Title: Set Naked On Your Kingdom
Author: sassydandelion
Universe: DC X MCU
Word Count: 76k
Status: Complete
Synopsis:
At the end of No Way Home, Peter chooses to sacrifice his life in New York to save the multi-verse...by letting Dr. Strange send him to a world where no one has ever heard of Spider-Man. What kind of crazy place is this Gotham City, anyway?
Rec Reading Site: Archive of Our Own
First Chapter:
"High and mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your kingdom. Tomorrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes, when I shall, first asking your pardon there unto, recount the occasion of my sudden and more strange return." (Hamlet. Act 4, Scene 7)
Prologue:
"What's happening?" Peter shouted.
"They're starting to come through," Doctor Strange shouted back, "and I can't stop it."
"There's got to be something we can do," Peter countered. He couldn't fail everyone again. "Can't you just cast a spell again? But the original way, before I screwed it up!"
"We're too late for that," Doctor Strange snarled in frustration. "They're here! They're here because of you."
Peter swallowed. "What if I wasn't here anymore?"
"What?" Doctor Strange barked, clearly feeling the strain of the spells he was desperately casting.
"They're coming here because of me, right?" Peter asked. "Because everyone knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man? So cast a new spell, but this time send Peter Parker to a place where no one knows who he or Spider-Man is. Make me…disappear."
"No!" Doctor Strange choked out.
"But it would work, right?"
"Yeah, it would work," Doctor Strange snapped. "But you've got to understand! It would mean that everyone who knows and loves you…we'd never see you again. And you…would be completely alone."
Peter swallowed. "I know," he said softly. Then, with more conviction: "Do it."
Peter knew he'd made the right call when Doctor Strange gave up and agreed—they were out of options.
"You'd…better go and say your goodbyes," Strange counseled. "You don't have long."
Even having a brief goodbye was more than he deserved. "Thank you, sir," Peter said sincerely.
"Call me Stephen," Doctor Strange countered irritably.
Yeah, Peter supposed they really were on a first-name basis, now. "Thank you, Stephen."
Stephen scoffed, but Peter thought it was directed more toward himself than toward Peter. "Yeah… Still feels weird," he admitted regretfully.
Peter hugged his fellow-Peter-Parkers and thanked them for everything. That was the easy part. They were supposed to go.
Facing MJ and Ned was harder. "I have to go away," he said.
"What?" Ned asked, bewildered.
"Go away? What are you talking about?" MJ demanded.
Peter took a deep breath. "It's okay. I'm going to come back," he said recklessly. "I'll find you, and it'll be like none of this ever happened. Okay?"
MJ immediately saw the flaw in the plan. Peter could tell by the panic in her voice. "Okay, but what if that doesn't work?" she asked. "What if that doesn't work? What if you can't get back? I don't want to do that! I don't want you to do that!"
"I know, MJ," said Peter sincerely. "I know."
"Isn't there something we can do?" asked Ned.
Peter shook his head, but MJ wasn't buying it. "We can't, we can't come up with like a plan or something?" she asked, panic bleeding through her voice. "There's always something we can do!"
Peter wouldn't let himself cry. He had to be strong for her. For both of them. "There's nothing we can do. But it'll be okay."
"You promise?" Ned asked, tears running down his face.
Peter looked at him. "Yeah, I promise." He wanted to tell Ned he was the best friend he'd ever had, that he would ever have. He couldn't find the words. But he and Ned did their handshake one last time, except, halfway through Peter had to hug him. One last time. "I'll come find you, okay?"
"I know you will," Ned's belief was unshakable. "All right."
"You better," MJ said fiercely. "If you don't, I'll have to come after you. I can do it. I'll figure it out."
God, he loved her. He wanted to be her hero. One last time. "I promise I'll fix this."
"I really hate magic," MJ confessed.
A watery chuckle escaped him. "Yeah," Peter agreed. "Me too."
And then, a miracle: "I love you," MJ said. And how cruel was it that she could say it to him now, when he was about to hurt her more than he ever had?
He opened his mouth, maybe to tell her he loved her back, maybe to apologize for every mistake he'd ever made that had caused all the people he loved so much pain.
She wouldn't let him: "Just wait," she instructed. "Wait, and tell me when you see me again."
"Sure," said Peter.
Peter stared at them, drinking them in, trying to commit every part of them to memory, knowing he would fail. They were the most beautiful things in the world. Battle-worn and weeping and alive.
Dawn shifted into morning.
And Peter was gone.
Day 1:
The sudden transition was jarring. The sunlight, which had been nearly blinding, suddenly became dull and muted; the colors around him snapped to dingy gray. The quiet of the early morning was replaced by honking horns, motors, and the requisite back-up beeping that came with every city morning. The cool air blowing off the river in the morning sun became icy and aggressive, whipping through Peter's suit and incidentally exposing every rip, tear, and break.
And the fact that he was standing in the middle of a public space, unmasked and in full Spider-Man regalia was most jarring of all.
Peter ducked into the nearest alley. No one was in his immediate vicinity, but he didn't really want to meet up with anyone as he was. Now that it was too late, he realized he should have thought through what being sent somewhere he could be completely anonymous would mean while he was wearing a colorful, skin-tight suit with a spider emblazoned all over it. Another gust of wind slapped at his body, and Peter realized the thermo-regulation function of the suit wasn't working.
Of course it wasn't. If Peter didn't exist, here, then Mister Stark's tech wouldn't recognize him, and wouldn't work for him. And that was assuming that Mister Stark even existed in this world, which Peter probably shouldn't. Peter really ought to count his blessings that the nano-tech didn't just dissolve and leave him completely naked.
But that didn't answer the most important question on Peter's mind: Now what?
A light drizzle gave him his answer: Find shelter. Peter needed food, water, and some place to get warm; he could worry about everything else later.
Peter weighed his options. Swinging around on his webs would be a faster way to travel, but more conspicuous. And what was the point of moving quickly if he didn't know where he was going? On the other hand, his footwear was not really intended for long walks as much as it was for sticking to the sides of buildings and the like. The stockings were as durable as the rest of the suit, but they wouldn't provide much more support than walking barefoot.
And what was he going to do about clothes? Walking around in his spider-suit was a terrible plan, but he didn't have a better one. He glanced down the alley. There was a dumpster. Well, Peter was no stranger to dumpster diving. He lifted the lid and peered inside. The stench was incredible, but Peter hopped onto the edge of the dumpster and continued to scan its contents for several moments.
A police siren flicked on and off again, startling Peter. He glanced over his shoulder to see a black-and-white with lights flashing waiting ominously at the end of the alley. Peter got the message; he let the bang of the dumpster lid echo of the alley walls as he hopped down and ran down the opposite end, away from the police car.
It would be a long walk to wherever he ended up.
It was several hours later, interrupted by brief interludes of ducking into subway stations to get out of the wind and the wet, before Peter finally caught a break. The hours had at least been useful, more or less. He had learned, in the various subway stations, that he was somewhere called Gotham City, and he was currently in the Old Gotham district, although he had been walking long enough that Peter wasn't sure how long that had been true. There was some kind of cathedral in the area (or so the metro maps had indicated). Peter had decided to make the cathedral his goal, reasoning that a church would probably be a place where he could spend a few hours warming up. But, completely by accident, he found something better. Much better.
Gotham Public Library.
Peter noticed and approved of the lack of steps as he entered the building. It was a nice nod to accessibility, which May had taught Peter to appreciate. Something about that made his chest hitch.
Peter's thoughts and feelings were completely derailed as he stepped into the building and was surrounded by warm, dry air. Suddenly he was aware of how painfully cold his hands and feet were, how his hair was not just damp but dripping little rivulets of rainwater down the back of his neck, and how his nose was numb. He just stood there, stupidly, his mind completely blank, as he shivered two steps past the doorway into the library.
"Washroom is back toward your left."
Peter glanced to his right, and saw there was a welcome desk stationed there that he had completely missed. A middle-aged woman with short, salt-and-pepper hair wearing a blue security-guard uniform stared at Peter with blank professionalism and jutted her chin in the direction she thought Peter should be headed. Peter hadn't really been thinking about using the bathroom, but figured it wouldn't hurt to wash up a little.
"Thank you, ma'am," he told the guard as politely as he could. It wasn't her fault he found her a little intimidating. She was just doing her job. Heck, being a little intimidating was her job, really. And she was being nice about it.
As Peter crossed the library floor, he noted the center of the building had a large, circular staircase that spiraled upwards and was illuminated, at least in part, by the natural lighting provided by a large, domed skylight. It was really pretty, and made Peter feel like the library was welcoming him to come upstairs and look around. It was nice.
Peter ducked into the bathroom, intending to just use the toilet, wash his hands, and head back out. But then he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.
God.
The wounds had already healed, but Peter had dried blood crusted over his eyebrow, his nose, and down one cheek. His mist-soaked hair added to his battered, miserable countenance. There was a gash down his left forearm that Peter had noticed during his walk, but hadn't realized how it flapped open and drew attention to his pale, thin arm. There were scorch-marks on the front of his suit, blackening half of the spider emblazoned across his chest. The scorching was probably courtesy of Electro, although maybe that happened when Peter blew up the Goblin's sled. The damage gave Peter's whole appearance a post-apocalyptic survivor look.
And then there was the fact that he was still wearing the spider-suit at all, which looked so weird while he was standing in a public restroom.
Peter did what he could. He tugged off his gloves—no easy feat with cold-numbed fingers—and used the toilet. Then he washed his hands and face. The restroom had one of those old-style air-dryers, and he used that to warm his hands and dry his hair. Peter assessed the results in the mirror, critically. It wasn't good, but it was better. A little bit, anyway.
He exited the restroom and approached the library's help desk. A pretty woman with glasses and bright red hair cut into a neat bob was seated there. "How can I help you?" She asked pleasantly. A tiny frown creased her brow as she took in what Peter was wearing, but she smoothed it out immediately and smiled at him.
Peter smiled back, trying not to feel embarrassed. "Um, are there public computers here that I can use?"
"Third floor, you'll see them without any problem," the librarian responded. Peter wondered if he was imagining the relief he heard in her voice.
Determined not to be a nuisance, Peter thanked her and climbed the stairs up to the third floor. Walking up the steps felt just as inviting as Peter had imagined.
On the third floor, just as the librarian had said, the computers were impossible to miss. An entire room of computers, row after row, in which one of the walls was made entirely of glass (or, probably a stronger, sturdier plastic, in reality) and bordered along the staircase. Peter could immediately see that roughly half the computers were in use, and walked around past the restroom to the doorway to enter the room.
Peter sat down and got to work, opening up the search engine. First, he searched Gotham City, and discovered he was in New Jersey, of all places. It figured. No wonder this city was such a dump.
Next, Peter searched Tony Stark, Anthony E. Stark, and Stark Industries. No results. Nothing. No death notice. No stock photos of Mister Stark grinning sharkishly into the camera. Not even some crummy press release or an apology for whatever latest scandal Mister Stark had gotten into. Peter tried googling Iron Man. That did get results, but for a triathlon, not a person. Mister Stark wasn't here.
Peter was honestly surprised by how disappointed he felt. It wasn't like he could have asked Mister Stark for help, anyway. The whole point was that Peter didn't exist here. The tight pain in his chest was just stupid. Useless.
To get a better idea of what he was dealing with, Peter searched Pepper Potts and Harold Hogan. Then he searched for Captain America, Steve Rogers, The Hulk, Dr. Bruce Banner, Nick Fury, SHIELD, and, finally, The Avengers. The last one directed him to links for an old TV show.
Were there any heroes in this place at all? What if this was a world where there had never been an enhanced hero? Had Peter ended up somewhere he would be even more of a freak than he had been back home?
The pain in his chest began to flutter, transforming into panic. Peter stood up from his computer and darted into the nearby restroom. Breathing heavily, Peter turned on the sink and splashed water on his face. The back of his mind was complaining he was acting like a cliché, but he didn't know what else to do. And, weirdly, having to grope around for paper towels while half-blinded by water did actually help distract him from his fears of being the only human-mutate in the entire world.
Peter took a breath and held it. He counted to four and breathed out. He did it again. He noticed the room was actually a lot colder than it should be. A glance up revealed an open window that no one would be able to shut without one of those special poles with an attachment on the end. Or without the ability to climb walls. Not that Peter was going to do that, because, hey, fresh air in a bathroom was always a good thing.
Peter took another breath. Right. No Avengers. But did that really mean there were no heroes in this place? Peter was theorizing ahead of the evidence. He didn't have enough data to test his hypothesis.
Peter returned to the computer room, and thankfully no one had logged him out and taken his computer (there were still a few empty ones, which probably explained that kindness). He sat back down and typed "heroes" into the search engine. He only found websites for restaurants selling Hero Sandwiches, and a few real-estate agencies. Peter tried, "Gotham heroes." That was informative. Apparently branding with a stylized bat was the thing heroes did, here.
The bat-heroes information also led Peter to information about heroes that weren't based in Gotham. "Superman" seemed like a cross between Captain America and Thor. A super-fast guy was called "The Flash." Peter thought it might be neat to be able to move so quickly that time seemed to slow down in comparison. He was a little surprised to see a woman whose most obvious super-power was to make the swimsuit she was wearing seem like it covered her from head to toe. Peter could only dream to have that kind of confidence. And chutzpah.
Weirdly, almost none of the heroes mentioned were described as having any kind of personal life. It was strange compared to Peter's memories of Mister Stark constantly being mobbed by paparazzi, or seeing daily updates to the Captain America page that specialized in posting pics people had snapped of him doing daily things (it had been cleverly titled, "America Day-By-Day."). It was like all the heroes here had taken after Black Widow, who had protected her private life with a ferocity that made the press wet themselves in terror. But there weren't even any pieces talking about how some intrepid (and deeply stupid) reporter had almost gotten a quote when he nearly got close enough for Black Widow to strangle him with his own intestines.
Okay, whatever. Heroes were private, here. At least they were actually a thing. But Peter realized he shouldn't waste any more time on that. He had more immediate problems. He started to search out Gotham's homeless services and found them…seriously lacking. Where was this world's analog for FEAST? Why weren't there more services to help him find housing? Peter couldn't remember seeing homeless services this bad since…
Wait.
Peter searched for "the blip," and "Thanos," and "half the world in ash." Nothing. Thanos was never here. He never erased half of everyone.
And the Avengers never brought everyone back. This world never experienced the shock of losing half its population, and then doubling the population five years later. The world never had to deal with a homelessness crisis that literally meant for every housed person, there was another, unhoused person who needed somewhere to live. Which meant all of the services that Peter was familiar with, that Peter had used, himself, when he and May first came back to Queens, didn't exist.
Sitting in the library in front of his computer, Peter began to comprehend just how screwed he was.
Peter never thought he would ever, ever find something about the blip that had made the world better, but…it did force everyone to treat homelessness as everyone's problem. Here, it was just Peter's problem.
Peter started searching for food kitchens, homeless shelters, and anything else he could think of that might be useful to him. He grabbed one of those little pencils and a small piece of paper from a stack near it. The paper and pencils were probably meant for Peter to write down information about book titles or decimal numbers, but they could just as easily be used to write addresses.
"Excuse me?"
Peter startled at the gentle touch on his shoulder. It was the red-headed librarian he had met earlier. She was sitting in a wheelchair. Peter felt like an idiot that he hadn't noticed that detail before.
"Um, yeah?" Peter glanced around, a few people glanced up briefly from their screens, but more people just ignored him entirely . Had he done something wrong? "Is there a problem?"
"No. No problem," the librarian said reassuringly. "I just wanted to ask if this was something you'd be interested in?" She handed him a glossy brochure. Peter glanced down at it, and then did a double-take. The Ethel Gore Kitchen and Homeless Shelter. Peter looked back at the librarian, who was smiling uncertainly.
"Uh," Peter fumbled for something to say. "Uh, yeah, actually. Um. Thank you?"
The librarian's smile regained its earlier warmth. "You're welcome. Actually, if you'd come with me downstairs, I can get you a free bus-pass to help you get to the shelter."
"Um, okay." Peter wondered if she was being nice to him to get him out of her library. Trying to get the riff-raff out. But the thought of not having to walk Gotham's wet, cold streets was a powerful draw that he couldn't ignore. And even if she was trying to kick him out, it wasn't like Peter wouldn't have to leave, eventually. He felt pretty confident that, like every other library he'd ever visited, this one eventually closed and expected the readers to go home at night.
Peter cleared his browser history out of habit, logged off the computer, and followed the librarian out of the computer room. She didn't head toward the spiral stairwell, because, of course she didn't. Peter mentally kicked himself. But there was a bank of elevators to the right, and as she wheeled herself into one, Peter stepped in after her.
Back on the first floor, the librarian led Peter to the desk she had been seated at when he first spoke to her. Peter realized that, from this angle, it was impossible to tell that she was in a wheelchair. He decided he didn't feel as bad about missing this point, now. The librarian reached into a drawer and pulled out a small stack of cards held together by a rubber band. She handed Peter a few. "Each one is good for a day, but the day starts at the time of the first bus route and ends at the last, so roughly six in the morning to nine at night, and then it's done."
The feeling that the librarian was trying to get rid of him intensified. She could have just brought the cards up to the computer room along with the brochure for the homeless shelter. Still, Peter needed all the help he could get, and a free bus ride to a place to sleep for the night counted as help. "Thanks."
The librarian nodded. "There's one other thing." She moved out from behind the desk and headed toward a door marked, "No entrance. Library personnel only." She opened the door with a key-card and glanced over her shoulder to see if Peter was following. It was a little strange to see the inner workings of the library, but Peter gamely followed the librarian down the short hall to what appeared to be a storage closet.
The door was unlocked and she pushed it open, "We have a system for our Lost and Found," she explained. Everything in that lower bin," she pointed to a large, clear plastic tub taking up most of the lowest level of a set of deep shelves, "has already been here six months and is going to be donated to a thrift store." The librarian shrugged one shoulder and quirked a smile. "I thought if anything fit, we could skip the middle-man and donate directly to someone who needs it."
Peter swallowed against a lump in his throat. God, he must look so bad for this woman to be going out of her way like this. And there were so many other people who probably needed what she was offering even more than he did. On the other hand, it would be nice if Peter could arrive at this homeless shelter wearing something other than just his spider-suit. Several people had given him weird looks, today, and Peter didn't like the feeling of drawing attention to himself.
He pulled out the tub and took a look. The baby-socks were definitely too small for him. So was the teeny pink sweatshirt that proclaimed, "Daddy's PRINCESS," in rainbow sparkles. But the gray, hooded sweatshirt looked promising. Peter pulled it over his head; it was a little tighter than he preferred, but it did fit, even if it probably made him look like he was wearing tights. Not a great look, but better than a weirdo with spiders all over his front and back.
There was a green hat that Peter considered until he saw how gross it was on the inside. At the bottom of the box was a bulky, canvas coat. It was light brown with a darker-brown collar. It had giant flap pockets that looked big enough to hide a paperback book each. It didn't have a hood, which was dumb—as far as Peter was concerned, every coat should come with a hood and any coat that didn't was a failure—but it looked warm. Peter tried it on; it was much too big for him; the sleeves completely covered his hands, but it also reached almost to mid-thigh, which concealed the spider-suit nicely.
Peter put the remaining items back in the bin and stowed it back on the bottom shelf. Then he grinned and posed for the librarian. "How do I look?" He joked.
The joke apparently fell flat, because for a moment the woman looked at him blankly. She recovered almost instantly, so quickly that Peter wondered if he had imagined what he had seen. "I'm glad you found something that fits. Sort of," she amended.
"I really, really appreciate it," Peter said honestly. "And the bus pass. You've totally saved my day."
"I'm sorry I can't do more," the librarian said regretfully. "Is there anything else you need? Anyone I can help you get in touch with?"
That tightness in Peter's chest returned sharply. "No. Thank you." He cleared his throat, "Really, this is amazing. Thank you, ma'am."
The librarian gave a small huff that might have been laughter. "My name's Barbara."
"Peter Parker," he reached out and shook her hand.
Barbara took a breath, as if she was about to say something, but then thought better of it and sighed instead. "The bus stop is to your right at the end of the block as you leave the library," she said. "You'll want to get to the shelter early. A friend of mine works there, and she says the beds can fill up very quickly."
Peter nodded, "Okay. I'll do that."
Barbara led Peter out of the Employees Only area and out into the library foyer. "Good luck, Peter," she said quietly.
"Thanks," Peter replied as he turned away to walk out the door. As he waited for the bus to arrive, he considered: really, all things considered, his luck had been better than usual.
***
The Ethel Gore Kitchen and Homeless Shelter was called "The Kitsch," by the people who frequented it. Peter immediately discovered this when he mis-identified it by its proper name and received a chorus of derisive hoots and snorts in response. But other than that, everyone was pretty friendly. A very tall, slender, Asian-American woman with short, dark hair and a wide, inviting smile instantly recognized Peter as new. She aggressively provided assistance by forcibly marching him toward the back of the building. It turned out there was a surprisingly well-equipped clothing closet located there.
"We have a grant from the Wayne Foundation," she said, as if this explained anything. "It gives us a lot more room to help than we would have with just our baseline donations." She picked out a pair of gray sweatpants and held them up to him; she discarded them and searched for another size. She was clearly practiced at this, because her second try—a navy-blue pair of sweats—was a good fit. He put them on. The drawstring waist helped. She tossed him a hoodie of the same color that looked like it would fit a lot better than the one he was currently wearing.
"Um, do you want this one?" Peter asked, indicating the hoodie he'd gotten from Barbara as he pulled on the new, larger one.
"Sure," she said, stretching one hand out to take it from him, while the other pressed a black t-shirt into his grip. "I'm Alysia, by the way. What size shoe do you wear?"
"Um, Peter. I mean, nine and a half?"
"Nice to meet you, Peter. Try these on," she thrust a pair of black sneakers at him. "This is where a lot of the Wayne Foundation money goes. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to keep shoes stocked in every size." Peter dutifully tried on the shoes. They were a little roomier in the toe than he was used to, but they fit okay.
"Great. Take this." She thrust a neon green nylon bag into his hands. "It's a few things to help you out until you have something more stable to depend on," she explained. "Now let's get you to the dining room."
With that, Alysia whisked Peter into a large room with the same dining set up that Peter recognized from FEAST and the cafeterias of every school he had ever attended in his entire life. Peter picked up a tray, and when a server asked if he wanted something, he said, "Yes." He was ravenously hungry. His last meal had been…. A memory of the older, calmer, blue-eyed Peter Two putting a sandwich in his hand and telling him to eat washed over him.
He shook his head and tried to focus. The room was crowded, and Peter briefly had to fight his long-standing anxiety about figuring out where to sit in the lunch room. He decided to follow the strategy he had always followed when he was eating at FEAST, both when he was using their services, and later, when May was running the branch in Queens. Peter scanned the crowd and saw a guy sitting with a generous amount of space around him.
The guy was big, disheveled, wearing several layers of clothes, and had two knit caps on his head. He was also muttering to himself and seemed to be occasionally swearing. Peter moved over to the guy.
"Is it okay if I sit here?" he asked.
The guy looked up at Peter warily. Peter smiled and tried to project friendly harmlessness.
"Are you going to grab my butt?" the guy demanded.
"No. I'm going to eat my dinner," Peter answered sincerely.
"Okay. You can sit here," the guy said easily. "People are always touching my butt," he added. "Because it's irresistible."
"Well, I'm going to eat my dinner," said Peter. "I'm really hungry."
"Yeah," said the guy. "The food's pretty good, here. I'm Eli."
"Peter."
"Cool." Eli gave Peter a little smile and they both got down to the serious business of cleaning their plates.
Peter had initially started this strategy of sitting by the most threatening-looking person in the room because he figured: better he should deal with it than somebody who wasn't super strong with the ability to heal quickly. But he discovered that often the people that seemed the scariest were really just as scared of everyone else. And sometimes just being friendly could make a real difference to those people.
Peter and Eli made short work of their respective meals. After he had finished, Peter took a moment to inspect the nylon bag Alysia had handed him. He realized it was a drawstring backpack, and inside he discovered several useful items that he might need in the future: a refillable water bottle, a toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste, a travel-sized deodorant, a small bar of soap, a thin washcloth, a disposable razor, a nail file, two pairs of tube socks, two sets of boxers, and a small package that Peter initially mistook to be a package of tissues, but then realized what it actually was—a foil emergency blanket.
"Wow," Peter commented absently. Alysia had just handed him this like it was no big thing. Peter imagined her and the other workers at the Kitsch putting together bag after bag of supplies just so they could hand them all out to people who didn't have anything.
"You're cool, Peter," Eli decided out of nowhere. "Come outside with me."
"Um. Okay," Peter agreed, not having any better idea of what to do next. He followed Eli to the dirty-tray window and mimicked his actions, putting his tray of empty dishes inside. He could see someone on the other side spraying hot water onto the dishes.
The air was noticeably cooler outside the building. And it was a lot quieter, too. Eli sighed in relief. "Want a smoke?" He offered Peter a cigarette.
"Oh. No, thank you," Peter answered. He briefly considered talking to Eli about the dangers of smoking, but rejected the idea. Eli was being really nice to offer him something as expensive as a cigarette. Assuming tobacco products were as expensive here as they were back home.
Eli accepted Peter's lack of nicotine habit with equanimity and lit his own cigarette with a cheap plastic lighter. "You new in town?" Eli asked.
"Um. Yeah," Peter admitted. "I guess it shows?"
"Kinda," Eli agreed. "Don't try to sleep under any of the bridges. Not even if its raining. If the cops don't run you out, someone will roll you."
Peter was genuinely touched by the advice. "Okay. Thanks."
"Sure." Eli puffed on his cigarette. "I do bushwhack Scientologists. I give them a good bushwhacking."
Peter wasn't sure how to ask Eli what he meant by that comment. But something else occurred to Peter, distracting him. "Aren't you going to stay here, tonight?" He asked.
Eli scoffed. "Nah. I got twenty bucks. I'm getting some weed tonight."
Peter went out on a limb. "Doesn't that, uh, interfere with your medications?"
Eli gave Peter a sidelong glance. "I don't take those. They come from China. The cameras are everywhere."
Peter wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. "Oh."
Eli shrugged. "If you're staying, you'd better get back in." He took a final drag of his cigarette and flicked the butt into the street with a practiced hand. "I'll see you around, Peter."
"You too, Eli. Be safe."
"Thanks, man." He said over his shoulder as he ambled comfortably into the waning light.
Peter went back inside, and was startled to see that all the tables had been put away in the short time he'd been outside. Cots had been laid out in their place and it seemed as though all of them had been filled with bags, coats, or the occasional person who was already sleeping.
"Peter?" Alysia approached him, looking stricken. "I was going to get you before the meal was over, but I couldn't find you."
Peter tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. "Eli tried to offer me a cigarette," he explained. "I guess he didn't want to stay here tonight?"
The corners of Alysia's mouth turned downward. "No. We have a sobriety policy. No alcohol or drugs on the premises. It's a requirement from one of our donors. It drives a lot of people away."
"I'm sober," Peter offered.
Alysia looked miserable. "Peter, I'm so sorry. I should have explained before, but I didn't…." She shook her head. "All the beds are full. We can't take extras."
The sinking feeling became a hard, painful knot in Peter's stomach. "That was fast," he murmured.
"I'm so, so sorry," Alysia repeated helplessly.
Peter forced himself to smile as reassuringly as he could. "It will be okay," he said. And hey, it was probably true, right? He was Spider-Man. He could handle a night on the streets.
Alysia was not reassured. "Will you please come back tomorrow night, so I know you're okay? I'll help you get a bed, then."
"Of course." Where else could he go? Peter had no food, no home, and no source of income. He would need to come back to the Kitsch or he'd starve.
"The longest bus route from here runs to Old Gotham," Alysia said, seemingly apropos of nothing.
"Okay," Peter answered. It struck him that she was giving him a way to stay warm for a few more hours. "I'll do that. Thanks."
Alysia bit her lip. Peter could feel for her. He remembered May's frustration with some of the restrictions imposed on FEAST because of local by-laws and donor-requirements. He didn't want Alysia to feel bad or to do something that would get her in trouble. "I'll be fine. Really. And I'll come back tomorrow to prove it."
"Alysia?" One of the other shelter-workers called out.
"I've got to go," she said apologetically. "Be safe, Peter."
"I will," he promised. "You, too."
***
Peter drifted in and out of a heavy doze on the bus ride back to Old Gotham. It wasn't until the driver shook his shoulder that Peter realized the bus had come to a complete stop.
"Hey, kid," the heavy, African-American man said gently. "I'm sorry, but this is my last stop."
Peter could feel his eyes wanting to close in spite of himself. "Yeah. Okay. I'm up. Thank you, sir."
"You're welcome."
The icy air slapped Peter into wakefulness. He needed a plan. He looked around. It was full dark now, so it took Peter a moment before he recognized he was at the same stop he'd left from the library, earlier in the day. Peter reasoned the front overhang of the library was as good a place as any to shelter for the night, assuming it wasn't already taken by someone feeling territorial. It looked like he would be trying out the emergency foil blanket sooner than he'd realized.
As Peter approached the library, glancing around him, a thought struck him. The window in the third floor bathroom had been open, earlier today. What if it was still open?
Peter was weighing the relative morality of breaking into a public building when a cold wind blew down his neck, and he decided morals were a luxury he couldn't afford at the moment. Peter wandered around to find an area that wasn't so well lit, and then kicked off his new shoes. Once they were safely stowed in his drawstring backpack, he slung it over his shoulder and quickly scaled the wall. It took a few minutes for Peter to find the side of the library that corresponded to the bathroom by the computer banks, but when he did, he nearly cried.
The window was still open.
Peter fed the backpack through first, then crawled through after. It took less than a second for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the bathroom. Peter considered his situation, locked the bathroom door, and then flipped on the light. He unpacked his belongings and set them on the edges of the sinks in the bathroom. He took off his coat, hoodie, sweatpants, and, finally, his spider-suit. Peter took a moment to assess the suit critically. The stockings (Peter refused to call them "footies," like Mister Stark always did) were fine. So was the mask. The gloves had a few worn spots at the knuckles, but they were salvageable. His web-shooters were intact, but almost empty. He had maybe a dozen or two shots left.
The overall suit, however…. Even ignoring the gash along the arm that flapped in the wind, the suit as a whole had the appearance of having been chewed up and spat out of some pitiless monster that wanted a snack and found him wanting. Not a great look. And all the tools and technology Peter needed to fix it…were home.
Peter rolled up the suit into as small a package as he could and tucked it into the bottom of his backpack. It took up most of the space, but he was able to pack the rest of his belongings, meager as they were, on top of it. He left out the soap, washcloth, toothbrush, and toothpaste. The mask, gloves, and stockings Peter stowed in the large pockets of his canvas coat.
Peter gave himself a quick sponge bath in the sink, brushed his teeth, and then put on a new pair of underwear, his sweats, t-shirt, hoodie, and coat. He filled his water bottle from the tap. He wrung the water out of his washcloth the best he could, and used a paper towel to dry off his toothbrush. Then, into the backpack they went. It was amazing how something with so little in it was so quickly filled to the brim. He'd have to rearrange some things to go into his coat pockets if he wanted to free up some room.
Peter flipped off the light, and, carrying his backpack and his shoes, stepped out into the darkened library. The building wasn't completely dark, but the lighting really wasn't even enough to read by, if you were someone who didn't have enhanced vision that allowed you to see in almost any level of lighting. For Peter, it was easy enough to see that there were actual couches located strategically around the edges of the room, no doubt to encourage people to sit and read their books. Peter picked the closest one and lay down.
He had meant to spend a few minutes planning for what he would do in the morning. But he fell asleep the moment his eyes blinked shut.
Day 2:
Waking up on the couch in the library was strange. On the one hand, Peter felt so much better than he had the night before, just because he'd finally gotten some sleep. On the other hand, his situation was pretty dire, all things considered, and Peter didn't have a good plan to fix them, yet.
His first order of business was to clear out of the library. It wasn't hard, although it was awkward to manage his shoes and his backpack as he squeezed out the bathroom window. Once he was down on the ground, he put on his socks and shoes.
While he was waiting for the library to open, Peter tried to think about what to do next. He didn't have his diploma—that was in Midtown in an alternate universe and therefore inaccessible. It occurred to Peter that he also didn't have his birth certificate or a social security number, here. So, not only did he not have a job, he really had no legal way to get a job.
Peter had known, academically, that he was privileged to be a US citizen. But he hadn't really appreciated all the things that he'd had for free that any immigrant would be lacking. Except now, Peter was lacking all those things, too. Home. Community. Access to basic needs. The ability to build all those things with hard work.
When the library finally opened, Peter's fingers were numb and aching from the cold, and his stomach was cramping painfully, but he had a plan. He nodded hello to Barbara, who smiled at him in return, climbed the stairs to the computer room, and got to work.
Peter missed Ned acutely as he flexed his rusty coding muscles and worked on hacking his way into Queens' public record system. It took him hours, due to making some rookie mistakes early on and then having to back-track to fix the problems he had made and clean up after himself. He could practically hear Ned making fun of him for this; Ned would have done twice the work in half the time.
But, eventually, Peter had forged an electronic birth record for Peter Parker, son of Richard and Mary Parker, born at Elmhurst Hospital Center. It took him a moment or two of calculating to come up with the appropriate date of birth—no blip meant no one would understand why he was chronologically eighteen years old when he was born twenty-three years ago—but Peter was good at math. He'd just have to remember his new birth year. He kept the same month and day, though.
It had occurred to Peter more than once that it would be much simpler to use the birth certificate of some baby who had died around the right year, and build a new identity around that. It would probably be smarter, too, because there would be a physical copy of the original birth certificate. But…Peter couldn't do it. Even if he was willing to take the name and identity of some dead baby (and Peter couldn't stop himself from thinking of how the parents of that kid would feel if they somehow found out), he didn't want to erase his own parents. He didn't want to erase May and Ben, either. Peter didn't want to come up with a new story for himself. He wanted to hold the old one as tightly as he could, even if he was the only person who would ever know it for the rest of his life.
So, Peter spent the whole day breaking into the public records' office to make up a birth record that was all his. Now, all he had to do was put in a request for a copy of his birth certificate, trick the computer record into thinking he had already paid for said copy, and…
Peter realized the hole in his clever plan. Where could he have it mailed to? He didn't have a fixed address.
Peter sighed with frustration. Being homeless was such a pain.
***
Eli was there at the Kitsch, and greeted Peter cheerfully. "Action figures seem like they would be cool friends," he said brightly.
"Oh yeah?" Peter responded.
"Yeah. I thought it would be a good idea to put them in cheese freezers, and later I could defrost them. I can make people from strawberry milk."
"Huh, I didn't know that." Peter idly wondered what Eli would be like if he took the medications he was so paranoid about. "Hey, there's something I need to talk to Alysia about, okay? Save me a seat?"
"Yeah, sure," Eli said easily. "Go knocking on Goldberg's door."
Peter approached Alysia, who looked relieved to see him. "Great! As soon as we start putting the tables away, people sign up for a bed. Just make sure you get in line as soon as you see everyone else lining up."
"Actually," Peter said, "It's okay. I found a place. What I wanted to ask you about is, um, I need to have a copy of my birth certificate sent here, to Gotham, and I was wondering if it was okay for me to have it sent to, here, at the Kitsch?"
Alysia nodded. "Yes, actually. When you get it, we can sign you up for our program to get state identification. Do you have our brochure? Our mailing address is on the brochure. But, Peter, what do you mean, you found a place? You'll be much safer if you're indoors, especially since the weather is only going to get worse this time of year."
"I know," Peter reassured her. "It's inside and warm."
To Peter's surprise, Alysia seemed even more concerned by this news. She glanced around, then motioned for him to follow her back to the clothing closet. Once they were in a relatively private space, Alysia said seriously, "Peter, I know that being in a strange place with no one to depend on is really scary, and the first person who offers you help can seem like a goddamn angel of mercy. If you've found someone to give you a safe place to stay, that's fine, but I want you to remember that extortion is a crime in all fifty states across the country. No one has the right to exploit you for sex or drugs or manual labor or anything else just because you need a place to live. And no one deserves to be exploited for those things, especially people who don't have a place to live."
Alysia delivered her caution with such earnest concern, it made Peter's chest tighten again. He could easily imagine May saying the same thing to some kid telling stories about how he'd miraculously found a safe place to live on the streets. Peter couldn't blame Alysia for jumping to the worst conclusion; he also couldn't tell her the truth and make her an accomplice to his crime of breaking into the library.
"I understand why you're worried," Peter said. "And I'm really grateful. But I promise I'm in a safe place. No one's going to hurt me. Really." And it seemed like a shame to take a bed in the Kitsch from someone else who really needed it when Peter could find a warm, safe place by crawling up a wall.
"If you ever realize you're not safe, please come to us, okay?" Alysia asked.
"Of course," Peter agreed. "You guys are the only friends I've got."
Day 3:
Peter woke up in the middle of the night to hunger pangs. One meal a day at the Kitsch was just not enough. He needed income, or he needed to scrounge for leftovers from restaurants. Or both.
After a few moments of deliberation, Peter sneaked into the computer room. He knew that using the library's computers wasn't any worse than breaking into the library in the first place, but he couldn't help feeling bad about it. But his stomach gurgled unhappily, providing perspective.
Peter realized he never did get around to researching resources for the homeless the other day. Barbara had interrupted him. And then yesterday he'd spent all his time hacking. Peter pulled up the search engine and typed in, "gotham homeless food." To his surprise, Gotham Cathedral, the very place he had been searching for when he'd found the library instead, served breakfast from seven-thirty to nine-thirty every morning. There was his second meal, right off the bat. He could have had breakfast yesterday, if he'd only known.
Peter then searched "gotham restaurants," and evaluated the results. As he'd hoped, one of the results led him to a map of Gotham City with restaurants dotted all across it. Peter decided after eating at the cathedral, he would wander through Little Italy, the Diamond District, and the Fashion District to see if there were any likely places that he could scrounge from.
Peter remembered one of the people from FEAST explaining that local, small businesses were more likely not to donate on a large scale to food banks because they didn't have the resources—but that meant that they were also more likely to throw away more food that someone who wasn't too picky could eat.
Peter was definitely not picky. May had fondly called him her garbage disposal more than once. Usually after he'd cleaned out their fridge of every leftover (sometimes after scraping off green fur) after a particularly energetic patrol.
Okay. Peter had a plan. He crept back out of the computer room and curled up on "his" couch to try to get a few more hours of rest. He was still hungry, but somehow the knowledge that this would be temporary was enough to soothe him back into sleep.
***
One thing Peter was discovering was that being homeless was really time-consuming. It took over an hour for him to walk to Gotham Cathedral from the library. At least his feet didn't hurt in his new shoes and socks. He decided that tomorrow, regardless of the morality of it, he was going to hop the subway. Heck, if he just rode on the top of the train, he wouldn't even technically be stealing. Maybe. But walking was so slow that Peter spent the entire trek riddled with anxiety that he wouldn't get to the cathedral until it was too late to be served.
Fortunately, Peter's fears were unfounded. He arrived shortly after the doors had opened and people were still in line to get their meal. He grabbed the maximum amount of two bowls of hot cereal, two cups of milk, one cup of orange juice, two fruits (Peter chose a green apple and a banana), and a yogurt. The yogurt was packaged in a little cup, so Peter stored that in his pockets along with the fruit. He added a healthy spoonful of brown sugar onto each of his cereals and then carried his tray toward the large, round tables set up across the room.
He looked for Eli, but didn't see him. So Peter just employed his earlier strategy of sitting next to whomever seemed like no one wanted to sit with. A woman with shoulder-length, matted hair was muttering angrily to herself as she sat completely alone at a table. Peter sat down across from her. He didn't want to crowd her. The woman looked up sharply from her own bowl of cereal and glared at him. Peter smiled.
"Stay the fuck out of refrigerators, you rapist!" she shouted furiously.
Whoa. "Yes, ma'am," Peter said quietly, glancing around to see if anyone was watching. Everyone was busy eating. Peter did likewise.
The woman finished her cereal and shouted, "I know you want to come in my pussy! But you can't! You can't!"
Peter caught the empty bowl before he even registered her throwing it at his head. He set the bowl down and quietly said, "I won't touch you. I promise."
Someone else sat down on Peter's right side. Peter turned to face an African-American woman in her mid-thirties who he had vaguely registered as monitoring the food line, earlier.
"I didn't do anything to her," Peter said quickly, afraid he would be asked to leave for harassing someone who clearly couldn't protect herself.
"I know," the woman reassured him. Her smile was bright in her dark face. "I just wanted to be sure that she hadn't hurt you. I saw she threw something at you?" She spoke with a heavy accent and Peter wondered what country in Africa she was from. Then Peter wondered if the countries in Africa here were the same as those at home. Then he wondered if all the countries in this world were the same as the ones at home.
Peter held up the empty bowl, and the woman sucked at her teeth. "Ida," she said reproachfully. "We've discussed this. If someone is upsetting you, you come to me. You don't throw things at people."
The woman frowned, first at him, then at the other woman. She picked up her tray, and hurried away, muttering.
"Ida is very sick, and very afraid," the other woman said, shaking her head.
"I sort of figured," Peter offered.
The woman chuckled, causing her beaded cornrows to click against each other. "You are good to be kind to her. But you don't have to let people throw things at you. Everyone is allowed to eat here safely. Ida knows that, too, and it's okay to remind her, yeah?"
"Yeah, okay," Peter agreed.
The woman shook her head and stood. "My name is Victoria," she said as she picked up Ida's empty bowl and headed back to the kitchen area.
Peter thought it was interesting that everyone seemed so focused on making sure everyone knew they were "allowed" to be present and "deserved" to feel safe. He wondered if a lot of people at the cathedral and the Kitsch felt like they didn't deserve anything better. If they believed they deserved to be miserable or afraid.
***
Wandering down the streets of Gotham City was…interesting, if occasionally frustrating. Peter hadn't really taken any time to really look around, before, but walking in search of promising restaurants was an education. Peter walked past Gotham Central High School and marveled at the relative wealth that had to be poured into just the physical building, and wondered if the school curriculum reflected the same level of prosperity. And then, just a few blocks later, Peter passed buildings that had bars over their windows, or sometimes just boards or sheets of plywood. And another few blocks after that, Peter walked along side a public park that was a bright green gem in the middle of all the dingy industrial gray.
It was like New York City, really, and Peter felt dumb for being surprised.
Finding restaurants in Gotham wasn't too difficult. In any five-block radius, eateries could be found that spanned the spectrum from swanky to total dives. The swankier places had locks on their dumpsters, unfortunately. Who did that? And the total dives didn't seem throw out anything that still had any kind of food-value, as far as Peter could tell.
Peter initially tried the direct approach of asking the people working at the restaurants if they had any food to spare. This did not have the desired results. Some people were kind, pitying, and firm that they already donated to local food banks and would Peter like the locations of where they donated to? Peter appreciated these kind responses, even if they did feel a little forced, at times. He accepted flyers for various food-banks in the city. Unfortunately, most of them were located on the other side of the city. He couldn't just drive over there in his car, and he only had one bus pass left. If he was going to trek across town, he had to plan it, carefully.
There were other responses that were…less than kind. One man threatened to call the cops on him for being a public nuisance. A woman actually chased him out of her sandwich shop with a broom, like he was a feral animal and she didn't want to get too close. One guy who had to be around Peter's age actually mocked him: "Do you have any extra food?" he'd sing-songed back in parody of Peter's question. "No, asshole! Get a job like the rest of us!"
After several hours of this, Peter was tired, discouraged, and starting to feel hungry again. He found an unoccupied stoop and pulled the fruit and yogurt out of his pockets. Peter felt like an idiot as he realized he didn't have a spoon for the yogurt. Oh well. It had been warming in his pocket and was roughly the consistency of soup, so it was easy enough to slurp down out of the cup. He ran his finger around the inside of the cup to get the last dregs out. The apple was sour, especially compared to the yogurt, but not bad. The banana had bruised in his pocket, but otherwise it was delicious.
A little lunch made everything seem more manageable. Peter decided to cut his losses for the day and try again tomorrow. He'd only scratched the surface, after all. There had to be some place that was willing to help out. Maybe he could get some kind of under-the-table employment, even. Peter was smart. He was a hard worker. He could learn to do anything.
Peter put that thought on hold once he was in the embrace of the warm, paper-smelling air of the library. He nodded to Barbara and bounded up the stairs to the computer banks.
The back doors Peter had added to the public records site were still in place. It was the work of a few minutes to fill out the application for a copy of his birth certificate, and a few more minutes work to make the site believe he had paid the twenty-two dollar and fifty cent fee to have the copy mailed to the Kitsch. It should take a week to ten business days to arrive.
Peter glanced at the clock and realized he had missed the bus that would take him to the Kitsch. He groaned inwardly. If he waited for the next one, he likely wouldn't arrive until after they had closed. The buses were as slow in Gotham as they were in New York.
Well, he only had one bus pass left, anyway. He'd save it for another day. Today Peter would try his luck on the subway.
***
It was actually easier than Peter had expected. He found the nearest subway station, studied the map for several long minutes, figured out what line he needed to follow to get to the Bowery district, and jumped the turnstile (while studiously ignoring the pang of guilt he felt as a result).
Once he knew where he needed to go, Peter just waited for the train he wanted to pull away, and then as the last railway car exited the station, he leapt onto the back of the train. He had been worried someone would notice him, but no one was even looking at the train that was leaving, they were all looking the other way for the next train to show up. The only real challenge was Peter couldn't rely on his feet to grip because he was wearing his shoes. But this was something Peter had dealt with before, and wasn't especially worried about it.
The subway was so much faster than taking the bus. And a lot more fun, too. He kept his hood up, just in case someone caught sight of him clinging to the back of the train (and because it was cold and the hood helped), and he hooted with glee as he sped over one of the rivers that segmented Gotham.
The Kitsch did not have a subway station nearby, but Peter arrived in the area early enough that he had plenty of time to walk the rest of the way without feeling rushed. When he arrived at the Kitsch before the bus did, Peter couldn't quite suppress a smug grin.
As he sat down next to Eli and they both demolished their respective meals, Peter was amused to note that he had already developed a kind of routine. It needed work, but he was figuring out how to survive in this strange city.