network.

[sorser]

Who: Stephen Strange & Emily Dyer
Username: strange, emilydyer
Warnings: None! Will add if necessary.


un: strange

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Doctor Stephen Strange. Back in my home universe, I once practiced as a neurosurgeon; here, I’m offering my experience as a doctor in ADI’s medical department. With that comes a variety of responsibilities, but also the obligation to make the occasional PSA. So, here goes:

I understand that not everyone is completely trusting of ADI, or agrees with their handling of any given situation. And I’m not here to convince you otherwise. Instead, I’m here to make sure everyone knows that the medical department always has its doors open to any who need it, regardless of your feelings on the organization. So please take advantage of that fact.

If you’re injured, or sick, or feel affected by anything odd or supernatural in this world, don’t hesitate to get yourself checked in. Your health is always of the utmost importance, and we’ll do what we can to take care of you. Remember: you can’t continue to investigate if you’re ill or otherwise incapacitated.

If you need to contact me personally, that’s always an option, too. Doctor Dyer is also available for the same services, and is just as competent — if not more so.

-Dr. Strange

un: emilydyer

Dr. Strange is being kindly flattering in regards to myself, but in regards to your health, he is absolutely correct. My name is Emily Dyer, and I'm operating as another physician in ADI's medical department, with my background best classified under general practice and community medicine.

Our allegiance, in the end, is not to those who've agreed to help ADI, but to anyone who is in need of a doctor's care. Wherever you come from, whatever your take on this entire predicament we find ourselves in, we wish only to aid and to be deserving of your trust.

This sentiment isn't limited to just us, but rather all of our colleagues as well. If you aren't able to come into the department, or an emergency has arisen, send us a message, and we'll come to you instead.

Additionally, I'd like to put forth a small secondary announcement. I've been working on a medicine to aid sleep and reduce nightmares, and at this stage, it's ready to be given to a larger group. I'd like to offer this out to those who'd wish to try it, with a request that you let me know how it works for you so that I can accurately calculate its efficacy as a remedy.

If you're concerned about what it's comprised of, it's based in herbology and natural sources instead of harsher synthetic chemicals, and I have been taking it myself, so you needn't feel there is a risk associated. At worst, it simply has a bitter taste, which can be improved on with time. Regardless, I realize that this will raise questions, and I'll answer them to the best of my ability.

-E.D.

(( ooc: since this is a joint post, both Stephen and Emily will make appearances in the replies. ))

Comments

[medicative]

I would be delighted to see a rush of cold patients.

...Not literally, of course, but it would be better than wild boar maulings, rusty traps, sleepwalking injuries, sleep deprivation, and all the lovely other things that walk through our door.

[at least a cold goes away in a few days and requires little more than common sense and maybe a decongestant.]

[sorser]

On that, I can't help but agree.

[He sighs a little, and now that they can give their message a little time to percolate on the network, Stephen slips his device into his pocket. He's dressed normally today; no need for the sorcerer's regalia within the confines of medical.]

So, speaking of. ["So", a word that heralds expectation. Perhaps Emily is expecting it by now.] We did agree on something else after we'd posted this. Do you remember?

[medicative]

...Of course I do. I did promise you once the formula was complete enough, and I keep my word.

[even if she feels rather like she wants to immediately bolt out the door. instead, she picks up the mug of coffee she has and sips from it, forcing herself to relax.]

So. Ask your questions, Dr. Strange - I know you have several.

[sorser]

[Stephen would have to be utterly obvious to not realize this is a sensitive topic, otherwise she wouldn’t have gone to so many pains to avoid discussing it. He knows he should not be blunt in his questioning, that he should at least be sensitive to her discomfort, despite his gnawing curiosity that has shaped itself into concern.

So, before he asks, he simply decides to sit in a chair nearby, inviting open discussion with body language that isn’t standing with clear expectation.]

Those dreams of yours, how much of them were based on real experiences?

[medicative]

...All of them.

[she exhales slowly, clearly uncomfortable, but keeping a stiff upper lip regardless. her fingers tap on her mug, and she keeps her back ramrod straight.]

Though not entirely the way it linked together. Bits and pieces, stitched together to make something very, very new.

[and the basement, that was harder to understand.]

Dr. Strange, if I told you something that sounded utterly fantastical, impossible, completely so - I fear there is no way to address things without sounding quite mad.

[sorser]

[He looks at her evenly, mouth tugging into a frown for how serious this must be; how difficult it must be to talk about.]

Doctor Dyer, I am a sorcerer. I’ve seen the colorful branches of the multiverse, fought entities that wanted to destroy humanity, and have spent an indeterminable amount of time studying what I once thought was fantastical and impossible.

Believe me, I’m not going to think you’re crazy.

[medicative]

[she knows, she knows - magic is capable of many things, and magic is probably why she is where she is now, but it still smarted when she was so relieved to be able to feign normalcy again. going to work, coming home, being able to go and do as she pleases. it's a lot to take in.]

Thank you, I sincerely appreciate that.

[it won't make her posture any less stiff, but she doesn't have quite the same death grip on the mug that she had before. progress.]

What you saw were fragments of the...I suppose I should call it another realm, where I've been trapped for so long I've really lost track of time. They don't go together in that order, but that's the nature of dreams, to distort memory into something new.

[that's not the fantastical part, not all of it. but it addresses some of how she had seemed to know the figure that had haunted them, hunted them.]

[sorser]

[He takes what progress he can, letting her speak. Stephen’s focus sharpens on her words, the same way it would when contemplating multiversal threats that have the mere potential to exist, back in Kamar-Taj.

And this doesn’t feel too far off the mark. A reality in which individuals are hunted by creatures that look ripped from the pages of a Lovecraft story? Oh yes, he remembers that thing, and the inherent helplessness wrought of being hunted.]

How did you become trapped there? Was it that thing’s doing?

[medicative]

No. Hastur is another...participant in the hunt. Though I assume he came to join by choice, instead of deceit.

[because she cannot envision a creature like that trapped. amusing himself, perhaps, or wrapped in strange ritual. it's not as though she can sit down with him and ask his story, or that she's even inclined to do so.]

I have never seen my captor's face. All I know is that each of us brought there were invited - there was no reason to doubt its reality, nothing to question.

[everyone invited for a reason compelling enough to take a leap, sweet enough to say yes to. nothing strange or amiss in it save for how much the Baron knows.]

And then once there, there is no way back. The location may change, the hunter likewise, but it's all the same every time you're brought forth. Even if you pass the gates, you are still there.

[again and again and again, against beings you could never actually hurt, only delay. the fear never really eases, though she's learned to live with it. learned how to buy precious seconds, minutes, to push someone else before her and take the blow on her own back. it is hell, she thinks, but a hell she's earned.]

Not even death is an escape.

[this last part is admitted so softly, as if she had to coax the fact out from where it was buried in her chest. perhaps her attitude might make more sense to him - why she was so reluctant, why she would downplay her own life and experience as boring, as nothing. Emily asks for no pity, no sympathy - it is what it is, it is her existence, wrapped in a Mobius strip that is not allowed to cease.]

[sorser]

[It all sounds terrible, inhuman. Like trapped in a nightmare, except where theirs in this world ended, hers keeps on cycling; death on loop. Stephen, too, can relate only superficially. Where he had died via the wrath of Dormammu, over and over again, he had done so willingly to exert his influence over the dread entity. He had been in control, even if he suffered for it.

Emily sounds only like a victim.]

And you've died there, haven't you.

[It isn't a question, spoken softly, as if treading uneven ground. Her reluctance now does make sense in context. This is not something you tell a prying mind, even if they are a co-worker one sees daily.]

Why you? Why any one of the people who were chosen to undergo that process?

[medicative]

I wish I knew. I wish there was some common thread to pull on - that we were all souls who had done wrong, or that we were all good people, even that we were all from the same place. But there's no connection to be seen.

[if people know each other, it's the exception, not the rule. that her initial grouping seems targeted is a strange fluke, a change in the routine, but then what follows is all the same.]

The only true thing we have as a constant is that we survive.

[Emily will make herself finish her cup, as if it will unstick the words in her throat.]

Now you know why I worry about sounding mad.

[because people don't die over and over, and come back. an endless distorted game of chase, with many a threat to face down - it doesn't exist. and yet it does.]

[sorser]

[He looks at her steadily at first, saying nothing. Turning this new information over in his head, he wonders if he should consider her as a different sort of person from now on — experiences, good and bad, craft an individual into who they are today. Stephen knows that very intimately.

So what does it say for Doctor Dyer? That she is a survivor, yes, but that she survives with dignity — that she does not take the injustice she’s been served out on others, but still chooses to help and to hope for the betterment of the people around her, when awful circumstances stamp such hope out of lesser men and women.

It’s admirable. It’s a quiet strength, and maybe that’s how Stephen would always have described her. So very little changes in his estimation.]

Emily, [It is the first time he’s dropped the formality of title and surname, but he thinks it’s overdue with this conversation.] in this world, you’ve been given a new freedom. To say what you want, to believe whatever you want, and no one will argue the point. How can they? You’ve seen the kind of people this world’s pulled into it.

[Anyone would sound mad, retelling their own tale. Even those from his own world could spin yarns that are unbelievable on their best day. Wanda. Tony. Even Loki, when he was here, the Trickster god himself stuck in Gloucester.]

Don’t keep this kind of thing to yourself. The otherworlders here could help you; you don’t know what type of expertise they have with the unusual, or what kind of advice they could give.

[His features soften, imperceptibly.]

I’m glad you felt you could tell me. And as awful as it is to be here, you can take it as proof that your endless cycle? Isn’t so endless.

[medicative]

[it's like the words cut some invisible string of tension that she's held onto from the moment she was here, the fear of being labelled delusional or wrapped up in some curse, that it was something no one would believe. horror and fear and agony, and things aren't perfect here, but at least there's a little room to exist. at least there isn't a nigh constant reminder of death. she can breathe, and the air doesn't feel tainted.

it will take time to truly adjust, this she knows. but Stephen's right, that there might be people who could help. maybe someone out there knows more about loops, about what it is to be uncertain of death or life. maybe there's advice that will simply make it bearable. either way, there might be something - and that kindles hope Emily hasn't had in a long while.]

...Thank you, Stephen.

[she means that as sincerely as her body can hold.]

I don't think I ever quite let myself think there wasn't going to be a moment I wasn't going to wake up right back there, with all of this a merry little dream.

[sorser]

[His expression, so often defined by its sharp lines and quizzical skepticism, grants her a little warmth. The care found at the heart of people like themselves—people who seek to aid others, who know it as their duty—is often hidden by Stephen’s acerbic wit, or his no-nonsense approach to many things, but every once in a while it unearths itself.]

This place is more than just a reprieve for some. It’s a chance to reflect back on the circumstances they’ve come from, and the time to solve problems that they didn’t have the means to before.

[He leans forward, his elbows on the table.]

I can try to help you, too. I know a thing or two about being stuck in a loop.