Chapter Eight!

Well, thanks for all of the reviews guys, means a lot! And I've noticed that there are very conflicted views about the idea of Claudia/Harry. However, as I previously said, I never intended to have them be together. This is because I think they are too similar, and if there was any attraction between them there would be nothing emotional about it. However, for those of you who like the idea of them, I'm not saying there's nothing there at all. This chapter kind of goes into what I think their relationship would show if Claudia were actually in the films/comics, because as one of you said Harry is a very complex character just like Claudia. If anything were to happen between them, it wouldn't be romantic (I dont think Harry is capable of being romantic, especially not Dane Dehaan's version). They will have a connection, though, I can promise you that.

Anywho I'll let you read on, and thank you all for the support!


Harry Osborn replayed the footage of the Times Square attack. He was in the office that was once his father's but now his own, sat at the desk the man who had abandoned him used to own. The glass felt cold beneath his hands, cold like a corpse. Harry smiled thinly at the thought; a corpse like his father, a corpse like he was soon to become.

As a child Harry used to be fearless towards the idea of death. Like any kid he used to think he was invincible, an exception to nature's cruel ways. He remembered the games him and Peter Parker used to play before he was sent away. Both of them had pretended that it was just them against the rest of the world, running through the neighbourhoods or riding their bikes in the back alleys without a care in the world. Children didn't need to fear death, but that didn't stop them from living any harder.

But now Harry had ever felt more afraid. He'd had a lucky escape in not remembering his mother or her death when he was a baby, but to see his father like that shook his world out of focus. While before he had been the rich son of one of the most powerful men in New York, now he was a small man walking the short road to his grave. He didn't want to die. He had barely lived.

But as he watched Claudia Thatcher on the little TV in his office, he felt like him and her were one of the same. He was an orphan, she was an orphan, both betrayed by life itself. Sure Peter was also the same, but he was just too positive about it all. He hid away from it in the view of others and pretended that everything was okay, which only made things worse. Harry had tried it, and keeping that kind of thing to himself resulted in him screaming at his roommate in boarding school when he was just thirteen. It was better to let the damaged side show; people wouldn't get hurt if they knew to keep away. Claudia went about things the right way, the bad way that made things good. She knew how to survive.

The test he had presented to Claudia that morning had been successful. In the café she had played herself off as a tough, take-no-crap city girl with a shadowed background, but here on the TV she was nothing more than a terrified human who just wanted to live. The way she crouched screamed to the world that she wanted to fight, but the terror in her face proved that her human side was stronger than her ego. But she had fought, she'd fought with words. She tried to reason with the creature, tried to explain that she wasn't going to harm him, and what did she get in return? A bolt of electricity to send her running like the frightened mouse she tried to bury deep.

How many times had Harry pleaded with his father to not send him away when he was eleven? How many times did he beg his father to let him come home? How many times did he fight for his father's love, only to be left in the gutter to rot in a never ending, cruel world?

And he was about to face a bigger battle. He could practically feel the illness in his veins, poisoning him slowly, painfully, just waiting to show it's self the way his father had promised. It trembled in his hand, begging for release beneath his skin. He would fight it. He would fight pretty damn hard, but unless he found a cure he knew he would die trying. His demons would eaten him up from the inside alongside his illness, and a part of him wondered how long it would take for Claudia's demons to kill her.

It fascinated him how a girl like that got wrapped up with a guy like Peter, who was so normal and unaware of everything that it was almost pitiful. Harry thought that Peter had created a mental block towards the bad, and clung on to hope like he said during their first meet up after ten years. Hope sounded all good, it was something to believe in, but Harry found that it was a distraction from something bigger. Hope was, like him, a lost cause now.

So how did a purposely blind hopeful like Peter end up with a fellow lost cause like Claudia? Something didn't add up. Then again, with a city overrun with spider people and creatures made of electricity, did anything add up in a crazy world such as this?

Harry lifted the little cube that Norman Osborn had claimed to be his life's work and stared. Harry wanted answers, and answers he was going to get.


Standing in what remained of Times Square, I felt nothing.

I thought I'd have some kind of reaction to the location I had almost died in, something like numbing terror or self-loathing for being afraid. But I didn't feel anything at all; I didn't even get visions of my experience that had only happened two days before. Most of the damaged had been cleared, but none of the once advertising screens were up and working. Work started immediately after the danger was over, so what I was met with now was a lot of scaffolding and the loud sounds of construction work.

"You alright, darling?" a man behind me asked, dressed in a fluorescent yellow jacket and pants, as well as a safety helmet; one of the builders, apparently.

"Yeah," I said simply, turning my attention back to the scene in front of me. It must have been about one in the morning, yet there were still bystanders looking at the devastation with the same awe as me. Some pointed as they repeated the story of that evening, while others simply stared solemnly. A few stared directly at me, despite the fact that I was in a dark hoody and jeans. I knew why they were staring. As Lilly had said, Martha and I were famous once more around here.

As if to confirm this thought, the man next to me said, "You're one of the Thatcher sisters, right?"

"What of it?" I demanded none too gently.

He didn't even blink, instead offering a lazy shrug. "For someone who's gone through as much hell as you, you look kinda… normal."

I laughed thinly. "Normal isn't how I would describe myself."

"How would you describe yourself?"

"Screwed up." I looked at him blankly. "I may look normal, but if you were in my head I think you'd be met by Hell."

He stared at me for a long moment, old, weary eyes staring deeply into the ocean filled with pain and betrayal. He didn't let on any emotions, not even unease, but he didn't play himself up to be unafraid of me, either.

"I see it." he said quietly. "I see Hell in your eyes."

"How so?"

"They're cold, cold like the abyss, cold like Hell." He said this in a tone that denied any trace of emotion, but at the same time I didn't feel anything in return, only acceptance to his words. After all, when it was just one in the morning, everything made sense no matter how absurd.

"I thought Hell would be hot." I said.

"Many say it's cold." he replied with a shrug. "Do you believe in Hell?"

"Should I?"

"Maybe." he smiled thinly. "You're already living it, anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter."

"No," I murmured, looking back at Times Square once again. "I guess it doesn't."

The stranger nodded to himself and then let me be, sauntering off to get back to work. I placed my hands in the front pocket of my hoody, twining my fingers together for warmth. Then I pinched my wrist until it bled, just so I could feel something instead of nothing at all.


The next day, I woke feeling like myself again, or at least the self I had made myself be. Martha hadn't noticed me sneaking out in the night, but I wasn't able to sleep and needed air. At the time I didn't know how I'd ended up there, only that my legs had carried me without my permission. This morning it felt like a very distant dream, one that I hoped to forget.

"How are you this morning?" Martha asked me as she handed me a plate of two pancakes sprinkled in chocolate sauce. Her hair was up in a messy golden bun and her eyes were tired. Judging by the chosen outfit of sweatpants and a plain t-shirt with a picture of a cupcake on it, I could only guess that today was her day off. I planned to spend the morning with her before I went to my afternoon college classes, so I too was dressed in nothing more than a pair of bed shorts and one of Peter's old shirts which I found I couldn't part with just yet; it still smelled of him, like fresh air with a hint of his cologne

"I'm okay," I said, smiling. "How's you, sis?"

She yawned, making her eyes twinkle with moisture. "Not too bad, couldn't sleep though."

"No?" I said, for a second thinking that maybe she had heard me sneak out and stayed up all night worrying. That couldn't be true though; she'd of had my head by now if she knew.

She smiled tiredly. "No. Bad dreams."

"Ah." I nodded, completely understanding. "Of the other night?"

She frowned to herself and shook her head. "No, not that. They were about you, but you weren't entirely with it. You were like a zombie almost, a body without a mind if you know what I mean. And you looked so… hopeless and lost; alone. I tried calling out to you but you couldn't hear me and then you just… vanished." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "I've never dreamt anything like it."

I frowned now, pausing mid-chew before swallowing heavily. "Have you thought about seeing a doctor, maybe get some sleeping pills? Or even a—and I hate myself for saying this— therapist?"

She looked at me with wide, fearful eyes. "You think I need one?"

"I think it could help you." I reasoned quickly. "You went through a lot, Martha, you couldn't hurt to get it off your chest to someone who can never say anything to anyone else."

Her eyes descended on me and darkened just a little, enough to make me uneasy. "What about you?"

I stared her straight in the eyes, carefully saying, "We all have different ways of dealing with things. Therapy wouldn't help me even if I wanted it to, and you know it."

"You're not as strong as you think, you know."

"And neither are you." I placed down my breakfast and got up from the sofa, walking over to her until we were almost toe to toe. My sister was a head or so taller than me, yet somehow I always felt I was the one in control when it came to just us. I guess darkness always overrides light, anyway. "Don't do what I did. Don't lock yourself away and suffer on your own. It almost killed me and could very well kill you, too. Talk to someone, even me if you have to, I just might not be able to offer any advice." I took her hand in mine and squeezed. "But sometimes it's better for someone to just listen."

A few heavy moments passed, just the two of us absorbing the weight of my own words. When she said nothing, I whispered, "Sometimes wounds never heal, we just have to learn to cope with them."

"I shouldn't have to worry about myself when I need to worry about you." she whispered back, leaning down to press her forehead to mine and close her eyes.

I smiled despite her words. "I'm fine." I said. "You don't need to worry about me. I'm always fine in the end." I pulled back and forced a beaming smile on my face. "Now let's sit down and watch some crappy TV, yeah?"

She smiled sadly back and nodded.

Later, on my walk to college, I was confronted by Gwen. She practically came running at me from behind, grabbing my waist to pull me into one of her quick, rushed embraces. I froze, stunned by her sudden appearance, and a few people bumped into us because of our hasty stop.

"Hey, you alright?" I asked as I pulled away, collecting myself. Her eyes looked worried, riddled with questions that I couldn't fathom. I took her wrist and squeezed as she struggled to get any words out of her mouth.

"The other night, with that man, that Max, I know him, I know him." She said far too quickly, gripping my arm until it hurt. It was then that I saw not only concern in her eyes but also excitement.

"Excuse me?" I demanded, my own eyes widening. "You know him? How?"

"Once at Oscorp, he used to work there. His full name was Max Dillon. We spoke in the elevator for five minutes, and from what I could gather he had this weird infatuation with Spiderman." Her eyes hardened. "He said they were best friends or something."

That that's just weird. "So what do you wanna do?"

"I want to know what the hell happened to him."

"Yeah, I think the whole city wants to know that, Blondie."

"No!" she vigorously shook her head. "Oscorp, it's got to have something to do with Oscorp! And I want to find out what." She took my hand and began directing me away from the direction of college, and I struggled to keep up.

"Oh, that's it, drag me away from my education and future and only way to secure a stable life!" I said, yet I didn't fight against her hold. She looked at me with bright eyes as we weaved through the crowd.

"Do you want to go to college, or do you want to actually find out what's going on?"

"Will it be dangerous?"

"Maybe."

"Then I'm in."


Let me know your thoughts!