Silence. Cold. Mud under his fingers. Sweat dripping down his forehead.
He breathes… in and out, in and out, in and… his breaths are ragged and Peter doesn't understand why his nose feels clogged.
There is something covering his eyes, and he reaches up weakly to pull it off. After lifting one heavy arm up to his face, a pitiful whine slipping past his lips, his fingers fumble around to find that there is nothing on his face. Not even his mask.
His eyes were just closed.
He tries to open them, the idea of no mask making his heart pound, but his head is aching and his eyelids feel like they weigh a trillion pounds. Much more than he could lift -- powers and all.
Peter whines again, finding it frustrating when his lips won’t form words. “Mis’er S’ark?”
His last memory was fighting. So much fighting that Peter was actually starting to get worried that he wouldn’t make it out of this one. Even now, when he assumed that he was safe, that thought still clutched him tight in its icy grip and threatened to break him.
He remembered Tony calling for him, the older man’s broken voice becoming static over the coms. Peter had wondered how the reception could possibly be this spotty. Peter had tried to call back, but his voice had died in his throat.
They had him cornered. The Hydra agents that had surrounded them as soon as they were far enough away from the quinjet -- an ambush. It wasn’t supposed to be anything big; a mission that both May and Tony thought would be safe for him.
The last thing Peter remembers was one of his web’s being shot, the sound of it snapping seeming to echo through the air and freeze time. The water below had greeted him with a cold embrace, so icy that it sucked the breath from Peter’s lungs, and that was before he remembered that he couldn’t swim.
And now, he’s here.
“Mister Stark?” Peter asks again, this time a little more coherently.
He was on dry land, so Peter assumed that it must have been Tony that saved him. Peter rubbed his right eye, the lid seeming to come unstuck, and when one opened the other followed.
He’s alone.
That’s the first thing he notices. The second thing is that only about ten feet away from where he sits propped up, is a raging river. The river stretches the width of a freeway, but it’s not deep enough to hold as much water as it does, so the river itself spills over the bed and sprays threateningly.
Peter draws his knees closer to his chest. Don’t get too close. You still can’t swim.
With a groan, Peter rests his hand on the wall behind him and pushes himself to his feet. None of his injuries seem to be physical, but his head still aches, and his lungs burn. He wonders how much water he took on.
He had been sat against the remnants of an old stone wall. Around him was the fallen structure of a brick house; crumbling and fractured foundations that were all coated in a thin sheet of dust.
On a far off wall, Peter can make out a graffitied Hydra symbol. Peter frowns at the darkly painted creature.
Suddenly, sharp prickles are building at the top of his spine, and Peter spins around as his sense tells him something is definitely wrong. His heart pounds and he can hear it in his ears, a tidal wave of drum beats that feels like he’s going to be sent into cardiac arrest.
He wasn’t ready for this. Spider-Man was always supposed to be ready for everything; but right now, it felt as though Spider-Man had been washed away in that river.
At this moment, it was just Peter Parker standing a very wet spandex suit.
He had never felt so underprepared.
There is a girl standing near the water’s edge. She is wearing a black, skin-tight suit that resembles Natasha’s, and had ice blue hair that hung in wet curls around her face, draping down over her shoulders. There was a dark mask covering her eyes, but her lips were set in a tight grimace, and she was completely soaked down to the bone.
Peter tried to look intimidating despite his shaking hands.
“Wh-- who are you?” Peter asks, his eyebrows furrowing.
The girl doesn't move.
“Who are you!” He shouts again, his voice failing to echo over the raging river.
He stands with his hands out, his body in a stance that he imagines as threatening. The girl just tilts her head slightly, before reaching behind her back and pulling out Peter’s mask.
Peter’s eyes widen, his expression morphing into one of shock before he could stop it. The girl looks down at his mask, and then back up to him.
Peter wished he could see her eyes past the tint of her mask.
“Did you get me out of the water?” Peter asks, “Did you rescue me?”
The girl doesn't respond. Instead, she just tosses the mask down at his feet. Peter crouches down, never taking his eyes off her, and snatches the mask from the muddy ground. He pulls it over his head and immediately his suit livens.
“Karen?” Peter asks, still watching the girl.
She hasn’t moved. Her hair dancing in the breeze blowing off the water; blue locks like waves over a raging sea. If anything, her mouth has pressed tighter together.
“Yes, Peter?” Karen’s voice fills his ear like a godsend. If Peter was alone, he would have sighed in blissful relief.
“Karen, hi, any sign of the team?”
“The connection is a little fuzzy, and I am not able to pick up on the signal from any of the Avenger’s comms.”
“Okay, well, please keep trying on that. Do you know where I am?”
“You are currently standing on the edge of private property in France that stretches over 14,000 acres wide.”
Peter takes a deep breath. “I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that Hydra owns this land.”
“I cannot affirm or deny that.”
Peter looks back up to the girl. Her foot shifts in the dirt, her fist clenching and unclenching rhythmically by her side.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” Peter asks her, his voice rising to a shout.
Her mouth opens slightly and Peter’s heart beats just a little faster, the thought of her finally talking causing a sudden excitement to flare in his gut. But then she closes it and goes back to her statue-esc stance.
Peter just huffed in annoyance, seeing her as no threat and spinning on heel. He starts towards the forest sprawling behind him, knowing that if he started swinging now, he could probably find the team by nightfall.
He had just reached the tree line when a new voice suddenly spoke out. “Wrong way.”
Peter turns his head quickly, looking over his shoulder and notices that the girl has stepped closer.
“Excuse me?”
“You didn’t come from there. You were traveling downriver, which meant that you came from up there.”
The girl points east. Peter narrows his eyes at her, but nods. “Okay. Thanks.”
She doesn't say anything else. He makes his way in the direction she pointed him in, but he can’t help but flash a look every few feet to see if she’s still there. His sense hasn’t told him anything, so either she’s gone or he doesn't think of her as a threat.
By the time he’s walked fifteen feet, he looks back to find the river’s shore empty.
----
Karen may have no signal, but at least she has a clock. He’s been swinging just over an hour, and this forest seems to get no smaller. Maybe he was just getting himself lost.
That thought makes his panic a bit, so he sits down to think out his next moves.
He’s only been sitting for a minute before a flash of bright blue catches his attention. Peter narrows his eyes, staring ahead before focusing on a distant figure. It was the girl.
“You need something?” Peter asks, watching as she stands like a statue between the trees.
Like before she says nothing. Peter takes a deep breath, his chin resting on his hand and his shoulders hunched over.
“Can you at least tell me if I’m going the right way?” He says.
When she doesn't respond, he wasn’t surprised.
“You know,” he starts, standing, “I think you might be the most talkative person I’ve ever met.”
Nothing. Not even a shift in posture.
Peter sighs, “Please just point me in the right direction.”
It takes a few seconds, but eventually, her left arm raises in points to Peter’s right. Her arm stays like that as he stands and starts in that direction. Water drips off the end of her extended finger.
“Thanks,” Peter mumbles, not caring if she heard him.
----
The third time she shows up, Peter rolls his eyes so forcefully it makes him dizzy.
He looks down from his branch to watch her staring up at him, the twenty-two feet between them seeming a lot shorter than it was.
“I’m not even gonna try and talk to you,” Peter says, crouching.
Her blue hair is slightly less wet than the last time they met. Her curls were less springy, and now resembling something Betty had once called beach waves. A part of him wondered what color her eyes were behind that mask.
It was only a few minutes into the shared silence that Peter realized that they had started some kind of staring contest; except when you can’t see the eyes of the person you’re competing against, you have no idea who’s winning.
Peter swung away before her gaze could burn into his any longer.
----
The fourth time, it was creepy.
“You know,” Peter says, “I’ve heard of stalkers, but this is a whole other level.”
She walks alongside him as he jumps from tree to tree. He is keeping as far away from her as he possibly can.
“Look,” talking a swinging is proving harder than he thought it might, “if you’re gonna follow me around, you could at least give me your name.”
He scoffs when there is no answer. But when he finally does hear a second voice, he almost misses the next branch.
“Monsoon.”
Peter looks down in disbelief. The girl’s eyes stay trained forward.
“Huh?” He asked, his voice small.
“People call me Monsoon.”
It was the first time that Peter realized that she had an accent. It reminded him faintly of Wanda’s, but he knew that she definitely wasn’t Sokovian. Mostly French, with the tiniest bit of German influence.
“Why do they call you that?” Peter asks, looking down at the top of her head. The sunlight breaking through the treetops caused her hair to glow brilliantly.
She shrugs slightly, a slight hum sneaking past her lips. Peter’s lips pursed under the mask.
“I’m Spider-Man,” he says, even though she didn’t ask, “but my friends call me Peter.”
“We’re not friends.”
“We could be.”
“We’re not.”
Peter’s web’s shot out, grabbing onto a thick branch, and he swung shortly. “Then you can call me Spidey.”
“Fine,” she grumbles.
Peter knows that they move in silence for a few long minutes thanks to Karen’s clock, but he gets worried when he realizes that the sun is starting to go down. It’s just after 5:30, but the lack of daylight is unsettling.
With no connection to the team, no relative idea where they landed, and a traveling companion that hardly talked, Peter felt pretty screwed.
But Monsoon seemed to know where she was going, so he thought that he had no other choice than to trust her.
“Hey, Monsoon,” Peter asks, watching as they come upon a narrower river cutting through the forest ahead. He could easily swing over it. “Please tell me that we are at least close--”
He cuts himself off when a sharp splashing noise echoes up from below, and he looks down to find himself alone.
So much for trust.
----
Monsoon doesn't return, and something about that sets Peter even more on edge.
The clock inches past seven by the time he decides to give up on swinging. Peter ditches the trees in favor of the water, and he walks along the river bed, continuing in the direction Monsoon pointed him in.
His feet start to ache, and he suddenly wished that he was gifted with super-speed instead of sticky limbs.
It’s only when his ears filled with a sudden hiss and crackle of static does he stop in his tracks. His heart leaps into his throat, and the only other sound than the comms cutting in and out is the rush of the river beside him.
“...Peter… P- Peter… are you-- are you ther…?”
Tony’s voice is faint, but it’s still there. Peter tries not to shout in excitement when he responds.
“Yes! Yes, I’m here! I can hear you!”
“Peter… is that… hello? Peter!”
“Mister Stark!” Peter cries out, his voice so loud that if Tony couldn’t hear him over the comms, he could definitely hear his voice ringing out over the trees.
Tony says something new, but his voice is drowned out by a new kind of static filling Peter’s mind. Something’s wrong, his spidey-sense tells him. Get out of the way! The internal mantra seems to scream.
When the first bullet sails his way, Peter has enough sense to leap out of the way. The bullet pieces the dirt instead of him, and his gaze darts up to where it came from. Snipers in the trees.
So, it seems that all of the Hydra agents were not taken out after all.
The second shot misses him by half an inch. The metal soars past his nose with an ear-piercing whistle, and Peter stumbles back quickly.
The third one, though-- Peter knows when this one was shot because white-hot pain fills his thigh. He grunts, only allowing himself to be taken down for a split second. Because as soon as the third is shot, the next few follow quickly.
Peter flips away as fast as he can, but the sharp stinging in his leg doesn't help improve his agility. He hisses through his teeth as his next landing causes his stance to buckle, and he collapses into the dirt.
Peter thinks about how Tony must be close by. He wonders if the team can hear the bullets. If Tony somehow knows that Peter needs help, like how Peter knows that he is fucked if he can’t get up now.
He grunts as he tries to push himself to his feet, but he only has himself propped onto his elbows when the sound of splashing is heard from the river behind him. All the commotion in the trees ceases, and Peter cranes his neck around to see what has stopped the snipers from shooting.
In the darkness, he can make out the tall silhouette of his former traveling buddy.
“Monsoon,” Peter groans.
The girl only flashes him the briefest of glances before she starts towards the treeline. Her hands dance around her hips; her fingers clenching and unclenching in a way that Peter recognized Wanda do a million times.
If Peter could see the Hydra snipers, he would know that they were watching her, confused expressions flickering over their faces.
“Monsoon…” one of them says, their accent thick and tone curious. “You approach us?”
Monsoon doesn't give a response -- something she was proficient in -- and instead, she throws her hands forward forcefully, and shout of effort leaping out of her throat.
The river explodes. A tidal wave that momentarily soaks the canal dry suddenly launches itself towards the trees, washing the snipers from the trees and taking every leaf and lose branch with it.
And because it was the last thing Peter expected her to do, he yelps.
When the wave floods back into the river, it leaves the three snipers lying on the grass and coughing up water. Monsoon snarls and rushes forward, attacking the first agent.
They fight for a minute, the man mostly incoherently swatting as she punches wildly. A second agent suddenly pushes himself to his feet, and before Peter can warn the girl, the second man jumps on her back.
She rears back with a shout of anger, her hands coming up to grab at the man’s arms around her neck. The man growls, his biceps tightening into a chokehold.
The agent that Monsoon originally attacked finally falls out of his daze and reaches up, ripping her mask off of her face while she was preoccupied. Peter could now see her face. Her eyes were wide and filled with a frenzy.
In some sudden bout of adrenaline, Peter finds himself pushing back all pain and clamoring to his feet. The expression on her face makes him see red, and he suddenly realizes just how outnumbered she really is.
“Hey, jackass!” Peter shouts, momentarily drawing both agent’s attention. “I didn’t think you were planning on leaving me out of the party.”
Peter shoots out one, then two, webs. They attach to the agent holding Monsoon in a chokehold, and when Peter pulls away, the man’s arms snap back and he cries out in agony. His limbs hanging limply at his sides, and it wouldn’t take a doctor to tell Peter that they were ripped from the sockets.
Monsoon seems to have the other agent covered, and she pins his arms down, knocking him out with one swift punch to the jaw and an animalistic scream.
“You got him?” Peter asks, even though he knew the obvious answer.
She turns to look at him, and even though it was dark out, the light from the moon clung to the water coating her face, and he could make out every one of her features.
While she might try to seem stoic, her eyes defied her. They showed every emotion she felt; no wonder she wore a mask.
As she stared up at Peter, he watched her pupils search his mask. She looked so confused… lost.
If Peter’s heart hadn’t been beating a mile a minute, or his blood had been leached with searing hot pain, he might have tried to console her.
But of course, that was the exact minute their third sniper decided to make his entrance.
“Monsoon,” the man drawls, his voice sending shivers pricking into Peter’s skin. “Darling.”
Monsoon doesn't turn to face him, but her shoulders tense and eyes darken with fear.
“You defy us,” the agent says, stepping over the fully unconscious forms of his two colleagues. “We love you, and you defy us. Why?”
Monsoon starts to tremble, water droplets running down the sleek spandex of her suit. With Peter’s enhanced hearing, he can hear the whimper slipping out under her breath.
Peter stares at her in shock, his eyes big behind his mask. She’s one of them.
“You belong to Hydra,” Agent Number Three snarls. “You will always belong to us.”
Monsoon buries her head in her hands. Peter takes a step back.
“Jonquille…” The agent starts, his accent changing, “...Feu… Douze… Jonquille…”
The words don’t make sense in Peter’s mind, but must to Monsoon as she stiffens quickly. A low growl from her has Peter back up unsteadily.
Her head raises slowly and Peter gulps. Her eyes are narrow slits, but from what he can see, her pupils have blown wide and her irises have darkened completely.
“Monsoon,” Peter says, raising his hands in defense. She crawls forward, snarling like an animal. “It’s, it’s just me. Just Spidey. I-- you know I won’t hurt you. Monsoon-- please--”
When she jumps towards him, he screams.
Peter falls backward roughly. His eyes scrunch up in pain, but they shoot back open as soon as he realizes who’s towering over him. Monsoon glares down at the boy, her teeth flashing and fists clenched in a threatening manner.
“Monso--”
Peter is cut off when she waves her hand widely and he is swept off the ground in a flash of cold water. The last thing Peter registers is the hum of static in his ear, and the back of his head hitting the ground, before his sight washes away along with the world.
----
Static.
Repulsors.
Bright lights. Flashing heat. Yelling. Screaming. Worried voices.
Tony.
“Pete, Peter. Hey, hey, buddy. I’m here now.”
Relief.
“I’m here.”
----
Peter wakes up on a cot on the quinjet. He groans, his head throbbing, and someone is instantly stirring by his side.
“Hey, bud,” Tony says, sounding relieved.
Peter pries open his eyes, groans once again at the sudden assault of light, and squints. Tony must recognize the problem, as he shifts so he is blocking the light. The man’s face is in shadow, but Peter tries to smile.
“Hi, Mis’er ‘Ark,” Peter says, his voice scratchy. “Where are we?”
“Quinjet. Almost home. You’ve been sleeping for a few hours.”
“‘Ive it to me s’raight. How bad am I?” Peter grins, but it’s filled with pain. He knows Tony recognizes it, but the man chuckles anyway.
“You’ll be okay, Pete. It’s a minor concussion that should clear up on its own.”
“I was shot.”
Tony’s fake smile falls, “So you do remember. You’ll be fine. Steve already removed the bullet, and your healing is working double-time to fix your leg up.”
Peter gives a half-lidded, heart-filled smile. “Nothing I ain't seen.”
Tony places a hand on his. “You know I hate it when you make jokes like that.”
“Jus’ tryin’ to lighten the mood.”
“I thought that was his job,” Sam suddenly says, gesturing towards Tony. Peter realizes that he’s there for the first time, and flashes a dopey smile. Sam snorts at the expression.
“Don’t you have somewhere better to be, Wilson?” Tony asked, his tone sharp.
“Ship isn’t that big, Stark,” Sam says, his smirk falling. “And with our new passenger, it makes it even more stuffy.”
“New passenger?” Peter asks, looking between the two men.
Tony glances back at his kid. “The girl.”
“Monsoon,” Peter says softly, realization falling over him.
“Monsoon,” Sam repeats, “huh. She wouldn’t give us her name.”
“She wouldn’t give us anything,” Tony corrects, and Sam frowns.
“Whatever,” the Falcon says, standing from his seat. “You fill the kid in. I’m gonna see if we can make this ship go any faster.”
Peter watches his teammate make his way into the cockpit before his eyes start to ache and he moves his gaze back to Tony. It takes a second for him to focus on the billionaire, but when he does, he realizes that Tony’s eyes are full of worry.
“Bud,” Tony says, squeezing Peter’s hand tighter. “You should get some rest.”
Peter narrows his eyes, and suddenly he is thinking of earlier. The lost look in Monsoon’s eyes flash in his mind, and his breath hitches momentarily.
“What is going to happen to her?” Peter asks, ignoring Tony’s previous sentence.
Tony looks down, shaking his head slightly. “Peter, you should really get some--”
“Tony.”
Tony’s eyes darted up when Peter uses his first name instead of the familiar moniker. “Pete…”
“Tell me what’s going to happen to her.”
Tony takes in a deep breath, pausing for a moment, before, “She’s going to SHIELD. After that… The Raft.”
Peter’s eyes widen, and the action makes his head burn. “No, she can’t--”
“Peter, she tried to kill you.”
“It wasn’t her fault.” Peter tries to sit up, but Tony pushes him down quickly.
“Woah, hey, down, Kid. What do you mean? How wasn’t it her fault?”
“She-- she-- it was the Hydra agents. They had her brainwashed or something. The guy started saying some stuff in like, French, and then she did a complete 180. Before--- before… if you saw her before, Mister Stark, you would never be sending her to The Raft. She was so scared.”
Tony stares at Peter sorrowfully for a long moment, before whispering. “Like Bucky.”
“Bucky-- like the Winter Soldier?”
Tony nods stiffly. “Look, bud… I’ll… Steve knows more about this than I do, and it obviously means a lot to you, so… I’ll talk to him, okay? See if there’s something we can do.”
Peter didn’t feel entirely better, but he still nods.
“Okay?” Tony asks again.
“Okay.”
“Now, please, get some sleep.”
Peter nods once more and lays back down. His eyes drift shut, but Tony stays, as well as that uncertain feeling.
----
It takes two days for Peter to get any news on Monsoon.
He tries to keep his mouth shut and not worry, but it’s harder than he would have anticipated. When he finally does hear anything, it’s after midnight and Peter has been pretending to sleep in his room.
“Pete,” Tony says as he sits on the edge of the mattress. “I know you’re not sleeping.”
Peter fake snores for a minute, and he can hear Tony chuckle.
“She’s not going to The Raft,” Tony says, his voice softer than before.
Peter turns his head so quickly he risked giving himself whiplash. “What?”
“I’ve been talking to Steve… there are ways we can help her out of whatever Hydra has done. She’ll stay at SHIELD until she’s stable, and then… well, we’ll play it by year.”
Peter smiles, “Thank you.”
Tony rubs Peter’s shoulder. “You’re welcome.”
“I was worried.”
“You don’t need to be. You can trust me… after all, I am a man of my word.”
----
It takes two months before Peter is allowed to see Monsoon again.
She had been spending time at SHIELD with Bucky, Wanda, and some specialists from Wakanda. She had only just started speaking full sentences the week before. When she had asked to see “Spidey”, Tony had been surprised and reluctant.
Her last meeting with Spider-Man definitely didn’t go well.
But after a lot of pleading from Peter, he had finally given in. The boy was relieved. He just wanted to make sure she was okay.
Peter now sits on the couch in the common room, his knee bouncing and eyes trained down. Tony is seated across the room in one of the plush armchairs. The man’s gaze never leaves Peter.
When the elevator doors slide open, Peter is on his feet in an instant.
Monsoon’s grey eyes dart around the interior nervously. Her gaze scanning every wall, piece of decor, and window. When she finally sees Peter, her shoulders stiffen.
It’s weird seeing her now. Before, she was wearing a black, spandex suit that covered every part of her body, aside from her head. Peter had never had a proper look at her face in sunlight, and her eyes were much bigger than he anticipated.
She was wearing a soft sweater and a pair of jeans. Her blue hair had fallen back into its wavy form and draped down her back. The most jarring thing about her though, was the dark purple vines climbing up her neck and running down underneath her sweater. Like pulsating spider webs.
“Hi,” she says, and it’s weird for her to start the conversation.
“Hi,” Peter replies, smiling and stepping forward. He sticks out his hand, and she stares at it for a moment. “My name is Peter Parker.”
She takes his hand and slowly shakes. “I’m Ayla. Ayla Beauregard.”
“Nice to really meet you, Ayla.”
“Nice to meet you, Peter.”