☑ THE SHADOW | Peter Maximoff

e l e v e n

~ 𝐏𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫 ~

TW: this chapter implies rape. nothing graphic is explained, but it is heavily inferred and does happen to a character that isn't in the room.

The damp cell floor was cold beneath Peter's feet as he knit his eyebrows and pulled Aya behind his body unconsciously.

"Just her?" he asked, looking between the two men confusedly. "Why?"

The look the two men gave each other was enough for Peter to deduce what was going on. He could feel his grip on her arm tighten, and the first man shrugged. "Doctor's orders."

Instantly, Peter shook his head. "No-"

"Do ya really think you can tell us what to do?" the first man asked, stepping closer to size Peter up, who tried to keep his head high and his voice low.

"If you fucking touch her-"

The man grabbed onto his hair and roughly slammed it into the bars of the side wall, but Peter was able to get his leg under the man and trip him. Unfortunately, the man had a strong grip on Peter's shirt and pulled him down to the ground as well.

Peter wasn't himself, and he knew that. He didn't have half his strength, let alone his mutation, and it didn't give him much of a fighting chance. But he tried. He tried so hard to wrap his arm around the guard's neck and squeeze as tightly as possible, but the other man came up and jammed the butt of his gun into Peter's temple.

"You'll what, mutie," the first man snarled, hitting Peter's head against the ground again.

Peter's vision swirled.

"What are ya gonna do?"

He moved his arms to try standing up, but was knocked down by another hit to the temple.

"Get him in the other cell."

There wasn't anything Peter could do as the man with one working eye wrapped the mutation dampeners around his neck and arms, picked up his body and dragged him over to the other cell. His body was incredibly weak while Aya called out to him, her voice frail and scared - a side of her Peter's never seen before.

Peter fought through everything he felt to lift himself up, but he could only watch as they hit Aya the same way they hit him before giving her the dampeners and dragging her out of the cell. His hands clutched the bars to her cell and his head fell against them.

He didn't want to listen to her screams - her calls out for him even though she knew there wasn't anything he could do. Not yet, at least. Peter already knew that if he was ever gonna come back, there was going to be a lot of hell to pay for these people.

Peter had gotten angry before. But it had never been this bad. It didn't matter that this past year had been nothing but fighting with Aya. It didn't matter that she had threatened him every day, and it didn't matter that he made it one of his sole purposes to make her as angry and frustrated as possible. This was never something he would have wished for her.

Even if the torture and the experiments never happened. He never would have wished for her to go through what she was going through now.

He crawled over to the door of the cell and aggressively tried to shake them open, but it didn't do anything. His mind flashed pictures based on the sounds he was hearing, making him bang his head against the bars so hard it hurt.

Fuck, he hated that place. There wasn't one thing he could possibly think of that he liked. It was all shit. Top to bottom, every direction. Absolute shit.

When thinking about it, though, he realized there was one thing he hated more than this place: himself. If he had focused more on the mission instead of trying to annoy Aya like he always did, he probably would have seen the sign that something was wrong; he should've known the moment the truck was full of soldiers instead of children that this was a trap.

Aya screeched out again, and he flinched.

For the most part, he and Aya were equally tortured. They got the same tools, same treatments, same everything. He just got a little extra abuse because he couldn't keep his mouth shut. That was purely his fault.

But, this... Aya got this because she happened to be a young, pretty girl around disgusting, desperate, pathetic forty-year-old men. And all Peter could do was sit there and listen to it happen.

He wanted to go home. His body hurt. His mind was running empty. He wasn't sure how much longer either of them could take.

His grip was still tight on the bars as he stared at the ground. Maybe he deserved this treatment for being a smart mouth. But Aya didn't deserve it. She didn't deserve any of it.

He thought back to the game they were playing before, and his eyes squeezed shut.

I don't trust myself.

She wasn't scared to go out because he was there, or because she hated people. It was because she was afraid of hurting them.

I never told anyone.

She was embarrassed. Embarrassed of her mutation. Scared of people being scared of her because of her mutation. She was innocent. And he treated her like shit.

Fuck, he was such an asshole. She was right. She was so right.

It's okay. You didn't know.

That shouldn't matter. He wasn't the kind of person who wanted to actively make someone upset; he liked to make little jabs, mostly at himself, just to make everyone smile and be in a better mood.

So why was she different? What made him want to so desperately get her to blow up and yell at him everyday?

He couldn't figure it out. Especially not with her crying out like she was now.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, clutching onto the bars while tears pricked his eyes. Her screams made him tense and cave in on himself. "I'm sorry."

w/c: 992

a/n: a little bit of a shorter chapter, but it was interesting to see a some of peter's thoughts on this, no?? could the guilt that he's feeling change things for good?? lemme know what you think!! xx