Once you care, you're fucked.

Blood pooled from Clara's mouth, down her throat shared with Venom, but also onto her chin, whenever his enormous tongue did not prove his everlasting hunger by licking clean her face from yet another match.

Caring erases every ounce of knowledge and replaces facts with hope.

Around the cage Clara sought out and willing stepped back into that night, instead of going through with the plan of calling her sister, the crowd's cheers came in waves of instant and electrifying ecstasy to witness the absolute butchery occuring on their secluded stage where hallucinating was normal and the rich's dirty money reached even dirtier hands.

Fact was that Venom needed food, Clara needed to stop feeling the pain and they both ached for tasting some victory after so many lost battles. These low streets of Salé were making it easy to feel superior, in control, as the lesser evil amongst thousands worse.

The tribute of another victory reached their stomach and Venom wasted no breath in extracting what he needed to grow his power. Half of the energy went across Clara's body, healing whatever was left to heal.

Half an hour into the arena and she already looked healthier, better too, save for the little cuts and the bruises under her clothes, waiting their turn. Any internal bleeding had stopped long ago and those broken bones mended right after the bullet holes sealed properly with barely even a scar left behind.

Yet she wasn't exiting the cage.

Why would she?

The night was still young and for once, she was in a familiar environment, doing the only thing she considered herself good at. Victory mixed with an enclosed bubble of safety and Clara called that her personal drug.

"Venom eats the head of his... of her... of their sixth victim!" Moroccan Arabic beamed through the speakers, briefly pausing the loud music for a transition in which the headless corpse of a massive woman was dragged out of the ring and someone else, already trembling outside the iron fence, was trying to man themselves up to get in there with the beast. "Will the monster ever tire? Will it ever be satisfied? Let's see if Boneyard will be any luckier than those before him."

"Bet we can take that one down in less than ten seconds," Clara boasted to Venom, not even bothering to be silent and certainly done with standing still. She was moving around now that she was no longer limping and dragging her steps. The first fight in the cage had been tough and necessary to regain her strength, everything else was her escaping pending problems and finding a fleeting pleasure. Violence was her only comfort amongst humans that she could trust.

Before the last fight, she had lost her shirt, now caught in the metal fence of the cage, right next to the exit opening up to greet a tall and muscular man. Clara couldn't contain her grin looking at him.

"Make that a six," she huffed, amused, after measuring the man just once. "He won't even see what hit him." With that said, she rolled her shoulders back, stretched her arms, one at the time, over her chest, helping the blood stain on her hands, now truly embedded onto her skin, dry off faster.

If she was ever going to realize what a big mistake she made that night with getting there, one shower won't be enough to make her feel clean again. Though Clara's mind was lost, Venom knew that from a gram of lucidity brought by being well fed.

Venom loved a good meal and he knew they both needed it, however, about three corpses ago, it had reached the "enough" mark and now he was simply concerned that Clara was not alright. She wasn't alright. The longer he stood in her body, the more attentive he got to what she was feeling... or rather what she was not. It was easy to understand she was using everything as the biggest distraction away from the burn behind her eyes, the tiredness of her heart and the sadness.

He would have let her do this fighting thing they both enjoyed all night until the morning sun shone upon this corner of the planet, were it not for the genuine realization that nothing there was helping her feel better.

Though his knowledge of human affairs was thin, seeing someone unexpected behind the man entering the cage caused Venom to form an idea solely based on words he had heard that person say: I felt less insane since you showed up.

Clara got to re-feel the memory Venom brought forward and her confident posture immediately shivered out of place. At a time like this... to think about Steven? She couldn't have been such a masochist.

"Look behind the crowd, through the open door," Venom directed her gaze, once through his deep voice and twice through actually detaching two smaller versions of his hands from under her skin to place on both sides of her head and move it towards the right direction where... He knew she saw him when her heart skipped a beat.

This new adversary beat his fists on his chest like some sort of underwhelming ape, but the call for intimidation game was interrupted and truthfully mocked by how dismissive Clara was of him. Her eyes locked across the crowd with Steven.

"What is he doing here...?" she mumbled out the whisper though the real question in her mind went somewhere along the lines 'how much did he see?'.

With their gazes connected, Steven seemed to have shaken his head before turning around. Venom didn't even have to try and shed some light in Clara's mind that this place might be too dangerous for their human, because all her thoughts got twisted around by this sudden meeting, even from across a tough crowd.

Clara walked right past the man she was supposed to fight, giving him a dismissive pat, "I tap out, you won."

"The hell you do-"

He lunged forward, grabbing hold of her wrist, trying to twist it around, but Clara just stepped aside, because with bigger hands, Venom grabbed the locked door of the cage and ripped it open, throwing it back. She stepped aside right in the last second so the door passed her and hit the man in full, dragging him across the room with a metallic fence to hug.

All she had left to do then was walk out, dismiss entirely anyone who was standing in her way and try to get to the very edge of the confused crowd chatter. Steven had started walking away so his back was turned on Clara when she finally made it out of the crowd, but he was recognizable to her from almost every angle, so it didn't quite take the woman too long to catch up and grab the sleeve of his shirt, stopping them both still rather close to the illegal fighting grounds, but far enough to not hear the chatter, only the deafening music.

Steven looked down at his arm and saw the bloodstained hand holding him. "Is this what you always do?"

"You weren't supposed to be here," she pried the words out of herself with a strain which caused her to take her hand off of him and take a small step backwards as soon as Steven turned around.

"I was worried about you," he shook his head, disappointment weighing on his tone and very being. "But obviously," lifting his right hand, Steven gestured at her face, "my worries have been misplaced. You look like you never even got close to death a few hours ago." And he didn't understand how or why. Not in the slightest. Fear built up under his skin, it shivered his bones for him and Steven felt his heart living on the constant pressure.

Anxiously, Clara looked over her shoulder and fortunately for her, so far it seemed no one was trying to follow her to see why she ditched her fight. But lingering would still be unwise so she reached her hand out towards Steven. In a collected manner, he leant away.

"You didn't answer my question," he insisted, "is this what you do for a living? Why you avoided telling me your job back in DC? You kill people for fun." With every cell in his body, he didn't want to believe any of it.

"I don't do it for fun!" Clara rapidly argued back.

"Oh, but I saw you enjoying it," Steven moved his head in little shakes, because he couldn't believe what he was saying, nor what he had witnessed. Nothing fit the narrative he knew or the woman he fell for so hard in just three days. Three days. That would have counted as love at first sight and it lingered still, even if he was looking at someone who now terrified him deeply, while flustered him all the same.

Clara couldn't handle seeing disappointment on the features of someone she loved; she's never been good at it and she wouldn't start honing a skill out of the blue. So, she answered with plenty of sarcasm. "Well, that's just what I am best at, as a monster, isn't it?"

Steven felt her words as hard as one of her slaps. He recalled it from back in Casablanca, but now that he had seen what she really does when anger -trying to rip hearts out of demons-, he knew she was gentle with him.

This was not the time, nor the place for a fight or a discussion going in the direction they were taking it, but words were coming out and none of them could stop this escalation from simply happening because behind each other's eyes, the pressure of the events overtook their senses. Running on no sleep, no rest and accumulated tension was as close as embodying a time bomb ticking its last seconds.

"Wrong," Steven raised his voice, at first shyly, but finally more certain. "This can't be what you are best at." Behind his borderline heavy words laid fragments of memory: from her laughs, to her smiles, to the effortless jokes and the caring little gestures like bringing him breakfast, asking about his day.

"You don't even know me," Clara made it her mission to bitterly remind Steven of the words he pretty much stabbed her with in Casablanca.

"I was wrong," Steven admitted without hesitation. "And I'm sorry," he sighed. Those memories flashing before his eyes, after he had held them back through fear all the way there, managed to have the man tell how terribly wrong this had went. "I do know you and you are not a monster."

Clara knew that was all she wanted to hear, that shred of validation that her true nature does not make her unlovable... but now, she simply found it hard to believe.

His own mind was a mess, betraying him with each word and what Steven knew he had to attempt then was to temper himself to talk slower, calmer, collect his thoughts, discern them before letting them out to make sure he was the one speaking, not Marc, not Jake and certainly not the suffocating fear. Because if he kept going on impulses, he was going to push her away in such was he'd lose her forever.

Blood found home onto her skin, stained the angelic presence Clara had in Steven's life, but the more he concentrated on memories and the facts hidden in them... the less of a monster she became.

She protected him. And she even said she loved him. Him?

"Even if our meetings seem to have been rather fractured...," Steven chewed on his words slowly, "we are alike, I think. I am terrified of this dark, violent thing that lives in me."

"We are not alike," Clara shook her head firmly, but when she opened her mouth to continue explaining how her Venom was different from his disorder, she realized it was not up to her to explain to Steven what Marc wouldn't.

The break in the speech was fully taken advantage of by Steven to continue disagreeing with her, even if just with a shake of his head at first. "I refuse to believe that Jake walked me all the way out here for nothing. He said you need us and I can see why-"

"I don't need anyone!" her rough shout caused him to shiver and his eyes, barely just grabbing some confidence, cowering instead momentarily back in a widening state. "Never needed anyone, never will need anyone..." And yet, her voice was faltering, cracking and catching fire to turn to the ashes of a whisper.

The shiver of her lips confirmed to Steven what he's been thinking about all the walk to finding Clara, while paradoxically trying not to bias himself on his affection for her.

"Maybe," he sighed, forcing his shoulders to relax. "But there is something you need and it is not that," he pointed, briefly, towards the cage fighting place which still caused him chills of fright and disgust all at once.

"You think you know me?" Clara watched him nod. "You met my good side and you think you know everything about me...," her tone mocked him entirely, but Steven still nodded along rather innocently.

He didn't know for certain if he was right anymore, but he sure hoped he was.

What was the worst it could happen if he was wrong though?

He imagined that if he truly read Clara wrongly, then she'd end up killing him and would that be so bad? Because somehow... if he was wrong and survived to see the sunrise, then it would mean that he failed lamentably to hold yet another relationship and that he'll simply have to live with a broken heart and mind at the same time.

Steven believed with all his being that he had nothing left to lose.

Clara's expression shivered because the surface anger felt the coldness of sadness underneath her skin, where Venom lurked and drowned in those emotions. "Poor little Steven thinks he knows what I need. Humor me then. What the fuck do you think a stupid monster like me needs-?!"

She gasped as Steven's arms wrapped around her. He hugged her tightly and warmly and the blizzard inside of Clara escaped, freezing her on the spot, unable to move, unable to mask her expression again.

Her eyes widened, ever so lightly. She was looking over Steven's shoulder while his head bowed and his nose inhaled the scent of hers: hope. His hands gripped her back and his heartbeat echoed next to hers in a rhythm which punctured the dam keeping at bay all the tears Clara refused to cry.

She wasn't the crying type. She hadn't shed tears for years on end, hoping she could forever refuse to show this weakness. But Steven Grant hugged her and her muscles gave up the act, her eyebrows flinched and their furrow turned into a curve that painted sadness, in its truest form, at last.

Her shoulders were allowed to feel heavy at once and her head, weary, rested down on his shoulder, forehead protecting the eyes which closed away from the world and finally let the tears come out in a quiet hiccup, a small whimper she was ashamed to hear, but it was so relieving to finally let out.

Steven heard it, but he did not move to look at her, not while he also felt her hands weakly holding to his shirt, around the sides of his body. And he knew... he had been right.

"Hey!" The man behind the bets made around the cage finally caught up with the fact that Clara was rising their profits into properly skyrocketing and without her, things were turning banal again. So he exited the crowd and spotted her figure, intertwined with a man. He carelessly dismissed the scrawny looking fellow and glared towards the back of the lady. "Hey, Venom! You can't leave-"

Steven was the one facing towards that direction so with wide open eyes he saw Venom form out of her back, a head with thousands of teeth and wide white eyes, paired with a clawed hand which grabbed the human by the throat, tossing him in the dumpster.

"Can't you see my human is having a moment, filth?" Venom growled in pure rage, but when he turned back around, he grinned almost adorably wide at Steven, waving. "Do go on, please, you're doing great!"

Steven lifted his hand, pretty shocked by the aspect of the thing he was talking to, but also certain it would be nice to at least wave back as well. Only when his hand lifted did Clara become aware that Venom was retracting back under her skin, meaning that he's been out.

She panicked within a second, realizing the sting around her eyes were tears. Letting go of Steven, she brought her own hands up to wipe her eyes quickly, but without looking, now that Venom was gone, Steven helped her too. His big thumbs brushed under her eyes for her and wiped the tears until his hands could hold both sides of her face.

"Think I just met... Venom?" Steven whispered.

The sincerity of the gesture of helping her wipe her tears without actually staring down at her weakest moment struck all chords of sensitivity in Clara. She cared so much for them that she had just realized how much she was willing to forgive.

"We should probably get out of here," she mumbled, but since their bodies were close enough, the whisper was perfectly capable of reaching Steven who, this time around, immediately agreed.

It didn't take them long to get out of the dump of a place where the cage fighting happened, because even if it was between abandoned railways, tucked under a bridge at the edge of town, close by remained a park with little greenery but all the available benches they could need to sit down and let the elation of holding hands overtake them.

Once sat down, Steven remembered to check in on the guy in the mirror. He searched the inner pocket of his jacket and brought out the mirror. Of course, it wasn't just his bare reflection which looked back at him.

Clara found it weird that he took out a mirror, out of all things, but did not voice concerns, nor did she bother judging. She leant back on the bench and looked up at the night sky. It seemed to be less cloudy, but still, the city lights were making it hard to distinguish stars and the moon did not shine over the park at all. Such a shame.

"Can you please explain everything to me now?" Steven's voice sliced through the silence of the night.

Upon looking back at him, Clara took in his hunched posture: elbows on his knees, curving over that mirror and studying himself in it like he was watching someone else entirely. It did not take her too long to actually be able to tell that he might be communicating with his other selves.

"About Venom?" A sudden wave of deja vu overtook her. They've done this before, with far more light above and a fit of laughter between them too, but they've done this... on the last of their three perfect days in DC and later, in San Francisco.

"About him too, yes," Steven nodded eagerly. His hands shaking on the mirror betrayed nervousness onto his next words though, those spoken while looking to his side, at Clara, "But about... Marc and Jake too."

He looked at her with hope, a hope which Clara would have hated to kick, but she had no other choice but to. "That's not my story to tell, Steven..."

"They agreed," Steven pointed to the mirror. "I mean, I suppose they understood I trust you more than I trust them right now and they think you can make me understand."

"Marc's trying to pass the responsibility onto me?"

Steven glanced in the mirror and saw Marc this time, instead of Jake, looking a bit too tired, but still bowing his head in a hint of being ashamed it had come to this. Clara watched as Steven fell silent for several moments while watching the mirror, then, once he lifted his eyes back to hers, he looked absolutely shattered.

"He says he's sorry."

Immediately after they stopped holding onto each other, Clara hid her bloodstained hands into the pockets of her pants. She shrugged, trying to dismiss Marc's apology. "Passing responsibility-"

"He's sorry about not being there for you in Casablanca."

At that interruption, Clara paused. "It's fine," she mumbled, looking away, at the park ahead. "You can tell him I've been through worse and I'm already feeling better anyway." And yet she knew that was a lie and most likely she'll be haunted by what had happened there, no matter how much she'll do to try and forget it.

"Doesn't change the fact that I failed you, Clara," Marc spoke what only Steven could hear from that mirror, right before Jake appeared instead. The differences were minuscular, Steven could barely tell the difference, but he tried his best while listening to the other.

"Alright," Clara sighed.

Steven looked away from Jake and at her, eyebrows raised. Silence both inside and outside commenced.

"I'll tell you what I know, but I don't know everything about either of them, so they might have to complete the missing pieces still. Get that?"

Happiness beamed across Steven's features while relief carried inside of him where both Jake and Marc have just been granted the greatest gift of all: some help.

Help was what Michael Morbius needed and yet did not receive for far too long.

His mind was fractured into a thousand confused shards, half of them revolving around Dr. Hayes' words. In that conglomeration, a few lines have stuck with him in infinite echoes on repeat while his vampiric eyes, spots of darkness on a wide spread whiteness now clogged with veins exploding in a blinding red.

"In fact, you are here to help... We've been testing a serum which I think you'd agree could save the whole world a lot of time... what if... we could instantly separate the good from the bad." Laughter sneaked in Dr. Hayes' voice.

"Harrow almost got it, but his judgment lay in the wrong field. Dr. Connors was close as well, but no. The symbiotes' trial and error is the key... Unfortunately, you will taste the unfinished product... and it will be painful, my friend, but it will teach them... the lesson."

Missing pieces of what Dr. Hayes said made Michael tremble in a fear which poisoned his whole system, turning skin to goosebumps and having his vampiric form phase in and out as fast as his heartbeat was rushing. He has been walking days on end, without feeding, without stopping. His clothes ripped from sandstorms and he couldn't control where he was walking, nor what his mind was doing.

His thoughts were spurring to the surface all he ever did bad in his life and if he thought he's been getting better, then all of a sudden he thought he deserved to turn himself into a walking corpse on purpose. He was a monster.

He was in the midst of a desert when a light flew over his head. While in his wrecked vision that was just a faded flash in a world rusted in darkness, Grizzly, who was piloting the helicopter, saw a thinned man who no longer looked the way he recalled. He landed the helicopter way behind Michael, who did not stop walking. The rotors were spinning, though slower, raising sand on all sides while Grizzly jumped out of the seat and outside.

"Michael!" He tried shouting in the second he could spare without bringing his right arm up to cover his face from all the sand. His hair and beard were already filled. "Michael, you can stop now, it's me... Michael?"

Grizzly ran through the dune to get to his friend. His hand caught his torn sleeve and touched a dead cold skin, making him pull back a little rougher than he intended. Yet, even though Dr. Morbius' face was contorted in the form it took while he was feeding, he turned around and looked at a meal without even flinching in his direction.

Calling himself lucky, Grizzly ran back to the helicopter and opened the box he prepared before leaving -he had a hunch Michael might need a quick blood fix, but he never imagined it would be this bad. No, Michael looked like he hadn't eaten in days, which would explain why he was limping through the desert, but not really to the extent at which Grizzly would understand.

His rough hand grabbed a bag of blood, thick red, right from the stock in the bunker's infirmary, and turned around only to realize that Michael started walking away once more, wordlessly.

"For fuck's sake, Michael," Grizzly cursed under his breath and got back to running through the sand, now reaching his friend when they were quite far from the helicopter to not feel the cutting winds of sand. There, the desert's silence and darkness was their nightly partner.

Grizzly posted himself in front of Michael blocking his way and mindlessly, Michael simply tried to step through him, instead of around. "What the heck happened to you?" Grizzly struggled to open the blood with a hand and bring it to Michael's mouth but his friend, unlike himself, didn't even reach closer to the very thing his skeletal body needed.

In that very moment of despair in Grizzly realized O.M.N.I.U.M., whoever they were as a new threat, managed to dismantle his feared Horsemen too easily.

His rough hand took hold of Michael, arm wrapped around him and his back of the head rested back on Grizzly's generous hand. With his free hand, Grizzly forced blood to flow down Michael's throat.

"No, I am a monster," whispered mutters turned into shouts off of Michael's lips. "I have no place amongst the elite! I am a pest-" He started choking on blood, refusing to swallow it, despite his very nature shivering for it. Grizzly was forced to let go once Michael started struggling to escape, to retake his walk of shame to death.

"Fuck," Grizzly breathed out holding an empty bag from which all blood was wasted and now drained into the dune. He looked after his friend and knew exactly what he needed to do... only he didn't know if he still had it in him, to say the line and move on. Michael had been his first Horseman...

And now he's in pain, Grizzly reminded himself and caught up one more time, this time not putting himself in front of him, but remaining behind. He wrapped his right arm around Michael's throat and squeezed, holding his head in place. In that moment, though it hurt him to knock out someone he started caring about, Grizzly breathed out the mantra of his old team, "For the greater good."

"Shit...," Steven breathed out, ten minutes after Clara had finished the whole of the lengthy explanation. The mirror was in the place between them on the bench, face down. "An identity disorder, not a sleeping disorder, huh?" he could feel his very mouth dry saying that out loud, because voicing it meant he was acknowledging it. Acknowledging that he's been in dark for so long was wrenching his heart, his mind... and yet, Steven was no longer feeling lost as each time he woke up in his room, chained to his own bed, confused and fearful to check if he ever left that room without knowing, without any knowledge of himself and how to protect this body.

Now he knew it was protected, just not by him.

"Yeah, but I think it's best you talk out your next questions with Marc or Jake, because that's as far as they told me too, which is not much, but it's a start-"

"Thank you," Steven interrupted her. Aware that was as far as Clara should sensibly go either way, he voiced his gratitude yet thought inwards... A shit past? He knew nothing about that. He remembered fractures of a banal childhood. Military service? Steven couldn't ever imagine himself holding a gun or going to war, but it explained why Marc was such a frightening fellow to keep eye contact with. Boxing, mercenary, death and resurrection into vigilante life. The Moon God of many phases took advantage of an easy to break mind.

Steven knew the rest he had to talk out with Marc... A frightened chuckle corrupted him out of the blue. And here he thought the intruders were the others.

What he discovered from Clara, be it very little, was enough to twist his mind and stomach in separately tight knots.

Amongst them, a knot formed around the information that, at the end of the day, it was Marc who set it all up too. So before shouting at him, Steven should thank for ever having the three day opportunity which now marked him for life.

There was no taking back his love when it came to Clara, it seemed. It looked like it embedded itself into his very being, no matter who was in control.

He has gone truly mad over this love, hasn't he?

Because what sane man would still want to be close with the woman with an alien inside and an appetite for human heads and gore he had witnessed one too many times in less than twenty four hours already?

"Don't mention it," Clara sighed herself into getting up from the bench and stretching her back a little. "Now, let's go."

"Go?" Steven looked up, rather confused by this sudden act from her. "Go where?"

Of course he couldn't have possibly known Clara's only been thinking about how unfair things have been between them so far. Steven and her.

The more she told Steven about what she has been doing with his other selves, the more she felt like a true bitch for going around thinking she could be in love with any of them while Steven had been pretty much kidnapped from his home, clueless to every little danger.

Clara felt the bitter taste of guilt.

"The airport," Clara answered nonchalantly. With stained hands into her pockets, she looked up at a sky which still refused to show the sign of the moon's existence. Somewhere beyond the horizon, an auburn flame was about to instead insist that it was too late to hope for that silver shine, and it would have been instead wiser to want to see the beauty of a sunrise soon. "You're going back to DC and I should probably head back to San Francisco-!"

Unbeknownst to her, Steven, who scratched the surface with his want to talk with Marc, blinked weirdly one or two times. His head felt a little lighter, until someone else took over the body and that someone heard Clara's words and immediately got up. He took her wrist in a welcoming grip, in the absence of a way to hold her hand first. Clara looked back surprised by this reaction, yet her shock drowned away as smoothly as his gesture of pulling her left hand out of her pocket and holding it carefully, regardless of the dried blood on it.

"Jake," she smiled.

Leaning back, he unsuccessfully tried to hold in the sincere smile hearing his name fall off her lips undoubtedly gave him, "How are you doing that?"

"Doing what?" Clara stole a glance down at the way he intertwined their fingers.

"Stealing my heart away... but no, how can you tell the difference?"

"The accent," Clara stiffened a quick laugh, which faded with the shake of her head. "Mostly the eyes though."

"The eyes?"

"Each of you looks at the world differently, you know," Clara explained with a dismissive shrug, having to look away in a slightly uncomfortable air, since it seemed like Jake was hanging onto each of her words like they were worth a fortune. That's what his eyes were telling her. "The eyes are the mirror to the soul, or something like that. We read it once on a flier."

"Then," he lifted her hand up and pressed a temperate kiss on her knuckles, "why does your soul look sad? Oh, I know... Is it because Marc and Steven are not very good at being boyfriends?"

Clara's glare was a spear Jake took valiantly right through the heart, with a smile still on his lips. "Don't give me that look, love. Marc pissed off Khonshu and it seems that got me with a bit more consciousness for a while, enough to know about the relationship going on, thankfully. Imagine my shock when I realized those two got their kisses before me."

"So you just want a kiss too?" Perhaps she was a bit too cocky about it. She couldn't quite help it: the distraction of a little fun appealed to her more than actually thinking back at her "part-time team" and especially at the revenge she was sure neither her, nor Venom, needed anymore. O.M.N.I.U.M., though she wouldn't admit it, scared the living shit out of them now.

"I do, but I am also planning on earning it," Jake was also as sheepish as one could get, finally accepting to just hold her hand and be certain that with the sunrise close by, they could just stumble into the nearest bar still open, bribe some of the cleaners to let them in.

Yes, that was exactly what they were going to do, while he still had time to spend with her himself. Someone had to front while in his mind Marc Spector and Steven Grant were finally talking, more or less, civilized. Jake smiled a little brighter: this felt like true progress, at last.

author's note:     there we go, another chapterr 💕💖 taking a break from the usual drama *yes, imma ignore the michael and grizzly scene* to give our babies a little breather, before all hell breaks loose duhh

also, i have a couple of edits which may brighten your day like they did mine, made by some wonderful people. thank youuuu

a gif set made by -anakxn featuring clara x the three alters :

a scene edit made by potter_spellbook (which kinda reminds me of last chapter's scene) :

next update is on Fridayy & it's a looong, roller-coaster type of chapter 👀✌