Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Peter crawled over the edge of the roof silently, listening to the commotion inside the warehouse. There was a skylight in this one, or at least, there was a fairly square hole that may or may not have had glass in it at some point in time, which allowed him to sneak over and get a better look.

Two masked vigilantes were tied to chairs in the middle of the floor while men in Kevlar and black masks surrounded them with guns. One of the vigilantes was dressed in a black and blue skin tight suit, with a black domino mask over his eyes. The other was dressed in sturdy black cargo pants, a Kevlar vest with a red bird painted across the chest, and more than a few empty gun holsters. His domino mask was red. Peter happened to know that the one with the red bird symbol usually wore a helmet in addition to the mask, but it had obviously been removed at some point. Peter looked around. Yep, there it was, sitting on a table against the wall. It looked remarkably undamaged.

He was glad that he recognized the two heroes. He’d been doing a lot of studying in the past few months, getting to know how this universe operated, and he liked what he’d learned about Nightwing and Red Hood in particular. Nightwing was well loved by the general population and had a solid track record of not only bringing in the bad guys with nonlethal methods, but also providing law enforcement the evidence necessary to make sure the charges stuck. It was something a lot of vigilantes, including Peter when he’d first started, didn’t think about.

Red Hood, on the other hand, reminded him more of Deadpool. Especially when Hood had first come to Gotham. Those records hadn’t been pretty. Lots of death, severed heads, criminals running scared. He tilted his head. It probably spoke to something broken in his psyche that he found it endearing how much better Red Hood was doing with the whole wanton death and dismemberment thing, but he'd just been so proud of Deadpool lately and he supposed that feeling was carrying over to this stranger.

He hadn’t met any of the local heroes in person yet. He was still avoiding the superhero community in this dimension, at least until he felt like he could stand on his own two feet here. He never liked feeling disadvantaged when face to face with superheroes. The only reason he was breaking his rule now was that Nightwing and Red Hood were obviously in trouble. His limited research had implied that the two of them didn’t work together often, but it seems like they had teamed up tonight for whatever reason. It wasn’t going well.

“You birdies are going to learn to stop interfering with our business,” the lead Bad Guy said. His mask was slightly different, made to look like a skull. It was probably meant to look more intimidating than it was. Unfortunately, Peter didn’t know who this guy was. He hadn’t been on the list of major Gotham villains, and Peter hadn’t gotten around to looking into the smaller ones who weren’t in and out of Arkham every few months. Judging by the naming system in this universe, though, he was going to guess that the guy was called something like Black Mask or the Menacer. Maybe simply Skullface.

The bad guy #1, as Peter had labeled him in his head, suddenly pistol whipped Nightwing in the side of the head. Both vigilantes were gagged, but Red Hood started making noise behind the cloth tied around his mouth that sounded an awful lot like swearing. He was tugging at his bonds, but they weren’t loosening. Peter saw the way Nightwing’s head lolled, dazed from the blow, and reacted before thinking.

“If they haven’t learned that lesson yet,” Peter said, sliding upside down from a line of webbing into the center of the warehouse, “then I doubt they’re going to this time.”

Shots immediately began to ring out. He’d positioned himself high enough that none of the bullets came close to anyone else in the warehouse, though he himself had to twist and leap to avoid getting hit. He moved quickly, quicker than the goons expected, judging by their inability to keep up with him as he swung across the warehouse ceiling. He picked up goons as he went, disarming them and securing them to pillars and walls with webbing. 

Nightwing and Red Hood both gave muffled shouts, which Peter took as a warning. He ducked low and the bullets flying at him from behind hit the bad guys in front of him instead. One dropped with a bloody shoulder while another was hit in the chest. With the way his heart rate immediately became erratic, Peter wasn’t sure he was going to make it. He shot to his right and webbed four more bad guys out of the way. That only left two more, plus the leader. It was quick work to take out the last two goons – seriously, these guys needed better training and like, medical insurance. And dental. Did they get worker’s comp in this kind of job? He asked one of the criminals about this as he webbed him to dangle from the ceiling. The guy just spat at him. Peter grimaced and dropped back down to the floor.

“Don’t worry Mr. Nightwing, Mr. Red Hood! I’ve got this.”

Their responding grunts did not sound reassured, despite the fact that the warehouse was mostly clear now. He frowned at the lack of faith.

“A new player,” the villain said, in a stereotypically villainous voice. “And not even a bat. A spider come to play.”

“That’s me!” Peter responded cheerfully. He shot his webs at the guy’s limbs, but he was faster than Peter expected. He adjusted to keep up and managed to web one of the guy’s wrists to the wall. He quickly followed up with webs to the guy’s other wrist, chest, and mouth. He had to get close to disarm him, which caused the muffled noises behind him to increase dramatically, but he ignored them until all of Bad Guy #1’s weapons were in a pile, far out of reach, and coated in a thick layer of webs.

“Play time’s over now. Time for the responsible adults to come pick you up.”

Bad Guy #1 snarled at him in a way that was genuinely frightening, but he couldn’t free himself from the webs. It took Peter’s level of strength to break them and even he had to put in effort. He took another look around the warehouse, but there were no more goons left standing. He was running low on web fluid after all of that, but it was worth it.

He turned and smiled at Nightwing and Red Hood, even though they couldn’t see beneath his mask. Nightwing was listing slightly to the side and breathing heavily. That hit to the head did a number on him. Peter’s smile slipped away and he rushed forward to free them. He carefully grabbed the zip ties and ripped them apart, freeing their hands and feet. The number of zip ties seemed like overkill in Peter’s opinion, but perhaps the villains here had simply learned to stop underestimating the local hero community.

“Who the fuck are you?” It wasn’t the most grateful greeting he could have received, but Red Hood seemed like the blunt, no-nonsense type, so Peter decided not to take it personally.

“I’m your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man!” He grinned wryly beneath his mask. 

“How old are you, kid?”

Peter frowned, not that they could see it. “Old enough to have just saved your lives.”

“Touché.” Red Hood looked around at the criminals currently stuck to the walls and ceiling, minus the two that had been shot. Peter could have slapped himself for forgetting the man who was bleeding out on the floor. His heart climbed into his throat as he leapt over and checked on the one that had been shot in the chest. He was alive, but barely. He used his webbing as a makeshift bandage for both of the men and stepped back. He’d already called 911, so with luck the paramedics would be here soon.

“He’ll be alright,” Peter assured them both. Red Hood didn’t seem too concerned, but Nightwing did and Peter wanted to make sure he knew that Peter hadn’t wanted him to die either. He was used to death by now, but if he could avoid it he would do everything in his power to do so. “The bullet missed his heart and his lung isn’t punctured, which is good.”

“You’re a medical expert too now?” Red Hood asked. He’d retrieved his helmet, but Peter was sure that his eyebrows were raised underneath.

“Well, no, but I know the basics. And I can hear his heart and breathing, which helps.”

The other two vigilantes shared a quick look. Peter wasn’t sure what the look said, but he didn’t really have time to stick around. He prepared himself to swing back through the hole in the roof, but stopped at the sound of Nightwing’s voice.

“You move like you know what you’re doing, but I’ve never seen you around. Or heard of you operating anywhere else.”

There was an implied question in that, several of them, but Peter didn’t have the answers Nightwing wanted. He shrugged.

“I mostly just do little guy stuff, you know? Muggings, lost kids, cats stuck in trees. You’d be surprised how much people appreciate that. Don’t get me wrong!” he hastened to add. “What you guys do is super important too and we absolutely need people like you, it’s just not…what I do.”

Nightwing looked at him for a moment, then smiled. “Yeah. I can see how the ‘little guy stuff’ gets lost sometimes.”

Peter nodded and pointed finger guns at him. “Exactly. Now, the police will be arriving in…forty seven seconds, so I’ve gotta skedaddle. See ya! It was nice to meet you both!”

He was up on the roof before either of them could respond.

“Well that was weird as fuck,” Jason said, staring after the kid who’d just saved their lives. His costume had been surprisingly well made, with a full face mask and a large red spider across the chest. Despite all evidence to the contrary, this Spiderman didn’t fight like a newbie.

Dick sighed. “No kidding.”

Spiderman couldn’t be more than sixteen by Dick’s estimate, and even that was being extremely generous. Thirteen would be his actual guess. He was skilled, but undisciplined and flippant in a way that was likely to get himself hurt. As adorable as he found the idea of Spiderman rescuing cats from trees and walking kids home at night, he was deeply worried that the kid was in over his head. He’d almost been shot immediately upon landing in the room, for one, and a later mistake had nearly gotten one of False Facers killed. A quick look at the kid’s handiwork, however, proved that his webs were surprisingly good at holding wounds together and it seemed like his assessment of the man’s survival would be correct.

“Loud. Acrobatic. Over confident,” Jason listed. He cocked his head to the side, as though a thought just occurred to him. “Was that what you were like as a kid? I see now why B has gray hairs.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

They broke into a brief, childish shoving match that ended abruptly with the sound of approaching sirens. Dick glanced at his watch. Exactly forty-seven seconds from when Spiderman had left. He wondered how the kid had known. He and Jason slipped silently back out into the night.

Chapter Text

Peter made his way back to his little hideout and collapsed onto his web hammock. It had been one of the first things done once he managed to acquire (Okay, stole. He knows stealing is wrong, but there were extenuating circumstances and he’s going to pay them back. Somehow. Eventually.) enough chemicals to make the web fluid. He justified it to himself by saying that he needed to test the formula, but that argument fell apart when one considered the fact that he had purposefully made the first batch much longer lasting than his usual formula which was designed to last about two hours and the fact that he’d used a good portion of his limited supplies. It was worth it though, he thought. If he’d been forced to sleep on the floor this whole time, he would probably be far more sleep deprived than he currently was.

He sighed and settled more comfortably in the hammock. He’d lined it with blankets and spare clothes, making it semi-insulated while simultaneously making sure his clothes were warm for the morning. It was a solid system. 

He knew he should probably change out of his suit, but he was just so tired. He’d messed up earlier, and in front of Nightwing and Red Hood no less. How many times had he been told to slow down and make sure of the situation he was walking into before jumping in? The answer was: too many times for him to have done just that earlier this evening. He’d seen the two heroes in danger and all of his common sense had flown out the window. It had been so long since he’d worked with any other heroes that he reacted without thinking.

It had been four months since he landed in this dimension. Four lonely, difficult months. The first several weeks had been spent alternating between panicking, waiting, and surviving. It hadn't taken him long to realize that he was much farther from home than he initially thought, though perhaps it took him longer than it should have.

He let out an annoyed huff and shifted restlessly. He still had made no progress on figuring out how to get back to his home dimension. He wasn’t even completely sure how he’d gotten here. All he knew was that he was having another one of those annoyingly cryptic conversations with Madame Web, then she’d tensed and reacted to something he hadn’t seen. Even without seeing it, however, his spider-sense had warned him about the danger. Big time. Blaring sirens type of warning. Then, for no reason he could remember, he was suddenly experiencing something between falling and drowning. It was dark, the kind of complete darkness only found underground and in the space between stars. And it was silent. Eerily silent, like all sound had been snuffed out. He was used to hearing every little noise: the hum of electricity through the city, the heartbeats of eight million people around him, the buzzing of insects and scurrying of rat paws, gunshots and car engines and sirens and shouting and crying and laughing and singing and so much overlapping noise created by the city that never sleeps. He’d never known silence, even before he got his powers. This silence grated at him. All he could hear was his own heart and his own lungs struggling for air.

Then, abruptly, there was light and noise again. The light was dim and filtered through thick smog, but it was blinding after the complete absence of it. The sounds were more like what he was used to. A city, loud and brash, filled with people. There was more violence than there had been before…whatever that was, but was still familiar. It was only after his eyes had stopped blinking away the spots that he’d realized how unfamiliar this city was.

He’d landed in his Spider-Man suit and so had hidden until he knew more. His spider-sense had been on the fritz, warning him of every alley and shadow, but he’d eventually found a rooftop that seemed safe enough and had taken the time to have a nice little panic attack. Then, he committed his first crime in this new dimension: he broke into a church.

In his defense, normally churches were open at all hours of the day to allow in the faithful and those seeking asylum. He was pretty sure that’s what they were for . This one, however, had been locked up tight and he’d had to twist and squeeze his way through one of the tiny windows on the second floor to get in. There was no one inside, not even a pastor or priest (he hadn’t checked what denomination the church belonged to, but the stained windows covered by iron bars made him think possibly Catholic), so he was free to search out the closet where they kept the items they donated to the poor. Peter was the poor in this situation, so it wasn’t stealing, he promised, though he did apologize to the life-sized wooden Jesus behind the pulpit just in case.

He’d emerged from his scavenging with a pair of jeans, a t-shirt with an iron-on image of a northern long-eared bat for some reason, a plain dark grey hoodie, and a pair of work boots that were only slightly too big for his feet. They were women’s boots, but he forced himself not to think about that. He’d also tried hard not to think about the fact that all of the clothes he had found to fit him were several sizes smaller than he’d expected. At first, he’d tried to convince himself that the sizing in this dimension was just different than he was used to, but then he’d stepped into the bathroom and caught a glimpse of his reflection.

His suit was loose. It sagged around his shoulders and drooped over his torso. The pants were baggy rather than skintight and the tips of the boots flopped past his toes. He’d noticed the discomfort on the way here, but hadn’t given it much conscious thought since he was far too preoccupied with trying to figure out where he was and what the hell was happening to worry about it.

Now he was worried about it. He took a deep breath and ripped his mask off, still staring at the mirror. The young boy that looked back at him looked nothing like the twenty year old that he’d seen just that morning as he brushed his teeth. Well, he did look like that man, but younger, less defined, with baby fat in his cheeks and large brown eyes that seemed too large for his face. 

Peter had another panic attack.

When he got himself under control, he stepped closer to the mirror and touched shaking fingertips to the surface. The glass was solid. This was real. He had been deaged somehow. He didn’t know by how much, but he suspected he was currently around thirteen or fourteen. Right around the time he’d been bitten. Yet he still had his powers, which was good. Had he gone back in time? His instinct told him no. This wasn’t New York, even an earlier version. His body was younger, though his mind wasn’t, which was odd. Maybe a side effect of getting here? Wherever here was. No, this was something else, something caused by whatever had set off his spider-sense and caused Madame Web to gasp in fear. He just needed to figure out what that something was.

The next several days were spent completely in survival mode. He’d changed into the newly obtained clothes and had used an old grocery bag from the church’s kitchen to hold his suit. The kitchen had a large box of donated food items as well, from which he had taken the bare minimum needed to help him get through the next few hours. Then he’d gone out onto the streets again, this time at ground level, and walked.

It took him some time to notice that the same word popped up over and over on all of the signs: Gotham. Gotham Printing Press, Gotham Theater, Best Burgers in Gotham! The sun had just begun to rise when he came upon Gotham Public Library. It was a large, ornate building that reminded him vaguely of New York’s with its marble columns and imposing structure. There were no stone lions, but there were two statues of men seated in marble thrones to either side of the entrance. It was closed at the moment, but Peter had stared at it with growing hope in the dawn light. Libraries had computers and computers had answers. He could figure out where he was and what to do now.

He’d found some of the answers he was looking for that day. He’d learned that he was indeed in a city called Gotham, and that it was the crime capital of the country. He’d discovered the names of the vigilantes that combated that crime, as well as the other heroes of this world. The Justice League was interesting. They were a much larger group than the Avengers, and more autonomous, though overall not too terribly different.

He’d also learned that there were some people in this dimension who specialized in interdimensional travel. They weren’t the easiest people to get a hold of, it seemed, but that had given him hope that his problem was solvable. Four months later, he was still waiting to hear from one of the four people he’d reached out to: Ray Palmer, Jennifer Morgan, John Constantine, and Zatanna Zatara. So far no luck. He’d had to be fairly vague in his messages to them, so they wouldn’t think he was insane, but now he was considering that he might have been too vague.

He grumbled to himself and shifted again in his hammock. Why had this happened to him? He was a good person. Or at least, he tried to be. He saved people every day. He was polite, he helped old ladies carry their groceries up the stairs, he paid his taxes. Besides, he hadn’t pissed off anyone new lately that he knew of. Maybe this mystery person or entity or whatever had been targeting Madame Web and he’d simply gotten caught in the crossfire? The strange thing was, he had seen no sign of her since landing here. He knew she had the ability to cross dimensions, yet she had left him here. Had it really been her all along? Then why had she been afraid? She could have been acting, he supposed, but he didn’t think so. He knew what true fear looked like.

It had been early spring when he’d arrived and now summer was nearly over. The weather would start to turn colder soon. Kids would be going back to school, the nights would become longer, and crime would decrease, if only slightly in a city like this. Everyone knew that crime grew worse when the weather was hot. Peter had seen how bad things had gotten here in Gotham over the summer. He’d tried to avoid going out as Spider-Man for as long as possible, but he just couldn’t ignore the constant sounds of pain, fear, and death. So he’d found himself a needle and some thread, tightened up his suit, and hit the streets.

He tended to stick around the abandoned building where he’d made his home. It was in a place that might have once been called Park Row, according to the faded, bullet hole-ridden sign he’d passed by once, but the locals just called it Crime Alley. It was a fitting name, as there seemed to be more crime here than even the rest of Gotham. Like when he’d first started as Spider-Man, Peter stuck to the small stuff. The “little guy things.” He stopped muggings, walked drunk people home, got cats out of trees, things like that. There were a lot of robberies around here. It made him a little bitter towards billionaires living safely over in Bristol like Bruce Wayne, who seemed to be this universe’s version of Tony Stark (if Stark wasn’t Iron Man and had a habit of adopting orphans). Mr. Wayne made it hard to truly hate him, however, since he seemed to be personally keeping Gotham from sinking entirely into poverty and hopelessness. He started the Martha Wayne Foundation, which provided soup kitchens, free schools, orphanages, and women’s shelters all over the city. It funded the arts, gave scholarships, and provided all kinds of educational programs. It also was responsible for a program called Family Finders, which Peter learned about when a woman on the subway asked him if he needed their help to find his parents.

So, he couldn’t really blame Bruce Wayne for how awful things were around here, but he could blame Batman. In fact, no vigilante other than himself and Red Hood ever stepped foot in Crime Alley. Peter couldn’t understand that. This was where people needed the most help, and they were avoiding it? He wasn’t sure if it was cowardice or some other reason, but either way he resented them for it. Oddly enough, that resentment made him fit in with the rest of the residents of Crime Alley more than pretty much anything else. They loved Red Hood, hated Batman, and minded their own business. Peter found himself liking them a lot.

The people of the Alley were strong. They used to be afraid of him, when he first started out. Sometimes they would even attack him after he’d just saved their lives. Then, something changed. He wasn’t sure what it was, but now when he swung over the streets, people would wave to him from their windows. The guy who owned the falafel stand, Mr. Nazir, would always offer him a free falafel if he managed to get there before eight. They were never exuberant, of course. Even joy in the Alley was subdued. When he saved victims, they usually just gave him a nod of thanks and went on their way. This was their reality and they’d survived so far, and they would keep on going until something put them down. Spider-Man just happened to delay that eventuality for a little while, and they were grateful but not overly emotional about it. The first time that had happened, Peter had been a little wrong-footed, but he soon came to realize that’s just how it was here.

As much as he was growing to like it though, he still ached to go home. He was tired of being fourteen again and he was tired of the constant smog and the strange stench of Gotham. It wasn’t like New York, whose scents shifted with the wind from sewage to hot dogs to car fumes to spices and back again in an olfactory kaleidoscope. Gotham smelled like chemicals, always. Sometimes it smelled like death and blood, other times like a porta-potty in a tornado, but it always smelled like chemicals. He hated that he was getting used to it.

It was also getting harder to get by. He hadn’t been able to find a job, so he had no money for food or rent. No one wanted to hire a fourteen year old (who looked even younger than that) other than the gangs and the mobsters, which he wanted nothing to do with. His metabolism was eating through the dumpster scraps and dollar store canned goods faster than he could get his hands on them and he knew that the building he’d found wasn’t going to be up to par come winter. He knew with terrible certainty that unless he did something to improve his situation, he would die.

The question was, what could he do? He didn’t exist here. He had no paperwork to apply for a job or even to school. He might be able to do a decent job of forging them, but honestly his forte has always been chemistry, not computer science, and he didn’t really trust that the forgeries would hold up under any kind of scrutiny. He’d seen what CPS was like here and he refused to allow himself to be caught by them. He’d already rescued a dozen kids last month who’d been trafficked as a result of the so-called Child Protective Services. It didn’t help that he would be classed as a ‘meta’ in this dimension, which would make him more valuable to those kinds of people.

At this point he was thinking he might just risk it and ask one of the vigilantes for help. That’s what they did, right? They might not believe him though, and then what would they do? Put him in Arkham Asylum with all the other crazy people? No thanks.

He thought again about the Martha Wayne Foundation. He’d utilized their services before, especially the soup kitchens and clothing bins, but he’d never really looked into their free schooling and scholarships. School would mean two meals a day, hot showers in the locker room, and a heated building for at least half the day. It might mean the difference between life and death. 

The problem, again, was his lack of official identity. The only computer he had access to was in the public library and that was hardly the best place to go about faking birth certificates and social security cards. What choice did he have though? Unless he decided to just stand in Bruce Wayne’s vicinity and look sad. That seemed to work for at least a dozen kids in Gotham, from what he had gathered from the gossip magazines he’d found in the trash. He wasn’t actually sure the exact number of children the man had, but it was several at least. He didn’t trust it, however, and he didn’t trust Bruce Wayne – no matter how many charities he funded. So, school it was.

Once he made up his mind, he was finally able to fall asleep for a few fitful hours.

Chapter Text

“I’m tellin’ you,” Jason said, kicking back in his chair and tossing his feet onto the table, “the way he moved wasn’t natural.”

“Jason. Feet,” Bruce reprimanded without looking around. He was staring at the mask footage from last night, watching the new vigilante as he flipped around the room and non-violently trapped almost every member of Black Mask’s crew.

Jason didn’t take his feet off the table. “I know that Nightwing has a thing about flipping all over the place –” 

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“– but the way this guy moved was different. And what’s with the webs? Is he just sticking to a theme or can he actually, like, produce them?”

“He’s using a device,” Bruce said. He paused the footage and pointed to a tiny detail neither of them had noticed. “When he presses the buttons on his wrist, the webbing shoots out. Based on the sample I got from Gordon, the material is synthetic. I was able to break it down to its base components, but the two attempts at recreating it both failed. I’ve sent a sample to Lucius to see if he has any more luck.”

“Okay so,” Dick said, leaning against the desk and holding up both hands to count on his fingers, “we know that he’s a meta, that he’s stronger and faster than the average human, that he’s good enough with chemistry and engineering to make his own weapons, and that he saved both of our lives.”

“And that he’s, like, twelve.”

Dick grimaced a little, but nodded toward him in agreement. “And that he’s very young.”

“We also know that he’s been operating in Gotham for at least several weeks.” All three of them looked up to see Tim walking into the cave, carrying an open laptop. He set the laptop down and connected it to one of the Batcomputer’s many monitors. Police reports and grainy CCTV footage popped up, overlapping each other.

(Tim had to code it to do that, Jason knew. Tim was just a dramatic little shit.)

Bruce leaned forward to examine what Tim had found and frowned. “How did we not hear about this before?”

“Because he only ever stays in Crime Alley and he never gets involved in anything too big. He never engages with Arkham breakouts or gang wars, mostly muggings and small time robbery.”

“The little guy stuff,” Dick said, repeating what Spiderman had told them.

“Yeah, exactly. I think he might even have actually rescued a cat from a tree.”

Dick grinned. “That’s so cute.”

“It will be less cute if he gets himself hurt through inexperience,” Bruce countered gravely, making Dick’s smile fade.

“Right.”

Before Bruce could order him to, Tim started collating the data he’d collected and putting together an official file for Batman’s records. Bruce grunted in approval and moved on.

“I’ve spoken to the rest of the League,” Bruce said, sitting back in his chair. “No one has heard of ‘Spiderman’, either as hero or villain. The closest is, of course, Black Spider, but there is no apparent connection besides the arachnid theme.”

“So what do we do?” Jason asked.

“We watch, for now. Observe, monitor, but don’t interfere until we know more or unless he’s in trouble. I’m inclined to believe that he’s on our side, but I don’t want to make any hasty judgments in case I’m wrong.”

They both nodded.

“I’ll keep an eye out for him,” Jason said casually. He stood up and stretched, then snatched his helmet off the table. “I’ve heard a couple of things about a new hero in Crime Alley and I’m starting to think those rumors are about our new friend.”

“What kind of rumors?”

Jason shrugged. “Just like the kid said. Little guy stuff. Interrupted muggings, kids being walked home at night, that kind of thing. I didn’t hear anything about the cat, but that’s not exactly major news either. The Alley’s been different though. It was driving me nuts trying to figure out what was up.”

“Must mean they like him then,” Dick commented. That was pretty significant, actually. People of Crime Alley didn’t approve of just anyone. In fact, they rarely approved of anyone who wasn’t from there and even then, they mostly hated each other. For Spiderman to be accepted meant that he was probably a local and that he’d proven himself to them somehow, like Jason did as Red Hood by looking out for children and sex workers above anyone else.

Bruce was still frowning hard at the screen. The furrow between his brows looked like a carved canyon of worry and disapproval. “Just because he is only concerning himself with petty crime now doesn’t mean that he won’t get involved in something bigger at some point. Probably sooner rather than later in this city. He needs training. Backup. We don’t know anything about him or his personal life. If he’s from the Alley, he could be struggling for basic necessities and yet still somehow going out every night as Spiderman.”

“You’re saying he’s going to get himself hurt if we don’t do something,” Dick concluded, finishing Bruce’s thought like he always did. Bruce just nodded gravely.

“So we’ll just make sure that doesn’t happen,” Jason assured him, his voice muffled partway through his sentence as he shoved his helmet on his head. He waved over his shoulder. “I’ll let you guys know if I run into him.”

“Be careful, Jay!” Dick called behind him. Jason flipped him off with a manic grin and took off on his bike.

Weak sunlight through the curtainless windows woke him, as it did nearly every morning. He lay there for a while, his mind blank, before finally forcing himself to get up. He rolled off his web-bed (he was trying the name out, he wasn’t sure about it) and landed in a crouch on the floor.

His first day in Gotham he’d found an old, four story office building which was completely abandoned except for the fattened rats on the first floor and the spiders. He’d learned pretty quickly to avoid the apparently abandoned warehouses, of which Gotham had many, and so had set about finding shelter that didn’t house weapons, chemicals, or people. Finding the office building had felt like winning the lottery. It wasn’t the warehouse district, an instant plus, and there was a rundown apartment complex down the street that housed a few unfortunate families. Much of the organized crime here left this section of town alone, if for no other reason than they had no use for it. The building was decrepit, with trash piled in the corners and rats scurrying about to eat it. The stairs had collapsed, most of the windows were broken, and the second floor was nothing but debris and dust. There was some evidence that people had set up camp on the first floor at some point, but it had been a long time since then. The third and fourth floors, which Peter had climbed to get to, still had some damaged desks and a few ratty chairs with broken wheels.

The roof and walls were intact though, meaning he was safe from the rain which seemed ever present in Gotham, and the sinks on the first floor all miraculously functioned. He’d since found large blue water jugs (which had been sitting empty behind a grocery store) and filled them all, just in case that functionality ever stopped. 

He’d stocked up on a lot of things, actually. There was a dump only a mile outside of city limits and he’d managed to find a shocking stockpile of things that were still perfectly functional, or at most required minor reparations. He now had a few threadbare blankets (thoroughly washed at a laundromat with scavenged coins), a tarp, a camp stove (it unfortunately required small canisters of propane, which he only rarely had access to), a small cooking pot, and as many electronics as he could get his hands on. It was crazy the perfectly good parts people would throw away just because they didn’t know how to fix them. So far he’d collected: five phones, three radios, seventeen remotes, a DVD player, two TV screens, a whole mess of wires and spare parts, and a laptop that miraculously had a working hard-drive and only minor water damage.

His best find, however, had been a grocery over in the Diamond District, not too far from the library actually, that threw away all of their expired or nearly expired food on Thursday nights before the Friday delivery trucks arrived. Unlike most of the other food stores in Gotham, they didn’t lock their dumpsters, which meant that Peter was free to bring a backpack and slip inside the bin as soon as the workers went back inside and fill it to the brim with perfectly good food. Most of it he had to eat right away to avoid spoiling (namely yogurt, fresh fruits and vegetables, and all of the cooked food from the deli) but some of it he was able to hold onto and eat over time.

This morning he still had some cereal, a bag of dried apricots that supposedly expired last month but were absolutely fine, a carton of shelf-stable almond milk, and half a jar of peanut butter. He decided to go ahead and eat the rest of it. He desperately needed the calories and, blessedly, it was Thursday. That meant that he could spend the day at the library creating an identity for himself and applying for the scholarship, then he could head over to the grocery store for some dumpster shopping before heading home. 

All in all he was in pretty good spirits when he arrived at GPL. He waved cheerfully at the woman at the front desk, whose name he’d long since learned was Barbara Gordon. She had fiery red hair that reminded him of MJ and she was the kindest person he had met in Gotham by a mile. She smiled back at him and waved before turning back to the father and son she was helping check out.

Peter chose an out of the way computer, one whose screen wasn’t visible to either passersby or the cameras, and logged in. He took a deep calming breath.

“Okay, you can do this,” he whispered to himself. Sure, he’d never done anything like this before, but he was smart. He could figure it out.

He did know some coding from his college classes, but Mr. Jenkins didn’t teach anything like this. Bureaucracy might just work in his favor, however. All he had to do was convince a hospital that he had been born there, get them to send him his birth certificate, and then convince the social security administration that he’d simply lost his SS card. Easy. 

He decided to stick with what was familiar and started with Mount Sinai hospital records. Their records system was almost shockingly easy to find and break into, even for a complete novice like him. He shook his head and decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Full Name of Child: Peter Benjamin Parker

“First rule of lying,” Deadpool said to him in a faux sage tone that was ruined by the taco meat falling out of his mouth as he spoke, “keep it simple. Stick to the truth as close as possible and say it confidently. Make yourself believe the lie, if you can. It’s easier that way.”

Sex: M

Date: 08/10/2003

(He wasn’t proud of the math it had required of him to figure out the date he should have been born in this dimension, which was apparently several years ahead of the dimension he had left.)

He made up an hour of his birth, filled in the hospital’s information for the place of birth, and spent a probably unnecessary amount of time researching which OBGYNs were working that year at the hospital to fill in a name for the attending doctor. Then, he stared at the empty boxes for the mother and father’s information.

Mother’s Full Maiden Name: Mary Teresa Fitzpatrick

He had hesitated before putting her name down, but he couldn’t lie, not about this. She might have died when he was a toddler, but she was still his mother and always would be.

Father’s Full Name:

The cursor blinked at him and he stared back, hesitating. Was there a Richard John Parker in this dimension? Was there a Mary Teresa Fitzpatrick? He bit his lip. Even if they did exist, they wouldn’t hear about this little piece of paper, would they? Besides, Fitzpatrick was his mother’s maiden name, which would make it harder for someone to track her down to tell her about a fictional son that may or may not exist. To be safe, he decided to also put down his father’s old last name, the one from before he was adopted by the Parkers. He typed, “Richard John Grayson,” and tried to ignore the twisting snakes in his belly at the fear of this dimension’s versions of his parents being alerted to what he was doing.

Information completed, now came the hard part: forging the doctor’s signature and scanning the record into the system without anyone noticing a discrepancy.

He suddenly swore to himself quietly just before hitting print. Speaking of discrepancies, he forgot that if he was changing his father’s last name, he needed to change his own. He erased the ‘Parker’ and replaced it with ‘Grayson.’ It was just about as common a last name as Parker, so he wasn’t worried about it making him stand out.

He looked it over one more time and then printed the page. All library cards came with twenty-five cents for printing and copying per month. It was five cents per page, so it would cost him ten cents to print it and then scan it back in. Considering the fact that he hadn’t printed a single thing since getting here, that was no problem.

He clicked print, locked the computer, and practically sprinted to the ancient printer that still hadn’t received the signal that it had a job to do. He hovered impatiently as it finally received the document and started to print with an awful, chugging whir as it inked the page line by line. Unfortunately, the birth certificate was almost entirely blue, which meant a lot of ink, which meant that the printer took its sweet time to relay the image to paper and deposit the burning hot page onto the tray. Peter snatched it and headed back to the computer.

There were plenty of other birth certificates from 2003, which was where he had copied the one in his hand, so he was able to find one fairly quickly that had a signature from J.N Rivkins, MD. He glanced around to make sure no one was watching him, paranoid despite how quiet his spider-sense was being, before pressing the paper to the screen and tracing the messy scrawl that Dr. Rivkins considered a signature. He pulled the paper away and compared the two images. They were pretty close. The ink was a little messed up on the bottom left of the document, but not enough to make anyone suspicious, especially once it was scanned in. The printer paper definitely wasn’t the same as the kind they used for actual birth certificates, but he planned to doctor up the image a little before uploading it to the hospital records. He nodded to himself, satisfied that it would hold up at least well enough to get what he needed.

Another hour flew by as he scanned in the fake certificate, doctored the image to look like the others on file, and uploaded it to the proper place with the naming convention the hospital used. Then, he sent a request in through the convenient portal that the hospital provided for requests such as hospital records, birth certificates, and test results. 

“Damn.”

Peter swore under his breath and shifted anxiously in his seat. It cost $15 for a new birth certificate to be mailed. He didn’t have $15.

This was an unexpected flaw in his plan. Even if he somehow came up with that much in cash, it wouldn’t help him here because he had no bank account and no debit or credit card. He had two options if he wanted to go through with this: steal someone’s wallet or commit credit card fraud. He wasn’t sure which one was morally worse. Though, wouldn’t credit card fraud ruin someone’s credit? He was pretty sure that was bad. Much worse than spending fifteen dollars on some rich person’s debit card that they could then close right away.

It meant more effort for him, but he could do it. He logged off the computer and headed for the front door.

“Oh hey, Peter, done already?” Miss Gordon asked.

“Nah, I’m just gonna get some food and come back. If that’s alright? I won’t eat it in here, I promise.”

She smiled and Peter got the impression that she was trying not to laugh at him. “Of course that’s alright, Peter. Go have your lunch. I’ll see you later.”

“Bye, Miss Gordon!”

“It’s just Barbara, please, Peter.”

Peter turned around so he was walking backwards out the door. He shook his head at her. “No can do, Miss Barbara.”

“That’s a compromise, I guess.” Quieter, where most people wouldn’t be able to hear without enhanced senses, she added, “It only took four months.”

He laughed a little to himself as he turned back around and hopped down the steps two at a time. He headed for one of the busier streets, one of the ones that had a lot of fancy stores, and started weaving through the crowd. He knew how to pickpocket. He’d never actually done it, at least not like this, but he’d used sleight of hand to steal things from the villains he fights. He kept his head down, apologized in a low voice to those he bumped into, and didn’t do anything to make him stand out too much. He knew that he did stand out at least a little for the fact that he was young, poorly dressed for this part of town, and alone, but he kept his hood down and made sure not to behave in a way that would make a cop suspicious. He came out on the other side of the crowd with three wallets.

He’d wanted to up his chances of actually getting a debit card that worked. If he went through all this effort and still couldn’t order that damn baby receipt he was going to lose it. He ducked into the nearest alleyway and rifled through the wallets quickly. Two of them had debit cards while the third only had seven dollars, a fro-yo punch card, and a bunch of flattened gum wrappers for some reason. He took the debit cards, wiped his prints off the leather, and dropped what he didn’t need. If the police were even mildly competent they would find the wallets. As it was, maybe some other homeless person in need would find them and take the cash while the wallets’ owners got their IDs and cards replaced.

Miss Barbara wasn’t at the front desk when he got back, but he figured she was probably doing inventory or whatever it was librarians did. He went back to his computer and started where he had left off. The first card he tried was declined. That person, a James C Smith, was probably a seasoned Gothamite who reacted quickly to his wallet being stolen and turned the card off in the time it took Peter to walk back to the library. The second, however, went through just fine. He heaved a sigh of relief and slumped back in his chair before bolting upright and hiding the cards away. It would suck to be caught now, when he was so close.

The cards burned in his pocket. He hated what he was willing to do to survive. Sure, he didn’t think that he had actually harmed anyone by stealing those wallets or spending that tiny amount of money, but it was the principle of it. He wondered if Uncle Ben would be ashamed of him. He wondered if his parents would be.

He knew Aunt May would be. She had a steel moral backbone and never tolerated any nonsense. Then again, she was always the first to advocate for the poor. He had grown up with her rants about social inequality, police brutality, and the consequences of a society that lacked empathy and compassion. He’d even seen her hit a cop with her purse once. That was when he learned that kindly Aunt May carried a brick around in her bag just in case she had to hit someone with it.

So maybe she would understand. She would want him to make it up to those people somehow, eventually, but she would understand the circumstances and why he had to do it. 

“Sometimes doing what is right means going against the law, Peter,” Aunt May had told him with a smile as she poured some tea. “You have to know the difference.”

With the first task out of the way, now Peter just needed to get a social security number. It turns out that you can just apply for one if one hasn’t been assigned to you. With his newly minted birth certificate, Peter could just walk into an office and get what he needed. He would have to wait for it to arrive at the P.O Box he had set up, but otherwise it was a much more straightforward process than he expected. And far less illegal.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t apply for any schools or scholarships until he got that number. He could, however, do some research to decide where he was going to apply.

The schools near Crime Alley were all predictably terrible. They were funded by the Martha Wayne Foundation, but they were still ranked the lowest in the city – and the country. Probably because of how often violence interrupted the school day. It seemed like every school in the area had been attacked by gangs or caught up in a larger rogue attack. 

Schools on the upper island, across the Sprang River, seemed alright, as well as a few in Old Gotham. Safer than those around where he lived, certainly, but also better programs and better teachers from what he could tell.

Then there was Gotham Academy. It was in Bristol, which was basically Gotham’s Upper West Side. That was where the richest of the rich lived – and where their kids went to school. Gotham Academy was prestigious, ridiculously huge, and so well funded it might as well be its own country. Peter hated it immediately and would have clicked away, but then he saw pictures of their science department. Large, open labs with gleaming equipment and cabinets filled with carefully labeled chemicals. They had a mass spectrometer. In a high school . Not to mention their 3-D printer, which Peter had never heard of but desperately wanted to get his hands on, spectrophotometer, centrifuge, and everything else that Peter couldn’t see in the photos. Was he drooling? He was pretty sure he was drooling.

He wasn’t exactly overly enthused about the idea of going to high school again, but he might just sell a vital organ for one hour in that lab. He had to get this scholarship. Access to that kind of equipment meant that he would never have to worry about making more web fluid. It meant that he could get back to studying biochemistry. It meant some semblance of normalcy in this insanely not normal situation he’d found himself in.

He left the library practically buzzing. With his new goal blazing in his mind, he’d filled out the online application for a social security number and made an appointment for the day after his birth certificate was scheduled to arrive. There were three weeks until school started, which meant that he would have to have that scholarship in place by then. Luckily, they had rolling enrollment, which meant that any student could apply at any time. The power of money.

He waved again at Miss Barbara as he practically skipped out the door.

“Wait! Peter!”

He stopped and turned to see her beckoning him over to the counter. He walked over, still with a slight bounce in his step.

“Hi. What’s up?”

“I just wanted to see what’s got you so giddy. Is it good news? You’ve seemed a little down lately.”

Peter ducked his head shyly. He didn’t know she paid that much attention to him. “Yeah, it might be. Good news, I mean. Or at least, I hope so.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I know I’ve said this before, but if there’s anything I can do to help you, I’m always around.”

“I know,” Peter responded quietly. “I really appreciate it.”

“Of course. I mean it, Peter. Anything. Even if you just want to talk.”

He nodded with another small smile. “Thanks. I should get going.”

“Wait, here, before you go.” She reached into the pouch that hung over the left arm of her wheelchair and pulled out a ziploc bag filled with chocolate chip cookies. “I’m trying out a new recipe and I need a taste tester. You wanna take these home and tell me tomorrow how they were?”

Peter took the bag with a laugh. It had become somewhat of a game between them ever since he first started showing up here regularly. He supposed it was because he looked homeless and hungry and more than a little pathetic, because she immediately got it in her head to feed him at every opportunity. Peter had tried refusing the food, but then she’d pulled out a tupperware container full of brownies and asked him to critique her recipe. Since then, every few days he’d receive a batch of baked goods to review. He hadn’t tried anything of hers that he hadn’t liked.

“I’m sure they’ll be just as good as all the others, but I’ll let you know. See you tomorrow, Miss Barbara.”

Peter laid in his hammock that night, his belly full of stale ham and cheese sandwiches, not-quite expired strawberry yogurt, and delicious chocolate chip cookies. His grocery haul had been even better than usual. He got more almond milk, five more jars of peanut butter (he didn’t even think peanut butter expired, but they all had little stamped dates for last week), several boxes of crackers and cereal, and, the best part, three bags of ‘expired’ dried fruit. That in addition to the weekly bag of canned goods he got from the MWF meant that he would be alright for the next week. 

Home was still an impossibility, but he was pretty sure things were looking up.

Chapter Text

The following Monday, Peter made his way to the post office in the pouring rain. He arrived soaked and probably looking like a half-drowned rat, but nobody else in the place gave him a second glance, maybe because they were all wet too from the downpour outside. He shook the excess water off his hands as he walked up to the counter to ask for the box key. The man had merely scowled at him, typed in the information in the most aggressive staccato Peter had ever heard, and shoved the key across the counter at him in a way that nearly sent it flying onto the floor.

“Next!”

Peter opened the box with shaking fingers. Partly from the cold and partly because if the envelope from the hospital wasn’t in here then he was going to have to cancel his appointment tomorrow and he really, really didn’t want to do that. He just wanted to get all this over with.

There was a stack of mail inside the small box, which was a surprise. Most of it was junk mail. Credit card offers, a flyer for a local handyman, a coupon for twenty-five percent off an oil change, then, near the bottom, an official looking envelope stamped with Mount Sinai on the upper left corner and his name peaking through the plastic window. He ripped it open right there. He had to be sure it was actually in there.

It was. He was now officially Peter Benjamin Grayson of this dimension, born August 10th, 2003. A full nine years after the year he had started college in his own dimension, but that was besides the point. He was real here now. He swallowed heavily as the thought sunk in and ran a finger over the raised seal at the bottom. He tucked the precious piece of paper into the inside pocket he’d sewn into his hoodie and tossed the rest into the trash before flipping up his hood and ducking back into the rain. 

The weather was too terrible to do anything but stay inside, so he holed up in his makeshift home and tinkered with the electronics he’d scavenged. He’d made some rudimentary webshooters in the first week, but he was working on a better version right now. They were nearly complete, they just needed a few adjustments before they were perfect. He’d also managed to fix one of the phones. Or rather, he’d build a new one from the pieces of the others he’d found. Three of them had cracked or shattered screens and one of them was scratched, but the fifth had a screen that looked fresh from the box. Which was a miracle since all of the other components of that phone were completely ruined. The battery was fried, the processor and memory were rusted over, and the speaker was straight up missing. So he’d used the screen from that one, the processor from another, Frankensteined two of the phones’ memory cores together, and came up with a phone that worked as long as it was connected to wi-fi, seeing as he didn’t have a service provider.

The only project left for him after he finished the webshooters was a miniature police radio he planned to fit in his ear while on patrol. His spider-sense did a good job of directing him towards crime (by trying to lead him away from it), but it would help to know where the police were and what they were responding to. From what he could tell, Gotham police also kept an eye on where the vigilantes were throughout the night, using an unfamiliar code to do so. It had taken Peter a while to figure out what they were talking about, but now he was pretty sure that would be useful information to have as well, even if he continued to stick around Crime Alley.

He would have liked to be able to upgrade his suit, maybe even to something like what Nightwing wore. He got to see it up close when he saved the two heroes and had been struck by jealousy. Nightwing’s suit was made of a thick material that was strong enough to deflect blades and possibly even bullets, but still flexible enough for his style of fighting. Peter would do anything to have a suit like that. Unfortunately that kind of suit costs money, and a lot of it. He laughed to himself as he imagined the Martha Wayne Foundation funding the local vigilantes the way they seem to do everything else. Maybe he should apply for that grant.

Still chuckling to himself, he picked up one of the tiny screwdrivers he’d acquired and set to work. 

The next time he looked up, the sun had set. The only way that he could tell really was that the light coming in through the windows was yellow streetlight and ironically brighter than the weak, gray ‘sunshine.’ He sat up and stretched his back and shoulders from where he’d been hunched over his work. He leaned back to critically examine the device he had created. It wasn’t as small as the earbuds he’d seen in this dimension, but it was serviceable. He flicked the small switch on the side and heard the tinny chatter of the police radio. He grinned to himself. Now to test it out.

He changed into his suit. The material was holding up well, which was a little surprising given that it was only spandex and it had been through quite a lot in the past few months. He’d had to sew up a few tears from lucky hits and that one time he’d gotten caught on a piece of jagged metal inexplicably sticking out of a wall, but otherwise it was fine. He stuck the portable scanner in his ear and slipped his mask over his head.

Swinging out over the streets of Gotham was just as freeing as it was back home. Nothing could touch him up here. He was still Spider-Man, still saving people, and it was out here that he felt most like himself. 

He stopped two muggings and a corner store robbery in his first twenty minutes. The police response time was atrocious in this city, but it was especially bad in this area of town. He was taking a breather on the roof of an apartment building when he finally heard police arrive to pick up the first two muggers he’d left webbed to the alley wall. If he hadn’t had a means of restraining them, his work would be for nothing. That made it all the more important that he continue to have access to the materials needed to make his webs.

He considered the problem as he swung towards the sound of another scream. He supposed he could just break into Gotham Academy at night if he didn’t get in. It wouldn’t be ideal, but it’s not like they wouldn’t be able to afford to replace anything he took. He didn’t like stealing though. Technically, even if he got into the school he would be stealing from them to make his webs, but it felt less like outright theft that way. He would just be a student using the materials provided for him. It was different.

Besides that…he was lonely. He’d spent the past four months completely alone. The only regular interactions he had were with the friendly librarian and a Mexican couple who owned a restaurant a few blocks away from where he lived. They were one of the ones he’d gone to to ask for a job back when he first got here. They’d been sympathetic, but they couldn’t afford to hire anyone. Instead, they offered to give him food in exchange for the occasional hour or two of work. So he’d gone there a couple times a week since then to wash dishes or bus tables in exchange for cartons of rice, beans, tamales, and sometimes leftover burritos or chips. They were exceedingly kind and he was grateful for the meager Spanish he’d learned from high school and from hanging out with Wade that allowed him to have basic conversations with them.

Still, despite those three, Peter missed actually having people around. He missed MJ, he missed his friends from college, he missed his Aunt May and her friends who would always come around for dinner and ask him how classes were going. High school sucked, but he’d had friends there. There were people to talk to. It was kind of pathetic how much he was looking forward to actually meeting some new people who wouldn’t yell at him to get out of their store or out of their way. 

The rest of patrol went smoothly. The scanner worked perfectly and he was able to gain a better understanding of how the Bats operated. ‘The Bats’ was apparently a term that everyone used for the group of vigilantes in Gotham. Batman was the first, then he was joined by the first Robin. Some people said that the first Robin grew up and became Nightwing, while others said that he was some sort of demon or spirit of vengeful youth that shifted slightly over the years. The second Robin, or the slightly altered version of the first, worked with Batman for a few years before he disappeared. Nobody would speak of that time that Robin was gone. Peter got the impression that things were far worse then, if such a thing were possible. But then Robin returned (or there was a third one?) and things got better. Now there was Batman, Robin, Red Robin, Spoiler, Batgirl, and Signal who regularly operated in Gotham. Nightwing technically belonged to a city called Bludhaven, which was Gotham’s sister city, but he was occasionally seen flying around Gotham’s rooftops all the same. Then there was Red Hood.

Peter had done an excellent job of avoiding Red Hood so far, if he did say so himself. Other than that one night of saving his life, he hadn’t crossed paths with the crime lord/vigilante. Red Hood dealt with the bigger things like trafficking rings, drug smuggling, and mobs, while Peter stayed low and out of the way with the small-time crime. It had worked out so far. Which was why he was so caught off guard when he paused on a rooftop near the end of his patrol and heard heavy footsteps land behind him.

He whirled around, alarmed that his spider-sense hadn’t warned him of an incoming threat. Red Hood stood opposite him, hands open and weaponless. He’d obviously landed heavily so that Peter would hear him. 

“Fancy seeing you here.”

Peter didn’t know what to make of that opening. Was Red Hood upset to see him? He didn’t actually sound surprised. Had he been following him? No, he would have known if someone was watching him, regardless of their intentions. 

“Hi?” Peter had wanted to sound casual, but the word came out like a question instead. He didn’t know what Red Hood wanted and it was putting him on edge.

“I’ve heard a lot about you lately.”

“Oh?”

Red Hood wasn’t advancing toward him, for which Peter was grateful, but he was sure that if he tried to make a run for it now Red Hood would follow. With his grapple gun, he might just be able to keep up and he really didn’t want to be chased by an angry Red Hood.

“Yeah. Heard you been doing some good around here. Even rescued a cat from a tree, cliche as that is.”

Peter shrugged. “A little girl asked me for help, so I did. That’s what I do.”

“The little guy stuff, right?”

“Yeah. Nothing fancy.”

Red Hood nodded and took a small step closer, testing the waters. Peter didn’t move, but he was prepared for anything.

“That’s good. The small stuff matters, even if most of us don’t have time for it. A lot of people are grateful for you around here. They’ve accepted you as one of them now, especially since you only help the Alley.”

Peter shrugged again, still wrong-footed by this whole exchange. “They need it the most and the only other person doing anything is you.”

Red Hood stared at him for a long moment, as though evaluating his words. Or him, entirely. “Yeah,” he said eventually, “no kidding. I admit I don’t mind the help.”

Relief struck him at those words. He’d been afraid that Red Hood would resent someone else working in his territory. He’d wondered if that was the reason the other vigilantes stayed out of the area. Daredevil was like that with Hell’s Kitchen. He protected his little corner of the world and he didn’t like anyone else stepping on his toes. He was glad that Red Hood didn’t mind.

“Right. So, um, is there a reason for this heart to heart or…”

Red Hood laughed, the sound slightly unsettling coming through his voice modifier. “Yeah, kid. I wanted to meet you. Properly this time, when you’re not saving my life. And to thank you for that, by the way.”

“You’re welcome. I would say anytime but I think it’s best you don’t make it a habit.”

Red Hood snorted and shook his head. “I don’t plan on it.”

He had continued advancing forward slowly while they talked and was now only a few feet away from where Peter stood. His spider-sense still hadn’t warned him of any danger, so he figured that Red Hood wasn’t planning to attack him, even if he was still a little confused.

“So, um, nice to meet you, Mr. Red Hood, but I was just planning to head back. I’ll see you around, I guess.”

“Wait!” Peter froze and turned around from where he’d been ready to swing away. Red Hood had his palms out both to ask him to stop and to show that he wasn’t a threat.

“I got a few questions for you, kid.”

Peter really wanted to push back against the word ‘kid,’ but he was uncomfortably aware of the fact that he was only fourteen years old right now. If he saw someone his age running around and doing what he did, he’d call them a kid too. He grimaced beneath his mask.

“What kind of questions?”

“You saved those kids from that trafficking ring a few weeks back, right? You got them out and brought them to the authorities, made sure they were actually taken care of this time.”

Peter just nodded, though his interest was piqued now. Were those kids okay? Did something else happen to them?

As if he could read Peter’s mind, Red Hood continued, “They’re fine. I checked on all of them a few days ago. They got into good homes, they’re all doing real good. I just wanted to know if you remembered anything about the bastards who took ‘em to begin with.”

“Oh, yeah. I know the police didn’t catch them all, just a few low level guys. I’ve been keeping my eye out for them, but I haven’t seen them around since then. They called themselves the Clockwork Crew. I guess their leader is really strict about schedules or something.”

“The Clockwork Crew? I haven’t heard of them before,” Red Hood said, almost to himself. “Anything else you can remember, kid?”

Peter wracked his brain. “They were talking about a shipment going out at midnight, but I thought that was just the kids, so it’s probably irrelevant. They used code names, unless the goons were actually called Hammer, Dog Breath, and Bits.”

“Dog Breath? Really?”

Peter laughed. “Yeah, pretty awful nickname. That’s what they called each other though. Um, other than that, I’m not sure I know anything useful. They had someone working for them in CPS, I know that, but you probably know that too. They had only used that warehouse the one time and they haven’t been back since. They drove a grey van with tinted windows and no plates. Looked pretty new, still shiny with no dents or scratches. They’ve probably ditched it by now though. I haven’t noticed a large number of kids going missing since then.”

Red Hood sighed and ran a hand over the top of his helmet. “Yeah, it was worth a shot.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t more help,” Peter said, truly regretful. He had tried looking into the traffickers on his own, but he’d gotten nowhere. He hoped Red Hood would have more luck.

“It’s alright. You did good saving those kids. You seem to know what you’re doing, even if you’re like, twelve.”

“Hey, I’m fourteen!”

“Uh huh, whatever you say, pipsqueak.”

Peter crossed his arms over his chest and glared at him. Red Hood just laughed at him.

“You got a place to live, pipsqueak? Food, medical equipment, someone lookin’ after ya?”

Peter’s hands tightened on his biceps. “None of your business.”

“It will be my business if you die in my turf because you don’t have backup.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Yes to food and shelter. Happy?”

“Not really,” Red Hood replied bluntly. “What if you get hurt on patrol? Even the little guys have knives and guns around here.”

“I heal fast. No problem.”

“You might heal fast but you’re still mortal and you still bleed. That means you need medical equipment and somewhere to go if you get hurt bad enough to need help.”

“What, you offering?”

“Yes.” The answer drew Peter up short and shut down his defenses faster than he could blink. “But if you don’t want that, I also know someone who’ll help, no questions asked. She’s good. She operates a free clinic here in the Alley. Her name’s Dr. Leslie Thompkins.”

Red Hood held out his hand and Peter automatically reached out to take what was being offered to him. There was a little white card with Dr. Thompkins’ name and the address of the clinic printed on it, along with a phone number. On top of it was a small black device that Peter had never seen before but recognized anyway. This was what he had been trying to accomplish with the police scanner. It was tiny, sleek, and would fit perfectly in his ear. He looked back to Red Hood.

“It’s a comm. Keep it on at all times while you’re on patrol. It’ll be muted on both sides, but if you ever need help just tap it once and I’ll be able to hear you and respond, okay?”

Peter rolled the device between his fingers. “You’re offering to help me? You’re not going to try to stop me?”

“Trust me, I considered it. But would you have stopped if I asked you to? I doubt anything short of locking you up in a tower like Rapunzel would stop you from doing this. I know how it goes.”

“Even a tower wouldn’t stop me,” Peter agreed. “I can climb walls.”

“So I’ve seen. Go home, kid. Eat, get some rest, do whatever kids like you do when they’re not dressing up in pajamas and beating up criminals. And keep that comm on you.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Red Hood.”

“It’s just Red Hood. Or Hood, if you want. See ya later, kid.”

With that Hood leapt off the side of the building and grappled away, leaving Peter standing there stunned. It had taken a long time for the other heroes of his dimension to take him seriously. He was nineteen before anyone even reached out to him. Then he’d met the Avengers, Daredevil, and Deadpool all within the space of a couple months as though the universe had finally considered him worthy of the big leagues. Red Hood had seen him helping the people of the Alley, even as barely a teenager, and hadn’t tried to stop him or tell him he wasn’t old enough to be doing this kind of thing yet. He wondered if it was because there were so many younger heroes in this dimension. Robin was supposedly eight years old when he first started, assuming he’d been human the whole time, and there was an entire group of teenage vigilantes called Young Justice, obviously modeled after the Justice League. He was judged based on his actions, not his age, and he was still reeling from the shock of it.

It felt nice though. To be seen. He set the comm on top of his suit after he changed out of it and tucked the pile into the desk he’d claimed for himself. Red Hood was definitely his favorite now.

Chapter Text

“You’ve grown soft in your old age, Little Wing.”

Jason didn’t bother looking over to where Dick was draped over his couch like he belonged there, eating his food out of his fridge.

“Bold words from someone who’s nearly a decade older than me.”

“Seven years! That’s not a decade.”

“Close enough.”

“Whatever. So you gave the kid your seal of approval.”

“I gave him a comm and Dr. Leslie’s information. That’s not approval, that’s just…a safety net. In case the kid gets in over his head.”

“Uh huh,” Dick said dubiously. “Sounds like approval to me. Probably to him too.”

Jason just shook his head and put the now clean pieces of his pistol back together. Dick didn’t even flinch from the couch when Jason loaded it and stuck it in the holster on his thigh.

“He’s too young for this,” he said after a moment. “He’s fourteen goddamn years old. I know,” he said, holding up a hand to forestall the words about to come out of Dick’s mouth, “that we were both younger than that when we first started. Hell, Damian is younger than that now. I don’t know how Bruce does it.”

“For the same reason you are now. Because we all would have done this without him and so he just wants to make it as safe as possible while we do it.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Jason said quietly.

“What?” The obnoxious crunching behind him stopped and he could feel Dick’s eyes on him.

“I wouldn’t have become a vigilante if it weren’t for Bruce. I was homeless, starving. I only cared about surviving. I didn’t have the ability to even think about saving other people.”

“Yes you did,” Dick argued immediately and Jason whirled around to face him. Dick continued before Jason could say anything. “You told me yourself. Even before Bruce, you used to look out for the other kids on the street. You checked in on the sex workers and reported anytime they went missing, which normally isn’t something police notice. Every day, despite your circumstances, you went out of your way to look out for those around you. You’re a good person, Jason. Sure you didn’t have my anger issues and you never tried to murder someone at the age of eight, you never stalked Batman and Robin, and you weren’t raised in a cult of assassins, but you still had that drive to make things better in any way you could.”

Jason snorted and shook his head. What a fucked up little family they had. People forget, sometimes, what a hellion Dick Grayson was as a child, but he was a grieving kid who’d lost his parents and ended up in juvie for having the wrong skin tone and speaking the wrong language. He’d been a ball of spitfire and murderous rage that had only been tempered by Bruce Wayne’s one man quest to save Gotham through fear and violence. Jason hadn’t been like that. He’d been angry sometimes, and rebellious, but only in the way all teenagers are. He’d loved school, was a total bookworm and theatre geek, and he truly believed that being Robin made him magic. Until he died.

And it hurt more, sometimes, to know that he would have never been anything like Robin if he hadn’t been adopted by Bruce. He wouldn’t have leapt across rooftops or fought grown men three times his size. He would have never been in that damned warehouse across the world from home.

Or maybe he would have. Maybe he would have found that box in his old apartment anyway and gone searching for his birth mother. Maybe she would have still sold him to the Joker, just because he would have thought it was fun and because she would have been paid. Maybe none of it had ever really mattered at all.

Jason sighed, suddenly exhausted down to the bone. “There’s more to the kid than we know. He’s obviously a meta, but I think he’s…I don’t know. Running from something? Or someone? He’s avoided all of us this whole time, but he didn’t actually have a problem talking to me tonight, or saving our lives last week. He said he doesn’t have anyone looking after him. No parent, no guardian. It feels like there’s a story there. I can feel it.”

“Okay,” Dick said easily. “We’ll watch out for him. He only ever patrols in the Alley, so that’ll be all you, but the rest of us will keep an eye out for a kid matching his description. We’ll do whatever we can to make sure he’s safe, alright?”

“Yeah, alright.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a while. It was so long, in fact, that Jason almost thought his brother was asleep until he spoke again.

“Do you think he might be that kid Babs was talking about? The one who always goes to the library?”

“That would be a crazy coincidence. What even made you suggest that?”

“I don’t know. He’s around the same age and Babs said she’s fairly certain he’s homeless. The address that he put on his library card application was fake. I haven’t seen either of them, but from yours and Babs’ descriptions, they sound about the same height and build. But mostly it’s just instinct, I think.”

Jason nodded thoughtfully. They all knew better than to ignore their instincts, having been in the game as long as they had. It was the same reason Jason was so worked up about Spider-Man. His gut was telling him that there was something more going on than just another child in a costume going out to get themselves killed trying to help people.

“Maybe I’ll stop by the library tomorrow, see if Peter shows up.”

“Want me to come with you?”

“Nah, I got it. You said you were headed back to ‘Haven in the morning.”

Dick groaned and rolled over to snuggle into the back of the couch. “Don’t remind me. The drive is going to be murder after no sleep.”

“I’m not the one keeping you awake, numb nuts. Go to sleep.”

“You go to sleep.”

“What are you, five?”

“What’s that make you?”

“Dead.”

Dick rolled over and glared at him. Jason just grinned. He couldn’t help it if his family didn’t appreciate his morbid humor.

“Get me a blanket.”

“What? No. I’m not your maid, get it yourself.”

“I’m comfy. Come on, please? Maybe a pillow too.”

“You are the absolute worst,” Jason said, getting to his feet. “I hate you. You’re never allowed here again. Why did I even let you come this time?”

“Because you looooove me,” Dick called to Jason’s retreating back. Jason scoffed and yanked down a spare blanket and pillow from the closet, then threw them at Dick’s head. Dick caught the pillow but the blanket still managed to smack him in the face, so Jason considered it a victory. 

“Night, Jay,” Dick said sleepily once he’d finished spreading the blanket over himself and wriggling around for five minutes like a restless toddler.

“Night, Dick.”

After talking to Red Hood, Peter couldn’t stop thinking about that trafficking ring. He’d left all the big stuff to the established vigilantes and it hadn’t been a problem so far, but Red Hood had come to him for help. Sure, it might have just been a ploy to get Spider-Man to talk to him, but he was pretty sure it was more than that. Red Hood had hit a wall in the investigation. 

It wasn’t that Spider-Man hadn’t helped with some of the bigger stuff before. He stayed under the radar, but he couldn’t just ignore the major, city wide threats. Twice since he’d been there, there had been a major Arkham breakout. Once was Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze, whose powers and plans he could have guessed just from their names. He’d spent those eighteen hours guiding civilians away from the danger zones and carrying those infected by Ivy’s poison to medical centers. He didn’t fight either of them, no matter how much he’d wanted to. There had been no reason to. Batman, Robin, and Spoiler had gone after Poison Ivy while Red Robin, Batgirl, and Red Hood had been sent to apprehend Mr. Freeze. Signal had been working similarly to Spider-Man, getting civilians out of the way.

The second time there was a breakout, the Joker had gotten free. He’d never seen the city so afraid. No one went out on the streets, even the gangs, and the Bats moved in force like a terrifying, coordinated, miniature army. A bank was bombed and some kind of gas was released in the subway, but the Bats moved so quickly that Spider-Man didn’t even have the chance to do anything that time. They had those civilians out of there and the Joker back in Arkham within four hours. 

This was different though. This was a new player on the board, according to the lack of recognition in Red Hood’s voice, and children were being hurt because of them. He decided to do a little more investigating, but using a different method this time.

Peter had been in the Alley for long enough that he looked like one of them. Namely, because of his age, short stature, and gaunt, underfed features, he fit right in with the rest of the homeless children wandering around the streets. They’d been suspicious of him at first, but they’d left him alone. He talked to them occasionally and they traded tips on where to get food or other resources, but he wouldn’t say he was close with any of them. That meant he would have to be careful about how he approached this.

He found Ivan first. Ivan was twelve years old with the hardened soul of an old veteran. He had thick, curly brown hair and a scar from the corner of his ear to his jaw. He saw Peter coming and nodded solemnly to him, his brown eyes watching him carefully.

“Peter,” he greeted. “You look troubled.”

Sometimes Peter wondered if Ivan really was twelve, talking like that. But he was small enough to be and Peter knew it was just because he wanted to sound old enough to be taken seriously, as though his ability to survive these streets at his age didn’t already make him a force to be reckoned with.

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

“What’s up?”

Peter bit his lip. “You know those kids who got taken a while back? The ones Spider-Man saved?” Ivan nodded. “I don’t think the people who took them are actually gone.”

“Red Hood usually takes care of traffickers pretty fast,” Ivan responded, but it wasn’t a denial. It was simply a statement of fact with an invitation for Peter to explain more.

“I don’t know. I saw some people with little clock patches the other day and they were acting weird. Have you seen them around?”

Peter hadn’t actually seen any of them recently, but all the goons in that warehouse had had a small patch sewn onto their jackets of a clock. All the clocks had been set to different times, which Peter had noted as odd, but he figured it was just a part of their schtick. He wanted to know if anyone had seen those patches around town.

Ivan scratched his chin. “I did see a patch like that last week. Just one guy though, over at Newman’s. You told Red Hood about it?”

Peter didn’t ask what Ivan was doing at Newman’s, despite the fact that it was a bar well known for hiring kids to do shady deliveries. He shook his head in response to Ivan’s question. He should have told Red Hood that detail, but honestly he’d forgotten about it until the next morning.

“You should,” Ivan said firmly. “For now I’ll pass along what you said to the others. If they see anything like that, we’ll get the message to Red Hood. Avoid those guys if you see them and don’t make yourself stand out. Stay safe out there, Peter.”

With that, Ivan turned around and ducked beneath a piece of plywood covering a hole into the adjacent building. Peter listened to his heartbeat as he went through the building and out the other side, headed for who knows where. At least he’d gotten the word out there. Ivan hadn’t been his first choice, but he was reliable and he’d make sure the others were on the lookout for the Clockwork Crew. He’d check back tomorrow to see if anyone had more information.

In the meantime, he had an appointment to get to. He hurried across town and made it to the social security office twenty minutes before his appointment. The woman frowned at him when he came up to the desk, birth certificate clutched tightly in his hand, but she took the document from him and read it over silently.

“Where’s your parents, kid?” the woman asked.

“They, uh, aren’t around.” At her dubious eyebrow raise he hurried to continue, “My aunt is the one that’s raising me. But she’s at work right now. She can’t get off during the day but you guys are only open nine to five so I figured since it’s my social security number that I could just come myself, you know? I’m trying to apply for a scholarship.”

He fidgeted, swaying from foot to foot as she stared at him with narrow eyes.

Too much information , he chided himself. Less is more, remember?

Then, to his relief, she made a copy of his birth certificate and began filling out the form for him to get his social. He thought the form was a little redundant, given the fact that he had filled the whole thing out online and it looked like she was typing in all the same information, but he kept his mouth shut. She typed fast, but it still took her a while to get everything completed and print his new card. He had to sign it in front of her, but then he was done. He grinned brightly at the woman, who smiled back reflexively, and practically sprinted out the building.

He sprinted from the social security office to the library, unable to contain his excitement. After so many weeks of being in limbo, he was finally doing something. He was going to get that scholarship, go to school, and use his new resources to find a way home. 

He almost ran right by Miss Barbara with only a quick wave, but she called his name and he stopped in front of her desk, practically vibrating with the need to get to his usual computer.

“Woah, slow down, speed racer,” she said with a grin. “Where’s the fire?”

He grinned back at her and bounced on his toes. “I think I’m gonna be going to school soon.”

“That’s wonderful, Peter.”

“You’re not goin’ to school now?”

Peter jumped a little at the unfamiliar voice and belated saw the tall, broad shouldered man standing next to Miss Barbara behind the desk. He was wearing a black t-shirt that stretched over his chest like it might tear and he had a streak of pure white in his otherwise black hair, right where it fell onto his forehead. Blue-green eyes looked at him curiously, but not nearly as judgmentally as his question implied.

“Uh, no. I mean, I did. I used to. But not in…a while.”

The man nodded in understanding. “Been there. Glad to hear that’s changing for ya.”

Peter’s smile was back. “Thanks, mister.”

“It’s just Jason, kid. No need for the mister. I’m not that old.”

Peter made a show of wrinkling his nose and looking Jason up and down. “Are you sure, mister? You look pretty old to me. I mean, you even got white hair.”

Miss Barbara stifled a laugh and he grinned at her. Jason just shook his head.

“You little sh – punk. Go do whatever it is youths do these days.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Jason. You go do taxes and tell kids to get off your lawn.”

He ran away before Jason could come up with a retort, still laughing to himself. Behind him, he heard Jason and Barbara’s whispered conversation.

“I didn’t expect him to be such a little shit. Reminds me of Dickhead.”

“He’s a cheeky one, that’s for sure. I’m glad to hear he’s going back to school.”

Peter reached the computer and tuned out the rest of the conversation. It was sweet that Miss Barbara cared so much. 

He filled out the scholarship application in minutes, now that he had the required information. Now the only thing to do was take the placement test. There was a spot available later today, actually. It wasn’t like he had any means of studying anyway, so might as well get it over with. At least he could be sure he’d do well on the math and science portions. The literature section would be iffy at best, but he managed to get into college with the rudimentary skill he had, so he should at least be able to manage a high school level.

What about history, though? Would history be the same here as it was back home? Probably not, honestly. He scheduled the test anyway. It wasn’t for a few hours so he had enough time for some quick internet searches.

Ancient history seemed similar enough, as far as he could tell. He didn’t actually know enough about it in his home dimension to say for sure. It was recent history that had gone off the rails. The existence of superheroes had changed everything in this dimension, far more so than back home. Apparently high school history curriculums covered interplanetary treaties, the formation of the Justice League, and a bunch of other things he’d had no idea about. He skimmed through the articles, but he didn’t actually have time to learn all of it. Hopefully it would be enough.

He waved bye to Miss Barbara and Jason on his way out, then doubled back and braced against the counter, leaning forward.

“The cookies were good, Miss Barbara. Fluffier than the last batch, but I liked the dark chocolate you put it in before."

"Noted," Barbara said with a smile.

"Bye, Miss Barbara. Bye, Mr. Jason. Nice to meet you!”

“Bye, Peter!”

He raced to the academy. It was a long journey. He had to go all the way from the Diamond District, up through Somerset and Burnley, then across the Trigate Bridge. He arrived sweaty and tired, but with five minutes to spare, so he considered it a win. The test administrator who let him in the building didn’t seem to appreciate his timeliness, however, since she sneered down at him and wrinkled her nose at the state he was in.

It probably didn’t help that he’d showered two days ago. It was hard sneaking into gym locker rooms all the time, alright? He did the best he could by showering every few days and using wet wipes in between. He used the sinks on the first floor of his building to wash his hair and face, but he couldn’t exactly climb all the way in one of those tiny things for a bath. Besides, if he got into the academy that wouldn’t be a problem any more. He’d just get to school early and shower before classes started.

“This way, Mr. Grayson.” She led him down the hall without even bothering to introduce herself, though at least she seemed to know his name. Her high heels clacked sharply as she walked and the sound echoed in the empty hall. He fought not to wince.

They reached a classroom that looked exactly the same as the dozen other classrooms they passed as she ushered him impatiently inside. Apparently he was the only test taker today.

“Sit. No phones, no notes. You will have ninety minutes. Answer all questions to the best of your ability and try not to leave any of them blank. You may not speak, use the bathroom, or ask questions. Understood?”

Peter nodded, thoroughly intimidated. She had him empty his pockets and roll up his sleeves before she handed him the packet of paper and a number two pencil.

“Begin.”

Peter wrote his name across the top of the first page, then flipped through the rest. He started with the science section, then breezed through the math. With the two easiest portions out of the way, he tackled the history section – which was all multiple choice, so best case scenario there – and finally the reading and writing portion.

The only sound in the room was the ticking clock and the scratching of lead across paper. He could hear his own heartbeat and breathing, as well as the administrator’s. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights seemed overly loud and he fought to tune it out and focus on the words in front of him. He was scared to so much as look up in case she somehow accused him of cheating.

“Time,” she called, just as he finished reading everything over. He stood up and handed her the test with a nervous smile that she didn’t return. 

“Results will be available in forty-eight hours. An email will be sent to your parent or guardian, as well as the Martha Wayne Foundation for review. They will send you a decision sometime after that. Goodbye, Mr. Grayson.”

He headed back out into the dreary sunshine. There were a few hours of daylight left, but he was exhausted. He’d gotten up early to find one of the street kids and he hadn’t slept all that well last night. He was eager for a nap before heading out for patrol.

He made his way back across Gotham to the place he called home, climbed up the wall, and slipped through one of the broken windows. He collapsed into his hammock and was asleep in minutes.

He awoke to the sound of gunshots. It wasn’t an abnormal sound in Gotham by any means, but these were closer than usual and had startled him out of a strange dream about a talking spider and a frozen web sparkling in the winter sun. Wade had been there too, talking nonsense about bats and birds, but Peter didn’t remember exactly what he had said.

It didn’t matter now. He shook off the dream and leapt out of bed to tug on his suit. He paused before putting on his mask, looking between the earbud Red Hood had given him and his police scanner. He didn’t want to wear both and impede his hearing. He relied on that sense too much as Spider-Man and couldn’t afford to hamper it. He decided to forgo the scanner for now. Maybe he could find a way to incorporate it into the device from Hood, but for now he was comforted by the thought that he wouldn’t be entirely alone out there tonight.

He climbed onto the roof and perched on the edge, listening for more signs of violence. The gun shots had stopped, but he didn’t know the cause of them. Robbery? Murder? He strained his ears and heard the wet gasps of someone in pain.

He found the person he was looking for in the apartment down the street. It was a man in his mid thirties, wearing a threadbare suit as though he’d just gotten home from a low level office job. His home had been ransacked. It looked as though someone had been searching for something, but Peter had no idea if they’d found what they were looking for. He focused on the man.

“Hey,” he said softly as he crouched down by the man’s head. “I’m Spider-Man. I’m going to help you get to a hospital, alright?”

The man said nothing, just looked at him with wide eyes like a frightened animal and breathed hard as though he couldn’t get enough air. Peter examined the wound. There were two bullet holes right next to each other, one just under the left side of his ribs and the other slightly lower on his left side. The lower one was a through-and-through and didn’t seem to do much damage other than, you know, a bullet wound, but the other one had grazed his lungs. With the response time of emergency services he’d grown familiar with, he didn’t trust an ambulance to get here in time. He would just have to make do.

“This isn’t going to be pleasant, but just hang in there, alright?” The man’s eyes rolled in fear but Peter just pulled out his canister of medi-webs (another work in progress, but he wasn’t a fan of ‘webbages’ so this was what he was going with for now) and sprayed the two wounds liberally. The man gave a garbled shout and thrashed, but Peter held him down until he finished. The webs would keep the skin from pulling and would prevent him from bleeding out before Peter could get to Gotham General. 

“Alright, all done. I’m gonna pick you up now, and then we’re gonna swing real fast, okay?”

He lifted the man in a fireman’s carry and used more webs, the normal ones this time, to secure his hands and feet. This way, he would be able to hold the man with one hand and swing with the other. It would be difficult, but he’d done it before and knew he could do it.

He eased them both back out the window he’d come in through and launched himself into the air. The man let out a breathless scream that cut off when Peter’s web caught and they flew forward instead of down. He had to move quick, his normal movement impeded, but he got them across the city in record time. He handed the man over to some confused EMTs who were about to climb into their ambulance after a drop off and swung away.

The rest of his night was not any easier. It felt like Gotham was amped up tonight for some reason and he didn’t get a rest for the next several hours. Finally, he crouched on a random roof and caught his breath. He was so tired. He was pretty proud of how well he’d done feeding himself with no income, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough. His metabolism simply burned through everything too fast. It made him lethargic. His reaction time was slower than it should be, though still faster than a normal person’s, and after five hours of crime fighting his body felt like it had been dipped in lead. He rested his head on his knees and breathed.

Heavy boots landed behind him. Peter didn’t even bother looking up. He had been aware of Red Hood’s approach this time, though his spider-sense still hadn’t issued a warning. Instead he’d heard the sound of a grapple gun and the brushing of fabric as the man had moved. He was too tired to even greet him.

“Hey, little spider.”

Peter managed to turn his head with monumental effort and look in Red Hood’s direction. “Hey,” he said softly.

“You alright?”

Peter shrugged. “Tired.”

Red Hood hesitated for a moment, then sat next to him on the ledge. “Heard about the guy you brought to the hospital. You saved his life. Good job.”

“Thanks.” He smiled a little, glad to know he’d done some good tonight.

“I heard some more about that Clockwork Crew,” Red Hood offered. Peter made an interested noise but didn’t speak. “They all were little clock patches. Makes them easy to identify. Not sure why I hadn’t noticed them around before, but now that I know what to look for, I should be able to take them down.”

“Tha’s good,” Peter slurred. “You find names?”

He could feel the concern radiating off of the man beside him but he didn’t say anything about it. “Yeah, a few. Mostly lower level guys, as far as I can tell, but it’s a start. Let me know if you hear anything else, alright?”

“Mmhmm,” Peter agreed. God, he could go to sleep right here.

“Are you gonna be good to get home, kid? You don’t even look like you can stand right now.”

“Sure,” Peter lied. He didn’t actually know if he could get home right now, but he could probably just sleep on this roof and be fine. 

Red Hood sighed. “Yeah, okay, no. Come on.”

Peter found himself suddenly hauled to his feet and the world spun dizzily. “Woah. What?”

A strong arm wrapped around his torso and started half-carrying him, half-dragging him along. “You’re spending the night at my safe house. Ah, ah! No arguments. You’ll get eight hours of sleep and then we’ll talk.”

Peter was pretty sure he should have argued harder against this, but at this point he couldn’t remember why. He trusted Red Hood. Or he trusted him enough, he supposed. When he heard a grapple release and catch on a nearby building, he climbed up Red Hood’s side and clung to him, resting his head on his shoulder. Hood tensed in surprise, then huffed and proceeded to carry Peter a few blocks west and then down the stairs from the roof to an apartment that he unlocked with an actual key. 

Peter was vaguely aware of being set down on something soft and a blanket being pulled over him, but then he was out.

The next time he woke, it was to the smell of bacon, eggs, and maple syrup, which was a much better way to wake up than gunshots. He rolled over and shoved his head deeper into the pillow, only to stop once he felt the fabric over his face. Right. Patrol, Red Hood, safe house. Had he really fallen asleep clinging to the fearsome vigilante like a koala. Why yes, yes he did. He was never going to live this down.

“Morning, sleepy head,” Red Hood greeted cheerfully when Peter finally talked himself into leaving the room. Hood wasn’t wearing his helmet, just his domino mask, and he grinned at Peter from where he was manning the stove. Crisp bacon sat on a paper towel covered plate to the right of the stove and Hood was sliding a fresh waffle from the iron onto a towering stack of fluffy, buttery goodness. Peter’s mouth watered and his stomach growled loud enough for Hood to hear across the room.

“Hungry?” he teased.

“Starving,” Peter said honestly. He sat on one of the stools that Hood gestured toward and eagerly accepted the overflowing plate handed to him.

“You didn’t have to cook me breakfast, you know.”

“I know,” Hood said easily as he passed him a bottle of syrup. “I wanted to. Besides, you look like you could use a good meal. Or twelve.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Peter grumbled. He hated that he looked so scrawny right now. He was doing the best he could! He drenched his waffles in syrup and lifted his mask to his nose to take a bite.

“Oh my god.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

“Thish ish sho good,” Peter responded through a mouthful of waffle anyway. He swallowed and shoved in another bite. “Sheriously. Thank ‘ou.”

“You’re welcome, gremlin. Eat as much as you want, I made plenty.”

Peter could see that. It looked like Hood had made enough for an army. Or for a spider mutant. He devoured the plate in front of him and grabbed another stack of waffles before wolfing down those too. The bacon and eggs were long gone and all that was left on his plate was a small puddle of syrup. He was tempted to lick that up, but he figured that might be a step too far.

“Feel better?”

Peter blushed. “Yeah. A lot better. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, kid. You know, when I offered to help you, I meant this kind of thing too. If you need a place to crash after patrol or a good meal, let me know, okay?”

Peter’s blush deepened. He would not be taking advantage of Hood’s kindness like that, but he nodded anyway because it looked like that’s what Hood was waiting for.

“I should probably get going,” he said after an awkward moment. “Thanks again for everything. I hope you catch those clock guys.”

“Anytime, Spiderkid.”

“It’s Spider- Man ,” he corrected. “With a hyphen. Because I am part spider, part man . It’s important.”

Hood held his hands up in surrender but Peter could tell he was just humoring him. “You got it, Spider-Man.”

Peter rolled his eyes and pulled his mask back down before leaping, not at all dramatically if you asked him, out the window.

He headed home, feeling rejuvenated, and changed into regular clothes before going to search out Ivan again. He didn’t have high hopes of finding out something Red Hood hadn’t already discovered, but he was willing to take a shot anyway. He found Ivan leaning against the same wall as yesterday and waved to him.

“Peter, you’re back. Did you see any of those clock patches?”

“That’s what I was going to ask you, actually.”

Ivan nodded. “A few kids have seen them around. We gave their descriptions to Red Hood. Well, all except one,” he admitted with a pinched expression.

“All except one? Why not that one?”

Ivan sighed and he sounded like an eighty year old man weary of the world. “You know Bianca Mooris? She stays sometimes with a friend in the Bowery, but mostly lives here. She’s eight, blonde hair, always wears pink bows?”

Peter nodded. He was pretty sure he’d seen her around, though he’d never spoken to her.

“Well, she said she thought she saw one of those patches on a man who visited her father in the Bowery. He’s one of those high society types. She’s scared of him, didn’t really want to talk about it. She made me promise not to tell Red Hood.”

That wasn’t good. It would make things infinitely harder if it was one of the elite pulling the strings on this operation. It was a lead, however, and Peter planned to tug on that string until he reached the end.

“Does she know his name? I mean, I don’t go out of the Alley much, but I want to know who to steer clear of, you know?”

Ivan looked at him like he was stupid. “Avoid all people like him. Everyone knows that.”

Peter winced but conceded the point. He was about to try to press again for more information when Ivan sighed again and looked away.

“She didn’t tell me a name, but she did say she knew he was going to be at the gala this weekend. The one the Waynes are hosting. I wanted to tell Red Hood that, but she’s terrified it will come back on her dad if Red Hood targets him. I don’t know what to do.”

For the first time since Peter had met him, Ivan sounded his age. He was just a scared kid, doing his best. This was a problem no twelve year old should have to face.

“Leave it to me,” he offered. “I’ll tell Hood. That way you don’t break your promise and the clock guys still go down. Deal?”

Ivan considered for a moment then nodded. “Deal.”

Chapter Text

The next night, Peter went out again, determined to find out more about the traffickers. And to distract himself from waiting for an email to arrive to the account he’d set up for his ‘guardian.’ He'd chosen Ben, and created a generic email address for him. Writing his name on the paperwork had been bittersweet.

Tonight was calmer than yesterday. He’d looked it up and saw that last night had been a full moon, though it hadn’t been visible behind the ever present cloud cover. That was probably why everyone had spontaneously gone insane.

He was on the edge of the Alley and the Bowery at the moment, sitting on the ledge and enjoying his falafel he’d gotten from Mr. Nazir. It was a little cold, despite being wrapped in foil, since he’d had to immediately swing off to stop an attempted murder, but still good.

"Hey, Spidey."

Peter’s head snapped up. "Oh, hey, Nightwing! I'm glad to see you're alright."

He hadn't actually had an interaction with the vigilante other than saving his life, but for some reason it felt natural to greet him, as though they had known each other their whole lives. Nightwing moved gracefully, like a dancer or an acrobat, as he came to sit down next to him on the ledge. He sat mirroring Peter’s position, even swinging his legs as they hung over the side of the building. 'Imitation is the highest form of flattery,' a voice sang in his head. It sounded remarkably like Wade Wilson’s.

"Thanks to you," Nightwing said, tilting his head to look at him. "You saved my and my brother's lives."

Peter shrugged. "Nah, I’m sure you guys would have got out anyway. I happened to be in the right place at the right time. How's your head?"

"Better. It was only a minor concussion and it’s mostly healed now."

"That's good," Peter said with a nod. "Head wounds are the worst."

"You've gotten your fair share, I assume?"

Nightwing was fishing, he could tell, though for what Peter didn't know.

"A few," he answered vaguely. "Why?"

"I'm just curious. You seem experienced, but you’re a little young for it and I’ve never heard of you before.”

“Well none of you come to the Alley, do you?”

He didn’t mean for it to sound so accusatory. He was sure that they had reasons that he just didn’t understand, but that didn’t help the bitterness. He saw death and suffering every day in this tiny corner of Gotham and yet no bats, no birds, no one but him and Red Hood.

Nightwing winced. “Yeah, that’s fair. Crime Alley has been off limits to us for a long time.”

“Off limits?”

“When I was younger, Batman never let me get close. He said it was too dangerous. Then, it had been too long and we weren’t welcome there. The people of the Alley felt abandoned by Batman and now even if he tries to help he’s shunned. He tried anyway, for a while, but then Red Hood took over and…”

There was a whole painful story in the silence after Nightwing trailed off. Peter didn’t push. He knew what it was like to have stories that were too painful to say out loud.

“So what brings you here tonight, then?”

“You,” Nightwing answered bluntly, but with a smile to lessen the blow. “I was curious about you, especially after you saved us. And Hood talks about you.”

“He does?”

Nightwing smirked, though thankfully it seemed more in regards to his brother than to Peter. “Yep. He’s got a soft spot a mile wide for you already.”

Peter ducked his head even though Nightwing couldn’t see his burning face beneath the mask. “Yeah, he’s alright too,” he replied glibly.

Nightwing laughed and bumped his shoulder lightly. “I’ll tell him your high praise.”

“Please don’t,” he begged, pained.

“Alright, alright. I won’t.”

They sat in comfortable silence until a scream cut through the air and they both leapt to their feet. Peter hesitated for a moment, then looked at Nightwing.

“Wanna fly together?”

Nightwing grinned. “Thought you’d never ask, Spidey.”

Peter jumped from the edge and fell with a whoop before catching himself and swinging high. He flipped forward, tucked into an aerial roll, and shot out a web just in time to pull himself forward without losing momentum. 

Nightwing caught up to him and flipped twice in the air before shooting his grapple gun. The gun was slower and more unwieldy than his webs, but Nightwing still made it look effortless. They raced each other toward the scene of the crime, showing off slightly but not forgetting their goal.

On the rooftop above where a woman was being backed into a corner by three thugs, Nightwing grabbed him before he could leap down. Peter looked at him, eyebrows furrowed between his mask. Nightwing nodded his head toward the mouth of the alley, where two more guys stood watch to keep anyone from interfering. Not that any true Gothamite would. Peter would have missed that though, too focused on the victim, and would have been caught off guard when two more guys joined the fight. He nodded to Nightwing in thanks, then dropped between the men and the terrified woman.

“Hey now,” he said, palms up. “No need for violence tonight, fellas.”

“Who the hell are you?” one of the thugs asked, shoving his knife in Peter’s face.

Peter froze, then put his hands up and wept dramatically, “Oh no! Small knives! My weakness!”

The thugs around him stared in confusion. Peter grinned and yanked the knife out of the thug’s hand, breaking a few fingers along the way.

“Just kidding.”

He used his webs to yank the weapons away from the other two and kicked one of them backward towards Nightwing, who’d just finished subduing the two lookouts. Nightwing caught him and put him in a sleeper hold. Peter kicked another into the alley wall and webbed him there while simultaneously tripping the one coming at him in an attempt to punch him in the face. The man went down hard and Peter trapped him there with more webs.

“I know this is ironic coming from me, but I hope you guys have learned that violence is not the answer. Don’t worry, police will be by to pick you up in about thirty minutes, you know how slow they are around here. So get comfy!”

He turned to the woman they’d saved, but she was already booking it out of the alley. Good instincts, poor manners. Oh well.

“Good job, kid,” Nightwing said, walking over. He didn’t seem concerned with the fact that the victim had fled. Perhaps he was just glad that she was physically able to do so. And he was probably used to it, being a vigilante in Gotham.

“Thanks. I’m getting really tired of being called ‘kid’ though.”

“Maybe in a few years, after you get a growth spurt, that’ll stop.”

“Ha ha,” Peter deadpanned. “So you’re saying I’ll grow out of it?”

“Yep!”

Peter just rolled his eyes and yanked himself up to the roof. Nightwing followed less than a second later. It had been nice, having backup. He’d never really had it before, except when working with Team Red, but that was different. Nightwing flew through the air the same way he did and took joy in flipping around like gravity didn’t apply to him.

“Want to fly some more?” he asked without thinking.

“Absolutely.”

He and Nightwing swung around Crime Alley for the next couple of hours, even expanding a little into the Bowery, which Peter was much less familiar with. At one point it had become a competition to see who could do more tricks within certain distances, but mostly they just…did what Peter normally did. They soared between buildings, stopped a half dozen muggings, walked some people home. It was nice.

“This was fun,” Peter declared. They had ended the night on a rooftop not far from his building. He couldn’t stop the grin that stretched his face. He meant it. He’d had a lot of fun tonight.

“It really was. Thanks for letting me join you, Spidey. I’ll see you around.”

“Good night, Nightwing!”

Peter collapsed into his hammock that night still grinning. He’d never been against having people with him when he patrolled, it’s just that no one had ever offered. It wasn’t like he’d ever gotten an invitation to join the Avengers, despite his best attempts. Sure, he’d met them and had worked with them a couple of times against major threats, but it wasn’t the same. He still didn’t think he actually wanted to join the Bats, not officially at least, but he wouldn’t mind if one of them wanted to come swing with him from time to time.

Chapter Text

The next day, he had an email waiting for him in ‘Ben Parker’s’ inbox. He took a deep breath and opened it before he could chicken out.

He’d done well. Really well. He’d aced both the math and science sections and had done better than average on the reading and writing. The history score wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was a passing grade and that was what mattered. His twenty minute internet scour and the fact that it was all multiple choice had saved him.

He leaned back in his chair, relieved. He would still have to wait to see if he officially received the Wayne scholarship, but his chances were pretty good, he thought. It felt like an enormous weight off his shoulders.

Now, he just had to focus on getting ready to stake out that gala this weekend and find who the mystery benefactor was for the Clockwork Crew. He’d already looked up Bruce Wayne during his second week here, after seeing the guy’s name on practically everything in the city, so he knew a bit about him. He reminded Peter a lot of Tony Stark. Billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. He wasn’t Iron Man, obviously, but otherwise they were pretty similar. 

The gala tonight was for the Thomas Wayne Foundation, which was the other half of the MWF. Whereas the MWF focused on education, art, and family support, the TWF existed to provide medical funding. It helped people cover expensive medical costs, funded hospitals, and gave annual awards for ‘medical breakthroughs and lifelong commitment.’ The theme of the gala this year was ‘classic Hollywood,’ whatever that meant. It didn’t matter much to him. It wasn’t like he was actually going to be attending the party, he was just going to be hanging around outside. What he really needed to figure out was how to do that without tripping any alarms or garnering unwanted attention.

Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t any public information about the security around Wayne Manor. He couldn’t even find an updated blueprint, since this dimension’s version of wikipedia informed him that it had been added to and remodeled several times over the years. Part of it had even burned down once and had to be rebuilt. His best bet would be to sneak over there before the gala and check it out himself, but if he got caught doing that he would have no defense. At least if he got caught at the gala, he could say that Spider-Man received credible intel about a threat to the partygoers. 

He sighed. He wasn’t really good with the whole planning beforehand thing. Guess he’d just have to wing it.

The guest list for the event was public, at least. He had a list of names to go with the faces. Nearly the entire Wayne family was supposed to be there: Bruce Wayne (obviously), Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne, and Cassandra Cain. He didn’t know why Duke Thomas, Mr. Wayne’s newest ward, wasn’t expected to attend, but he found he didn’t care that much. Instead, his attention was caught on the name ‘Dick Grayson.’

He’d never actually read the names of Bruce Wayne’s children before. He’d read over the man’s not-wiki, skimmed a few articles, glanced at a few gossip magazine headlines, but he’d never actually cared enough to dig any deeper. He’d had his own problems to deal with and besides James Jonah Jameson’s so-called ‘reporting’ on Spider-Man, he didn’t care to read speculation and gossip about other people’s lives. He was regretting that now though.

‘Dick’ was a nickname for Richard. It was a terrible nickname, if you asked him, and pretty old fashioned, but a pretty obvious connection nonetheless. Bruce Wayne’s oldest son was Richard Grayson.

His father.

His mind shut down. He logged off the computer and walked out the door with barely a farewell to Barbara, then started walking. He wasn’t headed anywhere specific, he just wandered until the sun started to set and the buzzing in his head had lessened into a faint drone.

An hour before the gala, Peter suited up and made his way to Bristol. There was a lot more security around the gigantic, Gothic style manor than he’d expected, but it was easy enough to slip by it using his spider-sense. He perched on the roof near the entrance so he could watch the guests come in and hopefully assign names to the faces as they came in. He figured they would have to show an invitation or something.

Instead, just before the gala was scheduled to start, the Waynes stepped out onto the entryway. Apparently this was the kind of thing where guests were greeted in person by the host.

And there, standing right next to Bruce Wayne in a tailored, dark blue suit, was Dick Grayson.

Losing Uncle Ben would always be a wound that would never close. Peter had tried for years to move on from the pain of it, had tried to heal, to forgive himself, but then he would dream of Ben’s face in his last moments, his final rasping words, and he’d wake up shivering with cold sweat and the weight of his guilt pressing down on his chest like an anvil. 

There was a deeper hurt beside that grief, however. An older loss. He had been only four years old when his parents died in that plane crash, not old enough to even truly remember them. Ever since he’d been old enough to understand what had happened and what he’d lost, he’d spend a probably unhealthy amount of time mourning what could have been. He mourned the life he could have had if his mom and dad had lived to raise him. He mourned for the fact that he never knew these people who were responsible for his existence. He spent hours learning everything he could about them. He begged for stories of them from Uncle Ben and Aunt May, and they obliged him. They even gave him old tapes of his father from when he was a kid, and one from the circus he’d grown up in before being adopted by the Parkers. He read all of the nasty articles that came out after his paternal grandparents’ deaths, even though they turned his stomach. He cut out notices of his mother’s science fair awards from the school newspaper, read her graduate dissertation, and kept a box of her old jewelry tucked away in the corner of his closet. He especially loved photographs of them. He hoarded the photos he found like a particularly avaricious dragon and he would stare at them on bad nights when he couldn’t sleep. There were inconsistencies in their stories, he’d found, which both Ben and May tried to steer him away from looking at too closely, but it had only made him more curious about them.

Until he met Wolverine. Logan had recognized him somehow and it had upset both of them that he didn’t immediately know why. Then, Logan had remembered. Apparently his parents had saved Logan’s life, well before Peter was ever born, and he had seen them in him. At the time, Peter had been unable to do anything but stare, his emotions writhing and snarling in his chest. He’d been surprised, of course, but then he realized that his parents being CIA agents actually explained every single inconsistency and question that had been plaguing him his whole life. He’d been angry too. Angry at his aunt and uncle for not telling him the truth, angry that a mission was what had actually killed his parents, angry that their jobs had taken them away from him. Then there was the shy pride that he was enough like them for Logan to notice, even though Richard and Mary Parker were little more than strangers to him. And there was the everpresent grief that rose up like a tide of thorns to drown him and make him bleed from the agony of it. 

He’d managed to get more stories out of Logan after that. He didn’t have many, unfortunately, but it was more pieces to the puzzle that he’d been constructing since he was six years old and he’d grasped those pieces with two hands and held them close. His parents weren’t just smart and funny and disgustingly in love, like his aunt and uncle had told him, they were also strong, capable, and fierce enough to keep up with the Wolverine. 

“One of the toughest son of bitch I ever met,” Logan told him. “I never seen anyone that tough go so white so fast as the day Mary told him that she was pregnant.”

Logan had laughed then, but Peter couldn’t, too hooked on the story to even breathe.

“I’d seen him jump out of airplanes, leap into burning buildings, fight off armed gunmen, and yet, the thought of being a father scared him shitless.” Logan sighed. “He was up to the job though. Always was. A shame he didn’t get to do it for longer.”

“Yeah,” Peter had agreed, his voice hoarse and choked. “A shame.”

No matter how much he learned, however, it never filled that missing space in his heart. He would never truly know either of them and every time he remembered that, the wound would slice open again. He would take those pictures back out and look at the faces which were only familiar in ink and he’d imagine getting to meet them, just once, just to introduce himself and hug them.

Which was why he was currently frozen, stuck to the ledge of an unfamiliar building in an alternate dimension, staring down at a face that shouldn’t be familiar and yet was. He gripped the stone below him so hard it started to crumble, but he couldn’t loosen his grip because the man below him, smiling and wearing a suit so expensive even Tony Stark would approve, was his father.

“Mr. Grayson! So good to see you,” called a voice, which was soon accompanied by a man who stepped forward to eagerly shake Richard’s hand.

He sat there for a long time, watching this alternate version of his father greet guests like a professional. He watched long enough to figure out a few things. One, Richard Grayson was popular, well-liked, and ridiculously charming. It made him feel bumbling and awkward to think about how he would have been in the same situation. 

Two, the friendly, easy-going attitude that his not-father was using was fake. He was good at it, very good, but he knew his dad’s face. He’d seen photos of him happy, playful, mad (there was one particularly good one of him covered in mustard, for some reason, while he scowled at the camera), and a hundred other emotions caught on film. He’d seen him when he was sixteen and determined to perfect a move on the trapeze while someone else – he thought it was Ben – filmed him just in case he managed to do it. He’d seen the terrible photos taken by the paparazzi after his parents had just died, his face caught either in grief or rage. So he knew that when the line of people continued to come up and shake his hand, Richard wasn’t as enthused about each introduction as he seemed to be.

Peter watched long enough that he nearly forgot what he’d actually come here for. He knew that beneath his mask the expression on his face would be hungry. He was starved for information about Richard Parker, or Richard Grayson, and even this alternate version of him was data for his collection. He wanted to meet him. It wouldn’t be the same, of course, but it was something and he decided right then and there that he was going to find a way to make it happen. Preferably without it being too awkward.

For now though, he had a human trafficker to take down. 

Peter crawled from the front ledge of the manor toward the ballroom. Though he hadn’t been able to get any updated blueprints, the room was still easy to locate. That’s where all the noise was coming from. Overlapping voices, clinking glasses, fake laughter, soft music. He had to move carefully to avoid the motion sensors and cameras (who had those on the roof ?) but he made it undetected and settled into the shadows to watch the party below.

For the most part, the gala was exactly what he would have expected. There was a lot of schmoozing, even more gossip, and about a metric ton of fancy hors-d'oeuvres that weren’t being eaten by any of the polite society milling about. He cycled his attention through the various conversations going on, but he didn’t expect to find anything useful that way. It was mostly boring anyway, aside from some of the gossip. A few times he had to catch himself from gasping out loud at some of the comments below.

Instead he focused on the faces and, more importantly, their clothes. He searched for any hint of a clock emblem. He could only imagine how easy it would be to hide something like that. It could be a tie pattern, some fancy cufflinks, subtle stitching on a suit jacket, anything. It almost made him wish he could have been down there to examine in person, but he was just fine where he was. Even if it made his job a smidge harder.

Finally, after hours of squinting and long after his limbs had gone numb from staying in one position for too long, he spotted something. A small clock, stitched in gold thread, on the right cuff of a man’s suit jacket. It was subtle, as he predicted, but not unnoticeable. It wasn’t meant to catch anyone’s attention, just alert those in the know of who this man was. He peered closer at the man’s face. He was average looking, with dark brown hair that was cut and coiffed in a way that screamed money. His suit probably cost more than most people’s cars. His eyes were dark above his million-dollar smile. Peter’s spider-sense flared a sharp warning upon seeing him, though he didn’t need it. Whoever this guy was, Peter would not like to be alone in a room with him.

He tuned in his hearing to the conversation the mystery man was having with two women. One of the women was older, with long white hair pulled into a stylish bun and an expensive, though modest, dark blue dress. The younger woman wore a lighter blue dress cut low over her cleavage. The man kept glancing at her chest in a way that would cause most women to slap him. This woman just giggled and leaned closer.

“--every summer, of course,” the man was saying. “It’s an exclusive guest list, I’m sure you can imagine.”

“Oh, naturally!” the younger woman agreed heartily. Her cheeks were flushed a slight pink and her heart rate was elevated. “You have such good taste, Mr. Hammond. In friends, and in everything else, I imagine.”

Peter grimaced. She sure was laying it on thick. The fake smile on Mr. Hammond’s face tightened momentarily, indicating he was probably annoyed as well, but he smoothed his expression soon enough.

“Indeed, Ms. Grier. Speaking of which, there is the man of the hour just over there. I am going to catch him before someone else steals him away for another hour. If you’ll excuse me.”

He was gone before Ms. Grier could process his words. Peter watched carefully as Mr. Hammond strode through the throng towards Mr. Wayne. He didn’t weave or even give much time for people to leap out of his way, he just expected the crowd to part for him. They did, if only because they didn’t want to be run over.

“Mr. Wayne!”

Bruce Wayne turned with the same affable smile he’d had all night. Peter couldn’t tell if it was an act or not. He figured Ric – Dick Grayson must have learned that trick from somewhere though, so it was possible.

“John Hammond! Good to see you, you scoundrel. How are you? Still throwing those yacht parties every year?”

“Of course. Your invitation is still open, you know, even if you never show up.”

Mr. Wayne laughed heartily. “Oh, you know how dangerous it is for me on a boat. Why, just two years ago I took a nasty tumble off the deck of my own ship and broke my arm. I would be nothing but a liability.”

Peter raised his eyebrows. Why did that sound like a lie?

“Yes, I heard about that. Vickie Vale reported on that incident, if I recall.”

“That she did. Intrepid reporter, that one. Wouldn’t leave me alone until I gave her every last sordid detail!”

“I am…familiar with the particular doggedness Ms. Vale possesses.”

“Of course you are, my friend. You are chum in the water for the sharks they call journalists, same as me. Come with the Lamborghinis and the yachts.”

John Hammond made a sour face that he swallowed bitterly. “I prefer to think of myself as one of the sharks, Mr. Wayne.”

There was a glint in Bruce Wayne’s eye then that made the hairs on the back of Peter’s neck stand up. It wasn’t a warning from his spider half, just a general awareness that Bruce Wayne’s himbo persona was thinner than it looked. He supposed that confirmed where Dick had gotten it from, then.

“I imagine we all like to think that way, John, but few people actually are. Anyway, have you tried the canapés yet? They are simply to die for. My butler made them, you know, and he is quite gifted in the kitchen.”

The conversation continued inanely from there and Peter tuned it out. He couldn’t tell if anyone else in the crowd knew exactly what kind of man John Hammond was. He got the feeling that Bruce Wayne had some idea, if not concrete proof, which might explain why he always avoided the man’s parties. He probably just had good instincts.

After escaping Mr. Wayne, Peter’s target got trapped in a conversation with three business men that was by far the most boring one he’d overheard tonight. Something about quotas and quarters and dividends or something. He didn’t really understand, to be honest. To be perfectly truthful, he stopped paying attention entirely at that point to watch his not father dance.

It wasn’t his first dance of the night, but something about this one reminded him of the way Ben and May would dance in the kitchen after dinner. They always played music while they did the washing up and afterwards, sometimes, they would hold each other and spin around the small space like it was a dancefloor. It was never anything fancy, just a tender embrace and soft steps that led around and around. He used to wonder if his parents ever danced like that.

The woman was a little older, probably in her fifties, and so Dick had to move gently. The song was a slower one as well, which was a far cry from the lively waltz he’d danced with a girl earlier. Dick was so effortlessly kind to her that it caused a lump to swell in Peter’s throat. He knew his father was a good man, but seeing it now was different. A man in Dick’s position – young, wealthy, handsome, charming – he could have any woman in this room and likely more than a couple men. Yet he had chosen to take this woman’s hand for the slow song and give her a genuine smile, which had been so rare tonight. The woman was glowing by the end of it and she blushed when Dick bowed to kiss the back of her hand.

“Thank you, my dear,” she said with a smile. “You have always been a good one.”

“The pleasure was all mine, Mrs. Sweetwater. Thank you .”

The woman disappeared back into the crowd and Dick was once again pulled this way and that into various conversations. The glass in his hand miraculously emptied multiple times, despite Peter having never seen him take a sip, and was refilled each time by a passing waiter.

Peter felt a bit like a creep, watching this alternate version of his father so intently, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to memorize his face, his mannerisms, everything about him. Granted, this probably wasn’t the best setting for it, but he wanted it anyway with the same longing he’d felt staring at those photos growing up.

He finally wrenched his attention away when he glimpsed Hammond headed for the exit. He was leaving early, apparently. He wasn’t the first to leave, but there were still plenty of people left in the ballroom and the night was barely half over. Peter crept past the security features once again and followed.

Chapter Text

John Hammond had always been a slimy individual. Bruce had been aware of this for years, but he’d never found any actual evidence of wrongdoing, so he’d been forced to do nothing but shake the guy’s hand and avoid his party invitations with all the finesse of a flighty billionaire.

Tonight, however, he’d seen on Hammond’s suit jacket the same emblem that Jason had been chasing. Jason hadn’t actually told any of them what he was investigating as Red Hood – he never did – but Bruce kept an eye on all of his children. He always knew what they were up to, or he tried to. They were trained by him and all quite stubborn besides, so sometimes he was effectively left in the dark. It helped when he kept quiet about what he knew. Despite what some might believe, Bruce was actually capable of not interfering.

Sometimes, regrettably and despite his best intentions, he would find himself bringing up Red Hood’s various activities, specifically the resulting deaths, when they saw each other in person. He would always promise himself to not say anything, then the words would come out of his mouth anyway. Jason would get defensive, they’d argue, and then he’d leave. Again.

It wasn’t as though Bruce was not friends or even teammates with killers. Diana killed. She was a warrior and she would always do what she had to do. Hal had been a soldier before becoming Green Lantern, Oliver had been little more than a serial killer when he started as Green Arrow, and Arthur was a king who had led his people to war and whose duties occasionally involved executions. Several other members of the Justice League had killed in the line of duty as well. In fact, if he thought about it, there were very few people with whom he interacted regularly who did not have blood on their hands.

But none of those people was his son. None of them had he seen as a child, defiant and hungry, and fed them. None of them had he raised. He had helped none of them with their homework, went to their school plays, taught them how to tie a tie. None of them had told him that “Robin gave them magic” with all the genuine, childlike intensity of a young Jason Todd.

Jason was his son, and perhaps that’s why each death at Red Hood’s hands felt like his own failure. That bright little boy he raised would never have grown up to become the Grim Reaper of Gotham. He cared deeply and he fought hard, but he’d never been an executioner, despite Bruce’s fears which had been the beginning of the end. Because that bright little boy had died and Bruce couldn’t save him, and now every death felt like hot blood spilling over his own hands amidst burning rubble on foreign soil.

Jason still didn’t trust him. Even now, when they were doing miles better than they had been at Red Hood’s debut, Jason reacted to him like an abused shelter dog seeing a man. Bruce never knew if Jason was going to run or bite; he just wanted him to know he was loved.

Still, that lack of trust left him in a difficult situation now. If he told Jason what he’d seen, Jason would know he kept an eye on him. He would be angry and Bruce had neither the emotional expression nor the verbal dexterity to make him understand why Bruce was so compelled. It might drive yet another wedge between them that Bruce couldn’t fix.

Then again, Jason would be even angrier if he discovered Bruce withheld vital information. Not to mention the potential consequences of doing so, which Bruce could not morally abide. It would anger Jason and hurt Bruce, but he really had no choice.

He excused himself from the party and locked himself in a soundproof office on the second floor. He dialed Jason’s number. The first call went to voicemail, so he tried again. On the fourth ring, Jason answered.

“What?”

The hostility of the greeting was expected. It was almost a role they both played, though he was fairly sure Jason didn’t really mean it anymore. He hoped.

“Good evening, Jason.”

There was a pause and he could almost hear Jason mentally cycling through potential reasons for this phone call. He could see his son’s eyes narrowing in suspicion. He ignored how it made his heart squeeze painfully.

“Stop beating around the bush, old man. Just tell me why you called.”

Bruce refrained from saying that a polite hello was not the same as ‘beating around the bush’ and instead did as he was asked.

“John Hammond. He is at the gala tonight and he has a small, embroidered clock emblem on his sleeve.”

“You’re updating me on high fashion now?”

“I just thought you’d be interested to know.”

“Sure, whatever. Look, I’m busy doing actual work instead of rubbing elbows with rich schmucks. I gotta go.”

“Alright. Stay safe, Jaylad.”

There was a longer pause this time, long enough that Bruce thought he’d hung up, then, “Thanks, I guess. Even if you can’t mind your business if your life depended on it.”

“You’re welcome. I love you.”

It was too much, he knew. Jason had reacted badly whenever he said those three words since he came back to life and so Bruce had swallowed them each time where they sat like stones in his gut, heavy and damning. The line clicked as Jason ended the call.

Bruce lowered the phone slowly and took several slow, measured breaths. He wrestled Batman, the investigator, the observer, into his box first. Bruce, the father, was harder to subdue, but he managed. Eventually he was left with only Brucie Wayne, frivolous airhead with no responsibilities and more money than God.

He didn’t think about John Hammond as he reentered the party. He didn’t think about Jason as he pretended to down drink after drink and nearly crash into one of his own priceless statues. He didn’t think about anything at all.

Chapter Text

Following Hammond, Peter was focused again. He’d left distractions behind and now his only thought was for his prey and those children he needed to rescue from the Clockwork Crew. He moved silently through the night and easily kept up with Hammond’s BMW as he wove through the streets of Gotham like a man who wasn’t afraid of speeding tickets. 

He expected something cliche, like an abandoned warehouse, but Hammond didn’t head toward the docks where the bulk of those were located. In fact, he headed in the opposite direction, toward Old Gotham. He stopped in front of a building that looked like it might have been a restaurant once upon a time, but now was little more than a decrepit skeleton with a sagging roof, broken windows, and likely enough asbestos to kill an army.

Hammond strode into the building like he owned it. He might, actually, though it would be rather stupid of him to have his name on the deed for the same building where he did crime. Then again, criminals did stupid things all the time, so he wouldn’t rule it out completely.

Peter landed on the edge of the roof, on a section that didn’t look like it would crumble under his weight. He dropped down and crawled on the outside wall, just under the roof, to search for the best method of entry without being spotted. As he circled, he listened to Hammond’s movements inside. His footsteps were loud against the concrete and pieces of shattered glass. He walked briskly from the front door towards the back of the building, then lifted something heavy from the floor with a grunt. Hinges squealed loudly, high pitched enough to make Peter wince. Hammond’s footsteps continued, but they went down this time with a staccato, metallic rhythm. Metal stairs then. To a hidden basement? That would make sense. It wasn’t the cliche he was expecting, so he gave some points for that, but it was still classic villainy, so the points were instantly deducted.

He couldn’t hear anyone else in the main part of the building, so Peter considered it safe enough to slip through one of the empty window frames and drop soundlessly to the floor. Hammond hadn’t closed the trap door behind him, so Peter could clearly hear the sound of rattling metal, scraping steps, and muffled, terrified sobbing.

He went through the trapdoor headfirst so that he could crawl along the wall and not make the same amount of noise that Hammond had in his descent. He came to the bottom and peered around the corner to see a sight he was repulsed, but not surprised, to see.

Children were locked in cages. Dog cages. Sometimes two or three children to a cage, they were dirty, too thin, and almost out of their minds with fear. Whatever method the Clock Crew had used to keep them from crying or screaming clearly worked, since all the children were silent except for the tears and the hitching breaths they couldn’t stop. 

Rage filled him. He didn’t often succumb to anger. Anger was dangerous from a person like him. He needed to be in control, always. He knew exactly what he was capable of if he let himself give in to rage, and it terrified him. Besides that, he didn’t like being angry. He preferred to empathize with people, to find hope in the darkness. It was hard to find hope or empathy in the trafficking of children.

One of the Crew lashed out and smacked one of the cages with the baton in his hand. It looked like a police baton. Peter wondered if maybe the man was a cop. That would explain why the Crew had been able to operate with impunity; someone was hiding evidence.

The maybe-cop didn’t have time to let out more than a short bray of laughter before it was cut short by Spider-Man’s web snatching him by the chest and flinging him into the opposite wall. Three thwips in succession tore the guns out of the others’ hands and they clattered into a pile in the darkness behind him. He had no puns today, no quips.

He moved through the Crew without mercy. He knocked each one unconscious and wrapped them so tightly they looked like cocooned butterflies. Or, like tasty dinner for a thirsty spider.

When he was done, he turned to the cages and dug deep for some levity. He smiled beneath his mask. They wouldn’t be able to see it, but they could hear it in his voice and that mattered. 

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m Spider-Man. I’m here to get you out.”

He broke the lock on the first cage with his fist and opened the door. The two children inside cowered back, but a small voice from a cage to his right spoke up before he could try to comfort them.

“Do you work for Batman?” The boy was perhaps the youngest of them, around five years old, with dark curly hair that was long since matted and a bruise healing on his cheek.

“I work with Red Hood,” he said instead. “I don’t work for anyone. But Batman and I are on the same side.”

“I’ve seen you with Red Hood!” a little girl piped up. “Hood trusts ‘im. I know it.”

That seemed good enough for the rest of them. He broke the locks and the kids climbed out on their own, some unsteady on their feet. He ushered them in the direction of the stairs, then turned back to the mummified men. He hauled each of them into the cages and shut the doors. He made sure to mangle the handles so that even if the police took long enough to find them that the webs dissolved, they would still be trapped.

He turned around and caught the eye of one of the children. She looked to be about eleven or twelve. She stood with a straight back and nodded at him with a vicious gleam of satisfaction in her gaze. He nodded back.

“Alright team, up we go. Help each other, that’s it. No, I got him,” he said, scooping up the little boy that another child was trying to carry. 

“What’s your name, little man?” he asked the child in his arms.

“Gabe,” came the shy reply, followed by a small face tucking itself into his neck. He smiled.

“Nice to meet you, Gabe. And what about you?” He directed the question at the child who’d been trying to carry Gabe in her spindly arms, despite the way they shook from hunger and fatigue.

“Charlotte.”

“I love the name Charlotte. Reminds me of the spider.” 

She giggled. “The one from the story?”

Peter nodded. “The very same. I’m friends with all spiders, you know.”

“Really?” another little boy asked. 

“Oh yes,” Peter told him seriously. “I’m part spider, after all.”

“Woah.”

“Mhmm. What’s your name?”

He continued like this all the way up the stairs and to the front door. It was only after they stepped outside that Peter realized he hadn’t actually planned this far. He had no idea how he was going to get all of these children across town to the hospital. He supposed he could wait for an ambulance to finally show up, but it didn’t seem like the greatest plan. Just as desperation started to set in, however, he heard the growl of a familiar motorcycle.

“Red Hood!” cried Abigail, the same girl who’d spoken up for him in the basement.

Hood climbed off the bike and looked them over. He caught Peter’s eye – though how he did that through his helmet Peter wasn’t quite sure – and asked, “Everything alright?”

“Mr. Spider saved us!” Charlotte yelled in the too-loud way of children. “He beat up the mean men and everything. He even put them in the cages instead of us!”

Red Hood tensed for a moment and Peter was certain that he was trying to rein in the same anger that Peter had felt once he realized exactly what he was walking in on. 

“I’m glad Spider-Man was here then,” he said eventually. “Is anyone hurt?”

“We’re okay,” Sophia said. She stepped in front of the group, taking charge. She was the oldest, the one who had most clearly understood why Peter had shoved those guys into the cages, and the one he assumed had been keeping the rest of them alive to the best of her ability. “Mostly bruises, but we’re all hungry and tired.”

Red Hood nodded back, his demeanor equally as serious as hers. Peter’s respect for him went up a few notches for how easily he accepted her authority over the group.

“I’ll call in some back up,” Hood said. “They’ll take you guys to the hospital while we deal with the present Spider-Man left for me downstairs.”

A few kids scrunched up their noses in confusion, but Sophia only pressed her lips in a grim line and began corralling the others to wait for their ride.

Hood pulled Peter aside. “Thank you. For getting here in time.”

“One of the men down there might be one of the ring leaders,” Peter told him, without responding to the thanks. “His name is John Hammond.”

“How did you know that? I only just found out an hour ago.”

Peter smirked. “Dealing with the small things works out sometimes. It means I have ears to the ground.”

Red Hood grunted in acknowledgment, though he still seemed troubled. Peter had a split second of fear that Red Hood thought his information might come from being involved. It would hurt to be accused of something like that and he would have to fight to defend himself. He hoped that Hood had more faith in him than that.

“You were supposed to stick to the small stuff.” Peter blinked. That wasn’t what he thought Hood was going to say. “This is a lot bigger than rescuing cats, Spider-Man. Why didn’t you call for backup?”

Peter grimaced. Honestly he’d forgotten about the comm in his ear. He’d been distracted by seeing his alternate father, then too focused on Hammond and the children to think about anything else. Red Hood sighed.

“We’ll discuss this later. Batman and Robin are coming to pick up the kids. Then I’m going to have a little talk with Hammond.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go home, Spider-Man. You’ve done enough for tonight. Get some rest.”

He said the words gently, but Peter bristled anyway. “I know you think I’m just some kid, but I’m not naive and I can help.”

“You did help,” Red Hood countered, still infuriatingly gentle. “You saved those kids and you caught Hammond. That was more than the rest of us managed to do. We’ve got it from here. I promise if I need you, I’ll let you know.”

Peter frowned, but he actually wasn’t sure how much help he’d be after this point. The kids were rescued and about to receive medical care. Red Hood was far more intimidating than him, especially de-aged as Peter currently was, and so his presence might actually be a detriment to the interrogation Hammond was about to receive. He hated the logic, despised it really, but he couldn’t deny it. It didn’t help that he was really feeling the exhaustion of the day now that he was finally standing still. He nodded his head jerkily at Hood in reluctant agreement. Hood’s shoulders relaxed a fraction and Peter resented how much Hood worried about him. He was also, maybe, a little bit warmed by that fact, but he would take that secret to his grave, thank you very much.

He at least waited until the Batmobile arrived and the children were loaded in the back before leaving. Batman’s car had to be the coolest vehicle he’d ever seen and definitely not what he would have chosen as his first choice to ferry a small gaggle of children across town, but it was surprisingly roomy in the back and none of the kids seemed to have any problems with it. In fact, they were quite excited to pile in. Their voices overlapped each other as they asked eager question after question about the Batmobile, about Robin, if they could see a batarang, if they could touch the buttons. Robin was left with the task of wrangling them away from anything dangerous while Batman made intense eye contact with both Red Hood and Spider-Man before slipping into the driver’s seat. The engine roared and Peter could hear their screams of delight as the car took off.

Red Hood’s hand landed on his shoulder before Peter could swing away.

“Next time, remember to reach out. You’re not alone, kid.”

A lump formed in Peter’s throat. He couldn’t speak. The moment was an almost exact replica of one he’d had with Daredevil, not long after they’d met. He’d been choked up then too. He nodded at Red Hood wordlessly and escaped before his emotions could get the better of him.

Jason watched Spider-Man swing away. He’d known, just like Bruce had said, that sooner or later Spider-Man would get himself caught up in something bigger than alleyway muggings and corner store robberies. He was concerned with how quickly Spider-Man had found Hammond. He was pretty sure he’d spoken to one of the other street kids to get the intel he needed to find him, though how he’d found one that Jason himself hadn’t spoken to he didn’t know. Oracle had used cameras to follow Hammond away from the gala, but had lost him in a small stretch with minimal CCTV. Jason had been frustrated. He’d gotten on his bike and was headed in the direction they’d last seen Hammond’s car when he realized a distinct lack of red and blue flipping over his head. He always caught a glimpse of Spider-Man, especially now that he knew to look for him. He’d been out all night and hadn’t seen him.

“Hey Oracle,” he’d said, his voice as casual as he could make it, “can you check the tracker in Spider-Man’s comm real quick?”

Barbara, bless her, didn’t even comment about how she was already busy flipping through the camera feeds around the East End to find where Hammond had gone. 

“He’s pretty far outside of his territory,” Oracle announced after a moment. Jason got a sinking feeling in his chest. “He’s headed for Old Gotham. Hood, I think he’s following Hammond too.”

After that, Oracle had traced back where Spider-Man had been that night while Jason crossed the bridge to Old Gotham. Spider-Man had been at the gala somehow and had followed Hammond from there. He had a lot of questions about that, but the kid had looked dead on his feet from the way he was swaying slightly as they waited for Batman to show up. The questions for Spider-Man could wait, unlike those for John Hammond.

He let his footsteps land heavily on each step as he descended into the basement. He wanted them to know that he was coming and that it would not be pleasant for them once he arrived. He turned the corner to the sound of frantic whimpers and rattling cages. He whistled, impressed. Spider-Man had done a good job. The four men were bound head to toe in layers of thick white webbing. It was a little unsettling actually, even for him. They looked like they were a giant spider’s next meal and if he didn’t know Spider-Man better, he would have been a little freaked out. As it was, he appreciated the versatility and usefulness of those webs the kid had made. They were strong too. Strong enough to hold Spider-Man’s weight as he swung through Gotham and strong enough to withstand the frantic movements of the men wriggling within them right now.

The cages they were placed in were too small for them. They were large dog cages, made for breeds like german shepherds and huskies, but too small for muscular, adult men like these guys. They were too small for the children too, especially given that there were five cages and just under a dozen children currently being taken to Gotham General. He felt no sympathy, even for the goon with the broadest shoulders who was shoved up against one side of the cage at an awkward angle, his legs too long to allow him to settle any differently.

Their pathetic squirming increased in intensity when he came into view under the naked lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Their mouths were covered, but they whimpered and cursed and begged anyway through the webs. He ignored them and crouched down in front of the one wearing three thousand dollar loafers.

“You and I are going to have a talk.”

Chapter Text

Bruce clicked through his emails without bothering to pay too much attention to them. Bruce Wayne received far too many emails and only a fraction of them held any relevance. He had automated filters to weed out the worst of it, but unfortunately there were some things that required his attention so he was forced to sort through the rest himself. Most of it was for WE: signing off on projects and budget proposals, reviewing the company’s stock portfolio, declining requests for mergers. Some of it was from his connections as Brucie, wanting to set up some event or outing and not willing to go through his secretary to do so. Others were simply information he liked to keep tabs on: updates on charities, guest lists for upcoming events, recipients of the Martha Wayne scholarship. He had a new list for that last category, actually. School was going to start in less than two weeks and so all award winners had been selected. There were several scattered around the city, some for specific trips or projects while others covered entire education costs. The ones to Gotham Academy were full scholarships with a stipend and contained the shortest list of names. Mateo Silva, Peter Grayson, and Ava Matthews.

Bruce scanned the list with tired eyes then saved it to the appropriate file. He was having trouble staying awake, despite the three cups of coffee he’d had. It had been a long night. He’d had to excuse himself from the gala to go pick up the children that Spider-Man had rescued. It had proven to be a more difficult feat than he anticipated, given one very determined couple who wanted both a third for the night and a business partner for an endeavor in Taiwan. He’d managed to shake them though and arrived to find eleven children huddled together while his son was speaking very intently with Spider-Man. He wished he could have stayed longer and spoken to Spider-Man himself, but the children had waited long enough.

After he’d ensured that they would be taken care of by the hospital staff and the police, he went back to the scene of the crime. He hoped that Jason would have had the foresight to keep Hammond alive, but given the situation it was not a high hope. Jason was always the most violent when it came to crimes against children and innocent women. Bruce didn’t blame him, of course. Those were always the hardest cases for him too. It’s just that they would need Hammond to find the others of the Clockwork Crew and as evidence in the case against them.

He’d been pleasantly surprised to step into the basement of the old Dellatore place to find that Hammond was indeed still alive. He was encased in dissolving webs and smelled sharply of urine where he’d pissed himself in fear, but he was alive.

In an even more shocking turn of events, Jason didn’t snap at him for interrupting or tell him to leave. Instead, he let Batman stand menacingly in the corner while Red Hood continued to make threats and get answers. He didn’t even have to make good on any of those threats. Hammond was the kind of guy that broke the second he wasn’t in command. It probably helped that Jason’s threats were pretty creative. He supposed it came from reading all that Shakespeare.

By the end of it, they came out with a new name: Ted Truett. It was not a name either of them recognized, which was concerning. Neither of them liked the fact that this group had been operating without their knowledge and the fact that this Truett could be someone completely beneath their radar was galling.

They’d given the four men over to the police and gone their separate ways. Before he left, however, Jason stopped and looked at him. Bruce wasn’t sure what he’d been looking for, but he nodded after a second and started his bike. Over the engine, Bruce heard him quietly say, “Thanks, old man.”

Between that moment and the mystery of Mr. Truett, Bruce hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. He’d spent hours learning everything he could about Theodore Ausmus Truett. He hadn’t found anything particularly helpful, but he compiled a file on him anyway. He would have to do some more in-person reconnaissance if he wanted to get any useful evidence. That would have to wait until tonight though, which was why he was sitting with his chin in his hand, scrolling nearly mindlessly through emails he didn’t particularly care about.

 After a while his eyes started to droop again. He stood up to get himself another cup of coffee, then immediately sat back down, eyes wide. He opened the scholarship email again and looked at the names. Specifically, Peter Grayson.

Grayson wasn’t an uncommon name, generally speaking, but there weren’t many in Gotham. Bruce knew every single one of them. He’d looked into them before, just to make sure there was no familial connection to Dick, and there was no Peter Grayson in Gotham or the surrounding area. He pulled the records from the MWF. Birth certificate, social security number, application, and placement test. He started with the birth certificate. 

He might actually need something stronger than coffee for this.

Peter spent the next day at the library again. He tried not to think about the kids from last night, but he kept seeing their faces in his mind and wondering if they were alright.

Of course they’re alright , he assured himself, Batman took care of them .

Except, what happened to them now? He knew that not all of them had parents to go back to. Would they go into foster care? Should he do something? Could he do something?

He sighed and shook the mouse listlessly. It was still loading, which was giving him too much time to think. He was just going to check ‘Ben’s’ email and do a little more research. He should probably try reaching out to those dimension travel experts again. They seemed like the kind who were too busy to check their email regularly. In the meantime, he was planning to find their published works and do his best to understand them. He was stuck here. He had all the time in the world to learn.

The computer finally finished loading the browser and he logged into the email. He scrolled through the spam email (again, how did people already know this address) until he found one from the Martha Wayne Foundation.

Congratulations! We are happy to inform you that you have been awarded the Martha Wayne Merit Scholarship. Please see the details below.

Peter’s shoulders slumped in relief. This would make his life so much easier. He scrolled through the details and felt his eyebrows raise more and more as he read. It would make his life a lot easier.

The full scholarship to Gotham Academy included: full tuition, school uniform, school supplies, textbooks, all day access to the cafeteria, and a stipend of one hundred dollars a week, to be deposited into a bank account of his guardian’s choosing. Admittedly he had only read the bare minimum when applying to the scholarship, mostly the requirements. He’d been expecting tuition, maybe some money towards the uniform and books. This was a whole other level. He wouldn’t have to pay for a single thing out of pocket and he’d get four hundred dollars a month besides. He sat, open mouthed and shocked, until the sound of wheels came up behind him.

“Oh, Peter! Congratulations! I didn’t realize you were trying to get into Gotham Academy.”

“Thank you, Miss Barbara,” he said. He still couldn’t take his eyes away from the words on the screen. “I can’t believe it.”

“You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for, Peter,” she said gently, laying a hand on his shoulder.

He managed to glance at her with a small smile, then looked right back at the email. “That’s not what I mean. I mean, yeah, I was worried I wouldn’t be accepted, but I didn’t realize the scholarship would be this much. It’s…so much better than I thought it would be.”

“You didn’t know? A full Martha Wayne scholarship is known to be comprehensive. Bruce Wayne funds those himself, to make sure there’s always several available. It’s no joke to get one though. You must have done very well on the test.”

Peter shrugged. “I did alright.”

Barbara laughed. “I would bet good money that you did better than alright.”

He finally turned away from the computer and ducked his head at her praise. Her confidence in him felt nice, even though he knew that the scales were skewed in this case by the fact that he was a full adult taking a test designed for a high school freshman.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it. I just happened to recognize the logo as I was passing by, I didn’t mean to snoop. I’m proud of you though, Peter. I mean it.”

“Thanks, Miss Barbara.”

She left and Peter heard her helping a young girl find a book a minute later. He printed the email with the details so he would have it without needing to come to the library, then spent the next several hours neck deep in string theory and the fundamental principles of magic.

He emerged, blinking and numbskulled, near closing time. He hadn’t even noticed how long he’d spent hunched over his keyboard, dry eyes squinting at the screen. He stood and stretched. His spine popped, but one vertebra refused to budge so he kept leaning until he was nearly in a backbend. Ah, there. He bent the other way until his forehead touched his knees. That was much better, he really shouldn’t spend so long in one position.

“Where are your bones, kid?”

Peter straightened like a prairie dog popping out of the sand. “Oh, Mr. Jason! Hi.”

Jason sighed. “When are you gonna give up the ‘Mr.’ thing?”

Peter blinked at him innocently. “I’m just being polite, Mr. Jason.”

“Uh huh, and I’m Mother Teresa.”

“Jay, are you coming – oh, hello.” 

Peter looked over at the sound of the new voice and froze. That was Dick Grayson! That was his alternate, not-really father! He wasn’t prepared for this!

“This little shit is Peter,” Jason introduced. “He’s one of Bab’s regulars.”

“Nice to meet you, Peter. I’m Dick,” his not-dad said with a smile and extended his hand to shake.

Peter felt like his limbs were on marionette strings as he lifted his hand to shake Dick’s. Dick’s hands were calloused and strong, just how he always imagined his dad’s hands would be. The handshake was quick and Peter’s arm flopped back to his side when it was done like the string had been cut.

“Cat got your tongue, gremlin? You’ll stand there and make fun of me all day but not a word to Dick? Come on, the jokes are right there.”

Peter glanced at Jason, which finally got him to stop staring at Dick with wide eyes. He tried to shake himself out of it.

“If he hasn’t heard all those jokes by now, he’s either deaf or a hermit.”

They both laughed and Peter resolutely did not let the sound of his father’s laugh paralyze him. He was going to be completely normal about this.

“Babs told me about your scholarship,” Jason said casually. “Congratulations.”

Peter flushed. “She did?”

“Yeah, kid. She’s proud of ya. She always gets a little attached to her regulars. Or did you think she gives cookies to just anyone?”

If it was possible, Peter blushed further. He must be as red as a tomato by now.

“Oh that’s great, Peter!” Dick enthused. “Which scholarship was it?”

“Um, it was the Martha Wayne scholarship. To Gotham Academy.”

Dick whistled, impressed, just in time for Barbara to roll by and glare at him. “This is a library,” she hissed. “I know you’re allergic to being quiet but at least try, please.”

Dick smiled sheepishly and rubbed the back of his neck. It was the exact same way Peter acted when he was embarrassed. He stared, fascinated.

“Sorry, Babs.”

“Mhmm,” she said dubiously, but he saw her trying to hide a smile anyway and both he and Dick knew that she wasn’t actually mad.

“Right, well, I should probably go,” Peter managed to say and struggled not to wince at how awkward he sounded. “It’s past close.”

“Don’t worry about it, Peter. I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

Peter smiled genuinely at Miss Barbara. “Of course. It was nice to see you again, Mr. Jason. Nice to meet you, Dick.”

There, totally normal. See? Peter could be normal.

Jason groaned theatrically. “I’m still mister, but Dick doesn’t get anything? Come on. He’s older than me!”

Peter walked backwards toward the door and smirked. “Coulda fooled me, mister.”

He stepped outside to the sound of laughter, still grinning.

Chapter Text

The best part of the first day of school, besides the amazing locker room shower and central heating, was the cafeteria. His scholarship had come with a little card that looked like a credit card, except that it got him access to free food all day. As much as he wanted. It wasn’t like his old school in Queens, where there were free breakfast programs for qualifying students desperate enough to eat cardboard french toast sticks covered in maple flavored corn syrup and lunches made of mystery meat and gelatinous green beans. At Gotham Academy, breakfast was a wide spread of sandwiches (with real meat and real bread), fresh fruit, yogurt, smoothies, pastries, and an array of teas and juices. No one even looked at him twice when he filled his tray with five breakfast sandwiches, three muffins, a pile of fruit, and a smoothie. He even went up for seconds and was able to slip a couple extra bacon and egg sandwiches wrapped in napkins into his bag for later.

If that was breakfast , to which only a small number of students went, he couldn’t imagine what lunch was like here. As he walked to his first class he could almost imagine his body ravenously breaking down the food that was much closer to the number of calories he actually needed than anything he’d managed to get so far.

He knew that he’d lost weight since getting here. He’d never really had a lot to spare, even before the spider bite, but now his metabolism demanded he eat more calories than even Captain America in order to keep up with his body’s needs. The first month had been the worst. He knew he’d gotten down to a dangerous weight and it was only creativity and spite that kept him alive. He’d been doing better, but he could still easily count his ribs in the mirror and his face was too gaunt to truly be called healthy. He was self-aware enough to recognize that this scholarship likely saved his life. Going out as Spider-Man would be easier now too, with all this food. 

He was feeling on top of the world when he arrived to homeroom. He tried tamp down on it just a little so that he wouldn’t seem deranged, but he wasn’t sure how well he managed. Even some of the sneers he received weren’t enough to bring down his mood. He’d been dealing with those his whole life, a few from teenagers of a dimension that wasn’t even his wasn’t going to affect him.

He sat next to a boy who seemed too young to be in high school with a permanent scowl. The others appeared to be avoiding him, so it was a bit of a gamble to choose the seat next to him. He could just be an outsider like him, or there could be an actual reason that all four seats surrounding the boy were empty. Peter didn’t much care either way though. He was just a kid and he was alone, so Peter swung casually into the seat to the boy’s left and stuffed his backpack beneath the seat. He was supposed to have a locker, but they hadn’t assigned one to him yet so he was stuck carrying around the ratty old bag he’d been using since he got here. He’d washed it, so it didn’t smell like it had a week ago, but it was still full of holes and very clearly not one of the shiny new backpacks the academy kids had. Several of the ones he’d seen this morning had been leather . What high school kid had a leather backpack? 

“Hi, I’m Peter,” he offered to the lonely boy with a smile. The kid just scowled back and stared at him with intense green eyes.

“I am Damian Wayne. Why did you sit next to me?”

“Is that not allowed?”

The boy, Damian, stared at him some more. “It is allowed.”

“Alright then,” Peter said easily. He leaned back in his chair and settled in to wait for the teacher to arrive. He didn’t make it obvious that he was studying Damian as much as he was being studied in turn. Damian had an odd accent, as though it were a mix between several different places and languages. He didn’t know enough about languages or accents to guess what that mix was, but it had resulted in a stilted, formal speech that sounded strange coming from the mouth of a twelve year old.

“Most of the others are afraid of me,” Damian said suddenly and Peter turned his head to look at him fully. “You are new. That is why you do not know enough to be afraid.”

Peter couldn’t help the way his eyebrows rose. “You’re right that I’m new and that I don’t know anything about you, but I highly doubt that there is anything you could say or do that would make me afraid of you. First of all, you’re like, twelve –”

“I am thirteen! I will be fourteen next month.”

“--and secondly, you seem like you could use a friend. If you don’t want to be friends with me, that’s fine, but I’m offering anyway.”

“I have friends,” Damian retorted.

“Sure,” Peter agreed easily. “But are they here?”

That caused Damian to falter. “Allies are always appreciated,” he conceded after a moment. Peter grinned in victory, and at how adorable the kid was.

“Allies then.” He extended his hand and Damian shook it with all the gravitas of a diplomat sealing an important international treaty.

The teacher arrived then and they sat through the typical first day lectures. When they were released, Damian did not wait for him, instead speeding out of the classroom like it was on fire. Peter shrugged it off and pulled out his schedule and map to locate his first class. Geometry. How fun.

“Father.”

When Damian’s name had popped up on his phone less than an hour into his first day of school, Bruce’s heart had stopped. His brain had conjured up a thousand scenarios of things that could have gone wrong. A rogue attack, a fight, a fire, anything. Damian hadn’t pressed his emergency beacon, but there could be any number of reasons for that. He’d answered the phone with shaking hands only to hear his son’s calm, assertive voice on the other line sounding like nothing in the world was amiss.

“Damian. Are you alright?”

“Of course I am, father. I am calling about the Peter situation.”

“The Peter situation?”

Bruce hadn’t told anyone about his suspicions or his investigation into Peter Grayson. He didn’t want to alarm anyone until he knew for sure that he was right. He’d been working quietly on the problem for nearly two weeks, but he hadn’t yet tracked down where Peter was living to obtain a DNA sample, or to observe the boy at home. He visited the library regularly and was friendly with Barbara, but he couldn’t walk into the library to get a hair sample while Barbara was there. She would spot him immediately and, without knowing what he needed it for, would undoubtedly get in his way. So he’d been biding his time by searching through Dick’s history for any hint of a Mary Fitzpatrick. His search had been frustratingly unfruitful.

“Yes. The one that Gordon has been concerned about. He is here at school.”

Gordon was looking into Peter? Oh. Barbara. He wished his son would just use people’s first names.

“Oh. Yes, I am aware of that. Did he do something?”

“He sat next to me in homeroom and offered to be my friend. He could be a spy or a plant.”

“Or he is simply being friendly.”

Damian scoffed hard enough to cause static over the speaker. “No one is simply friendly, father. Except the Kents, for some reason. I assume because they are aliens.”

Bruce rubbed a thumb between his eyebrows and took a deep, quiet breath. “They are not the only friendly people in the world, Damian. But in this case there is a possibility you are right. Stay close to him and keep an eye on him. Be careful.”

“I am always careful. I will watch Peter. Whatever he’s here for, I will put a stop to it.”

The corner of his lip quirked up. “I’m sure you will, son. But keep in mind that he might be innocent. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

“I am no amateur. I will see you this evening.”

Damian hung up before Bruce had a chance to say goodbye in return. He sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. He was feeling his age more and more every day. He looked back at the computer screen where he’d been going through every woman named Mary in New Jersey and New York for any connection to Dick. Maybe he should have asked Damian to get a DNA sample.

Chapter Text

Peter tossed anxiously in his hammock. He needed to sleep, he knew that, but he just couldn’t get his mind to shut up. Every time he managed to get even the slightest bit comfortable, he would spend the night feeling guilty and overwhelmed. It was a pattern he couldn’t break and not one that he even wanted to. He didn’t even know what he was doing in this dimension and yet he’d enjoyed his day at school as if he didn’t have friends and family back home who likely thought he was dead.

It was easy to get caught up in his life here. He was surviving, he was adapting, and that meant he wasn’t spending any time trying to figure out how he got here or how to get home. He just didn’t remember and that was driving him insane. Now that he had access to Gotham Academy’s million dollar science lab, he could probably get in there and run some tests on himself to check for any anomalies, but it might also be too late now for the results to be conclusive. He couldn’t rule out the possibility that anything he’d find would simply be a result of living in a different dimension for several months.

He slammed his head against his pillow (which was really just a thrifted pillow case filled with a wadded up towel) a few times and then flopped onto his stomach. He was supposed to be getting in a nice two hour nap before going on patrol, but it had already been over an hour and he was no closer to dreamland than he was to home. 

He wondered how his aunt was doing. Was time passing the same way there as it was here? She had likely filed a missing persons report that next morning after he’d disappeared. The search would have been called off by now, just a file gathering dust in some cabinet at the precinct. What evidence could they possibly find for interdimensional disappearances? They would have no choice but to give up. Aunt May might have beaten whatever poor officer who had to tell her that over the head with her purse brick. The mental image of that brought him a brief moment of amusement before fading.

What did MJ think about his disappearance? His friends? His professors? Was he a tragic tale on campus or had he just quietly vanished from their lives? He wished he knew. He might never know. Not a single “expert” had answered his request to discuss dimension travel. He wasn’t an inch closer to answers than he had been when he’d first arrived and he couldn’t escape the feelings of guilt and hopelessness. It didn’t help that he’d been so distracted. He hadn’t put any effort into figuring out a way home and that fact was like a knife to the chest. 

Maybe he should ask Red Hood, or Nightwing. If anyone would potentially have answers, he assumed it would be them. Weird things happened in Gotham. 

He rolled over again. Emailing the experts he found obviously wasn’t cutting it. He needed a new plan, a more active one that didn’t just require patiently waiting. He jumped out of the hammock and grabbed the notes he’d taken with the names and contact information for the people who might be able to get him home, or at least point him in the right direction. If emails weren’t working, then he would just have to call them directly. Luckily, he’d finally piggybacked off of a nearby cell tower last week, so he had somewhat reliable service.

He picked out a name at random to start with. John Constantine. Exorcist, demonologist, and master of the dark arts. Supposedly, he traveled between the realms of Hell and Earth regularly. He’d read quite a few social media posts that mentioned him working with the Justice League on various occasions. Magic wasn’t usually Peter’s first choice, but if it got him home he didn’t care if he had to wear ruby red slippers and click his heels three times.

There was no phone number or address for him, however. He remembered feeling lucky he’d even found an email that was sort of, vaguely, associated with the magician. 

Okay, option number two. 

Ray Palmer, physicist and professor at Ivy University who specialises in quantum physics. He had written several papers on the hypothesis that the key to the multiverse exists on the subatomic level. Peter had read most of those papers during his long days at the library and he was interested in the theory, though he wasn’t sure how much help it would be to him specifically. As far as he could tell, Palmer had never actually succeeded in testing this hypothesis. It was all theoretical mathematics. Even if he could somehow prove that the multiverse was accessible at the quantum level, there would still be a long way to go before human beings could traverse it, and especially with the accuracy Peter would need to pinpoint his own dimension. Still, it would be worth a discussion at least. 

The question was, should he reach out to Professor Palmer as Peter Parker or as Spider-Man? Peter Parker could just be a science geek looking to talk to an expert, but Spider-Man could potentially have a valid, time sensitive reason to need the professor’s help. Then again, Spider-Man was barely established in Gotham at this point and wouldn’t be recognized outside of Crime Alley, let alone all the way up in Massachusetts. 

He took a deep breath and dialed the number on the school’s website before he could chicken out. His bio page said that his office hours lasted until seven in the evening, so he should still be there.

“Hello?”

“Hi! Is this Professor Palmer?”

“It is. How can I help you, young man?”

Peter winced. He was sometimes forcibly reminded of how young he was now and that reminder was never pleasant. Professor Palmer could tell he was a child even over the phone. How embarrassing.

“I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but I was wondering if I could take up a bit of your time to talk about your work looking into the multiverse and its relation to quantum field theory?”

There was a brief pause over the line, as though the professor was surprised, then, “Of course! I am always happy to discuss my work. What is it you want to know?”

The two of them ended up talking for over two hours about the minutiae of multiverse theory and quantum mechanics. From the sound of it, Dr. Palmer was actually a lot closer to answers than his published work would imply. It still wasn’t a ticket home, but Peter hung up feeling more hopeful than he had in a while.

He swung out above the street lights with a few extra flips and twists. He was starting patrol a little late, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about that too much when, for the first time in nearly five months, he had a glimmer of hope that he wasn’t stuck in this dimension forever.

After a while, a figure in black and blue joined him in soaring through the air. Peter couldn’t help but laugh as he tucked himself into a quadruple somersault mid-air and Nightwing, not to be outdone, did the same a mere few seconds later. It was fun, flying with Nightwing. It reminded him of dreams he used to have as a child of flying with his father on the trapeze, the way his grandparents had. 

The thought made him remember the Richard Grayson of this dimension and he swung into a powerful aerial twist. He was more determined now to talk to him. He needed to know everything there was to know about the man before he went home. That knowledge alone would make this whole thing worth it.

Nightwing once again kept him company as he focused on the little stuff. They walked a group of drunk girls home, stopped five muggings and three attempted assaults, and Peter helped a little boy fish his toy car out of a sewer grate it had fallen into. There had also been one amusing encounter with some graffiti artists who were surprised to hear Spider-Man complimenting their skill rather than running them off from the illegal activity. 

At the end of the night, Nightwing ruffled the top of Peter’s mask as though ruffling his hair. “Good job tonight, kid.”

Luckily, his mask hid the way his face lit up neon red at the praise. “Thanks, Nightwing.”

Nightwing just grinned at him before flipping off the roof and heading out of the Alley towards his own territory.

“He asked me for permission to come into the Alley,” a voice said behind him. Peter leapt about a mile in the air as he spun around. Curse his stupid spidey-sense for not warning him of Red Hood’s presence. 

“Oh really?” Peter said weakly as his heart still attempted to climb out of his throat in fear.

Peter couldn’t see Red Hood’s face but he swore the man still looked amused. “I asked him why and he said you’re the only one who can keep up with him in the air. After watching you two, I see what he meant.”

Peter ducked his head. He felt almost more bashful with Red Hood’s praise than with Nightwing’s. 

“I wanted to give you an update on the Clockwork Crew situation.”

Peter snapped back into work mode. “Did Hammond tell you anything?”

“He gave us a name, which is a lot more than we had a few days ago. It gave us a thread to pull on and it’s only a matter of time until the whole thing unravels and we can take them down. You helped us out a lot, Spider-Man.”

Peter winced. He could hear the implied ‘but’ at the end of that sentence.

Red Hood continued as though he could hear Peter’s thoughts. “But, if you’re going to keep doing this, you need training.” The words sounded like they tasted bitter on Red Hood’s tongue. “I know several people who would be willing to help with that, or…I could train you myself.”

Despite the reluctant nature of the offer, Peter’s eyes widened. Red Hood was offering to train him? Unbelievable.

When Peter remained silent, Red Hood continued almost nervously. “I know that you’ve been doing this on your own for a while and you might not think you need help, but training can make the difference between life and death. So can having allies and access to resources. It won’t,” he cleared his throat roughly, “it won’t save you from everything, but it matters anyway.”

It was another one of those sentences that he or Nightwing would say that holds the weight of an unsaid story behind it. It meant a lot for Red Hood to say all of that, more than even what it meant to Peter to hear it.

“Okay.”

There was the sound of a deep inhale over the vocoder in the helmet, followed by a pause as though Red Hood had been prepared to keep arguing his case and was caught off guard by Peter’s easy acceptance.

“Okay? Yeah, good. Okay then. We’ll start tomorrow. Are you free during the day or just the hours you normally patrol?”

“Not during the day. I just started –” he cut himself off roughly. “I mean, I can start an hour or two earlier than my normal patrol, but that’s it.”

Red Hood nodded briskly. “Sounds good. Meet me on this roof tomorrow, an hour before your usual patrol.”

“Cool. See you then,” Peter replied faintly as Red Hood leaped off the building with only a little less drama than Nightwing. 

He held in his excitement until he got home, then he mashed his towel-pillow against his face and screamed. He’d never really had a mentor before. Sure, Daredevil and Deadpool had both taught him some things, but it was the sort of tips and tricks one gives an ally, not a full training regimen. He pictured himself looking as effortlessly badass and cool as Red Hood while taking down criminals and screamed again into the pillow.

Maybe his Parker Luck was finally turning around.

Chapter Text

Peter sat next to Damian again the next day in homeroom. Damian glanced at him, but otherwise didn’t react, which Peter took to be a positive sign. He pulled out a notebook and started scribbling his English assignment as fast as humanly possible. He had fifteen minutes of rollcall and announcements to write three paragraphs about himself. It was an introductory assignment, one he’d done countless times over the years because teachers were never quite as original as they thought they were, so he already knew what to write.

He could feel Damian’s eyes on him as he wrote, but he ignored the attention. Damian reminded him of a temperamental cat, one born on the streets but brought inside with promises of food and warmth. He was distrustful and skittish, prone to lash out if he felt threatened. If Peter pretended that he didn’t know Damian was studying him, maybe it would make him seem like less of a threat and Damian would eventually trust him more.

Two minutes before the bell rang, his patience and feigned ignorance paid off.

“I have the second lunch hour. I saw your schedule yesterday, you have the same. You will sit with me.”

Peter smiled at his success. “Absolutely! Looking forward to it.”

Damian nodded once and turned back to the incredibly detailed drawing of a cat he’d been working on. Peter was impressed by his skill, but it seemed too soon for compliments so he held his tongue. The fact that he’d even been allowed to see the drawing felt like when a cat exposes its belly for pets as a trap for its quick claws.

Geometry went by quickly, followed by social studies and biology. Social studies was actually interesting to him this time around, since it focused on recent history and the impact of heroes on society. In fact, his first paper topic, which was due in three weeks, was to choose one hero and analyze their effect on the region where they operated. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was going to choose Red Hood. He would have the advantage of training directly under the man, after all, though he’d have to be careful about not revealing that fact.

Finally, it was lunch time. He’d eaten his fill at breakfast and had had a snack between second and third period, but his stomach was still growling by the time he stepped into line. He’d been right about the spread available. Everything from fancy pasta dishes to steak and lobster. It was unreal. He piled his tray with enough food for three people and then went in search of his new friend.

He found Damian easily. He had told Peter the truth about his reputation; everyone seemed scared of him. The table he sat at was empty and students gave it a wide berth as they went to sit with their friends. No one bullied the kid, as far as Peter could tell, but he was ostracized nonetheless.  

Peter sat down across from him with purposeful casualness. He felt the eyes of other students in the room on him as he did so, likely to see what would happen, but he ignored them.

“Hey, Damian! How have your classes been?”

“Dull and tedious,” Damian reported dryly. He had a packed lunch which Peter noticed contained no meat. Some dishes smelled spicy, maybe Middle Eastern? He wasn’t a food expert so he wasn’t sure, but it all looked delicious.

Peter laughed at Damian’s answer. “Yeah, I feel that, dude. I could do all the geometry and biology work in my sleep.”

“Do not call me dude.” Peter glanced over to see Damian’s scowl. He rated it at a two out of five on the anger scale, so he decided it was probably fine. He shrugged apologetically.

“Understood. What classes do you have this afternoon?”

“We do not have to engage in small talk, Grayson.”

Something about the way he said Peter’s fake last name irked him. It was like a challenge, almost, but he didn’t know why. He let it go.

“And what if I’m genuinely interested?”

Damian studied him intently. Peter kept eating despite the stare and eventually Damian must have concluded that Peter was serious because he answered, “I have AP World History, Mandarin, AP Literature, and then Classical Art.”

This school offered Chinese? Peter hadn’t really looked at the foreign languages, honestly. He’d just let them assign him a Spanish class and called it a day.

“Cool. I bet that art class is fun.”

He didn’t really think so. He found art to be beyond him and classical art was even worse, but he thought Damian seemed like the type to enjoy it.

“It is,” Damian said shortly.

Peter floundered for something else to say. He wasn’t sure if Damian wasn’t interested in conversation or if he just wasn’t good at it. Or maybe Peter was the one who wasn’t good at it. He always tended to either be awkward or ramble about things other people didn’t care about.

After a moment, Damian saved him. “I enjoy art. It is a way to see the world through others’ perspective and express your own view of it. I prefer realistic depictions, so I am looking forward to this class’ syllabus. Next year I will either have to take photography or abstract art, so I will be choosing photography as the lesser of the two evils.”

Peter let out a short bark of laughter between bites. “I would have thought you’d like photography, if you like realism.”

Damian hummed thoughtfully. He’d finished the food in one of the containers and neatly closed it before placing it back into his lunchbox.

“Photography has its uses, but I find it difficult to see the artistry in it.”

“Then maybe the class will be good for you,” Peter said with a shrug. “It’ll open your eyes to a new form of art you hadn’t considered.”

Damian nodded with a contemplative look in his eye. “Yes, you are correct. I appreciate your insight, Grayson.”

This time the name did not sound so sharp on Damian’s tongue. Still, “You can call me Peter, you know.”

Damian clicked his tongue to the back of his teeth in a derisive sound. “I would never be so crass as to address you so informally.”

Peter blinked in surprise. So it was a form of, what, respect? Politeness? He tried to remember what Damian’s last name was. The teacher had said it during roll call this morning, what was it?

“Oh. Would you like me to call you Wayne, then?”

“If you prefer.”

Peter didn’t quite know what to do with that. Maybe he’d just avoid addressing him by name for a while.

The rest of the lunch period passed in comfortable quiet. Damian didn’t draw attention to the amount of food Peter ate, for which he was grateful. When they were done, Damian stood up and offered to take Peter’s tray.

“Oh, you don’t have to,” he started, but Damian was insistent. It was kind of sweet, actually, so Peter allowed it. Damian really didn’t seem to have any friends here and Peter didn’t mind the kind gesture.

After lunch was Spanish, which was a real drag after the food coma he’d put himself in. He was too sleepy for verb tenses. He woke up a bit for the next class though, which was P.E. It was one of those classes that combined different grades together, which seemed like a recipe for disaster if you asked him, but he wasn’t the one who made those kinds of decisions.

Every gym period had a small group from each grade, with the room split between freshman and sophomores on one side and juniors and seniors on the other. Today, apparently, was the start of the self-defense module.

Mr. Morse, a squat, burly man with an eighties-style mustache and biceps the size of Peter’s head, was the no-nonsense type of teacher. He barked orders like they were soldiers rather than students and didn’t tolerate laziness or gossip. When he’d announced yesterday that they would be doing self-defense as their first lesson, Peter had been gobsmacked. What kind of high school taught self-defense? But then he remembered that this was Gotham and that these kids were all children of the city's richest and most powerful, meaning that they were likely targets for kidnapping attempts. Upon reflection, it made perfect sense that parents would want the school to prepare their children for the worst.

“I will be pairing you by size and strength, not by age,” Mr. Morse announced. The class was silent, but a few people shared looks at that. “Your first lesson will be how to get out of a hold. We will start with the basics.”

Mr. Morse went around the room and assigned partners. In a way, Peter was glad for the method of pairing, since even some freshmen were significantly larger than him. Then again, he didn’t really have to worry about that with his enhanced strength. The real test would be his control so that he didn’t accidentally hurt whoever he was partnered with.

He ended up with a junior he didn’t recognize. He was Peter’s height, maybe an inch or two taller, and slender. He could tell the boy was muscled though, despite his lack of bulk. A runner maybe? The boy smiled at him.

“Hi, I’m Tim. Nice to meet you.”

Peter shook the offered hand. It seemed a little formal for a gym class, but then again these were high society teenagers. 

“I’m Peter. Likewise.”

A spark of recognition lit Tim’s eyes at hearing his name. “Peter? You’re a freshman, right?”

“Yes,” he replied hesitantly. He couldn’t have already made a reputation for himself, could he? Unless everyone had heard about the new scholarship student.

“You’re in homeroom with my brother Damian.”

“Oh! Yeah, I am. I didn’t know Damian had brothers.”

As soon as he said it, he could have hit himself. He did know that Damian had brothers, he’d just forgotten. He hadn’t really cared which rich family his new friend came from, but now it finally clicked. Damian Wayne, as in Bruce Wayne, as in Wayne Enterprises, as in the manor he’d stalked just a few days ago. So much for Peter’s supposed intelligence.

Tim smirked a little. “He doesn’t really like to talk about us. He’s the blood son, after all, while the rest of us were strays that Bruce took in.”

He didn’t sound bitter as he said it, more like it was an inside joke within the family.

“Nothing wrong with being adopted,” he said, a little more seriously than he intended.

“No,” Tim agreed, equally serious, “there isn’t.”

Their conversation broke off as Mr. Morse started calling out instructions. He made two students demonstrate the simple wrist hold and escape. Then, the rest of them copied it.

Tim grabbed his wrist first, leaving Peter as the escapee. He started off weakly pulling on Tim’s hold, but he soon realized that Tim was a lot stronger than he looked. Cautiously, Peter started putting more force into it, twisting out of each type of grip Mr. Morse walked them through. Peter always had to be conscious of his speed and strength, so he never really knew what the average person was capable of. He was also deceptively small and wiry, making people underestimate him. Tim surprised him at every turn. He didn’t go out of his way to hurt Peter, the way he knew a few others in the class would if given the opportunity, but neither did he treat Peter like glass. When it was Tim’s turn, he effortlessly broke Peter’s hold even when he allowed himself to put a little more effort in. It was a refreshing change of pace and he found himself smiling by the end of class. Neither of them walked away with bruises, but it had been enough to pique Peter’s interest. He supposed that it was easy enough to explain Tim’s strength and proficiency with previous martial arts training, which he said he had, but something about the way he moved reminded Peter just a little of Natasha when she was humoring him.

 “I’ll see you tomorrow, Peter,” Tim said on his way out of the locker room. Peter bid him goodbye, still thinking about the strange connection his brain had drawn between Tim and Black Widow. He was just missing home, he decided, that’s all.

He was distracted all through his last class of the day. Not by Tim or thoughts of home, but rather of the training he’d be starting tonight with Red Hood. What would he learn first? Stealth? Some new fighting style? Would he teach him how to use a grapple gun? He didn’t need to know how to use one, since he had his webs, but it would be fun. He hoped Red Hood wouldn’t try to teach him how to use an actual gun. Wade had given him a lecture about the usefulness of knowing how to use one, even if just to know how to take one apart, but he still had a hard time holding one. He could face down a criminal pointing a gun at him no problem, but as soon as the metal touched his hand it was like all higher brain activity shut down and he was left with animal fear. 

Well, now he was worried about disappointing Red Hood on their first day. He chewed on a fingernail and tried to listen to the teacher as she talked about forensic science. It was the only elective on the list he’d been excited about and here he was tuning out the lesson in favor of his anxiety.

The bell rang to release them and Peter joined the crush fleeing for the exit as fast as possible. He practically sprinted home, too nervous to even think about taking the bus. It would only take him part way, anyway, so it wasn’t worth the effort. He dumped his bag onto his hammock and changed into his spidersuit in record time. The comm from Red Hood went into his ear. He was early for their meeting, but with his nerves he didn’t think he could sit around and wait. Or worse, try to focus on homework.

There were still plenty of things for Spider-Man to do in the daylight. The only reason he’d been going out more at night was that the entire city seemed to be mostly nocturnal, just like its heroes. Signal worked during the day, but he was the only one. That being said, he enjoyed the weak rays of sun through the heavy clouds of smog as he swung between the buildings. He did the things he always did. He saved another cat from a tree – and didn’t even get scratched by Fluffy’s claws in the process. He pulled a man away from getting hit by a speeding car, helped a lost kid find her parents, and dropped off an old woman having a heart attack at the hospital. Finally, about twenty minutes before their scheduled time, he went up to the roof Red Hood told him to go to.

The roof was empty, of course. He sat on the ledge and swung his feet over the street six stories down. The sun was just starting to set. The light hit the smog over the city in a way that was far more beautiful than it should be, like the sky was painted in vibrant oranges and pinks by an artist’s hand. He wondered if Damian ever painted or if he stuck to pencil drawings. He should ask him tomorrow.

Ten minutes later, his spidey sense alerted him to a presence behind him. It wasn’t a warning of danger, just an awareness that he likely would have missed if he hadn’t just been sitting here quietly. He jumped up and stood on the ledge of the building, turned toward where he knew Red Hood was. He didn’t see anyone though. He tilted his head in confusion. There. Red Hood was hidden in the shadow of the HVAC unit, crouched low to not be seen.

Red Hood stood up smoothly. “Well done. I wasn’t sure you’d be able to spot me.”

“I almost didn’t,” Peter admitted. Red Hood just nodded.

“That’s to be expected. You’ll get better.”

Right, because Peter was going to be learning from him. He tamped down on the excitement.

“So…what are we going to do first?”

“First, we’re going to find how much you know of the basics. First aid, reconnaissance, strategy, that kind of thing.”

Peter swallowed his disappointment. It sounded a lot like being in class. Red Hood laughed as though he knew exactly what Peter was thinking.

“We’ll get to the fun stuff later. But first, how do you stop a wound from bleeding?”

Chapter Text

“Good work, Robin,” Batman said quietly over the hum of the DNA analyzer. 

Robin clicked his tongue derisively. “Of course, father. It was no hardship to acquire the sample.”

He merely grunted in response. He was already dressed for patrol, but the computer showed that the analysis of the sample Damian had gotten from Peter’s lunch at school was nearly complete. He hadn’t even had to ask his son for the carefully bagged swab of saliva, he’d simply come down into the cave to interrupt where Bruce was tinkering with a new grapple gun design to hand it to him. 

As he’d prepared the DNA, he’d heard Dick’s voice in his head warning him of boundaries and paranoia, and how he shouldn’t instill his bad habits in his son, but, well, Damian had come to him this way and while there were many habits that needed to be broken, he found the child’s paranoia and initiative to be quite useful. Not to mention relatable.

“Go to the batmobile,” he ordered Robin as the computer let out a soft ding to announce incoming results.

“I will stay and find out the stranger’s secrets.”

He turned and fixed Damian with the glare that had cowed nearly every person who had received it – except his children.

“You will wait for me in the car. That is an order.”

Robin glared back for another few heartstopping seconds before finally turning on his heel and marching toward the batmobile like a soldier. A very small, very angry soldier.

The truth was that Bruce still didn’t want anyone to know his theory. Not until he’d found evidence and had put all the pieces together himself. Then he could present the entire case to his family without having to worry about potentially being wrong or loose threads that could be pulled upon to disaster.

He took a deep breath and steeled himself before looking at the DNA results. They were…odd. The only thing that was at all what he expected was the small box showing parentage. 99.7% paternal match to Richard John Grayson. He sat down heavily in the chair. He’d been hovering near the computer for the past several minutes, too anxious to sit, and now his knees felt like rubber as he read those small letters over and over.

Finally, when the static had cleared from his thoughts, he turned his attention to the rest of the page. Peter’s DNA was mutated. It looked purposefully done, if he had to guess. There was evidence of genetic material from several different spiders woven into the boy’s DNA. Spiders? That was a strange choice, even for Gotham. The boy seemed healthy, so the mutation likely wasn’t impacting him negatively, but he needed more information. Had he been experimented on? To what end and by whom? Was it because they knew that the boy was Dick’s son?

“Spiders?” said a young, quiet voice behind him and Bruce cursed under his breath. He should have known Damian wouldn’t wait in the car – no Robin would, especially not his youngest. He should have saved the results for later, when he was alone, but he’d been too impatient and now he was paying the price.

Damian sucked in a small, sharp breath. It would have been a dramatic gasp from anyone else but from him it was barely audible.

“Did you know about this?”

Bruce didn’t have to ask what he meant. He knew that Damian was looking at the parentage section, knew what it was that tinged his tone with such betrayal.

“I suspected,” Bruce said slowly. “Dick does not know.”

He turned to see Damian’s face furrowed in furious confusion. “How can he not know he has a son?” he demanded.

“I didn’t know about you,” Bruce reminded him. It was a fact that still burned when he thought of it. His son had been raised thousands of miles away from him, in a dangerous environment, and Bruce had been none the wiser. Damian could have died in the League without Bruce ever having known he existed. The thought was like a lance to the heart.

“We know he’s not a clone, but could he have been…created somehow? In a lab, with his DNA mixed with that of various arachnids?”

“It is a theory I am entertaining.”

“And your other theories?”

“We will discuss them later. For now, we are late for patrol.”

Spider-Man was surprisingly knowledgeable in some areas and woefully lacking in others. He knew some basic first aid and he’d demonstrated his ‘medi-webs’ to Jason, which were fascinating, but he’d obviously never been formally taught any of it. He could logic his way through some of Jason’s questions about recon and strategy, but not in any way that assured him the kid was using those skills in his daily vigilantism. He had a lot of work cut out for him.

The good news was that Spider-Man was very receptive to the lessons. He paid attention and was incredibly earnest. After his initial disappointment that Jason wasn’t going to be teaching him kicks and flips on the first day, he’d locked in pretty quickly. There was a sort of admiration the kid had for him that made Jason both uncomfortable and flattered. Usually Dick was on the receiving end of this sort of attention, though Jason had experienced it during his time as Robin. He hadn’t felt it in a long time.

After the first few minutes, Jason had sat down on the concrete and gestured for Spider-Man to do the same. They sat across from each other for over an hour before Jason’s numb legs encouraged him to call it for the day. 

“Come on, kid, let’s go.”

“Go? Go where?”

“This is when you usually start patrolling, isn’t it?”

He couldn’t see the kid’s face, but he could see him light up anyway. “Really? I mean, Nightwing has patrolled with me before, but you’re going to go with me?”

“No better way to see how you operate,” Jason said reasonably. “But I ain’t doin’ all those fancy flips and sh- stuff.”

Spider-Man giggled and for a second Jason’s heart seized at the reminder of how young he was. 

“You can swear in front of me. I promise I’m not a fainting maiden.”

“Never said you were. But, you are twelve, so I’m tryin’ to be a good influence.”

“I’m fourteen!”

“Same thing.”

He jumped off the roof to the sound of Spider-Man’s grumbling. He smirked to himself beneath the helmet. This kid was too easy to rile up.

At first, Spider-Man seemed reluctant to take the lead, but he settled into his routine after the first twenty minutes or so. A lot of what he did reminded him of his Robin days. Spider-Man knew many of the people they passed by name, from Ronnie who lived under the bridge to Mr. Nazir who ran the best falafel stand in the city. He checked in with the sex workers, talked to street kids, and monitored the corner stores most often targeted for robberies. He bounded around from place to place, but he always took the time to make sure the people he passed were alright. Their pace as they patrolled was erratic and very different from what Jason was used to, but strangely it made the night pass by quicker. Before he knew it, it was past midnight and he pulled them to a stop on top of an apartment building.

“Time for bed, kid. You got school in the morning.” Or at least, he hoped the kid had school in the morning. A lot of Alley kids weren’t that lucky.

Spider-Man sighed with his full body in the way of annoyed teenagers everywhere. “Whatever, dad,” he said sarcastically. 

Jason rolled his eyes. “Just get some sleep, punk. We’ll meet at the same time tomorrow. Good job today.”

Despite his fatigue and annoyance at being told to go to bed, Spider-Man practically lit up at the praise. He tried to hide it, but Jason could see how he stood a little taller and ducked his head as though hiding a blush Jason couldn’t see anyway.

“Thanks, Hood. See you tomorrow.”

He swung away, likely going a circuitous route so that Jason couldn’t follow. He was used to that level of paranoia though and it didn’t bother him. What did bother him was the puzzle that had been scratching at his brain for weeks now.

He thought about what Dick had said about Spider-Man and Peter possibly being the same person. He thought of the way that the two of them flew together in the air like they were born to it. He thought of Peter in the library with his snarkiness and quips, but also his quiet earnestness. He thought of Peter’s build, and Spider-Man’s, and Dick’s. He thought of Peter’s nose and the shape of his eyes. He thought of Peter’s freakish flexibility and the only other person he knew who effortlessly moved as though things like joints and tendons meant nothing to him. He thought of the look on Peter’s face when he’d first seen Dick, like a deer in the headlights.

All of these facts led to one conclusion, but it was a conclusion that didn’t make sense and so he must be wrong. Despite his reputation, Dick really wasn’t promiscuous. He was fiercely monogamous and loyal to his partners, even if his relationships often ended explosively. He didn’t sleep around. He was the kind of guy who needed emotional connection, which meant no one-night stands.

So how in the hell had he ended up with a kid that he obviously knew nothing about?

Chapter Text

Peter’s life once again fell into a routine. He went to school, ate lunch with Damian, practiced self-defense with Tim, and went home to start his lessons with Red Hood. He managed to do most of his homework in study hall and would hurriedly finish whatever was left over in homeroom. He was eating regularly and was even almost eating enough, which meant that he was gaining back a lot of the weight he’d lost. Within two weeks, his face lost its razor sharp edges and he looked more like the healthy fourteen year old he was supposed to be.

Damian’s behavior had not gotten any easier to interpret. He hadn’t warmed up to Peter in any normal sense of the term, but he continued to allow Peter to sit with him and have conversations. Most of the time Damian seemed to be trying to get to know Peter, albeit in a stilted, awkward kind of way that felt more like an interrogation than anything friendly. He tried not to judge the kid too harshly though. As he’d previously noted, Damian had no friends at this school and he was treated like a shark that might bite at the slightest provocation. His social skills were obviously lacking, but he was trying with Peter and so he did his best to meet Damian halfway.

It was hard though, sometimes. Not because of Damian’s brusque tone or lack of tact, but rather because it was hard to answer questions about his past when he was living in another dimension. He kept details vague. He grew up in Queens, New York. No, he never knew his parents. Yes, he was adopted. For the sake of simplicity, he lied and said he’d been home schooled until he came to Gotham. 

He skipped over the questions about why he’d come to Gotham. He’d need to come up with a cover story for that, but until then his method would be evade, evade, evade. Damian didn’t like this – he seemed like the type that always needed to know the answers to things, even if those things were none of his business – but he more or less let it go.

Damian also asked a lot of the normal questions kids asked. Who was his favorite hero? What was his favorite color? Did he like the circus? What was his favorite animal?

Peter tried to turn the questions around whenever he could. He learned that Damian’s favorite color was green and that he was an avid animal lover who was very passionate about animal rights, which was why he was a vegan. His favorite hero was Batman, he didn’t watch TV, and his favorite medium for art was colored pencils, though he liked paint and charcoal equally. 

All in all, he was confident in his ability to say that the two of them were friends. Damian was still suspicious of him, in the way of all stray cats, but he wasn’t hostile and was often quite pleasant. It felt good to have a friend again, even one who was thirteen. It went a long way towards easing the loneliness in his chest.

He would even say that he and Tim were perhaps on their way towards friendship as well. They didn’t have a lot of time for conversation during their lessons, but they’d reached a kind of camaraderie and understanding born from being equally too advanced for the class. They suffered through it together with eyerolls as they effortlessly performed each exercise assigned to them while the coach went around and corrected the others. 

His lessons with Red Hood were going well. Hood liked to incorporate practical lessons as much as possible, which meant that after teaching him about tactics or reconnaissance techniques, he’d often be sent to put the lesson into action. So far he’d spied on a corrupt landlord, snuck into a warehouse with electronic security, and taken out a group of eight henchmen in two minutes flat. Every time Red Hood expressed approval at how well he was learning, he felt pride balloon in his chest. And he was getting better. His instinct would always be to jump in without hesitation if someone was in trouble, but he was getting better at taking those extra few seconds to look before leaping. 

The hardest lesson, the one they were working on tonight, was his continuous observational skills. He tended to hone in on one thing at a time and so he didn’t see the whole picture unless he was up high, purposefully looking at it that way. Red Hood wanted him to pay attention to everything, all the time. Peter had no idea how anyone could do that.

“How many goons were there?”

Peter was still panting slightly from the fight. They’d dropped through a skylight together into a room filled with men with guns and giant crates filled with even more guns. It hadn’t taken them long to subdue all of them and secure the weapons, but Peter had been caught up in the fight. He’d focused on the man in front of him, then the next, and only his spidey-sense had saved him from a couple of guys who’d come at him from the back and side. He definitely hadn’t been counting.

Still, he didn’t want to disappoint Red Hood so he searched his memory hard. Each of them had landed on a man when they’d dropped, so that’s two. Then Peter had taken on two more while Red Hood had taken on at least three. Or was it four? Let’s say a total of eight now. Then the one who had a knife that he’d pulled after Peter had yanked his gun away, nine. The two who’d rushed him from his blind spots, eleven. Of course Red Hood had been fighting that whole time, how many had he dropped while Peter fought those three? 

No, wait, he was thinking about this wrong. How many guys were on the ground when they were done? Two under the skylight, maybe eight or ten over on Red Hood’s side, and six on Peter’s. Oh and the guy he’d webbed to the wall. 

“Twenty.”

“Close. Nineteen.”

Peter grinned, but Red Hood’s continued firm stance made it fade.

“You figured that out from memory, which is a good start, but you need to know in the moment exactly how many people are in the room. If you miscalculate, you could be caught off guard and that can be the difference between life and death.”

“I understand,” Peter said with a grimace.

“Otherwise,” Hood continued, making Peter snap his head up from where he’d been examining the concrete, “you did well tonight. Your reflexes are sharp and your instincts are better than anything I’ve ever seen.”

Peter shrugged modestly. “Honestly I’m kind of cheating with that. It’s the mutations.”

There was a pause. Red Hood had to know, obviously, about Peter’s abilities, but so far they hadn’t talked about it. Hood didn’t ask questions and Peter didn’t offer any information.

Cautiously, Red Hood asked, “What all can you do with those mutations?”

Honestly it was a relief that he’d chosen to ask that instead of how Peter had been mutated in the first place so he was glad to answer.

“Enhanced senses, strength proportional to that of a spider, flexibility, faster healing, plus the stuff you’ve already noticed. I can stick to things, which means I can walk or climb up walls. I have quick reflexes, which is part of my spidey-sense.”

“Spidey-sense?”

Peter blushed scarlet beneath his mask. He’d never really told anyone that was his term for it, if he talked to them about his abilities at all. It had just kind of slipped out.

“Oh, uh, I’m aware of what’s around me? Like, even if I’m not paying attention I know if someone is watching me or if I’m in danger. The intensity of the warning depends on the intent of the person and the level of danger. So like, someone like you could sneak up on me because I know you’re not going to hurt me, but someone else couldn’t.”

“Interesting. We’ll have to work with that, find the limits and uses. Anything else?”

Peter thought for a moment. “I’m…durable?”

Red Hood tilted his head. “What does that mean?”

“I just don’t break as easily as a normal person. I’ve been thrown through walls and off buildings, but it didn’t kill me. I can heal from pretty much anything: bullets, stabbings, broken bones, whatever. One time I was burned so bad my skin melted off but I healed in a week.”

Red Hood had gone perfectly still, staring at him. Peter shuffled on his feet, unsure what emotion Hood was feeling beneath the helmet.

“All of that…happened to you?”

“I mean, yeah, but it’s fine, like I said. I heal.”

Red Hood let out a slow, crackling sigh through the voice modulator. “Right. Okay. You’re coming over to my place for dinner tonight.”

“What?” Peter asked, bewildered.

“Don’t fight it, kid. Let’s go.”

Which is how Peter ended up having spaghetti and meatballs with not only Red Hood, but also, somehow, Nightwing.

Red Hood was acting extra strange tonight. He was constantly looking between Peter and Nightwing as though he were about to say something or maybe like they were in on some kind of secret he wanted the answers to. A shared, confused glance proved that neither Peter nor Nightwing had any idea what the looks were about.

When Nightwing had showed up unexpectedly by crawling through the window, Red Hood had suddenly begun acting as though he didn’t know how to move in his own body. He dropped the stirring spoon three times and hit his knee against the cabinets twice. He simultaneously stared at them with an unnerving intensity and studiously avoided looking at them at all. Peter had never seen him act like this and he had no idea what was going on.

“So,” Nightwing finally said to break the awkward silence, “how are the lessons going?”

“Good!” Red Hood blurted, his voice too loud. “Spider-Man is doing great. Really good.”

Peter fought down the blush that threatened to set his face on fire at the gracelessly delivered compliment. Nightwing smiled at him.

“I’m glad to hear it. Hood’s not being too hard on you, is he?”

“No, not at all,” Peter said genuinely. He sent a concerned glance toward Hood who had gone pale beneath his domino mask at Nightwing’s question. What was going on?

Nightwing nodded, but he was looking at Red Hood too. Hood cleared his throat and started shoving food into his mouth at an alarming speed. Nightwing’s brow furrowed.

“Are you alright, RH?”

“Mhmm,” Hood mumbled, still looking at his plate that was steadily emptying.

“Right,” Nightwing said slowly. “Okay. Well, as…fun as this has been, I should probably head back. I’ve got an early morning ahead of me. Thanks for dinner. Spider-Man, it was nice to see you again. We’ll fly together again soon, alright?”

“Okay!” Peter agreed eagerly. “Nice to see you too, Nightwing. See you later.”

Red Hood waved as Nightwing turned to climb back out the window, but didn’t say anything. Peter really, desperately, wanted to ask what was wrong with him, but he didn’t think they were close enough for him to push on an issue that Red Hood clearly didn’t want to talk about.

“I, uh, should probably go too.” He had cleared his plate several minutes ago, which had only made the whole situation more awkward since he had no distraction. “Thank you for dinner. I really appreciate it.”

Red Hood’s shoulders had relaxed after Nightwing left and he had slowed down enough to actually chew his food. He wiped his mouth with a napkin then nodded at Peter with more seriousness than he felt the situation deserved.

“Any time, Spider-Man. I mean it. You can come by for dinner every night if you want.”

Peter nodded, feeling a bit overwhelmed. He mumbled another thanks, then left the same way Nightwing did. Hopefully Red Hood would be back to normal tomorrow.