When Spidey Met Oracle

"God damn it, Parker," she sighed, breaking. "I never wanted you to see me like this."

Peter didn't respond at first because he was out of things to shout and he suddenly felt so weird about pushing her. "Why?" he asked, exhausted. "You didn't think I'd understand?"

"Of course you'd understand," she fumed. "Everybody understands."

"Barbara..." he started to say.

"Don't," she insisted. "Just... no."

"Okay then, good talk I guess," Peter groaned. He felt his strength return with this fresh surge of irritation, forcing himself up onto his wobbly legs. "I guess I'll just go tend to a few minor injuries and you can just disappear all over again. We'll both just forget this happened."

"Sit down, Parker," Barbara insisted as he stalked past her. "You need to give yourself more time to recover. Cobra's Lingering Bite should have knocked a man your size out for at least an hour."

"Proportionate recuperation of a spider," he mumbled, but considering the syrupy drawl of his words, Barbara doubted that was a real thing. She expected him to fall down unconscious after five steps, but watched him stagger on in silent shock. "I'm sure you know the way out," he muttered before ducking into the bathroom.

Barbara had only been in his apartment for all of five minutes before he'd come home -- she would have been there sooner if she hadn't kept talking herself out of going through with this house call during each step of tracking down his address and entering the building -- but she certainly knew her way out. She just wished that was all that she'd worked out in her time here. Unfortunately, Barbara Gordon was a cop's daughter who spent her time with the world's greatest detective. There were some things she couldn't turn off.

She couldn't not notice the thirteen-to-twenty-inch strands of red hair anymore than she could un-see the scorch marks on his ceiling. Based on the undisturbed dust in common high traffic areas, it was obvious that Parker didn't spend all that much time in his apartment, which made sense. Between his time as Spider-Man and his hours at Horizon this should have been a place for him to sleep, to say nothing of the fact that the psych profile for a man of his intellect would have indicated a much less tidy place if he spent the time to actually nest here.

It didn't appear, however, that the time he did spend here was spent alone. Based on the faint, porky smell of burnt flesh and fine ash, the Human Torch had spent considerable time here in the last four days at least...

So had the supermodel. Barbara didn't get that from the smoky aroma as much from those hairs on his sofa. If Dinah or Helena had been here and Babs had pointed them out, the girls would have insisted they were just some of her own from when she first came in -- it was one of the reasons she hated when they insisted watching that silly Sewn Up show on Barbara's 70-inch high def flat-screen in Kord Tower.

"You should do your hair like that, Babs," Dinah so often insisted. "You and Mary Jane Watson practically have the same hair."

"You've got to do something," Helena would agree. "At least pretend you don't spend all of your time in front of a computer."

Barbara personally felt there were a hundred subtle differences to her shade of red to Watson's. This kind of thing was a point of redhead pride, honestly. Babs was more of a warm and sunny, fiery copper-colored ginger while Watson had a silky, bouncy auburn rust shiny with top-shelf product and completely devoid of the kind of split ends Barbara often found herself plagued with. And every time Babs saw old pictures of herself with bangs of her own, she thought she looked awful. Barbara had often wondered if Watson's hair was a dye-job, but right now, she was oddly much more curious just how much time she and Parker spent together...

Peter, of course, had different concerns.

By the time he made it to the bathroom, all those tiny little injuries had come flickering back to painful life and the injured web-head suddenly realized just how much he didn't want to do this on his own.

He had other options, he supposed, but none of them seemed too promising.

There was always the Night Nurse -- an E.R. physician with a secret clinic that specialized in emergency care for superheroes -- but she was all the way over in Brooklyn, so he hardly considered the trip worthwhile for anything less than a gunshot wound these days. Anyway, he doubted he could web-swing over there in his current state thanks to Barbara's little pressure point prank.

Carlie had once dressed his wounds after he had tussled with Firefly when Hammerhead had hired the arsonist to turn up the heat on a rival gang, but that, of course, was before she knew Peter was Spider-Man. "It's weird," she had said. "I've seen burn-patterns like this before... on a cadaver when I was examining one of the Scorcher's victims..." And the way she looked at him when he explained that he burned himself getting a frozen pizza out of the oven, he knew he'd better not risk asking for her help again until he was ready to tell her the truth -- or at least until he came up with more plausible lies. And while his secret identity wasn't an issue any more, Carlie wasn't really in the mood to do Pete any favors these days. Besides, she was in Chicago right now for that stupid convention.

He knew better than to call Mary Jane. Even in their best days as a couple it was only in the direst circumstances that she played Florence Nightingale. There was that time a couple years back when she popped his dislocated shoulder back into place with a towel leveraged against a radiator. It hurt like hell, but it was oddly one of his favorite memories of MJ. She said she'd picked that trick up from The Learning Channel, but what Peter heard at that moment was that she was willing to take all of him. Even the nasty spidery stuff. He'd always tried to cover up the injuries before... Sometimes to his utter detriment -- like that case of vertigo stemming from an inner ear imbalance that'd almost killed him thrice over because he didn't want to admit he needed help that might scare her. But there she was jerking his socket back into place with household items and that dazzling smile. Right there and then he thought they'd make it work. He thought they'd figure everything out and live happily ever after.

But that was maybe a month before he joined the Avengers and it suddenly seemed like he was fighting other superheroes instead of the bad guys every other month for the flimsiest reasons...

And again, this was when Mary Jane loved him best.

Whenever he stumbled home too beaten up in those days, she still just wanted him to stop all the Spider-Man insanity, give up his burden and be with her.

If only he had. If only he could.

In those scant few months when Aunt May knew the truth about him, she'd done her fair share of medic duty. May had been there to get him through that day he first put Osborn in jail -- the man had actually bitten Peter for fucksake! Then there'd been that night after the SHRA task force had raided the Night Nurse's clinic and he had nowhere else to go, so his aunt had to stitch up this nasty gut-slash from the Creeper. She'd been a trooper, taking ten minutes to look up some things online before she returned with bandages and crazy glue and a sewing kit ready to do what needed doing. It'd be great if May Parker had this gritty but uplifting back-story of being a nurse back in "the war" or something, but honestly, she'd always been a housewife as far as Peter remembered. That said, she'd been the same housewife who kissed his boo-boos and stung him with bactine his whole childhood. So in those truly dark moments when he was lying on her kitchen floor, convinced he was bleeding out and finally facing the end of the long, stupid story of Spider-Man, Peter could be brave for her.

Hell, she was the woman who'd first taught him how.

Don't tell Aunt May the truth again, don't tell Aunt May the truth again, don't tell Aunt May the truth again, Peter kept telling himself as he staggered toward his medicine cabinet. It's the only way to keep her safe.

He got the aspirin out without too much difficulty, but getting the bottle open was a little beyond him. He could make his arms work, but his fingers -- usually so dexterous -- were still giving him a hell of a problem.

"Don't tell Aunt May what?" he heard Barbara ask from the doorway.

Crap. Peter thought, turning toward her. Did I say that out loud? I'm still just so woozy...

"Yes, you said that out loud," she sighed, rolling into the bathroom. "I told you not to push yourself, idiot. Nerve cluster strikes tend to come back in waves. You think you've shaken it off, then the adrenaline dissipates and all of a sudden you're discombobulated all over again."

"Discombobulated," he thought. That's a great word but how often do you really get to use it in a sentence?

"Not that often," she agreed.

Is she reading my mind? he wondered, dazed.

"I'm not reading your mind, Parker, you're babbling," Barbara insisted snatching the aspirin out of his hand to pop it open for him. "Try to focus on one train of thought... What were you saying about your aunt?"

"She can't know about this," Peter said through the fog in his head. "She can't know about any of this..."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want her to get hurt..." he sighed."She's the reason your memory of me had to go, Barb... Because she has to stay safe... Bad things happen because I'm Spider-Man... Bad things have always happened because I'm Spider-Man, but somehow they never happen to me... It's been hard to hold down a job and my relationships have all been disasters... but that's all just dumb shit... you know? My uncle died when I got these powers..."

"I know," Barbara told him, handing him a few pills. "I read the story in the Bugle. That's how I figured out who you were. The loss of a parental figure like that... Batman went through something similar. Nightwing, too. I'm sorry, Peter, I really am. It's bad, but it... it happens. That doesn't make it your fault."

"But it was my fault," he insisted, gulping them down. "I... I could have saved him... My uncle's killer ran right past me, committing a crime, and I could have stopped him... I had all these stupid powers, but even without them... I could have tripped that guy or something... But I let him go because I thought dealing with something like that was beneath me." He slumped down against the sink. "That's the real reason I do what I do now... but even when I do what I do the people I care about still get hurt."

"What are you talking about?"

"There was this girl... I loved her," Peter sighed. "I loved her so much, Barb... and she died because of me and what I do... Because of Spider-Man. I did everything I could to save her, but she's just gone... and worse... I'm pretty sure that she died because I tried to save her... She'd had this whole life that had nothing to do with me, but in the end, all of that just... just disappeared so a madman could use her as a prop... It's sick what I do... It's wrong the way my life works..."

"I'm sure you didn't want to her hurt, Peter," Barbara said.

"It doesn't matter what I want," he blathered on. "I hurt everybody I meet in some way or another... People get hurt. People die. People I love. Sometimes people I just... I just know. And I can't stop it... I'm not fast enough or strong enough or smart enough... I've let so many people down... I get to save strangers... I even get to save my enemies... but anyone who makes my life worth it -- the ones I love? I ruin their lives..."

"Pull it together, Parker..."

"Aunt May almost died... And Betty got mugged... Harry had to fake his death and then later he had to leave... Flash lost his legs... And MJ... Poor Mary Jane just can't... She..." His eyes rolled back as another wave hit him.

"Peter!"

He perked up then. "All these bad things happen to the people I love, but they don't happen to me, Barbara," he mumbled again, shrugging it off. "And I'm the one who actually deserves it..."

"Why?" she asked. "Why do you deserve it anymore than them?"

"Because I didn't stop that burglar," Peter said, "and he's been gunning down everybody else ever since... I've got to do this on my own... Alone."

Barbara wanted to let that stand on its own, but she couldn't help herself. "So I guess that means you're not back together with the supermodel...?"

"Supermodel?"

"Mary Jane Watson."

"Oh, right. 'The supermodel'..." Peter shook his head with a chuckle. "You know, it's hard to believe that's how everyone sees her... For so long she was so much more than that to me, you know? And before that... she was just this flighty friend of mine... Everything between the day my aunt told me about this girl she desperately wanted me to meet to now and supermodel's always the last thing I think of..."

"You're right," Barbara said. "That is hard to believe."

"Mary Jane Watson doesn't want any part of this side of me," he sighed. "She understands it... But she doesn't want to see it... Because she knows it's going to kill me and she doesn't want to watch me die over this... And I do it for her... And for May... And for everyone else I've let down... That's why it's over with me and her. I want to go out there and make sure that she's safe, but she just wants to be with me..."

"Why don't you just tell her how you feel?"

Peter just smiled then. That sad smile he was so good at. "She knows," he said. "And I know how she feels. But we just reached this point where knowing how we feel about each other doesn't change anything. Has that ever happened to you with someone you loved?"

"Yes," she confessed. "But I never figured out what comes next."

"Maybe you figure it out with somebody new then," he shrugged. She looked at him then, but he looked away. "Maybe you don't."

Always an out for Peter Parker, Barbara figured. Beyond that, she really didn't know what to say. This little visit certainly hadn't gone the way she'd expected.

For as long as she'd known the truth about Peter Parker, she always thought the web-slinger was just like the Dark Knight... That he'd personally seen one terrible tragedy firsthand and it defined him -- from that day forward, he was committed to making the broken world better. It was obvious to her now that it was different for Parker than it was for Bruce. Peter was driven by a far sicker monster entirely. He'd been older when his uncle died than Bruce was when he lost his parents, of course, which she realized now would make a significant difference to his mental state in response to such an event, to say nothing about the psycho-physiological impact of gaining extra-normal abilities at that delicate stage of adolescence. And this thing about having encountered the killer before -- that insane twist of fate...

Bruce Wayne was doggedly, destructively determined to save Gotham in honor of the memory of his murdered mother and father, but he had somehow built a new family around that goal. Peter Parker, by contrast, blamed himself for every bad thing that happened to everyone around him and felt compelled to keep them at a distance because of it. She knew people thought Batman was broken, but Spider-Man was just this walking death wish. No wonder he had to make some stupid joke every ten seconds. How else could someone live like that everyday?

As much as she thought she'd understood him before, this revelation cut her to the quick. There was nothing Barbara wanted to do right then more than find some way to save him... Huntress had once accused her of obsessing over fixing damaged heroes, and maybe Helena had been more right than wrong. And while Babs now knew better than to try to make Peter Parker her new project, she figured the least she could do was patch him up.

"Somebody punched you," she said eventually.

"Yeah," Peter replied. "That was you... about eight minutes ago."

"I mostly used defensive blocks after you attacked me, remember?" she scoffed. "And I meant before that."

"Lots of people have punched me," he sulked.

Barbara rolled her eyes. She'd heard the rumors for years. Parker seemed to rein it in a bit the two times they'd worked together, but there was no denying it: Spider-Man was a whiner... which was making this whole newfound desire to save him somehow rather difficult. "Someone cut you, too," she observed.

"The Hobgoblin might have gotten a few licks in," he finally admitted.

"Looks like more than a few licks," Barbara informed him, rolling closer to survey his injuries. "I'm seeing at least three slashing burns on your back, most likely shallow cuts from some kind of plasma-powered blade, and if I had to guess from the ragged gashes and the dispersal of shrapnel wounds on your thighs, you almost took a direct hit from a low-yield fragmentation grenade with organic casing."

"Wow," Peter whispered. "That's kind of hot."

"I assume you mean the burns on your back," she mock-whispered in reply. "And seriously, what kind of goblin uses a flaming sword?"

"That's what I've been saying!"

"What's the point of cutting someone with a weapon that's just going to cauterize the wound?"

"Well, I can tell you personally that it hurts like hell."

"You've been doing this long enough that I have to assume you have a first aid kit."

"Well, duh..." he shrugged. He was clearly still feeling sluggish, because he did it one shoulder at a time.

"Go get it, have a seat, and take off your shirt," Barbara instructed.

"What training do you have in this kind of thing, exactly?" Peter asked, pulling a sizable emergency medical trunk from under his sink.

"Just what I've picked up from a former British soldier turned MI-5 agent with an extensive background in combat medicine who's been patching up Batman since he skinned his first knee," she answered as he handed it to her. "That good enough, nerd boy, or should I have brought my CV?"

"Still with the 'nerd boy', huh?" he smiled, slumping onto the toilet.

"I let you get away with Spider-Man the first time we met," she said, "so sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, you're nerd boy forever..."

Barbara suddenly rethought that assertion when he stripped off his top. She'd spent a lot of time with Bruce and the boys in a rarefied field where gorgeous pecs and washboard abs were the impossible norm, so Peter's rugged physique should have hardly been a surprise, especially when you considered the fact that he was peeling off spandex for god's sake, but all that web-strand styling was distracting.

"Wow," she said softly. She immediately regretted it, blushing as she hoped he hadn't heard her. Maybe this was a case where her impeccable memory wasn't doing her any favors. In her mind, Peter Parker was still the scrawny, teenage version of himself from all those years past, not some well-defined hunk who'd clearly filled out from a decade of wall-crawling cardio. If Barbara took a moment to really think about it, she'd have realized that she had certainly seen more brawnily toned torsos in her day, but he'd just tacked on so much muscle... And even more remarkably, besides his recent wounds -- like the burns on his back and that bruise over his eye -- his skin was more or less flawless. She'd seen Bruce's naked back on several occasions and the vast patchwork of scarring always made her wince and she'd spent a few nights tracing her fingers along every faded wound Dick still had from his lifetime of crime-fighting, but Peter Parker still appeared so pristine and unmarred. Either he'd been extremely lucky in his time as Spider-Man, or his regenerative spider-powers healed his wounds much more thoroughly than unaugmented, human vigilantes...