Eight days. The number feels both too long and not enough time, to have been the number of days since Venom launched him across a decommissioned army base and drenched themself and those things that had been hunting them in acid. Eight days since they covered him in an indestructible fucking door and blew the rest of the place sky high. Eight days since they woke up to a pardon and a threat and an agonizingly quiet brain.
Eight days without Venom.
Eight mornings of waking up in hospitals or airports or hotels and having to remember all over again, because there’s no answer to his call.
The first few seconds of that terrifying fall from the airplane had felt nothing like this. Watching Venom pull away from him to end Drake and Riot, watching them seem to sacrifice themself the first time, was nothing compared to this. It feels like being forcibly ripped apart under the knife blade of a high-pitched sound, but Venom is already gone.
They’re gone. They’re gone and they’re not coming back this time.
The Statue of Liberty wavers in the afternoon light, and he lurches forward to grip the guard rails to hold himself up, to hold himself together. His next breath comes out as a wail, wrenched straight from his chest. He’s grateful he’s the only one on this pier, but he doesn’t entirely care. When you’ve spent a year looking like you’re talking to yourself in public, you stop caring if people stare at you.
If he talks to himself now, no one will ever talk back.
The next breath isn’t a wail, but it feels like a knife as it slices through his chest, and finally, tears come with it. Still gripping the railing, Eddie sinks to his knees. He feels the cold, hard press of concrete through his jeans, but it doesn’t calm him. The next breath is a sob, wet and harsh and painful.
Loser, Eddie, he thinks, and it isn’t Venom, not really. It’s just his memory of Venom’s voice playing in his head. A memory of sitting at a water’s edge, on the other side of the country, at the very beginning.
Because if they were here now and could see (and hear) him sobbing over them, they’d call him something else. And he’d laugh through his snot and spit and tears, and V would pull out of him just enough to head-butt him just hard enough to sting a little, and he’d shove them away with his palm across their face, and they’d pretend to snap at him with their fangs….
But they’re not here, and so all Eddie can do is kneel on cement and sob uncontrollably. He doesn’t know how to stop and he doesn’t know why–
When you love someone…
Another waterfront, another place, another view. After they were on the run, after they separated and reunited again. He had prodded them about it, those words, and they tried to deflect, but he knew. He’d always known.
Venom had, too. They’d traveled hundreds of miles together, in those last several days, and Venom had hardly fed. They hadn’t even yelled at him to find them something– or someone– to eat. Just a few assholes in Mexico, a fish and a frog, and that chocolate bar from the kid.
Eddie knows why. It’s the same reason why they launched him away at the last second, why they covered him in a shield and made sure he was the last thing they saw as they– as they saved the world. It’s the same reason why Eddie’s on his knees on a pier overlooking the Statue of Liberty when he was born in this city, crying so hard he can’t breathe.
We could have been happy, with a life like this.
Even though his tears, his breaths like jack knives tearing through his lungs, the desperate ache in his chest, he remembers the rumble of Venom’s voice as they’d said it, gentle and as soft as the symbiote’s voice was capable of being. He remembers the warm coil in his heart, the cool press of the window pane against his cheek, his own answering silence. He remembers the secret, slithering black tendril that poked just out of his sleeve to swipe briefly, almost tenderly, at his palm.
Yes, he answers to the memory of V in his head now, to the deafening silence. Yes, I know, but buddy–baby–
He thinks of the beach again, the sunset staining the horizon orange and gold. He thinks of kissing them in the woods, when they’d never needed to do that to switch hosts, and of Venom’s insistence that Anne had wanted to kiss him, not Venom. Even so early into their bond, he’d known it was a lie.
“I was happy.” He whispers, or rather, sobs, to the pier, the lapping water, the green towering symbol of freedom, that silence he can’t get used to. I did a shit job of showing it, but I was happy. And now–
And now he’s having a breakdown across the bay from a tourist attraction.
It would be easier to stay here, collapsed by the water as the cold seeps through his clothes until he stops feeling cold. It would be easier to kneel on the pier, tears drying on his face and making the skin stiff with salt, until the tears return, as they always do. It would be easier to give up, to stop putting one foot in front of the other and inhaling again after each exhale and waking up every morning, alone, and going to bed every night, alone.
Alone, alone, alone. Every second of every minute of every day alone. For the rest of his miserable life.
It would be easier, yes, but it would not be keeping his promise to Venom.
I’ll never forget you, Eddie. Don’t forget me.
He cannot remember them if he cannot continue on. Venom saved him on purpose; it would be poor thanks to throw everything away eight days later.
With a strength he doesn’t want, he hauls himself off of the ground. He takes one final look at the statue, swallows down the tears that threaten to return, and turns away from the sight.
He’d be lying if he said a part of him didn’t hope a tiny, weakened piece of the symbiote would find him there, would drive small creatures and random people across the country to make it to this spot, like the final few minutes of the romantic comedies neither of them would admit they loved. But this isn’t a romantic comedy, and Venom isn’t coming. Eddie would be far more likely to find trouble, alone and defenseless now, while waiting here after dark, than he would be to find an emaciated squirrel or seagull searching for him.
It is a beautiful fantasy, but it’s only a fantasy. He makes his way home.
He’s nearly back to his apartment, a tiny studio he’s subletting from the friend of a friend for a few months, when his phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number.
He knows better than to open it. He knows. After a short-lived career in investigative journalism, after Cletus, after being a fugitive for months, after being given back his life and threatened into silence in the same breath by the military or the government or whoever the fuck that guy was on the morning after the worst day of his life, he knows nothing good can come of opening that message.
He opens it.
Cal’s on 87th. Round the block from your apartment.
“Oh, great,” he whispers. “This is how I die.”
Another text: This afternoon.
A third: 3:30.
Yet another. Eddie wonders if this is the weirdo’s first day on the job. Bring no one. Tell no one.
“I’m getting kidnapped.” There was a time in his life when this thought would have made him panic.
Instead, his first thought is, If I get killed, can I go wherever V is? He has to step into a doorway and breathe through the rush of anguish that sweeps over him then.
After a long moment that could have been ten seconds or ten minutes, he gets his heart rate down, manages to blink away the tears stinging the back of his eyes and tickling the bridge of his nose. The tremor in his hands recedes, and he finally thinks to check the time on his phone. It’s already 3:26.
“Fuck.” He hisses, running his hand hurriedly down his face. He’s relieved to find it dry of tears as he heaves in a deep, still shaky breath and steps back onto the sidewalk.
He doesn’t want to know what will happen if he’s late or doesn’t show, even if he’s pretty sure he’s going to find himself locked in a trunk in about ten minutes anyway. He rounds the block, stops just outside the cafe named Cal’s, pretends Venom is still inside him and ready to protect him so he won’t pass out on the pavement from terror, and steps into the restaurant.
He isn’t attacked on sight. He isn’t knocked immediately unconscious. Instead, he finds himself staring around the perfectly normal cafe that admittedly has seen some better days, but is still doing fairly good business between mealtimes.
In a back corner, his eyes snag on a familiar face. Two familiar faces, actually. Two women, sitting on the same side of a table, a cell phone face down on the table in front of the blonde, as though she’d only used it a few minutes ago and is perhaps expecting a potential response.
They are looking at him, both of them. They don’t call out to him or wave him over, but they do smile, the blonde’s forehead crinkling slightly as though she knows how threatening her messages sounded. Eddie doesn’t see either of them as a threat, not really. The other woman brought Venom to him a second before Strickland tried to kill him. She saved his life, prolonged Venom’s. He approaches the table.
The blonde taps her phone, as though to send a secret message, but then she speaks outright. “Eddie, right? Please, sit.”
“Yeah. You’re those scientists, aren’t you? Who helped us–me?” It’s still hard to speak for just himself, but he supposes they helped Venom, too.
The brunette woman’s eyes widen suddenly and she puts her hand over her breast pocket. The blonde woman glances at her and she nods briefly before the blonde turns back to Eddie. Eddie watches the exchange but cannot make sense of it.
“Yes. My name is Teddy Paine. This is Sadie.”
Sadie pats her pocket and moves her hand back to her lap. “We’re sorry to have texted you so ominously, but this meeting isn’t exactly officially sanctioned.”
“Seeing as they threatened me into silence before I was even fully conscious after… after, I can believe that. How did you get my number in the first place?”
“I have my ways.” Sadie smiles mysteriously.
“So, um,” Teddy starts, “how have you been doing?” Eddie looks at her, trying to decide what to tell her. But then she pauses, frowning. After a second, she whispers, though he’s said nothing, “Yes, I’m getting to it. But this is how humans make conversation.”
He realizes, with a start that sends a crack through his already bruised and broken heart, that she isn’t talking to him. She’s replying to something in her head; she still has her symbiote. The one she bonded with that night. She still gets to hear their voice, feel their presence, look crazy in public when she responds out loud to a voice no one else can hear.
He opens his mouth to reply, but suddenly he’s so angry he could break something. It rolls through him like a roiling flame, like a mushroom cloud. Venom was taken from him, and he has to sit here and listen to this woman interact with her symbiote, still alive and thriving. It’s so unfair it makes him want to throw up.
“I want to cut off Knull’s head with his own fucking blade.” His voice, steady and soft but bleeding with rage, startles him. He’s spent the last eight days in a haze of grief and pain, but he’s so damn tired of being sad and hurt. If he can’t bring V back, then he’ll snap Knull’s stupid neck with his bare, weak, human hands.
Teddy blinks at the violence of his words. She exchanges a glance with Sadie, who touches her pocket again, almost absentmindedly.
“I don’t believe that’s a viable solution,” she says carefully.
“Yeah, no shit,” Eddie mumbles with a sigh. Most of the anger dissipates as quickly as it appeared, replaced by the usual misery. “I just wish….” His voice breaks and he trails off, trying to breathe around the ache, so that the tears will stay inside.
“Well, Eddie, I–” Teddy says, interrupting his thoughts, but Sadie interrupts her.
“Teddy,” she says, taking Teddy’s hand. Eddie notices. He also sees the slight blush that appears on Teddy’s cheeks at the touch. Sadie leans toward her and lowers her voice. “Not here.”
“But–”
“Look at him,” Sadie nods subtly at Eddie, then glances at her breast pocket and pats it for the third time. Eddie’s starting to wonder why she keeps doing that. Nervous habit? Something she’s making sure is still there?
Sadie looks back at Teddy and continues. “It’s killing him. It’ll draw too much attention. He won’t be able to help it.”
“I–” Eddie starts, not sure what she’s talking about, but feeling offended anyway.
Teddy looks at Sadie in silence for a moment, then glances at Sadie’s pocket. It’s quick, but Eddie still catches it. Then she looks at him for a long moment; Eddie wonders if she’s listening to her symbiote. At last, her face twists in an expression Eddie has come to know well in the last few days. He sees it on Anne and Dan the few times he’s answered their video-calls, on Mrs. Chen’s face the last time he saw her before he came to New York, even Martin wore that same look when he visited Eddie in the hospital. Sympathy. He hates it.
“My brother died in a freak accident when I was young,” she says, which is the very last thing he expected her to say. By the time he thinks he should apologize for her loss, she’s continuing, as if this is a short, horrible story she’s told many times before. “I was struck by lightning. My brother grabbed my hand at the last second and received the worst of the strike. It killed him instantly.
“For many years, before I moved away to become a scientist, when the pain became too much, I would escape everyone and everything and go off on my own. I went to the beach where my brother died, where I spoke to him last, and be alone with my grief.”
She looks at him, eyes soft, mouth twisted, and he realizes she gets it. It isn’t exactly the same loss, but it’s close enough that the look on her face isn’t sympathy but empathy.
“Where do you go when you need to be alone?” she asks.
He knows the answer immediately, but there is a part of him that is protective of the knowledge. He won’t be alone if others know about it. But as he looks at the women, at their patient, open expressions, he knows that whatever the point of this is, it’s important.
“There’s a pier, across the bay from the Statue of Liberty. It isn’t one of the main ones; I don’t think it’s meant for pedestrians.” He hesitates, then adds, “They wanted to see it. Venom. We were trying to get to New York for a fresh start. I was going to take them to see it.”
He glances up, in time to catch Sadie smile and look down at her pocket for a moment. Before he can ask about it, Teddy speaks. “Can you send me the coordinates?”
“What?” He asks, startled.
“Eddie, Sadie’s right. This… conversation would be better had somewhere more private. I think this pier is the best place for it.”
“What even is this conversation?” he asks.
“Better to wait,” Sadie says. “Trust us, please. Do you think you can send Teddy the coordinates?”
“I–Yeah, fine.” Eddie pulls out his phone and starts searching his GPS for the pier. “When should we meet?”
“I agree,” Teddy says after a pause, reminding Eddie that she still has a symbiote inside of her. “Definitely as soon as possible. Why don’t you start heading there after you send me the coordinates, and we’ll follow in about twenty minutes?”
Eddie finds the coordinates and sends them to the unknown number. Teddy’s phone pings with the receipt. “Before I go, I’ve got a question for your friend.”
Teddy glances at Sadie. “Not her. The other one.” Eddie taps his head. “They’re still up there, aren’t they? Talking to you.”
Teddy nods. She doesn’t ask him how he knew. “She’s listening. What do you want to know?”
“The Codex could have been destroyed by killing one of us. Why did you all protect both of us? Why didn’t you just kill me while I was on my own so you would be safe? You didn’t have any attachment to me.”
Teddy is silent for a moment. Eddie looks between her and Sadie, but Sadie doesn’t glance at or touch her pocket. Eddie gets the impression she’s purposely trying not to, though.
“Venom defeated Riot. They were powerful. To kill you would be to incur their wrath. Better to protect you both, and the key you carried inside you.”
I can’t let you die!
They’d been so afraid of the xenophage when it first appeared, so afraid of unlocking Knull’s prison. Yet they’d bonded with him at the river to keep him from falling over that waterfall or being shot by a soldier. They knew, when he’d been run through by Riot, what bringing him back would mean. They knew it would result in the Codex, in being hunted. They’d done it anyway.
“Eddie? We’ll meet you at the pier, okay?” Sadie’s voice filters in, as though from far away. He exhales, bringing himself back to the cafe, rapidly blinking away the tears that have misted his eyes.
“Right. Yeah. Okay.” As soon as he can see clearly, he flees.
And so, less than a few hours after he left, Eddie finds himself back on the pier, staring at the Statue of Liberty. This better be good. Maybe her symbiote needs a new host. She didn’t seem to be adjusting poorly to the bonding, and he would never agree to it anyway. There is no way to replace Venom, and he would never dare to try.
Maybe they just need advice. He wouldn’t even know where to start. It would be like giving relationship advice, and he isn’t exactly an expert on that, either.
“What the hell are we– am I– doing, V?” he whispers, eyes on the waves ahead of him. The question falls out of his mouth without thinking; eight days hasn’t been long enough to break the habit of talking to himself, even if the silence that follows his words breaks him in two every time.
He stares at the water, the glittering setting sun reflecting in the churning surface. He loses track of time, staring into its blue-green depths, mind devoid of both Venom’s voice and his own conscious thoughts. His heart aches, and he misses like acid is burning away his vital organs.
“You weren’t kidding, this is really out of the way.”
Eddie jumps, whirling around to see the two scientists gingerly stepping down the old, crumbling steps to the pier.
“Yeah, well…we– I’ve been on the run for months. Still getting used to not having to stick to the shadows and the back roads,” Eddie shrugs.
Teddy nods as she finally steps onto level ground, reaching out to help Sadie on the last step. “Well, I think it’s the perfect spot to talk.” She doesn’t give him a chance to respond, but he can’t imagine he would have said anything interesting if she had. “So, back at the lab, before all hell broke loose–”
“T,” Sadie interrupts. “They’re impatient. If he wants an explanation later, he’ll get one, but let’s just get to the point, yeah?”
Eddie looks between them as Teddy nods. “What are you–?” He trails off as Sadie pulls something out of her breast pocket. When she holds it up at an angle that he can see it, the world falls away, and he almost drops to the pavement for the second time today. She holds a tiny glass vial up to the light, and inside it, straining against the sides to get to him…is….
He can’t breathe, the hope that surges up his throat chokes him like oncoming tears. “Is that–?” He starts, his heart racing. But he knows. He knows as surely as he knows his own name, his reflection, the beating of his heart. Whether it’s been eight days or eighty years, he’d recognize them, even this small a part of them.
Sadie nods, handing the vial to him. They press against the sides desperately, making themself almost transparently thin in their effort to get through to him.
“It’s them,” Teddy says, her voice sounding distant to his ears. “We’ve been feeding them bits of chocolate the entire way here, so they’ll be strong for you. They’re okay.”
With shaking fingers, Eddie gets the vial open, and Venom springs for him immediately. They absorb into his skin, and he can feel the symbiote oozing around inside of him, and it feels like coming home. Still….
“Buddy?” He whispers, not daring to hope, even though he just saw a symbiote slip into his body, even though he would know them anywhere. It’s too much, it’s too perfect, and nothing good ever happens to him. He’s a loser, after all, Venom told him so the very first day he met them–
Eddie.
He can breathe again. He sags against the wall of the pier and lets out what might be a laugh and might be a sob, he isn’t sure.
“Venom,” he gasps, still unable to speak any louder.
I’m here, Eddie.
“Let me see you. Please.” He’s sobbing in earnest now, clawing at his chest as though he can draw out Venom’s head with his bare hands.
“They might still be too–” Sadie starts, but Venom listens to Eddie anyway, pulling themself out of Eddie and drawing their fibrous black body into the shape of their head. Eddie grabs for them immediately, cradling their head in his hands and drawing them closer. They watch him, and it feels a little like lying helplessly on his back underneath a metal door, watching the love of his life die for him.
Because that’s what they are, even if he’s never said it.
He should say it.
And then Venom bumps his head gently with their own and nods in the direction of the stairs. In his head, Venom says, Thank them before they leave. They brought me back to you.
Eddie turns in the direction they indicated in time to see the women making their way back to the main road.
“Wait,” he calls, still clutching Venom’s head like he’s afraid they’ll vanish. He is, a little, if he’s honest.
The women stop and glance back at him. He thinks he should be embarrassed to be seen clinging to an alien’s head like this, like he’s about to— he swallows down that thought before V hears it. But he can’t find it in him to care, not now that Venom has been restored to him.
“Thank you,” he says emphatically. “Thank you for taking care of them, for bringing them home.” The warmth that spreads through him at the word home is not entirely his own.
The women smile and wave. And then he’s alone with Venom. So he isn’t really alone, and thank God for that.
He turns back to Venom, drinking them in. A wave of aching, desperate affection washes over him as he holds their face close. He pauses a moment, watching them through his tears to make sure they are looking at him. They haven’t stopped since they manifested from his chest.
“I need you to know three things,” he gasps between hitching sobs. “One, if you ever do that to me again, I’m going to kill you myself, you asshole.”
I couldn’t– they rumble.
“I know. I know, V. But it broke me apart. If we go, we’re going together. I can’t do that again.
“Two. I was happy,” he shoves the memory of the drive through the desert across their shared neural pathways, Venom’s words, the cool plexiglass of the window, the dim, lonely light playing off the sand and asphalt. “You make me happy. I’m sorry I was always so bad at showing it. And third–”
He pauses to regain his nerve. He knows V already knows, but it’s still hard to finally say. He’s been denying it– to Venom, to himself– for so long now. “Third, I love you. I love you so fucking much.”
I know, Venom says, but Eddie can feel the sharp burst of delight rolling through him from Venom’s core. I love you, too, Eddie.
“I know.” He smiles through his tears, pulling Venom impossibly closer, pressing his lips anywhere it’s safe, and even a few places it isn’t, knowing Venom will heal him if he cuts his mouth on the symbiote’s teeth.
It feels like a long time before Eddie cares about anything more than holding Venom, anything other than pouring love into Venom inside of their shared body, and feeling it returned to him. When he finally thinks to ask, the sun has fully set behind the horizon, the moon beginning its ascent above the waves.
“How did you survive?”
We left a piece of us at the bar in Mexico.
Eddie’s insides turn cold. Like with Cletus. Venom shakes their head quickly, but Eddie feels the guilt and discomfort roll up their spine.
Not the same. The piece was not… offspring, Venom says aloud, but Eddie hears what they were going to say: Our child.
V.
That is the best word for Carnage! They say defensively. Anyway, it wasn’t like that. I have been careful since then. I didn’t notice because it was a bit of me. Of us.
“I think that’s worse. Do you want a bunch of clones of us running around?”
Do you keep track of every flake of skin and strand of hair you lose, Eddie? It was barely alive at the time. It would have dried up and decayed if that douchebag who kept trying to kill us hadn’t snatched it up!
Their tone softens a little then, or as much as it can soften. It was good he did, though. Those scientists grabbed it while the lab was falling apart. They kept me alive.
Eddie wipes away the tears on his face impatiently. “Is it still there, then? The Codex? If we’re both still alive?”
V swipes gently at Eddie's cheeks with a black tendril. No. I checked as soon as we bonded. Being mostly killed and then regrown from a scrap destroyed it.
“We’re safe?”
Venom nods. You’re safe.
Eddie frowns at them. V. He thinks again.
Venom knocks their head lightly against Eddie’s. We’re safe, they correct.
Eddie smiles; it feels foreign on his face. He kisses them, their teeth smooth and unyielding beneath his lips, though he can feel both of their joy darting through their synapses.