Exposed Nerve

I don't own the Avengers and it's probably a good thing I don't.

This sprang from a single thought I had at 3 a.m. one night, a one-shot that I had to get out so it would stop bothering me.

This story contains body-horror, gratuitous violence, gore, and torture.  Proceed with caution.

 

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"Please."



His voice was quiet and small but it echoed in the dusty room, a trembling syllable with nowhere to go.  He was scared and he had every reason to be - they had caught him off-guard when he'd been leaving work in the very early hours in the morning, he had been tired and had just been thinking about the beautiful cup of hot fragrant tea that he was going to have in the little cafe down the street.  



He hadn't seen it coming, they'd appeared as though they had been timing him, as though they knew his routine and his schedule - which was impossible because he didn't have one.  



Just like his co-workers, his job was consistently unpredictable.



They'd told him they had her and if he went quietly, if he didn't argue, if he was good and did as they told him, they wouldn't hurt her.  They would let her go because she wasn't the one they wanted, it was him - so of course he had gone along.  What else could he have done?  



They hadn't worn masks so he knew their faces now, but he was also aware that was a bad thing.  Had they let her see their faces too, or had they worn masks when they'd abducted her, had they taken her from her home, had they hurt her?  He knew she was strong, stronger than he'd ever been, but god help him, he could hardly stand the thought they might have hurt her.  



"Please," he repeated, his voice catching at the thought, "Is she alright?"



He was answered with a long silence, followed by a blow to the jaw that made stars dance behind his eyelids.  It wasn't the first time they had hit him, they'd tried knocking him out in the car already, but after the first two strikes without success, it had devolved into one of them just repeatedly bashing him in the head with his fists until the other had pulled him back.



"He won't be worth anything dead."



He hadn't defended himself.  His hands were tied, so they figured he couldn't anyways.  His head was hurting, an ache that came with a persistent throb, irritating in its tempo and now his jaw was twinging too - but he had been hit harder, it would heal.  The guy with the restless fists was the bigger of the two, a man with a mean face and deeply set eyes, stocky with the build of someone who used to fight.  The other one looked less like a cartoon villain, more like the average Joe you'd see on the street, like anyone you'd see around the city, and he did most of the talking.  If there was any chance of appealing to reason, it would be with that one.



"You've got to stop hitting him, the poor guy can only take so much."





The voice was filled with mock-pity; he wasn't sure of the expression because he'd been blind-folded during the ride.  He couldn't pinpoint exactly where he was, but he'd heard the rattle of a roller door, the sound of ancient corrugated iron sliding into its slot - he was in a garage or a storage facility somewhere, but that was all he knew.



He tongued at his cheek where it had caught against his teeth and tasted blood.  He wanted to spit it out, he hated the taste, it made his heart jump and flutter and he was already struggling to keep his blood pressure down, he had to, he couldn't take too much stress.  He needed to hold out, he needed to stay calm because he needed to know she was okay.



"Worried about your girlfriend, huh?"



The voice was close to his ear and he wanted to correct him - ex-girlfriend, she was his ex-girlfriend, but that detail seemed trivial.  He just nodded instead and received a pat on the cheek that made him flinch.



"I just want to know that she's okay."



Another long silence; he braced himself for another hit but it didn't come.



"She's fine.  We don't even know who she is.  We just said that to make you go with us, we didn't want you making a scene."



Relief flooded over him; it had all been a lie, a way to make him go along without question.  His shoulders slumped with the impact of this information, a full-body sigh as he let go of the images of her being abducted or hurt or terrified, as he tried to discard the horrible possibilities that had gone through his head.  



In front of him, his tormenters exchanged a look; this wasn't the first time they'd had a hostage, but it was the first time they'd gone for a payout as big as this one potentially had.  The guy in front of them was smallish and rumpled-looking and his glasses had broken after the first hit, but he was worth a hell of a lot of money.



"You should be more worried about yourself right now."



The blindfold came off and dim, orange light flooded his vision; it took a moment for his sight to adjust - especially with his left eye swelling the way it was - but when it did, he knew he was inside a shipment container, the kind tankers hauled around.  The drive hadn't been that long and the air was especially humid - they must have been close to the water.  



He blinked hard and the faces of the two men came into view; he searched his memory for a second time, looking for anything that told him who they were but neither of them were familiar.  He tried to ignore the way his blood was thrumming; he wondered if they could see it.  He wondered if his shirt collar was being moved, if it was shifting with every thump of his pulse.



Please no.



"Please." he voiced again, swallowing against the way his throat had tightened, "I don't know what you want from me - but I can tell you that this is a bad idea.  That you don't want to do this."



Eyebrows raised.  The skinnier one gave him an incredulous look while the other one busted out the sort of smile that was usually associated with crocodiles.  The talker moved in front of him, crouched down, smiled.



"Here's what's going to happen." he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a smartphone, holding it up in front of him, "You're going to sit tight.  You're going to look really miserable for the camera - which should be easy enough, my friend over there is going to assist you with that - and we're going to send a little video to your boss."



Money.  This was about money.  They were going to use him for a ransom.  It was so stupidly simple, so absurdly unoriginal that he hadn't even thought about it, hadn't even considered that it was a possibility.  After all, he was only just becoming used to the idea that there were people out there that would come looking for him now, people who would worry if he went missing.  People who, for god's sake, would actually pay money to get him back - but it wouldn't get that far.  



He stared into the tiny lens of the camera and his warped reflection looked back at him with a different expression than the one he knew he was wearing, his reflection smiled nastily at him.  Panic twisted in his chest.



Not this.



God, not this.



He'd been doing so well.



"Please," he said, and he'd used the word so many times already, but it just kept coming out which was ridiculous - it was like some part of him thought they'd change their minds if he was polite enough, as though he believed manners would bring back their morality, "Just let me go."



His voice cracked and the skinny one sneered at him like he was pathetic, but he didn't understand.  The bigger guy was tilting his head to the side, cracking it like a fighter about to step into the ring, he was pulling a knife out of his coat while the other one was moving backwards and away from him, pointing the phone at him, recording him.  The knife glinted, a sheen of amber light glistening down its razor-sharp edge and all the way to the tip - they wanted a show.  They wanted something to feed the camera so they could send the footage to the only man who would pay for someone like him.



"Don't do this.  You don't understand." he knew he was begging now, but he didn't care how it looked, they didn't understand that he was begging for their lives, not his own.



The skinny one was talking, a voice-over like he was the narrator of a film,



"We couldn't get our hands on your bitch girlfriend ever since you stepped up her security, Stark, so we took your boyfriend instead.  We're going to start taking pieces off of him now, but if you pay up soon enough, maybe he'll still be functioning by the time you get him back."



His heart rate rose, he couldn't slow it down and all of the pranayama in the world couldn't have stopped it, not now; the pain started before the knife was even close to him, an ache deep in his core, right in his spine where muscle fibres began to stretch and tear around his nervous centre.  It was agonizing, but the worst part was the feeling that someone had just pulled the plug on his humanity and it was circling around a drain, that he was losing all logic and rationality and it was being replaced by adrenaline and heat and the anger, the ungodly rage.



The knife made it as far as the corner of his eye before they realized something was wrong, before the seams of his shirt began to give way, the fabric tearing like tissue paper, the thick ropes around his wrists fraying and unraveling and finally snapping.  He clawed at his face, at his hair, because the loss of control was worse than the pain would ever be and he was screaming, incomprehensible sounds that came out as a roar that rattled the thin metal that surrounded them.



Both of the men were stuck to the spot and frozen in horror, knife and phone both still hanging in the air as the Other Guy bellowed; he brought his fist down, one movement, onto the head of the man with the knife and his neck broke, his spine crumpled, he folded up like an accordion, his skull sinking down into his chest cavity, his shins cracking in half and his legs bowing outwards until all that was left was a pair of arms sticking out of the flattened, oozing remains.



The skinny one tried to run.  He dropped the phone and ran for the door, reaching down to heft it upwards, the rusted metal protesting before it began to move, but he wasn't fast enough.  An enormous hand slapped into the rolling door, bent it outwards so it jammed and refused to go any higher, leaving only a small gap.  He dropped onto his belly in a hysterical attempt to crawl through the space, but then he was being grabbed by the leg and dragged backwards - he was screaming, but he couldn't hear it over the howls of the thing that had a hold of his ankle.  He was hefted into the air and thrown up against the corrugated wall, his vision blurring from the hit and he was trying to scramble back onto his feet anyways, trying to get away, but an enormous hand took hold of him around the waist and gripped hard.  His ribs gave out all at once and collapsed inwards before he was pitched onto the concrete like a rag-doll, sputtering blood and bile.



He pulled a burning, wheezing breath in through what remained of his lungs and he could see the knife not far from him, a few inches from the still-intact hand of his friend and he tried to crawl for it but the shock - or maybe the damage - had left him paralyzed.  The most he was able to do was turn over and he found himself looking up into a hideous face; enormous shoulders were heaving with the force of the breath escaping through the thing's nose, muscles across its chest were shuddering and twisting, veins were visibly throbbing under thick green skin.  There was a long moment where they made eye contact, an instant where he could see some part of the meek scientist they had taken hostage only hours prior, but then the resemblance was gone and he managed to let out one last burbling scream of terror before the fist came down on him.  



Once would have been enough, but the Hulk didn't stop until he was stamping wet bits of skull and brain into the concrete, until there was no face left for him to look at so when Banner came around, he wouldn't know who either of them had been.  



He inhaled deeply before he huffed out his breath and stared down at the circle of gore around him; the smell of blood was thick and all he could seem to do was clench his fingers at the air and scream before he was ripping down the walls around him, tearing the sheet metal and stepping out into the dawn light, beating his chest like an unhinged beast.  He was so incensed by the gore that he didn't notice the pin-prick in the base of his neck at first, he didn't feel it until the tranquilizer was coursing through his veins.  He wrenched the arrow out of his neck, staring at it in animal confusion when his legs gave out beneath him and as he lay on the ground, the last thing he saw was the tilted image of Clint Barton lowering his bow, his distant voice saying:



"I really didn't know if that was gonna work."



And as they sat in the back of a rumbling van, Clint did his very best not to listen to the gurgling screams that were coming from the phone they had recovered, managing not to flinch at the sound of breaking bone.  Across from him, Phil was observing the video like he was watching the weather network; when it was done, he set the phone off to the side and looked at nothing for a while.



The silence stretched on to the point that Clint started to get restless, and just when he was about to speak, Phil beat him to it,



"You did good work today, Agent Barton." he said.



"All I did was load him up with drugs."



Phil shifted his cane from one hand to the other; he was allowed to have the sling off of his arm for a few hours at a time now.  It was great news that Clint wasn't allowed to share with anyone because Fury hadn't exactly got around to telling the rest of the team that S.H.I.E.L.D's surgical staff was really that good.



"As you're well-aware, there are orders out from the security council to closely monitor Dr. Banner's activities and to report any further incidences involving his particular disorder," Phil said, his voice casual, "So it was fortunate that you were able to subdue his captors before it was necessary for him to defend himself."



Clint rubbed his hand through his hair uncomfortably and he nodded,



"Yeah," Clint said finally, "Good thing."



There was a beat of silence as the two of them observed the unconscious doctor for a long moment and then Clint asked,



"So does my good work get me out of writing the report?"



The agent's eyes crinkled at the corners and he distracted himself from the expression by pretending there was something interesting happening out the window,



"It wasn't that good."