"M-Mr. Stark?" He whispered, eyes large beneath his mask. He was almost afraid to breathe, scared that if he did, if he made any movements, it would prove to be a dream and that his mentor wasn't standing right in front of him, protecting him. "Is that really you?"
Mr. Stark turned his head again, his smile, though strained, was still as blinding as ever.
"In the flesh, kiddo." Tears sprung to Peter's eyes and his bottom lip trembled, though no one could see it through the mask. Tony, as if knowing his reaction, kissed his teeth. "Look, Underoos, I know you're probably emotional right now but we have a problem on our hands. We can talk and hug it out later, okay?"
Peter realized his mentor was right and nodded, willing the tears to dry.
"Right," he coughed, clearing his throat, slightly cracked through the voice modulator. "Let's do this." Tony nodded.
"Alright. Get out of the way." He did, tumbling to his right while Tony went left, letting the sentinel's blast hit the wall, essentially destroying it.
"Is Dr. Strange with you?"
"Right here, spider boy," a voice said, just appearing out of nowhere. He jumped about ten feet in the air and came to face said doctor, who had a shit eating grin on his face.
"I hate you." The genius tsked.
"Is that any way to talk to your father?" Peter sputtered a bit.
"But…you're not my dad?" Tony feigned a hurt look.
"Dear, listen to that," he simpered at Stephen, who rolled his eyes, "'You're not my father,' he says. The utter betrayal!" The spider vigilante snorted.
"I see your dramatics haven't stopped." The billionaire harrumphed.
"Never!" A loud whistle pierced the air and the three men turned to look at a seething Damian Wayne.
"Hey! We need some help over here! Cease your chattering!"
"Oh yeah," Peter was sheepish, "the robot." Tony sighed and his husband rolled his shoulders, wincing at the cracks.
"Are you helping out?" The question was directed at Loki, who only smirked.
"Of course not," is all he says before he disappears like he was never there before. The three paused for a moment.
'That tracks,' Peter thinks as he sighed in exasperation.
"Yeah. We can talk later." They rushed towards the fight, great smiles on their faces as they fought together, finally reunited after a long time apart.
They were losing.
It's not like the odds were against them, but they were losing somehow. Peter thinks it's because of the reinforcements that the Joker called when he flew away. He groaned.
"Getting tired, sweetheart?" Slade panted next to him, fighting off three men at the same time, each with their own weapons. Peter grimaced in his suit. The sentinel had been long defeated but now, there were just troves and troves of people in clown masks, laughing like the Joker as they attacked Peter's team.
"Not even-" Tony's voice cut into their short conversation.
"Excuse me, what did you just call the kid?" His tone was accusatory and highly unamused. Slade didn't answer and walked away, two goons hanging underneath his arms and the other one over his shoulder. More men came at him, maximum of two but when you were as huge as Slade, with the amount of muscle mass he has, everyone kind of just bounces off anyways.
"Who are you again?" Slade's tone took on a wary note, even as he turned to throw the goons hanging off of him to the side.
"I'm his mentor. Who're you?" Slade paused, taking in Tony in the suit.
"His friend," Slade reluctantly says, pointing at Peter, who beams at him.
"Yeah. He's my friend." Tony's eyes narrowed underneath his mask.
'Oh, he's definitely more than that.' Before Tony could say anything else, however, five figures dropped into the room from the hole in the top of the roof, their silhouettes catching Tony, Peter, and Slade's eye.
"Did someone ask for backup?!" Harley's enthusiastic tone echoed in the sewer and Peter couldn't stop himself from smiling. She was in the same outfit, but with a cleaner look.
The others, who Peter believes to be Steph in the purple and those three ladies who own BP gym, Harley's old ride or dies. He recognized their figures, even with the kevlar they wore.
There was a new person, however. She was wearing a skin-tight black outfit, similar to Bruce's in the comics. A golden bat, also similar to Batman's, was donned on the front of her shirt, a hood over her head. She had dark bangs and a short bob of black hair.
'Who's that?' he asks himself. The mystery woman joined his best friend and high fived Steph, who said, with a grin,
"Who's ready to kick clown ass?! Let's go ladies!"
"Is that Harley Quinn?" Tony asked in disbelief. Peter turned to his mentor/un-official dad, a hand on his heart.
"Mr. Stark, you know about Harley Quinn?" Peter could practically feel Tony roll his eyes. Stephen stepped up beside his husband.
"You forget that we all grew up with these stories, Spiderman." Peter shrugged.
"I never really know what you guys grew up with. You're so old, you know?" Tony gasped and pointed a finger at Peter who cackled in his suit.
"Take that back! I look as young as your aunt does!" Peter shrugged again, smiling like a brat underneath his mask before running away to join Slade and Harley in the fight. He hears Tony start to curse him out behind him.
'Just like old times,' he thought, a warm feeling blooming inside his chest as everyone else rejoined the fight, battling with all their might.
It was overwhelming. Peter never expected the Joker to have this many people working for him. It was at least a ten to one ratio. After you took a few out of commission, more seemed to come in and join. Even Bruce was struggling.
"Guys!" He called to everyone, knowing that they could hear him on the comms, "we need to end this soon! It's been two hours already! We're going to get tired eventually!"
"Speak for yourself, princess!" Jason shouted, grunting when he took a hit to the stomach, before punching the goon right in his clown mask. It knocked him out cold.
"As much as I hate to say it," Tim said through clenched teeth, his bo staff knocking against multiple heads as he swung it this way and that, "the new guy's right. We need to finish this. Now." Peter panted. This was getting him tired and doing it all manually, fighting them off personally was highly inefficient. He backed up as five different men surrounded him.
One reached for Peter, but he ducked out of the way and shot a web at them, sticking them to the wall. More hands rushed at him and he did the same thing. However, even as he stopped them, more joined in to fight with him, their masks taunting him, laughing at him.
"Where the fuck is Joker getting so many people to fight for him?!" He shouted to no one in particular, though answering laughs and cackles reached his ears. He stared in disbelief. They laughed like him too?!
It was only a second later that he looked around, desperate for a break, that he finally noticed something that could be of use to them.
"Karen!"
"Yes, Spiderman?"
"Webbing Fluid: Net Function!"
"Of course," she answered and a large net, made of his best synthesized web fluid which is able to hold for more than five hours (the longest he's made yet), spread across many of the goons on his side of the sewer. The line from his shooter disconnected from his wrist, his hand wrapping around it before jumping onto the wall and quickly climbing up.
The net moved from under the men, scooping them up in one motion as Peter pulled on the line in his hand, the net closing and bunching up at the top. Peter leaned down and tied it into one of the best knots he knew, one that Steve and Bucky taught him. He then hauled the line over his shoulder, crouching low into the wall and climbing up to attach the line, and by extension, the net full of Joker's goons, to the wall. For extra security, he shot some more webbing onto the net (though the goons could still breathe) and to the line that was sticking to the wall.
"I know a good way to end this!" Tony snarled as multiple hands restrained his armored arms. He snapped forward and flipped two people over his arm.
"Then get on it, Underoos! We'll cover for you!" Peter could hear Jason snort and he scowled.
"If you're such a genius, why didn't you think of it in the first place?" He grumbled to himself as he swung away from the goons attached to the wall and towards the lifeless sentinel on the ground. He landed gracefully and crept closer, staying low so as to not attract attention. Thinking logically, he figured that the panel to the sentinels innermost controls would be upwards of the torso and head, the hardest places to get to.
The sentinel was lying on its stomach, so he checked the head first. He found nothing on the back of the head plate.
'It must be on the front then,' he thought with some irritation. He really did not want to flip a giant robot over at the moment. But he had to. So with a groan, he sneaked his hands beneath the forehead, and knowing that the rest of the body would be connected with and supported by the head, began to lift. It was easy enough and when he gained enough distance from the ground, he rotated the head in his hands, the rest of the body following suit. A loud crash of metal on concrete resulted. Peter cursed.
'Fuck, fuck, fuck. Gotta hurry!' He rushed to the chest, the forehead bearing no opening plate. Just as he had thought, there was a small rectangular door where he assumed led to the control panel.
Using his hand, he squeezed the door, the metal bending right into his fingers, breaking off its hinges entirely. It revealed bunches of wires and buttons that he couldn't quite make sense of just yet. He observed for a second longer before he concluded that he needed Karen.
"Karen! Scan this and tell me how to control him!" He stood up and pointed his arm down to the control panel and a light scanned the panel and the surrounding electrical wires.
"Cut the blue one, Peter and then connect this," his watch produced a thin and small hard drive, "to the USB insert. I will do the rest."
"You got it. Thanks Karen," he said as he got to work, using his superstrength to rip apart the lone blue wire in the panel.
"Of course." Peter grabbed the USB and clumsily flipped it to get it to fit into the insert, mentally cheering when he finally did it.
"Alright, now what?"
"Loading information." A second passed. "Information download complete. Loading controls." Another second.
"Hurry up, Underoos! We can't hold them back much longer!" Peter growled, turning to glare at the back of his mentor.
"Doing my best over here, Mr. Stark!" He turned back to the sentinel underneath his feet. "Please hurry up Karen!"
"Just another second, Peter. Controls download complete. What would you like Toby to do?" Peter quirked an eyebrow, a bit incredulous.
"The robot has a name?" And if Peter really listened, he could hear a sort of offended tone to Karen's voice.
"Of course he does." A moment passed by as the spider-themed vigilante blinked. He shrugged.
"Whatever. Bring him up, Karen!"
"Affirmative." The robot beneath Peter's feet, Toby, Peter reminded himself, started to rumble, its metal parts creaking and groaning as the arms of the sentinel pushed him back into a standing position.
Multiple people, including most of the goons of the Joker and his own team turned to watch the sentinel walk upright in fascination and horror. Peter jumped from Toby's chest and onto a concrete wall. Toby started forward on Peter's command, swiping downwards at the goons whose weapons were ineffective against the giant hunk of metal.
"Mr. Stark, move everyone away!" Tony turned to look at his husband and no words passed between them, but an agreement was reached within seconds. Tony deployed his thrusters, flying up to Peter's position on the wall as Dr. Strange opened a portal behind each of their team and sucked them in.
The portal opened in one of the upper tunnels, giving the Bats (who shook their heads and held their stomachs after jumping out of the portal) and Slade a bird's eye view of the battle between Toby and the minions. Peter trusted his legs to hold him up as his hands played with the controls given on a holoscreen projection from his watch.
"I see you're making good use of that watch I gave you." Peter rolled his eyes but smiled.
"Yeah. This' like the first time in a couple months." Tony was quiet but the younger man could tell there was guilt in the air.
"Pete, I'm sorry we couldn't-" Peter cut him off, refusing to receive an apology for something that wasn't Tony's fault.
"It's not your fault Mr. Stark. It will never be your fault." The vigilante could tell that Tony still felt guilty but his words appeased him slightly. Just before Tony was about to say something, however, something shiny caught Peter's attention out of the corner of his eye.
In Dr. Strange's rush to get everyone out of there, he forgot Harley, who was fighting off two goons while not noticing one with a javelin in his hand, creeping up on her.
"Harley!" He yelled in a panic, startling Tony and then jumping into action. Harley likely didn't hear him due to the gunfire and fighting. Peter shot a web precisely at the goon's hand, causing him to lunge backwards and fall on his back. He swung down and helped Harley get rid of the other two she was fighting.
By the time they were done, they were both panting slightly.
"Thanks, man," Harley got out between breaths.
"No," pant, "problem." More panting. Amidst his distraction with Harley, he didn't hear the goon in the back rip his way out of Peter's webs.
He did, however, get a tingle, his Spidey Sense acting up. He felt it move towards Harley. Doe brown eyes widened and before anyone could do anything else, he whipped his head towards his best friend. Using his strength, he pushed himself by the balls of his feet towards where Harley was and pushed her out of the way.
She fell to the ground with a thud and looked up incredulously, before the sound of a rip and a squelch echoed in the sewer. Clear blue eyes looked up towards brown as Peter's mask dissolved, showing his face, which had gone pale white.
Those same blue eyes showed heart break as Harley's mind comprehended what was in front of her: Peter, falling to his knees, large brown eyes wide, with the bloody blade of a javelin protruding out of his chest.
"Peter!" Harley shouted at the same time Tony and Stephen screamed Peter's name. The goon behind Peter used one of his feet to push at his shoulder, so he slumped forward and the javelin left his chest, leaving a giant hole.
The Bat's up above snapped their head towards the figures lying in a growing pool of blood, hearing the name of someone they held dear to their hearts. Slade was the first to jump into action, using one of his grapple hooks to hold himself steady as he slid down the wall.
He was followed by Dick, Damian, and the rest of the Bat Clan, hurrying down to see if what they heard and saw with their own eyes was true. Tony had already flown down and was now cradling Peter's body in his hands, his husband portalling down next to him. Tears rolled down Tony's eyes.
"Pete! Pete! Stay awake buddy!" Stephen cursed.
"He's losing blood fast. Hold on. I know a spell." A bright bubble of light enveloped the hole in Peter's chest, holding in the blood so he didn't lose much more. "We need to get him to a hospital."
"Not a hospital," Damian bit out, heart somehow utterly broken at seeing someone like Peter in a state like this. "They'll ask too much." Stephen glared up at the green eyed man.
"And do you somehow have better people than surgeons to work with? I'm a surgeon and I would do the surgery but it's not sanitary enough here." Stephen grimaced at the thought of doing a surgery on the floor of a sewer. Damian glared right back at Stephen, towering over all of them.
"I do, actually. We have a space in our house for that." Peter giggled a bit then groaned at the large jolts of pain that occurred when his chest moved.
"Not a house. A mansion," he corrected and Damian's jade green eyes softened a bit.
"A mansion. My apologies. However, we have a space if you would like to assist Agent A in helping out our...companion." Stephen glowered longer before Tony hit his husband's calf. The doctor sighed and agreed.
"Fine. Let's go." A portal opened and Tony, with Peter limp in his arms, just barely awake, went in first, appearing in the foyer of Wayne Manor. Stephen followed through, along with Harley and Steph. Everyone else stayed back.
"Aren't you guys coming?" Harley asked, pleading with her eyes. Dick gave a stunning smile and it actually had a bit of a genuine note to it.
"Don't worry about us Harley. Take care of our boy." Harley hesitated for a moment before nodding.
"Give 'em hell," she commanded, a glare present on her pretty features. Bloodthirsty smiles were given to her in return. Harley could even see Slade's smile through his black and orange divided mask.
"You got it," Jason winked. Harley offered a small smile and then turned her back to them, letting the portal close behind her.
Everyone looked towards Bruce who smirked, reveling in the anxiety that spiked from the Joker's men, all crowded on the other side of the sewer room.
"You heard the lady," Bruce said, his timber becoming dangerous. Eyes sharpened and grips on weapons tightened. Stances lowered, becoming predatory. These people will avenge the loved one who was gravely injured. That was a promise, seen in their grins and their hungry gazes. "Fuck. Them. Up."
The battle had begun.
Jason breathed deeply as the metallic smell of blood entered his nose. He shivered in pleasure as the man beneath his feet pleaded for mercy.
Of course, he couldn't give it and laughed loudly as he shot a bullet through his brain. Splatters of blood reached Jason, ricocheting off his clothes and staining the underside of his jaw. He did nothing to wipe it away and instead turned to his family who watched him in amusement.
"What?" He rolled his eyes and shrugged when their expressions only became more amused. "Whatever. That's the last of them." The sight of a massacre laid before them, each with their own stains of blood, their own injuries but nothing compared to the celebration in their eyes, the pleasure they derived from splitting bodies apart like they were pieces of paper. Their own bodies trembled with the high that they lived off of from the murders of Joker's men.
"I haven't had that much fun in forever," Stephanie comments, scratching at a droplet of blood that stained her dark purple sleeve. Tim raised an eyebrow.
"What about last month? The fire and the warehouse?" Steph shrugged, flipping her blonde hair over her shoulder.
"That was then. Everything else that's happened besides Peter was boring. You're all boring people," she whined. A hand tapped at her shoulder, and the blonde turned around to face Cassandra Cain, who had just returned from Hong Kong. Cassandra pointed to herself, eyes large and innocent, though everyone who really knew her understood that she was anything but. "You're always an exception, Cassie."
Damian snorted. "She's always an exception." Bruce smiled genuinely.
"Glad to have you back Cassie. How was Hong Kong?" Cass shrugged, her cropped hair bobbing along with her movements.
"It was okay. Easy stuff. Got everyone back in line. There shouldn't be any more issues from the Triad nor the Yakuza." The smile of the billionaire's face sharpened. He clapped his adoptive daughter on the shoulder.
"Good," he praised, his figure proud. His daughter always made him proud. That was why she was the favorite.
"B!" Dick whined, large blue eyes aimed up at his adoptive father. "You never tell me I'm good!" Bruce's expression fell flat. Chuckles raised from the group, specifically Slade who was watching from the sidelines the entire time. He feared that if he were to impede on their play time, the time when the real demons inside these ordinary looking people came out to play, he'd become part of the massacre.
And not the good part.
"Shut up, Slade," Dick grumbled. He only shrugged and walked away, towards the grappling hook that he had come down from earlier.
"And where are you going, Deathstroke?" Steph drawled, her arms now hanging over Tim's shoulders.
"To see my sweetheart."
"How is he now?" Tony asked his husband as Alfred finished up inside the operating room. Stephen sighed, pinching his nose as he took off his protective personal equipment.
"He's stable for now and his vitals are starting to look okay. You could tell the healing process is already taking hold but we're not sure how long this is going to take or how much energy he's going to be expending stitching up that giant hole in his chest." Tony nodded, pushing the grim reality of Stephen's words aside.
"But he's okay? He's going to be okay?" Stephen cocked his head over to the side.
"Honey, we're scientists, we don't make promises nor do we believe everything that-"
"Just," Tony said loudly, clenching his eyes shut, "let me be optimistic. I don't want to hear it right now, okay?" Stephen was silent for a moment, intelligent blue eyes appraising Tony before the doctor nodded.
"Okay. He'll be fine. At the very least, that's my prediction and I've been right many, many times." Tony glared at his smirking husband.
"Now is not the time for jokes, Stephen." The surgeon rolled his eyes.
"Then what is it the time for?" Tony put his hands around his waist, letting some of his weight go onto his right foot so he was leaning slightly.
"It is time for you," he pointed to Stephen, "to go home and let everyone else we're okay." Stephen shrugged.
"Don't you think Loki's already done that?" Tony looked at his husband with incredulity.
"What do you think, babe? It's Loki!" Stephen rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah. I get it. I'll see you later okay? Let me know how Peter's doing and when he wakes up." Tony nodded, knowing full well that he wouldn't be able to.
"I love you," he called out when Stephen was halfway through the door.
"Love you too," was lazily thrown back.
'Typical,' Tony thought fondly.
Suddenly, the full weight of what happened today fell upon Tony and he found that he couldn't stand anymore. His knees buckled and he could no longer stand upon his weak legs so he let gravity do its work.
Before he could fully hit the ground, however, a strong hand enclosed his upper arm and hoisted him back up. His head lolled backwards and before he knew it, he was swept upwards into a bridal carry.
"Stephen?" He mumbled out, eyes squinting up at his captor. Blue eyes stared down at him but they weren't Stephen's crystal blue eyes. No, they were deep like the ocean. They pulled him in with their current. "You're not Stephen," he grumbled and was shocked to hear a rumbling laugh emit from the chest he was held to.
"No," an even deeper voice than his husband says, "I'm not."
"You're, uh," Tony fumbled with his words a bit, "Bruce Wayne right? You're Batman."
Bruce stared down at the adorable sight in his arms. Half-lidded whiskey eyes stared up at him and Tony mumbled something akin to fur? That was all Bruce could make out before Tony went limp in his arms. Everything was quiet for a moment before Jason snorted.
"Did he just call you a furry?"
Peter snuffled in his sleep, causing Harley to snap her head in his direction, hoping to catch a glimpse of him waking up. She deflated when she saw that he was still asleep.
"You know, Miss Quinn," a distinctly British voice said from the doorway of her and Peter's once shared room, "it was always considered rude for a gentleman to keep a lady waiting." Harley laughed wetly, tears coming in quickly.
"I hope he doesn't make me wait long. I want answers as much as I want him to wake up." Alfred hummed and walked into the room, checking through Peter's vitals in Stephen's stead. After a quick check-through, he finally turned to Harley, who was still looking at Peter's ashen face, nearly the same color as the white pillows that he rested on.
"Sometimes, my dear," he says, waiting for Harley to turn her head before he continued, "I find that the best remedy after a stressful day is a cup of steaming tea." He held a hand out. "Would you care to join me?" Harley looked at her best friend before reluctantly grabbing onto the butler's hand. Deep breaths reached her ears and she was reassured that he would be just fine.
It was dark and warm, and there was a dry, scratchy feeling to his throat. Peter cracked open his eyes before cringing, bright lights causing his eyes to throb in their sockets. He groaned. A pounding reached his ears and he belatedly realized that it was the sound of someone's footsteps rather than the pounding of his own head.
"Pete?" Tony's soft voice entered his ears, still sounding loud despite how quiet Peter knew he was trying to be. "You okay?" Peter didn't want to nod, didn't want to aggravate his head further so he hummed. However, he didn't expect for it to hurt so badly. His voice cracked and it felt like his throat was bleeding from the inside out. He whined softly. "What? What's wrong?"
"H-" he tried to say but the sound stopped short, "hurts." A hand carded through his hair, feeling marvelously cool against his burning skin.
"Alright, Underoos. I'll get you some water okay?"
"'Kay," he says, grimacing. It felt like ages before Tony got a glass of water to him. He helped Peter sit up a bit to take a few sips. He settled back against soft pillows after and he suddenly felt exhausted. "Hey Mis'r St'rk?"
"Yeah Underoos?" Peter snuggled into the blanket, sighing in contentment.
"I l'v y'u." He didn't stay awake long enough to hear Tony's reply.
The next time Peter woke up, he was conscious enough that he felt the extreme pain from the hole in his chest. The pain medication likely burned through his system too fast. He groaned loudly, his throat less scratchy than last time. Footfalls came to meet him as he attempted to sit up in bed.
"Mr. Stark, is that you?" Tony chuckled off to the side.
"So it's back to Mr. Stark now, is it?"
"You shouldn't sit up so quickly, gorgeous. You'll only hurt yourself." Peter squinted upwards into Dick's azure eyes as the back of the bed rushed upwards to meet Peter's back.
"Dick?" Tony snorted.
"I still can't believe you chose that nickname yourself." Peter could practically feel the oldest Wayne sibling rolling his eyes.
"I was young and I didn't know what it meant, okay?" Tony chuckled along with some other people in the room. His Spidey Sense wasn't tingling so it wasn't anyone who wanted to harm him, at the very least. Peter finally opened his eyes fully, still slightly squinted against the light and saw that practically everyone was in the room.
Bruce, Tony, Stephen, Steph, Dick, Jason, Tim, Damian, Harley, Slade, Alfred and another woman he knew nothing of.
"H-Hey guys," he greeted. A glass of water was offered to him which he took gratefully. He tried looking away to drink, uncomfortable with all the stares on him. When he was done with about half of the glass, he turned back, placing it on a bedside table.
All was silent for a bit and Peter had to break the silence. He would literally die if there was no noise.
"What's going on?" Damian straightened from his leaning position, uncrossing his arms in a way that made him seem broader and larger than he ever had before. Peter shrunk slightly as Damian came to tower over him, jade green eyes turning acidic.
"That," he growled, pointing at the hidden bandage behind his hospital gown, "is what's going on. When were you going to tell us that you were," Damian paused, unsure how to phrase it exactly. "Special?" He decided upon the word. Peter grinned nervously.
"What do you mean special? I'm not special at all-" Tony cut him off, standing suspiciously close to Bruce. Or was Bruce standing suspiciously close to Tony? Stephen and Bruce were shoulder to shoulder, both behind Tony and looming over the genius, looking like his bodyguards.
'That's interesting,' Peter noted before snapping back to reality.
"They know, Pete." The chestnut haired man stared at his mentor.
"As in-" Tony nodded before he could finish.
"Yep. As in that." All was silent for a moment.
"Well fuck."