The Enemy Within - Part Two

[x-juggernaut.livejournal.com]

Early Wednesday morning, a message of sorts is sent. It takes a rather unusual form, one that has a definite effect on the inhabitants of the boathouse.




It was early enough in the morning that the school grounds were still fairly quiet but late enough that Moira had already been to the lab and back. A good time, she thought, putting down her coffee onto the kitchen table. Nathan was in the process of bringing Rachel downstairs so they could feed her but she could enjoy the quiet while it lasted.

The quiet was suddenly and abruptly shattered by the sound of her daughter shrieking at the top of her lungs. "AHHHH! AHHHHH! WAAAHHH!" It sounded more distressed than anything, and the speed of Nathan's footsteps as he came down the stairs was considerably more rapid than it should be. He appeared at the bottom of the staircase, looking confused and a little distressed himself, Rachel thrashing and shrieking in his arms.

"Hold her," he said, pushing the baby at Moira. "There's something going on outside."

Grabbing the screaming baby, Moira followed in Nathan's footsteps. "Wha' is it?" she asked, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. It wasn't an attack, there would have been a warning from Charles but something was going on. It felt off and Rachel was obviously agitated.

"What in the name of..." Nathan trailed off as he got out onto the deck and blinked at the lake. For a moment he thought it was on fire - which wasn't as strange a concept as it sounded, not around here - but it wasn't. They were letters, but when he tried to focus on them his vision blurred and a stab of pain hit him right behind the eyes.

Staying in the house, but inside of the doorframe so that she could back away if need be, Moira followed Nathan's gaze. "Wha' is tha'?" Wincing, she looked away, a headache starting to form at the base of her neck. Rachel had stopped screaming but was still whimpering in her arms. "Tha's nay somethin' anyone 'ere can do," she said softly, trying to look at it from the corner of her eyes.

"It doesn't seem to be spreading. Or moving at all," Nathan said, trying to sneak another direct look at it. The incipient headache was suddenly more insistent. "I can... sense something, too. I think that's what bugging Ray."

"'Tis botherin' me as well but certainly nay on th' same level as ye two." Moira frowned, bringing Rachel in closer to her body. "Charles probably already felt this but th' team needs ta be clued in. Giant flamin' signs are never a good thin'."

"No," Nathan said, a bit more dryly as he turned away from the lake, already sending out a quick telepathic warning to Charles - who was indeed already aware - and Scott. "I think the three of us should go up to the mansion," he said, putting his arm around Moira's shoulders. Rachel was still whimpering. "Just in case."

Reaching around to the side of the door, she grabbed the emergency baby bag they kept there. "Aye, tha's best. We'll get Rachel away from this an' 'opefully be able t' distract her." Moira frowned once at the lake before looking firmly away as they shut the door behind them.




Upon leaving the infirmary, Cain runs into Doug, who has translated the letters on the lake. Doug relates the message to Cain, who is remarkably nonplussed.



Cain wandered around the hallway leading from the basement to the stairs, grumbling bout no decent coffee in the infirmary. Logan had been nice enough to bring him a case of beer to split while evading the doctors' attention, which wasn't exactly focused on Cain right now, what with the injured kid in the medlab.

He rounded a corner, nearly flattening Doug, who held a piece of paper in his hand and had a look on his face like he'd realized something very important.

Doug had been holed up in his room, doing his best to avoid everyone. From the way only one or two people had even emailed to see how he was doing, he figured most of the mansion assumed he was the ogre who'd ruined the relationship and caused Marie-Ange to cry. Between that and the job offer from Pete Wisdom, he'd done his best to make himself scarce.

But the large flaming letters on the lake could not be ignored, and made a few things click in his mind. He jumped backwards as he saw the very seven-foot groundskeeper he'd been looking for. "Oh, Mr. Marko," he stammered slightly. " I was just looking for you."

"Talk to me, kid," Cain said amiably, walking towards the kitchen and the coffee machine. Pouring himself a large mug, he gestured towards Doug with the carafe. "Want some?"

Doug normally wasn't much of a caffeine drinker, but staying out of the mansion until 3 or 4 in the morning the past few nights had taken its toll on him, leaving him with a haggard look. "Please," he said politely. Accepting a mug from Cain, he took a swallow, barely even tasting it.

"So, did you see or hear about the giant flaming letters on the lake?" he asked in an apparent non sequitur.

"Giant what?" Cain asked with an arched eyebrow. At Doug's gesture to the window, Cain parted the curtains and peered out, then covered his eyes. "Ah, jesus!" he grunted, shaking his head. "This some kind of joke from Shiro or something? Tell me that's not a love letter to his girlfriend he wrote in big ten foot flaming letters."

"Believe me, I think you'll wish it was in a minute," Doug replied. "It says 'Give me back what is mine'. And it's in a language I've only seen one other place before." He took another sip of his coffee. It actually wasn't half bad. "Huh," he said, half to himself. "Maybe -that's- why..."

"Why what? Give who back what's theirs?" Cain squinted out at the burning letters, which seemed to be fading slowly. "What in the hell are you talking about, Doug?"

"There was a stone that Doc Mactaggart showed me, once upon a time," Doug replied after another sip of coffee. "It had markings in the same language as those flaming letters." He consulted the sheet of notes he'd kept ever since being asked to translate the writings. Taking a more serious tone, he began to read.

"Behold, I am Cyttorak, king of kings and lord of lords. Fall down on your faces before me and tremble, worms, for..." he trailed off and licked his lips.

As soon as Doug spoke the words, the letters flared and vanished from sight. Cain stood for a moment, trying to parse what he'd been told when one of the younger students ran into the kitchen.

"Oh, Mister Marko," she exclaimed, nearly out of breath. "You've got a visitor. The Professor asked if you and Doctor MacTaggart would meet him in the study? Okay, bye!" and in a flash, she was off again.

Cain looked down at Doug, then shrugged. "Probably just some coincidence. Thanks, Doug." He set his coffee cup in the sink, not noticing the cracks that spiderwebbed across its surface. Checking his watch, he shrugged and headed for the study.



While the message is translated, its sender shows up. At the front door, rather politely. A chat is had between the visitor, Cain, Moira, and Charles - and a request that is both deal and demand is put on the table for Cain to ponder.




Charles Xavier wheeled his chair down the hallway, stopping a few times to straighten low-hanging pictures that had been brushed out of alignment by the passage of multiple students. While a good deal of the younger students had gone home to be with their families over the summer, the school was still home to a great many youngsters who would inevitably rush through the halls with a sense of freedom that came with the end of classes.

A knock at the door sounded, deep and resonant. Instinctively, Charles opened his mind to sense for familiar psychic patterns, but instead reeled slightly at the sheer volume of presence on the other side of the door. Stunned for a moment, he turned his attention that way as a younger student skipped across the foyer, opening the front door.

In the entryway stood an elderly man, well over six feet tall and bearing the size that came from obviously carrying a significant amount of muscle in his youth. His lined face showed signs of impatience and frustration, emotions Charles could feel cascading through the psychic ether. But to all his senses, the man seemed to be impossible to read telepathically. Charles had a brief feeling of being in a wide desert, and trying to describe a specific patch of sand - the man had so much sheer psionic presence that it was impossible to discern anything but the feeling of restrained consternation that was emanating from him.

"Hello," the visitor said to the girl who'd answered the door, his voice a raspy whisper that nonetheless rattled the pictures on the wall in their frames. "I would like to speak with Cain Marko. Bring him to me."

Xavier wheeled himself into the foyer, situating his chair in front of the open door. "I am Charles Xavier, please, let me welcome you to my school. You have business with Mr. Marko?"

The stranger smiled and gave a wheezing chuckle. "Mr. Marko and I have had a... pre-existing arrangement for a number of years. He has something of mine that I wish returned."

Immediately recognizing the tone of the message that was left on the lake that morning, Charles' mind raced. He turned to the young girl and nodded. "Talia, would you find Mr. Marko and Doctor MacTaggart and have them meet me and our guest in my study?" As the young girl raced off, Xavier nodded to the elderly gentleman.

"If you would follow me, Cain will be with us shortly. You stated Cain has something of yours to be returned. I trust that this morning's missive was yours, then?"

The older man laughed, a sound like rocks grinding together in his throat. "A small demonstration of what little remains to me, yes." He followed as Charles headed towards the study, absently reaching out with a finger to tap a hanging painting slightly askew. "Have you noticed Cain feeling odd lately? Weak, perhaps? Something perhaps wrong with this power he has assumed to be his for so long?"

Entering his study, Charles spun around to face the visitor, his face set in a mask of determination. "If you are threatening my brother, or anyone else in my home, I must ask you to stop. You will find that Cain does not respond well to threats, explicit or implied."

The visitor laughed, turning to look at Moira and Cain as they entered the study, shocked looks of recognition on their faces when they saw the man who'd been standing over Cain the other morning in the service station. He smiled and looked back at Charles.

"One thing you would do well to learn is this:" he said, taking a leisurely seat in one of the chairs. "I cannot be stopped."

***

Charles had assured Cain multiple times that he could sense no threat from the visitor, but even still, Cain couldn't bring himself to sit down. The older man sat in one of the high-backed chairs in the study, facing Charles, Moira, and the pacing Cain. One foot tapped in a rapid, almost impatient rhythm.

"So," he asked in a raspy voice that shook the picture frames on the wall despite its hushed volume, "have you figured it out yet?"

Cain stopped his pacing, peering at the visitor closely. Damned if it ain't like looking into a crazyhouse mirror..., he thought. "You said you couldn't be stopped. Those exact words, the ones that've been crawling in my head for damn close to forty years now. What in the hell do you want?"

"Simply for you to give me back what is mine," the old man stated, a look of restrained anger crossing his face, wrinkled features straining in an odd reflection of Cain's perpetually-disturbed scowl. "Return my power to me, and I will trouble you no more."

All Moira could think was that it was a very good thing Jim had no indication that this meeting was happening or that she was anywhere near it. After the other day, the worry would have been enough to give him a heart attack.

Leaning forward, she studied both the men intently and then focused on the older one. "Forty years is a verra lon' time," she said simply. "Why show up now?"

The old man eyed Moira with a quizzical look. "Forty years is an eyeblink, after millenia of imprisonment. Hundreds of your centuries, trapped in that forsaken rock - and then in him!" One shaking finger pointed accusingly at Cain.

"Then my prison was broken, and I was freed - but not as I was. This... mortal shell, this husk. What you SHOULD be without my power inside you!" he rasped at Cain, rising from the chair with a surge of unpredictable power. Glass picture frames cracked as the old man continued pointing at Marko.

"I tried to take the power back, but it's tied to the prison, tied to you. You can still feel it when I'm near, don't you? That rage? That anger, the desire to destroy anything around you? That voice in your head telling you to burn it all, take this world and dash it to cinders?" He leaned close to Cain, loudly whispering. "That's me. Always been me. And it's going to always be me right there inside you unless you give me back what's mine. You know it's true. As sure as you know my name."

Cain closed his eyes, bowing his head silently. "Cyttorak," he whispered.

Charles Xavier appeared entirely unfazed by the presence of an Elder God in his study - and utterly unsurprised by the revelation of their visitor's identity. "To give back 'what's yours'," he said, very calmly. "Perhaps you would explain that further?"

Cyttorak chuckled, turning away from Cain to pace around the study. Each light footfall caused books to jump in their shelves, teacups to rattle in their cabinet. "When your world was just a ball of gas around a bigger ball of gas, I was around. Me and others like me - your people like to call us 'gods' because you don't even have the level of consciousness to understand us completely. Not without going insane anyway." He turned to Cain and smiled. "Your friend Hodge saw how that goes. I figured if you were going to misuse what's mine, I'd return the favor. Didn't seem to sink into your thick head, though."

He stalked back across the room, ignoring Charles and Moira to stand chest-to-chest with Cain. "I find it to be utterly ironic that I found myself imprisoned for destroying one of my own kind - my 'brother' if you want to put it in your primitive terms. So they exiled me here, to this... this fragile world of rock and mud. Powerless and confined. Until you broke the prison and freed me, but you kept MY power! MINE!"

The roar shook the windows in their frames, peeling the wallpaper from the walls in strips. "And the irony? The one I killed came back. And I'd never have figured it out until he touched you." Cyttorak pointed at Charles without looking. "You freed him from the host he'd chosen, returned him home. How very poetically just."

Frowning, Moira resisted the urge to shift around in her seat and fidget. The tension in the room was growing and suffocating at the same time. "How is Cain supposed ta give yer powers back ta ye?" she asked carefully, not afraid but certainly not stupid enough to not be careful.

"Simply allow it," Cyttorak said, running a finger along Cain's chest while the larger man stood as still and quiet as a statue. "Because you know what will happen if you don't. I'll always be with you, and that rage will just keep building. Eventually the desire to destroy will drive you mad. Human minds are not meant to carry this power, return it to me and I will leave this place. You will be free of your burden, and I will be free of this prison."

"Cain." All of Charles's attention was on his stepbrother. "What is your reaction to this?"

Cain remained silent for a moment, then spoke. "You're saying that I give up this power, and you go back wherever the hell you came from, and it's all square?" Cyttorak nodded with a smirk. Cain shook his head, turning away and pacing.

"What happens to me then?" he asked. "You say if I don't do this, eventually - what, I'm going to go crazy and destroy the world?"

"No," Cyttorak interrupted, correcting him. "Simply everything you hold dear. You are a human Juggernaut - you are an instrument of destruction, something wielding power man was never meant to hold. And you cannot deny the anger inside you, as much as you wish to."

Cain swore under his breath, hands swinging as he walked. "You can't just leave me alone, can you? I got a second chance here, you can't just take that away!"

"You think you deserved it?" Cyttorak shouted back, "I will not live this half-life simply to appease your sense of mercy! No, I can't force your hand. I can't just take my power back, it has to be given. That's all it takes. You willingly surrender it to me, and I will leave you as I promised. You will become as you should be - as you would be had you never held my power."

Cain peered closely at the old man. It was jarring, seeing his own features weathered by age. The muscle hanging atrophied and slack on Cyttorak's mortal form, the grey hair and wrinkled, liver-spotted skin stretched over his skull. "What I deserve..." he murmured quietly. "We set things how they should be, and you leave with no problems?"

"None in the slightest," Cyttorak promised, sitting back down and steepling his fingers. "I've no desire to remain here, any more than you are to have me. Are we agreed?"

Silently, Cain leaned on the windowsill, staring out at the horizon. "I gotta think on this," he said quietly but firmly. "You give me a day, and I'll make a decision. Give this back, or live with it and take the consequences."

Cyttorak smiled, a twinkle in his eye. "One day," he repeated. Standing once more, he looked over at Charles and Moira with a bemused smirk. For a split second, it appeared as if he was standing in a double-exposed photograph, his physical form overlaid by the image of a flaming red skeleton - then he was gone.

"Cain," Charles said after a moment, sounding grave. For the first time, there was something close to a flicker of real distress in his eyes as he spoke. "There is no way to know if this... being is telling the truth. His mind is beyond my ability to penetrate, and I notice he said nothing of the consequences for you of returning his power."

"I agree wit' Charles," Moira spoke up. "We 'ave nay any idea o' wha' will 'appen ta ye. On one 'and he was powerful enough ta 'urt ye an' make a royal mess in th' store...without his powers. On th' other..." Cyttorak would be staying around, that much was sure.

"It's my call, right?" Cain looked back and forth from Moira to Charles. "I gotta think about... you don't know what it was like. Hearing that voice in there, having to rein it back for so long. It.... it's my decision. I gotta think about it."

With that, Cain turned and pushed open the doors of the study, walking back into the hall.

Charles sighed deeply as Cain departed, a look of fatigue descending over his features as he rubbed at his temples. Clearly, Cyttorak's presence had affected him more than he had let on during the conversation itself.

"I'm deeply concerned by this," he said to Moira. "I know what a burden this power has been for Cain, but we cannot know the consequences of this. He's correct, it is his choice. And yet..."

"An' yet I've this sinkin' feelin' tha' whatever his choice," Moira responded grimly, "tha' it'll affect more than jus' Cain. If he doesnae give th' power back, we'll 'ave this Cyttorak runnin' around causin' grief ta nay end. If he does...then somethin' wit' tha' amount o' power runnin' around th' world isnae good, either."

Sighing, she stood up. "Charles, I'm goin' ta go back over Cain's file an' all th' data we've collected since he first arrived. Nay sure wha' good tha'll do but at least 'tis somethin'."

Charles nodded. "Please do. I will..." He hesitated, the uncertainty on his face overwhelming for a moment. "... consider the situation further," he finally said, sounding almost weary.