I wake to darkness and a strange sensation filling my throat. My first instinct is to panic, to thrash against whatever's invading , but my body feels too heavy, too distant to respond. The intrusion isn't painful, quite the opposite. It feels like sothing warm and alive is embracing from the inside, holding together when I might otherwise fall apart.
My eyelids weigh a thousand pounds each, but I force them open. Slowly, the world cos into focus, the familiar steel walls of our bunker bedroom, the soft glow of the bedside lamp.
And Ellie. Beautiful, fierce Ellie, her arms wrapped around my naked body, her blue eyes wide with relief. Pure, unfiltered relief.
"Ellie?" I try to say, but the word cos out garbled around the tentacle extending from her body into my mouth. The symbiote shifts slightly at the vibration of my voice, adjusting its grip on my insides with surprising gentleness.
"Shane, thank god." Her voice breaks on my na, and she pulls tighter against her bare chest, her heart hamring against mine. "It's been three fucking days."
The symbiote slowly withdraws from my throat, the sensation strange but not unpleasant as it slithers back into Ellie's body. I take a deep, gasping breath, my lungs filling with air that tastes sweeter than anything I can rember.
"What happened?" I ask, my voice raspy from disuse. I glance down at my hands, flexing my fingers. White, human skin. No claws, no crimson color. Just... .
I reach up to touch my head, finding no trace of the horns that had erupted from my skull. My back feels normal too, no wings, no tail. I'm completely human again.
"You've been unconscious," Ellie says, her voice thick with emotion. "The transformation took everything out of you. My symbiote has been keeping you alive, feeding you, helping you heal."
I reach up to touch her face, tracing the curve of her cheekbone with trembling fingers. She leans into my touch, her eyes closing briefly as if savoring the contact. Sothing stirs in my chest, a mory, a vision, a possible future. Ellie, older, with laugh lines around her eyes. Our children playing nearby.
I stuff it down to not cry focus on the now.
"I can't believe I missed Christmas," I whisper, my voice catching on the words.
Ellie's eyes snap open, and she grabs in a bone-crushing hug, pressing against her with desperate strength.
"Shut up, you idiot!" she half-yells, half-sobs into my hair. "You're alive! That's your present!"
I wrap my arms around her, feeling her warmth against my skin, her heart beating against mine. The mory of that possible future lingers, making my own eyes sting with tears.
"No, I wanted to get you sothing though," I insist weakly against her shoulder.
She pulls back just enough to look in the eyes, her hands framing my face with surprising gentleness. "You being alive and well is my present too, moron!" Her voice breaks on the last word, betraying the fear she must have felt these past three days.
I lean forward, pressing my forehead against hers. "I saw sothing while I was out, Ellie," I whisper, not sure how to explain the vision of our future together. "I saw us... happy. With a family."
Her breath catches, her fingers tightening slightly against my cheeks. "Yeah?" she asks, her voice unusually soft.
"Yeah," I confirm, a smile tugging at my lips despite my exhaustion. "It was beautiful."
She kisses , gentle at first, then with increasing urgency, as if reassuring herself that I'm really here, really alive. The symbiote shifts across her skin in response to her emotions, creating patterns of darkness and light that dance across her body like living shadows.
When we finally break apart, I notice for the first ti that we're not alone in the bunker. The small bedroom door is cracked open, and I can hear voices murmuring in the common area.
"Who else is here?" I ask, suddenly self-conscious of my nakedness under the thin sheet.
Ellie sighs, her expression complicated. "Spider-Woman's still around. She's been checking on you every few hours. And Masters has been in and out. She's the one who got us back here after... after everything."
The mory of Norma's death crashes back into my consciousness with brutal clarity. The feeling of her skull giving way beneath my hands. The hot splash of blood. The rage that had consud so completely.
"Did I really...?" I start, unable to finish the question.
Ellie's gaze hardens slightly. "You did what you had to do," she says firmly. "What she deserved."
I swallow hard, the mory of those guards falling under my shotgun blast flashing through my mind. "I killed like four people," I whisper, the weight of it suddenly crushing my chest. "Five, including Norma."
My hands start to tremble, and I clench them into fists to stop the shaking. "Does the news know? About what happened at the mansion?"
Ellie reaches over to the nightstand, grabbing a folded t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. As she helps sit up, the symbiote shifts across her skin, forming a simple black tank top and shorts to cover her nudity.
"Masters blew up the whole mansion," she explains, gently guiding my arms through the sleeves. "Bodies too. Said it was cleaner that way."
The shirt slides over my head, and I feel pathetically grateful for her help. My muscles ache like I've run a marathon, every movent sending dull pain shooting through my limbs.
"How did we get back here?" I ask as she helps with the sweatpants, lifting my hips so she can slide them up my legs.
Ellie's hands are steady, thodical as she dresses . "Masters drove us ho. You were completely out of it. Spider-Woman ca with us."
I rember the webbing around my wings, the sound of her voice cutting through my rage. "Is she okay? I know she tried to stop ."
Ellie's face hardens slightly, her blue eyes cooling as she shrugs. "I don't know, and honestly, I don't care."
The callousness in her tone surprises , but I don't push it. Instead, I think about those guards at the mansion, their faces frozen in shock as my shotgun blasts tore through them. In the mont, it had felt righteous, necessary. Now...
"I didn't feel it in the mont," I admit quietly, "but I think I kind of feel bad for killing those guards. They were just doing their jobs."
Ellie sits beside on the bed, her weight making the mattress dip. Her hand finds mine, fingers intertwining. "You've been through a lot, Shane," she says, her voice softer now. "More than most people experience in a lifeti."
I nod, unable to find words that could possibly encompass everything I'm feeling. Then another thought hits , sending a chill down my spine.
"What about Carnage?"
Ellie's expression darkens. "No one's seen it. It probably escaped in the chaos after you..." She trails off, but I know what she ans. After I crushed Norma's skull like an overripe fruit.
"Fuck," I breathe, leaning back against the headboard. The thought of that psychotic symbiote loose in the world, possibly looking for a new host, makes my stomach turn. "That's not good."
"I don't even know where to start dealing with all this," I say, running my hand through my hair. The weight of everything, the killing, the transformation, Carnage on the loose, feels like it might crush .
Ellie squeezes my hand, her blue eyes locking with mine. "Listen, one step at a ti, okay? You just woke up after three days. Just relax."
A sharp knock at the cracked door interrupts us. Masters pokes her head in, her severe features softening slightly when she sees sitting up.
"Well, look who's finally rejoined the land of the living," she says, leaning against the doorfra.
A/N: Might pause here for a while. Or not. I really don't know.
Reviews
All reviews (0)