A Fickle Thing
Chapter 10: Trapped
It's the cloak's favorite new game.
Hide and seek, of course.
What began as a relatively childlike method to help Stephen learn the secrets of the Sanctum (an eternally confounding and maze-like place) turned into a genuine pastime for both of them.
The Sanctorum has hundreds of corridors, secret passageways, closets, inner and outer chambers, dungeons, attics, breezeways, bathrooms, darkrooms, laboratories, and kitchens. Not to mention a ballroom and a padded cell. The assortment of spaces (each one with a history, each one unique) is enough to keep a piece of sentient fabric entertained for years. And even though it has called the Sanctum its home for too many years to count, the cloak still gets a thrill every time it discovers a new place.
The cloak does the hiding; Strange does the seeking.
"Should I count to 100 this time?" the doctor asks, his voice echoing through the hallway where he waits patiently.
Ecstatic, the cloak swoops behind him and ruffles his dark hair, giving an "affirmative."
Stephen smiles mischievously as the cloak spirals and spins above him.
"I just want to give you a better chance at winning this time. How long did it take me to find you yesterday? Not even thirty seconds?"
The ex-surgeon has become increasingly more knowledgeable about the Sanctum after several rounds of this game and has become almost as much an expert on its various secret tunnels and magic doors as Wong or the cloak. It also doesn't hurt that the doctor is becoming proficient at apparating.
The scarlet garment bristles at Stephen's insult as the man chuckles.
"No hard feelings, my friend. May the best navigator win."
With that, Strange turns on his heels, places his hands behind his back, and begins to count in a slow, even voice.
"One…two…three…"
If the cloak could giggle, the sorcerer would have heard its bubbles of laughter echoing through the ancient halls of the Sanctum as the overgarment flits away.
The piece of mystic fabric soars through the house on Bleecker Street, delighting in the suspense of the game. Delicious—the pressure to find a suitable hiding place combined with the horror of being chased! The cloak shimmies delightfully as Stephen's counting begins to fade away, and it focuses on the task at hand. It flits indecisively from a chamber to an anteroom to a breakfast nook, dissatisfied with each new spot. All are too obvious—too open—or places Dr. Strange is acquainted with.
An attic, an atrium, a nursery.
No, no, and definitely not.
A studio, a study, a laundry room. None of them are suitable or offer enough dark corners.
There has to be somewhere that is new and an ideal hiding place.
Footsteps directly beneath the cloak cause it to freeze and then scramble to the nearest closet. In its haste, the magical textile doesn't realize that it has never been in this particular wing of the Sanctum before. Fear of being caught causes the cloak to swiftly turn the door handle of the closet and slip inside, hovering, as if it's holding its breath. Cobwebs brush against its mantle in the pitch dark. Something rustles beside it, but the cloak dismisses the noise as rats scurrying about.
The cloak shivers, listening for its chosen's footfalls outside the door. They grow louder then pause. The cloak takes care not to move an inch, floating in mid-air. Just when the garment is about to give up and expects the closet door to swing open at any moment, Dr. Strange's footsteps start up again and grow weaker, walking away. The cloak twirls, overjoyed at the prospect of actually winning this round. It will wait a good five to ten more minutes, just to make sure that Stephen isn't coming back, before it reveals itself. Even better—what if Strange gets lost and has to wait for its heroic habiliment to rescue him? If the cloak had hands, it would have rubbed them together with eagerness.
But before the cloak can vaingloriously bask in its accomplishment, there is another rustle in the darkness. This time, the sound is accompanied by a voice.
"Why are you here?"
The cloak whirls around, reaching out with tendrils of its fabric in the dark to meet nothingness.
"You must leave before it finds you."
The cloak quivers at the breathy utterance. Its accent is British, but the timbre of the sound is inhuman and unrecognizable.
"It will keep you here forever…"
The overgarment shudders. Is it a relic?
"…with the rest of us."
A light flicks on, and the cloak finds itself in the middle of a medium-sized room, slightly larger than a walk-in closet. From the collection of dusty boxes and crates, it realizes the room has been used as a storage area for quite some time. Perhaps the space has been neglected due to its location in the Sanctum—it's certainly not a central point.
On most of the cloak's expeditions throughout the house on Bleecker Street, it would drift through empty corridors where the only life it encountered might be a stray mouse, but the ethereal voice had sparked a suspicion that is only confirmed with a lamp's sudden illumination:
The cloak is not alone.
Facing the door, it immediately takes in the sight of other objects uncomfortably close in proximity: on its left, a gramophone with a brass horn and a Tiffany lamp with blue and green stained glass resembling dripping vines. On its right is a black bowler hat and an antique doll with long brunette curls and ice-blue eyes that match her dress. The cloak instantly whirls to face the doll, assuming that it is the source of the uncanny voice who warned it. But the doll simply puts its tiny arms up defensively and shrinks behind the domed hat, trembling.
To the cloak's astonishment, the bowler rises up in the air to float at the cloak's level. The voice starts again, and this time the cloak realizes that the sound emanates from the hat.
"I said… LEAVE!"
The cloak doesn't require further insistence and bustles its red fabric before whisking towards the closet door.
But the magical fabric never reaches the knob before something large looms over it, casting twisted shadows on the wooden floorboards as the Tiffany lamp flickers fearfully.
"Well, HELLO there."
Another voice—but this one is deep and smooth as an oil slick. The cloak freezes and feels its very being quaver with fear as it slowly turns around to face…
"The armoire!" the bowler squeaks as the other trapped items scatter like ants.
A 19th century piece made from fine French walnut, the armoire looms over the cloak. An ornate finial spike poised between two arches presides over the casework below. Ripples of wood along its sides act like muscles, and its two cabinet doors are fixed with mirrors. Like eyes, the mirrors reflect the cloak's palpitating form in front of it. The armoire's dark countenance is almost gothic in style, and in the small space of the closet, the large piece of furniture is a threatening presence. The cloak wonders just how long the armoire had been "asleep" before realizing there was a newcomer, or had it been watching the cloak the entire time? The thought causes the magic fabric to shudder even harder.
"What do we have here? The Cloak of Levitation?" the armoire laughs deeply. "This is an honor indeed."
The cloak tears to the door, but the armoire is surprisingly quick for such a bulky object (or perhaps it's just had a lot of practice) and slides in front of the door, completely blocking the exit.
"We have not had company in many decades. I think you will be a suitable addition to my collection here."
The cloak swoops back, joining the ranks of the other objects, who are visibly shaking now.
Another hearty laugh from the armoire. "Yes—you can try to run. The others tried too. But you will soon learn there is no way out. And if you run from me, you will regret it. Hat—tell the cloak what happens if it tries to escape."
The bowler hesitates then shuffles toward the cloak. Its voice is pleading now. "The mirrors will open up, and you will be locked inside the armoire until His Excellency, Napoleon III, lets you out."
The cloak can feel its fabric oscillating like a heart beating out of control. There are few things it detests more than being trapped. Not to mention being trapped by an oversized, overbearing hunk of tree.
The hat spins around, clearly vexed. "Please go along with Napoleon. Victoria tried to run away, and the armoire locked her up for three years."
Nodding slowly, the dark-haired doll looks up at the cloak with mournful eyes that appear on the verge of shedding human tears.
"She hasn't been the same since…"
Like a jaw slowly unhinging, the evil armoire opens one of its mirrors to reveal a black abyss that blocks out more and more of the cloak's vision. Its panic is palpable, an emotion that can only be encapsulated in a scream.
But the cloak can't scream.
Its velvety edges brush the back of the closet, and there is nowhere else to go.
"Music!" bellows the armoire. "The 'Danse Macabre,' if you will."
As if it has been kicked, the gramophone jerks into life, and with a needle-scratching intro, Saint-Saens begins to play. Clashing notes on a violin give way to a plucky orchestra that could be the soundtrack to an insidious carnival or demonic parade.
The armoire begins to move forward, its heavy posts smacking the floorboards and shaking the dust from lifeless boxes. It is gleeful and enthusiastic in its approach, as if it has done this a dozen times before.
Beyond the mirror, the cloak awaits darkness.
Until—a burst of energy breaks through the door behind Napoleon and strikes the gothic furniture as well, causing both entrance and armoire to explode into a million wooden shards. The other objects scatter.
Hovering weakly in shock, the cloak waits for the dust mites to settle before glimpsing the unmistakable form of its master, its chosen, its protected.
Stephen Strange stands frozen in the entrance to the walk-in closet, his fists raised like a boxer after casting the destructive spell. His chest is heaving slightly, his mouth set into a grim line, eyes sharp with what the cloak recognizes as worry. Glancing at the bits of door and armoire in his wake, the human finally sees the cloak. Immediately, he eases out of the fighting stance, his posture relaxes, and he pauses before smiling softly.
"Found you!"
The cloak immediately flutters to Stephen and falls into the man's arms, trembling uncontrollably.
Dr. Strange sees to it that the neglected artifacts are taken from the storage area and thus freed from years of imprisonment.
The Tiffany lamp and gramophone are placed in Dr. Strange's study. The lamp pours over the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald while the gramophone explores Stephen's record collection and delights in playing a wide range of classical, jazz, and soul albums.
Victoria finds a home in the Sanctum's nursery, and it isn't long before Christine is bringing over a visiting niece or nephew and some of their friends to play with the treasure trove of under-used toys when Dr. Strange is on an extended mission. Of course, Victoria is careful to hide her sentience from the newcomers until they have gone. When not in the company of other toys or children, she spends her free time writing a dissertation on global feminism, with a focus on reproduction and the family.
And the bowler hat—once Stephen learns of its ability to talk, he wastes no time in gifting it to Wong.
The scholar balks at the bowler at first, until Stephen protests: "Aren't you always complaining that your head gets cold in the winter?"
Reluctantly, Wong receives the hat, places it on its head, and glances in a mirror. Slowly, a smile spreads across his face.
"Not bad," says Wong, nodding with approval.
"Not bad?" squeaks the hat. "How about handsome?"
Wong's high-pitched scream at the talking hat sends Stephen into fits of laughter that take him the better part of an afternoon to recover from.
"Totally worth it," Strange tells the cloak later.
And even though Wong is apprehensive at first about owning an articulate headpiece, he keeps the bowler in his chamber and frequently wears it around the city.
Stephen never asks the cloak about what happened that day. Perhaps it would have been a futile pursuit to ask an object without a voice to explicate on any subject. Or perhaps Dr. Strange learned the terrible events that occurred in the storage room from the bowler hat.
Either way, Stephen refuses to let the cloak out of his sight in the weeks to come and insists on checking up on it when it leaves the room, even for just a moment.
And they never play hide and seek again.
"I found you for the last time," says Stephen one evening, removing the cloak from his shoulders and placing it on the armchair beside his bed. "But just remember—you found me first."
The cloak settles into the chair as Strange settles into his bed, and both man and mantle watch over each other as the waxing gibbous moon rises over Manhattan.
TBC
A/N: Heyyyy everyone! Much love and cookie dough to those still reading this! It's been sooo long since I tackled these characters and looked at my notes for inspiration. Apologies to those who would have liked an update sooner than almost a year later. (nervous laughter) This chapter is dedicated to Girl-of-Action, who requested the cloak interacting with other relics eons ago. I hope this super short one-shot met at least a couple of your expectations without getting too Beauty and the Beast or The Brave Little Toaster on everybody. (For some reason, the word 'armoire' just seemed to fit as a piece of evil furniture.)
*Antique furniture descriptions in this fic courtesy of "Inessa Stewart's" antiques website.
Next chapter: A BAMF Stephen fights alongside the Avengers!
PinkChaos: Aww-thank you for your kind reviews! I'm glad you enjoy Stephen's interactions with the cloak. I also wish I had a sentient piece of fabric as a friend. Wouldn't that be awesome? A Christmas fic is a great idea! I'll have to think of something for the future.
Honey: Ha! I love your nickname for the cloak—"Cloaky." I'll have to remember that one. Thanks for reviewing this fic and sticking with my other "Star Wars" one. I try to alternate between different chapter fics to focus on updating, but I will be working on another chapter for that one soon.