Chapter Text
Prologue : Short.
As Peter Quill was one of the final ones to become dusted the planet is filled with a sickening silence as Tony stares at the empty spaces his comrades once were. The silence soon became something better than the words he was about to hear from behind him.
“Mr Stark, I don’t feel so good.” Tony turned to see SPider-Man, Peter, his kid, ever so slowly starting to turn to dust. Tony rushes to his side as Peter collapses onto him with all strength leaving his body as he and Peter fall to the ground.
“I- I don’t know what’s happening, Mr Stark I don’t wanna go.” Tony can hardly keep himself composed as he tells Peter that he’s going to be okay. All Peter can feel is agony as his advanced healing is trying to put him back together as the infinity stones are horrifically continuing to tear him apart.
“I don’t wanna go Mr Stark, please.” Tony can only hold him as his body finally gives up in trying to heal the constant and unrelenting pain and Peter begins to disappear. Peter just watches as Tony is trying to console him and can’t help but remember their conversation on how Mr Stark felt his death would be his fault. Peter couldn’t have that, Mr Stark had become his own dad now.
“I’m sorry.”
“No. No, kid, stay awake, no.” Peter just sadly smiles before his gaze drifts away as a final look at the sky before his body falls to the wind and is taken away into the sky, leaving his world behind, forever.
“No.”
Tony just sat there, in the place he lost his friend, his child. What else was he supposed to do now?
Their world was in ruin. Peter was never coming back.
At least not in his world, because just as he died.
He woke up again.
Chapter 1:
Welcome to the first proper chapter of this strange MCU Spider-Man x DC Batfam story I have ever written because I have too many ideas and must write them to satiate my hunger for this theme hehehehehe.
Peter woke to the sound of metal groaning against the splashes of water, the first shock was that he woke up at all, the next shock was how he was somewhere completely unfamiliar. His eyes and sense are overloaded with sounds and sights, it’s almost pitch black, the smell is foul, nothing makes sense, yet it’s as if the whole world was spinning.
He has to give himself a good long hour to finally return to normal, well, as normal as he can feel in this situation. Peter has finally managed to figure out that he’s on a boat of some kind, it’s most likely a shipping container or trade ship. It’s too big to be anything else, the other question he has is why is he here? How? What happened on Titan? Where is everybody?
As he’s thinking about everything he groans as his body is shook at a violent bump in the ship. Next thing he knows is a voice nearby. He must have been too out of it to notice the people all grouped in a different cage opposite his, a lot of them, except their cage is much larger and less upgraded than his it seems.
“Hey kid, you alright?” Peter looks up to see the face of a bearded man in regular clothes yet they’re dirty and slightly ruined in places. His face is hard as stone yet his eyes show sincere concern. There are many people around the man also looking at Peter.
“Where the hell are we?” The man’s eyebrows furrow more and he goes to speak but coughs violently and a woman next to him props him into a more comfortable position. She then speaks for him.
“Child, do you not know what’s happening?” Peter shakes his head then realises it’s probably too dark for them to see anything except the outline of his body.
“No, I don’t remember how I got here, at all.” Peter can see her face quite clearly in the dark and she looks just as concerned as the man does now that he's recovered from his coughing.
“We’re being trafficked by the Penguin. We were supposed to be entering Gotham City as immigrants but he caught us all and took us.” Peter is shocked, he wakes up suddenly after dying and now he’s become a victim of human trafficking? “Are you okay, child? Injured in any way?” Peter just sits up against the iron or steel cage. He pokes and prods at his body, realising he’s only wearing underwear and pants which are significantly dirtied. As he’s prodding he notices at least 3 different broken ribs with bruises and cuts everywhere else.
“I think some of my ribs are broken, I’m really out of it so I can’t 100% tell, it feels like my head has a gong in it.”
The man finally talks up again but this time it’s not about his wounds.
“Hm, hey kid, are you a metahuman?” A what? Peter thinks for a minute only to make the connection that they mean like an alien or advanced person. He knows that they ca’;t see his face anyways and he’s too dazed and confused to properly register his words before he says them.
“I think so.” The man nods in understanding at this and Peter is still confused as to why that confirmed something for him.
“Why? Is something wrong?” The woman shakes her head in reassurance and so does the man.
“No child, he just wants to confirm the reason you’re the only one in a stronger cage. We know many people have things against metas but my brother in law is one, he had better strength and accelerated healing.” The man just nods before adding in his own piece of the conversation.
“That man is my brother, the lucky bastard got the meta genes. Good man, don’t worry. I ain’t got anything against you.” Peter isn’t sure how to respond, all the information is confusing him. They’re talking about it like it’s such a normal thing and while the world is aware of superpowered humans and aliens, it’s not like they’re regular on earth.
“Thank you, then.” The woman just smiles gently before refocusing on how he got here.
“You were already on the ship when they forced us on. What’s the last thing you remember?” Peter contemplates telling them but decides he’s already told them too much so why not.
“Dying. I remember dying, I think.” He can feel the tension in the room and tries to think of anything else.
“Y-you died?” The woman sounds like a concerned mother once she finally finds the voice to talk again.
“I think so? It really hurt. My body was dying too quickly, I have accelerated healing too. . . it just couldn’t keep up, I don’t know what happened.” No, he does know. For some reason, there’s no doubt in his mind that he died. He should be dead. He just hears the man shuffle uncomfortably and the woman gasps gently.
“I’m so sorry that’s happened to you, you’re just a boy.” Peter just huffs out an indignant laugh. Just a boy. If he was just a boy he wouldn’t be in this mess. “I’m Tabby, this grump is Marty. What’s your name?” Peter realises that telling his name isn’t too much and makes it easier for him so that he doesn’t have to lie, if he needs to he can change it up later, they don’t know what he looks like anyways.
“It doesn’t matter but, call me Peter.” She smiles again, almost as though she knows he shouldn’t be able to see it yet he can. After being satisfied with her answer she sinks back into Marty for warmth leaving Peter to his own thoughts, still thankful that he isn’t completely alone in this mess.
— — —
Days go past and Peter keeps talking to Tabby and Mart until finally, the boat stops, the only interaction they’ve had was with the food person that comes down here once every 1-2 days. Just enough to keep the people healthy enough to survive properly, yet not sufficient to keep them balanced and strong enough to resist.
“Hey Pete, wake up.” Peter wakes to Marty’s voice echoing quietly against the walls. Once Marty hears Peter shuffling around he lets Peter know the situation. “I think we’re nearly there, overheard the guards talking about docking soon.” Peter just makes a sound of affirmation to let Marty know he can hear him. With the time they’ve been talking Peter already learned that they were being trafficked and were most likely going to become slave labourers. That is, if you’re a regular human. Peter on the other hand is considered a ‘meta’ which meant very different things for him.
He has learned 3 very important things in the few days he’s been stuck on this ship, weakened and injured.
1. Meta’s are similar to what he originally thought, except they mostly are born with the genes unlike what he thought.
2. A lot of people do not like said metas.
3. This is not his universe. (Which is definitely the most concerning part.)
How does he know this? Because he’s heard all the other prisoners talking about villains going by the names of Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, Penguin, Firefly and the most brought up is The Joker. Who is apparently one of the more formidable and insane opponents. Except, none of these villains exist or he hasn’t ever heard of them at least. Nor has he heard of the heroes and vigilantes who fight them being names like Batman, Superman, The Flash, Wonder woman and many others like Nightwing or Red Hood.
It’s all throwing Peter off so much it makes his head ache considerably more than he would like. When he first came to the realisation that this may not be his world, he panicked. He couldn’t breathe or function properly for about a day. That was about 7 hours ago. He hasn’t been given much time to recover before something else happens to him at this dock they’re arriving at. Peter has tried constantly to find a way out of his cell but it’s extremely solid and he doesn’t have his suit nor is he at full strength. The cage is almost completely rendering his abilities practically useless which means his senses, while definitely still not at human level, are significantly dulled. He simply sighs, lying in wait for a chance to appear to make his move
So he waits.
Hours pass till finally, Peter hears the loud cries of the subordinates and ship workers as the boat docks with a final large metal groaning sound. This was it, soon they would come down to unload their ‘prizes’. Peter is already ready for whatever is to come, propped in a stable stance.
Everything is quiet until the creak of the huge doors above them opens to reveal the light of the ships, meaning it’s still night time then or early morning. A main subordinate comes into the area the other human prisoners are in and clicks a button on this remote which then opens their cell door. Gun in hand he motions for everyone to move into this other container which would lift them to the main deck.
“Alright move it or die you disgusting pricks!” Peter hears him yet his eyes are only on the remote the man is holding. BEcause after all the others are boarded Tabby gets one more glance at me before shouting in my direction.
“I promise Pete, everything will be okay! You’ll be alright!” Her eyes show nothing but pure concern though, Peter steals a final glance at Marty who looks just as concerned, he must’ve noticed his gaze on him because he then yells at Peter too.
“We’ll find you again somehow kid! Stay alive till then! Alright?” Luckily because of all the commotion and bustling from the other prisoners, Tabby and Marty’s words went through without causing any issues with the occupied guards.
Finally they are lifted into the air and he hears a loud thud, the sound of their container being put onto solid ground on the dock. The main guard with the remote haughtily walks up to Peter’s cage and bangs his gun loudly on the cage.
“Can’t wait to see what Penguin will do with a mutt like you. You’re not even a proper meta, human or alien, just a freakshow huh?”
“Screw off, baldy.” Yeah okay, Peter has been through a lot recently and is in no way shape or form in the mental or physical state to deal with this douchebag. The man, in his anger, hits the release button to Peter’s cell door.
That was his first mistake.
He began yelling and cursing out Peter, so as the man stormed into the cell he kicked Peter square in the chest which did nothing to move Peter from where he was standing. The man has momentary shock before recovering and just punching him instead, also a bad idea.
His second mistake was ever entering the cage.
The door was left open a bit and just as he was about to leave from attacking Peter, there’s a loud commotion on the outside of the ship.
The sound of collisions and fighting overwhelm Peter's ears and he can’t help but notice how someone was getting closer to his destination quite quickly. The guard squawks in fear as a silhouette drops from the sky, landing on one of his other guards. Peter doesn’t have a clue who he is until the main guard yells in terror.
“IT’S THE BATS! Everyone move out, now!” All the guards scramble trying to outrun this new masked figure, dressed in black and blue. He watches as the man takes them all down swiftly and efficiently, using these electrically powered sticks to paralyse and contain them all.
The man’s third and final mistake, was leaving the cage open.
Peter notices the cage swing wide open due to a gust of wind from the fighting man who was now just tying up the traffickers who had all but given up trying to escape the man’s grasp. Only baldy has the guts to speak, or I guess you could call it idiocy, the line is very thin.
“You bats act so high and mighty but Penguin will smash you all to pieces!” How cliche could you get? Just as Peter thinks the drama has ended another costumed guy comes down from the top deck except he is wearing a suit bearing more red and a different insignia, it looks like a mix between a bird and a wave. Peter assumes it’s a bird considering the other guy has a blue bird on his chest, seems to be a theme almost.
That theme is ruined when a man, larger than the others in mostly bulk comes down except he is dressed as a bat instead, so the bird theme is ruined. He’s the one who speaks first.
“Is that all of them Nightwing?”
“You betcha, Batman! All traffickers locked and loaded.”
So this was Nightwing and Batman! Peter watches their interaction, hidden by the darkness of his cell, then all of a sudden, Batman looks directly at his cell. He begins talking while still staring at Peter, yet it’s like instead of looking at him, he’s looking through him.
“I thought you said everyone you got out was human?” The other figure who was yet to be named pulled a confused face.
“What do you mean? They were human? Red Hood also checked and asked them.” Batman made a noise of some kind as he started to take a step forward. There's a voice that comes over their comms.
“Hey, Red Robin. We made a mistake, there’s apparently one meta. A couple of the civilians withheld it because they didn’t trust us with him.” Now named, Red Robin relays the message again to Batman who is no longer listening as he calmly yet cautiously walks over to Peter’s cell. Nightwing is right at his side, weapons not turned on yet certainly ready to be used if needed.
As Batman stands in front of the open door he growls at the sight of the cell and its brutal coldness. He doesn’t bother to turn to Red Robin to speak to him, never taking his eyes off the cage. Peter, on the other hand, is very confused. For some reason, none of these vigilantes can see him, he’s right in front of them. Yet they act like they’re lookin in an empty cage.
“Red, ask Red Hood if he can get any more information out of the civilians there. Gently.” Red Robin just gives a firm nod before following up the question with Red Hood on the comms. Peter overhears the conversation between Red Hood and 2 civilians who Peter quickly discovers are Tabby and Marty.
“Please, he may be a meta but he’s kind and probably scared.” Red Hood just sounds like he’s reassuring her, making sure she knows he means no harm.
“We won’t do anything to him ma’am, we just want to know if you could tell us why they wanted him, what were his mutations? It will all just give us information and clues as to why Penguin needed this specific meta.” There’s a long accentuated silence before Marty speaksup instead.
“You better be telling the truth, Red Hood, we know Batman doesn’t like metas.” Marty just sighs deeply before getting back to the point. “He said his name was Peter, the only abilities we know was that he had night-vision of some kind and accelerated healing, those were the only ones he mentioned.” Red Hood just gives an affirmative thanks before reporting it back to Red Robin and Batman.
“So then where is he? One of us should’ve noticed if he left the cell.” Nightwing is now more thoroughly scoping out the cell, checking the corners and looking for evidence of inhabitants and how long ago. The man gave up, finding nothing except steel and iron. “There’s no one in here. He must’ve escaped quickly, then.” He makes a humming sound in contemplation yet it seems he comes up with nothing.
In the meantime Peter is firmly stuck to the ceiling of the cell, slowly waiting for these unfamiliar and strange people to leave him be. Keeping his breathing as silent as he could, movements as still as a graveyard.
“I don’t like the idea of a rogue meta running around my city Nightwing.”Batman makes an agitated sound and Nightwing goes to appease his frustration.
“C’mon B, from what we’ve heard he isn’t bad, just a bit scared.” That just makes Batman even more annoyed before he turns to face Nightwing.
“That is when people are most dangerous. Fear is the beginning of every villain and murderer and vigilante. Fear makes you irrational, Nightwing.” Nightwing holds his hands up in surrender to calm the man down again. Now it was Red Robin’s turn to satiate the man’s everburning anger and distrust.
“From what we know the guy only has accelerated healing and night vision. It doesn’t make him a threat, not yet at least. We’ll keep our eyes out for someone like him regardless. What the guy doesn’t need is a team of vigilantes chasing him right now. He’ll just get more scared which means, more dangerous.”
Batman just lets out a tired sigh before turning to grab his . . . grappling hook? Ok, weird choice of weapon. He then shoots it towards the top deck with an echoing clang before it yanks him all the way up.
Ok, seeing the point of the grapple hook now.
Then one by one the vigilantes leave the bottom deck, taking the criminals with them. Peter hears the sounds of sirens and he takes it as his opportunity to leave. As he steps out the cell he takes a moment to look at himself, the only problem is that he’s transparent, invisible.
He certainly knows that he didn’t have this power beforehand, it makes him wonder what else has changed since he has come back to life. Right now though his priority is getting away from all this drama, he’s had enough to last him centuries, he doesn’t understand how Thor or Loki do it.
With the thoughts pushed out from his head he moves out of the boat jumping and sticking to the walls as he goes. Turns out his ribs still haven’t fully healed as he lands a bit too harshly on the top deck. Peter is distracted instantly as he sees Tabby and Marty on the dock below trying to converse with the man who he assumes is ‘Red Hood’ and his other companions.
Peter lets his senses take over again, no longer restricted by the cell, to listen to their conversation.
“Please, he doesn’t know what’s going on, when he awoke he was confused, injured. If you find him, let us meet him first before you do anything.” Peter feels a certain warmth with Tabby, like a mother figure. Just like Aunt May, his mind starts to drift to everyone back home and Peter is hit with a nauseating feeling which he quickly pushes away.
“We will miss, alright, for now though you should go with the police to get sorted but we’ll make sure to contact you if anything comes up.” She reluctantly lets go of Red Hood’s arm which she hadn’t even realised she had been holding so tightly.
“Okay then, okay.” Tabby lets herself be led away by Marty towards the direction of the other trafficked people. Peter watches in silence as Tabby and Marty are moved away with the rest of them, the quiet docks now filled with the sounds of sirens and red and blue lights. There’s a sudden pause, as if time has slowed when the one called Red Hood, stares directly at where Peter is standing. He can feel his heart rate rise instantly as the man continues to stare. Peter doesn’t wait to find out whether or not the man could actually see him. Breaking away from the intense moment and running away as fast as he can.
He doesn’t know where he’s running, all he knows is that he must find somewhere, anywhere out of the view of people.
He’s leaping over buildings. Shops. Houses.
Anything until he finally finds an apartment building with half of the apartments boarded up with planks, curtains and signs saying that it was unstable and due for deconstruction but Peter thinks the whole area is due for deconstruction because the sign saying that looks at least 5 years old. He listens for heartbeats anywhere in the building and finds none.
“I guess this’ll do for now.” He mutters to himself as he quietly slinks into the apartment building through the top window which hadn’t been boarded up. The sound of the creaking floor seems so loud in the silence of the city that it makes Peter wince. He steps in and gives it a good look. The layout is pretty basic, small living room/kitchen. Toilet and bedroom to the side through the other door. There’s no furniture except for a dining table, chair and rickety old mattress. Peter continues to scour through the apartment, it's obvious no one has lived here for a long time.
After looking through the bedroom and apartments on the top floor Peter eventually finds a closet with different arrays of abandoned clothes that must have been left behind in a hurry.
“Ehhhh I’ll just try them on and see what fits.” He tries on a jacket which is about 8 sizes too small.
“Okay nope.” Next he tries on a t-shirt which would fit someone maybe double his size.
“Also nope.” After that he finds a dark blue t-shirt with a white snake plastered on it as if it was wrapping around the torso of the wearer. It fits quite well, if a little small. With a t-shirt ticked off his list he looks for a jacket that would fit and some pants to replace the ragged ones he wears currently. He finds a jacket only to put it on and see it has a my little pony character plastered on the front.
“. . .yeah, also no.” He slips it off and while looking up he sees a dark brown, almost black, aviator jacket that looks about the right size. He grabs it off the rack and gives it a shake to get rid of any dust, there’s a lot. He shakes it out vigorously enough until there’s no dust visibly coming off it anymore. Peter is glad though because when he puts it on, it fits quite well, only a little big which is honestly better for cold weather so he’s quite happy about it.
Happy that he’s found an outfit for the top half of his body he starts opening drawers to look for pants, socks, shoes just the lot. Opening the second drawer he finds a couple of pairs of jeans, shorts, tracksuit pants ect. He goes for the tracksuit pants thinking they’ll be the ones most likely to fit and lucky for him, he’s right. They’re only a bit too small, just leaving his ankles a bit visible.
Continuing his search around the bedrooms he finds a pair of black converse and a drawer of socks which weren’t too hard to find a pair that fit. The converse themselves were a little bit big but they fit his feet and weren’t going to fall off so he calls that a win. With everything he needs he takes the oversized t-shirt and a pair of pyjama pants back to his chosen room for when he goes to sleep later, for now he just sits on the bed. He’s left to his own thoughts, which is always a dangerous thing.
(this is peter’s thoughts for now just to make it more clear)
What the hell am I supposed to do now? I’m stuck in a place that I don’t understand. It looks like earth but isn’t mine. Is the multiverse actually real? I know I talked and theorised about it with Dr. Strange and Mr Stark but this seems unbelievable. Why would I be sent here anyways? Why am I the only one alive? Or am I dead? Do I even exist in this world? I know I died so, did I move into the body of Peter Parker in this world? . . .
What if?
(ze end of his thoughts.)
Peter rushes up to the bathroom in search of a mirror and when he finds one, what he sees is him but not him. It’s obviously his face and he looks about the same age as when he “died” , say about 16-17 no more or less. There’s some obvious differences though, Peter is a couple of inches taller then he used to be leaving him at about 6 foot he’d guess. His body type is the same though, still healthily fit albeit a bit on the skinny side but that doesn’t surprise him. He goes back to looking at his face only to realise the bigger differences, while his face is the same it looks more. . . refined? Less baby-ish, he could probably pass as over 18 if he tried. That wasn’t what shocked him though. What shocked him was his eyes and hair.
His eyes held a green colour, no like his original deep brown eyes. It was almost an unnatural type of green if you looked close enough but it was drowned out by the brown in his eyes.
And his hair, he didn’t notice it before because it was hidden but now that he looks at it he can see a section of it that is pure white. His brown hair was mostly concealing it until he pulled it back to get a better look and realises how much there was.
“What the hell?” It didn’t look or seem dyed which left Peter confused, why would he have white hair? He keeps pulling at his hair and face as if it will give him some answers, it doesn’t. He is just glad that his body is almost completely like his own from before he died. Which is still very high on his list of concerns. For now though he’s just going to stick with the basics, shelter, water, food, in that order. Shelter is luckily already a tick so he can cross that off, now he thinks water and food can wait a bit longer so he decides it would be best to just scope out the place. He climbs out the side window and uses the ladder to hop onto the roof.
Once up there he stands to get a proper look of the view, the city in the distance looks so much more lively than the area he’s in right now. He wonders why that is but doesn’t ponder for too long. He’s standing on the edge of the building for a while before he zones in on a library in the distance in a better part of town. The part he’s on looks particularly more run down, almost like a ghost town, it’s just a mess, the streets and people look distant, like they’re just floating around just waiting for tomorrow. Looking at the city is making him think of New York, home, Aunt May, Ned, MJ, Mr Stark, everything, he’s starting to hyperventilate and freak out and before he knows it, he’s crying.
Why am I crying? The tears aren’t stopping. What am I even supposed to do here? I-I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
“What do I do, oh god, what the hell am I supposed to do.” He stares at the ground about 8 stories below thinking how it may just be easier to die again. He isn’t prepared to do any of this alone. Just as Peter thinks he’s going to throw up from the nauseating home sickness he senses the presence of two people behind him, so he turns in an instant to face them, teary eyed and distressed to see two familiar and very concerned faces. . . or should I say masks?
(I am way too tired to be writing this rn so if yuoall see any mistakes lemme know)