Chapter Text
“And the latest batch is showing so much promise! In the last 48 hours, the mortality rate has dropped from 86% with the theta-3.1.2 variant to only 79% in the theta-3.1.3!” Hans continued excitedly as he groped with one hand for the sandwich he’d been neglecting. Tearing off a chunk of bread and meat with his teeth, he chewed slowly to give Niklaus time to let the appropriate amount of awe spread across his face.
Niklaus yawned again and picked at the sleep still caught in the corner of his eye. “Uh huh,” he muttered.
Hans felt his lip twitch into a frown. The bread felt suddenly felt dry in his mouth, and he reached for his tea to hide his glower. Well, Niklaus never really was a morning person , Hans soothed his wounded pride. So he really should be forgiven for his lack of enthusiasm . The tea had gone tepid and tannic, and it turned his dinner into a soggy lump on his tongue. Hans swallowed it down regardless. Still, Niklaus needed to be informed of what was to come on his shift. Time difference was not an excuse to be grumpy in the face of their glorious mission.
“So that should make your job far more pleasurable today, wouldn’t you say, Klaus?” Hans suspected that his attempt at being warm and friendly was coming across as borderline saccharine, but Niklaus glanced up at him nonetheless. Still, the usual warmth in his colleague’s gaze was missing, and the other man simply grunted his acknowledgement before idly arranging his pens.
“After all, that means there are less lab rats to clean up,” Hans trudged on, undeterred. “The first batch with the curdled blood? Oof, do you remember that?” Hans asked, forcibly jovial. Again, Klaus just grunted and stretched. “Or the ones who went feral and started tearing chunks from their own flesh? I know they are of a lesser race, but oof. That gave me nightmares.”
Klaus’ glance this time was downright frigid, and Hans felt a prickle of irritation. No, no, Hans. Be nice. He is still readying himself for the morning. He has not been up all night like you have been. Staggered shifts are hard, you know that. Hans drew a deep breath. “Test subject 17 should be --” Klaus interrupted with another loud yawn. “I’m sorry, Herr Niklaus, am I boring you? ” Hans heard himself spit out irritably.
Klaus heaved a sigh. “Hans. Mein Freund. It is barely 0500 hours. The sun is not even up. I have not had my coffee. I have just awoke from a beautiful dream of Frau Schueler, and being reminded of curdling blood and feral Americans is not what I want to replace it with. So yes. I am a little… tense.”
Hans considered that perhaps Klaus was right. He knew he should be more tactful, and that after all, Klaus was more than a comrade, he was a friend. Maybe he should ask Klaus more about his dream. Maybe he should fill him in on the strange sense of wrongness that had filled the night, only made worse by this conversation. Or offer to make a new pot of tea. Either way, he should probably smooth this over.
“Well at least someone gets to see the sun,” Hans heard himself explode instead. “Some of us are trapped down in the bowels of this gott verlassen mountain for all hours!”
“ Gott im himmel , I am too tired and too sober to deal with --” Klaud gestured to the whole of Hans. “ -- whatever this is . I am getting a coffee,” Klaus snapped, rising to his feet so quickly that his chair toddled on its back legs before clattering back into position. “ Would you like one? ” The question was somehow thoughtful and combative at once.
“That would be lovely ,” Hans snapped back, equally aggressive. “Cream and sugar, please. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome!” Klaus barked, slamming the door behind him as he left their office.
Hans watched his partner leave and fumed at the empty space he had vacated. Difficult mornings were not unusual, of course. Hans worked the overnight shift, and Klaus was the day shift. They had some overlap during the last few hours of Hans’ workday and the first few of Klaus’, and Klaus was without a doubt, not a morning person. Still. There was something else in the air that Hans couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something that just felt… Wrong .
There was a nagging, prickling feeling at the back of his neck, like he was forgetting something. Or maybe more like eyes on him. Hans ran through his mental checklist. The human test animals chained to their gurneys wouldn’t need to be fed for another few hours, and by then they would be Klaus’ problem. He’d run all the checks, and although it had been a bit more quiet than usual, there were no alarms sounding. Hans moved to the console again to verify. Nope. No alarms.
Hans tried to consider anything that seemed out of place. Rolf hadn’t come by for his usual chat on his break, but perhaps he had been chided too many times by the unteroffizier and was deciding to lay low. Still, something nagged at him. Maybe Klaus’ mood was more than just the usual morning discomfort. Maybe Hans was forgetting something? The idea made his chest burn with a sudden pulse of adrenaline. What if he had forgotten something important? Like Klaus’ birthday? No, no that was foolish. No one would be that upset over a simply oversight like that, right?
What if he had forgotten Herr Johann Schmidt’s birthday? The sandwich clattered back onto the plate as Hans rushed to his calendar, flipping frantically through the pages, completely unaware of the two pairs of eyes watching him from above.
“There they are,” Steve whispered. Though he inherently knew he didn’t need to speak at all to be heard by the symbiote. Still. Vocalizing allowed him a sense of normalcy that had been all but forgotten ever since he’d agreed to this endeavour.
Venom, for what it was worth, was happy to play his role and pretend like he wasn’t privy to every thought in Steve’s head. “ Where? ” he asked.
“There. That stack of files, I think. Plus whatever is in the filing cabinets, and probably those reels if we can get them. You think we can?”
“Not an issue,” Venom rumbled in response. “ The human?”
Steve grunted softly, watching the HYDRA man move around. Though he tried to focus on the task at hand, his eyes kept drifting to the sandwich. Venom may have been satiated, but Steve still felt starving.
“Stee-vee, ” the symbiote growled.
“I’m thinking.”
“No. You are not.”
“I’m thinking now, okay? Jeez.” Steve squinted at the man, then scanned the room again with his eyes. “Too risky to drop down. That other one could be back any minute. We’ll have to bring him up here.”
“Will not fit. ” Steve frowned at the response, but looked at the opening to the vent they were sitting at. Steve had always been small, and the ventilation system needed to maintain a base inside a literal mountain was extensive and robust. Unfortunately, HYDRA seemed to favor more robust soldiers as well. The vent opening that was small enough for Steve to shimmy in and out of was out of the question for the scientist below.
“Sure he will,” Steve said with a shrug, thankfully remembering to keep his voice down. Something twitched and itched at the corner of Steve’s mind. Something he had heard long ago but wasn’t sure it belonged to this situation. Best not to worry over accuracy at the moment.
“Anything his head fits through, the rest will follow.”
There was a long pause before the response came. “ We do not think that is correct. ”
Steve blinked in surprise. “What? Sure it is. Collarbones fold. Just gotta get his head through and his collarbone will fold and bam, problem solved.”
This time the seconds seemed to stretch on before the reply. “... Do not think that is correct. Stee-vee’s collarbone does not fold. ”
Steve grunted. “Yeah, well, the list of things my body should do and doesn’t is longer than my arm. Longer than your arm.”
“We do not think human collarbones fold. Stee-vee is mistaken. ”
Well, that was news. Steve snorted softly. “Okay, then what am I thinking of?”
The feeling of the symbiote shuffling through his memories was uncomfortable. Flashes of conversations, bits of random trivia, voices, images; dozens upon hundreds upon thousands all flickering behind his mind’s eye at once before Venom found what he was looking for.
“Cats. ”
“Oh. I was way off,” Steve scoffed in amusement, watching the scientist as he left the calendar and began to return to his desk. “We need to bring him up here.”
“Will not fit, ” Venom reiterated.
“Then make him fit,” Steve growled softly.
There was no hesitation from the symbiote as Steve felt the black, pulsating ooze pull away from his body. Like a snake, it slipped down through the grate and crept through the air towards the unwary scientist. Steve wrinkled his nose up as he stared at the insignia on the man’s uniform. A skull with tendrils curling away from it like the grasping arms of a kraken. Like thorny vines of some Lovecraftian horror, ready to twist and tear at new victims. Steve’s lip slowly curled up over his teeth.
Steve watched as his own tentacles crept silently closer, slinking, pausing, slinking again, careful that his prey would not be alerted until it was too late. By the time Hans looked up, Steve had already won.
The blackness shimmered as the tip of the coil hung suspended in the air, barely a foot away from the German’s face. It was pretty in its own way, so dark that the light seemed to slide off of it, coalescing into dappled pools along the pockets of its flesh. Hans was transfixed, and Steve could see the fascination and the primal desire to flee battling behind the man’s eyes.
“Was in aller Weld …?”
The head of the vine was almost like a pod, and though it must certainly have been against Hans’ better judgement, one hand came up to meet it. The blackness shivered in response, starting at the nose of the tendril and moving down its length, a prickly wave of living ferite. As Hans’s head slowly moved to track along origin of this length, the pod erupted violently into bloom. Thorny petals -- no, fingers -- split wide, and as Hans tried to take a step back, the monstrous hand lunged for him, lashing onto his face and devouring any cries of protest into its palm.
Steve watched in mild interest, blue eyes drifting to the door, then back to the sandwich abandoned on the table. The man was screaming, but it was muffled by the symbiote forcing its way into his mouth and nose, over his head, and spreading across his shoulders. If Steve focused, he would be able to feel every movement, every squirm, and every pulse of the racing heartbeat. It was unnerving at first, but now it was natural. Instead his focus lingered on the scientist’s now abandoned supper.
An urge came to him to back up down the vent, and he recognized that it had not come from himself. Steve obeyed regardless. The moment he had cleared the vent entrance, the blackness recoiled towards him, reforming along Steve’s back and shoulders until it was stopped with a heavy thump and a jar that resonated through the metal vent. The blockage lowered, and then tried again, slamming up with enough force to fray the metal inward, but still it wasn’t enough.
“Will not fit,” Venom growled.
“You’re not trying hard enough then,” Steve snapped back. From the small gaps in the metal, he could still see the man struggling, clawing and scratching at the ooze in vain. The desperate screams were barely audible above Venom’s irritated snarls.
Again the man was slammed against the too-narrow entrance. Again. And again. Until finally, with a great heave from the symbiote, there was the crunch of bones giving way, a terrible squelching sound, and a splash of warm blood across Steve’s face. He reached up to wipe it out of his eyes as the prize was pulled fully into the duct, bent and broken, deep tears ribboning the bloodstained uniform and strips of flesh alike. Crimson drizzled out of what remained of the vent’s opening, past the shredded metal to drip onto the floor with an urgent tak tak tak tak.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Steve recognized that the whole point of this plan was to stay stealthy. Leave no sign behind. To slip in, pull the man into the grate to dispose of him quickly and quietly, and to vanish as eerily as they had arrived. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Steve also recognized that a dented and bloodied air vent and the growing puddle of blood on the floor of the office defeated this idea entirely. But he simply shrugged. In theory it had been foolproof. Reality’s refusal to meet his standards was Reality’s problem. Not his.
The sickly blond made a vague gesture. “Go ahead and eat him, then,” Steve decided, and then covered a yawn with his fist as the symbiote eagerly did exactly that. When the crunching and soft snarling had subsided, Steve pulled himself forward to look down the grate. The papers were still there. As were the files. And all that was out of place was a little bit of blood. Some, he realized distastefully, had landed on his precious sandwich.
They needed to get down to the floor, but the ruined metal was a trap of blades. Steve wondered momentarily if Venom could just ooze them down and no sooner had the thought formed in his mind when he felt bare feet on solid ground. Steve registered mild surprise as he watched as Venom retreated from his body, having done exactly as he’d imagined. Steve shook his head. He could be impressed later, right now he had work to do.
Grabbing the sandwich from the plate, Steve padded heavily across the metal plates and opened the door. Peeking cautiously to make sure they were still alone, he whistled a single note between his teeth. From a hidden ledge nearby, Bucky’s dark-haired figure appeared. He too looked around cautiously, before carefully dropping onto the catwalk and hurrying to meet Steve and his symbiote. Once inside the lab, Steve carefully closed the door while Bucky surveyed the scene. Buck regarded the damage with only a slight frown of disgust.
“That was real risky, Stevie. I almost got spotted twice,” Bucky said, turning towards his friend.
“Nah,” Steve dismissed, picking at the bread. Trembling fingers dug pits into the loaf at the spots where the blood had saturated, flicking them to the ground. He debated on tearing off a bit of soiled meat, but maybe he could just wipe it clean with the side of his hand. “You were Up. I’m tellin’ ya, Buck, no one ever looks up.”
Bucky’s eyes were on Steve’s hands, brow knit with what appeared to be confusion. “Steve, where’d you get that?”
Steve licked the remaining breadcrumbs off his thumb, regretting the action when he realized his skin tasted a little too much like iron. “What? Oh, the sandwich? I took it from a dead guy,” he said. “Are you hungry? Here I’ll split it.” Steve’s stomach growled at the idea, but if Buck was hungry, Steve would happily give up whatever meager bounty he had.
“Steve,” Bucky’s voice was firm and almost parental. Steve recognized and hated it immediately. “You can’t go eating sandwiches you take off of dead guys.”
The laugh was high and manic. “What? No, no Buck it’s fine he wasn’t using it or anything.” Steve padded to the desk, aware of Bucky lingering over his shoulder. “Just gotta eat around the bloody bits. It’s fine, it’s fine. Help me gather these papers.”
Bucky frowned, but dutifully moved to shuffle through files. He squinted at the information and sighed. “It’s all in German,” He announced, instead starting to make a pile.
“Don’t you sprechen deutsch , Herr Barnes?” Steve teased around a mouthful of food. He opened a drawer and rooted around, discarding writing utensils over his shoulder. While he worked, he struggled to chew on the sandwich held between his teeth without dropping it entirely.
“I mean, I do, but my head feels like it’s full of gunk. I can’t make heads or tails of anything.”
Steve’s frown deepened, his eyes going hard and determined. “...We’ll get you outta here, Buck. Promise.” Steve shook himself present and rolled his shoulders, glancing around. A nearby mug caught his attention, and he snatched it, drinking it down with a gulp and a shudder.
“Steve, you can’t just drink things you find on a desk,” Buck grumbled as he continued collecting his stack.
“What do these people have against coffee?” Steve stuck his tongue out, smacking his lips against the bitter taste of over-brewed leaves. “Say, Buck. You remember the time you accidentally drank my paint water?”
Bucky scoffed and looked up from his task. “Which time? Remember when I told you all I wanted for Christmas was for you to stop leaving your damn paint water mugs around?”
Steve straightened up with a nostalgic smile. “Yeaaah. Sorry you didn’t get it, Buck. Must have been a real bad boy that year.” The flush that spread across Bucky’s cheeks only made Steve’s smile wider.
“Hardy-har,” Bucky said, though he seemed a little flustered. He brought the stack of papers over to add them to Steve’s pile. “You know, it’s going to be a real trick to get all of these out with just the two of us. And while dodging goons.”
Steve grinned at Bucky, and for a moment he didn’t look quite so manic and delirious. There was not just lucidity in his eyes, but a sharpness that hadn’t shone in quite some time. “Oh it’s a real swell trick, Buck. Watch this.”
Taking a big stack of papers, he held them up in the air. The black sludge of the symbiote poured up the limb and over the bulk he was holding. “Abracadabra.” When the oily mass retreated, the files were gone.
Buck nodded quietly, “Yeah, that’s some trick, Stevie.” Bucky moved to finish adding the papers, glancing around. “Where’d the uh… Venom… Even come from, anyhow?”
“Get those reels for me, will ya, Buck? And…” Steve paused to wrack his brain. Lately, everything had felt feverish and blistered, blurred around the edges like the street top in the middle of July. But right now... Right now a cloud had lifted from his eyes, and the heat seemed to recede just a little. Right now memories felt less slippery.
“...It was after the World Expo. After you were shipped out,” Steve began, feeding the last of the files to the ever-voracious demon. “I was trying to enlist again, as usual,” he said as an attempt at a joke. “But instead I was chosen for an experiment. Project Lazarus they called it.” Steve looked over, watching Bucky work the reels of data tape off of their spools. “It was supposed to be the Future. A way to give super human strength, they said. A way to instantly heal wounds, to turn the tides on death itself, they said.”
Steve’s voice trailed off, frowning quietly at the empty mug for a long moment. “And a lot of men had died, they said… But they said that if we could make this work… If we could find someone able to harness the power they had found… It could end the war. It could save so many lives.” Steve’s blue eyes flicked towards Bucky, not quite landing on him. “The only life I could think of saving was yours…”
Steve smiled softly, drawing a deep, trembling breath. “They told me that only the strongest of heart and strongest of will could survive their little project.” Despite himself, Steve smiled, laughing gently. “Thought they were crazy to pick me, with my stellar health and all. Who wouldn’t look at me and think ‘boy, what a model of American fitness’. Obvious best candidate.”
“Steve… Why did you agree to that?” Bucky asked softly, gingerly holding out the reels for the symbiote to absorb. The sludge crawled over the metal, white eyemarks staring into his soul as a thousand wriggling polyps squirmed and sucked at his skin. And then with wriggling and sucking, it retracted again, taking the metal with it.
Steve considered the answer, slowly finishing the last of the scavenged sandwich. “I… had a lot of reasons. That night… I knew it was the last time I’d ever see you again. That the next time I touched your skin, it would be at your wake. That without you… I had nothing. I was nothing. So… when they told me it was dangerous, I didn’t care. If I died, I’d be with you that much sooner. If it worked? Well… Here we are.”
Blue eyes stared into nothingness, feeling the flames of fever licking at the edges of his mind. The food seemed to have quelled it slightly, but it would be back. It always came back. For a moment Steve wondered if this was worth it. The sickness. The pain. The unending, gnawing madness. Was it worth it?
The cool hand on his cheek made Steve flinch, but Venom’s silence signaled there was no danger. Glancing up, he hadn’t realized that Bucky had come so much closer and now for the first time he could really see just how much damage Bucky himself had endured. In the glare of the electric lights, Bucky was pale. There were dark circles under his eyes and the baby fat that had once softened his features had been burned away, replaced with hard angles of high cheekbones. On his hand, Steve could smell sweat and faint sickness, dirt and the biting cold that even here managed to permeate at times. There was a weary tremble in hand that cupped his cheek, and Steve stepped forward into Bucky’s arms, hiding his face against the rough cloth of the stolen HYDRA uniform.
Fabric rustled as the strong arms moved around him, steady despite everything they’d been through. Steve found himself clinging to Bucky’s chest, and pressing himself to him, Steve tilted his face up to hide in the curve of Bucky’s jaw. He drew in a deep breath, feeling the roughness of stubble on his skin, the tack of drying sweat, the rhythm of Bucky’s pulse against the side of his nose. Oh how much he’d missed this. How much he’d forgotten he needed this. For a moment, Steve could forget the horrors of the last few months, the last few days, the last few minutes. For a moment, he could just breathe in the scent of his best friend, his lover and pretend that all was right in the world. For a moment, he could ignore the second self in his head, curiously examining these new sensations and emotions, ignore the knowledge that while it was being quiet now, Steve would be bombarded with questions later. For a moment, he just was. They had time.
Fingers were running through his damp hair, and Steve drew a deep, shivering breath. “What was it like?” Bucky’s voice rumbled in his chest and Steve smiled softly at the reverberations.
“There… was a chamber. It was tall and clear, with glass as thick as my arm. They locked me in there and it hissed behind me. The air felt strange. And then some men in lab coats brought out the canister, filled with strange, thick black liquid. It roiled and moved even when the canister was still, like it was trying to get out. And they plugged it into the side of my chamber, like one of those tubes from the Dr Frankenstein movie. You remember that movie, Buck?”
“I do,” Bucky rumbled again, his hand moving slowly down Steve’s back before coming up to his hair to stroke him again.
“Well it was like that. And then… And then everyone stepped back. And the canister opened and the liquid… hesitated. It hesitated, Buck… before it slid out into the chamber with me. It was all… grasping and squirming, like that pond scum we found with Becca a long time ago. The one that moved on its own. You remember that, Buck?”
“I do,” Came the soft reassurance. “Were you scared?”
“At first. They told me not to fight it, but I did anyhow. I stomped it real good, but it grabbed onto my bare foot and wrapped around my ankle.” The sound of Venom’s raspy chuckle at Steve’s memory didn’t startle either of the humans. “It was all over me, on my legs, up my waist, in my mouth and choking me and then suddenly… He was everywhere ...” Steve shivered and pressed himself harder into Bucky.
The arms held him close. “...What do you mean ‘everywhere’?”
“In my… head. In my thoughts. Trying to control me, take me over. But I refused. And I fought. And I wouldn’t bend and I wouldn’t give in.” Steve drew back enough to look up at Bucky, holding out one arm as the ichor pulsed and oozed from his pores, licking at the air like the tongues of a thousand snakes before collapsing to be reabsorbed into his flesh. Venom’s will pulsed in Steve, reminding him that they should still be moving. Steve’s own will pushed back stronger. They had time.
“When I refused to break, that was when I saw him as his true form. That was when we saw each other face to face. And I understood…” Steve watched the symbiote bubbling along his arm and made a gentle soothing sound. Little by little, the ooze calmed, spreading into a layer of black slime across his skin.
“...Does it hurt?” Bucky coaxed.
“Oh yeah,” Steve said without hesitation. “So much. But you get used to it. You get used to the fire in your skull and the constant hunger and the -- the never being alone ever not even in your own thoughts. In your own dreams . And you get used to everything being an argument and the fever and the endless squirming in your veins because -- because when everything is quiet... And everything is still. In those few, precious moments, that’s when it feels like love.”
Realizing how that sounded, Steve peered up at Bucky’s face. “Not -- not romantic love. Or fraternal love. Or I guess even platonic love…” Pale lips pressed into a frown.
“Stevie, there aren’t a whole lot of other kinds of ‘love’ left,” Bucky said calmly.
“No it’s… It’s like… The love of a wolf for the forest. Or the love of a deer for a cornfield. It’s safe… And it’s nourishing. It’s the most natural thing for the symbiote to love the host, for the deer to love the field. To want to be there. The hide. To play. To eat ...”
Steve looked up into those tired, ice-blue eyes. “Humans are very much like cornstalks. Beautiful and benign, meant to be loved and bent and stomped on and crushed until every edible morsel has been trampled out and only a dry, withered husk remains.” Steve’s eyes took on a manic glitter. “But I… I would not bend. I would not break. Of all the cornstalks that came before me -- and there were so many before me -- I was the one who will not be crushed. I will not break. Doomed as I may be, I will still fight .”
“Doomed?” Bucky asked above him. Steve paused a minute to gather his thoughts and consider his words. The urgent nudge came again, but there was no immediate danger. Steve held fast. They still had time.
“The thing that the cornstalks don’t understand is that to be loved by a deer is to be wholly devoured. And so too is that what it means to be loved by a symbiote. Because --” this time there was a growl of warning, coming only a moment before Steve heard the click of a latch falling back into position.
Steve’s head snapped up, drawing away from Bucky as blue eyes locked on brown. Brown eyes just now coming back into reality from a much needed break from focused thought, only to discover that in moment all of reality had been uncompromisingly, irrevocably, violently changed.
The German stood before the now-closed door, holding two tin mugs of coffee, frozen in place as he took in the scene. A small, bedraggled man covered in motor oil standing with a soldier he didn’t recognize. A steady sound like dripping water, but when he looked up, he saw the tattered metal of the damaged vent. The steady drip wasn’t water. It wasn’t water at all.
“Do not move,” two voices snarled at once, Steve’s a command, Venom’s a warning. As the German’s eyes flicked towards the emergency alarm button, the snarl became more feral.
All at once, the German lunged, dropping the tin mug of coffee as his hand slammed onto the red metal actuator of the emergency alarm. The shimmering black fist slammed into his chest, shoving forward through the resistance and crushing through his ribs. All at once, three screams erupted, the sounds clattering off of eachother and off of the machinery around them. One was human. One was mechanical. And one was decidedly neither.
Steve clamped his hands over his ears, the shriek of the alarms sending visceral pain through the symbiote, amplified and shared through his own body. He cried out, pustules of black erupting over every inch of skin as if the noise itself had set Venom boiling, but with a snarl of his own, he forced the creature under control. “Get a hold of yourself!” Steve yelled, lowering his hands from his ears cautiously. The pain didn’t subside, but dulled to a more tolerable level.
“We have to go,” Bucky growled, checking his weapon and grabbing Steve by the arm to lead him out. All around the base, they could hear the mechanical scream spreading, soon to be answered by a buzzing swarm of soldiers. Escape now was their only option. They had run out of time.