Chapter One

Eleven Years Ago, New York City, New York…

"Now Peter, you know the rules?" His Papa was on the sidewalk, next to a very big man. Peter did not like the man, who looked older than mean Mr. Kappa and had a cane with thorns on it.

"Yes, Papa," Peter said dutifully. "Listen to the, the,"

"The trainers, Peter. You are to listen to the trainers."

Papa looked tired, Peter noticed. It wasn't new, but now he seemed really tired, like when Peter messed up on knife throwing, or cried about the bunny dying.

Peter didn't like his Papa looking that way. The man standing next to Papa looked mad, like Peter did something wrong. He would get it right this time, make Papa not so tired.

"Yes, Papa. And I be good for Hyda."

"Hydra, Peter."

"Yes, Papa."

Papa kneeled down and looked Peter in the eyes. It was rare he did that, his back was bad.

"Just know this is for the best; I need to change the world, and you will too, through Hydra."

"Yes, Papa."

"Good boy."

The scary man frowned at him before grabbing his hand.

"Let's be off, boy."

"Yes sir," Peter said. He looked back at his Papa as they walked away and waved. "Bye, Papa."

Papa didn't wave back. He went back inside the house.

"I'll miss you," Peter whispered and turned back.

Present day, Paris, France...

Rain pounded the rooftops, creating a cacophony with the men running across them. The city below was an empty cavern while its citizens waited out the worst storm of the decade. None of the people on the roofs were dressed for the weather, but it mattered not; they had a mission to complete.

A smaller, more agile being kept ahead of them, foot falls almost silent if not of the water and the precious cargo on their back.

"You piece of shit, stop this instant! The girl is one of the weapons. Continue this foolishness and you will be discontinued, along with her!"

He rolled his eyes at his most recent (and last) trainer's stupid attempt to make him cower; nothing would keep him from protecting his apprentice. She was his responsibility, and not even Satan would stop him from getting her to safety.

"Capture first!"

"Yes Sir!"

"Peter, I'm scared," his apprentice whispered after the men decided to take shots at his legs. Peter deftly dodged and dived off the roofs into the city below.

"I know," he said. "But you don't have to be. You know why?"

"Because you're here."

Peter smiled, kicking an agent as they rounded a corner and snapped his neck. She flinched, but death wasn't new to her. At least not these past six months.

"That's right, kiddo. Always." He pocketed the gun from the dead man, as he only had his knives and webs due to their hasty escape.

"There they are!" More voices shouted, some of them Peter recognized from his missions.

He rolled his eyes; none of them were particularly worth the effort, especially since he got his enhancements at eight. Now that he was fourteen, those enhancements were more deadly to them.

"Close your eyes Bug; it's going to get messy." He cocked the gun, ready to snipe two of the now ten agents headed their way, taking as many out as he could.

"Peter, do you have to?"

He paused, knowing what his apprentice was implying was correct; Peter didn't have to kill them now. He could easily just leave, and have them on their getaway train, and by morning they would be ghosts in the wind.

But Hydra shouldn't get to have trained agents who knew Peter well enough to track him. Their deaths would be what kept Peter and the sweet girl he promised to save from being hauled back later.

So, he sighed. "I'm sorry, Lila."

And he fired. Lila tightened her grip to his back, not looking. Peter bashed skulls, stabbed through necks, and used Hydra agents as shields against their comrades. It was a sick sort of justice, the men that he used to fear dying by his hands.

One agent who liked to get handsy with many girl recruits tried to rush him with a knife. Peter ran to meet him, causing the agent to widen his eyes. He ducked below the knife, Lila held firmly by her own grip and his webs.

The man's weight and momentum worked against him, and the take out was something Peter would have been able to pull off at five. As he fell, Peter slid through the gap in the legs and sliced through the pants at the femoral artery, carving it up. Niagara Falls burst forth from the cut, and the agent fell down screaming. As Peter landed in a crouch he ripped the still bloody knife through the neck before propelling it into another agent who was preparing a grenade twenty yards away.

They didn't hit the ground before Peter was rushing past them, picking the knife out as he went. His apprentice was almost gasping at the blood that was around them, though the rain was already attempting to wash away the evidence.

Five more agents had arrived onto the deserted street and were ready to kill him by this point, including an unfortunate thorn in his side.

"Kill them, you fools!" Ah yes, Peter's first handler and teacher from his toddler days. The man was in a wheelchair due to his ripe old age of eighty and known more as an honorary advisor, but still the sight of the balding man was enough to make Peter flinch and want to give in, plead for mercy.

But he didn't. Instead, he grabbed the grenade his last kill was trying to use and used some of his web fluid to create a sling, all the while dodging the array of bullets. When he was ready, Peter leaped up to a roof nearby and aimed.

"Lila, cover your ears, okay?"

She nodded into his back, and Peter took that as his cue. He ripped the pin out and slung it towards the agents. It exploded right in front of the Hydra agents, and shouts of pain (not to mention fury) could be heard.

By the time Peter lost any remaining pursuers and made the way to the train in the worsening storm, Lila managed to look up. She didn't speak, not until they were in a container and headed north, away from Paris.

"Peter," she said, clutching her knees, eyes gazing at the rushing pre-dawn scenery, "where are we going now?"

Peter hummed. "Well, where do you want to go to kill some time? Any place on this side of the planet is fine."

She flinched at the word "kill", but otherwise shrugged. Honestly, Peter only had things planned until Belgium; after that, wherever Lila wanted to go, he was fine with it, as long as it kept them on the move. He already saw the world as an assassin. To see it as a tourist would be a welcome change.

"Maybe… home?" She hesitated, looking up at him. Peter's heart ached for her, something he couldn't have claimed just six months ago.

But Lila changed him, brought back feelings he thought were beaten out of him. Or, maybe they had been, but she made new ones grow. Either way, Peter wanted to make the world better just for her.

What she asked for was impossible, however, at least until they disappeared for a bit. Hydra would expect them at the airports, heading back.

"You know why we can't do that…"

"Until we lose them in the wind for good," she parroted back. It was what he had told her every time she wanted to go home, and was why he chose tonight of all times to leave.

Peter had been giving his all to train Lila enough to go on a mission with him, where it would be child's play to abandon Hydra's cesspool of a ship. There, they would find a way to get past the ocean barrier that kept Lila from her home in the States. But Hydra had decided Peter was too valuable to continue training his apprentice, that he was getting too close, even for his reputation of having an excessive amount of emotions. They were going to move her to Hayate.

Hayate was a bully, and had been since the pair was 'recruited' at three. Peter often came out on top in terms of intelligence, fighting, and ended up with a stronger mutation. But Hayate's cruelty made him a favorite amongst some of the upper council. If Lila had been given to him, she would have lost the light inside her that Peter relied on to salvage his humanity. When he felt like being honest to himself, Lila kept him from the final fall to be what Hydra wanted him to be.

So he would get her home. No matter how long it took. No matter what it cost him. She would be held in her parents' arms again. It was the hardest thing he had ever done, abandoning his… home, for lack of a better word. He had grown up around many of the monsters in the Paris base, more so than any of the other fifteen he had been to in the last decade. Not even Moscow's base held its grip on Peter so tightly. While it was always a private dream of Peter's to get away from the organization his father sold him to, it was one he had given up on before puberty started, before even his powers. There had been no point in escape, when the world seemed bleak no matter where he went. People were evil, be them Hydra or "good guys", so leaving the familiar for the unfamiliar was a no go. His dream was foolish, and letting it go had been his struggle.

Now, though, that dream was a reality. It was all because of the overly thin brunette with fire in her eyes.

"We'll be in Belgium in an hour," Peter said, breaking the silence.

"London."

He raised an eyebrow. "I offer you, my adorable apprentice, most of the world and you choose London of all places?"

Lila sniffed, giving him a glare. "I'm not adorable, and you said anywhere, Peter."

"That I did, Lila; that I did."

The rising sun, the sky, an angry streak of water colors after the storm, made something rise up inside him. Peter felt a rare grin rise up. They did it, they were free.

"Fuck you Hydra," He shouted over the roar of the train. Lila blinked up at him, a matching smile forming. She stumbled up, striking a power pose.

"Fuck you Hydra!"

Ah yes, his little apprentice liked to mimic him a bit too much at times. It was adorable, but Peter doubted that her father in particular would appreciate some of the quirks she no doubt picked up.

"Keep using that language and you'll be the reason I die before twenty," he said in the monotone voice from training.

"If you can use it, I can use it."

Peter snorted. "I'm almost an adult, and you are a small child."

"I'm six and a half," she argued.

"The fact you still use the half part only proves what a kid you are."

He kept his amusement hidden as she tried to work a comeback. When her face became devilish, he knew he was in for it.

"I heard you tell Mr. Hayate that you were fourteen and a half last week."

His face reddened slightly. Yes, he had pulled that to make a point that he was older than the bastard, and it had worked; Peter had gotten the easy night guard duty that rotation.

"That is not the point," he said stubbornly.

"Is too!"

"Is not!"

"Is too!"

"What I say goes!"

"Nuh, uh!"

"Yes."

"No!"

They continued fighting over it until they were huffing and trying to contain laughter that hadn't been allowed to escape in far too long.

Lila helped him grasp their freedom, helped him rip it from Hydra's hands.

Now it was up to him to keep them that way. Anything, for his apprentice.

End. Just something I wanted to write, I may continue it, as I have an itch for the idea. It kept demanding to be written while I was finishing up the next chapter for my SHIELD Peter Parker fic.