Broken Cages (MCU)✔️

Hostage Situations

While they had not been successful in killing me, we were to make it look like they were successful in taking me, doing everything to draw out the Croatians who would do anything to get to me. It was almost nice how much they seemed to care that I was theirs.

Not nice in an actually nice way, but my parents didn't ever care about me.

Once again, they decided to use my injuries as a way to work for them. Tony had been in a similar situation a long time ago, and after an injury, a hostage video had been sent out. It worked then, so he figured they could set up a drop if we made it look like all they wanted was money for my return.

I was exhausted, but I agreed.

Tony and Bruce brought cameras to a shipping container they had pinged half a mile down the road. Loki took me onto the ship to prepare me.

"I am so sorry, darling. I will need to leave the cuts exposed on the front, but they won't see your back, so let me clean those up before we get you seated. I let him do what he had to. There were a few pieces of glass on the back of my leg and one on my shoulder, and he quickly removed and disposed of them.

I didn't make a noise, but whenever I winced, I could feel Loki's pain by the way he would grip wherever he was holding a bit gentler as if he thought he was hurting me.

Instead of walking me to the shipping container, we hopped in the car to get us the short way down the road. "I want you to know we can stop at any time. But none of it is real. Remember when I said we could pretend? This is all pretend."

I nodded.

"Please say something, Darling."

"I'll be okay, Loki," I croaked out. I was raised to be okay. At least my parents had given me that.

"Of course, you will," Loki praised.

Inside the shipping container, which was disgusting, a chair was set up with a camera beside it. Loki helped me over to the chair, and I limped slightly; my ankle had swelled since the fight, the man who had grabbed me twisting it. Loki was patient, though and helped me sit down. He tied a rope tightly around my midsection, took my arms and tied my hands behind the chair with a smaller rope.

"One more thing, darling," he sounded sorry. He took a thankfully clean cloth from his pocket and tied it around my mouth so that I could still scream, but no coherent words would be heard.

"You okay?" he asked, ready to stop this whole thing now. But I nodded. Let these monsters be baited. All of them. Loki looked at my steely resolve and sighed,

"Okay, Tony, we are good to go."

Tony starts the camera, his thumb goes up, and Loki starts directing, telling me to scream, sob, and thrash around. Do anything to look terrified.

And I sold it. I watched Loki's eyes go black, and Tony could not watch. By the time Tony called cut, my voice was as raw as it had been when I sang for an hour only days ago. Glass had dug deeper into my arms, and my ankle hurt worse from accidentally banging it on the chair as I thrashed around. Spit had dripped down my face, and the cloth was dripping with it, mixed with my tears.

Loki wasn't the one to untie me, though, because Steve had pushed forward, tears glistening in his eyes. Loki hovered behind him as Steve first fixed my top, which had ridden dangerously low from the thrashing, and then he removed the cloth, discarding it on the ground. Loki stepped to untie my hands as Steve untied my middle.

Once I was free, I tried to stand, but Steve picked me up instead, holding me gently, trying to keep all of his skin away from my cuts while keeping my weight off of my ankle, which very clearly had something wrong with it, the more it was left.