Recombenant.
“So what makes you think he’s come back here?”
“Where did you go when you first thought about starting over?” Miguel said over his shoulder, landing on the ground and walking into the alleyway in one smooth movement, as if getting off a bus, his mask off, his suit still on. He didn’t care about anyone knowing his identity - they didn’t know Miguel O’Hara, and who knows if they’d ever meet him. Who knows if he’d stick around long enough to be recognised.
There was a nice freedom to it.
Eddie, meanwhile, thought about the question. He thought about the gravestone of the first Eddie Brock, Jr. He thought of how he was both him and not him, how he was… How he had needed to say goodbye to that Eddie, and also hello to the new Eddie, before he could start walking through the world again.
“I hear ya,” he said, quietly. The sound still travelled in the alley, and Eddie heard reverberations. Sounds he heard from inside himself, when he was loud enough.
The other symbiote was here. Miguel was staring into the corner, where he had fought it before, and Eddie followed his gaze. There, spread across a small section of the corner, was a flat, long piece of red material, not quite a web but not quite a board, either. It flexed and licked the air, and moved softly from side to side.
And behind them, a figure cloaked in red, curled in on himself, slowly descended between the buildings, tendrils lowering him down. His teeth long, sharp spikes extended from his mouth.
“Whaaghght aarieegh youuu doignng heaargh?” the creature croaked. It was damaged, not enough DNA to fix it, it only had a small piece from Miguel, and had bit off a large chunk of Eddie. It needed a mix of both, an even amount, plus some Anti-Venom to finish the equation. An equal amount of all parts, to make it whole.
It needed a mouthful of Miguel, and another bite off Eddie.
Miguel got into a stance, and Eddie got low to the ground. A second later, the creature screamed again, its voice gone. Eddie moved to block his ears, but realised he didn’t need to - sound didn’t affect him anymore.
Good to know, he thought to himself, before jumping forward into action.
The trick was, they had figured out, to make sure that the clone got a decent amount of them at the same time. It would be the… least painful, kind of change. Getting a taste of its father, and punch from its brother, it was still in pain, the DNA not combining correctly.
So the plan was to make sure it bit them. And how do you make an injured dog bite you?
Well, you piss it off even more.
Miguel and Eddie made sure not to touch it, only toy with it. Keep it on the ropes, not let it escape and hurt anyone else, but also make as little contact as possible. Bounce off the walls, crack some wise, swing past it, web it to the ground, jump over its head…
Just like the ‘real’ Spider-Man used to do.
And when it was fully riled up, when the angry, injured animal, the dying creature who had been born to be something else that it didn’t want to be, didn’t need to be, when it finally got angry enough to ignore how much it would hurt, and leap forward and just bite - they let it.
But on their own terms.
They saw it coming, the moment it got so annoyed it was about to pounce, and they did something they really really hoped would work.
Carnage dived forward, mouth open, teeth-shaped spikes about to grab Miguel by the arm and shake him, like a bulldog with a bone, and Eddie snaked under him, collapsing his own body into just tendrils, crawling under the ground, and climbing up Miguel’s body, turning his suit white with grey accents, but keeping the red design he loved so much.
Everything was happening in slow motion, and just as Carnage bit down on Miguel’s arm, his teeth cleaving straight through the flesh, tearing a chunk out of the spot just along his elbow, Eddie was able to cover it.
Carnage got a chunk of both, and the piece that was Eddie climbed down its throat, taking a hunk of Miguel’s meat with it.
Carnage gagged, and screamed, and Miguel cried out in pain as his tendons ripped and his muscles tore, but Eddie was already at work knitting him back together. Healing was as painful as getting injured, and all three of them were feeling it.
Carnage grabbed its head, as the lights began to change. Everything’s losing its red haze, the brightness getting brighter, the darkness seeming to fade, the sound of blood pumping in my ears fading into the background as the sound of traffic got louder, and it hurt.
Why won’t the heart stop beating? Why won’t the heart stop beating??? Why. Won’t. The Heart. Stop. BEATIING-
Then silence. A blond man lay on the pavement, slightly curled up, his eyes wide, unmoving. Unbreathing. Staring. His arm twitched.
Miguel shook his own arm, testing the muscles in his hand, making sure they worked, that Eddie was fixing him properly.
You think this is the first time I’ve done this? He heard Eddie say in his head.
“Just making sure,” Miguel said aloud. He stepped towards the twitching man on the ground.
So that’s what Parker had looked like. Eddie was right - they were nothing alike. And that gave him comfort. He knew who he was, once he realised he wasn’t this.
Sometimes it means as much to define yourself by what you love, just as much as what you hate, he heard his father Franklin say to him once, before taking his husband’s hand, and kissing the mind of a thousand personalities.
“What… am I?” the blond man said.
Miguel stopped. He grimaced as Eddie finished healing his arm, growing back the last few layers of skin, and tidying up the muscle underneath.
“What did you do to me?” the man asked, again. His voice was raspy, a little high, like he’d been going too hard at a heavy metal concert.
Miguel watched him. Selfishly, he wanted to see what this man would do. He knew what he would do, but there was one tiny part of him that wanted to know if-
“SAY SOMETHING!” the man screamed.
Miguel stumbled. Eddie schlorped off him, and reformed into his own body.
“Something,” he said quietly.
“‘Something?’” Miguel asked. “Isn’t that English for algo?”
Miguel stuck out his tongue like there was a bad taste in his mouth. “Eugh,” he gagged, “Personality aftertaste.”
“I know,” Eddie agreed. “It’s the worst. I can still taste all your brooding.”
“I didn’t ask to get made,” the blond clone of Peter Parker said, still on the ground, back to staring ahead of himself.
Miguel turned to look at him, and knelt down by his side.
“You think we did?” he said quietly. “Look at us.”
He pointed at himself and Eddie, and gestured to the blond man.
“All three of us, we’re just… copies, of what came before. Someone’s idea of what someone else was. But you know what? That makes us special. Because you were born from the idea of Spider-Man, and so was I, and we are absolutely nothing alike. We could be anyone - we can be anyone. So be someone, other than who you thought you were. Who someone else told you you were supposed to be. Be someone new, because being one person’s idea of Spider-Man means you’re going to be a thousand other people’s ideas of what Spider-Man isn’t. So make a name for yourself. Be yourself. Who is that, in this moment? Right now? Who are you, naked blond man?”
The man blinked. Eddie knew he didn’t need to, that he didn’t need to breathe, either - he had enough symbiote lattice in his DNA that he wouldn’t have to worry about any kind of decay, or keeping systems intact day-to-day. But he still inflated his lungs, and took in the fresh, polluted air of New York City, the closest clean air you could find, just across the street from Central Park.
The man remembered places he’d never been. He remembered someone else he’d never been. Peter Parker was long gone, killed by a mutant plague almost a hundred years ago. Peter Parker could be lying right here on the street, if he really wanted to.
He looked up at Miguel O’Hara, and blinked a few more times, getting used to the sensation. He liked it. Between one pair of blinks, he remembered being a child, and falling over in the dirt, and his uncle telling him that his scraped knee wasn’t the end of the world. That a little blood wasn’t so bad, and a scratch was nothing to be afraid of. That it was always okay to feel hurt, and afraid, and unsure about what was happening, but the important thing was to never let that stop you.
He remembered holding onto that thought, when he first put on a mask. When he first fought the Green Goblin, the Rhino, the Lizard, Doc Ock… when he first made a joke into one of their faces, and when he lost one of the most important women he’d ever known in his life. He remembered the words his uncle had told him.
“... Ben,” he coughed. He coughed again, and something dislodged in his throat, and he swallowed the last tiny piece of Miguel O’Hara, washed down by the Anti-Venom.
“Ben Reilly,” he said again, clearly.
Eddie smiled. This guy’s voice was lower than Peter’s. There was more bass to it, it felt more… solid. It had been a long time since he had heard Peter’s voice, and he was glad to hear something resembling it again.
But he was also glad to meet Ben Reilly.
And, judging from his smile, so was Miguel O’Hara.
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