Peter sat on his bed for most of the day; staring at the flakes of paint that were starting to peel off the walls of his apartment. He was so shocked that he could barely force himself to blink. Protonslaught had managed to save Annabelle at the very last minute, but that was of little consolation to someone who just found out that their best friend was trying to kill them.
At this point, he should have been used to it. After all, his role model had become Doctor Octopus, his old roommate was a villain called Boomerang, one of his High School professors was the notorious criminal Jackal, the son of his boss at The Daily Bugle had briefly been Man-Wolf, and the creator of F.E.A.S.T (a shelter for homeless people that Aunt May volunteered at) was Mister Negative. It was unsettlingly common for Peter to know these villains outside of the suit...but this was different. This was Harry. His best friend since childhood, and one of the few people that could actually console Peter after his uncle died.
Long story short, this sucked. Hard. There really wasn't anything that Peter could compare it to. It was like...losing a limb or something. He wasn't going to let it happen. Not without at least trying to convince Harry away from the path he had chosen. So, with a heavy heart and a broken belt struggling to keep his pants secure, Peter finally left his apartment.
It wasn't long before Oscorp was towering above him, casting shadows across the ground like an ominous warning. The steps leading into the building was absolute chaos; people running in and out as if it were a mini-marathon. It was always busy there, which was why Peter rarely visited Harry at work.
Inside of the building was even worse; a winding labyrinth full of chattering tourists and busy scientists. It was a miracle that Peter even managed to find his way to Harry's office in such an atmosphere. Somehow he did though, and when he arrived his friend was sorting through a pile of documents left sprawled across his desk.
"Bad time?" Peter asked sheepishly, earning a rather loud gasp of fright from the young billionaire.
"Pete?" Harry breathed a sigh of relief, but despite his tone, he didn't look quite like himself. His hair was dishevelled and his eyes were lined with dark circles. "Not at all! Did you need something?"
Peter chewed on his bottom lip and kicked his sneaker against the carpet. Harry's casual attitude was making this harder. It was only now that he realised that he had no idea how to bring his concerns into the light without revealing himself as Spider-Man."Oh, uh, not really. Just thought I'd...check up on you."
Harry raised an impossibly neat eyebrow in Peter's direction, then managed to force a smile. "I appreciate it, but as you can see, I'm completely fine."
"Yeah, it's just that...are you sure there isn't anything you want to talk to me about?"
Harry's expression shifted to one of absolute bewilderment. "No, why would there be?"
Peter tried not to look directly into Harry's eyes. It felt as if he could see Norman in them; the psychotic grin and the blood of Gwen Stacy on his hands. "I don't know... You've been acting a little strange of late, and I just wanted to make sure that you were alright."
"Strange?" Harry repeated sceptically. "We haven't seen each other since your birthday, Pete."
"Right...but at my birthday you were acting weird." Peter tried again, but it was obvious that he was reaching for any excuse at this point.
Harry dropped a handful of documents back onto his desk and sauntered towards his childhood friend, hands dug deep into his pockets and brow furrowed in slight confusion. "Okay, what's this about? If you have something to say, then say it plainly."
Peter gulped back the bile that had arisen in his throat. He felt physically nauseous at the idea of this conversation becoming more tense than it already was...but this was a serious matter. Harry had almost killed Annabelle, and that couldn't be ignored. "I know who you are, Harry. I know what you've done."
Harry's eyes flared with something unfamiliar. A deep, unfiltered rage that boiled in his veins and tore at his mind. "And who exactly am I?"
Finally, Peter met his gaze and in that moment he knew that his friend was gone. There was too much hostility...too much anger. "You're not who I thought you were. You're a criminal...an attempted murderer."
There was a second, however brief, in which Harry's jaw clenched in irritation. Still, he managed to wipe that expression off his face for long enough to feign ignorance. "What are you on about?"
"Don't play dumb...please. This is hard enough without having to drag it out."
The room fell into utter silence. Even the hurried shuffling of the Oscorp employees outside of the office couldn't puncture it. Nothing could...nothing except Harry's sudden mumbling. The only remaining Osborn shook his head, discreetly, and to no one but himself. "But...he's my best friend..."
Peter narrowed his gaze at Harry. He was acting as if he had completely forgotten that Peter was in the room, or at the very least, that he was still capable of hearing him...but the bigger question was why Harry was talking to himself in the first place. Though he had always been a relatively tortured soul, Harry had never been insane. Well, not until right now.
"Harry... I'm sorry, I just need to know why you did it." Peter pleaded with him, hoping to find some small semblance of the friend he had once treasured. "Please. You need to explain it to me."
Hardy grabbed a fistful of his own hair and pulled, frustrated, as he slumped against the distant wall. There was a window next to him, but the light shining through it didn't reach him. He was consumed only by shadow. "He...made me do it."
"Who?" Peter pressed, gripping desperately at the possibility that Harry wasn't truly a criminal; that he had been forced into it. "Who made you do it?"
As Peter lingered closer to his distressed friend, he noticed that Harry's teeth were bared animalistically. There was something else there. No, someone else. Living inside of Harry like cancer. "I can't...he'll kill me..."
At last, Peter reached his friend and grabbed him by the shoulders. He could feel them trembling beneath his hands...and that's when Peter made the most baffling discovery. Harry was crying. In all the years that Peter had known him, he had never seen him cry. He always tried to hide that part of himself...to appear stronger than he felt. Peter tried to remain strong, for Harry's sake, but the mere sight of his friend in so much pain made his eyes well up. "I won't let anyone hurt you, Harry. You know that. Tell me what's going on."
Something shifted in Harry's eyes. He looked up at Peter, tears falling down his face even more rapidly than before, and latched onto Peter's arms like a vice. It all happened so quickly. Too quickly for Peter to completely comprehend the situation. Within less than a minute, Harry had pulled Peter over to the window, and thrown him out with strength almost equal to his own.
The glass shattered around Peter, tearing into flesh and reflecting his own shocked visage as he fell. Harry stood somewhere above him, unable to watch, and yet still present as his friend plummeted towards his ultimate demise.
Shock twisted around Peter's entire body like barbed wire. The wind stung against his skin and emptied his mind of everything besides the man that had pushed him out of the window. Peter had almost hit the ground when he finally aimed a bunch of web fluid back towards the Oscorp building and swung himself back up.
Harry had turned away from the smashed window when Peter threw himself back through it, but the sound of ragged breathing quickly grasped his attention again.
"You...tried to kill me..." Peter's voice shook with horror. Never in his worst nightmares had he imagined Harry being capable of such a betrayal.
The young Osborn tensed at the sound of his voice, then very slowly, glanced over his shoulder. The crystalline tears were still sparkling against his cheeks, but that sorrow was quickly replaced with horror. His face completely drained of all colour, as if he was staring at a phantom, and he stumbled backwards on unsteady feet. The web shooter on Peter's right wrist was somewhat visible now and still had a strand of the rope-like substance connected to it.
"No..." Harry mumbled, eyes wide and breath growing shallow. "It can't be you...it can't be..."
Peter mirrored Harry's disbelief, but not for the same reasons. Instead, he stood motionless by the window - staring betrayal in the face. "How could you?...you're like a brother to me, Harry."
His words never reached Harry - the boy's mind was somewhere else, consumed by a darkness that very few could even comprehend. "You killed my father..."
"No. I didn't." Peter snapped back. He had wanted to tell him that for so long now...but he never thought he'd get the opportunity. "Norman was the one trying to kill me...but I jumped out of the way and he was impaled by his own glider. I promise you, Harry. I didn't want him to die."
The shock on his face soon flared into unbridled rage. His face, which had turned a sickly pale, was now dark red. "You're lying. After everything we did for you, Pete...my father treated you like his own son, and you killed him!"
"That's not true. You have to know that by now." Peter almost sounded like he was pleading with Harry. "He was The Green Goblin...he was killing people. He killed Gwen!"
"No, you killed Gwen."
It wasn't true...not really, and yet Peter was suddenly racked with guilt. The memory of his ex-girlfriend's death played in his head over and over again, like a skipping record that never allowed him to move forward or backwards. Norman Osborn had thrown her off the Brooklyn Bridge, but it wasn't the fall that killed her. It was Peter's own idiocy. He had aimed a web at her, and in his panic, he didn't consider the sheer velocity that she was falling with. He managed to grab her mere inches away from the water, but the web had stopped her fall too suddenly. It jolted her entire body to a halt, and the resulting whiplash broke her neck.
Peter spent the better part of four years trying to convince himself that it wasn't his fault, but he never truly believed it. He knew that, though he wasn't the one who pushed her off that bridge, he had been the one that killed her.
"No...you weren't there. You don't know what happened." Peter hissed. "You need help, Harry. You're losing it. I'm taking you in."
"Taking me in? Under what charges exactly? You're the one that broke into my office with nothing but wild accusations...and I'm sure the police will be eager to know the identity of their precious Spider-Man." Harry's hand lingered beneath his desk and pressed against the red panic button that was hidden there. An alarm sounded and Peter's heart almost stopped completely. If he was caught here, Harry would surely say that he was a threat and he'd be taken to the police station. Peter couldn't allow that to happen. Not now that Harry knew his secret.
Peter's gaze never left Harry as he stepped back towards the smashed window. Somehow, it felt like he was staring at an empty shell; a husk of the friend he once had. He had been hollowed out and replaced with an unfathomable amount of hatred and paranoia. He looked exactly like Harry Osborn, but he had the eyes of a stranger.
Just as the security personnel reached their current level in the building, Peter flung himself from the window and swung out of sight.
He only landed when he was positive that he had slipped out of their field of vision, and covered his web shooter's with the sleeve of his shirt. Peter was already shaking with the effort it took not to break down when he finally walked out of the alleyway...and that only worsened when he found himself face-to-face with a newspaper stand. Two issues were laid out, both mocking Peter's already fragile state.
One sported a blurry picture of The Green Goblin carrying Annabelle away with the headline 'New Goblin Kidnaps College Student', and the other was a newer photo from their recent fight. It read 'Is Spider-Man Working With The New Green Goblin?'. He didn't know where they could have possibly gotten that idea during their intense battle, but propaganda and lies apparently sold more papers than the truth. For instance, the disappearance of Hexterminator was still rife with conspiracy theories that they published weekly.
Peter turned away from the newspaper stand rather bitterly. He needed to get away...somewhere quiet where he could scream at the top of his lungs and punch something down. Unfortunately, due to his refusal to lift his gaze from the ground, he soon found himself bumping into someone and jumping back in shock.
Now, there were millions of people living in New York. Peter could have bumped into any of them...but that's not how his luck worked. Of all the individuals stalking those streets, Peter had knocked into the one person that he wished that he hadn't.
"Omg, Pete?!" Annabelle gasped in shock. "Weird how we're always running into each other, right?"
Typically, Peter would have been glad to see her but he was on the verge of tears, and two seconds away from crumbling. He didn't want her to witness his descent into mental instability, and so he tried his best to hold his emotions in place. "Yeah...hey, uh, are you alright?
"Me? Yeah, I'm great!" Annabelle grinned and adjusted her baggy jacket higher onto her shoulders. "Why?"
Peter couldn't even muster the energy to be confused by her nonchalant reply, though it was still quite perplexing. "Because...you were kidnapped?"
Annabelle's eyes widened and she rubbed the back of her head sheepishly. "Oh! Right! Umm..."
"Protonslaught saved you, didn't she?"
The girl blinked cluelessly at him before vigorously nodding her head. "Yeah! That's exactly what happened. I didn't really know her name but she was super cool...she fought like 60...no, more like a hundred dudes to get to me!"
"Really?" Peter struggled to reply without sounding too depressed. "Thought they said there was no one there in the paper."
"That's 'cause she scared them all off."
Usually Annabelle's quirky nature was somewhat charming to Peter, to the point where just being in her presence brightened his day...but this time was different. Her knee-high socks depicting various pictures of cucumbers simply didn't bring him the joy that it typically did. "Look, I gotta go. I'm sorry."
Peter tried to leave, more for Annabelle's sake than his own. He wasn't sure how much longer he could pretend like his life wasn't falling apart at the seams...but before he could take more than two steps he felt Annabelle's hand grab his own. He turned, surprised by the sudden contact but still unable to conceal his pain.
"Pete...you're bleeding." Annabelle frowned, and Peter finally examined himself fully. Blood was starting to soak his clothes from where the glass had pierced his skin. "What happened?"
"I...just fell. I'm fine." Peter murmured, trying not to meet her gaze in fear that she would see right through his facade.
"I don't believe you." Annabelle replied, bringing her free hand up to graze against his cheek tenderly. Peter wanted so desperately to melt into her touch, but his mind was racing and his muscles were so tense that it was starting to make his body ache.
"It's nothing." Peter sighed. "I just found out that my friend wasn't who I thought he was...that's it. Really."
"Et Tu, Brute?" Annabelle replied and Peter's eyes darted up in absolute bewilderment.
"E-Excuse me?"
"They were Caesar's last words, after he was betrayed by his best friend...means 'You too, Brutus?'."
Peter stared at her in a hefty mixture of confusion and disbelief. He should have expected her to say something completely random and unrelated to his sorrow...and, strangely enough, it brought him a small amount of comfort. Now that Annabelle's strange reply had pulled him out of his own distress, Peter suddenly realised that Harry knew everything about his life; including the people he cared for most.
Peter's face quickly became bereft of all colour, and regret hit Annabelle straight in the stomach. "God, I'm sorry...that's probably not the best thing to say. I'm not great at comforting people..."
"N-No...I appreciate the thought." Peter quickly responded, dread flooding his system and overwhelming any other emotion he had previously been feeling. He needed to gather anyone that Harry might target, and get them to safety...maybe even contact Clint for extra protection. He'd start with Annabelle and Aunt May, then he'd fetch MJ. "I actually need your help with something. Is there any chance you could come with me to my aunt's house? I need someone to keep her company while I run a few errands."
Annabelle was understandably a little sceptical about this strange request, but she didn't argue with him. She simply smiled and nodded eagerly. "Sure, if it'll help!"
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*Peter's face when Annabelle says Et Tu, Brute?*