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WHO: Jack Bauer and Spider-Man
WHERE: Some Manhattan rooftop.
WHEN: Friday evening.
WARNINGS: Ethical quandaries and discussion of torture.
SUMMARY: Jack and Spidey have a little chat about Osborn.
FORMAT: Whatever!

Spider-Man was sitting on the edge of the roof, one foot propped on the parapet and the other dangling. In deference to the unseasonal weather he nursed a cup of coffee in his hands, another waiting for Jack's arrival next to his web-sack of civvies and folded umbrella.

The tapping of his fingers against the paper cup was only interrupted when he took a sip, more out of a need to occupy himself than any real desire for a drink. He knew the coming conversation was one he and Jack needed to have, but that didn't make him any more eager to discuss the subject at hand.

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This was a Spider-Man Jack had never seen before or would have really imagined. Sipping coffee, dangling his legs, an umbrella? He still didn't know a lot about the superhero world, but he had never thought umbrellas might be part of it. But it made sense. Spider-Man and the others were all still people under those masks, and they didn't want to get rained on any more than anyone else. This was oddly comforting to Jack as he climbed onto the roof from the fire escape.

"Spider-Man."

"Captain Bauer -- I mean, Mister Bauer. Uh, hey," Spider-Man said, wincing at his own faux pas. Real auspicious start to the evening, Parker.

He makes a hasty grab for the second coffee and passes it over to the other man as soon as he's settled. "It's probably gotten cold by now, sorry. I thought about packing it in webbing but I figured, you know, that probably wasn't going to end well ... but anyway."

If the use of his old rank holds any wounds for him, Jack doesn't show it. The gesture of coffee- and the image of it being web-wrapped- that gets a smile. "You didn't need to do that." He takes the coffee and holds it. "But still, thanks."

"Hey, look at you!" Spidey enthused, sounding for all the world sincere. "So you do have expressions other than 'sternly demanding' and 'grimly determined' after all! I was wondering about that. Good for you -- I hear it's important to keep expanding your skillsets, especially in today's economy."

Jack snorts. Not even Seras has commented on his tendency to lineface. "Well, since I'm out of work, I figured it was time to broaden my horizons."

He slowly crouches down, looking around. "All right," he says. "Tell me about Osborn."

And just like that, Spider-Man's good humor is gone. If Jack notices that Spidey's hunching around his coffee cup, well, it's not just his imagination. "I'm not quite sure where to start. How much do you know about our Wicked Witch of the West, anyway?"

He notices, all right. "Not much. When I first got here, he was a hero and businessman, high-publicity. He ran one of two Avenger teams." Jack frowns. "Even then, I'd hear things about him on the Network. A lot of people from his world seemed to have a problem with him. Then, on New Year's Eve, we took him in for arranging murders at City Hall while the Avengers wrecked Times Square."

The frown becomes a scowl. "He was diagnosed as mentally ill, not responsible. The man spent three months in an asylum named after him, and got declared healthy. He approached me once during a crisis to help the force, but I shot him down. Nygma ran his reformation, our Deputy Mayor. And now he's got access to the City's power grid through the Mayor. Less than two years after the murders." He shook his head. "The bastard's coated in Teflon."

Spider-Man laughs. It's not a pleasant sound. "Believe me, I'm the last person you need to tell about that. He's literally committed murder in broad daylight, in front of police witnesses, and still gotten out of it in the end. He pulls stunts like that all the time. You'd think people would get tired of hearing about his mistaken identity or Spider-Man did it or it was my mental illness but I'm all better now, but no. He times these perfectly arranged publicity stunts and next thing you know, he's being hailed as a pillar of the community and they're making action figures of the guy. Action figures!"

He gulps down the rest of his coffee, hardly seeming to notice when he crushes the empty cup in his fist.

Edited 2012-07-27 00:58 (UTC)

"Action figures." Jack sighed. "I'm not even going to ask if you're kidding." The answer would surely only disappoint him even more.

He watches the cup crumple in Spider-Man's hand. "I'd like to know what he did to you," he says softly. "What makes this personal for you." Spidey just implied he was framed, but Jack doesn't think that's it- what he's seeing here has to be something that cuts a lot deeper.

"What hasn't he done is more like the question. He--" Spider-Man cuts himself off, the secrets piling up behind his tongue. Jack isn't asking for his secret identity; he knows that. But how to explain his and Norman's fifteen-year-emnity without at least hinting at it? Then there's the (tenuous) protection of his psychic blindspot, a secret he's kept back from even his closest friends from back home. He and Jack may be working together now, but the other man's become a wild card. Spider-Man doesn't distrust him, not really, but baring the soft underbelly of his psyche to a near-stranger is another matter entirely.

Still, he has to make Jack understand somehow. "He ... likes to hurt people, specifically to get to me. More than that..." He takes a deep breath, plunges on. "There was a girl. Gwen Stacy. College student, about my age. She was beautiful, inside and out -- that's what people told me afterwards, anyway. I didn't know her, of course." Another hesitation. "He tossed her off the Brooklyn Bridge, right in front of me. I -- I tried to save her, but...

"He likes to gloat about that one."

Jack stares. He knows so well what it's like, to have people die in front of him that he could and should have saved, but the knife-twisting Spider-Man is describing... well, it's a long way down from the Brooklyn Bridge.

"I'm sorry," he says. The words feel lame and pointless in his mouth. He shifts on his perch for a moment before speaking again.

"On the communicator, you mentioned that he's good at twisting you around. That's why you can't push too hard on him here, isn't it? You're afraid he'll somehow manage to bring you down to his level. That he'll manipulate you, taint you." He took a breath and thought about bridges and gravity and gloating.

"I still don't understand why you'd be worried about that. From what you're telling me, this man needs to be stopped. Period, no matter what."

Even as Jack continues to talk, Spider-Man is already shaking his head. "You don't get it," he snaps, bounding away from the edge, almost halfway to the stair access before he pivots back in Jack's direction. "Or I'm not explaining it properly. You have to understand, that was just the beginning."

The words tumble out in a rush, faster and faster. "Before, he was a -- a problem, but nothing I couldn't handle. After that, it was personal. Even when he faked his death it was like the things he'd done had tainted everything important to me, and the harder I pushed back, the worse we got tangled together. I thought I could save Harry Osborn from going the way of his father, I thought I could protect Liz and Normie --" He's been pacing, but he grinds to a halt. "I just made things worse, for me and everyone else. But I couldn't get away. And then Norman decided -- he decided, if you can't beat them...

"...Make them join you."

Edited 2012-07-31 00:07 (UTC)

Jack blinks slowly. None of this sounds good, none of it. He thinks about the things he's seen here, people manipulated through brainwashing and telepathy and magic spells.

"He tried to control you? Found a way to subvert you somehow?" He tries to imagine what kind of leverage Osborn could have found on someone this opposed to him. None of his possible theories sound like good things.

"He, um." Spider-Man laughs again, helplessly. It all sounds so melodramatic when he tries to say it out loud. "He drugged my toothpaste. Sent me a CD, supposedly from a friend, with embedded subliminal messages. I had these weird, intense dreams, more like hallucinations, where I thought I was the Green Goblin and Spider-Man was the enemy. I was so out of it I didn't even know that I was actually acting it out, attacking people in his suit."

His mouth is dry; he has to pause to swallow. "I know I hurt some people. Scared them, anyway. And he -- I'm pretty sure he used me to dump a body. He actually killed somebody and dressed him in my costume to make it look like I was out of the picture. I don't really remember much but ... I remember dropping Spider-Man off a bridge." Yet another death on his conscience, even if he wasn't the true murderer.

"When I found out about Dr. Bendix's murder, that's when I realized something was seriously wrong, but it was too late. He took me to the Osborn family estate ... called me 'his boy.' Told me that the dark would save me, if I was strong enough to accept it, as his father had made him accept the darkness when he was a kid. Because I was going to be his son, you see, so I had to walk the path he'd walked."

I'm going to have to undo you, Peter -- make you want the darkness. He remembers Norman's voice so clearly it sends a shiver down his spine.

"Though, I'm pretty sure even if his dad was an abusive scumbag, there was no Goblin formula or electroschock treatment involved."

Jack doesn't say anything for a long time. He takes a deep pull of his coffee, drinking it without enjoying it. He looks out into the darkness of the City.

"That's one of the sickest things I've ever heard."

Spider-Man moves back in Jack's direction and flops back down on the parapet. He's not a good enough actor to sell his boneless sprawl as genuine relaxation, even if Jack hadn't just been witness to his half-panicked confession.

"I don't ... really talk about me and Norman," he says into the silence. "A couple people know what happened, but not --" Again, stopping mid-sentence. "I almost gave in to him. I was just ... so tired of fighting. And the longer he had me locked up in the dark, the more everything he said seemed to make sense. I was this close to drinking from the vial and becoming Gobby Jr."

Just for a moment ... you showed your true self, whispers Norman in his memories.

"I mean, whatever. I blew him off in the end, and I'm okay, now. But you need to know how good he is at controlling people. If he can't scare them, manipulate them, or buy them off in your normal nefarious-businessman ways ... he ups the ante."

He nods. Jack is going to be checking his toothpaste from now on, that's for sure.

"I understand," he says quietly, looking down at passing traffic, then at Spidey.

"You've stopped him before, haven't you? You've brought him down." The 'how' isn't said just yet.

"I guess it depends on your definition of 'stopping.'" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Even when I manage to get him arrested, he always manages to wriggle out of it somehow. You've seen how he works the system."

"Right now, just getting him arrested is a good start." Jack re-positions himself on the roof, squatting down and facing Spidey directly. "Do you have anything we can use? A plan, an idea, his weaknesses?"

"Well, he takes a punch like anyone else. The problem isn't knocking him down -- it's keeping him there. The guy's as slippery as a bag of Harvard Law School-educated weasels."

Jack grunts. "I know the type." He stands up. "And I've put plenty of them down."

He looks over his shoulder. "I need to get moving. CPD patrols this area every night in a few minutes, it's risky for me to stay exposed."

He nods and, now that they're wrapping up, starts checking the capacity of his web-shooter cartridges. "I know the feeling. So ... what's the plan for now? I know I'm going to keep hunting for a way to nail that sonuva @#$% to the wall; what about you?"

"I'll see what I can do." Jack stands with his back turned, hiding a grim and contemplating face. He knows he doesn't have much time before he leads a suicide mission overseas, and that even if they succeed he'll likely have to exile himself to deal with the fallout. When it comes to dealing with threats like Osborn, he is as always running out of time.

"I wish I could promise you something," he says. "But there's a lot happening right now." There's a pause. "I want you to know, I appreciate what you do. Whoever you are underneath that, you've made a difference. That counts for something."

If this is the last time he sees Spider-Man- if he's going to spend God knows how long out of the City- he wants it to be on a high note.

Spidey doesn't look up at Jack right away, instead putting an inordinate and probably unnecessary amount of attention into replacing one of his web-cartridges. Finally he slams it home, tugs the glove back in place and moves back towards the other man, reaching out to offer his hand.

"It means a lot that you'd say that, Jack, really." He hesitates, then barrels on, "Listen, I don't know what you've got planned next, and I'm not going to pretend that I approve of everything you're doing, because we both know that's not true. But take care of yourself, all right? We need all the good people we can get out here."

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i literally couldn't make myself type that swear it seemed so wrong

heh

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