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The church was quiet, and dark, and empty.Late at night, on a Tuesday evening.Eddie gazed up at the cross on the back wall. Twenty feet high, at least. Maybe more.He looked down at the black and white tiles that moved in rows across the floor. Been there since he was a child. Maybe longer.Our Lady of Saints was by no means a large church—by no means a cathedral of any size. But she had her towering cross, and her bell tower, and her blue rose window like the robes of the Mother of God in her alcove. She was 200 years old and seemed unchanging, even with renovations and changes through Eddie's adolescence and adulthood.He knelt at the altar and turned his face up to the shadows, eyes drifting shut as he considered the sorry state of his life."I know you're there, God."His life, building up everything, for what? All that time, that effort, that struggle for validation and recognition—all for a little bit of attention?"At least, I think I know."For what? For his anxiety ("You're not dying, Eddie; it's just a panic attack") to be re-diagnosed as cancer, late stage? ("You're dying, Eddie.") For him to slip up, frazzled and misled; to make a simple mistake and be fired for it? (Maybe not a simple mistake but he couldn't understand how he deserved this.) For his distant, cold father to disown him, wash his hands of him? For his wife to leave him?"I know you don't approve of what I'm about to do."For him to kneel here with a gun in his hands, between his knees, shivering slightly in the cool, dusty night air of Our Lady of Saints."So I thought I'd let you see what I've become..."He felt awful in so many ways."What Spider-Man's done to me."Awful, with the metal between his hands slightly warmed up now, to body temperature, thinking about what Anne would think when she found out. Sure, she'd left him, but... as much as he wanted to blame her, he couldn't. As much as it was his instinct to try and find someone—anyone—to blame for his failings, so he wouldn't have to think about how much he hated himself... he couldn't blame her. He didn't want to hurt her.He was an asshole and he didn’t deserve her."So you'd know it's for the best."He'd fucked up."There's blackness there... I can feel it like it's real. They call him a hero, but he destroyed my life."That's right. It had to be Spider-Man, because otherwise—who? Eddie Brock was a dying man; his life had spiraled out of control in the span of weeks and he was alone with no family, no job, no love, no future for him—all because of what? It had to be someone's fault. There had to be a reason—anything."There's no forgiveness in my heart for him."Anything at all."I know I need to kill myself. It's what I deserve."He knew it was a stretch to blame Spider-Man for the world collapsing out from under his feet, but it was the best he could do.Blame him for his lost job, therefore his lost insurance and his lost marriage and his lost chance at acknowledgment, his lost future. It was Spider-Man's fault. He could get treatment, if not for him. Wouldn't be dwindling away the last of his savings in the midst of a divorce.Wouldn't have spent the last of his money on the pistol in his hands, raised with the barrel up against his jaw in prayer as tears ran down his face.The Virgin Mary before him, halo gleaming, glass tears on her porcelain face as she, too, wept."But all I can think about is...killing him..."On the surface, he meant Spider-Man, sure.But underneath those words, in the back of his thoughts, he wasn't talking about Spider-Man. Not anymore. He didn't really believe himself when he blamed it all on the masked vigilante.All he could think about was death.It wasn't Spider-Man's fault.It wasn't Anne's fault, or his father's fault, or his boss' fault.It wasn't even his own fault.It was nothing. It was the detached universe, the inexorable tide of moving planets and fate woven into the mantle of the sky. God's distance, looking upon His kingdom from such heights Eddie must have seemed like just one more dot of tone making up the big picture. Insignificant, and small. No one out to get him. Just bad luck. Just that one stray strand unraveling from the weaver's loom, black and slender.So it had to be Spider-Man's fault because it had to be someone's fault, and it couldn't be Eddie's fault."Forgive me..."His finger tensed on the trigger but something caressed his knee, then. His hands, his face.Cool and delicate.Dripping down from Mary's sorrowful eyes, down over her outstretched arms and the thousand folds in her robes. Over her covered feet, down the pedestal, across the cold tiles.Across Eddie's thighs and up his torso and around his wrists—"What—" He dropped the gun with a clatter, startling backward on his knees, and for once Lady Luck blessed him as it slid across the waxed tiles harmlessly.This... living shadow loomed over him, slicked and wound across his body, creasing his Sunday best as it tightened on him like some kind of liquid boa constrictor.It engulfed him, and he screamed.Fear, confusion, pain—every centimeter of his body seared, rended apart on the atomic level. Every piece of him shifted aside to make room in the microscopic spaces between his cells. But slowly it began to fade and he found himself kneeling still, arms at his sides and palms out, a beam of moonlight bending off of the Virgin Mary's metal halo and the cross aloft behind her.Pain gave way to a melting relaxation, even as his mind raced with all the blame and grief and resignation, joined further by thoughts of betrayal and loneliness and relief, all whirling together leaving him breathless with his own self-loathing and projection and disillusionment and then—Something small and inquisitive wormed to the forefront. Scared, but curious.A tendril of black lifted from his chest, bobbing like a snake in the open air, back and forth."Are you an angel?"A ripple shivered down its length and he felt that in his own body, detached and alien, but tangible.Amusement, more confusion, a singing desire to understand as it reached out to touch his face—drifted across his brow, and his cheekbones and his lips. Then back in through the surface of his skin, settling just inside, somewhere. Thrumming with an energy that rose the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck.Briefly, the shadow burst out from his back in what must have been the approximate shape of wings before folding back in on itself and into his spine.A surprised laugh broke from Eddie's throat, low and quiet and freeing.He felt it in him, echoing his laughter in the form of a trilling shiver up the back of his neck. Silver bells in his head like starlight, honing into a little prick until they vanished and brought up an image which stopped Eddie short—Spider-Man, again, drawn from his racing thoughts.Church bells and agony.His own shaking hands and the suicide note he had stuck to the fridge with a magnet.His empty bank account.A laboratory, clean and sparse.His empty apartment.Anger.And Peter Parker.It was his fault.Eddie stood—didn't even bother to retrieve his gun. Just left it where it was, a waste of money as he nearly skidded halfway down the aisle on his way out of the church. He moved fast, easy, wild, and as his feet hit the pavement the shadow—the light in his mind—surrounded him until the two of them became one free being.They would make Spider-Man—no, Peter Parker—pay for destroying their career, their life, their marriage, their future. For betraying them and hurting them, an object to be discarded when he realized they lived as much as he lived. For teaching them how to feel and then showing them just how much that hurt.They would make him pay.