Catch for Us the Foxes

"Do you remember why you are here?" Here was unforgiving and harsh; a dark, cold pit that he had been cast down into for reasons that escaped him long ago.

"Do you know how long you have been here?" He couldn't even remember his own name. Time and torture had wiped his mind of everything but the misery of still being alive.

"Can you even speak?" The ensuing silence answered for him. Fingers curled themselves into his dark, matted hair, forcing his head back while another hand pried his mouth open to reveal the bloody stump that used to be his tongue. "Pity," his hair was released before two cold hands slid down to hold his head "seems that it was never truly made of silver."

The hands pressing firmly against his temples tightened their grip and he let out a small noise of discomfort when thumb-pads brushed over his desecrated, unseeing eyes. He jerked back weakly but the hands did not let go, only strengthening their hold while fingers explored the burns that had taken his sight. "My dear prince," cold breath spread across his forehead and he shuddered, uncomfortably aware of the stench of rot that sat heavy in the air, "my condolences for not visiting before. It is a shame that you cannot even look upon my face and converse with me as a civilized being." Another exhaled cooled his skin and he shivered because of it. "I suppose it will have to be one-sided."

The hands fell from his face and the pit grew quiet, yet the stifling presence remained. It was in the air and in the earth, smelling of death and rot. It churned his stomach and lingered in his wounds. It was the cold and the dark, the hopelessness of the pit. It was the Mad Titan Thanos come to claim his prize.

"A prize I do not see in front of me." It was the voice that intimidated entire planets, capable of leading armies and breaking them. "I see a miserable creature that doesn't even deserve the mud that it lays in." It chilled his skin and made his body tremor uncontrollably. "A runt," the word cut like a knife, "incapable of anything useful."

The fingers were back and they gripped his chin with bruising force. "You… Who couldn't even perform one simple task." His head was roughly turned from side to side like an animal being inspected by a butcher. "Pathetic, weak, worthless, and insignificant." With each word the grip tightened until his jaw cracked under the pressure. "I invested in you, and you failed me." Bone grinded against bone. "Your punishment is far from finished. I've come her to tell you that even after five thousand years, it's not even halfway through." Poison magic branched out from the fingers and he found himself collapsing into the mud, chest heaving with agonized breaths and shoots of pain spreading from his jaw. Unwanted tears fell from his blind eyes to trace paths through the muck on his cheeks and his chest constricted with a new, inexplicable pain. "I have one more purpose for you," the Mad Titan paused, "until then, revel in your kingdom of mud, dear prince." There was the sound of wind and Thanos was gone, leaving Luke in the cold and dark, clutching at his chest and trying to breathe.

Pain, unlike anything he had experienced in his immortal lifespan, coursed through his veins and caused his battered body to convulse. His mouth opened in a silent scream, blood spilling from his pale lips as Thanos' magic tore his insides apart. It shattered his bones and set fire to his blood, breaking him in every way possible. It whispered terrible realities into his ears and sent morbid visions dancing across the dim of his blindness until he punctured his own eardrums and tore out his eyes.

The whispers and visions continued nonetheless.

Poison magic pulsed through his body for two hundred and seventeen days but it seemed centuries before the final tremor ran through his frame and his blood cooled. Centuries longer until his hearing returned with a crackle and his tongue began to reform in his mouth. Eventually, he could feel his eyes regenerating in the empty space behind his lids and the familiar weight of a tongue against his teeth. Fluctuations in the black of his blindness gave way to colors and then shapes, faint in the dim light but most assuredly there. He recovered his sight just in time to see the Chitauri swarm into the pit, prepared and eager to use his regenerative capabilities against him. Thanos' voice echoed throughout the space: "Do with him what you please."

He was pinned to the ground by rough hands while jars brimming with acid were forced down his throat until every drop was carving bloody rivulets down his esophagus. Small, keening whimpers escaped his ruined throat as they pried his lids open and, with sadistic grins that he could only momentarily witness, dug hot irons into his eyes and scooped them out.

Mud was brought a boil by an unseen and unfelt fire before it was poured generously across his back and hands, scalding the skin and filling the air with the stench of burning flesh. The exposed injuries were scrubbed with handfuls of salt, assaulting his senses with a unique pain that kept him writhing as the Chitauri jeered and screeched in their alien tongue. His stomach twisted at the agony, violently heaving up the blood and acid that was in it while ravaging his throat even further. He retched until they lifted him from the ground and strung him up against the side of the pit with cruel, unforgiving wire that rubbed his wrists raw.

As time moved forward his injuries festered and swelled with infection, delivering an unrelenting fever that distorted what little reality he had left to cling to. His rational mind was overwhelmed by agony and it retreated, leaving him an empty shell that the Chitauri continued to abuse for their own sick pleasure. Again and again they would return and rip his body apart; over and over leave him for a time only to restart the cycle of blood and grief that brought him to the painful realization:

Immortality is a curse.

An agonizing curse.

AU: "Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom." - Song of Solomon 2:15

Merry Christmas, all. Leave a review, if you feel so inclined.