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seriousficHe left it impaled in the glider. The blade severed something vital and soon enough the glider ran out of juice. It sputtered. Died. Harry slumped down the wall, pale and pathetic and vulnerable.
“What are you waiting for?” Harry asked, almost gently. The tone was leaving his skin, his eyes. “Do it. You know you want to. Send me to my father!”
Peter pulled the knife away. “You’re already with him. If you want to be the martyr, if you want me to be the villain… I’m not going to give it to you.” He pulled the caps off some canisters. They were marked as flammable.
”I’ll kill you!” Harry screamed, trying to get up but only succeeding in sprawling across the floor.
”You’re welcome to try…” Peter armed several pumpkin bombs in a display case. They flashed, but didn’t go off.
”You can’t… you can’t let me live! I know your secret!”
Peter stopped. He stopped right in his tracks. “Okay, Harry. Tell the world what you know about me. Scream it from the rooftops, for all I care. I'll deal with it. I always deal with it.” He walked away.
Harry laughed. A cracked, joyless sound. He was still laughing hysterically as Peter set him down, tied up, on the neighboring rooftop. He kept laughing as his lair exploded, Osborn Manor dying forever, its death throws growing in intensity with each new explosion ripping through the building, until he saw Spider-Man swinging away from it.
***
Peter pulled off the top of his costume. Grabbed some towels and pressed them to his wounds. Splashed water on his face and washed the blood off his hands. Bandaged himself. Changed into his street clothes.
Then, finally, he sat on the edge of his bed. Not crying, not even moving. Just... sitting.
There was a knock at the door.
”Peter Parker?”
”It's open,” Peter said quietly.
The door swung open. “Mr. Parker, I have bad news…” a police officer said, someone who might hunt down Spider-Man without remorse or support him in his hour of need. Someone who could go home and leave the job behind. “Mary-Jane Watson has been in an accident. She's currently being treated at the Marshall Thurman Memorial Hospital.”
”Treated? She's okay?”
”She's in critical condition. In surgery right now...”
Peter pushed past the policeman and ran up the stairs. He didn’t even bother to change into his costume before he started swinging.
***
J. Jonah Jameson was speechless for once. All he did was listen as the TV anchorman laid it all out.
“In other news, corporate raider Roderick Kingsley, frequently accused of insider trading but never convicted, was found dead in his apartment by police, the victim of an apparent hanging. The fact that his noose was composed of the same type of webbing that the vigilante Spider-Man uses has made Spider-Man the prime suspect in the murder. Not without reason, it would appear. Forensics of the material left behind by the Hobgoblin and interrogation of weapons designer Donald Menken has revealed that Oscorp was responsible for researching and developing the glider, armor, and other tools used by the Green Goblin to terrorize this city.”
Jameson muted it. There wasn’t much more he could listen to. He looked up at Robertson.
“How’s the Watson girl?”
Robertson spread his arms. “Still in the hospital. It doesn't look good. She's slipping in and out of consciousness... the scans aren't complete, but they think she has severe brain damage. At this point, she could go into a coma or worse at any time.”
”Pay her hospital bills. All of them.”
”Jonah?”
“She's Parker's girl, isn't she? That makes her Bugle. That makes her family.”
***
What Peter could see of Mary-Jane’s body past the hospital gown was mostly bruises. A brace covered her graceful neck. He got closer, but it just brought more damage into focus. He dropped to his knees. And he still couldn’t cry.
“Oh, baby, I'm so sorry...”
“Peter...” The word was so quiet that the only way Peter knew it wasn’t his imagination was that Mary-Jane’s lips had parted.
“MJ?”
”You… came...”
”As fast as I could.”
”Is... it over?”
”All of it.”
”I know... I promised... I wouldn't ask this... but could you... stay... with me?”
”Anytime.”
”Good... I'm going to... take a little nap now... wake me before my audition...”
”I will, Mary-Jane. I will...”
The color seemed to seep out of her, like she was sinking deeper and deeper underwater. Her eyes closed up and her lips froze, parted in mid-exhale. The next moment, she took a subtle breath. The moment after that, she let it out. That was all.
Peter reared up, feeling a hot blush of shame circling his spine up and down… the insurance agent asking him about an accident, the teacher asking him about the fight he’d started. And all he could do was stand there. That was all.
“Who are you?” someone asked. “How did you get in here?”
“He’s her boyfriend,” someone else said, dully familiar. One of Mary-Jane’s friends, Gwen, that was her name, Gwen, just another shadow cast by MJ and now the light was gone.
”That still doesn’t explain…”
Something Gwen did made the doctor back down. He left. Peter didn’t notice. He barely noticed when Gwen pulled up a chair and sat down beside him.
“You okay?” she asked.
Peter nodded.
”Gwen Stacy. I’m her best friend.”
Peter shook her offered hand without moving much. The cut on his cheek had reopened, begun to bleed. Gwen saw.
“You look pretty cut up.”
”Got into a fight.”
”Did you win?”
”Nobody won.”
***
Peter walked into the hospital boiler room feeling like his lungs wouldn’t accept air, his heart would turn away blood. His broken wrist had a cast around it now, Gwen’s doctors fixing him up and looking away long enough for him to leave. He had still been wearing the goddamn suit under his clothes. But now he had it in his hands, still wet with blood and pain.
He flung the door to the boiler open.
There comes a time in every man's life where he has to look back on it all and ask himself "Was it worth it?" I look back on all the people I've saved, all the villains I've defeated... and then I see the ones I love, the ones that always pay the price. Uncle Ben, Aunt May, Mary-Jane, Harry. So when you add it all up, the only answer you can end up at is... No.
Peter closed the door. Clutched his costume to his chest and walked away.
My story is one of tragedy and sorrow. I lost my parents. I lost my uncle. I lost my best friend. And now I've lost the woman who meant the most to me. But perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that I can't change or stop. I can't neglect my responsibility. And that is why I'll never stop being Spider-Man.
He walked out of the hospital, out into the cold night. Looked up at the skyscrapers, the people. The city.
His city.
He started walking, just another face in the crowd.
Once upon a time, a woman I loved very much asked me what I would do without her. I didn’t have an answer for her then… and I still don’t. But I’ll keep on living. Because as much as I need her… the world needs Spider-Man.
END OF ACT 1
INTERMISSION
Octavius had begged, he had pleaded, but they would not listen when he told them his children were innocent of his crimes. They just hadn’t listened!
Now, under armed guard, his tentacles secured to the walls, he waited for the executioner’s axe.
The surgeons offered him sedatives before they went about maiming him. He refused. The worse it hurt, the better he felt. Now he knew exactly how much pain Spider-Man would be in when he was ripped limb from limb by the arms of Doctor Octopus.
The_Lurker
Date: 2009-10-02 08:23 am (UTC)I can't hate Harry, for some reason. I tried but i just can't. I'm not sure how redeemable he is at this point, but i so want to find out, even if he keeps being evil. But then again, if the real SM3 taught me something, it was that no evil is to great that it can't be Butlered to good again.
MJ's ( Alicia Witt, MJ needs to be a real redhead) death scene. It was amazing. 'That was all.' Great line.Just great. And 'Nobody won.', so true.
Your writing style keeps getting better chapter after chapter. I enjoyed this fic immensely. Way to fix SM3!