Elastic
Stephen wanted to keep his discovery from the group. Although the information was important in respects to their urgency, he didn’t think it was anyone’s business to know that Peach’s guards were beginning to use her as a sexual outlet. She’d be devastated if her torture wasn’t a secret.
When Strange had come back from his “trip,” his hand riddled with broken glass and face mottled with tears, Loki and Tony demanded to know what had upset him that much, what had inspired the dazed, detached look in his eyes. Stephen tried to resist, stumbling off to mend his wounds and find a broom, but the tears kept gushing forth and he began hyperventilating as Loki tailed him, inundating the doctor with questions and orders until finally shoving his shoulder from behind.
Strange collapsed to his knees, his very spirit snapping in half like a wad of angel hair pasta, crushed by the weight of his failures and his inability to control the situation. It shouldn’t have been this difficult. Stephen Strange was brilliant, had power that most would sum up as unlimited, and had every resource Stark Industries could offer to supplement where he lacked.
“Please don’t make me say it,” he whimpered, forehead pressed against the tile floor, unwilling to face Loki, who was crouched next to the doctor with his persistent scowl permeating the back of Strange’s head.
“You will tell me the truth,” Loki hissed, his voice grainy and hollow. “Even if you must admit your own ineptitude. I’m running out of patience.”
Loki hadn’t eaten or slept in…who knows how long. Too long. If the striking, angular shadows cutting his cheeks didn’t give it away, the fragmented squawk of his voice did. Loki was plenty lean before this ordeal began, but now his clothes were barely catching a grip on the ridges of his bones. His sweatpants were being held up by a shoelace that had been drawn through the waistband, as the elastic wasn’t tight enough to do the trick anymore. His grotesque weight loss made his movements like that of a spider. Light-footed, spindly, robotic. It was unsettling to witness and was even worse for the person his attention was being directed at.
As Loki squatted next to Stephen, his hands crimped his knees, forcing the tendons in his knuckles to jut out like twigs under his thin, translucent skin. Loki cocked his head to the side, eyes wide and bulging from the sockets as he chewed on a wad of his unbridled fury like a cow munching on cud.
“I can’t speak it,” Stephen said.
“And yet, you will,” Loki instructed. “She doesn’t belong to you anymore. It’s not your place to withhold.”
Stephen lifted his face, took in a breath, and paused, remembering the pain, the smells. Loki held his crouch without moving, seemingly without even breathing, as he tried to extend his patience just one iota further.
“She…they…” He hiccupped and held a fist over his lips. “There’s two guards that watch her when Darren isn’t torturing her.”
Loki’s shoulders relaxed, pleased with Strange’s compliance.
“All of it,” Loki commanded, his jaw tight. As Stephen continued, trying not to hyperventilate, he stuttered heavily and choked on his words.
“Today. Once Darren finished electrocuting her naked body for hours. The guards came and gave her a bath. It was supposed to be an incentive. S-since they hadn’t b-bathed her in a while. But. They.” Stephen’s jaw quivered. “They groped her. And held her down. And gagged her with her own washcloth. While one of th-them f-f-f-fingered her. And it hurt so bad. She thought they were. They were. They were… Cutting her open. And when they took her to bed. It was supposed to be over. But one changed his mind. And. And. And he. He got the tip. The t-tip of his…” Stephen grit his teeth, his face pinched painfully. “He wanted a blowjob.”
There was a long silence as Loki’s eyes became impossibly colder.
“I see,” Loki said softly, accepting Strange’s testimony as truth. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He folded his hands neatly, his knees creaking as he rose to his feet. He padded gently into the living room, where Stark sat on the couch with his face in his hands. Loki then cleared his throat and promptly demolished Peach’s living room wall, uncorking a scream that had been marinating in his chest since the day Peach had been captured, and in a blur punctuated by clouds of dust, battered the far wall of the living room until there was nothing left of it.
After, Loki, Tony, and Stephen all sat gathered on her couch, staring at Peach’s bed through the massive hole that was once a wall. Loki’s breath heaved from the exertion. Occasionally, one of the men would cough lightly or clear his throat of the settling clouds of concrete dust.
“I’ll uhh, ahem, I’ll get that fixed before she gets back,” Tony said. “Replace the TV, too. Get some cleaners in here. It’ll be like nothing ever happened.” He nodded to himself, an assurance that his plan would work.