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“Sasha. Call her Sasha. Alexandra wasn’t… she didn’t use it, not among friends.” He nods, allowing me the space to speak. I appreciate it, because this isn’t an easy topic for me to bring up—I haven’t spoken of her in a very long time. “She’s a year older than me. She’d be 18 right now. She is 18 right now. Her parents weren’t the best people—she presented with her mutation when she was six and they did whatever they could to get rid of her. At the time, HYDRA was looking for any mutated people for testing at the very least. They paid her family off and they were more than happy to have her gone. That’s what she always told me, at least.” Sasha wasn’t the most verbose when it came to her family, but I get it. That kind of environment wasn’t conducive to being in touch with your emotions. “She was there for three years when they brought me and my parents in. They killed my parents for their research, but not before forcing them to use it on me—it’s why I’m, ah, all spider-y. She was… they were trying to make another you.” His mouth flattens into a grim line at that.
“The stuff they gave her wasn’t nearly as pure as what they gave you, and nothing like what they gave Rogers. She’s strong, yeah, but her bones are all fucked up. They had to put these metal braces against the bones in her legs and her spine so she could withstand a fight without breaking them. And whatever they did messed with her mutation enough that now whenever she uses it she has pretty serious seizures. She was never as useful for them as they thought she’d be because she couldn’t do anything all that much better than me.”
His face has remained stoic and calm throughout my little speech, but when I pause he asks, “What kind of training were they putting the two of you through? What was the point of all that?”
I shrug. “It was never all that clear to us. I was barely 16 when everything went down, and she was a bit over 17. For most of our operations we had no idea why we were doing what we were doing. All I ever knew was, they’d fly us to some undisclosed location, tell us what language to speak, and what we needed to retrieve. Or who we needed to kill.” I pause, considering. “Well, I say we . We never went on a mission together. All I know is what she told me and what happened to me. To the best of my knowledge, she was mostly stealing things and making people's deaths look like accidents.” He nods, seemingly appeased for the moment.
“And the kind of training?” He continues.
“Yeah, um. So we were both pretty young when we came to be under their… care, so I think it was a bit different from how they made you. We started with lessons in language, because kids are so much better at achieving fluency than adults. She could already speak Russian and English mostly fluently by the time we met, but I had nothing. They started me on Russian and Spanish right away and used us as speaking practice for each other. I can speak Russian, English, Spanish, and French, and she took German and Mandarin along with English. She had an easier time with the languages than I did. Once she was around 10 and I was 9, we started with physical and combat training. She was showing promise with the serum at this point but her mutation was never what it could’ve been—they had her on benzos anytime she used it, which was more often than she should’ve. My enhancements made me virtually perfect in most physical aspects, except for my senses. As you’ve seen, I can get… overloaded. It wasn’t all that hard to keep me down in a gunfight simply by virtue of the amount of noise a shot made. But they trained us, I think the same way as how they trained you—knives, firearms, blunt objects, hand-to-hand. They focused me more on my webbing and using it for combat but that wasn’t all that useful. Spiders use their webs to build nests, not to strangle people. I helped invent this synthetic stuff that I keep in my shooters.” I show him the contraption under the cuff of my sweatshirt. “Any other questions?”
—
Peter trusts me. Really, really trusts me. I’m not quite sure what to do with that.
The information he’s just given me will not only be invaluable but was almost completely unnecessary. He absolutely didn’t need to share that much, but he did—this kid was dying to tell someone about himself. He even showed off his little “shooters,” as he calls them.
The information about Sasha’s medical condition, about his life and the languages he speaks, are all filed away in my mind for the moment. I only really have one pressing question left.
“How did they subdue you both? Keep you with them and force you to kill?” He pales a bit and looks down.
“That’s, ah, that’s the thing. They didn’t really, like, force us? In the traditional sense. It was more like they had us both from a very early age, we were completely dependent on them, we had trackers embedded in our necks that could kill us if needed, and we both knew that any insubordination would get the other hurt.” He shrugged. “My parents were dead and her family pretty explicitly didn’t want her. We never tried to escape all that hard, not till the end.” Oh fuck. Jesus fuck, this is not going to end well.
“Peter. Be very clear with me. You were not brainwashed, your memories were not taken? At all? They didn’t have a gun to your head forcing you to kill those people? Both of you did those things… relatively voluntarily?” He looks a bit startled but nods. I rub my flesh hand over my mouth and jaw. “That is… not good.”
“Well, I mean, it wasn’t voluntary per se. It was more like… I’m 11. How would I ever run from this huge organization that has subjected me to these things when they notoriously have a guard dog capable of killing me and everyone I love?” Well, he’s not wrong. I would’ve put them both on their knees and double-tapped them to the back of the head, back then. But will any court accept that as a reasonable defense for being hired killers for so long? I don’t know. I just don’t know.
My mind is feeling more like my own today than it has in a few days, which is kind of it considering the stress that this whole situation is putting me under.
“I think we’re going to have to bring this situation to the Avengers, Peter. I have no sway here. None. At the very least Tony and Steve need to know.” He just stares at me for a moment.
“Now that you know, do you trust that they can keep this to themselves? Or would doing this put me in danger?” I’m not sure how to answer him. He isn’t off-base in being concerned about this, not at all. But there is absolutely nothing we can do without the endorsement of the rest of the team.
“I trust Sam. I trust Steve, and Natalia, and Wanda. Stark’s an asshole but I trust him with this. Banner would never snitch and neither would Rhodes, not if the rest of us agree to keep it quiet. They know the danger that comes with being enhanced and unregistered.” Peter nods and looks at his hands, twisting together in his lap.
In a small voice, he asks, “Do you think HYDRA’s still around, James?” I swallow and glance out the windows to my right.
“I hope not. I want to believe that it’s gone. But I can’t.” He makes eye contact with me and nods once more.
“Okay. I don’t think it’s gone, not really. And if you’re willing to admit that to me then I trust your judgment on this, too.” He smiles mirthlessly. “Let’s go tell your team then, yes?”
—
I have not yet met the Spider.
I believe that they knew I would not approve of their… methods in capturing him, so rather than be humane, they decided to keep me out of the loop. I do not live with them any longer, so I suppose it makes enough sense that they would not include me in this plan. And yet.
To find out that he is a child, younger even than Pietro and I were during Ultron, is deeply unsettling.
“Vision, would you hand me that bowl? Thank you.” He passes over the bowl containing the dumpling filling, and I get to work folding them. I do not like to spend much time in the tower anymore, but even I can admit that Stark’s kitchens are far superior to that in my apartment. Making Halusky is not a simple task and requires as much counter space as possible—thus, here I am.
We are on the common floor, although no one is here at present. Seemingly all at once, though, the Avengers begin to show up and pile into the communal sitting area.
“Why did Barnes need to see all of us? Can this not be, like, a memo or something?” Stark asks. Steve shrugs, also seemingly in the dark. As Rhodes, the last of the group to arrive, takes his seat, the elevator doors slide open and in walks James and a teenage boy that I do not recognize.
Vis leans over to me and whispers, “That is our young Mr. Parker, Spider-Man.” My eyebrows lift. Younger than I had presumed, even. Shorter, too.
James leads Peter into the room, so that they stand shoulder to shoulder in front of the gathered group. “We have something to tell you all. And something to ask.”