The world was darkness.
Just… Shadows and shapes, in vague motions, just too dark that he could make out anything of what was happening, but clear enough that he saw everything move.
He saw spikes… Blades… Claws… Teeth… And webs. Webs from one end of existence to another. A world of danger. Of battles. Of Heroes and Villains.
And he, himself, a spider in the midst of it all.
The spider was surrounded by danger at all sides.
Out from the dark depths beneath this world, shot a tentacle, a monstrous thing of power, and might, and up behind it, it pulled a massive mass of other slimy, cupped appendages, a huge bulbous head, and a monstrous and wicked beak.
The Kraken had but one eye, and it hated.
It brought the tentacle down on the spider, who jumped, the world breaking beneath the tentacle-like glass as the spider left it all behind.
The spider landed on… A rooftop. Yes, a rooftop. It was dark and only in silhouette, but there was no mistaking it.
The spider was not alone though.
Opposite it, filled with color and life that made it stand out so, so hard against the black shadows and outlines that was this world, was a woman.
She was tall, dark brown of skin, and with long, black hair.
The woman was naked, revealing a toned physique, and that along her arms were glowing, pulsating circles.
The spider did not care about that though. It saw her throat. The pulsating veins of blood just beneath the skin, so succulent and tasty.
The woman was terrified. As well she should be.
She brought up her hands in an attempt to defend herself, but it did not matter.
The spider took the distance in one, massive leap, slamming into her and knocking her over.
Two long, white limbs slammed down on her arms as she fell to the ground, exposed. Defenseless. Easy prey.
She screamed, but what did the spider care of that?
Two long, wicked fangs bit deep, deep into the neck, probing, feeling for those succulent veins of blood.
All the while the woman screamed, and screamed, thrashing, her legs kicking desperately as the spider held her down with legs and its bulk, its enormous strength on full display.
Then slowly, slowly the kicking stopped. The wails ceased. The motion faded.
The spider though… The spider did not stop sucking. It kept draining, kept ripping out the woman's lifeblood as it gorged itself on the taste of it all.
He could taste it.
It was bile, filthy… disgusting… And yet he just kept sucking and sucking on it as if it was the last thing he would ever drink.
He felt the taste all throughout his mouth.
The taste of the woman's blood.
---
Izuku woke up with a start.
For a moment, he shot up and looked around frantically, expecting so, so many things, the monsters, Stain, the woman's blood-
He froze. Then his hand shot up to his mouth, expecting to find blood there.
He didn't.
There was no one in the room.
It took him a while to figure out what the room was… Then he realized that he was in a… Hospital Room.
Why… Why was he in a hospital room?
He rose, only then realizing he was mostly naked, except for a black pair of shorts.
"V-Ve… Venom?"
His voice, as if he hadn't drank anything in days, cracked as he talked. Weak, and desolate.
-oh… you're awake…-
The symbiote's voice was… Far, far weaker than normal.
Izuku panicked. Way, way more so than he would have expected.
"A-are you… Okay? You sou… Sound Weak."
-yeah… just hungry… we haven't gotten any more nourishment since you lost consciousness… took a lot out of us to fully reconnect and heal your wounds…"
Wounds.
Izuku immediately found himself touching and feeling his arm where… Where…
He froze again. What… What had happened to…
It was so, so hard to think… To process things.
There had been… The images flashed through his head. A figure in red… Huge, hulking monsters… And one that… That…
He froze.
Then he recalled. He remembered the sensation around his arm as the creature had… Had…
Izuku found himself falling out of bed, and onto the floor as he tried to get up, only to faceplant.
Then he gagged, as his body tried to vomit, the feelings of muscles spasming around his arm suddenly seeming more real than anything else.
Anything else.
Everything else that had happened, the battles, the man in red, the other monsters… All of it… All of it seemed a distant, distant thing compared to the feelings he felt around his arm in that moment as… As…
-ah, now that's more like it!-
Izuku could barely feel it as Venom suddenly surged back to life again, his own emotions feeding the symbiote like a prime meal after going hungry for days.
Izuku for his part began to practically hyperventilate.
He… He needed air. He needed to breathe!
He forced himself to his feet, practically uncaring of the world around him as the familiar black suit engulfed him as he stepped up to the window.
It was a good thing it could actually be opened sideways because as he was now, he would have ripped it clean open if it could not have been.
Once the window was opened, he found himself climbing. He wanted out! He needed to get out!
It wasn't some conscious decision that led him to begin climbing up towards the roof.
He just wanted to get away! He needed to get out of that room, away from the… the… the…
What was he doing?
The thought struck him as he neared the top of the building.
A clear, coherent thought in a sea of hysteric madness.
What was he running from?
There was nothing in that room that could harm him.
It was not there where he… he had…
He reached the top, and there, having climbed over the railing, found himself sitting down by the edge.
He didn't realize he was crying before then.
But he was.
Loud, harsh sobs, that he buried in his hands the black retracting from them as his suit changed shape from his regular suit to something less dramatic, like his usual knee-length pants and a t-shirt.
Had Izuku been more conscious of what had been going on, he might have questioned why Venom(Who very much preferred to be a suit) decided to cut back on that, but as it was Izuku didn't notice anything of the world around him, as everything that had happened finally hit him over the head like a bag of bricks.
The deaths, the battles, the… The… Monster… the… The Woman he'd…
It was too much. It was far, far, FAR too much.
He couldn't process it, he couldn't-
A hand found itself around his shoulder.
Izuku flinched and looked over, and to his astonishment he saw Mina, having gone down so she was at the same eye level as him.
"Hey…"
Izuku tried to speak. He really did but…
Mina though didn't wait for him to try and get something out.
Instead, she leaned forward and hugged him.
For a moment, he was absolutely baffled.
No… No… A killer should not… He… He didn't deserve to… To…
Eventually… He found himself embracing her back in a hug as he cried. Literarily on her shoulder.
It was mayhaps not as strong a hug as Mina had given him at her place in what now felt like it had been a year ago, though, in reality, it had only been a few weeks, but somehow, as they hugged each other, the girl by his side seemed far, far more… Real, than anything else around him.
She was there. She was warm. She cared.
The horrible memories did not go away, but… Somehow… It seemed less… Less like it was the end of everything he knew, now.
They stayed like that for a long, long time.
Eventually though, after what felt like an eternity, the two disentangled, and Mina sat down beside him, the two teenagers leaning up against the wall.
They sat there for a while in silence.
Izuku found himself glancing over at Mina.
The girl… Did not look well.
...
If you want to read ahead of the public release, or just want to support me.
You can join my p atreon :
[email protected]/Huvnn