LOG: Cain & Dr. Strange - late night visit

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Cain let out a loud snore, head rolling to one side as he slept. The
monitors to his side beeped slowly and rhythmically, tracking his
pulse, blood pressure, and breathing. To all appearances, he was just
the normal everyday sleeping giant.

Madelyn had left the machines set to page the medical wing if there
was any change in Cain's condition, something that was deemed unlikely
due to the increased speed at which he seemed to be recovering,
although he had yet to regain any sort of fine motor control over most
of his body, or coherent speech.

With only the sound of Cain's snoring and the sterile echoes of the
machines to fill it, the boathouse seemed dark and empty.

Stephen Strange stepped out of a shadow into the living room.

He considered the sleeping figure thoughtfully. The fact he was sleeping at
all was an indication of the changes that had taken place. Not to mention
the mystical ones... Amanda's spell was visible to the magician's eyes,
interwoven with another energy signature he guessed was Nathan's TK, but
where the Gem had been a blaze of magical energies, now it was barely a
muted glow... He doubted Amanda would even be able to sense the power of it
at the moment. Taking a seat beside the man's bed, Strange sat patiently,
waiting for him to wake up in his own time. He had a feeling it wouldn't be
long.

Cain let out a long yawn, blinking his eyes blearily. He glanced to
the left, seeing the clock on the VCR displaying a time best described
as 0-Too-Damn-Early. Cursing mildly, he arched his back, trying to
roll his shoulders. The left side still was too weak, didn't want to
respond.

He turned his head to the left, then to the right. As his eyes fell on
Strange, Cain's jaw dropped. "You..." he breathed, then gestured
weakly with an arm. "You... 'manda's teeshr. Mag'c guy."


"Stephen Strange," the magician confirmed. "I apologise for the rudeness in
just dropping in, but I have information for you I thought you'd want to
receive in some degree of privacy?" Not to mention he wanted to reassure
himself of certain things, given what he had found out. "Are you
well enough - I waited as long as I deemed necessary."

"'m well as 'm gon' be," Cain mumbled, using his arms to roughly push
himself into a sitting position. He looked around before remembering
Madelyn had gone back to the mansion. "How y' get 'n?"

"I'm not... exactly here. Astral projection - at the moment my body is
quite comfortably ensconced in a hotel room in London while my... soul, for
want of a better word, is here talking to you." He passed his hand through
the arm of the chair he was 'sitting' in as an example. "I have to admit,
Amanda and Mr Dayspring did a remarkable job on things. Technically it
shouldn't have worked at all, but you can never fail to take into account
the power of a pair of stubborn wills."

Cain had remembered Charles once talking about something of the sort,
astral whatever. He paused, trying to think his words more than
just say them.

"They don't come more stubborn than Nate and Amanda, that's for damn
sure." Cain smiled at the deep timbre of his voice, even if it wasn't
really speaking. "Nate showed me, you know, in my head, what happened.
I'm still not sure how it worked but - hey, alive. Not complaining."

He resisted the urge to poke experimentally at Strange, then folded an
arm across his chest. "But I don't think you're here about Nathan, are
you?"

Ah, much better than trying to decipher what Marko was _trying_ to say.
"No, I'm not," Strange replied, almost blandly. "Tell me, does the name
'Cyttorak' mean anything to you?"

"Sit a who what?" Cain cocked his head. "Can't say that I do. I get
the feeling it ought to, though. This got anything to do with what I
had Amanda ask you about?" It was strange, Cain noticed. He knew the
lights were on in the kitchen, and the overhead lights on the boat
dock. He could see them through the window. But the house was dark,
seeming smaller. Claustrophobic, almost. Why was he nervous? It didn't
make sense.

"Cyttorak," Cain repeated the name. There it was again. That weird
feeling of... containment? Familiarity, yet... no, he'd lost it again.

"An ancient god of war, anger and other unpleasantness. Not worshipped in
any numbers for almost a millenium. It was his temple you found the Gem,"
Strange said, still in that clam, almost ordinary voice, although he was
watching Cain intently for any sign of... well, insane godly rage, for one.

"Well, that's coincidence for you," Cain joked, "Found it in the
middle of a war, and I'm ... I was a pretty angry guy. Sounds like me
and this Cyttorak," again that weird feeling, Cain shrugged it off,
"would have got along just fine."

"The thing about magic is that there are no coincidences..." Strange said
dryly. "The combination of events, the fact you were the right personality
type... I believe it was no coincidence you found yourself in that temple
and that the Gem came to you. You were the perfect avatar for Cyttorak to
express itself in."

"Avatar?" Cain was puzzled. "Afraid you've lost me there. Thing is, I
know damn well what brought me there, and it ain't worth goin' into.
But if you've got answers, hell, I'd love to hear 'em."

"I have some." Strange settled back a little, his astral form slipping back
into the armchair. "Cyttorak is - was - a very powerful God. It's not from
this dimension, coming from somewhere akin to this Limbo place Ms Rasputin
was taken to, although not the same place. In order to act within our
dimension, Cyttorak needed an avatar, a representative. A human into which
its power could be directed, through the Gem. Unfortunately the process
generally drove the chosen individuals insane, after a time, but in you
there was a resonance. You said it yourself - you got along just fine."

Cain thought for a moment, letting the information sink in. "You're
saying... if I get this straight... that I had a GOD in my
head? And when the Gem went away, so did he?" He frowned slightly.
"That'd probably explain the headaches. Feeling like something's
missing, you know?"

"The one and same," confirmed Strange with a nod. "But yes, effectively
that was the case - you were the earthly avatar of Cyttorak the Destroyer.
When the Gem was shattered, Cyttorak lost its grip on this reality - not
only does it explain the headaches, but the loss in mass and the return of
basic biological functioning. However a human being cannot experience
something like that and there not be lasting effects. Especially
when the Gem still retains considerable power, although the fact it's been
incorporated into your DNA means that power is no longer active, nor
accessible to someone like Amanda."

Cain waved a hand awkwardly. "If I wanted the medical talk, I'd ask a
doctor," he blinked once, then corrected, "MY doctor. If I was still,
you know, what I was - I don't know." Cain let his hands drop to the
bed. "I can't even move. Ain't that irony? This Cyttorak gets kept
prisoner in some jewel, and when he gets out, I end up a prisoner in
my own body. Life's fulla little surprises."

"But," he said after a brief pause, "that makes me think of something.
Ways back, Amanda was using me as her fix for whatever it is she does.
This means she wasn't using me, was she? But whatever was in the Gem
instead?" At Stephen's nod, Cain slowly got a look of concern across
his face. "If this big nasty thing was in there like you say, it ain't
gonna influence her none? I mean, other than me, she's been closest to
this thing-"

Alison.

Cain's train of thought derailed, his mouth open and slack. Why would
Alison know about what having the Gem in her was like? Why was he
certain that she had somehow shared his experience? It didn't seem
right.

"She's been close to it," Cain recovered his composure, "it ain't
poisoned her or nothing, has it?"

"It did," Strange said simply. "Back in March last year, before she was
sent back home to England... there were some issues that were related to
the nature of the power of the Gem, and the power she absorbed in Limbo.
The fact she used it mainly for healing others did much to alleviate the
effects. And the rest was dealt with by Ms Wisdom - it's no longer a threat
in the state it's in now." A smile flitted across his face. "But thank you
for the concern. I'm sure Amanda would appreciate it as well, if you were
to tell her."

"I owe her big," Cain agreed. "Not just for this, I mean, I treated
her like shit. Didn't give her half a chance, just wrote her off.
Didn't expect she'd, you know, put herself at risk to save a guy like
me." He closed his eyes and lay back in the bed. "Here they gave me a
second chance, and I wouldn't even give her a first one. Owe her big."

"I think that giving her that chance will go towards balancing the scales,"
Strange said. "Now, I should go. You need your rest, as do I -
trans-Atlantic projection is somewhat taxing. But should you want any
further information... now I know who I'm dealing with, I have more than a
little."

"Yeah," Cain answered. "Stop in once you're stateside. We'll have a
beer or something. But Doc?" he pleaded, "use the door?"

Strange paused in mid-fade. "If you insist," he said, with a hint of
amusement, getting up and walking towards the door... and proceeding
straight through it. Then, a moment later, he stuck his head back through
it and asked: "Oh, was I supposed to open it?"