Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rock bottom tastes a lot like a sixty-cent packet of lukewarm chicken soup garnished with a fine layer of dirt.

Eddie doesn’t even like chicken soup - it reminds him too much of being sick. He’s sick a lot now, too. He’s had the same cough stuck in his chest for at least a month. It gets cold in San Francisco at night.

Fuck, he misses his electric blanket. Hot water. His bed. He misses a lot of things, really.

The weather’s not so bad tonight, which is a small reprieve that he doesn’t take lightly. He’s running thin on supplies, and he’s tired of skulking around back streets and alleys while he wrestles with his pride over whether he can really stomach sitting street-side with a cardboard sign today.

(Eddie never understand how hard it could be to choose between your pride and your need to eat until he wound up here himself. It’s a wretched thing he wouldn’t wish on anybody.)

He’s got some change left though, so Eddie decides to take a raincheck on panhandling for the day. He pretends he’s just making the logical choice; his stinging moral compass is not fooled.

Mrs. Chen doesn’t look surprised to see him when he shoulders through the door to the shop, although there’s a distinct lack of enthusiasm on her lined face. “Eddie,” she says. “You’re looking like shit.”

“Yeah, Mrs. Chen. So you tell me every time.”

She makes an annoyed noise and waves him into the store. “Close the door behind you before you let the warm air out.”

Eddie does, taking comfort in the familiar ring of the bell, and disappears off into the aisles before she can corner him into a status report. Her concern, while appreciated, tends to rub the rawness of his wounds in all the wrong ways.

It takes him a good several minutes to pick out what he wants. It didn’t used to. Eddie keenly remembers throwing a half dozen things into the cradle of his arms without even considering the contents of his bank account. Now, he pauses and considers. Weighs up the soap (the homeless shelter two blocks over has soap, but the smell reminds him of a hospital) against a packet of cookies (more expensive than is justifiable, but Eddie’s poor sweet tooth has gone through enough neglect).

He grabs a corned beef sandwich from the deli, adds it to the haul, and shuffles to the counter. Mrs. Chen watches him upend his haul on the counter expressionlessly. “How much money do you have, Eddie?”

He has - Eddie pauses to check his pockets - exactly six dollars and twenty-three cents, excluding the small fortune (a hundred and twenty bucks) buried under the shitty landscaping outside his old apartment building.

(Eddie’s master plan is to scrape together enough to buy a half decent camera so he can just film his own damn show. He already has the single good suit that he salvaged from the trash bags his former landlord emptied the worldly remains of his apartment into. He uses it for the occasional interview that always inevitably flops when they realize yeah, he’s that Eddie Brock.

In Eddie’s head, his self-produced show takes the world by storm. He makes a cool million in the first month, and his boss begs him to come back.

In reality, Eddie knows it’s unlikely a homeless man ranting at a mediocre camera is going to generate anything more than a hundred unfunny gifs and maybe a cruel meme or two.)

Eddie offers Mrs. Chen his most charming smile. “Maybe just the sandwich.”

The weight of her unimpressed glare could level a mountain. She packs the lot into a bag without even glancing at prices.

“Mrs. Chen -.”

“Oh, for god’s sake, just take it,” she says, thrusting the bag into his hands. “It’s nothing compared to what you stopped that -” a word in Mandarin that he doesn’t recognize but makes him flinch all the same “- from making off with the other day.”

‘Stopped’ is perhaps too generous of a phrase for what had really happened. “I didn’t really do anything,” Eddie says awkwardly. “He just beat the shit out of me and ran off when he heard the sirens.”

His ribs still hurt from that. He’s starting to think they might always.

“And left my till alone,” Mrs. Chane says. “Now take the damn bag.”

“I don’t need charity -.”

“Eddie.”

Eddie takes the damn bag and slinks out of the shop with as much of his tattered pride as he can muster.

He eats the sandwich sitting on the curb. Afterwards he’s still hungry, so he eats half a pack of cookies too. It doesn’t whet his appetite so much as remind him of its constant existence.

How did I wind up like? Eddie thinks wistfully as he packs his things back into the flimsy plastic bag. How the ever-loving fuck did I get here?

He shuffles off down the street, taking care to drop his empty sandwich wrapper in a garbage can as he passes. Vagrancy is no excuse for delinquency, after all.

Maria is waiting on the corner atop her throne of blankets, just as she usually is. “Hey there, handsome,” she says as Eddie sinks down on the pavement beside her. “You got anything to share in that wonderful bag of yours?”

Eddie obediently hands over the last of the cookies. Maria accepts them, but her enthusiasm dims when she reads the package.

“Raisins. Really, Eddie?”

Eddie shrugs, digging his hands into the warmth of his hoodie. “They’re healthy.”

Maria snorts. “We’re not gonna make it another ten years anyway. Who cares about health?”

“Maria,” Eddie sighs.

“What? It’s the truth, ain’t it? You used to be a big hot-shot reporter. You did a piece on us all. What did your pretty little statistics have to say about that?”

Eddie doesn’t know what to say. She’s not wrong - he knows she’s not wrong. Doesn’t mean he has to like it. “Eat the damn cookies, Maria.”

Maria scoffs at him, shaking the packet open. “Homelessness sure made you fussy, Eddie.”

“I’m not fussy,” Eddie says. “I’m sharing. Like the good, honest soul my mother raised me to be.” Maria’s eyes crinkle and she smiles at him with crumbs caught in her teeth. Eddie can’t help but feel inexpressibly fond. “Anybody ever tell you you’ve got a gorgeous smile, Maria?”

She laughs at him. “Sure, back when I brushed my teeth more than twice a week. Nice trice, honey.” She passes him back the packet of cookies. Eddie is strangely disheartened to notice she’d only eaten one or two. She’s getting thin in the face, and Eddie worries how well she’s going to cope when the winter rolls in.

“Sure I can’t interest you in more?”

“I know damn well I got more money than you do,” she says. “Feed yourself first, then worry about the rest of us.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Fuck off,” Maria says cheerfully, riffling through one of the many bags by her side. “I think I’ve had enough of your company for now. Life was better when I only saw you once a week, and you’d give me twenty bucks just for sitting here.”

“Your affection wounds me, Maria.”

Maria pulls what looks like a half-knitted scarf from the bag. The yarn is a little grubby, but the knitting needles it’s looped around are well cared for. One of the first things Eddie ever learnt from her was that she knitted almost all her blankets. Sometimes, she sells them on the street, and Eddie wishes she wouldn’t even though he understands the necessity of it.

Maria’s craft is worth more than fifty bucks and a half-hearted thank you.

“Alright, alright,” Eddie groans, levering himself back off the ground. “You gonna be okay out here tonight?”

“Worry about yourself,” Maria says, not looking up from her knitting. “Nobody’s seen Isaac in a few months or so now. Doesn’t he sleep out in the same place you do? All sorts of crazy rumours going about.”

Eddie pauses and glances back, frowning. “What sort of rumours?”

Maria loops the wool more firmly around her bony fingers. “Heard somebody say that folks goin’ around offering good money to anyone who’ll participate in some clinical trial.”

Eddie’s heart sinks. Victorious nostalgia tastes bittersweet on the back of his tongue. “Did they say who was offering?”

Maria shakes her head. “Just that they were.” Expertly, she finishes one row of stitching and starts in on the next. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, mind whirling. “Please do.”

.

In general, Eddie does his best to avoid sleeping in the streets. It’s too… public. Too upsetting.

Sometimes, when Mrs. Chen is feeling generous and Eddie is feeling crap enough to ask for it, she lets him sleep in the back room. It’s an enormous show of trust that Eddie can never quite wrap his head around, and he does his best not to take it for granted or to abuse the privilege. These days, he’s saving up all his good will for when the weather turns.

When he’s not at Mrs. Chen’s, he tends to sleep in the park. It’s not comfortable or private, that’s for sure, and the streetlamps are hell on his eyes, but it’s… it’s something.

Eddie’s favourite bench is past the countless twisting turns of the path and hidden behind the large bulk of the trees. More than once Eddie’s walked in on a drug deal, but over the past couple of months he’s well and truly perfected his ‘I ain’t seen nothing’ expression, and he rarely runs into any sort of trouble.

Today, the area is blissfully empty. With a groan, Eddie drops his bag under the bench. It looks as cold and uninviting as always, but Eddie doesn’t take it to heart. They’ve had a lot of good times together, and Eddie’s learnt to look past its flaws.

It takes some wiggling to get into a decent position that doesn’t immediately make his back feel as if it’s been set alight, but eventually he manages. The trick, he’s found, is to pretend like he’s planning on being here for five minutes and not five hours. If he can just convince his body that it doesn’t really need to be comfortable, then he’s home free.

(Home free. The irony in that phrase is enough to kill a man.)

Above him, the far-reaching branches of the trees offer a framed view of the night sky. He can almost see the stars out here. Sometimes, he tries to convince himself that that alone is worth all the shit he’s been through.

(it hasn’t worked yet, but Eddie lives in optimism.)

He savours the view for a moment that stretches beyond counting and then, when he’s finally managed to calm the anxious spike in his pulse that always come from roughing it out here like this, he closes his eyes.

Sleep does not come quickly, but it comes.

Unsurprisingly, Eddie dreams of Drake.

It’s not the first time, and he doubts it’ll be his last. Trauma’s funny like that. For all that he’d only had a good ten minutes of personal interaction with him, his head and his heart have latched onto the pain and fury that keeps him warm even in the coldest of moments.

In the dream, he’s sitting in a room. It’s empty and cobblestoned. A bit how he images an old-fashioned dungeon might look. There are shackles on his wrists and at his ankles, and in his hands he holds a heavy news camera.

Across the room is a window. Drake stands on the other side. Every time Eddie tries to lift the camera it grows heavier and heavier - and, as he watches, the window begins to shrink.

As far as his subconscious goes it’s not clever or deep but it gets the job done.

C’mon, dream-Eddie thinks deliriously as the camera turns to lead in his clumsy fingers. I just need to get one good shot - one good shot and I’m -

Eddie wakes up sweaty and confused. The bright lights of the streetlamps cause spots to cloud his eyes. The bench beneath his back hurts like a bitch.

The park, Eddie thinks breathlessly. You’re in the park where you sleep most nights. You’re homeless and sad but you’re alive. You’re alive. Drake isn’t here.

Eddie sits up slowly. His shoulders protest loudly and the sharp knife-edge of pain in his side flares. He winces, pressing at it with one hand and sullenly regrets ever trying to be a hero and stop Mrs. Chen’s robber.

For a moment, he allows himself to just … sit.

Breathe in - you’re fine - breath out.

It’s a good strategy, too. Eddie feels himself calming down in small increments, the tight tension in his lungs easing and the pain shifting from intense to tolerable.

Eddie hears the approaching footsteps before he sees the looming shadow. He glances up sharply, shoulders stiff, and meets a pair of soft, dark eyes. For a moment, he thinks he’s still in his nightmare.

“Good evening,” Drake says, and doesn’t even have the gall to sound like he’s surprised. He’s dressed in a suit that probably costs more than Eddie’s rent ever did, and his hands are tucked lightly in his pocket. He looks completely at ease, like going for a midnight stroll in the dark edges of San Francisco's parks is just a personal hobby. “What a pleasure to see you.”

Eddie is keenly aware that he looks - in the ever-loving words or Mrs. Chen - like shit. “Wow, looks like the prince has come down to visit the common people after all. Whoever would have thought?”

Drake’s smile is deceptively pleasant. Eddie knows better than to buy it. Now that he’s aware of what to look for it, he can see the cold steel of Drake’s spine easily. “I’d have thought petty retorts were beneath a man of your qualifications.”

Eddie snorts and holds out his arms, gesturing to the park around them. “I haven’t got much in the way of qualifications anymore. You made sure of that.”

“I heard about your situation,” Drake says. “It’s very unfortunate. You’re a very capable reporter, Mr. Brock.”

Eddie gets to his feet, crowding closer. Drake does not back away, obediently tilting his head to keep eye contact. Eddie wishes the difference in their builds allowed him to feel as if he had the upper hand. It does not. Mostly, he feels slimy and unclean being this near him, which is rich coming from a man who hasn’t had a proper shower in at least three days.

“I didn’t just lose my job because of you,” he says. “I lost my fiancé, my house, my reputation - my life.”

“Come now, Eddie,” Drake says, as if Eddie has ever invited him to the privilege of his given name. “You and I both know that’s on you more than it is me. Nobody is immune to consequences. Don’t you think it’s time that you face yours?”

Eddie barks out a harsh laugh. “Are you serious? I’m sleeping on a park bench, asshole. And you think I’m not facing my consequences?”

“I think -.”

Eddie holds up a hand and, miracle of miracles, Drake falls silent. Eddie takes the chance to discreetly shuffle back, putting distance between them. The dark, amused glimmer in Drake’s eyes tells him that he wasn’t nearly as subtle as he’d hoped to be. “What do you want, Drake?”

“Can’t I just be out for a nice stroll?”

“You could,” Eddie says, “but you’re not.”

The corner of Drake’s mouth twitches in a small smile. “Alright, perhaps I wanted to talk.”

“To gloat?”

“To extend you an offer,” Drake says, with all the suave charm of the rich and famous everywhere. “To make amends. I’d have come before now, but you can be a hard man to find.”

“Yeah, that comes with having no fixed address,” Eddie says without missing a beat. He pauses for a second, listening to the stillness of the park. There’s not even a faint breeze in the air, and it’s rubbing against his frazzled nerves something fierce. “What kind of offer?”

This time Drake’s smile is broader. “You’re a smart man, Eddie. I’m sure you can figure it out.”

“Not smart enough to know when to keep my mouth shut,” he says, but Drake doesn’t respond. Eddie hesitates, considers just turning on his heel and leaving. Let’s see how Drake deals with that; something tells Eddie that Drake’s experiences in humiliation and rejection are minimal at best. There’s nothing quite like the poor man rubbing the rich man’s attempted charity in his face to humble a person.

He knows he wouldn’t though. There’s not a bone in Eddie’s body that knows how to walk away from an offer like that. He’d have thought that after months without an audience, without even a pen to jot down his thoughts, that his investigative skills would have grown rusty with disuse.

They haven’t.

Eddie takes the bait. “You want me for a clinical trial.”

“It’s all perfectly ethical, I assure you,” Drake says. “As much as you’d love to have the world consider me a monster, I’m bound by the same red tape and legalities as anybody else.”

Eddie finds that hard to believe. “Why?”

“Consider it a selfish way to assuage my guilt,” Drake says blithely. “I know you won’t accept my charity, but I’d like to help you get back on your feet. Consider this a way to earn it.”

“Being a medical experimentation won’t restore my reputation.”

“Not a medical experimentation. Just… a temporary test subject. And yes, perhaps it won’t restore your reputation, but I can.”

Eddie’s skepticism is stronger than his burgeoning hope, but only just. “And why would you do that?”

“Must I have reasons for everything?” Drake’s exasperated impatience was finally starting to seep into his tone. “Just be sure that at the end of the experiment you’ll be - well, perhaps not wealthy, but you certainly won’t be living in squalor.”

“This is a public park. If you think this counts as squalor you should take it up with the council.”

“Is that a yes or no, Eddie?”

“Stop calling me that,” Eddie says. “And that depends; do I get more information?”

“Do you need it?”

“Will I get it if I do?”

Drake smiles affably. “Yes or no?”

Yes, Eddie thinks, mind raw with longing.

No, Eddie thinks, pride sharp and burning, suspicion thick enough to choke.

Drake reads his hesitation easily. “I can see that you need more time. That much I can give you.” He reaches out and picks up Eddie’s hand. Startled, Eddie goes to pull away, but Drake holds tight. A moment later, he presses a cheap burner phone into his palm. “When you decide, call the number in here. Somebody will be with you right away.”

Eddie snatches his hand back, fingers wrapped around the phone case like a lifeline. “Whatever you’re up to -.”

“Yes, you’ll find me. You’ll stop me.” Drake’s voice is as dry as a desert. “Consider, perhaps, how you plan on doing that in your current situation.”

Eddie gapes at him. “You -.”

Drake gives him a polite smile. “I look forward to hearing your response, Eddie. Enjoy the rest of your night.”

Drake goes, vanishing down the same path he appeared from with nothing more than the tap of his expensive Italian loafers on the pavement. Eddie watches as two shadows detach from the trees and fall into step behind him. Neither of the bodyguards so much as glance back at him.

Mind reeling, Eddie sinks back onto the bench, clutching the phone close.

What, he thinks, the ever-loving fuck?

Chapter Text

The phone Drake had left him does not come with a charger. The battery drains slowly, but it does drain, and Eddie keeps a half-frantic eye on it all the while. He’s long since memorized the lone number in the contacts list, but he’s no idiot.

He understands the implication here - Drake’s offer is a limited time only sort of offer.

Eddie does not call the first day. Instead, he finds Maria again.

“About Isaac,” he says.

Maria does not glance up from her knitting. It looks like a different project entirely than what she’d been working on the previous day. “What about him?”

“Did he tell you anything before he…” Eddie searches for a diplomatic word choice and finds none. “Disappeared?”

Maria shakes her head. “Not me,” she says. “We weren’t close. If he told anybody, it’d have been Geoff.”

“Geoff?”

“Lives in the alley between the Chinese place and the dry cleaners. Three blocks away.” Maria points with the blunt tip of a needle.

“Would he talk to me, do you think?”

“No,” Maria says without skipping a beat. “He went missing about a week ago, too.”

Patience is not a virtue that comes naturally to Eddie, but he fights for it all the same. “Is there anybody else I could talk to?”

Maria finally looks up and her eyes are deeply sympathetic. “Honey,” she says, “I know you’re new at this, but you know the number one rule out here; folks who run their mouths are folks that wind up dead in a dumpster.”

Eddie wants to press. He wants to keep Maria’s friendship more. “Alright,” he relents. “Just… if somebody asks if you want to participate in any sort of study, promise me you’ll say no.”

“Sorry, Eddie,” Maria says. “A girl’s got to eat.”

“They’re bad news,” he says. “Real bad news.”

Maria gives a broad grin. More than one of her teeth are chipped and it adds a sharp edge to it. “So is most things around here. What are they gonna do to me that’s any worse than what I’ve already got, Eddie?”

“Maria,” Eddie says, “please.”

She takes in the seriousness of his expression and her smile fades. “I’ll think about it,” she allows. “But not promises.”

Eddie leaves, hoping he’s done enough to keep her safe, at least from this - at least for now.

Eddie does not call the second day. The battery drops to 37%. He tries to find Geoff, but nobody he talks to can tell him anything new. The furtive look in more than one set of eyes tells him there’s some secrets being kept, but Eddie doesn’t know how to dig them out.

On the third day, he goes to see Maria again.

Her blankets are there, as are her bags. She is not. Eddie sits and waits and waits and waits. She does not arrive. Finally, Eddie allows himself to look in her bags. Her knitting needles are there, lonely and sad looking.

At the top is one of the scarves she was knitting. Attached to it is a note.

eddie. keep warm. stop being such a wimp.

Eddie sits for a moment, and then he gets to his feet, gathering together Maria’s things as carefully as he can. It’s a bit of an event, because she’s never been shy about spreading out all over the street corner, but he manages.

Mrs. Chen does not like impressed when he waddles through her door looking like a pack horse. He gives her a hopeful look.

“You realize I’m a convenience store not a charity, Eddie?”

“Maria’s gone, Mrs. Chen. I just want somewhere safe to keep her stuff until she comes back.”

Mrs. Chen purses her lips and looks over the top of her glasses. “Are you sure she’s coming back?”

Yes, Eddie wants to say, but his optimism has been worn thin by too many months of park benches and day-old sandwiches given to him at the grace of his only friend. He meets Mrs. Chen’s glare and doesn’t say anything at all.

A second passes. Two. She sighs, like Eddie has thrust the weight of the world upon her skinny shoulders. “Alright, put it in the back,” she says. “But it’s not staying there forever, you hear me, Eddie?”

“Yes, Mrs. Chen,” Eddie says. “Honestly, thank you -.”

“Go, Eddie.”

Eddie goes, scurrying into the backroom so quickly that he knocks over a toilet paper display with the bag swinging off his shoulder. Mrs. Chen curses after him, and Eddie closes the door in a hurry, cutting off her doubtlessly colourful Mandarin.

The backroom is tiny; half storage and half office. Eddie usually sleeps under the kitschy desk in the corner that has long since been buried by unpaid bills, and Eddie sacrifices the tiny strip of space for Maria’s bags, tucking them as far out of the way as he can.

It’s sad, he thinks, how Maria’s whole existence can be condensed to a two-by-two square of floorspace.

He leaves before sentimentality gets the best of him and finds Mrs. Chen righting the upset display right outside the door. She gives him a positively filthy look and opens her mouth. Chancing the last of her generosity, Eddie quickly says, “Could I get some change for the phone?”

“Edward Brock, you would test the Buddha’s own patience,” Mrs. Chen says, but she fetches him a handful of quarters and deposits him in the back corner next to a half-broken ATM and the rusty payphone that is likely older than her.

Eddie feeds the machine three quarters and punches in a number he knows like the back of his hand. It rings - rings, rings, rings. Then there’s a click and Anne says, “You’ve reached Anne Weying. Unfortunately, I’m not able to answer your call at the moment, but if you leave a number and a message I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

Eddie closes his eyes, grits his teeth, and forces back the overwhelming wave of bitter fondness that nearly knocks the breath out of him. For a second, he wonders if this is such a good idea; but he thinks of Maria’s empty street corner, of his lonely park bench, of Drake’s effervescent smile.

Good idea, probably not, but the only one Eddie’s got.

“Hey, Annie. I know you probably don’t want to hear from me, but I’m… I really don’t have anybody else.” Eddie pauses for a second, fingers tapping erratically on the benchtop. “You know how you were always telling me to behave before I got into all sorts of trouble? And you were usually were right? Yeah, I’m about to do something like that, but worse. I’m talking real fucking dumb here, Anne.”

Eddie hesitates. He wishes he’d written this down before hand, knew how to give her just enough information so she would know what to do if this all went to hell, but not enough to get her into any sort of trouble. It’s a delicate balance, and Eddie has never been a delicate sort of guy.

He hears a cough, and he glances over his shoulder to see a wrinkle-faced old man in a baseball cap waiting behind him. Eddie rolls his eyes and turns back to the phone.

“Just… if you don’t hear from me again at some point soon, assume something real bad happened - and that last argument we had? The big one that blew everything up? Assume I was right about that, too.”

The man behind him clears his throat again, and Eddie twists to shoot him a glare. It’s probably the week-old stubble on his face that makes him flinch rather than the look itself, but Eddie takes his victories where he can.

Turning back to the phone, he says, “I know I haven’t got the right to ask you for anything anymore, but I know you still… a part of you still cares, yeah? You’re good like that. If you wanted me dead, you’d do it yourself. Anne, Annie - just. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything. And I know you don’t wanna hear it, but it’s the truth. I hope you’re happy; be happy, even if this whole dumb thing falls down over my head and I wind up dead in the bottom of a landfill. I gotta do this, Anne, but please -.”

He’s cut off by a harsh beep that lets him know the message has hit recording capacity.

For a moment, Eddie considers calling back and leaving another, but his pocket full of change is rapidly diminishing. Besides, he has nothing left to say and he knows it. Anything else would be for selfish gratification.

Eddie hangs up. The abrupt click of the phone settling in the receiver is strangely final. Behind him the man mutters, “Fucking, finally.”

Eddie takes in a deep breath and leaves the store. Mrs. Chen gives him a confused look as he strides past, but she doesn’t stop him. Eddie is indescribably glad. He doesn’t know if he has the strength for more than one tentative goodbye in him.

He makes the damn call.

“Mr. Brock?” The voice on the other side of the line is peppy and utterly unsurprised to be hearing from him. For a moment, Eddie is a little stung that apparently he has not warranted a direct line to Drake himself, but the more logical part of him has to reluctantly admit that Drake probably has more important things to do than sit on his ass all day waiting for Eddie to call.

“Yeah,” Eddie says shortly. “You can tell Drake I’ll do it, so long as he keeps his word. I’m in.”

He can hear the faint click of a keyboard through the line. “A car is on the way to pick you up now. Is there anything else you require?”

So much for being a hard man to find. “There is,” Eddie says. “Tell your boss if I wind up dead in a landfill, the full weight of the American legal system is coming for him, and she fights ugly.”

Hanging up on her is petty but ultimately satisfying. Right now, Eddie is about to sign over the last of his limited power to the one man he hates more than anything on this earth - if all he has to left to him is petty victories, than he plans to make the most of it.

.

For an illicit research facility complicit in the deaths of countless innocents, the Life Foundation is… depressingly impressive.

Eddie has spent more than enough time watching it from the outside, nestled amongst the cliff faces with artful precisions. He’d been in once before, of course, and he remembers being guided through impressive hall after hall in a tightly regulated tour designed to show-off all the attractions made for the public's eye.

Not so today. Today, he’s met at the front door by a set of intimidating men and quickly hustled through the foyer towards the back. Nobody spares him so much as a glance, and Eddie is past the cheerful ‘STAFF ACCESS ONLY’ signs before he can blink.

The room they take him to is small and windowless, empty of anything but a desk and some chairs. Compared to the luster outside, it’s positively archaic.

“Cozy,” Eddie remarks.

“Take a seat,” says escort Number One, who manages to make it sound more like an order than a request. Eddie does, but he makes sure to be as obnoxious about it as possible. Their poorly concealed flinches as he drags his chair legs over the squeaky tiles is a balm to his soul.

“Mr. Drake will be with your shortly,” says escort Number Two, not sounding any more calming than his companion. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

They step outside before Eddie has the chance to make a snappy retort, and the door closes definitively behind them. Somehow, the room seems to be impossibly smaller. It’s just Eddie; alone in this tiny, windowless hellscape that is starting to look more and more like the  dungeon from his dreams with every passing moment.

What the hell am I doing here? Eddie thinks, suddenly dizzy with the weight of the unfamiliarity, the suspense. What the fuck am I doing?

The answer is, of course, what he always does; the best he damn well can.

Eddie takes a deep breath and he waits. And waits. And waits.

It’s such an obvious intimidation ploy that Eddie can’t help but be amused. He’s interviewed people far scarier than Drake in his time. He’d even done a piece on William Fisk once - and nothing out there had ever truly nailed the sheer aura the man emitted up close and personal.

(Granted, that piece had gotten him run out of New York, and nearly ruined his life, but it had been a valuable learning experience, that’s for sure.)

The difference, Eddie thinks, between Drake and Fisk comes down to confidence, a sense of a security.

People like Fisk didn’t need to make a show out of their power; they didn’t have anything left to prove. People like Drake, however, are too new at the game, too young; they have to push just to see what will give beneath their touch.

Arguably, that makes people like Drake far more dangerous. The unpredictability. The power-hungry drive to impress.

Eddie doesn't know how long he waits, but it’s long enough that he begins to nod off at the table. He’s startled back to awareness by the sharp sound of the door cracking open.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” Drake says, sweeping into the room. There’s a manila folder in his hands and he sets it on the table. Eddie blinks at it sleepily. “I’m pleased to see that you’ve decided to join us.”

“Yeah, well,” Eddie says, snagging the papers and dragging them closer. “You didn’t exactly leave me a lot of options, did you?”

Drake takes a seat, blatantly ignoring that last accusation. The smile he offers is light and pleasant. Charming, really. He finds Drake’s boyish professionalism far more sinister these days, and he wonders how he ever missed it.

“I have some documents here I’d like to go over,” Drake says. “We can have a lawyer present, if you’d like.”

Eddie doesn’t doubt that any lawyer Drake would provide would do their level best to steer him down the wrong path entirely.

“It’s fine,” Eddie says, already scanning line after line of legal jargon. Eddie was engaged to one of San Francisco's up-and-coming lawyers for over a year; Anne would never forgive him if he came out of it without a passable fluency in the language of American law.

Drake leans back in his chair. It doesn’t even have the gall to squeak beneath him. “Take your time. There’s no rush.”

Eddie snorts. “There’s a lot here,” he says. “An NDA? Really, Drake?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be much of a businessman if I let you take all our secrets to a rival, would I?”

“Yeah,” Eddie mutters, rubbing idly at his chin as he reads. “I’m sure its rival companies that you’re worried I’ll blab to.”

“Certainly, your journalism background warrants some caution, but rest assured, this is all standard paperwork.”

That doesn’t comfort Eddie in the slightest. The more he reads the more he gets the feeling he’s in over his head. There’s so much - too much. And most of it is more terrifying than he has the words to explain. He shuffles through the papers, plucking one at random.

“By signing the above form, you waive the right to sue the Life Foundation or any of its subsidiaries and holdings in the event of injuries sustained during the course of the experiment.” Eddie pauses for a second and finishes, “Up to and including death.”

Drake smile is pleasant and faintly terrifying. “A mere formality. Are you signing or shall I ask security to see you back out?”

Eddie thinks for a moment about saying no; about ripping up this dumb form and heading out the door where - where what? Where his favourite park bench was waiting? Where he had no home, no family, no life?

No, he was seeing this through. For his reputation; for the truth.

“Give me a damn pen,” he says, holding out a hand.

Drake looks almost impressed. Possibly he’d thought Eddie would have crumpled beneath the pressure. Possibly - most likely - he hadn’t thought Eddie was really this dumb.

Rookie mistake. It’s a safe bet that Eddie is at least twice as dumb as you expect him to be, and ten times as reckless. He was born without a sense of self preservation, and it had served him well as a reporter up until the precise moment it did not.

Drake passes him the pen. Eddie scribbles his name on one document, then two; three, four, five - until he’s lost count and Drake shuffles them all back into the folder with a smug, self-satisfied smirk.

“Welcome aboard, Eddie. I can’t wait to see what your contribution brings us.”

.

Afterwards, Eddie is ushered from one small room into another. He’s given a set of plain white clothes to change into it, and he does so gladly. His pride isn’t stronger than the temptation of clothing that he hasn’t been wearing for three days straight, and if Eddie’s going to really do this - and it looks like he really is - he might as well get something out of it.

Then he waits again, this time standing awkwardly in the middle of an empty changing room, rubbing his sweaty palms against his shirt and hoping that he doesn’t like as much like an idiot in this outfit as he feels.

This time, when somebody comes for him it’s not Drake.

“Eddie Brock? My name’s Doctor Skirth. I’ll be part of the team working with you.” She’s a mousy sort of woman with large glasses and an awkward smile. She shakes Eddie’s hand like he’s anything more than just another warm body to be tossed to and fro in the wake of Drake’s whims, and Eddie can’t help but be a little charmed.

“Good to meet you,” he says, which isn’t entirely true.

She looks as uncomfortable with his lie as he feels. “Yes,” she says. “Well. If you’ll come with me, we can get started?”

“Do I get to find out what this experiment is?”

Her mouth tightens. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Mr. Drake prefers for the participants to be as uninvolved as possible to… eliminate potential bias.”

“Potential bias. Right. Of course.” Eddie sighs, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “Well, lead the way, I guess. Just promise me that if Drake’s planning on having me kick the bucket, I’ll at least get a last meal, yeah?”

Skirth doesn’t say anything, for which Eddie can’t really blame her. He supposes when your boss is Carlton Drake, there’s not a lot you can say without incriminating the whole company in a whole web of bullshit.

Eddie’s armed escort is waiting for them just outside, and Eddie allows himself to be led through the corridors. Emerging into a broad room is a strangely disconcerting feeling. There are people here, more than Eddie has seen since he was whisked away into the bowels of this monstrosity.

He sees a large glass room, and an observation station before it, manned by scientists in crisp white coats. Drake stands beside them, watching Eddie approach with his hands neatly folded behind his back.

Behind him is more guards with their guns and perfectly blank expressions. It’s an awful lot of security for a research facility, that’s for sure, and inside his head Eddie is already waxing poetics about the inherent distrust of the Life Foundation.

“Didn’t know this was going to be a spectator event,” Eddie says. “I’d have dressed nicer otherwise.”

“They’re here for your safety, as well as our own,” Drake says, which is delightfully ominous. “Are you ready?”

“Do I get a say now?”

Drake glances to Eddie’s escorts. “See him in.”

The door to the glass room - cell, Eddie thinks, call it what it damn well is - opens. Eddie is frogmarched inside like they think he’s going to make a break for it at the first available opportunity. It does nothing for his shaky confidence.

They leave him several paces inside, and his escorts back out quickly. The door closes behind them, and Eddie is… not alone, he realizes with surprise.

From outside, he’d thought the cell was empty. But there’s a bench inside, and atop it is an intimidatingly large canister made of thick metal and plated glass. Eddie thinks he can see something inside it, but he’s too distracted to really check.

Behind him, Drake and his scientists watch with rapt attention. Eddie feels like a bug - perhaps smaller than a bug - crushed under the pressing weight of a microscope.

“If this is just a really poor assassination attempt, I swear to god.”

“I assure you, your death is not the goal,” Drake says smoothly. “Nothing would please me more than to see you come out of this alive, Eddie.” Then, to the operator on his left, “Open it.”

For a moment, Eddie is stupid enough to believe he means the door.

He does not mean the door. Across the tiny room, the heavy canister makes a clink followed by a faint hiss. As Eddie watches, it swings open.

Nothing happens. Cautiously, drawn by his curiosity, Eddie steps forward.

It is a mistake; of course it’s a mistake.

Something explodes out of the canister, black and fluid, flopping from the table to the floor and somehow not making a single sound along the way. For a second Eddie thinks it’s just moving too quickly for him to be able to get a solid read on it, but he quickly realizes there’s nothing there to get a solid read on.

“What,” Eddie says, stumbling backwards, “the fuck is that?”

Whatever it is, it’s heading straight for him with a determination that is positively frightening, webbing itself across the floor in sticky, gelatinous strands. Eddie’s back hits the glass. He can taste the rapid pounding of his pulse.

For a man who has built a life on the back of his command of words, Eddie finds himself incapable of even beginning to describe the thing; can only watch as it reaches out and snags ahold of his foot.

Idly, he’s surprised by how cool it feels, but he’s far too frightened dwell on it, can hardly squeeze a thought passed the whirlwind chaos of his mind.

“No, no, no. Get the fuck away from me.” He kicks out, trying to shake it off, but it merely climbs higher and higher, scaling him as easily as if he were its personalized ladder. In desperation, he reaches for it, tries to sink his hands into the pulsing mess, but he doesn’t get the chance.

The thing settles on his chests, shivers, and then - with Eddie watching in horror - it… dissolves. Not away, not to nothing - into him.

For a solid moment there, Eddie can’t do anything but gape like an idiot, hands resting atop his ribs where he can feel nothing but the cheap cotton of his shirt. It’d all happened so quickly - one minute? Less than? - and if it hadn’t been happening to him he might have thought he’d just hallucinated the whole thing.

“It worked,” Drake says, voice faintly crackling through the intercom. “Congratulations, Eddie. You’ve survived step one.”

Eddie almost starts. Impossible as it seems, he’d all but forgotten his audience. Hard to focus on anything but the awful, invasive feeling sweeping through him like a tsunami. Slowly, he turns to look through the glass.

Drake looks inordinately pleased, and more than a little surprised. Beside him, Doctor Skirth looks intensely relieved. Her hands are quivering, and when she realizes Eddie’s noticed she tucks them behind her back and out of sight. She meets his eyes for a second and then glances hurriedly away.

“What did you do to me?” Eddie asks. His voice is strangely raspy, and there’s a tremor chasing along his skin, shocking him like an electrical current.

“I suppose we’ll find out,” Drake says. “That’s the nature of experimentation, is it not?”

Eddie takes a deep breath and lets it out. He can’t tell if his ribcage feels tighter or if it’s just in his head. “What -.”

Doctor Skirth leans forward and cuts him off. “How are you feeling? No pain? Trouble breathing?”

“How am I feeling? Pissed off, mostly.”

“Mr. Brock, please.”

Eddie dearly wants to snap at her too, but he understands she’s doing her job. He scruffs a shaky hand through his hair and tries to take stock of himself as best as he can.

How does he feel? Scared. Confused. Close to puking from the adrenaline rush. Other than that, though, he feels… mostly fine.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Right now, I’m feeling okay, I guess.”

“Good,” Drake murmurs. “That’s really, very good. Thank you for your cooperation, Eddie.”

“I told you to stop calling me that,” Eddie says. “Just because I signed up to be your goddamn guinea pig doesn’t give you right to be getting all friendly.”

Drake ignores him, just as Eddie had known he would. He turns, speaking to the men behind him. “Move him to one of the containing cells; preferably one furthest from the other subjects. I think it would be to the benefit of us all if we gave Mr. Brock as little chance to use his silver tongue as we can.”

“You know I can still hear you, right?” Eddie asks.

Drake turns and gives him one of his perfectly pleasant smiles. “I have no secrets to hide here, Eddie. You know exactly what you signed up for.”

Eddie doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t bother replying. He’s expecting for the door to the room to be opened so he can be gently escorted to his new suite, but a moment passes and nothing happens. He frowns and glances up, a question on his lips.

He doesn’t get the chance to ask it. There’s a faint hiss, and for a second he thinks it’s the sound of the door opening - a moment later he realizes it’s coming from the room as a whole. A moment after that, exhaustion hits him like a freight train.

He can feel the light pressure on his skin, see the puffs of air working from the surrounding vents.

“Did you just…” Eddie can barely get the words out, half from genuine disbelief and half for how heavy his tongue suddenly feels. “Did you just drug me?”

“A light sedative,” Drake says, faux apologetic. “Nothing to be concerned about. It’s just a safety precaution to make transportation easier. I’m sure you understand that I can’t afford to put my staff at risk in situations like this.”

Fuck you, Eddie wants to say, but what comes out is barely coherent and definitely not English. He loses his ongoing battle with gravity, and goes down hard, hitting his head on the tiles on the way.

It’s probably the drugs, but Eddie could swear that there was a flicker of comfort behind the pain; soothing in a way that escapes his rapidly fleeing vocabulary.

He’s still awake when the door opens, and he watches dazedly as three pairs of heavy military boots stomp into the room. He can’t really see from this angle, but there’s a wariness to them that Eddie thinks probably wouldn’t be necessary even if he could do more than twitch a finger right now.

Eddie is far more adept at starting fights than he is at finishing them.

“No trouble,” warns the guard at the front. “You understand?”

Eddie grunts in what he hopes is a suitably disparaging manner. They stoop down, hauling his limp arms around their shoulders, and Eddie catches a glance of the fancy guns holstered on their hips, their professionally blank faces.

Drake had called them security, but Eddie would put good money on mercenaries.

Distantly, Eddie hopes that they don’t drop him. Less distantly, he hopes they don’t shoot him either.

Won’t let them hurt us, whispers a voice at the back of his head that must belong to him but feels incredibly alien. Don’t need to be afraid, Eddie. We’re safe. Safe with us.

“God,” Eddie slurs, sounding impressively delirious for a man who used to day-drink the way other people would breathe. “I wish I was always this goddamn confident.”

The guards on either side of him exchange baffled expressions.

Passing out is a relief; Eddie goes into the welcome embrace of writhing darkness.

Chapter Text

Eddie wakes in a cell even smaller than the one he'd passed out in. There's a flat bunk in one corner, and a toilet bolted to the far wall beside a sad looking sink. Other than that... there's nothing. Nothing but a disturbing red glow from the security lights above and in the corridor, casting everything in a bloody halo. 

Groaning, Eddie sits up. He aches something fierce from god knows how many hours of unconsciousness upon the unforgiving tiled floor. Something has left his stomach tight and shivery. He hopes it's the drugs. 

He thinks, then, of the crawling black mass that is currently lodged somewhere deep inside of him. God, he hopes like hell it's the damn drugs. 

Eddie stands slowly on shaky feet, tottering to the glass that makes up the encompassing walls. He presses his palms flat to it for balance as he leans forward and peers around his new home. 

It's too dark to make out much in the way of detail, but Eddie realizes he's at the far end of an entire bank of clinical cells. The ones immediately around him are empty, and Eddie vaguely recalls Drake demanding he be kept out of the way of anybody he might influence with his 'silver tongue'.

Eddie's never been accused of having a silver tongue before. He's an investigative reporter not some kind of charismatic TV personality; his success has always been due to his hard work and persistence, not any imagined charm. 

Distantly, he can see a figure in the cell three blocks over, curled atop their bunk with their back to him. 

Hoping desperately that the glass hasn't been sound proofed, Eddie glams against it. The glass gives a satisfying rattle beneath his palms. "Hey!" 

There's no reaction, not even a flinch. Eddie tries again, this time louder. "Hey! Can you hear me?" 

For a second nothing; and then the figure stirs. 

Eddie holds his breath, watching as they sluggishly roll over to face him, squinting through the dimness. From this distance, Eddie can only faintly see a scraggly beard and an unkind expression, but he'd recognize the stiff, cautious silence anywhere. 

"I'm in the cell at the end of the row," Eddie says, a little quieter now that he has the stranger’s attention, wary of spooking him. "I'm just like you, okay? I'm not with them. I'm just another volunteer." 

He'd expected curiosity, or even relief; what he gets is a harsh, awful sounding laugh. "How do I even know you're real?" 

Eddie pauses. What the hell is he supposed to say to that? "What do you mean?" 

The man shuffles around, throwing his feet over the side of the bunk. "How do I know you're not just the voice that lives inside my head?"

Cautiously, Eddie asks, "And what does the voice in your head say?" 

"Don't,” snaps the stranger. "Don't talk to me like I'm crazy. It's not my voice - Drake put it there. He did this." 

Eddie quietly adds potential psychosis to the laundry list of things he has to look forward to. "It's alright," Eddie says in the voice he reserves for only the most difficult of interviewees. "I believe you. I believe you, I promise." 

For a moment the man seems primed to explode, but then the fight goes out of him all at once. Shoulders slumping, he says, "The voice doesn't say anything - but I know it's there. It's always there. Waiting. Watching. With me." 

Thoroughly unnerved, Eddie steps back and sinks down to the floor. "What's your name?" 

"Geoff. My name's Geoff." 

The irony is so thick Eddie might choke on it. "Good to meet you, Geoff. My name's Eddie, and you're just the man I've been looking for." 

. 

As the night slips away, so does Eddie's grasp of the situation. He'd tried to keep up conversation with Geoff, but unsurprisingly days of captivity had eaten away at both his spirit and sociability. He'd grown quieter and quieter until Eddie can't even tell if he's still awake. Either way, he can recognize a dismissal when he sees it, even if he's not typically good at obeying them. 

Eddie curls up atop the bed and begins planning his report of the situation in his head to pass time. Given that it's day one of, hopefully, many more days to come, he doesn't have much to work with. 

At some point he slips into sleep, and then at some point after that he wakes and immediately wishes he had not. 

Once, when Eddie had been fresh at this reporter gig, he'd made the mistake of trying to work while suffering the flu. It had quickly proven to be a miscalculation and he wound up with a fever hot enough to burn down a small town. He had been bed bound for three weeks. It had been the worst month of his whole damn life up until the second Anne gave him back her ring. 

This - this is like that, but worse. Somehow, impossibly, it manages to be the emotional and physical intensity of both those memories rolled into one awful, awful sensation. 

There's a fever warming his skin that had not been there when he closed his eyes, and when Eddie raises a trembling hand to pass over his forehead it comes back wet with sweat. His very bones ache like somebody has taken a jack hammer to them, and his mouth is slick with bile and saliva. Eddie cannot actually remember the last time he ate something substantial, but he thinks he's probably a good minute or two away from coming face to face with it. 

He feels like shit. He feels like the physical embodiment of every illness and cold he's nursed his whole life. He feels like he's dying. 

And, somehow, despite all that he's hungry. 

"Geoff," Eddie croaks. His voice sounds choked and dusty. He clears his throat and tries again. "Geoff. Geoff!" 

From across the room Geoff groggily snaps, "What?" 

"I think -." 

Eddie doesn't get to finish the thought. With a quickness he didn't know he possessed, he rolls off the bed and stumbles to the toilet. The force of his puking is so violent he has to cling to the bowl with shaking hands. 

"Oh," Geoff says, and he sounds almost sympathetic. "Yeah. This is the nasty bit." 

"What do you -?" Eddie spits out a mouthful of stringy bile and somehow finds the strength to pull away from the toilet if not with the confidence that he will remain away for long. "What do you mean?" 

"Sorry, Eddie," Geoff says and nothing else. 

Eddie does not have the energy to push the conversation. He curls up on the floor with his arms wrapped tightly around his stomach and shakes and shivers through what he imagines the world's worst detox feels like. At some point, either he loses his grasp on consciousness or else the sickness eats away at the last of his withering sanity, because he could swear that he can feel something inside of him - moving like quicksand over all the delicate mechanisms that keep him alive and kicking. 

Dawn finds Eddie half asleep on the floor, blinking as the harsh fluorescents of the facility come on and the bloody red of the late-night security lights finally dim. It's a strangely surreal feeling, he finds, lying half dead inside a glass cage as the room at large begins to fill with people, each and every one of them considering him like he's an interesting animal and not a fellow human. 

"He made it through the night," says one of the scientists who is not Dora Skirth. She sounds surprised and perhaps a little bit relieved. "That's a good sign." 

The other scientist who is not Dora Skirth says, "Drake will be pleased." 

You know who will be pleased? Eddie thinks, semi-deliriously. Me, when I kick your boss so hard in the ass that it turns him inside out. 

Finally, Dora Skirth herself enters his field of vision. She steps nearer to the glass than any of the others, and when she looks at Eddie he thinks he might recognize an emotion in her eyes that wasn't farmed and carefully produced inside the clinical labs of the Life Foundation. 

"How's he doing?" 

"All the vitals seem solid." 

Eddie doesn't feel solid. He feels a lot like he's made of a particularly awful liquid that refused to mold to any shape it ought to. 

Skirth seems relieved. She meets Eddie's gaze and offers him the tiniest quirk of a smile that Eddie thinks is probably meant to be encouraging. To say he trusts anybody in this hell hole would be a stretch, but so far Skirth has seemed to do the best she can by him, and Eddie's usually a pretty good judge of character, even when he's in as rough of a shape as he feels right now. 

Dora Skirth does not seems like the kind of woman who takes joy in the suffering of others, no matter what her job demands of her. 

The doors at the back of the room hiss open, and everybody turns to look. Eddie, who is still a puddle on the floor, can't do more than crane his head ever so slightly and keep on shivering. 

"Good to hear," Drake says as he strides in. He tosses a glance to Eddie, and then immediately seems to dismiss him from his attention. "Get him hooked up and ready for an infusion. After that, see how his stats compare to the previous subjects." 

Skirth hesitates. "Maybe we should give him just an hour or so to ride out the worst of the -." 

Drake cuts her off with a smile. "I know you have only the best of intentions, Doctor Skirth, but we can’t pass up valuable opportunities for data just for the comfort of our subjects. Mr. Brock is a resilient man. I'm sure he's more than ready for anything we can throw at him. After all, this is all voluntary, isn't it, Eddie?" 

It takes Eddie's hazy mind a whole moment to realize he's being directly addressed. His mouth tastes like puke and cotton and he spits out a mouthful of murky saliva and says, "Fuck you." 

Drake's smile twitches, just ever so slightly. Eddie cannot tell if he's amused or annoyed. He hopes it's the former. If it's not, Eddie's going to make sure it is by the time they're done here. 

Drake turns around and says to one of the numerous guards behind him, "Get him out and ready. Don't trouble yourself to be gentle." 

. 

Eddie's taken from his comfortable cell to another equally comfortable cell. This one comes equipped with a vertical table of some dubiously medical sort. Eddie isn't entirely sure the vertical part is necessary, but he supposes psychological torture can be just as strong of a motivator as torture itself, under the right circumstances. 

Drake's goons strap him to it while the scientists stay safely behind the glass, and as per Drake's orders they don't spare Eddie any sort of comfort. He's reasonably sure that the tightness of the straps around his wrists are wholly unnecessary and he says as much. 

"Shut up," says the bald one at the front, who Eddie suspects is probably the head honcho around here. 

"Look," Eddie rasps, "I'm just saying, if people see those bruises you're gonna have a fun time explaining them in a way that doesn't seem at least a little sexual." 

Baldy glares at him with a heat that rivals Eddie's fever, and he tugs the straps tight enough that Eddie can actually feel his blood circulation choking a little. 

"Okay, okay," Skirth says, skirting closer to the doorway and wringing her hand anxiously. "I think he's sufficiently restrained. Don't damage him, please. He's a valuable subject." 

Baldy steps away, one hand to the gun on his belt. "He's all yours," he says, and the lot of them pile out of the room. 

Skirth steps aside to let them out, and then slips inside the room with a skittish energy. She approaches Eddie, making sure to stay in his line of sight all the while. "I'm just going to put an IV in," she says, as if she were a normal doctor and Eddie were an ordinary patient. "It'll sting for a second, but you'll be thankful for it, believe me." 

"I don't think I'm going to be thankful for anything short of a bucket full of fried chicken right now," Eddie says. "God, I've never been this hungry all my life." 

"That's a common side-effect," Skirth says comfortingly. She's rustling with something down by Eddie's elbow, and he can't quite see what. 

"Side-effect of what?" 

"Well," Skirth says vaguely. "This and that. Pinprick now." 

"What -." Eddie winces as the needle slides into the softness of his skin. "God, that felt way bigger than an IV." 

"Liquid nutrients," Skirth says. "I'm putting some electrodes on you now." 

"Are you gonna walk me through every step of this process?" 

Skirth sticks something to his forehead. "I thought you might appreciate it." 

Eddie does, but his pride won't allow him to say so. Besides, there's something discomforting about praising Skirth for doing the bare minimum, and he's not sure he's ready to think about it too much. "Your friends out there don't seem to agree." 

He can't see her expression, but the pause before she keeps covering him in electrodes is telling enough. "We all have our opinions." 

She finishes what she's doing and steps away. It looks as if she's going to say something but thinks better of it. She closes her mouth, looks away, and steps out of his view. From the corner of his eye, Eddie can just see the door closing.

Once again, he's alone in the room. 

Faintly, he can hear the scientists talking outside, but he's too tired to focus on what they're saying. The feeling of being fed through an IV is incredibly disorientating and not at all what he wants. He can still feel the out of place hunger in his gut, conscious of it in a way that defies all his prior experiences with the feeling. 

"Are you really sure I can't convince you to just... give me a pizza? A sandwich? Something I can put in my mouth in chew?" One of the scientists glances up from his screen and shoots Eddie a supremely unimpressed look. Eddie dearly wishes to return it but he just doesn't have the energy. "How long am I going to be here, exactly?" 

Skirth leans forward and says, "As long as Drake needs you to be. We'll do our best to keep you comfortable, I promise." 

So a while. Eddie sighs and closes his eyes, leaning back against the awkward table beneath his back. Better get comfortable then. 

. 

Eddie stays strapped in the room for long enough that by the time they let him down he feels sore in places he didn't even know had feeling. More than once he'd nearly drifted off due to a delightful combination of the fever and sheer apathy, but every time he was shocked back awake by the electrodes. So much for just being there for data gathering; although in fairness, Eddie hadn't bought that in the slightest. 

It's the guards that actually allow him out, but Skirth lingers by the door and asks, "How are you feeling?" 

Eddie levels her with a look and says, "How do you think?" 

She has the grace to look slightly abashed, and the guards escort him with firm hands around his elbows, half dragging him. They pass by Geoff's cell on the way, and Eddie is unsurprised to see that it too is empty. 

Drake is waiting for them at Eddie's cell, and whatever he sees in Eddie's exhausted figure seems to please him. "You're looking better." 

"I feel like shit," Eddie says bluntly. 

"Your fever seems to have broken." 

Perhaps it has. Eddie supposes that he feels more... present than he had during the night. Less sweaty too, although it's hard to be sure when he already feels like he's covered in dumpster juice. "No thanks to you." 

"The fever is a good sign," Drake says. "It means it's working." 

"What's working?" Eddie snaps before he can stop himself, the sheer strength of his exasperation finally cracking through the flimsy veneer of his devil-may-care attitude. 

"You don't need to concern yourself with that," Drake says dismissively. 

"Hey, hey, whatever that black fucking thing was -." 

"Put him in his room," Drake says, and the guards muscle Eddie past him and into the cell, although perhaps 'muscle' implies some kind of resistance. Eddie wouldn't be capable of resisting a single toddler right now. He's never felt so completely and utterly drained in all his life. 

Eddie shrugs the hands off his arms and the guards step out. He turns, rubbing at his sore muscles, and glares at Drake. "You realize that refusing to tell me anything isn't going to work forever, right? Gathering information is literally my career." 

"Was your career," Drake corrects, and that stings more than Eddie would like to admit. "And you're welcome to make any and all assumptions that you would like about the nature of these tests. Eventually, if you're half as smart as you like to pretend you are, you may even hit on the truth." 

"What's that supposed to mean?" 

"Get some rest," Drake says. "You're a valuable subject, Eddie. I know you might not believe me, but I promise that nothing would please me more than to see you come out of this experiment in one piece." 

Drake leaves, taking his security detail with him. Eddie steps back from the glass and reluctantly sinks upon his barren bunk. After a day being strapped upright, the relief of laying down is almost immeasurable. Utterly exhausted in a way that escapes description, Eddie curls up, arms around his aching stomach and eyes squeezed shut against the furious brightness of the lights. 

Drake had been right about one thing at least - Eddie feels... maybe not 'better', but he certainly doesn't feel worse. The hot itch of the fever is largely gone, and in its wake it leaves him feeling both tired and strangely tense.

And so hungry - holy fucking shit, how is it possible to even feel like this? Is this what people mean when they say 'ravenous'? Eddie could eat a horse, a herd of horses, an entire fucking zoo - his teeth seem to physically hurt with the desire to feel something squishy and red-blooded beneath them. 

There's a distant hum and Eddie glances up just in time for the room to plunge into darkness. A moment later the furious red of the security lights flare up. 

That's one day down, he thinks. One day down and what seems like an eternity left. Geoff still isn't back, and that should probably concern him, but he's too distracted by his own misery to feel much of anything for anybody. 

Another hunger pang lances through him and Eddie curls up tighter. "Fuck. Holy fucking shit." 

A feeling of alien discontent ripples through him and, on its heels, a single word: hungry. 

Eddie startles so furiously that he falls clean off the bed. His elbow smack sharply on the floor and he scrambles backwards until his back hits the glass. "Who said that? Geoff? Man, is that you?" 

There's no immediate reply, just the static hum of the facility around him. Then, Eddie. Hungry. Feed. 

The voice is thick and dark, and it sounds nothing at all like Geoff or anybody at all. It doesn't even sound human. And, Eddie realizes with a mounting horror, it has so very clearly not come from the room around him.

"Oh my god," Eddie wheezes, fear chasing all the air from his lungs. "Oh, fuck." 

Eddie, says the voice. Hungry. We're hungry. Need to eat. 

A hysterical laugh bubbles out of him. Eddie rakes his shaking fingers frantically through his hair, gripping at it tightly as if he can shake the foreign feeling from his skull itself. "This is exactly what Geoff told me would happen. Oh my god, I've only been here one fucking day and they've already driven me crazy." 

Not crazy. Hungry. So very hungry, Eddie. 

"Not crazy? Not crazy?" Eddie plants his hands on the glass behind his back and slowly levers himself upright. His legs barely hold him. "Shut up, you're not even real." 

A sluggish spark of annoyance that doesn't belong to him flares in his gut. We're real, Eddie. Turn around. 

"I'm not listening to a voice in my fucking head." 

Turn around. 

Against his better judgement, Eddie does. The glass beneath his palms is slick from his panicky sweat. His reflection stares back at him, sallow-faced and pale as a sheet. He looks about as sane as he feels. "Okay, what the fuck am I looking for?" 

Us, the voice says, and then Eddie’s face turns into a goddamn monster. 

There's so much blackness - an aching void of it, filled with white teeth and whiter eyes. It's the stuff straight out of nightmares, and Eddie barely gets a second to really process it, because then he's reeling backwards, screaming like a frightened child. He trips on his own feet and goes down hard. The hand he throws out to keep himself from hitting the floor catches on the side of his bunk, ripping at his skin and adding one more hurt to his already considerable collection. 

Calm down, says the voice, and Eddie must be imagining the faint prickle of amusement. 

Eddie plants both hands on the floor to haul himself back upright, leaving a bloody handprint on the tiles. He's shaking so hard that he swears he can hear the rattle of his bones. He doesn't know what to say - doesn't think he could say a damn thing even if his terror hadn't robbed his mind of all his words. 

For a second the voice doesn't say anything and then, like a curious observation, We are afraid. 

Eddie gives a choked laugh. "Yeah, no fucking shit." 

A considering pause that stretches for so long that Eddie almost has a hold of himself before it speaks again. We don't need to be afraid, Eddie. We will protect us. 

Eddie's arm goes numb. As he watches, his hand lifts from the ground without his say so, moving under an influence that is not his own. Eddie stares dumbly as his hand turns over, exposing the gash in his palm. We don't want to hurt us. We want to be safe. 

Before his very eyes, the wound ... heals. Blood tracks back beneath his flesh, and the skin knits itself neatly back together. In all of a second there's nothing left at all, not even the distant memory of a scar. 

The numb feeling in his arm vanishes. Tentatively, Eddie flexes his fingers. There's no pain, no resistance. 

Eddie cannot say for certain that he's not crazy, but he can say for certain that one moment ago his palm had been split open and now it's not – and he certainly hadn’t been the one to fix it. 

"What...." Eddie takes a deep breath. "Who are you?" 

There's a pleased flicker of emotion chasing along the cavernous feeling of hunger that is still tearing at him. 

We, the voice says, are Venom. 

Chapter Text

Venom, as it turns out, is a parasitic alien from space and he's interested in taking up equal shares in Eddie's body.

Not a parasite, Venom says, for what is perhaps the third time in as many minutes, sounding progressively more irritated. We seek symbiotic relationships to the mutual benefit of both parties.

"I don't really wanna take the word of an alien on this."

To us, you are the alien.

"Hey, this is my planet, buddy," Eddie snaps, because he deeply does not want to get into a debate about the semantics of what constitutes alienhood. "And I don't feel very 'mutually benefited' right now."

A shiver of irritation rolls through him. Hungry, Venom says sourly. We need to eat. We cannot do anything with our body so weak and feeble.

"This body's served me well my whole life," Eddie says. And then, as realization hit, he asks, "Wait, is this hunger you?"

I told you, Venom says, completely unoffended. Need to eat.

Eddie scratches at the IV marks embedded in his arm. "What about that shit they pumped me with? That not doing it for you?"

No, Venom says, and refuses to elaborate.

Eddie sighs, leaning his head back against the icy glass wall behind him. Above, the security lights paint awkward shadows along the hallway and cells. Geoff's still not back. Now that Eddie isn't terrified out of his wits, it's genuinely started to concern him.

The man in the other cell? Venom asks, curious.

"Yeah," Eddie says. "He's kinda like... my entire social circle at this point. I'd rather not be stuck here alone."

Not alone, Venom points out. Not anymore.

"I don't really count a parasite hitching a ride in my ribs as company, no matter how chatty he is. You're kinda like... a tapeworm, I guess."

He can physically feel Venom roiling along his bones. It's a very disconcerting feeling. Not a parasite! We are -

Eddie waves idly. "I know, I know. We are 'mutually benefited' or whatever the fuck you said."

Venom settles back down, but Eddie has no trouble picking up his malcontent. You're not very bright, are you?

"Hey! Watch it, asshole. I'm the landlord here, and I'm willing to kick you out."

Oh? A feeling of dark amusement curls through him. And how would you do that?

Eddie opens his mouth, thinks, and then closes it. It's not the smooth recovery that he wishes it were when Venom is - apparently - a part of him and privy to his... thoughts? His intentions? Eddie doesn't know the specifics, only that privacy is beginning to look more and more like a foreign concept. Out of all the things he has to look forward to, that is perhaps the one he thinks will weigh on him the most.

We are not your enemy, Venom says, instead of the dozen other meaner things he probably had to choose from. We can keep you safe, if you let us.

"And if I don't?"

We will keep you safe anyway. Your opinion is irrelevant and your memories imply a history of bad decisions.

"If you have something to say, just come out and say it."

You're kind of a loser, Eddie Brock, Venom says, absolutely merciless as he goes in for the kill. You would benefit from somebody to keep your own stupidity from ending you.

Eddie rubs a tired hand over his face. "Can't believe I'm being called a loser by the alien goop that lives in my head," he mutters. "This is really a new personal low for me."

We need to rest, Venom says. We are exhausted.

"Oh, so when you're calling me stupid it's 'you' but when you're trying to act like the good guy suddenly it's 'we' again. I see how it is."

Rest, Venom insists.

Eddie sighs and hoists his aching body to his feet. "Sure," he says. "Why the hell not. Maybe this will all just be another nightmare and I'll wake up on my favourite park bench."

Sure, Venom says. If that's what you need to tell yourself.

Eddie doesn't waste his time replying, just curls up in the bed miserably, incredibly conscious of the being watching his every movement and thought, and the awful hunger still simmering in his gut.

In the morning we will convince your scientists to feed us, Venom says.

"Yeah, they've been real good about listening to me so far."

We can be very persuasive.

Eddie doesn't have the strength to disagree. He rolls over, trying to find a more comfortable position. Strangely, sleep comes easier than he would have thought. A lot of it is the sheer exhaustion, he knows, but a part of it is the weirdly reassuring brush of Venom against the back of his mind, trying to be soothing in some clumsy sort of way.

It occurs to Eddie that Venom might be as new to this situation as he himself is - and then he realizes that that mightn't be so true after all.

Eddie doesn't know how long Drake's experiments have been going on, but he's certainly been at it for longer than Eddie's been aware of them. It's not only possible but incredibly likely Eddie is not the first human that Venom has… connected with like this.

(connected doesn't feel like the right turn of phrase, but Eddie can't quite find the right one. Fused? Bonded? Fuck if he knows.)

We can discuss anything we need to when we wake up, Venom says. For now, rest.

And, to his surprise, Eddie does. It's the best sleep he's had since coming here - it's the best sleep he's had for years.

.

In the morning, the same routine plays out.

This time, Venom wakes him before the lights come on, and by the time the scientists are milling uselessly about, Eddie is awake and mostly alert. He watches them sharply, hands folded in his lap, and when he catches sight of Skirth looking his way he snags her gaze.

That one, Venom says. If anybody will listen to us, it will be her.

Eddie doesn't want to risk talking back in front of such an audience but he nods idly. He doesn't need Venom to tell him that Skirth is perhaps the only person in the room who views him as a human being before a test subject. Eddie crooks a finger, beckoning her closer. She hesitates, uncertain, but edges in until she's separated from him only by the glass. "Do you need something?"

So many things, Eddie thinks, but wisely chooses not to say. He will not waste his limited goodwill on pointless sarcasm. "Food," he says. "I'm starving in here, Doctor."

"Oh," she says, seemingly relieved. "I know you think so, but with liquid nutrition -."

No, Venom snarls. Pointless. Disgusting. Real food. Red-blooded and warm.

Eddie chooses to pointedly ignore the more disturbing aspects of that request. "You're smart, Doctor Skirth," he says. "How many other people have sat where I'm sitting and died on your watch? How many of them have you watched wither away even when you pump them full of your fancy chemicals?"

"That's not -."

"What about Geoff?" Eddie asks.

"Geoff?" Skirth repeats, baffled. "Who -." Realization seems to hit. Her expression drops and her cheeks go red.

"Oh, shit," Eddie observes. "You didn't even know his fucking name, did you? You just stuck him in this cell for your fucked-up experiments and pretended he wasn't your responsibility."

In her defense, Skirth does not try to argue with him. If anything, she looks more miserable than Eddie knows what to do with. "He's …" she hesitates. "We're taking care of him."

He's dying, Venom says helpfully. Just like we will die if we don't eat.

"Doctor Skirth," Eddie says, doing his best to meet her lowered eyes. "I don't think you want me to die any more than I do. Trust me when I tell you that if you don't give me actual, real-life food, you're going to kill me, and it seems like you already have enough blood on your hands to last a lifetime."

He can see the precise moment that she caves. It's really something to behold. "Alright," she says, stepping back. "I can't promise anything, but I'll… I'll talk to Drake."

"If you talk to Drake he's going to say no," Eddie points out. "I know you probably like to think of him as a kind, benevolent master, but he would like nothing more than to rub my own helplessness in my face."

"If I tell him it's for your health he -."

"Will he? Is that a gamble you're really willing to take? It's my life on the line."

Behind her, one of the other scientists calls her name and Skirth looks up and away. Sensing that his time to convince her is crumbling in his hands, Eddie says, "Doctor Skirth; please."

She turns back around, harried. "I'll see what I can do," she says. "If I talk to him, he'll understand… I just need to - to convince him."

"Doctor Skirth -."

But she's gone, stepping away and talking quickly with one of her coworkers. She sends Eddie one more glance, but then she ducks out of the room and out of sight. Eddie watches the door close behind her with a burgeoning sense of hopelessness.

If her boss won't let her help us, we can always lure her into the cell and eat her instead, Venom says, and Eddie cannot tell if he's joking or not, and that disturbs him more than he can explain.

"We're not eating people," Eddie mutters under his breath, scratching anxiously at the IV marks in his elbow. "If Drake isn't convinced - and he won't be - we'll think of something else."

Eddie doesn't not realize he's referred to them as 'we' until Venom's obvious satisfaction warms him from the inside out. It scares him how quickly he's already begun to consider Venom his ally - the pair of them a single unit in this war against Carlton fucking Drake. Eddie supposes that's only to be considered natural when all human contact gets him in this place is pain and misery. He thinks stronger people than him would give into the comforting promises Venom whispers in his ear.

Yes, Venom purrs. Yes, we will.

.

They don't see Skirth for hours - long after Eddie is taken out of his cell for a bit more harmless experimentation.

They spend a day strapped to the table being pumped full of more noxious liquid nutrients, and then being repeatedly shocked, as if the result is going to be any different at all from the previous time. By the time they let him down and escort him back to his cell, Eddie is viciously, terribly nauseous and also quietly stunned that it's already been two damn days - it feels far shorter, and yet also far longer.

It's possible Eddie's sense of time has been shocked out of him by repeated electrocution at this point, he supposes.

They still haven't fed us, Venom observes as Eddie picks a corner to crawl into.

"Yeah," he says sourly. "Believe me, I know."

If they will not feed us, we will have to feed ourselves.

"You see, I know you want to sound all rational and logical, but that doesn't work when I'm reasonably sure you're talking about eating people again."

Tasty, Venom says in what he probably thinks is a persuasive tone.

"Yeah," Eddie mutters, rubbing at his temple like Venom's voice is merely something he can soothe away. "That's about what I thought. No eating people, okay?"

Not unless they really deserve it, Venom suggests.

"No. Not at all. Period."

Sure.

"We don't need to be sharing headspace for me to know when you're blatantly lying."

Can't make you happy no matter what I say, Venom grouses. High maintenance.

"High - not wanting to eat people is considered the absolute least you can do in most cultures."

Not mine.

"Well, we're living on earth not on..."

Klyntar.

Eddie is saved from trying to pronounce that by the clatter of a door opening out in the hall. He hauls himself to his feet and hobbles to the glass as quickly as he can, squishing against it as he tries to get a good look at what's going on.

What's happening?

"If you shut up, maybe we can figure it out," Eddie mutters, craning his head as he finally sees the figures entering the corridor.

There are three of them he realizes; two in security-black, and the third in experiment-white. As Eddie watches, Drake's mercenaries escort an exhausted looking Geoff back into his cell, leaving him on the bed without a pause for concern or consideration.

"Hey!" Eddie calls. "Watch yourselves, assholes. Is he alright?"

The bald one that has so far proven to be Eddie's favourite pauses on the way out and gives him a look that reads a mix between disdain and annoyance. "Shut it, Brock. He's fine. I can't say the same for you if you can't learn to act your place."

Eddie desperately wants to say something incredibly snarky back but he restrains himself, gritting his teeth.

When you let me feed, Venom says, he's going to be first.

Eddie ignores that too. The security team leave, and it's just Eddie and Geoff alone in their glass hell-hole all over again. Geoff is curled up on his bed, back to Eddie and shoulders tight. He seems both exhausted and inexplicably tensed. "Geoff," Eddie calls, a little softer this time. "Hey man, good to have you back. You had me worried."

"Yeah," Geoff says. "You weren't the only one."

Hesitantly, Eddie presses a palm to the glass, as close to offering comfort as he can in their current situation. "You wanna tell me what happened?"

Geoff gives a weak laugh. He's still facing away and Eddie wishes he wouldn't. "I'm sure you'll find out.”

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Eddie, man - you don't really thing you're gonna be any different do you?" Geoff says. "Give it another three days and this is going to be you."

"You don't know that," Eddie says. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Please," Geoff says. "Just... leave me alone. I want to sleep. Just let me sleep."

Eddie goes to say something else although he's not quite sure what, but abruptly finds his jaw stiff and unresponsive. Leave him be, Venom says, more serious than Eddie has learnt to expect from him. The host is rejecting the symbiosis.

Quieter, so that Geoff can't hear, Eddie asks, "What does that mean?"

They did not match, Venom says. There was no union. Without another host, my kind will die - not before your friend does though.

"What can we do?" Eddie demands. "There's got to be something."

Venom does not respond. Eddie is surprised to find that his silence is no comfort. He steps away from the glass, rubs his hands frantically through his hair as he tries to jostle a thought that could be in any way, shape, or form helpful. Nothing comes. Agitatedly, he begins pacing.

Stop it, Venom says. We need to save our energy.

"What does it matter?" Eddie snaps. "Maybe Geoff's right - give us another week and we'll be as fucked as him.”

We will not, Venom growls, and a dark shiver of tension rakes along all the delicate nerves that wire Eddie's body. Our connection is strong. We will -

"I don't want to talk about this," Eddie says. "Fuck, you realize I didn't exactly sign up for this, right?"

Nastily, Venom says, Neither did I, and yet I'm doing the best I can for us.

Eddie grits his teeth against all the mean and horrible things that want to slip out. He doesn't want to fight with Venom - that wouldn't solve anything at all, and Venom was right about something at least; he doesn't have the energy to spare.

Like clockwork, the lights above power down. A brief pause, and then the red glow Eddie has come to dread flickers into existence. He glances through the glass, but Geoff is still unresponsive on his bed.

If there's anything at all to be done, Eddie won't find the solution tonight. He's too upset, too shaken, too hungry - the best he can do for now is try and reset the frantic misfiring pulses in his brain and see what tomorrow brings. If there is anything at all he has in abundance, it's time.

Sleep, Venom suggests, and the quiet tone of his voice offers a tacit apology. Eddie accepts it wordlessly, climbing onto the awful fucking bunk that he's learning to hate more than any number of isolated park benches. It's cold in the cell, and Eddie curls up tight, face buried in his arms and knees tucked tight to his chest. After a moment he feels a ripple along his skin, and he opens his eyes just enough to catch what looks like thin film of black seeping out.

"Venom, is that you?"

The blackness tightens. We could be more, Venom says, but -

"The security cameras," Eddie says, coming to an understanding.

We don't want to give everything away, Venom says. No fun in that.

Eddie snorts but obligingly turns his back to the corridor, and in response Venom obediently crawls out past his elbows, covering all the skin the cameras cannot see. Eddie will not admit it, but it's more comforting than he can explain, having the touching of another living being, even if that being is the alien creature that lives inside his head - maybe even because of it.

"This doesn't, like, hurt you, does it?"

We are fine, Venom assures him. We will take care of everything. Sleep.

Against his better judgement, Eddie does.

.

To begin with, Eddie's not sure what has woken him. The lights are off, and Venom is still a warm and reassuring weight on his skin. He stays still, feeling the stir of Venom at the back of his mind as he becomes aware that Eddie's woken up.

What is it?

"I don't know," Eddie mutters. "Do you -."

Then he hear it - a wet, hacking cough. Suddenly the world rights itself. Eddie’s off the bed and staggering towards the glass before Venom can stop him, barely managing to disappear back into Eddie's body in time.

"Geoff? Geoff, are you alright?"

Another awful cough and then a groan that sounds loud enough to rattle the glass. Eddie throws himself forward, heart pounding, and beats against the walls of his cell, trying desperately to get a good look at what's happening. "Hey, hey - speak to me. Geoff, are you alright? What's going on?"

As Eddie watches, Geoff makes an aborted attempt to climb off his bed. He manages to get his legs over the edge and then he freezes. There's a faintly awful look on his face, and Eddie meets his eyes right before he starts to seize.

"No no no!" Eddie beats fruitlessly against the glass, feeling it quake but refuse to give. Three cells down, Geoff is on the floor, clutching erratically at his chest as he convulses. "Venom, what do we do?"

We watch, Venom says calmly. And be thankful that is not us.

As Eddie stares in horror, Geoff gives one last horrific twitch and goes still, mouth open and eyes frozen upwards. A second passes, and then something dark and mud-like begins to seep out of him. Eddie can hardly breathe. He feels like he's going to be sick. The sludge hits the floor, shudders, and then seems to... die. "Is that...?"

It was, Venom says. But not anymore.

The alien is dead.

Geoff is dead.

And now it's just Eddie and Venom and the ticking promise that they'll be next.

Chapter Text

The morning finds Eddie on the floor, head in his hands and Geoff's body going cool only a few cells over.

The scientists don't even glance at him as they come in, instead making a beeline right towards the cooling corpse, security hot on their heels. Eddie can hear them talking urgently. They sound frightened. Eddie would be too, if he had to be one the to break it to Drake that yet another experiment had gone down the drain.

Eddie only glances up when he hears a soft tap on the glass. Unsurprisingly, it's Skirth, looking as tired and miserable as Eddie feels. "Do you know what happened?"

"Yeah," Eddie says. "You killed him - him and that alien parasite he was carrying. I hope you feel proud of yourself."

Skirth twists her hands together anxiously, looking wounded. "He was doing okay when he was returned to his room last night," she says. "All his vitals were -."

"I know you're used to relying on nothing more than data, but did you miss that part where you're experimenting with goddamn aliens? Surely even you know that numbers are gonna mean jack shit when you're dealing with something you don't even understand."

"That's what we're trying to do!" she insists. "If we can just -."

"God," Eddie says, disgusted. "I bet this is what Carlton Drake sounded like when he convinced you to work for him, isn't it? What did he sell you? Some crock of shit about helping humanity? About being the last line of defense between humankind and eradication?"

Skirth opens her mouth to reply but then closes it again, hesitating. Eddie feels vindicated. "This can't be what you wanted, Doctor Skirth. Tell me this isn't what you signed on for."

Quiet for a second. She glances anxiously over her shoulder where her colleagues are still fussing with what remains of Geoff. Nobody is paying them any attention. "No," she admits, so soft that Eddie nearly misses it all together. "No, it's not."

Tell her that if she doesn't feed us soon -

I know, Eddie thinks viciously, hoping that it's enough to wordlessly convey his opinion to Venom.

Eddie gets to his feet, groaning a little as his back cracks from a night hunched miserably on the floor. Skirth takes a minute step back as he approaches the glass, which hurts a little, but is also just slightly gratifying. The dark swirl of amusement that comes from being so pointlessly feared belongs to Venom, he's sure, but the longer they're together the harder it gets to disentangle the origin of any one feeling. "I'm taking it your talk with Drake didn't go well."

Skirth purses her lips, which is answer enough. "With the death of the other subject, he might be willing to -."

Eddie groans, thumping his forehead against the glass. "How many times do we have to talk about how that's a bad idea before you get it into your head that Drake isn't on anybody's side by his own? If you ask him again he's just going to make things even worse - might even reassign you, and then I'm really going to be fucked."

Skirth looks more conflicted than he's ever seen her. "Are you sure the liquid nutrients aren't working?"

"Doc," Eddie says, "whatever these aliens survive off, I can promise you it's not that. We need meat. As red and bloody as you can get it, preferably."

Skirth blinks at him, eyes wide behind her glasses. "We?"

Fuck, Eddie thinks. He hadn't meant to say that. Inside him, Venom practically preens, typically unconcerned with the real-world implications of it all.

"I know you stuck something in me," Eddie says, in an attempt to salvage the conversation. "The same thing that came pouring out of Geoff when he - well. I'm not entirely stupid, regardless of what Drake told you."

"I wasn't saying -. "

"Doctor Skirth."

"Speak of the devil," Eddie says, stepping back hurriedly just as Drake emerges like smoke behind her.

To his utter surprise, Drake looks... rattled. There are faint smudges under his eyes, and a prickly aura of irritation around him that breaks the mask of rich tranquility he so clearly works hard to maintain. Behind him, Eddie can see security carrying Geoff's body out - one at his shoulders, and the other at his legs. They're showing him all the respect of a beaten-up sofa, and the rage that hits Eddie nearly knocks him off his feet for the sudden strength of it.

Geoff had been so scared at the end. He'd been terrified. Eddie can still remember the way Geoff had looked at him right before the seizure robbed him of all thought; like he was asking Eddie to remember him in a world that would like to pretend he'd never existed.

Geoff hadn't been the nicest guy Eddie had ever met, and he certainly hadn't been the most successful - but he'd been somebody. He'd been alive and now he was not, and the gall of Drake and his men to brush him under the rug like he was nothing more than dirt is unbelievable.

Eddie doesn't get to say any of this, because Drake has locked onto Skirth with a laser focus. "What happened last night?"

"We - we don't know," she stammers, casting Eddie a frantic glance. "The drop in his vitals must have been too sudden for the computers to pick up on. He was fine when he was put into his room last night."

"He was not fine," Eddie says, butting in brutally. "He knew he was going to fucking die. Whatever you lot did to him, Geoff was aware of it all."

Drake casts Eddie a glance so icy that it could freeze the whole of the San Francisco bay. "Your opinion wasn't asked, Mr. Brock."

"Well, fuck you too, because I was the one who stood here and watched as that alien asshole you stuck him with chewed him up from the inside out, okay?"

Drake doesn't look moved in the slightest, not that Eddie had expected him to be. He doesn't think Drake has a human bone in his whole damn body. Drake turns away, dismissing Eddie thoughtlessly, looking to Skirth for answers that she doesn't have to give. Venom is strangely silent, watching this all play out with a petty fascination the same way Eddie watches crappy reality TV.

"I'm sorry Mr. Drake," Skirth says. "It won't happen again."

"We can't afford for it to," Drake says sharply. "We only have two of the symbiotes left - I expect better from my staff than to leave a higher life form to die alone in a glass cell.”

What about Geoff? Eddie thinks, but doesn't waste his breath saying. What does he get out of all of this?

Drake turns to go, and Eddie manages to catch his eyes for a beat of a moment. There's a deep concentration there, and an aggravation that looks out of place on his young, handsome face; as if he cannot fathom the useless creatures God has deigned to surround him with. He's gone before Eddie can get a snarky remark in, but his expression remains burnt into Eddie's retinas.

That one is trouble, Venom says. We need to watch him.

.

Most of Eddie's morning is spent sitting in the corner of his cell, watching the comings and goings of the research team. Foolishly, he hopes they're too preoccupied with Geoff's passing to spare him any real thought, but eventually all good things must come to an end.

Skirth had disappeared after Drake's scolding, so it's one of the other scientists that Eddie has never bothered learning the name of that comes to fetch him. "On your feet," he says, barely glancing at Eddie as he gestures the security team forward.

"You're not going to just give me electroshock therapy again, are you?" Eddie asks, too miserable to give more than a halfhearted grimace. "I can promise you, if you shock me the result is that I will be shocked. You're not going to get much else."

The scientist spares him a scowl but not much more. To the security team he says, "Treece, we need him in room A."

"Treece," Eddie says wryly as the door hisses open. "Can't believe you've been manhandling me for days and we're just now getting around to introductions. Pleasure to meet you."

Treece is not amused by him in the slightest. Eddie knows this because the way his fingers dig into Eddie's upper arm as he hauls him to his feet is sharp enough to bruise. There's a moment there where Eddie honestly thinks he blacks out; at this point he's so hungry that he doesn't even feel it anymore. The world as a whole is just strangely disconnected, as if he's experiencing it through the slightly off reflection of a mirror.

In the moment before the pain jerks him back to awareness, Eddie has an incredibly vivid and strangely wistful dream of ripping Treece’s head from his shoulders and stuffing it down his throat. He's not entirely certain whether the image comes from him or Venom, but he can't help but appreciate the almost nostalgic tint to it all.

Eddie, Venom says, gentler than Eddie's heard him yet. Eddie, we're okay. I've got us.

"Yeah," Eddie slurs as he's dragged from the cell, watching the halos from the ceiling lights blind his vision. "I know you do, buddy."

"What the fuck is he on about now?"

"Just get him to the room. He gives me the goddamn creeps."

Eddie floats through the now familiar feeling of being strapped to a table. He's poked full of more needles, but thankfully today they decide not to plaster him with electrodes. It's sad how grateful that makes him.

He dozes in and out of consciousness as the techs go about setting their machines up for today's fun and games. At one point, he manages to open his eyes long enough to see that Skirth has returned from whatever timeout Drake sent her too. She looks tired and fraught, and when Eddie catches her eye the concerned sweep of her gaze tells him that he looks exactly as rough as he feels. He gives her a toothy grin and tries for a thumb up before he remembers that he's locked down tighter than Fort Knox. Strangely, she does not seem the least encouraged by his gesture.

Eddie, Venom says, his voice cutting through the fog clouding Eddie's mind. If we don't eat soon, we will consume ourselves.

"Vee, I am way too fucking high on pain to understand what that means," Eddie says quietly and with a distant smile.

His good cheer does not last. As he watches, one of the scientists twists a dial on their fancy machines and suddenly all Eddie knows is pain.

His first thought is that they'd stuck him with the electrodes after all and he'd somehow missed it - his second thought is that he'd really like it if that high-pitched shrieking noise carving his skull to pieces would please cease.

There are no more thoughts after that - there's simply not enough room for them. He's shaking apart from the inside out. He can taste blood in his mouth and it takes him a moment to realize it's because he's quite literally screaming his throat raw. In the glass in front of him, he catches his distorted reflection - the shivering black that's flashing along the outline of his body like a particularly grotesque exoskeleton, the vicious white of Venom's teeth superimposed over his face.

Eddie, Venom hisses, and distantly Eddie realizes that this is the first time he's ever actually heard what pain sounds like for Venom.

It's over almost as quick as it started, and Eddie is left gasping, weak in his restraints and absolutely covered in sweat. His head is ringing fiercely and he's shaking like a leaf. Inside, Venom is a quivering mess. Eddie can feel his desire to spread out and cover Eddie like a blanket, but he either lacks the energy for it, or perhaps has just enough reason left to recognize it'd be a bad idea to tip their hand like that.

We're okay, Venom soothes. We're okay.

Eddie doesn't feel okay. He wants to reply but all that comes out is a faint wheeze.

When we get out of here, we'll eat them all. Starting with the one that just turned the dial.

Eddie doesn't even have the strength to remind Venom that they don't eat people, not even the bad ones, not even the ones who have ruthlessly tortured them in the name of science. All he wants right now is to close his eyes and never have to open them again.

"Subject responds to high pitched frequencies the same way as previous subjects," drones the scientist. "Mr. Brock, how do you feel?"

Like shit, Eddie thinks.

Fuck you, Eddie also thinks.

So incredibly fucking hungry, he settles on.

He gives a vague shake of his head as he leans forward and spits up a string of bloody bile.

"I think," Skirth says, very loudly, "that might be enough for now."

"It's still early -."

"Given what just happened to Subject 16, I think we should maybe reconsider our approach," she says, and she even manages to sound like a rational person making a perfectly valid point. "He's in poor condition. Besides, we really ought to be focusing our attention on integrating the other symbiote with its new host."

The two scientists out there with her share a considering glance and then look back towards Eddie. Eddie tries his hardest to look as pitiable as possible, which isn't even that hard, really, considering he can't ever recall feeling worse.

You said that before, Venom observes

"And I'll stop saying it when it stops being true," Eddie grunts, barely loud enough to be heard.

He means to stay awake and see the outcome of Skirth's debate, but he blacks out again. Eddie is developing an uncomfortably familiar relationship with unconsciousness and he cannot say that he likes it. The next thing he knows, he's been unstrapped from the table, sagging against Treece’s shoulder as all the tension leaves him at once. Eddie is so relieved that for a second he really thinks he might cry.

"C'mon," Treece snaps, hoisting Eddie upright. "I'm not carrying you."

"Oh," Eddie slurs. "If that's how you feel."

He lets his body go limp, and Treece has to scramble to avoid dropping him. Eddie can hear him whistling out a string of curses that seem incredibly unprofessional. Beside him, one of his security buddies hovers, and if Eddie did not know any better he might venture to say that he looked amused.

"For fuck's sake," Treece grunts, and then hauls Eddie over his shoulder like he's nothing more than a sack of potatoes.

"Careful!" Skirth says from the doorway. "He's still a valuable subject."

"He's a pain in my ass," Treece mutters, shoving past her and back out into the hallway. Eddie is far too committed to his act to bother raising his head to watch where they're walking, but he recognizes the turns in the corridor they take. He can hear the clack of Skirth's heels as she hurries to keep up with them. "None of the other subjects were half as much fucking trouble."

"Just a talent of mine," Eddie says and then hisses as Treece very deliberately slams him into a wall.

They pass by Geoff's old cell on their way back to Eddie's, and Eddie does not allow himself to lift his eyes from the floor. Something about seeing it empty just fills him with dread, and he can't help but wonder who will be left to notice when it's his turn to be zipped into a body bag, leaving nothing behind but a bloody stain on the floor.

Treece dumps Eddie on his bed, and Eddie allows himself to be dumped without a fight. To Skirth, Treece says, "Make sure this one doesn't die. Drake is on the warpath right now, and I'm not certain any of us are going to survive another failure."

"That's the plan," Skirth says.

Eddie hears the heavy stamp of Treece’s military boots leaving, and then the hollow hiss of the door closing. He rolls over, one arm over his face to see Skirth standing there, watching.

She does a lot of watching, Venom says. Might be more useful if she did something helpful for a change.

"What do you want?" Eddie says. "If you're expecting a thank you for the rescue operation you're going to be sorely disappointed.”

"I - no..." She pauses, fidgeting for a moment and eyeing him like he's a wild animal and not a man made up of eighty percent will power and twenty percent alien goo. "Stay here for a moment."

Eddie can't help but snort, but she's already turning on her heel. "Sure," he calls after her. "I'll just put off my plans for a nice mid-morning walk, I guess. I had so many other places I wanted to be."

Your sarcasm is almost as bad as your personality, Venom observes.

Eddie allows the arm over his forehead to slip down and cover his eyes. "Shut up," he mutters. "You're an alien made of mud. You don't get an opinion."

Eddie drifts for a while after that. In between every blink he loses his grip on the waking world. He has a nice dream about sitting on the sofa with Anne. The house is burning down around them and they watch the fire roar with pretty but empty expressions. Eventually Venom tugs at him, and Eddie reluctantly allows himself to be taken fully back to the waking world

When he opens his eyes he nearly has a damn heart attack. Skirth is standing over him - in the cell itself - gripping a bucket and looking more determined than Eddie has ever seen her.

"I'm pretty sure you're not meant to be in here," he says, squirming upright. He casts a glance to the cameras out in the hallway behind her. "And we're definitely being recorded."

"We're not," Skirth says firmly. "I'm not the only one who disagrees with what Drake is doing. Here." She thrusts the bucket at him before Eddie can even begin to process that statement. It catches him in the chest, winding him for a moment, but when he smells what's inside it he can't help but give an audible groan, mouth already watering and fingers shaking from want.

"Did you really get me a bucket full of rare steak?" he asks. There must be at least five or six pieces in there, all lightly seared and bloody-red.

"You said you wanted it as red-blooded as you could get it," she says defensively. "Short of giving you salmonella this was all I could think of."

"And the bucket? I'm not a zoo animal, even if you've got me locked in a cage."

"I'm new at this smuggling thing. I wasn't sure tupperware would be the right choice."

Less talking, Venom snarls, brutally ripping away control of Eddie's body, and more eating.

Eddie doesn't protest - doesn't even fight him. Just allows Venom to snatch up the first piece of steak and shove it in their mouth.

Eddie knows what it feels like to have a good meal after far too long being hungry. The streets may not be the torture chamber Drake's lab is, but they're far from being a walk in the park. He'd expected relief, the turn of his gut as his body struggled to work out what it was supposed to do with this. All those things are as familiar as an old friend. What he had failed to consider was, of course, Venom.

Eating is not a relief. There is no moment of quiet fulfillment. Instead, the second he swallows the first mouthful, all he can focus on is the consuming idea of more. Venom eats the steak so fast they nearly choke, and then another, and another until they're bent over the bucket on all fours stuffing each piece down like they're going for gold in the world's most disturbing Olympic event. Distantly, Eddie is aware that Skirth is still there, watching, but he just doesn't fucking care. He's never been so hungry in all his life, and his hands are shaking and covered in beef juice and blood.

It's dead meat, Venom says with a dark, horrible satisfaction. But it'll do.

They eat it all. Honestly, they could eat more, but Eddie is trying not to focus on that. He's sitting on his ass on the cold tile floor by the time he thinks to look up and check in with Skirth.

"Sorry," he says, voice thick. "We've been really hungry."

Skirth looks... nauseated. There's no other word for it. Her face is faintly green and she's backed up against the wall, fingers curled through the doorway as if she is really second guessing her brave choice to come in here.

For the first time Eddie realizes that a lot of Skirth's pity has been in how useless and pathetic he's looked sitting behind the glass being treated like a big, bad villain. He supposes the look of him now with cold blood on his face tearing into a bucket of semi-raw meat shatters that illusion just a little.

"Hey," Eddie says, getting to his feet as slowly as he can and holding out his hands as he would to calm a spooked animal. "Hey, we didn't mean to scare you. It's just us. We're not going to hurt you."

Skirth doesn't look any more reassured. "You keep saying that," she says, voice high. "We. Us. We put the symbiote inside you, I know, but you shouldn't be..."

She has no idea what she’s done, Venom says, amused. None of them do. They have no clue what true symbiosis is.

Knowing that Skirth is probably already a lost cause, Eddie asks, "Is that what we have? True symbiosis?"

Eddie, Venom says, in that fond way he has of calling his name. We have a perfect union. Back when I was alone, I'd heard of such things, but never thought it would be like this.

Eddie is strangely touched. He feels like he shouldn't be, but it's hard not to be when he can feel the wistful weight of Venom inside of him, wrapping himself tighter so the two of them will always remember they're a single unit now.

"Are you..." Skirth looks as if she can hardly believe what she's saying. The grip she has on the doorway tightens. "Are you talking to it?"

Eddie offers her a bloody smile. "You've been good to me, Doctor Skirth," he says. "How would you like to meet my other half?"

Chapter Text

Eddie had feared that introducing Venom and Skirth would be a volatile endeavour at best.

For Venom, because while he doesn’t loathe her the way he does some of her coworkers, in general he seems happy to eat anybody who does not meet his one item criteria of being Eddie. For Skirth, because knowing the creature that she’d had a hand in experimenting on is a bloodthirsty sentient alien and confronting it are two vastly different things.

Despite Eddie’s misgivings, however, the meeting actually winds up defying its rocky start and superseding any and all expectations. It’s possible he had vastly underestimated both Skirth’s wide-eyed scientific curiosity and Venom’s childish desire to show off.

“So you can control any part of his body you want?”

They’re all on the floor at this point, Eddie with his back against the bed, and Skirth with her legs folded nearly to the side, staring at him with vivid fascination. Venom is roaming up and down Eddie’s skin in a shiver of black, clearly delighting in the way Skirth refuses to take her eyes off of him.

“We can do more than that,” Venom says, borrowing Eddie’s mouth. Venom seems to bubble upon the surface of Eddie’s skin and then, as they both watch, a tiny head emerges from the general vicinity of Eddie’s shoulder, teeth sharp and eyes sightlessly white. “We can do far more.”

To Skirth’s credit, she does not scream or faint or any of the dozens of things Eddie perhaps would have done in her shoes. She blinks, mouth dropping open in shock. She looks half-horrified, half-amazed, and a whole lot like she thinks she’s dreaming. “You can maintain a solid form while in contact with your host?”

The golf ball sized Venom head swaying by Eddie’s face smiles sharply. Even Eddie, who knows Venom would never hurt him, feels a shiver course through him. Skirth’s expression freezes like a deer in headlights.

“What we can do would blow your tiny human brain,” Venom says in what Eddie thinks is an unnecessarily mocking voice. “If you would stop starving us, we could show you.”

Skirth frowns. Eddie can see her nails digging against her palm. She has the look of a woman who is trying very hard not to appear as terrified as she clearly is.

“Hey,” Eddie says. “Let’s not go about scaring the only half decent person in a ten mile radius, yeah?”

Venom turns to look at him, the length of black connecting him to Eddie’s shoulder stretching with alarming ease. “We are not frightening her. It’s the truth.”

“Buddy, we’re gonna have to talk about the way you choose to share ‘the truth’,” Eddie says, reaching up to pat him. It’s the first time he’s actually touched Venom like this, and he’s surprised by how smooth and cool he feels beneath his palm. A part of Eddie had expected him to be sticky or gooey. He’s not in the least, and it’s strangely disconcerting.

Skirth takes a breath and glances down at her watch, making an obviously displeased face. “I’ve been here too long,” she says, getting to her feet. “It’s risky to keep the cameras off for anything more than half an hour at the most.”

“Woah, hey,” Eddie says, alarmed. “You’re just going to leave us here again?”

“I’m sorry,” she says apologetically. “I really, really am. But I can’t just…”

“Stage a jailbreak?”

That wrangles a small smile out of her. “Where would I even put you? You’re a bit too big to hide under my coat.”

“We don’t belong here,” Venom hisses, pulling closer to Skirth so that his teeth are inches from her face. The goo connecting him to Eddie stretches effortlessly. “If you don’t get us out of here, we will escape ourselves, and I cannot promise you’ll survive our efforts.”

Skirth steps back quickly, bumping into the wall. “I’m not leaving you here! Not for good, I promise. I’ve just - I need time. I need a plan. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Eddie can feel Venom’s discontent like a thick wave rolling through him. “Vee,” he says, holding out a hand.

Venom twists, looking at him. Eddie snaps his fingers impatiently. Then, with apparent reluctance, Venom retracts, slithering closer until he’s merely jutting out from Eddie’s shoulder again. He bumps his head against Eddie’s hand, and Eddie opens his palm to smooth it along him. “She’s doing the best she can,” he says firmly. “We’re not eating her.”

From the other side of their small enclosure, Skirth asks, alarmed, “Was that likely?”

“No,” Venom admits sulkily. “Eddie would not allow us.”

That doesn’t seem to reassure Skirth in the slightest. She’s staring at them like she really has no idea how to react to any of this. Eddie can’t help but think, all thing considered, she’s taking the vague threat of cannibalism very well.

“The longer we’re stuck here, the more likely it is that Drake actually figures out something useful,” Eddie warns. “And I dunno what we’re really gonna be able to do when that happens.”

“I just… I need some time,” Skirth says. “I promise. If I can just talk to some of the others.”

“They won’t turn you in for treason?” Eddie asks doubtfully.

“This is a lab, not a kingdom,” she says.

Eddie snorts. “Could have fooled me, the way Drake runs it.”

Ignoring him, Skirth bends down to scoop up the empty bucket. Eddie catches a glimpse of a few stringy pieces of tough gristle they’d left splattered at the bottom. Inexplicably, his gut pangs with longing, and it takes all his self-control not to lunge for it.

Soon, Venom says quietly to him, soft and warm. Soon we’ll eat something better than dead meat.

Eddie doesn’t know whether that thought should be as comforting as it feels. Mostly, he thinks he’s long past sticking to societal conventions when it comes to the complicated mess of his life and the terrible, awful things Venom whispers in his ears like a siren song.

Skirth is still standing in the doorway, twisting the bucket in her hands and watching them. Eddie realizes she’s looking to be excused - waiting for permission to leave them here. It’s a sick thought, but somehow it comforts him all the same.

“Alright,” Eddie says, even as Venom gives a deep rumble at his shoulder. “Do what you gotta do, but know that we’re not exactly the patient sort. If prince charming ain’t gonna spring us from our tower, we’ll do it ourselves.”

“You would make a poor princess, Eddie,” Venom says unhelpfully, but something about the joking nature of it seems to finally unwind the tight knots of Skirth’s demeanor. She stops looking at them like she’s waiting for them to take a bite out of her any second now.

“I’ll do what I can,” she says. “That’s the best I can promise you.”

“I’m holding you to it,” Eddie says.

Skirth’s mouth twists and she looks so miserable that for a moment Eddie has to fight the urge to blurt something comforting, but she rallies, straightening her back and stepping out of the room. “I promise,” she says. The door hisses closed, and suddenly Eddie’s back to looking at her through the glass.

He hadn’t realized just how much more bearable the cell had felt when the door had been open, giving him a mockery of choice, a potential escape route. Now, with that taken from them, he feels remarkably exhausted.

“Better be quick, doctor,” Venom says, baring his teeth in something that might pass as a smile to somebody incredibly unfamiliar with the term. “We’re still very, very hungry.”

Venom withdraws, sinking back effortlessly into Eddie’s skin, leaving nothing but a disappearing ripple of inky blackness to mark the place where’d been. It feels - it feels good, honestly. An anxiousness Eddie hadn’t even been conscious of when Venom was semi-apart from him eases, and Eddie lets out a deep breath.

Eddie rolls his shoulders and looks back up, catching Skirth’s eye. “You heard the big guy,” he says. “Do what you gotta do, but be quick. He’s not gonna do anything without my permission, but he makes some very compelling arguments.”

.

One thing Eddie had not anticipated about these trials was the sheer boredom.

When he wasn’t being trussed up like a turkey and poked and prodded, he was largely just left alone in his cell. There was nothing to do but sit and stare, watching the empty corridors and absently counting the blinks of the light on the security camera pointed straight at him.

Eddie has never done well with solitude, and he’s always done worse with boredom. He needs to be doing something. He has too much forward momentum in him to ever stand still for long, and this experience is pushing him well past his limits.

He thinks he might very well murder somebody for a pen and paper. Fuck, he’d settle for just the pen. There’s enough clear white floor space here that he could probably write a novel.

We’d murder somebody for free, Venom corrects.

“You’d murder somebody for free,” Eddie says. “I’d rather not murder anybody at all if I don’t have to.”

Eddie, says Venom, with a wry twist in his tone. I know you’re not naive enough to think we’re going to be able to escape here without eating at least one person.

Eddie can’t help but smile, even though he thinks it probably makes him look incredibly maniacal. He lets his head fall back, hitting the wall, and stares up at the blank ceiling above him. Even that’s boring to look at. It’s enough to make him almost miss the water stained, drooping roof of his last apartment.

He misses the stars the most. What little of them he could see through the smoke and smog of the city.

“Look, I’m not disagreeing that we might have too… Ya’know, hurt somebody.”

Kill.

“The insinuation was there, you don’t gotta red-pen me like an over enthusiastic English teacher. I’m just saying, it doesn’t mean we have to eat somebody just because we killed them.”

Seems like a waste, Venom says. I thought you humans were all about recycling?

Eddie rubs a hand over his face while he considers that and can’t come up with a satisfactory response. “I mean, strictly speaking, I suppose you’re not wrong.”

He can feel Venom’s smug attitude warming the back of his mind. I rarely am.

“I don’t believe that for one second,” Eddie says. “There’s no way that you’re not at least half as stupid as I am.”

Venom’s indignant response is cut off by the sound of the door to their cell opening. Eddie opens his eyes and lifts his head, wondering if perhaps Skirth has come back to them already.

No dice. Carlton Drake looks every bit as insufferable as the last time Eddie saw him, if at least slightly less frazzled. His hair is combed neatly, and the bags under his eyes have been carefully concealed.

“Are you stopping by to visit the lowly peasants now?” Eddie asks, refusing to give Drake the satisfaction of moving so much as an inch from his comfortable spot on his incredibly uncomfortable bunk.

Drake, as per usual, ignores Eddie’s particularly intelligent cutting remark. “I’ve been hearing some rumours about you lately, Brock.”

“Maybe you should employ less gossips,” Eddie suggests helpfully.

“Some of the scientists have said that you seem to be talking to yourself,” Drake says, and Eddie’s stomach drops. “Or you’ve been talking to somebody in your head.”

Venom is dead silent. Eddie is thankful of the room to think, racing from one thought to the next so fast that it’s enough to give him whiplash. Searching for something - anything - to dig them out of this trap.

“Well,” Eddie says, drawing the word out long and slow. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there isn’t exactly much to do in this five star resort you’re running. A man would go crazy without something to occupy himself.”

Drake very clearly does not buy it. His dark eyes are boring into Eddie, and the corner of his mouth is ticked up ever so slightly. Carlton Drake has a horrible poker face. It’s a good thing, Eddie thinks, that he made his fortune on torture and not gambling.

“Let’s be honest with one another, shall we, Eddie?”

“You don’t exactly compel me to honesty, but sure, we can try.”

Drake steps closer and Eddie fights the instinctive response to push away, slam his shoulders against the wall until it gave and he had some place further to escape to. It’s absurd. Although months of neglect and days of starvation have stripped Eddie of most of his muscle, he’s still bigger than Drake, could probably take him in a fight if it came down to it.

It certainly doesn’t feel like that. Eddie wonders if maybe this whole thing has gotten to him deeper than he’d thought. As a reporter he’d certainly seen how deep the psychological trauma of abuse could run. He’d never thought he’d experience it himself.

“Have you been talking with your symbiote?”

Eddie stares him down and does not respond. The silence drags long and terrible between them. Venom stirs a little beneath his skin, responding to Eddie’s mounting tension with a dark hostility.

Drake smiles thinly. He looks faintly victorious and Eddie dearly wants to punch him in his pretty boy face. “I’m sure you understand that in the countless forms you signed, that you agreed withholding information related to the Life Foundation could and would result in criminal charges.”

Eddie snorts. “Are you serious? You wanna put me before a judge and have me explain how I came to be in possession of an intelligent life form on your company’s dime? ‘Why yes, your honor, he did kill countless people and conceal their deaths from the general public, thank you ever so much for asking’.”

“Are you threatening me, Eddie Brock?”

“I’m saying that you and I both know that the power of the law isn’t your weapon of choice,” Eddie says. “I don’t care what you made me sign, I’m not doing jack shit for you.”

“There’s really no point in being argumentative for the sake of your pride.”

“Being argumentative and what’s left of my pride is really all I’ve got to defend at this point,” Eddie says, smiling nastily. “So you can do what you want, but you haven’t got much to bargain with me.”

The corner of Drake’s mouth ticks, just ever so minutely, but Eddie sees it clear as day. The big bads of New York would have eaten this guy alive. In his heyday, Eddie would have obliterated him. It’ll forever be Eddie’s deepest shame that this is the man that brought him low.

“Alright,” Drake says, smoothing his hands down the front of his suit. “I can understand your integrity, if not much else, I suppose. We’re no better than animals if we don’t offer each other at least the base amount of respect, aren’t we?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Eddie says cheerfully.

This time, Drake’s tick is even clearer but he recovers masterfully. “You seem to be in fine spirits today, Eddie,” he says. “As such, I don’t think we need to be overly concerned with the state of your health.”

Eddie can see precisely where this is going, and he’s not impressed in the slightest. “You don’t get what you want, so you resort to petty torture. Real class act, aren’t you?”

“It’s not torture, it’s science. I’m sorry that you can’t understand the difference.”

“I’m not so sure the Geneva Convention would agree with you, but sure.” Eddie spreads his arms wide, welcoming Drake’s punishment without so much as wincing. “Give me the worst you can, asshole.”

Drake smiles and it’s more teeth than lip; icy and somehow unclean. “I have not even begun to show you my worst, Eddie Brock.”

.

They try and drown him.

Eddie is sure, that if he were to ask, there would be some highly technological explanation for it all. Something that, on paper, sounds fancy and reasonable.

In reality, they dunk his head underwater and until he blacks out and then, once he wakes up, they dunk him again.

It’s not great.

In the beginning Venom talks him through it, the angel on his shoulder whenever he wakes, guiding him through each breath he can struggle down and promising glorious, horrific violence if Eddie will just give him the word.

We could tear them limb from limb, leaving them nothing but a ball of flesh.

No, Eddie thinks as he’s plunged back under again.

We could eat them all, Eddie. Every last person here who thought they could lay a finger on us. Every single one.

No, that’s not what I want.

Water again, rushing in his ears, choking him, robbing him of thought.

At one point, during one of his brief visits to the surface, he hears one of the scientists saying, “It’s incredible; no matter how much water he takes in, there’s no sign of it in the scans. He might as well be breathing nothing but air.”

It sure doesn’t fucking feel like Eddie’s breathing nothing but air. At some point, Venom stops talking to him, too distracted keeping Eddie from drowning, consuming the water as it hits his lungs, absorbing it as best as he can even though Eddie thinks there has to be a limit to what Venom can take.

He’s not a fucking sponge.

Something about that thought is enough to send Eddie over the edge, and this time when they drag him out of the water he’s laughing hysterically, tears turning the water on his face salty.

Treece, who has had one hand tangled in Eddie’s hair this whole time, visibly hesitates. His grip tightens to the point of pain, and Eddie catches a watery glimpse of his baffled, slightly fearful expression before Treece manages to get ahold of himself.

Eddie goes back under the water still laughing. It hurts like a fucking bitch.

Eddie, Venom says. Please.

It’s the closest to begging Eddie’s ever heard him; it presses at Eddie’s crumbling defenses, and he’s so, so tempted to say yes.

He’s so goddamn tired. He’s hungry and he’s cold and he’s scared. It would be so very easy to let Venom do what he wanted. How bad was a little murder, really, when the people he’d be killing were capable of doing something like this?

Eddie’s pulled from the water gasping and heaving. He spits a shaky string of bile back into the water and, for the first time since this started, catches a glimpse of his face.

He’s sodden like a drowned rat, sopping hair hanging in his face and rivers running along every tired crease that lines his skin. His eyes are shot through with branching blood, and the bags beneath them look like bruises.

Eddie blinks.

There’s enormous white teeth and roiling black skin and sightless eyes. A tongue flicks out, snake-like.

Eddie .

Eddie closes his eyes. “No,” he says, voice hoarse and water-logged. “Not over this.”

You’re such a soft fool, Venom says. We could have so much if only you would let us take it.

“Who’s he talking to?” Treece asks, his voice a distant rattle to Eddie’s thought.

“Doesn’t concern you,” replies one of the scientists. “He’s ready to go again.”

Nails scrape Eddie’s scalp. He sucks in one more big breath and then, once again, he goes under.

.

Afterwards, Eddie’s permitted a shower. Well, shower is perhaps too generous of a term - he’s permitted to stand naked and shivering against a wall while he’s blasted clean with a powerful hose.

The water is barely above lukewarm, but compared to the torture of early, it’s heaven. Eddie squirms beneath the pressure of it, so far past being self-conscious that it’s not even funny.

He’s given a fresh set of clothes, and he can’t help but rub his hands over it greedily, hoarding the clean, dry feeling like it’s worth its weight in gold. Treece leaves him curled up atop his bed, giving Eddie a look like he’s nothing more than dirt as he leaves.

Eddie doesn’t care. He’s clean and he’s dry and he’s warm. He’s still shaking like a leaf, and he thinks he’ll have nightmares about drowning for as long as he lives, but part of what had made him such a great reporter was his ability to compartmentalize, and he boxes up the last hour of his life up tightly and tucks it away in the deepest, darkest recesses of his mind.

Venom tugs at him and Eddie obediently rolls over, putting his back to the camera looking into his cell. Instantly, Venom slithers out, blanketing over Eddie’s skin in a warm wash of comforting black. Eddie shivers beneath his touch.

If we didn’t know better, we’d think you were into this kind of thing.

“What kind of thing?”

There’s a humorous ripple in his gut. The being tortured sort of thing, Venom replies. I can’t think of another reason that you let it persist like this.

“I can think of plenty,” Eddie says tiredly. “I knew what I was signing up for when - well, when I signed up for it.”

He can feel Venom shuffling through his memories with all the grace of a bull in a china shop. Eddie allows it to happen. There’s nothing Venom is going to stumble upon that Eddie really feels like he ought to hide.

Venom’s going to know it all eventually, anyway.

I thought you weren’t a very nice man, Venom observes idly. But Carlton Drake is a very, very not nice man.

“Yeah, you could say that.”

He’s a dick.

Eddie gives a soft laugh that hurts his sore throat. Venom preens a little bit, pleased. For a moment they stay like that, curled and tangled together, comforting one another with nothing but their shared presence and the growing connection between them.

Eddie, Venom says, at what point are we allowed to help ourselves?

Eddie tries to think about that and discovers he just plain lacks the mental energy for it. He shrugs. “I guess we’ll figure out that when the time comes.”

He can see Venom gearing up for a response, but then, quite suddenly, he freezes. A scant second later he vanishes, sucked back into Eddie’s skin like water swirling down a drain. (Eddie can’t help but shiver at the comparison.)

There’s a knock on the glass. Already resigned, Eddie rolls over.

This time Drake doesn’t bother to come into the cell properly, content to stand behind the glass and watch him, hands folded neatly behind his back. “How are you feeling, Eddie?”

“Peachy,” Eddie rasps. “Kinda thirsty, actually. Could go for some water if you’ve got some.”

Drake’s eyes give an amused twinkle. “Not talkative?”

“Can’t talk, throat too dry,” Eddie says, and gives an exaggerated cough. It hurts something fierce on the way out.

“I see your humour made it out intact.”

Nothing will make it out intact from this facility when we’re done with it, Venom rumbles, but Eddie nonchalantly shoves that thought aside.

“Better luck next time, I guess. Your worst isn’t so bad after all, Drake.”

He’d expected irritation. He’d expected aggravation. The tick at Drake’s mouth and that dark flash in his eyes. Instead, Drake smiles pleasantly at him. Instantly, every hair on Eddie’s body stands on end.

“I think you’ve made a mistake. I’m afraid that wasn’t at all what I had in mind.”

Going by the victorious expression on Drake’s face, Eddie does not quite manage to mask his flash of alarm in time. Eddie slowly levers himself upright, eyes on Drake all the while. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Drake doesn’t respond, just turns to face the far doors in the corridor. Eddie follows his gaze, dread sinking his stomach to his shoes. They bang open.

Inside the hall stalks Treece and one of his men. Between them, they drag a body. The way their feet catch on the floor tells Eddie they’re alive, but the slump of their shoulders and the hang of their head is exhausted and intimately familiar - it’s precisely how Eddie had felt after Venom has possessed him that first time.

They turn a corner and Eddie catches a look at their face.

It’s Maria.

Of course it’s Maria.

Drake turns to look at him and when Eddie meets his expression, he sees a monster that Venom will never match. “Let me know, Eddie Brock, if you truly think you’ve seen the worst I’m capable of now.”

Chapter Text

To say that Eddie takes the revelation badly would be to say there was ever a possibility of him taking the revelation well.

Eddie, Venom says, sounding incredibly distant for somebody who lives inside his head. Eddie, calm down.

Maria looks rougher than he’s ever seen her. Her hair hangs like a curtain, limp and greasy, and there isn’t an ounce of complexion in her pallid face. She slumps between Treece and his fellow escort like the dead, feet pulling on the ground.

Eddie sees red. His hands press so hard against the glass caging him that he’s surprised it doesn’t crack beneath his palms.

Eddie, Venom says again, more urgent now. Eddie can feel a writhing bloodlust rising in the back of his mind, a sweeping storm of fury. If we do not calm down, we’re going to do something that you regret.

For a second, that’s a price Eddie thinks he might be willing to pay. The very notion of facing any consequences for his actions seems so far off, and all he wants to do is break through this goddamn prison and tears Drake’s smug face from his skull. He wants it so bad that he can practically feel the give of Drake’s flesh beneath his fingernails.

“What’s the matter, Eddie?” Drake asks. “Finally lost your tongue?”

Eddie sucks in a deep breath and he can feel Venom skittering along the back of his neck, just out of sight. That flicker of reality is just enough to pull him away from the precarious brink he was standing on and, somehow, Eddie manages to claw his way back to reason.

“So this is your game, huh?” he asks, voice hoarse with the effort of containing his fury. “If you can’t break me fair and square, you’re not above playing dirty?”

“Subject 18 volunteered to be here, just the same as you did,” Drake says.

There’s innumerable things Eddie wants to say to that, but he reigns himself in. Carefully, he calls out, “Maria?”

She doesn’t answer. Treece dumps her in Geoff’s old cell, even though there’s plenty to spare, and Eddie watches her slump lifelessly to the floor. Her head bounces off the tile, and although she’s out cold Eddie can’t help but flinch on her behalf.

Drake says, “Well, it seems you could use some time to think over my proposal.” he adjusts the cuffs of his blazer. “I’m afraid that we’ll be back later this evening to pick up Maria for some tests. Why don’t you use that time to decide what is more important to you, Mr. Brock: your pride or your morals.”

Eddie watches as Drake turns and heads for the exit, passing by Maria’s cell without even a glance. Treece and his companion fall into step beside him, and the sharp crack of their boots against the cold floor is achingly loud.

The door hisses open and they disappear outside once more. It closes behind them, locking Eddie into his empty purgatory of silence.

.

Maria seems to sleep for eternity. Eddie spends every single minute of it on the floor by the glass, watching her with hawk-eyes, terrified that the moment he glances away will be the moment she ceases to exist.

Eddie, Venom says.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Eddie says without blinking. “Fuck, I know, Venom, okay? I know.”

Venom ripples uncomfortably over his skin. He feels dissatisfied, and when he speaks next his tone is incredibly sulky. We weren’t going to say anything.

Eddie rubs at the grout between the tiles, feeling it against the delicate skin of fingers. “I’ll bet you weren’t,” he mutters. “Like you’re not all smug about being right.”

We’re not smug, Venom says. We’re unhappy. Rude to be smug in such circumstances.

That manages to wrangle a faint smile out of Eddie, but it’s gone almost as soon as it arrives. “I wouldn’t blame you. Fuck, I can’t believe I was such a - a goddamn idiot.”

There’s a tentative pressure on the back of his neck, and when Eddie reaches out to touch it, Venom smooths along his hand, warm and comforting, squeezing into the ridges between Eddie’s fingers. Too good, Venom suggests. Be easier if we’d listen to me more than you.

Eddie sighs, taking his hand back. Venom clings for a moment but lets him go before the cameras can catch them. At this point, Eddie’s more or less sure they’ve lost the element of surprise.

Drake knows they’re communicating. There’s no way around that. There’s far too much footage of Eddie talking to himself, and more than one eye witness account to vouch for just how fucking creepy he is. What Drake doesn't realize, he thinks, is that he and Venom have long since crossed the line from communication - they’ve bonded.

Stockholm syndrome, Venom says with good humour.

“I’m offended you think I’d fall victim to something as stupid as that.”

Eddie, you’ve fallen victim to much stupider things. We can’t take the moral high ground anywhere with you making all our choices.

Eddie wishes it wasn’t true, but he’s still staring at Maria three cells over, laying on the floor and breathing far more shallowly than Eddie would prefer. “Shut up.”

She’s alive.

“I know, I know. Just… alive and well are very different things. Especially in here.” Eddie hesitates for a second and then asks, “Can you feel…”

Her symbiote?

Eddie winces. “Yeah. I guess, if that’s what you’d call it.”

Venom flutters about, both inside and outside of him; a patch of blackness blooming on his elbow, an insidious stretch at the back of his mind. It’s there, Venom says. Alive, but not, as we say, well.

“Can you tell why?”

Why it’s not well?

“I mean,” Eddie starts, uncertain. Without meaning to, his fingers skate down to brush the faint remnants of Venom lingering on his skin. “Why it’s not working for her when it works for us?”

Again, Eddie feels that inexplicable flicker of tenderness that Venom sometimes exhibits when Eddie works up the courage to talk about them as a unit rather than individuals. It doesn’t work because they don’t have a union, Venom says. We are different, Eddie. We have symbiosis. We are truly one.

Eddie doesn’t understand it, not really, but he doesn’t think he’s quite ready to press Venom for the details of it. Not yet, anyway. Not when he has so many other things to worry about. He supposes it’s pretty depressing that being semi-possessed by alien goo that seems half infatuated with him ranks remarkably low on his priority list these days.

Across the corridor, there’s a faint noise and Eddie’s on his feet in an instant, hands to the glass. “Maria?”

As he watches, she stirs. Slowly at first, but after a moment her eyes flicker open. She stares blankly through the glass at him, seeing but not comprehending, and Eddie worries for a moment that the hit she took on the way down might have been worse than he’d thought.

“Maria?” Eddie says again, gentler. “It’s me. It’s Eddie. You’re okay.”

That’s the biggest lie we’ve told, Venom says, but Eddie ignores him.

“Eddie?” Maria’s voice is soft and hazy. She hoists herself up on the floor, hand pressed to her forehead as she frowns at him. “What...”

“Hey, take a deep breath. How are you feeling? Dizzy? Does anything hurt?”

Maria shakes her head, but Eddie thinks it’s probably not in answer to any of his questions. With apparent effort, she sits up properly, leaning against the wall. Eddie digs his nails into his palms, trying to give her time it doesn’t really feel like they have at the moment.

After a very long moment, she says, “Even in here I can’t seem to get away from you, can I?”

Eddie lets out the breath that had been pressing against his sore ribs. Venom swirls, darkly amused, in the back of his mind. “I’d say it’s good to see you but…”

Maria snorts weakly. She clambers upright, stumbling unevenly, shoulder ramming into the wall before she finds her feet. “I know you’ve got a noble streak, Eddie,” she says, “but you really shouldn’t have come here.”

“That’s what I tried to tell you.”

Maria shrugs. “I needed to eat.”

Eddie tamps down on the fond frustration blooming in his gut. He’d long learnt it’s pointless to argue with Maria about most anything. Her perspective on the world is far different from Eddie’s and he can’t even pretend the inherent privilege of his life didn’t play a sizable role in that.

“Alright,” Eddie says. It takes all his willpower to peel himself away from the glass, but he manages, sitting down atop his bunk. “Okay, okay. How long have you been here?”

Maria shakes her head again. “A while, I think.”

“But not…” he waves vaguely at their bland little jails. “Not like this?”

She hasn’t been with her symbiote long, Venom observes. We’d know if she’d had.

Eddie valiantly ignores the implications of that.

“No, not like this,” Maria says. “I was with some other volunteers for a while. They took us one by one.” She glances around at the endless empty spaces around them. “I guess I don’t want to know what happened to the people who went before me, huh?”

Eddie does not think she does, no. “It’s alright. I’m going to get us out of here. You don’t need to worry.”

“Eddie,” Maria says, fond but exasperated. “I don’t think this is one of those situations you just ‘get out of’.”

Eddie grits his teeth. “We can get us out,” he insists.

“We? I don’t know how much help I’m going to be in this situation, Eddie.”

Before Eddie can think of a gentle way to tell her that hadn’t been precisely what he’d meant, the doors to the corridor open again.

“Treece,” Eddie says. “Can’t you see we’re having a conversation here? You’re interrupting.”

Treece doesn’t even glance at him, but he does bang loudly on Eddie’s glass as he passes, making him startle back like a fish in a tank. “I don’t think now’s the moment you really want to test my patience, Brock.”

Maria presses herself back into a corner, but the empty look on her face says that she knows nothing she does here will really amount to anything. The door to her cell opens, and Treece sizes her by the wrist, dragging her brutally forward.

“Hey! Hey! Be careful, alright? She’s not… she’s not well.” Eddie slams his palms against the glass. “Are you listening to me, asshole?”

Maria tries to twist out of his grip, but Treece’s security pal takes her other arm and the two of them drag her out of the cell with just as little care as they’d had putting her in there in the first place. She doesn’t look at Eddie as she’s neatly ‘escorted’ past, but the look Treece shoots him is righteous and smug.

Eddie takes in a deep breath, holds it, and then lets it out. The horrible swirling fog of fury in his gut does not abate.

“Alright, Vee,” he says quietly. “You win, I guess.”

Win what?

Eddie closes his eyes. “I think it might to stage a break out.”

.

They keep Maria for what feels like an age. Eddie has long since grown used to the veritable eternity that seems to pass between each and every event in this hellscape, and somehow he manages to keep from doing anything drastic.

Venom is there all the while, a dark, comforting presence ghosting along his skin and shivering at the back of his mind. He’s restless, Eddie thinks.

Not restless, Venom disagrees. Eager. Another shiver. Another faint flash of blood splattering along the glass behind Eddie’s eyes. Excited.

“Well,” Eddie mutters, leg swinging idly over the side of his bunk, “let’s try and keep to the plan, yeah?”

We can try, Venom says, which doesn’t inspire confidence.

Finally, the doors hiss open. Eddie does not move from his position on the bunk. He listens but does not watch as Maria is dragged back to her cell. He can hear the sound of her hitting the ground again, and he bites back on the urge to leap to his feet and pick a fight on her behalf.

Footsteps approach his cell, the sharp sound of dress shoes on tile. “Is this your attempt at taking the high road, Eddie?”

Drake’s voice is as insufferable as always. Eddie focuses on the bland ceiling above him. “I thought one of us ought to try it, considering it seems beneath you.”

Silence for a second. He wonders if Drake’s mouth is twitching yet.

“Goodnight, Eddie. I’ll be seeing the both of you bright and early tomorrow, I’m sure.”

“Go jump off a cliff, you rat bastard.”

Drake retreats back to his entourage, and the doors rattle closed behind them. Eddie waits patiently, listening to the wet sound of Maria breathing. The bright overhead fluorescents shut off and the security lights flicker on in their place.

Eddie waits a moment, two, and then calls, “Maria?”

“I’m fine,” she says, in the voice of somebody who is resolutely not fine. “Just… tired.”

Eddie levers himself off his bunk, cautiously approaching the glass. Through it, he can see Maria shivering miserably on her bed, head tucked out of sight. “The first night’s the worst,” he says. “It gets… it gets better.”

Venom’s silence is deafening.

Maria says, “I don’t feel so well, Eddie.”

The careful, wavering lilt in his voice is enough to make him want to punch something. Maria has always been one of the funniest, strongest people he’s known, and to see Drake bring her down to this is almost too much.

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Eddie says. “It’s rough, I know.” And then, trying for a spark of humour, “Was it worth the meal?”

“Didn’t even get a meal,” Maria says. “Stuck me full of some tubes instead. Eddie, I’m so hungry.”

The shiver that chases down Eddie’s spine is pure reflex. He wonders if the awful, horrible yearning in Maria’s voice is the exact way he’d sounded every single time he’d begged Skirth to please, for the love of god, please feed us.

“Yeah,” Eddie says again, because he has nothing else to offer. “I know. Try and - try and get some sleep.”

Maria doesn’t answer. The shallow rise and fall of her shoulders tells Eddie that she’d already passed out before he’d even finished talking. Feeling useless, Eddie slinks back to his own bunk to wait.

It doesn’t take as long as he’d thought it would. Eventually, the doors open again.

“About time,” Eddie says, exhausted. “I was beginning to think your backbone gave out.”

Skirth ignores him, making a beeline straight for Maria’s cell. She shows none of the hesitation she did when she’d come into Eddie’s that first time and is on her knees beside her in an instant, fingers to her pulse and the back of her hand to Maria’s forehead. Maria herself does not so much as stir.

Eddie gets to his feet, shuffling closer. “I thought you could do all that remotely.”

“Supposedly,” Skirth says, peeling back Maria’s eyelids and shining a pocket-torch into the iris. “But after - after what happened last time, I want to be sure.”

Eddie deeply does not want to think about ‘last time’. He thinks he’ll be haunted by Geoff’s last moments until he joins him. “How is she?”

Skirth stands, gently rolling Maria onto her side and passing a comforting hand through her hair. Absently, Eddie wonders if she’s a mother. “Not good,” Skirth says, voice tight.

“We need your help,” Eddie says, as measured as he can, trying not to sound like a man at the end of his rope.

“You have it,” Skirth says immediately. At Eddie’s floored expression, she says, “You were right about me. I spent too much time watching and not enough time doing. If I can - if there’s a way I can fix this, even a little, then I have to try.”

Maybe not so much of a coward after all, Venom observes softly.

Eddie lets out a breath, his head hitting the glass in front of him as the relief leaves him weak. “Thank you,” he says, breath fogging his reflection. “That’s - thanks.”

Skirth is quiet as she leaves Maria’s cell. She approaches Eddie slowly, hands in the pockets of her coat. Up close, she looks like she hasn’t been sleeping well, and possibly like she’s aged an entire year inside a week. Eddie wonders if that’s the going price of guilt these days. “What do you need?”

“I want to know where the other volunteers are being held,” Eddie says.

Skirth’s expression falters and for a moment Eddie thinks she’s going back on her word, but she says, “I could tell you, but I don’t know how much help it’d be. If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s nearly impossible to find your way around the labs.”

Eddie wishes that surprised him. He wouldn’t have put it past Drake to design it as a labyrinth on purpose. “Okay,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face.

Before he can say anything else, he feels a faint flicker of pressure on his skin and Venom emerges, twisting and black. His mouth splits open, revealing his endless sharp teeth. “If we get out,” Venom says, “Could you take us there?”

“What, right now?” Skirth asks, alarmed.

“No, god no,” Eddie says. “I’m guessing Drake’s got this place locked down tighter than Area 51 at night.”

Skirth reluctantly nods. “Even I don’t have the access to get you in there at this hour.”

“Tomorrow,” Venom says.

“Tomorrow? That’s -.”

“No,” Eddie cuts in. “No, he’s right. The sooner the better. I can’t - I can’t keep Maria in here any longer than she has to be, Doc. She’s not going to make it another day at this rate.”

As one, they both turn, looking over at her cell. Maria in on her bed where Skirth left her, but she’s quivering, skin an unnatural white. She looks at least twice as bad as Eddie had felt on that first day when all he could do was shake and puke.

“The symbiote is rejecting her,” Venom says.

Skirth doesn’t look at all surprised by the news. Eddie supposes that after nearly twenty test subjects, this is something she’s probably grown used to. “Eddie,” she says gently. “Even if you get out, I don’t know if she’s going to be…”

“We can help her,” Eddie says firmly. “Venom and I - we can do something.”

Skirth looks uncertainly to Venom. He’s bigger now, one large, clawed hand resting on Eddie’s shoulder, bleeding out from Eddie’s back like a rising fog. He’s more detailed too, less like an illusion and more like the flickering glimpses Eddie has caught in his reflection.

He’s getting stronger, Eddie realizes. Between finally - finally - being fed, and the slow and steady growth of their bond, Venom is quickly becoming far more than a mere voice at the back of his head.

“It’s not that simple,” Skirth says. “We’ve tried everything.”

Venom smiles at her. “You haven’t tried us.”

Eddie doesn’t even know what that means himself, but he gives Skirth his most pleading look, the one that used to win Anne over even in her foulest moods. “It doesn’t matter right now,” he says. “We need to get out. We can’t stay here. At this rate, Drake’s going to kill us both.”

“Probably the good Doctor too,” Venom observes. “He’s growing suspicious.”

Skirth grimaces, wiping her hands anxiously on her lab coat. “It was only a matter of time. I’m not a very good liar.”

“Come with us,” Eddie says urgently. “Tomorrow. You can’t stay in this place, Skirth.”

“What little will be left of this place,” Venom adds in what he probably thinks is a helpful manner.

Skirth looks torn. “If he knows for sure that I was the one who helped you, he could -.”

“He could do anything, Skirth, for any reason whatsoever. Drake is a fucking sociopath, and believe me, I know what one looks like by now. You’ve gotta get out. I’ve got…” Eddie thinks of Anne, and hopes she doesn’t strangle for this. “I’ve got somebody who can help, I think.”

“You think?” Skirth asks. “That’s not - that’s not really as reassuring as you think it is.”

“I don’t think you really have much of a choice,” Venom says. “Either you die tomorrow when we escape, you die when Drake gets his hands on you, or you come with us and maybe live.”

Skirth hesitates for a moment longer. Behind them, Maria makes a pained sound and Skirth glances over her shoulder again. All the fight seems to burn out of her. “Alright,” she says. “Seems like you’re going to need a doctor on hand anyway, I suppose.”

The sheer relief that hits Eddie is a surprise. Skirth is… she’s a good person. A good person in a bad situation, trying her hardest to right all the wrongs she’d contributed too. Eddie doesn’t truly know how bad tomorrow is going to be for everybody in this goddamn building once he lets Venom have his way, but he has an inkling it’s not going to be pretty.

Skirth doesn’t deserve to be caught in that. Nobody does, if Eddie’s being honest.

“Smart choice,” Venom says, and then he slinks back into Eddie’s body leaving nothing but a puddle of black shimmering on Eddie’s skin for a moment.

Skirth watching him go warily. “Is he okay?”

Eddie rolls his shoulders, adjusting to the lack of weight pressing at them once more. “Conserving energy, I think,” he says. “I get the impression we’re going to need as much of it as possible tomorrow.”

The pleased, hungry ripple Venom gives in his gut tells Eddie he’d guessed correctly.

Skirth steps back from their cell, fingers leaving smudges on the glass. “Will you tell me what, exactly, your plan is?”

Eddie grins, and if the way Skirth shudders and steps back, there’s more than a little of Venom in it. “You’ll just have to find out, won’t you?”