Chapter 2: Strange city, lonely boy

The shower had to be short, before anyone wondered why someone was using it when the gym had just opened. Peter was not even supposed to be in there, he had no money for the membership but had snuck in through an open window on the second floor. Climbing down from the employee level to the main gym floor had been easy, as long as he stuck to the ceiling and avoided cameras.

He dried his hair as best as he could without a towel and, for a second, considered putting his clothes under the water spray. They were not smelly yet, but there were several stains on them from the place he slept in the night before.

Then, he remembered the wind, the humidity and the cold that was waiting for him outside of the gym and he decided to keep his clothes away from any more moisture.

He did, however, wash his underwear and socks thoroughly. Those, he would not buy more of at a thrift store so he had to be responsible.

It reminded him of his childhood, scrubbing clothes in the sinks of emergency public bathrooms, after the invasion. Back then, it had seemed hard, that way of living with May. Now, though, he would give anything to go back to those days. He would have no powers, no responsibilities and, more than anything, his aunt would still be alive.

Power and responsibility, he could handle. This crushing loneliness, though, was the single most painful thing he had ever been through in his whole life.

Peter had never been as alone as he was now, with no friends and no family to turn to. He was determined to survive it, though, to live on on his own and eventually build himself a new life but…

Trying not to let his mind wander to much lest in land in too dark of a territory, he shook himself and headed out.

He closed the door to the shower room behind him and quickly made his way to the men's restroom, blessedly empty, à before slithering out of the window. He put his palms flat on the wall and climbed up as fast as he could until he reached the top. Business as usual.

A low whistle, coming from the street below, made him freeze on the spot.

Horrified at the idea of being spotted when he was in such a weak position, Peter whipped back, gazing down into the dazed face of an old man.

Said old man waved happily at him, although his other hand clutched a gun.

"What lab are you from?" He asked Peter conversationally, his gun hand slowly rising, finger shifting to move towards the trigger.

"Hey man-" Peter replied, trying his best to look inoffensive. "We don't need that gun to get involved, do we?"

The old guy shrugged, scratching his head with his free hand, the other one, however, was still tense, clenched around the weapon.

"This side of town… Not for some freak like you. You're not welcome here." The friendliness was all but gone from his face, turned into a mask of stone. Hostile, his senses said, not that he needed any superhuman help to find that out.

Peter's danger sense was not going off yet but he still kept his eyes tracked on the firearm, ready to leap back at any moment. He still had some web fluid left, but he was reaching his limits and had been saving it ever since he got into this strange new universe. 

He hoped he wouldn't have to use it now, he barely had enough left in it for a dozen or so short swings.

"Freak? Come on… I'm not that weird." He chuckled awkwardly. "I'm not gonna hurt you or anything. I just came here to take a shower."

This made the man's eyes tighten. Like Peter, he was quite noticeably homeless at the moment, yet seemed protective of the neighborhood. It was, indeed, in a much better state than the one he had spent the night in. That one did not have any gyms in it and all the public bathrooms had been full of people half gone into a haze of drugs.

This amount of drug use, in fact, had been seriously worrying. Peter never had to investigate anything related to illegal substances, but even he could tell that something was off in Gotham. The misery and the dread in the air was almost suffocating.

"Fuck off." The old man finally said, lowering his gun. "Don't come back here. I'm being nice. Next time I'm fucking shooting you."

Peter nodded abruptly and took the chance as it was offered, running from the edge of the roof and further into the rest of Gotham. He had to be more careful.

The encounter did give him some information, despite being utterly terrifying to go through. The stranger had not seemed overly surprised to see a teenager stick his way up a wall, which meant that this universe had to have some form of mutant abilities. Somewhat worryingly, however, the civilian's immediate reaction had been to draw a weapon on him.

That was not a good sign for his standing as a mutant in this universe. As he jumped from roof to roof, he couldn't help but wish he was back home, where people had finally started to become more tolerant.

Then, he remembered that home was not even home anymore, now that May, M-J and Ned were gone and he missed his landing, hitting the metallic roof of a warehouse with a loud clang.

He groaned, even though the bruises caused by the fall were healing before they even started marking his body, and slowly got to his knees. His breathing had started to pick up, and he had to stay there, frozen to the spot, until he managed to get it back under control.

Tears prickled at his eyes, ones that he could no swallow back no matter how hard he tried. He stayed there, on the roof, for a long time. He barely felt like a human anymore. What was the point of living if all the ones he loved were gone?

He shook his head. He had to make it work out. That was what May would have wanted for him. He couldn't just give up. 

Still, he remained there, laying on the dirty roof, gasping in the cold air for a few more moments. Above his head, the sky looked just the same as the one back in his universe. For a second, he felt like he was back home.

It came back to him again. The loneliness was bitter, painful. The only exchange he'd had all day had been hostile and it made a little part of him want to curl up and cry.

Or course, most of him wanted to curl up and cry right now, although it was for different reasons.

In the end, he kept on going, standing up and running on. Years of haunting the New York roofs had prepared him well for this city. He could tell, as he travelled over them, that most of the lower streets were troubled, dangerous. Several times, he had to duck down to avoid a stray bullet.

It wasn't even lunch time yet!

"Something is seriously wrong with this city." He groaned, rubbing his ears, which rang with the sound of the shot he had just dodged. His throat felt scratchy, his eyes burned. There was no one to help him out, at the end of the day. No one to welcome him home and cook with him. No one to talk after a long day of school and an evening of patrolling.

He had to get by on his own, find his way past this and make a life for himself that would make his aunt proud.

Peter landed softly on yet another roof. He had followed old road signs, looking and listening for the place he was seeking. Eventually, he managed to find it. It took him hours, even with his powers, which was odd for someone used to simply typing his question into a search engine and getting an answer right away.

His stomach rumbled as he settled down on the roof or the Gotham Public Library. He thought about eating one his cans before deciding against it. He still did not have any cutlery and, even though he could easily open them with his hands, he did not want to show up at a public library with dirty fingers. Especially not when he was planning on using the computers there.

With a sigh, he tightened his shirt-bag, cringing as it made the cans inside clang against each other. He must have been quite a sight right now, with his oversized dirty t-shirt, too big camo shorts, frayed scarf and the boots from his spider suit peaking out, adding even more incongruity to the whole outfit.

Well, it was a public library, surely they wouldn't throw him out for this, right?

He made his way to the library's entrance, climbing down the service ladder, not wanting a repeat of the confrontation he had earlier. Nobody batted an eye at him when he stepped inside. Apparently, he looked normal enough to blend in with the usual crowd. He didn't know if he should feel good or bad about it, considering the kind of town he seemed to be in.

As soon as he spotted the computers on the second floor, half of them already taken by young children and other adults down on their luck, Peter headed straight their way, sitting down in front of one with a happy sigh.

This, sitting down on an uncomfortable desk chair in a public space, about to use an outdated computer for research, reminded him of the days from before Spider-Man. He used to meet up with Ned at the library, back in the days to look up Magic the Gathering strategies and Star Trek facts. He had many fond memories of those times.

Using a guest session, as he doubted he would be able to get a library card without flashing an ID, or at least a phone number, he started on his research. At first, he wanted to be pragmatic, looking only at the locations of the businesses on his list. Very quickly, however, he began to get distracted.

Unable to help himself, Peter gave up looking for adresses after the second business and instead went back to the browser homepage, typing :

"Gotham City"

A few million results popped up but Peter scrolled past the few obvious advertisements for travel agencies to get to the Wikipedia page dedicated to the city.

Apparently, he read, Gotham and it's surroundings had almost eleven million people living in it. What he assumed was the commercial district the day before had just been part of one of the city's many major districts. His stint on the bridge probably hadn't even allowed him to see all it.

Looking further down, his eyebrows shot up significantly. Gotham was rated as number one in the whole United States by crime rate. However, the article added, even though it was in the lead now, and still was back then, the crime rate had been slowly declining over the past thirteen years due to the involvement of…

The "Batman"?

Now having completely forgotten about his quest for employment, Peter clicked on the affiliated Wikipedia article. The picture at the head of it was a blurry shot of a man, wearing a dark suit and what appeared to be a cape, although the way he held himself made him seem like he was melting into the shadows.

"Picture taken of the Batman during a Justice League intervention. Credits : Lois Lane"

This looked a lot like a superhero to Peter. As for this "Justice League" it sounded even more like a super hero team.

Heroes still existed in this world, then. It made sense, considering he had established mutants existed over there too. He probably would fit right in with that crowd, as long as he didn't mention he got his powers from a radioactive genetically modified mutant spider.

Sometimes, Peter lamented that he had never gotten to look in depths at the metabolism of the spider that changed him. Too bad it had died right after biting him.

M-J used to joke about the spider taking over his body as it died and him actually having been a spider all along, during that beautiful week in which she had known and no one else had. 

If mutants existed here, however, it meant that some of them, at least statistically, would have taken the same path as him and many other heroes back home. This Batman person must be one of them too.

The page had a large section about the Bat's history. Most notably, it had a record of the number of arrests attributed to him (and holy shit it was in the thousands), pictures of the aftermath of his most iconic fights and a whole section about his philosophy.

A wave of relief crashed over Peter when he read that the Bat was known to never make any victims. It was a code he had never broken. This was a hero he could respect, he decided. Maybe this town wasn't all bad, if this was the person protecting them.

Linked to the Batman page were several others, namely ones showing the names of fellow super heroes as well as a list of Gotham's major criminals. Peter almost clicked on them to keep reading then suddenly remembered he was in a public library, which was probably going to close in a few hours.

He groaned, dropping his head into his hands. If only he had more time…

"Hey you." A cheerful voice called from behind him. "Anything I can help you with?"

He turned around, coming face to face with a smiling woman. In her early twenties, she had beautiful red hair and a genuine smile on her face. From where she was, sitting on her wheelchair, she was almost the same height as Peter. He blushed, ashamed to talk to a fellow human when he was looking as messy as he currently was.

She didn't appear judgmental at all, simply waiting for him to answer. A badge on her Star Wars hoodie identified her as "Barbara - Library Staff". It was hard not to smile back, especially since he had really been going through a bad time recently.

"Hm." He stuttered. "I uh was looking up some info."

She peered over his shoulder to look at the screen.

"Batman, uh? New in town?"

He blushed again.

"Is it that easy to tell?" He rubbed his head with his hand, feeling awkward. This place, Gotham, was turning out to be more and more… unique by the hour.

"The accent gives it away a little." She smiled. "New York, right?"

So New York did exist in this universe! Gotham must be located somewhere else on the East Coast.

"Yeah. I'm kind of lost honestly." Peter admitted. "Wanted to find out more about this city."

Barbara nodded. "Wise choice. You're not going to want to leave your home a lot at first, it's safer that way."

He didn't feel like telling her that he currently had no way home, as she was apparently assuming he was just the unfortunate kid of some financially struggling family. He had been that kid, once.

"Yeah. Uh. I was wondering if you had any way of printing pages here."

She smiled at him again. Barbara apparently really liked her job, or maybe she felt bad for him. 

"You can get a card for free, and that would allow you to print up to 100 pages a day. I'll just need your phone number and ID and I can set it up for you."

Peter cleared his throat. Awkward.

"I uh… don't have a phone. My ID is uh- it's home."

Technically, neither of those affirmations were lies. Barbara raised an eyebrow then took another long look at him. After a while, she narrowed her eyes and leaned over.

"Kid, Gotham is not a good place for a runaway. I know you think it's less likely for people to find you here but best case scenario you end up shot or robbed in a week. You are better off in New York.

Peter shook his head.

"I'm eighteen." He lied.

She raised an eyebrow at that and he sighed. Damned oversized clothing! 

"Look." He finally answered. "I'm not a runaway. That's the truth. I'm just not in a situation where I have access to those. It happens. There's a reason why I'm here."

Once again, no lies there. They stared at each other for a few more seconds before Barbara shook her head and pulled something out of her pocket.

A library card.

"You can print 150 pages on this. I need the other 150 for my thesis draft."

Then, upon seeing him hesitate, she winked at him.

"Staff gets 300 free pages."

Barbara took the time to explain to him how to send the documents he wanted to the printer then told him to get her card back to her before he left. He watched her wheel away to help a little girl and her mother log in to their library session. She seemed like a good person.

After that, it became a race to pack as much copy and pasted text as he could on a Word document without making it impossible to read. He tried to grab as much as he could on Gotham, including the map of the city, a page on every active vigilante, and info on the many high profile criminals haunting the streets. He used all of his remaining pages to gather more knowledge on heroes from other cities, as well as recent world history. 

He wished he could get a card, find a few books. He did not, however, have the time to stay and read at the library, not when he was so short on money and supplies. As for getting a card and borrowing the books for free, it was out of the question until he found a way to get a form of ID and money for a phone plan.

Peter had no idea how much an average phone plan costed. May had often complained about it, though, before Mr. Stark gave them a lifetime subscription to Stark Services.

There was no billionaire to hand him favors this time. The best he could do was to print all he could and learn from it. 

By the time he was done compiling information, it was thirty minutes to seven, which a friendly disembodied computer voice had reminded everyone was the library's closing time. Thankfully, there was no one at the printer so he managed to get everything out and the card back to the friendly librarian before closure.

"Thank you so much." He told her honestly. "This helps a lot."

She smiled, something a bit sad in her eyes.

"Remember what I said, kid." She said before he left. "Gotham isn't safe for people who are on their own."

He wasn't a kid anymore. He had fought monsters, he had seen death, faced death.

There was no way she could know that.

He went out of the library with a stack of paper in his hand, having no other way to carry it. He made it halfway down the front stairs leading into the street before realizing he had gotten completely off track.

Out of the fifty or so adresses on his list, he only looked up two of them. Worse, he could only remember the direction to one of those.

There was simply no way that this single address he remembered would take him on, not dressed like this, not when he was carrying a bunch of sheets of paper in his hands. He probably looked like a total weirdo.

Still, mostly because he had nothing else to do, he ended up going there. His stomach was hurting by now with how hungry he was. He had tried to make his rations last by skipping lunch and delaying dinner to when he had found shelter. He was finding that out to be a bad idea.

Peter stopped in front of the pizzeria as the sky darkened and the Gotham streets took on their nightly looks. He could hear whispers of death and deals around every corner.

He looked at the shop front. Old bright red paint promised a traditional, homey experience. Peter had known this place was a restaurant from the name, Marco's Authentic Pizzeria, which had made him expect it to be in a somewhat safe area.

It was not. Marco's was situated in the middle of the neighborhood Peter had slept in the night before. The buildings around it were all severely damaged and the restaurant itself looked like it had seen better days, with its front door handle hanging limply and what looked like a few bullet holes marring it's wooden planks.

He pushed open the door, hearing someone shuffle in the back to come meet him. A man in his early forties slowly came out of what Peter assumed was the kitchen. Looking exhausted, he was wearing a grease stained apron and, judging by the heavy limp he moved with, there was a reason why he was looking for a new employee.

It was probably a delivery job, Peter deduced. This part of town was bad so no one wanted to come eat in there. The pizzeria was probably surviving on deliveries. The issue now was that he had no driver's license, as well as no resume or-

"You here for the job?"

The man wiped his hand on the apron and walked over. He smelled like spices, oil and beer.

Peter could only bring himself to nod. He had had some small jobs before, but May had always been there to give him a pep talk before he went in to the interview. He had no idea what to do, now that he was on his own.

"Okay." The man said, surprising Peter. "I'll be honest with you, kid, I don't expect you to last more than a night."

He didn't leave him time to interrupt, instead going on : "We deliver to anyone who asks. Everywhere. Cause of that it's a bit more expensive. Used to do the deliveries myself but."

He gestured at his foot. Now that he was closer, Peter could see that most of it was wrapped in bandages.

"So, kid. You're probably not gonna last. Got any iron?"

Peter gave him a blank look, not really understanding why he would need metal. The man barked out a sharp, unamused laugh but did not explain himself.

"Guess I don't have a choice. Got to keep working. You get 5$ a delivery and you keep all tips. You also get this." 

The man set on the table a monster of a gadget. It appeared to have once been a car GPS, ripped from its stand and hooked to a portable battery. It looked clunky and old but, as long as it worked, it should help Peter get lost less.

"Did you steal this off a car?" He asked, because he couldn't help but put his foot in his mouth.

The glare he got was enough to get him to close his mouth and lower his eyes.

"Hope you at least have a knife or something kid." Something softened in the man's face and he leaned over the restaurant counter. "You sure you want the job? I know it's tough for brats like you out there but this ain't an easy business to work for in Gotham."

"I don't have a choice." Peter shook his head, too tired to be anything but honest. "I'll do it."

The man looked at him thoughtfully then :

"When can you start?"

He almost answered "tonight" but thought better of it. He did need the money but he was feeling terribly hungry, and carrying food around on an empty stomach sounded like torture. Instead, he replied he could start the next day, getting a nod in as his only answer. No contract was drafted up, he wasn't asked for his ID.

Later, Peter realized what "iron" meant and, upon wondering why one would need a gun to deliver pizza, he concluded that the pizzeria owner did not, in fact expect him to come out of his first food delivery unscathed. There was something about this town, everyone was more violent than what he was used to.

And yet…

He thought about Barbara, who had not pushed him to answer her questions, who had helped him out more than she was supposed to. Someone had been nice to him today. Things were not so dark. Gotham was not always so gloomy as it seemed now, as it settled into an uneasy, violent evening.

Peter spent the night barricaded in a shed next to a small boatyard. It was a bad idea, as far as shelters went but, by midnight, he could hear people fighting and yelling not too far away from where he was hiding, and that was enough to make him stay put. He eventually fell asleep, exhaustion taking him down after he polished off a disgusting can of cold ravioli. He was so hungry that, for the first few bites, they almost tasted good.

He slept on a pile of empty boxes, with his grey shirt as a pillow. The shed's walls were thin and he kept waking himself up by shivering too violently and knocking his elbows and knees on the wood.

Still, it was better than the streets.

In the morning, he snuck back into a gym, a different one, this time, to clean his body. The water was warm and felt like heaven on his cold skin. The tip of his fingers had started to turn blue, when the night had gotten really cold. He had to hold them up to his lighter to make it get better.

It was harder for him not to clean his clothes this time as they had grown humid from his night on the shore. He didn't, though, knowing he could trash it for better clothes as soon as he started working that night.

Ashamed of his current looks, he spent the day on one of the tallest buildings he could find in this forgotten part of town. The sun was gone, on that day, leaving him cold and shivering.

He took the sheets of paper out from the waistband of his shorts. He had time to spare before his shift started, he had only been hired to cover nights after all, and he did not intend to laze around. He couldn't. He had to keep his mind busy, focused.

Survival was his priority, he couldn't look back, couldn't think about what had happened.

His heart beating slightly too fast and his hands shaking, Peter started to read. As he progressed through the pages, his mind quieted. He didn't even know if he was properly absorbing all of the information in front of him, with how tired and cold he was, but at least struggling for understanding allowed him to distract himself from darker emotions.

Through the whole day, though, he could not shake the terrible, empty sense of absolute loneliness that had taken over his life.

He didn't know if he would be able to survive the months to come but, for May, for M-J, he would try.