Chapter Text
May had told Peter about Parker Luck; it was an inside joke more than anything.
Break a glass? Parker luck. Fail a test? Parker luck. Have the entire world forget your existence and end up on your own with no degree in a shitbox apartment because you messed up a magic spell?
Parker fucking luck.
So maybe, on some level, Peter wasn’t that shocked to wake up on the floor of the room. Okay, room was generous- the cell. Jagged stone lined the walls around him, and metal bars were in front of a small doorway, with just a tiny slat of solid metal against the floor. It was honestly a little cliche if you asked him. There was something around Peter's wrist, but not a handcuff. It wasn’t attached to anything but him, but it was definitely techy, and he couldn’t get it off no matter how hard he pulled. Same with the bars. Apparently, even kidnappers got vibranium now.
The strangest part of the room was the two twin mattresses laid on opposite sides of the floor, a thin, half-tattered blanket on top of each. He didn’t see his roommate.
Plus, whoever had taken Peter had taken his suit, leaving him in just a t-shirt and sweats, so his identity was a bust. Just the cherry on top that he needed.
Peter sat on one of the mattresses, leaning his head against the uncomfortable stone and letting his mind wander. There wasn’t much else to do until his kidnappers made their dramatic entrance anyway. Vaguely, he wondered how long it would take anyone to realize he was even gone. Seven months ago, before he’d made a mistake so bad that it broke the universe, he would’ve guessed twelve hours tops before Tony was after him. Now, maybe in a week or two, people would realize they hadn’t seen Spiderman in a while. As for Peter Parker, maybe his boss would realize when he didn’t show up to work for a couple of days, but he’d probably fire Peter over text in some unceremonious fashion instead of worrying. He wouldn’t be the first employee at a shitty warehouse that didn’t check papers to just stop showing up.
No one would ever know Peter Parker had gone missing.
Maybe the Avengers would be told about Spiderman’s disappearance, but would they care? Why would they? Some vigilante that, to their knowledge, had just helped them out a couple of times? Had fought against Thanos and popped up with a quip and a thwip when a big fight got too close to Queens?
Peter had only dared to fight alongside the Avengers once since his colossal fuck-up.
They’d never know that after Thanos, Peter had been with them in Wakanda, recovering and laughing with the group, sitting vigil at Tony’s bedside, fucking around in the lab with Shuri until they developed a robot that Tony had called “an obscene insult to the act of engineering itself” as soon as he’d woken up.
They’d never know that Peter had had team dinners with all of them, and burnt the burgers so bad at a barbecue at Clint’s once that he was on a ten-year ban from cooking, and that every time Peter had been injured, every New York-based Avenger would drop everything to stand outside his room and wait for news, no matter how many times he told them not to.
The world would probably write Spiderman off as dead within a couple of months, and Peter Parker would be forgotten. Maybe this mystery roommate would have better luck with people caring enough to rescue them, and if Peter was lucky, he could come along for the ride.
A small plate of food slid through the now open slat in the metal bars that immediately closed again. Peter could see a man dressed in all black turning to walk away. He stood, feeling a head rush from hunger or some leftover drugs in his system as he charged toward the bars.
“Hey!” He yelled after the man who was still walking away.
“Hey!” Peter tried again. “What’s going on? What do you want with me?”
The man stopped and turned.
“Sleep, Spider,” the man said in a heavily accented voice. “The doctor will be by in the morning.”
Before Peter could formulate a response, the man turned and left through another heavy metal door. He was frozen because Peter had recognized the emblem in red decorating his chest when the man had turned. The villains in every story told in history class, fighting alongside everyone from the Nazis to the Confederate army.
Hydra.
He’d heard stories from Tony for years and plenty from Steve after the team reformed following the battle at the Compound. Bucky didn’t like to talk about them much, but the bits he’d heard had shaken him. He felt bile rise in his throat. If Hydra tried to turn him into a soldier for their side, there was no one left to pull him back. No one who knew his history to remind him, no one with memories of him that could bring him back to himself. He’d be stuck.
He couldn’t let it happen. He’d try to get out, and if he couldn’t, well, he’d have to take himself out of the equation.
He started trying to map his environment with renewed vigor. The small hall that the cell was in held two other rooms down the row, but he couldn’t hear anyone in them, just the low buzz of machinery. Probably not to hold more prisoners, then.
There wasn’t much else he could gather yet, so he picked up the meager plate with a slice of bread and cold green beans waiting for him. At least they weren’t trying to keep him strong yet. Maybe he had time.
—
In the morning, he was greeted by the scraping sound of another metal plate against the concrete ground. Unlike yesterday, the slat didn’t immediately close again.
“Pass last night’s plate through,” the gruff voice of a new guard. “Slowly.”
“Don’t think I want to,” Peter retorted, sitting up on the mattress. Fuck these guys if they thought he’d just be compliant.
Peter Parker was a kind person. Most used to describe him that way, at least. A little shit, but overall, he was nice. Secretly, inside, a tiny part of him had always been screaming. Screaming that life had treated him like shit, and he should lash out and burn everything to the goddamn ground. Screaming that had only amplified in the past months.
Now seemed like a good time to let it out.
“You will,” the man responded.
“Nope,” Peter said mockingly.
He was gearing up for another retort when his nerves lit up like fire, making him slam his body back against the mattress and convulse in a way he couldn’t stop no matter how hard he tried. He stayed like that for a few seconds before the pain receded, a leftover ache radiating throughout his body but most prevalent on his wrist. The techy thing was a fucking shock bracelet.
“Round two?” The guard asked, waving a little remote.
“Try me,” Peter replied, trying to bring up all his strength. His reward was another few moments of writhing in agony.
“Obey, Spider,” the guard said after he stopped.
Still twitching slightly, Peter picked up the plate and made his way to the bars. He was unsteady on his legs but counted the fact that he was still standing at all as a definite win. He bent over and started reaching for the opening, but the guard kicked the bars, the clang reverberating in his heightened senses, worsened by the electricity still running through his cells.
“Kneel,” the guard said with a sick smirk across his face. When Peter didn’t immediately obey, he reached for the remote, and Peter dropped to his knees with a crash before sliding the plate back.
“Good spider, you may be useful yet,” the guard said.
“Antonov,” a voice called out from down the hall, just outside Peter’s scope of view. “Don’t break the new toy so soon. It’s such a rarity that we get anything fun.”
“My apologies,” the guard, Antonov, said, bowing his head and stepping back from the bars, his hands clasped behind his back.
A short man came to the door, balding and wearing small glasses, a stark contrast from the two tall and strong guards he’d seen so far.
“The doctor, I’m guessing,” Peter said from his position on the ground.
“Doctor Werner,” the man said. “I’ll give you a pass this once on addressing me directly. Do not do so again.”
“What are you-” Peter started.
“Tell them they don’t have to bring in the anesthesia,” Doctor Werner said as he looked at the guard behind him. Antonov nodded and stepped through the door to the room beside the cell.
Oh. That’s what this was.
“Would you like to try speaking again?” The doctor asked. Peter didn’t reply. “I assume you know why you’re here now.”
Again, Peter sat silently.
“Fast learner,” Werner said, almost appreciatively. “We’ll work on the eye contact problem next.” Peter almost immediately dropped his gaze, survival instincts beating out his desire to mouth off. He just had to survive long enough to figure out an escape.
“We’d like to figure out what makes the spider tick,” Werner continued. “Strong enough to take on our Winter Soldier, and a healing factor that puts Captain America’s to shame. What else can it do?” The doctor paused. “You may speak.”
“So I’m the next enhanced soldier?” Peter asked.
“No, you’re the next serum,” the doctor said simply. “We need to run some tests first, many, many tests. After, who knows? You’re either disposable or an asset. That part is up to you, and you’re proving yourself to be very… adaptable.”
Peter’s blood ran cold; he couldn’t move. Rebelling could mean dying before he could escape, but compliance could turn him into a killing machine.
Plus, that whole anesthesia thing was probably going to suck.
“Engel, as soon as he finishes his meal, bring him in,” the doctor said to the guard from last night before disappearing into the room next door. Peter hadn’t even heard the guard enter.
His mind was too consumed in the worst-case scenario.
—
A week and half of experiments had passed. Today, the time that the guards typically came to get him had long since passed, if he was keeping track of time well. He was hopeful that today, maybe he wouldn’t have to enter the room next door. He was still weak from yesterday when they’d taken his blood just to see how fast he could create more. He didn’t always know why they conducted certain experiments. Still, he knew enough Russian to pick up snippets, and he’d silently thanked Nat on more than one occasion.
After a particularly rough day, they’d left him without an experiment one once. He’d heard Werner tell the guards that they need him to stay alive long enough to finish the experiments, that they couldn't break Hydra property.
So Peter sat on his mattress, staring at the untouched one across from him and trying to let his healing catch up with the week of hard work it had been put through. He looked at his reflection in the plate that had held his breakfast. Even in the distorted metal, he could see that he was already getting thinner and too pale from the blood loss, even if the color was slowly returning. He stood to test it and even felt slightly less dizzy.
When the bars crashed open a moment later, Peter dropped to his knees and immediately averted his gaze to the floor. Over the time he’d been here, he’d learned his lesson all too quickly. If he wanted to live long enough to form a plan, he had to play the game, just not too well either.
That and the bracelet fucking hurt.
Something hit the ground with a loud thump, but Peter didn’t look up until he heard the metal door that led from the hall slam shut.
Something hadn’t hit the floor. It was someone.
Peter rushed over to the body lying across the concrete and felt for a pulse, relieved to find it beating steadily, if not for a slight arrhythmia. He picked the person up and set him down on the unused mattress, stepping away and taking his first look at the man’s face.
Maybe Peter had snapped. Months of being lonely compiled into a stint in a fucking cell somewhere in a Hydra base had all compounded on him, and he was seeing things. That, or he was being Punk’d by God.
Peter started laughing so hard he was afraid he’d wake the sleeping man, even though he knew from experience that the man was drugged to hell. Hydra didn’t even know what they’d just done. There was no possible way. Peter slumped against the wall, ignoring the way the rocks scraped against his back and tore at the thin shirt.
It wasn’t funny, it really wasn’t, but the universe had a really messed-up sense of humor, apparently.
Because for the first time in seven months, he was seeing Tony Stark.