justprompts http://i25.tinypic.com/hsnj9f.gif Explosion
ooc: Set after this and before this. The thread with Lindsey isn't done, but I wanted to go ahead and get this out so the timeline doesn't get held up. Plus I have time to actually write it tonight versus my schedule will be weird tomorrow. Thanks to Logan mun for letting me npc!
It's been building for months now, but he's been fighting it as much as he could. Truth be told maybe it's been building for years. Maybe that ticking timebomb started ticking when he found his father dead in the penthouse. When he cradled him to his chest, and prayed for God to fix it. Bring him back, make it better, please don't take him away. I need him. Sally was right, of course, that life isn't fair. That not everyone gets to come back. When he's on his meds, and completely lucid Harry knows his father's presence was always more in his head than a supernatural thing. That didn't mean that there wasn't a ghost to kick back to hell in the penthouse. It just meant Harry held on too tight sometimes. He wasn't really designed to be able to let go.
He was fine though for awhile. He'd kicked that drug habit. He found happiness and stability. That was what he told himself. In hindsight he wondered just how stable any of his relationships had ever been. It wasn't that he was attracted to people with problems. They were attracted to him, and face it he knew he wasn't the most stable block in the Lego building. He tried so hard to fight it though. He'd been trying to fight it long before he held on so tight to his father's body that it took two people to pry him away. Sometimes he wondered if he was fighting it before he took that massive LSD overdose. For as long as he could remember he was fighting for something. Stability. Love. Sanity. It was all there, but no matter how tightly he held on to it it wasn't tight enough.
People leave. They walk out the door without leaving a note. They end up dying because they took on Spider-man. They end up dying because they were unfortunate enough to give birth to you. They leave because they want your best friend. They leave because you want to kill them because you blame them for killing your father.
Sometimes they vanish. It was kind of hard to find closure if someone simply disappears from existence. There was something more comforting about cradling a dead body to your chest than receiving word via telephone that the person you loved was gone. Vanished without a trace. It all led back to California didn't it? Connor went to California, and portal jumped to his death. Cordelia lived in California and vanished while dying.
Death and California. What was that old classic rock song?
You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave.
Yet they did manage to leave, or vanish or whatever the hell you wanted to call it. No one knew what happened to Cordelia. There was no parting message. No empty words of how she didn't want to do it, but she did it anyway. No, that was all Connor and Darla. Cordelia simply vanished. There was a car, but no sign of the sister he had grown to love.
Love. How crazy was that? What a joke that was to find out he had a sister, and she just happened to be the person who despised him. The person who had been the other great love of Connor's life. She had been someone he disliked before, and then boom blood connection. The knowledge they shared genetics. The truth of who they were, and what they were to each other. The bond that had first showed it's head in the mountains when they still hated each other. That survival instinct that made them fight so they both made it out rather than every man, or woman, for themselves. The bond was intense, and somehow some way he began to love her. He began to need her. She was his family, and that connection to a father who had deemed them both unworthy.
He tuned out pretty fast in the conversation. Handed the phone to Angel when the words sunk in. Vanished. Disappeared. Can't find Cordelia. He wasn't even sure what was said and what was in his head. It was all colliding together as things often did in Harry's mind. But he felt that snap. Felt just as clear as he had every other time it happened.
There was no laughing this time. There was no sense of calm. There was just rage and that snap that told him this was it. The ticking time bomb had been detonated. He was about to go off.
"I have to go out," he said quietly as Angel hung up the phone. He rushed toward the door before Angel could stop him, but didn't quite make it all the way out. Angel hauled him back in and pinned him to the wall. "Let me go."
"You're going to get a grip right now." Angel was staring at him with a look that Harry couldn't quite place. He was positive that Angel had never looked at him that way before. "I'll find Cordelia."
"Yeah, you did a bang up job finding Connor and Darla," Harry spit out with pure venom in the words. The impact of Angel's fist to his face made him smirk. That was more like it. Angel underestimated how fast and strong Harry was. He didn't see the knee to his gut coming anymore than he saw the foot lashing out to knock Angel off balance. Harry grabbed Angel by the front of the shirt and slammed him into the wall. His eyes flashed dangerously as he whispered quietly, "The only reason I don't rip your head from your shoulders is the same reason you don't do the same for me. You're better at lying than I am. Take care of her. I shouldn't be around her or anyone right now."
Harry shoved him hard before walking out of the apartment, not bothering to close the door behind him. Sliding behind the wheel of his car, he calmly drove away. Angel could make excuses for where he was going. Angel could make up a lie that would pass Kara's inspection. Angel could be calm because right now the only calm thing Harry could do was not drive recklessly out of the driveway. Once he was on the road all bets were off.
After all the times his mind had snapped you would think that Harry would be used to it. Perhaps the proof that he hadn't shattered completely was that he hadn't gotten used to it. That he could still be tilted off his axis when it happened. It impacted him so hard that for a moment he would struggle to breathe. For a moment he would look around to see if he was back in that closet.
His music was turned up loud as he drove toward the city. Thank fuck the only key he had to his Goblin shit was locked up. Not that he felt like terrorizing the city, but he did want another dose of those enhancers. It finally sunk in that he had used them the way he had used every other chemical that he came into contact with. He abused them because he could. He wanted the easy out, but the joke was on him. There was no easy outs. Suicide never worked for him. Death kept spitting him back out. He was starting to believe it was his destiny to lose everyone that he loved, yet he would remain standing. How fucking dramatic. Step right up for your daily dose of Osborn drama. There was plenty to go around for everyone. He could mock himself. At least that was something. The people who lacked a sense of humor scared the fuck out of him. They were the people who climbed the towers and started shooting randomly.
The people with a sense of humor put on masks and terrorized a city.
Come on, what's a little Goblin humor between friends? He looked up at the rearview mirror and smirked. Friends. Right. Blue eyes had stared back at him in the mirror, but he wasn't even looking for those eyes. He really only wanted to be left alone.
Wasn't that how it always worked out? When you wanted to be haunted by the people who died on you they are too busy to return your screams, but when you wanted to be left the fuck alone they're in your mirror trying to grab your attention. Honestly, was it so hard to get on the same page?
"Harry."
Harry ignored the voice. He wasn't in the mood to talk.
"Harry, slow down before you wreck the car."
He pushed down harder on the gas pedal.
"Harry, she isn't dead."
The tires squealed as he pulled over suddenly, turned off the engine, climbed out of the car, and locked the doors. He began to walk away. Where he was going he didn't know, but he'd had it. He had it with people vanishing. He had it with death. He had it with voices in his head. He had it with the past and the present colliding. Harry was over it. He couldn't do it anymore. So he walked.
Maybe if he kept walking things would make sense. Maybe those answers he had been searching for would finally come to him. Maybe he'd have a run in with God. Maybe he'd get mugged again. Fuck it, he didn't care. He was just so over it.
How could she vanish? She told him things would be okay. Why had he believed her? Right. Because he needed a miracle. He told Jean-Paul that they deserved miracles because there had been too much death. Deserved. How fucking entitled was he anyway? No one deserved anything. It was what it was, and it was time to suck it up and deal. So, his dying sister had managed to disappear? She wasn't the first person to do it. Hell, she wasn't even the first person this year to do it.
"Nice shoes," someone said as they stepped out of an alley.
Harry paused, and tilted his head up to check the guy out. Right. "Yeah."
"You don't live in this area. That's a nice car back there too. Most people wouldn't park it around here."
Wasn't this the part where the local masked hero showed up to save his ass, and then berate him for being a stupid rich punk that wasn't aware of his surroundings. He wasn't in Gotham, and this wasn't Manhattan. Heh. "Yeah."
Things seemed to slow down all at once. One minute there was a guy complimenting his shoes, and doing the scary I'm going to rob your ass deal, and the next there was a gun pointed at him.
Wow. Harry really hated guns.
"Keys, wallet and I'm feeling generous. You can keep the shoes."
"That's nice of you," Harry said tonelessly, as he made no move to turn over his keys and wallet. The sound of the gun clicking made him relax rather than tense up.
"Now."
"No."
"What?"
"No."
One minute things were slowing down, and the next it felt like his life was fast forwarding. If asked he wouldn't be able to recall how it happened. One minute there was a guy waving a gun in his face, and the next the guy was on his knees and Harry had the gun pressed to the back of the guy's head. There were no heroes here. No one to break it up.
"Who would miss you if I pulled the trigger?" He asked. His tone was so casual. It was the tone he used to ask a question in class.
"You're crazy."
"Am I? You pulled the gun on me first. What does that make you?" Harry smirked as he pressed the barrel of the gun against the man's head a little harder. "Who would miss you if I pulled the trigger?"
"My girl. My kid. Dude, what the fuck man. Put the gun down."
"Is it loaded?"
"What?"
"Should I find out by firing it?"
"Yeah, fuck, yeah it's loaded. Dude, seriously, what the hell do you want?"
Harry grinned. Now that was a good question. What did he want? "You can't give me what I want." He brought the gun down hard against the back of the guy's head and watched as he fell forward. Huh. Apparently Lex Luthor wasn't the only one who could drop with one smack against the back of the head.
The gun was still in his hand. Still loaded. He wasn't sure what to do with it. He really hated guns, but he was tired of dealing with assholes who gave him shit for walking around in their neighborhood. Maybe that was his entitlement again. Maybe he shouldn't feel like he had the right to take a walk to keep from having conversations with his dead father in mirrors. What an entitled little bitch he was.
He walked back to the car and placed the gun on the passenger seat. The key went back into the ignition and he eased the car back into traffic. The gun was there, and he wasn't sure what to do with it. There were a lot of thoughts that went through his head, but most of them seemed like a bad idea. He couldn't keep it. Even if his mind snapped he was still in control enough to know he was the last person in the world who should have easy access to a gun. He didn't want to toss it into the trash so someone else could find it. Harry hadn't brought his phone with him so he couldn't call and ask Peter to come and take care of it. He was kind of tired of relying on Peter to help him anyway.
Harry drove around for an hour, every so often casting a look at the gun like it was a snake about to strike, before he stopped on the bridge after pulling the car over. Harry was only out long enough to toss it into the water. No one needed to have a gun in New York. Hell, no one needed to have a gun anywhere. Once he was back into the car, he drove to the closest payphone and called Logan's number. Luckily he had memorized it. The conversation was brief. He needed to use the danger room was now a good time. He was grateful that Logan was a man of few words.
Harry couldn't deal with words right now. He needed something he could fight. Something he could destroy without guilt otherwise he was going to destroy himself and everyone in his path. He was just so fucking over it.
It's been building for months now, but he's been fighting it as much as he could. Truth be told maybe it's been building for years. Maybe that ticking timebomb started ticking when he found his father dead in the penthouse. When he cradled him to his chest, and prayed for God to fix it. Bring him back, make it better, please don't take him away. I need him. Sally was right, of course, that life isn't fair. That not everyone gets to come back. When he's on his meds, and completely lucid Harry knows his father's presence was always more in his head than a supernatural thing. That didn't mean that there wasn't a ghost to kick back to hell in the penthouse. It just meant Harry held on too tight sometimes. He wasn't really designed to be able to let go.
He was fine though for awhile. He'd kicked that drug habit. He found happiness and stability. That was what he told himself. In hindsight he wondered just how stable any of his relationships had ever been. It wasn't that he was attracted to people with problems. They were attracted to him, and face it he knew he wasn't the most stable block in the Lego building. He tried so hard to fight it though. He'd been trying to fight it long before he held on so tight to his father's body that it took two people to pry him away. Sometimes he wondered if he was fighting it before he took that massive LSD overdose. For as long as he could remember he was fighting for something. Stability. Love. Sanity. It was all there, but no matter how tightly he held on to it it wasn't tight enough.
People leave. They walk out the door without leaving a note. They end up dying because they took on Spider-man. They end up dying because they were unfortunate enough to give birth to you. They leave because they want your best friend. They leave because you want to kill them because you blame them for killing your father.
Sometimes they vanish. It was kind of hard to find closure if someone simply disappears from existence. There was something more comforting about cradling a dead body to your chest than receiving word via telephone that the person you loved was gone. Vanished without a trace. It all led back to California didn't it? Connor went to California, and portal jumped to his death. Cordelia lived in California and vanished while dying.
Death and California. What was that old classic rock song?
You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave.
Yet they did manage to leave, or vanish or whatever the hell you wanted to call it. No one knew what happened to Cordelia. There was no parting message. No empty words of how she didn't want to do it, but she did it anyway. No, that was all Connor and Darla. Cordelia simply vanished. There was a car, but no sign of the sister he had grown to love.
Love. How crazy was that? What a joke that was to find out he had a sister, and she just happened to be the person who despised him. The person who had been the other great love of Connor's life. She had been someone he disliked before, and then boom blood connection. The knowledge they shared genetics. The truth of who they were, and what they were to each other. The bond that had first showed it's head in the mountains when they still hated each other. That survival instinct that made them fight so they both made it out rather than every man, or woman, for themselves. The bond was intense, and somehow some way he began to love her. He began to need her. She was his family, and that connection to a father who had deemed them both unworthy.
He tuned out pretty fast in the conversation. Handed the phone to Angel when the words sunk in. Vanished. Disappeared. Can't find Cordelia. He wasn't even sure what was said and what was in his head. It was all colliding together as things often did in Harry's mind. But he felt that snap. Felt just as clear as he had every other time it happened.
There was no laughing this time. There was no sense of calm. There was just rage and that snap that told him this was it. The ticking time bomb had been detonated. He was about to go off.
"I have to go out," he said quietly as Angel hung up the phone. He rushed toward the door before Angel could stop him, but didn't quite make it all the way out. Angel hauled him back in and pinned him to the wall. "Let me go."
"You're going to get a grip right now." Angel was staring at him with a look that Harry couldn't quite place. He was positive that Angel had never looked at him that way before. "I'll find Cordelia."
"Yeah, you did a bang up job finding Connor and Darla," Harry spit out with pure venom in the words. The impact of Angel's fist to his face made him smirk. That was more like it. Angel underestimated how fast and strong Harry was. He didn't see the knee to his gut coming anymore than he saw the foot lashing out to knock Angel off balance. Harry grabbed Angel by the front of the shirt and slammed him into the wall. His eyes flashed dangerously as he whispered quietly, "The only reason I don't rip your head from your shoulders is the same reason you don't do the same for me. You're better at lying than I am. Take care of her. I shouldn't be around her or anyone right now."
Harry shoved him hard before walking out of the apartment, not bothering to close the door behind him. Sliding behind the wheel of his car, he calmly drove away. Angel could make excuses for where he was going. Angel could make up a lie that would pass Kara's inspection. Angel could be calm because right now the only calm thing Harry could do was not drive recklessly out of the driveway. Once he was on the road all bets were off.
After all the times his mind had snapped you would think that Harry would be used to it. Perhaps the proof that he hadn't shattered completely was that he hadn't gotten used to it. That he could still be tilted off his axis when it happened. It impacted him so hard that for a moment he would struggle to breathe. For a moment he would look around to see if he was back in that closet.
His music was turned up loud as he drove toward the city. Thank fuck the only key he had to his Goblin shit was locked up. Not that he felt like terrorizing the city, but he did want another dose of those enhancers. It finally sunk in that he had used them the way he had used every other chemical that he came into contact with. He abused them because he could. He wanted the easy out, but the joke was on him. There was no easy outs. Suicide never worked for him. Death kept spitting him back out. He was starting to believe it was his destiny to lose everyone that he loved, yet he would remain standing. How fucking dramatic. Step right up for your daily dose of Osborn drama. There was plenty to go around for everyone. He could mock himself. At least that was something. The people who lacked a sense of humor scared the fuck out of him. They were the people who climbed the towers and started shooting randomly.
The people with a sense of humor put on masks and terrorized a city.
Come on, what's a little Goblin humor between friends? He looked up at the rearview mirror and smirked. Friends. Right. Blue eyes had stared back at him in the mirror, but he wasn't even looking for those eyes. He really only wanted to be left alone.
Wasn't that how it always worked out? When you wanted to be haunted by the people who died on you they are too busy to return your screams, but when you wanted to be left the fuck alone they're in your mirror trying to grab your attention. Honestly, was it so hard to get on the same page?
"Harry."
Harry ignored the voice. He wasn't in the mood to talk.
"Harry, slow down before you wreck the car."
He pushed down harder on the gas pedal.
"Harry, she isn't dead."
The tires squealed as he pulled over suddenly, turned off the engine, climbed out of the car, and locked the doors. He began to walk away. Where he was going he didn't know, but he'd had it. He had it with people vanishing. He had it with death. He had it with voices in his head. He had it with the past and the present colliding. Harry was over it. He couldn't do it anymore. So he walked.
Maybe if he kept walking things would make sense. Maybe those answers he had been searching for would finally come to him. Maybe he'd have a run in with God. Maybe he'd get mugged again. Fuck it, he didn't care. He was just so over it.
How could she vanish? She told him things would be okay. Why had he believed her? Right. Because he needed a miracle. He told Jean-Paul that they deserved miracles because there had been too much death. Deserved. How fucking entitled was he anyway? No one deserved anything. It was what it was, and it was time to suck it up and deal. So, his dying sister had managed to disappear? She wasn't the first person to do it. Hell, she wasn't even the first person this year to do it.
"Nice shoes," someone said as they stepped out of an alley.
Harry paused, and tilted his head up to check the guy out. Right. "Yeah."
"You don't live in this area. That's a nice car back there too. Most people wouldn't park it around here."
Wasn't this the part where the local masked hero showed up to save his ass, and then berate him for being a stupid rich punk that wasn't aware of his surroundings. He wasn't in Gotham, and this wasn't Manhattan. Heh. "Yeah."
Things seemed to slow down all at once. One minute there was a guy complimenting his shoes, and doing the scary I'm going to rob your ass deal, and the next there was a gun pointed at him.
Wow. Harry really hated guns.
"Keys, wallet and I'm feeling generous. You can keep the shoes."
"That's nice of you," Harry said tonelessly, as he made no move to turn over his keys and wallet. The sound of the gun clicking made him relax rather than tense up.
"Now."
"No."
"What?"
"No."
One minute things were slowing down, and the next it felt like his life was fast forwarding. If asked he wouldn't be able to recall how it happened. One minute there was a guy waving a gun in his face, and the next the guy was on his knees and Harry had the gun pressed to the back of the guy's head. There were no heroes here. No one to break it up.
"Who would miss you if I pulled the trigger?" He asked. His tone was so casual. It was the tone he used to ask a question in class.
"You're crazy."
"Am I? You pulled the gun on me first. What does that make you?" Harry smirked as he pressed the barrel of the gun against the man's head a little harder. "Who would miss you if I pulled the trigger?"
"My girl. My kid. Dude, what the fuck man. Put the gun down."
"Is it loaded?"
"What?"
"Should I find out by firing it?"
"Yeah, fuck, yeah it's loaded. Dude, seriously, what the hell do you want?"
Harry grinned. Now that was a good question. What did he want? "You can't give me what I want." He brought the gun down hard against the back of the guy's head and watched as he fell forward. Huh. Apparently Lex Luthor wasn't the only one who could drop with one smack against the back of the head.
The gun was still in his hand. Still loaded. He wasn't sure what to do with it. He really hated guns, but he was tired of dealing with assholes who gave him shit for walking around in their neighborhood. Maybe that was his entitlement again. Maybe he shouldn't feel like he had the right to take a walk to keep from having conversations with his dead father in mirrors. What an entitled little bitch he was.
He walked back to the car and placed the gun on the passenger seat. The key went back into the ignition and he eased the car back into traffic. The gun was there, and he wasn't sure what to do with it. There were a lot of thoughts that went through his head, but most of them seemed like a bad idea. He couldn't keep it. Even if his mind snapped he was still in control enough to know he was the last person in the world who should have easy access to a gun. He didn't want to toss it into the trash so someone else could find it. Harry hadn't brought his phone with him so he couldn't call and ask Peter to come and take care of it. He was kind of tired of relying on Peter to help him anyway.
Harry drove around for an hour, every so often casting a look at the gun like it was a snake about to strike, before he stopped on the bridge after pulling the car over. Harry was only out long enough to toss it into the water. No one needed to have a gun in New York. Hell, no one needed to have a gun anywhere. Once he was back into the car, he drove to the closest payphone and called Logan's number. Luckily he had memorized it. The conversation was brief. He needed to use the danger room was now a good time. He was grateful that Logan was a man of few words.
Harry couldn't deal with words right now. He needed something he could fight. Something he could destroy without guilt otherwise he was going to destroy himself and everyone in his path. He was just so fucking over it.