Chapter Text
Spider had been asleep for a long time. He wasn't exactly sure how long, but it was long enough that his dreams became lucid and memories of before started flooding in. They were vivid, some good, some bad.
A curly haired girl with a mischievous glint in her eyes sat at a desk beside him, drawing caricatures of the sullen people around them. He asked her a question, and her response was to show him what he assumed was himself, matching the melancholic faces of the room's other occupants.
It was a memory viewed in fondness. He knew without a doubt that the girl was something special, just from that first glimpse of her.
The scene fades, another taking its place with a different kind of fondness.
A boy with round eyes and a child-like smile was sitting across from Spider, humming to himself as he placed another brick to the strange structure between them. It was spherical and made completely with the tiny bricks (LEGO, his mind supplied). He felt a sense of pride and accomplishment as the final piece was put in place.
There were many similar memories, with the boy and the girl both individually and together, all of which made his entire body feel warm. Or it would, if he could feel his body. He had a feeling that if he knew where his mouth was, and how to use it, he would definitely be smiling.
Most of the time, the memories were flashes:
a secret handshake,
teasing insults,
AcaDec gone overtime,
applying for colleges,
a tearful goodbye,
One Last Kiss.
He loved them so much. They were his people, his best friends, his family. Somehow Spider knew this body had never known them, but he felt connected to them in a way that he felt he should've.
They were in his memories, and although he shouldn't have them, they were too vivid, too real to not be his, to not belong to him at all.
Spider spent his entire existence like this: reliving and watching memories, his memories, waiting for something he didn't even know he was waiting for. He was okay with waiting, for somewhere in the back of his mind he knew his body wasn't ready yet. It wasn't complete. Wasn't stable.
It would be ready one day, he knew, and when it was he'd be able to do the things he experienced in the dreams. He'd finally be able to help people.
So there he stayed, watching, waiting for the day he would be ready.
Dick and Wally were often the ones to suggest the team undermine Batman's authority. Especially regarding the missions they were and were not allowed to undertake. Kaldur was usually lumped in with them, despite him only tagging along to make sure they stayed out of trouble.
This still was true for Dick and Kaldur, and Dick knew that if Wally was alive, it would still be true for him too.
It was difficult sometimes (read; all the time) without Wally there. Dick would often catch himself searching for his fiance in a crowded room, or turning to tell him something funny, only to remember that he was gone.
It had taken almost a year to get his life back together after Wally died, but he knew he had to keep on living. He had to get out of bed, he had to talk to his people, he had to live his life, because he knew Wally would hate to see Dick throw it all away to such grief.
He had a solid routine that kept him alive and moving, which he thought was pretty good for someone in his situation. One of the steps was to talk to the people in his life. Which was how he got in the situation he was currently in.
Dick had hacked into the Justice League's files again (he was basically a member at this point), and found some coordinates that were thrown into a folder and forgotten about. Dick had decided it was worth looking into, on account of his own boredom, and so he convinced Kaldur to tag along for old time's sake.
The coordinates led them to an empty house on the outskirts of New York, the only thing occupying it being the layers of dust and mould growing from years of vacancy.
Upon arrival, Dick did a sweep of the parameter, checking for escape routes and vantage points whilst Kaldur set up their stakeout in a car across the street.
“So…” Kaldur started once Dick had settled in the passenger seat. “How have you been? I heard you got a dog?”
They passed the time catching up on each other's lives, not having seen each other for a few months beforehand. Dick learnt that Wyynde had proposed, Tula had taken to planning the wedding for them, and that they had to be careful of which seagrasses and corals were used in the decorating, as Wyynde was allergic to certain types. Kaldur had learnt that the dog’s name was Haley and that she was a grey pitbull with a missing front leg. Dick had pulled up pictures of her on his phone. She was very cute.
Finally, after five long hours, a woman with a high ponytail and a surgical mask covering her face slipped out the front door. She stood there for a few minutes, fidgeting with her lab coat and occasionally checking the cheap watch that was hugging her left wrist.
A black van pulled in beside her, and a tall, red-headed man wearing a three-piece suit stepped out of the backseat, swiping imaginary dust from his suit jacket. A small drone that Dick had sent out earlier picked up the pair's conversation.
“Good evening sir.” The woman says, standing straighter. “Spider is ready for transport. Would you like me to wake him or will he be going as is?”
“Leave him unconscious. He doesn't need to be awake for the process to work.” The man adjusted his shirt cuffs, then followed the doctor inside.
Dick, now against the door, followed them in once he could no longer hear their voices, Kaldur close behind him. Footprints in the dust suggested a secret door behind a cabinet, though it wasn't very secret anymore. All they had to do was search for the switch that opened it.
It took all of five minutes to find it, considering that they can't have left the room; there would've been footprints leading elsewhere. Kaldur pushed in a slightly jutted out brick next to the cabinet, and it slid to the side, allowing them to pass through.
They stepped into an elevator that was eerily similar to the ones in CADMUS and Dick internally groaned. Lex? Again? He really thought the whole CADMUS thing was over after the whole ‘liberating the Genomorphs’ thing. If Lex was somehow creating more clones and now branching out to selling them, it could become a really big issue if it wasn't dealt with.
After the doors closed and Kaldur pressed the only button that seemed to be in the room, the elevator started moving.
Dick readied his escrima sticks, taking on an offensive stance, preparing himself for whatever was on the other side of those doors. He saw Kaldur solidify his water-bearers into swords, taking up a similar stance to Dick’s.
The elevator pinged, announcing their arrival as the doors slid open.
To Dick's surprise, only the doctor and the man were in the room, both of whom had looked up from the tablet in the doctor's hand. Behind them was a large capsule holding something submerged in a murky blue liquid.
Dread pooled in his gut as he realised what it must be. Whatever, or whoever, was inside that capsule had to be Spider.
“Wait!” The man cried, getting into a defensive stance and positioning himself closer to the capsule. “You don't understand! He's the key!”
Dick took a step closer, slowly putting his escrimas on the ground and holding up his palms in a placating gesture. “The key to what?”
Spider had been awake for all of five minutes, and he already wanted to go back to sleep.
He couldn’t remember how to get his legs to work, and the world was constantly flicking between dark and way too bright, and the overwhelming scent of hospital assaulted his nose. Something was touching his arm, tapping him softly, but it was no use. His body wasn’t working.
Oh god. How did lungs work?
The people in his dreams made it seem effortless, as if they didn't even have to think about something as simple as breathing. And, subconsciously, he knew that he had been breathing (albeit shallowly) up until that point, but that was automatic. He didn't know how to manually breathe, as it, apparently, was just a thing people knew how to do, and therefore, had never been taught to him.
A voice from beside him spoke in soft tones, soothing his rising panic.
“Hey kiddo, can you hear me?” Spider didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t sure if his voice would work and he had no clue how to move his body, but the voice needed to know that it was heard. Whatever he did, he needed to do it fast before he passed out from lack of oxygen.
He let out a small whine and tried opening his eyes again, slowly this time, allowing himself to adjust to the light.
The man in front of him could not be real. It was impossible. He’d seen that memory so many times. It was so vivid, so real that Spider knew this man could not exist. He was seeing a ghost. For the man in front of him had the face of his father, and his father was dead.
“Shit.” Dick launched forwards from where he was kneeled in front of the boy, catching him before he face-planted on the tiled floor. Dick had been trying to get the kid to calm down and start breathing, but he was in such a panic that he was almost completely unresponsive.
For a moment, Dick thought he might’ve caught a glimmer of recognition in those big green eyes, but he was so focused on getting the kid to breathe again that it quickly slipped his mind.
Dick checked his pulse, and upon finding a weak heartbeat, started CPR. “C’mon kid, breathe for me.”
Across from him, Kaldur was keeping watch of the doctor and the man, who had been swiftly detained upon explaining that the kid was essentially a lab-grown lab-rat.
They had spliced a regular civilian’s DNA with a meta’s DNA to create the boy. Then when he was stable enough, they had spliced the boy's DNA with a variety of spider’s DNA, to attempt the creation of a miracle cure for the man’s dying son.
He felt for the man, he truly did, but that didn't excuse the shit they had put this poor boy through to create a hypothetical cure that might not even work.
“Hey O, how far is B?” Earlier when they'd freed the kid, Dick had made sure to inform Babs of his and Kaldur’s little excursion, knowing that they'd need help getting everyone out without any hiccups.
“Batman and Robin are three minutes out.” Three minutes. He can do that. He continued pushing air into the boy's lungs, praying to whatever gods would listen that this kid would be okay. He felt a hand on his shoulder and glanced up.
“Nightwing. Do you need me to take over?” Kaldur’s voice was tinged with concern and the look he was giving Dick was almost enough for him to give in.
“No it's okay, I've got this.” He could do this. All he had to do was keep this one kid alive.