Warnings: Still none.
A/N: I clearly don't know what nuclear physicists do. lol
...
Part 2
Otto wasn't quite sure what to expect. No, that's not true. He did expect better security at a place like Bellevue-at least the upper floors where the most notorious, high profile patient-prisoners were kept.
As it was, all it took was a bit of home-made chloroform spray and good old lock picking (and, unfortunately in some places, crunching) to get to Norman's suite at the very top floor.
And it was legitimately a suite. Run-down, thread bare carpeting and upholstery, dusty shelves and scratched wood, but it had a master bedroom, bathroom, and office.
The last room of which he found Norman, bent over a desk and scribbling in a notebook. Otto stood by and observed for several moments, but he didn't hear the other man muttering, no cross looks or sudden movements. He seemed calm, collected.
"I was wondering when you'd come."
Otto stepped forward from the shadows. "Norman."
Osborn sat back in his chair. "Tell me, Doctor, when did you get back?"
"A few days ago, it would seem."
Norman nodded. "Hmm. New chip still intact?"
Otto sighed. "It is, thankfully."
A moment of silence, as Osborn mulled and considered. "Do I have the honor of being the first, or, only, person you're paying a visit to?
A pause. "No. My assistant. I spent the night at her apartment, but I said nothing of our...parallel universe experience."
Norman tipped his head, pursed his lips. "Harry didn't tell me you two were so close."
Otto quickly shook his head. "No, no, it's not like that-"
"But you wish it were, don't you?"
"I..." Otto's shoulders fell. He let out a tired laugh or two. "I suppose there's no point in lying about that anymore, given the circumstances." Another pause. "Yes, I do."
"You're sure you haven't tipped her off to what happened to us?" Norman pressed.
"No. Couldn't think of how without seeming...well..."
Knowing glances were exchanged, before Norman rose from his chair and shuffled up to the closest window, to look out through the bars welded to the frame, out onto the city.
"Do you think there's any hope for us, despite what that younger Parker did?"
Norman turned around. "I suppose that depends on what you plan to do now."
"Turn myself in, of course." Otto responded solemnly.
Norman took a deep breath. "I've had a lot of time to think, obviously. Think of what I did, here and...there. I saw no other way. What are we to do, live on the run for the rest of our lives? We're too old for that nonsense, Octavius. You know it, I know it. I will say, though," he moved to sit down again, "out of my darkest moments, I was given a gift I certainly didn't deserve. It's been difficult and not always reciprocated, but a chance to salvage my relationship with Harry has been..." A light entered the other man's eyes, and a little smirk. "Hmm."
"The Harry I remember didn't speak of you much."
"No doubt you remember things quite differently, these past couple of years. I'm not entirely sure what you may know, or don't know, or basically what all I should fill you in on, but I know Harry was funding your fusion project in the hopes that it would be sort of the cash cow that would reinvigorate the company and help fund his less lucrative research into my...problem."
Otto looked down, at the fingers of his one hand squeezing and rubbing the other. How the actuators hovered, docile, near his feet. "I've failed..." He huffed. "So many ways, so spectacularly."
Norman mulled his words. "The only true failure, is in not trying to do our best in the only moment we truly have: the present."
Otto looked up at Norman and chuckled. "When did you get so wise?"
The other man took a deep breath. "Like I said, I've had a lot of time to think in here." He shrugged. "Not much else to do."
Otto hadn't wanted to ask, but: "You haven't had issues with...ah, the Other Guy showing up?"
"I have my moments," Norman answered without hesitation. "Part of what Harry's research is all about. All the lawyers, too, have tried to argue some sort of temporary insanity issue, but..." Many faces flashed across Osborn's mind, the last being a woman from another time and place who, along with her nephew, had been foolhardy enough to help him. "I know ultimately I belong here, though."
Otto couldn't help but compare their situations in his mind. And he knew he couldn't avoid the inevitable any longer.
Otto rose heavily from his seat. "I better go." He turned to leave-
"Otto."
He looked back.
"That woman, your assistant. Harry has told me about her. Make sure she knows."
...
Sam hadn't noticed earlier, but sometime during the night one of the spare blankets she had supplied Otto had been draped over her as she had been curled up on her couch. She also hadn't noticed until he was gone, but the handful of dirty dishes had been washed and put away, and the stack of science journals on her diminutive dining room table had been neatly shuffled into a respectable stack.
She knew she was a heavy sleeper, though not that heavy. Some cold, logical part of her brain chided her; he could have done anything in the middle of the night. But some more reasonable, amenable part knew he wouldn't have.
He may have forgotten her in all this mess and chaos, but he'd never shown her any menace. Had never dragged her into any of it.
She rubbed the frayed ends of the blanket he'd given back to her between her fingers. She wasn't even entirely sure he'd even come back today. It was already evening, the city already darkening.
Not that she had much else to do, until she found a new job, but-
A crunching thump on her roof startled Sam. For not the first nor last time, Same was grateful she had the topmost unit in her semi-dilapidated brownstone.
Sam jumped up and headed toward her bedroom once she heard the squeak and scrape of the sliding glass doors in her bedroom being opened.
Otto stood silent there, all but still except for a hand that was moving in a pocket, and aside from his actuators, which were were all pointed at Sam.
"How did it go?"
"Well... well. My dear."
She couldn't help but smile at the endearment, as if it was more demonstrative and not as well-worn as it was.
"Are you okay?"
It warmed Otto to even just be asked that question after everything that had happened, even though it was by no means a foreign phrase between the former lab partners.
A rueful smile curled his lips. "Right now, yes." He stepped toward Sam, who didn't flinch or step away. Her eyes were locked firmly with his.
"I..." Otto grasped the thing in his pocket and pulled his hand out. "Can I trust you with something?"
"Of course."
Otto held out both hands, still covering...whatever it was. Sam held out her hands, and he carefully placed the weighty, disk-shaped object into them.
Otto opened his hands over hers to reveal a glowing disk with a triangle motif on the front.
Sam's eyes sparkled with curiosity at the thing; she could tell it was something special. "What is this?" she whisper-asked.
"Something called an arc reactor. It came from...the place I've been, these last few...weeks."
Sam stared at this arc reactor for several seconds. "Is it stolen?"
"No," Otto huffed in amusement. "I mean, not on purpose, anyhow." Once he'd snatched the thing from that... Electro or whatever his name was, seemingly from another time line, he'd never gotten the chance to return it to the younger Parker, before he found himself back in his own world. He hoped its absence didn't cause the other Parker any problems, since he had no idea how he'd ever be able to bring it back.
Sam let out a sigh as she squeezed the bridge of her nose, another familiar gesture. "Otto..."
"I know, I know, I just..." He folded her lithe fingers over the arc reactor. "I trust you with...so much. Including this. Please trust me, the real me, to do what I need to, to...share what I need to, when I can."
Sam swallowed. "But...but not now, huh?"
"Not now. But soon."
Her eyes shot up to his, then flitted back down. "Okay." Sam nodded. "Okay."
Otto hung his head. "Thank you. I know-lack of inhibitor chip or not-I deserve much less."
"Hey." Sam raised her hand not holding the arc reactor to Otto's face and coaxed his head up to look at her. "I know this wasn't you. The bad stuff. The real you was there all along, just..." She looked aside, but her hand stayed on his cheek.
"I want to tell you more, but you deserve so much more than me."
Sam's eyes shot up to his again. She struggled for something to say in response for a moment. "That...that's not true."
"You do." A pause, at least on the man's part. The arms were floating, moving around them, watching all this intently. "Don't let me hurt you more than I have already."
Sam shook her head. "You'd only be hurting me in not letting me have this chance."
Sam pulled Otto in for a kiss. Their first ever. It was not happening under the most ideal of circumstances, but given that Sam had all but settled for the idea that she would never even see Otto again, just 24 hours prior, she was going to relish it. A tentative brush of the lips quickly turned more heated.
Otto didn't respond at first, but any resistance quickly dissipated. He moved to wrap his flesh and bone arms around Sam. The metal arms soon followed suit, with the lower ones coiling around her legs and hips, and the upper ones also around her torso.
She winced only slightly at the pressure felt at her still-healing back. The metal arms were surprisingly warm, as warm as his flesh and blood ones.
The times she'd examined or otherwise had to move them around in the lab, the metal was always icy to the touch. They'd always bothered her... when Otto first shared their design with her, she'd immediately objected to the intrusive design and AI programming, but he'd kept insisting that they would work "like a dream," but that dream had so quickly become a nightmare.
But all that right now just suddenly...didn't matter.
After some uncounted moments later in each other's embrace, Sam spoke.
"I love you." It was said so quietly, so small, she wasn't even sure she heard herself right.
The arms around Sam loosened and Otto drew back. He tugged off a glove and caressed her cheek in turn, as he locked eyes with her.
"Sunshine," he smiled, as he continued to caress her cheek.
He'd called her that before. Not often, but she could recall hearing that nickname right after they got the news that they had received the grant from Oscorp and she has been so excited; one morning, after they had had a particularly good week in the lab and she had brought him coffee; after he had seen her home one night at the end of another week when it had been raining nonstop in New York.
Otto took a deep breath. "I need to go."
All the light went out from Sam's face. "I know," she whispered, as all of Otto's arms fully unwound from around her and he started to move away.
She felt so cold. Blank.
The future was a complete unknown, but chances are, it wasn't good.
Otto moved back towards her sliding glass doors.
The two of them locked eyes.
"I love you, and I'm sorry."
...
A/N 2: There will be a Part 3 and possibly a Part 4, depending on how I structure the rest of this. Stay tuned.