Bad Brain Day
Peter stared at the ceiling, trying to find some motivation to get out of bed, to do something, anything. He glanced at the clock again, watching the minute turn as the time to catch the bus got closer and closer. “I should really get going,” he mumbled.
The minute turned again, then five more. Peter sighed. There wasn’t much use in going now, was there? He would be late and, honestly, maybe it would just be better to not go altogether than be late again. The minute turned.
There was a soft knock at the door, and when Peter grunted to come in, Jason stuck his head in. One look from under his furrowed brow was apparently enough for Jason to know what was going on. “Bad brain day, huh?”
“I just don’t know what’s wrong!” Peter almost yelled. “I just can’t… move.”
Jason hummed. “I know the feeling. You okay if I come in?”
Peter nodded, not looking away from the ceiling. He felt the edge of the bed creak with weight as Jason sat down. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“What’s there to talk about?” Peter grumbled. “I just can’t fucking move, and it’s getting worse!”
“What do you think could be causing this?”
Peter narrowed his eyes, studying the ceiling patch that kind of looked like a praying mantis if he squinted hard enough. Thoughts of Ned and MJ and Aunt May and Dr. Strange and Matt and Mr. Stark and Beck and Osborn came rushing in, overwhelming Peter to the point he wasn’t sure if he was breathing anymore. Everything was too loud, the buzzing of the electricity in the house, the water moving down the pipes as someone in the apartment above was showering, Jason’s breathing and heartbeat, the feeling of the sheets and how it was suddenly trapping him, how his shirt was suddenly much too tight and how the room was suddenly too hot and how everything itched and why was his spidey sense going off, he wasn’t in any danger, was he?? Oh god what was dangerous, he had to get Jason out if the building was about to collapse, shit—
“-id, breathe! Pete, you have to breathe! Come on, focus on my breathing. Nothing else, you got it? In and out, in and out. Breathe in, one two three four five six seven, hold, one two three four, out, one two three four five six seven eight.” Jason repeated it, holding Peter’s hand to his chest as he breathed exaggeratingly slowly.
Peter was back in his head, mimicking Jason’s breaths. He counted along until the other thoughts weren’t as loud, and his head was his own again. “Good, I’m good,” Peter said, trying to convince himself as much as he was Jason.
“Wanna tell me what happened there?” Jason carefully prodded.
“I um. I think I might be not processing things. Like, I’ve just been pushing them away and they all came rushing back in.”
“Do you want to talk about them?”
Peter’s eyes filled with tears, and Peter let them. Fuck, pushing it away wasn’t going to do him any favors in the long run, was it? “I think I should. I’m not doing anything else today,” he joked.
Jason didn’t laugh. “Are you sure? If you truly want to, I’m here for you, but if you don’t, that’s okay too.”
“Okay. I think I’m ready.”
“Think you can get out of bed?”
Peter nodded hesitantly and pulled the sheets off. He followed Jason to the couch, where Jason draped a wonderfully soft blanket on top of him. “I’m going to be right back, I’ve got breakfast and a box of tissues with your name on it.”
Jason was back in just a couple of seconds, holding the promised goods before sitting down next to Peter. Peter slowly made his way through his egg burrito, staring at nothing but his memories as he tried to figure out where to start. Finally, he said, “Well, for one, I’m not an alien.”
Jason chuckled. “Yeah, I figured as much. What alien has a perfect Queens accent? That’s just too specific.”
“How’d you know what part of New York?”
“Harley told me a couple weeks ago. So, if you’re not an alien, you had to come from somewhere, right? Something that had to do with the magic around you.”
“How’d you know about that?”
“A friend of mine showed up at the apartment a while ago asking about a pretty strong magical signature. It couldn’t have been me, so…”
“Huh. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Wasn’t my business, wasn’t his, so I sent him on his merry way.”
Peter stilled for a moment, staring at his hands. “Thank you.”
“No prob. So you were sent here through some pretty powerful magic, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What was the name of the wizard?”
“Sorcerer, not a wizard. Sorcerer Supreme. Dr. Strange.”
Jason huffed a laugh. “We have a Dr. Fate. He’s also a Sorcerer Supreme.”
“Weird.”
“Why’d you have to leave, if you don’t mind me asking?”
So Peter explained. He started with the spider bite on a Stark field trip and losing his uncle. He explained about Iron Man, he explained about Toomes, he explained about Thanos and the gauntlet, about losing his mentor and five years and his identity after Beck outed him to the world. He explained about the spell that he interrupted too many times, bringing the other Peters and all of their villains along to his world. He explained about trying to cure those villains because he had to try, he explained about how he lost Aunt May and how he had been planning to kill Osborn for it, about how he was stopped by an older version of himself that had so much pain in his eyes and about how the new spell wiped everyone’s memories of him. How he didn’t even get to see Aunt May’s grave and how he wasn’t sure if he wanted to because the words ‘Beloved Aunt’ wouldn’t be on there and he wasn’t sure if he could handle that. He explained how he lost Ned and MJ that day, and how he was finally here.
By the time he had gotten to that point, he was leaning onto Jason, tears streaming down his face and his voice choked with emotion. The tissue box was almost empty and the little trash can Jason had in his living room was almost full. Peter was silent afterwards, trying to get as much comfort as he could from Jason’s arm wrapped around his shoulders and holding Peter close.
“Jesus, kid,” Jason murmured. “Should I— should we get you some therapy?”
Peter barked out a sharp laugh devoid of humor. “What therapist would actually believe me?”
“The JL have people, have been working up an army of therapists who are sworn to secrecy and will believe you because they’ve heard weirder.”
“Weirder than a giant purple alien who erased half of my universe because of some weird rocks?”
“Maybe not that weird,” Jason conceded, “but pretty damn close. They’re good people, Pete. They’re protected by the JL too, so if anyone goes after them to get to you, then they’ve got backup and safeguards.”
“No one knows Spider-Man yet, why tell me that?”
“Because it’s the kind of thing you’d worry about, kid.”
Peter’s smile and laugh was watery, but sincere. “How do you know me so well?”
“Just a lucky guess. And if you don’t like any of those therapists, there’s always Harley.”
“She is licensed, isn’t she?”
“I think she hasn’t gotten around to renewing it yet, but she was at one point. But again, the JL has a team of therapists, so you can pick whoever you like.”
“Would you be willing to get therapy?”
“Kid, I already am.”
“I’m really happy for you. I hope it’s helping.”
Jason nodded, looking distant. “It’s a journey and it hurts, but it’s supposed to. Little by little, Pete, I think I’m getting better. So you’ll think about it? If you’re not ready for therapy, I get it and you can take all the time you need, but I think it would really help you.”
Peter thought of all the times he desperately pushed those thoughts of his loved ones and family away for the sake of his sanity, and where that was getting him. “I think I’ll try.”
“I’m proud of you kid, I really fucking am. Thank you for opening up, I know it wasn’t easy, but hopefully we can get you to a baseline where you’re not miserable all the time. Another perk of superhero therapists is that they can help get medication that will actually affect you, should you choose to go that route.”
Peter closed his eyes and smiled. “Thanks, Jay.”
“No problem, Pete.”
Peter swung through the city, wondering how a normal person couldn’t be killed with the kind of g forces it inflicted as Red Robin grappled next to him. They paused on a rooftop, staring out over the city.
“Are you doing okay? You didn’t throw a quip at that mugger we stopped,” Tim pointed out.
Peter sighed. “I told Jason everything today.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Honestly? I thought that I would feel better than I do. I mean, I do feel a little better than I did, but not nearly as much as I would have liked. And Jason recommended some of the League’s therapists, so I have that to think about.”
“That’s a lot of mental shit for one day. Are you sure you want to patrol tonight?”
“I had to get out and do something, I was getting a little stir-crazy.”
“Okay. Off topic, I know, but do you want to spend the weekend at my place?”
“Yeah, sure. I could definitely do with some distracting. Show me this Steven Universe you’re going on about, and you know, other forms of distraction.”
Tim snickered. “Yeah I bet you want that.”
“You don’t get to act smug when you’re just as bad as I am,” Peter informed him. It didn’t remove Tim’s little smirk, much to Peter’s dismay. They fell silent, watching the cars moving below them.
“It’s quiet tonight,” Peter mused.
“Weird, isn’t it? I’m worried that the villains are going to try to team up again. Lex has been awfully quiet…”
“Lex?”
“Luthor,” Tim explained. “Bad dude. He created Kon, so I thank him for that, but that’s the only good thing the guy has ever really done, and that was to try and kill Superman or something. Again. He’s this rich obnoxious prick.”
Peter considered this. “I think I have someone like him back home.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah! Norman Osborn. Bane of my fucking existence. He wasn’t even in my dimension for that long before he killed…” Peter trailed off.
Tim waited patiently, reassuring Peter when he didn’t continue. “Hey, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. Just because you spilled everything to Jason doesn’t mean you have to do the same for me.”
Peter smiled painfully. “Thanks. From what I heard, anyway, he was quite a pain to the other Peters as well. I guess I’m just grateful I didn’t have to deal with him as much as they did. But from what I was told, yeah. Rich prick obsessed with a superhero whose name starts with ‘s’ and ends with ‘man.’”
“Other Peters?”
“They were pulled to my dimension, along with all their villains, who we worked to cure. There’s a ‘Clayface’ here, right?”
“Yeah.”
“We had a ‘Sandman.’”
“And you cured him?”
“Yeah. I mean, I had help from the other Peters, but yeah we cured him.”
Tim was quiet for a moment. “Think you could cure Clayface?”
“It’s worth a try. I’d need a sample to try and synthesize it with, but yeah I think I could do it. Especially if I had you to help.”
“Aww. What else do you think reflects across universes?”
“I don’t know. You wouldn’t happen to have a mercenary named Deadpool whose real name is Wade Wilson, would you?” Peter was joking, but Tim’s slow turn to look Peter fully in the eyes was disconcerting. “No fucking way.”
“Deathstroke. Slade Wilson.”
Peter’s sudden laughter sounded reminiscent of a bird loudly squawking while being strangled. “Shut the fuck up! No way! Don’t tell me he likes chimichangas and has a weird sense of humor too.”
“He doesn’t. Yours is funny??”
“He can be. It’s really fucking dark tho, which makes sense because he was fucked up pretty badly by these experiments done on him. He can’t die and he can grow back limbs. He’s also scarred pretty badly from it. Mentally and physically.”
“Yeah, ours is just a psycho. He was kinda obsessed with Nightwing for a while and is one of the Titan’s biggest enemies. He’s terrifying.”
“Huh. Mine’s an anti-hero, so that’s good. Does yours have any kids?”
“Yeah, two of ‘em. Red Hood dated one.”
“Mine has a daughter. She was around five when I had to leave…”
“Is she a trained assassin too?”
“Nah, though she could be if she put her mind to it.”
“Good for her.”