After taking care of all that, Clark returned home.
The sight of the wrecked house filled his eyes with guilt and worry.
"Dad! Mom!" His voice trembled. This was his failure. He had underestimated just how insane Norman had become.
The basement safe room opened from the inside, and Ben and May stepped out hand in hand.
"Clark!" The moment May saw her son, she rushed to him and pulled him into a tight embrace, studying his face. "Thank God you're alright... thank God."
It was pure instinct.
To her, Clark was still the child who needed protecting.
Wrapped in his mother's arms and seeing both of them safe, all the rage in Clark vanished.
He carefully put his arms around May, just as he used to when he was younger.
"I'm back, Mom. I'm sorry I got here late." He rested his chin lightly against her hair, his voice soft. "It's okay now. It's over."
Ben came over with a gun still in hand, and the three of them stood there holding each other.
Once he had steadied his wife, Ben pulled Clark a little to the side.
"Where's Norman Osborn?" he asked quietly.
Clark smiled with that same harmless, innocent look of his.
"He went where he belonged, Dad. I promise you, this life, the next one, and the one after that, he won't be showing up on Earth again."
Ben caught the wording.
Not on Earth.
But he didn't press.
He wasn't some rigid moral absolutist. He wasn't about to interrogate his son over whether he had crossed a line.
"Well done, son. As long as the family's safe, nothing else matters."
Even though the family was safe now, Peter had known something was wrong the instant he saw Clark vanish at school.
It felt huge.
Maybe something involving home.
He rushed out on leave, changed into costume in the bathroom, and swung back toward the house as fast as he could. On the way, he saw police cars racing toward his neighborhood.
"No... no, no! Uncle Ben! Aunt May!"
From far away, he could already see smoke rising from the remains of his house.
He hit the lawn hard, stumbled, rolled, and scrambled back to his feet.
"Uncle Ben! Aunt May!" Peter's voice tore out of him.
He sprinted into the wreckage, heart pounding with images too horrible to bear.
But what he found wasn't what he feared.
Standing in the middle of the ruined living room, completely unharmed, were Ben and May. And beside them stood Clark, gently patting May's back.
"Peter!" May turned at the sound of him and froze for a second when she saw the red-and-blue-suited Spider-Man.
Apparently Ben had never told her.
She didn't know the boy under the mask was her nephew, but she knew this was one of the heroes protecting New York.
The two boys she had helped raise had turned out better than she ever could have hoped.
Peter looked at his family, saw they were alive, and his legs gave out beneath him.
He ripped off the mask.
He didn't even try to hide anymore.
Tears streamed down his face.
"Uncle Ben... Aunt May... I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I got here too late... I thought... I thought I'd lost you!"
He clutched Ben's leg and broke down sobbing.
If Clark hadn't been there, if the Goblin's bomb had gone off dead center in the living room, then for two ordinary people...
Peter would be staring at two bodies right now.
"You silly kid, what are you crying for? We're right here." Ben rubbed Peter's messy curls, his own eyes faintly red.
Clark stood to one side, watching his brother cry like his world had nearly ended.
And honestly, he understood.
Clark hauled Peter back to his feet.
"Dry your eyes, Peter. The house is wrecked, that's all. Don't cry."
Peter wiped his face with one hand. "Clark... who was that bastard? Who did this?!"
His teeth clenched. His fists tightened until the joints cracked.
He wasn't hiding the fury in him at all.
If he found out who was responsible, he swore he'd string the guy up from the Brooklyn Bridge and let sharks finish the job.
"It was the Green Goblin. Norman Osborn." Clark didn't soften it or dodge the truth.
"Norman Osborn? Harry's father?!" Peter's eyes went wide in disbelief.
Then the anger came roaring back even harder.
"That lunatic! Where is he?! I'm going to..."
"You're not going anywhere, Peter." Clark cut him off. "He already paid for it. Paid in a way that'll give him more than enough time to think about what he's done."
Peter looked at his brother when he said that, and for the first time, it genuinely unsettled him.
Thankfully, he also knew he was never going to end up on the wrong side of Clark like that.
Peter swallowed and, very wisely, chose not to ask where exactly the Goblin had gone.
He knew enough to understand this had not ended in some cheerful Hollywood resolution.
"Alright. Since everyone except Eddie is here," Clark said, clapping his hands once and breaking the heavy silence, "maybe we should deal with the important question first. Where exactly are all of us sleeping tonight?"
He pointed at the living room, which now had all the insulation of an open-air gazebo.
"The stars are great and all, but I'd rather not spend the night getting eaten alive by Queens mosquitoes."
At NYPD headquarters, George Stacy strode into his office almost vibrating with adrenaline.
A few minutes earlier, a folder had appeared on his desk.
Inside were mountains of evidence tied to Oscorp: illegal genetic experimentation, ordered killings, human enhancement projects, crimes that crossed every line of law and decency.
As for the explosion near his home district, he had already sent SWAT and issued orders to take the attacker down on sight.
"Commissioner! New update from the scene!" an intelligence officer rushed in.
"Patrol units report the Parker family is completely unharmed, but... the green attacker is gone. No body at the scene. Just wreckage from the glider, and a human-shaped dent in the wall."
"It was the S-Man..." George muttered.
He understood immediately.
That Green Goblin had likely "disappeared" from the physical plane of Earth altogether.
"Send that file directly to the FBI's financial crimes division and the Justice Department," George ordered.
As for Clark's involvement, he wasn't touching that. It was too complicated.
Officially, the Goblin was simply missing.
"Pass down my direct order. Citywide sweep tonight. Pick up every executive tied to Oscorp's criminal operations. Lock down Oscorp Tower."
He slammed a hand onto the desk.
"If someone else already removed the worst monster for us, and handed us every piece of evidence we need, then if we still can't clean up the rest of these rats, every one of us ought to hand in a badge and go raise crops somewhere."
"Yes, sir!"
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