Jay Vespertine has once written the lines which unknowingly foretold the beginning of their once in a full moon encounter, the first piece in a domino of fate. Separated by destinies, linked by the moon. However, no scribbles on papers or writings on walls could have appreciated the evolution through the phases.

Above San Francisco, the moon was long into its waning gibbous phase, getting ready to pass into its third quarter by the end of the next week. Its spiritual meaning laid along the lines of looking inward, rather than at the havoc of the world around, slowing down not to cease taking action, but to focus everything on the needs of the self: to protect it, to nurture it. This moon, prepared for the transitions to come, dimmed its light to leave room to regain composure.

The moon called for rest but there was no rest left in Clara Carita's angry soul, nor Jake Lockley's easily swayed heart.

Across the narrow alley from them, Louisa Mccarthy, because that was apparently the name of the front desk lady, was still pinned to the wall by Venom's arm, coming from Clara's shoulder and wrapping around Louisa's bottom half of her head. The woman's whole body was drenched in her own blood, from calculated puncture wounds, from one bullet hole and a broken bone sticking out of her skin. That same crimson was under Clara's nails, painting scarlet stars on her cheeks and chin, and staining her clothes with the mess she had to work through to get the very bare minimum of information out of this brainwashed minion of Harrow's.

"Something tells me this silence between us might as well mean you didn't miss me at all," Jake sighed. It's been twenty minutes since he fired that bullet and he was pretty sure it did nothing but annoy Clara, even if the echo of emotion he was left with from Marc told him that she needed them that night. It surely didn't look like it to him, not now that the carnage was over and she calmed down from a high of adrenaline she rode with a grace he felt absolutely blessed to witness.

Violence was an art into the eyes of a man who didn't care to seem anything else but what he was: a criminal, a thief, the sort of man you wouldn't like being the target of. This violence was never going to scare him, the gore was not something his eyes have never seen, though usually, he was the one whose fists got bloody.

Clara ignored his joke with a sharp inhale. That was Jake's cue to search his pockets and finally give the woman a tissue long forgotten in his jacket's pocket by Steven, who liked being prepared at all times. Surely, Jake was certain that tissue was meant for anything other than being held by his hand and tampered against the gorgeous skin of a woman in a try to help wipe the blood off.

She shrugged his hand away, grabbed the tissue herself and started violently wiping off any inch of her face that she could under two seconds before scrunching that thing into her fist. "Are they all like that?" Clara finally nodded towards Louisa, bordering the state of blacking out from all the pain she had endured for twenty minutes of torture. Yet even helpless as she was, Clara wasn't leaving her out of her sight, not even as she found the need to walk away, towards that other wall, and sit right down on the dirty, smelly ground.

Lunatics. Fanatics. True believers of the cause Louisa presented as "liberating the world of flaws". They idolized Arthur Harrow and his research to better the humans as a unitary whole.

Jake sighed. He too had lowered down, to be at her level, even without properly sitting. His back leant against the wall, knees supporting his now draped wrists, while his head was, at all times, turned to the side, watching the woman he had forced himself aware of. He knew he had caught her at a bad time, but even so, there was no denying it: he liked this side of her too. The side of worry creases, of dangerous breaths and of sharp words without mercy to poor souls such as his.

He nodded for her, because how could he ever deny her any answer. Him, the very personification of the other's lack of emotional awareness. "They are," Jake confirmed. "All I could track down myself, all wearing that symbol." Even if he disliked that their talk seemed to want to gravitate just around work, he breathed close to her defensive presence and the company in a dark alley was better than his usual lonesome walk.

"She has no knowledge of O.M.N.I.U.M. though," Clara opened her fist and started playing with the bloodstained tissue. Her eyes looked at all the wounds she inflicted on the woman to get anything valuable out of her. It should have been enough, if she really knew more. "We have nothing, but the delusional explanation of a goal to fix the human race and the fact that Arthur Harrow has always kept tabs on me."

That last detail was perhaps the most disturbing, because it meant Marc and her have always had something in common, even if they've never been aware of it.

"It's not nothing," Jake disagreed. "In fact, she said far more than what Arthur's followers were usually willing to speak to me about. Most of the time, they were far more scared about him than about dying, which was tough to work with. People fearless of death and careless about pain are hard to persuade out of secrecy."

"Which means we can't even trust everything she said," Clara nodded. "Because she could have as well been placed there as a distraction, someone he could spare." She hated nothing more than the idea of being bettered and played. Clara was very aware of the fact that she never got around finishing high school or attempting to get a college degree was going to weigh her down in life. It stopped her from ever having a real chance at a job, and now... she was starting to feel like it would stop her from doing right by her symbiote and punishing the people who hurt his species.

"Well, you never told me how exactly you've met him," Jake alluded his inquiry. "And if you told Marc, then I still wouldn't know..."

"He sat down next to me, in the waiting room, the day I went to try and get my sister back on the course, pay her debt and everything. Actually... everyone looked at him," Clara's jaw clenched. "It was planned."

"I admit, Marc may have warned me about this," Jake gulped dryly, but even feeling guilty, he didn't look away from her. "He told me not to give you Arthur's name and I ignored him. But, at least by what Louisa told us, it finally makes sense why Khonshu tried forcing Marc to stay with you."

Jake knew his choice of words. He knew exactly what he was doing when he accentuated that very word, even though every fiber of his being aware of the other personalities knew none of them felt forced to stay in her presence anymore. He was intently watching for how that word made her react, because he could have fallen in love a thousand times over, it wouldn't have made a difference if she didn't care at all about him to begin with.

But, easily said, Clara's reaction was satisfying. She chewed on the inside of her cheek, visibly holding back a grimace at the reminder that saving them at the docks, opening up to her in the park... it was all the divine guidance, not really Marc.

In an uncontrollable instant, she recalled the park and the question Marc had no idea why he was supposed to ask. A smile immediately showed on her face. That crooked moment of realization that reminded the corners of her lips to lift a little. "Khonshu," Clara repeated, then got up from the ground.

"I'm starting to dislike that guy," Venom mumbles, somewhere deep into her mind.

Jake followed to stand as well. "What about him?"

"He made Marc ask me about the demon I know without telling him why. He gave us the exact next step all along and all we had to do was follow."

"Considering how slow Marc is sometimes," Khonshu finally made himself seen to his avatar. Though he's omnipresent, in the back of his mind, it is only when needed that the presence gets louder and more physical. Just then, Jake refused to turn his head and look at how the God stood behind him. "Clara's slowness cannot be judged."

With the Venom holding Louisa to the wall, she pulled her to the center of the street, maneuvered her to kneel and without a single second of hesitation, that tentacle hardened into a blade and slit the woman's throat opened as it left to hold that gash and squeeze the blood to pool in the middle of the alley.

Jake did not understand what was happening. He was aware only of emotions, not of actual events which occurred with his other selves. Luckily for him though, as she drained the blood out of Louisa, Clara looked back up to him and oh, how he enjoyed finally being seen after a whole twenty minutes of being ignored, "I know a demon. Paul. He's a detective, a much better one than us."

"I don't know," Jake tilted his head, "I'm a pretty good detective too, sweetheart."

"Haven't seen you working."

"Found out where you lived though, didn't I?"

"What a charming stalker...," Clara added sarcastically, then glanced down to step back and now stand in the pool of blood forming. "But Paul must be an important piece if your God needed to know about him. According to Michael, he hasn't been answering his calls at all lately. Sure, he's not a technology addict, but perhaps he has something we need to know. So, we're going the old fashioned way of talking to a demon."

Venom shook the corpse a little to get the last drop of blood he could then left it back down, next to the wall, fully retracting under Clara's skin. She lowered down and stuck a finger in the pool of blood, drawing a circle, counter clockwise. "Orrozoth," she whispered to the blood as her finger lifted out of the pool and Venom appeared out again energetically to lick it clean.

The puddle vibrated and though Jake was very interested in where this was going, he looked on both sides of the street, to make sure they wouldn't be interrupted from what seemed like quite the satanic ritual to him.

At first, an unruly sound reverbed out of the blood, making its surface stabilize and the edges of the puddle even out, forming a perfect circle on the pavement. After that, the sounds started clearing out and taking a step closer, Jake was certain he heard a man's grunts come out of it.

"Paul?" Clara asked carefully.

"What?" A strong voice shouted out of the puddle. "Clara? Is that you? Bloody hell, took you long enough, woman!"

"A British demon?" Jake huffed amused.

"Who's that with you? Doesn't sound like the bloodsucker."

"Morbius is not here, I'm with a... friend."

"Don't bullshit me, Clara, you don't have friends," Paul's sarcasm didn't cease to come through even as his voice was sounding oddly, fluctuating in intensity. "Apart from that ex of yours. What a pussy he is..."

"What ex?" Jake was not good at keeping himself in check. A lot of emotional awareness came with the lack of any filter at all when it came to it.

Fortunately enough, Clara had priorities that night and they did not revolve around pointing out to Jake that he held far too much jealousy for someone who wasn't even her lover. "Why does it sound like you're making a physical effort there, Paul?"

"Because I'm fucking your mother," he irascibly replied, only to continue on a much louder tone, with the real angered answer. "Because you called at the worst bloody time! I'm trying not to get devoured by hounds here."

"Where's Good Boy?"

"Wounded, for unholy's sake," Paul puffed. "They hurt my hellhound, Clara." Now that they knew he was in the middle of a chase, it made sense to associate the sounds with bangs of objects falling over, of fellow passerbys screaming at the happenings. Jake also distinguished the low roar of the supposed hounds.

"Hope you're planning on making them pay. If you're close by I can give you a hand..."

"I'm in Casablanca," Paul cut her off. "Hold on, gotta obliterate this cunt first. Incendium!" Some painful wails continued out of his incantation and finally, Paul seemed to have sighed relieved. "Listen, Clara, get your asses to Casablanca as soon as possible, because some of these motherfuckers trying to summon Hell on Earth have O.M.N.I.U.M. burnt onto their skin. I was meaning to call you, but honestly, I fed the human phone to Good Boy ages ago. Ah... Only one dead person for the sacrificial call? Yeah, you've just run out of minutes with me. Better see ya before I murder this entire sect for you."

The puddle of blood soaked right into the pavement, leaving behind not even the stain of red. Clara sighed.

"Are you really friends with a demon?"

"Wouldn't call Paul my friend even if I had to get myself a good place in Hell," Clara sat up and turned towards Jake. "But you heard him. We need to go to Casablanca, so can you bring Marc out for a second?"

"You're already bored with me? But I barely just got here," Jake whined, because the second she, the one whom he got to idolize himself by feeling the faint brushes of emotions she created for the others, requested another personality of his, he felt his heart break.

"Let Marc take over," Khonshu growled from behind him and Jake turned around, pointing his finger up.

"Shut up!"

Though Clara was back to not seeing his hallucinations, she understood what was happening this time around. "Khonshu's here?"

"He's always here," Jake turned back to her and his hands rested down on her shoulders, slid on her arms, down until he could grasp her hands and bring them up between them. His head had long bowed before her in this process. "He's always here," he repeated, much sadder, earning the exasperated sigh of the God behind him. "For Marc, for me, even for Steven, even if Steven never sees or hears him. He never lets us take a single step without him watching."

"You over dramatic worm...," Khonshu continued his complaints.

"Am I really that unimportant to you, my dearest?" Jake's eyes finally moved up to meet Clara's gaze, after a quick lingering on staring at her lips and at that little drop of blood she must have missed next to them. She, on the other hand, did not understand in the slightest why Jake was so keen on being close to her, why he was clinging to her hands and acting as if in love. She didn't understand why he'd fall in love so she just assumed it was part of his unique personality to flirt with anything that has a pulse.

"Should I punch him for you?" Venom checked in with his host, but Clara couldn't answer, because Jake continued talking.

"Am I that easy to forget that you'd rather have the others? Break my heart swiftly, if that's the case."

"I don't prefer the others," Clara corrected him, eyebrows furrowing. She tried to get her hands away from his, but Jake clung a little tighter. "In fact, I don't prefer anyone and I would much rather go to Casablanca alone, so I can have my stupid revenge and closure about those people, but so it happens that the God of the Moon will force Marc to follow me anyhow. I want to save us time, but sure, if you want to be the one to explain to Steven what's going on when he suddenly wakes up in a different city, go ahead and remain in charge of the body."

Jake listened with wide eyes throughout the talk and once it ended, he realized she was just as blind emotionally as the original owner of his body. So, it put a smile back on Jake's lips, "How I adore hating that you are right." His expression relaxed to truly embody those words and he stepped closer.

"As you wish then, my love," Jake sighed gradually. Below their meeting gazes, his big thumbs massaged her knuckles slowly and faintly, far more gentle than how his hands usually operated on victims he needed information out of. From her, he needed only attention, that attention he tasted as a fleeting, blurred memory, from Marc and especially from Steven. He was jealous that they got the true thing, while he took the scraps and crumbs of it.

"But only because I am your humble devotee, and your wish is my command."

"Is it?" Clara played along in a final moment of realizing that if he stared any longer at her, she might actually consider the beauty of his eyes, the charm of his features and the magnetism of his presence.

"Anything you ask, I am compelled to do."

"Then can I ask you to do something now?"

Jake straightened up, excitement building up in him so very visibly now that they were close enough, by his own choice, for Clara to feel his breath hitch. She inhaled that faint cologne while he nodded himself into holding his breath.

"Get your hands off me, Jake." Only Clara could have said a threat in a seductive voice, to make the man both ache and laugh at her request. But he complied, stepping back and letting go of her hands. She didn't really expect them to feel so cold after he let go, but it meant his touch was warmer than she initially realized.

"I only ever have one request from you, my love... Don't forget me." Jake's smile was the definition of melancholic moonlight, of obscure loneliness through the prism of an extrovert.

The smile was contagious and the sadness was a viral disease that even Clara's numb soul seemed to find it hard not to understand. "See you around, Jake," she nodded.

"Him having a crush on us does not shock me at all, but how do we feel about this?" Venom pondered in Clara's mind exactly what she's been wondering too, minus the lack of shock about the sudden love. "I mean, he shares a body with Steven, but also with Marc," Venom pretty much voiced that name as a curse word.

"It doesn't matter," Clara mumbled to herself for a second. "They are only here because of Khonshu."

"In the same way we were only there for Steven because of the money," Venom criticized.

She had no time to react to that comment, because Clara focused back her eyes and realized Jake's were rolling back into his head. She remembered Marc asking her to look away and thought it would be decent to do that again, respecting his privacy, but unfortunately, Jake's legs betrayed him while he was surrendering control.

His knees buckled and Clara instinctively stepped forward, catching him from falling over.

"Holy shit, he's heavy!" Venom gasped for her while she tried to support his weight without falling over too. Her symbiote's strength had to aid her.

Jake's body was limp for only a couple of seconds, the consciousness returned to his left leg first, then to his arms, which wrapped around her body, in a desperate hug, while his forehead, rested on her shoulder, now shifted to the side until his nose bumped on her neck's skin. He held to her even tighter, even if he stood on his own now.

"Marc...?" Clara whispered, hesitantly.

"Who's Marc?" a posh accent answered her.

It was Steven and that caused Clara and Venom both to panic. All it would have taken then for everything to go formidably wrong was Steven lifting his head. Then, he would have glanced over Clara's shoulder and seen the dead woman behind. They couldn't have that! Though neither of them liked lying, this violence and truths were not their story to explain to Steven, not their heartbreak to feel.

So Clara's arms wrapped around him tighter and spun them around so that she was the one looking at the corpse, not Steven. "Mark my words that this is the best hug I've ever had," she faked a laugh, making sure to squeeze him warmly and affectionately, not at all as desperate as she really was. While she distracted Steven, Venom formed out of her feet two tentacles to go around the couple and pick up the corpse of Louisa, tossing it into the dumpster.

The strong noise made Steven flinch, "What was that?"

"Just a cat," Clara replied quickly, Venom retracting back under her skin as soon as Steven leant back to take a look at her. His eyes stopped on the red spot next to her lips.

"This is the first time I see you with your lipstick smudged," he pointed out, still blinking slowly, still confused that it was night and they were in a smelly place.

That confusion wouldn't leave him even after Clara more or less reassured him that they've spent the day together and he will surely recall it after a good sleep. Steven Grant returned to his hotel room with a true headache from everything. It felt like moments ago he was still excited after how well their date went, moments ago he decided he wouldn't sleep at all so his memory problems don't have a chance to strike... Apparently, they did a number on him again, no matter his tries.

Clara returned to their rented, underground office, sat in Michael's chair, since he was long gone, on his task to look after her sister. Venom's head kept her company, looking at her phone as concerned as he did. "I need to let Marc know about this trip to Casablanca, but I can't just message Steven about it."

"Sounds more like a them problem and less of an us problem, Clara," Venom hummed.

"Yes, it's their fault their system is so messed up by lies, but we can't just wreak havoc in it. Imagine if someone came between our symbiosis and tried to separate us."

Venom shook his head in a shiver, then stopped, pointing in her contact list, something she didn't notice until he did. "You have a Marc Spector in your phone."

"Different number...," Clara sighed relieved. "Okay, I'll text him the details."

Steven was five minutes into his room, confused about time, busy worrying that he really lost his mind and trying to make sense of everything. He looked for his phone, to perhaps shed some light onto this, but when he started searching his jacket, he first found the gun.

His heart stopped and he dropped the gun, leaping back until his back hit the door. "What is that... doing...?" Mindlessly, his hands kept on searching his pockets and they found something which resembled the shape of a phone. He looked down and a second panic source was there: that wasn't his phone.

It lit up that very moment with a message and the sender's name made him pale significantly. "Clara?" his voice trembled over her name.

"Steven-"

The deep voice made Steven lift his eyes and look right into the window's reflection where he didn't look like himself anymore. His expression in the reflection was glaring at him, that him was serious and slightly worried. But how could a reflection be different?

"You need to get back to sleep, you shouldn't be here right now," Marc spoke as calmly as he could, but just then, he was struggling to take over.

"What...?" Steven's pitched voice was shaking at the fright these words and situations were causing him.

"We don't have time for this," Khonshu's much louder voice sounded from everywhere around Steven, only he had no idea what was happening.

"Who was that? What is going on here? The gun and... Why is Clara...?"

With that last question, Steven's eyes dropped back to the phone in his hand and opened the screen.

"Steven, that's not yours."

"It has my name in it...," he could barely comprehend the entirety of the message, just that Clara talked about him in it.

"Oh, for my sake," Khonshu sighed out and interfered by stirring up a proper wind inside the room, strong enough to detach the lamp from the nightstand and throw it at Steven's face. It took all of Khonshu's formless might to do that, to know his avatar's personality out, but it was worth it, because once Steven lost consciousness, Marc gasped back in control, hand flying to his nose, which was bleeding.

"I told you to not hurt Steven, he has nothing to do with this...," Marc mumbled, knowing damn well Khonshu was listening.

"He was standing in our way. If you don't want him hurt, make sure he doesn't interfere again, Marc. Now, you have a message to read."

author's note:    Casablanca, babyyyy *me, being hyper and ignoring how everything is getting complicated*

imma be posting the act divider tomorrow, but chapter one of act iii will be published on Wednesday after I see ep 3 (not that it will be inspired by it, it's just me boosting my inspo). After that, my updates will be one every two or three days for the week because I will be on a family holidayy 💕💖
I hope that's going to be okay too