"Peter, I don't understand."
After Professor Morbius left with his expectations of Batman still hanging in the air, Harry Osborn stood in the penthouse office of Oscorp Tower, staring at the Dark Knight with an uncharacteristically grave expression.
"Harry?" Batman turned to his friend.
Harry walked to the office door, poked his head out, glanced left and right to make sure no one was around, then slammed the door shut and locked it with a click.
He took a few quick steps back, grabbed Batman by the shoulders with both hands, and started shaking him like a man possessed.
"Are you insane?! For some scientist we barely even know, you're willing to throw every resource Parker Industries has behind him? The guy's just an employee to me—to us! That's it!"
No matter how nicely you dressed it up, Professor Morbius was, at the end of the day, nothing more than an Oscorp employee.
To put it bluntly: as long as Morbius didn't drop dead inside the Oscorp building itself, whether he lived or died had practically zero impact on Harry Osborn's life. And it had even less to do with Peter Parker, a complete outsider.
Batman kept his body relaxed, letting Harry shake him without resisting.
If he wanted to, Harry could throw every ounce of strength he had into slamming into Batman and the man wouldn't budge an inch.
But letting this go on forever wasn't an option either. Batman silently counted to three in his head, then gently but firmly took control of his own body, bringing the shaking to an immediate halt.
"Harry, look at me," Batman said calmly. "You think I'm doing charity here—betting everything to save a stranger, right?"
"Isn't that exactly what you're doing?!" Harry was both anxious and furious.
No normal person would gamble everything on a stranger. Harry couldn't wrap his head around what was going through Batman's mind.
"No." Batman's answer was absolute. He walked over to the massive floor-to-ceiling windows and gazed down at the city of New York spread out below them. "Everything I'm doing is for Parker Industries. And maybe… for the future version of us."
For some reason, Batman suddenly remembered his best partner from another universe—someone who had crossed universes and bent time itself just to bring one little girl home.
"For us?" Harry was even more confused now.
What did throwing everything at a stranger have to do with them?
But Batman's next words made Harry's face drain of color.
"Think about your father, Harry." The simple sentence struck Harry Osborn like a knife to the chest.
"Norman Osborn was one of the smartest men on the planet, but he fell to a power he couldn't fully control. We've both seen firsthand the kind of horrors that can be born from one scientist's desperation."
Harry had never been able to hide from the truth of what happened when Norman injected himself with the incomplete Super Soldier serum and became the Green Goblin.
The day Norman was transferred straight from the Manhattan precinct to the Ravencroft Institute in the northern suburbs, Harry had learned everything—everything except the identity of the Batman who ultimately stopped his father.
Harry's expression froze. The hands gripping Batman's shoulders went limp and fell to his sides.
Batman didn't stop just because Harry had gone quiet.
"Professor Morbius's blood disease is an unprecedented black box. We don't know what it is, we don't know how it works, and we sure as hell don't know what it might do under extreme conditions. Right now it's only affecting one man. But what if…?"
"What if this disease has a dormant phase? What if one day it mutates into something airborne? What if one of our competitors—or worse, someone like General Ross—gets hold of him with money and lies, and turns this disease into a biological weapon?"
As Batman spoke, Harry's mind flashed back to that night he'd climbed from the first floor to the ninth, the beast-like roars echoing in his ears the entire way. He couldn't help but shudder.
To this day he still had no idea what that thing had been. And not knowing was exactly what made it terrifying.
"But… there aren't that many 'what ifs,' are there?" Harry reflexively objected.
Seeing that Harry still wasn't fully convinced, Batman closed his eyes.
He wasn't giving up on persuading Harry—he was remembering scenes from right after he'd first crossed over into this body.
Among them was the sight, from Peter Parker's own eyes, of Uncle Ben lying in a pool of his own blood.
Batman silently apologized to Peter in his heart, then opened his eyes and looked straight at Harry Osborn.
"Harry, do you know what Uncle Ben said to me right before he died?"
"No—Peter, don't!" Harry panicked, trying to stop Batman from going any further.
Even though his own heart was heavy with thoughts of his father locked away in a psychiatric ward, Harry still didn't want his best friend Peter Parker to rip open his own scars just to make a point.
"It's all right, Harry."
For once, Batman reached out and gently patted Harry's shoulder himself. The two of them stood side by side in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down over New York.
"Uncle Ben said… 'With great power comes great responsibility.' We're not just businessmen, Harry."
Harry never noticed when Peter left.
He just stood alone by the window, motionless, watching the endless flow of people and traffic far below while turning their conversation over and over in his mind.
"My father is only in a psychiatric hospital. There's still a chance he'll see daylight again someday. And even that hurts me this much."
"But Peter has lost Uncle Ben forever. How much resolve did it take for him to tear open that wound just to say those things to me?"
Harry couldn't bear to imagine how much courage Peter Parker had needed in that moment. His own heart was trembling.
Standing silently by the window, Harry Osborn took a deep, steadying breath. Then he returned to the Osborn estate in Queens, changed into a black suit, and bought a bouquet of flowers.
He was going to the cemetery to visit Uncle Ben.
After leaving Oscorp, Batman stopped by an auto show and traded in the understated sedan he'd been driving for a brand-new 2006 first-generation Audi R8—the open-top version, no less.
Since he bought the display model right off the floor, he ended up paying nearly double the sticker price.
The car turned heads everywhere it went. It was the kind of ride only the absolute top tier of Wall Street elites could afford at the moment, and the convertible version made it even more eye-catching.
Combined with Batman's unkempt stubble and Peter Parker's strikingly handsome face, he had no idea how many passers-by sneakily snapped photos with their phones. More than a few shy teenage girls scribbled their numbers on scraps of paper, crumpled them up, and tossed them into the car as he passed.
Batman ignored it all. He hadn't bought the car to attract random attention—if that were the goal, he could have just taken the Batmobile out and guaranteed ten times the stares.
But then he wouldn't have been able to openly drive into Forest Hills.
He needed this obviously expensive luxury supercar if he was going to visit Aunt May without raising too many questions.