The Weight of The World ｡ Peter Parker [1]

38 - Before The Storm

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I hadn't heard from Peter in days, making my head a little overloaded with doubt and worry because I had let him leave with nothing more than a stupid line about my bobble head. I should have made him promise to call me everyday that he was away but that seemed a little overbearing. Without any contact from him yet, I needed a way to try and keep him from my mind and with my friends busy, I headed towards Oscorp, wondering if I could sit in the labs with my parents for the afternoon. 

With the harsh wind slicing through the streets, I glanced up at the familiar building rising high into the cloudy sky. I stepped into the warmth, the glass doors sliding closed behind me. I signed in at the front desk, knowing security had gotten tight with the recent accident. I was heading towards the elevator when my shoulder bumped into a man that had been storming towards me. "Sorry," I was muttering out, twirling around to make sure the man was alright. That's when my breath caught in my throat. "Mr. Osborn?" It should not have been a question but it came out that way because the man standing before me looked nothing like Harry's father. His skin was a sickly pale, his hair greasy and untamed. There was a jittery look in his eyes, his lips pulling into a firm line. 

He glanced over me and for a moment I thought he didn't know me. "Florence. Parsons." He said the words twice, like he had to say them out loud another time to convince himself it was me. "Harry's friend. Peter's girl. Yes, yes. It is good to see you." His words were shaky, making me question if he was sound of mind. The Norman Osborn I knew was a confident man, almost snobbish and with a chip on his shoulder. The man in front of me was a shell of that old man, now he was nothing but a skittish cat.  

"I heard about your accident in the labs," Words were falling from my mouth, trying to fill the silence with something, with anything. I was feeling very uncomfortable with him standing so close and staring at me like he was trying to see something that wasn't there. "I'm sorry to hear all your work was destroyed. Harry has been worried about your...health." 

The mention of his son, or maybe his work, triggered a spark in his haunting eyes. A hand gripped my shoulder, drawing me close. His lips went to my ear and I was already trying to struggle away from him. "The work may be gone, but it's finished."

"What's finished?" I questioned quietly. 

He grinned, it was a horrible dark smile that chilled me to my core. I had never seen him so manic and it was frankly scaring me. Norman was never a kind man, not to his son or to many people, but he had never been crazy. "He will fall. The setting sun. The spider. The darkness. The goblin. Take his heart. Make it break. The city burning bright again. He will fall, so I can rise."

I was shaking my head, his words nothing but a string of nonsense. Before I could even question what he was talking about he was pulling away, his shoulders hunching forward as he hurried towards the exit without a look back at me. I stood in the lobby for a moment longer, watching as he turned left and disappeared down the street. 

With nothing left to do, I went upstairs and found my parents in their usual lab, bent over a vial of purple liquid. I shrugged off my jacket, it slipping towards the floor as I stepped up beside them both. I caught sight of nearly ten more vials tucked away in a fridge. My parents had been working on a strand of injectable serum based on a hypothetical formula to increase a human's senses and abilities. "Is it finished?" I breathed out. 

My father gave a low chuckle, "No, not quite. We haven't even began to run tests with it. The formula is too unpredictable and right now, field testing is out of the question."