Natasha sat inside the black car with Yelena and watched as the building went up in flames. The building that Dreykov was in, along with his little daughter who was completely oblivious to what her father had done.
Who loved her father with her whole being...
Who believed her father, was just her father and not a kidnapping monster...
Who was now dead, because Natasha wanted to find her son...
She closed her eyes and shakily exhaled. There has been a lot of kills over time that she has felt guilt for, especially since she had her son but this one, where she willingly killed an innocent girl because she wanted to find Pyotr...
The guilt felt like it was drowning her, like she was tied to an anchor and she was thrown overboard to sink into the bottomless pit which was the ocean, letting the water soak into her lungs and suffocate her.
Luckily, her sister was there to pull her back to the surface...
"You did what needed to be done Natasha." She said, resting her hand on her sisters shoulder, "No one can fault you for wanting your son back."
Natasha swallowed, "I sometimes wonder if he actually knew what I did, would he still love me?" She admitted to her sister, whispering so no one else could hear her confession, even if no one else was around.
Yelena frowned, "I think, that you are his mother, and he'd love you no matter what you did, because you loved him when he needed you." She said, her eyes growing a little softer at her sisters words.
Natasha scoffed, "I wish I could be as sure as you."
"Don't worry, once we find him, you'll see for yourself." Yelena smirked which made the older woman roll her eyes slightly.
"Come on, let's get out of here and over to the rendezvous." Natasha said as she started the car and pulled out of the parking spot.
When Clint called in and asked if the mission was complete, she said yes, not telling any of them about who else was in that building with Dreykov.
She didn't need their judgment at the moment, she needed their help to find her son and she'd do whatever it took to find him.
No matter how many secrets she had to keep...
————
Two guards stood on either side of Pyotr as he was escorted down a dark corridor. The place to the boy looked abandoned, like no one had lived in it for a very long time but something about the place was just, wrong. Like something very bad had happened here and he could feel it in the air.
Pyotr doesn't think he has ever been as scared as he was in this one moment, being walked down a dark, dreary hallway by four very scary looking men with masks on their faces and matching symbols on their shoulders.
He just wanted his мама...
After another minute of walking down the hallways to the old building, they came to a doorway that was different from the others, for it had a nameplate towards the top but the name wasn't visible anymore, having been so old the name faded a while ago.
One of the guards opened the door while another shoved him through before they shut it right behind him, trapping him inside with whoever was in the room.
Pyotr's eyes roamed to the front of the room where he could see an old dusty desk but that wasn't what caught his attention.
There was a man sitting down at the desk, his calculating blue eyes roaming across the kid's form with a tilted head but Pyotr was more worried about the second man in the room.
To the right of the desk, stood a man that easily reached six feet in height. His equally blue eyes stared through the young boy like he wasn't even there though.
He stood straight up, no slouch in his stance whatsoever but the main thing that caught the kid's attention was his left arm.
It was fully metal...
"Welcome Spider, to your new home." The man behind the desk said in a monotone voice.
"W-what?" Pyotr muttered with fear behind both his gaze and his words.
"Your home is gone, the people there are now dead. No one is left who wants you and with their death, means the deal we had has changed. You will now stay with us for the rest of your life. You will train, you will kill, you will become the best soldier this world has ever seen." The man said.
"N-no, you're lying! My mama is still out there, she'll come get me!!" Pyotr screamed at the lying man in front of him, not believing that his mother was gone.
She couldn't be, she was his mother, nothing could stop her.
The man only clicked his tongue at the boy, "Such an attitude, that won't be a problem very soon though. It matters not if you believe me, I don't need you to. I only need your cooperation. You will train with the soldier here, he will tech you everything you need to know. But first, my science team will have to keep you in their...medical facility to try and unlock all your powers."
"No!! I want my mama! I don't want to stay here!!"
"Don't you wish to know who your father is? Because I know exactly who that is..." The man wasn't even allowed to finish before the kid cut him off and glared at him which was an exact replica of his mothers.
"No!! I don't want my father, I don't know him! I want Mama!!"
The man glared back at him, "I'm sorry, that's no longer an option." Without another word spoken, the guards who were still outside the room walked through the door and one of them grabbed the kid and started to haul him out the door.
Pyotr tried his hardest to break free, kicking and screaming and trying to get out of the man's grasp but it was no use, he was only a five year old trying to fight against grown men.
He never stood a chance...
The last thing he saw before the door slammed closed was the glare from the man behind the desk and the blank stare from the soldier on the right...
————
A year later...
October 13th, 2007
Pyotr stood straight up with the Solider standing right next to him, waiting in an empty room for when their superiors entered.
This past year has been a giant blur for the kid. After those first agonizing three weeks strapped to a table and experimented on, he was instantly thrown into training with the Solider. Learning everything from how to handle weapons, how to lie, to see how others are lying and even hand to hand combat.
Now that all his powers have been unlocked for him due to all those experiments after he had got bitten by that spider his body could handle anything that they threw at him. He was more durable than the others, he was stronger than even the Solider himself, he could stick to surfaces, had enhanced sight, smell and hearing which was definitely not fun at certain times and he knew when he was in danger with his sixth sense.
Because apparently the only thing that could unlock his powers was another one of their experiments which happened to be a radioactive spider, the arachnid having escaped and bit him the last day of the second week in that lab.
Which happened to change his DNA and made him have freaky spider powers.
His handler was saying he was molding into the perfect obedient little Solider.
Little did his handler know though, that Pyotr never gave up hope that his mother was still out there, somewhere, looking for him.
He'd do anything to see his mother again, even if that meant doing whatever these people wanted him to do.
He wanted his mama back, and this was the only way to try and get her back...
He had to play the part...
The kid was knocked out of his head when the door creaked open and in came his handler along with two guards who were carrying a person with a black bag over their head.
The two guards forced the person onto her knees and ripped the bag off to show the face of a young woman who couldn't have been older than twenty years old.
Pyotr didn't let it show across his face, but internally he was screaming and panicking. He didn't like the look of this one bit, not at all.
He didn't want to hurt anyone...
The red puffy eyes of the young woman looked up and made eye contact with the child who was standing as stiff as the Solider next to him. Her eyes widened in shock and fear before she tried to speak but she didn't even get a noise out of her mouth before the guard smacked her and shut her up.
His handler walked over to him with a pistol in his hands, "Spider, take this, and complete your final test." He said in Russian, the only language he has ever spoken in the whole year he's been here.
Pyotr, not The Spider, looked at the pistol which was outstretched towards him and he hesitated. He didn't want to, he knew what the weapon was used for, and he didn't want to hurt this young lady.
His handler saw this though and glared down at him, shoving the gun into his hands and making the boy grasp the handle, "You will do as I say, or I will kill her in front of you. No matter what, she will die. So either I kill her slowly and painfully, or you can do so." He offered before stepping away from Pyotr, leaving the kid staring into the scared honey brown eyes of the young woman.
"It's okay, it's okay honey. It's not your fault." She smiled sadly at the boy, speaking in perfect Russian but that's not what made the boy freeze for half a second.
Her accent, how she spoke it reminded him so much of his mother. Her soothing Russian voice who would sing him to sleep when he couldn't fall asleep, the voice which would comfort him when he was sacred.
He missed her so much...
He gulped once before he pointed the gun at the woman's head, the only sign that he wasn't okay was the slight sway to his hands as he stared blankly at the woman.
But she didn't seem to mind, offering him one last smile, "It's okay, it's okay." She kept repeating but Pyotr didn't hear her words, too focused on stopping his hands from shaking.
A second later, and with one last smile, the only sound in the room was the echo of the bullet leaving the chamber and the thumb of a body hitting the ground.
The very first of many kills...
A few hours later, Pyotr sat in his room, which was really just the soldier's and his cell, staring blankly at the wall in front of him with a few tears slipping down his face.
He just killed someome.
He just killed, someone...
What would his mother think of him?
He heard as the door to the room opened but he paid it no mind as he continued to stare at the wall, he only acknowledged there was someone else in the room with him when there was suddenly a weight next to him on the cot.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the Solider was staring at the same wall he was but there was something in his gaze that unsettled the boy.
In the full year since he has known the soldier, he has never seen that look on the man's face. He has seen split seconds where emotions flashed behind his gaze but this was different.
It looked like he was actually sitting next to him, and not just staring off into space like he usually did.
After a couple more minutes of silence, surprisingly the soldier spoke up.
"What's your name kid?" He asked in perfect Russian but Pyotr could tell that it wasn't his native tongue. He spoke barely above a whisper but Pyotr could hear him, enhanced senses and all.
"Pyotr." He whispered back.
After a second of silence, he spoke again, "Peter. That's what your name means, yeah?" He asked.
The kid shrugged, "Mama named me. She used to say that it meant I was her rock, that I helped ground her."
"She sounds smart."
"She was, the smartest I ever knew." She said but then remembered the man's other question before, "But...to answer your question, If you mean my name translates to Peter in English, then yeah, I know."
The soldier nodded his head, "Can I call you that? I'm American, it's easier for me."
Pyotr nodded his head, "Sure, what's your name?"
The soldier didn't speak for a moment, his eyebrows furrowed in thought before he answered the boy, "James, my name is James...I-I think."
"You think?" Pyotr tilted his head and turned a little bit to look at James.
The man grimaced, "I Uh, have trouble remembering things sometimes. They put me into this...this machine that takes away the memories. It was only today where the effects started to...wear off again, during your..." He trailed off, knowing he didn't need or should continue with that sentence.
"What happens if they find out?" Pyotr asked, ignoring the feeling of guilt that surged through his body at the reminder of what he did.
"They put me back in the machine." He said simply
"Does it hurt?"
James hesitated for a second before answering, "No, it just takes my memories."
"I don't want to forget my mama."
James looked to his left and slightly smiled down at the kid, "Don't worry, I'll make sure you won't."
And from that conversation, birthed a friendship built on pain, suffering and blood...
A friendship that would not last...
————
Three years later...
October 15th, 2010
Pyotr stared ahead of him as his handler brought in the gagged and confused man. In his nine years of life, he has never done something as difficult as what he was going to be asked to do now.
Even killing someone was better than what they forced him to do in situations like this.
Having to extend his victims pain for information, just to kill him anyways at the end of it no matter what.
All his interrogations ended that way, with the person dead, bleeding out in a pool of his or her own blood.
And there was nothing he could do to change that...
"Spider, do what you do best." His handler said, stepping aside and letting the young boy have at it.
He made sure that all emotions were hidden from his eyes as he slowly walked around the tied up man, like a predator and his prey, stalking, ready to pounce at any given moment.
He had a part to play...
Within three minutes, the man was bleeding profusely from multiple lacerations across his face and torso, his head hanging down with his chin resting on his upper chest as he was mumbling nonsense in multiple languages but Peter acted like he didn't care.
He got the information, that's all he needed...
His handler nodded to him once, signaling Pyotr to end it so he grabbed the pistol one of the guards had in his hands and shot the man once in the head, ending his life before handing the weapon back to the guard.
"Excellent work Spider, you're dismissed." His handler said so Pyotr turned around to go out the door but the man called out to him one more time so the boy gave his full attention to the older man.
"Before I forget, you will be working alone from now on. The Solider was needed elsewhere and you have proven yourself capable enough to handle everything we need here, you may go now." He waved off like what he said wasn't just a big deal.
But Pyotr, oh he was furious. He was sad, heartbroken but most of all, that one sentence caused the coldness inside his chest to start clawing at him, trying to escape from the cage he trapped it in three years ago when he met the Solider, James for the first time.
All those times James would help patch up a particularly nasty wound that he had gotten in training, where he'd give him a portion of his own food to try and help the kid with his enhanced metabolism or even the small things like offering the boy his blanket when he had gotten too cold during the winter nights.
James had been the one constant in the past three years of his life, but now that he was gone he didn't know what he was gonna do.
The one person since his mother who seemed to care about Pyotr and not the Spider...
Was now gone, and probably wasn't ever coming back...
Without even realizing it, he was being led to his cell by a guard that he didn't recognize, but he knew she had been there for at least two years, having seen her around a couple times since meeting James.
When they got to his cell and she unlocked the door for him he walked in and sat down on his cot staring blankly at the other one in the room, the one which used to belong to James.
He could feel the loneliness slowly starting to creep up his spine, the coldness threatening to consume him but he couldn't really get himself to care at the moment.
He was alone in this hellhole again, and he had no idea what he was going to do about it.
He was so busy that he didn't realize the woman was still standing in the doorway watching as the boy stared off into space, completely ignoring everything around him.
The middle aged woman silently sighed to herself before closing the door behind her and walking down the hall towards her quarters.
She hated watching the boy slowly become someone he wasn't, like every little thing he did here was slowly consuming everything in his being.
She's been here for two whole years and she was so close to completing her plan to break them out, so close it almost physically hurt her.
She couldn't handle watching her grandson in so much pain anymore...
She knew she'd have to act soon though if they both wanted to make it out of this alive and have any chance of seeing the outside world again.
She had failed to protect her daughters from going through that pain, so she'd make sure her grandson got out of this type of life like his mother and aunt did even if it was the last thing she did.
Now the only thing missing was figuring out how she'd actually get the signal out to Alexei...
———
California
Shield Facility
Natasha sighed softly as she sat down on her couch in her quarters within the base. It had been a long day of working as Stark's innocent little assistant.
She hated the job, but it needed to be done and Yelena and her were the ones who grabbed the short straw in the cup but Yelena had weaseled her way out of the job.
Leaving it all to Natasha.
Lucky her...
Natasha closed her eyes and laid her head back on her couch, wanting just a second of solace after an annoying day of dealing with stuck up business men in suits.
But her mind quickly traveled to way more depressing thoughts, thoughts that she'd rather wish wouldn't come up until she was a hundred percent alone.
Her son, her little Pyotr who would've been already nine years old was still missing and it seemed that she was no closer to seeing her son again then she was back then when she first joined Shield.
He's been missing for almost five years and she hated how she was starting to lose hope of ever seeing her son again.
She felt so bad admitting it to herself, but she was a realistic person by nature, she knew what the possibilities were of ever seeing her son again but a small fraction of her brain, still silently hoped that he was out there, alive and hopefully living a good life.
But even she knew that was a stretch.
Ever since joining, Fury has upheld his side of their little deal and made a team consisted of only a handful of people who looked for her son, two of those members being Mary and Richard Parker, along with Maria Hill, Phil Coulson, Clint Barton, Yelena and herself.
Surprisingly, it was Mary who was put in the field the most searching for any echos, any whispers she could find of the long lost son of the Black Widow anywhere in the world.
Natasha was forever in the woman's debt for what she was doing for her...
She did find a tip about a year ago coming from over in Russia about a man and a young boy seen together. Apparently Mary had heard it from someone who crossed Hydra and the man was scared shitless, not wanting to invoke the wrath of the organization any more then he already did.
That piece of information, did not make Natasha feel any better about finding her son though...
She was broken out of her thoughts when her sister walked through her door and sat down next to her with an exaggerated sigh causing Natasha's lips to twitch into a small smile.
"Ughhh, you would not believe the day I just had. Why do people have to be sooooo annoying?" Yelena said which made her sister snort in amusement.
"What happened now?"
"So get this, I was in this class yeah? Teaching these noobies about how to be a better spy and this asshole had the audacity to hit on me, me? Like he had any chance with me to begin with." Her sister rolled her eyes which made Natasha smirk.
"I'm sure you showed him didn't you?"
Yelena smirked right back, "Damn right. Took his wrist and broke it. You should've seen his face, priceless."
Natasha scoffed and opened one of her eyes to stare at her sister, "You can't just break anyones wrist who flirts with you."
Yelena pouted, "But it's so fuuunn."
Natasha shook her head before closing her eyes again and letting her thoughts from before cloud her head, but lucky for her, Yelena saw this and didn't allow it to happen.
"Hey, what's the matter?" She asked with a worried frown across her face.
Natasha gulped, "It's been five years." She said and Yelena could hear how broken her sister's voice sounded which made her heart constrict for the pain her sister was experiencing.
"Hey, none of that. We'll find him, I promise you I won't stop looking. I'll be a hundred and I still wouldn't stop looking for my nephew." She said with a soft smile, causing the older sibling to smile back at her sister.
"Thank you." She said.
Yelena shrugged, "Of course, what's family for if you can't count on them to help."
"Yeah well, if we could get into contact with Ma and Pa this would be a whole lot easier." Natasha scoffed, annoyed that the two of them still couldn't get into contact with Melina and Alexei.
Two years ago, they got word that Alexei had broken out of the prison he was in and ever since then they have been searching and trying to get in contact with them, because they both knew who had broken him out.
There was only one person who could do it without being seen, and that was their mother.
"Do you think they know you have a son?" Yelena asked.
"It's Melina, of course she knows." Natasha deadpanned.
Yelena clicked her tongue, "True. Do you think that's what they're doing? Trying to find him?" She asked.
Natasha was quiet for a second before responding, "I sure hope so. If there is anyone who could find my son, it'd be his grandmother."
Yelena huffed, "Isn't that the truth."
If they only knew how true that statement really was...