Chapter 1: Prologue
Chapter Text
The first thing Peter realizes when he regains consciousness is that he is not anywhere he expected to be after Dr. Strange had cast that final spell. Where he had been was a dry, brightly lit Sanctum in New York City with Ned and MJ and a backpack full of supplies, including the upgraded suit he had. He had even made sure to stop by Aunt May’s gravestone. Strange had mentioned he wouldn’t be able to pinpoint and place him exactly as he was at the time, but he had said he did not expect much to differ since the Sanctum in New York existed in many universes. Parallel universes- despite their differences, still had laws of order. Where he was now… well, where was he now? It was wet– but not quite the wet he felt when it rained on him during patrol, or even the wet he felt when he had fallen into the river all those years ago and Stark’s suit had to fish him out. It was also green, so incredibly green. It’s all encompassing, he can’t see the color– can’t even really open his eyes– but he can feel it; he can feel the green thrumming through his entire body. So much for the expertise of a ‘Sorcerer Supreme’.
Peter wades through darkness, feeling as if he were suspended in thick molasses. His limbs struggle to move as he coughs– once, twice, a third time, but the liquid doesn’t exit his mouth– instead, there’s more. Panic seized him when he realized he’s actually suspended in the strange, wet yet sticky (He couldn’t quite find the words to describe it properly) liquid. More and more and more enters his mouth, and suddenly he feels like he’s drowning, a weak cough rattling his body. As much as it leaves his mouth, it doubles back and sinks deeper into his throat, until he’s fully panicking, mind bouncing every which way until his hands stutter and move through the molasses-like liquid until they hit something cold, hard, and firm. Glass. Or metal or steel. It had to be.
Winding back as best as he could, his eyes shut tight as he tried to hold a breath he hadn’t quite inhaled on, his fist meets the surface and shatters his containment. It breaks the silence of submersion and he’s flopping out of a large tube, onto the floor, cutting and piercing his arms and legs on the glass, sputtering for air. For the moment, however, all he can focus on is the blood rushing to his ears, the distinct sound of his thumping heart (a little too fast for a human but he was both part spider and in abnormal condition, he figured), and his coughing and sputtering breaths. All he can feel is green. Green and sore. Shaking off like a wet dog who just got bathed in goo from another dimension, (because hey, that’s what he was doing, right?) Peter manages to crack open his eyes to take stock of his surroundings.
The room itself is dark, but after a moment of blinking his bleary eyes and wiping more and more green away from his brows, they adjust and he’s able to see the tube he’s in is one of five, with an almost neon green liquid sputtering out of the tube at the top of his broken container, the liquid of pooling beneath him and in the remaining bottom of the tube that hadn’t broken away. The other tubes are empty. Why was his tank the only one with goo inside? Wasn’t he sent here through a spell? If that was the case, why did he feel like he was freshly hatched? Everything was so bright– his head was pounding, he had cotton-mouth, his ears were ringing, and he could barely see, and as he stabilized himself, all Peter could focus on was how angry he felt. What kind of adult lets a teenager make such a dimension altering decision? Especially after so many people died around him. Because of him. He flinched.
Tony lived all those years while he was blipped. He had Mrs. Potts and Morgan– he had a family and he sacrificed himself for everyone– and Peter. Especially Peter. He made time and space dimensional travel possible for Peter. Peter suddenly felt old. So much older, and so very different than he remembers ever feeling before. He felt it in his body and the way green threatened and loomed over each negative thought he had, having taken part in so many world-changing– and ending ways. He had, essentially, sent his first love’s dad to prison for life. He had met the Avengers, split apart on the tarmac when Mr. Stark brought him in for the Civil War. He had saved his best friends and classmates from their death multiple times. He fought aliens and met humans and aliens alike from outer space and teamed up with them and fought in a war.
A galactic, multi-dimensional war, deciding the fate of his universe, against a giant titan who had thrown a moon at Mr. Stark. (and Mr. Stark lived then). Suddenly Peter’s mind rears back to the anger that had threatened to consume him previously, before he had tumbled down the slippery slope he was on. What was Strange even doing, considering such a thing from a seventeen year old? Hell, one slap to the head with full power and he’d be obliterated like a mosquito and a bug zapper, if he ever saw that damn wizard again– suddenly very aware of the green, deep and strangely venomous rage bubbling up in his chest, Peter takes a deep breath, and promptly coughs up more green goop with a strangled sound. Ugh, what the hell is this stuff? Looking down at himself in the darkness, he realizes he’s dressed in what he had been wearing when he arrived at the Sanctum that morning, a simple t-shirt and pants, but his backpack and shoes were nowhere to be found, and he was dripping in said goo. It clumped in his hair; he runs his hands through it and feels a slush of goop drop down in a congealed mess from the side of his face to hit the ground in a distinct and clean plop sound. Must be related to the laws of order Strange had mentioned– and this tube must have been his way of explanation into this universe, it was a lab… Peter idly surmised as he stood up, slowly eyeing the space around him, wincing as the glass below him cut his bare feet.
Once he stood, plucking individual pieces of glass out of his arms, he swerved his attention to the corner. There, a computer was easily recognizable and comparable in looks to the computer he had been using prior to Mr. Stark’s internship, and that wasn’t saying much– sure he was a whiz kid with engineering and tech, but he dumpster dived for all his stuff before Mr. Stark came along. This computer looked like a pre-cracked piece of junk he would find useful. The only difference was it had a casing around the screen that connected it to the wall and a keyboard at the metal built-in it sat on. There was no chair. Peter’s mind wanders again to his old mentor as he messes with the buttons, or rather, the look in Mr. Stark’s eyes as he died. With a shutter of light reflecting off of his now glassy eyes, the screen of the computer finally blinks on, showing static first, and then distinctly beeps a warning of a containment breach as it shows the status of each tube- ART.LAZ pods are what they’re labeled as. Peter wasn’t nearly as handy with computers and hacking as Ned is– was, but in his time with his best friend and the other Spider-men, he had picked up quite the knowledge on how to hack machines, both in person and remotely, and he was pretty confident in his ability to erase his tracks. Nothing above or even on the same level as Friday or Edith’s capabilities, that’s for sure, but well beyond his previous abilities. He had always considered himself good with hardware, but now he thanked his lucky stars Ned had insisted on showing him a few more things in the calm, before Peter lost everything– before Dr. Strange– now was not the time to reminisce, find the information and make a game plan, he thought, shaking himself awake from the flashing memories of his best friends. They were gone now, or rather, he was the one gone, erased from their memories, erased from the city’s skylines, erased from existence entirely– to protect his universe’s reality.
In a few moments, he was able to acquire the files on the local device without passwords, and found himself in a bit of a pickle. He had woken up, apparently, in something called an artificial Lazarus pod. Apparently the creators of the lab had been reverse-engineering something called the Lazarus Pit, which was a naturally occurring phenomenon and could resurrect the dead, instantly heal the injured, and even had the possibility of granting immortality if continuously used (crazy, if true, Peter chuckled to himself). It also meant somehow he had been resurrected from the dead. Maybe dying was his original role in this universe. Or, maybe, this dimension just has people waking up from vats of goo in a subterranean laboratory any time. Peter has a small glint of a smile at the idea that anything he just experienced was normal. There were also side effects of the known substance listed. His fingers twitched on the mouse as he read them. Violent behavior, uncontrollable emotional outbursts, temporary insanity. Big yikes. Peter didn’t feel insane. He felt calm, disturbingly so.
There was a bit too much green in his eyesight and his heart was racing, emotions of all kinds pouring through his mind– but he was alert and beginning to process the key things laid out for him through the entries on the computer. Sure, this new discovery was not in the least comforting, in fact, it was incredibly concerning, because Peter knew if he went insane , even temporarily, this could mean the death of a whole city. He always toed the line between pulling his punches and hiding his emotions through quippy and sarcastic comebacks; if only the villain of his past knew he was holding back, maybe then they’d have given him a break every once in a while. Peter had not always been the good boy his Aunt May had raised, even after the whole Spider-man secret had been revealed. There were a few times, just enough to count on less than a hand, in which he got much too close to letting his anger get the better of him and do some serious damage. All were before Tony came in, and he had managed to control himself otherwise. It’s one of the reasons why he was so much more hurt when everyone believed he was a murderer- because he could be , but he wasn’t . He had power and responsibility, why couldn’t they see that? Peter’s pulled out of his ever-green thoughts and back into his new reality at the discovery of a journal log kept by the computer administrator.
According to the most recent journal entry done, this was the final lab left after someone named RH had wiped out the other experiments, and something by the name of JL had destroyed all others on the Earth. On his earth, there had been no such thing as a Lazarus Pit. If there had been, Mr. Stark would have undoubtedly made it so no evil-doers could use it, while finding a way to make it a new technology to be utilized for the medical industry . It also said there hadn’t been a body in the tube he had punched his way out of, but a science experiment of that specific scientist using a clump of cells. Apparently, the lab he was in was used for nothing more than observation and testing of whatever the green goo’s origin was. It didn’t improve his worsening mood or his increasing awareness of his senses going haywire. It was like he had just been bitten for the first time again. He itched, was sore, the green only intensifying the discomfort as he could hear and smell and feel every small scuffle and movement that was around him. The hairs on his body stood on end, and every part of his mind screamed at him with green fury he was not safe here . He attributed it to the new and unknown environment. He could also sense spiders scuttling around every which way. Even the one sitting just at the back edge corner of the table. It was kind of distracting, this newfound discovery, and kind of creeped him out if he hadn’t become a stout defender of arachnids in his time in his New York as Spider-man, but he needed to focus. He could measure his newfound dimensional abilities later- it could be a side effect of the green goo he woke up in.
The computer had security footage, logs of the experiments and results, and a typed draft of information and reports to a scrambled email that had been time-stamped in August, a month prior to the date on the computer’s corner. It was September of 2016– he went back in time eight years, give-or-take a few months. As he searched the computer for any other information, he discovered there was no internet access, so finding answers here was a no-go. He’d have to venture out of wherever ‘here’ was. First order of business is leaving this lab, then he’s got to find shelter, water, and food. Then he can worry about the implications of entering a (possibly) entirely different universe AND time stream. Peter stood silent for a moment and closed his eyes. Despite the darkness surrounding him, the pale lights of the tech in the room actually made it harder for him to accurately judge the room’s interior. There was a door on the opposite side of the room with a strange lock mechanism. That didn’t matter , Peter cracked a partial smile, remembering the first time he had accidentally destroyed his door in an effort to open it up early on in his mutation. If he didn’t break it on the first try, he could easily do it in the next. Worst case scenario, the wall itself would be easy enough to break through, even if it was reinforced steel.
There’s a chirp in the back of his mind, almost but not quite imperceptible through human ears, but he catches it and whips his head back to the small corner of the table where the small jumping spider had made up shop. It had raised its two front legs, tilting its head. Peter finds himself tilting his head the opposite way and approaches slowly with a single finger drawn out in front. When it meets the table, the spider skitters close to him, pausing to do another head tilt in seeming confusion at its own behavior, before it jumps onto Peter’s hand. It crawls up his arm, and sits on his shoulder. Peter glances at the tiny creature, its eyes looking back at him. He smiles slightly, eyes wide, and moves slowly towards the door. The hand on the opposite arm as the spider grabs the handle and pulls. There’s a creak, the sharp and pops of metal struggling against metal, and then it pops open with a loud clang and reveals a dark hallway.
“So, you wouldn't happen to know the way out, would you?” Peter asks his new companion. The spider chirps happily.
Chapter 2: Sense
Summary:
Peter sees (and kind of meets) a couple bats.
Notes:
Heyo!
Thanks for the comments and bookmarks! I’m so happy people are interested in what I've got. I'll reply soon, I promise. I just really wanted to post the first chapter before logging off for the night.
Story Lore notes:
- I’m not calling Peter’s spidey sense the Peter tingle the entire time– i just can’t take it seriously enough. It’ll be used, but for the most part I’m going to change the wording so it's not a 'tingle' every time (it sounds too close to tinkle to me and that reminds me of pee)
- Also, I AM de-aging Peter to 15, but he will quickly be turning 16. I just love kicked puppy civilian Peter Parker, and I love vigilante misunderstandings even more.
- Peter learned how to deal with paparazzi because of Tony, but due to everything in the world crashing down on him, including the weight of the Spider-man identity, he obviously had a hard time with the No Way Home scenario. Here, I'm hoping of going in a more "no one knows me and my entire family is dead, so I might as well be a little shit," kind of way.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The quiet of wherever this lab was located disturbed Peter as he walked on into the darkness. The spider on his shoulder continuously skittered down his arm until it rested on the knuckles of his hand. A small smile remained on his face, the small arachnid providing a weird, comfortingly strange type of camaraderie. He could tell just by listening there were no other human heartbeats around him, but strangely enough, above and around him. A bunker, then.
The hallway continued on for a few feet, up to what Peter could tell was an archway that opened up into a larger, more common space. It was here the tiny jumping spider jumped off, surprising Peter as it landed on the doorframe and disappeared into the darkness of the ceiling. Looks like he just wanted a ride… wait.
Peter’s hand touches the wall to his left first, sticking to it like he would normally. A strange feeling washes over his limbs, and he has the strongest urge to skitter just like his small friend had done. That’s not normal– or at least it wasn’t his normal. He had not experienced such an overwhelming need before. The urge is swallowed, almost as soon as he focuses on it, and savored in the fashion of Peter stepping up onto the wall, crawling on all fours to the corner, finding a light switch on the way and tripping it as he looks out upon the room, utilizing more of his flexibility than completely necessary (bones were not supposed to bend like that ). He was called Spider-man for a reason, and it felt nice to stretch out. Hm. He hadn’t ever felt so nice from just being in a ceiling corner.
Just as Peter begins losing hope, and he believed the electricity to be out completely, he could hear the inaudible buzz of the light turning on. Soon, the dull yellow industrial overhead bathed the room in a warm yet deeply unsettling hue, the shadows dark black and the bright reflection from the white walls hurting his eyes. It was all too bright, how could he forget he’d need time to adjust after being in the dark so long? How long had his body been in that damn vat before he woke up? He needs to know where he is. If he doesn’t figure it out soon he may just go punching through walls, floors, hell he’ll dig himself out of this place even if it's the last– it was as if the rage was overwhelming the cells in his body, the green feeling sticking to his very bones themselves, gluing itself to the very fabric and makeup of Peter himself. Side effects . New mutations. His body flinches over his own mind’s confident vocalization.
Peter’s rational side reiterates this to himself over and over and over again, even mumbling out loud, leaning back into the corner as an arm moves to block the light so he could adjust his eyes easier. There was a real possibility in which he loses control, in which case everyone in at least the city (if he was still in a city– but he felt pretty sure after localizing a flurry of heartbeats upwards and outwards from his position; it didn’t feel all that different from New York’s less busy areas).
With his eyes finally adjusting to the buzzing overhead light, Peter lowers his arm back to the wall and narrows his eyes to the room. It appeared to be a wide, multipurpose break room. From his position he could see a med-bay off to the opposite corner, a thin curtain hanging from a steel frame to block the bed; the medical office equipment locked up on the wall made it obviously a first aid station. Before this were a series of cafeteria style benches and tables, a coffee station with a microwave, and a corner with a sleek, almost medically sterile and clean series of couches with tables placed in front of both. A full and organized bookshelf sat against the wall they faced. About where Peter was, just below him, was a kitchenette, with a center buffet style piece of serving equipment, creating an arbitrarily sectioned space just before the cafeteria tables were, which was void of food.
Seeing and sensing no fluctuations in danger, he almost slides off the wall, before deciding to cross over to the med-bay on the ceiling. It was almost comforting, the way he felt as he crawled. It felt good, normal. Not normal, not even for him.
There’s a good amount of first aid at the makeshift med-bay, but he finds himself staring at his reflection of the steel tray he picked up first, a glance of it catching his eye. The lighting was doing nothing but making him look exhausted and strung out, but in the low yellow he could see a distinct change– one that stunned him. A very small sliver of curls was now shockingly white, and his eyes seemed to almost glow green on the very edge of them. He still had a crusty green goop that had dripped down and dried there on the side of his face, the curls sticking out every-which way from his messing with them. Specks of blood from the cuts he had endured splattered across his hands and somewhere along the way had been smeared on his face.
He was himself, as he remembered, and yet the features in the reflection seemed foreign. He looked younger, by a year, maybe two. Peter knew this was his face, and he knew dimensional travel and time travel were all a new phenomenon, with no true precedent in someone staying in a different universe altogether. He just didn’t even think to expect his own appearance to change. Like he hadn’t even thought when he asked for the spell by Dr. Strange in the first place; he was just so distraught by MJ and Ned losing their admittance to MIT, and the stress on everyone around him in dealing with all that bad publicity… The green reared its ugly head again at the thought of the sorcerer, and Peter decided to move on.
For a few minutes, all that could be heard in the break room was his systematic exploration of the space, along with a huff when he discovered the water was shut off and he wouldn’t be able to clean up fully before leaving. Doing the best he could, he uses the few left alcohol wipes to clean away the blood on his feet and hands and some medical forceps to remove any leftover glass. Once satisfied with his level of healing, Peter’s focus shifts to the bookshelf. Each row had a different label on it, and corresponded with the number of pods in the room he had woken up in.
The top two rows contained entirely empty journals and scrapbooks, space-holders. He decided to keep it as neat as possible, not wanting to set off any alarm bells if a researcher, or anyone else, he supposed, decided to show up. The bottom two were just as empty. The third and center row had full journals of research and logs of the various experiments done at the current facility, along with comments, follow up research, and a final book summarizing information gathered with sources back to the corresponding journals. Peter focused on this one.
He’s not sure how long it took him, but it was well-organized with meticulous records, so it was relatively easy to comprehend given his own intelligence. At no point did the records state a boy was in the pods– in fact, the actual contents of the pods were only mentioned once in the summary, and upon further inspection, was pointedly blacked out or unreferenced in all the previous journals. The contents were only referred to as “Pod 3” but the reality was far more gross. In reading the final summary, Peter discovered a person’s hands had been in the pod, suspended to research the effects of the pit’s chemical makeup. He also discovered humans, when resurrected by the original Lazarus pit, often went through Lazarus Fever , which entailed the side effects he had found written on the lab’s computer. Whatever they were doing, it had ended at least a month before Peter himself popped into existence, that much was clear.
The book also made it clear the experiments were abandoned due to interference with an outside vigilante group referenced only as “the Bats” and the death of the lab’s head. The inside back cover had an imprint of a large “K”.
So, Bat vigilantes, a green goop acting like an elixir of life (questionable), a disembodied hand, and “K”. It was entirely possible, if he thought about it long enough, the hands belonged to this universe’s version of Dr. Strange. Even within his rage, the thought made him shiver. There was also RH and JL to look up when he finally got out of the bunker.
Where in the actual hell did Strange send Peter?
He wanders around the room, summary kept in hand, eyes flitting across the space. A sudden creak and two heartbeats at the far end come into focus, opposite the archway he walked in through and in the direction he had been planning on going. His own heart begins pumping faster. They set off his Peter-tingle, but not in an immediately threatening way. Focusing, he can hear two people– a man and a woman. He’d been too in his own head to notice them get so close. To be fair, there was a lot of new information he had to process.
“This looks like one of those bunker labs Hood was talking about,” the woman spoke quietly; Peter could sense their counterpart messing with something on the door.
“Yeah, there was a large spike in radiation that peaked around 10pm. Those types of readings were found at the labs just before a collapse of equipment happened at the labs he destroyed,” the man responded, finally clicking the door open and peering into the inky darkness. He was a radiated spider-person. He was the radiation spike. It was mildly considering they could read his radiation levels, but maybe it was a result of his sudden appearance in the universe. Peter cocks his head to the side, processing this information as his heart thumps fast in his chest at the sound of their footsteps entering and leaving faint echoes. Almost untraceable echoes, if it hadn’t been for his spider abilities.
These people knew whoever the researchers feared– in fact, Peter was almost sure these were the “Bats” the journals wrote about. Hood could be related somehow to RH- if it was a surname (of sorts). He can feel them stealthily checking the few open rooms connected to the hallway, their approach getting closer and closer. In a flurry of panic, realizing he’d be out in the open as soon as they turned the corner, Peter jumps up onto the ceiling and crawls, pinned tightly just over the doorway in the dark hallway, tucking the book in his waistband. He couldn’t risk putting it back, even if it would be better for them to assume a pair of disembodied hands somehow broke out– like Thing. Wait, did this universe even have the Addams Family movies?
“Power levels indicate a slight increase of use in the last half hour, proceed with caution,” A static voice, much quieter than the intruders, spoke. The man touched his ear. Looked like a simple comm link, definitely outdated compared to nanotech.
“There’s a light on ahead, cover me.” The woman spoke, her pace quickening. Soon, Peter could make out the forms of two suited people in the darkness just below him, the woman was donned in black and purple, a hood and mask covering most of her face; the man was in mostly red and some black with a black domino mask covering his own face. He remains as still as possible as they peer into the breakroom and clear it.
“No one inside, looks like there’s another hallway,” the man in the red suit spoke softly, the comm crackling on again, static rushing Peter’s ears as if he were posed, listening while perched on the intruder’s shoulder.
“If the data from Hood is correct, the final farthest room will have the pit. You’re currently in the breakroom for the researchers.” it was distinguishable as a woman this time around, their guy in the chair, Peter smiled to himself. The woman, who had been poking around the room, calls the man over to the bookshelf.
“Looks like one volume is missing from their collection. It’s the one that summarizes everything – dust has barely settled, so someone was just here.” Peter realizes with a shake of his head, their snooping and slow maneuvering to the pod room has given him the perfect opportunity to escape– he could feel the steady airflow from the cracked open door they had entered from, echoes of spiders thumping their tiny limbs in unison towards that direction. He moves slowly, crawling on the ceiling in the pitch black. He only pauses when he’s reached the halfway point, looking back only to observe the scene through listening ears as they discover the broken machine.
“Woah, something was definitely in that thing. Oracle, contact B and the rest of the team, including Hood. We may have an escaped science experiment on the streets of Gotham. There’s a computer in here, I’ll try to get you access.” the red suit spoke, his hand moving on his ear. The woman was crouching at the base of his tube.
He didn’t stick around to hear more of their investigation, nor did he want to. Peter was getting antsy, especially when they called him an escaped science experiment. What exactly was the deal with that green goop anyways? He didn’t like the feel of it, or the look of it. Sure, he knew it was Lazarus 'serum' (and Peter wonders if this could be similar to the super soldier serum Captain America got, a variant, maybe), but the differences and side effects were much too vast to be too close to what he knew super soldier serum to be. It already seemed like this universe may be less technologically advanced with no Tony Stark to develop new tech. They likely have an equivalent, less cool billionaire, especially knowing how capitalism works.
Peter kept moving, encouraged by the quiet sounds of spiders on all sides scritching in his direction. He felt similar to how it felt with the jumping spider, as if they were watching him with curious eyes, all too happy to see one their own for once instead of an unfriendly stranger. After stopping and listening to their taps a few more times for directions ( he was literally turned upside down ), he’s climbing up a manhole. Peeking out, he sees a grimy, empty and poorly lit street. With a little too much vigor, he pushes up and all but flings the cover halfway across the road until it slams into the brick to his right, and crawls out. His strength scale desperately needed to be adjusted before fighting anyone or anything, lest he kill someone because he couldn’t pull his punch. As quietly as he can, he paces back to the cover and lifts it, easily replacing it.
The sky is dark, stars not visible under the cloudy skies of the city. It’s sprinkling with thundering clouds off in the distance as he’s hit with a sudden wave of exhaustion, the tension and stress of his predicament catching up with him. His stomach growls loudly, aching for food as his body works to heal the injuries he had sustained. His metabolism was moving fast; he needed to recover as many calories as soon as possible before it starts eating into the little fat reserves he has. Much to his chagrin, his heightened senses decided this was the moment to begin recovering from the initial shock he had woken in. The ringing in his ears is replaced slowly with the sounds of the city. Peter can hear sirens off in the not-too-far distance, and the people three streets over moving about their lives in apartments and homes, and alleys, chattering away. He can hear a mugging happening just around the corner, and the baby crying and being soothed by its father three blocks over.
The streets overpowered him with the scent of rotting meat, burning chemicals, smog, and a faint but semi-pleasant waft of street hot dogs– the kind wrapped in bacon with lots of sauerkraut. His stomach reared back at the thought, his mouth watering. The worst thing of all, however, was not how hunger gnawed at his stomach, but how cold it was. An icy wind rippled through his damp clothes like a blade cutting through paper, soaking his being in a chill and freezing his core, making him curl into himself. The main downside of his spider DNA was his inability to thermoregulate. He needed shelter, food, and water, in that order. Then he could worry about information and documentation.
Another change from his universe to whatever this one was: the level at which his spidey-senses, the Peter tingle, reacted. Even when walking home late at night, the tingles usually only spiked when the danger was imminent, like a mugger waiting around the corner or a robbery happening at the corner store by his place. Here, the tingle remained at a steady, low frequency, so even and constant of a thrum he couldn’t call it a tingle, but his nerve endings felt rubbed raw and sore. As if it were warning him his entire surroundings were dangerous. They likely were.
Still barefoot, Peter feels the gentle tapping of spider limbs from the right, beady eyes blinking out of the darkness of a building’s arched entrance as he approaches it. There was a decently large, orb-like web there, and the spider itself lowered itself down to Peter’s eyeline just as he clocked a security camera at his back. Neoscona crucifera , also known as the spotted orbweaver.
“Do you know where I can hide out?” He asks quietly, almost joking to himself, rather than the arachnid he had approached. He didn’t expect for the spider itself to raise a front limb and shake it to Peter’s left.
“Go left out the alley?” His eyes are wide, so he can talk to spiders in this universe, “Thanks, tell all your buddies I’m around; I’ll need help to navigate… well, navigate wherever this is.” He speaks slowly; the spider blinks, chirps once, and raises itself back to its web, dew from the damp night glittering off of some of the strands in the low street light.
Peter begins walking the suggested direction, body language slumped over and inconspicuous as he tries to contain as much body heat as he could. If the two at the lab already reported it to their “guy in the chair”, there could be back up arriving soon, and he didn’t think he saw another entrance besides the one he had left through. Best to make haste. He makes it through two dimly lit alleyways, making a point to avoid getting his face on the cameras that seem to follow him (or was it his paranoia?), before he has his second run-in of the night.
Just as he turns the corner, his spidey-senses go haywire and a fist comes flying towards his face. He dodges it with pure instinct, dropping down into a crouch before jumping back up and making eye contact with a very, very angry man. He had a beanie on, his face twisted into a snarl of a grin with a knife in one hand.
“Gimme everything you have, kid,” He growls out, grabbing at Peter’s shirt and slamming him into the wall. If anything, the bricks behind him felt it more than he did, but he let it happen, because of course he would get mugged on his first day in this universe. It’s that Parker luck– or something like it. The feeling sneaks up quickly, and just as the mugger speaks, Peter’s mind hyper-focuses to notice something– no, someone, right above them on the roof, watching. It was an oppressively strong presence, staking out the alley with careful and observant eyes he could feel but not see from his position. An unseen guy on a rooftop, it’s nighttime, and he’s strong. It had to be one of those “Bats” the researchers were writing about.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble; I don’t even have shoes on dude,” Peter pleaded his case, wide eyed and adding some shakiness to his voice for good measure. He learned his poker face from the best. And that best is dead now, because of him.
“I don’t give a fuck, what else you got?” The mugger begins grabbing at his shirt, manhandling him. Anger seemed to rise in Peter’s chest, frustration becoming more heady as he imagined all the ways he could break the guy's wrist and get out of this damned situation. Green tinged his vision. Not good. He was definitely going to lose his temper if this guy’s hands didn’t leave him soon. His body was burning with overstimulation. All the new sights, sounds, and smells could not even compare to the agony of the sensation of being touched. His nerve endings felt just as raw as they had when he woke up; the adrenaline ramping up throughout his system made his fingers twitch.
Now, if Peter hadn’t noticed that figure above, and if he had been back in his own city, he probably would have just webbed the guy up and called the cops, easy-peasy lemon-squeezy. However, if he was correct in assuming this was not New York (and he’s pretty damn sure it wasn’t) and because he knows this is not his dimension, revealing himself right now would not be the best choice.
The green continued to bubble on the edges of his vision, much to his irritation. An itch hit his wrist, and he came to realize he didn’t have his web-shooters anyway– in fact, where they had been secured tightly to his wrists just as Dr. Strange had cast his spell, now was completely devoid of all accessories. There were, however, incredibly red and angrily itchy, sore spots on each wrist. They were also the part of his nerves that burned the most. It felt not too dissimilar to when he had first been bit. He’d have to investigate that later. The mugger uses his silence as precedent to grab at the book he had tucked into the waistband of his pants, and audibly groans when he sees it.
“What kind of kid keeps a book in his pants? Where’s your wallet? Didn’t your parents teach you to always keep cash on you?” The mugger asks angrily, knife coming up to press against Peter’s neck. Now that would be counterproductive– why would he carry cash in case he got mugged? Shouldn’t it be a given that it's more dangerous to carry cash?
“W-woah, hey man–” Peter’s false (and yet very real– he needs that book) protests are interrupted by the sound of boots running and a thwip of a grappling hook hitting the roof of the other building, the massive, thickly built figure dropping down next to them. The mugger curses and flies backwards from Peter, nicking his neck in the process. He covers it quickly with his hand, the skin that had split apart already stitching itself back together. Healing speed is much faster than normal , he observed, cowering so he wouldn’t pull attention to himself .
“Red Hood! This-I mean, I ain’t doing anything- I’m just– well,” The guy stutters, nervously watching the figure, bringing his hands up in defense. Peter observed the crossed arms of the beefcake to his right, a brown leather jacket on top of a black stealth-like suit with red– a bird maybe? He couldn’t see it from this angle– spread across the pecks. He couldn’t blame the mugger from backing off so quickly, this guy was intimidating. He wore a red helmet that covered his entire head and face and was built like a brick house, on top of being eerily silent so far. The mask reminded him of Iron man. A well of emotions threatened to break through the dam he had been building since he woke up, but this new guy in front of him was doing well in calming his senses. The shrieking thrum of danger was now back to the low thrumming baseline Peter had noticed upon his surfacing. Strange. He feels almost… just almost, like kin.
Notes:
I have no beta reader, just my own self to reread it over and over again, so if you see any overt grammar, punctuation, or spelling mistakes feel free to point them out (nicely).
Next chapter may be next Sunday, if I'm lucky. Tomorrow (Monday) is a long day for me at work, and I work full time right now so I won't have real time to work on this story until the weekend.
If I can, I'd like to update every Sunday, but that's me being hopeful.
Chapter 3: Trio
Summary:
A casually traumatized and sassy Peter Parker and Crime Alley’s Red Hood meet in an alley, it goes as well as you expect. Oh, and Red Robin and Spoiler make a surprise appearance and it does not... well it does not go great.
Notes:
Hey all, thanks for the kind comments and the kudos! It’s kinda exciting to be posting again. This every Sunday update thing may being a good idea, since I write a lot Thursday-Sunday.
Monday-Wednesday I kinda live in a dissociative haze for work until my mind wakes up. It's not healthy but it's how I cope working 6 days a week, 60+ hours.
I'm sorry to whoever lives in New Jersey who reads this, bc I will be shit talking about it as pure fandom characterization. Also Jersey Shore knowledge and overall vibe it has as a part of the US. Peter’s from NY, of course he talks shit about Jersey.
Sorry for late night Sunday post, I should actually be sleeping for early shift tomorrow, but I needed to post this after my final edit. I kinda shifted the whole chapter after I added a new part last minute.
TW: violence, attempted robbery
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“I thought I was clear on the rules, Artie.” His voice comes through an obvious voice modulator, gruff and almost mechanical.
“You were, Hood! I swear, this is my first time since; you gotta believe me!” He all but begged, the man stalking closer to him until Artie was pinned against the opposite wall by the base of his neck with just one hand, begging for his life. Where neighborhood heroes meant to be this scary and threatening? As they spoke and Peter listened, he came to a realization.
Red Hood had to be the same RH from the journals at the lab. Which meant the guy who was watching this whole thing go down from the roof, the same guy who was helping him get out of this mugging was also the guy who didn’t like whatever research he had just crawled out from. He didn’t like it so much he killed a bunch of the top brass. Big yikes. He could smell a deep earthy-leather musk, iron, a hint of sweat, and something acrid, with a charcoal and sulfur smell, along with a slight rubber scent. Bigger yikes– Peter liked to steer clear of guns with any kind of ammo, standard or rubber.
It was easy enough to avoid bullets, but they still made him nervous . He’s had to take a few bullets before, just to ensure a civilian didn’t take them instead. He could handle it; he had a responsibility. They just made him bleed; he’d bleed a lot, and feel sick for it, but he would live. No civilian could bleed that much and live. A green haze of anguish overflowed his mind; Peter pressed his fingers to his eyes, rubbing and blinking it away, his vision blurred and hazy. He was dirty, itching from dried green goo he woke up choking on, so hungry he felt ravenous, his reflexes and every part of his mutation was elevated, and everyone and everything in this place overloaded Peter’s senses like a flood swept away cars, buildings, homes. But that wasn’t what bothered Peter the most. What bothered him was just how dangerous this man was, he set off the alarm bells in his head, the hairs on his body stood on end, and yet as soon as he had stepped into Peter’s radius, he instantly relaxed (or at least the green part of him did) .
It was unfamiliar, his two senses fighting over Red Hood. His intense and analytical, untrusting mind argued “RH” was a risk to whatever green science project he landed in the middle of when being transported here. There was a feeling of something more feral in Peter, however, enhanced unmeasurably by the feeling and permeation of green that told him Hood was a friend, a trustworthy person, a brother.
He decided to chalk it up to his senses being overrun by the seemingly dangerous nature of the city itself, and Red Hood protecting Peter in the moment. He had to get out of here. No matter what his senses are telling him. He had to figure out what else had changed and where he was. Before he’s locked up in a ward or something– there’s no way the experiment he discovered himself in was above board legal. Did they have something like the RAFT here? Peter shuddered, and finally his body unfroze.
Just as he sidestepped and had begun to creep away, Red Hood’s arm swung up and pointed at him where he was without even sparing a glance.
“Not so fast, kid, we need to have a talk,” A shiver rakes down Peter’s spine. Human or mutant, this guy had good senses. A wave of nauseous green rage peeks through his mind, annoyed over being called a kid so many times in his life, especially when he certainly didn’t feel like a kid, on top of essentially getting caught immediately by a vigilante by being in a place completely unknown at the wrong time, and a new dimension . Caught by a vigilante who used guns – attached to straps on both thighs . Gunshot wounds hurt, but the blood was worse. He always bled so much. An ugly, terrifying green fluid feeling seeps down his brain into his skin, his fingers twitching as he refrains from scratching at the now dried green stain left behind on his body.
A kid wouldn’t be fighting in a war. Kids don’t fight titans in space and– Peter begins to tune out whatever conversation the mugger– Artie and Red Hood were having (something about territory, and no more warnings) and his own spiraling, in favor of mentally screaming the lyrics to an old song– one that made Ned fall over laughing and MJ lose it when he sang it at karaoke. MJ had actually been the one to suggest actually singing it out loud, quote “for therapeutic reasons” un quote. It wasn’t the song that was funny, but the fact that Peter was the one performing it for them. It kind of hurt Peter to remember them as if they were dead. They were simply… gone forever.
Don’t Stop Me Now, by Queen, his fingers patting quietly and rapidly against his side as he played the song in his head. His head lowered as he simply decided to face the wall, confident in his spidey-senses to notify him of danger (because they really were quite ingrained monstrous reflexes now). His danger sense thrummed from the city, the danger lurked every corner of the darkest places, and nearly every civilian had a weapon on them, that was certain.
But Red Hood’s appearance had thrown him off.
Where had Peter truly been transported? When he woke up in the Lazarus pod he felt as though he had just woken up from death again . As if every molecule had broken apart excruciatingly slowly until there was nothing left and he felt nothing and was nothing. Like the snap all over again.
He was exhausted, running on fumes after waking up in a smaller body he just interdimensional time traveled through. Peter’s mind wanted to argue that Hood was a threat, he was a shadowy figure, a criminal from wherever he is. But the green in him calmed into the low hum of a controllable pit he could compartmentalize much easier at the moment.
A spider crawling on the wall he stared at reached his hand and placed two legs on a finger, and Peter couldn’t help but commit the zoologist’s cardinal sin and assign human emotion to the gesture. His eyes turned glassy as he smiled down at the small creature, who tapped twice noticeably on the finger, moved its fangs open and closed, and then continued walking up the wall. Even if it was a new spider-based instinct, it comforted him to be seen by “his own ”.
Peter could now feel his feet were cold. Everything was cold. How had he been able to keep going on for so long? His bones ached from how freezing he was. He was getting so cold it was hard to keep going and simply just hibernate but first he had to find a safe place to stay– Peter is actually just about to consider running, one of pure desperation and stubbornness of the exhaustion plaguing him, when the attempted-mugger is suddenly running off with wrists that look suspiciously wrong in angle and tears in his eyes, and Red Hood is turning to him. Peter was technically facing and cowering against the wall, shivering. Although, this was more of a comfort to Peter than the vigilante would assume. One of his palms faced the wall, fingers sticking to the wall in reflex, where the spider had just left him.
It wasn’t that he was scared. In fact, the part of his mind clouded by green demanded his body to remain still, and to trust Red Hood. It was just Spider-man who wasn’t so sure about that. His instincts, at some level, were overpowering the green’s attempt to overwhelm him. The seemingly new addition to his list-of-things-to-worry-about threatened to take over, and Peter knew without his brain steering the ship, the pure feelings of guilt, shame, and grief, deep, lonely, and pitch black grief, would swallow it in a tsunami. There was no telling what kind of rage lay underneath if it were unveiled and he lost control of his focus. If the green swallowed him whole . He shuddered again.
“Hey, I’m not going to hurt you, calm down, kid,” it’s so casual yet matter of fact, Peter has the confidence to lift his gaze and meet the helmet’s eyeline. To his credit, Hood barely flinches, holding still at the last moment, but Peter still catches the minute movement, and he (correctly) assumes he’s made direct eye-contact despite the all encompassing helmet to block his view. Instinctual eye contact is nothing new, but there were actually known heroes in his dimension, so there was no need for masks, I mean, besides Mr. Stark’s helmet. And of course, Peter himself. It kind of reminded Peter of when–
“What are you doing in Crime Alley anyways? Hold on, are you barefooted ?” The concerned tone lilts in disbelief, the man leaning down, and Peter knows very early on this guy was never going to leave him alone if he didn’t act up.
He knew because in New York he had been the one to find kids alone and approach them like approaching biting dogs trapped with their heads in a wire fence, and this guy had that vibe engulfing his entire body. But Peter wasn’t actually a kid. He may look it, but he had experienced many things, including death, as a kid, and he simply was not that person anymore.
He was a terrible liar though, so he’d have to play up being a snarky teen. He may have been a believable 18 year old in his own dimension, since he had turned 17, but now he knew he looked young. All he had to do was answer in riddles and be a little shit. He could totally do that.
“Yeah, my shoes got stolen earlier, you missed it.” Peter wraps his arms around himself, the cold running through him again, not aiding in his hope of denying the whole “runaway kid” thing, but he remains indignant. Internally, he was struggling to find a good way out of this conversation that was steering quickly towards pity and a lecture. Like one of Mr. Stark’s classic talks, sans the pity. He steps away from the wall, fidgeting as he steps closer into the dull lamp light of the alley.
This was where Peter fucked up– and by fucked up, he means he simply miscalculated how easily he’d be seen through Red Hood’s helmet. He was simply too preoccupied to consider the guy would recognize his freshly-released-from-a-tube appearance.
In the light, regardless of how poorly lit the alley was, the streak of white in his hair became profoundly noticeable, reflecting and almost glowing. Although he had enough control over himself to not see green at the moment, the fact remained he still had a dried, coagulated and disgusting green tinge to his clothes and down his neck, and his eyes still showed a reflecting ring of bright green despite his apparent calmness (a new and permanent trait, he would soon come to realize).
It was Red Hood’s turn to freeze. His heartbeat picked up for a moment. Peter had no clue what spooked him into such a silence, but it quickly became an awkward moment before the man in front of him blocking his exit of the alley (or at least the only one he could get to as Peter and not Spider-man) cleared his throat.
“Where are you coming from? You sure look like you’ve been through some serious shit,” He asks, his body language betraying the relaxed tone he spoke in. He was tense, coiled up and ready for something Peter couldn’t be sure would happen and he pressed something on his helmet when Peter glanced at the wall beside him. Something a normal human would barely register, but Peter wasn’t a normal human, was he?
As long as this guy didn’t touch him, he’d be fine. His body felt peculiarly light and he was starving, but he could easily catch the vigilante by surprise and scamper off via rooftop, secret identity be damned (he didn’t have a record here to look for anyways). He still had his strength for now, in fact if anything Peter felt much stronger than he had felt in his universe, before waking up in that lab. He’d need to test his limits to ensure he didn’t accidentally kill someone with his output before putting it to use.
A static sound buzzed into his ear, and Peter could tell instantly this guy had a comm link in his helmet, it being the thing he had pressed on in said moment. Murmurs of the same voice he had heard in the bunker came in with a high sense of urgency.
“Hood, I’ve been trying to reach you for the last half hour. We have a possible artificial lazarus pit situation, possibly the last one created by Kobra. Red Robin and Spoiler couldn’t find anything useful besides access logs on the computer at the site. Please tell me you’re near that spike we reported.” Red Hood had insane poker face skills, because if Peter hadn’t heard it himself, he wouldn’t have noticed a single difference in the man. He didn’t move once during the entire dialogue, save for his fists clenching up at his side, which could be explained by a multitude of things. It wasn’t what gave him away, he just never had a chance with Peter’s enhanced senses. Hood grunts and brings up a hand to the side of his helmet and clicks something; the buzzing from the comm shuts off abruptly. Kobra, another thing to look up when he got out of this alley.
“Oh you know. Long day. Lot’s of things happened. Went for a swim. Just a little lost now.” Peter shifted, shrugging his shoulders and releasing his arms in a swing of movement, looking around the alley and doing the best impression he could of his past mentor’s technique in casual and unworried avoidance, squinting his eyes to emphasize his searching.
Like he said, he really was a bad liar, but the thing about being a bad liar, is if you commit to it wholeheartedly, and make it just broad enough, it becomes impossible to accurately refute with logic. Because it’s just that ridiculous.
Mr. Stark had him sit through a crash course on how to deal with paparazzi shortly after his internship had been announced publicly, and Ms Natasha and Bucky had provided a more intensive lesson shortly after his return to the world of the living. After the war. Before–
Peter felt green waxing in his head, tensely bringing up hands to itch and rub at his eyes until it subsided. He wasn’t sure if the vigilante could see his eyes, but he didn’t need more trouble than he already had tonight. His body thrummed with high energy, nerve endings alight with different warnings. He could hear, smell, taste the acrid and molding sewage in the streets surrounding him, and feel the danger lurking in every other alley besides the one he stood in with Red Hood. Updated spider-sensitivity training will be a problem for future-Peter. He had to focus on not letting anything stupid slip.
“Swimming? You don’t sound like you’re from Gotham at all. How’d you end up in Crime Alley in the first place, there’s no pools around here?” Red Hood adjusts, crossing his arms over his chest once more, posture lying back, appearing just a little relaxed. All a farce, as far as Peter could tell. As soon as the Oracle lady had mentioned the Lazarus pit, the guy’s heartbeat had picked up to an almost panic-attack level of speed. He could also sense the palpable anger seeping out and into the surroundings of the vigilante (okay, was he a vigilante or a hero? This guy definitely didn’t seem like the Steve Rogers type, but then again, the Captain did break international law and fought previous allies for his presumed dead amnesiac best friend, so he could be wrong. Or maybe he was a Bucky Barnes type).
A voice in the back of his head reminded him that the law was not always just. Captain America’s situation was deeply complicated, and not until recently did Peter truly figure out what the whole thing was really about. Mr. Stark had simplified it greatly .
He also reminded himself the people he was comparing this man to didn’t exist in Gotham. At least he had a city name– he would have preferred to know the state too, but Peter quickly dismissed asking since it’d be much too suspicious of a teenager to not even know which American state they were in. No need for any misunderstandings… Even though Peter didn’t have the slightest understanding of the world he woke up in.
One thing Peter was sure about was that Red Hood was definitely the RH the researchers were talking about. He observed the leg straps with gun holsters he wore in the time Oracle was speaking in his ear, the big guns bulking up his silhouette in the shadows of the alleyway. The journal entries had called him a psycho for shooting up a room full of flammable equipment, resulting in an explosion of a lab more than once. And, he escaped each time, no one even got close to stopping him. They said he was unhinged and violent and moved as if driven by a mission from gods of blood and punishment.
Red Hood didn’t exactly match the description. Sure, he was intimidating and definitely broke that mugger’s wrists with a not-quite-right look in his eyes, but it seemed like he had a handle on how to treat supposed civilians and had an apparent rule against targeting kids. Not to mention, Hood hadn’t reached for his guns once or tried to escalate the situation.
“Crime Alley? What a name. I’m on the completely wrong side of… Gotham. I better be on my way then!” Peter widens his eyes almost comically and forces his body forward mechanically, deflecting almost expertly. The name Gotham felt uncomfortable and strange on his tongue. Peter assumes it will get easier with time.
“Thank you so much, Mr. Hood, I would’ve been totally screwed! I should be getting back home now. Goodbye!” Hood’s body language screamed discomfort as Peter shifted to push past him, not even taking a single full step until Hood’s own foot takes a fraction of a step back as he lifted his hands, bouncing back on his heel and approaching him like Peter would approach a wounded animal in a tree or a kid on a roof before he could leave. Again, like Peter had done so many times before.
“Woah there kid, how about I walk you home? You said you’re from Gotham?” He clasps Peter’s right shoulder gently, playing along with the lie. The touch is sudden and shocking, but surprisingly warm and comforting at the same time. It didn’t set off his nerve endings like the other guy had. He had a firm and gentle grip on his shoulder, not too much pressure but just enough to warm Peter’s senses. He didn’t feel trapped.
He knows the vigilante is fishing for more answers, using the same tactics he used to use on the kids he’d watch over on his own patrol, but Peter leans into the touch all the same. It’s only mildly frustrating how touch-starved he was. His skin was itchy, the touch feeling as cool as a refreshing glass of water on a blindingly hot Summer day in New York without any AC.
“Queens, born and raised. Moved to Gotham recently,” it still felt like molasses saying it. Molasses reminded Peter of the green he had woken up trapped in. The touch reminded him that everyone who had comforted him before was either dead or had already forgotten ‘Peter’ and mourned Spider-man. He was a child soldier who fought a war for the sake of the world; he who managed to ruin everything Mr. Stark had fought to bring back– him, the people lost in the blip. The thought made his anger feel raw once more, the green bubbling under the surface of his skin. His head twitched unnaturally and Red Hood noticed it.
“Shit, kid. No one willingly moves from New York to New Jersey.” There’s silence that follows this statement. Peter’s eyes can’t help but get comically large when he says it. New Jersey, of all places? Even in his dimension, that place was a– Comparison would be a killer, he didn’t need a mental run through of his own notably small amount of Jersey knowledge, because Gotham clearly hadn’t existed where he came from.
“I chose to move. I just didn’t realize it’d be to Gotham,” He snorted, unable to stop himself from getting his own private and bitter joke. He tilted his head to the side, focusing his attention on the scuffling of spiders around them. It made it easier to speak to the unfamiliar yet comforting vigilante.
“And you’ve got a place? Parents or a guardian, I mean.” Hood responds carefully after a moment, his head tilting as well, but for some reason the way he spoke disarmed Peter. It was like he already knew Peter’s future answers were all bullshit. His eyes flitted away from the masked vigilante and appeared to glaze over as he scratched his neck and thought of Aunt May, of Uncle Bed and his mom and dad who he never met. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything about them. He couldn’t bring himself to speak their names. Red Hood’s understanding grew, and yet it was of a different kind.
“Yeah, I mean my parents are dead, but I have a guardian. What’re you, a cop? You gonna call CPS?” His Queens accent comes out a little thicker than he wanted it to, but it was already obvious he was new here. He admitted to being lost. He said he had a guardian. He was too old to be put into this dimension’s CPS, they’d have to sedate him, and that would be a hard catch anyways. Peter could be quite slippery. He just had to make this vigilante believe someone was waiting for him.
“No, kid–” Peter can’t stand it anymore, the word like a slap in the face to the years of time he spent fighting for his neighborhood, and then ultimately his universe, and he has to say something.
“Can you call me literally anything else? I’m not a kid.” There’s a rawness to his voice that makes Red Hood’s heart stutter when he looks at him, and there’s a look in Peter’s eyes that makes Hood see a version of himself. A broken down, exhausted, pre-Bruce version of himself, but worse than that, was the look of pure acceptance of grief and despondence, and of the weight of the world he himself had only been privy to after being murdered by Joker. He also thought he saw a flicker of green, there one moment and gone before he could confirm it. After a moment of silence, he sighs under the mask, shaking his head.
“What’s your name then? What do I call you?” And Peter realizes he should have changed the subject before they got this far. Hood’s shift of attitude had resulted in a miscalculation. He was now waiting for his self-introduction.
“Peter.” He isn’t too worried about sharing this, since no one would know him anyhow. He was hesitant, however, to identify himself fully, in case Red Hood wants to get his little friend on the comms involved in finding him. The less they had to work with the better. When he inevitably created a false identity, he would be a lot harder to find in a sea of unknown Peters. He shifts his feet again. His toes were almost numb.
“Peter, I’ll level with you, since you seem like a smart ki-” At Peter’s intense glare, a spark of green confirmed Red Hood’s fear as Peter remained none the wiser. Red Hood continued through the interruption, plowing through back to the conversation at hand.
“Crime Alley isn’t a place you just end up, it’s dangerous, and no sane guardian would let their… young teen… out after dark.” It was almost entertaining to watch Hood struggle, attempting to avoid the word ‘kid’ again. “Especially when there’s a curfew in place.” He finishes strongly, his jaw set and posture raised tight, but calm. Peter was impressed yet wholly irritated. Of course he ran into the one vigilante who bothered to pay attention to the curfews of a city. Or maybe they were a big deal here?
“Yeah, about that. I’m eighteen, so I’m pretty sure the curfew doesn’t apply. Besides, I am trying to get home, you just happen to be keeping me. You know, my guardian is probably worried too, since I was expected home like twenty minutes ago,” Peter lifts up his arm, tapping his nonexistent wrist watch and crossing his arms, shifting his stance in attempt to show the attitude of a cocky eighteen year old.
It wasn’t hard, he just channeled Tony and MJ in a weird sandwich of personality mash up. He knew he looked younger, probably fifteen or sixteen, likely to do with this universe’s time stream being incompatible with his own, if he had to guess, but he couldn’t go spilling his age when he didn’t actually know it himself . He was pretty close to eighteen when he left his dimension anyways.
The vigilante cocks his head but doesn’t move from his spot; Peter can instantly tell he didn’t buy a single one of his lies.
“Well then, I better walk you home, you know, make sure your guardian doesn’t get more worried. Eighteen is still plenty young to be out after dark in these alleys, alright?” Shit, Peter had no come back.
“I was taught to not trust strangers. Especially in bad parts of town.” There’s an audible sigh that breaks through the voice modulator.
“I’m Red Hood, I run Crime Alley, and I just helped you not get mugged again . Very nice to meet you. Is that familiar enough for you, Peter?” Peter could recognize the sarcasm in Hood’s voice when he mentioned the mugging, telling him he hadn’t even convinced the guy his shoes had been stolen. Can Peter just never catch a break? Peter crosses his arms and does the next best weapon in his arsenal of things Peter Parker can do to avoid confrontation.
He pouts.
“It’s a long way.” Hood almost laughs at that.
“Tch, I have time.”
Another beat of silence. Peter taps his bare foot against the alley ground. Hood doesn’t show any signs of letting up.
“Fine. Which way is it to the public library?” Pete concedes, cooking up a plan. He almost wants to laugh at how stupid it was.
“Not in Crime Alley that’s for sure,” Red Hood snorts, “if you’re talking about the Central library, it’s on the Upper West Side.” gestures behind him, slightly to the right. Peter turns and nods as he looks around, observing and focusing on sounds in the area for a moment in the guise of gaining his bearings.
He could hear a familiar manhole cover scraping and the groans and frustration of a familiar woman and man as they climbed out not too far from here. Not much time left until they cross our path, and Hood already knows something is up. It won’t take the other two long to find them and for all three to discover his sudden appearance is related to the lab.
“Alright, you can walk me to the library. Then I’ll go alone from there.”
“Kid-” Peter abruptly cut him off with a scalding look, unknowingly flashing green rimmed eyes at his (personally dubbed) newest stalker.
“The library is a safe place, and no offense Mr. Hood but I still don’t trust you fully; new city and all, I’m sure you get it,” His eyes can’t help but warily eye the man’s guns that holstered to his legs, the vigilante taking note of the reaction, “I can manage from there.”
This seemed like the right thing to say, since it got them moving and provided Hood with a compromise.
“Okay, but we need to make a stop first.” Peter sighs and rolls his eyes, but concedes.
A few blocks later, Red Hood stops in front of a modern building that seemed to match the surroundings in derelict and disarray, but was so clean inside it reminded him of the Avengers base upstate, the one Mr. Stark had promised to give him a tour after the war was over, the one Peter had ended up sneaking into to get his suit back. The suit Mr. Stark and him worked on together– the suit he didn’t have when he woke up in that damn tube of goo. Maybe a safe house, of sorts.
He doesn’t move past the foyer, weary of being in a semi-stranger’s home– or safe house. He doesn’t even really know why he agreed to follow him inside in the first place. He tells Red Hood as much, and the man has the audacity to just give him a hearty laugh through the modulator. It was nice, however, to be out of cold, wet and rainy weather and inside a clean, dry, warm place. A deep rumble in his chest purred for a moment and he had to physically take a breath and clear his throat to not only realize the satisfied-sound was coming from his own body but how to stop it. Another side effect to take note of.
“What size shoe are you anyways?” Red Hood digs through a closet in the hallway off to the left side of the entrance, and Peter steps further, moving in just enough to get a view of him, the hall light the only thing illuminating the space. He’s thrown a pair of socks that he inspects while the vigilante is distracted, finally slipping them onto his frozen feet when nothing strange is found. They were thick, soft gray wool socks and did instant wonders as he slid his newly clothed feet on the tile, a small satisfied smile on his face.
“I don’t know, probably a nine?” Peter’s feet were smaller at whatever age he was now than they had been, so he guessed. He was enjoying the feeling returning to his toes when he turns to see the man, Hood is staring at him with his mask on, and the teen comprehensively analyzes his body language to realize that hadn’t been the answer of a teenager who knew what they were doing.
Red Hood analyzes Peter just as deeply. Another misunderstanding begins to grow. Just keep quiet and run when given the chance. He could figure it out in the moment. He turns away once more, hiding himself behind the wall, hand sticking to it out of comfort. It was all he could do to convince himself not to walk up the wall to the ceiling corner where other spiders would have lurked, if it wasn’t so damn sterile .
Then a familiar buzzing of technology switched on beyond the thrums of the building, and the low crackle inaudible to human ears picks up the voice he had heard earlier. It was Oracle.
“Hood, come in. Where the hell have you been? I know you’ve got your own problems in the Alley but–” Peter swears he heard an almost growl of a shushing sound come out of Red Hood’s throat. Peter stood in the closed doorway, closer to the corner of the entrance, stock still, as the vigilante used his closet search to conceal his communications.
The apartment itself was sleek, modern, and open concept, the hallway housing what Peter guessed were a bathroom and two bedrooms, along with the closet Hood was currently rummaging through.
“Yeah. I’m here,” his voice is raw but low and razor sharp. He obviously had practice talking so no one could hear him. Too bad Peter was just the kind of enhanced-mutant type who could.
Well, in his universe he hadn’t been considered a mutant, since he had been bit by a radioactive genetically-mutated spider, but since he woke up submerged in green he’s had a feeling it may be different this time around– or this ‘universe’ around. Every part of him was just a little too spidery, comparatively .
“Had to take care of something important. Could be related, not sure, so keep Spoiler and Red out of this while I figure it out.”
“Red Hood, what do you mean it’s related? Is someone there with you? Can you not speak freely?” The voice crackled from the buzz of the tech, but Peter could tell amongst the irritation mixed fear and deep concern in her voice. How astute of her to catch on. It’s not like Peter was a threat to him, of course he definitely could take him in a fight, but he had no desire to harm someone who was clearly trying to do good. Another, greener part of him screamed they were some vein of brothers .
It was extremely confusing. Peter was an only child. He’d prefer to chalk it up to the multiverse and parallel lives of vigilantes, or something related to the spell that made him suddenly pop into existence, but it wasn’t . Born from the green that seeped into his skeleton and loomed over his existence with just a little too much weight, the liquid he choked into his lungs for a moment before he escaped the pod told him Red Hood was family .
“Later. Gotta get a kid home first but he won’t tell me where he lives. I’m taking him to the Central Library,” Peter really didn’t like it, the feeling and the way Hood emphasized ‘kid’ into the intercom, and he didn’t like it when he told the mysterious techie where they were going. He really didn’t like it when silence followed, but he hated it when the Oracle lady answered, swifty and so systematically.
“Got it. I will tell Red and Spoiler to meet you at the safehouse closeby. I’ll be in HQ on lookout; you better have some answers, or they may get B involved. We need to be ready, this might not be something best handled alone, regardless of how much you’re trusted, Jay. I’ll check the security tapes of surrounding streets and send you what we do know.” Hood’s whole body tenses a fraction when this B figure is mentioned, before relaxing at her final words, still rummaging with various unknown items in the closet.
“I will, but make sure they don’t make contact, the kid’s already pretty freaked out from what I can tell. Don’t think he knows what’s going on; could be a case of trafficking. I’ll keep my comm on but muted so you can track me.” A shudder ran through Peter as he listened carefully. What a misunderstanding to have– was human trafficking that high on the list for possible subterranean lab experiment victims?
Okay, maybe that was a stupid question. As far as he could tell though, he woke up in the green liquid Lazarus pod because that’s where he landed.
He had a working theory in the back of his mind on how he ended up in the tube where only hands were found. It was morbid, but if the hands weren’t just normal hands, and just so happened to be the hands of a certain doctor from New York who in this universe had a slightly different accident, were procured by some random Gotham villain, then it could explain his appearance . However, Peter put that idea on the backburner for when he wasn’t in survival mode.
After a few moments of Red Hood further fumbling around with different things in the closet, bumping and thrashing and making noises of irritation that included some pretty colorful curse words under his breath, he pulls out two matching shoes, size nine, that were black with a faded yellow bat spread on the side of them and tosses each one to Peter, who catches them with ease. They fit perfectly.
“Thank you…” Peter ties tight knots on the laces, peering up at the masked vigilante now in front of him. Hood simply nods and motions out the door.
“So was that like your place or…?” Peter idly asks, feeling a bit grateful and considerably relaxed now that he wasn’t barefoot. Now he could actually run without fear of leaving a blood trail (if he were to hurt his feet).
“Something like that. C’mon, I got a motorcycle around the corner.” Red Hood’s answer is short, and he seems stiff, despite attempts to relax his body. Peter assumes (correctly) it had to do with him and these Red Robin, Spoiler, and Oracle people. He must have a personal vendetta or something with those labs. Maybe he was experimented on? Wait- a motorcycle?!
“You said you’re from Queens, right? Why’d you move out to Gotham, of all places? You know we have one of the highest crime rates?”
Peter, distracted once more, pondered how to answer this, because no, he didn’t know Gotham was so dangerous. He hadn’t even known Gotham was a place that existed until he landed here and was told that’s where he was.
“Like I said before, I didn’t know it’d be Gotham. My guardian got… transferred to a new position and we didn’t have a choice.” Sticking to the vague truth as much as possible will help him later. Hood hummed at that.
“Must’ve been one hell of a job transfer if they sent…” Hood looks at him, and even through the mask he can tell he’s expecting a name. Peter sighs and looks at the masked vigilante pointedly.
“Tony.” He provided. Red Hood has got to try harder than that to get better information off of him. When he thought of what to say, it had suddenly begun to feel weird to call Mr. Stark, Mr. Stark, when he felt so much older than when he last saw his mentor alive . When so much had changed.
“Well, if they sent Tony here, with a family, it must’ve been a big company-wide change.” Now Peter was puzzled. He couldn’t find a single truth to pull into a response, because, well, Tony simply wouldn’t have transferred if it was the truth, because he owned his own goddamn company ( Mrs. Potts ran it, but Mr. Stark’s name was still on it, and Peter didn’t think they could make him do anything unless Mrs. Potts insisted. He was Tony fucking Stark for gods sake) .
So if anything, it was time to deflect and give useless information.
Peter wasn’t sure if Tony Stark, in any form, existed here, but another thing his Tony had taught him was if you’re gonna lie, don’t get caught later on by forgetting your own story. So he had to stick to the truth the best he could– just in case he ran into Red Hood again.
Then the green threatened to close his throat, feelings of anguish and deep-seated and suddenly crushing loneliness mixed with his grief. He spoke as soon as he could push through the sea of emotions attempting to swallow him up.
“No– no, Tony is a big deal, he would’ve turned it down if he thought it was a bad idea. I figure he’ll fix up any issues with the branch and we’ll settle quickly.” It’s not like Peter could just go home after he figures out where, when, and how he is. He may be able to move to a different city, but that’d take a lot of time, seeing as he didn’t actually exist here. He’d be sticking around in Gotham for at least a little while, so he couldn’t assure the vigilante he’d be gone in a few months. Dr. Strange– Stephen, had said it was a permanent fix.
Red Hood’s hands were stuffed into his jacket pockets as he continued to march along, walking Peter down a cleaner looking alley-street and turning to open a garage abruptly. A red tricked out motorcycle sat inside a mechanics work station filled with tools, dirty rags, various parts and accessories, spray paints, even a mini fridge. On the wall hung a black helmet that Red Hood grabbed, tossing it to Peter, who deftly snatched it out of the air before he can slow himself down.
“Helmet on,” Hood sits on the bike, walking the bike out. Peter fastends the helmet on his head and awkwardly follows him out. The door to the garage is shut, and Red Hood pulls something out from under the bike seat before getting comfortable; turning to Peter from on the bike, he speaks.
“Have you ever ridden a motorcycle?” He asks. Peter can almost feel him squinting his eyes under the mask, observing.
“No, uh–” when the bike roars into life, the sound is barely muffled by the helmet, hurting Peter’s ears and making him flinch. As it grew constant, he found it a little more tolerable, and shifted awkwardly towards the vigilante.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Peter is thrown a dark jacket to wear– it was the object Hood had grabbed from under the seat. Too cold and overwhelmed to return it, he slips it on and basks in the warmth. It’s a bit big on him, but thick and warm. The hoodie is entirely black except for a painted red bat on the back that matches the symbol on Red Hood’s suit. Peter could admit it was a decently cool design. “I have two rules: lean when I lean, and don’t fall off.”
Peter slid himself onto the back, adjusting so he matched Hood, who then revved the engine and shot off in an instant out of the alley.
The ride was exhilarating, and despite the lack of his spidey-sense, Peter felt as if he would fall off at any point as Hood weaved through cars and lights as they reached the more populous area. He let his hands stick to Hood’s jacket, for extra assurance, as he focused on watching the different locations pass by, in which Peter noticed were, over time, becoming cleaner, more empty; they passed a large park and what appeared to be a university campus.
Here, in the nicer parts of Gotham, buildings had more overhangs to protect people from the light rain falling from dark clouds (the same rain that seeped into his jacket as they drove on). Windows were polished and devoid of graffiti; police presence increased. On one of the particularly sharp turns, he could feel Hood laugh at his quick scramble to hold on tighter as he sped up to take it instead of slowing down.
When they finally stopped, parking in an alley off of what was apparently their destination, Hood made him take a breather for a moment and laughed with him.
“You had to have broken at least a dozen traffic laws.”
“What do you know, Queens, for all you know, my driving is perfect.” Peter turns to the masked vigilante and swears he can hear the shit-eating grin on his face, so he narrows his own eyes at the man. Peter didn’t want to admit he never once had his spidey-senses go off in reaction to the maneuvers Hood made. Every single one, much to his annoyance, felt well-practiced, routine, and expertly steered.
“A wise woman once said nobody’s perfect, you live and you learn it.” Peter responds anyway, giving the vigilante a sarcastic grin, tossing the helmet back to him. Hood simply chuckles and rests it on the seat before gesturing him towards the alley’s exit, leading the way.
“So, it sounds like you’re pretty fond of this Tony-guy.” He brings their previous conversation back up and Peter wants to cringe away, despite expecting it. Just push through it.
“Yeah, he’s really great. We spend a lot of time in his lab together. I mean, people called me a genius, but he’s the real deal. One time–” Peter stops himself short as they exit the alley and enter a wide opening, where the Gotham City Public Library stood tall, braced by old ionic style columns that intermingled perfectly with a simple yet gothic style building at the very front-center of the cemented square park. A large fountain stood at the center, framing the entrance of the library perfectly behind it from where they approached, the water bubbling and rushing of each small section of the beautiful stone making Peter’s mouth salivate. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was. Unfortunately, he’s pretty sure drinking from a decorative fountain like a wild animal was not acceptable in most dimensions, including this one.
“Peter? One time you what? You said something about a lab?” When Peter turns to look at Hood, barely giving him a glance before completely forgetting he was there as he gazes upon the grand city square. It was vastly different here than where he had ended up.
Firstly, his spidey-senses thrummed with much lower energy than before. Then, there was little to no sewage or trash on the actual street. Sure, he had noticed the streets gradual cleanliness increase as they walked, but this was honestly still a sharp and abrupt change from leaving the alley just off the side of it. The square, regardless of the gloomy cloudy and dark skies sprinkling down upon it, was a sight to behold with the architecture surrounding it.
Some specialty clothing stores, some trinket and souvenir shops, a toy store, some coffee shops, some restaurants, all closed, all residing within beautiful gothic buildings, surrounding the open space that had a variety of sectioned areas to sit and loiter in. He could hear the heartbeats of the residents living above the ground floor businesses, families sleeping; parents just arriving home from work; siblings eating late night snacks together; the familiar dull roar of a city’s inhabitants filling the back of his mind.
It was comforting to hear not everyone was in survival mode, as he had felt was the case in Crime Alley. There was even a day care on the corner, diagonal to the library, with a play structure peeking through a gated entrance.
Peter said too much, and was actually going to say even more to his (possible) detriment when two figures landed a couple feet away, jumping down from the rooftops. They sent his senses into overdrive, and although they didn’t scream threat, they did scream dangerous. Peter already had Red Hood, he didn’t need two more stalkers that set off his spidey-senses. Likely Red Robin and Spoiler. Someone didn’t listen, Peter’s internal voice sings. He tenses up, freezing next to Hood. His senses hadn’t noticed them until they had revealed themselves– which was not inspiring for his confidence. Hood notices his body language and curses under his breath, stepping forward to place himself between Peter and the two new additions.
“I thought I told O,” He says, his modulator conveying a seriously irritated tone. His attitude seriously threw the woman off, inciting Peter’s curiosity, “I’d meet you after I was done getting a kid– Peter home.” He crosses his arms, casting a backwards glance at him when he feels the pinprick of Peter’s glare on the back of his neck.
“You were taking too long. Thought you might want assistance,” the man smiled in a joking tone, his body language relaxed yet he looked coiled and ready to spring into action at any point. His eyes flickered to Peter, taking stock, observing him from head to toe. It sent a chill down his spine and ignited that ugly green once more.
“Friends of yours?” Peter spoke, surprising all three of the vigilantes. He placed a gentle hand on Hood’s arm and smiled, casually gesturing with his other, but the rage in his eyes was obvious to Red Hood. He knew that look. Distrust and anger . Peter was back on alert, guarded more than before.
“Something like that. They were supposed to wait for me until I was done.” He grit out, giving a pointed tilt of his head towards the two. The vigilante was pretty sure this almost completely destroyed all the rapport he had built with Peter on their trip to the library. He was incorrect, but he did lose his chance to get easy information from Peter.
Peter was quite ready to bolt, if his body language couldn’t be clearer, and it really couldn’t be. The rage Hood saw wasn’t one of being blindsided, nor was Peter fearful or shocked, as Hood assumed he would be. Peter knew from his enhanced senses they were planning on meeting up, he heard it himself, but no, he was actually furious they had been able to get within his radius and he hadn’t even noticed.
Green once again bubbled in his chest, swathing Peter in a rush of overwhelming emotion and begging him to take action, to push back, to attack and protect himself. He had to remember, with great power comes great responsibility, and right now, his responsibility was to keep this damn green rage contained.
Notes:
Recently I discussed my fic with my plp and we both thought Scarecrow would be a cool first major villain. Keep in mind that this doesn’t account for the other things I’m toiling over, and my writing brain may just decide to do something else! So,,,, it’s open? Undecided. Unsolved ;-P
I’m taking my sweet time, and deciding on the fly how I want Peter’s story to go. On another note, I made a Spotify playlist of songs I feel encapsulates either Peter or the fic, and keep adding songs to it as I work my day job. It’s kinda crazy that Linkin Park’s early albums have some excellent songs regarding the way I picture Peter. However, that's probably more related to how I associate Spider-man and listening to Linkin Park with my childhood experience. Funny.
While I am referencing a basic map of Gotham and a supplemental that has where each villain hq is approximately, maps of Gotham with actual distance like miles are fuck-shit hard to find, and actual timing between areas are even harder to process, because comic authors don't always reference maps when writing about where these bitches are going, so if you see me make shit up about how close or far something is, keep it quiet...
Also, I completely changed the end of this chapter... because of the whole map thing.
If i made mistakes, i'll be back to fix them. lolz
Chapter 4: Escape
Summary:
Peter has a 'thing' over Spoiler and Red Hood, but not for the reason the vigilantes think. Hood goes brother bear, and they all get ditched in the dust by Peter.
Notes:
Ha ha I once again added a bunch of shit last minute!!!! SO forgive me for mistakes, those will be edited in days to come.
Peter dealing with uncontrollable anxiety, ptsd, trauma, grief + brand new universe, but in NEW JERSEY + waking up in weird goo(meeting three highly trained vigilantes) = lazarus fever induced panic attack & Peter shutting down (because he wouldn't dare hurt innocents if he could help it)
Not much to say about this chapter, its pretty straightforward. Just some interactions and some eavesdropping! Fun stuff happens and Peter commits a crime and doesnt really think about it much so dont worry about that.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Peter didn’t react when his two new stalkers took a step forward, speaking to Red Hood at first (he mildly considered this title improper, considering they just met him, if this counts as meeting them, but since he knows they’ve been on his tail a small part of his petty teenage brain said it was fine since he wouldn’t call them the name out loud). An inside thought , Aunt May’s voice reverberated in his head. He’d assume Red Robin was the guy, who was mostly dressed in the red suit (obviously) he had observed earlier, and the woman was Spoiler, mostly in black and purple.
Well, to say he didn’t react would be a lie, he did react, but it was more in the way of freezing, like a deer in headlights, was a reaction. Freezing was the best he could do to stop his body from moving in a way that most definitely would not have been remotely close to human movement in the least. He was thankful he had a hoodie on, hiding most of his appearance.
Peter wanted to skitter up a wall, snap his jaw at them and hiss. Huh. That was very new. Kind of feral sounding, if he’s being honest.
Albeit, the two didn’t quite know for sure it was him they were searching for, but Peter knew what he heard Red Hood tell Oracle. He knew Spoiler and Red Robin would just as likely be informed by Oracle what Hood had told her, if them talking to her in the lab was anything to go off of. He also knew these people had to be smart if they were comfortable as vigilantes in a city thrumming with more danger than all of New York— unless you count the levels at which his senses reacted to the RAFT, or even the series of unfortunate events that led Peter to Gotham in the first place.
Peter’s senses began screaming the minute they took two more steps forward as the ‘adults’ conversed, his hand sticking to Hood’s sleeve almost subconsciously. It wasn’t as if they would—could kill him in that instance, Peter could tell they had genuine concern, but there was a subtle look in their eye of appraisal, curiosity, and tentative hesitance that made the green feeling crawl out of his bones and diffuse into his skin. The green reacted in disbelief— rage? Rage felt more accurate— to him being unable to notice them in the sound of the city around him as he had taken it in. The Peter part of him didn’t like how they seemed to dissect him with their eyes.
He barely had time to take a miniscule step back to hide himself in the shadow of the shit-brickhouse of a vigilante that was Red Hood (he almost despised the idea of hiding when his fists could easily kill a man, but his brain told him now was not the time to be stubborn) when his spidey-senses reacted, making him abruptly jerk his head to the side, as if he’d suddenly been punched directly in the jaw by an unknown attacker.
The pounding rush of green seemed to envelop his heartbeat and push up through his insides into his brain. His eyes glowed an unnatural and bright emerald, unknown to him, and the head jerk was a reaction too abrupt and much too fast to go unnoticed by the three people he was all but surrounded by, regardless of a hood hiding his expression.
He hadn’t dodged anything, in fact, he knew there had been no external threat– but there was a voice in the back of his head, suspiciously not unlike his own, telling him to let loose. It told him these vigilantes couldn't help him, that he was a lost cause, forcefully abandoned by his own universe. It told him that the deep, aggravating itch of rage he had been pushing down and past, and mulling over the entire night was righteous– that he deserved to give in and wreck the place. It made him wretch his side to the side abruptly, he just needed a wake up call from the haze of green overcoming him.
The voice that sounded eerily like his own gave him a headache as his teeth ached and as he clenched his teeth, his mouth began to salivate with a slightly venomous taste—which provided another crisis for him to evaluate at a later, safer time. He may be part Spider but he was called Spider- man for a reason, goddamnit, he was a man! The green goo must have had more side effects on his mutated DNA… he had to figure that out quickly— before he accidentally hurt someone— before he lost control. He had to be in control.
He had begun feeling oddly aggressive as soon as they spoke to Red Hood, only ramping up at the looks they were sending his way, the green rattling around in his body, confusing him and throwing off his spidey-sense. Hood was safe. Regardless of his senses screaming for him to act, the green seemed to be lulled into complacency while he remained next to the man. It was the only thing anchoring Peter to reality at that moment.
Peter just didn’t have the time or energy to process why he felt this way, or the new oddly tingly feeling of venom in his mouth, especially when these two other costume motherfuckers were beginning to seriously grate on his nervous system. ( Language! )
“Red Hood–” Spoiler seems nice, well meaning, even. But her eyes were glued on him, not Red Hood, with a grin on her face. It wasn’t necessarily a creepy smile, and she seemed to be the one ensuring all the vigilante’s energies were holding up pretenses of simple, pure concern. Peter couldn’t handle it, that look in her eyes that made him feel small— young, like a kid again.
So he tunes it out in favor of tugging on Hood’s arm where it had been stuck. He felt a bit childish, like a kid trying to get his mom’s attention, or in this case, his dad’s.
That gross, nauseous green feeling welled up in the pit of his stomach again as he pictures Uncle Ben’s cold, lifeless eyes on him the day the aliens attacked New York. He can feel himself shaking but he’s powerless to stop it. He ends up balling up his free hand into a fist clenched straight at his back. He can feel the skin there tear and reheal, tear and reheal, tear and–
“You alright Pete?” Red Hood’s voice cut through the panic for a moment. With big eyes, he looks at the man and nods wordlessly.
He wasn’t alright, though. His fist opens at his side at the attention, and Peter can see faint skin traces falling down, his palm completely normal save for newly healed over baby pink skin in an uneven line across it. He brought up both hands this time, catching on Red Hood’s sleeve for a moment, before rubbing madly at his eyes, stumbling slightly backwards. How many people had he lost? How many had he failed? Peter wonders if his many mistakes were why he was now across the multiverse, in a completely unknown world.
Aunt May would have scoffed at this had she been there (because after she found out he was Spider-Man he could talk to her about anything, and know she was there for him to feel normal with), but she wasn’t there. She was gone. Dead. Just like his Uncle, just like Mr.Stark— Tony. It didn’t make sense, but Dr. Strange– Stephen, the guy who had been sorcerer supreme at one point, had explained the spell to him as if it had. But it couldn’t be undone, he was in this universe forever. His world would keep turning, hopefully safe for now from the crack that threatened the stability of life itself he had caused. The green snarled Stephen Strange was responsible, ultimately, for the spells. Regardless of his requests and interruptions, if Stephen was the man he claimed to be, to live up to be, why had he listened to a teenager’s requests? But then again… Peter’s breathing picked up. How many aliens had he killed?
It had never been a huge concern on his part, between the war and everything that went on after it, he never ended up having too much time to think about the war he fought in after being gone, dead to his world, for five years. He had woken up from death and went straight back to work, and then everything proceeded to fall apart.
Now all he could remember were his senses screaming at him as he activated instant kill mode on his suit, and he could feel the projectiles and the alien bombs whizzing past him and dropping around him. He could remember his death grip on the glove, the glove that had slipped out of his hands the first time and cost everything . He remembers losing Tony . He could feel the rage and the excruciating pain he felt as he watched the life drain from his mentor’s eyes.
The man who had created time and space multidimensional travel for him, who, despite his mistakes, always came back for Peter, always found a way to get to him, instantly dead after saving their universe, and millions of others at risk of Thanos’ destruction. Tony hadn’t been the best mentor, but before the snap, like just before, Peter had finally felt as if he was getting somewhere with the man. Titan was a mistake, but he wouldn’t have changed anything, except for keeping hold of that damned gauntlet.
Green wells up once again. His breath jagged and uneven, eyes flickering a glow, his vision tinged with color as he attempted to give the vigilante he was choosing to trust a desperate look, the man, obviously seeing something wrong in him, had immediately given him a firm nod with a frown and a deeply haunted look in his own tinged-green eyes. His hands came up almost in slow motion as he turned to focus on Peter entirely, ignoring his fellow vigilantes who had begun to speak to each other and the comms in a panic, and rested his hands gently on Peter’s shoulders. His hood was still on and yet he knew– he felt that they saw the green in him.
Peter feels it, can feel that Red Hood is speaking to him in a low, calm voice and he wants to flinch back, but he fears his instinct of throwing the man across the square in an instant of panic at not knowing his own strength, once again. The touch grounds him. It sinks back down to him where he had been watching his mind leaving his body in what Peter recognized was a major panic attack. A bunch of information from both his overloaded spidey-senses (because they were assuredly more spidery than Peter-y) and the distinct ache of acidic and sharp rage was incredibly overwhelming.
He blinks, eyes fluttering shut for a moment as his breathing becomes more labored, attempting to calm himself down through the 5 senses grounding technique Tony had taught him.
Five things he could see were his new shoes on his feet, the gray cement of the square, Red Hood, Spoiler, and Red Robin. He punctuates his thoughts through a sudden deep breath.
Four things he could feel were Hood’s hands on his shoulders, the itch of his wrists where his web shooters used to sit, the fabric of the fresh socks Hood had given him, and his own hair ( when had he raised his own hands? ). He feels the two across from him narrow in on the movement of his lips that mouthed along with his grounding words, on Red Hood’s hands and intense focus on Peter, on the situation that seemed to be playing out like a stupid film reel. Focus, Peter.
Three things he could hear , Red Hood’s heartbeat, loud and fast, the steady breathing of the family living above the kid’s toy store, asleep, and Oracle, talking– no, scolding the two vigilantes that incited this situation in the first place. Once they actually talked, they were going to connect him in some fashion to the lab, whether he liked it or not . He was still covered in green! He had to be gone by the time they got over being secretive and hush hush around him–
Two things he could smell , Hood’s musk, a distinct and acrid mix of earthy leather and sulfur with rubber, the sewer underneath him. One thing he could taste, his own (? questionable at best, since he hadn’t confirmed anything) venom in his mouth.
His thoughts, having been jumbled with panic, relax after completing the exercise. Red Hood’s arms are still encasing him on both sides, essentially, but Peter relaxes and lets his hands drop limply to his side. All of the three vigilantes, he can see now, were tense and ready for a fight, had one broken out, their expressions portraying a sense of confusion, as if they were expecting something much worse. At him dropping his hands loosely, his eyes no longer plagued with that green glow they had known as Lazarus Fever– what Hood had known as pit rage. Peter felt exhausted suddenly, as if he had just fought a Doc Ock and a Lizard. But there wasn’t any time to be tired, he had to get out of sight. Then, he may as well be paper in the wind, with no actual papers to be spoken of. Another thing to worry about when he got away from them.
They would then have no choice but to search the streets for him, and Peter was confident in his hiding skills, regardless of them having the home turf advantage, especially if understanding spiders was one of his powers now . Maybe that was something he could test out? There had to be millions of spiders in the city, if he could get a network going he wouldn’t have to rely purely on–
“What’s going on, Pete, talk to me,” Hood says in a low tone, his head dipping ingo Peter’s space as he finally hears the man. Peter shook his head, his eyes wild and darting around the open space, then repeatedly to the two vigilantes that were inching closer by the minute.
He was fine a moment ago, but he couldn’t speak, just releasing small stuttering breaths as he tried to form a complete sentence. He catches the shakes increasing when Spoiler takes another step forward, now barely three feet from them, his eyes zeroing in on the movement and leading Hood’s eyes to it. Get out, get out, get out–
“Is he alright? He seems–” Red Robin is talking and Peter catches Hood’s head jerking, cutting off the other with a single look he didn’t catch.
“Stay where you are, you two are the reason he’s freaking out,” Hood’s interruption is abrupt and aggressive, and the two are still at this revelation. Red Robin seems to be dumbfounded at the idea. Maybe they were used to civilians calming down in their presence, not freaking out. Hood seems to get larger by the minute with an adjustment of his posture as he turns to face them, his hand slipping down Peter’s arm and lightly tapping the outside of his wrist with two fingers, gently tugging Peter to get behind him once again. Peter shrinks in his shadow, focusing on Hood’s now steady heartbeat. It gave him time to calm down and focus.
Peter’s continued reliance on Red Hood, his willingness for him to take the lead, despite his body language telling him the kid was anything but comfortable with all of them there, made the vigilante feel a sort of fierce pride and strange satisfaction he hadn’t remembered feeling much of since his own incident with a certain green liquid. Sure, there were the alley kids, but the instinct was never this deep.
Red Hood was known to be wildly protective of children, especially in Crime Alley, but the feeling itself rarely extended to be stronger than his feelings for his adoptive family, positive or negative. Right now, he had alarm bells going off with how Peter was reacting, telling him he had to diffuse this situation unless he wanted something absolutely terrible happening, most likely to Peter’s detriment, and his own. He didn’t want Batman involved quite yet. Just when he’s about to address his younger siblings, he’s interrupted.
“Hood, I’ve gotta get going,” Peter said in a hushed and cold tone that led to a silence that hung in the air. It sent a shiver of concern up the man’s spine, but he turned slightly to focus on addressing Peter. The shaking was gone, but the wild look in his eyes remained, hood enshrouding most of his hair and face with darkness. Red Hood was close enough to see his face, however.
“I’m Spoiler, that’s Red Robin. Sorry if we spooked you, but we can walk you home! The other side of the city is our usual area,” was a sudden offer, arriving before Red Hood could even respond to his words. It made Peter jerk his head, his own eyes narrowing suspiciously in on Spoiler from over Hood’s shoulder, who had stepped forward again, just a half step ahead of Red Robin.
Red Robin smiles gently, hand friendly and raised as if greeting him. Hood’s grip on his wrist tightens, but he releases it as Peter steps out of the man’s shadow and to the side of him. Hood gives him a look of concern, which he avoids meeting intentionally. It felt brotherly.
“No offense, but I trust this guy more than two randos who showed up ‘n nearly scared the pee out of me. He saved me from a mugger and drove me across the city, for all I know you’re just roof stalkers looking to whisk me away to your basement apartment– not that Hood would let that happen.” Peter’s voice came out colder than he had wanted it to, but he was beginning to feel the sensation of panic rising in his lungs again . The longer he stood still, talking to these people, the worse the green wanted to lash out. It was calmer now because of Hood, but if Hood wasn’t here, Peter doubted he’d be able to control his strength. He’d end up hurting someone in an accident or dealing some serious property damage with his own hands, that much was sure. Hood snorts out a laugh under his breath, and the two other vigilantes seem to dial in on it, looking shocked.
“Damn right I wouldn’t,” He claps his hand gently on Peter’s shoulder, giving him a toothy grin, and it soothes a sore Peter hadn’t realized was there, making the edge of his mouth twitch upwards. Interesting, he wonders why his spider senses are almost at ease next to Hood.
“Hey, we’re not stalkers–” Red Robin sputters, looking between Spoiler, Peter, and Hood exasperatedly.
“Oh, that was meant to be an inside thought, sorry,” Peter interrupts him, inhaling through his teeth through a clenched jaw that showed an awkward “oopsy-daisy, eat-shit” smile. It was, genuinely, meant to be an inside thought, his face flushing a bit in embarrassment. He was thankful his hood hid him from most eyes.
“Pete,” Hood gives him a look, confused and searching for something in his expression. Whatever it was, he didn’t find it– couldn’t find it through Peter’s new blank poker face. The green glow that had been threatening to overtake his eyes and therefore his mind was now a dull thrum, Peter pushing it down, down, down, until he could barely feel it. For now.
“Thanks, Mr. Hood, for walking me this far, but I really need to get home now. As much as I love guided tours of the city by vigilantes, tonight’s not really a good time; got places to go, people to see. You know how it is,” As he’s speaking, he’s animating his words with his hands, gesturing wildly and pouring as much teenage sass as he could muster into his tone. He steps back, away from Hood, away from the safe buzz the green had told him about.
“Woah, the streets may be safer around here but it’s still Gotham at night, you sure you’re good to go home? We could at the very least drop you off on your street.” It was Red Robin this time, hands up just like Hood’s had been when he had first approached. Peter was starting to get frustrated.
He just needed to find a place to curl up for the night. The light was dim here, but not nearly as dim as it was in those alleys, and he could still feel the surprised vigilantes picking his appearance apart. Red Hood looked worried, as if he’d bolt at the slightest movement and disappear from view forever (he wasn’t wrong to have that fear, Peter conceded).
“Well, stranger danger and all that,” Peter shrugged, his hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. His nervous tick was the same in this universe, at least there was no one around to know it was a tell that he was lying. Peter was pretty sure they could figure that out just by looking at him, though.
“Hold on a sec, you don’t have to leave just cause we’re here, Peter, we just wanted to meet up with our friend Red Hood,” Spoiler spoke kindly, the man next to her elbowing her side and giving her a serious look. Peter almost laughed in her face.
“Yeah, even if you weren’t here, I’d be leaving. Like I told Mr. Hood earlier, my guardian is probably preeeetty mad at me for disappearing. So, I should go, and you guys can have your vigilante meeting or whatever this awkward situation is. Seriously guys, I can tell there’s some tension and I’m not sure if it’s sexual or not but I am not equipped to handle all that.” Peter rolled his eyes, sassing the (technically, to him ) unknown vigilantes.
They all seemed to sputter at the joke, Red Robin’s lip curling in amused disgust, Spoiler accidentally letting out a huff of a laugh at it before quickly covering her mouth as both Red Hood and Red Robin whip their heads in her direction.
“Ew, Red Hood’s more like my brother than a partner, thank you very much,” Red Robin spits out, crossing his arms in mock offense and turning his head in a pout, his mouth twitching with the obvious desire to laugh. Tension had drained out of the man’s body at this jab but he still seemed to hold himself on guard. Peter simply raises his shoulders in a shrug.
“That’s none of my business, so… good night!” He darts off, immediately hustling it out of the square (in a, hopefully, human-paced sprint) and darting into an alley opposite the one he entered from. He hears a few shouts after him, even Red Hood cursing as he attempts to swipe at his shirt to (unsuccessfully) grab him, shaking his hood off in the process. However, Peter was agile and his senses thrummed with awareness of every molecule in his body and those surrounding him. Now away from the people who had incited that green rage within him, he could think properly.
He runs through the alleyway for a minute or so until he hits a dead end, where he then confirms he isn’t being followed by focusing in on the three distinct heartbeats of the vigilantes, still in the square where he left them. From behind a rogue dumpster that was spilling into the alley, obviously having been searched and rummaged through not too long ago, he looks around, observing the walls around him.
Once Peter is able to confirm there were no cameras, even meeting a couple of his new spider friends (who promptly chirped at him when he made eye contact, one even hopping quite adorably and motioning two of its legs upwards, towards its own web), he slid his hood back on and got on all fours, climbing up the dark, slick bricks of the building.
As he moves, he chirps at the small spider who had motioned him upwards, who in turn chirps back as it climbs up its own string of web alongside him and recedes back into the shadows, where its web meets the overhang of the roof. He wished he had his webs, but he was sticky enough, and that could come later. He’d have to figure out a way to make web fluid for easier and faster getaways. His wrist itched at this thought.
He made sure to stay out of sight, remaining low, bent in an unnatural position as his joints maneuvered and jumped to different roofs, working on backtracking towards the giant library in the square, far too worried that even the slightest hint of his figure would mean the vigilantes spotting him from their location on the ground to even spare a glance at the city’s skyline.
He had his super-senses, would be able to tell in an instant if their eyes wandered to the roofline, but he couldn’t feel anything like the effects of a super-serum from Spoiler and Red Robin, they all just seemed to have insanely keen eyes. Red Hood was… a unique case. He didn’t smell or feel like Steve or even Bucky did, with their super-soldier serum, but he felt as if there was green in him that matched his own, and Peter couldn’t imagine the things he’s noticed in himself as unique to his Spider-DNA. Maybe the weirdly specific skills he seems to have gained, like communicating with spiders (maybe more, when he gets the chance to actually test them), but there was an increase in his strength, speed, and agility he had noticed while climbing and jumping that had to be a result of the green goo of a liquid.
As he settled behind a gargoyle on the Library roof, he listened to the three in the square just below him.
“What the fuck did I tell you? I told Oracle I’d meet you after I dealt with the kid. I had him talking, he mentioned a lab– fuck– and then you just had to show up!” Red Hood was mad– mad and helmetless, if his voice was anything to go by. He was more angry than he had let on, and Peter was impressed he had held it in enough for it to not leak out while he was down there, beside him. His voice was rough but even and steady, matching what Peter had learned about him.
“He thought we could have been lovers!” Red Robin was hysterically fake vomiting, Spoiler letting out laughs and teasing them.
“I could cut the tension with a butter knife, so I don’t blame him for assuming anything.” Her hands were up in a shrug, body language emphasizing that she enjoyed Peter’s little extrapolation far too much, in the other two’s opinion.
“Shut up, both of you. I had it handled, you should have listened to Oracle and stayed back,” Hood angrily growled, crossing his arms tensely, his helmet in one of his hands.
“Hood, it’s been an hour since then with comms completely offline except for location. You of all people should know if a kid was in that lab and escaped, he may have been affected by Lazarus fever and could pose a serious risk,” Red Robin spoke logically, but Peter could tell this enraged Red Hood even more.
“Yeah, a risk I know how to handle a whole lot better than you two– god dammit!” There was venom in his words, but it didn’t seem to puncture through anyone’s psyche. He paced in place, one hand keeping a steady grip on his helmet, the other sliding over his face. He couldn’t see the details of their faces, but he did not look happy.
Peter idly wonders, laying back and kicking his feet up, leaning his weight upon the gargoyle’s base, if this type of communication was common between the vigilantes. Hood’s aggressive tone and their complete lack of hesitancy made Peter think so.
“Jason, we were just worried. B was returning to the cave and asking for our patrol status. If we hadn’t come up with an excuse, you know he’d be out here already.” Spoiler spoke. Using real names now? Peter gladly filed it away for later reference. He could already recognize their heartbeats, but the more information the better; he had a feeling he’d be dealing with a lot of overstimulation and an overwhelming amount of information in the next few days.
This was yet another shadowy figure Peter knew nothing about. “B” sounded like a boss, or maybe the team leader, like Mr. Stark or Mr. Rogers– Tony and Steve– where they answered to him in some matter of fashion. Peter was liable to miss things when he was in survival mode, and something about the dull roar of danger that lurked in his senses from the city itself made him believe he’d need the extra help names would provide.
“B knows he’s not welcome in my alley,” Hood spits out at the two, his body now almost sizzling with hot rage. Peter could feel it radiating off of him. The green in him bubbled up, almost like it was reacting to Hood’s own feelings. He felt angry that Hood was angry. It was uncomfortable, so Peter turned away, facing the stone gable of the roof and looked up at the underside of the overhung roof– the soffit, where only one or two spiders had spun a web. He could picture their figures in his mind as he listened, leaning his back against the base of the gargoyle he hid behind.
One of the spiders dropped down using a web and skittered over, Peter reaching out his fingers before he realized he did, watching it with curious eyes as the tiny thing crawled up his arm. It settled on his shoulder, where it sat, cocking its head back and forth as it seemed to want to listen to what Peter was listening to. He stifled a small chuckle and nodded his head to the three far below them.
“I’m playing spy right now, they’re my targets,” He whispers to the creature playfully, the memory of one of the few ‘ spy’ lessons he received from Miss Natasha immediately after the war passed through his mind. It… vibrates ? Back. Purrs? Can Spiders purr ? He was pretty sure they could. It reminded him of Ant-Man– Scott, from back in his universe. Peter wasn’t sure if he could name as many spiders and retain the memory of each individual one like that man could with his ants. It seemed like a lot, but then again Peter didn’t know much about the guy, just what he learned during the airport fight and the little bit he learned after the war. It had been his idea, afterall, to use the time-space-dimensional-type of travel to get people back.
“We’re not in your alley, if you haven’t noticed, Jay. B may not encroach on your territory but this square is not yours. It’s our patrol area, and he’s not above crossing the edges of an imaginary border if it means catching an out-of-their-mind Lazarus pit survivor. He just doesn’t do it because he doesn’t want to lose you, again.” The final part of Red Robin’s speech, said so lightly and sensitively Peter almost leaned in to hear it, seemed to fizzle out the spark of rage in Hood and turn it into a frustration of pure irritation, if the waves coming off of him were correct. His whole body was wound tight and tense.
The vigilante stepped forward into his space and pressed a comforting hand to Hood’s shoulder as he hung his head, breathing deeply. So, this “B” is definitely similar to Tony and Steve in terms of power he held over these vigilantes, and Peter’s sudden appearance in green goo was somehow connected to a way in which they almost lost Hood. Excellent information. The more knowledge he had the better he could avoid these so-called ‘Bats’. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be embroiled with the Bats of Gotham, it sounded ominous.
“He was talking to me when you got here. I don’t know if it was the surprise that set him off or something else, but he wasn’t afraid of you guys. ” Hood's fists clenched tightly at his sides, pushing past the discomfort of their previous conversation and the tenderness in favor of addressing the situation at hand. Red Robin clapped his shoulder once, and released it, leaning back with his arms crossed, one hand up on his chin pensively but doesn’t step out of the other’s space.
“So it could be the shock of our appearance? Hm… it kind of makes sense, we did jump down from the roof. Kid was jumpy to begin with too…” Red Robin trails off in thought for a moment, leaving the group silent for not even a second before–
“So what did he say, anything about the Lazarus pit?” Spoiler’s head shot up where she had been fiddling with something on her belt while the two men had been speaking.
“No. Nothing. I barely got him to talk about his supposed guardian before you arrived. Got a name though, Tony. He didn’t give a last name, but he did mention he was moved here for a job, and that they spent a lot of time in a lab together. I don’t know how much of it is true and real, but the only time the kid seemed actually present in our talk was when he brought up Tony.”
“Could be real, could be a real delusion or a false memory,” Red Robin sighed, running a hand through his hair, a hand resting on his hip. Peter bristled at the idea.
A delusion? He could see them believing that over a multiverse theory, depending on how advanced of a society this was. It looked average, a bit before Stark Industries took over the tech industry– but it was shrouded in deeper, darker colors, with the distinct underlying scent of chemicals in the air, and citizens that seemed far more used to violence than a sunny afternoon. It was night, he probably shouldn’t be out anyways , he amusedly told himself. Peter would have to do some research to see how progressed the world was in his new universe.
A false memory? Was that even possible? He had very real memories, some pleasant and some extremely distortedly painful ones, and despite the changes to his appearance, he was quite sure he was still, well… him! It’s not like he was literally being experimented on in the lab. He showed up afterwards, the lab showing signs of abandonment long before his awakening in the Lazarus pod. But they didn’t know that– couldn’t possibly know that .
Who would guess he was transported into a green goo pod by a wizard in another, maybe even parallel universe? Not anyone sane, that’s for sure. Yeah, he may be a bit psychotic but he swore most heroes were. Everyone had skeletons in their closet, afterall.
“The thing is, if he did just get revived in that pod, he wasn’t acting like it. Even when he was freaking out, he calmed himself down in an instant, I barely had to do anything… I’ve never seen someone with pit rage be able to calm himself down through anything but violence .” Hood muses, his voice thick with a weight Peter couldn’t place. A cool breeze made its way over the roof, rushing through the small tunnel-like structure that held the pillar embellishments and gargoyles Peter sprawled out behind and sent a shiver down his spine. That damn spider thermoregulation is failing him again, and his energy is waning. The tiny spider on his shoulder made its way down and skittered back to its nest.
“Could it be a new experimental strain? We hadn’t focused on the place because there was no trace of trafficking connected to the place, it was deemed inactive a year ago after B got Kobra’s funding pulled.” Red Robin is pacing, hand on his chin as he walks back and forth. Peter can practically feel the guy’s curiosity. If that was a thing he could feel? Maybe a new facet of his skills? Or maybe he just assumed it was the feeling of curiosity, with his body language. Although, normally he would have to look at someone to know their pattern.
Somehow Peter felt locked in on the three of them, each one of his senses focused on tracking their heartbeats, steps, and overall placement?
“We won’t know for sure until we get this sample back to the cave. I have a small sample of blood too, so if this Peter kid was trafficked or missing we’ll be able to find him.” Spoiler spoke this time, cocking her head and bringing out two vials, from what Peter could see from around the gargoyle, one green and one deep crimson. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, FUCK. They had his blood? He hadn’t even thought about that! Peter’s breathing began to get erratic, his hands coming up to mess in his hair, quickly sticking to the shadows, crouching down and leaning partially over the edge of the gargoyle, peering through the shadows onto the vigilantes.
Red Hood let out a big sigh, groaning under his breath and lifting his hand, motioning towards the vials. Spoiler promptly handed him the green one, in which he pulled it close and inspected it.
“Another fucking pit experiment,” Hood snarled out after a moment of observing the vial, shoving it back into Spoiler’s hands, “Oracle, send the location of the lab. I'm going in tonight. You two get back to the cave, B will want you off the streets.”
There’s a cacophony of protests from the two, but Peter assumes Red Hood must have been older than them, and it felt almost brotherly because after a few pointed looks and quick responses at attempts to stay out, eventually threats of telling B about a certain hacking of records had them giving up and demanding he send them any information he finds in the meantime. They all agree to be on the lookout for Peter, much to his chagrin, and he watched as Red Robin and Spoiler shot grappling hooks out and began swinging away from the square, and as they faded from view he slipped back up to his spot on the gargoyle’s back, the stone leeching warmth from his body.
Their hooks reminded him of his webs, and his wrists ached. Peter assumed it was due to the familiar metal bracelet’s absence from their normal position on his wrists. When he had first made them, actually taking them off had felt foreign, uncomfortable even. He felt naked.
Peter listened, after they were gone, to Red Hood who was watching their backs as they faded into the city’s dark skyline. Peter almost had a heart attack when the man’s helmet abruptly turns in his direction, and despite being behind the gargoyle, Peter finds himself tucking his body tighter than before behind the large stone decoration. After a moment of what Peter can feel was his eyes searching the roofline, he’s moving out to the alley they had entered from, his bike roaring to life and taking off the direction he had been guided from.
Peter let out a sigh of relief and relaxed, spreading his limbs lazily against the gargoyle, stretching before standing straight up. Tomorrow, he’d go to the library, use their bathroom to clean up, figure out where and when he was, and do some major research on how a teenager can make a living. He wished he looked his age, but maybe he was in that green liquid goo for a little longer than he’d like to think. After that, he’d have to come up with a plan of action. But tonight he had to find some shelter, a temporary home base close to his ‘resources’, aka the library.
Stretching and hopping lightly, attempting to build confidence in himself, then he stares up at the roof and jumps. Peter sticks with his hands, crawling up and around on all fours until he can look at the rooftops around him. The square wasn’t the best place to find an abandoned space, but when he looked around the library roof, he spotted the library roof access doors. How convenient. Peter normally would be against breaking and entering, but it was a cold night, and the rain that had ebbed when the three other vigilantes had been with him had come back to be sprinkling overhead, with even darker clouds on the horizon.
Unfortunately, the only thing he had on him was a book tucked beneath his shirt, the hoodie Red Hood had given him, and a few first aid items he nicked from the first aid station in the lab in his pockets. He peered into the window on the door, not seeing any cameras pointed directly at the door. There were no open windows to the small room with the staircase leading downwards. It was a stupid move, really, of course someone would notice. If there was a security system, it wasn’t a loud one, and there was no hum of electricity in the room as he just brute forced his way and broke the lock through a concentrated ‘push’ on the right part of the door.
It was warm inside, and Peter eased the door quietly shut behind him. It was quiet, and when he concentrated he listened and found one heartbeat, on the first floor. It made him nervous, so Peter decided to stick to this space and the space directly below him, wherever these stairs led.
Thankfully, the stairs led to a maintenance type space, dropping in like a weird balcony entrance, workbench dusty from lack of use, equipment stacked and orderly on shelves and walls. In the corner stood a linen closet of stained blankets and sheets that were left unusable, including retired towels and towels for the maintenance and janitorial staff. The entrance to the closet led to a hallway, but Peter simply rolled a janitorial cart in front of it, locking it shut from the inside. He trusted his overly sensitive senses to tell him if danger was near, and the one person on the bottom floor was not a threat as far as he could tell. They were likely a night watch, or maybe some librarian working really late.
Digging through the closet, Peter carefully picks out the least stained sheets and larger towels, and wraps them all in one of the bigger king sized sheets. He scours the rest of the room, searching for anything he can use. There’s some trash bags, a couple of wrapped soaps that were left on a cleaning cart. He holds it all easily, tucking the items in his pockets as he goes.
Eventually there’s nothing more to scavenge, and Peter is almost asleep on his feet. He was a ghost in his movements.
He organized his bedding together into a large layered blanket mess, wrapping himself in it. Peter tucks himself into the space between the door to the roof and the stairwell to the maintenance workroom, and thankfully, he finds just enough warmth to lull him to sleep in an instant. Danger was dull and distant, the buzz and hum of his senses calmed in the safety of a library building with someone on the first floor, someone he could sense was capable, their heartbeat steady and constant.
Downstairs, Barbara Gordon, otherwise known as the Oracle by her vigilante friends, sat in her office.
Notes:
i have mighty plans...
Chapter 5: Research
Summary:
Peter freaks out with a whole lotta memories coming up while navigating Gotham City. Some chillaxing in the library (not). Babs is totally gonna clock this grimey ? year old with a Red Hood hoodie on and green eyes and white streak in his hair.
Notes:
Notes: *kicks down your door singing Charles Bradley’s “Changes” ヾ(｡ꏿ﹏ꏿ)ﾉﾞ peters GOOOOOIN THROOOOUGHH CHAAAAaaaNGGEeeez
Some anchoring details I ironed out that are important to note:
- I think before I stated Dr. Strange, instead of just making the world forget Peter Parker is Spider-man, he sends him to an alternate universe so everyone will believe Spider-man died at the statue of liberty, where the crack in the multiverse was. Peter said goodbye then to Ned and MJ, swung to do his little round of goodbyes and prep I mentioned in the first chapter, and then was magicked away. Peter Parker never existed, but Spider-man did.
- All of the characters ages are as follows (i know i typed this up before but it may have changed because I want Peter to be at Gotham City HS with some of these bitches)
- - -> Jason is still 23, Dick is still 25, Cassandra Cain is 19, Tim Drake is 18, Stephanie Brown is 18, Duke Thomas is 16, Damian Wayne is 11. Bruce is in his early 40s. Alfred is… old??
- Essentially, Cass, Tim, Steph, Duke and Damian are a year younger than I projected in the first chapter.
-Tim Drake dropped out and came back to finish, Steph didn't fail on purpose, but an villain attack left her unable to finish the last year, so she went back with Tim to finish. It was Bruce's hope for them to at least continue/finish a high school experience.
- Because the timelines are whack and I have no clue about when the teen titans events took place in terms of batman, and the fact that the teen titans aren’t TEEN in my story, I’m using their Titans moniker. If I reference teen titans shit let me cook. They likely won't be in the story but they will be mentioned.Also, if you can't tell, I know nothing about hacking and computers. Like, I looked up terminology to figure out what to say, but who knows if it's correct, ya know what I mean?
5/7/25 Updated for clarity/adjustments
5/9/25 Updated for further adjustments
7/23/25 Updated for brevity
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The first thing that Peter thought of in the morning when he woke up was Karen. He missed his old AI; he was used to going without her after she was destroyed, but…
What time was it? Karen would have told him as soon as he was conscious .
The window on the door had him hopeful he would wake up at dawn, but was instead met with an overcast of clouds, rain slamming down on the roof and window alike, and dark skies thundering in the distance. He absently thinks of Thor, and if gods can traverse the multiverse, or parallel-verse? If that were the case, however, he likely wouldn’t assume he was his Peter. Or was Thor exempt from the spell, since he was a God? Peter hadn’t seen him since the war, after he left the planet. Maybe being off-planet could have somehow affected the spell? But it was a universe-level spell. The multiverse forgot him; everyone in his universe thought Spider-man died. There was no Peter for Thor to remember, only Spider-man, his compatriot in the galactic war. A vigilante– certainly not the child Peter felt he was at the moment.
In his half awake, half asleep haze, Peter imagines Karen waking him up, announcing the time and that he was going to be late for school, before even Aunt May would get to it, when he would have barely slept after patrol the night before. The AI had always been on top of things, even reminding him when assignments were due. She’d scold him for being out too long, threatening to contact Aunt May or Happy, sometimes Tony if it was especially bad. She would listen to him when his thoughts were all jumbled up like they are now. Karen may have been AI, but she would have been there for him .
Closing his eyes again, he thinks he would even settle for a watch at this point. Anything to have on his wrists, which were itching as he was almost restless with irritation. Sensory wise, they were hot and itching like he did when his body was healing itself— why were his wrists itching?
He yanks his body up abruptly, eyes snapping open as he takes a deep breath out of the cocoon he had fashioned himself rather creatively, if he does say so himself, and he does. He whips the sleeves of his hoodie in an instant to do a bodily check for injuries and looks down to see— what the actual hell.
The sudden discovery made him shoot to his feet— as weird as it was, he had small spinnerets on the inside of each of his wrists, just like Peter 2. As quickly as his expression brightened in scientific curiosity and wonder, it fell in disappointment. He liked his web shooters, the webs he painstakingly designed and then later expounded upon with Tony in their lab. They were a fundamental part of who he was as Spider-man, they had intrigued Tony enough to get him into his lab; they had saved his life time after time. The web-shooters also served as a bonding moment between Peter 3 and him, in which they were able to safely discuss their formulas in detail with someone who could actually understand, and they were able to muse over what kind of things Peter 3 could do with new web formulas when he returned to his universe.
Now Peter was out of his home universe, permanently.
Fresh green rage rushed forward and upward, forcing him to curl in on himself as fast as he had jumped up, arms wrapping around himself for a moment in shock. What would the other Peters have said, if they knew he’d had to abandon his own universe. The one he fought so ardently to win back.
He stumbled, and the thrumming of his heartbeat began overpowering his ears as he forced himself to take deliberate breaths and lean onto the handrail for the stairs. Peter knew he didn’t abandon New York, he didn’t abandon his neighborhood. He had tried so hard and so much, and had managed to fix all the mistakes he made after Tony died with his final act.
Only the fix was the complete annihilation of his existence in his own home universe. He was lucky, he supposed, he was able to live. Stephen had been reluctant to make everyone forget Peter, had even seemed concerned before the spell, before telling him he could send him somewhere else. Before telling him he had to send him somewhere else, lest he be a threat to their universe as a result of that damned spell.
Parker-luck had been something to joke about with his friends and family; it was often a bummer and it was a very real experience for him, but now, utterly alone in the unknown, the only thing Peter felt about it was anger. Peter swore he heard himself growl in frustration. He wanted to hit something, wanted to snap something in half, wanted to fucking kill — the sound of metal crunching and the idea of killing woke him out of the spiral he had begun to weave for himself.
The handrail he had been “leaning” on was crushed in his grip. It looked like a pretty thick, sturdy iron bar. Yikes. He did not like these green thoughts making his mind hazy. He’d have to make a better list of side effects he was experiencing when he gets something to write with, to see what could be connected to the green liquid– a Lazarus pod, Lazarus goo, Lazarus juice? Gross, well he did accidentally ingest it, but nevermind– and what could be attributed to universe changes, if the distinction was possible. His mouth tasted venomous again.
Peter resolved to focus on what his next move should be in Gotham instead of the new possible mutations he’s gone through as a result of a multitude of (possibly) connected factors and parallels, decidingly filing the scary green thoughts that had threatened to take over away for future Peter, who (hopefully) had time to deal with emotional crashouts.
Firstly, he needed an identity. Stephen said it would be a universe without Peter Benjamin Parker, without Spider-man entirely. He reasoned in the short time he had to prepare before the spell took hold, and now, that it could be a parallel universe, another branch delineating from his universe’s anchoring branch, in which his birth never occurred as a result of something fundamentally different about the world as a whole. Stephen said this would be the likeliest theory. People would still exist, or pieces of them, he mused, but they were not the same. He’ll call that theory P1, the simpler the better until he can get something to write with and in. The second theory was not as comforting, and was the one Stephen had been reluctant to bring up as one of the possible outcomes. Theory two was he was in a completely different universe, a completely different branch than the one he knew. It would mean anything and everything could be different. He could even be on a different planet. Peter calls this theory P2 for now. The third theory and final one that he could think of with his tired brain was one of misery, in which he was actually killed in the process of the spell and this was a type of time and universe related hell built to torture him for eternity for messing with the universe. He dubbed this one Theory Hell, for fun.
Slow down Peter.
No, the first thing he needs is information. He needs to know about the city he woke up under, he needs to know about Crime Alley, and Gotham. He needed to know what kind of tech he was working with, if the lab was just outdated or if it was standard; he needed to know what day, month and year it was.
He needed to figure out how old he was.
After he got basic information about his new universe he could make a plan of action for the day. Shelters, food banks and employment were his top priority. When Uncle Ben died, Aunt May really struggled. They ended up in a few shelters before they landed a shoebox apartment. When she moved them to the apartment Peter had come to know, May had been so proud. It was beautiful, the space hummed with comfort and safety, he had a bathroom and he had his own room…
He’d need identification for any shelters, which he couldn’t get without an actual identity first. He’d have to find an excuse to have lost all identification, have a place to receive a new ID, a bank account, money to pay for both of those things, and oh— a guardian . Peter is definitely at least 16, right? He told Red Hood “Tony” was his guardian, but after some sleep in a mildly warm and otherwise unoccupied, quiet space, he doesn’t know how to feel about that.
Mr. Stark was a great mentor; when he learned Peter created his own web shooters from the stuff he dumpster dove for and hack-engineered, he invited him to his own lab. After showing off a bit, in the usual casually impressive manner he normally did, they tinkered on a project together. It was Peter’s skills with picking up what Tony showed him about the mechanics of suits he was experimenting with that had him being given 24/7 access to the lab, with a corner carved out in the space for his own projects and a promise of more space when it was needed.
That was before Titan, after the Civil War, and just before he had been planning to return to his friendly neighborhood Spider-man gig. That was when life was simple, even though it hadn’t seemed to be. There were no intergalactic universe destroying threats back then– or at least none they knew about.
Those sometimes planned, sometimes literal drop in visits had meant everything to Peter. One of the unplanned times, he had climbed his way up the building to the lab’s break room balcony around 3am (because he had forgotten to grab his new experimental web fluid from the lab)— well he walked the ceiling and literally dropped down behind Tony in the dimly lit room with AI code running in front of him, extremely focused.
The shock had nearly knocked him over, and Peter had righted him quicker than he could act, much to the irritation of his mentor. They talked about future odd hour lab rules (One: No more dropping down on Tony) and the AI Peter saw. He had learned a lot that night. More than he ever knew about coding and AI at the time.
He had protected him at the Stark Expo and the Stark Foundation had paid for Uncle Ben’s funeral and headstone costs after the Battle of New York. He provided financial stability when the internship started and a lab to work; a safe space for learning. He built him a suit, he made him personal AIs, tools and gadgets for Spider-man he passed off as “silly things”.
So, Mr. Stark , Tony was a great mentor. But a guardian?
Tony was more of a protector. Guardian had a certain connotation that made Peter take pause. If he had to actually think of a guardian, besides May, it would be of Happy Hogan. Happy had been the ones entertaining his antics, answering his calls, tending to his questions, guiding him alongside May. He didn’t know if they had more of a serious relationship than Aunt May had let on, but he knew Happy was a rock to depend on, who was always there, especially after Tony was gone and whenever Peter needed him the most. He wouldn’t have minded if Happy had become his official step-uncle. He was like a father. Tony was… simply not like that. It took a while after his death for Peter to realize Tony wanted him to be better than he had been, that he had seen in the kid, something special, something more . They weren’t emotional like that, it was more… unspoken. At least before the blip.
When Tony saw Peter on the battlefield, after Dr. Strange had brought him back after the painful dusting had occurred, while he was still reeling with shock that it had apparently been five years, he had pulled his mentor back up onto his feet and Tony’s heartbeat had spiked as he seemed to be in shock at seeing him there, rambling on, but then he had pulled Peter into a hug and everything in the world, the battlefield, the blood, the terror and the adrenaline pumping through his body, everything went quiet just for a moment. And Peter had felt safe . And then Tony was gone, and he was once again staring into the lifeless eyes of another dead mentor.
Peter mindlessly scratches at the slightly raised and irritated spinnerets for a moment, sitting with those thoughts before turning towards his makeshift bed. After he was sure there was no trace of him except for the broken lock, crushed handrail, and raised dust, the space looking almost identical to how it looked the previous night, he sat on the top steps and listened.
Past the rain, the thunder, and the clouds roaring, he could hear the heartbeats of only a few bodies below him in the library. It made sense, for the weather, he supposed. The same heartbeat from last night was there, on the lobby floor, but there were smatterings of people in different areas, mulling around and sitting still.
In New York, the libraries were rarely as empty as the Gotham Central Public Library was when Peter finally found a (no-security-cameras-in-sight) way off the roof, even on days with bad weather. He made his way through a neighboring building’s alley, up the large steps leading to the entrance and into the large doorway of the library, where he could see only a red-head librarian he had heard the heartbeat of last night sitting at the front desk and a child and mother paired at the children's book section sitting area to the left of the desk, the mother reading a picture book quietly to the young boy.
It made the green in him itch until it was forced to swell with grief instead.
There was a dull humming of electricity concentrated in the closed office behind said librarian, buzzing out in different directions, his spidey-senses setting him off when he made eye contact with the woman. She smiles at him, her ginger hair neatly framing her face with the thin rimmed glasses that sat there. She looked nice, her cherry red hair and his danger sense had her reminding him of Ms. Romanoff, but from how loud his spider senses were from just the city alone, it was hard to tell if she was the source of the intensifying prickling of his Peter-tingle exactly or if something around her was. His senses told him she was safe to be around, that she wasn’t a threat (at least not to him, at this moment), so he quietly approached her.
Barbara “Babs” Gordon was running on very few hours of sleep after spending most of her night aiding the Bats, staying especially late to be on comm with Red Hood and talk through the investigation for the lab with the radiation spike and the new Lazarus Pit situation, when Peter walked in through the doors. She hadn’t noticed the teenager until he got well within ten feet of the desk, which shocked the well-trained woman, but she hid it well as she resolved to leave the teenaged stranger alone after doing her job.
“Hi, can I help you?” She spoke, disrupting the quiet of the lobby.
“Uh, yes ma'am, do you have computers here?” He asked, walking up to the desk as deliberately as possible. Getting closer, he sees the woman is sitting in a wheelchair.
“Yes we do, but please kid, call me Babs. They’re upstairs to the right, log-in information is taped to each computer, and there’s a time limit of 3 hours. If you need any assistance, or have any questions, just let me know!” She smiles, and Peter gets the sense that she’s surveilling him as skillfully as Ms. Romanoff would surveil her targets. Babs. Just like how Ms. Romanoff– Natasha , would scold him for calling her Ms. Romanoff and not Natasha. Before the blip, and the subsequent, he had trained with her briefly when Tony had asked for all of the Avengers to help him with self-defense. Tony rarely went to the Avengers team itself for anything, so it was a request that was not ignored, regardless of tensions after the civil war.
Her eyes scan over and across the chest of the hoodie he had gotten from Red Hood, flickering in recognition as she looked him down and then back up where they seemed to be stuck on Peter’s hair, her eyes lingering there and the side of his neck still tinged with green residue.
Peter brought a hand up to cover his neck, playing it off as if he was just a nervous teen when he responded.
“Oh, thanks Ms. Babs, I’m Peter. It’s nice to meet you. I’ll make sure to do that if I have any questions!” He beamed, rubbing at the back of his neck. He was not a kid, and that nickname really bothered him after all he’s been through. The bathroom should be the first stop before the computers.
Peter feels her eyes follow him to the second floor, until he’s out of sight. That wasn’t weird, at all… it totally didn’t make Peter nervous, at all… Her voice was mildly familiar, which meant it was either a fluke or someone he had come into contact with last night, but Peter couldn’t place it quite yet. Barbara “Babs” Gordon was shocked to see the Peter that Red Hood, Spoiler, and Red Robin had described in her library, acting normal (considering their suspicions) and incredibly polite. He was grimy, had green tinged liquid dried on his skin, but the white streak in his hair and green ring in his eyes gave it away as clear as day. As soon as he was out of sight, Babs turned her attention to her computer, furiously notifying Red Hood that Peter was there and that he seemed to have slept the night not at home, as he had told the vigilante he would be.
Peter takes a left instead of a right, following the signs on the walls to the back corner where he finds an alcove with a large set of cushioned benches, two bathroom entrances and a single unisex family stall. Reminding himself the family stall would have the most privacy, he entered quickly and locked the door behind him, taking a deep inhale and exhale before turning to the… extremely clean bathroom stall? It was dark, the ceiling light flickering for a moment before warming up the space in a white-yellow light, but it wasn’t dreary. There was a lightly toned, childish but almost gothic wallpaper, with animal silhouettes painted dancing around the upper wall in a border. The bathroom itself had many handrails and a few kid-friendly stools for them to reach places, and was dressed in dark woods and sterile metals. The large mirror above the wall-sink’s reflection almost shocked him when he made eye contact with himself.
To say Peter looked rough would be an understatement. He couldn’t believe he was in public like this and barely got a head turn when he had made his way through the square. His curls were sticking up every which way yet simultaneously crumpled, as if he had been soaking in salt water for months. That was likely the green liquid goo he had drowned awake in. His eyes were sunken just a little too much to be his normal, healthy self , and they were their normal warm brown— except there was an almost fluorescent green shine to them. They were more subdued in the light— or rather in the bright warm light of the bathroom, but Peter could see it nonetheless. He made the hypothesis that it was related to the green haze that was threatening to overtake him since he crawled his way out of that lab and immediately decided now was not the time to focus on that.
There was a layer of grime all over his face and skin, and some of it washed out in the rain of the night, but most remained clinging to the corners of his skin and joints, cracking and itching. It was time for him to clean himself up, he couldn’t pass as a well-adjusted Gothamite(?) if he looked homeless. He took one of the odd soap bars he had found and used it to wash every part of him visible, even pushing up his sleeves so he could clean up his forearms. The cold water felt especially nice on his spinnerets, and he was able to poke them without the itching after a moment under the stream. The itching was likely a result of the new mutation healing and settling into his body. He itched whenever his body knitted itself back together, when bruises darked quicker, when he would have to rebreak incorrectly healed bones or relocate dislocated joints, when he was trapped under a building — whenever it itched, he healed.
After struggling with some wet paper towels, Peter elects to simply sticking his head under the faucet, utilizing the tiny sliver of the soap bar left to wash the green out and drying it under the air dryer— supposed poop particles be damned. His curls puffed up under the heat.
For a moment he was worried he’d be kicked out for using the bathroom like a shower, but a quick check of the building saw no increase of people, nor any footsteps or heartbeats coming close to the bathroom he locked himself in. In fact, there were no heartbeats on the floor besides the four in the direction of the computers.
In this moment of lonely sanctity, he takes a true look at himself. He looked how he remembers he did at fifteen– which was not too long ago, and yet it felt like a lifetime. His hair is the same curly brown short mess, but there was now a bright silver curl that looped down into the hair meeting his forehead, smack dab in the center. His eyes were just as they had been when he entered the bathroom. They looked tired, despite his youthful appearance, and Peter could see the weight of his mistakes; he could see the decisions he made that cost him his life as he knew it. His sunken cheeks were mildly concerning, and Peter felt a hollow ache in his belly and realized he must be incredibly hungry, but was pointedly ignoring it. He had no time to be hungry right now.
He quietly mulls over the fact that it was a lifetime ago when he had been fifteen. When he was fifteen, he had just met Tony, had barely even begun the Stark Internship, and had just gotten a tech suit to use instead of his own, homemade Spider-sweatsuit. When he was fifteen, he fought the Avengers alongside other Avengers in a civil war. He caught the Winter Soldier’s metal arm when he was fifteen. When he was fifteen, he was asked and turned down becoming an avenger. When he was fifteen, the civil war and Vulture with Chitauri technology were his biggest concerns. He held together a ferry with strength and his own webs when he was fifteen. A building purposefully collapsed on him when he was fifteen. He could handle green. He could handle Gotham.
He had ‘died’ twice now, what a record, but this time there were no loved ones for his own bad guys to threaten, no support system, and no suit. But it was never about the suit. He was just Peter here, so far, but Peter knew he wouldn’t be “just Peter” for long. He felt it in the air of Gotham, in the vigilantes he had run into the night before, in the people sleeping and the people stalking. Spider-man’s work wasn’t going to be limited to New York. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t in Peter to sit back and not be his vigilante counterpart. With great power comes great responsibility.
Feeling at the very least, a little refreshed, with one item officially marked off of his list of things to do that day, he exited the bathroom, sticking his hands in his hoodie pocket as he walked through the aisles of books back to where he knew the computers were.
It was abysmal. Peter knew libraries in general tended to have outdated tech, since they were generally underfunded, but this library was beautiful and grand, and obviously well-funded, if the computer at the front desk, the architecture, furnishings, and impressively large catalogue of a three story library was anything to go off of, but everything he saw was pre-Stark tech.
It was similar to the tech he built using dumpster parts and the early to mid 2000s era of technology, rather than anything he had recently been using with Ned. When the big back thick computer and tower warmed up finally and he could open internet explorer , Peter found he typed too fast for the machine to catch up, but this, he mused, was of no consequence to him.
If this was the tech in this world, even including the brand new looking tech at the front desk, it would not be difficult for Peter to hack into the library servers in the first place. Hell, if the government’s tech was this outdated (he’d bet their servers were just as outdated if not more so) then it’d be considerably easy to fake an identity.
Staring down at the computer in the corner, one who’s screen faced a wall with the chair facing both the stairwell and the elevators to his left, he uses the generic log in first. It’d be weird if he asked for the computers and then never logged on— he was one of five in the section, the other four being a couple whispering and giggling to each other on a computer in the row ahead of Peter, and the other two being single studiers, with big textbooks and notebooks and pens surrounding them, both in the first and farthest row from him. He ignored them.
Once he clicks around the desktop, he finds out it’s half past 1 o’clock on August 2st, 2013. His birthday was 8 days away. Fuck. By his legal birthday, he’d be turning 13, not 16. He did not look 12. He did look 16. He’d just have to adjust and memorize 1997 as his birth year. At least he was close to his original age. What a way to spend his birthday, alone, lost and left in a universe not his own.
Fuck, it was, in fact, internet explorer. Of course . It loaded much faster than Peter remembers it being when he was younger, but he could not remember the last time he used internet explorer, so maybe he was conflating loading time with memes about it from his old universe. Maybe not.
Peter had no idea what to search for, so he just no-brained it and typed in “Lost teenager, no parents”. Damn, this was brutal, why was Peter so dumb. At the results loading, Peter ignored the weird amount of quora links popping up and searched “Gotham City” instead. He found a city website, the police department, fire department, and a whole lot of places named after a Wayne family. He goes down a rabbit hole, and eventually he finds himself reading the city’s ordinances and local laws, skimming the document line by line until he finds what he specifically needed to know. When he finds it he sighs heavily.
According to this universe’s New Jersey truancy laws, not only was he required to have a guardian (or be emancipated with a support) but he was required to be in school during weekdays unless given express permission or extenuating circumstances, lest he be picked up by the cops and handed to CPS.
On the bright side, it was Friday, so he had the weekend, and in knowing this he now knew to say he just moved to the city. The honest downside was that Peter was tired of attending high school. He did it before the blip, after the blip, and eventually just got his GED with everything going on. He had planned on MIT, but obviously that was down the drain, he didn’t even know if there was an MIT in this universe, and he couldn’t exactly just apply to any college here without records of any kind at 16 years old .
Peter wasn’t sure how his spineretts worked, if they did at all, but Peter 2 had told them he had to eat even more to be able to use them properly. If his body created webs, then he assumed the same would be necessary, and seeing as he was currently identity-less, homeless, and completely uneducated as to how the city works, he wouldn’t be getting a meal enough to satisfy his appetite anytime soon. A highly funded school with a chemistry lab like Midtown would give him access to materials, and to web-fluid ingredients, if he could get in. Hopefully the school would have scholarship programs. Rebuilding web-shooters is still a priority, and his own webs can be back-up, when he figures them out; he would feel a whole lot safer if he had access to his webs in general, and his suit– but that was a thought for later.
Also according to the internet, there was no such thing as the Battle of New York, no Avengers initiative, no Avengers civil war, no Ultron scare, no blip, no Thanos, no intergalactic war on earthen soil, nothing. Not even a Tony Stark or a Captain America, and definitely no Wakanda. Although, Peter wonders if Wakanda did exist, just in hiding as it had been doing in his world for centuries. After a moment of wandering thoughts, Peter swallows heavily and searches for Spider-man. He finds nothing. He types in ‘superhero’. The Justice League was the first result, which was made up of multiple heroes, including aliens, like the Kryptonian known as Superman. There was him, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Aquaman, The Green Lantern, Green Arrow (why was everyone green? Peter had begun to dislike the color lately…), and Black Canary. But none of them come to Gotham. None of them, except one.
Batman was the main hero of Gotham, was widely considered a cryptid, and had a strict “no-meta” rule that was currently being debated by Reddit users, because apparently Reddit existed here still (Twitter, Instagram and Youtube did as well. Peter almost felt the need to cry out in joy, in recognition ). The “no-meta” rule was debated because there was now apparently a daytime vigilante with Batman’s logo plastered on his chest by the name of Signal, who was, in fact, meta. Meta was another name for mutants, but in this world there was no such thing.
People were born with a meta-gene, kind of like mutants on his own Earth, and Peter did not have such a gene, which made him a nonmutant, but here, he was less sure. He had done testing on himself back with Tony when the internship first started because he had been curious, but the results had shocked him, but not before his mentor saw the results, then eventually the entire Avengers team when they found out his identity– before he screwed up too many times .
His blood was radioactive and his DNA sequence looked like someone took a shredder to it and spliced it with thousands of spiders’ DNA, but there was no single genome telling him he was a mutant— meta. He, after all, wasn’t born Spider-man, but was bitten and evolved into the identity as a result of the bite. As he read through the scientific research of the Meta-gene, he was presently reminded that Spoiler and Red Robin, and therefore Red Hood, had some of said radioactive blood. The thought gave him a high amount of anxiety.
Peter didn’t know a lot about this universe so far, and was quite literally actively learning, as he scrolled through the articles he had casually hacked to bypass pay-walls to read, but he was thankful that at least there wouldn’t be any DNA they could match him to. He didn’t exist in whatever theory universe he now resided in, and he wouldn’t have existed already, so it stands to reason there would be no one to compare his DNA to. Unless there’s some freak loophole where his parents or uncle and aunt were alive in this reality, just different. That would be confusing, to see a child that genetically belonged to a coupling that never existed in the first place.
If he was really lucky, they wouldn’t know what to look for, and would simply see a compromised DNA swatch. Peter normally didn’t feel lucky, hence his coined term of “Parker-luck”, but right now he did—because who would assume a human to be part spider and test for more than one organism’s DNA? It sounded like, from their conversation, they were assuming he was trafficked and experimented on, not necessarily a meta. The less these vigilantes knew about Peter, the better. He already fucked up one universe, he shouldn’t mess with with this one more than he already has.
Twitter also existed, and most mentions of the Bat vigilantes were blurry and grainy photos and fancams. It wasn’t all that different from the memes of 2013 where he came from. In fact, it reminded him of the times when Ned would send him fancams of Ironman and then the Avengers after the battle of New York, and they would do fake fighting brackets and debate who would win using fan wikis and headcanons of their own. They’d spend hours talking, and when Peter actually began working with them, Ned was the one he could actually talk about it to. The only one who understood him, on a fundamental level, besides May, besides MJ. But, they all understood him better than he could understand himself.
That green haze blinked out of his eyes as he attempted to focus on the words he hadn’t realized he had stopped reading, his hands flying to his hair as Peter let out a shaky breath and stretched in his chair. Barely forty minutes had passed since he began his research, and he was already feeling pretty good about his basic knowledge. Pop culture wise, he may be behind, but US history was majorly the same, except for Captain America being replaced by a Wonder Woman, who was actually an Amazon, which would have shocked Peter more had he not fought amongst Greek Gods against the Chitauri and Thanos, from Titan. Had he not been to space and fought the Titan face-to-face. Had he not been snapped out of existence for five years and been brought back to an intergalactic war.
Good thing Peter was used to myths becoming real.
WW2 had ended earlier than it had in his world because of Wonder Woman, and Peter distinctly noted the US took in far fewer Nazi scientists that had been responsible for terrorizing the world with their inhumane experiments than his universe’s US had, and that there was a lot of funky history about New Jersey— but those could easily be chalked up to him being a ‘transplant’ from New York. Thankfully, it appeared the universe had filled in gaps he may have expected with scientific research, with other scientists stepping up and developing projects almost identical to his own universe’s. He instead focused on what rogues patrolled which areas, finding incredibly basic and bare minimum postings about where each Bat could be seen working somewhat regularly.
In Gotham, there was Batman and his sidekick Robin, who was always a child (many theories surround that one, including one that inferred Robin was immortal, a clone, or an unaging and shape shifting alien. His personal favorite that he believed was there were multiple robins that take up the mantle as they age, because duh ).
Then there was Red Robin (it was literally in the name), Signal, Spoiler, Batgirl, and Red Hood, who many debated if he was even part of the Bats, since he was well known as a crime lord who hated Batman. Well, he knows who “B” was now, at the very least. The neighboring city, Metropolis (seriously, what’s with the terrible names?) was home to Superman, the alien hero from Kryptonian and a few others. Bludhaven was home to Nightwing, another Batman counterpart who was also sighted often in Gotham. It seemed all vigilante justice in Gotham was exclusively dolled by the Bats, and Peter wasn’t one.
However, he did note there was a group called the Titans, (Peter tried not to shudder at the name) with known members being Raven, a powerful sorceress, and Cyborg, who was, well as expected, man and robot, a cyborg. Then, Starfire, who is a tall and beautiful orange skinned woman with brilliant red hair from a planet called Tamaran who could fly and shoot different green beams (Peter wasn’t quite sure what they were) from her hands and eyes. She had quite the fanbase on Twitter and Instagram. Then there was Beast Boy, who was green like Professor Hulk, but seemingly shared nothing else in common with the doctor, and was aptly named because he was often seen shifting into different animals at will. He had an instagram that was quite popular and outspoken about being vegetarian.
It’s not like he could be Spider-man right away, but technically, when he did pick up his mantle again, he wouldn’t be breaking the “no-metas” rule Batman had, because he really wasn’t metahuman. Somehow Peter has a feeling Batman still wouldn’t like him crawling around. He wonders if he has a cave with bats in it. A batcave.
Anyways, Peter was sure he would be fine in terms of US history, since it was his second worst subject anyways, but in his attempts to learn more about Gotham he found a few things to be, well, more complex.
First, he discovered that Gotham City had the highest crime rate in the country, and was home to the most vicious and downright evil rogues he had ever read about. Most were locked up in Arkham Asylum, which had apparently regular breakouts for a place supposedly housing Gotham’s most dangerous. Peter didn’t enjoy the concept of RAFT, he understood it, but it felt way more secure and a much smarter option compared to a janky asylum.
Joker was a big name, he apparently poisoned the water supplies regularly with a more diluted version of something called Joker Venom, which was said to cause victims to be forced to smile and laugh uncontrollably. In its full form, in the few instances he found it used in larger quantities, it caused immediate death, the corpses left with a sick, twisted and inhuman rictus grin. It seemed he was cruel and violent for the sake of being cruel and violent, and found joy in it; Joker was currently locked up in Arkham, most recently by Batman himself. According to newspapers and all the information he could find online, Joker was Batman’s top villain.
Peter thought it was kind of anticlimactic, for this city’s big bad to be a clown with shitty makeup and expert chemistry knowledge. Although the idea of Joker venom did send a shudder down his spine, it took most drugs to be in a concentrated form or an extremely, lethally high dose to take any effect, so even if the water was poisoned, the amount of dilution would likely cause it to pass through his system much faster than it would a normal human, with far less affect. More of Peter’s attention was drawn to the twistingly familiar sinister smile that lived unnaturally wide on the clown’s face. It reminded him of the Green Goblin—
He could feel hands around his throat, Norman– no, Goblin choking him, spewing venom with his words. He can see him throwing the bomb as he escapes and can feel his body moving to block the explosion— to get to May. He got her, she was okay, she was standing… and then she wasn’t.
“I just have to– to catch my breath,” May had all but whispered out, and Peter could see it, the haziness that flashed over a person’s eyes just before it clears entirely, and they’re dead. He could see the haze, and then the clarity as he cried out for her to be okay, and instead was met with cold, lifeless eyes where his once head-strong and lively Aunt’s eyes had been. Those damned lifeless eyes again. But this couldn’t happen— not now, not with his May. Please let this not be real.
Peter took deep, quiet yet gasping breaths as he tried to calm down, his head in his hands to block out the lights above him, to block out the green. It was real; Aunt May was gone, dead because he dared to believe he could have it all.
Not now, Peter.
There was still information to find, documents to forge.
Other than the Joker, there was also Two-Face and the Penguin, both big time criminals with ties to organized crime. Peter assumes they operate not too differently from how the mob operated from how they were described in varied sources. Penguin seemed to be operating a series of nightclubs, restaurants, and bars that were legal on the surface, but he knew they were just as likely a money-laundering front. Clayface sounded similar to Sandman, at least in the way his transformations seemed to take place, and Killer Croc almost reminded him of the Lizard, in which Peter 3 had described his experience with fighting and curing Dr. Curt Connors.
Letting out a last shaky breath, he peers around the computer to see the floor had cleared in the time he was distracted. There were a few more heartbeats downstairs, in the children’s section and Babs remained at the lobby desk, her heartbeat fast but not concerningly so. Peter returns to his searches.
He finds more information on rogues named Bane, Mad Hatter, the Riddler, and Scarecrow, and even discovered some big name rogues, such as Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy, who actually worked with the “Bats” in some instances.
Bane seemed to just be enhanced, kind of like Peter, but it also seemed like he wasn’t considered Meta— maybe he was on really strong steroids ? Mad Hatter, a stupid concept for a villainous identity, in Peter’s opinion, was considered retired and permanently locked away in Arkham Asylum after his most recent escape and subsequent capture by Batman, where it had been denoted that the ‘mind-controlling tech’ he created finally backfired on him. Peter wasn’t too shocked, especially after seeing what he looked like— the Lucky Charms brand leprechaun called, he wants his bit back.
The Riddler was a popular rogue of Batman’s, albeit less physical than the others. He mainly themed his crimes around riddles, puzzles and games, and was overall a seemingly scary but less-feared criminal around Gotham than the others. The rogues seemed no more scary or intimidating than his own villains, in fact, Peter was pretty sure he would be able to handle any one of them on a bad day. Maybe even two or three of them, depending on his wear-and-tear when the fight starts. Scarecrow, however, worried him.
Scarecrow was a villain that had worked alongside the Joker in poisoning the waterways on occasion, but was credited as doing it more often and more effectively with his own creation of ‘fear-toxin’. He apparently created this ‘fear-toxin’ to be a potent and dangerous hallucinogenic that, if inhaled or injected into the bloodstream, amplifies a victim’s greatest fear and shows them it. Cases of intense exposure had resulted in some older victims having instantaneous heart attacks, and in the overall, had exposed citizens to a mostly permanent psychosis of chronic fear. People were left incapacitated, mentally unwell and unfit for society; some were left violent and (obviously) fearful. First hand accounts of the experience, including a very pixelated video (not the thing Peter should be focused on, but come on , is this really what the internet used to look like? He swore it wasn’t this bad before Stark tech!) showed a fear-toxin bombing in the Diamond District showed it to be a very real and very major concern for Peter, since he didn’t know how he’d react if he hallucinated one of his own rogues and accidentally killed someone in the process, someone innocent.
The green already threatened to overwhelm his control, and with the very recent increase in abilities and skills, and changes to his body, there was no question. Fear can make anyone do some crazy things. The effects of hallucinogens mixing with his abilities, current psyche, and current possible mutations were not something Peter was eager to find out.
Secondly, according to all of the sources he could find, criminals and crimes in both small and large scales were normal in Gotham, and he found many resources for surviving different rogue attacks, including a standardized pamphlet from the GCPD that went over each villain’s modus operandi and how to stay safe, which alarms in the city meant what, and when curfews were. Apparently, gas masks were expected to be kept on hand, ready to be used at any time, and it was standard for one person to keep enough Joker-Venom style Epi-pens for a whole family. He skipped over the rogues who were listed as having worked with Batman himself, since it seemed to Peter from every single thing he read about Gotham, that he was the one to trust when it came to villains.
Weird.
Thirdly, the city had an odd obsession and protectiveness over their resident billionaire, Bruce ‘Brucie’ Wayne, who was well known for being a playboy who enjoyed spending his money on the city, adopting a gaggle of orphans dubbed “the Wayne Children”, and his overall airheaded ‘himbo’ energy. He was the biggest name, and had various charities littered throughout the city that offered a variety of comprehensive services. Clinics, shelters, hospitals, the college, the schools, GCPD, everyone got money from the Waynes. It was kind of impressive— the Stark Foundation hadn’t even had a finger in all the pies, but the Waynes did. One of the schools funded by Bruce Wayne was Gotham City High School, which boasted a full ride scholarship, including books and uniform, with a weekly stipend of $400 for anyone who received it. Ignoring all other information on the Waynes and the school, his eyes zero in on the scholarship and Peter clicks the link to apply.
Thankfully, there was a scholarship application that was separate from the standard, and allowed a full waiver of fees regardless of admission. All that was required to take the entrance exam, and thus the exam for the scholarship, was his first and last name, guardian name, address, email, and an optional phone number. Peter memorizes the school name for when he has an identity to actually use. He clicks back on the web page to do more general research.
There were edits of ‘Brucie’ everywhere at different Charity Galas, dinners, on the street, with his kids, really any time he was in public, there were fancams being made. When Peter watched uncut clips, he noticed the certain lithe and trained way Bruce seemed to move, even when appearing to be clumsy and empty-headed. His kids, the Wayne children, all moved similarly, despite different ‘flaws’ coming up.
Being around Tony for his teen years, and being a high school intern directly in contact with the Tony Stark, Peter had to deal with a lot of press when he first started. Tony had managed to keep paparazzi off his back for years, and even had him receive media training, keeping him out of the spotlight as much as he could. But, Peter had attended a few (required) galas with him, and had picked up on the way Tony seemed to play the part of genius billionaire, playboy philanthropist, sometimes acting drunk despite having been sober for a few years at that point in time.
The way ‘Brucie’ and his children moved was how the heroes of his universe moved when they were trying to be normal. It was deliberate, with active choices being made to drop a glass here, lean over there, trip over this extremely obvious wire where the cameras can see.
After Tony died and later when Beck revealed his identity to the world, he dealt with a lot of press. It wore him down, but he could handle it. Peter could handle J Jonah Jameson, he could handle stalkers and paparazzi, he could handle a lot. What he couldn’t handle was his loved ones being hurt and their good names being dragged through the mud with him. During the process of the trial, he learned a lot about how to hide the different mannerisms and emotions from his face and body language through his lawyer, Matt. Who, ironically enough, was blind and couldn’t see his expressions. But he was Daredevil, so he could read them, and to Peter, he was simply a really good lawyer. Peter could have seen himself working with Matt if he had been able to stay; he could have seen himself training with him to sharpen his senses, to focus on trusting his body. Matt had done so much for him as Matt, he could only imagine how much he would have learned from Daredevil.
All that is to say, the Waynes were highly suspicious, but looking at their biographies on both fan sites, social media, and public statements, Peter couldn’t place what exactly felt off. If he really wanted to figure them out, he’d have to meet them, and somehow he knows that wasn’t a good idea. If they were so outwardly public, Peter didn’t want anything to do with them. He’s dealt with enough media outlets, he’s not raring for more.
Tapping a finger to his lips, the opposite arm crossed over his body as he leans back in his chair, Peter pauses a moment to think. He had an hour left on his computer, unless he hacked into it— which would be easy enough with the tech he was up against.
He’d need an ID, a social security card, birth certificate, hospital records, school records, bank account, and some mild social media presence to have a believable identity to anyone who looked just below the surface. He looked up what official documents were required to apply to school, peeking at what each one was supposed to look like and then Peter logged out of his computer and stretched casually, getting up and wandering around until he found the nonfiction science section on the third floor. He pulls out a random biochemistry textbook that he’d read before and picks it up, swiping a loose pencil from an empty desk and an almost full notebook from the trash on the way down. These would serve as an alibi , Peter thinks, as he sets it up in front of his computer, notebook open to an empty page. Then, he begins.
Hacking from the log-in page was pretty easy. As he bypasses the shockingly good security for a library computer, he finds himself thinking of Ned again. He’d be patting him on the back right now with a smug smile, telling him he was almost as good as his guy-in-the-chair. From that jumping off point, he wrote his own code to run in the background that would notify him of any back-hackers, curious Carls, and government watchdogs that could pop up, and began the long process of creating an identity.
First was easy— an email. He needed a place to save all his work, to prove he was a human. Second was a birth certificate for Peter Benjamin Parker. That was the most painful for him, if he was being honest. In creating it, he had to simultaneously create birth and death records for his parents and Aunt May and Uncle Ben. He kept everything the same, only changing the years to match up with their ages and deaths. It was then Peter realized how monumental of a task this was going to be. He had to create their lives, not just their deaths. How suspicious would it be if he had a real identity but all of his dead relatives were as fake as can be? Too suspicious . One of Natasha’s rules to survival as a superhero was to never cause more suspicion than he can help. Small discrepancies were normal, and no one had perfection in their records, but finding a believable balance could mean all the difference.
Thankfully quick with his fingers, Peter created a code that compiled a list of women with no living relatives who had recently died and was in the same tax bracket, and used their tax records as a copy product, only adjusting names and important numbers. With the records of his family being in a completely different state than that of the one he copied, he doubted the tax board would notice they were exact to the decimal of another state’s resident’s taxes. He then added social security numbers to them, falsified bank records, including account closures upon death, and even gave Aunt May her education records. He marked his parents as dying from the plane crash that killed them, Uncle Ben as being shot in a mugging through falsified NYPD reports, and Aunt May…
Tears welled in his eyes as he got to Aunt May’s death records. It was too soon , but Peter didn’t have a choice. The green began swirling behind his eyes— all he could do was mark her death as one of a murder, with the case marked solved, and leave it be. Glassy eyed, he runs a hand through his hair and a deep sigh releases from him. He couldn’t let the green overtake him now, he didn’t have time to panic. He had to get these documents made and get out before anyone notices the ‘hole’ he had punched through the computer’s firewall.
Once his family’s records were finalized, Peter realized he had no way of making a brand new ID without a standardized picture of himself. Instead, he moves on to hospital records, writing up his birth records the best he could, slipping his patient IDs and records into the cluttered state records of New York with ease. One thing about this universe was he wouldn’t have to pretend to be the weak, nerdy and unathletic Peter Parker he normally played anymore. New hospital records means no records of his asthma, thick prescription glasses, or deadly allergies that all suddenly went away. Instead, he marked allergies as peppermint, citrus, cayenne pepper, and chestnuts— none were extremely deadly to him, but since he became Spider-man those were the biggest irritants. That, and, well, he couldn’t exactly write he was allergic to ethyl chloride. What person would even figure that allergy out?! Not the normal, law-abiding Peter Parker, that’s for sure.
Next Peter got to work on Midtown’s records. Thankfully it appeared the school changed very little across universes, and he was able to use almost all of the memories in his head about the courses he took to falsify and backdate his own school record almost perfectly. He also marked himself as a “home-bound” student, something that technically wasn’t a thing where he came from, but as far as he could tell in this universe implied he wasn’t able to attend courses regularly so he had a separate tutor and did coursework at home for credit. So, if anyone were to do some digging and contact the school or students themselves, they would have an answer for why no one remembered him. He then emailed himself a saved pdf of the official transcript, just in case he needed that for admissions later on. From there he decided to move on to more fun things, such as hacking social media to backdate his accounts and posts. Peter figured if anyone asked, he could explain he was just sheltered, and didn’t have much of a presence because it wasn’t his priority. But still, it was better to have a few small accounts rather than none, especially as a teenager. He found some older memes for Wonder Woman on twitter fan accounts, backdating their “repost” dates to soon after the originals were posted. He figures if was going to have a favorite hero here, he’d probably pick her for now, since she was at least on level with Thor and wasn’t located in Gotham. Plus, her costume was cool and she had a lasso that made people tell the truth— extra doubly cool. He didn’t have any selfies, or anything that showed him as a human-being, but not everyone posted those, so he could bluff about that. He decided one account was enough after he went down a rabbit hole of content about Wonder Woman, and he realized twenty minutes had passed. In finishing his hack-escapade (hackapade? No that was stupid, even Ned would agree) Peter decides to do some last minute action and hacks into the postal service. With a little finagling, he finds himself a PO Box that was unoccupied and assigns himself to it, filling in information quickly so they would have time to set up the box before the weekend. It was easy to slip his backdated application in, the system was jumbled with bureaucratic red tape that made it hard for anyone to tell what was in the system in the first place, let alone when a missent box request was received.
Not even twenty minutes later, as he had just finished filing a police report for his missing social security card and documents, he received an email from a postal employee at the office his box was located, notifying him the box was ready for keys to be picked up. He needed a legal ID or equivalent and to pay the $15 fee, so he fired back a quick response, letting the office know he will be coming in as soon as GCPD and Gotham City government reissue new prints of his stolen identification.
Seconds later, an automated response from the GCPD comes, notifying him that he would be receiving contact from the city about new documents, and they’ve received his report. In the automated response, he received a printable document that provided proof of his report, which he tacked onto the email to the post office, and finally had proof of his identity in the meantime. Peter sighs. Those were the fastest reply he’d ever gotten from any government entities, but in looking at the GCPD’s website, he suspected stolen or lost documents were common in the city of constant rogue attacks. It wasn’t nearly as messy as it was after the battle of New York, or the Blip, but it was up there. With this, Peter almost thought himself done. Then he realized— a guardian. Sitting there, staring at the security code running for just a moment, Peter idled. Yesterday he said Tony was his guardian. Today, it would be different.
Peter created Harold “Happy” Hogan and followed the same formula he did with his parents and aunt and uncle. He got the full work up, a birth certificate, social security, education and work records (an independently contracted security guard and bouncer), tax records, and even an active bank account– he had to get that scholarship money somehow (if he passed— which he had a feeling he would). The only problem was he had to steal from someone to get a balance to have an account in the first place.
Peter chose billionaire Brucie Wayne. Sure, he likely had financial advisors or whatever rich people have to track their money, but the damage seemed less impactful. $800 from a billionaire’s account was chump change; Peter knew this from the way Tony spent money. Hacking in was almost too easy, a backdoor being accessible and decryptable relatively easy for his skill set. Someone else, or maybe multiple people, had hacked into this account prior to him to take money from it. They did a good job at covering their tracks, but he eventually found the bank account the lump sum was added to.
Strange, how did Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne’s dead son, have an active account and why was someone stealing from Bruce, the account owner’s father and putting it into his dead son’s? After he completes routing the money through a variety of accounts until he confirms it ends in ‘Happys’ account, he adds a cipher to the enclosed code that translates to his signature— which was just a digital version of a spider’s web, telling whoever hacks in next that this pathway was closed by their friendly neighborhood Spider. He may not have a suit, but at least he lives on digitally— for now. Now, where was he?
Ah yes. Peter closed out his programming, leaving a small backdoor protocol should someone attempt to get access to what was done. Then, he logged back into the computer and pulled up the website for Gotham City High School. The webpage loaded to show the campus entrance, gothic and grand, built more like an elite private academy than a standard city high school. Although, the first thing on the news section was an announcement of a new indoor climbing gym, with bouldering and a ropes course, and a dance studio. Peter isn’t sure that should be possible for a high school to have, but he’s glad some very generous people exist in this world. Or rather, he supposes he has Bruce Wayne to thank. That’s apparently who signs off on all scholarship candidates.
Scrolling farther down to find the link he remembers, he finds it at the bottom. Following the instructions for the digital submission, Peter takes his time to carefully fill everything out. The next step was to take an exam in two days at ten am, in which only those with the percentage completed correctly, for a total above 80%, can be accepted into the program. He wrote down important time and place information he needed, such as where his PO box was, where the precinct was where he could get a new ID with his papers, since he was a minor, so long as a certain form was signed, and the exam date, time, and location.
He’s got information, memorized the extremely short list of shelters willing to accept unidentified minors without immediately calling CPS, and has an idea of what he needed to do next to be able to survive. He has papers coming, cards requested, and an entrance exam to take in two days time. The library is quiet, and Peter can tell now the heartbeat at the lobby desk, rapid but steady, was one of very few. There were three groups of families scattered throughout the children’s section, and two people on the third floor. He shuts his eyes for a moment and listens, focusing on the librarian.
She’s talking to someone. She’s muttering under her breath, but it’s clearly to someone. Peter focuses on her, and finds the frequency easily. She’s talking to someone on an— an earpiece? Peter really shouldn’t listen, shouldn’t eavesdrop, his Aunt May would say it was rude, Natasha would say it was smart. Maybe it was just a work related–
“It’s not like I can confirm it, but he matches your guys’ description, right down to his clothes. He was pretty grimy when he came in, but I suspect if he was the one breaking out of the pod we found, a shower hadn’t been the first thing on his mind.” She says.
Peter feels frozen, and suddenly very small. He was worried his hacking would be caught, but that was literally the least of his troubles. He knows where he heard Babs’ voice. It was the same buzz of a voice he heard in Red Hood, Spoiler, and Red Robin’s comms, and the person speaking to her on the phone sounded just as familiar.
Babs was Oracle.
Notes:
I decided some things for Peter's new traits for coming outta Lazarus pit pod! If i make him a bit OP then thats my business, the man is a god among metas in this Gotham, but he’s still Peter. I just wanna pad him up a bit for… plot things. Huehuehue.
Hope you enjoyed this chapter, it was fun to write! I will be going through sometime soon and updating each chapter with edits I've made since posting, but it won't change the fic itself, it'll mostly be small additions, corrections, and alterations.
As always, leave me a comment if you feel up to it, I'm open to constructive feedback! I also love hearing your excitement and opinions, but as always, I may not respond. I will do my best, though!
Finished this half asleep, ill correct any outright stuff tomorrow!
Chapter 6: Liar
Summary:
Peter introspects a lot it seems.
Babs said "it's grillin time!" kinda.
Notes:
the source is i made it the fuck up !
thanks for holding on~ I was going to make this longer, to make up for the missed week, but I don't want to rush it. I also want to space out some things.
sooo enjoy this bit, and as always, mistakes will be edited later!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Peter's heart beat out of his chest, green threatening to spill over in his moment of weakness. He sat unmoving, almost holding his breath as he continued listening, blankly staring at the screen in front of him, the static from the comms almost burning his ears.
“Did he seem off? Any signs of pit madness?” The voice responded quickly, with an edge to it. It was Red Robin, Peter could tell. What the hell was pit madness, he thought it was Lazarus Fever?
“He seemed like a normal alley kid; though, if he hadn’t walked up to the desk I wouldn’t have even noticed him. He scared the hell out of me— he was as quiet as B.” Peter could tell from the noise surrounding her she was typing furiously.
“He’s as stealthy as B with no signs of pit madness despite having woken up and broken out of a science laboratory test-tube Lazarus pit and you think he’s normal?” Red Robin scoffed, a hint of teasing to his voice.
“Don’t take that tone with me, or I’ll tell B about how you hacked your records last year to avoid the truancy law. I’m running facial recognition on him from the library cameras, so we’ll know who he is soon.” Peter could practically hear Babs smiling. New information, Red Robin was around Peter’s age. Red Robin groaned. He felt like he was on the edge of his seat, like anyone could walk past and see a paranoid eccentric teen in the corner, twitchy and sketchy; someone no one would want to talk to. Despite the way he felt, his posture remained comfortable, his hands resting on the computer desk, ‘relaxed’ yet completely still, face so unbothered someone would have to really, really pay attention to notice how tightly coiled he was, ready to spring. It helped that he used to have a baby face— now that he has a baby face (again).
“Listen, I’ve got the blood sample running and the other sample was confirmed to have the same properties as the Lazarus pit. I saw his eyes glow like they did when… when Jason was overcome with pit rage. The kid shook it off in seconds Babs, whatever crazy shit is going on is bad and he’s at the center of it. We should wait until we at least know who he is to approach him.” Wow, Red Robin gave him a lot of information in a very short time. First of all, his eyes glowed at some point last night— in which he assumed it was when he kept rubbing at his eyes during those weird panic attacks he was having, when the green felt strongest. That was definitely new, definitely not a spider thing, and definitely not good. If his eyes glowed then no wonder they were stalking him. Secondly, this pit rage thing was not something he should be able to shake off with some breathing exercises, they weren’t green panic attacks, which didn’t necessarily mean anything to him, but were significant in this universe. Lastly, and the most concerning, was that they believed him to be a pawn in some grander scheme involving the Lazarus Pod he crashed out of. Which meant he had to assuage their worries sooner than later in order to better slip silently into Gotham. His hands twitch momentarily with the urge to flee .
“I’m just going to go check on him, I am a librarian after all, and it’s been three hours.” Babs suggested. She sounded quite positive considering what they were talking about, but Peter liked her style. But that also meant she was coming over, and going to snoop. He had to be doing something, be normal, somehow. He had to be Peter. Everyone knew Peter was a terrible liar, he had too many tells. But those tells are only obvious when he loses focus (or if the person knew him, but nobody knew him, not anymore). Now that he knows Babs is Oracle, the one helping his ‘stalkers’, he thinks he would prefer using snarky teenage deceit and evasive action, but Babs had yet to show any malice. Aunt May would not be happy with that. Aunt May isn’t here, the green seemed to hiss in his ear.
Spider-man was almost an excellent liar, because behind the mask, no one could see his face. It was usually his voice that gave him away, and even then it was only due to sustaining injuries or having to use maximum effort (which was a rarity after the war, until the universe had ripped open). This was, of course, after his first suit from Tony was destroyed, that is. With Karen. Before he lost everything again . Green welled up the back of his head, punishing Peter with a splicing pain through his eyes and all he could think about was how absolutely fuming that he almost destroyed his universe for college admissions, and now he had to go to redo high school a third time . Fuck. He just needed to calm down before Babs got upstairs, if Red Robin had seen his eyes were glowing green then they were definitely green now.
Peter liked school, but at some point in the post-blip and post-war timeline he had just decided to just get his GED for the sake of being done with it. He knew all the material anyways, this time around he just wants a place to get the chemicals for his webs.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea—” Red Robin is cut off by Babs herself, who scoffs at his words. Peter can tell she’s clicking out of her computer, the wheels of her chair deftly sliding back and then out from behind the front desk, off of carpet and onto the smooth finish of the floor.
“He’s in my library, and he didn’t seem all that bothered talking to me. I’ll just pop up, see what he’s doing, and try to get a little information out of him so hopefully we’ll be able to figure out more. If anything happens, well, I just sent a message to Hood, so it’ll be fine!”
As Peter hears the whir of the elevator being called nearby, he stutters into action, the green pain momentarily pushed to the back of his head with pure brute mental force. His hands move to close out his computer, logging off. Peter takes the pencil he found and begins doodling on the next page, writing the exam time and date information down again. He’s humming a song he remembered from one of Tony’s many lab rock playlists, stuffing the page half full with mindless drawings and notes, mostly abstract pieces of the arc reactor, disjointed inventions of his, quotes he could remember from Jersey Shore (he was never one to watch it on his own, but Aunt May loved trashy ‘reality’ tv), when he can sense Babs wheeling towards him.
“Hi Peter, I was just checking if you were alright up here since the time limit on the computer was up!” Babs is friendly, her posture and demeanor bright, a sharp contrast to her eyes, which were slyly examining, cataloguing and seemingly memorizing his cleaned up appearance and ‘relaxed attitude’ with barely a twitch. She had expected something else, despite her casual attitude with Red Robin.
“Hi Ms. Babs, yeah I was just drawing,” Peter decided to play into the innocent bit, fidgeting with his pencil for a bit before looking at her, since it was Babs, and his spidey-sense seemed to calm when he was around her. It was unfortunate she was Oracle, otherwise he’d make the library his main spot for free heat, electricity, and kind company. He pointedly allows her to come in closer and snoop at his notebook (conveniently folded to hide Peter’s new universe guide and someone’s Latin study notes, which would likely deter any casual snooper anyways).
“Oh, you’re taking the Gotham High school scholarship exam? That’s great!” She beams, his mindless scribbling and drawings working exactly as he hoped as she skimmed over it. Peter has to actively remember to not cringe at both the volume, his ears a bit more sensitive at the moment, having been used to the quiet of the library, and the fact that this would be a thing he could be linked to. Well, if they were trying to find him using facial recognition, nothing would show up, because Peter had no photos of him that existed except the library security footage. Peter smiled back at her, sitting up attentively. This fact comforted him.
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool. Did you know it has a climbing gym? What kind of high school has that?! I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a high school having anything like it. I hope I get in,” He responds, and it is just truthful enough that he holds his composure, regurgitating facts he just learned while using it as a jumping point to direct the conversation away from himself without actually derailing it. Natasha told him to believe the lie as he tells it, to keep it simple but specific enough to be personable. He supposed if they ever connected him to the school with his name, then he could just make sure they believe he’s not a threat to them.
“Yes, I did. Did you just move to Gotham?” She asks politely. As he looks down at his drawings to set his pencil down, he catches the movement of her touching something by her ear and the familiar sound of static from comms is loud and clear for Peter. She turned it on while he ‘wasn’t’ looking’. How quaint of her, but Peter supposed she had no way of knowing he would be able to hear the sound no normal human or standard meta would, for that matter.
In fact, Metas didn’t really even seem as powerful as the enhanced people of his previous universe— most being categorized as low level non threats, while alpha (Superman, Wonder Woman), beta, and gammas made up very few of the population and were considered leagues above the non threats. Peter would guess he was a gamma level meta, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Yep,” Peter pops the ‘p’ on his word, nodding along, “I don’t know how I feel about it though, I almost got mugged last night, but Red Hood stopped it! Then, these two other weirdos dropped in on us when he dropped me off outside and were totally trying to kidnap me. Both were Bats, but I don’t know, it seemed sketchy. How would they know where we were!” Peter rambles, keeping his story to the facts of exactly what happened, so there was no real detail to his life they could dissect. He’s animated as he speaks, sinking into the Peter routine of saying everything and anything while at the same time providing Babs absolutely nothing of substance .
Plus, he got to insult the stalker vigilantes (he didn't blame them, really, he did the whole snooping thing too), but really, he wanted to keep a low profile while he figured things out. He couldn’t control his strength, wasn’t sure which reflexes changed, and wasn’t sure how his mind would be affected by the green as a result of the changes. He hears a gasp and stubborn grumbling of denials and frustration from the man on the comm. Babs is smiling, but she seemed to be holding back laughter.
“Wow, sounds like an eventful night. Good thing Red Hood was there. I wouldn’t worry too much about the others, they probably just wanted to make sure you were alright. Hood has a reputation— wait how did you even meet him? He’s only located in Crime Alley.” Babs is a good actress, and if Peter hadn’t known she was Oracle, if he had really been himself at age 15 , if he had been a little more naive, if it had been before Beck, even, he would have believed she was simply making conversation. She was so casually polite, slipping into a cadence as if they had known each other for years. But he knew better.
“Oh I got lost. New to the city and all that,” Peter gave her a set of jazz hands and a faint huff of a laugh. From the comms, he hears a scoff.
“Bullshit, he was covered in the stuff from the Lazarus pod we found.” The voice— Red Robin, grumbles.
“What about your parents; I bet they were worried!” She guffaws at that, giving away nothing about the other person in her ear; Peter doesn’t need to know she’s Oracle to know she would never have bought that line from him.
“Oh, uh, they’re dead…” He trails off, not needing to feign a look of sadness as it pooled in his gut, “but they’ve been dead for a long time. My guardian gave me an earful when I got home. I was definitely gone too long.” He shrugs. That kind of answers their question— and implies Peter was a normal human who happened to land himself in trouble.
“I’m sorry about your parents. Why didn’t you just call your guardian?” She cocks her head, as it was the most logical thing in the world— because duh, it was. Most teenagers never went anywhere without their phones.
“Well we’re really poor so I don’t have a phone. But Happy says it would rot my brain anyways. He told me I could get one when we got here, but we haven’t picked one up yet,” Peter smiles genuinely, waving the suggestion away. Happy had, once upon a time, been so irritated (but not really, he was never that pissed off) at how many messages Peter would send him, and how many times he called him to ask ‘stupid’ questions about anything and everything, that he had outright taken his phone away multiple times on non-patrol nights and held it hostage.
“Is it just me or is this kid a little too calm?” Red Robin’s voice crackles over the comm. Peter has to focus a bit harder to ensure he doesn’t crack his relaxed act. A twitch would reveal too much. Despite her casual attitude, the librarian was examining every bit of him.
“Happy?” An expression of genuine confusion graced Bab's face. Oh, that’s right, Peter told Red Hood it was ‘Tony’ who was his guardian. Oracle would know, but Babs shouldn’t. Unfortunately, Happy was not a common name.
“He told me his guardian’s name was Tony.” The familiar gruff yet unmodulated voice of Red Hood speaks, and Peter realizes it must be a multi-comm link this time around, the man had simply not spoken yet. He wondered if Spoiler was on the line.
“He’s my guardian, it’s more of a nickname.” Peter gives Babs a disarmingly charming smile.
“On it,” Red Robin says, and suddenly Peter is thankful he had created dense identities for his ‘guardian’. Though, Happy wouldn’t be the name on any legal paperwork, nor would they find it in any other circle— not his Happy at least, so it would be another dead end.
“Oh! I’m not sure about it rotting your brain, but if you ever need tech recommendations, I have friends in the industry. It wouldn’t hurt to have a phone now that you’re in Gotham, it’s way too dangerous for a kid like you to be out without any way of contacting anyone. What neighborhood did you say you moved to?” Peter wants to narrow his eyes at her final question, but he knows she’s watching his every move and microexpression, so he keeps it schooled in the same lazy smile, with his ‘relaxed’ posture.
“Cool! Thanks,” He beams at her, “I, uh, I didn’t say but I honestly don’t remember the name,” He sheepishly rubs the back of his head, and technically this wasn’t a lie. He had no clue what neighborhood he would ‘live’ in, but he knew where in general direction each was and the defining characteristics of each region. In his New York, he knew every alley and every street like it was written in his DNA.
“Try to get something else, Happy is a nickname at best, replacement isn’t gonna find that in the system.” Red Hood astutely comments.
Babs studies him for a moment, nodding to show she was listening to him. Peter could tell she was strong and his senses told Peter she was not someone to be careless around; at least not yet. Unfortunately there was no way in hell he would go to her for tech advice anytime soon, whether he’d like to or not. Regardless of how disappointing tech seemed to be comparatively, he knew she or another one of the Bats would use the opportunity to bug his device. Meticulously removing the bug would be much too suspicious of him, and cause him unneeded stress in the long run.
Peter felt strongly about him being much better off building his own device from a base phone, or even scratch if he could find the right parts. A Stark level phone would not be difficult in the least to manufacture if he had parts, all he would need to do is write the code. He just had to get past these crazy observant stalker vigilantes. Hopefully his practice with Tony and the various Avengers held up. Peter had faith in Nat’s lessons in survival, at the very least.
“That’s okay, I’m sure you’ll remember it once you get used to the city. Is Happy picking you up here?” It was this question from the kind woman that gave him pause. Peter was technically done at the library, for now, and the rest of the day he would have to spend finding shelter, food, and water. He couldn’t stay in the maintenance room he found last night, now that he knew Babs was the Oracle. That was just asking for her to discover him.
Despite this, Peter was tempted to wait at the library, where it was safe and quiet . But what good would that do for him in the long run? Peter had to think of something to say, and quickly.
“No, he’s at work. I’m exploring today. I was going to print a map but I got distracted on the computer. Did you hear that Wonder Woman just took down another global terror ring? It was on the front page of Gotham Times. It said Batman was there too, I guess he must be a decent guy if Wonder Woman works with him.” He cocks his head, rambling on, using his hands as he talks in a way distinct to Peter alone.
“We’ve got pamphlets at the front desk, I’m sure there’s one with a map. If you’re done here, how about we go check it out?” She suggests, and he emphatically nods, getting up and closing his new notebook and plucking his pencil off the desk.
“That’d be super helpful, thank you Ms. Babs!” He grins, motioning for her to lead the way. She smiles and nods her head, wheeling towards the elevator. They fall in tandem and Peter rushes to press the button eagerly, trying to emulate an excited kid at their first hotel vacation. He leans slightly to the side as the machinery whirs to life.
“Who do you think would win in a fight? Wonder Woman or Batman? I think Wonder Woman.” He grins, absentmindedly spinning the pencil in his hand around. He hears Red Robin laugh and Red Hood grumble something he didn’t spare any extra attention to.
“So, you’re not a big fan of the Bat?” Babs asks with a smile. She’s casual, but Peter can see there’s something else in her eyes, behind her glasses. He wasn’t sure he could place it. Her hands rest on a part of her wheels, flexing occasionally. They tensed when he had mentioned Batman.
Now, Peter really shouldn’t answer that, but speaking to the librarian-tech-genius of the Bats was soothing to his senses. Every part of him was a live wire, ready to set fire and run, but she was kind . Peter had been through a lot in the last 48 hours. He quite literally jumped universes not even a full 24 hours ago. The tension he carried through his body was strained, ready to snap at the instant a soft wind blew in.
It would only be a matter of time before he would have to go back out onto the streets to find shelter and food, and he knew she was safe. Even if she set off some of his senses, Babs was no threat to him at the moment. She just was checking in on him, so she can learn more and report back to the other Bats (Batlings?) . If he doesn’t kick up dust here, he may have a better chance at slipping away from all of those involved. He shrugged at her question.
“I don’t not like him. It looks like he and the other Bats do a lot for Gotham, and only want the best for Gotham, but I—”
Here is where Peter wants to hesitate. He wants to say it was hard to do, to use emotional triggers to pull on the heartstrings of Babs and evoke a more sympathetic reaction. He wanted to say that Peter Parker, the terrible liar, couldn’t twist people’s emotions like that on purpose. He wanted to pay back the kindness Babs showed him, regardless if it was a false face or not. But he didn’t. He lets his breath shake as he releases it, alternating what he wanted to say to what he should say. Something specific enough for her to understand but broad enough they’d get lost in analyzing him, something not about him, as far as they knew. Just like Nat taught him .
“I have a friend, who happens to be Meta. He’s been there for me every step of my life since I was 13, he’s even saved my life more times than I can count, but now that I’m here I’m worried he won’t come. I heard that Batman is strict about Metahumans in this city, and it’s not like my friend can hide his abilities. It’s kind of obvious with the way he moves around! He’s scared of being caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time, yaknow? He’s even told me he’s afraid of stepping foot on a rooftop here in case Batman comes and locks him away. He’s never talked like that before, since I had to come here…” Peter explains, pausing at certain places and glancing at her as if to show how uncertain he was. He really wanted to ham it up, to project the “lost and innocent teenager caught up in a bigger scheme” view of himself.
Referring to Spider-man as a separate entity felt like a strong misguiding technique. Sure, they may know he came out of that green Lazarus pod of goo, but they didn’t have to know he was a hero vigilante, let alone one from another universe. He could almost hear Rhodey, telling him he was laying the groundwork for when Spider-man inevitably pops up. Babs looked a bit stunned at this, but recovered quickly, her face resting in a pensive expression. The elevator door opens and Peter let her go in first.
“Shit. If Pete is telling the truth and he’s got some Meta looking out for him, he’ll probably be pissed to find out he got messed up in that Lazarus pit.” Red Hood speaks.
“And that Batman, the justice who knows everything, had no clue,” Red Robin sighs. Peter could imagine him hanging his head in his hands, wherever he was.
“Well, it’s true Batman doesn’t like Metas in his city, but it’s more like he just doesn’t want them to cause any problems. There’s even a Bat that is a Meta, Signal, the daytime hero! Besides, there are plenty of regular citizens who are Meta and live here,” Babs responds, nodding to him.
“Oh, that’s good to know then. I’ll have to tell him next time I see him!” Peter beams, letting his body exhale and seemingly relax against the back wall of the elevator.
“Try to get a name,” Red Hood says in Babs’ ear.
“This friend of yours,” Babs pauses, and when Peter gives no indication of naming the friend, continues to speak, “as long as they don’t come in and set any fires, I’m sure they’ll be able to visit you safely. Batman isn’t in the business of bugging civilian Metas who mind their own!” Her face, once again, settles into a calm smile. The elevator dings and they exit together, walking towards the front desk.
“Oh yeah, he would never cause any trouble for the Bats. If anything, trouble seems to follow him!” Peter waves off, smiling and humming in agreement.
“That is mildly concerning,” Red Robin spoke.
“Well, hopefully it won’t. Here are all the pamphlets we have!” Now behind the desk, Babs spreads out one of each. Individually, there’s four she sets out. The first is a guide to surviving various rogue attacks and where to find necessities for such times, a one to one recreation of the information he found in digital form on the GCPD’s site, the second contained shelters and soup kitchens across the city, including their addresses and a small localized map of which cross streets they were located at. The third was a general map with the subway stations locations and schedule, and the fourth was a guide to the city— restaurants, hot spots, clubs, where the Wayne family is often famously sighted. Peter didn’t think they had a Gotham City Tourism Board with the amount of crime that took place, and the seeming truth that no one comes to Gotham for vacation (nor did they move here), but if they did it would likely be the source of the final pamphlet.
“Nice, these are perfect!” He takes each one, flipping mainly through the one with the map to start to commit it to memory.
“Why would the kid need the other pamphlets if he’s got a home and a guardian?” Red Robin questions quietly, and there’s something in his tone Peter doesn’t like.
“Well he lied to me about Tony, could be lying about where he lives too.” Red Hood responds.
“I’m glad they can be of use to you. Now, since you are here did you want to get a library card? All I need is a name, email, and address.” Babs types at her computer for a moment, Peter assumes it's to log in.
“Uh, yeah, sure!” He has never been more glad he already memorized his PO box address. The voices in Bab’s ear though? Distracting as hell when attempting to lie your way through an interaction. He did not need the vigilante stalkers knowing he’s homeless.
“Great, here,” Babs slides a piece of paper that had three entry lines over to him. Peter flips his pencil around and leans over the low desk, writing in his information before handing it to the woman.
“Peter Parker, let me put this in the system and then I’ll get your card printed,” She nods, smiling and looking down at the paper, proceeded by more typing. Babs turns around and moves to the back counter, where two printers stood, one large industrial standing on its own and the other a standard one on the countertop.
As she does this, Peter slips the other pamphlets open, reading up on a soup kitchen on the edge where the Bowery starts to meet Burnley. He could walk the block or two to a subway station, get on and pop out right near it. Looking at the shelters, the one that was on the edge of Burnley doubled as one. It was on the list of those that didn’t report minors, Peter remembered from how many times he repeated the addresses in his head. The printer whirred loudly as Babs maneuvered around the bulky technology. She clicked a few buttons and it made an affirmative beep sound.
“Come on over and I’ll snap a picture for the back of the card, stand on the red tape,” Babs waves Peter over and he follows, ducking his head as he settles on up to the side counter, where a piece of red tape was stuck to the carpet about two feet away and a white backdrop was standing up right behind it. He stands there and looks up, giving a polite smile to the web camera contraption that Babs holds high in the air. She nods to him and turns back around to hit another button on the printer.
Peter’s attention shifted to the Guide to Gotham Rogue Attacks, walking back to the front of the counter as he began to read through the newly familiar information. Most shelters provided gas masks for free (he had read it was something Wayne Enterprise had insisted it provide to every shelter in the city), and the Joker antivenom epipens were semi-common and affordable too, some even being provided in certain Wayne-related locations for free. That was surprisingly better than his universe’s health care response to rogue threats, but then again, they didn’t have a Joker.
He suspected he would be fine in most of the chemical attacks, unless it was highly concentrated and he took the full force of it, but Peter would rather be safe than sorry. He couldn’t risk uninhibited or unconscious recklessness.
The printer jolted and spit out a card, which Babs took in a hand and turned around, promptly putting it back in the machine.
The tourism-adjacent pamphlet had a listing of where the rogues were sighted most often, what stores had the best rogue safe gear, where GCPD stations were, and where cheap and expensive restaurants could be found, even pointing out the Wayne Family’s favorite after-party spot, Bat Burger. Peter wondered how Batman felt about the plethora of hero-and-rogue themed stores, the fast food chain, and merchandise. Tony had capitalized on a lot of the official Iron Man merchandise pretty quickly, but he didn’t know if Batman’s secret counterpart identity was like that.
The printer Babs is working on spits out a card and she returns to her spot behind the desk with it in hand. She deftly slides the card over to him with a happy grin, which he takes gingerly.
“That will let you check out books, audiobooks, DVDs, and CDs. You’ve got three free pages of printing per day, and the computer time limit is extended to five hours,” Babs says.
“Wow, my old library didn’t have photo identification, this is crazy!” Peter widens his eyes, examining the card. Well, ID can be checked off the list— he’d have to check in person if it was a valid form of identification to receive his bank card and PO Box.
“Yes, thanks to the Wayne Foundation our library is exponentially larger, nicer and far better equipped to provide services to our community. You should have seen the place before! Now we actually have semi-recent computer systems and programs but just a few years ago my library was utterly dismal.” Babs speaks with pride, with her arms crossed out in front of her, chest pushed forward and back straight as if boasting her own achievements. Peter supposed the library was an achievement on its own, with its beauty and size and resources. He hadn't looked too closely, but the place had a significant collection of all manner of things a library should have, bundled and suspended neatly amongst grand columns, gothic architecture, dark luxurious wood tones, and a sleek yet sophisticated design that screamed ‘old money’.
“Wow, the Wayne Foundation must do everything in Gotham, I keep seeing their names pop up everywhere!” Peter slides the card into his back pocket, jeans still crusty from drying with the Lazarus goo caked in, “kinda like the Stark Foundation.” He mutters under his breath thoughtlessly, glancing at the clock above the desk. He had an hour till the shelter on the edge of the Bowery opened for dinner.
“What was that?” Babs asks, eyes slightly narrowed and peering curiously up at him.
“Oh nothing, just thought of something,” Peter smiled, cocking his head to the side. She cocks her head to match his, smiles and then hums a short three note hum and types something further.
“Too quiet for us to pick up, sorry O,” Red Robin chimes in. Maybe they had a certain code to their humming when they couldn’t speak? Or maybe they had barely caught it too. That was close, too close. Though, they would have no connection to tie it to, no organization or name.
“Well, I should get going, but it was great meeting you and I’m sure I’ll be back soon!” Peter smiles, tucking the pamphlets in the other back pocket. Babs startles and nods enthusiastically.
“Of course! If you ever need anything or have any questions about the city, I’ll be here!” She responds, waving as he nods in response and turns to the door. As soon as he gets to the doors, he hears Oracle.
“He’s heading out the doors now; I’m going to find out what our new friend here did online for three hours.” She speaks quietly and definitely not loud enough for Peter to be able to hear, but Peter wasn’t just Peter, he was also Spider-man. Good thing he set that back door protocol on his computer and the network. He would have to hope it held up.
Notes:
Me: the source is i made it the fuck up
—> however I am;
Using the DC fandom wiki for the meta levels, and Peter will (wrongly) assume he’s a gamma level meta (he’s beta level in my story, bc I may or may not have plans to do something fun with that)
Chapter 7: Conversation
Summary:
Peter leaves the library and Hood “stalks” him in his civvies.
Notes:
5/25:
Hey yall! It’s sunday, my usual upload day, but Im going to upload tomorrow because its a national holiday that I have off and want to not rush :) im planning a DND campaign for my friends rn (I am DM).Some uploads might become like that, out of sync with my proposed schedule, so i’ll likely delete the first null chapter when i took a week off, and this one, when I upload tomorrow. So, don’t worry too much if some Sundays I don't upload because i may upload Mondays or mid week :) I have no plans to abandon this fic! Just need more flexibility.
Im also coming up on a mini home vacation this following weekend, so i may have time to upload or at least write!
CURRENT:
*civvies is just slang for civilian clothes
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“He’s heading out the doors now; I’m going to find out what our new friend did online for three hours.” Babs speaks softly as Peter exits the building. As soon as the doors shut, she’s typing and clicking away at her computer, switching over to her private servers and running a scan on the computer where Peter had previously sat. A moment of silence goes by.
“Does anyone else find it insane that that kid could calm his pit rage that fast?” Spoiler’s voice patches in, breaking the silence that had befallen the trio.
“It felt more like suppression to me, but yeah that was freaky. His eyes glowed for like not even half a second before he blinked it away,” Red Robin responds, not at all surprised at the appearance of one Stephanie Brown as Spoiler on the comms. He had known she was planning on checking in.
“If he hadn’t stepped into the light I wouldn’t have known anything was different about the kid. He was normal considering he was getting mugged, if not a bit sarcastic, but he’s from New York so I’m not shocked by the attitude.” Red Hood speaks clearly, his voice crisp and unmodulated on the comm.
“He still had that green dried liquid stain all over him when he came in, but it looked like he cleaned himself up in the bathroom. I clipped the library security cameras and got this still of him.” Oracle speaks softly but succinctly, clicking and typing, the only noise the soft whirring of her computer and the mouse and keyboard. The doors of the children section closed with sound proofing, the upstairs open air section much too far up to be heard.
“Yeah that’s definitely him. Who just breaks their way out of a giant test tube of resurrection liquid and then casually goes to the library the next day?” Tim huffs, clearly typing away at his own computer.
“He might be fresh from the pit and new to the city but the kid has experience with trauma, at the very least.” Red Hood clips, a huff of frustration coming from him.
“Well I’m working on the bloodwork— actually that should be finishing up soon since I started it as soon as I got in last night— and running O’s image through the codex, so we’ll find him somehow. Anything interesting in his browser history?” Red Robin asks casually. Babs snorts, but she hums in a way the three recognize as concern.
“His first search is ‘lost teen, no parents’, who searches that?” Babs bursts out, surprising the two others on the comm.
“He really looked that up?” Red Robin almost laughed, because really the situation itself wasn’t at all funny; a (definite) Lazarus pit kid is loose on the streets, a sarcastic, stealthy enough to make it noticeable to the Oracle kid that has enough control (Tim wasn’t so sure it was control, it seemed almost natural of him) to at least suppress his pit rage.
Red Hood wanted to be amused, because what kid actually searches that? He was amused, that is, but another part of him held major concern for the kid. When his pit rage first started to hit him, he rarely suppressed it. He was violent, vengeful, angry and utterly destroyed. He had died and come back entirely wrong. It was rough, to say the very least , working through his anger and rage until it simmered to mostly annoyance (which was mostly vented now through his clean up of Crime Alley and the occasional competitive team up with Dickwing).
Jason still couldn’t spend much time around Bruce, or the manor, but it was getting better. His adoptive siblings made it better too. But Peter had… questionable support, if any. He hadn’t cleaned up or changed since the night before, which meant the kid was actually homeless or something far worse was happening, something Jason didn’t want to bring up to the others yet. There was something about the guy that made him feel surprisingly protective, like the green in him was able to feel the green roaring in Peter, and could feel when he was slipping into chaos and rage as they were together.
“Well he mostly just looked up world and Gotham history, rogues, guides, he spent a weird amount of time looking at the city law and ordinances, and…” she trails off.
“He applied for Gotham City High School, is taking the entrance exam on Monday.”
“Woah, wait pit kid is gonna be our classmate? We can easily befriend him for our senior year, easy undercover work!” Stephanie said, seemingly thrilled by this development.
“Slow down Steph, he’s still a potential ticking time bomb!” Red Robin sounded exasperated, typing away.
“O, where are we on the records for Peter Parker?” Red Hood asks.
“I’ll do some digging for his records, I’ll contact you all when I’m done. Stay out of trouble, and do your homework, Tim,” Babs lectures before closing out her comm before any oppositions can be heard. She clicked onto a private connection with Red Hood.
“Peter looked up multiple shelter and soup kitchen locations. I’ll send you the ones he spent the most time looking at. One of them edges the Bowery from the Burnley.” Oracle reports to him, her tone hard but obviously concerned.
“… I’ll go in my civvies, may be easier on him,” Jason grunts, a rush of green anger bubbling at the base of his neck. He felt strangely tense and— he was worried . Peter had been on edge but he was clearly just trying to survive . Besides, B didn’t need to know anything about this (yet).
The teenager hardly did anything wrong or dangerous so far, but Jason knew how difficult it was to suppress the pit rage that came from being resurrected using the Lazarus pits. In sight, smell, and touch could he recognize the very substance he came back in. They all knew Kobra labs had gotten its hands on the Lazarus pit, or at the very least discovered its properties well enough to manufacture its artificial twin, but Jason now wrestled with a new anger.
The thought that the Batman had dismissed this specific lab, along with the others agreeing, because it had been deemed inactive and unconnected to the human trafficking ring they took out, but the whole time this kid— Peter, was trapped inside the “Lazarus pod” chamber all this time, made him sick with rage. How was it possible they missed it, and why did no one at least check the lab? Jason had questions, Red Hood would get the answers, one way or another.
The weather is overcast, with an extra side of dark grey as the afternoon slowly begins transitioning into the evening when Peter finally steps foot outside and the doors close behind him. He had spent almost the entire day in the calm and controlled environment of the library, his senses able to finally settle and feel less, well, neon ? Ever since he broke his way out of that green substance in that Lazarus Pod in the lab his senses felt bright, ugly, and raw in a way they hadn’t felt since his fever broke after the spider bite. Peter felt a shudder of green as he bristled at the loudness of overlapping conversations, the sensation of emotion roaring through his head and heart, the noises of skittering creatures and forgotten roamers from the sewers, the wind blowing through tunnels, the restaurant and cafe’s kitchens and their crews (his sense of smell was more sensitive than ever, his stomach growling before turning queasy with every new smell of the city).
He could hear far more than he could before (he swore someone in this city was blowing a dog whistle constantly), see a lot farther, a lot more in detail (he could see and sense the ants crawling in the cracks of the concrete, if he focused), and is overall faster than he had been before, which was already fast as hell.
It was once again incredibly challenging for him to not become overwhelmed; it reminded him of how his senses were after first getting bit. He wasn’t safe as a homeless kid in Gotham City, after all, so his senses were all screaming at him. He could feel the crisp prickling of his spidey sense, the tingle of something off.
Sure, he saw the people milling about, some in the shops perusing goods and others sitting in restaurant and cafe windows, but there was an underlying buzz of inherent danger. Almost every person Peter focused on set off his spidey senses in some way or another, and he came to the realization that almost everyone walking by was extremely focused on minding their own business and had some type of weapon on their person. It was a lot to take in.
Peter used his dwindling energy to shift focus onto his plan, drowning out the sound of the people and the city with the sound of the subway. He pulled the brochure with the map of the area out and began walking, following the sound of rails and machinery running underground and the people’s semi-synced steps more than the guide itself. His stomach rumbled as he took strides as long and fast as could pass for being normal for a human boy, avoiding side streets that especially set off his senses. It wasn’t long till he reached the subway.
Peter pulled his hood up and blended with a swath of commuters, sliding over the turnstile like he had done in New York as Spider-man. He tried to pay most of the time, Tony got him a pass early on in the internship and it worked even after the blip, and after he died. He wondered if it would have worked if he had simply been erased and able to stay in his New York, or if the spell would have erased the card, along with all the other physical evidence of his relationships. Yeah, that sounded more accurate to Parker luck. Idly he remembers MJ and Ned both giving him flack for feeling bad about it— it was, afterall, in New York City that turnstile jumping was normal for its citizens. Besides, the law doesn’t dictate what is moral or right , and never has.
In Gotham, although he did check for cops, it was equally easy if not easier to jump the turnstile. The station itself was much dirtier, grimier, darker, and less full than he would have expected. There was the distinct smell of sewage, mixing with the bodies who commuted through the space and the earthy smell of damp, dark tunnels. As he made his way down the stairs, his senses focused on the spiders he could hear scritching around the corners and dark spaces.
When he got on the correct number, Peter stood for two reasons. First, he did not want to take a seat so he could avoid giving it up for another (suspicious) Gothamite, since he was bound by both habit and duty to offer it to someone who looked like they needed it. It didn’t seem like people were neighborly for the sake of being neighborly here. Secondly, there was a spider web covering the corner of the advertisement that almost bordered the doors. He leaned, his hand gripped the pole by the door, and Peter made himself as small as possible.
The spider that was in its web, at the small tap his other hand left on the ad, skittered out and began suspending down on its web. Peter watched it curiously as once it got on his jacket sleeve that leaned against the wall and bars, it climbed its way to Peter’s hoodie collar, where the jacket opened at the base of his throat. The small spider stayed there, ultimately just nestling down and resting. Peter felt oddly comforted when it stayed where it was, the small creature gave him a feeling of confidence, allowing him to observe his surroundings without being overwhelmed. It was stressful to think in this universe he was undergoing further mutations, but gaining this strange new understanding with spiders was kind of nice. Where he had no one, he had his spiders.
As creepy as normal people would say it is to commune with spider-kin, as far as he was concerned, Peter was already too far gone from being a well-adjusted civilian; he had been through too much, seen too much carnage, executed war himself, fought a multiverse of villains, and has lost too many people, so he may as well embrace the spider side of himself.
There was a family of three huddled close to the doors, the wife enveloping the son and the wife’s back against the husband’s, their hands intertwined. The boy had a brand new nerdy natural history museum t-shirt on, the tag still hanging off the sleeve, and was falling asleep standing up, the mom smiling softly as she had him leaned against her. Peter’s heart ached hollowly. He turned his gaze away, his eyes following the floor as he avoided eye contact while observing the other Gothamites. An elderly lady with an elaborate updo sat with her cane in front of her, a whole gaggle of business commuters in suits Peter waded through earlier, a few pairs of grouped teenagers, all in varying clothing styles— one pair was extremely punk with a lot of leather, one of the teens even having a bright orange mohawk; another group was a peppy cheerleader and a pervy-acting jock boyfriend; the other a group of eclectic hippies and skaters.
Considering how packed subway trains could be, Peter was thankful there was space between him and the pounding heartbeats. He spent the entire ride tensed, hood up and body leaned as casually as possible. He wasn’t trying to point himself out as an outsider to the locals. The spider tapped against him, and it was brought to his attention the train was slowing down.
The screeching of the rails hurt Peter’s ear as the car came to a complete stop, the doors opening. The spider climbed off, wandering back up to it’s place in its web. The teenager wondered if these spiders could sense his anxiety, but that would be assuming too much of a spider. He had his traits, mutating as they may be, because of a radioactive bioengineered experimental spider species, not because he was a small common spider (no offense meant towards his new friends). With regular spiders (and the mutated one) he had zero clue if they could actually feel emotion, and if they could, Peter doubted it would have the complex emotional range of a human.
It was his turn to exit, weaving through the fair of people coming in and leaving with practised ease. Moving in a crowd, disappearing, was something Peter knew. It was one of the skills that had Tony both impressed and disturbed by, because Nat and Bucky had both stated they had only taught him basic survival skills, but that Peter was able to do the disappearing act as if it had been second nature. It had improved in a minor way with their teachings, but not even the supersoldier could spot him in a crowd once he made his move. Tony had trouble getting even Friday to spot him on the cameras (though, that was easier than his crowd disappearing skill, especially since Peter knew its blindspots).
Peter found his way out the tunnel through the commuters, up the stairs and to the streets above. The clock on a nearby building told him he had approximately ten minutes to make it to the soup kitchen and shelter, so he booked it as quickly as humanly possible. He was tempted to try out his new natural web, but really didn’t want to draw attention or accidentally have his web snap from disuse.
He made it to the doors right as the lady was snapping a pen to her clipboard. She was a bit irritated at his sudden appearance, but took down his name (he used Ben Stark instead, and really he didn’t mean to but he panicked and ended up lying). Ben (Peter) took his place on the line, waiting patiently, keeping his head down. Most people in the shelter didn’t look too far off from the people who attended F.E.A.S.T., except for the huge brickhouse of a man that saddled up behind him the moment he settled into the rhythm of the line.
“Haven’t seen you around before, you new in town?” The man’s voice is clear, and when Peter focuses on him it dawns on him that he recognizes his heartbeat as Red Hood.
“Yeah, new in town,” Peter narrows his eyes, a bit irritated that his spidey sense hadn’t given him a heads up, but he supposed since Red Hood hadn’t been a threat, him in civvies wouldn’t be either. Somehow he knew Hood was no threat to him . The line moves and Peter focuses on his tray and says yes as two different people serve him. It was a stew of sorts, thick of different vegetables and some small beef chunks and a chunk of bread. He smiles brightly at the volunteers, thanking them, their faces both shocked yet happy they were being acknowledged. He could feel Red Hood’s gaze on him the entire time.
When he sits at a corner cafeteria table facing the entrance, Hood sits across from him.
“So, newbie, what’s your name?” He asks, taking a sip of his water. Before he can stop himself his eyes widen, openly agap at his appearance. Red Hood had black hair with a white streak in front, his blue eyes shifted and appeared almost green. Since the color did shift between tones, it made Peter curious if his own eyes looked like that in passing but with his brown color.
Peter messes with his hair for a moment, and the civilian vigilante’s eyes focus on the white streak in his hair. So , Hood was playing civilian with him. Made sense, with whatever enhancements that green goo gives he still shouldn’t expect Peter to recognize him without his mask on. That was definitely because of his spider genes, somehow .
“Ben, what about you?” Peter continues to stare openly at him, narrowing his eyes as he watches Hood twitch. Granted, Hood does a good job at hiding his surprise, seeing as he’s definitely expecting him to say ‘Peter’. His eyes do light up in a sense of amusement though.
“Jason,” he nods. Peter nods and finally breaks his open examination of Hood’s appearance to take a big spoonful of stew. It was kind of gritty, like they hadn’t properly dissolved the bouillon cubes. But the vegetables were plentiful and the small meat cubes were just big enough to actually be chewed. Peter was hit instantly with how hungry he was, so he attempted to focus on matching the pace of other people eating.
“What brings you to Gotham, kid?” Jason asks, observing him as Peter tears a chunk off his stale bread to soak it into the soup. He could stick to the story he told Hood, but why bother being serious when he could have a little bit of fun? Peter Parker may play the part of respectful young man, but these people, the vigilantes who seem to be stalking him, in suit and out, didn’t know Peter. No one knew him anymore. He was alone (besides his newfound spider brethren) and had no form of entertainment, what harm could it really do? No one would believe it anyways. Peter glances around and leans in, motioning for Jason to do the same. When he does, a curious expression on his face, the teen speaks.
“I’m actually on a top secret mission, sent by a leading scientist of New York City to bring Gotham and therefore the world down once and for all.” A wicked grin crosses Peter’s face, and he can tell Jason, if it was possible, was sweating , his form still as soon as he mentioned a mission with a scientist. Maybe that was too close to what happened. He suddenly shifts his serious expression into a goofy one and lets out a louder, more obnoxious laugh.
“Man you should’ve seen your face!” Peter silently slaps the table, exaggerating his enjoyment of the gag.
“What—” Jason begins, before Peter cuts him off.
“Sorry man, I had to mess with you. You’re so serious, is that normal for ya or is it just with the newbies?” He shakes his head, waving off the man. Jason looks a bit irritated at first, a swath of green overtaking his eyes for a moment before it blinked away, and he was chuckling under his breath.
“Yeah, not a great joke, Benny boy. We have a lot of rogues in the city that would do just that.” Under his breath, in which he definitely assumed Peter couldn’t hear it, Hood continued, “thought I was gonna have to actually call B.” Oh good , Peter thought, they hadn’t reported him to Batman yet.
“You look like me,” he found himself speaking to Jason before he could stop his wandering mouth. He closes it tightly, bringing his hands up to his face, hovering to cover his mouth. Even the man across from him looked surprised.
“Yeah, I guess we might be similar.” Hood nods, leaning forward on an elbow and observing Peter for a moment more. The both of them evaluate each other.
“So what are you actually doing in Gotham?” Jason asks, narrowing his eyes at Peter’s continued silence and the odd ‘prank’ choice he had undertaken.
“My guardian moved us. Got a promotion or whatever. Did you know the crime rate here is damn near if not 100%?” Peter answered immediately, rattling off the statistics just as a habit of cover.
“Where’s your guardian now?” At this question, Peter knows it’s meant to trip him up. He can obviously guess that Babs, or Oracle , informed Red Hood of the places he’d looked up and Hood went to find him. Even if unconfirmed, it looked damn sure Peter was homeless and lying about his guardian. But he was damned if he was going to be taken in by CPS as an adult-minded teenager. He was already basically 18! But Peter also knows the minute he makes it clear he’s alone, these motherfuckers (pardon his French) would not be leaving him alone. That’s just the type of people they seemed to be. It was how Ned and MJ were . It was how Aunt May was . He was pretty sure that was how these new people were.
“Happy works, a lot,” Peter shrugs, filling his mouth with more food.
“Is Happy your guardian? What a nickname, what does he do?” Jason all but whistled, and Peter gave it to him, he’s a perfect actor. Had he not made a point to memorize his heartbeat, he definitely wouldn’t have recognized Hood immediately. Sure, he would have figured it out, but Hood was so casually seeming he felt he had to answer his questions. No— he wanted to. The man had begun to eat his meal when Peter could finally talk with his swallowed bites.
“Yeah, Tony gave him the nickname. He didn’t like it for a while but I think it’s grown on him. He works in private security, so we go to a lot of places.” Peter smiled, blankly looking up at the ceiling, picturing the day Mr. Stark introduced them to each other. He’s brought back to reality when Jason comes into focus, who has all but cleaned the bowl of stew in front of him. Peter takes his final bites of stew.
“Who’s Tony?” Jason’s chosen expression was relatively confused, an innocent question really, and takes more food into his own mouth. Peter, however, thought this was the perfect time to curve it away. He gave the vigilante the exact same information he had earlier in an entirely new conversation. He swallows his final bite and takes a sip of his water cup. Before he can give a sassy response about stranger danger, Jason slides his bread in front of Peter.
“Here, I ain’t gonna eat it,” he nods. Peter takes it, hands unable to refuse the sustenance his still body craved.
“Thanks. You lived in Gotham your whole life?” Peter asks, pointedly not answering the question asked of him.
“Mostly. I spent some time… abroad, a while back. But Gotham is home, always has been. Which is why I’m here, be careful kid, it’s dangerous. Really you shouldn’t be out past dark, but…” Jason smiled grimly, his words were pressurized by an unknown weight, something strained in the way he avoided the topic, the expression shifting into a serious straight look at Peter as he continued to talk.
“I’m not a kid, but thanks for the warning, I’ll take it seriously,” Peter’s cocked head and tense body language rivaled his casual tone as he spoke. Hood sighed in relief and leaned back in his chair.
“Good, I’m heading out, I have—I work nightshift. Make sure you stop by the front table for anything you might want or need,” the man goes from leaning back to standing in a split second.
“Ohhh, night shift. Wow, that’s rough buddy,” Peter razzed him, giving him a crooked grin and a nod as Jason left. He was off to be Red Hood, that sly bat.
Notes:
It’s not in Peter’s knowledge, but the first bit is what takes place immediately when he leaves the library. Sorry if the characters seem a little OOC, i'm still getting a feel for their speech!
I’ll get better with time.
Smaller chapter= better quality, for tonight!
Chapter 8: Shelter
Summary:
Peter gets new things, finds a home, disassociates and has a mini episode, and does some light breaking and entering.
Notes:
I was gonna update yesterday but ended up adding more and leaving it for today. Shorter chapter than usual, but that's because I'm doing the world building before real shit comes in.
Thanks for sticking with me! I have many a plans!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
As soon as Jason exits the dining hall, Peter gets up and racks his tray in the dirty pile. Head on a swivel, he does as the vigilante suggested, and goes to the front table. There’s no one manning it, but there’s a few backpacks that are fully packed next to a sheet to put down a name of who took what. The instructions are clear, Peter just had to sign his name to take one. Honestly, he’s just thankful he doesn’t have to talk to anyone, it was hard to keep talking the vigilantes into circles. He writes Ben Stark down on the paper and throws his new belongings on his back. Afterwards, he wanders to a small lobby area to the left of the entrance, the one he had pointedly ignored in the face of food to eat. There’s a free bin of miscellaneous sweaters, jackets and outerwear adjacent to the announcement board. Looking around and seeing no one, Peter saddles up to the free bin and begins combing through it, eager to find another jacket. Normally he wouldn’t have wanted to take another, worried he would take it from someone else in need, but he was in need . He was still freezing, and the changes to his mutations and powers seemed to extend to his thermoregulation. Besides, Jason, Babs, and Red Robin and Spoiler all knew what he was wearing now. If he was caught on camera at the library after hours, they would easily be able to pick him out in his very recognizable gifted hoodie. At this rationalization, Peter searches until he finds a black (fake) leather jacket with an attached hood that was also black but very much a cheaper, lighter fabric. It was not at all his style, but it was very Gotham , and he figured in a place he still knew very little about it’d be best to blend in. Besides, he kinda liked the idea of having his spider friends hanging off each stud and strap on fabric that donned the punky jacket. Maybe he could get some of them to stay with him (Peter was pretty sure spiders weren’t normally social creatures, but so far they had shown an unnaturally high affinity towards him).
Once sure no one was watching his every move (there was one volunteer, an older woman, watching him like a hawk watches a field mouse) he slips out of the building, stashing his new jacket in the bag without taking so much as a look into it.
As much as he was interested in staying at a shelter with a decent bed, any thought of that crumbled when he thought of CPS and vigilantes getting involved. He wanted to stay off their radar as much as possible, at least until he figured himself out. Peter isn’t sure what he wanted to do, but with some food in his body and the sun going down ever so slowly, he comes to the realization he forgot to print all of the documentation he needed to even get access to everything he worked on in the library. Tomorrow when he goes to the post office he’d need his documentation to prove he was the person with the PO box. He mentally chided himself, shaking his head and groaning as he stopped himself a few steps outside the shelter. He stealthily scanned his surroundings, but Peter couldn’t hear any familiar heartbeats, and as far as he could tell no one was watching, so it was the perfect time to move. He would have to sneak back in and hack into the computer and printer system, leaving before anyone was the wiser.
But first, shelter. He needed a home base to return to, and Babs would likely be at the library until very late. Thank you, Jason, for the not-so-obvious, obvious heads up. His best bet would be at a point in time where Babs would step away from the building for even a moment, though he didn’t know if she did that.
Peter walked forward, towards Crime Alley and away from the (just fractionally) less dangerous streets of Burnley, pulling the map pamphlet out of his pocket and taking note of the cross streets he passes. He avoided alleys and streets and turns that made the back of his neck tingle, straight up ran (at a very inhuman pace) from two muggers before they could even pull a knife, and kept himself moving relatively quickly until he reached a darkened area that seemed relatively unpopulated, even for the usually occupied yet abandoned buildings. A part of him itched to climb, to skitter across the rooftops. A part of him even wanted to find a tidy corner and web up—wait. Peter really was craving a dark corner to spin his web. What the actual hell. That… that will be a problem for future Peter. If it was a problem. Maybe it could be a new coping mechanism, who knows.
At the end of this particular street Peter found himself on was a building that appeared to have been blown up partially, the bottom street floor being completely open but had concrete support beams still intact, albeit charred. The buildings surrounding it were all boarded up heavily, and Peter could barely hear a single rat let alone a human. There were a lot of tittering spiders around, however. If anything, it brought him a weird sense of peace. The second floor collapsed into the first, but the third was still relatively whole, with the stairs to it destroyed by whatever explosion or fire that had taken out the first two floors. The third floor windows were blown out on the front, but when Peter checked the alleyways, they somehow remained closed and locked in the back, which was perfect safety for someone who could stick to any surface. Perfect for Peter Parker’s new residence.
After a brief inspection of the supports and the surrounding area, he deemed it safe to scale, so he skittered up a support and into the broken window that housed the (semi-nonfunctional) stairwell on the third floor landing. Once inside, he explored the floor to find two apartments, one of which had a door wide open with scorch marks emanating from the cracked open floors that hadn’t entirely broken apart. If he squinted he could see through the gap onto the bottom floor.
The other apartment had a door that was warped shut, but when Peter decided to use a bit of strength the thing cracked apart and off the frame— he’d fix it later if it was livable. Inside was a dusty but relatively uncluttered living space lacking most personal effects with a decent olive green couch front and center, facing the wall he faced when entering. The kitchen (if you could even call it that) was on the wall to the right, across from the arms of the couch, and was a set of three cabinets, both above and below, with a fridge and a sink. The fridge lacked the humm of electricity it should, so Peter doesn’t bother opening it. If there was spoiled food, he’d wait to deal with it. On top of one of the few counters was a burner plate, unplugged and dusty. It looked like it was old when it was abandoned.
The power didn’t work (for now), but if Peter could (casually) build an arc reactor and adapt it to at least be able to be plugged into, he could power a heater and if he had tools he could fix or even upgrade the burner in the kitchen. It’d be crude to some of his previous arc reactor work, seeing as he’ll have to dumpster dive for parts and tools, but he could do it.
He had spent plenty of time with Tony in the lab and had, under his tutelage, expanded upon his engineering skills greatly. If he could get a soldering kit, amongst other supplies, he could really make something out of nothing. Materials wise he was positive he could easily find substitutes, or figure out how to make up for the lack of a part. He always had a knack for it, and frequently dumpster dived before Tony came into the picture, but he had really thought up a lot of things Peter hadn’t dared to think up before he got the “internship”. Then he had received nearly endless resources of supplies and tools, space, but had an obvious time limit between school, his friends, Aunt May, and Spider-manning.
All Peter had now was time, and yet he had no supplies or tools or lab. He was completely alone and in another universe where no one he loved existed. His hands curl into fists at his side, the green washing over his mind in a nauseating wave. There may be threads, remnants or pieces of people and places he knew, but this wasn’t his old world. There was no Tony or Aunt May, or Happy. No MJ or Ned. No Nat or Bucky, or Steve , or Sam, or Stephen. No Matt . His chest heaved and he seemed to be in a panic state, but it was… far away. Almost as if he wasn’t totally present in his own body.
Something was very wrong. Peter suddenly felt his stomach drop, a sense of dread filling it. His senses weren’t there— at least they weren’t as they should be. He felt sluggish, like he was moving in thick water. Like he was wading through a Lazarus ‘pit ’, as the others had called it.
Peter’s head jerks back, his hand throbbing as he comes to his senses and finds himself standing on the ceiling of the dark, open cavern that made up the bottom floor of the building. He’s positioned past the crack that peeked through to the other apartment on the third floor, the pulsating hand had reached a section of rubbled wall that remained at the second story, the punch mark clear as the concrete was cracked and crumbling from the force. Blood smeared Peter’s knuckles. He immediately drops to a crouch, hands coming up to run through his hair and down his face. In the darkness of the night, he focused and heard sirens on all sides of the city, a pitter patter of rain as it began to sprinkle down, and could smell damp, mixed with an acrid toxicity, sewage, tar and rotten food. He could smell his blood. He needs to get inside.
Scurrying on all fours, he gets back to the apartment he had scouted and decides to lay in the corner of the ceiling above the door for a moment to catch his breath, his chest heaving as he breathes heavily out of panic. He hadn’t even realized the green had overtaken him. His spiraling had sufficiently lulled him and he had forgotten his control. He didn’t know exactly what symptoms were a result of green goo and what was the result of his universe travel, as well as the effects of each on his mutations. What if him losing control of his body was a result of that green Lazarus goo mutating his spider genes? He would do almost anything to be able to do some tests on himself right now. It would, however, require a lot of specialty equipment to do the things he wanted to do.
This was not a priority at the moment, however, since he needed to return to the library now that he had a place to return to. There was no doubt in his mind the Oracle would have security cameras in the building and around the entrances, granted he hadn’t seen any on the roof access he had entered through. Maybe it’s because normal people and criminals can’t get to the roof without being noticed by other cameras? It was an oversight, that’s for sure. An oversight he would be taking full spidery advantage of. Babs hadn’t noticed his minor break-in the first night as far as he knew, so that was his best shot at getting in. He’d have to rely on his sketchy hacking skills, which he hoped hadn’t set off any alarm bells quite yet. He was just thankful the library computers weren’t as modern as they were in his previous reality, it made it easier for him. Ned always had told him he was the type of hacker to fail successfully (and he was inclined to believe it, especially now that he lived in the new shitty reality of Gotham, New Jersey).
Finally at a baseline calm (which was not as calm as he wanted, but in a place that had the hairs on his body standing on end constantly he’d take what he could get), he walked the ceiling and flips down onto the couch, coughing as it pops dust and soot everywhere in the air. Oops.
Once settled, Peter removes his new backpack from his back and examines the contents. Setting aside his fake leather jacket, he found a toothbrush and travel size toothpaste, a gas mask of some sort (it wasn’t quite “are you my mummy” style, but he wouldn’t say it was a Stark style rebreather either), three epipens of Joker Antivenom, a small first aid kit with a few Batman bandaids and alcohol wipes, two calorie dense protein bars, a packet of bus, subway, and free services locations pamphlets, a pen and a small writing pad, and two bottles of water. The reviews weren’t kidding when they said Wayne shelters had the best haul. Peter didn’t even think F.E.A.S.T. gave out this type of stuff— well, he supposed there were no toxic chemical attacks done by villainess rogues in his reality to make giving these things out necessary in the first place. Gotham seriously had a problem. Was it because it was New Jersey or just a result of the serious curses on the land? Peter would have to want to untangle history for that answer, and he didn’t. History was always one of his poorest subjects, though he never failed it. He figured back in New York that he was always living through historical events anyways, and had direct lines to two of many sources if he really needed to know (i.e. Bucky and Steve).
He takes the notebook he had nicked from the library and the book from the lab where it had been hidden in his waistband and slides them inside, along with the pencil and pamphlets of the library from his pocket. The pamphlet with the overarching map comes out, along with the pen, and Peter marks where he is now along with where the shelter and the subway stop was.
Releasing a big sigh, he tucks the items back in his bag and springs back up to the ceiling, holding his leather jacket, at this point too tired to not be spidery. It’s not like there was anyone to worry about seeing him in his current state. There wasn’t another heartbeat for a whole block besides the animals scurrying around the alleys.
It suddenly occurs to him, while he’s walking casually on the ceiling out the door, there may be spider friends to meet in his new, dusty home. That could be done later, when he has everything he needs and could sleep.
Slipping out of his newly claimed squat, Peter runs down the street at a human pace while shrugging on his extra jacket, eager to reach the subway station before the last train stops. He’d use the cover of the deep night to come back quickly, but there was no need to exhaust himself further when he could catch a ride back to the library. His hands come up to check his two hoods once more as he reaches the entrance, nervous to not let his face be caught by cctv, regardless if anyone would know him or not, and regardless if Babs or the whole gaggle of vigilantes on his butt knew he was actually living around Burnley. Ever since Beck framed him and his identity was revealed to the world with the subsequent fallout, he still felt uneasy and nauseated anytime a camera was near him. He loved photography, and even found solace in taking photos at times, but the minute the lense turned on him, his world would tilt and he felt an immeasurable sense of dread. Best to stay under the radar here. He saw the Batman drama tabloids.
Peter uses the hand rails to slide down the stairs, falling into a rhythm New York City had seen of him as he jumps off and speed walks to the turnstile, which he slides over, and down a shorter set of stairs until he reaches the landing itself. Peter manages to step inside a car right as the doors go to shut, and he’s off. The train back to the district the library is in is quiet, a low murmuring of a few other passengers, focusing his senses on the people and environment and not the shrieks of the rails and echoing rattle of the tunnels. Peter tried not to be disappointed there was no spider on an advertisement for him to gain comradery with.
The trip didn’t take long, but it felt much longer than the trip he took to the shelter. By the time he exited the underground, the clouds shrouded the moon and left many places in eerie darkness, or dull and buzzing yellows and fluorescents, including the streets he had taken before. Gotham’s alleyways in Burnley and Crime Alley had screamed danger, whereas there was a duller hum around here. Peter observed as he leaned back against a building close to his exit, less people milling about and the borough was better lit (though still dark as hell, seriously what was the problem with this city and lights) with more obvious security measures as he quickly took his map out to note where he was and where he had to get before he stuffed it back into his pocket. With a better idea of where to go in the darkness, Peter found his way back to the square he had been led to the night before using landmarks and spiders along the way. They seemed to want to help him. Now came the relatively easy part, breaking into the library.
As he landed on the same rooftop with the door to the library, which was still devoid of cameras, Peter eased his way through the broken door (yikes, sorry Babs) and down the steps to the maintenance room. As he gets to the interior door, Peter gingerly climbs onto the wall on all fours and opens the door carefully. He can’t sense anyone in the building, so Babs may have left for the night— though he had a feeling she would be back very soon.
Either way, no one was in the building. Not knowing when he’d get a better chance, he ties the strings on his jacket hoods together and climbs through the top of the doorway and onto the ceiling of the connecting room. There were definitely cameras, but he can and will exploit the most overlooked blindspot of cameras in buildings designed like this by crawling on the ceiling, as flat as possible. He was in a wide hallway that seemed to be a maintenance section of the floor, and he finds the hallway opening up through double wide doors into a utility stairwell. He climbs down, only able to avoid half the cameras here as he makes it to the second floor. He exits and enters a very small maintenance room, that then exits next to the very bathrooms he had cleaned himself up in hours prior. The cameras would definitely catch him entering and exiting doorways, but his goal was just not to be recognized immediately. As long as he got away tonight, he can manage. Just keep moving, Peter. He gets to the second floor computers, only to discover the only computers with printers readily connected were the three downstairs in the lobby, ones that were distinctly visible to the front desk where Babs was earlier. Peter scrubs at his face with his hands, before double checking his leather jacket is buttoned and zipped closed out of anxiety. It was time to put one of his working theories to the test; Peter crawls down one further story.
Once he’s on the ceiling directly above the computers and printers he needed, he pulls back his sleeves to where his natural webbing would come from, and points it between his feet. He motions like Peter 2 had and it works, his hand wrapped around the short strand and pulled with one hand with his whole weight. The string doesn't budge, though it stretches a little. Peter takes a leap of faith and shoots another, this time lowering himself down on it, upside down, as he would have with his artificial webs, slowly and evenly. Once at his desired height, he releases it like Peter 2 had shown him and flips to land gently on his feet on the floor.
Shaking out his nerves for a moment, Peter casts a low glance around, noticing a few cameras that obviously faced him. They likely have motion based sensors, so he’d have to move quickly. The longer he was recorded the longer they had footage to pick apart. He immediately began his work, the first step being to get into the computer without a log in, as he had done once before. Peter succeeds, barely scraping past the mid level security bug Oracle had no doubt set up herself. He’s printing the last of the documents he needs when he senses someone at the front entrance. By heartbeat alone, he recognizes it as Babs, who’s digging in her bag for her keys as she speaks to someone in an unsettled yet confident tone. Peter doesn’t bother listening in, too anxious to do anything but focus on the printer. As soon as it finishes ejecting the final page, Peter wipes the evidence of him rifling through Bab’s systems and shuts the computer and printer off. He gathers all the papers up and stuffs them into his refurbished notebook, placing the book back into his backpack, all but leaping up to the ceiling just as the woman opens the door and enters the building, her head on a swivel as she looks around, but not up.
As she continues to her desk, chatting with someone, Peter moves with her, getting up to the second floor before he can sense her eyes looking up. He’s already making a swift skittering exit onto the third floor and ensuing rooftop by the time Babs is able to pull the minor security footage recorded of the library’s newest mysterious intruder (i.e. Peter) up.
Notes:
I think weekly updates will happen but I don't know what day, sorry not sorry. I still have a lot of passion for this but going back for a family event last weekend had me get sick (I think it was a fever but I kinda brute forced my first day through it, then spent three days taking dayquil and nyquil). I've been falling asleep relatively early because of how little sleep I got while on my mini vacation and because nyquil knocks me tf out!!!1 But I sleep best in my own bed, I could not sleep in that hot ass weather either.
Chapter 9: Discussion
Summary:
Red Hood has a mild breakdown, sets fire to a warehouse, and then the batfamily review what they've found and what they were told about Peter. Peter finally gets back to his new 'home' in Crime Alley to rest.
Notes:
okay y'all, suspend your disbelief and let me cook. I'm not the most well versed in batfam personality but I'm doing my best. I would say I’m sorry for any ooc content but Im really not worried about it because apparently even some comic writers barely give certain characters personalities sometimes- makes sense for a fandom that has a tag "dc stands for disregard canon"
Basically my source is I made it the fuck up
This chapter starts with third person omniscient as usual, but the focus is on the batfam members for the most part.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Red Hood wouldn’t say he was in crisis. He wouldn’t say he was handling the new pit kid’s little scientist joke poorly, and he wouldn’t admit to his family that it grated on his nerves and incited that green anxiety that often ramped into rage, of which he had worked so long to cope with. B would definitely have some things to say about the way he blew off steam, and Alfred would definitely give him an earful about the way he sometimes disregarded his own well-being— sometimes (who was Jason kidding). However, B sure as hell couldn’t say jack. None of his family could, except maybe Damian, who (most of the time) just argued his own decisions were well-thought out based on his analysis of the situations at hand (granted he had gotten better since moving into the mansion about owning his fuck-ups and learning from them, though he would glower at Jason for calling them fuck-ups).
If giving a bloody, savage beating to goons and killing all the big heads of the newest trafficking ring that just happened to open up shop in his territory right when Peter popped up on his radar was his version of blowing off steam, well that was his business. In fact, it’s almost done business. No, Red Hood was not having a crisis. It didn’t matter these guys had nothing to do with the lab they found, he still had to clean up. More gunshots rang out in the darkened warehouse.
Oracle had sent him to the base of operations, where none of the people were held, mainly because the boss didn’t like seeing his victims, calling them dirty lowlife scum. Hood had, for the night, temporarily allowed Batman and Robin to enter his territory on the promise they would rescue the people locked in shipping containers by the docks. The downtrodden people of Gotham’s Crime Alley still deserved safety, and Jason couldn’t be in two places at once.
He hadn’t told them about his own mission location, just that he was tracking the heads. B had, of course, attempted to get him to use the comms during this particular mission, but Hood had a particular method in waste disposal that his ‘dear old dad’ didn’t quite agree with. Fuck B and his ‘no-killing’ rule.
Almost as a punctuation to his thoughts, Hood’s gun fired more rounds through the last door, pinning the big bossman in fear to his chair as Jason kicked it in, stalking up to his desk. The man is shuddering, pale and in shock at the bullets that seemed to bracket and trace his figure in the walls and furniture around him. As Hood is about to speak, the eel of a man’s expression turns angry, his lips curling in rage and eyes alight with a familiar flame of retaliation.
Hood can’t for the life of him remember the guy's name, but it didn’t really matter. The bossman begins reaching for his own gun, which had been sitting at an angle on his desk, but is dead before he can even touch the whisper of it. Jason’s own gun is tucked back in his holster as he saunters up to the body, pushing it, in the chair, away from the desk. He spends the next forty minutes digging through every possible paper, document, record and stub in the room, despite knowing there was no connection between this trafficking chapter and the lab Peter escaped from. He had to be sure.
Now Jason knew most of the rogues in Gotham would have the motive and scientific know-how to at least kidnap and torture a kid only to resurrect him in the Lazarus pod. He could think of a particular league who would resurrect a weapon of a kid. Despite the whole thing being in jest, Jason’s gut was telling him something about Peter, about Happy and Tony, didn’t match up.
Upon playing their conversation over and over again in his head, he found he had no new information, with only the joke being new to their interaction, but at the same time, Hood realizes he wouldn’t have been able to address it because to Peter, he was two different people. He was smart, both street-wise and seemingly clever and skilled at avoiding giving full answers to questions asked of him.
Bringing him back to the present was the calm after the green burning rage had reared its ugly mug, where he had exited the office. He had all the important information, the next step was scene clean up. Unfortunately for the piece of shit who trafficked children and women and sometimes entire families, there would be no burial. He had beaten the hell out of a bunch of goons, probing them for any information on schemes involving the Lazarus Pit or kidnapped kids from New York, killed the ‘central table’ which was code for the big heads of the operation, and was setting fire to the office to destroy the place. Like he said, his family would not be happy with how he was conducting himself. But fuck ‘em. As far as Jason was considered, despite his bat insignia, he is his own man. He answered to no one and protected Crime Alley as one of their own the best he could. Someone had to do it.
As soon as he had left Peter, or ‘Ben’ as he went by at the shelter, he had itched to react . He wasn’t sure why the kid was changing his name, but it did not forebode well for the cover story Red Hood was originally told, and it certainly pointed Jason to the conclusion he had been worried about in the first place, that being child trafficking and experimentation.
It was obvious Peter was off kilter, but he had been so cognitive they were all thrown off, and had no leads on who he was until the tests came back, at the very least. That being said, Peter conducted himself like someone who lived and breathed a somewhat familiar trauma— and then some; he watched when Peter’s entire body tensed in a familiar, guarded and nearly inhuman way when he had felt backed into a corner, but still looked to Red Hood in his unease. The glare in his eyes was so unbelievably trusting for a kid who was on edge at every other sound and slight movement, and he had trusted the vigilante to ensure his safety. Jason had a feeling this was significant (he was correct, though would receive no confirmation of it for some time).
“I’m sure I won’t get a straight answer as to what you were doing, but please tell me you’re alright,” Bab voices out in his ear, the comm crackling to life as soon as he turns it on. Hood hums, returning to himself for the time being.
“Just peachy. If you can, send the fire department to my location; bossman started a fire,” from underneath his mask, a crooked grin barely blesses Jason’s face, “ any news from lil Red?” At his response, a scoff is heard over the comm.
“Hey I told you not to call me that—” Tim butts in, voice mildly irritated.
“Enough already, you two,” Babs says just as Steph breaks through and says “I have too important of plans tomorrow morning for you two to waste my time!” She was going out with Cass tomorrow and absolutely did not have time for brotherly hijinks if she wanted to get a good night's sleep. Both men give a groan of irritation followed by barely a moment of silence which was promptly disturbed by Red Robin.
“Is thrifting really what you consider important at this moment?” Tim teases, a low laugh audible as he rolls his eyes from his location.
“Oh beef it, lil Red, or I’ll snitch to B about that knife fight you almost lost last weekend,” Steph snarks, huffing into the comm.
“Excuse me that guy only got the drop on me because you—” at their bickering Red Hood decidedly interrupts.
“So are you gonna tell us what the deal is with the kid or what?” He gruffly asks, tone almost sounding as if he was pouting (at least it sounded like that to Babs and Steph). Jason looks around at the now empty warehouse that was beginning to burn. He cocks his head to the left and the right once more before nodding to himself, confident he cleared the area, and walking to the exit of the dark warehouse. As he makes his way out, he finds a spot far enough from the building to not feel the complete heat of the fire, but close enough to ensure no one enters until the fire department arrives.
“Yeah , Red Robin, we’re awaiting this grand reveal… c’mon, who is this kid?” Steph’s tone is jaunty, relaxed even as he munches on something. She was definitely sitting in her room at the family manor, at her desktop, eating late night snacks Alfred prepared.
“Okay, here’s the thing… I couldn’t find a single match. Not even a partial. This kid’s photo doesn’t exist as far as our codex is concerned,” at the admittedly exhausted sounding admission from Tim, there’s a clamor of dissonant voices.
“Bullshit, B’s got every living person on that thing, check it again.” Hood all but snarls, a tinge of green seeding his vision.
“There’s no way he isn’t in the codex! Unless he’s from a literal cave in the middle of nowhere, his information has got to have been wiped out.” Steph speaks up about halfway through Hood’s outburst, groaning in frustration.
“What can you tell us about the blood sample?” Babs pointedly moves past the frustrated young adults, but Red Hood remains in his head. A pit kid who’s information likely got entirely wiped from all systems, a ghost, for all intents and purposes. What purpose, his mind could only guess (and these fearful thoughts would continue to persist, clawing at his throat with every interaction and glimpse of trauma he would see in Peter’s actions, until he got answers ). Sirens become audible as the firefighters begin arriving at the scene. He nods at them and moves on, grappling to a deserted roof nearby.
“Yeah… about that.” They all groaned again at Tim’s intonation, “the only things my tests could tell me were the fact that there were dangerous, and I mean lethal levels of radiation, and that he is at least partially human,” there’s a pause of silence on the comms, enough for them all to hear the clacking of Bab’s keyboard.
“… what do you mean by partially human?” Steph’s voice is almost exaggerated with how puzzled she sounded.
“And what do you mean by lethal levels of radiation?” Babs rushes out, her jaw clenching as if swallowing the information.
“Elaborate.” Hood grits out, his own jaw clenching underneath his mask.
“Look— the sample was botched before I could even collect it, we got it off the floor! There’s also some type of DNA degradation here that even B’s machine can’t recognize with such a small and irradiated sample. It was so splintered I couldn’t find a single identifying gene, let alone a Metagene! The radiation could be a result of an external factor but there weren't any readings on our equipment, so I extrapolated it was the blood itself,” There’s desperate annoyance in Tim’s voice, no doubt fueled by the lack of sleep and distinct overconsumption of coffee.
“Do you think he has one— a metagene? We never established if he was meta or not, just that he was impossible because he could shut off his pit rage like a machine,” Steph points out, exaggerating her tone when it came to the second half of her sentence. She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair comfortably, directing her eyes to the decorated wall above her own desk.
“So if we’re gonna actually ID this kid we need a better sample or a paper trail.” Hood runs a hand over his covered head, sighing deeply.
“Or we can get another blood sample, and a hair sample could work if we can’t get that; we have the Oracle to track him down,” Tim suggests, taking a moment to chug down a half cold half empty coffee cup he found at his desk. Caffeine was caffeine, and Alfred had taken away his fresh coffee an hour ago.
“I hate to be the bearer of more bad news but he wasn’t in any surveillance system I have access to either; I caught him on subway cameras hopping the turnstile but nothing after he exited at his stop. Peter is freakishly good at avoiding cameras and I’ve got no matches using the photo. If he’s a trafficked kid, he went missing long before anybody had any photos of him, or they scrubbed him. I’ve still flagged the areas he was last seen in so when he shows back up I'll be able to find him,” Babs sighs over her comm. Tim nearly coughs his coffee out, surprised at the Oracle being duped by a teenager other than himself (though whether he’s actually duped her is another argument waiting to happen).
“Woah, woah, woah, he evaded all of your cameras? I swear to god if this is another Damian situation.” Steph groans, and it was mentally clear to the others that she drags her hand down her face in mock irritation.
“Hey- names!” Babs says, clicking her tongue.
Fuck, goddamnit,” Hood shuts his comm off temporarily, slamming a fist into the brick beside him as he lands in an alley. It leaves the wall slammed and crumbling where his fist had met the clay. His hands tremble just a moment, letting out a shaky breath only audible to himself. He turns his com back on.
“It’s not another Damian situation, at least I hope for all our sakes it’s not,” Tim sighs, keyboard going tp clack tp tp tp clack as he works through more files and information, occasionally staring blankly at the photo of Peter’s face from the library security camera.
“What about the records? It’s not like he just spawned himself into existence. How many Peter Parkers can there be in Gotham?” Red Hood speaks this time, breathing deeply as he attempts to calm himself down and leans against the dark, damp brick of a crumbling Crime Alley building. They had written off that damn lab and Peter had suffered for it.
What other explanation was there? They knew he was the one in the Lazarus pod they found, he may have played it off well enough but he had residue all over him and the distinct rage and almost fluorescent green rimmed eyes of the Lazarus Pit, not to mention the stark white hair of Peter’s bangs that matched Jason’s own. It was an inscrutable mark of the changes of the Lazarus pit.
“Through the library computer I traced him as Peter Parker, born August 10, 1997, which means his 16th birthday is next week! He just signed up for the Gotham City High School Wayne scholarship exam on Monday. I’m 100% sure he used the street address of his PO box as his home address and there’s no phone number, but there is an email for both him and his guardian, so I’ve tagged it. You all know I’m a chair for the scholarship board for the Wayne Foundation— I received his application and checked given information against our own databases,” Babs takes a moment and settles over her desk, scrolling quietly, she sighs, “Peter’s early records were almost immaculate, the only weird thing is there isn’t a single photo of him, and the parents never had social media. It isn’t necessarily weird, but since they were relatively young it was surprising. There’s tax records, insurance, hospital, rental agreements, and even dental records. He lived with his parents Richard and Mary Parker, who were both CIA desk agents in a New York office until he was six. Both of them died in a plane crash on the way home from a conference in Virginia, and Peter moved in with his aunt and uncle, Ben and May Parker shortly after—”
Thus solving Jason’s mystery of where the name Ben came from, and giving him confirmation it was their Peter, “—and prepare yourselves, because it only gets worse. When he was 13, his uncle died when their apartment building collapsed in on itself. The official statement says he saved Peter by shielding him from shrapnel, but the time frame logged shows the kid would have been with the dead body of his uncle for at least three hours before rescue came.” (Because Peter hadn’t had the heart to deny his Uncle’s legacy, and he had seen the police report in his previous life to replicate it with a technical ease, but hadn’t thought of implications of trauma the original report provided. He was numb to it. Peter hated his insensitivity to the once life shattering event that still haunted him, but he had been through plenty more tragedy since then.)
“What is he competing for the worst tragic backstory ever? Holy shit!” Steph blurts, absolutely befuddled and heartbroken for the teen they had seen the night before. For someone who was so young , to have experienced that. She knew it couldn’t have been easy…
“And his Aunt was murdered a month ago,” At her words, and the loaded way she spoke, a cold chill spikes down every one of the vigilantes’ necks at the revelation. Stephanie’s own eyes gloss over just momentarily as her thoughts drift to her own parents, mainly her father and the trauma she went through, and then she sighs, not overtly sad or depressed but more so as a form of relaxation, an attempt to breathe and to cope. Her eyes flutter shut and when she opens them she’s taking another deep breath, in and out , and glances at the photos above her desk on her corkboard and surrounding wall. They’re prints, some just from her phone and some gifted by Tim. The center one is a ‘family photo’ of Bruce , Alfred, Dick, an obviously peeved Jason, Cassandra, Duke, herself, Tim, and Damian.
It grounds her, and she thinks of her current guardian. She may not view Bruce, and by (obvious) extension, Batman, as her father, but he was most importantly someone she could rely on, trust, and be supported by. He was a figure she could call fatherly , sometimes. She even called him papa B on occasion to pester him, granted, he was finally working on the whole emotional constipation thing that had been going on for a while. Stephanie Brown had a father (and she wasn’t interested in her ex-boyfriend’s father being her own, anyways) but there was safety now, a security in knowing her found family had her back, that they could and would protect her and do the right thing. Peter seemingly had no one, his family all gone one way or another, and was running around after god knows what happened to him.
“They catch the person who did it?” Red Hood’s voice was dangerously low, his body tensed as he landed on another rooftop, having been grappling to his safehouse the entire conversation. The edge to his voice didn’t cut as deeply when the others were thinking the same question.
“ Well , Peter was a witness to the murder itself, and it was marked solved shortly after with a man named Norman Osborn was identified as the assailant. Though, he had a terminal illness and died before he was convicted.” Babs tone wavers at first, becoming soft yet clinical as another beat of silence follows the information as it settles.
Red Hood pauses on the rooftop this time, wondering if this is where Tony and the name Stark came in, and if there would even be any record of him. A month ago meant he wouldn’t have been in the Lazarus pod that long, but the lab had been inactive already for a year. It didn’t make any sense, he was missing something, but he knew he needed more information to get to the bottom of everything. There was a limit to what files and records could give them.
“What about his guardian now?” His voice is eerily calm, and it’s only mildly unsettling to the others on the comm.
“Harold Hogan, which, I’m pretty sure is the man named Happy that Peter mentioned,” Oracle supplies, “He was originally a bodyguard to some private company that was redacted on official documents, but now works as a private security contractor. It looks like he gained custody of Peter a month ago when his Aunt passed. I can’t find any trails connecting the two but since he was named in the will of May Parker, it’s likely he was a family friend.”
“Private security? There’s gotta be a lot of money for that in Gotham.” Red Robin pipes up, his mind moving a mile a minute trying to piece the puzzle that was Peter Parker together. He begins immediately compiling lists of possible employers, both legal and illegal. Unfortunately, Tim was missing big chunks of the big picture, and he knew it. They all knew they were missing major elements. Elements they’d only understand through meeting (or following) and sneaking (prying) information out of the pit kid. Tim wasn’t a stalker, Peter just didn’t seem all that open to sharing the truth thus far. He was interested in finding the truth .
“ Yeaaah , dirty money. If his shit was redacted it had to be government or private businesses, try government first I’m sure it’ll be easier to hack general systems. I’ll do some digging into the organized crime sector here for anyone matching his description,” Red Hood rolls his eyes, taking off once more. Tim hates to agree with Jason, but he had already begun cross referencing his slowly growing list of possible employers with every variation of Harold “Happy” Hogan’s name he could think of.
“We don’t know if he’s dirty, Hood,” Steph says, “he could’ve just been dealt a bad hand.”
“What if this Hogan guy is a trafficker? I mean, private security with no solid connections to the aunt but somehow ends up with custody of a kid? I think it’s a valid theory,” Steph speaks up this time, “but we shouldn’t assume anything about Peter.” She finishes, glancing back at her family portrait.
“We shouldn’t rule anything out yet,” Oracle nods to herself.
“Anything else you could find about the kid?” Red Hood asks, finally reaching the roof of a nearby building to his own safehouse.
“He went to a school called Midtown School of Science and Technology in New York through the self-study program, so unfortunately it’s likely he wasn’t well known. He crushed his classes with almost perfect grades in every advanced class except in history and was tested into the twelfth grade this past school year,” at this biographic information, Tim and Steph gasp.
“No way, if he gets into Gotham City High, he’s going to be in our classes!” Steph squeals, a big grin spreading across her face.
“If? He’s definitely going to get in with that full ride scholarship. His transcript is impeccable and he even has some college credits, and he’s into biochemistry and engineering!” Tim excitedly adds, easily reviewing the records from Midtown he had pulled up the minute the name left Bab’s mouth. Babs clears her throat and they both cease their thrilled chattering, the teens easily forgetting the gravity of the entire situation at the prospect of getting to be undercover on their own school time, school time they often skipped or slept through.
“Peter also has mild to severe allergies to peppermint, cayenne pepper, chestnuts, and citrus but other than that a clean bill of health. Though the last logged check up was shortly before his uncle passed away,” Babs frowns, huffing at the gap in medical records with little to no explanation. Although there were plenty of things that could affect this, like poverty, socioeconomic class, and accessibility, there was also a chance, a jumping to conclusions type chance, Babs noted, it was a sign of wanting to hide something. Like if there were cruel experiments being conducted with or without guardian knowledge. Barbara Gordon shuddered at her leap in anxiety.
“He’s also got a twitter account with no pictures of himself, though it does use his actual name, and some posts, his username is ‘realqueenskid’,” and Babs could almost see Tim and Steph racing each other to check the account, curious at what could be found out.
“He’s a Wonder Woman fan; almost every interaction he has with external accounts is fan related. He isn’t very active, and has literally no followers,” Tim frowns, seeing a backlog of only a year of posts, though he supposed Peter was barely 16, it was odd for someone his age to not be wholly on social media.
“At least he’s got taste,” Steph smiles and nods in approval, instantly searching other sites for the same username, hoping to find his other accounts only for nothing to turn up.
“So what do we do about him? I know we didn’t want to tell B yet, but he’s going to get suspicious at our silence on the comms tonight.” Tim asks after a moment of scrolling.
“We do nothing for now,” Babs answers matter-of-factly, “Batman and Robin are finishing up the situation of trafficked Gothamites Hood and I uncovered and you all will go about business-per-usual.”
“I don’t want Peter on B’s radar until we know enough about him. He’s a pit kid, that makes him my responsibility.” Red Hood grits out, his teeth clenched. Something was up with the Lazarus pod they found, and he needed to figure out where that stood before facing Batman. He refused to let this situation slip into his hands. He may be doing better overall, but like he had mentioned before, he didn’t just not want to hand over Peter to Bruce. He couldn’t. The deepest darkest green inside him refused to budge, to need help. Not with a pit kid. Not with Peter.
“He’ll find out eventually, whether or not we tell him,” Tim voices what everyone is thinking. A beat of silence passes over them.
“We’ll cross that bridge when it comes. Batman has called it for the night,” Oracle calls over the comm. The team of vigilantes call goodnight over comms, not nearly as cheery as they had been at the start, and the line goes silent.
It’s not until an hour later, when Babs had just gotten home to her apartment and into her pajamas, when she receives an alert from her motion cameras inside the library. She scrambles to get up and out, seeing a thickly concealed silhouette of a person crawling through the doorways onto blind spots at the ceiling. Instantly as she’s zooming out of her building’s elevator, she calls Dick.
“There’s someone in the library and I don’t know how they got in. None of my security protocols have been alerted and I think they’re crawling on the ceiling— no it’s definitely a human I saw the shape of a man!” Her voice is mildly out of breath as she holds the phone between her shoulder and ear, just mildly arguing with the vigilante on the other line.
By the time she had dug for her keys and unlocked the door to her library, Nightwing was quickly heading in her direction in his own version of the batmobile, the quiet exit from the manor where he had been staying for the night nonexistent. His speed was faster than he’d driven in a while, and he repeatedly appealed for the hacker to wait outside for him to arrive.
Babs meanwhile had her head on a swivel carefully observing her surroundings and getting to her desk, notifying Dick she was inside. He curses under his breath and speeds up. The space illuminates with a click of a switch. Finally , she looks up and sees nothing, no one, but across to the computer-printer section hangs a silvery thread of sorts. Instead of investigating like she normally would, she tells her phone counterpart about it as she quietly wheels to the back office, where her computer and Oracle system set up was organized. She turns everything on and begins clicking away, weaving through her systems to get to both the cameras and the computers and printer data.
When Nightwing enters her office, Babs instantaneously hangs up the phone and turns her head to him.
“Building is secure, except that the maintenance center’s roof access door was broken. There’s some weird dents in the handrail too. I’m leaning towards the intruder being a meta,” he reports, closing the door behind him. He saddles up besides her with crossed arms, sighing, “not sure how I’d describe whatever that thread is, but I got a sample. It’s kind of sticky and damp, but it cuts like when the archaeologists in all those old-timey jungle movies walked into giant spider webs!” Dick ends with a charming half grin. Babs rolls her eyes and sighs, dragging her face in her hands from underneath her glasses dramatically.
“Whoever broke in used computer terminal two and its printer, but there is no record of anyone even using them,” she gestures at the screens, where one had a running software checking for anything left behind, purposeful or not, the other two had the motion sensor security cameras up. On one of the screens was a rerunning, isolated clip of the burglar coming down as if suspended in the air, thread completely invisible in the camera definition, and Dick has to liken it to a spider, the way the man (?) unfurls and drops down onto the library floor. The intruder is probably not too much taller than 5’7-5’8, wearing a bulky black jacket that sometimes reflects, and Dick recognizes it as a leather jacket layered on top of a baggier hoodie, the bottom peeking out from the closed leather coat. The hood was pulled over the head close enough to block out and shadow the person’s face. As he examines the odd movements, Babs pulls up multiple other clips of the mystery burglar’s movements, he watches each one carefully.
“They got past my system in less than ten minutes, but it doesn’t look like they left anything behind. I’m going to do a system wide analysis and rewrite the security to reboot it.” Dick nods as Babs explains with a series of more frantic typing.
“I’ll bring the sample back to the cave, see if I can get any results. In the meantime, are you gonna be here?” He asks the focused woman, setting a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Yeah, gotta do what I said and make sure no bugs got in. I gotta notify B of what happened too—” Oracle nods, but Dick can sense unease when she mentions contacting Bruce. This caught his attention, or as his siblings called it, activated his nosiness, because just an hour prior he had been at the manor attempting to rest after the debrief for their joint mission that night, a mission Oracle had been deeply invested in and working on with Batman. So why the nerves now?
“What’s going on?” He asks, eyes narrowing through his cowl. Babs rolls her eyes but stops what she’s doing and backs up at a diagonal to face him, taking a deep breath as she speaks.
Peter leapt over the rooftops once out of the library, using his natural webs sparingly between larger buildings to make it further with less of his natural webbing. He wasn’t 100% confident in their tensile strength yet, despite its similarities in appearance and touch to Peter 2’s own natural webs. Peter 2’s webs had proven to be stronger than Peter 3 and his own synthetic web fluid, but the man had specifically mentioned the ability was somewhat linked to his own mental and physical health. When he rested and got more food in his system, he would test it out fully. As if on cue, his stomach grumbles. Any calories he got from the free meal were definitely used up by now, making Peter more tired than he would have been had he been swinging across New York. He was definitely keeping artificial webs in his repertoire, if not for variety, for the convenience of webbing not affecting his stamina. It also made him feel like himself to have web shooters on his wrist; they felt naked without the tech, and in a city as dark as Gotham, Peter didn’t feel comfortable waiting to explore the natural webbing his body had mutated to create (and a small part of him rejected it, because it was far too different, far too otherworldly to be a trait of his own ). He needed the stability and familiarity of his tech.
Finally, after only reviewing his map twice, Peter reaches the familiar roofline of Crime Alley’s dark neighborhood. Normally he isn’t so good at directions, but it’s easy enough, using the subway station as a landmark, to find his way back to the half crumbling apartment building he had sussed out.
Plenty of bodies prowled the alleys and dimly lit streets for him to gladly stick to the rooftops, and he was nervous Red Hood may spot him, but nonetheless Peter continued soaring over long jumps on all fours, following his spider instincts as he worked to keep his hood covering his face. At some point, he would have to wander the alley dumpsters in some places for parts, scrap metal and tools. Tonight was not that night. While he could easily see items in the dark, it’d be safer to dumpster dive during the day.
Finally, after what felt like forever, Peter makes it back to his squat, crawling down the side of the building from the roof and entering through a familiar window. Once actually inside the apartment he had combed through earlier in the night, he sets his backpack on the rickety table by the front entrance before he enters the living space and picks up the couch. Covering his nose and mouth with one hand, he sort of shakes the couch out, as best he can with one hand and not throwing it (he almost loses grip twice, which would have meant a large couch thrown at an already weakened wall). Once he can finally see through the settled dust that had shaken out, he sets the couch against the opposite wall to the window in the corner, so he can see every entrance. Then, he lifts the table with his bag on it and sets it perpendicular to the couch, its edge lined up to meet the edge of the couch arm.
Happy with the rearrangement, Peter anxiously organizes his bag’s contents, and when he’s sure he double checked and accounted for everything, he packs it all away again and putters around the apartment, searching.
Though covered in settled dust and debris, most of the things in the cabinets were still untouched. In the kitchenette there was a top cabinet left with some canned food, mostly corn, beans, chili, and a few diet soups, while the cabinet under the sink had a few half-empty cleaning sprays and a couple of half-dirty rags. Ceramic dishware and kitchen tools, as well as some well-stored dry ingredients were still stacked in the others. The kitchen sink had a couple of cracked somewhat dirty plates and remnants of a shattered glass or two. The (nonfunctional) bathroom off the living space was relatively clean, and it was farthest from the explosion, which just meant there was a lack of building debris and construction level dust. The mirror was Peter’s least favorite thing in it, but there were still some rolls of toilet paper and a stack of dusty towels on the rack. In the cabinet of the bathroom, under the sink, were a few varied bottles of painkillers and allergy medications, a roll of gauze, a mini first aid kit with sewing supplies in it (which may be useful, since Peter could project not eating enough calories severely affecting his healing speed), an almost full bottle of isopropyl alcohol, and a roll of trash bags. In the cabinet behind the mirror was an almost completely gone stick of deodorant, a mostly empty and crusty toothpaste tube, a withered, used toothbrush, and a variety of men’s cologne that Peter nearly threw up upon smelling (he got stealth attacked by the mixing scents, and had severely underestimated the seal of the cabinet) when he opened said cabinet up. There was also a razor and shaving cream, but the pair looked more rusted and musty than the tooth brush. He’d have to clean up tomorrow, but for now, his head was beginning to hurt, his wrists were sore, like he had worked out a muscle too hard, but that hadn’t happened since his ballet days. Sure, he had been sore from getting beat up on the playground, sore from being knocked into lockers, and later from healing injuries as Spider-man, but he hadn’t felt any muscle soreness in a long time.
The rain had just begun to pour from the clouds, dampening the extremely detailed range sounds he could hear of the city around him and giving him a mild relief. His Peter tingle was low, dully humming as it should in a dangerous neighborhood such as this side of Crime Alley. After a moment of silence, his stomach growls, so he grabs one of the high calorie protein bars that came with his bag and unwraps it, attempting to savor the chalky gross texture in small bites to extend the length of it. One of the early inventions Tony had worked on for Peter was an actually decent tasting protein bar that had about ten times the calories a high protein bar would. He had even considered calling the product spidey-snacks, and had called it that for some time as a joke. What he wouldn't give for one right about now, Peter bemoaned.
Moseying to the couch, Peter finishes the bar and flops down, letting out a deep sigh, his joints somewhat relaxing now that he was laying horizontally and not on the ceiling for the first time since arriving in Gotham City. His stomach feels hollow despite the protein bar, but he had to wait at least until tomorrow to finish the other one off. The shelter he had visited earlier was open for breakfast and dinner, so if he could manage to wake up he would be able to get two meals a day until he was able to get into school. He also needed to get to the post office before it closed early. His eyes flutter shut, his hearing and other senses alight with listening to his perimeter, testing how far he could hear, focusing on the pattern of sounds filtering in. Too exhausted to think further, Peter Parker falls asleep to the pouring of rain on the roof and pavement below, the wind just occasionally howling at the windows, and the sirens of a police chase muffled through the rain in the distance.
Notes:
Y'all like my hacker talk? Idk shit about computers or hacking so I'm winging it. The internet is a series of tubes, right?
Hope y'all enjoy this one. I've been transitioned back to part time work so I have ... more time now to work on this fic. Expect relatively long chapters in the meantime.
Like always, any errors or spelling mistakes will be fixed at a later date; I'm planning on editing all of the chapters in mass at some point before I wholly finish this fic.
Chapter 10: Unbothered
Summary:
The same night as the break-in, Babs fills Nightwing in on what she, RH, RR, and Spoiler discovered (or rather who).
Peter takes a casual trip to the post office on Saturday morning, meets more spider friends, returns to the scene of the crime, and has a totally fine, not at all eventful day (actually).
Notes:
Thanks to everyone for the positive comments for the last chapter!!! I may not respond but I do read them (and re-read them often). I finally decided on a bbg for the plot of this story. No spoilers!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
After a deep silence, Babs finds the wording she was looking for.
“You’re aware of the lab Tim and Steph were tasked with clearing the other day, right?” She asks. Nightwing shifts, glancing back at the dark library beyond the doors of the closed office before turning to face her.
“Yeah, and I was clearing the partner labs closer to Ace Chemicals,” the vigilante crosses his arms over his chest, leaning his head forward to lazily nod as he gives confirmation.
“We found something, well… someone,” she leans back, her abrupt silence that follows this revelation is surprising to the man who digests this news. But, Oracle was reluctant to share the news. Obviously, this was much more serious than she was letting on.
“Okay, well who did they find?” Dick gestures for her to continue speaking, his eyebrows obviously raising despite being behind the glued cowl masking his identity. He had a small, lazy smile, but Barbara knew better than to trust the relaxed speaking posture. Dick was absolutely bugging for the information.
“Listen, we decided we wouldn’t tell Bruce for now. Jason is involved and we really want to get the whole picture before B steps in, if it becomes necessary. Which I don’t believe is,” Babs is stiff, but her eyes narrow almost playfully, a smile curled on her lips as she pushes up her glasses. Jason would have made fun of her for being a geek, but she genuinely needed her glasses back on her nose (and she would not hesitate to remind him of any and every embarrassing moment even close in topic to the situation). Dick could see through her smile, and saw the worry there.
“Well that isn’t suspicious at all, should I be concerned you’re doing something dangerous without me?” He crosses his arms and leans to one side, a smooth and flirty smile on the vigilante’s face.
“The thing is we don’t know. Well, we don’t think he is, from what we’ve seen,” Babs responds a moment after she rolls her eyes at him.
“What do you mean by ‘he’?” Eyes narrow, Dick’s stance returning to crossed arms and upright posture. His mind was doing calculations, however, and keeping in line with the investigations that had gone into the owners and industry for the labs and what they had been originally categorized as, he began to think of his brother. He searches Barbara’s gaze, and finds confirmation of what he knew. There was someone awake, alive from a Lazarus pit, up and walking around Gotham.
“Does Jason know?” Was his first question, obvious (at least to Barbara Gordon, it was obvious) concern plastered on his face. He knew his younger brother, who had only recently been coming around to the rest of the family after a long and tense period of time avoiding them, and he knew he was still so angry. They barely managed his fallout, and here there was another one, though this one a stranger.
“Jason found him. He had to have escaped the lab recently, because Tim collected samples of both fresh blood and lazarus pit water on the scene,” Babs frowns, her expression one of deep thought easily recognized by her counterpart.
“So you have him in custody” Was the question she had been dreading, and he had finally asked it.
“No.” She scrunches her nose, “he was actually getting mugged, barefoot and totally out of place when Jay found him, but he played it off as if he was just exploring and got into some trouble. He even said he moved here recently and got lost, but with where he was in proximity to the exit of the lab and how damp in green water he was, we knew it was him. Tim, Steph, and Jason also reported his eyes as having the same pit green glow to them. And, I saw it on the cowl feed,” Babs was resolute, though she seemed to be in disbelief of her beginning claim of the person getting mugged. She turns her chair now to her high tech computer set up and clicks and drags a few things, an expanded feed of the video showing up on the largest screen hanging down from the ceiling. The vigilante turned, a hand resting on his hip while bringing the other to his face, nervously running his hand over it in anxiety as he watched the video. Whoever this guy was, he was young, wearing a Red Hood hoodie design and basic pants. It’s hard to make out the features exactly. At his eyes narrowing in, Babs freeze captures a few seconds at a time containing brighter images of the kid, putting them up on her desktop screen to the left so he could observe it repeatedly.
Dick was the first to know Jason was back in town when the man himself told him he was going to stay and ‘settle down’ in Crime Alley. It had been his home, once upon a time. Before everything. Before Bruce. They met up after patrol every so often when Dick was in Gotham, even teaming up for the occasional clean up; though Jason made the switch from a variety of guns, rifles, launchers and explosives to knives, his tasers, crowbars, and a sword. Equally as deadly in his hands, but easier to incapacitate others without their death. His brother was dangerous, he’d done a lot of things Dick wouldn’t ever do himself. But his brother was his brother. His brother who was compassionate, and soft at heart (with a critical weakness to kids). He still read, and nerded out about obscure and (honestly) sometimes pretentiously smart jokes about the arts or something he was reading at the time. He was a surprisingly decent chef and an excellent listener, and recently Dick had just begun to see a semblance of the person Jason used to be, but matured.
Jason couldn’t pretend that he didn’t feel trapped as forever young, even as time went on and he gained distance from the events that broke him apart, distance from what followed and stitched him back together again. He was still always somewhat hot-headed, steadfast but quick to violence with some questionably sane methods and skills. He was better now, able to cope with the rage of being torn apart and brought back wrong. Bits of his positive, childish nature had twisted cruelly. Brutal, inhumane torture followed by dying alone, and then being revived, will do that to a person. Barbara continues to speak as Nightwing somewhat spirals; she knew he’d snap out of it.
“He’s around 15, 16 years old. His name is Peter Parker but he went by Ben Stark at a shelter tonight. He said he had a guardian and a home. When Steph and Tim got close, he freaked out,” her tone is calm, not dissimilar to when she would report things over the comms, but there’s an emotional edge to her voice, a slight waver. Peter is the same age Jason was when he died. Dick didn’t know if this was a good or a bad thing. If it would be too much, even though he believed Jason could handle it. It may even help him. Still, he couldn’t help but worry for his brother. He was worried this Peter kid was a threat to stability.
But he also worried the kid could be a key to helping his brother find stability.
“He was totally calm with Jason, in fact they even stopped by one of Jay’s safehouses and got the kid shoes and a sweatshirt. And Peter even spoke about a supposed guardian, but the instant the others joined them in the square, he changed,” Dick was hanging onto every word Babs spoke, her hands moving and gesturing occasionally. His eyes narrow.
“—But nothing bad happened!” Babs exclaimed, a placid but confused smile on her face as she closed clicks and isolated a few other frames of cctv to observe, “all three saw his eyes glow and get overtaken with the green of the Lazarus pit, but the minute it closed over them… Jason said Peter grabbed onto him and seemed to do breathing exercises. Breathing exercises! Have you ever seen pit rage be calmed down through breathing?” She wonders incredulously, but her eyes almost pleading. She was upset about this kid. On the captured images, there’s a sequence of the kid’s eyes glowing green, the illumination of his face gone in an instant after he had grabbed onto Jason and taken a step back in what appeared to be tense fear, chest expanding and contracting in deep breathing, somehow still obvious in the dark of the night and the dull ambience of lights in the city.
“He trusts Jason,” Dick breathes, his body fractionally untensing. If the kid liked Red Hood, then it’d be easier to track him down sooner than later.
“Yeah, for now. And I think it could be related to the Lazarus pit and the method of how Peter was likely revived and kept,” Babs cringes “which I have some theories about but it’d be best to ask the source himself. We’re keeping an eye on him for now. He has a believable paper trail and a supposed guardian, but I’m working on a search for the tampering of files. He’s signed up to take the Gotham City High School Wayne scholarship exam on Monday.”
“Babs…” Dick trails off, tilting his head fractionally in concern. He knew she was already expecting his disapproval.
“I know what you’re gonna say, it’s dangerous, because he’s an untethered pit kid, but when you meet him you’ll see it’s not that simple. We need to figure this out, Dick. You know how Bruce can be and I don’t want to scare the kid off. Jason is dead set on handling this himself,” Barbara Gordon is absolute, sitting up tall with crossed arms as she stares the vigilante dead in the face. Dick runs his gloved hand over his masked face. He felt exhausted. He shouldn’t have asked, but he did, and he would always ask if things were okay for his family. There’s a beat of silence, as he thinks his plan through.
“I won’t tell B, yet, not until we get a grasp on the kid’s situation. But, I need to know when and where you meet him, and what you get. For now, just send me what you do have on him; I need to have a talk with Jason.” Dick gestures to Bab’s computer, pulling out his own phone.
Peter woke up to the sound of a car backfiring and the bright light of overcast sky in his face peeking in through the intact (but stained with some type of grit) window that now directly faced the couch. He wasn’t proud of it, but when the car had gone off he instantly shot to the ceiling, groggily sticking there for a moment before unceremoniously dropping back down and flailing his limbs dramatically.
His sleep had been bad, to say the very least. He had woken himself up from being on the edge and side of the couch at a diagonal, sticking to the attached cushion two separate times, been woken up a litany of other times by thunder, multiple gun shots not too far from where he was sleeping, and a strange wind that seemed to echo in a contained area below the street. He had sat awake, talking himself out of going out to help, because he knew he had to help himself first. At least, until he had a suit to hide his identity. Maybe with dumpster parts he could build a built in heater through a web design. Peter had ended up scribbling ideas into his half-Latin-student-homework notebook for a good hour, attempting to distract himself from the cries of the city, before his eyelids drooped and the boy of a man fell asleep once more, struggling until the morning light. Now all he could do was sit up.
Of course he was going to pick up the mask again. Spider-man, as he had known before, was who he was, just as much as he was Peter Parker. At the moment, he felt much more spider than he did man. In many ways, the fifteen-again teenager had grown; he had experienced things no adult normally would or should, let alone a child. He was snapped out of existence for five years while others (Tony, Happy, Natasha, amongst millions) lived on, he was the kid who died painfully, feeling every atom of him dust away when others just ceased. It would stand to reason, the kid he once was before no longer existed.
It took less than a year for his life to fall apart after the final battle. After Mr. Stark died. After so many died to get the battle back. After he sacrificed his life and happiness for the sake of his universe. Peter had been dealing with a lot for a 17 year old, actually saving the entire world type-of-lot, and now that he was in a different universe, 15 again, mutating as a result of a substance he still had little to no knowledge on, without his suit, and without his web shooters (pointedly, Peter avoids thinking about his organic shooters while barely awake), it was hard for Peter to not want to get up for the day. It would stand to reason he would feel the need to crash out. It would also stand to reason for him to want to put on the familiar and comfortable mask of Spider-man once more. Human Peter Parker shouldn’t be able to level a building with a few well placed punches, so it’d be better to put that energy to use helping others. An unknown masked vigilante to protect the little guy, to watch over the neighborhood; this time, with no possibility of losing anything (green tinges the edge of Peter’s vision as he reminds himself he had nothing to lose anymore). It was easier and far more acceptable to crash out as Spider-man.
In fact, now that he had an actual shelter in which he could rest, he was itching to go out. He was pretty sure he could hear the entirety of Crime Alley last night, and there were a lot of crimes happening, obviously. But Peter was scared. He was 17 (though still wrestling with his de-aged, 15 going on 16 body), and alone. Before, he had Aunt May to come home to, where they’d get take-out (because she burnt dinner again) and watch television. He had Ned, who would grill him about patrol (Peter would often spend over an hour texting him immediately after, in which they’d discuss anything and everything known to man, and they’d go over leads for the more organized criminals). He had MJ, who would send him pictures sometimes of the murals and graffiti people had painted for the Avengers, Spider-man, and sometimes Tony. Sometimes it was her own art, and she would talk him through his night in a way only she could. He had Happy, who he would send after-patrol reports and pester like the teenage spiderling he was. Who always responded regardless of the time, and always had his back.
But he could never return to them. Though they lived, Spider-man was dead in their universe, and they never knew Peter Parker, because he never existed to them. He was erased. Remnants of his existence lingered but failed to connect in any meaningful manner, as if he were a skip on a CD or a scratch on a record.
Peter hunched over, tears threatening to fall as he sucked in a deep, shaky breath. In, out, in, out. He attempted to calm the hysterics threatening to spill over. The green felt stronger the worse he felt.
Even if he could return (even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to) he wouldn’t have reintroduced himself to his lifelong friends; he wouldn’t have reminded them of who he was. Where Spider-man went, trouble and a whole lot of bad Parker luck followed, and Peter could not be separated from the masked vigilante. He had known it already, but he knew it even better after meeting Peter 2 and Peter 3. It was who he was— across multiverses. With great power comes great responsibility.
Gotham was very different, it had an insane crime rate with an impossible recidivism rate for the heavy hitters with chemically toxic attacks far more intense than any New York rogue had attempted. Another problem actively plaguing him was that he had no clue what the green Lazarus ‘pod’ had actually done to him, and with how easy it had been to crush heads before (he had never done it, thankfully, but Tony had him do a plethora of physical testing to see just how enhanced he was as a result of the bite), he was once again terrified of his own strength.
Sure, there were symptoms and basic information in the summary book of what the Lazarus pit could do, and he could tell it had increased and heightened every one of his senses and abilities in every breath he took, and with how green he felt constantly. Even now, as he took deep breaths and calmed his heart rate, he could feel a bitter rage that seemed to itch under his skin. A hollow pit in his stomach that wasn’t just hunger, making him ache in his bones. With the time to feel, his body felt weird. Like all of his emotions had been shoved into a box that was too small to fit it all, and it was threatening to burst at the seams at all times. His consistent desperation to get back up, to survive remained, but there was something else. It felt fundamentally broken, the way his mind fractured and twisted. Where the Peter who just wanted to do good once lived was abandoned, or maybe extinguished and crushed down. Flaking delicately under fists of resentment, bitter rage, pain, and loneliness, the pitch black feeling rolled over what little was left of his child spirit in waves, glowing green behind his eyelids.
Peter doesn’t remember feeling so much at fifteen, even with everything that had happened that year with the Civil War and Vulture (also known as the year his crush and homecoming date’s father tried to kill him). The rage itching at him seemed to be influenced by the nauseating green that seemed to creep at the edges of his vision whenever he felt just a little too much.
In response, he jumps off the couch, where he had landed back and sat up on moments prior, and Peter shucks the black fake leather jacket he had used to commit the minor crime of last night’s printer heist back onto the deep olive green canvas of the couch and grabs his backpack from the table parallel and flips it onto his back (well aware he shouldn’t be justifying his crimes, because he shouldn’t be breaking-and-entering either way, but he decidedly puts the thought to the back of his mind). With a quick listen and then scan of the area, Peter decides to open the sealed window that faces his couch and crawl out onto the side of the building, closing it but keeping it unlocked behind him and slowly descending. He was damn confident no one would be able to scale three stories with no real footholds.
After some walking, keeping his hood on and head down as Crime Alley awakens to the overcast and gray skies, Peter finds himself approaching the same shelter and soup kitchen he had eaten dinner at the night before. This time, however, there were three different people with clipboards, and three slow but steady lines of people entering. He slips into the back of one of them, waiting patiently until he reaches his own clipboard wielder, who was an extremely tall and lithe woman with a name tag that read Abigail.
“Name?” She asks, smiling kindly as she looks down toward Peter.
“Ben Stark, m’am,” he answers, keeping his manners.
“Got it, first time?” Abigail writes quickly, her responses to his answers just more questions.
“No ma'am.” He answers.
“Age?”
“18.” It was quick, practiced, and Abigail raised her eyebrow at his answer, looking at him up and down, but didn't address the elephant in the room. Peter was thankful. He really didn’t have the energy to lie convincingly at the moment, so being a shameless liar will have to do— his stomach was gnawing at him. Seeing as it appeared there were far less volunteers around dinner time, Peter decided it would be the last time he came to breakfast at this specific shelter, at least not without scoping it out first, too afraid of getting caught by CPS.
“Any allergies?” Abigail asks.
“Citrus and mint, m’am,” at Peter’s response she scribbles something deeply onto the paper and nods. Her eyes seemed to flicker back to trace his face as he held his calm and innocent expression in the face of her sly scrutinization; she checked something else on the paper. Peter wished he could see through the paper to read it. It could be nothing, but he hadn’t seen the others in front of him be stopped for this long. He doubted there was actually that much writing necessary for a check-in at a soup kitchen.
“Line 3, green trays. Good luck,” she sighs after a moment, jerking her head to the entrance.
Peter progresses into the line labeled with the number three and the color green. It was always green. What was with this universe and green? He begins to question if the universe was trying to fuck with him, but it isn’t long until he’s sitting at a far table, matching the pace of the others eating at other tables. He didn’t exactly avoid everyone else, but there were clear groups who knew each other, most significantly older than him. The few younger teens he saw were with a parent, most often their mother, or an older adult sibling (Peter doubted the blood relations between some of them, but he also knew blood didn’t determine family). He kept his eyes down for the most part, opting to practice attuning to his hearing.
The clock in the cafeteria read 9:15 AM and his meal consisted of a breakfast potato mix with bell peppers and some small pieces of ham, watery scrambled eggs, one biscuit, an apple and banana, and a cup of orange juice. It didn't do much for the gaping hole that was his appetite, but it was plenty for a free meal, and he had a protein bar in his backpack he could snack on during his trip to the post office. Clearing his empty tray was easy enough, skating through easily by following what he had learned through observation the previous evening amongst the others cleaning up. Peter then took a look at the post board and found a table nearby with free granola bars (he took six while nobody was watching, stashing them in his bag). He really did not want his fat eating itself. He told himself he’d be able to donate food back when he gained a semblance of stability. Then, there was a big map on the wall opposite the post board, next to the archway he had entered from. He hadn’t noticed it before, but it had landmarks mapped largely, including post offices. Peter took note of the denser city areas, namely Wayne Tower, which was marked as the tallest building in Gotham and headquarters for billionaire ‘Brucie’ Wayne’s Wayne Enterprises, and noted where his own PO box would be. He also spotted Gotham City High School, and took out his used brochure map to mark up with each notable location, not confident in his navigation skills of Gotham quite yet. Give him a month and he’d get the hang of it; he’d do it in less time as Spider-man.
It’s around 10AM when Peter finally leaves the kitchen, blending with a group of five other younger adults who hadn’t noticed him, following closely behind until he reaches the cross street where he turns the opposite direction, towards the post office. As he walks, the streets of Burnley seem as alive as they could be. People kept their heads down, and although not extremely full, the cars that did pass through sped down the streets at incredibly dangerous speeds, normally bumping loud and extremely diverse ranges of music. One was especially fast, zooming past him and setting off his senses so abruptly that he almost flung himself up to the light post high above him. It was a yellow convertible, the owner, a grown woman with blonde pigtails, and two others, one redhead and a teen with a hat on, were laughing so loud it rose above the loud Blondie blasting from the speakers. Instead of doing the clearly metahuman thing, he simply flinches, not unlike a spider would (or a cat startled with its fur raised) and goes about his day.
The clerk at the incredibly dusty yet immaculately organized post office isn’t at all fazed by his request for a new key, not even bothering to check the required paperwork. A woman worked hurriedly in the back, stuffing mail into receptacles roughly, with another worker at the back door, wide open, on the loading dock in the alley. They seemed to run on monotony and pure auto-pilot, which was mildly comforting; for once Peter’s tingle hadn’t spiked when he met the eyes of said clerk. After a glance at his library card (he was praising Oracle like a god for having both a photo and name line on the back of it, because that was definitely not standard at his old public library), he had a new key to a box he technically never paid for or originally registered for. He opened it just for the sake of testing the key, and proceeded to tuck the small metal item into his backpack’s internal pocket. It’s around this point, after exiting the post office, that Peter tucks into the protein bar stashed in the backpack, taking small bites into the (still) chalky chocolate slowly as he walks.
Peter isn’t exactly being smart at the moment, returning to the subway meant showing back up on cameras, where he could be tracked. But, it was early on his second full day of being in Gotham, and he was not doing terribly for himself; he had eaten and found shelter and even gotten a semblance of a plan in motion to ensure his survival.
He gets down the stairs and slides over the turnstile, sliding onto the line that would take him to Bab’s library again right before the doors shut, hood remaining up. He almost giggled out loud picturing Natasha and Steve in their ‘incognito’ looks, stifling his smile with a sleeve. Baseball hats and hoodies, how original. Yet, here he was. His hoodie, his only protection, heading towards the very people he should avoid. Peter tapped his foot to a nonexistent beat, ignoring the annoyed look of the older man a foot away on the bench. Multiple spiderwebs coiled in the corners of the advertisements and subway car itself, and Peter thought he may as welltest some things out while he had time.
He taps his fingers against the bar he gripped for stability as they moved through the tunnels, and mentally calls out to the little spiderlings he hoped were there, focusing on reaching the spiders only in his subway car. He’s about to give up when he suddenly hears a somewhat familiar frequency, and before can truly fully process it, there’s a stream of at least 10 spiders slowly crawling from a variety of directions surrounding his position. It sends a shudder down his spine, but not in disgust or worry. A spark of green in his eyes ignites as his heart beats out of his chest, eyes watching the spiders carefully. It’s cute, the way they march to him, and he mentally calls for them to climb up to his arms. One by one he feels the tickle of them follow the task, until five rest on each arm and blink up at him. Peter tries not to freak out at his ability to commune via frequency with his kin, excitedly grinning over his arms. He probably looked absolutely psychotic but it was Gotham, afterall, so he wasn’t too worried.
If you can understand this, wave a leg, he thought, specifically narrowing his eyes at them. All 10 wave a leg, their heads glancing back and forth amongst the herd. Spiders weren’t pack oriented as far as Peter knew, but it is extremely cool that they don’t seem to mind his instructions, each relaxing and purring on his arms. He thinks they’re purring at least, there’s a slight frequency from each, blending together in a harmonious vibration that was strangely soothing. He takes a deep breath to calm his heart rate.
Can you understand me? He wonders directly to them, and there’s a slight change in the frequency, like a collective agreement. Interesting. As he examined the spiders relaxing on his arms, he wondered how far he could communicate, the extent to which they could respond, how many he could call, if they could work together, if he could send things through them, or messages— did they feel what he felt? Who was he to his spider kin? Were they even able to process his requests, or were they bound acting puppets— or was it weird spidery kinship? So many ideas. He would jot them down when he got to the library.
You can return to your nests. Thank you, Peter thinks at them; so they move away, off his finger and climbing in a line up the pole, separating at the ceiling. One lingers, a low frequency clicking at him for a moment until it hops and skitters away.
He keeps his hood down when leaving the subway station, but Peter can’t stop the pleased smile he had plastered on his face as he walks towards the newly familiar square. In fact, he’s in an excellent mood until he reaches the library to find Babs is the sole occupant, at which point his anxiety erupted into his system. Peter knew this was a stupid idea, but what else was he going to do? He needed information and more importantly he wanted to be around people. He couldn’t get a bank card until Monday after the scholarship exams, so he couldn’t buy anything to clean his squat up, and he did need to study the world’s history to see how different it was.
Although, Peter barely knew the very basics of his past universe, and the things he knew about art and English were only because MJ had been talking about it. It had been important to her, so it was important to Peter. Even if she didn’t know him anymore.
Green sludge; a burning cold feeling shot through his veins, sending a cold chill over his body. Instead of spiraling, however, Peter’s thoughts flicker back to Red Hood, and how his agitated and spiked senses had dimmed and untensed by his side. He could put two and two together, and he now knew Jason (Red Hood) was like him. The hair, the eyes, and the familiar green hum that seems to emanate constantly from his very being, they were all Lazarus markers. He thinks he’d be able to trust Jason. Peter thinks he was the least likely to narc of the three he ‘met’, and he was also pretty sure Oracle technically reported to Batman— Batman who was famous for not liking metahumans, of which Peter would definitely be grouped into.
Peter takes a deep breath and walks out an alleyway across the way and up the steps, entering the library quietly. It doesn’t do much to prevent the pairs of eyes inside landing on him as soon as he enters. He was, afterall, the only person, besides the librarian, inside.
“Peter! It’s good to see you again!” Babs was pleased, and though she did seem on edge and distracted, she smiled at him kindly as he approached the desk.
“Hi Ms. Babs, yeah I’m taking the scholarship exam for Gotham City High on Monday so I wanted to study,” he responds casually. His guilt expands for his breaking-and-entering when he notices the dark bags under her under eyes, a sign she had slept little. She obviously had a rough night thanks to him.
“Of course, if you need anything let me know, I’ll be here,” although she seemed to want to talk, she also seemed to be doing something incredibly attention-dependent on her computer. He waves and thanks her in response before heading upstairs.
Peter settles into the chair at the same familiar corner computer, takes out his notebook and the same pencil, and turns the tower on. He remains on the computer for a while, clicking through webpages and researching the history of the world and specifically Gotham.
Peter did discover, in his research, that there were few exams similar to the Wayne scholarship exam taken in Gotham, or anywhere he could find, for that matter. The exam was organized per subject, not per grade level, and went up to college level difficulty. Depending on their scores, the recipient can either receive a partial, half, or full scholarship, and can even earn an additional stipend according to tests, semester grades, and if college courses are being taken. He was aiming for a full ride with the $500 biweekly stipend provided to those testing out of twelfth grade. It was kind of an oddly specific system, but Peter didn’t really care so long as he got in.
It was around one o’clock that Peter couldn’t ignore his stomach any longer. He ate three of his six granola bars, listening to see if Babs would hear the crinkling of wrappers and come up to kick him out, but when she remained typing and clicking away at her computer, he threw the trash away in a nearby bin and went back to his ‘research’.
Research ended up being social media and posting more about Wonder Woman. Superman reportedly just saved a bunch of miners from an earthquake collapsing their site in some foreign country, and Batman and his sidekick Robin had rescued a shipping container of Gothamites being trafficked the night before. According to the paper, the entire organization was reportedly seized that same night, when the main organizers died in a huge fire and explosion not too far from his location in Crime Alley. Instead of focusing on the gross green anxiety welling up and threatening to spill out over his perceived ignorance of the situation, he decides to research the Waynes family every Gothamite seemed to love for some lighthearted reading.
Peter did think, in observing one of the group photos from a charity gala, that it was pretty striking that the number of vigilantes in regularly patrolled areas of Gotham matched up with the number of Waynes in the family. He decided he could afford to write it off for the moment, since the vigilantes had yet to do anything but accidentally scare and talk to him, and because that was simply too much to deal with at his present moment. After messing around a little longer on social media, Peter goes back to the subjects of the exam and writes down any differences in material he finds that he could easily mix up. Mostly focusing on history, since it would be his worst subject, he spends enough time to warrant giving up, deciding to research what energies and tech were available on the market instead. Peter jotted down store locations that may have relevant trash, but in his boredom it quickly devolved into brainstorming a new and temporary Spider-man suit that would get the job done while he got settled. The itch of the night to be Spider-man still a steady, sore thrum in his mind. He wrote the locations of a few fabric and craft stores down, and finally logged off around 4, right in time to hit the maximum time allotted on the computers.
Peter packed up and stopped by the bathroom to do some more clean up, wiping dust off himself from his squat and stuffing a load of paper towels and some toilet paper into his backpack, just in case. Babs was in her back office when he silently walked past the desk, a sign marked she was on lunch, so his pace picked up until he got outside where the doors shut behind him. Stomach growling, he makes his way to the closest open kitchen for dinner, using his marked maps as reference, and finds it rather quickly. It’s in a darker part of the towering buildings, and the doors remain wide open with only one clipboard carrying person out front. Wondering if it was because dinner had just opened, and provides them with the name Ben Stark, again, joining the small crowd of people at the foodline. Peter eats at a table of others spread out enough to remain silent and unbothered by them, but close enough to blend into the crowd. He doesn’t linger, but receives a gallon freezer bag full of protein bars, trail mix, peanut butter crackers, and a water bottle, gifted to all new-faces just before he’s back out onto the street. The overcast light of day is almost gone, quickly being overrun with the dark gray of the night as he picks a direction to go. Peter climbs Wayne Tower just after what Gotham would call sunset, not wanting to return to his hovel quite yet, his stomach uneasy from the weird sludge of meatloaf and strange potato-adjacent carbohydrates provided at the shelter.
He felt emboldened by the darkness of the cloud-covered night sky and by the lack of eyes focused on anything besides getting home before the darkness really swallowed the night. The higher he climbed and the further he indulged his spider nature, the more satisfied he became. He wanted to see how far swinging webs could get around the city, what was better than going to the highest vantage point available to check it out?
Peter walks the edge, peering down steadily at the lights below. He couldn’t help but let out a low whistle. Although retaining the beauty only a city of lights and towering buildings could have, there was a distinct and harsh difference that seemed to shock Peter’s heart back to his reality. Batman and his whole crew sure had it rough.
The distant and yet extremely close and ricocheting sounds of gunfire seemed to come from no particular direction between the beautifully gothic and somewhat dark art deco buildings and structures that defined Gotham’s streets. The snaking of streets and arches and the whistling of wind through all manners of places had an odd labyrinthian nature, undoubtedly stimulating the dark and seedy secrets below the city’s translucent surface. He focused his senses, his ears prickling in various decibels depending on the direction he stood focused on listening to.
Then, Peter sighs, a gust of wind biting his cheeks as he flops down onto his butt to sit at the edge, hands extended out behind him. He had committed so many felonies in the first 48 hours of being on this Earth, but to be completely honest he was pretty sure Tony would just be impressed. He may have even gotten a silent nod in approval from Natasha. Sam would just say it was necessary for survival. Bucky wouldn’t have cared much at all (he was a previousky brainwashed supersoldier, he had bigger problems than breaking and entering). Ned and MJ would absolutely laugh and joke about it to make him feel better (though MJ leaned more into chaos than any law and order, not including the hit tv show produced by Dick Wolf, and Ned leaned more to the anxious ‘what if you get caught’ side of things). His stomach rumbled.
Peter groaned, but fished out the three granola bars left in his bag and ate them, leaving the gallon bag of snacks sealed for tomorrow. After finishing the third, he lamented about how hungry he still was. On Sundays, however, the shelter on the edge of Burnley by his squat held a buffet breakfast sponsored by a local church through a charity dubbed ‘Wings for Hope’. It was advertised online and a popular event because the volunteers were said to bring extra nonperishable foods to give out to each person in line, no matter how many people there were, and it wasn’t Wayne sponsored, which was exceedingly rare in Gotham. Peter would definitely attend, especially since the photo he saw had a plethora of bacon and sausage stacks.
But for now, he watched the lights of the city twinkle, shimmer, and glow below, until the cold began nipping at his nose and ears, and the clouds began to clump together and look stormy above him. Then, after another furtive look in all directions, he shot one of his bio-webs, grasped onto it, and took a leap of faith, back to his squat in Crime Alley.
Notes:
There will continue to be update gaps, bc my mental health be mad as fuck!!!! but please stay patient because I will finish this fic.
In terms of this fic, I usually postpone publishing bc of the first two stages of editing I go through, which takes a couple days after I finish writing the chapter.As always, any mistakes and errors left will be fixed later.
Chapter 11: New
Summary:
Peter gets a break (sort of)
(In which Peter has a nightmare, enjoys a buffet, a free shower, and even gets the classic anime shopping episode treatment!)
Notes:
get ready for some trauma being fucked with in this dream sequence.
I used to have incredibly detailed and specific dreams, so If it seems a bit much for a dream sequence let me cook, I'm using my own experiences. I also used to have SEVERE night terrors which i don't mention often irl. Like detailed, full horror experiences that I’d wake up sweating AND cold from. It's one of the reasons I still have insomnia.Also, let it be known that I love describing shit. Yes I am mentally shopping through my protagonist, thank you.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It’s the sense of every particle of him breaking apart and crumbling to dust that ripples through dreamless sleep; the intense, thoughtless and mind flaying pain overwhelming Peter’s senses as he suddenly drops , body jerking in shock as he collapses in Tony’s arms on Titan. He had been so afraid, desperate, crying out for his mentor. He had never wanted this ; he just wanted to help out the little guy, be a hero to his neighbors, to his community, make it safe to be , be a good guy. The good guys always win the war, even if they lose the battle, right? But he had failed , the Avengers lost, and when the pain finally faded, he knew of nothing, finally crumbling to dust. Then he was guided out of the nothing—from the dust of Titan by Dr. Strange for the war .
The images begin to flash by, a strange and unsettling collection of memories and fears startling his senses, disturbing the water he lay in. Blood. The blood he lay in. Blood but not human blood, blood but alien blood. Not soldiers, outriders. Aliens— Outriders surrounding and threatening to overtake him. They weren’t human; they didn’t think; he did. It was a kill or be killed situation. His heart beat out of his chest, calling desperately for help, voice cracking as he tried to look for his heroes in arms, glimpses of their faces turning away from him. Instead of the hum of Thor’s hammer flying high above him for him to latch onto, he was overtaken, crushed, but suddenly in a pit of viscous liquid that was too dark to see through. He thrashed and screamed, beating his way out of the pool, dragging himself out as if he had been reborn again, new, broken, wrong. It all felt wrong. He was still himself, right? And Peter saw himself, the reflection in the water as clear as a mirror, though the edges of the image blurred when he focused too hard.
But the image staring back at him is wrong. His eyes are sunken in, dark under eye bags contrasting the bright, glowing eyes engulfed in green where warm brown and amber reflecting eyes should be. It startled him, fumbling back away from the uncanny version of himself as it smiled at him with the same slimy, toothy and twisted grin that gave him panicked heart palpitations every time he remembered May’s death.
He turned and ran, he ran for his life, glancing down at the water in fear of the green in his eyes as he ran but instead he’s holding the gauntlet they had fought so hard for the first time as the terrain changed abruptly. Lasers, beams and projectiles screamed around him as he ran for everyone’s lives. His senses were overrun, his spidey-sense unable to recognize where the danger was coming from when everywhere was dangerous on a battlefield. He was never supposed to be on that ship in the first place. Tony told him to stick to the “friendly neighborhood Spider-man” gig so many times and he never listened— nevermind he was all but whisked away to Germany right after meeting him and was kind of brought in to be an Avenger in the first place. No, Tony didn’t want Peter to turn out like him or the other failed vigilantes of the world, so he did give him training wheels that made Peter roll his eyes but look back on in fondness. As he thinks of his mentor, his surroundings grow fuzzy until the bright light of a laser smashes into the ground directly in front of his feet and he’s thrown back— and suddenly the world is still, bodies of the dead lying around him as he’s reaching for him.
“We won, Mr. Stark. We won…. Mr. Stark?” Watching the light fade in his mentor’s eyes, slowly dimming with each second as the final snap to save their world took what was left of the man, “I’m sorry, Tony.”
The man was limp, struggling to keep awake and alive, the memory of his final goodbyes to Pepper Potts playing out like a scene in the exterior as Tony faded quickly as the snap to save their world snapped another piece of Peter’s mind away.
I’mSorryI’mSorryI’mSorryI’mSorry
The words seem to burn into his flesh, a painful wind whipping around as the face of his dead mentor is seared into his memory, the man who had created time and space dimensional travel to bring Peter back. His childhood hero; the man who all but blackmailed Peter when he found out his identity into helping him across the globe; the man who protected and gave everything to protecting the world and those close to him was gone. In a state of hysteria, choking for air, Peter collapsed to his knees, then to his forearms, groveling and wading in a sickly neon green pool, screaming as he sank for any relief. As he was engulfed entirely, choking on the viscous green matter, his vision fades to black.
Peter woke up in a cold sweat, lying flat on his ceiling, eyes facing the couch and side table from the higher vantage point, and he’s suddenly extremely aware of how gross he felt. It had been a few days since he could shower, even before his entubement (Peter huffs in amusement just thinking of the word), and he was really getting ripe in both his clothes and body ( was it even his body ? His mind whispered). Now was not the time to focus on dreams— or rather nightmares. He didn’t have the time to have a mental breakdown, not with his stomach grumbling and his skin itching. He’d turn to sarcasm, jokes, and inane chores to distract himself.
Today would have to be a find-a-shower and find-clean-clothes day because he couldn’t be the kid who smelt bad at GCHS. He had to pick a struggle, because he was 3-for-3 with being homeless, an orphan, and poor. At Midtown, there had been plenty for Flash to pick on him besides his hygiene; he didn’t exactly want to expand that pool at a new prospective school. Especially one with a climbing gym. They also had a free breakfast program at the school, and the full ride scholarship he was aiming for included school lunch every day. The thought made his fingers twitch as he stretched his body, sticking to the ceiling lazily sprawled out. He really needed that scholarship.
Before a shower and clean clothing could be procured, however, Peter needed to make sure he got to that charity provided breakfast buffet. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but the sun was out behind a cover of clouds and he could hear people moving about their day. He uses half of a leftover water bottle to rinse his face and hands, scrubbing at them and wiping them off with the inside of his sweatshirt and heads out soon after.
When Peter arrives at the shelter, there’s a mass but somewhat segmented group of people outside, and unfortunately for him the business of it all was extremely overwhelming. It made it hard to focus, and therefore painful to be so close to the concentration of every rustle of clothing, lip pop, bite and scrape of eating utensils and dishes in the vicinity. But, nevertheless he persisted. A couple of pop- up tents were set up lining the streets leading up to the steps of the shelter, each with a few different services, like a county health services rep (who happened to be on their phone, popping gum obnoxiously and packing some serious firepower), free no contract cell phones (this was somehow the most familiar thing Peter had witnessed, these guys had to be in every universe, except this one definitely had a weapon that reeked of blood), and a pack of unarmed yet weirdly buff support group leaders ready to talk to anyone, while a big hand painted sign on butcher paper attached to the pop ups advertised WINGS FOR HOPE.
A sandwich board of information stood outside the entrance, and as he got closer he saw an arrow pointing towards the buffet, with no clipboard in sight. He slipped into the growing buffet line and prepared his tray. And, after basically inhaling what had to be the equivalent of eight trays with how high he stacked his food each trip up to the buffet (he felt bad at first, but the volunteers seemed to cheer and bring out another full serving any time a container was completely emptied, and no one kept their eyes on him for longer than a second), Peter almost felt giddy with how full he was. He absolutely could body another two— maybe three full trays, but the herd inside was beginning to thin and he did not want to draw more attention than necessary, so instead he picked up his dirty tray and returned it to the dishwashers, thanking volunteers he ran into on the way. Once he exited the main cafeteria, he filled up his two water bottles at the drinking fountain marked SAFE in a huge green marker that he had not noticed before and reviewed the post board again. While staring up at it, he can feel eyes on the back of his head as one of the shelter’s volunteers approaches him slowly.
“Hi there,” it’s a teen girl who taps his shoulder gently, smiling in a way that despite failing setting off any alarm bells made him feel just as uneasy, “Just to let you know, there are free showers in the bunk building that you’re allowed to use. Here.”
Before Peter can stutter a response, the girl stuffs a plastic bag containing a sealed travel sized shampoo, body soap, toothpaste, and even a toothbrush. She motions to follow, and she’s so abrupt and matter-of-fact that he does so, his danger sense not alighting at all in her presence. In his bafflement, he fails to notice the girl giving a thumbs up to a different, older woman at the Wings for Hope Charity table at the entrance.
“The Wings for Hope Charity holds these buffets every month at different shelters. You should talk to Winona, at the desk,” the teenager suggests, Peter answering skeptically with a hum. Not even five minutes later, after entering a long hallway behind the food line and making two turns, Peter is entering a locker room to (gloriously) shower in peace (no one was inside, and Liz , the volunteer, told him no one really showered in the morning). She suggested meeting Winona again, and was nervous about it, but he could understand the sentiment— it was awkward sometimes to be a volunteer ‘working’ with your own age group; he was like that when he first began stopping by F.E.A.S.T. and May would introduce him to other teens.
There were towels on racks on the wall he entered from, mismatched and stacked neatly, so he gratefully grabs a larger and less threadbare blue towel from the stack. The showers are in the far corner of what was a standard locker room, with a large and well organized open shelf of free clothing organized in short bins on the wall diagonal to them. Peter makes a beeline to it, satisfied to be alone and unsupervised in an enclosed and quiet place, away from the noise of the volunteers and other homeless Gothamites. In here, he could drown the excess sound out if he focused on the pipes and the water running. There’s a bin of underwear and socks, separate 5-packs of each, all sealed in a clear plastic-but-not-quite plastic packaging with a “W” sticker at the center, and bins for donated short sleeved shirts, long sleeved shirts, sweatpants, pants, and jeans. A bin to the side of the shelving is labeled winter coats, and the sign on the wall above it explained the limit of the free system. Peter dutifully followed it, still walking away from it with a 5-pack of pre-washed underwear, a 5-pack of pre-washed socks (courtesy of the Wayne Foundation), three short sleeves, two long sleeves, one pair of jogger style sweats, and two pairs of work pants (he eyeballed it, aiming for one size larger if he wasn’t sure, because there’s no way he was gonna put clean clothes on his freakishly grimey body before a shower). He was a bit smaller than he remembered being but he suspected that was more of a result of the partial starvation he was experiencing than his age; it was more fun to focus on picking through the winter coats and pick out a Nightwing themed thermal rain jacket.
Once he packed everything up in his bag, leaving a set of clothes for after his shower, Peter placed his bag in an empty locker in plain view of the stalls. The shower water was hot but eventually stalled to a relatively warm temperature for the full 7 minutes he spent under the spray, scrubbing himself down, letting the green goo that had drowned him awake wash down the drain. The soap barely lasted the entire scrub, disintegrating through its complete use, but he couldn’t have felt better in this life. The cuts on his feet, arms and hands had healed but he felt a weight to his bones he hadn’t felt in his previous life, even when he had felt as if he were burning and separating at a molecular level in the snap, it hadn’t been this heavy. After he returned from ash; after Stephen showed them the way out to the war, he eventually processed his death and was able to be somewhat whole, though strikingly lost in grief. Despite experiencing death, the war, and the subsequent multiverse magic, his mind still struggled to grasp the pain brought from the distinct green that seemed to want to swallow him up. The tube he broke out of had to be related to this feeling of weight, if not his nightmare. But he couldn’t think about that now. What mattered was he kept going.
Wrapped in his towel, squeaky clean, he dresses in his new clothing, opting to wear two pairs of socks, his new dark gray long sleeve under a larger red shirt that had an electric bolt on it, the Red Hood hoodie pulled over it, followed by the cool Nightwing thermal rain jacket unzipped. It was overcast, and looked like rain, and Peter was a spider who couldn’t thermoregulate. Sue him for layering up. As he sat on a bench and tied his shoes, he smiled at them ever so slightly. Jason would likely show up again if he kept coming to this shelter, and seeing as Crime Alley was his territory, Peter would likely run into Red Hood again. As calm as his senses were around the man, it almost scared him how easily the first friendly face— well, mask of Red Hood imprinted on him. The young spider’s senses told him the man was extremely dangerous, but not to him; and the green thrummed but didn’t rush when he was around. It could be good in the long run, to pick Hood/Jason as his trusted adult; the lonely part of his heart ached deeply for a connection he couldn’t give himself. But trusting another unknown is exactly what kicked off the events that ruined his life on his previous Earth. No matter how strong his senses hummed around Jason, Peter’s gut reaction was to hide. He knew it wouldn’t last forever— he was Spider-man, and since Gotham had its share of hero vigilantes he’d be running into them sooner than later. Especially since he was definitely going to try to convince Batman to let stay as a ‘meta’ (not that the furry had a choice, Spidey would worm his way into the scene with or without his blessing).
The main issue Peter had with trusting Red Hood was Batman didn’t like metas. Peter was a mutate, not a mutant, but considering the loose definition given, he was pretty sure he’d be considered a meta. Red Hood still wore the bat emblem, but had the same white hair streak and green rimmed eyes as him, and was definitely somewhat enhanced by the Lazarus pit . Peter wanted to trust his twin (he may be developing a weird expectation of Jason, he had only met the guy twice). He had a minor theory that the green was forced back because his spidey senses were calm around the multi-weapon wielding vigilante. The worse he felt and the more danger there was fraying at his current instability, the harder the green toxicity of emotions was to control. Therefore, Peter knew emotional outbursts and high tension could cause him to lose such control. There was a high probability Hood knew what the Lazarus pit was, and what it truly changed about a person; there was a high chance the vigilantes around him also knew something about it, but Peter was more wary of them. It wasn’t the same. Hood— Jason was kin, his toxic green eyed spider preened. He was the same.
Speaking of the same . The various heights of mirrors on a half empty, half-lockered wall showed Peter what he had seen in the library bathroom not too long ago. His hair, now properly clean, was clearly curly with a thick bunch of blinding white ringlets coming out from the center front of his hairline, and his skin, now clear of streaks and dirt and dust, was just gaining a semblance of color back in his cheeks, the green tinge he had felt coating him gone. Peter felt foreign to himself, the image in the mirror was his body (he poked himself hard, just to check) and he still had the abs he woke up with after his mutation (that was one crazy morning), and his face was mostly the same. It didn’t look like the reflection in his dream. The hair didn’t help the uncanny feeling, but Peter could easily ignore, look past it, or even dye it if it really bothered him that much.
Aunt May always told him his eyes were warm, and that they made him look friendly (and when he was younger it helped his puppy dog begging eyes). Though he hated getting mistaken for a child as a result of his baby face (something that had remained, though it hardened ever so slightly by the time Stephen had sent everyone back to their own dimensions and a decision was to be made), it was something he had begrudgingly accepted over the years. But Peter felt so monstrously other— his face was the same, albeit a bit more youthful, but his resting expression was haunted and looked wrong, but when he attempted a soft loose smile, one he gave Oracle , it was the same Peter he was back in Queens.
The color of his eyes threw the familiar smile off kilter. The toxic and unnaturally neon green around the brown looked similar to central heterochromia, but the green seemed to flash, the glow of green rising with the spikes of heightened panic he had locked away since waking up in that fucking tube. Jason’s had been a cross between blue and green. Peter pointed out they were the same, and Jason had agreed. Blue must have been his original eye color, before the Lazarus pit. In a fit to control his emotional outburst, he wonders if the man also broke his way out of a giant test tube in an unrelated lab, or if he had experienced the naturally forming substance. It was easy to focus on the mysteries of the Lazarus pit over the discomfort of his body and mind being changed— he was no longer himself.
According to the notes he had read, he was in an artificial recreation of the real thing, so Jason could have experienced either one. He also considers the consequences of a human being revived from death, and what his pit twin (again, why he felt close enough to call him that, Peter wasn’t sure) had experienced leading up to it, as well as the subsequent aftermath (he felt like Jason wouldn’t mind being called his twin). Peter was human, but he was also a spider. He knew the green substance he was in caused him to mutate, but his genes were already mutated, so although there was the thrumming of war beneath his skin in the form of hot rage and deep seated loneliness, he had a level of knowledge and experience in how to control himself with the desire to maim and kill assaulting his senses, this time in the form of hissing green. Peter shakes his head at himself in the mirror. He had to push past this train of thought to keep moving.
After tossing most of his dirty clothing in an empty, relatively unscathed grocery bag he found on the ground by the trash and tying it tightly, he stuffs it in his backpack on top of everything else and makes to leave the shelter. He waves to the teen who had directed him to the showers, smiling as Liz gives him a wide open smile and a thumbs up from her position, which was leaning up against a wall beside the post board, where she was texting on her phone, obviously pleased with his cleanliness. The phone looked relatively modern, matching the make of one of the ones Peter had seen online. He feels a bit rude, but he doesn’t stop by the Wings for Charity table with ‘Winona’.
As soon as he exits the building he’s greeted by numerous volunteers, who all guide a quiet and dumbstruck Peter to each booth where he receives a small tote bag full of support group brochures, church literature, and candy. It’s a bit overwhelming, but his senses don’t spike so he allows them to talk to him for a little while, listening to the story of their nondenominational church youth group. He manages to separate himself from them when another teenager his age is brought over by two people, who seemed to know the volunteers themselves, and moves to the free phone tent. The contract for the phone was odd, and had some specific limitations as it was considered a “Wayne emergency service”. Honestly, Peter didn’t really care, as long as he got something adjacent to a phone, he could mod it all he wanted.
He had once helped with correcting the main prototype for Starkcells, the project he named and Tony groaned at that would have rivalled the vivo phones everyone used. It wasn’t very different in the first place, except it could be used as secure lines for the heroes on and off grid by connecting to the specific, hidden Stark satellite Tony had set up specifically for that purpose during the Sokovia Accords. Yes, he had agreed heroes needed oversight, something to give a balance to their power over the world, but he also knew how dangerous governments could be with their hands in the metaphorical pie, and wanted to create safety nets. Ever the planner, his mentor was, who had back-up plans to his back up plans.
The Avengers civil war, after all, had been two figure heads clashing for power because they both cared so damn much about the world and their people; but they were two ships passing in the night. They had different philosophies; Steve had chosen to find the Winter Soldier, his Bucky, and Tony had been severely compromised by this positioning— he had taken the betrayal and splitting of the team personally, as far as Peter could understand. He didn't know the details. Peter kinda wished Tony and Steve weren’t as emotionally constipated and bad at communication as they had been at the time, otherwise the entire Avengers fall out could have been prevented— at least he thought so.
The phone the man handed him, along with a mini directory of emergency services to call, was a flip phone. It didn’t surprise him too much, because of course, it was a free phone, but man was the thing so outdated compared to even the phone he had modded before Tony came into the picture. He’d have to majorly upgrade this thing.
Waving goodbye to a random volunteer who had handed him the pamphlet regarding Saturday afternoon meetings at the church the Wings for Hope Charity group reigned from, Peter made sure to get out of sight as soon as he could, only popping back up when he arrived at the subway, went through the station, and subsequently disappeared at the station in the upper east side. The timing of trains wasn’t exactly reliable, and it was extremely confusing how every commuter had an air of incredibly volatile hesitance, only groups of older teens and tired college students seeming to speak amongst friends and make noise. It was tense and set off his tingle most of the ride, because any time a set of eyes decided to focus on him for even a moment, his senses began screaming afraid! Because of course, in focusing and training his further heightened abilities out of necessity for all of the three days that he’s existed in this universe, he’s refined another skill. He had a walking vibe check. Through scent.
Before the Lazarus tube he woke up in, he had the tell of imminent danger; he had his Peter-tingle, spidey sense, his spidey tingle, and the reflexes to back it up, but now his spidery little mind was also telling him about civilian vibes as he tried to not focus on the way he could see—feel—hear her blood thrumming beneath her skin and smell her anxiety and fear . He had read that a lot of rogue attacks occurred in the subways, the more heinous of Gotham villains being extremely terroristic with targeting civilians specifically. Yes, he reasoned, that was more than likely the cause of the stench of anxiety that followed every citizen in the subway.
With the day still holding back rain, each major station of the city was mapped properly, and each borough or region (Peter wasn’t sure how they classified the city here and at this point was too afraid to ask) had been somewhat explored or at least marked for reference further down the line. It wasn’t like he could do the whole city in one day, but between the subway trips he climbed rooftops and attempted to retain a level of stealth from those below, aiding in his familiarization. When he gets to the Diamond District, he’s psyched to discover his senses calm down a bit, and exploring more of central Gotham is much the same. His spidey sense wasn’t completely gone, but it had dulled to the point of almost being able to trust he wouldn’t get immediately mugged for looking around. He still got dirty looks, but they were more so the look of the rich in the face of the poor. Ugh, rich people. Peter loved Tony Stark, idolized him for many years. Still did, to some regard. It was ingrained in him, for how much Tony meant to him was immeasurable. That being said, he was infuriatingly rich. Sometimes he said things that would send Peter spiraling, because what do you mean Ironman, Tony fucking Stark doesn’t know what uncrustables are?
Granted, Peter didn’t even get them, but Aunt May had gone through a phase where she made “auntcrustables” and they were just peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut out into funny shapes. She had been pretty proud of the bunny, even if she had decided to try toasting it and ended up with burnt bread and a melted peanut butter filled toaster (Peter scavenged it for parts before they threw it away).
Anyways, he’s quite glad to be in the Diamond District, because he finds a cardless atm. He keeps his head down, deciding the atm camera would likely be just easy enough for Oracle, Batman’s woman behind the computer, to get this footage, and quickly taps in information to pull out half of his money, $400. He keeps it split up, a part of it in each shoe and the thin breast pocket on his long sleeve shirt underneath all the layers. He didn’t have a wallet, but he knew better than to keep his life line in the obvious spot when he’s likely gonna get mugged on the way home tonight. Well, they could certainly try, at least.
On the train, on his way up towards Coventry, Peter reviews his notes against his map, wearing his backpack on his chest to keep it close. It was close to four o’clock, and he wanted to get a few items at the general store before turning in. The atm was a pleasant surprise, so now he could actually get supplies . He just hoped it wasn’t as expensive as it was in New York. As soon as he leaves the station, Peter finds himself sticking to the sidewalk, weaving through the few people out on a Sunday afternoon, until he reaches a busy street where a few markets were centered and a bodega sat at the corner (there wasn’t bodega cat— he couldn’t trust it).
He starts at the general store. Really, he knew he should prioritize food and water, since it seemed like the tap here was actually, genuinely undrinkable without specialized plumbing, but there were things he wanted—needed to make, so his mind really couldn’t diverge from its path. Peter found a higher end soldering kit (with more than a few extras he would have needed to get separately) for $65 (unthinkable in his economy), a battery operated work lamp, two packs of batteries, black fabric markers and black puffy paint, and a nice pair of protective but fitted dark blue gloves (he would definitely be using these for safety and not at all Spider-man related activities). Though the on-the-market batteries were absolutely lackluster, he’d have to make a better source— fusion? He could go for a mini arc reactor, but that was something he didn’t have access to the materials for. Though, if he did get his hands on the right parts, he could build a longer sustained battery out of other materials. Eventually maybe he could even get a generator. He spends just under $100 on his tools.
The next stop for Peter is the discount outlet next door, which is incredibly similar to Goodwill in his universe, but had far more items and was organized like a quirky thrift shop on the edges of the racks upon racks of clothing, shoes, and accessories. After a quick scan of the store, Peter spots personal folding carts that can either be returned at check out or purchased for $10. Perfect! He could not believe his Parker luck, to be honest, he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. For now, he grabs one of the better looking ones and carefully presses the now knotted tight bag from the general store at the bottom, stealthily sticking the barest amount of natural web to the bottom so it couldn’t be pulled out easily. He weaves through moms and their children, teens out with their friends, and the occasional bored minimum wage worker (what was minimum wage like in a city this dangerous anyways? Asking for a friend…) to get to the blanket section. Peter was never if not thorough with addressing his thermoregulation— or rather lack thereof (but it was all but a value to have good warm blankets in the house, because when there was no heat in the apartment during the snowy winters of New York, blankets and cuddling had always been the final defense). He usually picks out based on texture and scent, but gets distracted from the comforters by the sleeping bags they have hung as blankets. All extremely cheap, like $10 and under cheap, because the zippers broke and they were unable to clasp. Big whoop, Peter could just sew that shit up, or even just fold it over and pad it with extra blankets. Worst case scenario his limbs rip through the seams and he has to patch it up. The best one he found had definitely experienced its glory days, but the black exterior and white, gray and red plaid interior fabric had no stains (how was that even possible?), was heavily insulated, and still had the broken zipper parts attached. He rolled it up in his hands and wrapped the attached string to keep it tight, stuffing it as neatly as possible into the cart. After that find, Peter got a Signal themed bat-blanket, which was incredibly soft to touch and warm with bright white bats outlined in black against shocking yellow tie dye swirls, and a powder blue wool blanket, one of those blankets with the satin hem border, each $4 a piece. After he shops for himself and Spider-man, then he would worry about the few extra items he may need at the grocery store across the street, like detergent and stored water (he was pretty sure his body could handle drinking from the tap, but he didn’t exactly have a working tap, and he wasn’t too keen on possible side effects of toxin remnants).
Peter was having way too much fun in this store. While he was still definitely stewing in the misery of universe-hopping, he could remember the temporary suit he had doodled the day prior, not dissimilar to the suit he wore before Tony, the one he wore when he had a building dropped on him— the second time around— and like anytime he created, built, and or engineered, when he got to use his hands and his brains on science and math, he was in his element.
The sewing part of his element had been embarrassing at first to admit, it was something he first learned out of necessity, so he could repair clothes and patch things to save money around the house after Ben’s death. Ultimately, it became a prideful skill of Peter’s. Anytime he seemed to draw in on himself for it being called feminine and girly , MJ would turn to him and give him the “what’s so embarrassing about excelling in a respectable skill,” stink-eye, and like a lightswitch the feeling would be gone.
Peter found a pair of dark navy bottoms (insulated with an almost cargo-like texture to the outside and a soft grey material lining the inside, four sets of pockets, and tight enough to not be bulky yet stretchy enough to be able to make even some of his most spidery movements), a plain dark red hoodie a single size larger than him, a navy blue thermal long sleeve that same size, and red socks with black toes and heel. He spends way too long in the shoe section deciding that if he stuck to walls in regular shoes like he’d been doing and had done back home, then he just needed to find a pair Red Hood wouldn’t recognize immediately as being the ones he gave Peter. Peter had a feeling that would be something the crime-lord vigilante would notice. It’s rather not his usual style, but in looking back at the broken glass, used needles, and various hazards everywhere in his new home turf, Crime Alley, and his track record of simply walking over various debris, he settles on a pair of black combat style boots. MJ would have said they fit the mood of Gotham; Peter finds it hard to disagree when there’s about ten other pairs on the shelves to choose from. The pair he chooses is less worn down on the sole and way more tactical looking than that of MJ’s classic doc martens.
Then, he finds the $1 bins, glorious $1 bins! And he’s reminded of the time Aunt May had discovered the $1 bins at their local thrift back when he was 12 and had just entered a growth spurt. He, according to a glance at the clock hanging high between the entrance and exit doors, spends around 45 minutes just digging through them, finding the clothing with the least offensive designs possible ( everything was covered in some form of superhero logo, pop culture reference he wasn’t privy to, or stained to hell with patches that look like blood— seriously, throw it away, at this point it’s a health hazard) until the cart had an added six shirts (3 of which were oversized and plastered with superhero logos), three pairs of pants, two pairs of soft, baggy sweatpants that cinched at the waist and both bottom legs, three long sleeves (two of each which were long-johns material), two zip up jackets, one red with a black R on the chest, one a faded black with an even more faded yellow bat symbol on the back, and three crewneck sweaters (one of which was grey but had a spray painted stencil reading “I was sent to Arkham Asylum and all I got was this lobotomy”; Peter thought it was equally hilarious and concerning, and couldn’t resist putting it in his cart). The final stop before the check out counter was the miscellaneous section, full of books, old DVDs, VHS tapes, cassettes, lamps, furniture and other miscellaneous homewares. He’s comforted to know this universe had a similar if not the same progression of technology, varied as a result of its own timeline and founding events that would likely take him longer than a couple days to comprehend. It remained passably familiar.
He had done some research, various online video games Ned showed him when they were younger were titled differently but functionally the same. Though, he found it comical that Nintendo seemed to have the exact same titles and lines. That’s odd. Movies were somewhat different, and there were a lot of actors that didn’t exist in his previous life, but the big pop culture hits were relatively the same. Movies like Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, they all existed. Back to the Future didn’t exist. Star Wars, excitingly, was similar if not the same from what he had found, though there was an even bigger success for the animated series that resulted in a larger expansion of the animated universe (he was too exhausted from surviving to be excited about that right now, but he had the rest of his life ). The same was true for music, though this was something he hadn’t focused on researching since he didn’t have headphones and hadn’t wanted to bother Babs, he instead turned to searching for any of Tony’s favorite bands. Most of them looked like knock-off variants of the same band. Peter hadn’t recognized any other popular musicians except maybe a few names feeling familiar, and he was sure it was only because of MJ. Though, most of the musicians and bands she liked that he had recognized here were small-time— not quite popular or off their feet yet. In Gotham’s universe, it was either a band with the same name and it was a coincidence or they got extremely popular in this version of Earth.
Peter did score a small half bent but still functional camping stove, a functional digital watch (which he set to the current time immediately— he needed some type of alarm for tomorrow morning), a small trash can, a pack of pens, three notebooks, 2 bath towels and both kitchen and bathroom washcloths, but the miscellaneous section mostly held junk he’d rather wait to spend money on. He couldn’t live in that half collapsed building in Crime Alley forever, but it could do until he was old enough ( again ) to… well he supposed he could do anything, and while it was somewhat freeing to realize there was no Daily Bugle to ruin his life publicly, it also reminded him there was no Queens to protect and go back to— at least not a Queens he knows. He knows it’s normal to miss people when they’re gone; he knows he feels guilty, he feels like a curse and retribution itself, hollow and carved out like a shell of who he was ; he knows he feels green.
Peter takes a deep, quiet breath, breathing out through his nose before returning to look through the media in front of him. Everything blurs together despite his best efforts, his brain giving up on trying to distinguish the titles on the shelves as he feels a migraine coming on. Not good; he still needed to go to the grocer.
Peter pays for his things and gets out of there, ignoring the narrowed eyes of the cashier and tugging his cart along, exiting quickly. He took extra care to not crush the handle of his new possession as he moved to the grocery store across the street.
It was small, definitely locally owned, and definitely not the perfect picture of a modern supermarket, but they had a good selection of things he needed and there weren’t a lot of people around either. The only check out counter was at the front, where he enters from, which is empty save for an older man who was sitting in the back in an open doorway labeled “OFFICE”, staring at security cameras and a small tv with a soccer match on. He was hunched over, definitely at least 6 feet tall, had a salt and pepper beard, and set off his danger senses like crazy, and Peter definitely saw at least two guns on his person. However, when the man turned to look at his newest customer, Peter’s senses flickered, telling him the man posed no threat to him at that time. It was fine enough, so he picked out the few things he needed (paper towels, cleaner, a collapsible ‘camp’ broom & dustpan that cost way too much, propane for his camping stove, a large jug of water, seasoning salt and pepper, and beans and rice), thanked the man (who looked at him like he had grown a second set of eyes) and made his way back to the subway. His eyes were squinting, head aching and throbbing as he can feel the pressure of his approaching migraine increasing. He felt inconsolable, bursts of incredible anger colliding with his gut wrenching loneliness and the pain thumping against his brain. He picks his cart up and holds it gently yet tight, like he was concentrating on holding a baby, and leaps over the turnstiles using one hand, making it just in time to head back home. If it could be called that. He spends the entire trip back coaxing the spiders in both his and the next subway car to him, hiding them by taking advantage of the dim overhead lights and his dark hoodie. They actually purr in unison just as he’s beginning to have more than a human grip on the pole he held onto, bringing him back into his own mind that had begun veering into disarray. The stop before his, a group of rowdy men who could only be described as hooligans joined Peter’s car. At first they didn’t pay him any mind, and he prayed and prayed they wouldn’t look his way. The spike of warning had been so instant it jolted him out of the calming stasis he had found himself in with his spider friends, his senses becoming hyper focused on their chattering and drunken shenanigans.
He manages to avoid catching their attention as he exits the station, climbing the stairs to the crossing near Burnley and Crime Alley. The hooligans continue to follow, and Peter can feel one of their eyes on him; he can tell the tallest one is sizing him up like a predator does prey. He waits until he gets a little further from the group, along with the screeching metal and hum of flickering electricity, before hiding in an alley that doesn’t set off his spidey senses and yanking out his map, marking the area with where he shopped. Suddenly, in the fading light of day and the pale yellow light of the lamppost, Peter felt the weight of the world on his shoulders . He was exhausted, running on fumes at this point and he still had to get up early for the exam. That stupid scholarship exam.
A part of him was eager to get into the school to learn; the snap had taken five years of time, and after the whole identity reveal it was hard to go back to class like normal. He was more eager now for the free meals and warm classrooms during the winter cold. Because of course he had to arrive just as Summer was beginning to slow down and Autumn was creeping in.
He was going to turn sixteen a second time, and this time it would be alone. The thought pooled more exhaustion onto his shoulders. It almost drowned out sound too, but the moment he turned the corner back onto the main street, alarm bells bursted out from the nerves in his body. Peter ducks as a collapsible baton is swung at his head. It was the same rowdy group he had seen on the subway, of course, that had either followed him or managed to get in front of him.
“You missed, you idjit!” The figure who says this is a scruffy, lanky white man in a black leather jacket who smacked the one with the baton’s head. Baton wielder was tan with a five o’clock shadow and a furious look on his face. He swung another two times, which Peter managed to grab his cart and dodge by throwing himself back. It was a little abnormal for a natural movement, but nothing quite inhuman yet. Peter’s grip on the cheap metal was becoming dangerously tight, but he feared letting his cart get stolen by these random gang lackeys. He did not just subject himself to shopping all day for nothing.
“Uh, boss, isn’t he a kid?” The shortest one asks; Peter decides to call him evil stache because he had twisted the ends upwards in a point and it made him look totally evil.
“Shut up, Reg. I’ve got good intel that Red Hood’s dealing with the suckers at the docks tonight. This kid is just another unlucky sucker, ain’t he?” There’s a lazy, crass smile on the lanky boss-man’s face as he says it, a gross, terrifying gleam in his eyes. The goons with him chuckle along, and Peter lets them corner him, Reg (evil stache was definitely better but whatever), who’s more nervous and hesitant than the others, hangs back from the group. Peter holds tight onto his cart, and he can feel the metal pressing in on itself within his grip. He couldn’t get into a fight right now, because he seriously might kill someone and it would be an accident.
“You shouldn’t be out on the streets this late, son,” the comment is meant to be patronizing, the hissing present in the undertone of his voice.
“Man, come on, I’m just trying to get home,” Peter groans, slouching over and moaning as loud as he can in irritation. He glares, meeting each in the eye despite his posture. The boss laughs.
“And you can. You just gotta give us all your shit,” he grins, gesturing for two of the five of them (including the boss man, he isn’t strong or interesting enough to count separately in Peter’s experienced opinion) to approach him. He was beginning to feel green in his fingertips, rage drowning his body and crashing over him as he allowed them to approach. But, as they go to reach for Peter’s arms to pin him, pure, gut churning instinct to maim and kill threatens to kick in, so he backs up to the alley wall he found himself cornered in, his cart swinging behind him.
Then his ears pick up the thrum of electricity— and a quick glace upwards confirms his annoyance. Of course he happened to be on the only street with functional security cameras. And, the camera is turned directly to them. He clenches his jaw, only to taste the familiar venom he had tasted when he had been surprised by Spoiler and Red Robin.
How annoying. He was hoping to play up the spider instinct a bit to spook these losers into leaving, if he could— it usually worked to get Sam and Bucky off his case when he wanted to avoid running laps. What he wanted to do to his muggers was arch backwards and start climbing on the wall with only his fingertips, then hiss and spray his webs at their eyeballs while skittering away.
Not the smartest for concealing the spider identity side of things, but it was the only plan he could imagine without the rage sinking in to tell him to rip their heads off. Spidey’s sarcastic quippy nature only worked so well with his villains because he pulled his punches.
“Seriously guys, can we please not do this tonight?” He sighs, his shoulders hunching. He wasn’t too worried about getting beat by these guys, he definitely would be able to avoid their blows, but he did want his cart to remain intact and in his possession, and he couldn’t exactly fight back. Those cameras posed the worst restrictions when he knew there just had to be someone watching or at the very least recording the interaction. And that someone was definitely Oracle. Who else would be watching the cameras on the edges of Crime Alley? Peter doesn’t think anyone else would . The only positives to this entire situation was the fact that it was dark and there were very few streetlights in this part of town.
“Should’ve stayed in New York, kid. Gotham ain’t the streets for you,” the bald man in a large black trench coat standing next to the bossman clicked his tongue in disapproval, shaking his head.
“And they are for you? The chemicals made you bald!” Peter has no idea what possessed him to say that crazy line, but whatever. He was flying by the seat of his pants. He really hated surveillance cameras right now. Baldie guffaws, about to respond with anger and discontent when the bossman smacks him on the head too and glares before turning to look back at Peter, tongue poking his cheek and looking more irate than ever.
“You sure are a brave little prick, it’ll make it more fun to break you—” dear god this guy did not deserve those villain lines.
“Could you get more cliche and predictable, seriously what the hell guys?” Peter can’t stop himself, the glow to his eyes flickering as he begins to breathe heavier. Lanky bossman gets this look in his eyes that tells him he was pissed. Yeah, he gets it, Peter can be a real asshole, foot-in-his-mouth kinda guy when he gets hangry. Add to that being dimensionally deported (he liked the alliteration), de-aged and mutated more than his normal— so long as he didn’t grow extra eyes or appendages he could make anything work— he was working under a lot of stress, okay? He could read Red Hood was only a couple rooftops away, navigating through alleys and maneuvering larger gaps expertly, gaining fast.
“Shut the fuck up,” Lanky bossman, “and all of you! Gettim!” He points and yanks his thumb at Peter, and there’s a mad scramble of the three (Reg, or evil stache, remains back, so it’s only number 3, baldie, and baton wielder) to jump towards and begin corralling him into a corner of the alley.
“No knight in shiny Red Hood can save you! You’re too old to be reading fairy tales, motherfucker!” Lackey number three, who happened to have a big 3 on the chest of his bomber jacket the same bright green as his hair, snarls, his fist flying straight at Peter (the universe was definitely laughing at him, why else would goon number 3 have green hair). Peter was already fast, and in his mutation he found himself having to be more deliberate with his speed when it came to focused uses of it; the good part was, if he made a mistake, it was much too quick to be seen or tracked by normal human eyes. So, with his processing speed, Peter manages to stifle what would have been an admittedly mean laugh. And to be fair, calling Red Hood not only a knight, but shiny was super fucking funny. Peter bemusedly agreed his helmet could be a bit shiny and that he did have a mighty steed (Hood’s bike was really cool and he hates that he didn’t enjoy it more at the time).
In the split seconds he has, he focuses and is pretty damn sure he heard Red Hood’s steady heartbeat finally dropping onto a rooftop behind him right as the goon spits this line out. And maybe Peter was… a bit influenced by the anger pulsing through him and the irritation from walking on an empty stomach, but he decided he could live to cook up some minor drama, as a treat. Sue him, he was starved for entertainment.
The smile he gives the rowdy muggers is the most twisted, petrifying smile the teen boy with a baby face could give, his toxic green eyes glowing in the darkness, sending a spike of fear through his assailants he can feel even as the hit lands on his cheek. He snaps his head dramatically to the side, stumbling backwards and falling towards his cart, dropping the grin and immediately hiding his face in his hands as he hears the low frequency of Hood growling out “fuck”. Peter knew it would bruise, face punches tended to do that no matter who punched him, but man, did the punch feel like nothing compared to literally any of his own villains. With how weak it felt he figured it wouldn’t warrant any concern, nor would it be weird if a small bruise healed very quickly. The bats would likely attribute it to his exposure to the artificial Lazarus serum. The instant he crumbles over his cart, his attackers are stopped in their tracks by a familiar call above them.
“Oh, I don’t know about that, ever heard of the Brothers Grimm?” The voice of Red Hood himself calls out from the rooftop, clearly thick with rage and something else Peter didn’t recognize. Peter can recognize the familiar buzz of the comm in his ear, but chooses to focus on the familiar and calming heartbeat of his twin instead. It was honestly shocking that the man could be breathing so heavily, so quietly, and without the rapid heartbeat to match. Hood leaned casually above them, dropping down so quickly the only clue to the grappling hook was the clang and the sound it made when it retracted. Anyone else wouldn’t have seen it, wouldn’t have distinguished it’s sound from the background noise of Gotham city’s underbelly.
But Peter wasn’t anyone else; though, he still marvelled at the huge man’s graceful, light footwork as he landed on the cobblestone street in front of him (it should be illegal to be that jacked and that silent, for real). He watches as Hood presses forward, concise and quick with no wasted steps, pulling a crowbar from his back and swinging it quicker than the three goons could react. Okay, scratch the whole “entertainment” bit he was hopeful for, it was way too brutal. Granted, they were going to mug and beat someone , so he can be glad they chose him at the very least, but Red Hood took the protective thing a little… a little too far for a ‘kid’ he just met, in Peter’s opinion.
“Hey Mr. Hood, I think you gottem,” Peter says, at this point righted and standing unharmed (he doesn’t count the punch) with his cart, tentatively stepping forward. He was beginning to grow concerned with the steam of rage rolling off his body, and it was almost infectious the way he desired to let loose, a sentiment that seemed to increase tenfold when seeing Hood do what he was doing. He dropped the one he had grabbed by the throat (not a good distance to use his crowbar, but he didn’t exactly need it, nor did he need his other hand free to choke a guy with one).
“You alright?” Hood turns his back, ignoring the angry and discontented yowls of the lanky bossman, and Reg (evil stache) who was attempting to do damage control. In an instant, he’s checking Peter over for injuries. Peter's not sure how, but with Hood, his senses dialed down to 8 rather than 11, so he sighed and nodded wordlessly. He felt kind of guilty now that he was close and could basically smell his worry– actually he was pretty sure he could smell it. Hood recognized the pure exhaustion in his posture and face, noting the green glow of his eyes and Peter’s hands— one clenched at his side and the other around a full cart. The vigilante read the situation in seconds and turned back to the muggers, covering Peter behind him with his daunting figure.
“I was clear when I said no kids ,” and a growl came out so low and intense Peter began to think he would have been better off just beating the guys up on his own (it would have been a disaster, he definitely couldn’t confidently pull his punches while feeling so green ).
“I tried to warn them, I promise, Hood!” Evil stache speaks up, and a spike of warning originates from the boss when he moves his disgusting gaze towards Reg. Peter, before he can realize, tugs gently on the back of Hood’s jacket. The man cocks his head curiously in response.
“He’s telling the truth, the rest of ‘em didn’t care,” he doesn’t know why, but he feels comfortable enough to fiddle with the hem of the leather jacket nervously. When he finally dares a glance up at Red Hood, the man is watching through his mask, head cocked fully downward and body turned ever so slightly to him. Peter, anxious now and rather embarrassed about his choice of entertainment, drops the fiddling and turns his gaze downward. He can feel Hood’s analytical eyes on him for a moment, then he simply turns back to bossman and evil stache. The three who had attacked were dragging themselves back towards their… colleagues? Fellow lackeys? Peter wasn’t sure what to call a small gang of goons in relation to one another. He was glad they could move despite their wounds; in fact it kind of freaked him out. He can feel the nervousness of the bossman, and sense the sweat on his brow the longer he stands still.
“Right, and we’re real sorry, Hood, I promise!” Reg is sweating his ass off too. Hood hums and casually pulls out a gun from his holster, and before Peter can react, is shooting bossman in the knee. His scream ricochets throughout the alley; Peter flinching back and covering his ears abruptly at the sound of both the gun and the pained crying. However, there isn’t any blood, no scent of ammo or grease from a gun. Rubber bullets. He presses forward immediately after the gun fires, grabbing the now collapsed boss by his hair, ignoring the shaking of Reg by the man’s side.
“This’ll be your second warning. Next time I catch you breaking my rules, I won’t use non lethals,” the helmeted man leans in, obviously attempting to hide his words from Peter. Peter would be amused if he hadn’t just heard an obvious death threat, but he was more concerned by the lack of his spidey sense reacting to the gun. Maybe it had to do with the comforting nature of Hood’s existence in front of him. Could be the non lethality of his ammo; could be both of those things. Maybe it was his fried brain– he was really hungry now. He had skipped the shelter’s dinner because he bought his own supplies and wanted to skirt the bats, but this plan was obviously also a disaster. Hood uses his grip to push the boss over and away, jerking his head to motion for Reg to get him and get lost. The group helped each other stand up and began stumbling away before the simmering vigilante turned back and approached Peter.
“Thanks for the assist, Mr. Hood!” Peter decides to break the tension present in the air cheerfully. Hood shakes his head, slowly and deliberately showing his movements as he brings hands up to touch each arm, bringing him in to check him over for wounds. He lets it happen; it felt like ages since someone fussed over him, even though it hadn’t really been that long.
“C’mon, it’s just Red Hood,” He sounds exasperated, helmet and body stilling when he focuses on Peter's now bruised face.
“Oh you know, taking a lovely stroll through the sewage,” Peter shrugs, cracking a grin that twinges slightly with the bruise forming on his face. The familiar itch of healing was absent and he wanted to curse his body. He needed to get food in his system.
“Fuckin—” the vigilante mutters, bringing his hand up and running it over the mask affixed to his head, “didn’t you say your place was on the other side of the city?” He questions, and Peter can hear Babs in his ear. It begins pouring the instant he goes to answer, thunder cracking in the distance, so he closes his mouth and looks ruefully at the sky before looking back at the masked man. Peter hated that even the rain in Gotham didn’t smell like the rain he knew.
“I say a lot of things,” he answers cryptically, zipping up the rain jacket he had layered on and pulling the hood up. Red Hood cocks his head as if contemplating something, before he shakes it, his hand twitching at his side fractionally.
“Pete,” his stern tone is more worried than anything, even through the modulator, and tugs at Peter’s heartstrings. He feels a bit guilty, but really the punch was nothing.
“Mr. Red riding Hood— wait is that how you got your name? You like the Brothers Grimm.” Peter retorts, a quiet goofy laugh escaping his throat before he can stop himself.
“My helmet is red,” Hood gestures to his head.
“A helmet is not a hood!” That reminded him— did this universe have their own version of Hydra? (The image of Red Skull popped in his head as this conversation began, Peter observing the helmet in low light again. He also may have hacked his way into Shield files with both Tony and Ned on separate occasions to be able to see Red Skull in the first place) But then again, Wonder Woman replaced Captain America in terms of positioning and she was … literally god like— the more he learned about the hero, the more he learned just how much more powerful than Steve she was (no offense, but Thor had told stories about Themyscira and Amazon women, and if she used her full strength no human super soldier in his universe would be match).
“I watch out for the alley kids and a helmet isn’t the friendliest lookin’ thing to see, so I wear a hood instead sometimes. Now enough yapping, let’s get you home.” Hood gestured, opening his arms and using his finger, waving it around as if asking ‘which way’, wholly unaware of Peter’s scattered, sleep-deprived thinking.
“No way! You and your little bat buddies are totally gonna stalk me.” Peter squawks back, a bit embarrassed and somewhat anxious at how normal he felt around Hood and how easy it was for him to slip into wandering thoughts. It wasn’t surprising to him that Jason was watching out for the kids in his territory. Given his experience with him, Peter would bet his entire cart Red Hood is a big old softie on the inside. Besides, if he did show Hood, they would have more than a few concerns about how he made it his home. He could tell he was a worry wart, so he doubted the guy's siblings were much different. He lived in a half blown up building with no power or running water and no actual entrance!
“They’re not my buddies. I’ll walk you halfway, c’mon, your stuff is gonna get soaked.” Hood grits his teeth when he says the first part, but his heart is less deceitful as he tugs the cart and Peter, who was beginning to feel a bit sluggish from how tired, cold, and hungry he was, decides he’d survive with it in Jason’s hands.
“Fine, but if you tail me I will lose you and you’ll be the one responsible for me getting lost in Crime Alley at night again!” He sticks out his tongue at him, joking, but being 100% serious.
“If I were to tail you, you wouldn’t know a thing. Though you are freakishly good at avoiding CCTV cameras, care to comment?” At his inquiry, Peter can’t help but snort.
“Yeah right, even Nat wasn’t able to tail me properly! If I could figure her and Bucky out, I could totally figure you out, Mr. Heavy Boots!” He childishly retorts, regretting the instant he says it because he messed up! Realistically, it didn’t matter, right? Red Hood was so easy to talk to, despite his size he didn’t feel like a fully intimidating adult. It was the green humming; it was also the fact that Jason reminded Peter (a little bit) of Uncle Ben. There wasn’t a lot to go off of since he just met the vigilante, and they didn’t look alike, but whenever they spoke he could feel that energy, the same energy that he felt from his Uncle, who kept comforting and attempting to sooth Peter up until the very moment he died.
It made his semi feral brain turn off the paranoia and relax just enough to ease the weight on his shoulders. Honestly, kind of embarrassing too, he was supposed to almost be an adult! Here he was getting sloppy with personal details because some killer vigilante in his new universe has the same vibe as his dead uncle. Not thankfully, but in the very least, Nat and Bucky were not from this universe, so even if their counterparts somehow existed and they were assassins, both were kept relatively off books for most of their ‘careers’, so there shouldn’t be any known connections to his specific dimensional universe’s nicknames (somehow he was doubtful they were even heros in this dimensional universe).
“I’m usually more confrontational than the bats,” there’s a pause as they walk, Peter shivering before he asks, “who’re Nat and Bucky?” Peter considers how to answer, and Hood gives him that space.
“They’re… old friends of mine,” he smiles, a sad glint in his eyes. And either Jason can’t figure out what to say, or he isn’t pressing, but Peter is thankful for the moment of quiet as the rain pours down from the dark sky, dull yellow street lights flickering as they continue on. Then, Hood sighs.
“How’d you meet?” Peter blinks at the question, tensing fractionally, only relaxing when he sees the vigilante relaxed and the humm and background noise of his comms off.
“They were both… coworkers of Tony’s? Kind of. It was a weird situation and it’s honestly hard for me to even describe. But they taught me a lot, they were both really helpful but Bucky and Sam really stepped up when—” he cuts himself off at the same moment his stomach growls extremely loudly, stunning the both of them and thankfully distracting Hood from the conversation (though a quick glance told him it was only being bookmarked for later discussion). Peter just gave out way too many names, but it felt good to talk about them. To remember his universe’s reality with Hood, even when he had lost everything.
“If you won’t let me walk you to your place, then I’m feeding you, c’mon on,” Red Hood sighs, pulling him under an overhang. Peter checks his watch to find it was still only 8 o’clock.
“Fine,” He acquiesced, rubbing his eyes from under the large rain hood covering his face, “where to?” Peter slouches, rubbing at his eyes again as another shiver wracks through his body— how was he still so cold even with all the layers he was wearing?
Notes:
To be real I’m sewing seeds right now and it’s not really gonna show until it DOES ya know? Also, I know I said he got a break,,, and in a way it was!
There will be better interactions and events will be kicking up in the next few chapters, so Im looking forward to it!
Thanks for reading! Later than usual update because I genuinely added an entire interaction with Red Hood because I wanted Peter to build a little more trust in him quicker than the others, but you also get around 11k words of chapter, soooo...
Also, I realized I was rushing for no reason; I wanted to slow down.
Chapter 12: Elephants
Summary:
Peter makes many executive decisions on an exhausted mind (he just hopes they don’t bite his ass in the end).
Red Hood and Peter bond as a result.
Notes:
Hey y’all, good to be back, it’s been over a month! I think almost two?
TBH life just kinda has me stressed tf out and I am so poor that I just lay in bed on my time off and rot while writing my OC DC fanfics and reading the updates on my comics.When I finally finished this chapter, I realized it’s around 12k words, struggled editing it, and hated it, so I split it up! Next chapter soon; I just ended up adding a bunch of content while editing this chapter so I know I'll likely add more to the next chapter too.
I’ll be bouncing between Jason’s focus and Peter’s focus for this one, so buckle up and pay attention. Not everything said Peter knows, and vice versa.
I've also begun using a slightly different formatting process; it may not be noticeable but in case it is- apologies but it is what it is now!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Peter and Red Hood end up at Batburger.
Jason is extremely thankful the place ended up being not too far from where they had been, because the kid’s lips were tinged blue by the time they arrived— despite the layers he seemed to be dressed in. He got Peter’s drink order when he sat him in a booth, telling him he’d order while Peter dried off best he could. The kid definitely seemed a bit out of it by the way he readily agreed and stood up for a moment, rubbing his arms and legs to warm himself up, and Jason didn’t like how quickly his cheek was swelling up from the bruise that had quickly formed. He didn’t like a lot of things happening with Peter, and he had just met him.
He had turned on his comm to get a report on Peter, from Babs. Apparently he had been seen at numerous train stations throughout the day and been spotted moving through the heavier surveilled areas for very short periods of time, his face somehow always obscured by something. As they had begun discussing possibilities as to what Peter could be doing— or what his goal could be, Babs got pinged of Peter’s supposed reappearance on cameras not too far from the station in Burnley, one of the few left that edged the border of Crime Alley.
They all knew Peter had lied about being lost, they knew he was from the artificial Lazarus lab, but it seemed his new homebase was in Red Hood’s stomping grounds after all. And he was caught in trouble. Again.
Jason knew he couldn’t be everywhere all at once; it’s one of the main reasons he was attempting to reconcile, to redeem himself to his family.
Not because he was lonely. Not because he was always alone in the end.
He clenched his jaw under his helmet as he approached the dead eyed cashier at the front, trying to focus and ordering maybe a little too much food. He really couldn’t help it, the familiar fresh green rage itching to spill blood over that quickly formed bruise. But he had to keep the well clamped shut, had to breathe and not let his emotions take control again.
Let it be known Jason was just as unstable as much as he was working on it. Dying does that to a person. Makes them unstable, emotional . When he first came back, the shattered pieces of who he had once been fractured under the cracked skull and broken and bruised body that dug itself out of the ground he was buried in. It crushed him deeper and deeper and deeper until he buried the brutalizing heart aching pain. He had to force himself to bury it all (like they had buried him). To bury Robin. It had worked (not constructively, and not according to his ‘family’, but he didn’t do what he did for them).
Jason was no longer the same “Jaybird” Bruce knew, and would never be again. The robin that flew through Gotham under Bruce's wing like a tornado of smartassery and ecstatic joy was dead. Jason Todd Wayne was murdered and became the murderer known as Red Hood for vengeance. It wasn’t just Bruce who had failed him; who had replaced him. That pissed him off, sure, but an irreparable hole was ripped from his heart when Talia told him about Bruce, Nightwing, and Joker. The ache of deep, mind numbing rage that his murderer was alive , was allowed to live, and continued to be one of the deadliest threats to Gotham, had eaten at his mind until he was nothing but a monster of the pit, raised from his broken body anew with the goal to complete his mission, to do what Bruce couldn’t, and to destroy him while doing it. The heartache was replaced with an all-encompassing, toxic, and excruciatingly blinding green rage that Joker was not dead because of Bruce when Talia brought him from the pit.
Those slimy green waters still taunted him in his nightmares, and when he did manage to sleep, visions of what the Joker-Cheer toxin showed him still lingered, haunting him.
He didn’t want to do it again. Losing everything, and everyone. He worked and worked and worked so hard so many times to redeem himself to his family, but there was only so much blood you can wash out before you bleed.
No killing in Gotham. Read: No killing Bruce could definitively trace directly to him. His rules were his rules, and he firmly believed understood they did trade lives in the business of sparing that mass murderer. But Jason had broken that rule publicly, caused a major incident and forced Bruce’s hand. He had played right into Joker’s.
The realization only made the rage worse. But he was working on that, not for Bruce, no, but for himself. (It helped to have a family, to have people to call on and trust.)
Now Peter was here and he had the same haunted look in his eyes he saw in himself when he first resurrected, the same white tuft of hair, and the same green glow to his eyes. The same rage that Peter had somehow managed to push past. But Jason knew better than anyone how that green sickly rage could crawl under the skin and bury itself there, breeding its anger until it was all too much and exploded outwards. Until it buried him, or others. It was dangerous, and despite having no qualms killing people and lying about it, he didn’t want that for Peter.
He didn’t want Bruce to get his hands on him either.
How could he trust Bruce with Peter? Jason didn’t hold his death against Bruce, but he did blame him for what came after. He couldn’t stop the clown for his own self-proclaimed son , let alone Gotham . Peter was everything a Robin was and more. Witty, intelligent, observant, quick-footed, traumatized, and an orphan. With time, Jason was sure he would find that Peter’s skills lived up to his quips.
Jason was also sure Peter was a scared kid who died and came back wrong just like he had, and was attempting to deal with it all on his own. He didn’t believe for a second he had a guardian wherever he was calling home, but he did have theories about Tony and Happy. Peter clearly had a lot of respect for both, if his avoidant defensive nature was to be believed, but would they stand up to Jason’s scrutiny? He hardly doubted it.
Peter has genuine concerns over whether or not it’s a good idea to have a restaurant using terrorist rogues who wreck destruction as decorative fodder to the very hero who foils their dirty schemes on a regular basis. Though, maybe it was the city’s way of coping with the trauma its put through.
Tony himself had considered opening his own chain of burger places, but Ms. Potts had executively decided to just have Stark Industries sponsor his favorite places instead. She had been extremely fond of the story when Tony told him about it, interrupting the eccentric man multiple times to correct his skewed knowledge of the whole deal (because Ms. Pepper oversaw Stark Industries for a reason). That had been a good night, one of the few he had after Germany, before… well before.
The difference was, while Gotham had its fair share of small-time rogues, the heavy hitters of this universe were maniacally and murderously inclined, and there were no burgers for the villains in his world. Well, if things had gone even worse, there might have been, knowing who Mysterio truly was.
Blinding neon light signs flashed and reflected different colors everywhere as the glow emanated through the windows, which had villainous themed food specials advertised with cheap vinyl lining the bottom that went up and blocked most of the view to the street (did that say it was a Harley Quinn approved deluxe fry combo?). The seating was patterned booth pairings (the green paired with question marks had to be the Riddler, right? That was so Riddler coded) and a classic row of diner counter stools with black cushions. There was an awful and clearly mandated uniform for the staff that included cheap Batman and company masks and a printed t-shirt with the bat symbol he saw everywhere. All that’s to say, his environment was waging a war on his exhausted body and ever-increasing green migraine he had pulsing in his head.
It’s definitely greasy; the fry cook smelled as if he had been born there, but the sizzling of the hamburger patties and popping of the fryer sounded and smelled divine to Peter’s starved self. Maybe the headache was from not eating, and not a ‘mood thing’. That would make logical sense, but the whole survival on his own thing was burning him out, and Red Hood had just helped him not go apeshit on those flies. Why had he even taken that punch?
He stands for a moment, turning blankly towards his cart and pressing fingers into the tender bruised skin on his face. No tingling, no itching. He wasn’t going to heal without food. Right. Food.
Peter is sitting in one of the bright red booths all the way at the back, waiting for Red Hood to return to the table with their meals like he promised he would. Like a kid. Normally he hated feeling like a kid; Hood made it feel just ok . He didn’t love it, but it didn’t feel patronizing or false. It could be the green influencing him, the Lazarus pit making him more amenable to Red Hood, but somehow Peter didn’t think the pit was supposed to connect people like that. Maybe it had to do with the origin of the lab? Either way, his spidey senses were quiet around Hood. So quiet, he can’t remember the last time he had a chance to feel so… well he wasn’t sure what he felt. He was just tired. In fact, it made him feel the exhaustion in his bones so well, that it scared him.
Peter didn’t like admitting he was scared. He knew people, family, friends, a community; they were all important and key to a decent survival. It’s what he’d learned, what he’d been taught. He can’t do everything on his own. Now he was afraid more than anything. Afraid of losing anyone else because of a desperation to prove himself capable. Flashes of green bleed into the edges of his vision.
Peter fiddles with his cart, checking the items for how soaked they were to distract from his racing thoughts. Half of the clothing on top was sopping wet, but the towels he had put on top of his blankets and sleeping bag managed to stop some of the water from seeping into them. He pulls most of his items onto the table, listening absentmindedly to the downpour, the cook in the kitchen, the cashier who looked absolutely miserable (wearing a cheap looking bat cowl and clearly tired of it) taking Jason’s rather large order. He packs as much of the wet clothing into the towels he has, putting it at the bottom around the water jug, only struggling a little bit to stealthily separate his biowebbing from the first bag of things from the general store he stuck there. Then, he put the nonperishables he bought on top of the wrapped clothes, his first bag on top of that, the dry clothes rolled tightly on top, and the blanket and sleeping bag rolled and folded neatly to be pressed over top. He stacks his backpack on the uneven plush surface, leaning back against the booth backrest to glance across the fast food joint.
The bright reddish pink flashing of the “HAHAHA” neon sign on the opposite wall made his eyes hurt. What kind of sign was that? At least the one on his side of the restaurant was a bright green neon puzzle piece! That was interesting, compelling even, but the whole vibe of laughter in a creepy font on the wall was giving cringy 13 year old edge lord, in his opinion .
The brightness of the lights inside seemed to make the darkness waiting outside even deeper. He closes his eyes.
Peter only realizes he had fallen into a brief snooze when Hood waves a tray in front of him, his senses lighting up to the scent of food and jolting him out of his sleepy haze.
“Yeah, you’re gonna want to be awake for this,” Hood seemed amused by him, but had already set down two trays piled high with food on the table in front of him by the time Peter fully sat up.
“How’re you even gonna eat with that on?” Peter references Hood’s helmet, taking the moment to rub at his eyes. The shock of falling into a light slumber in a fast food chain was quickly bypassed in the face of his aching stomach. It had to be the cold rain that was getting to him and his lack of proper caloric intake making him so out of it. The jacket had helped, but his pants and shoes were soaked and almost icy. He hated wet clothes— texture nightmare! It reminded him of when he landed in the Hudson.
The discomfort of essentially passing out in a public place and the damp setting in was barely offset by Red Hood’s calming heartbeat and the appearance of a greasy, thick stack of burgers and fries with large sides of ranch, ketchup, and a pink neon sauce, a large milkshake, and a huge cup of water. He drools, Hood snorts a laugh behind his face plate when he finally drops into the seat across from Peter.
“Like this,” Hood sassily responds, clicks something on the side of his head and presses his fingers to the top, lifting and removing his helmet, making Peter gasp and look away. No way was this dude just revealing himself like that— and in public! He thought the bats were super secretive? That’s what the internet said! Wait, Hood wasn’t exactly a Bat, though, right? Online it was a widely debated topic, because he wore the insignia but was at odds with Batman publicly more than a few times. Because he killed people. Though it was clear from their interactions, they did work together, but Red Hood seemed to be largely independent. He had worked with a group called the Outlaws, which was infamous around the world for ‘dismantling heavy operations’. If he was revealing his face, it didn’t mean he had to reveal his other face.
Beck’s death flashes through his minds eye and he has to close his eyes for a blink and take a deep breath to focus once more on Hood’s calm and even heartbeat. Peter dares to glance up.
Red Hood had a domino mask under his helmet. Of course he did, because that is totally normal. In fact, why didn’t Peter think of that? Then again, he could kinda stick to anything if he needed to, including his mask, it wasn’t just his hands and feet (true: Peter could hang from the ceiling from the top of his head; Ned had once made him T-pose while there for the meme).
“You—“ he reacts, mouth opening and closing like a fish for a moment. Hood laughs, his lips quirking at the edge, and Peter takes the chance to observe his appearance. It seemed like he wasn’t used to smiling, or at least he hadn’t without his helmet in some time, had black hair with a tuft of white front and center that began to spring up from being flattened. The familiar squared jawline, a scar from his skull to his cheek recognizable from the man Peter knew as Jason. And arguably, logically , Peter knew Hood as Jason because of his heartbeat, but seeing the evidence of his knowledge in real time was a bit… much. He knew it, but man did it feel weird that he was right. He hadn’t been able to really recognize people’s heartbeats like that without a seriously focused meditative process. Now it only took a few seconds to recognize the pattern in the blood flow, and not nearly as much brain power was required. Peter files away ‘enhanced pattern recognition’ as another change to his powers.
His spidey sense had been raised marginally when they had entered, had faded when Red Hood sat him down in his booth, and only raised the hairs on his neck marginally because they were at a crappy fast food chain in a random square of Crime Alley.
He could hear gun shots in Burnley’s direction.
Peter was tired; he was hungry; he was 15 going on 16. Red Hood had done nothing but help him since he dragged himself out of the Lazarus lab. So Peter deflated and gave a narrow eyed closed-lip smile to the man sitting across from him, the green in his eyes flashing in the fluorescent lighting.
“Whatever,” He sighs. Peter takes a good look at his tray and swallows, nervous about eating food he didn’t pay for, but nonetheless excited.
“This, it’s a… Family tradition,” Hood’s brows pull together like he hadn’t meant to do it at all, but nonetheless pulls from his tray a box that looks remarkably similar to a Mcdonald’s happy meal, but is black and yellow, with bat ears as the closure, and sets it on Peter’s tray. Peter lifts it gingerly into his hands. So, Red Hood was part of the Batfamily.
“A kid's meal? Why does your bat family have a tradition of getting a kid’s meal?” Red Hood shakes his head in response, sighing as if exhausted by the question, “is it because of the branding?” Peter mumbles more to himself as he opens it up. Inside is a small fry, a bag of apple slices, and 4 chicken nuggets, which, much to Hood’s admittedly well hidden surprise, Peter swallows in seconds. The surprise was so minute Peter hadn’t even noticed the difference until he saw Hood watching him with an amused and almost wickedly soft smile on his face. Any sane person would probably think it was intimidating, maybe even scary, especially considering his reputation; it didn’t seem natural to his stature, his presence.
Peter wasn’t exactly the first person to claim he was sane, as he was a mutated dude running around in a Spider leotard most of the time.
He pulls out a small plastic black bag once the last of the apple slices are gone and glances at Red Hood with a lifted and sceptical expression, who nods casually and leans back in his booth, watching. So, ever the people pleaser, Peter rips it open. It’s a mini Red Hood, but in a design Peter had yet to see— one with an actual red hood and no guns, but what looked like a tire iron and a katana on his back. When he looks up at the man, mouth twisted into a playfully sharp grin, he finds Hood had a more reserved, but nonetheless shocked expression on his counterpart’s face— well, as shocked as a man whose eyes were obscured could appear to be.
“Are these rare or something? You’re actually wearing a hood!” Peter asks excitedly, flickering between looking at real life Hood and the model figure, holding the toy up to compare them side by side, gesturing with his other hand like he was framing the scene.
“Yeah, I’m not really a hero like Nightwing or Red Robin. That’s… also a suit I don’t wear much, I don’t know how they even got it so accurate ,” Hood shakes his head, muttering the final comment, bringing a hand up to rake it over his lower face, rubbing at what sounds like stubble on his chin. Peter really, really hated that by choosing Hood as focal point to keep himself from getting overstimulated by his environment, he was tuned into every bit of the vigilante. His eyes darted away from Hood’s, and Peter shrugs as casually as he can and sets the figure neatly next to his food. He grabs a clump of fries and dips them into a huge glob of ranch before biting into the fried deliciousness.
“Well, you’ve already saved my butt a few times. And if what I read on reddit was true– don’t look at me like that, you’re literally a primary source so I’m just fact checking— If they’re right, then Crime Alley became a hell of a lot safer when you took over—” He’s rambling, but Peter supposed his affinity for Red Hood was also the fact that for the most part during his exploration during his long and busy day, whenever any bad characters that set off his spidey senses got a look at his Red Hood hoodie, they ended up walking the other way, “sure, I believe killing people is wrong, and you should do all you can to save a life, but sometimes circumstances are…” Peter trails off, picturing his own past, the scenes playing like a movie reel constantly in his head. He had always believed in the best of people, and he still mostly did. The other Peters had helped with that. With Green Goblin.
But Peter also knew death, as it knew him. He knew the adrenaline of life and death situations; he knew of death and dying .
Jason catches the vacant, hollow look washing through the kid’s eyes for just a moment, the edges tinged green for even less time than he thought possible before Peter snapped back into focus and continued, “...complicated.” He stuffs more fries into his mouth.
And by god, they were satisfying. He dipped some of the fries into the neon pink sauce to discover it was a slightly more hot, unnatural and slightly chemical tasting dip not wholly unlike thousand island sauce. It made his nose wrinkle, his tongue mulling the taste of the food over in his mouth before swallowing, deciding it was delicious all the same.
It also helped distract his brain from focusing on the fact that he almost murdered Green Goblin not too long ago. That was a fresh wound he had faced, dealt with, and needed to process again , but that might be postponed, since he didn’t especially feel like losing his shit tonight. Especially not in a fast food chain badly themed around a crime-fighting night stalking Bat and his odd, violent and otherwise insane rogues, with Red Hood, a de facto Bat, sitting across from him.
“That’s one way to describe it, yeah,” Red Hood takes a drink of his shake, cocking his head and thinking for a moment, observing the kid shoving food into his mouth somehow gracefully lethargic, as if he was half asleep, going through the motions expertly.
Despite his exhausted state, Peter was perceptive as all hell. It was just a bit jarring to see that cold, blank stare of an avoidant kid who’s been through hell and back for only seconds at a time between joyful false faces of confident politeness and smiling rambling speeches. Sure, Peter was an oddball, but if they hadn’t caught him covered in Lazarus water, would they have known he was a pit kid? Jason wasn’t sure.
For a teenager not native to Gotham, Peter was incredibly well adjusted to the crime rate. Especially for one who supposedly just moved there. With how smart he was, Jason was sure that Peter would have ingratiated himself perfectly within the school system and slipped through the cracks just as easily. But that didn’t really matter, because they had caught him; no, Jason was more concerned about his response, or rather, lack thereof, to the whole murder thing.
He wouldn’t sugar coat it, though he had begun using nonlethals in the guns he kept on his thighs, primarily sticking to wounding and maiming, his day work was what he called cover. Jason had killed quite a few people he probably could have avoided killing, like, a day ago, he just didn’t plaster it on a billboard for Bruce to see it anymore. Even then, he mostly only killed the big wigs, and some even were left barely clinging to life— if they were left with crippling injuries and no way out of an exploding or collapsing building then that was none of Jason’s business.
Hey, look, it was a very new thing, not taking the lives of criminal scum impulsively .
Key word, impulsively. Jason often felt like he was the revolving door for his own values, that they’d reset and reload like a bullet being cocked into its chamber every time his life was going alright for once. He just began getting back into the good graces of the hero world, with his family ; had an epiphany and everything.
But wanting to be someone and actually having to be that person were completely separate stories. It was nice to have backup, people he could trust again. A family. He had lost everyone, killed in broad daylight, and his family still wanted him to come back.
It was not so nice to have to deal with the emotions of it all. Dealing with Bruce, and his constant disapproval, his tone and the way he saw through Jason’s flimsy excuses every time a mafioso involved with the Gotham underworld disappears on his watch. Dealing with the baggage of knowing he was one bad step from being abandoned again for his choices.
Because Jason knows what Gotham needs. He was past the guilt, because he had his own beliefs; he had grown beyond Bruce. If he refused to get his hands dirty, Jason would. He would sink to their level.
Jason still didn’t go to family dinners on Thursday nights.
Jason felt guilty about that, Alfred made sure of it whenever he did somehow get roped into going to the manor or the cave. He was already trudging through dangerous swamps, toeing the line of truth and lies he really didn’t want Bruce to clearly distinguish.
A part of him worried Peter was just another bomb waiting to explode in his face. The green hum in his body whenever he could see the kid helped offset that anxiety, which was odd for something that could have antagonized the worst of him.
“Well, I wouldn’t worry about Red Robin teasing you about a kids meal toy, he named himself after a restaurant chain,” Peter chews for a moment, speaking into the slight lull of conversation, gesturing loosely with a wave of a hand and rolling his eyes, but by the look of Hood’s cocked head and mildly puzzled expression, they probably didn’t have the Red Robin restaurant franchise here. Peter can’t help but forge on and sing out the jingle, shaking his head by the end of it with a mischievous look in his eyes. Jason snorts.
“Haven’t heard of it,” Hood hums, taking a bite of one of two of his own burgers. Peter watches for a moment before his stomach is rumbling, despite having polished off his first set of fries. He couldn’t possibly put it off any longer, so he sinks into his first burger with gusto. He moans when he tastes it, a part of his brain tingling as the taste recalls to him that one night when Tony took him out after one of their earlier simulation training and suit development weekend sessions went long into the evening. It was one of the few that got past both Aunt May and Ms. Potts’s supervision, and they had both been covered in soot, their hair comically blown out and greasy as all hell. The cashier had asked Tony for a picture and it ended up trending online for two days straight. He forced the emotion down and focused on chewing deliberately.
There’s a blissful silence that falls between the two as they eat, Peter slowly drying out but retaining the chill he had just gotten rid of with the hot shower afforded to him.
After a particularly large gulp of his milkshake, having finished his food, Peter cleared his throat.
“So,” he says. Red Hood looks at him, having just taken a huge bite of a… western bacon cheeseburger? Did Peter have one of those? He gently smacks his lips, trying not to call attention to it. It tasted like he definitely had one of those. He doesn’t really remember what he ate, just that it was delicious and hot and it was settling perfectly in his stomach at the moment, “are we gonna address the elephant in the room or what?” Peter asks.
Jason scrunched his eyebrows, as if debating something while chewing and taking his time to swallow. Wow. How the hell was Jason even supposed to respond to that?
“Which one? There’s at least twenty.” He shrugs, slowly, carelessly picking a napkin out of the dispenser on the table, wiping his hands, scrunching it up and tossing it onto his now empty tray– there were a few fries left; Peter eyed them. Jason slid his tray an inch up, gesturing with an open, relaxed body language, leaning back just a little to show he was full. Like a total Uncle, Peter noted. The teen leans in, feet jittering beneath the table as he picks at the leftover fries.
“Obviously the fact that we’re wombmates,” It’s so simply said, Hood almost misses it, Peter glancing casually at the domino mask, cocking his head, almost thankful for the excuse to not make direct eye contact, his eyes traveling up to the man’s hair pointedly. Red Hood, who was taking a sip of his drink, nearly choked at the statement.
Peter could probably eat another four burgers, and still have a snack afterwards, so he talks instead, letting his mouth run wild.
“I’m willing to address a maximum of three elephants, metaphorically speaking of course. One of them has got to be that green tube I escaped from, because it’s clear to me this,” Peter gestures between their heads emphatically, “is not a coincidence. I am not that lucky.”
“Listen, kid,” Red Hood starts.
“It’s Peter,” Peter interrupts.
“The Lazarus pit changes a lot, Peter. Dying does,” Red Hood bites out, his heartbeat rising fractionally, clearly uncomfortable and slightly irritated (and it takes the wind right out of Peter’s sails, to be honest), “you were in a lab, but— we’re pretty sure they put you in the same stuff that comes from the natural pits. OG formula,” there’s a low noise that reverberates from him, like a hum, but sadder; Peter isn’t sure if it was only something he could hear, “I was brought back by the pits.”
It felt like a confession.
Peter wondered what kind of trauma Jason experienced; he wondered if it was anything like drowning in green.
He blinked away the image of his body dusting away from his mind for the moment.
“Why are all city crime fighting vigilantes always so vague?” Peter grumbles, trying to lighten the mood while simultaneously irritated, mussing up his slowly drying hair. He was already tired of being treated like glass; breakable.
Green bubbles pop, the sensation of the waters of the Lazarus tube flood his sneakers.
He takes a breath— he was just tired. His face began itching— healing as his food digested, but the feeling faded as the rest of his body took in the nutrition it needed.
Stupid super metabolism.
“You know a lot of those?” The question is quick, casual, and slides so perfectly into the space between them, almost prompting Peter to answer immediately and out of reflex. He stopped himself from saying anything rash by taking a long sip of his milkshake. He found himself unable to think too critically, feeling a bit more sleepy than before with food in his system.
“Can’t you just tell me something useful? Like why I’m—” He was going to say angry, but he cut himself off, pressing his mouth in a tight line, letting out a frustrated huff of air from his nose, body clenching as he felt the green water of rage splashing against his ankles. Peter gestured to his entire self after a breath. Red Hood snorts.
“Yeah, I’ll tell you about it, but I gotta say, you’re a fucking oddball. Haven’t really responded to the whole undead thing like we expected,” There’s another clench of Red Hood’s jaw, but there’s a slightly playful nature to his tone as he cocks his head. The domino mask pinches where the vigilante’s eyes are definitely narrowing in on him.
Watching. Observing.
Peter lets out a high pitched start to a laugh, shutting his mouth abruptly when he feels his fangs descend just a fraction and the twitch of heads, of eyes in their direction make him reel himself back in. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes with his fists before setting a hand back on his milkshake, a mutter of a laugh escaping from his mouth.
“How was I supposed to react?” A pleased curl to his close-lipped smile, he shakes his half empty milkshake a little and latches onto the straw. Red Hood studies Peter for a bit, chews on some ice from his drink and sets down his cup.
To be entirely honest, Jason wasn’t sure how much he should tell Peter, but he felt obligated to. And not in a ‘I hate you but you’re my responsibility’ way, but a ‘you’re a little shit but you’re my little shit’ kind of way. Jason went into the day thinking it wasn’t going to be a big deal, but holy fuck what was going on with that? It had to be related to the pit, the original waters Peter got encapsulated in.
“I went on a rampage after I came back. The pit has a way of… making your mind more malleable, more suggestible and I was… with the wrong type of people. My head was cloudy for a long time—” okay too much, reel it back Jason; he didn’t want to unload his own problems onto the kid. How much should he tell a teenager about this stuff? Sure, Jason was a teenager when it happened to him, but… Peter was a relative stranger. He had a lot of questions about this whole situation and— fuck it , “but the lab you were in belonged to Kobra, who was known to manufacture his own pits. Except his concoction usually makes you a mindless slave for him to control.”
Peter appreciated Red Hood’s candor. He doesn’t really know who Kobra is besides what he found online (which was a pretty basic bare bones biography about a cult), but Hood didn’t need to know that. He nods slowly to show he’s listening.
“Usually… so there’s a ‘but’ in there?” Peter questions after there’s a beat where Red Hood takes a sip of his own drink.
“But the tube you broke out of had the original Lazarus waters. Same as me,” Red Hood then launches into an explanation of the Lazarus pit, in which he admitted to Peter that the lab was left unchecked because it wasn’t on anyone’s radar, and it would have probably set off one of Peter’s alarm bells to redirect focus, but he quickly found himself unable to focus on anything besides the fact that Red Hood knew what the pit was because he died. It had taken a moment to process that part of his earlier statement.
Peter wasn’t insensitive, he wasn’t going to ask how it happened. The guy was clearly still dealing with it, his ‘resting’ hand on his lap in a tense fist. Red Hood sounded like he was biting out his words, attempting to explain a lengthy but rather undetailed history of someone named Talia al Ghul and Ra’s al Ghul. History was never Peter’s strong suit.
“You died, then.” Peter wants to smack himself; why the fuck did he just interrupt to say that? Red Hood stills for a moment, dumbstruck at his audacity, Peter was positive.
“Yeah. I died, what about you kid?” He nods, letting out a deep sigh, his large frame seeming to relax a bit as he leans back, an arm going up against the backrest.
“Yeah,” Peter sees the red sands of Titan, the disappearing back of Thanos, his mentor’s eyes, and ash, as he’s broken apart and snapped out of existence. He feels the suffocation of green, sick Jello water in his lungs choking him, pervading his senses and blinding him. He feels himself struggling against the glass. There’s a leap in Red Hood’s heart beat that makes him snap back to reality.
He comes out of his daze to a crunched cup in his hands, thankfully emptied.
He sets it onto his tray and shakes his hand free of the droplets of leftover shake, taking a napkin and tidying up the way Aunt May taught him. If nothing else, it busied his hands. He hears Red Hood let out a hum, and he hands him another napkin for his own hands.
Jason wasn’t sure what to say to make the kid listen and trust him. He was good with the alley kids, but Peter was a teenager. A teenager who came from pit waters but seemed to have iron-will and no lack of knowledge as to who he was. Jason had the same iron-will, but had been lost in vengeance. In rage.
It turns out he didn’t have to do much.
“You wanna talk about it?” Red Hood sounds a bit unsure, but he still asks.
So far, he had helped Peter twice, given him clothes and shoes, food, and driven him on his cool ass motorbike. He had checked in on him as a civilian, and he seemed dependable. Sure, Peter read online that Red Hood was an unhinged murderous anti-hero at best, but he also was raised to understand that people were not all black and white, they were emotional, can act irrationally and be scared and make mistakes, and Jason was a person first and foremost.
He was also kin. That green goo that permeated him demanded it. Peter didn’t mind that one; if anything, it was the calmest demand the Lazarus waters had of him.
But he remembers Tony and May. He remembers Titan, and the Guardians.
“Not really,” There’s a tight, slightly uncomfortable grimace on Peter’s face as he wrings his hands together under the table. All he wanted was a carefree summer after being apparently gone for five whole years and fighting a war he was never supposed to be in. Jason watches his eyes gleam green for a minute as Peter breathes.
“Then elephant number two?” Red Hood asks hesitantly. Peter smiles softly at him and Jason’s heart rate calms down a fraction, remaining steady and soothing for the spider.
“Might as well get it over with,” Peter honestly had no clue what Hood was going to use as the second topic of controversy. He really hoped it wasn’t the guardian thing.
“Okay, it’s about your guardian— what was his name again?” Hood folds his arms in front of him. God damn-it, Peter, you had to think something, didn’t you? He shakes his head, leaning back and mirroring Hood’s posture before narrowing his eyes and making direct eye contact despite the domino mask blocking direct sight.
Jason was testing the waters, seeing if Peter would lie about it again.
So far, Peter was pretty sure he told Red Hood it was Tony, but as far as everyone else he’s met, it was Happy. He needed to get his story straight anyways, it was easier to stick to one ‘truth’. Peter hated lying, but he wasn’t above it. He strategically avoided conversations and the truth whenever necessary, to keep his identity secret. Or at least, he had. Matt had been extremely effective in coaching him how to do so. He could beat a lie detector, if needed.
Then again, he couldn’t be all that terrible at lying; he did manage to hide that he was Spider-man from the public until an unhinged tech-illusionist manipulated him and ruined his life (he always wanted to keep his loved ones in the dark, but he always knew in the back of his mind it wouldn’t last. They would find out eventually; and he was right. And it had been okay . For a while ).
Peter huffs out a small chuckle, under his breath. He needed to channel the best Tony liar face he could if this was going to work.
“Happy; What about him?” He gives the vigilante a bullshitter’s smile, and Jason is impressed at how quickly the kid’s entire demeanor shifted. It was mildly unsettling how natural it appeared to be; Jason definitely could have seen himself writing it off as a teenager mood swing if they hadn’t just admitted their deaths to each other.
“Hm, I think you said your guardian was Tony before,” Red Hood points out immediately.
“Yeah, I lied.” Peter admits, nodding confidently. If he got caught in a lie, he supposed he could just take the shameless route.
Jason coughs to conceal a laugh, clearing his throat.
“You lied.” Jason repeats, before laughing a bit, “Okay, Happy then. Here’s the thing, kid,” his voice lowers, “the paperwork is good but it isn’t that good. Now, before you panic,” his hand reaches out slowly and deliberately, palm down as if trying to soothe a wild animal; Peter felt like a wild animal being coaxed, but he was too sleepy to be annoyed, “I’m not a fucking idiot, I’m not going to report you to CPS. Those bastards wouldn’t hesitate to snatch up a kid like you,” Jason leans in, over the table with his large form, to ensure no one had the chance to overhear them as he speaks.
Jason knew what happened to kids in Gotham’s children protective services; Peter was definitely better off staying off the radar of any sick fuck who wanted a Meta child.
Because they would find out, somehow, they always did.
Also, Jason was totally lying about his paperwork, that shit was solid as fuck, even by Tim and Babs’ standards, but Peter didn’t need to know that. Speaking of the devil, the kid froze the minute he mentioned paperwork.
“But I do need to know you’re safe; you’ve got a roof over your head, a way to survive,” Red Hood’s eyes pinch again behind his mask, and he rubs his palm over his chin; Peter could hear the skin scratch at his stubble.
The fluorescent overhead lights hurt his tired eyeballs, so he closes them momentarily. He’s quiet as he mulls over what the man said. Peter was stressed, his heart rate picking up at the mention of kids like him. Did Jason know?
They had his DNA– his blood, did that mean they knew he was a mutate? Or was he just referencing the pit’s effects? He really hoped it was about his experience in the pit rather than his spider DNA.
He had a feeling they would be having a different conversation if it was.
“Yeah,” he responds in a quiet tone, arms still locked across his chest, but he opens his eyes and continues to look down at his lap, “I’m fine,” Spider-man answers Red Hood’s inquiry, his entire body tensed but strong, steady, and (hopefully) believable.
Jason swears under his breath.
“Okay, let’s say I believe you. If you ever…” Red Hood hesitates, and it’s the most unsure Peter’s seen him to be so far, “listen, I’ve got safe houses all over the city. You could crash in one, whenever, however long you need. No strings attached.”
Peter’s posture relaxes again, his face not in the least bit concealing of his surprise at the offer. A safe house… sounded so nice. But his shivers were calmed down (his wet clothes still stuck uncomfortably onto his body despite being half dry). A hot shower and heating would be wonderful, but it was still too soon. Peter wasn’t quite ready to follow him , regardless of his decision to trust the words of the vigilante.
He still wanted to be cautious.
“What’s in it for you?” Peter asks, keeping his tone more relaxed, but he couldn’t hide the edge to his voice hidden from the well trained Red Hood.
“I get to know a kid with my level of power is safe for the night,” Red Hood is straight forward, and there’s no hint of lying in his heartbeat.
“What makes you think I’m on your level?” Peter laughs, teasing the man, a smile growing on his lips, but he doesn’t leave, and he doesn’t shut him down immediately. Jason is thankful. Peter, on the other hand, found it mildly amusing in his clouded, tired head, that Red Hood thought they were on the same level. In fact, he hoped he was right. Peter hoped he wasn’t stronger— or rather, that he wouldn’t have to be.
“You know why,” Red Hood cocks his head, leaning back in his booth seat and lazily pointing a finger at him before rocking forward to the table again to take another sip of his drink, “and I know why,” he gestures back to his hair and eyes, despite being behind a mask. Peter nods, unconsciously agreeing.
“You know, if I had a nickel for every person I’ve met with our exact hair and eye combination, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice in the last two days,” Peter suddenly jokes, moving past Red Hood’s clear admission and the warm feeling slowly growing in his chest. He may not know
“Oh yeah? What’s his name?” Hood crosses his arms, his eyebrow clearly raising in a teasingly inquisitive expression.
“Jason; he was cool. I haven't seen him around and I’m a bit worried because he said he worked nightshift. What if he’s a henchman? Maybe I should go look for him sometime,” He raises his expression, trying to seem earnest. He thinks it works pretty well, considering Red Hood’s heart rate picks up and Peter can smell a mild anxiety.
“I don’t think that’s a great idea, Pete,” Red Hood’s mouth forms a solid line, regaining his composed presence.
“I think he works around here, though? It shouldn’t be too hard,” Peter grins playfully. Red Hood does a double take, narrowing his eyes.
Was Jason imagining things or was Peter aware he was the very man he met at the shelter? It seemed like a jest, and had begun so earnestly.
The better question was how could a teenager like him recognize Jason, being fresh from the pit? It didn’t make sense. Unless Peter was Meta and had some ability that allowed him to recognize them on instinct or some type of magic bullshit. In that case, Bruce would definitely butt-in (he was kidding himself if he didn’t think Bruce would butt-in regardless, and he knew it). He felt a little guilty for worrying the kid, if he wasn’t hinting at knowing his identity.
“How about this,” Jason gestures, compromising, “I’ll look out for him, tell him you’re worried and to stop by the shelter soon,” Jason suggests.
“I’ll be in and out of that shelter, but I guess that works,” Peter grins but acquiesces.
“You’re a pain in the ass,” the words seem to escape Red Hood in a huff of affectionate irritation. It flips Peter’s stomach, the green squirrelling away to the back of his mind, enveloped by his more light hearted emotions.
“I’m not sure what you mean, Red,” Peter sticks out his tongue like a child, but is met with a dazzling laugh from Red Hood that seemed to even startle an employee who was so idle Peter was sure (because of her heartbeat) that she was sleeping while standing up.
“Fine, fine, keep your secrets,” He grumbles, a slight smile stuck in the conversation.
A beep to his watch conveniently alerted Peter it was officially nine o’clock. He needed to get home, and the rain wasn’t letting up.
“Hey, I’m not trying to run away or anything, but I have an early morning and I still need to get home. Can we put a pin in this or something? I’ll answer the rest of your questions another day,” Peter suggests.
Jason observes Peter’s repeated nervous glances between his watch and the weather outside. It was a downpour, with no chances of letting up anytime soon.
“I’ve got a tarp in my bike pack,” Peter nods quietly at Hood’s declaration, his words interrupted by a loud crack of thunder. It makes Peter flinch.
He wonders if Thor could traverse universes, or if his dimension was in a different branch entirely. Thor was… A familiar face; a comrade who had clapped him harshly on the back while at the compound, shortly after the war ended and before Tony’s funeral. A friend who said he would always be welcome in his company— to him as Spider-man (Thor had actually attempted to gift him Asgardian ale, something that would work against his metabolism, but that had swiftly been intercepted by Bucky and Steve. That had gained Aunt May’s tentative approval ). Thor was a stranger in a friend’s coat.
Jason pulls his full helmet back on after loudly draining his milkshake of its contents into his mouth, and stands right as Peter does. Peter’s focus was on the sky, but not the rain like Jason had assumed it was. It almost felt as if Peter was attempting to scour the heavens, eyes straining anytime a flash of lightning and the following thunder echoed throughout the city. Jason wondered what it was he was searching for so intently.
They throw away trash and deposit their trays at the proper receptacle, Peter lingering by the entrance when Hood motions for him to stay put while he goes to grab his bike and the subsequent tarp. When he returns barely ten minutes later, engine roaring into the alleyway beside the food joint, the rain is dripping off of his helmet and jacket and the tarp is tucked tightly under his arm. Peter allows him to wrap the cart in the entryway of Batburger, surprised at how secure it seemed to be when the man popped up and gave him a nod. Everything was tightly packed, compressed under the tarp.
Then, as they exit Batburger, a rush of cold air envelops Peter’s whole being. He zips up his jacket higher and burrows into a pair of gloves and a hat he had thrown on at the last minute before Hood had wrapped up his belongings, gripping his cart’s dented handle just tight enough to keep a grip.
Peter was going to be cold tonight.
He must have had a look on his face that said it, because after a moment of standing under the overhang, Red Hood cleared his throat.
“My offer stands, tonight, or any other nights,” Jason said as quietly as he could under the crashing sound of rain and thunder clapping in the distance, and so gently Peter had to swallow tears as his eyes stung with heat. Instead, he gives the vigilante a shaky smile.
Jason thought Peter looked too beaten down for a fifteen going on sixteen year old. But what did he know? (he knew enough)
“I’m alright for tonight, thanks Hood. I better get back,” Peter said, after a moment of looking up at the sky and pulling his rain jacket’s hood up over his beanie. He didn’t bother with the guardian charade, content with Red Hood’s promise to not report him to CPS.
“Okay, kid, I’m always on-call, so if you need anything, even if it’s a ride, or something… ” Red Hood trails off again, shrugging as he hands Peter a piece of a ripped receipt with a phone number scrawled in large print on the blank side. Peter shows his surprise, but takes it gingerly, staring down at the number and nodding to himself and then Hood. He takes out the flip phone in his pocket and programs the number in, giving Hood a pointed look when he flips it closed.
“I will, thank you,” Peter nods.
Jason watches Peter disappear into the dark night, then returns to his bike in the alley.
As Jason starts it up, debating if he should try following Peter before ultimately deciding against it, he nearly smacked himself for being so fucking empty-headed. He totally forgot to ask about those Nat, Bucky, and Sam characters Peter mentioned on the way to Batburger.
He’d have to ask next time.
Meanwhile, Peter walks ahead, listening to the thrum of Spiders in the sewers underneath and in the corners of the buildings. He was cold, shivering the entire way, but his belly was full and his spirits were raised.
He was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, Red Hood could be a good ally to his new start.
Notes:
I decided to can a few ideas and add some good ole light hearted fun, and I watched like an over hour long lore video for this chapter alone that made me have to retcon some things for the fic long update coming later. Thanks for reading, and as always, I'll be back at some point to update!
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