Chapter Text
‘By Thor, I finally found it,’
Peter pushed open the large doors of the Gotham library. The smell of fresh paper and old oak rushed in to greet him, and Peter didn’t relax, but his hunched shoulders loosened up just slightly. Gods, was this the first time he had been in a library in over a year? It sure didn’t feel like it, but the last time he had been to one was before Beck had revealed his identity. The familiar surroundings of bookshelves and books were comforting and familiar in a way that Peter hadn’t had in a long time.
‘Alright, Peter. You can do this. You came this far.’ Peter thought with a sudden surge of determination as he walked over to the large front desk that was currently missing a librarian. He focused on his hearing and heard one heartbeat in the entire building, and one woman’s voice, both coming from a room behind the desk.
“Go down two blocks over, you’re right on top of him,” Came the muffled voice from the back room. Peter instantly recognized she was on a call, as there was no one else she could be talking to, and consciously dulled his hearing down, feeling uncomfortable standing alone in front of the desk. His eyes darted back and forth to check the exits and paths out, shifting his weight from one foot to another in case he needed to leave quickly. He counted at least three cameras tin the room, but he didn’t particularly mind, especially not in this gods-forsaken city. Peter idly brought his hand up to rub at his neck, his fingers only meeting cloth, and his hand was immediately stuffed back into his pocket to avoid aggravating the already bruised skin underneath the bandana.
‘Right. I forgot,’ Peter thought bitterly, looking at the front desk with his brows pinched in irritation. During his intense stare down with the desk, his eyes caught on a shiny bell that he would probably see at a hotel front desk, and he had a moment of internal conflict.
‘Should I ring it to tell her that there’s someone here? Would that be rude? I feel like it would kind of be rude,’ Peter thought, picking at his worn sleeves. ‘But I kind of need her help, and it’ll just be really quick,’
Without giving himself another chance to go argue with himself anymore, Peter reached a tentative hand out and tapped on the little bell gently, the soft little ring echoing through the empty library and making Peter cringe internally. ‘Why was that so loud?!’
There was a small uptick in the woman’s heartbeat from the other room before it went back to its usual rhythm. After another moment of uncomfortable silence, the door finally opened, and a woman in a wheelchair with the most fiery orange hair that Peter had ever seen rolled out with a friendly, if not a bit apologetic, smile.
“Hello! I’m sorry I couldn’t help you sooner,” She said, opening her laptop on her desk and looking at Peter with an analytical look. Peter felt even more uncomfortable under her scrutinizing gaze than when he was alone, suddenly all too aware of how he looked. He admittedly didn’t look his best in his jeans with patches sewn in, his oversized grey MIT hoodie with the hood up, scuffed-up and dirty Converse, a red bandana around his neck, a torn backpack, and – oh yeah, his black eye and dirty hair poking out from under his hood.
“Do you need something, sweetheart?” The woman – Barbara, her tag said – asked with concern lacing her voice, breaking Peter out of his self-conscious mini-spiral.
‘Friend! Capable! Smart! Friend!’ Peter’s Spider-Sense sang in the back of his head. His Spider Sense, while he hasn’t really been listening to it recently, was more than likely correct, so Peter’s posture untensed a little more.
“Can I use your computers, please?” Peter signed, his fingers working through the air unsurely as Peter prayed to any and all gods that she understood ASL.
Barbara’s face held a hint of mild surprise before she nodded and brought her own hands up for him to see. “You need a library card, but with that, yes, you can! Would you like a library card?”
Peter nodded, feeling the first sense of relief since he left Skip’s house. He started picking at his sleeve as a nervous habit again as Barbara started typing on her computer.
“I need your name, age, and address, please,” Barbara signed, looking back at Peter. Address? Peter hadn’t thought of that, and for a split second, he internally panicked before bringing his hands back up.
“My name is Peter Grayson, I’m 15, and I just moved here, so I don’t have my new address memorized.” Peter’s name slipped through his fingers with ease, and technically, he wasn’t lying. His father’s last name was Grayson, and Peter had no idea if there was already a Peter Parker in this universe or not, so he didn’t want to take any chances.
Barbara’s face hardly moved more than a slight uptick of her eyebrows at his name, and the speeding up of her heartbeat. Peter had no idea why she had that reaction, but he had to commend her ability to keep a straight face. If Peter hadn’t been trained by multiple superheroes, assassins, and scientists, he wouldn’t have noticed her microexpression.
Barbara went back to typing on her computer for another few seconds while Peter once again picked at his sleeve. There was a chink, a hum, and a small printer that sat on the edge of her desk spat out a small piece of paper. Barbara took it, looked it over quickly, then handed it to Peter, who took it gratefully.
“Thank you,” Peter signed with a small smile, walking over to the other side of the library, where he heard the faint hum of machinery.
There was a line of seven desks with outdated and clunky-looking computers. Peter glanced around to make sure he could still see the front and back doors from his seat at the desk at the end of the row of computers, cringing internally at the old setup. It was fine, it was fine; he’d worked with worse when dumpster diving for electronics, something he would probably have to do again.
With the air of someone touching something fragile, Peter turned the computer on, praying that this piece of hardware would work, and while waiting for it to boot up, he took his backpack off his back and zipped it open, digging through the sparse contents before his fingers brushed against a smooth headband of a pair of Bluetooth headphones.
Peter pulled out the red and blue headphones with gold accents, tapping a button on the side to make a small USB pop out, and once the screen booted up, he plugged it into the side. He hadn’t charged them in…forever, actually. Not since he lived in Happy’s condo, and that was what? A month ago or so? Peter didn’t like to think about it too much.
After a minute of the desktop staying blank with only a few applications on it, a small pixelized red and blue spider crawled its way from the corner of the screen closest to the charging port, opening new windows with texts of code.
Peter sent a quick glance to Barbara and shifted to cover the majority of the screen, opening another window of…Boogle? What the hell? He had to pause for a moment to stare at the blue, purple, and yellow logo before typing in something about Gotham crime rates to pretend he was researching something.
“Connecting to local satellites…intaking data…welcome, Peter,” came Karen’s voice, so quiet that only someone with Peter’s hearing could hear. The voice was so missed, so welcome, that Peter thought he might cry. The lines of code had changed to a window of just the stats of the current computer and the networks around it.
Peter unplugged the headphones and closed out all the windows, wiping the history but keeping the Boogle open in case Barbara decided to see what he was doing. Putting the headphones on, Peter was relieved to have the excess noise from the city dampened, and he breathed a silent sigh of relief.
Now that Karen was connected to this universe’s network, Peter could take her somewhere else to charge long-term, as he didn’t want to overstay his welcome with Barbara. The little display in the corner of her window on the computer screen told Peter that she had about 25% battery left; that should last him at least another day if he couldn’t charge her before then.
Peter stood up and turned the computer off, zipping his bag closed, and walking back to the entrance. He offered Barbra a little wave, which she happily returned before pushing the doors open and walking out, adjusting his bandana slightly.
***
Barbara had seen many strange people walk into her library. School clubs, brunch book clubs, a group of men in suits who just sat in one corner and drank coffee silently, aliens (Sorry, Clark), and quite a few lost and traumatized tourists. Needless to say, she thought she saw it all.
Until today, when a small, scruffy-looking child Dick Grayson walked in, looking absolutely adorable in his oversized hoodie. If Peter hadn’t given his name, Barbara was seconds away from texting Bruce about another clone situation, but the longer she actually looked at the poor kid, the more differences showed up.
For one thing, Peter’s eyes were brown, not Dick’s blue, and they looked so tired, so guarded, that Barbara just wanted to wrap him in a warm blanket and feed him Alfred’s cookies forever. And the kid looked severely underfed, but still carried himself with the same fluidity that Dick did, the movement of someone guarded, but ready to fight if needed, which concerned Barbara.
The moment Peter’s hands, unsure and small, started to sign, Barbara filed that in her brain as well. He could be deaf, mute, or nonverbal, but Barbara was also focused on making sure he felt welcome, so she signed back. When Peter pulled out his headphones, she marked being deaf off the list, which left being mute or nonverbal, which was interesting to Barbara.
Then there was the name. Peter Grayson. It echoed in her mind, even when he went to the computers and stopped paying her attention. It only brought Barbara more pestering questions. Who was this kid? Where the hell did he come from? Why did he look like he had just been mugged in an alley? (Not impossible) His name couldn’t have been a coincidence, not when he looked exactly like the famous Wayne son.
Once he left, Barbara started looking through the library's camera footage for a good picture of him, and managed to find a frame where he was looking directly at the camera with a mixed expression of anxiety and wariness. She took a quick screenshot, sent it to her phone, then opened up the family chat with a small grin.
TraumaQueens
TheOneBraincell: 
TheOneBraincell: @TheBestAss-et, are you missing a kid?
TheBestAss-et: I’m sorry, WHAT?!
HelmetHead: Jesus Christ, it’s an exact copy.
PartyCity’sWorstNightmare: AWWW, HE’S ADORABLE!
Glowstick: Does he have any chance of being a clone?
TheOnlyGoodChild: What’s his name?
TheOneBraincell: Peter Grayson.
HelmetHead: Alright, what the fuck?
CaffieneJunkie: Do you know how old he is?
TheOneBrainCell: 15
TheOnlyGoodChild: He looks much younger.
PartyCity’sWorstNightmare: I know! He looks, like, 13, at most!
CaffeineJunkie: He would’ve had to have been conceived in the early Nightwing days.
HelmetHead: Damn, Dickie. Didn’t know you got around like that back then.
SecretHufflepuff: Do not taint Richard’s history with your drivel.
CaffeineJunkie: @SecretHufflepuff You’ve been pretty quiet about all this. Not looking forward to another stray in the family?
SecretHufflepuff: Do not refer to Richard’s potential child as a stray, Drake. I was merely contemplating who would meet the child first.
PartyCity’sWorstNightmare: Damn, straight to the point, huh?
TheOnlyBraincell: Just because Peter looks like Dick, doesn’t mean that he is automatically his child. Disregarding his last name.
Glowstick: @TheBestAss-et are you okay? You haven’t said anything in a bit.
SecretHufflepuff: Richard is currently staring blankly at the wall and has made no response to my attempts to get his attention.
TheOnlyGoodChild: He needs some time to process this. @TheOnlyBraincell, is there anything defining about Peter?
TheOnlyBraincell: Other than the clothes in the picture, he had a plain black backpack, a red bandana around his neck, and only spoke in sign language. He actually looked homeless, but seemed to come in to charge his headphones.
HelmetHead: @CaffeineJunkie I’m assuming that you’re already looking the kid up?
CaffeineJunkie: Peter Grayson, currently in foster care in New York. Current foster parent: Steven "Skip" Westcott. Behavior has been noted for possible neurodivergence, as he was very easily distracted, fidgeted with anything that was put into his hands, and seemed to hyperfocus on tasks that interested him. Anything about Peter before his placement in the system is completely nonexistent.
Glowstick: So we’re dealing with a ghost kid foster system runaway?
Caffeine Junkie: Essentially, yes.
Glowstick: Great.
PartyCity’sWorstNightmare: Who do you think is going to meet him first?
SecretHufflepuff: I would prefer it to be me, but I’m still unfortunately benched.
HelmetHead: Wait, who’s telling Bruce?
Glowstick: Not it.
CaffeineJunkie: Not it.
HelmetHead: Not it.
TheBestAss-et: No one is telling Bruce. The only one who should EVER tell Bruce will be me.
TheBestAss-et has gone offline
Glowstick:…Right. That settles that.
TheOnlyBraincell: If any of you guys is to meet Peter, keep in mind that he looked ready to bolt even when I just looked at him. I doubt Dick will be very happy if you guys try too hard to get Peter’s DNA and scare him off.
SecretHufflepuff: Understood.
HelmetHead: Gotcha.
PartyCity’sWorstNightmare: Copy!
CaffeineJunkie: Point taken.
Glowstick: Roger.
TheOnlyGoodChild: Noted.
After Barbara put her phone down, she went back to the security cameras, looking at what Peter was doing. It didn’t seem much; merely Boogling the city’s many rogues, which was to be expected if he came from New York.
She paused the frame when a small movement caught her eye as Peter was leaving. He adjusted his bandana, just slightly, but enough for Barbara’s sharp eyes to catch something underneath it. Her brows furrowed as she zoomed in, enhancing the image and turning the saturation up.
Was that…bruising? She took another screenshot and sat back in her seat, praying to god that this kid wasn’t hurt by anyone too badly, or Dick would go on a murder spree.