"Second Life" by ArmoredSoul
A Spider-Man fan fiction
What if the only way to save the one you love is to turn them into something else?
Initial concept: "Life of a Symbiote"
--
One:
"-transfusion. The shift is a rather dramatic one, so it may take a considerable amount of time for him to adjust properly."
"Of course. And when do you think he'll wake up?"
Sound. Loud. Voices. Words. Vanessa?
"The transformation was completed rather recently, but in truth, there is very little known to medical science concerning these symbiotic life forms. It could take anywhere from a month to merely twenty-four hours before Matthew regains full consciousness."
Matthew. Name. Mine? Don't know, sounds familiar though.
"Oh, a-alright. I-I'll come back tomorrow."
I know that voice, soft and sweet like an angel's song. Vanessa. My Vanessa. And she sounds like she close to tears.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Weston. We're doing the best we can for your fiancée."
"…Thank you, doctor."
The light clicking of hard soled shoes on a tile floor, a door closing.
I can sense something has changed, something important. I just… Know. And it kind of scares me, this feeling that something is not as it should be. I try to calm myself, listening for that beautiful voice, the one thing I recognize. But it's only the doctor now, talking to an assistant about some such level of something or other. No Vanessa. She's gone, and I don't know where she went. And now I really am scared. I can hear lots of different things now, beeping and clicking and bubbling, but I ignore the background noise. Vanessa, where are you?!
Something cold brushes against me, and I flinch away from the sudden contact, a fluid movement of my entire being that presses me up against something smooth and curved. The motion scares me even more. It feels wrong, foreign. Like I'm not supposed to be able to move that way. Fear takes ahold of me, and with it, an unyielding need to run, to escape and hide away until I can figure out what's going on.
When the cold thing touches me again, I grab it, latch on with extensions of my own mass and continue to cling when the thing pulls away. I feel a strange rushing sensation, something washing over me, then everything is cold. Mid-winter in Alaska kind of cold. The intense temperature change causes me to vocalize my distress, a sharp keening like an injured animal. Voices, the doctor and the assistant, shouting in alarm, though I don't know what for. Something warm nearby, that peculiar sense again, but this time with a direction. And visuals.
Fuzzy blobs of color at first, though the blobs quickly come into focus. I see an older man looming over me, his kind face frozen in an expression of near-terror as he looks down at me, hanging from the metal implement he holds outstretched in one hand. He is the source of the warmth, and I'm so cold, I can't stop myself, coiling up the tool into his sleeve. Warm, so warm, the life pulsing just under his skin. I wrap myself around his wrist, somehow becoming a skin-tight band as I soak up his heat. The warmth, the life, it feels so good, I just want to be a part of it. And I can feel my body reacting to this want, this need as instinctual as the need to breed. Bits of myself melding with him, like the ingredients of a recipe combining to become something far greater than the sum of its parts.
Wait, stop!
I pause as I begin to swirl over his knuckles, hearing this voice not mine in my mind.
Yes?
The man's eyes go wide, and I can feel his heart rate speed up.
I don't want to bond with you!
Bond? Warm…
His expression quickly fades from near-terror to curiosity, though I can tell he is still rather well spooked.
Are you cold?
Yes. Cold. Bad.
The tank is warm. Would you like to go back?
Tank?
I follow his gaze, and realize the metal tool is still outstretched over a cylindrical tank of greenish fluid. So that's where I was. But I don't want to go back into the tank. I want-
Vanessa.
Vanessa?
Vanessa. Want. Where?
I'll get her for you. Will you wait in the tank?
I have to think on that a moment, reluctant to leave the living warm thumping through the doctor's veins, but the answer he wants is made all to clear by his accelerated hear rate.
Yes.
He exhales a relieved sigh, and waits patiently as I extricate myself from the accidental bonding. My body screams at me, wanting so badly to be part of something more, but I force myself back into the tank, for Vanessa's sake if anything else. The doctor visibly relaxes the moment I slip off the end of the metal tool, not caring that I catch myself on the tank's edge so that I might pull out the moment I see Vanessa.
"Mrs. Carlson, would mind calling ahead to the lobby to catch Miss Weston before she leaves?"
I watch the mousey-looking assistant nod and rush over to an old-fashioned corded phone mounted on the wall by the door. Contented by the fact that I would soon see my beloved Vanessa at last, I allowed myself to relax a little and take a look around.
The place was obviously scientific in nature, judging from all the beakers and test tubes lying around, but also medical, as I could see a gurney pushed off the side by an IV rack. Other than that, I really didn't understand much of the place, though I had a sneaking suspicion that I should know something more. With nothing better to do, I decided I'd better look myself over. Not much to see really.
A bit of an amorphous blob of blackish-gray goo, though I could move under my own power and form an abundance of tendril-like appendages at will. For a moment, when I first glimpsed a part of myself, I panicked, a sense of wrongness terrifying in its intensity. But it quickly died, as I realized that I really hadn't the slightest clue as to what I might possibly be supposed to look like. It wasn't long after I examined myself that the door was flung open, crashing into the wall and bringing all focus to the lone entrance.
Vanessa!
She stood in the gaping doorway, panting like she'd just run a four minute mile, the goddess of my waking dreams. Tall, athletically slender, her cropped raven curls framing a pale heart-shaped face and accentuating her brilliant aquamarine eyes. I could not suppress a delighted cry at the sight of her, pulling myself up out of the tank despite the chill as I extended a number of tendrils in her direction. Her beautiful smile cast in my direction only made me happier.
"Matthew!"
Vanessa. My beloved, angelic Vanessa. Barely three strides of her long legs, and she gathered me up in her arms, holding me close in an embrace I returned whole-heartedly, swirling up her arm and around her neck in a moment.
VanessaVanessaVanessa!
She laughed, a soft tinkling sound that lifted my joy into the far reaches of euphoria, so much so I could have sworn I was floating on air.
"I hate to interrupt…"
All merriment came to a screeching halt as the doctor spoke up. I wanted to snap at him, hit him, something for ruining the reunion. Judging from his apologetic expression, Vanessa was quite vividly broadcasting her own distaste.
"My apologies, but there is still a battery of tests to run."
"What for?"
Her voice and mine, intertwined. Ah, bliss.
"Memory recall, mostly. Just in case the transformation lost something in translation."
"And the 'mostly'?"
The man swallowed audibly. Not a particularly good sign.
"We'll need to test his abilities and weaknesses, for safety's sake."
"You mean in case he takes over my body and goes on a murderous rampage."
I froze, stricken by my beloved's venomous words. Never, not in a thousand, thousand years, would I ever do something like that to my dear Vanessa. Never! Would I? It hurt to even consider the prospect, but that didn't make it entirely impossible. Vanessa gave the mental equivalent of a snicker.
Always the pessimist.
I responded with a loud telepathic raspberry, which made Vanessa giggle audibly. The doctor gave us an odd look, but continued.
"Anything is possible, Miss Weston. Especially in your situation."
I felt her frown, and I could tell she was pondering something, but she wasn't directing her thoughts to me, so I hadn't the slightest clue as to what in the world the man was blabbering about.
What's wrong?
A sense of unpleasant surprise flashed across our growing bond, along with a mixture of sadness and anxiety that made me nervous.
You don't remember, do you.
Remember what?
I felt her retreat from the bond, pulling away from me and back into her own head, where I could not contact her.
Vanessa? Vanessa?!
"How long will the tests take, Dr. Halburton?"
"It depends upon your fiancée's cooperation in the matter, but we should have full results by the end of a two week period."
"And when might I be able to take him home?"
She stroked her fingers down the arm I had coated, a gentle touch I wanted so badly to return but didn't know how.
Vanessa!
"I'd like to keep him overnight for observation, just to make sure he's stable enough for exterior exposure. But you should be able to sign him out tomorrow morning."
At those words, I felt as if the frozen atmosphere had been injected into my heart. No, no, no, NO! I threw myself at my beloved's mental barrier, trying desperately to get through and reconnect our bond.
No! Vanessa! Don't leave me! PLEASE!
But she pushed me away, forced me to draw back into myself until I was only me again, a quivering blob of gray goop lying in her palm. A pained whimper was the only sound I could make as my beloved Vanessa placed me back in the tank, sliding my form off her fingers into the heated fluid.
"The tales of your mental prowess are not unfounded, I see."
"I've been practicing."
She talked to the doctor for a few more minutes, solidifying an appointment schedule for the testing before she turned to leave. I pressed myself up against the curved glass, wanting so badly to be close to her, a part of her, once more.
Vanessa…
She paused at the door, her hand on the doorknob as she gazed back over her shoulder, a forlorn expression on her delicate features as she looked upon me. Tears gathered in her eyes, tiny glittering liquid diamonds of sadness. And then, she was gone, the door slamming shut.
I slumped back into the tank with a pitiful whine, a terrible aching emptiness where my Vanessa was once a part of me.