#i remade them all from ground up apart from eddy

[squea]

vera, vin, val and eddy (click for hd pls i didnt crash my pc 3 times with srwe for nothing)

[land-of-brains-and-chocolate]

i’ve finally fucking done it i’ve gotten the tragic backstory out of my system. i’m free. i’m free of the softness. hardcore head chomping only from now on

They feel different, definitely. New. Remade. More alive than ever, more aware. With every thread of their being that is neither one nor the other, neither claimed nor given, they are more. They are the building blocks for someone else.

Still, they are two-in-one. There are experiences they haven't shared. Understandings they've failed to reach. There are still things that require them to communicate. They're not just a person, but a relationship.

They find themselves wishing for perfect unity, sometimes. They know it'd get awfully lonely, though.

"Is now the time?"

It certainly seems like it could be. There's a sense of safety, or as close as they get, these days, in sitting on a rooftop, off the ground, away from everything. It's tinged by anxiety as the symbiote realises what he's referring to.

"I can tell you're trying to think of other things that require our attention," he says, "but we haven't taken the time to rest since we doomed and subsequently saved the world. There are limits."

Eddie thinks back to it. The separation, the invasion, the reunion. There's a tightness in his chest, then, that travels up to his neck, down his arms, into his stomach, all over. The symbiote can't open a channel of communication. It's either blanking out or overwhelmed. Maybe all at once.

It hasn't locked up like that in a long time. Not with him.

"It's okay," he says, trying to relax. "You don't have to." He pictures pressure, lifting with every breath.

"If there's anything you want to talk about, I'm listening."

They look out into the lights of the city, weak against the milky early morning sky. Eddie sits cross-legged, chin propped up on his elbow, weary down to his bones. A soft breeze gives him goosebumps, and in focusing on the sensation, slowly, they fall back in sync.

The memory appears vague, at first. Viewed at a distance. The symbiote doesn't offer it to him, exactly, doesn’t draw attention to it, but it's right there, right there in their mind. When he recognises it, Eddie automatically reinforces it with the brief flashes he got to see, a memory of a memory, until it is reconstructed.

The symbiote sits in a cage. It is sad, and angry, and afraid, but in a sharp, alien way, not yet shaped and given context by anything familiar. It is assaulted, from all sides, by the knowledge that it shouldn't be - not-it could be, and it could not-be - with nothing else for it to know.

The present symbiote thinks of it with disgust and pity, both. For what has yet to happen to it, for it to not realise it. For it to have been like this, when it could've not been. For it to not have learned to hide in time, having had to be taught.

Eddie thinks of the symbiote, the one he never got to know, too. What an innocent creature, he thinks.

And even in its cage, the symbiote thinks of the mind of another, the inescapable draw of it. The other's capability for endless strangeness. The wish to share their emotions, to have them directed at it.

It thinks of that.

For everyone to see.

For everyone to punish.

The memory fades away. Others take its place, but they aren't available in any coherent and concrete form. They are, more than anything, a series of states, flickering into their mind as one impact after the other. 

The symbiote is seen. It is described. It is opened. It is seen. It is described. It is opened. It is seen. It is described. It is seen. It is convicted. It is seen. It is filled.

Every muscle in Eddie's body locks up. His jaw feels like it's gripped in a vice. He can't breathe, but his heart is beating like it's trying to escape his chest cavity. The pain is solid, physical. It allows him to distance himself.

Eddie thinks. He thinks them back to the cage. He clings to every impression. The sky, oddly purple, perhaps cloudy. The crowd of aliens, the way the symbiotes seeped in and out of them, the faint fear and despair the hosts broadcasted into the network, the pleasure the symbiotes took from it. The slight twitch of their facial protrusions. Their smell, vaguely like leather.

Eddie puts together detail after detail, until the monotone drone of their mind lessens, until they come back to themselves.

Eddie aches.

It's sorry. It's so sorry.

Eddie hardly hears it. Eddie is standing, in some way, amidst the crowd. He looks up at the symbiote in its cage. It liked this species, he thinks. Anger flares up inside him, but only for a moment. It’s already over, after all.  

No one reacts to him when he takes a step forward. No one reacts to him when he climbs the odd apparatus. The symbiote is small and confused and not the one he knows, not quite, but it's more real than any of them.

"A sonic cage," he says, "right?"

Eddie reaches through it, effortlessly.

"Bad design on their part," he says. "It might stop you, but it won't stop your Other."

He can't quite reach it, at the back, where it's slumped into a puddle, so he crosses the barrier. It's a tingle across his skin. The symbiote looks up at him, wide-eyed.

He touches it. It doesn’t flinch away. It's never had to flinch away, and this time, it never will. It's curious, it's hopeful. It runs up his arm, presses up against his chest. It can feel his heartbeat. It wants to feel more.

"I'm here to protect you," he says, and it's never thought of anything like that, but it feels like something it's been holding inside, somewhere. Some yearning.

In bright sunlight, Eddie blinks his eyes open.

The symbiote is draped across him, purring in short bursts, as if feverish, shivering. Slowly, Eddie raises his arms around it. He runs his fingertips over it, then dips them inside, carding through its silky mass, over and over, top to bottom.

For the moment, the symbiote's mental blocks dissipate. Their thoughts tangle around each other, nudge each other, strengthen each other.

Most prominently among them: They're dead.

The corner of Eddie's mouth curls upwards.

There's nothing but vicious joy attached to the thought.

They picture it, all of them, disintegrating. In such immense pain, they'd rather let themselves fall apart than bear it. And it was driven by the symbiote's pain. The very pain they inflicted on it was their downfall.

Justice at its most efficient and most excruciating, truly.

For a second, the symbiote thinks, they were all one, they were all connected. It was part of the largest empathic network it's ever established. They all felt the same. But it survived. They didn't. They'd never been made to hurt like this. They'd only done the hurting.

It was stronger than them.

"Of course," Eddie says, eyes soft. "Of course you are. People like that are never strong. They may be powerful, but they're always... weak."

He pauses, thoughtfully, then gathers a pile of goo in his hands, and it rises, rounds out, grows eyespots, until he's cupping the symbiote's cheeks.

"You're worth all their lives and more."

There's something like a dull thump, like a massive leap of his heart, out of rhythm. The symbiote killed them. Not alone, but it did. That was one thing. It was right to do so, it knew that, knew that for all the species they subjugated. They brought and deserved nothing but death. But still... Some part of it still thought...

For so long, all it knew of itself was that it was wrong. All this time, it haunted it. Drove it not to be like them, but not to be like itself, either. To be like nothing and no one, in order to be so much as accepted. And now, that wrongness is supposed to be a badge of pride. Of triumph.

It churns with it. All the more, when Eddie brings their faces closer. Wanting still burns, sometimes. Wanting anything. Being anything. But his lips brush against it, and the burn subsides.

"I think," he says, quietly, mouth moving against its smooth surface, "it's up to us to decide what's wrong, now." He pulls back. "Who needs to be punished. Who needs to be protected. It's up to us alone. They’re gone."

It's up to Venom. Venom never would’ve let any of this happen.

"And it's up to me," he continues, "to decide whether I want you."

The symbiote stills, only for a moment, before it realises how hard he's trying not to smile, and headbutts him, gently.

"Which I do. Shame certainly won’t stop me.”

Fair enough.