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Once, he had a name. He had a mother and a father, a childhood and a life. He does not remember any of these things.
His beloved has called him solnishka for as long as they’ve known each other; a tribute to the color of his hair and the light he brings to an otherwise dark existence. Solnishka, then, is his name. The only one that matters, at least, because it is the name he hears when a soft, gentle voice calls him from the dark and the cold.
This is the way things are done, the way they have always been done. There is dark and cold and emptiness and then there is the voice of his beloved - zvezdochka - calling to him. He opens his eyes to the only face worth remembering, to gentle hands on his bare body trying to drive away the cold.
This is the way things are done.
It is with great distress, then, that Solnishka wakes alone.
The room is not like anything he has ever been treated to before; lavish, compared to where they are normally kept. The walls are thick and white, far too bright when Solnishka and his zvezda are used to the dark. There are soft blankets and clean sheets and beneath them, he wears a gown. It’s thin and flimsy and open in the back - he can feel the sheets against his backside - but still clothing.
This is not the way things are done. His beloved is the one who dresses him and no one else.
A needle is taped to the back of his hand and one thin wrist, its tube leading up to a bag with clear liquid in it. He does not know what this is but if they find it necessary, he cannot fight against it.
“You’re awake,” a voice says and it is female. They are not usually allowed around women; not since their time with the spiderlings.
Blinking against the harsh lights above him, he slowly turns his head to look out into the room. The woman who sits at his bedside is beautiful and poised. Her face is familiar but he cannot place it and her hair is the color of blood in the sunlight. He finds that fitting for a person that so easily telegraphs violence while trying to appear meek and docile.
Solnishka can count a least a half a dozen weapons hidden on her and that means, of course, that there are at least half a dozen more that he can’t see. This woman is deadly.
“Where is he?” He asks hoarsely. His mouth is parched and his lips are dry; he is not usually made to speak until Zvezdochka has tended to him. He shouldn't have to do so now.
“Where is who?”
The woman tilts her head to the side, feigning confusion and curiosity but her eyes are sharp and assessing. She is trying to fool him but Solnishka learned long ago how to read dishonesty in his captors.
“Zvezda moya,” he hisses through clenched teeth. His body aches without those familiar hands on him, without the opportunity to touch in return. “Where is he?”
Has he been woken yet? Did they make him open his eyes to a world without his solnishka? The idea of it makes him tremble, makes him want to scream and fight against them. The only thing that stops him is the knowledge that his impertinence will mean he doesn’t get to see Zvezdochka at all.
“You're supposed to let me see him,” he tells the woman instead. “He has to see me or he'll be agitated.”
“Agitated?” A voice from nowhere says. "Understatement of the century, pal."
Solnishka lurches into a sitting position, alarmed. The woman reaches out to him, perhaps to push him back down or perhaps to calm him; he doesn’t know and he doesn’t care. He scoots away from her outstretched hands, hissing in displeasure.
No one is supposed to touch him but his zvezda.
“He broke out of his room,” the nowhere voice says. “We need your help containing him, Widow.”
Solnishka blinks and then looks at the woman, who is rising fluidly from her chair. Suddenly, he can place her face.
“Oh,” he says. “Spiderling.”
It makes sense now, why they would allow a woman to sit with him. She will build trust between herself and the pet and that, in turn, will ingratiate her to the Asset. She is the link between the two of them and their new captors.
She smiles, small and secretive. “I wondered if you would remember,” she says and moves toward the door.
“Spiderling,” he calls.
Throwing his feet over the bed, he uses the metallic stand that holds the bag feeding liquid into his arm and pulls himself to his feet. Without its support, he would fall; his body is still far too weak for such exercise but it is necessary.
She turns to look at him impassively, hand on the door.
“You have to take me to him,” Solnishka says and he doesn’t care if he sounds desperate. He is awake and his beloved is not with him; this is not how things are done. “Did they not tell you? He won’t stop until he finds me and he won’t care if he kills the people who stand in his path. He will calm for me, I promise.”
He hates it, to be used this way, to be used against the one he loves but this is his purpose. This is why he is allowed to stay with his beloved, to live each day in his embrace. He is the pet and he keeps the Asset docile. If it keeps him close to Zvezdochka, he will suffer this manipulation.
“Did who not tell us?” The Spider asks.
“The men who gave us to you,” Solnishka says, as if this should be perfectly obvious. “There are instructions, spiderling, you shouldn’t have ignored them.”
This, of course, is why there is usually a seasoned handler sent with them. To stop these things from happening. The absence of one is curious, but it isn’t his place to question these things.
She doesn’t say anything to this. Instead, she stares at him for several long seconds - agonizing seconds, seconds that his zvezda probably used to harm someone keeping them apart - before finally nodding. She reaches for him again and again, he avoids her.
“You can’t touch me,” Solnishka admonishes. “He won’t like it.”
This, too, is part of the instructions.
She doesn’t seem to like this response. It isn’t the first time he has seen displeasure at this rule but his beloved has always been quick to keep the promise of death to any who break it. Those who value their lives learn just as quickly.
Keeping her hands to herself, the Spider opens the door and leads him out into a hallway where the air is cool enough to make him shiver and that is just as bright as the room he was being kept in. They need only turn down two connecting hallways before they find his beloved.
Zvezdochka wears a gown just as flimsy as Solnishka’s own and his face is tight with fury and the undercurrent of fear. With his metal arm glinting under the bright lights, he holds a dark-haired man in the air by the throat. Around them, there are other people and they all have their weapons raised.
The Spider makes a noise; she must know the man about to die.
“Zvezdochka,” Solnishka says loudly. His voice is still hoarse but it carries the necessary distance between them. “Dusha moya, I’m here.”
Immediately, his beloved releases his hold and turns to him; the man crumples to the floor. Someone checks to see if he is alive but Solnishka is not concerned with a stranger’s life. His only concern now walks down the hall toward him purposefully, made no less powerful by the strange clothing he wears.
As soon as they are close enough, strong hands reach under his arms and he is effortlessly lifted. Obediently, Solnishka wraps his body around his beloved, legs around his waist and winding one arm around his neck, curling into him so that Zvezdochka may hold him more easily. He keeps the hand with the needle on the metal stand, lest he forget its presence and hurt himself.
His beloved wouldn’t like that, either.
“You’re cold,” Zvezdochka murmurs in the language that both is and is not their own. He does not sound pleased. “You aren't supposed to walk yet, you haven’t been awake long enough --”
Solnishka shushes him, soft and sweet, petting the side of his face with his free hand.
“I’m cold,” he agrees because it does not pay to deny these things. He won't be believed, not when his skin prickles with goosebumps, and anyways, he isn't in the business of lying to the one he loves. “Make me warm.”
Zvezdochka pulls him closer, tighter against his body. A firm hand in his hair brings their faces just inches apart and his beloved laves slowly at his dried lips, wet and teasing. It isn’t until Solnishka makes a noise in his throat - small and yearning - that he deepens his ministrations into a proper kiss.
Fire races through Solnishka and his heart beats faster, stronger. His body finally wakes up, he is finally alive again; made so by his beloved’s kiss. He brings the metal stand a little closer so that he may cup Zvezdochka’s face with both hands, hoping to keep him in place. Begging him not to stop.
A proprietary hand slides up his thigh, pushing up the gown with it. He makes another noise, a moan, and tries to press even closer, wanting more. His body belongs to Zvezdochka, just like his heart, his soul; wherever his zvezda wants to touch him, that is where he aches to be touched.
“Calm,” his beloved says when Solnishka has begun to make too many noises.
Another kiss is bestowed to his tingling mouth and then moves to his cheek, his jaw, his neck. The top of his gown is pushed aside so his beloved may lick at his collarbone and mouth at his shoulder. Again and again, he goes back and forth, placing long sucking kisses that will mark - that are meant to mark - from his jaw to his shoulder.
Solnishka trembles, heat pulsing through him as if he has never known the cold before. Between his legs, his cock grows heavy and already, the thin layers between them have become far too much. He wants his beloved to divest them both of their clothing, to reacquaint their bodies properly. The hand on his thigh tightens, trying to calm him. It's hard and painful, a grip that will bruise. He wants it to bruise, wants to carry the marks so that everyone can see how he is owned.
Unable to hold his own head up any longer, and his beloved’s hands now otherwise occupied, Solnishka rests his cheek on Zvezdochka's broad shoulder. He feels content now, finally being cared for the way he was meant to be, held close and made warm the longer they touch.
Hazily, he blinks and finally registers the Spider’s astonished face.
Does she not remember, then? Has she, too, been made to forget too many things?
“He will want a blanket for me,” he tells her softly. “And water. We will stay in the same room or this will happen again. He will take care of me first. But so long as you give us these things, he will not fight you when it’s time. He’ll go with you.”
“Go with us?” She asks and for the first time, she sounds truly cautious. “Go with us where?”
“To the chair,” he says and he cannot keep the derision out of his voice, though it’s dangerous to show such emotion. The chair is the most hateful thing in existence to him; it harms his beloved, makes him forget. “And then to the mission. Whatever you have purchased us for.”
“Purchased?”
This is the nowhere voice but it is definitely coming from somewhere this time. Solnishka raises his head to see a man with sandy hair walking down the hallway toward them. The dark-haired man limps a few steps behind him, helped along by yet another man. This one is dark-skinned.
“You haven’t been purchased,” the dark haired man snipes. “Not you or Robocop. We rescued you. You’re welcome, by the way.”
Rescued? Solnishka does not even remember a time when he hoped for such a thing.
“I don’t understand,” he says and Zvezdochka seems to share his confusion. He stops what he's doing and shifts, trying to get a look at the three men and the Spider.
“You’re free now,” says the dark-skinned one, gently. “Welcome to Avengers Tower.”