Months
“You can’t keep talking about her as if she’s dead,” Loki said, his voice ragged. “I won’t allow it.” He was on his third hour of pacing for that day. If the last three weeks had been any indicator, he would have calves of steel by the time Peach was recovered.
“I…I don’t see another way around it,” Doctor Strange said. He leaned forward with his elbows on the conference table. He chewed his words very carefully before spitting them out, with that same solemn expression and tone a doctor takes on when delivering bad news to the family of a deceased patient. “With that, ahem, that amount of blood. With the damage we saw. It was clear that whoever came to her apartment wasn’t looking for a prisoner. If we’re going to do her memory any justice…I…I just don’t want this guy at large for months because we’re in denial about the evidence.”
They presumed torture.
There was a drought concerning security footage they could use to confirm the events of that morning. It was an unprecedented anomaly… Shortly before Peach arrived back at the tower, the surveillance cameras at Stark Enterprises cut out. No backup cameras activated like they should have. No alarms sounded. Peach’s self-installed door camera captured two masked individuals entering the apartment, her arrival shortly after, and about thirty minutes later, the same two people heaving an unnervingly large and lumpy duffle bag exited the apartment. That was the extent of the footage they recovered. The only other thing they could take notes from was the physical scene they’d walked in on.
First, of course, the backpack was gone. Her bathroom and bedroom had been ripped to shreds. It looked like a robbery: her clothes were strewn about the room, drawers upturned, jewelry box cleaned out, the works. Her phone had been incinerated in the oven.
Then, of course, there was blood everywhere. Leading away from the bathroom, there was a small puddle and red handprints smeared across the floor as if she’d fought someone trying to drag her away. Perhaps she fell and smacked her face on the floor during the pursuit. There was a crimson splatter up the wall of her kitchen and a little on the ceiling, indicating that if the splatter wasn’t from a stab wound, someone had punched that woman with the might of a freight train. Flecks of dried blood lined a bowl-shaped dent in the wall where someone had bashed her head in repeatedly, probably more times than she could remember if she survived. Droplets of blood trailed on the floor, indicating a chase. It all lead to one conclusion: she’d fought hard and lost hard.
“You should have been here,” Loki said, bloodshot eyes staring venomously at Doctor Strange. His hair was stringy, looming over the hollow, angular features of his face.
“I know,” Strange said.
“You were the only person that could have actually been of use that day.”
“I know.”
“You failed her,” Loki said.
“Kamar-Taj was under attack,” Strange said, his tone flat. “Time was needed to rebuild what was damaged, re-fortify our defenses—"
“It’s under attack every other day!”
“They needed me and I had no idea that the cameras here were out or…or…any of the rest. I thought you guys could handle it and I had to make a choice.”
“You chose wrong,” Loki gritted out.
“You know I came as soon as I could.”
“It wasn’t soon enough,” Loki said, the purple bags under his eyes showing the only real color on his pale face. He wrapped his arms around himself and slipped his eyes shut, leaning back in his chair.
“Well where the fuck were you, then? You were IN THE BUILDING—”
“Let’s get on with it,” Tony said. He looked well-groomed, but his slouch and the severe cracks in his lips from weeks of chewing showed how distraught he was on the inside. “I don’t understand why we brought you back here if you’re not actually going to do your job. This isn’t social hour.”
“I just want us all to be prepared for the obvious truth,” Stephen said. He wouldn’t admit out loud that he was petrified to see what they’d done to his Little Patient. After the attack on Kamar-Taj, Tony asked him to return to Stark Tower to use his universal awareness—to search Peach’s apartment and find out what they did to her, to see where they took her. As soon as he’d heard the state of her apartment, Doctor Strange found for the first time in his life that he didn’t think he was strong enough to face something.
“Go,” Loki said. “The least you can do for her is witness it.”
Stephen swallowed thickly and nodded. With a flourish of his wrist, a glimmering, golden portal opened in front of him and he stepped through.
Though his eyes were closed, Loki picked at the skin around his nails for what seemed like hours—a little nervous tick to help pass the time. After three weeks of this habit, however, the pickings were slim and his fingers were raw and bleeding slightly from his incessant attentions, the nerves throbbing angrily, begging him to stop. He couldn’t stop. He’d failed his darling. He knew, he fucking knew he should have never left her alone in Florida. He’d had a bad feeling and he didn’t listen to his gut. During the time she was attacked, he was sleeping. Would he have heard something and been able to help had he been awake? His subconscious screamed at him, all hours of the day and night, with a resounding yes.
Tony opened his mouth to say something, but Loki shushed him. He wasn’t interested in conversation. His mind was tuned in on the belligerent, ceaseless cry from within that he’d fucked up in the worst, most irreversible way a person could. There would be no relief from his anguish. Not through some petty distraction like conversation. He didn’t feel he deserved the break. Tony’s teeth clicked when his jaw clamped shut. Then, the seconds would pass quietly as they waited for Doctor Strange to return.
…
…
…
…
Stephen burst through his portal in a flurry, falling to his hands and knees, breathless. His face was wet and red, eyes swollen. Loki quickly realized Stephen was sobbing. Bad news, surely. Though he didn’t think he was strong enough to hear it, Loki waited patiently for the insolent ‘doctor’ to reveal the details of Peach’s brutal end, prolong his well-earned internal suffering all the more. It would fuel his rage when he took revenge on her killers.
“SHE’S ALIVE. SHE’S ALIVE,” Strange choked out between heaving breaths. “I know how to find her.”
After explaining the events of that morning, ending with Peach’s unconscious (but not dead) body being stuffed into the duffel bag, Stephen revealed his insight.
“She has to be alive. They know they need her to access those files, and if they already did, we would surely know by now. There would have been another breach or attack, there’s no way anyone would be sitting idle with that information. As long as she doesn’t give up the passwords, she’s alive.”
“Probably being fucking tortured,” Tony breathed, his eyes welled with tears. He wiped his hand over his mouth.
“Probably, yeah,” Stephen said, nodding. “But I can communicate with her if she’s alive. I can find out where she is.”
Loki wanted to respond, he really did, but his mind was ravaging the bones of his memory of the training day he’d spent with Peach. He knew there was something off about that Darren kid during their fight, but the girl fell for his act without a question in her mind. He should have been there. He should have fought harder. He should have nipped this entire situation in the bud. And now, because of Loki’s own ineptitude, that kid probably had her locked up in a basement somewhere with electrodes hooked to her t—
“Loki?”
The ‘doctor’ was addressing him. Loki raised a brow at his enemy.
“Do you have anything you want me to tell her?”
…
“What is your plan, half-wit? I was too bored by your first explanation to bother listening.”
“Uhh, okay… I’m sure you’re familiar with the spell—I just need to burn a few strands of her hair, which we can find in the apartment, and when I cite this incantation, my consciousness will be transferred into her mind until either of us ends the spell. While I’m with her, I can ask her whatever we need to know to learn her location.”
Loki scoffed.
“Yes, aha, I’m familiar with that spell, but I can assure you—it won’t work in this situation.”
“I can assure you it will,” Strange argued, tilting his head and furrowing his brows, thoroughly perplexed.
“Trust me. It’s best if I perform the spell,” Loki tried. “I believe you’re forgetting one very important parameter of the charm and I think it best that we don’t waste the precious resource of her hair on what will certainly be a botched attempt to contact her.”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” Strange admitted.
“That enchantment only works if the participants have not had sex with anyone else besides one another before the spell is cast.”
“I was the last person who had sex with her,” Stephen said.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“That’s…That’s not right,” Loki said, shaking his head in genuine disbelief. “That’s not possible. We…We… No. Before she left on her trip to Florida. That very morning I took her not an hour before her flight. On the desk in her office, no less.”
Tony snickered, welcoming his first reason to smile since Peach left.
“Yes. And I stayed with her while she was in Florida.”
Loki’s lip curled and nostrils flared. He leaned over the conference table like an animal ready to lunge and rip it’s prey’s throat out.
“What?!”
“I comforted her while she was adjusting to being back in her hometown,” Strange elaborated. “She was having a hard time. Ahem, no pun intended.”
“You mongrel, I laid my claim, I made the lines of my territory very clear. My marks would still have been on her delicate neck. How DARE you touch her?”
“Look, buddy, she called me so maybe you should take up your ‘claim’ with her. When we recover her alive. Which I’m desperately trying to do before the next century passes.”
“Fine, if you’re so smug, but know this: the moment she’s safe and well, I will eviscerate you.”
“I can see you’re having a hard time dealing with the responsibility you feel over her disappearance and I hope you find a way to stop projecting those feelings onto others,” Stephen said. “If you’ll excuse me, I have an important task to carry out.” He opened another portal leading to Peach’s apartment so they could gather some of her hair, allowing Tony to walk through before gesturing to Loki, welcoming him to join them.
Loki’s nose twitched. He took a step back, watching Strange’s cape flick around impatiently, sensing it’s master’s mood. His girl needed him, he thought, but he felt so useless. What would Loki do, sit there and watch the ‘doctor’ cast a spell that should have been his? Wait patiently with his thumb up his own arse while Strange did all the legwork? Hm. Perhaps the ‘doctor’ would need a sitter, Loki thought, just to ensure that he asked all the right questions, to be absolutely certain she would get home in one piece. Fine. Only for her. Loki waltzed through the portal with his nemesis and made sure he was the first to find Peach’s hairbrush.
Once the spell was complete, the room reeking of burnt hair, Stephen sat on Peach’s couch, relaxing as much as he could considering what he’d just seen in this room. He felt his consciousness slip into a dark void as it searched for the vessel of her mind. The key was staying calm. A calm mind wouldn’t alarm her or frighten her into ending the spell early by accident. A calm mind could find her faster.
He’d asked the other men in the room to stay quiet while he worked. Fewer distractions would make the spell more successful, and the more times the spell was successfully performed, the stronger his cosmic connection with Peach would be. Overtime, he might be able to look through her own eyes or even speak on her behalf. For their first time connecting, though, he expected a dark void and the voice of her thoughts.
When Stephen Strange’s consciousness fell into Peach’s body, he felt suffocated under the weight of her exhaustion. He took a moment to tune in, being surprised to find that he could feel some of the physical sensations in her body. She was in immense pain. Her hands were bound above her head, wrists raw. Her face was throbbing with bruises. There were a number of severe lacerations painting her back and thighs. When he tried to feel in her body elsewhere, such as her stomach, he was met with radio silence. Next time, he hoped.
Their conversation began with a thought.
Lovely girl? Can you hear me?
…
…
Sweets? It’s Stephen.
No.
Peach?
I know it’s not him. Please leave me be.
How did you guys get in my mind?
Little Patient, it’s me, it’s Doc—
Please just let me rest. I can’t take any more today.
Any more what?
What have they been doing to you?
…
Peach?
Shhh. I need to rest.
How can I prove to you it’s me?
There’s nothing you can do.
A hallucination would know everything I know.
If you’re a trick, same thing. They know how you played with me.
Hm…Loki’s here with me. Would you like me to—
Yes. Now.
Okay, one moment while I talk with him.
…
…
…
He says the last time he ‘ravished’ you, he gave you the illusion of a threesome. Does that sound familiar?
Is he okay?
You want to know if HE is okay?
Please.
He’s been a wreck without you. He blames himself.
He’s an idiot.
We all thought you were dead.
I don’t know where to begin, Peach. I’m so sorry.
It’s okay.
I’m really tired. Did you call to say goodbye?
Goodbye? No. No, honey. I called to tell you to hold on.
Yawn.
Did you just yawn in real life and think the word ‘yawn’?
Yeah. I’m tired. Problem?
Sweets, we are trying to find you. Where did they take you?
Shrug.
Did you just…? Okay… Have they let you outside at all?
No. Why?
I’m wondering if the environment is hot or cold.
Maybe rainy or sunny?
What time of day is it over there?
Not sure.
They haven’t let me sleep in a few days so my internal clock isn’t uhh, how you say…
‘Functional.’
Oh, baby. My honey. I’m so sorry. Go get some rest.
Don’t leave me.
You need to sleep, angel. I’ll be back soon, okay?
Please don’t go, Stephen. I’m not strong enough. I can’t take it.
Just hold on for us, alright? Keep fighting.
You’re so strong, baby. You’re doing amazing.
Is Tony upset with me?
No, Peach, never. He knows you did your best.
This kid sideswiped us all, but we’re going to find you soon, okay?
Okay.
Please sleep. I promise I’ll be back as soon as I think you’ve slept enough.
Promise?
I swear. I’m not going to leave you alone.
Can’t you just stay until I fall asleep?
Doesn’t work that way, lovely. You’ll just want to chat me up.
But I miss you.
I miss you, too.
I love you.
I love you, too.
Good night, Stephen.
Good night.
Goodbye.