Fractured Webs

by Chaotic_Gemini_In_The_Sky

Summary:

In the aftermath of the Snap, a fractured universe mourns. Peter Parker, torn from his dying world at the moment of ultimate sacrifice, awakens not in death — but in Gotham. Haunted by voices of the dusted and fused with fragments of the Infinity Stones, Peter is caught between dimensions, carrying the unbearable weight of what was lost.

Notes:

Hi everyone I wanted to try my hand at a Peter Parker in Gotham fanfic and this is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy I tried my best to stay consist but I have a terrible memory so things are probably not going to be. Anyway let me know what you think.

Inspired by Dark Matter by mysterycyclone
Inspired by You With The Watercolour Eyes by DefinitelyNotIndecisive

Chapter 1: Ashes and Echoes

He was supposed to fade. He didn’t. And now the universe would never be the same.

The battlefield on Titan was a wound in the cosmos—jagged, bleeding, and raw. The red world groaned under the weight of battle, its skies stained with ash and ruin. Stone towers crumbled into yawning canyons. Fires crackled along distant ridges, casting long shadows that flickered like dying thoughts.

Peter Parker—fourteen, trembling, bleeding—crouched behind a fractured pillar of alien rock. His breaths came in stuttering gasps, filtered through a half-shattered mask. Sweat drenched his skin. His ribs throbbed. His legs shook. Everything in him ached.

This isn’t a place for kids, he thought. But then again, he hadn’t been a kid since the Spider bit him.

“Okay, Peter,” he whispered, “this is it. You gotta move. They need you. You’re... you’re Spider-Man.”

His voice cracked on the last word.

He launched himself from cover, webs screaming through the air, latching to the massive Infinity Gauntlet. Sparks hissed. The suit groaned with strain. For one heartbeat, he thought it might work.

Then came the blow.

A backhand. Unseen. Unthinkably fast.

It crushed into his chest with a thunderous crack . He felt his sternum bend. The suit’s nanotech surged, trying to compensate, but the force hurled him through the air like paper in a hurricane. He slammed into a monolith, and the world went black-red-white.

Then came something... else .

Tiny lights flickered in the air around the Gauntlet’s knuckles. Not seen. Not sensed. Not even noticed. But real.

Unstable power. Broken fragments. Shattered forces.

They should have vanished.

Instead, they passed into Peter like ghost-fire, like glass in his blood, sharp and unnatural. They didn’t belong—but they stayed. And somehow... he didn’t break.

He stood, again. Shaking. Swallowed by pain.

Then— the Snap.

The sound was soft. The effect was cataclysmic.

He turned, gasping, in time to see Mantis disintegrate into ash. Then Quill. Drax. Strange met his gaze—those unreadable eyes—and was gone.

Peter looked down. His hands trembled. His fingertips began to fade.

The mask was gone. The fear was not.

“Mr. Stark... I—I don’t feel so good…”

Tony’s arms were suddenly there. Warm. Anchoring.

But Peter was already slipping.

“I don’t wanna go—I’m not ready—please—”

But his voice wasn’t alone anymore. It echoed.

Warped.

Folding in on itself.

He didn’t fade like the others. He ruptured . The fabric of space bent around him, tore at the edges. Light bent. Gravity inverted.

He didn’t vanish.

He shifted .

It began with cold.

Not ordinary cold—this was ancient, viscous, alive.

Peter’s lungs seized as they filled with thick, luminous liquid. His limbs jerked, flailed, scraped against slick stone. Panic overtook him before thought could catch up.

He was drowning.

His body burned—not from lack of air, but from within. Every cell screamed. His nerves were lightning. His thoughts disintegrated into raw sensation. Pain, unlike anything he’d ever known, carved through him.

Something inside him pulsed—wrong, unbound, infinite.

He kicked. Fought upward. A hand broke the surface. Then his face.

He exploded out of the Lazarus Pit with a choking gasp, vomiting glowing water onto the stone floor. His entire body convulsed. His skin steamed. His suit—what remained—hung in slashed ribbons. The spider symbol on his chest warped and flickered, pulsing with unnatural colors: violet, gold, green.

Peter collapsed to the floor. Gasping. Trembling. Wet hair clinging to his face.

His body was wrong.

His heartbeat thundered. His veins glowed faintly beneath his skin. The air around him buzzed like static—no, like power —pressing against the world as if he didn’t quite belong.

He groaned, clutching at his ribs.

Then—

Footsteps.

Measured. Echoing.

From the dark of the chamber, a man emerged—tall, cloaked, eyes glinting beneath a hood of shadow. His presence bent the room around him.

Ra’s al Ghul.

His gaze narrowed as it fell upon the trembling, half-drowned boy at the edge of the Lazarus Pit.

“Who are you?” he asked, voice sharp, precise.

Peter looked up, dazed, barely able to focus.

“I—I don’t... I don’t know…”

“You emerged from the Pit.” Ra’s stepped closer, studying him like a blade. “You weren’t thrown in. You appeared . That should not be possible.”

Peter coughed, shuddering. His voice was ragged. “Where... am I?”

Ra’s crouched beside him, examining the cracks in Peter’s flesh where light still flickered beneath the skin. “This place is hidden. Ancient. Protected. None find it without intent. Yet you fell from the Pit itself.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Peter whispered. “I didn’t choose this... I was—Titan. I was on Titan, and then—” He broke off, swallowing a sob. “There was dust. Everyone was... gone.”

“Titan?” Ra’s repeated slowly. “That is not a place I know.”

Peter shook his head, hands gripping his skull. “This isn’t right. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

Ra’s stood, arms behind his back, eyes thoughtful. “You are not dead. But you were not born in this world, either.”

Peter's fingers spasmed. The floor cracked beneath them.

Ra’s flinched. Just slightly.

Peter looked at his hands, horrified. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Power,” Ra’s murmured. “But of what kind, I cannot say.”

Peter tried to stand—and faltered. His legs buckled. Ra’s did not offer a hand.

“You’ve been changed,” Ra’s said. “Not by the Pit. Before it.”

“I didn’t ask for this,” Peter muttered.

“Few who are chosen for greatness ever do,” Ra’s said.

Peter looked up, eyes bloodshot and burning. “I’m not great. I’m just a kid.”

Ra’s drew his blade.

Peter froze.

“I do not trust what I cannot understand,” Ra’s said. “And you are a tear in the world’s order.”

Peter raised his hands in defense— and the world cracked again .

A shockwave lashed out—pure violet light. Ra’s was flung backward, slamming into the wall hard enough to dent stone. The blade clattered to the floor.

Peter staggered back, panting. “I didn’t mean to—”

Ra’s stood slowly, blood trickling down his chin. His expression had shifted—from wariness to fascination.

“You are dangerous.”

Peter clutched his chest. “I don’t want to be.”

“That may not be your choice.”

Ra’s lunged—blade flashing.

Peter’s scream split the chamber—not just in sound but in reality . Colors burst from him—green, red, blue, gold, power without name. The chamber bent inward. Stone warped. Torches guttered and went out.

And Ra’s—Ra’s al Ghul—was gone.

Nothing left but ash and a sword hissing against the Pit’s edge.

Silence reigned.

Peter stood there, panting, trembling, skin glowing faintly, hands twitching with tremors he couldn’t stop.

And then the voices began.

Soft. Almost imagined.

“Peter…”

Mantis.

“…it’s cold…”

Quill.

“Where are we?”

Drax.

“I’m still here…” Strange.

Peter clutched his head. “No—no no—stop—”

The voices weren’t outside .

They were inside. Trapped. Like ghosts. Like splinters of lost people anchored to something inside him—echoes of the dead.

Peter dropped to his knees, choking on a scream.

He was a tomb.

A vessel for lost souls.

A mistake that should not exist.

Chapter 2: Blood on his Hands

Peter sat with his knees pulled tight to his chest, a trembling bundle of bone and guilt, the aftermath of murder still thick in the air. Vaporized fragments of Ra’s al Ghul drifted like ash around him, carried by phantom drafts that should not exist in an enclosed chamber. The air was heavy with silence—but not peace. There was a hum to it, low and constant, like a slow scream barely restrained by stone.

The Lazarus Pit at his side rippled in jerking, unnatural pulses, casting eerie green reflections that danced across Peter’s blood-spattered arms. Its glow lit the etched veins across his forearms—violet, red, gold, green—like threads of lightning beneath skin.

The Infinity fragments inside him weren’t singing now.

They were watching.

And Peter Parker was falling apart.

He stared at his hands—small, raw, shaking. Coated in damp soot, crusted blood, and the Lazarus fluid that reeked of old copper and rot. They didn’t look powerful. They looked like they belonged to a kid who missed math class. Like someone who should be at home, grounded for sneaking out late.

But they had killed a man.

No webbing. No mercy. No second chances.

He hadn’t knocked Ra’s out. Hadn’t disabled him.

He had unmade him.

“I didn’t mean to…” he whispered, barely a breath. “I didn’t want to…”

The sentence collapsed beneath the weight of itself. His breath hitched, and a sob strangled up his throat like broken glass.

“I—I just wanted to go home…”

The words were a child’s wish whispered into a void that didn’t care.

Peter doubled forward, fingers digging into his skull. The pressure behind his eyes pulsed with a thousand voices. They fluttered like moths behind his sockets—soft wings made of memory, pain, death.

But now one of the voices sounded like his .

I killed him.
I killed him.
I killed him.

“Shut up…” he whimpered.

The whisper became a chorus.

I killed him.
Murderer.
Monster.
Murderer.
You were supposed to be a hero.

“Please…” he rasped, “please shut up—please—”

The chamber didn’t answer.

But the guilt rose like bile.

He’d seen death before. Queens had dark corners. He’d heard gunshots in the alley behind his school. He’d seen what men could do when they stopped caring.

He’d felt loss.

Uncle Ben.

Then May, in a world that could barely remember her face.

But this—this was different.

This was his hands.
His power.
His fault.

A dry retch cracked from his chest. Peter pitched sideways and vomited bile onto the cold stone floor. His stomach spasmed again, but there was nothing left to bring up.

The echoes of the Snap still lived inside him.

And so did the dead.

He lay curled beside the Pit, fists trembling, soaked in glowing water and old sweat. The green fluid clung to his skin like a living thing, pulsing faintly in sync with the shivering runes along the chamber walls.

This place wasn’t dead.

It was waiting .

His pulse slowed. The fire in his chest dulled, but the voices...

The voices shifted .

“Peter... you okay now, right?”
Mantis. Gentle. Nervous. Hopeful.

“Dude, seriously—what the hell is going on?”
Quill. The mask of humor over fear.

“This place stinks.”
Drax. Always blunt. Always present.

Peter gritted his teeth.

“Stop…”

“…this isn’t the end…”
Wanda. Soft. Fractured.

“We were supposed to come back, not... bleed through.”
Bucky. Quiet. Haunted.

“Peter, focus. You’re still breathing. That means you’re not done yet.”
Sam. The voice of a soldier trying to stay calm.

“You're not supposed to be like this, kid...”
Strange. Regretful. Tired.

Peter screamed.

“SHUT UP!”

The chamber vibrated with the force of it. The water in the Pit surged. Dust rained from the ceiling.

But the voices didn’t leave.

They simply receded.

Waiting.

Peter dropped to his knees, gasping, eyes wide, bloodshot. The runes in the walls flickered. The web of veins along his arms glowed again—color bleeding like bruises through flesh.

Each color pulsed with a rhythm.
Each beat matched a voice.
Each voice matched a soul.

The Infinity Stones hadn’t just given him power.

They’d carried something.
Someone.

Dozens of someones.

T’Challa.
Shuri.
Falcon.
Bucky.
Wanda.
Vision.
Strange.
Quill.
Mantis.
Drax.
Maria Hill.
Nick Fury.
Thousands… no millions of others.

Their deaths had echoed . Their souls had fractured into the Stones that held the universe’s law—and when those Stones had cracked, the pieces had fallen into him.

Peter wasn’t just a boy anymore.

He was a coffin.

And the dead were awake.

Then came the shift in the air.

A pulse of red.

A flicker at the edge of the Lazarus Pit.

And she appeared .

Not formed. Not teleported.

Just there.

Wanda Maximoff stood barefoot on the stone floor, draped in crimson. Her eyes glowed not with fury, but grief . She looked like mourning made flesh. Not a ghost—but not a woman, either. An echo given form. A scar in time.

Peter stared at her, frozen.

“You’re… you’re dead.”

Wanda nodded slowly. “I am. But I didn’t move on.”

Peter didn’t move. His breath barely stirred.

“You’re not real.”

“I’m not alive,” she said, voice soft as thread. “But I’m not nothing either.”

She took a step forward. The Pit didn’t ripple.

“The Stones held more than power,” she said. “They held consequence . When we died—when Thanos broke the laws of reality—our souls didn’t vanish. They fractured.”

Peter’s lip trembled.

“The moment you touched the shards… we clung to you.”

“You’re not hallucinations…”

“No,” Wanda said. “We’re residue . Fragments. Bound to you through the Stones' pain. Through yours .”

Peter folded in on himself again, arms around his knees. “I don’t know where I am. I—I woke up here. There was this man—he tried to kill me—I didn't mean to but I—”

His voice broke again.

“I killed him. I killed him.”

“You weren’t ready for this,” Wanda whispered.

“I’m just a kid.”

“So was I.”

She knelt before him.

Peter’s fingers dug into his arms until they bled.

“I don’t even know if this place is real…”

“It is,” she said. “But it isn’t yours. It’s between . A crumbling place. A place full of judgment. A place looking for meaning.”

Peter’s eyes darted across the chamber—rotting walls, weeping stone, the green water that never stopped moving.

“It feels like a graveyard.”

Wanda’s voice was a thread of wind.

“It is.”

He looked up at her, desperate.

“Why me?”

“Because the universe doesn’t care about fairness,” she said. “Because the Stones broke—and you were the only thing nearby that could hold what spilled out. ”

“You’re saying I’m not human anymore.”

“I’m saying you’re more than one soul in one body.”

Her hand reached for his cheek. He flinched. But didn’t pull away.

She touched him.

And for the first time since the Snap— silence.

The voices faded. Not gone. But quiet.

Resting.

Peter exhaled like he’d been drowning for hours.

Wanda’s touch was fading, her body fraying into embers of red.

“I can’t hold them forever,” she said. “But I can give you space. Time.”

Peter looked into her flickering eyes.

“What do I do?”

She hesitated.

“Live.”

Then, like a dying fire caught by wind, she disappeared—blown into the ether.

And Peter was alone again.

But not empty.

He rose on shaking legs. His muscles ached. His skin burned. But he stood.

The stairway out of the Lazarus Chamber loomed ahead—steep, broken, forgotten.

Wherever this place was, it wasn’t Earth.

It wasn’t home.

But it was waiting for something.

And Peter had to decide:

Would he be its salvation?

Or its next shadow?

 

The torchlight in the Lazarus Chamber had dimmed.

No more whispers. No more red-eyed ghosts drifting like embers through his vision. The air hung thick and stale, heavy with the remnants of something ancient, something violated. Even the Lazarus Pit, once a seething, pulsing core of unnatural green light, had gone still. Like a beast returned to hibernation, satisfied after tasting a soul it wasn’t meant to touch.

Peter Parker stood alone.

His breathing was shallow, each inhale dragging damp, mold-heavy air into aching lungs. His legs trembled beneath him, every muscle twitching with the aftershocks of resurrection. He hadn’t died, not fully—not cleanly—but something inside him had. He could feel the divide. The line.

Before the Snap.
After the Pit.

Who am I now?

Every beat of his heart sounded like a drum struck with celestial malice. The remnants of the Infinity Stones curled through his bloodstream like vipers made of fire and time, sleeping— for now —but ready to writhe, to bite, to scream.

Peter needed answers. He needed air .
He needed to run —not from something.

From himself.

He turned from the edge of the Pit and stumbled forward, legs numb, muscles stiff like rusted springs. His foot struck a broken tile and he nearly fell, catching himself against a shattered pillar. Pain lanced through his side. He hissed but kept moving.

A narrow passage yawned between two collapsed walls, partially hidden beneath the blackened remains of some ancient explosion. The opening was crude, asymmetrical, carved into the bedrock like an afterthought—or an escape route.

Peter stepped into the dark without hesitation.

The walls closed in quickly. He ducked instinctively as the ceiling lowered, jagged stone scraping along his arms. His bare feet slapped against rough ground, every step opening a fresh ache. His suit peeled away in strips, nanofibers flaking like dead skin.

Still, he didn’t stop.

The further he crawled, the colder the air grew. Mildew thickened into rot. The sharp scent of minerals became the stench of sewage, rust, old blood, and chemical decay. Somewhere ahead, water dripped steadily. Echoes multiplied in the tight space, his own movements returning distorted, monstrous.

The tunnel constricted—too narrow to walk. Peter dropped to his hands and knees, crawling through the filth. The stone tore his palms. His breath came in hard, ragged bursts. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t turn back.

Behind him was death.
Ahead… might be worse.

Then the tunnel changed.

The stone ended. Cold concrete replaced it—moist and slick beneath his fingers. He paused, blinking. Pipes lined the walls now, crusted with rust and whispering with thin streams of steam. Above him, a low electric hum joined the dripping of water. The sound of infrastructure. Of machines. Of civilization.

He had reached the sewers.

Peter pulled himself free from the tunnel’s mouth and dropped to the floor of a massive, curved corridor. The sewer stretched endlessly in both directions, lit by occasional flickering green bulbs mounted along the arched ceiling. The lights buzzed like dying insects.

A trench of murky water gurgled beside him, its surface disturbed by oil slicks and floating trash. The stench slammed into him.

Peter gagged.

He yanked the shredded remnants of his mask over his mouth, tried to breathe through the taste of filth and rot, but it was useless. He coughed, ripped the fabric off, and tossed it into the dark.

His vision blurred.

The voices stirred.

“Peter…? Where did you take us?”
“Get help, kid. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“I remember dying. I remember it burning.”

Peter clenched his fists. The veins in his arms lit like faint circuitry, pulses of red and violet and gold dancing beneath his skin.

“Quiet,” he whispered hoarsely.

The voices paused.

Not gone.
Just listening .

He staggered forward, footsteps echoing. The damp floor chilled his bare feet, and his legs felt like they weren’t fully his—like he was puppeteering someone else’s body. His thoughts kept slipping, tangled in fragments of other minds, other memories.

He remembered holding Tony’s hand.

He remembered dust turning to wind.

He remembered screaming as Ra’s al Ghul vanished like a vaporous curse.

He remembered—

“Stop,” he muttered to himself.

Time passed without rhythm. The sewer became a labyrinth of silence and rot, the curved tunnels like the ribcage of something long dead. Peter didn’t know how long he walked. Minutes. Hours. Days, maybe. He felt unanchored.

Then—finally— light.

It bled down through a rusted metal grate bolted above his head. The edges of it were twisted, as if something had ripped it loose once and never put it back. Sunlight filtered in—not bright, but real. Warm.

Color.

Peter’s pulse quickened.

Without thinking, he crouched, coiled, and jumped.

His fingers caught the lip of the grate. Rust flaked into his eyes. His shoulder screamed in protest. But he swung himself up, grunting, boots scraping, and rolled through the opening onto crumbling asphalt.

He collapsed.

The air hit him like a slap—cool and sharp, filled with smog and the metallic tang of a city long since soured. He gasped, choked, then laughed once—bitter, breathless—at the feeling of real air again.

Sunlight filtered through smog, dim and orange, like dusk smeared across the sky.

Peter rose to his knees.

Then stood.

And turned.

He froze.

Gotham.

He didn’t have the word yet—not truly—but he knew. On some primal, sensory level, he knew .

The city stretched before him like a graveyard wearing a crown of glass and iron. The buildings were tall, narrow, monolithic—black stone and old gargoyle-studded architecture nestled beside brutalist skyscrapers of dark steel and smoked glass. Rooftops were cluttered with antennas, rusted water towers, and broken neon signs that buzzed half-heartedly behind cracked windows.

A billboard flickered above a crooked subway entrance:

“Vote Dent: A Safer Gotham.”

Peter’s lips moved, soundless. Then—

“…Gotham?”

It slithered into his mind like a worm made of dread. Not just a name. A feeling. An infection. A warning carved into brick and shadow.

The streets around him were wet with old rain. Black cars drifted past—sleek, armored. Pedestrians moved fast. Hoods up. Eyes low. No one lingered. No one smiled.

A man brushed past Peter, muttering into his collar. Another woman on the corner glanced up—and looked away just as fast, like staring too long might pull her in.

A siren wailed far off. Slow. Hollow.

No laughter. No music.

Just concrete. Just metal. Just decay.

Peter took a step forward. Then another.

The city didn’t notice him.

But it felt him.

It watched him.

Something deep within the skyline shifted, like old bones remembering pain.

Peter turned slowly, his eyes tracing the rooftops, the alleys, the dark windows.

He was a stranger here.

A ghost with gods inside him.

A weapon made of broken worlds and guilt.

This wasn’t home.

This was Gotham .

And Gotham did not wait for heroes.

It devoured them.

 

Chapter 3: Books and Shadows

The sidewalk groaned beneath every step. Cracks spidered through the concrete like veins—old and broken, just like everything else in this city.

Peter Parker wrapped his arms around himself, trying to shrink in plain sight. His breath ghosted in front of his lips, his lungs burning in the cold air. His torn suit clung to him like dead skin, its nanofibers shredded beyond repair. What was once sleek and modern now sagged around him in tatters, the web insignia on his chest barely visible beneath grime and ash.

Each breath tasted like soot.

Each glance over his shoulder brought nothing—yet felt like everything was watching.

This isn’t Queens.
This isn’t even Earth, is it?

People passed by him, but no one looked. They moved with a kind of learned fatigue, shoulders hunched, heads low, hands buried in coat pockets or wrapped around cheap lighters. Some muttered to themselves. Some twitched with invisible itches. Others were too still—like the city had stopped them mid-life and forgot to restart.

The only thing they all had in common was this:

No one cared.

No one even glanced at the gaunt teenager with torn clothes and bruised eyes.

Peter stepped into the mouth of an alley, pressing his back to the grime-slicked brick. Steam hissed from a vent beside him, curling around his face like smoke from an invisible fire. The wall behind him was a canvas of old graffiti—layers of threats and art and gang tags scraped over each other until nothing meant anything anymore.

He pulled his sleeves down, trying to hide the glow in his veins. The cracked spider-symbol throbbed faintly with dull violet and green. His skin felt too thin, like the energy just beneath it wanted out.

He needed answers.

What is this place?
Why is it wrong?
Why do I still feel them in me?

There were no Avengers here. No friendly neighborhood to protect. No tower rising bright against the skyline. There was only Gotham—a haunted carcass stitched together with shadow and sirens.

Peter muttered aloud, voice barely audible through the hiss of leaking steam, “Okay… priorities. Hide. Blend in. Find a computer. Find... books?”

Even his voice sounded strange here—too young, too soft. It felt like it didn’t belong in this place. Like he didn’t.

A library. That was the safest move. Low-tech. Quiet. Forgotten by the city’s cruelty. No need for money. No one to ask questions. And maybe— maybe —a way to figure out if he even existed in this world.

He pushed off the wall and re-entered the stream of people, tucking his head down, mirroring their slouched steps and lifeless pace. He passed a newsstand selling cigarettes, cheap knives, and anti-meta tabloids. A liquor shop with armored bars over the glass, the neon “OPEN” sign flickering like it was trying to die. A pawn shop window advertised gun sales next to a baby stroller.

And then he saw it.

A rusted city map near a bus stop. Most of it was faded. Torn corners. Old rain damage. Someone had scratched profanity into the Plexiglas.

Peter leaned in, pretending to check the bus schedule. His eyes scanned the map, absorbing street names, subway lines, districts he didn’t recognize.

Then—

GOTHAM PUBLIC LIBRARY – Midtown Branch

Yes.

He turned sharply and headed down the next street, heart thumping louder now—not with fear, but purpose .

The deeper he moved into Midtown, the more the city seemed to fold inward.

The air thickened with smog and wet smoke. Neon signs flickered dimly through a haze of rain and streetlight. He passed a man with three cigarettes jammed into the same mouth. Another with a broken umbrella duct-taped to a trench coat. Police cruisers drifted by with tinted windows and silent menace, like sharks under the surface.

Peter ducked into a crowd forming around a food cart. The smell of hot oil and spoiled meat made his stomach turn, but the bodies gave him cover. He moved fast, never looking anyone in the eye.

The city had no rhythm—just pulses of danger and silence.

By the time he reached the library , his legs ached, and the voices in his head had started whispering again.

“What’s the point of this place?”
“No one here remembers us…”
“This world doesn’t have heroes. Only watchers.”

He shoved them down.

The building sat between a crumbling tenement and a boarded-up law office. Faded stone, cracked marble steps, a gargoyle crouched above the entrance like a dying sentinel.

A crooked plaque read:

GOTHAM PUBLIC LIBRARY
Midtown Branch – Est. 1898

He climbed the steps. The door creaked when he pushed it open.

Inside, it was colder than outside.

Dim. Smelling of dust, yellowed paper, and mildew. A chandelier hung from above, swaying slightly—half its bulbs burned out. Shelves loomed like canyon walls. The ceiling arched like a cathedral that had forgotten God.

The front desk was abandoned.

No librarian. No security. Just silence.

Peter’s footsteps were swallowed by thick, moth-eaten carpet. People were here—scattered. A man with a tinfoil hat. A woman murmuring to a stack of books. A kid curled up asleep with a hoodie over his face.

At the back—computers. Old. Square monitors blinking with ancient screensavers. Terminals from another century.

Peter sat down.

The chair groaned. The plastic was cracked.

He hovered his hands over the keyboard. Closed his eyes.

“…Please work.”

The terminal flickered to life, coughing data onto the screen with sluggish effort. The homepage was primitive—banner ads, popup warnings, and a feature about something called No Man’s Day .

He ignored it.

He typed.

"Avengers New York"
"Tony Stark Iron Man"
"Spider-Man Queens"

Nothing.

His heart sank.

No articles. No images. No S.H.I.E.L.D. No Stark. No Midtown High. No Sokovia. No mention of anything his .

Only fragments. Conspiracy forums. Fiction blogs. Someone’s badly-drawn comic strip about a guy in red pajamas.

Peter stared, breath hitching.

Is my world even real here?
Was it ever?

He tried broader terms.

“Superheroes United States”
“Earth’s Mightiest Heroes”
“Meta-humans registered agencies”

And then he saw it.

A pattern.

A new name.

Justice League

He clicked.

Slowly, the stories came together. Metahuman defenders. Based in Metropolis. Names like myth.

Superman.
Wonder Woman.
The Flash.
Martian Manhunter.
Aquaman.
Green Lantern.

And then—

Batman

Peter clicked deeper. Articles flooded the screen—more shadows than light. Rumors. Unverified sightings. Blogs that blurred fact and fear.

Then a headline:

“Gotham’s Phantom: Why the Batman Operates Outside the League”

He read, jaw tightening.

No registry. No oversight. No mercy. Captures metas. Contains them. Watches everyone. Runs Gotham like a paranoid god.

“…several metahumans detained without trial in Narrows Correctional.”
“…believed to have weaponized Gotham’s surveillance systems…”
“…unconfirmed reports suggest zero tolerance for enhanced individuals…”

Peter leaned back.

Hands clenched.

The air around him felt heavier now. He could feel it—like the walls were listening.

“I’m in Gotham,” he whispered.

And I’m not supposed to be here.

His reflection in the dark monitor shimmered faintly. His eyes flickered red for a moment—just for a moment—and veins lit softly beneath the skin of his wrist.

He stood.

He needed to disappear.

But before he left, he turned back to the screen.

He cracked his knuckles.

“Okay, Parker. You hacked S.H.I.E.L.D. when you were twelve. You can break a dinosaur.”

The library system was old—connected to even older municipal systems. The software still used basic encryption. It had backdoors and forgotten logins.

He used one.

He forged a new identity.

Name: Ben Reilly
Age: 17
Status: Ward of the State
Education: Gotham Unified – Incomplete
Employment: None

He uploaded a blurry photo from a webcam—face half-hidden by a hoodie, chin tilted down.

Next—money.

He found Wayne Foundation’s community outreach systems. Complex. Fortified.

He didn’t break in.

He ghosted through forgotten corners—old funds buried in subdirectories. Dormant aid programs. Charity shells never used.

$200. That was all.

He tagged the withdrawal as:

Emergency Youth Reimbursement – Trial Disbursement
Subnetwork: 47-G

He printed a burner card from a kiosk in the lobby.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wayne,” Peter whispered. “But your city doesn’t feed its ghosts.”

He searched for shelters next.

Ark Row Mission.
Armed staff. No minors. Risky.
Saint Elias Overflow.
Gang-controlled. No cameras. Worse.
The Narrows Food Co-Op.
Two meals a day. No ID needed. Volunteers run it.

He wrote the address down.

That would be his next stop.

For now, he looked to the library doors. Rain pattered against them. The city beyond shimmered in a strange, dreamless glow—neon against oil-slick streets.

Peter pulled his hoodie up.

Whatever Gotham was… it wasn’t waiting for a Spider.

It had its own shadows.

And as he slipped out the door under a borrowed name, one thought burned in his mind:

Survive. Don't shine. Don’t swing.

Just survive.

Chapter 4: Breadlines and Borrowed Skin

The rain in Gotham didn’t fall like it did in Queens.

It leaked , like blood from a ceiling wound the city refused to stitch. The drops slid down rusted scaffolding and fire escapes, turning to greasy streams that soaked everything—gutters, clothes, even skin—with an oily sheen. The water pooled at Peter’s feet, reflecting the jaundiced glow of streetlamps and the bruised shimmer of dying neon signs.

It soaked him through.

His ruined Spider-suit clung to his ribs like second skin left to rot, its nanofiber darkened and heavy with the memory of Lazarus water and dimensional ash. Every seam itched. Every movement stung. And still, he kept moving.

Hood drawn low, posture hunched, Peter Parker walked like a ghost through a city that didn’t notice.

No climbing. No swinging. No webbing.

Just a silent figure among hundreds of others trying to forget they were alive.

The Narrows Food Co-Op wasn’t labeled like a building—it was whispered like a rumor. Hidden between a half-collapsed tire shop and an adult video store whose windows were painted black, its only marker was a peeling wooden sign nailed over the door in crooked handwriting:

"Help Here"

The building leaned forward as if it wanted to collapse but couldn’t find the time. Its bricks were chipped, half-buried under a creeping mass of graffiti, old protest flyers, and rot. Moss grew along its base. The window beside the door was patched with cardboard and duct tape.

The line outside stretched a full block.

Wrapped in plastic bags, flannel shirts, and oversized coats, they waited—shuffling, silent, hollow-eyed. Gotham’s forgotten.

Peter stepped in behind a man who smelled like burnt rubber and cough syrup. No one looked at him. No one cared. That was the rule here.

His breath came in faint clouds, steam twisting in the air before vanishing like everything else. His skin itched beneath his clothes—still tainted by the Lazarus water, the way it clung to him, like it had claimed him.

Inside his head, the voices shifted in their sleep. The souls —dormant now, but dreaming. Some murmured faintly. Strange. Wanda. Bucky. A swirl of names that no longer belonged to the living. But for now, they stayed silent.

Peter’s fingers flexed in his sleeves. His hands were trembling.

A woman walked down the line, handing out numbered slips of paper. Her coat was two sizes too big, sleeves dragging. She never looked anyone in the eye.

“Name?” she muttered when she reached him.

He hesitated. A cold spike of panic shot up his spine.

“…Ben.”

She didn’t blink. Just nodded and moved on.

Ben Reilly.
The alias felt weightless. It wasn’t a lie. Not completely. Just a name borrowed from another version of himself—one that maybe didn’t have gods in his blood.

Inside the co-op, the warmth hit him like a slap.

The heat wasn’t kind. It was thick —dense with the scent of too many bodies packed into too small a space. The air reeked of boiled cabbage, processed meat, and the faint copper tang of old radiators. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, flickering every few seconds like they were about to give up.

Volunteers shuffled behind battered tables, doling out steaming stew into mismatched trays. No one smiled. No one spoke.

Peter’s stomach growled like something feral.

He stepped forward, took the tray without a word, and sat on a folding chair near the back wall. His fingers trembled so hard he nearly spilled it.

The first bite burned his mouth.

He didn’t care.

He hadn’t eaten since Titan —not really. The hunger gnawed at him like punishment. The food was bland, salt-heavy, greasy. The kind of warmth that sticks to your ribs and lingers just long enough to hurt when it fades.

He ate too fast.

When he looked up, someone was watching.

Across the table sat an older man, beard gray and coarse, eyes sunken but sharp beneath a battered beanie. His face looked carved from sidewalk.

“You ain’t from around here,” the man said quietly.

Peter stiffened.

The man didn’t move, just nodded toward Peter’s shoes—melted rubber, Lazarus-blackened. “That’s dimensional burn. You military? Clean-up crew? WayneCorp freak?”

Peter swallowed, forcing himself to stay calm. “No. Just trying to get by.”

The man looked at him for a moment longer—then returned to his tray without another word.

Peter exhaled.

An hour later, the line had dissolved, and Peter slipped out into the rain-slick streets. The heat from inside didn’t follow him. It died the second the door closed.

The city had grown quieter.

The sound of the rain was louder now—less a rhythm and more a drip , like time leaking through cracks. He moved through narrow alleys, past crumbling fire escapes and sagging neon. A police cruiser rolled by, but didn’t slow. They never did.

Saint Elias Shelter sat behind a chain-link gate covered in rust. The windows were covered with plywood, some tagged with spray paint. The front door was missing its knob, replaced by a hole in the wood and a string of wire that served as a latch.

Peter stepped inside, blinking in the dim light.

A bored-looking volunteer sat behind a folding table, flipping through a paperback book. She barely looked up.

“You here for food or clothes?”

Peter blinked. “Clothes?”

She thumbed toward a side room. “Take what you can carry. One bag. Nothing new.”

The room smelled of mildew and fabric softener. Clothes were piled in bins, some folded, most not. Jackets hung on wire racks, some still damp from earlier rain. A single bulb dangled from the ceiling, buzzing faintly.

Peter moved quietly.

He chose carefully.

A navy hoodie—soft, oversized, the cuffs frayed.
Black jeans, faded and worn.
A t-shirt with a cracked Gotham Knights logo.
Sneakers with laces knotted like rope.

He ducked behind a rack of trench coats and peeled off what remained of his Spider-suit. The fabric tore as it came off—still damp, clinging like regret. He folded it and tucked it deep into the bottom of a nylon duffel bag.

When he pulled the hoodie over his head, something shifted.

He looked in the mirror near the exit.

He didn’t see Spider-Man.

He didn’t see a weapon.

He didn’t see a vessel full of broken voices.

He saw a kid —thin, tired, forgettable.

And that was the point.

He waited in the common area for nearly an hour.

Hood up. Eyes down. Backpack gripped tight. More people kept arriving. Too many. And there were never enough beds.

A volunteer eventually came by, voice apologetic.

“Sorry, kid. No space tonight. Try again tomorrow.”

Peter nodded like it didn’t matter.

Then slipped out the back door without a word.

The alley stank of rotting meat and old oil. Rain slid down the walls like sweat. Peter moved through it in silence.

He kept walking.

The city pulsed around him like a living wound. Every building seemed to lean inward. Every streetlight buzzed like a warning.

He found a fire escape and climbed, hands slick on the metal.

At the top—rooftop silence.

He found a corner, shielded by a rusting ventilation duct, barely wide enough to curl up in. The concrete was cold against his skin. He didn’t care.

He slumped down, duffel at his side.

And stared at the sky.

Neon reflected in puddles like dead constellations. Gotham's skyline loomed like broken teeth—nothing clean, nothing bright. A police blimp floated in the distance, casting its spotlight in slow arcs.

Peter’s throat tightened.

And then—

He broke.

His face twisted as the first sob escaped. Silent. Raw. Then another. Then more.

He buried his face in his sleeve, trying to silence it, but the grief clawed its way out. It needed to.

“I want to go home,” he whispered through tears. “Please… I just want to go home…”

He pulled his knees to his chest.

The names spilled out like blood:

“Aunt May…”
“Ned…”
“MJ…”
“Happy…”
“...Tony…”

That last name hit the hardest.

Tony would’ve known what to do.
He would’ve fixed it. Or died trying again.
But he wasn’t here.

Peter was alone.

A refugee. A glitch. A walking mausoleum for the dusted.

Somewhere in his blood, the stones stirred.
A flicker. A hum.
Wanda. Mantis. Bucky.
Whispers—not words. Not yet.

Just echoes.

Not enough to hold him.

Not enough to save him.

He cried until there was nothing left to cry.

Until his body ached from the effort.

Until his breath came shallow and slow.

And then, beneath the glow of Gotham’s cold moons and blinking towers, Peter Parker finally slept.

Wrapped in borrowed clothes, on a forgotten rooftop, in a world that didn’t know his name.

Chapter 5: Echoes of Home

Morning in Gotham didn’t arrive with warmth.

It crept in through broken windows and rusted drainpipes, uninvited and colorless. The sky above was an endless bruise—gray, churning, void of sun. There was no golden hour, no birdsong, no heat to soak into the buildings. The city woke like a corpse twitching after rigor mortis.

The rain had stopped, but everything was still wet. Still cold.

The air smelled of damp brick and exhaust, and Peter Parker stirred in his corner of the rooftop, curled beside a rusted ventilation duct like something small hiding from predators.

He blinked against the light—such as it was. Gotham’s morning was pale and thin, like it had forgotten how to rise properly. His hoodie clung to his skin, heavy with moisture. His jeans were stiff, his knees raw, his knuckles bruised. Sleep had not restored anything.

He sat up slowly, groaning, limbs sore and unwilling.

His body wasn’t built for this. Not even the enhanced one. Not this kind of slow collapse .

He rubbed at his eyes, then looked at his hands. They trembled faintly. The skin beneath the surface shimmered with ghost-light—purple along the veins, gold at the fingertips. The stones were quiet, but present. Embedded in him like old scars. Watching from within.

“Peter…”

He froze.

The voice came not from the street below, but from inside. From behind his own thoughts.

It was soft. Familiar. MJ’s voice. Or a memory of it.

“You’re not alone.”
“We’re still with you...”
“You have to move.”

Peter exhaled through his nose, harsh and bitter.

“Not now,” he muttered, shutting his eyes tight. “Just… not now.”

The voice didn’t reply. Just lingered. A flicker in the background, like a phantom in an old film reel.

He climbed down the fire escape slowly, muscles aching, shoulders hunched against the cold. The alley was empty, save for puddles and steam curling from a sewer grate.

He hit the sidewalk and moved without looking up.

Back into Gotham .

The city stretched like a bruise under low-hanging clouds, endless and indifferent. Garbage lined the curbs. Horns blared in the distance. Somewhere, a man shouted. Somewhere else, a woman cried. No one stopped. That was the rule.

Don’t see. Don’t speak. Keep moving.

Peter obeyed.

He passed a storefront with flickering TVs—old models, their screens warped by age. One showed the news.

“...Axis Chemicals targeted again in last night’s attempted break-in. Batman involvement suspected. No suspects in custody. GCPD spokesperson declined to comment...”

Peter kept walking.

The Narrows Co-Op was open early, the line shorter than the day before. He stood in it. Waited. Accepted a tray with a nod.

The food was different today—mashed potatoes, peas, some kind of gravy-soaked protein. It didn’t matter what it was.

It was warm .

He sat in the corner, back against the wall, and ate every bite. Slowly. Methodically.

Like it might be his last.

Then, back to the library .

Back to the terminal.

Back to Ben Reilly.

The computer hummed as it booted, its fan wheezing under the strain. The keys were sticky. The screen flickered every few minutes. But it worked. That was enough.

He searched:

“Dimensional theory.”
“Multiversal anomalies.”
“LexCorp black projects.”
“WayneTech portal research.”
“Boom Tubes.”
“Mother Boxes.”
“Speed Force breach incidents.”

It was like chasing smoke.

Government firewalls blocked half the sites. The rest were crackpot theories and physics blogs with no credentials. Anything real was buried behind layers of digital cement—and digging too deep would only bring eyes he didn’t want.

Especially his .

Still, Peter compiled names. Dates. Locations.

A digital map of potential cracks in this reality.

A way home. Maybe.

But he was tired.

So tired.

His head drooped toward the keyboard. His reflection in the monitor stared back—hollow-eyed, gaunt, and not quite human. The glow beneath his sleeves had faded, but he could still feel it—like something breathing under his skin.

He shut his eyes.

“Still here...”
“Still you …”

The voices in the stones murmured like a lullaby made of dust.

And then—

A sound.

Soft. Subtle.

Wheels on tile.

Peter’s eyes opened. He didn’t turn.

Not yet.

“Been watching you a few days now.”

A woman’s voice. Calm. Not hostile.

Peter turned, slowly, fingers tensing on the keyboard.

The woman behind the reference desk had red hair pulled into a braid over one shoulder. She wore a gray cardigan and dark jeans. Her glasses reflected the terminal glow.

And she sat in a sleek black wheelchair , well-used but maintained. Scratches on the wheels. The kind that came from years of living hard.

There was presence to her—quiet, but firm. A stillness that wasn’t passive, but practiced. She didn’t just see him.

She was reading him.

“You don’t need to panic,” she said, rolling out from behind the desk. “You haven’t broken any laws.”

Peter blinked.

“I—I was just… doing research.”

Her mouth quirked into something between amusement and concern.

“Sure. Dimensional theory. Speed Force anomalies. The backend of WayneTech’s closed projects. Definitely the kind of thing every cold, wet teenager looks up after three days of silence and canned stew.”

Peter’s eyes flicked to the terminal. Then back to her.

“I’m not looking to cause trouble.”

She stopped in front of him, eye-level now. Her voice softened.

“You don’t look like you want to. But you’re still broadcasting trouble. Loudly.”

Peter swallowed. “I’m just trying to survive.”

She nodded slowly. “Then you’re ahead of the curve already.”

She reached into her cardigan pocket and pulled out a small, folded piece of paper.

Set it on the desk beside him.

He stared at it. Then at her.

“Why?”

“Because you’ve been using this library for three days straight without stealing anything, crashing a terminal, or asking for help. Because you keep your head down, but your eyes never stop moving. Because you’re trying very hard not to look scared, and failing only slightly.”

Peter looked down at the slip of paper, then back up.

“You’re not GCPD?”

Her expression tightened—just for a moment.

“No,” she said simply.

“Then who are you?”

She extended a hand.

“Barbara.”

Peter hesitated.

Then shook it, keeping the pressure light.

“…Ben.”

The lie came easy now.

Barbara didn’t blink. If she doubted him, she didn’t show it.

“Well, Ben,” she said. “You might want to take that address. O’Shea Apartments. Fourth Street. Ask for Mara. Say ‘Redbird’ sent you. No questions. No ID.”

Peter furrowed his brow. “Redbird?”

“Old name,” she said. “Doesn’t matter anymore.”

He picked up the slip. Turned it over. It was real. A real place. A next step.

“…Why help me?”

Barbara tilted her head slightly. Her voice lowered, but stayed steady.

“Because I know what it’s like to fall. And because this city notices people who are different. Especially the wrong ones. Especially ones who glow.”

Peter’s breath caught.

She wasn’t guessing.

She’d seen.

But she wasn’t afraid.

“You don’t have to do it alone,” she added, softer now. “Not everyone in this city wants to hurt you.”

Peter stared at her. At the woman with calm eyes and the presence of someone who had bled and come back sharper.

He nodded, slowly.

“Thanks,” he said.

Barbara smiled—just barely. “Good luck, Ben.”

As Peter stood and turned to leave, she called out one more time.

“And Ben?”

He paused.

“In Gotham, there’s no such thing as invisible. Not forever. Be careful who’s watching.”

He nodded again.

And left.

The rain was returning, light but steady, as Peter stepped back into the street.

The city swelled around him—wet pavement, sirens, and low thunder.

He felt the folded paper in his pocket.

A name. An address.

A thread to follow.

For the first time since waking in this world, Peter Parker— Ben Reilly —had somewhere to go.

Chapter 6: Redbird’s Gift

Gotham’s rain never really stopped.

It just changed its mind.

From downpour to mist, from mist to fog, from fog to air so heavy it clung to skin like regret. The city itself seemed to sweat grief, leaking it through bricks and pavement. And as Peter Parker — Ben Reilly now, in name only —walked down 4th Street, he felt every inch of that sorrow sink deeper into his clothes, his hair, his bones.

The note in his hand had bled from the damp, the ink feathered into watercolor smudges. But the words remained readable, if just barely:

O’Shea Apartments
Ask for Mara
No IDs. No questions.
Say “Redbird” sent you.

Peter’s fingers clenched around it as he walked past shattered bus stops and rusted mailboxes, his hood drawn low, his posture tight. The weight of the city pressed in on him from all sides—like Gotham had noticed him and wasn’t sure whether to ignore or devour him.

The building came up fast. Almost too fast.

It was half-swallowed between a collapsed drugstore with plywood windows and a bail bond office sealed behind iron bars. The fire escape was mangled like a spider’s broken leg. Old scorch marks streaked across the third and fourth floors. From the street, O’Shea Apartments looked like a building that had died in its sleep.

But there was light behind the lobby door—weak and yellow, like the last cigarette of a man who’d given up quitting.

Peter stepped inside.

The door creaked open with the sound of splintering wood. The lobby was the size of a janitor’s closet—tile cracked like dried skin, ceiling sagging, and the air ripe with mildew, cigarette smoke, and the faintest hint of bleach.

A woman sat behind a warped desk with a cracked plastic nameplate that no longer had any lettering. She was reading a newsfeed on a battered tablet, smoke curling from the corner of her mouth. Her hair was chopped short, the ends dyed a fading red that bled into black. She had one boot propped on the desk, the other planted on the peeling floor. A knife handle jutted out from her bootlace.

She looked up the moment Peter entered.

“You lost?”

Peter hesitated. Rain still dripped from his sleeves.

“Mara?” he asked quietly.

Her eyes narrowed.

“Who’s asking?”

He reached into his pocket, hands shaking more than he liked, and pulled out the folded slip.

“Redbird sent me.”

That changed something.

Mara’s shoulders dropped half an inch. The edge in her eyes dulled. She took a final drag and stubbed the cigarette out in a chipped coffee mug already lined with gray ash.

“You got a name?”

“…Ben.”

She nodded like that was good enough.

“Third floor. Room 307. You pay week to week. No noise, no guests, no cops. You don’t bleed in the halls, and you don’t ask about the guy in 310.”

Peter blinked. “Understood.”

She pulled a ring of keys from the desk drawer and slid one across. The metal was rusted, worn nearly smooth.

“Two hundred up front.”

He fumbled for the burner card, hands slick. Swiped it through the ancient reader. The machine paused—then beeped.

Approved.

Mara raised an eyebrow.

“Thought that card was a bluff.” She leaned back, eyeing him with a half-smile. “You full of surprises, Ben ?”

Peter gave her the ghost of a smile.

“You have no idea.”

The apartment was little more than a box.

A single twin mattress on the floor, the springs bowed inward. A rusted space heater sputtering warm air into a room that still smelled of rain and cigarettes. A mini-fridge that wheezed like it was dying slowly. The window was cracked, the frame patched with old towels.

But it was dry.

It had a door that locked .

No open sky. No vent. No one watching from above.

Peter closed the door, clicked the lock into place, slid down the wall, and sat there on the floor, knees drawn up, breath coming slow and uneven.

Silence.
Not absence. Not peace.
But silence.

The kind that meant he was alone .

No food lines. No rooftop vents. No vigilantes in the shadows. Just the hum of the heater and the soft creak of settling floorboards.

He peeled off his hoodie, stripped down to a t-shirt, and let the space heater thaw his damp skin. Bruises bloomed purple along his ribs. The remnants of Lazarus water still itched beneath the skin, ghost-pain coiling under muscle.

Peter moved like an old man.

He sat cross-legged on the mattress, fingers steepled against his lips, eyes staring at the wall.

He needed a plan.

Step One: Survival.
Eat once a day. Keep a roof. Don’t draw attention.

Step Two: Intel.
Keep searching for a way home. Watch. Learn. Stay near Barbara—she saw through him, but hadn’t turned him in. She was something rare.

Step Three: Control.
Understand the fragments. Understand what they’d done to him. What they were still doing.

He looked down at his hands. The veins shimmered again, faint but undeniable. The power whispered. Wanda. Mantis. Strange. The dead. The not-quite-dead. The echoes.

He clenched his fists.

Never again.

Later, he returned to the Narrows Food Co-Op .

The sky had bruised darker. Thunder growled low in the distance. The line outside was longer tonight, filled with more silent mouths and hungry eyes.

Peter moved quietly. Blended in.

Hood up. Eyes down. Heart buried.

Inside, the warmth of soup and overcooked potatoes made the air thick. He slipped into line and scanned the community bulletin board near the door.

Flyers and tearaways littered the cork:

TEMP WORK – demolition crew. No ID. Cash at shift end.
Courier Needed – fast feet, no questions.
Dishwasher – cash, East End Diner. Graveyard shift.
GCPD Fundraiser – “Don’t Go” written in black marker beneath it.

Peter tore the courier tab and slipped it into his pocket.

A start.

At the serving line, he was greeted by a new face.

A young man in a dark gray Henley , sleeves rolled to the elbows, plastic apron slung low. He had a streak of white in his jet-black hair and bright green eyes —so bright they looked like they belonged to something not entirely human.

The second their eyes met, Peter felt the air shift.

The man blinked, startled. His expression flickered—recognition? Confusion?

Peter raised an eyebrow.

“Is the soup haunted?”

That snapped the guy out of it. He half-laughed.

“No, sorry. You just… look familiar.”

Peter shrugged. “Probably the hoodie. Everyone’s got one.”

The man hesitated. Then handed over the bowl. His fingers twitched as he did.

“Name?”

Peter paused.

“Ben.”

A beat.

“…Jason,” the man replied, quietly.

Their eyes locked again. Jason’s gaze was sharp now— trained , even. He studied Peter like a puzzle. Like he was cataloging symptoms. Matching them to scars he already carried.

Peter turned and sat near the window, his tray untouched.

And then he saw it.

His reflection in the rain-spattered glass.

His eyes were green.

No longer warm hazel—now pale emerald , glowing faintly in the dim light. Just like Jason’s.

And his hair—

A streak of white slashed through the right side of his head. Thin but growing, like lightning had kissed it and refused to let go.

His breath caught.

His stomach churned.

His fingers twitched.

The Stones stirred.

Not loud.

But there.

He didn’t remember that happening. Didn’t feel it. But it had.

The Lazarus water.

The Infinity fragments.

The power that refused to leave.

Peter clenched his hands under the table, breathing shallow.

He looked back toward the counter.

Jason was gone.

In the alley behind the Co-Op, Jason Todd lit a cigarette with fingers that shook more than he liked. The rain slicked down his jacket, but he didn’t care.

He leaned against the wall, eyes narrowed.

The kid had Lazarus eyes. Not just a tint. The glow .

And the white streak?

That wasn’t trauma.

That was residue .

Jason had looked in enough mirrors after his own rebirth to recognize what this meant.

But this kid?

This wasn’t just Lazarus. This was something else .

Something layered.

Ancient. Fractured. Wrong.

Jason exhaled smoke into the sky, eyes fixed on the clouds above Gotham.

“This kid,” he muttered. “What the hell are you?”

Chapter 7: Of Pits and Ghosts

Peter Parker knew how to disappear.

In Queens, it was a choice—slouch the shoulders, avoid eye contact, keep the chatter low and the movements smaller. Blend into crowds. Vanish between distractions.

But in Gotham , invisibility wasn’t a tactic.

It was a necessity .

Here, invisibility meant survival. People who were seen too often ended up on missing person lists—or, more commonly, didn’t .

So Peter became just another cold figure in a sea of ghosts and gray skies. The power inside him, the strange thrum of shattered forces embedded in his veins, remained suppressed—barely.

He did the work no one else wanted.

Unloading shipments in condemned warehouses. Scraping graffiti from burnt walls. Wiring broken light fixtures with salvaged copper and rusted tools. He never used his speed. Never used his strength. Never did anything that would make someone pause and say, he’s not normal.

But that didn’t mean the power wasn’t there.

It was .

Always humming. Always waiting.

The Narrows Food Co-Op became routine—his only reliable warmth.

Hot meals. No questions. People too tired or numb to care if your eyes flashed green for a second when the light hit wrong.

Jason was usually there. The guy behind the serving line. Quiet. Solid. Carried himself like someone who didn’t just know violence—he’d survived it.

Peter had noticed the white streak in Jason’s black hair. The eyes, too—sharp, green, watchful. Like they had once burned and never quite cooled down.

Jason didn’t ask Peter anything. Not about the hoodie. Not about the silences. Not about the smell of old smoke that clung to him like shadow.

And Peter didn’t offer anything either.

Gotham didn’t run on confessions.

It ran on quiet .

Then came the poster .

Taped haphazardly to a kiosk outside the co-op. Stapled beneath three layers of moldy flyers and gang tag warnings.

WAYNETECH INNOVATOR GRANT PROGRAM
Have an invention that could change the world?
We want to see it.
Anonymous submissions allowed. No background checks.
Innovation is Gotham’s future.
—The Wayne Foundation

Peter stared at it.

Wayne.

That name had come up before—in the library files, on the burner card, in donation footers of almost every public facility in Gotham. The city’s silent owner. A man who never appeared, yet somehow ran everything.

Peter didn’t care about billionaires.

But he knew tech .

And he had designs—things built in Stark’s shadow, things imagined during sleepless nights in Queens. He could build again, if he had the parts. He could contribute .

And more than that…

Maybe it would be a way out. Or at least, forward.

He folded the flyer and tucked it into his hoodie.

Something stirred under his skin, glowing faintly through the fabric of his sleeve.

Elsewhere: The Batcave

The Batcave’s dark pulse echoed through stone and steel. Monitors glowed in surveillance hues. Silence ruled—broken only by keystrokes and the quiet hum of distant systems.

Barbara Gordon sat before a console, scrolling through city records with one hand, sipping burnt coffee with the other. Her red hair was tied back, her expression cool and unreadable.

Behind her, Tim Drake leaned against the edge of the secondary terminal, arms crossed. Nightwing paced, his footfalls soft on the metal. Damian Wayne lurked like a shadow near the gear racks, sharpening his blade against stone for no reason other than to sharpen.

They’d all been called down by Barbara.

Now they waited.

She tapped her screen once, pulled up a low-resolution still from the Gotham Public Library’s east branch.

It showed a teenage boy. Hoodie. Slouched posture. Skinny. Nothing remarkable—except for the light reflecting off his eyes.

Green. Unnatural. Wrong.

“He’s been using the Midtown terminal for two weeks,” Barbara said quietly. “Logged in under the name Ben Reilly. No background. No ID trail. But smart. Quiet. And weird.”

Tim frowned. “Weird how?”

“His tech queries are advanced. He’s not just curious—he knows what he’s doing. Skips over surface-level articles, jumps straight to white papers and system schematics. At one point he was cross-referencing WayneTech’s old prototype funding reports.”

Damian raised an eyebrow. “You think he’s corporate espionage?”

Barbara shook her head. “No. He’s poor. Lives in O’Shea Apartments. Paid for his room using a community outreach card most people can’t even find, let alone exploit.”

Nightwing narrowed his eyes. “What’s the catch?”

Barbara tapped again. Pulled up footage from a different angle. The boy was looking at a terminal screen—but the glow was more obvious now. Green, bleeding into gold. Just under the skin.

“And then there’s this.”

Tim leaned in. “That’s… not just tech glare.”

“No,” Barbara said. “It’s coming from him.”

Damian straightened. “Meta?”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “But it doesn’t match anything on the GCPD watchlist or League scans. His energy signature is off the charts—but not Power levels. It’s subtle. Deep. Like whatever’s in him is… lying dormant.”

Nightwing looked over at her. “He from Gotham?”

Barbara sighed. “Doubt it. Doesn’t match any local databases. I don’t think he’s from anywhere we know.”

Bruce’s voice came from the shadows.

“You think he’s a threat?”

The Bat had arrived. Silent as always.

Barbara didn’t turn. “I think he’s… haunted.”

That got their attention.

“He glows,” she said. “Sometimes green. Sometimes gold. His body language says trauma, but his eyes say calculation. He’s scared , but he’s also fighting it . Like someone who’s already survived worse than this city.”

Nightwing crossed his arms. “What do you want to do?”

Barbara closed the screen.

“Nothing. Yet.”

Tim frowned. “We let him wander?”

“He’s not hurting anyone,” she said. “And I don’t want to provoke something we don’t understand. He’s staying quiet. That’s more than we can say for most.”

Damian’s expression was unreadable. “He’s hiding something.”

Barbara looked at Bruce. “I know. But we don’t know what yet. And he hasn’t given us a reason to strike.”

Bruce’s voice was cold steel.

“Then we watch.”

Back in the Narrows, Peter sat on a stoop , picking at the edge of the folded WayneTech flyer.

The sky overhead pulsed with orange and gray, bleeding into evening. His hoodie was pulled low, his breath fogging in the air.

He didn’t know eyes were on him.

Didn’t know how close he was to being seen for what he really was.

But he felt it.

The shiver down his spine.

The whisper of movement too silent to be the wind.

He clenched his jaw and stood.

And across the street, watching from the shadows between two rusted dumpsters, Jason Todd exhaled smoke through his nose.

“I don’t know what the hell you are, kid,” he muttered, “but you don’t belong to this city.”

He flicked his cigarette aside and followed, silent and steady.

Chapter 8: Drawn in Ash

The room smelled like solder and insomnia.

Peter sat cross-legged on the floor of his small, cluttered apartment, surrounded by chaos. Not the kind that came from laziness—but the desperate, obsessive chaos of someone trying to hold his own mind together.

Cracked blinds let Gotham’s dying light drip through in narrow bars of gray. The air was thick with the scent of fried wiring and damp drywall. Blueprints littered the stained carpet, scrawled across notebooks, napkins, torn cardboard, and scavenged printer paper.

Some were clean and precise: circuit layouts, power conversion nodes, energy dispersal funnels. Others were frantic—black-ink scribbles scratched in sleepless fits, fragments of math that no one in this world had ever written before.

Peter’s hoodie clung to his skin, damp with sweat. His sleeves were pushed to the elbows, and beneath the skin of his forearms, pale green veins glowed faintly. Not bright—but wrong. Alien. Like the light of stars that had already died.

He stared at a torn pizza box in front of him, the cardboard surface etched with a crude schematic:

Multiversal Anchor
Stabilizes spatial-temporal identity.
Anchors soul-structure under entropy stress.
Prototype non-functional — requires reinforced power lattice.

He didn’t remember drawing it.

He remembered holding the pen. He remembered waking up beside it. But the hours between? Blank.

The ideas just poured out now. Flowing through him like muscle memory from a body that wasn’t his.

He was building with knowledge he hadn’t learned.

Like something in him—some broken remnant of something greater—was reaching through him. Using his hands.

And lately… it had started talking back.

Not words. Not at first.

But images.

Flashes of places he’d never seen. Of Titan, broken and red. Of New York torn apart in a mirror-world reflection. Of the Lazarus Pit, bubbling in some ruined temple beneath time itself.

And now…

Words.

Low. Whispering. Like they’d crawled up from the cracks in the world.

“You are not meant to stay.”

“You are bleeding into the wrong shape.”

“You carry too much.”

Peter pressed his palms to his eyes and curled inward.

“Shut up,” he whispered. “Just let me breathe …”

But the air shifted.

He felt it instantly. A subtle pressure drop, like a storm rolling in through walls that couldn’t stop it.

He looked up.

And they were already there.

Three figures stood in the far corner of the room, not entering—coalescing. Their edges shimmered, translucent but real. Like memories reassembled.

T’Challa, straight-backed, arms clasped behind him. He looked just as Peter remembered him—regal, reserved, eyes filled with a kind of knowing grief.

Bucky, standing near the cracked window, arms crossed. His metal fingers twitched as he watched Peter—not cold, not harsh, but wary. Defensive.

And Mantis, her large, luminous eyes wide with sorrow.

Peter scrambled to his feet, stumbling slightly over a heap of tangled cables and diagrams.

“I didn’t summon you,” he said, breath catching.

Mantis tilted her head. “You didn’t need to.”

“You’ve been drawing us in for weeks,” T’Challa added, voice like a calm tide. “Whether you knew it or not.”

Peter backed against the wall. “This… this isn’t real. You’re not real.”

Bucky gave a bitter snort. “Neither are we dead. Not completely. Not where you’re standing.”

Mantis nodded. “The pieces of us... they stayed. When we were dusted, part of our selves stayed behind. Not ghosts. Not whole. Just… stuck.”

Peter swallowed, throat dry.

“But why me ?”

“You were closest to the epicenter when the Stones broke,” T’Challa said. “When reality cracked... you caught some of what slipped through. The parts of us that couldn’t move on.”

“I didn’t want this!” Peter’s voice cracked. “I don’t even understand what I am anymore!”

“You’re bleeding through dimensions, Peter,” Bucky said softly. “Like a seam that never healed.”

“Your body,” Mantis added, “it’s trying to hold everything. But it’s starting to fray.”

Peter dropped back to his knees, surrounded by papers.

“I just wanted to go home,” he whispered. “I wanted to find a way back to May. To Ned. To MJ. To…”

He stopped.

The name hung in the silence.

Tony.

His voice caught. Not even a whisper. Just the shape of it in his chest.

And the absence it left behind.

He knew Tony was alive—out there. In his real world.

But not here.

Here, he was alone. The only piece of his Earth trapped in a place that didn’t want him.

T’Challa knelt beside him, gently placing a spectral hand on Peter’s shoulder.

“You are not alone.”

Peter looked up, eyes shining.

“You carry more than us. You carry yourself . And that matters.”

“Don’t lose that,” Mantis said quietly. “Not in this place. Not in Gotham.”

Peter looked down at the Multiversal Anchor.

“I submitted the designs,” he said. “To WayneTech. Through their grant program. I signed it as ‘Proxy.’ They won’t know it’s me. I just… I need to build something stable. Something real.”

“Will it fix you?” Bucky asked.

Peter shrugged. “I don’t know. But hiding’s not helping.”

T’Challa nodded, standing once more. “Then build carefully. And trust nothing in the light.”

“Especially not those who smile in it,” Mantis added, cryptic as ever.

One by one, they faded. Dissolving into light and ash. Their presence left warmth in the air—and a soft hum under Peter’s skin. A resonance.

He was still a beacon.

Still not alone.

Across Gotham, Jason Todd watched from a rooftop.

Peter had entered the WayneTech annex an hour ago. Slipped in quietly. Dropped something off. No contact. No ID.

Jason didn’t know what was in the envelope. But whatever it was, it was smart . It got flagged in the system before the building even processed it.

The kid was glowing again.

Only for a second. But Jason had caught it.

White hair streak. Emerald eyes. That weird Lazarus shimmer, like someone half-touched by death and reborn sideways.

He’s not just a stray, Jason thought.

There was power in him. But more than that—purpose. Like someone had carved a mission into the center of the boy’s chest and left him to figure it out blind.

Jason frowned beneath his helmet.

“I should bring this to Bruce.”

But he didn’t.

Not yet.

At Wayne Tower, buried beneath the server stack of the Outreach and Innovation Center, a silent alert pulsed red across a subnetwork that didn’t officially exist.

The submission tagged Project Anchor passed initial vetting. No red flags. No identity.

But it pinged something else .

Something old. Something Bruce had buried deep in the post-Crisis security protocols.

Uncatalogued tech. Unknown resonance. Foreign design architecture.

A file opened.

UNIDENTIFIED SUBMISSION – External Origin Suspected

Priority Review: B. WAYNE

Deep beneath the city, in a vault lined with obsidian armor and shattered blueprints, Bruce Wayne stared at the report and said nothing.

Only the sound of bats answered.

Chapter 9: Between the Lines

In the sublevels of Wayne Tower, the hum of the servers was the closest thing to a heartbeat Gotham had left.

Tim Drake moved with precision. He didn’t blink. His fingers danced across the holographic keyboard, dragging schematics into motion, expanding code sequences into geometric projections. The lights of a hundred screens reflected in his eyes, casting blue and violet glows across his face like faint warpaint.

The center of the display spun slowly—a shimmering, three-dimensional lattice webbed in concentric layers. At its core: a pulsating structure not unlike a gyroscope, rotating around a magnetic core that existed only in theory.

PROJECT ANCHOR
Submitted by: Proxy
Classification: Dimensional Bridging Gate
Function: Multiversal Stability Matrix — Designed for singular tethering
Status: Anonymous | Trace Obscured | Priority Review Flagged Automatically

Tim leaned forward, eyes narrowing.

It wasn’t just brilliant. It was terrifying.

“Bruce,” he called, voice quiet but carrying. “You’re gonna want to see this.”

Footsteps approached behind him—not loud, but distinct.

Bruce Wayne entered with the silence of a man used to walking unseen. He said nothing at first, just stepped beside Tim, hands clasped behind his back, the fold of his coat casting shadows onto the floor. His gaze was already on the screen.

A few seconds later, Barbara Gordon wheeled in, already typing something into her own tablet, glasses sliding down the bridge of her nose.

And then, from the side door, Dick Grayson arrived—his boots still dripping from the rain, jacket soaked, hair slicked back with wet wind. His eyes were shadowed with exhaustion. He hadn’t said where he’d been for the past two days.

He said nothing now. Just crossed his arms and stared at the spinning projection.

“What is it?” Bruce asked, his voice its usual calm steel.

Tim gestured to the display. “Something that shouldn’t exist.”

He tapped a few keys, and the schematic zoomed in—showing stabilization nodes shaped in impossible geometry, quantum-threaded anchors, dimensional dampeners… and a singular fusion node built to resonate with one specific temporal frequency.

“This is more than theory. It’s a functional framework for controlled dimensional travel. One-way passage. Stabilized on this end. You could walk through it without causing a ripple. It wouldn’t collapse. It wouldn’t fragment.”

Dick’s brow furrowed. “That’s… not possible. At least not with current tech.”

Tim nodded. “Exactly. But this wasn’t made with current tech.”

Barbara studied the data stream. “Who submitted it?”

“That’s the thing,” Tim said. “It came through the WayneTech Midtown Annex public grant portal. Labeled ‘Project Anchor.’ Signed only as Proxy . No face. No prints. No biometric tag. Whoever they are, they masked their ID through GothamNet—probably one of the public library terminals. But the encryption? Military-grade. Like… alien-level tight.”

Dick stepped closer. “You trace the email?”

“Dead end,” Tim said. “It’s a bouncing node across seven ghost servers. Some of them don’t even exist anymore. And the system registered anomalies in the signal. Like... echoes. Glitches.”

“Glitches?” Barbara asked.

Tim hesitated. “Temporal displacement patterns. Something in the data is vibrating at the wrong frequency. Like it didn’t come from this side of the veil.”

Bruce said nothing.

Tim clicked through the final page of the schematic, revealing the metadata.

“This isn’t just a portal,” he said quietly. “It’s a tether . One end is rooted here. But the other… it’s reaching back. It’s looking for something that was lost. Someone.”

Silence fell in the lab.

Dick stared at the design, his eyes drawn to the core symbol embedded in the Anchor’s energy well. Not a logo. Not a signature. Just… a shape. A web-like pattern looped in on itself. Familiar, but ancient. Like a memory blurred by dreams.

He didn’t know why it unsettled him.

Barbara finally broke the silence.

“Why submit this anonymously?”

Tim turned back to them. “Because whoever Proxy is, they don’t want to be found. But they need this built. This isn’t theoretical. The designs are functional. The parts required are minimal. And the person who made it?”

He exhaled.

“They’re desperate.”

Bruce’s voice was low. “Do we know what’s on the other side?”

“No,” Tim said. “But… there’s something else.”

He pulled up the interaction logs.

“During submission, the system flagged the design’s harmonic structure. It’s not native to our world. It’s not from this Earth. It’s not even compatible with the dimensional framework we use in our multiversal model. This... came from somewhere else.”

Bruce nodded once.

“Keep it in a sealed file. No outside review. No escalation. I want this watched. Quietly. If they contact again… we’ll respond. But not until we know what we’re dealing with.”

He turned and walked away.

Dick lingered.

His eyes stayed on the Anchor.

And in his chest, something tugged. A strange, quiet ache he couldn’t name.

“Something wrong?” Barbara asked him quietly.

Dick blinked. “No. I’m just…” He paused.

He didn’t finish the sentence.

But deep down, in a place he didn’t talk about—even to himself—he felt it.

This thing... it feels familiar.

Like it’s mine.

Later. Elsewhere in Gotham.

The basement of the Gotham Public Library stank of mildew and forgotten years.

Peter hunched over the warped table in the back corner, a cracked laptop in front of him, the glow from the screen painting lines across his face.

He’d slept two hours in the last forty.

The Stones were louder now. Not screaming—but speaking.

Phrases. Warnings. Fragments of memory not his.

“You won’t hold forever.”
“The thread is pulling tighter.”
“Your blood isn’t what it was.”

He ignored them.

His eyes were locked on the email that had appeared only hours ago.

Subject: We’ve reviewed your work.
Message: It’s exceptional. If you’re looking for help—or if you’re in danger—we’d like to talk.
No names. No commitments. Just a conversation.

Peter’s finger hovered over the REPLY key.

His heart beat once. Twice.

He closed the lid instead.

He didn’t trust them. Not yet.

But they’d seen it now. They knew someone had built something impossible. Someone lost. Someone outside.

And he knew Gotham.

The Bat would be watching soon.

He could feel it.

But he didn’t know that he was being watched by more than the Bat.

Wayne Manor – Later That Night

Dick stood in the trophy room, eyes fixed on the portrait of the old team—him, Bruce, Jason, Tim, Barbara. Before the blood. Before the fire.

Alfred's voice echoed faintly from the other room, but Dick barely heard it.

His mind was on the schematic.

The Anchor.

Something about it crawled under his skin.

Not just the math.

But the instinct.

The hand that drew it... felt familiar.

The style of the wiring. The way the power systems looped unnecessarily, not for efficiency—but control. Safeguards layered over safeguards.

That was his design language.

Or...

Someone who had learned from him.

Bruce’s voice entered quietly behind him. “Still thinking about the submission?”

Dick didn’t turn. “It’s… strange.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s like... the work of someone with something to prove. Someone smart. Young. Scared. But not reckless.”

Bruce was quiet a moment. Then:

“You think you know them?”

Dick’s voice was lower.

“No. But I think… I should .”

Chapter 10: The Broken God

There was no up where Thanos sat.
No down.
No pulse of planetary rhythm, no rise of suns or ticking chronologies. Only the void—deep, endless, cold in concept but burning in silence.

A nothingness so absolute it gnawed even on memory.

And Thanos welcomed it.

For what was a god without worship?
A king without a war?
A reaper without a harvest?

He had shed them all—the throne, the ambition, the blade, the path.

He was…
was...

Once, he had called it balance. A gift to a bloated cosmos. Order where none dared impose it. And when he succeeded—twice—he had thought himself finished. The Gauntlet shattered. The Stones undone. A universe spared its own self-inflicted rot.

He had let them kill him for it.

And then…

Time rebelled .

Not forward. Not backward.
Sideways.

A wound had opened in the fabric he thought forever mended.

And now, here in the hollow between galaxies—at the edge of nothing and the skin of all reality—he felt it.

Not as a sight.
Not even as a voice.
But as a pressure behind the eyes.
A shudder in the spine of the cosmos.
Like a scream underwater.

The Stones.
They were not gone.

Reduced to atomic whisper? Yes.
Scattered, dormant, diffused into cosmic entropy? Certainly.
But destroyed ?

No.

Nothing that old could die.
Not truly.
Not unless time itself ceased to remember it.

And time—like Thanos—had a long memory.

He rose.

There was no ground, but the void thickened under his will. Space obeyed . Gravity coiled , uncertain whether to cling to him or get out of his way.

He clenched his hand into a fist. No Gauntlet adorned it. Just scarred skin, veins dark with the memory of power. But in that clenching, the fabric of the beyond shivered .

A vibration.

An echo.

Something familiar.

It scratched at his senses like a thorn behind the eye.

A presence.

A child.

Thanos narrowed his eyes. Across the infinite sprawl of space and shadow, a flicker. A life, burning like a candle set atop dry leaves.

Small. Weak.
But wrong .

He saw it.
Or rather, felt it.

A boy, cradled by a ruined world. Not born of it. Not shaped by it.
Invading it.

Beneath concrete and stormlight, wrapped in the scent of rust and rain, this creature walked under a stolen name with a spider on his chest and chaos in his blood.

And the Stones—what was left of them— clung to him .

Not six.
Not whole.
But slivers.
Like glass buried in skin.

Reality, Time, Soul, Space, Mind, and Power.
Each shard humming with pieces of those they’d claimed and those they’d lost.

Thanos saw it all.

The boy didn’t take the Stones.
The Stones took him.

In that moment, the Mad Titan understood.

This wasn’t balance.
This wasn’t the correction of a universe.
This was corruption.

A vessel formed of accident, trauma, and sentiment.
Human sentiment.
The worst kind.

He remembered Tony Stark . The arrogance. The cleverness. The defiance.
And this boy—this child —was born of the same mold. Not genetically.
But ideologically.

Hopeful. Naïve. Grieving. Dangerous.

That was why the Stones hadn’t scattered.
That was why they lingered.

Emotion.
Memory.
The human soul’s defiance of loss .

They fed on it now.
And so did he.

A pulse through the void.
And then another.

His mind reached out—not with psionics, not with speech, but with cosmic will. He extended himself across space like the hand of a god reaching into the bones of creation.

Seek the shards.

They responded, far from this galaxy, trapped in the edge of the Phantom Zone—screaming without voice.

They were moving.
Breathing.
Thinking.

And they lived in the stink of mortal sweat and neon.
A city of gargoyles and graves.
A place where capes hunted in alleys and justice came with a mask and a wound.

Gotham.

Thanos felt the heartbeat of the shards there.
A fusion of Time and Soul and the others and… something else. Something not yet named.

He saw the boy again—curled beneath leaking pipes, skin flickering with glow, muttering names of the dead in his sleep.

A boy with a spider’s legacy and fire in his veins.
He didn’t know what he carried.
But Thanos did.

The future.

Not of the multiverse.
Not of balance.

But of chaos .

“No,” Thanos murmured.

The void around him bent .

He stepped forward. Space cracked like old glass. Stars shrank.
The great cosmic tides that watched silently now recoiled.

He did not wear armor.
He did not raise armies.
He would not ask .

He would take .

“You are not worthy,” he whispered into the fabric of the multiverse.
His voice crossed layers of existence like a ripple through sand.

“You will return what you carry, little spider.”
“Or I will rip it from your blood.”

And as the void peeled open before him, and time screamed against the breach, Thanos vanished into it—
Not as a warlord.
Not as a god.
Not even as a tyrant.

But as correction .

In a city far below, beneath thunderclouds and the yawning mouths of broken buildings, Peter Parker shivered in his sleep.

He dreamed of fire.

Of ash.

Of eyes that saw everything.

And something in the dark whispered his name—not Peter, not Ben, not Proxy—

“Shard-bearer.”

And the universe trembled.

Chapter 11: Graves of Titan

Peter was drowning again.

Not in water.

In dust .

It fell from the sky in waves, thick as smoke and slow as grief. Not ash— dust . The kind that didn’t settle. The kind that clung. It wormed its way into his lungs, his ears, his mouth. It coated the horizon, turning the stars above to smudges and memory. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t run fast enough.

This was Titan .

Or what remained of it.

The sky burned a sick orange. Fractured moons hung like cracked bones in the black. Buildings crumbled in slow motion, too slowly—like time had slipped off its axis and was trying to remember how to fall.

Peter ran through it all, legs sluggish, each step dragging through gravity that felt heavier than guilt. The nanotech suit flickered across his skin in spasms, glitching with sparks, trying and failing to hold shape.

“Mr. Stark—!” he choked out, voice already torn from screaming.

He turned—
And there was Tony.

On the ground. Bleeding. Still.
Eyes glassy with the echo of sacrifice.

Peter stumbled forward, hand outstretched—
And Tony crumbled .

Ash. Again.

“No—no, please, not again—!”

Then came May.
Then MJ.
Then Ned.

One by one. Reaching for him. Smiling.
Then falling to powder the moment his fingers brushed theirs.

“STOP—!”

He dropped to his knees, clawing at air that no longer felt like air, sobbing into dust that remembered too much. The wind rose, high and thin, howling like a dirge.

The sky cracked.

Green lightning burst through the clouds, carving jagged lines across Titan’s corpse.

And then, from beneath the planet, came the water.

Lazarus.

Black and wrong, boiling from the cracks in reality. It flooded everything—rushing in, silent and inevitable, a reverse ocean swallowing the remains of a world that never healed.

Peter was swept under.
Choking.
Thrashing.
Sinking.

But the cold wasn’t what burned.
It was his chest.
His veins.

The Stones.

The fragments screamed with him.
And then…
They answered .

Reality cracked.

Peter jolted awake.

A soundless cry. The kind that tears the throat but never escapes. His back arched off the mattress, sweat soaking the sheets, breath ragged. The dim room around him pulsed with warped light—green, gold, and violet veins rippling beneath his skin.

The lamp on the nightstand burst in a spray of sparks.
The radio on the shelf whined , then died.
His anchor tattoo, etched in radiant lines across his ribs, flickered —unstable.

The walls of the apartment bent subtly, like reality wasn’t quite holding shape around him.

Peter gasped. “Not again—no—”

Then came the voices.
Whispers. Gentle, but steady.

“Peter… breathe.”
Mantis.

“Let go of the fear. You’re safe.”
Bucky.

“We’re here, kid.”
T’Challa.

They stood at the edges of the room, spectral outlines of light and memory. Not ghosts. Not fully. More like echoes—a chorus caught in crystal, tethered to what remained of the Stones.

Their presence stilled him. Centered him.
The light dimmed.
His breath slowed.

Peter dropped to the floor on his knees, hands shaking, tears hot and silent.

“You died.”
“You came back wrong.”
“You carry us.”

And then—

A sound.
A hum, strange and ancient.

Reality twisted again.
The corner of the room folded in on itself, light bending, shadows streaming backward . A tear opened in the air—green, elegant, humming with power that didn’t obey physics.

And from it stepped—

Loki.

Not broken and chained as Peter had seen him last, but alive. Whole. Vibrant. His Asgardian leathers shimmered like oil-slick armor, a cloak of green flickering with faint golden runes.

He didn’t walk. He glided. Like a sentence arriving before the page was ready.

He looked around the apartment with mild distaste.

“Well,” Loki said, brushing invisible dust from his shoulder. “This is… intimate.”

Peter scrambled up, heart hammering. “You’re dead—!”

Loki smirked. “Yes. Repeatedly. Quite theatrical, really. But I find death is more suggestion than conclusion these days.”

He stepped further into the room, eyeing the remains of the broken lamp and the static dancing across Peter’s fingers.

“You’re leaking,” Loki added. “Metaphysically, I mean.”

Peter took a shaky step back. “You’re tied to the Stones?”

Loki tilted his head. “ Tied is such a mortal word. Let’s say… entwined . I left behind more than blood when I touched the Time Stone. I am Loki of Asgard.” He smiled, slow and knowing. “And now, I suppose, Loki of Fractures.”

Peter frowned. “Why now?”

Loki raised his hand. A thread of emerald light curled upward from his palm like a serpent. “Because the stories are bending. The multiverse is tilting. And I…” His eyes gleamed. “I am, after all, the God of Stories . I tend to notice when the narrative frays.”

Peter’s voice was hoarse. “Why me?”

“Because,” Loki said softly, stepping closer, “you were shattered at just the right moment. And broken things catch broken pieces. The multiverse poured its trauma into you like a crack in the dam.”

Peter turned away, fists clenched. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“Of course not,” Loki said. “Heroes never do. But destiny’s quite impolite that way.”

He looked past Peter to the anchor glyph glowing faintly across his ribs. “You’re becoming something the multiverse hasn’t seen before. Something it hasn’t yet decided to worship… or destroy.”

Peter’s voice dropped. “Thanos.”

Loki’s expression soured. “Yes. He’s awake again. Awake and moving . He felt the ripple. He felt you .”

Peter’s stomach turned.

“This time,” Loki said darkly, “he comes not to rule. Not to balance. He comes to erase . Every last shard. Including you.”

Peter’s hands sparked with uncontrolled power. The fragments inside him hummed . “So what do I do?”

Loki grinned, sharp and cold. “You survive. And you learn. Learn to wield what you carry, before he tears it from your corpse and leaves you dust.”

Then, softer—almost kindly:

“Write your own ending, little spider. Or someone else will write it for you.”

And he vanished—
Just like that.
Like a story that had turned the page.

 

The food co-op was quieter than usual.

Late in the day, most of the regulars had come and gone—wandering back to shelters, overpasses, or alleyways they called home. Only a few remained now, nursing the last of their trays under the grim flicker of overhead lights. The air buzzed faintly with the scent of bleach and boiled cabbage, and the windows—those perpetually smudged rectangles of old grime—let in just enough of Gotham’s dying daylight to smear the room in a washed-out, yellow-gray haze.

The kind of light that made everything look a little sicker than it already was.

Peter sat hunched in the far corner, alone.

He barely touched the bowl in front of him—lukewarm rice and canned beans—scraping at it now and then with a plastic fork, more for the noise than the nourishment. His hoodie hung off him like wet fabric, clinging in all the wrong places. His hair stuck to his forehead in messy tufts, and his fingers twitched against the table like they couldn’t decide whether to clench or shake.

He looked like hell.

Jason Todd noticed the second he walked through the back.

He wasn’t supposed to be working tonight—he’d dropped in for recon, maybe steal a conversation from the old cook in the back who remembered when Gotham wasn’t a graveyard in slow motion. But when he saw Peter…

He froze.

The green in Peter’s eyes was brighter now. That faint hue Jason had spotted days ago—muted, subtle, maybe nothing—had sharpened into something more. Not a glow. Not yet. But close. Like there was light under the skin trying to push its way out.

It was wrong.

Jason had seen that kind of green before.

In the mirror, after the Pit. Before the headaches. Before the rage turned into voices. Before he learned how to bury it in fists and bullets and silence.

He watched the kid for a long moment.

Peter’s breath was off—too shallow, too fast. His shoulders were curled forward like his body didn’t trust itself. Like he was trying to hold in more than exhaustion.

Something was building.

Jason had been watching him for weeks. At first from rooftops. Then shadows. Then here—behind the counter, across the room, near enough to intervene but far enough to walk away if the kid exploded.

He’d told himself it wasn’t his problem.

That Peter wasn’t his responsibility.

That he wasn’t going to do the thing Dick always did—swoop in, play hero, try to save the broken. Gotham didn’t hand out clean endings.

But now?

Now Jason saw it.

The moment before a breakdown.

The kind of moment you only recognized if you'd been through it.

He set his tray down, slow and deliberate, and crossed the floor without thinking.

Peter didn’t look up.

Jason dragged a chair across from him and sat, elbows on the table, arms folded tight.

His voice was low. Measured.

“You’re slipping.”

No response.

He leaned forward just slightly. Enough to cut through the fog.

“You haven’t eaten. Haven’t slept. Your hands are shaking. Your pupils are blown wide. You look like a bomb trying to convince itself it’s just a paperweight.”

Still, nothing.

Then, slowly, Peter lifted his head.

Jason’s stomach clenched.

That Lazarus green—no longer hidden—stared back at him like fire pressed behind cracked glass. His jaw was locked. His nostrils flared with every breath. And beneath the hoodie, Jason could see the faint pulse of something… alive. The veins beneath his skin were glowing, barely perceptible in the co-op’s dim lighting, but unmistakable.

Power. Old and wrong and too much for one body.

“I’m fine,” Peter muttered.

But the voice didn’t match the face.

It was hoarse. Hollow.

A lie both of them could hear cracking down the middle.

Jason rolled up his sleeve, slowly, showing the scar that ran jagged across his forearm. The skin there was twisted, tinted faintly green, warped like melted wax around the edges. Not clean. Not healed.

Lazarus-born.

“I know what this is,” Jason said, quiet and grim. “I know what it does to you.”

Peter looked down at the scar, eyes narrowing. Then back up—suspicion flickering behind the pain.

“You…?”

“Yeah,” Jason said simply. “I died. I got brought back. Not by choice.”

He let the silence hang between them for a moment, like weight on a wire.

“You think you’re holding it together,” he continued. “But you’re not. Not really. You’re drowning. And sooner or later, if you don’t learn how to bleed that fire, it’ll torch something.”

Jason leaned in, locking eyes.

“Usually someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

Peter flinched, just barely.

Then he looked away.

His hands gripped the tray until the plastic fork cracked.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he whispered.

Jason exhaled. Not relief. Not yet. But something close to a step forward.

“Then don’t ride it out alone.”

He waited. Let Peter chew on the silence.

And finally… a nod.

Small. Almost imperceptible.

But it was enough.

Jason stood. Pulled his jacket off the chair and slung it over one shoulder.

“When I’m done here, we walk. I know a place. Quiet. No one around. You need to learn how to bleed it out before it bleeds you dry.”

Peter’s head lifted again.

There was something behind the green now. Not just fire.

Grief.

Jason knew that look.

Because it had lived in his own eyes for years.

He didn’t say anything else.

Just walked away—back behind the counter—heart heavier than before, but strangely lighter at the same time.

He’d told himself he wouldn’t get involved.

He’d lied.

Later—

The shift was over.

The trays had been washed. The last stragglers had gone. The lights inside the co-op flickered into nighttime dimness. Gotham outside was damp, yawning into another rain-soaked evening.

Jason waited by the exit, helmet hooked on his hip, jacket zipped up.

Peter stepped out a minute later, duffel bag slung over one shoulder, hoodie still clinging to him like second skin.

They didn’t say anything.

Just started walking.

Through the Narrows.

Toward the rooftops.

Toward something Peter didn’t have a name for yet—but it felt like breathing for the first time after being held underwater too long.

Somewhere above, hidden by shadow—

Barbara Gordon watched the two from a rooftop camera across the block, her eyes narrowing behind augmented lenses.

She tapped her comm.

“Jason just made contact. Direct this time.”

On the other end, Tim’s voice crackled. “And?”

“He’s not watching anymore,” she said softly. “He’s teaching .”

A pause.

Then Bruce’s voice, grim and low:

“Then it’s started.”

Chapter 12: Like Smoke in the Rain

The rooftops of Gotham were quieter than usual.

Not silent—never that. But quieter.

The city below breathed in slow, pained exhales: a broken generator humming in a back alley, the distant murmur of sirens five blocks away, the occasional bark of a street dog chasing ghosts. Rain slicked the rooftops in silver streaks, pooling on rusted gutters and cracked stone ledges like tears the city had long since forgotten how to weep.

Above it all, on the edge of a tenement that hadn't seen repairs since the last blackout, two figures sat beneath the sighing sky.

Jason Todd, shoulders broad and posture relaxed, sat like someone who’d been here before—many times, too many. A half-bent cigarette smoldered between his gloved fingers, unlit, just something to warm his hand. It hung there like a bad habit he refused to drop. He stared out at the city like it owed him an answer it would never give.

Next to him sat Peter.

Cross-legged. Folded in. A boy made small by exhaustion and grief, arms wrapped around his knees like he was trying to keep himself from unraveling. His hoodie was soaked through, clinging to his ribs and spine. One shoe had a fresh hole, the sock beneath dark and damp. His head was down. His hair dripped in wet curls across his forehead.

He looked like something Gotham had spit out but hadn’t quite killed yet.

Neither of them spoke.

They didn’t have to.

Jason had learned long ago that some silences were heavier than words. Especially with Lazarus kids.

Peter’s breathing was shallow, uneven. His jaw flexed every so often, a subtle tic. His hands wouldn’t stop moving—twitching, fingers scraping against the rooftop like they were searching for something to hold onto.

But what got Jason’s attention wasn’t the fidgeting.

It was the glow.

The Lazarus green in Peter’s eyes was brighter tonight. It pulsed just beneath the surface, alive in a way that made Jason’s spine itch. It wasn’t rage yet—but it was close. Like a pressure building behind the skin. Like something old and powerful whispering just behind the ribs.

Jason finally broke the silence.

“You feel like you’re burning,” he said. Not a question. A memory spoken aloud. “Not hot. Just… wrong. Like your blood’s trying to crawl out of your skin.”

Peter didn’t look up.

But his shoulders twitched—just enough for Jason to know he’d hit the mark.

Jason flicked the cigarette over the edge of the roof. It arced once, then vanished into the dark.

“You don’t have to tell me what happened to you,” he said. “But I know you didn’t land here on purpose. I know that look. Lost. Cornered. Trying to hold in something that doesn’t want to stay still.”

Peter finally spoke, his voice low, dry. “I woke up in water. Green. Glowing. Everything was wrong. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. It was like my body didn’t know what to be.”

Jason didn’t flinch.

“That was the Pit.”

Peter turned his head slightly. Rain slid down his cheek like a tear he didn’t feel. “You keep saying that. The Lazarus Pit. What is it really?”

Jason leaned back on his palms, boots stretched out, face turned up into the rain.

“It’s not a pool. Not really. It’s a wound. In the world. A scar that never healed. Old magic, old power. You die in one world, it gives you back to it—but not the same.”

He paused, then looked at Peter.

“It’s not resurrection. It’s… conversion.”

Peter frowned, barely breathing. “You’re saying I died.”

Jason didn’t blink. “I’m saying you came back.”

The words hit like a fist to the lungs.

Peter froze. Not fully understanding. Not wanting to. His mouth opened, then closed again. His hands clenched into fists.

“…How do you know?”

Jason rolled up his sleeve.

The scar on his forearm was thick, uneven, and slightly iridescent in the rain. Not a clean wound. Something primal and wrong lived in the lines of it.

“Because I’ve been there. I died. And someone I trusted dropped me in. Thought it would bring me back whole.” He snorted. “They were wrong. I got up, yeah. But I brought something with me. A shadow I couldn’t shake.”

He turned his arm, letting Peter see the Lazarus-stained skin in full.

“The green isn’t power. It’s consequence.”

Peter shivered. Not from the cold.

“I don’t want to be… whatever this is,” he whispered.

Jason let out a dry laugh. Bitter. Familiar.

“Welcome to the club.”

Peter blinked, startled. It was the first time he’d seen Jason smile—not a real one. Not the mask-smirk, not the predator’s curl. This one was weary. Human.

Jason’s voice softened, the edge gone.

“I spent years pretending I could handle it alone. Pushed everyone away. Told myself I didn’t need help.” He looked out at the skyline. “Almost burned down half the city because of it.”

Peter wiped his face with a sleeve. “So what do I do?”

Jason stood, boots scraping against the wet concrete. The rain didn’t stop. It never did.

“You stop pretending it didn’t happen.”

Peter looked up.

Jason looked down at him, face hard but not unkind.

“You died,” he said. “And now you’re here. That doesn’t make you a monster. It makes you cursed. But you’re not alone in that. Not anymore.”

Peter hesitated.

Then rose slowly to his feet.

He wasn’t okay. He could feel it in his bones. In the ache behind his eyes. In the whisper of voices from shards of power buried under his skin.

But standing next to Jason—another broken resurrection, another fire forged by grief—it was easier to breathe.

Not safe.

But bearable.

Morning in Gotham

Gotham didn't rise with the sun. It slouched into the light like a junkie coming off a high.

The rain hadn’t stopped. It never really did—just changed rhythms. Today, it fell in a slow, steady drizzle that curled around the fire escapes and seeped into window panes like smoke. The air smelled like rust and mildew and the ghosts of yesterday.

Peter Parker sat on the edge of the tenement roof, legs dangling, hoodie pulled up over his ears. The wind bit through him, but it wasn’t the kind that cut. It reminded him he was still here.

The tremor in his hands had faded.

Not gone. Just… less.

Jason had left an hour ago. No dramatic exit. No lecture. Just a nod, a quiet “See you around, kid,” and then he was gone, swallowed by the city like smoke curling into alleyways.

And that had been enough.

Peter stared across the skyline, eyes drifting toward Wayne Tower.

A spire of steel and secrets. A blade through the sky. Somewhere in there, someone had read his designs. Someone had noticed him. And they hadn’t turned him in. They hadn’t hunted him down.

They’d reached out.

“We’d like to talk.”

He pulled the burner laptop from his bag, fingers steady as he booted it up. The WayneTech message still blinked on the screen.

For a moment, he just stared at it.

Then, finally, he typed:

Thanks. I’d like to talk.

His finger hovered over the send button.

Then he hit it.

The screen went still.

Nothing exploded. No alarms. No lightning bolt from the sky.

But inside him, something subtle shifted.

A weight lifted.

A door opened.

Elsewhere

Tim Drake blinked at the ping on his screen.

Untraceable.

Anonymous.

But there.

The message lit up in soft gray.

“Thanks. I’d like to talk.”

He stared for a moment, then turned toward the others.

Bruce looked up from the Batcomputer, calm but attentive. Barbara paused mid-keystroke. And Dick—perched in the windowsill, boot tapping lightly—raised a brow.

Tim said, “We got a response.”

They didn’t know who Proxy was.

But soon… they would.

Back on the rooftop, Peter closed the laptop and slid it into his bag.

The city whispered beneath him.

He stood.

Still hunted. Still haunted. But not hollow.

Not anymore.

Just unfinished.

And finally… moving forward.

Chapter 13: Proxy

The WayneTech Midtown Annex loomed above the city like a promise and a warning—sleek, silent, watching. Its steel skin gleamed faintly in the morning haze, refracting the city’s dull light into something colder, sharper. The building didn’t belong to Gotham; it hovered above it. Like it didn’t want to be touched by the blood and rust below.

Peter Parker stood in the lobby and felt like he was breathing someone else’s air.

The polished white floors swallowed the sound of his footsteps. The walls shone with data streams, design prototypes, and rotating holograms that flickered like slow lightning—sleek, futuristic, alien to him. This wasn’t the library. This wasn’t the food co-op. This wasn’t the rooftop, soaked in rain and grief, beside someone who understood what it meant to claw your way back from death.

This place was sterile. Controlled. It didn’t welcome shadows like him.

He tugged at the frayed hem of his hoodie and adjusted the strap of the bag slung over his shoulder. His sneakers were damp and made soft squeaks against the spotless tile.

Still… he’d come.

Because they’d asked. Because they’d noticed. Because for once, someone hadn’t slammed the door on a kid who broke the rules of the universe just by breathing.

A woman in smart heels and a darker suit approached with a clipboard and a controlled smile. She didn’t offer a hand.

“You’re Proxy?”

Peter gave a slow nod.

Her eyes lingered on the hoodie, the jeans, the thinness of his frame. But she said nothing.

“This way.”

He followed her past glass security walls and silent checkpoints. Retinal scans flickered as they passed. Cameras tracked his movements with algorithmic precision. No beeps. No alarms. Just quiet eyes watching.

The hallway curved into a seamless stretch of glass and brushed steel, like the inside of a spaceship. He caught his reflection in one of the darkened panes. Pale. Wet hair curled over his brow. Shoulders hunched slightly. A shadow bleeding into the edges of a world that didn’t want to bend.

Finally, the woman stopped at a thick, matte-black door. She tapped a panel, then stepped aside.

“You can go in now.”

Peter hesitated for half a second, then stepped through.

The conference room was sleek and cold, humming with soft light. A long table of obsidian glass sat under a hanging fixture like a blade suspended from the ceiling. Across it sat three people.

And instantly, Peter knew who they were.

Bruce Wayne didn’t need to introduce himself. He was the gravity in the room. Every movement calculated. Every breath deliberate. His eyes, cold steel rimmed with shadow, locked on Peter the second he entered. Not cruel. Not unkind. But weighing. Measuring.

Next to him was Tim Drake , fingers already tapping his tablet, expression sharp and analytic. He barely looked up, but Peter felt the weight of his focus.

And beside Bruce—

Peter froze.

Barbara Gordon.

They locked eyes.

“You…” he blurted, before he could stop himself.

Barbara’s brow lifted slightly. “Library Boy.”

Tim blinked. “What?”

Peter rubbed the back of his neck, awkward. “Midtown Branch. Couple weeks ago. You gave me that housing flyer.”

Barbara’s mouth twitched into a half-smile. “Didn’t expect to see you in a place like this.”

“Yeah… well,” Peter murmured, “Gotham’s full of surprises.”

Bruce remained silent, but Peter could feel his gaze shift—slightly—toward Barbara. The faintest crease formed between his brows. Not confusion. Curiosity.

That look. That weight behind Peter’s voice. That hesitation before stepping forward. That guarded tilt of the chin. It scraped against something familiar in Bruce’s memory.

He had seen it before.

In Dick.

Not the Dick Grayson who cracked jokes and somersaulted across rooftops like he was born in the sky—but the boy he’d first met. The twelve-year-old who’d stood in Wayne Manor wearing grief like a second skin. The boy who flinched at kindness. Who couldn’t sleep without the window open. Who learned to laugh only after learning to fight.

Peter had that same fracture in him. The same sadness knotted tight with guilt. The same instinct to hide it under calm.

Bruce kept his expression unreadable.

But something shifted. Deep. Private.

A thought he didn’t dare voice:

He moves like him. Talks like him. Reacts like him.

Couldn’t be.

…Could it?

Bruce folded his hands. “Let’s begin.”

Peter took the seat across from them, posture straight but guarded. Tim tapped the Anchor schematic into the table’s surface, displaying it midair in a crisp green projection.

“We’ve reviewed your submission,” Bruce said.

Tim leaned forward slightly. “Some of your quantum coefficients—like these?” He tapped the floating formula. “They’re completely unique. Not in any published database. Not in theoretical physics. Where did you learn them?”

Peter glanced at the numbers and shrugged, keeping his voice level. “I read a lot. Built on what I understood.”

“Self-taught?” Tim asked.

Peter nodded once.

Barbara studied him. “The structure isn’t just theoretical. This looks like something built from experience. Trial and error. What’s it for?”

Peter took a breath. The air in here was colder. Cleaner.

“I’ve been in places that don’t hold together right,” he said. “Places where the laws of space—of self—bend. The Anchor’s designed to… stop that. To hold a point in reality still. So people don’t fall through.”

Bruce didn’t look away. “You’ve seen this happen?”

Peter didn’t answer directly.

“I’ve seen enough,” he said softly.

There was silence.

Tim exchanged a look with Bruce, then nodded. “We’d like to help you develop it. But in-house. Secure facility. Supervised access.”

Peter’s jaw tightened. “No names. No records.”

Bruce nodded once. “Alias remains. But we’ll know where the work’s coming from. We expect honesty if you want our trust.”

Peter hesitated… then nodded.

“Okay.”

Barbara leaned back slightly. “Looks like you’ve come a long way since that bulletin board.”

Peter offered a shy, uneven smile. “Yeah. Gotham has a weird way of… pushing people.”

Bruce stood slowly.

And behind the stern lines of his face, the thought refused to leave.

The way he holds tension in his hands. The way he won’t meet your eyes when he’s telling the truth. That’s not just learned.

That’s blood.

Later

The rain tapped against the windows of WayneTech’s upper floors with quiet insistence—like the city itself was asking for entry and being kept at bay. Outside, Gotham bled neon into the mist. The skyline shimmered with dull reds and fractured blues, refracted through the thin silver curtain falling across the glass.

Inside the private conference room tucked behind the R&D wing, the air was still and heavy, save for the soft hum of servers and the rhythmic pulse of schematics rotating slowly in the air above the center table.

Bruce Wayne stood at the window, motionless, his arms folded neatly behind his back. The light from the storm cast sharp angles across his face, hollowing his cheekbones, deepening the lines near his eyes. But he didn’t blink. Didn’t speak.

He just watched.

Watched the lights of the Narrows. Watched the burn in the east where the smog crawled in thick ribbons over Crime Alley. Watched the city he’d sworn to protect gnaw at itself like a dog chewing its own limb.

And beneath it all, he thought of Peter —Proxy—this stranger who had walked into WayneTech with hands that shook and eyes that didn’t. A boy with equations in his blood and ghosts at his heels.

Behind Bruce, Barbara Gordon sat at the obsidian table, her wheelchair angled toward the hovering projection of Peter’s Anchor schematic. She scrolled through lines of code with a flick of her stylus, her expression thoughtful—serious in a way Bruce hadn’t seen since she first learned the difference between Oracle’s mission and the GCPD’s failure.

Every so often, her eyes flicked toward Bruce, waiting. Measuring his silence.

Tim Drake paced like a cat denied sunlight. He moved in deliberate steps around the room, one hand trailing the smooth surface of the glass table while the other tapped rhythmically against his thigh.

“He’s young,” Tim said, breaking the silence. “No older than seventeen, if that. If he’s been living rough for any length of time, he’s held together surprisingly well. No twitching. No tells. His story’s too clean.”

“He’s practiced,” Barbara murmured. “Carefully so.”

Tim gave a short nod. “He knew how to dodge our questions without sounding evasive. I watched him. He never once lied. But he never told the full truth, either.”

Bruce still didn’t speak.

Tim’s voice lowered, more pointed now. “He’s hiding something. Something big.”

“No,” Barbara said, still studying the projection. “He’s protecting something.”

Tim stopped pacing.

She looked up. “There’s a difference. Hiding is fear of being found. Protecting? That’s fear of someone else getting hurt.”

Tim frowned. “What makes you so sure?”

“Because I used to be him,” she said quietly. “Trapped behind too many secrets, trying to keep ahead of the people I cared about, hoping none of them would see how close I was to unraveling.”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed slightly, still fixed on the rain-smeared cityscape beyond the window.

“He reminded me of Dick,” he said, at last.

That stilled the room.

Barbara blinked, lips parting.

Tim looked up sharply. “Wait, what?”

Bruce turned slightly, though he still didn’t face them fully. His voice was low. Thoughtful.

“When I first took Dick in, he wore his grief like armor. He smiled too fast. Joked too loud. Trained harder than he should’ve. But at night, he would sit at the edge of the balcony, staring at the skyline like he was waiting for someone to come take him back.”

Tim said nothing. Barbara’s face softened.

“I remember,” she said. “He’d joke about it, but you could see it in his eyes. He didn’t believe he belonged. Not really.”

Bruce nodded. “Proxy has that same look. Like he’s walking through a place that doesn’t want him. Like he’s half-expecting the world to shove him out again.”

Tim folded his arms. “You think he’s been through something similar?”

“I think,” Bruce said slowly, “he’s been through something far worse.”

The rain outside thickened, battering the windows harder now. The storm had grown bolder. Like it sensed something shifting inside the building that bore Gotham’s cleanest name.

Barbara glanced back to the code. “The way he talks about the Anchor… it’s not theory. Not even desperation. It’s purpose. He’s trying to fix something. Maybe even undo something.”

“He doesn’t just want to stay,” Tim added. “He wants to stop something from following him.”

Bruce stepped away from the window finally and moved to the table, gaze locked on the suspended model of the Anchor.

“Let him work,” Bruce said. “Give him tools. Controlled access. No surveillance on his person, but everything he builds—everything he touches—gets mirrored on our secure server.”

Tim tapped a note into his tablet. “Understood. I’ll set a phantom layer on the lab network. Passive monitoring. He won’t notice.”

Barbara’s gaze drifted again toward the screen. “If he opens a doorway…”

“We’ll know,” Bruce said. “And we’ll be ready.”

Tim hesitated. “Ready to stop him… or help him?”

Bruce looked at him. And for a moment, there was something unreadable in his expression. Something almost too human.

“…That depends on what’s coming through the door.”

Barbara shifted slightly. “And what if what’s coming… is already here?”

The room was silent.

A beat passed.

Bruce’s voice was almost too quiet to hear.

“Then we make sure he’s not alone when it arrives.”

Later

As the rain pressed against the glass high above Gotham’s sprawl, Bruce returned to his office. The lights were low, shadows stretching long across the floor.

He poured himself a glass of scotch but didn’t drink it.

Instead, he walked to the wall-mounted display and pulled up the file marked PROXY . The schematics, diagnostics, energy readings—they all glowed faint green-blue, like something that belonged in another world.

Bruce stared at the security still of Peter leaving the conference room earlier.

Hair dripping. Hoodie sagging. Eyes sharp. Haunted. Hollow.

And behind that look—

Something achingly familiar .

He enlarged the image. Tilted his head.

Dick would’ve been his age now when he used to sneak into the Batcave at night, just to look at the gear. Not touch. Just… look. Like a kid at the window of a toy store he’d never get to walk into.

Bruce clicked open a side panel. Brought up DNA trace logs.

The file was still pending.

Still encrypted.

Still anonymized .

But something in his gut twisted as he looked at the facial geometry overlays. Not an exact match. Not even close.

But certain structures—jawline, brow, eye set—leaned toward someone the system flagged as “similar.”

Grayson, Richard.

Bruce didn’t move for a full minute.

He set the glass down on the table without drinking.

And in the silence of the tallest building in Gotham, the storm outside whispered against the glass like a truth waiting to be spoken.

Chapter 14: Fractures in Motion

The apartment was barely larger than a shipping container. Exposed brick, paint flaking from water-damaged corners, and windows that shuddered when the wind hit them just right. The radiator clanked with tired determination like a dying heartbeat trying to prove it still mattered. The single overhead bulb flickered every time Peter boiled water, so he worked mostly in lamp light and silence.

But still—this place was his.

In the center of the floor, Peter sat surrounded by blueprints and fragments of failed circuits. Chalk lines and scribbled equations crawled across the walls like graffiti scrawled by a mad physicist. The desk nearby was a graveyard of soldered boards, torn gloves, and cracked lenses. The mattress sat untouched. He hadn’t slept in it for two nights.

He didn’t need sleep. Not when the Stones stirred inside him like gears grinding beneath his ribs.

The Anchor Project had moved far beyond what it was in its earliest form. No longer just a theoretical stabilizer or a glorified dimensional latch—it had become a framework. A nervous system for something bigger. Something alive.

Every test he ran in the WayneTech labs showed refinement. But it was in this room—the shadows, the quiet, the pressure under his skin—that the real progress happened. Where Peter pushed beyond what science allowed and into something else entirely.

He reached forward and adjusted a broken stabilizer ring. It sparked against his skin, and his hand flinched involuntarily.

A thin filament of green and gold energy danced across his fingertips. For a moment, the lines on the blueprints shifted . They moved. Rearranged. And then stopped.

Peter sat back, breathing hard.

It was happening more often now. The Stones weren’t just whispering— they were guiding . Shaping the blueprints in his hands, updating the architecture as though the ideas weren’t coming from his mind but from somewhere deeper. From wherever the fragments inside him remembered belonging.

The Anchor was starting to feel less like a machine and more like a compass . Something reaching out across the fracture points between worlds.

Or someone.

He rubbed his face, smearing graphite and oil across his cheek. His reflection stared back at him from a cracked mirror on the far wall. Thin. Pale. Older than the age in his bones should allow.

And behind his eyes—that faint Lazarus glow , brighter now.

He turned his gaze from the mirror.

Don’t look too long, Jason had told him. It’ll start looking back.

His burner phone buzzed.

The screen flared with a coded message:

3. Gordon
   You free tomorrow? I’ve got something you might want to see. Tech demo in R&D Lab 3.

Peter smiled, a tired, grateful curve of the mouth. Barbara had a way of knowing just when to reach out. Like she could feel the weight getting heavier.

He tapped back a reply:

“Sure. What time?”

The response was instant.

“Morning. And don’t wear anything flammable. Just in case.”

A soft laugh escaped him before he even realized it. It was a strange relief— to laugh and not feel guilty . He closed the Anchor files carefully, slipping the newest diagrams into a reinforced sleeve, and slid them into the drawer he kept locked under the desk.

But as he did, he paused.

There was a hum. Not mechanical. Not external.

A feeling.

He stared at the drawer. The hair on his arms lifted. A subtle pressure grew at the base of his spine, like standing near a massive engine he couldn’t hear but could feel vibrating through his ribs.

The air around him changed.

He looked toward the far wall—and for a split second, he swore he saw a shimmer. A ripple. A distortion like heat above pavement.

Someone was watching.

No, not someone. Something .

The Stones didn’t react with fear—but with recognition .

Peter swallowed hard. “Not tonight,” he whispered to himself. “I’m not ready.”

He stood, shaking it off, breathing in through his nose. The tension coiled in his back like a spring, but he forced himself to stretch, roll his shoulders, exhale.

He crossed to the window, twisted the rusted latch, and cracked it open.

Gotham’s breath met him—a lungful of concrete and wet rust, stale fog and rain-slick metal. A city alive in the way sick animals stay alive: through instinct. Through desperation.

But tonight… it wasn’t oppressive.

Tonight, it just was .

And somehow, that was enough.

Elsewhere — Beneath Wayne Manor

The Batcave existed like a dream trapped under rock. Its stalactite teeth gleamed in the cold blue light of the monitors, and the echo of water dripping into distant stone was the only natural sound left in it.

At the edge of the command center, Bruce Wayne stood with arms folded, his eyes locked on the largest monitor.

The paused feed showed a moment from earlier that afternoon: Peter hunched over a terminal , his hands dancing across a simulation interface in the R&D lab. At first glance, it was ordinary—just another researcher pulling late hours.

But Bruce had watched the playback twelve times .

Because at timestamp 04:17:39, the image glitched.

Just for a frame. Less than a blink.

A distortion formed around Peter’s hands. A shimmer, like light being bent . The edges of his body looked like they weren’t fully settled in space—like the camera didn’t know how to capture him.

And his eyes—reflected in the terminal glass—flared with a glow that didn’t match any light source in the room.

Not green. Not gold. Not just Lazarus.

Something else.

“Something’s moving around him,” Bruce murmured, more to himself than the room. “And it’s not just physics.”

He turned to another console, pulling up Peter’s activity logs. Not the restricted ones—they showed nothing unusual. But Bruce had been logging hidden metrics. Passive sensors embedded in the lab’s atmosphere, tuned to energy shifts beyond standard EMF readings.

Dimensional flux. Residual entropy. Temporal echoes.

All of them spiked when Peter entered a room.

Bruce’s jaw tightened.

He stepped forward and keyed a biometric override, summoning a deeper set of files—WayneTech’s “black level” diagnostics. The data appeared like a slow-opening eye.

And there it was.

Multiversal interference.

Radiating outward from Proxy.

No technology could explain it. No experiment had accounted for it. But it was there. Traces of something that didn’t belong in this world clinging to Peter like smoke.

Bruce stared at the waveform—jagged and sharp.

The only time he’d seen something like it before was during the collapse of the Bleed between dimensions. When they’d tried to close off incursions from other timelines. When Zatanna had whispered that some wounds in reality never heal—they just hum louder the longer they stay open.

He closed the file.

His face remained stone. But his thoughts swirled like the storm above.

Peter wasn’t just a survivor of something catastrophic.

He might be the epicenter .

 

The sliding glass door whispered open as Peter stepped into R&D Lab 3 , his footsteps hesitant against the polished composite flooring. The room greeted him not with chaos or clang, but with a low, resonant hum —the sound of power lying dormant, of machines dreaming.

The space was a study in precision. Modular workbenches glinted under amber-hued overhead lighting, casting long shadows across the brushed titanium surfaces. Transparent display panels glowed with slow-cycling data, and the faint scent of ozone, solder, and cold metal permeated the air—sharp and oddly comforting. Like a sterile forge , still warm from the last hammer fall.

Peter paused just past the threshold, hands deep in the pockets of his hoodie. The cuffs were more frayed now, the stitching unraveling from a hundred nervous tugs. Still, he looked healthier than he had a week ago. Less haunted. His posture wasn’t as curled in on itself.

Barbara Gordon looked up from her workstation, a stylus clicking idly against the edge of her tablet. She was angled slightly in her chair, legs crossed, posture relaxed—but her eyes, sharp behind blue lenses, tracked every subtle tic in his expression.

“ Hey, Library Boy. ”

Peter blinked, then gave a crooked half-smile. “ Hey… Chair Girl. ”

Barbara arched an eyebrow. “Careful. I’ve got laser turrets programmed to target sarcasm.”

Peter let out a short, genuine laugh, scrubbing a hand through his curls. “Noted.”

She gestured him closer. “Come on. Got something I think you’ll like.”

In the center of the room hovered a modular combat drone , sleek and coiled like a predator caught in stillness. Its chassis gleamed obsidian under the lights, ringed with micro-repulsors and etched with shifting diagnostics. It floated above a stabilized field projector, motionless but alive—like it was waiting to move .

“Newest model,” Barbara said, tapping her tablet. “Hardware’s solid—WayneTech’s neural-linked adaptive targeting. But the software’s a problem. Lag on reaction-time. AI’s overcorrecting for angular displacement—basically, it panics when something moves too fast.”

Peter tilted his head, squinting. “So it jerks around instead of tracking smoothly?”

“Exactly.”

He took a slow step forward, studying it. “Looks like it’s trying to predict intention through velocity rather than behavioral patterning.”

Barbara gave a pleased nod. “Someone reads my notes.”

Peter glanced at her, uncertain. “You want me to…?”

“I want to see how that weird little brain of yours works,” she said with a faint grin. “So yeah. Mess.”

There was a pause. Not long. But meaningful.

Peter hesitated for exactly three seconds before moving, dropping his duffel with a soft thud. Then he shrugged off his hoodie, revealing grease-streaked sleeves and forearms faintly freckled with tiny scars— the hands of someone who learned by burning himself first .

He didn’t ask questions. He just moved.

In moments, the drone’s underplate was open, exposing its internal processors and gyro cores. His fingers didn’t dart or fumble—they flowed, deliberate and unhurried, like he was drawing music from wire . He rerouted the latency buffer, bypassed the central AI core, and rerouted predictive patterning into a micro-loop tethered directly to its sensory membrane.

Barbara didn’t speak. Didn’t even blink.

She’d seen a lot of bright minds. She was one. But Peter didn’t work like most of them. He didn’t overthink. He felt the system. Like it was something familiar. Something he’d held before.

Fifteen minutes later, the drone chirped.

“System Stabilized. Predictive Tracking: 273% Increase.”

Peter let out a breath and took a step back, wiping his fingers on the hem of his shirt. “I rerouted the intent recognition layer to prioritize micro-adjustments in body language instead of reactionary movement. Most AI waits for action—it doesn’t anticipate hesitation. This one… should.”

Barbara whistled low. “You just rewrote our AI feedback model using what looked like salvaged bus station schematics.”

Peter rubbed the back of his neck. “I, uh… I used to build motion stabilizers out of broken microwaves. Different tech, same theory. Except less exploding.”

Barbara leaned forward in her chair, eyes bright. “Peter… that was brilliant.”

His cheeks flushed. “Thanks.”

Then, just as his fingers brushed the edge of the drone again—

Something changed.

Not in the room. Not visibly.

But in the air.

Peter’s hand froze.

There was a pull in his chest. A tremor beneath the skin, like something plucking invisible strings deep inside him. His breath caught. For a moment, everything went quiet— too quiet.

And then…

“You always had the spark…”

A woman’s voice. Gentle. Familiar in a way that made his chest ache.

“You were meant to build.”

A man’s voice—calm, kind, filled with memory he shouldn’t have.

Peter staggered back a step, his eyes wide. He turned—fast—scanning the far end of the lab. Empty.

But the air still hummed.

Barbara noticed. She wasn’t looking at the drone anymore—she was watching him .

“Hey,” she said gently, “you okay?”

Peter blinked rapidly. “Y-yeah. Just… tired. Maybe low blood sugar.”

“Uh-huh.” Her tone was neutral, but her eyes weren’t. They were watching every twitch in his fingers. Every quake in his breath.

He turned away, pretending to fiddle with the drone.

But the voices lingered in the corner of his mind like fingerprints on glass.

Barbara rolled up beside him, this time not with a quip or a test—but with something gentler.

“You know,” she said, her voice lower now, “I wasn’t really trying to test the drone today.”

Peter looked at her, frowning. “You weren’t?”

“No.” She tapped her stylus once against the metal. “I wanted to see you in your element.”

“…Why?”

Barbara shrugged. “Because I needed to know you had one.”

Peter looked down. “Not many people go out of their way for me.”

“I’m not many people,” she said simply.

There was no bravado in it. No challenge.

Just fact.

He smiled. Small. Honest. “I figured that out at the library.”

They didn’t say much after that.

Just sat there, side by side, bathed in the warm glow of circuits and repulsors. Somewhere deep within the walls, the hum of power continued—steady and alive.

And for a while, Peter forgot to be afraid.

Not of the Stones.

Not of the voices.

Not even of himself.

Chapter 15: Echoes in the Crossfire

The Joker didn’t escape like a man.

He escaped like a myth.

Two dead guards, a blacked-out feed, and thirty-two seconds of static. By the time the system rebooted, his cell door stood wide open, and every surveillance drone in a three-block radius was blind.

Arkham staff said it was “impossible.”

But Gotham knew better.

The Joker never left quietly.

And this time, he didn’t just vanish. He left a stage behind.

A gas-leaking GCPD cruiser rolled down 7th and detonated in front of a pediatric clinic. Traffic lights in the Diamond District blinked to green on all corners, causing three simultaneous pileups. Laughter—tinny, prerecorded—echoed from sewer grates and abandoned bus stops. Twenty Joker-themed drones launched from somewhere underground, dropping hallucinogenic mist across Midtown.

No one knew what he wanted yet.

But Peter Parker was about to walk into it.

Peter stepped out of the Midtown Library Annex with a circuit kit, a notebook filled with phase-loop redesigns, and a vague headache from skipping lunch.

He’d spent the day troubleshooting harmonic decay models for the Anchor. Stabilizing interdimensional geometry shouldn’t have been so personal, but lately, the math felt like therapy—rigid, logical, safe. Unlike everything else in his life.

He didn’t notice the silence at first. Just the way traffic seemed off. A little too still. A little too tense.

And then the sky broke.

A billboard above him flickered to life—Joker’s grainy, too-close face filling the screen with pixelated glee.

“You ever get the feeling someone’s watching you, Gotham? Me too! Let's all wave to the NSA. Or Bats. Or maybe the thing crawling under your bed!”

The screen glitched.

“Smile wide. Laugh loud. And run like hell—”

An explosion ripped through the next block.

Glass shattered. Cars skidded. Smoke poured across the street. Screams erupted from every direction.

Peter dove behind a trash bin, dragging a stunned delivery man with him. Shards rained from above, peppering the sidewalk like deadly snow. Across the intersection, two clown-masked thugs leapt from a purple van, wielding pistols and spray canisters.

Laughter began rising from the crowd—but it wasn’t joy. It was wrong . Panicked, forced. Joker gas.

Peter’s blood screamed. That same Lazarus-born static rippled under his skin.

No suit. No mask. Just instincts.

And something beneath the instincts… older. Hungrier. Like the Stones hadn’t finished whispering yet.

He was already moving.

He spotted a child frozen behind a newsstand, eyes wide with terror. Peter vaulted a bench, scooped the kid into his arms, and rolled them both behind a van just as gunfire tore across the street.

One thug spotted him. Grinned. Raised a pistol.

Peter braced to dive—

CRACK.

The gunman dropped, a red mist blooming from his shoulder.

From the alley emerged a figure Peter had never seen before—black tactical jacket, twin pistols, glowing red helmet.

A ghost in crimson.

The stranger didn’t speak. He just crossed the distance in a blur, seized Peter by the arm, and shoved him into a side alley.

“Go. Now.”

“I—wait, who—?”

“MOVE.”

The voice was mechanical, modulated. Angry. Familiar in tone, but not in name.

Peter didn’t argue. He grabbed the kid again and ran into the smoke.

The red-helmeted figure turned, already back in the fray.

Wayne Manor – Batcave

Barbara’s fingers moved across the screen, rewinding, isolating, analyzing.

“Jason’s engaging in Midtown,” she said calmly. “Took down two armed thugs. Pulled Proxy out of the blast radius.”

Tim didn’t look surprised. “So he’s still protecting the kid.”

Bruce stood at the center console, arms folded, eyes narrowed at the paused frame: Red Hood shoving Peter into an alley. Peter clutching a child. Face pale. Shaking.

Tim zoomed in. “And he still doesn’t know Proxy is Ben Reily .”

“Jason thinks we’ve only been watching Proxy’s digital footprint,” Barbara confirmed. “He has no idea we ID’d him last week.”

“He’s always three steps ahead until you let him think he is,” Tim muttered.

Bruce’s voice was quiet, but firm. “Jason made the right call.”

Barbara nodded. “He’s been watching out for Proxy for months. Brought him food once. Tips on places to crash. All off-grid.”

“And you’re just telling me this now?” Tim shot Barbara a look.

Barbara arched a brow. “You were too busy dissecting phase harmonics.”

Tim conceded the point with a scowl.

Bruce didn’t take his eyes off the screen.

“He’s drawn to him,” Bruce murmured. “Even before he knew who he was.”

“Jason sees himself in him,” Barbara said softly. “They both came back different.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened.

No one said it aloud—but it hung between them.

So had Dick.

Midtown Rooftops – Later

Peter sat on a rooftop edge, coughing into his sleeve, lungs raw from the gas. He’d passed the kid off to emergency responders. No injuries. Just shock.

His arm stung from shrapnel, but it wasn’t deep.

The adrenaline was wearing off.

And the fear was creeping in.

Red Hood had disappeared as fast as he arrived. No name. No face. Just that same cold authority Jason sometimes had when he got serious.

Peter looked down at the street—smoke still curling from a burning cab.

He didn’t know why the man in the helmet had saved him.

Didn’t know who he was.

Didn’t know why something about his voice made the Stones in his blood go quiet.

But he had a feeling this wasn’t the last time they’d meet.

Batcave – Hours Later

Jason strode in with his helmet under one arm and a long gash across his jacket. He didn’t look winded. Just pissed.

Barbara didn’t say anything. Just nodded toward the screen.

Proxy’s face, frozen mid-run. Smoke. Blood. Chaos.

Jason raised an eyebrow. “You were watching.”

“We always were,” Barbara said.

Jason blinked. “Wait… you knew?”

Bruce stepped forward. “We’ve known who Proxy is since before the Midtown submission. We let him come to us.”

Jason looked stunned for the first time in a long time.

“So all that talk about ‘unknown variable’ and ‘caution’—”

“Wasn’t for him,” Tim said. “It was for you.”

Jason stared at the image again. Peter. Shaken, bleeding. Alive.

“…You should’ve told me.”

“You didn’t ask,” Barbara said, not unkindly.

Jason turned back toward the screen.

And something in his voice—unarmored, low—cut through the hum of the cave.

“He’s a good kid.”

Bruce was quiet.

Jason added, “But you already knew that too, didn’t you?”

Bruce nodded once.

And no one needed to say it:

They’d all seen the spark in Peter.

The question now was how far it would burn—and what it would leave behind.

 

Rain rattled the windowpanes of Peter’s small Gotham apartment like knuckles on a coffin lid. The shadows in the corners stretched long and deep, and the city outside was still pulsing with the Joker’s aftermath—sirens in the distance, smoke curling into the dark.

Peter sat on the floor, back against the peeling wall, shoulder bandaged, breath slow. In his lap lay the remains of the Spider-Man suit. Tattered, blood-stained, singed with black soot.

The spider emblem across the chest was warped, the legs fraying at the edges.

Still, it stared back at him.

He hadn’t worn it since he arrived. Since the world went wrong.

But he was thinking about it now.

Because someone needed to stand between Gotham and monsters like the Joker.

And no one here was calling his name.

He stared at the mask, fingers curled loosely around it.

And then—

The air changed.

Not with temperature, but with weight.

A deep, familiar ache settled into the room. Like pressure on his chest, like gravity made personal. His fingers twitched. His eyes lifted to the shadows.

And they began to form.

Not illusions.

Not memories.

Souls.

The faint silhouettes of them, shimmering like smoke over embers.

Wanda stood by the window—expression distant, a flicker of red trailing from her fingertips.

Bucky leaned against the wall, arms crossed, his metal hand glinting faintly.

T’Challa stood tall, regal and silent, gaze heavy with sadness.

And beside the door—Quill. Drax. Even Mantis. Soft shapes in the gloom.

Peter’s breath caught. He didn’t dare blink.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he whispered.

Wanda tilted her head. “Neither are you.”

Peter looked down. His grip on the mask tightened.

“I didn’t choose this,” he said. “I didn’t ask to come back.”

“But you did,” Bucky said quietly. “And we didn’t.”

Peter winced.

“I should’ve died with you,” he whispered.

“No,” T’Challa said, stepping closer, voice calm but sure. “You were meant to carry us forward.”

Peter’s jaw clenched. “I’m not strong enough.”

“You are,” Wanda said, her voice gentle—like May’s used to be.

“You survived the Snap,” Mantis said.

“You survived the Pit,” added Bucky.

“You carry more than blood,” T’Challa said. “You carry legacy.”

Peter stood slowly, the mask hanging from his hand. “But if I put this on again…”

“You’ll suffer,” Quill said bluntly.

“You’ll be hunted,” Bucky added.

“You’ll be alone,” Wanda finished.

Peter raised the mask. “Then I’ll suffer. And I’ll fight. And if I’m alone—then fine. I’ve been alone before.”

They said nothing.

But one by one, the spirits stepped back.

Fading.

Not gone. Not angry.

Just… proud.

Peter was about to speak—when time twisted like thread and another figure materialized from the edge of reality, where color frayed and sound unraveled.

A shimmer of green.

Gold.

Black.

Loki.

Not whole. Not alive. But still there.

He stepped into the room with a sardonic smile and folded hands.

“You do love making speeches in empty rooms, Peter Parker.”

Peter didn’t flinch. “You’re dead too.”

“Oh, most definitely,” Loki smirked. “But death and I have a… complicated arrangement. Seems I got caught on the edge of the Time Stone when it fractured. Now I drift. Occasionally watching.”

Peter narrowed his eyes. “Why are you here?”

Loki’s grin softened—not amused, but knowing.

“Because you’re about to become something dangerous.”

Peter lifted the mask.

“I’m not dangerous.”

Loki stepped forward, voice lowering. “You carry the fragments of four impossible forces inside your veins, child. You speak with the voices of the dead. You survived death twice, bled through worlds, and now you think wearing a mask is just a symbol?”

Peter slipped the mask over his head.

“It’s not just a symbol,” he said quietly. “It’s responsibility.”

Loki exhaled through a smile. “Spoken like someone burdened with glorious purpose.”

Then he vanished, smoke and shimmer—just as the ghosts had.

Leaving Peter alone in the dark.

Alone… but standing.

The Spider-Man suit stretched across him again. Imperfect. Scarred.

But whole enough.

He stepped toward the window.

And leapt into the rain.

Somewhere in Gotham, a civilian caught a glimpse:

A blur between rooftops.

A flash of red and black.

Not Batman.

Not Nightwing.

Something new.

Chapter 16: Ashes and Armies

Location: Earth – Avengers Compound, Reconstructed War Room

The war room was quiet. But not the kind of quiet born of peace.

This was the silence before impact.
The kind that pressed against your ribs like an unseen hand.
The kind that filled your lungs with questions no one wanted to answer.

The new Avengers compound had risen slowly from the wreckage, stone and steel replacing the cratered memories of the one that came before. The screens were newer. The consoles cleaner. But the ghosts?
The ghosts were the same.

Tony Stark stood at the edge of the table, sleeves rolled to his elbows, knuckles pale on the glass. He hadn’t shaved. He hadn’t slept. But his mind, as ever, was on fire. Next to him, Steve Rogers was a statue of tension—arms crossed, chin low, jaw set like iron.

Natasha sat near the corner of the table, the heel of one boot tapping against the leg of the chair in a restless rhythm, her eyes never straying far from the swirling projection at the center.

Bruce was scrolling furiously through quantum data on his slate—eyebrows pinched, muttering equations like prayers. Carol hovered behind him, literally, her boots an inch off the floor, arms crossed as light flickered around her subconsciously, like a solar flare waiting to lash out.

And near the far wall, shadowed and silent, stood Thor.

Stormbreaker rested tip-down against the floor, his hand loose around the haft. The Asgardian’s beard had grown thicker. His posture was heavier. But in his eyes—a dim spark still simmered. A storm, waiting for the world to deserve it again.

Tony cleared his throat. “Alright. Everyone’s here. Let’s talk about why the universe is vibrating like a tuning fork from hell.”

Bruce swiped across the main console. The hologram flared to life, revealing an unstable rift—its core spinning with chaotic geometry. It didn’t obey normal physics. It bent the projection like a wound in the light.

“Same energy signature as the Snap,” Bruce said grimly. “But this isn’t just raw force. It’s… strategic. Controlled. It’s moving between layers of quantum stability. Like it’s following a thread across timelines.”

Natasha leaned in. “A thread to what?”

Carol narrowed her eyes. “To who.”

Bruce hesitated. “We got a signal. Faint. But it’s him. Thanos.”

A pin dropped in the room. Even the tech seemed to hold its breath.

Steve was the first to speak. “That’s not possible. We watched him die. Thor—”

“I killed him,” Thor interrupted. “I saw the life leave his eyes.”

Tony gave a sharp exhale. “Apparently not enough life.”

Bruce turned the hologram, zooming in on dimensional folds layered over one another like paper bleeding ink. “He’s using some remnant of the Stones’ resonance—fractured though they are. Not to travel between dimensions. To drag them together .”

Steve frowned. “Why?”

Tony tapped a control. The rift pulsed. “Because it’s not about killing anymore. It’s about unmaking . He’s taking what’s left of the Stones and grinding the boundaries between worlds into dust. Think quantum genocide.”

Natasha’s voice was flat. “Multiversal collapse?”

“Worse,” Bruce said quietly. “He’s building something with it. An army.”

Steve stepped closer to the projection. “What kind of army?”

Carol answered instead. “The kind that doesn’t belong anywhere.”

Location: Unknown Realm — Beyond the Edge of Time

Ash crunched beneath Thanos’ boots. A dead moon drifted in pieces behind him, its orbit cracked like a dropped plate. The sky had no sun. No true light. Only the distant echo of starlight caught in gravitational scars.

He walked slowly, deliberately—each step a statement.

The Gauntlet on his arm was no longer whole. The Stones flickered unevenly, fractured prisms leaking threads of energy like blood from old wounds. But they held together—because he willed them to. And his will had never faltered.

Ahead, a portal churned. Not a gate. A wound . A spiral of jagged dimension, bleeding colorless space.

Behind him… things followed.

Creatures that had never been born.
Chimera of lost timelines, stitched from cosmic failure.
Not Chitauri. Not Outriders. These were worse.

Souls stripped of reality. Broken reflections from dying branches of the multiverse. Some were versions of people that never lived. Others were memories , given form by corrupted echoes of the Mind Stone.

One version of Ebony Maw followed him—half his face lost to temporal erosion, the other side smirking eternally. Another flickered like static, every footstep existing in multiple places.

Thanos turned to face the breach. His voice was low, but it carried like thunder in a cathedral.

“I tore half of existence down. And still, it resists.”

He raised the Gauntlet. The Power Stone flared with an angry light—splintered, but furious .

“I will not be remembered. I will be finality .”

He stepped forward into the breach—into the in-between place.

And the gate swallowed him whole.

Location: Earth — Avengers Compound, External Rain Garden

The rain drummed on the rooftop like a warning. Thor stood alone, eyes skyward, soaked but unmoving. He could feel it in his bones. The world wasn’t ending. It was peeling .

Tony approached, umbrella long abandoned, water streaking down his jacket.

“You feel it too?” he asked.

Thor nodded slowly. “I have known gods who believed they could rewrite fate. They became smoke.”

“Well,” Tony muttered. “He’s trying again.”

Thor looked at him, eyes faintly glowing now. “He will fail.”

“Yeah, I agree. But let’s try to minimize the collateral damage this time.”

Tony hesitated. Then added, “I’m working on something. Quantum architecture to brace our dimension—Anchor constructs, multiversal shielding, even a few dangerous ideas from someone I swore I’d never use again.”

Thor raised a brow. “Loki?”

Tony gave a tired grin. “His research notebooks were under his bed. Who knew?”

The thunder god smiled grimly. “Then you’d better read fast.”

Location: In-Between Realms — The Drift Between Fates

Thanos emerged into the hollow between worlds—a space that did not belong to time, or place, or causality. Here, physics was a suggestion. History flickered like candlelight. Voices from other lives echoed through the folds.

And in the middle of the Drift, something pulsed.

A ripple.

A memory.

A voice.

“I’m still here.”

Thanos paused.

The Soul Stone on his ruined Gauntlet vibrated, as though recognizing something.

He turned slowly.

A shimmer. Small. Fractured.

A trace of Peter Parker’s soul echo—caught in the infinite churn of soul-forged chaos. A boy half-forgotten by his world. Half-remade by another. Not a warrior. Not a god.

But not gone.

Thanos narrowed his eyes.

“You should not still exist,” he growled. “The Pit should have erased you. Time should have burned you away.”

He raised the Gauntlet.

The air screamed as reality bent.

“I will unmake you properly, spider.”

And he stepped forward into the rift.

Chapter 17: Threading the Web

Gotham — Days After the Joker Incident

The mask was on again. And this time, Peter— Ben , as they knew him—didn’t hesitate.

He stood at the edge of a rust-streaked rooftop in Old Bristol, his shadow long and sharp against the flickering city below. Rain misted from a low sky. Car horns echoed like heartbeats. Gotham breathed beneath him, wounded and angry.

The Spider-Man suit—reconstructed from salvaged Stark tech and stolen WayneTech polymer mesh—was darker now. More Gotham. Matte black shoulders, blood-red chest. The spider emblem was sharp, jagged, almost a warning.

Peter tightened the gauntlet seal around his wrist and exhaled.

This was the first time he’d worn the suit since everything went sideways. Since the Lazarus Pit. Since the hallucinations. Since waking up in a world that didn’t know his name.

But the city needed something.

And he was tired of waiting to be asked.

He leapt into the rain.

WayneTech — R&D Wing

Peter entered the lab quietly the next morning, hoodie damp, face pale, shoulder stiff. There were fresh scrapes on his hands. Nothing too obvious. Nothing worth questioning—yet.

Barbara looked up from her tablet.

“Morning, Ben.”

He nodded, setting a thumb drive on the counter. “Patch update for the Anchor’s harmonic chamber. Better sync to low-frequency phase drift.”

Tim, hunched over a half-disassembled drone, glanced sideways. “You always work at 3 a.m., or just the days ending in chaos?”

Peter smiled faintly. “Sometimes my brain doesn’t respect curfews.”

Barbara didn’t press. But she noticed the bruising near his temple.

So did Tim.

They were watching him more lately. Measuring the distance between his intelligence and his isolation.

And neither of them could quite place what it was about him that felt… off.

Batcave — Later That Day

The central screen flickered.

Footage from a rooftop camera played on loop: a masked figure flipping through smoke, webbing two thugs mid-stride, landing in a low crouch before vanishing into the mist.

Barbara tapped her stylus against the screen. “That’s our spider again. Last night. Narrows. Broke up an arms drop.”

“He’s moving faster,” Tim noted. “Cleaner than the first two sightings. More confident.”

Damian watched with a scowl. “This vigilante does not belong here.”

“Neither did I, once,” Dick said quietly.

The screen paused mid-jump—Spider-Man hanging upside down from a streetlight, back arched, knees tucked just like…

Tim’s eyes narrowed.

He pulled up an old training file—Dick, seventeen, in his first solo week as Nightwing.

The poses were almost identical.

Same flips. Same spring-loaded stances. Even the web-slinger’s finish—a tight three-point landing with one leg forward—was unmistakably Grayson.

Barbara raised an eyebrow. “Déjà vu?”

Dick crossed his arms, brow furrowed. “He moves like me.”

Jason, leaning against the railing, added, “Too much like you.”

Damian scoffed. “So, what? He studied your footage?”

“Or he was trained by someone who did,” Barbara said, glancing toward Bruce.

Bruce didn’t speak.

But his gaze was locked on the footage, unmoving. Until t he Batcomputer let out a sharp ping , its screen flaring to life with another surveillance update. Bruce didn’t flinch. He was already turning toward it.

A moment later, soft footsteps echoed down the East Tunnel—deliberate, silent, sure. A figure emerged from the shadows like ink forming purpose.

Talia al Ghul.

Her cloak spilled behind her like poured shadow. Her posture was perfect, her movements unhurried, her expression unreadable.

No one had summoned her.

But no one questioned her arrival either.

Bruce straightened subtly, as if preparing for a shift in gravity.

“You’re late,” he said.

Talia’s eyes flicked toward him, but her attention was already caught by the paused screen. A still of the red-and-black figure frozen mid-swing, tendrils of web slicing through the Gotham rain.

Her voice was calm. “You’ve found him.”

Barbara turned in her chair, her tone measured. “You recognize him?”

“I do not know his name,” Talia said, stepping closer. “But I know what he carries.”

She motioned with a single, elegant gesture. Tim toggled the display to infrared mode.

And there it was.

The outline of the vigilante glowed faintly—not heat, not energy. It was something older . Something colder .

A subtle green shimmer, coiled around him like smoke that didn’t obey physics.

“Lazarus residue,” Talia said, her voice cutting through the room like a blade drawn quiet.

Jason straightened where he leaned against the railing.

Tim blinked. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve watched the Pit remake flesh more times than any of you can count,” Talia said without pride. “That aura—it lingers only on those touched recently . Whoever this spider is, he is no longer fully tethered to the living world. The Pit remembers him.”

Bruce stepped forward. “You said recently . How recent?”

“Within months. Weeks, even. The echo hasn’t faded. And there’s something else…” Her gaze narrowed. “He carries the mark of a Pit that was… unstable.”

Barbara’s brow furrowed. “Unstable how?”

Talia hesitated—not for dramatic effect, but because the truth weighed even heavier than usual.

“My father is missing.”

That stopped the room cold.

Dick slowly turned to her. “Ra’s?”

Talia nodded. “He entered one of the oldest Lazarus Pools—deep beneath the K’un Lun faultline. It had not been used in centuries. Something in its chemistry was… different. It reacted violently to him. My scouts found no body. No trace of him. Just scorched stone, ruptured air… and echoes.”

Jason’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of echoes?”

Talia met his gaze. “Something broke through. Or was pulled through. Whatever it was—whatever he became—he is no longer here. At least not in the way we understand time and place.”

Tim muttered, “And then this guy shows up. Not just Lazarus-touched, but fighting like a ghost trained by Nightwing himself.”

Dick leaned in, analyzing the frame. “He’s got my aerial dismount. Even the triple flip. That’s not just mimicry. That’s muscle memory .”

Jason said nothing. But his hands curled into fists at his sides.

Tim added, “Then who trained him? Or raised him?”

Barbara said, almost to herself, “He doesn’t just fight like Grayson. He moves like he was raised by him.”

No one laughed.

Because it wasn’t a joke.

Talia turned to Bruce. “If this boy—this Spider—is linked to the Pit my father vanished into, he may not be what he seems. And if the Pit was fractured, if reality tore as part of its collapse…”

“He could be from somewhere else,” Bruce finished grimly.

“A timeline. A branch. A… correction,” Talia said.

Jason turned his eyes back to the footage, where Spider-Man vanished in a blur between rain and shadow.

He knew.

He knew who it was.

He saw Peter— Ben —in the suit’s posture. In the tension in the shoulders. In the guilt stitched into every kick, every webline.

But he also saw something else now.

Something that scared him more than Lazarus pits or Jokers or armies of the undead.

He saw Grayson in him.

And he wasn’t the only one.

Dick looked down at his own hands. His expression was unreadable.

The Batcave was silent for a moment longer, tension coiled like a loaded spring.

Finally, Damian broke it.

“If he’s Lazarus-touched, he could be dangerous.”

Talia’s eyes flashed. “Or he could be something more.”

Jason spoke at last. “He’s not a weapon. He’s a kid . One trying to find his place.”

Barbara met Jason’s gaze. “Then let’s figure out who Ben really is.”

Bruce nodded. “We keep watching. We gather data. No confrontations. Not yet.”

Talia’s cloak shifted as she stepped back into the tunnel.

“But when the time comes,” she said over her shoulder, “I will know. And if the Pit clings to him the way I think it does… the world may not be ready for what he becomes.”

And then she was gone—vanished into stone and silence.

Jason stared at the screen as Spider-Man leapt across a rooftop, cape trailing like the last breath of a forgotten name.

No one knew Peter Parker’s secret.

Not yet.

But they were getting close.

Too close.

And Jason could feel the past and future threading together in real time.

Not a spider’s web.

A family’s.

Chapter 18: Blood and Thread

Gotham wasn’t just a city.
It was a living scar that refused to close.

And tonight, it was bleeding again.

Arkham Asylum’s western containment wing erupted like a corpse coughing fire. A boom cracked the night open, flame spraying against the black skyline, windows bursting from shockwaves that rippled through the cracked bones of Gotham’s underbelly.

Sirens howled like dying animals.

Above the chaos, the sky blinked with rotating red strobes, casting everything in surgical violence.

The GCPD responded late. They always did. They weren’t trained for this kind of madness. But others were.

From the shadows came the ones who moved like vengeance:

Batman.
Nightwing.
Red Robin.
Batgirl.
Robin.

And—

Spider-Man.

He’d caught the breach on a rooftop four blocks away, mid-swing, his body pivoting in the air like instinct guided him before thought could catch up. The smell of smoke hit him first. The screams hit harder.

He didn’t hesitate.

Gotham didn’t let you hesitate.

The courtyard outside Arkham was already littered with debris. A crumpled van, cracked pavement, blood pooling where guards had tried and failed to hold the line.

Peter landed with a thud that echoed through his new reinforced boots. The moment his feet hit stone, two figures burst from the smoke.

Firefly , jetpack flickering erratically, flame-thrower already lit.

Victor Zsasz , his pale face twisted with the glee of violence, a blade glinting in each hand.

Peter moved.

Webs cracked through the air like sharp reports—one to the nozzle of Firefly’s pack, the other to the booster’s valve. A swift pull. A high-pitched whine —then smoke, sparks, and the arsonist spiraled out of the sky, crashing into a wall hard enough to crack brick.

Zsasz barely made it six steps before a steel-toed boot slammed into his chest. Damian Wayne stood above him, blade drawn, expression unreadable.

Spider-Man landed beside him.

“Nice form,” Peter muttered.

Damian didn’t look at him. “You were slow.”

Peter grinned under the mask. “Was trying not to get flambéed. Excuse me for caring about presentation.”

Barbara’s voice snapped over the comms. “North cellblock—Tetch and Magpie are on the run. Joker was seen but vanished. We’ve got unknown interference in the west tunnel. Could be a separate faction.”

Batman’s reply was ice and steel. “Priority: containment. Non-lethal unless necessary. Move.”

And they did.

Fifteen Minutes Later – Arkham's Broken Western Wall

The breach was wide enough to drive a tank through.

Masonry torn apart. Reinforced steel warped like paper. Peter and the others tracked the last rogue down the corridor’s edge: Killer Moth , of all people, buzzing through the air with a backpack jerry-rigged from what Peter immediately recognized as WayneTech's prototype magnetic propulsors.

It looked like a Frankenstein of stolen R&D and suicidal overconfidence.

“Give me altitude,” Peter said, already vaulting up the nearest wall.

He fired twin webs—one to Moth’s harness, the other anchoring to a steel beam. He yanked, redirecting the villain’s flight path.

Jason met him mid-trajectory, slamming him out of the sky with the kind of satisfaction only Red Hood allowed himself to show.

“One flying cockroach down,” Jason muttered, shaking his fist out.

Peter exhaled, checking the power feedback on his gauntlet display. The repulsor-thread weave was holding—barely.

Then the air changed.

Still. Dense. Weighted.

It hit Peter like static behind his eyes—like cold fingers brushing the back of his neck.

He spun—

Too slow.

A blade hissed.

Steel kissed flesh.

Peter staggered back, pain flaring across his ribs. He webbed up to the nearest fire escape instinctively, hauling himself out of reach.

Below, standing calmly in the scorched courtyard, her blade glinting with strange green—

Talia al Ghul.

Her robe swirled in the wind like ink in water. Her blade gleamed—slicked with his blood. But it wasn’t red.

It shimmered green.

Lazarus green.

She tilted her head. Her voice was velvet and death.

“Your body carries the Pit,” she murmured. “You smell of it. It clings to you like rot to flesh.”

Jason moved first, shouldering his way between them, pistol drawn and unwavering.

“Back. Off.”

Tim flanked her left. Nightwing mirrored the move to her right. Robin blocked the rear. The formation wasn’t just reaction—it was instinct. They moved like a unit.

And last came Bruce. No grand entrance. No sound. Just presence .

“You shouldn’t be here,” Batman said.

Talia wiped the blade with ritual grace and sheathed it with reverence.

“I only confirmed what I already suspected.”

“You cut him,” Jason snarled. “You didn’t need to.”

Talia raised a single brow. “The Pit whispers. But blood tells the truth.”

Peter was gone.

Slipped into the night like he belonged to it.

Not a trace.

Not a sound.

Except—

Bruce looked down.

A single speck of blood—caught on his glove.

He lifted his hand. The spot glowed briefly—bright Lazarus green—before fading into black.

He said nothing.

But Tim noticed.

“You’re going to test that, aren’t you?”

Jason’s voice cut in. “Don’t.”

Bruce turned slowly. “We all want answers. So do I.”

“He’s not a thing to study,” Jason snapped. “He’s a kid . He’s trying.”

Bruce didn’t reply. He didn’t have to.

Talia was already vanishing into the shadows. Her voice trailed like smoke behind her.

“If the Lazarus remains in him… then my father may not be the only one who returned changed.”

Damian scowled. “We should’ve stopped her.”

Dick’s expression was tight. “She’s not the threat. Not yet.”

But none of them noticed Bruce’s glove still clenched tight—his mind already running DNA forensics, cross-checking database fragments. Somewhere in the pit of his stomach, he felt it:

The truth wasn’t far.

Gotham Rooftops – Hours Later

The city wheezed beneath a veil of black rain.

Peter sat hunched beside a crumbling chimney stack, knees up, one arm wrapped around his ribs. His suit was folded beside him, his hoodie soaked in blood and ash. The wound had closed—supernaturally fast—but something deeper remained.

The ache wasn’t just Lazarus.

It was memory.

It was power.

It was something inside him, pressing against the seams of his body like a scream with nowhere to go.

The Stones were whispering again.

Not words. Not clear.

But emotion. Purpose. Weight .

Choose. Balance. Become.

He pressed his hand to his side.

It glowed.

Faint.

Insistent.

Then the night around him rippled.

Like heatwaves.

And they came.

Not as ghosts this time—but as entities . Presences . Fully formed in the gloom.

T’Challa stepped forward first. Regal. Serene. Watching.

Then Wanda. Her hair flowing unnaturally in wind that wasn’t there.

Shuri. Drax. Mantis. Even Groot, a blur in the periphery. Others stood beyond—blurry, incomplete. But watching.

“You’re getting stronger,” Wanda said.

Peter nodded, exhausted. “I didn’t ask to be.”

“No one ever does,” T’Challa replied.

He swallowed hard. “Am I becoming one of you?”

“No,” Shuri said gently. “You are becoming what we couldn’t.”

Peter looked down at his hands. Gold sparks flickered at the tips of his fingers—then faded.

“I miss you all.”

“We know,” Wanda said.

He turned toward her. “What if I can’t carry it?”

T’Challa stepped forward. His voice was quiet thunder.

“Then we will help you hold it. But you must keep moving. You are the thread now, Peter. The web between worlds.”

Peter leaned back, breath fogging in the cold.

Above, the city burned. Below, his blood boiled with Lazarus and light.

He was changing.

And the world felt it coming.

Chapter 19: The Son He Never Knew

Rain knifed across the glass skylight above the Batcave, each drop a needle against the silence. In the heart of the cave, glowing softly in cerulean hues, the Batcomputer hummed like something breathing.

Bruce stood unmoving before the console.

The screen displayed a rotating double helix—bright, clean, unmistakably human. Data streamed beneath it, detailing enzyme markers, mitochondrial sequences, metahuman variant genes… and one result Bruce had now run six times.

Paternal Match: Richard John Grayson
Probability: 99.98%

He didn’t blink. He barely breathed. The rain above became thunder in his ears.

The blood sample had been minuscule—a trace lifted from a glove after the Arkham perimeter fight. He hadn’t expected much. Residual Lazarus saturation. A trace metahuman anomaly. Perhaps a better idea of what this “Ben” kid was hiding.

But what the analysis gave him was something else entirely.

Not just Lazarus-marked. Not just enhanced.

Family.

He cross-checked against Dick’s own stored genetic scans—compiled years ago for medical diagnostics and combat readiness. Every detail matched. Not just the baseline genome. But the inherited quirks. The high-tensile flexibility markers in the ligaments. The acrobat frame. Even a rare autosomal recessive imprint—one Bruce knew Martha Wayne carried.

He stared at the screen.

Then, quietly, he brought up another window.

Name: Unknown Alias – “Ben”
Estimated Age: 16
Possible Origin: Unknown
Abilities: Advanced agility, strength, reflex coordination beyond baseline. Artificial web propulsion device. High-level intellect. Lazarus-afflicted.

And now... Dick Grayson’s son.

A quiet rumble from the ramp snapped Bruce from his thoughts. He didn’t turn as Barbara Gordon approached from the upper gantry, her wheels soft over the stone.

“Still working?” she asked, voice low.

Bruce didn’t speak.

Barbara rolled closer. The computer glow hit her face, and her eyes widened. She recognized the scan immediately.

She let out a breath. “Is that—”

“Yes,” Bruce said.

“Does he know?”

“No,” Bruce said again, and this time there was steel behind it.

Barbara leaned forward slightly. “You’re sure it’s him?”

Bruce brought up a side-by-side analysis: Dick’s DNA, the boy’s DNA, a perfect overlay. The similarities in bone structure. The physical data from recent combat footage. The symmetry of a family tree without roots.

Barbara exhaled slowly. “My god. Ben’s… Dick’s?”

Bruce nodded. “But he doesn’t know. Neither of them do.”

Barbara sat back in her chair, stunned. “How? When?”

“There’s no record,” Bruce said. “No woman. No incident. No missing time. Either Dick didn’t know… or someone made sure he wouldn’t.”

Her expression darkened. “You think this is League-connected.”

“I think someone wanted him hidden.”

Barbara looked toward the screen, the frozen frame of the red-and-black vigilante crouched on a rooftop, eyes glowing faintly behind the mask.

“It makes sense,” she murmured. “The way he moves. He fights like Dick. Same instincts. Same speed.”

Bruce crossed his arms. “But his mind is sharper. More analytical. He doesn’t just move—he calculates.”

Barbara’s voice dropped. “So… what do we do?”

Bruce paused. “We watch. We protect. But we don’t tell them yet.”

Barbara looked at him sharply. “You’re not going to tell your son he has a son?”

“Not until I understand what Ben’s been through,” Bruce said. “There’s something else—his cells aren’t just Lazarus-altered. They’re stable. Integrated. It’s like… the Pit couldn’t twist him. It adapted to him instead.”

Barbara shook her head. “That’s never happened before.”

“No,” Bruce agreed. “Which means whatever brought Peter here… it wasn’t an accident.”

 

Jason Todd was halfway through a lukewarm protein bar when something in his gut twisted.

That itch. That bone-deep sensation that something wasn’t right.

He ditched the rest of the bar and made for the Narrows. Quiet steps. Hood up. Two alleys, a rooftop vault, and one shortcut through a condemned stairwell later—he was outside the rusted door of Apartment 4B.

He knocked. Once. Twice.

No answer.

His jaw set.

He picked the lock in three seconds.

The door creaked open into darkness. The air smelled of sweat, solder, and blood. Inside: bare mattress, broken desk, scattered schematics, and a smear of red across the floor.

“Shit…”

Jason was at Peter’s side instantly.

The kid lay slumped against the wall, hoodie dark with blood, face pale, breath ragged.

“Hey,” Jason said, kneeling. “Kid—wake up.”

Peter groaned softly. “Jason…?”

“You look like hell.”

“Feel like it,” Peter murmured, head lolling. “It’s… not bad.”

Jason lifted the hoodie—and froze.

The bandage covering Peter’s side was soaked. Beneath it, his skin glowed faintly green. Not infection. Not tech.

Lazarus.

Jason’s breath caught. He’d seen that glow before. On himself. In Ra’s al Ghul’s sanctums. In dreams that came screaming.

“You should’ve told me,” he muttered. “You said it was fading.”

Peter winced. “I thought it was. Until I was mugged.”

Jason swore again. “Of course it was a mugging.”

He stepped away, trying to calm the storm in his chest. And that’s when he saw it—on the desk.

A cracked web-shooter.

Jason picked it up slowly. The design was brilliant. Familiar.

He turned toward Peter. “You… you’re the spider.”

Peter didn’t answer right away. Then, finally, “Yeah.”

Jason shook his head, then sat down hard next to him. “You’re a teenager with Lazarus scars, grief in your eyes, and a mask hiding the fact that you’re one of the best fighters I’ve ever seen. And you’re doing this alone?”

Peter looked down. “It’s easier.”

“No,” Jason said. “It’s not. It’s what we tell ourselves so no one gets close. But it’s not easier. It’s emptier.”

They sat in silence a long while.

Jason finally stood. “I’ll be back tomorrow with real food. And proper med gear.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Yeah, I do,” Jason said. “Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s what it feels like to claw your way back into the world and not know if anyone’s going to be there when you stand.”

He gave Peter a long look.

“Now I’m here.”

Then he left, the door clicking shut behind him.

And Peter—bruised, Lazarus-marked, and more tangled in threads than he could see—sat in the quiet and let himself believe it.

Even just for a moment.

He wasn’t alone.

Not anymore.

Chapter 20: Mask Work

The wind off the East End carried the scent of burnt copper and diesel. Gotham pulsed under the clouds—neon signs flickering against storm-slick glass, police sirens curling like nervous fingers through alleyways. The city wasn’t quiet. Gotham never was. But up here, above the chaos, the rooftops offered just enough distance to pretend otherwise.

Peter sat on the edge of a narrow ledge, legs dangling above the street, his mask tugged up to his nose to breathe the night air. Beside him, Red Hood leaned against a rusted ventilation pipe, helmet resting on the concrete beside him. For once, Jason Todd didn’t look like a walking weapon. Just a man—tired, thinking too hard.

“You always this quiet during patrol?” Peter asked after a long silence.

Jason glanced over. “Only when I’m working with someone who won’t shut up.”

Peter smirked. “You wound me.”

Jason gave a low chuckle and looked back out at the city. “You get used to the noise down there. The way Gotham breathes. It’s like a dying animal that just won’t stop fighting.”

Peter tilted his head. “That’s poetic. Morbid, but poetic.”

“I read books.”

“Do they have bullets in them?”

“Some.”

Peter laughed under his breath, then went quiet for a moment.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to this city,” he admitted. “It’s too… heavy.”

Jason looked over at him. “You’ve been in darker places.”

Peter’s shoulders stiffened. He didn’t answer.

Jason continued anyway, voice low. “You move like you’ve seen war. Not just back-alley skirmishes or rooftop muggings. Real war. And you don’t scare easy. That’s not something you learn on the fly.”

Peter looked away. “Where I’m from… everything was war, eventually.”

“You mentioned you were Spider-Man before. Different city?”

“Different everything,” Peter said softly.

Jason caught the edge in his tone and didn’t press. Instead, he nodded toward the skyline. “I used to think Gotham was the only place in the world that mattered. Like it was the last thing standing between order and the void.”

“And now?”

Jason shrugged. “Now I think Gotham’s just another wound. It bleeds, but it doesn’t die. Neither do the people who try to fix it. Not really.”

Peter considered that. “Is that what you are? One of the people trying to fix it?”

Jason gave him a long look. “Depends on the night.”

They lapsed into silence again. Below, a stolen van rattled past on the avenue. Jason’s eyes followed it briefly before returning to Peter.

“You ever tell anyone why you stopped being Spider-Man?”

Peter hesitated, then slowly shook his head. “It… stopped feeling like I was helping. Back where I came from, the people I loved—my aunt, my friends—they paid the price for the mask. And when I died…”

Jason’s eyes narrowed.

“I didn’t come back the same,” Peter said quietly. “And when I ended up here… I thought maybe I could just be a ghost. Do the quiet thing. Vanish.”

Jason nodded slowly. “Doesn’t work, does it?”

“No,” Peter admitted. “Because someone always needs saving. And the mask always finds you again.”

Jason glanced down at his helmet. “Yeah. It does.”

There was a long pause.

Peter finally asked, “What about you? I mean, I know the name. ‘Red Hood’ shows up in all the whispered rumors. Ex-Robin, comes back from the grave, drops bodies until Batman puts a leash on him.”

Jason snorted. “Pretty close to the PR version.”

“And the real one?”

Jason looked over at him, and for a second, Peter saw past the armor—past the scowl and the bravado. He saw a kid not much older than himself who had been broken in ways Peter didn’t even fully understand.

“I died,” Jason said, his voice flat. “Painfully. Alone. And when I came back, I wasn’t just angry—I was wrong. Like the Pit had turned all my sharp edges inward. The mask kept me from cutting everyone else.”

Peter’s fingers twitched around the edge of his gauntlet.

“I know what that feels like,” he said. “Coming back and not knowing if you’re still… you.”

Jason looked at him, something unspoken passing between them.

“I knew a kid like you once,” Jason said. “Not exactly the same. But close. Smart. Quiet. Always looking for the exit even when he was trying to help.”

“What happened to him?”

Jason’s voice was almost gentle. “He disappeared before he figured out he didn’t have to be alone.”

Peter didn’t answer right away. He looked down at his hands, the tips of his fingers faintly glowing under the tech-lined gloves.

“I’m still figuring that out,” he whispered.

Jason nodded.

They sat there for another minute before Jason finally pushed off the pipe and grabbed his helmet.

“Come on,” he said. “Intel says Penguin’s moving crates out of the lounge docks again. If we move now, we can catch them before they scatter.”

Peter pulled his mask back down over his face.

“I’m right behind you.”

They leapt into the night together, silent shapes over sleeping streets. The city roared beneath them, full of smoke and steel and secrets. And for once, Peter wasn’t swinging alone.

Not anymore.

Chapter 21: Hidden Threads

Tim Drake liked to think of himself as one of the few rational voices in the ever-expanding chaos of the Bat-family. Smart, methodical, calm under pressure.

Except today, apparently.

Because today, Tim Drake was choking on cold coffee while staring at a DNA profile that was about to send the entire damn family into a tailspin.

Onscreen, under the flickering cave monitors:

Subject 815 – Anonymous Blood Sample
Cross-Match Initiated: Grayson, Richard J.
Result: Paternity Match — 99.98%

Tim wiped his mouth with his sleeve and leaned in, double-checking the screen like it might magically change. Nope. Still there. Still glowing.

Still real.

“…Dick has a kid?” he muttered, staring in disbelief.

Not a niece. Not a clone. Not some weird time-travel twist from the future. A biological child. And Bruce hadn’t said a word.

Tim tried minimizing the file, but his fingers fumbled, twitching with adrenaline.

The elevator hissed open behind him.

“Oh no—” he whispered.

“Hey, Timmy,” came Stephanie’s voice, chipper as ever. “You doing something shady and over-caffeinated again?”

Tim threw himself halfway across the screen with one arm. “Nope! Totally routine Bat stuff. Vents. Batarangs. You know. Justice.”

Stephanie paused mid-step, raising an eyebrow. “Then why are you sweating like you just hacked a Wayne satellite and committed a federal crime?”

Tim winced. She was already leaning in before he could deflect.

She stared at the top line of the screen and read aloud: “‘Grayson Paternity Match?’” A beat. “Wait. Wait—hold on—Dick has a—”

“Shhhh—” Tim hissed.

Too late. A second set of footsteps echoed from the corridor. Jason strode into the cave, helmet tucked under his arm, casually wiping blood from a cut along his knuckles.

“What’s this about Dick and fatherhood?”

Tim groaned and slumped in his chair. “I hate all of you.”

Jason stepped beside them and squinted at the monitor. When he read it, something in his expression shifted—not surprise, exactly. More like recognition pulling a slow string tight.

“Oh hell,” he muttered.

Stephanie looked between them. “Okay, someone explain before I spiral. Who’s the mystery baby?”

Jason exhaled. “Not a baby. Kid’s maybe fifteen, sixteen. Met him a few weeks back. Goes by Ben. Tech whiz. Quiet. Works nights in WayneTech R&D.”

“Wait—Ben?” Tim said sharply. “As in... the portal kid? The one Barbara flagged for building that stabilized anchor prototype?”

“Yeah,” Jason nodded. “That’s him.”

Stephanie frowned. “Wait, you mean the same kid who’s been patching together crime scene tech better than Tim can?”

“Hey,” Tim muttered.

Jason ignored that. “Bruce got the blood sample after the Arkham breach—Talia nicked the kid with a Lazarus blade. Just enough for a drop to hit his glove. He ran it through the cave diagnostics.” He motioned toward the monitor. “Now we know why.”

Tim’s eyes widened. “Spider-Man... is Dick’s son?”

Jason hesitated. Then slowly said, “He’s Spider-Man.”

Tim’s jaw dropped. “You’re joking.”

“I wish,” Jason said. “I saw the gear. The moves. The precision. I’ve fought beside him. It’s him.”

“I knew there was something off about him,” Stephanie said, half-dazed. “He fights like he was trained, but not by Bruce. Like… he learned rhythm instead of tactics. Like Dick.”

Tim nodded slowly. “That’s what I couldn’t place. It’s not just skill. It’s style.”

Jason crossed his arms. “And the Lazarus stuff? He’s carrying it. But not like me. It didn’t make him feral. It just… stuck. Like it was always there, waiting.”

Another voice drifted in from the shadows, smooth and dry.

“Master Bruce has been unusually evasive on the matter.”

They all turned. Alfred stood near the staircase with a silver tea tray, composed as ever.

“You knew?” Tim said.

“I suspected,” Alfred replied, setting down the tray. “Master Bruce was careful with the data. But careful is not the same as discreet.”

Stephanie leaned in. “So what now? Do we tell Dick? I mean, his literal DNA is walking around Gotham, calling himself Spider-Man and building dimensional tech.”

Jason frowned. “We wait.”

“We wait?” Tim echoed. “Why?”

Jason’s voice lowered. “Because we don’t know what the kid knows. We don’t know what he remembers. If he grew up here. If he even knows Dick’s his father.”

Alfred nodded gravely. “The boy is carrying more than just lineage. There’s grief in him. Something broken and stitched back together. Forcing the truth too soon would do more harm than good.”

A sudden thump made them all freeze.

Another presence landed in the middle of the room with feline grace.

Damian.

“I heard everything,” he said flatly. “You are all fools for whispering about it like gossiping children.”

Stephanie scowled. “You were eavesdropping.”

“I live in the shadows,” Damian said. “This is not new.”

He walked toward the screen and studied the helix.

“So… the spider brat is my nephew," he said, deadpan.

Tim groaned. “You are not calling him that to his face.”

“I will call him what he is.”

Jason rubbed the bridge of his nose. “For the love of—just don’t stab him, okay?”

Damian crossed his arms. “We should confront him.”

“No,” Jason snapped. “We let this play out. He’s scared. Isolated. He has no idea what kind of family he just landed in.”

“Lucky him,” Tim muttered.

The elevator chimed.

Everyone froze.

Footsteps.

Dick Grayson strolled into view, towel slung over his shoulder, hair damp from the workout ring, grinning like he hadn’t just walked into the most awkward family ambush of the year.

“Hey,” he said cheerfully. “What’s the drama? You all look like you just found a bomb under the couch.”

Jason moved fast—spinning toward the screen and yanking the display off the console. Tim nearly choked on his coffee again. Stephanie slapped a smile on her face.

“Movie night!” she blurted.

Dick blinked. “What?”

Jason nodded quickly. “Yeah. You picked last time, but we were thinking you’d go again.”

Dick raised a brow. “Didn’t I already claim Zorro like five times?”

“Make it six,” Tim said with a too-wide grin. “Classic never dies.”

Dick eyed them all suspiciously, then exhaled with a laugh. “Man, you guys are terrible liars.”

Damian offered, “They’re just bad at hiding things. You taught them poorly.”

Dick narrowed his eyes. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” the group chorused in unison.

Dick hesitated. Looked from Jason to Tim to Steph. To Damian, who was the worst liar of all—and yet still said nothing.

He shook his head slowly. “Weirdest Batcave energy I’ve seen in a while. I'm watching you.”

As he headed upstairs, a thick silence settled over the group.

Jason let out a low whistle. “We are so screwed.”

Alfred poured himself a cup of tea. “Master Richard will learn the truth in time.”

Damian folded his arms. “Preferably not from a League assassin. Or the spider brat himself.”

Stephanie stared up the staircase, eyes wide.

“When this blows up,” she said, “I’m blaming Tim.”

Tim sighed. “Fair.”

And somewhere far above them, hidden behind lenses and silence, Ben Reily —Spider-Man—was out on the rooftops, patrolling the city… unaware that everything was about to change.

Chapter 22: Side-Eyes and Silence

Peter Parker had a sixth sense for trouble. Not the Spider-Man kind—though that still prickled at the base of his skull like a nervous whisper when danger loomed—but a different kind. A social kind.

The kind that developed when people in power got very quiet around you for no obvious reason.

He hunched further over his workbench, eyes flicking across the diagnostic holo-UI, but his focus was split. The stabilizer node in his hand glowed faintly, micro-thread veins pulsing with heat, but he barely noticed. He was too busy watching shadows reflected in the polished surface of his desk. Movement patterns. Posture. Proximity.

He didn’t need spidey-sense to know he was being watched.

Barbara Gordon had passed by his workstation five times in the last hour. Each time, she’d made a comment—too casual, too rehearsed. Something like, “Need anything?” or “Still working on that anchor tuning?” Always said with a too-bright smile and a little glance that didn’t match the tone.

Tim Drake, meanwhile, was sitting nearby pretending to analyze old WayneTech prototypes on a secondary console. Except he hadn’t actually touched the keyboard in ten minutes. His coffee cup steamed faintly in his hand—untouched and definitely decaf, which Peter knew wasn’t his usual.

And Bruce Wayne?

Bruce had shown up. Unprompted. Twice in one week. Standing silently in the corner of the lab like a very large, very judgmental statue with Bluetooth in his ear.

That wasn’t just unusual.

That was terrifying.

Peter, still going by Ben , said nothing for several minutes. He let the silence linger just long enough to make them more uncomfortable. Then, without looking up, he spoke into the air:

“You guys need something? Or are we just playing ‘Stare at the Weird New Kid’ today?”

Barbara fumbled her tablet. Tim choked on air. Bruce—of course—remained still.

“Uh,” Tim said. “No, we’re just… data syncing. Power cycling the diagnostic clusters.”

Peter slowly turned around in his chair.

Tim attempted a casual sip from the mug and winced. Cold.

“Right,” Peter said flatly.

Barbara took a step forward, trying for diplomatic. “We were actually reviewing your last few adjustments to the anchor stabilizer. The resonant dampeners you installed? Impressive stuff. Seriously. The feedback harmonics are the cleanest we’ve seen since... ever.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Thanks. I’ve been tweaking the design since before I ended up here.”

“Where’s ‘here’ exactly?” Tim asked before he could stop himself. “I mean—originally. Before Gotham.”

Peter didn’t answer right away. His fingers traced the edge of the bench.

Barbara shot Tim a look.

Peter finally said, “Not here. Not this world, I don’t think. Dimensions aren’t linear anymore, especially not with what happened to the Stones.”

Tim blinked. “Stones?”

Peter froze slightly, then gave a quick, distracted shrug. “Long story.”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. Peter noticed. Everything mattered. Micro-expressions. Breathing patterns. Voice tone.

This wasn’t just scientific interest anymore.

It was personal.

He leaned forward over the console again, his voice low and casual. “You know… for a place that hired me off a forged ID and a one-sheet application, you guys are really interested in where I came from.”

Barbara cleared her throat. “It’s not that—”

“It’s totally that,” Peter cut in, still calm. “Which is fine. I get it. You don’t know me. And this city? Trust isn’t a given. You watch each other’s backs, you analyze everything, you make backup plans to your backup plans.”

His eyes flicked to Bruce. “And you… you’ve got files on files. I’d bet money you’ve already cross-referenced me with half of Interpol.”

Bruce said nothing.

Peter gestured toward the workstation. “So if you’ve got something to say—if there’s a reason Tim’s been nursing the same coffee for forty minutes and Barbara’s been orbiting me like I’m about to explode—just say it.”

Silence.

Peter looked at them all, then shook his head and stood.

“Fine. Don’t. I’ll figure it out anyway.”

He turned and moved toward the far wall, where a secondary display hummed with spatial compression metrics. The anchor core glowed softly, light bouncing faintly off the reinforced glass. It looked stable. Controlled.

Unlike this conversation.

Behind him, Barbara muttered under her breath. “He’s definitely onto us.”

Tim added, “He’s literally built a dimensional anchor from scratch. He figured out our tells ten minutes ago.”

Bruce’s voice cut through quietly, immovable.

“We wait.”

Peter heard that. Of course he did.

But he didn’t react. Not outwardly.

Inside, though, everything was shifting. He could feel it.

The way Bruce’s eyes lingered. The subtle tension in Barbara’s voice. Tim’s nervous questions. Even Alfred’s change in tone lately—more formal, more gentle. Like someone trying to comfort a truth they couldn’t say yet.

And the way Jason had started looking at him more thoughtfully after patrols. Less like a fellow vigilante. More like a puzzle that was starting to take shape.

They knew something.

Something about him.

And the way they watched him—cautious but curious, unsure but protective—it didn’t feel like they were afraid of him.

It felt like they were afraid for him.

Peter stood at the far terminal for a long time, hands resting on the edge of the workstation, listening to the quiet drone of the tech and the louder silence of the people behind him.

He didn’t know what it was.

Dick Grayson was not a morning person.

He was a "watch-the-sunrise-after-a-four-story-dive" kind of guy. A "don’t talk to me until the mug’s half empty" sort of soul. His socks never matched, his hair was always a mess before coffee, and if someone dared interrupt his peace before 9 a.m., they better have a death wish or fresh croissants.

So when he stumbled into the Wayne Manor kitchen wearing a threadbare tank top, sleep-crushed curls, and socks patterned with one bat and one Nightwing logo, he expected the usual.

A groggy Alfred. Maybe Tim clicking through server logs. Jason raiding the fridge and muttering about city corruption. Cassandra quietly eating cereal like it was a mission. Barbara with a tablet in one hand and a smirk in the other.

Instead, he got silence.

Unmoving. Heavy. Every set of eyes fixed on him like he’d walked in wearing a Joker smile and a tutu.

He paused mid-step. “Okay… what did I miss?”

Jason cleared his throat. “So. Grayson. You ever, uh… think about kids?”

Dick blinked. “Like—children? Literal children?”

“Yeah,” Jason said. “Like, you know… fatherhood.”

Dick narrowed his eyes. “Is this one of those weird League mind-control debrief things? Are we all pod people now? Steph, blink twice if you’ve been body-snatched.”

Stephanie, sipping orange juice, didn’t blink.

Instead, Tim chimed in, too casually, “Just wondering if you’ve ever considered the possibility that you could have a kid out there. Hypothetically.”

Cass signed: Would be strong. Small Nightwing.

Dick glanced around, suspicion rising like steam from his untouched coffee mug. “Did I get cursed by Zatanna again? Is this one of those ‘your spirit got split in two and one half fathered a child in the Phantom Zone’ situations?”

“No magic,” Barbara said quickly. “No time travel either. This is just… real. Normal. Kind of.”

“Normal?” Dick repeated. “This is the most abnormally normal conversation I’ve ever walked into.”

Jason coughed. “It’s just a question.”

“It’s not just a question when six of you are staring like I’m about to find out I gave birth on a rooftop.”

“Not… birth,” Tim muttered.

“Don’t start,” Dick snapped. “Is someone about to tell me I’ve got a long-lost clone?”

“No clone,” Barbara assured. “Too much personality.”

Dick stared at her. “What does that even mean—wait, hold on.” He pointed at her. “That was too specific.”

Jason muttered, “He’s gonna figure it out.”

“He’s already figuring it out,” Tim whispered.

Alfred, ever serene, took a gentle sip of tea. “I have prepared a fresh chamomile pot. Should we need it.”

Dick exhaled, sat slowly, and fixed them all with his “Nightwing on a crime scene” glare. “Okay. You’re all being cagey. What is it? Don’t lie. Don’t hedge. Just spit it out.”

Steph looked at Barbara. Barbara looked at Tim. Tim looked at Jason.

Jason, in a rare moment of hesitation, looked at the counter.

Finally, Barbara sighed. “There’s… someone. A kid. He’s been working in the labs. Quiet. Keeps to himself. Really smart. Bruce took an interest in him a few months ago. Assigned him to the tech wing.”

Dick frowned. “The intern? Ben? Bruce said he was working on containment field tech.”

Tim nodded. “Yeah. That one.”

Dick tilted his head. “You’re telling me he’s…?”

Jason muttered, “He’s… you. Yours.”

There was a long beat.

Dick slowly set his mug down. “…I’m sorry, did you just say I have a son ?”

Cass nodded solemnly.

Tim tapped the tablet beside him. “DNA match came back 99.98%. We ran it twice.”

Barbara stepped in gently. “His blood was in the system from an injury during the Arkham incident. Bruce matched it to the family tree during a scan. He didn’t tell us right away.”

Jason shrugged. “Classic Bruce.”

Dick didn’t speak.

The mug trembled slightly in his hands.

Alfred finally broke the silence. “He goes by Ben. But we believe it is an alias. He hasn’t told anyone his real name. We’re not even sure he knows the full truth.”

Dick stood.

He didn’t say anything.

He didn’t have to.

The hurt was etched into every line of his face.

 

Dick’s hands hovered over the terminal. His stomach churned with a hundred kinds of dread.

He hadn’t planned to come here. He’d told himself he’d process it. Think it through. Maybe even get a second cup of coffee.

Instead, he was digging.

Subject 815.

He opened the file. Biological profile. Trauma history. Lazarus exposure.

Regenerative adaptation. Neural imprint fractures. Transdimensional displacement suggested. No known next of kin.

Until…

Paternity: GRAYSON, RICHARD J. – Confirmed.

His heart stopped.

He scrolled again. The screen filled with clinical language that made his chest ache.

Resurrection Event: Likely Lazarus-based. Unrecorded.

Psychological Notes: Signs of adaptive trauma response. Isolation. Internalized grief. Self-suppression of emotion.

Subject unaware of biological heritage.

He closed the screen with a trembling breath. His knees threatened to give out.

Peter—Ben—his son —had died. Had come back. Through that .

Through the Pit.

Dick knew the smell. The burn in your soul. The fire under your skin that never truly left. Jason had never stopped carrying it, even after the rage faded.

And Peter—his son—had gone through it alone.

The sob hit him before he could stop it. One hand clutched the desk. The other covered his mouth as the weight crushed down.

“I wasn’t there…”

He dropped to his knees, the grief crashing through his body like a wave that never crested.

“I didn’t know… I didn’t— God, I didn’t even know his name…”

His voice cracked. The kind of sound that made glass want to shatter. The kind of pain that went deeper than muscle or bone.

“I wasn’t there to hold him. I wasn’t there to tell him it wasn’t his fault. I wasn’t there when he needed me.”

His fingers dug into the floor.

“I never even got to see him smile…”

Moments Later – Back Upstairs

The elevator opened.

Dick walked in like a storm—silent, heavy, unrelenting.

Barbara looked up. Tim stood from the kitchen table. Jason turned, coffee halfway to his mouth.

No one said anything.

They saw it on his face.

“Why,” Dick whispered, voice hoarse, “didn’t anyone tell me before?”

Barbara stepped forward, cautious. “Dick—”

“He died.” His voice cracked. “He died. And you let me not know.”

Jason lowered his eyes.

Alfred, standing by the sink, spoke gently. “We feared you would blame yourself, Master Richard.”

“I do.” The words were raw. “Because I should have been there. I should have known. I should’ve felt it .”

Tim tried. “We were still figuring it out. It was complicated. He doesn’t know about you either—”

“That makes it worse,” Dick snapped. “He doesn’t even know he has someone waiting for him.”

Barbara looked stricken. “You couldn’t have known.”

Dick’s hands trembled. “He went through the Pits. And now he’s a vigilante. In Gotham. In this city. And I’ve done nothing but live my life while he fought to stay alive.”

Jason finally spoke. “He’s not broken, Dick. He’s still… him. Somehow.”

Dick laughed—short, bitter. “How would I even know what ‘him’ is? I don’t know what he likes. I don’t know what music he listens to. I never even saw his first step.”

Barbara reached out, squeezing his shoulder.

“You can still meet him,” she said softly. “You still can know him. That’s why we didn’t tell him yet. We wanted you to have a say.”

Dick wiped his eyes roughly, trying to pull himself together. He looked at the holo-screen of Peter—masked, mid-swing, confident, and alone.

“I have to find him,” he said. “Not as Batman’s second-in-command. Not as some guy from R&D.”

Jason tilted his head. “As what, then?”

Dick’s voice softened.

“As his father.”

Chapter 23: Stardust and Silence

Location: Upstate New York — Stark Research Bunker, Sub-Level 6

Tony Stark hadn’t slept in five days.

Which wasn’t unusual by his standards. But this time, it wasn’t caffeine or ego or even panic attacks driving the insomnia.

It was the echo of a voice—soft, frightened, trying to sound brave.

“I don’t feel so good…”

And then he was gone.

Peter. His kid.

The one thing Tony never meant to love so much, and still did anyway.

And now, with the dust of half the universe settled—but never quite swept away—Tony sat alone beneath flickering lights in a reinforced lab carved deep into the earth. The air was stale. The power grid was low. He liked it that way.

The quiet helped him pretend the world hadn’t started unraveling again.

He hunched over a projection table littered with models of dimensional theory, subatomic matter resonance, and most of all—Infinity Stone energy profiles. The new scans pulsed in dull, color-coded rhythm, each flicker like a countdown to something terrible.

Because despite everything—despite the Avengers’ best efforts, despite the Gauntlet’s final toll, despite his sacrifice—Thanos wasn’t dead.

Not entirely.

The data was clear. A broken signal out of orbit, faint but unmistakable: a match for the Mad Titan’s gravitational signature. Buried in a dead pocket of space-time. Wounded. Diminished.

But breathing.

Tony hadn’t told Pepper yet. Or Rhodey. Or anyone, really.

He needed confirmation.

He needed control.

But tonight… it wasn’t Thanos that haunted him.

It was Peter.

Across the lab, sitting in a dim case, was the prototype suit Peter had worn on his first night swinging over Queens. Red and blue. Homemade and brave. Still singed in places from web-fluid stress tests and a close encounter with a Stark toaster.

Tony stared at it for a long time. The mask still had a crack in the left lens.

He could still remember the look in Peter’s eyes before Titan. The hunger to do something right. To be enough. He had trusted Tony to lead. And Tony had led him straight into the fire.

“I should’ve said no,” Tony muttered.

He hadn’t meant to speak aloud.

But FRIDAY heard anyway.

“Sir?” she asked gently.

Tony sighed. “Just the ghosts again.”

There was a pause. Then:

“Peter?”

His hands curled into fists on the edge of the console.

He hated how the AI could still read him like this. But it wasn’t wrong.

Peter was still here. Not physically. Not even spiritually, probably. But somewhere in the wreckage of the quantum data they’d pulled after the Snap… there was something that didn’t belong.

A tether.

That’s what the latest readings showed.

Something pulsing across space-time, like a weak heartbeat trying to sync with a missing body. A trail not of dust or ashes… but of energy. Specifically, Soul Stone residual. A pattern nearly identical to the one registered the moment Peter vanished in his arms.

“FRIDAY,” Tony said, leaning in, “pull the Soul Stone resonance data again. All anomaly pulses. Compare them to the last Titan frequency where Peter… where he vanished.”

The graphs updated instantly.

And there it was.

A match.

Not perfect. But close enough to make his stomach flip.

Tony stared.

“What are you holding onto, kid?” he whispered.

The Stone should’ve died with the Gauntlet. But something—or someone—had survived. Not whole. Not returned. But echoing.

Like a single thread of light refusing to snap.

Location: Stark Memorial Garden — East Wing

Tony walked through the early morning haze without a coat, letting the cold soak through his hoodie like punishment. The lawn lights were still on, casting long shadows across the stones. The trees here had grown wild since the blip—twisted into strange shapes, almost like they were listening.

The garden wasn’t public.

It was for them.

The ones who hadn’t come back.

He stopped at the stone marked:

Peter B. Parker
14 Years. Scientist. Hero. Kid.
“With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility.”

Tony knelt and set something down at the base: a small pair of custom web-shooters. Burnt-out. Scratched.

Broken.

They hadn’t been used since Titan.

He stared at them for a long time, then let his hand rest lightly on the stone.

“I keep trying to move on,” he murmured. “Everyone’s rebuilding. Bruce is off doing wizard math with the Sorcerer Supreme. Carol’s playing cosmic firefighter. Even Nat smiles more.”

A pause.

“I can’t.”

His voice broke.

“Because you were the one I was supposed to save.”

His hand curled into a fist against the stone. “You were just a kid. You should’ve been at school, failing chemistry and asking MJ to prom. Not dying in space in my goddamn arms.”

A breeze stirred the trees.

Tony sat back, staring up at the dull red sky.

“There’s a pulse, Pete. Some kind of tether. I don’t know what it means. I don’t even know if it’s you. But if it is…”

He exhaled slowly.

“If there’s a piece of you still out there—buried in the soul of that Stone—I’ll find it. I’ll pull you back. Even if I have to tear a hole in the universe to do it.”

Something brushed past him.

Wind, maybe.

But it felt like a touch.

His breath caught.

He looked around. Empty.

But for one impossible second… he could’ve sworn he heard something. Faint. Childlike. A laugh.

Or maybe—

A sob.

He stood slowly, brushing off his knees. His fingers lingered on the top of the stone one last time.

“You don’t get to be the hero this time, kid,” he whispered. “You’re grounded when I get you back.”

Then he turned and walked into the wind.

Behind him, the web-shooters caught a sliver of sunrise—and shimmered.

Just once.

Like something remembered.

Chapter 24: The Weight of What Lingers

Peter Parker woke up with the ghost of a scream clinging to his teeth.

He didn’t release it.

Didn’t breathe it out, didn’t gasp, didn’t even let it tremble past his lips.

Instead, he sat up too fast, the world blurring around him, and clutched the sweat-damp sheets to his chest. His heart thundered like it was trying to punch its way out of his ribs. His fingers dug into the mattress like anchors.

The cheap bed creaked beneath him. The window hummed as the cold wind of Gotham swept past, carrying rain and sirens and the distant throb of restless city breath. Lightning flickered somewhere across the skyline, slicing the room in half with shadow and light.

Peter rubbed his face hard.

But the memory didn’t go away.

It never went away.

The dust was always there when he closed his eyes.

Not metaphorical. Not grief. Literal dust— people , dissolving into weightless fragments of who they used to be.

He could still see Ned’s face. Still hear MJ screaming. Still feel Tony’s arms catching him as his body gave out.

But that wasn’t the worst part anymore.

The worst part now… was Thanos .

Not a memory. Not a dream. Not just trauma lingering in the back of his mind.

Something real.

Something present.

Because in the past two nights, the Mad Titan hadn’t just haunted Peter’s dreams.

He’d spoken.

And it wasn’t like Peter had been sleeping much to begin with.

Earlier — The Nightmare

Titan.

Or maybe just an echo of it. Corrupted. Twisted by time or grief or something deeper than either.

The ground was cracked obsidian, glowing faintly with red embers beneath the surface. Storms churned in a sky so black it shimmered. Time didn’t pass here. Nothing moved except the wind and the ash.

And Thanos stood at the ridge of a collapsed crater.

His silhouette was wrong. Shattered. His armor fractured. His gauntlet cracked and useless. But his voice…

Whole.

“You are far from home, little spider,” he said.

Peter backed up, mouth dry, eyes locked on the looming figure.

“You’re dead,” he managed to say. “You’re gone. ”

“I am remembered,” Thanos replied. “And the Stones remember too.”

His hand—scored by ruin—rose slowly.

“You carry them, even here. In this world that was never yours. And now… I see you.”

Peter’s skin crawled. The sky screamed in silence. And then Thanos moved.

A flicker. A blur.

And the world split open—

Now — Gotham, Present

Peter bolted to the bathroom.

His shoulder hit the doorframe hard, but he barely felt it. The light clicked on with a struggling buzz.

And the moment he saw his reflection—he froze.

His eyes.

They weren’t fully green anymore. Not since the night of the Arkham breach. But now… blue veins of light curled at the edges of his irises. Beneath that, threads of deep, liquid red shimmered faintly beneath the surface, like they were waiting.

Living inside him.

His breath fogged the mirror. His hands trembled.

He pulled his shirt up, grimacing.

There were pulses beneath his ribs. Glowing now. Cool and steady like deep ocean light while also unstable, flickering like a fire burning in reverse.

He didn’t need a label.

The Infinity Stones.

New fragments. New weights in a body already warped by Lazarus resurrection and dimensional collapse.

They weren’t fully fused yet. But they were calling to him. Not with words. With hunger.

He staggered backward.

And then… a voice.

“You’re slipping.”

Peter spun, hand up, wrist ready to fire—

But it was Wanda.

Not alive. Not dead.

Echo.

She stood in the doorway without opening it. She didn’t shimmer anymore. Didn’t flicker. She was clearer than before—solid enough to cast a shadow.

Behind her… others began to gather.

T’Challa. Shuri. Mantis. Bucky. Ghosts—or maybe not. Maybe souls with unfinished work.

“You feel it now,” Shuri said quietly. “You were only supposed to carry the fragments. But the more they awaken, the more you become .”

Peter leaned against the sink, trying to steady his breathing.

“I’m not even from here,” he whispered. “I don’t belong to this world. I was supposed to help and get out.”

Wanda’s expression didn’t change.

“You think that matters? The Stones don’t care about timelines. Or borders. Or home.”

Peter looked at her, eyes raw.

“Thanos spoke to me. In the dream. Said he sees me now. That he’ll unmake every version of me across every world if it means finding the Stones again.”

Mantis’s voice was gentle. “He’s not whole. But he is awakening. ”

Peter’s stomach twisted. “He should be dead. I watched him die.”

“Not all things stay dead,” T’Challa said grimly. “Especially when they were made with the power of creation.”

Peter sat hard on the edge of the tub, staring at his reflection again.

His voice broke. “I’m only fourteen. I don’t even know who I am here. I’m not supposed to be… whatever this is. I just wanted to do the right thing.”

“You still can,” Wanda said, stepping forward. “But not alone.”

Peter laughed bitterly. “You’re not even real.”

“We are memory,” said Bucky, appearing near the sink. “But we are still with you. That’s what matters.”

Peter’s jaw tightened. “If I let them in—these fragments—what happens to me?”

“They reshape you,” Shuri said. “But they don’t erase you.”

“They remember you,” Wanda added. “You are their anchor now. Not their puppet.”

He let out a shaky breath.

“I’m scared.”

Wanda knelt in front of him.

“So were we.”

The others knelt too, solemn. Not as ghosts. Not as martyrs. But as guardians.

Peter’s hands gripped the edge of the tub.

“I need help.”

“And you have it,” Wanda said.

Peter looked up.

In the mirror, his reflection shimmered.

Not weak.

Not lost.

But changing.

And somewhere, across a void Peter couldn’t name, the remnants of a ruined god stirred in fractured space.

And whispered:

“Mine.”

The Gotham skyline bled silver beneath a cloud-torn moon, the streets still slick from earlier rain. Lamplight glinted in the puddles like fractured stars, as if the city were trying—failing—to remember the sky.

Spider-Man moved through the steel bones of the city like breath through broken ribs.

Swinging. Darting. Clinging.

Silent.

Tonight didn’t feel like his usual rhythm. There was no gut-tight danger. No ambient alarm in the marrow of his bones. Instead, there was… weight. A heaviness he couldn’t shake.

Not fear.

Something closer to anticipation.

Something almost like memory.

He landed on the roof of an aging tenement building in Old Bristol, crouched low on the ledge, rain still dripping from the eaves around him. The quiet was deceptive. Peter knew how things could change in seconds. And he was waiting.

Reports had flagged this area for possible arms drops. No big syndicate tags—just small-time movers, and maybe a few too many untraceable WayneTech crates.

Peter didn’t mind stakeouts. They gave him time to think. But lately, that was the problem.

Because when he thought too long… he remembered.

The sound of dust falling like static. The way voices vanished mid-sentence. Thanos. The fragments. The fact that he wasn’t from here.

And—

The soft fwip of a grapple line cut the quiet like a whisper in a crypt.

He turned on instinct, already tensing—but stopped himself halfway through a reflexive lunge.

A figure landed across from him on the adjacent roof, boots touching down light on soaked gravel. He didn’t raise a weapon. Didn’t posture.

Just stood there.

The rain beaded off his blue-and-black armor. His mask lenses gleamed in the low light, inscrutable but calm.

Nightwing.

Peter straightened slightly but didn’t rise fully.

“You following me?” His voice was even, but his heart ticked up.

Nightwing shook his head. “Patrolling. Heard chatter about activity in this sector.”

Peter’s posture didn’t change. “Yeah, well… Gotham doesn’t exactly do welcome baskets.”

Nightwing stepped forward—not threatening, just closer. “Maybe we don’t know how to say welcome.”

Peter tilted his head. “Is that Bat-code for ‘we’re watching you and haven’t decided if you’re a threat yet?’”

A soft smile curved under Nightwing’s mask. “Maybe. Or maybe I’m just here to see how you’re doing.”

Peter blinked behind his own mask.

That wasn’t how these conversations usually started.

“You’re not what I expected,” Nightwing added after a beat.

Peter frowned. “What did you expect?”

“Someone angrier. Someone more like… us.”

Peter shrugged. “Yeah, I’ve heard I don’t fit the Gotham mold.”

“You move like someone who doesn’t need to.”

That caught Peter off guard. “Is that… a compliment?”

Nightwing looked away, toward the alley below. “I meant your fighting style. The way you adjust mid-air, how you use momentum to change direction mid-grapple. That wrist rotation on your weblines… it’s something I haven’t seen in years.”

Peter stiffened slightly.

“That so?” he asked, tone light but careful. “Guess I have a flair for flair.”

Nightwing’s voice dropped just a fraction. “You move like someone who learned to balance before he learned to walk.”

Peter’s mask hid the confusion and the stab of something like déjà vu. “…That’s oddly specific.”

“I’ve known people like that.”

Peter didn’t respond immediately.

He didn’t have the words for the way his chest felt.

The way this man’s presence—his cadence, the tilt of his head, the steadiness in his voice—hit something in Peter’s memory that wasn’t memory at all. Like his body remembered something his mind couldn’t. Like a phantom limb aching for a hand that never held it.

Peter stood slowly. “So… you just swing through rooftops complimenting vigilantes? Or is this a recruitment pitch?”

Nightwing shook his head, and for the first time, something in his stance faltered.

“I’m not here to bring you in,” he said quietly. “I’m here because I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Peter paused.

That didn’t compute.

You didn’t get concern from Gotham vigilantes. Not unsolicited. Not like that.

“You don’t even know me.”

Nightwing’s expression behind the mask was unreadable. But his voice cracked something raw in the air.

“Maybe I don’t,” he said. “But sometimes… you don’t have to know someone to see them.”

Peter looked down.

The rain hit his mask in soft patters, trailing down like tears he hadn’t earned.

“I don’t get people looking out for me,” he said, voice smaller. “Not anymore.”

Nightwing didn’t answer for a long moment.

Then: “Maybe it’s time someone did.”

Ten Minutes Later — Abandoned Warehouse Near Harlow and Fifth

They hit the drop point with perfect synchronicity.

Peter slipped in high through a broken skylight, silk-threading rifles to the rafters before anyone realized. Nightwing moved in shadow, a silent wraith with electric precision.

It was seamless.

Like instinct.

Like choreography written before they’d even met.

When it was done, they met back on the rooftop.

Breath steaming. Rain falling again.

Peter leaned against the ledge, mask pushed halfway up, dragging air into his lungs. He didn’t speak.

Neither did Nightwing.

Until: “You’re good.”

Peter snorted softly. “You said that already.”

“You’re too good to be this alone.”

Peter looked away.

Nightwing stepped forward, careful. “You don’t have to be.”

Peter didn’t answer.

So Nightwing offered something else.

“If you ever need backup… you’ve got it. No strings.”

Peter hesitated. Then nodded once. “Thanks. I’ll… remember that.”

He moved like he was about to leap away.

But then paused.

“You ever get that feeling,” he said, “that you’ve known someone longer than you actually have?”

Nightwing blinked.

“…Yeah,” he said quietly. “I do.”

Peter didn’t speak again. He leapt into the night, vanishing like smoke in the wind.

Dick stood still, soaked now, the rain dripping from his hair. His mask was off. Held loosely in one hand.

He stared into the night, heart pounding like it had when he was seventeen and standing under the same storm-colored sky, swearing to protect a world already breaking him.

He could still feel the phantom echo of Peter’s presence.

The weight in his voice. The ache behind the words.

"You don’t even know me."

But I want to, Dick thought. God, I want to.

He swallowed hard.

Because he did know him. Not in the way he should have. Not in the way either of them deserved.

But the blood didn’t lie.

And now every second they didn’t talk—every second he didn’t reach out—it stretched the distance between them further.

Dick turned, heading toward the Manor.

And he made a promise to himself in the storm.

Next time… he wouldn’t let Peter walk away without knowing the truth.

Because a father owed his son more than a silent rooftop.

He owed him everything.

 

The lab hummed with low, steady energy—the comforting white noise of machines deep in their thinking. Diagnostic monitors blinked in rhythm, soft glows casting shadows over the steel tables and modular panels. The subtle ozone scent of powered circuits lingered in the sterile air.

Peter Parker liked it here. Needed it, really.

No voices in the hallway. No mirrors to catch him off guard. No well-meaning people asking if he’d gotten sleep, or if the circles under his eyes were new.

Just equations.

Just purpose.

He hovered over the primary interface of the anchor prototype, stylus clutched in fingers that moved with practiced, meticulous grace. The prototype had been vibrating again—subharmonic pulses at irregular intervals. He narrowed the problem down to the frequency dampeners and had been recalibrating them for the past hour.

Every movement was an escape. Every line of code another inch away from the dream he'd had last night.

The dust.
The scream he didn’t let out.
The echo of a Titan’s voice he never invited.

Thanos’s whisper still clung to the corners of his mind like cobwebs.

But the dead were quiet today.

And that... was never a good sign.

He didn’t register the approaching footsteps. Not until a voice broke the sterile quiet.

“You the one Barbara mentioned? The anchor system guy?”

Peter froze.

It was the kind of voice that was smooth without trying to be. Warm. Familiar. And unfamiliar.

He looked up, breath catching—and dropped the stylus. It hit the floor with a soft clatter, echoing too loudly in the silence.

A man stood in the doorway. Broad-shouldered. Civilian clothes—a black jacket over a henley. Clean-cut, with windswept black hair and blue eyes that could’ve belonged to a memory.

Peter’s lungs forgot what to do.

Because for a moment—a sick, brief, impossible moment—he thought his father had walked into the lab.

No. Not possible.

But—

The man stepped in gently, reading the tension in the room. “Sorry, didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I’m Dick. Dick Grayson.”

Peter didn’t respond right away.

The name registered. Of course it did. Everyone in Gotham knew who Dick Grayson was.

But that wasn’t what knocked the air out of Peter.

It was the jawline. The smile. The way he stood like he didn’t know how much space he filled.

Peter’s throat felt tight enough to choke him.

“Ben, right?” Dick said after a pause, still cautious. “Barbara told me you’re the one making serious waves down here.”

“Yeah,” Peter croaked. “That’s me.”

The words felt wrong in his mouth—stiff, like they belonged to someone else. His voice cracked halfway through, betraying the sudden flood of emotion.

Dick didn’t seem to notice the quake in Peter’s hands as he reached down for the stylus. Or maybe he did. But he didn’t comment.

“Mind if I take a look?” he asked, nodding toward the interface.

Peter hesitated. His fingers still trembled. But he managed a shrug.

“Sure. It’s… not finished,” he mumbled.

Dick stepped closer, his gaze scanning the display. “Doesn’t look unfinished. Looks like someone smarter than me’s trying to solve something that shouldn’t exist.”

Peter forced a tight smile.

He could feel the grief crawling up from wherever he’d buried it. Slow. Inevitable. Like water under a locked door.

Dick glanced at him, then paused. “You okay?”

Peter looked up. Really looked at him. And whatever walls he’d built in the weeks since arriving in this world—they buckled.

“You look like someone I used to know,” Peter said, the words falling out too fast, too raw.

Dick blinked, expression softening. “Oh?”

“My dad,” Peter said, and regretted it instantly.

The words opened a chasm he hadn’t meant to step into. His fingers curled tight around the stylus like it might anchor him to the floor.

“He died when I was six. Plane crash. It was… it was this classified flight. We never got the full report. Closed-casket funeral.” His voice grew quieter. “I never got to say goodbye.”

Silence.

Thick. Still.

Dick didn’t speak.

He didn’t have to.

Peter stared down at the prototype like it would vanish if he stopped pretending to work.

“You don’t just look like him,” Peter whispered. “You move like him. Sound like him. Your voice—hell, even the way you stand... I almost forgot what it felt like. And then you walked in, and now I can’t stop remembering.”

Dick’s face changed. Not visibly, but subtly. His smile didn’t vanish—it simply… mourned.

Peter’s chest hitched.

“I didn’t expect this,” he muttered. “Didn’t ask for it. I was doing okay. Not good, but… stable. And now I’m shaking like a kid again.”

Dick stepped forward, slowly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice low. “For what it’s worth.”

Peter shook his head. “You’re not him. I know that. I know.”

But his voice was breaking, fraying at the seams.

“You’re just the closest thing I’ve seen since I was a kid.”

Dick knelt down on the stool across from him. The hum of the lab filled the space between them.

“Do you miss him?” he asked.

Peter looked at him like he couldn’t believe the question had been said aloud.

“…Yeah,” he whispered. “Every day. It’s like this scar I can’t stop picking at. I used to think I’d forgotten his voice. I wanted to forget, I think. It hurt too much. But now…”

He trailed off.

And Dick didn’t rush him.

He let the silence breathe.

“I lost mine too,” Dick said quietly. “Both of them. One night. Just… gone.”

Peter blinked, glancing up.

“It doesn’t stop hurting,” Dick continued. “But it gets… quieter. When you let someone else hear it with you.”

Peter’s shoulders shook once. Then again.

He let out a sound—a stifled sob, brief and desperate.

He pressed the heel of his palm into his eyes and cursed under his breath. “I thought I buried this. It's been eight years.”

“Grief doesn’t stay buried,” Dick murmured. “It waits. And sometimes it walks into your lab wearing a leather jacket.”

Peter let out a laugh. Broken. Ugly. Real.

He swiped at his eyes and nodded. “Thanks. I think.”

Dick stood, patting Peter on the shoulder—not awkwardly. Just enough to say I see you .

He started to walk toward the exit.

Then paused.

“If you ever want to talk about him,” Dick said, “or about anything… I’m around. No pressure. No lectures.”

Peter nodded once. Silent.

He watched Dick leave.

And after the door closed, Peter just… sat there.

Staring at the exit. At the absence.

Not because he’d finally said something about the grief that still curled in his chest like old roots.

But because—for a second—it had looked back at him.

And smiled.

And it hurt more than it helped.

But somehow… it hurt less alone.

 

The rain streaked steadily against the glass, painting the Gotham skyline in silver smears of motionless melancholy. Thunder rolled low over the rooftops, too distant to be threatening—just enough to settle deep into the bones, a reminder that storms never really end here. They just pause.

Dick Grayson stood by the window, arms crossed over his chest, unmoving.

Not silent.
Just… holding in too much to say.

Barbara glanced up from her terminal for the third time in five minutes. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, unmoving.

“You’re doing that broody silhouette thing again,” she said, tone light but careful.

Tim, sprawled on the couch with a tablet propped on his knees, lifted a brow. “That’s Bruce’s brand, you know. You’re infringing.”

From the corner, Jason gave a snort. “Nah. Dick’s just dramatic. Broody with better posture.”

But Dick didn’t flinch. Didn’t smile. Didn’t even glance away from the window. His jaw was locked, his knuckles white beneath his sleeves.

The rain kept falling.

Barbara slowly turned in her chair. “Okay, enough. You’re not subtle, Grayson. What happened?”

Dick’s breath finally left him, slow and heavy, like he’d been holding it since he left the lower levels.

“I went down to the lab today. Just to meet him.” His voice was quiet. Unsteady in ways he never let it be. “Peter.”

Tim straightened. “Spider-kid?”

“Yeah.”

Jason looked up from the ammo he’d been cleaning. “Something go wrong?”

Dick turned, leaning back against the window frame, hands clenched tight at his sides.

“He had a breakdown.”

The room froze.

Barbara’s expression turned from curious to sharp in an instant. “What do you mean?”

“I said my name, and he dropped his stylus like I’d hit him.” Dick’s voice wavered, edged with something raw. “He looked at me like… like I was a ghost. Said I looked like his dad. Sounded like him. Moved like him.”

Tim frowned. “His father?”

“He said he died in a plane crash when he was six.”

Jason leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. “But… Bruce ran the DNA. You’re his father, Dick. Biologically.”

“I know,” Dick said too fast—then flinched. “I know. I just… if Peter’s right—if his dad was someone else entirely—it means…”

Barbara’s eyes narrowed. “It means he’s not from here.”

The room went still.

No one needed to say it. But Tim did anyway, voice flat with realization.

“He’s from another universe.”

Silence. Heavy. Breathless.

Jason blinked slowly, setting his gear down. “You’re saying Spider-Kid is from some alternate dimension? Like full multiverse crap?”

Tim nodded, eyes distant. “It makes sense. All of it. His tech is half a decade beyond anything we’ve got. He handles subspace like it’s a second language. And the anchor project? It’s not just theory. He’s trying to open a door.”

Barbara brought up the schematic Peter had shown her—sifting through subspace diagnostics, interference signatures, and untagged radiation frequencies. “Bruce couldn’t even decode half of this. Peter’s working with frameworks that don’t exist here. He’s not just building dimensional theory—he’s living it.”

Dick had started pacing, hands raking through his hair like he could pull the ache out by force. “He looked at me like I tore something open. Like seeing me ripped apart a wound he’d been barely holding shut.”

Jason’s voice was soft. “Because in his world… you’re dead.”

The words hit like a punch. No one spoke for a long stretch.

Then Dick sank down beside Tim on the couch, his eyes haunted. “You should’ve seen his face. Like he was staring into a dream he never thought he’d get back. And it broke him.”

Barbara’s voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s why he hides. Why he deflects every personal question. Why he never says where he’s from. He’s grieving a world we’ll never understand.”

“And doing it alone,” Jason muttered. “In a city that eats people like him.”

“How old is he?” Tim asked softly.

“Fourteen,” Dick replied.

They all froze.

Tim slowly leaned back. “Fourteen.”

“He’s a kid,” Barbara said, voice cracking. “But his eyes are older than mine.”

“Yeah.” Dick swallowed. “Like he’s lived a dozen wars and didn’t get to come home from any of them.”

Jason exhaled sharply, standing and starting to pace. “Okay, so what do we do? He’s here. He’s scared. He’s unstable. And he’s Spider-Man. If that wasn’t enough, he’s also your kid. Technically.”

Tim nodded. “And if he built a portal in? Someone—or something—might follow.”

Dick stood again, slowly. “And Peter might be the only one keeping the door shut.”

Jason let out a breath. “That’s a lot for a kid to carry.”

“Especially one who thinks he’s got no one left,” Barbara added.

Tim looked to Dick. “So… what do we do?”

Dick looked around at the team—family, really. The ones who’d stood by him through every nightmare and resurrection. His voice was firm when he answered.

“We don’t push him. He’s hanging by threads. If we try to confront him now, he’ll just shut down more.”

“So we wait?” Jason asked.

“We wait,” Dick echoed. “We let him come to us. We keep him safe. We give him time.”

Barbara nodded. “And if the door cracks open?”

“Then we’re ready,” Tim said. “For whatever comes.”

The silence that followed wasn’t fear.

It was bracing.

Because they all knew what Gotham had taught them—quiet was never peace.

It was just the inhale before the scream.

Meanwhile — WayneTech Sublevel Lab 3

Peter Parker stood hunched over his interface, hands hovering above the anchor schematic like it might disappear if he blinked.

He didn’t know they were talking about him.

Didn’t know the storm he’d left behind.

All he knew was that something inside him had shifted. Tilted off-center.

Seeing Richard Parker… no Dick Grayson —alive, real, and breathing—had cracked something in his chest that had been sealed shut for years. In his world, Dick was gone. Just a name in a file. Just a footnote in a long list of heroes who didn’t survive the invasion.

But here, he was flesh and blood.

And he smiled like Peter mattered.

That was the part that hurt the most.

Peter clenched his jaw and turned back to the schematic, trying to focus on anything else. The resonance field. The tether points. The possibility of stabilizing the frequency long enough for a controlled jump.

But his hands were shaking again.

And when he blinked, he still saw Dick’s face.

Still heard his voice.

Still felt the terrible warmth of hope clawing at the walls he’d built around his heart.

Hope was dangerous.

He couldn’t afford it.

He’d buried too many versions of it already.

But still—he felt it anyway.

And that terrified him more than Thanos ever could.

Chapter 25: The Sword’s Edge

The Gotham sky pulsed with smog-dimmed moonlight, clouds bruising the skyline in shades of ash and silver. Rain still clung to the rooftops, glittering in puddles and pooling in rusted gutters like stagnant time.

Peter Parker knelt on the edge of a narrow rooftop ledge, the wind slicing past him like glass.

He didn’t move.

Didn’t speak.

Didn’t blink.

His fingers clutched the edge of a vent, knuckles white, arms trembling—not from cold, but from everything else. From the tension coiled under his skin like a live wire. From the storm inside him he’d been pretending didn’t exist.

Because it was storming.

And he didn’t know how long he had before the lightning finally cracked.

He wasn’t sure what he was more afraid of—what he might become, or what had already taken root inside him.

The Pit.
The Dust.
The Silence.

But tonight, what haunted him wasn’t just that—wasn’t just Thanos whispering through his fractured sleep, or the way the world looked wrong in his periphery now.

It was a face.

A voice.

Dick Grayson.

Peter had met him just once, hours ago in the lab, but it had left him unspooled. Like someone had reached through time and memory and carved open a part of him he’d buried with his father’s funeral.

Because Dick Grayson looked like Richard Parker . Sounded like him. Felt like him.

But he couldn’t be.
He couldn’t.

Because in Peter’s world, his dad had died in a private plane crash over the Atlantic when Peter was six. The company said it was mechanical failure. Peter didn’t remember the report. Just the way Aunt May had cried when she thought he wasn’t listening.

And now there was this man—this stranger —walking into his life with a familiar smile and eyes that made Peter’s chest ache.

It didn’t make sense.
It wasn’t fair.

He didn’t even know if he wanted to believe it.

The wind shifted. His Spider-Sense tingled—late, as if reluctant.

He turned, already knowing what he'd see.

She stepped from the shadows like she’d always been part of them.

Talia al Ghul.

Her robes were dark green, heavy with rain. Her face was carved in stone. Calm. Controlled. But beneath the poise, something sharp and ancient boiled—rage tempered by centuries of blood.

Peter stood slowly. No mask. No weapons in hand.

Just his fear, his exhaustion, and the simmering energy of something unnatural curled behind his ribs.

“You,” he said.

Talia watched him like a historian eyeing a corrupted artifact. “I’ve been watching you longer than you know.”

Peter didn’t move. “You’re not exactly subtle.”

“No,” she said. “Neither are you. Especially not to those who know how to listen.”

She stepped forward. Rain slicked across the rooftop between them. “You move like someone risen from ash.”

Peter didn’t answer. His jaw was tight.

“I have a question,” she said, stopping just a few feet away. “And you’re going to answer it.”

His pulse ticked upward. “Let me guess. Not multiple choice.”

She didn’t blink. “What happened to Ra’s al Ghul ?”

Peter's gut twisted.

The name was like a toxin. Heavy with implication. He remembered the man's voice—resonant, terrible, echoing through the stone chamber beneath the earth. The last place Peter had been before the Pit took him and broke him open.

“I don’t know who that is,” he lied, too fast.

Talia’s eyes sharpened like the tip of a blade. “Lies do not suit you, Lazarus.”

Peter stiffened. “I’m not whatever you think I am.”

Talia stepped forward again.

“I’ve searched for him for months. His signal vanished… but something remained. A stain in the Pit’s resonance. Something broken. Something burned away.”

Peter’s mouth felt dry.

He exhaled slowly.

“I didn’t know who he was,” he said, too fast. “He—he attacked me. He wanted to use the Pit. I didn’t mean to—”

Talia’s expression shifted.

Not shock. Not disbelief.

Pure rage.

“You killed him,” she whispered.

“No,” Peter said quickly. “It wasn’t—he was going to kill me, and I didn’t even know what was happening, and something inside me—”

The sword was in her hand before he finished the sentence.

Drawn like lightning. Humming with ancient, whispered fury.

“You killed the Demon’s Head,” she said, her voice a calm, breaking thing. “And the Pit chose to let you live?”

Peter backpedaled. “I didn’t ask for this!”

“You don’t inherit the Pit,” Talia hissed, stepping forward, blade flashing under the city lights. “You survive it. And you do not survive my father.”

Peter raised his hands. “Look—just wait. I didn’t know who he was! I didn’t even know what the Pit was until it was too late!”

“You destroyed the soul of the Lazarus,” she snarled. “And now it clings to you.”

She lunged.

Peter dodged back, the blade singing as it sliced the air inches from his chest.

The rooftop exploded into movement.

Peter rolled under a swing, webbed a nearby pipe, and yanked it as a shield. Steel clanged against steel, sparks flying.

Talia didn’t slow.

She moved like water over stone—precise, relentless, not a wasted step. Peter fired two webs, tried to bind her arms, but she twisted through them, blade flashing again.

“I don’t want to fight you!” Peter shouted.

“Then die quickly!” she snapped.

He blocked with a makeshift shield, felt the vibration of the strike shudder down his arm.

This wasn’t like fighting a thug. Or even someone like Joker. This was ancient training, grief sharpened into a weapon. And she wanted blood.

His.

Peter flipped backward, landing hard near the ledge, panting.

Talia stalked closer, blade gleaming.

“You carry something sacred,” she said, “and you’ve desecrated it.”

Peter’s eyes glowed faintly green now—unintentionally.

Talia’s did too.

“Come then,” she whispered. “Let’s see what the Pit left behind.”

She charged.

Peter dropped low, fired a line—

And the rooftop battle truly began.

 

The Batcave hummed with low mechanical life, the massive terminal casting sterile light across stone and steel. Rain tapped against the high skylights in rhythmic pulses, but the team didn’t hear it.

Because something had just shifted.

Something big .

Tim Drake’s fingers flew across the holographic interface, his brows pulled tight, eyes sharp behind his glasses. Lines of data scrolled too fast for anyone else to follow—heat signatures, seismic spikes, energy fluctuations.

Then—

“Got something,” Tim said, voice tense.

Everyone looked up.

On the monitor, a satellite thermal map blinked to life, centering over the Burnley district. Three blocks glowed with a flickering heat signature, red-hot but unstable—radiating outward like something had erupted , then tried to swallow itself.

Barbara rolled forward in her chair, heels clicking sharply against the floor. “Explosion?”

Tim shook his head, fingers narrowing the satellite scan with a flick. “No blast crater. No detonation signature. This isn’t chemical—it’s energy . A burst. High concentration, but... localized. Almost like a dome expanding, then collapsing.”

“Like a sunburst without heat,” Jason muttered from where he stood near the weapons rack, arms crossed tight over his chest.

He stepped forward, boots heavy.

“And guess who was web-slinging through that neighborhood ten minutes ago?” he added darkly.

Tim tapped another key.

A flickering blue tracer line appeared on the screen—a motion trail. Parkour acrobatics, low-altitude movement, non-standard propulsion.

“Spider-Kid,” Tim confirmed.

Barbara’s mouth tightened. “Ben.”

Dick Grayson—Nightwing—was silent, standing off to the side, fists flexing slowly. His eyes didn’t leave the screen.

“Did he check in?” he asked.

“No,” Barbara replied. “No comms. Not even a ping from the burner he carries.”

“That’s not like him,” Tim said. “He checks in after every engagement. Even when it’s nothing.”

Jason’s brow furrowed. “Unless this time, it wasn’t.”

The silence that followed was sharp enough to cut through Kevlar.

Then—

A new shadow entered the room.

Tall. Heavy. Authority in every step.

Bruce.

He stepped out from the corridor that led to the armory, his cape trailing behind him, face a storm of unreadable steel.

He’d heard enough .

“Gear up,” he ordered.

The command didn’t echo. It didn’t need to.

Jason was already moving—grabbing his helmet, sliding on his jacket, holstering his sidearm. “If something happened to that kid—”

“He’s not alone,” Bruce said, voice low but iron. “And we’re going to make sure he knows that.”

Tim stood. “Pulling satellite footage from five minutes before the spike. We might catch a visual.”

Barbara keyed into Peter’s tracking data. “We won’t get an ID through his mask, but I can boost his bio-signature if he’s still moving.”

“He’s still moving,” Dick said suddenly.

Everyone turned.

His voice wasn’t loud. But it was certain.

Tim frowned. “How do you know?”

Dick looked away for just a second. Then back.

“Because he’s not the type to go down without trying. Not even when he should.”

Jason’s voice was gruff. “Not the only one like that.”

Bruce stepped forward, watching the red bloom pulse again on the monitor. “There’s something different about this. That much energy—it’s not just tech. It’s biological. Maybe mystical.”

“Lazarus?” Tim asked.

Barbara’s eyes flicked to Bruce.

Bruce nodded once. “Possibly.”

No one said it aloud—but they were all thinking it.

Whatever had found Peter tonight… it wasn’t normal.

Jason zipped up his jacket, slamming a fresh clip into his pistol. “Then let’s make sure he doesn’t have to face it alone.”

Barbara rose, grabbing her earpiece. “I’m syncing all your HUDs to the new spike location. Route converges at Burnley and 9th. That rooftop’s got old tenement buildings. Line-of-sight might be bad—watch each other’s backs.”

Tim slipped on his gauntlets, jaw set. “He’s a kid, Babs.”

Barbara nodded grimly. “Yeah. But whatever’s out there… it doesn’t care.”

Dick stood at the edge of the platform, staring into the cave darkness.

He hadn’t said what he was really thinking.

Not yet.

That when Peter had broken in the lab—when he’d seen Dick and nearly folded in on himself—it hadn’t been confusion.

It had been recognition.

Painful, buried recognition.

Peter still didn’t know the truth. Didn’t know who Dick really was.

And if something happened to him tonight—before that truth came out—

Dick clenched his fists.

He wouldn’t let that happen.

“He doesn’t know who he is,” he said softly.

Tim glanced up. “What?”

Dick turned, eyes dark with something fragile beneath the fury.

“He doesn’t know we know. About the blood match. About the truth.” His voice caught. “If he dies tonight—he dies thinking he’s alone.”

Jason’s mouth tightened. “Then let’s make sure he doesn’t.”

Bruce stepped forward.

The team gathered—silent, focused.

Ready.

“Move out,” Batman ordered.

And the cave emptied like a blade drawn from its sheath.

 

The rooftop was chaos.

Rain hammered down in sheets, blurring the skyline into jagged silhouettes of concrete and neon. Thunder rolled like drums of war above, muffled only by the shriek of steel and the whip-crack of Peter’s webs.

Talia al Ghul moved like a storm—fluid, silent, inevitable. Her blade gleamed in each lightning flash, a curved shimmer of lethal history.

Peter met her swing-for-swing, his every nerve burning with adrenaline. His left web-shooter sparked where she’d sliced it earlier, his suit fraying around the seams. The faint green glow beneath his skin pulsed brighter now—an echo of something ancient, something buried in the Lazarus energy that had claimed him once and never fully let go.

Talia struck again, a downward arc aimed for his exposed ribs.

Peter caught the blow mid-air with two reinforced web lines—crossed and tensioned—but the force of it still knocked him back two steps.

“Why do you protect what you don’t understand?” she hissed, eyes wild. Her voice cracked with fury that bordered on grief. “Why defend power you were never meant to wield?”

Peter ducked under the blade’s return swing, heart pounding in his ears, boots skidding across wet gravel.

“I’m not trying to protect it!” he shouted, voice raw. “I’m trying to survive it!”

But she wasn’t listening.

She didn’t hear the desperation in his voice. Didn’t see the fear behind his movements. To her, he was the thief of something sacred—an interloper who had defiled what could never be his.

She charged again.

Peter leapt backward, landing hard on the bent frame of a rusted AC unit. His foot slipped—just an inch, just enough.

Talia’s blade sliced forward—

—and caught his shoulder.

He cried out, stumbling back as the edge drew a line of fire across flesh and suit alike.

Then it happened.

The wound didn’t bleed red.

It glowed.

Bright.

Fierce.

Wrong.

A jagged pulse of green light ignited from beneath Peter’s skin, but it wasn’t alone.

A ripple of gold sparked along his collarbone. A line of deep violet shimmered under his jaw.

The fragments inside him—the shards of what had been snapped and scattered across the universe—answered the pain like a scream answering a scream.

Peter’s eyes widened. “No—no no no—”

Too late.

The shockwave tore out of him like a second heart exploding.

Color bloomed across the rooftop like a god had dipped the night in liquid starlight.

Gold. Violet. Green.

The hues flared with a soundless violence, a silent roar that cracked the sky itself. The air distorted—folded in on itself—as space bent briefly under the pulse. Rooftop tiles shattered. Neon signs blew out. Windows for three blocks spiderwebbed with fractures before bursting entirely.

Talia was thrown backward, lifted into the air as if gravity itself had flinched. Her blade clattered across the roof as she hit the ground and rolled to a crouch.

Below, the entire Burnley block lit up red as alarms screamed to life.

Police sirens howled. Emergency sensors across GCPD headquarters exploded with motion alerts, biohazard spikes, and gravitational anomalies. Gotham's grid flickered under the pressure of something that should not exist.

In the center of it all, Peter dropped to his knees.

His body trembled—arms limp, fingers twitching. Veins along his arms glowed like molten circuitry. His breathing was shallow, broken, like something inside him had cracked open and couldn't be resealed.

A whisper clawed at the edges of his consciousness. Not Talia. Not the city.

Thanos.

Not a memory.

Not a voice.

A presence.

“You are the altar now,” the Titan said inside Peter’s skull. “The dust remembers. The Stones remember. You will carry what I could not.”

“No,” Peter gasped. “Get out of my head—”

“You will become what you fear.”

“SHUT UP!”

His scream fractured the rooftop again—more light arcing out of him like it was trying to escape.

Talia rose from the rubble, face pale, drenched in rain and fury.

“You are a child,” she whispered. “And yet… you carry the shadow of the End.”

Peter tried to stand. His knees buckled.

Talia advanced slowly this time, her sword forgotten behind her. She studied him now—not with the gaze of a killer, but something close to awe. And horror.

“Who are you?” she whispered. “What did you do to the Pit?”

Peter looked up, his eyes lit with a flickering kaleidoscope of colors no mortal should possess.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

For a moment, neither of them moved. The rain hissed against the rooftop, steam rising from where the heat of power had burned away the cold.

Then—

The sound of grapples slicing through the air.

Multiple.

Shapes landed across the rooftop in a blur of shadow and purpose.

Nightwing first, flipping into a slide near Peter, already crouched protectively in front of him.

Red Hood next, guns drawn—not aimed, but ready.

Robin, staff extended, scanning the area with narrowed eyes.

And behind them—

Batman.

Wordless. Immovable.

Barbara’s voice crackled in Nightwing’s earpiece. “Energy readings just spiked again. What the hell happened up there?”

Peter blinked.

The glow emanating from him dimmed—just slightly.

But then—

Talia threw something.

A talon-shaped device, ancient and humming, forged of Pit-metal and designed to lock a soul in place.

It hit Peter square in the chest—

And everything exploded in white.

Chapter 26: Threshold of the Self

Location: Nowhere and Everywhere — Peter’s Mind
Time: ???

It was not darkness.

Not really.

It was something deeper than the absence of light — more insidious than shadow. A void that responded not to presence, but to identity. It knew Peter. It wrapped around his every thought like oil on fire. Not whispering.

Listening.

Judging.

It pressed in on him, a weightless pressure so complete that it felt like drowning in his own breath. He didn’t know if he had a body here, but every part of his soul ached — his senses stretched thin, nerve endings fraying at the edges of awareness.

He tried to scream.

Nothing came out.

Only static. White and endless. Like radio noise coming from a God with no face.

Then—

A voice.

A girl’s voice.

Trembling.

Afraid.

“I don’t want to go…”

His heart seized.

No.
No.

MJ.

Not the one from this world — not the passing stranger who glanced at him on a Gotham street and looked away. His MJ. The one who stole fries and said "tiger" without irony. The one who looked at Peter Parker and didn’t see a mask, but a home.

She stood before him, flickering.

Her hand reached out for his.

It passed through.

And then—she turned to ash. Again.

Peter lunged, grasping for her with everything he had left, but her face broke apart like dust under the weight of memory.

“MJ—!”

She was gone.

And in her place—
Another voice.

Younger. Broken.

Terrified.

“Mr. Stark… I—I don’t feel so good…”

Peter turned, trembling. He saw himself, younger, his own face full of panic, clinging to a man who had once made him believe the world could be saved.

Tony’s eyes were hollow, desperate—and then empty.

Peter watched himself disappear. Again.

He curled inward, but there was no ground, no gravity, just the endless pull of memory like quicksand.

They came fast now.

T’Challa vanishing with a single blink, his arm outstretched for Okoye.

Wanda screaming as her power unraveled around her—clinging to nothing, visionless and alone.

Drax, silently fading mid-laugh. Mantis sobbing for her mother in a tongue no one understood.

Nick Fury cursing as he fumbled for a pager that would never beep in time.

Each memory hit like a tidal wave.

“You couldn’t save me.”
“You let me die.”
“You were the one who lived. Why?”
“It should’ve been you.”

Peter shook. He covered his ears. Screamed.

But the void did not echo.

It absorbed everything.

Until a crack appeared in the silence.

Not a sound. A shiver .

A pulse of light bled into the dark — green first, then violet, then deep, molten red. The colors of things lost. Of things broken.

The fragments.

The Infinity shards.

They woke.

Inside him.

And they remembered .

They showed him.

Not words.

Visions.

He stood atop a throne of splintered time.

The webs stretched from star to star, snaring moons like prey. His mask was carved into stone across dying planets. The multiverse knelt before him or was shattered for its refusal.

Galaxies spun like coins at his fingertips.

The fragments inside him whispered:

“You are a constant.”
“You are convergence.”
“You are what is left.”
“You are what must come.”

Peter gasped—backing away from the image. “NO! I’m not that—I’m not—!”

But the fragments pulled .

Not just forward.

Outward.

Then he was somewhere else.

A snowy Soviet bunker.

And he wasn’t himself anymore.

He was Bucky Barnes .

He was the Winter Soldier.

Steel punched into bone, commands implanted into muscle memory. Screams in Russian. Blood in his mouth. A gloved hand striking down a screaming tech with no face. Cold. Controlled.

And worst of all?

He didn’t want to stop.

He felt the numbness. The quiet . The terrifying peace of being emptied out and filled with obedience.

Peter tore himself out of it—but the memories stayed. Bucky’s pain now lived under his skin like an echo.

Next—

A red light.

A burning city.

Wanda .

But not the poised sorceress he had met in passing. This was a girl again. Kneeling beside a twin brother with silver in his hair and a bullet in his chest. Her throat raw from screaming.

“Pietro…” she whispered.

Then the world exploded around her.

And Peter felt it.

Not just saw it.

The moment her heart broke and her power answered .

He felt her collapse under the grief. Felt the terror when her powers surged and she didn’t care who died.

When she didn’t care if she died.

Peter shook, clutching his temples.

“Stop—please stop—I don’t want this—”

But the fragments were showing him everything now.

Yelena sobbing over a little girl’s - Anya’s- grave, vomiting from guilt.

Stephen Strange gasping as he held the Time Stone for the first time and saw every life end, over and over again, until one finally didn’t.

Groot alone on a ship, clutching a picture of the family that raised him wandering if he’ll see them again.

Loki kneeling in the ruins of Asgard, clutching Thor’s cloak, whispering apologies to a brother who would never answer.

Vision, eyes wide with love and pain, as the woman who taught him humanity tore him apart to save it.

And then—

Peter.

Again.

Back to himself.

The constant. The surviving.

Blood on his hands.

Eyes glowing.

Heart screaming.

He crumbled, collapsed into nothing.

The void pulsed again.

“You are not a boy.”
“You are the storm.”
“You are what remains.”

“I don’t want to be this,” he whispered. “I never wanted this.”

“You already chose.”

“No…”

“And you survived.”

Then —
A hand.
Warm.
Familiar.
Fingertips brushed his wrist, grounding him like roots digging into the storm.

He turned.

Wanda stood before him, face sad but kind, her eyes rimmed with the weight of too many lifetimes.
“Peter,” she said softly, voice like a lullaby breaking through thunder. “Breathe.”

His chest hitched.
“I—I can’t. They won’t let go.”

“They’re not meant to,” she said, kneeling in front of him. “They’re part of you. But they’re not the whole.”

He clung to her hand like a lifeline pulled from drowning.
The void shifted around them, no longer silent.
Behind Wanda, others emerged from the glow—ghosts of what was, echoes of what should have been.

Shuri, calm and clever.
Drax, broad-shouldered and quiet for once.
T’Challa, regal in his stillness.
Mantis, hands clasped, eyes wet.
Bucky, standing beside Sam, arms crossed.
Even Stephen, robes flickering like dying embers.
And…

Peter’s breath caught in his throat.
A smaller silhouette stepped from behind the rest.
Wearing a simple blouse, a denim jacket with frayed cuffs, and eyes too tired for their kindness to fade.

May .

His mouth opened, but no sound came.
She smiled. Not big. Not grand. Just… the smile.
The one he remembered when he scraped his knees or came home late.
The one that forgave before he confessed.

“Hey, sweetheart,” she said, her voice warm and trembling.

He staggered.
Collapsed into her.
She caught him like she always did—like no time had passed, like love could still anchor a broken soul.

“I’m sorry,” he choked. “I’m so—so sorry, May, I—”

“Shhh,” she whispered, pressing his head to her shoulder. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. I’m proud of you.”

“But I let you die.”
He said it like a wound. Like a crime.
“I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t save you.”

Her fingers combed through his hair, just like when he was little.
“You saved more than I ever could’ve imagined. You kept going. That’s what matters.”

Behind them, the void rumbled.
A tremor of something ancient, slow, and vast stirred behind the veil.

Peter tensed.
“They’re still coming,” he said hoarsely. “Whatever it is… it’s still out there.”

T’Challa stepped forward, nodding. “There is more. Always more.”

Peter glanced at them—at all of them.
The fallen. The brave. The lost.
And at the woman who’d raised him, who had died because of the path he walked.

“I don’t think I’m strong enough.”

Wanda knelt beside him again. Her hand on his shoulder.
“You don’t have to be,” she said. “We are.”

“Let us carry it with you,” Vision said gently. “You are the thread. But we were the weave.”

Peter looked at his hands. Still trembling. Still glowing—cracked with energy, riddled with power he didn’t want.
A weapon. A vessel. A boy.

A son.

He took one last look at May.
“I miss you.”

She smiled, and this time it broke her a little, too.
“I miss you more.”

Then she stepped back.
Back into the light.
Back into the place where memories wait.

He rose. Not because he felt ready. Not because the fear had left him.
But because he had hands behind his shoulders.

Because they stood with him.
And because even if the universe broke,
he would not be alone.

Not anymore.
Not ever again.

It had been years since Dick Grayson had felt truly afraid.
Not fear in combat. Not the white-hot instinct of a blade arcing for your throat, or the cold dread of defusing a Joker-built bomb in the last four seconds. Not even the sick ache of watching Bruce flatline and come back again and again.

This was something else.
Something slower.
Helplessness, thick and coiling in his gut like smoke you couldn’t breathe through.

He stood motionless, framed by the broken teeth of a ruined rooftop, the rest of the Bat-Family in a wide ring around him. The remains of the explosion still lingered: soot, cracked concrete, the tang of ozone. Smoke drifted in lazy ribbons from warped metal and shattered glass. The air itself pulsed with unnatural static—like it remembered the blast and hadn’t recovered.

And at the center of it all…
Ben.

Or what was left of him.

The boy was curled in the crater’s heart, half-buried under broken stone and fractured steel. His small frame was still, almost eerily so. The soft rise and fall of breath just barely visible beneath his torn, soot-streaked hoodie. But it was his skin that drew their eyes.

It glowed.

Not brightly. Not evenly. But veins of green and gold lit his arms like molten cracks in broken marble. They shimmered beneath the skin—alive, angry, and unnatural. His eyes were shut. His expression unreadable. He looked less like a kid and more like a warning.

Jason stood nearby, tense and unmoving, one hand hovering near his holstered weapon—not out of threat, but caution. Tim was pacing, half-crouched over a damaged scanner that sparked with static every time it got near the boy’s body.

Barbara’s voice came softly over comms. “We’re seeing a spike in metaphysical radiation. Lazarus signature is unstable.”

“Amplifying,” Jason muttered. “Like it’s feeding on him.”

Tim scowled at his readout. “These aren’t Pit readings anymore. Something else is tangled in him. Something older.”

Dick barely heard them.

He just… stared.

He couldn’t stop replaying the moment from earlier that night. The crack in Ben’s voice. The tremble in his hands. The flicker in his eyes as he’d looked up at Dick like he knew him. Really knew him. Like he’d been looking for him and finally found him too late.

He saw it now—the resemblance. Too much of it to ignore.
Not just the black hair or the shape of his eyes, but the posture. The guarded way Ben carried himself. The way his pain sat like weight on his shoulders. Like someone who hadn’t had the chance to be a child for a very long time.

Dick swallowed the lump in his throat.

This wasn’t just power.
This was grief.
Burning from the inside out.

“He’s still not responding,” Tim said tightly. “And his neural activity’s… I don’t even know what this is. He’s not unconscious. But he’s not here either.”

Bruce, silent as stone beside them, finally spoke. “He’s trapped. Whatever hit him, whatever’s inside him now—it’s using his mind. Reshaping it.”

Barbara added, “If we force him awake, we could break something permanent.”

Dick exhaled, low and shaking, and stepped forward.

He crouched beside the crater—just outside the glow. He remembered the kid from the lab. The one who wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes unless he was explaining some impossible tech concept. The one who ate junk food like he hadn’t known a full meal in weeks. The one who laughed like he didn’t deserve it—and went quiet like he didn’t expect it to last.

And now this.

Dick reached out. Didn’t touch—just hovered his hand an inch from the boy’s shoulder.

“Ben,” he said softly. “I know you’re in there.”

The wind moved around them. Cold. Heavy.

“I didn’t see it,” Dick murmured. “I should’ve. You’ve been screaming through the silence since the day you got here and none of us heard you.”

The glow under Peter’s skin pulsed, slow and deep.

Jason took a step forward. “Something’s changing. That light’s building again.”

Tim flinched as his scanner shorted out for good. “His vitals are climbing. It’s like a surge response—he’s fighting something, or… someone.”

Dick moved closer, kneeling now. “You don’t have to fight it alone, okay? You’re not alone, kid.”

A beat.
Then another pulse of light—this one stronger. The rooftop trembled beneath their feet.

Tim shouted, “Dick—!”

But Dick reached out, gently pressing a hand to Peter’s shoulder.

“I’ve got you.”

And then—

Peter gasped.

His body seized, arching upward like he was being yanked out of the void. His eyes flew open—blazing with light. His hands clawed at nothing. His chest heaved, mouth open in a scream that never made it past his lips.

Then—

Silence.

The light dimmed. Slowly. Painfully. Until all that was left was gold flickers beneath pale skin, fading like embers in ash.

Peter collapsed forward.

Dick caught him.

His weight was too light. Too fragile. His breath hitched in uneven bursts. His lashes fluttered but didn’t fully open. And then—

A sound.
A whisper.
So quiet it nearly didn’t exist.

“…Dad?”

Dick froze.

The others stiffened.

Jason looked up sharply. Barbara’s mouth parted in silent confusion. Tim stared, blinking.

“…What did he just—?” Jason asked.

Bruce didn’t speak.

Dick held the boy tighter, fingers curled at the back of Peter’s neck.

His throat clenched.

He didn’t know if Peter was talking to him. To someone else. To someone long gone in a world no one here had ever seen.

But it didn’t matter.

He didn’t correct him.
Didn’t say it was a mistake.
Didn’t ask questions.

He just whispered, voice breaking,
“I’m here.”

And held on like he meant it.

 

Chapter 27: Ripples Through the Veil

Location: Earth-199999 (Original Universe) — Undisclosed S.H.I.E.L.D. Quantum Research Outpost

The silence was deceptive.

Tony Stark stood alone beneath the skeletal arch of a reinforced quantum dome, deep beneath one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s last off-grid research stations. Out here, there were no windows. No daylight. Only machines, glowing monitors, and the endless, quiet hum of theories clawing at reality.

But tonight—the hum wasn’t theoretical.

It was real.

The quantum lattice at the heart of the chamber flickered, pulses of iridescent light twisting through the air like the tails of comets. The tether array—rigged together from leftover Pym tech, alien artifacts, and whatever Stark had yanked from the ruins of the Battle of Earth—was flaring.

Wildly.

Tony stared at it without blinking.

One hand gripped the edge of the console so hard his knuckles had gone white.

F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice broke through the static, strained with synthetic unease.

“Quantum anchoring destabilized. Multiversal tether field experiencing phase dilation. Alert: signature spike detected—Level 8 anomaly.”

The anomaly glowed across three overlapping screens in jagged, red spirals. Not radiation. Not magic. Something else. Something new.

Or worse— familiar.

Tony whispered, “That’s not a spike. That’s a heartbeat.”

From across the world, Bruce Banner’s face appeared on the secure comm line, green-tinged eyes wide with disbelief. He was still in Delhi, running diagnostics on the fallback relay.

“You seeing this?” Bruce asked, breathless. “It’s—it’s like the quantum veil tore itself open and bled data.”

“More than data,” Tony said, turning the screens with a flick of his wrist. “We got emissions that shouldn’t even be possible. Like someone ripped a thread through localized spacetime. This wasn’t a glitch.”

He gestured to the waveform.

“This was deliberate. ”

Banner leaned closer to his screen, frowning. “It’s centered on a single frequency.”

“I know,” Tony said quietly.

Bruce hesitated. “And you think it’s him.”

Tony didn’t answer immediately.

He swallowed.

In his mind, he saw Peter’s face again—soft brown eyes, messy hair, the kid who made snarky pop culture jokes mid-fight, who built web shooters out of old calculators and whispered ‘Mr. Stark’ like it meant something. Like he meant something.

And then he saw ash. Fingers. Face. Gone.

The empty space where Peter should’ve been never stopped echoing.

“Call it whatever you want, Bruce,” Tony said finally. “But I’ve seen enough ghosts in my dreams to know what this wasn’t. ”

He tapped the sequence again.

The flare pattern looped. Three pulses. One long. One short. One fractured. Not random.

“That's a signal,” Tony muttered. “It’s weak. Distant. But it’s intelligent. ”

Bruce's brows furrowed. “If it is Peter—how? We saw him disintegrate.”

Tony gave a humorless laugh. “Yeah. And then the universe broke in six places, Loki hijacked a time loop, and Strange made a roulette wheel out of probabilities. ‘How’ is irrelevant. Where is what matters now.”

Bruce looked away. “Have you told the others?”

“No.” Tony’s voice hardened. “Not until I know what this is. Not until I have more than blinking lights and a prayer.”

He stared at the center monitor. The signal looped again—pulsing softly.

“Because if there’s even a chance — a fraction of a fraction —that Peter is alive somewhere out there...”

He trailed off.

Bruce said it for him.

“You’re going to get him back.”

Tony didn’t deny it.

Instead, he opened a fresh panel on the interface—labeled VEILMARKER . It was a project he’d kept off S.H.I.E.L.D.’s records. A hybrid quantum-lattice algorithm designed to isolate ripple events in the multiverse. Dangerous. Incomplete. Barely held together with intuition, caffeine, and trauma.

But now?

Now it had a purpose.

F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice cut in again.

“Multiversal triangulation initialized. Phase-lock acquired at 14.7%. Stabilization threshold not achieved.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Tony muttered. “Give me what we’ve got.”

A new window bloomed open. A grainy, distorted view of something almost—but not quite—like Earth. Cities unfamiliar. Architecture wrong. No matching coordinates in any known map.

A faint signature blinked on the edge of the scan.

BIOFORM DETECTED: UNIDENTIFIED SUBJECT – CODE: ARA-CELL – MATCH: 96.2%

Tony’s breath hitched.

He leaned closer, eyes narrowed.

“…that’s him.”

“Tony,” Bruce said, warning in his voice. “Even if we isolate the universe—crossing over isn’t just complicated. It’s dangerous. Lethal. There are variables we haven’t accounted for.”

Tony didn’t look away from the screen.

“I don’t care.”

“Tony—”

“You didn’t see him,” Tony whispered, voice brittle. “The way he looked at me. Like I was supposed to have all the answers. And then he was gone. I promised I’d keep him safe.”

“You did everything you could,” Bruce said gently.

Tony’s jaw tightened.

“Not everything,” he said. “But I will.”

Behind him, the lab hummed louder. The tether array flared again, this time different —sharper, as if responding.

The universe was listening now.

And somewhere, if Peter was still alive…
He had just cried out loud enough for Tony Stark to hear him.

And Stark?

He was already building a way across the stars.
Across the walls.
Across the veil.

No matter what it took.
No matter who tried to stop him.

Tony Stark was coming for his kid.
And this time—
He wasn’t going to be too late.

Location: Unknown — World Between Worlds
Time: ???

He sat upon nothing.

There was no throne. No ground. No stars. No horizon.

Just the suggestion of shape—bone, obsidian, the echoes of a throne long shattered. The weight of galaxies pressed in from all sides, unseen but undeniable, coiling around his frame like the memory of gravity.

Here, Thanos did not breathe.

He remembered breathing. He remembered the strain of muscle, the ache of flesh, the Gauntlet burning into his skin as he rewrote half of existence with a single thought. But this place had no air. No time. No need.

It was the dark echo that lived between ticking seconds.

And he… had been waiting.

His eyes—those ancient, brutal things—opened slowly.

Black. Reflective. Endless.

The void twisted in response, curving inward like it feared his gaze. Light itself bent away from him, refusing to touch his outline, as if the laws of reality had agreed: He should not be here.

But here he was.

The Mad Titan.

Reduced not to ash, not to dust—but to persistence.

To memory.

And memory had power.

The Stones were gone. Atomized. Shattered. Cast into the flow of time like seeds with no soil.

But he had felt it.

A flare.

A scream—not of voice, but of soul.

Something had shattered across the veils of the multiverse, not with brute force, but with need. A need so loud that it burned through dimensions like fire through paper. It hadn’t been power. Not yet. Not fully.

But it would be.

He had once worn the full set of the Infinity Stones—Space, Time, Reality, Power, Mind, Soul. He had held the balance of all things in his hand. Killed for it. Bled for it. Burned for it.

He knew the taste of their song.

And what he felt now...

Was that.

But warped. Wild. Bleeding.
As if someone had stitched the bones of the Stones into something living.

A soul.

A boy.

The boy.

He curled his hand—phantom muscles flexing in the nothingness.

“Parker,” Thanos said, voice echoing through a dimension without sound.

He had watched that child fade in Titan’s dust. Had seen the panic in his eyes—the desperate, pathetic clinging to life. And now… that voice had returned.

Not begging.

Not breaking.

But screaming.

Not just across one universe.

Across many.

The ripple had torn through the fabric of the World Between Worlds, and the void had whispered it to him in silence.

The boy lived.

And something inside him was changing.

Thanos turned his head toward a distant shape—a black star burning against the canvas of nothing. It pulsed with a heartbeat that did not belong in any known cosmos, a singularity where timelines folded in on themselves and screamed in their own languages.

He did not approach it.
He did not need to.

He understood it.

“You carry what was never meant to be kept,” Thanos murmured.

Not to himself.

To Peter.

The Stones had been made. He had sought them for decades. Forged armies, slain gods, torn worlds apart in pursuit of them. Because the balance required it. Because the universe demanded order.

But now?

Now a child had become a vessel for their fragments.

Not forged.

Fused.

Time and Soul wrapped around Power. Reality bled into Mind. A lattice of impossible constructs fed by trauma and grief. The makings of a god born through error.

A mutation in fate.

And the universe was bending again.

Wrong.

He rose—not by standing, but by becoming. Shadow and form peeling from the void like a sculpture rising from magma. A giant. A revenant. Unbound by flesh, remade in eternity’s echo.

“I will come for it,” Thanos said.

Not the boy.

Not the vessel.

But the imbalance.

Because if even a fraction of the Stones lingered in Parker’s soul, if what had once been destroyed had now found a new host—a child riddled with loss, cracked by the death of loved ones and reshaped by guilt and rage and fear—

Then the universe was once again at war with itself.

And this time, there would be no gauntlet.

No mercy.

Only Thanos.

And the boy whose soul dared to steal from gods.

Chapter 28: Ash Beneath the Skin

Location: The BatCave — MedBay

It was quiet.

Not the soft quiet of rest. Not the sacred stillness of healing.

No—this was the silence that came after destruction.
The silence of rubble and unanswered questions. The kind that filled the lungs with smoke and guilt and left the heart counting seconds, waiting for something— anything —to move again.

Peter lay curled on his side on the medbay cot, swaddled in a thermal blanket that didn’t seem to help. His skin no longer glowed like it had on the rooftop, but faint lines still lingered—gold, green, and violet—like scars made from constellations trying to burn their way out from inside him.

His breathing was shallow. But steady.
His fingers twitched with every cold gust the Nest’s recycled air brought in. His lips moved from time to time. Names. Maybe numbers. Maybe nothing at all.

Dick sat beside him, elbows on his knees, gloves discarded on the floor. His mask was forgotten too, tucked into the crook of his arm like he couldn’t bear to put it back on. His jaw was clenched so tightly the muscle twitched. His knuckles were red from how long he’d kept them folded together.

Bruce stood like a statue in the corner, arms crossed. The same spot he’d stood in since they’d carried Peter in. Watching. Waiting. Calculating. As if the right equation could fix what none of them understood.

Barbara sat at the terminal, the monitor still frozen on the paused rooftop blast. A frame of fire and light and Peter at the center of it. A sun that wasn’t supposed to burn.

Tim was against the far wall, silent since arriving. Eyes locked on Peter’s still form like he was waiting for the kid to either disappear… or explode again.

Jason leaned against the doorway. Not speaking. Not moving. His arms crossed, his mouth a grim, unreadable line.

No one knew what to say.

Until Peter stirred.

A twitch in his leg. Then his fingers curled. His breath hitched. Then—

His eyes opened.

Slow. Bloodshot. Cracked with color that had no business being in human eyes.

But they were aware.

“…Where…” His voice was raw. Barely a whisper.

“You’re safe,” Dick said quietly, voice gentler than any of them had heard from him in a long time. “You’re home.”

Peter blinked. His brow furrowed.

“I passed out.”

“You collapsed,” Barbara said. “The blast knocked out every power grid within three blocks.”

Peter swallowed. His throat worked around a word he hadn’t chosen yet.

“Did I… did I hurt anyone?”

“No,” Bruce answered first. “No casualties. Just damage.”

Peter exhaled. That simple truth hit him harder than anything else. His eyes glistened suddenly.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Dick murmured.

Peter let out a sound. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a sob. “You keep saying that. Like I didn’t almost level half the city.”

“You were scared,” Barbara said softly. “You were in pain.”

“You weren’t alone,” Dick added, voice barely audible.

Peter turned away, shame curling his shoulders inward. “I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop them. ”

Jason pushed off the wall and walked forward slowly. “The Pit doesn’t let you walk away clean,” he said. “But what’s in you… it’s more than that. Older. Deeper.”

Peter closed his eyes. “I know.”

Bruce stepped forward then, not looming. Just… present.

“You need to tell us everything. Not just about the Pits. Or the explosion. About you. ”

Peter didn’t answer at first. He kept his gaze low, then—finally—lifted it to Dick.

“You said you wanted to be someone for me,” Peter said, voice trembling. “But you were. Once.”

Dick didn’t speak. His breath caught.

“In my world,” Peter said slowly, carefully, like every word was being pulled from a wound, “you weren’t Nightwing. You weren’t a vigilante. You were just… my dad. Richard Parker. You and mom died when I was six. Plane crash. I never got to say goodbye.”

He looked at Bruce, then the others. Their faces had changed. Some had gone pale. Some were still.

Peter didn’t stop.

“I’m not from this world. Not your Gotham. Not your Earth. I was born somewhere else—Queens, New York. I lived with Aunt May. I was Spider-Man. Friendly neighborhood, all that.”

He laughed weakly. The kind of laugh that didn’t come from joy, but exhaustion.

“Then Thanos came. The Snap. And everyone I loved— everyone —just… turned to ash.”

His voice cracked. He didn’t try to hide it.

“I watched it all. I tried to fix it. I tried to stop him. I failed. Then the Stones—” He stopped himself. “They pulled me through. And now… I don’t even know what I am anymore.”

Silence swallowed the room.

Until Bruce said what they were all thinking.

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

Peter looked him dead in the eye.

“Because the last time I had people I cared about… they fell away into ash”

Dick’s hand moved without thought—settling gently on Peter’s wrist. A grounding touch.

“You’re not alone anymore,” he said.

Peter’s lip trembled. He tried to hold it together. Failed.

“You all called me Ben. That name… it helped. It kept me hidden. But that’s not who I am.”

He drew in a breath, sharp and shaking.

“My name is Peter. Peter Benjamin Parker.”

The weight of it dropped like a stone in the room.

Tim closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. Jason muttered a curse under his breath. Barbara turned back to the monitor to hide the shine in her eyes.

Dick didn’t speak. Not right away.

Then he squeezed Peter’s hand and whispered, “Thank you.”

Peter nodded, just once.

“It’s not over,” he said hoarsely. “Whatever’s in me… it’s not done.”

Barbara spoke up. “Then we stay ahead of it. Together.”

Peter met her eyes. Then Bruce’s. Then Jason’s. Tim’s. Finally back to Dick.

“I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

“You don’t have to,” Dick said softly. “We’ll figure it out together.”

And for the first time in what felt like years, Peter didn’t feel like he was falling.

He felt held.

Still cracked. Still glowing. Still not okay.

But not alone.

Not anymore.

 

The next time Peter woke. He woke slowly.

Not with a jolt.
Not with a scream caught in his throat or the cold sweat of dream-fire slicking his skin.
Just… woke.

His eyelids fluttered open, hesitant and slow, like his body wasn’t entirely sure if it was allowed to be at peace.

There was no void.
No screaming.
No echoing roar of dusted voices or Lazarus madness threading through his bones.

Instead, there was warmth.

Soft sunlight filtered through the tall, narrow windows of the bedroom he found himself in — not blinding, just golden, gentle. The light cut across the pale tile floor and warmed his blanket-wrapped legs. He registered the weight of it slowly — a fleece throw someone had tucked around him at some point during the night.

The cot beneath him creaked slightly as he shifted. Not a hospital bed. Something more lived-in. More human. The scent of antiseptic still lingered faintly in the air, but it was overwhelmed by something else.

Something comforting.

A tray sat on the table to his left, carefully arranged: scrambled eggs, toast with strawberry jam, a banana peeled halfway and wrapped neatly again in plastic, and a cup of coffee that still steamed faintly.
Next to the tray, a yellow sticky note was taped to the edge.

"You better eat. Or Alfred will track you down and guilt you into submission. —B"

Peter stared at it for a moment. Then — almost without realizing — a smile curled at the corner of his lips. Crooked. Small. But real.

His fingers brushed over the handwriting. Clean. Precise. Confident. Barbara’s.
The note stayed pressed to his hand longer than it needed to.

He wasn’t used to this.

The quiet.

The care.

The idea that someone expected him to get better — not just survive, not just endure, but to actually heal — was foreign. It didn’t fit in the framework of how he saw himself. But it was here. On this tray. In this light.

And maybe… maybe that was something.

He moved to sit up slowly, each muscle stiff with exhaustion and aftermath. His ribs ached, but only in the way that told him he was alive. The veins of light beneath his skin — gold, green, violet — had faded to a faint shimmer, like afterglow in his bloodstream.

No surging power. No screaming ghosts.
Just breath.

His.

And it was steady.

He swung his legs over the bed, bare feet touching soft carpet, and rubbed his hands over his face. The world felt heavier in the mornings, but for once it didn’t feel impossible .

Footsteps echoed in the corridor before he could reach for the coffee.

Then a familiar voice:
“Hey, Sleeping Webhead.”

Tim’s head poked around the doorframe, his ever-present datapad clutched in one hand, the beginnings of a grin tugging at his mouth.

Peter blinked blearily. “That nickname’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life, isn’t it?”

“Yup,” Tim said, stepping fully inside. “It’s already in the team’s comm protocols. ‘Sleeping Webhead: Code 03-A.’”

Peter groaned. “I’m going to ask Barbara to erase it from existence.”

Tim flopped down into the rolling chair beside the bed, spinning once with a low hum of satisfaction before stopping to face him.

“Good news,” he said, holding up the datapad. “You’re officially not on cosmic fire anymore.”

“That was on the table?” Peter raised an eyebrow.

“Buddy, you lit up three buildings with your heartbeat. It was absolutely on the table.”

Peter reached for the coffee with exaggerated care. “And the bad news?”

Tim leaned back. “Bruce wants to talk to you.”

Peter grimaced. “Already?”

“Yup. Something-something ‘tactical future planning.’ Also, something-something ‘emotional well-being,’ but he said it like he was chewing glass.”

Peter sighed and took a sip. The coffee was perfect. Cream, no sugar. Just how May used to make it when she wanted him to calm down.

He swallowed, his throat tightening.

Tim seemed to catch the shift in energy, because he leaned forward, voice softer now. “You feeling more like yourself?”

Peter didn’t answer right away.

He stared into the cup for a long moment, watching the ripples settle. His reflection stared back at him — tired eyes, mussed hair, a faint trail of fading light across his temple.

“I don’t know who that is anymore,” he said finally. Not bitter. Not dramatic. Just… honest.

Tim didn’t flinch.

“Fair,” he said. “But for what it’s worth… the guy you’ve been while you’ve been here? We like him. A lot.”

Peter looked at him. Really looked at him.

There was no pity in Tim’s eyes. Just understanding. The kind born from grief and nights too long and mistakes made by kids who were handed war before they had a chance to live.

“I keep waiting to wake up,” Peter admitted quietly. “Like I’ll open my eyes and be back in my apartment in Queens. Wake up to Aunt May frying eggs and scolding me for leaving my costume under the couch.”

He swallowed hard.

“I miss her,” he whispered. “Even now. After everything. I still forget she’s gone sometimes.”

Tim didn’t say anything at first.

Then: “You’re allowed to miss her.”

Peter closed his eyes. “I keep thinking if I just focus on the mission, on the work, on helping people… I’ll stop hearing them. The ones I lost. The ones who burned away.”

Tim’s voice was gentle. “Does it work?”

“No.” A shaky exhale. “Not even a little.”

Tim stood and squeezed his shoulder.

“Well, maybe it’s time to let yourself start over. Even just a little. Doesn’t have to be a clean slate — just… a place to stand. And we’re here. When you want it.”

Peter looked up at him, jaw tight, eyes glassy.

“I don’t think I know how.”

Tim smiled. “You don’t have to yet. Just try eating your eggs. That’s step one.”

Peter gave the smallest nod.

And as Tim turned to leave, the quiet didn’t feel as heavy as it had before.

Not gone.

But lighter.

And in the bedroom light, Peter finally let himself eat.

It wasn’t healing.

But it was a beginning.

 

After that It started with pizza.
Not a mission.
Not a lab meltdown or cosmic revelation.
Just… pizza.

Stephanie was first through the door, her boots scuffing the entryway as she kicked it shut with her heel, two stacked boxes balanced on one arm. Her jacket was damp from Gotham rain and still smelled faintly of coffee and adrenaline.

“I come bearing sacrificial carbs,” she announced. “Let the ritual of recovery begin.”

Jason trailed behind her with a six-pack of root beer under one arm and a crinkling bag of chips in the other. “I’m not saying I stole these from Alfred’s stash, but if anyone asks, this is a raid sanctioned by the Bat Council.”

“I heard that,” Alfred called distantly from the hallway, his voice dry as ever.

Tim was already in the living area, sprawled across the couch with a laptop open on his chest and his legs tangled in a too-large fleece blanket patterned with vintage Bat logos. “If you didn’t bring garlic knots, I’m not opening the group movie vote to you.”

“You abuse power worse than Bruce,” Jason muttered, tossing him a bottle.

Peter hovered near the kitchen archway, fingers curled into the cuffs of a hoodie that definitely wasn’t his. It hung past his knuckles and smelled like cinnamon and solder. Probably Tim’s. He didn’t ask.

He still wasn’t used to this part—the quiet moments. The space where no one was fighting or bleeding or falling into other realities.

“Peter!” Barbara waved a slice of pizza at him like a beacon. “Couch. Now. This is a mandated chill zone.”

He smiled. Small, tired, but real. “Yes, ma’am.”

He sat carefully, wedging himself into a space between Cassandra—who gave him a nod and passed him a paper plate without saying a word—and Dick, who was already queuing up a movie on the big screen.

“Okay,” Dick said, remote in hand. “Sci-fi, rom-com, or a horror film so bad it circles back to genius?”

Peter blinked. “You’re asking me to choose? That’s a trap.”

Jason tossed a pillow at him. “Welcome to family night.”

Peter chose sci-fi. Tim called him predictable. Jason called him a nerd. Cass just stole a breadstick and let the chaos roll around her in silence.

From his perch near the stairs, Damian regarded the entire scene with the skeptical air of someone forced to attend a sleepover against his will. Eventually, he sat on the far end of the couch and accepted a slice of pizza with all the stoicism of a prince granting mercy.

Alfred passed through once, laying out folded blankets and quietly refilling a tea tray that no one had realized was empty. He paused beside Peter as he straightened the corner of a blanket.

“Mr. Parker,” he said, voice low. “It’s good to see color returning to your face.”

Peter met his eyes. “Thanks. For… everything.”

Alfred offered him a rare, soft smile. “You’re quite welcome, Master Peter.”

And just like that, the name felt real. Not just a label. Not just a shard of a broken universe. But something that belonged here, in this moment.

The movie played. Spaceships roared. Laser blasts echoed. Tim complained about the inaccurate physics. Barbara challenged him to prove it. Jason launched popcorn like missiles. Damian dodged every kernel with irritating ease.

Bruce passed through once, watching them from the hallway for a long moment. No cowl. No cape. Just a man in black, quiet and thoughtful, with a coffee mug that Peter suspected had never been empty once in the history of the multiverse.

He didn’t say much.

But he looked at Peter.

And he nodded.

It was enough.

Peter didn’t speak often that night. He didn’t need to. No one pressed him about the Stones. Or the flare of cosmic light he’d unleashed. Or what it meant that a god had whispered his name across the void.

Instead, they passed him slices of pizza. Made him laugh. Let him fall asleep with his feet tucked under the throw blanket and the sound of Dick’s half-asleep snoring in his ears.

Cassandra gently lifted the empty plate from his lap when he nodded off.

Jason made a show of not caring as he tucked another blanket over him.

And when Peter murmured in his sleep — not in pain, but in the soft tone of someone remembering something once lost — no one woke him.

No one left.

They let him rest.

Let him belong.

For the first time since falling out of one world and into another, Peter Parker didn’t feel like a mistake in someone else’s story.

He felt… tethered.

And somewhere, just faint enough not to break the stillness, someone whispered:

“Welcome home.”

The rooftop was quiet, save for the wind.

Peter stood near the edge, the Gotham skyline stretching endlessly beyond him in crumbling towers and wavering lights. The air was cold — the kind of cold that cut through the thick hoodie he wore, biting into the skin beneath like memory. His breath fogged the air, shallow and steady. The wind tugged at the loose strands of his hair and the hem of his borrowed clothes, but he didn’t move.

Not away.

Not yet.

Behind him, the access hatch creaked open. Soft boots landed on old concrete. Peter didn’t turn.

Dick stood in silence for a moment, watching the small silhouette at the edge — barely more than a shadow in the dark, wrapped in fabric and grief.

He walked forward, stopping just a few steps away.

“It’s not just the powers, is it?” Dick said finally.

Peter didn’t answer at first. The city lights painted faint gold lines across his jaw, catching on the faint shimmer still left under his skin.

“No,” he said eventually.

Dick waited.

“You carry people with you,” he said gently.

Peter’s voice came quiet. Broken. “They didn’t want to go. And I couldn’t let them disappear.”

He stared at his hands — hands that had once caught MJ mid-fall, hands that couldn’t stop Uncle Ben from dying, hands that had cradled Tony Stark as the arc reactor dimmed.

“Sometimes they talk,” Peter murmured. “Sometimes they don’t. But I feel them. Always.”

Dick stepped up beside him, close but not crowding. “Then maybe they’re still here for a reason.”

Peter turned slightly, just enough to glance over his shoulder. “You think that’s why I ended up here? Why this Gotham? This Earth?”

Dick followed his gaze, watching the wind pull clouds across the moon. “I don’t know. Maybe the universe doesn’t work in straight lines. Maybe it shatters. Scatters what’s broken until something finds something else that’s cracked in just the right way.”

He looked at Peter. “Maybe it just knew you needed someone.”

Peter blinked hard. His voice was tight. “You don’t even know who I was. You didn’t know Ben Parker, or May, or any of the people I lost. I didn’t even know if telling you was going to get me thrown back into a cell or—”

“You told us your name,” Dick interrupted gently. “That was the only thing that mattered.”

Peter turned to face him fully then. The breeze caught the corner of his hoodie and tugged it sideways, revealing the faint gold scars along his collarbone — remnants of power, of the Pit, of everything he couldn’t quite name.

“Thank you,” he said. “For not asking me to be okay. For not pretending like I’m just some… guest.”

“You’re not a guest, Peter,” Dick said, voice steady. “You’re family. Whether you’re from this world or another. Blood or not — that part doesn’t change.”

Peter’s chest tightened. His throat closed around a knot of words he couldn’t shape.

He didn’t say anything.

He just stepped forward.

And hugged him.

It wasn’t long. Wasn’t perfect. His arms were hesitant, like he wasn’t sure he had permission. Like he’d forgotten how to want it.

But Dick didn’t hesitate.

His arms wrapped around the kid like he’d been waiting to for months.

He pulled him in, steady and sure, and let Peter rest his forehead against his shoulder.

“You’re okay,” Dick whispered. “You’re allowed to be.”

Peter didn’t cry. Not this time.

He just held on.

He didn’t feel like a weapon. Or a mistake. Or a cosmic accident in someone else’s timeline.

For the first time in longer than he could remember, he felt…

Like a son.

Somewhere below, the city groaned and flickered and moved on.

But on the rooftop, under the fractured moonlight and the sharp wind, something fragile began to settle.

Not healed.

But mending.

Together.

Chapter 29: The Weight That Followed

The light in the room was soft, a quiet kind of stillness that settled into the walls. Gotham’s usual chaos was muffled behind reinforced glass. Inside, it was a rare moment of calm — the kind that came only when everyone had run out of questions and finally asked for the truth.

Peter sat on the couch — hoodie draped around his thin frame, legs pulled close, a mug of lukewarm tea cradled in his hands. He’d been silent for a long time. Letting the warmth soak into his fingers like it might hold him here — in this room, in this moment, in this reality.

Across from him, Dick sat with his elbows on his knees, expression open but careful. Jason leaned against the back wall, arms crossed, silent. Barbara was nearby at the console, pretending to scroll through data, but not really seeing it. Tim stood beside her, watching Peter with quiet focus.

Damian sat near the window, chin lifted in his typical you-don’t-impress-me stance. Cass perched quietly on the arm of a chair, still as glass. And Bruce — ever the sentinel — stood in the shadows just behind them all, arms folded.

Peter looked up slowly.

“You want to know where I’m from,” he said.

Bruce’s voice was low. “Only if you want to tell us.”

Peter’s throat tightened. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

He looked down into his tea, seeing the whole sky of another world reflected there.

“I was fighting in space,” he said. “Titan. With the Avengers. And a few others. We were losing. Thanos had the Gauntlet. All of it. And then he…”

He blinked, swallowing hard.

“He snapped his fingers. I felt it. Like my whole body cracked apart at the seams. And then I started to disappear.”

He glanced up.

“But I didn’t die.”

Jason straightened. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t turn to dust,” Peter said. “Not like the others. One second I was reaching for Mr. Stark, and the next… I was somewhere else. This city. This version of Gotham. No Avengers. No Midtown. Just… smoke. Shadows. People who didn’t know my name.”

Barbara’s fingers stilled on the keyboard. “You snapped — but you didn’t vanish?”

Peter nodded. “Something must’ve gone wrong. Or right. I don’t know. Maybe it was the spider bite, or the energy from the Gauntlet, or just… luck. But I ended up here. And I’ve been stuck ever since.”

Tim’s voice was soft. “How long?”

Peter exhaled. “Eight months. Give or take.”

They were quiet.

“You’ve been alone that whole time?” Dick asked.

Peter gave a small, bitter smile. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

He set his mug down.

“I tried to lay low. Survive. Figure out where the hell I was. And then the dreams started. Not nightmares. Just… echoes. Pieces of what I left behind.”

“The Stones,” Bruce said.

Peter nodded slowly.

“They didn’t just erase half the universe. They shattered something deeper. Time. Space. Reality. I was too close. I breathed in the backlash. And now… I think I’m carrying pieces of it.”

He pulled up the sleeve of his hoodie.

Lines of soft, unnatural color glowed faintly beneath his skin — gold, green, violet.

Jason let out a low whistle. “That’s not just spider-powers.”

Peter nodded. “They’re not full Stones. Just fragments. But they whisper. Sometimes they show me things. People. Places. Loss.”

His voice dropped.

“And lately… they’ve been whispering about Thanos.”

Bruce stepped forward, jaw tight. “You’ve heard him?”

“In dreams. In the mirror. In reflections that don’t match mine. He’s still out there. He won. In my world, he won . And if the Stones are rebuilding themselves inside me… I don’t think he’ll let that go.”

Cass looked toward Peter, voice soft and clear. “What are you trying to do?”

Peter looked at her — no mask, no lies.

“Survive,” he said. “And maybe… build something that can get me back. That’s what Project Anchor was supposed to be. A way to find my world. Or anchor me in this one, so I don’t lose myself to whatever the Stones want to turn me into.”

Barbara’s eyes went wide. “You’re trying to reverse-jump through the multiverse?”

“More like… stabilize my tether to it,” Peter said. “Before I come apart. Before I become something that can’t be put back together.”

Damian scoffed under his breath, but didn’t comment.

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” Dick asked gently.

Peter’s shoulders hunched. “Because you were kind. You let me stay. You gave me a lab, a roof. Family, almost. I didn’t want to ruin that.”

“You didn’t ruin anything,” Dick said.

Bruce nodded. “You told us now. That’s what matters.”

Peter met their eyes, one by one.

“You still want me here? Even if I’m a cosmic accident with a potential god complex waiting to explode?”

Jason cracked a half-grin. “You fit in better than you think.”

Barbara gave him a warm smile. “You’re not the only one here with baggage.”

Tim glanced down at his notes. “I might actually be able to help stabilize the Anchor prototype with League resources. We’d just need some higher-level calibration from the Watchtower.”

“And I can help teach you how to push back when the Stones try to control you,” Cass added softly.

Peter looked stunned. “You’d… really help me build it?”

“You’re not alone anymore,” Dick said, reaching over to grip his shoulder.

Peter let out a shaky breath — the weight of eight months finally cracking.

“Thank you.”

Bruce looked toward the screens. “Then we start tomorrow. We build your anchor. We find a way to connect the multiverse. And we prepare.”

Peter’s voice was barely a whisper.

“For Thanos.”

 

Location: Wayne Tower Sublevel R&D — Project Anchor Chamber

The low hum of power coils pulsed like a heartbeat through the underground chamber. Fluorescent lights flickered against walls lined with prototype tech and metaphysical sensor rigs. Arc welders, hard-light emitters, and arcane chalk symbols overlapped on every surface like a marriage of logic and madness.

Project Anchor had become more than a side effort.

It was an obsession.

And tonight, it was alive.

Peter stood in the center of the room, hoodie sleeves pushed up, hair damp with sweat. His hands hovered over the orb on the table—Project Anchor’s core—a sphere of forged vibranium laced with quantum-weaved carbon and etched with sigils pulled from four different magical grimoires.

It pulsed like a living heart, fractured gold and violet light spilling from its seams, and Peter felt every breath of it in his bones.

Tim adjusted the readings on a nearby screen, muttering under his breath. “Feedback loop's cycling again. Temporal harmony holding for four-point-three seconds before destabilization.”

Barbara’s fingers danced over the secondary console. “Containment matrix isn’t syncing with the power surge. It’s still bleeding energy.”

“I can feel it,” Peter said softly, voice taut. “Like it’s trying to… reach. Not just across space. Across memory.”

Dick stepped forward, face grim. “It’s not just reaching, Pete. It’s calling. Something’s listening.”

Jason leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching the orb with a wary gaze. “Feels like it’s breathing. Like it’s got a pulse.”

“It does,” Bruce confirmed, entering the chamber from the far hallway. He glanced at the waveform readings on the overhead display. “Peter’s emotional state syncs with the orb’s resonance. His memories… they’re becoming anchors themselves.”

Peter looked down at his hands. “I didn’t mean to make this thing feel. I just wanted to build a door. A way home.”

“Maybe,” Dick said quietly, “but you’re not just opening a door. You’re lighting a signal fire. And something out there is answering.”

A beat of silence.

Then the air shifted.

The lights dimmed. The energy field spiked—only briefly, but sharp enough that every HUD and sensor flickered with unreadable error.

And then—

A ripple moved across the room. Not physical. Not magical.

Something in-between.

A scent on the air: ozone, candle smoke, perfume.

The hum of reality thickened like syrup.

“I hope you weren’t going to try this without me,” a voice purred.

All heads turned.

Zatanna Zatara stepped through the threshold as if summoned—heels clicking softly against concrete, coat trailing behind her like a shadow. Arcane embroidery shimmered subtly on the hems of her sleeves. Her eyes took in the chaos with quick, sharp interest.

She arched a brow at the orb, then at Peter. “You must be the spider-shaped multiversal knot everyone’s talking about.”

Peter blinked. “I… yeah. That’s me.”

Zatanna stepped into the circle of flickering containment runes and tilted her head. “Project Anchor,” she murmured. “More like Project Wound. This thing isn’t just unstable. It’s bleeding into the void.”

“We were trying to stabilize the fragments inside Peter,” Tim offered. “Keep the Stones’ echoes from spiraling.”

Zatanna’s expression turned grave. “You’re not just stabilizing fragments. You’re turning Peter into a beacon. One that echoes across every realm. Every version of reality.”

Bruce stepped closer. “Can it be grounded?”

Zatanna nodded slowly. “Yes. But not mechanically. You need a soul-bonded anchor. Something alive. Something present. ”

They all looked at Peter.

He didn’t flinch this time.

“…It’s already bonded to me,” he said. “I feel it. It’s like breathing backward through time. I can hear them sometimes. The ones who… didn’t make it.”

Zatanna’s eyes softened. “Then let’s give them something to follow home.”

She raised both hands. Symbols ignited along her arms, glowing with cold blue fire. She placed her palms on either side of the orb and closed her eyes.

“Everyone clear the circle,” she instructed. “This will either work… or crack open something worse.”

The Bat-Family stepped back.

Peter remained.

“I need you to stay perfectly still,” Zatanna said. “I’m going to inscribe a sigil on your soul — anchor it to this Earth, this timeline, this body. It won’t erase the other you. But it’ll hold you. And through you… them.”

She whispered the words backwards.

“Yekaw morf sraeT. Dnim morf htaeD. Eman morf noitcennoc…”

The orb flared violently.

The air thrummed with force.

Then—

Dust.

Golden, weightless dust swirled upward from the floor. At first like smoke.

Then more.

Shapes forming. Figures emerging.

Shuri. Bucky. Drax. Wanda. Stephen. Sam. T’Challa.

And at the very center—May Parker. Her form clearer than ever. Eyes full of tears. Mouth open like she was trying to speak.

Peter turned slowly, mouth trembling.

“Aunt May…”

She smiled, and this time—he heard her.

“I’m still here, sweet boy. I never left you.”

The room went completely silent.

The dusted gathered—less ash now, more whole. Translucent, but nearly solid. They stood around Peter like orbiting moons, drawn to his glow, to the sigil burning invisible beneath his skin.

“They’re tethering,” Zatanna breathed. “They’re not echoes anymore. They’re memories made real. ”

The orb pulsed once.

Then stabilized.

Bruce stepped forward, eyes locked on the readouts. “It worked.”

“No,” Peter whispered. “It’s working. They’re still coming.”

He reached forward.

And this time — when he touched May’s hand — she didn’t vanish.

She squeezed back.

Chapter 30: Resonance

Location: S.H.I.E.L.D. Research Outpost 9
Universe: Earth-199999

The interface thrummed beneath Tony’s hands — steady, rhythmic. Clean.

For the first time in what felt like months, the equations didn’t laugh in his face. No more reality-warping entropy errors. No more collapsed-phase projections. No more false echoes.

Just one clean, stable frequency pulsing back at him like a lighthouse caught through the fog.

And it was his.

Not his, exactly. Not of this universe.

But definitely his kid .

Peter.

Tony leaned back from the console, running both hands through his hair, breath escaping in a short, almost disbelieving laugh. He stood alone in the center of a chamber full of sleeping machines and blinking lights, but it felt like the room had stopped breathing entirely.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y.," he said, voice hoarse.

“Yes, boss?”

“Confirm again: frequency ID delta-seven-seven-one.”

“Confirmed. Quantum-pulse emission is steady. Temporal drift below threshold. Coordinates locked to extradimensional origin.”

“And?”

F.R.I.D.A.Y. paused.

“It’s real, Tony. And it’s him.”

He turned slowly, letting the words settle in his chest. The dread. The hope. The disbelief.

Then he crossed the room, picked up his communicator, and dialed into the encrypted Avengers network.

Location: Secure Meeting Room — Avengers Compound
One Hour Later

Tony leaned against the long table, arms crossed, barely waiting for the rest to sit before launching in.

“I found him.”

Steve blinked. “Found who?”

“Peter.” Tony’s voice was flat. Quiet. Like if he said it too loud the moment might shatter. “The kid. He’s alive.”

A beat of stunned silence. Natasha stopped mid-motion with a mug in hand. Thor froze, seated half-turned toward Bruce. Rhodes sat up straighter. Carol crossed her arms but didn’t look away. Rocket let out a low whistle.

Bruce was the first to speak. “You’re sure?”

Tony turned and brought up the projection. In the center of the table, a pulsing gold-violet waveform bloomed into view, shifting and warping like a heartbeat trapped in crystal.

“I’ve been tracking multiversal anomalies since the Snap. Hoping something, anything , would show me I didn’t just watch him die for nothing. A few weeks ago, I picked up a weak signal. At first I thought it was random. But it wasn’t. It was a frequency buried in the energy signature the Stones gave off when… you know. We lost.”

He paused.

“Then last night, it stabilized. That’s never happened. Not even once.”

“Could be a trick,” Natasha said carefully. “The Stones were chaos incarnate. Maybe it’s a phantom.”

Tony shook his head. “No. The signal has rhythm. Intelligence. He’s trying to come back. Or maybe he already did.”

Bruce frowned. “But the Stones were destroyed—at least here. The power shouldn’t exist anymore.”

“Right. Here. But what if somewhere else… one of them cracked during a Snap and didn’t disintegrate? What if that energy breathed into someone else?”

“You’re saying he has the Stones inside him?” Steve said.

“I’m saying something does. And it’s tied to Peter’s biosignature. No doubt.”

Rhodey cleared his throat. “So what now? What are you suggesting?”

Tony exhaled slowly.

“I’m suggesting we go find him.”

More silence.

This time, Carol leaned forward. “How do you know he’s not a threat now? If he’s carrying what you say he is, and he’s been alone in another world, how do we know he didn’t—change?”

Tony’s jaw tightened. “He’s Peter. And no matter what else he’s carrying, I’m not letting him stay alone out there.”

Bruce tapped the table. “Even if we build a doorway — and that’s a massive if — we don’t know what kind of world we’re stepping into. There could be temporal drift, different physics, different power balances. We may not even survive the entry point.”

“So we prep,” Natasha said. “We make it surgical. Recon first. One or two of us go. Confirm it’s him. Get him home.”

“I’m going,” Tony said, before anyone could offer alternatives.

“No debate?”

“Not unless you can find me another kid I personally dragged into a war and then watched die on a floating rock,” Tony snapped. “He’s mine to bring home.”

Steve met his eyes, then slowly nodded. “Then we do it right. Coordinated. You’re not walking through that doorway alone.”

Rocket muttered, “Another damn universe-hopping mission. Why’s it always teenagers who break the laws of physics?”

“Because they don’t know the rules yet,” Carol said.

Bruce rose to his feet. “We’ll need magical reinforcement. Multiversal travel doesn’t just use tech — not anymore. I’ll see if Strange will listen.”

“I’m sure he already knows,” Tony muttered.

Steve looked around the table. “Then we’re agreed. We find him.”

Everyone nodded.

Tony turned back toward the console and whispered, almost too quiet to hear.

“Hang on, kid. I’m coming.”

 

Location: Nullspace — The Grave Between Stars
Time: Timeless

There was no wind in the dark.

No sky. No floor. No throne.

Only ruin.

And Thanos knelt at its heart, surrounded by the shattered geometry of extinct dimensions — fractured timelines, stripped clean of motion, bound in silence. Corpses of reality drifted around him like ash in a dying fire.

He had not moved in what might have been an eternity. Not since he first heard the scream echo through the web of time. A scream not of death, but of becoming. Of something impossible.

Of life surviving when it should not have.

That name again. That boy again.

Peter Parker.

Thanos’s fingers curled around the hilt of the ruined glaive beside him — not his weapon, but the memory of one. Echo-forged from twisted strands of broken timelines, its edge could cut through memory, hope, even the past. He had reforged it for this.

The Stones were dead here. Burned from existence by his own will.

And yet...

He felt them again. Not whole, but alive. Scarred. Clinging to a soul that had no right to endure their weight. He had sensed it ripple outward — not a signal, not a whisper, but a call. The kind that rewrote laws. The kind that mocked inevitability.

He rose slowly, bones aching with cosmic burden. Not from age. From restraint.

All around him, the dark moved.

Things forgotten and monstrous stirred in the gravity of his will — remnants of war, creatures born in the folds of unmade realms. Not the armies he had once commanded with regality. No. These were the leftovers — stitched from pain, welded with time.

They had no names.

No mercy.

Just purpose.

Behind him, the Void Leviathans coiled through space like serpents in oil. Their bodies fractured, their eyes blind. Loyal.

Above him, the rift pulsed again — faint, but steady. The signal the boy couldn’t help but emit.

The Anchor, they called it now.

The mistake that should not have stabilized.

Thanos turned his head toward the lightless chasm it radiated from, a tear between possibilities. Not yet open. But weakening. Cracking.

Soon.

He placed one hand over his chest — over where power used to burn. Where fire had once flickered behind every breath. Where silence now lived.

But it would not be empty for long.

“I warned you,” he rumbled, voice echoing through hollow space. “I told the universe what must be done.”

He looked beyond the veil.

“Balance was the mercy I offered. This… is consequence.”

He opened his hand, and the glaive sang.

Behind him, the horde stirred — a thousand forms twisted by entropy and war, once lost, now found again by his command.

And far beyond them, like a candle in the wind…

Peter Parker’s soul burned too brightly.

He had inherited what he could not understand. Wielded what he was never meant to touch. Reached beyond what death had sealed.

And now?

He would answer for it.

Thanos stepped forward — one step across nullspace, and the veil trembled.

The time for waiting was over.

Elsewhere — WayneTech Sublevel, Earth-Zero

Peter staggered, a sudden chill washing through him. Zatanna caught him by the arm, steadying him mid-rune. “What did you feel?”

He swallowed hard.

“…He’s moving,” Peter whispered. “Thanos. I think he’s coming.”

The light in the orb dimmed.

And somewhere far away, something ancient took its first step toward home.

Chapter 31: The Gathering Storm

Location: Batcave — Sublevel Operations Deck
Time: 48 Hours After the Anchor Ritual

The silence after the ritual had been deceptive.

It wasn’t peace. Not really.

It was that breathless moment after the heart stops but before the sirens start. When the world pretends it’s still whole. When even time forgets to tick forward.

Peter had slept through the worst of it — nearly twelve hours under careful watch, the faint glow beneath his skin finally dulled to a low pulse. The medbay had been quiet then, machines humming in rhythm with his slowed breathing, his chest rising and falling in long, steady drags. No screams. No visions. Just the fragile weight of sleep.

They had all thought it meant they were safe.

But in Peter Parker’s life, peace was never the end of the story.

Now he stood by the reinforced glass of the observation deck, hoodie pulled tight around him like armor, face drawn with quiet dread. The city sprawled beyond the hidden cavern — dark towers against a storm-heavy sky. Wind howled faintly, a distant animal pacing at the edge of the world.

The sigil Zatanna had carved into his soul still pulsed beneath his ribs. Each breath made it hum like a tuning fork — steady, patient, waiting.

Below, the Nest came alive in practiced motion.

Tim and Barbara moved between consoles, fingers flying over League-calibrated touchscreens integrated with glowing magical glyphs. Cass danced through sparring forms, each movement controlled and dangerous, while Jason demolished a reinforced drone with brutal efficiency.

Behind soundproof glass, Bruce and Dick stood close, their conversation tight and low. Bruce’s face was stone. Dick’s was taut with something else — a knot of worry wrapped in big-brother fear.

But it was Peter who felt it first.

Not a sound. Not a vibration.

A twist in the web.

His body snapped upright, a tremor shooting through him like someone had plucked a single silken thread — the kind that spanned worlds.

He turned toward the room, face pale.

“…He’s coming.”

The words were a scalpel. Sharp. Precise. Cutting through any illusion of calm.

Dick stepped out from the booth almost instantly. “You’re sure?”

Peter’s voice shook despite him trying to control it. “The Anchor didn’t just stabilize me. It called him. Like a beacon. Like prey.”

Zatanna’s arrival came like the answer to a question nobody wanted to ask. The air shifted—temperature dropping, light bending—and she stepped through the shadowed archway, her coat fluttering behind her, eyes already glowing with magic’s charge.

“I warned you,” she said. “The ritual held you, Peter—but the Stones aren’t quiet. They’re echoes. And the soul… it sings to its maker.”

She looked at him with something that was almost pity. “And you shine like a lighthouse during a storm.”

Barbara snapped her head toward the rising readings. “If he’s tracking it, what’s the range?”

Zatanna’s reply was immediate. “Infinite.”

Jason’s jaw tightened. “So we’ve got what — days?”

Peter’s eyes glazed faintly gold. “We have hours. Maybe less.”

Bruce didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward, cloak sweeping behind him, voice colder than steel.

“Bring up League Channel Alpha.”

The lights dimmed. A low harmonic thrum echoed through the Nest. The central schematic table glowed — pulsing once before splitting open into a full spherical projection. Seven transmission nodes lit up along its perimeter.

Then the faces appeared:

• Superman, arms crossed, worry deep in his brow.
  
  
• Wonder Woman, tall, poised, her gaze already assessing.
  
  
• The Flash, caught mid-bite of an energy bar, blinking.
  
  
• John Stewart, Green Lantern, armored and scowling.
  
  
• Aquaman, leaning on his trident, rainwater glinting off his armor.
  
  
• Hawkwoman, unreadable beneath her helmet.
  
  
• Martian Manhunter, ethereal, already scanning the energy in the room.
  
  

Bruce stepped forward without ceremony.

“We are calling a high-priority assembly. A multiversal incursion is underway. Gotham is the epicenter. The threat’s name is Thanos.”

A beat of stunned silence.

Then Clark leaned in. “Did you say… Thanos?”

Zatanna moved beside Bruce. “A warlord from Peter’s original world. One who wielded the six Infinity Stones — and used them to erase half of all life in his universe.”

Then Peter stepped into the light.

His shoulders were squared. His voice, though quiet, never shook.

“I watched them die. My friends. My family. I tried to stop it. I failed.”

Even Barry stopped chewing.

Peter continued, gaze unwavering. “Then I… I snapped. I don’t know if it worked. I don’t know what happened. But the Stones didn’t destroy me. They pulled me here. I’ve been carrying them ever since.”

“You what?” John asked, tension sharp.

“I didn’t ask for this,” Peter snapped. “But it happened. They fused with me. I became something else.”

Diana stepped forward in her node. “And you believe he’s followed you?”

“He’s not just following,” Peter said. “He’s hunting.”

Zatanna added, “He doesn’t want conquest anymore. He wants Peter. The Stones inside him. And if he gets them…”

She didn’t finish the sentence.

Bruce did. “Then the multiverse falls.”

No one laughed.

Clark nodded tightly. “We’ll shift Watchtower sensors to monitor dimensional thresholds.”

John added, “The Corps will sweep incoming anomalies.”

Then Diana turned back to Peter. “What do you need?”

Peter’s voice cracked slightly. But he didn’t falter.

“I couldn’t save my world. But maybe I can save yours.”

It was Clark who spoke again, gently: “Then we’ll stand with you.”

The transmission cut.

Silence returned.

But not peace.

Peter turned slowly—and found Dick standing beside him, arms crossed, but eyes soft.

“You okay?” Dick asked.

Peter opened his mouth. Then stopped.

“No,” he said honestly. “But I’m trying to be.”

Dick nodded once. Then walked to the observation window beside him.

“You feel him coming?”

Peter nodded. “Like a storm. In my teeth. In my bones. Every time I breathe, I feel his hand getting closer.”

Dick leaned forward, elbows on the railing. “You remember when I told you you’re not alone?”

“Yeah.”

“I meant it.” He looked over. “You don’t have to carry the world on your back this time. You’ve got all of us.”

Peter swallowed hard. “I keep waiting for someone to say this was a mistake. That I’m too dangerous.”

“Too dangerous?” Dick snorted. “You held off becoming a god just to protect us. That’s not dangerous. That’s what makes you family.”

A silence passed.

Peter whispered, “Thanks, Dad.”

Dick blinked — startled.

But then he smiled.

And he placed a steady hand on Peter’s shoulder.

“Let’s go build a world worth saving.”

Later

The war room pulsed with layered energy — raw, unseen, alive.

Above the circular schematic table, a 3D map of Gotham hovered in slow rotation, laced with glowing lines of sigils and code. Tear vectors flickered crimson across the city’s map, blinking with growing urgency. Above and below the surface, everything hummed — like the city itself was holding its breath.

The Anchor Defense Grid , now fused with League-grade tech and Zatanna’s arcane matrices, shimmered with unstable beauty. Magic and logic bound together in a lattice of gold, violet, and green — the same colors that lived beneath Peter Parker’s skin.

Around the room, the Bat-Family moved with purpose.

Tim Drake adjusted calibration lines at the grid’s interface, his fingers flying across holographic keys.

Barbara Gordon ran diagnostics from her chair, Watchtower uplinks feeding psychic echoes and quantum dissonance in real time.

Cassandra Cain stalked the perimeter silently, marking breach zones with chalk glyphs, every motion precise, every muscle coiled.

Jason Todd sat on a bench, calmly oiling an array of weapons spread out before him — blades, batons, firearms — each modified for the kind of enemy that existed beyond flesh.

Stephanie Brown leaned on the railing beside Cass, chewing bubblegum she wasn’t supposed to have and flipping through a tablet with field notes. “You know, for being dead people, these projections are extremely dramatic.”

Damian Wayne stood off-center near the Anchor’s containment housing, arms crossed, posture tense. His expression was unreadable, but his gaze never left Peter.

And Peter?

Peter stood still.

Frozen before the orb. The anchor pulsed like a second heart beneath his ribs. The sigil burned faintly through his shirt — not visible, but everyone could feel it.

Then—
The air behind him rippled.

Like reality was trying to remember how to breathe.

Peter turned.

A shadow flickered at the edge of the war table. Then another. And another.

They formed slowly. Pieces of light reconstructing memory. Fuzzy outlines flickered into recognizable shapes.

1. 
   Ned.
   T’Challa.
   Strange.
   Vision. Wanda. May.

They were back. Not as ghosts. Not illusions.
Something else.

Solidifying.

Stephanie’s jaw dropped. “Okay… that’s not in the briefing packet.”

Tim stepped back, voice low. “They’re… real.”

Peter’s breath hitched. “They’re closer,” he whispered. “The Anchor — it’s tethering them. Not just to me. To here.”

Zatanna strode in from the corridor, her eyes already glowing. Her voice was soft — reverent.
“You’ve begun to reweave the dead.”

Damian narrowed his eyes. “That shouldn't be possible.”

“No,” Zatanna agreed. “It shouldn’t. Unless what’s in him… is rewriting what is.”

Cass took a step forward, her gaze locked on the figures.
She whispered: “Hope.”

Alfred Pennyworth appeared at the far end of the room, a tray of tea and sandwiches balanced perfectly in his hands despite the uncanny display. He did not flinch. He looked only at Peter.

“I believe, Master Parker,” Alfred said calmly, “that your guests may be in need of a seat. Or a soul, should they find one again.”

Peter swallowed hard. His voice came out hoarse.

“They’re finding their way back.”

Dick moved to his side again, shoulder to shoulder. His voice was quiet, but firm.

“And we’re going to help them get here.”

Jason stood, sheathing his knife. “Then we’d better win this war.”

Barbara touched a control node. The figures — still half-light, half-memory — pulsed with a flicker of recognition.

May reached toward Peter, hand trembling, as though she knew him. Wanted to reach him.
Then flickered out again.

“They’re not ready,” Zatanna murmured. “Not fully. But they’re close. And with every breath you take, Peter… you pull them further from the void.”

Alfred moved to the edge of the schematic table, setting the tray down with grace. He glanced around at the grim, awestruck faces.

“Then I suggest we ensure there is a world waiting for them,” he said. “One worth coming home to.”

Stephanie exhaled shakily. “Did the dead just… RSVP?”

Tim smirked faintly. “With a glowing, soul-fracturing, interdimensional lightshow, yes.”

Damian’s eyes hadn’t left the Anchor. “We need more containment nodes. Reinforce sigils around the city’s ley lines.”

Cass nodded silently. Already moving.

Peter stared at the dusted forms — his mother figure. His best friend. The king who taught him poise. The sorcerer who gave everything. The girl he loved more than his own heartbeat.

They flickered…
Then faded again.

But slower this time.

“Then we hold the line,” Peter said.

No one laughed.
No one questioned it.

They simply began moving.

Because now…
Now it was not just Earth at stake.
It was memory.
It was love.
It was resurrection.

And far beyond the stars—
In a dimension cracking under the weight of ambition—
Thanos heard it.

He heard the pulse of return.
And he roared.

Chapter 32: Quiet Before Collapse

Location: The BatCave – Sublevel Operations Deck

The hum of preparation buzzed through the steel bones of the Nest.

It had been two days since Zatanna completed the ritual. Two days since the sigil was etched into Peter’s soul. Two days of waking in a different kind of silence — not the silence of safety, but the kind that hung before a scream.

Outside, Gotham held its breath. The clouds had stopped moving. The air was too still.

Inside, the war room lived.

The Bat-Family had converted the entire sublevel into a multi-spectrum defense grid: spell-inked wards crawled like ivy across every wall and steel beam, glowing softly in hues only the magically attuned could perceive. Watchtower servers lined the eastern alcove, blinking with constant data loops as multiversal tremors registered across dimensional frequencies.

Across every screen, a phrase pulsed in dull crimson:

Dimensional Stability: Uncertain

Peter stood at the center of the storm.

He didn’t fidget. He didn’t joke. He no longer wore the soft clothes of a guest but the armor of someone preparing for war. The tactical weave was reinforced with fragments of vibranium mesh, spell-threaded Kevlar, and arcane-laced stitching that faintly pulsed over his ribs.

Beneath it all, the Anchor glyph still shimmered beneath his skin — a sigil that no one could see but that every being in creation could feel .

The weight of it never stopped humming.

A clink echoed nearby as Jason reassembled his rifle, every piece etched with alien alloy scavenged from League caches. Each movement was muscle memory. A dance he didn’t need to think about.

“Thanagarian steel should give me one or two hits on something the size of a god,” he muttered. “After that? We improvise.”

Across the chamber, Cass was crouched low over the reinforced flooring, finishing the final arc of a combat-grade containment seal.

She looked up at Peter and nodded. “Ley line intersections are synced.”

Above, Tim flicked through scans on three overlapping screens. “Tripwire hexes online. Tied into the Watchtower’s failsafe grid. If anything even sneezes in our direction, we’ll know.”

Barbara stood beside him, her face lit by shifting data windows. Her voice was calm but clipped.

“There’s movement. Small fluctuations in subspace. Nothing consistent. But something’s… circling.”

In a corner shadowed by metal support beams, Damian honed the edge of his curved blade with careful, methodical strokes. “If this ‘Mad Titan’ makes it through the veil,” he said without looking up, “we will need more than a warning.”

Peter’s voice was quiet. “He won’t come alone.”

That drew the attention of the room. Silence settled again, heavier this time.

At the central holotable, a holographic map of Gotham bloomed into life. It rotated slowly, rings of energy glowing around critical points — hospitals, shelters, ley line convergences.

Zatanna appeared in a shimmer of cold air and arcane light, stepping into the projection like it welcomed her.

“We’ve embedded the wards,” she said softly. “All across the city. The bones of Gotham are wrapped in sigils older than the stars. It won’t stop him — but it might buy us minutes.”

“Sometimes,” said a low voice from the stairs, “that’s all the difference.”

Bruce emerged from above, his armor half-stripped, gauntlet still clasped to one hand, streaks of soot and cold still clinging to his collar.

He stepped beside the others, gaze locked on the schematic.

“We’re not going to defeat him with brute force,” Bruce said. “This is about containment. Stalling. Holding the line until we can turn the board.”

Peter looked at him, voice tight. “And if we can’t?”

Bruce didn’t blink. “Then we make sure what comes after us has a chance.”

The tension was broken — strangely — by the arrival of Alfred .

He swept into the room with all the gravity of a king’s steward, a silver tray in hand: a tea set, folded cloth napkins, and carefully arranged protein bars.

“You’ll forgive me, Master Peter,” he said, placing the tray down with elegant precision, “but I’ve been feeding Graysons and Waynes for long enough to recognize the symptoms of an impending collapse. Sit. Eat. Even warriors sharpen their blades after rest.”

Peter gave a faint, grateful smile. “Thank you, Alfred.”

He took the tea. Warmth settled into his hands. For the first time in hours, he sat.

The room returned to motion — quiet, efficient, charged with the kind of energy that came before a storm broke the horizon.

But Peter kept staring at the flickering display above the table — the Anchor core hovering in the center, contained by both science and sorcery.

His thoughts were no longer anchored to this world.

After a long moment, he broke the silence.

“…We need to activate it.”

Tim turned from his console. “The Anchor?”

Peter nodded. “We stabilized it. Contained it. But it’s still a bridge. A signal.”

Jason frowned. “You want to open the door?”

“No,” Peter said. “Not fully. Just… look through it. A window. A glimpse into what’s left of my world. We can calibrate the lens to resonate at the frequency of the Anchor’s origin point.”

Cass stepped closer. “To find survivors?”

Peter’s voice was tight. “To see if there’s anything to save.”

Zatanna moved beside him, watching him with a more careful gaze. “It’s not just that. You need to see it. Don’t you?”

Peter nodded. “I’ve been carrying the grief of something I never confirmed. I watched them all vanish, but I don’t know what came next. If I can see it — even just for a moment — maybe we can help.”

Bruce stepped to the console.

“What do you need?”

“Energy,” Peter said. “A controlled burst through the Anchor core. Magic to stabilize the connection, tech to filter what we see through memory resonance. We don’t cross over — we just look.”

Barbara was already typing. “I can reroute shield power to the projector. We’ll get one clean pulse before the system needs to cool.”

Zatanna looked to Bruce. “I can handle the containment.”

Bruce nodded. “Then do it.”

The team moved.

Even Damian.

Even Jason.

Peter watched as they all worked, all moved — because he asked them to.

Because they believed.

Not in the Anchor.

In him .

Elsewhere, Beyond the Veil

In a realm with no sky and no floor, the void rippled.

A single flicker of golden light pulsed like a heartbeat.

And far, far away, something vast turned its gaze toward the Anchor’s trembling glow.

Thanos smiled in the dark.

The web had begun to shine again.

And soon, he would reach through and claim what was his.

Across Gotham — The Other Side of the City

Gotham should have been quiet.

After all, the Bat was occupied. The Nest pulsed with League magic and off-world tech. Every rooftop had eyes, and the city's heart was locked in a holding breath. But below that — beneath the concrete veins and forgotten rails, under rusted manholes and in sewers paved with blood — something had begun to pulse.

A sickness.
A presence.
Older than gods, hungrier than demons.

It started as a tremor. A pressure . No sound. No voice. Just a vibration, like a heartbeat buried in stone. It bled through the crumbling ruins of Old Arkham , where shadows clung like scars.

Down in the cracked foundations, Jervis Tetch blinked twice, his hand still clutching a broken teacup. The rim had long since cut his fingers. He hadn’t noticed. But he noticed this . A ripple through his mind. A whisper louder than thought. The walls bled Alice’s name in red, and for once, it wasn’t his madness doing the painting.

In a sealed chamber deeper still, Dr. Jonathan Crane stood motionless beside his shattered mask. His hands trembled — not from withdrawal or lack of toxin. From awe. Fear. Something had invaded his nightmares, rewritten them from the inside. Something not born of his gas. Something ancient. Something real.

He whispered into the dark, “What are you?”

There was no answer.

But he dropped the syringe anyway.

Elsewhere, across the east end, in the ruins of what was once a criminal cathedral — stone and stained glass defaced by years of blood and dust — Bane sat alone. Breathing. Steady. Purposeful.

He felt the change long before he understood it.

The pressure curled around his spine like a venom of its own — no hose, no mask, no pump. Just raw will pouring into him from nowhere. The kind of hunger he hadn’t known since Peña Duro, when gods had failed him and rage had fed him instead.

He rose from his meditation and cracked his knuckles.

Something had called him.

And Bane never ignored strength when it whispered.

Even Oswald Cobblepot , clutching his cigar with shaking fingers in the back office of the Iceberg Lounge, looked up from his ledgers as the power grid flickered. He didn’t need magic to know something was wrong . He simply felt it — like the market was shifting and the world was no longer for sale.

In every dark corner of Gotham, its monsters stirred.

The Riddler sat in a library, surrounded by notes he hadn’t written, diagrams that weren’t his. But he understood them. Somehow. Knew that if he followed their angles far enough, they’d lead him to something bigger than Batman. Bigger than puzzles. Bigger than answers.

“They’re changing the rules,” he muttered. “But I’ve always loved a good cheat.”

And in the skeletal remains of a derelict chapel in Crime Alley, far from light, the laughter began.

The Joker .

He wasn’t smiling when it started. He wasn’t even awake. But when it hit him — like a gust of fire through the marrow — his spine arched, his lips split, and his eyes snapped open.

He laughed until his ribs hurt. Until his voice broke. Until he was choking on it.

And then he listened .

To the thing inside the silence.

The pressure grew — hotter now. Not words. Not even sound. Just meaning pressed directly into their skulls like a needle into the eye.

“He is here.”
“You will crack the world open from within.”
“You will distract.”
“You will corrupt.”
“You will consume.”
“And I… will harvest.”

None of the rogues questioned it. They didn’t call each other. They didn’t gather.

They simply moved .

Like a virus spreading through the blood.

Scarecrow vanished into the alleys with a new toxin brewing in his mind — one that didn’t need chemicals to work.

Bane began preparing his followers in the shadows of Burnside — no speeches, no bluster. Just war.

The Riddler turned on every encrypted channel he had and started feeding Gotham contradictions.

Cobblepot shifted his business from weapons to something darker. Influence. Leverage. Chaos.

And Joker ?

Joker painted a smile on his face — a real one, carved deep.

He didn't need orders.

He just needed a stage.

And chaos?

Chaos was coming.

Chapter 33: The Thread Between Worlds

Location: The BatCave — Arcane Core Sublevel

The chamber was alive with motion.

Arcane sigils pulsed on the floor like breathing veins, glowing a deep cerulean interlaced with streaks of gold and violet. Surrounding the Anchor Core were layers of reinforced circuitry, hard-light projection rings, and quantum-stabilizing rods humming just above the threshold of meltdown.

Peter stood at the center, armored in tactical weave now overlaid with embedded runes — subtle, etched into the fabric like veins across skin. At his chest, where the sigil Zatanna had bound to his soul glowed faintly, he felt it thrum — not pain, not fear — but resonance.

Balance.

Across from him, Zatanna floated just inches above the ground, her eyes filled with ancient fire. Behind her, the rest of the Bat-Family stood ready: Tim monitoring waveform diagnostics, Barbara keeping temporal telemetry stable, Cass and Jason guarding the chamber’s threshold, Damian sharpening his focus more than his blades, and Dick — standing nearest Peter — a silent, steady presence.

They had rehearsed this moment a dozen times. A mirror ritual. A peek beyond the veil.

But tonight, Peter wasn’t just looking.

Tonight, he was reaching.

“Ready?” Zatanna asked, her voice strangely calm amid the storm of magic and machine.

Peter nodded once. “Let's make the call.”

She began the incantation — but not alone this time.

Peter had memorized the words.

“Ytinifni fo htrae, niamer fo thgil,
Nwod etirdneper, emoh ot thgir—
Nehw dnal fo tsap nihtiw lies peoh,
Evas lliw live morf daerps eht hcihw…”

Each word rippled through the chamber, vibrating the very frame of the BatCave’s reinforced sublevel. The Anchor Core flared — tendrils of golden light arcing into the walls, the floor, even into the veins beneath Peter’s skin.

And then—

It happened.

A harmonic shift.

A tone Peter hadn’t heard since the moment he snapped in his old world — low, metallic, deeply human.

A voice.

“Anchor signal acquired. Cross-dimensional tether detected. Redirecting resonance field...”

The voice wasn’t Zatanna’s.

It was F.R.I.D.A.Y.

Peter’s breath caught.

He looked down at the Anchor Core — and saw something new. Something impossible.

Another frequency.

A beacon.

One he knew like breath and blood.

Tony Stark.

Location: Elsewhere — Earth-199999, Deep Space Monitoring Lab, Earth Orbit

At the edge of Tony Stark’s lab, the stabilized rift detection system screamed to life.

Lights strobed. Energy peaked. And on the screen—

ANCHOR LINK DETECTED.

Tony, pale, unshaven, and halfway through another sleepless shift, froze. His tablet slid from his hand.

“No way,” he breathed.

The signal was unmistakable.

Peter’s frequency.

Alive.

Not just alive. Reaching.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., lock onto it.”

“Already did, boss. Cross-phase stable. Dimensional resonance: 89.7%. Doorway possible.”

Tony’s eyes burned.

He tapped into the primary projector, hands flying across controls.

“If that’s really you, kid… then let’s build a door.”

Location: The BatCave — Simultaneously

The Anchor Core shrieked, spinning violently. Circuits began to overload. Magic surged against tech like oil and water until something — someone — stabilized it.

Zatanna hovered in place, whispering counter-rhythms. Tim called out, “The anchor’s shifting polarity — someone’s pulling back!”

Peter’s hands burned. “It’s not pulling! It’s syncing!”

The light above the Anchor Core coalesced into a vertical rift — a shimmer like heat rising off pavement.

Within the tear, Peter saw it.

A lab. Familiar. Stark-designed.

And on the other side — older, sleepless, but unmistakably alive:

Tony Stark.

His holographic eyes widened, and his voice cracked through the distortion:

“Peter?”

Peter’s heart nearly stopped.

“Mr. Stark,” he whispered. “You’re real.”

So did Tony.

“You little idiot,” he said, voice thick. “You’re alive.”

The rift stabilized — just for a moment — enough for the rest of the Bat-Family to see the ghost of a man they’d heard only in Peter’s fragmented stories.

Dick stepped forward. “Is that—?”

“Yeah,” Peter said softly. “That’s my mentor.”

Tony blinked, studying the silhouettes. “And… you’ve made some new friends.”

Zatanna reached out toward the energy lines, adjusting the spell’s weave. “This connection won’t last long. Not yet.”

Peter turned to the team, chest rising fast, energy dancing across his fingertips.

“We did it,” he said. “We made a door.”

Tim stepped up to the console, stabilizing the waveform. “We can use this. Coordinate. If we keep the field reinforced, we might even be able to transfer people—”

Peter’s eyes widened.

“Or bring the dusted home.”

Zatanna’s face turned grim. “Not yet. The structure isn’t ready. Any pressure, and it’ll collapse. But… it’s possible.”

Tony, voice clearer now, broke in again.

“Pete, if you’re hearing this — if we’re both hearing each other — then that means Thanos knows, too.”

Peter nodded. “He’s on his way.”

“Then build defenses. Reinforce the bridge. I’m doing the same here. When this door opens wide, it’s going to bring the best… and the worst.”

The light flickered.

The connection wavered.

Peter stared at his old mentor, tears in his eyes.

“I’m coming home,” he said.

And Tony smiled. “Then I’ll be waiting.”

The rift collapsed.

Darkness returned.

Silence.

Only the steady hum of the Anchor Core remained.

But no one in the room breathed quite the same.

Not after seeing the impossible.

Not after feeling hope again.

Peter turned slowly.

“We need to finish the door,” he said. “Not just for me. For all of them.”

And behind him, the Bat-Family stood ready.

Because now?

Now they knew it could be done.

Location: Gotham City — Multiple Sectors

The sky didn’t crack.

It peeled.

A slow groan of pressure bent against the storm clouds that had lingered over Gotham for days. Wind shrieked through alleys like it had a name to scream, and down in the blood-soaked veins of the city, something terrible began to stir.

The villains didn’t announce themselves.
They simply acted.

East End – 10:47 PM

The first explosion tore through the remains of an abandoned courthouse.

A shockwave of color and debris burst outward as Jervis Tetch —the Mad Hatter—strolled from the flames with a cane in hand and a razor-thin smile twisting his lips. Behind him, civilians staggered with hollow eyes, minds strung like marionettes under invisible threads.

“Tick-tock,” Jervis whispered. “Time to play.”

He tipped his hat, and the entranced crowd surged into the street.

Otisburg – 10:52 PM

Near the waterfront, a wave of panic rippled as Jonathan Crane emerged from the sewer mist with a prototype dispersal unit strapped to his back. He wore his mask like a crown.

The new gas wasn’t just fear.

It was memory.

“Let them relive it all,” he rasped into the wind. “Let the city choke on what it buried.”

Screams began moments later—whole blocks of people tearing at their skin, reliving every mistake, every nightmare.

The Narrows – 10:55 PM

On the prison transport bridge, a convoy exploded mid-crossing. Armored trucks flipped. Flames licked the sky.

From the wreckage, Bane rose.

He wasn’t alone.

A dozen Blackgate escapees spilled behind him—beasts and monsters loyal only to pain. Bane adjusted his gauntlets, flexed his arms, and growled toward the night.

“This city has become flaccid with peace,” he said, voice low and venomous. “Time to break its spine again.”

The BatCave – 11:02 PM

Peter didn’t feel the first explosion.

He felt the web tremble .

From the command deck, the city schematic erupted in alerts. Multiple sectors flashing red, pulsing with emergency pings: mass hysteria, fires, hostages, gas dispersals.

Tim’s fingers danced over the console. “We’ve got coordinated hits. Mad Hatter in East End. Scarecrow in Otisburg. Possible Arkham escapees in The Narrows—Bane leading them.”

Cass was already sliding into her suit. “Diversion.”

“They’re too spread out,” Barbara muttered. “This isn’t random. Someone’s playing conductor.”

Dick cursed and looked to Bruce. “It’s a trap. They’re pulling us away from the Nest.”

Bruce nodded grimly. “And from the Anchor.”

Peter stepped forward. “It’s Thanos.”

The room quieted.

“He reached them. Twisted them. Gave them purpose .”

Jason cracked his knuckles, already donning gear. “Great. Gotham’s worst as puppets for a space warlord. That’s new.”

Zatanna appeared in the doorway, eyes glowing faintly. “He’s accelerating. The city’s a fuse, and the Anchor’s the match.”

Barbara looked over at Peter. “If you’re right—he’s going to make us choose. Protect Gotham… or protect the door.”

Peter’s jaw clenched. “We don’t choose. We do both.”

“Then we divide,” Bruce said. “Jason, Cass, Damian — Narrows and East End. Shut down the chaos, minimize civilian casualties. Tim and Barbara — coordination, surveillance, comms. Zatanna and I will reinforce the Anchor chamber and wards.”

“And me?” Peter asked, already knowing.

Dick rested a hand on his shoulder.

“You stay at the core.”

Peter nodded. “If the door opens, I have to be there.”

Tim's voice cut in. “If they breach the Anchor chamber, it’s over. Door collapses. Maybe worse.”

Jason loaded a clip into his rifle. “Then they won’t breach it.”

Cass vanished into shadow, already moving.

Damian met Peter’s eyes on the way out. “Try not to die, Parker.”

Peter smirked. “Back at you, demon-spawn.”

And then, they were gone—fanning out into the burning veins of Gotham.

Anchor Chamber – 11:24 PM

Peter sat cross-legged in the center of the runic circle, breath slow, pulse steady. The Anchor Core before him glowed brighter than ever — fed now not just by energy, but intent . The glyph on his chest throbbed in perfect rhythm.

Above him, the walls shimmered — sigils alive, arcane barriers flickering like stars trying not to go out.

Zatanna stood by, her hands raised, holding the layers of the veil in place. Bruce monitored perimeter breaches from behind reinforced glass, his voice crisp over the comms.

“East End containment in progress.”
“Otisburg still unstable. Crane’s gas is spreading faster than expected.”
“Narrows… Bane is still unchecked.”

Peter closed his eyes.

He could hear the world cracking.

He could hear Thanos laughing.

And somewhere in the heart of the storm, the doorway began to pulse.

Chapter 34: Gotham Bleeds in Color

Location: Gotham City — Multiple Hot Zones
Time: 11:31 PM

The Narrows: Fire and Venom

The air reeked of burning oil and blood.

Jason Todd landed on the cracked pavement with a thunderous crunch , scattering glass. His boots skidded against blood-streaked concrete as he rolled beneath a swinging metal pipe. The brute behind it — a towering Arkham escapee — snarled through broken teeth before Jason spun and shot him in the knee .

"Stay down, Chuckles."

Beside him, Cass moved like smoke through gunfire. She didn’t speak. Didn’t breathe. Just moved — one second behind a charging thug, the next behind him, driving her elbow into the nerve cluster behind his ear. The man crumpled mid-step.

They were outnumbered ten to one.

Didn’t matter.

Jason shoved two new clips into his belt. “I count thirty more between us and Bane.”

Cass nodded once. Her eyes burned beneath the shadow of her cowl. Blood on her knuckles. A fracture in her rib.

Jason smirked. “Still with me?”

Cass smiled faintly. “Always.”

Then they ran into the fire.

Otisburg: Nightmares Unbound

It wasn’t just gas anymore.

It was memory .

Tim dropped onto the rooftop just in time to watch a woman claw at her own arms, shrieking about flames that weren’t there. A man beside her begged for forgiveness, kneeling to a ghost only he could see.

Scarecrow’s toxin had evolved. The Anchor’s residual psychic energy had amplified it.

“Damn it…” Tim whispered, fumbling with his mask's filtration seals.

Barbara’s voice echoed in his comms. “Drone dispersers at Sector 4. Can you hack the payload remotely?”

“Working on it.” Tim traced the signal to a nearby ventilation grid, rewiring a comm-linked override into his gauntlet. “This isn’t just fear, Babs. It’s guilt. It’s lived pain .”

Scarecrow’s voice — crisp and cold — slithered over the rooftops like a sermon:

“Why fight the inevitable, little birds? You’ve all buried something. You all fear yourselves. ”

Tim’s hands paused.

His parents. The League. The Mirrorverse.

He felt it now — those moments, curled into his lungs like broken glass.

Barbara's voice snapped him back. “Tim! You with me?”

He exhaled sharply. “Yeah. Routing the signal through the relay now—”

A surge of static. Then: BOOM.

The rooftop shook.

Scarecrow had seen him.

“Tim?!”

“Still here…” Tim muttered, staggering upright. “He’s close.”

And so was the toxin.

East End: Ticking Teeth and Glass Eyes

Damian Wayne hit the alley wall hard.

His sword clattered beside him as enthralled civilians swarmed the street in synchronized precision. Their faces were blank. Hollow. Their eyes mirrored each other like mirrors stacked in eternity.

A voice purred from the rooftop: “Isn’t it beautiful? A world that listens. ”

Jervis Tetch danced along the edge of a billboard, his cane spinning, his teeth catching moonlight like fangs.

“Free will is such a burden ,” he mused.

Damian spat blood and rose, blade back in hand. “Your mind games don’t work on me, freak.”

“Oh, dear boy, but I’m not aiming at you,” Tetch giggled. “You are simply the audience.”

The crowd turned, eyes locked.

Damian cursed.

They rushed him — twenty blank-eyed puppets with knives and tire irons.

And Tetch laughed.

Watchtower Relay Hub: Command Deck

Barbara’s fingers flew across keys as Watchtower alerts pinged in real-time.

Cass and Jason—still active.
Tim—injured, but mobile.
Damian—losing ground.
Scans flickered with instability. The city’s psychic pressure was rising.

She looked to Bruce, who stood with arms crossed, watching Peter and Zatanna stabilize the Anchor across a live feed.

"This is a coordinated break," she said. "He’s softening us up."

Bruce nodded. “And when we’re scattered... that’s when he strikes.”

Barbara’s fingers tightened on the edge of the console. “We need more eyes in the field.”

And then the comms… shifted.

A laugh echoed across every open channel.

Not digital. Not static.

Wet. Real. Alive.

Jason froze in the middle of a counter-blow.
Tim jerked upright, pupils dilating.
Cass paused mid-spin.
Damian faltered, sword halfway through a swing.

The voice danced between them:

“Miss me, Bats?”

Peter’s eyes snapped open from his meditative state.

“What the hell was that?”

Zatanna paled.

Bruce looked up from the console, every muscle drawn tight.

“He’s back.”

Peter’s breath hitched. “Who?”

Bruce’s eyes went dark.

“The Joker.”

And far below, in a forgotten carnival on Gotham’s edge —
where no man had walked in years —
a spotlight flickered to life.

And the laughter didn't stop.

Location: Gotham City – Various Sectors
Time: 12:04 AM

The BatCave — Anchor Room

The laughter still echoed.

Not over the comms anymore, but from something deeper. Something invasive. It bled from the walls, like the city itself had started to breathe it in. Peter stood frozen, his palms flat against the edge of the Anchor interface, watching the residual magic pulse faintly across the projection of Gotham. The sigils shimmered unnaturally.

“He’s not just broadcasting,” Zatanna said, her voice tight. “He’s using the Anchor field like a conduit. Amplifying himself. Something else is feeding him.”

Bruce didn’t flinch. “Thanos.”

Zatanna nodded grimly. “He’s a monster. But Joker… he’s a virus. And Thanos just handed him a megaphone.”

Peter swallowed hard. “We need to shut it down. Just temporarily—until we re-stabilize the field and close Joker out.”

“We can’t,” Tim said over the comms. “The Anchor’s bound to Peter’s soul now. Pulling the signal might do more damage than good.”

Bruce looked at Peter. “Then we end this the old-fashioned way.”

Otisburg — Rooftops

Tim sprinted across the rooftops, knees aching, cape catching on jagged metal. Scarecrow had vanished into the alleys below, leaving only warped victims and clouds of burning gas behind.

“Babs, any word on Joker?” he asked.

Barbara’s voice was clipped, urgent. “The laugh originated from the old amusement mile district. Signal points suggest he’s reactivated part of the old funhouse grid.”

Tim skidded to a stop. “Isn’t that—”

“Condemned? Blown to hell? Yes. And now somehow radiating Anchor residue. Peter’s energy is leaking there.”

East End – Cobblestone Narrows

Damian drove his sword into the wall and vaulted upward, landing atop a crumbling chimney as Tetch’s minions fell into chaos behind him. His breath was ragged. His shoulder bled freely, a ragged tear in his sleeve. He didn’t stop moving.

“Tim, confirm Joker's location.”

“Old amusement mile,” came the response. “It’s pulsing like a heartbeat.”

Damian ground his teeth. “Then I’ll cut it out.”

The BatCave – Anchor Room

Peter stood before the orb — still glowing, still whispering — but something in it had changed. The image of Gotham rotated slowly above the table, and from its center, a pulse of red light throbbed outward in a slow spiral.

A heartbeat.

Not his.

Zatanna pressed her fingers to a sigil along the edge. “He’s hijacked part of the emotional resonance — not the core Anchor itself, but the tether between Peter and the city.”

Bruce turned to Peter. “Can you feel it?”

Peter’s voice was quiet. “It’s not just him. I’m… hearing them. The villains. All of them. Their madness is bleeding into me.”

Zatanna placed a hand on his shoulder. “Then we cut off the source before it fuses.”

Bruce barked into the comms. “All units — converge on Amusement Mile. Joker is the node. We end this now.”

Amusement Mile – Perimeter

Jason stared up at the gates.

They were cracked, rusted open — smeared with paint that still looked fresh. A flickering neon sign buzzed overhead, casting eerie light across the shattered street.

He clicked his mic. “Guess who brought party favors?”

Cass landed beside him, silent but ready.

Damian emerged from the alley shadows, dragging a body behind him. “Tetch won’t be a problem. He’s in pieces.”

Tim joined them from above, mask already filtering the air. “Scarecrow’s retreating. Probably regrouping.”

The gates creaked.

Then a light flicked on.

Then another.

And another.

Like the whole park — closed, gutted, long-dead — was waking up just for them.

Peter landed last, breath shallow, eyes flickering faintly gold. “I can feel him.”

Cass moved beside him. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Peter shook his head. “I have to. If he’s using the Anchor’s echo, I’m already connected. I might be the only one who can shut him out.”

Jason grunted. “Then stay close.”

They passed through the gates as a new sound began to rise — slow, mechanical music. A carousel. Rusted gears trying to remember what joy used to sound like.

And then… from every speaker, every broken animatronic’s throat, every corner of the dead carnival—

“Welcome, Bats and Boys and Spiders too!
I’ve got a story just for you…”

The Joker’s voice was everywhere now.

And in the center of the park, beneath a spotlight, a crooked chair sat waiting.

Occupied.

Smiling.

Waiting.

Joker tipped his hat.

And said, “Let’s talk.”

Chapter 35: The Signal and the Spark

Location: Earth-199999 – Avengers Compound (Under Reconstruction)
Time: 3:42 AM, 143 Days After the Snap

The numbers never stopped moving.

Rows and rows of them—shifting, recalibrating, pulsing with chaotic logic—raced across every inch of holographic display as if mocking Tony’s stubborn grip on order.

The room still bore scars from that day. Ceiling beams twisted like ribs cracked by a god’s hand. The faint scorch of something that had been holy and then unmade.

But Tony Stark had set up his war desk in the ruin. Because there was nowhere else to be. No tower, no team, no Peter. Just half a universe… missing.

And yet—tonight, something breathed.

The dimensional tether that he’d almost abandoned last week—the one that didn’t follow any known quantum curve, that bled cosmic interference like a faulty arc reactor—was pulsing. Not erratically. Not randomly.

Rhythmically.
Deliberately.

A call.

Tony’s breath caught in his throat. His fingers, stained with grease and solder, hovered above the interface like they were afraid to touch it and make it disappear.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.,” he said, barely above a whisper.

“Yes, boss?” came her soft response.

“Run it again. Confirm signal origin. Is this… is this an echo? A Snap-backscatter? Something cosmic leaking through the quantum decay?”

A pause. The longest second of his life.

Then:
“Signal confirmed. It’s external. Originating from a subdimensional tear. And Tony… it carries a match to the Parker profile.”

He blinked. Once.

A dry breath clawed up his throat.

“…Peter?”

The name made the silence heavier.

He sank into the broken remains of a chair, a thousand-yard stare locked onto the display. The graphs shifted into a 3D waveform. There, pulsing in blue and gold, a frequency signature unlike anything native to their universe. And overlaid within it… a neural pattern. Incomplete. But unmistakable.

Peter Benjamin Parker.

Later — Lakeside

The lake shimmered with moonlight. Trees stood still like silent witnesses to the end of everything.

Pepper was already there when he arrived—wrapped in a long jacket, staring out over the water like she could see another world reflected in the ripples.

Tony approached slowly, his boots crunching over gravel and ash. He stopped beside her, silent, the wind catching the edges of his jacket.

Without a word, he held out a data slate.

She took it. Watched the signal flicker across the screen.

The waveform, the energy spike, the faint ID tag.

Then she looked at him.

“Peter?”

Tony nodded, once. He could barely manage that.

“I think he’s alive.” His voice was raw, low. “Or… maybe not alive in the way we know it. But he’s reaching. Through something. A veil, a fracture—hell if I know. But it’s him. I feel it.”

Pepper stared at the screen again. “After all this time…”

“Not even six months,” he said quietly. “Feels like a lifetime.”

She sat on the bench. He followed.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, face buried in his hands. “He apologized, Pep. While he was—” His voice cracked. “He apologized to me . And I couldn’t even hold him together.”

“You held his hand,” she said gently.

“And then let go,” Tony whispered. “I froze. And he was a kid , Pep. My god, he was just a kid . He looked at me like I could fix everything, and I let him down . I gave him a suit and a title and told him he was an Avenger. But I didn’t protect him. I weaponized him.”

Pepper turned to him, her eyes wet. “You gave him hope, Tony. A purpose. He chose to fight beside you.”

“I should’ve stopped him.”

“He would’ve found a way to follow you anyway,” she said gently. “You loved him. You still do. That’s what matters.”

Tony sat still for a long moment. Then, slowly, he stood.

“I can’t ignore this signal. I have to follow it. Even if it’s bait. Even if it’s a lie. If there’s even a chance he’s real—”

“Then go get him,” Pepper said, standing with him.

She leaned forward, kissed his cheek.

“For both of us.”

Avengers Compound – War Table, 5:12 AM

Old systems roared to life like half-dead titans roused from slumber. Lights flickered through the corridor as the primary relay engaged.

Tony stood in the war room — what was left of it — bootstrapping fragments of StarkTech with salvaged Wakandan interfaces and leftover Sorcerer metadata from the last time Wong had visited.

He opened the comms. Secured. Buried in encryption six levels deep.

Steve Rogers answered first. Beard thicker. Face more tired than Tony remembered.

“You found something?”

“Peter,” Tony said, with no buildup. “I found Peter.”

The silence was immediate.

Then Steve leaned forward. “You’re sure?”

“As sure as I am that I need to be.”

Clint Barton’s face came up next — scarred, weathered, still recovering from an encounter with a shadow creature in Kazakhstan. “Tell me where and when. I’m in.”

Wong appeared from Kamar-Taj, brows furrowed. “I felt it as well. Something moved through the Winding Way last night. A soul—still burning.”

Carol Danvers buzzed in from orbit, her hair cropped short, face bruised. “Coordinates?”

“Still unstable,” Tony said. “But the door is open. I think he opened it from the other side. I’m tracking his anchor.”

Bruce Banner appeared last, his voice worn thin. “The signature’s real. But something else came with it. Something massive. The dimensional wall flexed like fabric being torn.”

Tony stared at the swirling gate. Not quite open. Not quite closed.

“Thanos?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Bruce said. “Or something worse.”

Tony didn’t move. He spoke to the room, but also to himself.

“If Peter’s alive… I’m bringing him home.”

Far beyond, in a city gripped by shadows and sigils, Peter Parker stood on the edge of Gotham’s skyline.
And overhead—just for a second—a thin line of light split the sky.
A door.
A path.
A promise.

Chapter 36: Red Laughter, Black Skies

Location: Gotham — Amusement Mile (Condemned Sector)

Once, this place had been joy.

Now it reeked of rot, cordite, and madness.

The bones of roller coasters jutted against the twilight like the ribs of a dead god. Tilted clown statues wept rainwater from half-melted cheeks, and the carousel still spun—its cracked, chipped horses frozen mid-scream. Warped calliope music echoed through the fog like laughter underwater.

And above it all, the Joker's banner flew—a smile stitched in blood.

Peter slipped through the broken turnstiles, the faint hum of the Anchor pulsing under his skin. He could feel it—the pull, the wrongness here. A place thick with old tragedy and fresh warpaint.

He wasn't alone for long.

Boots hit the ground beside him.

Nightwing dropped from a line above, landing with practiced silence. “Couldn’t let you have all the fun.”

Tim appeared next, stepping through the mist with a flick of his bo staff. “Joker’s been baiting us for days. Figures he’d make a show.”

Jason loaded a fresh mag into his modified hand cannon and came up from behind a derailed bumper car. “He always does.”

Cass knelt beside a rusted popcorn stand, eyes scanning the shadows. “Gas lines cut. Ambush set.”

Damian was last, blade drawn, cloak already flecked with ash. “Then let us be the reckoning.”

Peter gave them a look—one of gratitude, quiet and heavy. He didn’t say thank you. He didn’t have to.

Amusement Mile — Central Pavilion

It was a war stage.

Floodlights flickered. Joker-emblazoned flags twisted in the wind. Corpses of mechanical animals stared blankly with shattered glass eyes. A throne of splintered wood, charred mannequins, and old Bat-emblems stood at the center of the carousel, rotating slowly.

The Joker sat atop it all.

His coat was patched together from clown costumes and SWAT jackets. His crown — bent Robin mask shards and melted utility belts. He clapped lazily when the Bat-Family stepped into the light.

“Well, well, well. A family reunion.” He leaned forward. “Peter. My star attraction. And the Bat-brats in full costume. God, it’s beautiful.”

Peter stepped forward. “This ends tonight, Joker.”

Joker's smile cracked wider. “Oh honey. It begins tonight.”

A klaxon whined behind them.

Floodlights snapped brighter.

The carnival ignited.

Explosions tore through old booths as Joker’s gang surged from the shadows — riot gear laced with smiley faces, makeshift tech pieced together from League scraps. Bane’s lieutenants dropped down from the rollercoaster supports, muscles enhanced and masked. Toxin bombs hissed through the air as Crane's newest fear blends crept in through the vents.

Battle erupted.

Cass met the vanguard first, slicing through a wave of painted thugs with surgical grace. Tim darted between Joker goons, disabling their weapons and knocking out comms. Damian met a patchwork monster—half Croc, half venom-enhanced brute—and took it down with a vicious blade to the thigh and a dislocated jaw.

Jason was chaos. Gunfire, smoke grenades, and elbow strikes that crumpled reinforced vests.

Dick fought by Peter’s side—flipping, striking, shielding his brother’s flank as Peter tore through enemy lines with webs and fist and something deeper, something brighter pulsing from his hands.

The Anchor flared under his skin, reacting to the chaos, and Joker saw it.

“Ohhh, look at that glow. What’s inside you, Spidey? A little Infinity? A little death?”

Peter didn’t answer.

He just moved.

Straight toward the carousel.

Joker’s throne lit up as he pulled a switch. From beneath the platform, a crude energy cannon unfolded, made from Anchor-core fragments and League portal tech. It fired skyward—

—and tore the clouds.

The sky screamed.

Above Gotham

A tear in the heavens. A ring of black fire. Space unraveled like paper soaked in oil.

The Bat-Family froze as something stepped through.

A giant.

Gold-plated armor. A double-bladed weapon across his back. Skin the color of spoiled twilight. Eyes like dying suns.

Thanos.

He landed with the force of a meteor, the carousel cracking beneath the shockwave.

Even Joker stepped back, whispering with reverence, “Oh… he’s real.”

Thanos looked at Peter.

Not the Bat-Family. Not Gotham.

Just Peter.

“You,” he said, voice like tectonic plates grinding.

Peter’s hands trembled.

Then curled into fists.

Behind him, Dick stepped closer.

“We’re with you.”

Jason cocked his gun. “All the way.”

Tim swallowed hard. “Guess the carnival’s over.”

Cass and Damian flanked him silently.

And Peter—still glowing, still burning with something ancient and bright—stepped forward.

“You’re not taking this world,” he said.

Thanos smiled.

“I don’t need the world.”

He lifted his hand.

“I need you.”

And the sky above Gotham shattered.

The sky didn’t just tear.

It bled.

Colors poured like oil down from the heavens — golds, blacks, and violets unraveling across the stars. The rift cracked wider, no longer a thin seam but a wound gaping above Gotham, too large, too wrong. The clouds evaporated under its heat. The moon vanished behind its shadow.

And from that shadow, he stepped through.

Thanos.

Not just a figure now. Not just a memory.
A god-sized corpse-walker dressed in battle-gold, his skin carved with time and conquest, each step heavier than thunder. The ground cracked beneath him. Gravity itself bent to make room.

His gaze moved across the amusement graveyard with the slowness of a hunter. He said nothing. His presence spoke for him.

Power.

Finality.

Death.

Joker, for once in his life, was silent — his glee curdling into something half-shocked, half-ecstatic. He stood half in shadow, near the rusted carousel, as if caught in a religious trance.

And then the rift opened wider.

They came like a wave of rot behind him.

The army.

Leviathans soared through the rift, their metallic bodies spiraling like cosmic serpents. Drop-ships groaned into being, spilling alien foot soldiers — Chitauri, Outriders, and something else… bigger. Modified. Corrupted by something older than Thanos himself.

Cass’s breath caught.
Jason tightened his grip on his rifle.
Tim’s fingers flew across his console.
Barbara's voice in their ears was taut: “I’m reading… thousands. Multispecies warbands. They’re not breaching — they’re invading. ”

Peter stood in the center of it all, eyes locked on the monster that had killed his world.

The Anchor burned beneath his ribs.

Thanos finally spoke.

A voice not made for mortal ears.
A rumble that shook scaffolding and split the ground beneath their feet.

“I have come for what was stolen.”

Peter didn’t move.

“You carry what should not exist. The spark of six truths. Infinity — broken. I will restore it.”

Dick moved forward, shoulder brushing Peter’s. “You’ll have to go through all of us first.”

Thanos tilted his head, slow and deliberate.

“You mistake yourselves for obstacles.”

He raised one hand.

The world around them shifted .

Concrete peeled backward as if erased. Part of the old roller coaster snapped mid-air and fell sideways — not broken, but disintegrated . A vortex opened behind the funhouse, and several Outriders leapt through, howling like starved beasts.

“Positions!” Bruce barked over the comm. “Form a perimeter. Prioritize anchor defense and crowd control!”

The Bat-Family snapped into motion like a blade unfolding.

Jason vaulted up a ruined ride scaffolding, sniper rifle locking onto the Outrider cluster. “I’ve got eyes on their flanks.”

Cass blurred forward, blades singing.
Damian dove from above, sword gleaming.
Tim activated an energy field near the Anchor relay.
Barbara rerouted the League’s emergency signal tower.
Zatanna, deep within the city, chanted louder, trying to contain the widening tear.

Peter stayed rooted.

He could feel it now — the pull .
Thanos wasn’t just after him.
He was calling to what lived inside him.

The fragments of the Stones — the imprint of cosmic memory, fused to Peter’s soul.

“You are not chosen,” Thanos said. “You are an echo. A mistake.”

Peter raised his head.

His voice didn’t shake.

“No. I’m what’s left.”

Thanos descended slowly to the ground. His army followed like thunder on broken wings.

The carousel behind them exploded as Joker began to laugh again — shrill, high, discordant. “Ohhh, now it’s a party!”

Tim’s voice crackled through the comm: “They’ve breached the second ring. Anchor site is exposed!”

Cass landed beside Peter, blood on her arm, breathing hard. “We can’t hold this long.”

Peter’s fists clenched.

The Anchor burned brighter.

He turned to the others. “We hold it anyway. ”

Thanos raised his gauntlet.

And unleashed the first wave.

Chapter 37: The Gods Bleed

It was fire and steel and shadows.
It was war.

Amusement Mile was no longer a crumbling relic of Gotham’s past — it had become a battlefield wrapped in ash and flame, carved open by interdimensional teeth. The carousel lay in ruin, its music still stuttering on a cracked speaker. The midway was shattered, striped tents torn open like wounds, their insides burning.

Thanos stood in the middle of it all, unmoved.

And then, the sky changed.

A ripple of golden light sliced through the war-clouds above. For a moment, even the roaring army of Chitauri froze. For a heartbeat, Peter felt the familiar hum of hope in his bones.

The League had come.

Superman dropped like a meteor through a Leviathan’s skull, shattering it into rusted shrapnel. The impact cracked the asphalt in a thirty-foot ring.

Wonder Woman swept through the fog with her sword drawn, slashing through Outriders in a whirlwind of divine wrath.

Green Lantern John Stewart hovered above, his constructs forming massive shields over the Bat-Family’s defensive lines, boxing in Thanos’s army with blades of light.

The Flash darted between collapsing structures, evacuating trapped civilians before the buildings fell, then reappearing beside Tim with a grin and two fistfuls of dismantled enemy tech. “Need a processor core? I brought five.”

Hawkwoman flew in like a strike of vengeance, her mace igniting with Nth metal as it collided with an incoming dropship, sending it spiraling.

Aquaman surged from the harbor behind Amusement Mile, leading a wave that swept over the lower streets and knocked a dozen invaders into submerged ruin.

And last, the Martian Manhunter phased into view beside Peter, placing a steady hand on his shoulder. His voice was calm, but heavy.

“We stand with you, Peter Parker.”

Peter nodded.

For a moment, the tide shifted.

The Bat-Family rallied around the League’s arrival. Jason and Cass rejoined Damian at the collapsed Anchor relay. Tim linked the defense grid to Stewart’s constructs. Barbara redirected the satellite coverage. Zatanna appeared atop a ruined coaster, her hands blazing with magic as she carved sigils into the sky itself.

And Peter?

He stepped forward.

But then… the temperature dropped.

Thanos moved.

He didn’t speak.
He didn’t shout.
He simply struck.

In an instant, a gravitational pulse erupted from the Mad Titan’s armor — not a blast, but a crushing force , bending space itself. Lantern constructs shattered. Part of the defense grid collapsed into molten slag. The Flash fell mid-run, convulsing, blood trailing from his nose.

Wonder Woman dove at Thanos, blade first — and was caught mid-swing. He gripped her wrist, stared into her eyes, and broke her sword. The shockwave sent her flying into a building’s third story.

Superman hit him next — a sonic boom trailing behind his punch.

And Thanos caught it.

The impact shook the earth, but the Mad Titan barely flinched. His hand wrapped around Clark’s fist, twisted, and slammed him into the ground hard enough to leave a crater. Kryptonian blood stained the rubble.

Peter watched — breath catching — as the League faltered.

The Mad Titan didn’t just fight.

He unwound.

Martian Manhunter phased through Thanos’s back, aiming for his heart — but Thanos twisted, grabbed him mid-phase, and sent him hurling into a burning funhouse. John didn’t rise.

Hawkwoman’s mace hit him square in the head. Thanos didn’t even blink. He backhanded her out of the sky.

Zatanna raised both arms and screamed a reversed incantation — “EMIT FO HSALF!” — a flash of light cutting across the battlefield.

Thanos growled.

And spoke for the first time since the assault began.

“Your magic is a whisper. Your gods are children.”

He raised his hand.

And from the rift above — more came.

A fresh wave of Outriders. Hulking berserkers shaped like armored gorillas with molten mouths. Chitauri warlords in gravitic armor. Some were twisted, mutated — warped by void exposure from the rift’s edge.

They hit the streets like a flood of nightmares.

“DEFENSIVE POSITIONS!” Bruce’s voice roared through the comms.

Tim slammed down an override. Jason tossed Peter a high-yield charge. Damian ran straight into the new wave, slicing his way toward Thanos.

Peter activated the Anchor beneath his armor. The sigil inside his chest burned.

Zatanna appeared at his side, bruised, bleeding. “You can’t use the full Anchor yet. You’ll tear apart.”

Peter clenched his fists. “I know. But we’re losing.”

Zatanna pressed a bloodied hand to his chest. “Then don’t use it to destroy. Use it to protect. ”

Around them, Gotham burned .

And high above it all — Thanos stood, unbothered.

Watching.

Calculating.

Coming for what belonged to him.

Smoke painted the skyline in bruised streaks of red and gray. The city screamed beneath the weight of invasion. Thanos’s army had spilled out of the rift like rot from a split corpse, devouring everything in its path — and the League, for all its might, was breaking .

Peter stood at the heart of it all.

Anchor Site Alpha had once been the Wayne Tower’s reinforced rooftop. Now it was a crater—its support columns shattered, its defensive grid fried by Thanos’s gravity storm. The world buckled around him, chaos pounding at the edge of reality.

The Anchor pulsed beneath his chest like a second heart.

Zatanna knelt beside him, her voice ragged from spellcasting, sigils scrawled in blood across her arms.

“Peter,” she said hoarsely, “the rift won’t stay open long. If you’re going to do it, do it now .”

Peter looked around him.

Superman was barely upright, one arm hanging limp, his cape torn and caked in soot. Wonder Woman bled from a split in her brow, leaning on her shield. John Stewart’s ring flickered — flickered — on the verge of burnout. Jason and Damian were back-to-back, blades slick with ichor, breathing hard. Cass was limping. Barbara’s hands trembled on the control pad. Dick was crouched near a pile of rubble, gun empty, jaw set.

And Thanos was walking toward them, slowly. Deliberately. Each footstep like a funeral bell.

Peter inhaled.

Then, he stepped into the center of the crater — the sigil beneath his suit glowing through the fabric, his fingers sparking with gold and violet flame.

Zatanna shouted, over the roar of collapsing buildings, “Focus on the thread ! Reach through it — not just with your power, but with your memory !”

The words echoed in him.

Memory.

He closed his eyes.

And he remembered:

• The first time Tony handed him a Stark-tech interface, saying, “Kid, try not to blow up the lab.”
  
  
• The way Steve had clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, “You’ve got a good heart, Peter. Keep it.”
  
  
• Ned’s laugh. MJ’s stubbornness. Aunt May’s warmth.
  
  
• That last moment… the dust. The fear. His own fading voice: “I don’t wanna go…”
  
  

And now?

He didn’t want to stay .

He raised his hands.

And the Anchor erupted.

A column of blinding white energy lanced into the sky — not raw chaos, but a precise beacon. Sigils flared to life along the broken rooftop, ancient magic spiraling around science. The sky tore open , not in ruin — but in answer .

The rift widened.

It changed .

From a wound… to a gate .

And from beyond that veil — they came.

First, a surge of golden energy streaked overhead — a radiant blur that cut through the dark like the sun itself.

Captain Marvel crashed into the earth beside Superman, her eyes blazing, fists humming with cosmic fire. She nodded once. “Heard you needed backup.”

Then — the sky sang .

Dozens of sling rings ignited across the air, spirals of orange sorcery rippling in waves.

From them stepped the Avengers .

Tony Stark’s suit clanked into view, full armor, gleaming but battle-worn, his mask lifting as he stepped beside Peter. His eyes shimmered.

“…Hey, kid.”

Peter choked out a breath. “You came.”

“Damn right I did.” Tony looked around. “Nice city. Shame about the apocalypse.”

Beside him, Steve Rogers stepped through another ring, shield strapped tight, the star on his chest gleaming. Thor followed in his wake, Stormbreaker resting on his shoulder, lightning dancing in his beard. Bruce — half-Hulk, half-man, eyes glowing with controlled fury — lumbered out next, flanked by Rocket and Nebula.

Wakandan troops emerged from one portal, spears raised. Okoye led them, flanked by Shuri and M’Baku, their armor already smeared with black war paint.

Another ring bloomed open — this time above — and Valkyrie descended astride a winged steed, a small fleet of Asgardian warriors behind her.

Ant-Man. Wasp. Natasha. Clint. Pepper.

Even Wong and a squadron of sorcerers — holding sling rings open while mystic shields flickered in the air around them.

The League turned, battered and bloodied — and saw the tide turning .

Dick stared. “Holy hell…”

Barbara whispered, “He did it.”

Jason just grinned, wiping blood from his mouth. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

Superman’s lips quirked into something like a smile. “Now we have a chance.”

Peter turned back toward the rift. It was still open — pulsing.

Thanos paused at its edge.

For the first time since arriving… he hesitated.

His voice boomed, low and echoing:

“You bring an army?”

Tony stepped beside Peter, face unreadable.

“No,” he said. “We bring home. ”

Then Steve lifted his shield.

“ Avengers— ”

And Diana raised her sword beside him.

“ League— ”

Peter took one step forward, eyes blazing, the Anchor burning bright in his chest.

“ Assemble. ”

And the battlefield exploded into motion.

Chapter 38: Ashes and Embers

The world became thunder.

Not the kind that rattled windows — but the kind that cracked continents. That tore the sky from its seams and rewrote gravity itself.

Gotham’s ruins burned. Streets buckled from the force of gods and monsters. Arcane wards pulsed with overloaded energy, cracked open like veins spilling light. The city had never known such a war — not even in its darkest nightmares.

And at the center of it all, Thanos stood unmoved.

Every step he took forward was ruin.

League magic shattered against his skin like dust on granite. Lantern constructs imploded under his fists. Superman fell from the sky, cape torn and armor dented, blood dripping from his mouth. Wonder Woman’s shield split. Her blade snapped.

Carol Danvers soared like a star — only to be hurled from the sky in a trail of fire, crashing through three buildings before disappearing behind smoke.

Thor bled from his scalp, Stormbreaker chipped.

Even Tony — repulsors burning white-hot, suit screaming at 92% structural failure — couldn’t land a blow deep enough.

Thanos didn’t need the Stones.
He was the war.

His army surged behind him — Outriders swarming like insects, Chitauri artillery turning buildings to rubble. Leviathans screamed through the storming clouds, raining death. The League and Avengers fought side by side, but the line broke, reformed, broke again. Blood soaked concrete. Ash painted air.

Peter fought harder than he ever had in his life.

He was everywhere — slinging webs, drawing fire, shielding the wounded. His body burned with the Anchor’s energy, his veins alight with gold and violet, cracking with power he didn’t fully understand. His hands shook from exhaustion. Every movement hurt.

But he didn't stop.

He caught Damian mid-fall and spun him to safety.

He yanked Cass from beneath a crumbling overpass, took a blast to the shoulder meant for Dick, barely flinching through the pain.

He leapt from a crumbling rooftop to drive a shard of broken Lantern construct into the throat of a Chitauri beast before it reached Tim and Barbara.

But the Anchor was burning too fast.

Too much.

It was unraveling him.

Thanos noticed.

And moved.

Peter barely saw him coming — a blur of shadow and gold, a weight in the air like gravity turned against him.

The punch crushed his ribs.

The backhand cracked the street.

His body hit the concrete like a meteor — a crater formed around him. Blood in his mouth. His suit in tatters. The glow of the Anchor sputtering beneath torn fabric, barely a flicker.

He couldn’t move.

Thanos stood over him.

No words. No taunts.

Just inevitability.

Peter tried to lift his hand — to spark the Anchor one last time — but even that was gone. His fingers twitched, and fell.

Smoke and ruin swallowed the battlefield. The League staggered. The Avengers bled. The last defense, crumbling beneath the weight of inevitability.

Thanos raised his hand.

And then — the wind changed.

A hum.

No, a pulse.

One that made the hairs on every survivor’s neck rise.

The battlefield flickered.

A shimmer of gold.

And then — from the ruined horizon — a figure stepped into the light.

T’Challa.

Alive.

Whole.

Behind him: Shuri. Bucky. Sam Wilson, wings gleaming.

Then more.

Dozens.

Hundreds.

Ash swirled from the ground, reforming. People. Soldiers. Heroes.

Stephen Strange stepped through a ring of light, cape rippling behind him, eyes burning with purpose.

Wanda appeared at Peter’s side — knees hitting the earth — her magic wrapping around his broken body like a cocoon of light. Her face was streaked with tears and fire.

“ I’ve got you, ” she whispered.

And all around them —
The dusted returned .

Across the battlefield, portals bloomed — hundreds of them — spilling out everyone Peter had lost. Everyone he had tried to carry in silence. Everyone the Anchor had refused to forget.

The dead weren’t dead anymore.

And Thanos — for the first time —
Stilled.

The sky burned gold and violet.

Portals rippled across the cityscape like radiant wounds in the world, spilling the returned like a tidal wave of hope. Wakandan legions surged with their spears alight. Asgardians howled their war cries. Sorcerers from Kamar-Taj lit the ruined skyline with weaving shields of ancient power. Xandarian Nova troops fell into formation beside Lantern Corps squadrons as alien artillery scorched the edges of enemy lines.

The dusted had returned.

And they were angry .

T’Challa led a charge through the heart of Gotham, his kinetic armor flaring with impact bursts. Falcon rocketed overhead, slicing through Leviathans with red streaks of sonic justice. Wasp shrunk and burst through enemy skulls in bursts of quantum sparks. Wong and Zatanna stood shoulder to shoulder, weaving their spells through gravity and flame, sealing ruptures and slicing through wave after wave of Outriders.

In the center of it all, Peter stood upright once more — cradled in power. His wounds, while not fully healed, were encased in the living filament of the Anchor’s glow. Wanda stayed close to him, whispering spells of protection, her own hands still trembling from the resurrection.

“I can still feel them,” Peter said quietly as he helped Strange reform a protective dome. “The ones who came back. They’re still… connected.”

“Good,” Strange muttered. “You’re the thread holding this together. Don’t let go.”

Behind them, the Bat-Family regrouped — Dick and Tim reinforcing comms with League lines, Barbara rerouting drone feeds and intel. Jason, bloodied and limping, reloaded beside Damian, who held his katana against his thigh with silent fury.

Cass didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. Her movements cut through the battle like poetry written in broken bone.

And for a moment — just one — it looked like the tide had turned.

Thanos had been pushed back. His forces flanked. The Leviathans were falling. A coordinated assault from Captain Marvel and Superman cracked the very ground he stood on.

He stumbled. Just slightly.

He bled.

And the armies of Earth — of every realm Peter had ever touched — surged forward with a roar.

Hope.
Unity.
Fire.

And then Thanos smiled.

It wasn’t joy.

It was certainty.

His gauntlet-less hand reached into the armor at his side — and drew out something small. Something alive .

A crystal.
Faint. Shimmering. Pulsing.

The battlefield seemed to tilt .

Strange’s eyes widened. “No—”

“It’s a shard,” Wanda breathed, her magic recoiling.

Of a Stone . No — something older.

The Echo of the Soul Stone.

“I found it in the world between,” Thanos said, his voice like falling stone. “Where death has memory… and power doesn’t forget what it once was.”

He crushed it.

And the battlefield screamed .

A wave of inversion rolled out across the field. Light bent. The newly resurrected staggered. The Anchor inside Peter flared — violently — and he fell to his knees.

“Something’s wrong,” he gasped. “The tether—it's unraveling—”

The sky reversed — color bleeding backward.

From the cracks in the concrete and the corners of shadows, something crawled.

Not soldiers.

Not machines.

But echoes .

Figures that shouldn’t exist.

Twisted versions of the dead.

Mirror-forms. Puppet shells of fallen heroes — some still alive, some never real. A bizarro Steve Rogers with a rotted shield. A Wanda stitched from shadow. A Spider-Man whose eyes were hollow sockets glowing violet.

“Multiversal phantoms,” Strange growled. “Thanos found a door behind the veil.”

And now, the veil had opened .

They weren’t reinforcements.

They were reflections of ruin .

And they were hungry .

Thanos raised his arms, no gauntlet needed. Around him, space bent inward — reshaping, folding like origami around his presence.

“You thought I needed the Stones,” he said, voice calm. “But I only needed you to bring me to where they were born.”

The Anchor pulsed — and Peter screamed .

His body buckled under the strain. Light and ash poured from his wounds. Strange and Zatanna both surged toward him — but Thanos’ new army closed the gap.

The lines were breaking again.

And now, the storm wasn’t just physical.

It was reality itself .

The city screamed.

Not in words — in fractures. In stone cracking like ribs. In metal twisted into screaming shapes. The skyline flickered with flame, as though hell had broken through the heavens and made its home above Gotham.

The sky was wrong. No longer blue, no longer black — it was torn. A wound stitched in chaos and cosmic heat, with stars bleeding through like broken glass.

At the center of it all, Peter Parker — their son, their friend, their thread between worlds — hung limp in the air.

Cradled in the grip of Thanos.

He wasn’t struggling.
He couldn’t.

Blood marked his lips. His eyes were swollen and barely open. His limbs hung useless. The glow beneath his skin — once sacred, once a beacon across dimensions — flickered low. Unstable. The Anchor within him faltered, screaming not in sound, but in energy.

Gold. Green. Violet. Red. Blue. Orange.
The pieces of the Infinity Stones.

Shards.
All of them.
Buried in his soul.

He had carried the remnants of what remade the universe. The aftermath of a god’s weapon.

And now they trembled.

Below, the battlefield was devastated.

Superman lay bloodied, cape torn. Diana held her sword’s broken hilt like a lifeline. Zatanna was unconscious. Bruce had one eye swollen shut, armor cracked, unmoving in the rubble. Lanterns were down. Titans scattered. Strange lay broken in a shattered spell circle.

And Dick Grayson…

He was already running.

He didn’t wait. Didn’t ask. Didn’t think.

He just ran — straight across flame, steel, and screaming wind. Past Jason, who could barely hold himself up. Past Cass, who was crawling toward the line. Past the wreckage of heroes. His boots smashed into the ground, breath caught in his throat, heart in pieces.

Because above them —

Peter was dying.

Their Peter.

His son.

Thanos’s voice rolled like thunder. “You were the thread. The knot in the weave. The flaw I waited for.”

Peter blinked once.

Blood ran from his nose.

“You are mine now,” Thanos said.

And then — he reached in.

Not with force. But with will.

His hand moved through Peter’s chest like cutting through silk — bypassing skin, muscle, heart. Straight to what lay buried beneath. The Anchor screamed.

Dick screamed too. “ NO! ”

Golden light shattered first — the echo of Power.

Then green — Soul.

Violet — Time.

Red, blue, orange — shattering together.

Each fragment ripped free from Peter’s body like pieces of memory, pieces of him. He arched. Screamed once. A sound that tore through Dick’s ribs and carved his name into the earth.

Then Peter went still.

Thanos withdrew his hand — and with it, the shards. Glowing, swirling fragments of impossible power. The last pieces of the Infinity Stones — born again from ash, from hope, from Peter’s sacrifice.

And Peter…

Peter fell.

Not a body. Not a scream. Not a shadow.

Just gone.

Mid-descent, he vanished.

Unmade.

Unheld.

Unseen.

“ PETER! ” Tony’s voice ripped across the battlefield. He collapsed to the ground where Peter had been, gauntlets sparking, reactor cracked. “ No. No, no, no no— ”

Dick skidded beside him. Dropped to his knees.

And for a long moment, he couldn’t speak.

He just looked. At the empty space. At the dust. At nothing.

“ Please... ” he whispered. His voice cracked. “ Please no. ”

Jason staggered up behind them, bruised and bleeding. He looked at Dick — then at the empty air — and went still.

Cass stood a few feet away, shaking.

Tim dropped to one knee beside Barbara, silent.

Zatanna stirred. “Where is he?” she rasped, barely conscious.

But no one could answer.

Because there was no body.

Only a father on his knees.

Dick clenched his hands into the dirt, the blood on his palms not all his own.

“I told him I’d be his family,” he whispered. “I told him… he’d never be alone again.”

Tony didn’t respond. His hands trembled as he reached for a spot in the dirt where Peter had stood.

“I gave him that suit,” Tony muttered. “Gave him the name. The fire. I told him to hold the line. He was just—he was just a kid. ” His voice cracked. “He was my—he was my kid.”

Dick looked up, eyes raw. “He was mine too.”

Tony blinked — stunned. But he understood. He understood.

And he nodded.

Around them, the battlefield was a grave.

Thanos floated above the wreckage — a god crowned in glowing shards.

“This world will die,” the Titan said, voice hollow with certainty. “And your hope died with him.”

Then the sky screamed.

Chapter 39: The Thread Beneath the Loom

Location: The Between — Realm Beyond Time and Death

Silence.

Not absence. Not emptiness.

A silence shaped like memory. Like myth.

Peter floated in it. Or perhaps through it. His body was curled in on itself — like a leaf drifting across a black sea. Blood no longer flowed. Pain no longer sparked. But something remained. Something more than bones. More than light.

The shards were gone.

Torn from his soul, ripped out by Thanos's monstrous hand.

And yet, he was still here.

Still… breathing?

His fingers twitched. His eyelids fluttered.

The Anchor — fractured though it was — still pulsed. Weak. But not gone.

Peter opened his eyes.

There was no sky. No ground. Just an endless realm stitched with silver threads — infinite filaments dancing across shadow, light, sound, and silence. A great tapestry, impossibly wide and far too close. The strands glowed faintly with moments he recognized — glimpses of himself. Laughing with Ned. Hugging May. Swinging through Queens. Standing beside Tony. Holding the line in Gotham.

He was inside a story.

His story.

But it was coming undone.

A strand snapped.

Peter flinched as it whipped past his face and unraveled into nothing.

Then, a voice:

"Careful. Too many of those break, and even the gods forget you existed."

Peter turned.

A figure emerged from the threads — tall, cloaked in green and gold, with dark hair swept back and eyes like shards of starlight. His hands were clasped behind his back, a smile ghosting his lips — sharp, knowing, and not entirely unkind.

“Hello, Peter Parker,” the figure said. “I believe you’ve misplaced your soul.”

Peter blinked. “Loki?”

The man bowed slightly. “ The Loki. Though, these days, I prefer a more poetic title.” He gestured to the woven strands surrounding them. “The God of Stories. Keeper of what was and what might yet be.”

Peter’s voice was hoarse. “Am I dead?”

Loki tilted his head. “Almost. You stand in the Between. The space behind pages. Between breath and silence. Where stories pause, but do not end.” He walked slowly around Peter, his boots not making a sound. “You were carrying quite the burden, young spider. Six shards of pure cosmic memory. That sort of thing leaves fingerprints.”

Peter lowered his head. “He took them. All of them. Ripped them right out of me.”

“Yes,” Loki murmured. “And in doing so, he nearly severed your thread entirely. But something held.”

Peter looked up. “The Anchor?”

Loki gave a thoughtful hum. “No, not just that. Anchors tether. But this—” He reached out and plucked a thread of silver from the air, letting it dance across his fingers. “This is will. Yours. The part that refused to die.”

Peter swallowed. “Then why am I still here?”

Loki smiled faintly. “Because stories resist endings. Especially the ones that matter.” He moved closer, gaze sharpening. “Your story isn’t done, Peter. It’s been fractured. But not lost.”

Peter glanced around at the threads. “Can I go back?”

“Not yet. You’re not strong enough. Not on your own.” Loki paused. “But there are ways.”

Peter clenched his fists. “I have to stop him. Thanos. He’s going to destroy everything.”

“I know,” Loki said softly. “He has the shards now. Each one a song of the old cosmos. And with you gone, the last tether to the stones' humanity is lost. Unless…”

Peter looked up.

Loki gestured to the threads. “Unless the story shifts. Unless you change it.”

Peter’s brow furrowed. “Change how?”

“You were a vessel. But you can become more. Not just the boy who held the shards. But the story that remembers them. The one who contains their meaning, not just their power.”

Peter shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“You will.” Loki smiled, and it was a little sad. “It’s painful. Becoming a myth. But it’s the only way.”

He reached into the threads and pulled a memory — glowing, raw — from Peter’s own life. Aunt May’s hand on his cheek. “With great power…”

“...comes great responsibility,” Peter whispered.

“That,” Loki said, “is a story that never dies.”

A sound echoed then. Distant. Faint.

The roar of war. The thunder of Thanos’s army.

Peter’s head snapped toward it.

“I need to go back.”

Loki nodded. “Then weave yourself anew. Not as the boy who was broken. But as the idea that endures. Become the echo. The thread that resists unraveling.”

He stepped forward. Placed a hand on Peter’s chest.

“You’re not dust, Peter Parker. You’re the spark.”

A light began to glow beneath Peter’s ribs — soft at first, then sharper. A pulse. A memory of power, not just from the Stones, but from every person he’d ever saved. Every hand he’d held. Every name he’d whispered in mourning.

The Anchor within him flared.

And with it, the threads began to move.

Reforming.

Binding.

The story began again.

Peter breathed.

And somewhere, far above — on the broken battlefield of Gotham — a ripple of golden light shimmered across the rubble.

Tony Stark looked up.

So did Dick.

Their eyes widened.

The sky had changed.

And something was coming through.

Chapter 40: The Spark Returns

Location: Gotham — The Battlefield Beneath a Broken Sky

Time fractured.

It didn’t shatter. It bled.

Golden veins spread across the storm-black sky like cracks in a pane of reality. The battlefield below — a cratered hellscape of steel, stone, ash, and fire — froze in place, suspended in the breath between heartbeats. Screams stilled. Thunder paused. Even Thanos, crowned by the fractured Stones, looked up as the fissure pulsed.

A sound followed.
Not thunder. Not song.
A heartbeat.

Boom.

The crater where Peter had vanished shimmered with threads of golden light. Not lightning. Not magic. A pulse — deep, resonant, soulbound.

Tony staggered back from the shattered ground. His armor buzzed with half-dead energy, chestplate cracked wide enough to expose the arc reactor beneath.

He didn’t dare hope.

Beside him, Dick Grayson stood utterly still. He looked like a man with his ribcage hollowed out. The boy he’d called his son — taken, ripped apart — gone before he could even say goodbye.

Then — a flicker.

One.
Two.
Three.

Tiny glimmers rose from the dust, lifting like embers off a dying campfire.

But they didn’t fade.

They twisted.

They spun.

They formed a shape .

From the center of the battlefield, light erupted. Not in a beam — but in a spiral. Like a cocoon unraveling, made not of flesh, but of story, of memory, of meaning .

And in the middle of it all — a figure hovered.

No longer bleeding.
No longer broken.

Peter Parker.

But not the boy who had been ripped apart by Thanos’s hand.

This was something more.

His suit was black, laced with golden stitching that moved as if alive. Threads of silver ran across his arms and spine like constellations. The sigil burned on his chest — not the spider, but the Anchor symbol, reforged.

His eyes opened.

And behind them… the spark.

Dick whispered first. “Peter…”

Tony took a breath like it might kill him. “Kid?”

Peter drifted to the ground.

His feet touched the earth.

The spiral of light collapsed behind him.

The battlefield roared .

Thanos turned slowly, the Infinity shards rotating lazily above his hand. “Impossible,” he murmured.

Peter raised his head.

“No,” he said, his voice low, clear, unshaking. “ I’m inevitable, too. ”

And then he moved.

**

The second impact was a shockwave.

Peter didn’t punch. He arrived — his fist crashing into Thanos’s face with the weight of a thousand threads. A dozen colors exploded with the hit — echoes of each Stone resonating behind the blow.

The Mad Titan reeled back.

The battlefield ignited.

From the ruins, Superman launched forward again, now bolstered by golden energy trailing behind him. Diana caught her broken blade — now wrapped in spectral vines — and charged with a cry that shattered sound barriers.

Shazam returned with lightning drawn from the sky, his eyes glowing with shared light. The Flash moved like fire through glass, trailing hope behind every step.

Dick landed beside Peter, escrima sticks lit with electric arcs.

“You good?” he asked.

Peter glanced at him, cracked a smile. “Not dead. Let’s start there.”

Then they were moving again.

**

The Avengers, now surging back into the fight, followed Peter’s lead.

Thor, battered but alive, grinned through bloodied teeth. “He’s back.”

Strange raised a trembling hand. “The timeline just rewrote itself.”

Carol Danvers, crashing through three of Thanos’s dreadbeasts, shouted into the comms: “Whatever that kid is — stay close to it!”

**

Thanos bled.

He hadn’t bled in eons.

The shards flickered in his grasp — uncertain. The Anchor had been his prize, but the story had changed. Something had shifted. The vessel had evolved.

And the universe no longer feared him the same way.

He snarled. “You think you’ve won? You’ve done nothing but delay extinction.”

Peter stepped forward, his hands glowing.

“I didn’t come back to win,” he said. “I came back to remind the universe what we fight for.”

Thanos roared and unleashed the shards.

And the second wave began.

**

But high above, in the quiet between stars, someone watched.

Loki.

The God of Stories smiled softly, his fingers still dancing along the thread that anchored Peter Parker to life.

“Now,” he murmured. “Let’s see how this tale ends.”

Chapter 41: The Web That Rewove the Stars

Location: Gotham — The Battlefield / Everywhere / Nowhere

Time cracked.
Again.
But not from violence.
From release.

The battlefield burned beneath a sky torn open. Gotham's skyline—ravaged and scorched—bled orange and violet light where Thanos had punched a hole through reality itself. Fires raged in fractured towers. The broken ribs of once-proud buildings jutted toward the heavens. Ash fell like snow.

At the center stood Peter Parker.

Not just standing—rising.

Golden light shimmered in veins beneath his torn suit, flickering through bloodstained fabric and soot. Around him, fragments of the Infinity Stones—once stolen from his soul—quivered above Thanos’s gauntlet like insects trapped in amber.

But they didn't belong to the Titan anymore.

They pulsed now to someone else.

To him.

Thanos growled, stepping forward. “You were broken. You were dead.”

Peter’s feet touched nothing. He hovered a foot above the ruined ground. Blood dripped down the side of his face, but his voice came steady.

“You broke my body,” he said, “but not my story.”

Then he raised his hand.

The shards screamed.

Cracks burst in the air around Thanos as the fragments ripped free from his gauntlet. Space warped in violent spasms as red, green, gold, and violet light tore loose—divine lightning ripping reality like paper. Thanos stumbled back, his armor buckling, his jaw set in disbelief.

The Stones circled Peter again.

Not piercing.

Not infecting.

But obeying.

Mind. Power. Space. Time. Reality. Soul.

The Anchor at Peter’s chest flared. It didn’t bind the Stones. It invited them. It became a loom.

And Peter—the boy, the soldier, the thread that refused to snap—became the one who wove.

“No,” Strange whispered from below, half-conscious. “Not a god. Not a weapon. He’s the mender.”

Tony stood beneath the cracked remains of a concrete wall, armor flickering with critical alerts, eyes wide with wet grief and awe.

“Look at him, Pep…” he murmured. “He’s more than we ever imagined.”

Dick stumbled into view, cloak torn, one eye swollen shut. He dropped to one knee beside Diana and breathed:

“That’s my son.”

Thanos roared. The rage of a dying Titan shook the earth.

He launched forward, cosmic blade raised—its edge trailing starfire.

Peter didn’t flinch.

He didn’t fight.

He stopped.

With a breath.

And time halted.

Thanos froze mid-lunge. Every molecule of his being trembled under the weight of Peter’s will. His blade hung in the air, unmoving. His expression, locked in mid-snarl, twisted.

Peter floated closer. All was still.

He looked down—not with hate. Not even anger.

With sorrow.

“You were inevitable,” Peter said softly. “But inevitability isn’t destiny.”

He opened his arms.

The Stones responded.

Their light no longer raw and wild—but harmonious. A celestial chord. A chorus sung in color and creation. Threads of energy poured into the air around him—not to destroy, but to repair.

He whispered one word.

“Undo.”

The Anchor glowed white-hot.

A pulse exploded outward.

A breathless, beautiful detonation of healing. Like a heart beating the universe back to life.

The battlefield reversed. Ash pulled from the wind and reformed bodies. Scars sealed. Buildings rose. Gotham healed.

But it didn’t stop there.

Across the planet, oceans cleansed. Coral reefs returned. Pollution ebbed like ink drawn from a wound. Villages that had dried up found rivers again. Skies choked with soot turned blue.

Across galaxies, dead stars reignited.

Civilizations long destroyed found new ground—new homeworlds built not from ashes, but from potential.

Then came the deeper magic.

Between realms, Peter reached.

Where once a veil tore at every crossing, now a bridge grew.

Between dimensions. Between Earths. Between broken timelines.

And through it all, Peter remained still. Breathing. Channeling.

Holding the weight of it all without breaking.

Thanos remained frozen in that moment, still snarling, blade raised. But now… he flickered.

He was no longer part of this story.

Because Peter—without hate, without revenge—simply erased him.

Not in violence.

In silence.

Thanos faded.

Unwritten.

The universe had no place left for him.

And so, he went.

Gone.

---

Peter descended.

The sky healed.

The stones, their duty done, unraveled into light and rejoined the tapestry of reality.

He touched the ground.

And the city wept.

Not from pain.

From relief.

---

Tony reached him first. His face stained with soot and tears, he didn’t say a word. He just caught Peter in his arms, pulled him in, and whispered:

“I got you, kid. I got you.”

Peter, chest rising with exhaustion, whispered back, “I’m okay.”

Dick was next, stumbling into the circle, grabbing Peter by the shoulder and pulling him into the hug too.

“You scared the hell out of me,” Dick murmured. “Never again. You hear me? Never again.”

Bruce arrived last, silent, placing a hand on Peter’s head with the gentlest pressure. The Bat’s mouth was a line, but his eyes—those spoke volumes.

Around them, the heroes gathered.

And watched.

The boy who’d once been a footnote in a war too big to survive…

Had ended it.

---

Later — Watchtower Deck

Peter stood at the edge of stars. Hands in his hoodie. The Anchor now rested quiet beneath his chest.

The stars pulsed.

Behind him, a ripple shimmered.

Loki emerged, walking from shadow to starlight.

“You ended him,” the God of Stories said, voice quieter than usual.

“I rewrote him,” Peter answered. “Took him off the page.”

“And what now?” Loki asked. “The story’s over. Victory is sung.”

Peter smiled faintly.

“It’s not over,” he said. “It’s just unwritten.”

He turned to Loki.

“Help me write the next part.”

Loki bowed low, genuinely.

“The cosmos is yours, Web-Weaver.”

---

The universe, once shattered, was whole.

And the boy who mended it?

He finally knew:

He wasn’t the broken thread.

He was the hand that rewove them all.

Chapter 42: Epilogue: The Thread That Holds

Location: Earth — Gotham, Rebuilt

The city had stopped bleeding.

For the first time in generations, Gotham breathed without choking. The skyline stood whole, not jagged with war scars. Parks reopened. Families walked the streets at dusk. The old Amusement Mile — once a graveyard of nightmares — had become a quiet memorial garden, lanterns swaying where laughter had once died.

Peace didn’t shout. It whispered.

And at the heart of that whisper, stood a boy — or what was left of one.

Peter Parker sat perched on the rooftop of Wayne Tower, legs swinging idly over the edge, a thermos of tea balanced against one knee. The wind moved through his curls, brushing across the collar of his rebuilt suit. The Anchor — once a burning brand of burden — now pulsed quietly beneath his ribcage. A heartbeat. A compass.

Behind him, the Nest’s rooftop doors opened.

Dick was first, walking easily, mug in each hand. One was labeled #1 Dad . The other, Bug Boy . He passed Peter the latter with a soft grin. “You always this dramatic, or is it a multiversal thing?”

Peter smirked. “Comes with the radioactive bite. Drama’s in the genes.”

Footsteps followed — heavier this time.

Tony Stark stepped out into the wind, arms crossed over his chest. He didn’t wear armor anymore. Just a hoodie and jeans. But there were nanite nodes along his spine — he never truly put the suit away.

He looked at Peter — and for a moment, nothing was said.

Then: “You gonna brood all night or let the rest of us have the good skyline?”

Peter looked back with a smirk. “You and Dick can share it. Just don’t start comparing jawlines again.”

“Too late,” Dick muttered, raising his cup.

Tony rolled his eyes but smiled — really smiled — and sat beside them. “How’s the Anchor?”

Peter tapped his chest. “Stable. Resting. Kind of like me.”

The doors opened again.

May stepped onto the roof — scarf wrapped tight around her shoulders, hand tucked into Alfred’s arm. The butler, ever composed, held a silver tray in one hand, laden with shortbread and tea.

May approached slowly, eyes glassy but dry. “You always sit on high places when you're thinking,” she said softly.

Peter shrugged. “Helps me feel small.”

“You’re not,” she said, pressing her hand to his cheek. “You never were.”

He leaned into her touch for a heartbeat. “Thanks for waiting.”

She swallowed. “Always.”

The others emerged behind them now — Barbara, Cass, Jason, Tim, Damian. Bruce stood at the threshold, cape trailing behind him like a shadow that had finally stopped chasing him.

Zatanna arrived last, cloak fluttering in the wind, staff in hand. Her magic no longer crackled — it pulsed softly, resonating with the new balance of things.

“Across the bridge,” she said, looking at Peter, “the multiverse is holding. Dozens of timelines stabilized. No rifts. No screams.”

“And the door?” Bruce asked.

Peter tilted his head, as if listening.

“It’s still open. But it’s breathing, not bleeding.”

Tony stood, pacing the edge of the roof. “So we’ve got a stabilized multiversal corridor. Restored planets. Functional magic-tech integration. And no more purple rage gods on our necks.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “We won?”

Tony looked down at Peter. “No. He won.”

----

Elsewhere — In the Threads Between Worlds

Loki stood atop a needle of broken space, smiling into the wind.

Behind him, stories spun themselves back into shape — fractured realities stitching into new narratives. Not repaired. Evolved.

He held up a single glowing strand of webbing.

“Still attached,” he whispered. “Always was.”

----

Later — Wayne Manor

The family gathered around the long dining table. May poured soup into bowls. Alfred corrected Jason’s posture. Bruce sat at the head, quietly nursing a glass of wine. Tony was mid-rant about repulsor stabilization arrays and the flaws in League architecture. Peter sat between Dick and May, laughing softly when Damian argued that he should lead the next diplomatic mission to New Genesis.

It was peace. Awkward. Full of scar tissue. But real.

At the far edge of the room, a small screen flickered to life. A broadcast from a newly reformed Watchtower shimmered into view: bridges forming between realms. Aid being sent to timelines still healing. Heroes coordinating between realities like diplomats and soldiers both.

And over it all, a new sigil.

A golden thread wrapped around a blue globe.

Hope.

---

Final — Gotham Rooftops

That night, Peter returned to the clock tower alone.

He stared out at the world he’d saved — no, rewoven .

And behind him, May’s voice echoed.

“You coming down, sweetheart?”

“In a second.”

He looked at his hands.

They no longer shook.

Then, softly — he webbed forward and vanished into the night.

Not because he had to.

Because it was who he was.

A thread.

A guardian.

A story that would never be lost again.

— End —
(or maybe just the beginning)

Notes:

Let me know what you think. I tried my hardest to write a somewhat decent fic so I hope it was okay. <3