Establishing himself as a friendly presence in Gotham was proving harder than Peter originally anticipated.
He had figured that the average Gothamite would be wary of a masked newcomer; Crime Alley and surrounds even moreso. But so far, the few appearances he'd made that evening had mostly resulted in screams, people running away or throwing stuff at him.
No one had resorted to shooting at him just yet, but Peter wasn't holding his breath.
Still, he refused to be disheartened. So what if Gotham was a hard egg to crack? Half of New York was convinced Spider-Man had killed the 'great hero' Mysterio, and Peter still managed to get work done there. Sure, there were times when the person he'd saved or offered to help turned around and spat in his face (literally and metaphorically), but Peter thought the tides had been turning back in his favour by the time he'd fallen into Gotham.
A fact he was definitely absolutely not bitter about.
What it meant was, Peter wasn't afraid of working against public opinion. He'd done it before, and he'd do it again.
He took his time tonight, trawling through Burnley and Park Row. The night's intent was to familiarise himself with the streets from on high, and he swung leisurely between buildings or jumped with light feet across the chasms of streets. This time around, he only made half an effort to avoid cameras.
Peter wasn't dumb (though last night could have proven otherwise): he knew the Bats probably had some Guy in the Chair monitoring the city and coordinating missions or jobs or busts or whatever they chose to call it in their neck of the woods. You don't earn a reputation of omnipotence (or was it omniscience? Peter got them mixed up sometimes) like the Bats had without having intimate knowledge of the comings and goings of Gotham. And unless they just… didn't do literally anything else (which Peter doubted since the Waynes were well known for their public work in Gotham), that had to mean they had someone coordinating their moves.
Reasonably, then, Peter knew that sooner or later his presence would pop up on the Bats' radar. He'd just prefer it happened closer to the later part of that equation, but also? He wasn't too worried if it was the sooner, since he'd already screwed up his first meeting with Hood. Hence the half-assed avoiding of the cameras.
It was early enough that Peter figured he'd be able to avoid most Bats and Red Hoo—Jason. That was going to take some getting used to, wow. Sure, Peter had reasoned away his resentment, but he wasn't ready to spend a night on patrol pretending he didn't know exactly who was hiding under that mask and muzzle. Maybe tomorrow… Maybe never?
Okay. Maybe Peter hadn't reasoned out all the resentment like he'd thought.
He'd deal with that later. For now, what mattered was that he steered clear of Red Hood. Even if just for the simple reason that Peter didn't trust himself to not immediately give the game away.
In the meantime, he passed through the island city's northern districts in a grid-pattern to take stock of the streets. What alleys were likely to contain what activity. Which half-empty parking lots had the highest likelihood of hosting an exchange of illegal goods. When was the worst time for shift workers to be heading home. Etcetera, etcetera.
They were the kind of things Peter knew about Queens. The kind of things Karen used to support him with whenever he ventured out of his turf, back before Mysterio. She would have been helpful now — if anything just to be someone to record his observations of the city. But Peter's memory, while not eidetic, could do a lot of heavy lifting, and what he didn't manage, he wrote down for later in a little notebook he'd put in his chest pocket just for that evening.
All the while, Peter maintained a steady connection to the web. It thrummed with life around him, and as he ran and jumped and flipped and flew, he thought it almost felt as though he were travelling along a wire, brilliant with the energy of millions surrounding him. The chaos of lives lived sung through him: furiously, joyously, desperately, dreadfully. The music of it filled Peter with something that went beyond bliss. He couldn't really describe it, just that the feeling that seeped into him was unlike anything he'd felt before and Peter was alive with it.
He could have run forever, he thought, and never tire of that feeling.
But Peter wasn't casing out Gotham just for the high. He wanted to know the city. Understand how one little spider could fit itself into her craggly pieces, for however long that little spider was there to stay. So he forced himself to stop each time he reached the water, passing from east to west and back again. Crouched on the highest point along the waterfront — half the time, that ended up being a busted streetlamp — Peter took notes on what he'd found.
The job was necessary, but it certainly wasn't the most pleasant: the cold air condensed the thick humidity into a dampening smog that left everything vaguely sticky. Even with his warmed suit, the chill seeped in through his lungs and into his bones.
The things Peter did out of love.
That wasn't all he did, of course. Entrenched in the web, though still unable to pick out the fine minutiae of human emotion, Peter discovered he could sense the spikes of alarm created by Gothamites in danger. Job or not, Peter answered their calls as he came across them along his route.
One time, it was an attempted carjacking. That one Peter chased off with some precise throwing of stones while hidden in the shadows, using the reputation of the bats to his favour. Another time, it was a pair of women hurrying home, who'd been accosted by a drunkard with a knife. Peter incapacitated the man with a set of nerve strikes (one of the few things Happy had taught him, bless that man), only to have the women run away from him. The next was a couple having a brutal domestic that had devolved into blows. Peter's appearance in their window might have prevented one of the men from beating his boyfriend, but it didn't stop eitherfrom throwing the nearest objects at Peter. He'd tossed himself out of the way with a shouted threat that he'd call the cops.
(He took note of the address. Better to come back later and see if the boyfriend needed a way out.)
So… yeah. Tough nut to crack, was Gotham.
But if the Erasure had done anything at all, it made Peter stubborn. He was tired of sitting back and twiddling his thumbs, and was determined to stick this out, for however long Gotham kept him in her ragged clutches.
This time, as Peter was flying through his sixth cross of the city, the web drew him to a child. Peter clung to the brickwork of a condemned tenement, its windows blocked, though he could feel that there was a group of people still stubbornly living inside. He watched the child, safe from observation on his perch on the top floor. She was maybe seven or eight, a little chubby, with dark skin and braids someone had taken the time to weave bright plastic beads into. She was crying as she huddled against the wall, but Peter couldn't see any injuries on her.
"Hey," he called out from above. "You okay?"
The girl let out a surprised yelp, then covered her mouth. She looked around wildly, but didn't think to look up until Peter told her to. She squinted up at the shadowed building in a way that made him wonder if she usually wore glasses. Peter was at least relieved to confirm that she wasn't hurt. Just scared.
"R-Robin?" she answered tentatively, and Peter winced with sympathy. Turning up as an unknown mask wouldn't do much to assuage her fears; at least a familiar brand like the Robins might have made her feel a little safer.
"Sorry kiddo, not a Robin. I'm a friend, though."
Rather than scare her more with his wall crawling, Peter affixed a web to the wall and abseiled down enough that she could see him properly, but not close enough to alarm her. Not that his intentions mattered much: the moment she could pick him out from the shadows, Peter heard her wet breathing hitch and the alarm on the web spiked again.
Helplessly, he waved at her, still a good twelve feet above her. "Sup."
"Who're you?" To her credit, though her voice wavered, the girl didn't scream at his appearance. Peter was relieved: he'd always designed his costume with ideas like 'coolness' in mind and wasn't interested in using fear to maintain order.
"Just your… friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man."
The girl took a wary step backwards. She was carrying a little backpack, stuffed full of who knew what, but it was pink and glittery and entirely out of place in this grimmer than usual pocket of Park Row.
"I-I never heard a' you."
"We~ell I've just moved in. Would you believe me if I confessed this was my first night shift here? Kudos to you locals, this is a bi~ig city."
Peter's sing-songed words cut through her guardedness, just as he'd hoped. The girl glanced around then back up at Peter. "Mama says it's dang'rous to be out by m'self."
"Your mama's right about that. So, why're you doing it anyway?"
Her face crumpled before she hid in her hands and Peter's heart clenched. He would've liked to come down and comfort her, but he didn't want to make her run off. Peter was fast, but no one could match the speed of a child under ten.
"Hey, hey, it's okay," he said instead from on high. "Whatever's happened can be fixed, y'know?"
"I was bad!" the girl cried out from between her hands, with all the conviction of a child certain the world was about to end.
"Come on," he tried. "No one with a My Little Pony backpack can be that bad. Who's that on the top? Twilight Sprinkles?"
"Twilight Sparkles!" the 'you uncultured buffoon' was implied in every syllable of her speech, but at least her outrage had snapped her out of her doom spiral.
"Right, right. Twilight Sprinkles, that's what I said."
The hands fell away so she could level him with the most severe glare Peter had ever seen in an under ten. He was probably lucky the mask hid his grin, or she might have been the third person that night to throw something at him.
"I'm sure Twilight Sparkles wouldn't think you did something bad. You wanna lay it on your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man?"
Peter could tell she was weighing up her options, glancing between him, the street and the boarded-up building. Eventually, she came to a decision and nodded decisively. "I ran away."
Okay. A runaway. Peter could deal with that. "May I ask why?" The crumpled face again. He panicked a little. "Or not! Why don't we start properly with introductions? Twilight Sparkle lover, meet Spider-Man. Spider-Man, meet…?"
"Naomi," Naomi answered his pointed question.
"Naomi, that's an awesome name. Do you know what it means?"
"No."
"Cool. Neither do I." Naomi's lips twitched despite everything. "You wanna know what Spider-Man means?"
She nodded mutely.
"It means 'helper of lost children' in Spiderese. That's the language of my people."
Naomi's eyes widened. "You mean you're really a spider?"
"Oh sure," Peter said with far more ease than he could have managed even a week ago. "Where do you think this web stuff I'm hanging from comes from?"
Naomi appeared to realise that whatever he was holding wasn't actually rope and she gaped with surprise. Then her eyes narrowed with suspicion again. "Spiders have eight legs. And Papi told me their web comes from their bums."
No one was ever gonna let that part go, were they?
"Well, firstly, I do have eight legs. The other four are just invisible, okay? You know how it goes: you accidentally call a sorcerer a wizard and bam! Half your identity disappears and then he goes and puts your spinnerets in your wrists of all places. 'Cause y'know, that makes sense. But sorcerers, am I right?"
The nonsensical rant worked as intended. She took a tentative step closer and Peter tried not to feel like a real spider summoning her into his web. He wasn't trying to eat her, just get her home. Don't make it weird, Parker.
"Can I come down?" he asked. "I'd rather speak to you human to spider, yannow?"
Naomi nodded. Peter rappelled down and dropped the last few feet, so he was standing on solid ground again. After hours of running and flipping and swinging, he felt a bit like he'd caught sea legs. Like he'd fallen still while the world continued to race away around him.
Now that he was up close, Naomi looked him over curiously. Peter bore the child's attention patiently, though he was waiting for her to drop something suitably savage about his choice of attire: he knew if he'd met Jenny dressed as he was, his ego would never recover.
Fortunately for Peter, Naomi was a much sweeter child. "I like your spider," she said eventually, with all the seriousness of an art critic. "It's cool."
"Thank-you," Peter said gallantly and not at all smugly. "I like your backpack. It's got the perfect amount of glitter, don't you think?"
She brightened. "Yeah! Papi bought it for me, before—" her face fell, "before Rori was born."
Peter looked at the straps. They were cleaner than an eight-year-old's bag had any right to be. "Was that long ago?"
Naomi shook her head. "He was born in summer. But he's sick and he cries all the time and Mama and Papi are always with him and—" she broke off, voice turned wavering and watery. Peter understood.
"You're lonely, huh?"
She nodded and rubbed at her eyes. Peter resolved to find a way to pack some tissues in his suit. Surely he could manage without ruining the aesthetic with — he shuddered — a utility belt. "I know Rori's sick! But he's all they ever talk about and they're always busy and, and I jus' wanted—"
"To know they cared?" Peter offered when Naomi couldn't finish her confession. She nodded furiously from behind her hands.
He was relieved: if this had been a case of abuse, he'd have had to involve himself with the police sooner than anticipated. And from the stories he'd heard from Jason — and his own research — Peter didn't exactly trust the capabilities of CPS in Gotham. Just that morning, he'd read a deep dive article from the Gotham Gazette about a not-so-healthy handful of children in foster care that had disappeared over a two-month period, all from distraught foster parents with spotless histories. There was speculation that someone from CPS or GCPD was connected, though the paper took care to ensure there were no pointed fingers.
It wasn't like that was the first time something like that had happened, either. Peter imagined there was a good reason pre-teen Jason chose the streets rather than foster or a group home.
"When did you run away, Naomi?" Peter asked. He'd crouched to be level with her now.
"A-after dinner! I tried to show them my homework, but Mama said she didn't have time and I couldn't take it anymore! But I was walking for ages and they still didn't come and then I didn't know where I was and I know they're gonna be mad and they're gonna sent me to Tito's but his place smells like wet dog and—!"
"Hey now, it'll be okay," Peter promised, interrupting her rising hysteria. Naomi continued to cry without a single tissue in sight. Damn him and his obsession with aesthetics! That was definitely Mr Stark's fault.
Okay. 'After dinner' was an unspecific time, but Peter could guess they ate early-ish. Five or six? Meaning Naomi had been out for maybe three to five hours? That was a long time for a kid under ten. Even with her parents worried about their son, they would have noticed Naomi's disappearance.
"Do you know where you live? If you're lost, we can work out how to get back."
To Peter's alarm, the crying returned in earnest. "I'm an idiot!" Naomi wailed, and Peter hushed her, glancing with alarm at the condemned tenements. He didn't know if whoever was inside was friend, foe or neither, but he wasn't interested in learning, either.
"Mama put our home in my bag!" Naomi sniffled, and wrenched off her backpack, tearing it open to reveal an address written with permanent marker on the inside. "I'm so dumb!"
"Not dumb," Peter said gently, even as he was sighing with relief. "Just scared. We all forget things when we're scared. Like, what's the difference between a wizard and a sorcerer, you know?"
13A Seargent Street, Burnley, the address read in bleeding block print on the lilac polyester.
He hadn't expected to be quizzed on his memory so soon, but there he was. If Peter's recollection was right, that was probably a fifty-minute walk away.
Fortunately, there was a faster way to solve the issue at hand.
"Naomi, do your parents have a car?"
Naomi shook her head. "But Papi sometimes borrows Mr Cáceres' car when they have to take Rori to the hospital in a hurry."
Peter nodded. On the web, he was tracking two people making their way towards them, but the heightened awareness he'd enjoyed from the rooftops was gone. He had no way of discerning their intentions. "Say, why don't we head down the street?" He pointed the way he assumed Naomi had come from. "This spot is a bit of a dead zone, but I should be able to call your parents from over there."
He held out his hand and Naomi inspected the web design curiously before she took it. Her eyes widened with surprise. "Your hand's really warm!"
"Oh yeah." Peter took extra care holding her hand. "Did you know spiders are cold-blooded? My suit's extra special to keep me warm."
"Oh." She frowned thoughtfully as they walked, then looked up at him determinedly. "Do you want my gloves?"
He couldn't resist grinning. Naomi's hand was easily half the size of his. "That's kind, but I'm okay. That's why my gloves are extra warm!"
They rounded the corner and the wall they'd been following fell away, revealing another condemned apartment block. Only half the windows were boarded, but the telltale stains of black soot streaking out from them suggested this one was in a far more precarious state. Although Peter could sense plenty of small animals within its walls — rats and birds, mostly — there were no humans. Naomi really had managed to end up far from home. It was a miracle she'd not been accosted along the way.
He pulled out his burner and dialled the number written in Naomi's backpack. The phone picked up after the third ring.
"Hello?" And yep, that was one frantic mother on the phone. Her voice was layered over several others.
"Uh. Hi, is this—" he looked down at Naomi questioningly, then remembered he was masked. "Is this Naomi's mum?"
"Oh my God!" the exclamation sat somewhere between relief and terror. The voices on the other side fell silent. "God, yes, this is Tara. Are you — do you—"
"I found your daughter. She's safe—" Peter interrupted and then was interrupted himself by Tara's wretched sobbing, then there was an exchange of words the phone couldn't quite discern, and a new speaker was on the phone.
"Who is this? You have my daughter?"
"Just a friend," Peter said, evasive. "I found her by the old apartments on Evans Close."
"Evans Close," Naomi's father echoed. His voice was taut and wary, laced with disbelief. "The ones hit by Firefly last year? That far?"
Peter glanced back at the burnt-out husk of a building. That could certainly have been an arson job. Fancy stumbling across them so soon after Jason mentioned them. "Yeah, those. How long do you think you'll be?"
"We're leaving now. Should be ten minutes. Can I speak to Naomi?"
"Sure." Peter handed the phone to Naomi. "It's your dad, kiddo."
Naomi scrambled to take it. "Papi? Papi, 'm sorry!"
Peter tried not to listen in on their tearful reunion (and there was a lot of crying on Naomi's part). He was happy to have easily resolved things, but now he'd found a solution, his thoughts couldn't help turning to the ruins of his own family. Peter had done something similar, not long after his parents died. He couldn't remember much of it, just the overwhelming desire to go back home, even though he understood that house wasn't his anymore. Uncle Ben found him thirty minutes in, and Peter had cried until he could barely breathe anymore, so struck with the horror of it all he'd triggered an asthma attack.
His aunt had been in a frenzy when they got home. She'd swaddled him up tight and cuddled with him on the couch until Peter fell asleep.
Above! Behind. Watching. The flash of awareness cut through the wave of fresh grief. There was no sense of threat from the newcomer, but Peter looked up cautiously.
There! Perched on the burnt husk of the apartments — which could not be safe — was a single, slim figure. They were too willowy to be Red Hood, and though Peter's sharp eyes could make out the silhouette of points, like horns — or ears — he doubted he was unlucky enough to stumble into the Batman's way on his first real night on patrol.
So, which of the Bats could it be?
The figure, aware they had Peter's attention, waved once, then beckoned before they shot off a line and jumped back into the night. Peter could only trace them to their second jump before the smog swallowed them.
Okay. So someone wanted to chat. He held back a groan. Threat or not, he'd been hoping to finish up his sweep tonight. Now he might have to put it on the backburner for later.
He waited with Naomi, still talking to her father, until he heard a car draw closer. Peter turned and deftly jumped up onto the fencing surrounding the Firefly casualty. Naomi startled. "What are you doing?" she asked, alarmed.
"I'm heading out," Peter said. "I know your dad's just around the corner."
"What about your phone?"
"It's cool." Peter shrugged. It was only a burner anyway. "You keep it."
"But—"
"Stay brave, Naomi. If you see me around, say hi."
She settled her shoulders. "Fine," she said, then winced. Peter laughed softly. "I mean. Bye. Thank-you."
"It's what I do." Peter watched as a beat-up SUV rounded the corner. "That look like your ride?"
Naomi squinted at the glare of lights then brightened. "It's—" she put the phone back to her ear. "Papi I can see you!"
The car honked twice in answer and Peter took that as his cue to leave, making the most of the distraction to shoot out a web and jump for the roof of the tenement. He clung to the wall, hidden by shadows to watch as a man threw himself out of the car before it had even stopped and ran for Naomi, falling to his knees and wrapping her in his arms.
Peter's chest ached. His eyes burned.
He wanted it to stop.
Swallowing thickly, Peter climbed up the decaying building and ran light-footed across the perimeter. The air still faintly stank of smoke. He wondered how many people had been displaced by the fire. Arson was a cruel way to make a statement.
It was something to research tomorrow. In the meantime, Peter had a watcher to follow.
— + —
The Bat wasn't far. Only a block to the north, though they made him follow another two, back into Burnley before they stopped and waited for Peter to join.
He watched them from their last jump, cautious, but across the web he couldn't sense anyone else on the rooftop of the arcade. The street itself was still relatively busy for nearly ten at night, with cars travelling north and south and a few pedestrians on the sidewalk, but no one paid the rooftops any mind. Considering how the Bats liked to call that ground their own, Peter found it surprising.
Though he was enveloped in shadow, the Bat knew where he was. They waved again, then mimed an old-fashioned film camera, followed up by an X with their arms. He laughed softly and made the jump.
"Are we playing charades, then?" he asked the moment he landed, but the Bat didn't respond. It was a woman, slender and shorter than Peter, cloaked in lightweight black body armour and a full-face black mask — similar to his own, he noted with approval. The yellow detailing and the bat-symbol on her chest confirmed her alignment, as did the full-length cape that rippled in the light wind. What was it with the heroes here and capes? Had they never seen The Incredibles?
Oh God. Did The Incredibles even exist here?
Either unaware or uncaring of his sudden horror, the woman — Peter suspected she was one of the many iterations of Batgirl — began to circle him, and Peter couldn't help but mimic her, unwilling to give the Bat his back. The web thrummed faintly but not enough to alarm him, though he kept an eye out for each exit as they turned.
Was she a Wayne or adjacent? He thought maybe Cass could fit the bill: they had similar builds, and he'd felt a similar cautiousness while around her that first meeting.
Eventually the Bat stopped.
"Do you know what you're doing?"
The question, half-strangled by her modulator, had Peter stiffening with offence before he reminded himself that it was the exact sort of thing he might have asked a newbie in his territory, had that ever happened. He forcibly relaxed.
"I do," he said calmly. "I've been at this gig for years."
"But not in Gotham."
"No. Not in Gotham. I'm…" he struggled to find a polite way to say 'I know this city is batshit crazy'… "aware it's not a job for the faint-hearted. I wanted to take things slow." Ish. He changed tack. "Are you a Batgirl?"
"These days I am," she agreed. Her modulator left her voice in an even worse shape than the Red Hood's. Husky with the promise of violence if challenged. Peter was entirely uninterested in doing so.
He was an idiot, but he wasn't dumb. That was an important distinction, in his mind.
"Who do you call yourself?"
He waved at the insignia on his own costume. "Spider-Man."
"You're a meta?"
"That's a bit rude," he deflected. "Take me out to dinner first. Wine me and dine me, and then we can gossip about where we got our genes from."
Batgirl's shoulders jumped with amusement. "Funny. Why are you out tonight?"
He shrugged. "Why are you?"
"I asked first."
Eh. Worth a try. He aimed for the truth: things would probably get dicey out here if he ended up on the bad side of the Bats. "It's my duty, you know? To care. To help. I've put things off long enough. Figured it was time to do my part."
Batgirl nodded. "And tonight: the girl. That was your help? Your duty?"
"Why, is it not yours?"
"It is. But it's… reactionary."
Peter shrugged. "I'm not the type to work a case. I'm not a detective." Even if last night would beg to differ. Then again, Peter was pretty sure last night was proof positive he wasn't cut out to be a detective. "I go where I'm needed, usually."
"And Gotham needs you?"
He shrugged. He wasn't arrogant enough to believe he was the answer to Gotham's prayers. Still… "Pretty sure this city could take all the help it could get and still be wanting. But I'm here, so I'll help."
"Hmm…" Batgirl stepped closer and Peter locked his feet in place to stop himself from backing away. The weight of her attention was heavy across the web. "You speak like you think you won't be here long."
Peter shrugged again. If Batgirl really was Cass, he didn't want to risk her knowing her brother's fake boyfriend wasn't long for this world. Good thing he was in the habit of manually altering his voice. "I don't know. Does it matter? I want to help."
Her shoulders twitched again with amusement. "You'll do it with or without our approval, won't you?"
Peter's silence was probably telling. He didn't care.
He heard a whisper of sound from Batgirl's earpiece. She hummed again. "I have to go," she told him.
"Sure."
"Next time I find you, give me your new number. I won't share."
He laughed. Of course she saw him leaving Naomi with the phone. "Roger that."
Batgirl nodded sharply. She took a step back, then paused as if a thought occurred to her. "We'll be coming for you. Tonight, you made yourself known with that girl. The Batman will want to know you."
"Eh," Peter said. "I'll keep a welcome mat at the ready."
Batgirl actually chuckled aloud at that. "Bye, Spider-Man."
"Batgirl."
The conversation over, Batgirl took off with a run and jumped off the roof, hauled off into the smog by her grappling hook.
So cool, Peter thought. Then:
"Goddammit! That was the number I gave to Red Hood!"
— + —
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[1]
BatChat Young Adult Edition, T ime reads 12:35AM
11:22PM Orphan Annie: New species of spider discovered
11:40PM SIGnature moves: if you send me some BS like a jumpscare gif again I'm hunting you down. I don't care that you're the scariest. I'll do it.
11:55PM Orphan Annie: <3
11:55PM Orphan Annie: its man-sized
12:11AM I'll Spoil YOU: did u mean bird-sized
12:15AM Orphan Annie: no (✿◡‿◡)
12:33AM Rude-Robin: Every day I remain here I find another reason not to stay alive