Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: I decided to take a break from my weekly-updating WIPs and, in the process, remembered this story idea existed on my Cloud. So I pulled it up and decided to see what I could do with it months after the fact, and this first chapter was the result. :P
This will be a shorter fic, ~40k. It's heavily inspired by #thatPOWER by will.i.a.m, but the title is of my own making. I shit you not, I'd been debating a title for this fic back when I first came up with it in the shower, and then that one Build-A-Bear slogan popped in my head, "Where best friends are made!" and I knew I had to go with it. You'll see why.
Anyways, not too sure when I'll get the next chapter posted. I want to finish my other ~40k fic and get caught up on my weekly WIPs, so it might be a while.
Until then, I hope you enjoy,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~build-a-spider~
~chapter 1~
They met up at a coffeeshop in Amsterdam.
Steve was the one to get there first, so after Natasha ordered herself a cappuccino and an accompanying croissant, she sat down across from him at the table where he was pretending to do a crossword puzzle. "Your disguises are still awful," she informed him, her voice barely above a whisper, pushing the croissant on the table's surface. He probably needed the calories more than she did. "I thought I taught you better than that."
He was wearing yet another baseball cap, although this time the glasses were more modern and befitting of his face. "No one's recognized me," he murmured, accepting the pastry.
"That you know of," she shot back. "All it takes is one person to recognize you."
"I know." He tore off one of the ends of the croissant. She made no mention of how that was not one of the correct ways to eat it, figuring the point would be moot. It felt like he was going to change the subject. "How's your sister?"
She was right. "As well as anybody can be when they've been brainwashed for years and without free will. How's Barnes?"
It was easier, for her to call him that. Bucky was the name that Steve called him, a pseudonym earned by years of friendship and borderline brotherhood. James felt too personal, because that was his name, the one which had been his before HYDRA had taken it. And she was not calling him Солдат, not when it was the name the scientists had given him and she'd been taught to call him, not when he was no longer under their control and she was no longer the girl from the Red Room with no place in the world.
She had a place in the world. She had a family – two of them, to be precise.
Steve offered her a tired smile. "The same, but worse. T'Challa's sister, Princess Shuri, wanted to put him back in the ice until she has a better idea of what's going on inside his brain. He agreed to it."
She winced. "I'm sorry, Steve."
"Don't be. He's getting the help he needs now." A dark look came over his face. "Sam, Wanda, Clint, and Scott, on the other hand..."
He didn't need to finish his sentence.
They both knew what was going on with them, as much as they were able to.
Natasha took a sip of her coffee. "I've acquired a quinjet with the help of an acquaintance."
One of the corners of his mouth twitched. "How many charges are you looking to rack up, Nat?"
"No more than you." She set her cup back down on the table. "They can't stay there, you know that. I thought you would be all for getting them out."
"Oh, I am." She knew he was; she was only joking. He knew that, too, the fond cast to his eyes giving him away. But there was something else there as well, something she knew what to place. Reluctance, because he thought he had some other duty to fulfill first. "How would you feel about going on another mission first?"
She was right, again.
"I just took out the man who made me what I am and infiltrated almost all of the governments in the entire world," she deadpanned. "What's the mission?"
Steve opened up his bag, a brown leather satchel sitting on the chair next to him. He pulled out a black folder also made of leather with what looked to be a Wakandan inscription on the lower right corner, placing it in front of her and opening it up. To her surprise, there weren't very many papers contained within it. Only a few. "While I was with Bucky in Wakanda, I asked him if there were any more HYDRA bases that we should take a look at, any that we missed in case there were any more of them crawling around. He said there was one, in Belarus."
She turned the folder around so she could get a proper look at it. Her eyebrows furrowed some in concentration. "I thought we got them all."
"I thought we did, too." He sounded chagrined. "According to him, he went to this one once or twice between 1998 and 2001. He heard from his...handlers that it was decommissioned shortly before the data dump, and stricken from all records. That's why it wasn't there. HYDRA wanted to pretend like it didn't exist."
"Why?" She frowned. "What could be so bad about it?"
"I don't know. Bucky doesn't, either. That's why I wanted to check it out." He paused. "Are you up for it?"
She glanced up at him, a hint of a smile etching on her features. "The faster we do this, the faster we can get the others," she agreed. "Let's go to Belarus."
They were in the air within the next two hours. She was sitting in the pilot's chair, him in the co-pilots. In front of them, past the windshield, was an expanse of clouds. There weren't many, but there were some. Below them was Germany, passing by swiftly.
Neither of them spoke for a while. Once upon a time, back when their team had still been a (family) team, they'd gotten used to spending hours in the quinjet at a time while flying to and from missions. Of sitting next to each other in companionable silence. It was when Thor and Bruce had still been around and not...wherever they were now.
Eventually, though, Steve cleared his throat. "Have you heard from Tony?"
She almost snorted. "No. You know what we did to him."
She did not mean to make him feel bad. It was merely a statement of fact. Tony...was not a trusting person. Like her, he never had been. He'd put a monumental amount of trust in her and the rest of the Avengers in letting them live in the Tower, and then in the Compound he'd had built specifically for them. He'd confided in all of them, spent time which he often did not freely give with all of them. He'd even helped Wanda adjust to life in the United States, even though she'd messed with his mind just like she had the rest of theirs and tricked him into creating Ultron.
And she and Steve had betrayed that trust.
Steve should have told Tony about Barnes killing his parents. But, to her discredit, she should've realized he was never going to. Barnes was his best friend, his brother in all but blood. She should've taken the responsibility away from him and done it herself. She should've pushed harder to get them all to sign the Accords, so they could remain a team and Barnes could get the pardoning that he deserved.
Maybe if she had, none of this would have happened.
Then again, if she had, there was a chance she wouldn't have gotten to save Yelena, either.
Steve sighed, breaking her out of her reverie. "I didn't want to hurt him. But I also didn't want him hurting Bucky for something he'd been forced to do," he admitted. "I figured there would eventually be a good time to tell him. I forget that there's no such thing."
"We're all human," she reminded him. "Even you, Steve. We can't change the past."
"Only the future," he continued her train of thought. "Yeah. I understand if he never forgives me after all of this. I only hope he forgives the rest of you."
She scoffed. "I'm as guilty of a party as you are."
"No, you're not."
"I was there when we found out Barnes killed his parents."
"But he wasn't your friend; he's mine."
To that, she technically couldn't argue.
Only because Barnes had never been her friend. No, simply the person who had taught her some of her best fighting moves, how to spar with a person who was stronger and faster than almost any other man alive, how to be unbreakable and made out of marble.
As they got closer to their destination, the topic of their conversation changed. Natasha told him about Yelena, Alexei and Melina, and Dreykov. She didn't tell him everything, because the only person who was allowed to know every piece of her soul was Clint, but he was entertained by what she divulged. He liked hearing about her sister, who was so much spunkier and sassier than she; and that was fine, because Natasha liked talking about her more than herself, too.
When they got to the coordinates, she landed the quinjet. For as far as the eye could see, there wasn't anything around. Only fields which looked like they hadn't been tended to by anyone in years...and a small barn.
"Think that's the entrance?" she asked Steve.
"It has to be," he said. "Come on, let's go."
They approached the barn slowly and warily, just in case. Steve didn't have his shield, having left it with Tony in Siberia (which Natasha did not approve of, but she would worry about that at another time). Indeed, he was no longer wearing the Captain America suit at all. Princess Shuri, apparently, had made him a new one. It wasn't made out of vibranium, but it was made of harder material than previous iterations, with a darker color scheme and a giant black star in the middle of his chest. She wasn't sure if she cared for it, but this too she would tease him for later.
Because right now, she was clutching a gun in her hands. She would fire it, too, without another thought.
Since she was the one with the more powerful weapon, she went first. She kicked open the main door to the barn. There was no one inside, but it did seem like someone had been in it recently. There was hay scattered about its floor, a strange, web-like material hanging from the rafters. Eyeing the latter warily, she stepped around it to where the hay was concentrated in a barely discernible greater amount than anywhere else. She kicked it around, and both heard and felt her foot hit something harder than the ground. "Steve."
Walking over, he helped her scatter the rest of the hay. They were standing on top of a hatch door. "Think you can lift it?"
"Yeah. Might wanna step back."
She hopped away from the door. With only a little difficulty, which was actually saying a lot due to his strength, he was able to open the door. Beneath it was a set of stairs, leading down into darkness. "Ladies first."
"How charming," she commented dryly.
She did go down first. Thanks to her own enhancements, the ones given to her at the same time the Red Room had taken out her reproductive organs, her eyesight adjusted quickly. The staircase led to a room, a bunker, made of thick metal walls. There was another hatch door, this one vertical and with a wheel to open it, however next to it there was a keypad. From which a red light was blinking.
Alarm bells instantly went off in her mind.
Quietly snapping her fingers to attract Steve's attention as he followed after her, she tilted her head towards the blinking light. Lowering her free hand down to her thigh, she tapped the back of it, asking him if he thought the light was part of a camera. It was too dark for her to be certain either way.
He hesitated, only answering her when he was right behind her. Touching the same spot on her thigh, he tapped it twice, which meant "no."
Of course, that didn't out-rule the possibility of some sort of audio feed.
Natasha inched closer to the keypad. There were no numbers on it, which made the possibility of an audio feed more likely. Briefly glancing back at Steve, she shared a look with him, before she said softly into the dark, "Heil HYDRA."
The light turned blue, but no sound of the door unlocking was heard.
Then:
"Пароль?"
The voice was robotic, sounding like it came from a box that had seen better days.
Steve shuffled his feet. "Nat – "
She raised a finger to her lips at the same time the voice repeated, "Пароль?"
She had to think. After she had dumped all of the SHIELD files, and by extension (almost) all of the HYDRA ones, she, Tony, and Clint had spent hours pouring over the latter ones. So had the rest of the team, plus Hill, but the three of them specifically had spent the most time on it. She and Clint had thought they'd had a duty to do it, and Tony had a memory better than anyone she knew. Between them, they'd been able to go over hundreds of files, if not thousands.
Suddenly, an idea struck her. She mouthed to Steve, "When was this base created again?"
He shrugged, before mouthing back, "1960's, maybe?"
"Ренегат," she said out loud. "Цетус. Альфа. Боец. Мать. Клятва."
The light turned green. A clicking noise was heard.
"How did you know that?" Steve questioned.
She huffed. "HYDRA didn't strike this base completely from the records. There was one password from the bases Tony, Clint, and I could never figure out where it went."
"Lucky for us?"
"Maybe," she allowed.
He twisted and pulled the second hatch door open. On the other side of it was a hallway, large enough that they could walk side-by-side in it easily, which they did. As they walked, the lights in the hallway came on, one at a time. Or so most of them did. A few of them did not, presumably due to the past few years of disuse.
She was not the only one to notice that, just like in the barn, the web-like material was hanging from the walls of the hallway. "What do you think those are made of?" Steve whispered to her. "Or what do you think made them?"
Natasha felt her mouth set into a hard line. "Nothing good."
There was no spider alive that would be able to make webs like that, as spider silk was what they looked to be composed of. The webs were at least half of an inch in diameter, with some strands thicker than others.
Was the reason why the HYDRA base had been abandoned because of a genetic experiment gone wrong? That would not bode well for them. Granted, giant spiders would not be the strangest thing she had ever fought, but –
The hallway emptied out into a large room, almost like a small warehouse. The ceiling was of the same height, and like the walls and ceiling, of the same concrete as the hallway. There was a monitoring station, which had several screens, but none of them looked to be active. Two other hallways fed into the room, probably leading to the rest of the base.
"What do you want to do?" she inquired. "Explore first, or check to see if the computers work?"
"I seem to recall the last computer we came across like this had originally been a man."
"Good point."
Thus, the computer was first. Natasha pressed a key, not exactly caring of which one. They watched as several of the computer screens fluttered to life, green text appearing on otherwise black backgrounds. It was code.
Something Steve was wonderfully inept at, then.
He grimaced. "What does that say?"
"I'm not sure." She reached out with her free hand to ghost her fingers along the nearest screen. It'd been a while since she'd looked at code. It looked like it was probably C; still, she wanted to be –
Abruptly, she heard a rustling noise, coming from behind them.
She spun around, aiming the gun and clicking it, looking for the source of the sound.
After a moment, she came to the conclusion there was nothing.
She blew a lock of blonde hair out of her face. "Did you see what that was?"
Steve shook his head. "No. I heard it, though."
An uneasy feeling settled into her stomach, something which rarely ever happened.
But they definitely weren't alone in this base.
Resorting back to Morse code, this time she blinked to Steve her question, asking if he felt like exploring the base first. His eyes darted over to the computer, but he nodded anyways. He must've agreed with her it was unlikely there was another version of Zola hiding inside its machinery.
They started through the hallway to the right. The base was smaller than almost all of the other bases they'd destroyed, seemingly having operated on a skeleton crew. There were quarters for the superior of the base, along with a handful of guards and what looked to be a scientist or two. There was a small mess hall, a lab, a gym with appropriate equipment, a pool which looked to have been emptied out years ago. There additionally seemed to be another room set aside for quarters closer to the lab. It was barren, containing only a mattress with a comforter that had been ripped in a few places and a well-worn pillow.
Natasha did not like what the makeshift bed probably meant. She did not like how it was the only room to be so scarce, because every other room in the base appeared to have been hastily abandoned by the HYDRA scientists. There'd been books in some of the quarters, artifacts of life. They shouldn't have been there, because HYDRA would never leave behind everything like this, and yet they seemingly had all the same.
"Do you hear anything?" she said to Steve.
He concentrated. "No. Not besides us and the ventilation."
"No heartbeats?"
"Not that I can detect."
"Are you sure?"
"Nat."
It turned out the hallway wrapped around the main room, so after they exited the bare quarters and walked past a couple more rooms they checked out and saw nothing in, they were back where they started. The other person in the base was nowhere in sight, however she could practically feel them there. It wasn't like eyes boring into her skull, as she had an inkling they were back in hallway or one of the rooms where they couldn't see them or the vice versa, more like...
She knew they were being listened to.
This presented a problem.
They'd come here under the assumptions the base was abandoned, yet that was obviously not the case. The hay, the webs, the person behind both of those things.
They had no idea why the person was here, why they had presumably been left by HYDRA. The scientists would not simply leave a base like this for no reason. This person had to be dangerous, volatile, even though they hadn't shown their face yet. They were probably spying on her and Steve in the same way she spied on people out in public, listening for tells, what they were planning.
She walked back over to the computers, pressing a button to bring them to life. With her one hand, she began to type.
"Nat – " Steve began.
Natasha shut him up by handing him her gun, so she would have both hands free. She gestured for him to turn around, keep watch, and most importantly, keep quiet. He did, albeit with some reluctance.
She worked on finding what she could. Presumably, they did not have much time. Since the person knew they knew they were there, it would probably only be minutes until they came to investigate their verbal silence, or the sound of the clacking of keys. She had to give them as much of an edge as possible.
She pulled up all of the files the computers had on their hard drives efficiently. A good portion of them dated back to the same day in the 1970's, presumably when they'd transferred over to the C language and put in all of the physical files up to that point, of which there were no remnants of. It looked like there had been a small number of projects to be housed in the facility over the years: the Winter Soldier had spent some time here not long after the construction of the bunker had been completed in 1962 on top of the two times between 1998-2001. After him there was one project called Angel, listed as "failed." Another called Ursa Major, failed. Gadyuka, Nerys, Magna, Koroleva – all failed.
Then there was the one at the bottom of the list. Project Arachne.
It was not listed as failed.
She clicked on it.
The files which were brought up were eerily reminiscent of SHIELD's, in that way all of HYDRA's were ever since the infiltration. They were typed in Russian, the Cyrillic clean and crisp. The more recent files were first to show up, as they went back in date. The first page of the first file depicted two pictures of the subject, one similar to a mugshot and the other full-length in body.
"Jesus Christ," Steve muttered.
Natasha would've told him to shut up, but...she was prone to agree with him.
The pictures were of a boy, twelve years in age at the most. He had short brown hair in loose curls, dark brown eyes. He was dressed in an all-black outfit in each picture, which looked to be made of something lightweight and durable.
But that was not what attracted their attention.
In the full-body picture, the boy's arms...he'd rolled up the sleeves of the outfit to halfway between his elbows and shoulders. It revealed that his arms, up until an inch or two below the sleeves, were made of...metal. They were composed of the same metal as Barnes' implant, titanium, only without any Soviet Red stars.
HYDRA had been conducting human experiments on a child.
The Red Room had done similar things, to be fair. She would not say she, Yelena, or any of the other Widows were much better in that regard. But the Red Room never would have cut off limbs for no reason, replacing them with prostheses. Because that was what had to have happened...right? She doubted the Nazis would have taken in a disabled child to experiment on, or kept him if he'd sustained serious injuries. They would want only the best of the best.
She turned the pages for more information. There were mission reports, health reports. From these, she learned the boy was enhanced in a way similar to Steve, having been bitten by a radioactive spider developed by HYDRA, and that his name was Pyotr. It was used interchangeably with Arachne and the title of Asset, the second much like Barnes. He'd done a variety of things they'd heard only whispers about, disrupting SHIELD missions before the dump when the agents got too close to discovering the truth, assassinating the king of Latveria, killing other people HYDRA deemed to be a threat, gathering intel on different world governments, etcetera, etcetera. He was a force to be reckoned with, despite his young age.
Just like Madame B. had said she'd been.
Something swirled deep in her gut: disgust. If whatever had happened here hadn't happened and the files of this place hadn't been stricken from the record, they could've saved this kid, Pyotr, like they had Wanda (and almost had Pietro). He was probably the one in this facility, hiding from them – she hoped he was the one in this facility, hiding from them. Because the alternative was that he had been killed, and judging by the date of the most recent file, he would've been no older than twelve.
Still, it wasn't like the alternative was much better. If he was the one in here with them, he'd been stuck here since 2014. It was 2016 now. Two years. That was a long time for a child to be left completely on their own, super soldier or not. She didn't want to imagine how lonely he must've been in the Belarusian winters when it was too cold to go outside, how he must've wished at times for HYDRA to return, for even if they experimented on him, they still would've been companions in an otherwise empty, desolate environment.
Natasha dug deeper. She ignored files she knew she shouldn't've, paid attention to ones she knew she should've ignored. She wasn't capable of thinking rationally. The truth was hard to ignore. It felt like she, the Avengers as a whole, had failed this child.
Steve tensed next to her. "Nat..."
The dates went back and back. 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 –
"Nat."
– 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000.
Here was the oldest file.
She started to read its contents.
"Nat."
. . .
. . .
And then, just like that, her world changed forever:
DATE: 31/12/2000
SUMMARY: Egg formed from DNA of both Koroleva (Mary Fitzpatrick) and Black Widow asset (Natalia Alianova Romanova) has been successfully fertilized using the sperm of Tony Stark (Anthony Edward Stark), sample collected by Koroleva in New York City on 10/11/2000. Embryo will be placed in Koroleva on 05/01/2001, if hatching is successful. If embryo comes to term, Koroleva will raise the child at the Belarus base for six years. Koroleva will then be terminated and listed as a "failed project."
It is the hope that the combination of genetic material from both Koroleva and the Black Widow asset will be more stable than Koroleva's alone, due to the unexpected side effect of her enhanced serum. Since attempts to conceive a child with Koroleva and the Soldier as the parents failed due to other unknown reasons, it is additionally the hope that Stark's DNA will be successful instead, as identified by being a person with prime genetic structure.
If the embryo does not come to term, Koroleva is to be terminated and listed as a "failed project." The Belarus base will then be given new candidate to work with, under a new project name.
Neither Black Widow asset nor Stark are to know about the existence of the project, regardless of viability. Files of this project will be stricken from the overall HYDRA record, with only copies physical or digital being stored at the Belarus base. Black Widow asset is a particular risk if existence of the project is discovered. As reported by the Red Room leader Dreykov, she has exhibited tendencies towards familial attachments in the past, more so than other Black Widows.
If embryo comes to term, the project will be remained from Project Leifr to Project Arachne. SHIELD scientist Richard Parker, having been recruited the same time Koroleva was recaptured, will be in charge of creating –
She had a son.
She, Natasha Romanoff, despite no longer possessing the organs for it, had a son. Apparently, she'd had one for almost as long as the time since her graduation ceremony, but she'd never known about him. She'd never felt like there was a piece of her that existed out there, kept a secret from the entire world in the same way she kept an oath.
And he was Tony's son, too.
(And the son of this Mary Fitzpatrick, although she had no idea who that was or how combining their DNA had worked.)
Their son, who had been created, and raised, by HYDRA.
She was glad then that she'd handed Steve her gun. Her hands were beginning to shake as she shuddered in a gasp, stumbling back, nearly tripping over her own two feet as Steve wrapped an arm around her waist, keeping her steady. She'd never felt this way before. Shocked. Shook to her very core. Finding out HYDRA had been part of SHIELD all along, that Dreykov had been alive and the Red Room not destroyed, had absolutely nothing on this.
From behind her, she heard the clicking of a gun.
In Steve's arms, Natasha spun around. The person in here with them was standing in front of them, with a gun pointed at her head. And it was Pyotr. Her son. He was older than the last picture of him that was taken, taller. His skin was pale, presumably from the two years spent mostly underground and without sun. His metal hands were wrapped around the gun, one of his fingers poised to pull the trigger.
But his eyes were different.
The right one was still its original dark brown, the same color as Tony's, she realized with a jolt, because indeed now that she was looking for it, he was almost a spitting image of his father. But his left eye was a cool, crisp electric blue. Its pupil was wider than his right, and that was how she came to the conclusion it wasn't a pupil at all. His left eye wasn't an eye. It was a prosthesis.
She felt like she was going to be sick. The nausea which swept through her was so visceral, it almost triggered her nonexistent gag reflex.
"Pyotr," Natasha said, forcing her tongue to work. "That is your name, right? Pyotr?"
It was the only thing she could say, all other words failing her.
"What?" Steve asked.
At the same time, Pyotr stiffened. His eyes, both the real and the fake, widened fractionally as he looked between her and Steve, the blonde keeping the gun in his hand pointed away from the kid. Pyotr did not appear to recognize either of them, confusion flitting across his face in a way which was eerily reminiscent of Yelena's. It was the expression of somebody who had somehow retained their innocence in spite of everything they had done, all the people they'd killed.
And then his face hardened, his grip on his gun tightened, and he said the phrase which caught her completely off guard (like she wasn't already). It was the same phrase she'd told Clint all those years ago back in 2001, not 2006, when they'd met for the first time. When she'd still thought Dreykov's monster was all she ever could be, and not a daughter, a sister, a friend, a lover, a mother:
"Не заставляй меня убивать тебя."
Word Count: 5,034
