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When it slunk back to Eddie, the symbiote was shaking. He’d noticed a tremor in the shadows, standing outside of Stark Tower. The soft squelching of it against the ground. Instantly he turned from the floodlights outside the building and ran into the shadowed alley. It flowed from the darkness onto his hand. Anguish flooded him the moment it touched his fingers- a torrent of images flooding through him too fast to process. It surged up his arm and over his body, writhing across him in unsteady pulses. Like sobs.
“What happened?” He growled, stumbling back at the force of it’s emotions. “Did- did Spiderman hurt you when you went with him?”
Another flood of images. White on flesh on red on blood. The symbiote tightened around him, part of it coagulating across his chest and underneath his armpits. Some of the places where he had the most warmth. He cradled the thickened mass on his chest in his arms, leaning down to press his lips against it.
“Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay.” He forced his tone to be calm, comforting, past the rage that burned in him at the way his other felt so weak in his arms. “I’m here.”
He gently carded his hands through the shaking mass, tracing circles through it’s surface. The touch had once had no significance to it- but after years of them holding each other, it knew the patterns meant comfort. It had done the same to him many times. He held his other for a long time. The shaking slowly lessened, until eventually it was limp against him. Only the comfort of his skin kept it from sliding into a formless puddle on the concrete below.
“What happened?” Eddie asked again, this time quieter.
Flash. The name rocketed through Eddie’s mind. He saw through it’s eyes- Flash was on the ground, heaving, the white anti-venom suit in damaged rivulets across his exposed skin. His voice was weak. Spiderman’s mind was in the symbiotes- they were together, fighting the Goblin-Carnage- but his thoughts were muffled beneath the symbiotes' desperate grief. Spiderman knelt over Flash, saying something. The symbiote spooled out from his fingertips onto Flash’s burning skin.
Stop, Flash thought the minute they made contact, even as his mouth was moving to say something back to Spiderman. If you touch me you’ll die. I still have Antivenom in my blood, even if it’s not enough to keep me alive.
But it had to save him.
No. You have to save Spiderman. He needs you to defeat the Goblin.
But it had to save him.
I know. Flash smiled bittersweetly. His eyes drifted from Spiderman’s, alighting on the spool of black curled tightly around his shoulder. A hiss of smoke billowed from the contact, the pain searing into the symbiotes flesh. But you have to leave a man down sometimes.
That wasn’t what he said on the field.
I’m proud of you. He raised his hand to curl around the tendril. But you have to let me go.
So it did. It watched his head fall back against the concrete. It numbly followed Spiderman to battle. It slithered away when he told it to leave so he could fight the Goblin one on one. And now it was here.
The memory faded into the back of their shared mind. They were back in the alley. Eddie’s eyes stared into the distance without focusing on it.
“I’m sorry, love.” He whispered, his voice thick with the shock of it. He squeezed it tightly in his arms, and it shuddered, tightening around him like if it let go he would disappear. “I’m sorry.”
The symbiote didn’t speak much the next day. When Eddie went to work, writing up his tabloid trash on the pen and paper he could afford, it was silent. When he went out to eat it didn’t voice an opinion on what he got. It lay in the back of his mind like a flat puddle. Eddie let it. He knew what grief did to you. And whatever jealousy he had toward Flash for the time he had with the other, he pushed it aside.
For some reason, that night he felt more rejuvenated than he ever had. Most nights he’d been so tired he couldn’t stand at 10 pm- he’d been blaming it on finally approaching his late thirties. But now when he went to rest his head against the pillow, sleep wouldn’t come. He took the opportunity to work on his article- some drivel about a woman who had Galactus’ baby. The expose about corruption in the FBI stayed under his bed, where one day, a newspaper would want it.
The symbiote wanted to say something to him. He could feel it, a primed hesitance in the back of their shared mind. It lay still against him as a jacket and jeans. There were moments when it’s mind shifted, lifting up it’s presence as if it was going to share something with him, then lapsed back down again. He knew, and it knew he knew. But he didn’t press it.
This was the nature of their shared mindscape. It was hard to keep things apart from each other. Emotions moved between them so fluidly sometimes they didn’t know whose was whose. But it had found ways. It had kept the secret of it’s newest spawn from him, until the point he was almost captured by the FBI because of it.
As if spurred on by this thought, the symbiote called to him.
Eddie, it thought.
It was using words this time. A habit it had picked up during their years apart; his other only thought in human language when it had a specific message to get across. One it didn’t want ruined or misperceived by the frenetic nature of mental communication. Eddie had always thought this was counterintuitive- it was quicker and more powerful to communicate in images and feelings, as it usually did. He had said as such sometimes. He didn’t say so now, even as the symbiote felt the opinion.
Eddie, It said again.
Eddie inclined his head, looking up from his article. “Yes, love?” His voice was still gentle, still soothing after the other’s ordeal.
Do you think I should have tried to save him, even if it might have killed me?
Eddie stiffened. His back straightened instinctively against the back of his chair, and the symbiote pressed down on his shoulders in response, trying to flow calm back into his tightened muscles.
“No. No, of course not.” He breathed out. “You made me a promise when you went with Spiderman- that if it seemed your life was in danger, you’d run away. You’d come back to me.”
But it was Flash. The symbiote pressed. It’s grief flooded through his name- and something like guilt prickled under the surface.
“That doesn’t change anything. You know I can’t lose you.”
But I didn’t want to lose him.
Anger prickled within Eddie. Anger that there was someone else beyond the two of them. That his other cared about Flash more than him-
Not more than. I care. The symbiote shifted against his skin, running through the hair on his forearms. It’s voice was hard and gentle at the same time. Don’t know how not to.
Eddie clenched his jaw. This wasn’t about him. He knew that. His other had lost someone, and he had to be there for it. He looked down at his hands, clenched into open claws at his sides. They did that when he wasn’t paying attention. He forced them to relax, reminding himself: He’d promised himself he’d never hurt anyone with his anger again. Least of all his other. Guilt prickled within the symbiote again, a response to the thought. He wondered what it meant.
He told me I had to let him go. The symbiote continued, instead of answering the question in his thoughts. So I did. I’ve never let anyone go before. It sounded numb.
“You did the right thing.”
The symbiote was silent. They were quiet for a long time. Eddie looked back at his article. There needed to be some kind of provocative sentence in paragraph eight, something to keep the readers hooked.
Eddie, do you love me?
Eddie stiffened. “What? Of course I do.” He reached back to his shoulder, his fingers sinking into the symbiote mass of his jacket comfortingly. “You are my everything. My life. My benediction.” My purpose. My will. My reason to keep living. My hope. My love.
I don’t think Flash loved me. Not the way you do.
Eddie nodded. He tried to tamp down on the flicker of smugness in his chest, but they both knew it was there.
If I did something bad… Would you still love me?
“Of course, my love. Nothing could ever take me from you. Darling, where is this coming from?”
If I did something bad, and you didn’t know, and then you did know, would you still love me?
“Yes.”
But what if you hated me? What if you wanted to leave me? What if you-
“Darling.” He said forcefully, cutting off it’s frantic thoughts. He held out his hands palm up above the table. Instantly his jacket flowed down his arms, turning black and pooling between his fingers. He held it between his hands like cupped water. It was more liquid than solid now, slight, fearful ripples eddying across the surface.
“Even if you did something bad.” Eddie spoke gently. “Even if I hated you. I wouldn’t leave. Because I know what it’s like without you-” His voice choked. “I know what it’s like, and I can’t live like that again. I’d rather die.”
And what if you wanted to die?
Eddie stiffened. Instinctively his hands grew tighter around the liquid symbiote, constricting the space it had within them. Rivulets of it flowed over the sides of his palms. They oozed down the backs of his hands, coalescing into a solid web that held them still. Held him to it.
“...I know I’ve wanted to die before.” He said slowly. “But not now. Not when I’m with you. When we’re… when we’re whole.”
But they weren’t as whole as they used to be. After so many years apart, they were still learning how to be us again. It was a thought he often buried, and a thought he couldn’t allow himself to say in words. They were imperfect. But he allowed himself to feel it for his other. To acknowledge what they feared this discordance could do to them.
“We never should have ended to begin with.” He continued. “And I’m afraid of us ending again too.” He stroked his thumb through it’s liquid body, his throat tightening at the way it clung to him. His life. His everything. His other. “But I promise you. We will never be apart again. No matter what it is you’ve done.”
So I don’t have to let you go?
“No. Never.”
The symbiote relaxed within his mind. It didn’t fully believe him- but it’s frenetic fear was slipping out of it. It curled under the nail of his thumb, seeping into the miniscule space between it and the flesh. It needed to touch these parts of him that no human could. To reaffirm what they were. He waited patiently as it did so.
Can we go to sleep? It asked after some time. I want to think. I think better when you’re asleep.
Eddie frowned instinctively. The symbiote was going to think without him. To deliberate without him knowing. He’d suspected this was the case weeks ago- but it had confirmed it.
I’m sorry.
“No, it’s alright. If it’s what you want.” He sighed.
They got into bed. The symbiote curled around him, thickening and insulating like a blanket. He nuzzled his face into it, and it flowed across his closed eyelids.
“Good night. I love you.” He murmured. He’d been too tired to say it many of these nights.
It loved him too.