"Yup it's me- Harry Osborn again!" Pause. "I sent both of you a text an hour ago and of course I hear nothing back. I'm done waiting." The sound of something breaking. "I'm done," Harry repeated before ending the message.
Andrew played the message one more time before deleting it. He thought there had to be a way to save everyone, but Violet was right. There were still some events that needed to happen to ensure that he and his sister were born. Peter telling Harry his secret identity as Spider-Man had really thrown him through a loop.
He couldn't save everyone.
So, as mad as his sister was at him, she helped him figure out damage control. Andrew was going to spend as much time with Peter as he could to ensure that Peter didn't start on the cure for Harry's disease. It wasn't that Andrew didn't want to be spending so much time with Peter- his father- but he hated having to lie to him about it. Andrew had never seen him this carefree before. It wasn't fair that they were going to have to take that away from him.
Harry Osborn had to become the Goblin. Gwen Stacy had to die.
From the sound of the last message Harry had sent him last night, he was about to get the cure his own way, which would ultimately be downfall.
Andrew kept fidgeting with the ends of his sleeves as he walked to the lake by the bridge. Gwen wanted him to meet her there. He kept debating with himself whether or not he should go, but she might not have much more time. Violet wouldn't approve, but this was the one thing he hadn't told her about.
Gwen was already there, staring down at a passing boat. Her mint green jacket was hard to miss against the black railing. Andrew hesitated, having second thoughts, but she had had already turned around and seen him.
"Hey," she greeted him with a hug, which he returned.
"Gwen," he smiled, "what's up?"
She was looking extremely pleased with herself, her hands practically twitching with excitement. "Remember how I told you about how I applied for that scholarship to go to Oxford University in England?"
"You got it," Andrew answered right away.
"How'd you know?" She tilted her head.
Andrew let out an amused laugh. "Well, besides the fact that you're literally bouncing with excitement, I told you that you'd get it," he smiled.
"That you did," she said. "I had my interview this morning, and they just called me back an hour ago. There's an early summer program, but it starts in like four days. They're going to pay for my plane ticket to get there, but I'd have to leave tonight."
"Tonight?" Andrew blinked in surprise. "I mean, that's kind of soon, isn't it? How are you going to get everything packed? What about saying goodbye to everyone?"
"I'm just bringing a small suitcase for now. My mom will send the rest in a couple days. I'm having a late lunch with my family, but as for everyone else? I kind of pushed away a lot of people away after my father died. And then Peter and I kept going back and forth about wanting to be together. The point is, I don't really keep in touch with a lot of people here anymore and I'm hoping I can start over in England."
"Am I the only other person besides your family that gets a goodbye?" Andrew gave a half smile.
"Well..." She looked at the ground for a moment. "I was debating on whether or not I should go see Peter. I feel like I owe him that, but it might be too hard for me. For the both of us."
Andrew quirked an eyebrow. "So you're just going to leave without telling him?"
"No," Gwen said quickly. "No, I just, I'm going to call him. I actually saw him earlier today, right before my interview in fact."
"You did?"
She nodded, not giving him any more details. Instead, she was looking to the distance when confusion crossed her face.
"Harry?"
Andrew turned to see Harry Osborn pacing angrily forward towards them. He angled his body to shield Gwen, but he had no doubt who Harry was here to see. The move did not go unnoticed, as Harry's eyes flickered to Gwen, and then back to Andrew.
"So, you're the other one?" Harry sneered at Andrew. There were dark rings under his eyes, his usual smoothed down hair was in disarray.
"How'd you find me?" Andrew asked.
"I tracked your phone number," Harry glowered at him, "but that doesn't matter right now. What matters is the fact that you and Peter lied to me!" he growled.
"We never lied to you," Andrew said, taking a step forward. That was a lie. "We told you we needed to test our blood to see if it was compatible. We never said we weren't going to help you." Another lie.
"It's been weeks," Harry said through his teeth. "You're just some stranger, so I get it if you don't want to help me. But Peter... Peter is my best friend. I can see now that I can't even rely on him for help when I need it."
Andrew tried not to flinch at that. Peter wasn't lying to Harry, he actually thought Andrew had plans to help try and cure him. "He's been busy. He'll help you, he just has other things going on right now."
"What's going on? What's wrong Harry?" Gwen said, stepping out from behind Andrew.
Harry closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, his hands visibly shaking.
"Peter said something to me earlier this morning, Harry. He told me what was happening to you, and that he wanted to help. He wants to help," Gwen repeated.
"It's too late for that," Harry shook his head. "I've just been kicked out of my own company because they framed me for someone's death. The kicker is, he isn't dead. They're holding him at Ravencroft."
"That's horrible, Harry," Gwen frowned, "Have you told the police?"
"Oscorp is a multi-billion dollar company. They know how to bury things they don't want to be seen," Harry scoffed.
"Just give us a little more time," Andrew said.
"We're out of time!" Harry yelled. Andrew made sure nobody had stopped to listen to them, but there were no other people in the vicinity. "What don't you get?! I no longer have access to any of my labs."
"I don't know what to tell you then," Andrew shrugged. "What can we do?"
Harry dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small case. Andrew suspected what it was even before Harry tossed it to him; a syringe and hypodermic needle.
"Give me a sample of your blood. That's all you have to do. I'll do whatever I need to do by myself. Obviously I can't count on either of you."
"Harry..." Gwen said at the same time Andrew answered, "No."
"Excuse me?" Harry looked at him in disbelief.
"I'm not just giving you my blood," Andrew shook his head.
Gwen stared at the case and then back to Andrew. "Am I missing something here? Why do you need Andrew's blood?"
"How much do you want?" Harry growled.
"You just lost your company," Andrew said slowly. "Do you really think the people that framed you are going to give you access to your account?" Andrew took the syringe out of the case and crushed it in his palm. "You're not getting my blood."
"You son of a bitch!" Harry lunged at Andrew. Gwen rushed to Harry to hold him back, but in his rage, Harry shoved Gwen back roughly causing her to fall over the safety railing.
Andrew leapt forward onto the railing and shot a web out, instantly catching her arm. The fifteen foot fall would have definitely hurt her. She grabbed the webbing with her other hands and looked up at Andrew with wide eyes. He easily pulled her up over the railing, noticing that she was shaking.
"Harry..." Gwen said sadly, watching Harry's retreating figure.
"Let him go," Andrew told her, pulling off the webbing from her jacket.
"He needs help," she whispered. She still seemed like she was in shock.
Andrew sighed. "And he'll get it. Not like this though," he pointed the the crushed syringe on the ground. "I'll get you home though, you need to get ready for your trip."
The shock seemed to go away with the mention of her trip. "I need to get home. I'm leaving tonight for England a-and... and you're like Peter?"
Andrew nodded. Gwen let out a disbelieving laugh.
"I sure know how to pick them," she whispered to herself. "Peter knows about you?"
"Yeah. We've been working together."
"That's what Harry meant by 'the other one.'"
Andrew picked the empty syringe up and disposed of it in a nearby garbage can. "If you want, we can talk about it later. You have my number, you can message me when you get to England." He forced a smile. "For now, let's get you home."
Gwen was silent on the way back to her house. She gave Andrew a quick hug and a goodbye before walking inside.
He had walked just ten steps away from the door as his phone began to ring. Peter was calling him. Andrew answered and Peter was rushing out sentences about coins and Roosevelt. Before he could even get a word out, Peter asked him to meet him at an abandoned train tunnel entrance near the construction site on 45th and Derby Lane. Andrew agreed and hung up the phone.
The train tunnel entrance only took about ten minutes to get there - by swinging there, that is. Peter had a red beanie on with a black hoodie similar to the one Andrew was wearing. He was rocking back and forth on his heels when Andrew walked up to him.
"Hey!" Peter beamed. "Sorry to call you down here like this."
"It's all good, although I didn't really understand everything you were saying on the phone," Andrew said.
Peter set down a black bag he was holding and pulled out several gold coins from his pocket. "I found these in my Dad's old briefcase he left me. You don't need to hear the whole story, but I think he wanted me to find these. I did some digging and these coins are used specifically for the Roosevelt Train Station. He- my Dad- had these hidden in a calculator, so they must mean something." He pocketed them again.
"Ok," Andrew shrugged. "Let's go check it out."
"Really?" Peter looked surprised. "I didn't think you'd want to... but I was hoping you would," he amended when Andrew raised an eyebrow. "Oh! One more thing, before I forget," Peter picked the black bag up and handed it to Andrew.
Andrew opened up the bag and stared at the item in his hands.
"I thought that you could use one of your own, you know, if you're going to be saving the city and all that with me," Peter scratched his arm. "You're always wearing black, so I figured I'd use that in the color scheme."
Andrew held the suit out in front of him to get a good look at it. The webbing pattern was similar to Peter's suit, but the coloring was different. Where Peter's suit was red, the fabric was a dark cobalt blue color. The rest of the suit was black, where Peter's had normally been blue, and the eyes had a blue tint to them. The last actual suit Andrew had was when he was ten years old, and his father had destroyed that one.
"This is... really cool, dude," Andrew admired the suit some more. "Thanks, for real."
"Awesome," Peter grinned.
Andrew folded up the suit and put it back in the black bag. The two of them headed into the abandoned station.
"You know," Peter began, "now that you have your own suit, you're going to need your own secret identity nickname." He took out his phone, checked it, and slipped it back in his pocket.
Andrew rolled his eyes. "I'm not too worried about people knowing who I am. The people that I do talk to can handle themselves in a fight."
The tunnels were dark without any natural light. If it wasn't for their enhanced senses, they wouldn't be able to properly see. Peter had his flashlight out anyways.
"What about your sister?"
Andrew paused. Peter still didn't know about her. "Yeah... you're right. Have any ideas? I'm sure 'Spider-Man 2' is out of the picture."
Peter snorted, "yeah right."
"The Tarantula?"
"If you want people to think you're covered in hair," Peter laughed.
Andrew elbowed him. "Well, if you have anything better, be my guest."
Part of the tunnel had caved in, letting in a little bit of the light from the outside. There was just enough space for them to squeeze through.
"Spider... spider-bite... the dark spider, no... web something... web weaver..." Peter kept mumbling to himself trying to figure out a name.
Andrew paused at hearing his alias from when he was ten years old, 'Web Weaver'. The name sounded lame to him now, but back then he loved putting on his suit and saving people. So much had changed since then.
"We'll think of something," Peter checked his phone again, his face unreadable, before putting it away.
"You have somewhere else you have to be?" Andrew asked.
Peter kicked a broken piece of track aside. "No, I- do you remember me talking about my kind-of-not-so-ex-girlfriend Gwen?" Andrew nodded. "This morning she had an interview for Oxford and she told me she'd let me know if she got in or not. I'm just anxious to hear what happened. If she gets it, she moves to England and I'll only have a couple months left to see her, but she'll be happy. If she doesn't, then she stays here but she'll be unhappy."
"That sucks." Andrew wasn't quite sure what to answer to that.
"Hey, there's some light up there," Peter nodded forward, saving Andrew from having to come up with something else to say.
They both hopped up onto the platform that was labeled 'Roosevelt.' There was one single turn style, and Peter had immediately walked up to it, put one of the golden coins in and walked on through.
Nothing happened.
"I don't understand," Peter said.
Andrew looked around the dimly lit room. "Maybe the coins were for something else?" There was a sudden grinding noise behind him and he walked towards the tracks that were- spreading apart! "Peter, come check this out!"
A full sized subway train car emerged from the tracks. Peter and Andrew looked at each other in disbelief. The lights inside the train all lit up just as the doors to the train opened.
"After you," Andrew gestured to the train. Peter crept forward, observing every little thing they passed. Whoever had set this up obviously didn't want anyone else knowing about it at the time; it looked like some underground lab that ran secret experiments. Andrew shuddered at the thought, reminding him of the time he had spent on Stryker's island.
A small section of the train had several vials of liquids all under what Andrew could only assume was a blacklight. There was also a small glass container that had cobwebs inside; whatever had inhabited that container was no longer there.
"Whoa," Peter said loudly.
"What?" Andrew whipped his head up from the glass container, nearly knocking over one of the tiny glass vials.
"The blacklight is having like an opposite effect on your eyes. They're normally like... glowing neon blue, but with the blacklight they're just brown."
"That's what color they used to be before all this happened," Andrew said, moving on to check out a small set of surgical equipment.
Peter tapped his chin, "I got it. Your code name can be 'Luminol.'"
"Luminol?" Andrew frowned in confusion. "What? What's that?"
"It's a chemical that exhibits chemiluminescence when mixed with an oxidizing agent. It's used to find blood at crime scenes, but it glows a bright neon blue color."
Andrew bit his lip. "Maybe."
Peter moved on to a computer next, the words "Download Complete" on the screen. Andrew picked up what looked like a stress ball and started tossing it in the air, leaning against the wall as Peter sat in the computer chair.
A video started playing, and Andrew recognized the person that popped up on the screen: Richard Parker. Peter had pocketed his red beanie and gone still, listening to the video.
They both silently listened to the video. Andrew set the stress ball back on the counter. Some of the things that Richard Parker - his grandfather - were saying, Andrew had already known, but other things came as a surprise to him, and apparently Peter.
Norman Osborn and Richard Parker worked together. Oscorp was trying to weaponize his research. Richard did not want his work going to biological weapons, so Norman had falsified evidence against him. Richard had secretly implanted his own DNA into the spiders. Only Richard's bloodline can continue the experiments with the spiders. The video ended with Richard saying how much he loved his son and that he was going to have to disappear for awhile.
Peter sat in the chair, staring at the now blank screen on the computer. "Everything that they were saying about my father was a lie. This is the proof I needed to see."
Andrew cleared his throat. "You were right about the coins he had left for you. They were tokens for the train; he wanted you to see this video."
"I can't believe he used his own DNA on the spiders. Did he plan for this to happen? Did he know what was going to happen to me?"
Andrew shook his head. "Nobody knows what's going to happen in the future."
"Wait a second... how was the venom able to work on you? After my father passed away, I'm the only one that it would work on." Peter looked up at Andrew from the chair.
"No idea," Andrew said a little too quickly. "Maybe I got lucky?"
"Hmm," Peter tapped the arm rest repeatedly and then took his phone out. "New voicemail? How did I miss her call?" Peter put the phone up to his ear and listened. His face fell further and further every couple seconds.
"What happened?" Andrew shifted from one foot to the other.
Peter ran a hand through his hair. "Gwen, she uh- she's leaving for England. Tonight. She didn't want to tell me in person."
Andrew whistled. "Damn, that's kind of..." he trailed off when he saw how upset Peter looked.
"I need to see her before she leaves. Maybe I can change her mind or- or maybe I don't know but I need to see her," Peter was practically panicking.
"Yeah, I understand. Do what you need to do," Andrew nodded his head towards the exit. Peter gave him a grateful smile before hopping out of the train car, and running towards the exit.
Andrew slumped back against the wall again. Tonight was apparently the night it was going to happen, one way or another. His father had told them stories about what happened, about how he told the girl he loved he would move to England to be with her. But that could not happen. There was no other way.
"Dammit!" Andrew punched the wall, his hand going right through the frame. The metal had cut his arm, but he paid it no attention. It would heal soon.
He sent a quick text to his sister, "Peter's going to meet Gwen now. She's leaving for England tonight."
Her text back came within seconds. "TONIGHT?! Where are you I'm coming to meet you ASAP!"
Andrew texted her back his location and made his way out of the train tunnel. By the time he made it to the exit, the sunlight was nearly gone.
"There you are!" she stalked towards him. "Andrew, this is not good. Why is she leaving so early? What happens if Peter goes with her? He cannot go to England!" Violet began biting on her finger nail.
Andrew stared at the ground, unsure of what to say. He felt as if this was his fault; it was his fault. If he would have stayed away from everyone, then time would have repeated itself. Tonight was going to be horrible either way. Either Peter goes with Gwen to England, which would in turn erase his sister and him from the timeline, or else everyone he cared about was about to have their lives turned upside down.
"I know I fucked up, Vi," Andrew let go of a breath he didn't realize he was holding in. "I just wanted to spend time with him. He doesn't know who I am, he doesn't know what I've done to our family. I know that Dad felt different about me ever since I got back from that island, after all those people I killed. All I saw in his eyes when he looked at me was disappointment."
"Andrew..." Violet softened her voice, "you know that's not true."
He swallowed hard, not wanting Violet to hear his voice shake. "He was too good of a person to say it out loud, but I always knew."
"Dad loved you," she countered.
"Yeah, he might have loved me," Andrew chuckled sarcastically, "but he didn't like me. I just wanted to know how that felt, and now I do because he says we're friends. This Peter has never looked at me like I was the danger, or like I was going to snap any second," the words rushed out of his mouth. "And it sucks because I am constantly lying to him."
Violet stared at him in shock. Andrew swore inwardly; he shouldn't have said any of that out loud. She already worried about him and this was not going to help.
"Even though I don't agree with your decision to associate yourself with our teenage father, I understand why you did. If that's truely how you think Dad felt about you, I'm sorry we didn't see it sooner. You have to understand though, he loved us both equally - no don't try and cut me off - he did," Violet stomped her foot.
When Andrew didn't say anything, Violet continued. "All of us were affected by that island. Some in more ways than others, but still. Dad had some pretty dark things happen to him in his life, but no matter what he was there for us."
Andrew nodded to let her know he had listened to her words. Luckily for him, she knew he wasn't usually one to talk about feelings or emotions, so she took that as the end of that conversation, for now.
"What's that?" Violet pointed to the black bag dangling from Andrew's hand, clearly trying to change the subject.
"Oh uh, D- Peter made me a suit," he chuckled. "He wanted me to keep my identity safe when I was helping him in the city."
Andrew took the suit out of the bag and held it out to show her. Violet's mouth gaped in awe as she inspected the fabric.
"He made this for you?"
"Yup," he said, popping the P.
She studied the suit for a minute before handing it back to Andrew, who stuffed it back in the black bag. Andrew knew she wanted to say something, from the unsure look on her face, but whatever she was about to say was lost in the next moment.
Every light in the city began shutting off. Everything. Cars began slamming into each other when the traffic lights went down. People were screaming in the distance and there seemed to be some sort of electrical storm bouncing off of one of the skyscrapers.
Andrew's phone buzzed and he knew it was Peter before opening his phone.
Need backup. Follow the electricity -P