Annie and Dan are visiting his parents back East when the aliens hit New York, and then all the flights are canceled and the catsitter they hired doesn’t have any extra openings, so it’s Eddie to the rescue.
There’s some kind of irony in Anne finally trusting him to feed the cat a year after ending their engagement. He’s walking up the hill to their apartment, Annie on the phone telling him the system Dan uses for watering his plants, because of course Dan has a system, when Venom starts freaking out hard.
EDDIE, he says, so urgently that Eddie almost drops the phone. Eddie, something is wrong.
“What?” Eddie asks, looking reflexively around them–it can’t be Carnage again, unless–? But the street is quiet. The nearest person is an old woman pushing her bubbe cart.
“Eddie?” Anne asks, distant. “Everything okay?”
Something is very wrong, Venom repeats, and he sounds nearly distraught. He lurches sideways in Eddie’s chest, and Eddie does drop the phone this time.
“Whoa, whoa,” Eddie says, “What’s wrong?”
Instead of responding, Venom abruptly manifests, taking control of their body and scaring the pants off of the rest of the street.
“Jesus, V, what the hell,” Eddie says–or tries to say. He suddenly feels it too: something indefinable but essential is–wrong, and getting wronger.
“No,” Venom snarls out loud to the street, where the old woman–jesus christ. Where the old woman has just collapsed into dust, leaving nothing behind but her cart and her purse. A car slams into a lamppost, the driver’s seat suddenly empty. Someone is screaming, and they aren’t even screaming at them. “I said no.”
Oh, Eddie thinks, as a passenger tries to escape from the car’s backseat, and crumbles into nothing as soon as she reaches the pavement. Oh, that’s what’s happening to us.
“It is not.” Venom is surrounding him, is in him, deep as they always are, close enough that no one could tell the difference. Eddie can feel Venom repairing him, hanging onto his brain and his heart and feverishly binding atoms together that want to fall apart, and he can feel that it isn’t going to work, that not even us can stand against the unyielding pull of entropy.
I love you, V, Eddie thinks, fierce as he can.
“Don’t leave me,” Venom orders, frantic, hanging on as hard as they can, with every part of themselves. Eddie’s lost his view of the street, and he doesn’t know if it’s because he’s lost his eyes, or because Venom is shielding him from whatever there is to see, if the last thing he’ll see is that familiar blackness. “Don’t leave me alone, Eddie.”
Eddie tries his best to project gratitude with the last shreds of himself he can reach. He hopes Venom knows how much his life was changed, how much he wants––
*
Tag: Loki
and-a-pidgey-in-a-wepear-tree:
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It becomes a pattern in the aftermath.
Bruce has set up a makeshift lab in Wakanda, while the world takes stock of their dead and Wakanda mourns for their king. Bruce isn’t doing anything important, but he needs to do something, so he studies Wakanda’s vibranium supply and attempts to keep Shuri busy.
Otherwise, the grief might just be too much for the both of them to bear.
Bruce also tries very hard not to think about Tony and what form of matter Tony may or may not be at this very moment. He’s only moderately successful.
It’s on the third day of the second week after half of the world has turned to ash that Thor brings Bruce a little green snake. Bruce is baffled, but he tried to be polite about it. Bruce is heartsick, though, so that makes everything a little harder.
Then Thor asks for Bruce to see if the snake is Loki, and it takes every bit of willpower Bruce Banner poses to not burst into tears. Thor is so strong and so keen to smile, he makes it so easy for everyone to forget that he has lost nearly everything.
Bruce pokes at the snake without any further complaints. When nothing happens, the grief on Thor’s face is unimaginable.
Bruce begins spending time with both Thor and Shuri, in a desperate attempt to combat his own grief by combatting theirs.
All the while, every second or third day, Thor brings Bruce a small green animal and asks Bruce to see if it his lost brother. Bruce checks every time, with care and precision, but the result is always negative. It’s awful for both of them, but Thor can’t seem to stop and Bruce doesn’t know how to make him.
This pattern holds for a few weeks, until Thor brings Bruce a beaten and battered lizard. It’d been burned somehow and it looked like one of its limbs had been badly broken. When Thor presents it to him, Bruce honestly isn’t sure if Thor had just brought the little thing to Bruce to see if it could be saved.
“Could you check?” Thor asks, the question quiet and hurt after so many weeks of negative results from Bruce’s prodding and poking.
“Of course,” Bruce says softly, adding his portion of the call and response.
He gingerly picks up the lizard, as the poor also looks like he’d been through the wringer, and gives him a quick once over. Bruce’d been right about the broken leg and the burns were pretty –
The lizard fucking turns into Loki. A damaged, burnt Loki who scuttles backward on a broken leg while spitting blood.
Thor bursts into tears. Bruce bursts out laughing. Everyone has their own way of processing grief and shock and grief turned into shock, apparently.
It’s later, when they’ve gotten Loki a little patched up, convinced Okoye not to kill Loki (”He tried to destroy the world!” she says – “He’s gotten better,” Bruce says), and Thor’s eyes were mostly dry, that Loki finally says through clenched, bloodied teeth:
“They’re in a pocket dimension.”
“Who?” Bruce whispers, stunned.
“Everyone. I told him he’d never be a god. He was just a warlord playing at being something powerful. He should’ve fucking listened.”
JUST THIS ONCE, ROSE, EVERYBODY LIVES
Thor: I lost my dear brother about 4 marvel movies ago
Loki (from the other room) : QUIT TELLIN EVERYONE IM DEAD
Thor: sometimes i wish you were dead you Asshole
Cheloneuniverse 