Of course there had been something along those lines lurking beneath the rock he’s overturned. He’d been nosing around and knew he was nosing around, trying to determine the root of her reluctance; pressing fingers to a suspected injury and feeling it out, waiting for the hitch of breath, a sign of bruised ribs.
Strange’s voice remains neutral, just as clinical and detached as before despite the bomb drop. He doesn’t waste his time with condolences; he doesn’t even know how he would give them, and suspects she doesn’t want them. )
I don’t doubt your intelligence or your capability or your contributions to this organisation, Madame. It’s more a matter of practical self-defense. People can still find themselves attacked even within the Gallows, as we saw with Julius. Members of Diplomacy can still be hijacked in the course of their duties. You were taken captive only last year, were you not?
( Yes, he reads all the public reports. )
I don’t mean to pressure you, however. I expect you’ve already weighed all of these considerations before.
( It’s a small mark of esteem. He knows some people don’t consider all the angles; from what little he knows of the chief cryptographer, she is not one of them. )
I have, ( is agreement and not rebuke; she can hear the extension of good faith in what he says, and accepts that for what it is rather than prickling. )
I expect you read in the same report that we were not rescued, but that we extricated ourselves from that situation. ( because that’s how it went down. ) I am a trick rider of some skill, ( she’s being modest, ) a talented lockpick, and adept with many magical means of eluding capture and captors when it’s required of me.
I simply don’t believe that the best use of my time, for my own sake or for Riftwatch’s, is to set aside the work that currently occupies it in order to become less skilled than those we already have to do work that is already being done that no one requires or wishes me to do. And I understand your view on the matter, but—
You must allow that we cannot all be warriors. Warriors are necessary. I believe that firmly and I have great esteem for those that occupy that role— allow me that I know it is not mine.
[ It’s so fundamentally alien to Strange’s entire life so far that he’s still struggling to wrap his head around it. It’s not even that he was particularly born to be a warrior; he still didn’t gravitate to it, but it had been simply been necessary, a matter of survival, next steps.
(They both did the things they had to do to survive. Those things just happened to be so vastly different.) ]
Hm. Alright. I can’t pretend the concept comes naturally to me, but I understand better now, madame, and I can at least respect it.
[ And the monks did teach him a clever, slippery approach, which he tended to use more than a Thor or even a Steve Rogers: thinking his way out of a fight, taking the sideways slant where possible, using the enemy’s own momentum against themselves to wear them out. Be as the flexible reed bending in the wind, and not the stubborn oak tree. So these next words are the sound of him relenting, a little tongue-in-cheek, ]
For posterity, I hope you don’t come away with the idea that I punch first and ask questions later. I do generally prefer a more elegant solution. It’s just that when all sophistication fails, sometimes I do wind up having to throw a fireball at someone about it.
Were I pressed to draw a conclusion, Docteur, I would sooner suggest that you look first to a solution within yourself in most things.
( leading him both to the wielding of a flaming sword, and a tendency to immediately volunteer for self-experimentation. he is, as isaac has said, a riftwatch researcher, and those people are mad.
but in a different way than the forces lot tend to be.
[ Strange can’t help the bemused smile at being so correctly identified; for once feeling at ease in this conversation, rather than the usual out-of-his-depth, lost and like there’s some complicated social nuance flying right over his head that de Cedoux’s wrangling with ease. But this time— ]
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portalling) wrote2022-04-02 01:17 pm
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no subject
Of course there had been something along those lines lurking beneath the rock he’s overturned. He’d been nosing around and knew he was nosing around, trying to determine the root of her reluctance; pressing fingers to a suspected injury and feeling it out, waiting for the hitch of breath, a sign of bruised ribs.
Strange’s voice remains neutral, just as clinical and detached as before despite the bomb drop. He doesn’t waste his time with condolences; he doesn’t even know how he would give them, and suspects she doesn’t want them. )
I don’t doubt your intelligence or your capability or your contributions to this organisation, Madame. It’s more a matter of practical self-defense. People can still find themselves attacked even within the Gallows, as we saw with Julius. Members of Diplomacy can still be hijacked in the course of their duties. You were taken captive only last year, were you not?
( Yes, he reads all the public reports. )
I don’t mean to pressure you, however. I expect you’ve already weighed all of these considerations before.
( It’s a small mark of esteem. He knows some people don’t consider all the angles; from what little he knows of the chief cryptographer, she is not one of them. )
no subject
I expect you read in the same report that we were not rescued, but that we extricated ourselves from that situation. ( because that’s how it went down. ) I am a trick rider of some skill, ( she’s being modest, ) a talented lockpick, and adept with many magical means of eluding capture and captors when it’s required of me.
I simply don’t believe that the best use of my time, for my own sake or for Riftwatch’s, is to set aside the work that currently occupies it in order to become less skilled than those we already have to do work that is already being done that no one requires or wishes me to do. And I understand your view on the matter, but—
You must allow that we cannot all be warriors. Warriors are necessary. I believe that firmly and I have great esteem for those that occupy that role— allow me that I know it is not mine.
no subject
(They both did the things they had to do to survive. Those things just happened to be so vastly different.) ]
Hm. Alright. I can’t pretend the concept comes naturally to me, but I understand better now, madame, and I can at least respect it.
[ And the monks did teach him a clever, slippery approach, which he tended to use more than a Thor or even a Steve Rogers: thinking his way out of a fight, taking the sideways slant where possible, using the enemy’s own momentum against themselves to wear them out. Be as the flexible reed bending in the wind, and not the stubborn oak tree. So these next words are the sound of him relenting, a little tongue-in-cheek, ]
For posterity, I hope you don’t come away with the idea that I punch first and ask questions later. I do generally prefer a more elegant solution. It’s just that when all sophistication fails, sometimes I do wind up having to throw a fireball at someone about it.
no subject
Were I pressed to draw a conclusion, Docteur, I would sooner suggest that you look first to a solution within yourself in most things.
( leading him both to the wielding of a flaming sword, and a tendency to immediately volunteer for self-experimentation. he is, as isaac has said, a riftwatch researcher, and those people are mad.
but in a different way than the forces lot tend to be.
she’s rather fond of both. )
no subject
Got it in one.