Twisting the Blade: Thunderbolts (Marvel Comics) Fic
The nurse was a big guy, blond, if you looked hard you could see marks under the heavy fringe that covered his forehead - scars. He seemed like a guy who’d been around, seen a lot, probably lived a pretty rough life but the guards didn’t ask about that. All they asked for was his ID and it checked out so they let him into the prisoner’s room.
So much security, all for a man lying inert and unconscious in a hospital bed bruised and deathly pale as tubes feed him painkillers and fluids.
The prisoner’s name was Jack Harrison. He was also known as Jack Flag. He’d been a hero; some would argue he still was. Under the Superhuman Registration Act, he was a dangerous criminal. As such he’d been hunted down and beaten to a pulp. If and when he recovered, he’d be locked away. A grim prognosis, even grimmer his spinal column had been punctured. The quirks of superhuman physiology notwithstanding there was a good chance he’d never walk again.
It seemed like he’d fallen pretty low.
He hadn’t hit bottom yet.
Inside the room, the nurse locked the door. He disconnected the monitors; he slid the needle connected to the morphine drip out of Jack’s hand. Then he peeled away his hospital uniform. Under it was a sleek black and white costume. He pulled the hood over his head, down over his scarred forehead. Then he lit a cigarette and waited for the prisoner to wake up.
*****
Jack woke to pain and panic. Confused memories of his capture, the battle with the Thunderbolts, Bullseye’s sneer melting into Swordsman’s enraged face above him…
“Can you talk?” Someone was asking him. “Try and say something.”
“Where, where am I?” He managed. It was hard to talk, the effort it took. It felt like he was shouting at the top of his lungs but all that came out was a whisper that he could scarcely hear himself.
“You’re in custody of the federal government. You’re in a medical facility designed to contain superhumans. Do you remember how you got here?”
“Yes… Some... Does Lucy know where I am… my family…” He tried to move, he couldn’t. “God, it hurts. Everything hurts.”
“That’s what you get for putting up a fight.”
So much pain but even worse, no pain, no feeling, nothing at all in his legs.
“My legs…”
“Are useless.”
“No…”
“Yes. You’d better get used to it. You’re never going to walk again.”
“No.”
Jack had been trying to rise, but now he let himself fall back onto the stiff hospital bedding, he screwed his eyes shut, knowing but not wanting to know that it was true. He wanted to be brave, defiant, but it was too much for him. He’d watched his brother, Drake, go through this years before. He’d always wondered how Drake did it, how he went on after he lost the use of his legs. Drake had always seemed superhuman to Jack in a way that his own powers never had. Now it was happening to him. It seemed too cruel, too overwhelming. He couldn’t begin to comprehend it, not yet, so he let himself drift away. He let merciful unconsciousness claim him.
Or rather he tried.
Whoever was there with him, whoever was speaking, doctor or interrogator, wouldn’t let him. Through the haze he could feel his face being slapped, his body being shaken.
“Come back, Jack. I’ve wasted the last hour waiting for you to wake up, I’m not going to let you pass out on me now. Open your eyes, look at me, focus. Who am I kiddo? Who’s your daddy?’
A black hood, the white of eyes and teeth flashing, on the forehead spiraling black into white…
“Do you know who I am? Do you remember what I did to you?”
He remembered the sickening jolt of his stomach as the blade punched into his back. A smooth voice in his ear. “Hello. I just jabbed a blade through your vertebral canal into the end of your spinal column. Blame them, they wouldn’t let me just kill you.” Horror as his legs buckled under him.
“Bullseye.” He said weakly.
“Good boy, now we’re finally getting somewhere.”
“What do you want?” Jack asked. He was crippled, imprisoned; he could barely move, speak or even think. Bullseye wasn’t allowed to kill him so he probably wasn’t allowed to gouge out his eyes or cut out his tongue or cause any other kind of non-lethal damage that might get noticed. What more could Bullseye find to do to him? “What’s left?”
“As long as you’re breathing, you’ve got something to lose.” Bullseye said cheerfully. “There’s always something left. Believe me I know. You see, I’ve been where you are more than once, kiddo. I’ve spent years of my life lying in hospital beds, doing time in traction.”
Bullseye sat down on the bed next to Jack and started fiddling with the sheet. He wasn’t wearing gloves. His hands were oddly beautiful, long and elegant. As if to make up for this uncharacteristic grace there was ugly, chipped black polish on his fingernails.
“One time, when I was in a bed just like this with a tube up my nose, just like you. You know who came to visit me?” He brushed a couple strands of hair from Jack’s forehead in a parody of tenderness. “The guy who’d put me there, the devil himself. Shoved a gun in my face and pulled the trigger. I gotta say, it fucked with me. It was a long time ago, but it’s still fucking with me. I don’t like that. I don’t like it at all. I thought maybe I’d feel better about the whole thing if I did to you what he did to me.”
“I’m not him,” Jack said. “I’m nobody.”
“You’re right about that,” Bullseye purred. “The funny thing is it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t bother me that you’re not him. You’re close enough.” His thumb traced Jack’s lips. Too intimate. Jack jerked his head to the side, turning away. Bullseye caught his chin, turned his face back, forcing Jack to look him in the eye. “You can’t get away from me, kiddo.” It felt like his muscles had been shredded, like his own limbs were too heavy to lift but somehow Jack managed to reach out and shove Bullseye away.
It was pathetically easy for Bullseye to subdue him. A few minutes of struggle and he was too exhausted to fight.
“You don’t know when to stop, do you?” Bullseye laughed. He was sprawled across Jack, pinning him down. “The spirit may be willing but your body is trashed. Even your powers won’t do you any good, there’s an inhibitor field on this room. You’re just an ordinary guy who’s had the crap beat out of him. How about we take a look at the damage?” He pushed aside the sheet that had been covering Jack then peeled off his hospital gown, ignoring Jack’s feeble efforts to stop him. For what seemed like an eternity Bullseye looked, head tilted, eyes bright with sick curiosity. Then he reached out, poking at Jack’s abdomen, squeezing his thighs.
“You feel that?” He asked. “What about that? No?” He didn’t wait for answers, just moved along delighted by the sound of his own voice. “I’m taking out your catheter,” Bullseye said conversationally. “I want to see you piss yourself, though it sort of spoils it that you’re incontinent. I’d like it better if you had control and I made you lose it but I guess we all have to learn to live with disappointments. I mean, you’d probably like to have your powers, or be able to use your legs. You probably think the world would be a better place if guys like you went around locking up guys like me instead of the other way around but that’s just not the way things work.” Jack screwed his eyes shut again. If he couldn’t feel and he couldn’t see maybe it wasn’t happening.
“Hey, quit trying to sneak off.” Bullseye snapped. Jack gasped as a jab of burning pain exploded just below his collarbone - Bullseye had stubbed a cigarette out on his chest.
“Pay attention,” Bullseye ordered, lighting up another. “After I took your catheter out I played around a little and I’ve gotta tell you, your dick is totally limp. Nothing. I hope you remember the last time you banged your lady, cuz you’re not gonna be doing it again.” He learned in close, his voice low. “Don’t worry though, there are still plenty of things you can do.”
Jack lashed out with all his strength and managed to knock Bullseye off balance for a heartbeat before cat-like he steadied himself and struck back viciously. He slammed Jack across the face half a dozen times then grabbed him by the hair, roughly heaving him over so he was flat on his stomach.
“Jesus H. fucking Christ. Do you enjoy getting smacked around?” Bullseye snarled. “Do you think it makes you noble to persevere in the face of overwhelming odds? That’s the sort of bullshit guys like you believe in, isn’t it? Fighting the good fight, making the world a better place.” He got on top of Jack, straddling his hips, letting the weight of his body hold him down. His breath was hot against Jack’s neck.
“Don’t…”
“Stop me. You can’t, can you, so I can do whatever I want. That’s the way the world works. Believing in that other stuff, that’s the reason you’re here. You would have been fine if you’d had the brains to mind your own business and lay low till this whole Superhuman Registration pledge drive blew over but you had to be out there showing how righteous you were. You deserve everything that’s happened to you. You deserve this.”
His whole body was violently jarred, again and again in a relentless, pounding rhythm.
“No… no…” Jack was sobbing now, the stress had cracked him. He was whimpering and sobbing, hiding his face.
“You should have let those gangbangers have that girl, kiddo.” Bullseye said. He seemed to be having a good time again. “You should have used your power to look out for you. Look where playing hero gets you. Don’t look so scared, I’m not hurting you. I’m not even doing anything to you I haven’t already done, slipping it in real easy…”
Jack didn’t feel it but he heard something tear. At the sound his empty stomach clenched, acid burning his throat. He started dry heaving, the convulsions of his guts indistinguishable from the motions of Bullseye on top of him. He couldn’t breathe; he was choking on bile, his panic mounting.
The door slammed open. A man in a suit, doctors, armed guards.
“Bullseye, you have exactly three seconds to move away from the prisoner or I fire your nanochain.” The man in charge said in a deadly calm voice.
“Nice to see you too, Osborn.” Bullseye sneered but he was off of Jack by the count of one. Nervously, several of the doctors circumvented Bullseye to get to Jack. He felt the prick of a hypodermic needle, a tube shoved down his throat that let him breathe again.
“You’re really a class act, Bullseye,” Osborn said. “Terrorizing a paraplegic has got to be low even by your standards. You realize we’re already dealing with a Civil Rights lawyer who claims it’s cruel and unusual to suppress Flag’s powers while he’s injured. All we need is for it to get out that you’re in here interfering with the prisoner.”
“The security here’s a joke,” Bullseye said nonchalantly. “It took you guys almost two hours to figure out I was in here.”
“And what did you do during those two hours?”
“Nothing serious.”
“I’m disinclined to believe you considering that this man is agitated to the point where he’s seizing. What did you do to him?”
“He thought I was ass raping him,” Bullseye said. He couldn’t keep the edge of glee out of his voice. “Don’t worry though; I was just fucking with him. I didn’t really do it. I just jostled him a little, shook him up.” He leaned down, got in Jack’s face one last time. “You hear that, kiddo? I didn’t really do anything to you. That’s the punchline, there weren’t any bullets in the gun but you were crying like a baby. They’re shooting you up with morphine and you’re still shaking.”
“You should keep in mind, Bullseye that you’re about two shocks away from being in Flag’s place.” Osborn said tersely.
“You think I’d be here if I didn’t know that?”
“Get him out of here.” Osborn ordered. A couple of the guards stepped forward, weapons raised. Bullseye laughed, tossed something in the air then turned and left.
As darkness closed around him Jack watched two halves of a playing card flutter downward. The tearing sound he’d heard, he’d thought it was his body but it was just a card trick. A sick joke.
He lifted his hand to grasp the floating cards but by the time he reached the place where they had been they were already gone.