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(CLOSED) / disney's phantom manor
Who: Stephen Strange (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rehandle), Avengers of all flavours, and any future special guest stars.
What: Stephen adopts some multiversal strays
When: July onward
Where: Dr. Strange's Home For Peculiar Adults (his house in Sunset Falls & related adventures)
Content Warnings: will uh. will update as needed. likely to get messy in here with talk of character death at a minimum
[ On Will-o'-the-Wisp Walk, a beautiful old manor house stands at the end of a grand driveway in grounds lush, green and weeping with willows. At first glance it might look like a perfectly ordinary Sunset Falls home, but a quick Google will cite it as the present residence of one Dr. Stephen Strange, who stands guard over the basement-bound dimension that started spiriting away Sunset Falls residents that one time.
For the most part, excluding the months when the yard played host to a massive space ship whose outline still marks the lawn, all's been quiet up at the house since the basement incident.
Not so come July. With the latest Confluence arrive a slew of new faces, and the usual tranquil unease of one Sunset Falls street is unlikely to stay tranquil for long... ]
[ (If you've ever been to Disneyland, no you haven't, and you've never seen this house before in your life.) ]
rehandle), Avengers of all flavours, and any future special guest stars.What: Stephen adopts some multiversal strays
When: July onward
Where: Dr. Strange's Home For Peculiar Adults (his house in Sunset Falls & related adventures)
Content Warnings: will uh. will update as needed. likely to get messy in here with talk of character death at a minimum
[ On Will-o'-the-Wisp Walk, a beautiful old manor house stands at the end of a grand driveway in grounds lush, green and weeping with willows. At first glance it might look like a perfectly ordinary Sunset Falls home, but a quick Google will cite it as the present residence of one Dr. Stephen Strange, who stands guard over the basement-bound dimension that started spiriting away Sunset Falls residents that one time.
For the most part, excluding the months when the yard played host to a massive space ship whose outline still marks the lawn, all's been quiet up at the house since the basement incident.
Not so come July. With the latest Confluence arrive a slew of new faces, and the usual tranquil unease of one Sunset Falls street is unlikely to stay tranquil for long... ]
[ (If you've ever been to Disneyland, no you haven't, and you've never seen this house before in your life.) ]
THE VIBES -
▷ OPEN - house things - through July
early/mid-July, post-Arcadia
wildcard
any time
wildcard i think?
steve had been in her room in arcadia, no missing him there — but she and stark had only texted. it'd been better that way. things still felt ... raw, even if he'd agreed to join up with them in the end. some patterns you fell into without even thinking about them, and they'd picked up right where they'd left on in some places. in others? she didn't want to touch that with a 20 foot pole.
it's even more complicated knowing that as far as stark was concerned, that hadn't happened yet. )
Knock knock.
( regardless, she leans on the door of the room tony has taken over as his own, hands shoved into the pockets of the leather jacket she'd confiscated for her own as soon as strange set her loose on the house. no sense putting this off. he looks like she remembers him looking the night before she'd arrived here — older. a little less frantic. a little more worn. )
Already building a suit?
( she nods at the armor rack. )
no subject
But.
He's working because that's what he does. He has to keep his hands busy, his mind occupied, otherwise that frantic genius will turn itself inwards and become toxic all too quickly. The workshop is the first thing he does, before he's even shopped for clothes.
When Natasha finds him, he's sitting at the workbench with his back to the half open door, breaking down one of the robots from the jail, separating out its component parts so he can rebuild it again. He turns around to look at her, circuits tangled in his hands, then reaches up to tug earbuds out. ]
Eventually. [ He follows her gaze to the suit. ] There's some neat stuff here. Back in Excelsior. Might have to steal some ideas.
[ He sets the robot parts down and turns properly on the stool to look at her. ]
Didn't get to really talk before. How are you doing with this whole.. thing?
no subject
it gives her enough hope to move further into the room, out of the doorway until she’s a little further in his orbit. natasha still hangs back, keeps distance between them — but it’s a far cry from being able to bolt. )
Imitation is the highest form of flattery — or so they tell me. ( she favors him with one of her patented half-smiles, but there’s an shadow to it that is new, a sense that the words are just as much self-deprecating as poking fun at him.
a half-smile that wavers, corner of her lips tugging. it’s not the same as a how are you doing that he might’ve tossed her at home (and even that she’d had months without), but it strikes the same chord. )
Rotten politicians, forced imprisonment, potential sun cults. It’s like we never left home. ( she knows he’ll see the words for what they are: a deflection, a suit of armor.
she follows them up with a jab of her own: ) We really haven’t recruited you yet back home? ( probably a poor choice of words there. unlike her, a mis-step. )
no subject
The time heist? [ Tony raises his eyebrows. ]
Yeah, who came up with that? The name, not the idea. Though they're both pretty nuts.
no subject
( it’s a mark of how all of this has changed them, the way that his lips purse but he doesn’t call her on the mis-step. he’d been like that at the house he shared with pepper too. angry that they’d come, but anger shaped like a scalpel rather than a spray of machine gun fire. and underneath that? a kind of peace she’d never seen in him before.
the peace was what drew a question, for her — had they really done the right thing, bringing him back? )
He showed up at the gates of HQ, for a second we thought that — ( she won’t forget the sickly feeling of joy that had leapt in her throat, her entire body thrumming until it became clear that scott hadn’t been spared, he’d been lost and that was different. ) I didn’t want to bring you in until we thought there was a real chance.
( an impossible one, as he’d pointed out at the time. she picks her way towards the table, runs her fingers over a piece of metal because it gives her something to do other than avoid his eyes. )
for stephen.
but there’s no amount of distraction that can really keep him from the awareness, slotted temporarily in his subsystems, that he has perhaps more questions about their situation in this dimension than his colleagues, who rightly have very many questions—and he may have more questions for pretty good reasons. so he considers himself lucky that their temporary landlord might be a good authority on matters of transdimensional travel and, well. surviving the impossible.
he catches stephen in passing, incidentally, while washing dishes. he’s been meandering around as faux human, because per his preliminary research people in this world have mixed opinions on starfallen, visible difference, the color red. best not to make things more complicated until they have to be. ]
—ah, there you are, Dr. Strange. [ shutting off the sink and reaching for a hand towel. ] Do you have a moment? I’ve been meaning to speak with you.
no subject
He's been busy this last week. Always some reason to be going more often than he's coming back: a jailbreak or a long overdue talk with a friend or more guard attacks elsewhere in the haunted little town he almost calls home. But here he is, getting ready to make himself a sandwich, very obviously not in a hurry to do much of anything. And so, finally, the inevitable catches up to him.
Funny. You spend years preparing for a whole array of impossible, uncomfortable conversations about a life lived in another universe, and then up shows the one iteration of the one guy whose conversation topic of choice is inevitably going to be the massive shitshow you only just experienced.
He doesn't have even the bones of a script ready. Suddenly keenly regretting having spent his career dodging the need to gain any meaningful family room experience.
Extracting himself from the refrigerator empty-handed, Stephen turns somewhat stiffly in the Vision's direction. Brows raised, faux casual, mouth pressed into a line that he manages to twitch for a moment into a non-committal almost smile. ]
Oh? Sure.
[ 'Oh? Sure'? Oh, sure, Strange. Impeccable execution. ]
for, unfortunately, everyone.
good tenants probably aren’t slamming their landlords through one of the house’s old boarded walls and further, in an ear-popping explosion of wood and debris, vision with his hands fisted in stephen’s collar sending them both skidding across the newly swept floors. the face turned down at stephen is decidedly not human; it is also not especially robotic. not with his glowing eyes, his mask of unfamiliar and towering rage. ]
—WHAT DID YOU DO?
belatedly sobbing
it’s kind of a relief when vision slams through the wall with a crumpled body she recognizes to be strange. this feels more normal than whatever weird domestic act they’ve all been putting on.
that doesn’t stop her from startling, though, coffee half-way to her lips. )
Vision. ( it’s what clint had once called her ‘commander’ voice. ) What happened?
HOUSE GROUP CHAT -
no subject
May need to take in additional people temporarily. I'll keep you in the loop.
no subject
( what, she's gotten good at this logistics stuff )
no subject
Thank you.
no subject
food, toiletries, spare clothes
unless you're sitting on a stockpile somewhere
( this is all very professional, good for them )
no subject
Anything particular you want while I'm doing the rounds?
[ She gets special requests for being an exceptional houseguest. ]
no subject
not unless you know a guy who can get me more knives
or guns
something feels like we’re gonna need it
no subject
I do happen to know a guy
no subject
you trust him?
no subject
To source what you need? Yeah
If there's anything specific you could do with let me know. Otherwise I'll ask him to spare what he can.
no subject
throwing knives
batons if he has them
easier to be non lethal
no subject
[ Jason's general air of 'would give weapons to a wizard on request' isn't a subtle one. ]
I'll see what he can do.
no subject
no subject
[ Only half true. The reality is more that he'd rather keep his house full of Avengers un-visited by people who would absolutely find a way to weaponise them against him for their own amusement (affectionate). ]
no subject
keep your secrets for now
anything else i can do to help prepare?
no subject
no subject
( and look we’ve successfully navigated yet another conversation without anything fraught happening! )