Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter hadn’t healed yet.

The stitched-up hole in his stomach was still raw feeling,  and strangely itchy. He couldn’t even scratch it without Harry chewing him out for it everytime he tried. Even with the itchiness and the rawness, he knew his healing factor was doing something considering the fact he was okay enough to stand.

The scrapes on his knees were nothing but scabs by now, and the cut on his back was now healed to a scar. At least that’s what Harry told him, he couldn’t see without a mirror around.

He wished they had a mirror, not only to see his cut but because Peter kind of… forgot what he looked like. Even with a good chunk of his memories intact, how he looked was kind of faded. He remembered what color his eyes and hair were, but… not really his face.

He began to absentmindedly pick at his fingernails “Hey, Harry?” He asked the boy, who was staring out into the hall with a stern expression “Peter, I’m trying to keep an eye out.” He continued staring and Peter huffed “Humor me one thing, just for a second.”

Harry glances at Peter then back at the hallway and back at Peter again “Fine, what is it?”

“What do I look like?”   Harry furrows his brows, “An idiot, next question.”  he smirks and Peter rolls his eyes “Oh come on! Do better than that.”  he whines a bit and Harry clicks his jaw “Okay… you look like… a baby-faced, freckled, idiot who nearly gets himself killed at every opportunity.”

“ Harry.”   He chastised, and Harry’s smirk turned into a frown “Fine fine…” he began to mumble but Peter could hear it perfectly fine “You look… well you do have a bit of a babyface and your hair is curly… you have some freckles and I’d say your um… good looki- You have a scar on your like… eyebro- okay okay why do you need to know?” he interrupts himself, jerking his head away. 

“I can’t really remember what I looked like…” he muttered, bringing his knees to his chest “At least I know I’m not ugly.” he teased after a beat which Harry refuted “Don’t let it get to your head, you still look like an idiot.” 

“Wow You sure say idiot a lot, maybe come up with another adjective and broaden your vocabulary.” he waves his hands away from each other to emphasize his point. “Not many other words to describe you other than idiot. And by the way- an idiot is a noun.” Harry snorts.

“My forte is math and science, not English… I do know two languages… and a half.” Peter counts it out on his fingers, lowering one “Mostlyyyy Italian.”
“How can you possibly remember all that but not how you got to an entirely different state?” He snorts. Peter shrugs with a sheepish smile  “Trauma-blocking?”  his voice was too cheerful for what he was suggesting.  Harry looked like he was about to say something, but he stopped. His face became stern, his eyes narrowing.


“Harry…?”


“Shush.” Harry suddenly hushed, Peter slammed his mouth shut and went to lay down just as they’d practiced a couple of times before. Harry backed away from the bars “Remember to hold your breath, Pete.” he whispers, only glancing towards him for a moment as panicked footsteps grew closer.

Peter took a deep breath, closed his eyes shut and waited for someone to enter the room.  He hears the smoke hissing into the air and he holds his breath. After a couple of beats he hears Harry’s foot tap twice on the ground.

‘When I tap my foot the second time… you jump.’ Peter opens his eyes, lurching forward and wrapping his arm around the guard right in front of him. He held in his scream from the agonizing pain that shot up his side, and used his other hand to unclasp the gas mask on the guard, and with him not being a meta… wasn’t very pretty.

Peter tastes copper on his tongue, having bit it when preventing his scream. He kicks the back of the guy grabbing Harry and this time he lets out a cry of pain, Harry pushes back from his attacker and roundhouse kicks the side of his head which causes him to lose his mask.  

The two guards choked on the gas, writhing and struggling to stay awake before passing out. Harry grabbed Peter by the wrist and dragged him from the jail cell where they both gasped and took in deep breaths of the clean air.

Well mostly clean, Gotham is severely polluted. 

The two waited for the smoke to dissipate “Alright, I’ll get the taller guys clothes you take that guy.”  Peter nods, kneeling over “…this feels wrong, sorry dude-“ he takes off the black blazer first “To be fair you’re guarding a bunch of children and setting up a lot of them to die so..” he throws the blazer on over his white shirt “and maybe getting arrested while in your boxers will let you reevaluate your life choices.” He takes the slacks off the guy and puts them on. He puts his hands in the pockets, feeling around and pausing when he feels a plastic card “... A keycard? Or… ID…” he flips it around, might still be useful “Hey you have more use than I thought you would.” 

Harry had already finished getting dressed “You know he can’t hear you right?” He had changed into the white shirt had on as well and it didn’t fit him right, too big around the shoulders and the sleeves came down to his knuckles “…hm..? Oh yeah, I know he can’t.”

Peter chuckled, shaking his head “Should I change my shirt too- is the blood too noticeable?”

Harry nods “Yeah.” He turns away in a hurry when Peter goes to take off his shirt mumbling something like ‘warn a guy..’ and ‘you have no shame…’ Peter heard it and tried not to laugh “I think you have more shame than you should pal, I’m used to it.”

 After Aunt May walked in on him thousands of times he had lost any shyness.  In all fairness though half of those times he had left the door open. Aunt May…  

‘ Did she put up missing posters for me?’

Peter finished putting on his shirt, everything fit him fine except the pants which were a bit loose around the waistband “There, now can we go?”

Harry huffs softly in relief “Yes we can, I got the keys let’s lock them in.”   Peter and Harry leave the cage and lock it with the keys, it was strangely old-fashioned for being made by a supposed rich guy. Tony was a rich guy but he wouldn’t have done anything like this, and if he had it would have been a lot less janky and dirty.  Maybe Harry was just messing with him when he said that The Penguin was a villionaire. (Villain-Billionaire)

Harry looked around the two hallways “Okay, let’s keep moving.”

Peter stepped around the puddles on the ground, water was dripping from the ceiling but now Peter could tell it was from a pipe and not because they were underground “...what a dump.” he joked, and Harry allowed himself to laugh just a bit “Yeah, when I get out of here I am relaxing in my hot tub for hours.”

Peter’s eyes widened “A hot tub? I’d be happy to use a computer! Or borrow a phone…” Harry laughs, “When we get out of here you can use mine, hell I’m sure my dad will buy you a new one for saving me- he’ll probably buy you the newest ProPhone.” he starts walking down the hall, his footsteps were heavier set than Peter’s careful more practiced steps “You mean iPhone right?”

“Uh no, ProPhone . Only the best made from Wayne Tech. The most sold phone on the market- other than… I guess the Q-Phone exists, I have a couple of them but there’s a reason I only have a couple.” He said it like it was the most basic concept ever, and the fact Harry acted like having more than one phone was normal. Maybe he could think of one more for work  calls and stuff but more than that seemed so crazy “Why… why would you need that many phones in the first place?” They scooted along the edge of the hallway, sticking as close to the wall as possible as they made their first turn.

Harry shrugged “I don’t know, my dad buys them for me and… I keep one phone for friends only, one for friends I don’t actually want to be friends with and my dad, and one of them I just have a bunch of games downloaded on it and music… the Q-Phones are old but I keep them anyway for the pictures on them.” 

he paused, and when Peter turned to see what he was looking at he saw a cell with a young, crying metahuman girl in it.

Harry stared at her for a moment but kept walking ahead, Peter grabbed onto his wrist “we can’t leave her, Harry.”  without waiting for an answer, he grabbed ahold of the keys despite Harry’s halfhearted protest. Peter ran to the cell door “Hey, I’ll get you out of here.” he reassured. 

The short girl looked over and up at him “You’re dressed like the guards.” she noted, and he nodded “Yes,” he noted the scar across her nose “but we’re not with them. Promise.”

“Okay. I believe you. You look too dirty.”

Harry barked out a laugh, immediately slapping a hand over his mouth. Peter sent him a scowl “Shut up- but yeah months without a shower will really do that to you. I’m Peter by the way.”

“Oh. I’m Lea.”  She answered, barely audible (at least to people with average ears) “You two are meta’s too? You guys don’t really look like it.”

“Are you sure? I think Harry looks weird enough.”  That got a laugh out of her, and an annoyed sigh from Harry. He began to test out each key on the keyring until one finally opened the cage. The girl got out, fumbling with her hands like it were a nervous habit “Um… thanks…” Her ears were shaped like fins, and she had gills on either side of her neck. She looked at Peter and then down at the keys “Those are all for the cages?” Peter nodded “Yeah, me and Harry actually-” and then she immediately snatched them from his hand and began running the way they came from “Hey-!”

“Told you so.” Harry sighed, seemingly unbothered   “We don’t need those keys anymore anyway, those are the only locks I’ve seen that are metal like ours- we could probably bust in the other doors.” Peter gets ready to run after her, but stops “…she’s gonna free people with them anyway so...” Peter offered with an awkward smile.  Harry shrugs “Good enough for me, we need to focus on ourselves anyway.”

Peter looked back at where the girl had run to, she seemed so small… would she be able to manage all on her own?  He began to walk again, Harry leading the two of them until they approached a pair of double doors “Are you sure that it’ll be fine?”

“Look Pete, I’m confident that everything will be okay.”

BEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEP .

The room flashed red, alarms blaring so loud it hurt their ears which caused them both to cover their ears in a panic. Peter, with a very deadpan expression, went “Somehow, I don’t believe you.” He looked back at where the girl had run off too. Harry gripped Peter’s wrist “I know what you are thinking, but it was her decision to run off not ours.”

Peter looked over at Harry, casting him a fierce glare “Harry, we need to go save her.” Harry’s eyes went wide open with an aggravated tone “What? And risk our own skins?! She stole from you, after trying to gain your trust.”

“She needs our help! She could be in da-”

“ Why… Why do you do this? You never kill your opponent, even when they are dead set on killing you, you went out of your way to make sure nothing stray hits the crowd even when they are a bunch of assholes… and now you're so insistent on saving some stranger!”

From the back of his mind, he remembered Tony asking him that very same question of Why? Peter hadn’t remembered his answer, but hearing it again it came to him so naturally. He looked away from Harry, tearing his wrist away from him.

“When you can do the things I can, and you don’t and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you .”

Harry said nothing to that, the only thing that could be heard between the two of them was the alarm, the distant ringing of gunshots, shouting, and terrified screaming. Harry winced when a particularly loud one met their ears but Peter took off the opposite direction, running and putting distance between the two of them without saying another word.

The footsteps felt louder than any alarm in that moment. Each one echoing, Harry needed to leave. He should just let him go and quietly sneak out without drawing any attention to himself.

‘They happen because of you.’

“Peter!” Harry shouted, running after him only stopping when Peter finally did. He didn’t get any closer than he needed to.  “I”ll… I’ll find the security room and turn off the alarms and work on getting the security doors open! Just… get the girl and get out of there, we can all meet up... at Robinson Park by the Alice statue and we can get some help from there.  Please… please be careful.”  

Peter softens a bit, turning his head and with a nod, smiles in a way that they both knew meant no promises.

Peter resumes running, the last thing he hears before the alarms drown him out is Harry muttering “That idiot better not get himself killed.”

Harry turned and ran towards security.

Peter ran towards gunfire.