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It’s raining.
Peter’s wearing an oversized hoodie that’s decidedly not waterproof- or even resistant for that matter- but he tells himself it’s really the thought that counts. Soaked to the bone and breaking the stillness of the night with shivers, slight tremors dance along his vision as he jerkily reels in the sobs threatening to crest on his breath.
In. Out. Hold. In. Out. Hold.
It’s easy to escape the rhythm, which is why Peter devotes himself to shuttering his slicked fingers across his temple, a tangible treatment- a tangible reminder- against the spoon-fed fall his body leads him to: the crash, the end, that thing he won’t ever admit that he craves. The urges chanting reassurances Peter had disavowed a long time ago have revived on the spectacle of his breakdown; reassurances built on an agonized reverie- the peace of a still corpse- free-fall in a scatter of images flashing forward in his mind.
In. Out. Hold. Don’t think about it. In. Out. Hold. Don’t think at all.
Peter guides his prickling eyes to Gotham’s gloomy horizon. Storm clouds shroud the skyline, slyly feeding the fall of murky wind to slants of rain. The musk of polluted petrichor stains his ragged inhales- keeping his composure requires more discipline than he has at the current moment, but nevertheless an effort is being made, however pitiful that effort may be.
In. Out. Hold. In-
It’s a futile fight against the frantic fear clawing craters up his throat. Adrenaline would be a a stupor Peter would gladly forfeit to, something as buzzing and blissful as a charged sense of urgency, something that devotes itself to a purpose, something that sharpens instinct and ambition into action. Something that wouldn’t assimilate itself into his familiar tolerance of constant aching.
In this reverie, beyond the haze of hollow emotion, maybe Peter’d finally get off this godforsaken roof.
It’s been two months since he died. Since Thanos snapped, since he felt himself becoming undone atom by atom, since he woke up in a pit of hazardous, violently vibrant green as his fourteen-year old self. He’s built a life for himself here, if he could even call it a life- perhaps that title grants it too much dignity. Nevertheless, Peter clings to it; that, and his slimy, cold shelter filled with scavenged and remade tech. He makes stupid jokes as he checks out new books at the library, as fickle and fragile as his laughs are. He chalks the asphalt in rainbow murals with scruffy-handed children, letting the rain wash away the colors, keeping the kids’ homework dry under an umbrella he bought for them. It’s what’s left of him, after he’s been hollowed out and replaced with a marionette vigor too stringy to handle.
He hones the dulling sensation of misplaced righteousness into a fierce blade, driving it deeper and deeper into his ribcage as Gotham keens with corruption. Spider-Man was rebirthed in this world, in addition to Peter Parker. An efficient, competent ghost that slithers unseen through the cracks, stealing time from under clockwork fingers, setting Gotham’s charred underbelly aflame with light again and again. They call him Specter. Never seen. Never heard. But the event of loosening dread, of burgeoning hope- that and the mystery- keeps him known all the same.
Then there’s the particular cypher that Peter returns to, this leveled performance of normality that sticks along the undersides of his fingers. Don’t get caught. Don’t get attached. But fate puppets him again and again, swerving the sweet decay of his ambition or hope or love halting, rekindling its victims just enough to keep him living. If he could call it living. Peter’s really starting to think that title gives it too much dignity.
Fate keeps gluttonously gorging on the downward turns of his slapdash life. The soothing lull of relief remains a phantom, a ghost he chases, the same as the Bats and Birds chase him. A puzzle unknown. A cypher unable to be decrypted. A grand scheme replayed every night before he goes to sleep, anxious impulses swimming in his head. Or, as grand of a scheme his mind can create, keeping ten steps ahead of every great detective with the burning will of his determination.
His determination is waning. It’s dwindling.
The concrete’s wet and cold. Peter’s wet and cold. Peter’s sick and tired and wants fate to back the fuck off.
Fate, of course, does no such thing.
Another twist of this wicked universe that plucked him from his reality and planted him in another is- not only the fact that he didn’t legally exist and had to forge documents for six days- the “matters of the soul”.
Sounds so profound.
Soulmates.
Apparently Peter has them, tangled in a thicket that pulses and grows thorns, vines, and virtues along his skin. Silver swaths of swirling hyacinths curve along his spine. Peonies are playfully placed along the inside of his elbow. Snapdragons and bluebells intermingle in circlets around his wrists, stretching their stalks into his palms. Daffodils and spider lilies and lilacs and even more blossoms bunch up bouquets in unruly mosaics, gently curling an affectionate trace along the protruding bones of his ribcage. An epiphany of whirling petals stake their claim on Peter’s soul, floating their veiny signatures of stems eternally swaying on a breeze he’ll never feel.
Unsteadily, Peter snakes a hand to hug his torso where the pigmented petals reside, a paltry imitation of true touch. He’s sopping wet and shivering as the rain steals any attempt at warmth. Hair sticking to his forehead- chunks of white and all- Peter tries to maintain his composure, sloppily swiping a dripping palm at his face. There’s people who are bound to love him, he tries to remind himself. Fate is bound to lose its razor, and halt the guillotine.
It seems so unreal. Time is so unreal, fate is so unreal. The only things that stick are the bruises, blotching stains of fingerprints along his neck and arms. It taints the dainty pull of bluebells tingling to assure him, pressuring his pulse to relax. Seconds press forwards hedonistically, gulping down the future with a fervor unknown to the growing past. Seconds of rainfall, of chalk washing away, of lights flickering, of fluttering leaves and flowers pressing to his wrists in tandem with his heartbeat, a pitiful mimicry of comfort.
He’s thought about them before- the fate-linked owners of the garden growing on his skin. But all they are are blurry faces that bring fading warmth. They’re fantasies of soothing hands and gentle touches echoed in aches along his body, superimposed as unknown names faintly crossing the tip of his tongue. Peter pries the syllables off his lips, examining the pull of the letters his mind has unlearned from his soul, but restlessly they spill into the gibberish of an empty heart. An empty mind. An empty room.
That empty room of his shelter, unleashed from its shadow-slick molding and holdings of crass stains, is the single epitome of Peter’s history in Gotham.
And the petals on his skin seal the nascent cries of his future.
All Peter wants is his family- a family. He wants Aunt May. He wants Uncle Ben, he wants MJ and Ned and Mr. Stark and Ms. Potts and- and he wants his Dad, he wants his Mom. He wants to go home.
Death divides and he’d survived. He’d survived a cataclysmic fall scattered in thought between dimension to dimension, rebuilt molecule by molecule into a breathing boy just shy of a sky he’d recognize.
So.
Here he sits.
The edge of the rooftop taunting him.
In the rain.
Waiting for his heart to finally start beating with a purpose.
The rain falls anyways, ignorant to his plights and pleas, as always. A simple cycle is all it conforms to- nature. But Peter broke the mold already by breaking through his glass coffin. What’s left for a boy sick enough to wander the edge of a rooftop, waiting for death to claim him? What’s left for the boy desperate to start living again?
A prickle of Peter’s senses interrupts his spiral, clutching mild notice to the edges of his awareness. A presence is approaching, with the quiet grace of trained feet- sure, steady, and almost indistinguishable from the raging susurrus of the rain. The pattering of water on an umbrella follows, with the humming of comms that shadow their minute breaths indicating that this is- probably- a Bat. Despite all of Peter’s efforts to avoid them.
But hey, misery loves company.
(And maybe, just maybe, deep down, Peter wants to quit feeling so goddamn alone. Maybe that’s why he allows them to approach.)
“Hey.”
It’s Nightwing, rumpled hair a mess as rain slicks its shine. He carries with him an umbrella enduring the relentless barrage of the storm. Peter tucks his hood a little lower on his head as Nightwing situates the umbrella over both of them.
Nightwing speaks, voice soft with concern. “You doing okay?”
Peter almost snorts. How obvious does a person undergoing a mental crisis have to be these days? Neon sign? Dead body? “Nah, just enjoying being soaking wet thirty floors up. Like a normal person.”
“How about we move away from the edge?”
Peter does snort this time. “Subtle.”
“Well, I am known for my subtlety.” Nightwing replies in a whisper, before situating himself into an easy crouch beside Peter.
Confused, Peter watches the other’s movements, body tensing, the idea of escape becoming even more tempting. “What are you doing?”
“Subtly trying to talk to you.”
“Congratulations, you’ve done it,” Peter says lowly, voice tired. “Do you want a gold star?”
Nightwing tilts his head with a timid smile, tone warm when he says, “I’ll take a conversation.”
Peter sighs, looking out into the hazily lit night with dim eyes. “I’m not getting rid of you easily, huh?”
“You’d be correct.”
“What a totally unsubtle move,” Peter lazily lilts, voice wispy with exhaustion before it sharpens. “Why are you even here?”
Shrugging, Nightwing leans forwards, settling himself actually sitting next to Peter. “I go where I’m needed.”
“Ah yes, suspicious masked figures are in high demand these days,” Peter drily remarks.
He laughs softly. “You’d be surprised.”
“I’m not the one demanding them,” Peter defends, before he turns sharply, realizing in a blurt of words, “despite my current predicament.”
“I’m not leaving you unsupervised, kid.”
“I’m eighteen,” Peter hisses.
Nightwing makes a buzzer sound, “Bzzt, nope, try telling the truth next time.”
“I’m not going to do anything!”
Nightwing simply looks at him with an unreadable expression. Maybe he’s realizing antagonizing a teen on the edge of a thirty-story building is a bad idea. Or maybe he’s waiting for an answer.
Either way, Peter caves.
“…Heights make me feel better,” he relents, looking away. “My head feels clearer. I feel less… alone.”
When Nightwing speaks, his voice is gentle, fond. “I get what you mean.”
Peter’s tempted to snap his dissent, but a memory floats nearer to his wilting focus, distantly dressed in the colors of a warm summer’s night, swallowing his dread with the sharp cloying tang of artificial cherry cough syrup. His Dad had stayed up with him as he coughed and wailed, repentant from the humbling prowess of sickness.
Unexplained, the memory superimposes itself haunting the moment, blurring faces into familiarity if Peter squints his teary eyes just enough.
Dad had disagreed with young Peter’s assertion that the cold was punishment for practicing gymnastics without a supervising adult, and had cradled him close to his chest, his rumbling voice coaxing him to sleep, as Peter cried and cried with his sore throat hurting all the while.
Peter- at the time- did not confess his climbing of the armoire in concurrence with the admission, though he cried about being punished for that too.
The memory is gritty with the sepia of untouched love, the overlapping voices of past and present- pleading for recognition- losing themselves to time.
Peter’s chest aches.
He talks instead.
“I would always climb to the top of the tallest furniture back when I was young. Itty bitty, type young. I guess the habit never stopped,” a shuddering breath escapes him. “My uncle said I get it from my dad- he was an acrobat.” Peter laughs, a quiet, fragile thing. “I miss them. I’m-“ His voice tapers off into a hoarse rasp- “I’m on my own now.”
Nightwing hums, the slight incline of his head tilting forwards an invitation. And Peter- well, Peter can’t stop the words from flowing out.
“I’m just so tired,” he wheezes out, hands clenching the wet fabric of his hoodie, molding the texture to his skin to abate the crawling feeling of despair. “I just want it to stop, y’know? Be someone outside the pain. The ache.” The empty room.
Idly, he brings a hesitant hand to graze the potent petals of the bluebells wrapping themselves in circles around his wrist, a gentle pull tugging at his heart before he quickly recedes the touch. He forces the quivering exhales threatening to bite into his breathing away, away into the abyssal misery of an unknown love harbored for an unknown family. Shuttering his eyes closed in a harsh vow of attempted solace, Peter tries to spurn the heavy hand of fate from tipping his fingers again to his pulse, again to the hope of those wishes of whispered comforts and loving embraces. The future is fickle, it seems to remind him, within the everlasting wish plying the pleats of his soul open. It is not for you.
Nightwing- in contrast- breathes in steady inhales, considering the information with the guise of idle thought. His head turns at every movement blurted from Peter’s limbs, blocked by the dark of the night from detail. After a pause, he begins in a low murmur, “Loneliness is greedy.”
Peter forfeits a startled huff in his surprise. “Pardon?”
“It eats everything,” Nightwing continues, voice soft with hushed purpose. “Every emotion, every thought, every moment bleeds with it, and you can’t stop the infection without amputating the limb.”
Peter curls further into himself, resting his head on his knees, away from the vigilante. “I don’t like this metaphor.”
“...Does it make it too real?”
“…a little bit.”
“Feeling isn’t a crime.
“…Feeling’s just human,” Peter whispers, voice faint and crackling hoarse.
He sees Nightwing from the corner of his eye scoot closer, a subtle wisp of reverent recognition crossing upon his face. “Yeah. It is.”
“I want it to stop,” Peter repeats, again, a mere mumble. “I want-“ my family. He clutches his wrist. “I want to reach out. I want to talk. I want to be someone. But I’m so goddamn scared,” he chokes out, tears once refused finally finding their way through the blockade stationed in his throat, in his mind. His soaked palms overlaid with the too-big sleeves of his hoodie hurriedly swipe at his eyes, doing nothing but smearing wetness further onto his face.
“That’s why you have to do it scared,” Nightwing gently presses, soft and steady. “You have to reach out. You have to talk. Or else you’re risking necrosis.”
Peter snorts, sniffling. “You’re horrible at extending metaphors.”
“But I’m right.”
You’re not. Peter wants to say. I’m not even supposed to have lived.
The end is so tempting. The edge is right there. Peter can tilt his world a little forward, and find himself face to face with fate on his own terms. He was supposed to have died. He’s not even native to this dimension. Is this simply rectifying the universal blunder that allowed his heart to beat?
The silence feels like a flatline. Peter is acutely attuned to the susurrus spread across Gotham, and the minute shudders of the night urge his shoulders to hunch against the slaughterhouse of noisy quiet. Pulse racing, breath shallow, Peter presses careful grips onto the bruised handprints lingering stained across his soulmarks. This pain is simple. This pain isn’t the same as the ache. This pain is also frightfully present, but instead a residue ripened on his skin. This pain is a tangible reminder, a tangible treatment, against the spoon-fed fall his body leads him to, but- but inoculation has taken its toll. The dosage isn’t right.
There never was a cure.
There is no curing of the ache, and these efforts seized from a pallid, animated corpse of a boy mean nothing against the unreal reaches of time and fate. He’s already desiccated, beyond necrosis. He’s beyond these insipid platitudes of concerned eyes and clever quips. Peter- if he focuses just enough, attention sharp and sharpening- can feel the thought enter his mind like a bullet: he was never meant to survive.
He was never meant to hope.
Peter doesn’t give himself time to think, the dread in his gut roiling and writhing tendrils of deadly despondency into his veins. He doesn’t give himself time to think, instead, unsteadily, Peter picks himself up limb by shaking limb, knocking the umbrella away from above his head.
(Hyacinths and peonies and snapdragons and bluebells and daffodils and spider lilies and lilacs-)
“Thank you,” Peter whispers, staring at Nightwing, the moonlight catching on his face. His bruises must show, his heritage of his father’s face and mother’s eyes and uncle’s disposition and aunt’s sad smile all painted on him in that moonlight. “You tried. That’s more than what I did.”
Nightwing responds quickly by darting upwards with the grace granted by his trained reflexes. With intervening worry and concern thick on his strained words, he gently says with outstretched hands, “Hey, hey, let’s back up, yeah?”
Peter doesn’t.
A tongue touched to the roof of his mouth does nothing more than add another lost reassurance to the tally. Another phantom of childhood lingering in the taste of artificial cherry cough syrup. Tremors spout and splint rapid inclinations in teetering flesh, spilling over a precipice of contained composure, of maturity, of ascertained calm. A fissure threatening to fray, a fracture screaming its cracks split. Copper coagulates on superficial supports, the drip of blood lingering on the wet concrete, splatters scaling the insipid pull of his soaked hoodie. Oh. He forgot about those wounds.
In this lighting, his pain feels hazy, the ache subdued by the racketing riot of numbness inundating the cold that crowds his chest. He’s being told his parents are dead. He’s clutching Uncle Ben’s corpse to his chest. He’s at the funerals, one, two, three. He’s in the hold of his father, sore throat throbbing, listening to the comfort so readily offered to him, the love overflowing as the lean muscle of his dad shifted to cradle him closer. Peter gulps down the blurry sight spinning his father’s face onto Nightwing’s, catching the taste of artificial cherry cough syrup on his tongue. His wrists burn.
Peter smiles, a wickedly frail thing. “Bye, Dad.”
And Peter steps off the edge.
He doesn’t fall.
Bluebells are holding him up.
A grip is etched deep into his skin, a clutching hand along his wrist pulling him harshly back onto the concrete and into a body solid with lean muscle.
At the contact, a bond snaps into place.
It’s a futile fight against the wave of emotions inundating the sudden approach of the bond, all curious incredulity mixed with warm concern smoldering like soft embers in the forefront of Peter’s mind. An overwhelming sense of relief slinks in like a cooling tide spreading in a rush onto shore, carrying the current of protectiveness, and- above all- overpowering familial love.
My son, my son, my son, echoes through Peter’s mind.
Peter barely registers the arms frantically cradling him to Nightwing’s chest, a shudder apparent in the frenzied movements of the vigilante as hands snake along his back, one wrapping itself tight around his torso, the other coming up behind his head. Dad’s hand slips down the hood, curling careful fingers into Peter’s hair, guiding his head in a gentle press to lay on his shoulder, murmuring sweetened words of reassurances all the while.
Then he goes silent. Rigid.
“No-“ a barely there whisper laced with the deep breathiness of desperation brushes against Peter’s ear- “no, no, no, not you.”
“Dad?” Peter asks, hoarse and teary.
“What did they do to you?” He hisses, tears clogging the throw of his throaty voice. His hold tightens, deepens, pressing Peter further into him. “How many times did you die?”
And here fate is again, back with more horror to cram down Peter’s quivering throat.
“I- I don’t know,” Peter manages to shove out of his mouth, the realization swiping the courage that made him speak. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Restless energy consumes the idle reach of his muscles, spasming in listless wavers of movement. How does he not know? How often did he wake up just to drown?
(He shouldn’t have lived.)
The bond sweeps back in at the leak of his distress, a blur of soothing repose blooming into Peter’s mind, emanating through the points of contact with his father’s body. Peter can’t help but relax against it, against the warmth, exhaustion bleeding him slow, slowing, slower.
“Shh,” Dad hushes, tone dipping on the barest hint of voice as he shifts his hold on him. “Easy, easy, you’re alright. I’ve got you.”
Melting in the embrace, Peter lets his breath heave into slower rhythms, unburdened by the rapid pace that once consumed his thoughts. In the reaches of the thin threads of coherence still remaining in his emotionally shot brain, Peter says dazedly, “You’re the bluebells.”
His father laughs faintly. “Yep.”
“…do you happen to know a snapdragon?”
“Oh, kid.” His grin widens, laughs leaning loose and loud as it rumbles through his chest into Peter’s. “You’re stuck with all of us, huh?”
Peter makes a noise of confusion.
Dad huffs in amusement before rattling off, “Hyacinths, peonies, spider lilies-“
“Lilacs, dandelions, hydrangeas, bat orchids-“ Peter finishes. “How did you know? Do you know them?”
Instead of answering, Dad buries his face into Peter’s wet hair and mumbles through his giggles, “Oh, they’re going to love you, kid.”
Warmth blooms in Peter’s chest at the admission, the bond thrumming in a happy, contented haze.
He’s safe.
He’s with family.
Peter’s mind rushes to speak next in a hushed tone, words falling slowly- deliberately placed- from his mouth, “My name is Peter. Peter Parker.”
“Hi, Peter Parker,” Dad whispers, tone fond and warm. “I’m Dick Grayson.”
Peter sputters a wet laugh, “Out of all the nicknames ‘Richard’ provides, you chose Dick?”
“What?” He looks mildly offended, but somewhat amused.
“In my dimension, you stuck with Richard,” Peter continues, courage and spunk returning in pieces. “Richie for Mom. Maybe your brother called you Dick.”
“What?” Dick’s face contorts in fierce confusion and concern, tense jaw set, drawing back from their embrace.
“I’m not from this dimension, Dad,” Peter says quietly with a small, sad shrug. “There’s no point in hiding it- you’re sure to have questions. I came from the temporal anomaly a couple months back, in a pool of weird green goo at some definitely illegal lab.” He huffs softly, humor intact even in his strangled whispers, “Like, who even makes their dubious scientific achievements in neon green anymore? Their data encryption was also similarly dubious, but this universe’s tech is pretty behind from-“
Dad tightens his hold on Peter, setting a small kiss on the top of his head. “Peter, sweetheart, hush.”
Weariness collapses back into Peter’s mind, heavily lacing itself sodden in his body. He closes his eyes, letting himself savor the moment of closeness. “Whatever you say, Dadwing.”
Dad then sighs, tension easing from his limbs. “…I can’t believe I have an interdimensional child.”
Peter snorts. “I can’t believe I have a Dad.”
“You know I’m never letting you go, right?”
“You just got me!”
“Precisely the reasoning.”
“Gotham’s smog is gonna smoke you out.”
“Yeah, let’s get you home. Your Grandpa and Uncles are probably worrying themselves sick.”
“Uncles, plural? Grandpa?!”