lepoffaith

by Lazydaily

marvel peter gotham long ass chapters

9. 9

Gotham is not a quiet place unless danger is trying to settle in. The city is constantly abuzz, constantly alive. In the daytime people are out living and working, breaking their backs trying to survive in the hell. And in the nighttime there's the beating of club music that sounds like the city's heart. Gotham is always awake, and Peter has started to grow accustomed to the sound of her noise the way he knows New York's.

In fact, the only time in his life that Peter had started getting a quiet sleep was when he started living with Tony.

Being that high up in the air in a penthouse, it's hard to hear the traffic below. Nothing is silent, because Peter's senses are just that fine tuned, but that's because Peter keeps the soundproofing feature off. One reason is that Peter is not used to silence after living in Queens. His home with Ben and May had been noisy, the foster homes were noisy, and then the streets were a cacophony. He got so used to it, that Peter couldn't sleep properly the first week that he stayed with Tony, and it helped to not have the soundproofing feature on.

But another reason is that he doesn't mind hearing the humming of the fridge in the kitchen, or when someone gets up to get a glass of water in the night, or Tony's arc reactor keeping him alive. Because this Not-Silence means that Peter is not alone, but in a safe way. It's not the noise of the city, but it's home nonetheless.

So when Peter hears this same type of Not-Silence after opening his eyes and is lost in the hazy moments of waking up, he almost rolls over and goes right back to sleep, believing that he's back home. He feels like he has to get as much sleep as he can before FRIDAY wakes him up for school. He almost forgets everything that has happened since he met Ohnn, and he feels completely safe for the first time in a while.

Almost.

Because at first it felt that way, but then he discovered the Not-Silence is not the same.

Firstly, there's a heartbeat right next to his bed. He knows them, and they are not from home. This heartbeat is accompanied by the tip tapping of someone typing on a keyboard and their soft breathing. Secondly, there are footsteps far from where he is, muffled by heavy wooden walls. The floors in his home are no softened on rugs or behind wooden walls. Thirdly, a radio in a distant room, with a song that isn't distinguishable.

This is not Peter's room.

Then he thinks he might be back at Benny's, because he remembers that he is not home not home not home, but that doesn't sound right either, and he almost panics. But he knows the heartbeat beside this bed, and it hits him: This is not the room that he has been staying in for (nearly) the past month. The thought strikes him hard and forces him to open his eyes fully and ignore the ache in his chest.

Peter sits up, a painstakingly slow action, as if one wrong move would have him activate a secret trap.

It's not a tiny room with a closet, bed, window, and desk, which are all the things that a person needs to thrive. Secondly, it doesn't have any of the stuff he's gotten used to- it's not a cramped place with peeling wall paper and a pipe that groans every five seconds. It doesn't have a window that rattles in the wind, or the screeching of car tires outside. And it certainly doesn't have any of his stuff in it. Like his notebooks, his backpack, his tool kit. Non ha niente.

Nada, zero, zilch.

He's laying in a stupidly huge bed (What is it, a king sized? Who the fuck even needs a king sized bed?), and it's covered in thick blankets (those are actually kind of nice, he'll admit that). It's one of those canopy beds; the kind that have the curtains around it. Peter thought those were fake beds made for TV sets, and that real people didn't have them. He thought everyone knew they only existed in period dramas.

Somehow, this giant bed doesn't take up that much space in Not-His-Room, and that's because it's also huge. It has not just one window- which was already the height of luxury- but three, all with thick green curtains, all on one wall to the left of this bed. On the opposite wall to the windows, to his right, there is a shelf that stretches the entire wall, surrounding a grand desk. Save for a few books close to the door in front of him, it is empty, with no little knick knacks or decorations. It's as if this room isn't used often, or had just been cleared out, and there's no dust to tell him which is true. There's also another door that Peter is suspicious leads to a connected bathroom.

There's even a huge green and gold rug with those tassel things- he remembers Aunt May used to complain about how much rugs cost, but she always wanted a big nice one. She'd be all over this rug, nerding out and telling Peter about it. The dark walls are bare, but every crevice of the room is built like someone had hand carved the wood with those twisty designs that art people like. The nightstands have a big shiny lamp on the one to his right, the left one bare.

There's even a chandelier. A chandelier.

Who needs all that window space? Who needs a desk that someone could land a plane on? Who needs a wall-to-wall library in their room? Who needs a rug that's bigger than an open field? Who needs the hand carved wood and the shiny lamp, and who needs a chandelier in their room?

Truly, utterly awful.

Peter's room at home is big, yeah. He's still not used to that- to be able to do a flip and not knock over everything within his vicinity. He has FRIDAY to talk to, he can't hear his neighbors shouting at each other, nothing breaks if he looks at it wrong. And of course, it comes with two billionaires, one a superhero, living down the hall. But he's got a normal sized bed for a normal sized teenager, and it looks like Peter has stepped into the future, rather than stepping into a dark castle where a vampire is 100% going to jump out of a corner to snap his neck.

Overall, Peter can only come to one conclusion once he has awoken, seen this room, and felt the pounding headache behind his eyes, all while remembering Nightwing catch him before he passed out in front of a sticky-note covered Batmobile. Just as Jason had warned him about, Batman had kidnapped him.

Because honestly, what other candidate would there be? This has that big headed billionaire's hands all over it.

Unless, of course, it was Dick. Both seem to be top two in the 'will take an homeless orphan home' list. He should have asked Jason more about that.

The problem is? Peter can't even be mad about waking up in someone else's house. He can't put up a fuss and complain, because what else were they going to do? Bring him back to Benny's and say "Here you go?" Were they gonna take him to a doctor? At the hospital? Were they gonna leave him on the street and hope for the best? He doesn't have any allies here except for them, so it's a logical conclusion, and an easy excuse they used.

Peter is still gonna be upset about it, however. He won't whine about it or anything like that (okay, he might make a few jokes, sue him), but he feels he has a right to be reasonably put-off about the situation. He put in a lot of effort to not get brought here, and he just had to go and pass out after lifting a building. It feels like they won, and all because he hadn't been clever enough to get them out of the situation before it got as bad as it did.

…He had at least got to show Batman he won't be outdone, in some way. Sure, they finally got Peter at their house. But he thinks he's proved, somewhat, that he could get away if he wanted to.

(Does he want to? He's unsure. The dumb bed is comfortable and Peter forgot what a decent mattress was like.)

There's one more issue, and one that he doesn't know how to feel about. He's not wearing his spider-suit or his new jacket, but instead wearing a soft white, long sleeved shirt, and sweatpants. Someone had changed him, and because he doesn't feel sticky or bloody or dusty from the aftermath of the Firefly bombings, they had also gave him a bath of some kind.

It makes his skin crawl to think that it happened while he was passed out, but he supposes it's like what would happen if he was at the hospital, but instead of a dumb looking gown, he got actual clothes. And besides… his reflexes would have shut down anything that was meant to harm him. He can't exactly turn that off, even in his sleep. If his body had felt like he was being hurt, he would have woken up, or someone would have gotten punched. Or both.

Peter flexes his hands. It feels wrong to see them without a layer over them; he usually wears fingerless gloves for his day to day. Not because he's emo or whatever, but because he has a visible scar on his right hand: the spider-bite.

It's his last scar that he's ever gotten. Right above his thumb on the back of his hand, there's two diagonal puncture wounds. The scar tissue is faded, barely even white, but they are there. It could be passed over without anyone noticing it, if they weren't paying attention. But there's also a layer of spider veins under the bite. They're a dark blue color closer to the center, but fade out into a spider web of white farther from it.

Peter takes his gloves off when he washes his hands and takes a shower, because he's not gross and nasty and disgusting. But it always bothers him when people take it off when he's sleeping. The SHIELD doctors did that to him after Tony got him back. If Peter was alone in this Not-His-Room, he would have started looking for something to cover it again.

But he's not alone.

"Good evening, Sleeping Beauty."

"I knew a vampire lived here." Peter replies immediately to Tim, the culprit of the heartbeat and the keyboard clacking that he heard. Tim raises a brow at him like Peter is the weird one. But Peter wasn't the one who greeted someone with 'good evening' and sounded like it wasn't part of the joke.

The other boy is sitting in a chair next to Peter's bed, one foot in a medical brace kicked up on the mattress while he looks at his laptop on his lap. He has a set of crutches leaning against the back of the chair, and he's wearing the most casual clothes that Peter has seen him in, just a regular sweatshirt and sweatpants.

He's relaxed, slouched back in the chair like he's been there a while. He glances over Peter as if double checking something.

"Is someone mad that they got kidnapped?" He teases, a low blow considering this is no laughing matter. (It might be when the annoyance of being taken care of turns into being grateful someone wants to take care of him. But that's a later problem.)

"You're lucky that I like you." Peter lays back down on the stupidly soft pillow, glaring at the canopy bed.

"God forbid you live in opulence and with zero threat to your person." Tim shuts his laptop, laying his hands over it and giving Peter his full attention. A thoughtful look crosses his face, and as though surprised, "You like me?"

Peter stares at him, dumbfounded. He thought it had been pretty clear for at least a few days now that Peter and Tim are friends. Why else would he say that to Tim during the Two-Face incident? "No, Tim. I don't like you at all. That's why I called you my friend, enjoy your presence, and held up a building so you wouldn't die."

"Whatever," Tim says, but he grins like it's a big deal to hear it. "I like you too, you little freak of nature."

He grins smally at the other boy, covering his right hand with his left. Tim looks down at the action, his smile dropping hesitantly. He sighs almost silently, setting his laptop to the nightstand and bringing his foot off of the bed so he can properly sit up, facing Peter. "Thanks for the save back there, Spider-Man."

It's not the question that Peter expected, nor is it the anger for being lied to. Peter doesn't know why he's so surprised by that. He hadn't felt that bad about lying to the Avengers because at the time, they had been using Peter as an informant on the missing kids in Queens, and he had a lot to protect back then. He had no way of knowing that everything would have turned out fine for him if he had just spoken to them, so yeah. He told them his name was Parker, and he lied about having a mother still around, and he hadn't felt like he was a shitty kid for that.

But he had felt sort of guilty about keeping it from the Bats, after they had more than shown to him that they weren't an enemy. He expected some kind of jab about it, but it hadn't come yet. Except maybe from Damian calling him a block-head when they were swinging around on Halloween.

(Maybe it'll still happen.)

"Don't mention it, Red Robin." Peter replies with a grin.

He eyes the crutches behind Tim, and the boot that's on his foot. He's not nearly as injured as Peter would have expected from that fiasco, which means that either Peter has been in a coma for months, or Tim wasn't as injured as he could have been. As if sensing Peter's worry, Tim sighs and assures Peter: "I'm okay, Peter. Just a broken foot. You made sure of that."

"So I didn't go into a coma?"

"What? No. You just passed out from exhaustion." Tim explains, waving off that concern. "Sure did give everyone a scare, though. It's amazing that you woke up literally right after Dick finally left your side. He's been hovering all day. He only left when I told him I'd take up his post."

"It's only been a day?" Peter chooses to focus on that, because if he thinks about how much he had worried everyone, especially Dick, he'll feel the need to throw up. And his headache doesn't allow for emotional vulnerability at the moment.

There's gentle footsteps in the hall outside the room, and Peter expects a visitor to enter. But they keep going past his door, down the hall. There's the softest sound of a door opening and closing.

"Technically." Tim shrugs. "We got back around 2AM, and you slept until…" Tim checks the watch on his wrist. "3PM."

"Oh." Peter thinks on that. "That's not bad at all."

It certainly isn't. Last night, he had felt like all of his muscles were way too light, like he'd float up into the sky. But right now, he feels… a little sore? Peter had never lifted that much weight before, so he knows his body probably wasn't ready for that. But he must have slept off most of the damage, because other than the headache, he feels fine. He's had worse happen to him- like sleeping off gunshots for a couple days, and falling out of the sky and having his back get fucked up.

The door in the hall opens again, and the person- it's a new person, someone Peter doesn't know, because their heartbeat is not familiar to him- walks back down this way. This time, Peter's spider-sense actually reacts to their presence as they near his door.

hello! old?

"Tell that to Alfie." Tim smiles knowingly.

"Mr. Pennyworth?" Peter asks, eyeing the door. watching says his spider-sense, and Peter glances at Tim to see the other boy blatantly staring at Peter as the door opens.

"Just Alfred, Master Peter." Mr. Pennyworth says as soon as he steps into the room.

Peter's never seen someone look so much like a cartoon character's inspiration than he has with this guy.

He's an older man that has a stern face, probably from years of not taking people's shit. He has a hooked nose and though he's bald at the top of his head, what hair he does have is perfectly white and well trimmed. He has a matching white mustache that could rival Gordon's, and he wears a tailored suit with a crisp black bow tie.

Despite looking like an orchestra conductor that runs his band like it's the military, Alfred's dark brown eyes crinkle when he walks up to stand next to the bed, setting a metal tray down on the covers. He looks like someone's grandpa that smiles with just his eyes- well, at least, a grandpa that has fought before. It's something about the way he carries himself, but Peter thinks that's what he's seeing… It's like the old man can't just turn it off, because he spent years in active combat. It's sort of how Peter sees Benny, or other veterans. Except Alfred is like… Like when Peter met Nick Fury.

Not to mention- Alfred is British. Yet another instance where Peter feels like he's stepped into a movie. He didn't think British people were real, either. (He's mostly kidding.)

"Hello, Mr. Alfred." Peter greets, unsure of what to make with a new person.

"Just Alfred." The man corrects again. "How are you feeling, Master Peter?"

"Like I got crushed by a building." Peter jokes, but when Alfred raises a brow, Peter replies more seriously. "Fine, sir. Just a little headache."

Tim snorts, and Peter glances suspiciously at him. Tim just shrugs, letting Peter know he's not gonna get to know what's so funny.

"That's good." Alfred turns his attention to the metal tray. There's some pain medication, a small device that looks like it's for taking blood pressure, and a grilled cheese sandwich with some kind of soup, along with a glass of water. "Your ability to heal is rather extensive. You had twisted your arm and sprained your shoulder, but it had fixed itself before I could examine it further. The same for the cut on your forehead. It had sealed itself back together while I was cleaning the wound."

"Yeah, that happens." Peter mumbles, not quite sure what to say.

"In the end, you just needed some fluids, a bath, and to sleep off the exhaustion. Your body was not prepared to carry that much weight. Likely from the malnutrition." Alfred lists off, and Tim claps his hands together, startling the both of them.

"That's my cue to leave." Tim says brightly. He collects the crutches and pulls himself out of the chair. He quickly reaches over the bed to mess up Peter's hair, and then does a whole show of using the crutches for as long as Alfred's eyes are on him. When Alfred looks away, Tim lets go of one of the crutches and shoots him a don't snitch look.

"See you in a little bit, Peter."

"Bye, Coupon."

Tim scoffs as the door closes, leaving him alone with Alfred.

Which is so suspicious, isn't it?

No doubt, he had a million questions for Peter. Such as: Why did Peter lie and run away from them for an entire month? That's just one of many he can think of at the top of his head. But he hadn't asked them even though he had the time to do so… which is confusing. Why wouldn't he? Actually, why weren't they all crowding his room demanding to know everything? He's pretty much a sitting duck for that kind of thing at the moment, in this big stupid huge bed that Peter will need a real compass and a map to navigate getting the hell out of later.

When Tim leaves, Alfred sighs like he's gone through too much in a short period of time. He pops open the medicine bottle, hands two to Peter, then he pauses. He decides to give him one more, then closes it up again. He must know about Peter's metabolism. Unlucky for them both, the pain medicine only might help with the headache, but it'll go away on it's own at some point.

"Thank you for helping me." Peter takes the medicine and downs it with a couple gulps of water.

"Of course, Master Peter." Alfred takes Tim's chair, sitting down next to him. The afternoon light drifting from the windows makes him look a little older, but nonetheless kind.

Peter tilts his head, smiling smally at the older man. It's such a ridiculous thing to be called, that Peter can't just not comment on it. "Do you really have to call me that? Do you work for Mr. Wayne?"

"I am his butler." Alfred replies to the second question first, and Peter glances around the big fancy room again. Butler… Tim had mentioned that before, hadn't he? "The title is the same for all of my charges."

"Say the word and I'll get you out of here, Mr. Alfred." Peter sets the water down on the tray, and Alfred's brows raise at him. "What? It must be an awful lot of work handling this family. You need a getaway, I got you."

"That is a generous offer, my dear boy, but I shall have to pass. And please, it is just Alfred." Alfred sounds almost amused, in a dry way. He doesn't smile, but he does have a crinkle around his eyes that feels like it. "Now, I must insist you eat. We will be having dinner later this evening, but I imagine you are hungry now."

Peter, indeed very hungry now that Alfred had pointed this out, pulls the tray onto his lap. Alfred sets aside the blood pressure machine on the nightstand, and Peter is about to compliment the amazing soup when Alfred continues speaking.

"Before I ask, I must tell you that what you say to me remains confidential." Oh boy, Peter knows a bad sign when he hears one. He has a cheek full of grilled cheese and can't cut in, so Alfred presses on unbothered. This was likely his plan to remain uninterrupted. "The others have medical files, all of which remain under my watch. They are able to be accessed by Master Bruce should the need arise, but otherwise, I am the sole person who can view them. However, for your case, I imagine you would not want prying eyes. That is alright with me. I shall not tell a soul, nor even write it down, if that is what you wish. But I do need to know your medical history, because while you are staying within this Manor or under any treatment of mine, I shall be taking part in the care of your health and recoveries. And I would like to be fully knowledgeable, so that I can provide my best assistance to you. Is all of this understood?"

Oh.

Peter looks down at his long sleeved shirt.

The idea that his clothes had been changed had made him sick not only because of the idea of being unclothed in front of someone, but also because there are scars there that Peter feels a… sort of shame about.

The spider bite that he received had given him an expert healing ability. Peter would have to be very, very damaged in order to have a scar remain. However, the scars that he had received before the bite stayed on his skin, and they are… not pretty. Faded, almost unnoticeable, really. And it's not like they're staying forever. He already knows that the smaller ones were healing over, making it appear as if nothing ever happened.

But they tell a lot about the kind of kid that Peter had been, and Peter doesn't like to think about that kid. He likes to think that he's an entirely different person than that one, now.

(He doesn't really think that.)

No doubt, Alfred had been the one to change him, and he had seen them. Not only that, but he mentioned malnutrition, which is something Peter has struggled with, and it means that Alfred had done some tests of some kind, or knows it when he sees it. Which means that lying? Not happening.

Not that Peter would lie about this anyway. It just seems like a silly thing to lie about. Alfred would figure it out either way.

(Who else saw the scars? Was it really just Alfred? Are the others going to know, and they just won't tell Peter?)

"Yes sir, I understand." Despite knowing all of that, his voice feels a little wobbly and quiet. It's been a while since he had to run through something like this. The doctor that he goes to is SHIELD fielded, so she knows a lot about mutants and super powered crazies, and she's seen the brunt of it. However, even she had a frown on her lips when Peter had to talk about his medical history with her.

He tries to start the same way he started with her.

"Um, I used to have asthma and needed glasses to see far away." Peter tells him, and Alfred nods to show he's listening. "But after the spider-bite, I didn't need them anymore. Sometimes my body will still think I do, though, and it can get hard to breathe. I broke my arm when I was three because I jumped off some steps. And I ate a penny and we never figured out if I, uh, passed that or not."

See, that's easier to tell someone. Silly, stupid little stories of him being reckless or a dumb kid. But what Peter doesn't think is relevant is what no longer affects him.

"Um, do I have to tell you everything, like, after I got my powers? Because with my healing, it doesn't really stick around…"

"Only what is still around." Alfred tells him, voice reassuring but leaving no room for confusion. "Not a soul, Master Peter. Just you and I. I need to know how to help you should the need arise. For anything."

It's a great offer. But Peter's skin itches thinking of the 'anythings' that he could tell Alfred.

It's not malicious compliance when Peter doesn't tell the older man everything. It's not, he knows that- because unless it's an injury that wasn't mended or hadn't scarred, he doesn't need to alert Alfred to it. So he doesn't tell Alfred about when he was ten and some concrete fell on him and broke his foot.

(The Battle of Manhattan took away his first foster family, and his parents' old storage unit. So Peter wouldn't get either a new family, or the pieces of his old one.)

He does explain away the five scars on his right arm:

"I got cigarette burns on my right arm when I was 11."

But he skips over the part of his life where his hands got dry and cracked from overusing hand sanitizer and washing his hands too often. And when he couldn't get to his inhaler and he had to go to the hospital.

(Kids slipped through the cracks after the Battle. So many people died, and so many others were left behind, and everyone was just desperate for a placement. Peter never got a normal house after that. It's just his luck.)

But there is another scar that he can't overlook, that he wishes would start to fade like the cigarette burns were. It's the same one that he hopes Dick will never ask him about. That he hopes no one will point out.

"And the scar on my neck is from a broken bottle."

His neck feels bare without a hoodie there to hide the scar, feels cold. He refuses to reach his hand up to touch it out of habit. Peter hadn't looked at Alfred at all while he spoke. He chose to stare at the food and eat, trying not to think about how it happened or who gave it to him-

Get out of that house he's gonna kill me he's gonna kill me he's gonna kill me he's gonna kill me

-because if he does, he'll start to get angry and he only just woke up and everything is fine, now. Everything is fine. He's not the same kid anymore, because of what happened after.

Peter flexes his right hand again, where those two little dots that changed his life for the better sit on his skin.

"I was bitten by a genetically modified spider when I was 12." Peter says, and this time he actually looks at Alfred. The man has not made any indication, really, that he felt sick or hated the thought of Peter's old injuries, nor did he look like he was casting pity onto him. He just… looked like he was there. That he was listening.

"It genetically modified me as well, when it bit me. So I'm sort of human, sort of spider, now. I'm allergic to citrus fruits, vinegar, peppermint, tea tree, lavender, rose, cinnamon, and conkers. I can go into a sort of anaphylactic shock. I'm… slightly radioactive. Because that spider was, not all spiders. Just that one… Radioactive." Peter starts to ramble, and he has to pull it back before he goes off on a tangent. "Also, um, there was an, um, incident. Where someone injected me multiple times with a serum that was supposed to make me into a super soldier but it was defective and would have killed me if my metabolism hadn't eaten it up. But it did make me super sick every time and then for a couple months afterwards, and we don't know if that had any lasting effects on me or not."

The older man taps a finger on the arm rest of the chair. Peter doesn't need his spider-sense to tell him just how intently Alfred was listening, because it's plain as day in the way he observes Peter. He braces for questions pressing that issue-

He doesn't wanna remember that it hurt so bad let's not talk about it-

-but instead, Alfred reiterates, "Your strength, agility, and durability has increased since the spider bite."

"Yes sir?"

"But it is not as strong as it could be." Alfred tells him. Peter had heard something similar form his doctor back home, so he's not that surprised. "Is this because you have not been eating well this past month that you have been in Gotham, or is there a history of malnutrition?"

"…Both?" Peter guesses is the correct thing to say, and Alfred waits for him to continue. "Benny feeds me a lot, but it's not as much as I really need to eat. And I, uh, used to not have access to meals," Peter doesn't know if dropping the 'I was homeless when I was 12' is something he's ready to talk about just yet. "-so I was eating about once or twice a day for about two years. We think I need to eat about five meals a day, but since it's not as practical time wise, I eat snacks and bigger proportions during meal times."

"How long has it been since you started eating as much as you were supposed to, and how long have you been in Gotham and had to eat less?"

Huh. That sounds suspiciously close to an innocent question that really asks him about his past. Alfred doesn't back down if he can tell Peter is suspicious.

Ugh, whatever. He knows he's gonna be honest and tell them shit anyway, so they're the ones who would be weird if they got the old guy to interrogate him.

"I've been eating regular meals for about 11 months, and I've been in Gotham for one month."

It's like he's checked off a box on Alfred's list, because the man nods and then grabs the blood pressure machine on the table without continuing on that. He stands up from the chair and Peter holds out his arm for him to wrap it around his arm. As Alfred turns the machine on, Peter decides it's his turn to ask his questions.

"Mr. Alfred?"

"Just Alfred, Master Peter."

"Mr. Alfred," Peter restates, because as long as Alfred is calling him that, Peter is calling him Mr. He'll wear the guy down eventually, he thinks. "There's a distinct lack of Waynes in this room asking me a million questions."

"How perceptive of you."

"Is that because you asked them not to?"

"Of course, Master Peter." Alfred replies easily, pulling out a notepad to scribble down the numbers on the machine. "Who do you think runs this house?"

"So that's why you don't need a getaway." Peter looks down at the machine again. It's not SHIELD or Stark tech, but it's managing to actually pinch his skin in order to get a reading. This can't be for the Bats, they're all human… as far as he can tell. They aren't secretly vampires, right? Jason had gotten offended about that vampire conversation they had… But they have heart beats?

hello! hello! hi!

Peter strains his ear to listen for the heavy boot steps that are coming closer.

"What are you thinking that causes such a face?" Alfred unclips the device when the machine turns off. He tucks the notebook into his suit pocket and gestures to the plate. "Don't let your food get cold, now."

"Oh, right." Peter picks up the grilled cheese as the door to the room opens. "Are any of the Waynes part of the undead?"

"Excuse me?"

Peter is mid bite when Jason closes the door behind him, a conflicting series of emotions all over his face. He leans back against the door for a second, then crosses over to stand at the foot of the bed, hands in his jeans pockets. Peter sits up straighter to greet him, grinning and putting one hand up to hide his mouth as he says, "Jafon!"

"Don't chew and speak."

"Please swallow your food before speaking, Master Peter."

The two of them correct at the same time. Peter snorts a little because Jason, despite looking and acting nothing like Alfred, had sounded just like him. Jason shakes his head, observing Peter closely.

"Tim said you were up, so I figured I'd come check on you." Jason crosses his arms. "You feeling alright?"

Peter glances at Alfred, sensing that if he tried the hilarious joke that didn't work on Alfred, on Jason, while Alfred is still in the room, it would cause another eyebrow raise. "I'm fine. Right, Mr. Alfred?"

"Just Alfred, Master Peter." He turns to Jason, now. "If you are here, Master Jason, then I will leave him with you. When he finishes his plate, do let me know." Alfred tells him. When he passes by Jason, he pats the man's shoulder. Jason nods like he's been given a super serious job.

"Alright, Alfie."

"Thanks again, Mr. Alfred."

"Just Alfred, Master Peter." Alfred repeats himself.

"We'll work on it." Peter sighs.

Jason huffs out a half-laugh at that as Alfred exits, crossing over to take the chair next to Peter's bed. "You might as well give up now, kid. Not even Dickie could wear him down on that. And he has puppy dog eyes that have worn down the government and the occasional crime lord."

Peter tilts his head. "Are you the 'occasional crime lord'?"

Jason doesn't reply. Instead, he starts digging into his pocket. "I found something of yours while I was helping out with the relief effort in the apartment complex."

Peter takes the tattered red and black mask from Jason.

His Spider-Man mask is ripped into two halves. One side is covered in blood, the eye lens missing completely. The other half has a cracked lens, the eye looking up at him, dusty and old looking.

The first Spider-Man outfit had been a hoodie with a sharpied on spider-symbol, sweatpants, his sneakers, a black face mask, gloves, and a pair of black goggles. They were what he fished out of dumpsters and lost and founds and from a school that he didn't attend. It was a shitty hero costume, but it had meant a lot to Peter. He still keeps that old suit in his wardrobe back home, in a box that Pepper had gotten for him when she saw he was just keeping it on the bottom of the wardrobe.

"To preserve it." She had said, showing him how it locks. "Until you get your own place to display it like Tony does with his suits."

"You think I'll display it?"

"Of course, Peter." She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "When you're older and you have had a bunch of suits, it would be nice to look back on a few of the designs. Everyone else will have pictures, but you'll have the progress right in front of you."

This was his first mask that Tony showed him how to make. It was much better than some blacked out goggles that dulled his senses for him. It was his first real suit, one that made him look like a professional. And it was one of the only things that he had from his home universe. The mask is probably the one part of his costume that means the most to him. It's the identity he puts on to help people, to be stronger.

"I can throw it out, if you don't want it." Jason sounds hesitant. Peter looks up, a range of emotions hitting him all at once.

"No, I- I want it." Peter grins, setting the mask down on his lap. "I'll just have to make a new one. I kind of wanted to try something different with it anyways. Thanks for grabbing this for me."

Jason nods, but he still looks a little uncomfortable. "No problem, kid."

"Guess I'll just rock a domino mask for a little while." Peter tries for some light hearted humor, and Jason tries to smile like he's accepting that, but it falls just flat enough in the silence that Peter thinks something else has to be going on.

Tim had addressed it, somewhat, but they hadn't talked about the Spider-Man thing. And now, here's Jason doing something similar. Peter wants them to just hurry up and ask, because he has been prepped for this for at least a week now. Jason leans on the arm rest like he's trying to be relaxed, but his shoulders are tense and his grin doesn't exactly reach his eyes. It falls away before it could even try to look real.

"You're sure you're fine?"

"Yeah, I'm all good. Didn't they tell you?" Peter wonders. "I just over exerted myself with the building. I can sleep off pretty much anything. And eat it away, too."

That manages to crack a grin on Jason's face. He scoffs, leaning back in the chair and finally managing to relax just a little bit. "Yeah, I heard about your metabolism from Alfie. Get ready, kid, because you've never had a meal plan like his. Hell know if you skipped a meal or ate what you weren't supposed to."

"What am I not supposed to?"

"Fast food. Burgers. Pizza." Jason starts to list off, and Peter's eyes widen.

"What?"

"Forget about anything deep fried that he didn't make himself. I'm pretty sure Dickhead and Tim have a snack stash somewhere that they aren't sharing with everyone else. Hey, you're not a sugar-fiend, are you? 'Cause Dick is, and Alfie already has enough problems with keeping him from consuming diabetes in a box."

"Please tell me if I crave a burger you'll save me." Peter is seriously considering that might be what manages to keep him away. No burgers? One would think he'd get tired of burgers, but something about his diet craves it. He gets burgers all the time while living at Benny's. He's gonna go through withdrawal!

"Hell no, Itsy Bitsy, you're on your own. I am not risking Alfie's disappointment."

"Please?" Peter begs. "I'll be your best friend forever!"

"Yeah, because being best friends with a 14 year old looks great on me."

"You hate me." Peter sighs, pulling out his secret weapon: his saddest face ever. Bucky described it once as 'like kicking a puppy.' "You hate me and for what? I didn't even do anything!"

Jason fully turns around in the chair to look out the windows behind him. "Wow, would you look at that? The sun is actually out. Never thought I'd see the day."

"Coward." Peter says, but it has no bite to it.

"It's called being smart." Jason taps his temple when he halfway turns around. "…Have you stopped pulling the face?"

"Why? Was it working?"

"Not even a little bit."

Peter huffs, swirling his spoon around in the soup while Jason turns around fully again.

… He tried to be patient, but it's still nagging at him.

Tim and Jason are both sort of dancing around the part where they ask their questions and get their answers. It can't just be because of Alfred telling them not to, can it? Didn't Tim say that Dick had been here, but he had just left? Where did he go? Peter doesn't know what to do with himself when he's the one with more questions, it makes him feel lost. He thought he'd be answering and explaining…

He also thought he wouldn't be at Wayne Manor, but that part was wrong. Maybe this is how it normally is for them, and he got that all wrong? They just asked him so many questions before knowing his identity that it feels like they would have even more now. And the main culprit for that isn't even here at the moment.

"Tim said Dick was here?"

Jason chews his bottom lip, shifting in his seat uncomfortably. He clears his throat before he speaks. "Yeah, he was. He stayed with you pretty much the entire time, but he had some stuff to take care of, so he asked Tim to be here if you woke up while he was out. He'll be back in a little bit to bother you."

"He's not a bother." Peter manages a grin.

"Trust me, when he gets back, you're gonna get sick of the hovering. 'Peter, do you want water?' 'Kiddo, you want another five pillows?' 'Want me to steal Bruce's card and buy you an ice cream shop, bud?'" Jason sounds like he's speaking from harrowing-but-not-really-experience, a fond smile on his face like he's pulling all of the examples out of a couple memories.

"When do you think he's gonna be back?"

"Uh, well, he's… Getting some paperwork done." Jason runs a hand through his hair.

"…Paperwork?"

"Yeah, just some stuff, not really important." Jason then glances at him, and he adds on quickly: "I mean- It is important, because otherwise he'd be here. 'Cause you're important too."

It's like he's trying to save face, but for why, Peter is genuinely lost on.

"Riiiight…" Peter says slowly. He thinks he stepped on a conversation bomb. In the time he's known Jason, he's never seen him act so skittish, like he doesn't know what to say, so he's skirting around the topic. "That's alright. I just feel bad I passed out on him."

"He's had crazier shit happen to him, trust me on that one. He's just glad you're alright. We all are." Jason is rubbing his hands together awkwardly, and he looks around the room in search of something to say. "Don't worry about it, 'kay? He'll be back soon."

"…If you say so."

There's another few seconds of silence between them. Peter doesn't know what Jason is feeling, but Peter is feeling like Jason is waiting for something to happen. Or like he knows something, but he doesn't want to say it.

"Jason?"

"Yeah?" Jason looks back at him.

"Is everything alright?" Peter has to ask, because his mind is coming up with worst case scenarios and man it would suck if he had ended up being wrong about these guys. Like, it would majorly suck. Peter doesn't want to go into hiding and have to try and catch Ohnn to stop him from tearing apart the multiverse.

Jason stares at him, his lips pressing into a thin line as he contemplates what to say. It feels like a bad sign, so Peter prepares himself for the worst. He can almost feel the 'we don't want you here' about to fall out of the guy's mouth, and Peter will have to leave but would he be able to go back to Benny's or would they chase him out of Gotham-?

"I'm not gonna lie to you." Jason says, and Peter winces as he braces for impact. Jason pauses, just staring at him like Peter had said something.

He waits for Jason to say something, anything, but it doesn't come. He just furrows his brow, eyes zoned in like Peter's a puzzle that is concerning him. He finds himself speaking before he can make himself stop. But hey, humor is his best coping mechanism.

"…Are you about to cut to commercial break or something? 'Cause I don't have the money to pay for ad-free bad news."

"What? No, no." Jason sighs and puts his head in his hands. "No, Peter, it's not bad news. On your part. You did nothing wrong, okay?"

"Oh."

"I don't like that you're a vigilante."

"Wow. Okay," Peter ignores that that feels like a stab to the chest. Because holy shit, the one guy that Peter thought was the chillest out of all of them despite possibly(?) being a murderer that Peter thought was pretty cool just told him that the most key part of who he is is not approved of. "Sure sounds like I did something wrong."

"That came out wrong. It's- It's complicated. You're a kid." Jason says, his voice harrowed. He picks his head up to look him in the eyes, and it's the most serious Peter has seen him. "Just- tell me that Tony isn't the reason?"

Peter doesn't understand, but it sounds like this is super important to him. Like the idea that Tony could be the reason Peter is Spider-Man makes him sick to his stomach. Peter's mind flashes with the Robin List he had read about, what felt like years ago, and how some of the Robins had short tenures. Like the second Robin, who had only four or five years before disappearing.

It had been a lot to process, the day he got here, so it was enough at the time to try and remember their names. But now, Peter wonders if there's something more to the Robins and Batman that has Jason so worried. Did they lose someone?

He knows that a lot of people don't like the idea of kids as vigilantes or superheroes, but Peter hasn't been a kid in a very, very long time. Peter can't imagine himself putting down the mask, because Spider-Man helps people. That's all Peter has ever wanted: to do right by Uncle Ben and Aunt May, and what they taught him.

"He's not." Peter says it like it's a promise. "Not at all. I was bitten by a spider when I was twelve. I met Tony when I was thirteen. Tony doesn't even know a lot about it, just that it happened. I became Spider-Man on my own because I wanted to help people like I hadn't been able to help others that I cared about. I'm trying to follow what my Uncle Ben taught me. I have the ability to help others with these powers that I have, and what kind of person would I become if I didn't choose to do that?"

"And how does Tony feel about it?"

"He'd like it if I stopped. But he doesn't try to stop me because he knows that I'd just keep doing it anyway. I'm sorry," Peter just can't seem to get it in his mind what the hell Jason could be on about. "-did you guys think Tony was making me-?"

hello! hi friend!

Peter cuts himself off, glancing at the door. Jason does too, but he quirks a brow when he doesn't see anyone. "You alright?"

The door swings open as an answer. Tim is leaning on one crutch, phone in hand. He observes the two of them for a second before nodding to Jason. "Hey, B wants us downstairs for something real quick before dinner."

Jason hesitates, mouth open like he wants to say something, but he decides against it. He grunts as he pushes himself out of the chair. Like his brother, he reaches over to mess with Peter's hair as a way to say goodbye. Peter is about to protest, because hello? Jason can't just leave without at least clarifying what they were thinking? Why does it feel like Peter is the one who wants to have this conversation now, and they don't?

But Jason tells him, "Your Uncle Ben sounds like a good guy." And the protests fall silent.

He does glare at the door, however, when it shuts and he's alone again.

They bring him all the way here but then don't want to talk to him? It sounds so stupid that it can't be the case. It feels like he's out of the loop, and boy, does Peter hate being out of the loop. That bug inside his brain that refuses to let adults have all the say in what he does and where he goes and who he goes with and what he's allowed to know is screaming at him right now that he needs to figure it out. What happened while he was asleep that made them hold back on this conversation?

He looks down at the lunch tray in his lap. Jason and Tim are keeping something from him, he hasn't seen any of the others. Dick is 'filling out paperwork' which sounds like an excuse to hide something that he's really doing. Is it because he's a teenager? Or they think he can't handle it? Is it because he passed out? He's not a damn baby, he can handle the hard shit.

He can't help but think that if Damian were here, he'd at least be honest with Peter.

And then he thinks: If I were talking to Damian.

…He's at Damian's house.

Peter's own brilliance strikes him sometimes. He can be so stupid one second and startlingly bright the next. He pulls back the heavy covers off of him and slips out of the bed. If he wants to talk to Damian, it looks like he's going to have to find him.

-

"How in the world are you going to break it to Wally that you stole a kid?"

"I didn't steal Peter." Dick defends himself immediately, because hello?? He thought they were on the same page on this one, and Duke is being so rude right now. "I don't steal kids. It's like a rehoming."

"Don't say it like that. I'd prefer if you stole him."

"I didn't steal him!"

"Yeah, Duke," Steph spins idly in her chair across from Dick as he continues signing his name. "It's not stealing if it belongs to you."

Dick raises a brow, but Stephanie doesn't elaborate what she meant. He shakes his head and looks back down at the adoption papers in front of him. He still has half of a packet to get through, and this is just for the paperwork that they have. He still will have an entire process of paperwork to get through to legally get Peter as his, once the DNA test is done and they can finally figure out where the kid came from. Peter being honest with them once he wakes up would also be nice.

Not that Dick is complaining. This is exactly what he wanted in the first place. But it's confusing that Bruce hadn't suggested anything but supporting Dick, instead of throwing out there about Dick not being ready to be a parent, or whatever other nonsense he could figure out so that he'd be able to adopt Peter instead.

In fact, Bruce has been worryingly laid-back about this.

It's eating away at Dick and making it hard to focus. Because Dick has never, not once, seen Bruce be 'laid-back' about something this important. He's not even hovering over Dick's shoulder to see him do the paperwork and point out something he should be reading but he skimmed over. Bruce is sitting next to Tim and talking to him while they both look at the Batcomputer screen together, in low, hushed voice that make Dick think that he should be over there with them. Right now, the computer is sequencing Peter's DNA in every database they have, and they're all waiting for the results with a sort of tension in the Cave that feels like waiting for a gavel to drop.

Dick looks back at the papers. The papers look up at him. The words swim in his vision, and he closes his eyes for a brief moment. He's been up long enough that his brain feels like mush at this point.

Whatever they find, he just hopes that Peter is okay with this- the adoption. Or, not an adoption, adoption, at the moment. It's the process of starting that.

Because, well, depending on how long Peter is with them, as Waynes, the public will find out eventually. And they're going to need a story. Dick is more than sure that he wants to be the one taking care of Peter, but what if Peter isn't okay with that?

Peter loves Tony, even if they're all very sure that Tony doesn't love Peter. They still don't even know if Tony is his foster dad or… God, don't get him started on the possible 'Tony is a God' thing. The first thing Tim said when he woke up and saw Dick earlier was "By the way" and it never comes with anything good, if Tim is starting off a sentence like that. Because it means he found something and he hadn't told you yet.

Tony? A God? Dick doesn't even know where to begin on that. He doesn't think that Tony being a God makes any more sense of the situation. All he knows is that Tony doesn't need to have anything to do with the kid, and even if it makes Dick the bad guy in Peter's eyes, Peter is not going back to that shitbag.

But yeah… He knows it's probably wrong to even start filling out the paperwork without talking to Peter and asking him if that's okay, but they do need to start on it. He just won't finish or turn anything in until he gets a chance to ask Peter if that's alright.

(The being adopted by Dick thing. Dick thinks that if he heard Peter doesn't want him to be in his life like that, it'd be the equivalent of getting hit by a high speed Batmobile. But if that's the case, Dick will get up on broken bones and personally pick out a number of options for Peter to find a home with. Because Tony is not home.)

God, and he needs to tell Wally.

Duke pointed it out, as if Dick hadn't been fretting about it on his own, the weight growing heavier every time he writes his signature down.

It's not that Wally and Dick are together, together. They haven't had that conversation yet, they were just trying to let it develop naturally. Dick is… flighty, nowadays, when it comes to relationships, because of… just. Everything. He hadn't tried for a relationship in a long while, now, because the idea of someone getting that close again made his skin burn. But Wally is Wally, and this is something neither of them considered until they were both drunk at Dick's house and talking about how much they cared about each other, and Dick was dealing with the aftermath of being Batman while Bruce was gone and-

Yeah.

They sort of starting drifting towards each other in a way that was way more than friends (but honestly, hadn't felt that different from how they were before, and that's a little scary to think about). And of course, his family noticed before Dick and Wally could really talk about it again. Of course, they were gonna ask about this, about how Wally might fit into this picture.

They just don't know that Wally has been so busy lately back home these last two months that he and Dick haven't spoken much since then. Sure, they send messages to each other and they make sure the other is alive and doing okay despite the workload increasing, but other than that, it's been hard to pick up the phone. Dick too, has felt like he's carrying too much on his shoulders in both Bludhaven and Gotham, and now he's imagining telling Wally that in the time they haven't been able to catch up, he acquired a kid and started looking for a house.

It's a lot to process. It's a lot to think about telling Wally when they only just started considering a real relationship. It's a lot to think about a house where Wally and Dick and Damian and Peter live together like some kind of movie, because it's that surreal to think Dick could be that happy.

But… In the end, Dick knows that Peter needs someone, and if that puts everything else on hold, he'll be fine with it. He'd make that decision a hundred times over if he had to.

Dick looks back over at the computer, trying to focus on the papers but finding it to be increasingly difficult. Not just because Steph is watching him fill the papers out like she's a hawk ready to swoop in with a joke and Duke is playing a video game next to him and the beeping is starting to get to him, but also because he knows something is up.

Jason and Babs have been skirting around an idea they had about Peter. Tim wouldn't talk to him about his thoughts on Bruce and Peter after the Two-Face incident, and he had that look in his eye like he had something figured out. Bruce gave up too easily.

Bruce gave up too easily.

It's that part that hits him the most. He just keeps returning to the moment where Damian had been resting on Dick's shoulder at the breakfast table, half asleep, and Bruce had been the one to bring up getting the papers for Dick.

Why? Kept spinning around his head as he watched Bruce sip his coffee. Why did you do that?

Dick knows when he's being kept out of the loop. It's had him stepping back to see the entirety of Peter's case, to figure out what he could be missing that everyone else saw. At first, he thought it was Peter being Spider-Man. But now?

He knows how close he's getting to the answer. It sits there at the edge of his mind, waiting for him to pick it up and examine it. He doesn't know if he wants to think it, to accept it, in case it happens to be the wrong idea. But… He keeps going back to it, dancing on the edge precariously.

Last night had been a mix of frantic panic and a silence that hung over the Manor.

When Peter passed out, they brought him back to the Cave and Alfred declared that only Dick could be in the room. The others had to go get their own injuries checked out by each other or go see Leslie, and no one argues with Alfred. The worry they had for Peter was subdued when Alfred closed the curtains and got to work. When Peter was properly assessed as 'fine and needing rest' they set him up in the room that they had decided would be Peter's.

Alfred had ordered the rest of them to get some rest. Again: no one argues with Alfred. Tim had been exhausted and given pain medication for his broken foot, so he actually did pass out. Bruce had tried to stay up to talk to Dick, but he was injured and he didn't have the heart to protest when Jason pulled the 'Old Man' nickname out.

It meant that no one had the opportunity to test Peter's DNA, and so the Manor was quiet. For some reason, it reminded Dick of the period of his life when Bruce had taken him in. Dick stayed in the chair next to Peter's bed, the clock ticking out in the hall and Peter breathing softly in his sleep.

He couldn't stop thinking about what he was missing.

Every glimpse he had of Peter as Spider-Man, working triage and getting people evacuated, made it clear that Peter had been trained for this, or at least had been doing this for a while. He worked faster than the rest of them, evacuating the most people out of the building. Several of them would have died if Peter hadn't been there to fish them out of the rubble and get them to someone. But no matter how efficient Peter or Tim or Damian or any of the others are, Dick will always feel a gripping fear when he hears they've gotten hurt.

He felt that fear when he heard Peter and Tim were injured in the attack. Of course Peter had also been the type to keep going despite that. Dick had felt useless in that moment, when he pulled the destroyed building apart to get to them. It was all Dick could do to help Peter put the building down, to be there and take care of him in the aftermath.

The fear hadn't gone away like he hoped it would, not until he was sitting by Peter's side while the kid was fine and asleep (just asleep, it's not like what happened to Jason, because Dick was there and Peter is okay).

When the fear wore off, Dick couldn't stop thinking about how Peter looked so much like him when he wore that domino mask.

It struck him so violently, that thought, and he's still struggling to let it go now. It could mean nothing, it could just be a similarity. (Peter has Dick's mother's eyes. He has her eyes and is it in the same way that Peter's smile looks like his?) But at the same time, coincidences don't play nice in Gotham. A coincidence always turns out to be something more, something hard to hold onto in the struggle. This thought is dangerously close to what Dick thinks the others were trying not to let him know. It explains why everyone is in the Cave together, hovering around him in particular, and not off doing their own things.

It's not stealing if it belongs to you.

Please, please, please don't let this be what Dick thinks it is.

Jason sets down a mug of coffee next to him. The clink of the cup on the glass catches his attention, and Dick tears his eyes away from the computer to look at his little brother. Jason avoids his gaze as he takes the seat next to Dick.

"Kid asked about you."

The guilt feels like a slap in the face. He'd wanted to be there when Peter woke up, because he feels shitty that Peter didn't get a choice to come with them after all that work they put in to give him that choice. There's a reason Tim wasn't allowed to go to Peter's room at Benny's and try to find DNA- Dick trying to teach them boundaries, and he had a feeling the kid would 100% know if someone went snooping around his room.

(He knows Tim tried anyway. Malicious compliance that is Dick's fault. He said 'don't go snooping in Peter's room to get the DNA.' Instead, Tim tried to get it at Batburger, but Peter took his trash with him.)

Steph rolls her eyes at him. "Don't make the saddest face in the world over that. He's literally fine. You'll see him before dinner, I bet."

Jason grunts, which isn't a good sign at all. "You look like Peter is not fine." Dick points out.

"He is. He's eating, he has a joke with Alfie already, all you can ask for in a healthy, fine kid."

"What did he say? You know what, never mind." Dick stands up from his seat. "I'll just go ask him. I should have been up there anyway. You said he's eating? Do you think he's still hungry? I have snacks he might like- don't tell Alfie."

"Dickhead, maybe finish up your paperwork? I told him you'd come see him when you're done." Jason taps the papers. Dick bites down a protest. He wants to go see Peter now, not wait to finish up paperwork he could do later. The kid asked about him, he should be there! What if he feels bad that Dick isn't there with him?

But Jason shoots him another look, probably a reminder that Dick needs to be down here, because Jason might be chill with B at the moment, but Peter is a point of contention after Bruce's stunt, and Dick needs to know what they know. It's a lot for one look, but they're experts at reading each other by now. So instead of leaving, Dick sits back down in his chair and starts signing a little too aggressively on the paper.

"Is the DNA sequence almost done?" Duke asks, still focused on his video game.

"Hey, Boyfie!" Steph shouts suddenly, startling the table. Dick's signature on this page comes out wobbly. "What's it at now?"

"95%." Tim replies from over his shoulder. "Some of the readings are already processed. Does anyone want to guess how radioactive he is?"

scratch!

Dick's signature stops midway, a line chopping through the words above it. Jason winces. Dick's eyes snap up to look at Tim. "What did you just say?"

"Oh, boy, I love this game!" Steph hums, tapping a finger on her chin. "Humans have about 7,400 becquerels, right?"

"We are not playing this game!" Dick stands up from the table and makes his way over to the computer. He leans over Tim's shoulder, the other boy pulls back to give Dick a better view of the screen, covering his mouth with one hand awkwardly.

It's the usual testing that they do for everyone. From what Dick can see, there's not a lot to be worried about at the moment. He has decreased nutrient levels that no doubt, Alfred already spotted and is working on creating a meal plan for. But it is concerning to see that Peter appears to be slightly more radioactive than the typical person. He supposes that it's not a harmful amount, but still, weird.

"The spider that bit him must have been radioactive." Tim says, massaging his right hand while deep in thought. He and Bruce are looking at another screen above the one Dick is looking at. "But look at the genetic mutation in this sequence. There's spider DNA embedded into his. There's probably more to his powers than we've gotten to see."

"I thought the whole 'Spider-Man' thing cleared that up." Steph comments. "Spider. Man. Sounds pretty simple."

"He's definitely not a meta. He doesn't have the gene." Bruce sighs, leaning back into his chair. He looks exhausted, unable to look away from the data. "I'm worried about where he received the mutation."

"Do we think someone experimented on him?" Tim asks.

God, experimentation. With all the shit that Dick sees, he wonders if there's ever going to be a time that he actually gets ambivalent to hearing something like that. A part of him doesn't want to feel that ache of never-ending sorrow for others, but a bigger part of him doesn't want to lose it, and is maybe terrified that the day could come. The idea that someone could have done something like that to Peter makes his blood boil-

"Do we think Tony did it?" Steph asks. The reminder of Tony's existence sparks a bigger frustration in his chest, and before he can comment on if that is the case, he'll definitely make Tony regret it, Jason speaks up.

"No, we don't."

Everyone looks at him, surprised. Jason has his arms crossed, head leaned back to look at the cave ceiling. He's not angry, but he too looks tired.

"We don't?" Tim raises a brow, asking for the clarification without asking.

"I asked him." Jason says, and Dick hats that he tenses up, just a little. It's hard knowing that shit like this triggers Jason, but they can't do anything about it. Jason, for his part, doesn't act like he's pissed about the world or at Bruce, which is relief. "He told me Tony had nothing to do with it, they met after he got bit."

"And when was that?" Bruce asks.

"He said he was twelve when it happened, and he met Tony when he was thirteen."

"Wait, are we talking about Tony now?" Steph cuts in. "Because I still don't believe that Tony is a God and Peter's foster dad. Ugh, can we just bring Peter down here already so we can ask him?"

Honestly, Dick agrees. They could speculate all they want, but they'll only know the truth when Peter tells them. The kid is awake and might be willing to talk, so he knows that's what they need to do. But then his mind flashes with the look of Peter in that domino, and again how everyone seems to suspect something but won't tell him, and how Bruce had given up just a little too fast… His mind circles back to that thought that he's scared to pick up.

The computer alerts to a finished process.

Tim and Bruce look first. Dick tries to look, but his body is frozen. It's not until Tim sucks in a breath and says, "Shit." that Dick gets the courage to look at the screen, where the DNA results are waiting for him.

PETER 'GRAYSON'

UNKNOWN MATCHES TO ANY RECORDS

POSSIBILITY OF PARENTAGE:

Richard John Grayson- 99.999%

Alessandra Martina Romano-Esposito- 99.999%

It's not stealing if it belongs to you.

-

Wayne Manor is weird as shit.

Peter stares at the wall in front of him, offended by it's mere existence. He's on the third floor now, and at this point, he has concluded that Wayne Manor isn't just difficult to navigate, but it's also full of secrets that he so wants to uncover.

His Not-His-Room had been on the second floor, and that's where it appears everyone else has their bedrooms as well. When Peter had walked out, he had not been met with a hallway like expected, but a sitting room. He should iterate that he seriously thought those didn't actually exist. The sitting room was connected to two mystery bedrooms like his own- Peter had knocked on a few of the doors down there, but he hadn't gone snooping through them, or anything.

When he left that sitting room, he had discovered that he was right to assume that the Wayne's are like, rich rich. He walked out onto a balcony that opened up to look over a huge grand hall. It made everything feel open but also closed off, because there are so. Many. Doors. Like, an absurd amount. In this one square shaped section of the second floor, there was a lot to even look for.

There were staircases to his immediate left that went either up towards where he thinks are the master bedrooms, or down to the Hall. But instead of going downstairs, he first went to investigate if anyone was in the other bedrooms or sitting rooms. There are two more sitting rooms, that lead to three bedrooms that connect to them, just like the room Peter had been in. All of them were empty.

One of the doors had been open and looked right into what he thinks is Coupon's sitting room, because there was the scraps of a robot on the ground. One door in that shared sitting room had yellow sign with Duke's name on it, and the third had a poster of some rock band he's never heard of. The room with the radio going had been leading down to a hallway full of spare bedrooms, and it sort of smelled like there were guns nearby, so he thinks it could be Jason's?

There was a locked bedroom door in one of the sitting rooms, and his spider-sense told him it hadn't been touched in a long time. There was nothing to tell Peter that anyone was around, so he decided to continue his search by choosing to go up the stairs, past the master bedrooms, and to the third floor. His spider-sense had told him that there was some kind of movement up there.

Which leads to now.

He's gone through most of the third floor, and he's starting to get pissed off. Because he knows he can hear a hollowness to the walls in some places that scream "secret room" and Peter is entirely forgetting what he was doing because of it.

It's a secret fucking room! Hello?? Who the hell cares about answering their dumb questions when there's secret passages everywhere? Peter is half expecting to find a library, pull down a specific book, and find the entrance to the secret room that way. All he keeps coming across are music rooms or what look like old offices, or empty rooms that no one has touched in a while.

"Meow?"

"I know it's here." Peter says. The black and white tuxedo cat that Peter found chilling on a window a few minutes ago sits next to him, his tail flicking with idle curiosity. It's been following him around since then.

Peter crouches down to the ground to look the cat in the eyes. "You wouldn't happen to know if there's a vase I gotta pick up to get inside that passage, right?"

"Meow."

"Hm." Peter nods. "Alright, keep your secrets. I'll figure it out soon enough."

The cat does not say anything back this time.

"They don't call me Spider-Detective for nothing." Peter stands back up. He rubs his chin like they do in the movies, and in his mind he has one of those dorky hats and a big coat on. "Well, no one calls me that. But they would if I had a magnifying glass."

"Meow."

"You get it."

He rubs his hands together as he makes his way down the hall, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious looking. Oh, and for Damian. He almost forgot about that part. The cat slinks along next to him, rubbing on the legs of fancy wooden tables with probably-super-expensive-and-fragile antiques on them.

It's weird that a whole bunch of people live in this house (he thinks) and he hasn't seen anyone but this cat around since earlier. Maybe he should have just gone after Jason and Tim and demanded to be involved. But that felt like whining, and Peter doesn't do shit like that.

He opens one of the big doors to peek inside one room, and he pauses.

It's a dancing studio. On the other side from the door, there are floor to ceiling windows, the afternoon light spilling in. To the right there is a wall of mirrors, and all around the room are support bars about waist-high. It's empty, save for a water bottle that has condensation, and someone's phone. The cat walks over to the bottle and licks some of the water drops.

"Meow."

"You're right, Cat Watson." Peter says. "Someone's been here recently."

He steps into the room, looking around another time. He might as well just wait for them to come back. No one leaves their phone somewhere if they aren't gonna come back soon to get it. The cat seems to get the idea that they're chilling in here, because he flops onto Peter's feet and gives him an expectant look.

"Aw, who's the cutest little guy ever?" Peter coos, scratching at the cat's chin. The cat closes his eyes and starts to purr. "You're so sweet. Nothing like my nemesis, Sprinkles."

The cat purrs as Peter sits down fully on the ground. The cat apparently likes when Peter uses both hands to manhandle his face, cause it keeps shoving itself forward for Peter to do it again. He pulls back his hands to squish him a little, snorting at the face he's making.

"That cat hates me. I didn't even do anything wrong. I save him from a tree pretty much every Thursday because I can't say no to his owner. She's a little girl named Amanda, and I'm not a monster, so of course I say yes every time. Even though Sprinkles is a demon from hell and has earned his right to be an outdoor, feral cat."

The cat doesn't care about Peter's ramblings. He climbs over Peter's lap, meowing loudly when Peter stops to brush his own hair out of his face.

"Demanding little guy, aren't you?" Peter continues petting. The cat is content with that, and he is pretty damn cute, so he supposes he'll just have to die here if that's what it wants.

hello!

Peter looks up at the door, only to find someone standing a couple feet away.

He freezes. The cat protests this, pushing it's head into Peter's hand. He tries to pet like normal, but he's so surprised that he forgets how to move his hands. The woman that entered the room has the bottle and the phone in her hands, head tilted to the side as she observes Peter with a grin on her lips.

She's an Asian woman in her mid-twenties, maybe, and very pretty. Her black hair is cut very short, held out of her face by two strawberry clips on either side. She's wearing practice clothes, which makes sense if she's a dancer. This isn't what catches his attention, however.

Peter's sense being as fine turned as they are, he catches onto body language that a lot of people don't notice. Like when someone lies, and their pupils dilate. Or when someone's smile is too thin to be real. Sometimes he notices calluses on people's hands that show how hard they work daily, sometimes he sees people who have chronic pain and need someone to help them. With this woman, he sees someone talking to him. Studying him just as intently.

The tilt of her head is the curiosity, the smile is her warm greeting. The way her eyes twinkle with knowing, and how precise her steps are when she makes her way over to sit next to him without a word. His spider sense buzzes around her, not because she's dangerous to him, but because she is not someone to mess with.

He can't help but tense up because of it. When Peter meets someone who could kick his ass, a lot of the time, the instinct is to fight. Other times, when he knows he wouldn't win, it's to get away as fast as he can. Right now, he wants to run.

She holds out her hand to him, a slow movement, with her palm up. Her posture is relaxed, neither leaning toward him nor away. She's open, showing him that she's not going to hurt him. It's exactly like she knows Peter's spider-instinct wants him to get the hell out of dodge.

Peter looks at her hand, hesitant. She doesn't try to pressure him, just waiting for an answer. He lifts his left hand to hers, and she holds his hand with a gentle squeeze, her smile growing. Happy, in a way that feels like she's been hoping for that.

"I'm Cassandra. I go by Cass." She introduces herself. Her voice is so soft.

"Peter." He replies. "You're Black Bat, aren't you?"

Another smile. She squeezes his hand again, and when Peter lets go, she reaches down to pet the cat. "Yes, I am. And you're Spider-Man."

"It's nice to meet you." Peter tells her. "But it does feel like I'm meeting a ghost."

This makes her laugh. She hums in thought as the cat pushes his head against her hand. "Not many know when I am around. But you did."

"Only for a second. And only 'cause you wanted me to." He watches her face. He's never met anybody who can talk like she does. It's weird, but fascinating.

"You didn't like it when Bruce did it." Cass points out, far too amused by this. "But you are not angry with me."

She says it as a statement, because she knows. She knows just by looking at him what he feels. Peter shakes his head, a chuckle escaping him. "Something about Mr. Wayne makes me feel like a rebellious teenager."

hello! friend!

"Cassandra, have you seen Alfred?" Damian's sharp voice cuts in as he hurriedly enters the room. He stops a few feet away when he sees Peter, then puts his hands on his hips as he scowls. "Aren't you supposed to be resting?"

"I went looking for my favorite Robin!" Peter grins cheekily, and Damian rolls his eyes.

"What could you possibly want right now?"

"Well, firstly, and more importantly, I wanna know about the secret passages in the wall. Cat Watson was helpful, but we only got so far."

"Excuse me?"

"Mmmm…. What did I say that needs repeating?" Peter squints.

"His name is Alfred."

"…The butler?" Peter looks around the room, as if he wouldn't know if the butler was around.

"The cat. His name is Alfred the Cat." Damian states as if that makes any sense.

"I bet Alfred the Human was thrilled." Peter comments. Damian stares at Alfred the Cat, who is trying to crawl back into Peter's lap.

"He likes you."

"I'm a very likeable guy. Or so my Aunt said." Peter shrugs.

"Hm. Acceptable." Damian waves it off, then asks, "What was your second thought for me?"

"Oh yeah. I wanted to know why everyone is being weird." Peter looks at him. Cass leans back to watch him, and Peter tries to understand what she means when she raises her eyebrow like that. Knowing, is what it feels like, but not much else. "Tim and Jason both visited me on my death bed-"

"You were not dying."

"-and neither of them asked me any questions. Which is weird, because you guys were all about that before."

"Father and the others are waiting for the results of your DNA test. You've lied to everyone before, so we wanted to have our own information before talking to you." Damian states, simple and clear cut, leaving no room for misinterpretation. It's just like Peter expected.

Well… He did lie to them. He can't be upset that they'd want that information.

But his gut gets all twisty anyway.

So the paperwork was probably the DNA test, right? And them watching over him while he slept and stuff, was it to make sure he didn't run off, or maybe to make sure he didn't hurt any of them? He might have jumped the gun with calling them friends, since they have been friendly to him the whole time. But then again, people can be friendly and have different intentions.

The scar on his neck feels cold and too exposed.

He doesn't think they're bad guys. They're just doing their jobs, aren't they? Making sure Peter isn't a threat to them or anyone else by getting to know him, and they're also investigating Peter and Ohnn both. They can be friendly while also getting what they need.

Peter grins, knowing that Cass is watching him, but not really knowing what else to do but get over it. "Sounds about right. Are they almost done, or is that an after dinner conversation?"

"I have no idea. The others are cooped up in the Cave, and I had to feed Alfred."

"See, I keep picturing the guy when you say his name."

"Meow."

"Alfred the Cat agrees with me." Peter says.

"How would you know what he's saying? You don't speak cat."

"What if I do?"

"You're a spider-mutant, not a cat mutant. If you can also speak to animals, then I call bullshit." Damian snipes. He crouches down to call Alfred the Cat over to him, but the cat remains lazily in Peter's lap. Cassandra giggles at Damian's face. But a question that Peter had a long time ago hits him all at once, and he cuts off Damian's complaint.

"Wait, do you have turkeys?"

Damian's eyes widen and he's taken aback. Cassandra laughs again, this time louder. "How in the heaven's name did you know that?"

"Please show me the turkeys!" Peter puts his hands together as he begs. "I've been wondering about this for, like, ages!"

"How did you know I have a turkey?"

"Pleaaaaaase! I've never seen a turkey in person before!"

"Peter, how did you know I have a turkey!?"

-

"Who the hell is Alessandra!?"

"Holy shit, dude, I thought it was weird that he looked like you but this is insane."

"Looked like him? Peter has his face! Just color Dick's eyes and hair in brown and boom, you got Peter! Dimples and all!"

"Wait, he does look like Dick."

"Duke, are you serious? I thought we all knew this and just weren't saying it out loud."

"You all look the same to me."

"Wait wait wait! Tim stop! Look at that!"

"Steph stop pulling my hair when you want to see something on the damn computer!"

"Then maybe listen when I tell you to wait!"

"Dick, do you recognize her?"

"She's soooo pretty! Oh my gosh, look at this picture! She's a firefighter! Look at her muscles! She could crack someone's head open! I need to meet her immediately."

"This tracks with Dick's record."

"Honestly, true. I mean, like, Kori and Babs?"

"But she's not a red head!"

"She looks so much like Peter!"

"This is literally just a normal mother from Gotham. Look, she has a toddler named Teresa, she drives a white soccer van with a hundred bumper stickers, she goes to local coffee shops-"

"How are you finding this so fast?"

"I'm good at my job? Why are you complaining?"

"Tim stop!"

"OW! Steph, stop pulling my hair!"

"Looooook! Awwwwww, that is the cutest baby I've ever seen! Gasp, wait-"

"Did you just say gasp out loud?"

"-Do you think that's what Peter looked like as a baby? She looks a lot like her mom too! Do we have a picture of Peter yet? I wanna compare faces!"

"She volunteers at several local animal shelters on weekends, and she also works at her family's community center."

"Jesus, she's a saint or something. Look at this picture? Is she building a wheelchair for a paralyzed dog?"

"Dick," Jason cuts through the chatter. Dick can't feel his face. Or his hands. Or his body, in general. He knows that Jason is touching his shoulder, but it doesn't feel that, either. Jason's voice is low, meant only for Dick to hear. He looks at Jason on autopilot, because he certainly hadn't thought about moving.

His brows are furrowed in understanding, and he pulls Dick along gently. "Let's get you somewhere quiet for a little bit."

Dick thinks that's nice. He wanted to do that, but along with not feeling his body, he can't comprehend moving on his own. Jason leads him away from the computer, Bruce's eyes following them as the kids bicker about what they're seeing. Jason closes the door behind them when they get to the med bay. Dick walks to the nearest wall and puts his back to it, sliding down to the ground.

Jason meets him there. They both sit together, shoulder to shoulder, in silence. Dick can't bring his mouth to move just yet.

Peter is his kid.

He wants to say that it came out of nowhere, but did it really? All this time, Dick felt like something was wrong- not wrong, no, not… Not wrong. It was just that ever since he met Peter, Dick couldn't sleep like he used to. He wanted to be out there with everyone, or at least be there for Peter, somehow. When they were apart, his mind kept drifting back to the snarky and clever kid, wondering how he was.

And he knew, to some extent, that Peter looked similar to him. He noticed from the very start that Peter had Dick's mother's eyes, but he hadn't thought he had his mother's eyes. Not like that. He thought that Peter was just the universe throwing him into Bruce's steps yet again. There's a kid that looks like you. That reminds you of you. That needs someone.

Peter is his kid.

His dimples on that kid's face. His mother's eyes. That's his nose, isn't it? Did he sound like Dick did at that age?

How did this happen? How would Dick not know? There can't be any way that Dick would forget someone he'd been with to this extent. He would have been 15, he wasn't doing anything at 15. But with this line of work, what if someone-

Oh, god, what if someone cloned him? The possible experimentation, that could be a part of it. He doesn't remember his parents, he's told Dick that before. He has memories of his life with people that raised him, and it doesn't make any sense right now. The image of a little toddler Peter not knowing his parents, in some lab somewhere, being raised by people who hurt him like that-

"Hey, Big Wing, you gotta breathe."

Dick lets out a gasping breath.

Peter is his kid.

"How did this happen?" Dick's voice cracks, and he looks at Jason for an answer. Not even an answer- he's just- he's feeling so lost, so guilty, and he needs something to hold onto or he's never going to understand.

Jason's face softens. He's holding onto Dick's wrist, feeling the pulse there. "I don't know."

No matter how Peter got here, it's Dick's fault somehow. It has to be. Whether he's a clone, or there's another possible explanation, Peter is his, and Dick is the reason that he exists. It's a terrifying concept, one that threatens to pull Dick over the side and drown him.

"I don't even know an Alessandra."

"I didn't think you would." Jason agrees.

"I would have been fifteen."

"I know."

"Did I do this to him?"

"Don't you dare." Jason urges, squeezing his wrist. "Look at me, Dick. It's not your fault."

"Then who's is it?" His mind keeps coming back to a lab where Peter is all alone and Dick hadn't been there. "We need to talk to Alessandra."

"Maybe." Jason says, and Dick thinks he's gone crazy. Because why wouldn't they go to her right now and get some kind of explanation as to how she had a kid with someone that doesn't even remember her? Jason scoffs at Dick's expression, shaking his head. "We still have to talk to Peter. We have a shit ton to ask him, alright? There's gonna be answers in there, you can't go running off to investigate that right now. The kid's gonna need you here, you can't leave him with just Bruce to talk to. I have a feeling the kid takes after you in the teenage angst department. He stole his cape for jump scaring him, how do you think it'll go if they have a serious conversation without you here?"

That startles a laugh out of Dick. The image of Peter shrouded in Batman's cape while mocking him makes some of that panic fall away.

Dick puts his head in his hands, elbows on his knees, and lets out a sigh that he hopes will carry away the rest of the fear and the mind-numbing feeling that comes with it. Jason's completely right. He can't go running off to investigate without talking to Peter, his biggest lead, first. And his kid.

His kid. When he's not freaking the hell out about it, it feels nice to hear that.

Peter would have been his if he accepted the adoption, but this hits in a different way. This is a blood relation, something that doesn't go away no matter how hard someone could try. Dick keeps looking back on all of their interactions and trying to figure out what other details he could have missed, because he hadn't been looking. Does Peter laugh the same way he does?

He recalls the night he first met Spider-Man. Peter caught him when his grappling hook gave out, and Dick had already thought back on that interaction fondly after figuring out that Peter is Spider-Man. But this time, it makes his chest feel warm to remember that he figured out Peter had been watching him before then, too, because Cass sent that video of him copying those flips. Maybe Peter is a lot more like him than he realized.

Oh god.

"What?" Jason asks when Dick sits up fast.

"Peter doesn't know."

"Uh, yeah?"

"Jason." Dick presses. "He doesn't know."

"I figured? If he knew and hadn't reacted, he's a damn good liar. And I don't think he is, to be honest. Unless he thinks it's funny, because of that library shit he pulled-"

"Jason, how the hell do we tell him?"

Jason pauses. "Oh."

"I can't just go, 'Okay, tell me everything about your life. By the way, I'm your supposedly dead father. Don't know who told you that.'"

"I mean… that sort of sounds like what you should say? I'd put it nicer, though. But that's just me."

Dick groans, the newfound problem swinging overhead, ready to cut his head off like a guillotine. He's never thought about a situation like this. All of the contingency plans that he has in place for events like his friends getting mind controlled and trying to kill him and him knowing all of their weaknesses, or what to do in case, say, a giant octopus tries to take over Gotham… and he never planned for a surprise son?

"Do you think there's a reddit post somewhere about this kind of situation?"

"Wow, scraping the bottom of the barrel here for a solution."

"Unless you have helpful advice, you don't get to judge me on how I handle telling my son I'm his father." Dick snarks as he opens his phone. He's about to open Abacus when he sees that he has a missed call from Wally. "Oh shit."

"What's wrong?"

"I gotta call Wally."

"Oh shit." Jason laughs, because he's a bastard and finds amusement in Dick's suffering. He claps Dick on the shoulder and stands up. "Good luck with that. I'm gonna go see what they found out about that Alessandra woman."

He pauses, glancing at his little brother. "Little Wing."

"Yeah?"

"Thanks." Dick can still hear the others talking to each other, though it's muffled by the door to the med bay. He'd probably still be there or would have had a panic attack if Jason hadn't brought him away from that.

Jason grins softly. "Don't mention it. Seriously. Don't. We're not good with mushy feelings."

He laughs, thumb hovering over the 'call back' button as Jason leaves.

It's been two months since they properly talked to each other, and he can't imagine what to even say. First, it was a problem on how to tell his friend-maybe-lover about gaining a kid, but… He just needs Wally's advice. Or just to talk about it. No, what he wants is to be with Wally right now and have the conversation in person, but he shouldn't leave until he talks to Peter, at least, and if he asks Wally to come get him, he's going to want to stay with Wally or go investigate Alessandra.

He needs to at least hear Wally's voice. So he clicks call.

"Dick?" Wally answers halfway through the first ring. "Hey! Man, that was fast. I thought you wouldn't get to call me back until later."

"I had my phone on me and saw you called. How've you been?"

"Masters program is kicking my ass." Wally laughs, and Dick closes his eyes. It's been way too long since he's heard his voice. "My professor has some kind of hatred for fun and joy or whatever, so he keeps making my assignments due at 3PM, like a psycho."

"Who picks 3PM for a due date?"

"That's what I'm saying!" It sounds like Wally has flopped onto his bed. "Hey, are you free right now? I can zip on over and we can hang out. I've missed you."

Dick smiles, fondness bubbling up around the ever stirring emotional void that he has going on right now. And then guilt, because he knows that he can't accept having Wally take him somewhere where he doesn't have to think about life. At least, not right now. "Sorry… I'm not. We've got a… situation, here."

There's a moment of hesitation, and then. "Are you okay? You sound like you've been through the ringer. Want me to kiss it better?"

"It's just a lot to process." He replies, running a hand through his hair. "It's a lot to explain. You got some time?"

"Of course I do! What's going on? I thought you guys settled the new Arkham breakouts? I saw it on the news."

"Yeah, we did. This is something more personal." 'Personal', he says. Yeah, no shit, Dick. Having a surprise son is about as personal of a matter that something can get.

"You guys fighting again?"

"No, not that kind of personal." Dick sets his head back on the wall, his stomach a bundle of nerves. "There's this kid…"

"Bruce did not pick up another kid." Wally gasps. "Did he at least tell you this time?"

"Well, um, it's… complicated. He's less of Bruce's and more of a stray that the rest of us picked up. He kind of showed up out of nowhere at Babs' library, and it was pretty clear he had some shit going on at home. We were just checking on him at first because it was pretty bad. But, well… he kind of… doesn't exist."

"Uh oh?"

"He's also sort of a vigilante."

"So he totally got adopted. Got you."

"Not yet?"

"Why is that a question?" Wally laughs. "That's what happens in Gotham. Bruce looks at a kid and boom, they've got a room in the Manor. You guys clearly inherited that from him."

"He's staying with us right now-"

"See?"

"-because he got hurt last night while we were fighting Firefly. Honestly, Wally, there's a lot of shit in between all of this that I don't know if I could explain over the phone. But we ran his DNA earlier-"

"You guys are such freaks." Wally says, sounding stupidly fond about it.

"Yeah, I guess we are. It's just, with all the other stuff going on, we had to check, you know? Because he doesn't exist anywhere we can find him, and the theories and stuff are all over the place."

"Well? What'd it say?"

Dick hesitates. "He's mine."

"Your what?" Wally doesn't get it. Dick runs a hand over his mouth.

"He's my kid, Wally. We don't- We don't know how, yet, but he is. Bruce ran it another time to be sure, while all the kids were freaking out. And me, too. He's my son."

Now that has Wally sitting in stunned silence. It lasts long enough that Dick pulls back his phone to make sure they're still on a call. Dick doesn't know what to say, really. He had been surprised to find out about Kon-El, but being on the other side of that conversation is strange. Maybe he should ask Clark? From what he remembers, Clark and Kon had a very rocky relationship at the start, but they're far better now.

This also happened to Bruce, with Damian. He knows that Bruce is trying to be more open and shit, but he doesn't know if Bruce is ready to talk about his feelings on that particular subject. Least of all would he want to say anything to Dick, he thinks.

"You there?"

"What's he like?" Wally asks.

"What?"

"Look, I'm not there right now, and I don't know the facts, so I'm not gonna speculate." Wally tells him, and it's with that Wally conviction that tells Dick there's nothing changing his mind. "Clone, ex-lover, whatever. Doesn't matter, 'cause I know you're already attached. You are, aren't you? I bet you were filling out adoption papers before you even knew."

"I didn't fill them out completely."

"Are you absolutely sure you're not related to Bruce? Is the adoption thing genetic?"

"Wally-"

"What's the kid like? What's his name? What do you know about him? I'm not there, you gotta fill me in!"

Dick laughs, a wave of affection washing over him. Okay, so he was probably over thinking again. Wally has a way of pulling him out of his head and back into what really matters. And what matters right now is Peter, and where they go from here. Dick can't stop thinking about his past, and how Peter could have gotten here… He thinks about Kon-El, and how alone he had been, and fears that Peter might have been the same.

"He's super smart, first of all. His code name is Spider-Man, with a hyphen. Both the 'man' and hyphen is very important to him. We haven't really talked about that part yet, but from what we've seen, he's super intelligent, and likes working on the fly. I don't even know if he makes contingency plans like we do, or if he just makes it up on the spot? But he's good with computers, Babs had tried tracing back how he got into the library computers without a login and he erased it. And he's funny, too. He likes making people laugh. Well, he hasn't said that, but when he does make someone laugh he gets a goofy smile on his face."

"That last part sounds like you, Boy Wonder." Wally teases, but there's a thoughtful consideration behind it.

"When we were in civvies, we got caught up in Two-Face's plan-"

"The one on the subway?"

"Yeah, that one." Dick nods even though Wally can't see him. "He mouthed off to Two-Face and stole his detonator. Gave Tim a run for his money too after that. Gave me a damn near heart attack, but it worked out alright. He's just- He's a really good kid. It took a lot to get him to trust us, but I think he does now? We haven't really gotten a chance to talk about it, everything's been so hectic."

"He sounds like a good kid. I can't wait to meet him." Wally sounds like he genuinely means it. Relief washes over him, and Dick sighs smally.

"I… I'm just nervous. He doesn't… know." Dick admits. "He doesn't know that I'm his father. From the little bit we know about his past, it's clear he thinks his parents are dead. He grew up with an Aunt May and Uncle Ben, and now he says he's a foster kid."

"I thought he didn't exist? Like, legally? If you guys couldn't find him… Or, well, really, if even Tim couldn't find him, then something's going on, right?"

"Yeah, we don't know how it matches up, exactly. I mean, the closest theory I can think of is that someone is cloning people again, but it still doesn't match up. It's all just- just really complicated. I don't even know where to begin. He woke up a little bit ago and we're planning to talk to him about it all, try to get some answers. I just… I don't know how to tell him. The conversation went from 'hey, your foster dad who might be a God really sucks and I hate him, so we're taking him in'-"

"Whoa whoa whoa, what?"

"-to now, I have to tell him 'So I know you think your father is dead and all, but I'm about to literally change your perception of your life up until now.'"

"I'm sorry, I'm still hung up on the Godly Foster Parent?"

Dick scoffs. "Don't even get me started on Tony."

"You could not sound like you hate someone more that you just did." Wally laughs in surprise. "Who the hell is Tony?"

"Peter's foster parent. We think. That's what Peter calls him, at least, for now. It might just be what Tony told him to say. What I do know is that piece of shit has good money, is likely a brilliant engineer, and he dropped Peter off basically homeless and starving in Gotham so he could hide away somewhere from some dipshit villain that's after him, and doesn't seem to give two-shits about his well being. And- And Peter really cares about him."

Wally grows quiet for a minute, probably letting all of that sink in. Dick feels the rage boil under his skin at Tony- this shitbag that just left Peter to fend for himself, and came back for who-knows-what, then disappeared again without even trying to take care of Peter. It makes no fucking sense and it's just so unfair to Peter. The kid adores Tony, he trusts him, and this is the thanks that Peter got? Bruises and beatings from someone that Tony pissed off, and Tony couldn't be bothered to help him?

Dick swallows down some of the guilt that wants to eat him alive. If Peter really was cloned because of him, then what if there was a way he could have known sooner? Would he have been there to keep him safe? Could he have saved Peter? Can he be a good dad now?

"Dick, I think it's gonna turn out alright." Wally finally says, dragging Dick back to the present. "Like you said, Peter's a smart kid. He sounds like a tough one, too. Now that he's got you and the other Bats in his corner, I'm sure it's going to work out for the better. He won't be left behind anymore. Just take it one problem at a time. Kaldur would tell you that, too. Want me to add him to the call?"

"God, no, don't bother Kaldur right now." Dick chuckles. Kaldur is probably just getting back from his own mission for the Justice League tomorrow.

He lets the words sit in his mind, and he really takes his time to consider them, to feel them. For all of his fears and insecurities about this, Wally is right. Peter isn't going to be alone anymore, not if Dick can help it. They can work on the problem with Tony and the Ohnn once they get this situated first. He can't go around panicking and coming to his own conclusions until he talks to the kid. No sense in repeating B's mistakes. Universe knows that he's still trying to escape that past.

"Lemme know if you need backup. I'll tell Barry to suck it and come speeding over for you. Batman won't be able to stop me from butting in."

Wally sounds like he's joking, but Dick knows he's being serious. "Thanks, Wally. I mean it. I was kind of freaking out."

There's a knock on the door to the med bay. Stephanie sticks her head inside- for some reason, she has permanent marker all over her face. Someone had drawn "BOOOO" on her cheek and a frowny face on the other, but before Dick can even ask what the hell happened in the maybe fifteen or so minutes he was gone, Stephanie rolls her eyes and says, "You should see Tim. He's the real loser right now."

"Right. Makes all the sense in the world."

"He got fussy about me wanting control of the Batcomputer! Doesn't matter, I won in the end. Anyway," She says, as if this is such a bother to her. Dick can't help but grin at her. "Dinner is almost ready, so Alfred said we need to talk to Peter before and get it over with."

"Sounds like your cue, Blue." Wally chuckles. "Tell Steph I said hi."

"Wally says hi."

"Wally?" Steph snatches the phone. "Oh my gosh! Did Dick tell you!? He did? Well he probably didn't tell you everything, so I'm gonna tell you. First of all, you have got to see this lady that is Peter's mom-"

Steph charges out of the room, leaving Dick with one hand over his ear but completely empty. He stares at the door in defeat. He's not going to get his phone back for at least two hours. Wally and Steph can talk for days and not get tired.

-

"This is complete bullshit!"

"Swear jar." Cass corrects Damian idly. She's more focused on braiding Peter's hair as he sits on the floor in front of her than she is to what they're doing. She has her legs tucked under her, wearing more comfortable clothes now, and her relaxed nature made it easy for Peter to relax as well. She had even given Peter a comfortable hoodie to wear, a "Gotham Knights" design on the front. He thinks it's a baseball team?

Peter smirks as Damian's character on the video game goes toppling off of the side, while Peter remains in the lead. The only reason Damian isn't being more fussy is because Alfred the Cat has settled on his lap, and jostling him would be a war crime.

Right after Peter finally got Damian to cave in to let him see the turkey, they had gone to the second floor for Cass to change. Turns out, she's in the mystery bedroom next to his, and Damian also shares a sitting room with them. Cass had given him the hoodie then, and he noticed that the hoodie was extra large, like she knew that Peter was uncomfortable having his neck so exposed.

Damian had led them outside after that. They had gone all the way out to a barn in the backyard. (Or, really, they don't have a backyard. They have land. They were surrounded by forests instead of a cityscape and he had to squint to see where the fence line was. Where in Gotham could they have possibly fucking gone?) There, Peter had gotten to meet not only a turkey, but a cow with a bat shaped mark on her face. As if the cow is wearing a mask.

This was the best part of Peter's life. Literally nothing could top the joy of opening the barn door and seeing a BatCow.

Damian approved of his enthusiasm. He was more than happy to tell Peter all about the animals that they have. When Peter saw Titus and Ace, he thought that maybe being kidnapped wasn't so bad after all. Titus is a big black Great Dane that stuck to his side while they were in the barn, and Ace is a German Shepard that kept alerting to something about Peter that Damian kept waving off. They're both super sweet, and Peter, who has always wanted a dog, had a blast playing fetch with them.

Alfred had called them inside when the sun started dipping low, using a bell, of all things, and that's when Damian and Cass decided to actually show Peter around the Manor's first floor. He thinks that rich people have way too much to do. He was shown a billiards room, smoking room, school room, cloak room, a powder room- which is apparently far different from a bathroom- a gallery filled with paintings from Bruce's family line (and more importantly, Damian's and Steph's paintings. They're artists, who knew? And really great ones, at that.), a real life ballroom. However, Peter's favorite part would have to be the conservatory.

After that to, they ended up in the drawing room. It's not a den, or a living room. Alfred had corrected that notion when he dropped off drinks for them. Apparently there's a den somewhere, but this is not it? Whatever it is, it has a huge flat screen TV, a lot of comfortable couches, and a vast collection of video games that Peter has never seen before.

Doesn't stop him from kicking Damian's ass at them, though.

"Someone's a sore loser." Peter taunts jovially. He had started by just mashing the buttons until he figured out the patterns, and his work paid off. Damian scowls, trying to catch up in his own car to Peter's, but it's all in vain.

"I thought you said you've never played before?"

"I'm a fast learner!"

"You're a headache, is what you are." Damian grunts back.

"Do you wanna try something else?" Peter's car finishes across the finish line, thus ending the race. Damian sets his controller down with a huff, and starts looking at the other games in the stack. Cass runs her fingers through Peter's hair as she lets down the braid, and he leans into the touch.

"Have you seen this one before?" Damian holds out Mortal Kombat, but it's not Mortal Kombat. Instead of the characters that Peter knows, there's a few faces on the game that look strikingly familiar. Peter's eyes widen and he grabs the game from Damian's hand.

"What is this!?"

"It's Vengeful Wrath. Timothy's dumb friend Connor gave it to me for my birthday."

Forgive his language, but Peter is absolutely flabbergasted right now. After all, it's not every day he sees the Avengers on a video game.

It's not them, them, but it sure looks like it! Captain America is wearing the red, white and blue, but his shield is shaped like a star and is all shiny and white. Natasha is next to him, wearing a full face mask with a skull on it. Hulk, but he's yellow and has longer hair. And- Peter can't believe his eyes- Iron Man. His suit is black and yellow, and the lights are white, and yeah, okay, the technology isn't the same. Not nearly as advanced, he doesn't have the arc reactor in the middle of his chest. But it's Iron Man. Peter would recognize the silhouette anywhere.

"I have to play this right now."

"It's not that good." Damian's brow is furrowed. "It's not even that clever. The game mechanics are pretty simple for your first try, though."

"You have no idea how fast I can pick this up." Peter replies. He stands up to go switch the games out when:

hello! friend

He glances at the entry way right before Bruce rounds the corner. He stops there, looking around at them with a hint of trepidation. Peter stops mid step, anxiety rolling through him that he tries his best to hide. Cass sees it anyway, and she frowns, shooting him a worried glance.

This is Peter's first time seeing Bruce in person. Not Batman- he's met Batman a couple times now. The only idea of "Bruce" that he got was from those photos. The billboards, the posters, the bus stops, the big buildings with his name on them. Before, Bruce Wayne was just a name that Peter wouldn't imagine seeing in person. It was kind of impossible to correlate Batman and Bruce Wayne as being people who could share a room, let alone be the same person.

Peter's first impression of this version of Bruce is that the old man looks tired. His hair is not all gelled up and picture perfect like Peter sees all around the city, it's way more messy, like he just rolled out of bed a couple hours ago. He's dressed down in his casual clothes, just a t-shirt, a jacket, and some sweatpants. It makes him look far more human and, like, a real person. He finally looks like someone's dad rather than a business man or superhero.

Bruce observes them quickly. It's almost impressive how he takes in so much information in a single glance.

"Father," Damian greets. "I take it you all are done downstairs?"

"Yeah, we are." Bruce has one hand on his hip. "How about you and Cass head down there first? Peter and I will catch up in a second."

Damian doesn't hesitate. He scoops up Alfred the Cat in his arms and leaves the room with a nod towards Peter, like nothing could be wrong with this. Cass, however, lingers. She holds back to pat Bruce on the arm, whispering "Gentle." to the man. She smiles encouragingly at Peter, trying to tell him that everything is going to be fine. The two traitors leave Peter with Bruce and this awkward conversation they're about to have.

Peter is still holding onto the knockoff Avengers game. He awkwardly glances at the cover, feeling a pang of longing for his mentors, for Tony.

"How are you feeling, chum?"

Chum? What kind of nickname is that? Peter looks up at him, keeping his emotional support knockoffs close. "I'm alright."

"I heard you had a headache. Did you get enough medicine for it?" Bruce steps closer into the room. He bends down to pick up a couple of the video games that Damian had scattered around the table. His lips turn up into the smallest of grins as he looks at the cover of one of them. "Damian gave you a tour?"

"I got enough." Not really, but it's whatever. "And yeah, he did."

Bruce glances at him, a curious twinkle in his eye. "You have an opinion."

The words just fall out of Peter's mouth. "A billiards room? Really?"

This gets him a low chuckle. "It's popular here in Bristol. Not that it gets used outside of the occasional gala."

"Jeez," Peter scoffs. "A gala? You can't just call it a party?"

To his credit, Bruce seems very used to people dogging on him for his money. He isn't even annoyed that Peter isn't bothering to hide that it's a lot. Peter can't talk much- he has Tony, now, after all, and Tony is anything but a modest man. But still. The kid that lived on the streets, and before that, in rooms as tiny as closets, will never let them know peace.

The mood shifts without them having to say much else. They both know what they need to talk about. The part of Peter that still wants to avoid the conversation is asking him to tell Bruce that he met the turkey.

Bruce takes a breath. It's almost unnoticeable that he's nervous, too. "About last night… You're a pretty courageous young man. I really have to thank you for keeping Tim safe."

Ugh. Like all compliments, Peter likes them, but doesn't know what to do with them. He avoids eye contact, stating, "I didn't really do that much."

"Agree to disagree." Bruce replies. "I'm just glad that you're alright. We were worried when you passed out."

Right, Peter did that. A laugh escapes him as he thinks about the other thing he did. Bruce raises a brow in question as to what's so funny. "Did you get all the sticky notes off your Batmobile?"

Bruce clears his throat in a noise that almost sounds like a laugh. "No, we didn't. Since someone didn't put them on the windows, we figured we'd just leave it for now."

"I made sure it could still be functional." Peter grins. After all, they wouldn't have had time to pull the sticky notes off the windshield if there was an emergency and they needed to see. Peter didn't know that he'd end up being part of the emergency, though.

"Thinking ahead is a good trait." Bruce comments.

"Trust an old man to make a prank sound like an assessment."

A soft laugh, and Bruce looks him over another time. Peter doesn't know if he's just really good with eye contact or if he's observing Peter's face. It feels like the latter- like he's searching for something. There's an almost sad quality to his thin smile. Bruce sighs in resignation.

"I have to let you know before we go downstairs, that the others are a little… eager. If it gets overwhelming, just let me know, and I'll make them go upstairs. Or, if you don't want to talk with them around at all, we can do it here. Just me and you, chum."

Yikes, choices. Peter's bad at those. Both ideas sound good… On one hand, he could just tell Bruce now and get it out of the way. On the other hand, they all deserve a first hand explanation from Peter after the run-around he's been giving them for a whole month. It's the second idea that does him in.

"It's alright. I wanna talk to everyone."

Bruce nods, running a hand over the back of his neck. "Alright then. Follow me, and I'll show you to the Cave."

"The BatCave?" Peter corrects. He stops himself right before getting to the entrance, and he turns back to set the video game down on the table. Bruce waits for him, glancing at the game before Peter joins him again.

"Yes, the BatCave."

"I think that's the only one you get a pass on." Peter informs him. "Oh, and BatCow. She's cooler than you, by the way."

"Hard to argue with that." Bruce pats his shoulder.

They go up a short set of steps that Damian and Cass hadn't shown him on the tour. The very first door leads into a study, with suspiciously thick sounding walls- like someone had sound proofed them, to at least muffled it. It smells like old books and ink, as well as flowers. The last part makes sense when Peter spots a fresh vase on the desk, with the purple and pinks and yellows of a bouquet of fresh roses. It's fairly big for just a study, with two couches, and a desk in front of a big stained glass window.

Like before when he was upstairs, Peter can feel a hollowness nearby. He searches around the room for the source, eyes falling on a grandfather clock that isn't ticking.

"That spider-sense really is impressive." Bruce says. "It's easier to tell you're not just looking around when you know about it."

At the reminder that Bruce figured him out, Peter clicks his tongue and crosses his arms. "Tim won't tell me how you actually did it."

"I used deep diving techniques to lower my heart rate and slow my breathing. I then moved when you were distracted by Tim, and reacted fast enough that you weren't alerted until I was close by."

"Next you're gonna tell me you know how to move your liver on will, or something. And then I'll be convinced you really aren't human after all."

His lips twitch into a knowing smile. For a second, Peter almost believes he was right on the money. Bruce doesn't give him a reply to that. He reaches a hand towards the clock face, pulling back the glass. He turns the clock hands from 12 on the dot to 10:48. There's a hollow click, and when Bruce steps back, the grandfather clock opens up to reveal a winding staircase behind it, lit up by small lights on each step. A cool wind washes over their feet.

like! like! dark cool like!

"Sick," Peter breathes out in amazement despite his resolution to remain cool and mysterious. Bruce chuckles, and gestures for Peter to go down the staircase first. Of course, his first thought is that this could be a trap, but it's thrown out seconds later because his spider-sense is begging him to go down there.

Which is likely due to the fact that Peter's spiderisms like dark and cool places, and a cave sounds like the perfect place for that. His humanisms, however, are already excitedly running through the possibilities of what could be in a supehero's secret base. Airplanes? Other cool cars like the Batmobile? Vending machines?

The steps were steep at the top, but as they get farther and deeper down into the cave, they widen out, and Peter can see light coming from ahead. He glances back at Bruce, wondering if he could ask about what's down there or if he should wait. Right as he starts gathering the courage, the cave widens out and Peter is met with his first view of the BatCave.

Any underestimations he could have had are swiped out from under his feet.

The steps empty out onto not rock, but a floor of metal. In front of the steps is the Bat-costume, standing tall and proud in a case. It's steps away from the still sticky-noted Batmobile that sits on a hydraulic turntable, facing towards a long stretch of road that goes towards the left, into a non-illuminated section.

Peter jogs over to the railing which overlooks the cave, footsteps echoing back minutely. The cave is ever bigger than Peter ever expected. There are multiple levels, built around the cave itself to give it stability and space. The entrance overlooks one level, almost like a mimic of the Wayne Manor and it overlooking the Great Hall. Peter's eyes widen as he takes in the view of what appears to be a trophy room.

One wall is covered in suits from over the vigilantes' careers. It almost reminds Peter of Tony's workshop with all of his suits standing in their own cases. Batman has the most of them, even ones that aren't in black, but are blue, grey, yellow- is that pink? What in the world did he need that for? There are others next to it, too. Robin suits, starting with one that looks like it fit a twelve year old, then moving on in the years.

Peter leans over the railing to see more, and despite the fact that Bruce should know Peter wouldn't fall, he grabs onto Peter's hoodie from the back to keep him from going over the side.

There's a giant, shiny penny, maybe standing several Batman's tall. Peter spots a sword in a glass case, a gavel, a penguin? Is that a fake penguin? There's big hanging dice from the ceiling, but most importantly-

"Is that a T-Rex!?" Peter can't help but sound delighted. Peter will never be too cool for a T-Rex. "Why do you have a T-Rex!? Is it alive? No, it can't be. But does it come to life? Is it a robot?"

"I like dinosaurs." Bruce replies, and Peter can tell he's proud of it. "No, it doesn't come to life. It's a robot that has been deactivated."

"I think it should. You can have a Bat-Rex! Literally no one would go against a Bat-Rex."

Even farther down, Peter can see a BatBoat or something, sitting in the water. Peter cranes his neck to see, and Bruce gently pulls him away from the edge. "You can see them closer when we pass through there."

Peter hurries along at that promise, he's holding Bruce to it. They have to take an elevator (an elevator! It doesn't have FRIDAY or an AI at all, but it's still so fricking cool!) down to the second level. Peter jogs out ahead of him to go look, spinning a couple times to try and see everything at once.

"I need to upgrade from my box." Peter comments to himself as he looks up at a display. Inside, there's several ray guns that Peter so wants to get a closer look at. One looks like it freezes things, another has a "shrink" option- "Does that say magma? It totally does! Does this shoot lava?"

"Your box?" Bruce prompts, ignoring Peter's actual questions.

"I have a box of things I get from my villains." Peter moves to the next display, bouncing on his toes excitedly. "Tinkerer always leaves stuff behind and I like to reverse engineer the less dangerous stuff. Sometimes Armadillo drops a scaley thing, or Black Cat leaves behind one of her tools. She steals mine, so it's only fair. But nothing as cool as this. I didn't know you could keep the big stuff."

"Hm." Bruce stands next to him, a thoughtful furrow to his brow. "That is a magma gun, yes."

"So cool! Which villain did that come from?"

"B!" Jason's voice cuts through the air. Peter startles and looks behind him, and Bruce gets the guiltiest look on his face. Jason has his arms crossed, standing at the entrance of another room. Peter wouldn't even have to try to read "Really, Old Man?" on Jason's face right now. "He has all the time in the world to look at the cases later."

"Boo." Peter totally doesn't pout about that.

Jason snorts at that. "Come on, Boy Mystery, you can't leave us hanging forever."

"Yeah, Peter!" Steph shouts from inside the room. A second later and she's shoved all 6'5" of Jason out of her way. She hurries over to him, and Peter is trapped in a tight hug without warning. "I missed you! It sucks being on the sidelines, I miss all the fun! This is so not fair!"

"Hi?" Peter pats her shoulder. Steph lets go to let him breathe, but she drags him by the arm towards the other room. Bruce sighs before he follows.

Everyone's there, but he didn't expect any less. Tim and Damian are at a multi-screened computer on the other side of the room. Babs waves at him from one of the screens, and he waves back at her. Cass is leaning on the desk, looking over one of the screens that shows a radiation level- oop, that has his name on it. Duke is pointing something out to Cass, and she nods. Duke is surprised by that, but she shakes her head and whispers "Later."

Jason and Dick are both sitting at a table filled with broken bat equipment. Dick perks up when he sees Peter, hands out in a nervous greeting. "Hey, bud! Feeling alright?"

"I'm guessing you finished your paperwork." Dick winces, an awkward laugh escaping him. Peter's arm is finally released from Steph's hold. She flops into the chair next to Tim, who- "Why is Coupon covered in sharpie?"

"He lost." Steph replies, folding her hands together as Alfred the Cat jumps into her lap. Tim has random lines all over his face, and Peter's noticing a cup with only a singular pen in it next to the computer. A suspicious lack of markers.

"Peter, you were bitten by a radioactive spider?" Damian must not have been there for their discovery, because he's still reading all of the screens. "When did that happen?"

"No, actually, I want to know about Tony first. Why is he a God? No, let me reword that." Duke tries.

"Tony's not a God? Who told you that?" Peter asks. Then, Peter is slapped in the face with the memory of a bunch of suppli and stress levels off the wazoo. "Oh, did I somehow tell you that?"

"What do you mean he's not a God? I saw it!" Duke protests.

"Uh, about that-" Peter's voice cracks embarrassingly.

"Hold on hold on hold on, we need to start somewhere else. Like Ohnn, maybe, because who the hell even is that guy?" Steph interrupts.

Peter's hands feel sweaty. He wipes them on his pants and tucks his hands inside the sleeves. Dick stands up from his chair to stand next to Peter, setting a strong hand on his shoulder. The others are still arguing as Dick speaks to just him. Just like Bruce, Dick is examining his face, like he's just now noticing it. "Ignore them, they're all over the place. Start where you want to, and we'll try not to interrupt."

"Um…" Peter is blanking on his entire story. "I don't know where to start."

"How about you start from when you got to our world?"

A silence hushes over the room, and every eye turns on Tim. He's looking right at Peter, leaned back in his chair. God, he looks so stupid with his face covered in sharpie and his has his crutches on the ground next to him, but his eyes are clear and sharp and it's like he sees right through Peter. It's a far different person than Peter has met up to this point- or maybe he just didn't see it, because Tim always was able to hide it, until now.

Dick's hand tightens on Peter's shoulder, but when Peter looks up to check he's not angry at him, he's staring at Tim in shock.

"How long did you know?" Peter asks Tim.

A smirk crosses Tim's face, all too smug. It only grows wider when Damian's jaw drops, and he points at Peter. "He's right!?"

"Of course I am." Tim sits up straighter, all professional and proud of himself. "I figured it out the same day of the Two-Face incident. Everything was right there in front of me. You don't exist in this world no matter where I go to find you. Even now, after a DNA test, you don't come up in any database. You're a vigilante who's been working for at least a couple years, and Tony is some kind of mentor figure for you, but we've never heard of either of you. That would be impossible, unless, of course, you came from somewhere we wouldn't know about. And the only place the Justice League can't monitor is an alternate dimension we don't know anything about."

Tim doesn't give the others to let that sink in. He pushes forward, and has he does, Peter can't help his own grin from spreading. "You came up out of nowhere with a villain we've heard nothing about either, so I'm assuming he's from your world as well. Tony didn't drop you off here like we assumed, you've just been staying with Benny because you had nowhere else to go when you got to Gotham. You made a good move going to the library and getting yourself into the computers, twice, without Babs being able to monitor what you were doing. Babs told me you were looking up the Academic Decathlon site, but you don't go to that school, because you don't exist here. When we were at Batburger, you made a comment about alternate dimensions and the heroes that could exist there. I didn't notice the importance at the time because we also talked about time travel, but you were probably sniffing out if we would believe you, weren't you?"

Peter crosses his arms. Tim had him figured out after the Two-Face incident, but apparently no one else considered that.

"What was the nail in the coffin?"

"You didn't know about Young Justice." Tim says.

"Arrogance?" Peter raises a brow.

"We're a subject of controversy now, even after a decade of teenage heroes. You would have grown up hearing about this from every news source, social media, word of mouth. Not even being 'chronically offline' could keep that from you. Also, I need to mention: only someone chronically online would say that?"

"You also just mentioned several villains I have never heard of." Bruce says. Peter turns to look at him. The older man has his eyes narrowed at Tim, who just shrugs, not caring that he kept this from them. "We probably would have figured this out sooner if someone had shared that information he had."

"Tim," Dick's voice is far too level. Tim actually manages to look guilty this time. "You didn't think that was important for us to know?"

"Sorry, Dick… It's just… I was going to tell you guys my suspicions, but Damian-"

"You are not pinning this on me."

"You were sooooo smug that you figured out he was Spider-Man!" Tim glares at Damian.

"Fuck, Tim, how could you stomach eating those paninis while you were keeping that to yourself out of some petty revenge?" Jason mocks, but he's grinning ear to ear. "You waited, what, five days?"

"Huh. So playing the long game can work. Maybe he should reread the Art of War." Peter thinks out loud, picturing Tim and Loki in the same room. Loki would love this.

"Peter, he's right? You're from an alternate dimension?" Steph wheels her chair a little closer, her eyes shining with interest. "That explains so much!"

"Jeez, and we were panicking earlier…" Duke sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "So how did you get here?"

"First, I need to clarify that whole 'God Tony' thing. I lied when I told you that was Tony. I thought you were gonna snitch to Batman, and Loki probably also messed with me to say it." Peter tells him. Duke's eyebrows raise. "He likes playing tricks. He probably also made you more mad at him than you should be. He has that ability."

"Hold on, Loki?" Babs blinks at him. She had been observing is quiet silence like Cass, but upon the mention of the God, her eyes were sharp. "As in the Norse God?"

"Yeah. I don't know about if he has an alternate here, but he's definitely the Loki from my world. He's… an ally, I think. You can never tell with Loki. He's been cool with me so far, but Thor has told me enough stories that makes it clear to expect an agenda. He's been going back and forth between our worlds to get information from both sides." Peter explains, scratching the back of his head. "Tony is my foster dad, and he's my mentor, like Tim said. They are two different people."

"So- this whole time…?" Dick drags a hand down his face.

"I told you guys that he's a nice guy." Peter shrugs. "I would have clarified earlier, but I did not know you guys, nor trust you in any capacity. Sorry."

"No, no, that makes sense. For all you knew, you could have stepped into a world with far different morals than your own." Steph thinks it over. Peter knows that was part of it, but the bigger part was him having severe trust issues and a history of being experimented on. "So… what happened?"

"Tony is the hero Iron Man, in my universe. He's part of a group like your Justice League, called the Avengers. Ohnn attacked me a month ago and brought me here as leverage over Tony, but I don't know what for. There's… honestly, there's a billion reasons he could have. He wants something, but it hasn't been clarified what he wants. His brain is sort of scrambled from whatever turned him into a snake-mutant. They didn't know I was Spider-Man, though."

"They?" Bruce asks.

"Ohnn is working with someone else. There's a few leads that they have to investigate on their side, but Tony's biggest suspect is a company called OSCORP."

"Why can't Loki just bring you back?" Babs asks him. "You said he's traveling between our worlds."

"Because it'd kill me." Peter shrugs. "The way that he takes to get back and forth is meant for beings like him to cross. Even with my healing, it'd probably rip me apart. Ohnn's method isn't pretty either. He isn't using magic, he made a device that works like a particle accelerator. I've been trying to get it from him so that we can get back, but he's slippery."

"Right, okay." Steph nods. Every Bat in the room has their thinking face on. "So he brought you here, to our world… why? Couldn't he hold you leverage in your world?"

"This would have been solved day one if I was still back home." Peter is sure of it. "Tony would have been able to track me down, or I would have escaped. It's not just Tony that's on his case either. There are other heroes that were in New York when I was grabbed. It was a smart move getting me as far as possible if they really wanted that leverage over Tony. But they don't have nearly as much leverage since I got away from Ohnn before he could send proof of life to them."

"So, both sides are stuck having to wait for Ohnn and this mystery partner of his to show up in order to stop him. And then there's the issue of getting you back home." Jason muses. "We could see if any of our magic users or someone else are able to be contacted…"

"I can't leave Ohnn in this universe." Peter tells them sternly, leaving no room for debating that matter. "He's a problem from my world, and he belongs there. And if he's really working with OSCORP or another villain organization, we'll need his intel to sniff that out."

"But getting you back would mean he has no reason to come here." Duke points out. Peter shakes his head.

"No, he's been sniffing around Wayne Industries as well." Bruce crosses his arms, deep in thought.

"He wants tech for that device of his. I've seen it up close. It's impressive, but it'd be even more impressive with cohesive parts. That's sort of why I don't believe that OSCORP is who he's working with. It's a major tech company like Stark Industries, and if they were partnered with him, they'd have given him better tools."

"Well, I know one thing for sure." Dick says, and Peter looks up to see he's got a determined grin. "You don't have to try and capture Ohnn by yourself."

Right. Peter's not alone anymore. He hasn't been, not really, this entire time. It felt like it in the very beginning, but it was his own stubbornness that prevented him from reaching out to these heroes.

It's like the weight of the world has just dropped off his shoulders. Not being alone sounds so nice.

-

"Is your name really Peter Grayson?"

Peter is mid chew of the most delicious dinner, so he almost doesn't notice how the table reacts to Damian's question.

He's been in a great mood since he finally told them everything. He's got more than a couple meals in his stomach, he got to meet a turkey and a cow, he knows he's going to get a decent night's sleep before going to get his stuff from Benny's tomorrow- Oh, and telling Benny that he's alive, and to thank him for giving Peter a place to stay all this time.

That's right. Peter decided to finally accept their offer to stay here. Not only because it makes more sense, but because it feels right. He's comfortable here, and the Bats are weird in a nice way. He'll get used to the stupidly mysterious and big Manor, and hopefully, within the next month, he'll get to go home.

The thought does strike him as sad enough to make his chest twist uncomfortably when he remembers that going home means he won't see them again. But for now, all is good, and Peter can ignore that ache like he ignores all the rest. It's a problem for later, when he's alright.

Dick chokes on his drink. He's sitting next to Peter in the dining room- the room they usually eat dinner in is just a little too small for all of them. Jason claps his hand on Dick's back to help him breathe, Tim nudges Damian just unsubtle enough that Peter notices it. Damian, sitting across from Peter, hasn't turned his eyes away from Peter, examining his face much the same that Bruce and Dick had, but much more intense than they did.

Peter blinks, choosing to swallow his food when Alfred raises a brow at him in warning not to speak with his mouth full.

He totally forgot about that.

"No, it's not." Peter chuckles sheepishly. "I didn't know if I had an alternate here yet or not, so I just said my Dad's old last name."

It's like Peter shot a gun into the air rather than just explained himself. Everyone is starting intently at their plates- all besides Damian.

"So what is your real name?"

"I feel like you're implying you want my full legal name, freak."

"That would be adequate as well." Damian replies.

"Seriously, you want my entire name?"

"You owe us."

Peter rolls his eyes, but obliges. "You only get to use that card two more times before it's played out. My full legal name is Peter Benjamin John Andrea Parker."

"Did your father change his last name when he got married?" Damian asks. Tim's fork scrapes on the plate, and Damian side eyes him.

"No, he changed it when he was adopted." Peter's brow furrows. They're acting suspicious. He looks to Cass for an explanation, only to find she has snuck away to help Alfred with something in the kitchen.

"Did he want to change it?" Dick sounds a little upset. Peter catches him blink away a wetness to his eyes.

He… is in a room full of other orphans. Maybe none of them changed their last names? He had just assumed, hadn't he, that they all had Wayne? Peter never wants to change his name, so he can understand that must be hard to imagine, if they feel the same.

"No, not really. His parents' case was a media fire though, and people kept bothering him when they looked him up. So he changed his name when my grandparents adopted him." Peter tells them. He hadn't been alive for that, obviously, and he didn't think to ask Uncle Ben about the full story until he was 8 years old.

"Were they famous?" Damian asks. This time, Tim harshly elbows his side.

"Stop roughhousing at the table." Dick scolds, but his heart doesn't seem to be in it.

"They were world-renowned acrobats. The Flying Graysons." Peter says. Bruce looks up from his plate and Dick tenses at his side. "The tent caught on fire during their act and they fell."

Dick sucks in a breath. He hasn't touched his plate since Damian started asking him questions. Peter almost asks what's wrong, because Dick seems like he's in pain, almost, but Damian continues.

"So you were raised as a Parker. How did Tony become your foster parent?"

"Damian, maybe Peter doesn't wanna talk about this." Steph says this as if it's a question, but it sounds more like a warning.

"It's fine?" Peter is so thoroughly confused right now. "My parents died in a plane crash when I was little, and then my aunt and uncle passed. Tony ended up becoming my foster parent after he found out I was Spider-Man."

"Who else is done with their food?" Jason abruptly stands from his seat. Dick passes his near full plate with little thought, and seeing that Peter was done, he grabs Peter's too. "Damian, grab the others and come with me."

"But-"

"Now, please."

Damian doesn't huff, but he is frustrated. He grabs the rest of the plates, following behind Jason. Peter hears Jason hiss, "What was the point of that?" and Damian reply, "Were any of you going to ask him? You didn't even tell me until I saw the computer myself."

"Cups!" Duke stands up, grabbing cups from the table. "Tim, help me with these?"

"I can help?" Peter offers, but Duke smiles and shakes his head.

"Nah, nah, I got it, kid. Thanks, though!" And they're off.

Steph stands up as well, already pulling her jacket on. "I'm actually gonna go see my mom tonight. She wants a movie marathon! Fun, right?" She leans over to kiss Peter's cheek, then the top of Dick's head as she makes her way out. "I'll see you two later!"

Peter is left looking at a near empty dining room. It's just him and Dick, and Bruce left at the head of the table. The others left in practically the blink of an eye. He looks to Bruce or Dick for something- a clarification, a reason, only to find Dick is lost in thought and Bruce is watching him with evident worry.

"Did I say something?"

Bruce's gaze is pulled towards him. Still, worry. "No, chum. They're just eager to get to patrol."

Sure feels like Peter said something. He doesn't even know what to do with that. Nothing comes to mind as overly crazy, unless they're that uncomfortable with talking about Peter's family?

"When do you guys go out?" He asks. He could at least try to clear his head with patrol. There are some regular spots that he goes to now, that he sort of hopes will cheer him up to see. Like Analetta, the little girl that he walked home with her mother, leaves out candy for him on her window, and Peter leaves a sticky note behind to let her know he came by to keep them safe.

"Alfred would like if you rested a few more days and got your strength up." Bruce tells him.

"I'm fine, though. I slept it off already."

"Just a few days. You can let your body get used to eating more than just burgers." Bruce tries for a joke as he stands up, picking up his own plate. "Dick?"

Dick takes a second to pull himself out of his mind. "Yeah?"

"Some of your old clothes might fit Peter. He's going to need a set of pajamas for tonight before we get his things tomorrow." Bruce says in a gentle voice. Dick nods slowly, pulling himself out of whatever stupor he's in and smiling at Peter like everything is normal.

"Sounds like a plan. Those clothes are in my closet, I think."

He playfully pulls Peter's chair back for him when he gets out of his own. Peter hops to his feet, following after Dick but glancing back at Bruce. The old man has tucked his tail to hide in the kitchen with the others.

Peter doesn't get it. As Dick leads him through the halls to go upstairs, he tries to run through everything that he said at dinner. There's… nothing that comes to mind as anything weird. Instead of following behind Dick, Peter makes sure to keep at his side.

"Is everything really okay?" He asks, praying that Dick will be honest with him.

"You didn't do anything wrong, bud." Dick says it with enough conviction that Peter tries to believe him. "They just hate awkward conversations, and you and I gotta have one."

"Oh." Peter lets out, nerves bundling in his chest.

Dick doesn't need a sixth sense to detect that Peter started feeling stressed. His eyes widen and he stops in front of one of the sitting room doors, setting a hand on his shoulder. "no no no, nothing- nothing bad, I swear. It's- We have to talk about our backstory."

"…Backstory?"

"We don't exactly want to keep you a secret." Dick tells him, opening the door to the sitting room. This was the room with the locked door that Peter avoided earlier. "You know, the whole billionaire thing. People get in our business a lot, and our secret identities are a must. The press is scared of B 'cause he's made it pretty clear that they shouldn't talk about his kids, but if they see you-"

"They're gonna assume Bruce adopted me too?" Peter feels the tension from him release. "You know, you don't have to teach me about the press."

"I don't?" Dick opens the door to his bedroom.

"No. Tony taught me." Peter grins, and he revels in the confusion Dick has for a second. "He's a billionaire like Bruce. The Stark Industries I mentioned earlier? It was his family's company."

Dick stops in the doorway, turning around, gobsmacked. "Seriously?"

"Yeah!" Peter knew it would be funny to drop that on him. "So, is that what you were worried about? Teaching me how to deal with the press? 'Cause Tony, gave me all kinds of advice. Like, looking my best so I at least look cool when the paps try to sneak my photo."

The older man shakes his head in disbelief, muttering "Of course." under his breath as he makes his way into his room. Peter stands at the doorway for a second, just looking around.

It's clear that Dick had moved out at some point, but that he still visits often. The room has a lot of the same elements of Peter's, but it isn't so bare-bones as his is. Dick's room is full of life. The canopy bed has string lights on the headboard, as well as taped Polaroids and printed pictures of what looks like Dick with his friends and family. The walls were painted a pretty light blue, any whites in the room are more of a sandy white, sort of like a beach. It's hard to see the blue walls, though, because every inch is covered in posters. The bookshelf has more than just a vast collection of books, and it mostly centers around things that Dick has put on display.

Peter walks over to the bookshelf to see as Dick opens his closet door. There's sea shells and coins from all over the world in one spot. A pink music box that has a broken handle. There's tickets to concerts, there's framed photos of him and Bruce, and Jason, and Alfred, all looking younger. There's one picture with a 13 year old Tim and Dick at an ice cream shop.

It's very cozy, which suits Dick, Peter thinks. He doesn't know that much about the guy, but the room matches his vibe really well.

"It's less about the paparazzi- they really are scared of Bruce, besides Vicki Vale. We're more worried about what to tell them, if they see you." Dick sounds hesitant. He's pulled a box down from the top shelf of his walk in closet, and he's now kneeling on the floor to dig through it. Peter wanders over, crouching down next to him.

"Backstory."

"Yeah." Dick pulls out a black sweatshirt with something called "THE GREY GHOST" on it. He blinks at the huge swath of fabric, then sets it down with a sigh. "I told Bruce I lost that, and it was here the whole time."

Peter chuckles at that. Dick pulls out another hoodie, this time it's white and has no design. He also pulls out some pajama pants and socks. Peter almost wonders about underwear, but Dick mutters that Alfred probably already put some in his room.

"So, Peter…" Dick stands up, and Peter tucks the clothes under his arms. "We don't know how long you'll be here, so we need to set up some type of guardian for you."

"Is that not the serial kidnapper- I mean, adopter?"

Dick lets out a breathy laugh. "No. I was- I was hoping you'd be okay if I did that?"

Oh. Peter hadn't considered that. All signs had pointed to Bruce being the one who'd take him in. But Dick is nice too, actually. He knows Dick better than he does Bruce, even though he's apparently going to live in Bruce's house. It does sort of settle on him, however, that he doesn't know how long it could take to catch Ohnn. Maybe, at some point, he's going to have to work on getting home rather than catching Ohnn. He can't stay here forever just because Ohnn is here too.

Tony is waiting back home. Pepper, Ned, his teachers. Ben and May's graves are there. His parents, too. As long as Peter is here, he can't see any of them. and Queens is missing him too, he hopes. Spider-Man has so many people in his world that he checks up on, and he doesn't think Loki has been taking up the Spider-Man mantle too.

He might be here long enough that he needs a guardian. But-

"That's okay with me." Peter says honestly. Dick relaxes, and Peter figures that must have been what was worrying him the whole time. Peter does have a history of running away when they get close. "I mean, it's temporary and necessary. I'll be going home soon now that I have you guys."

"Right. Yeah." Dick nods. He picks up the box and brings it into the closet again. Peter takes another glance around the room, getting a good look at the posters.

There's one that catches his eye, out of all the others.

It's not just because it's prominently displayed, or that the colors are bright and fun. At first, it's just that the name "Grayson" catches his eye, and Peter is surprised to see it. He had just been talking about his grandparents, after all. But the longer he stares, the more Peter understands.

THE FLYING GRAYSONS

The name stands out on the backdrop so plainly, but it takes Peter reading it several times for his brain to comprehend it. Peter walks closer to the poster while hearing Dick put the box away in the closet.

"I'm Dick Grayson." He had introduced himself to Peter.

The conversation that he just had about his parents at the table- Dick had looked sad, not scared. Like he couldn't fathom this, like it hurt him to hear. The two acrobats on the poster are colored in as silhouettes, but Peter remembers a box of video tapes of performances and practices that he used to watch for hours on end, dreaming about being like them, about having that connection to people he never got to know, that were his family. In that box, there had been the exact same poster. Only, his hadn't included the names of the acrobats.

John Grayson, Mary Grayson, Richard Grayson

"Oh."

He laughs, first. Out of shock, mostly, maybe confusion. He can't believe it, at first. His brain tries to convince him that it's just a coincidence. But the logical part of his brain screams at him don't be fucking stupid. And that's when all the humor is blown away, and Peter is left rocking in the aftermath.

Peter sits down on the bed, staring at the poster as it stares back at him. He hears Dick suck in a breath when he comes back, but Peter can't look away from the poster.

His dad had been named Richard Grayson. His grandparents, John and Mary. It was staring Peter in the face the whole time, but he had overlooked it. Had he been avoiding thinking of it, or had he just not considered it a possibility?

Or did Peter really not recognize his own father's face?

He wants to feel something, anything. But what he feels is… numb. It's the same as when Peter waited in Ben and May's window for his parents' car to pull up, on a rainy summer day, a few days after his birthday. He turned four, and he was so excited to have his birthday party with his mom and dad. They were going to go to the space museum together. Dad promised.

But the car never pulled up, and Ben and May were in the kitchen on the phone. Peter moved from waiting at the window to sitting on the porch step, looking down the street where the car usually pulled up.

It's the same feeling as when May sat down next to him, and she'd been crying, and she says that she needs to talk to Peter.

It's the same feeling as a funeral Peter didn't go to, because he was so little, that he didn't understand. There weren't any caskets, because they died in the ocean, falling out of the sky, and would never make it back home.

The same feeling as visiting headstones, and not remembering their faces.

It's numb, and nothing, and everything all at the same time.

The bed dips as Dick sits down next to him, hands folded together. He tries to speak, but the words must be lost on him, too. It takes what Peter thinks must be hours for Dick to say anything.

"I didn't know how to tell you." Dick says, his voice barely above a whisper. Peter would say it's his victim voice, the one he'd use on a little kid that just lost a parent, but that's not really the case here. It's raw, like Dick was struggling to understand it himself. "We saw it earlier, when the DNA results came in… I'm so sorry we didn't say it earlier. There was a lot going on, and we didn't want to leave that on you in front of everyone."

Peter stares at that poster.

"Are you okay, Peter?"

"I'm tired."

He didn't know he was going to say that until he says it, but it sounds right. Peter finally looks at Dick, and the man has the most vulnerable expression on his face, like he'd been ripped apart and exposed for everyone to see. And Peter sees his eyes are a little watery and there's guilt. And Peter, numb, can't think about what that means, or why he even feels that way.

"I'm gonna go to sleep." Peter tells him, feeling breathless. Dick's brow furrows in confusion, searching Peter's face for a couple heartbeats. His expression softens, though Peter doesn't know what he finds.

"Okay." Dick says. "That's okay. You've had a big day. We can talk later."

Peter stands up. Dick doesn't follow him out the door, but Peter manages to say, "Goodnight"

"Goodnight."

-

Peter's door opens while he's laying in the bed. That numb feeling had taken over him, and he somehow managed to blink and find himself dressed in the new clothes and laying down, looking out the window and watching the moon peek out from behind the clouds. The Not-Silence that he heard earlier feels much more like regular silence at night. The walls muffle everyone's heartbeats, and Peter can only hear the wind in the trees.

hello friend

No light spills out from the hallway, because everything is dark in the Manor now. He thought everyone else had left on patrol, or just left. But Peter hears two heartbeats at the door, and one of them is Damian.

"Ace," he whispers. "Leg dich hin."

The dog's paws patter across the floor, and then jumps into the bed with Peter. He whines smally as he tucks himself under Peter's arm, laying his head down on Peter's neck. Peter's hand runs through the fur without thinking about it, and Ace's heartbeat is steady. The door closes, and Peter falls asleep like that.