Peter left the manor in a hurry, not even bothering to stop and pick up the ugly vase he'd knocked over on his way out. That was the problem with Peter Parker, as his father would be happy to tell you. He just didn't care.

Didn't care about the manor where he lived, or its history, no matter how many his dad recited it to him. Peter saw past all the myths and stories and great things that were said to have happened there and saw it for what it was in that moment, old and decrepit and rotting from within. Odd pieces of wood stuck out from the interior, stabbing and sticking into anyone who dared to get to close.

They didn't have to worry about that often, though. The manor stood in the middle of a forest, hidden by trees and mountains. No one found it unless they were sent there, or unless they were looking, and not many people were.

Oftentimes Peter complained that he would like to move. He pictured himself in the city, surrounded by people, or in a school, with actual people his age, instead of holed up on the second-floor study with a private tutor.

Oftentimes his dad complained about his complaints. His were wiser, more sophisticated complaints. His complaints always carried the undertone of an order.

"You should be grateful," he'd tell him. "I'm breaking history in this house, and you don't even care. You can't even be bothered to help out in the lab from time to time."

Oftentimes Peter dug his fingernails into his sweaty palms. It was a lot safer than rolling his eyes.

Peter cared less about the lab and his dad's experiments than he did the manor, where they were performed. Didn't care about the screaming he heard through the walls, or how it never seemed to stop, even when he put headphones over his ears. Didn't even care that he could hear through the walls, thanks to Richard's research into cross genetics and that incident with the spider.

Maybe his dad was right, then. Maybe he should feel grateful.

Most people who wound up in his dad's lab left on a stretcher with a thin, white sheet covering their limp, lifeless bodies. Peter didn't care about that, either, if you were wondering. He didn't.

Sometimes their screaming was just annoying. It got to him. Nagged at him, ate away until it drove him out of the manor and into the woods that surrounded it, where if he walked long enough and far enough, he couldn't hear it anymore. Sometimes he just had to escape. Sometimes, like now.

His tennis shoes crunched down against dirt, leaves, twigs, and he tugged his jacket closer to his skin, wishing he'd thought to grab something heavier to throw on before he fled the manor. That was another one of Peter's problems, according to his father. He never really stopped to think things all the way through.

Peter paused on the path when the screaming died down, then cut off altogether. A shiver went down his spine, one he pretended had more to do with the cold than it did with death. He looked around the forest, as if he might be able to spot a ghost if he looked hard enough, before shaking his head and continuing down the path.

"Get it together, Pete," he mumbled to himself, rubbing his temple, the screaming echoing through his thoughts although it was no longer really there.

He took a deep breath, then released, watching the air that flowed from his mouth turn white. Rays of sunlight reflected through the mist, causing Peter to look up at sky and remember something his mother used to say.

"Fresh air and a little bit of sunlight can fix anything."

Her voice played through his thoughts, accompanied by her smile. Memories of her that were so blurry, so out of focus and bright, and so filled with something that warmed him up from the inside, that Peter had trouble believing they were memories and not just dreams, not just something his mind fabricated to make it seem like it was possible for things to be fixed.

Real or fake, the memory and the words replayed over and over until his head was clear, until he almost walked straight into the fence that surrounded the property where the manor stood. The metal was rusty, just as the manor was splintery, and completely useless at keeping people out, if they even wanted inside.

Peter couldn't imagine anyone did. He suspected the fence, as tall as it was, was built to keep people in.

A pathetic whining brought Peter's attention to the ground, where he saw a rabbit tangled up in plastic that had once held a six-pack of beers together. The idiotic guards were always out here drinking, but not bothered cleaning up after themselves.

Peter crouched down and hesitantly reached his hand out. "Just don't bite me, okay?"

The rabbit continued whining in response but didn't try to bite him as Peter untangled its paws from the plastic and picked it up, using both hands to cradle it. He stretched out his arms and released it on the other side of the fence, feeling lucky that the animal had the good sense to keep hopping in that direction, away from the manor and the screaming.

Peter watched him go, then picked up the plastic off the ground.

"How endearing."

Peter turned, slow and annoyed, and made his eyes extra cold when he saw it was Whelan speaking to him. He least favorite guard, and Hydra's biggest reject.

A cigarette hung out of his mouth, like usual, and a blank stare crossed his face, also like usual.

"You really shouldn't litter," Peter told him, sliding the plastic into his pocket to throw away once he was home.

Whelan eyed at him. He took the lit cigarette from his mouth and let it fall to the ground. A childish protest, but one Peter couldn't blame him for. His hostility wasn't unprovoked.

Whelan was the subject of Peter's own experiments, which, by his own admission, were much more like juvenile pranks than they were scientific, though he supposed they weren't completely pointless.

He did have a hypothesis. Peter wanted to know how many times he had to turn Whelan's hair purple or nearly burn his tongue off with tempered tooth paste before the man quit his job and left.

Once he made Whelan so ill Richard himself had gotten involved, telling Peter to tone it down. Replacing guards was a hassle, even more of hassle if one was dead. The paperwork, Richard told him, the paperwork would give him a headache.

"The boss wants to talk to you."

"I thought he was busy," said Peter.

"His engagement finished early."

Peter's stomach knotted and bubbled with dread. He hated seeing his father after failed experiments.

He diverted his eyes back to the lit cigarette laying on the ground.

"Don't you know smoking is bad for you?" asked Peter, looking back up. "And the wildlife. You're going to start a fire one of these days."

"Just start walking," Whelan growled out. "Nobody has time for your games today."

"When do they ever?"

Peter's question was met with another growl and with a turned back. Whelan did have the decency to smear the cigarette into the ground with his shoe, putting the fire out, before marching back off into the forest. Peter supposed he could try to be happy about that. He might have been walking off to his doom, but at least he'd won the interaction.

Wood creaked under Peter's feet as he climbed the stairs up to the manor's second story, heading to his dad's office. The room stood at the end of the hallway, and the door had been left open. That didn't stop Peter from knocking, softly, with the back of his hand, until he was told he could enter.

Richard Parker stood with his back turned, staring out the large window. He was still wearing his white lab coat over his clothes. Peter ignored the small drops of blood splattered across the white, and instead focused on the light streaming in through the window. Light that made the specks of dust floating around sparkle like stars.

"Y-you wanted to see me, dad?" asked Peter, shuffling his feet in place, but refusing to move any closer to the man standing next to the window.

It left a comfortable distance between them, as Richard's office was the largest room in the manor. Once, it had been the master bedroom, but after Peter's mother died, Richard threw out everything all their shared belongings, or at least, everything Peter hadn't secretly smuggled away and hid in the antic.

The bed had been replaced with a large, oak desk that sat crooked in the very center of the room. Piles of books lay open, some of the floor, some on the tattered armchairs, and some piled high on the desk, piled over stacks of loose papers.

"Yes, Peter," said Richard, then turned on his heel. He straightened his coat, and stared Peter down. It made him want to sink into the wood. "I have some good news."

Peter stayed where he was and anchored his expectations to the ground. He and Richard rarely had the same definition of good.

"We're moving."

Then, just like that, with those words, only those words, that anchor started to move, shift in place. Something fluttered around in Peter's stomach, a feeling so unfamiliar he didn't have a name for it, and as much as he tried to pull his excitement back down to reality – what he knew to be reality – the idea of leaving the manor behind left him unable to contain it.

Peter took a couple of steps closer. More floorboards groaned under his feet.

"We're… moving?"

"Yes," said Richard, his voice snapped with annoyance. "That's what I just said. They need me elsewhere. There's a headquarters in Canada with better equipment and better opportunities for you. They have a school, kids your age, sons and daughters of agents. It'll be good for you."

Peter frowned. Logic told him people who worked for Hydra were rarely concerned with having children, and less so about taking care of them and sending them to school, but the idea of having friends, of just having people around who weren't the guards and doomed to his father's lab was powerful. More powerful than logic could ever hope to be.

"So, there's going to be a lot of people there, then? People my age?"

"Yes, so kind of you to keep up," said Richard, turning back towards the window, and making no effort to mask the annoyance in his tone. "Honestly the things you choose to get excited about are troubling, you're delighted by the idea of meeting friends and yet completely ignorant about all the progress I've made being here."

Peter's eyes drifted away from his father and trailed across the wrecked floor, wondering what exactly he meant by progress. People screamed and yelled down in the lab. They died. Some lasted longer than others, but for the most part, it was always the same. Maybe Peter and his dad had different definitions of progress, too.

"Ah, well, guess it can't be helped," continued Richard. He gave Peter another look, up and down, and there was something there in his eyes that didn't seem quite right, that seemed calculating. "Well, run along. Pack a bag. Just the essentials, the movers will get the rest. We leave in the morning."

He nodded, and made a move towards the door, only to pause when his dad stopped him one last time.

"And Peter," he said.

"Yeah, dad?"

"Don't forget to take your dinner supplement," he told him. "It's important to keep your levels up."

"I won't," said Peter, then left without another word.

He headed downstairs to the kitchen, quickly mixed all the correct powders together for a dinnertime nutrient shake and forced it down his throat. It wasn't that bad, if he chugged it fast and rinsed his mouth out with water right after, which was exactly what he did.

Next he snuck up to the attic to retrieve the books he hid there, the books he saved from when his father decided to purge all his mother's things from the manor. Peter blew dust off the cover of an old, tattered book he remembered his mom reading, and decided that it would come with him to wherever he went next.

He packed a bag, then spent the rest of the evening counting the seconds until he would go to sleep, just so he could wake up and be on his way to someplace better.

Peter's dreams were the same as being awake, filled with screaming that rattled around, loose, in his head, and didn't stop. They weren't the screams of anyone important, but still, they haunted him while he slept, and he couldn't figure out why.

Strangers who died in the manor were not anyone enough to think about during the day, let alone worry about in his sleep. They weren't even people. Not really. His dad had explained that to him a long time ago, that their lives had little meaning outside what they could provide with their deaths.

That he was helping them be useful to humanity, and their unwilling sacrifice was absolutely necessary for scientific advancement.

His dreams were different, though, that night everything changed. It was his mother screaming at him, and her scream was jarring enough to jolt him out of one nightmare and catapult him straight into another.

Peter's eyes opened with a snap. Hovering above his bed were two glowing eyes, attached to a robot-looking man, and there was a metal hand covering his mouth.

"Don't scream," ordered Iron Man. Peter could that it was unmistakably Iron Man in his bedroom, now that his eyes were adjusting. Another man hovered nearby, shuffling his feet.

The hand that covered Peter's mouth moved to his shoulder.

"W-what's happening?" whispered Peter. He wiggled around on his bed, trying to shrug the hand off his shoulder. "Get off me!"

"Calm down, son," said the other man. "We're here to get you out of here."

"Captain America? Get me out of here?" asked Peter, squinting his eyes and tilting his head. Iron Man hoisted him out of bed, and the covers went with him, hitting the floor by Peter's feet. "Oh cool, I'm being kidnapped."

"Not exactly the term I would use."

Peter wanted to ask Captain America if he had a better word for kidnapping but decided he shouldn't waste time slinging words when his fists worked just fine. He took a swung at Iron Man, only it was sloppy from sleep and easily caught by a metal hand. Pain shot through his fist, and when he tried to withdraw it, Iron Man held on tight.

"Out of the two of us," said Iron Man, his robotic voice dull and bored. "Why would you try to take out the one covered in armor?"

"Oh, you know, just testing a theory," answered Peter, trying to pull his hand out of Iron Man's grip. He was disappointed with the conclusion his test brought. He always kind of figured since the spider incident he'd be stronger than Iron Man, stronger than the Avengers. He always thought the was sort of the point.

Briefly he considered, if he ever regained control of his fist, crawling up to the ceiling and staying there until the Avengers either knocked him down with a broom or gave up and left, but unfortunately for Peter, it didn't seem as if Iron Man would ever let go.

"I'm gonna tell you how this is gonna play out, so listen up," said Iron Man. "You're going to come with us, without a fight, or it's gonna get really ugly, really fast."

"Things are already ugly." The words slipped out of Peter's mouth before he could think about them.

Captain America opened his mouth, but not even a syllable left his lips before he was silenced by Iron Man's index finger pointed at him.

"Ugly for you, maybe," said Iron Man. "But if you're quiet, and you come with us, we'll leave your dad and everyone else alone. Just being honest, here, I don't think Richard would survive the type of prison they'll put him in, do you, Cap?"

"Uh, no," he answered, though he hesitated and sounded unsure.

Peter didn't have to think about it to make a decision. He knew where he fell in the Hydra hierarchy, and if it was a choice between him or his dad, Richard was more important, more useful to Hydra doing his research. It was obvious. Peter didn't even really a choice, especially now that he saw he was outmatched.

"Fine, I'll go with you," said Peter. Iron Man immediately let go of his hand at his answer, causing him to stumble backwards and catch sight of his bag, packed and ready for a new life in a place.

It figured the night before he was about to get everything he always wanted something like this would happen. Parker luck.

Peter beckoned towards his bag on the floor. "Can I at least take my stuff?"

"Got any weapons? Any traceable electronics?"

"No."

Unless a book was a weapon, Peter had nothing of the sort, though now he wished he had packed one.

He thought Iron Man might ask to search his bag, but, surprisingly, he took his word for it. He nodded his approval, and Peter picked up his bag off the floor and slung it over his shoulder. He slipped on some tennis shoes, then was ushered out of his bedroom by the two Avengers.

Keeping his part of the deal, he kept his mouth shut as they crept through the hallway and passed Richard's closed bedroom door.

Something childish, something he shoved deep down and hoped wouldn't surface, wanted to yell out and pound on his door. He didn't, though. He held it together by reminding himself that now, in that situation, Richard didn't need a son. He needed a sacrifice, and Peter was willing.

They walked for a long time. They walked through the forest, creeping past Whelan and the other guards knocked out cold on the trail, along the same path Peter had used earlier as his temporary escape. They walked through a hole in the fence, one Peter assumed Iron Man had created when he and Captain America broke in.

Once they were outside the perimeter, Iron Man took his faceplate down, and although his armor stayed intact, he became a different person.

Tony Stark wasn't robotic like Iron Man. His eyes were tired, his jaw tight, his movements annoyed. He had a phone and he kept checking it, as if kidnapping Peter wasn't a threat to his safety, or at least not one worthy of his whole and undivided attention. That was a little insulting, sure, but Captain America grated at his nerves even more.

At least Stark had the decency to be properly stressed. Captain America was collected, he moved through the trees, the exposed roots and fallen branches with ease, even with just the tiny flashlight they used as their guide through the dark.

They came to stop when they got to a clearing, partly because Stark was checking his phone, and partly because, with horror, Peter realized they had reached their destination.

It was negative," announced Stark, making his phone disappear back into the Iron Man armor. What that meant, Peter wasn't sure, but he knew Stark didn't sound happy about it. Just more of the same. Just annoyed, and a little grumpy.

"That's good news, right?" asked Captain America. "You were just saying you weren't ready – "

"-Is that a plane?" Peter blurted out, interrupting them both. "I can't – I don't – I can't get on a plane."

"It isn't a plane. It's a jet, so you're good," said Tony. He reached out to grab Peter's arm, to tug him forward, but Peter took a step back.

He narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms. "I don't care what it is. I'm not getting on it."

"Yes you are."

"No I'm not."

Stark stuck out a finger and waved at it around at him. "You're getting on that jet even if I have to put you on it."

"Tony – "

"Yeah, yeah, I got it in prep, okay, Cap? Be nice to the kid," said Stark. "Getting him the hell out of here is the nicest thing we could be doing, even if we have to use force."

Stark took a sudden stride forward, and Peter's reflexes got mixed up. He should've thrown another punch, but instead he froze in place. He flinched, and waited for the strike to come, but it never did. When Peter looked up, back at Stark, he was squinting back at him, the annoyance drained from his face, replaced with something else.

They stared at each other, and it was quiet. A breeze blew through the bare trees, Captain America shifted from foot to foot, somewhere a dog or a wolf howled. Nobody screamed.

Tony took a careful, slow step forward and grabbed his wrist, tugged him forward, towards the jet. "Come on."

Peter stepped up and climbed into the jet, and everything became real. What he was doing, what he was leaving behind, that he wasn't a sacrifice, but instead a clown. The sleep juices in his brain were gone. He was thinking clearly, so he knew if the Avengers had wanted Richard, they would've taken him, no matter what Peter did or didn't do.

Which meant he'd been the target all along, and he left willingly, without a sound, with leaving any clue who'd taken him or where he was going.

"You tricked me," said Peter, sitting down and looking up at Tony Stark, who only stared blankly as he sat down beside him.

Captain America, who disappeared behind the co-pilots chair, muttered something that sounded like, "So much for gaining his trust."

Someone replied back to him. Someone sitting behind the control panel. Whoever they were, Peter hoped they knew what they were doing when it came to flying a fancy Avenger jets. His stomach tightened just being inside of it, and when the engine revved to life, Peter's hands found the edges of his seat, his heart jumped around in his chest, his eyes darted around the small, dark space.

"Kid."

Peter met Tony's eyes.

"It's gonna be okay."

"My mom died in a plane crash."

If his father taught him anything, it was that there was a time for telling the truth and that time was usually around the very second when it would do the most damage, cause the most hurt. Peter had been aiming for guilt with his admission, but Tony's face remained blank in the darkness and he had no idea if he'd hit his mark.

"It's gonna be okay," he repeated. "My jets don't fall out of the sky."

Peter frowned, wondering if his arrogance was supposed to comforting, and frowning even deeper when he realized it actually kind of was. Still, he brought his legs up to his chest, buried his head into his knees, and hugged his legs as the jet lifted into the air.

Being terrified was one thing, but letting the enemy see him terrified was another, and if there was just one thing Peter was certain of about his new situation, it was that the Avengers were his enemies.

A/N: thanks for reading!