WARNING: Torture
Chapter 3: Unforeseen Complications
The skrull materializes back into his den where his prisoner remained shackled.
"You're going to tell me how to get your little brat to trust me or so help me, I will kill him in his sleep!" the skrull fumed, still in his form as Stephen.
The real Sorcerer Supreme forced his head up to look at his mirror image.
"You're going to have to give me more to go on here," Stephen sighed.
The skrull whirred at him, eyes glowing. He snatched Stephen's hair and wrenched his head back to make eye contact with him.
"Peter Parker has become a galactical pain in my ass, tell me how to get him to back off or he'll be here with you," The skrull hissed. Stephen jerked a bit at the venomous words coming from his carbon-copies face. His silence must have lasted too long because a punch to the face jostles him back to the present.
"T-tell me exactly what he's done and I can help you," Stephen gasps as the edges of his vision blurs and blood fills his mouth.
"The little pesticide was jittery and wouldn't come near me. He even tried to turn Anthony against me," the skrull raged circling Stephen, his gimmicked cloak twirling around him.
"We had an argument before I left-" Stephen tried to say.
"No, he knew I wasn't you! He said he could feel it! How can he feel it?" the skrull challenged.
"It's his powers. You won't be able to trick him with a disguise, you'll have to reassure him," Stephen says, a plan formulating in his mind.
"And how exactly am I to do that?" the skrull asks, becoming less hostile and more interested.
"Tell him something sentimental, use a movie reference, I don't know," Stephen says faking insecurity. It works.
"You know exactly what to do but you won't tell me!" the skrull accuses brandishing a knife he conjured. He stalks over to Stephen and holds it to his throat.
"You won't kill me. You still need me to trick my family for the stone," Stephen says calmly.
"You are correct," the skrull taunts walking around to his back, "but that doesn't mean we can't still have fun."
Stephen can't hold back a scream as the first letter is etched into his skin.
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After what Stephen deems as a reasonable amount of torture time and cementing his plan, he breaks.
"Call Peter your little 'pericoloso,'" Stephen wheezes through the pain igniting in his body. "Tony and I call him that when we need him to calm down during one of his panics or when we are being sincere."
The skrull smiles and immediately leaves. Stephen sighed his relief that the bait had been taken. Now, he only had to wait and hope his son was as clever as he hoped. He had a plan to free his cloak, but his sling ring had been confiscated. Without it, his salvation was entirely up to his husband and son.
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The skrull returned to the bedroom where he had left a sleeping Tony, the bed was empty.
"Anthony?" it called out.
"Sir is in the kitchen with Peter making breakfast Doctor," the house's AI Friday answered.
"Thank you," the skrull responds, covering his confusion. He wandered back to the room where everything went to crap last night.
Tony and Peter were hovering around the stove. The smell of coffee and eggs wafting through the room.
"Hey Stranger," Tony says, turning toward Fake-Stephen.
"Hello to you too," the Skrull responds, angered at the way Tony lingered in front of Peter. Essentially using himself as a shield. Distrust lingered in the air.
"I wanted to talk," the skrull says, pulling out a stool from the bar. Tony crossed his arms and Peter moved to stand next to him, mimicking the motion.
"I'm sorry Peter. I'm sorry that I have been away so long and so often that you feel threatened by me when I'm home. But I swear to you that I am here now and I won't leave you," the skrull says rising timidly from the stool and approaching them.
"I won't leave either of you," it says looking at Tony.
The mechanic smiles at the illusion and looks at Peter.
"It's good enough for me if it's good enough for you," Tony says to Peter. The teen hesitates before moving toward Fake-Stephen to hug him.
"I love you," Peter says carefully.
"I love you too, pericoloso" the skrull responds, ruffling Peter's head. The action distracts him from Peter's momentary stillness and Tony's look of horror.
Pericoloso was the family's italian word for danger, threat, unsafe. It was impressed on Stephen and Peter by Tony. A cry for help.