Move Along Home

C1] Weakest Link

Warnings: mention of Thanos harming small children in order to further his own goals, descriptions of injury
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[Before]

After what might have been days or a few minutes or an hour, he became aware that the surface beneath him was solid. 

His fingers were freezing. That should have meant something to him. On autopilot, he pried open his eyes, lashes sticking together from disuse, and waited for the world to focus. Senses tingled and fired arbitrary thoughts. His lungs pressed painfully against his ribs, the skin of his cheeks stretched taut. He could not feel his legs.

He lingered in those fluttering bits of sense for a long time before a door opened; the sound was muffled in his clogged ears.  "He's awake," someone said from behind him. Feet scuffled, two voices traded words.

Before he could process the noise or react in any way, a strong grip pulled under his bicep and hoisted him into a standing position, sending a hot rush of circulation down to his numb feet. A sound came from his throat, a half-audible note that was something close to the letter "A" but not quite there. 

 A stranger's hand brushed down from the top of his shoulder to his waist, roughly batting bits of glass from the folds of his clothing. 

 ( He had read hundreds of articles about the bridge's construction, but never really thought about how it was made of glass until that glass was shattering under his feet and glittering in his hair and tearing at his skin and dropping him into the abyss of space. )

 "Hate to yank you around so soon after you've woken up," said the stranger, "but the master wants to see you now. Crew safety policy, you know, we've got to check every guest's criminal record and whatnot. Last time we let people on without identification, we found that they were fugitives planning to kill the captain! Imagine that." The stranger pulled on the back of his shirt, hard. He stumbled a few steps forward, and the stranger hummed approvingly before pulling him forward a little gentler. "Let's go."

 They walked.

Policy, he thought. There was a familiar word. It clicked in his numb brain and triggered other words, better ones, more applicable ones. His tongue swept over his lips, trying to moisten them despite the fact that his mouth was dryer than a desert.  

"Which nation," he tried to ask, but the rasping that came out of him barely sounded like words. His throat tasted like blood.

"Oh god, you sound awful," the stranger said, pausing. "Here, take this." Something smooth was pressed into his hands. Still half-blind and unsure of what it was, he hesitantly lifted it towards his mouth out of the need for something to fix his thirst and was rewarded for his decision when the curve of a glass bottle pressed against his lips and punchy, warm alcohol washed into his mouth. 

 "Ey ey ey, don't inhale it," the stranger sighed as he gulped too much at once and burst into a fit of racking coughs. 

 Even as he sucked in a breath and coughed it back out again, flecks of liquor peppering his spit, the setting began to sharpen. Two walls slid into focus; he was standing in a hall. The stranger standing beside him was small and stocky, female if he had to guess, dressed in greys that matched her pale blue skin surprisingly well.

(Surprise.)

He looked away from her and down the hall. There was a door on the far end.

"Which nation?" he tried again. This time his speech sounded like speech even though the back of his throat still tasted bloody.

 "Nation?" the stranger repeated.