Riftwatch has been kind enough to outfit the sorcerer with a generic set of clothes, so he doesn’t stand out quite so egregiously anymore (the tailored Armani suit carefully folded and stashed away in his quarters, somewhat regretfully), but he still looks uncomfortable and fidgety in the new attire. He’s kept his trademark red cloak, but it doesn’t move anymore, just hangs lifeless on his shoulders, and he hasn’t quite made up his mind whether it feels like wearing the pelt of a dead friend and if he ought to leave it behind.

Still. At the sound of that voice, Strange looks up from the towering piles of books he’s surrounded himself with, and he blanches.

There’s the innate instinct to be just as blasé and nonchalant back, match the attitude tit-for-tat, except—

(except that the last time Stephen Strange’s life intersected with Tony Stark’s, he was at his funeral, the death that Stephen himself had tidily lined up for him, maneuvering the other man toward that sacrifice like a convenient rook on the chessboard—)

So Strange goes still, instead. Looks at him for a little too long, as if he’s seeing a ghost. When he marshals himself back together, he’s steadied out his voice, aims for that nonchalance and very nearly hits it. “This isn’t some kind of fever dream, right? Knocked on the head a bit too hard, fell under a hallucinatory spell, started imagining a medieval Tony Stark?” A beat. “This is you, right?”