"Are you sure this will work, Eddie?"

"Not at all. But I guess it's worth a shot." Even though the graveyard was deserted, he kept his voice low just in case. Though, with the exhumed grave and the hill of dirt beside it standing just a few feet away from him, being overheard talking to himself was the least of his worries. Surprisingly the actual digging wasn't so difficult, with Symby simply absorbing the dirt and displacing it somewhere else until they reached Looter's coffin. The hard part was trying not to throw up when he cracked the coffin open.

Cletus and Eddie had gotten lucky with their resurrections; one had mostly been preserved by the vacuum of space and the other hadn't been dead nearly long enough for any rot to set in. But Norton… well, he'd been dead for at least two weeks now. And even with his body being embalmed and made-up as well as could be managed, the only thing worse than the sight was the smell. And this whole time he'd thought fresh dead bodies were bad enough for his conscience... Eddie had to have Symby plug his nose before he could get close enough to push the Norn stone into the wound carved through Norton's chest, the wound that still stood out among the rotting ulcers all over the rest of him.

In every tragedy, every cliche drama story, every revenge fantasy Eddie had seen (and some he'd even made up for himself), they always said that taking one life wouldn't bring another back. That was still true, but he didn't see it as an exchange. More like a price to be paid; if you take one life, it's on you to replace it with something else.

He just hoped Mom wasn't watching his latest sin of grave-defiling. Though, with Symby's anxious voice in his ears as he sat on the nearest bench waiting for his own redemption, she easily filled in that role of giving him all the guilt he deserved.

"Even if it does work… what if he doesn't change? What if we're just putting another criminal back on the streets? What if he really does become a killer one day?"

She was echoing his own questions at him, either deliberately or subconsciously, since he'd been asking them to himself ever since he came up with the idea. In the end, he'd just went and asked Felicia for one of the stones she'd swiped and took it from there. She hadn't asked why he wanted one, not when he said only said he wanted to 'set something right'. Either she could see for herself what he planned to do, or she just trusted him enough that it wouldn't be something she'd regret helping with. He couldn't really tell. Having anyone that wasn't an alien trust him was taking some getting used to.

Being in love with someone that wasn't an alien, that was strange too. Eventually he'd stop being surprised from every morning he woke up next to her, sometimes with Symby wreathed between their fingers and joining their hands together in black gloves. But until then, he was happy to let it make him humble.

After all, the last thing he needed, if it turned out he could raise the righteous dead after all, was a God complex (again).

"I think we'll scare him straight," he said, looking left and right and behind for anyone coming near. He doubted anyone would be visiting after 9pm and Symby helped camouflage him in the dark, away from the streetlights lining the paths, but in a city bloated with superheroes he'd learned to be cautious. If Parker came across him he'd be itching for an excuse to throw Venom into a skyscraper, and that would have been the case even if Venom didn't steal his ex.

Eddie kept watching the hole in the ground, one leg bouncing restlessly, waiting for something to happen, just as he had been doing for the last five minutes. He hadn't thought it was possible to be bored while waiting on a miracle, but he'd been proven wrong about a lot of things lately.

"Any day now, Norton… c'mon, we got places to be." He was supposed to be having dinner with Felicia that night, and though they were both practically nocturnal (mostly due to them keeping each other up most of the night) he didn't want to leave it too late to get something for her. He'd noticed that any places still open after midnight usually just stopped trying to make anything taste good; why bother when all the customers were probably half-asleep?

"Maybe we missed a step," Symby suggested, flashing through Eddie's memories of Cletus' revival for anything that hadn't stood out before. But he shook his head even as the snapshots came through his head.

"I don't think so. Seemed pretty simple when Hood did it, just… shove a stone in them and boom, they wake up. Maybe it's just taking longer to patch him up or something." That seemed the most likely explanation for why it was taking so damn long, especially with the state he'd found the body in (he was almost grateful for the after-images of Cletus gasping back to life, since his corpse had been slightly less stomach-churning to look at). He sighed, hunching over with his elbows on his knees. "Did Felicia do anything different?"

"What do you mean?" Symby was confused, which made Eddie confused as well.

"You know, when… when she used one on me, after I died."

"Felicia didn't bring you back with the stone, Eddie."

"...Huh?" Even though it was a fact sent right through his brain cells, it still took him a few seconds to process it. As usual his head was stubborn to accept anything that told him he'd been thinking wrong this whole time.

"It's strange…" Symby didn't seem to really register the shockwaves of protest from his neurons, too lost in her own musing over it. "I saw Carnage empty your throat. The cut was so deep that I knew I couldn't heal the damage fast enough... but your heart didn't stop beating. I could still feel it when I bonded to Felicia. And when we found you, the wound was gone. We have no idea what happened in between."

This was the first Eddie had heard of any of this; neither Felicia nor Symby had made any question out of how he survived, nor how his wound had impossibly healed. Symby had hidden certain things from him before, during darker days, but this wasn't a case of that. She thought he'd known all along that someone else had risen him, that he knew who it was and just didn't think it was important enough to talk about.

Eddie was still blinking in shock, grasping at the implications of this revelation as they flew right at him. "But... Felicia's the only one who had those stones on her. If she didn't use one on me, then who the hell did?!"

Symby didn't have an answer for him- not at first, at least. But then Eddie realised he had been wrong yet again. The only people who had those stones were Felicia… and the one she stole them off of. But if she'd missed one...

"OH MY GOD!"

Eddie's head snapped up, and he saw Norton standing there in his dirt-stained suit, staring down at his own gravestone. He'd been so lost in the possibility of having to owe the Hood of all people such an enormous favour that he hadn't noticed the former cadaver had finally dragged himself out of his coffin.

Luckily, Norton hadn't yet noticed him. He was a little too busy piecing together his not-death and making sure all his pieces where were they were supposed to be, hands constantly returning to his head as if to make sure it was actually there on his shoulders.

"Oh my… God," he repeated, through a throat so hoarse he must have swallowed some dirt while he was down there. "Gods? Jesus… what the hell…?"

"Welcome back, Looter."

"GAAAAH! NO! PLEASE, PLEASE NO-!

Venom expected Norton to be surprised by his sudden appearance behind him, but he hadn't expected him to jump so far that he almost fell right back into his grave. He managed to save Norton from the six-foot fall by grabbing his arm with a tendril and claw, wrenching him back onto solid ground even as he cowered and flinched away.

Eventually Norton realised he was really still alive; first looking down at the mud tumbling loose at the edge of the hole to thud back onto his coffin, then slowly summoning the strength to face his rescuer. Venom released his arm to make things a little easier, cocking his head in curiosity at everything the stone had managed to fix. Norton was pale from so many days underground, his eyes bloodshot and body still shaking from getting used to breathing again, but if it wasn't for the mud on his burial suit no-one would have been able to tell he'd been dead just five minutes ago.

Although, from how he gulped and looked in shock at his arm, as if surprised he still had it attached after Venom held it, he looked like he wished he still was.

"Did…" He gulped again, swallowing down mud and maggots. "D-d-did you…?" He pointed a shivering finger down at the hole he'd called his home for the last two weeks.

"Did we kill you?" Venom asked for him. "No. But we did resurrect you."

Norton squinted, likely not buying it for a second (and why would he? Venom hadn't exactly advertised himself as a savior of the D-class villains) even as he patted his chest, over where his heart was pierced. But, looking left and right in quick glances so his eyes never left Venom, he saw nothing else that would easily explain his situation. He straightened his back, gaining a little more confidence now that it was less likely he was about to die all over again.

"Wh… why? N-Not that I'm not grateful, I-I mean, but…?"

Venom let the moment hang for a while, pulling his lips over his fangs with effort as he leaned down. Norton still flinched as far as the space between him and his grave would allow, though he seemed more worried about being splattered with drool than anything else.

"Because the man who killed you had no right to," Venom told him, "so we sent him to death in your place. And someone dear to us seems to think you're worth giving one last chance. But if you blow this chance… well, we brought you here from hell." Then Venom took a firm hold of his shoulder, deliberately squeezing down to the bone with his claws. "Do you know what that means, Norton?"

As he narrowed his eyes, Norton's bloomed and almost burst out of their sockets. Venom could feel his skeleton trying to flee from his skin, all fear focused from that single point of contact on his shoulder, as he struggled to even shake his head.

"It means that we can send you right back if we need to." When Venom finally released him again, he'd somehow gone even paler, practically glowing like the surface of the moon.

"I'll… I-I'll be good." Every word that wasn't a stutter was reduced to a squeak as he edged backwards, skirting the grave to hide behind the stone with his inaccurate death date carved into it. "I'll be good, I-I swear, just… please don't make me… don't send me back-!"

Venom cocked his head again, this time wondering what Norton's afterlife would have looked like, if he was so terrified of going back to it. Who he would have seen, what they would have said to him. Hopefully something along the lines of 'stop stealing shit'. Or at least to try it with a better name.

"That's what we like to hear." Venom restored his grin to its full glory, and with a single sweep of his arm he cut the mountain of dirt piled beside the grave in half, shoving it back into the hole where it belonged. "Now go home to your poor sister."

Norton nodded furiously even as he stumbled over other much more intact graves, the ground in front still bulging from being disturbed. "Right! Right, yeah, yeah! I'll… I'm going. You-you won't see me again, I swear!"

Venom watched him scurry away as he kicked the last of the dirt into the empty grave and pulled the headstone free from the ground, since it wasn't needed any more.

"One more thing," he called out, making Norton almost trip over the edge of the path he was running towards. "If you ever see Black Cat, be sure to thank her. She's the reason you're alive."

Norton kept nodding blindly, his only concern being getting far the hell away from any more dirt. He'd realise the significance of it when he caught up on all the news he'd missed from being buried. And, like the rest of the city, he'd probably be really grossed out. Eddie had to laugh at that, keeping Venom's grin on his face as Symby pulled back from it.

"I don't know about you, Symby, but I think we did pretty good tonight," he said proudly.

"I think we should have eaten him while he was fresh," she added.

"Symby…"

"I'm kidding!" She set loose a jolt of endorphins to prove it to him. "Jeesh, sometimes I think Felicia is the only human on this planet with a sense of humour."

Eddie rolled his eyes as he pulled out his phone, this time keeping it in a more conventional pocket in his jeans so his whole clothes wouldn't shake whenever it vibrated. Though, there was only one person he had it set to vibrate for.

"Speaking of her, she wants to know what time we're having dinner at."

"Ooh, I want steak!"

"Sorry, love," he said while tapping out a reply to Felicia. "We already decided on Chinese last night."

"What? Where was I during this?!"

"It was when we were watching the robot movie and you were hiding behind her couch cause you got upset at Ironhide dying." He pocketed the phone again, stamped down the last of the dirt over the hole they'd filled in, and breathed a sigh of relief as he finally headed for the graveyard exit.

"Anyway, you're on a diet," he added as he started walking.

"WHAT?!" Symby flooded his veins with her own stress hormones, cortisol bloating his bloodstream even as he grinned.

"Just kidding." That's what she got for saying he had no sense of humour, and though he could feel her somehow pouting without actual lips she let up on the endocrine attack. "Don't worry, she said she'd have something for you."

"...Is it chocolate?"

"It might be."

"I love her, Eddie."

"You and me both, darling."