Chapter Text
Consciousness returned slowly but his body stayed paralyzed.
Fuck.
Unable to even open his eyes Stephen concentrated on what he could - it was cold, it smelled strange and he couldn't feel anything at all surrounding his body. He was upright, but his feet didn't touch the floor. He was surrounded by nothing. He was...
Suspended.
In thin air because he couldn't feel anything restraining him, despite being unable to move.
The Hulk. A smashed staircase. Meeting Tony Stark. Winking at Tony Stark. Getting thrown around like a ping-pong ball. Getting choked. An ice-cold hand caressing his face in the mockery of a lover's touch.
If he could have he would have thrown up as the memory hit him like a ton of bricks.
He couldn't say how long it took him but after gathering all of his dwindling reserves he managed to open his eyes - only to wish he'd kept them closed.
He was on a spaceship, no way around it. Floating in frigid air, unable to move and without any hope of rescue. Even the familiar weight of the Cloak was missing. He forced himself to keep his eyes open against all his instincts and tried to take in as much of his surroundings as possible.
Darkness. Cold. Lonely.
"The Sorcerer awakens."
There was a hand on his right side, heavy and ice-cold. Stephen wanted to scream, he wanted to run away, he wanted to throw up. He could do nothing but hang there, suspended high up in the air, helpless and paralyzed. The hand wandered over his body, his sides and his back, high up until it came to rest on the back of his neck. He had felt the touch in excruciating detail on his fully clothed body, on the bare skin of his neck it was a thousand times worse. The cold burned and the fingers - more like talons, really - gripped hard enough to bruise him, maybe even break his skin.
Despite the invisible restraints the managed to shudder.
"So strong. You should not even have been able to open your eyes. Your world has chosen its Stone Keeper well."
On the inside Stephen was laughing hysterically while half-dying from fear, on the outside he still couldn't do anything but stare straight ahead. Suddenly the visage of the alien appeared in from of him. The hand on Stephen's neck moved to his throat and squeezed none too gently in clear warning.
"Strong and proud. A good combination for many things but I am almost out of time. My master awaits me and he expects the Stone. Give in now and spare yourself the pain."
"Never," Stephen forced himself to whisper around the almost bruising grip. His lips were dry and cracked and it felt as if that single word had been wrenched right out of his soul. He hoped that his eyes could communicate the determination he couldn't vocalize.
The hand still holding him in a tight grip squeezed even harder in silent warning. "As you wish. The hard way it is." The alien turned his head and called something a language Stephen couldn't understand. "You had your chance," was whispered directly into his ear. "What happens now could have been avoided, remember that."
At first Stephen didn't understand. Not even when the translucent needles of various sizes and lengths began to descend on to his defenseless body. It wasn't even that bad when they pierced his legs and his back. Chest and stomach could also be endured.
But the moment the needles touched his arms he panicked. Magic in red and gold engulfed his body and tried to push the intruders out of his body but to no avail. Instead they pushed deeper and deeper, penetrating through skin and muscles down into his bones.
Then they touched his hands and fingers.
Stephen screamed despite the magical technology designed to prevent exactly that. His innate magic went crazy and shattered the needles as if they were made out of sugar.
He was still screaming, deaf and blind to his surroundings, when the energy fields holding him went down and he fell to the floor. He curled up in fetal position, still caught in a flashback of horror and pain.
"Not so strong after all, I see. What a pity." Another try to remove the Stone from around the Sorcerer's neck proved to be as futile as the first one, unfortunately, and the frustration was released with a kick to the unprotected side of the human. "Reinforce the emitters and suspend him again. Higher up and horizontal instead of vertical." Another caress of soft, warm skin. It felt so nice. Alive and easily breakable. "I want him to feel even more helpless when he wakes up again."
*
Waking up in hospital after his accident had been pure terror. The pain hadn't even been that bad - high-grade painkillers be thanked - but the sight of his hands, suspended before him and held together by metal rods and stitches had been so horrifying that Christine had to hold him down, and try to calm him down before he ripped everything off in a panicked and desperate attempt to escape.
There had been no escape. Not from the pain, not from the shaking and the weakness and especially not from the knowledge that this was it. No way back; no chance to ever regain the full use of his hands again. He tried anyway, despite knowing that it would be futile and very probably damage them even worse in the long run.
He had to try. Not matter if it took all of his money, the hope of some amount of natural recovery and most of his sanity with it.
He was left destitute, homeless, in more pain than before, and on his way to being addicted to painkillers when he somehow stumbled into his new life full of magic and giant responsibilities he never could have imagined before.
A duty that brought him onto a spaceship, being tortured for an Infinity Stone.
He should have died in that accident; he'd known it all along.
He wasn't strong enough for this.
*
When he came to again he could open his eyes but that only showed him the floor. The new position was even worse for his already dizzy and disoriented senses and would bring another host of problems soon enough if they kept him like this. He could already feel that the circulation in his arms was partially cut off and his hands hurt even more than usual. Defensive magic tingled under his skin but he couldn't access it to try to free himself.
"Fuck," he whispered and when that didn't produce a reaction he knew that he was truly alone for the time being. He closed his eyes again and attempted to gather all of his fading strength to be prepared for the next, inevitable torture session.
When he opened them again the needles where back. Soundlessly, as if they'd been conjured out of thin air. Probably they had been.
The repugnant alien was also back, looking at him with a hunger that was not purely for the time stone. Stephen fought against the threatening nausea once again and dared to take a breath in relief when the thing didn't try to touch him again. Once had been enough for a lifetime.
"In all the time I've served Thanos, I've never failed him. If I were to reach our rendezvous on Titan with the Time Stone still attached to your vaguely irritating person, there would be... judgement. Give me... the stone."
The needles descended once again.
But this time he was prepared. When the damn things pierced his body once again he screamed in pain but he could keep his mind in the present by forcing himself to feel the pain and categorize each and every needle that entered his body. Stay in the present, the past is the past. He exorcised each and every memory of hospitals and surgeries from his mind, concentrating on the agony of the right here and now.
"Painful, aren't they? They were originally designed for microsurgery. And any one of them..."
The rest was a blur of agony, Tony Stark's voice and the Cloak rescuing him from the vacuum of space.
*
"Hey. Wizard. Come one, we don't have time to lie around and be useless."
Stark's voice was kind, despite the rather harsh words. So were his hands which were busy patting him down, obviously in search of injuries.
"I'm ok…," he started to say only to gasp and bite his tongue when Stark's hand brushed his left side and it hurt. Breathing became a difficulty. It's the same place, he realized. Oh God, it's… He squeezed his eyes shut. No, he reminded himself harshly. Your ribs are not broken, you would have felt it before. You're not in a hospital bed, hooked up to every monitor there is, you're not drowning in your own blood.
"Sorry, sorry, hey, Strange, come back, it's okay."
Stark's right hand was still on his side but without putting pressure on it but his left on was on the right side of Stephen's face, trying to ground him and bring him back to the present.
"I'm here," he whispered, hating how broken he sounded. "Sorry, I don't know what happened."
"You got hurt," Stark said, not unkindly. "And I have to patch you up before you collapse."
"There's nothing broken. It just surprised me. They must have kicked me while I was unconscious."
Stark looked horrified and unconvinced. "You sure about that, Wizard?"
"It's Doctor and yes, I know how broken ribs feel and that's not it."
The pressure returned, but featherlight. "I can help you." The offer was sincere but the thought of stripping down and letting Stark touch him where the alien had touched him only a short while ago… he shuddered.
"No, thank you. I'll manage."
He was sure that Stark had seen more than he was supposed to because he looked sad instead of annoyed at Stephen's refusal.
"Tell me if you change your mind, Doctor." Stark stroked over his face once in a comforting gesture before he withdrew and stood up. "Come on now. We need to figure out where we are and how to fly this thing."
Stephen took the offered hand and let Stark help him up. All the way to the bridge he pretended to not notice how Stark looked at him with barely hidden concern and empathy.