Where to start?
Peter woke up to a blinding amount of pain. It felt like he was dying, and he was barely able to focus enough to stop the screams buried in his throat, itching to get out. Taking in some quick breaths, he waited for the pain to subside. He figured switching realities wouldn’t be great for his body, but he wasn’t expecting the pain to be this bad.
As the pain started to fade slightly, Peter’s memories began coming back to him. The last thing he remembered was his talk with Dr. Strange, where he found out the only way to fix things was for Peter to have never even existed in his reality, but Dr. Strange offered one way he could still make a life for himself. Of course Peter didn’t want to leave behind everyone, but he knew it was the only option.
If starting over in a new reality was what would save his family and friends, he would do it in a heartbeat. So he was quick to accept the terms, and Dr. Strange said a final goodbye.
Heavy raindrops that pelted his face startled him out of his thoughts, and it took all energy left in him to push himself up. His raging headache didn’t appreciate the movement, but Peter opted to ignore the pain and take in his surroundings.
Even with his enhanced eyesight, it took a moment to adjust to the darkness surrounding him, with the moon and stars as his only light source. Not to mention his vision was blurry and everything he could see was spinning. Soon after, outlines began to appear and shapes started to take form, slowly coming into focus.
The rough concrete he was sitting on and strong breeze started to make sense as Peter realized he was overlooking a city. From up here he could see towers and buildings making up the dense area that stretched on for miles. New York was a place that was very alive at night, and in comparison this place was dull and quiet. The only sounds being the wind and some sirens in the distance. As surprising as it was waking up to being on the edge of a roof, it was extremely helpful to have no witnesses of Peter's bizarre awakening.
It was normal and even comfortable for spiderman to be on top of buildings, however the chances that he existed in this reality were astronomically slim. And without his suit, he just looked like a depressed teenager who might jump to end his suffering. Peter wasn’t sure if there were any heroes roaming around that would stop to help a civilian on a rooftop, but he didn’t want to stick around to find out.
Peter waited a few moments, gathering his strength before slowly standing up. This only caused his headache to worsen,and his vision became cloudy as he struggled to keep his balance. A few deep breaths later, he had stabilized himself enough to begin stumbling towards the fire escape.
Making his way down to ground level was painful and time consuming, but regardless Peter started wandering around the streets of the city, attempting to process his situation.
There was a long list of things he needed to do, and it was extremely overwhelming. He didn’t even want to think about how he was going to inevitably introduce Spider-man to this world, and instead decided to focus on basic needs.
Peter's top priority was finding a place to stay, and he started going through his options while attempting to ignore the cold rain water seeping through his clothes.
He could buy or rent a cheap place, but with no money on him that would mean getting a job and saving up, neither of which he had time for. If the weather in this place was only going to stay cold and rainy, he would freeze before he had nearly enough money for that.
He could attempt to find a homeless shelter, but he knew that would raise a lot of questions he didn't have believable answers for. The idea of trying to explain his situation to anyone sounded like a nightmare and simply wasn’t worth it.
He could also find a bridge or something to sleep under, but that would only temporarily solve the issue. Peter doubted you could survive this rain and cold outside for longer than a week.
This pretty much left him with just one option, which was to find an abandoned building to stay in.
Now this was easier said than done, as most cities have very few abandoned buildings, choosing instead to quickly renovate any they had. So Peter prepared to spend the entire night searching, but was pleasantly surprised after finding one in less than an hour.
It looked super old, but nothing else seemed wrong with it. Unease began to grow in his chest. What kind of place was he in where the city wouldn't renovate a perfectly good building? This isn’t home to a cult or anything, was it?
Peter chose to push down these thoughts and just be thankful for this miraculous find. But his problems weren’t solved yet as he still needed to get in.
The front door was locked for obvious reasons, as well as the windows on the first floor. So after quickly glancing around to make sure no one was nearby, Peter started using his sticky grip to scale the wall. After all, there would be no reason to lock the 2nd story windows.
Stopping on the part of the wall right beside a window, he used his feet and one hand to stabilize himself, with the other hand pushing up the glass. Just as he suspected, the window slid right open.
As he entered the building, finally taking shelter from the pouring rain, Peter started to feel a little less upset with his miserable situation. He took in what was going to be his home for the unforeseeable future.
The air was stale and he was standing on some old carpet. There was a beat up mattress on the ground and some random pieces of wood scattered around. It looked as though someone had attempted to fix the place up before ultimately deciding it wasn’t worth it.
As much as Peter wanted to look around his new home some more and clean the place up, he was fucking exhausted. Traveling through realities takes a lot more energy than you would expect, and he wanted to sleep off the pain.
Peter collapsed on the mattress, too tired to be bothered by its filthiness, and decided working on this place would be a future-him problem.
Peter woke up with a headache, and wanted nothing more than to stay in bed and pretend he didn't exist. But he knew if he wanted to make a life for himself here, he needed to get moving.
Considering the long list of problems he needed to address, Peter first decided he needed information. Like for example, where he even was?! And what better way to gain information with no phone than the local library.
Peter wasn’t proud of it, but with his damp, ripped clothes, they might not let him in, so he had to resort to some unlawful tactics to get better clothes without any money.
Which led to Peter taking to the streets of the city, wandering for what felt like hours.
After finding what looked to be some chain brand clothes store, (Peter drew the line at stealing from small businesses.) Peter walked in and began looking around. Even with his dirty, torn apart getup, he got no more than a glance in his direction.
Not wanting to take more than absolutely necessary, Peter grabbed a grey long-sleeved shirt and some baggy black jeans. He also made sure to grab any hygiene products he needed. (He wasn’t an animal after all) Using his spidey sense to guide him, Peter was able to swiftly avoid any security, which there was an insane amount of for some reason, and he avoided detection from any cameras.
After successfully making it out of the store, he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and began his journey back home, or at least where he thought home was.
Much later, a tall building came into view that he recognized from the previous night. Peter was now able to take in the building as a whole for the first time, lit up by the daytime sky. No sun shone upon this city, as it was extremely cloudy, but at least it wasn’t as dark or raining.
He realized the building was an old apartment complex, which made sense as to why it was so big. Peter was more than content with his new house, and just needed an easier way in.
He silently reprimanded himself for forgetting to unlock the door from the inside last night, and quickly glanced around his surroundings.
This building was not in a busy part of town… in fact, he hadn’t seen anyone besides him walk by this building. It wasn’t that far of a walk to the busier parts of town, (If you knew where you were going), but since it was on the outskirts of the city, there was no reason to walk over here.
Which was great for Peter, as he was once again able to scale the side of the building with no detection.
Not wanting to forget again, after making his way through the window he immediately downstairs to unlock the front door.
It seemed like this building had been locked here for so long, that no one would even bother trying the front door anymore, so Peter wasn’t too worried about anyone finding him here or breaking i
After trudging back up the stairs to his apartment, Peter got changed into his new clothes and wanted to get started on his journey to find the library. After all, he was extremely curious about the city and this new world he was in.
Instead of wandering around aimlessly, this time Peter decided to ask for directions. The problem was everyone in this city seemed super sketchy, and the majority of them set off his spidey senses.
Coming across a market of sorts, Peter entered hoping to ask the store clerk as they might be more trustworthy than random people walking around outside..
“Excuse me,” Peter said as he reached the counter, clearing his throat, “Do you know where the nearest library is?”
The woman manning the counter didn’t even spare him a glance, and instead wordlessly handed him a paper map.
“Uh- thanks.”
Peter started walking away, not wanting to continue this one sided conversation.
Upon exiting the store, he unfolded it, wondering who even uses paper maps anymore.
All the streets and labels on the map seemed chaotic at first, so it took Peter a minute or two to even figure out where he was.
Luckily, it seemed like there was a library nearby, and he started in what he thought was the right direction.
This place felt uneasy to him. Just the city as a whole made him nervous. The people here were very closed off, and not one person he made eye contact with returned a smile. Also, the number of guns he saw people carrying made him wary of any danger that might be hidden within the alleyways.
The air smelled of smoke, and a cold breeze felt like needles pricking the skin on the back of his neck.
Not to mention how the atmosphere felt weirdly quiet for how many people were out.
It felt like an hour, but Peter reached what looked like the library within 15 minutes. He pushed open the doors, expecting it to be fairly busy late-afternoon. But he was surprised to find it entirely empty. Usually in libraries there's at least some quiet whispering or light chatter, but it was so silent you could hear a pin drop.
By the looks of it, the only person in the building was the librarian, who was staring at him intensely, waiting for Peter to do something.
“Um- hi… I was just gonna use the computers if that’s cool?” After waiting a moment to see if she responded, Peter just decided to walk over to the computer station farthest from the counter, and logged in as a guest.
The library is always dead, which is perfect for Barbara’s cover.
She can rely on no one ever stepping foot in here besides those who knew of her secret identity as Oracle. In fact, she can’t remember the last time a civilian stepped inside, that's how long it's been.
So when she heard the door open and saw a kid she didn’t recognize, it startled her a bit. It actually startled her enough that she forgot to respond to him and may have accidentally been staring too much.
His accent was interesting to her, maybe he was from New York? And he was nice too, which was weird. Judging by the way the kid acted, it seemed like he just recently moved here. Which makes absolutely no sense because why would anyone move to Gotham?
Barbara had a lot of questions, but she knew she couldn’t just bombard him while he was trying to do stuff. She opted for just waiting till he left to try and strike up a conversation.
Peter wasn’t too sure what to start with, but after contemplating it for a moment, he typed out ‘Spider-man’ and hit enter. He wasn’t surprised when no results were found, but he thought he'd check just in case.
Next he looked up Iron Man. Then the Avengers. And still, nothing popped up. The realization that everyone he ever loved was left behind was devastating. He tried to ignore these thoughts as he had for the last day or so, but he knew he could only push down these feelings for so long.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts and instead typed out, ‘What's my location?’. After a moment of loading, it showed he was in a city called Gotham. And as he scrolled further, he saw tons of articles about Gotham, all of which mentioning the same thing: the crime rate.
As he read on, it all started making sense to Peter. The cold shoulders from strangers, his spidey senses on high alert, why they didn’t renovate the building. It was because no one in their right mind would move to gotham. In fact, it seemed that everyone would move out of Gotham at the first chance available.
…
Well on the bright side, Spider-Man could help a lot around here.
Peter wasn’t even sure if there were any heroes here. But after a quick search, he found his answer.
Batman was the main hero here in Gotham belonging to a group called, ‘The Justice League.’ Which Peter thought was very similar to the avengers.
There were also a ton of vigilantes here, which seemed to be working with Batman?
It was surprising, considering heroes and vigilantes don’t usually get along at all.
With all these vigilantes, Peter thought he might need to be slightly careful when debuting as Spider-Man, as he wasn’t sure how well they’d accept newcomers into their little vigilante society thing.
Speaking of, Peter also needed to make a new suit and web shooters, but he decided to worry about that another day. He needed to take things one step at a time, and the next step was ensuring his existence in this universe.
So Peter decided he needed to get to work creating an identity for himself. The people of Gotham didn’t seem like the curious type, but he didn’t want to risk anyone asking questions.
So over the next hour, Peter hacked into very secure websites and created a legal identity for himself. His family was the most difficult part. Peter decided to list Tony Stark as his father, and listed his mother as deceased. He couldn’t bear to think about his Aunt May, so family-wise he just left it at that.
Peter even created an entire identity for Tony Stark, on the off-chance that someone looked into him.
Long story short, his identity was airtight. He got rid of any loose ends that might expose his identity as fake. The only problem left was his home address.
He can’t very well list an abandoned building as his address, but he also couldn’t leave it blank without arousing suspicion. After thoughtful consideration, Peter typed in a random address that looked real at first glance, but actually didn’t exist.
If anyone did look into his identity, they wouldn’t even think to check that the address listed was real, and that was about as good as Peter could do.
Not wanting to overstay his welcome, (He could feel the librarian staring at him.) Peter decided to call it there. Of course there was more he wanted to do, but he figured he could always come back sometime soon to finish things.
He made sure to take a few minutes and wipe the recent history on the computer, just in case. It wasn’t hard by any means, but it definitely had more cyber security than Peter thought was reasonable for a public library computer.
Regardless, there was no trace of him even logging into the computer. After working up the courage to walk past the librarian and leave, (She seemed like she wanted to say something to him.) Peter got up and started moving towards the exit.
He almost made it pass the counter when the librarian started talking to him.
“You new around here?” She asked, breaking the silence.
As much as Peter wanted to ignore her and keep walking, he didn’t want to be rude. And considering this had been the first person to address him since he got here, maybe an actual conversation would be nice.
“Is it that easy to tell?” Peter asked, moving towards the counter.
“Your accent gives it away. What is it, New York?”
Peter nodded, “Queens.” He was slightly surprised New York even existed here. He decided he would need to research the differences more when he came back next time.
“So what brings you here? Just visiting?” the lady asked, phrasing it like a normal question. But after all his research Peter knew she was really just asking, ‘Why the hell would you ever come to Gotham of all places?’
“My dad’s work transferred him here. So I’ll likely be around for a while.” This alibi matched the identity Peter created for his ‘dad’, but he didn’t want this stranger knowing too much about him so he didn’t elaborate.
“Ah I see… my name’s Barbara by the way.” Barbara said, waiting for him to respond with his own.
“Peter.” He said, not wanting to give out any more information about himself. “I have to get home before my dad gets worried, but I’m sure I’ll be back.”
Barbara seemed slightly disappointed at him cutting the conversation short, but didn’t comment on it.
“Get home safe, I’ll cya around!” She said, waving goodbye as Peter walked away.
Something about that kid intrigued her, and Babs couldn’t stop herself from looking into his search history.
She felt bad invading of course, but walking into this library and being secretive? It was like he was asking for it.
The only issue was, once she went into the computer, the history was gone.
Sure you can delete your search history, but Barbara can always find it, y'know, being Oracle and all. It's quite simple really, because once you search something, even if you delete it, it's never truly gone.
Or at least, Barbara thought. But Peter’s history was gone gone. As if it never existed. Which didn’t make sense as the kid wasn’t just staring at a blank screen for an hour, she saw him looking stuff up with her own eyes.
Which led her to the one possible explanation, that he hacked the computer.
This raised even more questions. How was a teenager able to hack their highly secure computers without setting off alarms? It was pretty much impossible to do with how much money Bruce poured into them and how much time Babs spent adding extra cyber protection. Also what could Peter have possibly been looking up made him feel the need to erase it all? It didn’t make sense.
The only thing that kept Barbara from freaking out, was that the kid said he would be returning. So she would likely have another chance to figure this kid out, and maybe get some answers to her burning questions.
She made sure to send a quick message to the family group chat, basically explaining what happened and describing what Peter looks like so the others could keep an eye out for him.
Gotham was a dangerous place after all, and a kid like that would get eaten alive around here.
Peter was hungry, and as much as he hated it, he still didn’t have any money.
So he may or may not have stuffed a couple granola bars in his pockets that he found at a nearby convenience store, and walked out. Vowing to pay them back once Peter had money, he started his walk home.
The weather wasn’t great, and with dark clouds looming above the buildings, it looked as though it was going to storm.
But at least it wasn’t raining yet, so once he made it back, Peter entered his house dry for a nice change of pace.
He walked over to the bathroom and tried the sink, sighing when nothing came out.
Peter wasn’t expecting to have running water, but he was definitely hoping. Luckily though, after taking a look at the pipes, he realized it might be a solvable problem. It looked like the pipes were just clogged, which he wouldn’t need any new parts to fix.
For a little while, Peter just focused on getting this problem solved, because even though the water wouldn’t be great, it would most likely still be drinkable. So getting running water needed to be one of his top priorities at the moment.
After what felt like forever, Peter was able to get the pipes unclogged and had running water at last. Peter suddenly remembered just how thirsty he was, immediately drinking some water. He also ate one of the granola bars he borrowed to curb his hunger.
Peter was getting a little sick of being in this room though, and wanted to get out and do something.
After being in there for so long, the stale atmosphere and bright wallpaper felt suffocating to him and he needed some fresh air.
Don’t ask him why, but Peter decided to go to the rooftops. More specifically, the roof of the tallest building he could spot nearby which just so happened to be the place he first woke up in Gotham.
After climbing up the fire escape and taking a seat on the edge of the roof, Peter was able to relax for the first time since entering this reality.
Sitting on rooftops was always something he did back home, loving the bird's eye view it gave him. And a part of him just wanted to reminisce.
As he dangled his feet over the edge, missing the rooftop conversations with Tony, he couldn’t help but admire the city.
Sure the crime rate wasn’t and it was a very dark place, but It was also beautiful in its own way. A park’s blue streetlights highlighted the empty benches way down below him. and the moon emphasized the tall skyscrapers. Peter, from the colorful New York city, wasn’t sure how to feel about the change of pace.
On one hand, he missed being the friendly neighborhood Spider-man, helping the common folk. But on the other hand, here he could make a real difference. It was obvious the city had a ton of criminals and villains. He could help out so much as Spider-man here. Peter could see the potential this city had, and he wanted to do whatever he could to help it.
Peter was so distracted by these thoughts that he almost didn't notice someone rapidly approaching him. Key word being ‘almost’.
Nightwing wasn’t having a great time.
He had been on patrol for such a long time and didn’t get any sleep the night before so he was absolutely exhausted. He stopped on a rooftop for a quick breather and debated ending his patrol there. Honestly, he was just so done with everything and was about to call it early to go home when he saw someone sitting on a nearby rooftop.
Now listen, he wasn’t proud of it, but he may have sighed.
“What's going on?” Oracle’s voice came through on his headset.
“There’s a jumper,” Nightwing replied, already moving.
Nightwing was tired and just wanted to go home but regardless, he was quick to make his way over to the building. Yet when Nightwing landed on the rooftop, his heart sank.
The person, who was sitting on the edge of the rooftop just moments ago, was now gone.
“Nightwing?” Oracle spoke, but was given no response.
This can’t be happening. Nightwing couldn’t breathe. There’s no way that person just killed themself, right?
The vigilante ran over to the edge of the roof as soon as he caught his bearings. Peering over it, he was expecting to see a body covered in blood, hopefully one that was still moving. But what he wasn’t expecting to see, was nothing.
No body, no blood, no sound, no proof anyone was ever there.
“Hello? Nightwing, what's your status?”
“Uh- I don’t know.” He finally responded, going through a mix of emotions.
There’s no way someone was able to get off the roof that quickly without falling, it just wasn’t possible.
After considering what just happened, Nightwing chalked it up to a figment of his imagination and decided he was just seeing things. After all, it was the only reasonable explanation.
Nightwing went straight home, not wanting to patrol anymore after whatever just happened.
Peter, who was sticking to the outside of the wall on another side of the building, let out his breath. He was attempting to avoid any heroes and vigilantes (At least for the time being.) and that was way too close of a call.