#strangcrdoctor

“Christ. Your beside manner is shit, Doc. Did people really pay you for that gloom and doom bullshit?”  Jessica wasn’t actually complaining. She wasn’t stupid enough to come to Strange for comfort. If she wanted comfort, she would’ve stuck with the doctor she was paying. Comfort was futile; a tiny bandaid over a wound that needed stitches. A relentlessly cheery smile telling her she’d lost her fucking spleen.

Stephen’s body had been warm - a solid, comforting presence at her side - and Karen had been drifting in and out of a light sleep as they lay there, tangle of limbs and splayed hair. When he shifted, when the warmth suddenly left her side and Stephen was gone, Karen’s eyes had snapped open and she’d looked up to him. The request had been simple, bordering almost on a demand, but his own reply made her smile.

Tea? Tea sounded nice. It would be even better to have while curled up together in the bed.

“I suppose I’ll give you bathroom privileges this time,” came the half-hearted tease, the blonde shifting on the bed enough to turn on the lamp on the nightstand before she sat upright, adjusting the pillows behind her. “I got more honey earlier this week. Will you put some in mine?” 

She greeted him with a sigh and a half-hearted smile. In one hand was a cup of tea; the other held the day’s paper, folded open to the obituaries. She had underlined someone’s name.

     “We should prolly stop meetin’ like this,” John coughed the quip as he leaned against the doorway to the Sanctum. He was covered in blood again, and while it was always uncertain just how much of it was his, judging from the bruises decorating his skin, his straits had been dire tonight. 

@strangcrdoctor​ gets a starter for our plotted thing!

                      He’d thought Hydra had burned the stench of wartime London out of his memories, but he is mistaken. As soon as the smell of smoke, fire, piss, and misery hits his nose, he’s right back in the middle of the second world war, his posture changing, his mind full with military shortcuts. He needs two hours until he finds today’s newspaper that tells him he finally got it right. He’d done two jumps already, missing the right time completely and probably fucking up some time-space-continuity, but he doesn’t particularly care about that. Of course, he never intended to go back to London, but he is too scared to try another jump. He takes care of his appearance first, his Winter Soldier training helping him with acquiring a military uniform, so he won’t stand out in the bombed-out city in jeans and a fucking leather jacket. Then he finds shelter in a half-destroyed building, considering his possibilities.

                      He could try to make it to the continent and then to the fucking Alps. Europe is still Nazi-infested, so that will take a fucking long time, maybe too long to actually get there in time and save his own ass. He could wait for Steve and tell him the god-honest truth. That would probably screw the timeline beyond recognition since he couldn’t shut up about the whole Valkyrie stuff. He could also just try to talk to his younger self, but every science fiction time travel novel he ever read had told him how bad that would go. Well, he could also wait for the evening before the mission in the Alps. He could disguise himself and pay a visit to young Sergeant Barnes. It wouldn’t take much, maybe just breaking a leg or an arm. That would heal up nicely without much trouble, but he’d be unable to attend that fucking last mission.

@strangcrdoctor​ said:  " you know, it's ten times easier to relax when i'm not reminded of the killers out to get us. "

From the mouths of centuries-old babes, he thought. Still, he knew that at heart she was actually quite accurately diagnosing a persistent issue in both of their lives... just with slightly different shapes and executions. Stephen at times felt like the Sanctum and his phone were grand-central station for every hero, demi-hero, and Village grandma that needed something witchy done.

But the silence, the dead, echoing silence when he wasn’t being bothered, was somehow always worse.

“Maybe,” he granted. Folding his book closed, he wandered over to the couches assembled around the hearth, sitting down on his usual armchair. “But whenever I think that, i have to remind myself that I’m rather a stodgy old bat to begin with, and that I shouldn’t look gift company in the mouth. What about you? Who has been speaking over you of late to have you so irritated about this particular issue?”

     “It’s too fast,” Anya --well, she was Anyanka again, now wasn’t she?-- sighed. Usually she’d be too scared to voice such a thing aloud. This place, though. It was so still, seemingly warded from the outside world. Each and every one of them. “I think maybe I’m out of practice.”

     She paced, chewing the very tip of her thumb anxiously. Anya didn’t remember this being so difficult. It certainly wasn’t brain surgery. Woman wronged, wish made, punishment enacted, wash, rinse, repeat, ad nauseum. In fact she was having trouble remembering how much fun she used to have. These days it just felt as though she were constantly trying to meet her quota.

     “I...It’s not like I can’t do it,"Anya insisted, sounding for all the world like she was trying to convince herself of than anyone else. “It’s just...I dunno. Maybe I was human for too long.”