video;

[interns]

Oh! See, I'm ready this time. Hi.

[ guess who's sitting on camera looking cute in the Oxford hoodie she got for Christmas from Peter, hair perfectly styled, make-up perfectly done. this girl! ]

Hello, everyone temporarily tuning into the Barge network for the next few days - my name is Gwen Stacy. If you have any questions about what's going on, or who might be here, or- anything at all really, please feel free to ask me and I'll try my best to answer them.

[ mostly, she's just hoping to hear from her family. or maybe even Flashua. she'd be really okay with that. ]

Comments

[interns]

I saw you talking to Peter.

[ which was bad enough, but this- it kind of sucks. it's wearing at her a little more than she thought. mostly because she can't get in his face and yell, can't slap him, can't shake him and ask him a dozen different ways what the hell he was thinking. this is unnerving because it's just a face on a screen and it's still making her skin crawl ]

You can't touch us. You can't do anything to us, as long as we're here. [ which- kind of comes out of nowhere, but it feels important to say. there's more umph behind it at least, then her first few words ] So whatever you want to say, whatever sick- thing you've thought up, don't waste your breath. It's not going to matter.

[ EHHHH it could. it could matter. he could probably say some stuff that wouldn't make her feel all that great. but she's definitely clinging onto the idea that she has no reason to be scared, because this is her chance to fix how things turned out at home. ]

[excussus]

[And just like that, he spikes. Something in his countenance shifts, the quietness in his posture gets louder, his eyes narrow a little.

He wishes they hadn't fucking killed Max. It was so much easier not to feel like - well, like a prisoner when you had a guy made of energy backing you.

Harry purses his lips for a moment, then laughs. It's still quiet, low, far from the high pitched cackle that he knows can take over. He smiles, lips pulling back over his teeth, and he shakes his head.]

Okay.

[Another shake, then he rubs at one of the contusions along his neck.]

Thing is, no one can touch you as long as you're there. Last I checked...

[He whistles, dropping one hand down to smack against the other. He doesn't look away from her at all.]

[interns]

[ it's the laugh that makes her confidence falter, just a bit. makes her brow furrow up, try to figure out- well, a lot of things. not how he got better, because he clearly isn't, but maybe how long it's been, what the hell he's been up to since then. probably locked up somewhere, which is moderately comforting. but still. ]

That's a little childish, don't you think? Like it was something out of a cartoon. And I didn't go splat, lets be adults about this. [ it's strange to find confidence in this, but she kind of is. like she can own it, somehow. and mmmaybe it is cause it's over video instead of in person. maybe. she'll figure it out later. ] You killed me, Harry. It was real. But no, it wasn't painful. And it's not painful here, either. [ ............anymore. the way her fingers curl up in her sleeves would give her away if it wasn't hidden below the frame of the camera ] What I meant when I said you can't touch us while we're here is that your plan failed. Here we have the chance to undo what you did.

[excussus]

Undo what I did.

[His lips pull back further and now it's not so much a smile as just a baring of teeth, a silent snarl, like he would rip her throat out himself if he was close enough rather than letting gravity take care of it for him.]

That's half the problem, huh? You're both so fucking selfish. I told him I was dying, and all he gave a shit about was you!

[He's not sure when he started shouting, but by the end he's jabbing his finger at the screen, his voice raised and - different. It's like something else lurks there now.]

[interns]

He couldn't help you! He couldn't.

[ she doesn't mean to shout either, but it kind of just! happens! because he is! she's quick to reel herself in though, not wanting to, y'know. lose it. because that's possible. it is. she's never actually yelled and screamed and cried about what happened. well, she cried. she cried a lot in front of someone she barely knew, that first day she was back. but she never let herself get much more emotional than that ]

Whatever you did to yourself, it would have been worse if you tried to use his blood. Who knows what it would have done!

[ but no, she doesn't know he injected the same spider venom. that they already have that answer. so she's just frantic with the idea of him still trying to blame Peter for not making that impossible choice ]

[excussus]

No, that's bullshit! [He doesn't care about reeling himself in, he doesn't care about anything but heaping the blame on Peter. It's not an impossible choice, not in his eyes, and he'll never accept it.]

All he had to do was give me his blood, all he had to do was trust me! We were friends! And he didn't trust me!

[He lied, and lied, and refused to save him. Peter made him so desperate, so terrified, that he had to go to the source. He had to hope the venom would give him what it gave Spider-Man.

He's had a lot of time to think in Ravencroft. Not about anything good or useful of course, but he's been thinking nonetheless. If it had just been earlier - if Spider-Man had come to him sooner, agreed, trusted him--

He could have studied the DNA. He could have figured it out on a cellular level. He would be better by now. Not some freak. Not some hideous monster like his dad was turning into.

He grits his teeth and feels the ache of where they grew and shattered against each other. They've mostly been replaced in his prison stint, but that doesn't make the memory any less.

He's not Connors. He's not weak, no matter what his dad used to think. He'd have found the way.]

He ruined me. And you're the only way to ruin him.

[interns]

You're not- ruined. [ it's weird that her brain hooks onto that first, but it does ] You're sick. And that's not Peter's fault. You can't blame him for that.

[ a little heavy on those words there, because yeah, this kind of is reminding her of Dr. Connors, in a way. who was so desperate to find a way to fix himself that it led him down a really dangerous road. one that she enabled, for so long, without realizing how bad it could have gone. it didn't feel that way though, when all they wanted to do was help people.

but that's not the point, it's not. Connors tried to poison the whole city, Harry- just went after Peter Parker. that's the point. ]

If you had trusted him, he would have helped you find a cure. A real cure, not the spider venom. We both would've helped you.

[ which gets blurted out in that rush of words and seems to surprise her as soon as she says it. but it's true. she was going to major in molecular medicine, for crying out loud ]

We both would have helped you. But you tried to take the easy way out, and look where it got you.

[excussus]

[Both of them. That takes him aback, but only for a moment, a sharp, surprised moment where he thinks he forgets to breathe. Both of them, she's saying that now, after he killed her (he didn't kill her whispers a vicious voice in the beack of his thoughts, he only dropped her, it wasn't his fault Peter didn't catch her in time), now--

And that twists slowly, to now, now she offers, now after it's too late, with the venom already in his body, after everything it did to him, after Harry Osborne died screaming on the flood before the tech suit, before he was reborn in it, before after now now--]

I didn't have time to wait for you two to work out your shit. Really, Gwen, you'd have helped me from Oxford? You think I could just sit at home, and wait for you two to leave me behind and settle in while I lost control of every fucking bone in my body? Is that what you think I should have done?

[He's almost screaming by the end, because no, no, there was no alternative, he will not see it.]

[interns]

Yes! Yes, maybe that's exactly what I think! [ no, she doesn't know the details of the Harry's disease, how quickly it would have taken over, how long he had. she only knows how long Norman fought, the things she heard after his passing. but she also doesn't really know that Norman was also looking for that same miracle cure that Harry thought he had access to, in Peter's blood. ehhh. details, details. ] You don't know anything about me, so don't you dare try and say what Peter and I were going through had any effect on your decisions, on what you did to yourself. That was all you.

Oscorp might have had its secrets, and the more I learned the more I wanted to distance myself from it - but I never once held that against you, and I never would have. You were Peter's best friend, you were- a kid, just like us. Nothing we were going through would have mattered if you had asked for his help instead of demanding it like you did. Instead of trying to put this impossible pressure on him to try and save your life. And you're calling us selfish?

[ she shakes her head, pulls in a big breath because she's just ranting, and this isn't like her. she's not shocked by it, but it's just- a lot, all at once ]

If you weren't so selfish, maybe you would see that I wasn't the only way to ruin Peter, I was never the only way. What you did to yourself? That was it, that was more than enough. You ruined him the second you ruined yourself. So you don't get to lecture me about being selfish, Harry Osborn.