Chapter 13

The ringing of his phone woke Harry out of a deep sleep, something he cherished. He was too groggy to get his eyes to focus on the caller identification, but he assumed it was Zahra.

"H-hello?"

"Harry, this is Donald Menken. I need you to wake up so I can talk to you."

Definitely not Zahra. Harry squinted at the clock on the table beside his bed. "It's 2am here."

"I know. It's only 8pm in New York, but I wouldn't be calling if it weren't serious."

Harry sat propped himself up on his pillow. "What's going on?"

"It's your father…"

His throat went dry, and he felt as though he had been hit with a bucket of ice water. A few days ago he had been informed that his father's health had taken a decline, something he was grimly accustomed to, but the senior Osborn had always recovered. "Is he…?" Harry couldn't finish the question.

"No, but the doctors say that it's not looking good. You need to return to New York. Immediately."

Harry's mind reeled and he didn't respond right away.

"Harry, are you understanding me?"

"Yes. I'll leave first thing."

"Good. Have your assistant contact me as soon as possible," Menken told him.

The call ended, Harry left his bedroom as if in a daze and went into the main part of his suite. He stared out the window at the adjacent building that he had given so much of his attention to the past few months. Soon, Zahra would be over there cleaning, preparing the lounge for another day. He dreaded having to tell her about this sudden development. However, before that, he would have to wake Brady and they would have to get to work packing and booking a flight out of Europe as quickly as possible.

As Zahra walked out of the back of the building after her early morning cleaning shift, she was surprised to see a familiar figure waiting for her. Her mind flashed back to the first time Harry had sat there – a cold, late fall morning and him slouching nonchalantly as he waited for her to appear. Her pleasure at seeing him was erased as she approached and saw the strain in his face. Something was wrong.

"Harry, are you alright?"

"Something happened, but I didn't want to call you while you were working. My father is really sick. Actually…I think he's dying."

She let out a gasp. "I'm so sorry!"

"I've been told to return home immediately, so I have to leave pretty much now."

"Oh my gosh…. Are you okay?"

He shrugged. "I feel like I'm having a bad dream. I didn't think this would happen so soon. He's been sick all my life but… I'm not ready for this, I don't want to go."

"Maybe this is your chance to reconcile," she suggested. "I'll come to the airport with you."

They held hands the entire ride. Harry thought that he might be away two weeks, depending on how things went. If it looked like he would have to stay there for a longer period of time, they could postpone their Baltic tour that they had planned for the summer, and she could come to New York instead. If it weren't for Zahra's cousin coming for a post-grad visit in a few days – something that Zahra had been looking forward to since before she met Harry – she would have followed right away.

Harry tried to be positive about it, but he hated having to be separated from Zahra. "I guess your cousin is visiting at the perfect time – you two will be having so much fun there won't be time to miss me as much."

"As if that were possible," she replied.

At the airport, Zahra walked with Harry and Brady as far as she could, but once they got to security they would have to continue without her. Partly because of the strong lighting and partly because he didn't want to show the emotion in his face, Harry was wearing sunglasses. Anyone who used to know Harry Osborn could be excused for assuming that the hungover party boy was setting out for his next posh location. Brady glanced at the young man and saw the stress in his body language, how tightly he gripped his fiancé's hand, and knew that being away from her, at this of all times, was going to push him to the limit.

"Call me anytime you need to – I know it's going to be tough," Zahra murmured.

"I wish you could be there."

"You will get through this. I'm here whenever you need me."

Harry tipped up his sunglasses and she gazed into his bloodshot eyes. "I love you, Zahra."

She took his hand and put it to the middle of her chest, her heartbeat under his palm. "You're right here with me," she whispered.

Zahra kissed Harry with salty tears streaming down her face and watched him walk into security.

How he had managed to keep his composure until he had locked himself in his suite at the Osborn mansion, he would never know. Harry didn't even remember walking there, yet his feet knew the way. Now, as he sat on the cold bathroom floor, shaking violently after having spent the past few minutes retching into the toilet, some clarity of mind was finally beginning to return.

Harry had just visited his dying father, and it had been so much worse than he could have possibly imagined. Norman Osborn had no words of kindness or even remorse for leaving his only child to his own devices; there would be no coming to an understanding. Yet, it was his hands, his claw-like hands, that Harry knew would haunt him forever. Even more horrible was the revelation that the disease was genetic – how could his father have hidden that fact from him this whole time?

Once Harry had crawled to his feet, tore off his shirt, washed his face, and gargled mouthwash, he wrapped himself in a blanket and collapsed exhausted onto a sofa. Maybe Norman was wrong. Maybe the "Osborn curse" had skipped a generation. He needed to talk to Zahra, hear her voice or he would lose his mind.

"Harry! I've been thinking about you all day. How was your flight? Are you feeling jetlagged?" she asked him.

"The flight was fine. It's early afternoon here, but I'm still on Berlin evening time… I'm so tired."

"Have you seen your father yet?"

He was silent, searching for the words for the suffocating emotions he was trying to suppress. "It was awful," Harry finally replied in a quiet voice she had never heard before.

"Oh no…"

"I knew that he hated me, but to have him tell me to my face how much of a disappointment I am… I really thought that there would be a deathbed reconciliation or something, but I was stupid for thinking that."

"You were positive and hopeful, and you did your best."

He started crying, but he didn't want her to hear it. He couldn't tell her the rest of his father's confession, not right now. "I wish you were here."

"Just stay on the phone with me."

"I'm so cold and so tired."

"I'll talk to you until you fall asleep."

The first couple days after Harry left Berlin were rough for Zahra, so when her cousin arrived it had been a welcome distraction. However, those two weeks had also come and gone, and Harry was still not able to leave New York. It had stretched into a month now, but even more disturbing was the undeniable fact that something had changed. Their video calls had stopped, and his text messages had become shorter and less frequent.

Zahra was absolutely heartsick. What had changed? Was it the distance? Did their relationship really just fizzle out so easily? What happened to all of the promises that they had made to each other? She gazed at the ring on her finger, recalling the day that Harry had put it there. Part of her wanted to take it off, but if she did that, things would really be over. She wasn't going to give up that easily, but doubts continued to creep in hour by hour.

The return to New York was never going to be anywhere close to fun; however, Brady wasn't expecting things to be this messy either. The right-hand man of the late senior Osborn, Donald Menken, seemed to be determined to make things thoroughly unpleasant. There was a hierarchy to how the Osborn staff functioned, Brady accepted that, but Menken was clearly trying to push him out altogether. With Harry being the sole heir to the company and to all private assets, there was a lot to be gained by being the controlling interest in the young man's life, a role that Menken desperately wanted to fill.

Since Oscorp already had a capable administrative assistant for the junior Osborn, and a fleet of drivers and security members at their disposal, Brady had been stuck at the Osborn mansion for much of the time, feeling useless. After the being completely responsible for Harry's day-to-day schedule, his security, and his damage control for so long, suddenly there were other people doing these tasks. However, keeping a degree of familiarity for Harry was important, so Brady wasn't going to complain.

Working for the Osborns was a challenge, but over the past few years that he had known Harry, he had grown to care about the young man. He could be arrogant, demanding, and entitled, but he could also be surprisingly kind, insecure, and honest. Not that he considered Harry to be a son, or a younger brother, or even a friend, but Brady was a constant in his life. Seeing Zahra become a stable influence on the young man was a position that Brady had no problem sharing.

That said, he could clearly see that a distance between the couple was forming. Lately, Harry had become extremely evasive, and that was on top of him dealing with the absolute truckload of emotional baggage from his father's death. Harry had shared with him some of the heartless final words that Norman had spoken – things no son should ever hear. Brady had seen Harry at many low points before, but nothing like this.

It was late afternoon and Harry was back home from the office. He said he hadn't been feeling well, and he looked it. The dark bags under his eyes never went away and he was frequently bundled up as though he was cold. If there was nothing Brady could do for him at Oscorp, then he would make sure the young man was taken care of here. He found the tea that Zahra had given him back in Berlin and steeped it, bringing the tea tray up to the Harry's suite. He knocked, heard a muffled reply, and entered. Harry was staring out the window.

"I've made some tea for you," Brady announced. "If you have any suggestions for dinner, I can take them back down to the kitchen."

As Harry turned, the assistant's gaze fell upon the immoderately filled glass in his hands, then down to the liquor decanter on the side table. Brady's jaw tightened slightly in his effort to stifle his reaction, but he must not have been able to keep it completely out of his eyes.

"Disappointed, aren't you?" Harry muttered, his voice thick. "I was doing so well, not drinking. Well, at least it isn't pills. I made sure all of those were properly disposed the moment my father died."

"I also recall you asking for the liquor to be cleared out of the house, aside from the kitchen."

"I did. Funny thing though. A small bar got set up in my office. I think Menken is trying to tell me something."

"Tell you what?"

"That I'm weak!" Harry shouted, swaying on his feet. "That all it takes is the sight of it sitting around and I'll slip right back into the hole. I swear he sent me that first bottle when I was 16… like it matters anymore. And I just want to not think. I want to be able to sleep."

Brady watched him all but fall back onto the sofa, his head leaned back and that's when he caught sight of it. "Harry, what happened to your neck?"

The young man snapped back to attention, and tried to cover it with his hand, but winced. "It's nothing."

"It's infected, that's what it is."

"It'll be fine."

"I can have a doctor come in quietly."

"I said forget about it!"

"You have an open sore on your neck; I'm afraid I can't."

"I already know what it is!"

Brady stared at him in confusion, waiting silently for an explanation.

"A parting gift from my father – the disease is genetic," Harry spat out with a voice brimming with loathing.

The older man inhaled and exhaled a full breath, trying to process this information. "Are you certain?" he asked.

"That was Norman Osborn's deathbed confession. If I wasn't losing my mind over this, I wouldn't have told you, but I have to tell someone."

"What about Zahra?"

"No! Zahra can't know about this."

"You're engaged to be married – isn't this something she should know?"

"Tell her that her fiancé is going to become a monster?" he exclaimed bitterly. "You didn't see him," Harry began again more quietly. "You didn't see what the disease did to his body. What it's already starting to do to me."

"Then you can't keep it a secret forever."

"If she doesn't marry me, she won't have to know."

"You're going to break off the engagement?"

"I gave her my word of honour that I would not break it; only she would be able to call it off. Who says chivalry is dead?"

All at once, Brady understood the situation, understood what Harry was doing. "You're going to make Zahra break the engagement. That's why you haven't been in touch with her…"

"Ten points to the man in the suit," Harry drawled as he took another swallow of his drink.

"I know you have a mean streak, but I didn't think you could be cruel."

"No, no, no. Cruel is telling your neglected son that he's a living time bomb before abandoning him forever. I'm going to spare Zahra everything that Norman put my mother through. I won't doom her to the same fate. I'm going to save her from all of this."

"Zahra respects you. She loves you. She trusts you. Keeping this a secret will break her heart even more than the truth. You're really just going to push away the only person who feels that deeply about you?"

Harry staggered to his feet, pointing a finger into Brady's chest. "Don't you dare judge me! You don't think this isn't tearing me up inside? I would give anything to make her happy. But my father sacrificed everything and still didn't find a cure. I'm not going to sacrifice her to save myself."

Brady shook his head. "I don't agree. I won't sit silently as you throw away your only chance of happiness."

"Then you don't have to. You are free to leave. Where was your sensitive conscience when I was treating girls as disposable items, or when I was on the verge of destroying myself with drugs and alcohol?"

"I guess you never noticed that I stuck around when others left. That I always believed you would come around. That I actually cared. I never tried to be your father or your friend. I just tried to be there."

Brady made for the door, then halted and turned around. Harry stood frozen, unsure of what he would say next. Saying nothing, however, Brady marched over to him, grabbed Harry's glass of alcohol right out of his hands, and hurled it against the wall. Then he spun on his heel and left the room.

A/N: I really like how the dialogue between Harry and Brady turned out. Actually, I really like their dynamic in general. That is all.

And thank you for reading 3