It was a bruised and battered Peter Parker that entered Harry's mansion. One of the nicer side effects of having the genetic gifts of a spider was that he healed with astonishing speed; his wounds from the final confrontation with the Green Goblin had vanished by the time of the funeral. However, not even spider-blood could erase the twinges of a serious fight in just a few minutes, so he was moving a little stiffly.

He'd remembered to check for cuts and scrapes. No reason to repeat the past.

Harry met him almost before he'd entered. "Hey, Pete."

"Hey, Harry," he said, giving him a slightly surprised look. This - the meeting him at the door thing - was different. Against his better wishes, Peter was instantly suspicious.

Harry asked about Aunt May, and the Bugle, and Peter answered all of the small-talk questions with a growing sense that the axe was going to be falling any second now.

Finally, Harry finished making conversation and, deadly serious, asked, "Pete, you take his picture all the time, right? Where does he go? Does he keep a schedule, or...?"

Oh. That. Again.

"Harry, I told you," he said, trying to be patient and not entirely succeeding. "I'm not going to help you on this until I see proof."

"You don't believe me," Harry said. He was more resigned than bitter, but the bitterness was there too.

"No, it's not- I believe that you saw what you saw. I'm just saying, maybe what you saw isn't the whole story. I mean, Spider-Man has never killed anyone. Anyone else," he tacked on hastily, to forestall Harry's complaint. "And you're right, I do follow the guy around, and I do know him, a little" - white lies were okay, white lies were okay - "so maybe I do have a biased opinion. But I don't think he's a killer. Do you believe me?"

Harry sighed. "Pete - it's just, you're not really good with people."

That was true.

"And you're not always a good judge of character."

That was also true. After all, Peter had thought Norman Osborn was a guy to look up to.

"So I guess... the answer is no, I don't."

Now Peter sighed. He hadn't really expected anything else - they'd had this conversation a few times already, and the end result was always the same: Harry hated Spider-Man. Still, it would be nice if one of his only friends in the universe would stop trying to get him to help kill himself.

"Sorry," Harry added. "You want to do something? Pool or something? I bought a pinball game."

Peter, irritated enough to be deep into sarcasm mode, almost said, "How about we throw darts at a picture of Spider-Man?" but stopped himself just in time. "No, that's okay. Actually, I have somewhere to be."

"Oh yeah? Assignment or what?"

White lies, he reminded himself, were okay. "No, just an errand for Aunt May. Are you going to the concert on Friday?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "I wish. I've got a delegation of negotiators coming in from France, of all places. They want to use Oscorp's patents for their own projects, and right now I'm thinking..."

"Uh - errand," Peter cut in, fearful of the prospect of listening to Harry discuss boring, confusing business stuff, which always had the potential to veer into a "I wouldn't be in this situation if Spider-Man hadn't killed my father" direction. "Gotta go."

Harry looked a little forlorn, but said, "Right. See you."

Peter let himself out of the building. He hated lying - to everyone, but especially to Harry, who was caught up squarely in the middle of the mess and didn't even know it. Telling him the truth might've cost Peter a friend, but he was willing to do it, just to get the burden off of his soul. But Norman - Norman had asked him not to with his dying breath... and Harry idolized his father, and if he took that away, there wouldn't even be good memories left.

It hurt so much to loose your father. Loosing a father twice would kill the strongest person, and Peter had serious doubts about Harry's strength.

Peter couldn't stand it. He walked for all of half a block before ditching the civilian identity in the first alleyway he found and swinging on.

He wasn't going anywhere. He wasn't looking for crimes to stop. He just swung. It helped to clear his head, he'd discovered; there was an odd sort of Zen to be found in slinging webs.

He swung until sunset, when he stopped. Aunt May would be expecting him soon, but he could beg off with the same kind of excuses he'd used on Harry. Freelance photography and frail-seeming widowed aunts were great for excuses. Right now, in this precious space of time where no one was trying to kill him and no one needed him, Spider-Man just wanted to sit and watch the city.

Spidey found a good perch on an old building's decorative ledge, surrounded by weathered stone gargoyles. From the street, no one would notice him among the other crouching figures.

"It just doesn't make sense," he said after a minute, surprising himself. "I haven't done anything except try to save the world. Why would Psycho try to kill me? If it's nothing personal, if it's business, then who's he doing business with? Jolly Jonah's too cheap to hire anyone. Maybe I need to stop going through Hell's Kitchen, leave that neighborhood up to that other guy, what's-his-face, with the horns. Last thing I need is organized crime breathing down my neck."

He glanced to his side, where one of the gargoyles was staring back with a frozen stone scream.

"Hey, why am I telling you this? You're a statue. How deranged is that?"

The gargoyle stared.

As far as gargoyles went, it wasn't that nasty looking. Spidey tilted his head and considered it. It would be nice to have someone to talk to - and, bonus, the statue couldn't talk back. "Hmmm. I'll call you 'Bruce'. "

Bruce didn't even say goodbye when he webbed off.