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This is very bad.
May is honest-to-god about to take on Norman Osborn—or the Green Goblin, whatever—never mind the fact that Peter, with his superpowers, could barely hold his own against him. So, yeah. It’s not just bad. It’s very, very bad, and Peter needs to get to her, but she’s too far.
He gets a horrible feeling in his gut milliseconds before something huge crashes into the apartment lobby, hurtling straight at May—
And stops abruptly next to her.
It’s like time has frozen. Maybe it has—it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to happen today—but then May jumps back, away from the hovering object, and Peter realizes what happened. It’s Osborn’s glider, the one he was riding on the bridge. And clamping down on it is one of Octavius’s mechanical tentacles.
Octavius strides into view and plants himself between Osborn and May. “Norman, stop!”
Osborn sneers. “Looks like the party’s over.”
There’s another suspended moment where the glider strains against the tentacle’s hold, and then it breaks free and speeds towards Osborn. Osborn hops on and turns back to look at them over his shoulder.
“A parting gift,” he calls, and throws a bomb.
“No!” Peter shouts, springing into action. He bats the bomb away, just barely, and feels scorching heat from the blast as he crashes to the ground. Ears ringing, he staggers to his feet and looks wildly around. Osborn is gone. Smoke fills the air. “May!”
“Peter!”
He turns toward her voice, and is shocked to find Octavius with his back turned to the bomb’s blast, tentacles curled protectively around May in front of him. May gingerly pushes one of them aside—it yields easily under her touch—and rushes over to Peter.
“Are you okay?” Peter asks, putting his hands on her arms, scanning her up and down for injuries.
“I’m fine, I’m fine, are you okay?”
Everything—literally everything—hurts, actually, but Peter pastes on a reassuring grin. “Yeah, totally.” May looks shaken, but unharmed. Satisfied, Peter turns to Octavius. He hasn’t moved, back turned to Peter, staring hard at the ground. “Doc?”
“My inhibitor chip,” Octavius says, “has it been damaged?”
“What?” Peter moves closer and glances at the chip at the nape of his neck. “It looks fine.”
“Check it,” Octavius says, sharp. And then, softer, “Please.”
“Okay,” Peter says, startled. He inspects the chip more carefully. “It doesn’t look damaged, and I made a reinforced casing to protect the chip, ‘cause the old one seemed too exposed. Does it feel like it’s malfunctioning?”
“No, I… I don’t know,” Octavius says. “I’m just paranoid, I suppose.”
Before Peter can ask about it, May calls out, “Happy!”
Peter perks up. “Happy’s here?”
He follows May’s gaze and, sure enough, out beyond the wreckage, there’s Happy in his car, idling in front of the Daily Bugle van. Peter looks between Happy, the Daily Bugle reporters, and May, and makes a quick decision.
“May, go with Happy, have him take you to Ned’s place. Ned and MJ are there, stay with them. Don’t let the Daily Bugle guys follow you. Actually, don’t worry, I’ll distract them.”
“What?” May says. “No, you’re coming with me.”
“I can’t,” Peter says, pleading for her to understand—they don’t have time to argue. “Those guys are still out there, I have to stop them.”
May bites her lip, looking torn. Then she strides away, but not in the direction of Happy.
“May—”
May scoops up the bag with the cures they’d been working on for everyone—sans Osborn’s, because his didn’t work, shit. No, wait, can’t think about that right now. That’s a problem for future Peter.
May stomps back to Peter and presses the bag to his chest. “You be careful, Peter.”
“I will,” Peter assures her. “Now go, please.”
May gives him a quick hug—Peter does his best not to wince when she squishes his broken ribs—and a kiss on his forehead, then finally, finally dashes out the building.
Peter turns to Octavius. “Let’s climb to the roof. If the reporters see us both, hopefully they won’t bother following May.”
Octavius gestures to him. “Lead the way.”
Peter stumbles a little when he starts walking but ignores it and half-trips, half-skips into a run. Once outside, he throws himself onto the side of the building and starts climbing as fast as he can. Behind him, he can hear Octavius’s mechanical tentacles crunch into the stone of the building as he follows. Peter kind of hopes Jameson down below thinks Octavius is chasing Peter and not that they’re in cahoots. It’d be the first time he was right about something.
An engine revs, and he spares a glance over his shoulder to confirm it’s Happy’s car speeding away. The Daily Bugle van doesn’t move. Everyone down below is staring up at him and Octavius.
Thank goodness.
Peter’s legs shake when he lands on the roof. He can hear sirens in the distance, rapidly approaching.
“That was too close,” Peter says. His hands are shaking now, too. He turns to Octavius. “May, I mean, if you hadn’t been there—she could’ve—she almost—”
His voice gives out. He feels numb all over. He can’t lose May. Not on top of everything. He can’t.
He doesn’t think he could survive it.
He startles at the touch of a hand on his arm, and his gaze refocuses on Octavius in front of him. His tentacles stretch out in a wide circle around Peter, as if shielding him from the world around them.
“She’s safe,” Octavius says. “She’s alive, and she’s safe. You wouldn’t let her get hurt.”
His voice radiates calm assurance, but he’s wrong, wrong, wrong.
“I almost did!” Peter bursts out. “I can’t believe I even let her stay in the apartment! How could I, how could I just let her hang around so many bad guys like that?”
“Because you didn’t see us as bad guys. You saw us as people who needed help. People who you could help.”
Peter blinks at Octavius, who looks steadily back at him, and his own words sink in. “Oh man, I just called you a bad guy, didn’t I?” he says. “That was super rude, I’m sorry.”
Octavius smiles sadly. His tentacles recede and curl at his back; weirdly, Peter feels their loss.
“No,” Octavius says slowly. “It’s not inaccurate. I’ve hurt many people. I tried to hurt you. I’m sorry about that, for what it’s worth.”
Peter shakes his head fiercely, then stops when the rapid motion makes his head spin worse than it already was. “You weren’t in control of yourself. Not really.”
“More in control than Osborn is when the Goblin takes over, anyway,” Octavius mutters.
Peter frowns at the mention of Osborn. “He trusted me. Osborn, I mean. He trusted me to help him, right away. Even though I’m not his Peter Parker.”
He hasn’t been able to figure out quite how he feels about that. Best as he can put it right now, it’s a mix of touched, a little weirded out, and more than a little scared. Scared of being compared to someone worth such trust.
Scared of not living up to it.
“I suppose being a Peter Parker was enough for him,” Octavius says. “He must have believed you would have the same values. After all, you’re both Spider-Man.”
“But I’m not him.” The words slip out of him, defensive, surprising even himself. But Peter can’t be anyone else, not even an alternate universe version of him. He can only be himself.
“No,” Octavius says after a moment. “You’re not.”
He’s looking at Peter a little strangely, and Peter wonders if it’s a good thing in Octavius’s eyes, that he’s different from the Peter he knows from his own world. He bites his tongue on asking what Octavius thinks of him. It doesn’t matter, right?
Does it matter?
Peter does not want to think about this. He turns his head and tunes in to an increase of chatter below, and realizes the sirens have stopped.
“We should get out of here.” Belatedly, he notices the gash across Octavius’s cheek, the dried blood caked around it. “Oh man, you’re hurt.”
“I’m alright,” Octavius says, “but it’d be wise to find someplace to recuperate.”
“Yeah, I agree.” Peter’s everything hurts. He tries not to think about that, either. “Okay, follow me.”
He scales down the back of the building and leads Octavius through the back alleys of Queens. There’s no more talk between them, which would normally make Peter feel awkward, but he’s grateful for it now. His head feels kind of fuzzy and even breathing hurts. It looks like Octavius might have been more hurt than he let on, too, because he’ll occasionally grunt and brace one of his tentacles against the ground as if to steady himself.
Peter wishes he could offer to help somehow, but he’s barely holding himself up, so they trudge on, suffering in silence—at least, Peter is.
It takes a while to get to their destination, not being able to swing and hop across rooftops, but he can’t risk either of them being seen, and honestly the whole trip kind of blurs together and Peter’s not sure how much time actually passes before they’re sneaking into his old apartment through a broken window.
“We should be safe here for now,” Peter says. Maybe if he says it, it’ll be true. The whole world knows where he lives, but then again, those other guys aren’t from this world. And maybe his apartment is so obvious a choice no one will think he’d actually decide to come back here?
It doesn’t matter, either way; Peter doesn’t have anywhere else to go.
It’s been months since he’s been here, months since he and May packed two suitcases each and moved into Happy’s apartment. Standing here now, Peter feels, nonsensically, safe.
He’s home.
He sways on his feet, and then off his feet, tipping over—
Before a strong pair of hands catches him by the arms and rights him.
“Peter!”
Peter blinks woozily up at Octavius. Weird, he’s right in front of him, but he feels far away. Distantly, he realizes that he’s been running on adrenaline for the past who-knows-how-long, and now that it’s finally run out, the full-body pain is crowding out everything else.
He’s not gonna crash—he can’t afford to—but maybe he can close his eyes for a second.
“Sorry, Doc,” he mumbles. “Think I gotta sit down now.”
“Peter!” Octavius says again, more urgently, but Peter’s head is lolling back, and everything goes dark.
Peter slumps unconscious in Otto’s arms, and Otto does his best not to panic.
He cradles Peter carefully, resting his head in the crook of his arm so he can get a better look at him. This Peter really is so different from the one native to Otto’s own universe. Oh, the scientific brilliance is present in both, and the compulsion to do good, but the way they hold themselves is completely different. The Peter here bounces around with frenetic energy and talks a mile a minute with unrestrained passion. Yet, he also seems somehow more grounded, more sure of himself than the Peter from Otto’s world, despite being a few years younger.
Also, Otto most definitely never felt the urge to reach out and touch the other Peter’s face.
He hates himself for even thinking about it. As if he has the right to touch anyone like that again, after what happened to Rosie.
After what he let happen to her.
Even holding Peter like this now feels like a guilty thing, and Otto forces himself to stop thinking about the comforting weight of Peter in his arms to check him over for wounds instead.
Peter’s face is dirty with blood and grime, and there’s a nasty bruise under his eye, but his breathing is steady, which is hopefully a good sign; Otto’s really not that kind of doctor. Unfortunately, it’s hard to gauge the damage done to the rest of his body, given the Spider suit.
He takes stock of their surroundings. The darkened apartment they’ve entered has seen better days. They came in through a broken window, and it must have been broken for a while, because various debris has blown in and dirtied the vicinity. There are shards of glass still on the ground at his feet, and is that a brick?
Well, at least the place seems empty.
After a moment’s consideration, Otto hefts Peter into his arms. His back protests as the action exacerbates the chronic pain in his back. He knows the actuators could easily lift Peter for him, but some stubborn part of him insists he carry him on his own, and so he ignores the spasms of pain and holds Peter close as he ventures further into the apartment.
He does use an actuator to open a door, and steps into a bedroom. The walls are adorned with movie prints, in addition to a large glossy poster displaying the periodic table. Medals and certificates hang above the desk in a corner of the room. Otto steps closer to read one of them, and sees that it’s a school science award, made out to Peter Parker.
So this is Peter’s room. Come to think of it, didn’t he mention the apartment they were in earlier belonged to someone else? Ah yes, Happy—the one May had left with.
Well, knowing this is Peter’s apartment somewhat eases Otto’s concern that someone else might show up unannounced, and he turns to the bed.
Peter groans as Otto settles him onto the mattress, and his eyes flutter open. “Dr. Octavius?”
Relief floods Otto. “Peter,” he says. He’s still bent over the bed, fingertips brushing Peter’s shoulders, but he doesn’t pull away, selfishly letting himself linger for a moment longer. “You passed out for a minute there.”
“What?” Peter shakes his head slightly. “No, I just closed my eyes for a second.”
“Ah, yes,” Otto says, “And I suppose you walked to your bedroom all by yourself, too.”
“Oh, I’m lying down,” Peter seems to realize as he says it. He frowns. “Okay, maybe I did pass out.”
Otto sighs. “How are you feeling now?”
“I’m fine,” Peter says. He starts to sit up and immediately winces.
Otto carefully pushes him back down. “You passed out. Do you want to try answering that again?”
“No, really, I’m fine,” Peter says, trying to sit up again, but Otto keeps him pinned to the bed. “I have accelerated healing. You don’t need to worry about me.”
He’s so wide-eyed and earnest, Otto’s heart breaks for him. How many people has he pushed away with those words? How many times have others been convinced to dismiss Peter’s hurt because of how quickly he can bounce back?
Well, that stops now.
“Peter,” Otto says, schooling his voice to be gentle instead of stern. “Let me help.”
At that, Peter inhales sharply, and his eyes fill with tears that immediately spill over, stunning Otto.
“What—why are you crying?” Otto asks, uselessly and with no small amount of panic. He withdraws his hands and stands up straight, unsure if his touch, his proximity, is welcome. He’d just wanted to help; he hadn’t meant to make Peter cry.
“I, um—” Peter’s breath hitches. “I don’t know? I just—I’m always patching myself up, um, besides Happy that one time, but like—I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m crying. Sorry. Just—sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Otto says.
Peter sniffles and sits up. He swipes his arm across his face. “You’re really nice, Dr. Octavius.”
Otto shifts uncomfortably. He used to think he was a good person, a kind person, but after all that he’s done—he’s not sure the assessment fits anymore.
But then Peter leans over and presses his side against Otto, and he can feel Peter’s shoulder shaking against his stomach as he cries softly, and suddenly however Otto feels about himself doesn’t matter, not in this moment. He wraps an arm around Peter and says, “Just tell me what I can do.”
“Just, just give me a sec to pull myself together.”
Otto can do that. And so he stays there, holding Peter in a half-hug against his body, thumb rubbing circles into his shoulder. Seconds turn into minutes, and he moves to sit on the bed beside Peter, never letting him go.
Peter curls into Otto’s chest. He’s not crying so much anymore, but he is trembling. “You’re warm,” he mumbles. “It’s nice.”
Otto uses an actuator to lift the edge of the comforter and drape it over Peter’s shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” Peter says. “I feel like my whole body is broken.”
Otto does his best to hide his alarm when he asks, “Can I do anything?”
“I mean, I’m already healing,” Peter says, “but it’s always good to clean any external wounds. There’s a first aid kid under the sink in the bathroom, if you don’t mind grabbing it.”
“Of course,” Otto says.
The bathroom, when Otto finds it, is a bit cramped, but he keeps his actuators tucked close behind him as he retrieves the first aid kit. When he returns to the bedroom, Peter’s already removed his Spider suit, and is standing by the bed in nothing but his boxer briefs. His body is a mottled bruise, and there’s blood smeared around a few cuts and scrapes. Otto has no idea how Peter is even standing right now.
Something must show on his face, because Peter says, “I’m okay,” before quelling under Otto’s hard glare. “I mean, I’ll be okay.”
Otto clenches his teeth. The next time he sees the Green Goblin, he isn’t letting him anywhere near Peter.
“Sit down,” he says.
Peter does, lowering himself back onto the bed. Otto sits beside him and opens the first aid kit. It’s distressingly low in stock.
“Why?” Otto can’t help but ask. “Why do you do all this? Why be Spider-Man?”
Peter shrugs. “It’s just… I have to. I can’t not. Like, if I have these abilities, then I should do something good with them, right?”
Otto swallows against a sudden lump in his throat. Quietly, he starts to clean and dress Peter’s wounds.
“You know,” he says after a minute, “I once told the Peter Parker from my world that intelligence is a gift to be used for the good of humankind. At the time, I’d theorized I could create a miniature sun to utilize as a clean energy source. These—” he waves at the actuators hanging limp from his back, “are actuators I built to assist with the fusion reaction. But the experiment failed.”
He takes a fortifying breath before he continues, focusing on what he’s doing with his hands, as if that will make talking about what happens next easier. “My inhibitor chip was damaged at the time. The actuators wanted to complete their function and I—I was proud. I thought I could rebuild my machine and try again. I hurt a lot of people to get what I needed.”
He still fears the whispers of voices in his head, drowning out his own, demanding he finish his work. Demanding they be allowed to finish their work, what they were created for. Not realizing that his science was flawed, and his machine was doomed.
That accursed machine, the reason Rosie—but no, it was his fault, wasn’t it? He’d built the machine that had killed Rosie. And he’d built the actuators that had killed many others.
Really, it does no good to dance around the truth: He’d wielded the actuators to kill. The AIs in them may have been influencing him, but they didn’t control him entirely. It was Otto’s own pride that let him go along with it. Which also meant that he had that capacity in him all along. To hurt, and to kill.
He’s a monster.
He’s grateful to Peter for fixing his chip and granting him clarity. Truly, he is. But now he’s remembering the last time his mind still felt clear, when he realized what had happened, what he’d done, and he wanted to drown himself and his actuators in the river. At the time, the actuators invaded his mind and convinced him to keep going—of course, look how that turned out.
What is there to keep him going now?
“Dr. Octavius?” Peter says.
Otto shakes his head. Compared to him… “You, Peter, are everything right in the world.”
Peter’s cheeks tinge red, and he shakes his head with a nervous laugh. “I really wouldn’t go that far.”
Otto smiles wanly at him, unsure how to give voice to all the thoughts swirling around in his head. Unsure if he should. He feels, suddenly, very tired, and very alone.
“Okay,” Peter says firmly. “My turn to help you.”
“Help me?” Otto echoes. Hasn’t Peter already helped him more than enough?
Peter gestures at him. “You have a cut on your face. Let me clean it for you.”
Otto had honestly forgotten about the cut, the result of narrowly dodging a piece of building debris during his brief fight with Dillon outside the apartment. He shrugs, out of energy to disagree, out of energy to take care of it himself. “Alright.”
Peter finds a fresh wipe from the first aid kit and gets to work. He cleans the cut with one hand while the other cradles Otto’s cheek, keeping him steady. His touch is gentle and warm, and Otto, struck by the extent of care Peter is showing him, draws a sudden, shuddering breath.
Peter pauses. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” Otto murmurs thickly. “Yes, dear boy.”
Peter resumes his task quietly. The silence between them now isn’t comfortable, per se, but it’s not uncomfortable, either. There’s a charge between them, not overpowering; just a tickling of static.
Of potential.
Peter lowers the wipe and dabs antiseptic on the cut, his touch featherlight.
Otto shouldn’t chase the potential. He shouldn’t. But he can’t help wondering what would happen if he did, if Peter would let him. His lips feel dry suddenly; Otto darts his tongue out to wet them.
Peter’s lips part on an inhale, and now Otto can’t breathe. Peter stares at Otto with wide eyes and flushed cheeks. “Um,” he says. “I-I’m done. Are you hurt anywhere else?”
He drops his hands from Otto’s face, and Otto’s breath comes back in a rush. “No,” he says. “That was it. Thank you.”
“Are you sure?” Peter presses. “Just, it seemed like you were hurting while we were walking here.”
“Oh. No, that wasn’t from the fight. During the accident, the one in my world, the harness for the actuators melted and fused with my spinal column. Sometimes it hurts more than others.”
Peter makes a soft noise of sympathy. “That’s awful. I’m sorry.”
“It is what it is,” Otto says. Just one of the many consequences of his mistake, another one he can never take back.
“Well…” Peter clears his throat awkwardly. “I was actually thinking, um, about your actuators.”
Otto frowns. “What about them?”
“They must be able to do delicate work, right? Have to, if you made them to help you with a fusion reaction.”
“Naturally,” Otto says slowly, still not seeing where Peter is going with this.
“Well, I was thinking, the science lab at my school is pretty-well stocked,” Peter says. “We can probably get everything we need there to finish the cures for everyone, but without the fabricator, I was kind of stuck on how to put it all together. But with your actuators, I think we can do it.”
Otto makes a thoughtful noise. It’s not a bad idea. And if his actuators could be used to help, not harm…
Does Peter even realize how much he’s done for him, in so little time?
“Yes,” Otto says. “I think we can do it, too.”
Peter grins at him, radiating warmth and—hope. A most precious hope for the future, for Otto’s future. He’s reaching a hand out to Otto, beckoning him forward, and Otto—
Otto decides to chase it.