HOPELESS ☾Peter Parker - 1

FORTY

"Well none of it is true." Her mom let out another bone-chilling chuckled and walked in her daughters direction. 

"I raised you in a house just outside of this area and Hydra kept watch on us. You willingly allowed me to give you serums and train you and I kept record of everything that happened. You grew smarter than any child and stronger than some grown men at record pace, and you soon became an extremely good solider, even at such a young age. It was then that Hydra knew you were the one. 

"They had been testing and creating serums that would allow us to control memories, and you were all set and ready to be the chosen one that got to test them. But then you had to get cancer. You became sick and then you died, but Hydra couldn't let that happen. So, we brought you back to life with a serum laced with my DNA that could only work on you, and it did. We moved you to New York at the bigger location and tried to begin our studies. You were such a good soldier before then, but after you died something changed in you. You no longer wanted to be part of the organization and you didn't want to be experimented on, but it was too late. The memory serums already contained your DNA and Hydra couldn't just make more, so they did what they had to do. They turned your brain into mush and gave you trigger words so that you would cooperate, but they could only use them minimally, for if they used them too much then your brain wouldn't be able to handle the memory serums. 

"Finally the trials began, and at first all of them failed. Until trial thirteen. We finally used energy from the Tesseract and were able to access your brain, but you began to resist the serum. You were too powerful and we couldn't control you, so I made a decision. I used the successful serum to create a fake childhood for you that would allow you to think that you had only recently been taken by Hydra. If you didn't know about the other serums and strength you possessed, then you wouldn't use it and we would be able to continue our work. I even made it seem as though a former doctor called Hofmann was the one experimenting you, and I made you trust both me and your father. So trial thirteen was a complete success; we changed your memories and created an entirely new personality for you. It was beautiful.

"When you were training we told you about your super strength so you would use it, and it was shocking when your eyes became a glowing blue. You had never looked more like me than when those eyes were shining, and when I saw them, you were no longer a burden you were a trophy. But you met that damn Winter Soldier and he escaped. None of us thought that he would risk everything to come back and get you, but he did. He knew how powerful a weapon we could make you with the memory serums, so he took you away from us. But now you're back, my beautiful Hemlock. You've come back to me." 

Aspen had tears streaming down her face and figure stayed unmoving. "You're lying." She whispered out weakly, not wanting to believe a word the woman in front of her spoke. 

Marie walked over and crouched in front of her daughter, giving her that same sickly sweet smile. "Am I? Think really hard, Hemlock. Really, really, hard." 

Aspen was so distracted by her own thoughts that she didn't even realize that her mother had pulled a syringe out of her coat pocket. 

"Stop!" Peter tried to call out but it was too late, the woman had already stuck the needle into Aspen's neck and injected the clear liquid. 

"What was that?" Aspen breathed out, her head spinning and eyes becoming heavy.

"Now you'll see." Her mom vaguely whispered just before Aspen passed out. 

☾

Aspen woke up with a gasp, her body lurching forward only to be yanked back by the familiar restraints.

Her eyes searched around and she saw her mother still standing their smiling and Tony and Peter staring at her in concern. 

"H-How long was I out?" Aspen asked the same question she asked the first time her brain feeling disoriented.

If she had woken up in a different situation, she would've believed that it had been years, but because of what her eyes were met with when they opened she wasn't sure. 

"Five minutes." Her mom gave her a smirk, "But it felt like years didn't it." 

Aspen eyed her mom, breathing heavily her head still spinning at the new information.

"What did you see?" Marie questioned, her icy stare going right through Aspen. 

"Everything." The girl breathed out, a tear slipping down her cheek. "How could you do that to me?"

Everything that her mother had told her about her past was true; she had seen that. Whatever serum Aspen was injected with allowed her to watch certain events of her life from the outside. She saw it all: her mother training her as a child, her young self willingly being injected by serums, the cancer, the forced treatment, and finally the changing. Every memory she had was created by a serum that glowed blue in the dark and made her eyes that same light. 

Aspen never really went camping with her parents. Her dad never laid with her and showed her the constellations, and she never really fell in love with the moon. All of it was a lie. 

"I didn't do it to you." Marie whispered. "You did it to yourself. I know you saw it, you volunteered." 

Aspen clenched her jaw tightly and glared at the woman in front of her, not even bothering to try and stop the tears from falling down her face anymore.  

"Why did you tell us that? Why not keep it secret?" Tony spoke up from his side of the room, allowing the attention to be taken off of the breaking girl and providing a proper distraction. 

Across from Aspen, Peter was slowly breaking free of his restraints, so Tony was distracting the woman so the boy could get fully free. He just needed a few more minuets.

"Because it doesn't matter what you all know. Soon you two will be dead and Hemlock's memory will be wiped." Marie said her malicious grin forming into a full on smile. 

"I never saw my father. What happened to him?" Aspen spoke up with a breaking voice, bringing the attention back on her.

"Don't get me started on that idiot," Marie mumbled, rolling her eyes. "Your father didn't know that I was Hydra agent when we met. We got together one night, and accidentally had you, but it ended up being the perfect opportunity for Hydra to have a new soldier. They could train you and see how well you responded to the advancement serums, but then you proved yourself worthy of more, like I told you. Throughout it all, we needed Stanley's help. He specialized in working with the human brain and was a brilliant scientist. At first he refused to work with us, but we persuaded him."

"You tortured him?" Aspen asked, her voice cracking. 

She was honestly just relieved that her father had no intentional part in harming her. 

"That and threatened to kill everyone he loves. That usually does this trick." Marie laughed lightly at her own words and stared at her daughter. Aspen once again felt like she was the mouse and her mother was the cat, ready to pounce at any moment. 

"Where is he?" Aspen questioned, her voice barely above a whisper.

If it was possible, Marie Blue's smile became even wider. Spending all the way across her face to the point that it almost reached her ears. 

"He's dead."