I hate recurring dreams.
Me and my best friend in our college bachelor pad. He proudly holds up a science exam that I helped him study for. "I owe it all to you, Pete. I knew my best friend would never let me down."
A party. Dinner. Music. Dancing. Girls. But all throughout is the smiling face of the man who paid for it all and made it all happen.
Harry Osborn.
A flash to a different moment. The roar of a jet engine. The noxious smell of smoke. Some other strange, otherworldly sound.
Flash back to cruising in Harry's convertible through the streets of the boroughs. Our girls laughing beside us.
The scene cuts back to the smoky jet engine. The smoke parts, revealing a glider. Above the glider, a manic face leers down at him. That same strange sound, a jabbering screech…
A laugh.
That laugh.
In that voice, a grim parody of his best friend's.
The voice of Harry, twisted by the Goblin formula. Harry had struggled with substance abuse in the past. He had even gone to the hospital after a particularly nasty LSD overdose. But it seemed most of his problems could be traced back to a domineering, withholding, sometimes-abusive father.
The maniacal laughter, the overpowering stench of exhaust, the scream of the engines.
His best friend had counted on him to be the guy who never let him down. But when Harry needed him the most…
A red gloved fist collided with a green masked face with the force of a freight train.
It wasn't Spider-Man versus the Green Goblin. It was Peter Parker and Harry Osborn, tossing each other around a rooftop.
Where had he gone wrong? At what moment had he lost control and lost his best friend to the same demon that had taken Gwen from him?
The Osborn townhouse exploding. The Goblin Serum—altered by Harry—had finally taken its toll.
Harry's last act had been to carry his unconscious rival out of the exploding house on his glider. And then exhaustion, stress, and the toxic drug finally claimed their victim.
His best friend died in the garb of his mortal enemy.
Flash back to his apartment, Peter passed out on the couch, Harry tucking a pillow under his head.
Peter poring over his books, and Harry dropping a can of soda and a snack next to him.
Peter walking home in the rain, and Harry picking him up in his car.
Mary Jane holding little Normie in her arms, and the paramedic coming over to tell them that Harry was dead.
Then the memories stopped, the past ended, and the present began. Harry being tortured. Harry screaming in pain. Wearing the mantle of the Green Goblin, sans mask, while real demons cackled all around him.
The Green Goblin had damned his best friend to hell.
And Peter Parker had failed to save him.
Peter jerked awake in bed, sitting straight up, and instantly regretting it, knowing he had woke his wife again.
Her eyes bored into him. "The same dream again?"
He sighed. "This time he would have to tell her the whole thing.