Gathering Up the Pieces

Gathering Up the Pieces

The first thing he can remember is walking. Consciousness came when he was already walking, and for a moment he didn't know it was he who was taking each step one after the other. He stumbled then only for a moment, continuing to walk without fully realizing the mechanics of walking. He did not know where he was, where he had been, where he was going; he did not even know how to wonder these things yet. He did not know his name, and was not aware of what a name was and why it would be odd that he did not know it. Existence is a strange thing, sentience is a stranger thing. And so for a moment, for the first moment of his life Edward Brock Jr. merely existed, he did not live. He simply went on walking as he assumed that was his nature, and there was not higher thought in it all.

Consciousness is a hard thing to grasp, and this stayed true and Edward continued to walk, without understanding how to question this existence he suddenly woke himself up to. His strides were heavy and methodic, his breathing became loud and for a moment he thought he had thought of something. It is a strange thing to exist and yet not live, to be there and not understand where there is. There were no thoughts let us say that, the mind was empty, but aware of itself. Like he was asleep.

The symbiote was a creature of profound love, perhaps not by human definition, but it was similar. Perhaps devotion is a better word to describe it. It had also grown in its rather short existence a distrust of the masses. Its first love was named Peter Parker. This first love, a man of nobility, of personal honor, and responsibility, a good man by all standards, with few hate in his heart, the symbiote wished only to help this Peter Parker. This creature gave all it had to this Peter, and somehow, it does not know why, it was rejected. But it was, rejected, and left, abandoned, left for death to come and take it as Peter struck it with that awful, awful noise.

It was by coincidence or destiny that Edward Brock Jr., abandoned and left alone in the world was there as well. There was a common vulnerability found between the two in their first encounter. Both somehow weak, somehow dying in their own fashions. Edward was but a boy lost and confused, and the symbiote, well not of this world it was always lost and confused, and now without even its lover by its side. And it met this boy, this young man, tearful and afraid.

This young man was no Peter Parker, but he spoke to the symbiote in manner Peter Parker would not allow.

"Who are you?" That boy asked. "What do you want?"

Sweet boy, so alone in that alien world.

But that boy he was hurt.

The Darkness, the symbiote took him away, he was so hurt. And the Darkness went within Edward and forced that heart to beat and those lungs to take in air when the boy had long since died. But the symbiote, the lover, Darkness who knew not the concept of a soul continued the existence of the body. The boy's face was so burnt, the throat nearly ripped away, his sides exposed the inner workings of the muscle, flesh was gone, and bone was exposed. The boy cried out in gasps as the Darkness forced air into those lungs that could not function any more. But death, it would not allow its host to die. Not like this. And so the boy who had died was kept alive in some manner. For the Darkness stretched forth its hand to cover his throat, and kissed his cheek to hide the exposed bone.

Edward was more of a skeleton than a boy now and he continued to decompose in areas, but somehow still alive. A lung ceased to comply with the Darkness and one was going to have to do for now. The heart was getting weaker and the blood was pouring out of the exposed half of the body. Oh, Edward, you poor boy. The Darkness hid him in the sewers and washed him in cleansed water. The symbiote, who fed off life found itself giving it.

But even the Darkness found that a half the body Edward was left with was not going to survive. Not unless the Darkness made it. But it stared into those blue eyes, even if the body was functioning there was nothing in those eyes, no life, no thought. Failure was however not an option of the symbiote. This was not how it was to end.

The Darkness spent a good long time studying what was left of Edward Brock Jr.'s body, six months in fact. It examined the very cells, the very genomes, it was made of. It saw where the veins went, and how the muscles moved. It saw how bone held up muscles, and how electrical impulses made the body move. It examined the nervous system, the circulatory system. It witnessed how air went from the lungs into the blood, and how carbon dioxide was discarded. And slowly did it fit itself into that body to accommodate those missing parts. No longer would the Darkness merely be within Edward, he would become a part of Edward. There would be no more separation without the death of Edward, for now Edward was more symbiote than a man. For the Darkness spread over and became those veins, those muscles, those strands of DNA, that Edward now lacked. Truly now they had reached symbiosis. For now the Darkness gave life to Edward who gave life to the Darkness.