Chapter Text
When Dr. Strange had finalized the spell, Peter Parker was in an alleyway in New York City. He had freshly webbed himself away from Ned and MJ, resigned to the fact that no one would remember who he was. Dirty water was gathered in the dips of concrete, lining a path from the sidewalk to the dead-end. It rank like shit, but Peter digressed.
His shoulder came into harsh contact with the brick wall that cut off the narrow shadows, taking the pain in stride. Whatever injuries Peter had would heal against his will, much faster than a normal person should.
He didn't deserve to stop bleeding or aching. Peter was the one who began the problems in the first place, asking Dr. Strange to perform a spell that wiped everyone's memory of his mistakes. While meeting Peter Two and Peter Three was interesting, the following villains weren't. All in the name of Peter's selfishness and his belief in seeing the good in everyone, May was dead. Just as he had done to Uncle Ben.
It all boiled down to one thing: He shouldn't have been a fucking idiot. Peter always managed to be a fucking idiot. He ran away, causing Uncle Ben to chase after him, and subsequently got shot. He shouldn't have trusted Mysterio, ignoring the spiking spidey-sense that alerted Peter to the older man's true intentions. Tony's death had blindsided him for a while, a walking heart wound on display as he actively fought in the name of his mentor. Peter wasn't sure if his vision had cleared yet or if the muscle had mended itself.
It was still hard to tell.
Even after all that, he still tried to avoid the consequences of his actions by begging Dr. Strange to wipe the memories of the world. His selfishness in not including those close to him was his downfall.
Then it was May. His aunt, who was hesitant to house clear villains, but did it nevertheless at Peter's request and puppy eyes. Peter did that. Brought her murderer right to the door. She was meant to be safe. Meant to be protected by Peter and his spider-like abilities. And he failed.
So, as the world forgot him, Peter shed his Spider-Man suit. The material was damaged, blood and charred clothes covering him from head to toe. The fabric practically singed in his hands, everything in Peter's brain screaming at him that he didn't deserve to be the one under the mask.
He wore a thin tank top and basketball shorts underneath, the bag he had stashed there earlier providing jeans and a hoodie. He winced as he put them on, bruises and cuts slowly fading away. The fire had also managed to burn a few parts of his skin, which wasn't comforted by the fabric rubbing against the wounds.
Peter didn't stop his movements. Only dressed with a sick sense of determination that it was the least he deserved.
Havoc had wrecked New York enough. From Aliens to Norse gods, none had caused a literal rip in their universe. This time, everyone would forget him. Peter would accept the full consequences this go around.
Then, just as the buckle clicked into place, something tore through him—an echo of the Snap, that same cosmic violence rearranging his atoms from the inside out. It wasn't pain so much as obliteration in miniature, a seismic shudder ripping down his spine and turning his breath to ice. Peter's lungs seized, his fingers twitching uselessly at his waistband as the alley warped at the edges of his vision. His eyes blew wide, terror sluicing through his bloodstream faster than adrenaline ever could. For a heartbeat, he was convinced the universe had come back for him—finishing what it started.
He blinked.
The agony vanished so abruptly it left him nauseous, stumbling on phantom pain that wasn't there anymore. The cold, filthy New York alley he'd been standing in was gone, replaced by another one—narrower, darker, the shadows heavier and almost sentient in how they pressed close. The air smelled different, too, pungent with industrial smoke and something metallic underneath, like the whole city bled through its gutters.
Peter's pulse hammered in his ears as he slowly turned in place, breath trembling out of him. Brickwork loomed taller here, older and meaner, the kind of architecture that didn't want to be approached, let alone touched. Neon flickered somewhere far off, casting a sickly light that didn't belong to any street he recognized.
He wasn't in his alley anymore.
He wasn't even sure he was in New York.
"What the… fuck?" Peter muttered, the words slipping out before he could think.
They echoed strangely in the alley, too light, too bloody, too… young.
He froze.
That wasn't his voice.
It couldn't be.
He blinked hard, as if his ears were playing some warped trick, but the sound still rang in the air—thin, high-pitched, embarrassingly squeaky. It scraped against the walls like a pebble skittering across concrete. Every hair on Peter's arms lifted, his instincts prickling as his mind tripped over itself.
Slowly, he tried again.
"Uh—hello?" His voice cracked right down the middle.
Peter sucked in a breath. His lungs felt smaller. His chest felt tight—not panic tight, but structurally tight, like everything inside him had literally shrunk.
"Nonono—what is—why do I sound like—"
The pitch climbed even higher, unmistakably adolescent, a sound he hadn't made in years. He slapped a hand over his mouth, as if he could catch the voice and shove it back down where he thought it belonged.
His hearing, sharpened since the bite, offered no mercy. It told him, with agonizing precision, that the voice wasn't distorted. It wasn't an echo in a weird alley or a spell glitching out. It was coming from his own vocal cords—authentic, organic, his.
A cold, electric fear rippled beneath his skin.
"No way," he whispered, barely audible—yet still too young, too high.
His heart thudded faster. The rhythm was different too—higher tempo, lighter impact, like a smaller organ beating against a smaller ribcage. His spider-sense buzzed faintly, confused, not warning him of danger but of something fundamentally off.
What?What?What?
Peter forced himself to look down.
His hands—
His hands were wrong.
They were small. Not just thin—small, like they belonged to a kid who hadn't hit his growth spurt yet. His fingers looked narrow and frail, the knuckles not fully pronounced, the palms tiny enough that he could cup them together and still barely span the width of his own chest.
His breath hitched. He rotated them slowly, watching the dim light catch on the soft, unscarred skin. His sweatshirt bunched awkwardly at the wrists, as though the fabric remembered the size of the older, broader version of him.
Peter's pulse skittered.
"What the hell happened to me?" he whispered—voice doing nothing to soothe his mounting anxiety.
The alley breathed around him: cold, wet, unfamiliar. The shadows felt thicker than New York's, the air heavier, the smell grittier, but he didn't recognize any of it. He didn't recognize himself.
All he knew—what his senses refused to let him deny—was that he wasn't in his adult body anymore.
Somehow, impossibly, he was young again. Younger than ten, Peter guessed. There was a single scratch recently healed by his thumb, caused by May’s cat when Peter had first moved in. He was eight.
Danger!Danger!Here!
His spider-sense didn’t whisper—it screamed, a piercing vibration slicing down the back of his skull and tightening every small, familiar muscle in his eight-year-old frame. Peter sucked in a sharp breath as instinct took over, the same spiderbit reflexes he had carried into battle a hundred times… except now they fired through a body not built for it. He spun on his heel anyway, fluid as water, weight shifted to the balls of his too-small feet, hands raised defensively even though they looked ridiculous—tiny fists, swallowed by the sleeves of a hoodie that suddenly felt like a costume on a child.
Peter's jeans and shoes shrank down to the same size as him, fitting him snuggly as they did when he was seventeen. His hoodie was the only thing that remained larger, which—okay. Whatever. Now it could double as a blanket.
The alley wasn’t empty.
Two figures ambled toward him from the mouth of the street, silhouettes wobbling in the sickly flicker of a dying neon sign. They moved like they were glued together—shoulders bumping, steps uneven, the slow, predatory drift of men who had found something smaller than them to entertain themselves with.
The first one was tall but starved-skinny, all angles and bones jutting under a filthy trench coat. The coat might’ve once been tan, but now it was a graveyard of grease stains, cigarette burns, and patches of grime so dark they looked wet. His beard sprouted in uneven clumps across a gaunt jaw, patchy as if he’d tried shaving once in a blackout and never finished the job. His eyes, sunk deep into bruised sockets, glimmered with the flat, glassy sheen of someone who lived their life half-pickled in cheap alcohol.
He reeked of it—Peter’s sharpened senses were instantly assaulted by the sour fumes, heavy and staggering. Which—why—did Peter still have his abilities? He wasn't bitten until he was fourteen, which wouldn't explain the reason he had them now, in a body clearly younger than fourteen. And where the fuck was he to begin with? Annoyance was starting to cloud his mind, a side effect of his fast healing and the hunger that came with it.
He was hangry. Sue him.
The second man was shorter but wider, built like a slab of damp concrete. His flannel shirt—buttoned wrong and hanging open in places—couldn’t contain the unruly swell of his stomach, and a thick chain wrapped around his fist swung lazily at his side. His hair stuck out in greasy tufts beneath a beanie that might once have been black before the city chewed it into its current gray-brown misery. His nose had clearly been broken more than once, sitting crooked across his face like a smashed piece of pottery.
When he grinned at Peter, his teeth were a mosaic of yellow and gaps. They weren’t just bums. Not just drunks. Not just desperate men trying to survive a harsh night.
These were the kind of men this city had bred—hard-edged street hyenas who hunted weakness because it was the only thing the setting reliably fed them.
And to them, right now, Peter looked like prey.
“Well, well,” the gaunt one drawled, voice thick and slurring, “lookit what wandered in. Someone’s little brat out past bedtime.”
The bigger man laughed, a gravelly sound scraping like sandpaper. “Bet the kid’s got somethin’ in those pockets. A toy or two. Somethin’ shiny.”
Bad.
Peter’s heart thudded so hard he felt it in his ribs—which were too small, too fragile. His sweatshirt suddenly felt like armor made of paper. His breath puffed white in the cold air, too fast, too intense. It was the same reaction he would get at tense moments for Peter, at least before Aunt May and Uncle Ben got a therapist for him at eleven. It was almost as if this body didn’t remember the techniques to calm down.
His spider-sense flared again—louder, brighter, frantic.
They were getting closer.
Peter backed up a step, sneakers silently skimming over wet pavement. His injured, shrunken lungs burned with the frigid air and the panic rising in them. He swallowed, feeling the unfamiliar shape of his throat, the smaller stretch of vocal cords that would betray him if he spoke again.
But instinct—deep, unshakable instinct—told him to plant his feet.
To measure distance.
To listen for weight shifts.
To catalogue escape routes that did not exist in this boxed-in alley.
The men were ten feet away now. Closing fast.
Peter lifted his hands higher.
They shook—but not with fear.
With power.
With instinct.
With something in him that hadn’t disappeared when his body shrank.
“Fuck off?” Peter said.
He could feel it—like static under his skin, like the charged hum of a circuit waiting to fire. His strength was still there, coiled and compressed like a spring wound tight inside a smaller container. His senses were still keen. His balance stillperfect. His reflexes still too fast, too fluid for any normal child or anyone, frankly.
His powers hadn’t vanished.
But they were different—compressed, recalibrated, packed into a body never meant to hold them.
And he was about to need them.
Because these predators had spotted something they thought was helpless.
And Peter Parker—tiny body or not—wasn’t.
The men closed in, breath fogging the air like steam from a sewer grate. Peter’s spider-sense shrieked inside his skull—too loud for such a small head—and pain pulsed through his ribs where the Goblin’s bombs had left their mark. His muscles trembled under bruised skin, phantom burns prickling beneath the hoodie. He could barely breathe through the leftover ache.
But they kept coming.
“Shitty brat!” The tall one lunged first, fingers curled like claws, fully expecting a terrified kid to fold.
Peter moved before he consciously decided to.
He ducked low—faster than the man could register—and pain bolted up his spine when he twisted, but momentum carried him through. His palm struck the man square in the sternum, a push meant to shove him back.
Except Peter didn’t have the strength of a child. The man flew.
He slammed into the opposite wall with a wet thud, cracking brick behind him before crumpling to the ground like a discarded marionette.
Peter stumbled, nearly falling to one knee. His breathing hitched, sharp and thin. His body wasn’t built for these bursts of power—not at this size—and fresh pain spiked through his side.
The second man stared, eyes widening, anger momentarily swallowed by disbelief.
“You little—”
He swung the chain.
Peter’s sense flared—GO LEFT—and he obeyed, sliding out of the arc by inches. The chain whistled past his cheek, stirring his hair.
Peter grabbed it mid-swing.
The man tugged, expecting to overpower a kid.
Peter tugged back.
The man lurched forward helplessly, off-balance—exactly where Peter needed him. With a tight breath, Peter pivoted and drove a small but superhumanly strong fist into the man’s gut.
The impact knocked him breathless.
A second strike—this one to the jaw—sent him collapsing to the alley floor.
Silence settled.
Peter stood there, chest heaving, tiny knuckles throbbing, bruised ribs screaming.
He’d won.
But in a body that felt like it didn't belong to him, broken and alone in a city he didn’t know—it didn’t feel like victory.
Peter didn’t move at first.
He just stood there in the alley, chest rising and falling too quickly for air to actually be circulated. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. His ribs throbbed with the dull, sick ache left behind from the battle in New York—deep bruising under the skin, maybe worse. His burns stung beneath his hoodie, the fabric scratching over raw spots every time he breathed.
He coughed deeply into his sleeves, knowing Natasha would chastise him for spreading germs. Peter knew better, so he didn't understand why he did that. When he pulled back, blood was splattered.
The unconscious men lay scattered like broken debris, and for a moment, Peter just stared at them, trying to understand what had just happened.
He’d fought grown men while trapped in the body of a third grader.
That thought alone made his stomach twist. What the hell was Peter doing?
His spider-sense finally settled back into a low hum, though it didn’t disappear—just hovered, uneasy, like it didn’t trust this place. Peter didn’t either. Everything about this city felt… wrong. Wrong in a way New York never had, not even on its worst days. This city's darkness wasn’t just the absence of light—it had a presence, like the shadows were living things watching him from the brickwork.
He needed to move.
He needed someplace safe. A rooftop, a shelter, an unlocked stairwell. Something.
He drew in one careful breath, winced when it caught against his ribs, and forced his legs to move. The alley felt longer now, stretching into deeper night as he limped toward the exit. His balance was off in this smaller body—his steps too light, his reach too short. Every movement felt alien, like wearing clothes that didn’t belong to him. Which was ironic, because the clothes and body did belong to Peter.
The city greeted him with cold wind and a smear of neon light across wet pavement. It was louder here—sirens in the distance, the rumble of an elevated train, the faint hum of electricity underneath it all. The smell of smoke and rust burned his nose. There were faint shouts everywhere. Most of them bad.
Where was he supposed to go?
His stomach clenched. Ned and MJ didn’t know him anymore. May was—Peter swallowed hard, the word refusing to form. Tony was gone. Happy wouldn’t know his face. Dr. Strange was probably already on another planet or in another dimension dealing with whatever eldritch fires he’d lit today.
And now Peter was eight in a strange city. And he couldn't ask anyone why.
He wrapped his arms around himself as another gust of cold air tore down the street. His hoodie was too big on him now, hanging loose, letting the wind carve straight through to his skin. He didn’t have a phone. He didn’t have his suit. He didn’t even have a name in this world.
He wandered.
Block after block passed beneath his aching feet as he shivered, swallowed whole by a city that felt nothing like Queens' familiar, frantic rhythm. This city didn’t buzz with life—it brooded. Its streets were carved in harsh, uneven lines, the buildings pitched at unsettling angles as though they’d been standing too long without support.
He slowed when he passed a cluster of grimy windows plastered with old posters, several marked with the same word again and again.
Gotham. The fuck is a Gotham?
On a pharmacy sign. On a laundromat’s broken awning. On a dented police call box.
It was weird—strange and heavy at the same time, like a name he should have heard before but hadn’t. Gotham. It didn’t sound like a real place. More like the setting of a nightmare someone forgot to wake up from.
And somehow… he was in it.
"Probably in Nevada," Peter said aloud, voice hoarse from lack of water. It would be his luck to end up someplace in Nevada.
He passed a liquor store with bars over the windows. A laundromat with broken machines stacked inside like corpses. A pawn shop with a man sitting out front, staring at Peter with a look too sharp for comfort.
Peter kept walking, keeping to the side of the road.
His feet hurt by the time he reached a quieter block. His burns throbbed. His ribs felt tighter, like they were swelling the longer he moved. His wounds were taking their time to heal, Peter's lack of strength prolonging the process. His vision blurred momentarily.
Peter grabbed onto a flickering streetlamp, leaning his entire body weight on the flimsy pole. His forehead rested against the cool surface, settling something deep within Peter's bones.
He needed to stop.
A small playground sat half-collapsed at the corner—rusted swings, a cracked slide, the gate hanging crooked. The streetlight above it was completely out with no light coming in through the electrical flicks.
It wasn’t ideal.
But it was empty.
Peter slipped inside, careful not to make noise. His breath came out in weak plumes, too fast. Any moment Peter knew he was due to collapse. He crossed to the far end where a plastic tunnel—sun-faded and chipped—connected two broken platforms. It was barely big enough for a child.
Which meant it was big enough for him.
He hesitated at the entrance. He had slept in rough places before—in homeless shelters, in alleyways, tucked in the backseat with his aunt when he and May had bounced between temporary shelters and borrowed couches. Back then, he’d been taller, voice already starting to drop, wrapped in the thin illusion of control. And later, as Spider-Man, the suit and his powers had given him height, strength, and a confidence that kept fear at arm’s length.
Now? He felt small. At any moment, someone would see a distressed kid and would try to take advantage of him again.
A kid again in every way that mattered, without May’s warm hand on his back, without the mask that made the darkness less terrifying. The tunnel in front of him wasn’t shelter—it was the closest thing he had left.
But he didn’t have anywhere else.
He climbed inside, curling up as tightly as his aching ribs allowed. The plastic was cold against his cheek. The wind still cut through the openings at either end, but at least it wasn’t slapping him from all sides.
He pulled his knees to his chest and folded his arms around them, burying his face in the fabric of his sleeve. His fingers brushed one of the burns, and he bit down on a whimper. His body was still healing—still buzzing faintly with warmth under the skin—but healing was slow when everything hurt.
He blinked hard. Once. Twice.
His eyes burned.
He hadn’t cried since May. Not even as he left Ned and MJ behind.
He didn’t want to start now.
But the cold gnawed at him, and the fear sat like a stone in the center of his chest. The plastic tunnel felt too big and too small at the same time, and Gotham groaned around him as if the city itself breathed in the dark.
Peter squeezed his eyes shut and whispered into his knees, voice so small he barely recognized it:
“Please… someone tell me I didn’t screw everything up again.”
His words fogged the air.
The playground creaked.
The wind howled.
"Just not Nevada,"
And Peter Parker—eight years old, hurt, homeless, and alone—finally let exhaustion drag him under.
When he woke, the world was gray.
Not morning-gray, but sickly, washed-out gray—the kind that made everything look meaner than it already was. The wind had died sometime during the night, leaving a heavy stillness in its place. Peter peeled his cheek off the plastic tunnel wall and winced as every muscle in his body protested at once.
His hoodie and sleeves were stiff.
It took a few seconds before he realized why.
Dried blood.
Brown-red streaks crusted along the fabric, smeared down his arms, mottled across his chest. His hands were stained with it too—his own, most of it, from the fight with Green Goblin and the fallout afterward. It leaked through the fabric. Some wounds had reopened when he’d knocked out the men last night. Now they were closed, healed over completely, but the soreness was a deep, throbbing ache radiating all the way to the bone.
Peter flexed his fingers, testing them. They moved fine, no pain—just stiffness. His ribs, though, were a different story. Every breath stretched the bruised tissue in a way that made his eyes water.
He needed to clean himself up. He couldn’t walk around covered in dried blood looking like a lost third grader out of a horror movie.
He crawled out of the tunnel slowly, careful to keep from scraping any still-sensitive skin. The morning air hit him with icy teeth. Gotham—if that’s really where he was—didn’t warm up even with daylight.
Peter staggered to his feet.
His legs shook.
He took a moment, one hand braced on the cold metal support beam of the swingset, and waited for his head to stop spinning.
“Okay,” he whispered to himself, breath puffing white. “Find water. Find… something.”
He shuffled out of the playground, hugging himself as he crossed the street. The morning brought a thin haze hanging low over the road, tinted with the smell of diesel and distant smoke. The city was awake, but groggy. The kind of awake that felt more like it never slept in the first place.
Peter scanned the block, searching for any place that might have a bathroom—gas station, diner, anything.
He started walking.
The soreness made each step a slow process. His feet dragged, and the oversized hoodie sleeves kept slipping past hishands. He looked like a lost kid, which he hated. If someone tried to mess with him again…
His spider-sense flickered, quiet but present. Not danger, exactly. Just… observation. A reminder that he wasn't alone, even when it felt like it. A block down, he found a narrow convenience store wedged between a boarded-up bakery and an electronics shop missing half its sign. The store windows were fogged up, and the neon “OPEN” sign buzzed like it was struggling to stay alive.
Peter slipped inside.
The heat—weak as it was—felt like heaven.
The clerk barely glanced at him, too busy flipping through a newspaper. Peter tugged his sleeves down farther, hiding the dried blood as best he could. He wasn’t sure what would freak the guy out more: an eight-year-old covered in suspicious stains or an eight-year-old speaking like he had opinions on multiversal fracture points.
“Uh—bathroom?” Peter asked, trying to make his voice sound less… childish.
The clerk jerked a thumb toward the back without looking up. Peter nodded quickly and hurried.
The door stuck twice before it opened. Inside, the bathroom was worse than he expected—cracked tiles, a dripping sink, graffiti on every surface—but it had running water. Barely, but it worked.
He gripped the edge of the sink and stared at himself in the spotted mirror.
A child stared back.
Messy hair. Pale face. Eyes too big, too tired. Blood splattered across his hoodie like something out of a crime scene. He looked like he should be in school. Or at home playing video games. Not… this.
Not wandering a city he didn’t recognize, pretending he was still holding it together. Peter was trying to ignore the fear that was coursing through him, the type of apprehension that plagued him as a child after his parents died.
He turned on the tap.
Freezing water gushed out.
He splashed it on his sleeves first, rubbing until the fabric softened and the blood dissolved into pink swirls down the drain. The hoodie remained stained, but at least it didn’t look freshly soaked. Then he scrubbed his hands, his arms, his face. His skin turned red from how aggressively he scrubbed, but he didn’t stop until the mirror showed a version of him that didn’t scream injured at first glance.
Water dripped down his chin. His hair stuck to his forehead.
He breathed out slowly.
Okay.
He still didn’t know where he was. But being clean felt like a small win. Sure, Gotham was a place. But really, what state could he be in?
Peter scooped his hands together under the tap, drinking handfuls before he was satisfied.
He left the bathroom and slipped out of the store before the clerk could say anything. Back on the street, the city seemed louder now—honking horns, muffled shouting, gunshots that went off too many times.
Peter looked around.
Gotham.
He didn’t recognize a single building. Not one. Which wasn’t unheard of—New York was huge, and he couldn’t claim to know every borough intimately—but this place didn’t look like any borough near Queens. Or Manhattan. Or Brooklyn. Or, honestly, anywhere on the East Coast he’d ever seen.
The air felt heavier.
The shadows darker.
The people more guarded, faces carved into expressions that said they’d seen everything and trusted nothing.
Still…
Peter needed to learn his surroundings. He couldn't just wander blindly. So, he moved deeper into the city.
Down one block, then another.
He passed a massive stone building that looked like an old courthouse, though its steps were cracked and its columns stained by years of rain. Across from it sat a deli with a sign so faded the letters were barely readable.
He kept walking.
Everywhere he looked, he picked out details—the warped angle of the skyline, the way the police cars looked different from NYPD cruisers, the strange bat-shaped symbol painted on a few alley walls. Probably graffiti. Some local vigilante mascot. Every city had its weirdos.
He walked until his feet ached more than they already had, until his breath sharpened in his lungs.
A bus rolled past him, splashing through a puddle.
Peter turned automatically, looking for the transit logo on the side.
It wasn’t MTA.
It wasn’t anything he knew.
Just: GOTHAM CITY TRANSIT AUTHORITY OF NEW JERSEY in peeling white letters.
He frowned. There was no Gotham in New Jersey.
Officially: What The Fuck.
He wasn’t in Manhattan.
He wasn’t in Queens.
He wasn’t even close.
“Okay…” he whispered, staring at the fading bus until it turned a corner. “So… maybe not Nevada.”
He kept walking, determined now. If he could find a police station, a map, anything, he might finally figure out where he was. Why everything felt off. Why his spider-sense acted like it was walking through a nightmare.
And why one blink had taken him from New York to—apparently—New Jersey, trapped in his eight-year-old body.
Peter tugged at his oversized hoodie, squared his ridiculously tiny shoulders, and marched down the long, unfamiliar street like an undercaffeinated demon child on a mission.
The morning sun barely bothered to shove through the smog above him—figures.
One step at a time.
One clue at a time.
He was going to figure this out.
Or, you know… die trying. Because why should today be any different?
Peter’s legs ached with every step, but he kept moving. Every block felt longer than the last, every street corner darker than the one before. Gotham wasn’t New York. Not by a long shot.
He had no map. No plan. Not even a clue. Every step, every glance at the grimy storefronts, every shadow that stretched too long, reminded him that he was in an unfamiliar setting with questions he was dying to get answered.
“Perfect,” he muttered under his breath. “Lost, blood-streaked, and—bonus!—completely out-of-world to anyone who could actually help me.”
His voice squeaked, far too high for comfort. He wrapped his hoodie tighter around himself and shoved his hands into the sleeves. He wandered. Block after block, street after street, until finally he saw a building that made him pause. It was taller than the other buildings around it, but not menacing like the others. Its stone façade was dark and worn, with narrow windows rising in vertical lines.
Above the heavy, carved wooden doors, the letters were etched in bronze: “PUBLIC LIBRARY.” The words were simple, plain, and somehow safe.
Safe. Safe. Go in.
Peter tilted his head. A library. He didn’t know why the thought gave him a small burst of hope, but it did. Maybe there would be someone inside. Maybe someone would ask if he was okay. Maybe he wouldn’t be alone for more than a few seconds.
He hesitated at the entrance, staring at the doors like they were a portal to somewhere less terrifying than Gotham’s streets. The steps were cracked, the doors heavy and warped, and the windows high enough that he couldn’t see inside.
He wriggled his hoodie sleeves over his hands again, a nervous tick of him, and muttered, “Okay. Don’t get eaten. Don’t trip. Totally fine.”
He pushed the door open.
The smell hit him first: paper, ink, and the faint tang of cleaning solution. The interior was dim, with sunlight streaking through tall, narrow windows, dust motes dancing in the beams. Rows of bookshelves stretched up into shadowed corners, forming a maze that swallowed him in quiet. The faint creak of wood under his feet reminded him he was really here.
He wandered between the stacks, eyes scanning for any sign of life. No one. Just the hush of the library, the faint smell of old pages, and the soft scrape of his sneakers on the floor. He didn’t know what he expected—someone shouting “Peter! Finally!”—but he hoped for something.
“Hello?” a voice said suddenly.
Peter froze, practically holding his breath. It was calm. Welcoming. Not threatening.