Chapter Text
Peter has a pounding headache from what has to be a concussion, there’s a bag over his head, his hands are chained tightly behind him, and a gun presses on the back of his skull, herding him along.
This was not what he was expecting when he took the long route to the library. Something was seriously wrong with his luck if he’d been randomly taken from the streets and been beaten half to death.
He’d once heard that if a kidnapper moves you to a secondary location, your chances of surviving decreases by 70%. He doesn’t want to know the chances for a tertiary location is, especially if the kidnapper is the fucking Joker who won’t just tell him what he wants.
He stumbles blind, almost tripping over himself a few times.
“You know,” he mouths, and the gun presses more firmly into his head. “I really don’t see how we’re going to get out of this stalemate. Ha, I don’t see. Get it?”
There’s no response, but they do stop moving. Maybe they’d arrived.
“I already told you, I can’t help you. I can’t do anything. So you might as well let me go.” Peter struggles a bit, testing out the chains again. He won’t use his strength in front of the Joker—he has the feeling that it wouldn’t be too hard to connect the dots to Spider-Man, and that’s not a target he wants on him. “Pretty please?”
Peter can hear someone come closer to him, with Joker’s strangely steady but still erratic heartbeat. He tenses in anticipation as the sack is pulled off his head.
He blinks a few times, cringing from the light. He doesn’t know how long that’s been on him. When his eyes adjust, he sees Joker leaning down over him, face twisted in a terrifying smile, and—they’re in a lab. A large one. An expensive one.
And there are two dozen people shoved in a corner, all forced to kneel with rifles pointed at them.
“I heard you put up a fight, Petey,” Joker sings, taking one finger and tapping the belled bruise on his cheek. “That’s not very grateful of you.”
“What is this?” He spits out, glancing from the hostages to the clowns with guns and to all of the tech supply in front of him—it’s everything he’s dreamed of having access to for months. “Why am I here?”
Joker giggles maniacally. “This is all for you,” he croons, gesturing to the lab. “And the people, too. You said you didn’t have the materials.”
The blood drains out of Peter’s face. “I also said what you’re asking for is impossible. It’s all theoretical, the science just doesn’t exist.”
The chains binding his wrists are yanked off, and he immediately brings his hands out in front of him, noting that they’ve been rubbed red and raw.
The Joker brings out a familiar red plastic notebook, the cheap two-dollar kind, that started all of this. “The science doesn’t exist, yet you wrote it all down,” he drawls. “And isn’t half the fun of science the experimentation? I’m giving you a gift, Petey.”
“You still haven’t told me where you found that,” he scowls in response.
The clown pays him no mind. “You know what I want. Just play by all my rules and I’ll let everyone go! And if not—well, I’m sure that’s rather obvious, don’t you think?”
“You want me to make a bomb that doesn’t exist,” Peter protests. “You’ve got the wrong guy. I’m just a high school student—a street rat. I can’t help you.”
Joker shrugs good-naturedly, seeming none too off put by that. “Oh, well. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
There’s a yelp from the group of kneeling people, as a woman is grabbed by her hair and forced down. “Hey, wait,” Peter yells, panicked. “Don’t touch her!”
The woman is sobbing, and then—she’s not. The gunshot rings in his ears.
“No!” Peter rushes towards her but is held back from the clown that brought him here. He knows it’s useless, he knows the woman was shot point-blank in the head, all because of him. There’s another cry from the group. “No, please, stop.”
“Reconsidered?” Joker laughs, and Peter feels an intense hatred for him—something he’s only ever felt for two people in his life. “There are still more people for your… incentive.”
Peter tears his eyes away from the brain matter decorating the cold tile, from the group of people all suppressing horrified sobs—all except for two. Peter chokes on a gasp when his eyes briefly meet Tim’s.
Tim’s here. And, from the looks of it, so’s his dad.
They’re at Wayne Enterprises, because of fucking course they are.
He tries to steady his voice, but it’s hitched and shaky. “You don’t know what you’re asking for,” Peter tries to reason. “It’s not a bomb. It’s not meant to be a bomb.”
The Joker flips through the pages, and Peter flinches. He knows what’s in that notebook. Mostly just him thinking on paper, but there are notes on various superhero suits—he thanks whatever God there is that all of it is generic enough not to be traced back to Spider-Man—as well as weapons, inter-universal travel, time travel…
And the arc reactor.
“When has Joker ever needed someone to make his bombs for him?” A voice murmurs incredibly softly from the crowd of people. It sounds much calmer than the situation warrants, sharp with clear focus and attention, and Peter spares a glance to see Bruce Wayne staring intently at the two.
The notebook is handed to him, open to the page of countless notes of the arc reactor. Calculations of its energy, its potential. “This is an energy source,” Joker states. “The most powerful in the world by far. And don’t tell me you did the calculations wrong—I checked them myself!”
Peter’s heart thuds. So he knows his stuff, in both making bombs and mechanical engineering as a whole. “It’s clean energy,” he still resists. “Renewable. Not a bomb.”
“But it could be!” The Joker laughs, eyes alight. “It could be a bomb!”
“If you know your stuff, why didn’t you just make it yourself?” Peter snaps, closing his notebook and hugging it tight to his body. “Why do you need me?”
Joker leans closer over him. “That little gem fell into other hands at first,” he sighs regretfully. “It didn’t work out too well for them. You hear about the explosion way out?”
Peter pales. A fifty-mile radius crevice formed, killing everything in its path. It was in the middle of nowhere, at least—nothing but miles and miles of abandoned highways. That was his fault.
The woman’s death was his fault.
“You’re a very valuable man right now,” the Joker delightedly exclaims. “Everyone wants a piece of your mind. But I got to you first—had to see what all the fuss was about. Ha ha ha!”
“Please,” he begs Joker, even as he knows it’s hopeless. “Just please let everyone go. The reactor, it’s not meant to be used like this. It’s supposed to be good. Just stop.”
There’s a twinge of annoyance in Joker’s smile now, and his voice drops very low. “If you don’t agree to this right now, I am going to personally shoot every last one of those people. And then I’m going out to find more. It’s your choice, really.” He breaks into peals of laughter, and pulls out a gun.
“Don’t,” Peter whispers. “I… I need sketch paper. And—and palladium. I need palladium.”
The Joker laughs.
-
Peter’s hopes of Batman coming to save them are dismissed when he hears that the bats have been sent on a chase around the city to find and deactivate smaller bombs that could still kill dozens of people.
He tells the Joker the bomb will take time, and he gets three days in return. Every day after that, they start eliminating hostages.
Three days.
It’ll have to work.
He spends a few hours sketching over the design and changing parts of the original. He knows that the arc reactor could be used as a bomb—had helped Tony design it with failsafes so that it wouldn’t.
Which really sucks for him, because he knows how to take all of them off. Well, most of them. A few, he’s guessing here.
The most dangerous part is that Joker is knowledgeable in bomb making, engineering, and chemistry. The trick is to make sure that Peter is just better.
Which he is. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have needed to kidnap him. But he has to be better enough, because the moment he finds something off, twenty people are dead.
He gets to work.
The worst part is that once he’s started, it’s so easy. It feels like stepping into a sigh, how simple it is for him to work in the lab. He’s unconsciously aware of everything around him, hands flying as he gets the material he needs.
He works through the night, and by the end of it, he’s got the beginning of a reactor.
On the second day, he steels himself and speaks out.
“I need help.”
Joker stops what he’s doing and faces him. “You don’t expect me to fall for that,” he sneers.
Peter keeps his face forcefully neutral as he talks. “A bomb like this has multiple different mechanisms that all have to work. You know that, you saw the design. If you want me to meet the deadline, I need another set of hands.”
“Work faster, then. Or let a few people die. Whatever.” Joker couldn’t look less bothered about it all.
Peter takes a breath. “In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t slept in two days. And you guys could’ve been nicer transporting me—a concussion is not the best for thinking. My hands are shaky, and one wrong move, and all of us vaporize. I need help.”
Joker sighs, notes of anger letting through. “Fine. Take your pick,” he says, gesturing to the clump of hostages. “They’re all smart enough to work with WayneTech.”
Peter walks to the side where everyone’s cowering under the guns. He makes a show of looking over the people, his face softening in guilt and sorrow. His eyes meet Tim, who looks straight back at him.
“Him,” Peter says, pointing at his friend. “I want him to help.”
The Joker condemns him. “Wayne’s brat? Why would you choose him over the engineers?”
Peter keeps his voice carefully monotone. “Look at everyone else—they’re all about pissing their pants right now. I need someone with calm, steady hands and slender fingers. I choose him.”
Joker peers at the hostages, slow delight blooming on his face. “Yes, they rather are scared, aren’t they? Alright then, let him up.”
Peter walks to Tim, ignoring the sharp gaze of Bruce Wayne from next to him, and helps him up, tugs him over to the table he’s been using as a workbench.
“Peter, you can’t do this,” Tim hisses. “He won’t let us live no matter what.”
“I have to,” he whispers back.
“No secret talks!” Joker sings, something deadly in his eyes. “Speak loud and clear for all of our friends to hear.”
Peter snaps, “I was just introducing myself.” He pulls out his sketches and the latest drafts, and shows it to Tim. “This is an arc reactor, miniaturized and compressed. It’s a Multi-Isotope Radio-Decay Cell with a toroidal plasma containment system. The Pd-107 beta decays, and the particle is the source for the electron capture by Pd-103, producing gamma rays. The electromagnetic coils around it capture that energy and redirect it. Get it?”
“Peter…”
“The bomb itself is simple. It’s just a controlled overload of energy—with the materials I have, it’s going to be about 5 GigaJoules per second,” he continues. “Do you understand that?”
Tim blinks. “That’s insane,” he breathes. “That’s more than an entire generating complex.”
Peter jerks a nod. “It can level all of New Jersey,” he says ruefully. He shakes himself, turns back to his sketches. “The energy has to be focused and controlled. It can’t hit any part of the reactor before it needs to. These,” he points at a different sketch, “will protect it from exploding prematurely.”
Peter widens his eyes meaningfully at Tim and hands him the sketch. It’s similar to the antigrav puck, only on a smaller scale, larger power, and very difficult to make.
“I can help you build the first few, and then I need you to make them yourself while I work on the bomb. Then we put them together, and I’ll connect them to the switch. I think I’ll need—at least twenty, or so.”
Tim hesitates, eyes furiously scanning through the blueprint. “Twenty,” he repeats, tapping the paper with a finger. “I can do twenty.”
“Do as many as you can,” Peter warns. “Something like this can easily turn into a catastrophe, and the range of protection isn’t very big. The wires will have to be coiled up tight to fit. We can never be too safe.”
Tim nods forcefully in return, and Peter relaxes. He understands—at least a part of it. Protect, one per person, curl up into a ball. And did he have any doubt? Tim’s every bit as smart as he is—a few minutes speaking physics to each other more or less proves that. It’s how he’d known he could trust him with this. And it’s only that Tim hasn’t had the workings of Tony Stark to build off of, that’s the difference.
Now it’s just up to Peter to pull off what Tony Stark pulled off in a cave ten years ago.
-
He makes an arc reactor, but it’s more than that.
He makes an Iron Man gauntlet, too.
It’s not shaped like one, only has the repulsor. In the design he showed the Joker, the repulsor is supposed to be set into the reactor to continuously fuel the reaction. In theory, that’s true, but he has a different purpose in mind.
They have twelve hours left on the clock when Peter breaks down.
“It’s not enough time,” he cries. “I need another day. And some sleep. Please.”
He puts his head in his hands, body hyperventilating. It’s not all fake, it’s just extremely controlled. And he’s definitely gone longer without sleeping before—he and Tony had some famous “all weekers” when working on something especially interesting—but that didn’t mean exhaustion was pulling at him with a vengeance.
“You have twenty more days,” Joker reasons delightedly. “Your friend, however, has until tonight. If you want him alive, you should get to work, Petey.”
Peter chokes back a sob, paling as he turns to Tim. He wills tears to his eyes, calling up every terrified emotion he’s felt in the past almost-week. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I got you into this, and now you’re going to die. I’m sorry.”
He collapses onto Tim with a wail, and shakes in his arms. He pushes his face into him, pressing his mouth against his shoulder as he speaks incredibly softly.
“Make sure everyone has one,” he murmurs and hopes Tim can catch it. He’s still snivelling pathetically. “When I say, get down and curl up.”
Tim grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him. “Get it together,” he snaps at Peter, and looks at him emphatically. “I’m not dying today.”
Peter whimpers. “Let’s… let’s finish up your part of the bomb,” he stammers. “You should at least have time with your—with your dad.”
With careful hands, he guides Tim to the reactor. It’s not his greatest work, but it’ll do, as long as he times everything right.
He narrates to Tim where he should put all of the little bugs he’s made, his hands holding aside unnecessary wires in the big metal containment in which the reactor resides, watching as Tim’s hands disappear into the machine and then slip out—another bug hidden under his sleeve each time.
They space the time out, so that all together it takes two hours before bugs are hidden in pretty much every crevice of Tim’s clothes.
“He’s done,” Peter miserably declares. “He can’t help anymore. Let him be with his dad.”
Joker eyes them both up and down suspiciously. “Are you giving up on the deadline, Petey?” He coos, but his eyes flash. “You don’t want your friend to help you? You want him to die?”
“I chose him because he had good nerves, not because he was a fucking genius,” Peter seethes. “You’re about to kill a teenager in less than nine hours. The least you could do is let him be with his family.”
Tim starts trembling. “So I’m really going to die?”
Peter tries to look like he’s one step away from another breakdown. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “There’s just too much to do.”
If they get out of this alive, maybe there’s a career for them in acting, because the Joker flicks his hand. “Go,” he orders, bored.
Tim scurries back to where the hostages have laid, almost unmoving except for the odd bathroom breaks or meals they’d irregularly gotten. “Bruce,” Tim’s voice breaks down, and then he collapses into his arms.
Peter starts sobbing again, little hiccups of “I’m sorry,” drawing the attention back to him. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I don’t want to do this,” he bawls.
Tim discreetly passes a handful of the bugs to Bruce.
Peter can’t afford to pay attention to them. He has to keep the attention on himself, which he’s been doing for the most part anyway—none of the clowns obviously think any of the hostages are much danger, because they don’t really watch them all that closely.
He makes a show of trying to calm himself, biting into the soft flesh of his palm to stop his hiccups. He has to trust that Tim knows what he’s doing, that he’ll figure out his side of the plan and Peter will do his own.
“Tick, tock, Pete,” Joker sings maniacally. “Six hours.”
He bites his palm hard enough to draw blood and gets back to work.
-
“Time’s up.”
Peter’s hands stall from under him. The bomb is still wide open, with wires sticking out. It’s clearly unfinished.
“No,” Peter breathes. “No, no, no, please. I’m going as fast as I can.”
“And maybe this will be a motivation for you.” A clown tears Tim from his dad, whose eyes look incredibly pained. Tim just lets out a sob.
The clown forces Tim onto his knees in front of Peter, and Peter chokes on a cry. He looks at Tim through the tears in his eyes, and they’re not fake, because Jesus, that’s his friend in front of a gun.
He prays to whatever God there is in this world that this will work.
“Please don’t,” Peter whispers. He grabs the bomb violently into his arms. “It’s almost finished, look! I just need more time. See?” Tim’s shaking too hard to speak.
The Joker takes out his gun and points it at Tim’s head. “Sorry, Petey! Better luck tomorrow.”
Peter meets Tim in the eyes. Tim gives him a slight nod.
“Now!” Peter yells, plunging his hand deep inside the bomb and activating the bugs with a switch hidden inside. Tim hits the ground hard, curling into a ball with everyone else as force fields flicker to life around them.
Peter doesn’t have one, he has something else.
Bullets crack off against the energy of the force fields as Peter rips the arc reactor and the repulsor out from the bomb, dropping the shell. He quickly fastens the repulsor around his right hand, holds the reactor with his left—it’s done in less than a second.
And then he fires.
He takes the Joker down first, the familiar sound of repulsor blasts whirring as it emits a beam of light and pure energy, sending him sprawling across the lab, knocked unconscious with a mix of third degree burns, a heavy concussion and severe bruises, probably. Not enough to kill. So familiar he might cry.
He dodges the bullets as best as he can as he shoots again and again, taking each individual clown down one by one. The repulsor’s not great—hastily done, scrap work, not fit to be in a suit—but it’s good enough, if somewhat out of control. With the civilians out of the way, they don’t stand a chance against an Iron Man gauntlet.
More clowns file in through the door—the ones that were keeping watch in other parts of the building, keeping it all secure. Peter takes them down with ease, one after another.
Now that the shooting’s started in the lab, Peter can hear fire down below the building, too. The police—they must’ve been here all along, trying to find a way in without getting anyone killed. But now that everything’s gone to mayhem inside, anyway, they must be brute forcing their way in.
Eventually, there are no more clowns. Peter falls to his knees just as the first cops arrive.
“Shit!” He hisses, cradling his right arm. It’s already swollen with bruises—the jerk of the repulsor injuring his hand where there was no gauntlet to protect it. He’s lucky the bones aren’t completely shattered. “Fuck.”
He drops the reactor and stumbles for the husk of the bomb, blindly reaching in and switching off the force fields now that the cops have arrived. They work on securing the Joker first, who’s still unconscious.
Tim arrives in front of his vision first. “Peter, you’re shot,” he hisses, propping him up against the wall.
“Huh?” He glances down, sees some red blooming through his shirt. “Oh, yeah. That’s just a graze.” He hadn’t even felt it in the fight, and it really only nicked his side.
Another figure joins Tim in kneeling down in front of Peter, and he starts as unfamiliar hands press firmly against his wound, hissing as sharp pain starts to course through his body.
“Oh, hey, Mr. Bruce,” Peter mutters, breathing through the pain. “Good to see you again, except not really. Sorry about all this.”
“It’s not your fault,” he immediately responds, frowning. “This needs stitches.”
Peter flashes a weak grin. “Nah, it’s fine. Just needs a bandage, and… some sleep. A few good meals.”
All of the hostages save the three of them have eagerly left the lab, met by more policemen outside. The Joker is secured surprisingly quickly and efficiently, carted off to Arkham, assumably. He doesn’t know where the other clowns will go.
A familiar man in blue uniform joins where the three are. “Hey, I know you,” Peter says. “Commissioner Gordon. You helped me get to school, before.”
Gordon looks over Peter, taking in Bruce’s bloodied hands at his stomach, the repulsor in his hand connected to the arc reactor abandoned a foot away, and the bruises all over Peter’s body. He swiftly calls in his radio for a medic.
“Wayne, I need to know what happened,” Gordon addresses Bruce, whose face looks horribly tense. “We’re taking the other hostages in, but with your case…”
“He can’t go in,” Bruce replies, voice strained but firm. “Peter Parker, he was the target, and if Joker wasn’t lying, there are others after him. Gordon, we should talk alone.”
Gordon pauses for a second and then nods, radioing in that all units should leave the building, watching as the cops file out the door, leaving only the three of them.
“The kid?” Gordon asks incredulously, as soon as he gets confirmation that the building is secure and completely deserted. A paramedic arrives, and Bruce backs off a bit, although Tim stays silent at Peter’s side. “What did they want from him?”
The woman has a first-aid case, and opens up a suturing kit, starting by cleaning the wound. Peter decides to let it happen—with how stunted his healing is right now, it might even be for the best.
Peter grimaces as he pushes himself slightly more upright, cringing at the death-glare he gets from the woman. “I can tell you that,” he still pipes into the conversation. “They wanted me to make a bomb.”
Gordon furrows his brows. “Joker is notoriously good at explosives. Why did he go through all this trouble for you?”
“Because I was stupid.” Peter bites his lip, all of the anger and guilt he’d suppressed the past few days bubbling up. “I lost my notebook about a month ago. I didn’t really think anything of it—I just used it for brainstorming, you know? Thinking on paper. I don’t know how, but someone bad must’ve found it, and then word got around that I know how to make a bomb that could wipe a small country.”
Gordon narrows his eyes at him. “Why were you designing a bomb? And how do you even know how to do that?”
Peter lets out a forceful exhale as the stitches start. “It’s not a bomb,” he swallows hard. Tony would hate his tech being used like this. “It’s a reactor. Clean energy—it could be a renewable source to fuel a city. But… but any energy source can be a bomb, and this is an especially powerful one.”
He continues on. “Last Friday, I was walking to the library after school, when they kidnapped me off the streets. Hit me pretty hard in the head, too. They took me to some kind of abandoned building—I don’t know where. Told me they wanted me to make them a bomb. I said no.
“They tried beating me into doing it, but I can take a hit. And then I said I couldn’t make one there anyway because they didn’t have the materials I needed to make one.”
“Could you have made one there?” Tim asks, voice reproachful.
Peter blows out a breath. “Probably,” he shrugs. So could Tim have, or anyone with a good enough brain and a few closely kept Stark-secrets. “But I wouldn’t have. It seemed smarter at the time to just keep denying. The technology isn’t supposed to exist, the science is all theoretical. But they wouldn’t let it go.
“Next thing I know, I’m getting a sack shoved on my head and I’m brought here. They told me if I didn’t build it, they’d shoot everyone here. They… they killed a woman, because of me,” Peter says softly, voice breaking. “So I tricked them. I made this reactor instead,” he half-heartedly lifts his right hand, “and I got Tim to get force field shields over everyone during the shootout.”
The paramedic is finishing up her stitches—he only needed four or five. He lets her clean it one last time, and then dress it with a bandage.
Gordon turns to Bruce. “Did he say who was after him?” He sounds urgent.
Bruce shakes his head. “Joker mentioned that somebody else got a hold of the notebook first. He brought up the explosion far out east.”
The blood drains out of Gordon’s face. “Everything was vaporized in a fifty-mile radius,” he mutters, pacing. “The government tried to cover it up as much as they can—they blocked it off, let as few details about it out as possible. I only know that whatever it was, it scared the shit out of them.” He turns to Peter, who’s finished being treated and is now pulling himself up against the wall, waving away the paramedic’s concern. The paramedic gets dismissed by Gordon. “That was you?”
Peter staggers over to his work bench, where his notebook and various looseleafs lie, almost unruffled by the fight. He gathers them all up in his arms and then drops them on the floor, slumping down next to him.
He waits for the others to sit down around the pile with him before he speaks.
“This is the notebook,” he says bitterly, handing it over to Gordon. “It’s mostly a mess. Half-baked concepts I never really cared enough to fully realize them. And I didn’t have the resources or the need, anyway.” Mainly so he wouldn’t forget—Tony’s work, the science he learned from his world—sometimes somewhat contradicting that of this one.
Gordon flips through the pages, eyes scanning through, not understanding the content. “You’re going to have to explain this to me, son.”
Peter sighs, leaning forward. He takes the book and puts it on the ground. “Superhero suits,” he says, pointing at the sketches with his left hand. “Wings, repulsor-based flights, shields, force fields.” He turns a few pages. “Weapons—the nerdy kind, like what comic book heroes would use. AI huds, tech bow and arrows, an android. Multiverse and time travel—I haven’t cracked those yet,” he smiles ruefully. The ones he needs most.
He taps at some calculations that stretch twenty pages long. “Nanotech,” he murmurs, fingers tracing the page, underlining some key equations that even Tony needed to filch off the princess of Wakanda to figure out. “You could make pretty much—anything.”
“Peter, this is insane,” Tim says. He looks at the work with some understanding in his eyes—enough to at least get an idea of what caliber of tech they’re talking about. Honestly, probably more. Man, they should let loose in a lab together some time, when a crazy crown isn’t holding a gun to their heads. That’d be fun. “How did you even design all of this?”
Peter shrugs. He didn’t actually design most of it—although there are plenty of his own notes, additions, and improvements on each. He’s not that smart—at least, not Tony-Stark, Hank-Pym, Shuri smart. But he can’t exactly say that.
“I’m a nerd,” he says sheepishly. “And I like building stuff. Most of this is incomplete—someone really smart would have to work really hard to finish the designs and make it work. But—”
“It’s all feasible,” Bruce finishes. “All of this tech—you could make it. Or someone else can. Lex Luthor, maybe—There’s nothing stopping this from existing in our world.”
Peter hesitantly nods. He flips the page again, showing the arc reactor. “This is the energy source,” he explains, pointing to the first draft. He finally slips the repulsor from his bruised hand, tosses both the repulsor and the reactor on the ground in front of him. “And this is what I made it into. The repulsor is a beam of a high-density form of muon particles. You can set it to different powers—see?”
Tim frowns at his notes. “You said the maximum energy on this is 5 GigaJoules a second,” he says, tone slightly accusing. Peter nods. “It says here that the estimated energy is more like 70. That’s—that’s basically unlimited.”
Peter turns the page. “To get more energy, you need a particle accelerator,” he reveals. “The palladium core I used is a temporary fix. Eventually, it gets neutron damage. To overcome that, you need a new element, made in a very specific accelerator. After that, it’s just a matter of efficiency—how good you make it.”
Peter picks up a loose piece of paper from the ground. “This is the one thing that doesn’t leave this room,” he vows. “There are fail safes in the design of the arc reactor to keep it from being weaponized as a bomb. I put them there. You mess with them, and they become unstable. My guess with the highway is that they just made it wrong. This,” he shakes the paper, “is how to get past them—I had to make it to throw the Joker off my case. And there can be no copies, no trace, no nothing. I’m going to burn it to ashes.”
“Jesus, kid.” Gordon takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “No wonder they went through this trouble. I’d be surprised if every gang and supervillain weren’t foaming at the mouth for this.”
Peter flinches inwards. “I can disappear,” he blurts out. “I—I have a friend, she’s good at this stuff. I’ll leave Gotham. I can run so they won’t find me.”
“No.” Bruce forbids resolutely. “We can’t risk that. If you get caught again—”
“I won’t,” Peter promises. “I’m good at disappearing.”
Gordon lets out a sigh. “Wayne’s right. We can’t risk you getting into the wrong hands. Frankly, I’m worried about the government, too. They might already know, even. What they could do with this stuff…”
Peter rakes his good hand through his hair in pent-up nervous frustration. “That’s literally all I can give you,” he says. “I don’t know what else to do.”
Bruce hesitates, shares a look with Gordon. “We could do a cover-up,” he suggests. “The media already believes that I was the target of this attack, doesn’t it?” Gordon confirms with a nod. “We keep with that story. Throw out all witness testimonies. Give Peter Parker an alibi for the past week, and then bury him so deep no one can ever find the name.”
“But that doesn’t change the main problem,” Tim argues. “That gets the government and police off our trails, maybe. What about the bad guys who already know about him? Joker implied that Peter’s currently valuable, that important people are still looking for him. They won’t be fooled—and even if they are, it won’t matter, because they’ll still be looking.”
“Maybe we should bring the League in,” Gordon mutters. “Peter could be a—a consultant, of some kind. Build them some tech. And they could keep him safe.”
Bruce immediately shakes his head. “With Wonder Woman and Superman missing? The League’s a mess right now, they can’t handle this too. 70 GigaJoules, that’s enough to blow what?”
“The entire Fukushima generating complex was less than five,” Tim pipes in. “You put it in the right place, on top of the bomb itself, you could cause earthquakes, tsunamis—massive, possibly global-scale destruction.”
“So it’s an extremely high profile case,” Bruce concludes. “Whatever we do, we need to pick a route, and fast.”
Peter frowns in weary thought. “Can’t we just, like, fake my death or something?” He asks, jerking his head to the side for good measure. “Really publicly, super visually. Let everyone know I’m dead, and then I can actually run away and live the rest of my life in peace?” Hopefully, find a way home, too.
“Sorry to break it to you, kid, but we can’t get you a new identity without witness protection,” Gordon says. “And we can’t get witness protection without ringing some very high bells.”
“Oh, I can do that,” he waves away.
Bruce pauses. “You can make a new identity?” He doesn’t look—well, he doesn’t look put off by it. If anything, he looks—slightly suspicious, definitely curious, but mostly like he’s just figured something out.
Peter blinks at him in response. “I can hack into the government, get some new papers. It’s no big deal. So is it settled?”
Gordon makes a noise in the back of his throat. “Just keeps getting better and better,” he mutters lowly, and then states louder. “You’re not running. On top of how dangerous it is, you’re safest where we can keep an eye on you, especially so that if anything happens, we know what to prepare for. Also, you’re sixteen.”
“What if we don’t hide him?” Tim offers. “We could establish him. It doesn’t need to be real, but if we just get word out that he’s working for the League, or Batman now or something, maybe it’ll be enough to get them to back off?”
“That still invites attacks,” Bruce counters. “Maybe even more. The contents of the notebook could be just rumour now. Publishing Peter like that would be a confirmation.”
Peter groans. The migraine that hasn’t gone away for the past week is killing him, and everyone just going around in circles is not helping. “Isn’t there just some super secure place you can lock me up in or something?” He complains. “And then you can argue this out. But also, I feel the need to remind you I haven’t slept in three days straight, or eaten much of anything, and also my brain feels like it’s melted from all of that math.”
Everyone pauses to consider him.
“You’re right,” Bruce says finally. “We can argue the details out later. We need a plan for right now.”
“We’re not going to lock you up,” Gordon vows. “You’re a kid, and the only thing you did was be too smart for your own good.”
“I got a woman killed,” Peter grieves.
“No,” Bruce clips. “You didn’t. You did save twenty people. For now, our priorities are buying some time, and keeping Peter safe until then. We can hash out the rest later.”
Tim starts gathering up all of the papers and the notebook, pointedly leaving behind the most dangerous one. “We start by locking this up,” he says. “Get it secure in a place no one can find.”
Peter hesitates. “I have more notebooks at home,” he admits. “There’s… a lot more where this came from.”
“How many?” Bruce asks, wearing a tense expression.
Peter tries to think back. “Maybe a dozen or so? I’m not entirely sure. Mostly they just go further in depth with some of these, a few more concepts.”
Gordon shakes his head. “Kid, you’re giving me an aneurysm,” he grumbles. “Give me an address. I’ll get them to you discreetly.”
Peter winces. He thanks God that he left his spider suit with Felicia for repairs before she left, and he hadn’t had time to pick it up before getting nabbed. “Uh, okay. You know that really old abandoned firehouse in the deserted part of Crime Alley?”
Tim stares at him. “Are you living in a Fire Station?”
“Hey, I was literally orphaned again like, six months ago,” he protests. “Give a guy some time to get back on his feet.”
“We’ve been trying to get you home with us for months now,” Tim almost yells. “Why didn’t you come?”
Peter chews on his lip. “I like living alone,” he defends. “And I like Crime Alley. I didn’t exactly plan to end up in Gotham—I had to make do with what I had. You’ll find all my stuff on the second floor. My notebooks should be around there, too.”
Tim obviously looks like he wants to argue more, but Bruce lays a hand on his shoulder, cutting him off. “We cover this up,” he warns Gordon. “As far as everyone knows, this was a targeted attack on Wayne Enterprises. Open and shut the case, and I’ll get NDAs out to all my employees.”
“The Easter Egg hunt for the bombs is still going,” Gordon informs with a grimace. “I heard they only have two left, but the bats and cops are stretched thin, they won’t get a chance to take accounts from the hostages until then. Will Peter be going with you?” Gordon asks, and Bruce nods.
“What?” Peter cries. “I didn’t agree to this.”
Tim gives him a withering look. “Too bad,” he clips. “I know you have an allergic reaction to getting help or something, but you’re not doing this alone. It’s too dangerous.”
“Tim—” Peter begins, but a glance at Tim’s face stops him in his tracks. He’s never seen him so worked up before—not even when there was a gun to his head. He slumps forward, crossing his arms, feeling like a small child.
Bruce settles a weighty gaze on him.”My manor is heavily protected,” he explains gently. “It’s secure to a paranoid degree, and as a benefactor, I have contact with both Batman and the League. It’s the safest place for you, right now.”
Like Tony Stark minus the Iron Man. Peter chews on his lip. “Fine—but only until you come up with a plan. I was planning on going home soon,” he says mournfully.
Bruce nods at him, unhappy but obliging. He stands, helping Tim up, offering Peter a hand which he declines. Tim has all of his notes but one, and the repulsor is still lying on the floor.
Peter reaches for the repulsor with his left hand. He sets it on the absolute lowest setting so that it just begins to emit light. He casually aims it at the piece of paper lying by his feet and fires. The tiles on the floor around it are shattered and blackened.
Gordon stares at the crevice it left behind.
“I can safely take it apart,” Peter reassures. “Once my hand gets better. Honestly, this is not my best work, I kind of want it gone. I’ll pull it to pieces so that it doesn’t exist anymore.”
Gordon nods slowly. “That might be best. Get some rest, kid.”
-
After the most awkward car ride in history, they finally arrive at the manor.
“Shit,” Peter murmurs. “Big place for a street rat.”
At least in Stark Tower, everything was futuristic. Peter felt somewhat like he belonged—between the nerding out and all. And Johnny had always made Baxter Building seem impossibly welcoming. This mansion stinks of Old Money, and everything Peter is not.
Walking through the doors is like signing his fate to the guillotine. It’s silent, and empty, and more than a little gloomy. The exact opposite of home with May.
The butler sees them and immediately fusses over Tim and Bruce before noticing Peter’s presence. He introduces himself extremely formally, and Peter feels awkward standing there.
“Alfred, can you take him to one of the guest rooms?” Bruce asks. “He can borrow some of Tim’s clothes for now.”
“Of course,” he assents, and leads Peter through countless halls that all look the same. “I’m afraid we don’t have a room prepared at the moment, but you may stay here while that’s sorted.”
Peter rubs the back of his neck. “Oh, it’s, um, fine. Anything’s fine, really.”
The room is probably as big as Peter’s old apartment—maybe more. The bed is way too big, and the room itself has a distinct feeling of unused. Tim stops by with a pair of soft sleep clothes in his arms.
“Hey, can I take a shower?” He asks him, shuffling his feet. “They didn’t exactly give me much while I was with the Joker.”
Tim stares at him for a bit before gesturing to a closed door inside his room. “Go ahead. Everything’s probably in there.”
It’s the first time he’s showered in hot water in so long Peter almost cries. He has to be careful not to get the bandage wet, and contorts his body to manage it. The steam pulls at him, exhaustion taking him, until he almost wants to fall asleep in the shower.
He’d forgotten how his hair curls, soft and mute, when washed with real product and not a generic cheap soap bar. He shampoos thrice, and washes his entire body twice, just to get the feeling of dirt off of him. He brushes his teeth for five minutes.
Tim’s clothes swallow him, looking ridiculously loose on his skinny frame. He’s just skin and bones and vague hints of unusually corded muscles.
“Eat before you sleep,” Tim says, perched on Peter’s bed. He has six pieces of plain toast on a platter, with three bottles of water. “You didn’t eat much in the lab.”
Peter grimaces, and takes the toast from him. He manages down four before his stomach churns too much.
“Hey,” Peter says softly. “I’m glad you’re okay. And I’m really sorry I got you into this.”
Tim’s expression is pinched. “Don’t be sorry,” he says, narrowing his eyes at him. “Damn it, Peter, I just wish you’d let us help you before. You saved my life.”
Peter just winces. “I’m the one who got you there in the first place,” he argues, and Tim shakes his head.
“No,” he states firmly. “You didn’t.” He hands Peter a water bottle to drink from and puts the remaining two on his nightstand. He stands with the platter. “Sleep for as long as you can—we won’t bother you. Come find someone when you wake up. Everyone else should be home by then.”
Peter tilts his head. “Where are they? Where’s Duke?”
Tim briefly hesitates. “They’re dealing with the fallout for WE,” he explains. “Making sure everything’s right.” Peter gets the sense that that’s not quite true, but he doesn’t push. “Don’t worry about it. Get some rest.”
He leaves him alone in the room. Peter’s asleep before his head hits the pillow.