i want a spidery peter parker in gotham who is competent and very well knows the horrors of the world, having a chat about his home world with batman.
i’m not too well versed in x-men, love em all but i don’t know as much as i’m realizing i want to. sorry if some information is wrong or exaggerated for the purpose of the story.
peter crouches on a rooftop next to batman, idly watching over the city.
it was a quiet night, not too much crime, which is wonderful thing to see, and peter is soaking in the tranquility.
he has been in gotham for almost a year, been living with the waynes for half that time.
when he had first landed himself here after the whole statue of liberty fiasco, he had never imagined he would feel the sort of peace he does right now.
he is eighteen, and feeling free for the first time in his life.
“what has you thinking so much?” the man beside him asks, and peter feels grateful for bruce, so grateful.
“just that i never would have imagined i could feel as free as i do here, now.” he speaks softly, knowing the bat will hear every word. he receives a hum in response, and peter knows its an invitation to continue if he’d like, but also a reprieve to simply keep this silent moment if he wanted to.
peter thinks, for a moment, how different this world is from his own, and while in his heart he will aways belong to his earth, to his family and his city, this one isn’t so bad, either.
“i will always love my old world, you know? it’s where i’m from. where i was raised. where my family’s buried. and i don’t want to compare, but there’s just some things about this world that i thought i’d never have back home.” his heart twinges at the thought of everyone he had ever known, continuing to exist without the knowledge that a place like this existed, but he knew there was nothing to be done about it.
“like what?” bruce asks, because he always asks, because he always cares. it doesn’t matter what might be on peter’s mind, he knows bruce will always listen.
peter thinks hard for a moment, wondering if this is something he wants to share, before deciding that with this man and the family he had built, the family he and the others had so willingly invited him into, there isn’t much he wouldn’t answer if they asked.
“like, you call us metahumans here. i mean, meta literally means transcending, you know? and metahumans? it’s just… back on my world, we’re called mutants.” he pauses, moving to sit on the ledge of the building, looking towards his dangling feet as he thinks.
bruce moves to sit next to him, cape flowing back behind the man as he settles.
“mutants? isn’t that a bit…”
“dehumanizing?” peter snorts bitterly. “yeah, that was the point.” and he stares into the sprawling city, into the lights of buildings and the clouds in the sky, and thinks that people would be much happier if they weren’t so angry all the time. “mutant was actually one of the kinder terms, you know.”
and bruce seems to take a moment with that, ingesting and internalizing it, moving it through his thoughts and memories as he understands just what peter is talking about.
“you weren’t treated well there, were you?” and he sounds sad, resigned, knowing this is a different world, and peter’s own past. nothing he can do from where he is except listen to the young man tell his story.
“actually, i was treated better than most all of us. there were laws and legislation written against us. in a lot of places, we weren’t considered human at all. we didn’t have the same rights, or the same treatment.” peter sighs, thinking about the history rewritten, the people killed. the wars fought.
“and where you lived?”
“where i lived… it wasn’t great, but it was a hell of a lot better than it could’ve been. that being said, it was always better to not be a mutant, if you could.” he breathed out, thinking of his friends, of kurt and ben and even charles, who could have hid but never did. “i was lucky, if you could even call it that. my physical mutations are easy to hide or write off. the spinnerets could be called scars if no one looked to close, the fangs could be a weird genetic thing like some people have. but i had friends with blue fur. rocks for skin. i had friends who could’ve blended in seamlessly, you wouldn’t have looked twice at them, but refused to hide just because it was ‘easier.’”
bruce hummed once again, thinking of his own son, duke, and of peter, young and at the mercy of a people who could take one look at them and think that they didn’t deserve basic human respect.
“it was different for me, because i’m what they call a mutate, not a mutant. i don’t even have the x-gene.”
“the meta-gene?”
“yeah. and like, i know its not great here, for metahumans. there are still trafficking rings, still people who would rather us be wiped out or whatever, but back home, they wouldn’t even make a court case if the victim was a mutant. they said, crime can’t be done against mutants, because they had their powers, so they automatically had the bigger gun.” peter laughed drily, wiping a stray tear from his eye as he turned to look at bruce.
“i remember when i had first gotten my powers, i was so excited, you know? it was so cool, i could lift trucks and stick to walls and heal a paper cut in minutes. then, a week or so later, i woke up to the news that 24 mutants had been killed overnight by some anti-mutant group. men, women, children, were dead, and the news was celebrating. saying that they were the beginning of some kind of cleansing, or something.” these words were spat out in disgust, anger clenching his heart like a vine.
“i remember thinking, no one can know. no one can find out, or that’ll be me.”
bruce puts a steadying hand on peter’s shoulder, and he breathes through the emotions choking him.
“there was almost a war, or maybe there was a war, i’m not sure. they didn’t exactly teach about it in school. this guy, erik lehnsherr, called himself magneto, because he could control magnetic fields, manipulate any metal. he gathered mutants to fight against the government, against the people that were considered ‘human.’ a lot of people died on both sides before magneto and professor xavier decided to make their own country. called it krakoa.” he sagged against bruce’s side, head on his shoulder as he considered his next words.
“a country entirely for metahumans?” bruce asks, bringing an arm around the younger’s shoulders.
“mhmm.” peter nods as best he can. “i visited once, and it was… beautiful. but sad. so sad.” his voice is quiet once again, low and mourning.
“why was it sad?”
“a gilded cage is still a cage, b. whether it’s the closest thing to freedom you can get or not.” he heard bruce take a steadying breath, and continued. “the anti-mutant organizations and some countries, like the united states and britain, made sure it was a cage, up until the day they ensured its destruction.”
they sat in silence for a moment, letting the history sink in, mourning together.
“i had been spider-man for four years before i came here, and even right before i left, a lot of my fights weren’t stopping a mugging or a robbery, it was running away from the people i saved, or a group of em that decided i had too big an ego for a monster.” bruce twitched, sucking in a breath, but peter beat him to it. “that’s just what they said, b. i know it’s not true, but it is to them. the cops even tried to shoot me, every time they saw me. not only because vigilantism is illegal.”
there wasn’t much to say, after that. they sat together silently for a few minutes before peter circled back.
“i just never thought a place like this could exist, you know? i know it’s not perfect. metahumans and non-metahumans don’t live in perfect harmony. but i can have fangs here, and no one mentions it.” he sits up, looking back down at the people walking the streets. “i can exist here, and not feel like if i say or do the wrong thing then everything i’ve worked for will come crumbling down. it’s nice, to sit and breathe in a world that i’m accepted in. i just wish that everyone back home could have that chance, too.”
and bruce just squeezed his shoulders, a silent acknowledgement. presses a kiss to the side of his masked head, and says “you’re always allowed to exist, here. on this world. with us.”
and peter smiles, because it’s true. because he is as safe as a spider-mutant vigilante can get. and it’s just so relieving.
