"You talk too much."

Kicking Drake off the edge of a platform didn't sit well with Eddie, but he couldn't bring himself to wholly regret it either. He wasn't a hateful guy by nature, but the man was a dick who had ruined his life and the lives of countless others. He'd lied, exploited, and murdered innocent people. Now he was a dead dick who Riot couldn't use to pilot the rocket anymore. He was just a limp, useless dick.

Now all he needed was to find Venom and they could hunt down Riot before he could find a new host. He had to hurry before before the stupid parasit—

His vision turned white as something slammed into his back and punched through his chest. He choked on his next breath and wheezed. His knees hurt. He must've hit the ground, but he didn't remember falling. He looked down at spear in his chest and gagged. It was like Venom, but not. This thing was cold and detached from Riot, like it had never been a part of the symbiote. It had used its own flesh as a tool. At least when Venom killed people, it had the decency not to pull its own teeth out and throw them. This was gross. It was like that scene from Alien. Heh, Alien.

Distantly, Eddie thought he should be more worried about the fact that there was a giant hole in his chest rather than how gross he thought it looked; but he never really could stand the sight of blood and there was a lot of it now. Maybe that was why he felt dizzy. He would have fallen over completely, but that would probably just have hurt more.

A hand closed around the collar of his shirt and lifted him up to meet Riot's …. eyes(?)

"You are nothing." Oh that's nice. Kick a guy while he's down. Not like he was dying or anything.

The thought brought him up short. He was dying. Fuck.

The realization struck him almost as painfully as the ground did when Riot dropped him. He was going to die…and so was everyone else. Annie, Dan, Mrs. Chen. And Venom. He had failed them. He'd failed the whole world. Game over man.

.

.

.

At least he could say he'd tried his damned hardest. He'd fought with everything he had to save a bunch of people who would probably never know or care. It hadn't been enough, but it was something.

Eddie stretched his hand towards the edge of the platform. He wasn't really sure why. He didn't honestly expect Venom to come back for him. He wasn't that deluded. Eddie knew he was a means to an end for the symbiote. Venom had said that he had changed its mind about letting its people destroy Earth, but that didn't make Eddie anything special. Not special enough for Venom to risk its life to save him anyway. He couldn't really blame it. They hardly knew each other.

His hand fell slack against the grating. He no longer had the strength to hold it up. His thoughts were getting fuzzy as consciousness drifted away from him. His emotions were muddled. They confused him. He was certainly afraid of dying, but….after everything he'd been through in the last few days…..the silence in his head was almost worse.

He was going to die alone….It was more terrifying now that he knew what it was like not to be alone.

For all the trouble it'd caused…even if it had abandoned him in the end…he had to admit…he'd gotten rather…attached…to the damn…parasite…

.

.

.

"Eddie!"

.

.

.

"It's alright Eddie. I got us. I will finish this."

.

.

.

"Have a nice life!"

.

.

.

"Goodbye, Eddie."

"Venom, no!"

"No!" Eddie bolted up in his chair, nearly falling out of it in the process. He felt a phantom pain zing through his chest and he grabbed at the front of his shirt with shaking hands. It was just a dream. Slowly regaining control of his breathing, he suddenly became aware of the concern practically radiating off of Venom. His shout seemed to have woken the symbiote, as it was now on high alert for any immediate threats. While Eddie couldn't hear every thought running through his symbiote's head, he managed to catch something along the lines of, "Vigilant….fragile…idiot."

Eddie wasn't sure he liked being thought of as a fragile idiot. Besides, nothing was even attacking. It was just some dumb nightmare.

"Alright. S'okay, calm down V."

Venom directed a questioning thought at him.

"Just had a nightmare that's all. But don't—"

He didn't even get the sentence out before Venom had sorted through his memories for the dream. Finding it, the symbiote grumbled deep in his chest.

"There is no need to fear Riot or my kind now. They cannot hurt us. We made sure."

"Yeah, I know."

"They will not hurt you again Eddie. We will not let them."

Eddie smiled at the black tendrils curling protectively around his hand. He knew that the threat of Drake and some mass invasion was behind them now. He knew that Riot was no longer a threat to them.

It was strange though.

As far as nightmares go, the part when he'd died hadn't been the most terrifying. He had been scared certainly, especially when he thought the symbiote had abandoned him, but he was terrified when he thought he'd seen Venom burn up.

Quite strange that that was the part that woke him up screaming.

Not that Venom needed to know that. It was possible to keep some secrets after all.

—

Eddie had fallen asleep at his laptop. Again. For the past few weeks it seemed as though he was trying to avoid sleep altogether. He said it was because of the new job. He needed to make a good impression with his first story and seeing as it involved the Life Foundation, he had a personal stake in it to get it right.

While a break in at the abandoned lab was certainly interesting, it hardly posed much of a threat or even relevance to them. The place had been scrubbed clean. Nothing was taken. In all likelihood it had been some delinquent offspring. The story did not require nearly as much focus or effort as Eddie was putting into it. Their time would be much better served elsewhere. Besides, their body was still recovering from their fight with Riot. Venom had been much weakened then and had been unable to repair all the damage done to its host's body. Something which it bristled at for its inability to mend, let alone protect its home, but Eddie said it could wait and there was no real harm.

Venom disagreed. While the damage remaining was minimal, it was still enough to incite fear dreams in its human. While Eddie concealed many of his thoughts about that night, Venom could tell it bothered him still. In all honesty, it too had been shaken. To be separate from one's host is one thing, but to have achieved such perfect symbiosis, only to be torn away was more pain than Venom thought it would ever know, until it made its way back onto the platform.

Seeing Eddie so still and pale, arm extended towards it, still hoping it would return. And the blood. Never before had the sight of blood made Venom feel sick, but in that moment, he never wished to see it again. At least not Eddie's. Never Eddie's. Eddie was theirs and no one would harm him or them again.

Venom could understand Eddie's fear. He had died, because Venom had not been there. It was surprised that Eddie had not yet blamed it for what he had suffered. At least, not consciously. Based on what it knew of Eddie's dreams and memories, he had been afraid when Riot had wounded him. Afraid because he was alone. Because Venom had not been there to protect him. Humans are such fragile creatures and it had been stupid for it to have let its guard down. It was Venom's fault that Eddie had been hurt, that Eddie was afraid, that Eddie had di—

Venom still couldn't bring itself to finish that thought. It did not matter. Eddie was healing now. Venom would prove itself to him in time. It would never eat his organs, not even the extra ones. It wouldn't make Eddie eat any humans besides the bad ones. And it would prove to Eddie that the symbiote would protect him, even at the expense of its own life.