Can we get an F in the chat for Peter's sleep schedule?
The scent of antiseptic was strong, overwhelmingly so, as it was pressed to his body. His breathing felt ragged and torn, and he couldn't seem to get enough oxygen into his body. He ached, and he was sure that if he wasn't so out of it, the amount of pain would be crippling. As it was, it buzzed on the edges of his senses, barely out of touch but foggily in sight. If he swam closer to true consciousness, he was sure it would be there, waiting for him. The thought almost made him want to slip back into the folds of unconsciousness.
But then came the sharp, stinging memory flooding back into his thoughts at the notion of falling asleep, and he nearly shot upright, if not for how weak he was and the straps keeping him restrained to the table. His flesh was dressed in gauze and bandages, some of which were soaked through with blood before the wound had been able to close. He didn't want to fall asleep, no, no, not now. His jaw clenched and he swore he could taste blood in his mouth from biting down so hard.
Blood, something so precious. No, no, he couldn't lose anymore. He felt himself distantly choke on the blood, before foggy faces removed the liquid from his mouth, coughing hoarsely to expel any residual liquid before the wound closed itself. He felt hands press down on his body, keeping it still, shouting words he could barely discern were meant for his well-being, to get the soldiers on standby to keep him from disturbing his raw and healing wounds any more than they had been.
His heart beat erratically in his chest, but he couldn't focus on how fast it was racing; the only thing his mind could fixate on was that it was beating. It had stopped, hadn't it? He was sure it had. There had been so much blood outside of his body... had his heart not had enough to circulate? His memory was foggy. What had he been doing, earlier? It was hard to picture anything outside of the crippling weakness that clung to his form like a weighted blanket.
He went to flex the fingers on his right hand, but no response was met. Right. He'd... he'd been told to remove his own ring finger. He pretended to do it because he couldn't stand the thought of losing one of his only two fingers on that hand that was still flesh. They hadn't liked that. They'd hurt his eye and had him get rid of the pinky finger. He remembered the saw, that dreaded saw. He remembered trying to look away but being unable to, sobbing, trying to clamp down on his screams as he worked the saw through his own flesh, through his own bone, until the finger dropped to his feet. He had, too, the saw clattering to the side as he'd clutched his bleeding right hand in agony. After that, it was a blur. They hadn't been happy that he'd reacted so emotionally. They... they did a test on him. He felt his back arch as he tried to lift away from the dreaded table he'd been strapped to, the same one he was on now. That stupid scalpel, those stupid knives, that dumb saw... they had been traced along his flesh, some barely grazing the capillaries, others wedging deep enough to brush marrow. It was all he could do to keep from screaming and making the torment worse.
But there was so much blood. Too much blood, flowing an unnatural dark magenta, edging crimson. Something about his weird mutant blood was said, he was sure, but the details escaped him. He couldn't see the blood, but he didn't need to; he could feel his life force ebbing out steadily, through too many wounds for his enhanced healing to cooperate with. It tried to prioritize the wounds, but ultimately, the lack of strength, food, water, and proper treatment left it unprepared for such abuse.
His body began shutting down. His heart had less and less blood to circulate. His organs began to feel like lead. Then his lungs gave out, and he gasped like a fish, desperate to find air, any air at all. His vision gave out, his senses muddled, until nothing seemed to matter anymore. He was collapsing to the static at the back of his head, and he welcomed it with open arms.
The constant thrumming of his chest gave one weak sputter, before giving up, too.
Peter shot awake with a gasp, before coughing wildly, trying to fill his lungs with air. His senses were haywire, freaking out from the memory. His hand scrabbled at his chest, desperate to get a grip from underneath the simple comfortable clothing he'd been lent so he didn't have to stay in his old stuff. Without consciously realizing it, he'd shrugged the shirt off to the side, enough to where his wild eyes could see his chest and the scars there. Then, his hand moved to his pulse point on his neck, lingering. His hands picked up on the thrumming vibrations of life, and he let out a quiet, relieved huff at that, hand shakily dropping to his lap and body falling back into the bed. His hand was clammy and his body was covered in tremors, but he couldn't help the broken, quiet laugh that snaked jaggedly out of his lips.
You're alive, Peter. He reminded himself, pressing his palm to his eyes and covering them, head tilted to the ceiling. It was just a memory, Peter. It's been years since you died. You're fine now.
But he couldn't shake the memory of that first death. Even though he'd tasted it twice afterwards, nothing beat the erratic fear he harbored towards the first. Of his life force slipping between his fingers, staining his surroundings in the unnatural dark magenta. A part of his mind knew it wasn't the death he really feared anymore, though. His body had been willing to accept the out, and so too had his mind. Back then, he'd only been with H- them four months.
No, it wasn't dying that made that memory so stark in his mind. It was being revived that kept his mind anxious and his thoughts wild. Because it would've been too kind of H- them to let their forced captive go so early, having gone too far with their own conditioning. His hand absentmindedly hovered over his heart, over the four slashes across it, before finding its way to the large burn on his right side. Where that dreaded defibrillator, used thrice, had shocked the hardest to tether his soul to his body, to keep his mind from leaving his flesh. He supposed if one looked hard enough, they could see the imprints of the electrode pads there. He was thankful the one near his left-side collarbone was faint. The mutant had enough physical and mental reminders of the experience; he didn't need another noticeable one.
Movement in his peripheral caught his attention, and he nearly jumped out of his skin when he noticed Natasha. When had she entered the room? He frowned, before realizing that FRIDAY must've caught on to his distress and alerted the former assassin. He groaned inwardly, cursing his luck. He'd only been there three days and he'd already bothered them, waking up on the verge of panic from a nightmare, for every one of them. He craned his neck to the side to spot the time. 8:49 AM. Great. Peter had only been asleep for three hours, then. Fantastic. He'd been afraid of sleeping for this exact reason, yet it had still happened.
"Are you alright, маленький паук?" She asked, taking a seat in one of the chairs nearby, quietly moving it closer so she could hover by his bedside.
Peter pursed his lips, not quite sure how to feel about little spider as a nickname, especially when it had only priorly been associated with the Russian-speaking goons he'd been forced under. However, he didn't really feel uncomfortable about it, not as uncomfortable as when Tony had called him Pete. Perhaps it was because it was a nickname he was familiar with, or perhaps it was because Natasha herself had been in a similar situation. Regardless of the reason, he furrowed his brow, thinking of the words in his head. Meeting her gaze shyly, he muttered, "Я мог бы быть лучше, большой паук."
Natasha seemed taken aback, before a curious smile crossed her face. "You can speak Russian?" Granted, it was hoarse and rough, and his pronunciation was a tad off, but she hadn't thought of the mutant as being multilingual. In hindsight, she shouldn't have really been surprised; he'd been through most of the same training she and Bucky had endured, and Wanda had caught a glimpse of, and they were all multilingual. She supposed her surprise came from the knowledge that he hadn't been allowed to speak, and was shocked that he was able to replicate the language well enough despite his mending vocal chords.
Peter gave a nod to that, thankful for the distraction. He was more than willing to reveal this tidbit about himself if it kept the conversation away from his nightmares. His throat was already beginning to regret the Russian, but, he figured, his throat wasn't exactly going to heal if he didn't strain his voice. Besides, he still lacked a phone of his own, and anything to talk with otherwise. Despite his throat objecting, the former asset continued raggedly, "Russian, German, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Hindustani, Arabic, Malay, French, Bengali, Portuguese." He needed to pause, but after letting his throat rest a bit, he added, "Bits and pieces. Common words and phrases. Any language H- they needed me to understand, read, and write in." His voice lost its power after that, and he frowned, before extending his hand out to Natasha. She gave him his palm, and he finished tapping, I-W-E-N-T-A-L-L-O-V-E-R. N-E-E-D-E-D-T-O-K-N-O-W-W-H-A-T-M-Y-S-U-P-E-R-I-O-R-S-W-E-R-E-S-A-Y-I-N-G.
His head lowered at that, and his hand instinctively pulled in, as the memories swirling at the back of his mind came to the forefront. Of visiting many, many different countries, having to understand the material he was being given, so he could blend in. So he could kill and not get caught. Most of his knowledge on words from other languages were from what he could recall being given to him, or hearing as he went to do a hit. A part of him fondly reminisced on some of the odder run-ins in Abidjan, where he hadn't known the specific French words he needed and had to substitute English instead, or the time in Karaj where he'd run into a few cross terrorists that had used curse words he hadn't heard from his superiors before that kept him from understanding their full statement. He frowned internally at the notion that part of him was nostalgic for some of those past, more calm hits from his time of torment. That was something to internalize and worry about later, he supposed.
"Pepper and Tony will be back soon," Natasha informed him, keeping his cold hand in one of her warm ones while she lifted her other hand to brush a stray curl from his face. His hair was getting a bit too long for his liking. When her hand moved away after relocating the curl, he idly wondered why her hand so close to his face, to his scars, hadn't freaked him out. He chalked it up to her being similar enough to his assassin mindset that his mind hadn't really registered it as anything but an extension of his safe space. That was another thing to think about later.
Seeing his confused look, she added, "They went out to get you a phone and some better fitting clothes. You'll be staying here until the UN hearing; I'm sure they want you as comfortable as possible while you heal. And before you worry, Tony should be fine. He wasn't terribly injured, and Pepper can make sure he isn't straining his injured arm."
He wondered if his swiftly grown attachment to each of the heroes was just that readable. The thought was quickly dismissed, though. Natasha had been an assassin, like he was; she knew how to read someone like a book. If anyone could figure out his deepest kept secrets, she'd be the most likely. That thought was both comforting and terrifying. Would the relief that would come from finally letting a piece of his mind out, of relieving some of the burden from his shoulders, be worth the paranoid fear that letting a piece of him slip was a mistake, and would result in his mistreatment? It was unlikely, but it wasn't something his harrowed mind could ignore as a potential possibility if he revealed any of the dark thoughts that clawed at the weaknesses in his brain. He didn't want to burden anyone with his baggage. It was too suffocating, but he was used to hiding it; he'd had to hide it. The rest of them wouldn't be ready to carry the load; it would crush them. That's what his terrified mind supplied in response, anyways.
The thought had only taken a second, so he gave a nod of acknowledgement to the statement, grateful for the news even though he hadn't known he'd needed it. The memory that had woken him up initially had faded into the background, and his mind had calmed to the general buzz of thought that it usually subsisted at. He spent the next little while just quietly exchanging taps with Natasha. discussing words in languages both old and new, seeing what he could remember being taught and he hadn't known before. It was peaceful.
It was nice, having his own phone. Tony and Pepper had already covered most of the set-up process, but it was interesting to see how it was done. Before he knew it, he was being handed the phone to fiddle with at his own discretion. He'd been warned not to take it apart unless he wanted to be stuck without a way to reliably speak (his voice was still unresponsive, so he had to let it rest before trying again). He couldn't help the curiosity bubbling up inside as he spelunked the many facets the device had to offer, showing things to Pepper and Tony that caught his eye. He was too caught up in his excitement over the technology to note the glances the two sent each other, or their smiles at seeing him enthusiastic and eager about something.
After mistyping something on the note app and having it read in TTS, though, and not knowing what it was, the conversation moved from learning about the phone to his knowledge. It wasn't honestly all that different from the tap conversation he'd had with Natasha earlier, but it wasn't focused on exclusively different languages. The mystery word had led to a search on what the word meant, which made Tony recall that Peter hadn't known what 'okay' had meant. Upon bringing it back up, they spent the next few minutes figuring out exactly what Peter knew and lacked in knowledge.
Did he know basic math? Of course. He knew fragments and pieces of algebra, calculus, logic, and number theory. Mathematical physics was something he'd been internally calculating and putting into practical use with his missions, he just hadn't realized what it was. But beyond the patchwork of math he knew, the rest was unknown to him. Trigonometry, combinatorics, foundations, probability and statistics, arithmetic, he knew bases and parts of their whole but they were largely unfamiliar to the asset, if not foreign.
Language was another complicated point. He knew how to understand, read, and write in multiple languages, and he figured he could speak in them if his voice wasn't so broken, but he wasn't the most fluent. He knew words, basic sentences, how to do the basics in making it legible enough to be understood if necessary. But it wasn't enough to consider it a language he knew. He found similar struggles arise with his native English language, too. An odd wake-up call to him was finding that words that he'd understood and known from a protocol or order standpoint also had different uses and definitions that weren't the definition he'd been programmed to interpret. Most of his knowledge on what a word meant had earnestly come from context in a sentence with words he did know.
That wasn't even broaching into the topic of literature. He knew how to write, but he hadn't had to do it very often. He knew how to read, but hadn't had much in regards to reading material besides hit information. As it stood, he knew how to string together sentences, could guess where words belonged and didn't by what felt right, but his comprehension on why things were written certain ways, puns, jokes, stories, and essays was minimal at best and non-existent at worse. It hadn't helped that he took most of what he was reading literally, used to only receiving facts that he would have to compartmentalize and use to his advantage.
His scientific knowledge was about as specific as his mathematic knowledge. He was intimately familiar with chemicals, and what they had done to his body, but not how more of the exotic chemicals could be used. He was an inventor first and foremost, and hadn't delved too deeply into the world of chemicals besides designing his own web fluid. That was an aspect he was eager to share; he'd been proud of getting it to work, even though it was being used for things he didn't appreciate. His sense of biology was his most knowledgeable topic, but for all of the wrong reasons. The only two facets of it he knew was information on his own mutated biology and how human biology functioned so he could kill. He knew the fastest way to stop the heart, the easiest way to kill without spilling blood, parts of the body that could be used to kill someone quickly and painlessly, the best place to target an opponent, weaknesses and how to spot them. His knowledge on human biology was solely synonymous to his knowledge on how to kill people, and that information he kept from sharing, despite knowing that both of them probably knew where that knowledge came from.
He supposed his biology was very different from that of an average persons, thinking on it from a comparative standpoint. Normal people bled crimson, not dark magenta. Normal people didn't have nigh microscopic hairs on their hands and feet that helped cling to walls. Normal people didn't have venom glands above their canines that could excrete neurotoxins capable of giving someone hallucinations and seizures in strong enough doses. Normal people didn't have blood that gave people powers, drove them crazy, and then killed them. Normal people didn't have enhanced healing that could save from basic injuries and scar the worst wounds. Normal people didn't have super-strength. Normal people didn't have highly sensitive senses. Normal people didn't have precognition. Normal people didn't have the urge to spin webs, or crawl into corners of the ceiling. Normal people didn't have the urge to trap someone in a web and wrap them up and inject them with venom and suck out their insides-
No, don't think about it. Don't think about it. You didn't act on it last minute so it's fine, you're fine, you didn't do it. You didn't do it. You. Didn't. Do it. But you could've done it. You wanted to do it. You're resisting half of your instinctual primal urges, Peter. You shouldn't ignore them, Peter. You can't help it because you've never been human, Peter.
Nope. He refused to fall down that rabbit hole again. He repressed that train of thought back in the pit of hell in his mind that it had crawled out of and tried to bury the thought, but he knew it was pointless. It always lurked in the cobwebs of his head. It was as much a part of him as he was, the gross inhuman monster that dwelled beneath carefully trained killer instincts that only avoided tipping the scale into inhumanity thanks to strict conditioning to be an emotionless weapon. He always tried not to dwell too long on the knowledge that the abilities he was born with had also come with the unpleasant side-effect of spider-like tendencies, both the moderately alright and the horrendously terrible.
What were they discussing- education. From what Tony and Pepper seemed to be figuring out, with papers strewn about on a makeshift desk they had brought in, working on their phones while Peter had fallen prey to the ink in his head-space, he was egregiously under-educated. They hadn't bothered to touch history, social or otherwise, which he was thankful for. The mutant was pretty sure what limited knowledge of history he'd been granted was terribly biased in favor of H- them, and inaccurate. They were the same people that'd tried to teach him that the Avengers were terrible for nearly crushing H- them three years ago. Look at where that had gotten him; in their company, after being freed from endless torment. He wasn't willing to trust a word H- they had taught him beyond what he believed to be factual, backed by their lack of lie and the proof he was finding now, in math and science and statistics.
When they'd finished, they seem displeased by the results, and Peter could tell he was terribly uncultured. The mention of school (the word stirred a distant, foggy memory of discussion of prepping for such a place, mention of a 'school year' and 'Kindergarten' brushing the torn fragments of his past life's remembrance) was brought up, though with some hesitance, questioning if it would even be a smart move. He was behind, from what he picked up on through their quiet conversation, whatever that entailed. The discussion ended with a gentle reminder on Pepper's behalf that they didn't even know if Peter would be staying until after the UN trial, which got Tony quiet quickly.
He'd found, lately, that he hated when the room fell silent. It was always filled with stilted awkwardness, of trying to make conversation around the sharp edges of an unfavorable topic. It happened a lot around him, which, Peter supposed, could only make sense. He hadn't exactly been forthcoming with the topics of conversation he disliked and the ones he did, especially since his contribution to conversations was limited by his inability to speak for long periods of time without relying on TTS and his general lack of knowledge of anything to talk about that didn't regard his former life.
Silence had been his companion for so long, his only refuge in the swirling chaos of conditioning and murder, his only solace and safe space that meant he was alone. In that, it had also become his tormentor, plagued with unexpressed thoughts, bursting at the seams with emotions kept cloaked under a mask of indifference. He'd tolerate it before because he had nothing else to think about. It was why he'd taken to counting time; there was nothing else to do besides think about the torture (don't think about it), the blood on his hands (stop thinking about it, you had no choice, even though you consciously chose to, Peter), his trauma (no, stop, don't think about the memories don't think about the loss don't think don't think don't think), and the unvoiced thoughts his disassociated spectator identity of Peter Parker had become in the eight years he'd held the Weaver identity forward.
But now that the mask of Weaver was no longer required for survival (it'll never go away, you were Weaver for longer than you were Peter, Peter), silence meant that he could be swallowed by the dark ink in his brain that he'd kept at bay, locked tight behind the mask, because he had no choice to. It meant letting everything he'd kept so diligently held back finally free, and he had no clue how to even go about navigating the mess his mind had become in the wake of his imprisonment. He wanted so badly to just let those aspects of Weaver slide through his fingers until no remnant of H- they remained, to start anew as the innocent child he had once been. The silence reminded him that it was never going to be that way, and he'd begun to despise the silence for mocking him with its jaded cynical realism.
So, to break the silence, he offered an olive branch, read by the flat TTS feature; "'If I can stay, I'd like that. To learn more about what I missed, anyways.'"
And, well, while the smiles they gave him weren't vocal, they washed away the silence, anyways.
*sips soda* Ah yes, I too love me some good fluff! It's a shame we won't be getting much more dedicatedly until Strange Encounters.
Next on OWOW: One can run from sleep, but can't run from thoughts.
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