Every creature on this earth dies alone.
WHO: Harry and his hallucination
WHERE: on top of a building
WHEN: afternoon, right before this network post
WARNINGS: this is so TL;DR I apologize for existing
SUMMARY: Welp. Time to pretend to jump off a really high building in an attempt to piss off dad!
FORMAT: prose
It took a while for people to notice, because when you're walking around in the city you only look up if you're a tourist. And Harry was up pretty high. The wind was cold in his hair, flapping the sides of his jacket like restless stage curtains. It wasn't a warm jacket, because that would be weird. If he planned to jump off an entire goddamn building, why bundle up like you planned to stand there for a while? This had to be as real as possible, even though he'd laughed about it earlier. Everything should be more or less true. For instance: he did need psychiatric help. (Just not this place's.) He did occasionally think about suicide. (But he'd never tried.)
And he did, indeed, hallucinate. Just not about goblins.
"You are making a very big mistake, Harry."
No one else was with him on the roof; no one had noticed yet. Harry could feel Mr. Shaw blocking some of the wind behind him.
"Gonna stop me, dad?" It wasn't as big a relief as he thought it might be to actually say it out loud. "Say it."
Silence from Shaw. Heh. 'Mr. Shaw'. Harry didn't know what the significance of the name was, and it had taken him a long, long time to come to terms with the fact that 'Mr. Shaw' was just, plain and simple, his dad. Now that he knew, it was easy to see it, of course, but he remembered the panic attacks and long nights and the endless rattle of pills. He remembered how hard it had been to admit it. That his dad paid a fucking brainwasher to insert some batshit alpha personality in his head, one who could drive cars and find hidden lab sites and shut him down and make him forget.
They said it together: "Cellar door."
And nothing happened. He didn't black out, he didn't turn into a fiery monster, memories didn't stream hot as blood from beneath the inky cover of his subconscious. He was Harry. His hands were cold. He was standing on a ledge about three inches from jumping off, breath streaming into the wind in a cloudy swirl. He was free to do this, and if he did, it would be only one blow. It wasn't like he thought Norman would care. He would spin it, he would turn things around, and Harry expected nothing less. And if he were by himself, he might as well just jump off the roof for real, but he wasn't. True, his allies weren't all that trustworthy, but he was confident that they both had something invested in this situation enough that they would make some effort if things went wrong.
When they go wrong. Harry shuddered quietly, rocking back on his heels. The world swam for just a second, a side effect of going off his meds, and he thought about how vast the ground was, and how small his heart was. Just a fist, pushing stubbornly over and over against the confines of his ribs. He was so weak. Even the monster inside him meant nothing, not compared to someone who knew what they were doing and knew how to fight, and not compared to the monster his father was.
Pete, I wish you were here.
"Harry. Listen to me" Harry felt Shaw's hand on his arm, but where once the man had been so strong, now he felt weak, hardly substantial. He couldn't pull Harry off the ledge, and it made Harry laugh, annoyed.
"Shut up, dad." He brushed irritably at his arm, dislodging Shaw's already tenuous grip. "Oh..." Harry stared down several stories. "... geez." People had finally seen him, and there was a police car pulling up, as well as a sparse crowd.
Shaw was burning holes in the back of his head. As if he hadn't done enough damage to Harry's brain already.
"You're going to regret this, Harry," Shaw said, low, yet strangely not menacing. Harry almost turned to look at him, then didn't, then realized he had no reason not to, and did. Shaw was standing there, watching him not with concern, but implacable pity, almost superiority. "You're going to wish you had the resolve to carry on or the balls to actually off yourself, because he's not your father. And neither am I. Do you know the meaning of the phrase 'pyrrhic victory'?"
Harry didn't. He'd never heard of it. But that was impossible if Shaw knew it, so that meant that Shaw was keeping him from remembering the definition. Harry didn't say anything. His control over Shaw wasn't perfect, he knew that, otherwise the man would be gone already. That didn't mean he had to like these small reminders that Shaw that Norman Osborn still had footholds in his brain, and probably would for the rest of his life.
"You will."
Below, a police officer used a megaphone to shout something up at Harry, but it was garbled and incoherent to Harry's ears. The cold was finally getting to him, but there was no way to stop now. He turned away from Mr. Shaw and edged toward the street. The roof exit door was jammed shut with a chair and a lot of duct tape, but it wouldn't hold forever.
He took a deep breath and close his hand around the communicator in his jacket pocket. Time to go.
WHERE: on top of a building
WHEN: afternoon, right before this network post
WARNINGS: this is so TL;DR I apologize for existing
SUMMARY: Welp. Time to pretend to jump off a really high building in an attempt to piss off dad!
FORMAT: prose
It took a while for people to notice, because when you're walking around in the city you only look up if you're a tourist. And Harry was up pretty high. The wind was cold in his hair, flapping the sides of his jacket like restless stage curtains. It wasn't a warm jacket, because that would be weird. If he planned to jump off an entire goddamn building, why bundle up like you planned to stand there for a while? This had to be as real as possible, even though he'd laughed about it earlier. Everything should be more or less true. For instance: he did need psychiatric help. (Just not this place's.) He did occasionally think about suicide. (But he'd never tried.)
And he did, indeed, hallucinate. Just not about goblins.
"You are making a very big mistake, Harry."
No one else was with him on the roof; no one had noticed yet. Harry could feel Mr. Shaw blocking some of the wind behind him.
"Gonna stop me, dad?" It wasn't as big a relief as he thought it might be to actually say it out loud. "Say it."
Silence from Shaw. Heh. 'Mr. Shaw'. Harry didn't know what the significance of the name was, and it had taken him a long, long time to come to terms with the fact that 'Mr. Shaw' was just, plain and simple, his dad. Now that he knew, it was easy to see it, of course, but he remembered the panic attacks and long nights and the endless rattle of pills. He remembered how hard it had been to admit it. That his dad paid a fucking brainwasher to insert some batshit alpha personality in his head, one who could drive cars and find hidden lab sites and shut him down and make him forget.
They said it together: "Cellar door."
And nothing happened. He didn't black out, he didn't turn into a fiery monster, memories didn't stream hot as blood from beneath the inky cover of his subconscious. He was Harry. His hands were cold. He was standing on a ledge about three inches from jumping off, breath streaming into the wind in a cloudy swirl. He was free to do this, and if he did, it would be only one blow. It wasn't like he thought Norman would care. He would spin it, he would turn things around, and Harry expected nothing less. And if he were by himself, he might as well just jump off the roof for real, but he wasn't. True, his allies weren't all that trustworthy, but he was confident that they both had something invested in this situation enough that they would make some effort if things went wrong.
When they go wrong. Harry shuddered quietly, rocking back on his heels. The world swam for just a second, a side effect of going off his meds, and he thought about how vast the ground was, and how small his heart was. Just a fist, pushing stubbornly over and over against the confines of his ribs. He was so weak. Even the monster inside him meant nothing, not compared to someone who knew what they were doing and knew how to fight, and not compared to the monster his father was.
Pete, I wish you were here.
"Harry. Listen to me" Harry felt Shaw's hand on his arm, but where once the man had been so strong, now he felt weak, hardly substantial. He couldn't pull Harry off the ledge, and it made Harry laugh, annoyed.
"Shut up, dad." He brushed irritably at his arm, dislodging Shaw's already tenuous grip. "Oh..." Harry stared down several stories. "... geez." People had finally seen him, and there was a police car pulling up, as well as a sparse crowd.
Shaw was burning holes in the back of his head. As if he hadn't done enough damage to Harry's brain already.
"You're going to regret this, Harry," Shaw said, low, yet strangely not menacing. Harry almost turned to look at him, then didn't, then realized he had no reason not to, and did. Shaw was standing there, watching him not with concern, but implacable pity, almost superiority. "You're going to wish you had the resolve to carry on or the balls to actually off yourself, because he's not your father. And neither am I. Do you know the meaning of the phrase 'pyrrhic victory'?"
Harry didn't. He'd never heard of it. But that was impossible if Shaw knew it, so that meant that Shaw was keeping him from remembering the definition. Harry didn't say anything. His control over Shaw wasn't perfect, he knew that, otherwise the man would be gone already. That didn't mean he had to like these small reminders that Shaw that Norman Osborn still had footholds in his brain, and probably would for the rest of his life.
"You will."
Below, a police officer used a megaphone to shout something up at Harry, but it was garbled and incoherent to Harry's ears. The cold was finally getting to him, but there was no way to stop now. He turned away from Mr. Shaw and edged toward the street. The roof exit door was jammed shut with a chair and a lot of duct tape, but it wouldn't hold forever.
He took a deep breath and close his hand around the communicator in his jacket pocket. Time to go.