Who did this to you?

2

Everything after that was a blur until you woke up in a hospital bed covered from head to toe in bandages and doctors were telling you how lucky you were to have survived.

The doctors informed you soon enough your left arm was gone--you could have guessed--but you swore you could still feel it. Feel it burning, feel your fingers flexing, like if you just tried hard enough it would return, but no matter how you willed it, it didn't come back.

Not that you expected it to.

Your spouse--or, the villain, disguised as a loving spouse--visited every day, bringing with them a wide assortment of gifts. You ignored them every time- if you didn't straight up sleep through their visits, only new gifts on the table beside your bed indicating they had been there at all. It wasn't hard to ignore them with how difficult it was to stay conscious even without the added incentive of ignoring your most hated enemy. On top of that, your hearing was in and out--the doctor said it should return on the right side as whatever had hit you was centered on the left side, but there was no guarantee on the left--though you would have tuned them out regardless. With very little response from you, they'd inevitably leave after barely a few minutes and as soon as they were gone and you had the awareness to ask, you'd have a nurse dispose of the gifts.

It got much harder to ignore them the more conscious you became.

As soon as you were able to sit up on your own and stay relatively conscious--disregarding the splitting headaches--you would spend every waking moment scouring news sites. This would be the perfect time for the villain to strike with you bedridden and completely out of the action, but they seemed to have gone completely dormant since the incident- though you had no doubt they were planning something big behind the scenes, they would never pass up such a perfect opportunity. You just hoped one of the other heroes would be able to stop them.

Though you weren't sure how they would figure out they were supposed to as you hadn't seen any news mentioning your absence either.

The villain continued to visit every day, for even longer than before--no doubt keeping an eye on you to be sure you continued to stay out of commission until whatever they were planning went through. They brought more gifts with them and though you never responded, they would talk to you. They talked of your pet and how they were doing, talked of your civilian friends and how they wanted to see you, talked of your parents and how they promised to fly out and visit the second they were able, and so on and so forth.

Each word was like another dagger in your heart, stroking the anger bubbling in your very core hearing them speak the names of those you loved- no doubt holding how much they knew over your head, a veiled threat that they now knew exactly how to hurt you if they needed to. You wanted to run them through or skin them alive, but you weren't about to make a scene in a hospital when you were completely unable to fight back if they decided to strike.

So you stayed quiet, unresponsive, and endured until they decided to leave, before throwing out their gifts until they came back with more the next day.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

The day the doctor gave you the go-ahead to return home came sooner than you thought it would and your spou- the villain came to pick you up and take you to the house you shared.

You couldn't walk and the doctor had no timeline on when you might be able to again--if ever--so the villain wheeled you out to the car in a wheelchair. At least your legs still moved on your que so you were able to get out of the chair on your own, but you had to have help actually entering the car and everywhere your skin met the villains burned like a thousand fire ants biting you all at once.