Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Three years, six months, three weeks, and twelve days.

The Winter Soldier had betrayed them three years, six months, three weeks, and twelve days ago.

Three years, five months, and four days ago The Spider had been debriefed when Winter had not come back from his mission. Winter had left. He had left them – him – for the Avengers of all people. And Spider would not, would he? Spider was better, he was told. Spider was stronger and faster and smarter and better. Spider was useful. He would be useful, wouldn't he?

Three years, five months, and three days ago The Spider started training more. Dauntless, tasking training, ranging from combat to mental. He'd been preparing for this ever since he'd been brought to HYDRA, ever since he'd been born. He knew how to shoot a gun before he could walk, he knew how to climb walls like his genes prevailed him to do before he could speak, he knew how to kill a man in more ways than one since before he had been given The Spider as a name.

He had other names, too. Webs was one he was most fond of, one he could remember even after the memory wipes he endured after missions (Some he did not want to remember). He could remember a lot of things, things he should not; Winters voice, no matter how dull and mindless it became, the walls of his ce- room. They're room. That Winter had left, and he was a traitor, and he had left Spider alone.

Alone was such a strange thing, he would think (he shouldn't be able to do that either, he found himself knowing. Strange, since he'd always been able to) staring at the endless, dark, unbreakable walls of their room. His room. Just his now. 

Two years and twenty days ago Spider had gone on his first mission by himself, none of blood nor glory, but he succeeded flawlessly. His stealth was exceptional, his agility none had ever seen. He prided himself in it.

Three years, six months, three weeks, and twelve days. The marks on his wall, etched into the vibranium with his finger nail. (He shouldn't be able to do that either, despite his super strength. He never told anyone that, not a soul. He would surely be punished for keeping secrets, yet he hoarded them like precious gold.)

Three years, six months, three weeks, and twelve days.

Not that he had been counting.

–––

Missions were simple, roundabout things. Just another working cog in the machine, a mechanical part that made the ever so complicated equation flow. Things like those came easy to The Spider, maths and science and machines. Sometimes, a craving to hone those skills would overcome him, something like hunger or rabid desire to learn and create.

He would push those thoughts – those selfish, useless feelings – to the side. Feeling were not apart of the equation, the make up of HYDRA. Emotions would crumble the inner workings to rubble, befall it until it was nothing but useless junk.

Spider could not be useless.

So missions became simple.

They varied, of course. Things like retrieving jewels and precious strings of gold from dimly lit store fronts and old as dirt museums, to assassinations covered in the blood of nameless and faceless victims who could end the world as they know it, to parties will tall glasses of champagne and smoky rooms and tight fitting gowns and strange looks and touches of men.

Spider had never failed a mission, had never hesitated to shoot a gun since training (he didn't like to think about his training. It was weak, but memories scared him. He supposed that's why he was meant to forget, they never wanted him to suffer) nor had he ever came back empty handed, whether that be with precious gems or sticky sweet blood. Always with a grin on his face, under that mask of his he wore. 

He was better than Winter, he was trained to be, fought to be. He took the labs and prodding with a still, stony face. He took the memory wipes with nothing more than a gasp of air. He took it all, every single drop, until either himself or his handler was satisfied.

And he was satisfied. He would dare to call himself happy.

Todays mission was no different from the last one, or the one before that. A simple assassination, straightforward and to the point. 

Except for one fact, one small piece of information he knew had been coming yet still set his stony, mask covered face into what felt like the biggest smile of his life. He did not know who it was he was to kill, he'd only been told why. And the why is simply what they were.

An Avenger.

He was going to kill an Avenger.

Spider was told who it was in the meeting room, a space of tall walls and many chairs and a giant screen behind a stone podium. The man – the dedicated debriefer of his missions, who The Spider apparently had not earned the pleasure of his name nor his face, even after all his years of missions – spoke fast and factual, flipping through a digital file on the subject at the speed of light, but Spider gained it all. By the time he was adorning his gear he knew the face and name by heart.

Harley Keener, or Iron Lad (a ridiculous title). A kid with longer tawny blonde hair in surfer waves and simple, boy like features. His green eyes were sharp and wide, encompassed by small smile lines at the corners, faint eyebags, and the freckles that scoured his face like the stars to an open night sky. His smile was a jaunty, rakish sort of thing; far from perfect, but the dimples and simple charmingness of it made Spider doubt. He had never seen such a wide, carefree smile. Actually, he couldnt quite remember the last time he saw a smile at all, it was almost unnerving.

For the mission, he thought to himself as he soaked this all in like he was desperate for water, imprinting the face of the boy in his head like a map he'd be lost without. A page in book he couldn't live without remembering. He inhaled the grainy picture on the orientation screen like it was air and he'd been drowning. For the mission.

It was like a mantra in his head, a broken record. And other things, like Harley and assassination and Avengers. But mostly Harley, the boys face a background to his song of thoughts he shouldn't have.

And murder.

Even surrounded by death, The Spider was not familiar with the word murder. Sure, he had seen it, read it in the old, worn dictionaries he could get his grubby hands on. Definition; The unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. Yet, even then, as the highest and most noble of assassins, he had never considered the job of a soldier murder. It never even came to mind.

But now, as he stepped into the cold frigid and fresh – so fresh and sweet and lord had he never breathed air outside of the base before or was he simply going mad? – air of wherever he lived, a sinking, unfamiliar feeling pooled in his gut. He was struck with the fact that murder nor Harley Keener seemed to mix well at all, and perhaps shouldn't even be in the same realm of possibility. What would happen to that silly, charming smile? Where would those green eyes go, if he were simply gone? Spider had never met the boy, never heard his voice or seen his face outside a noisy screen in a stale room, but the lack of Harley Keener even sharing the air he was breathing now, a million miles away, made him crave something like freedom just to experience those things all at once.

God, where had that come from? He was free. HYDRA was free. As free as he could get, at least, for a creature like him. 

No, he wasn't murdering Harley Keener, that was foolish. Iron Lad was a dangerous individual, and a close comrade of Iron Man –  unidentified in the outside and media world, apparently, no matter how close they were – and his death would be a step closer to victory.

The stairs up to the sleek black jet were agonizingly long, even if they were only seconds, and Spider hesitated at the top. Eyes flickering around the empty plain of snow and ice and white flakes from the sky, no HYDRA base in sight. 

The snowflakes pelted him like tiny needles to his skin, the wind whipped at his face like leather belts and hard slaps. His full body suit did not protect him against the cold – and normally he would resent this, cursing to every god and back that one of his weaknesses just had to be a lack of proper thermoregulation – but now he found himself grateful. Out in that cold, barren land, The Spider finally felt himself living. Finally felt the steady drumming of his heart in his chest, the staggered breathing from his lungs, and that small, tentative smile from under the cloth of his mask. Scared to feel, even if someone would never be able to see it.

Harley Keener will die tonight repeated over and over again in his head, even after he'd been sedated with drugs, making his mind and his senses much clearer, preventing him from distractions during the mission, blocking out the faces into blurry masses and the trip into a few short seconds.

And even then, he didn't quite believe it.

–––

The January air of New York City was nothing compared to the base, but it was the rain that was truly awful.

Rain like to plague Spider on his utmost of important missions, making his hands slick and the fine hairs across his skin cease to work. It happened once in Santa Cruz, when he was young and naive, to steal a precious heirloom from a grand cathedral. They only rained sixty-eight days per year, and Spider had been just so lucky to experience one that evening. Same thing with the mission in Maine, and the one in London, England. 

It was on missions like these that Spider was grateful for the training, the endless strategizing and exertion. It was without it that he would fail.

So then, as water poured down from the stormy clouds above, The Spider hauled himself atop a building with just his bare hands and the window ledges. He sat on the edge, watching through the large windows of the tower, far enough that no human eye would see (except for him, of course, but he had past the breach of humanity long ago). Therefore they would not see him, clad in dark against the fading night sky and storming clouds, but he had a clear view.

It was of a kitchen and dining room, something much too small and much too homey for such a big, rich tower. Warm golden lights shown from the tall ceiling, illuminating the brick outside, and a warm, salty aroma wafted through the glass, only for the enhanced senses of a soldier to smell. Spider regarded this all with a quick and critical mind, eyes dancing back and fourth from the people inside. A dark skinned man, a blonde man with hearing aids, a red haired woman who's air around her rang like air chimes, a sarcastic sounding man with a trimmed goatee and (awful) shades, a tall blonde soldier of a form, and the target (his bright smile prominent and hair a mess of frizz and helmet hair).

They were laughing. A cheerful sort of sound. Talking and laughing and living. Spider felt something, something he couldn't quite place. It might've been guilt, but either way he shoved it deep down.

And then he saw him.

Him.

Walking through grand doors like he had no other care in the world, like he belonged there after all. Sitting down beside those people – those monsters who hated and fought pointless wars – like they were comrades. Friends. Family, if he even dared to think it. 

They had been family once. Perhaps a broken, small, futile family. But they had been brothers, had they not? Maybe more than. Spider had accidentally called him papa once, when he was young and a babbling ball of flesh and love. He had been shushed and cared for and told never to do so again, for if he cared too much he would be taken away. Taken away from his Papa and the room they called home.

Traitor, traitor, traitor.

"You look happy," a teasing voice broke through the empty (it wasn't empty, it never was) mind of Spider. He blinked down at the people, so small yet so big in the grand scheme of things.

Winter had a small grin on his face, a shadow if you weren't looking for it. It looked strange and completely, utterly normal on his face at the same time. "Maybe that's 'cause I am Wilson, ever thought of that?" He fought, with no fire behind the words.

But Winter wasn't happy. Not truly. He looked sad, even. Spider didn't know how you could be happy and sad and the same time, but Winter had done it. 

"It's just.." he looked like he was searching for words, words he couldn't quite find. He was quiet, even to enhanced ears. "Just someone's birthday, thought I'd try to be happy for him. You wouldn't know 'em."

Oh.  

How could he be so smart, yet so stupid at the same time?

The Spider didn't care much for the dates, nor the years. Living underground did that to you. Yet every year, without fail, Winter would wake him up hours before the guards would come to bang them awake on January 16th (definitely not his real birthday, but they day he'd been given to Winter, if nothing else) and they would build a fort out of the raggedy blankets they had been provided over the years. They would tell stories, pretend the vibranium ceiling was just a night sky, and laugh quietly all the same.

Traitor, traitor, traitor.

Spider glanced down at the digital screen attached to his wrist, the green letters glowing bright even through the weak, pointless mist in his eyes. January 16th.

And every night on his birthday, after the training and the studies and the prodding and the poking, Winter would sing him to sleep. He was an awful singer, and the tune was not made for his voice, but it was the only one he could remember from a mission because it had reminded him of his Spider. His poor, little spider.

Humming filtered through his ears, and he watched Winter sing the slow, old tune. Even through the shaky, indecipherable notes Spider could still remember the words.

Close your eyes

Have no fear

Spider felt like he was sick.

The monsters gone, he's on the run

And your daddy's here

And then it all came crashing down.

And The Spider remembered.

He remembered late nights reading the old, worn books of his childhood. The tales of green, fresh grass and blue, blue oceans. A mother and a father, maybe, before he'd been HYDRA, their smiles cast in white glows of childhood memories. He remembered the songs and quiet laughter and warm hugs of his cell, where there had been not one but two. Where he had truly felt all there, like he was free even in the confidants of a cold, empty base.

He was no soldier.

And he wanted to be free, with his hands vacant of blood and the stench of murder free from his skin.

And he was falling.

Literally, he was falling. The ground closing in. He must have blacked out, the memories and emotions coming in vibrant swarms that blinded him stupid. But he had no time to think about that because the ground was getting a lot closer than he would like much too quick.

Without even thinking, he shot a web from the black cuffs attached to his wrists and swung from a building, ducking into an alley.

The Spider should've been ashamed to say he didn't hesitate when he ran.

Chapter Text

…heyyyyyy…… how y’all doin…??

so recently, i’ve actually been getting back into the mcu and i wanted to revisit this fic. honestly, i would have just published the second chapter i had written three years ago(?) and just never posted, but it’s lost to time soo..

i’m rewriting this fic!!!!

i’m unhappy with how the first original chapter of this turned out, yall glazed me SO hard i did NOT deserve your compliments MY GOD. thank you for the support tho i love u guys. but it was really bad and personally i think i’ve improved and i could do so much better by this story, because i still like the idea i had and i miss it

as of the time i’m posting this, the new fic has been dropped. it’s under a new name, but it’s in the same series as this one, so you can find it there.

thanks for the kind words and support, hopefully i won’t abandon this one either lol