Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter couldn’t stop coughing up dust.

Which, honestly, was not the best thing to happen to you when you wake up in an alleyway. 

It wasn’t even, like, normal dust like that time he got buried alive under a building and he threw up dusty vomit. It was straight up gray dust that he’s like 87% sure used to be his internal organs. The whole snap and dust that Thanos had done seemed to have some real weird side effects.

Like the alleyway. This looked like Earth, it smelled like Earth, it sounded like Jersey for some reason, but it was definitely not Earth because why the hell would he get beamed up only to get snapped back?

Peter coughed again, a small cloud of what he’s pretty sure is his currently restructuring small intestine came floating out in front of his face. Damn, that looked like the world’s crunchiest vape hit.

Okay: situation check.

Body? Mostly regenerated, still missing a few fingernails and half his ear.

Dust? Covered in it and still coughing it up.

Suit? More than a little raggedy, but intact and with nanites patching it up.

Senses? Mildly haywire, telling him there is danger everywhere, but then again, he was in space ten minutes ago.

Overall? Actively improving with every dusty exhale.

“What the fuck?” He said, remarkably not that hysterical considering his current situation. “What the fuck ?!”

Aunt May would absolutely be telling him off right now if she heard him swear, but that isn’t his priority, even if he really wished it were. His priority was…

What was it that Happy had drilled into him? Water, shelter, fire, food. Wait, no: shelter, water, food, then fire. Rule of threes: 3 hours in bad weather, 3 days with no water, 3 weeks with no food. Then multiply that by three because Parker Luck meant that Peter’s metabolism burned through everything three times as fast.

“Okay,” He said, exhaling a bit of dusted kidney. “Okay. Get shelter.”

Peter shakily stood up, using his stickiness and the graffiti-covered wall as leverage. Ugh, his legs feel like they’ve been torn apart molecule by molecule and then put back together– oh wait.

“I should’ve stayed on that bus.” Lie, Peter should have been faster and stronger and actually gotten the glove off of Thanos’ hand, but being lazy was the other option. “Should’ve let Ned hand me the blue switch controller. But nooo, I had to get myself abducted.”

His legs nearly collapsed under him when he tried to walk, so Peter made the executive decision to climb instead. Climbing sheer surfaces was easier than walking nowadays, thanks to the corrupted super soldier serum running through his veins.

Thanks, Dad, for hiding that little science experiment in your toddler son’s pet tarantula. Sure, it definitely did hide the finished serum from the HYDRA agents who hunted his dad down, but it meant that Peter had a really bad weekend between his pet spider, Jam, biting him and giving him superpowers, and Jam escaping his tank and running away. Jam, a superpowered tarantula, was out there, somewhere, wandering New York, and maybe, actually, Peter should have told someone about him.

Peter collapsed on the roof of a random building in the random state of Jersey and thought about that for a second. 

Shit. He probably should have told Mr Stark or Aunt May that the radioactive spider he said gave him his powers is still on the loose. Hmm, a problem for when he got home. Somehow.

Roof. He is on the roof. Is this shelter?

…Did he hit his head?

He coughed again, and another crunchy gray cloud of dust floated out of him. Or maybe that is his brain regenerating. There is a pounding in his head right now.

Holy shit, what if his superhealing was stronger than the snap and the dust just floated around forever until Peter rebuilt himself? Maybe that’s why he’s in Jersey!

A horn blared from below, furious shouting fired back at the impatient driver with a road rage that made New Yorker Peter Parker flinch.

Or maybe this is just hell. 

Oh my god, hell is in Jersey.

He’d connected the two dots!

Gunshots went off below, almost like the road rage drivers had escalated into attempted murder.

He nodded solemnly, feeling a little bit drunk like that time MJ dared him to drink hand sanitizer. He connected the dots.

What was he doing? Oh! Shelter, yes.

Peter squinted at the starless night sky. A roof isn’t shelter.

He should probably try another roof, or an empty building. Those usually have shelter. Peter needed shelter and a nap, and hopefully some water soon, because coughing up dust for half an hour straight was absolutely killing his throat.

Eventually, with only six more coughing fits and the slow recalibration of his brain, Peter did manage to make it to the next rooftop over. Then again, and again, and again.

He had no idea why Jersey’s rooftops are so easy to hop between. Or why they had so many gargoyles and grotesques, and other stone statues. He felt like they were about to come to life and send him spiraling to a random point in history.

He squinted at one statue. Exaggeratedly slow, he blinked. The gargoyle didn’t move.

Okay, he’s safe, the statue wasn’t secretly a weeping angel.

On his eleventh rooftop, he struck gold. He also struck his funny bone on the landing, and he briefly considered making this his thirteenth reason before logic won out. If fighting a purple alien on a different planet didn’t count as his thirteenth reason, then his entire arm buzzing with invisible ants in his bones shouldn’t either.

The building was abandoned, more or less. It was definitely dilapidated, and there was no sound from any water running through the pipes, and he couldn’t even hear the buzz of latent electricity. However, Peter’s pretty sure there are a few homeless guys on the third floor, based on the sound of shuffling and muttering.

Jackpot.

Using just a little bit of his enhanced strength, Peter yanked the rooftop access door open and slunk inside.

It was dark, musty, moldy, and also crumbly. Still, it was shelter, and Peter would reluctantly trust that his healing factor wouldn’t let him get mold in his lungs alongside the dust. 

It’s cold, but still somewhat warmer than outside, which had been freezing, but Peter’s body hadn’t recovered enough to actually feel it. Now that he had found a corner of an abandoned building to curl up in, and his brain seemed to have mostly returned, his body remembered the concept of shivering.

Teeth chattering, Peter curled up in what used to be someone’s bedroom. It was all trashed, but it was like nobody had ever come back. Like everyone had abandoned the building in a hurry overnight.

He wondered if that was what happened when you got dusted on Earth. 

Was he in the bed of someone who had died because of him?

He didn’t know, and as much as he did care, it was just too cold for him to continue caring.

He just needed to sleep. Just a quick nap, just until he had ten fingernails and two full ears back.

Peter could care again in the morning, but right now, it was time to recover.

Chapter Text

Peter groaned as he peeled his body off the moldy mattress.

Next to him, like he was a snake that had shivered off a layer of skin, were piles of dust. Black-grey flaky ash-like dust.

“Fuck!” He swore, scrambling away from the scene. Then, when he fell off the bed: “Shit!”

Of course, he had to fall asleep in the horror movie room and then wake up in the horror movie bed. Of course.

The dust appeared to have long since settled ( falling apart in Mr Stark’s arms under unfamiliar skies ), and his body felt solid now, complete once more. The room he was in, however, was definitely not complete.

It was utterly trashed .

A little girl’s room, torn apart as if by monsters. The mattress was torn and pulled off the frame slightly, and the clothes were on the closet floor, and the drawers were gone. There was smoke damage around the boarded-up windowsill, and nail scratches on the back of the door. 

Peter was pretty sure he had seen this scene in a zombie movie once. 

“Hm.” He stood up in the middle of the chaos. His tingle wasn’t tingling, so he’s pretty sure he’s safe and isn’t about to get jumpscared by a kid zombie from under the bed, but still. This situation doesn’t seem safe. “This doesn’t pass OSHA regulations.”

Should bedrooms pass OSHA? Probably not, but they should. Peter once made a Home Alone trap on the floor of his bedroom out of Lego, and it was immediately used as friendly fire, so Aunt May made him put it all away into her large mixed storage container (and not in their original boxes like he promised he would do). That definitely wouldn’t have passed any OSHA regulation.

This place has clearly been abandoned for months, and unless Peter was missing some time, then this wasn’t because of the snap. Holy shit, did the zombie apocalypse happen when he wasn’t looking? He really hoped it was more of a Warm Bodies zom-pocalypse rather than a The Last of Us one. 

Although this could also just be how Jersey looks like.

Peter should go figure out where he is beyond a vague notion of ‘New Jersey’ based 100% off of some accented angry words said in the middle of the night. 

Yeah, he should go and…

And…

Why did he fit in a child’s bed?

Why was Peter so short ?

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no! Panicking, he ran towards a very dirty old mirror on top of the very tall dressing table. Please, this can’t be, there is no way this is happening to him right now, and- oh my god, he’s tiny !

Instead of his own sixteen-year-old self staring back at him, he looked way closer to a second grader. 

This is so not okay.

His clothes seemed to have shrunk to fit him, thank god, and his suit appeared to have shrunk using the nanites in it.

His suit!

“Karen?” His voice trembled a little, almost like he was an actual seven-year-old.

“Peter!” Karen answered after a terrifying pause. “Scans show significant levels of newly regenerated tissue. How are you feeling?”

Instead of anything clever, Peter answered with “I think I have new teeth.”

His mouth did feel like it had new teeth; it was foreign and weird, like when he had gotten braces. The bumps and ridges were slightly different, a bit more even, and his canines felt extra sharp.

A long pause from Karen. “Yes… Scans do indicate a new jaw and mandible.”

“Wack.” Peter put his hands on his hips. “Say, Karen, is there any part of me that isn’t lighting up as regenerated tissue?”

“99.99% registers as new tissue.”

“Oh my god, I’m immortal.” 

If Peter has lost his whole body and then remade it from scratch, then that means his healing factor is way more powerful than he thought. He nearly gasped out loud at the idea of being able to regrow limbs.

“Do not test this hypothesis,” Karen was quick to scold him. “It is highly improbable and dangerous.”

“I wasn’t gonna!” Peter said, as if he hadn’t learned how to web-sling by jumping off a roof.

“I see,” Karen said with far too much judgment in her tone for a robot. “Peter, are you aware of where we are? I am unable to connect with the Stark Satellites.”

“New Jersey, I think.” He moved towards the boarded-up windowsill and tugged the boards off, then used the sleeve of his costume to defog the windows. The world outside was grey, ugly, run-down, and depressing. “Definitely Jersey.”

“ Peter ,” Karen warned, as if reading his mind. “Do not reach a conclusion without sufficient evidence. Do you feel well enough to venture outside? Perhaps a connection to a digital system will help recalibrate our servers.”

Peter wrinkled his nose. “Can’t you do that yourself? Surely there’s another satellite to connect to? This doesn’t look like the Dark Ages.”

“Sunlight and a walk would be good for you,” Karen said instead. “You will be able to reorient yourself and go in search of sustenance. Venturing outdoors will be an improvement to your health.”

Peter thought about it, “You’ll stay with me, right?”

“I am always with you, Peter,” Karen said.

“Okay,” He squared his shoulders and gave the outside world a disgusted look, before clicking the release button on his suit to let it drop to the ground. “Let's go, I guess.”

Within seconds of stepping outside, Peter regretted it.

He wanted to go home .

This city was dirty, ugly, and weird. People kept giving him ugly looks, and Peter was genuinely afraid of getting jumped, something that he had never felt even in the dirtiest of suburbs in New York. 

“Take a left,” Karen instructed in his ear. The nanites had reconstructed his mask into some pretty nifty-looking spider-themed hearing aids, and Peter was almost upset he hadn’t had these before. They blocked out extra sound better than any noise-cancelling headphones he’s owned, and would probably work better than his old childhood hearing aids. 

Actually, Peter had no idea how Karen had done it, but these mimicked his old ones really well. He had to wear hearing aids after the whole alien invasion thing, when he got temporary hearing loss from the explosions and his Uncle Ben having to fire his gun in a confined space several times to protect them, and while he did manage to mostly grow out of needing them by the time he finished middle school, Jam’s bite did fix him up the rest of the way.

“Peter, take your thumb out of your mouth,” Karen scolded as he waited to cross the street.

“My teeth hurt,” Peter whined, taking it out but immediately wanting to shove it back in. His gums itched bad , like his teeth were still being reconstructed. 

“If they are still growing, then sucking your thumb may cause the plates to be malformed. Do you want to have to use braces again?”

“No,” The light turned green, and Peter was finally able to cross.

At least he had figured out what city he was in, more or less. He had no idea where in Jersey ‘Gotham’ was, but it may be the suburb too, considering how it was plastered everywhere from rubbish trucks to store names.

“Then don’t suck your thumb.” Peter was well aware that Karen was made to make him behave while Spidermanning, but sometimes she didn’t have to be such a mom . Sometimes, she even copied exactly what Aunt May had said earlier and just echoed it to him. Not that he would ever complain about Karen, he loved Karen, even if he sometimes feared that she would take over the world if she thought that it would protect him. “Another two blocks and then–”

“Ooh, a bill!” It was crumbled and soggy from trash juice, but it was still a five-dollar bill.

“Please don’t touch–” The AI did a crackling sound, like she had attempted to sigh. “The library should have some hand sanitizer at the front desk.”

“I want snacks first.” He was already looking around for a bodega or corner store to enter. There was one, but it had shattered windows and looked like it had been robbed last night. He squinted at it, but his tingle seemed more or less fine with it, other than disliking the broken glass on the ground. And the crackhead in the alleyway. And the car was waiting at the red light with a trunk full of weapons. 

Okay, maybe his tingle didn’t like anything right now, but for good reason, Peter was in Jersey .

Still, Peter couldn’t tell if it was supposed to usually be like this, or if everyone was on edge because of Thanos’ dusting.

“Water is your priority,” Karen told him as he walked in. “Then a carb-heavy food. If sourcing food is difficult, then we must get the most calories possible to prevent starvation.”

“There’s donuts!” Peter ran across the store the second that he smelled them. He would prefer a sandwich, but he doesn’t know if he should trust the meat here. 

Glazed donuts sat in a box, three in a pack, only a dollar ninety-nine.

“That’s… cheap,” Peter squinted at them. Did they have rat poison in them? Well, he was pretty hungry anyway, so he might just eat them because he’s immortal now. Also, who makes a pack of three donuts? That’s just weird. 

“It appears standard for the local prices,” Karen said.

“Are you on the wifi?” Peter demanded, “Why am I outside if you are on the wifi?”

“We don’t trust everything we see on the internet,” His AI sounded like a Captain America PSA. “And you need sustenance, including exercise. Grab the donuts, Peter.”

Peter grabbed the donuts. 

He also grabbed a large water bottle and a single pig in a blanket that looked like it might give him food poisoning. He’ll eat the donuts later for lunch if the pig in a blanket didn’t make him throw up.

He carried his haul up to the dissociating teenager behind the counter and gave him the biggest, toothiest smile. If he looked like a little kid, then he was going to take advantage of it. “This, please!”

The teenager looked down at him, placing his palms on the counter to lean over. “Uh. Where are your parents?”

“Mom’s outside,” Peter lied. “I’m a big boy and I can buy snacks all by myself.”

“Okay,” The underpaid teenager clearly didn’t care enough to question him any further. “Five dollars and eight cents.”

And eight cents? Peter blinked. Did he calculate the tax wrong? No, impossible, unless his brain was still regenerating. He’s good at maths. Wait. New Jersey has a higher sales tax than New York. Another reason why home was better.

Peter stuck his bottom lip out and held out his five dollars, really hoping that this cashier gave as many fucks as MJ did at her cafe job. “I have this much, is it enough?”

The cashier looked at the bill, at the till, at Peter, then back to the bill. “Sure, kid.”

Peter left the corner store with a sense of pyrrhic victory and a plastic bag, a little upset at himself for so quickly turning to emotional manipulation, but survival is survival. Aunt May always told him to lie to strangers and do whatever it takes to be safe, and Uncle Ben always said to aim for the nuts and scream ‘fire’ if someone tried to grab him, but Peter wasn’t in that kind of situation at the moment.

“Eat as you walk,” Karen said. “The library is close by now.”

Peter tore the plastic wrapping off his pig in a blanket with his teeth and bit straight into it. The sausage did taste a little bit off, but not ‘end up in the ER because of dehydration from puking your guts out’ kinda off. Yum.

He bounded up the stairs to the Gotham City Library, as the sign declared in a weird extra gothic script. This city was weird, like someone had taken the nonsensical aesthetics of David Bowie’s Labyrinth, 1930s Chicago mobsters, the Hellfire sequence in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and My Chemical Romance into one really big mixing bowl. He hated that he kinda liked it.

Peter jumped over the stair that had a weirdly yellow puddle. This city would be cool if only it stopped lighting his tingle up with the sense of permanent low-level danger and also was in a different state.

The library was slightly emptier than his local one at home, but with more families than college students. He must be far away from any local colleges.

He walked up to the front desk with confidence he didn’t have and a lie that was not his best. “Hi!” He waved his hand at her as he spoke.

The librarian lady at the desk was a redhead, with rectangular glasses and a cardigan. Peter would find her intimidating if it weren’t for the fact that she immediately smiled when she saw him. 

“Hi there, do you need some help?” She had also seen his hearing aids, because she used ASL as she spoke. Not that Peter was the best at it, his Aunt and Uncle had used it with him when he was younger for the more important instructions when he was at home and turned them off, but as his hearing recovered, they stopped using it altogether.

“Uh-huh,” Peter nodded and gave her his brightest grin. “My mommy dropped me off so I can find some books. I wanna read some books about Gotham cause my teacher says we’re gonna learn about the city soon and I wanna get a sticker on my quiz again.”

Did that sound babyish enough? He had made it up on the way with Karen to explain why a kid wanted to read boring books. Plus, he doubted that any adult would let him use the internet unsupervised. 

“Of course!” She didn’t stop her signing as she rolled herself out from under the desk. Oh, that’s why she was so short, she was in a wheelchair instead of a desk chair. They should swap her desk then, it can’t be comfortable for her to be sitting there with the desk level so high up her torso. “My name is Barbara, what’s your name?”

She had her own name sign, which was really cool. A ‘B’ which turned into a flicked ‘smart’ off her forehead.

“I’m Peter,” He responded with his own sign name, which he had been given years ago. A double-P, wrists crossed over like the sign for spider. His Aunt May had helped come up with it when he was little, and it was partially inspired by Jam the Rouge Tarantula. “I’m seven.”

“Wow, so big,” Miss Barbara nodded along like he had said something very impressive. “Now, I think we have some books about Gotham over here.”

Peter followed behind her, eyes lighting up at his plan working.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t unusual at all for parents to drop off their kids at the library and disappear, and it sometimes felt like a solid quarter of her job as a librarian was just babysitting. Not that Barbara was complaining, she loved her job.

Still, she wished that some parents could be a little bit more responsible.

Barbara made sure to be facing Peter when she explained the books she had pulled off the shelf for him. “G is for Gotham tells you a little bit about how our city looks like, and The Garden State for Growers tells you a bit about how the city was created and some of the other cities in our state. Detective Donnie Goes to Gotham tells the story of how Donnie solves the mystery of who founded Gotham and how he learns the history of our city. Now, Detective Donnie has a lot of words in it, do you want some help reading it?”

Peter seemed like the studious kind of kid, the type excited about going to school since he had been dropped off to learn more about a lesson he hadn’t even started yet. A lot of Alley and Bowery kids were like that, just happy that they were lucky enough to be able to afford school, and while Peter’s clothes weren’t shabby enough to be either, they could be from a Narrows kid or a family who had gotten unlucky recently and had to move to a worse neighbourhood.

“No,” Peter said stubbornly and very, very adorably. His little cheeks filled out when he set his jaw, making his face look even chubbier with baby fat. “I can do it.”

She resisted the urge to coo at him. “I bet you can. Now, if you want any more help at all, I’ll be at the desk.”

“Okay!” His accent wasn’t right for Narrows either, but it could also be a childish lisp. Probably a recent move, then. “Thank you!”

Now, Barbara didn’t want children of her own, not at all, however, she got baby fever sometimes too.

Pulling out her phone, she couldn’t resist sending a message to the family group chat.

From Wizard’s Orb:

When will one of you bring home a niece or nephew for me?

My auntie status is overdue

Surely the adoption gene has been passed down to one of you

From Biggest Bird:

Shouldn’t it be B who asks us that

U good Babs?

From Wizard’s Orb:

There’s a bunch of polite chubby cheeked babies in the library

From Chunkiest Bird:

pull an old man and kidnap one

WHO CHANGED MY NAME

From Wizard’s Orb:

Tim

And no

From Biggest Bird:

Tim

From Purplest Bird:

tim

From Wizard’s Orb:

Can’t one of you steal one for me

I want to be an aunt not a mom

From Chunkiest Bird:

TIMOTHY GIVE ME BACK THE PERMISSIONS TO CHANGE MY NAME YOU LITTLE SHIT

From Purplest Bird:

nooo we r family matching 

all birds 

i came up w the idea 

From Chunkiest Bird:

why the fuck would you call me fat

From Purplest Bird:

nooo!!!!!!!1!!!

ur the tallest but dicks oldestvso u the chunkiest now

From Chunkiest Bird:

and you couldn’t do tallest and oldest… why?

From Purplest Bird:

didnt think of it

From Wizard’s Orb:

GUYS FOCUS

I want a baby and you aren’t giving me one

From Biggest Bird:

Well, historically, grabbing random babies off the street doesn’t end well

From Wizard’s Orb:

Dick you are 28 years old 

You should already have non kidnapped babies

From Chunkiest Bird:

oh snap

From Wizard’s Orb:

Jason, you too

Nearly 24 and no babies in sight

Or babes

Stop dancing around it with Roy

From Biggest Bird:

Ha!

OK but for real Babs how cute are the library babies?

From Wizard’s Orb:

Adorable

We need one now that Damian is too big

From Purplest Bird:

tim can be the baby of the fam now that hes the shortest again

From Chunkiest Bird:

cass exists??

From Purplest Bird:

cass is MY baby

From Biggest Bird:

Well I’m doing nothing so I want to go see the adorable library babies

From Chunkiest Bird:

unemployed sibling behaviour

From Biggest Bird:

Shut up I’m having a job interview just a few blocks over

From Purplest Bird:

unemployed. sibling. behaviour.

Barbara laughed at the banter between her idiots. Dick would probably turn up in either a few minutes or a few hours, depending on when his interview was actually scheduled.

“Um, Miss Barbara?” A little voice reappeared at her elbow, startling her.

Peter stood there and stared at her with big brown eyes, looking like a little doe or a particularly cute calf. Staring at her like he didn’t just cause her a heart attack. This is why Bruce didn’t allow chatter on comms during patrol; the birds could distract even the most well-trained of vigilantes.

“Yes, Peter?” She signed as she spoke, moving her hands quickly to distract from her shock. “Do you need some help?”

“Do you think we can travel to different worlds? Ones that are just like ours but slightly different?”

Poor thing, the move must be a lot for a kid that age. “Oh, I know so. You know the Justice League has fought aliens and people from other dimensions? It can be pretty cool to be in a new place.”

“I’m from New York,” Peter said, slightly distracted, eyebrows all furrowed like he was trying to do complex math. “The Justice League fought another dimension? Was it like their evil twins?”

“It was like their evil twins!” Barbara’s eyes sparkled even though she hated that week. Alternative versions of themselves were fine, but when the public finds out it always turned into a nightmare headed by Lex Luthor on Twitter. “Superman fought the evil Superboy in Metropolis.”

“Cool,” Kids always found superhero battles the coolest thing ever, not understanding the carnage and damage it created. “Do we have books on it?”

“I don’t think we have any that have pictures in them,” Other than pre-school ‘Harry is a Hero Too!’ books, which Peter was too old for. “Sorry.”

“Oh,” Peter pouted. Then, for a brief moment, he got a look on his face like he was up to something. It was startlingly similar to Dick’s I’m about to run circles around Batman and he can’t stop me look. Then, it smoothed down to a normal, innocent look that Barbara knew was 100% fake. “Can we ask the internet? It has all the books.”

Adorable. “Hm, I don’t know, does your mom let you go on the internet?”

He made an offended look, “Yeah! I’m allowed on the internet all the time!”

Uh-huh. “By yourself?”

That got him. Peter looked down at his hands for a moment, frowning. “Um, maybe you can help me, Miss Barbara, cause your computers are not like mommy’s?”

“Sure,” She smiled and grabbed her chair’s wheels. It was a great attempt, but Barbara had grown up pulling better tricks. Although he was only seven, he had plenty of time to learn how to lie properly. “What hero do we wanna look up first?”

“Superman!” Peter said.

Barbara mock-gasped, “Not Batman or Robin? Peter, you’re a Gothamite now, you can’t betray us for Metropolis!”

“Not betraying!” Peter’s eyes were wide, like he was scared he had actually offended her. “Just wanna look first!”

Barbara laughed, opening the ancient public desktop with her log-in. “I’m just teasing, Peter. Let me open up Google.”

The second that she had turned around and clicked on the icon on the taskbar, she heard the twang of the rollie chair’s lift lever, and turned around to see Peter halfway through climbing up on the too-tall chair. Her hand shot out to hover right behind him, “Oh! Do we need help?”

Peter ignored her, or, perhaps, didn’t hear her since he had his back to her. He seemed to have pretty good hearing with his hearing aids, not really checking her lips or hands, but kids got their fingers into everything, and he may have turned it off in the second she had turned her back. Still, he got onto the chair with just one or two grunts of displeasure. She could understand, some of the stools and tables in the library were too tall for her to transfer comfortably, but her wheelchair was too short for a lot of the desks too.

“I wanna see Superman now,” Peter put his hands on the computer desk. His eyes were gleaming with the unbridled delight of a kid doing something they technically shouldn’t be.

“Okay, here is Superman,” Barbara resisted the urge to laugh as she opened up Google images of Kal-El. There were dozens, showing him in various stages of flight, during rescues, and accepting awards.

Peter pointed at a rare press image of the full Justice League, with Clark at the microphone giving a speech. “What’s going on here?”

“That,” Barbara clicked on the link below to open a news article. “Is the big meeting the Justice League held after fighting aliens. Superman was telling everyone how it went and how Earth made some new friends in space.”

“What friends are those?”

“Right, so the Green Lanterns,” Barbara began to explain interplanetary alliances for babies. Peter watched, fascinated, eyes flickering between her and the screen as she explained the role of each hero. 

At times, Peter would interrupt and point at a different hero, with no discrimination between Plastic Man or Wonder Woman, and ask: “What did they do?”

Every time, Barbara would explain patiently, even if she wanted to tell him that Booster Gold does nothing but pose for invisible cameras.

“And what does Batman do?” Peter pointed at Bruce, after kinda ignoring him for several other heroes first. “And why is he a bat? Is he half-bat?”

“No, Man-Bat is half bat, Batman is half-darkness.” Best to get Peter used to Gotham as quickly as possible. Transplants always either sank or swam, but the kids adjusted the best and quickest. “Batman does everything. He fights, plans, evacuates, and bosses people around. Most people think he’s Gotham’s spirit come to life, a type of ghost that helps everyone, but I think he’s just a normal man trying to do something to help.”

Peter nodded seriously, reminding Barbara too much of Damian when he was younger. “With great power comes great resbun- resbon- res-pon-sa-bi-lit-y.” He frowned as if his tongue had personally betrayed him by stumbling over the word.

She went to ask him who had taught him that, when she got interrupted by footsteps approaching.

“Babs!” Dick had arrived, dressed in his nicer blue corduroy and a polo. His voice immediately got softer as he spotted Peter, who was leaning so far forward in his chair to look at the heroes on the screen that Barbara was afraid he would fall. Still, Peter was proving to be a remarkably coordinated kid.“Oh! Am I interrupting?” 

Peter turned around and promptly fell off his chair, making Barbara rescind her previous thoughts as she grabbed the chair to stop it from fully crushing the boy. “Peter! Are you okay?”

Peter just blinked, long and slow, and tilting his head all the way back to stare at Dick. “You look just like my dad.”

“Oh,” Dick said.

“He’s dead.”

“Oh!” Dick looked at her for help, and with a little bit of accusation, as if she could have somehow known this. 

Peter continued talking, like small kids tend to do. “It’s okay cause he left me his pet spider. I like spiders, and his name was Jam cause my uncle once said he was going to squish it into jam if he ever saw it out of its cage. Jam got out, though, and he bit me but I told everyone Jam died too because I didn’t wanna be called ir-re-spon-sab-le. Do you like spiders?”

“Not particularly,” Dick managed to recover quickly. “My favourite animal is the elephant. I used to have a pet elephant when I was little.”

Peter squinted at him. “Are you lying?”

Barbara hid her smile behind her hand.

Dick gasped dramatically, “Do I look like a liar to you?”

“Well, you look like my dad, and my dad lied a lot, so yes.” This kid was going to kill Barbara. Steph was going to kill her if she didn’t get the CCTV footage of this later so that the whole family could watch Dick get humbled by a second-grader. “Ely-pants, ugh, El-e-ph-ants need a lot of space to grow and a good en-vi-ro-ment to eat and be healthy. You can’t have an el-e-ph-ant in your backyard, it’s ill-e-gal.”

“You’re right, it is illegal, but I grew up in a circus,” Dick was good with children in a way that made her heart ache for him. It’s something that, if they had gotten married, would have led them to divorce. She loves him, but not enough to have children with him, but she only realised that after they had broken off their engagement. “We travelled all around the world, and Zitka had plenty of space.”

“Did you run away to the circus?” Peter was officially fascinated by Dick, and was now completely ignoring the open tab on the Justice League.

“Better. I was born there,” Dick winked, the only warning they got before the man decided to do a backbend into a handstand. “I’m an acrobat, see!”

“I can do that too!” Barbara was already mourning the quiet calm of her space. “Look!”

Peter mimicked Dick really well, albeit with a little tad more flailing of legs to push him up. 

Dick immediately dropped out of his handstand to spot the kid, having learned his lesson on not spotting little brothers trying to copy him. 

For all that they are all Robins, none of them had Dick’s intensive acrobatics training, and Barbara vividly remembered a few years ago when Tim, Damian, and Cass all bet each other that they could mimic the infamous quadruple summersault the best, and then Dick yelling at them all for getting injured. Tim’s sprained ankle, Cass’ bruises, and Damian getting snatched out of the air by Dick taught them all a valuable lesson on knowing their limits. Jason had laughed himself sick as if Barbara didn’t have video evidence of him pulling a muscle in his thigh trying to copy Dick when he was fifteen. Steph, thank goodness, has never attempted to copy Dick, but Barbara knew that she had tried to copy Cass and Helena several times, which was at least far more manageable. 

“I can do it!” Peter took one hand off the ground for a heart-stopping second, then fell forward back onto his feet, with Dick hovering but not helping. He could do it, and pretty well for his age, but it still made Barbara worry that he would fall again. “See! Can I join the circus too?”

“Yeah, you did,” Barbara interrupted with a glare at her idiot friend. “But this is a library, Peter, you have to be quiet. And you ,” She pointed at Dick, “Know better than to do handstands here.”

“Sorry,” Dick winced, scuffing his foot on the floor. This was her job; he couldn’t be pulling stunts in here where her boss could see.

Peter turned red and shuffled his feet. “Sorry, Miss Barbara.”

For a second, Barbara thought she was seeing double. Peter looked identical to Dick, just he had been all those years ago when they had first met.

“Oh!” Peter looked outside, “My mom’s here! Bye, Miss Barbara, Bye Mr Circus-Man!”

Barbara went to stop him, to ask if she could talk to his mom or if he wanted to get a library card, but he ran off.

“Peter!” Dick was similarly startled, going to chase after him, but the boy disappeared in the shelves in less than a second before reappearing to dash out the front door. Still, he tried to follow him outside.

Out the empty front door, because nobody had entered in a while.

Did he lie about his mom coming to pick him up to get out of being scolded? Barbara hoped that the kid wasn’t pulling a Tim.

Dick reappeared at the door, frowning. “I lost him, but I didn’t see any cars driving off.”

“I’ll check the cameras,” She said. “I think I spooked him.”

He shook his head, “I think I spooked him more. Dead dad lookalike is probably weird for him.”

Damian had once accidentally called Jason ‘father’ because he had only seen his back, and the fallout of that incident had been both glorious and destructive. Similarly, Steph had once called Dinah ‘mom’ while sleep-deprived, and Dinah had teared up because she had a terrible thought of all her children becoming vigilantes, and that had made Steph lock herself in the bathroom. 

Poor thing. “I think his mom is trying to get a fresh start; they just moved here from New York, and he’s struggling to adapt.”

“Sudden single mom? Ouch,” Dick winced, likely remembering how he had moved in to avoid NY apartment prices. “Yeah, Gotham must be the only city they can afford. Are they living nearby? Whose patrol route are they on?”

“No clue, he wasn’t chatty like that with me,” Barbara pulled up the outside cameras. “Just wanted to learn more about heroes and how they fight aliens and dimension travellers. Also, about Gotham, but he said that’s for school.”

She frowned at the cameras. Peter left the library, then ran off-screen down the sidewalk. She watched as Dick appeared on camera the same moment that Peter disappeared, and then how he had looked down either side of the street.

“Think he ran home?” Dick asked, looking worried.

“Probably,” She sighed. Gotham wasn’t New York; kids couldn’t just run around on the streets by themselves. Still, they did, but usually only when older or more street-smart. “If he comes in again, I’ll talk with his mom, she might not know the kidnapping rates here.”

“Yeah,” Dick kept looking down at the cameras. “Sounds like a plan.”

Chapter Text

“Peter, please stop hyperventilating.” Karen attempted to calm him down.

“Not–” Peter took a huge breath in, “–Very helpful.”

“Without your full mask, I cannot show you the breathing formula,” Karen sounded genuinely upset about it. “Perhaps I could say it out loud?”

Sitting halfway up the side of a building was pretty normal for Peter, except for the reason why he had decided to run up the side of the building.

That was his dad. That was his dad .

Peter was sitting in an alternative dimension, a whole other universe, which was so cool but he couldn’t even properly nerd out about it all because he was pretending to be a normal kid and he had to get data about the unknown factors like an experienced hero or an avenger; then a guy who looked identical to his dad popped up, and surely that wasn’t his dad at all because his dad was dead, but then he starts talking about pet elephants and acrobatics, and surely that was a coincidence, but then Miss Barbara was scolding them and it was like his dad and him got caught doing science experiments in the kitchen by his mom again, and yeah Peter’s sense of denial wasn’t that strong and–

“INHALE!” Karen shouted in his ear, making Peter jump a foot in the air like a particularly startled orange cat.

“I’m breathing!” Peter hissed angrily, his right ear ringing for a moment as it repaired itself. That was a lie, he wasn’t breathing before, but after that heart attack, he most definitely was. Jesus. “What the fuck, Karen.”

“Language,” His AI scolded him as if she hadn’t just yelled in his ear loud enough to damage it. 

“That was my dad.” Peter was really, fully, properly, freaked the fuck out. “He’s supposed to be dead.”

“This is an alternative universe, we cannot expect the world to have any similarities to the world we left.” Karen was, luckily, always logical. “Furthermore, I seem to understand why you are so young.”

“Because my body went back to the last save point?” Which, turned out, was the same age he was when his parents died.

“Perhaps,” Sometimes it was very easy to remember that Karen was a machine, and as much as Peter was her human kid, she sometimes forgot he had biology instead of code. “I believe it may also be because the year is 2009.”

“That explains why the library computers look so old.” Peter should be panicking, but he’s sorta all outta panic and now all he has left is disco. “Oh my god, K, Lady Gaga is at her peak right now.”

“Peter, the War on Terror is currently ongoing.”

Now, did school always tell him to never forget? Yes. Did Peter forget? Also yes.

“I don’t know how to stop that.” Peter admitted. “Should I… make an Iron Man suit?”

MJ had done a fourteen-minute speech about the hypocrisy of the War on Terror and she had mentioned the impact of Iron Man, but if Peter was being honest, he hadn’t paid all that much attention. Partially because it was almost lunch and he had skipped breakfast, and partially because the time limit they had all been given was three minutes.

“...No?” Karen didn’t sound all that sure either. “Perhaps we should focus on safety, food, and shelter.”

“You have money?” Peter hoped she managed to successfully hack the library computers while he distracted Miss Barbara about heroes. 

“Unfortunately, pay chips, cards, and online pay are not common in this world.” Wait, what? Did people actually carry cash around on them? Wow, Peter doesn’t think any of his guardians properly carried cash on them since 2010… which was in another year… Peter would like to return to the future please. “However, I am confident in my ability to hack an ATM now that I am more familiar with the technological capabilities of this world.”

“Karen, that’s a crime.”

“So is child neglect, and you are a child that I would be neglecting if I did not find a way to feed you.”

Peter squinted at the hazy sky. That sounded distinctly like the kind of roundabout reasoning that was more human than machine. Then again, Mr Stark said that he programmed Karen so that taking care of Peter was her highest priority. 

Plus, if he did arrest people just trying to feed their families, then he wouldn’t be a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. He would be a cop. His Uncle Ben had drilled it into him to never, ever, ever trust a cop. 

Even if his Uncle was technically a cop, even if it was just for a long-term SHIELD undercover mission that Peter got to learn about from leaked files and his Uncle getting shot and killed by another cop while a helicarrier fell out of the sky. That’s fine.

Point is: Peter ain’t no cop, and he don’t associate with no cops.

Unless it was to keep everyone safe and help people evacuate.

Ugh, why did the world have to be complex and difficult? He just wants to have a juice box and watch Spongebob like he did when he was seven again.

Wait a second.

“If we steal, can I have a juicebox?” Peter asked.

“Only if you remember to buy a toothbrush,” Karen said. “I do not want to measure your regenerative capabilities on regrowing and fixing bones.”

“Ew, don’t call teeth bones.” Peter shuddered. “I want apple juice.”

He stood up, right on the edge of the building. Down below, his dad exited the library for the second time, looking around again like he was searching for Peter. Not that he would find him, nobody ever looked up.

Still, right as Peter thought that, the man shifted to look up.

Peter threw himself away from the edge in a practised backflip, which he nearly fumbled due to his arms being a tad short. His wrist twisted, making him hiss.

“We should ice that,” Karen fussed.

Instead of that, Peter just wrapped his hand around his wrist for a few seconds, letting his ice-cold fingers prevent any swelling. Having terrible circulation, with true spider-levels of thermoregulation, did occasionally have benefits. Rarely.

“Do you think my dad is a SHIELD scientist here too?” He was way too quick to notice someone looking at him; it was weird for a normal person to be that quick, right? “Oh my god, are my Uncle Ben and Aunt May here too?”

“I found no evidence of SHIELD or HYDRA online,” Karen shot that idea down. “Although there is a much higher percentage of heroes, vigilantes, and other persons ready to assist the world, there is a significantly lower number of hate groups and other government agencies. The agency ARGUS appears to be the most similar to SHIELD, however, they appear to take a greater stand in the protection of modified humans and aliens.”

“Wait.” Peter froze. “They don’t have any Anti-Mute societies?”

“Nothing as prominent or mainstream as our world.” Karen denied, Peter could hear the quiet whirring of her reviewing online databases. “Hatred is mostly limited to fringe groups, and directed at aliens more than enhanced humans. Currently, no political groups are campaigning on the basis of Anti-Enhanced policy, although three are doing so with Anti-Alien policies; they are considered extremists. It appears that the socio-political spectrum is not the main enemy for this world.”

Holy shit. No fucking Nazis. 

Peter flopped on the roof of the building, clutching his wrist. “Hey, K?”

“Yes, P?” Karen mimicked his softer tone.

“I don’t think this world is hell anymore.”

“I doubt the likelihood of your progenitor ending up in hell… unlike mine.” Karen deadpanned.

Peter snorted, caught off guard. “Karen! Mr Stark did not deserve that!” Still, he was grinning.

“He took me away from you.” Karen never did get over the Toomes incident. “He deserves it a little bit.”

He knew better than to argue with her, knowing that Mr Stark had to once physically separate FRIDAY and Karen’s codes when they argued about him. 

“So…” He wriggled his fingers, watching as the wrist was rapidly purpling. “Is my dad part of this ARGUS?”

“No.” Karen denied. “There are no records of a Richard Parker in any government payrolls.”

Well, that’s… good? 

Working for SHIELD is what killed his parents and Uncle Ben in the first place, but then again, that meant that all the work they did to help the world might not have happened. Peter’s mom invented a temporary cellular regeneration serum that one day became the basis of Helen Cho’s Cradle. Peter’s dad reinvented the super soldier serum and evolved it so it could combine with foreign DNA to become adaptive and create new powers. Uncle Ben was a leading intelligence officer with one of the best undercover identities that he was practically a ghost; he had met his wife, Peter’s Aunt May, while undercover as a gangster in a gang that was peddling magic weapons, which had eventually led to their mass arrest. His family had done invaluable work helping the world.

Their work also killed them.

With great power comes great responsibility, as his family motto goes. There’s other ways of helping, Peter just had to keep an eye out.

He really hoped that his dad wasn’t an assassin or a mercenary in this world.

“I want a juicebox,” Peter remembered suddenly.

“Apple juice?” Karen confirmed, despite her perfect memory.

“Apply juice.” Peter nodded seriously, sitting back up. The purple bruising on his wrist was gone, now a light shade of greenish yellow remained. “Hey Karen, is my healing faster?”

“Analysis shows a confirmation.”

“Huh.” Peter decided he wasn’t going to think about that. “I guess practice makes perfect or something. Betcha my wrist is gonna be all healed up by the time I apply juice to my tummy.”

If Aunt May heard that one, she would laugh so hard she’d cry. Unfortunately, Karen doesn’t have that same sense of humour.

“That appears to be statistically likely. Would you like me to plan a path to the nearest ATM?” She offered.

“No, no, no!” Peter perked up, the idea of committing his own crime, for the first time, mildly interesting. “We gotta do it far away, so they can’t tri-angle-ate where we’re staying. Like in the movies, with 007, y’know?”

“I see.” Karen started whirring quietly in his ear again. “If we are ameanable to walk for forty-five minutes, I have found an ATM that is out of predicted search parameters.”

“Yep!” Peter grabbed his small plastic baggie of old cornerstore donuts. “Mission: Dirty Money Apple Juice!”

“And a toothbrush,” Karen added.

“And a toothbrush!” Peter conceded.

They stood there for a second before Karen spoke up.

“Peter, do you need assistance getting off the roof?”

Peter eyed the edge, peeking his head over. The streets were empty, there was nobody down below walking around or looking up, but it was a long, long way down.

“No,” He said, like a liar. “I just realised that I should’ve packed my webs.”

“You are sticky.”

“Oh yeah,” Still, Peter stared down at the sheer wall. The distance down was half as much when he was twice as tall. Still, he can’t afford to be a scaredy spider. “Feet first this time.”

Peter wasn’t scared of heights, okay? He was just… uncertain of his powers at the moment. If he was healing quicker, who knows what else had changed? What if he was less sticky? Or he stuck for less long? 

What if he started growing new limbs ?

Peter crept down the wall of the building, landing softly in an alley the second he felt safe enough to jump off and land safely. Not the priority. Karen said the priority was being safe. His powers aren’t a priority because Karen said they’re not a priority.

Hell, Peter having a dad walking around isn’t a priority because Karen didn’t say anything about him being a priority. 

Peter has to trust Karen, because Karen will always take care of him. Right?

He plastered a big grin on his face and straightened up, turning and beginning to walk out. “Let’s go!” 

“Other direction,” Karen corrected.

Peter turned on his heel. “Let’s go!”

Chapter Text

“May I reiterate that we can find a new shelter?” Karen was louder now that she was reconnected with the rest of the nanobots in his suit.

“May I re-it-er-ate that I like it here?” Peter replied.

That was a lie, he did not like it here, but in-here was safer than a lot of out - theres . In the crumbled-down abandoned building, with its vague after-taste of copper and nitrogen, nobody could reach Peter. Locals drew a wide berth around it, like it carried some sort of disease that even delinquent teenagers feared, leaving not one tagged wall in the hallways, just Peter and the two homeless guys who couldn’t go higher than the third floor since the stairwell was barricaded. Peter hadn’t seen his two neighbors yet, but sometimes he heard them laugh and giggle in the middle of the night, and Karen decided that it was best that they didn’t meet.

At least this place was insulated and furnished, and it had no rent. Which was fair, because Peter was pretty sure it would be illegal to charge rent for a place that had weird red, white, and green mold crawling up the walls.

Still, Peter was getting antsy.

Mr Stark should have shown up and rescued him by now, right? It’s been a full week already. Surely someone else was coming to help him.

Karen kept reminding him that the best thing to do when you’re lost is to stay in the same place until help arrives.

“Peter, it is a weekend again, it is safe to attempt to find a new shelter,” Karen coaxed. “CPS won’t pick you up if you listen to me.”

Still, Karen tried to get him to move.

“No.”

“Peter-”

“Nuh-uh!” Peter tried to cover his ears, then realized that Karen was in his ears with his mask and aids, and began to chant the word louder and louder.

“This is unproductive!” Karen was yelling now, cross. “Peter, stop it!”

“This is my home now!” Peter yelled back in the empty room. “You can’t make me!”

“Peter! You are not safe here!”

“no , no, no, NO!” Peter stomped his feet against the ceiling. “This is mine! ”

“FINE!” Karen snapped, if she was human then she would be tearing her hair out. “We can stay!”

Peter froze from where he was standing upside down. “Really?”

“Yes,” Karen ground out. “Only because I have yet to see adverse effects of mold poisoning from you. The second you feel ill, I will be removing you from here.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

Karen was clearly unimpressed with him, “As the youth say: Bet .”

Peter paused, considering his circumstances. He was alone, and small, and only being supported by Karen.

He didn’t respond, and instead shot out another web, making a new cocoon.

If the bottom half of his new room looked like it came straight out of a zombie movie, then the top half of the room looked like that scene in The Hobbit movies where the dwarrow get attacked by giant spiders in Mirkwood. Webs hung everywhere, creating hammocks and cocoons and spots for him to hide in.

The webs coming out of him were weird . Healing quickly wasn’t the only thing he had gained, and the spinnerets had been a nice and terrifying surprise. On one hand, he didn’t have to steal supplies to make his own webs, on the other hand, he definitely didn’t have that before and who knows what’s going on in his body.

Karen has reassured him multiple times that her scans do not indicate he was growing new limbs, but she did want to take him to a dentist soon, which wasn’t reassuring either.

If Aunt May were here, he’d have gone to the dentist ages ago . Aunt May was a nurse, and she would be able to do her own blood tests sneakily and give him check-ups and make sure his healing was fine. She’d take care of him.

But Aunt May wasn’t here and so he had to listen to Karen because she was the only vaguely-adult person in his life.

Most of the time. He had to listen to her, most of the time.

Peter curled up in his cocoon and drew it tighter around himself, trying to insulate himself. It was a pathetic attempt to block out the world and the cold, but he was trying his best, okay?

He’d only gone outside to grab more food, not wanting to chance getting kidnapped or whatever the weirdos in Jersey would do to a lone kid on the streets. He was wearing clothes from the abandoned closet on top of his nanite suit, a combination of purple leggings, a plain red shirt, and a too-big hoodie that came from the two kids’ rooms. 

It’s warm, at least. Start of June, so Summer was fully in swing, even if the weather outside didn’t seem to agree with what season it was. During the middle of the day, it got uncomfortably humid, like Peter had taken a left on Titan and ended up in a multidimensional sauna. It sucked . Night was way better, a light breeze with a permanent 60-degree chill, even if this city decided that meant it was perfect for playing ‘firecrackers or gunshots’ at 2 am right outside his window.

Peter swore he had only closed his eyes for a few seconds before he woke up to that exact game being played.

“Ugh,” Peter whined, shooting off another web to wrap around himself.

“Go back to sleep, Peter,” Karen soothed. “I am watching the cameras, you’re safe.”

Another round of shots ring, this time even closer.

Peter is far too small to be going Spidering, even if he really, really wants to. He’s too short, and his powers are fritzing, and he’s hungry all the time. Aunt May told him he can’t go Spidering if he’s hungry, that’s one of her big rules.

It’s no good if he faints from hunger mid-swing and becomes a spider-pancake. His malnutrition already had him do a really embarrassing swoon once during PE, and Aunt May had been really upset when she came to pick him up.

Shots were fired, with very loud swearing.

Peter didn’t have to strain his hearing, they seemed to be coming from just two blocks away. “Where the fuck are those birds?!”

Birds? 

“Karen,” Peter frowned, “Are there people shooting at pigeons?”

Usually, Peter had to deal with tourists trying to catch pigeons, not with people trying to shoot them. Surely they’re not that hungry, right? There’s stores to rob instead of killing poor wildlife.

“Not pigeons,” Karen replied. “These birds appear to be human-shaped and the local vigilantes.”

“Pigeon-man and Captain Bird?” Peter may be sorely lacking in the sleep aspect.

“Nightwing and Red Hood,” Karen corrected. “The latter is expected as we are currently in his claimed territory, however, Nightwing is outside his regular territory.”

More shots, and a shrieked: “Oh shit!”

“They good?” Peter rubbed at his eyes. 

“Scans show that both vigilantes are fine. They have evaded all bullets, and are now returning fire.” She whirred, and his mask faded out into hearing aids, glowing softly blue. “They also seem to be attempting to push each other off the roof.”

“Stupid,” Peter yawned and began to slip out of his cocoon nest, gripping the ceiling with his fingertips before letting himself drop to the ground on his feet. “I thought the local heroes were Batman and Robin?”

“They are, with an extended array of other vigilantes in the city. They are referred to as a collective as the ‘Bats and Birds’ due to the mantle appearing to be inherited and passed down. Robin is the title most passed down, with six known vigilantes being graced the title. Batman is more stable; however, there are online rumors of Batman being temporarily replaced by the older Birds. There are additional groups such as the Birds of Prey and the Batgirls, which are also Birds and Bats.”

That’s a lot of vigilantes for one city. Peter used to think that New York had a lot of heroes, but apparently, that was nowhere near the number that Gotham had. Which was weird, because from the book about Gotham that Miss Barbara showed him, Gotham had a quarter of the population that New York had.

“They don’t have any spiders?” That sucked. Peter was one of many spiders back home, with himself and Ms Romanoff and the whole Red Room. Not to mention Antman or Wasp and their bug group. 

Karen hesitated for a second, her servers whirring. “I have found no evidence of any arachnid heroes. There is one mention of a ‘Black Spider’ who is currently residing in Blackgate Penititionary for serial murder, however.”

“Well,” Peter considered that. “I guess that tracks. Kinda. Was he a spy or assassin?”

Peter knew about Black Widows and the Red Room. His Aunt May was an ex-widow, or, at least, the closest thing one could get to being an ex-widow. She hadn’t made the cut to be a proper spy-assassin, so on her final test, she had gone rogue, faked her death, run away with his Uncle to America, changed her name, and joined SHIELD. She had then stepped down from SHIELD’s medical division when the files had leaked and worked as a normal nurse instead of a SHIELD nurse who specialized in Enhanced physiologies. While Uncle Ben and he were being shot at by a solid sixth of the NYPD in Hell’s Kitchen, his Aunt May had been fighting two Widows sent by Dreykov in Brooklyn. Only Peter and May had made it to their emergency meet-up point, and that had led to a six-month trip around the US, Mexico, and a few different islands where they lived in a car. Peter learned a lot about Black Widows and SHIELD in those six months.

“No data available.” Karen denied. “Standard civilian access only, Peter, apologies. If we connect me to a proper computer, I can search for more.”

“We’ll go back to the library,” Peter decided, reaching for the door.

“It’s the middle of the night.” Karen sounded disapproving as he left his apartment. “Go back to sleep, Peter.”

“I wanna see the Birds,” He refused. 

He wanted to see how they fought, and what the heroes here were like.

“It is unsafe.” She scolded, “Safety is your priority.”

Peter rolled his eyes, “I’ve been safe inside all week. I’m bored .”

So he strode down the hallway until he got to the stairwell, and began to climb.

Karen didn’t try to stop him this time, knowing all too well that boredom was a bigger danger to Peter than any bullets. She remembered the Fourth of July America’s Ass-travaganza incident that MJ, Ned, and Peter may or may not have started. May had been so disappointed when she picked them up from the beach and saw the ash and sand in their hair. She did give them all extra-large sodas, however, as a treat for out-running the cops and sending them on a wild goose chase. Then she scolded them all again and put a little bit of liquid IV in their sodas, which made the weirdest salty-sweet aftertaste.

Outside was far chillier than inside, but it was also humid enough that Peter didn’t feel it.

The roof was just as ramshackle as the inside of the apartment complex but less moldy. The TV antennas were all either broken or stolen, and there was an old plastic chair in a corner, the kind you saw on people’s porches in the Bronx. It was originally blue, but it had faded from exposure to the elements, and it was mottled in an ombre of lavender to grey. 

Peter, seeing a very clear seat for him to watch everything go down, sat in the chair.

Down below, a bunch of gangsters were running around like headless chickens. Some were shooting up at some buildings over, some were running away, and some were yelling weird shit.

“Stand down!” One guy tried to command the others. “It’s the two big birds! Stand the fuck down!”

“I ain’t losing my bones!” One woman yelled as she gapped it, sprinting down the street like hell itself was on her heels.

“I’ll pluck you like a chicken you boneless motherfucker!” One other guy yelled like he was Rambo, a machine gun on his shoulder.

Up above, a different type of chaos was happening.

One man, larger and built like Captain America and Thor’s lovechild, was jumping rooftops while firing bullets down below. He was athletic, doing flips and showy stuff that should be impossible for a guy his size, but gravity didn’t seem to care. The other man, shorter and slimmer, was alternating between trying to push Captain Thor Junior off the rooftop and freefalling between buildings, swooping down to kick a thug or two before grappling back up. It was messy, it was chaotic, and it was perfectly executed.

These two were playing around and beating people up in such perfect synchrony that it made Peter’s head spin. Boneless Bird, from what Peter could guess from that picture-perfect triple somersault, was executing moves that only Spider-Man could manage. Captain Thor Junior wasn’t letting the distance or his parkouring interfere with his marksmanship in a way that Uncle Ben would be begrudgingly impressed by. Daredevil would drool at their situational awareness.

They stuck to the apartment buildings on the other side of the street, so it was just plain good watching, and Peter didn’t even get the urge to interfere. Junior appeared to be using rubber bullets, from the complete lack of blood coming from the fallen thugs, and Boneless was laughing and mocking them, generally having a good time.

Even his Tingle was quiet, so Peter got to simply observe and learn.

The Birds and thugs didn’t seem like they were going anywhere, and it wasn’t like he could go back to sleep with this kinda racket going on.

At one point, Junior shoved Boneless off the rooftop, and the flippy bird didn’t even flinch, seamlessly transferring into a flip that had him landing feet first on a thug’s back.

Peter tilted his head at the move. That one would be perfect for the next time someone threw him out a window. 

Standing on his plastic chair, Peter threw his whole body sideways as if he was free-falling, then tucked as if to transfer into a flip. Unfortunately, unlike the two Birds, Peter was not falling off a building, and so he didn’t actually have all that much space or momentum. That is, to say, Peter ate shit .

Loudly. Right on a metal sheet and broken antenna.

“Fucking birds!” One guy below twisted and fired in the air, at Peter ’s building.

“Stay low!” Karen snapped. “Flat on the ground, now.”

Peter was already flat on the ground, but he didn’t argue. “I’m sorry.”

“I hope we’ve learned a valuable lesson here,” Karen hissed back as the gunshots over his head increased.

He was pouting, “I didn’t mean to.”

“Start crawling back to the access stairs, we can discuss this when we are safely inside again.”

Then, the gunshots went completely silent and were replaced by tires squealing, and Peter realized that the laughter and joking from the vigilantes had gone quiet.

Someone landed on the edge of the roof, and they quickly ran over to Peter’s side.

“Kid!” It was the slimmer vigilante, clad in black with a bird spreading across his chest and down his arms. “Are you okay?”

Another thud indicated the larger vigilante arriving. “Wing, was that a kid?”

Peter picked up his head and sniffed, widening his eyes at the pair whose fun he had ruined. “Sorry! I just wanted to watch!”

“Oh jeez,” Red Hood put his hands on his hips, staring down at him and visibly folding in on himself, becoming softer at the presence of an upset kid. “We’re just glad you’re okay, kiddo. Where’s your parents?”

“Are you okay, sweetie? Oh no, your palms! That must hurt, huh?” Nightwing had paused for a second when Peter had lifted his head up, but was now putting his hands under Peter’s armpits and picking him up and placing him on his feet, like he was an errant cat. “But, guess what? I have Bat-Band-Aids!”

Now, Peter could continue to be upset about interrupting them, however, something far more pressing has come up.

“Bat-Band-Aids?” Peter stuck out his hands to Nightwing, peering at the near-invisible belt he was reaching for. “Uh-huh, they hurt, I need one. No, two! I need two. Cause I have two hands.”

His palms were already healing, but the vigilantes didn’t have to know that.

“Peter,” Karen sounded exasperated in his ear. “Stranger danger includes vigilantes.”

Nah, that didn’t sound right at all.