Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

This is new.

Ever since the incident his dreams have all been the same, dark, blurry and blotchy. He’s also always woken up in the same cold, small, and musty smelling room. With a small layer of dust covering the floor along with water dripping down from the ceiling because of a busted pipe.

All he was able to do was just sit there, in that cold, dark, and small room. But as the days went on being in that room no one came, no one passed by, and no one brought food. He was left alone for days, in a dark cold room, starving at one point.

It wasn’t a pleasant dream to be having every single night, obviously. Who would want their thoughts consumed with images of their most traumatic event when trying to sleep? Or having that constant reminder that no one was coming to save you, feeling abandoned. Eventually losing hope that anyone will come and get you out of this place.

Even though it wasn’t particularly something he wanted to constantly be reminded of, a sense of comfort as well as tranquility followed the dream each night. That's why he categorized it as a dream instead of a nightmare.

So, to his surprise tonight when the dream occurred, he sensed danger, hostile people and panic. Making it more of a nightmare than a dream.

This was not how it’s supposed to start.

This time when he woke up, he wasn’t in the small room, but a big room with the lights flickering and a row of windows on the wall to his right. It was always cold in the small room, but this time it was hot, with the air thick, like smoke was being pumped into the room. The biggest difference he saw was that instead of being free to move around he was bound to a metal chair in the middle of the room.

What is happening?

Before, he knew what his dream was showing him, it’s what he remembers doing most of his days in whatever place he was in. However, he has no recollection whatsoever of how he ended up here, strapped and unable to move. That's when the panic quickly washes over him.

Over the last few years, he hasn’t liked his arms and legs being bound to things, being immobile, it makes him feel helpless. Some days it almost feels like the fear just showed up out of the blue, having no memory of where it may have stemmed from. But that just makes this setting even worse, because he is tied down.

He thrashes against the binds, thankfully breaking free from them only after a few yanks. This allows him to calm down a little bit but as he gets down from the chair, stumbling a bit, he senses immediate danger outside his room.

Slowly making his way out of the room he notices how people are running around frantically, going faster with each explosion that occurs. Some are in white lab coats while some are in military gear.

Explosions? When were there ever explosions here?

What really caught his eye was the tall guy standing at the end of the hallway, just staring straight at him. Why this man? Maybe it's because of the way he’s not moving or the creepy way he stares at him.

No.

This is the danger that he was sensing inside the room. And now looking at him face to face he realized that this man was more menacing than he had originally thought. Then the lone man starts stalking towards him like he’s prey that’s been watched for hours.

His senses start attacking him, telling him to run far, and fast. Telling him that if the lone man were to catch him it’s not going to end up good. But where could he go? He starts frantically looking around, trying to find an exit.

Then it catches his eye, the big door at the end of the hallway, behind him. Which so casually had the word EXIT if bright red letters at the very top. He looks back at the lone man and how close he had gotten, luckily everyone running around is slowing him down.

With the “help” from everyone slowing the man down, he makes a run for the exit, hearing the man yell at anyone to “Stop the asset before he escapes!” This just urges him to keep running.

Successfully dodging everyone’s attempts at grabbing him he pushes open the door and is met with the sight of a ginormous hole in the wall, trees that look like they go on forever and something sparkly, white, icy covers the ground past the hole in the wall. The air is also completely different, while inside it’s thick and smokey, outside it's icy cold, and crisp.

He quickly surveys his options, the best one being running down the stairs, then straight through the hole in the wall. He hears people gaining on him so even if he didn’t want to go with this plan he’s out of time.

With the plan set in motion he books it to the stairs, staggering at the end due to tripping on the last few steps. Once he gains balance again, he doesn’t waste a second, sprinting through the hole leading to the outside.

A wave of relief encompasses him, like a weight was lifted off his shoulders.

He’s free.

Looking behind him he sees the lone man stop right before the hole in the wall. Almost like he can’t leave the compound.

Weird.

But before he can question it more the man lifts up a gun, aiming it straight at him. Next thing he knows the gun is being fired and before he can react, he feels something pierce his shoulder.

Not wanting to feel that feeling more, he swiftly turns around, running faster, way faster than he was before. Not trying to think about the pain or the warm liquid flowing down his arm, staining the white, cold sheet under him.

Knowing that eventually he won’t be able to run for long, he hopes by the time he can’t run anymore he’ll be far, far away from that place.

He was kind of hoping that he wouldn’t get burnt out as quickly as he did but very quickly his lungs started to burn, his legs felt numb, and the pain in his shoulder grew immensely.

He’s tired, hungry and extremely thirsty. But to his luck he hears the sound of a river flowing harshly in the distance.

This is just what he needs.

Hearing a river flowing gave him the motivation to keep going, because as soon as he gets there, he’ll be able to rest. With the motivation he moves faster, reaching the riverbank in no time. Though as he staggers towards the river, black dots invade his vision, everything turns blurry, and he feels really lightheaded.

No.

This can’t be happening.

He needs to make it to the river.

He can’t afford to stop now, not when he’s so close.

But everything goes black, and he hits the ground, the sound of the rushing water being the last thing he hears and the pain in his arm being the last thing he feels before everything just stops.

Chapter Text

Unexpected.

That’s what today was.

Everything felt like it was going right, which it was, but it feels so surreal that it doesn’t even feel like reality.

For once, everyone in the Avengers compound woke up without the sound of the loud alarm blaring throughout, signaling that there was a threat. Everything was quiet, maybe too quiet. Though maybe everyone was just so used to being woken up that when they weren’t, they didn’t know what to do.

The sound of birds chirping filled the air, the rustling of the trees was heard through the echoey building, and the sun was shining perfectly through every window insight.

Maybe this is what the life of luxury is like.

Eventually, everyone got out of bed and headed to the main area. Taking note of each other's presence, then headed off to their respective specialties. Tony and Banner go to the lab for research, Natasha, Steve, Sam, and Bucky head to the training room, and Clint heads to the archery course outside.

*In the Lab*

Tony starts sifting through his blueprints and new designs he created for his suit, as well as Peter’s. Speaking of Peter, where is he? Maybe it’s early? No, it’s 11:34 am, he should’ve been here by 8.

He’s never later than 8 when it comes to the days for working on his suit, plus if he wasn’t going to show, he would’ve texted Tony.

Maybe he slept in?

Guess it’s a good thing that even if Tony isn’t at the compound, he still has access to the whole facility.

Not deciding to dwell too much on the fact that Peter isn’t here, just chalking it up to him sleeping in late, he and Banner start working on the Iron Man suit together.

*In the Training Room*

Sam and Bucky are sparring in the ring while Steve is just hitting a punching bag with Natasha, trying to get into the feeling of being alive again. Doing some stretches, with a small jog on the treadmill.

Once Thanos was defeated and they were all able to return the stones, they were able to bring Natasha and Vision back to life. It’s only been about 1 and a half, but being in the land of the living after being in the land of the dead is definitely an experience.

The first few months after Natasha came back, she and Clint didn’t talk that much. Clint still felt like it was his fault she died, even though there was no other way.

Natasha never believed it was his fault. Clint had a family, a wife, and kids to live for, while Natasha had none of that.

Though it is better now than it was then, barely, but barely is still something.

***

*12:38 pm*

“Can I have all the Avengers present in the compound head to the main conference room; there’s something disturbingly important that you all need to see,” Jarvice voices out through the entire compound.

Everyone stops what they are doing. Disturbingly Important? What exactly could that mean?

Not even 5 minutes later, everyone is sitting in chairs in the conference room.

“What’s this about?” Tony was the first to break the silence.

Jarvice answers immediately, “There was an email sent from an anonymous account addressed to every Avenger. The email includes a PDF file of all the experiments that were being conducted in the HYDRA facility located in the Bohemian Forest, Czech Republic. A message was attached saying, ‘Thought you might want to finally see this.’ ”

Yeah, today was definitely unexpected.

Everyone stills, not daring to move a muscle. Shock quickly spread over everyone’s faces. Ever since they had to leave with nothing, they’ve been trying to get the files attached to the information they were given almost a decade ago.

How and where did this person get this information? More importantly, who is this person?

Sam and Bucky look around at everyone else in the room because they have no idea what's going on. Though the mention of HYDRA has Bucky listening very intently.

“What happened almost a decade ago? Why does everyone look slightly uncomfortable?” Sam announced, breaking the tension rising in the room between the original Avengers.

This time, Steve was the one to break the silence, “About a decade or so ago, when we were trying to ambush all the Hydra Facilities, we got a handful of information about this one in the Czech Republic that was experimenting on kids. Though…. when we got there weren’t any children hiding, not in cells, not in rooms, nowhere, almost like they were never actually there.”

“But the freakiest part was that there were rooms within the facility that looked like they were there for children, but the children that would occupy those rooms were nonexistent,” Natasha added to the end of what Steve said.

The mention of what was inside the facility made everyone look a little queasy, almost like they were imagining what it would’ve been like if they were to find kids there.

“Jarvice, open the file and display it on the screen, please.”

“Of course, Mr. Stark.”

The first thing that everyone read was the big words “Project Arthropods.”

“Arthropods? What does that mean?” Sam asked.

“Arthropods are members of the phylum Arthropoda, which is the largest phylum in the animal kingdom. They include insects such as spiders, crustaceans, and centipedes.” Clint blurted out, answering Sam’s question.

“What? I have children who know many weird facts.”

Now that they have that all figured out, they try to read as much as they can, but most of the file is blacked out, only keeping insignificant words that aren’t much help when you’re trying to figure things out. But this is better than what they had before, which was nothing.

The first 100 pages or so were just descriptions of the insects they used for the experiments, as well as how they planned to genetically modify them into… “meta-insects?” It also included the daily tests following newly found information, which was important but not what everyone was exactly looking for.

After about an hour of scrolling through pages upon pages of details, they finally get to something worth reading. It displayed the main guy of the whole facility/ who decided to do the experiments, then directly under were 8 profiles.

The only thing that wasn’t blacked out on the profiles was the DOB, DOD, along with the way they died.

***

They were children.

The people who were being experimented on were actually children, ones who died at a very young age. All of them died before the age of 10, due to such horrific ways as well.

Oh God. This is disgusting and absolutely vile.

Nausea washed over everyone present in that room. How could someone do that to literal children? Mutilating their bodies like that and thinking that everything is perfectly fine. Quickly scrolling to the last profile, they notice something different

The last profile caught everyone’s attention. More importantly, the lack of a DOD.

One kid didn’t die…

A bit of relief, along with curiosity, quickly encompassed the room. They scrolled down to see if anything about the 8th kid wasn’t blacked out. The only thing visible was one word, written in Czech.

Pavoukovec

Out of all 7 people looking through this file, only one person knew what it meant.

Bucky stilled, walking closer to the screen to make sure he was seeing it correctly. He slowly turned towards Tony. “Tony, how did Peter say he got his powers?”