Chapter Text
Life is set in stone, but unpredictable. Unprecedented. It keeps coming and coming and it's up to you to dodge all the unpleasantness. But it is going to hit you one day. Then you get to spend the rest of your life hating yourself for letting life pelt you off your path.
Peter Parker's life hit him at full speed.
From the first moments he can remember, through his childhood and until now, it seemed the force of life never tired out and never gave in.
His parent's death was the first hit, and then Hydra, testing, experiments, Torture disguised as ‘correction’, and then the final mutation. And that's everything up to the age of 7.
Little did he know the worst was yet to come after that.
The amount he’s lost keeps piling up constantly.
Every time he felt himself get back on his feet and stand after the fight, life always had another way to smack him right back down. Forced to mourn for a life that was taken from him.
But life is relentless. It doesn’t care how unhappy you are, how much you cry or how much you beg for it to stop. It’s uncontrollable.
Maybe that is Peter's only constant- that life never stops trying to smack him down.
(1)
Peter’s bed wasn’t much of a bed. It was more of a big, smooth, plastic frame with bedding over it.
To be honest, it was more of a huge, upside-down storage box with blue hospital sheets thrown over the top. When Peter first saw the plastic bed, he wondered why it was plastic.
He had never seen a bed made of plastic before.
The reason became evident quickly.
Peter was now wiping the blood from the ‘bed frame’.
His own blood, to be specific.
Smooth plastic made for an easy cleanup.
Instead of having to clean a wooden bed frame, he just had to wipe his bed with a damp rag that he is given when his wounds don’t stop bleeding.
The first aid training Peter received was intensive. He knows how to stitch himself up and can judge how serious his injuries are. But the main issue with him fixing up his own wounds is that they do not give him the proper equipment to handle his injuries.
A hydra agent usually just throws him a rag to tie around his limbs, or if he was lucky, a roll of bandage. He never gets infected. And if he does, the infection clears up in less than a day with his mutation.
He had accelerated healing that dealt with a lot of his injuries in less than an hour. But he left his last mission with glass stuck in his leg and he’s only gotten time to remove it now. He had become so used to dealing with pain from his missions and from the correctional torture he endured from hydra it didn't even phase him anymore.
It still hurts. He can feel it. But he doesn’t flinch anymore.
As he's just finishing up wrapping his wounds in the rag, he hears someone approach his room. He doesn’t move. He knows who it is.
“Паук,” the voice rumbled from the doorway, straight up Peters' spine- toggling the part of his brain that told him to comply. He could sense him in the doorway, but he always forgets how the low voices of agents make him feel. The need to give in and submit was still overwhelming, even after all these years.
Паук was the name Peter was given by his handlers when he was 7 after his mutation had been completed fully, and he began to train to hydras standards. The training was hard. They pushed him to be a perfect agent. Constantly training until his muscles felt like giving out.
The training was all trial and error. Nothing was explained or demonstrated to him. It was a slow and torturous beating that didn’t stop until your survival instincts kicked in and told you to fight back. More beatings would follow if your instincts were wrong.
He wasn’t allowed to fight back like a human. He had to fight back like a spider; become the паук.
Peter got used to being called паук after a while, but he remembered his real name, the one thing he had left from before Hydra.
The last thing he held onto before he lost everything.
The names of his parents are a mystery to him. He can’t remember how his name sounded coming out of their mouths. His memory of them is completely blank. He remembers his aunt calling him ‘Peter’.
His aunt's name was also long forgotten, but he remembered that the first and only night he stayed with his aunt and uncle after his parent's deaths. She was tucking him in before bed and said,
‘Peter, you’re such a good boy’.
If only she could see him now.
“Паук! At attention!”
Peter sprung up onto his bleeding leg. “владелец,”
Peter can’t even remember what his voice used to sound like.
He only speaks now in a monotone, robotic voice. Not too high- not too low. Not too loud- not too quiet.
Peter doesn’t remember being ‘corrected’ on his voice. But he remembers being scared. It was one of the first times Hydra used fear and pain to control Peter. He must have only been a kid when it happened. It was so long ago now. But agony like that sticks with you, no matter how many times you feel it.
“Паук, mission report on the termination of agent Thomas McAlister” Operative Rollins asked in his usual irritated tone.
Jack Rollins. He was one of the most common agents that came to Peter's room unannounced.
He was Peter's handler, and he liked to make it known.
He seemed proud to be a handler for such a successful project. He wasn’t directly proud of Peter. He was proud of his work on the field. He showed off Peter's extensive history with Hydra and his most important and memorable contributions to the organisation.
Rollin acted like Peter was a prized car. Proud of the details and the engine. But never complimented Peter to his face, just to others he felt the need to impress.
He degraded Peter, took a leading role in all of his corrections and actively let Peter know that whatever he was doing on a mission could be done by another operative.
Peter knew what would happen to him once he was deemed useless to Hydra.
Peter held a steady breath. “Mission Terminate Agent Thomas McAlister is done. The target moved from location to location for many hours before I finally moved in and completed the mission in the target's house. Agent McAlister was in his master bedroom, sitting on his bed, and spotted me as I was approaching him. He quickly grabbed a glass lamp near him and smashed it on me, but I quickly adapted and completed my mission. His wife found the body at seven- thirty-six PM and it was reported to the police.”
Peter listed off the information like it was nothing to him. It was nothing to him.
He had done assassinations for 3 years already and had done other undercover missions before that. With a new mission every week or two, it’s hard to feel anything when another target is dealt with. They were his mission, and he had no choice.
Peter was slowly losing touch with himself. But he didn’t know who it was he was meant to be.
Peter was gone.
Паук is what Hydra made from him.
Rollins walked across the room, not stopping once he invaded Peter's personal space. He towered over Peter. Staring down half-lidded at Peter's small frame. Peter just stared forward through Rollin’s chest.
Rollin grabbed his chin and forced it upwards to look him in the eyes. They barely looked human. They looked like they belonged to a wild animal. A tiger looking at its prey. Cold. Heartless. Violent.
“Бесполезный. You should know better than to get caught. I’ve raised you, trained you. Do you know how many people would die to be this high in Hydras ranks? Spies should not get caught. You are a spider. We built you for this, Паук.” By now Rollins was spitting long strings of saliva over Peter's face as he spat out his words.
“The Winter Soldier is gone. He Betrayed us. He betrayed you. He left his job incomplete. He was everything a perfect soldier was until he threw it all away and went awol.
He used to be so perfect. The winter Soldier Project is what inspired your design, and I will not let everyone's hard work go to waste again. You will become the perfect soldier.
You have hydras DNA in you. Our blood is pumping through your veins. I will not let you be a disappointment. If Hydra believes you have failed, you will be terminated, and you should know what that word means by now, Паук,” Rollin started the grin. There was no joy behind it.
He was just basking in Peter's failure. Enjoying the sadistic mind games he got to play when Peter fumbled on a mission.
“You should be better by now. You should be the machine we trained you to be. You could be incredible, Паук. Do not waste our time.”
His handler let go of Peters' chin, but his head remained in position anyway. It felt safe to comply. He felt like a doll being played with. In fact, he felt like nothing at all.
Rollin took a step back, maintaining eye contact for another beat before turning and leaving the room. Locking the door behind him.
Only then did Peter move his body again. He took in a breath. He just moved over to the wall.
He put his hands flat on it.
Another breath.
He lifted his body up onto the wall and climbed until he was tucked into the corner of the room.
Because the ceiling was more homely than his plastic bed frame.
There wasn’t even anything remarkable about this day. Murder and violence rolled off his back now. It was nothing more than a task anymore. He was a machine now.
He closed his eyes. Another Breath. He fell asleep, but he never rests.
‘Peter, you’re such a good boy’.
“We built you for this, Паук”
Peter was gone.
Паук is what Hydra made from him.