A medieval-old silver coin got tossed into the air by Paul.

It had seen empires fall and rise, met hands of merchants, kings, thieves and tyrants alike, passing from commoners to magicians of the old. Now it twists its shine, rising towards the roof and preparing to fall into a waiting hand, leaving yet another master, who just lost a bet.

But the way it turns... It changes itself as the time passes and as it moves forward... Isn't that a gamble of its own? Many wage their lives on the physics behind the toss of a coin.

Grizzly caught it and dropped it in the pocket of his vest with a smile sneaking under his mustache. It was the smile of a fulfilled winner.

"I saw that," Clara pointed out with a borderline angry voice. She didn't like having to be back there, but it was the partially reasonable thing to do after deciding she needed O.M.N.I.U.M. gone. In the absence of knowing where to find them without being a sitting target first, returning to the bunker and her absolutely dreadful team was a wise decision in the long game.

They had obviously let her in too, because the door leading downstairs opened, most likely triggered by Grizzly, who, at a desk, was sitting behind his favorite accessory, his laptop. It also meant that the men had waited until she got down there to make it clear they waged a bet about her while she was gone.

No shock crept in Clara's chest to know Paul had assumed she wouldn't return. In fact, she made sure he knew her hatred remained, by glaring at him.

"Looking like you're Carrie taking a break from filming a remake Hollywood will love but the world will hate, ay?" Paul grinned.

Grizzly also fixed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, then squinted ever so lightly at the sight of the woman, to finally realize it wasn't a new passion for red that she was having, but she was actually drenched in dry blood.

"And is that Steven or one of the others?" Paul spared some attention towards the man walking pointedly close to Clara. Both of them looked like they've been through Hell, on steroids, without sleep and bathroom breaks.

Marc glared sharply at the demon. He was rather certain that, were they to cross paths at any point in the future during the night, when Clara wouldn't be there... he'd most definitely rain justice in Khonshu's name on that bastard. And if he didn't die? Well, Marc knew things worse than death.

"The one you also betrayed in Casablanca," he answered through a snarl.

"You know what they say," Paul inhaled sharply, "what happens in Casablanca, stays in Casablanca. Welcome to the family, laddie." As quick as he was to form his witty reply, Paul also winked.

All over his old features, even in his receding hairline, relief was riddled though. No matter his antics, the demon was a pitifully open book for anyone to read and therefore, it was easy to understand his thankfulness that both of them were back there.

"Honestly though, Clara," Grizzly munched the words from under his mustache, furrowed brows articulating his confused curiosity. "Did you take a shower in blood or something?"

"Just ripped someone in half," she sighed.

"Wicked," Paul murmured, in approval.

"It has been a pretty long night." To that statement, she had to side-glance Marc, a quick reassurance that he was still there and she didn't just go completely mad, unable to process his demise -Venom may have watched one too many movies to give her that untrustworthy thought to worry about too-. Alas, her quick glance ended and she looked back at Grizzly, "Which sort of settles it for me that I'm never coming back to Morocco after this shit."

"Didn't you mean Venom ripped someone in half?"Grizzly's attention to details got the best of him. His squinting quickly turned to an undeniable widening of his eyes as soon as her answer got delayed, but their eye contact prolonged. Then she smiled and he absolutely lost it. "Clara...?"

There was not a shred of guilt on Clara's features, Marc had noticed. That did not stop her from still trying to pretend, for the sake of seeing Grizzly on the verge of bursting a vein on his forehead.

"Seems like the perfect time to tell you some cameras might have caught me while I was fighting O.M.N.I.U.M. soldiers in a half transformed state," she put on the most innocently wicked smile Marc had ever seen.

"You-," Grizzly stopped in a gaso before burying the following mutters of his reactions in his laptop. His head bowed and the keyboard got the most of his wrath by accepting the hard presses of rough thumbs.

Clara shrugged. While she was still part of the team, she might as well get the best out of her perks of working with someone like Grizzly, who knows his way around making anything go away: from data to people.

"Look at us," Paul leant against the margin of a table, "the team's back together."

"Michael's missing, you insensitive douchebag," her spite kept Clara posted.

"I know what I said," Paul was unbothered by her attempt to wound him with words. In centuries of life in a human form, the demon has heard pretty much every type of swear thrown his way. There was nothing out there to truly phase him anymore. Either way, his nonchalant phrase was now paired with a quick gesture, a nod to the side, to the infirmary of the bunker.

Clara caught the signal, "Michael's here and he didn't get his medical nose out to say hi?" The infirmary was a typical place to find that living vampire at, so she failed for once to assume the worst.

Grizzly, however, immediately panicked to see Clara make a determined beeline to the infirmary, opening its door. It happened long before he could even flinch an exclamation sound. All he could do now was grimace and stare at her freezing in the doorway. That door escaped her grip and opened further, until it hit the wall with a margin of it.

Marc tempered himself to approach quietly too. One glimpse inside was enough to just flash his whole attention on Clara again.

Michael Morbius was tied to a medical bed, completely unconscious and linked to a fastly depleting blood transfusion. His vitals, tracked on the side, were concerningly deprived. But taking out the shock factor of seeing an acquaintance in this posture, it was the fact that Clara and Marc both knew Michael was supposed to look after Priscila which scared both of them.

"I was meaning to tell you," Grizzly hoped to reassure her, "but you lot have a bad habit of not answering your phones." There was not a single soul in that room who did not know what Michael ending up this wreck truly meant.

"He sent me a text...," though dangerous, Clara tried to put out a theory that perhaps he got beaten up someplace else, not in Cairo. But she knew better than these, so the very thought faded before properly being formed. And then...

She huffed a short laugh.

The bones of a human, an avatar and a demon all chilled at the sound.

It was the same sensation as waiting for a missile to go off after it had hit its target. You are expecting it. You dread it, but know the explosion's arrival is inevitable. Only it never goes off, and you get to stare at it in fear that it might, when you are less prepared.

But what was Clara supposed to do? Crying was not her thing and she's already cried one too many times these past few hours. There was only so much her heart could take before all ache was filtered through a lens of irony for her mind to handle.

Just then, the irony rolled off her lips effortlessly, taking a good look at Dr. Morbius. "Of course something like this needs to happen the second I get a crumb of happiness."

"Clara...," Marc reached his hand out discreetly to take hers. He didn't mind the stain of her skin, still carrying that scarlet shade and now an overall filthy stench of death.

Hearing him call her name was the first trigger, right before she felt the treacherous electrifying presence of his touch. He made her feel safe and that safety of a walking, breathing home created the vicious illusion that it was alright for her to be weak. Not now. Not again.

Clara flinched her hand away from Marc's. "This is all O.M.N.I.U.M.'s fault," she declared.

Three men stared in utter disbelief. It was unlike Clara to take bad news so lightly, and on top of that, also blame them on someone else, other than herself. It was a double edged blade she was playing with, after Steven's advice, and only Venom seemed pleased to finally feel that his host was not beating herself up for things out of her control. Everyone else saw only that she was coating the bad emotions, irresponsibly.

Venom directed her sight towards a chair beside Morbius' bed, or more exactly on the coat hanging on its back. "It's Grizzly's. He doesn't go long without a full suit so he must have been in a hurry to be in another room when you get down here." From her symbiote's insight, Clara gritted her teeth and finally turned around.

"Why didn't you want me to see Michael's state?" she asked frankly and directly. Grizzly was visibly taken off guard as he had thought his assumption that she wouldn't be able to tell was a safe bet, but he did not linger in his own ego for too long. Instead he cleared his throat with a cough.

"He needed us on board with a plan," Venom guessed.

"Thought I wouldn't be apt for a mission if I knew my sister was in danger?" Clara continued the judgment. There was no need for an answer, she knew, by a simple glance at the man, that she was correct. So, instead, she sighed with a slight shake of her head, "It's precisely because Priscila is in danger which makes me perfectly capable of doing this. Watch the camera footage I asked you to delete, G, and you'll see what happens when people hurt the ones I love."

Her seriousness was bitter at its core, but the surface message was the sweet comfort to Marc, who may have the control back after a tough time, yet he still recalled too clearly that he has a debt to pay towards this godly woman he'd kneel for any day given the chance. A debt to pay in blood.

"So?" Clara questioned Grizzly once the silence continued for a hint too long than what would have generally been comfortable to her. "What's the plan?"

Being taken off guard no longer described properly the amount of shock puzzling Grizzly, in shadows under his glasses or between the abrasive hues of his eyes, as rough as his sand covered patches of skin under his layers of clothing. But then again... bringing his team on the same task was rare, he had to bite back on any thoughts of asking intrusive questions for now. So even though he was itching to know why Clara would ever act rationally and decide to ask about a plan rather than rush to Cairo, mindlessly so too, Grizzly's lips formed a thin line of acceptance.

"Right," from his dry mouth started the defeated answer. "I followed Michael's phone, backtracked everything to the D.H. Institute of Innovative Medicine in Cairo. After he sent you that text, Clara, he remained there for four more hours, before starting a walk in a straight line. He's been walking towards Casablanca for days, starving and completely mentally fucked, when I found him."

Marc glanced back at Michael Morbius, tied to life support. He looked like a mummified man, pulled out of the bandages. In Marc's eyes, he looked anything but alive at that moment, even though his chest raised and fell at rhythmic beats. Here he thought Arthur Harrow was a proper terrifying fellow, just so the world could prove to him that there will always be greater evils. It perhaps scared him just to think that Khonshu was right in trying to eliminate O.M.N.I.U.M..

"The institute itself is going to be our target," Grizzly continued. Reflecting on his glasses were the maps displayed on his screen, as well as security footage from around the institute. "Though we have minimal coverage in that area of Cairo regarding hackable systems, while you were away, I was able to appreciate no one left the building since Michael departed. No one got in either."

"Then there's the security of-"

"Wait, hold on," Clara interrupted Paul, directly pointing at him. "What the hell is Paulinus still doing here?"

"Oi!" the detective barked back. "Don't use my full name."

"I'll call you whatever the fuck I want to call you after the shit you pulled, bitch."

Grizzly watched rather bored their quarrel unfold. "I was actually getting to the part in which I explain why it would be beneficial if you two weren't at each other's throats for a while at least. Shall I go on?"

Though partially still glaring at Paul, Clara nodded to Grizzly's calm.

"As Paul was saying," he sighed, "the security of the institute proved to be an issue. I cannot remotely access their servers. All their data is encrypted and don't even get me started on the security cameras inside. The place is a proper fortress and there's no way we would be able to break in for a rescue mission without at least knowing how much gun power they have inside those walls."

Had this mission arose a month ago, Clara would have boasted right away that no amount of gun power would have been enough to take down Venom and her. She knew better now than to underestimate the enemy. Even when she was winning, she essentially lost against them.

The analysis into the possible O.M.N.I.U.M. headquarters made one thing clear to Marc: Michael was allowed to enter and he was allowed to exit too. That information didn't sit right with him and now, more than ever, his heart clenched, on the verge of a bad feeling.

"That's where the first step of our mission comes in," Grizzly sighed. "While I am not able to break their systems apart from here right now, I could do it if I had access to a certain satellite, even if just for ten minutes, which is as much as I would get before Stark realizes we stole it from him."

Both Marc and Clara took almost the same posture, with their arms crossed over their chest when the question left their mouths, "Stark?"

Grizzly nodded, as if it wasn't truly a big deal. "To gain access to it though, you'll have to plug me in his network and make sure to remove the hard drive after ten minutes too."

"So the mission is what...?"

"Trip to New York City, darling," Paul smiled at Clara, one of his wicked smiles. "Via 'hellfire fast travel'. More exactly into the Stark Industries Storage, a little outside the city itself."

"A place where I do have the ground map for and mild knowledge of the security bugs. I will guide you through every step."

"I'm going with Clara," Marc announced. He had guessed from the focus Grizzly had on only talking with her that they were planning a one-person mission. Not on his watch though.

"Can you summon the suit?" Grizzly immediately moved his attention to Marc. "The last thing any of you would like is to have Stark know the identity behind the vigilante sides."

Expensive with his words, Marc only gave a nod.

"Ten minutes," Clara breathed out. "Let's say it takes us five minutes to actually get the hard drive where it needs to be, then we need to wait there for ten minutes and..."

"Once the ten minutes run out, Paul will teleport you two back here and all three of you will leave for Cairo next, no delays."

Clara didn't like the sound of having to deal with Paul both in Cairo and during this fifteen minute stop in NYC. To trust him to get them out of there? She wasn't stupid enough to do that again.

"If he accidentally finds a way to die in Cairo," Venom whispered, "that wouldn't be our fault, hmm?" Now that was somehow a more pleasant sound, making Clara smile and surprise everyone, once more.

"Alright, that means we can spare fifteen more minutes so me and Marc can clean up a little." She didn't wait for anyone to comment on her sudden decision. Step have carried her away from this common room wordlessly and their passage into the dimly lit hallway was the transition from her masking: careless turned into a heavy burden of worry, a facial expression which felt the terror of constantly running by the question 'what if?'. What if she wasn't going to save Priscila? What if it was too late? What if...?

The tightness and pressure of the stains have bothered her for a long time now and being unable to stand them had her truly require this shower, the rough scrub and the violence to self under a suffocating warmth raising steam. At some point, she just sat down and let the boiling water rain over her while she hugged herself.

Her hands had grown weak and began shaking mid shower, so Venom took over, maneuvering the shampoo and beginning to wash her hair, the best he could, massaging from time to time some spots he had learnt the human body would often decrease tension at the touch of.

"We'll save Priscila," Venom gave her a constantly echoed mantra, cemented it into her mind. "Don't focus on the Marc dying part of the day, Clara. That dude's a handful of trouble and no matter how much we love him. Let's face it, he's weird. We should have seen it coming that he was the embodiment of Supernatural, always cheating death."

Clara found it hard to even blink while Venom applied shampoo for a second time.

"Let's focus on how well we did in the cage fighting instead," he tried to also manipulate those memories at the front of her mind.

"If they did anything to Priscila..." Clara was too far gone to notice Venom's tries to get her off this path of thoughts. The symbiote got ready to hear the best threat in the existence of mankind, however, Clara bowed her head, "... then what was the point of all of this?"

"They just played us, Clara," Venom sighed. "It didn't help that Priscila kept on asking us for more independence. Look, we cannot change the past and the present is pretty shitty, but we can change the future. Grizzly's plan will work if we make sure it does."

"And if Paul backstabs us again? What then?"

"We'll...," Venom hesitated for a moment of thought before sighing, "we'll take the first plane to Cairo alone and deal with this the way we know how. Yes," he hummed wickedly, "we're thinking of the same thing, good."

Venom agreeing to fly for her managed to unclench her posture.

A military posture was what stiffened Marc up while standing next to Grizzly. Paul had left the bunker to procure the "ingredients" to his teleportation means and something told Marc that prick was out hunting for humans. Nothing was too out of the ordinary for these bunch of people it seemed, a bunch of people Grizzly called the Horsemen Operative.

"Why the Horsemen?" he asked over the background noise of Grizzly pouring himself a glass of that golden liquid which burned his throat the best during stressful missions. "Are you the religious type?"

"Not really," he admitted with a shrug. He sniffed his mustache up then dropped the tension in his shoulders to properly turn around. The bottle in his hand was exchanged for a glass. There would have been two, had Marc not refused completely to have any alcohol. Last he needed after that resurrection messed with his head was more blur.

"It's just curious that Earth has survived so many Apocalypses so far," Grizzly laughed in a tempered manner. "Many would misjudge the Horsemen as those who bring the calamity, right? Well, it's an incorrect first impression. They are the harbingers of the Last Judgment. I suppose that would sound familiar to you, Moon Knight."

"You can call me Marc." The fastness of the correction simply proved Grizzly his point.

The bearded man nodded thoughtfully, "Knew it would ring a bell. You see, you're pretty much the missing piece of this team. They're all great in their own way, but they lack the higher purpose, the guidance I cannot offer because I am not really one of them. I've been looking for a long time for a fourth member to complete the team..."

"Trust me, you don't want me on your team," Marc then said.

"Because you work better on your own? Because you're unstable, untrustworthy or is it because you think the people who surround you are immediately in grave danger because of you?" Grizzly listed. All of those were reasons he had heard before, from the mouths of Michael, Paul and Clara.

Marc wasn't going to answer, so Grizzly just sighed, "Take your time with this, alright? But just think about it. I know Paul might have ruined the image you have of this team... Give them a chance though, will you? This is what the Horsemen Operative is all about after all, second impressions, second chances and obviously, doing what your friendly neighborhood heroes are scared of."

The golden liquid disappeared into Grizzly's mouth and that was thankfully the last Marc saw of him before walking to check in on Clara. He had given her space, time. Shower for himself didn't take too long, but by the time he was done talking with Grizzly, their fifteen minute preparation time was almost up. He knocked briefly at Clara's room, heard her faint approval that he could step inside, but as soon as he did, he might have regretted trusting her appreciation.

Sure, Marc recalled most of what Jake had going on with Clara above that bar, before they died. He's been boasting about it all the way through the afterlife. But it was a bit unexpected, to say at least, to be faced with this sort of view during such a serious time.

Clara was not nearly done with dressing up. She was just then putting on a bra actually, stopping mid action to look in the mirror before her and through it, stare at Marc who froze.

"Marc, honey," she sighed, glad to have yet another distraction, "something tells me you're not a virgin, so could you please close the door and come help me up a little with this?"

"I can-," Venom started in his mind, but put a break quickly to his own words. "Oh, alright, I will allow this."

Marc closed the door and approached her. He did aim to help her own more often rather than be a constant issue for her to solve or deal with. Starting as small as walking up behind her and carefully taking hold of the straps of her bra to clasp them together was a start nonetheless. One which made his heartbeat act up. Hers relaxed.

After finishing his task, he didn't move away, but instead lingered, caressing a knuckle down her spine. Some droplets of water fell from her short hair onto her cleaner skin.

The tickle had Clara's breath hitch and her chin raise at the next inhale lifting her chest. Marc stopped. His hand froze and he looked down at it. In the mirror Clara was looking at, he looked defeated.

"Are you alright, Clara?" he murmured.

"Don't ask me that," she disapproved immediately of the direction he wanted to take this conversation.

Of course she wasn't alright.

"Your sister..."

"We'll save her," Clara cut him off. "And we'll destroy O.M.N.I.U.M. too. I don't know, nor care how, but we will. So don't you dare say anything else right now."

Finally, Marc's hand moved and properly grasped contact to her skin, trailing its path to rest on the curve of her waist. His left hand joined and so, his forehead also found its rest on the back of her neck.

"It was odd... seeing you blame O.M.N.I.U.M. for your misfortune."

"What else should I do?" Clara replied just as quietly. She was studying them in the tall and narrow mirror before her and recalled too clearly that part of this was Steven's advice. "I can't cry all the time and it's not good for me and Venom that I keep on taking the blame for everything. They're bad guys, so why not think of myself first for a change and blame everything on them? They ruined my childhood dreams, they fucked up my chances in life, they tortured me, they killed you and they took Priscila. Haven't I earned something as easy as throwing blame?"

"You deserve none of this," Marc sighed, his lips finding the boldness of peppering a trail of kisses on the back of her shoulders, painting light paths on her skin, between the straps of her bra. Who was he to judge her? Only it wasn't a judgmental behavior which brought him concern, but a caring one.

"I just don't want you to cover up feelings for long enough to damage your mind the way I did," Marc admitted quietly.

"Sometimes I envy you, Marc Spector." This wasn't something to tell herself in the mirror where Marc avoided to look. She needed to see his eyes, so Clara turned around and claimed that right to be the subject of his tired gaze, that assertive, serious thing she wanted with every fiber of her being to trust completely.

Once she watched his confusion for long enough that their closeness was just a conduct of tension and magnetism drawing them nearer to each other, making his grip grow tighter and her own hands reach out of instinct for his shirt, Clara continued. Her lips' corners curved in a flinch of a smile, "There is at least one part of you with a chance at a normal life."

"We're kind of fucked otherwise, aren't we?"

"Oh, yeah," Clara nodded. "Definitely fucked, from the second we decided to care for each other." She brought her right hand up to the side of his face. "Are you alright though? You died and I think you've got no real time to process..."

"I'm fine," Marc interrupted with a fast line and a quick kiss. It did not make Clara drop her certain look, determined. Alas, he exhaled gradually and realized... this was love. Knowing when to cling. "I'll be fine," he corrected his previous statement. "It's not my first time dying. It hurts, it messes up my mind a bit more, but Khonshu has always interfered so that the Fields don't claim my soul."

Now, that was an explanation which satisfied Clara into letting her head bow. His neck kiss came on top of her head, given this chance, "So maybe you should stop trying to sacrifice for me."

Clara raised her head immediately. Were it not for his reflexes, she would have hit his nose for sure. But a little violence did not stop her from leaning closer and ghosting her lips over his. "I forgive you," she whispered. "For Casablanca." Between the lines, she reassured him she did not regret it, saving him. "And if we make it out of Cairo alive, I might even start trusting you to watch my back again."

"I don't deserve you," his sigh was pretty much a whimper, an ache that manifested first in words and second in the despair of their time stretched kiss.

The Horsemen are all about second chances, but if anything, the idea of a second chance belongs in the area in which "love" operates. Because then, no matter what happens, the heart is the lonesome judge and jury, compelled to forgive for the greater good of the system. And Clara knew she wasn't going to trust as strongly as she did back in Casablanca, perhaps not for a long time now... but if she let's O.M.N.I.U.M. ruin her relationship too, then what was the point of enduring so much?

They chose each other over the world one too many times to ever even consider there was a reality in which they didn't forgive each other for everything.

Forgiveness, in this context, comes with a promise too. Clara swore she'd not count on her love to save the day, avoid the disappointment and save them both from sadness. Marc vowed that he'd get a grip on himself properly now, be the hero at least his loved one needs.

It started as easy as walking out of her room as Venom and Moon Knight.

"Look at you too," Paul smiled, just done painting with blood on the floor. "All yin and yang for us." Venom didn't shy from showing the demon his middle finger. And the demon only smiled brighter, "Step inside the circle, monochromatic bitches."

Grizzly passed the drive to Moon Knight and the latter tucked it under some bandages, wordlessly. Inside the circle painted with blood and decorated with plenty of symbols, they didn't stay for too long. Paul opened his palms, his eyes turned scarlet red, vibrated and oozed out that color.

"Ten minutes," Grizzly reminded them. "And listen to the comms for directions."

Blood thickened underneath them, turning pitch black, at first slowly. Once Paul clapped, the circle swallowed Venom and Moon Knight whole, spitting them out across the world, at the coordinates he wrote into the circle beforehand.

"This was worse than flying," Venom immediately complained into the comms, becoming Grizzly's tell that he should sit back in his chair and begin raining Hell on Stark's security system to buy his team some time inside the building.

"'Aight," Paul looked back at the second guy he fished off the streets for sacrificial magic. "Time to prepare the second ritual, I suppose."

author's note:    new closing gif made by Raichia 💗💖💕 Marc and Clara coming for O.M.N.I.U.M. >>>>>>

now that we are nearing the end of this book.. would you all consider ever recommending it to anyone? just curious.

also, i may or may not have convinced my sister to make an edit with marc and clara, like one of those pretty, badass tiktok edits 😂😂 like ik she my sis, but bro, imma still cry to see my babies in an edit

next update: tomorrow <3