Double Drabble.
The bill comes due.
"You think there will be no consequences, no price to pay?"
The remembered words echo, and he closes his eyes. His teeth clench. His fingernails draw blood on his palms.
He sees the spear-heads through his heart, the spray of burst arteries. He smells the acrid stench of his flesh burning, tastes the iron tang of his blood. He feels every sickening crack of his shattering bones. Dormammu is clever—sometimes he is left alone until he dies of thirst. Sometimes he is tortured beyond mere pain, until he can sense nothing but the echoing snarls of Dormammu's rage. Sometimes he fights on and on and on, every block and strike fainter and feebler until he collapses from exhaustion. Sometimes he uses the extra time as a gift, honing skills and perfecting techniques in this unique chance to practice fighting to the death. But sometimes he doesn't even raise a shield, merely stating his oft-repeated line before waiting, once again, for the end and the beginning.
"The bill always comes due," Mordo had said.
But within his own mind, desperate in the anguish of a hundred lives, a thousand deaths, Stephen cannot help but cry,
Have I not already paid?