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The best thing — all right, one of the best things — about the Sanctum Sanctorum in New York was the ability to use the translocating windows to find a beach. At sunset. Where one could set up a table and chairs and libations, and relax in the fading light to the swish of the waves.
There were phytoplankton on the edges of the water, shimmering and gleaming in the dark. It was fucking magical.
“I hate you,” said Christine.
“Given that I’m the reason you’re here…”
“Shut up.”
Stephen shut up, and took another mouthful of beer.
“God, Stephen,” she said. “This is the best thing that you’ve ever done for me. Work has been hell this week, and this is just…It’s good.”
“I figure I owed you one,” he said, watching her scrunch her toes in the sand.
“Yeah,” she said. “And then some.”
“All right,” he said, because he knew it.
They let the glowing waves substitute for conversation between them. It was okay, he figured, because it was better than fighting, and Christine had been remarkably good about the whole not killing him for the stunt he’d pulled around Dormammu’s attempt at taking over the world, and he probably deserved a good smack for that. There was also the time he’d decided to show her the mirror dimension. And the time when she’d opened a door in the sanctum and gotten a face full of psychedelic beasts from another world. She’d been fairly understanding, all things considered.
Stephen wasn’t quite quick enough, when they ran out of beer — Christine caught him conjuring some (actually, just transferring it from the keg in the kitchens, but she wasn’t to know that), and that led to her looking at her watch, which then led to her realising the time, which then led to them both heading back home to New York.
The cloak, which had been patiently waiting by the open window (way too warm to wear on the beach, plus he didn’t like the thought of getting sand all through it), flapped up to him like a happy dog, hopping onto his shoulders and immediately turning the temperature from pleasantly to uncomfortably warm.
“So,” said Christine, passing the deckchairs through to him. “Is the cloak…sentient?”
The cloak helped him with the deckchair, acting as a second set of hands that weren’t convulsively shaking all the damn time.
“Semi-sentient,” he said. “I think.”
“So is it a pet, or a slave?” she asked.
“Uh,” he said, eloquently, giving her a hand through the window. “Neither?”
“Then what is it?”
“A cloak,” he replied, but his brain was already whirling, trying to work out what he actually thought.
“A semi-sentient cloak,” she said, reaching out to pet it. It reached back. “There’s a good cloak. You take good care of Stephen. He’s not smart enough to take care of himself.”
“You want to come and drink on my beach, or not?” he asked.
“I saved your life,” she said. “You owe me.”
“I owe you for more than that,” he said, meeting her eyes for a few seconds, reaching a trembling hand up to brush her cheek. She closed her eyes, briefly, and then opened them to glare at him.
“Oh no,” she said. “No, no, nope. We are not doing this.”
“What?” he asked. She hadn’t stepped back, so she probably wasn’t too angry.
“We are not reviving this relationship. Not yet,” she said, holding his face in both hands so she could look at him. “Especially not because you’re lonely and your best friend is a sentient garment.”
“I thought you were my best friend,” he said, and she leaned in to kiss his cheek. The cloak shuffled on his shoulders.
“Time will tell,” she said. “I’ve only just finished suturing my old wounds from when you left. You were a real asshole, Stephen.”
“And I am so sorry about that,” he said.
She kept his gaze just a second too long.
“So give us some time,” she replied. “We can learn to be friends again.”
“All right,” he agreed, and she smiled, and he knew that he was, in some way, forgiven.
__________
Not long after, he remembered Christine’s instruction to the cloak. It was pertinent at the time, because he was freezing to death in the Antarctic without a sling ring. It turned out that if someone bent on turning the Earth into a giant snowball was incapacitated, their snow spells didn’t stop. And it turned out that if you lost a sling ring near a — seal? sea lion? whatever the fuck it was — then the animal would try to play with the ring, and nose it into the freezing water that was quickly crusting over because someone had cast a snow spell.
It wasn’t his fault the portal had come out next to a seal, and the seal had bitten him, and he’d lost his footing and fallen on his ass in the snow.
The self-styled Iceman was still unconscious at Stephen’s feet — he’d shifted them into the mirror dimension (in part, to get away from the seal) and used a chunk of ice to knock the guy out, and then brought him back into the real world, administered first aid, and decided that he really needed some gloves. Tucking his hands into his armpits helped a bit, but he knew it wouldn’t help for long. The Iceman looked rather dapper in ice-blue robes and with pure white hair, but he was less dressed for the weather than Stephen was. Stephen wondered how he stood it.
The cloak was desperately trying to warm Stephen. It had only a tiny bit of magical ability that didn’t relate to levitation — it knew, for instance, when he was in danger — and it was using every scrap of that ability trying to heat itself up. Problem was, he still had a bunch of exposed skin. He could feel the skin on his cheeks getting frostburnt, and even his toes in his boots were aching. The cloak tucked its collar right up against him.
“Come on,” he said, kneeling next to the guy. “You’ve gotta have a way out of here.”
His hands were spasming in the cold, not just shaking. He rifled through the man’s clothing, and froze when something brushed against his fingers. There was intent there, not just the shifting of items. He steeled himself, reached into a tuck of cloth near the man’s heart, and drew out a small figurine in the shape of a phoenix. When it lay in the palm of his hand, it began to glow, and a pleasing warmth suffused his entire body. He closed his fingers around it, felt it wriggle, and then dropped it.
The figure hissed as it hit the ice, the sizzle of water on hot metal. He scrabbled for it, and managed to get his aching fingers around it again.
“Thanks,” he told it, and this time when it wriggled, he didn’t drop it. “Okay. Very few choices here.” His skin felt red-raw. He should fly up, and see if he could spot the best way to head out. He used the cloak to raise himself, and was disappointed — just snow and ice all around, stretching off southerly as far as the eye could see. The northern side of his vantage point was ice and seawater, deep blue and unforgiving. He was going to have to retrieve the ring.
The sea-lion, having probably realised that Stephen wasn’t edible, had waddled off to join its compatriots in the water. Stephen didn’t quite trust the ice; he’d have to let the cloak take a lot of his weight when he got near to the edge. He also realised, with a sinking feeling, that his unconscious captive could well die of exposure in the time it took to retrieve the ring; it didn’t take a genius to work out that the guy had been rocking the scantily clad look because of the phoenix token. Stephen was up and walking, and he had a magic cloak. He’d have to surrender the phoenix token to the guy who was dressed for sartorial impact, not the weather.
The token didn’t really want to stay with its old master.
“I know,” he said, even though he didn’t. “I mean — it’s all right. When we get back to civilisation, you can come and live in the New York Sanctum, if you like.” He thought it looked annoyed, but it settled above the Iceman’s heart.
Stephen wasn’t actually sure how he’d get the ring back — would he have to use a force of will to draw it up from where it was undoubtedly on the ocean floor? He gingerly stepped on the ice, feeling the cloak working as hard as he was to keep them both out of the water.
There. There. The damned seal had indeed flipped the ring into ice that was quickly crusting over (thanks in no small part to the Iceman), and it had crusted over quickly enough to catch the ring in it. Softly, softly, Stephen inched out onto the ice. It would be a death sentence, going into the water — he doubted that even the cloak could save him from the shock of Antarctic waves. He crouched, feeling the cold bite into his body, but he needed to get this before he broke the ice spell, if he even could break the ice spell. The ice was like a thick pane of glass; he could see through it to the black water below, and he scratched at it, uselessly. The ring was embedded.
He swore, and then did the only thing he could think of — punched the ice. The crack reverberated through his hand — he’d be lucky not to have broken a finger — but the ice-pane cracked, and he was able to fumble the chunk of ice that included the ring out of the water.
He hadn’t thought about what it might do to the ice under him, though. The cloak whisked him back so quickly he practically got whiplash, but he still nearly fell in. Distantly, he realised he’d stopped shivering. Bad sign, Stephen. Bad sign. He managed to make a rune in the air with his numb, clumsy hands, and set it to the ice spells. They shattered with a briskness that was breathtaking, and he was able then to use the phoenix token to break the icy prison that his sling ring was trapped in, jam it onto his hand, and step through back to home, dragging the Iceman with him.
The warmth of the Sanctum seared his skin. With the cloak’s help, he got the guy onto one of the spare beds, tied him down, and then called Christine. He left the phoenix on the guy’s chest, but it too seemed exhausted — maybe artefacts needed time to recharge, too?
He stumbled down the stairs when she knocked at the Sanctum’s handleless door, and she took him in with a practiced eye.
“This is my day off,” she said.
“And I am thankful,” he said, and he must have looked wretched enough that she let him go without further admonishment.
“All right, let’s examine you,” she said, once the door was closed.
“It’s not me,” he replied. “It’s — there’s an adversary in one of the spare rooms. Was trying to increase the size of the polar icecaps.”
“All….right,” she said, following him upstairs. “You do understand that I’m not your personal doctor on call?”
“In here,” he said, gesturing. She approached the bed and its motionless occupant. Stephen hoped the guy wasn’t dead; not that he was for the bad guys, but more that the erstwhile Iceman had been a decent sorcerer, and Stephen believed in the power of good people to do shitty things, and the power of good people who’d done shitty things to reform themselves.
He had, after all, done some pretty shitty things in his own time.
Christine touched the Iceman, beginning a preliminary check. “Good god, this man is freezing!”
“Concussion, probable frostbite,” said Stephen, shivering starting as he warmed up. “Can you help him? I’ll get the Sanctum to pay you a consultant’s fee. We’ve even got health cover.” He tucked his hands under his arms. “I’d d-do it, but I’m not in the right st-state to do a good job.”
“The Sanctum has insurance,” she said, arching an eyebrow, presumably at his stutter.
“Apparently the new ca-caretaker of the place decided that it would be a g-good idea,” he said, arching an eyebrow back at her, the effect completely lost as he stammered through chattering teeth. “Come on. Let’s make sure he’s not dead, then I’ll return him to Kamar-Taj.”
“How about you go and see about raising your own core temperature,” she said. “Then we can work together.”
The cloak nudged him toward the little phoenix figure. It took a few goes for him to pick it up — thankfully, Christine didn’t say anything, nor did she try to help — and Stephen smiled once it was in his palm, the heat suffusing his very bones. So no, it hadn’t been exhausted. It had just been picky about where it spent its magic.
“All good,” he said. She looked at him weirdly. “Magic. Getting warm via magic.”
“Can you magic me up a coffee?”
He shook his head. “After,” he said.
She smacked him gently. “All right, then,” she said. “Scrub up, and we’ll take a look at this patient.”
__________
He’d thought it was a joke at first, when he woke up with a large-ish stone idol huddling in bed with him. But who’d play a joke like that? Wong was drier in his sense of humour, and the cloak was the most jealous piece of clothing that Stephen had ever met, so he scratched that off the list.
“What?” he asked, and the stone idol looked up at him piteously, then burrowed into his arms. “Seriously, what?”
It was then that he realised that the heavy warmth he’d taken to be the cloak was just blankets, and the cloak was off somewhere. He got up, pulled on a robe, and carried the (heavy) artefact back to the museum.
And stopped short.
All the cabinets had been shattered, glass littering the ground, shining and glittering in the early light. The idol began to squirm, and he realised that the artefacts had scattered all over the room — some of them were broken, others just tossed about, like a child had angered and thrown away its toys.
“Sssh,” he told the idol, and it quietened in his arms. He’d always been told he had a shitty bedside manner, but he felt he was doing all right. “It’s all right. We’ll set everything to rights.”
Other artefacts huddled around his feet, and he knelt to them, letting the original idol down, and picking up a silver statue of a piglet that was squealing like the sound of a finger run around the rim of a wineglass. It snuffled into calmness. Stephen soothed magical item after magical item, and opened a door to be glommed onto by the cloak, which had clearly been shut away. But by whom?
“How did I sleep through this?” he asked, trying to wrangle the cloak into just being worn, rather than doing a great impression of an anaconda. Stephen closed his eyes, and opened his mind, focussing on the past few hours. Like gossamer clouds, the imprints of a sleep spell hung about the rafters, and a presence moved through the Sanctum. The cloak had investigated, once it had realised that Stephen was unshakably asleep — he watched a ghostly echo of it swish about the place, poking its collar into all the corners.
Then Stephen’s fears were realised when he saw in his mind’s eye the impression of Mordo. This, he thought, was a warning. Usually images weren’t so clear as this — although he was the Master of the New York Sanctum, which brought some advantages — but Karl Mordo should have been able to mask his presence here. Stephen shouldn’t just be able to reach into the past and spot him.
So Mordo either didn’t care, or he was doing it deliberately. Stephen opened his eyes to see the cloak floating in front of him.
“What in the seven hells was he doing here?” Stephen asked, and the cloak tugged him to where a dusty space sat in one of the display cases. “Ah. So what was here?”
The records of the Sanctum were pristinely kept. It didn’t take long to line up the artefacts, check them over for damage, and work out what was gone. Wong sent over some people to help sweep up the glass, and replace the pieces into their cases, although Stephen made sure he checked in with all of them. He was starting to get the strong impression that they were at least as sentient as most house pets, and they seemed to respond well to attention from the Master.
“The Jade Knife,” said Stephen, looking at the cloak, and then reading from the record. “It can pierce the veil between worlds, and destroy magical artefacts. Wow.” He really felt, sometimes, that there should have been an induction process for the sanctum. Would have made it much easier. “So does he want me to go after him?”
The cloak did the best attempt at shrugging he’d ever seen from a sentient garment. Stephen felt hopelessly underqualified, even when Wong showed up and they ended up sitting at the big table in the Library at Kamar-taj, drinking tea from delicate cups and plotting. It was dark over there, and few people were up and about; they’d swished through the portal so silently that they moved like ghosts.
“Do not stretch too far,” was Wong’s eventual verdict. “He will be waiting for you to reach out after him. He’s like you. He likes to be noticed.”
“Thanks,” said Stephen, drily. “I don’t suppose you have any further insults for me?”
“No. But if you like, I will wake Jean.”
The Iceman, who was actually a shy Canadian named Jean Janossi, had come to apologise after a few weeks at Kamar-taj, bowing and scraping his way into the Library, where Stephen had been studying some of the more esoteric volumes. Stephen winced.
“Don’t wake him,” he said, thinking of the awkward apologies he’d had to sit through last time.
“You raised quite a stir, bringing him in,” said Wong. “The Ancient One would have approved.”
“I’m a doctor, first and foremost,” said Stephen, raising his hand for a book. It floated over to him. “I don’t take lives, Wong. Not when I don’t have to.”
“His ambitions were noble,” said Wong. “He wished to repair the damage that we humans have made to the polar ice.”
“The same ambitions that Mordo has,” said Stephen. He held up his hands, scarred and shaking, so that Wong could get a good look at them. “I’ve had a long time to think about irrevocable change, Wong. Believe me. I could have used the Eye to wind back the time on my hands. Suffered through the accident again in fast rewind. I do wonder what would happen to the pins in them, if I did that. Maybe they’d splinter and shatter my hands worse.”
“You didn’t do it because you were afraid of the pins,” said Wong.
“You’re right. I didn’t.”
“You didn’t do it because you knew that when some things change, you cannot undo them.”
“Yes,” said Stephen. “I’m not saying that polar ice caps turning into slush is a good thing. But it’s a thing that is part of a huge system that we can only just begin to understand. A quick fix is not going to help. It might make things worse.” He rested his hand on the cover of the book. “And it’s why I can’t agree with Mordo. We won’t give up magic, not when it does so much for us. And we do change the world. But it’s all part of a system; the very fact that there’s dimensions and gates and Sorcerers Supreme dotted throughout the multiverse tells us that. Destroying our tiny cog in the great machine might have consequences we never dreamed of.”
The book obediently fluttered open, when he lifted the cover, finding his place from the last time he’d been reading it.
“Did you know that the books don’t do that for anyone else?” asked Wong. “Artefacts like you.”
“I like them,” said Stephen. “They don’t want me to be anything other than myself, and they don’t take offence, even when I mean to give it.” He gave a small, self-deprecating smile. “It’s why I like you, Wong.”
“And here I thought you liked my taste in music,” said Wong, and Stephen laughed, not noticing how the scrollwork on the fronts of the books lit up with sympathetic energy when he did.
When he went home, the Sanctum was quiet. He raised a protective rune over the museum, and in the dim glow of the magic, he saw the artefacts huddle together. He petted the stone idol goodnight, and swept off down the corridor, cloak billowing behind him grandly, probably because it was the one that got to stay with the Master.
Mordo. Damn Mordo. Stephen stripped and got into bed, cloak tucking itself under his arm for a cuddle. He didn’t stop it, just curled into it. So Mordo had a new artefact of his own, did he?
Stephen didn’t want to see what it looked like when he used it.
_____________
A few weeks later Stephen woke, feeling like death. His first thought was oh no, not again, and he barely made it to the bathroom in time before he was disgustingly sick.
The first time it’d happened, Mordo had been there. Stephen had been training, finally able to make a glowing arc of power in the air, and he’d been excited, his hands trembling from more than just fatigue. The Ancient One had left him on a mountain, and he’d made his way home to Tamar-kaj.
“Do not celebrate too soon,” Mordo had warned. “For every action, there is a reaction.”
“Equal and opposite reaction.” Stephen hadn’t meant to correct him; it had slipped out.
“As you wish,” Mordo had replied, and then Stephen had doubled up and thrown up arcane energy for the best part of three days.
To his credit, Mordo had carried him — actually carried him — to the bed in his cell, tucked him in with a bucket and some ice-cold glacial water, and kept an eye on him while he slept it off.
“It will change, over time,” Mordo had said. “Your body will become accustomed to small acts of magic.”
“And larger acts?” Stephen had been hugging his bucket in a completely undignified manner.
“Larger acts take a larger penance,” Mordo had said. “Equal and opposite, I believe you said.”
“That was Isaac Newton.” Stephen had forced the words out, and then he’d been sick again into his bucket.
Now, he was curled up on the cool tiles of the sanctum’s bathroom, hugging the toilet. He’d gotten very familiar with this toilet; after Dormammu, he’d slept for a week solid, waking only to throw up, or to have Wong force-feed him tea and plain toast. Wong checked in fairly often, truth be told, and he frequently sent acolytes with food that wouldn’t upset his changing body. Usually, the food had an alarming number of eyes, or tentacles, and an even more alarming taste.
The Ancient One had warned him, hadn’t she? Mordo had tried to. Eventually, his body would change so much that human food would taste like ashes, and he’d be stuck on the tentacle-and-arcane-energy-purge diet.
This time, he was throwing up what looked and felt distressingly like blood. He’d held off the consequences too long, he realised — but he’d had no choice. There’d been nightmare-aberrations crawling all over New York, chomping down on people’s dreams, sending some into never-ending comas, breaking down the shields and barriers of others, so that their worst thoughts and desires seemed like an excellent idea to act upon. He’d found the breach and sealed it, of course, but destroying thousands of the things had nearly killed him. They’d been breeding like rabbits since they got here. If he’d even missed a single one…
“You fool,” said a voice behind him. Wong managed to sound gentle, patient, and completely unsympathetic all at once.
“Had to be done,” said Stephen, through a throat that felt like sandpaper. “Who told you?”
“Your collection of artefacts was worried,” said Wong.
“My collection?”
Wong gestured to the cloak, the phoenix token flapping next to it, and, Stephen was surprised to note, the Eye, balanced carefully on the cloak’s broad shoulders. Behind them in the corridor was most of the contents of the upstairs museum cabinets, and even a couple of books. The cloak seemed to take this as permission to swoop over and settle around his shoulders, and the phoenix came and got into his pocket, and the Eye… It thunked against his chest, heavy and reassuring, and he felt it start to soak up some of the excess energy that had him feeling so ill. Wong shooed the rest of the objects away, and they went, seemingly all right now that they’d seen him.
“How are you, Stephen?” asked Wong.
“Fine.”
“How about you tell me the truth this time?”
Stephen looked at the toilet. What a glorious vision for the Eye of Agamotto to take in, he thought.
“I can’t eat anything without it rebelling in my stomach. I think I’ve done what the Ancient One warned against, and changed my body through the magic channeling through it.”
“Ah,” said Wong. “There are teas and tisanes that will help with that, but in the end, you would probably be best advised to simply share meals with we other Masters.”
Stephen shook his head. “The time difference to Kamar-Taj makes that impractical,” he said.
“Then I will bring my meals here,” said Wong, crossing to sit beside him. He looked at what Stephen had thrown up. “Hmm. Blood. What magics did you use?”
Stephen coughed. “Atlantean.”
“No wonder, then.”
“He opened the rift,” said Stephen. “I’m sure of it. He’s got the Jade Knife, so he’s used it to rip open spacetime.”
He didn’t need to say who. Wong sighed, and rubbed Stephen’s back, a surprisingly intimate gesture given his usual standoffishness.
“We’ll keep sticking fingers in the dam, but will it come to nothing?” Stephen asked, and the arcane energy in his guts made another appearance. He gasped for breath, wiping his mouth with a bath towel.
“I’d say you have him scared,” said Wong. “There’s no way anyone should have been able to stop that breach, but you did. Truly, the pupil surpasses the teacher.”
“But it’s not enough,” said Stephen.
“Rest for now,” Wong advised. “This is a conversation for later.” He patted Stephen’s back again. “I’ll send word to Kamar-Taj that I’m needed here awhile, all right?”
Stephen’s brain fired off a dozen snappy remarks, but what actually came out was “Thank you.”
Wong nodded. “Any time,” he said, and Stephen believed him.
____________
Sometimes, he used a clothes brush on the cloak, as a reward for being a good cloak. The brush shook in his trembling hand, but he brushed firmly, and he caught the cloak shaking too, like it was trembling with anticipation.
He didn’t want to think about it too closely; was this weird for the cloak? He saw it as kind of like brushing a dog, but how did the cloak see it? It leaned into the brush, and when he was done and his fingers were cramping, it whooshed around the room with what seemed to pass for delight (inasmuch as garments felt delight), eventually settling where it could watch him finish off the evening’s chores, coming and tucking itself under his arm when he collapsed into bed.
He didn’t even want to know.
___________
“Who the hell has a conference dinner on a Tuesday night?” Stephen mused to himself, trying to tie his bowtie and failing. It was galling; he should be able to get it perfect, but instead, he was barely able to make half a knot.
In the corner, the cloak was sulking. It wasn’t even subtle about it. It was flapping to itself, levitating, and sulking. Stephen threw the bowtie to one side, disappointed with himself, and the stupid tie, and when he really took himself in, the goatee made him look a lot like a Bond villain.
This was Christine’s favour: she’d called it in, and he’d been unable to say no, for a whole load of reasons up to and including that it was Christine. Could he come and speak at their October conference dinner, because she was on the organising committee, and they’d found out she knew Stephen Strange and would it be all right if she got him in to speak about what it’s like to be both a surgeon and a patient. She was fairly determined that he could probably convince some of his asshole ex-colleagues to be less disgusting to their patients if someone they respected reflected on the experience of being a patient. Stephen felt she was being overly optimistic.
The cloak floated over and hung about his shoulders.
“No,” he told it, and it drew back. If it were a dog, it would probably be whining.
He picked up the bowtie again, and caught sight of the cloak in the mirror, skulking and generally looking miserable. No, it was a cloak, it didn’t look miserable. He looked away, and then looked back again.
It looked miserable.
“All right,” he said. “Give me a few minutes.”
He felt a lot better in his usual sorcerer’s getup, which was telling, wasn’t it? The cloak happily swished around his shoulders, and he made a portal, because a) he still wasn’t great with cars, and b) he’d now spent so long getting ready that he’d be egregiously late if he travelled in any other way. Christine was waiting for him out the front of the hotel, dressed in an eye-searing yellow tartan suit. Miniskirted suit. He wasn’t entirely sure what was happening.
“You can’t resist showing off, can you?” she asked.
“You seem to be under the impression that my ex-colleagues will either notice or care about my attire,” he said. “I guarantee you they are here to get drunk, and nothing else.”
A woman was bustling down the stairs towards him. She appeared to be dressed as the good fairy from The Wizard of Oz. Stephen wondered, momentarily, if this was some sort of joke, but he dismissed the thought as easily as it had arrived. Christine wouldn’t.
“Oh, Doctor Strange!” said the woman. “I didn’t know if anyone had told you there was a Hallowe’en theme, given the date — you’ve done beautifully.”
He caught Christine’s eye. She gave him a what can you do? look, and smiled at him. She also reached out to pet the cloak.
“Hi there, darling,” she said, patently addressing the cloak. Stephen resisted rolling his eyes. “This is Gillian. Gillian, Stephen Strange.”
“Delighted!” Gillian hustled them up the stairs. “Now, come along.”
“Hallowe’en theme?” he murmured, as they trailed in Gillian’s sparkly wake. At least that explained the yellow tartan miniskirt suit.
“You didn’t remember it was Hallowe’en today, did you?”
“Not particularly,” he said. “I’ve been rather more preoccupied with what my old mentor has been getting up to.”
“Which is?”
“Attacking people like me and sapping all their powers.”
“Ah,” she said. “I can see how that might be awkward. Can you — can you afford the time here?”
“I promised you I’d do it,” he said. “Of course I can.”
A year ago, he probably wouldn’t have shown up. He was a little proud of the change he’d wrought in himself.
“Stephen,” she said, reaching up to him, kissing his cheek. “Thank you. I know this must be a lot to deal with, talking about it all on top of…whatever this mentor’s been doing.”
“My pleasure,” he said, wondering if he could get away with performing magic for the waiting room of surgeons in lieu of actually talking about himself. Probably not. “I might see you after?”
“I’ll owe you a drink,” she said. “But I really do need to get going.”
He watched her go; she really was very beautiful. The cloak tried to get in his eyes, and he batted it away.
“If you cock block me,” he told the cloak, “I will chop you up and use you as a cleaning rag.”
It shuffled off his shoulders and hung in the air reproachfully.
“Fine,” he said. “You get to hang around in a corridor all night. Have fun with that.”
He was halfway down the corridor when he felt it land back on his shoulders, clinging a bit. He ruffled a hand over its heavy fabric in acknowledgement, and got the fabric wrapping warmly around him in return.
___________
“Please tell the cloak not to watch,” said Christine, later that Hallowe’en evening.
“It doesn’t have any eyes,” he replied, running trembling fingers down her bare sides, delighting in the feel of her skin under his.
“I don’t care.” She turned to it. “Go and do what you do when you’re not being worn,” she said, and the cloak swished off. She bumped her forehead against his, kissing him again. “Come on, before one of us realises what a terrible idea this is.”
Later, the cloak was back, spread over them like it had been invited. Stephen wondered how he’d ended up in a ménage à trois with a cloak, but then dismissed it as this being his life now.
____________
The call came through on the winter solstice, bare days off from Christmas. Of course it did, thought Stephen, but he pulled himself together and flung open the door to Kamar-Taj, Christine in his wake. Wong had said there were injuries, and Christine was trained for emergencies and triage, not Stephen.
What Wong hadn’t said was that he’d had an injury of his own. Christine tended to the long slash that was gushing blood out of Wong’s arm, whilst Stephen took the Eye from its pedestal. Mordo had also managed to remove the entire side of the building. Stephen wondered where he’d gotten the strength.
“He’ll try to take your power,” said Wong. “That’s what he was here for. Look at what he’s done to the books.”
Stephen turned, and looked. Three tomes had fallen from their protective housings, and when he raised a hand to rifle through their pages, the fragile paper crumbled to dust. So that was what Mordo had drawn from.
“He’s killed them,” said Stephen, as another book fell from the shelves, pages fluttering like a landed fish gasping for water. “No— he’s taken their magic. All right.” He drew a circle into the world, bringing a rune to life in flame and light.
“What are you…?” Christine began, but Wong put a hand on her arm.
“They’re dying because they’re running out of magic,” said Stephen. “I can fix that.”
“The price—” said Wong.
“Is worth paying.”
Later, he knew, he’d probably curse all books and throw up a lot, but right now he felt his heart lift as the books rattled in their shelves, soaking in the magic he was giving them. He was drawing and drawing, using his body as a channel in a way it had never been meant to be used, but the books were getting well again, not fluttering and drowning in nothing.
“Strange!”
He turned, and Mordo walked out of the air, in through the hole in the side of the building. He could see Wong shift subtly so that he stood in front of Christine, injured arm or no.
“Karl,” he said, ending the flow of power to the books. There was no need to twist them up in whatever revenge Mordo wanted on him, or Wong, or the Library itself. “You’ve been busy.”
“So have you,” said Mordo. “Crowned yourself Sorcerer Supreme, yet?”
“Not yet. Do you think I should?” asked Stephen. “It would be one hell of a lot of alliteration.”
The lash of magic almost caught him, but he deflected it at the last minute.
“And where do you get your magic from?” he asked, quietly. “Oh, yes. You drain it. You drain it from other sorcerers; even from these books.”
“Do not talk down to me about magic,” said Mordo, cold as the ice on Everest. “You draw from the places between worlds, and you do not care when the bill will come due.”
“I care,” said Stephen, because he could already feel his body reacting to the magic he was forcing through it. He was going to be so damn sick.
“Yet you cannot resist the temptation to meddle,” said Mordo, softly. “You return to life what should be dead. There’s a reason why people don’t do that.”
“Because it’s destructive on a personal and physical level?” asked Stephen, dodging a spell that hissed past him. “Karl. There are prices for everything. I know that. But it’s not as simple as eschewing all magic.”
“It is exactly that simple. And that difficult.” Mordo looked sad. “I regret that I must continue, while sorcerers tend to trap magic, and use it to their own ends.”
“We’re humans,” said Stephen, drawing a blade of light between his hands. “We re-shape the world around us. All humans do — we build cities, clear land for farms. We dam rivers. We use resources to our own ends, yes, but there are some of us who use them to protect others. And that’s what the Ancient One did. That’s what I do.”
“And what bargains have you made with the Dark Dimension?” asked Mordo. “What lies will you tell yourself to help you accept corrupted power?”
“You’re right,” said Stephen. “I did bargain with Dormammu.” He snapped an arrow of energy out of the air, trying to maintain defensive, not offensive magic. “I went in there and bargained. I took time into his domain, and ran the same moment over and over and over until he snapped.”
“And now that he knows what time is, how will he use it?” asked Mordo, infuriatingly calmly. “You’ve just given him a model to build from.”
The thought hadn’t occurred to Stephen, but he couldn’t afford to stumble. He’d worry about it later.
“I let him kill me,” he said, trying to affect the same calm as Mordo. “I died. The price was my life, over and over and over.”
“Yet you came back,” said Mordo. He lashed out at Stephen, this time with the knife, which slashed through Stephen’s spells like they were made of cobwebs. “Pity.”
Stephen sucked in a breath, prepared to switch to offence, but then the cloak flew at Mordo.
“Stop!” he told it, but it had Mordo by the head and was smothering him. It had Mordo. Who had the Jade Knife, but also didn’t have his footing. Mordo brought the knife up to slash at the cloak as he and the cloak went backwards out of the hole in the side of the Sanctum. Stephen ran for the edge, and nearly went over trying to see what had happened.
No Mordo. He wasn’t that surprised. Maybe the man had known when he was outgunned, or maybe the cloak had done more damage than initially it had seemed to. A flash of red caught his eye, and he felt his stomach sink.
The cloak was snagged on a branch halfway down the mountain. Stephen reached for it with his powers, and found it heavy, unwieldy; it barely lifted into his arms. Not remotely animated. He laid it out on the ground with reverence, and swallowed when he saw the deep rents in the fabric.
“Oh no,” said Christine, softly. “Not — is it…?”
“I don’t know,” he said, kneeling over it, running his hands over the cloak’s soft lining.
Stephen felt the warp and weft melt back together under his hand, but the cloak was still. Mordo had been draining sorcerers of their magic; it looked like he’d drained the cloak. Stephen’s eyes felt hot, suddenly, and his throat tight.
“For want of a better word,” he said, keeping a tight rein on his emotions. “It’s dead.”
Christine sucked in an audible breath, and even Wong made a small noise of distress. Stephen looked up helplessly at them — what could they do? He’d saved the books, but Mordo had killed the cloak.
In his pocket, he felt the little phoenix token stir.
It fluttered out into the cool air, and lit on the cloak, waddling disconsolately up and down the heavy fabric.. And then it lit the cloak. Christine cried out, but Stephen pulled her back. What did phoenixes do, after all? The cloak didn’t flap wildly, just waved a corner, and then the heat and flames engulfed it.
“Stephen,” said Christine, and he realised that he was blinking away tears. But at the same time, he could feel the world shifting, and if he looked carefully — yes. Yes. There was something rising from the ashes. Something red, and broad, and as he watched, it popped its collar, swishing experimentally. It was beautiful — as clean and new as it must have been when it was first sewn — but it was still definitely his cloak. The phoenix token hopped out of the ashes, and flapped up to Stephen. He bent, and extended a hand for it to hop onto. It climbed slowly into his pocket.
“You did well,” he told it, as it snuggled in. “You did an excellent thing.”
The cloak was still testing out its restored — body? — by flapping and zooming.
“It regenerated the cloak,” said Christine, wonderingly.
“The phoenix will need to recharge a long time before it can do that again,” said Wong. “It’s meant to protect its master from death, or undue suffering.”
Stephen felt it turn over in his pocket. “But it saved the cloak.”
“Yes,” said Wong. “Which means that it perceived that the cloak was as important to you as a person. That you would have suffered, had it died.”
Stephen frowned. “It is a person, probably. I’ve been thinking about it — you can’t really have sentience as a half-measure. It’s like being half-pregnant. Either you’re sentient, or you’re not.”
“And this is why all the artefacts love you, Stephen,” said Wong. The cloak swished past, stopping just briefly to envelop him before soaring up to the ceiling. “Sorcerers and artefacts have complex relationships, but few sorcerers are willing to acknowledge artefacts for what they are, beyond appreciating their uses. You would have made a good librarian, or curatorial custodian.”
“I still could,” said Stephen.
“Alas, that position is claimed,” said Wong, poker-faced. “It’s time.”
“Time for what?” asked Christine.
“Earth needs a new Sorcerer Supreme,” said Wong. “You’re green at the job, but you’ll have to do.”
“What a vote of confidence,” said Stephen, but he knew what Wong was really saying. He trusted Wong’s judgement in this completely. Wong had seen him put himself and his body on the line multiple times now. Wong knew how Stephen’s assumptions and experiences had changed.
Wong knew, now, that Mordo really wasn’t coming back.
“Sorcerer Supreme?” asked Christine. “That’s…”
“Ridiculous, I know,” he said.
“I was going to say amazing,” she replied, hugging him, and then both of them sputtered as they were enveloped by a newly enlivened, and very enthusiastic cloak.
___________
Later, he suffered for his art all over the bathroom floor. When he woke up, his head was in Christine’s lap, and the cloak was draped over him, keeping him warm. He looked up at her through eyes that felt like hot marbles, and she gazed back, cracking a smile.
“Happy Christmas,” she said. “No kisses until you’ve brushed your teeth.” She stroked his hair back from his forehead. “Sorcerer Supreme.”
“Mmm,” he replied, and tried to go back to sleep. He’d only need to throw up again, and he was quite comfortable where he was. The cloak was warm and soft, and no-one ever stroked his hair in the usual course of things.
“Get up, Strange,” said Wong. “Your inauguration is in twelve hours, and you can’t still be sicking up arcane energy. It looks bad.”
“Mordo?” he asked, opening his eyes again.
“No sign of him. He must have used the boots to escape.”
In a way, Stephen was glad Mordo wasn’t dead, but in another way, he wasn’t happy to have such a formidable enemy. He struggled over onto his side, and wished he hadn’t — he felt weak and nauseous, all at once.
“Breakfast?”
“Lunch, actually,” said Christine, helping him sit up.
“Aberration sandwiches,” said Wong, cheerfully. “I think your stomach definitely won’t deal with human food today.”
Stephen stretched. “Can I remind you that I am Sorcerer Supreme, and I shouldn’t have to have tentacles for lunch?”
“Not yet you’re not,” said Wong, as Christine and the cloak got Stephen to his feet between them. “Come on. There’s work to be done.”