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For the first time, Eddie Brock voiced the doubt that had been writhing around in the empty space the symbiote had left behind:
“I can’t do this.”
His two companions stared at him before the one, a girl of about eighteen, threw her hands up in defeat. “He can’t do it, he says! He can’t-” Andrea Benton ran her hands through her hair with a hysterical kind of laugh. “Fought you tooth and nail for the Venom symbiote, Coach, and he says he can’t-”
“Andi, stop it.” Flash Thompson paused and closed his eyes. When Eddie finally met his gaze, its intensity struck him like lightning. He didn’t look angry, though, just... determined. “Brock, listen to me. You have to do this. You. You were the last one it was with, the last one it saw and was bonded to. Any traces of what it had with me or even Pe- or even Spider-Man are gone.” He leaned on his cane, crossing one arm over his chest with a bit of a guilty look. “I would go with you, but...”
Eddie shook his head. He couldn’t ask that of Thompson. Beneath his shirt, he was still in bandages from when the Red Goblin had nearly cooked him alive. The Anti-Venom had saved his life, but the fractal-like scars on his torso, and lighter, almost imperceptible ones on his face, served as a harrowing reminder of what they had all been through lately. This was merely the latest in a series of events that had nearly claimed them.
“We can’t risk it de-stabilizing,” Reed Richards clarified beside the makeshift portal he had been reconfiguring. “One person can go out. Two can come back, but I’m not willing to risk your safety or the symbiote’s.” His mouth twitched into a frown. “You’ll have about twenty-four hours. Keep track on the temporal stabilizer I gave you. Precautions aside, as it stands, most of my records and research are significantly outdated. If I find out how he managed to enter this universe, though…”
“The Maker...” Eddie closed his eyes, but the moment he did, all he saw was that grotesque face before him, weeks of careful manipulation and lies before he had managed to rip his precious other away-
“Brock, hey, are you with us?”
A hand rested on his shoulder, and he shook himself out of the waking nightmare that had been the last month or so of his life. Andi still bristled but she had wandered back over to stand beside her mentor.
“Just got Mania back not too long ago. She wants her sibling here, too.” She offered a lopsided smile. “You attacked a fifty-foot greasy asshole on steroids with a van. You slayed a dragon with a the help of a forty-year-old symbiote and the exact same dumbass energy Coach has-”
“Hey!”
“-so don’t say you can’t do this.” Andi inspected her short-cut nails. “Besides, if you chicken out,” and she let a tongue of flame engulf her hand, “I’ll literally summon the depths of hell to beat your ass.”
He half-expected her to crack a smile, but to no avail. Eddie glanced at Thompson. “She is joking, right?”
“You wanna test her? I trained her but I can’t read her mind.”
“Edward…”
He turned to Dr. Richards. The famed hero tapped his device with a nervous grimace.
“We need to make a decision. In four minutes this will destabilize and our window of opportunity closes.” His dark eyes shone with concern, the same way they had years ago after the Spider-Island incident. He was such a good man, missed so by the world after the inexplicable dissolve of the Fantastic Four. “I regret I cannot tell you much about what awaits you on the other side of this portal, except that it does lead to another Earth. The Maker… comes from one that was destroyed. I do not know what he wanted with this one, except that thanks to your symbiote, he failed. My hope is that your connection will at least bring you close to its location in that world.”
“Ergo, the rescue mission.” Andi tapped her foot impatiently. “Coach, c’mon, let me go.”
“Absolutely not! What if he winds up in a universe full of… Nazis or some shit?”
“I’ll go. I will.” Eddie took a breath, steeling himself. He took one last look at the device strapped to his wrist – a timekeeper locked onto this universe, in case it passed differently where he was going. A foot away from the event horizon-
“Eddie, hey.”
He turned and found himself wrapped up in Flash Thompson’s arms. He stiffened instinctually, but after a moment gave an awkward pat in return. Just as quickly, the other man let go and turned his face away.
“Um, be careful, okay? Bring m- your partner back safe.”
Eddie gave a stiff nod, trying to ignore the twinge of jealousy that came with what Thompson had almost said. None of that mattered, now. What mattered was getting his other back. With a final look to Dr. Richards and to Andi, he about-faced and stepped into the light.
It dropped down as a mass, feeling disoriented and vaguely ill, if such a thing was possible for one like itself. It at once adhered to the nearest surface, its biomass shifting to blend into the alleyway while it took a moment to determine where it had landed. It knew this place, though. It knew…
San Francisco, California. Eddie’s hometown.
But they had just been in New York City. Why would the Maker have targeted this place? But this did not feel as the San Francisco it had spent about two full years in with Eddie, some time ago. The Maker had rattled on about something to do with another symbiote’s capabilities, sacrificing one universe to bring back his own, but their main objective had been stopping him. Unfortunately, that had resulted in the symbiote getting pulled in through the massive portal the Maker had built and activated, and once on the other side, it had blinked out of existence like a star suddenly gone cold.
It still reeled from the loss of its beloved host, still mourning how little time they’d had between the symbiote rejoining with the Hive and being again so weakened by the resulting fight against the Grendel. Their subsequent capture by the Maker had again ruined its hopes of being able to communicate with Eddie, really communicate with him, the way it had wanted to since regaining its memories… Every time it took one step forward, inevitably, some higher power would force it three steps back.
No more. Once it had found Eddie, whether it took traversing all of San Francisco or the entire multiverse, it was going to do better. It was going to be better.
Unfortunately, this seemed an unfamiliar space, which didn’t bode well for the symbiote’s search. Once upon a time, it could have felt the cosmos for parsecs. Now, it felt nothing at all. Alone, without a host, with only its residual memories and the faint presence of another like itself-
It stopped.
That wasn’t possible. There could not be another Klyntar on this Earth. It would have recognized any of those whom made been with them fighting the Poisons in another universe. It did not seem to be a spawn, but rather of the initial generation, like itself. The symbiote did not dare test its luck that it might have found an ally… but it did seem to be bonded.
It slipped over to a grate in the street, slinking down to the sewer. It let its senses expand out to the network of tunnels, following its instincts towards the stranger.
Eddie’s first thought was that he had returned home.
Stepping out on the other side, he had expected New York, but one look and he knew this was his hometown of San Francisco. His childhood home had been in the suburbs, but he had gone into the city enough to know the winding Lombard Street immediately. He wasn’t but a few miles from the Marina District and Fisherman’s Wharf. It had been some time since he had last been to the City by the Bay, but everything seemed both familiar and strange.
His first order of business was to orient himself.
Eddie crossed at Lombard and Laguna and wandered into a Chevron gas station as casually as he could manage. The clerk was no older than eighteen, and only glanced up once as he passed by. A nametag read the name “Calvin”. He grabbed a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle and wandered over to where a few industrial-sized coffeepots sat. He slowly worked to fill a cup and scanned over the front page of the main section.
The date was the same as home – an immediate relief. He flipped it open and scanned over the headlines. Mostly local news; a few national headlines, but it wasn’t as if the Allies had lost the war here or something significant. Superheroes didn’t seem common or prevalent at all here, not like where he came from, where there would at least be one article about a local vigilante group.
He finished filling up his coffee, flipped the paper over to the “Opinion” section, and immediately choked on his coffee.
|| “Less Cops, More Neighbors – why communities with neighbors thrive, while those with heavy police presence only invite more trouble”
By Eddie Brock, Columnist and In-Depth Reporter ||
He cursed under his breath, coughing as his lungs worked to expel the searing liquid from his esophagus, and realized he had soiled the paper. He had cash in his messenger bag Dr. Richards had sent along with him, but he needed to try and save it for transportation and…
“Hey man, you good?”
Eddie snapped his head up. “…fine,” he grumbled. He’d been in New York for so long, it felt strange to have someone else do something other than mind their own business. Finally, he confessed, “Spilled a little.” He wasn’t going to not mention it and have the underpaid teenager suffer the consequences later. He set aside the now half-empty coffee and the wet newspaper to try and find some napkins.
Even so, Calvin wandered over with a “Caution – Wet Floor” sign and grabbed a large handful of paper towels. “Happens.” He tossed down the paper towels and slid the pile around with his foot. “You’re not the only one to have that reaction to the Opinions section. Especially if it’s…” The clerk trailed off when he spotted the stained column. “Huh, Eddie Brock wrote into the Opinions again. Remember when he used to have a show? Little Vice News-y, but maybe they’re into that kinda thing back where he’s from, in Brooklyn.”
Eddie stared at the clerk. He was still trying to process all this. A show… a life… a stable job… “Brooklyn? He’s from New York?”
“Yeah, you never saw him? He’s got this hella weird accent thing.” The teenager shrugged as he scooped up the damp paper towels and tossed them into a trash can. “He’s a good guy, though. Sticks up for people. Isn’t afraid to tell the Silicon Valley types when they need to step down.”
Eddie shook himself. He had a very common first and last name. Journalism was a popular profession. The odds of someone with his name being an investigative journalist weren’t that slim. His life was nothing if not an increasingly bizarre series of circumstances. A refilled coffee and five dollars later he stepped out of the gas station.
“Hey man, one more tip?”
He stopped and glanced over his shoulder.
“Watch out for that Venom guy. Rumor has it he’s got an appetite.”
Eddie just about crushed his coffee cup in his hand.
“This is a… a wild goose chase and I’m sick of it already.”
“We don’t chase geese. We’ve never chased geese. The only time we chased anything was when I swore vengeance on that pelican and when we broke out of the streetcar you screamed like a pu-”
“What did we say about that term?”
Venom’s words in his head took on a distinctly mocking tone. “‘What did we say about-’”
“Can it,” Eddie snapped. He adjusted the Bluetooth device in his ear, which was definitely off, but he could at least talk to the symbiote out loud without looking like a crazy person. “This better not be Carnage again. Or I swear, if you’ve had another spawn…”
“I have not,” it said, a little defensively. Venom stuck its head out of his jacket sleeve long enough to stick its tongue out at him before retreating. “The most recent fight did not activate the reproductive process.”
“Your procreation methods suck.”
“They do.”
“Where the hell are we going, anyways?”
Venom stopped them about midway through the Marina District, jerking Eddie over behind a shuttered coffeeshop. The second Eddie started to protest, it clapped a tentacle over his mouth to keep him quiet. They were still trying to figure out the whole body-sharing thing, but it was a work in progress. The symbiote directed his attention towards a sewer grate.
NO, he thought as loudly as possible. We are not going in the sewer! He would do, and had done, a great many things, but they were not going to stoop to going into sewers, no way, no how, even if they were more tolerable than the ones in New York.
Much to his surprise (and relief), though, after a few moments of being pinned against the outside wall, something poked its head through the grates of the sewer. It spilled out in dark strands, shiny in the streetlights, not quite as glossy as Venom, but…
“Shit,” he whispered. Eddie did a quick glance around, and finally Venom let him go. The symbiote wrapped around him in one quick, sweeping motion, and they knelt by the grate. Two white spots like eyes appeared, and they could feel its hesitation; its skepticism. Should we..?
Venom answered him by stretching their claw out. “You are not like Carnage. Or the others.”
Hey! Can we discuss this?! This is a very, very, very bad idea!
But then a tendril wrapped around their claw, and a voice came, strong and experienced. “I am not.” Eddie felt it rifling through his thoughts, just the surface of each, before immediately backing off. “Apologies. I did not know who I might trust here. Though it seems I have found myself.”
“You cannot have this host. He is mine.”
The stranger seemed to raise its hackles, which Eddie was quite certain he had never felt Venom do. Yeah, I’m not good with another roommate.
“You misunderstand. I would no sooner take your partner than throw myself into a pit of flames.”
“Am I really that bad?” An affectionate growl from Venom either meant that he wasn’t, or maybe he was, but his symbiotic partner didn’t care.
“But I am looking for someone. Allow me to show you.” A series of quick images flashed across their collective subconscious. A man on his knees before an altar. A bonding, a sense of righteous anger and betrayal and need for vengeance. A whirlwind of emotions, of hatred, resignation, peace, oneness, of love and confusion- And then the man’s face. Chiseled jaw behind a beard. Striking blue eyes. A warm glow, like a sunrise, lighting up the colors of his blond hair.
A sense of who they are, separate and together, alone and with others, but cutting through it all, a deep ache and need to rejoin, not for its own sake, but for the other’s.
When it finally spoke again, its voice seemed sorrowful.
“I am looking for Eddie Brock.”
A ten minute walk and twenty minutes of telling the computer store workers, No, I promise I’m fine, I just really want to get a good feel for this laptop, Eddie had some answers.
A monstrous vigilante known as Venom had showed up in San Francisco. Apparently, they were the familiar combination of tentacles, teeth, and tongue. The rumors of Venom having an appetite as large as their mouth were just that – rumors – but it gave Eddie a sick feeling in his stomach all the same. Who was Venom, here? That there would be an Eddie Brock, a journalist, bonded to a symbiote, calling themselves Venom-
He had also looked into his homonymous counterpart. They didn’t look or seem much alike, but they took a somewhat similar approach to journalism. This Eddie Brock apparently had managed to hold his life together, but Eddie had stopped himself after seeing the other man had a page on the Chronicle website as well. He needed to focus on finding his other, not obsessing over someone with his same name who had not become a pariah of society and thrown his whole life away. And given the decisive lack of any evidence that the Venom of this world had never declared Spider-Man their mortal enemy, that probably helped, as well.
He took the salesperson’s business card, just to be polite, and wandered out, feeling only more frustrated than before. Would his other have been forced to bond with another? Was that why he couldn’t feel it? Or had it been so weakened during the fight with the Maker that their bond had also been damaged?
Or had the bond already begun to fray with the seeds of doubt the Maker had sowed into Eddie’s mind?
The thought sent a shiver up his spine, and he clutched his bag tighter, trying to think. A park lay to the east of the Golden Gate Bridge, where they had rescued the underground community from the Life Foundation. Apparently the Life Foundation here was nothing like the one he knew, but perhaps it would think of their time here and return to that familiar space.
Eddie sat down roughly on a bus bench and dug out some small bills and change. He would head towards the waterfront – however much good it would do him. He would listen, and he would feel, and he would find his other. He had to. He had to.
“You do not bear a symbol.”
They stayed crouched on top of a dome near the Palace of the Fine Arts, more or less letting their new acquaintance use them as some kind of host-radar. The symbiote had felt an inkling of its host, this other Eddie Brock, who had two middle names and a backstory that made Eddie’s head spin.
But at least it was distracting him from the fact that he hated being up this high.
“What? Why would we have a symbol? What kind of symbol?”
It spread over them then, the silvery veins disappearing into smooth black, and a stark white spider-like symbol blossomed across their chest. From the way the other spread itself into their back, they felt it mirrored there as well.
“From my first human host. At first it was… as a mockery, but we made it our own.” The excess biomass disappeared, leaving them in their usual form. “A woman bore it before him, and from what we know of her, she has carried on a proud and noble legacy. Thus we have seen no reason to change it since our initial bonding.”
Proud and noble, huh? Somewhere in the space between himself and Venom, Eddie contemplated this. The symbiote stated it had indeed bonded to a number of hosts, maybe close to a dozen. Most for not very long, some for only a few minutes, though five had stood out as significant. It only spoke of its own Eddie, but at least one other it chose not to disclose much about seemed on its mind as well. It closed itself off, though, like some deep-seated fear of rejection still haunted it.
“What did you and your host actually do?”
“We saved the world but doomed each other.”
Eddie sought to probe further, but the symbiote had all but walled itself off. When he gave a mental probe to Venom, it all but told him to can it. Well that’s dramatic.
“If you treated the bond as the sacred joining it is, perhaps you would not mock it so.”
“Shouldn’t you be looking for your host?”
Only Eddie’s fear of heights prevented him from just wiggling free from Venom and fleeing a quickly escalating situation. Certainly he had experience with symbiotes taking swipes at each other – Venom and Riot; Venom and Carnage – but this one seemed borderline disdainful. Eddie happened to think he and Venom were a pretty good team.
“…he is here!”
Before either could protest, the symbiote had seized control just long enough to leap from the tower. It spun a line of tendrils out at a lightpost like a grappling hook, grabbed on tight, and swung down in a graceful arc. It repeated the motion twice more, instead ziplining forward, before it took them all down to the street level.
As soon as it ceded control, Eddie and his own partner practically fell face-first into the bricks that made up the plaza. When Venom sank back in, he looked up and saw a mirror image – not of himself, but of Venom.
Just… some other Venom.
Eddie made it almost all the way to the far east side of the Marina District before he felt a twinge in the back of his mind. He followed that twinge like a magnet, breaking into a run as soon as he was off the bus and headed straight for the Palace of the Fine Arts. His eyes prickled at the corners, and he shook them off. He pleaded silently that it wasn’t just wishful thinking; that his other really was the one pulling him closer.
He raced off across the plaza, and sure enough, cutting against the city lights like a shadow was a huge, dark shape. He couldn’t help it; he grinned, relieved and elated, when he recognized the elegant way they swung before ziplining to the ground. Eddie dropped his messenger bag to the ground and rushed to meet the figure, heedless of who it might actually be, because he knew, he knew that somewhere in there was his other.
Tendrils swirled off in a mass, straining towards him, and he welcomed them with open arms. They crashed into him so hard it knocked him back, a thousand emotions beyond all words coalescing into a single phrase:
I missed you. I missed us.
When two became one, the symbiote all but shredded his borrowed clothing, wrapping him in its embrace. Their whole being breathed and beat as one, and how he regretted putting his other in harm’s way, his need to prove himself greater than sense or heart. It did not begrudge him, no; it understood. But they would not allow themselves to be torn apart like that again. They would heal from this, as they sought to heal from all things in their past, but for right now, everything was right with their world.
“A-hem .”
Or at least it would be, once they got back to it.
The other Venom towered over them by at least a couple feet. They seemed bulkier; more monstrous in a way that reminded Eddie of Gargan. The thought soured their collective mood and they frowned up at their counterpart.
“You’re welcome.”
“They did assist me in finding you; provided me a place to stay while I was trapped here without you for some time.”
It still caught him slightly off-guard to hear the symbiote so clearly. They’d barely had time to register the change from reconnecting to the Hive before running off to slay the Grendel… and were then kidnapped by the Maker. Fine. With a thought and a seamless transition, Venom faded away, leaving only Eddie in street clothes. “Thank you for saving my other.” Eddie about-faced to go grab his discarded messenger bag that was also his only way home. “Goodbye.”
A horrible squelching sound moments later caught his attention. “You mean that’s it?!”
He stopped with a sigh and looked over his shoulder. His brunet counterpart threw his hands up in seeming disbelief. Eddie tossed his bag over his shoulder and rechecked the temporal device Dr. Richards given him. Still about eighteen hours to go…
“You can’t tell me you’re not at least a little curious about me.”
“I have had… a very long few days.”
“So, what, you’re just going to go back to the fucked up world you and your ‘other’ are from?” His expression turned sardonic. “Yeah, picked up enough from your symbiote to know it’s not exactly paradise.”
Eddie sighed. “I have... more than twelve hours before we can return home.”
“So, you’re not going anywhere. Where are you even sleeping tonight?”
“I… was just going to-”
“You have no idea, do you?” His counterpart fished out a cell phone from his pocket. “Hold on, we have a couple friends… could probably sleep on their couch…”
We probably have enough for a motel.
“Or we could accept assistance?”
Over by his counterpart, he saw the other symbiote snake its head out to eye them. He was liking this idea less and less, but…
“Who are your friends?”
“You should ask if Anne and Dan exist in his world.”
No. That’s weird. I’m not asking if he has the same ex as me and if she’s even his ex there. Maybe they got back together! He might even be married!
“Coward.”
For the first time since they had approached Anne’s apartment – Eddie on his motorcycle and the other (who Eddie had started thinking of as “Edward”) following silently from the rooftops – Edward spoke.
“How did you two… come to be?”
Eddie punched in the building code and shrugged. “Was doing a story, broke into a lab, touched something I shouldn’t have. Pretty soon I was saving the world from an alien invasion force with my new favorite parasite.”
Edward flinched at that. “You shouldn’t call it that.”
“It’s a term of endear- why are you two so sensitive about that?”
“You really don’t know anything about your partner, do you?” He stood maybe a couple inches taller than Eddie, but Edward’s presence had the distinctive impression of looming. As Venom, they weren’t much larger than Edward on his own, but he was a big man and it probably wasn’t necessary. “Whose apartment are we at, anyways?”
“I told you, just a couple old friends. They probably don’t even exist in your world.” Eddie started up the stairs, looking back only to make sure that Edward was still at his heels. “Your symbiote told us that you two got together over a… an ex?”
“A mutual enemy,” he practically growled in response.
“Right, right; its first human host.”
“It was complicated.”
“Exes usually are.”
“He wasn’t our ex!”
Eddie didn’t need to turn around to know that it was probably Venom snarling at him. He put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I’m only saying, doesn’t seem like the most stable basis for a relationship.”
“You don’t know the first thing about us.”
They climbed the next couple flights in silence before turning down the hallway. “I already talked to Dan, he just got back from a conference but he’s a bleeding heart for a lost cause and I’m pretty sure Annie won’t fight him on this.”
“…A…Annie?”
“Like I said earlier, you probably don’t know either of them.” He fished out a key, which was “for emergencies”, but sometimes that meant “Venom just really wanted to be around Dan to talk about spinal columns or some shit” or “a series of events that resulted in all three (four) of us waking up in bed together the next morning”. He tried not to think about it too much. He gave a couple knocks before he turned the deadbolt. “Annie, you home? But I suppose if you’re home that’s stupid to call out, but I figured Dan already told you I was bringing my…”
The door swung open. Anne was down to her blouse and pencil skirt, heels probably in her impeccable wardrobe and contacts swapped out for glasses. The apartment was cozy-looking, with a few warm touches that were undoubtedly Dan’s influence and Chinese takeout on the breakfast bar in the kitchen.
“…cousin.”
“Eddie? Something’s wrong with-”
Not now, Venom.
Anne’s eyes searched over his shoulder. “What cousin?”
“What do you mean? He’s right…” Eddie reached behind him for his counterpart and found only air. Down the hall, the stairway door slammed shut. “I’ll be right back.”
He rushed away, leaving her at the open door, and dashed after Edward. As soon as he passed the doorway to the stairs though, Edward – or rather some half-Venom, half-Edward amalgam – grabbed him by the front of his shirt and slammed him up against the wall.
“You didn’t tell us we were going to see Anne Weying!”
“Release him immediately!” Venom snarled, tendrils whipping out to strike the other pair.
“Venom, calm- how was I supposed to know you knew her?!”
“She died in our universe! We tried to blame Spider-Man for her death too, but it was my fault, I drove her to it, and just before we thought we had moved on, you bring us right to her! Do you want your Anne to die, as well?!”
The symbiote had faded almost entirely from Edward’s face and hands, even his manufactured clothing appearing patchy in places. Eddie backed up against a wall, speechless. The other’s blue eyes seemed to burn with inexplicable anguish, specked with black in a way that made it seem more than ever that the two were one.
And standing at the open stairwell door were Anne Weying and Dr. Daniel Lewis. The heavy bat in Anne’s hand dropped to the ground with a clank. Dan, ever the emotional rock, leaned down to pick it up and put the other hand on Anne’s shoulder.
“M…maybe we should all… get out of the stairwell.”
Ten minutes later they all sat in the living room area, Eddie keeping his eyes trained on his lap. His pulse still pounded in his head, and only the symbiote wrapped around his hands kept him grounded. Dan and Annie sat on the adjacent loveseat, his counterpart sitting on an ottoman, the other symbiote glaring at them through narrowed eyespots.
He’d just given the lot of them a brief explanation of all that had happened – the fight against Knull; the Maker’s machines; his own journey here to find his other. He had to assume based on what his other had told him about this Venom’s journey involving everything from the corrupted colony to Carnage that the two humans had been on this path with them.
Every time he looked up at her, he tried to focus on the differences. Her face was a little narrower, her glasses not as wide as the type Anne liked, and her hair longer than the Anne he had ever known. Still, he recognized the smart, penetrating gaze; even the way she looked at her own Eddie with some mix of fondness and exasperation. She had a way about her that was unmistakably Anne Weying, without any of the haunted gaze she’d so often had around him.
It broke him every time he thought of the sheer terror in her eyes right before she had-
“Um, Eddie?”
He and the other both looked to the doctor he’d been introduced to as “Dan”.
“Uh, not you, Eddie, other Eddie-”
“What.”
He blanched. “I was just going to mention that it’s… very interesting that despite being essentially the same person, between our worlds – that still boggles the mind, but I suppose after the last year I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Eddie and Venom-”
Eddie lifted his eyebrows. He half-expected some indication of sarcasm, but no, Dan was being entirely serious.
“-I should be used to such strange things. But, on my original point, there are so many things that went differently. You’re originally from the City, Eddie is originally from New York; Eddie went from television to print, and you are…”
“Between jobs,” he grumbled, thinking for a moment of his struggling position at the Fact Channel and his failed freelancing.
“I was just wondering… could I possibly..?”
For the first time, Annie smiled. “He wants to meet your symbiote.”
“…you what?”
“It’s grumpy,” their Eddie said.
"Eddie.”
Yes, love?
“I would not mind meeting him.”
…all right. He stroked the tendrils still twined around his hand before stretching his arm towards the strange but kind doctor. He saw even just after this brief time what had drawn Annie to him. Once or twice, he thought he saw a strange glance between Dan and his own counterpart, but that was surely just his imagination. Then again, this Eddie did still have a key to their apartment… and both their phone numbers…
His other snaked out towards Dan, forming a head and eyespots. Dan gave a delighted little gasp and reached out closer. “If… if I may?” At the symbiote’s consent and Eddie’s subsequent nod, he brushed the back of his fingers over the symbiote’s head. “Oh… it’s soft! Or, I’m sorry, should I use ‘they’ or ‘he’ or..?”
“‘It’ is adequate,” Eddie said.
“Does it speak?”
“I…” He hesitated. “It did, once.” He felt his face burn at the admission. Eddie did not care to think of the fact so often.
The symbiote’s voice came softly in his mind, bearing no ill will for circumstances that were no fault of either of them nor any other host it had respected. “It can be re-learned, Eddie.”
He cleared his throat. “We were apart for a long while. But we found each other. We are learning each other again.”
Dan didn’t take his eyes off the symbiote, instead continuing to gaze even as he nodded in response to Eddie. “It’s a relationship, isn’t it? Just like with our Eddie and Venom.” The aforementioned man scoffed but couldn’t help the smile when Venom grinned at him.
“I’m sorry about what happened to your Anne,” Annie said. “I’ve bonded with Venom, myself. I know it can be overwhelming.” She shook her head. “But you don’t know everything that happened.” Eddie started to cut in, but she put her hand up. “I know, I don’t know, either, but I’m certain you have other people in your life who care about you, and maybe the symbiote, too.” She crossed her legs and put an arm over Dan’s shoulders. “Everyone has friends.”
“Even a loser like Eddie,” Venom piped up. When its host batted at it, Venom bumped up affectionately against his face.
“Love you, too. Slimy parasite.”
“Hairless primate.”
Eddie couldn’t help but smile a little. Maybe it was watching the two of them tease each other so casually, hiding some deeper feeling they probably hadn’t even started to scratch the surface of. Maybe it was the way Dan continued to stroke his other gently, marveling at its alien beauty. Maybe it was seeing Annie gaze at his counterpart, Venom, and Dan with such… happiness. It wasn’t his Anne, no, but he liked seeing her happy.
At least somewhere in all of existence, Eddie Brock hadn’t fucked over everyone he met.
After a while of trading stories and even a few laughs over now-empty pints of Chinese food, Annie and Dan had excused themselves to bed. Edward had offered to help clean up while Eddie tracked down a spare pillow and blanket. Eddie came back to find the other man wiping down the countertops in the kitchen. “Found you a blanket and pillow. Hope the couch is okay.”
“I’ve had much worse.”
Eddie stood there holding the blanket and pillow until Edward tossed the paper towel into the wastebin. “I didn’t know, really. About Anne.”
His shoulders stiffened.
“They really are the two people I trust most. Aside from, you know, the obvious.”
“That’s… good, though.” Edward leaned forward on the counter, eyes locked on its surface. “I don’t have many people I trust. My other and I even had issues.” He took the items from Eddie and crossed to the couch. “Eddie, what you and Venom have, it takes work to keep it that good. I envy you and what you have. Stability. Friends. A home.”
“Come on, you can’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve been through a lot.”
“But that’s not the point! You told me yourself; you had the same issues at the Globe, but you still got past it. You didn’t go on some half-cocked revenge quest. The first thing you and Venom did was saved the goddamn world!”
“But I couldn’t have done that alone!” Eddie took a seat next to him, gesturing towards the main bedroom down the hall. “If it wasn’t for Dan and Annie, the whole planet would probably have been overrun by Riot and the jackass he crawled up the ass of.” He shook his head. “I get it, I’m new to this whole bond thing and I’m probably not doing it right or whatever, but I can’t go at this alone. We can’t go at this alone. There’s no way you could, either.”
His partner snaked its head out. Venom still seemed a bit cold towards the two, but its voice came softly. “Let me see your partner. But you should hear this as well.” Once the other symbiote had made its presence apparent, Venom twined around Eddie and hovered just over its older self. “If you come from the same place as me, you know our people can be ruthless. You know that our bonds, though imperfect, are unlike most any other.”
The other symbiote stretched out a tendril and gently set it upon Venom’s surface. It existed as just the barest surface connection, just enough so they could all communicate:
"I know it is. You are fortunate that your time with your host has been so rewarding. There were many times I did not honor the bond, with Eddie and with others. But it took being joined to another to bring me back to what was most important – our connections not only to our hosts, but to all those we come into contact with.
"I do not regret my journey, even when it has taken me away from Eddie. But I hope that you never have to endure such trials as I did. I was perhaps wrong to criticize your bond. Time can create bitterness.” A pulse of sadness; of regret and longing. “I only hope to re-instill that same trust in my own bond as you have in yours. Perhaps Eddie and I can both learn something about welcoming others into our lives."
“Well… Daniel and Annie are very good bedmates.”
Eddie turned beet red. Edward looked like his eyes were going to pop out of his head. Eddie forced a laugh and thanked whatever deities were out there the second that the other symbiote broke their four-way connection. “He’s kidding! He’s- you are such a jokester, V, let’s let them get to bed.”
“It does help us all get along.”
“I am so sorry, you know how English doesn’t translate.”
“It translates just fine, you pu…pathetic human.”
Even as they rushed away, though, he swore he saw Edward smile and mutter, “Don’t get any ideas, darling.”
The next day, Eddie’s counterpart and his friends chose to accompany him and the symbiote back to the place where they would take a portal back home. They stood in an alley, Eddie with an eye on the temporal device from Dr. Richards, the other laughing with his Anne about certain culinary choices Eddie hoped they were only joking about.
“Oh, Eddie, before you two leave, Anne and I grabbed something for you both.” Dan took from his bag a large wrapped rectangle. “It’s a guess, but we were hoping that your symbiote and Venom have at least this much in common.”
Eddie unwrapped the package and… He laughed when he pulled out a massive chocolate bar. “If it’s a guess, it’s a very lucky one.”
"Dark chocolate!”
“Yes, dear, he’s very perceptive…” He smiled warmly at Dan. “Thank you, both. We love it.” Tendrils had already leaked out to start unwrapping it. Eddie stuffed it deeper in his bag as if that would stop his other from consuming it altogether. “We’ll eat it when we get home.”
Eddie’s counterpart glanced at his watch. “Should be getting close now, shouldn’t it?”
“Yes, and we only have a five-minute window.”
“It’s been a strange pleasure meeting you,” Dan said, offering his hand. Eddie took it, and held it just a moment longer than was probably necessary. After a beat, Dan seemed to give up on the handshake and embraced him. It was brief, but still sent a weird warming sensation through his body.
“The pleasure was all mine, Dr. Lewis. You remind me of someone I know on the other end of this portal.”
“A good man, I hope?”
Eddie smiled at the thought of the Fantastic Four’s leader. “The very best.”
“Hey, Eddie…” Annie opened her arms in a welcoming gesture. “Come on. I know you need one.”
He almost decided against it, but after a second, he wrapped his arms around her. Her hand caressed the back of his neck, lithe but strong, just like she was in every reality. Tears sprang to the corners of his eyes but he was quick to blink them away. She didn’t let him go quite so quickly, though.
“Take care of yourself, okay? If there’s anything I know about men named ‘Eddie Brock’, it’s that they’re absolute disasters.”
He nodded against where his chin rested on her head. His breath shook as he pulled away and finally faced… Eddie Brock. Eddie put his hand out, but his counterpart instead pulled him into a hug.
“Remember what I said. Don't go at it alone.”
“We will.”
When Eddie stepped back, it was as Venom. They fished out the activator and gestured for the lot of them to give them a little space. With the push of a button, a portal swirled into view. They took one last look at their new acquaintances and stepped through, homeward bound.
They stepped out the other side into the Fantastic Four’s laboratory, greeted first by Dr. Richards. He grasped their arm to steady them upon their re-entry, and though his elasticity served as an unwelcome reminder of the Maker, Richards’ warm smile put them at ease. Anyone who didn’t wear a bucket on their head was probably kinder than their alternate who did.
“It’s good to see you both made it back in one piece.”
“Thanks to you, Mister Fantastic.”
“Only doing my job.” He powered down the portal and motioned for them to follow. “I hope you have a moment. Your friend came back after dropping off young Andrea, and refused to leave until you were both home safely.” Richards chuckled. “I had no idea you both had such a history with Eugene. All things considered, though, he still spoke highly of the both of you.”
Venom faded away, leaving Eddie to blink at the hero in bewilderment. “He did?”
Sure enough, crashed on the couch in a waiting area was Flash Thompson. His hair was rumpled and unwashed; a manual wheelchair parked nearby. The trickle of warm happiness he felt from the symbiote told him that it had probably witnessed its old host like this many times. Something tugged at his heart, and for once, he couldn’t say it was entirely the symbiote.
"Eddie, may I..?”
Its longing hurt, just a little. “Of course.”
It snaked out away from him as they approached, brushing over its friend’s cheek. Thompson stirred awake, but as he opened his eyes, he smiled brightly and sat up so quickly he almost lost his balance. “V! You’re back! You’re okay!” When enough of the symbiote had poured itself out, Thompson gathered as much as he could into his arms with a tight embrace that made Eddie feel warm all over. “But that means-?”
“Hey, Thompson.”
Flash faltered, but then loosened his grip on the symbiote. “Brock! You’re… you’re okay, too!” He rubbed the back of his neck, a little self-conscious. “I mean, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about you, too; at least a little bit. I’ve done a lot, but I haven’t crossed universe-jumping off my list.” After a beat, he flushed. “Well, get over here! You gonna make me get into my wheelchair just to give you a hug?”
Eddie started to say something, but an insistent tendril tugged on his wrist, urging him closer. He relented and sat down next to Thompson, who in the next moment pulled him into a tight embrace, the symbiote following suit, wrapping the three of them in a hug.
Somehow, it felt right. Maybe the other Eddie had been right about not going at things alone. Maybe it was good to have… friends.
Even if they came from odd places.