Prologue
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It had been almost two years since Doctor Strange had sent Peter hurling across the universe, leaving him in Gotham City but it feels like yesterday to him, he’d woken up to the dim glow of an abandoned lab, green goo surrounding and drowning him in a tube. He broke out of the tube, coughing and gagging as he struggled to make sense of his surroundings. The air was thick with an otherworldly atmosphere, and the remnants of his last moments in his home lingered in his mind. Gasping for breath, Peter stumbled around until he found his footing.The abandoned lab was big and empty, the tech around Peter seemed archaic, like he was in the backrooms or somewhere lost in time. There was a window with the view of woods and distant suburbs, the city beyond it unrecognisable to Peter, its skyline dominated by towering gothic buildings and the shadow of crime.
Shelter, water, and food. Peter shook himself out of his trance by repeating the fundamentals to his survival in his mind as he looked around his surroundings at the abandoned lab, which was shelter enough, so shelter is checked. After one tour of the place he discovered functional showers and a stash of cup noodles in what seemed to be an employee kitchen, along with ungodly amounts of instant coffee and granola bars that looked so old that the expiry date wasn't there anymore. It wasn't ideal, but it was enough to sustain him for the time being.
Now that his basic needs were addressed, Peter’s attention turned to his predicament, the predicament being where he was. Wandering through the dark corridors, his spider-sense tingle, a silent warning that he wasn’t alone. It wasn't just the physical surroundings; there was an undercurrent of something else, something beyond the abandoned lab. "I'm sorry, it was the only way," echoed a haunting memory of Doctor Strange's words. The cryptic message lingered in the air, leaving Peter with more questions than answers. What was the "only way," and why was he sent here, to this unfamiliar universe?
He shook it off as he explored further, Peter discovered rooms filled with abandoned equipment and dusty files. The lab looked like it had once been a hub of scientific activity this evidenced by the amount of "food" in the employee kitchen, but now it stood as a forgotten relic of experimentation. His search led him to a room with a computer, covered in a thin layer of dust. With a few keystrokes, Peter managed to bring the ancient machine to life, files and documents revealed snippets of information about a lazarus machine, experiments conducted by unknown researchers, and a mention of the name "Project Phoenix." inside of this folder he found another named “Subjects”, where he found his file stating his name, age (14), date of death (March, 2022), Mother (Mary Parker (deceased)), and his father (unknown), among other information about him.
Thanks to the file he now knows some crucial information:
1.- He exists in this universe.
2.- He’s dead in this universe.
3.- His mom existed and died in this universe.
4.- This universe's version of him's dead body was used in a sketchy experiment to bring back the dead and it brought him back just not that version of him(?).
He did his mental checklist of information and doubts he still had like: Who and where is his dad? How did he die? Is there internet in this thing? Among other questions.
At least one of his many questions was answered, this place does have internet and with a little (slightly illegal) hacking and thanks to the town hall’s archaic security system, Peter is now legally a living boy who is emancipated and living on his own in... Gotham..? Seriously? That's the name of the city he's in? It's a little on the nose, he guesses but sure, why not. People might question a 14 year old kid living on his own and not going to school, therefore, Peter was also looking into schools, preferably one that has dorms or student housing and scholarships. Which is how he ended up applying and getting into Gotham Academy after going to take an exam a few days later (lucky for him it was August and he was just in time for admission exams), for which he raided the lab for clothes, shoes and researched this universe's history and geography on the big boxy computer.
In one of the many forms he answered, he was asked if he needed a dorm and if he would be applying for the weekly stipend that came with the generous Thomas Wayne scholarship (which he very much did thank you) and within a couple of weeks he was attending Gotham Academy, lucky him , and was considered a model student, at least when it came to stem subjects (the geography and history of this universe was still confusing to him).
Next came spider-man, now, did Gotham need Spider-man? YES!! After living in his dorm and getting by for about two months Peter decided that Gotham was, in fact, in need of spider-man. Yes, they had all of those bats and birds, but they refuse to go into Park row, affectionately called Crime Alley, which is crawling with criminal activity and barely ever had drinkable water. So after some debating with himself and his past trauma, scrounging up materials and supplies, and getting used to Gotham and its lovely folk, Spider-man made his debut after six months of being in this picturesque city.
Next came the bats, turns out that the bats didn't take kindly to people fighting crime in "their city" without their approval, which, is fine, Peter supposed but he's helping fight crime in an area only Red Hood goes into so there's no need to be so pissy about it. The bats didn't think so, they also don't take kindly to unauthorized metas which they said Spider-man is one of those, so now whenever they see him outside of crime alley, they chase him around with knives and batarangs, which are cool, but they're cooler when they aren't coming at you Peter thinks. Red Hood seems to be chill with him tho, he hasn't chased him down or even given him a warning. Why can't all Gotham vigilantes/anti-heroes be like him?
After about a year and 8 months of living in Gotham came what Peter named the call, apparently people go looking after the dead when they're owed something, in this case, this universes Mary Parker had paid for a storage unit before she died. As it turns out, the accident that this universes Mary and Peter Parker died in was on their way to a smaller apartment Mary had just leased and she had put some of their old stuff in that storage unit. The next progression of events went like this: storage unit guy stopped getting payments for said storage unit, this went on for months so big guy got mad, he finds out Mary died and a months later that her son is alive, he tracks said son down, he calls said son and now Peter has to go through all of this stuff and figure out what to do with it.
After paying a considerable amount of (totally not hacked off of Lex Luther's bank account) money to the storage unit guy, who Peter has found out is named Mr. Grimaldi, he decided to pay for a couple more months (reminder that he does live in a dorm) while he came to terms about looking through this universe's version of his dead mother's things and the Other Peter (who he sometimes feel like he stole his life from him but that's for another day). To say he felt weird about this is an understatement, on one hand, he would get to find out more about these simultaneously familiar and strange people and he did feel like he owes it to them in some weird way but on the other hand they are also kind of strangers to him, he already took Other Peter's life, so taking these things and especially selling some of them just felt wrong but at the end of the day he just had to get over it because he can't really keep paying for the storage unit and hacking Mr. Luther's bank as bad as everything he reads about the guy seems.
So, he started looking through the unit, he would go every two weeks (he is busy student about to graduate) just to categorize and rate the objects based on how uncomfortable it made him thinking about selling or keeping them, before he even considers putting anything on the market. He hadn't gone in almost a month, busy with assignments and final projects, next time he went in to continue his inventory, he ran into Mr. Grimaldi, who even seemed like he missed Peter in the sea of people stashing odd things in his storage units, it was a surprisingly nice interaction and he went into his particular unit with a pep in his step.
After about an hour in the unit he found a pile of books and note books and among these he found it, it being TheJournal. As it turns out, alternate universe Mary Parker kept a journal in 2007, What happened in 2007 you might ask? it was the year Peter Parker was conceived, and What was in the contents of the journal? Well that would be Mary's business, or at least it would be if it wasn't also Peter's. Turns out Mary was busy in 2007, in the span of two months she slept with not one, nor two but three different men who could all be Peters biological father. And what was Peter supposed to do with this information? Besides look them up and see how happy and alive his three probable dads were.
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