Yup, this marks the end of the Austin series. Now I'll have the time to finish up "Just a Second Chance" and "Nature Versus Nurture 2" and work on another original story. Maybe if you guys are good I'll do a prequel-spinoff or two. Off to attend to my loyal minions...er, I mean, reviewers:
To saakuya: Here it is.
To LadyKayoss: Not one, but three major characters ended up killed. However, when you look at Hamlet at the end just about everyone's dead except Horatio and Prince Fortinbras. That play is where this chapter title comes from.
To moonjava: Thanks.
Epilogue: Good Night, Sweet Prince
(Author's note: This chapter is first-person, Octavius' point of view. The italics in the prologue of Romeo and Juliet are my alterations. "Fair Verona" and "take", respectively, are the Bard's original words.)
I have lived too long. I have my dreams die, my experiments fail. I have seen the death of my wife, a friendship with a student turn into a bitter enmity, discovered the son I never knew I had, saw him marry the daughter of that same enemy, and became a grandfather. And then I have seen the death of that son I knew for all too brief a time.
They lay my son's body in the brown casket, his actuators gently arranged on either side of him. My poor lost son looks so much like me, with his messy brown hair, straight nose, and my brown eyes covered by his favorite sunglasses. They lay my daughter-in-law in another casket, her straight brown hair loose around her shoulders, her blue eyes stitched closed. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Rachelle stands next to me on the graveyard lawn, whispering. I strain to make out the words.
"Two households, both alike in dignity,
In New York City do we make our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers lose their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, naught could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage…"
And I dimly recognize, from Rosalie's Shakespeare classes, the prologue from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
I look at my son's cousin, Rachelle Laufey, her brown hair hanging loose and swirling in the wind, and realize how much she reminds me of my dear late Rosie. The thought also hits me that her birthday is also exactly the same as Rosie's. If I believed in reincarnation, I could say that perhaps after she died, she came back to this earth to bring comfort to me through her friendship with my son.
At the end of Romeo and Juliet, after the title characters die, the Lords Montague and Capulet build a golden statue of their children and swear never to be enemies again. Well, we can't afford golden statues, but at the memorial service a few days ago, Peter and I symbolically destroyed a DVD of Spider-man 2. There will be no more Spider-man and Doctor Octopus. Our son and daughter deserve that much.
Noreen Osborn's funeral was a week ago. The only people to attend besides the minister were her son Harry and her half-brother, Norman "Normie" Osborn III. Last I heard, Harry Octavian asked Kelly Brock out on a date. Maybe that love will fill the hole Noreen's evil deeds put in their hearts. It only takes one candle to dispel darkness, and love is so much more than a candle. Love can light the stars.
With her knowledge of chemistry she could have been the next Marie Curie. With her business savvy she could have been the next Henry Ford. But in the end, she became the next Green Goblin. And the saddest fact of all was unearthed in her personal papers. According to the birth certificate and several letters found in Noreen's personal safe, her father was Harry Osborn—and her mother was a model and actress named Mary Jane Watson. Apparently Mary Jane had broken up with Harry and decided to marry her true love, Peter Parker. Not wanting Harry's baby to get between her and her new husband, Mary Jane signed away all her parental rights to her newborn daughter, Noreen Harriet. Noreen and May were in fact half-sisters. No one could tell what could have happened if Noreen had been raised by Peter, instead of Harry.
Matt Murdock came to my apartment yesterday with Austin's will. He said that in the event of the death of both him and May, custody of his daughters, Ottoline and Parker Marie, were to go to their maternal grandparents, Peter and Mary Jane Parker. He asked if I wished to contest the will and fight for custody of the twins. I told him absolutely not. I will not go against my son's wishes, and the girls belong in a stable home. However, Austin willed me all his scientific equipment and research notes, and that gives me some small comfort.
Finally, a woman in a black dress walks up to me. Her red hair is graying now, but I still remember the woman lawyer who picked me up at a New York City bar so many years ago. And, strangely, the battered wife I took advantage of pulls me in an embrace.
"Thank you, Dr. Octavius," Anna Smith, Esquire, tells me.
"For what?" I say.
"For giving me such a son as Austin," she replies.
"He was like a shooting star in my life," I agree. "Bright, beautiful…and gone much too soon."
Peter walks up to me and roughly pulls me into an embrace next, and begins to cry on my shoulder. In any other circumstances, this wouldn't be happening. Remember, the hostility Peter and I once had was so famous they made a movie out of it. But now, we are simply grieving fathers, wondering why we have to bury our children, instead of the other way around.
I have lived too long.
They play some songs, throw some roses in. And finally the caskets are lowered.
The Valley of the Shadow of Death.
After contemplating on their daughter for a number of minutes, Peter and Mary Jane bid their last goodbyes. I watch them lead Parker Marie and Ottoline away. One of Ottoline's tentacles, peeking out from her trademark red trench coat, is still holding a white rose, I notice. The next thing I notice is the splat of a large gob of spider web hitting the back of my head.
"Parker! Stop that right now!" MJ scolds.
"I didn't shoot that web," Parker states.
And Ottoline simply stares, amazed, at the small hole on the inside of her wrist and the minute hooks growing on her fingertips…
Good night, sweet prince, and may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.