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Harry Osborn sat. He sat and he stared and he tried to hold back the tears he felt clawing at the pit of his throat.
There was a tiny spider, so small he could hardly call it such, floating in the last dregs of some sort of compound. So many beakers littered the lab that Harry couldn’t remember what filled even half of them. The little bug could have choked in the last drops of a poison, or it might’ve drowned in an antidote—a cure that no longer mattered. Good for nothing except hurt, in the end. Like everything else in Harry’s life.
Like Harry himself.
At least the spider didn’t have to hurt anymore. Harry hoped the creature’s death had been quick and painless, but he knew it didn’t matter either way. It had fallen into Harry’s mess and now it was gone, its puny body left behind to remind Harry that he had done this. A grating, monstrous voice ripped through him, screaming that He did this. He did this. HE DID THIS.
It sounded like his own voice; it sounded like his father’s voice. It might’ve been God’s voice.
Anger boiled within him—anger that was just grief and pain and fear set aflame, lit by everyone who had ever left him. His mother, who had left him with nothing; his father, who had left him with everything; Peter, who now left him with a hole that felt like half his heart. Spider-Man had taken everything from him, just like his father said he would, and Harry couldn’t pick up the pieces—there were none to pick up.
What would his father think, knowing that Harry couldn’t make good on his promises? Even after everything, Harry couldn’t hate Peter—he couldn’t blame Peter. Peter had lied, yes, but Harry had done something infinitely worse: he had failed.
The little of Harry that was left began to crack as Harry caught himself wishing that Peter was there, that Spider-Man would finally, truly face him; not because Harry wanted to punish him—Harry just wanted Peter to hold him.
But Harry Osborn was alone, sitting in a building that stank of smoke and ghosts; a lone soul amidst a graveyard of his own making. He overturned the beaker into his left palm and viscous green liquid dripped slowly through the canyons in his skin, eventually plunking onto cold tile with faraway plops. For a moment it was almost as if the spider was alive again, its corpse sliding slightly in the chemical as it drained off Harry’s hand. Then it stilled, as Harry knew it would, yet he couldn’t stop his shoulders from shaking or the sobs that were torn from his gut.
As Harry collapsed into himself, hunched and trembling, his left fist came to rest against his heart, instinctively protecting something that was already long, long gone.