Chapter 17: Coming to Terms

In which ghosts of the past are laid to rest and the future is decided.

The next scene that Madame Web showed him was… unexpected to say the least. Peter felt his eyebrows rise as he looked at the alien landscape.

Literally alien.

The sky was green, and there were rings similar to Saturn's stretching across it. Below it was a small village, standing on the edge of a lush forest.

The screen zoomed in and showed the aliens living there. They were humanoid, with dark blue skin and vaguely feline features, but they acted no differently from humans. They were just ordinary people living ordinary lives.

Then a disaster hit. The ground shuddered as an earthquake began, quickly growing in strength. Trees fell and buildings crumbled, leaving many people injured or dead, trapped inside their own homes.

Peter watched the disaster unfold, unable to do anything to help.

He saw an elderly woman push her daughter out of the way as the roof fell down on them, but neither of them was fast enough to escape. The mother was killed instantly, but the daughter was trapped under a wooden beam that fell on her back, breaking her ribs.

She was left to suffer, crying in pain and choking on her own blood.

"Help her!" Peter demanded, turning to Madame Web.

"I cannot do anything, for this has already happened," she replied. "But don't worry: someone had been there to help her."

On the screen, a canine animal slipped into the broken building and stopped in front of the dying woman. The animal itself looked like it didn't have long to live either. It was practically skin and bones: old, starved, or diseased, Peter didn't know.

Then black tar seeped through its skin, forming into a jagged, vaguely humanoid shape of the symbiote.

Peter gasped. Did it mean that this alien woman was going to become its host? He had never considered that it might've been bonded to someone else before coming to Earth. For some reason, Peter had always assumed that he had been its first host.

The moment it fully detached from the animal, the canine keeled over, dead. And the symbiote crept closer to the alien woman.

She looked up at it with the kind of fearlessness that came only to those who had nothing left to lose. "If you want to kill me," she whispered, blood bubbling on her lips, "you better hurry. I don't have much time left."

The symbiote poured down in a wave of black, covering her in its writhing mass.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Mira," it whispered to her, "but I need a host to live."

"You know my name?" she wondered. "…Oh, you're in my mind. I can feel it." She smiled weakly. "Take what you want from me. I'm dead anyway."

"You're not going to die!" the symbiote protested. "I won't allow it!"

Its black tendrils lifted the heavy wooden beam, finally freeing Mira. Her broken ribs shifted into place, and she took a gasping breath, coughing up more blood.

"You– you're healing me?" she whispered in disbelief, pressing a hand to her chest. "Why?"

"I am a symbiote, not a parasite. I refuse to only take."

Mira slowly rose to her knees and looked around her ruined home. She let out a choked sob when she saw the trail of blood seeping from beneath the fallen roof. "Mom…"

"I'm sorry, Mira. I can't heal the dead."

"…But someone has to be still alive," Mira rasped. "The village… They need help."

"And we can help them. Together."

The symbiote swelled up, engulfing her in a dark wave, changing her into a familiar form. Mira was smaller and lankier than Brock, and instead of the spider symbol, she had only jagged white lines stretching over her shoulders and chest, but otherwise, she looked almost the same as the Venom that Peter knew.

He watched as Mira used the power of the symbiote to help the villagers, digging them out of the ruins. He watched as she was met not with gratitude, but with fear and hate. He watched as the same people whose lives she had saved called her a monster and chased her out of her own home.

He watched as she ran into the forest and collapsed to her knees, grieving for everything she had lost.

The next scene showed Mira sitting on a tree branch. She looked battered, with blood and bruises littering her skin. Several deep cuts were covered in the tarry slime of the symbiote like makeshift bandages.

"Did we lose them?" Mira asked, nervously tugging on her dark hair twisted into a loose braid. It was a few inches longer than before, so clearly some time had passed since her life had been shattered.

"Savage is persistent, but they will need time to catch up to us again," the symbiote replied.

Mira sighed in visible relief and slumped down against the trunk of the tree. "I'm so tired… Are they going to keep hunting us like this?"

"…I'm sorry, Mira. They're not hunting us, they're hunting me. If I wasn't there–"

"If you weren't there, I would've died in that earthquake," Mira interrupted sharply. "This isn't your fault, Venom."

"They are my species. My family."

"No, they're not!" Mira snapped. "Family is more than genetic material! The only thing that matters is love, and they clearly have none for you. They don't deserve to be called your family."

"…Then you are the only family I've ever had," the symbiote whispered.

Mira pressed a kiss to its writhing mass, her expression softening. "There will be others. You will find someone who accepts you like I do, you just have to keep searching."

The symbiote was silent for a long time. Finally, it said, "Every time I tried to bond to someone before, I just ended up scaring them. No matter what I did or said, no one has ever accepted me. I feared that I would be forced to possess animals for the rest of my existence, jumping from one to another as I burned them out in mere days, becoming nothing more than an animal myself. Meeting you was a miracle. I can't imagine finding another person like you."

"You will," Mira promised. "I don't know where and I don't know when, but you will find those who love you."

"You can't see the future, Mira."

She smiled, "Maybe not, but I know you, Venom. You are kind and protective and so full of love, it's impossible not to love you back. So don't give up, alright? I know that sometimes life can seem dark and grim, but it will get better. I promise."

Peter expected to feel denial. After all, kindness and love were not the traits he came to associate with the symbiote. It had to be just a trick it was pulling on poor unsuspecting Mira.

Instead, all he felt was a surprising amount of bitterness.

The symbiote had talked to Mira, to Leslie, to Brock. It genuinely seemed to care about the people it was bonded to…

So why had it never talked to him? Why had it only ever possessed and used him?! Why had it tried to twist him into something he wasn't?

Why was Peter the only person it seemed to hate?!

The screen changed once again.

It was now showing a massive volcano that spewed plumes of ash into the air. On its side was a deep crack that stretched into a canyon with sharp, rocky edges. A glowing river of magma poured endlessly down the canyon, never quite filling it.

And on the very edge of the canyon, Venom was fighting another symbiote.

This one was muddy yellow in color, with an ashen-grey pattern that made it resemble a hyena. Its host was humanoid but disproportionate, with overly long double-jointed limbs. Whichever species the host belonged to, it wasn't from the same planet as Mira.

"Traitor!" the yellow symbiote snarled, snapping its oversized jaws that were filled with triple rows of teeth. "I'll tear you apart!"

It lunged forward, slashing its massive claws at Venom, but it overextended its reach. Venom caught its forearm and twisted.

The arm bent and snapped with a wet crunching noise. The yellow symbiote howled in pain and lashed out with its other arm, but Venom caught it too. Then it shoved the yellow symbiote towards the edge of the canyon.

Its broken arm was hanging limply at its side, and Venom had a tight grip on its healthy arm, holding it right above the lava. The yellow symbiote shuddered and writhed, starting to liquefy from the heat. It dripped off its host in greasy chunks, unable to fight back.

It was beaten. Helpless.

And Venom looked ready to drop it into the lava.

Ready to kill it in cold blood.

(Peter remembered the bell tower and the Shocker's broken gauntlets under his fingers. He remembered staring into the villain's terrified eyes and realizing that he was about to cross a line that he would never be able to return from.)

"We can't just kill them," Mira whispered.

She was hesitating (just like Peter had been).

And yet… Venom didn't try to act on its own. It didn't push the yellow symbiote down, didn't try to kill it like it had almost killed Shocker.

Instead, it hesitated too.

"Savage will keep hunting us if we leave them alive! …But their host is innocent."

"Can you tear them off the host?"

"I've never tried it before, but–"

With a sickening squelch, Savage's broken arm snapped back into place. The yellow symbiote let out a triumphant roar and clawed open Venom's neck.

Venom staggered back, choking on blood that sprayed from the wound. Its black mass stretched over the wound, trying to repair it, but Savage didn't let them recover.

It pounced on them, driving them to the ground, and clawed across their stomach, tearing straight through the symbiote and ripping open the host's flesh.

"You're pathetic!" Savage snarled over Mira and Venom's combined scream of pain. "I can't believe a weakling like you is my sibling!"

Venom lashed out with black tendrils, but Savage easily clawed through them. "You should've killed me when you had the chance!"

It kicked Venom under the ribs, its talons leaving deep gashes in their side. "It's just like you to hesitate at the last second! Or is it your host that I should thank for giving me the time I needed to recover?"

Savage sneered down on them, "I'm right, am I? You're disgusting! These lowly creatures exist only to be used by us, but you're allowing this pathetic thing to weaken you further!"

"I'm so sorry, Venom…" Mira whispered. The gruesome wounds didn't impede her mental voice, but it was raw and full of pain. "This is all my fault…"

"I can fix us!" Venom insisted, its own voice sounding desperate and terrified. "We can still win! If we take down Savage–"

Loud snarls and roars echoed from the distance.

Savage laughed, "Your time is up, Venom! Now the whole family is here!"

Running towards them were three more symbiotes.

One had four arms and glinting steel-grey surface, covered in rusty-red stains. Another was murky green and covered in tendrils of varying length that swayed around it like seaweed in the water.

The third one was massive, so tall and bulky, it towered over the rest. It was an ugly off-white color, streaked through with mold-blue veins.

"I'm sorry, Mira. I'm so sorry… We're going to die now."

There was nothing but cold resignation in Venom's voice.

Mira didn't even try to argue otherwise. Her own voice was utterly defeated. "I'm sorry too. We should've killed Savage when we had the chance. If I had been a better host…"

"It wasn't your fault. I was supposed to keep you safe…"

"Congratulations, Savage," the white symbiote said. Its voice was so deep, it sounded like a mountain attempting to speak. "I knew you would catch the traitor, eventually."

"Thank you, Decay," Savage hissed, licking Mira's blood off its claws. It gestured at the river of lava, "Should I kill them now? Or do you want to devour them yourself?"

"No, death is far too kind a fate for such miserable wretch," Decay sneered.

It grabbed Venom by their mangled neck and effortlessly lifted them up. It flexed its fingers and they stretched into long, jagged claws.

"I regret ever giving birth to you."

Then it buried those claws into the side of Venom's face and pulled.

They screamed and screamed and screamed, their mental voices full of pain and terror, as Venom was peeled away from Mira tendril by tendril.

Venom struggled to break free and fuse back with its host, but Decay didn't let them. Its own bone-white mass wrapped around the black symbiote, keeping it trapped.

It could do nothing but watch as Mira bled out in front of them.

Savage laughed – an ugly noise that made its resemblance to a hyena even more apparent – and stood over dying Mira. "You actually care about this useless thing, Venom?"

It flexed its claws – and then plunged them straight into Mira's chest.

Venom writhed in Decay's grip with an anguished cry, but it was already too late.

Mira was gone. Killed in cold blood by someone whose life she had wanted to spare.

Because at the last moment, she had hesitated.

Because Venom had hesitated.

"This is why it– why they tried to kill Shocker, isn't it?" Peter asked numbly as he watched Venom being thrown into space by their own parent, banished from their kind for daring to care about their host.

Madame Web didn't reply, but Peter knew that he was right.

He already knew that the anger he had felt when he had been bonded to the symbiote himself hadn't been his own (at least, not entirely), but Peter was only now starting to realize that the fear hadn't been fully his either.

Only now was he starting to understand how badly he had misjudged the symbiote.

There had been no sinister plots, no grand attempts to deceive and control him. Just a scared, traumatized person trying to protect him in the only way they knew.

The screen shifted again.

It showed the symbiote being bonded to Leslie again. They were talking about him, explaining to Leslie that the only reason they stayed silent was out of fear of rejection.

And Peter… He believed them now.

Because he understood.

He felt the same fear every time Aunt May believed the vitriol J. Jonah Jameson spewed out about Spider-Man, every time Anna Watson sneered down on him, every time he was treated as an enemy by the people he tried to help…

Human or Klyntar, they were not so different, were they?

The images on the screen kept flowing.

It showed Leslie agreeing to help the symbiote and bring them to Brock (because that was all they wanted: not revenge, not anything evil, but just to be with someone they cared about). It showed Cameron stumbling upon them at the worst possible moment, desperately trying to help despite being completely outmatched. It showed the new symbiote bonding with him to save his life (and god… they really were just an innocent kid). It showed this ragtag team breaking into the Ravencroft Sanitarium to free Brock, and the symbiote finally reuniting with him.

Peter looked at Brock's expression – happy, disbelieving, on the verge of tears – and found himself unable to deny it anymore. Brock and the symbiote really did love each other and breaking them apart would be simply cruel.

But it didn't mean that Peter didn't worry what they might do next.

"What are they going to do now that they are together again?"

The screen shifted.

It showed Brock standing on a rooftop, looking warily down. "Maybe we should start somewhere a little– uh– closer to the ground?" he asked uncertainly.

Peter raised an eyebrow. Since when was Brock afraid of heights? With his powers–

…Oh. This had to be the past. He was probably only recently bonded.

The symbiote seeped out, curling pitch-black tendrils around him. "I won't let you get hurt, Eddie, I promise."

Brock smiled, his tense shoulders relaxing. "I know. I trust you. It's just a little… unnerving."

"Don't be afraid: I'll be with you every step of the way," the symbiote promised. "You're not alone anymore."

Brock stroked the black mass clinging to him. "Neither of us is."

The symbiote shifted and stretched, covering his entire body and transforming him into the form Peter knew all too well.

"Well, here goes nothing…" Venom muttered in Brock's voice.

They backed away from the edge – and then took a running leap forward, jumping off the roof with a cry that was equal parts excitement and fear. They soared across the street and landed on the opposite building, fumbling into an awkward roll.

Then they jumped back to their feet and kept running.

Peter watched them leap from rooftop to rooftop with a gleeful laugh, helping themselves with webs when the distance was too big, and remembered his own first days after getting his powers.

Before he lost Uncle Ben, he had been so… carefree, so excited to see what he could do with both his powers and the webshooters he had made… Even now, when sometimes it felt like there were only disasters and misfortunes waiting for him, Peter still loved webslinging.

It was strange to see someone he had once considered an enemy sharing that love.

A sudden cry for help had Venom sharply changing directions and pivoting down to land in a narrow alley. Inside it, an armed robber held a scared young man at gunpoint.

Venom bared their teeth and leapt forward, effortlessly batting the robber aside with enough force to knock him out.

"Please, don't kill me…" the victim whispered, slowly backing away.

"We don't harm innocent people," Venom replied. They kicked the unconscious robber, breaking his ribs with a sickening crack, and crushed his gun underfoot. "Only the scum that tries to hurt others."

The young man smiled in relief, "Really? That's dope! You're one freaky dude, but thanks for the save!"

Venom nodded in acknowledgement and quickly webbed away.

They landed on another rooftop and the symbiote started to peel back, uncovering Brock's head down to his neck. Then they stretched out, forming a face for themselves with white eyes and a toothy maw.

"He was grateful," the symbiote said with something like disbelief in their voice.

"Because we saved him," Brock replied. He cupped the side of their face and laughed giddily, "Can you believe it? We have just saved someone! All my life I have tried so hard to make a difference… And I can do it now! We can do it!"

"Together, we have that power," the symbiote agreed.

"We can help so many people… Can you imagine it, V? We can be heroes!"

The symbiote surged back, once again fully merging with Brock. Voices blending into one, they proclaimed, "Together, we can protect everyone!"

Peter sighed heavily, "…I owe them both one hell of an apology, don't I? If I haven't been so–"

"They are responsible for their own choices, just as you are responsible for yours," Madame Web interrupted. "No one has been fully to blame, and no one has been guiltless. But the past remains in the past. What matters is the future."

She snapped her fingers and the screen shifted again.

This time it showed the present (or, at least, a very recent past). Brock, Leslie, and Cameron were sitting at the table with mugs of coffee, having just finished dinner judging from the amount of dirty plates in the sink.

"I'm almost jealous," Leslie said with a wry smile. "You've been having adventures without us!"

Brock grimaced slightly. "Trust me, some of the things we've seen you're better off not knowing."

"Was that alternate timeline really so bad?" Cameron asked.

…Alternate timeline?

"Yes, it was," Brock replied, the symbiote's deep distorted voice mixing into his. "But we're glad that Madame Web has shown it to us."

Peter turned to stare flatly at the aforementioned entity. "Really."

She smirked back. "You didn't think you were the only person in the world I've ever shown myself to, did you?"

Peter silently rolled his eyes and turned back to the screen.

"It's still kinda hard to believe that us getting involved actually improved anything," Cameron said doubtfully.

"It did," Brock and the symbiote said in a tone that brooked no arguments.

Leslie put her elbows on the table and rested her head on one hand. "I'm honestly more curious about Spider-Man. You said that you've seen his past?"

Peter cringed inwardly. Turnabout was fair play, but that didn't mean he liked the idea of anyone knowing things that he'd rather keep private.

Brock shook his head. "What we've seen is not ours to tell. Let's just say… it gave us some perspective."

"Good or bad?" Cameron asked.

"…Unpleasant. But it was what we needed to see."

Then they transformed in a wave of black and gestured at the white spider symbol on their chest. "Have you ever wondered why we have this?"

Leslie slowly shook her head. "No, but– Actually, yeah. Why do you look like that? Seems… kinda on-the-nose."

"That's not your natural pattern," Carrie piped up, speaking through Cameron.

"No, it's not," Venom agreed. Their voice shifted fully into that of the symbiote, "I made this symbol when I first bonded to Spider-Man. After I joined with Eddie, we kept it as a reminder of our hatred and need for revenge."

"Which you have decided to let go, haven't you?" Leslie stressed with clear warning in her voice.

The edges of Venom's fanged maw curled up into something resembling a smile. "We have. And we think it's about time we made it official."

The white spider shifted, thinning out and losing form, until all that was left of it were jagged lines that stretched over Venom's shoulders and chest.

It was the same pattern that Mira had worn so long ago.

"We are more than just hate and we refuse to spend the rest of our lives defining ourselves through Spider-Man. We have already spent far too long stewing in the past. It is time for us to move forward."

The image disappeared and the screen dissolved into purple mist. It swirled through the air and returned Peter back to the real world, the echo of Madame Web's words following after him.

"They have made their choice. Now it's your turn."

Peter settled back on the rooftop and slowly exhaled. It looked like no time had passed in the real world since Madame Web had whisked him away, but to him it felt like a lifetime. He felt off-balance and nearly dizzy after so many revelations, but he also felt… lighter.

He never realized how much his experience as the symbiote's host had weighed down on him before. Now that he knew the truth…

It felt like he could finally move on.