A/N: Since we're dealing with Eddie's POV here, there will be stuff that can be considered Spider-Man bashing. Just remember: Eddie is an incredibly biased narrator, and showing his point of view doesn't automatically make him right.

Chapter 3: Doctors, Psychopaths, and Decisions

In which Eddie reflects on his life.

"I wanted to be a warrior: fighting injustice, fighting for the innocent people. I guess… I guess that's why I became a journalist," Eddie told Dr. Ashley Kafka, his prison therapist.

He remembered finding out that Dr. Connors had been experimenting with genetic technology and had somehow ended up mutating himself into a lizardman. He had kidnapped some poor sewer worker, attacked his own family, and planned to use the same device that mutated him to turn every person in New York City into a lizard.

Eddie had been proud of himself for that, for solving the mystery. He would've turned the story in and Dr. Connors would've been stopped. He would have saved the whole city!

And maybe his father would have actually been proud of him for once.

But instead, Spider-Man had tied him to a telephone pole and by the time Eddie had gotten free, Spider-Man had found, fought, and cured the Lizard, turning him back into Curt Connors. And, of course, that damnable spider took his own pictures of the Lizard that he gave to the Daily Bugle as Peter Parker to get the thousand-dollar prize.

Some hero he was! All he cared about was cash!

And Eddie had been made to look like a liar, even though he had been telling the truth the whole time. He had been fired, his father had disowned him without even letting him tell his side of the story, and the rest of his family refused to talk to him as well.

Not even when tests revealed that he had adrenal cancer.

They didn't care even then. Not even Mary, his younger sister, who Eddie had been close to once. She was the only one who bothered to take his phone call, but even she didn't believe him. She thought that Eddie was just lying to get money from her.

This was what his family thought of him: that Eddie would fake a deadly illness just to fleece his relatives.

…They never trusted him, did they? Never believed him. Never loved him.

But V did. Eddie wasn't just a host to them: they truly cared about him. They understood him like no one else ever did.

They protected him, made him stronger, shared everything they had with him… They even gave him their name, insisting that they were only Venom when together with Eddie.

He had given them a nickname in turn, calling the symbiote V. He remembered how happy it had made them. They had been so grateful for something this small…

Happy that someone cared about them.

They were a lot alike, Eddie and V: both of them outcasts of their respective families, both of them blamed for something that wasn't their fault… Both of them soul-crushingly alone in a world that hated them.

V had been banished by their own family simply for wanting a mutual bond with a host. The rest of the Klyntar race had considered them both a weakling and a traitor for daring to sympathize with other species. They had been thrown on a meteor and left to the fates.

They had survived this nightmare, but when they had finally been brought to Earth, their first attempt to bond with one of the astronauts had been met with terror and V fleeing, and their second had ended with Spider-Man rejecting them, even though V had done everything they could to help him and keep him safe.

Eddie closed his eyes and remembered the feeling of V pumping through his veins, helping him work out. The way V had curled around his waist and rested a little noodle head with big white eyes on his shoulder while they watched TV late at night. The way V had wanted so badly to be a good guy, to help and protect Eddie, to prove they were more than just a parasite that everyone else considered them as…

V might not have been the goody-goody "throw the bad guy in jail and not kill anyone ever" type of hero, but like Eddie, they wanted to protect the innocent. And they weren't afraid to maim or kill to make sure that anyone trying to harm innocents or their host stopped being a threat.

"…Eddie?" Dr. Kafka asked, breaking him out of his memories.

He blinked and looked up into the doctor's green eyes. "V… they wanted to be good too. They tried so hard…"

He remembered one of the nights when they had run through the city as Venom, leaping from roof to roof as V showed him how their powers worked. They had heard a young woman being mugged by some crook at gunpoint, so they had leapt down and brutally attacked the mugger, breaking his bones at the very least.

When the thief had stopped moving, they had turned to the woman and handed her back her purse, but the woman, probably traumatized from both the mugging and the way they had stopped it, had run away screaming.

V had been so sad, unable to understand why the woman had been so scared when they had saved her, but Eddie had comforted them. He told them that they had saved her life, that they had done good, which made the symbiote wriggle with happiness and purr like a cat.

They loved praise, loved making Eddie happy, loved being good. Eddie had taken the mugger's wallet as another little bit of payback and gave most to charity, but kept enough for rent, food, and to buy V the biggest chocolate shake he could find, which made the symbiote even happier.

V was so sweet, took so much joy in such small things…

"I still can't believe Spider-Man tossed them out like they were yesterday's garbage! Spider-Man pretends to be a good guy, but he's a hypocrite! He never even tried to understand V. They had done so much for him, and he left them in pain, injured, and alone. All they wanted was to help him, and he left them to die! He didn't care about them!" Eddie took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. "But I did. V and I… when we joined together… We could do anything! …Except now there's no more us. Only me, stuck here in this cell, where I can't do anything to help them. All I can do is wait for my partner, my other half to return."

Dr. Kafka gave him a pitying look, tapping her pen on her notepad. "Not we, Eddie. This Venom thing never existed. It's just a stress related delusion brought on by Spider-Man's wrongful persecution of you."

"He persecuted me all right!" Eddie snapped. "He humiliated me! Made me lose my job, my health, my apartment… My symbiote, who is indeed very real."

Dr. Kafka didn't react to his outburst, but the look of pity in her eyes was unbearable.

Eddie let out a sad laugh. "You think I'm lying, don't you? That I just made it all up."

"Of course not. I know you're not a liar, Eddie," Dr. Kafka said softly. "You just need a little help, that's all."

"So you just think I'm delusional instead, right?" Eddie asked bitterly. "Spider-Man can stick to walls. Mutants exist. Superpowered villains and heroes are roaming the city. Thor's an alien and no one seems to question it. Hell, I read in the papers that Stark Industries is building an interdimensional portal because they're too lazy to use a truck! So tell me this, Dr. Kafka: if all these things exist, why do you keep insisting that V isn't real?! Alien symbiotes aren't any more crazy than other stuff out there! And I know I'm beefy, but do you really think a regular human could do everything I've done as Venom? And what about my medical tests? I had adrenal cancer. Now I don't. It didn't just walk away! V cured me. They cured me because they care about me, and I damn well care about them! So even if you think I'm a crazy liar, I'm not going to deny the existence of my best freaking friend! That's the only thing I can do for them while I'm stuck here."

"Eddie, I don't think you're crazy. I think you're just lonely. You created V as a second personality to be there for you after everything you've been through, especially your false cancer scare."

"You're not listening! It wasn't false! Check the tests yourself: I'm not lying!"

"Mistakes happen. Your results were probably just mixed up with someone else's."

"It wasn't a mistake! No matter what Spider-Man led people to believe, I'm not a liar and I'm not insane!" Eddie clenched his fists. "It's his fault that V is gone and I'm stuck here! I hate that slimy little–"

Dr. Kafka shook her head, making her brown bangs fall into her eyes, and placed a hand on Eddie's shoulder. He turned away to avoid her look of pity disguised as sympathy.

"Hatred is not going to help, Eddie. You have so much potential… I know you're angry, and I know you're scared. I know you feel alone. But you don't need V. You can make some new friends, have some real human company…"

She took his hands and squeezed them gently, and Eddie turned to look at her. There was warmth in her eyes, still that look of pity, but also something else.

"I'm here for you, and together we're going to get through this."

For a split second, Eddie thought about at least pretending. Pretending that V was a delusion and latching onto her to try to fill the empty, aching void left after V was torn away from him.

Dr. Kafka was right about one thing: he was lonely.

He had been lonely all his life, until V came along and gave him the three best weeks of his life before they were ripped from him. It made Eddie feel even more empty, because he finally knew the feeling of someone caring about him unconditionally, loving him as he was, understanding him in a way no one else ever did.

Now that V was gone… He didn't want to be alone any more.

But if – and this was a big if – Dr. Kafka even wanted to be something more for him than his prison therapist, he couldn't use her as a substitute for V. It wouldn't be fair to V, her, or himself.

And she wasn't even close to what V had been for him. They had been everything to him: his friend, his partner, his soulmate…

He loved them more than Mary, even before his sister turned her back on him. He loved them more than his father, who he now knew would've never been satisfied, no matter what Eddie did in his attempts to gain his approval. He loved them even more than Anne, the only human he could ever call a friend, who cared about him and accepted him, but never truly understood him.

Dr. Kafka was a stranger. Eddie didn't have any real feelings for her, not even friendship. How could he trust her when she was trying so hard to convince him he was delusional despite all the evidence to the contrary?

He couldn't force himself to pretend just to make himself feel better. It wouldn't even work: Eddie remembered his disastrous attempts at dating all too well.

He had always been desperate for companionship, for a relationship, but all his attempts had only led to heartbreak. No matter how much he tried, he couldn't pretend that he wanted the same things everyone else did. He craved the emotional closeness like air, but he couldn't lie and pretend that the mere thought of a physical relationship didn't make his skin crawl. Not even for Anne, the only person he ever dated who didn't end up hating his guts afterwards.

(What would Anne think if she saw him now? Would she think he was crazy too? Would she turn her back on him like everyone else did? Eddie hoped he would never find the answer. He had enough heartbreak in his life already.)

Heck, he couldn't even pretend just to get out of here. The very idea of pretending V was a delusion made him sick. He knew that it made no logical sense to keep sticking to the truth when it kept him in an insane asylum, but it felt like pretending would be too close to saying V was gone for good – or worse, dead.

And he refused to believe his beloved symbiote was dead! V was tough. They had survived being sent through space on a meteor, they could survive a probe! They would come back to him. They would find a way. They were stubborn.

He had to believe in them.

He heard Dr. Kafka say something and again snapped out of his thoughts. Damn, he had to stop doing that around someone who already thought he was crazy. "Sorry, got lost in my thoughts. What was that, Doctor?"

"Our time's up, Eddie. We'll continue this tomorrow," she said gently. She patted his shoulder again before getting up and leaving his cell.

Eddie briefly thought about trying to use the open door to make a break for it, but he knew that he wouldn't get far. He had already tried escaping twice when he had first arrived to Ravencroft, driven half-mad by the separation, fever, and his desire to find V and save them, even though he had no idea how the hell he was supposed to do that.

It hadn't worked then, and it wouldn't work now, so he would wait.

"Man, what a dump. No pool, no stereo, and weirdos everywhere you look!" a high-pitched voice said and Eddie glanced up to see some skinny ginger guy in a straitjacket being led through the prison by two uniformed guards.

The man leaned as close as he could to Dr. Kafka as they passed her. "Aren't you going to give me some therapy, beautiful lady?!" he called out and let out another insane laugh before the guards literally threw him into his cell.

Dr. Kafka just ignored him. "Goodnight, Eddie."

Eddie mumbled a halfhearted "good night" while keeping a wary eye on the other prisoner as the guards closed his cell. He could swear he had seen that guy in the paper somewhere.

As Dr. Kafka walked past the red-headed guy's cell, he called out, "Aren't you going to give me a goodbye kiss?! Or are you afraid I'm gonna bite?!"

He reached his arm through the bars as if miming roughly grabbing Dr. Kafka. She cringed, though she tried to hide it, and the guards put themselves between her and the man.

Yep, this guy was a class-A scumbag. And while Eddie didn't really like Dr. Kafka, she was still an innocent person and he wasn't going to let someone talk to a lady like that. "Hey, you! Shut up!"

…Wow, that sounded incredibly lame. If– When he got V back, they would have to work on their witty banter.

The guy gripped the bars and glared at Eddie with a sadistic smirk. "Hey, man, I could eat you for breakfast!"

"Oh yeah?! Well, I'd give you indigestion… Man!" Eddie retorted.

He inwardly rolled his eyes at how that came out. Another original witticism from the mind of Edward Brock… Neither he nor V were good at making up clever threats in the spur of the moment.

He moved further back into his cell and sat down on his cot, hiding a laugh as he remembered how V, inspired to do some "tough talk" by a bad action movie they had watched, had either deliberately or accidentally got their sayings confused and told that mugger they were going to tear off his head, arms, and legs until he was nothing more than a turd in the wind.

V had been so serious and was trying so hard that Eddie had hidden his laughter at how freaking weird and hilarious that particular threat was. At least Venom being a huge monster with incredibly sharp teeth had done the job of making the mugger pee his pants.

His heart ached at the memory and he missed V even more if that was possible. He ignored the crazy guy's taunts and laid down, pulling his blanket over him. Still, the prison was cold and he shivered. Any time he had been cold when V was around, V would either turn into a nice thick sweater or a blanket depending on what they were doing and snuggle close until Eddie warmed up.

But V wasn't around anymore to keep him warm. Eddie felt like he would never be warm again.

Eddie bit back the fear that V was dead or that Dr. Kafka was right and they had never existed. He knew V was real! And until he found V's dead body, he wasn't going to let go of them. He wouldn't give up on the symbiote the way everyone else had.

Trying to comfort himself, he thought of his favorite memory with V, trying to bring back the warmth and happiness that memory always held.

"Eddie, why are they running from that guy? There's five of them and he's only one. They could fight and kill him! So why would they just run and let him kill them one by one?" V asked as the two of them cuddled on the couch, watching the bad B-list slasher film Eddie had picked. Their tentacles were wrapped gently around Eddie while their head with teeth retracted rested on his shoulder.

"They're scared, V. And people in horror movies never make good decisions," Eddie explained.

On the TV screen, one of the terrified teenagers hid behind a tree and tried to keep still so that the masked serial killer wouldn't find her. Eddie knew they were all doomed but he still nearly jumped out of his skin when the killer's machete stabbed through the tree and the hapless victim's body.

V instinctively tightened their grip on Eddie, though not enough to hurt. They were always so protective…

Eddie stroked their head. "It's okay, V. It's just a movie."

"If we were there, we would have killed him before he even got close."

"I know, V. If you were in the horror movie, it would have only been two minutes long because you would have killed the bad guy before they could hurt anyone."

"We would have. You wouldn't have let them hurt anyone either."

"You're right. That killer wouldn't have stood a chance against us," Eddie agreed.

He kept petting V's head, making the symbiote purr like a kitten, as they continued watching the movie. V loved to be touched, held, and cuddled. They soaked up affection like a sponge and Eddie was all too happy to give it to them.

And it was such a relief to cuddle with someone Eddie knew would never demand more from him than he could give, never pressure him into anything he didn't want, never judge him for being different…

"Why would they run into the basement?! They can't get away from the killer in there!" V protested as the three teenagers left ran into the basement of the abandoned cabin in the woods to hide.

Eddie shrugged. "If you're in a horror movie, you make bad decisions. It's just what you do."

"But why? Doesn't that impede survival?"

"Pretty much. It's just a horror movie thing, V. Probably because it would be too short if the characters made sensible decisions. Or it's just bad writing."

"No! You're supposed to hang on to the gun, not drop it!" V suddenly yelled at one of the characters. Eddie couldn't quite hide a chuckle and V turned to look at him. "What?"

"Nothing. You're just cute."

The symbiote pouted at him. "Am not!"

"Sorry, bud. You are."

"Am not!"

"Are too."

"Eddddiiieee! I am not!" V protested, unintentionally making themselves look even cuter.

Eddie just chuckled. "All right, sorry."

He unwrapped a Hershey's Kiss and held it out as an apology gift. V let out a purr and took it surprisingly gently from Eddie's fingers. They then snuggled close as they ate the Hershey's kiss and watched the end of the movie.

"Eddie?" V asked softly.

"Yes, V?"

"I love you."

Eddie tried to hide his blush at the blunt, innocent statement. He had no idea whether the symbiote meant it as romantic, familial, or friendly love, and he wasn't sure V themself knew, but he knew that V meant it with all their soul.

Eddie almost teared up. It was the first "I love you" he had heard in a long, long time.

V looked up at him nervously. Their thoughts were filled with fear of rejection. Trying to reassure them, he held them closer and kissed the top of their smooth head.

"I love you too, buddy."

And he did.

Eddie wasn't sure whether to cry or smile at the memory. He wished he had had more time with V, more soft memories like that, sharing cuddles and kisses, teaching V about humans and the planet they had landed on…

Maybe if he hadn't decided to get revenge on Spider-Man, he would still have V. Maybe they'd be cuddled together watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 or looking at the stars on the roof with a cup of warm cocoa as V told him about life on alien planets.

Maybe they'd be one of the greatest superheroes instead of separated and alone.

He remembered what Dr. Kafka had told him. 'Hatred is not going to help, Eddie. You have so much potential.'

And she was right. In trying to get revenge on Spider-Man, they had lost sight of the heroes they had both so badly wanted to be. And it was because of this that they were separated.

Eddie wasn't always good at taking responsibility for his actions. V, however, was. In fact, when they had first met, they had confessed and apologized to tying Eddie to the bell, having thought he was a threat in the heat of battle. V was strong enough to admit to their mistakes.

And Eddie couldn't, wouldn't, blame V for their plan. V had been angry at Spider-Man too, but getting revenge had started out as his idea, not V's. V of course had gone along with it and the two of them had managed to feed off each other in their anger, creating an echo chamber of rage and bad decisions, but it wasn't all on the symbiote. It was on Eddie too.

And it was time to change, to let the revenge go, and when they got back together, to be the protector of the innocent that they had wanted to be.

Because they had potential, they both did, and together, they were greater than the sum of their parts.

They would never succeed on the path of vengeance, Eddie finally understood that.

Eddie made plans in his head. He couldn't escape, so the best thing would be to make himself a model prisoner. Try to get out on good behavior and make a plan to find V, if V didn't find him first.

Then once he had V, they would disappear. Find a place where no one could hurt them again. Maybe go to California or Florida or some other place near the ocean. He hadn't been to the beach since he was a kid, and of course, V never had been there. They would love it. V always liked the water, even the gross polluted river.

They could start a new life for themselves, create their own future away from Spider-Man. Away from their terrible pasts.

If– when he got V back, he would talk to them about this. V had been the one Spider-Man had hurt the most, after all, but something inside him knew V would agree to move on, to live their lives together outside the shadow of revenge.

Madame Web smiled as she watched the shimmering web of timelines shift and change in front of her. Eddie and V didn't know it yet, but they had just changed fate.

The Beyonder would be impressed.

Love could truly triumph over hate.

She couldn't wait to see what this new future would hold. It would be very interesting.

Baron Mordo, however, was not so impressed.

He had been ready to use his astral projection to visit Brock and make his offer, when he sensed Brock's revelation: all the rage and hatred that surrounded the former reporter had dissipated like fog.

He had the feeling Dormammu would be able to sense it too.

This didn't bode well for their plan, and Mordo shuddered to think how his master would react to another failure.

Perhaps… Perhaps he should wait a little? The symbiote hadn't reached Brock yet, so Mordo still had the time to plan their confrontation in more detail.

He couldn't rely on Brock's obsession with revenge anymore, but the love Brock held for the symbiote and vice versa was like a thick choking cloud. Maybe he could exploit that love to make Brock agree to work with him…

After all, Brock would do anything for his symbiote.