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seriousficTitle: The Cost of Wearing Masks
Fandom: Spider-Man movieverse
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,600
Author’s Note: Betaed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
htbthomas. Takes place after the events of Spider-Man 2, assuming Spider-Man 3 never happened.
Next Part: Chapter 2
Characters/Pairings: Peter/MJ, Harry Osborn, Otto Octavius
Summary: As Harry Osborn descends into madness and Otto Octavius returns from the grave, Peter has just one thing on his mind: Mary-Jane called off her wedding to be with him. Holy shit.
Who says the Parker luck is all bad? I just spent an hour chasing around an old man in a bird costume. In the pouring rain. Right after my girlfriend told me she loved me.
Peter stopped under a humming AC unit to let its heat dry him off a little. Then again, maybe he had been lucky to get an excuse to clear his head before facing Mary-Jane. She’d literally stopped her wedding for him. Awful lot of pressure to put on a guy.
Peter climbed through the window into his apartment. Without the adrenaline warming his body anymore, getting out of his clingingly wet suit was priority one. He stood on one foot as he pulled off either boot, then peeled off the mask and gloves. After a quick look-see, he dashed into the bathroom and wrung out his top in the sink. It gave up enough water to fill a pool. And it was still dripping. Back in his apartment, he threw it over an open door to dry and went to his dresser to find something dry to replace his spider-pants with.
Mary-Jane was transferring folded clothes from a hamper he was sure he didn’t own to a dresser which he used more as an elevated surface than to store things inside. She’d changed into some of his clothes and Peter wasn’t quite sure he’d ever be able to wear them again, especially if he had to ask for them back. The wedding dress she was wearing the last time he’d seen her lay on his steamer trunk, like a shed skin. She looked at him, shirtless, dripping wet, and her eyes slid up and down.
“Sorry the fight ran long,” Peter said. “You been waiting here all this time?”
She gave him a million-watt-smile. ”I don’t really have much else to go to.” She sat up on his bed and straightened her/his lapel. “Oh, and I borrowed some of your clothes. Hope you don’t mind.”
”I’ve heard that clothes make the man, but in this case, the woman definitely makes the clothes. Probably because you’re a bit more developed in the chest depart…” Peter grinned self-effacingly… he felt like such a schmuck, but in a good way, not in a low self-esteem way. “I’m trying to be suave here, is it working?”
Mary-Jane extended her hand and he, catching on suavely, kissed it. “Consider me charmed.” Then she couldn’t stand it anymore. Mary-Jane gave in to her secret desire and threw together an ensemble of clothes that actually went together. They piled up in Peter’s arms.
“That’s all I get for saving the city from avian avarice?”
MJ threw a towel over his head and added a firm swat on the rump as he dashed back into the bathroom to change. There were some things he didn’t want even a close personal friend to see, especially after spending hours in cold rain. Then he saw Ursula was currently in the hallway.
“There was a…” he started, shifting his weight from foot to foot, wondering how he must look half-naked with a pile of clothes in his hands and bright blue pants on his legs. Then he smiled, shook his head, and went into the bathroom.
Ursula turned to Peter’s apartment to see Mary-Jane, who shrugged.
“Weren’t you wearing a wedding dress?”
Mary-Jane picked at her shirt. “It… got dirty.”
“Should I leave?”
“Probably.”
“Is she gone?” Peter asked from behind the bathroom door, once Ursula had left.
“Yes.”
“The Vulture had henchmen, you know. The Birds of Prey. They wore these jackets with feathers on the arms. I think themed villainy is killing the crime business. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned ski masks?”
Peter felt, in some subtle way, Mary-Jane lean her weight against the bathroom door. “Pete, have you been following the news lately?”
“I work at the Daily Bugle… so no.” He pulled his shirt on and rested his head against the bathroom door, as if he and MJ were two magnets locking together. “What is it?”
“It’s…”
“Who are you?”
Peter recognized his landlord’s accent anywhere. “She’s with me, Mr. Ditkovich.”
“Roommates cost extra! No matter how much my daughter wants it, you cannot stay here for free! Flirting with my daughter is not rent money! It is not even currency!”
“I do not flirt—“ Peter started to say, then heard MJ giggle a little. He quickly used a second towel to dry off, then dressed and wrapped the bottom of his costume in the towel. When he came out, Mary-Jane was putting away her wallet.
“How much do you pay a week for this place?”
“Too much. You didn’t give him any money, did you?”
“A little. Why?”
“Nothing. You just might wanna wear a wig next time you come down here. He’s very… persistent. So, what’s the big news? Vampires are real? Mutants walk among us? Did they finally find living dinosaurs?”
“It’s Doctor Octopus. He’s back.”
***
Peter strode to his laptop with his fly unbuttoned and his belt only halfway through its loops. Despite the circumstances, MJ had to admit that it was an intriguing sight. She sat down next to him on the couch and held his arm, hoping her presence would soften the news he was about to hear.
“He washed ashore in Jersey. Barely alive, virtually comatose…”
Although Peter was trying not to look worried, Mary-Jane could feel the diamond-hardness of his muscles tensing under the skin. He was single-mindedly flipping through channels, looking for news he could make out through the static. “They say he doesn’t remember anything from during his ‘psychotic break’.”
The TV settled on an image drowning in static. Otto, his leaden tentacles dragging behind him on a trolley, being escorted from one building on a hospital campus to another. There were guards with the latest Stark weaponry surrounding him so densely that the camera could barely catch a glimpse of him.
The Octavius that registered stronger in Peter’s memory was a sociopathic, obsessive engine of destruction with no care for the well-being of anyone that got in his way. That madman was hard to reconcile with the man on camera. He could be described as tired, drained, contrite, or just plain defeated, but it was obvious that the tentacles grafted to his body were more of a burden than a superpower. All his sins remembered and given weight. The man that was Doctor Octopus disappeared into a hospital.
“I suppose I should look into that,” Peter understated. “Later.”
“’Later,’ what?”
He kissed her. He’d been waiting to do that all through the fight, still feeling the tingle of the last one. It’d made him so lightheaded that he’d shrugged off the hardest of blows. Mary-Jane kissed him back, a surprisingly cold hand bracing on the juncture between his neck and shoulder, long red nails curved back to tinge the back of his neck. Her thumb pressed at his collar, leading the charge of his whole hand. She was pushing him back, and in her eyes he saw a bit of the abused trust that had clouded them in the past few days, replacing the unbridled friendship she’d once offered him.
Despite all they’d been through, he’d still pushed her away and lied to her and it would take time for that to heal. Time for them to get to know each other as people instead of the masks they put up.
“Aren’t you going to buy me dinner first?” Mary-Jane asked, neatly defusing the situation.
“I’ve love to. And thank you. Again.” Peter awkwardly got up, grabbing a backpack to shove his drying costume into. “Ock awaits…”
“I’ll wait. Patience is a virtue, right?”
***
Osborn Manor sat atop the old Oscorp headquarters like a spider waiting in its web. Although the corporate headquarters had long since been shifted to a more modern building, with most of its functions sourced there as well, the Osborn Building stayed strong despite its half-dead status, full of abandoned floors that its owner refused to rent out and rotting in places where the cleaning staff weren’t paid to go, places like infected wounds.
At the top floor, inside the manor that capped the vast rooftop, a white-gloved hand knocked at the door to the study. Then again, more insistently. Finally, the door opened and Harry Osborn, his face worn and stubbled, peered out at his butler, Bernard.
“What is it?”
”The board of directors has been trying to reach you for hours. They want to know about the merger.”
”Merger?” Harry asked, rubbing at his eyes.
”With the Brand Corporation.”
”Tell them to do what they think is best.”
”What they think is best? Mr. Osborn, you’re the majority shareholder…”
”And I have more important things to do!” Harry shouted before slamming the door in his butler’s face.
Inside the study, Harry made a bee-line for a brandy snifter from the liquor cabinet. He considered it for a moment, then put it down. No time for that now. His reflection beckoned to him and he’d waited long enough.
Even though his memory, indeed, his life, seemed like a mist of red these days, he remembered with crystal clarity three things. Spider-Man murdering his father, unmasking Spider-Man, and stabbing the knife through Norman Osborn’s image to find the Goblin’s lair. The mirror he shattered was intact now. Or so it would seem. He walked through it. The hologram rippled like quicksilver as he merged with his reflection, then was not there.
Rows upon rows of pumpkin bombs. Several gliders in various stages of repair and development. The flight suit his father had worn. And overseeing all this was the mask of the Goblin. The place was like an antic, and might have been when the house was first constructed. Cobwebs abounded, but shied away from the high-tech equipment that had been installed so recently. If Harry noted the creepy dissonance of gothic Victorian and state-of-the-art villainy, he didn’t show it.
A throne-like chair was sat in, Harry’s weight powering up the workstation in front of it. He typed on it, causing scientific equipment to rise out of the floor.
Human Performance Enhancement Formula Loaded, the computer reported as a graphic design whirlwinded onto the screen. Harry smiled and looked up. Above the workstation, lit by a candelabra below, was a huge portrait of Norman Osborn.
Harry pressed a key. Sodium Pentathol, Add Y or N? He looked up again. His father’s portrait seemed to smile. Y.
Inside the assemblage of science equipment, a needle drained liquid from one test tube and added it to the main cylinder, tinting the colorless liquid slightly green.
Harry pressed another key. Ammonium nitrate, Add Y or N? He looked up again. His father’s portrait seemed to frown in disapproval. N. Another graphic popped up, and another, and another. As Harry vetted his choices, the serum became a darker green…
***
Peter sneezed into a Kleenex. He really should’ve waterproofed his suit. He wadded up the tissue and free-shot it into a trash can, then readied another Kleenex from his pack. He would have to duck into a convenience store to buy another one soon. Then again, he was going to a hospital. It wasn’t like they’d not have tissues… would it?
Getting access to Octavius had been tricky. First, he’d finagled a press pass from Jameson by playing the photography card. And it was true. If Octavius remembered him (as he obviously did, for agreeing to meet him… gulp), then there was a good chance he would allow Peter to take some pictures. It made Peter feel like a paparazzo creep to photograph someone in recovery, but he told himself it wasn’t for money, it was to make sure Otto was really… Doc Ock no more?
Peter grimaced. He really had to get a new inner monologue.
After an elevator ride that had Peter miserably contemplating how fast he could get upstairs if he just jumped through the roof access and crawled, Peter disembarked with a disgusting variety of tissue paper wads in need of disposal. He really, really should’ve waterproofed his suit.
The high-security floor was only accessible by a key that a hospital administrator had popped into the elevator when sending him off, but the beefy security guard fixed him with a nasty stare all the same. Peter sheepishly dumped the tissues, washed off his gunky hands in the drinking fountain, and wiped them on his shirt. The guard intensified his nasty stare to Nasty Stare 2.0.
“Uh, hi there. Peter Parker, here to see Otto Octavius.”
Nasty Stare 3.0.
“I’m expected.”
“You his lawyer?”
“No, I’m a photographer.” Peter held up the camera dangling off his neck. “Cheese?”
The security guard clicked an intercom and, with a suspicious look, whispered into it. Octavius’s voice fairly boomed through it in contrast. “Peter Parker? Yes, send him in.”
The guard swept out of the way and Peter squirmed past him, smiling widely all the way.
Ock’s room had, thank God, a tissue box. Peter swiped some. Besides that it was a hospital room, with a hospital smell and only padlocks on the door and window to separate it from any other room. No, there was something else. No flowers or greeting cards or any sign of sympathy. Peter felt the old familiar pain of alienation creeping up on him. No. No, he wouldn’t sympathize. Not until he was sure.
Octavius himself was sitting at a desk, lazily spinning a piece of paper around, a pen forgotten at the side of the desktop. A black eye shield protected his eyes from light, though the room’s fluorescent lamps were dimmed. With a careful tread designed to respect the seemingly oblivious Octavius’s privacy, Peter walked over and leaned over him. It was a confession.
“Peter Palmer,” Octavius said.
“Parker, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir.” Octavius stood, his tentacles weighting him down. “Brilliant, lazy. I apologize if I can’t summon up anything else, but…” He gestured to the bandages wound around his head, greasy black hair poking out between them.
“There’s not much else,” Peter assured him. “I wanted to do a paper on you and we interviewed… I mean, I interviewed you…”
Octavius nodded. “Right, right. What grade did you get?”
“A minus.”
“Wreck the curve, why don’t you?”
Peter smiled genuinely. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly a night at the opera, but there weren’t any vault doors being thrown at him yet.
Octavius trudged over to the bed, dragging his tentacles behind him. They scraped loudly on the linoleum floor. “Don’t worry about them, they’re completely powered down. They’re flying in a specialist from Norway to amputate them… Dr. Foster. The state has generously agreed to pay for the procedure. Can’t imagine why. Would you like to…?” He gestured to his back, and Peter belatedly realized he meant the camera.
“Oh! Sure. If you wouldn’t mind, Dr. Octavius.”
“If it will reassure the public…” He loosened the top of his two-piece hospital gown at the neck, opening it at either side to reveal the gruesome melted flesh where the tentacles seemed to have dipped into his body like a compound fracture. The metallic spine has also sunken into the flesh, with tendrils of skin growing over it. “As you can see, it’s seeking symbiosis. Trying to power itself on bioelectricity. I even have nerve connections still active through the waldos… like phantom limbs, one would imagine.”
A swell of pity for the broken man rose in Peter’s chest. The tentacles imprisoned him like limpid prison bars. Those had been the enemy, not Octavius. Feeling like an A-1 heel, he pressed. “So you don’t remember any of it? Doctor Octopus, the Tritium… Spider-Man?”
“No. The shock and water damaged my tentacles’ hard disks. And the process of symbiosis is making me…” Octavius took off the eye shield to rub his eyes. The area around them looked cracked, as if his skin were made of marble and someone had taken a chisel to it. “Blurry.”
Despite that, Peter felt no relief. “Well, if there’s anything I can do…”
“There is one thing.” Otto stepped toward Peter, his tentacles making weirdly musical sounds as they scraped behind him. “The fusion reactor is still mankind’s best hope for clean and renewable energy. I refuse to have it stained by my advocacy. Bring me my notes, the report Oscorp did on the accid…” he trailed off, Rosalie’s name on his lips. One of the servos in a tentacle’s claw whirred like a sawblade running down, a sleeping monster twitching.
Peter put an arm on Otto’s shoulder and the ticking stopped.
“I know I had to have miscalculated. Let me find and correct my error so another can finish my work. Don’t let these—“ he grabbed a tentacle as if throttling it and shook it at Peter “—be my only legacy.”
Peter’s head turned away, but his body didn’t follow. Just after the memory of Norman Osborn and his dying wish had darkened his mind like an oilspill came another unpleasant reminder… but this time, his duty was to the living instead of the dead. Obeying Osborn had alienated Harry, turning him from friend to… something else. And now, as if some cosmic tribunal had declared a miscarriage of justice, he was given a chance to redress the balance. This time, he could save a life instead of ruining one. No tights required.
“You’ll be remembered as Otto Octavius, gifted man of science, not Doctor Octopus. I promise you that.”
Otto smiled, and it was a far cry from the scalpel-sharp teeth bared by Doctor Octopus. “Thank you, my boy. Curt is lucky to have you for a student.”
He extended his hand for a shake and Peter took it warmly. “See you soon.”
Otto spread his arms to gesture at the room. “You know where to find me.”
Peter turned to leave as a memory bubbled to the surface of Octavius’s fragile mind.
“How’s the girlfriend, by the way? Things work out with her?”
Peter’s blood froze. He turned back to Otto with a new, strangling deliberation in his movement. “She’s good. We’re good. Everything’s good.”
Otto smiled and nodded. “Good. I love a happy ending.”
***
By the time Harry was no longer able to hold his eyes open, the serum had become a green just this side of black. Whispers haunted his sleep… built in intensity. Suddenly:
”Harry!”
Jerking awake, Harry looked for the source of his name. He didn’t look far. The computer monitor’s screen had been replaced by an image of Norman Osborn, so vivid that Harry could’ve reached out and touched him if he wanted to. He didn’t want to.
”Harry…” Norman said again, no longer as harsh. The gracious dad instead of the stern…
”Father?”
”It’s time, Harry,” Norman said, his face reflected in the serum. Distorting with the fluid’s ripples. “Time to finish what I started.”
Tension pinched Harry’s frontal lobe, boiled its way out the inside of his eye sockets. ”But… Peter would…”
”Stop sniveling!” his father shouted. “You’re an Osborn, start acting like it!”
Like darkness vanquished by dawn, Norman faded away. His last words echoed inside Harry’s brain, the lair he sat in. “Acting like it… acting like it…”
Serum synthesized.
Harry turned away from the blinking computer screen, right into the Goblin’s mask. It was staring right at him, staring into his soul with empty eye sockets. Trembling, Harry picked it up. The mask shook in his hands. Lurched toward his face. Defensively, Harry threw it across the room.
”No!”
Close to screaming, Harry stumbled out of the room. He came back with an axe he’d grabbed from a suit of armor on display. Half-crazed, he found Norman Osborn in the reflection of a glass chemical vault.
”What are you doing, Harry?” his dad asked.
”I don’t want this!”
He smashed the reflection’s face in with the axe. The chemicals inside sloshed out onto the floor. Harry didn’t stop there. More chemical vats were shattered in his cathartic rampage. The freed fluids began to mingle…
”Any of this!” Harry screamed. Each swing was bringing him back to himself, obliterating the red mist of anger and reminding him of his real father. The harsh words, the harsher discipline, the constant expectations and disapproval and bile…
Like an executioner decapitating a prisoner, he broke apart the new serum.
“Anything to do with you!”
He attacked the flight suit, hacking it into pieces. At his feet, the chemicals began to bubble and simmer…
”I’ll never be like you!”
Norman’s portrait came to life, looking at Harry with baleful, hating eyes. ”You can’t deny who you are, Harry! You are your father’s son!”
The head of Norman Osborn was reflected in Harry’s brown eyes as they watched each syllable enunciated.
“You will always be my son!”
The chemicals exploded like the wrath of Norman Osborn himself. Harry was blown across the room, his clothes burnt from his body. He hit a concrete wall so hard he cracked it.
A thick, fat, green cloud rolled out of the mixed fluids and crept along the floor. In Harry's mind's eye, the gas seemed to form faces; demented specters with their mouths twisted into sneers. But Harry was not afraid. He was defiant. With his last breath, he challenged them to do their worst.
The vapor oozed over Harry as he lost consciousness, grew over his body like vines covering ruins. The gas almost leapt down his throat, like exhaling in the cold reversed.
Harry only choked once.
Fandom: Spider-Man movieverse
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,600
Author’s Note: Betaed by
htbthomas. Takes place after the events of Spider-Man 2, assuming Spider-Man 3 never happened.Next Part: Chapter 2
Characters/Pairings: Peter/MJ, Harry Osborn, Otto Octavius
Summary: As Harry Osborn descends into madness and Otto Octavius returns from the grave, Peter has just one thing on his mind: Mary-Jane called off her wedding to be with him. Holy shit.
Who says the Parker luck is all bad? I just spent an hour chasing around an old man in a bird costume. In the pouring rain. Right after my girlfriend told me she loved me.
Peter stopped under a humming AC unit to let its heat dry him off a little. Then again, maybe he had been lucky to get an excuse to clear his head before facing Mary-Jane. She’d literally stopped her wedding for him. Awful lot of pressure to put on a guy.
Peter climbed through the window into his apartment. Without the adrenaline warming his body anymore, getting out of his clingingly wet suit was priority one. He stood on one foot as he pulled off either boot, then peeled off the mask and gloves. After a quick look-see, he dashed into the bathroom and wrung out his top in the sink. It gave up enough water to fill a pool. And it was still dripping. Back in his apartment, he threw it over an open door to dry and went to his dresser to find something dry to replace his spider-pants with.
Mary-Jane was transferring folded clothes from a hamper he was sure he didn’t own to a dresser which he used more as an elevated surface than to store things inside. She’d changed into some of his clothes and Peter wasn’t quite sure he’d ever be able to wear them again, especially if he had to ask for them back. The wedding dress she was wearing the last time he’d seen her lay on his steamer trunk, like a shed skin. She looked at him, shirtless, dripping wet, and her eyes slid up and down.
“Sorry the fight ran long,” Peter said. “You been waiting here all this time?”
She gave him a million-watt-smile. ”I don’t really have much else to go to.” She sat up on his bed and straightened her/his lapel. “Oh, and I borrowed some of your clothes. Hope you don’t mind.”
”I’ve heard that clothes make the man, but in this case, the woman definitely makes the clothes. Probably because you’re a bit more developed in the chest depart…” Peter grinned self-effacingly… he felt like such a schmuck, but in a good way, not in a low self-esteem way. “I’m trying to be suave here, is it working?”
Mary-Jane extended her hand and he, catching on suavely, kissed it. “Consider me charmed.” Then she couldn’t stand it anymore. Mary-Jane gave in to her secret desire and threw together an ensemble of clothes that actually went together. They piled up in Peter’s arms.
“That’s all I get for saving the city from avian avarice?”
MJ threw a towel over his head and added a firm swat on the rump as he dashed back into the bathroom to change. There were some things he didn’t want even a close personal friend to see, especially after spending hours in cold rain. Then he saw Ursula was currently in the hallway.
“There was a…” he started, shifting his weight from foot to foot, wondering how he must look half-naked with a pile of clothes in his hands and bright blue pants on his legs. Then he smiled, shook his head, and went into the bathroom.
Ursula turned to Peter’s apartment to see Mary-Jane, who shrugged.
“Weren’t you wearing a wedding dress?”
Mary-Jane picked at her shirt. “It… got dirty.”
“Should I leave?”
“Probably.”
“Is she gone?” Peter asked from behind the bathroom door, once Ursula had left.
“Yes.”
“The Vulture had henchmen, you know. The Birds of Prey. They wore these jackets with feathers on the arms. I think themed villainy is killing the crime business. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned ski masks?”
Peter felt, in some subtle way, Mary-Jane lean her weight against the bathroom door. “Pete, have you been following the news lately?”
“I work at the Daily Bugle… so no.” He pulled his shirt on and rested his head against the bathroom door, as if he and MJ were two magnets locking together. “What is it?”
“It’s…”
“Who are you?”
Peter recognized his landlord’s accent anywhere. “She’s with me, Mr. Ditkovich.”
“Roommates cost extra! No matter how much my daughter wants it, you cannot stay here for free! Flirting with my daughter is not rent money! It is not even currency!”
“I do not flirt—“ Peter started to say, then heard MJ giggle a little. He quickly used a second towel to dry off, then dressed and wrapped the bottom of his costume in the towel. When he came out, Mary-Jane was putting away her wallet.
“How much do you pay a week for this place?”
“Too much. You didn’t give him any money, did you?”
“A little. Why?”
“Nothing. You just might wanna wear a wig next time you come down here. He’s very… persistent. So, what’s the big news? Vampires are real? Mutants walk among us? Did they finally find living dinosaurs?”
“It’s Doctor Octopus. He’s back.”
***
Peter strode to his laptop with his fly unbuttoned and his belt only halfway through its loops. Despite the circumstances, MJ had to admit that it was an intriguing sight. She sat down next to him on the couch and held his arm, hoping her presence would soften the news he was about to hear.
“He washed ashore in Jersey. Barely alive, virtually comatose…”
Although Peter was trying not to look worried, Mary-Jane could feel the diamond-hardness of his muscles tensing under the skin. He was single-mindedly flipping through channels, looking for news he could make out through the static. “They say he doesn’t remember anything from during his ‘psychotic break’.”
The TV settled on an image drowning in static. Otto, his leaden tentacles dragging behind him on a trolley, being escorted from one building on a hospital campus to another. There were guards with the latest Stark weaponry surrounding him so densely that the camera could barely catch a glimpse of him.
The Octavius that registered stronger in Peter’s memory was a sociopathic, obsessive engine of destruction with no care for the well-being of anyone that got in his way. That madman was hard to reconcile with the man on camera. He could be described as tired, drained, contrite, or just plain defeated, but it was obvious that the tentacles grafted to his body were more of a burden than a superpower. All his sins remembered and given weight. The man that was Doctor Octopus disappeared into a hospital.
“I suppose I should look into that,” Peter understated. “Later.”
“’Later,’ what?”
He kissed her. He’d been waiting to do that all through the fight, still feeling the tingle of the last one. It’d made him so lightheaded that he’d shrugged off the hardest of blows. Mary-Jane kissed him back, a surprisingly cold hand bracing on the juncture between his neck and shoulder, long red nails curved back to tinge the back of his neck. Her thumb pressed at his collar, leading the charge of his whole hand. She was pushing him back, and in her eyes he saw a bit of the abused trust that had clouded them in the past few days, replacing the unbridled friendship she’d once offered him.
Despite all they’d been through, he’d still pushed her away and lied to her and it would take time for that to heal. Time for them to get to know each other as people instead of the masks they put up.
“Aren’t you going to buy me dinner first?” Mary-Jane asked, neatly defusing the situation.
“I’ve love to. And thank you. Again.” Peter awkwardly got up, grabbing a backpack to shove his drying costume into. “Ock awaits…”
“I’ll wait. Patience is a virtue, right?”
***
Osborn Manor sat atop the old Oscorp headquarters like a spider waiting in its web. Although the corporate headquarters had long since been shifted to a more modern building, with most of its functions sourced there as well, the Osborn Building stayed strong despite its half-dead status, full of abandoned floors that its owner refused to rent out and rotting in places where the cleaning staff weren’t paid to go, places like infected wounds.
At the top floor, inside the manor that capped the vast rooftop, a white-gloved hand knocked at the door to the study. Then again, more insistently. Finally, the door opened and Harry Osborn, his face worn and stubbled, peered out at his butler, Bernard.
“What is it?”
”The board of directors has been trying to reach you for hours. They want to know about the merger.”
”Merger?” Harry asked, rubbing at his eyes.
”With the Brand Corporation.”
”Tell them to do what they think is best.”
”What they think is best? Mr. Osborn, you’re the majority shareholder…”
”And I have more important things to do!” Harry shouted before slamming the door in his butler’s face.
Inside the study, Harry made a bee-line for a brandy snifter from the liquor cabinet. He considered it for a moment, then put it down. No time for that now. His reflection beckoned to him and he’d waited long enough.
Even though his memory, indeed, his life, seemed like a mist of red these days, he remembered with crystal clarity three things. Spider-Man murdering his father, unmasking Spider-Man, and stabbing the knife through Norman Osborn’s image to find the Goblin’s lair. The mirror he shattered was intact now. Or so it would seem. He walked through it. The hologram rippled like quicksilver as he merged with his reflection, then was not there.
Rows upon rows of pumpkin bombs. Several gliders in various stages of repair and development. The flight suit his father had worn. And overseeing all this was the mask of the Goblin. The place was like an antic, and might have been when the house was first constructed. Cobwebs abounded, but shied away from the high-tech equipment that had been installed so recently. If Harry noted the creepy dissonance of gothic Victorian and state-of-the-art villainy, he didn’t show it.
A throne-like chair was sat in, Harry’s weight powering up the workstation in front of it. He typed on it, causing scientific equipment to rise out of the floor.
Human Performance Enhancement Formula Loaded, the computer reported as a graphic design whirlwinded onto the screen. Harry smiled and looked up. Above the workstation, lit by a candelabra below, was a huge portrait of Norman Osborn.
Harry pressed a key. Sodium Pentathol, Add Y or N? He looked up again. His father’s portrait seemed to smile. Y.
Inside the assemblage of science equipment, a needle drained liquid from one test tube and added it to the main cylinder, tinting the colorless liquid slightly green.
Harry pressed another key. Ammonium nitrate, Add Y or N? He looked up again. His father’s portrait seemed to frown in disapproval. N. Another graphic popped up, and another, and another. As Harry vetted his choices, the serum became a darker green…
***
Peter sneezed into a Kleenex. He really should’ve waterproofed his suit. He wadded up the tissue and free-shot it into a trash can, then readied another Kleenex from his pack. He would have to duck into a convenience store to buy another one soon. Then again, he was going to a hospital. It wasn’t like they’d not have tissues… would it?
Getting access to Octavius had been tricky. First, he’d finagled a press pass from Jameson by playing the photography card. And it was true. If Octavius remembered him (as he obviously did, for agreeing to meet him… gulp), then there was a good chance he would allow Peter to take some pictures. It made Peter feel like a paparazzo creep to photograph someone in recovery, but he told himself it wasn’t for money, it was to make sure Otto was really… Doc Ock no more?
Peter grimaced. He really had to get a new inner monologue.
After an elevator ride that had Peter miserably contemplating how fast he could get upstairs if he just jumped through the roof access and crawled, Peter disembarked with a disgusting variety of tissue paper wads in need of disposal. He really, really should’ve waterproofed his suit.
The high-security floor was only accessible by a key that a hospital administrator had popped into the elevator when sending him off, but the beefy security guard fixed him with a nasty stare all the same. Peter sheepishly dumped the tissues, washed off his gunky hands in the drinking fountain, and wiped them on his shirt. The guard intensified his nasty stare to Nasty Stare 2.0.
“Uh, hi there. Peter Parker, here to see Otto Octavius.”
Nasty Stare 3.0.
“I’m expected.”
“You his lawyer?”
“No, I’m a photographer.” Peter held up the camera dangling off his neck. “Cheese?”
The security guard clicked an intercom and, with a suspicious look, whispered into it. Octavius’s voice fairly boomed through it in contrast. “Peter Parker? Yes, send him in.”
The guard swept out of the way and Peter squirmed past him, smiling widely all the way.
Ock’s room had, thank God, a tissue box. Peter swiped some. Besides that it was a hospital room, with a hospital smell and only padlocks on the door and window to separate it from any other room. No, there was something else. No flowers or greeting cards or any sign of sympathy. Peter felt the old familiar pain of alienation creeping up on him. No. No, he wouldn’t sympathize. Not until he was sure.
Octavius himself was sitting at a desk, lazily spinning a piece of paper around, a pen forgotten at the side of the desktop. A black eye shield protected his eyes from light, though the room’s fluorescent lamps were dimmed. With a careful tread designed to respect the seemingly oblivious Octavius’s privacy, Peter walked over and leaned over him. It was a confession.
“Peter Palmer,” Octavius said.
“Parker, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir.” Octavius stood, his tentacles weighting him down. “Brilliant, lazy. I apologize if I can’t summon up anything else, but…” He gestured to the bandages wound around his head, greasy black hair poking out between them.
“There’s not much else,” Peter assured him. “I wanted to do a paper on you and we interviewed… I mean, I interviewed you…”
Octavius nodded. “Right, right. What grade did you get?”
“A minus.”
“Wreck the curve, why don’t you?”
Peter smiled genuinely. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly a night at the opera, but there weren’t any vault doors being thrown at him yet.
Octavius trudged over to the bed, dragging his tentacles behind him. They scraped loudly on the linoleum floor. “Don’t worry about them, they’re completely powered down. They’re flying in a specialist from Norway to amputate them… Dr. Foster. The state has generously agreed to pay for the procedure. Can’t imagine why. Would you like to…?” He gestured to his back, and Peter belatedly realized he meant the camera.
“Oh! Sure. If you wouldn’t mind, Dr. Octavius.”
“If it will reassure the public…” He loosened the top of his two-piece hospital gown at the neck, opening it at either side to reveal the gruesome melted flesh where the tentacles seemed to have dipped into his body like a compound fracture. The metallic spine has also sunken into the flesh, with tendrils of skin growing over it. “As you can see, it’s seeking symbiosis. Trying to power itself on bioelectricity. I even have nerve connections still active through the waldos… like phantom limbs, one would imagine.”
A swell of pity for the broken man rose in Peter’s chest. The tentacles imprisoned him like limpid prison bars. Those had been the enemy, not Octavius. Feeling like an A-1 heel, he pressed. “So you don’t remember any of it? Doctor Octopus, the Tritium… Spider-Man?”
“No. The shock and water damaged my tentacles’ hard disks. And the process of symbiosis is making me…” Octavius took off the eye shield to rub his eyes. The area around them looked cracked, as if his skin were made of marble and someone had taken a chisel to it. “Blurry.”
Despite that, Peter felt no relief. “Well, if there’s anything I can do…”
“There is one thing.” Otto stepped toward Peter, his tentacles making weirdly musical sounds as they scraped behind him. “The fusion reactor is still mankind’s best hope for clean and renewable energy. I refuse to have it stained by my advocacy. Bring me my notes, the report Oscorp did on the accid…” he trailed off, Rosalie’s name on his lips. One of the servos in a tentacle’s claw whirred like a sawblade running down, a sleeping monster twitching.
Peter put an arm on Otto’s shoulder and the ticking stopped.
“I know I had to have miscalculated. Let me find and correct my error so another can finish my work. Don’t let these—“ he grabbed a tentacle as if throttling it and shook it at Peter “—be my only legacy.”
Peter’s head turned away, but his body didn’t follow. Just after the memory of Norman Osborn and his dying wish had darkened his mind like an oilspill came another unpleasant reminder… but this time, his duty was to the living instead of the dead. Obeying Osborn had alienated Harry, turning him from friend to… something else. And now, as if some cosmic tribunal had declared a miscarriage of justice, he was given a chance to redress the balance. This time, he could save a life instead of ruining one. No tights required.
“You’ll be remembered as Otto Octavius, gifted man of science, not Doctor Octopus. I promise you that.”
Otto smiled, and it was a far cry from the scalpel-sharp teeth bared by Doctor Octopus. “Thank you, my boy. Curt is lucky to have you for a student.”
He extended his hand for a shake and Peter took it warmly. “See you soon.”
Otto spread his arms to gesture at the room. “You know where to find me.”
Peter turned to leave as a memory bubbled to the surface of Octavius’s fragile mind.
“How’s the girlfriend, by the way? Things work out with her?”
Peter’s blood froze. He turned back to Otto with a new, strangling deliberation in his movement. “She’s good. We’re good. Everything’s good.”
Otto smiled and nodded. “Good. I love a happy ending.”
***
By the time Harry was no longer able to hold his eyes open, the serum had become a green just this side of black. Whispers haunted his sleep… built in intensity. Suddenly:
”Harry!”
Jerking awake, Harry looked for the source of his name. He didn’t look far. The computer monitor’s screen had been replaced by an image of Norman Osborn, so vivid that Harry could’ve reached out and touched him if he wanted to. He didn’t want to.
”Harry…” Norman said again, no longer as harsh. The gracious dad instead of the stern…
”Father?”
”It’s time, Harry,” Norman said, his face reflected in the serum. Distorting with the fluid’s ripples. “Time to finish what I started.”
Tension pinched Harry’s frontal lobe, boiled its way out the inside of his eye sockets. ”But… Peter would…”
”Stop sniveling!” his father shouted. “You’re an Osborn, start acting like it!”
Like darkness vanquished by dawn, Norman faded away. His last words echoed inside Harry’s brain, the lair he sat in. “Acting like it… acting like it…”
Serum synthesized.
Harry turned away from the blinking computer screen, right into the Goblin’s mask. It was staring right at him, staring into his soul with empty eye sockets. Trembling, Harry picked it up. The mask shook in his hands. Lurched toward his face. Defensively, Harry threw it across the room.
”No!”
Close to screaming, Harry stumbled out of the room. He came back with an axe he’d grabbed from a suit of armor on display. Half-crazed, he found Norman Osborn in the reflection of a glass chemical vault.
”What are you doing, Harry?” his dad asked.
”I don’t want this!”
He smashed the reflection’s face in with the axe. The chemicals inside sloshed out onto the floor. Harry didn’t stop there. More chemical vats were shattered in his cathartic rampage. The freed fluids began to mingle…
”Any of this!” Harry screamed. Each swing was bringing him back to himself, obliterating the red mist of anger and reminding him of his real father. The harsh words, the harsher discipline, the constant expectations and disapproval and bile…
Like an executioner decapitating a prisoner, he broke apart the new serum.
“Anything to do with you!”
He attacked the flight suit, hacking it into pieces. At his feet, the chemicals began to bubble and simmer…
”I’ll never be like you!”
Norman’s portrait came to life, looking at Harry with baleful, hating eyes. ”You can’t deny who you are, Harry! You are your father’s son!”
The head of Norman Osborn was reflected in Harry’s brown eyes as they watched each syllable enunciated.
“You will always be my son!”
The chemicals exploded like the wrath of Norman Osborn himself. Harry was blown across the room, his clothes burnt from his body. He hit a concrete wall so hard he cracked it.
A thick, fat, green cloud rolled out of the mixed fluids and crept along the floor. In Harry's mind's eye, the gas seemed to form faces; demented specters with their mouths twisted into sneers. But Harry was not afraid. He was defiant. With his last breath, he challenged them to do their worst.
The vapor oozed over Harry as he lost consciousness, grew over his body like vines covering ruins. The gas almost leapt down his throat, like exhaling in the cold reversed.
Harry only choked once.
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Date: 2009-03-24 11:54 pm (UTC)