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"You hid my money behind a dumpster? Really? And here I thought you were a smart guy."

"They weren't stolen, were they?" Marc dragged the dark colored bag into the obscure light, then tossed it up for the woman to exercise her reflexes and catch.

Clara wouldn't have considered he'd store her money in any public place and she was especially shocked when his driving directions, given tiredly after the talk she had with her sister which he witnessed, indicated a certain unlit road out of the city where the only plausible stop was the very bar where it had all started, at least for her.

This time around, with a second unexpected visit, while she was pulling into its parking lot again, the name of the bar stood out. It should have spelt "Soul's", however the 'u' in soul was missing, as a sick joke of fate. Sol's. Irony lies in that name, because not only was it a rather soulless place in terms of business, but usually, people stopped at bars so their soul would grow numb with alcohol until it felt as if they had none.

They were now behind the lit front of the bar, beside the stinking dumpsters, filled with trash, behind which Marc considered it proper to hide a shit ton of money, as if no drunks could ever stumble across it while threading their steps out of the bar, be it popular or not.

To her core, Clara was disgusted that she had cared so much to stay true to her word, taking care of his alter, considering Marc was so careless with his end of the bargain. The whole three day escapade cost her far more than it should have, that much she understood since Priscila hung up on her.

In that moment, the key to remaining upset with Marc, as she should have, for all which he had messed up for her, was for Clara to try and not remember that she had a good time with Steven. She could have, at any moment after they parted ways in the aftermath of their junkyard fight, just abandon the promise, leave Steven without even meeting him and go look for a new way to earn fast money to cover the cost of her sister's studies. Venom had proposed that several times, yet she refused, at first uncertain and then, more and more compelled to see it through that the man remains safe.

It was only once the bag of money was in her hands, that Clara could blink some shape of expression back on her features. Alas, there was no need for her to stick around anymore and she had no intention of doing so.

"We're not asking him about O.M.N.I.U.M. in return?" Venom immediately perked a question in her mind, rather desperately once she turned her back at Marc without a single good bye. The phone call from Priscila had turned her upside down in all ways possible and she had no disposition to continue arguing with him, far less to get dragged in whatever chaos he liked to reside on a daily basis.

"It's not like he will be telling us anything," Clara sighed. She didn't bother whispering or keeping a low profile about the fact that she was talking to someone currently not visible, because frankly, Marc had met Venom and this surely wasn't the craziest thing he had seen.

With her back at him, Clara noticed the absence of her motorcycle helmet before getting into the saddle of it, causing a little frown to form on her face. It's been an awfully long day, she instantaneously attuned into her apprehension. Between the wonderful morning with the waffles she shared with Steven and the stressful events of the night, she still hadn't even managed to dry her clothes, nor even humanly complain about the damage done to her favorite jacket by those stupid bullets she has been hit by in the hallway.

"What if I told you everything?" Marc's voice sounded different when it called after her now. It wasn't Steven's try for a British accent, nor Marc's actual emotionally constipated numbness with a notch of harshness. Clara's hand was basically forced into stopping from touching the motorcycle.

Being curious or easily intrigued truly was the most dangerous of traits for humans, because she turned around and tilted her head, just slightly to the right.

It was the same face, same clothes, same overall features. But this time, his expression was not kind, nor mature... he looked at her with a confident grin instead and though she may have been wrong, it made Clara come to a very probable assumption. "You're not Marc, are you?"

He stepped forward, energetically and extended his right hand, while the left was hidden in the respective pocket of his trousers. Clara met his hand getting ready for a formal and strong shake, after all, both of them seemed to have proved, to some extent to each other, that their grips were firm and their hands heavy, when need be.

But once her hand was into his, he turned to holding it for anything else but a handshake. His grip was an embrace to her fingers and her knuckles quickly got peppered with a sheepish, quick kiss. "Jake Lockley, nice to finally meet you, love."

Clara pulled her hand away from him. Yes, this was certainly not Marc anymore. "How many of you are in there exactly?"

"Just the three of us," Jake answered immediately. "Marc was tired and thank goodness for that, because I'd be damned if I let him ruin this one for us."

After a whole day of mostly being in perfect control of everything, for once, Clara was confused. She got a three day period of getting to know Steven and one night of brawling with Marc was plenty to understand the very basics about him but... Jake? He was new and she wasn't exactly sure what she ought to take out of his fast paced speech or radiant confidence trapped into crooked grins and nervous tics of arranging his hair.

"So," he continued without much hesitation, just because his eyes narrowed in observation at how Clara's attention almost faded away from him, "whatever you want to ask, I'm an open book for you."

"Why?"

"What do you mean why?" Jake grimaced. He was acting as if it was obvious.

"What's in it for you in this situation?"

"You're doing it again, Clara," mid-sentence, Venom's head and neck formed out of her back and levitated beside her face, to speak and be able to also gesticulate in an inclination and narrow eyed glare towards Jake.

The latter had a very unexpected reaction to Venom and that was perhaps the only true thing which sealed the deal long before he even spoke. Neither Clara nor Venom would have expected to watch the man's eyes grow a little wide, then return back to normal and focus on the woman's eyes, "I'll answer all your questions if you let me buy you a drink."

It was just a harmless break, which would not weigh much against the almost two day drive waiting for her in order to return to San Francisco. Insomnia was pretty much a constant companion of hers lately and that little task of watching over Steven was more of a blessing than she even realized, now that the schedule returned to normal and she was about ready to return to her real duties.

So maybe letting Jake buy her a drink was truly just the wisest choice. Especially since she really had questions to ask which would earn her another time consuming fight with Marc and too much heartbreak with Steven.

"What do you drink?" Jake happily sat in the high chair next to Clara's at the bar. The inside of the building with the broken neon outside was truly as soulless as she had imagined. An old radio played irritating frequencies of some sort of rock music. They made Venom uneasy -even if now once again hidden in her- and therefore, her as well. But at least there was a significant lack of customers to stare at them and their suspicious bag.

"Lemonade."

"No!" Venom complained so loudly Clara flinched from the sound of her thoughts. "Too sour, get the orange juice instead."

"Are you kidding me...?" she stared blankly ahead while Jake watched patiently, half in awe. Finally, she looked back at the man, "Scratch that, we're drinking orange juice tonight apparently."

"Alright then," Jake smiled. He raised his hand for the old and bored bartender the very next second, "Whiskey on rocks and a glass of orange juice." Their overall answer was a roll of eyes, but he couldn't care less. "I don't get out often," Jake admitted, his smile ever constant, at least for now. "Probably because I am more aware than Steven, but a bit less than Marc. I know they exist, I know how they feel, but I don't really know what they do in my absence. I'm usually in charge when there's need to gather inf-"

"Okay, let me stop you there," Clara sighed. "I don't need to know your life story, Jake. I want to know about O.M.N.I.U.M., alright?"

"Of course," his smile leveled to a firm line and waited for the bartender to drop their drinks with plenty of spill before them and leave again, once more, to watch the news on his small boxed tv under the counter. "But to know about those guys, you should first understand who we are."

"I don't have time for that," Clara complained. "Cut the bullshit and just tell me why the fuck they were trying to kill you, because I've been looking for them for years, got into all the databases I could find, heck... I even sniffed around Anchor's files while mutants were tearing everything down the next door. And I've never found a single proof that there has ever been any such thing as O.M.N.I.U.M.. But then, out of the fucking blue, while I am trying to keep Steven alive, someone wears that name as a brand on their collarbone."

Jake stiffened a little laugh. "Steven likes you," he changed the subject momentarily towards his immediate observation, half about what he noticed in how Clara acted and half based on what he knew hid in his own feelings, blending with Marc's and Steven's.

"Not anymore," Clara faked a little smile. "Managed to scare the shit out of him." Admitting that out loud made her just about bitter enough to lift her glass of orange juice, gulp half of it down and immediately wish she could have drank some real alcohol instead of this colored water.

"Oh, I wouldn't let my hopes die just yet," Jake shrugged. "Steven has a remarkable talent of being ordinary and he's quite formidable at clinging to normalcy as well. He might just forget everything that happened which scared him."

But it weren't events which Jake could recall. In fact, he had no idea what could have happened exactly to make Steven be scared of Clara because the most prominent emotion he was feeling off of that day was that one's hope -such a refreshing little light to hold- and Marc's doubts, deepening. Everything else was detail out of his grasp which he had grown so used to he stopped moping over not knowing.

His task, therefore, had always been quite easy and strict. He was more talkative and emotionally calculated than the others, so he had to be in charge of gathering information, of interrogations and of connecting with people that may serve a purpose to Marc's Moon Knight phase and their higher duty. He was fine with having this strict job and with only that in mind at all times, he never really got the taste of real life.

He was out so rarely that his hopes laid that Marc and Steven would finally experience an emotion worthwhile for him to feel the echoes of as well.

Then Clara came along and Jake has been feeling Steven's newfound peace. Oh, and how that peace was more intoxicating and burning than the very whiskey he downed. It was like a soundless mockery trying to twist the knife into an open wound, because "look, you three could have had this all along, but you didn't" was somehow playing at the back of the tranquility on repeat.

It gave him a reason to want to be behind the wheel of the body for a while, get to meet this woman and so far, he hasn't been disappointed. He even understood why Marc had such strong feelings of doubt about her -the sight of Venom he caught outside the bar explained a lot.

"Don't you dare tell her about O.M.N.I.U.M.!" Jake's reflection talked back to him from the whiskey left in his glass while he lowered it back on the table. He winked at his reflection, knowing it was Marc trying to be in control again and turned his attention back on Clara.

Behind her, far across the bar, another mirror reflected back a hallucination of his own making, Marc shaking his head violently, "Don't drag her into this!"

"O.M.N.I.U.M. are hard to spot," Jake started, ignoring any more reflective surfaces. These were the information he had gathered for Marc two months ago, with his own fists, with his own wits and his own suffering paid in spit blood on the pavements of cities deep down he would have preferred to see as a tourist, not a cunning mastermind. "They cover their tracks really well."

"Who are they?" Clara asked in return, interested to finally add something onto the case which she gave up on too long ago. She was willing to dig up the past, considering how much this little name impacted both her and Venom, quite literally.

"A sect, an association, a group, a society...," Jake shook his head slowly. "None of my informants actually settled on just one definition, because I think no one really knows for sure. An acronym no one was able to define for me, but I identified at least a few branches in which they operate: drugs, human trafficking, genetical fields, genocide, terrorism..."

"And space travel," she added.

Jake raised his eyebrows. He was not used to obtaining information so casually in return for so little as his company. "You know that?"

Clara nodded, "I was hit by their rocket when I was sixteen, so I am pretty sure."

"You look astonishing for someone hit by a rocket."

"Compliments will get you nowhere, stick to the subject." And yet, she did mirror his smile, even if faintly, something Jake enjoyed and was grateful for. It made continuing the talk despite the ringing in his ears a much easier task than it should have been.

"It took me the added time of a month to actually put together a couple of pages about O.M.N.I.U.M. and that just because I managed to identify one of its active members for us. Does the name Arthur Harrow mean anything to you?"

Clara shook her head.

"Didn't think so either," he picked up his glass. Inside of it, his reflection was flickering and with it, he could see from peripheral sight that the lights inside the bar were flickering too. Clara was reacting to none of it, obviously, because in her eyes, nothing was happening.

Jake swallowed the remainder of his whiskey, some sort of shot of bravery and turned fully towards the woman, leaning closer, even if that meant he'd have to sit on the very edge of his chair. Clara did not lean back right away, but something told her the differences between Marc and his alters were truly starker than she had imagined when he briefly summarized the situation to her in the junkyard, when she wasn't even fully paying attention due to the fractures Venom had been trying to heal in real time with only one head eaten.

Thinking of nutrition suddenly reminded Clara of her hunger and of that liver pain. She hasn't been feeding Venom for three days now. Perhaps... she should sneak in a stop in the thirty six hour drive waiting for her, to make sure she won't have a liver failure and bleed on any highway.

Her eyes had unfocused for a moment, tiredly getting lost in thoughts, but the fact that Jake dared place his hand over hers on the table, continuing to invade her personal space brought her back to the present. She pulled her hand away from it, for the second time since they met -second time in about five minutes- and sighed, annoyed, "Is that all the information?"

"Marc probably knows more since he definitely must have done something with the information I gathered for him in these... well, it feels like entire weeks since I've been out," Jake shrugged. "But he won't tell me stuff like this, so that's all I know."

"Why's Marc so...?"

"So Marc?" Jake added rather comically.

Clara has been trying real hard to not wonder too much about this peculiar man she had met in the most uncomfortable way possible, but it was inevitable... The white suit, that insane strength, the two other alters. Everything just begged to be asked about. And Jake did tell her he'd answer her question, so even if she felt sort of bad to have to ask him to gossip about himself, she was interested enough about this to ignore the fact that he was enjoying breathing in her close proximity too much.

His stupidly absent smile was intoxicating, but following his shrug, his voice was rather grim, "Marc's been through a lot. He's trying to look out for us and also fulfill his duty to that Moon God of his-"

And then, his voice was strangled to an interruption of his speech. Right before her eyes, before she could even react, Jake fell off the chair and on his knees. "Shit, are you okay?"

"It was literally one glass of whiskey. What a weakling...," Venom commented, after a very long time of just listening. He knew the more he grew agitated, the more he'll have to eat from Clara's liver to survive. He hoped his dear host knew he was getting dangerously hungry and there was only so much self-control he endured before instincts kicked in and blacked him out.

Clara slid off her chair to try and help Jake to his feet but his world was in an earthquake. For him, the lights were flashing in the bar so much that his eyes simply had to shut close. The earthquake got all bottles to cling, fall and then shatter. The noise was unspeakable and if he told Clara anything at all in that moment, if he did anything else at all other than hug himself on the floor, it was all a blur. He was losing consciousness.

Marc opened his eyes, hands on the floor of the bar, on his knees. Before him, he saw a pair of familiar feet and as he sat back on his heels, eyes wide slowly looking upwards, his gaze climbed the tall build of Khonshu, whose skull's empty orbits stared holes down onto him.

"I'm sorry," Marc blurted out.

"What are you sorry for?"

"I doubt meeting Clara went according to your plan," Marc sighed. He wasn't really fully taking into consideration his surroundings anymore. "Or did it?" he questioned instead once Khonshu's answer took its sweet time to be delivered.

"Check your pocket. Jake left a gift for you," Khonshu directed him calmly, though his tone quickly turned irascible once Marc didn't know he meant the right pocket, not the left. "The other pocket, Marc!"

Finally, Marc pulled out of his right pocket a piece of paper, scribbled in english letters which would sooner look like hieroglyphs considering the shaken, ugly handwriting they've suffered through. But since Jake usually left him quite a lot of notes like that, Marc deciphered the message rather quickly. "She's going to San Francisco?" He read out loud.

His first reaction was not what he thought it would be. Because instead of confusion, he felt amusement. "She's going to drive a forty hour drive with no sleep beforehand? Crazy woman..."

"She's going to make the distance in thirty-five hours," Khonshu informed him. "Be in San Francisco before her and find her. There is more she can do for us regarding O.M.N.I.U.M. and Harrow. When you meet her, ask her about the demon."

"Hey!" The bartender dropped a rolled newspaper in a hit across Marc's back of the head.

It was, for him, as if all of a sudden, the surroundings had focused back on him and caught color. He turned around, rather shocked and furrowed his brows up at the stranger. "Yes?"

"Get off the floor and get out of my bar. You've managed to scare all my clients with your speaking in tongues."

Taking one brief look around, Marc realized he was correct, the place was empty now. Clara was gone too, along with her bag of money. "How long ago did the woman I was with leave?" he asked, standing up.

She had left about ten minutes before Marc properly stood up and Jake's words were still playing in her mind, much like the odd imagery of seeing his eyes roll back into his head. Clara had tried to tell him goodbye, to tell him that would be the last time she sees any of them, while he only replied with: don't lose your hope just yet.

"He was all mouth, of course," she muttered.

"Maybe... but he's right about the hope thing," Venom replied thoughtfully. It was just the two of them, again. Just them and the road, on the motorcycle which brings them the thrill of speed, as it had been since she was sixteen. "We're going to fix the thing with Priscila."

Alas, the vacation of meeting the many phases of Marc, finally seemed to have come to an end for Clara. She held the name 'Arthur Harrow' in her memory, but her and Venom's mind shifted back into the old focus, into being the Clara Carita, the perfect sister by day and the living terror by night.

Marc felt a phone vibrating in the inner pocket of the jacket which, because of the memories Steven decided to make that day with Clara, was still a little damp on him. He reached for the phone, but only once he saw it in his hand did he realize it was not his one. It wasn't even Steven's or Jake's. No. This was the phone of the crazy woman, the phone he did not have the chance to return to her between the awkward ride after the call from her sister and the money exchange. Jake came in and he... never got the chance.

"Well, shit," Marc mumbled, stepping out of the bar, into the chilly night. On the screen of Clara's phone lit up the ID name 'Bloodsucker'. Marc closed the screen and put the phone back in his pocket. "Guess we really got to visit San Francisco now."

author's note:    I think I dissociated at least once while writing this.. one moment I had 100 words and writers block, the next, I was nearing 4k words lmao

Mainly, I was just super anxious with introducing Jake Lockley and my personal take on him. Basically, idk what MCU will do with this alter of Marc's, but I referenced the comics for this and I hope it's likableeee

Speaking of Jake, here's the wonderful moodboard Raichia made for him and Clara, marking the last pair dynamics moodboard we need for the story:

I can't even pick favorites. Clara makes a wonderful match for Marc as a whole 👀