This was not how it was supposed to go.
That was not originally the plan.
Two weeks. In two weeks, Felix had come up with a plan. Drawing the Red Goblin in by disrupting New York and sending a boxed invitation to his people at Lower Alloways Creek. Comforting him and offering him a choice: to see if he would let go of his hate.
The Sheath would not instantly heal him. It would require time and research, but with the two of them together, with two great minds, there was no doubt that they could change not just the goblin's fate and hate but the world's.
They could heal the world. They could heal hate itself.
The goblin did not wish to do that. So they fought. Originally, Hobie was supposed to join him and it was supposed to be a two v one. But the Red Goblin teleported. Hobie couldn't catch him in time. He was far, far stronger than he ever thought possible.
Spider-Man wanted to hope. He wanted to give a chance. He wanted to avoid collateral damage and death.
If Spider-Man had been ruthless, if he had gone for the kill from the start, none of this would have happened.
But…that wasn't what Spider-Man did. That wasn't what he did.
He was the hero that men looked up at the sky at. It was his responsibility to give people a second chance. It was what eased their conscience. It was what eased his conscience.
Yes, his conscience. That was what this was all about. The morals his mother instilled. The morals Reed stood. The morals—
"Nooooo!"
"Face it! Face it, Felix Faeth!"
"You were just afraid of ending up like your father."
"No faith! No faith! In yourself! Your morals! Nothing!"
A thousand voices, all of them saying something different and yet meaning the same.
He was in the realm of the Sheath. Of a hivemind of endless Symbiote. Felix Faeth lay there, black liquid swallowing him like the ocean. He saw the white eyes and the tongues that spoke his mother language in the sky.
He floated along black waves. The moon did not exist. There was no light. Below or above, there was black.
"You're weak…!"
"Fall under us!"
"WE ARE THE ONES WHO REMAIN!"
He was no King of Black. He was Felix Faeth and he sank deeper into the hivemind.
What remained of him?
"...you don't affect me."
Everything.
"!!!!!"
Nothing had changed. He failed, so what? That just meant he had to pick himself back up. Spider-Man always picked himself back up. Always. Always.
Panic surged across the hivemind.
"What? What?"
"Why is he not affected? Why, why?"
Mystery, confusion, and answers were developed billions of times over by the black tongues. They shrieked and whispered and could not make up their minds. Felix did.
"Stumbling…getting dirty…making mistakes…I fucked up bad. I will fuck up bad. But that's apart of being Spider-Man."
"No. No, no, no—!"
"He is not like Gwen Stacy…!"
"DROWN IN BLACK…! DROWN HIM!"
His voice was a light that would not go out. "There's people waiting for me…Rio…Miles…Hobie…everyone is waiting. I can't be delayed by the likes of you."
These measly Symbiotes were mightier than he could ever be. He could never control them. He could never break out of this.
'Who said that?'
That wasn't Felix. That was the Sheath trying to worm its way into his head. No.
"No. You don't control me."
This hivemind was not so great. Capable of corruption, perhaps, but Knull had subjugated it. Gwen had resisted it.
He was Spider-Man. He wasn't some nobody. He never was and never would be. His name, his heroics, his failures, there was meaning. Everything he was, everything and everyone he had come into conflict with, it all happened in order to continue to the next moment.
The muscles of his arms twitched and black tendrils wrapped and trapped him. Slowly, they poked through the outer shell of his spirit to reach deep within. To corrupt him with the Symbiote. Red bioelectricity crackled throughout his body and he broke through.
"I told you, I don't have time to give up to the likes of you! I have a job! I'm a hero!"
He wouldn't die and lose on his morals. Not anymore. He closed his eyes, spirit and mind and body becoming one, and ravaged through the ocean of Symbiotes. The crackling red energy negated regeneration. It negated these Symbiotes from overwhelming him.
He fought, he fought. He punched. He pushed. He swam.
Felix Faeth rose to the surface.
Thwip!
The white webbing struck the sky and Spider-Man leapt out. He was no longer bare, he was in a black costume flashing a green emblem.
"All the blood, sweat, and battles…"
Below, from the black ocean, millions of tendrils chased after the figure.
"I'm not Spider-Man because of my powers! I'm Spider-Man because of me!"
He slammed a fist into the sky. A red explosion spanned the world. He couldn't break it. He could only create a small crack.
From the crack—
"I sEeEe yOuUu~!!"
Rash emerged, a red spider-shaped entity that grabbed his outreaching finger. Like Adam and God, their fingers touched and there was light. The Symbiote attached itself to the spider-emblem, painting it red.
Felix Faeth and Rash became whole.
***
"Any last words?"
Hobie laughed. Was it the performance of a brave man? Or actual laughter coming from someone who found the moment funny on its own terms? The goblin couldn't tell which. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and he spat blood at his face. It landed on the cracked devil mask.
He threw him aside like a ragdoll. "Have it your way! I'm going to beat you to death!" He straddled him, cackling, and lifted a fist high.
It came down.
Thwip!
Only to be stopped by a single line of white webbing. It caught the goblin's wrist from behind and pulled taut.
The goblin couldn't believe it. He held position for a moment, the fist suspended, and then very slowly turned his head.
The Red Goblin's mouth moved into a smile.
"I have no idea how you're back…but welcome back, Spider-Man!"
The colour of his costume had changed ever so slightly, from black to dark red. Harold required a fraction of a second to consider the answer.
Felix and Rash had on a cellular level.
Yank! The Red Goblin was pulled in. Laughing, ready, punches were thrown and they struck one another in the cheek.
Yank!
The webbing had not yet broken. It pulled taut and bounced them back at each other. There was a dot of shock on Harold before he grinned again and exchanged another brutal punch with Spider-Man.
Bam, bam, bam! Momentum separated them and the webbing kept them reeling back in. Fury was exchanged. The hero put all his weight into it and so did the goblin.
"Oh?" Bam! Punch! "Ohhh—!?"
Bam! Punch!
One half of the Red Goblin's mask snapped in half, thrown across the floor. They kept going and punching.
"You're weak. You're—"
Bam! Felix landed a punch a second earlier, the webbing finally snapped, and the Goblin skidded across, dropping to one knee.
Crack! Thud!
The Red Goblin's mask fell in its entirety. Looking up was a middle-aged male with greying coiled hair, nearing his sixties.
"Look at you," said Harold, unmasked and human for once. "Your punches aren't bashing my brains out even though you want to kill me. You're becoming an ordinary human. Looks like that Red Symbiote nonsense is just for show!"
What was happening? Nothing and everything. Half of Felix's Symbiote-metal mask was gone. He too was exposed. The veins of his eyes were thick and red.
"And I can't sense my Control Symbiote in you either." Harold laughed. "How'd you pull that one off?"
"I died."
"...what?" Harold did not like that answer. He scoffed, then he thought about it. "You…don't tell me you've successfully managed to control the Sheath?"
No. No he didn't. The opposite, he dispelled it. It was a contingency they had established in their two weeks of prep. Although, admittedly, the original plan was against one or two Control Symbiotes, not four. One or two injections, not a fistful shoved into his lungs. Still, the principle was the same.
In the event Felix and Rash couldn't fight off the Control Symbiote, Hobie was to come and throw him the Sheath. The Sheath would ideally erode the Control Symbiote and try to take him over.
There was only way, then, for Felix to break out. By becoming one with his Symbiote, to become a mixed vessel of Symbiote and human blood, the same way Gwen Stacy did.
Doing so, however, came at the cost of making his brain shut down. The process was supposed to take half an hour according to Rash himself, starting from the brain, then the heart, then the rest of him. However, by having Rash instruct Extremis with the necessary pathways (akin to the immune system learning from vaccine) and pushing that superpowered part of his already sensitive brain, they managed a miracle and woke him up in minutes.
It was a ploy that toyed with life and death itself. It was no wonder he couldn't feel Extremis anymore. Was Extremis gone forever? Was it a temporary pause? It was impossible to say. This was a full-boot reset of Felix Faeth. His muscles and nerves were a complete, weakened mess. By moving his right arm, his right shoulder twitched. By taking a step forward, he kicked.
Muscle memory and nerve memory, all of it was in disarray.
"..."
Only his Spider-Sense was untouched. That alone meant this wasn't over, not by a long shot.
"Not talking? Fine." Harold cackled and rose to his feet. He tried to wipe the blood leaking from lips and nose. But the flow wouldn't stop. More cracks of flesh appeared along his cheek. "Heh…hahaha!"
Felix reset his stance and Harold lunged. What followed was not a battle of powers.
They met in the middle of the ruined floor. They were two men who had run out of tricks and were down to the thing underneath all tricks.
The Goblin could, to put it simply, throw hands. This whole time, he had felt the intelligence in him with his glider and the lasers and the pumpkin bombs. But here, with all of that stripped away, it was clearer. Harold Osborn had been trained. Properly trained. His guard was loose and fake, then snapped into elbows tight when Felix threw his first punch. The first exchange lasted three seconds and neither of them landed cleanly.
'He's not playing…!'
Felix recalibrated, shuffling back. Harold chased. His jab was fast. Felix slipped it left and countered with a short hook to the side. He definitely broke or ruptured something. Harold mentally absorbed it and turned with it rather than against it, using the momentum to create distance and reset. Smart. He wasn't trying to out-muscle Felix, which would have been suicidal. He was trying to survive long enough for him to weaken.
Felix pressed. He was weakening, this was his time to strike!
He jabbed to draw his guard up, crossed to redirect, then sent a low kick to the lead leg that Harold checked with his shin. The check was clean. Felix feinted low and committed high. In trying to reply to his fist, Felix's other hand caught him above the ear.
Harold was thrown sideways.
He rolled with it, one hand touching the floor, and came back up, already running at him with a kick. Bastard was fast and silky-smooth at transitioning, he was already inside Felix's space before the follow-up could happen. Harold was stalling and pressing, to create an entanglement rather than a clean exchange.
Side-stepping his kick, Felix was met with short elbows and a knee attempt that Felix blocked with his thigh. Another elbow knocked him in the jaw.
They separated.
Both of them breathing hard. The goblin smiled and cackled.
"Looks like that hurt."
Spider-Man was supposed to be stronger than him in direct combat. Forget raw power, in martial arts, Felix suspected he was a shade superior. His brain was recovering and reconfiguring his usual movements, but ultimately, it was so damn slow. The exertion of his breathing was especially bad. He started coughing. Harold, cackling, was about to charge at him—
"Nggh!"
Except when he tried to lunge, he tripped up and crashed to his knees. He looked over at his ankles. He tore his achilles heel.
Coughing, Felix attempted to clear his throat and couldn't. 'M-my lungs…! D-dammit, it's still not—! Still not healed…!'
The fight in the café, the bombs, the attack on his lungs, the control, the death, the rebirth — all of it was being paid for now in his lungs.
He felt it in his vision. Everything was blurring.
Harold saw it. On his knees, heaving, his body getting older by the second, he didn't say a thing. Funny. He had been performing for the entirety of their acquaintance but at the risk of their deaths, he went quiet. His eyes tracked over Felix's face with the frank assessment of a doctor, or a predator, which in this moment were the same thing.
He carefully lifted himself, hissing. He had to gasp when there was a loud, "Pop!" in his knees. His body was betraying it. It now fully became clear why the Goblin avoided fighting and why he stuck to the shadows, particularly against Spider-Man. His regeneration, his existence, it came at a grave cost.
"Pull your fucking self together, Harold…!"
Bam, bam!
Hissing, like a sprinter, the goblin burst forward and hammered Felix's weak ribs across three consecutive exchanges. Felix stifled the pain. His enemy understood that the decisive moment was coming on its own. He just had to be there when it arrived.
Felix made him pay for it.
He took the body shots and traded them for head shots. It was an exchange Felix won because the power differential was still there. However, seeing him skid only a couple feet, it was apparent the the margin was closing. Harold understood that too and started to roll his head. He regenerated from that brain damage fast.
'Look at that, his hair is thinning. Bet I'm reaching the limit of his regeneration,' Felix thought to himself.
He charged and Felix actually had to step back to block. When he swept his leg, Felix actually fell and had to push his hands on the floor and kick up at Harold like an acrobat.
Harold blocked it though.
'He's learning my moves…!'
The goblin started to eat the lesser version of the spider.
In a fleeting moment of sympathy, he looked over Harold's face, unmasked, the lines around his eyes aged. He was fighting without pleasure now and his body was destroying himself for it.
But Felix's own hate and love fueled him. He couldn't let this man live. Not after what he made him do. It was personal. It was moral. That was what he convinced himself.
Felix understood him and it changed nothing about what had to happen.
Felix took a hit to the jaw that made the floor tilt. His hand went to the ground, one knee following, and he was up again before Harold could capitalise. The effort of the rise was visible, however.
Harold did not press. His chest was heaving. His right hand, Felix noted, had aged years in the last ten minutes, from the skin thinning and the veins bulging green.
Every regeneration was an invoice. Every broken bone knitted, every ruptured tissue sealed—even if Harold Osborn was winning this fight, he was also losing something he would never recover.
Life and death surrounded them. Those SHIELD agents Harold had killed and the cocoons Felix had made to save the other agents.
'Feliiiix…!'
His vision suddenly blurred. His eyes started to bleed. The temperature and the night wind caused him to shiver.
'Finish him! Finish this! I-I can't—your brain needs rest! Your nervous system is flicking on and off!'
Don't think, act. Easier said than done when there was a giant hole that led to thirty-seven floor drop. Without his usual equilibrium, he felt nervous. Felix couldn't survive a fall like that at this state and Harold, as though seeing the hole and the advantage it brought him, charged. Felix vaguely recognized that behind him was the night sky and a huge hole. This was where it all began after all. This room was where he and the goblin had crashed through.
Three more exchanges. Felix's combinations were shorter now. His right hand was still the most dangerous thing in the room. He built everything around protecting it and around creating the path for it. He kneed and tried to distract with jabs with his left hand while his right hand clenched tightly.
Bam, bam, bam!
A couple jabs and a knee. It was almost even.
'Don't think too much! Just act!' Rash yelled in his head.
Felix stepped in with a feint, Harold read it and—shit. Harold caught his ankle. It was a hook of the foot with a foot. Felix had been compensating for his preparing right side. He hadn't noticed how much he was compensating until the compensation became the trap.
His weight went forward. Harold pivoted, used Felix's own momentum, and Felix was taken down. They hit the floor together and Harold was immediately behind him, arm across his throat, the other hand locking it in place.
'Shit, shi—!'
He couldn't breathe. It was the classic configuration of a rear naked choke. Harold squeezed not to knock him out, he wanted him dead. Felix's hands came up, found the arm, and tried to pry him off. He…he couldn't.
He suddenly couldn't. The grip didn't move. Harold…he had been saving his strength and stamina for this!
Felix's vision began to develop black edges.
"Gnggghkk…!"
"Die, just die…!"
From everything preceding this moment, from the bombs absorbed and the death endured and the Extremis burn and the ocean of Symbiotes and the rebirth, all of it collecting into this single point of pressure on either side of his carotid. He pulled. He found less than he expected to find. His hands pulled and his great strength didn't answer the way it was supposed to answer.
Harold's chin pressed to the back of his head as he choked Felix out. Twelve seconds at this level of application and he'd be done.
He could hear, distantly, the sound of New York continuing behind them. Felix's vision narrowed at the periphery. His hands on Harold's arm lost another fraction of their purchase.
The Spider-Man was dying.
New York, however, would not let him die.
Light shone on Spider-Man and the Red Goblin. Harold hissed, his eyes having been wide-open in demented focus, and Felix's nail dug in.
Later, he would come to learn it was a Daily Bugle helicopter that had coincidentally swept across the giant hole for a scoop. It couldn't linger because a military helicopter came to shoo it away.
It was a matter of luck.
No, perhaps it was the will of the city.
Harold shut his eyes, trying to maintain that grip, but the advantage was gone. Felix violently dug in and pulled and created the fraction of space the choke needed to breathe. His elbow lifted and slammed into his side twice. His foot slammed down and broke Harold's loose ankle too. The pain spiked. Blood drooled out of Harold and yet he didn't release him.
"Not yet…!"
Squeeze!
Felix's face went blue and purple. Bastard…!
The light didn't return. He couldn't count on it again, Felix realized. He had to end this now.
'L-ledge…! Ledge…!'
The gap yawned behind them was wide and open and a long way down, framed by twisted rebar and crumbled concrete. The city far below was lit orange and white in the November dark.
Felix lifted his hips and dragged himself backward, carrying Harold. His focus was on choking him to death. The spider's vision darkened and darkened while the air was squeezed out of him.
He dragged and dragged until a cold wind struck the back of Harold's head. Ever so slightly, he turned his head. His eyes widened. He saw concrete nearly a hundred feet below. He knew it. He already knew it. But instinct and fear could not be so easily shrugged at this state.
Spider-Man grunted, lifted himself to his feet, and pried the arms off. But Harold refused to. He clung to his back, to choking Felix out, wrapping his arms and legs together. But doing so, continuing to do so—
"You're going to get us both killed, bastard…!"
He was literally a step away from falling. Yet Felix took that step back. His back foot was touching nothing but cold air. His eyes reddened completely. There was nothing to think about. His head was about to explode.
Felix jumped off.
The arms tightened instinctively. With the jump and whiplash of air, Harold's torso opened a fraction and Felix was able to drive both elbows into his side.
That was the last straw. Harold gasped, he released him, and jumped off Spider-Man to reach for the rebar jutting from the concrete.
Except Harold could not hold on. His hands slipped.
He started falling and in a blur, his eyes saw Spider-Man glued to the building. Skidding down lower and lower, however, because he was too weak for a proper purchase.
The goblin roared and flung himself forward, his hands latching onto the spider's foot. One last grab, except…
"You…!"
The scarlet foot was melting, as though his fingers had caught a torn part of the Symbiote. The Red Goblin hung there, seeing his own demise in real time. He tried to grab at his leg with his other arm but a kick snapped him off.
Their eyes met, red and anticipating death. Both of them.
However, Harold's face was the face of a man who had genuinely believed, even now, that this wasn't how it ended. Felix slammed his hand into the window, fingers finding proper purchase. His spider-grip had saved him from the fall; his human ingenuity saved him from the goblin.
Tendrils of red rolled down Harold's hands, until soon, there was nothing left to offer.
His fingers slipped.
The Red Goblin fell, his eyes wide-open. The cape snapped behind him in the rush of air. He gasped, he tried to reach out, only to smile and laugh at the futility.
Felix watched him fall for a long, long time.
Splat!
The sound of flesh imploding, when it came, was very small from this height. Everything was small from this height. The city continued. A military helicopter illuminated the broken hole and then down to the dead man.
To the scarlet corpse of the Red Goblin.
So do proud men die: crucified not on a cross of gold but on a stake of humble concrete.