After the demons and after Vanya’s more important physical check-ups, Strange had quietly tabled the lyrium topic with the thought, I’ll get to it eventually,

but then eventually had turned into a mass attack on Kirkwall and the Gallows as a whole, and so the priorities kept shuffling around. It remained on his to-do list, however, a small pebble in his shoe, faintly and perpetually nagging whenever he had a moment to breathe. But Vanya is demonstrably and assuredly off the lyrium, so the urgency of the conversation had shuffled downward compared to where it had started.

Today, Vanya finds the doctor seated at his desk, staring bleakly at some correspondence (inventory, requests for supplies denied, mercantile routes even more dried up, everywhere in the city is hard-up on things like elfroot and bandages). But. Hey. At least the infirmary itself survived.

“Always,” he says, then, “Well, not always. You know what I mean.” He scoots backward in his seat, gratefully shuffling the papers away. “Is everything alright?”

(He tends to assume the worst whenever people come to visit, now. Habits of the trade.)