Clara walked in front of a mirror and for the first time thought she caught a glimpse of an alternate reality into it.

There she was. Skin clean, hair luscious, eyes far less tired than yesterday and her supple figure pampered into a full suit, not the combat type, but rather the formal one, ironed to a line that very morning and smelling of her lavender washing machine capsules. The white shirt buttoned up to the very top under her suit's jacket was spotless, while that jacket matched the pants in perfect gray.

"How do we look?" Wide eyed, she asked Venom for confirmation on what she was rather scared to voice herself. Clara looked perfectly ordinary, like she'd get the suitcase with the money and actually walk out that door to head for a stable job, in an office which respects her and her input, at least on paper. She looked her age and most importantly, she looked like she had her life together, like those tame heels in her feet will be proposing an empowering sound as they walk down any road.

"One final touch," Venom hummed and with care to not disturb the neatness of her outfit, he slithered an arm out the back of her neck, sending it across the bedroom which, behind her, was formed out of a mess, especially on the bed where piled laid four more outfits, proof that at some point in the morning, Clara even considered wearing a skirt to this meeting with her sister's faculty in charge of her expulsion from the course. As soon as she made the appointment and saw the skirt, she changed her mind and went for pants.

Venom did not mind the mess at all. He went to the drawers on the other side of the bed and returned to Clara holding up in front of her face a little bag of make-up.

"I can do the lipstick while you do the rest and we'll be done faster."

Venom may not have always gotten the finesse subtext -like how when someone asks you how they look and your immediate answer is bringing them make-up may come off as concerning to them-, but his heart was always in the right place, something remarkable for a sentient being with no such thing. So Clara just smiled and agreed to the plan.

It was a true wonder what a bit of red lipstick and eyeliner could do to a face.

"We look like we could walk into a bank and no one would assume we are there to rob it," Venom pointed out gleefully only as they stepped out of the apartment building. Clara still remembered vividly the last encounter she's had with Marc, hence why she threw a fugitive glance to the side, where he had waited for her the other day to return that phone which was now in her pocket, untouched and undisturbed since yesterday.

She'd be lying if she said she wasn't wondering at all whether or not Marc actually took the hint to leave the city or not. But since no one will be asking her about this any time soon, she could afford completely ignoring her curiosities and hurrying to rejoin society with the most banal thing a human could do: use the public transport.

Of course, that motorcycle of hers could have gotten her to the meeting far faster, but she was not running out of time, nor was she willing to let the wind mess her hair up on that day just because the helmet had been tossed and lost somewhere in DC. So the public transport had to do and for the most part, taking away the abundance of peculiar scents and irritatingly loud people, Venom provided just enough entertainment to make it all enjoyable.

It was quite amusing to have a voice in your head when those voices were groaning about how the old lady who was quietly sitting in front of you would have the most delicious brain, but the teenager rudely listening to music without headphones definitely had good lungs, but a bitter liver.

These harmless shenanigans have managed to confer her the charming smile with which she greeted the front desk of the building whose address she was given over the phone. They gave her a visitor badge and coldness in return. "Take a seat in the next room, first on the right down that hallway, and please wait to be called in the office, Miss Carita," a lifeless worker directed her.

Clara didn't mind the wait, even though she was impatient to just be able to call Priscila with some good news already after what felt like a moment in which she had failed her as a big sister. Walking into this waiting room also reassured her that there would be not too much waiting for her to do. Just a couple more people, all just as formally dressed as her, were seated all across the room whose tall windows were draping light between the white blinds, falling perpendicular to the floor.

She decided to sit under those windows, on the empty black couch's left side. It was a comfortable seat in which she could keep her suitcase between her feet and still keep her back straight.

However, one hour into the waiting, her pristine smile was bound to disappear and leave behind a sour look which could have turned poisonous the entire water supply of earth if it was provoked to drip its venom into physical outburst.

One entire hour in which all people who've been waiting before have been replaced by new ones, still getting called in the office ahead of Clara. That was enough to drive just about anyone on the edge of desperation and molten rage.

"If we eat everyone here, there will be no one else to call in but us," Venom tried to bring a solution on the table as he felt her anger levels rise concerningly, to the point that her posture was scrunched and after unbuttoning -almost tearing- one button of her shirt, her knees were rest places for her elbows.

"Shut up," Clara cursed under her breath, earning only a couple odd looks from people who heard her in the deathly silence. She couldn't care any less about who thought she was crazy just then, because her full attention was on the exit.

Pretty much flinching, she straightened up one more time when the front desk woman returned, helping in a rather old man whose only distinctive feature she had time to notice while getting up was that he had a truly intricate walking cane.

"Excuse me," Clara's voice was peppered with borderline danger. Her gaze was pointed on the front desk woman, far shorter with her now that they were both standing, though a room apart. Of course, Clara thought she noticed, from the corner of her eyes that it seemed the whole room was watching either her conversation or the new man's walk to a seat.

"I've been here for an hour already. When exactly will I be called in to solve this? I'll have you know it's urgent-"

"All matters are urgent," she interrupted Clara. "Please take your seat, you'll be called in soon, Miss Carita."

Between the locked jaw and the tightness of her hands forming fists, Clara's whole mind turned into a buzz as she was humbled back to her seat on the couch. If the brain was a TV, then her screen was catching only the black and white disruption signal. Venom didn't even dare interfere with "helpful" comments at this point, because he could tell when his host's mood was elevated into a dimension of "I will not hesitate to cause some carnage".

"You're here for your child, ma'am?"

The man with the cane has taken a seat apparently on the middle of the couch, making him sit right next to Clara, whose aura may have just turned pitch black while she remained leant forward, away from the cushions. She threw but a side glance at this man.

"No."

"Didn't think so," he laughed, low and lighthearted instead, the sort of laugh which would have been tucked in the skillset of a man who had had children and grandchildren to make life beautiful for. "You look too young to have children. Then you're here for your own studies?"

His tone was trying to make him trusted and it was a comfort successfully luring Clara into sighing out at least half the tension she's been building up to keepin her shoulders. They dropped as she spoke in a long blink batting her eyelashes, "No, for my sister's."

"Would you say you are a good sister?"

That question came out of the blue and Venom was starting to feel uneasy, while Clara, caught in the swarm of emotions, was left vulnerable to them all when the pebble of inquiry crashed into her wall.

Without looking at this man, she inhaled sharply, "I sure hope I am. I am trying my best here, after all."

"Do you want to know for certain?" Boldly, his hand -scrawny skin and bone- tried to touch her thigh.

Clara's left hand clasped over the man's wrist, remembering in an instant all her anger. She pulled him closer until the tattoo on his inner forearm got shone upon by the light coming through the white blinds. She gazed down at the odd scales.

"I love violence, but everyone is looking at us right now. Perhaps not the best time to show mere humans we are superior."

Though she definitely heard Venom's reasoning, which was perfectly rational at that point, Clara did not let go of this man. Being touched was exactly the last straw she could take. Now, her gaze climbed up his arm and up to his face which surprisingly, still showed a relaxed smile.

"Nice tattoo," Clara's very eyes were a threat at that moment.

"Miss Carita?" the front desk lady returned and not until the continuation of that call in the room arrived did Clara really react. "They will see you now."

"Good luck, Miss Carita," the man sheepishly told her, not even caring to look down at his bruised wrist after she had let him go to get up, along with her suitcase.

That same suitcase got rained over by shards thirty minutes after the meeting with the faculty while a rage shout vibrated the wall of the room this man was standing outside of, smoking a cigarette slowly, defiantly gazing up at the turned off security camera. The door beside him opened in the rhythm of his last exhaled puff of white smoke and Clara stepped out of the room in which her and Venom had just destroyed everything. She had lost her suit's jacket before entering. That jacket was now flung over the man's arm while her disheveled look was completed by three buttons of her shirt being now undone as well.

"Hope that helped," he sighed, returning the jacket to her. "You could have called first though, you know." As he glanced inside the room before pushing the door closed, a ray of light from the beginning of the afternoon shone over his nametag: Mr. Beasley. He nodded rather happily at the destruction left behind by Clara and Venom, meaning there was one less room for his renovating team to destroy.

"Thanks, Shay," Clara mumbled, but though she had her jacket again in her hands, she looked at it with no wish to put it on. "Didn't know where else to let it out in the middle of the day."

"My men deserved an early day off anyhow," Shay Beasley shrugged it off. "You two okay though?"

This man was one of the few whose failed relationship with Clara didn't end in blood or in skipping a country. It was true that he ended up in her bed and they were both drunk enough that Clara decided it was the perfect time to introduce Venom, which caused quite a concerning amount of panic and vomit -total relationship annihilation- but they kept in touch and since she got caught up in things in San Francisco, it proved useful to keep a friend like him, who could provide, from time to time, a room in which Venom and her could express anger without actual consequences.

In fact, Shay Beasley succeeded in life quite nicely since they broke up, fairly and with mutual agreement, about five years ago. He was now married and had a child as well. With the years, he even got used to Venom.

"No," Clara answered honestly. "That stupid college kicked Priscila out and refused to get her back on it now because I am 'a underqualified guardian with an unreliable source of income' apparently." Her voice was on the verge of cracking and to that sound, Shay could only sigh.

"There's more medical colleges where Priscila can learn," he came with a shred of reasoning, voiced quietly. "And didn't you say you have a friend who's a pretty good doctor?"

"He's not practicing anymore," Clara simply shook her head. She screamed, destroyed, let all the rage out but not even a single crumb of it was matched with a tear. Her cheeks were dry and her eyes too, even if that meant numbness. "What sucks though is that none of this would have happened if I didn't take a three-day break," her tone changed drastically, becoming louder, more certain and confident, and less inclined to mirror how she was really feeling as her back straightened and she put back on that damned jacket.

"Sounds like you are blaming yourself-"

"Because it is my fault," she cut him off. "Venom told me we should have fucked Marc over and just go find another place to get the money from, but I wanted to play the humble one for once and look where that got me!"

"Marc?" Shay's eyebrows raised at the moment at which his finished cigarette dropped. He crushed it under the tip of his boots. "Who's Marc?"

"A bitch," Venom's head detached from Clara's right shoulder and hissed his own answer.

Yes, they've sure come a long way, because Shay no longer even flinched at Venom's appearance.

"It doesn't matter who he is," Clara dismissed that extra bit of frustration they were keeping attached to that name. "All it matters is that I screwed up big time and I am feeling like shit for it."

"But you said you took a break," Shay hummed, trying to recall her exact words. "There must be a bright side to this, surely. Did you at least enjoy the break?"

It did. Clara was more than aware that this three day break felt absolutely amazing, with or without Steven's rather charming presence. She got to sleep on a normal schedule, ate regularly, with less blood on her hands too... It had been a good break for her mind and that was exactly why at Shay's question, Venom's head turned towards her and tilted to the side to watch and listen for a reaction.

His host dodged the subject entirely though. "Didn't know parenting would change you into such a positive person this fast."

Shay turned bashful in a matter of seconds as his family was mentioned, "Spend one hour in Riley's presence and you'll find yourself more positive too. The little one's doing wonders for Rick and I."

"We're happy for you," Clara and Venom spoke at the same time, voices harmonizing. She took over the next sentence however, Venom's head disappearing back under her skin, "Anyway, thank you for today."

"You didn't come with your motorcycle. I could give you a ride back to your place?"

"Appreciated, but I'd rather clear my head on a walk." Clara felt so naive for having genuinely been confident that if she only had a talk with the faculty, she could change their mind about Priscila's place in their college. She needed this walk alone -well, alone with Venom- in order to make sure that once she gets to her sister's flat, she won't immediately start crying.

"We are not pathetic enough to cry for this," Venom reminded her like some sort of subliminal.

Knowing Priscila would be at work sometimes and definitely wanting to avoid an encounter like hers with Marc's the other day, after a few blocks, Clara stopped and finally got her phone out, just to discover that i had been on airplane mode all along. The second she turned that off, with the systems switching on again, she started receiving notifications about missed calls and messages. The calls got her attention first because there were twelve of them and all from the same person.

It called for a "quick" detour which winded Clara up inside a spacious elevator after a couple of minutes walking in the complete opposite of her initial direction. The elevator doors opened to a spacious laboratory with glass walls separating mostly empty bits. Far into it, at the very back of the hardly lit chamber, the man responsible for her missed calls was waiting for her with a dead serious look on his face. His boney finger switched off the security camera he pinned on the screen since she entered the premises.

Yes, there was the reason why she hadn't moved from San Francisco yet. No, not the man himself, but the meaning behind all of this: a purpose.

As someone who had taken quite a few bad choices since she was sixteen, finding a purpose outside of her duty to Priscila had been a formative event in Clara's life. So she stayed for that purpose, even if it meant that she had to glare from time to time, like just then, at the likes of Michael Morbius.

His pitch black hair framed his pale, grayish face with a stark bone structure and an equally cruel and cold gaze he kept on Clara as she stepped out of the elevator and her heels started sounding throughout this echoed room.

"You called?" she threw in the line which she knew would have been the gasoline to a waiting fire.

Dr. Morbius had always had, since the day Clara met him, the advantage of speed over her. In her perception of reality, it had been only the blink of an eye between her comment and the gust of wind which blew her hair back and placed the vampiric face of this man right in front of her. However, they've known each other for just about enough for her not to flinch away, even at the sight of his fangs.

It was all a buff.

And he knew she was aware of it.

No matter how angry, Michael had long signed himself up for a diet including only the blood of the guilty, with the strict exception of not drinking any symbiote-infected blood either.

So his monstrous expression faded back to the human one and he sighed, dropping the tension from his shoulders, "Just in time. I was almost worried someone had set you on fire in DC."

Clara gave his side ribs a little poke and finally walked around him to get to the desk which they were both far too accustomed with. At least five monitors, connected to a computer whose origin and capacity was not for them to question. They were monitoring the city from time to time, especially when they needed to hunt.

On the desk stood out the single piece which was dirty, a HYDRA pin covered in blood. "Is this what you called me for?" Clara nodded towards the thing without touching it, then looked back towards... she didn't really want to call Michael her partner. They weren't exactly a true team, certainly not Avengers or X-Men material. They were selectively working together, once in a while, as a break from their lonesome roads.

A part-time team.

Michael nodded, joining beside her and taking the pin in his hand.

"Didn't we kill all HYDRA members from the city already?"

"We did," he confirmed, remembering with a crooked satisfaction how absolutely terrified everyone was to find HYDRA members slaughtered in the office of their secret branch in San Francisco, a branch few had success in tracking and surviving as they were experts in the funding and finance of the bigger operation, meaning that they were the slithering type of trained people. "But we got a prisoner moved to our prison here last week, a day before you left. A scientist, brought in by Captain America in New York, but apparently moved here for no reason at all."

"Is he dead yet?"

"Yes, but not by my hands," Morbius continued. His personal vendetta with HYDRA could count as being backed up in spite for all Clara cared. "He was found dead, pretty much ripped to shreds in his cell. After the odd death, some known HYDRA lines have gone radio silent. Immediately after that, movement happened in the docks area. They're bringing a shipment in today and it will be transported either to their last base or a new one, out of town."

Any sane person would call that internationally available dial, to alert the Avengers, call S.H.I.E.L.D. perhaps. But if anything, living in the real world with a bit of power under your fingertips made it very obvious that calling for help will do nothing. These heroes saved the world from aliens, but were shit at handling the night life, the dangerous streets, where it wasn't a matter of mass survival, but of a game riddled in fear. They were too weak to kill the bad guys where they stood and that's why NYC was so bad of a destination.

Clara and Michael on the other hand, they lived off of these hunts. Literally. So why not get something good out of it like making sure the world will have little less nazis in the morning?

"So they need a reminder that this city is off bounds?"

"Pretty much...," Michael's voice trailed off because Clara too got distracted by her vibrating phone. She straightened up and her acquaintance immediately noticed her expression hardened at the sight of the caller's ID. Steven.

Of course, she didn't know that there was one thing Marc did in her phone, apart from sending himself texts to cover up everything in hopes Steven's sanity remained borderline alright: he also made sure to enter a second number in her contacts, for himself, to clarify a distinction between them, especially since they had different phones.

She didn't know.

So Clara answered the phone, face almost tinting red in anger and greeted with a rageful shout, "Lose my fucking number!"

"W-what?" a trembling voice replied to her and in under a second, Michael watched curiously how her expression went through at least five different emotions.

Clara found the stuttering contagious all of a sudden. "Steven? Oh my God, I... I didn't see your name on the screen before answering. Shit, I'm sorry." Why was she apologizing? Though more than aware that cutting ties with Marc also meant cutting ties with Steven, why did she find it so agonizing to break the latter's heart? "It's just... I've had a spam caller today and I thought it was them for a second." A little pitiful fib.

It took a while for the reply to come and all throughout the wait, Clara held her breath. "It's okay. No worries... Am I getting you at a bad time?"

Michael was next to her, half waiting for her to hang up so they could deal with the docks issue, half happy to see Clara express a different emotion apart from "coldness".

"Not at all."

"Good... So, I don't really remember if I told you that I got to San Francisco, with a later airplane-"

"You told me, yeah." She was perhaps as confused as one could get. One of the very first things Marc had warned her about before giving her the chance to pick the task he proposed was that Steven was very unaware of the fact that the body he had was not just his own. It felt like walking around mined ground now that she was no longer just bound by duty to him.

"Oh, that's great!" Steven exclaimed, genuinely happy. "It's a pretty town. I'm sort of glad you made me get out of DC, even if it was unexpected and definitely a bit stressful. Do you think we can go out tonight? The hotel is close to the port and I can literally see a nice looking restaurant there, from my window. I am sure it has nice salads. What do you think?"

Ending things with him on the phone seemed too cruel. He may have been but an alter of Marc's, but Steven has done nothing wrong to her. Wouldn't it be much better if she put an end to this tie in person?

"How about tonight? At...," Clara trailed off, glancing at Michael who just shook his head in definite disapproval, "... nine or nine and a half. You can text me the location of the restaurant and I'll meet you there. But I have to go right now, I'm at... work."

"Oh, yes, that's cool. See ya tonight then."

The phone call was cut short most likely on Clara's end, because she needed to turn around to Morbius fully.

"We are so not getting this done before nine," he sighed.

"What's with the negativity? Of course we will, I have a date at nine," she rolled her eyes, attempting a joking mannerism over it all. "And it's just HYDRA either way, nothing we've never done before. Did you call Paul on this?" She moved to get going, back towards the elevator, but since Michael didn't move an inch, a bit too stunned to talk back to her, Clara stopped one more time, her own exhale turning rather exasperated.

"What's with the slowness, Morbius? Are you a vampire or a zombie?"

He puffed about that comment immediately, but at least it got him moving along, "You're the one who eats brains, not me."

author's note:    hehe, new ending gif made by mee ^^

for the rest of this author's note, mild spoilers for moon knight episode 2 because i want to clarify certain differences this book will hold:

so, basically, since this book is part of a series in which i am technically building my own universe within marvel, i am taking creative freedom. before anyone asks, imma clarify that marc is based off of the comics mostly in this book, since i have researched the character prior to the show as i formed my ideas then, hence, no matter what the show's backstory for him will be, imma use the comic book origin story as the base of this.

that being told, for short (imma have the chance to explain this further through action later on), marc spector is an ex-marine, deported for his mental health issues and taking the hobby of boxing upon his return. out of that, he ended up a paid mercenary who regretfully died in the desert, on the alter of Khonshu. The God of the Moon being a God of many faces,  when Marc became his Avatar, his mental state worsened and his alters defined properly, so he suffers from DID.

there will be plenty differences between this book and the show and i think that's going to be cool because more marc spector content but hey, i hope y'all okay with it too. 💖💕✌

THANK YOU soo much for the support this book has been getting so far, it's honestly bringing me to tears of joy to read your comments and well, this chapter is long like that as a thank you basically (that, and this act simply is that packed and badass)