Chapter 32
Grains of sand crunch beneath Harry’s shoes as he leaves footsteps in wet sand, his feet carrying him rapidly towards the shade of layered stones. Within the cove, he watches the river’s tongue lap at the shoreline, clouding itself even darker with every passing moment.
Being shielded from the sun cools him rapidly, soothing joints that always move with the dense weight of swollen muscle. His body doesn’t look the part, doesn’t display any of what’s wrong with him outside his skin, but Harry knows very well what’s there. He can feel it. His body falls apart around him, only to stitch itself back together, a cycle that will never allow the crew repairing Theseus’s ship a moment of peace.
He wonders, if his body ever fell apart, if Peter would keep his head around. Or maybe he’d just forget it all. Harry wouldn’t be able to blame him for that
The scrape of sand sliding against sand shoots needles into his ears, sinks its claws deep into poorly repressed paranoia and tugs him around as if he’s strung up on puppet strings. His mind seems to distort the shadows that lie between stones, twisting the darkest areas into shapes that look monstrous or human.
There’s nothing there. Almost every last connection in his brain matter understands that, that enough sun seeps through the stone canopy above his head that anything that crept behind him, stalking him like a wolf, would meet his eyes immediately. And yet he steps forward, bringing himself to investigate.
Or so he tries. Disturbed water cascades behind him, the sound breaking the silence without a hint of caution and rapid clicking attempts to attract his attention. He feels himself wince, twisting his neck back around as a pointed metal actuator head prods his shoulder. “Hi, I see you, just give me a second.”
Harry can’t say he particularly thinks the thing heard or understood him. It fixes around his arm, shaking it in excitement. Oh, this one. Most of Otto’s actuators are fairly neutral towards him—except for the one who seems very happy they share a name. “Hi. Hi buddy. It’s nice to see you too. I just need to go look at somethi—“
Before the words leave his lips, the arm tugs, plunging him into the bitter cold of the Hudson. The temperature sinks into his body rapidly, turning his blood to ice. This isn’t a cold he could shake off easily; even leeching another person’s body heat to soothe himself might demand hours.
He hopes Peter is home when he gets back.
Harry finds himself deposited on the floor of Otto’s workshop with a rather unpleasant spot, the arm seeming very pleased with itself. It pokes at him, letting out a whistling sound in an attempt at communication. “Yeah, yep, I’m good.” He lifts himself to his knees, looking to where Otto towers over him. “Your arm isn’t very good at listening. I was worried we were being followed, barely got the chance to look.”
“You were worried you might be followed?”
Harry flinches at the volume—not that the worry isn’t understandable. “I didn’t see anything, but it didn’t let me get a very thorough look. It probably doesn’t matter, my mind likes to twist things.” He grimaces, looking towards a mold-riddled wall.
An actuator shoots downward, lifting him by the waist to set him on his feet, sharp metal digging into his sunken waist. “Your mind had better be awful, then. I’m not gambling this easily.”
Harry is sat down roughly, his ankles twisting out of their sockets to stabilize himself against the floor, leaving him aching. “Pretty damn sure, yeah. Used to see Dad after he died, hear him say awful things.” It’a strange to even him that he can find the substance in himself to say that to Otto of all people when he’s bitten it back from most people he knows. Perhaps there’s an expectation that Octavius, who’d never liked him, would mirror his own bitter and sharp thoughts about it to himself.
As if at the command of his poisonous thoughts, Otto shifts just far enough away from him that it’s noticeable, eyes narrowing. “…Well.” The word hangs in the air. “Keep a hold of yourself and we’ll be fine.” His voice is firm, but it’s all. The mass of tentacles beneath him drags him towards the makeshift laboratory deeper in the belly of the space.
Harry finds himself wishing the reaction was worse. “What do you need me for, Otto?”
“Something I’m not quite sure how to accomplish myself.” Otto exhales, fingers closing around a vial of bright yellow fluid. “I’ve developed something that I believe will be able to counteract the effects of that serum your father developed. But I’m not sure I’ve found a safe way to test it.”
“What do you mean?” He follows, finding his eyes lingering on where the Vulture lurks, large enough it cannot move without brushing both walls. “I’m right here.”
Otto gives Harry a brief glance over the rim of his glasses. “Regardless of your thoughts on the matter, I’d prefer not to kill you if it works too well.” He snaps his fingers, the bird behind him extending its head to be pat. “And I like my only. company here alive, thank you.”
Harry finds his eyes drifting to rusted scalpels scattered across one table. Absolutely not. “You’re not going to ask me to chop something off, are you?”
Otto’s head jerks around to stare at him. “What?”
He feels his face and throat burn, his lips briefly retreating into his mouth. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve lost limbs before, they just come back.” He attempts to display the narrow scarred line around his elbow, but it doesn’t pull a response from Otto. He doesn’t think the older man is so much as looking at it.
A sound like the shutting of a bear trap, underlined with the sickening tones of snapping bone, drags his attention back to that horrifying bird with a jolt. It had snatched up a poor, unsuspecting and now thoroughly dead rat, crushing it within it’s beak. From the sides of its beak and the hole where it’s throat should be spill blood and torn chunks of fur and flesh. Around the beast, living rats scatter from the violence.
“You sure you’re not willing to part with… that thing?” Harry steps backward.
“Yes, I’m certain.”
Harry winds up with his fingers fixed around the flexing ribcage of a rat, feeling his heart—not his heart, is it?—grow heavy with an unexpected sense of guilt as it struggles. It pays no mind to Otto as he fills a syringe with a green, instead fixing Harry with dark, beady eyes that have a wet shine. It’s too intelligent in that moment, too afraid.
It’s only afraid because it assumes any other living thing will eat it. There’s no reason for it all to bother Harry so much.
The sharp end of the needle sinks into the side of the rodent’s body. Harry can feel the small, powerless animal flinch, beginning to tremble more and more violently, his heart clenching. It’s only an animal, only one rat of the millions that live in the filth of a city like this. He’s seen dozens and felt nothing but disgust, flinched away from so many when they were the movement his eyes caught on patrol. And yet this makes him feel like filth. It is an animal that will never understand what is happening, and inflicting his own misery on something that, when it came down to it, would never—could never harm him. For the benefit of the same species this animal lives in the grime of.
He rubs circles into the space behind the rat’s ears, unable to care about the grime that coats his fingers. He only hopes it does something to help when the animal lets out a squeak, its spine contorting in his hands. It doesn’t squirm to escape it anymore, it writhes through pain so intense that even instinctual thoughts couldn’t form through it. Harry would know that better than anyone. He remembers the feeling, that pain so all consuming it had felt like every cell of his body was burning and there’d be nothing left of him. How much it had hurt hadn’t been the part that sunk into his memory the most--it had been a deeply primal sort of fear, one wired into the human mind centuries before they even resemble humans. It had felt like drowning and being hunted at once, it had been something that he imagined would have made a man like his father struggle against nothing, fight, but had made him curl up, cower, and beg for the forgiveness of Norman’s ghost. He’d thought he’d failed him. Because he had been deeply, primally convinced he was dying.
When Otto withdraws, Harry gathers the animal and lifts it into his arms. There’s no heat to his body, a fact no doubt made worse by how damn soaked he is, but Christ, he just needs to be able to do something. He strokes the softer fur along the rat’s chest, freezing when he takes in the pace at which the rat’s heart hammers away inside its chest and the sudden, chilling moment in which it stops, the rodent going limp with it.
Harry feels a bit nauseous as he watches its eyes blink open, head lifting to stare at him cautiously. It doesn’t try to escape, barely moves to begin with, only stares, almost as though it knows he’s at fault.
“Harry.” Otto speaks. “Give it here.” Feeling as though his teeth are about to splinter in his mouth, he allows one of the arms to pry away the animal, swallowing the bundle of emotions that forms when it begins to struggle again. “Turn around if it helps.”
He only adverts his eyes, the sound of bone cracking and a squeak doing more to unsettle him than they should be. Harry can almost hear what his father would think about that if he were present, caring this much about some dirty animal. He’d never shied away from testing on rats. Harry supposes it makes sense that it wouldn’t bother Otto either. The necessity shouldn’t bother him either.
After a few moments of chilling silence, a cracking sound echoes against the walls, pulling his eyes upward. Still held by the dangerous clawed end of one of Octavius’s arms, the rat’s body shudders as the bones of its neck snap into place. “What’s the point of that?”
“We know it affects animals the same way it does humans.” Otto really isn’t bothered. The moment the rat began to move again, he had reached for his antidote. A sigh leaves him. “It’s necessary, Harry. It isn’t pretty, but there’s no alternative.”
Right now, Harry thinks he’d rather have cut an arm off.
The needle sinks into the animal, and Harry suddenly wishes he were the one holding it down. If this stuff worked, it would at least mean it died under something a little more comfortable, a little gentler. Even with how violently Harry had died, he had at least had the fortune to die loved. He should be doing something more.
He expects it to be violent. The bitterest part of him, the part that wants this inflicted on himself, wants it to be violent, to be painful. For the sake of that animal, he’s grateful it’s so quick. It would seem as though it had fallen asleep if it weren’t for how suddenly it went limp and still.
The actuator that had been restraining the small creature lifts, drifting towards Otto’s head. As it whirs and squeaks at him, another of the arms—the one with Harry’s name—drifts towards him, clicking at him, tilted as if concerned.
“Hey. I’m good, I’m fine. I’ll be okay, bud.” Bony fingers tap against the metal claws. It always feels strange to try and ‘pet’ the actuators, even stranger to try and reconcile their vague sentience. Would they find petting patronizing? Should they be treated closer to people or animals? He briefly wonders why giving them that advanced of ai was remotely necessary for the project they were made for.
But Otto is speaking to the one who’d trapped the rat. “I see.” A pause. “Fascinating. We can begin working on adjustments tonight. We’ll need a blood sample from it.”
Harry steps forward, the arm near him following. “Does it not work?” The small, frozen body seems rather dead.
“Not how I intended.” Octavius nods over to one of the arms. “It still detects brain activity. I would need to perform some more tests—likely look a deeper into how you and our Frankenstein friend over there work—but it seems that much of how that serum works to keep you alive is focused on the preservation of your brain. It’s brain is preserved, still conscious, but this antidote currently works as what is effectively a very strong paralytic agent. It’s killed the body all over again, but not the mind.” His eyes drift upward. “Useful, but I would prefer something a little more reliable for someone like Norman.”
It doesn’t quite feel like he’s all there at that moment. “You’re right.” Is all he can spit out, feeling as though he’s snagged on a fish hook that digs into his cheeks and pulls him back, back until all he can think of is motionless months of nothing but the vermin he can still beneath his skin. It had kept his mind intact, and if his fragile, grayed skin, and atrophied away muscle is anything to go off of, little else. If it had allowed most of his body to begin decaying before it began repairing him, would that be why it always hurts so much, why it can’t ever seem to keep or negate the decomposition? Why it hasn’t stopped? “That’s probably why I got buried to begin with. I couldn’t move after I died, but I was awake. I felt my own autopsy.” There’s a sense he shouldn’t say that, but he can’t bring himself to care.
“It took you six months to get out.” Otto stares down at the rodent. “When I broke its neck, it was standing again in seconds. There must be something that caused that much of a delay for you.” He approaches Harry’s side. “Are there scars from the wounds that killed you?”
Wordlessly, he lifts his shirt, exposing the two holes that burrow straight through his chest.
“I see. It seems likely that when you were stabbed, it breached your heart. Perhaps it’s more complex to heal?” It doesn’t quite seem like Otto is talking to Harry for a moment. “Especially if you underwent an autopsy soon after that.” His attention returns to Harry. “Is there any other part of your condition I should know about.”
“There are insects inside me still. I can feel them.” He mutters, gesturing to a place low on one of his sides where holes bored into his flesh still stand proud. “And plants. Hell of a lot of plants.” That’s enough to catch Otto’s attention. The clear look of intrigue on the man’s face beckons him to continue speaking, try and explain whatever it is that’s going on this his body. “The bugs just got into me when I was buried. Not the sort of thing that’s hard to tell is still there. I don’t know where the plants came from for sure, but they bleed when I try and get them out.” He pauses. “Once I got hurt and Peter had to fiddle with them. I could feel it, and feel the rest of them.” Among other things “They're pretty much… everywhere beneath my skin. I think they’re fused with my nerves somehow. They might be the only reason I can even move.”
Otto’s eyes glitter over his glasses, staring at Harry with a look startlingly akin to the ones he’d give the reactor or his actuators whenever Harry had seen him looking at them. “That is absolutely fascinating. In the future, I’d like to--”
The sound of disturbed water echoes through the dank, cramped space, bouncing off the abundance of sealed walls to overstay it’s natural welcome. Too much noise to be nothing. Harry propels himself back towards the opening of filthy water and mold covered damp metal, feeling Basil’s dry, smooth scales draw against his skin to poke one head out of his shirt. It gives him a difficult to read look, two of it’s heads choosing to remain above his collar to witness whatever it is that’s happening
The water hasn’t entirely settled by the time he reaches it, the surface still chaotic and rippling. With how much filth gets dumped into this river, there’s no chance of even seeing a few inches into the murk, let alone deep enough to see whatever might have caused the disturbance. He turns, it could have been something getting inside-
Something moves toward him at near impossible speeds, crashing into him and flinging him into the shallower parts of the water. The figure freezes in place, staring down at him with eyes that reflect what little light exists in this room. He recognizes the animalistic visage of the man in front of him—he’d called himself Kraven, hadn’t he?
Harry’s hands are patting at his sides before he remembers he’s not armed. He’d needed to be—why hadn’t he even taken the knife? Something? He draws back one arm, his elbow sinking into the water, before driving it into the man’s chest.
He doesn’t even flinch.
Kraven’s lips draw back into a wide, fanged smile, one heavy boot forcing his hand to the ground. “I’d expected a little more from what you are. Such a waste, isn’t it?” He chuckles, threatening, it’s quality deeper than the river. “But I can’t resist the chance to hunt undying prey.”
The words give Harry a chance to look him over more closely. There are spots of scales along his neck, cut through with flared out gills. The hand that clutches a vial of whatever it is Otto brewed up is webbed between the fingers. None of this had been true of the hunter on prior occasions Harry had come face to face with him. What is he?
“It wouldn’t be any fun to dispose of you now. No adrenaline if there’s no hunt. Miserably unsatisfying. You must understand that. I would wager wants like that are as good as woven into you.” Those gleaming eyes narrow to slits. “I give you 72 hours head start. That is a dignity I always allow. You may run or try and fight. Or you may settle your life, if you choose. Nobody chooses that.” The weight of the man’s body shifts off him, leaving him catching his breath. “Three days, then I hunt. I am curious what sort of animal something like you will prove yourself to be.”
From around the cracked open wall the actuators surge, clawed ends open and sharp. The man they attach to follows soon behind, slowed by his distorted bottom half despite the actuator’s enthusiasm. Kraven takes a moment’s glance at Octavius, eyes narrowing into slits.
Harry expects a fight to break out over him, while he’s unarmed and useless. But Kraven appears to have gained what he wanted from coming here and bounds over him, vanishing into the murky water.
Christ, Harry truly is not very good at this, isn’t he? He rolls over, forcing himself to his feet as Doctor Octavius looms over him. “When he said ‘what you are’, he wasn’t only referring to your state, was he?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The words spill from his lips before he can think, discomfort settling over him like smoke as they do.
The feeling of Octavius bearing over him activates a fear he doesn’t think he’s felt since he was a child drawing Norman’s displeasure. “Yes, you do. Tell me.” It’s enough to make him want to fold.
“Norman did something to me. Something with all the weird shit he’s tangled up in. I don’t know any more than that.” Otto doesn’t need to know any more than that. If nothing else, it’s Peter who gets to know everything Harry does before Otto ever would. “Even though I’m trying to.”
It’s almost supernatural, that Octavius can still tell he shouldn’t believe him. “I have vials of that antidote left in my lab, but there’s now a large sample of it out in the world. I would try to get that back, if I were you.” His words are slow, deliberate. One of the oldest parts of his mind insists it’s a threat despite the complete and utter calm to it. “And if it’s not too much, let your friend Peter know I’m alive. You seem as though you need the help.”
Face burning with the barely hidden insult, he takes one half step back towards the opening, then hesitates. With unexpected boldness, he strides past Otto back into the lab, eyes trained on one pitiful lump of fur on one of the tables. His jacket is half unzipped by the time he scoops up the animal, placing it against whatever warmth is left in his chest and raising the zipper, leaving one arm to support the motionless body. “Hang onto me tight,” he whispers to Basil. “Don’t want to lose you.”
—
Basil peeks at the rat from his shoulder as Harry scrubs at greasy, filthy fur—not that he’s any cleaner at this point. “Not for you.” He mutters, when its heads all open and shut their mouths at him in a question. “I have mice for you in the freezer. Besides, you’re way too small for this. I think you’d choke.” He boops the center head, the snake shaking the water off its scales before ramming its head into his nose to return the gesture.
Once the animal is clean and wrapped in a towel, the bathroom door creaks open behind him. Cradling the rat almost like an infant, he turns to see Peter in nothing but his boxers, blinking sleep out of his eyes. “Are you coming to bed?” His eyebrows furrow just slightly. “Why do you have a rat?”
He lets his weight lay against the counter, feeling exhaustion weighing on him more and more with each second, almost eating away at him alongside the bugs. “I found Octavius.” He begins.
“He’s alive?” That shock manages to shake the rest of the sleepiness out of him. “Since when? How?”
“Beats me. Don’t think he really knows. He only just let me tell you.” He forces his eyes to remain open. “He was trying to find a way to reverse the performance enhancers—“ he manages to catch Peter’s question. “Can I explain why tomorrow? Please?”
The hesitation is clear, the instinctual, deeply ingrained need for control, desperate to know everything, to pull on each puppet string he can reach a finger around. But Peter swallows it, and he smiles. “Sure. You look exhausted. Can I know about the rat, though?”
He nods, a breathy laugh escaping him. “Yeah. He had a prototype or whatever and he didn’t want to use me, so he… dosed a rat with the enhancers and tried the antidote. Apparently it doesn’t undo the performance enhancers entirely, it basically just… paralyzed the thing, trapped it in its own body. I felt—it was already awful what we were doing to it, right?” He questions. “When it didn’t know what was happening or why. And I know exactly how that feels. I know it was necessary and the best option, but it feels like my responsibility now.”
Harry thinks there’s nothing that can more simply explain why it’s Peter who he loves than the simple fact that, just looking at his face change, he knows he understands. He knows Peter gets it. “Can I take it? I’ll go get some spare blankets and you can rinse yourself off quick.”
Feeling the breath slowly, easily leave what remains of his lungs, he gives Peter the bundle in his arms and watches him handle it perhaps even more gently than he had. “Thank you. And could you try and get it some water? I know there’s a turkey baster in the kitchen, that should be able to do something.”
“Got it.” He steps back out of the bathroom. “I’ll kiss you when you’re showered.”
He laughs slightly as he disappears, bending over to allow Basil onto the counter while he rinses the grime off himself.
The moment Harry is in clean flannel pants, he collapses into bed, only moving one arm to flick on Basil’s heat lamp, perched atop the night stand beside him. Moments later, the sound of the door creaking heralds Peter’s return, arms burdened by a blanket filled box that’s soon placed on top of a long unused vanity Harry suspects was once his mothers. The bed dips beneath the weight of the other man, the heat of his body rapidly reaching Harry’s body and drawing relaxation from aching muscles.
A finger gently prods at a space around where his pectoral muscle connects to his ribcage. “Aren’t you not supposed to sleep with the tape on?” He asks. “And it’s wet now too. Isn’t it uncomfortable?”
“I’m tired.” He mumbles into his pillow. “Besides, never gonna be the worst thing that’s happened to my body. Just wanna sleep.”
Peter’s weight lifts from his spot on the bed beside him. Though his eyes have long been refusing to open, he picks up the smooth sound of a drawer sliding open before body heat warms his skin. He doesn’t have energy for resistance when Peter begins maneuvering him, warm fabric being tugged over his head. “What are you doing?” He mumbles once Peter has successfully begun pulling his arms through the sleeves.
Harry can almost see Peter’s pink cheeks. “I know you’re more comfortable when your chest is covered.” Peter lowers him back into the nest of blankets, soon inching his hands beneath the fabric to, with the care of a surgeon, pull away the tape, layer by layer, with the utmost gentleness. “But it’ll be more comfortable to sleep without it too.”
He smiles at the sensation of lips against his, following Peter’s warmth to the center of the mattress and pressing against him. “I love you.”