Unconscious and automatic, his gaze is caught by that flutter of Wanda’s hands. It’s a small, subtle relief at the sight, the little gesture to show herself as unmarred and unburnt. Like presenting empty palms: look, I’m unarmed.
He still doesn’t relax — he’s wired taut, muscles strung and half-ready to run or fight if necessary — but he does nod once, crisply, in acknowledgment of Wanda’s pronouncement. Her diagnosis. Better, she says, and she does look better. But look is the keyword: he knows looks can be deceiving.
And then there’s a confused beat of silence. “Lively?” Stephen echoes, lost for a second. He’s been in Thedas for a while now. He’d almost forgotten the context; he hadn’t had a mirror while dreamwalking, hadn’t needed to look at himself and see his own shambling corpse. There had been no other Stephen’s consciousness to browbeat into submission, so the main effect was that everything had been intolerably difficult, like maneuvering with lead weights and his hands stuffed into clumsy mittens. Yanking on dead nerves like the world’s most inept puppeteer.
But then he remembers, and realises what Wanda meant, and he makes a noise in the back of his throat; something between a snort and a scoff and a laugh.
“Good lord, can you imagine, if I’d come over here while puppeting that thing. Permanently saddled here as a zombie. Pieces of me falling off.”
It’s a ghost of humour to match her own, an instinctive kneejerk joke because Stephen Strange can barely exist without a needling joke, falling back on sarcastic humour as a crutch. It’s one of his most annoying traits. But it also, sometimes, helps smooth over those rough edges in a conversation.
no subject
He still doesn’t relax — he’s wired taut, muscles strung and half-ready to run or fight if necessary — but he does nod once, crisply, in acknowledgment of Wanda’s pronouncement. Her diagnosis. Better, she says, and she does look better. But look is the keyword: he knows looks can be deceiving.
And then there’s a confused beat of silence. “Lively?” Stephen echoes, lost for a second. He’s been in Thedas for a while now. He’d almost forgotten the context; he hadn’t had a mirror while dreamwalking, hadn’t needed to look at himself and see his own shambling corpse. There had been no other Stephen’s consciousness to browbeat into submission, so the main effect was that everything had been intolerably difficult, like maneuvering with lead weights and his hands stuffed into clumsy mittens. Yanking on dead nerves like the world’s most inept puppeteer.
But then he remembers, and realises what Wanda meant, and he makes a noise in the back of his throat; something between a snort and a scoff and a laugh.
“Good lord, can you imagine, if I’d come over here while puppeting that thing. Permanently saddled here as a zombie. Pieces of me falling off.”
It’s a ghost of humour to match her own, an instinctive kneejerk joke because Stephen Strange can barely exist without a needling joke, falling back on sarcastic humour as a crutch. It’s one of his most annoying traits. But it also, sometimes, helps smooth over those rough edges in a conversation.