Chapter Text
Peter is drowning.
I just wanted-
-like you.
Peter is supposed to be dead.
He can't tell up from down or what it is, exactly, that he's drowning in, but for some reason that's the thing that sticks; knowing he's supposed to be dead.
Maybe if you were good enough-
There is fire in his lungs and rage in his heart; green, haunting, destructive. Peter wants to let it out -he needs to let it out.
With great power-
-morality is choking you-
There is liquid, glowing, thick liquid that sinks into his lungs, pushing out oxygen in one long, desperate gurgle of a scream as his suit fizzles in and out of its solid form.
Peter, delirious and still drowning, thinks he's back in that lake, left there to choke on his failure as Vulture escapes. But the glowing green reminds him he isn't, that he's somewhere else entirely, and if he doesn't figure it out soon, he's going to die...again.
His hands reach out, desperate movements wrapped in panic as he attempts to latch onto something solid, something he can use to propel his body up, away, out.
There is laughter, cruel, cold. It echoes, it calls.
Peter thinks he screams, but he isn't sure he ever stopped. The laughter keeps him company.
It's only when Peter can see the end, only when he can feel his body, his mind, his will give in to the darkness that waits patiently -like an old friend- does the pull slacken enough for him to kick out his legs. After five minutes, an eternity, Peter manages to break through to the surface, gasping greedily for air.
There is a vague awareness in his movements as Peter deactivates the suit, wading through water that glows, but there's something else attached to him. Something blinding hot, vengeful...heartbreakingly sad.
All he sees is green, even after he pulls himself out of the pond.
'Everyone will forget, everyone that has ever loved you-'
'I love you -just wait. Wait and tell me when you see me again.'
Peter gasps. There's a grittiness in his chest that he's not entirely all there to acknowledge past the wrongness of it all.
'I just need to catch my breath.'
Hands trembling, Peter breaks under the weight of his sins.
'May, what are you doing? May, please wake up.'
Peter swings his fists out, vaguely registering the nip of pain when his flesh hits old brick walls that remind him of the outdated tunnel routes he'd spent navigating during the harder parts of his months unmasked in Queens. Chunks of it fly loose, but it doesn't hurt enough for it to feel like justice or an equal exchange of Karma, so he keeps at it, abandoning restraints that reign in unholy strength.
Strength that, in the end, hadn't changed a thing.
'Strong enough to have it all, too weak to take it!'
Peter howls. It starts deep in his chest, just a broken mix of fear and anger and that unshakeable grief he can't ever seem to get off of him.
He throws his fist into the crumbling brick again and again until the sticky shine of his blood drips from his knuckles onto the dirt beneath him. It satisfies the grief -that haunting green- enough to take in a breath, and another until he's sinking into a mix of blood and gravel that stains the white t-shirt and grey sweats he'd been wearing under his suit.
Now this, he thinks, is justice. The echoing trickle of his blood agrees.
"Oracle said the signatures were pinging from this location."
The distorted echo of a conversation disrupts the stiff silence in Peter's mind, yet he's somewhat present enough to gauge the distance between him and them and how little time the fast-approaching thud of boots is giving him to leap away from the weird, toxic pond. Still, he manages to find an undisturbed corner of a leaky set of pipes running along the roof.
There he stays, shrouded in darkness as a figure appears, dressed in something Peter imagines half of the primary colours might have put together if they'd been transformed into people with an eye for circus fashion. Flashes of red, yellow, and green that aren't hard to miss almost entirely blindside Peter to a second figure, a tall shadow of black, who he only notices when they step through a stream of light bleeding down from an overhead gutter.
That heightened sense of his flares, running along his arms and up the back of his neck, a warning tainted in something dark, something otherworldly.
This place, wherever this is, isn't home.
Strange.
The spell to forget Peter Parker. Somewhere, somehow, it went wrong.
"Someone's been here recently; the footprints are still wet." Peter blinks at how young the figure in the colourful attire sounds, but his eyes still sting from a mixture of grit and blood and... whatever that green liquid is that he can't get a clearer image of them.
"Judging by the mess they've made, they're strong. Possible enhanced abilities." A woman's static voice fills the air.
Communicating through a channel, Peter observes.
"They're still here." A tall bat -the shadow man, says stoically, voice deep and guttural, not wholly human. Peter rubs his eyes to make sure he isn't hallucinating what he sees.
It takes a second for their statement to register, but when it does, Peter only has enough time to utter a quick 'shit' before his suit engulfs him and he's swinging.
Amidst the chaos and the fear, Peter questions the decision to run. He knows a vigilante when he sees one, and they tick every checkpoint on his super legit and totally not made-up list, but that pure instinct continues to ring despite his hesitation, and he can't think straight long enough to force his body to stop.
He needs to get to a quiet place to calm himself down.
His pursuers are determined not to give him that.
It doesn't matter how quickly he moves, using that rusty enhanced speed he can't remember the last time he'd tapped into to disappear into hidden passageways or slip through the cracks of ever-shifting tracks he's never seen before, because they manage to be one step behind him.
At some point, Peter thinks 'to hell' with it all and envisions himself collapsing onto the tracks in surrender when the sound of a train's squeaky brakes bounces off the walls of the track that veers to the left of him.
Peter moves towards it, hoping to shake the weird bat and their child assistant.
The closer he gets, the faster the train seems to shoot forward until there's only a split second left to use. Peter takes advantage of the darkness to deactivate the suit and catapult his body so that he lands feet first on the platform, right as the subway train rushes past him. However, the momentum from the leap propels him further along, and Peter ends up awkwardly gliding across the subway tiles, straight into a pillar.
The sound of bone cracking registers in his ear as he crumples to the ground. A shooting pain follows. Peter is tired but he doesn't have time to dwell on it, can't even give himself a second to let out a shaky exhale before he's up and moving again. Using the crowd of suspiciously desensitized people to slip in amongst them, Peter attempts to mask the limp in his walk as best he can and makes quick work of finding a seat before the doors shut and the train lurches forward.
The seat he manages to get is filthy, but then so is Peter, who resigns himself to the fact that if his healing factor doesn't kick in soon, he'll contract some disease his body will have to work overtime to burn out of his system.
"What did you do?" Peter's throat burns, both from having screamed it raw not even ten minutes ago and from having to swallow the lump in his throat when there is no sarcastic, overly confident wizard to answer him.
Not that he has enough energy to theorise because wherever he's ended up, there is a constant hum of danger that he's never experienced, even in the roughest areas of Queens. No, this place seems to be constantly hovering over the edge of bad. That and the brain-splitting switch between blinding light and piercing darkness does nothing for the migraine blooming behind Peter's eyes.
It's a sensory overload, one that picks and scratches at his head.
It just makes him angry.
It scares him.
"I need to get off this train," He murmurs.
"Oi, you got any money on you?"
Jesus, not now.
Peter leans against the seat's metal handlebars ahead of him and closes his eyes. All he hears is the whisper of rage, all he feels is that haunting anger.
It grows.
It festers.
"This kid hard of hearing or somethin'?" Another voice joins the conversation, just as aggravating and condescending as the first.
"Go away, please," Peter whispers. Be a cliché criminal somewhere else is what he wants to say.
"Give us your money." Neither of the dickheads shows any sign of taking pity on Peter, which is unfortunate, because Peter is having a hard time resisting the urge to beat the ever-loving shit out of both of them.
"I don't have any money." Peter grits through his teeth, knuckles a pale white against the handlebars. Peter's pretty sure he hears a screw come loose.
"Give us your fucking money!" What might have made Peter look like a walking corpse back in Queens seems to translate into someone with an endless flow of cash here because these douchebags just aren't getting it.
Peter feels the air around him shift as an arm reaches out to grab him.
Finally, something echoes in his skull.
That barely there leash, the force of his restraints that have been growing weaker, snaps.
Peter lunges from his seat.
"Ask for my money one more fuckin' time and I swear I'll-" Before Peter can finish the sentence, before he can uncurl his fingers from the first guy's jacket, he's ripped from him and shoved down the aisle.
"Kid's got spunk." The second thug snickers while his buddy recuperates, but Peter isn't in the mood for a showdown or the usual routine of snarky quips. He wants for pain, for the sick satisfaction of broken bones, for the red to wash the green away.
He corrects his stance, then he swings his fist.
It takes one minute to get both asshole's on the ground, even less to break an arm and somewhere in the haze of it all, there is a voice inside his head screaming at him to stop, to pull back. He might even be aware of the tears tracing rivers down his face, but there is green, and no matter how much of that anger he lets out, it's still never enough.
"Might be a good idea to give them a breather, kid. You won this round."
Peter whirls around, teeth bared like a goddamn animal, but he ultimately falters under the intense presence of the newcomer.
Clad in a tan jacket about ready to burst at the seams, some insanely buff guy with sunglasses and a gnarly scar across one half of his face has his arms half outstretched in the air, almost as if he thinks the action will calm Peter down and -yeah- maybe if Peter were the animal he was pretending to be one insane second ago, it might've done the trick. As it stands, it just makes Peter more weary.
The guy tenses, takes one look at Peter's face and steps back, although the action seems entirely subconscious on the stranger's part if the shocked parted lips and concerned scrunch of his brows are any indication.
"Shit," He mutters, "Let's, uh...let's get you back to your seat, yeah?"
"I'm fine," Peter croaks.
The stranger tilts his head, but the stoic expression on his face doesn't shift once. "Sure, but humour me anyway."
Peter begrudgingly obliges, if only because the rage has cleared enough for him to think about something other than violence. Still, he keeps his distance from the guy and shuffles back to his seat.
"Here, take these too." He hands over his shades.
Peter scrunches up his nose.
"Why?"
"Your eyes," the guy mumbles before pausing, long enough that Peter can tell it's not hesitancy but an outright lie, "You flinched at the lights when you got on, figured it'd help with that."
He's full of shit, but Peter is too tired to decipher why he's being lied to about sunglasses of all things. All that matters is his spider-sense has lowered to a manageable buzz, so Peter slides the shades over his face with a shaky smile that feels as fake as it probably looks and slumps back into his seat.
"Thanks...?" he mumbles after it becomes apparent the guy isn't going anywhere.
"Jason."
Peter hums, "Peter."
-
It's about twenty minutes of silence from Jason, twenty minutes Peter spends pointedly not making eye contact with anything but the grit under his nails, before Jason decides to drag Peter back to reality.
"You got anyone waiting for you, Peter? Anyone that might be...I dunno, worried that you look like a walking corpse?"
It's just me and you, Peter.
Until it isn't. Until Peter's hands are soaked in Aunt May's blood and her chest stops moving. Until she isn't there anymore.
Peter snorts. Jason is not impressed.
"Dude, I'm not fuckin' joking. You look five seconds away from cardiac arrest."
"Hmm?" Peter tilts his head back with all the fake air of nonchalant ease he can muster while pretending he isn't seconds away from a panic attack. He likes to think he's doing a pretty freakin' fantastic job at it, all things considered.
"Uh, no- I mean, they're all probably waiting back home." Jason doesn't need to know Peter believes 'home' might be an entirely different universe. He also doesn't mention that half the people who would be worried are dead, and the other half have most likely had their minds erased of any memory of him: semantics and all that.
"Well..." Jason drags out the word, as if he doesn't believe a word Peter has said. "Maybe you should give them a call. Let them know you'll be taking a detour, preferably to the emergency room. If you get off at the next stop, Gotham General Hospital isn't far."
What the hell is a Gotham?
"Wait a second. Who said anything about a hospital?" His senses flare to life, roaring at Peter to get up. To fling the shades back at Jason, at that piercing gaze he doesn't trust and run.
Peter clocks the exact moment Jason takes note of the stiff tension in Peter's shoulders, for what it implies, and resists the urge to flinch back at the way Jason seems to grow around him, like he's trying to trap Peter in a corner.
"Peter, I don't think-"
"Look man, thanks for the company, but I gotta bounce."
Peter hops to his feet, cringing when he feels his bare soles touch the dirt-streaked rubber floor of the train. He doesn't have the luxury of being concerned with hygiene at the moment, so he forces himself past the rows of seats until he's slipping through the cracks of the slowest-moving door he's ever had the misfortune of waiting on once the train comes to a jarring halt.
Peter's head swirls nauseatingly as he's pulled and shoved into a crowd that seems determined to smother him to death. It isn't a concept entirely foreign to him, but after months spent limiting basic interactions to four people, Peter finds it difficult to suddenly feel thousands of bodies pressed against him, unbothered about personal space as he's carried up into the outside world.
The air, the streets, the people. It isn't exactly shocking, considering Peter's gritty history growing up in Queens, but this place is different, heavily laced in something that feels alive, something that blinks back if you stop long enough to acknowledge you're being watched.
Gotham, that's what Jason had said. Peter's mind reels as he tries to place the name in his somewhat limited geographical knowledge.
Nothing clicks.
"Get to a higher vantage point. Then go from there." Peter mutters.
It had first begun as a routine of Peter's; back when the spider bite that hadn't immediately killed him had instead given him abilities no fifteen-year-old should ever have access to. A way to seek solace in the highest corners of his neighbourhood. It made him feel safe, untouchable.
He hopes it'll do the same here.
Peter wanders for what feels like hours, but is only half of that, and he comes to learn a little more about the people who inhabit Gotham.
One, they're rude. Peter attempts to ask three people in total where he is exactly, or even just the street name, but each time he is either met with glares, a strongly muttered 'get lost' or not acknowledged. The second is that everyone looks shady. It's in the way they compose themselves, the way they walk -like they're hiding something.
It's a skill, in all honesty, to come off as sketchy and then look at Peter like he's up to no good.
Overall, it creates a feeling of unease in Peter, heightened by his senses, leaving him feeling as if he's being dangled over the edge of a building. He also thinks he's being followed, and that the person following him is Jason. But that's an easy problem to fix.
Peter reckons one of the few positive, or at the very least useful, things to come out of being shunned by society was the ability to disappear, to throw people off his trail. He uses this knowledge now, weaving a path around a city he has no memory of until he no longer feels the heavy weight of eyes on him.
I'd kill for the power of invisibility, Peter muses as he turns down what has affectionately been labelled 'crime alley' by a local graffiti artist on almost every building.
He doesn't know if he should read too much into it.
Probably, says the voice in his head. It sounds a lot like MJ.
Peter ignores it in favour of climbing the fire escape, conscious that anyone could be lurking in the shadows, so using his abilities to scale a wall in half the time isn't an option. Around him, Peter hears shouting and cries for help -glass shattering and loud thuds. He doesn't remember his senses being this amplified because they sound so close, as if he's standing in the room with them.
It takes every ounce of the limited mental strength he has left to keep his back turned against that trained instinct to run towards the cries -to deny someone the chance to survive, but Peter can't get involved. He's lost, scared, and so very much alone, and the last time he meddled, he hadn't held his punches and almost killed two men.
"Strange." Peter spits out the name like a curse. The green anger from before flares up -plucks at the twinge of revenge still nestled deep in his heart- and then it is gone.
Deep down, he knows it isn't the doctor's fault. Well, not entirely. After all, Peter had suggested that he be erased from existence. It'd also been Peter who somehow managed to survive a multiversal trip through a wormhole and live to experience the inconvenience of it.
He pauses, blinking back the shock of the memory as it settles into place. That's new.
Peter pushes the thought aside and focuses on hoisting himself over the ledge of the building. Once his feet hit solid ground, he moves quickly, hopping from one rooftop to another until he settles on one of the taller buildings he can find in the area, a large, worn-out apartment block several stories high. There, he exhales.
The wind picks up around him, tousling the parts of his hair that aren't currently clumped together with sweat and blood.
Sighing, he moves to the ledge of the rooftop, right where the wind blows the strongest and sits down on it. With his legs dangling over the edge, Peter closes his eyes and listens.
If he ignores the thousands of indicators that this place is all wrong and focuses on the erratic beeping below, Peter can pretend it's home, that he's kicking back after a night of watching over a city that doesn't hate him. If he pretends enough, maybe he can make himself believe nothing is wrong.
"Fuck," Peter whispers, working past the lump in his throat and the tears he won't let fall.
"You must be new."
Peter startles at the steady tone of the newcomer and almost flinches himself right over the edge.
"Huh?" He hopes he doesn't look like he's just had the shit scared straight from him and twists himself around to watch as a girl who can't be that much older than him steps into the harsh red artificial light overhanging the escape door, clutching a box full of something that clatters every time she takes a step forward.
"As far as Gotham rules go, if you visit a ledge enough times, it's technically yours. Meaning this is my ledge, newbie."
Peter has no fucking clue what that's supposed to mean. "Uh, sorry?"
The girl shrugs, eyeing Peter for another minute before joining him on the ledge, her box taking up residence between the two. Peter decides that taking a peek into the box is allowed and promptly regrets it when he finds it full of liquor.
I do not have the mental capacity to help us both, Peter thinks distressingly, that is, until the girl interrupts what must be a very expressive crisis plastered across his face with a snort.
"I'm exercising my right to rebellion." Peter blinks owlishly, and the girl sighs, as if his lack of reaction is disappointing and not at all what she'd expected from him. "My aunt was being a bitch, so I raided her stash and intend to throw them off the roof."
Peter frowns. "Wouldn't pouring it down a sink be easier than lugging it all to the roof? And maybe, I dunno, more environmentally friendly."
The girl squints at Peter as if she's just realised he's stupid. "Well, for starters, there is nothing remotely environmentally friendly about this part of Gotham, I mean, Poison Ivy doesn't even find herself down here all that much. And more importantly, where the fuck is the fun in that newbie?"
Peter shrugs, averting his gaze to the girl's outstretched hand as she readies the first bottle to drop. Despite the dark, he can see a jagged ring of a bruise circling her wrist as she flings the glass and quietly concludes she can do whatever she wants.
"What's your name?" He asks.
"Does it matter?" The girl looks up from the road, the fringes of her dark wolf cut pricking her eyes, but her face softens and she offers a small, crooked smile. "Look, I'm not trying to be rude, but if you plan on sticking around, you need to know some things about Gotham."
"First -ok, technically the rule about claimed ledges was first, so the second thing is this. You're only ever one of three things in Gotham. A no-name like me - an average working-class citizen, junkie or goon. Then you've got your villain of the week. This one varies, but I like to group the deranged metas, psychopaths and occasional rich assholes into this section. Rich as in born with it or rich as in shady, Mafia-type shit. Either way, you have more money than you know what to do with, chances are you aren't doing anything good."
Peter grins despite himself. "And the third?"
"Annoyingly hopeful vigilantes. The people who think saving this shithole from or for the groups mentioned earlier will make a difference in the end."
"So which one are you, newbie?" No-name picks up a half-empty vodka bottle and hands it to Peter.
"Uhhh, undecided?"
No-name grins. "Smart, too many pick too quickly and then get stuck. If you're here to stay, you'll figure it out."
There is something in the way that No-name looks at Peter that confuses him. And the wording, 'sticking around', 'here to stay', 'need to know.' Like she knows this isn't his home. Peter frowns.
"How do you know I'm not from here. From Gotham." The name tastes heavy in his mouth.
No-name shrugs, but there's something in her gaze that makes Peter think she's been trying to find the answer to that question this entire interaction. "I think it's something you only really notice if you've spent you're entire life here, the difference between someone who's been claimed by Gotham and someone who hasn't."
"Claimed?" Peter asks.
"Yeah. Like if the city thinks you're theirs, it claims you...in a way." No-name catches the slightly horrified look Peter fails to wipe from his face. "Sorry, I'm making this place sound way scarier than it actually is-" No-name makes a face, "-no, that's not true. This place can be terrifying sometimes, I'm just too desensitised."
Peter watches a car creep along the narrow street facing east from where he sits, a shiver that has nothing to do with the wind crawling up the line of his spine. "Before coming here, I got that feeling too, like something I couldn't name was watching me. I guess Gotham hasn't decided if it wants me yet." He attempts a smile but it pulls wrong.
No-name laughs quietly and tosses the first bottle from the box. "I'd say to count your blessings."
Peter hums and times his toss with No-name's next one, the answering shatter from below oddly cathartic. "You know, you're surprisingly stable, for someone who sits on ledges."
No-name grins, a sarcastic, if saddened version of it anyway.
"What can I say? I had to cement my claim somehow. Stable is the new crazy in Gotham, so it does the job, keeps people off the ledge."
There's something in that knowing look of hers that makes Peter want to shy away from or, at the very least, assure her that she doesn't need to worry about him.
"Careful, if you get any more saintlike, I'll have to class you as a hero."
No-name snorts again and the sound reminds Peter of Ned. Peter hides a grimace at the thought of his friend, but No-name isn't paying attention, already staring down at the pavement below, shoulders tense when Peter manages to pull himself out of it enough to notice.
"Are you ok? Did we hit someone?" Peter peers down, frowning when he notes the lack of an unconscious body or any sign of life at all.
No-name hums, thoughtful but still tense. "No." Silence, and then, "Must've been the shadows."
"Maybe you're right, newbie. I think I'll save my rebellion for the trusty pipes of Gotham. You can come with or you can stay, but just know, the longer you're out here, the higher the chance you have of summoning one of those annoying vigilantes I was talking about."
"Speaking from personal experience?" Peter muses.
No-name rolls her eyes, but the small smile from earlier keeps her face warm as she hoists the box up, keeping it close to her chest the entire walk back to the rooftop door. "Stay cool, newbie. And get off my ledge."
Peter offers a mock salute despite the genuine tone in his voice when he calls out to her retreating form, "No promises, No-name."
The door squeaks shut, yet even with his body angled back towards the open air, Peter swears he can still hear the comforting melody of No-name's laugh long after she disappears.
"Alright there, kid?"
"Holy shit!" When the erratic fluttering of his heart corrects itself, Peter glances over his shoulder, eyes widening when they take in a tall figure clad in black -save for the red bat symbol carved into the armour on his chest. A red mask encompasses their face, effectively blocking them from Peter's view.
"How about we move away from the ledge, yeah?"
Peter blinks, clearly confused, until it dawns on him why the figure sounds super anxious. No-name wasn't kidding about summoning one of them.
"Oh, I'm not- I mean I wasn't thinking about-" Peter stumbles over his words as he climbs off the ledge.
"You look like shit." The modulated voice of the figure completely strips any emotion from their voice, but it still forces a laugh from Peter, despite the sudden pounding of dread unfurling within his chest.
"Yeah, feel like shit too. Believe it or not, it's kind of on brand for me."
"So is this a vigilante shift? Just doing your nightly run of the city?" Peter's voice begins to slur, and he's having a hard time figuring out if it's due to the lack of sleep he's gotten in the past couple of days or if it's another side effect from the toxic pond. Either way, it's flared up without someone like No-name distracting him.
The figure shrugs as they lean against the fire escape door. "Something like that."
For some reason, it's the most hilarious response to Peter, who eases into a steady chuckle that probably doesn't help him look any less delusional and insane, but something he can't help, especially when his laugh turns into loud, ugly gasps for air.
"Just...ah. Just breathe," the vigilante sounds so uncomfortable with the situation that aside from the panic attack Peter is ninety-three per cent sure he's in the beginning stages of he begins to doubt just what kind of vigilante they are if the sight of a hysterical kid stuns them.
Peter had seen his fair share of kids going through it back when Peter Parker and Spider-Man were two completely separate identities. He'd talked to quite a few of them, held their hands and sat with them on their ledges. In the cold, the rain, night or day, trying not to feel like he was way out of his own depth. Trying to ignore the small voice that would tell him he was just a kid.
Peter doesn't blame the red-masked vigilante for his less-than-stellar approach because he isn't even sure what's happening, let alone what he needs.
A few minutes ago, he'd been fine.
Peter gasps in between a sob, "I can't fucking breathe."
He's vaguely aware of hands gripping his shoulders as he sinks to his knees. It's the only thing he feels as the world spins around him, closing in on him, like a heavy weight is being lowered; like he's back under the rubble of that building.
"I need you to focus on my voice. Can you do that?"
Peter chokes.
"Come on, kid. Focus on my voice," The masked vigilante lightly taps the top of Peter's shoulders.
"I can't," Peter sobs.
"You can. Tell me one thing you can feel, one thing you can see and one thing you can smell."
Peter's brain momentarily freezes, "You're messing up the order of it, dude."
"I'm pretty sure there isn't a rule book on this kind of thing," the reply is followed by a low mechanical chuckle that Peter finds oddly comforting for all of five seconds before he's dragged back into the panic.
"Come on kid. Something you can see."
Peter tries to focus, but he can't.
"You. I can see you."
"Good, now something you can feel."
Peter lets out a shuddering breath. He wants to pass out. "Shit- I dunno man." Vigilante guy taps Peter's shoulder more aggressively. "Uh, the ground, I can feel little bits of gravel under my feet. Annoying as shit."
"Yeah, you need shoes."
Peter snorts at that. His mind feels less heavy.
"Ok, now tell me something you can smell."
Peter pauses, closes his eyes and focuses on trying to pick up a scent. He smells a lot. Himself mostly, and that isn't the most refreshing scent right now. Scrunching up his nose, he tilts his head back towards the direction of the ledge and feels the wind blow through, carrying the aroma of a food van.
"Food, I can smell a food van."
"Great, that's great. Now tell me one thing you can see."
They go back and forth like that until Peter can breathe without it feeling unnatural. Fifteen minutes later, he's sitting next to the vigilante guy in silence. They don't say anything for a bit, but Peter is starting to feel a little bit more like himself and with that comes the urge to babble.
'So what does the symbol stand for? You some sort of bat man?"
Vigilante guy snorts, "Fuck no. It's part of a...family thing. I go by Redhood."
"Huh," Peter raises an eyebrow.
"What?" Vigilante guy narrows his eyes.
Peter smothers a grin. "Nothing, man. It's a great name. I admire the creativity it must have taken to come up with it." Says the kid who chose Spiderman.
Vigilante guy tsks, but even Peter can tell he's trying to hold back an amused grin. "Smartass."
"Well, vigilante names aside, thanks for helping out...before."
"Gotta look out for our own, kid."
Peter doesn't know what that's supposed to mean, but for now, he focuses on the fact that the soul-crushing aloneness that's been clinging to him recently isn't so pronounced. So he nods and says, "Birds of the same feather and all that, right?"
Vigilante guy chuckles bitterly, following it up with a cryptic, "Don't let the shadows hear you say that."
Peter hums, but he's not really listening. His mind is calm despite several hectic hours, and this rooftop has provided Peter with more comfort in the last couple of minutes than he's had in some long months. So he basks in the silence and the mysterious company.
And Peter breathes.