Icarus
It's been a slow descent. Norman doesn't often even notice he's falling.
Every word from his mouth is a golden-plated political promise, bringing him up higher as he offers up the apple for the world to taste. He watches them fight for it from above. It's empowering. He is Superman, gaining strength from the sun. Every step towards the sunlight makes his shadow grow larger, an ominous man-shaped creature of its own clinging to Norman's feet as he leaves it behind.
He doesn't acknowledge it, and every day that Norman ignores the darkness it claims him a little more. Pooling around his feet like a puddle. It clings to his back like a symbiote, coiling around his brain, invading him without warning or ceremony. Norman won't ever notice. He's so used to its presence that its absence was unrecognized; its return even more so.
Victoria touches his face, adjusts his tie. She tells him to sleep. Instead he ticks the hours before the darkness reclaims him, unaware. It's an entity in his chest that he won't acknowledge. He escapes from it towards the sun, flying, asserting to all the nonbelievers his presence as the invincible Iron Patriot. He is Superman - he is Iron Man - he is Captain America.
It's a weak facade.
He cannot face the light this close. His wings melt off and he plummets into an ocean of demons, feeling each one try to drown him. Gwen Stacy holds back his arms, but the Green Goblin holds his head down under. Spider-man looks down at him from above, rippling and fading vision making it seem as though through a shattered mirror. Norman grabs at air, trying to surface, to offer up another soul to the darkness rather than his own. Take Spider-man. Take Harry! Norman doesn't want to rely on it any longer, but it fills his lungs and he feels at home. It's like what the first sip of scotch must taste like when you've been dry for 10 years.
He gives up. He can't fight the fall - his feet remain weighted by his son, by Spider-man, by Gwen and Emily and the Green Goblin and his father, locking him in the estate and making him like the darkness. Not only like it. Need it. He sees the seeds that he's sowing and he knows he won't succeed. The Osborns are born into darkness, and that's how they die. They'll watch him drown - all of them. Iron Man, the Avengers, the Cabal, the X-men, Nick Fury will watch and make sure he stays under.
Norman stays against the wall. He watches without sleeping. His father whispers in one ear, the Goblin whispers in the other. Spider-man interjects to taunt him. There is no safe place to run except to the past, perhaps the most dangerous of all possible options. That history is hidden behind a wall of bricks, untouchable. He slept in the darkness' embrace. It pulled at him, beckoning. Every step he takes away from it makes it only more desperate to have him back. He knowns, he knows if he turns he'll be devoured completely. He waits it out. The coils of his past escape brick-by-brick, waiting for the right moments to remind him they're there. Lily's face turns into Gwen. Gwen is really Emily. He hears her singing to their child. Harry is still only a concept.
Norman stands above it all while he wages war on his mind. He sees his own downfall with perfect clarity, and yet it still surprises him when he hits the ground.