It was an hour before midnight, his wife and daughter were already asleep, and Zachary Patton was humming a tune to himself as he prepared the next day's food in advance.
A nice slow-cooked Hamin, left on a secured hotplate overnight~ Zachary could already taste it just by imagining it.
So as he gently placed the pot on the hotplate and set the temperature and clock, Zachary tried to imagine how his daughter will react to tasting his grandmother's recipe for the first time.
It wasn't common for him to get a night like this, where he didn't hear her crying after waking up from a bad dream.
The life of a new father was tough yet rewarding.
So Zachary was surprised to be interrupted in the night not by the cries of his infant daughter, but by a rapid knock on the door.
"Who would come here so late at night?" Zachary asked himself as he turned away from the slow-cooking meal and began making his way to the door, grabbing a wrench from the toolkit he kept beside the door in case he needed to defend himself before he looked through the peephole.
Seeing the person on the other side of the door, Zachary quickly put down the wrench and opened the door, "Merin?" He asked the wiry blonde woman who stood outside his home, "What are you doing here? Get inside, you'll catch a cold like that-" Zachary tried to invite the familiar woman in, only for her to take a step back and rapidly shake her head.
"I- I can't d-d-do it," The thin woman that Zachary Patton recognized as his sister-in-law, Merin Clark, stuttered before she pushed a cardboard box into his hands, "I can't- I'm sorry, I just can't do it." She shook her head, refusing to look Zachary in the face before she turned around and quickly walked away, her body shaking as if she was freezing despite the thick winter jacket that wrapped around her.
"Where are you going?" Zachary called out to her, still holding the box, "We haven't heard from you in over a year, and this is all we get?" Zachary watched as the woman paused for a moment, turned to look at him, allowing Zachary to see her sunken eyes and almost unnaturally dry and chapped skin, thin scratch lines over her cheeks telling a story of her clawing herself.
She was sick, and likely on some kind of drug, Zachary could understand that much. But he still needed to know what was happening.
"I'm sorry," Merin said weakly, tears rolling down her face, highlighting the cracks in her skin, "Treat him right," And without waiting for Zachary to respond, Merin turned the corner and walked into the dark and empty streets of The Bronx in the winter.
"What are-" Zachary moved to chase after her, not bothering to grab a coat, only to pause as he heard crying.
An infant was crying.
An infant whose cries did not match his daughter's.
Zachary slowly made his way back inside, locking the door behind him before gently placing the cardboard box on the dinner table. Zachary slowly opened the box to reveal a baby with a tuft of brown hair on his head and bluish-grey eyes, crying loudly and flailing his tiny limbs.
"Shit," Zachary said, only to hear his daughter begin to cry from her room, leading to the door to his bedroom opening for his sleep-deprived wife to walk out and move to take care of their kid.
Zachary gently picked the baby boy up, revealing a small pile of papers underneath him.
Reading the papers while rocking the baby in his arms until he stopped crying and went back to sleep, Zachary felt a headache coming from what he read.
"Honey, what was that crying?" Zachary tentatively turned to see his wife enter the living room, the sounds of his daughter's cries no longer echoing throughout the house.
"Linda," Zachary spoke, a tired smile on his face, "I think we need to speak with our lawyer." He gently lifted the baby in his arms before pointing at the papers with his head.
Linda grabbed the papers, read the first half of the topmost paper, and placed it back down on the table.
"Shit." She said, holding her head in her hands, "I'll try and see if I can get Janice to come babysit tomorrow." She slowly stood up, "You call and schedule a meeting with Mister Berkowitz, tell him it's important."
"Yes, sweetie," Zachary told his wife as she began to walk away.
"Oh, and give the poor boy a bath, he can use one of Madeline's spare outfits for now," Linda told her husband before finally leaving the room and returning to bed.
Zachary sighed tiredly as he looked down at the sleeping baby, "You look so peaceful..." He whispered, still slowly and gently rocking the baby in his arms, "Don't marry a blonde." He gave the child the secret to living a stress-free life, hoping his wife didn't hear him.
The response he got was having the baby sneeze loudly, before he returned to crying.
"And you're awake again," Zachary said, "Let's get you cleaned up..." He looked over at the papers on the table one more time, "Alvin... Come on, Al, let's get the bath ready."
-------------------------------------------
"The papers are legit." Zachary Patton sat in a chair in front of his lawyer, "The baby is indeed the biological son of Merin Clark and Buzz Woodrose." Zachary nodded along as Donald Berkowitz explained to him what was going to happen next.
Zachary turned to look at his wife, an apologetic look on his face as the duo prepared for another long meeting with the lawyer.
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"And there we have it," Berkowitz said with a soft smile on his face, "As of now, you two are officially the adoptive parents of young Alvin Woodrose."
A week has passed since that fateful night, and a lot has happened to Zachary Patton and his family. But as he finalized the adoption papers and turned to look at the two babies sitting side by side in the stroller, sleeping soundly, He knew that no matter what happens next, they'll make it through.
"Do you think this warrants a trip to my parents to celebrate?" Zachary turned to his wife as the two exited the building.
"You wanna drive to Albany in the middle of winter with these two?" Linda raised an eyebrow at her husband's suggestion before motioning with her head at the two babies, "Tell your parents to drive here," She shook her head, "Or at least wait until Spring to suggest a trip up north."
"Fine, Fine~" Zachary laughed before kissing his wife on the cheek, "Come on, let's go home,"
To Zachary Patton, that week was one of the most influential moments in his life.
But to Alvin Woodrose? That week was just the beginning of a new life, one filled with amazement, action, heroics, heartbreak, and Tragedy.
A Life filled with confusion, friends, family, love, and loss, all in equal measure.
This is just the beginning of his life, of his story.
The story of how Alvin Woodrose became the hero known as Arachno!