Chapter Text
Cassandra Cain was trailing silently behind the near clone of her older brother. Being this close, the similarities were undeniable, she doesn’t know how anyone who had seen this child didn’t immediately think that he was Richard Grayson’s.
She had met him once before, at the park when he was meeting with Damian, but that was just so Damian could teach Peter’s cat a few new tricks.
Now, watching Peter run, he ran with such grace, with featherlight feet, that Cass could only think of her older brother.
Black Bat wasn’t normally seen out at this time in Gotham, it being almost one in the afternoon, but she was the closest who could get suited up the fastest, so when Babs called, Cass didn’t hesitate.
She was following Peter silently from the rooftops, mentally aware of her panicked older brother that was currently in her comms. She wasn’t ignoring him, she was letting him speak, while she listened. She thought of herself as a good listener.
“And he looked like he hadn’t eaten in weeks, oh my god. If I find whoever this Tony Stark is, I’ll-“ Cass could hear Dick take a deep breath on the other line.
Peter abruptly took a sharp turn, almost too fast for a normal person. It would surprise Cass if she didn’t know who his father was.
She kept right behind the kid, cataloging every person he passed, watching their intent, ready to jump at a moment’s notice.
Her job here wasn’t to catch Peter, it was to make sure he was alright, and got home safely, because honestly, with everything that’s happened, none of them liked Tony very much. And if she can find where the man lives, Cass might beat her siblings to dealing with the man, for the way that her nephew is.
Even if Stark hasn’t physically abused Peter, the kid is extremely malnourished. Cass can see it in his frame. If Alfred were to see the boy, the man would tut, and make sure he had enough to eat, and more.
Cass narrowed her eyes as she watched Peter running. She knew how to read body language, from a simple facial expression, to the way a person moved. Yes, he looked like Dick, but he also reminded her of herself, and of Damian. Hints of an assassin, a weapon in the way the kid moved. And that made Cass angry. Angry at whoever was responsible for a twelve year old to move like that. If it was Tony Stark, well, then that man better start running.
Suddenly Cass saw the glint of metal from the alley that Peter was rapidly approaching. As she got closer, she saw a man with a gun, eyeing her nephew in a way that made her blood boil.
When Peter arrived at the alley, the man spun into view, gun pointed at Peter, but Cass was fast.
In one swift movement, she dove off of the roof, launching a batarang at the man and landing in front of Peter with a soft thud.
She’s heard from the rest of the family that Peter’s decided to try and be Robin, so she knows that in some capacity, the boy can take care of himself. But he’s not Robin right now.
The gun was knocked out of the man’s hand, and he looked at it like someone had slapped his favorite toy out of his possession, before leveling Cass with a glare.
“The fuck did you do that for?” The man snarled, like he didn’t know that he was talking to one of Gotham's vigilantes.
Cass made a subtle note that he probably didn’t, she could smell a lot of alcohol on his breath, and he swayed on his feet as he moved. His eyes were slightly unfocused and glossed over, and he was sweating, Cass adding the possibility that he took some drug to her mental list.
She didn’t say a word to the man, not feeling the need to, keeping herself between him and Peter in a fighting stance.
She hears a sudden scoff from behind her, making her slightly waver her stance, her gaze flicking back to the child she knows is back there.
“Maybe because you, I don’t know, pointed a gun at a child and told them to go with you,” Peter hissed, his arms crossed over his chest.
Cass glanced back at the man. She hadn’t heard what he had told Peter when he pointed the gun, but she saw that look in his eyes, so she had already guessed that was his intention.
The man.. looked genuinely confused. Cass doesn’t know if it’s from the mix of alcohol and drugs, or the nonchalant child who almost got kidnapped that’s causing him to be like that.
“And, maybe, I don’t know,” Peter continued into the silence of the alley, stepping off to the side of Cass so he could be seen, but still behind her. “She’s a vigilante. It’s literally what they do, dude.”
“Is that him!?” Cass hears in her ear, but this time, she chooses to ignore it, reaching a hand up to her ear and tapping the comm off.
There is a time and place to listen to Dick’s rants, and this situation needs Cass’ undivided attention right now. She won’t be able to truly listen to him, and keep focused on this situation. She knows Dick will understand.
Before Cass had time to deal with the man in front of her, she saw a blur beside her, startling her. It takes a lot to truly startle Cass, but she had not seen Peter move, until he was closing the distance toward the man. And, Cass notes again, the way that the kid moves. Fully up close now, she can’t deny it, even if she wants to.
She moves fast, trying to get to the boy before he does something stupid, but Peter is faster.
To Cass’ surprise, he moves past the man, who had already been slowly turning around, and beelines towards something else.
Cass realizes that’s where the gun had fallen, and that’s where the man was turning towards, his eyebrows now furrowed as he stared down Peter who held the gun away from his body like it was a live grenade.
Cass took that as the opportunity it was, turning and swiftly knocking the man out with a single hit.
When she turned back around, she was expecting Peter to be sprinting away, his thing being running from the whole family, but he was still there.
What she didn’t expect was to see him methodically taking the gun apart with a knowledge that only someone who had done that before could do. He wasn’t just ripping pieces apart, like you would expect someone who had never touched a gun before to be doing. No. The boy was sitting on the alley ground, carefully taking the gun apart piece by piece, setting them in neat organized lines.
He looked lost in his own little world, so Cass slipped her phone out of a hidden pocket in her suit, and carefully snapped a photo.
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{Dick}
[Cass]: *.png photo. In it Peter can be seen with his eyebrows furrowed, his tongue sticking slightly out of his mouth. He’s sitting with his back to a brick wall, a dumpster to his left, and holding what appears to be the remains of a gun. Looking closer at the photo, you can see the pieces of the gun in neat lines in front of the boy.*
[Dick]: you found him!? Is he alright!!?
[Dick]: wait
[Dick]: is that??
[Dick]: Cass, please tell me that’s not a gun
[Dick]: Cass
[Dick]: Cass, please
[Cass]: It is fine.
[Dick]: Cass!?!
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Peter stared at the remnants of the gun in front of him.
When he grabbed the gun, all that he could think about was Uncle Ben.
He’s not entirely sure what pushed him to take the thing apart, but he feels better staring at the pieces in front of him.
He’s never liked guns, but Deadpool always has loads of them on him. That’s where Peter had learned to take one apart. It had become muscle memory in that moment, from all the times he’d done so with Deadpool.
Now that Peter’s out of his fog, his senses are coming back to him, and his head snaps up, coming eye to.. lensed eyes.
The vigilante that had (rudely, in Peter’s opinion. He can handle himself, thank you very much.) dropped down in front of him earlier and knocked the gun out of the man’s hands, was crouched in front of him now, phone left abandoned in her hands.
Peter eyed her suspiciously. He’d not met this vigilante before, and he does not remember reading about them in the library. Her suit was almost entirely black, with a black cape on her back, and the only color being a yellow bat symbol on her chest.
As if reading his mind, the vigilante tilted her head, still looking right at him. “My name is Black Bat,” she spoke softly.
Black Bat… wasn’t that the one that the people of Gotham suspected to be a myth..? She doesn’t look like a myth to Peter.
“Peter,” Peter mumbles, glancing back at the gun parts in front of him and the piece in his hand.
Black Bat reaches out a hand, gently taking the piece that’s in his hand, and.. Peter lets her.
He’s unsure why, as this is literally his first time meeting this supposed myth, but he feels like he can trust her.
Black Bat sets the piece with the others on the ground, then shifts her gaze back to Peter.
“Are you alright?” She asks, and even with her masked face, Peter can tell by the subtle movements that she’s checking him for injuries.
“I’m fine,” he replies, pushing himself up to a standing position.
The smell of the dumpster that he’s beside finally registers, and he scrunches his nose. He’s not sure how he’d ignored that for that long.
“I can walk you home,” Black Bat says, standing up as well. Peter does a double take. He didn’t even see her stand up.
He shakes his head. Vigilantes knowing where he lives is not something he wants to have to deal with.
“No thank you, I’m almost home. Plus, Dad’s not too keen on me bringing home people he doesn’t know,” Peter replies, brushing the dirt and grime from the alley off of his pants.
Black Bat tilts her head at Peter, and for a second looks like she’s about to argue against what Peter had said, before simply saying, “Alright.”
Peter stared at the vigilante, unsure of what he really expected, watching her crouch back down and begin to scoop the gun parts into her utility belt.
Well, Peter takes this as the gift that this is, and turns around and jogs out of the alley in the opposite direction.
Just to be safe, he’ll take the long way back to the abandoned sandwich shop that he calls home.
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Cass walked into the cave, her eyes scanning the area.
She would’ve tailed Peter the rest of the way home, but she saw the hesitancy, the lies, the fear in his eyes. She didn’t want to ruin any relationships that may have been built with the boy. She’d trust that he’d get home safely.
Her eyes locked onto Tim, who was slouched at the batcomputer, cans of the energy drink he insists he needs to survive surrounding him.
“Little brother,” Cass announces her presence, walking over and placing a gentle hand on Tim’s shoulder.
Tim startles in his seat, head whipping around to face her. “Fuck, Cass. You can’t keep doing that,” he breaths out, a hand coming up to rest on his chest.
Cass just smiles at him, before reaching into her utility pouch strapped around her waist and carefully pulling out the pieces of the gun that Peter had disassembled moments prior, setting them in neat lines in front of Tim much like Peter had.
Tim looks at the pieces, then slowly looks back at Cass.
“What am I looking at?” He asks, then shakes his head and waves his hand. “I know it’s a gun, but why am I looking at a gun.. a disassembled gun?”
“Peter did that,” Cass says, as she lays the final piece on the table.
Tim gives her a confused look. “That explains literally nothing.. and somehow everything at the same time.”
She then pulls out her phone, and pulls up the picture she had taken of the boy with the parts laid out in front of him, exactly how she has them laid out now. There’s a haunted Peter’s eyes as he looks at the pieces in front of him.
Tim leans in and looks at the picture, his eyes shifting back and forth between the photo and reality, before looking up at Cass.
“Send me that,” he says, then turns back to the pieces in front of him.
Cass does so, then shifts her attention to the monitors that were still on.
There was loads of information, piling multiple of the screens. Cass doesn’t understand how Tim can keep up with so much information in front of himself at once.
She doesn’t consider herself dumb, she actually thinks she’s quite smart, but this is a lot of information to have in front of someone at once.
One of the computers has Mary Fitzpatrick pulled up on it, documents, details, and photos about her life all the way from when she was a child.
Another has any and all information they have on Peter on it, which isn’t a whole lot, but still a decent amount.
One is just purely Peter’s DNA. Cass is not entirely sure why.
She looks back at Tim, who’s looking over the gun parts like it’s some kind of puzzle.
Normally, she’d try and convince him to take a nap, at least rest, but when she looks at him, really looks at him, she sees a determination in his eyes, so she leaves him be, turning and heading for the showers.
————————
Peter finally arrived back at the abandoned sandwich shop and let out a breath that he didn’t even realize that he was holding.
With the man pointing a gun at Peter and demanding he go with him, and Black Bat showing up, Peter didn’t have time to think over the events that happened literally hours prior.
His supposed to be dead dad was the friend that Babs had invited for hot chocolate, and Peter panicked and did the thing that he knew how to do best. Run.
Was running the best idea? Probably not, but that’s future Peter’s problem to deal with, when he’s not mid panic about everything that’s happening.
Peter heads over to his bag that he’d left in the corner and digs through it, pulling out a can of peaches. His last can. He’ll have to do another food run, with the little money that he has left. Maybe see if he can find any food pantries nearby.
The shelter that he had gone to on one of his first days in this dimension is always an option, but shelters typically tend to ask questions when you stick around for too long, and questions lead to cps being called on the (clearly) starving child. So, no shelter. At least for now.
Peter savored his peaches, making sure he didn't miss a single drop.
He suddenly feels something fluffy brush against his leg, and glances down to see Loki, who settles himself into Peter’s lap.
Peter sets the empty can to the side.
“Hey bud,” he whispers, gently scratching the cat behind the ears.
Loki leans into Peter’s hand, letting out a soft purr.
Peter smiles, letting his panicked thoughts drift away.
Even though the light was still faintly shiny outside, Peter felt his eyes begin to droop shut.
He was warmer now, so he trusted that this wasn’t hibernation, that sleep was just catching up to him.
He let his eyes slip closed, head knocking back against the wall, then he was out.
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{Barbara}
[Cass]: Peter has been trained.
[Barbara]: trained..?
[Cass]: yes. Trained. He moves like me. Like Damian.
[Barbara]: ..
[Barbara]: I don’t know what I was hoping you meant..
[Barbara]: but it wasn’t that
[Cass]: :(