Archive of Our Own ^beta

I guess I owe it to the timing of companions / I survived the year at all

- This House, Japanese Breakfast

He feels that orange warmth from somewhere in the city again, and he runs.

And he stumbles in five minutes late to a fight.

“You’re a kid,” Batman’s grumbling in surprise. “Why are you targeting laboratories and tech companies?”

“Why would I tell you?” It’s the girl from before, dressed like a cat. She’s cornered against the wall by Batman, but somehow doesn’t seem all that interested.

Annoyance waves off of Batman’s form as he growls. “You’re not exactly in a position to deny me.”

She smirks at him, like she’s not concerned at all. “That’s what you think,” she says, mischief in her voice. Then, she yells, “Hiya, Spidey! Care to help a cat out of a bind?”

Peter drops down on the floor between them. “You’re the one? The orange—“

She grimaces. “Yes, a rather unfortunate side effect of my travels. Now, are you going to help me out or not?”

“Not,” Peter says quickly. He doesn’t want Batman getting the wrong ideas here—he’s just as lost as he is. “Why would I help you?”

She pouts at him. “Well, I’ve gotta say that I’m quite hurt you haven’t recognized me so far. I mean, I know I took great pains to make it so, but I really thought I made an impression.”

“We’ve met?” Peter asks incredulously. He can feel Batman turning suspicious. This is probably uncharted territory for him, and he’s not quite sure what to make of it.

The girl gives a long-suffering sigh. “Come on, Spider.” Peter pauses a bit at that name. “Maybe this will help.”

He gets the sense that she’s toying with him as she steps closer. He inches backwards as she comes forward, and Batman’s just observing this like he’s a bit surplussed, and then the girl takes him by the head and kisses him where his mouth should be.

And by god, there’s only ever been a handful of people Peter’s ever kissed in his life.

“Fe—?” She lurches forwards and clamps her hand over his mouth before he can finish her name, and grins at him, and he knows, he knows it’s her behind the mask. Even without her white-blonde hair that Peter knows so well, undoubtedly covered underneath her hood, or glowing green eyes under a black mask. Even though she went missing months before Thanos ever happened. Even though he hadn’t known if she was alive or not until this very second.

She takes his recognition as permission to loosen her grip over his mouth and instead pull up his mask just to his nose—the way she’d done so many times before. He lets her, and when she kisses him for real this time, he kisses her back.

“That’s not allowed,” Sam says. “He’s a literal infant. Ugh, gross.”

“Who the hell is she?” Bucky agrees. “Am I missing something?”

Dr. Strange’s voice is stormy with thought. “I did not plan for this,” he admits, confounded.

And then Peter realizes she’s Felicia Hardy and shoves back.

“What the hell? You just up and disappear for months and you’ve been here this whole time? What the fuck happened?” He yells, violently tugging his mask back down.

She rolls her eyes, “You know, for once, it was for reasons very much outside of my control, thank you very much. Giant purple guy ring any bells to you?” Sarcasm leaks from her voice.

“Yeah, I know,” Peter says, and his tone is hard as steel. “He got me. He got a lot of us, actually, and you weren’t there.”

She winces, and Peter feels a guilty sense of satisfaction at that, at the first time Felicia’s coyness has slipped in this encounter. “I wondered,” she says, lowly. “I’m sorry.”

“Enough,” Batman growls. He’d been trailing their conversation and his patience had now run out. “Spider-Man, who is this thief, how do you know her, and why is she stealing from tech corps?”

Peter rubs the back of his neck. “Long story. She’s a friend—kind of.”

“We’ve dated a couple times,” Felicia pipes in quite unhelpfully.

“And if I remember correctly, I broke up with you because you wouldn’t stop pulling heists,” Peter points out.

Felicia doesn’t seem all that unbothered by the reminder of what at the time had been the worst experience of his teenaged life—excluding the deaths of his parents and uncle, mind you, may they rest in peace. “And here I thought I dumped you because your boner for justice was boring.”

“No, I totally broke up with you,” Peter denies, much too defensively to be anything but pathetic.

“Stop talking,” Batman snaps. “Spider-Man, deal with her, or I’ll handle this myself.” Peter’s conflicted. He can’t exactly leave Felicia to the cops, but he doesn’t want to break this slightly turbulent peace he has going on with the bats.

Luckily, Felicia saves him from this choice.

“Sorry, no-can-do,” she says, casually lifting a grappling hook and shooting it at a rooftop. Batman lunges for her, but he trips and falls on his ass comically, and God, Peter must really be an idiot because how else did he not recognize her bad luck jinx? “I’ll find you soon, Spider. I have the feeling we have a lot to catch up on.”

She sends him a heart made of her thumb and forefinger and then is gone.

Peter immediately turns around to the Batman and raises his hands in surrender. “Would you believe me if I said I had nothing to do with this and also extremely disagree with her methods but she is not a bad person and also please don’t kill me?” He rambles, hopefully.

He’s met with the full-force of the Bat glare.

-

“You okay, Peter?” Tim asks, drumming his pencil on the desk. “You seem kind of distracted today.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Peter replies mildly.

Tim snorts. “You wanna come over after school today, then? I bet my brothers would like to meet you.” He looks a bit suspicious, maybe even a bit concerned.

Peter gives him a small smile. “Sorry, I can’t. I have a date.”

The drumming stops. “You have a date?” He repeats incredulously, and, okay, ouch. Peter can have some game. Although he’s not really sure meeting up with the Black Cat to hash a few things out would really fall under that game, but, still. Tim doesn’t know that.

“More of a meet-up,” Peter admits nonetheless. “An ex of mine is in town, and we’re catching up.”

Duke leans forward in his chair. “An ex. Why’d she break up with you?”

“Why does everyone think she broke up with me?” Peter sounds childish to even his own ears. “I broke up with her.”

“You’re really not helping your case here, kid,” Sam snarks.

Duke snickers, but it’s not mean. “Okay then,” he ribs. “Why’d you break up with her?”

Peter scowls. “A difference of opinion.”

“Opinions on what?” Tim sips his coffee, trying not to appear as interested as he probably is.

“Life,” he responds. “Morals. Our hobbies and pastimes.”

“She likes Star Trek better, huh,” Duke says, mockingly sympathetic.

Peter shoves him lightly. “Actually, she doesn’t like either. She says she prefers not to be a nerd.”

Duke narrows his eyes at him. “Yeah, no. Can’t see it,” he proclaims, nudging him with one shoulder. “If she’s not a nerd, then she’s a geek. She has to be.”

Peter sends him a death glare. “Contrary to popular belief, it’s not like I’m completely socially inadequate.”

“No offence,” Tim says sympathetically, “But you kind of are.”

Peter opens his mouth to deny it, and then closes it like a fish. “Shut up,” he mopes.

-

“So,” Red Robin says, scooching closer to Felicia a week later. “You dated Spider-Man? What was that like?”

Peter groans. This is so not a conversation he wants to be having right now, and they don’t even have the decency to do it behind closed doors. Felicia seems delighted at the question, though.

“Exhausting,” Felicia says in return. “Why, would you like to join the club?”

“There’s a club?” Red Robin looks dumbfounded.

Peter shakes his head. “You have to know my secret identity to be an F.O.S., Cat.”

“I wasn’t talking about F.O.S.” Felicia’s smile is a bit too wide, too sharp. “I was talking about the I Dated Spider-Man And Lived club. Meetings biweekly.”

The blood drains from Peter’s face. “She said she was joking!”

“Has MJ ever seen a chance to embarrass you and not taken it?” Felicia raises an eyebrow at him. “And technically, the meetings are monthly. It alternates between Spider-Man and his Super Secret Identity.”

“There’s a difference?” Nightwing asks, looking intrigued.

Felicia snorts. “If you knew the man behind the mask, you would not feel the need to ask that question. Besides, Harry’s in one of them.”

Peter’s dead. He’s so fucking dead. Despite the humiliation of Harry Osborn being in the I dated Peter Parker club, he retorts back, “Is he ever even sober enough to go?”

“You think we can handle your bullshit sober?” Felicia says incredulously. “He supplies the edibles.”

“How many people are in it?” Red Robin asks, and Peter wants to snap at them to stop being so invested in his love life.

There’s a wicked smile on Felicia’s face, lips curling upwards. “Oh, so many. The founding members are MJ, Gwen and Johnny—“ Peter chokes—he’s not even going to try to unpack that last one, “but since then we’ve also had Harry, Kitty, Liz, Harley, Jess, Ned, Flash—Eugene, that is, not that superhero. And oh, how could I forget dear Peter Parker?”

Everyone doubles over in shock, sputtering, except for Felicia who has a smirk on her face. Somewhere inside, Peter’s seething. She must find this so hilarious.

“Peter Parker?” Red Robin chokes.

“What, you know him?” Felicia says, voice sugar sweet.

Nightwing looks like he’s having an aneurysm. “He’s a friend of mine,” he says, and if Peter wasn’t currently dying he’d feel happy about that.

“I don’t—I—“ Peter sputters. “I didn’t date Peter Parker!”

Felicia quirks an eyebrow at him. “You’re going with that? When I know how much alone-time you get together? I could swear I saw you with him just the other day—”

Peter’s so very glad his mask hides his face, because he’s sure it’s crimson right now. Red Robin and Nightwing look like they’re about to faint. “Oh my God,” he whispers, mortified.

“It’s actually pretty sad to date Bugboy, actually,” Felicia continues with an exaggerated sigh. “You have to constantly fight for his attention with twenty other people, and then the city of justice. Like Peter. He’s a total sweetheart, though. It’s the crazy exes still in love with him who insist Spider-Man has personally wronged them that you have to watch out for.”

“Isn’t Peter like, sixteen?” Red Robin sounds horrified. “How old is Spider-Man?”

Felicia shrugs. “Young enough,” she says, and for once Peter is glad that she took the lead until she follows up with, “Younger than you.”

He shoots her an alarmed glare that’s completely covered by his mask while Red Robin sputters. “How would you even know how old I am?” Felicia just winks at him.

“In my opinion, Peter and Spidey here were probably the best couple out of all of us. Peter always made time for Spidey, and understood when Spidey couldn’t do the same. But honestly? Web-Head dates a lot of people, a couple of them at once.” Her voice is teasing, and Peter’s about to throw her off the building, because it’s not like the way she’s spinning it to be.

“You’re making me sound like a cheater,” Peter says faintly. “I’m not a cheater.”

“No,” she agrees cheerfully. “Just a slut.” Peter chokes on his own spit.

Oh, God, he guesses he’s going to have to go all in on this one. And if he’s being completely honest, it’s not like what she’s saying doesn't have some truth in it—even if the truth is convoluted and misconstrued to hell. “We were kids,” he defends. They still are. “Everyone was kind of dating each other.”

Felicia leans into his space, a coy grin spreading on her face. “Not to break the news, but it wasn’t like Ned and Flash were dating. I mean, okay, maybe there were a few other couples. But really, everyone was either dating you or dating Peter or both.”

“We were just fooling around,” Peter vehemently states. “And you dated Flash! He wouldn’t stop talking about it for weeks!”

“How do you even know Peter?” Nightwing derails, slightly bewildered.

Peter goes for their official cover story—the one people just kind of assumed and he went along with. “He used to work for a tabloid article that trashed me to hell when he was stripped for cash. He needed the money, I helped him out. He was the only one who could get a decent picture of me. Eventually, he kind of just became the Spider-Man photographer.”

“More like the Spider-Man ass photographer,” Felicia snickers. “I used to frame some in my room, I think.” No she didn’t, unless it was purely in a way to make fun of Peter. In which case, she definitely did.

“Hey, where is Batman, anyway?” Peter asks loudly, in a clear attempt to either distract or derail the conversation, or remind the two resident bats that maybe they should arrest the cat burglar. “We should, like, fight crime?”

In all likelihood, Batman would glare at Peter until he felt like dying and then make him freak out. But anything sounds better than this conversation right now.

Nightwing snorts, a vicious amusement leaking through his tone. “He’s been sulking ever since he fell on his ass and let her get away.”

Felicia nods solemnly. “I tend to have that effect,” she agrees.

“Gross. You’re like twelve.” Nightwing makes a disgusted face.

Peter groans. “No, she means she literally has that effect.” Felicia grins at him, showing far too many teeth, barely visible past her hood.

“Oh, you would know, right, Spider? Hey, you’re not still with Petey, are you? I’d hate to break his heart—or did he break up with you, too?”

Peter decides that enough is enough. He won’t give Felicia the satisfaction of carrying this conversation longer than necessary. “Well, I’ll be off,” he says, not bothering for a response. He gives them a spidey salute and slings off, well aware that he took the coward’s way out.

He can feel Felicia smirking at his back. She wolf-whistles as he slings away, and he has no doubt she’ll be leaving right after him. She’s never been one for male company.

His face is red the entire way home.

-

Things We Know About Spider-Man: A List by the Bats.

1. He is approximately Tim’s age. (Black Cat says younger, but she doesn’t know how old Tim is. Or she shouldn’t. Hopefully she doesn’t.) In either case, he’s young enough to be able to date a sixteen year old.
2. He has a harem of people who have dated/want to date him.
   • Known members include Black Cat and Peter Parker (?????????) and many other unrecognized names, such as Flash except not The Flash.
   • Illegal substances are used during this time.
3. Peter Parker has taken pictures of Spider-Man’s ass before.
4. Peter Parker is from Queens. (Is Spider-Man then also from Queens? No mention of him online outside of Gotham. Further research required.)
5. He’s still hung up over Peter Parker. (Tim, Duke, Steph and occasionally Dick as Nightwing to keep an eye on Peter and make sure he doesn’t do anything dumb, like, God forbid, anything with him.)
   • This is evidenced by the hastened manner in which Spider-Man left after Black Cat inquired about Peter, and the tense way he got over him.
   • Peter is apparently going on dates with an old flame, so unless Spider-Man is a cross-dresser, he’s probably heartbroken by Peter’s moving on. Good for Peter.

-

Eventually, she does tell him what she’s doing in Gotham. Peter’s noticed, of course he has, that nobody from their own earth is also in this one. He’s googled his own name, and the names of his friends and family, to no avail.

The Hardys seem to be the only exception.

“You know what my family was back home, Peter,” Felicia explains, swinging her legs off the ledge of a building. “I was born in Flushing, Queens, New York, in our world. My dad was Walter Hardy—a master thief but a poor one. It’s not like that here.”

For reasons neither of them understand, her parents exist in this universe—although they’re very different people. Her father was still a thief, and he died long ago, but her mother is the surviving CEO of the Hardy Foundation—albeit both had different names, but the same faces, and same last name.

“I’ve been jumping back and forth for years,” she reveals. “Mostly, I stay in our world, my birth-world. That’s my home. My real family. But sometimes, I’ll make a trip, or I’ll be forced into one.”

“So all those times you disappeared…” Peter trails off.

Felicia quirks her lips up. “About half of them, I’ve been here.” Only half, Peter notes with a scowl. She then chews her lip—something very uncharacteristic for her. “A couple months before the snap, things got pretty bad. I mean, you’ve seen what Gotham is like, now. I came to help out, because my mom here tries, at least, you know? And everything just got messier and messier. And when too much time passed and nothing got better, I tried to go back, to go home. At least for a little while. I wanted to see you again,” she admits.

“But you didn’t,” Peter states.

“But I couldn’t,” she corrects. “I tried, and it just wouldn’t let me. All I got were terrible migraines and—glimpses, sometimes, of the world. I’m stuck here, same as you are.”

Peter’s pacing back and forth. His mind is reeling with this information—the knowledge that he’s not alone, the implications of what that could mean. “But why?” He demands, frustrated. “Why suddenly?”

“My best guess?” Felicia blows a breath out. “I think I was snapped. That’s why I can’t go back—because I’m supposed to be dead in our world. I got lucky and tapped out before.”

Peter wrings his hands together, takes a seat back down beside her. “Leesh, this is insane,” he mutters. “First of all, you’re telling me that you knew alternate universes existed and didn’t tell me?”

Felicia snorts. “Of course your nerd brain goes to that, first,” she says, kicking her feet out at him. “What about you, Spider? How’d you end up on the wrong side of the webs?”

“I told you, I got snapped,” he replies, distracted. “I was in space—Titan, Thanos’ home planet. It was me, Mr. Stark, this new sorcerer guy named Dr. Strange, and four aliens. Mr. Stark made me an avenger. We were keeping the Time Stone away from him—one of the six magic things Thanos needed to do the snap,” he explains, when she looks at him blankly.

“And you failed?” Felicia asks, already knowing the answer.

“He wiped us out,” Peter says solemnly. “He stabbed Tony, threw a moon at us, stole the stone, teleported away. Next thing we know, all of us are turning to dust—all except Tony, and this blue alien lady. I was the last one to go. I don’t know why it took so long for me, or why it hurt so much. I think my body was trying to fight it, to keep me alive. It wasn’t enough. And then I woke up here.”

“Do you think,” Felicia ponders, not unsympathetically, “That both of our powers, they were trying to keep us alive?”

Peter doubts it. “Maybe,” he bites his lip. “But I don’t think it’s enough. Yours makes some sense, at least. Mine doesn’t.”

Felicia leans just a bit closer to Peter’s side. “How’d you wake up?”

Peter pauses. “In some kind of machine,” he says, and she straightens up. “I—there were people there. And they said it was for bringing back the dead.”

Felicia interrogates him about the machine and what happened, growing more and more troubled with every answer he provides. He describes the machine, how it hurt, the mutant-things scattered around him.

“I’ll look into it,” she promises him, eyes uneasy. “Ask around, see if anyone’s heard anything. I have a feeling that’s important.”

Peter nods, and then hesitates. “Felicia,” he says, voice wavering. “When you get glimpses of home… do you know if—?”

“I’m sorry, Peter.” Her voice is unnaturally quiet, soft in the way Felicia Hardy had never bothered to make it before. “I don’t control what I see, but… I don’t think your aunt made it. Or… or your friends. A few of them, maybe, but not… not most.”

Peter’s body stiffens up, and he blinks rapidly. “It’s okay,” he replies, voice cracking only a little. “I didn’t expect it. Parker Luck never leaves any survivors,” he smiles brittlely.

Felicia scooches closer to him, her warmth a solid presence against his side. “We’ll figure it out,” she swears. “We’ll find our way home. And then we’ll get them back. Everyone. All of us.”

“Yeah,” Peter mumbles, uncertainty clouding his mind. “We will.”

-

“What does this mean, Strange?” Wanda asks, apparently troubled by the new information brought.

Dr. Strange’s eyes flash with his thoughts. “I don’t know.”

-

It’s surprisingly easy to settle back into whatever he had with Felicia.

They’re not dating. Honestly, Peter’s sure that if they tried that again, they’d tear each other apart for real this time. Besides, they’re not exactly in the best of circumstances right now.

Instead, it’s something else entirely. Not quite friends, not quite other. Something in between. Two kids who understand each other in a way that most people couldn’t. Someone from home, in a world where home doesn’t exist. More than friends, but not enough.

Mostly, they just fight crime. Peter’s still disapproving of the stealing but, what’s he going to do? He can’t cast the first stone—not when he wants to go home just as much as she does. And, he’ll admit it, he’s lonely. He hasn’t had anyone to talk to about the real things since he got here. And maybe he missed her a little.

Felicia’s taking great amusement from the predicament they’re in, at least. Now, whenever they run into each other in costume, she’ll rope him into a kiss. Even if there are some bats present. Especially if there are bats present.

Out of costume, too.

Much to his horror, she shows up one day unannounced at Gotham Prep in the stupid blazer.

Peter’s with Duke, Tim and Steph, the way he always is, when he hears chitter about a new student. Normally, people tend not to be too invested—unless it’s in a negative way, or the newbie is rich, or particularly good looking.

None of Peter’s friends seem very interested—other than a short comment on how apparently, she’s both.

And then Peter goes to English, and sees a familiar white-platinum head.

“No fucking way,” he whispers in horror.

Tim gives him an odd look. “You okay?” He asks, confused.

The head turns around, then, and when green eyes meet hazel, a wicked smile forms on the newcomer’s face. Peter immediately turns around and runs back into the hall, meaning to get a few moments to himself and freak out a bit before finding a way to go home and never come back again.

He doesn’t get the chance.

“Hey, lover,” Felicia, in a Gotham Prep Uniform, standing up from her seat and saunters past where his friends confusedly stand. She pulls Peter around in the hallway and kisses him on the mouth.

Peter stumbles back. “What the fuck are you doing here?” He hisses, and she doesn’t even try to suppress her amusement.

“Learning,” she says, “Duh. Besides, I look pretty good in a plaid skirt, don’t you think?” She preens. Peter wants to punch something.

“And you just happened to choose the school I go to?” Peter knows Felicia well-enough to know better than that. This was never anything less than planned—he’s sure of it. Besides, Peter’s skipped a few grades—figured that if he’s here for the long run, he might as well get out of school early so he can actually make money and not starve. Felicia’s only seventeen—a year older than him. She must’ve deliberately put herself in the senior year.

Felicia scoffs. “You know, not everything that I do is about you, Peter,” she rolls her eyes. “Or is that not why I broke up with you?”

“Stop saying that you broke up with me!” Peter embarrassedly realizes that he’s near-shouting—no one knows how to work him up better than Felicia. “I distinctly remember breaking up with you!”

Felicia just winks. “Are these your friends?” She abruptly switches topics, walking over to where Tim, Duke, and Steph have been just watching the show. “Hi,” she says, sticking a hand out to Steph specifically and neither of the others. “Felicia Hardy. I dumped Peter.”

Peter throws up his hands. Steph quirks a small smile and takes her hand, although her eyes still seem sharp, processing fast. “Stephanie Brown. But everyone calls me Steph.”

“Hardy?” Tim’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly. “As in, the Hardy Foundation?”

Felicia completely ignores him, instead flashing her teeth at Steph. “Let’s head in,” she says cheerily, linking her arms with the girl. She wrinkles her nose in distaste in the general vicinity of Tim and Duke, who look very confused. “Boys are gross, and I think I hear a fly buzzing.”

Steph’s grinning brazenly now, clearly trying not to laugh as she looks directly at Tim. “You’re so right,” she agrees, and they leave the hallway together.

“Is that the ex who was in town?” Tim asks mildly.

Peter’s still mortified. “Yes.”

“Dude…” Duke begins, still obviously in disbelief about what just happened. “Are you sure that you bro—”

“I’m not defending myself to you,” Peter yelps in response. “And don’t believe anything she says. She’s a liar, and she likes to make my life hell, and I so broke up with her.”

Tim just stares at where the girls left with more than a little doubt. “Are you sure?” He repeats.

Peter’s so very tired. Suddenly, he wants to take a very long nap—preferably as far away from Felicia as he can get. “I’m going to class,” he grumbles, just barely catching himself from slamming the classroom door behind him.

-

Felicia in Gotham Prep goes just as disastrously as he would’ve expected.

She seems to have taken an immediate liking towards Steph, chattering on with her like they’ve known each other for years. Her… aversion towards men makes friendship with the others pretty much non-existent.

And it’s not like Peter doesn’t know why, even if he’s never got the full story—only half-whispered, bitter confessions made in the middle of the night. And, sue him, he’s a little protective of her. He would warn Duke and Tim from trying to get close to her—something he’s sure Felicia wouldn’t appreciate.

But his friends are perceptive enough, Tim especially so. They seem to have picked up on how Felicia avoids other boys, how she doesn’t lose her coquettish nature but hides her sharp edge underneath it all. Mostly they just stare in exasperation any time she and Steph find each other, or grumble at being so obviously ignored.

Honestly, it’s probably for the best that Felicia doesn’t get along with them. Peter’s not sure he could handle all four of them at once.

“So,” Felicia says one day, sliding into their cafeteria table. She doesn’t eat lunch with them everyday—just figures she’d be pretty popular in a place like this. “You gonna take me out tonight or what, loverboy?”

Peter, who knows about her apres dark activities, knows exactly what she’s insinuating. “Absolutely not,” he says, appalled she would even ask. “You know my opinions on your… nightlife.”

Tim just blinks, like each conversation with Felicia (not that she ever talks to him directly) is a continuous revelation of the universe, but in the worst ways possible.

“Oh, don’t be a prude, Tiger.” He jolts at that nickname, sees her bite her lip to keep from smiling too hard and knows it was intentional. “It’ll be fun, I promise. I’ll even give you veto power—though I do think you’ll find the rewards most intriguing.”

Beyond the heavy implications of the way she deliberately phrases her proposition, Peter understands what she’s really saying. It’s important, and it has to do with their little interdimensional travels.

Peter wavers under her stare, and finds his resolve crumbling. “Veto power,” he warns. “And just this once.”

“Great,” she beams, managing to make it look somewhat nefarious. “I’ll bring your outfit,” she sweeps her gaze over his entire body, then leaves with a quick acknowledgement to Steph.

The moment she’s gone, he thumps his head on the table.

“You’re screwed,” Tim comments, taking small but frequent sips of his coffee.

Peter groans in response.

When his eyes flick upwards, he catches Felicia blowing him a kiss from across the cafeteria.

“You’re an idiot, kid,” Fury mutters.

“So screwed,” Duke agrees, eyes briefly darting to Peter’s side.

Peter just buries his head into his hands.

-

“Well, you clean up nice,” Felicia flirts.

He doesn’t doubt she means it. It must be her dream come true, to see Peter decked in all black, covered head to toe and masked in “stealth gear” (a black hoodie, jeans, face mask and gloves, voice moderators he’d done as a patch-up job for the both of them), ready for a heist.

“Why Wayne Enterprises?” Peter asks instead. “Why not, like, Lexcorp or something?”

She scoffs at him. “Lexcorp doesn’t have the technology we need,” she states as if it’s obvious. “Of course, we’d ideally be hitting up Stark Industries—”

“Not an option, even if we were home,” Peter firmly states.

Felicia rolls her eyes. “Well, if we were home, we wouldn’t need to be doing this.”

“Right, because we’d already be home—”

“Because Stark is your sugar daddy and he’d give you all this tech for free.” Peter sputters, cursing and denying, but Felicia just makes a web-shooting gesture with her hands, clearly referencing his spidey-suit.

Peter slumps. “So what are we looking for, again?”

“Nothing specifically,” she answers, as if that doesn’t negate everything she just said. “I just need you to look at the tech. I’m an arts student, and more importantly, I’m pretty. I don’t need to know this stuff.”

“You literally trained in like four forms of martial arts, several acrobatic sports, and also mastered thieving—including electronics and safe-cracking—out of revenge.”

“Yeah, out of revenge. But I’ll die before I become a nerd.” Felicia laughs at how worked up she’s making Peter, which she can somehow tell despite his best efforts at keeping his own voice flat. “I heard talk that they have some tech, and from what I figured, it may or may not have something to do with either how we got here, or how we get home. No stealing today, I promise, I just need you to take a look around and tell me if anything… jumps out. Seems suspicious. In and out in a breeze”

Peter feels skeptical about all this. Since when has Felicia ever been willing to humour Peter’s strict moral code? But he also figures that she’s just as desperate to go home as he is, and she might realize that they’ll get this done faster if they work together—which they will need to in the end, anyway.

“Alright,” he concedes. “But if you’re lying to me, I won’t hesitate to leave your ass back there.”

“Cross my heart,” she says, tracing an X over his chest. He blushes, and is incredibly glad that his mask is there to hide it. “Now let’s go.”

They leave their backpacks with their casual clothes in an alleyway, hidden in a spot only Peter could reach.

Felicia was right—it’s kind of a breeze to get into the building. But then, it kind of always is. They’re both enhanced, and Peter may not be a “Master Thief” like Felicia is, but he can hold his own. Felicia grapples them both, silently and subtly, up to the floor—they figured that Peter using his spider powers would be dumb. Then, it’s just a problem of picking all the locks and hacking into all the security—Felicia takes point on the first, and Peter knows his way around a computer enough to take care of the second.

Besides, it doesn’t really matter if they get caught anyway, as long as they get what they need and head out. He doesn’t put too much effort into covering their footsteps.

The only problem is getting out.

They break into the Tower’s Tech floors—the applied sciences division, with laboratories and prototypes and all. The security is very much alive, but they’re late enough into the night at 3 am that everyone else has gone home.

It’s extremely reminiscent of Stark Industries, and Peter’s stint as a real intern. Peter hasn’t seen a real lab (high school Chem doesn’t count) in months now, and his hands itch just to say fuck it all and see what he could make in there.

He looks around, gingerly touching some of the tech prototypes and designs. He sniffs in contempt. Mr. Stark could do better. He could do better. He passes by a work table, sees bits of wires and scraps of tech—things that would be trashed, and no one would use. He hesitates.

Normally, he would never condone stealing. But, nobody would be using any of it. Scraps wouldn’t be missed. And he’d already stolen half a grand from Wayne to keep from starving to deah, so really, what's a few pieces of trash?

He stuffs them into his pockets.

“Pay attention, will you?” Felicia calls irritably. “Stop drooling over metal and look around for anything useful.”

“Sorry,” Peter mutters, scrunching his face at her, even though she can’t see. “I dunno, man. All of this seems like pretty standard tech to me. Nothing particularly cool. Also, most of it just sucks overall.”

“Yeah, yeah, Wayne’s a dolt, his tech sucks, you’re such a genius, all that. Look harder.”

He doesn’t have a good feeling about this, but he complies, heading to the other laboratories, checking each one. With each that he finds, all of it seems just more and more normal. Same of the old and boring, dated technology. He doesn’t even notice when Felicia slips from his side.

“How are they even successful?” Peter grumbles. “They’re all like, falling apart.”

He’s on the last lab of the floor when the alarms hit.

“Shit!” He curses, scrambling to get out. He panics when he can’t see Felicia.

He runs from room to room quickly, glancing inside. He finally finds her on a computer, screeching at the screen.

“No, no!” She screeches, fury seeping into her voice, obvious even with the modulator. “It’s not here. It’s supposed to be here!”

“What’s supposed to be here?” Peter demands. “I checked everything, there’s nothing here. Just shitty tech. We have to go.”

“The machine,” Felicia yells. “They’re supposed to have research on the machine.”

“What research? We came here for tech!” Peter’s getting worked up. They don’t have much time before security gets here, and while he’s sure they could handle them, it’s an unnecessary complication he doesn’t want to take. And besides, he really doesn’t want to give Batman enough time to show up.

Felicia punches the computer monitor in frustration, breaking it. “I brought you here for tech. I came for information.” She presses her palms on the table and leans forwards like alarms aren’t blaring all around them. “I heard some intel that they found something on the Lazarus machine.”

Peter pushes back his anger at her in some part deceiving him, and focuses on what’s at hand. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but we have to go now. Whatever you did with the computer must’ve set off the alarms, and I don’t want to wait for any bats to show up.”

“You died!” She yells at him, shoving him back. “You died, and something brought you back, something brought you here. And until we figure out how, we’ll never be able to get back home. We’re fucking stuck here! You woke up in a machine, covered in dirt and blood. And I’m technically still half-dead! I thought—I thought that maybe, if we found it, we could use it on me. And I could go home and get some help.”

Peter’s freaking out. He’d love to unpack all of this and have a lengthy discussion about trust and honesty, but they’re on borrowed time, and they’ve wasted too much of it already. He firmly grabs her shoulders. “We can come back if we really need to,” he says urgently. “We’ll figure it out. We always do. We’ll find our way home. But right now, they don’t have anything, and we need to go.”

Felicia slumps suddenly in his grip. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s get out of here.”

The window they used to come in is barred in lock down, but it’s no match for Peter, whose arms shake just slightly as he bends them apart wide enough to crawl through. He’s lost a lot of weight, if it takes that much effort, just to do this.

They flee into the night, grappling away from the tower and then travelling the rest on foot. They weave through alleyways, tangling their route while still moving as fast as they can.

When they finally arrive in the original alley, Peter jumps up to grab their backpacks. They quickly pull off all of their black clothes, shove them into their backpacks to hide the evidence first before all else. Then, they quickly pull their clothes on.

“Someone’s coming,” Peter hisses, hearing light, sure-footed steps on the roofs. “A bat. We have to go.” He knows even as he says it that it’s too late—they can’t get away without revealing their true enhanced speed in their civvies—the same enhanced speed they used to break in, in the first place.

From the look on Felicia’s face, she understands, too. “Peter,” she says, voice low and urgent. “Do you trust me?”

Any other time, and Peter would’ve retorted back, no, of course not, how could he when she was so… like herself. But Peter knows her better than he convinces himself. He knows her drive, her anger, her fears—that no matter any tension there might be between them, they have never stopped being connected in the way they couldn’t to anyone else.

“Yes,” he breathes, and sees her face relax.

“Good,” she snips, and then she pushes him against the dirty alley brick wall and kisses him.

Not like the other times they’ve kissed since they found each other again. This doesn’t have the same coyishness, the teasing nature. It’s heavier. More. Peter leans into it even as he questions his own sanity.

“Jesus Christ!” A voice yelps from deeper into the alley.

Felicia breaks off from Peter and gives him a meaningful look, before turning around to face Red Robin, who’d apparently just landed in the alleyway.

“Do you mind?” She snaps, unbothered. “We’re kind of in the middle of something.”

Peter’s face heats as he realizes in the hurry to change clothes, his shirt’s been put on backwards, his pupils are dilated from the adrenaline and hair mussed from the mask. He’s glad his Aunt May isn’t here to see this, because: 1. She’d be scandalized, and 2. She would never let it go.

“There was a robbery,” Red Robin says, his voice just a bit squeakier than normal.

Felicia couldn’t look less interested, or more bored. “And?” She sounds utterly unimpressed.

Red Robin seems to be getting a blush—something only rivalled by Peter’s completely red face. “You should… go. It’s not safe here.”

Felicia rolls her eyes at him like he’s dumb. “This is Gotham,” she enunciates carefully. “It’s not safe anywhere. What’s one more robbery?” She flashes Peter a look like can you believe this guy? Only, Peter knows that she’s actually warning him to play along.

“You should go,” he repeats, more firmly. He seems to be getting some control over himself, after whatever shock he’d just experienced.

Felicia sighs with all the exasperation in the world. “Fine,” she bites, and turns to Peter. “What do you say we take this home?”

Peter turns red, and doesn’t miss the way Red Robin gives a choked cough. “Actually, Leesh, it’s pretty late. I should head back.” He’d gone out for patrol before the break-in to put anyone off his scent, and then turned in early before going to meet Felicia.

“Your loss,” Felicia says, drawing him back in for another passionate kiss. His back is pressed against the wall, and he can do nothing but kiss back, just briefly. He feels Red Robin get more and more ready to combust. “I’ll see you at school, lover,” she says when she breaks away, tossing her hair as she leaves the alleyway.

Peter and Red Robin just stand in awkward silence. Peter clears his throat. “So,” he begins, and flushes when his voice comes out uneven. “Good luck with the robbery?”

“Will you be safe headed back?” Red Robin blurts out, then immediately falls silent. He continues again, stumbling slightly over his words. “You know, it’s pretty late. And dark. And—”

Peter cuts him off. “I live in Crime Alley,” he says, ignoring the downward twitch of the guy’s mouth. “I can stomach the worst of Gotham like the best of them. Don’t worry about it.”

Red Robin obviously doesn’t seem very happy about it, but he nods anyway.

“Well,” Peter gracefully says. “Bye.”

He gets a small acknowledgement from the guy as Peter leaves, and as he walks down the street, he can just barely make out the crackling noises through Red Robin’s comms.

“No sign of them anywhere near,” a voice Peter can’t recognize through the static says. “I think they got away. Man, they’re quick.”

There’s a pause, and then Red Robin speaks.

“‘Wing, you won’t fucking believe what just happened."

-

“Hey, Peter, do anything interesting yesterday?” Tim asks blandly as he sits down in the chair next to him in homeroom.

Peter pauses his homework and glances up to see a forcefully neutral face. “Um, no..?” He says it like a question, confusion muddled in his voice.

“Oh, that’s funny,” he says, choking out stiff laughs. “How did your date with Felicia go?”

Is that what it’s about? Peter relaxes minutely. “It went fine,” Peter coughs. “We went to the movies, is all.”

Tim sharply exhales, carefully keeping his face calm even though his eyes are wild. “And her… nightlife? Whatever she promised you?”

Peter tilts his head. “Wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” he admits, trying for almost-honesty. “She toned it down a bit for me, I guess. But we were… interrupted, before we could finish.” He winces, thinking of the alarm and their haste escape, nothing to show for it other than a few hunks of metal Peter could tinker with.

“Okay. Cool, cool, cool, cool—” Tim stammers, choking on his own words. Peter’s beginning to get slightly concerned for him.

“Are you feeling alright, dude?” He asks, studying him up and down. “Are you sick?” He does look kind of ill.

“No, no, I’m fine.” Tim’s smile looks locked in place, panic underlying it. He slumps almost imperceptibly when Duke and Steph join in, although in relief or resignation, he’s not sure. “Anyway, you know that when you’re with her you should be safe and careful and responsible, right?”

Peter freezes, meeting Tim’s eyes. “Are you…” He says, incredulously. “Are you giving me the talk?”

If anything, Tim just gets even more freaked out. “Right?” He repeats, hysterically.

Peter can’t believe it. He meets Duke’s, then Steph’s eyes in turn, before settling back to Tim. Duke and Steph look a strange mix between wanting to die rather than be there but also somewhat delighted in the train wreck.

“You are,” Peter says flatly. “You’re giving me the talk. Now. In homeroom. At 8 am in the morning.” He’s lucky that nobody has ever once paid attention to what they were saying in the back of the class.

Duke takes pity on Tim and steps in. “Peter,” he begins, placatingly while somehow simultaneously looking as if he wants to step off a cliff. “You’re younger. I think Tim’s just worried—”

Steph has no mercy. “Hey, Pete. Make sure you’re in a safe and private place and not like an abandoned alleyway or something,” an oddly specific place to choose, but Peter lets it go, “don’t be silly, wrap your willy, don’t be afraid to say no, make sure you trust the person, and for the love of God, never tell me anything about it.”

Peter feels like he’s going to melt into a puddle in mortification. “You guys are barely older than me!”

Tim grimaces. “Two years,” he says. “One for Duke. Almost three for Steph.”

He ignores this. “What even brought this on?” He asks, instead, near pulling out his hair in stress.

Tim looks like he’s in excruciating pain. “Well,” his eyes get a faraway look, as if he’s reliving something traumatic. “It’s been recently… brought to my attention, that you might be… interested in—”

“Do not talk to me about how my body is ‘flowering,’” Peter says crossly.

Tim just looks even more pained. “You’re sixteen,” he whispers, horrified. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Peter gets up abruptly, shoving his things into his bag. He can finish homeroom in the library—or anywhere else but here. “I’m going to leave,” he announces. “This has been a truly awful conversation, and I’m gonna bleach my brain now. Please never bring it up ever again, ever.”

Tim calls out desperate and panicked at his back. “But you do know, right? You’ll listen to Steph, right?”

Peter supposes that he at least has to be grateful that he uses delicate, rich-people words—even if he is rather lacking in tact.

-

BATCHAT

Tim: that was a nightmare

Steph: you have no one to blame but yourself

Tim: his pants were on inside out in an alleyway, and he didn’t even notice. 100% of the blame is on Peter

Dick: does this have anything to do with Tim panickedly asking me how to gently but firmly dissuade people from relationships and sex?

Jason: replacement did what.

Tim: he was no help whatsoever. told me i had to “let it run its course” and things

Dick: people have to make their own mistakes. i’m sure Peter’s smart enough to look out for himself

Tim: you’ve met him. you know that’s not true. he has, like, fourteen bruises and is starving to a stick right now

Tim: and if you guys had seen it, you’d understand. i will never forget that horror in my life

Duke: okay, anyway, completely moving on from our underaged friend’s love life, how goes the search for the break-in?

Barbara: bad. they didn’t leave any DNA, but they also didn’t care enough to cover up their tracks. they obviously don’t care if we know they were there, as long as we can’t find them

Barbara: also, the hacker didn’t bother to take out all the cameras—just temporarily disable them. we caught some… interesting pieces of their conversation

Tim: like what?

Barbara: they split off inside. the man was looking at the tech and he stole some random scraps. the woman went for a computer. she was looking for something very specific

Barbara: she said she was looking for information on the Lazarus machine

Jason: no wonder Bruce keeps avoiding the topic with me, it’s like he thinks i’m one potentially insane step away from murdering Tim again

Tim: you never murdered me

Jason: that’s what you fucking think

Barbara: it gets weirder

Barbara: from what we picked up from their conversation… we might’ve found our missing insane zombie

Steph: no fucking way. the man or the woman?

Dick: both. but the woman confirmed that the man was the one who was in the Lazarus machine, and that she’s “technically still half-dead,” whatever that means

Barbara: they kept talking about how they want to go home, but they can’t because they were dead. said they’re trapped “here”

Duke: well that’s not creepy at all

Dick: they knew each other pretty well, worked well together even when she clearly went rogue from their set plans. and they have to be meta—nobody’s that quick, and the man bent metal with his hands

Barbara: the woman said the guy died and then woke up in a machine, covered in dirt and blood. she said something brought him here, and they have to find it

Jason: so to be clear, we’re now on a manhunt to find two completely unknown and skilled metas, on top of finding out more about the Lazarus machine, which we already knew almost nothing about, and then find out who brought them back to life and why? and what these possibly insane zombies want?

Tim: i don’t think she was brought back to life. she said she was “half-dead.” it sounds different from the man—and as far as we know, there was only one machine and it was used once before irreparably broken. maybe they tried it again on her, except it didn’t work all the way?

Barbara: better than our other theories so far

Steph: zombie man and ghost girl.

Barbara: somehow, they found out that we know about the machine. they searched WayneCorp specifically out for it, they just didn’t know we kept all of that data off Wayne servers

Dick: i don’t think they want to actually hurt people

Dick: they said they just wanted to go home. seemed pretty desperate

Jason: why can’t they just take the L train like the rest of us?

Duke: idk, dead people don’t work like that i guess? maybe when they say home they mean, like, the afterlife or something. maybe they didn’t want to be back alive

Jason: sorry to burst that very depressing bubble, but i don’t remember shit from my stint being dead. no afterlife, as far as i know, and if there was, it doesn’t make sense why zombie man would remember it and not me. also, why not just jump in front of a bus then or something?

Duke: they’re meta, maybe it’s like my ghostbusters thing? maybe they want some answers first? i dunno, i’m just as lost as you

Tim: what did Bruce say about this?

Dick: he’s mostly still sulking that somebody got through his security again, even after he buffed it up, what with Black Cat hitting there and all. also, he’s grumbly about the man saying his tech sucks

Jason: aw, lil zombie man hurt brucie’s feelings

-

Peter’s got to say, no matter the ups and downs of having Felicia here, her presence has been a godsend in some cases.

For one, she’s rich. And although he’d declined her nonchalant offer of a place to stay in her mom’s mansion, she’s still rich. And Peter supposes he can never have too many rich friends. A few had adopted him in his own world, after all.

He won’t live with Felicia because she would eat him alive, but also because he’s Crime Alley’s Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man, and he can’t be that if he’s not one of them. But he appreciates her buying some food for him.

He also appreciates her company on patrols, which has gotten more and more frequent, now that her thieving has slightly decreased. Her bad luck still plagues him, but he knew that would happen going into it, and—he can’t say what, exactly, but he feels that he’s being protected from the worst of it, somehow.

“You’re welcome,” Dr. Strange sniffs.

Anyway, he won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. He’ll take his occasional bad luck like the best of them, as long as it means he’s not alone in this universe.

One Friday evening, Peter catches a train.

He stops it from crashing into the harbour. It takes every bit of webbing he has, and pushes his weakened strength past the limits. He feels his suit tear, he’s pretty sure both his arms are dislocated, and his entire body feels bruised to hell from, what, repeatedly getting hit by a train.

He passes out immediately afterwards from the sudden hit of sheer weariness, and is saved from falling in the water by the passengers.

“I didn’t let them take off your mask,” one quietly promises him after he’s come to. He hesitates. “I’m from Crime Alley. I’ve seen you around. You’ve done good work there, kid.”

“Thanks,” Peter whispers, heavy exhaustion threading his voice.

He wanders off away from the train, almost collapsing on a nearby, empty street, and sets his left arm himself, using his feet to position them on the ground properly and the weight of his body to pop it back into place. He shrieks, lurching forward and barely choking back a full scream at the sharp pain coursing through and lighting his every nerve on fine.

He cradles his arm towards his body, panting, trying to catch his breath and force deep, shaky exhales. When he feels like he can sit back up again without fainting, he puts his other arm into position on the ground.

“Stop!” A voice barks, and Peter turns around to see Batman, who he hadn’t noticed land behind him through the pain. Batman was familiar enough that his spidey sense didn’t go off at him anymore, anyway. “What are you doing?”

Peter tilts his head, breaths still coming rapidly and a bit too shallow in his pain for his taste. “I’m setting my arm,” he says between puffs.

Batman growls at him, a furious stiffness to his mouth. “By yourself?” He demands, lurking closer to where Peter kneels on the cracked cement.

The blankness of Peter’s mask conveys more or less the same that his confused blink underneath it does. “I have to get home, somehow,” he says. He can’t go home until he gets to hide his suit under his civvies, and he can’t put those on without the use of his arms.

To Peter’s complete surprise, Batman manhandles him into sitting down on his butt instead of kneeling and leaning forwards. He gently takes his bad arm, and holds it out clinically, putting it into position. “On three,” Batman warns, and then swiftly pops his arm back into socket without waiting for a reply.

“Shit!” There’s a wave of pain in Peter’s head, and his vision whites out as a dull roar overtakes his ears. He instinctively curls protectively around his arm. Eventually, his vision returns, albeit staticky, to see Batman’s unhappy face. “God, I forgot how much that sucks,” he moans.

He gently rolls his shoulders just a little, wincing in pain. Those would take a week to heal completely, more if he gets even less food than usual.

Batman frowns. “Where is your partner? She should help with this.”

“Cat?” Peter asks, laughing. “She has her own stuff going on. She trusts me not to get myself killed.” Although he doesn’t doubt he’ll be hearing some words from her later, once she returns from the business trip her mother roped her into going.

Batman only looks more heated. “This is dangerous work. You shouldn’t go in alone—”

“I’m not alone,” Peter counters. “Just because I don’t have a team of bats doesn’t mean I don’t have back up. Black Cat might be busy, but if I need her, she’ll come. And it’s not like I’m completely helpless on my own. I think I did pretty okay today. You only really showed up for my shoulder, which I would’ve done myself.”

Batman’s scowl doesn’t let up, but then again, Peter suspects that it never really does. Technically, they did team up today—just indirectly. While Peter was saving the people packed on the train, Batman was hunting down whichever Arkham Crazy started it all in the first place. Even though he didn’t really have a choice, there’s some part of him that feels a little bit happy that Batman trusted him enough for this.

It’s clear Batman doesn’t quite agree, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he jumps straight to obnoxious orders and being an overall party killer.

“You won't go out for at least the next week,” he commands. “I can see your bruises through the cuts. You’re healing up for a while. Gotham can survive without you for a week.”

Peter feels a little pissy. Who the hell does the bat think he is? “Yeah, Gotham, maybe. But my priority’s always been Crime Alley, and they can’t survive that.”

Batman’s mouth twists down. “Crime is forever. It’ll be here when you return,” he asserts.

Peter audibly scoffs—he hasn’t taken that approach since Uncle Ben had died. “But the people won’t,” he hurls back. “Hell, I’m not saying that I’m jumping right back into the fray tomorrow. But my job has always been to look out for the little guy, not the city as a whole. There will always be crime to stop, and people to save, but a bad day for me might be the last for some kid in the Alley.”

“Regardless of that, you got hit by a train,” Batman snaps. “You need to heal.”

“In case you haven’t noticed,” Peter seethes back, “I’m not a bat. You don’t get to give me orders, and I sure as hell don’t have to follow them.”

Batman goes silent, and then, with an unsurety that Peter never would’ve expected from the man, hesitantly offers, “You could be.”

Peter whips his head up fast enough it hurts. “What?” He asks, certain he’d heard wrong.

“You could be one of us.” Batman’s stance has a nervous kind of energy that would go completely unnoticed by anyone except Peter, whose enhanced eyes can see the small twitches in his fingers. “You’re right. You can handle yourself. You’re talented in the field enough that I won’t outright tell you to go home. But you have a lot to learn, and you should have help.”

Peter smiles ruefully, and he doesn’t miss the hint of bitterness in his own voice. “Thanks for the elevator pitch,” he gives him a wry half-smile, “but the last time I was on a team, most of us didn’t make it out. I’m good with the Cat.”

“That won’t happen to us,” the lines of Batman’s jaws are firm. “My team is good.”

“Mine was better,” he counters. “You wouldn’t have ever heard of them, but they were called the Avengers. They were… underground. Stealth.” His lips twitch up. Well, they did have secret SHIELD agents and all. “They worked together for years before I even joined, saved the world dozens of times over, from aliens and robots and incredibly enhanced people—metas,” he corrects, remembering their terminology. “None of it mattered in the end,” he finishes, mournful. “They all died.”

“My team is not yours,” Batman growls. “What do you know of it?”

Peter speaks softly. “Teams fall apart. People die. Cat and I got lucky, that we barely made it out by complete chance. I hope your group’s different, I really do, but I won’t subject myself to that again. I’m happy how I am, and so’s Black Cat.”

“You don’t believe you’ll make it out alive,” Batman realizes. His voice is accusing, angry. Hell, maybe even a little pitiful. “You think Spider-Man will kill you.”

“Spider-Man will kill me,” Peter replies. It technically already has. “What about you? Are you ever going to hang up the cowl? If not, then you’re going to die in it. People in our line of work don’t tend to make it out alive. I have hope for the Cat, though,” he says wistfully. “She’s a thief, not a hero. Nine lives and all.”

“Then why do you do it? Why don’t you hang up the masked life?”

Peter’s thought of it, he won’t lie. He thought of it when Tony took his suit away, when May cried for days after she found out, when he died and woke up here. But Ben has always been a constant, universal truth in his life, and Peter could never turn his back on that.

“You saw what I can do,” Peter flexes his fingers. He echoes the words he said in his bedroom in Queens, years ago. “If you can do the things that I can, but you don’t, and then the bad things happen… they happen because of you. My—my pseudo-parents raised me to know that if you have the ability to help, then you have the responsibility. And I couldn’t save either of them, but I can save… I can save Mr. Fluffles the cat from a tree once a week,” Peter quirks a smile. “I can save Crime Alley—at least for a little while.”

“That’s not on you,” Batman replies, clipped, but there’s an underlying strain in his voice. “It’s on me. I took on the cowl so that nobody else would have to.”

“You don’t think I did the same?” Peter’s shoulders slump just barely. He was exhausted before, but this conversation is draining him. “My friends are all dead now, but when they weren’t, one used to cry seeing me go out every night.” Gwen, the sweetest of them all, who was terrified for his life even when he wasn’t. “But one day she just stopped. And later, I asked her why, and she said… she said she accepted it.”

“Accepted Spider-Man?”

Peter shakes his head morosely. “That I’d die as him. That one day, I’ll put on my mask and go out in the streets and never come home. That I’ll die painfully young, and be a national spectacle, and she’ll just have to live with it. She said it helped—that it’s the only thing that keeps her from falling apart, knowing that one day it will happen but praying it’s not today.”

Peter’s entire body shakes with weariness, and his bones are tired. If he doesn’t get home soon, he’ll collapse and pass out on the sidewalk. He rolls his shoulders just a bit, testing them out. They don’t hurt as much, and he can move them somewhat.

He hauls himself up, bracing himself for the short bout of dizziness that washes over him. “I’ll be back in three days,” he caves. “Three. I’m out of webs anyway, for at least a week. Keep an eye on the Alley, wouldya? And don’t worry about me.” He looks away and smiles. “Not today.”

Batman’s face has been carefully crafted to give away almost nothing, but the tightness to his mouth betrays some of his thoughts. Peter studies him briefly, and then turns around to leave without another word.

“You saved a lot of people today, Spider-Man.” Batman doesn’t call out—that would probably be beneath him, or something. But he speaks with a gravitas that pulls ears in no matter what. “Everyone on that train… more or less a thousand people. That was good work.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Peter tries to salute him, but can’t quite lift his arms up all the way, so he flashes him a peace sign instead. “See ya later, Batsy. Don’t follow me because I don’t think I’m up to lose you and I’d be really mad if I had to and, to be completely honest, you kind of owe me today for that stunt I pulled.”

Batman concedes with a small jerk of his chin, and Peter goes home to sleep.

-

He’d already spent half of his stipend before patrol the previous night on some tech. He hadn’t really thought he’d needed anything else to buy, other than food for the weekend. But on Saturday morning, he walks to a pharmacist first thing he wakes up to spend the rest of it on two slings.

He only puts them on in the firehouse, because even he knows that walking around with both arms slinged in Crime Alley is: 1. An invitation for anyone to mug him, even if it’s been immeasurably safer since Spider-Man, he doesn’t want to take that risk, and 2. A possibility that someone makes the connection between Spidey’s catching the train and Peter’s no good very bad day.

The good thing about being winter and him freezing his nuts off every time he goes outside (and pretty much inside, too) is that he doesn’t have to worry about ice compressions. The bad thing is it’s fucking cold.

He spends the rest of the weekend in the slings and cuddled up underneath his sleeping bag, barely moving. No money for food means… no food, but he does have some leftover granola bars that he spreads out through the two days. It’s not enough, he grimaces, to start up his healing, but it’s something.

Another positive is that technically, only his back (and okay, maybe a bit of his sides) got hit by the train when he tried to catch it. And, sure, his legs are also bruised from trying to dig them into the ground, but that’s neither here nor there. The point being that Peter’s face is fine, and as long as he wears long sleeved shirts (which he has to, it’s winter,) he looks absolutely fine.

On Monday, he takes off his slings and goes to school. He sees Tim and Duke wait for him in front, as usual. What’s not usual is being ambushed by Felicia the moment he steps off his bus.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” she hisses, a gentle hand resting on his back to guiding him with her. She’s placed her hand deliberately, and he’s grateful she’s not pulling on his arms, even if he can feel the cold fury radiating off of her.

Tim and Duke send him a confused look as they hurry after them, and she sends them a warning glare to not follow. Knowing them, it’s not going to work.

“Shouldn’t you be at some business meeting or something?” He complains, and then shuts his mouth at her glower.

Batman should take notes, because his glares kind of just piss Peter off at this point. Felicia’s? He’s about to run away screaming. “I hurried back as soon as I watched footage of a certain somebody getting hit by a train.”

“Catching a train,” he corrects, and then bites his tongue again.

Felicia’s utterly unimpressed. “You’ve got to get hit by a train first to catch it,” she seethes, and Peter can’t exactly say that’s wrong.

She storms him into an empty janitor’s closet that’s surprisingly roomy, (he guesses they have the money for it). She turns on the lights and puts her backpack down on the ground.

“Strip,” she says, opening her bag to reveal—medical supplies?

Peter bites back a smile at seeing her so blatantly worried and care for him. “What if someone walks in?” He asks, and Felicia shakes her head.

“The janitor comes in at lunch. Strip.” He grimaces, doesn’t exactly want to tell her that it was hard enough getting dressed in the morning, he doesn’t know if he can take his clothes off, too. She seems to realize this on her own, because her face goes thundery again and she helps him shrug off his jacket and unbutton his shirt.

Her breath catches as she looks at the multi-coloured patchwork of bruises that is his back and sides. She bites her lip, showing worry in a way that’s fairly uncharacteristic of her. “It looks worse than it is,” Peter tries to lightly reassure, and is met with another glare that clearly says: Shut up.

She takes his backpack and sets it on the floor, and then lays his jacket underneath it. “Lie down, on your stomach,” she says, and he obliges, using his backpack as a pillow and shivering where bare skin meets the cold floor.

She starts by pressing gently on some of his bruises, noting when he hisses in pain. “How bad was this on Friday?” She asks.

“Not that much worse,” he assures, and then realizes that isn’t exactly reassuring. “My healing hasn’t kicked in yet. My shoulders are a lot better, though.”

She purses her lips. “You’re taking tonight off,” she says, and Peter snorts.

“Already planning on it.” She nods, satisfied, and maybe a touch relieved.

She’s starting the slow process of checking each of his ribs when there’s a tentative knock on the floor.

Peter curses as he hears an uncertain voice call out. “Hey, Peter?” Duke calls out. “Remember what Steph said? About, like, responsibility? And—”

“I’m not having sex in the janitor’s closet.”

Peter realizes what a mistake that was when the door immediately starts to open. “Then what are you doing?” Tim asks, and then freezes as the doorway reveals Peter lying down, back in full view. “What happened?”

They step into the closet quickly, which is probably too small for all of them, and close the door. Felicia scowls at them without glancing up from checking his ribs. “I’ve got him. If you really want to be helpful, then cover for us in class.”

“Steph’s already doing that,” Tim says, taking off his backpack and kneeling on Peter’s other side. Gentle but firm fingers join Felicia’s, as Tim starts checking his left ribs. Peter hisses in pain as he touches a particularly sore part. “This one,” Tim says. Duke passes him a marker out of his pencil case, and he marks it.

“What happened?” Duke repeats, tightly. Felicia doesn’t give him a second glance.

Peter tries to give an unbothered smile, even though his body is tense like a wire and his face is smushed into his backpack, anyway. “Just got caught up in some trouble over the weekend,” he says casually. “You know how Crime Alley is. No biggie.”

From the silence that follows, it’s clear none of them really buy that, but it doesn’t really matter because they don’t press. They just work in a troubled silence.

Felicia starts taping up his ribs, plucking strips Duke’s cut and instructing Peter on when to exhale. “Suck it up,” she says to his wheeze in pain, even as her hands gentle. “I was gone for three days. This is on you.”

“You’re too good to me,” he lips dryly, focusing on taking shallow breaths throughout.

He’s happy, at least, that he wasn’t lying that his shoulders were doing better. Dislocations never took too long for him to heal, and other than a few stilted movements, he’s fine. Felicia checks them anyway.

Duke helps him up, as Tim gets his clothes and bag, helps him put his shirt on. Felicia hands him a water bottle and five small, white pills.

“You know those don’t work on me,” he tries to refuse, but she insists.

“These ones will,” she says, and Peter concedes. “Maybe not well, but it’s worth a try.” She helps him take them. She also has an enhanced metabolism, after all—although not as much as his. Probably why she gave him five.

She glares at Tim, who’s still holding Peter’s backpack. “Don’t let him put that on,” she orders, and he nods, shrugging it on with his own. “See you in Spanish,” she snips, and leaves the closet first.

Duke immediately turns to Peter. “What happened? Really,” he demands, and Peter gives him a tight-lipped smile.

“Already told you,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine in a few days.”

Neither of them look happy about it, but maybe they realize that he’s not expanding on his story, so they just help him to History, where Steph is waiting with pre-written notes.

-

“You have got to give me some of those pills,” Peter says as soon as Felicia sits down for Spanish. “Like, they’re not perfect, but they’re something.”

Felicia narrows her eyes at him, before reaching into her bag and pulling the bottle out. She shakes a small handful into a ziploc bag—did she plan for this? She hands it to Tim to put in his backpack. “I’ll give you more tomorrow,” she lifts up her chin. “And if you need them in the future, you have to come find me. Start at five every three hours, and slowly increase from there.” He knows she’s just saying not to be an idiot and hide injuries, and he gives her a sheepish smile.

Tim shakes the bag in his hand. “Should he be having this much in a day?” He wonders, concerned. “Won’t he overdose?”

“They’re light,” Felicia responds. “It’ll take that much to kick in.”

Peter bites his smile. Those pills are the opposite of light. One would probably be enough to make anyone high out of their minds. Three? Probably enough to overdose. Peter’s tempted to shove the entire bag down his throat.

Duke cracks his knuckles, the sound loud in the relative quiet of time before class officially starts. He and Tim exchange a slightly worried look. “Is your dad coming for the Parent Teacher Conferences next week?”

Felicia pauses. “His what?” She asks, holding back a laugh.

Peter groans. “They mean Tony Stark,” he says, cringing. “You know, my legal guardian?”

Felicia grins wickedly. “You know, when I said Stark was your sugar daddy, I wasn’t really meaning—”

“Oh my God,” Peter says, mortified. “You know that’s not true,” he sends a panicked look to Duke and Tim, who are watching with wide eyes.

She just shrugs. “If the gauntlet fits,” her eyes twinkle with mischief and delight at fucking with Peter. “Besides, how do you think Stark feels about being your dad?”

Peter turns red. “Mr. Stark is my guardian, not my dad,” he crosses his arms, noting that the pain is significantly less. “And I would imagine that he’s indifferent.” Because he doesn’t know.

Felicia winks at him. “Peter’s family is dead,” she mentions offhandedly to Tim and Duke, who look slightly gobsmacked. “Just so you know.” It would seem crude, maybe even cruel of her, but she knows Peter doesn’t really mind. It’s hard to mourn people you don’t remember.

Still, he smiles dryly to try to take the sting out of her statement to his friends. “Parker Luck,” he explains sardonically. “All Parkers and Parkers-by-marriage have to have the worst luck imaginable until they meet their early, bitter, painful end. I’m the last of us, and it leaves no survivors.”

“Your parents?” Duke asks, unhappiness colouring his voice.

Peter shrugs. “Plane crash when I was six. My uncle and aunt raised me until I got my uncle caught on the wrong end of a gun and my aunt—” Peter winces. “Anyway, I’m twice-orphaned. Maybe third time’s the charm,” he quips.

“Please, you forget I’ve met Stark,” Felicia wrinkles her nose. “That man is going to drive everyone around him to the grave and then drink himself in with them.”

Peter glares at her. “That’s not fair. He’s been on the wagon for years now, and it’s not his fault people want to kill him.”

Felicia suddenly quiets, going uncharacteristically serious. “You think he didn’t fall off after your…?”

Peter broods on it. “He’s fine,” he says, decisively. “I trust him, no matter what’s happened to me.” Felicia doesn’t look so sure.

Tim sets down the bag of pills he’s been clutching for the conversation so far. “So,” he says mildly. “Is your guardian coming to PTCs?”

-

Throughout the day, his friends all keep reminding him to take deep breaths and cough. “To prevent pneumonia,” Tim explains, as Peter winces and hacks.

Felicia drops in at lunch to make sure Peter has more than enough food, and to get him to take another three pills.

“Are you busy tomorrow?” Felicia asks him, and he falteringly nods. She sighs in obvious disapproval. “Wait for me after school, then,” she says casually. “I’ll walk you to your stop.”

He grins at her, knowing she means that she’ll join him on his patrol to make sure he doesn’t do anything too stupid again.

His friends are reluctant to let him leave alone, Tim grudgingly handing him his backpack to go home at the end of the day.

“I’ll be fine,” he promises. “Already feeling better.” And it’s true—the food and the pills really did a number, and the twenty Felicia’s tucked into his back pocket will buy him enough dinner to be on his feet the next day.

Duke pinches his face. “Call us if you need help,” he says, handing him a note with a phone number scrawled on it in neat writing. “Borrow a phone from anyone.”

Peter nods with no intention of doing that, but it’s a nice gesture. Tim scowls—maybe he sees through the nod. “I’ll really be fine. See you tomorrow.”

-

The next day, he goes to find Felicia immediately with an empty ziploc bag.

“Eight’s the golden number,” he says, watching her shake more pills in. “Any more and it doesn’t really help with the pain, just makes me drowsy.”

“We can stay in if you want,” she says, meaning clear in her voice. “Have a movie night. You can meet my mom.”

Peter makes a panicked face at the thought. “I’ve already met your mom,” he evades. The other one, but still. “She gave me the shovel talk. And I really am good. I think it’s mostly healed, and it’s just a little bit of bruising that hurts.”

Duke’s head pops in over his shoulder. “Hate to break it to you, Pete, but broken ribs don’t heal in a day.”

“Cracked,” he corrects, ignoring the skip in his heart at the sudden entrance. “And it’s enough to take a breezy walk in the park.”

Felicia, who knows that he means a breezy swing through the worst of Gotham, flicks his forehead.

It really is fine. Peter briefly feels a set of eyes watching them casually fight low-bar crime, but the Batman doesn’t approach either of them, so Peter just ignores it. Instead, he goads Felicia into playing a game of rooftop tag.

“So,” she says when they finally settle down on the roof of a building, legs swinging off the edge. She bought them a mango smoothie with untraceable cash, and they share it through one straw. “You have to figure something out for PTC, you know that, right?”

Peter groans. “Yeah, I know. But it’s not like I can just call up Mr. Stark and ask him to take a quick hop through dimensions.”

Felicia nudges him gently. “Maybe we could pay a guy. A lot of people in Gotham would be willing to do anything for a quick twenty—even identity fraud.”

“Maybe,” Peter grins. A building randomly catches on fire, and Peter sighs. “We better go handle that.”

Felicia grimaces her disapproval. “The bats can handle it,” she protests.

“The bats can’t catch a building from collapsing,” Peter points out. He swings off, not giving her time to argue, knowing she would follow.

The next day, they both have a few bruises and some minor burns, and their voices are just a little throatier than normal.

-

He ends up plucking a random guy off the streets.

“Your name is Tony Stark,” Peter debriefs him on the bus ride there. “You’re my legal guardian, you took me in two years ago, and you work at the Hardy Foundation. Just stick to my side wherever I go, nod at everything they say, and we’ll be in and out in half an hour.”

“Right,” Dave mumbles. To be honest, he doesn’t really seem like he’s listening, but as long as the conference goes without a hitch, that’s really all Peter can ask for.

The conference does not go without a hitch.

Dave from the streets looks awfully out of place with the high-class parents of the elite teens in Gotham. Mostly, people just give him dirty looks, which he doesn’t even seem to notice. Which might be a good thing, because most of them don’t bother to speak to him and skirt around the two like rodents.

The meetings take up virtually no time—they mostly just go in, smile and nod, talk about his test scores, and leave in under five minutes.

The reception afterwards, not so much.

Peter only really stuck around to get some of those free fancy teas and cookies they’re serving, and to quickly lament to Felicia about the disastrous meeting, once she gets out of hers, that is. She’s not exactly the student he is. But he didn’t exactly expect to get ambushed by his other friends.

“How’d it go?” Duke presses up to his side, eyeing Dave warily. “Nothing bad, right?”

“Nope,” Peter assures, inhaling his tea. May liked her cheap coffee, Ben was a stickler for tea. Peter was always one for energy drinks that fucked you up but, hey, he’s feeling nostalgic. “We’re gonna head home soon.” He’s gotta fork over that twenty.

Tim grabs him by the arm and guides him through the thick crowd. “Come meet our dad, first.”

They shoulder through where a congregation has formed in the centre of the admittedly large gym, and Tim leads him to the man in the middle of it all—some six-foot-tall dude in a suit probably as expensive as Tony Stark’s—well, the real Tony Stark. Not Dave in a shirt stained with… he doesn’t want to know, actually.

When the man catches sight of them, he excuses himself from the people and walks over to them, limbs relaxed and loose but eyes surprisingly sharp.

“You must be Peter,” he says, smiling blankly, in direct contrast to the strong stance of his feet. “I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Bruce, Tim and Duke’s adoptive guardian.” He offers a hand, which Peter hesitantly shakes.

“Peter Parker,” he says uncertainly. “And this is my legal guardian, Tony Stark. Nice to meet you, sir.” He tries his best to hide the full body cringe at introducing Dave from the streets by that name.

Bruce’s eyes sharpen further as he turns to Dave, who mutters some greeting and shakes his hand flimsily. “My kids say that Peter’s exceptionally smart,” he comments, and it’s a bit too deliberate-sounding to not be calculating. “You must be very proud.”

“Yes,” Dave stammers under his weighty gaze. “Perry here is at the top of his classes.”

The smile on his face, which never really seemed completely genuine, hardens, and Peter wants to smack his head.

“I thought your name was Peter,” Bruce says, tone slightly accusing. He’s not asking, he already knows. Peter literally introduced himself thirty seconds ago.

Peter flushes, mind running to find a way out of this one. Nothing really comes out. Dave doesn’t even seem to notice the standstill.

“Perry’s his middle name,” Felicia comes out of nowhere, sidling up beside him. She’s unaccompanied by her mother, who’s probably out networking at the moment—there are apparently a lot of big names here. Peter’s body unconsciously relaxes around her. “His mother used to call him that before she tragically, fatally died.”

“Yep.” Peter smiles fakely, putting his all into its brightness. “It was the last thing she called me before the crash. I can still remember her words: ‘Be a good boy for your aunt and uncle, Perry.’” He puts on a thick Queens accent. “‘We definitely will see you again and won’t die traumatically on the flight, giving you an orphan complex.’”

Her real last words to him were: See you later, alligator. Be back before you can count to a hundred-thousand-million. She was wrong.

Felicia gives him a glare, clearly meaning: Tone it down. Which is completely hypocritical, considering she’s the one who brought up his parents’ death as a diversion tactic. “It’s a cute little nickname,” she concludes, and then half-heartedly mutters: “And can you have an orphan complex when you’re just an orphan?”

“Twice-orphaned,” Peter reminds her gravely. “That has to be a complex somewhere. I mean, the whole anyone-who-loves-me-is-going-to-die? Oh, psychologists would love to get their greedy little paws on the Parker Luck.”

“Your parents must’ve really liked alliteration,” Duke notes, obviously bothered by where their conversation has gone but side-stepping it, frowning at where Dave pays no attention and is zoned off. “Peter Perry Parker.” Tim sends his dad a look.

“I was named after, uh, St. Perry the Platypus. You wouldn’t have heard of him,” he assures solemnly. “He’s catholic.”

Felicia’s forcibly easy-going expression is strained, and she steals Peter’s tea from him to mask some of her tension. Peter can just hear her calling him an idiot in her head.

“Felicia Hardy,” Bruce rumbles, evenly changing the subject. “I haven’t seen you in years. You haven’t come to the galas in a while.”

Felicia’s eye twitches as she smiles tightly. “I’ve been busy,” she says offhandedly. “I don’t actually visit Gotham all that much, normally.”

“A true New Yorker at heart,” Peter pipes in, teasing. “Gotham pales in comparison to the city that never sleeps.”

“Gotham doesn’t sleep either,” Tim points out. “The streets are never quiet.”

Peter chuckles dryly. “Oh, don’t I know it. The Alley is a constant battlefield.” He makes a face.

“I’ve heard it’s doing better now,” Tim responds thoughtfully, clearly meaning the recent pick up in vigilantism in the area.

Peter has his doubts. “Gotham tears itself apart every night and the bats kill themselves pulling it back together every morning. Except for the parts they miss. New York had… similar problems.” It’s why he picked up the slack in Queens. What he’s doing now, in Crime Alley.

Duke tilts his head. “I’d have thought Queens was pretty low key,” he admits, curiosity colouring his voice.

Felicia coughs into her hand. “Pete lived in a bad neighbourhood,” she smoothly covers up, which isn’t actually true. He lived in a great one—just one that wasn’t the most well-off and occasionally stunk like pot. “The cops were stretched pretty thin. Nothing like Gotham, but still.”

“First night in Gotham, a cop broke my hand for an empty wallet,” Peter scowls, flexing his right hand. “My uncle was a beat cop, though. I have some faith in the system. Or, a very select few people in the system.”

“We’ll make a cynic of you yet,” Felicia swears in a deadpan voice. “Maybe if you get roughed up by like another dozen crooked cops.”

Peter huffs a laugh. “That’s just another Tuesday in the Alley,” he remarks. “And justice is necessary. So are the bats. Maybe if the system gets dismantled and a newer, cleaner one takes its place,” he hurls back. Bruce is staring at him studiously, which confuses him a bit. “Queens was far from perfect, but hey, it’s home.”

Felicia clucks her tongue. “Anyway, Stark should get going,” she says pointedly. “My mom won’t like it if he’s off work for too long.”

“Yes,” Peter jumps on that train. He nods at Tim and Duke. “I’ll see you at school. It was really nice talking to you, mister, um, Mr. Bruce. Sorry for dragging you into this messy conversation.” He gives an embarrassed but friendly smile and flees from under their heavy scrutiny, dragging Dave along.

“How much did he promise you?” Felicia asks Dave once they’re outside, pulling out a thin wallet with more cards than cash.

“Oh, Leesh, you don’t have to—”

He’s cut off with Dave saying, “Twenty,” and Felicia peels off a fifty and holds it with the tips of her finger nails.

“Go nuts,” she says. “We trust you can find your own way back.”

He takes the bill and looks at Peter. “Hey, thanks for the quick weed, man.”

Peter’s not going to unpack that. “Yeah, no problem. Thanks for helping me out of a bind. I especially liked the part where you got my name wrong.”

Dave just nods absently and walks off from the school.

“You know what?” Felicia grins at Peter, mirth alight in her green eyes. “Even if that was a bit disastrous, I think it worked out okay.”

Peter groans. “If the school ever calls us back or anything, I’m screwed.”

She suddenly sobers. “You think we’ll be here that long?” She asks quietly, unhappy. “For another PTC, I mean.”

He frowns in response. “I don’t know if there’s much to go back to,” his voice is aching. “It feels better to have nothing in Gotham than in Queens.” No friends, no family. Starting over from rock bottom.

“Hurts more, too,” Felicia points out. “Gotham dirt is sky high New York. And we’ll get them all back. We have to.”

Peter knows Felicia’s desperate to go back to her mom, and he feels awful that he’s dragging his own feelings into it. He gives her an apologetic kiss on her temple. “I’ll take a look at my notes again,” he promises. “A real look.” As in, his head’s barely going to come out of the paper for the next three weeks.

Felicia loops her arm with his, trying for a lighter tone. “Hey, I have to say bye to my mom, but then do you want to go out?” She glances at the Gotham cityline wistfully. “We can have a night.”

Peter grins at her. “Miss Hardy, I do believe you’ve read my mind.”

-

BATCHAT

Duke: St. Perry the Platypus? That… is not real.

Tim: I checked his school records again just to make sure. His middle name is Benjamin.

Duke: Well, at least now we know that Bruce is open to adopting Peter

Dick: Did he really say that?

Tim: no. but he was making eyes

Duke: the poor-pathetically-orphaned-child eyes. especially when he got talking about justice and whatever

Steph: how did PTCs go, anyway? Did I miss anything?

Tim: you missed something but I could not tell you what it was.

Duke: Either Peter’s legal guardian is an idiot who doesn’t know his name, or that wasn’t Tony Stark. What bets are we calling?

Tim: None. No bets on friends’ abusive parents.

Duke: Aw, man.

Dick: Bruce just came home. Wow you weren’t kidding about the orphan eyes.

Duke: Peter checks all of his boxes—he’s like a mix of all of our backstories. Orphaned like Dick, meta like me, homeless like Cass was, Crime Alley like Jason and a legal guardian like Jason’s and/or Tim’s, and he’s smart, too. Hell, he even has Bab’s cop father figure who imprinted a strong sense of morals.

Dick: is that why Bruce is muttering about how he needs to stop by Crime Alley more often?

Tim: possibly. Peter may also have revealed some other… worrying details about his life.

Steph: Felicia knows what’s going on with him, right?

Duke: she was covering for him, yeah. And she somehow always seems to know when he’s injured.

Jason: hey can you guys shut the fuck up? Some of us had a late night.

Dick: you fell asleep at 2 pm

Jason: a very late night

Tim: dick

-

“What I wouldn’t do to see Iron Man fly through the sky.”

Peter and Felicia sit on the swings of the Crime Alley park Spider-Man fixed up, sweaty and exhausted and a little bruised up after their joint patrol. The Gotham city outline is so dreary, Peter can’t help but think it needs a little hot rod red and the comforting, familiar sound of far-off repulsors.

Well, maybe they weren’t comforting to anyone except for him.

“I’d rather meet Black Widow,” Felicia sniffs. “I wanna cop a few moves.”

“Really? Natasha?” A smile grows on Peter’s face. “I’ve only met her a handful of times, but she looked like she was ready to chew me up and spit me out. I was… ecstatic, actually.”

Felicia snorts. “You would be. You have a thing for women who can keep your ass in line,” she teases, gesturing to herself.

Peter’s eyes glint mischievously. “Actually, don’t tell Mr. Stark this, but I always had a thing for Thor.” He sighs dreamily—and only half-ironically. “He has such pretty hair, and he’s the one Avenger I’ve never met.”

“You’ll get your chance, fanboy,” she lips, and Peter jumps off the swing smoothly and lands several feet away.

When he turns around, his face is schooled neutrally. “I am Thor, son of Odin!” He booms, waving an imaginary hammer around with his hand. “As a Norse God, it is my duty to have eight year old boys be literally obsessed with me, and then freak out years later when they find out why.”

“You’re a nerd, I don’t know why I’m friends with you sometimes,” Felicia says, leaning down to get a woodchip and throwing it at him.

Peter acts like he’s been shot, collapsing dramatically to the ground. He stares up at the sky, stars hidden by the city smog. He misses New York.

“We could go to New York,” Felicia says softly, as if reading his mind. “See how this Queens is different from our own. Maybe we could find something. Or maybe the sky’s the same.”

“There’s nothing left for me in Queens,” Peter replies bitterly. “Not in—either of them. If I don’t have my aunt, and I don’t have Ned and MJ or even Flash, then what’s left for me? Who even am I?”

Felicia goes quiet. “You’re my friend, asshole,” she says finally. “And there’s always a home left for you in Queens, no matter who’s there waiting for you. There’s still a chance we can fix everything. And what do you do when you hit rock bottom?”

Peter quirks a smile up at the sky. It’s a phrase both of them have used many times before. “You get a spoon and start digging,” he finishes.

If New York is a hole, then Gotham is a grave, trying to beat them both into the ground. Peter had gone his run as Spider-Man with the idea that he always gets back up. Felicia has a different approach—to dig herself in, because then, no matter what happens to her, she’ll always have had the last say.

Peter likes to think of it differently. They’ll dig further because there’s nowhere else to go. No matter which direction they choose, they have to keep moving forward—and no matter where they end up, if they find a way home or make a new one in Gotham, at least they’d never have stopped.

“You’re the only real thing to me, here,” Felicia confesses after a stretch of silence. Her voice is slightly strained, and when Peter glances back at her, he sees that she’s tilting her head up, too—looking at an unfamiliar sky. So it’s one of those kinds of nights. “It’s a strange world and you’re the only thing that’s familiar. That’s from home. Everything’s weird here.”

“You’re real to me, too,” Peter replies tenderly. “I will say, the superheroes here all have such obvious names.”

Felicia smirks. “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s fucking Superman.”

Peter raises his fingers to his head like bat ears, even while lying on the ground. “I am vengeance. I am the night. I am Batman! You think he got bit by a radioactive bat, and instead of giving him superpowers it just made him all cranky?”

“I am Batman,” a voice suddenly melts from the dark. “You are children.”

Peter startles, scrambling up to find a figure cloaked in the darkness. “Oh, uh, Mr. Man, sir!” Peter panics, stumbling over his words.

“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” Batman grumbles, glowering at where Peter’s moved to stand next to Felicia, who hasn’t bothered to get up from the swing. “What are you doing out?”

Peter shrugs. “Don’t have a bedtime if you’re an orphan,” he says, totally poker-faced. “And we were, uh, making out..?”

He says it like a question, face reddening. But sue him, he’s actually gotten pretty used to that excuse whenever he and Felicia were caught in otherwise suspicious conditions.

Felicia sighs with all the exasperation in the world. “We’re on a date,” she says, bored. “You know, what young people have sometimes when they’re pretty like me or passable like him? Or do you not know what dates are?” She mocks him.

Peter just about has a heart attack. “Felicia,” he hisses. “I don’t think you’re allowed to call Batman old.”

“You called him cranky,” she rolls her eyes. “The first stone is not mine.”

“He is cranky,” Peter defends, and then freaks out and turns to Batman. “I didn’t say that. She’s lying. Take her to Arkham, not me.”

Batman’s expression doesn’t have an inch of give in it, and it makes Peter squirm under his glare. “I would think that young people would have dates when it’s not four in the morning in one of the worst neighbourhoods of Gotham.”

Peter scoffs. “Hey, this place is pretty cleaned up. I live in a much worse neighbourhood.” He winces—he probably shouldn’t tell Batman where he lives. “And we can head home now,” he adds, nudging Felicia on her swing.

Felicia groans while standing up, swatting away Peter’s hand. “I’ll leave you boys be, then, to talk about those radioactive bats.” She leans over to kiss Peter on the cheek, and his face burns red as he hides a smile. “Bring those notebooks to school tomorrow, lover-boy,” she says thoughtfully. “I think it’s time we started digging again.”

“Bring a spoon,” Peter cheerfully tacks on, watching her leave. When he can’t see her anymore, he side-eyes the bat. “So, as you said, it’s 4 AM on a school night, so. If you don’t mind.”

Batman scowls, but makes a gesture with his hand that Peter interprets as a go ahead. He wordlessly salutes him and heads off, only—he can hear a heartbeat following him.

Why is the Batman following him?

He can’t try to lose his trail like he does as Spider-Man—he might recognize some of his moves, and he can’t exactly swing or climb walls right now. Okay, then. He’ll play the long game.

He walks down alleys again and again, repeating streets, taking four right turns, the like. He never turns around, never gets any closer to the firehouse, and he doesn’t try to lose his tail. He’s just getting his point across.

“Do I have to keep doing this, or can you just let me go home,” Peter grumbles into the dark.

“You could take a few more laps,” the voice says roughly in response. “Maybe I’ll take the hint, then.”

Peter mutters a few choice words about it, and he finally turns around, glaring in the general direction the voice came from. “You gonna tell me why you’re creeping around, at least? Not a good look, Bats.”

Batman broods for a moment. “You said you live in a worse neighbourhood,” he finally divulges. “I need to see. To… help.”

Peter stares flatly at him. He wants to help? Where was this help when Peter started off breaking his back under the weight of Crime Alley? Sue him, he’s more than a little indignant about it.

But… Peter knows more than anyone that there are parts of the Alley even Spider-Man can’t reach. Rot carved in too deep. And depending on where his notebooks take him, Spider-Man might not be around for much longer. And… better late than never, he supposes.

Peter decisively takes off in a different route. He’s not wandering aimlessly, anymore. He’s got a destination in mind.

“What are you doing?” Batman rumbles, but his voice is closer behind him. He’s still following. Good.

“Taking you on a tour of the worst of Gotham,” Peter replies, not breaking his stride. “Pinch your nose, this is real Bottom Barrel Trash. We’ll see if you can handle it.”

It only takes them fifteen minutes to arrive. It’s a residential area, heavy in the night.

Peter turns to Batman and gestures to the neighbourhood. “You want to help Crime Alley, this is where you start,” he states.

“In a residential block?” Batman asks, confused.

Peter scrunches his face. “You’re supposed to be the World’s Greatest Detective,” he goads. “You gotta give me more than that.”

Batman looks at where the wood is rotting off some of the buildings. “It’s falling apart.”

“The rent is cheap,” Peter agrees. “That’s why people live here. But who?”

Batman squints his eyes, except instead of his signature bat glare, it’s thready contemplation. “Criminals,” he decides. “Signs of violence around the street, stashes for weapons around, more than a few duffle bags hidden around the fire escape, ready to go. They don’t have much money, but they’ve invested in heavy, black-out curtains and window locks.”

Peter nods, but he’s not satisfied just yet. “Look again. The apartments are bigger than a single. They have multiple bedrooms. And, when you come here in the afternoon, you can hear kids playing.”

“Families. They live in the same block,” Batman deduces.

“No,” Peter kicks a pebble from the side of the road. “The criminals have families.” Peter grimaces, looking at a few of the windows. “This is a street where criminals who have to feed their families live.”

Batman makes a troubled face, pensively studying up and down the street.

Peter continues. “A lot of the low-level criminals Spider-Man catches are people like these. They have families, they have people depending on them, and they have kids. Sure, they want a safer place for them to grow up, but where are they going to do that? They don’t want to hurt anyone, they’re just desperate. Spider-Man tends to let them go, give them a second chance and all—I hope you agree,” Peter warily glances at Batman, who doesn’t make any sign of his thoughts, “but at the end of the day, even Spidey knows the family’s still hungry.”

“What then?” Batman asks. He’s looking at a tricycle parked outside of one of the houses. “What are you suggesting?”

Peter exhales. “Give them jobs.” He turns around, waiting for Batman to join him, walks with somewhere else in mind. “You saw the park, how they cleaned it up. That was a community effort. The people really try. There needs to be a—an organization, of some kind. One that will employ anybody, anybody, even the convicted felons and people hiding from cops with no legal documents. Even for only five bucks an hour. Anyone who wants to help clean up the streets.” Peter casts a look around him, wrinkles his nose. “There’s a lot of streets to clean up.”

“You want to clean Crime Alley up from within,” Batman realizes.

“I want to clean it up from its roots,” he corrects. “This is the poison it’s drinking from. Good people forced to do bad things until you can’t separate them anymore. So give them a chance to separate it.”

“It’s not as easy as it sounds,” Batman warns. “On paper, it looks so idealistic. But there are major complications.”

Peter waves his hand away. “There are always complications,” he retorts. “The question is if Gotham cares enough about its dregs to give them a crumb.”

“Wayne tried,” Batman says. There’s more than a hint of bitterness in it, to Peter’s shock. “It didn’t work out. You saw the memorial.”

And Peter did see it. But that’s still not an excuse, and it’s sure as hell not a reason to give up on his side of Gotham. “This is Crime Alley helping its own. Not other people trying to take it, to gentrify it. Maybe it’ll be different,” he tries to reason, then shakes his head. “Even if it’s not, it’s worth doing. There’s a six year old girl with a drug dealer father who’s terrified she’ll get orphaned if he gets caught and goes to jail. Even if nothing changes at all, it’s worth trying.”

They walk in companionable silence for a while. Batman breaks it first.

“Do you know Spider-Man?” He asks hesitantly. If Peter had to guess, he’d say the bat is angry he even has to ask. “I’ve heard… rumours.”

Peter grins in wicked delight. He was mortified about it before, but seeing Batman be so off his footing is enough to bring the mean streak out of anyone. “Yeah? Were these rumours from a certain cat?”

Batman scowls, and that’s as good as a confirmation.

Peter chuckles. “Don’t listen to a word from her mouth,” he warns. “She’ll say anything to get to Spider-Man. But yes, I know him.”

“How do you know him?” Batman presses. “Black Cat implied that you knew him outside of the mask, too.”

Peter tilts his head. “Well, kinda? If you haven’t noticed, Spidey and I share a similar worldview,” he smiles dryly. “We talk sometimes. And—don’t tell anyone, but I helped him with some of the earlier versions of his suit,” he winks. He sniffs, and looks Batman up and down critically. “I could help you, too. You could use some upgrades.”

He laughs to let Batman know he was joking, even if it is true that Peter technically could jazz up his suit. He picks up his stride again, occasionally pointing out some things in the Alley. Harmless drug dens, and not so harmless ones. Sex work streets to look out for. A stray dog he sometimes feeds bits of his dinner to.

“How do you know Crime Alley so well?” Batman squints suspiciously at him.

Peter snorts—he has an easy answer for this one. “I’m a street rat. I spend most of my days out here. Nobody knows the alley better than a random street kid nobody pays attention to.”

“You’re perceptive,” Batman observes. “And smart. You designed Nightwing’s suit, I heard. Through the fan club.”

Peter coughs into his hand. “Uh, yeah, sure.” He screws up his face in thought. “Oh my god,” he exclaims gleefully. “You guys are so lucky that I’m like, dirt poor, and my aunt and uncle raised me to be a gentleman because if not, I so could’ve been a badass supervillain.” He has the knowledge to build the suits, after all. He raises his palm in an imitation of Tony with his gauntlet, makes little pew pew noises. “You guys would never stand a chance.”

“It’s good to know that it’s not just your financial circumstance preventing you from villainy,” Batman deadpans, and wow, is that a joke?

Peter grins at him. “If you happen to be like a billionaire or something, and you ever get bored of C-list Arkham escapees, toss a wad my way. I already have my origin story sorted out.” He drops his voice, lowering it until it sounds ridiculous. “Crime Alley. Gotham. It’s a rough place, but hey, it’s home.” He adds in a couple more pews for good measure.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Peter strolls to a stop on the edge of a street that branches out to the Firehouse. It’s far enough that it can’t be deduced for certain where he lives, but anyone can see that from that point, it only gets worse and worse. The gritty, abandoned scum of Gotham.

“Our tour ends here,” Peter says casually. “This is where I get off.” He narrows his eyes at Batman warningly. “I trusted you this far. Don’t follow me. I have to get ready for school and I don’t have time to go in circles again.”

Batman looks down the street with a hard set to his mouth. “You live here?”

Peter shrugs. “A bit further in, but sure. Street rat,” he reminds him.

There’s an unhappiness to Batman’s stance that Peter shouldn’t have been able to pick up on but somehow does. It kind of reminds him of Tim. “You’re sixteen,” he says, troubled.

“Um, yes.” Peter’s just going to assume that Nightwing mentioned that or something. “So?”

Batman seems strained. “I know a man,” he says, voice low and a touch quiet. “He’d be happy to take you in.”

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Peter holds up a hand. “I’m fine. And, unpopular opinion, but I actually like Crime Alley. It took me in when Queens tossed me out. I literally just spent hours showing you the people who actually need help here. No need to add me into the mix.”

“You’re sixteen,” he repeats forcefully.

Peter screws up his face. “I’m fine,” he reassures. “I have some good friends. They help me when I let them.”

Batman’s jaw is stiffly clenched. “Then let them help you,” he counters. “Or come with me. It’s not safe here.”

“Actually, it’s very safe,” Peter retaliates. “Well, as safe as the Alley can be. Nobody ever comes by where I live except for the more arrogant bad guys, and they don’t expect anyone there, so I can just hunker down until they leave.” Okay, maybe that’s not helping his point. He switches tactics. “And Spidey checks in on me from time to time. Makes sure I’m doing okay.”

“Even so,” Batman disapproves. “My associate has experience with cases like these. You’d be safer under his care.”

Peter chews on his bottom lip. “No thanks. I’ve had enough bad experiences with foster care,” he says, wincing at the memories. The crude two months he’d been in a group home after his parents died, while Ben and May tried to scramble enough money to get a custody lawyer. “I really am okay on my own. The Web-Wit keeps me safe, and Felicia keeps me from being stupid. Can’t ask for more, really.”

“Yes,” he gets in a soft reply, “you can.”

Peter cords his fingers through his hair, and then offers a casual smile to the man, ignoring the conversation entirely. “It was cool to meet you, Mr. Batman. I’ll see you around Gotham, probably, even if you don’t see me.” He shyly offers a hand, fingers spaced apart.

Batman tentatively takes it. “One last question,” he says, and Peter huffs a laugh. “Did Spider-Man really get bit by a radioactive spider?”

Peter groans, remembering the comment about the radioactive bat. “You caught that, huh?” He leans forward conspiratorially, repressing his grin. “You didn’t hear it from me, but… he was actually bit by a radioactive human. Steatoda Nobilis.” The species of spider that actually bit him. “Noble False Widow, wandered into the wrong lab with radioactive human experimentation. Spider-Man is actually a spider with human superpowers.”

He leans back on the balls of his feet, unknowing whether Batman believes him or not. He can take from that what he wants. Which Batman would do anyway, so it’s all cool.

He’s just about to leave when he falters. “Between you and me,” he wavers, “I think Spidey’s getting restless. He’s ready to fly the coop.”

“He’s going to leave?” Batman demands. “When?”

Peter rubs the back of his neck. “Don’t know,” he admits. “But this isn’t the first time he’s made the jump. You must’ve wondered where he came from,” he states instead of asking. “That’s why I took you on the tour today. I probably won’t stick around long after he leaves, but… someone’s gotta take care of the Alley after him.”

“You’re passing on the torch,” Batman realizes. “But nobody knows Crime Alley like Spider-Man does. I can’t help in the same way.”

“So help in a different one,” Peter easily counters. “I gave you a list to start. Spidey has… other commitments. He has friends and family, and a home. And there are places that need him more.”

“Worse than Crime Alley?” There’s disagreement in Batman’s rough voice. “He’s done good work here. Why would he just leave?”

Peter blows out a breath. “He trusts you to keep the peace,” he reveals. “He hopes he’s done enough that you get some kind of handle on the situation, and he knows what Crime Alley needs isn’t a hand stopping the pot from boiling over. Someone needs to turn off the heat.”

Batman seems more troubled at the thought of Spider-Man leaving than Peter would’ve thought. He takes pity.

He scruffs his feet a little bit. “It won’t happen for some time yet,” he assures. “And I could always tell him to push it off for a little bit, if you really need. But—” Peter’s voice turns wistful, hopeful, and more than a touch bitter and sad. “I know there’s nothing left for me at home,” he quietly confesses, “but I’d still like to go back. And if I can’t have my old family, maybe… maybe get a new one. One that lasts.”

He shakes himself out of it, noting that the sky is brightening rapidly.

“Just a thought,” Peter bites his lip. “Hey, say hi to Nightwing for me. He’s my favourite.”

Batman nods. “I’ll look into the jobs,” he says. “No promises, but… I have some connections. I’ll bring it up. And I’ll talk to Spider-Man about his… leaving.”

Peter beams at him—even the conversation he’ll have to have later can’t dim it. “Cranky,” he says, dimpling his cheeks, and then he leaves.

He needs to shower.

-

BATCHAT

Dick: Bruce just got back

Tim: Just now? We’re getting up for school

Dick: He has orphan eyes again. I think he saw Peter

…

Duke: yep. He literally asked me to kidnap Peter

Jason: like in those words or?

Duke: just because Bruce apparently doesn’t know what entails a legal kidnapping, doesn’t mean it’s not still a kidnapping

Duke: He wants us to forcibly get Peter into the manor because apparently he lives in the area of Crime Alley so bad that nobody ever even goes into it except for organized crime. Otherwise, it’s just completely abandoned

Tim: He does realize that we’ve been trying for months now and he just flat out refuses each time?

…

Duke: He says try harder.

-

True to his word, Peter shows up at school with his bag and arms full of notebooks.

“Trade,” Felicia says, and hands him a can of an unfamiliar energy drink to take the notes in his arms from him. “Here’s your monster piss.”

Peter cracks it open and gulps most of it at once. “Thanks,” he says. “I didn’t get any sleep last night.”

“I have more, but I’m limiting your input through time,” she informs him, flipping through the notes, then dumping them in a tote bag with other notebooks. “We have a study hall after lunch, right? Brief me during Spanish, and then we can start working at lunch. I also got you some more notebooks—figured you’d need it.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he agrees. She hands him another can of drink as he empties the first one, and then hands the entire tote bag back.

It’s going to be a long day.

-

Peter doesn’t really pay attention in class all day. He’s too busy reading through all of his old books, refamiliarizing himself with his past concepts and ideas.

It takes him hours to even get through the bulk of it, and he uses the extra paper condensing it into a form that Felicia can read, and also just recalculating equations and jotting new notes, helping his brain get through the mass of heavy theory and equations.

“What’re you doing?” Tim asks, poking his head behind Peter to look at the six or seven of them sprawled on his desk. He’s scrawling furiously, using a red pen to make annotations.

Peter bites his tongue between his teeth. “A new project I’m working on,” he says. “I’m trying to figure it out.”

Tim eyes the crazy-person writing suspiciously. “You look like you're making a bomb.”

“Nah,” Peter reassures, and then suddenly perks up. He supposes an inter-universal portal, one of his ideas, is rather like a bomb, in the sense that a black hole is, too. “Actually, it kind of is like a bomb. That’s a good idea, Tim, thanks.”

“That… is not what I wanted you to take from that.” Tim mutters, swiping the book he was just writing in and cruising through it. His eyes widen as he flips the pages. “These are notes on the multiverse theory, and interdimensional travel.”

Peter nods distractedly, not looking up from his current paper and taking another long gulp from his energy drink. “It’s all theory so far.”

“So far?” Tim takes the current notebook he was working on, too, ignoring Peter’s noise of protest. “Why are you trying to crack the multiverse?”

Peter pauses, stares at Tim blankly. “So, you know how in Star Wars—”

-

“I mean, what about an inter-universal phone?” Felicia asks. “Why can’t we just have Anakin give the Jedi a call and tell them to pick us up?”

“Well, what’s the phone number?” Peter challenges. “We can’t just call all willy-nilly and hope it’s the right one. The essence of the multiverse is that there are infinite universes, each with a slightly different change. But, considering canonically these universes vary drastically, the chances of Anakin finding the right one is next to impossible.”

Duke slams his head on the table. “You guys are literally just LARPing. Why can’t you make a number up?”

Peter blinks at him. They aren’t roleplaying as Star Wars characters trying to get to the multiverse stream, but he can’t exactly say that. And frankly, Felicia’s Star Wars knowledge is awful. Anakin calls the Jedi. They’re definitely having a movie marathon when they get home.

Felicia rolls her eyes. “Peter was interned by a tech genius. What’s the point of all that if he can’t solve a few theoretical physics catastrophes?”

“ Four tech geniuses,” Peter corrects. “Rhodey also went to MIT, I had that summer thing with Reed Richards, and you should know about Oscorp. And even if it’s fictional, I can’t just pretend bad science is real science,” he sniffs.

“I thought Oscorp was mostly biochem,” Felicia points out.

Peter shrugs. “I dabbled.”

Shuri leans closer to Duke. “He’s on the right track,” she reveals. “Not a phone number, more of a zip code. He just needs to find it.”

Duke’s eyes widen as he stares at blank space in front of him, but he says nothing, and Peter turns back to the notebook.

“So the Jedis are out, how about a warp machine?”

-

Peter and Felicia stand on the ledge of a tall building, almost thirty stories high. It’s enough to see the skyline. They’re not Spider-Man and Black Cat, not an unlikely pair of a superhero-vigilante and a morally grey thief. They’re two kids a universe away from home.

“Almost like New York,” Felicia comments. “Just gloomier.”

Peter can’t help but agree. “Just needs Stark Tower lighting up the sky.”

They’re not touching, but they’re almost. He’s close enough to her that she’s a warm presence by his side.

They’ve changed since they came to Gotham. Both of them. Their relationship shifted, but Peter couldn’t have said in what way—only that they were no longer kids dancing around each other for the fun and thrill of it. Felicia is his one connection to his home, and however unfair that burden might be on her, he knows he’s become the same to her.

It’s the only thing that keeps him from falling apart here, really. From feeling the true loneliness in a city like this.

“We’ll get home,” Felicia softly vows. “We have too much to lose.”

He gives her an aching smile. It’s painful to see.

Before, they could only have this after a life-or-death fight, when they’d both be bruised, beaten, and bloodied. Their skin would be raw, with smarting knuckles and tender nerves. Only then could they stand under the weight of the night and confess.

Now, Peter holds her hand.

“Can’t tap out now, Party-Hardy,” he murmurs. “We still have the rest of our lives to throw at the next big bad.”

“Next stop: Home.”

“Home.” May.

The word feels funny in his mouth.