Mage rights. So often it always, always comes back to mage rights, like a steady heartbeat in the back of his skull.

“Not to pardon a defector, but it’s a valid question. What are we fighting for, if you wind up put in a cage after your service.” A pause. It’s gotten too personal, somehow accidentally slipsliding backwards into the topic again, and there’s a slight squirming discomfort in Strange’s chest at the prospect; but it feels a vague honour to be privy to it, too. Here’s one of the only other men more reticent to discuss their feelings than Stephen Strange himself, and they’ve found the inadvertent lever to pry that door ajar. This isn’t really a doctor’s checkup any longer.

“Strictly speaking, it’s not too different a situation than the rifters are in, too. We still have no idea what everyone will do with us when the war’s over.”

Or if they’ll even still exist if rifts stop happening, or if they’ll be able to keep enough people in one place that the anchors don’t kill them either, or, or… But those are problems for another day.

“There was a saying, where I grew up: don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow.“ It’s a rural, folksy idiom. “I expect we’ll just have to focus on the present problems and cross that other bridge when we get to it. Sorry your guy didn’t wait.”

Which is a plain way of putting it, but— Strange means it.