( oocβ i know nothing about what if strange, so if i make any assumptions and Get Them Wrong, please lmk! also β cw for marc are listed here, if there's anything you'd prefer me to avoid! )
( marc's not here because he wants to find the meds to sell, he's here because he knows he's going to need them at some point, and he knows that other people are going to need them and they might not be able to afford them. he's here, too, because he wants to know whether there's anything else, anything beyond antibiotics β painkillers, the sort that marc's comfortable taking; anything β useful.
at least, that's how it'd started off.
marc wouldn't describe himself as a curious man. there are a lot of questions he doesn't ask, not because he doesn't want to know the answer, but because he's certain he won't like the answer, or because he doesn't think the answer will make a difference. it's a view that's extended to most of what he's encountered here so far β he'd died, there's no question about that, but the lingering question for him has been about what this place is, where it fits amongst his experiences. whether, then, it's real β partially or at all β or whether it's ambiguous in the same way khonshu had been, the same way marc had never quite been able to decide, not for years, whether his death, the first one in selima, had been a death and a resurrection, or if it'd been a near-death experience.
he'd decided, eventually, that it didn't matter. it didn't change the debt, the duty, or the work that had to be done β and in many respects, here's the same.
but none of that means he's happy to remain in ignorance, per se. the slosh, then, is marc setting his small collection of partially identified, partially unidentified pills sat atop a filing cabinet, the movement punctuated by another noise β a grunt, faintly irritated, as he forces open a particularly stubborn drawer. the voice isn't familiar, he notes, as stephen speaks. he doesn't look up from the drawer immediately, instead making note of where stephen is based on sound and shadows which, ultimately, is easier said than done given the water, but the eerie glow cast by stephen helps, and thenβ
huh.
for a beat, there's wide-eyed surprise. an arch of his eyebrows, consideration and weighing. debating. the cloak's more recognisable than the stephen he knows, but there are similarities there, the dim lighting and reflections probably making them more or less apparent in different ways, butβ.
he looks down at the papers his fingers are curled tightly around. they're damp, not yet sodden, and his eyes snag on a familiar grouping of words β secondary considerations: sleep disruption, hypervigilance β that earn a knitting of brows, before he looks back to stephen and entirely ignores his remark in favour of, )
Strange. ( blunt, brusque, entirely unperturbed by the frown. it's an expression he's intimately familiar with, given the stephen he knows really does not like him. )
fringes.
( marc's not here because he wants to find the meds to sell, he's here because he knows he's going to need them at some point, and he knows that other people are going to need them and they might not be able to afford them. he's here, too, because he wants to know whether there's anything else, anything beyond antibiotics β painkillers, the sort that marc's comfortable taking; anything β useful.
at least, that's how it'd started off.
marc wouldn't describe himself as a curious man. there are a lot of questions he doesn't ask, not because he doesn't want to know the answer, but because he's certain he won't like the answer, or because he doesn't think the answer will make a difference. it's a view that's extended to most of what he's encountered here so far β he'd died, there's no question about that, but the lingering question for him has been about what this place is, where it fits amongst his experiences. whether, then, it's real β partially or at all β or whether it's ambiguous in the same way khonshu had been, the same way marc had never quite been able to decide, not for years, whether his death, the first one in selima, had been a death and a resurrection, or if it'd been a near-death experience.
he'd decided, eventually, that it didn't matter. it didn't change the debt, the duty, or the work that had to be done β and in many respects, here's the same.
but none of that means he's happy to remain in ignorance, per se. the slosh, then, is marc setting his small collection of partially identified, partially unidentified pills sat atop a filing cabinet, the movement punctuated by another noise β a grunt, faintly irritated, as he forces open a particularly stubborn drawer. the voice isn't familiar, he notes, as stephen speaks. he doesn't look up from the drawer immediately, instead making note of where stephen is based on sound and shadows which, ultimately, is easier said than done given the water, but the eerie glow cast by stephen helps, and thenβ
huh.
for a beat, there's wide-eyed surprise. an arch of his eyebrows, consideration and weighing. debating. the cloak's more recognisable than the stephen he knows, but there are similarities there, the dim lighting and reflections probably making them more or less apparent in different ways, butβ.
he looks down at the papers his fingers are curled tightly around. they're damp, not yet sodden, and his eyes snag on a familiar grouping of words β secondary considerations: sleep disruption, hypervigilance β that earn a knitting of brows, before he looks back to stephen and entirely ignores his remark in favour of, )
Strange. ( blunt, brusque, entirely unperturbed by the frown. it's an expression he's intimately familiar with, given the stephen he knows really does not like him. )