Talk To Me
[ID: three pictures, the first is a photo is of a bunch of cassette tapes, the second is of Peter Maximoff from X-Men: Apocalypse, the third is of retro game cabinets. /.End ID]
Peter Maximoff x male reader
Warnings: Burns, mentions of blood, kidnapping, mentions of gun violence (non descriptive), physical torture, broken bones, cuts, becoming deaf/HoH due to physical trauma to the ears, probably a little inaccurate PTSD flashback and response.
Summary: You never thought you'd see Peter again. You never thought you'd hear again. You never thought you'd use your powers again.
AKA; PTSD and being an X-Man don't really mesh well.
Whumptober prompt no. 13: forced retirement
Notes: Set between Apocalypse and Dark Pheonix after the X-Men started like. actually being X-Men.
Reader has the ability to control sound waves.
Word count: 1,859
It was supposed to be a standard mission for you all. Simple procedure: go in, make sure whoever is robbing that bank gets detained, make sure the hostages are okay, possibly return stolen goods, and get out. It was just you, Peter, Kurt, and Ororo. This would be simple, if a bit boring. This wasn't simple nor boring.
As soon as you walked in the door, you knew this wasn't a regular run-of-the-mill bank robbery. You noticed immediately that there was blood all over the floor in splatters and puddles. It was silent. Far too silent. The entire bank was dead quiet save for the steps of all of your boots. You'd have to tell Logan that the shoes may need to be replaced on all of the uniforms when you get back.
Out of the corner of your vision, you could see Kurt visibly tense, ready to get all of you out of there if anything went haywire.
Peter pointed out a smear of blood, like someone had been dragged across the floor into a doorway, and silently ushered everyone in that direction.
In a blink Peter had zipped into the room, brushing past all of you, the sound of his running echoing off of the cement walls. When you heard gunshots, you quickly ran in after him, hoping to protect him from whatever was happening.
The room was dark; everything was still. You couldn't tell where Peter was, nor who else was in the room with you. Tuning into the sound waves around you, there was heavy breathing from one person. Then the sound of staggered breaths, like the ones of someone trying desperately to not be known; there were at least a dozen of them. It was hard to tell who was an aggressor and who was innocent.
Before you could even try your hand at echolocating, you felt someone grab onto your arm.
"Everyone out!" You yelled before you could think, and in a flash your skin was burning, excruciating pain flaring through your arm and up into your shoulder. You let out a suppressed scream even as the person let go of your hand, crumbling to the ground, and hovered your other hand over the burn. There were other mutants here.
"Can you hear me?! Get out!" A breath, air whipping around someone moving fast, the sound of a teleport.
Shakily you got up and snapped your fingers, trying to figure out where everyone was in the room. You couldn't focus. You didn't get a single thing.
Just as you snapped a second time, a bag was placed over your head, and your hands were restrained behind you by someone. Then darkness. You had been knocked out.
________________
When you came to, you could tell you were in a different place. Wherever they had you, it had less of an echo than the bank. The bag was still covering your sight, yet light traveled in through the seams of the burlap. Huh. Burlap. How predictable. You nearly let out a chuckle, only barely stopping yourself. The hell? You usually had better control of yourself. They must have injected you with something.
The burlap bag was pulled off your head as you realized you couldn't hear anything.
For days you were tortured; they wanted info. "Where is the professor?" "Where is the rest of the X-Men?" "Who is on the team?" "Where is Mystique?" and the one they repeatedly asked you over and over, "Where is Jean Grey?"
The ways they tortured you were pretty ingenious, though usually physical. At least they weren't as predictable as the fucking burlap sack.
The mutant who burned your arm before would re-burn the area every time it healed just a little. There was a mutant who could create weapons out of blood, cutting every inch of available skin with a dagger made of your own blood. A super-strength mutant broke your shins, leaving you with no way to escape even if you found a way out of the chair you were tied to. The worst part of this all was the inability to hear. Every demand, every question, every sentence to you was written out instead of spoken. Occasionally your ears would ring, a high-pitched noise that made you feel like screaming. They had obviously done something to your ears; you had yet to figure out what it was. Since you lacked the ability to hear, controlling sound was near impossible, especially in your current state.
You often caught yourself wondering where the rest of your team was, zoning out to try and escape the immeasurable pain you were in every day. You hoped they made it out successfully, that they weren't being tortured like you. These people who captured you would never see the light of day if you found out it wasn't just you being tortured.
As you rolled back into consciousness, you could tell something was off. Usually there was someone in the room with you, watching over and guarding the door. Now there wasn't. Not only that, but the lights were completely out; the room you were held in was enveloped in darkness. Being unable to see or hear was disorienting, and for a brief moment you wondered if you were even awake at all. A few blinks confirmed you were wide awake, your eyes adjusting just a fraction.
The walls were still white, with chipped paint flaking slightly off to reveal grey concrete underneath. You were still tied to the wooden chair in the middle of the room. You were still bleeding from the cuts you had gotten before you passed out.
You were still stuck here.
Sucking in a breath, you held in a sob, trying not to cry.
The door was forced open, and you flinched, expecting a new mutant, one that had a new kind of pain to inflict upon you, to walk in. Instead a silver-haired speedster zipped in, straight to you, holding your face in his hands. You no longer held back your tears, letting them rush down your face along with silent sobs. What you could only assume were strangled noises escaped your throat, unable to hear them.
Peter was mouthing something, obviously speaking to you, but you couldn't hear him.
"I can't... I can't hear you." You don't know how garbled it came out, or if Peter could hear what you had said, but his eyes widened. Quickly he turned your head, checking your ears. When he turned you back to face him, his eyebrows were knitted together in worry, eyes glassy and large.
Gently, like you were porcelain, he kissed your forehead before untying each of the knots that held you to the chair quicker than you could blink. He picked you up like you weighed nothing; for how scrawny he looked, they really had him gain a lot of muscle. You could tell he shouted something out the door at someone else.
Scott ran into the room, followed by Ororo, Jean, Kurt, Beast, and Raven. The whole team came back for you. A smile pulled at your lips, even through the pain of being held like you were, a wave of relief flooding your senses like a warm blanket. Whatever happened now, it would be okay. Everything would be okay.
Peter nodded to Kurt, and everyone grabbed onto him. In a poof, all of you were back in the plane; a stretcher in the back folded out just for you. After he set you down, the silver-haired boy, your Quicksilver, kneeled beside you, comforting you the entire flight home. He brushed over your head, wiping a few stray tears from your cheeks. Peter didn't say anything to you for the hour it took to arrive at the mansion. It broke your heart, realizing he wanted desperately to speak to you a mile a minute and be understood, to comfort you with his long-winded sentences.
When you arrived back at the school, Charles was there, waiting for all of you, along with a medical team. They rushed in to roll your stretcher away, Peter following after them. In a moment of relaxation, finally knowing you were in good hands, you fell back asleep. Peaceful and yet eerily silent.
________________
Light fluttered in through the curtains, hitting your eyes as they opened up again. You could hear birds chirping in the distance. It was peaceful. Peter was next to you; he hadn't realized you were awake yet. Your cuts still bled, your legs still hurt, and the burn on your arm was bandaged, but you were safe again. You could just slightly.
"Pete?" Your voice still sounded so distant. He lifted his head up, a hopeful grin on his face.
"You're awake! Oh my god, you're awake. Can you—can you hear me?" His words were jumbled, rushed, excited. There was hope in his voice, there was happiness that you were back, and there was sadness that you had gotten injured at all.
"I can hear you, Peter." Like a breath of fresh air after being trapped underground for so long. A weight lifted off your shoulders. The smile on the other boy's face told you a weight lifted off of his shoulders too.
________________
It was all wrong. Everything was wrong.
You were cleared for fieldworkagain after your injuries healed and sent on a small mission.
Gunshots rang out again.
All of a sudden you were in that dark room again, the breathing of a dozen other people surrounding you.
The skin burning on your arm.
The bag shoved over your head.
The white room with peeling paint.
Immeasurable silence that felt like it stretched on forever.
The ringing in your ears.
You collapsed on the floor, leaving the rest of the team to try and handle the mission while Peter calmed you down.
"Hey, hey, hey, you're okay, I'm here." The words were jumbled again, rushed, and panicked. He had no idea what to do to help. During all of the training you went through, none of it prepared you for the possibility of a teammate having PTSD. A fleeting thought in the back of his head told him that was because those who got PTSD got taken off the team, either by Charles or by—He didn't want to follow that train of thought.
"Shit, uh, Mystique, we got a problem. Shockwave is down; possible evac needed. I'm taking him back to the jet." He tried to slow his words down so she'd understand him, pressing on the earpiece to communicate with the rest of the team. Carefully he picked you up, hoping you were present enough to not freak out. "It's gonna be okay, babe; you're gonna be okay, I promise. I won't let anything bad happen to you, not anymore."
Peter rambled on even after he zipped the two of you to the jet, sitting down on the floor with you on his lap. You had started to sob loudly, but you hadn't pushed him away yet; he took it as a small win. He took a breath, realizing that you might not be able to hear him speaking.
"You okay?" He signed to you.
It took you a few minutes, but you finally responded, "I'm okay."
