Chapter Text
By the time the clock struck 6' the next morning, the dining room was pervaded by the rich aroma of roasted coffee beans. Alfred was predictably in the kitchen, while the younger bats huddled behind the counter in thick sweaters, anxiously waiting for Bruce to come up from the cave. Damian, in a fashion completely unlike him, had taken to gripping tightly onto Dick's shirt. Worse, While the others chattered, he had not deigned to pick at anyone's egos. This was, perhaps, the most worrying part of the morning, if you asked Dick.
"What do you think he'll start with?" Jason asked in a hushed voice, his voice still gravely from waking up.
"Normally, I'd say he'd start with the mission..." Dick answered, trailing off. Tim picked up his slack, nodding along.
"-But for him to call a group meeting this early into the game means something bigger is up. He's noticed something that wasn't originally on our roster."
Damian remained silent, face unchanged, but his grip tightened on Dick's shirt.
"You don't think he's noticed our 'side quests,' do you?" Jason sighed. "No—Of course he did. He's Batman—Stupid question."
"I'm amazed he didn't scope out our issues earlier, actually." Tim said, barely hiding his amusement as he sipped his coffee. Out of the four of them, his eyebags were the worst. "He has access to our comms whenever he wants. With how much of a nitpick he can be, it's already a miracle we managed to keep it a secret for more than a day."
"He probably already knew." Dick argued. "It's more likely that he just decided that it's no longer something that he can just silently leave to us."
"What, are we not trustworthy enough to handle it?" Jason scoffed, leaning back against the counter.
"If I may, Master Jason," Alfred interrupted. "I think it may be more that he's taken a personal interest in your little 'friends,' instead."
"Let me guess," Dick groaned. "He's got a file on them."
Alfred said nothing, which—if you knew him—was synonymous with an agreement. At this, everybody took a gulp of their coffee the same way you would catch a drunkard downing his beer. Damian's expression had darkened considerably the longer the conversation went on.
"We'll talk about the files later."
Nobody turned around when Bruce spoke up behind them. But they did all unanimously start heading towards the table, where Alfred was already putting down the last plates of food. A screen was descending from the ceiling at the same time that the curtains of every window in the room shut themselves slowly. When everybody was seated (and Jason's plate was in danger of spilling food) Bruce pulled a remote from his pocket and turned on the screen.
The dining room screen was directly connected to the computers down in the Bat Cave. The moment it lit up, they were all staring at a copy of whatever chaos Batman was focusing on down there: shifting footage of Gotham, police reports, missing persons, calculations that were constantly updating themselves, and personal files curated by Bruce himself.
"First things first." Bruce started, putting the remote away. With his hands, he tapped a spot on the screen, zooming in on a particular police report that must have been bothering him the most. "Dick, tell me what you see here."
Dick scanned the file quickly, his eyebrows furrowing the longer he looked at it. Bruce gestured for him to speak.
"Chemical theft from a lab, 2:45 in the morning, one dead and two injured. Three chemicals from the cabinet were found missing—This must be related to the Scarecrow." He paused, squinting. "But the scarecrow normally works alone. It says there were two perpetrators. Perp’s description doesn't match his appearance, either."
"He's working with someone else." Tim noted.
"What chemicals were stolen?" Jason cut in.
Batman swiped, and another filed showed up beside it. It was a list of chemicals. Damian's brow raised the more Bruce scrolled down.
"Lysergic Strong Diethylamide, Psilocybin, dimethyltryptamine, Salvia, ohmefentanyl, phosgene, and nitrous oxide." He whispered. "He must be working with the Joker."
"How do you know?" Jason asked, because Bruce hadn't disagreed with him.
"The first four are strong hallucinogens." Damian explained with a look that said 'isn't it obvious?' "Which lines up perfectly with Scarecrow's general activities. But ohmefentanyl is an enhancer for pain sensitivity, and phosgene causes nausea, headaches, and tightness in the chest, which is a bit more uncommon for him. But the real give away was the nitrous oxide-that's a potent gas that causes uncontrollable laughing."
Tim nodded. "Laughing gas. They're probably going to use it in closed off areas, where oxygen intake would dwindle considerably. Kind of predictable, if you ask me."
"They're making a hybrid of fear toxin and Joker Venom, then." Dick added on. "If those are the ingredients, it may end up being lethal."
"Another one. Why is everyone working on poisonous gas this month?" Jason deadpanned. "They're really so creative—Well, we've got a list, so I'm assuming we already have the antidote ready?"
"No." Batman shook his head, even though he knew Jason was being sarcastic. "This is a list that Gordon compiled at my request of all the recorded chemicals that have been stolen in the past month."
"So you think more have been taken—or bought—that have gone unnoticed." Tim finished. "Which would explain why the list we already have is pretty predictable."
"There is a third that's working with them." Batman said. "Dealing more cleanly with things. Slightly more legal, and incredibly difficult to track."
Dick dropped his head onto the table, scrunching his eyes shut in exhaustion. "Two Face. Ugh."
"That's why you've been having us track him down this week?" Jason realized. "You think that three of Gotham's most infamous villains are collaborating for this massive attack, and he's the one you're having the most trouble pinning down?" He paused. "Oh my god, that explains so much—f*ck, that doomsday looking device in the warehouse is a part of this too, isn't it?"
Batman nodded grimly, placing a device on the table that projected a rotating 3D render of the abandoned building Two Face had been using before.
"You sent in a report that he's been working at abandoned locations in Crime Alley. True, he fled the area you managed to find, and there were no kidnapped test subjects we could spot inside... But with the scan you were able to capture before the fight, we were able to map multiple erlenmeyer flasks, and test tubes that were full of fluids varying in density. There were boxes in what must have been the storage room filled with more bottled fluids. The device is probably a prototype built by him to spread the gasses."
"So he's buying their materials, rather than resorting to theft." Damian concluded, looking bored. "What a tycoon."
"Yes. It was probably the Joker's idea, to throw me off—The running calculations you see on the screen is one of Tim's new programs. It's going through all of the recently bought chemicals and making a list of the ones that are most likely to be used in tandem with the ones they've stolen. The next time we find him, we need to know whether it will be safe to use explosives around them or not."
Dick gave Tim a thumbs up. Tim smiled back proudly, tossing some popcorn into his mouth.
"But you don't want us to stop our search." Damian guessed, glaring at the screen. "You have more to say…Tt."
"Pfft—When does he ever not?" Jason drawled.
Bruce didn't respond to the obvious jab, and instead looked at Jason with a raised brow. Jason's smirk dropped immediately, and he turned to Alfred, who was holding back a smile. "Personal interest?" He mouthed to Alfred, who nodded. Batman scrolled through the files shown until it landed on one that was painfully empty, with the only image being extremely blurry.
It depicted a thin man in motion. Airborne, injured, and in black and white.
“Security footage?” Tim asked. “Is that the best image of him that you could find?”
"The news hasn’t caught on yet. I've personally been getting word that there's a new vigilante in town through a separate source. Spider-Man, was it? Gordon told me that several people have witnessed him catching thieves, thugs, and minor criminals around town. The people who have actually interacted with him have noticed that his suit is torn and stained nearly beyond recognition. Apparently, he also doesn't smell too great right now."
"I doubt anyone stained with that much blood would smell 'great.'" Dick joked, but his smile didn't reach his eyes.
"He's clearly wounded, and I have reason to believe that he's also homeless. But my greatest concern hardly has anything to do with either of those issues... Damian."
Damian didn't flinch, but his eyes flicked to Dick for a split second before he acknowledged his Father's call.
"Father."
"If my memory serves correctly, you had something like an episode yesterday, didn't you?"
Damian didn't respond, instead choosing to glare straight ahead with his nose in the air.
"This is serious, Damian. You attacked a bystander with no indication that you would do so. No warning, and seemingly no incentive, if the security footage is anything to go by."
"I had a reason." Damian said stubbornly, still refusing to look at Bruce.
"I know that." Bruce acknowledged. "The reason I brought this up is because I want to know why. What triggered you to act?"
Damian thumbed the knife on the table nervously. "His state was flunctuating."
Jason blinked. "...What?"
~˚₊𓆩༺🕷༻𓆪₊˚~
During his recovery, Peter had ended up resorting to scavenging food from trash cans. Turns out, the food fast food chains threw out was actually still pretty fresh. It was the rotten vegetables around that stunk. It wasn't his best look, and it definitely wasn't doing his suit any favors, but it meant that his body at least had enough food to burn to heal the rest of his injury. By the time the sun was up the next day—And after one cup of coffee from that cheap place he'd fled from yesterday—He was back at the Iceberg Lounge with a smile plastered on his face.
Sure, he was still sore and itchy from a whole night of (very uncomfortable) healing, but the month was nearly up. He needed his pay.
"Holy crap, Parker." One of the chefs exclaimed when he walked in that morning. He scrunched up his nose, making his mustache stick up at its ends. "You smell like a skunk's favorite tree."
"Thanks." He replied glumly. "I've had a rough few days."
"No kidding." The head chef tossed a garlic bread at him. "Here, eat this, an' wash up with the employee showers upstairs. There's some sort o' hotel soap in th' blue cabinet. It'll clean ya, but you're gonna smell like a granny for a while afta'."
"Thanks, Brent." Peter said, smiling for real this time.
One gloriously hot shower later, Peter stood fidgeting at the front of the Lounge. He wasn't fidgeting because he was scared, or anything like that. In fact, it was a pretty boring day, all things considered. He was just a bit put off by the fact that he could hear what the cooking staff was gossiping about behind closed doors.
"He looks even worse than he did last week." Stella, the cleaning lady, whispered. "Was his fever really that bad?"
"I don' think so." Brent replied while he grilled something—probably steak, by the sound of it—in a pan. "It's not th' pallor that's ticking ya' off, even though it's true he might as well be a vampire with how white he is. It's how hollow he looks. Kid's ribs are probably visible under that giant coat. His hollowed cheeks could hold a cuppa water, for all we know."
"You should toss him more bread on his break." The sous chef (Peter still didn't know his name) said. "If he took this job, I don't think he has anyone at home who can feed him. And he's definitely not feeding himself, if you're right."
"Oh, I'm givin' him more than just bread, I can assure you that." Brent declared. "I'll make sure he's fuller than our stocks before he leaves!"
The staff laughed good-naturedly between the sounds of pots, pans, and sizzling cuisines. Peter felt a smile try to fight its way onto his face. Sure, it was kind of weird to be able to hear people make out the fact that he was starving, but it was nice to know that they cared. And maybe also a bit more surprising than he'd like to admit. Brent hadn't seemed like a soft guy when he'd first met him. And his face was a mottled mess of scars. Out on the streets, Peter would have assumed he was an army veteran.
"I still don't get why you ended up working here, Chef." Stella said. "You always struck me as the type to work as a private school's cook. Or maybe at a nursing home."
Peter imagined Brent shrugging when he said, "Pay's just higher here."
"Why do you need the high pay?" She pressed. She was kind of nosy. Peter suspected that she was the type to gossip with her friends about the people she met as often as possible.
"Just helping out my folks. They're getting too old to work, and I like helping ‘em out."
Peter tried to focus on something else as the conversation droned on. It wasn't polite to eavesdrop on conversations. And the topic wasn't even him anymore, so he was doubly guilty if he continued to listen in. Not that he ever really meant to! But he still made a point to try and look for something else to do. He looked at the clock behind the bar counter; about twelve minutes until his break.
Nice. He wanted to see if the scarring from his wounds was gone yet. It probably was, since his healing factor seemed to be working properly again, but he just wanted to be sure. Everything just felt out of place recently, like nothing was static anymore. The glitching had nothing to do with it, honestly, but he couldn’t understand what else was making him feel so off.
"Hey, come here for a minute." Killian called him over. There was a sharply dressed, portly man standing beside him.
~˚₊𓆩༺🕷༻𓆪₊˚~
"What is he talking about?" Tim asked, looking at Dick, whose eyes had widened slightly in recognition. "Were you guys measuring his heart rate, or something? No, that's not enough to make Damian attack someone."
"Damian told me that Spider-Man is essentially a zombie, so it's probably about that." He confirmed. "But I'm not sure what he says was 'fluctuating.' I'm no expert on zombies."
"What, and Damian is?" Jason said skeptically. "I mean, you did tell us yesterday that he might be. But what's the reasoning?"
Damian stuck out his tongue at him. "Yes, actually. I am. You yourself were an obvious case."
"It's not hard to believe." Batman said, pulling out his phone. An unsettling photo of the Lazarus Pit was up on the screen. "The Al Ghuls are famously tied to the concept of raising the dead. With how much Damian would have been exposed to their ministrations, it's not unlikely that he's developed a sort of... Sense, for it. How it would work is beyond me right now, but I'm sure he can give a good explanation."
"Like I told Grayson—It's complicated to describe." Damian muttered, tapping the table. "It's different for each type. People from the Lazarus Pit, for example, have a certain smell to them. It's unique, and unlike anything else you'd be able to recognize without ample exposure. The best term I could compare it to is “smoky,” but even that doesn’t feel right. Jason and my grandfather positively reek of it... People who come back halfway with chemicals have an odd way of moving. And infected people—Usually with heavily mutated parasitic substances—almost always have uncanny faces. Glazed eyes. Blackened lips. Things like that."
"But you couldn't recognize Spider-Man's type of revival." Dick remembered, lifting his head back up from the table. "Then how did you know that he was Undead?"
"I guess it was sound." Damian tapped the table faster, his brows furrowing as he remembered his experiences. "Normally when sound is the sign, it's a lot louder. A gravely, layered voice. Or an odd sort of screeching when they're around. His sign was something I almost didn't notice: There was interference in my comm. Slight, almost unnoticeable. But it only ever happened when he was around. He's giving off some sort of wave that messes with surrounding frequencies. And there was a moment when it got louder, and I could just barely make it out: a vibrating hiss."
The whole table was silent.
"I was going to bring him in to question him. He really is the most stable and whole person I’ve ever seen that’s been brought back. I wouldn’t have noticed anything if I hadn’t already been suspicious of him." Damian admitted. "But he fled before I'd managed to make a move toward him."
"...And you're sure that it was a sign that he's a zombie, specifically?" Jason asked. "Not like, a side effect of him having some sort of weird superpower? Or of him being from another planet?"
"The pattern it follows is too recognizable, even though it manifested in a weird way." He replied firmly. "He seems innocent, but we have no idea what he's capable of."
"I thought so." Batman sighed, turning off the TV. He sat down at the head of the table, and the curtains slowly started opening again, letting in the light of the early morning sun.
"So, what now?" Tim asked after a beat of silence. "We've already got so much on our plates with this whole villain trio mayhem going on. We're not adding 'bring in Spider-Man the zombie for questioning' to our to-do list right now, are we?"
"No."
"Oh thank go-"
"You'll be tracking him down and working with him until further notice. But you're going to report on every action he takes. Understood?"
"Damn it."
"And we'll be switching patrol for now." Bruce added, ignoring the groans from everyone present. (Except for Alfred, who had disappeared at some point.) "Dick, you'll be partnering with Tim, and heading every night for patrol in Crime Alley. Jason, you're with Damian. I want the two of you to start every night separated. Damian will start from Upper Gotham, and Jason will start from Gotham Central. You'll keep moving until you meet in the middle."
"And do we get to know where you're going?" Dick asked, cheek resting on his palm.
"The loveliest place in Gotham." Batman said with a straight face. "The sewers."
Suddenly, any complaints they were going to bring up throughout the rest of breakfast disappeared.
~˚₊𓆩༺🕷༻𓆪₊˚~
"Peter," Killian said with a professional smile. "This is our boss, Mr. Chesterfield Cobblepot. He owns the building."
Mr. Cobblepot tipped his hat with a painfully white smile. (Were those veneers??) "I may be the boss around here, but feel free to just call me 'Oz.' I'm not very picky. You can even call me Penguin, if that floats your boat."
"Penguin?" Peter asked before he could stop himself.
"Oh, you really weren't kidding about him being new around here, huh?" The Penguin laughed. For some reason, it made shivers crawl down Peter's spine. "Well, better for me, I suppose. I've had enough of quitters and do-gooders to last me a lifetime!"
Peter didn't know how he was supposed to react to that. Laugh? Smile, nod?? He looked at Killian desperately, trying to wiggle his way out of this conversation.
"You know..." The Penguin said slowly, a hand stroking his hairless chin. "Killian might be right about you."
"Huh?"
"You show a lot of promise, for such a small kid." He clarified. "A little meat on those bones, and you'll look the part too."
"...I'm sorry, sir." Peter said cautiously. "I don't follow. What do I show promise for?"
"Did Killian not tell you?" He side eyed him. "Hm, well! Whenever we get new employees here, I come around personally around a week or two later to see if they'd have any potential as a personal bodyguard." He poked Peter's side with his cane. "Higher pay, free housing—Courtesy of me, of course—and higher stakes."
"And... You can't just find these with normal methods because...?"
Killian gave him a look that said, "Are you crazy??" But the Penguin didn't seem to mind much. "There's been a bit of a drought for them these days. Too many fish caught up on a hook, I suppose. I had to implement this system at the start of this year."
"And I made the cut?" Peter asked skeptically. He hated to admit it, but he really didn't think he looked up to the task from the outside. Plus, this seemed a bit too much like a scam for his comfort. The guy was still poking his ribs with his cane, eyeing him through a silver monocle that was perhaps a bit too big for his face. "Really?"
"I don't focus much on looks." Oz admitted, chuckling. "The bigger tell to a fighter is in the mannerisms. And boy do you have them! You might as well be a spooked cat, honestly."
"Was that supposed to be a compliment?" Peter wondered, bewildered. "This guy is crazy."
"So, how about it? Are you interested?" He asked him, his hands both clasped on the head of his cane now. It was meant to make him appear casual and coolheaded, but Peter saw how he was twisting it with impatience.
The free housing and higher wages was tempting, he couldn't deny it. But the risk of following a man that was so clearly involved in illegal activities that could end up with him dead was a toll he was not keen on paying. So, trying to be as polite as possible, Peter shook his head.
"I'm sorry sir, but I need some more time to think about it."
~˚₊𓆩༺🕷༻𓆪₊˚~
Dick stayed behind after the meeting. It wasn’t particularly unusual, since he and Bruce had known each other the longest. They often stayed to catch up on things under the mask of calling it “monthly reports.” Alfred sometimes wished that the people in his household weren’t so prideful. Things would be much more peaceful between them if they were more open.
“You seem more stressed than usual.” Bruce noticed, breaking the silence between them. “Are you missing the peace of Bludhaven?”
“No, it’s all been more or less the same to me recently.” Dick said, sighing. “I wanted to tell you something about our new vigilante. It’s not about him being a zombie.”
Bruce’s eyes narrowed, but he kept silent for Dick to continue.
“Things have been chaotic for all of us recently, and I’ve had to zip between Gotham locations more times than I can count this week. I thought it would be like that when you called me in for this case, but I didn’t realize I was going to be on the lookout for two more problem cases. You told us you’ve heard about Spider-Man from Gordon, but why didn’t you mention Peter Parker? I know you’ve heard about him, too. Somehow.”
“I wanted to hear it from you first.” Bruce admitted. “You and I both didn’t bring him up for the same reason.”
“Thought so.” Dick mumbled to himself, then spoke to him again. “You also think that they might be the same person, don’t you?”
“From the pictures I’ve found and the descriptions I’ve heard of Parker’s wounds, it would be more surprising if they weren’t connected. But correlation doesn’t equal causation.” He paused. “It’s no coincidence that they’ve arrived in Gotham at the same time, or that they’ve both suffered the same injuries. But we can’t be sure if that’s because they’re one and the same-”
“-Or if they’re both caught up in the same type of mess.” Dick concluded for him.
Bruce nodded.
“And if he is Spider-Man?” Dick wondered out loud. “What would that change? We have been having even more trouble locating Peter than we’ve had locating Spider-Man. Tim hasn’t been able to find his name—or anything close to his name—in the governmental files of any country we know. If we hadn’t seen him, it would be hard to believe that he even exists.”
“…Yes.”
Dick paused. “You have a theory for that, too?”
“I have no evidence to prove it, but for now, it’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“What, is he from a completely different timeline? Was he preserved through a way we haven’t discovered yet? Is that why Damian thinks he’s a zombie?” Dick pressed, leaning further into the table. Despite his exhaustion, his eyes had a sort of light to them. It had been a while since something so interesting had happened in Gotham.
“I’m not sure yet. Once I have something more substantial to go off of, I’ll explain it to you all.”
“It’s that inconclusive?”
“I wish it weren’t.”
“…Do you want me to tell Tim all of this?”
“No.” Bruce said firmly. “I’ll tell everyone when I’ve finished compiling the best explanation. For now, it would only stress him out more. He’ll try to start solving this, too.”
“To be fair, he’s already trying to find Peter’s location.”
“I’m aware.”
“Of course you are.” Dick sighed. “Alright, I’ll leave it alone. Is there anything you want me to do about it now that I know?”
“Just keep an eye out for clues of their connection. Keep Jason and Tim from drowning in stress.” Bruce hesitated for a second. “And check in on Damian once in a while.”
Dick rose from his chair, taking his drink with him. “Nothing new, then. Alright, see you, Bruce.”
“…”
~˚₊𓆩༺🕷༻𓆪₊˚~
Peter leaned heavily against his locker in the employee changing room at the end of the day. Dinner rush hour had been an absolute nightmare. Maybe it was because the weekend was finally upon them, but the bar was so packed that even Killian had been rushed around.
With a tired groan, he opened the door to his locker. It creaked open loudly, and he was hit with the smell of garlic bread, just like the one he’d been tossed in the morning.
“I feel like Katniss Everdeen, haha.” He smiled, pushing the bread aside to reach for his costume and coat.
The changing rooms—he noticed after stripping off his vest—were a bit colder than usual. There wasn’t any thermometer around where he could check the exact temperature, but his teeth were on the verge of chattering. Maybe his fever from before wasn’t actually as gone as he thought it was.
He thought that that was probably it until his sleeves slipped off his arms.
He stood still, unsure of how to react to this new development. He hadn’t even felt it. When had it happened? It wasn’t a glitch, that was for sure, seeing how it was very much not leaking blood. Actually, it gave no sign that it was from any kind of thing that would harm him. That was even more confusing.
He turned his wrists, trying to see it from different angles, even though that told him nothing new about it. It was hard to misunderstand what was there.
There were small holes on the undersides of his wrists, about an inch away from his hand.
He flexed his right hand a bit, and watched as it closed slightly, almost like a mouth. His stomach churned, and he wondered if he’d be able to keep down the garlic bread they’d put in his locker when he ate it.
“Okay.” He thought numbly. “That’s new.”
Outside the curtains of his changing room, he heard someone walk in and open a locker.
“I’ll look into this more later.”
He tugged on his Spider-Man suit and decided that maybe, possibly, it would be a bad idea to patrol tonight. Maybe he should spend the night fixing up his hovel of a home a bit more, instead?
“Nah.” He scoffed inwardly, zipping up his coat. “Finding where they’re experimenting on people is more than this. If it causes any issues, I’m sure I can find a way around them. It’ll be fine… As long as I don’t glitch.”
He left the building with the bread in his mouth, staring down at the whole walk back to his place at his wrist.
“I’ll just look at them for a bit before I start tonight’s patrol.” He decided.