Chapter 18
Harry grimaced as his stomach tried to settle. "That was awful!" he wheezed as Spider-Man set him down gently on the rooftop.
"We're fine. You can get a cab back home after this," Spider-Man, 'Peter Parker,' reassured him. He estimated that the man was older than Harry, but younger than his father. Harry couldn't place his age, but he still had far more gray hair than Norman Osborn ever did, so far. His costume was pristine but had a rough and homespun quality to it. He was certainly poor, and half-starved given the desperate way he'd wolfed down cheap fast food. This man, who seemed to be falling apart, still somehow managed to appear more put together than Harry had ever been.
"We have powered gliders, you know, at Oscorp. I've tried them before. They feel very smooth and natural. You just go in a straight line, for starters, instead of constantly changing altitudes and…" Harry tried not to throw up and managed to succeed.
"I'm acquainted with them," the vigilante said dryly. Harry sighed. If he fought the Green Goblin before, then he already had some very bad experiences with Oscorp tech.
"Right. Sorry," Harry said gently. Harry wasn't so hapless that he couldn't put two and two together. The Green Goblin was a spree killer, with a fondness for collateral damage. Spider-Man said his entire family had been killed. Spider-Man was surprisingly gentle and easygoing, except whenever the topic of the Green Goblin or his father came up again, at which point he seemed almost murderous.
He still hoped that his father wasn't the Green Goblin. He still hoped his father had played no role in destroying the strange man's life.
'But what does it matter if your father did or didn't?' he asked himself. 'You know that he's already destroyed plenty of families just as Norman Osborn alone. Even if he isn't the Green Goblin, he belongs in a cell.'
"Where are we?" Harry asked, brushing aside Spider-Man as he tried to pat Harry on the back.
"Outside one of the Goblin's safe houses. He's got dozens all over the city, to the point where I don't know them all. But I know he likes this one the most. If we just break in, it'll trigger an alarm and bring him running. But I can fool the scanner outside and… Harry?" Spider-Man asked. The man was wearing his red mask again, but Harry could hear the concern in his voice as they approached the small console outside the bare metal doorway.
"This scanner is Oscorp tech," Harry said, giving a sad smile that transitioned to a bitter smirk. "My dad has one just outside his office, and another one at home. He's very proud of them."
"…These gloves of mine are made out of a special polymer," Peter said, holding his fingers close to Harry's eyes. "Note the pattern. If I feed it certain data, it can copy a person's fingerprints." Harry watched as the innocuous red gloves suddenly adopted ridges and patterns that perfectly mimicked the fingerprints of a human hand.
"How'd you get something like this?" Harry said in confusion. "You told me you were homeless, so how do you have this kind of tech?" he accused.
"I am homeless," the man said with a shrug. "I still have contacts though. The Fantastic Four don't publicly get involved in vigilante work like this, because it's still illegal. But they're still superheroes. I got this from Reed Richards."
"H-how do you know Reed Richards?" asked a surprised Harry.
"I have a very complicated past. Your father played a big part in it. I could give you the full truth, but we'd be here all night if I did. I'd like to wait for another day, okay?" he said calmly.
"Did my father kill your family?" Harry could no longer stop himself from asking. Spider-Man froze, as if Harry had sucker-punched him.
"A few of them, a long time ago. The rest… the rest were my fault." He paused, as if reconsidering something. Or else listening to something that Harry couldn't hear. "Or maybe it wasn't anyone's fault. I'm not trying to kill your father, Harry. It won't bring anyone back, so it's useless. I just don't want him to kill anyone else."
"Why do any of this, if it's not for revenge?" said a frustrated Harry. He couldn't figure this man out. Not in the slightest. How could a man who had nothing still muster the strength to live like this? He desperately wanted to know.
He desperately wanted to be like him too.
"With great power must also come great responsibility," Spider-Man said with a shrug.
"What self-help book did you pull that from?" Harry barked back, almost reflexively.
"My uncle, before he died." Harry felt ashamed of himself, but the older man just chuckled, his tone of voice becoming sardonic and yet somehow more relaxed. "Relax, your father didn't kill that one," he said. The man was witty, but his humor was like that of a condemned man in front of a firing squad.
"It just means that I'm not about to look the other way when it comes to your dad. I don't have anything else. I only do this now. People are dying, and families are grieving. It scarred you. It scarred me. I'm tired of putting up with killers running wild. That's all this is," the man said plainly.
Harry believed him. He had the presence, and the confidence, to make Harry want to believe him. He was like one of the old pulp adventurers who had come back to life, older than even Captain America, like the Black Marvel or the Masked Raider. Those were the kind his father said he liked best, back when his mother was alive, and they were all so much happier. The two of them would watch old black and white film reels together when Harry was a boy, fictionalizations of real events. His father would smile at the grim, lonely, square-jawed, and ruthlessly honest zealots like the one that stood before Harry now.
"You really are a genuine superhero, you know that?" Harry said with a slight smile.
The man only ground his teeth beneath his mask and shook his head. "I've been told that before. Decide what I am after I stop your father," the man said gruffly. Spider-Man was apparently unaware that his dismissive humility only reinforced the image, sending a thrill of childish excitement down Harry's spine.
Harry was weak. He was thrusting all the responsibility of stopping his father onto a stranger who reminded him of more nostalgic times. He put all the hope he had of saving his father from himself into Spider-Man's hands, and it was a move his dad would have called cowardly, and shameful. But a bitter, angry part of him now liked the thought. That if his father thought he was a coward, then he'd simply make a coward's play and put everything in the tattered vigilante's hands.
He reigned in his own feelings of spite with a deep breath. He'd completed detox, but the thought of crawling behind alcohol and pills still tempted him. But those were just coping mechanisms, his psychiatrists had told him, and maladaptive ones at that. Harry would never get better until he addressed the root of his issue.
"Get us inside. Use my dad's fingerprints. I think they'll work," Harry said with what he hoped sounded like resolve, rather than anxiety and fear. Spider-Man simply nodded his head and pressed a gloved hand against the scanner.
A green light flashed above the metal door, as it sprang open. "Welcome home," a toneless female voice echoed.
Harry buried his face in his hands. "Harry…" Spider-Man began, but Harry only shook his head.
"That was my mom's voice. If the fingerprints didn't clinch it, I think that did," Harry whispered mournfully, even as he tried to joke. If Spider-Man could do gallows humor, then so could Harry Osborn. He'd already expected this, but joking about it gave him some measure of power over it. It lessened his feelings of disgust and betrayal.
At the root of every issue lay his father. They fought over it, the last time they'd spoken. He alleged that the therapists were quacks, and that Harry simply wanted to foist all his problems onto him.
Harry said, clearly and unambiguously, that the biggest source of pain in his life was Norman Osborn. And his father never forgave him, after that. He never spoke to Harry again, after that.
And the worst part of it all was that Harry had felt nothing but relief. He was happier, and calmer, the longer he spent without talking to his father. Harry thought that if they never spoke again, it would suit him just fine. And then he heard in the news that the Green Goblin had killed a family of five, and he relapsed again. His addiction was killing him. His guilt was killing him. He'd never get better until he addressed the root cause.
He needed to get rid of the Green Goblin, no matter who he was. Or he would die. "Let's go. Let's see what my father's been getting up to," he said firmly to the masked hero.
---
The Green Goblin had lairs just like this all over the city. The costs were likely exorbitant. The fact that anyone could stumble on to the entrance of one just by taking the wrong turn down the wrong street meant that Norman's security was full of holes. And as his addiction to the Goblin Serum worsened, his mind and his memories similarly decayed.
Towards the end of their feud, Norman genuinely no longer remembered where all his hideaways were, and how many identical copies of his costume and his expensive gear were hidden away in little corners of the city. It made life miserable for Norman and Peter both, when the man who dubbed himself the Hobgoblin had found his way into Norman's hidden caches.
That was a problem for later. Peter was still working on compressing what was originally supposed to be a years-long feud with Norman into a span of a single week.
'Maybe you'll get it done before he kills Gwen and Harry again,' he thought bitterly to himself.
[We will!] the Symbiote suddenly shouted in a triumphant vow. And Peter somehow found himself smiling, despite himself. It was good to have some optimism in his mind again, at least. No matter where it came from.
The Green Goblin's refuges were always well appointed, even comfortable. There was tiled flooring, and a little purple welcome mat at the entrance. It was air conditioned, and Norman had managed to find a way to pipe in running water into them. Huge monitors and a brown leather swivel chair dominated one of the walls, with each of Norman's hideouts hidden away in their own isolated local area networks. A little walk-in closet for his costumes. A small workshop to perform maintenance, and tinker with his tech.
Like a child secreting himself away in a treehouse, Norman seemed to love the thought of having a secret base. His personal pillow fort. Peter ground his teeth. How many people died to keep the secrets of such lavish security blankets? He wasn't naïve enough to think that Norman built these places on his own, with his bare hands.
This particular hideout was an old favorite of Norman's though, Peter remembered. This was the one he used the most often. Peter glanced at the monitors and sighed, knowing that it would take him weeks to brute force his way into the Goblin's networks.
But then Harry, without a word, sat in the chair in front of the monitors and fiddled with the keyboard. Peter's old friend chewed the inside of his cheek, before experimentally tapping away a few random strings with a frown on his face. It only took three tries before Harry had managed to guess his father's password, as he glowered balefully at the screen.
"…It's the same password he uses for his wifi at home," Harry sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Psychopath or not, it seemed Norman Osborn was still a man in his fifties. Harry burst out laughing, but it was mirthless and ugly. But even at Harry's lowest points, his laughter was never as ugly as Norman's. His voice cracked, and Peter put a hand on his shoulder from behind.
"I know," Peter said softly. "I know it's a mess. But put it out of your mind, for now." Harry looked up at him, looking lost. Looking frightened. Peter shook his head. "If I thought it was hopeless… if I didn't think I could help, then I wouldn't be here. I might not make it right. But I can make it better, at least."
Harry's eyes softened, as he set his mouth into a line. He nodded his head. "Let's see what my father is getting up to…" his friend repeated, as both men began their search through the Green Goblin's secrets.
Peter's eyes scanned the monitors from behind Harry and realized that he was now sitting on a trove of information. Each file was tantamount to a confession of his crimes. Even these might still not be enough to send Norman Osborn to jail… but it would be enough to show Harry, and nearly every other man on the street, just how monstrous Norman Osborn really was.
That, more than anything, is why they'd come here.
Harry scrolled through the information stored away in his father's private network with a dumbfounded expression. Peter was already familiar with some of these files. He'd been able to snatch away snippets of data from the Goblin in the past, particularly the schematics for Osborn's glider, and his explosives. But there was one set of files that made Peter pause, as Peter suddenly placed a hand on Harry's shoulder again and pressed the finger of his other hand against the monitor, drawing Harry's attention there.
Peter pointed to the collection of files labeled BLACK CAT. "Open these," Peter said firmly. "Please," he added.
Harry simply nodded his head, right now feeling too overwhelmed to do anything but defer to Peter for the moment. Like any civilian faced with an unfolding crisis, he put his trust in the hero.
The files were a collection of audio logs. And while Harry hid it well, Peter could see the way his shoulders slumped. The way he trembled, ever so minutely, when he heard his father's voice.
"To call Felicia Hardy an unqualified success would be… excessive," Norman's voice spoke tightly from the audio log. "But perhaps a qualified success then? Yes, the experiments that made her are reproducible, and are replicable. But they remain barely comprehensible." Peter could practically hear the scowl on Norman's face as he spoke that last sentence.
"Her powers remain elusive, and difficult to quantify. Their precise scope, their limitations, their weaknesses… how does one even quantify luck? The only thing that disqualifies it from being mere placebo is the fact that anyone the Black Cat trains her attentions on undoubtedly dies. The Don Rigoletto case was the most extreme example. Rigoletto was paranoid, incredibly furtive, and frankly, downright craven," he said, and now Peter could hear Norman's smirk as well.
It set Peter on edge.
"How was it possible to kill someone who was so well guarded, so careful, and so thorough? Rigoletto had seemingly accounted for everything, even chance misfortune and unhappy accidents. But the abilities I conferred upon Miss Hardy are incredibly insidious in nature. No man is immune to tragedy. A simple car accident took the life of Rigoletto's wife and young daughter, followed by the Don's ignominious suicide. A truly perfect assassination, with no true perpetrator in sight." Osborn's recorded voice oozed with smug self-satisfaction.
Norman had broken her heart, Peter realized. He'd forced Felicia to live with a child's death on her conscience. She could never forgive herself for it.
Peter could never forgive Osborn for it.
"Felicia Hardy…" Harry intoned solemnly, recalling that he'd heard the name from Peter before. "Is she…"
"Play the next file please, Harry," Peter whispered tightly.
They listened in silence, as the next log began. "Frankenstein. The scientist, not the monster," Norman said with a smug chuckle. A private joke made only to himself. "It's all too common a story nowadays. Don Manfredi's transformation of Martin Li into Mr. Negative, for example, ended with Manfredi's demise… and Wilson Fisk able to pick up the pieces, much as he did with Rigoletto's death. People are often killed by their creations, these days. Our own method, Fisk and I's, of preventing the Black Cat from turning on us was simplistic, crude, and brute force."
It was typical of Norman. Felicia's successes were his alone. Her failings were a collective matter.
"The chemical cocktail we used to induce her abilities were keyed to respond to certain hormones her body secreted, and certain neurotransmitters her brain produced. If she is kept in a state of fear or anxiety, she'd be unable to call on her abilities. And from there, the rest was a simple matter of Pavlovian conditioning. As with Pavlov's dogs, she was taught to respond to certain stimuli in certain ways. Like a good dog, she learned to fear her betters, though it does reduce the name Black Cat to something of a poetic affectation. However crude and direct, it was a simple solution to a difficult issue," Norman's voice continued, sounding pleased with itself. Harry listened, appalled at his father. Peter listened, furious with Norman.
But Norman's voice became angry again. The man's moods were always mercurial. "But the crudity of our methods means there's so much that we can't predict. There's so much about the human brain we still don't understand. How are her powers affected by a wildly different emotional state? If we were to explore those possibilities further, there's no question that I'd be placing myself at risk. Like Frankenstein, I'd be vulnerable to a creature of my own making. Thus, in the interests of safety, it would be best if Felicia Hardy were kept in her current state for as long as possible. Fearful, despondent, and in a state of learned helplessness."
"Shit," Harry wheezed, as he began to realize just how far gone his father really was. Norman's voice remained calm, clinical, and detached. He was perfectly sane. It wasn't the Green Goblin's shrill and bombastic insanity that was echoing in these audio-logs. Only his father's composed and controlled cruelty.
"Yeah," Peter growled. "Next one."
"Peter, this is… this is just making you miserable," Harry accused.
"I'm used to it. I'll be fine. But I need to know what they did to her." Harry gave Peter a worried look, but then groaned and decided to press on. Peter needed to know. He needed to know precisely how he'd failed her.
The next log played. This would be a bad one, Peter knew. Norman sounded particularly self-assured in this one. "What one often fails to realize is how much of our own thoughts and feelings are outside our comprehension or control. We are rife with paradoxes. My wife, Emily," and Harry flinched as his mother was suddenly mentioned, "certainly was confident that she loved me. But I could see it. Her buried resentments. Her growing disdain for me… she herself couldn't even see it, but I could…" Norman's voice remained soft, calm, and detached.
"Her illness and death were acts of spite against me," Norman's voice drawled conversationally. As if he were confiding a bit of gossip to a friend. "The last bit of agency that a life with me had doubtlessly left her. I'm sure she didn't mean it, but… but it's not like I'm easy to talk to. Or easy to tolerate. I gave her no other way to vent that suffering. So, I'm culpable…"
Harry shook his head, his expression one of frustrated confusion. These were his father's real and unvarnished thoughts, and yet they didn't make even the slightest sense to Harry.
Even Peter could only guess what was going on in Norman's head. But he remembered times when he was a boy, struggling to sleep late at night, where he felt frightened at the thought that all the people he cared about were only ever hiding their disdain for him.
[Peter…] The Symbiote's thoughts were full of concern, and a desire to reassure. Peter brushed them aside, albeit calmly and gently.
He wasn't a child anymore. He grew up. But Norman didn't, and everyone else was paying the price for him. The Symbiote seemed to relax, and then went back to attending to the audio logs, just as fascinated by this peek into Norman's head as Peter was.
"My point, with this digression," Norman continued, as if he were lecturing a student, "is that our own conscious thoughts have very little to do with our unconscious feelings. Ms. Hardy is finding herself in much the same position. Since her powers are keyed to her unconscious, and uncontrollable feelings… it means her powers are also, therefore, uncontrollable. And like Emily, those feelings are killing her."
Now it was Peter's turn to flinch.
"Keeping her in a state where she's biddable, fearful, and easy to control means that the Black Cat's repressed loathing has nowhere to go but inwards. She despises herself for her weakness, and for her lack of agency. Felicia Hardy is verging on a breakdown, and her powers are unconsciously obliging her. It's a rather vicious cycle, wherein she feels self-hatred, her powers sate her desire for punishment through misfortune, and the misfortune in turn further fuels her self-loathing. Her life has taken some particularly vicious turns because of this. Her father's recent passing, for one, made all the crueler by the fact that she volunteered for these experiments because a career in petty burglary couldn't give her the means to pay for poor Walter's chemotherapy," Norman said, with a mocking laugh.
Norman continued, his voice becoming a bit more vicious. A bit more like the Green Goblin. "At this time, I don't see any need in confiding my suspicions to Wilson Fisk or Miss Hardy. As I've said before, Felicia is a flawed and unpredictable creation. I've already drafted up blueprints for a more stable iteration of the Black Cat for the future, should her powers finally get around to inflicting a tragic accident on herself. I will, at this point, consider Felicia to be a self-correcting problem. If she wanted more than that, she should not have been a disappointment," Norman finished, his voice ringing with an all too familiar spiteful sadism.
"I really do hate your father, Harry," Peter whispered.
"I think I understand why," Harry said, just as stunned by all of this as Peter was.
How had things gone this far? The Felicia Hardy he remembered would never have entertained thoughts of suicide, even at her lowest points. But the Felicia he remembered bore almost no resemblance to the sad and lonely woman he'd found in the saferoom. The woman he remembered would've been clever, and proud, and would've found her own way free of Fisk and Osborn, even without his help.
But he didn't know how to help this stranger. He didn't know how to save her from herself.
'Coward!' His own voice, a dark voice, rebuked him. If he gave up on Felicia, he'd be giving up on himself too. He'd be betraying them both.
He stood in silence, simmering in a quiet fury, struggling for an answer. But it was Harry, not the Symbiote, who first broached Peter's solitude.
"Peter… who is Felicia Hardy?" Harry asked helplessly.
Peter sighed. He didn't know how to answer that, necessarily. But he would try. Because Harry had asked him to. "Her mother died young, and her father was a thief. A legend among thieves, even. Walter Hardy. And when he went to prison, she had to become one too. She couldn't help but be good at it. When she found out her father had a terminal diagnosis… she got desperate. Somewhere down the line, she ended up in the Kingpin's grasp." It wasn't the first time something like this had happened to her. It happened back then, too, after all. The only difference was that he had been there to save her from it.
"Do you love her, Peter?" Harry asked, sounding almost frightened as he asked the question. The full extent of Norman's cruelty towards this one woman had shaken him. And he was always the type to accept guilt on his father's behalf.
"A long time ago, I might have," Peter said softly. "That doesn't matter anymore. You also want to help her now, after hearing all of this," he said knowingly.
Harry scoffed at that, before giving one last look at the monitor and rubbing at his tired eyes. "Can't even help myself," he muttered.
"This is how you help yourself," Peter reassured him, placing a hand on his shoulder. Only for Harry to angrily push Peter away, as he surged to his feet and gave him a glare that even Norman would struggle to match.
"Can we even do that? Help her? Help me? And somehow, even help my dad?" he said, gesticulating wildly with every sentence. Peter stood motionless and calm, even as his oldest friend vented his frustrations as best he could. He was devastated, and Peter was the only one who could possibly hear him right now. Peter knew he wasn't really the one that Harry was angry with.
"You think this is the first time that someone's tried to bring my father down? Tried to take him out, even by using me to get to him? Like how you're using me, right now?" Harry said, thrusting a finger at the spider on Peter's chest, before his hand trembled and slowly relaxed. The façade of anger on his face was already starting to fade.
"I'm, I'm not saying you weren't wrong to bring me in on this," he continued, trying to reclaim some of his self-control as Peter stood in silence, impassive beneath his mask. "It's good that I finally let myself start to see what kind of person my father really is." Harry's mouth slowly curled up into a vindictive and broken grin, so much like his father's smile, even as tears slowly took shape in the corners of his eyes.
"He used to tell me all the time, what a terrible son I was. What a terrible person I was. He must have been laughing behind his mouth with every word. He's a hundred times more awful than I ever was, from the very start!" he shouted, doubtlessly recalling every bitter word Norman had ever spat at him, all over again. "And he'll get away with all of it. All of this! Because he doesn't take any responsibility for himself, and nobody can make him take it! He does whatever he wants, and nobody does what it takes to stop him!" The light seemed to die in Harry's eyes with every word. And Peter still only stood silent, and simply listened.
"He should… he should die…" Harry said numbly, his voice devoid of emotion, as the tears finally came. He was a thousand miles away from Peter right now. Years away, reliving a painful argument with his father. "He should die, Peter. He blackened my family's name. He's destroyed everything he was trying to build. If this is a cry for help then he, he doesn't deserve it." He swallowed, and his next words were in a tight whisper. "We ought to just kill him."
Peter gave a soft sigh. He remembered overhearing the arguments Harry had with his father, from time to time. More and more as time went on.
"Those were your father's words. Weren't they, Harry? You were just repeating the things he said to you." He flinched slightly. As if it were an accusation, and that Peter would condemn him for it, just as Norman would have. Peter slowly shook his head, and then pulled his mask off as if it were an ordinary costume, rather than retracting it as the Symbiote would have preferred. But the Symbiote obliged Peter's desire to maintain the illusion, and it gave him a moment to look at Harry Osborn face to face. There was no judgment within Peter's gaze.
"You were at your lowest moment, and you reached out to him for help. And that's when he said those things to you, didn't he?" Peter was angry, but not at Harry. But he kept that anger buried deep inside himself all the same. Because Harry couldn't help but feel that he was always the one at fault for other people's anger. And as Harry gave a flickering nod in response to his questions, he felt his chest tighten.
What business did someone as unfit as Norman Osborn have in trying to be anyone's father? What sort of parent would do something like that to their child?
Far too many, Peter realized. But Norman would have been especially cruel about it.
"It wasn't your fault, Harry. You didn't make him say those things. You didn't force his hand. Take a second. Take a deep breath and try to compose yourself. And we'll talk once you're ready again," he said, as he patted Harry on the back and gave him time to dry his eyes as he reached for his mask once again.
He halted for a moment as he gripped the discarded mask, recalling again that it wasn't cloth, but part of a living being. 'That didn't hurt, right?' he asked the Symbiote, now a bit worried.
[Nope! I can move it around just like it was still stuck to the rest of me. And I can stick it back on no problem. It's like the webs. If I lose it, it'll just dissolve on its own anyways, and I can grow it back just by having you eat again,] the Symbiote explained confidently.
'…If you can split off pieces of yourself and have them move around independently, we could use that,' Peter thought, now feeling intrigued by the possibilities. So did the Symbiote, but they both knew they had to focus on Harry right now.
Harry managed to look a bit more collected, but still despondent. Peter decided to keep his mask off for now.
"Your father's one of the worst men I know," He began firmly. "Maybe a handful of people were more awful, and some of those weren't even human. But turning the things he did to you back around to him won't help us, Harry. We're not going to kill your father."
Harry scoffed, even as he sniffed and dried his eyes. "Because if we do, we'll be just as bad as he is?" he said sarcastically.
"No," he responded firmly, perhaps more firmly than he intended. "That's amateur hour shit, Harry. It's something desperate assholes squawk out when they know they've really screwed up. Nobody who knows what they're doing is ever going to fall for that one," Peter said, giving a bitter laugh as he recalled the few times that even he'd heard that line.
"I really am using you to get to your father, Harry. And if I kill him, and I'm still not sure that I can't, it will make you an accessory. An accomplice. And you might feel good that he's gone, for a little while. But your whole life after that would be done. You'd never be allowed to forget your dad, because for the rest of your life, everyone else would hang his death over your head. You'd never be free of him like that. He's not worth it. Hating your dad and loving your dad is the same thing. Either way, you'd be making him too important in your life."
"That's…" Harry gave a grimace, as if he'd been forced to swallow bitter medicine. One that was still stuck inside his throat. "That's easy to say! How do I live with myself, if we let him get away with what he did?"
"I didn't say we were just going to let him go," Peter chided. "Death is the easy way out for your father. Getting caught, getting exposed… he'd rather die than endure that. Jekyll's punishment was being forced to take responsibility for all the times he went out to play Hyde."
"Then just how are we supposed to make someone as powerful as my father stop… without killing him?" Harry asked uneasily.
"Lucha libre," Peter muttered.
"What?" Harry said in sudden confusion.
"A lot of superhero life, and supervillain life too, is just this absurd lucha libre nonsense," he said self-deprecatingly. "The guy who gets unmasked is disgraced, and dishonored. It's the one punishment that's guaranteed to stick, for someone with a secret identity. A public unmasking, with lots of witnesses. Preferably while they still have blood on their hands. It's why most of the bad guys stop bothering with secret identities after they've been caught once. They might not be able to get convicted, and even if they do, prison might not be able to hold them. But any legitimacy they might have gets killed. Your father's been stupid. People like Justin Hammer or Wilson Fisk don't put on costumes and get their hands dirty in public. They get other disposable idiots to do it for them, while they maintain plausible deniability." Peter's voice was heavy with contempt, and not all of it was directed at Norman.
Harry considered carefully. "Because he's been going out and killing people himself, he's become somebody like Dr. Octopus, or Sandman. Everyone knows their real names. Guys like Octavius don't have lives outside of being supervillains."
Peter nodded his head. "Not unless they get an acquittal from the harshest and most arbitrary court in the country: the court of public opinion. If it convicts your father, he loses everything. His wealth, his company, and his connections. He'll only be the Green Goblin from that point on. And I can handle the Green Goblin."
"So we just… ruin my father, take everything from him, and the only hope of him getting any of it back is a long and painfully slow process of showing society that he's reformed and can be trusted with even an iota of power and influence again," Harry said thoughtfully. "And he won't be able to do it. Because he's too arrogant, and too stubborn, to ever admit that he did anything wrong."
He gave Peter an intrigued look. "So how do we do this? Your grand lucha libre unmasking?"
"We corner him. We take advantage of his fraying sanity and the mental decay the Goblin Serum is inflicting on him and push him to lash out in the loudest and most public way we possibly can. We just need a way to get to him, and really push him into a public breakdown. We take advantage of his disinhibition and drive him wild with rage, to the point where he can't hide who he is. And then I stop him, and expose the man underneath the mask, before he kills somebody. Or gets himself killed." [Or kills you] the Symbiote reminded him. "Or kills me," Peter added.
Harry gave Peter a skeptical look. "Peter, my father is arrogant, and touchy as hell. But getting him to lose it to the point where he just throws his entire life away is, well, unlikely. It's not like he hasn't been publicly humiliated before. He just bottles it up and waits. He makes sure he's safe when he strikes back. What could make him so angry that he'd risk publicly exposing himself the way you want him to?"
"The Daily Bugle," Peter said confidently. "Get every bit of those files on to a USB. None of this is good enough for a court of law. But it's all fit to print. As for me, I've got a few more listening devices left to spread around here."
Chapter 19: The Pequod
Peter returned to FEAST content. It had been a long time since he had felt that he had done enough. Or that he felt that he'd done everything he could have. But for once, things had worked out better than he had expected.
He had not expected Harry's devotion to his father to wane on its own. He expected to make Harry doubt, to at least distance himself from Norman for his own safety. He didn't expect Harry to join him in this.
He didn't expect Harry's friendship again. The Symbiote rippled slightly against his body, as if in a contented purr. They were happy to have made a friend as well, because any friend of their host was a friend to them, as far as they were concerned.
So what if it was cowardly of him, to go on as if his Harry's death had never happened? He was tired. He was weary to the bone. He'd take any solace he could get. He would accept one less reason to grieve. Even if he saw Peter as a madman, Harry had somehow still known that Peter meant well. That Peter was still someone that Harry wanted to be friends with again.
Peter was at worst merely eccentric, in Harry's eyes. It was his father who was truly insane.
It made Peter toy with the idea of coming clean and giving the full truth to Anna Watson and Annie Byrnes one day. That even if they didn't believe him, they would still accept him.
'But you just-' his own bitterness began, but the Symbiote abruptly cut in. [Negativity is worthless. If a feeling doesn't help, then don't bother with the feeling. That's something you always told the people you were teaching.]
He winced despite himself, knowing that the Symbiote was still trying their damnedest to prop him up against decades of emotional baggage. His years as a teacher were always his happiest ones. For a brief time, he felt as if he had life figured out. Everything was right in the universe, and right with his family.
Then he'd somehow stumbled onto something worth billions, and yet it had done him no good and had only taken away his peace. It had distanced him from his family, and all the money in the world was worthless once the sky erupted into flames. The Symbiote shuddered as Peter recalled the memory, and for their sake Peter also shut his recollection of the end of the world away. There was time enough to confront those memories later. More immediate fights awaited them.
Norman Osborn needed to understand that money and influence were brittle things, built on foundations of trust and sand. On paper, Norman was the more powerful partner between him and Fisk. He stood comfortably in the realm of a twelve-figure net worth, while Fisk had to struggle to scrape into ten. Oscorp had a global reach, while Fisk only had New York's underworld. Norman was considered palatable enough for senators to shake hands with in public, while local officials furtively struck under the table deals with Fisk. But Fisk had real, hard power, and Norman's was soft. Everyone would grind their teeth and endure Fisk, but nobody could be permitted to know the real Norman Osborn.
Osborn was only a tiger on paper, and he knew it. The Green Goblin was his first taste of real strength, the kind of power that didn't rely on what others were willing to give him. Apply the right pressures, and Norman's Goblin would bring his own empire crashing down on top of him. The Daily Bugle was a part of that pressure.
He didn't want to deal with Jameson again, but mercifully, Harry also agreed that Peter's plan to publicize his father's misdeeds to the public was a good one. Jonah, ever the inveterate scandalmonger, would be more than happy to publish a tell-all account from Harry Osborn about his father. It didn't matter that these could only ever be just allegations of Norman's misdeeds. A newspaper was not a court of law.
'We're permitted to speculate, Parker,' Jonah had reminded him, in his strangely fatherly way, as he imparted the hard-won wisdom of a professional muckraker. 'If they aren't facts, then they're merely theories. We outright tell the readers that this is where objectivity ends, and personal intuition begins. And people are funny, because they don't see any difference between the two.'
'So it's how you introduce a slant to your articles? How you get away with a personal bias?' Peter said, a touch accusingly.
But Jonah picked up on the accusation and seemed only to smile in approval as he lit a cigar. 'Sharp kid,' Jonah chuckled. 'It's why you'll never make full-time employee. You're too honest and too smart for this stupid bullshit, Parker. Pay your way through school and do something better with your life when you're ready,' the newsman said cheerily. 'Save the freaking world.'
Jonah was always crooked, but he was never a criminal. And he was blatantly honest and even brazen in his hypocrisies. For a cynical boy of fifteen, Jonah had been the most convincing adult Peter had ever met.
It wore on Peter though. He was always betraying himself, even going so far as to make himself look worse on purpose, just to help Jonah sell more papers. Just to get a bigger bonus.
Gwen had said that he was trash for going along with Jonah, after all the times Spider-Man had saved her and her father. But MJ's reaction, and the sad and disappointed way that she smiled at him, somehow cut deeper.
'Dishonest people hurt themselves too, Tiger,' she said gently. 'But I guess liars like us have to get by somehow…' He thought that her disappointment made sense in those days. He knew that she loved Spider-Man, after all. But it surprised Peter that she still forgave him for it.
She never forgave Jonah, though. Even years after they'd married, she always hated the man. She had always wondered why he was never able to bring himself to hate Jonah. She was always more image conscious than he was. It came with her job.
It wore on her. She didn't like how the people her husband kept risking his life to save nevertheless seemed to hate him. She took it far more personally than even he did.
'Just let him die,' she said quietly to him as he sat motionless on the hospital bed. She knew how hard that would've been for him to hear, especially from her. But she was just as exhausted as he was that day. They had both been at the brink, that time, and there was no other way for her to vent her quiet rage. 'Jonah's never grateful. You swoop in and save the day, and then he blames you for starting the whole thing in the first place. He isn't even here. You almost died saving him and he's rushing out on TV and he's back on his usual bullshit and… can't you… you should just let them all die…' For the first time in years, she could not meet his gaze. Neither could he. They were both far too afraid of what they would see.
They had fights. Every couple had them, even Reed and Sue. They'd married a bit younger than they really ought to have, rushing into it with unseemly haste when they found out she was pregnant. But they made it work, somehow. Over time, there was more stability, and less stress in their lives. They argued less and less as May grew up, and by the time they both actually felt ready to try for another child, Annie Parker was already quite a bit younger than her older sister. Mary Jane joked that, by that point, they were the only two people on Earth who could stand each other. Mayday had agreed with the sentiment, and it was a wonder she ended up as well adjusted as she had.
By the time they realized that they actually knew how to raise their next child, their arguments had all but stopped. But they argued again, that day. That one was a bad one.
She was always a kinder person than he ever was. She would disagree, but by then Peter had seen the best and worst that people could offer. He had seen the best and worst in himself. She cared more about doing the right thing than even Peter ever had, superhero or not. And always with far more passion, and far less cynicism than him. It frightened him, to see that empathy being torn away from her. But what would he look like to her if she could see him now?
Would she still recognize him?
Whatever hold Jonah had over Peter, she didn't understand it. She never understood why Peter always went so easy on the man, or why he always did the usual apologetics whenever the man crossed the line. It wasn't as if he could explain it to her either. He never liked Jonah. But he could never bring himself to hate him.
Nobody else at the Daily Bugle understood it. But they all felt it. He had asked Robbie once how Jonah was able to inspire loyalty from people who could otherwise barely stand him. Robbie, who knew him longest, asked him if he was familiar with the story of Moby Dick.
'I read the book, actually,' Peter had explained.
'Huh.' Robbie had fixed him with a concerned look. 'Cover to cover? Right down to all the incredibly boring chapters where Melville only talks about whaling?'
'Y-yes,' a young Peter had said, wondering if he had just admitted to something he shouldn't have.
'…Okay. Then you know about Ahab. Good sea captain. Great, even.'
Peter already knew where this was going. 'He got everyone killed, because he was nuts.'
'Ahab got fixated on something. But as long as you didn't bring the white whale into things, he otherwise seemed like a pretty nice guy to me. Good captain. Loyal crew.'
'The whale was pretty central to the whole story Robbie…'
'It was a very long book, and the whale itself was only there at the last minute. My point is, Ahab was a great captain who cared about his people, and his crew could see that. But then, see, there was this whale. And Ahab, while a very good captain, is also an imperfect human being. He had a grudge against a whale, built it up in his head as the reason why everything was wrong. It caused everything wrong in his life and was causing everything wrong in the world. But… it was still only just another whale. It wasn't anything other than some stupid whale that Ahab got way too carried away over,' Robbie explained. He was clearly far more passionate about Moby Dick than he'd initially let on. He clearly saw a lot of himself in that story.
'So you're trying to make sure Jonah doesn't get too carried away over Spider-Man. I got it. But then, what happens when you can't do that?' Peter had asked, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.
'Jonah helped me out of more than one really bad spot over the years. He was also really adamant about bringing you onboard this vessel of his. He likes you, Parker. He'll never admit it, but he likes you a lot,' Robbie said knowingly. 'So, if things don't work out, and one day Ahab goes too far over the goddamn whale… nothing else left for me to do but to also go down with the ship. But promise me you'll get your ass to a lifeboat before it gets that far, Peter. He wouldn't want you to sink with the rest of the old geezers.'
At the time, lengthy literary allusions were not enough for Peter to get over his conflicted feelings over Jonah. They still weren't, if he was being honest.
Peter simply didn't want to deal with Jonah again, if he could help it. A part of him was quietly dreading the day that Jonah's obsession with Spider-Man became rekindled, knowing that it would only make the job he had to do even harder. Jonah's publishing might make people like Harry, Anna, and Annie start to truly doubt him. So, for now, he'd leave this to Harry. He'd watch silently from the sidelines, ready to intervene when Osborn inevitably retaliated against his child.
He was sitting on the couch in FEAST, sitting next to Sergeant Frank Simpson again. They watched, impassively, as Reed Richards gave a brief and perfunctory press conference. "More research is needed on the symbiotes, in retrospect," Reed said apologetically. "These sorts of setbacks are commonplace in science, and I'm grateful for everyone's patience. We have one brave volunteer willing to bond with a symbiote, but it'll be years before we can conclusively say what the risks and side effects are."
There were a few questions, after that, none of which Reed was willing to elaborate on in detail. Reed Richards was no more guilty of anything than the average pop scientist, who made outlandish claims and then retracted them. He'd be forgiven for it just as easily as they were, and the only one his earlier claims would ever rankle with was Dr. Doom, and Reed himself.
They'd both hated the pop scientists, after all. He was grateful that Reed was willing to go that far on Franklin's hunch, simply for his sake. The Symbiote, for their part, was also grateful.
"Eh," Frank Simpson shrugged. "Everyone knows the real big brains already cured cancer. They're just keeping it from the rest of us."
Considering what Peter knew of organizations like AIM, and all the other mad scientists and conspiracies in the world, he couldn't say that Sergeant Simpson was wrong.
"You doing okay?" Peter couldn't help but ask Nuke.
"M'fine," Simpson said with a shrug. "I get by."
"How?" Peter genuinely asked. It was phrased as an innocent question, where one homeless man asked another how they coped. But Peter wanted an answer to an even more burning question.
How did someone like Nuke manage to regain even a semblance of sanity?
"Well, it's easy, Pete," Simpson said with a mirthless chuckle. "You just gotta meet Captain America one night."
"You met Steve Rogers?" Peter asked skeptically.
But it wasn't really that Peter had doubted that Nuke had met Captain America. It was that Rogers had tried for years to reach out to Nuke, back then, only for Nuke to try to kill him for daring to have the temerity to even try.
"Sure, sure," Simpson said with a good-natured laugh, again entirely incongruous with the man Peter remembered. "People always believe me when I say I know the Punisher, but nobody ever believes me when I say I know Captain America too."
"How?" he asked again. But Peter didn't mean 'how did you meet Captain America, Frank?'
How could a meeting with Captain America have somehow salvaged Nuke's mind?
Frank Simpson looked away, staring down at his feet. Lost in thought, and in memories. He gave a sigh. "I was in a bad place," Frank said tonelessly, before a trace of bitter humor entered his voice, "And I mean, worse than the one I'm in right now. I'd gotten ideas in my head. God knows from where, but I thought that I was going to kill a few people." Nuke's face set in a line, becoming something more familiar to Peter for a moment. "A few politicians."
Peter nodded his head gently towards Nuke, believing every word the other man had said so far. Nuke had performed more than a few politically motivated murders back then, for the sake of whatever incoherent and muddled ideologies his damaged mind could cobble together.
"But, stupid me," Nuke continued, "I publicized the threat. I sent a big letter, telling them that America's last Super Soldier was coming for them. And that there'd be hell to pay. So… they sent America's first Super Soldier after me, before I could pull anything."
Nuke shook his head. "The guy, Steve Rogers… we all know what he looks like under the mask. But it can still get pretty hard to recognize him without the costume on. So, he wasn't Captain America when he talked to me in that, I don't know what it was, some kind of diner… or bar or whatever. He looked the same age as I was. But I could tell, he was somebody older."
Sergeant Simpson smiled wistfully, and his expression was nostalgic. "He said to me, 'thank you for your service, son.' He was the first person to say that to me. We'd already pulled out of Vietnam ages ago, and he was the first and only person to ever tell me that."
"I fucking hated him for it," Frank said plainly. "I said to him, you know who I am? I'm Francis Simpson! I'm Nuke! I'm the ghost of every son of a bitch that got killed in Vietnam. That I carried it all, every moment of it. Every village strafed. Every bit of Agent Orange dropped. Every goddamn bullet fired."
Frank shrugged. "He said to me, hello Francis Simpson. My name is Steve Rogers, and I'm the ghost of every son of a bitch that got killed in World War 2. It's nice to meet you," Frank finished with a chuckle. Peter found himself smiling along with him. That really was something Steve would've said. He let the other man continue, as he listened in silence.
"He said to me, every conscript, every poor fucking draftee, every NCO who worked for a goddamn living, they didn't have a choice. That if a soldier is given a choice between following the orders they're given, or committing treason, and they follow their orders, then it don't make them a fucking Nazi. That it takes a braver man than even Captain America to stand up to his own country," Nuke said, with both anger and pride in his voice.
"It was fucked up what was done to me, Cap said. But it was also fucked up what was done to every other soldier who didn't get a choice in picking up a gun. That it was the sons of bitches up top who should be the ones living with the guilt, and the ignominy. The sons of bitches like Nick Fury," Nuke said gravely, before the flickering embers of hatred within him guttered once again.
"I wasn't so mad anymore, after all. I guess I forgot what the hell I was so mad about. This was Captain America, after all. This was the guy I always wanted to be, and… and he was already like me. Cops came after that. They put me in jail, and I didn't put up a fight. Guys from SHIELD came. Said, they could get me out of here. Put me back in the field. Serve again," Frank said, anger entering his voice. And then a smile, proud and vindictive, on his face. "I told them, oh, now this time you're giving me a choice on whether I fight for you or not? After all the shit with the Weapon X program, after all the lies and the fucking experiments… well, this time I'm saying no."
"Just did my time, and then I drifted after that. Some kind of nomad, I guess. Never fit in. I was a criminal with a dishonorable discharge, so it's not like I could fall back on even the piss poor veteran's programs. Just, found my way to FEAST. Martin Li, man. He said he didn't know what the difference between right and wrong was anymore anyways, so he wouldn't care that I done wrong. Roof over my head, now. And some good memories after all the bad for once," Nuke finished softly.
That was it then, Peter realized. The answer to the mystery was blind luck, and a fleeting moment of empathy and camaraderie between a hero and their nemesis. That was all it took. There was no bigger secret behind it all. Only this.
Nuke had simply gotten a moment that hadn't been there in Peter's original timeline. And it had completely changed his life. He looked at Frank Simpson, still bedraggled, woebegone, and sick. His implants were still killing him by inches. But there was, weirdly enough, something inspiring in all of that.
Peter took a deep breath and sighed. "The Inner Demons started using you for muscle after that, didn't they?" All of Martin Li's acts of evil were tempered by benevolent motives. And all the Demon's acts of good were tainted by ruthless utilitarianism.
Nuke grinned. "They tried. Don't follow orders so good no more. I was more like a guard dog. Bad guys get close to the house I'm staying in, I'll bark, and I'll snarl, and I'll tear out their throat. But you don't exactly take me for a walk anymore. I know Martin Li was Mr. Negative. Almost everyone here kind of knows he was Mr. Negative. None of us gave a damn. I decided I'd just keep people from hassling FEAST, instead of going out and being a leg breaker. That suited Martin Li just fine."
"I'll keep FEAST running. I promise," Peter vowed.
Frank just shook his head, his expression mirthless. "Don't feel bad if you can't," he said plainly. But then his expression became a touch less hard. "…You're a good guy, Pete. A good listener. I hear that Anna wants you to start living with her." Peter gave Simpson a confused look, and Nuke just laughed. "My ears work really good after Weapon X, Spider-Man."
"I can't, Frank," Peter said softly. It was the truth. It was also an excuse.
"Yeah, you can. You're just not ready. Just saying, most people here would give anything to have someone out there looking for them. Quit the tough guy act. Move in, clean up, and find some decent work. You're not nearly hopeless enough to keep sharing a couch with me," Simpson chided.
"…I'll think about it. There's something I need to settle first," Peter said plainly.
Nuke shrugged. "I spent years of my life alone, trying to 'settle things.' Calling quits on that was the best thing I ever did." Peter opened his mouth, and Nuke shook his head. "Naw, I wanna just watch some hockey. You just think about things instead of trying to debate me. I'm not the one you need to argue with," Nuke said calmly as he flipped through the channels.
"Thanks, Frank," Peter said softly, but Sergeant Simpson simply waved him away. His mind was miles away now, skating on a hockey rink somewhere. Peter had other places to be too.
---
Spider-Man, or rather, Peter Parker's decision to involve Jameson and the Daily Bugle was a sound and logical one, Harry felt. Jameson was, perhaps, the only unambiguously pro-vigilante public figure in New York City. Everyone else either buried their heads in the sand and tried not to confront the fact that they were reactions to a broken system, or else considered them part of the problem.
Not John Jonah Jameson Junior. Not Cowboy Jonah, as his detractors called him.
His paper was vituperatively anti-Fisk, almost to the point of obsession. It had cost him money, reputation, friendships, and two marriages. And he wasn't even close to stopping.
If there was anyone who was willing to go all in on an allegation that Norman Osborn was a mass murderer in league with Wilson Fisk, then it was Cowboy Jonah. Or at least, so Peter assumed, and so Harry hoped. He waited patiently in a chair just outside Jameson's office, only to wince as the door opened and he caught the tail end of a screaming rant.
"If he wants to sue me, he can sue me! I'm filthy rich, it's not like nobody's bloodied my nose with a lawsuit and wrung a retraction out of me before! But that bastard's got to earn it!" Jonah cursed loudly, as a ruddy red-faced man, someone who Harry could only guess was a lawyer of some sort, stormed out of the office.
"Smug son of a bitch," the angry man muttered just loudly enough for everyone to hear, even as Jonah got the last word in by slamming the door of his office loudly behind his guest.
"Mr. Jameson is ready to see you now," the brown-haired secretary said with a tense and falsely chipper tone of voice that clearly betrayed the fact that this wasn't even close to the most awkward moment she experienced under Jameson's employment.
Harry gave his own tense and awkward smile back at the young woman. He'd dealt with worse situations before too.
He smoothly swung open the door to Jonah's office, determined to be confident rather than worried he was stumbling on to yet another debacle. Jonah's office stank of tobacco, with the open window being the only thing stopping it from becoming a chimney as Jonah puffed on a lit cigar.
"Oh shit," Jonah muttered, as he took in Harry's arrival, and for a moment he appeared to be even more befuddled than Harry was. He hastily put out the expensive cigar and tossed it carelessly into a wastebasket behind him. "The Osborn boy, right…" Jonah continued, as if he was suddenly remembering something important, before pressing a button on his desk and yelling into an intercom.
"Betty! Get Robbie to my office. Tell him to drop everything and get over here, pronto," Jonah said authoritatively.
"Do you need me to connect you to his desk, or…?" the secretary said hesitantly, only for Jonah to roll his eyes and yell into the intercom again.
"Look, just tell Robbie the Osborn kid is here, and I need him. NOW!" the main yelled for emphasis, before shutting off the intercom. Harry hesitantly gave a sidelong glance at the window to his right, which opened to the rest of the Bugle's office. He could see the secretary outside pinch the bridge of her nose.
"Sorry about that," Jonah said pleasantly, any trace of his anger vanished. "I don't remember which button goes to Robbie's desk, and if I just text his phone, he takes forever to read it," the man explained.
"It's no problem," Harry said hesitantly, his eyes unable to do anything more than affix themselves to a large and prominent 10-gallon hat hanging off a rack behind Jonah's desk.
"Oh, that," Jonah said quickly. "Old office prank. People won't stop buying them for me. Take a seat already," he added brusquely.
Harry coughed as he sat on a desk. Was this all a tactic, Harry wondered, to keep people off balance? Some attempt to capitalize on his reputation as an eccentric with fringe politics, and lull him into letting something slip? Jonah gave Harry an utterly insincere smile, as fake as plastic. "Cigar?" Jonah offered, opening a case and inviting Harry to take his pick.
Harry gently smiled and shook his head, and Jonah shrugged. "Right, right. You prefer harder stuff," he muttered, a touch passive-aggressively, as he put away the cigars.
Harry narrowed his eyes. Cowboy Jonah really was sizing him up.
"I really do have dirt on my father, and Wilson Fisk," Harry said stiffly.
"And you presumed that, at the slightest mention of my personal white whale, I would immediately come to you with my tail wagging," Jonah said airily.
Before Harry could respond, the door opened again, and a dark-skinned man who looked to be about Jameson's age gently but confidently slipped his way into the office. "Making friends already, Jonah?" Robertson said, a touch warningly.
Don't let him rattle you, Peter had advised. Losing your composure and getting into a shouting match with him would only play into his hands. Don't be angry, but don't be a pushover either. Be firm. "I don't care about Wilson Fisk, or your vendetta with him," Harry said icily. "He's a side character in all of this. This is about my father, running around killing people, and the police being too impotent to do anything about him. So, I'm here because this is the only kind of justice that him or his victims are ever going get."
Robbie's face set into a thin line, even as Jonah grinned. "And there's your justice, wrapped around all of this, right?" Jameson asked.
Harry glared at Jonah from across his desk. "OF COURSE-" Harry began, before he realized he was already starting to let Jonah get under his skin. "Of course it involves me. You wouldn't have any story here unless it involved me!" Harry pointed out.
Jonah grunted in affirmation, halfheartedly acknowledging the point. But now it was Robbie's turn to frown and look skeptical. If there was any other person at the Bugle to be wary of, Peter had warned, then it was Joseph "Robbie" Robertson, Jonah's longest serving editor. He was Jonah's conscience, Peter had told him, and he would be the Good Cop to Jonah's Bad Cop. But ultimately, Robbie's loyalty to Jonah was bone deep. Even Robbie's noblest qualities served Jonah's interests, as he often found himself playing at being the angel Jonah's shoulder, and on occasion the devil's advocate.
"You need to understand, though, that this matter involves Fisk. If it's made clear that the Bugle can't protect its sources, it's a serious black eye for us. Nobody's going to leak anything about Wilson Fisk if they know he can just reach out and wipe away the son of one of the richest guys on the planet. And he can. But you want everyone to know that it was you who leaked this story. You want your dad to know it, and you want Wilson Fisk to know it." Robbie frowned and shook his head. "We can't do that. To everyone else it'll just look like we hung you out to dry once we got our story out of you. Or worse, that we were the ones who leaked out the identity of our source just to make our story sell more."
"Robbie makes a good point," Jonah said, a touch smugly, as if he had been the one to ask his editor to argue the point in the first place. And he might have. Or he might not have. Peter had warned Harry that both Jameson and Robertson were both sharp. "So, what do you think we should do instead, Robbie?"
"Scrub any hint of a Harry Osborn connection completely," Robbie said with a wave of his hand. "Scrub anything that could point to the fact that he was the one who leaked this story to us. We'll call it an anonymous source, and Fisk and the readers will just assume it was one of the many vigilantes who were sniffing around his business."
It was logical, and sensible. Harry's heart sank as he realized that it also wouldn't work. Peter's plans relied on Norman Osborn getting dragged through an immense amount of stress. Enough that he couldn't keep his mask on and hide who he was from the rest of the world anymore. People on the street wouldn't believe the truth if they thought that the accusation came from a vigilante, or an anonymous source. They wouldn't care, and Norman would know that.
A fatal blow to Norman's reputation, a true scandal on the scale that Peter's plan relied on, could only come from Harry publicly decrying his own father. It would've been an unthinkable betrayal on Harry's part, just a few years ago. But that was before he'd known that his father was no mere hypocrite, but a genuine monster besides.
Harry waved Robertson away, in a stern and confident gesture that was his best attempt at mimicking the mannerisms of both his father and Peter Parker. "No. It's got to be me. I want to out my father, and people won't buy it unless it comes from me."
Jonah let out a low whistle. Harry wondered if he was truly impressed, or just pretending to be. "You realize you're going to die if we do this, right? Maybe, I don't want your life on Robbie's conscience."
"My conscience?" Robbie said with a narrow-eyed look to Jonah.
"Yours. I happen to like being the asshole," Jonah said decisively.
"I'll be fine. I'm not going to die," Harry said tersely, but Jonah only responded with a scoff.
"When Fisk was just starting up, he was piling bodies onto the streets like cordwood," Jonah began. "NYPD was his personal slaughterhouse. Like cattle. And so were NYPD's families. So, unless you've got someone even scarier than Frank Castle in your corner, whatever bodyguards you pay off with your rich boy money isn't going to mean anything if Bullseye gets involved."
Harry's mouth was dry. He had a response. He just wasn't sure if he should give it.
'If you could,' Peter had added, a bit hesitantly after he discussed the plan with Harry, 'could you keep Spider-Man out of this when you talk to Jameson? It's not a superhero thing. It's just a personal favor.'
Harry couldn't figure out why this somehow felt like more of a betrayal than anything he had thus far committed against his father. But it did.
But he still did it. "I do have someone."
Jonah blinked, at first not understanding Harry's meaning. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"I do have someone scarier than the Punisher in my corner," Harry said numbly. "He's called Spider-Man."
"Spider-Man…" Jameson mumbled, ruminating over the name. "Okay. Who the hell is Spider-Man?"