Marvel's The Avengers: Hydra's Little Spider

Chapter 9: Life at the Compound

The next few days passed in a blurry. Peter and Wanda slowly adjusted to their new life at the Avengers Compound. Pietro still was not cleared to leave to infirmary and Wanda still hasn’t told her brother about her relationship with Peter. She dreaded that conversation, mainly for Peter’s sake. Natasha was especially helpful in making sure that Peter and Wanda have no complaints about living here. As somebody who switched sides herself, she knew how hard the adjustment could be. Steve on the other hand was eager to train with the new recruits the Avengers got in the past few weeks. Vision, who decided to stick around after destroying Ultron, Rhodey, who formally became a member after the battle of Sokovia as the media called it, Sam Wilson, who was the good friend Steve talked about back on the helicarrier and wore a bird suit of all things, as well as Peter and Wanda trained every day for a few hours before lunch.

After lunch, which was usually cooked by one of the members of the Avengers, mostly Sam though, Peter spent a lot of his time in the lab Tony gave him to create a suit for himself. He even incorporated something called ‘web shooters’. These devices were attached to Peter’s wrists and would shoot synthetic webs when he triggered them. It took Peter far longer than he would have liked to admit to develop and Peter was sure that his promise to Tony about not trashing the lab was broken a couple of times during development. However, now he had an incredibly strong fluid that dissolved after a couple of hours and was easy enough to produce.

Because Peter had not much experience in developing software, which would be required for the suit he had in mind, Tony even had an intern from Stark Industries brought upstate to help Peter out. At first, Peter was very much against having anybody else help him on this project, especially since he hasn’t exactly planned on announcing who he was to the general public, but once he got to know Ned Leeds he truly enjoyed having the young college student around.

Ned was a huge fan of the Avengers and geeked out whenever he met one at the Compound, but definitely knew a lot about programming. He even started to develop an AI for the suit, inspired by Tony’s very own one. Wanda, who visited Peter from time to time in the lab, also liked Ned well enough, even though he nearly passed out the first time he saw her. Apparently being able to manipulate minds and matter was something that impressed the intern even more than simply having an enhanced body.

Wanda herself spent the afternoons, on which she didn’t visit Peter, walking around the grounds and spending time with Natasha. The former spy took a liking to the Sokovian and even started teaching her some useful interrogation tactics, even if Wanda doubted that she would ever need them as she could simple read someone’s mind. Before they met up for dinner again, Peter and Wanda visited Pietro every day. The bedridden Sokovian couldn’t wait until he was allowed to leave the infirmary and the doctor who treated him was confident that he could leave soon. Wanda knew that she would have to tell Pietro about Peter’s and her relationship before he got released, especially since everybody else in the Compound knew about it, but still postponed that talk until the next day, every single day.

Another thing Peter enjoyed very much were the ‘breakfast lessons’ as Wanda started calling them. Since they were usually the last ones up in the morning, they had the whole kitchen for themselves and nobody bothered them about the mess they made, as long as it was cleaned up afterwards. The only time somebody complained about them wasting food was when Wanda used her powers to empty a bag of flour on Peter’s head, just as Natasha and Steve walked in. While the Russian simply laughed, grabbed one of the cookies they made and left for the living room, Steve lectured them about wasting food and how not everybody was as privileged as they were. When Peter told Ned about that encounter later that day the intern fell to the ground laughing. Once he calmed down, he explained Peter that that reminded him of his school days, where he had to watch countless PSA videos with Captain America. That evening Peter presented the other Avengers with a DVD, on which all these PSA videos were saved, and said DVD was promptly watched by the rest of the team. Steve still has not forgiven Peter for that, but he also didn’t say anything about Peter’s and Wanda’s kitchen habits anymore.