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redflagshipwriter · 2 months

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Reassembly 1

Masterpost

inspired by the iconic DC/marvel crossover Dark Matter that was actually the only reason I started reading DC (so if you like my DC stuff, Mystery Cyclone is who you have to thank)

The first thing that Peter registered was pain. His whole body felt like an electrical burn.

It was a relief to be in bone splitting pain, for about an instant. That was enough time for Peter to joyously process, 'I'm alive?' It came with a flood of endorphins. Holy cow, he was alive! How had Mr. Stark saved him? Did they win after all?

That next instant was when he fully processed the pain he was in. His whole body was burning cold. He opened his mouth to scream and he inhaled a viscous, sour liquid. He choked on it, hands flying to his throat. He opened his eyes and everything was filtered through a shadowy green. He couldn't see anything but green. He felt panic and it didn’t feel natural.

It didn't take Peter long to regret opening his eyes. It burnt. He gasped again despite knowing he wasn't going to get air. He closed them again but it didn’t help anything.

'I'm drowning! I'm drowning? Why am I drowning!?'

When did he get in the water??? The last thing he remembered was being on Titan! Titan wasn't notably wet!

It didn't matter, he could figure that out later. He swam. He only moved a little before he hit something. Peter flung his hands up flat against something hard, smooth, and cool. It felt like glass. He felt like a wild thing, feral and desperate. There was a light show behind his eyelids– or maybe an electric light was flickering madly a few moments before it died, casting him further into darkness.

'I'm going to make a mess.'

His hindbrain was running the show, so the guilty thought was just background noise as he made fists and banged on what he really hoped was glass. It broke.

He expected the glass to shatter or something and the water to all rush out in a dramatic wave. Instead, he felt it sort of collapse away from his hands and he distantly heard the glug of draining water filtered through the burning liquid all around him.

It still hurt, everything hurt. He had to get out! He hit the glass again in desperation. This time it broke more dramatically. Water rushed out with enough force to dash Peter against the broken glass.

It knocked the air out of his lungs- but he didn't have air. So instead he violently heaved that horrible green jelly out in a dramatic spray. He heard it hit what sounded like a hard surface.

And he heard screams.

Peter's eyes flew open. He blinked rapidly and fought the urge to scrub at his face with his hands. The odds that he had small shards of glass on them was uncomfortably high.

His spider sense switched on violently. His full body jerked.

Holy shit. Leaving the tube had apparently been a very bad decision for his safety.

'What is this?'

He was in a dark room. The only light was coming in through the glass pane on the top half of a door. He stumbled towards it. His whole body was loosening with relief as the green slime sluiced off of him.

The door was locked. Before he’d processed why it hadn’t opened Peter stupidly turned the handle a second time. Right. Of course. It was still locked. That was how locks worked.

It took a moment to think of what to do.

He forced the door open. There was an ugly crack in the doorframe. He didn't look as he stumbled out into a hallway. It was white tiled, with off white walls and the long lines of fluorescent lights overhead.

'I've been taken captive by someone who doesn't have an interior decorator.'

It wasn't much, but it was a clue. Mr. Stark would be able to exclude a lot of villains with that information. Peter looked both ways, heart pounding. Where should he go? He had no idea where he was or what was going on. One end of the hallway was silent. The other had the sounds of a distant but desperate fight.

That was when he realized he was naked. Peter was standing in a hallway absolutely naked, and still wet with green goop soup.

He turned away from the sounds of people.

Instantly he felt guilty, but he was naked! Peter ran, wet feet slapping on the tile. It was absurd. It should have been funny. It wasn't. He felt frantic and halfway insane and he still hurt.

'I hurt before, too,' he remembered. 'On Titan, everyone disappeared and then I hurt and I fell and Mr. Stark said-'

He shoved the thought deep, deep down before he became a gibbering wreck. Later. He'd think about it later.

For now he threw open doors as he came across them. Most of them were locked. Peter threw open a door and then turned on the light.

It was a lab. There was a huge tube full of green liquid and a-

"That's a body," Peter said, to himself. The words echoed. "That's a - that's a corpse."

Horrible? Bad. Very bad. He flicked the light back off and kept running. He was suddenly very glad he had run away from the sounds of human voices.

His brain tried to draw a mental connection between the green tube and where he woke up. He pushed that down and ran faster. His survival instincts were still in charge and they were screaming at him to leave. He was even more frantic now. He needed a door outside. He flung open a door, registered that it was full of clothes, and shut it.

Then he remembered, 'Hey, I'm absolutely naked,' and opened it back up.

It was full of clothes that were not suitable to wear in a lab. That made sense. Peter stared at a collection of jackets, skirts, and boxes of sandals. Right. People who worked here would have changed into long sleeves and full length pants when they got to work.

'It must be hot outside now.'

It was not ideal. He grabbed a bright green zip-up jacket that smelt kinda dusty, a black pair of dress pants, and frantically shoved his feet into a few pairs of slip-on sandals until he found one that kinda fit. "Why don't women have bigger feet?" Peter wailed, heels hanging off the end. He pulled the jacket on as he ran and hopped his way into the pants. "Ned is going to give me so much shit," he panted. The thought made him feel better. The closest door led to a shitty changing room, with metal lockers.

'Oh. Normal clothes that don't need to hang up would be in here.'

He froze, weighing how desperately he wanted to get out against how bad of a fit his current outfit was.

His Spidey sense didn't say the building was about to fall down this instant, so he decided to look for something better.

He started pulling on lockers frantically. Even if it wasn't immediate, he was in danger here. His spider sense was screaming it. That normally meant that he should run or duck or hide. Right now, he just knew it meant that he needed to get out of here and not get tracked back. That meant blending in. He needed to look normal, and a teenage boy in too-small sandals, dress pants, and a hi-vis jacket was not normal or inconspicuous.

He found one that hadn’t been properly locked and yanked it open. “Thank god,” Peter breathed, looking at men’s clothes. There was a slightly messy pile of T-shirts and rolled up socks at the bottom, a brown zip-up jacket, and two pairs of sweatpants. The holy grail was a pair of slightly worn white sneakers that looked his size. A quick check of the tag showed they were a half-size smaller than he’d buy.

‘Thor is looking out for me,’ Peter decided. ‘This is actual godly intervention.’

He changed right there, sending up a silent apology to the mad scientist whose wardrobe he was raiding. White shoes, black sweatpants, brown zip-up hoodie (oh no, he was mixing warm and cool neutrals) and a plain white t-shirt looked a lot more natural on a teenager than what he’d grabbed at first. The outfit change took seconds. He stuffed the old outfit in the locker to hide it and impulsively decided that he might as well grab the bag that was hanging from the back. He was pretty sure the compound was being raided or something, so the guy was probably going to be too busy in jail to notice his missing stuff.

The next door led outside. He could smell fresh air. He nearly wept.

First that was because freedom was close. When he shoved at the door, the temptation to cry was because it was a heavy metal door and didn't budge.

Peter reeled back and looked around for a way to unlock it. The only thing he saw was a box with a card reader. You needed an ID badge to get in and out, then.

Or super strength. This wasn't going to be subtle. Peter busted the door down with only a smidge of regret and burst into what turned out to be cool night air. It smelled like the ocean and safety.

Alarms blared.

"Okay," Peter said, "That sounds bad."

He picked a random direction and bolted. He wasn't too far gone to notice the first street sign and numbered address on the building he passed. He'd need to know where he'd just escaped from later. Mr. Stark would know what to do about a creepy laboratory with bodies in tubes-

A body! Not bodies, just one human corpse! He had been in a tube, yes, but. But.

Peter pushed down the impulse to scream.

That was great, because it wasn't actually that late out. He passed a jogger with a reflective wristband and hi-vis jacket. She gave him a weird look in passing.

'Because I look crazy sprinting by myself,' Peter processed. He needed to- did he need to put distance between him and the building or to blend in better?

No one was actively following him.

Peter swallowed hard. He forced himself to slow down to a brisk walk. He tried to look bored. He wished he had a phone to mess with. Oh. He unzipped the bag to check if there was one inside. There wasn’t, but there was a wallet.

He grimaced. Whoops. He’d look in that later. Maybe he could mail it back to the guy, if there was an ID in it.

There wouldn't be like, cameras everywhere, right? If not, the most important thing was to not be memorable. He was pretty sure. That sounded like something the Black Widow would say.

He ruffled his hair and realized it was drying in spikes. Peter grimaced at the feeling of whatever that stuff had been, drying. He wanted to shower immediately.

He settled for not touching it. He walked and walked and realized that he didn't recognize anything. He wasn't in NYC.

Well. Duh. He stared out at an unfamiliar city after sunset, dumbfounded. The last thing he remembered was being in outer space. He should just feel lucky to wake up on Earth at all.

Okay. What was first? He sucked in deep breaths, struggling for calm. He needed to find out where he was. That was first, right? Then he needed to contact someone. Aunt May or Mr. Stark or- he had Happy's phone number memorized. Okay. Great. His heart rate started to slow a little. He knew lots of adults that could get him.

It felt a little unreal to walk down the sidewalk past chattering civilians. Peter stared at people, not entirely sure why but feeling a little creeped out.

'They're not scared or stressed. Everybody's acting like it's a normal day.'

It took a while for the realization to hit.

'The invasion must be totally over. Things have gone back to normal.'

That should have been a relief. Instead, he felt a creeping tendril of fear. What had happened to him? How long had it been?

Okay. That question gave him a task. He needed to find the date. That was achievable.

He started walking again with that mission in mind. Despite how bizarre his situation was, having a goal made him feel more stable. Sure, he didn’t know what had happened, but he knew how to gather information to make a plan. That plan was probably going to be ‘borrow a phone and call someone, or use a public computer to email someone.’ He just needed a little more information to make that happen.

A thought occurred. Peter bit his lip and stole looks at the other people walking around. No, it couldn’t be. He hadn’t been asleep for a really long time, no way. People looked about the same. If anything, the fashion here was a little conservative and outdated. He eyed one young woman and was pretty sure Aunt May owned that exact top in another color.

To be fair, he was from New York City. Fashion started there and spread elsewhere, right?

It was fine. Everything was fine! He walked a little faster and wished he'd ended up somewhere that he knew. It would have been easier to get his bearings. He saw the name “Metropolis” on enough signboards to figure out that was the name of the area.

‘That is weird,’ he thought, anxiety prodding at his nerves. He fiddled with the zipper on his jacket to have something to do with his hands. ‘I’ve never heard that city name before. And this is definitely a city. People have American accents here. Shouldn’t I know this city?’

Well. Maybe it was a suburb or something. Like, a subname, like how the boroughs were all part of NYC. He could be in like, California, or something and just not know the area well enough to recognize it.

Peter finally found an electronic billboard with the date on it. Oh, shit. He stood open-mouthed for a long moment, watching the pixels appear and disappear in a ripple in between ads for a divorce lawyer and a jeweler.

It hadn't been long. It had been the opposite of a long time since the fight with Thanos. Or something?

Peter knew he was reeling. He shoved his hands in his pockets and started running on the sidewalk just so that there was a reason for his breathing to be so heavy. Shoot. Shoot. His shoes were starting to pinch and his whole body felt itchy with panic.

The flashing billboard had displayed the date in the bottom left corner. According to that, he was 5 years in the past.

'How and why?'

That complicated things. Peter tried to make a mental map of what things were like five years ago.

He couldn't go home. Not yet. He could – oh. Oh, Uncle Ben hadn't been shot yet. He reeled. He could- and Mr. Stark, this was around the time that Mr. Stark was kidnapped, wasn't it? He didn't remember exactly but maybe he could help.

It was too much for him to process right now. He wanted to go home and hide.

'I can't go home.'

The thought hit him hard. His heart started to race.

If he went home- they'd think he was a stranger! Would Aunt May and Uncle Ben even recognize him this much older?

'I think they'd want to help me. But they can't afford to feed me. I can't put that on them.'

Guilt crawled into his throat with claws. Peter felt his eyes watering. He was so selfish. He had a chance to help people and save lives and he was busy feeling sorry for himself because he couldn't go home? What kind of hero was he?

"This is good," he choked out. He scrubbed at his face. "I- I can fix so many things."

So why did it feel so terrible?

It was a bad night. It really was. He should have- he was a literal superhero. He should have compartmentalized and strategized and been practical, like his inner Colonel Rhodes advised.

Instead Peter wandered. He just walked the streets of this city as night fell and didn't even figure out where he was. The climate seemed like New York City, for what that was worth, so maybe he wasn't too far off from the home he could never go back to.

It took a really long time for him to realize that he was hungry. Like, he was really hungry.

That stopped Peter in his tracks. Despair crawled up his throat and choked him with tears. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to solve these problems. Act like an adult, he guessed. Adults got jobs. He needed to get a job.

'I want to go home.'

Was that just childish? Maybe it was a good idea. If he was in New York City, at least he'd know his way around. That could only help.

Well. All roads lead to Rome, don't they? Peter started looking for train tracks. If he found a subway entrance it would be clearly labeled, but he didn't have any money for tickets. So he needed the actual railroad, for moving stuff.

'It's not legal but it's not like, a real crime,' Peter told himself, and decided to go for it.

Peter sent up a silent apology to the transportation system and hopped on top of the next freight train that came by. It took him through this weird city and then out into the country for a short spurt before churning into a different city.

Not just any city. Peter stared at the night skyline. The bleariness from exhaustion was playing tricks on him, wasn't it? Because this looked like New York City.

#peter parker #peter parker in gotham #eventually #red reassembly #marvel dc crossover #first important DC character to come in is NOT a bat

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redflagshipwriter · 2 months

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Reassembly 2

link to first post

Masterpost

(the one where Peter Parker wakes up post-snap in a LoA lazarus experiment)

It was New York City. Peter thanked his blessings and the transportation gods. He didn't wait for the train to stop because he was kind of afraid that it wouldn't and he'd get carried somewhere else.

If he'd been a regular teen, it would have been like, super dangerous to jump off of the top of a moving train and land on cement. Peter rolled like he'd been taught and came up safe. He shook his wrists a little as he straightened and tried to figure out where he was exactly.

Okay. Operation solo hero was a go. Here he was, in NYC. He didn't have any help. But he was Spiderman. Peter tried not to feel discouraged about losing all his tech, his friends, and his mentors. He could remake his web shooters and a suit. He needed access to materials, but he could do it. His first formula had been made in a school lab.

'But I wasn't homeless and undocumented then.'

Oof, that felt bad.

'Can I even keep my name? I can't exactly go to Midtown and tell them to make Peter Parker plural.'

Yikes. That was a whole lot of yikes.

Well. One problem at a time, right? He needed to get himself into a more stable position for survival first. Now that he knew where he was, he could change his strategy from calling for help to becoming self-sufficient.

He wasn't exactly sure what to do. The first thing that came to mind was that he needed more clothes. Even if he had liked this outfit, he definitely needed more than one set. This was gross. And honestly? He was kinda cold. And he was increasingly uncomfortable about not wearing underwear.

'I don't have any money and I can't borrow some. I can't steal from anyone. What can I do?'

Peter racked his brains. Go through the donation bins for a thrift store? That seemed wrong. But … stores throw things away.

'Department stores get new things all the time. They must be throwing away old clothes. If I check their dumpsters, I bet I'll find something.'

With a plan in mind, Peter made his way to the closest big store he knew about. Even though he was stranded, at least he was in his city. New York City was way more comforting than Metropolis had been. He navigated by memory to a store he knew called-

Huh. The store was where he thought it would be, but it had a different name. Peter quietly read it aloud, wondering if this place would have the same bland, safe fashion as where he'd meant to go.

Well. There was only one way to find out, and it wasn't by going inside. They were locked up for the night anyway.

He found the dumpsters. Peter braced himself for a moment, taking a deep breath.

He didn't feel good about this. He didn't. Not morally- if it had been thrown away, it didn't belong to anyone– but looking at the outside of a dumpster really hammered in the desperation he was in. He was poor. He had nothing and he had no one.

Peter shook that off. "That's not true," he told himself. Hearing a human voice, even his own, helped a bit. "I have a great sense of humor and a positive outlook."

Still, uh, he was ready for a lifestyle that included underwear. He carefully lifted the lid and rested it against the wall so that it didn't make any noise. Then he hopped up onto the rim and squinted into the bin.

There were big plastic bags full of fabric. His first impulse was to tear them open and look, but he refrained. It would make a mess for the garbage workers. Instead he painstakingly untied the string at the top and opened a bag. Then he pulled clothes out one piece at a time and examined them.

His heart fell. He'd been right. These were all perfectly good, unused clothes with the tags still on them, so he could even sort by size. But someone had taken scissors to them all before throwing them out. Peter held up a t shirt and squinted at it. It wasn't that bad, really. They hadn't been super thorough. This one had kind of a snip through the middle.

…it wasn't like he didn't know how to sew. He'd done lots of repairs that way, and even made a Halloween costume one year.

If he just stitched that up it would be kinda obviously repaired. That was okay, but Peter dug around until he found another T shirt in a different color. It was hard to tell in the darkness but he was pretty sure it was blue. It had a similar cut.

"Okay," he planned aloud. "I cut them fully apart, even out the edge, and then sew them together so it looks like being bi colored is a fashion decision."

He dug around for a couple more shirts, trying to get four different colors that in the daylight he could hopefully mix and match. Then he shoved everything back in that bag and tied it up. He hung his haul over the edge of the dumpster and started opening bags on a hunt for jeans. A pair of jeans and a pair of sweatpants was basically all the wardrobe a teenaged boy needed, anyway.

It took four bags until he found some, and they were too big. But the next bag under that had his size range. These had been snipped too, but Peter huffed a laugh. So what? Lots of jeans had tears in them as a style choice. He dug out two pairs and wiggled into them one after the other to check the fit. It was a relief to have his legs covered. They were kinda long but he was expecting a growth spurt any day now, so that was great. He was pretty sure one was black and one was blue, so that was a good variety.

He wanted underwear and socks. Maybe a heavier coat, if they had one. He searched and searched and came up with nothing. He did find a shoulder-strapped canvas bag that had probably been returned- there was a subtle stain on the inside. Peter would have preferred a backpack, but he shoved the clothes inside the bag anyway. This was a lot better than just walking around holding a handful of fabric. He put the little bag from the guy’s locker inside of it. He still hadn't even looked at what was in it.

Still. He stared mournfully at the clothes. No underwear, really? He was willing to compromise on socks, but underwear and shoes that fit were a big deal.

"I guess they don't need to seasonally change those so much." Peter sighed to himself. "Wait- no. That can't be right. For socks maybe but shoes? They must throw out a ton of shoes."

Just not today, apparently.

Disappointed, he closed the dumpster back up and adjusted his haul over his shoulder. He left without looking back. He was already churning through possible solutions for his outstanding problems. Socks, shoes, underwear, and a sewing kit so that he could use his changes of shirts.

'Fancy hotels have those little repair kits as part of the free goodies.'

Oh, man. Peter steeled himself for social embarrassment. He was going to have to wander in and out of hotel lobbies by himself, take a repair kit, and leave.

'Maybe they'll think I'm a guest,' he thought hopefully. 'I don't look that bad. I look kinda like I'm going to school or traveling light.'

Oh. That was an idea.

'Lots of hotels have free breakfasts. I could just walk in, eat, and leave. Even if the desk staff thinks I'm probably not a guest, they probably won't say anything.'

It seemed kinda wrong. But it was a buffet. Leftovers were going to get thrown away. And he only had to wait until the morning.

Peter tabled the idea for later. It was going to depend on just how hungry he got. He was already really hungry, if he was honest about it. Whatever bodily numbness he'd gotten from the green jello stank tank had worn off.

'I'm going to get too hungry to manage before too long even if I have a huge breakfast every day. I’m used to running on a lot of calories. What would happen to my ability to be Spiderman if I can’t eat enough?'

He shoved the realistic part of him down and tried not to feel discouraged by his demanding metabolism.

Focus. The first thing was fixing the clothes.

'No,' grumbled a mental voice he knew he should recognize. It was coming through a fog of distortion. Shelter is first, Spiderman. Shelter, water, food, and then supplies like clothes.'

He frowned and rubbed at his temples. He didn't know how to solve that problem. It seemed more practical to address the problems that he knew how to fix first.

Well. A hotel buffet would probably have drinks as well, but they wouldn't be open for a while. He didn't know what time it was but it was actually night.

At least he had a tentative plan for it.

Peter steeled himself for embarrassment and started looking for hotels. The first one he found was too fancy- the amenities weren't placed in the lobby. He walked in and his attention was immediately caught by the soft golden gleam of a bell on the reception desk. It was under a strategic light.

'This one won't be good for breakfast either, there's nowhere for a buffet,' Peter noted. Thankfully, no one was waiting at the desk. He walked back out and realized that would probably be the case for most places at this time of night.

He felt better going into the next hotel. This one had amenities out, but not a sewing kit. Peter took a toothbrush, two of the packets of wash products, and a cheap razor. Maybe this would be the time his facial hair started to come in and he'd need to shave.

'I really need a wash,' he noted, not for the first time. 'So bad.'

The green stuff didn't smell …too bad when dry. It definitely didn't smell as sour as it had tasted. But his skin itched and his hair was crunchy.

The third hotel was the winner. He had the idea to look for a cheaper hotel aimed at business class travelers. It had free wifi, what was definitely going to be a breakfast buffet from 5:00 am, and it had the sewing kit that he needed. Peter took one gratefully, wondered if it would have enough string, and then took a second kit just in case.

Okay. Next priority was getting clean. That would double up with getting water- now that he'd thought about it, Peter was thirsty enough to drink shower water from the faucet.

He looked for a gym. He found a fashionable 24 hour one and dismissed it. Entrance was clearly only by key cards there. He needed someplace older. At least this was his city. He could guess the general area that would have what he wanted. Peter walked around until he found one and wiggled his way up to the third floor, heaved open a window, and went in search of a shower.

"Good thing I grabbed this," Peter said, stripping all of his clothes and palming one of the tear-open packets of individual soap and shampoo. There was absolutely nothing in the shower in terms of amenities. Gym patrons probably brought their own stuff.

He took the longest shower of his life, wished he had a washcloth or two, and ended up using both packets of soap to get his body clean enough. Then he hauled his clothes in, all of them, and washed them as best as he could using what was left of the shampoo. He wrung them all out and then put on his new jeans, totally damp. It didn't feel great on his skin. But at least it was clean. For now, he put on one of the black t-shirts. He'd apparently managed to grab two in black, one in red, and one in blue. This t-shirt had a v- shaped cut on the stomach, but he pulled the brown jacket over and zipped it up enough that it didn't show. It was all damp and very weird, but they'd dry quickly on him since he was moving around, right?

When he looked at himself in the mirror, Peter looked like himself. Sure, he was damp and messy haired. But he was clean! He shot himself a thumbs up.

He left the rest of the clothes hanging to dry and wandered the gym. It was eerie but also really interesting. He'd never spent much time in an actual gym.

That might be a cool hobby to take up. If nothing else, he could maybe find some classes.

Oh! A clock. Peter squinted at it in the dark. It was 3:42 AM. It wasn't actually that long until the hotel breakfast bar opened, then. He'd been walking around all night.

'I need a way to tell time on my own. There's not that many clocks in public.'

The first thing that he came back to when he thought of his problems was money. Money, money, money. He needed it. And he needed ID- did the ID come before the money, or the other way around? He needed tech to be Spiderman and to live in general– man, it was weird to be without a phone– so, how?

His first thought was to go to school and use the laptops there. But he wasn't a student. That would probably freak people out- or worse, draw attention to him. Was it more illegal to exist without documentation, or to be a minor who wasn't in school?

Peter shuddered. Yeah, no high schools.

But a public library? That had potential. The computers were always pretty old but they were free to use.

That was most of an itinerary for the day, then, he realized. It made him feel better to have a plan. He was going to wait a while for his clothes to dry (should he point the blow dryer at them?), and shove them in his bag. He'd go back to the business hotel for breakfast and probably more soap, then go to the library.

'I need to eat a lot at that buffet.'

His stomach rumbled in agreement. Oh man, this was kinda bad. He had no idea how to get another meal today.

Well. He could look into it when he was at the library.

He ended up turning the blow dryer on his clothes to get them dry. They didn't seem any dryer than they'd been when he wrung them out. That made for a tense hour of pointing the little machine while his arm got tired and he kept jumping at sounds that might be someone coming to open up the gym.

Stupid, Peter chastised himself. Of course a couple hours in a humid room wasn't enough to dry anything. They'd get moldy first.

He got them dry enough to fold up and put in his canvas bag, and then he went out by the same window that he'd come in.

'I hope they don't start locking that. If I don't have a place to stay soon, I'm gonna really need these showers.'

It didn't take him long to get back to the business hotel. It was somewhere between 5 and 6, which meant that the buffet was fully out but not busy. Peter walked in and beelined to the food, trying desperately to look like he belonged.

Nutritionally, it was pretty good considering the circumstances. Peter grabbed an apple and a banana from the fruit bowl and got a glass of milk as well as orange juice. He wasn't going to get scurvy, at least!

Glass containers had a selection of baked goods that honestly all just looked okay. He picked out a couple of plain rolls and then something that had walnuts in it. For protein, his options were some queasy looking sausages and a tray of scarily yellow scrambled eggs. He took a generous portion of both and finally started eating.

Whoa. As soon as he'd had a few bites, it was like the dial turned up on his hunger. Peter ate at record speed and caught himself looking back at the buffet.

No one was looking. There was only one other person in the buffet area, a young woman staring grimly into a cup of coffee and using her phone. The receptionist wasn't paying attention at all.

Peter felt worse, somehow, about going back for seconds than he had about coming here in the first place. But he was too hungry for shame. He grabbed two bagels and toasted them at the same time and stuffed his pockets with cream cheese packets.

'I could take a bit of this with me. A roll or two and maybe a banana? Ugh, it's weird, but the cream cheese has protein in it…'

He put another couple of packets in his pocket. No one was going to count and realize he was taking two of them out the door.

While he waited for the bagels to toast he refilled his drinks and added a coffee and an apple juice. He felt ridiculous with four drinks, so he drained the milk and put the empty cup in the clean up bin.

He filled a second plate of sausages and scrambled eggs (they weren't that bad) and piled the bagels on it as soon as they popped up.

Once he'd eaten his second serving, Peter felt a lot more human.

He also felt exhausted. Like, he was beyond tired.

'I didn't sleep at all so that figures. And I don't have any idea where I can sleep today. So… maybe one more coffee while I wait for the food to give me energy I can use?'

He couldn't quite stand the idea of gulping down all that liquid right then. It seemed like a good time to see what was in the little bag he'd gotten from the probably evil scientist's locker.

'The guy worked somewhere that stores human bodies in rancid green jello. If he's not an evil scientist, it's only because he's an evil janitor or receptionist or something.'

That… It wasn't ideal but it made him feel a little better and a little braver.

The instant he unzipped the little bag, Peter realized that the guy basically had his whole life in the bag. That included a phone, which was either turned off or dead.

"Whoops," he muttered. He considered turning it on but paused. Would that be safe? He might need it. But what if someone realized it had been stolen and tracked it?

He left it alone for now and looked at the wallet.

The first thing was a Metro City transit card. Peter looked at it and put it back in place. There were a couple more cards- credit or debit, an expired gift card, membership cards to three different pizza places and a gym, and an ID. Peter glanced around guiltily to be sure no one was looking before he checked the name and photo.

Richard DeWitt was blonde, apparently 5ft 10 inches, and 170 lbs. He had a lopsided smile and dead eyes in his photo. Brown eyes.

DeWitt was 37- no, Peter corrected internally. He grimaced. He was 5 years in the past, so DeWitt was only 32. One of the ID cards was for work, which was a goldmine. Or it could have been, if the company name had been written instead of the initialism LOA.

Better than nothing, at least. He memorized the letters and logo.

The debit and credit cards were no good to him. Peter made a mental note to destroy them later, so that no one else could pull them out of the garbage and use them later.

He paused for a long moment over the cash. He felt like a spotlight was about to shine down on him and an announcer would call him a thief. But he counted it: 87 dollars. That wasn’t Tony Stark money, but there were a lot of problems it could solve for him.

'The money isn't the same as back home.'

His eye caught on the one dollar bills. He picked them out of the pile to look at them more closely, like an inspection was going to make them change.

Assuming DeWitt didn't have fake currency on him, the US dollar was different.

Peter stopped. He belatedly processed that.

There was no way in a million years that the picture on the dollar had changed in the last five years. It had always been the same guy.

But here it was, unmistakably a US dollar with a man Peter didn't know printed in the center.

That changed things.

'I"m not on my earth, unless this is a hallucination. Where else could I be!?'

He would like to stop having paradigm changing realizations, any day now.

The only thing that kept him from having a total nervous breakdown was that he was in public. Sort of. There was no one directly looking at him, but that would probably change if he went into the fetal position and started wheezing.

This was bad. This was really, really, bad, actually.

He needed to go back to the drawing board. For all he knew, there was no Peter Parker here, no Tony Stark, no one he could go to for help.

And the people who had kidnapped him-

Oh, hell. They could be anybody for all he knew. Heck, what if that was a government thing? If they didn’t even have the same presidents, he couldn’t assume this was the same country, in a sense.

‘I need to look into that, as soon as possible. What if I’ve got the universe equivalent of like, HYDRA or something looking for me? That would be a bad surprise.’

He had the address of that building, at least, and the name of an employee. That was something to go off of.

Peter forced himself to exhale long and slow. He picked up his mess. He didn’t finish going through the guy’s wallet but he didn’t have the nerves for it right now. He stuffed it back into his satchel and left with a nod at the desk clerk.

He needed information, and that meant the library was even more urgent. It was the only way he knew to access the internet.

The walk wasn’t too bad. His nerves were a knot in his throat as Peter crossed morning traffic on what had to be a weekday, but his memory of NYC didn’t lead him wrong. He bounded up the stone steps to a big library two at a time, shot a queasy smile at the man behind the desk, and ducked his head as he walked in and did a little tour of the place.

There were three floors. The first floor had a dedicated computer lab for students, and long desk with four computers for public use. Near it there was a little table with pitchers of coffee, water, and paper cups with a sign encouraging free usage. There was also a reading corner, a collection of tables for quiet group projects, and rows of media like DVDs. Wow, so old. Peter marveled at that on his way up the stairs. There was a huge papier-maché wolf on the stairwell for unknown reasons. He patted it on the head as he passed.

The second floor had that intense library smell to it and a lot of signs strictly enforcing absolute quiet. He craned to see tall rows upon rows with labels like science and law, as well as a sign for reserved meeting rooms and bathrooms. The third floor was apparently mostly for group collaboration. Each table had a sign begging people not to bring in outside food and to leave their drinks on the table. Peter glanced over to the only table that had someone at it already, spied her huge coffee cup, and suppressed a snort. He didn’t see anything, but he could smell bacon and eggs. His stomach twisted into a knot.

Still, she didn’t seem to be causing any terrible destruction with her breakfast sandwich. He noted that she had four different colored highlighters next to her notebook, but tore his attention away before he felt like a creeper.

Okay. He had the lay of the land. It made him feel weirdly better. This library was now his base of operations, the center for his information gathering campaign and the subsequent plan… construction …campaign?

He’d workshop a name later. For now, he jogged back down a floor and went to the modern history section. He just read titles for a while, trying to paint a picture of what shared history he could confirm.

He saw lots of familiar country names referenced, and a few of the names that cropped up were familiar as well. The eerie feeling that he wasn’t home just got stronger, though, because there was no reference to half the modern wars and much less on WW1 and 2 than he'd expected. They were shelved in with books about the Justice League.

Justice League?

There was a whole lot of scholarship on that, whatever it was. Maybe it was like the U.N., Peter guessed. He flipped open a book and flipped pages randomly, scanning for words that stuck out. Ah, nope, there’s a reference to the U.N. So, this was a different thing entirely.

Okay, well. That gave him a starting point of something to look up.

He went back to the first floor and started a session on one of the public use computers. He had to write the time and his name on a check in sheet. He started to write ‘Peter’ out of force of habit and scrawled to a stop after writing the Pe.

For all he knew, that could be a bad idea. He shouldn’t leave any record that actually led back to him.

‘...So what else starts with Pe?’

It took him an embarrassingly long time to come up with Peyton. He wrote that down, exhausted and relieved, and then realized he needed a last name too. Oh, heck. He wrote a random letter -K- and then searched his brain for a plausible sounding last name. He came up with Kensington and then sat down, idly wondering if that was actually a name or just like, a place in the U.K. or what.

‘...I only thought of that because it ended in ‘ton’ like Peyton,’ he had the delayed realization. ‘It sounds kinda cheesy together. Fakey.’

Okay. Realistically, no one was ever going to look at that register. So it was fine that he wasn’t good at lying on his feet. He probably needed to sit down and come up with a couple of fake names to use in future.

Well. Maybe he didn’t have to be that creative. He opened a window and searched ‘Tony Stark.’ His heart fell as he scrolled through the results.

Tony Stark didn't exist here.

There had been people with that name, don’t get him wrong. But they weren’t Mr. Stark. There was no Mr. Stark in this universe. He tried looking up current billionaires instead, just in case Mr. Stark had a different name. He flipped through their photos with a sinking heart. That guy was too bald, Mr. Stark would never have a mustache that silly, Mr. Stark wasn't that jacked, no, no, no.

He tried other names- Happy Hogan, Jamese Rhodey, Virginia Potts (he initially forgot that her name wasn’t really Pepper and ended up on a site for kitchen goods).

The result? No result, more like. Not great.

He tried celebrities. Musicians, actors, philosophers, everyone he could think of. Weirdly, lots of them popped up.

The difference seemed to be around 1940. Historical names came up the way that he would expect them to. But anyone who was modern just didn’t.

Out of extremely morbid curiousity, he googled Anne Frank. He found a semi successful novelist in her 90s who lived in Prague.

Peter put his face in his hands. Okay. Okay, he knew approximately when the universes or whatever had diverged. That was wild.

His hands were shaking. He got up, realized he didn’t have a reason to stand, and then went to pour himself a paper cup of the complimentary water so he didn’t feel like a crazy person.

This was a whole different world. He couldn't assume that his background knowledge was helpful.

That made him feel so safe and secure. Thanks, universe.

#marvel dc crossover #red reassembly #peter parker

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