You learn quickly.
It's fact, simple and non-negotiable like the color of the sky, Newton's laws or quantum entanglement—you proved that last one true when you successfully activated the portal. The Portal, capital 'p', that's what it is now. Significant things, things that invoke change, leave marks, they deserve a name.
You think you had a name.
Very few people can study, understand and learn to apply thermonuclear astrophysics in the span of one night. Those who do usually have a name.
You think, distantly aware that They're moving your limp body out of The Room, maybe things like thermonuclear astrophysics were of significance not so long ago.
You learn five things.
Fi-ve. Five is an easy number. A small number. The simplicity sticks. You seldom have only five of something. What's five? Five billion? No, that's not right. Five suits. No. Five times five. Five Avengers. Maybe. If you don't count yourself among them.
Not recommended.
(You don't count.)
Five truths.
Once you stepped through The Portal, it collapsed and left you stranded in a spotless, bright-white and empty space. Naïvely, you began to search for signs of life in tall, desolate corridors. You wish you had been alone. You wish you had encountered nothing and died here, by yourself.
If wishes were horses.
Something else found you instead. Faceless machines, smooth as marble, pure as mother-of-pearl. Vaguely human in build—longer limbs, eight foot tall. They moved through a blur, as though the fabric of reality itself was shifting to accommodate their presence. Maybe it did. Does.
You were excited.
Soon, you would learn there was no they, no someone or something to address your demands to, plead or bargain with. If there was a They, They did not care. (That would be the first lesson.)
They pried away your armor, gold-titanium alloy turned wet tissue paper. In other circumstances, you might have been amazed, but with your only protective layer gone, anger and trepidation were the only emotions that remained.
They deposited you in The Room, one of Them enough to curb your struggling. Your hand broke—shattered like glass—when you threw a punch. You stopped trying to punch your way out, after that.
The Room is always tall and barren and clean. It absorbs the fluids. The walls are always smooth and impenetrable, their color the same as ceiling and floor. You're always being watched; it's not a question, not a maybe. Every surface gives off a cold, bright glow. There's no other source of light.
One wall parted and someone (something) (someone?) stepped through. There was no sound accompanying the movement, no echo, and it made you uneasy, that first time. None of the discomfort would measure up to what lay in your future, but you didn't know then.
Your mind would tell you, Chitauri, but it would be wrong. Not every familiar looking alien is one of them. The Others are manifold, they come in all shapes and sizes. The second thing you learn is not to pay attention to shape. Proportions matter, appearance doesn't. It keeps you occupied, even somewhat lucid, trying to gauge from their build alone how much your body will be wrecked.
This one had fangs, slits for eyes, purple-black skin—scales. Distantly humanoid in build. To ease you in.
The Other circled around you, and you backed into one corner. He—it—no, he. He towered a foot over you, the difference evident even from a distance. The undersuit was a flimsy layer of fabric. You felt naked. The Other was naked. He didn't seem to care. You tried not to notice or think about what his nonchalance might mean.
Something shifted in The Room, a change accompanied by the faintest hiss of air, and a thin film of what looked like pastel yellow dust particles laid itself over your skin. He didn't pay it any mind and you realized with a jolt he'd known what was about to happen all along.
Knowing or not, it wouldn't have mattered. The awareness doesn't change the outcome, it can only prepare for what's inevitable: you'll be overpowered. You've learned that the hard way, too.
That first time was breathtaking in the worst of ways. As though your mind had given up running every other subsystem, had narrowed down to a single string of ones and zeroes, one chunk of code, one command.
if (warm_body == present) { insert self in warm body} else { use any means to satisfy the need}
Everything was clearer than ever and yet you found yourself in a haze, caught in the throes of a wildfire that spread from your loins to Everywhere.
It destroyed everything in its wake, and the smoke rose to your lungs: it was going to choke you, this need, the unbearable urge. You knew—with the same certainty you'd known Mark II would fly, the Chitauri would be followed by something worse, The Portal would power up—that the only way to hinder the fire from burning you alive was to heed its demands.
Take.
Take or die.
You or them.
Them.
The Other felt the same. It was written in his eyes, his body, his stilted breath and galvanic movement. You knew he'd performed this dance before, and you knew how it had ended for the other party involved.
He was larger than a baseline human by all accounts. You couldn't help but stare, felt an ache in your own groin—hot and throbbing as if you'd been craving release for hours days—that matched the appearance of The Other's swollen member.
You've never been slow or defenseless, but battles fought on Earth are one thing, and this is another. Martial arts work just fine on kidnappers and two-bit villains. Alien beings that don't share pressure points, center of gravity and bone structure with the human body? They don't care for it much.
The human body is soft, breakable, malleable. By extension, so are you. (That would be the third truth.)
Defeat seemed inevitable, but you fought anyway. Desperation is funny like that.
His scales were cool and smooth. You ripped into them with blood-rimmed fingernails, a deafening chant of take take takehammering through your hindbrain. The Other wrapped his fingers around your broken hand, grinding the splintered bones in his fist, and you howled. Through it all, you kept scratching, kicking, biting.
Warm body. If, then. Get inside.
Your scuffle landed you on your stomach, one arm pinned below your body and one in The Other's crushing grip. His clawed fingers tightened until there was a sickening crunch and your vision grew a black vignette around the edges.
You returned to consciousness as you were split apart, with a plea for mercy on your lips that was promptly drowned out by an agonized moan. Of pleasure. Agony and pleasure should be polar opposites, and yet—
Mind-numbing pain radiated from your broken hand, your broken arm, the many other places bruised and battered. The intrusion inside you stripped you of every coherent thought, every forceful push another rupture in your skin and sense of self. The sticky wetness suddenly coating your insides and carving down your thighs in rivulets felt like salvation.
Everything about the act was violent. Vile. Abhorrent.
Your arousal never lessened. Brewing deep in your gut, seeping into your every cell, infecting everything. Disease. On the outside, the undeniable proof hung heavily between your legs, red-purple and leaking.
If, then, else.
A single thrust touched something inside you, gasoline to the fire already ravishing your entire being, and you bowed your back and cried in novel agony and mindless pleasure and lost yourself entirely.
You think, now, that you had not the sliver of an idea what losing meant. Parts of yourself in the cave (before the cave), in the wormhole, in the ocean, maybe. But you'd never learned what it was to be stripped of everything and be left a husk.
The first time and the ones that followed, you would fight. Dignity might have been a motivator. Fear, also. The driving force: fight or flight.
Since the latter wasn't an option, you would fight, and lose, and fight again. And then one day you'd stop, just to see how that felt, and it was easier. A relief.
In the end you always find relief, against the cold ground of The Room, sliding through your own blood. There are only two options after all, and you will inevitably wind up exercising the 'else' portion of the command.
The first is also the last time you attempt an escape.
You don't know where you're running to when you slip through the open door of The Room, only what you are running from. It occurs to you, as They corner you in the very hallway you first arrived in, that 'escape' might not be good enough of an escape plan.
Steve might've been right.
The thought sends a sharp pain through you that is, for once, not of physical nature. It hurts, to think about them, about him, and you avoid it as much as you can. In moments of weakness, when the haze fades and desolation sweeps across the eviscerated corners of your mind, you can't.
One of these moments is now.
Guilt is always the emotion that stands front and center: guilt because you could've told someone about The Portal, because a dark, dark part of you wishes you wouldn't have gone alone and that would've meant dragging someone with you into this nightmare. Because you know this will likely be the end of you, and you aren't so delusional as to deny that they will search and will be devastated, bitter and grief-stricken when their efforts don't produce results.
Two of Them nudge you forward and you obey, not wanting to incur more ill will. You are a failed escapee. If you thought you couldn't fall deeper, you're truly at the bottom of the ladder now.
You don't know what to expect. A punishment, most like. You begin to wonder what could be worse than this. Your hands tremble, and so does all of you. It's your own personal earthquake, and it rips open your outer layers and exposes the ugliness that lies beneath.
You're an animal. You're afraid.
In the end, They lead you back to The Room. There's no punishment but the continuous, familiar torture that is this place and your existence within its bleak walls. It doesn't compute.
Only later, when the haze bleeds out of you and you savor a brief respite in the blissful silence of your own cell—an uncomfortable sleeping pad in a room no larger than it—you come to understand what this means.
The fourth truth you learn is that this isn't mindless cruelty or even perverse fascination. The Others, you, you're an experiment. Science. Clinical evaluation.
Dissection, it turns out, is less insightful and more gruesome when you trade places with the frog under the scalpel.
A few of The Others enjoy it.
You can tell which ones don't and do, although their languages are nonsensical sounds, harmonic trills, harsh chitters, throaty grunts. Some look angry, some look sad. Some look like others have taken their anger out on them. Some take their anger out on you.
A select few keep battering your broken body until you can feel your mind splinter apart in its stead—because there is nothing left to break but something needs to give, and it'll always be you.
One has tentacles.
You find out exactly how much will fit until you come apart at the seams in a way so literal you didn't think there was any recovering from.
The chamber They put your body in—your brain thinks MRI, except it's bigger and quieter and made of the same, unyielding material as Them—will typically repair the thought-to-be-irreparable damages in no more than a handful of minutes.
This time, you stare at the gleaming white dome encasing you for half an eternity. You might have thought yourself dead, were it not for the hot prickle in every part of your body that betrays skin stitching itself back together and fractured bones mending with sorcerous ease.
It's magical, but it's not. (You can tell unparalleled technological advancement when it rapes you in body and mind.) You wonder what the limits of this machine are, if there are any. If you will ever be broken beyond repair, or if hoping for it will only result in bitter disappointment.
You wonder if They will consider a mercy killing, once you're too broken even for a lab rat. The possibility that pushing you toward that breaking point may very well be Their goal is real and terrifying.
You live to see another day. You don't know what a day is, anymore. Not here.
One is so Other you can't make out what he it will force into you until it's there, and that's the first time you sob before it has even begun. Your mind cycles through an endless litany of itwontfitnoitwontfititwontfitnonono, and you realize you were concerned about the wrong aspect of this coupling when it tears into you with a barbed something. There's more blood than spend.
It doesn't stop, it doesn't stop and doesn't stop until you're ᶠˡᵒᵃᵗ ʇɐolɟ f̳l̳o̳a̳t̳—floating.
After that, you don't mind at all. You're somewhere else, and it's alright. It's okay. You feel nothing. You are nothing. It's fine. It doesn't hurt to be at the bottom of the food chain. Someone has to be. It's alright. It's okay.
Maybe you should be concerned there’s something wrong, in your head and your body, and maybe you shouldn't feel eternally grateful when They come and take you away, but you find you have forgotten how to care about shoulds.
Sometimes you scream. Cry, often. Quietly. You aren't sure if it's a comfort, but you remind yourself it doesn't matter either way: They're indifferent toward your agony. They care about results. Findings. Throw something at another thing and see what happens. Bear, stick.
You think: every experiment needs someone doing the poking.
You think: at least that, you can understand.
There are two times you come out on top.
The first, you can barely remember. It's followed by an encounter that leaves you in the healing chamber for a long time, and that might not be a coincidence.
Sometimes, you're convinced it's all some karmic joke, made by the universe at your endless and excruciating expense. Sometimes, you think The Portal killed you and this is your hell. Your eternity. Even if it were, you would never know for certain, and that's what terrifies you most.
The second time, you wish you could forget.
Two. No more, no less. Nothing, in the grand scheme of things.
You can feel the bygone times in your bones, your flesh, your mind, even when you're whole on the outside. Dozens of individual instances of violence, carved into your very core. Who are you, without the scars? Before Afghanistan, you might've been nobody. Maybe this is the same. Maybe you need this.
(Maybe after everything they've done to you, you need to do something too.)
Grab a tuft of hair, face to floor. A broken nose. In lust-drunk frenzy, find the front hole first. A dislocated jaw. Three incisors. Bend a leg too far, step on something. A broken kneecap, a shattered ankle. Resistance is against one's better judgement: cracked ribs, cracked hip.
They drag him outside. Unconscious.
You did that.
He was smaller than the rest. A challenge still, but you prevailed. Someone paid penance and it wasn't you, not this time. You're not weak. You're animal as much as The Others are.
I did that, you think, looking at the smears of blood at your knees that for once aren't your own. The haze doesn't fade, you're still burning, but you remember the cries.
You throw up bile, add another to the revolting cocktail of bodily fluids on the floor. Your stomach is empty; They only feed you tasteless nutritional paste. A means to an end. Fuel to sustain your basic processing functions while They take apart everything else.
Another enters The Room. You don't move, and you don't make a sound even as you're being claimed. Mounted.
You don't fight again.
It's fascinating, you figure, sometimes. In the rare moments you can form more than monosyllabic thoughts. Thought. There is always only one singular thought. Take.
Fascinating. Biology, that is. Nature. Life is a miracle. The Others and you share nothing—not anatomy, language, culture or even galaxy—but this remains the same. Socket and plug. A carnal need. An instinct meant for survival, reproduction, passing on genes. Primitive, yet prevalent in a variety of intelligent organisms.
Mother nature acts upon a simple principle: never change a running system. You think, maybe you disagree with that. Maybe there are better ways and nature doesn't know. Your disagreement tends to get ignored.
It's better, less effort, to just go along and pretend there is no disagreement.
(That's the fifth truth.)
Sometimes, when you're allowed to think without the need clouding your mind, you question how long it’s been.
Time starts to lose meaning. You stop worrying about it.
You wonder if you could slit your throat without Them catching you before you’ve bled out.
First, you wonder. Then, you begin to consider.
You have yet to encounter an object to bleed yourself with. But the absence of time has taught you patience, and so you wait.
Change comes eventually.
Not in the shape of a blade, or a blissfully irreversible harm done to the flesh prison that is your body. (You hoped, some miles down the road, that your nerve endings would blunt, that the sensations would become tolerable as the novelty of the feeling faded. You've never been that lucky.)
Change comes sudden, with no doing from your side. You hear noises of fight when They lead you down the ever-blank corridor, and that catches your attention. It’s brief, over quickly, but the sound clings to you, plays even underneath the take take take that is supposed to swallow up every last tidbit of your conscience.
You are the first to arrive in The Room.
The wait, though short, never fails to whittle at your composure. You prefer being the one to join, but you rarely are. It’s more practical to lead the less damaged ones, those who can walk, to The Room. To you.
The Other steps inside.
You shouldn't be able to recognize him—you have never encountered one of them twice—but this face is familiar. Blond, blue-eyed, tight-lipped. Too familiar. Human. You're the only human. There are no two species alike, here.
It clicks. He is no Other.
No.
Tony, he says, it's me.
You wish it wasn't.
As much as you dreamed of rescue, you never considered it a possibility. It shouldn't be. (It isn't. Him being here only means you're both lost.) The Portal collapsed, and no one knew where you'd gone, and that was good.
None of them should've ever come here. Here is hell, and you can't bear the thought of trapping anyone but yourself in it.
No. Nonono.
You realize you have muttered the words aloud, the first sound out of your mouth that isn't an animalistic snarl, grunt or whine in what feels like ages. It's a rasp. Sometimes you'd forget the ability to speak was something you possessed.
I won't hurt you, he says. Lies. I'll get us out of here.
You realize, with fire licking up your spine: he doesn't know. You appear unharmed to him. He doesn't understand what's about to happen, doesn't know there's nowhere to go from here. This is the last stop.
And you brought him here.
Tony—I—
You know he feels it, nestled in his gut and spreading from there, but while you give into the need—because this is how it is and how it'll always be—he tries to fight it.
Even for Steve Rogers, this is a losing battle. He'll understand soon enough. You lunge at him, the both of you topple over, and the sensation of skin on skin is what tears down the last remnants of his resolve. The next time he your name falls from his lips, it's not a gasp but a growl.
You're no match for a super-soldier. He flings your body off of his and into the floor like a ragdoll, his chest heaving, pale skin flushed a dusky red. Sweat is already making his skin glisten in the cold light, and you know, suddenly, it's worse for him than it is for you. That's a first.
For the fraction of an instant, as he shuffles into the space between your legs and the curve of his full dick brushes against your skin, you entertain the possibility that it could be good, with him. Better. Less bad. Less horrific. Maybe he will look at your face and remember that you were on his side, once. That you fought together and not against each other.
And then he nudges against the place they've violated more times than you can count and you struggle because you can't not, so he bends your arm outward until the pressure is too much and the bone snaps. Nothing more than a toothpick in his hands.
The Room swallows your cries, your tears, your blood. You wonder how many gallons of it have seeped into the floor already.
He digs his nails into your thighs, folds you in two and rips into you, dry, brutal and unforgiving from the first push onward. The tears come, but it isn't the pain that breaks the levee.
You might've wanted this, in some other lifetime.
You might've thought about him some nights, the things he'd say and do, how he would look in you or you in him.
You might never stop hating yourself for being too afraid to take the first step when there was still time.
Now, all you have is this abomination of something you distantly remember longing for. It's yet another violation of your personhood, and you almost dare think it's a greater hurt than all the times The Others have ground your body to nothing combined. Almost. (Fate is a cruel mistress and you won't tempt her any more.)
This is one of your deepest wants, innermost desires, twisted and bastardized. Every time you delude yourself into believing They have taken everything, there is yet another soft, fleshy something They dig up from the depths of your ribcage only to choke the life out of it. No matter how close you hold and hide it, no part of your soul is safe. Nothing is safe. Not even Steve.
You sob freely as he bores his way into your body. Shame is a word without meaning. Take, your hindbrain screams uselessly. Your unharmed hand wraps around your leaking cock.
This is everything there is and everything there will ever be.
After climax, the need usually wanes. Least for a short while. Steve’s doesn't.
Even as you lie there, spent and shaking, he resumes his assault on your body moments after he's filled you. When your whimpers rise in volume, his fingers curl around your throat and smother them at the source.
His eyes are wild as he pounds into you. The slide is easy now. It burns worse now. You gasp for breath and feel silly for even trying when not a wisp reaches your lungs. You mouth his name but he only stares through you, penetrates your skin in another way altogether.
You thrash and twitch to no avail. As dark spots begin to eat your vision like countless black holes fighting for matter to consume, he comes again. He grinds his hips against you for another moment and then, blissfully, relinquishes his grip on your windpipe.
The second you’re freed, you suck in a lungful of air. In, out, in. It rattles in your chest, burns as it whizzes down your sore throat. You can feel the imprints of his fingers along your neck.
When he looks down on you the next time, he sees you. His eyes widen until the whites show, and then he scrambles to get away. You're open, leaking, and you focus on the sensation of liquid dribbling down your most intimate spaces. It's preferable to everything else you can feel.
He shuffles further away. Oh God—
Tony, I didn't, I don't —
His eyes shine with moisture.
You're. You're bleeding, I'm— your arm, oh God. I'm so sorry, I couldn't, I couldn't stop, I.
He notices your lack of response and quiets. The wetness in his eyes paints his eyelashes a deeper black. You aren't sure how to tell him what he doesn't know: that he's harmless compared to The Others, that he shouldn't apologize, that you're to blame for bringing him here.
That you want him to know you love him before he lives the horrors of this place and hates you for them all.
Had worse, you say.
He's crying when They lead him away.
They must be interested in observing your interactions further, because this isn’t the last you see of him.
The next time you are in The Room with Steve, he walks with a limp. His foot is swollen an angry, purplish red. He favors his right side. There’s blood and semen coating his chest, legs, back. Someone something has taken a bite out of the meat at his shoulder; tendons, flesh, and the white glint of what looks like bone lies there exposed.
In all your time here, it has never occurred to you that you might’ve been spared a tumble with the greatest monsters.
You want to throw up.
Your body wants something else.
He doesn’t put up much of a fight, and it’s not because he can’t or doesn’t desperately want to. You see it in the hardened, black-blue of his irises—this cast-iron will, this dogged determination that has his name written all over it. His knuckles are bright-white where he clenches his fists on the floor, the tendons in his neck protruding, every muscle pulled taut.
It’s more than pain. You understand: this is rebellion.
There is a moment, the smallest of instances, when you think you might be able to follow suit, to join Steve's protest, hold off.
You dig your fingers into his exposed meat and rut your hips and think, no, instead of take. The thought is brief and stands no chance against the relentless need, but it’s there. It’s there and you remember it after you’ve spilled your release—not the first to be here, the squelch and wetness betrays—and drag yourself away from him.
Fire still burns under your skin, scorches your nerve-endings, tempts you to give in. You can’t, not now. Not now that you’ve seen a possibility, now that hope has crooked its finger and beckoned you toward it. Some of the clouds lift, the haze momentarily lessened, and his ocean eyes retain some of their color.
Water is stronger than fire.
They don’t put you in the chamber, you observe. Your voice is a hoarse rattle, barely human at all, and it draws a wince out of him. Once the words register, you’re met with a silence that spells out confusion.
No, he doesn't know the chamber. They must have known what he was from the moment he stepped foot through The Portal; of course, They would want to test how far his enhanced organism can be pushed. The answer is far, you know that much, but not even Steve Rogers can do this all day until the end of eternity.
They’ll break him too, and it’ll be your fault. Because you built The Portal. You walked through it without considering the repercussions. The blatant, arrogant lack of failsafes is laughable. What a futurist you are.
They’ll break him and you can’t—you can’t watch. You can’t be a part of it. You can’t be a reason, the only reason, because he’s here for you and he can still fight and he can't waste it on you—
Hope doesn’t have a sound, but he says, Bruce reopens the portal every six hours. There’s a two-minute window, and you start to rethink that belief. If They can understand what is being said, They don’t interfere with your plans. So, perhaps, They can't understand. Why else would They allow for any possibility of escape?
His eyes are tired. He stopped bleeding, but the physical exertion is starting to wear on him. They don't feed him enough, you think.
With a surge of terror that freezes the blood in your veins, the understanding burgeons: They will do this until he gives. Like you. Until his strength fails him, until he folds and lies down not out of defiance but a lack of other options. Until something breaks that can't be put back together, not with all the care in the world.
Time is of the essence. He'll lose track of it when he's too far gone, like you. You’ll be both lost. What if another Avenger decides to follow you into doom?
No.
You have to go. Soon.
When will it happen next?
If the desperation bleeds into your voice, he doesn’t say, but his face turns alight. Any emotion is an emotion, you know, and he'd rather hear your desperation than pay witness to any more apathy.
It takes too long. You don't have any measure of time, but you count how often you are with The Others and begin to doubt the circumstances will ever align so perfectly as to grant you escape.
Two. Mercifully, you start to feel numb.
The odds are—you don't know. You don't really care. They're not good. You don't have enough data for a more in-depth evaluation.
Four. There's Steve.
He looks different. Still broken (your bones ache with real and sympathetic pain when you look him over) but he's had time to heal. He's stronger. His jaw clenches and his fingers flex.
Escape isn't on his mind.
There's nothing but the distant shadow of discomfort as he shoves into you. Your body has looped through the cassette labeled 'pain' so many times the sounds have become fuzzy, distorted. Weak. Perhaps, finally, some of the sensations have deadened after all.
The wet smack as your bodies meet and uncouple, the distant throb in your insides, the blood in your mouth leftover from when you bit off the tip of your tongue during the previous round—it's all background noise. You don't care. Your hands aren't broken, this time, so you wrap one around yourself and make it rough and fast to match Steve's thrusts.
He needs more, this time. After the second, there’s a third time, and a fourth. You’re so far gone—otherwise you wouldn’t bother—you flop over and crawl away while he’s still slow and sluggish, the aftermath of another orgasm. When he comes back to find you absent, you have but five seconds to understand the fallout will be grave.
You shouldn’t have turned around, you think, as he locks your head between his thighs and forces himself between your lips instead. He’s down your throat with the first push, and doesn’t care for your gagging and crying and the way your fingernails rip his back open.
You bite; he breaks your jaw. Air becomes the smaller of two worries—in fact, you happily embrace the lack of oxygen dulling your every sense.
After it's done and the urgency has abated, you cough up blood and a tooth. They take him away again.
I'm sorry, he says as he goes, uncalled-for. You were under the impression that the both of you have given up on apologies. Everything you do to each other in The Room is out of your hands, after all. (You would say as much if your jaw and throat were fit for speaking.)
We just missed it again.
Oh, you think. Oh.
You shouldn't have made it out.
The next time you meet, Steve can barely walk. He shuffles into The Room on one half-healed foot and a broken ankle, but it's only when he lays eyes on you that he collapses, as though the sight sucks all the fight right out of him.
He hasn't seen you like this. Six of The Others came before him, and their visits have taken their toll.
You know there's something—loose, and you don't want to think about it, so you don't. You think that the need is coming back and that Steve is here and you know how this ends.
His expression hardens when he looks at you. Just as the first surge rolls through your body and you think, take, he heaves himself to his feet and fits himself against the furthest wall. His protruding erection betrays that he has no less need than you, but he breathes deep and grinds his teeth and doesn't move.
Something suddenly slips into place in your mind. It's not an entirely unfamiliar feeling—there's similar moments hidden in the recesses of your memory, images drenched in blue light, numbers and code.
If, then, else. Or.
You've always enjoyed breaking nonsensical rules. This preset string of code isn't all that different. For every rule there's a loophole, a workaround. The human body is vulnerable, but it's also much, much more complicated than this one command suggests.
Or. Or you stoke the flames, burn everything down until the earth is charred black, and if you're lucky—come out alive. Ashes to ashes. The phoenix again; you know that one already.
You crawl to the wall and drag yourself upright. Your legs shake, your body wracked by tremors that belie the restraint your expression shows. Control is a myth. You are holding on by a thread. A thread, but that's everything you need.
His eyes are blue when they meet yours.
Water, fire.
The wall parts but no one enters. You don't question it. If this is the only chance you have, it won't do to get hung up on details.
None of Them follow as the both of you hobble down the maddeningly blank hallways, leaving a telling, red path in your wake. You should get caught any moment now.
As you round the corner, The Portal comes into sight, its glowing, icy blue like an oasis in the desert and you're dying of thirst.
Your heartbeat bounces between your temples, stings in your fingers, throbs in your groin. The edges of The Portal pulse and shiver as though it's alive, awaiting your arrival. To embrace you with open arms and welcome you home.
Any moment now, They'll pull you away, with salvation just out of reach.
They don't.
Blue, blue, blue.
It's everything you see once you stumble into the light with Steve's arm wrapped around your waist. You think, this can't be real. Could be you're dead, finally. Could be you don't mind, if it's with Steve.
Maybe blue is your new favorite color; you’ve seen enough red to last you a lifetime.
Your stomach swoops upside down, around and over itself. It's not all bad. It reminds you of flying. You heft yourself tighter against the body next to you, clawing in a way that is not related to need in any way except a need for safety and comfort.
You crash into something hard.
They're dressed casually, sweaters and shirts and soft lounge pants. With the exception of Natasha, who’s in her Black Widow gear. She doesn’t look as though she’s been out on a mission. Rather, it’s the opposite: she looks prepared to leave.
A dawning horror washes over you and then abates as you understand that she was ready to follow you and Steve into The Portal—but you stumbled back out before she could.
You’re lying down on a hospital bed, but the room is too familiar to belong in one. Tower.
The rest of the team is there, conversing quietly over the beep of machines by your bedside. They haven’t noticed your state of consciousness yet. Your gaze is drawn to Steve next: he’s dressed in a shirt and sweatpants; bandages peak out of the collar and sleeves of his top and his foot is wrapped in a cast.
The pang of jealousy you feel is directed toward his state of non-undress. Clothes. What’s wearing clothes like? You don’t remember. The scratchy gown you’re in doesn’t really compare.
You’re awake enough to pick up their voices. That’s Steve.
When I got there, I mean, he was—in a bad way. I don’t think— you don’t know how bad until, until you hear him, it was like he was …
It was longer than two weeks. It was longer.
Bruce starts talking a blue streak about time dilation and you distantly find yourself agreeing, but your focus is on Steve, who gets a faraway look in his eye that only Natasha picks up on. She nudges him gently and tilts her head in question.
When we escaped— he— he looked like he thought he was going to, to wake up any second. Like it was all a dream. He just— at some point, he’d lost every —
Someone speaks. Steve falls silent, and everyone stops what they’re doing. Moving, breathing, blinking. Belatedly, you realize that was your own voice interrupting.
No, you say again. That’s not right.
It’s hot and cold and good and bad and everything at the same time, this final understanding. You’re almost hysterical. It’s so clear, all of a sudden, what They were practicing all along. Not a scientific study, no. A social one.
No, no. You don’t get it. None of you— We didn’tescape.
Left, right, left. You shake your head, your face brushing the coarse cotton pillowcase. The others are confused, but Steve looks like he’s seen a ghost. It’s dawning on him.
They don’t… You swallow without spit to spare. They don’t make mistakes. They let us go. Allowed it. Theygot their answer.
What does it take, to break a being so entirely it refuses the strongest of carnal desires to chase salvation instead?
You know, now. You learn quickly.