The Afterglow

Chapter 16; Longest Night

The screen with all the files disappeared quickly behind the video player. After spending an hour scrolling through all of the photo files, she was left without an answer and the audio file had turned out to be only a song, which she would ask him about later when the opportunity arose.

Despite the frame only showing him from the shoulders up, Gwen could see that Peter had filmed the video from the kitchen, and the little date written in green on the bottom corner of the screen told her that it had been recorded the night before last. At least now she knew where he had gone when she'd felt him get up, and it was much less gross than her original theory that he'd had a meeting with the toilet.

Her chin rested upon her chest as she pushed all other thoughts aside to focus just as he began speaking to the camera. The first few minutes just consisted of him reminiscing over the times he couldn't talk to her using coherent sentences, which seemed a little odd, but she shrugged it off with a silent laugh as the image of their first couple of conversations flashed through her mind. Her laughter fell flat when she caught his next words, and she even rewound the video a few seconds to make sure she had heard right.

“I told you that I was going to fight Venom and put an end to this, but that's only partly true, hence this video. If I had told you my real plan beforehand, I know you would only try to stop me. The thing is, I have gone to fight Venom, and you know as well as I that this won't stop until the symbiote is destroyed, or until it has what it wants; me. So, I'm going into the fight with high hopes but if all else fails, I won't let you be put at risk anymore. If Venom wins, that will end this. That's the reason for this video, I promised to always be honest and this is me doing that incase I don't get the chance to.”

She couldn't have hit the spacebar to pause the video fast enough, but once the screen froze, Gwen put the laptop aside and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and planted her face in the palm of her hands. They had spent hours together coming up with a plan to fight back against Venom, every detail of the trap was carefully thought out, and that whole time she had been completely oblivious that he'd had a backup plan. His video was nothing short of goodbye just in case things went south, and she hated it. Lifting her head, she glanced at the laptop and then slammed it closed. She wouldn't watch the rest, not until everything was over.

After only minutes sat in complete silence with her own thoughts for company, she slowly began to lose the fight to keep her eyes open and eventually drifted into a light sleep. By morning, it would all feel like a bad dream and she would be laughing at how much she'd over thought it all.
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The impact of his body being slammed into the ground is what jolted Peter out of his unconscious state, but he kept his eyes closed. He could feel the presence of the enemy, even without visual confirmation, and alerting them that he was awake would be a bad move.

“Here.” The Lizard hissed. “Foolish Parker tried to reason with the cops, and they did most of the hard work. He's here, and he's injured. Fighting us both at the same time will be impossible. We should use this chance to ki-”

“No! We need him alive… for now.”

Venom? In the haze of pain and half-consciousness, Peter could barely make out the symbiote’s voice, but he didn't have to strain too hard to figure it out. While he and Gwen were busy working on their trap, Venom had been working on one of his own. The Lizard had been nothing but a distraction, and he had fallen for it.

“Alive?” The Lizard spat. “I have waited years for this, why on earth would I give him the chance to let him slip again?”

“Because…”

Venom lingered on the word, and Peter drew in a rattling breath and held it, willing for something to interrupt the conversation and stop what was about to be shared between two of his biggest enemies.