2019-09-01 - Blood and Thunder

Summary:

Eddie Brock makes a late and bloody stop at Betty Brant's apartment

Log Info:

Storyteller: None
Date: Sun Sep 1 01:50:06 2019
Location: RP Room 1

Related Logs

None

Theme Song

None

betty-brantvenom

Betty Brant was always working. Usually, when not out doing something for someone or the like, she was at home working on her writing and chasing down articles for print. She often works in the living room of the studio apartment, papers stacked on the coffee table along with her laptop and a glass of some type of alcohol. She wasn't addicted - she also swigged down coffee like no tomorrow.

The hour was late, the city dark but still bustling about, all the locks were set on her door and her hand-canon was resting on the floor by her limp fingers. She was resting, dozed off and sleeping soundly on the sofa.

The intrusion doesn't come through the door but the window. It's not stealthy, a noticeable crash as if something hit the frame hard, then a tinkle of glass as one of the lesser panes succumbed. There's an audible thump as of a body hitting the floor. Given Betty's past experiences and some of her present ones, she has every right to think something is coming to get her.

What she'll find, if she comes to look, is Eddie Brock laying on his back next to the broken window, sucking in air. He's in a pair of pants and nothing else, his chest bare. His muscled arms are coated from fingertip to shoulder in spatters of blood, soaking into the carpet and probably doing serious damage to her security deposit.

It's a start, terrifying and fingers grabbing the gun. The woman in panties, a shirt, and a few beads woven within her hair, stands, gun ready. Her expression is fierce, she's ready to kill whatever it was that came crashing through her window - that is until she realizes who lays, bleeding on her floor. Shuddering, she sighs, flicking the safety and moving closer. Glass, glass in feet is never fun. "Shit…"

He wasn't the first man to come into her home bleeding all over the place, at least. Looking around, she runs off, her bare feet padding against wood as she ducks away within her bathroom. She returns shortly, taking to her knees and wrapping up his arms with towels. "Eddie? Baby….hey, you hear me? Venom? Can you hear me?"

Eddie looks up and his eyes have rolled back in his head, showing white and vein. He spasms for a moment, shaking and thrashing his head until he finally pushed up to his knees. The blood soaks into the towels, but there are no signs of wounds on the man himself. Maybe they just healed up.

Maybe the blood isn't his.

"Yes. No. Hear you, yes. Eddie. Venom. Both. Neither," he says. His head whips and he slams his head into the wall, probably leaving a dent in it in the process, cracking plaster. More collateral damage.

"Eddie!" Betty calls out, and it's a good thing that she didn't have any neighbors. "Hey!" She calls again, sliding forward and wrapping around him, attempting to pull him back from the wall. Perhaps, bad for Brock, the wall was brick, solid and unforgiving. By now, there are stabs of glass in the woman's feet. "You can hear me, listen to me, I need you to stop. Please. I need you to speak with me, to me. Tell me what's happening…"

He claws for a moment at his own faces, black ink claws forming at the tips of his fingers, raking across his face and leaving rivulets of blood in the wake. He opens his mouth and some of Venom's fangs are inside, jutting awkwardly, delving into meat and bone.

"We are hunted," Eddie whispers. "We did things…but we didn't like…being told what to do. Turns out," he says, and he laughs with both voices, Eddie and Venom mingling, "We don't always get a say."

"Hey, stop…" She whispers softly, moving her hugging arms up to grab at his wrists and pulling them away, or at least attempting to. She pulls and attempts to hold them down, around him, against him, a bear-hug from not a very mighty woman. "What are you talking about? What did you do? Keep talking, I'm here." Swallowing, she gives a pull back, only now feeling the ache against her soles. "Com'on, step away. Com'on…"

His hand moves like a striking snake, coming up and putting his grip around her throat. He rises to his feet, standing and lifting her easily until she dangles at the end of his outstretched arm, breaking the grip of her hug and putting her up against the wall. The fangs are more prominent now, his face streaked with living darkness that crawls in his tear ducts and reseals those wounds like glue.

Eddie recedes a bit as Venom steps forward, his voice a rasping hiss, "Thisssssssss can't be fixed with hugs or comforting words. I ripped those men to shreds, tore their limbs, punctured their guts and it doesn't matter because there will always be more, more, more. Your government has so many little men ready to die for it. I wonder how m any we'll have to kill."

Betty Brant gasps sharply, her body up, pressure on her throat, gravity and grip not aiding her ability to breathe. Her hands reach up, gripping tightly on the inky forearm of the man towering before her, speaking in the voice of something else entirely. There's a hint of fear in her eyes, but then there's a glare and a weak-voiced growl. "Let…me…go…" She whispers out, nails digging in.

"So demanding," Venom says, cocking their head. "Eddie likes that. Says you're strong. Tough. I'm not sure you've ever properly been tested myself," the monster says. The nails dig into the flesh of Eddie's arm, but he doesn't react to the pain, even if she digs in deep enough to draw blood.

The tongue extends and lashes over those fangs as his jaw distends a bit more, "Do you think you can keep up with us? If it starts to get bloody and wet?" he says, finally releasing her and allowing her feet to hit the ground again. "Or will you run and hide, like the vulnerable pink thing that you are, for fear of getting chewed up in the grind. Eddie is sure of you. I want to be," he says.

"There were twelve dead bodies three blocks from here ten minutes ago. We don't think they are there anymore. Someone will have cleaned them up."

Betty Brant lands and rubs at her throat, the scar still there where her fingers press and pass, a shape forming, left pink and turning violet from pressure. A cough, a drag in of air, those often warm eyes darken as she glares out, limping away from the monster looming there toward her kitchen island. "Fuck you. You have no idea what I've been through before Eddie came back. Hunted, killings, so much blood. You think you're the only big bad dark thing to come into my life?"

Searching for…something, she pants out and battles back angry tears already rolling down her cheeks. "I've lost. I've walked down paths of death, I've helped Gods, I'm stopping the end of the world and all its twisted, complicated fibers," she slams the drawer shut and them limps back in his direction, leaving bloody foot prints in her wake. "And I'm not afraid of messing you up!" Her arm lifts, leveling out, what might be a gun is replaced by a simple airhorn. With a press, she sounds off the noise mere inches from his face.

The sonic impact is intense, driving Venom back against the wall. It screams, an unholy and unpleasant sound, an ululating screech of its own. Driven back as it is, Venom's body hits the wall, shoulderblocking in another dent.

Venom drops to one knee, for a moment and then lashes out, a tendril-whip of black trying to wrap around Betty's wrist and force her to drop the horn. "ENOUGH!"

The sounds in the room are hellish. Someone, somewhere, has to be hearing it on the street below. Still, she continues, pressing on the horn to keep the noise ringing out and rippling across the monster's nerves. The grip is painful, another mark for tomorrow as it twists up and pressures at her tendons. Eventually, her fingers flex and it's enough to drop the object - the audio-assault dies.

"For the last time, I told you to let me go!" Betty warns, attempting to yank her hand away.

The tendril withdraws when the horn is dropped and there's a moment where Venom lurches forward, snapping jaws until he twists and falls to the floor. "No," Eddie says. It's Eddie saying it, clear enough, and his body arches and has another spasm as he fights for control of his own body. "Leave…her…alone…" he says.

Another impact as he drives his own head into the floor, writhing and shaking a bit in agony until finally the darkness starts to recede and disappears back into him, leaving only Eddie, coated in sweat, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." he says, clenching his eyes shut in a mixture of shame and revulsion.

As soon as the tendril pulls away, the woman is already on the ground, scrambling for the airhorn. The beast pounces and falls flat, the spasming mess of man gives her pause. She hears his voice and pants. "Eddie?" She asks, she knew when she spoke there was two there, after all. The slam against the floor causes her to twitch. "Stop," she whimpers. "Stop doing that to yourself." Horn dropped, she crawls closer and rests her hand on his brow - if he was to slam it down, he'd crush her hand first.

"What's going on? Eddie, please…"

"The pain helps. He doesn't like it. It focuses me in my body, in my meat. Reminds me it's mine first. You hear me, Venom? MINE FIRST," he says, banging his head on the floor one more time. He finally forces himself to sit up, spitting a little blood out of his mouth, "Ah, Bets. I'm sorry, I…fuck," he says.

"Get me a drink, maybe? I'll see if I can…explain."

"When Venom and I first bonded, the result was…feral," he admits. "Much more it than me but even he was a little crazy by his own standards. Someone in the government offered me a chance at…cart blanche. Killing the people they want and, in exchange, I get a license to eat, all you can devour, as long as I came when I was called. But I got better and things changed and the…whoever's running the thing changed. And they stopped accepting my excuses and not coming when I was told."

"Now they wanna put me in a cage. One they can open and aim at anybody they like."

Betty Brant jolts at that last slam, her hand meeting the floor and guarding his brow from it. She takes it, not a sound made. Shuddering, she nods and steps away from him. Limping still, she hisses and makes up a drink. She'll dig at the glass later.

Snatching up a towel, she sits by his side on the floor, offering him the drink while she looks at the bottoms of her feet, trying to clean away and find the origin of the blood. "Who are they? I won't let them put you in a cage…" She explains matter of factly.

Eddie shrugs, "I don't know," he says, taking the drink and gulping long and hard at it. "I didn't ask a lot of questions. And they weren't offering answers even if I did. It was pretty clear I wasn't going to be filing a tax form for it, you got me?" he says.

"If you wondered why I stayed away as long as I did, it's because I…we…were like this. Like you saw a minute ago. Pretty much all the time. It was…not pretty. Still isn't. Hard not to be that way. Takes effort. And right now Venom's angry and hungry and not in the mood to play nice. Not to anybody."

"Tell me as much as you can about them." She continues, her brain shifting to 'work mode' with a vendetta. Biting at her lower lip, she pulls small slivers and shards of glass from her soles, resting them to the side and pressing the towel flat for pressure. One foot down, another to go. Shuddering, she swallows, turning her face to look in Eddie's direction. Her eyes are red, tear stained, her hand is bruised along with her wrist and throat. A wind rolls through the room with it's permanently open window face.

"Eddie, I love you." She begins. "If that happens again, I might have to kill it, and you…I don't want to do that. If getting you away from whoever they are calms Venom, I'll help you do that, too."

Eddie's face turns down, confronted with the evidence of the damage he's done. Yeah, it was Venom, but it wasn't all Venom. Eddie's always had his own demons and Venom feeds on them, has intertwined with them. He might not be guilty, but he sure as hell ain't innocent.

"Kill it?" he laughs. "Bets, I…you hurt it with the horn, yeah, but…kill it? Even suggesting that…" he shakes his head, "Don't make it your enemy. I know it hurt you, but if it decides it doesn't like you, that it hates you, that…would be very bad. For all of us," he whispers softly.

"I know they're not SHIELD. They're not CIA or FBI or NSA. They're…something else. Some shadow of a shadow, operating on its own…"

"Yeah, well, I noticed you get jumpy around fire now, too." Attentive, as always. "He already knows what I promised when first I met him. I told him I would not allow him to drag you down or hurt you. Me making that promise again shouldn't be surprising." Betty looks down, pulling up her other foot and digging the glass from it as well. "Christ, I feel like John McClane…"

"Ok, these people, are there others like you with them? Is it just you? What do they tell you to do and why?"

"Maybe not," he says. He seems a bit exhausted, "It should bother me more. The killing. I should feel worse about it. Bad. I'm not like Venom, I don't…enjoy it. But maybe I will. Eventually. That's the only thing that really scares me anymore. That it's only a matter of time until I like it."

"There are others. I don't really know much. There's one a redhead woman. Scandal. I met her once," he shrugs. "We were at a strip club. She wasn't really there for conversation."

"Sometimes you have to kill. Horrible as that sounds, I've started realizing it, too." Feet free of shards, she presses them against the towel and whimpers, slumping against the wall and resting her head back. "Others. Scandal. Interesting name…was she one of the dancers or…" A joke, small as it was, she swallows and sighs. "Alright, so we have some organization using people with abilities to do their dirty work? Is that it?"

Venom shakes his head, "No. One of the dancers was superhuman. She had these ribbons made of metal, like…razors. She dances with them. I wasn't there for that, it was just…" he shakes his head.

"Amounts to that. Suffice to say, they ain't pickin' Captain Americas," he says. "But, like I said, I don't really know. They didn't sign us up for their newsletter."

Betty Brant scoffs. "I'm ok if you went to a titty-bar, Eddie." Rubbing her knees, she lazily reaches over and settles her grip on Eddie's arm. "Something like that. Some shadow organization doing…things with people with abilities. And their offer to you was 'eat all you want'? But you have to come when they call like some dog? You don't, so they threaten you with a cage?"

Venom sighs, "I…probably hadn't been keeping up our end of the deal," he admits. "I stretched the leash enough that I almost forgot it existed. But somebody's pulling on the choke chain now," he says. "We'll try to bite the hand that feeds, of course," he says. There's a slow shift in him again, as he and Venom seemed to have reached some sort of internal accord for now. The struggle has eased from his brow, at least.

"Why did you get mixed up with them in the first place, Eddie?" Betty asks, hand still on his arm giving a lazy, almost tired, stroke. "I'm not one that likes the idea of being owned by anyone. I…don't have much to say, I'm doing what I do for reasons, too, but…it's different. Anyway, you, I can't have you coming here acting like that. Whatever is happening to you, to you both, it has to stop."

Venom pushes himself up and takes her hand. Leans down and kisses her knuckles, "I know," he says. "I'm sorry I…dragged you into it," he says. "I'll stay in touch, I promise, but I might…skip stopping by for a bit. Until I get this thing straightened out. Last thing I want to do is lead them to you," he says, leaning forward and kissing her forehead. "I'm sorry," he says again softly.

Betty Brant sighs. Her brow twists up and knits, eyes up, wide and wet. "Again?" Is all she asks after a swell of silence. "I-guess you're at least telling me this time to my face…" She looks at the mess, the blood, her feet still pressing against once-upon-a-time white fibers. Sniffling, she moves to stand and shakes her head. "Use the door." She requests half-heartedly.

Venom shakes his head, "Not like last time. I'm not disappearing. You'll know where I am. We'll talk," he says. "Just…maybe not as much in person. Not unless I'm sure you're safe around me," he says. "You don't know what he was in his head when he had you in his hands, Betty. He hurt you. And he really, really liked it. It was fun for him."

"I know you're not afraid. But I am," he admits. And then he goes out. He doesn't expect her to understand or feel sorry for him. He doesn't deserve that.

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