Chapter Text
Peter Parker
???
Turns out being shunted into a different reality is just as painful as you’d expect.
There’d been no warning, Peter’s sixth sense blaring only as his back had passed through the tear in the fabric of reality. If he wasn’t so preoccupied with trying to breathe through the unexpected onslaught of agony, he’d totally be nerding out about his first steps into another universe.
The other Peters got to it first. Guess it’s his turn.
Though, he can’t say the other two had reported the experience of having their atoms rearranged to suit the metaphysics of the universe in question. Seems Peter isn’t quite as lucky as his counterparts, landing himself in a distant branch of the multiverse.
Awesome.
In a lot of ways, the feeling is similar to the blip. Most people had felt a faint tingling seconds before their demise. Others had more of a stark numbness, mostly those with heightened abilities.
The worst could feel the individual strands of their DNA unravelling. Ten bucks to the fella that can guess what Peter got sacked with.
Now, as all his usually stable particles are being jumbled up and rewritten, Peter can at least count himself as fortunate that his memories are remaining intact.
It’s the small things in life.
Unfortunately, his pain tolerance can’t quite keep up with this level of sheer awful, and after one too many unending seconds of bad, Peter passes out.
~ ~ ~
Dick Grayson
Gotham City - September 21st
Dashing over the rooftops of Gotham never really lost its touch, the sensation of flight at Dick’s fingertips giving his stomach a fun flippy feeling.
The darkness of the city loses its weight on the threshold of the sky, light pollution chasing away the shadows of the night. He’d been trained on the utility of the dark for years, but he never felt beholden to it.
That will to grasp onto that which is bright is what set Dick apart from Bruce when he stepped into his own, the older man growing to understand that fundamental difference between them.
He hasn’t forgotten where he came from, and it’s easy for him to step back into old habits as he maneuvers across the city skyline.
With some of the family’s fringe members away from Gotham on mission, Dick had been recalled to give a helping hand. Tim’s been putting in too many hours and Jason’s still having issues with playing nice with Bruce, so it’d been on his shoulder to pick up the slack.
Damian’s just as spry as ever, but he'd been cooped up in the city for too long, pushing Bruce to arrange a play-date with Jon under the guise of training. With everyone gone, the manor has gone back to the way it was when Dick was first taken under Bruce's wing, curbing the aggravation that had built with their newest case.
A slew of shoddy Lazarus pits that’d been found dotting Gotham’s abandoned haunts, their frequency and gradual improvement making Bruce jumpy. Nobody had been able to successfully replicate the regenerative abilities of the real deal thus far, but somebody has been working on it.
A lot.
One such pit that Dick had found was complete with a half-decomposed corpse floating within, halfway to the zombie stage. It had not been fun sticking the man’s body back in its grave once Alfred had traced his DNA to a nearby cemetery.
Jason’s been on edge since he’d gotten wind of the Bats’ newest problem, the previous night's outburst leading to him giving Dick the silent treatment. He’d been doing better recently, going so far as to bump his shoulder with Dick’s a week ago.
Baby steps.
Here’s to hoping that the whole mess will blow over soon.
~ ~ ~
Peter Parker
???
Time gets wonky as Peter falls into an in-between state. He figures he hasn’t been turned into dust via a Thanos wannabe collecting more Infinity Stones, that experience having been closer to the instant wakefulness of being put under with morphine, years gone in a blink.
They'd also been destroyed as far as the Avengers were aware, Tony's sacrifice saving them from any possible future use.
Small sensations keep Peter tethered to reality, blips in his awareness that fade in and out of his consciousness. There's a weight keeping his eyelids closed and a steady pressure around his whole body, a heaviness in his still lungs. Faint tingles dancing across his skin.
It’s almost peaceful. Maybe this place isn’t so bad.
Wait.
Still lungs?
Peter tries to move, fear blooming in his mind like a bruise.
That faint sensation of pressure over Peter’s body gains a distinctly wrong edge as he grasps for consciousness, eyebrows twitching together in discomfort. His muscles feel leaden, chained into inaction by something out of his control.
The heart is a muscle.
A faint prickle crawls across the back of Peter’s neck, breaking through the heavy blanket that had settled over his mind.
Something’s wrong.
His sense of unease grows until it bursts across his skin, skittering in a current that puts everything into sharp clarity.
Something’s really wrong.
It’s time to wake up.
Forcing his eyes to open, Peter instinctively tries to draw breath into his lungs. Problem one slams into his awareness as he convulses around the sludge that’s filling them.
Panic starts to edge into his brain, kicking his muscles into gear. Drawing his limbs in close, he can’t see much aside from the colour of vibrant, sickly green.
There’s an inkblot of darkness in front of him, or well, above.
Working against the oppressive force of gravity, problem two arises in the weakness of Peter’s body with its extended lack of oxygen. Forcing himself towards the surface takes every ounce of his strength, frustration mounting with every second he goes without a proper breath.
He needs air. He needs air.
The first touch of nothing on the skin of his hands is a special kind of bliss. He has to all but drag himself out of the pool of green, the scrape of concrete on his body unbearable with the sensitivity of his skin.
The sounds and smells of his surroundings assault his senses, having been muted by the liquid he’d been submerged in. Vehicles roaring down streets and voices calling out are near deafening, worsened by the putrid odor wafting out of the sludge.
Rolling onto his side, Peter’s lungs seize in an attempt to expel the stuff that’s in his lungs. He can barely muster the force to get it out, no air flowing in or out to help with the process.
It takes nearly a full minute of coughing before his brain registers that he's breathing, and with that his heart decides to make itself known.
It thumps a dizzying staccato in his chest, pushing previously inert blood into a surge through his veins. The sense of wrong that’d suffused his body refuses to abate, the tingling at the back of his neck sticking around.
Slowly but surely, all of Peter’s faculties come back online. He feels a bit like the old boxy computers that his elementary school kept around for far too long, the creaky software barely keeping up with its base functions.
He promises to never make fun of another floppy disk again.
Ah good, his sense of humour’s back.
Blinking the last remaining bits of sludge from his eyes, Peter takes stock of his surroundings. Set up around the circumference of the pit he’d crawled out of is a homemade lab a la Adrian Toomes. If only the old bird could see him now.
Metal tables with janky chemistry equipment are strewn about near the walls, traces of solutions left in the hard to reach places. Used coffee cups are stacked in a mesh garbage can near the corner, a rickety cot sat nearby.
A live-in lab then.
A shiver traces up Peter’s spine as a breeze drifts through the space, a quick glance around revealing it to be a rundown warehouse. He should’ve guessed he'd been left to zombify in a place like this, abandoned buildings being ground zero for everything that goes bump in the city.
It takes a couple of tries, but he’s able to stagger his way over to the cot on shaky legs, finding a few useful belongings. Most importantly, he scrounges up a spare set of clothes, the jeans and hoodie fitting loose on his thinner frame.
Glancing towards a window, Peter finds himself distracted by the reflection staring back at him from the darkened exterior.
In large part, he looks the same. Maybe a bit younger than he had been before the multiversal travel scrambled his matter, though that could be the psychological effects of crawling out of a death pit showing on his face.
His eyes are wide, giving him an easy view of the discoloration of his irises. Where there was the usual plain brown shade, there’s now a slight hue of green that gives the illusion of a striking hazel.
Even stranger is the bleaching of a clump of hair by his widow’s peak, the strands standing out as a bright white.
He’s moments away from abandoning his reflection to investigate the chemistry equipment when his senses pick up on someone landing on the roof. The sound of their feet is feather-light, barely audible even to Peter’s enhanced hearing.
Reacting on instinct, he darts to a nearby wall to start climbing it. There’s a split second where he thinks he’ll just slide down it, unsure of this universe’s relationship with human-spider DNA comingling, but he sticks and scrambles to the ceiling as usual.
Tucking himself into a corner, Peter waits.
~ ~ ~
Dick Grayson
Gotham City Harbor - September 21st
Seriously? Another one?
Despite having found all of the pit sites abandoned, Dick takes the cautious route and slides into the warehouse through a window. Using the rafters to move further inside, he doesn’t notice anyone moving about.
The pit at the centre of the room’s letting curls of green-tinted steam rise from its surface, filling the air with all sorts of nasty smells. Hooking a line to a beam, he descends slowly towards the floor.
Stepping around the edge of the pit, it looks unremarkable compared to the others. It isn’t bubbling or churning like it’s ready for use, and Dick can’t spot a body floating within.
What captures his attention is a pool of slime near the ledge, the arrangement of the droplets leaving him with a bad feeling.
Shit.
Speaking into his mic, Dick tries to keep his voice on the level. “Hey B, hear of any high profile rogues going missing in the past month or so?”
“No.” Succinct as ever, Bruce’s response is followed by, “What did you find?”
“Another Lazarus pit, but this one looks like it was used.” Tilting his head, Dick scans the puddle again. “Recently.”
There’s a grunt and the sound of a fist hitting flesh from the other side of the line. Ah, he found some action. “Any sign of whoever might’ve been in it?”
“Not that I can see.” Turning his gaze up, he spots the trail leading to a cot but it stops there. “I didn’t hear any screaming and nobody came tearing out of the place, so I think I just missed them.”
“Understood.” The sounds of the fight cut off and Bruce pauses, three seconds passing in his usual 'I’m about to ask you to do something I don't want to' moment of hesitation. “Get into contact with Red Hood. He’ll want to know.”
It’s a surprising level of consideration considering Bruce’s usual level of stoicism where his tentative allies are concerned. Dick spares him the teasing and ends the line of communication with an affirmative.
Sending word to Alfred, he requests the equipment to be collected for investigation back at the cave, not wanting the authorities to squirrel it away.
Casting one last look around the room, he has a fleeting thought of worry for whatever poor soul found themselves in that pit.
Turning towards Crime Alley, he takes the front door, missing the spider that slips out the window and into the night.