Chapter Text
It was cold and dark.
Peter pressed onwards, unwavering, bare feet leaving bloody footprints in the snow as he ran. Behind him, searchlights lit up the surrounding darkness and swept across the frozen wasteland.
Escape wasn’t going to be easy, not with the towering trees confusing his sense of direction- they all looked the damn same- the sharp underbrush nipping at his legs and dangerous terrain all around him, with more than enough crevices to set up the perfect ambush around every corner.
Shouts in Russian echoed off the mountains growing closer and closer, and the frigid air burned Peter’s lungs with each passing breath.
He didn’t have much strength left.
The gunshot wounds in his abdomen and back leaked heavily, and Peter kept pressure on them as best as he could. But the blood just kept oozing through his fingers, staining his hands and making a mess of his ratty prisoner uniform, leaving a trail of red everywhere. His escape path was obvious to anyone who was tracking him.
Shit.
Hydra already learned one fact out of many: pure silver bullets worked the best.
He doesn’t know exactly how long, but it was definitely months. Months of captivity, of horrific experiments, of draining his blood into vials while doctors and scientists hidden behind their surgical masks took detailed notes. Cutting him open on a sterile metal table while he was wide-eyed, thrashing and very, very awake. They didn’t even give him the mercy of unconsciousness, those fucking bastards.
Testing him, figuring out all of his strengths and weaknesses. Months of fighting back, of holding onto himself even as they tried to break him down into something they could weaponise.
Peter took his one and only chance when Hydra was transporting him to another facility. Another godforsaken base hidden deep in the Siberian wilderness, bigger and better and more equipped for all the sick and twisted things they wanted to do to him.
He’s so fucking glad they underestimated him. If those agents hadn’t seen him like that in the transport truck- battered and beaten raw, under the assumption that he was pumped full of ungodly amounts of tranquilliser and flirting with death, then they wouldn’t have let their guard down for that split second. But that split second was all he needed to make his move.
Peter stumbled, catching himself against a snow-laden pine. The bark bit into his palm, and he dazedly watched his blood drip onto the fresh white snow beneath.
His vampire healing was usually so reliable, invincible once upon a time- but even that had slowed to a pitiful crawl. A far cry from what it was before. He couldn’t use any of his abilities, and he’s never felt so fucking weak and helpless.
They’d taken too much from him, done too much, and his whole body was falling apart. He knew that if he had stayed as their captive, his life would be over, the life that he’s somehow managed to preserve for hundreds of centuries up until this point. They would’ve killed him. And he’s not talking about Hydra.
This is all my fault. I got too careless.
But even then, Peter knew that if Hydra really wanted to, they would’ve found some way to keep him alive, keep him slightly before the brink of death, so that he was weak and broken and unable to fight back. So that they could keep using his body over, and over, and over, and over again.
He was better to them alive, but if they couldn’t have him then they’d try to make sure no one else could.
Peter was just worried what they were going to use his DNA samples for. His blood, his skin, every little thing they managed to take from him.
There’s no point in thinking about it right now, not when those assholes are tracking me down.
For him to escape, to save himself and preserve his energy and life force before all of his injuries can weaken him further… there’s only one way.
Peter’s head abruptly snapped up.
Through the dark trees ahead, he heard voices. Two different voices, speaking English with American accents.
“Stay close Richard, it’s too dark to see clearly out here. We need to take advantage of all this chaos, I doubt we’ll get another opportunity like this again,” A woman's voice floated through the chilly air.
“I’m well aware, my dear, right behind you now. Who do you think they’re searching for?” A man’s voice responded. “…wait, it’s not us, right?”
Two figures emerged from a thick cluster of pine trees, winter boots coming to an abrupt halt. There, just a few feet away, stood a Hydra soldier positioned directly in front of what seemed like a concealed storm bunker, its entrance half-buried in the snowy hillside.
The soldier’s head whipped up at them.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. Three sets of eyes locked onto each other- then clear recognition flashed over in a second.
The moment shattered and everyone moved at once.
“Who the fuck-?!” The man swore in Russian and reached out for his handheld radio with one hand, and his gun with the other- but Mary was faster and shot him right in the head before he could finish his sentence.
Peter heard the sharp but whisper-quiet crack of gunfire close by, but could tell it was aimed away from him. He released a long and slow anxious breath.
His weakened superhearing could barely pick out two heartbeats, steady and strong despite all of the commotion and noise. Not the typical heartbeats of frightened civilians.
American soldiers? He assumed distantly… but they’re not Hydra, at least from what he could tell…
He had to-
“Ugh!”
A searing lance of agony tore through Peter’s chest, as if his ribs were splintering inward. He doubled over with a guttural, wet cough that ripped up his throat- each spasm forcing up thick gouts of blood that splattered dark and steaming against the white snow at his feet.
Fuck.
“O-oh, shit. That’s… yeah, that’s really bad…”
His legs trembled violently, muscles turning to water, and then they simply… gave up. Peter crumpled straight into the snow with a muffled thud, his body folding in on itself as he landed hard on his side. The cold bit through his clothes instantly, but he barely registered it over the intense crushing pressure in his chest.
His gasps was shallow and desperate, each breath a broken wheeze that rattled in his throat. More blood bubbled past his lips, trickling down his chin.
Peter knew it now. He knew with overwhelming dread and certainty that he was about to die, if he didn't make an important choice right there and then.
He had to do it.
A rebirth.
But the risks… these conditions aren’t exactly ideal, even if I’m reborn, how can I survive out here when I’m-?
Wait.
He slowly looked up at the line of trees ahead, at the smallest gap between the underbrush where people would likely cross through if they had to get past. And adrenaline surged through him one last time.
Making up his mind, he limply crawled over to the source of the voices, digging his frost-bitten fingers into the snow, teeth clenched so hard they might crack as he had to shift whatever strength he had left into his upper body; forearms dragging his entire weight across the ground.
He hoped. Prayed, even though he doesn’t believe in a higher power. Of course, Peter couldn’t guarantee anything, but he was willing to take his chances. After all, he had nothing left to lose.
His vision blurred and darkness crept in at the edges. This transformation was his last resort, a survival mechanism coded into the genes of his species, and it began whether he willed it or not.
His entire body shrunk.
Bones crunched and compressed, reforming anew with wet and grotesque organic sounds. His awareness flickered like a waning candle as centuries of existence folded inward, condensing down to preserve the spark of life at his core.
Muscle and sinew rearranged themselves, weaving and narrowing as if they were alive- and what little remained of his blood redistributed to protect his shrinking vital organs. The bullet wounds in his abdomen and back sealed over, every deep scratch, mark and bruise fading away to reveal soft and tender pale skin.
The bloody prisoner uniform pooled around his rapidly diminishing frame. Peter’s last conscious thought, as his mind simplified and any memory became something distant and dreamlike, was a desperate plea.
Please. Please, let this work.
Then there was only the cold, the hunger, and the primal need to cry.
Mary’s gaze swept the perimeter one final time, scanning the treeline, the shadows between the pines, and the unmarked snow. There was nothing, no movement or a single sound beyond the whisper of wind through frozen branches.
Satisfied, she holstered her pistol with a quiet click, silently grateful for SHIELD’s latest sound suppressor upgrade. Even if another Hydra patrol was within earshot- well, that’s assuming it’s not a super-soldier unit and only average humans- they’d have heard nothing, not a single gunshot or struggle. Just the mountain’s vast valley swallowing up what had just transpired.
Behind her, Richard remained still. His sniper rifle was braced against his shoulder, eye pressed to the scope, and his breathing was controlled with every muscle tense and ready. He swept his sightline across the slopes above them and searched for heat signatures, for the glint of metal and anything that didn’t belong.
“…All clear,” he finally murmured, lowering the rifle but keeping it close.
Mary gave a curt nod and turned her attention upward, mentally plotting their next move. The rendezvous point was still half a mile higher, where SHIELD had promised a pilot would be waiting and ready for immediate extraction.
Her eyes traced the mountainside until they caught on a narrow gap between two clusters of pine. The underbrush was thinner there, the terrain less choked with bramble and deadfall- a much cleaner route.
“There,” she said quietly, nodding toward the opening. “That’s our path up.”
Carefully, they both made their way over. Just as they stepped underneath the trees and across the first few feet of shrubs, something moving on the ground caught Mary’s eyes further up along the trail.
Her hand immediately went to her side, ready to draw her pistol at a moment's notice… until a few footsteps more, and her eyes widened in shock.
She knew at first glance what it was, but almost couldn’t believe it.
The moment Mary stopped walking, Richard almost bumped into her, confused but alert. He held up his sniper rifle and peeked over her shoulder.
.
.
.
There, in the snow right in front of them, was a moving bundle of threadbare prison clothes, with a tiny fist pushing free from the bloody fabric.
The man gasped, his rifle immediately lowering. “Is that…?”
“Richard, that’s a baby,” she breathed, already moving forward without hesitation and dropping to her knees in the deep snow.
“I can see that, love,” Richard replied, his weapon still trained on the tree line, eyes scanning for threats even as his wife carefully extracted the small infant from the pile of adult-sized clothing. “Mary, we need to move. Those patrols-”
“Richard,” her voice cracked. “He’s freezing, look, he’s turning blue.”
That got his attention. He glanced down and felt his stomach drop. The baby, barely hours old by the look of him, covered in grime, blood and dirt, was indeed taking on a bluish tint, his lips pale and tiny chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow breaths.
Mary was already shrugging out of her thermal jacket, wrapping up the infant before holding him close to her tactical vest and trying to share whatever warmth she could.
Her eyes were solemn when they met Richard’s, suspiciously moist and glazed over.
“Did they do this?” she asked quietly. “Did Hydra… were they experimenting on pregnant women? Is that why…”
They looked at each other, a wordless conversation passing between them, the kind that only came from years of marriage and even more years of running covert operations together. They’d seen things in their year of reconnaissance on this Hydra facility- terrible things, documentation of human experimentation, genetic splicing and manipulation, forced mutations, all for the sake of building a secret army composed of the strongest soldiers and assassins that even nuclear forces would be fearful of. Horrors that kept them awake at night.
“I don’t know, Mary. But knowing Hydra, I wouldn’t put it past them, that’s for sure.” Richard’s jaw clenched. “Their base is only three miles down the valley, so I think…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.
Their hearts tightened at the thought of someone giving birth in such extreme conditions, and then leaving their baby behind. Maybe a mother who’d escaped, desperate enough to flee into a Siberian winter alone and terrified.
A woman who’d wrapped her newborn son in whatever she could find and then… what? Collapsed somewhere else in the snow? Been recaptured? Or killed? It must’ve been her that all these Hydra agents were searching for along the mountainside.
But they would never find out.
Mary pressed her face against the baby’s head, feeling the softness of his dark hair and breathing in that distinctive scent of new life. Against all odds, in the cold and abandonment and violence, he was still alive and fighting.
“We’ve been on this mission for over a year,” she whispered, something fierce and protective growing in her chest. “So… it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to say…”
“…that this baby is ours?” he finished, his gentle hand squeezing her shoulder.
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
Richard pulled his wife closer, creating a shelter with their bodies around the tiny life between them. He kissed her gently, their lips dry and cracked from the cold, but it was still sweet. They held the baby to their chests to share their body heat, willing him to survive.
“Let’s go home,” Richard murmured against her temple.
Mary let out a shaky laugh, tears finally spilling over. “Do you think our handler would throw a hissy fit if we brought home a baby?”
The man chuckled, and they both stood there in slight disbelief at their situation.
“Richard?”
“Yes?”
The baby made a small sound, not quite a cry but more like a mewl of discomfort, and instinctively Mary began to rock, the motion automatic and natural.
“You remember when we were talking about retiring?” Her voice was stronger now. “I think this is our sign.”
Richard looked down at the baby in his wife’s arms, a fragile miracle they’d found in the snowy Siberian wilderness.
He saw the bloody footprints leading back toward the Hydra base that were too large to be a woman’s, he noticed with a frown, and how the footprints stopped completely where the baby was found. As if the mother had completely disappeared. But he pushed the observation aside, since his wife’s face was soft with a hope he hadn’t seen in a long time.
This look… it really suits her, he thought adoringly.
After all, she’s always wanted kids, but the job would’ve made things difficult, not only for them but for their children also. And after so long with SHIELD, she’s learnt not to grow too attached, too sentimental- but at the end of the day, she couldn’t stay cold for long. It wasn’t her true nature.
“…Yeah, I think it’s time we retire,” he agreed quietly.
They moved through the forest cautiously, sneaking past the patrols and the searchlights overhead. Mary cradling the baby inside her jacket, and Richard on point with his rifle ready.
Just ahead of them was the extraction point, the small aircraft that would take them out of this godforsaken hellscape.
Against Mary’s heart, wrapped in her warmth and the steady rhythm of her heartbeat, Peter was having a dreamless sleep, unaware that the gamble he took had paid off. He would grow up protected and safe, at least for a little while.
At least until the day Hydra comes looking for what they’d lost.
.
.
.
They never made it past the Russian border.
On the journey back, their plane went down, falling heavy and fast after not even a few minutes in the air. It wasn’t an accident in the slightest- Hydra had been one step ahead of them this entire time- and costs were too great.
They had checked to see if there were parachutes onboard before taking flight, but when they opened up the container as soon as the plane started failing they knew something was horribly, horribly wrong. Both the main and reserve parachutes were torn to shreds, the suspension lines cleanly cut, and the harness itself looked too weak to be able to safely hold their weight in the rough, freezing winds.
Mary and Richard knew that this trip back was purposely sabotaged.
Richard sent out an emergency SOS to the closest SHIELD base in the vicinity the first moment things seemed off with the plane- but by the time it was received, it was already too late.
.
.
.
When SHIELD arrived at the crash site, the scene was pure devastation. Twisted metal jutted from the snowy mountaintop, and enormous flames swirled in the air, enveloping the fuselage despite the bitter cold. Grey smoke rose up against the pale sky, drifting away with the harsh snowy winds.
They found Richard first.
His body lay twisted among the wreckage, limbs at different angles and blank eyes staring up at nothing. The pilot was nearby, equally still, and equally as dead. The silence around the dispatch team was deafening; there were no groans, no movement, just death and fire and the sound of the wind through shattered steel.
But then there was a faint sound. It was barely audible but one could tell it was a wet, struggling gasp.
Mary.
She was pinned partially beneath a section of the fuselage, parts of her body broken in ways that made the medics’ faces go white. Half of her face was raw and blistered, the skin charred black and her left eye was swollen completely shut. Blood poured from the corners of her mouth, her nose and her remaining eye; mixing with tears and soot.
Each shallow breath rattled in her chest, wet and laboured and failing.
But her arms were wrapped around something, clutched so tightly to her chest that her knuckles had gone bone-white. Something small and wrapped in a blanket that was somehow still clean, untouched by the destruction surrounding it.
She’d shielded it with her own body, they noticed. What could it possibly be, just what is so important enough that she would willingly take the fire, the impact and the crushing weight, all of it- just to keep that tiny bundle safe and hidden away from the rest of the world?
“Ma’am, please don’t move, we’re going to-” The SHIELD medic dropped to his knees beside her, hands already reaching for his kit, voice filled with urgency.
Mary shook her head, the movement was tiny but agonizing. Trembling with an effort that seemed to cost her every ounce of strength she had left, she slowly opened her arms.
“T-take… him,” she whispered, each word a gurgling rasp as blood filled her throat. “He’s… our baby.”
The whole world seemed to stop.
For one moment, no one moved, no one so much as breathed. The medic’s hands froze mid-reach, and the other SHIELD agents standing nearby went rigid, their faces draining of colour as understanding washed over them rapidly.
Then someone let out a choked sob.
“Oh god,” an agent whispered, her voice cracking. “Oh my god.”
An older agent, a man who’d seen war and death, seen things that haunted him still to this day, stepped forward on shaking legs. He’d been on many, many missions with Mary and Richard, and considered them not just his coworkers, but his friends. He was there for their wedding, goddamn it. His eyes were glassy even though his expression remained stoic. He knelt slowly beside the medic, and his gaze fell to the bundle in Mary’s dying arms.
A tuft of soft brown hair peeked out from the blanket’s edge. Tiny fingers, that were so damn small, curled against the fabric.
The baby was somehow alive.
“…What’s his name?” the agent asked, his voice barely a whisper, thick with grief and sadness that he was fighting with everything he had to hold back.
Mary paused.
She hadn’t even thought of a name yet. After all there had been no time, no moment to stop and consider baby names and nurseries and futures. They’d been running, fighting, surviving, and then they were falling through the sky.
But the instant he asked, a name appeared in her mind as clear as a ringing bell. It sounded right, like it had always been waiting there for her to notice.
Her ruined face shifted just ever so slightly, into something that might have been a smile. Tears spilled freely down her cheeks, cutting clean tracks through the blood and ash. Her lips moved and formed the shape of the word, but no sound came out. Her voice was already long gone.
“Peter.”
The medic caught the name on her lips and broke. He turned away with his shoulders shaking and one hand pressed over his mouth. He’s only been a SHIELD medic for a few months, and barely knew the couple in front of him let alone anyone else- but couldn’t help but feel utterly devastated at the scene in front of him.
The older agent reached out with trembling hands and gently lifted the bundle from Mary’s arms. The baby stirred and let out a soft, sleepy sound. How he wasn’t crying loudly yet was a complete mystery.
Mary’s arms suddenly fell to her sides, cold and empty. Her remaining eye fluttered, searching for her son one last time- and when she found him cradled in the agent’s arms, her smile widened just a fraction.
I didn’t get to have you for very long, she thought through the blur and the haze as her consciousness began to fade. But… I’m so happy that I found you.
Then her chest stopped moving, and her eye closed for the last time.
And in the stunned, grief-stricken silence that followed, a baby boy named Peter began to cry.