848/Yesterday, Tomorrow

Yesterday, Tomorrow
Date of Scene:	29 March 2020
Location:	Sanctum Santorum
Synopsis:	Philosophical ramblings on the importance of being in life.
Cast of Characters:	Clea, Stephen Strange

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Clea has posed:
Wind buffets Greenwich Village from all sides. It swirls between the old Revolutionary-era streets and shakes up the hipsters going about their days, coming down from their vastly expensive apartments to swill overpriced coffee, used overpriced laundry machines at the laundromat, and basically live the American Dream circa the 21st century. Trash and the odd dried leaf take to the air, risking a good smack in the face.

Tabloids scream about Tony Stark this, Lex Luthor that. Tanking ratings for one politician or another meet with the social crisis of the moment. Genosha fallen, refugees need help, the Middle East in another jaunty crisis. They're all cares worth knowing, worth worrying about. Everyday whims and great tragedies pile up. Clea is immune to them to a degree. Her world, but not totally. She instead stands on the sidewalk and dances with the wind, twirling around on her toes with a balletic grace completely out of the norm for anyone, Julliard trained or not. A leaf prances around just out of reach of her fingertips, batted around like a small cat.

The Sorceress Supreme of the Dark Dimension, the daughter of a Faltine, is playing with the breeze.

Well. There are stranger things.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen, Sorcerer Supreme of this dimension steps behind Clea and he looks at the whims of the Faltinian woman with the joy of fluttering a leaf about before herself and her finger tips. Such is the joy of a Sorcerer Supreme who is no longer residing within their dimension.

    The wars and the politics of this world are no longer something Stephen has the luxury of allowing himself to worry about, but he will find time to spend time with the platinum haired woman who seems aloof and yet more worldly than he is in several ways.

    "Clea, How can you seem so carefree and tireless while out and about like this?" He asks, never having learned how to be that way himself even before his magical life.

Clea has posed:
Such is the joy of one who is within their dimension, supposing that dimension tries not to attain full revolt status thanks to a grumpy uncle who holds a grudge and no sense of tactile facility with his head. The white-blonde locks float as Clea stretches up as high as she can, swatting down the leaf. It plummets, compelled along, until another whimsical updraft blows it out of even her quick reach. Why it moves, carried on, is the knowledge of the atmosphere alone and it doesn't divulge its secrets even to her. Not entirely. A creature more fire than air, it's an easy game to truly whisper a word and hope a zephyr will circle back to favour her.

She pirouettes with a careless ease, hands clasped to her chest. The snatches of some old song play from an open window, someone's business trying to capture the first hints of spring.

//Yesterday,
All my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as though they're here to stay...
Oh, I believe in yesterday.//

A young Paul McCartney crooning over the spare melodies of a light drum and guitar swivel her attention away from Stephen, listening to that ballad with raised brows and parted lips. Its snare is in her, even as she hums a little. "I can see the sky," she says, a tad distracted, committing the heart-lorn lyrics to mind. "How beautiful it is, how vast and turbulent. Feel how it moves. Isn't that refreshing on your skin? You can't tell me you have never stopped to let it roll over you, braced against it. Surely you have. Do I need to convince Cloak to take you up there to prove my point?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen looks skywards at Clea's words, and he steps slowly behind her unguided steps as she twists and twirls and seems to frolock and get lost in the Earth itself. Stephen realizes again that she's beyond an alien to this world, she's an alien to this dimension, everything about it is alien to her thusly.

    "No, Clea, I've never been one to stop and smell the roses." Stephen retorts, feeling a sense of almost selfishness in that he hasn't stopped to enjoy the shades of blue of the sky, or the shapes of the clouds. Stephen has been a mind enraptured with study and purpose. One that doesn't allow time for leisure or relaxation. Strange shakes his head at Clea's question, "You are welcome to done the cloak should you need and soar among the clouds, I cannot tary in such trivial pursuits." Stephen explains with a tug of his lips downwards and a shift of his goatee.

Clea has posed:
An alien in every way including identification if anyone ever stopped her to press the point. Not exactly American born, and the papers that got her through Nepal into Kamar-Taj probably don't stand up to American scrutiny. As it is, illegal immigrant! Imagine how the feds might respond to someone who can look at them with wide violet eyes stricken by shimmering incomprehension at the notion she cannot be right there.

//I'm not half the man
I used to be,
There's a shadow hanging over me.
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.//

Paul keeps on crooning from the speaker projecting his mournful lament into the street, at odds with the sunlight threaded through the bare branches. Perhaps Help! would have been a better choice, if it's not already banished by an irked wizard. Meddle not in the affairs of sorcerers, after all.

She casts a smile up to him, brightly contained despite the ivory hue of her delicate, delighted features. All the colour radiates in her gemstone gaze, the rest reduced to moonlight, starfire, and silver. Clasping her hands together, she bends forward a little. "Then how are you self-assured about the purpose of life if you don't live it? The nexus of what you defend originates from knowing the experiences, letting them be a foundation for your dedication to it. A man cannot live on a mountaintop and care truly about the valley in a real, honest way unless he walks in the fields and talks to the villagers. Otherwise you're as remote as the sun in the sky, and what cares he for all he beams on?" It's not an insult; this is a very little question in the motif of the Mystic Arts trained in their joint home. "Trivial pursuits these are not, Stephen. I went without seeing the sky for twenty-eight years. Believe me, it's far from a trifle."

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "So are you to be my guide into the world of Earth and humanity? The alien woman who finds joys in the world of a man who's forced himself to be seperate from this world in order to, as he feels, best serve it. There is a comedy about this in the libraries of man and alien alike." The wizard says twoards the sorceress.

    "Or do you have a seperate recommendation, Sweet Clea?" Stephen asks, looking towards her violet eyes and feeling his own greys get drawn into her innocent and pristine and hopeful gaze, and yet the fires within the woman are poorly hidden, she has drive and desires as much as any human, maybe more so. Something about her draws Stephen in and closer to the woman, yet he keeps to himself out of respect.

Clea has posed:
It's an odd thing to be, standing in front of that great, imposing Sanctum serving as the bulwark of power in the western hemisphere. London and Hong Kong have their own roles to play according to the preferences of the sorcerous master of the terrestrial dimension, presumably, but this is the beating heart of his power. Clea respects it, without fail. But neither can she quail away from the statement he makes. "Your guide?" Foaming platinum bangs skim over her brow and tumble in her face, waiting to be knocked away. The waves tickle her nose, forgotten, tresses doing nothing to blunt the fathomless brilliance of her eyes turned to him like lanterns in the darkest of nights. "Only if you would invite the confidence. You hold the rank of the master here, I do not. The mantle comes with all the attendant demands and burdens, and in the end you must make the decisions. But forced separation is a dangerous path."

Oh, it takes moments to be brave. Not to quail away and make herself invisible, something she is so good at, it held up a masquerade for nearly eight hundred years. Longer, really. Her fingers reach out and if he doesn't flinch away, brush against Stephen's jaw. "We serve. Yes, that is why we command the power. What was it the Ancient One would say? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. A reminder springs to my mind. Master Mordo." Sorrow there, not rage. She can hold compassion in tandem with regret, so many regrets. "Service is hard. It demands much, but it isn't absolute and depriving you from having a /life/. Else no one would ever step up, would they? When was the last time you walked the streets to see what changed? Or went to look at those trees with the pink blossoms in flower in the park a few streets away? I fear for you, Doctor, I truly do. Cutting yourself off is like depriving yourself from light and water. Something dies if it goes too long. We both know who would lose a fight if I tried to pull you out against your will."

No need to mention 'stubborn mule' anywhere. Students probably muttered it when they thought he wasn't listening. Or they got more creative. Lots of room for that in Kamar-Taj. "Do you feel it? Here, inside, when you have one foot in the current of life in the city? With your people?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "I never have done any of that." Stephen says to Clea with a blink of his eyes and yet he keeps them shut as her hand touches his jaw and he reaches his scared fingers out to wrap around the curve of her womanly waist and he looks deeply into her eyes.

    At her final point, Stephen looks up to the city around them as he tries to think about what she's talking about. "It does feel... different, out here." The wizard remarks as he takes in a deep breath to pull in the city's air. To feel the life around him and the ground beneath his feet.

    "There's something there, Clea." He says, looking down again into her eyes. "What is it you're doing?"

Clea has posed:
"You yourself say that you feel separate and apart to serve it. Is this the man who performed medicine wrist-deep in a patient, dividing life from death?" Those fingers remain a ghostly presence against Stephen's jaw, warmer than any human would be. Given her parent, one of them anyone, is literally living fire, this should not be any surprise. She could keep them both warm on a winter's night and not even notice the chill, but then so can she stand at the bottom of the sea completely unhindered. Small benefits to being the only one of her kind naturally made. "Do you stand apart because it makes the losses easier? I do not know this path you walk as well as you do, nor your mind. I would know then what you think. The better not to assume, putting words in your mouth."

Hard to imagine his arms around her, but there they are, as if Stephen is the only thing from keeping her from floating up off the ground. The habit in Kamar-Taj was hard to break; she rarely touches the floor when failing to think about it. He tethers her more than well enough, and she leans a little back into the circle of his embrace without any difficulty. "So hard to believe with everything here, all the rain and the shawarma smells and the trains, you would not be out all the time. Everyone is! All these people going about their day, incomprehensibly -many-. But everywhere is possibility taking root."

Her smile tips up again as she looks back up at him. "What do you think I am doing? Reminding you how your world looks? I am a stranger, an /alien./ Outsider, aren't I? You get a traveler's take on it."

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "I keep seperate as I worry I don't have the time or luxury of attachment. It might cause me to falter in the moments of need and danger that I encounter on a near daily basis, or more." Stephen notes as he looks up to the windows around and then back down to Clea, "You are, someone to help give me that outside perspective that I cannot access without those virgin eyes."

    "I always pictured staying away from the world would make me a better person to help fix it, in medicine and with the Sorcerer Supreme position." Stephen admits, starting to let his fingers break apart to allow Clea to back away from him should that be what she desires to do, but he does savor the closeness of the white haired witch.

Clea has posed:
So says someone but a fraction of her age. Clea has an advantage of a millennium behind her, and even by the Faltine's standards, she is a complete youth. A toddler, amazing she can so much as cast Baby's First Spell. No wonder beseeching them requires such odd demands and backbends to convince them to bestow the flames currently dancing around her head, albeit banished to invisibility rather than leading someone to ask her how she achieved the effect. If Stephen looks right, they're certainly there. Their arcane presence is a screaming beacon to eldritch senses.

She hasn't dropped her hand. Probably time to do that. Fingers curl to her palm and her closed fist rests over her midriff without touching her breastbone. "I apologize. It sounds rather uppity of me to lecture you that way." Her gaze flits away from him, cast to the side, the old defensive masks rising out of habit. "No matter my cause, the words weren't very sporting, were they?"

She doesn't back away, though. The thought doesn't even dawn on her.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "They're words I need to hear, thoughts I need to think." Stephen says, reaching his hand to her wrist to try and pull her fingers to intertwine with his own. The man ignores the flames as he has always done since his eyes were awoken to the mystical worlds. "Don't be afraid to speak your mind with me Clea. I need someone to trust me and that I can trust to be completely honest with me. It's a rare trait to find in someone who knows I'm the sorcerer supreme." Strange explains, and then nudges his chin up towards the blue sky, to draw Clea's attention back upwards. "I need someone li- No, I need /you/ around me Clea. This world needs you."

Clea has posed:
Clea shakes her head a little. "I won't gainsay you either way. You know yourself best." The blink pulls her out of her thoughts, wherever they may roam, sometimes parallel to what might be expected and sometimes far outside the norm of anything vaguely familiar at all. All thoughts go up in smoke, anyway, her lips parting slightly before the words might be traipsing off her tongue. "What do you want now? What have you been doing since I was gone? A few months, years. There are so many things you surely have accomplished, and we've not had much time to talk about who and what happened. Perhaps, you might have had--..."

Incomplete statements roam where they will, capitalizing on the pauses while she looks at their hands entwined and then back to the doctor's face. Nothing unfamiliar there, her gaze following the vivid sky etched in shades of blue unknown.

"There wasn't for me. So you are aware."

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "Me either." Stephen admits and he shakes his head, looking back to the sanctum. "I have only been dealing with the job of the sorcerer supreme, dealing with Dormammu, and the Asgardians as well as some issues with the deaths of Gensoha, while also helping the still living on Genosha and their refugees in Wakanda." Stephen explains with a deep breath.

    "There's no one BUT you that could be my equal in all the cosmos and all the realms of the world." The Sorcerer tries to curl his fingers against Clea's though the damage still remains and makes such a motion difficult.

Clea has posed:
Whereas for her, it's effortless. Not for her the energy form of her parent and forebears, not without tapping into the magic at her disposal and a good deal of effort. Clea's mouth tilts in a small smile, giving the indication of amusement and softening resolve that tips away. Her fingers curl around his, sliding between the digits and making that connection easier where no damage applies. Any palsied tremor doesn't bother her; they are all she has known between them. No doubt ever caused her to recoil, but for comparison, look to the realm she calls home. They have quite a bit unusual there, from Mad Ones to peculiar mystical things and worse.

"You have stayed there all alone with the apprentices and masters coming and going?" she asks, tilting her head. "You heap too much praise on me. I am not your equal here -- and what I've claimed, you know Dormammu would take back with every breath. What rests on my shoulders isn't a cloak of hope, it is a guillotine with a timer. But still, no reason to complain. What do you want of me, Stephen?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "I want this. This moment repeated over and over. I need you to help me keep my humanity." The Doctor notes as he looks back towards the Sanctum and motions to it with his chin and takes his hand off Clea's waist, "I need you to be my anchor." Strange pleads sweetly as he then tries to lead her back inside, as the wizard desires something a bit more intimate in nature if she'll allow it.

Clea has posed:
"If it were so easy," sighs the Faltine. "We all clutch at the ideals we had, and sometimes forget what makes us who we are. I falter and fail as much as you do. You know that? That sometimes the fear and the anxiety claims a victim, that I don't always use magic for the most benign purposes but sometimes ones that seem a bit too... cheap, perhaps." She lists out her flaws without preamable, accepting their presence even as she rotates with Strange, facing that great house with the pitiless eye instilled in the architecture. The eye of an immortal being so far beyond them both, no matter their unique roles. Her feet lift from the ground slightly, floating on the air, separated by a few inches from the concrete. It evens their height more or less, and gives absolutely no weight onto his hand other than nudging her along. Rather like pushing a particularly dense balloon, one maybe filled with xenon.

It's back into the house, then, the familiar wash of the wards.