Chapter Text
Foul smell. That was his first thought. Bad headache. Hangover? Slick walls on all sides, bumpy plastic under his cheek. Tub, probably. Mouth rancid. Something was wrong. Someone was watching. One eye cracked open, flinched shut. No one was there. Were they? Opened again. His head throbbed. No, no one there. He felt wrong. Bad. Unreal.
The last time Eddie felt real was sneaking into the Life Foundation. The echo of his footsteps in the darkened halls, the catch of his nail-bitten fingers on his phone’s casing, the sharp scent of cheap antiseptic cleaner blown in by expensive HVACs, it was all familiar, all strange, all grounding in a way that nothing since had been.
He supposed he should thank his lucky stars that Carlton Drake cared more for secrecy than security, that he so badly wanted to work outside the realms of accountability that he declined to record the halls of his secret labs after hours. Otherwise, he’d be waking up to the feel of weird science linoleum under his cheek instead of the familiar, if cheap, plastic of his apartment’s tub. Of course, that would imply Eddie Brock had any lucky stars left, after the debacle that his life had become.
He sat up, head pounding little spots of light into his eyeballs. Ah, there’s my lucky stars, he thought, pleased with his own wordplay even as he wanted to vomit. He clutched his knees in his arms, trying to breathe slowly and stop salivating. He couldn’t quite remember the moments between now and the lab. He had been taking pictures, recording maybe? on his phone, using the light to try and tell what was going on in the glass-walled cells he had passed. No, not glass, they didn’t shatter into shards or tempered cubes, they must have been plastic. Did one break? Did something get out? There had been screaming, had he screamed?
trapped so long, so long trapped in the cold room, body feverish and fighting, came out fighting, didn’t know who it was but we knew how to fight, learned how to do that much to stay alive until until until
Eddie turned his head in time to throw up on the floor, instead of into his knees.
Concussion, maybe. He’d had one before, years ago, when it turned out that one slumlord-turned-politician knew how to throw a punch, and didn’t actually have enough sense to keep his image clean when baited with just the right words. Or wrong words. Eddie had ended up in the hospital, but the punch ended up on tape, and was a big hit with his viewers. Eddie liked to think he had swung that election.
A concussion? That means the skull broke, yes? Or is that when the brain is bruised by its case?
Shaking his head didn’t seem to clear much. He couldn’t remember any details, either of what a concussion actually was or of what happened before. He must have gotten out, right? He remembered running, feet pounding heavily on the ground, slamming into a wall, a door, a tree… through a tree? That can’t be right. He must have gone under the tree, that made more sense. And then...up a tree?
Why did he remember being up a tree?
Eddie spat, trying to get the taste of bile out of his mouth, and eyed the sink. Five feet away. He’d have to stand. He didn’t think he could. He felt unreal.
He felt beside himself, but in the same spot. He felt like each of his nerves had been taken out, polished with steel wool, and returned to his body. He felt like each of his muscles had been rolled out with a pin and wring dry of juices before being reconstituted with syrup. He felt like his bones had been emptied of marrow and filled with tepid lead. He could feel the the twitch under his left eye and the itch of the scars on his torso and the rancid burning of his throat as though they were alien, as though he had never felt them before.
No, this isn’t how it should be, this isn’t how we should feel.
The world paused. For how long? He felt a slow clearing of his head, as though some distant alarm had finally been silenced. He loosened the hold on his legs, put his hand to the side of the tub, and stood. More wobble than he wanted, but less than he feared. And, hey, he didn’t feel the need to vomit again! Progress!
Carefully, he stepped out of the tub, doing his best to avoid the glop on the floor. He’d have to clean up, later. The smell didn’t seem to be getting to him yet, which was good. Step by step, he made his way to the sink, turning on the tap and filling his cupped hands. One mouthful to slosh around and spit out, two more to swallow, his throat feeling better than it had right to. He turned off the tap, dried his hands, and only then looked up to see himself in the mirror.
Ah.
Yeah.
He was fine.
There was no monstrous vision of himself with pupil-less eyes crawling over his forehead. No nightmare of black oil oozing from his skin. His heart did not race, his breathing did not quicken, he did not jerk back from the sink and hit his head.
Again.
Right, it was coming back to him. He’d made it to the bathroom, to throw up before, in the toilet. He had been in the apartment before, and he had heard something, someone shouting at him.
Wasn’t shouting. Adrenaline is making your mind play tricks on you.
But then where had the shouting--voice--come from? If someone had been here, had followed him, they wouldn’t have left him here, in the tub. His neighbor, maybe?
He and his loud guitar should die.
God, he hated that guy. Obnoxious, loud, no respect for quiet hours. But still, the voice hadn’t sounded like his, not unless he’d gotten into death metal or something.
Eddie let out a breath. He should clean up, probably. It was kind of amazing that he was able to stand in here, in all the mess, and not lose his lunch again. Not that there was much left in his stomach at this point. Still, no sense tempting fate. He started by flushing the toilet. Mechanically, he bent to get the supplies from under the sink: sponge, bucket, generic brand bathroom cleaner. “Real wild and crazy night I got planned,” he muttered to no one, scooping some of the mess on the floor into the now-clear toilet. “Break into a maniac’s secret lab, get chased by goons, and then clean my bathroom. All I need is a hot date and I’ll be--”
His train of thought skidded to a stop, even as his hands stuttered on the gross tile. Maria. Maria had been there. She had been crazy, trapped in one of those cells! He had to go back, he had to go get her, even though she--
She was dead, wasn’t she?
She had tried to strangle him, and then she had died.
Why was he so calm?
His hands were still scrubbing the floor. His breathing was regular, his heartbeat unhurried. He should be feeling something more than this, this detached lack of emotion. His friend had just died! Why wasn’t he upset?!
You don’t want to be upset. It’s bad for your body. All those stress hormones, you need a break or they’ll kill you first.
And why the hell were his thoughts so goddamn weird?
Eddie was still mechanically cleaning the bathroom floor, thoughts racing. Something happened to him in the lab. He had gone in, taken pictures, found Maria, broke her out...that’s where the broken wall was from! He had done that! He hadn’t been calm then, he had panicked, hit every button on the stupid screen-touch console, and then broken the glass wall when that hadn’t worked. And Maria was…
She’s dead. She served her purpose.
“And what the hell purpose was that?” he muttered. Off-kilter as he was, he didn’t think of people as things, to serve some role only to be discarded. That thought wasn’t like him.
She got us to you.
Oh shit.
That thought wasn’t him .