Work Text:
It came from the communal space- someone was furiously drafting... something.
Venom walked into the room- Pom-pom sat squarely in the middle, colored sticks haphazardly strewn about and a small stack of paper was in front of her.
"Get out! Get out, you can't look!" She all but screeched.
Normally Pom-pom was dramatic to any and every effect, but this was disproportionate for, what they assumed, such an innocuous activity. It seemed as though she would have torn through Venom at any half-moment.
In mock surrender Venom wordlessly put both hands up and backed around the corner, if only to humor her.
Once they were out of view only then did they speak up.
"Can I ask what you are doing?"
They could hear the desperate shuffling of papers and smashing of colored sticks to surface.
"I'm not done yet!" Was the only answer Venom received.
"Hm. Does Mold know what you're doing?"
"He's not allowed in here either! Not until I'm done!" She sounded like she's been at this for a while now, merely at her wit's end for whatever it was worth.
Whatever she was doing, it was a secret. Unusual, but not unheard of between the three of them- mild reservations were only temporary between all of them. Not so much an unspoken rule, but just simple trust.
"Okay, well I would like to-"
"Done! I'm done! Come look!" Venom spun around the corner, hugging the wall lazily, Pom-pom was light enough to stand on the communal table apparently. Light enough to even jump on it. Wow, she was going to pick up all those colored sticks or witches help them. Where did she even get these from.
Pom-pom was waving a piece of paper like a flag.
"Look what I made!" She shoved the paper as high as she could reach to Venom's face who then broadcasted they wanted to take the sheet to view for themselves. Pom-pom relinquished her grasp.
Venom now looking saw that it was a colored scrawl of some sort.
Taking their time they saw a yellow circle in the top of the page which they had to guess was the sun (far too bright to look at directly, but close enough), a couple of little blue circles nearby which could be the common bird from these parts, a green smeared lower half of the page, obvious enough to be grass.
And in the middle of it were three round figures. Two huge bulbous contorted parodies of what had to be them and Mold. Venom looked closer. Pom-pom, in her understanding, made the tall dark round shape with black and gray and a scribble on the chest. There was a familiar dark picked flower in one hand. The other tall round figure was skinny with purples and what looked like a star jelly in theirs. Flowers decorated the whole page and a crude cake hound was somewhere in the grass. The small figure was in the middle, made with gray and green and it was reaching up to hold the hands of the other two. There were no shackles or dragontongue.
She gave them all smiles.
Venom's face softened. It wasn't as if something broke inside of them. It was something else, they didn't want to call it hope but it had the trappings of the word. It filled them with contentment and foreign bits of joy. Like the gristle of laughter and the whole body warmth of something pure and unfettered. They settled on naming the feeling happiness.
"Is this a picture of us?"
Pom-pom was beyond herself with delightful anticipation "do you like it?"
Venom eyed the drawing once more and then to Pom-pom, smile wide and approving "yes, you did very well." It wasn't said unlike before this life.
Pom-pom threw her arms in the air "I want to show Mold!"
Venom chuckled "alright, let's go find him." Pom-pom didn't wait for them.
"Then we're cleaning up this mess!" They called halfheartedly after her.