Work Text:
Eddie Brock knew this was a church even before he opened his eyes. Their church. The faint murmurs he could vaguely hear were gnawing at his brain like insects—he knew exactly what that felt like. He knew the Lady was weeping as she looked toward him, just as he had gazed many days and nights into a pair of ivory eyes wrapped in black, flowing liquid.
The moment he regained consciousness and realized the symbiote wasn’t by his side, he was certain: this was their church. Because they always met and reunited here.
————————
Eddie lay sprawled on the cold ceramic floor, his vision blurred, naked, surrounded by loneliness and fear. Yet, at the same time, he felt a symbiote approaching, like a tickle in throat. They could leave each other, but they could never truly escape one another. So, once again—as in so many past moments—he hugged it. Cold yet warm, painful yet gentle—this was how it felt during their first connection. He felt his body sinking into mud, a blackness that even the sludge of the Hudson River couldn’t match, something he yearned for and desired.
But almost simultaneously, he realized: this wasn’t his symbiote. At least, not the one he’d been coexisting with day and night lately. He was puzzled because the familiar touch and the unique symbiotic imprint confirmed its identity. This symbiote was delving deep into his mind, he thought, clearly sensing its sudden shift in emotions—excitement, relief, panic, confusion—just like his own. Then it discovered a switch, somewhere between his beating heart and flesh. Memories of inexplicable past events suddenly flooded in like a tidal wave, suffocating him. Those golden images, woven from memories and heartbeats, emotions and imagination, filled their shared past and now played before his eyes. He regretted not recognizing it sooner.
This still-young creature that communicated with him in silence——his symbiote from the past.
————————
Eddie wasn’t sure how magic worked, or if time travel was more of a scientific thing. In any case, when he woke up again, this was the situation: in their church, still in his forty-something-year-old body, with the symbiote he had met in his twenties now curled up in his stomach. To be honest, he’d almost forgotten the symbiote’s silent days. He had grown accustomed to its conversations and direct expressions, but now he was back to those earliest days. But really, he had never truly felt its silence—it was mostly how others perceived it. Maybe they thought the symbiote had learned to speak, learned to “be human.” They would be wrong, Eddie thought. It had mastered human language to communicate with them, using simple, feeble words and sounds to replace the beautiful way its species communicated. He had never even found it strange that he could understand its language naturally, as if everything was written in scripture, as if it was all meant to be that way. He never had to think or translate to grasp its thoughts—hunger, anger, fear, joy, guilt. Sometimes he wondered: were emotions really a human privilege? Perhaps Klyntar were born with richer emotions than Earthlings.
“Love…” Eddie called it.
The symbiote emitted a comfortable purring sound, but their bond remained distant. Eddie knew it had also recognized him—recognized that he wasn’t its Eddie.
“I think we both have some things to figure out, Love.” Eddie said casually. But the symbiote seemed to react strongly to that, suddenly he realized: back then, he had never called it Love. Back then, it couldn’t yet understand what humans called Love.
“Before you understand it,” Eddie stood up and walked out of the church, “we still have a long way to go… Hmm… this one? Yeah, right, this was my favorite style when I was young. Time waits for no one.” He laughed, out of pure joy. He remembered how simple the symbiote was back then—still unrestrained in expressing any emotion, still unadapted to Earth’s civilization. He had almost forgotten this feeling, this joy of sensing another soul… accompanied by unbearable hunger. He realized that, at this point, the symbiote hadn’t been fed chocolate yet, nor had they been intimate. So, the phenethylamine in his body was quickly depleted, and now he felt increasingly uncontrollable anger and longing.
This was an extreme emotion he had abandoned years ago. Just as he was about to reach a store to buy a kilo of chocolate, he suddenly remembered—someone had told him—the rules of time travel. Considering he was no expert in this field, and the consequences of breaking such rules were usually severe, he hesitated. If he introduced chocolate now, maybe they wouldn’t experience that accident, maybe… Eddie rubbed his temples, warning himself not to overthink it. But he still gave up on the sweets option and began considering another method.
“No, we can’t eat brains. What? Okay, that was the younger me. Anyway, we don’t do that anymore now.” The intense hunger was almost consuming both of them. Even though Eddie was already skilled at coexisting with the symbiote, he couldn’t control his younger half now—nor himself.
——————
Eddie dragged his body and collapsed in a grove of trees in the suburbs. As he leaned against a tree, the symbiote formed an external shape, its tongue wrapping around his neck, sharp teeth grazing the skin of his shoulder and neck, leaving a trail of blood beads. Hmm, hasn’t learned to control its strength yet, Eddie thought. He felt himself choking a little—the future symbiote wouldn’t bite this hard.
“Alright, I know you’re hungry, Love.” Eddie smiled. He looked around and said, “And I suppose I haven’t gotten that apartment yet. It’s okay, don’t be afraid, Love. I promise you’ll get everything you want. I’ll teach you what to do. At least after we discovered that intimacy produces phenethylamine, it never bothered us again—”
The symbiote urgently bit into the side of his neck, right where blood was flowing. A sharp sense of fear tightened Eddie’s nerves. He knew that maybe, even at this point, the symbiote had already understood his desires. It just hadn’t learned to express them with words and actions, and the Eddie of this time was still too young. But the present Eddie Brock—this middle-aged man who had experienced over twenty years of nightlife—was still tempted by the fervor of his other half in its youth. His body still responded swiftly to it. So, when the symbiote extended its long tongue and pressed against his chest again, he abandoned the idea of “taking it slow.”
“Damn it,” he muttered through gritted teeth, “how long has it been since we did this?”
——————
When the symbiote woke up, it found itself in a church. Their church. It almost immediately recognized the man holding it against his chest, weeping in sorrow—that familiar scent of home. So, without careful confirmation, it slipped inside. Only when it reached deep into the spleen did it realize: this wasn’t its Eddie—at least, not the one it was thinking of now.
———————
The symbiote peeked out from his shoulder, staring at the man’s gradually growing golden hair, his smooth cheeks, and sharp eyes. It finally confirmed: this was Eddie. Just a younger Eddie.
“You’re not my symbiote,” it heard Eddie say. “But you feel familiar. You’re not the red one either. Who are you?”
“I am your symbiote, Eddie. We are Venom.”
It watched as Eddie looked even more confused.
“This is your future, Eddie. Our future,” the symbiote quickly explained.
“Haha, I don’t believe it,” Eddie laughed. “Time travel? My symbiote doesn’t speak human language. Which spawn are you?”
The symbiote watched his expression and movements, suddenly feeling an uncommon sense of nostalgia. Of course, it remembered what the young Eddie was like, what gestures he liked, what he liked to wear and eat… So, it shapeshifted into that jacket.
“Huh?”
Hmm, classic Eddie eyebrow raise, the symbiote thought smugly.
“So… I time-traveled,” Eddie said, touching his own body in disbelief.
“Yes, Eddie.”
Then the air fell into brief silence. Before the symbiote could read his thoughts, Eddie closed his eyes and hugged it.
“We’re still together,” Eddie said.
The symbiote felt as if struck. It froze. Right at this moment, for the first time, it realized so clearly: in all of Eddie Brock’s dreams, in all the futures he imagined, there was always its presence. And what he had always desperately avoided, the greatest fear of his life, wasn’t being alone. It was losing his other, losing his symbiote. Because for him, losing it meant true loneliness. The symbiote wrapped its gentlest strength around Eddie, extending a claw to brush aside his shoulder-length golden hair, nuzzling his cheek.
“You’ll grow a beard later, Eddie.”
“Hmm, that’s not necessarily true, baby,” Eddie said with a smile.
This time, it was the symbiote’s turn to raise an eyebrow. It carefully savored this long-unheard term of endearment, remembering how he used to call it that when he was happy. It felt excited and licked his face.
“Young Eddie…”
“I’m really not used to you expressing yourself this way. The Klyntar language is more beautiful, isn’t it?” Eddie asked, pulling his face back slightly.
The symbiote paused.
“So,” Eddie stared into its eyes, “tell me—in our way—will we always be together, my other?”
Countless thoughts flashed through the symbiote’s mind. It remembered their several separations and reunions, their pain, regret, surprise, retreat, release. It remembered all the nights they were entangled together, speaking a language humans couldn’t understand, expressing a love that language couldn’t convey.
So, it told Eddie, “Yes, Eddie. We will be together forever.”
Eddie looked at it and said nothing.
Cunning reporter, the symbiote thought. How could it deceive him?
But now, neither of them brought it up again.————————
“Eddie, do you want to meet our children?” the symbiote spoke up. It suddenly thought it would be quite amusing to see young Eddie’s reaction to this. Sure enough, Eddie froze. He thought for a moment before saying seriously, “To be honest, I don’t think Carnage counts as ‘our child.’”
“No, Sleeper is the one we gave birth to.”
“What?” Eddie actually wanted to ask who Sleeper was, but his brain was flooded by the key information, making it hard to think.
“Sleeper is a symbiote. Dylan is a good boy. You love them very much,” the symbiote said, narrowing its eyes as if teasing him.
“Wait, I gave birth to a symbiote? And a child?”
Twenty-something-year-old Eddie Brock had never imagined this scenario. Back then, he was too afraid of being responsible for another life because he was always losing, never gaining. This kept him trapped in self-doubt. Now, he had to quickly process everything he had just learned.
“You’re saying I became a dad,” he said, as if finally understanding, with a mix of realization and lingering confusion.
“That’s right, Eddie.”
“So, you are too…?”
The symbiote nodded.
“My god…” Eddie felt he really should experience more of this time travel stuff. How else would he learn facts he couldn’t even dream of?
“Tell me, are we good fathers?”
That was his question, his knot.
“Eddie,” the symbiote said, “you are their role model.”
——————
“Time’s almost up, Love.” Eddie said, looking at his gradually transparent hands, stroking his symbiote. He gazed into its ivory eyes for a long, long time. He loved this beautiful creature deeply, so he wanted to tell it not to leave its Eddie. But in the end, he chose silence. Because parting was for a better beginning, he thought. My love, we will reunite in the future.
——————
“Eddie…” The symbiote watched the disappearing man and suddenly felt it should tell him something, things it hadn’t had the chance to express clearly back then.
“Eddie, no matter what happens, I have always loved you,” it said.
In the howling gale from the void, it heard the voice gradually fade. It heard Eddie Brock, in an echo spanning over twenty years, say:
“Always knew…
…I love you too.”
——————
What remains after the snow melts away?
Eddie Brock woke up once again from that small bed, rubbing his temples. The symbiote asked if he had a headache. He shook his head, stood up, and leaned against the doorframe, looking toward the crackling TV. Dylan was curled up asleep on the couch, The Old Man and the Sea half-read and open on his lap. Sleeper lifted its head from his arms and looked at them.
Eddie watched them huddled together and suddenly felt a sense of familiarity. He walked to the window and gazed at the brightly lit New York on New Year’s Eve, then suddenly couldn’t help but smile. The first snowflake of the new year was about to fall on the earth. The symbiote asked why he was so happy. He took the symbiote’s hand and said:
“I feel like I had a dream, my love. A dream too happy to be true.”
Right then, fireworks exploded in the dark night sky, accompanied by the chimes of the clock. The symbiote’s ivory eyes reflected the golden sparks.
“Love you, Eddie… Happy New Year.”
“I love you too, Love. Happy New Year.”