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Otto, Harry is here. [ if he sounds a little shaky and panicked, kindly ignore it. ] Not-- Not my Harry, but another version of him. I-- His version of me-- [ he trails off, then sucks in a breath. ] And Harry's sick.

He's sick? [Sure, he can ignore it - this is more important. Otto knows it must be something serious, if Norman's calling in a panic, but -] Sick how?

I don't know, he wouldn't tell me. I suppose he couldn't. That other.. me.. seems to have-- to have hurt him, I think, or at least made him think he didn't love him. I'm not sure.

[ a weary little sigh. ]

I was hoping.. you might speak to him? If I knew his diagnosis.. [ if he had samples to work with, maybe he could do something. the technology available in this world seems to be more akin to the one they just left, after all, which gives him more options. ]

Yes, yes, of course. I'll see what I can do.

[After some conversations he's had today, Otto isn't sure how generally trustworthy he comes off either. But at least there's no personal baggage.]

...are you alright?

As well as I can be, I suppose. Forgive me, I seem to keep giving you reasons to need to ask.

Don't worry about it. I don’t know what I'd do, if...something like that happened.

[He already knows there's even worse versions of him out there. What happened to Rosie, in those worlds? It doesn’t bear thinking about - better to focus on what needs doing here. Which is, per usual, bearing bad news.]

Norman... [A sigh, while he removes his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose on the other end of the line.] I'm sorry. I hate to bring this up now. But I don't want you to be surprised. I've run into several people today who recognized me as a...serious problem from their universe. There's a fourth Spider-man around, pretty sure he wanted to throw me off the roof...

[Suffice it to say, Otto has not been having a particularly great twenty-four hours! That's why he wanted to warn Norman ahead of time. At least one of them shouldn't be blindsided.]

I doubt any of them will approach you like that. They knew me by the actuators. But...you should know.

[ norman's marriage wasn't particularly good. he married because it was part of the dream he thought he wanted-- a successful business, a wife and children, fame and fortune. emily had given him harry, though, and if nothing else, he'll always be grateful to her for that. but otto-- otto and rosie had been perfect together. they'd had a marriage that rivaled some fairy tales, and he can't imagine what losing her must have been like. if some other version of her arrived here the way another version of harry has.. the pain would be greater than many people would be able to handle.

he doesn't know what to say to that. would it be a good thing even with the pain involved?

he's saved from trying to formulate a response as otto speaks up again. another peter parker? here? he's not sure what it says that they're all arriving in this place now. perhaps the spell had gone wrong somehow. ]

No, thank you for telling me. I'm only sorry that it's so difficult for you to blend in. [ they're both trying to repair some of the damage they've done, and yes, peter has every right to be wary, but it does mean that otto doesn't truly have an opportunity to form a first impression unrelated to his villainous persona. ] You weren't injured, were you?

[ It takes Harry a few days, after storming away from the conversation with the man calling himself Norman Osborn in the lobby of the hotel. A few days holing up in his room, ordering room service and hiding from the rest of the world as he watches the tremor in his right hand get worse and worse.

He'd wanted to help him, this other Norman. And he didn't seem like he was lying about it. But it's hard for Harry to imagine opening himself up to any version of his father.

So, he doesn't reach out to Norman. He reaches out to the man Norman had told him to talk to. The man who he already knows knew another version of himself.

He thinks about doing this over text, but his hand is shaking too much to type anything right, and autocorrect can only do so much. ]

Dr. Octavius? It's Harry. Can... Can I ask you something?

No, nothing like that. I think he was more afraid of me than anything else.

[Of course it hadn't felt good, to watch a version of the boy flee from him. But Otto knows it must have been well-deserved. All of it. When he'd first arrived here, in a world completely unlike any he knew, he'd thought perhaps he might have a chance to actually get out from under the shadow of what he'd done. That second chance the young Peter fought so hard to buy for all of them.

But, no. Maybe he didn't deserve to just have that slate wiped clean.]

It doesn't matter. [He sounds very tired.] I wasn't exactly going to blend in anyway.

Harry! I'm glad to hear from you.

[And Otto truly is! He's wanted to speak to the boy again for a couple of days, ever since Norman told him that he was ill and needed help. He'd just been trying to find him in person; call him old-fashioned, but he does prefer face-to-face conversations, especially for things which might become...fraught.]

Yes, of course. What is it?

[ Oh, it's going to get fraught. Harry's been living in a constant state of fraught-ness ever since he got here. Hell, since before that, even. Meeting Norman had just made things worse.

Otto's voice sounds far too chipper for Harry's mood, but he'll push on through. ]

In your universe... [ How does he want to phrase this? ] Is the Norman Osborn in your universe dead?

[Yeah, you know, he pretty much figured it would. Otto's voice sobers immediately.]

He was. Two years ago, by my time. [...] I found him again here, after you and I spoke. He mentioned he'd run into you.

Of course he did.

[ He says to himself, away from the phone's receiver, but probably still loud enough to be picked up. But whatever, that's fine. He still has his reasons for calling. ]

How did he die?

[Noted; summarily ignored.]

I don't know exactly what happened. No one did. [...] He was found stabbed in his home. The police never turned up much. I'm not sure if the investigation was still active or not, by the time I...left. Harry didn't like to talk about it.

[And by that time, Otto hadn't much wanted to either. He never put the pieces together while Norman was still alive. Even after, he never actually knew anything. But he remembered seeing old designs for that glider, and after a while, he noticed how the Green Goblin had just...vanished right alongside Norman. He never did much with it. What was there to be done? But the suspicion had lurked in the back of his mind right up until he heard that laughter on the bridge.

Now, of course, Otto's pretty sure he knows what happened. But that's not really his story to tell.]

I think you'd have to ask Norman, if you wanted to know more.

Stabbed...

[ Harry almost sounds disappointed. Death from a violent act, after a life spent loving his son. Instead of a slow decline into deformity, after a life spent pushing his son away. Neither of them are fair, for either Norman or Harry.

But he has to know for sure. The other Norman had mentioned an illness. ]

So it was sudden? He wasn't... sick, or anything?

...no, not like that.

[If you wanted to go all Star Wars about it, you could say that Norman died because of an illness. In a lot of ways, Otto wouldn't even disagree; the Goblin was a sickness, and it was the Goblin that killed him. But of course, it's not that simple.]

We'd grown more distant, in the years before he died. But I would have heard if he was that sick.

[ It takes Harry a minute to respond to that, and it just goes to show how fragile he is right now that his reaction isn't anger, but grief. Sadness. There's some rustling sounds from his side of the telephone as he wipes his eyes on his sleeve, and when he speaks again, his voice is strained, trying not to break into a full on sob.

This is too much to drop on a stranger like Dr. Octavius, but there isn't anyone else for him to tell. ]

When my father died... it was slow. He had been suffering from an illness for years, and it... changed him. It warped and twisted his body, and none of the brilliant minds at Oscorp could find a cure. So he got worse and worse, until finally it killed him.

[ He draws in a shuddering breath, feeling both vulnerable for sharing this, and also cathartic, for getting it off his chest. ]

That's what he left me with, when he died. A hereditary disease with no cure, and all the resources of his company to try to do what he couldn't. But I failed. I was so close— I almost had my hands on something that could have cured me... But now I'm here.

[ Why is he saying this? Because the other Norman had offered to try to find a cure. And if Dr. Octavius and Norman know each other... Maybe all this will get back to Norman somehow, without Harry having to go through the painful process of opening up to a man who is so close to being his father, but still so far away from it, too. ]

...I'm sorry, Harry. That's a terrible thing to go through.

[His voice is genuinely sympathetic. Is there any universe where the Osborns are okay, he wonders?

But Otto's too practical - and too aware of how Harry Osborns tend to be - to dwell on that long. The important thing now is helping Harry. If they're to stand any chance of discovering a cure, they ought to get started as soon as they can.]

But if this world's technology is any indication, their medicine must be far more advanced than anything either of our worlds had. Maybe there's something new here that could help. And, if there isn't, we'll just have to try and find it ourselves. You're not dealing with this alone anymore - I'd like to help, if you're willing.

[And if part of that help is acting as a go-between for Harry and Norman - well, that's fine too.]

Something that could help...

[ The truth is, he already has found something that helps. It didn't take a genius to put together the fact that after Harry punched that Emoji guy in the face, his patchy skin healed itself. For a few hours at least. People get superpowers when they arrive in this world, right? Harry thinks he might know what his superpower is. He hurts someone, he heals himself.

It's not sustainable, and he doesn't like it, but if it's what Harry needs to do, then he'll do it.

But... Having someone working towards and actual cure would be good, too. Just in case. ]

I... Yeah. [ He doesn't know what else to say. He's good at demanding help, not so good at accepting it when it's offered. ] Yeah. If you... If you guys want to help, then that would be good.

[ Just the barest acknowledgement of the other Norman. It's all he can manage for now, so it'll have to do. ]

Thank you.

Of course we want to help.

[Another thing that's not sustainable: dancing around the topic of Norman! But, just for right now, he'll let it go.]

We're working on getting the equipment and resources we'll need. But for now, what can you tell me about it? This possible cure you mentioned, what was that?

[ As the conversation turns more clinical, Harry's nerves seem to settle. He had talked to his father's doctors after his passing, gotten a rundown of the basics. Learned about all the things his father had tried doing to cure himself. All his failures. ]

It's called Retroviral Hypodysplasia. It's hereditary, like I said. Something in our genes, I don't know. I'm still in the early stages.

[ He takes a deep breath in, trying to recall the details the doctors had given him. ]

Symptoms so far have been tremors and skin lesions, that get worse when I'm stressed. [ And better when he hurts someone, but he's not going to divulge that information just yet. ] The tremor especially comes and goes. It's the worst in my hands. When I'm calm, it's not so bad, but then sometimes... It can effect my fine motor control.

[ Thus the reason he chose to have this conversation over phone, not text. ]

As for the cure... In my universe, we have a hero called Spider-Man. Nobody really knew where he got his powers, but I found out it actually came from a top-secret Oscorp experiment with DNA harvested from spiders. This spider venom, it can enhance your strength, your reflexes... But most importantly for me, it speeds up the body's healing processes. That's how Spider-Man can fight and fight and fight, then be fine afterwards.

[ The more he talks about Spider-Man and the experimental venom, the faster his speech gets, the more manic. ]

I tried to talk to him— my friend, Peter, the one I told you about, he has a personal connection to Spider-Man, so he did me a favor and set up a meeting between us. Anyway, I tried to convince him that if he gave me a sample of his blood to study, it could hold the cure I needed. But he said no! He looked me in the eyes and as good as told me he would rather watch me die than help me.

[ That's a gross exaggeration, but Harry's too far gone to realize it. ]

I was pissed, of course. But I did some more digging into my father's restricted files, and I learned that there were still some samples of the original spider venom hidden away in the Special Projects vault at Oscorp. I was just about to get my hands on it... when the Confluence pulled me here, instead.

[Otto starts off just listening and taking notes on a pad of hotel stationery. Retroviral Hypodysplasia...he's never heard of it, but that doesn't mean much. He's not a medical doctor. He jots down Harry's symptoms, his experiences...

...he stops writing when Spider-Man enters the picture.

Because of course he does. Of course he's involved somehow. Otto removes his glasses and pinches at the bridge of his nose as the story winds to a close. He doesn't for a moment believe it was as simple as that for Peter; he doesn't believe it would have been that simple in general. After all, the Oscorp he knows was developing an experimental serum for enhancing human physiology, too. It's a huge relief, hearing that Harry never got the chance to use it, but the knowledge of what might have been a near-miss casts that manic cadence in an even more worrying light.

His tone, when he speaks, is even and reassuring. Whatever might have happened, they can avoid it now. They can fix this.]

That's unfortunate. But it's not insurmountable. We already knew we'd be starting from scratch, unless this world has any existing research on your condition.

We'll start by looking into that. I'll let you know if we turn anything up. Once we have our lab space set up, we'll likely want some samples from you, but in the meantime...just try to take care of yourself? I know none of this is exactly relaxing, but your health is the most important thing here. You can call me if you need anything. You can call either one of us.

[Maybe that's venturing a bit too close to the topic of Norman, but it's all he'll say on the matter.]

[ Talking about Spider-Man, about how close he'd been to a cure, it ties a knot of anger and bile in Harry's chest. He's too preoccupied with the static of rage clouding his mind to pick up on the use of "we" and "us" in Otto's reply.

There comes the shaky breath of someone talking himself down off a ledge. The sound of someone picking up a bottle of something, the glass of the bottle neck knocking against a glass as it pours under a shaking hand. And finally, a clatter as the hand shakes just once too hard and the glass is knocked to the floor. ]

—Fuck!!

[ Whatever he's spilled, it's pooling across his hotel room floor. He has to go grab a towel and clean it up. There may or may not be broken glass. ]

Listen, I— I gotta go. I'll... [ Fuck. ] Just let me know when you need those samples from me.

Harry?

[Otto's voice is alarmed initially. But it doesn't sound like anything worse than a spilled glass. He frowns, still troubled, but lets it go.]

Yes, yes, of course. Get some rest, it's late.

[ guess who's knockin' on your door just after midnight, otto? it's quiet, though, since norman figures there's an off-chance ya might actually be sleeping. (fat chance.) ]

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