Giver / Taker, written by mads.
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𓃦 Prologue.

Like clockwork, the light furthest left in the row above his workbench always flickered every other minute. He never figured out why-he's not an electrician-or how long it'd been like so. For as long as he'd been there, at least. No matter that a light flickering for the better half of a decade definitely should've been looked over already.

He always worried about what it might say about the lab it lights. Bradley said he was too pessimistic and worried for his own good.

"Staring at it is going to do nothing about it," the same man had called from his left, cutting through the air and right into his thoughts. "If you're so worried about it, tell Norman."

"I have," he countered. "Multiple times. He says he'll have someone look into it, but that it shouldn't influence my ability to do my job."

"Well, it shouldn't. Does it?"

"No." A half-truth. It didn't affect his ability, just made him wonder if it should. His eyes found the light again.

He'd worked in this lab so long he knew it like the back of his hand. He wore the same lab coat day in and day out and had come to know it like a second skin. He knew how it stretched across his shoulders and molded him into someone else the second he put it on.

The first day he did so, he was ecstatic. Was finally about to be the man he had worked for the better half a of a decade to become, and at Oscorp of all places. It was the job that his entire graduating class aimed to land, and somehow, it had become his.

He hadn't been top of his class. Hadn't interned under someone so significant Norman had no choice but to notice him. Nothing about him is special. It was a mystery not only to his classmates but to him as well, how he landed such a position.

Most believed he didn't deserve it. Most days, he was inclined to agree. But he remembers the exact day it happened, and he'd been working since then to continuously earn it. Put on that lab coat, and turned into an Oscorp employee who could do his job like no other. Worked tirelessly for promotions he knew he deserved.

Ignored the ominous feeling that forever hung over him since he first stepped into that lab. It had been Norman giving him a tour that day-something he never would have dreamed of two years before that, being so close to Norman Osborn of all people, becoming his acquaintance-and he had stood right under that light, forcing him to watch as the light cast ghostly shadows over his face and covered him in a dark aura.

It had been seven years since that day. He's never forgotten it. Now, he knows it was the warning sign he'd been living with and enabling.

"Hello, gentlemen." The door in the furthest corner of the room had swung open, slamming against the wall with a deafening crack. Like he'd been pulled from his thoughts, Norman strode in with the energy of a man who owned the place he was in. Fitting, since he did.

"Mr. Osborn," Bradley called, unable to hide the bit of shock in his voice. It wasn't unusual for the boss to stop by, but it was that late at night. His daughter had created a case about him staying at home at night if he was going to spend all day at work. At least, that's what he'd told them all multiple times. "We weren't expecting you."

There was a twinge of underlying anxiety that crept its way into Bradley's voice, and he knew why. The green glider then at the mercy of his colleague's hands was belly up and prepped for wires to be crossed and managed.

That day was disappointing, to put it lightly. General Slocum and the Oscorp board had been in the lab just that morning, ready to finally see the Glider, Flight Armor, and performance enhancer that Norman promised would be ready by the first of the month.

Suffice to say, it was not.

Not only had the glider not been ready to fly at a constant and steady angle, despite spending countless hours in the lab, pouring over designs and the math needed to make it so-but the enhancer was not safe for practical use. Something that he had tried to tell Norman, only to be ignored.

"The tested rats have all shown signs of enhanced mania and paranoia," he'd said, pulling the test tube out of the millionaire's hand the week before. "We need to start over, take it all back to formula. It's too dangerous not to."

He'd been close to begging, trying to get Norman to listen to what he was saying and hear him. At the time, when Norman nodded and sat down with the formula and results in front of him, he thought he might have.

It was brought to the general's attention four days later.

"Well," Norman said, shedding his suit jacket and throwing it aimlessly on a table, "with today's results, I thought it best that I come in. With only these two weeks given to us by the general, we need to make sure we have everything ready next time they're ready for a display." He'd turned then, eyes falling on the only other person in the lab-who had yet to say a word.

Standing with the formula pulled up in front of him, vials prepped and still wrong, he swallowed. "Dr. Osborn, please understand, that the performance enhancers aren't ready. The data just fails to justify a test. Now, I'm asking you for the last time. We can't do this." His words were bitter tasting out of his mouth, and his muscles had been tense-like they locked up without his permission. They'd been doing that more and more since this formula was put in his hands. What he wouldn't give to go back and give it up.

Norman scoffed, the disgusted look on his face anxiety-inducing. "Don't be a coward. Risks are part of laboratory science. Let me reschedule, with the proper medical staff and a volunteer."

"I can't." He shook his head, the image of the rat he'd been testing on burning brightly behind his eyes. Her beady eyes, too wide for her small face, stared up at him and begged for help right before running herself into the side of her cage until she was nothing short of free from madness. "I can't voluntarily test the current formula on humans right now. If you just give me two weeks..."

"Two weeks?" He spun on his heel, pulling at his tie before removing it completely, throwing it in the direction of his jacket, and missing by five feet. "In two weeks we'll have lost the contract to Quest and Oscorp will be dead."

Stepping up the chamber set up for eventual human tests, something he was unsure they'd ever actually reach, Norman pulled the door open. The air inside seeped out with a hiss and he turned around to face the two other scientists again. At that moment, there was something frenzied in his expression that his associates failed to notice when he first walked in. Or maybe, it was only then taking form-as the idea of failure inched closer and became more realistic.

"Sometimes you gotta do things yourself. Get me the Promachloraperazine."

"For what?" He had asked, the answer too far out of what he would imagine to be at the front of his mind.

Bradley sighed before passing a vial to the older man. "It'll decrease nausea when the vapor hits the bloodstream." He was resigned, having given up on pretending that Norman wouldn't get what he wanted.

After undoing the buttons of his shirt, it became the next thing to join the ever-growing pile of clothes that accumulated on the lab floor. "Forty thousand years of human evolution and we've barely even tapped the vastness of human potential," he told them, as if they as scientists didn't know this.

"Help me in," he instructed them, stepping into the chamber and laying against the gurney placed there. It was a direct command, with no room for argument, but he tried anyway.

"Norman, please," he slipped around the workbench and stepped toward the glass-not stepping through even as Bradley did. "This is unsafe, and I can't in good conscience allow it to happen."

"Enough." It was more of a bark than anything, and his jaw shut with an audible click in response. Some days, he can still hear it in the back of his mind, when the sun is set and he's left in nothing but darkness. "This is happening. Either stay and do your research, or leave."

Besides the millionaire, Bradley reached for the gurney straps, pulling them over their boss' body and securing them with quick clicks. Each of which felt like a hit against his eardrums as violent as a gunshot, and he fought the urge to flinch.

And he knew, as much as he did not want to be in that room anymore-wanted to be at home with his Corgi Huxley, curled up and rewatching Doctor Who-he also knew he couldn't leave. There was something that told him, deep in his gut, that if he left then, he'd never forgive himself.

"Okay," he murmured, walking back to his seat and taking his place. Neither of the other two acknowledged him, his words too quiet and their focus too centered.

Once Norman was strapped in, suddenly nothing more than one of the lab rats he's been supplying his employees with, Bradley walked back to his computer. The chamber's controls were easy to find, and his fingers flew across the keys. Around them, a motor began to hum, and the steel gurney slid until it was vertical.

"Bradley," he tried, hoping to find some reason in the other man, but he was drowned out by the popping of gears and levers.

He could've tried again. Could've been a little louder.

He should've.

Yet, he didn't, and he made himself nothing but a consenting bystander as a thick, noxious green gas suddenly began to rise in the chamber. Slowly-slow enough that he could've marched over and thrown the door open and ripped Norman out before anything happened, but he didn't.

Instead, he had watched as the gas crept up, swirling around Osborn's feet. Over his legs. Over his groin. Creeping up his chest. Tickling over his chin. Watched, despite himself, as Norman held his breath.

The green cloud enveloped his head just as he forced himself to open his mouth to draw in just a tiny bit of air. Like it had been waiting for such an invitation, the gas seemed to leap into his mouth, ready to consume him completely. It was like it had a mind of its own.

Then, like he finally realized where he was and what he was doing, Osborn panicked, choking on the smoke fighting its way into his lungs. It only lasted a moment before he calmed again, but the time seemed to stretch.

"Norman?" Bradley called with his hands still on the controls-eyes unable to leave the man in the machine. "Norman!"

The gas seeped in and out of his body naturally, almost as if it had always been there and knew its way around. Bradley continued to peer through the glass, monitoring every second. The final scientist watched him-watched as he tore the skin of his lip with his teeth from nerves alone.

That was, until, Norman's eyes flew to his and his lips parted, a choked-up sound bubbling out. "I-"

It was all he was able to get out before his body started convulsing roughly, muscles fighting against his restraints. Completely seized by spasms, from his fingertips to his toes.

Across the room, the monitors had begun to roar to life with panicked sounds-all that said something detrimental about Norman in the span of two seconds. All of his bodily functions had suddenly gone haywire and were no longer his own. "Oh, my God," Bradley panicked, fighting the controls.

He almost hadn't heard him, too focused on the sudden sharp tone taking up space in the lab. Flatline.

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Norman!"

Finally, Bradley had found the control he needed, and in the tank giant vacuum vents in the ceiling roared·to life, sucking the green gas up and out of the room. Too late.

Bradley had beat him to the door, ready to open the door with a bang as soon as all traces of the gas were gone. After shoving his way inside, he had gone to Osborn, unstrapped him, ripped open his shirt, and frantically began the emergency procedures none of them ever thought they'd truly need.

Behind him, the only other witness continued to stare. He was unsure, truly, when he even moved. One second, behind his workbench, the next, only a few feet behind Bradley-still, nowhere near the opening of the chamber.

Suddenly, behind him, he hears a shrieking sound. He'd turned to watch as the monitors picked up again, going crazy just as they had before. His eyes ping-ponged around, watching as Norman's heart rate leaped up to 226, as his blood pressure skyrocketed, and as every single graph and scale and chart registered at or near its peak.

However, watching the monitors had meant he wasn't paying attention when, in the tank, Norman's eyes popped open and he leaped to his feet, terrified.

It was only then, when he had heard the thump of his landing, that he looked back to witness as he ripped the sensors off his chest with Bradley trying to restrain him.

"Bradley!" He screamed, only to be drowned out by the purely animalistic roar pulled from Norman's chest.

To his horror, it was an action followed by something worse, as his co-worker was suddenly flying through the air-thrown away from his boss' body by what could only be described as inhuman strength.

But not just across the chamber, no, he had hurled him through the glass wall of the chamber. It had exploded in a shower of glass as Bradley's body hit it. Shards fell like confetti across the tile floor, a clattering to represent the sudden breakage that was the entire lab and its occupants.

To his horror, it felt like Bradley kept flying forever, sailing across the lab before smashing into a pillar some fifty feet away and slumping into a pile of nothing.

"Oh, my God! Bradley!"

His footsteps had pounded in his ears in time with his heartbeat, and he never even felt it when glass dug deep into his knees and made its home there as he sank to the floor next to the blond. "Bradley, can you hear me?"

Fingers probed at the back of his head, and they came back sticky with blood-destined to grow tacky and stained. His chest pulled tight, and he cradled him that much closer.

Behind him, Osborn staggered through the broken wall of the tank, across the rubble, before towering over the duo.

He tensed, ready for a blow-for anything, but it never came. Instead, he was met with sudden and hurried footsteps in the opposite direction. At the time, he didn't dare turn around to see where he was going, too focused on what was in front of him than to worry about anything else. He'd soon figure out what it was he had been after, anyway.

"Bradley," he whispered, leaning so close their foreheads were practically touching. Under his thumb, pressed into the rapidly cooling skin of the scientist's neck and leaning a mark, he could just feel a pulse. He still remembers the taste of bile that grew as he lost it. Part of him would do anything to forget it, the other clings like the true masochist he is-needing to remember every part of the man he was forced to lose.

"Alec?" His best friend had asked, sounding everything like someone who knew what was coming to greet him, lips leaking crimson and eyes fading.

No, he had thought. Not you.

"I'm here," he answered, anyway, because Grim was knocking and he knew his place. No matter the panic galloping like a racehorse in his chest, or the hand squeezing the calloused skin of the others. There was nothing he could do. It didn't matter that he stayed because, in the end, he was unable to stop it. Instead, all he could do was keep his eyes on Bradley and repeat, "I'm here," uselessly.

After all, the hand in his is nothing but dead weight now, and the eyes looking at him were forever frozen.

Bradley was dead.

And Alec was cursed to live with his ghost, and the ghastly green reminder.

Authors Notes.

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𓅨 HELLOOO this is actually lowkey so messy because i wanted the narrator to be ominous and all that but it just ended up being a chaotic way to find how i can say "he [blanks]" so many times without the name

𓅨 still, i hope this makes enough sense and you know where we're headed with this prologue! alec will be an important character as we continue on, so keep that in mind hehehe

𓅨 finally, please let me know what you think!! i'm so excited to continue with this & for you all to meet hadley, so i hope you feel the same