The Basketball

Disclaimer: I own nothing about Spider-man or the Green Goblin. That all belongs to Marvel Comics, who can't seem to help resurrecting people every ten seconds in their comics but in their movies everyone stays very dead. This is based on the movie Spider-man 3. I made all of this up, so if there happens to actually be a comic or TV show episode wherein Harry and Peter meet this has nothing to do with it.
"Heya, buddy!" Harry Osborn said with his usual ear-to-ear grin when his best friend arrived. He stuck his hand out, and as he always did, Peter Parker shook it vigorously.

"Hi, Harry. How've you been?"

"Never better. C'mon, the court awaits us." He led Peter into the cavernous entrance hall. Once, Peter had been overwhelmed by the wealth and grandeur displayed here. He still remembered that day, not long after starting high school, when he'd been invited to the Osborn family penthouse for the first time. He and Harry had spontaneously bonded when Harry had broken up a bunch of the guys who had stolen Peter's glasses for, by his own estimate, the 1,247th time since elementary school.

"Here," Harry had said, handing Peter his glasses from where they'd been unceremoniously dropped to the floor. "You shouldn't let them push you around like that."

"It's no big thing," Peter had mumbled, his eyes glued to the floor, not daring to look at his rescuer. "They do it all the time. I've gotten used to it."

"Hey, your glasses are broken!" Harry exclaimed when Peter raised them to put them into their rightful place on his nose.

"It happens," Peter shrugged. His aunt and uncle would not be pleased, but it was hardly a surprise. However, in putting on his glasses, he was forced to at last get a good look at the person who'd helped him. He took a step backwards, nearly dropping his heavy stack of science textbooks. "Hey, you're…you're…"

"Harry Osborn." Harry grinned. He extended a hand, and Peter reluctantly rearranged his books so that he could shake it. Harry's grip was firm, as Peter was later to learn it always would be.

"P-Peter Parker," Peter had stammered. He'd known, as everyone in their school did, that the son of the famed scientist Norman Osborn had come to public school after flunking out of some prestigious European boarding school, but Peter had never expected to actually meet either of them despite being in the same grade as the son.

They stood looking at each other for a few moments until the warning bell rang and brought them back to reality. "Wait a second," Harry had said as Peter started instinctively for the safety of his classroom. "Can you tell me where room…" he peered at a small card in his hand, "…327 is?"

Peter sighed. "That's right where I'm headed. C'mon, I'll show you." They started down the hall together.

"So…" Harry had said after about thirty awkward seconds of silence, "You, uh, like…science, right?"

"Yeah." Peter hefted his books for emphasis.

"Wow. Um, listen, you know, science really isn't my thing. I can already tell I'm not cut out for my…" He stopped, blushing. "I mean, I can already tell this year will be a tough one for me. Coming in after the semester started like this. Would you mind, uh, helping me get caught up? If you don't want to, or you're too busy with other stuff, I understand…" he trailed off, looking at Peter hopefully.

This was so far from anything Peter had been expecting the son of Norman Osborn to say that he was temporarily struck dumb. When he finally found his voice, seconds before they walked into their science lab, he had heard himself say, "Sure. No problem." And that was what had first led him to the door of the Osborns. He and Harry had had their ups and downs since then, but the ties that had been forged that day in ninth grade had remained.

"Pete? You OK?" Harry's voice brought him back to reality. Peter glanced again around the entranceway, doing his best to avoid the empty eyes of the masks that lined the walls. They brought back bad memories.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, shaking his head a little.

"It's Dad's masks again, isn't it?" Harry said, startling Peter with his perception. "I'm sorry they bother you so much, but I like to keep them around, just the way he had them. They remind me of him…the good, and the bad."

"The bad?" Peter repeated as they started up the stairs.

"Pete, I have to face reality sometime about my father. You and Bernard taught me that." Before Peter could ask what this meant, Harry bounded ahead. By the time Peter reached him, he had opened a closet and was rummaging around inside. "Aha, here it is!" Before Peter could blink, Harry had heaved their old basketball right at his stomach. Had he been his high school self, this throw would have knocked him over and completely winded him. But his spider-sense had already warned him both of Harry's intentions and the velocity of the throw. He caught the ball easily without even having to step backwards.

Harry had already closed the closet and was walking away down the hall. Peter reflected ruefully that once Harry would at least have made sure his friend was all right, but now he knew without a doubt that Peter would catch that ball. Peter glared after him and heaved the ball at his retreating back.

Though Peter had not shouted in warning and the ball, propelled by Peter's spider-bite-enhanced muscles, was moving at considerable speed, Harry spun and grabbed it smoothly from the air. "You know," he said conversationally, spinning the ball on his index finger, "I've been looking forward to this for a long time. Spider-man versus the Green Goblin in an epic battle to see who will reign supreme."

Peter froze. Harry eyed him. "Pete, don't do this again. We're just going to play a little basketball, that's all. Just like we used to, only better, because now neither one of us could suck if we tried."

"But you, you're…" Images assailed Peter. Mary Jane, trapped in a taxicab suspended high between two buildings. Sandman, battering him as Spider-man while Venom held him by the throat from behind. Harry, coming in on his father's gilder just when it seemed Peter couldn't take any more. The fighting that followed, where they had worked together for the first time as Spider-man and the Green Goblin. And Harry, taking the fatal blow that was meant for Peter.

Suddenly, from the long hall behind Harry there appeared the glider itself, its front spears poised for impact.

"Harry, look out!" Peter screamed, but Harry didn't have time to turn. The image of those two sharp barbs protruding from Harry's chest burned itself into Peter's mind. The basketball fell to the floor and bounced with a crash as loud as thunder against the floor.

"Harry, no!"

0-0-0

Peter sat up sharply, breathing hard. He glanced around, trying to get his bearings as he pulled his mind from the dream. His tiny apartment looked just as it always did, with books and clothes strewn helter-skelter on shelves, the night stand, the dresser, and the floor. Lightning flashed from outside, illuminating the glass of the picture frames placed in various positions around the room. To his left, on his bedside table next to his chemistry books, were Aunt May and Mary Jane, both smiling reassuringly at him. Off by itself on a shelf across from the bed was his treasured photo of Uncle Ben. And newly placed on his dresser was the picture Aunt May had found when cleaning out their old house: one of a sweaty Peter and Harry in the Parkers' backyard, perhaps in tenth grade, Harry with one arm around Peter's shoulders. At their feet sat a well-loved basketball. Peter had felt odd keeping this particular photo when he and Harry had been on the outs with one another for so long, so it had stayed buried in his sock drawer where he wouldn't have to think about it. But the day of Harry's funeral he'd taken it out, bought an old used frame for it, and placed it there on his dresser.

The dreams had started before the funeral. They were always the same, though he and Harry might say different things each time: he would be going over to Harry's penthouse to play basketball. The glider unfailingly appeared the moment Peter realized that Harry had died saving him. They never actually got to play their planned game. And Peter always woke up yelling.

He stood as thunder cracked, rattling the windows of the old apartment building and making the whole house quake. Peter paused for a moment, as he always did when it stormed like this, to make sure the house wasn't going to crumble around him. He never quite trusted the place to stay in once piece, it was so rickety and falling apart. He and Harry had shared an apartment briefly after graduating high school, but after Norman Osborn died they had been forced to go their separate ways. Peter had found that this was the only place that suited his miniscule and often-fluctuating income as well as the need for privacy in his capacity as Spider-man. The landlord was crotchety and irritable and miserly, but Peter had come to feel some familiar affection for the man over the years. And his shy daughter Ursula was a decent sort of girl who made life bearable for all the miserable renters in her father's house.

When the building did not turn into dust at the thunder, Peter sighed with relief and rummaged under his bed until he found the locked suitcase that contained his spider-suit. A swing through the rain looking for bad guys to nail would get his mind off of things. As he yanked the suit on, he contemplated the old picture. He and Harry looked so young, so carefree. Sure, they had each had their individual troubles, but they seemed so small compared to the problems they'd faced as adults. Back then, all Harry had worried about were his science grades and impressing his father. Peter had had thoughts only for school, Mary Jane, and staying out of the way of people who liked to beat him up.

Just as Peter was reaching for his mask, the most important part of his ensemble, a light appeared in the main house and someone banged on his door. "Pete? Are you all right?" It was Ursula's hesitant, die-away voice.

"Just a minute!" Peter called back, yanking on a shirt and pants over his Spider-man uniform and tucking his mask under his pillow. Then he went to the door and opened it. "Boy, am I glad your dad finally got around to fixing this thing," he said as he admitted the rail-thin girl. She wore a long, floor-length bathrobe that had seen better days.

Ursula nodded in agreement, but she was not so easily brushed aside. "Are you all right, Peter? I thought I heard you yelling."

Peter turned away and sat on the edge of his bed with his back to her. She waited a moment, then said, "Was it a bad dream? Because if it was, my mom used to fix me warm milk when I couldn't sleep and I was wondering if you'd like a glass. You don't have to. If I'm bothering you I'll let you get back to sleep."

"No, that's all right. A glass of milk would be nice." Peter followed her into the kitchen and watched as she fixed the milk. Once it was heating on the stove burner, Ursula pulled up a rickety chair across from Peter and put her elbows on the table. Peter wondered irrationally whether her bones would poke through her skin. Ursula's startling thinness had that effect on people.

"So…" Ursula said after a moment. "Do…you want to talk about it?"

"Talk about what?"

"Your dream. I've heard you yelling the past couple of nights, and sometimes it helps if you…never mind. It's none of my business." She looked away.

"No, it's OK." Peter shook his head. "It might help. OK, here goes: it's about Harry."

"Your friend? The one who…died?" Ursula turned back and looked at Peter with her head tilted slightly.

"Yes. It's always the same dream, every night. In my dream, we're going to play basketball, like we used to as kids. But we never do; he's always killed in the dream before we ever get to play." Peter buried his head in his hands. "He dies in the dream when I realize that he's dead in real life. It makes me so sad to think of all the stuff we'll never get to do again now that he's gone." He thought about how amazing it had felt to team up with Harry against Venom and Sandman. Their old bond had returned, and they had worked together almost as if they had one mind. They might have had a fruitful partnership as superheroes, might have truly been able to work out the differences that had divided them since Harry's father died. If Harry had survived that night. They had reaffirmed their friendship at the end, but it just wasn't the same, thinking of all they could have done.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. "I understand," said Ursula. "I felt the same kinds of things when my mother died. I still have dreams about her, sometimes."

"What do you do about them?" Peter asked.

"The dreams? I make myself a glass of warm milk, and wait to find out what she's trying to tell me." Ursula flushed. "Do you believe in people coming back in our dreams to show us things about our lives? I do."

"I'm not sure." Peter glanced behind her. "The milk!" Steam was starting to curl from the saucepan, and a sour smell filled the kitchen.

"Oh, no!" Ursula reached the stove before Peter and rescued the curdling milk before it burned and woke the rest of the house. She fished out two mugs before pausing and asking apologetically, "Do you still want this? I can make some more, I guess…"

"No, I'll take some. I don't mind it being burned a little." In the end, he managed to swallow all of it without pulling a face. The sour taste was very faint. When they had both finished their mugs, he stood up. "I should be getting back to bed. Thanks for the milk."

"No problem. Goodnight." Ursula started back to her own room, but paused at the door. "Hey, Pete, I meant to tell you. Nice Spider-man socks. You'll have to tell little Richie in 214 where to buy them." Then she vanished, leaving Peter to stare at his red and black web-patterned feet, which he had forgotten to hide in his haste. He glanced at Ursula's door and shook his head. Another nice quirk to Spider-man paraphernalia growing so popular amongst the general public recently was that it made the real Spider-man's cover-up job that much easier. He went back into his room, closed the door, removed everything but his uniform, pulled on his mask, and leapt out the window into the night.

Catching petty everynight criminals soothed Peter somewhat. Anonymously doing good deeds for the normal citizens of New York had never lost its appeal for Spider-man, however much his personal life as Peter Parker might interfere and complicate. He returned to his apartment after a few hours of soaring above the streets with all senses on alert, worn out at last and ready for a good few hours' sleep before he had to get up for class. After carefully storing away his suit and making sure his alarm was still set, he allowed his head to sink back onto his pillow.

He turned his head so that he could see the photo on his dresser again. His own younger face, and Harry's, smiled back at him. Peter saw, superimposed over it, Harry's face as it had looked at the end, contorted with pain and yet still smiling. He thought about what Ursula had said about people returning from the dead in dreams to tell him things. Uncle Ben had done it once, why shouldn't Harry do the same? Peter smiled slightly, and drifted off.

0-0-0

"Hey, Pete, you're here. C'mon in," Harry said, extending his hand as usual. Peter shook it, enjoying the reassurance of its firmness. "Are you ready for some basketball?" Harry asked, leading the way into the house.

Peter paused in the entrance hall of the Osborn penthouse, as he often did. The hanging African masks seemed to mock him with their leering faces. He could almost imagine any of them with glowing golden eyes behind them. He knew now who had lurked behind that one particular mask he feared. He turned to look at Harry, who was standing on the steps, watching him with their old basketball under one arm.

Harry grinned, his scarred face twisting as if he knew exactly what Peter had been thinking. "How many times to we have to go through this before it sinks in, Pete? My father's dead. I know you didn't kill him, not as Peter Parker and not as Spider-man."

"How many times have we been over this?" Peter asked, confused.

"As many times as you let me get that far before reality comes screeching back into your head."

They stared at each other. "You're dead," Peter said at last. "You're dead, and I'm dreaming."

"Pete, listen. I am dead, but I'm not gone. As long as you remember me, the good stuff and the bad, I'll never be gone."

"Harry." Peter felt tears come to his eyes. "You are—were—my best friend. I'll never forget you. I could never forget what you did for me. I didn't know who else to turn to when Mary Jane was in trouble, but I never meant—"

"Peter, Peter, stop." Harry held up his hand. "I know you. You'd never mean to get anyone killed. You live your life trying to stop people from hurting. I made my own choices, just like my father did, and I decided that you and Mary Jane are worth any price. What else are friends for?" Deliberately, he put the basketball down, crossed the remaining distance between them, and put his arms around Peter. Very softly, he whispered, "That's what I've been coming here to tell you. To let me go. I chose, so let me go."

Peter put his own arms around Harry and tried not to sob onto his friend's shoulder. "I miss you so much, Harry. I don't know what to do without you there."

Harry pulled back a step. "Here's a hint: live. Do your thing. Be Spider-man. Save people you don't know and don't take the credit. Take care of your aunt and Mary Jane. Hold down your job. Don't ever make my mistakes and get caught up in revenge."

"I already made that mistake one too many times," Peter shuddered.

"And it cost us both. But you have to move on and not get stuck wondering what might have been." Harry took a few moments to let this sink in. He grinned as Peter started to smile. "Now, do you think the amazing Spider-man can take me in basketball or what?"

For answer, Peter shot out a bit of webbing and snagged the ball to him. Harry grabbed at it as it went by and missed. "Look's like you've gotten soft," Peter taunted, dribbling.

"Not too soft. What say we make the game more interesting?" A small silver device appeared in Harry's hand. He pushed the glowing green button, and six remote control razors rose from his pockets.

"No fair. I hate those things!" Peter yelled as he picked up the basketball and started a desperate sprint to Harry's indoor basketball court, converted from his father's old gym.

Harry was only a few paces behind, yelling "Double dribble! My ball!"

"We're not on the court yet," yelled Peter, ducking a charge from three of the razors without missing a step. He did a standing flip to dodge the remaining three, which his spider-sense told him had been going for his knees, and kept running.

"Genetically altered!"

"Chemically enhanced!"

Still panting insults, they burst onto the court. As he manipulated the ball, avoiding both his rival and his rival's pet razors, Peter wondered whether this really counted as sleep. For the moment, it didn't matter. He knew that when he woke he would miss Harry, as much as he still missed Uncle Ben, but they would both be with him. He still had their memories alive and well in his heart.

The basketball pounded on the court like fading thunder

Author's Note: I wrote this as a way of dealing with Harry's death in Spidy 3. Just when he got really cool and awesome, he had to die. I was also really touched by the basketball scene early on in the movie, where Peter gives Harry their old basketball and they reminisce about their carefree high school days. It reminded me that they have a history beyond all the hating that goes on between them in the movies, where they were best friends and nothing else mattered. Harry's turnaround and then death really crystallized that for Peter, and then he immediately had to deal with being left behind again. So I wrote this fic. It's a far cry from my usual material, I know, but every so often a weird one works its way out of me. Hope you enjoyed.

SamoaPhoenix9