“Ouch,” Strange says on autopilot, wincing in sympathy; in a way, the botched healing sounds even worse than the initial injury. (His perfectionist nature rankles at it. Like a surgeon leaving a goddamn tool still inside a patient, needing to open them up again.)

There’s always so much history here that he’s always trying to suss out the shape of, the Inqusition and Riftwatch with all their long scabbed-over wounds, literal and figurative alike. He tries to picture it, the context.

“So the Venatori tried to execute you for treason?” he asks.