"I believe I may have had some hallucinations in the worst of it, though I don't clearly remember. But the reordering ... as I healed, it was clear that the memories were real, I think, it was more that they'd sometimes come detached from the context. I'm not sure if that makes much sense, but it would be as if ... someone would be turned away from me in the memory and I couldn't be sure who it was, or I knew the event happened but I had no idea how old I was when it did. That sort of thing." He hasn't talked about this before and finds it, if not precisely easy, then at least easier than he'd braced for. Giving a report is something he knows how to do, even if the content is usually much different.

(And if Strange notices a certain detachment, he probably has enough training to guess where that comes from.)

"I didn't trust myself to taper off," he adds, frankly, of the later question. "The addictive properties of lyrium are ... intense. I informed the Commander of my intentions and let him advise me if he had concerns about the timing, and I reported to the infirmary. But I feared if I tried to. If I had access to any at all, I didn't trust that I wouldn't become a problem in trying to secure more." Still even.