Spiderman 3 (32 page)

REFLECTIONS

Peter remembered the days when the Malibu diner was the best that he and Harry could afford. All right, he admitted to himself, the best that
he
could afford. Harry could probably have bought the whole place with no trouble. But Peter would never have stood for Harry picking up the tab—as Harry could have well afforded—and Harry would never have tolerated Peter spending more money than was good for him. So the Malibu it had been whenever the two of them felt like going out to eat.

Come to think of it, Peter realized, it wasn't as if he were all that much better off financially these days either.

Sitting across from Harry, trying to express the frustration and confusion he was feeling, he brought his friend up to speed about the latest turnaround with MJ. Peter was only having a cup of coffee, while Harry was also having a piece of blueberry pie with his. "Things were fine," Peter insisted. "Then, suddenly, she says there's another guy. Gets this thing in her head, says I'm not there for her."

"She's been having a tough time," Harry said, sounding more sympathetic to Mary Jane than he was to Peter… which, Peter had to admit, annoyed him slightly. "Her career, singing waitress at a jazz club. Not exactly what she had in mind for herself."

Peter blinked in confusion, feeling as if he had just missed a section of the conversation. "A singing waitress… ? What about the show?"

"Well, she was fired," Harry said matter-of-factly. "Didn't she tell you?"

Slumping back in the chair, Peter was totally blindsided.
My God, that explains so much… almost everything… but how could I have known… how could
…

"She got fired?" Peter was unable to grasp it. "She told
you
, but she didn't tell
me
? What's going on? I don't get it!" Trying to recapture the high ground of being the victimized half of the couple, Peter said, "You didn't hear me, Harry! There's another guy!"

Harry paused, drumming his fingers on the table. Then, calmly, he said, "That's why I asked you to have coffee with me."

"What are you talking about?"

"The other guy, Pete…"He waggled his head slightly, then shrugged in a "What can you do?" manner.

Peter wondered just how many shocks to the system he was supposed to endure in just one outing. "What? Wait a minute.
You're
…"

"She came to me one afternoon." Harry tried to sound saddened, but a small smile on his face belied whatever his tone might have implied. "Lost. And she was troubled. She needed someone, and
I was there for her
." He made certain to emphasize the words Peter had used. "I've always loved her, you know that. It just… started."

Peter laughed in incredulity. It was as if he were watching some sort of play unfold in which everyone was a stupendously bad actor. "I don't believe this! I don't believe you!"

"I'm sure you don't," said Harry, sounding sympathetic but not looking it. "I'm sorry, pal. I'm not here to convince you. I just want you to know."

They stared at each other for a few moments, then Peter got up to leave, tossing a few dollars on the table to cover his side of the check. As he did so, the waitress appeared with a pot of coffee. "Can I warm you up?" she asked Harry. At Harry's nod, she refilled his cup. "How was the pie?"

"Soooo good." Harry grinned as Peter walked out.

Peter was in turmoil. His anger was getting in the way of his making sense of it all. How could Mary Jane do this to him? How could Harry? What sort of friends were they? The notion that Harry would move in, take advantage of Mary Jane if she was in that kind of state… and Mary Jane! That she would rebound from him to Harry… and why? It wasn't as if they had even officially broken up. It was completely insane…

The two words lodged in his head, coming to the forefront of his musings.

Completely. Insane.

Peter had far too much experience with someone like that.

Standing in the street outside the coffee shop, Pet slowly turned to face Harry, who was watching him through the window. Harry met his gaze, saw the suspicion in Peter's eyes, and seemed to welcome it.

Harry's mouth twisted in a fierce and cruel smile. His expression no longer bore the slightest resemblance to any that Peter's friend might have worn. But the question was moot: this wasn't his friend, by any stretch of the imagination, who was looking at him now.

This was the face of insanity. This was the Goblin.

Before Peter could make a move, the waitress leaned in to clear the dishes from the table, blocking Harry from Peter's view. When she moved aside, Harry was gone.

He had to have gone out the back. Peter considered vaulting over the top of the restaurant, but far too many people were around. Plus who knew what resources Harry might have lying in wait, or who might get hurt if another struggle broke out.

There was no way Peter was going to allow Harry to choose the time and place of their next battle… a battle that Peter was now eagerly anticipating. As he ran toward home and his costume, he pondered that he shouldn't really be looking forward to such a conflict. But that concern was promptly shouted down by the part of him that wanted to knock that leering grin off Harry's face once and for all.

Harry Osborn, feeling more self-assured than he had in ages, sat in the great room of his town house, calmly stirring a martini with a long spoon. Suddenly he stopped, sensing a change in the atmosphere of the room. He turned and saw a figure standing in the doorway behind him.

He exhaled a relaxed sigh, as if an old friend had come to call and have a pleasant chat. "What took you so long?"

"That was quite a performance," came the taut voice of Peter Parker.

"It wasn't all show. She
did
come to me." Harry gingerly put the martini down on the table next to him, taking care not to spill it.

He expected Peter to continue with the back-and-forth. To try to appeal to his better nature. To insist in mewling tones that Harry wasn't in his right mind, that this could all be avoided.

Instead, to his surprise, Peter advanced on him and announced, "I'm really going to enjoy this." Remaining cool in the face of the unexpected, Harry replied, "Not as much as I enjoyed it when Mary Jane kissed me. It was the same way she always kissed me. And that taste…" He sighed again, recalling. "Strawberries." He was utterly shocked as Peter hurtled through the air straight at him. Harry had about a split second to react, which wasn't remotely enough time. Peter slammed into him, sending the table and martini crashing to the floor. The combatants fell over the chair, upending it, as both Peter and Harry tumbled across the room.

Harry twisted, sending Peter flying overhead. Peter slammed into a set of shelves upon which various curios had been placed. The top shelf was jolted loose, fell onto the one below it, which fell onto the one below that, and so on until they all hit bottom, crushing all the curios into dust.

Staggering to his feet, Harry raggedly said, "You'll be hearing from my attorney about that. I hope you've got good liability insurance."

Peter wasn't listening. Instead he covered the distance between himself and Harry in one leap, sending the two of them flying backward and crashing into the mirror hanging on the wall.

Into it… and through.

They landed inside the Goblin's secret lair, and Peter looked around in confusion, startled over what he was seeing. With superhuman strength, Harry took the opportunity to grab a Sky Stick and swing it around like a baseball bat. It struck Peter in the side of the head, staggering him. Harry brought it sweeping back in the other direction… but Peter grabbed the flying device, yanked it from Harry's grasp, and tossed it aside.

He swung a punch at Harry, who ducked under it and came in fast with several quick blows to Peter's gut. Peter faltered, recovered, and fired a blot of webbing at Harry's feet. Harry tried to get out of the way, but the webbing affixed itself to him, holding fast. He tried to yank his feet free, but there was no time as Peter swung a vicious roundhouse that damned near took Harry's head off. As it was, Peter solved Harry's immobility problem, the blow so fierce that it knocked Harry right out of his webbed-up shoes. Harry was flat on his back, and Peter gave him no time to get up. He landed heavily atop Harry and, with an unbelievable ferocity, started hammering him in the face.

Harry's mind was swimming. This wasn't the Peter Parker that he'd encountered last time. To some degree, he'd counted on the notion that, in a head-to-head battle, Peter would always hold back. It was a weakness in Spider-Man's character—a reluctance to be up-front about the murdering cretin that he truly was—that Harry had come to expect. Not this time, though—Peter was cutting loose with the sort of murderous intensity that he had no doubt unleashed upon Norman Osborn.

Harry was on the receiving end of as brutal a pounding as anyone had ever endured. If it weren't for the heightened strength that the green gas had given him, he'd have been long dead. As it was, the room was spinning around him, and Peter wasn't letting up for even a second. The blows came fast and furious; Harry couldn't even begin to mount a defense. His head slumped back, and Peter cocked a fist, looking ready to punch it straight through Harry's head and into the floor below.

Through lips that were thick and swollen, Harry managed to say, "You gonna kill me like you killed my father?"

"Your father was a monster!" Peter shouted. "And you know it! He tried to stab me in the back! I jumped out of the way. He got what he meant for me." He brought his face close to Harry's, and Harry saw a terrifying grin. "He never loved you. Who could love you? No one. Not your father. Not Mary Jane."

Peter was just trying to give back some of the same mind games that Harry had dished out, but he was infuriated nevertheless. "My father loved me!"

"He despised you!
You were an embarrassment
!"

Reveling in tormenting Harry, Peter let down his guard for a second, and Harry seized the opportunity. He brought a fist around and slugged Peter in the side of the head, then hit him again, and a third time. Peter fell sideways off him, and Harry crab-walked backward, scuttling quickly toward a rack that was lined with pumpkin bombs. In a crouch, he grabbed one off the shelf. Harry was having trouble seeing, his right eye having swollen closed, the left not far behind, so he hurled the bomb as best he could.

Through the slit of vision he had left, he saw Peter snag the bomb with a web strand. Harry reached for a second one, then he froze as Peter snapped the bomb around like a yo-yo and sent it hurtling right back at Harry. He threw up his hands to try to ward it off. Too slow. The bomb exploded in Harry's face, blasting him backward, the room immediately filling with acrid smoke.

Harry hit the floor, the nerve endings in his face screaming as if they were on fire.
He's going to kill me. This is it. I'm helpless. He's going to snap my neck or stab me in the chest. I'm sorry, Dad. I tried. I tried so hard
…

But the death blow never came. Only silence. Deciding that he had nothing to lose in trying to get out of here, Harry started hauling himself across the floor. He was having no trouble gripping the surface, as his hands were sticky with blood. He registered this fact distantly, as if it were relevant to someone else.

Every movement agonizing, he managed to make his way out of the Goblin's lair. He squinted through his one working eye and saw no sign of Peter. So typical. He had Harry at his mercy, and instead of killing him, he'd decided to leave him alive so that Harry could worry about the next time he'd attack.

Well, that was going to be a mistake, oh, yes. Because next time…

With smoke billowing past him, Harry looked down and saw a large shard of the shattered mirror door on the floor in front of him. He glanced into it and gasped, wondering who the hell that poor, grotesque devil was looking back at him. It took Harry a few moments to realize that it was himself.

His horrified, sustained scream resounded through the penthouse.

Some distance away, the black-suited Spider-Man landed on a rooftop, but it was Peter Parker who reacted to the far-off howling that he knew, beyond question, was his friend.

He pulled off the mask and forced himself to remain there, motionless, until the scream finally faded.

At first he felt guilty over what had transpired, but his heart hardened. He'd left Harry alive after Harry had tried, on more than one occasion, to kill him. Harry Osborn was the single greatest threat in Peter's life—knowing his identity, capable of coming at him at any moment. Yet Peter had chosen to be merciful. What reason did he have to feel guilty over the fate that Harry had brought upon himself, just as Harry's father had likewise done?

"He deserved worse," Peter said tightly.

And so did Mary Jane. As demented as Harry had been, Peter was now convinced that he was telling the truth about Mary Jane's coming to him. And she had told him about what was going on in her life without mentioning one word to Peter. She wasn't blameless in any of this.

He wasn't about to go find Mary Jane and pound on her, obviously. But other means of revenge could be just as satisfying and—most important—wouldn't risk getting blood on his nice black suit.

But he had other priorities to attend to. First and foremost…

… hunting season was now open.