Riot was gone. Maybe they’d come back, maybe they wouldn’t, whatever served the mission best. For now the rest of them were captives, separated even from each other.
This planet was toxic. If they escaped their little prisons they’d die without a host so they were at their captors’ mercy.
They didn’t have much experience with mercy.
They were kept separate, completely alone.
If the humans had a reason for keeping them, Venom didn’t know it. What Venom knew was that they were alone. In a tube. For so long. With almost nothing to break the empty monotony.
They were fed, but not nearly enough and not nearly often enough and not nearly good enough. And the barely acceptable food creatures were the only offered hosts. There was no chance of permanence, only a short reprieve. Then back in the tube or die.
Venom wondered if either of the others had chosen to die rather than live like this. They couldn’t see each other, couldn’t see anything but bright white and sterile lab. Venom had no way of knowing if the others were still alive. Venom hoped they were. There was no reason to, their status did not change the situation for Venom at all. They hoped anyway. They did not want to be alone here.
But Venom was alone. So deeply and profoundly alone that they did not care that others of their kind excluded them, thought of them as weak, insulted them, they just wanted company. Any company. Even observing the humans without being able to understand what they were saying or doing was better than the nights of empty silent alone nothing.
Venom didn’t think Riot was coming back. It had been so long, Venom had no way of knowing how long but it felt like so long. Venom didn’t know if Riot was dead or alive, if this planet was doomed or not, or if an invasion would even lead to them being freed. Riot was callous even for one of them, would they care enough to track down only three? Not if they had no reason too, Venom thought. Not if it was any inconvenience.
……
After an unbearable amount of time they were offered human hosts. But no good matches. If the hosts did not die immediately they rejected them slowly, preventing full bonding.They offered little understanding of humanity because of this and were mainly useful as food.
The only real thing any of the hosts, human or otherwise, offered Venom was extensive knowledge of what it felt like to die. Over and over again. Desperation. Fear. Pain. Then nothing. Then back in the tube.
Venom watched through one of these unfit host's eyes as Phage withered and died, suffocating in this ugly, cruel world.
Venom didn’t want to die. They wanted to stop feeling death. They wanted a bond. They wanted to not be alone. If they hadn’t had this unusual desire before, the absolute solitude would have driven them to it now anyway. And then there was the danger these unfit hosts brought with them. The danger of dying like Phage. Venom wanted to live and didn’t want to be alone and the two fears coalesced into a single desire because they had the same solution: a good host.
So when Venom found Eddie Brock they became a part of him in all the ways they—he could and he held on as tight as he could and told himself that nothing could make him let go.
……
Venom didn’t think about the danger of his own death in the moment he was made to let go, when he was pulled away from his perfect host, his Eddie. He ignored the inability to breathe that was slowly sneaking up on him like predator stalking its prey. Venom only cared that Eddie was dying.
Riot’s blade had cut through so much of him it was a miracle there was any life left in him at all, but Venom could sense it. Faint and fading fast.
Venom had felt humans die. He never wanted to feel that again. There was a chance it was too late for Venom to do anything for Eddie. That bonding with him would just mean feeling him die. Venom bonded with him anyway.
If it was too late, they would die together. Venom would not take another host. This was the end of that sad wretched line of bodies. Eddie had given Venom a chance to live and to not live alone, and even though it was still ending like this at least Eddie would not die alone.
But it wasn’t too late. They lived. For now.
……
So when the explosion was rushing at them from one side and they were rushing towards the water on the other it was an easy choice for Venom to make.
They could both die, and the last thing he would feel would be Eddie’s death, or only Venom could die and the last thing he would think would be knowing that Eddie was alright.
The fire hurt more than anything Venom had ever experienced but he focussed on Eddie’s voice, calling out for him.
He wished he could answer, could stay. He focussed on Eddie.
____
The water was freezing compared to the heat of the explosion. If there had been any air left in Eddie’s lungs the cold would have knocked it out but he had used all of it up already screaming.
“No! Venom!”
For a moment he just let himself hover under the water as if the cold has frozen him but then a burning in his chest triggered a survival instinct that made him push his way to the surface.
He pulled air into his lungs desperately and it made him cough. There was still smoke, still wreckage falling all around. He didn’t think, just let his awakened sense of self preservation push him to swim for the safety of shore.
He dragged himself into the mud and collapsed onto his back, still breathing heavy. Then he screamed again in sadness and frustration. He thought back to the moment in their battle with Riot when he’d had a choice to make…
……
Honestly, he should’ve been thinking of the outcome of the battle, of his chances of survival, of the fate of the world. But as he looked at Venom squirm helplessly in Riot’s hand the next couple of seconds frozen in indecision all came down to very personal feelings.
Venom was currently out of his body, Eddie was free. Venom was in no position to get back to him, and if he didn’t want Venom to die it was down to him to do something about it. For the first time it was his move. It had to be.
He was free.
He was alone.
He was watching Venom die.
He reached out his hand.
……
He had chosen Venom, chosen to be with Venom, and then he was ripped away from him. The stupid parasite had sacrificed his own life to save Eddie’s and now Eddie was alone.
It would be normal to be a little sad but get on with his life. It would be normal to also be kind of glad this whole thing was over and done with and he can get back to normality.
It wasn’t normal to be this devastated. To wish the alien goop that insulted him and took over his body and ate human heads and Eddie’s own heart was not just still alive, but still in him.
He had gotten attached. He liked Venom. It had taken him this entire time to realize, but Venom was his friend and he wanted him around.
But Venom was dead.
Eddie wanted to just sink into the mud. Just stay on the ground until anything from the last couple days made sense or until he felt like he could stand being alone in his own head.
Venom was with him for so short a time, so why was the silence of his absence so deafening?
……
Eddie figured that, in the end, dragging himself home would be less work than letting the cops find him here and having to answer questions.
He ran into Anne. She hugged him despite his current mud-soaked state and was so happy he was alive. She seemed like she was moving and talking so so fast because Eddie was still wading through the ice-water of his feelings.
“Eddie? Eddie! What’s wrong.”
Oh god, now he had to say it.
“He’s gone.” Eddie managed. “Venom, he…he didn’t make it.” He was so soaked he couldn’t tell if he’d already cried himself out or if the tears just wouldn’t come but the customary tightness in his throat choked these last words and they came out sounding strained either way. “He’s gone, Annie.”
She hugged him again and made sure he got home.
……
His home was trashed and riddled with bullet holes but he was in no shape to even start fixing any of that so he did what he could do. He got out of his clothes and washed the mud off of his hair and skin and he made sure he was clean and mostly dry and wearing pajamas before he curled up in his bed.
He was detachedly worried he might get some kind of fever from having been in the freezing cold water but right now he just felt numb. Some of the wildest, craziest, and most horrifying things that can happen to a person had been happening to him nonstop and he couldn’t even begin to process it right now so he just sat there, his mind numb and empty like the snowy static of a broken tv, and waited for sleep to reboot his brain. Maybe when he woke up he’d have some idea how to deal with all of this.
How to deal with all of this alone.
……
As he drifted off there was a hollowness in him, an emptiness he wished he knew how to try to fill with anything at all so later when he was still half asleep in front of the fridge shoving food into his mouth he didn’t question it until the cold air from the freezer made him wake up fully.
Then he realized he didn’t remember how he got here. Then he felt the intense hunger. Then he had a decision to make.
After a brief inner debate, he decided to let himself hope.
He got out a spoon and started shoveling ice cream into his mouth while cooking the few other things in his freezer and then scarfing them down too. After consuming everything edible in the house he ordered food from the first place he could think of that was still open. He ate until the sharp spike of hunger ebbed and then he was so tired he just lay down on his floor and let himself sleep.
When he awoke it took him a minute to remember, to put together the pieces of last night scattered around him in the form of trash and open cabinets. When he did remember, his heart started racing.
“V…Venom?” He asked. Feeling stupid and nervous and hopeful and afraid and like his gut was full of ice. There was an agonizing pause.
“Eddie.”
He was so relieved that he started crying and the tears were hot on his cheeks.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I thought I was dead too.”
Eddie laughed. And despite the cold floor and the fact that his fridge was still open he felt warm.
“Eddie, you are…happy. That I am alive.”
“Well yeah, of course.”
“I did not realize you cared that much about me. I thought I was an annoyance to you at best.”
“Yeah, I uh, I don’t think I really realized it myself until towards the end there. But I do care about you, Venom. You’re my friend.”
“And you are not mad that I am still in your body?”
“Naw, I’m used to it. It feels too quiet in my head without you nagging at me.”
There was a pause.
“Eddie, do you want us to remain together? That is what I want. I want to stay with you.”
Eddie took a deep breath and thought about the future. He thought about the last couple days. He thought about last night. And he projected forward into ideas of two branching roads his life could take from here.
The answer was obvious.
“Yeah, Venom. That’s what I want.”
Something that had been tense in Venom for who knows how long, maybe his entire existence, finally relaxed.
“Good.”
Venom practically purred.
Eddie put a hand over his heart and sighed contentedly.
“Yeah, it is.”