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Anne leads the dog to a service door, then outside the hospital entirely.
She’s barely out the door when the dog explodes—no, it doesn’t explode, something rises from it, an inky blackness that drips and pulses and reaches up, up, up, towards her, and she doesn’t even have enough of a chance to scream before the thing pounces, spreads, sinks—
Sinks: sinking down into her skin. Anne can feel cold tendrils unwinding into her veins, her breath catching in her throat like she’s not the only one trying to breathe it anymore, and in the back of her mind she can feel more than hear the presence of someone else, something else that isn’t of her but will be, something that pulses and pounds and thinks and opens its mouth to speak—
(Annie)
Anne gasps. Her pulse is racing, her hands feel numb and her whole body feels warm, fever-hot. The voice speaks from deep inside her mind, not her own voice but a distorted copy of it, deep and undulating and reverberating throughout her entire being.
She answers, “....Venom?”
A shifting feeling under her skin, under her thoughts.
(I can track Eddie. I know where they're taking him. We have to hurry.)
Her mind is racing, she can just barely make out what’s been said. Her entire body is itching to move yet remains rooted to the spot at the same time. Forcing herself to regain composure, forcing the invading consciousness out of her thoughts so she can feel like herself again, she says, “Okay. Okay.”
Deep breath—the inhale echoes in her mind, not hers but someone else’s, someone whose anger and hunger and desperation she can feel thrumming in her bones. It’s terrifying. It’s exhilarating. All at once.
Anne looks to the horizon. “Show me where to go.”
Hours later, Anne watches Carlton Drake’s rocket explode.
Her heart leaps into her throat and she clamps a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. Tears spring to her eyes but she blinks them back fiercely. No, no, she can’t lose hope. Won’t.
She races out of the Life Foundation building, pushing past whatever staff and researchers haven’t evacuated already following Riot’s rampage. Out into the parking lot—already there’s a herd of police cars and ambulances assembling, first alerted by the chaos at the lab and sure to double now that everyone has seen the explosion. Anne runs past all of them and, common sense be damned, straight onto the road, aiming for the railing, stopping only when the force of her abdomen slamming into the wrought iron bars forces her to, and she scans the shoreline desperately, a litany running ceaselessly through her head please please please please….
There! —a dark shape washing up on the beach below the cliffs, small and almost imperceptible but she’d recognize him anywhere, of course she would, she does, and she swallows down a desperate cry and hoists herself onto the railing.
Racing down the embankment, almost twisting her ankles and tumbling to certain grievous injury or worse several times but she doesn’t care, not right now, and by the time she finally makes it to the shore her lungs and heart are burning and she pauses, catching her breath, looking, looking, and—
Eddie lays still and silent on the sand.
Anne runs, stumbling awkwardly through the sand, and finally she does trip but at least she does so within landing distance of Eddie’s body, and her shins sting from where they hit the sand but she shambles the last few feet anyway until she’s arching over Eddie, her hands fumbling to turn him over, shouting, “Eddie!”
He’s cold and wet and covered in sand and he looks like he’s just crawled through hell and back but somehow he finds the strength to half-open his eyes and mutter weakly, “....Annie?”
“God —Eddie, oh god.” She lets the tears flow freely now, relief overtaking despair. “I thought you’d—you’re okay!” A breathless, heedless little gasp of laughter; she has no control over it. “Gah —you’re okay, please tell me you’re okay—”
“He’s gone.”
Biting back an exhale. “He— what….?”
“He…. Venom’s gone,” Eddie whispers it again, and even through the daze his hand reaches to cup over his chest, fingers clutching agonized at the torn fabric of his sweatshirt. “I can’t feel him anymore.” A choke.
Anne remembers the feeling of another mind merging with her own, moving in to occupy the empty spaces in her subconscious. Even though her bond with Venom was brief, a part of her aches for that presence. Yearns for something missing. The blood running through her veins feels terribly alone.
Anne takes Eddie’s hand in hers. Twines their fingers together. A bond that’s a little easier to parse.
“Eddie, I’m so sorry.”
Anne sits in the back of the ambulance with Eddie.
A foil relief blanket drapes over his shoulders. He stares at the floor of the ambulance with his hands clasped tightly together over his knees. Wordless. Beside him Anne cups his shoulder gingerly, gives a gentle squeeze. The flashing lights of the emergency vehicles outside rim their shapes in reds and blues.
Anne says, mustering a soft smile, “Everything’s going to be fine now, okay?” Squeeze. “We’re going to be okay.”
“He saved me, you know.”
Eddie and Anne lock eyes. Eddie’s are rimmed in the shadows of poor sleep and days spent running for his life but beyond that there’s a kind of sadness, a yearning melancholy that makes Anne remember the night she found him outside their— her apartment, sorry and shameful. God, that all seems like forever ago now.
Anne remembers a kiss. Anne remembers how it wasn’t just her who found themself getting lost in the motions.
Anne wraps her arms around Eddie.
“I’m glad he did.”