blacked out and did something, somewhere out there, because at the end of the day it is still you; but he has no idea what he did or what his relationship with this girl was like.
So there’s that ruminative look on his face as he finally sits down, joining Hermione at the table. Takes a breath, decides to rip off the band-aid, raw honesty.
“Well, I hope it was a positive impression and he wasn’t trying to destroy the world or anything. I understand that’s an occupational hazard with Doctor Stranges.”
That would be a rather elegant way of asking it - was he, like, normal? - but what would even count? It's not like Hermione ever got the baseline of Stephen Strange, and from the way that he acted - acts - outside and removed from his original world, she has a suspicion he's got a bit of a complex. (It's Sorceror, actually.)
Still, see her eyebrows climb up her forehead nevertheless.
"No, I didn't see him - you - there was no destroying the world," here she does a little air-quote to add, "or anything." And sets her hands down - wasn't she here to get orientated?
"If anything, I saw him try to salvage or save it more often than not, and you..." She bites the inside of her cheek. Not you, Hermione, the two men are not the same. Clearly, otherwise it would be a cruel realisation that she's forgettable. "He was helpful, also - fundamental, really - in me training to not rely on my wand for some of the more offensive and defensive spells so much."
Something unclenches in his ribcage; some loosening in his jaw, a relief. Salvaging, saving. Helpful, fundamental. It’s good to hear, a validation that their first impression isn’t already hopelessly polluted.
“One of the better ones, then,” Strange says, a proclamation like he’s vetting different car models. This one guzzles too much gasoline; this other one has a tendency to murder its alternate selves.
He exhales and shuffles the papers on the table, a reflexive tic, keeping busy. “So you’re a magic user too. Good. I won’t know what your syllabus was like,” dry humour, “but if you catch me up, we can get on the same page.”
He doesn’t want to automatic assume that she’d want to resume any sort of magic training right off the bat, but he dangles the implicit suggestion there regardless. (Fundamental. That’s one way to stroke a sorcerer’s ego.)
Must be a bit wild, to have so much experience in the multiverse and travelling through it that you think of alternative versions of yourself as good ones and murderous ones.
It would give her a severe headache to think of herself in those terms. (On the other hand, which one is the murderous Hermione Granger? None.)
"A year," she answers. "We were travelling together, plus a lot more people. Many times, but not always, the travelling group was split into factions - had to do with cover stories, presumably, but who knows? I guess what is important is we didn't always coincide in the same place.
"It was nice to, though." She makes this little gesture, drawing a circle with her hand. "He showed me the portals thing you can do. I showed," off, "how it compares to Apparition."
She has a very extensive syllabus, Stephen. "I can write it down if you want to, but Ennaris mentioned paper is hard to come by. Some of my magic is...limited. Currently."
“It will be for a while; possibly forever. I don’t know what sort of spells you’re accustomed to, but if your world was anything like mine, there’s an irritating capability gap here. Magic is harder to execute, and it drains you faster.”
Is there a faint pang of jealousy over this other Stephen Strange she knew, who presumably wasn’t limited in the same way? Maybe. Besides the Sling Ring, Strange finds that he misses the telekinesis most: fine control, handwriting, being able to tie his own tie.
But he’s gotten in the habit of stubbornly reminding himself not to think about it, not to disappear down that spiral of imagining these other worlds. He is what he is and it is what it is. Looking too far afield in envy leads to—
(to living alone in an empty universe, a sallow haggard face and unshaven beard and unkempt hair, searching for a version of himself who might be happy, and who has Christine)
So. Don’t look too far.
“You don’t have to literally write it down; I’ll remember. What’s Apparition? Can you still do it here?” he asks, genuine interest piquing his voice. This wasn’t actually the point of the intake visit, the Head Healer does have other topics he needs to go over with her, but— first, magic. The man’s got priorities.
On one hand, yes - magic is harder to execute and drains her faster. Not everything does, but she hasn't set to experimenting with spells and endurance, or effectiveness of each spell - but this is early days, so give her time.
What she does know is that Apparition is limited, likely because she doesn't know this world. Doesn't know where to Apparate, so of course she's limited to line of sights.
On the other hand, it's also just easier to show him than tell him. So she takes a hold of her wand, and as easily as breathing - practice makes perfect, after all - she Apparates. To Stephen, it will look like a folding into nothingness, of sorts, and then a reappearance on the other side of the room in one piece.
"That is." She walks back to her seat. "But it's severely limited at the moment. I was able to do that from London to the Forest of Dean once, with people tagging along for the ride. I suspect a lot of it has to do with my newness here."
Strange doesn’t make a noise, or jolt, or yelp, but he immediately straightens up in his seat and leans forward in fascination. Locked in. “Oh, that’s— I’m jealous, I used to be able to— but of course you knew that already. I don’t have a Sling Ring here, so no portals for me.”
London to the Forest of Dean. Rueful: He used to be able to take people off-planet.
“What you just did looks similar to the way local mages step through the Fade for short distances, which might be exactly what you’re doing— fascinating, I’d like to watch you practice that sometime, if you don’t mind.” Later, he will run Hermione through Apparition drills, watching her technique over and over, trying to piece it together. That hook lodging on the Fade. The way reality folds around her.
How to reproduce it himself, someday.
“That said, sorry to break it to you, but I don’t know of any mage here at all who can do anything cross-continental. It’s like… our will directly warps reality using the Fade. But that means needing to be physically present to do it. Your weight and exertion on the Fade, pulling on it, to make your intentions real. The further away you are, the harder or near-impossible it is. Regretfully.”
It’s not to get her to stop trying or to quash her hopes; it’s to realistically temper expectations.
Of course he doesn't jolt or yelp, she's seen the portals - if anything, he's probably interested in figuring out how her Apparition works and how it differs from whatever it is that he can do, because he's a curious man.
She will be able to appreciate being correct in guessing his reaction, when he leans forward.
"I have been locked in short-distance Apparition for some years now, Dr Stranger, I've grown more than used to it," she admits, with a small shrug. "One learns to deal with one's circumstances, even when they're dire. Especially if one is really stubborn about being skilled at magic." Here, a tiny smile, self-deprecating. She's giving him a truth, one she won't likely give anyone else.
"That said, you are more than welcome to observe." And study her, and train her, mentor her, whatever he would like. She's going to be hungry for progression.
That will be in the future. For now, "But what...um. This induction, what is it?"
Really stubborn about being skilled at magic is like hearing an echo of himself, and it makes Strange crack a smile.
“Induction makes it sound like I’m bringing you into a cult. It’s just some paperwork and an initial consultation like I’m your GP.” He reaches for the stack, and slides Hermione a piece of paper: a quill and a single sheet, the questions neatly printed in handwriting not his own.
“Fill that out for me. I know some of it might not be very applicable since you’re so new — emergency contacts and such — but the more important part is getting it on-record if you have any existing medical issues, or any burial preferences. They typically do pyres here. Prevents demons possessing your corpse.”
"There is something vaguely cult-like about the Chantry, though," she points out with a small smile of her own, but takes the form without hesitation. "Though maybe all forms of organised religion are."
After a shrug, she casts her gaze over the form, a knot forming in her stomach. Emergency contact? Funeral rites of preference? God, she's going to die here. Assuming she hasn't already died, and this is just her soul manifesting into Thedas - but no, why would she have died, the war was over.
Deep breaths. Stephen Strange is being laissez-faire about the form, and therefore she must follow his example. Pure pragmatism now, mental breakdown later while in quarantine.
A bark of a laugh at the dig at organised religion, since Strange can sincerely relate: “They sure are. I’ve had to bite my tongue so many times, devotion is so much more prevalent here.”
He remains politely quiet while she works on the form. Sorry about the impending panic attack, Hermione; he’s truly not the most reassuring man, even if he tries.
“Yep. Feel free to stop by the infirmary to amend the details anytime.” He cranes his head to read the answers upside-down after she’s done. “… Time travel?”
There's the trick to get her panic attack to subside: engage her brain. Her gaze lifts to Stephen's and there's a flicker of a smile before she nods. "A few theories, while I was there, was that we kept moving through different ages. Maybe because so much of the culture and - frankly, the fashion and technology - of each place we stopped in for long enough kept being so different. Have you ever experienced that? In Thedas, for instance? One country will have steam-powered trains and electricity, and the clothes will look like something out of the 1920s, while others will look practically medieval."
She carries on without waiting for the answer, "There was time travel prior to that place, though. For about a year, in school, I had a Time Turner. It's a singular time travelling device, which when spun took you back in time for as many hours as you twisted the hourglass. I used it to attend all my classes, and before you comment on that, yes. I know it's demented, I have been informed before."
Another smile (two in the span of five minutes, congratulations Hermione). And perhaps Stephen Strange might be just as demented, because he says: “To the contrary, I was about to say I’d probably have done the same thing. I did my MD/PhD simultaneously. And when I first started my sorcery training, I used astral projection in my sleep so my spirit could keep studying while my physical body was unconscious, which I just saw as a colossal waste of time— but it sounds like you might actually have me beat on the multitasking front.”
For all her preexisting familiarity with him, he’s starting to feel that comfortable flicker in turn: encountering a kindred spirit, a fellow over-achiever. He leans back in his seat.
“Thedas is a little bit like that, but more due to isolationism and culture, as you mention, and particularly their attitudes toward magic. Without magic at all, dwarves have gone in on mechanical inventions and steam and their crafts are more technologically advanced than the rest. Tevinter, due to investing more in magic, has more enchanted marvels to make day-to-day life easier. The other nations lag a little behind, from what I can tell.”
Which might be a casually brutally judgmental way of putting it, but. She’s not from here, it’s fine.
“Where you were— They didn’t have a standardised calendar to tell you what age you were in?”
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
action.
( continued from. )
Are you familiar with the concept of multi-verses? Hermione asks, and something complicated crosses the sorcerer’s expression.
“Intimately,” Strange says, and he connects the dots, the pieces landing in place.
And perhaps this might be a more disorienting concept for someone else who hasn’t literally studied the multiverse and already crossed it, but this is a man who has met himself, who has peered into other worlds and knows what some of those diverging roads look like for him, and so instead there’s just that restless antsiness in his reaction as he thinks: well, it’s about time.
“I knew one rifter like that,” he says. “She went to another, more futuristic world than her own and developed powers, before she eventually came here. So this isn’t your first rodeo?”
action.
"It isn't, although I had the powers before that other world, and it was very much not futuristic," the latter part of that, in reminiscence, she almost smiles at. Some parts of it had been modern enough, but Taravast? Ke-Waihu? It had been as if they were travelling back in time, and sideways, and in loop-de-loops.
"Magic," she adds, making a gesture to the wand currenly stuck in her hair, where it secures positively wild curls into a bun. That added, she moves on - because that was the point to this whole thing: "And, from my perspective at least, it wasn't your first rodeo either." A beat. "We've met. I've met you."
no subject
Usually Strange is so quick to throw out his questions, with few barriers to his scalpel-sharp curiosity, but this time there’s an uncustomary hesitation. There’s simply no elegant way to ask, Was he a haggard homicidal maniac or was he, like, normal.
He. I. What an odd sensation. It’s like knowing you blacked out and did something, somewhere out there, because at the end of the day it is still you; but he has no idea what he did or what his relationship with this girl was like.
So there’s that ruminative look on his face as he finally sits down, joining Hermione at the table. Takes a breath, decides to rip off the band-aid, raw honesty.
“Well, I hope it was a positive impression and he wasn’t trying to destroy the world or anything. I understand that’s an occupational hazard with Doctor Stranges.”
hermione, internally: oh, buddy...
Still, see her eyebrows climb up her forehead nevertheless.
"No, I didn't see him - you - there was no destroying the world," here she does a little air-quote to add, "or anything." And sets her hands down - wasn't she here to get orientated?
"If anything, I saw him try to salvage or save it more often than not, and you..." She bites the inside of her cheek. Not you, Hermione, the two men are not the same. Clearly, otherwise it would be a cruel realisation that she's forgettable. "He was helpful, also - fundamental, really - in me training to not rely on my wand for some of the more offensive and defensive spells so much."
So there you have it, to top it all off: a mage.
no subject
“One of the better ones, then,” Strange says, a proclamation like he’s vetting different car models. This one guzzles too much gasoline; this other one has a tendency to murder its alternate selves.
He exhales and shuffles the papers on the table, a reflexive tic, keeping busy. “So you’re a magic user too. Good. I won’t know what your syllabus was like,” dry humour, “but if you catch me up, we can get on the same page.”
He doesn’t want to automatic assume that she’d want to resume any sort of magic training right off the bat, but he dangles the implicit suggestion there regardless. (Fundamental. That’s one way to stroke a sorcerer’s ego.)
“How long did you know him?”
no subject
It would give her a severe headache to think of herself in those terms. (On the other hand, which one is the murderous Hermione Granger? None.)
"A year," she answers. "We were travelling together, plus a lot more people. Many times, but not always, the travelling group was split into factions - had to do with cover stories, presumably, but who knows? I guess what is important is we didn't always coincide in the same place.
"It was nice to, though." She makes this little gesture, drawing a circle with her hand. "He showed me the portals thing you can do. I showed," off, "how it compares to Apparition."
She has a very extensive syllabus, Stephen. "I can write it down if you want to, but Ennaris mentioned paper is hard to come by. Some of my magic is...limited. Currently."
no subject
Is there a faint pang of jealousy over this other Stephen Strange she knew, who presumably wasn’t limited in the same way? Maybe. Besides the Sling Ring, Strange finds that he misses the telekinesis most: fine control, handwriting, being able to tie his own tie.
But he’s gotten in the habit of stubbornly reminding himself not to think about it, not to disappear down that spiral of imagining these other worlds. He is what he is and it is what it is. Looking too far afield in envy leads to—
(to living alone in an empty universe, a sallow haggard face and unshaven beard and unkempt hair, searching for a version of himself who might be happy, and who has Christine)
So. Don’t look too far.
“You don’t have to literally write it down; I’ll remember. What’s Apparition? Can you still do it here?” he asks, genuine interest piquing his voice. This wasn’t actually the point of the intake visit, the Head Healer does have other topics he needs to go over with her, but— first, magic. The man’s got priorities.
no subject
What she does know is that Apparition is limited, likely because she doesn't know this world. Doesn't know where to Apparate, so of course she's limited to line of sights.
On the other hand, it's also just easier to show him than tell him. So she takes a hold of her wand, and as easily as breathing - practice makes perfect, after all - she Apparates. To Stephen, it will look like a folding into nothingness, of sorts, and then a reappearance on the other side of the room in one piece.
"That is." She walks back to her seat. "But it's severely limited at the moment. I was able to do that from London to the Forest of Dean once, with people tagging along for the ride. I suspect a lot of it has to do with my newness here."
no subject
London to the Forest of Dean. Rueful: He used to be able to take people off-planet.
“What you just did looks similar to the way local mages step through the Fade for short distances, which might be exactly what you’re doing— fascinating, I’d like to watch you practice that sometime, if you don’t mind.” Later, he will run Hermione through Apparition drills, watching her technique over and over, trying to piece it together. That hook lodging on the Fade. The way reality folds around her.
How to reproduce it himself, someday.
“That said, sorry to break it to you, but I don’t know of any mage here at all who can do anything cross-continental. It’s like… our will directly warps reality using the Fade. But that means needing to be physically present to do it. Your weight and exertion on the Fade, pulling on it, to make your intentions real. The further away you are, the harder or near-impossible it is. Regretfully.”
It’s not to get her to stop trying or to quash her hopes; it’s to realistically temper expectations.
no subject
She will be able to appreciate being correct in guessing his reaction, when he leans forward.
"I have been locked in short-distance Apparition for some years now, Dr Stranger, I've grown more than used to it," she admits, with a small shrug. "One learns to deal with one's circumstances, even when they're dire. Especially if one is really stubborn about being skilled at magic." Here, a tiny smile, self-deprecating. She's giving him a truth, one she won't likely give anyone else.
"That said, you are more than welcome to observe." And study her, and train her, mentor her, whatever he would like. She's going to be hungry for progression.
That will be in the future. For now, "But what...um. This induction, what is it?"
no subject
“Induction makes it sound like I’m bringing you into a cult. It’s just some paperwork and an initial consultation like I’m your GP.” He reaches for the stack, and slides Hermione a piece of paper: a quill and a single sheet, the questions neatly printed in handwriting not his own.
“Fill that out for me. I know some of it might not be very applicable since you’re so new — emergency contacts and such — but the more important part is getting it on-record if you have any existing medical issues, or any burial preferences. They typically do pyres here. Prevents demons possessing your corpse.”
He sounds astoundingly laissez-faire about it.
no subject
After a shrug, she casts her gaze over the form, a knot forming in her stomach. Emergency contact? Funeral rites of preference? God, she's going to die here. Assuming she hasn't already died, and this is just her soul manifesting into Thedas - but no, why would she have died, the war was over.
Deep breaths. Stephen Strange is being laissez-faire about the form, and therefore she must follow his example. Pure pragmatism now, mental breakdown later while in quarantine.
"I'm assuming I'll have to refill this as it changes?" she asks, writing her quick answers already.
no subject
He remains politely quiet while she works on the form. Sorry about the impending panic attack, Hermione; he’s truly not the most reassuring man, even if he tries.
“Yep. Feel free to stop by the infirmary to amend the details anytime.” He cranes his head to read the answers upside-down after she’s done. “… Time travel?”
no subject
She carries on without waiting for the answer, "There was time travel prior to that place, though. For about a year, in school, I had a Time Turner. It's a singular time travelling device, which when spun took you back in time for as many hours as you twisted the hourglass. I used it to attend all my classes, and before you comment on that, yes. I know it's demented, I have been informed before."
no subject
For all her preexisting familiarity with him, he’s starting to feel that comfortable flicker in turn: encountering a kindred spirit, a fellow over-achiever. He leans back in his seat.
“Thedas is a little bit like that, but more due to isolationism and culture, as you mention, and particularly their attitudes toward magic. Without magic at all, dwarves have gone in on mechanical inventions and steam and their crafts are more technologically advanced than the rest. Tevinter, due to investing more in magic, has more enchanted marvels to make day-to-day life easier. The other nations lag a little behind, from what I can tell.”
Which might be a casually brutally judgmental way of putting it, but. She’s not from here, it’s fine.
“Where you were— They didn’t have a standardised calendar to tell you what age you were in?”