Chapter 21
BATCHAT
Barbara (06:02am): Okay, guys, time to clock off soon. What’s everyone’s status?
Steph (06:05am): Cass and I are getting medicine for Damian. He definitely caught Tim’s cold.
Jason (06:06am): I’m in bed. Do not call me or I will set this entire city on fire.
Tim (06:07am): sitting with duke.
Jason (06:08am): How is he?
Tim (06:09am): better. still disturbed by what happened at the school, but he’s back to himself
Jason (06:10am): Good.
Barbara (06:11am): Dick?
Dick (6:14am): Eating ibuprofen like candy. That was a rough fight last night. I’m not going to be at my best for a few days.
Jason (06:15am): That’s what happens when you run off without your sidekick.
Dick (06:16am): Yeah, well, someone snatched him up before I could find him yesterday.
Barbara (06:17am): Speaking of which, Spider-Man's earpiece turned on earlier this morning.
Tim (06:18am): Can you track it?
Barbara (06:18am): No. The storm is making it difficult.
* * *
Peter doesn’t go to any one particular place in his dreams. Not this time. He’s alone in the dark, drifting, considering all that he’s lost. He closes his eyes.
When he opens them again, he finds himself in the Wakandan ancestral homeland. There isn’t as much tranquility and peace here as before; it exists, and he can even feel its presence, but it doesn’t pierce his grief. He curls up beneath the great tree, under the watchful eyes of the panthers hidden among its branches. They hover nearby, protective but aloof. Peter hugs his knees and buries his face against them. He doesn’t weep; the sorrow and pain is too deep for mere tears. It's filled every part of him, glowing like an ember. He stays like that for some time.
T'Challa sits beside him on the warm grass. He says nothing. He simply watches the stars above and the glittering city below. Peter eventually looks up at him.
"Grief is a heavy thing to carry," T'Challa says after a long moment. "And you have been forced to carry more than your fair share. That does not mean you need to carry it alone."
"I can't come crying to the King of Wakanda," Peter says.
"Why not?" T’Challa asks, facing him now. "Do you think I will not listen?"
Peter doesn’t have an answer to that question. Or, rather, he does, but he knows the answer will only make him sound more pathetic: because he doesn’t deserve it.
The King seems to sense it regardless. T'Challa presses a hand on Peter’s shoulder. "You are not alone in this, Peter. We are here for you, even if you cannot see us. Remember that. Promise me."
Peter hesitates, but nods. "I promise."
T'Challa smiles at him, both sad and relieved. "Thank you."
Peter can’t manage a smile back, but he does feel a tiny bit better. Not many people can say that the King of Wakanda has their back, after all.
“You cannot stay here forever. You must push forward,” T’Challa says. It isn’t quite an order. “Walk with me, Peter.”
Peter hesitates, then pushes himself back onto his feet. He and T’Challa walk through the Wakandan Homeland together.
* * *
At some point, T’Challa disappears. Sam takes his place, walking beside Peter. The landscape around them shifts into that Louisiana coast. Peter finds himself momentarily pulled out of his grief, looking around. Peter walks with Sam through his family's property, fascinated, in spite of his grief. He’s never been to Louisiana, and he’s struck by how different the trees are, how humid the air is, and the strange calls of the birds above. Sam is perfectly at ease, relaxed and calm as he walks beside Peter.
"I feel like I've been asleep forever," Peter says, looking at Sam. "Shouldn't I be awake by now?"
"Yeah, normally you'd be awake," Sam says, walking beside him. "Wanda and Mantis are keeping you asleep."
"Why?" Peter asks, frowning up at him.
“Because we know what you were planning to do when you woke up,” Sam says.
His words hit like a truck. Peter looks away, shoving his hands in his pockets, suddenly ashamed and sick. Sam sighs, wrapping an arm around Peter’s shoulders. Peter walks with him like that for a long moment.
“I wasn’t going to do it,” he says quietly. “Not really.”
“I know,” Sam says. “But none of us wants to take that chance. You’d do the same in our position.”
Peter frowns, but doesn't argue the point. Sam is telling the truth, after all.
“The best thing you can do is wait it out,” Sam says. He sounds as though he’s speaking from experience. And maybe he is; Peter has avoided looking too deeply into the minds and hearts of the souls attached to him. “You find a reason, any reason, doesn’t matter how big or small, to ignore that impulse. Wait until the darkness goes away, then get help. ”
"Who do I go to?" Peter asks. His own voice sounds small and raw and wounded.
"Duke. Nightwing. Tim. Red Hood or Felicia. Hell, any of the Bats, maybe even that cop you talked to weeks ago," Sam answers. "You have options. Take them. All right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, all right," Peter says. He pauses. "Thanks, Sam."
Sam nods. He keeps a protective arm around Peter’s shoulders.
At some point, others walk with them, offering their own silent support. Bucky. Shuri. The Guardians of the Galaxy. Dr. Pym and his family. Even Nick Fury and Maria Hill join them. Some speak to him, but mostly they simply walk beside him.
Gradually, the darkness in Peter’s mind retreats. The others seem to drift away when this happens. Peter keeps walking. The landscape shifts and changes as he walks. Peter finds himself inside the Avengers Compound. Memories of the other Avengers play out across the grounds, ghost like, and muted. Peter is less paralyzed by his grief now; he stands up and walks through the halls of the Compound's residence wing. A door is open, golden light spilling across the hall, and the canned laughter of a sitcom echoes out into the hall. Peter walks towards the door, peering inside curiously. This room had been closed off when he visited the Compound.
Wanda Maximoff sits on her bed. A flatscreen TV is playing a rerun of Friends. She looks up and silently waves him inside. Peter hesitates, then walks into Wanda's room and sits with her.
They say nothing.
Somehow, Peter knows she understands his grief more than the others. He watches cheesy sitcoms with her until the pain lessens, and he drifts off to sleep.
* * *
He wakes up gradually, as if someone is gently pulling away a blanket. The grief and pain are still there, but it isn’t overwhelming like it was last night. And other, darker thoughts haven been pushed away. They haven’t disappeared, but they aren’t as close and tantalizing as they were before. That gives him a shaky sort of relief he doesn’t want to think about too much. He rolls over in his bed and checks the time.
It’s almost six o’clock in the evening. It’s dark and dreary outside, with a chill wind that smells of snow and ice cutting through the drafty building. He’s almost slept the entire day away. Maybe that’s for the best. He certainly wasn’t going to do anything worthwhile with his day. He sits up, stretches, pushes himself to his feet. He paces, grabbing three breakfast bars and eating each one mechanically as he moves. He’s starving, but even that feeling is oddly muted. The breakfast bars will keep him going for awhile yet.
He thinks about his current situation, pacing through the chilly fire station. ‘You are not alone.’ Dr. Strange had written it larger than the rest of the letter, as if to emphasize the point. In the back of his head, he hears Felicia say Learn to ask for help! and T’Challa and Sam. Their words swim around the back of his mind, and the obvious conclusion strikes him.
There’s no going home, and no one is coming to save him. He’d somehow held out hope that one of Dr. Strange’s portals would just pop into existence in front of him and take him home. He knows that it was stupid to hope for that, especially after all this time, but it would have been nice. Reality has set in, however, and Peter knows he can’t go it alone anymore.
His headset lets out a quiet ping from inside his suit. He pulls on the mask, engages the voice modulator, and turns up the earpiece. “Yeah?”
“Good evening to you, too,” Oracle says, a little taken off guard by his tone.
“Oracle. Hi,” Peter says. He changes out of his pajamas and into the suit. It’s mostly dry by now, but freezing. He puts on the utility belt and double checks his webshooters. “Sorry, I’ve had a day. What’s up?”
“Nightwing could use some back up for his patrol tonight. You in?”
That’s perfect. Peter’s answer is immediate. “I’m on my way.”
“Glad to hear it,” Oracle says. “Head to the East End. Nightwing will wait for you there.”
A quick patrol will help clear his head. And by the end of it, he’ll ask Nightwing if Batman’s invitation is still open.
* * *
The storm clouds thicken, and snow flurries start to fall by the time Peter reaches Nightwing. He drops down the roof ledge beside Nightwing and looks out over the streets below. The city seems darker than usual; more worn down, more hopeless than before. The shadows are deeper, the cold sharper, and Peter wonders if he’s just seeing the city for what it truly is for the first time.
“Hey, Spidey,” Nightwing says, focused on his phone. “Easy work tonight. I need your help finding someone.”
“Sounds good,” Peter says, his tone flat and uninterested.
Nightwing notices the change immediately. He looks up from his phone, frowning at Peter. “Hey. You alright?”
Peter sighs, reaching back to rub the back of his neck. Maybe he should just come clean now instead of waiting until the end of their patrol. “No. I just got some bad news from back home.”
Nightwing gives him a sympathetic look. “Let’s go talk--”
“Not yet, guys,” Oracle cuts in. “Black Mask’s men are moving in on Lexcorp’s labs. They’re heavily armed. And someone just called in a fire at an apartment tower on the other side of the Bowery. Details are sketchy on that one, but the company who owns the building doesn’t have a stellar record with the fire marshal.”
“When it rains, it pours,” Nightwing says with a sigh. “Back in my day, we only had one crisis per night.”
“You’re like eight years older than me, if that,” Peter points out.
“Hey, that’s like twenty in superhero years,” Nightwing points out. “Okay. Spidey, you go check out the fire, I’ll head to Lexcorp. We’ll meet up again afterward.”
“Right,” Peter says, standing up straighter. “Be careful, Nightwing."
* * *
Peter swings through the Bowery, keeping his head on a swivel. The apartment tower doesn’t look like it's on fire, but it could be an internal fire that hasn’t yet breached a window. Peter reaches the tower, sticks to the wall and crawls around the entirety of the tower. No fires, no alarms, not even the smell of smoke. The brick walls are damp and cool under his fingers, and the only sounds he can hear coming from inside are the usual noises one would hear in any apartment complex: laughter, annoying bass boosted music, chatter, and clattering noises in kitchens.
“Oracle, I’m here, but I don’t see anything,” Peter says. “I can’t even smell smoke.”
A lengthy pause follows that.
“Oracle?” Peter says, louder this time. He says it loud enough to startle a man standing on a balcony outside his apartment, holding a cigarette. Peter awkwardly waves at the man who returns the wave, just as awkwardly. “Hey, you there?”
“Shit,” Oracle says quietly. “That was a false call. Someone hacked into the 911 system and filled it with bogus calls. I’ve got two dozen bomb threats, one hundred fires, and four bank robberies on the screen right now. None of them seem legitimate.”
Gunfire cracks across the comm line, and Nightwing says, “The Lexcorp robbery isn’t! I could use some back up!”
“I’m on the way,” Peter says. He launches himself off of the apartment tower and swings back towards the Bowery.
Even through the clouds and snow, he can see the giant L shining through. The Lexcorp building isn’t the tallest one in the district, but it’s close. Peter uses his webs to throw himself across the district. He crosses it in no time at all, using a crane settled across the roof of a nearby building to swing around the rooftop and get an idea of what’s happening below.
Nightwing is facing off against twelve opponents and holding his own. The men have translucent tubes burrowing into their skin like the men he and Red Hood fought last night. One man aims a punch for Nightwing, misses, and cracks the cement wall where Nightwing’s head had been seconds before. They’re enhanced, then.
Peter finds his opening and swings down towards Nightwing and the men he’s fighting. Warning bells start to sound off when Peter starts his swing, and the full alarm hits him three seconds before the red dot of a laser appears on Nightwing’s back. Nightwing doesn’t notice; he’s too busy fighting back a dozen frenzied False Facers.
It’s just enough time for Peter to adjust his trajectory. He switches direction on a dime, yanking himself hard to the left, and swings low and fast. He lands a shoulder against Nightwing’s side, hard enough to send the man flying across the roof with a startled, breathless grunt just as the crack of a gunshot rings out.
Things slow down for him after that.
He sees the red dot hover over his side. Peter’s swing isn’t as fast as it should be. He can’t dodge this, and if he tries to turn or shift into another maneuver, he’ll just slow himself down and make himself a bigger target for the next shot. He tenses, his senses going absolutely wild.
He sees the blood when the bullet strikes home, but all he feels is a sharp, burning sensation, as if he’s been bitten by the spider from Oscorp again. It pierces deep, smoldering inside his guts, setting his ribs on fire, and adding a strange, wheezing sensation whenever he breathes in.
He sees Nightwing roll back onto his feet, staring at Peter in confusion that shifts to horror.
The force of the bullet interrupts his swing, throwing him off balance, and sending him over the side of the building. He lands on a lower roof with a sickening thud, cracking his head against the tarred roof hard enough to send stars in his vision. He rolls over onto his hands and knees, frustrated by his slowness, and tries to catch his breath. There’s a stitch in his side--
“There’s a bullet in your side,” Bucky hisses.
Right, that too.
Two more red dots appear on his hands, tracing jerky lines up towards his face. He launches himself off of the roof blindly, swinging away in a drunken, hasty arc that has none of his usual grace as two loud cracks echo across the evening sky. He swings from building to building, ducking between alleys and putting the larger buildings between himself where the snipers are.
Naturally, his headset is absolutely exploding.
“Nightwing? Someone is throwing a lot of interference into the line,” Oracle says. “Report. What’s your status?”
“I’m fine! I’m fine!” Nightwing snaps. Peter has never heard him this upset before. “He just--Spidey pushed me out of the way of a bullet. He’s hit. I’m in cover, but I can’t leave. They have me pinned down. God, there must be a dozen of them in the buildings around us.”
“Stay low, help is on the way,” Oracle orders. Three more thundering cracks shatter the air and Nightwing curses. She’s typing furiously on her end of the radio. “Help is coming as fast as they can--”
Peter lands hard on the roof of a bank some distance away from the Lexcorp building, standing in the shadow of the crane. His side throbs in agony, sharp enough to make his knees wobble and his breath come out in sharp gasps. This is much worse than his normal gunshot wounds. He’s never been shot with a sniper rifle before; normally it's a smaller caliber, if it happens at all. A little .22 bullet would be far more preferable to the absolute slug buried in his side. And it is still there, he can feel it. He prods the wound and hisses in pain, biting back a sudden wave of nausea. Flashes of white light creep into the edge of his vision, and his breathing becomes ragged. Blood is pouring down his side in a constant cascade, growing stiff in the cold, damp air.
At least he pushed Nightwing out of the way. This probably isn't a fatal wound for Peter, but it definitely would've been one for Nightwing. A bullet this large would’ve shattered his spine. It might have blown him in half entirely. Better the bullet hit him than Nightwing. Now for the fun part: getting the bullet out of himself. He can’t heal while it’s still there, and there’s only so much blood he can lose before it becomes troubling.
“Spider-Man, what’s your location?” Oracle asks. Peter has never heard her sound so tense. “I can get an ambulance to you--”
And then she cuts off. A muffled explosion in the distance sends smoke and debris into the air near the base of the crane, and the main cell tower in the neighborhood begins to topple over to the street below. Distant echoing pops in the neighborhood around him sound off, and Peter has the sinking realization that someone has just taken out every cell tower and repeater in the district.
“Someone just neutered the communication network,” Fury says.
“This is too organized,” Hill says.
Peter has to agree. The 911 hack, the snipers, the cell towers. This is connected. But god, it’s hard to think right now.
“Yeah, I fucking wonder why,” Bucky snaps. “Get to cover--”
The crane creaks ominously. Peter’s senses, already at high alert, shoot up to a low alarm when the massive machine is hit by a gust of wind. It creaks, then tilts, and then starts to fall to the streets below. The same streets that are currently packed full of cars and people. When it hits the ground, it’ll pancake anyone or anything it lands one.
He can’t let that happen. Peter pushes himself up, looks for any lingering snipers (he spots two), and then moves. He sprints across the slick rooftop, moving over and around each obstacle, using the parkour tricks Nightwing taught him weeks ago, adjusting his webshooter as he goes. If he does this just right---
He leaps into the air and shoots a wide web at the crane, swings below and then around it, connecting the web to the nearest building. It holds, creaking ominously. He keeps going, repeating the process down the length of the crane. It's a process that takes less than a minute and eats up almost all of his web fluid. He can feel blood pour out of his side with every leap, every swing, and every breath. It slows him down, but he pushes through it. He can’t stop now, and he’s not going to. Too many people are counting on him.
The final web, swing, and stick takes place barely twenty feet above ground. Peter succeeds in suspending the crane mid air above the busy streets of Gotham just as the crane brushes against the tops of a few buildings below.
He tries to land on the crane, misses by centimeters, and instead lands hard on the cold asphalt of another building. The wind is knocked out of him. He wheezes, staring up at the crane in a daze, blood gently pouring out of the wound in his side. The crane dangles from its web cocoon above him, creaking in the wind. Despite the pain, the exhaustion, and the very real bullet wound in his side, Peter feels relief.
God, that had been close. Was it not anchored properly? Was it rigged to fall? How did it---
Danger.
Peter freezes. His senses are going haywire. He can hear footsteps. And the sound of a coin being flipped, over and over.
"You know, kid, you chose a really bad time to drop in. That trap wasn’t meant for you," a low, gravelly voice says. Peter doesn’t recognize.
"Stupid do gooders are all alike," another voice says, sibilant and snarling. This one smells like a reptile. Killer Croc. "Instead of Nightwing, we get a Spider."
"Hang on there, pal," another says, and this one sounds like he's talking through a mouthful of mud. Clayface. "He ain't our mission. We don't need to kill him, right, Two Face?
Two-Face says nothing for a moment. And then that first gravelly voice speaks and Peter puts a name to it. "Everyone deserves a chance. Fifty-fifty. That's the best anyone can ask for."
Another coin flip, the smack of one hand catching a coin against another. Silence, and then, "Looks like the odds weren't in your favor."
“Oh, I was hoping it would go that way,” the Joker says, laughing. “Let’s call this a team building exercise, hm? Nothing brings friends together like a good beating. I even brought my favorite crowbar!”
“Leave him alive enough for me,” a voice hisses, low and echoing. The body it comes from smells of Fear toxin.
“If he survives this, he’s all yours, Scarecrow,” Joker says. “Just leave him somewhere for the Bat to find.”
“Get up,” Sam says urgently. “Get up!”
Peter Parker, grievously wounded, exhausted, and rocked by the knowledge that he’ll never see his friends or family again, pushes himself to his feet to face his foes.
Alone.