And as I lay me down to sleep

I pray to Marvel

Spectacular Spider-Man season 3-5

To keep

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It's all about the game.

You know it is. Don't pretend you don't.

You play the game all your life. It's not sidestepping but it's not playing by the rules either. It's evoking the natural order, the way things go because that's how they're supposed to go, without actually evoking it.

Edward Brock Jr learned this when he was nine and he became a Ward Of The State. Not playing the game, not setting himself apart from the other kids, is what saw him not leave the orphanage until he was thirteen. It's not that they were bad people, but he hadn't been able to use them. Then again he wouldn't have been able to use Ben and May Parker either. Not how he wanted to. Not how he had to.

Doesn't mean it didn't hurt.

Eventually he was picked up by an uncle who couldn't make real eye contact with him, but that was fine. He could use him. Food, shelter, and an in. M3 and beyond.

Playing the game once he arrived was what got him a spot among the popular kids and the untapped potential of the outcasts: Peter, Gwen and (maybe) Harry.

He got into Empire State on a football scholarship, but he wasn't stupid. No class was taken purely because he had to fill up a card. He'd had time. He'd seen others play the game badly, watched the constant flashbacks in their dead eyes from behind deli counters and gas station booths, and sworn that would never happen to him. He studied at M3, everyday not on the field spent in the library with Pete reading up on what their dads' worked on together, rehearsing the steps they'd need to take to retread their paths.

By the time he reached Empire State he had a good enough Science background to work his way into Curt Conner's lower grade bio classes, looking good enough to not get invited to the advanced bio and genetics course. That's an important difference. Dad worked with Connor's for a few years, wrote one of the leading thesis on potential enhancement of human biology. Eddie needed to earn it, not inherit it. For starters if he could really get it on it's own it would mean something and second of all…starting at the bottom of the heap and miraculously toiling his way into his old man's position would look good to the supporters and silence the detractors.

That's another part of the game. Make your detractors supporters. Whether they realise that's what your doing or not.

To really sell it he made sure to wait the five extra minutes it would take him to be only three minutes late to the first lecture genuinely out of breath. Just a little something for the biography people to remember. Connor's let it go but did catch up to him in the hall after class.

"Mr Brock?"

"Uh, yes sir?"

"That was good work today."

"T-thank you sir, really!"

Connor's held up his hand. The prosthetic one to make sure he got Eddie's attention.

"I remember you had a little trouble with work ethic more than your timing when you first arrived here as well. I also remember that you managed to do better and I expected that same standard from you today."

Gold. Pure gold.

"So I'd appreciate it if you were on time not just for tomorrow's lecture but the interview for the internship my wife insisted I start up. For the record, if you applied yourself, I think you'd be able to maybe finish up some of your father's old projects."

Even more gold.

"I don't want any hand outs because of my parents, Sir. I can't work the miracles my dad did, but I want to try at least. And I want to do it my way no matter how hard that'll be."

Connor's regarded him for a few moments, then held out his real hand.

"It takes a special kind of man to walk in another's footsteps and think like that, Edward."

"Eddie, sir, if…if that's okay."

Eddie took it, pleasantly surprised at the firm grip Connor's had. And plenty of people saw them. Play the game carefully enough, and these things write you as easily as you write themselves.

"Tread carefully, son."

And Eddie did. Eddie arrived early every day and gave just enough early on to make it look like he could keep up with the rest of the class, then, just before the review, he started playing for real. And outdistanced everyone in the class, slowly but surely.

The intern job was his.

Well. Give or take. It took palling around with the competition and playing matchmaker subtly enough that they figured some things were more important than their futures (they were smart. Almost smarter than him even. They'd do okay, just somewhere else.) to really make sure Connors at least considered his name.

He lost touch with the M3 crowd a while back. That felt…strange for a while. But he had work to do. A game to play. And besides, two years later, here they came through the lab door. Lacking experience, leaving a nice big spot for big brother to slide back in and hungry to learn.

"Pete, you're a high school kid with zero experience. You're not getting paid."

He's gotten this far on his own. Time for a foundation.

Then the foundation collapsed.

No. The foundation turned on him, swallowed him whole.

Over the past couple of weeks the world noticed the rise of something people started calling, against all common sense, super villains. Vulture, Shocker, Sandman,…even Dillon (or Electro. Whatever.) all got a new nickname courtesy of the Daily Bugle. Eddie noticed this after the fact picking up a copy of Motorcycle Monthly, and noticing the Sandman piece on the front page. Apparently the Bugle's where these people get their stupid little names. And he thought it was just the internet, because he didn't read the Bugle. It's nothing against Pete, just--who reads newspapers anymore?

And who'd read one coming up with this garbage? Sandman? The guys real name is Flint Marko and they call him Sandman? At least Electro had some retro charm.

Chumps, he'd thought at the time. Wasting time on Spider-Man when they could break the world in half if they wanted. Not that Eddie wants them to.

It's just what he'd do if he could.

But you don't need powers to play the game.

What Eddie thought you needed was the fact you knew it was a game. Figure out how to have all the answers, how to be right and stay there. And for that you needed people. Not people to use, what kind of monster does that? People to…build off of.

That's just what Peter and Gwen were to be for, Peter as the brother he could bounce stuff off of and Gwen as…maybe…one day…well.

"He said he wasn't coming. Guess he meant he wasn't coming with me."

And then the foundations, all of them, started collapsing on one another. One foundation liked the other. So what if Pete wasn't there? So what if Pete had been there with her for those two years Eddie wasn't? He's the one that noticed her. He's the one out of the three of them that made the effort to be something more than a meat ball surgery family. The Connors' tried to be part of that family for awhile, but that changed when they let him go. Don't have the funding? They had it when he signed up didn't they? His first year was unpaid, wasn't that enough?

And it's all. Peter's. Fault.

Mostly it's because Peter played the game too. Showing off in that stupid costume, sneaking his way into the internship, trying to cash in on himself with Jameson when that didn't work, using the Lizard to do it and not only taking more power than he could possibly need when he took the Symbiote but worst of all is where he was playing the game without either costume and not even realising it. Taking the money, the respect, the family, the love all for himself and not only not realising it but being too self absorbed to realise it, and leaving Eddie and all his slaving away by the rules in the dirt and the shadows with the maggots and the worms.

But worms turn. Shadows bite.

The Symbiote feels so perfect as It goes in and Eddie's left wondering what he'd ever have done without it. Something stupid probably. How could Peter be stupid enough to turn his back on this kind of power, the kind that levels every playing field the stupid game can throw at you.

This is making the rules. This is vengeance. It's throwing that ungrateful little usurpers festering little Spider powers back in his face and the best part is that underneath it's all Eddie.

"Together we're poison to Peter Parker and Spider-Man! We're Venom!"

Although, really? At the back of his mind? Eddie knows this is a load of bullshit. He's played the game for so long he can't respond to anything that doesn't go according to whatever plan he makes without acting, feeling like he's been played. And normal people have never really tried to play him because only people like Tombstone and the Goblin play games. The real reason Peter rejected the Symbiote? He had too much in his life to give up. He didn't need It. The real reason Eddie needs the Symbiote? He has nothing except what It needs.

The Symbiote knows how to play the game too.

"'Me'? Not 'Us'?"

When he comes to on the rooftop he thinks about going back to Pete. He thinks long and hard about it, but his thoughts go in circles and he knows that's because his heart really isn't in it anymore. He could say the Symbiote made him do it and maybe they'd all be willing to accept that. But the simple fact is It didn't make him do anything. He may still have that not there screaming, burning, phantom battery acid feeling It left on his skin, but when he was Them he felt cool and warm at the exact same time and nothing had ever let him do whatever he wanted like that before.

They levelled the playing field. They raised it.

So Eddie Brock, Jr forces the roof exit open, takes the stairs one at a time because it feels like if he takes too far a step he float a couple of feet of the floor and fall all the way down, spends a couple of minutes (hours) slumped against the wall until the homeless guy gets too close and then steals his coat.

It's not like he kills the bum or anything, just hits him over the head with a trash can and shoves him into a pile of…probably best not to think about. Takes his stupid coat and starts walking. Thinking through the un-thinking. Couple of plans but now he just wants to climb inside himself, not because of shock or anything but because that's what It felt like. He'll get the Symbiote back. Then They'll show Peter. He'll show Peter. You don't need powers to play the game.

And that's probably why he needs to get the Symbiote back. It makes him a super villain, and super villains get to play the best games ever. Level the playing field. Level anything. Create new rules.

It's all about the game.

Eddie Brock shuffles through the shadows and wonders if he'll ever actually win.