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hybridequalist · 10 months

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At long last, it's out. I had to save this draft from the Ao3 shutdown, but thankfully it's all still here.

Previous Chapter (tumblr link)

Taglist (you can be added upon request): @ sesquipedalian-aficionado @nesli26, @manga-crazy, @venomemes, @galleyleelol, @makingtimemine, @jackie-sugarskull, @nightshade7117, @skysthelimit291, @randomshizzles101, @inumorph, @snow-massacre, @phantom-fangirl-stuff, @pixellated-sparks, @vsalamandor2, @otaku-mai, @snarky-badger

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It was a weird feeling to be visiting one of the exam rooms in the hospital while off the clock--it was like you were playing pretend, sitting on the exam table like any other patient as if you didn't mop these floors or empty the trash cans regularly. Even weirder to be with someone who was not only ready for but expecting their thoughts to be read.

"I'm not going to lie to you, this was actually pretty open and shut in terms of examination," Dr Dan remarked, pulling out the MRI images from his folder. "There was no damage that we could detect from your fall."

"No signs of any contact with a symbiote either. Can't say I understand the specific neurology of how it happened, but the connection you experienced with him left no physical impact."

How was he so good at communicating on two fronts? He couldn't have had practice with it--you didn't get the impression Dr. Dan had regular superhuman contact (leaving out Venom and Eddie). Maybe it had to do with how much he had going on in his head; he was an observer and was always analyzing stuff.

"There was one thing I took note of that I wanted to bring up, however," he continued aloud, picking up one of the printouts and placing it on a clipboard. He pointed to a specific gray spot, near the lower middle of the brain. "This is your amygdala--the 'fear center' of your brain. On most people, it doesn't show up as prominently as this on an MRI."

You held up your hand to stop the doctor and pulled out your phone, checking that the volume was up.

"Is that a problem I need to worry about?" the device vocalized for you.

"Not necessarily; it usually means that your amygdala has increased activation compared to most other patients we scan." Dr. Dan frowned to himself, something occurring to him. "It's not exactly the same, but it does resemble how the amygdala looks in patients with a PTSD diagnosis. However, that isn't something that can be diagnosed by MRI and I am not qualified to make that call regardless. Now, moving on to these other scans..."

He pulled out a few of the printouts, handing them over and waiting expectantly, his face not revealing his giddy excitement. You stared down at the monochrome images of your own brain from multiple angles (though thankfully not a cursed front-facing one), but they looked the same as any you'd ever seen before--they might as well be a stock image used in a medical drama.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm supposed to see in these pictures," you commented, handing back the rectangles of glossy paper.

"That's just it: these are the scans I took while you were actively 'reading my mind'! They look completely normal! It's fascinating!"

"The procedure was similar to brain mapping, which basically tells anyone who knows how to read an MRI what parts of the brain are active at any given moment," he continued aloud, taking back the pictures and rifling through them to pick one in particular. "This one shows that your brain was engaged in the same way as when someone is actively listening to a conversation. But it's this one that's really interesting."

He flipped around another picture and you noticed this one seemed a bit clearer on some brain areas than the other scans you'd looked at.

"This scan, however, is when I asked you to pay attention to the memory. As you can see here--" he lightly touched towards the front part of the brain "--your emotional centers were wholly engaged, borderline hyper-activated which is why they're so clear. The language center is almost completely inactive by comparison."

"Now the exact reasons are a little unclear because there's not exactly any research about 'mind reading', but if I were to hypothesize as to why, I'd say that while passively 'listening' to thoughts, your brain operates like you're listening to a vocal conversation. But when it comes to focusing on a memory, you experience something closer to total empathy--you experience the memories of other people as if living through that experience in reality. When you connected with Venom's memory, you experienced this total empathy with a sapient but entirely non-human organism, meaning that your human sensory understanding of the world clashed with Venom's alien sensory experience, which is probably what caused the mental shock you reported; because Venom doesn't have the same senses as a human being when unbonded, his memory overwhelmed your brain trying to translate the information."

Dan was so excited. This was something new, something that had never been experienced or studied and he was lucky enough to witness it. But he was intentionally repressing that feeling, making a conscious effort to watch your face and remind himself that you were a person who potentially had some trauma mixed in with all the things he found so interesting.

He was really good at his job, unlike many others you could name.

You were in the midst of trying to think of a good response when suddenly your phone began to vibrate aggressively. You rushed to shut it off, feeling an involuntary flush color your body at the sudden interruption.

"I have a trolley to catch," you explained, standing up and gathering your things. "I can't afford to miss my errands before work today."

"It's perfectly alright," Dan assured you, giving a gentle smile. "I'll go ahead and note that you appear in good health, but if anything else comes up, do not be afraid to give me a call--or whatever form of communication suits you best. Eddie knows how to reach me directly if anything concerning develops."

You nodded, staring down at your shoes as you put in your earbuds, starting up music to drown out the thoughts of anyone you might pass--people tended to unconsciously advertise hyper-personal details or very gross things in medical contexts. If you had to "see" one more weird rash secondhand, it would be too soon. Oh yeah, and the small issue of lots of people being in simultaneous pain that made your body ache in sympathy.

Idly, you opened your phone calendar and looked at your list for today's outing, walking through the steps in your head for how to make your afternoon as easy as possible. As you stepped into the lobby, someone shoulder checked you as they went to grab a drink from the water cooler. Not gently either; there was some impact that hinted it might have been intentional.

"Shoot, I'm sorry! Thought I cleared you. Are you okay?"

You glanced whomever had just crashed into you and were met with a wall of pastels--blonde hair streaked with sky blue highlights, a pale yellow tee peeking from under white, sleeveless denim, dotted with vibrant pins of all shades and slogans. Focusing in, you realized that despite the height of your new forced acquaintance, their face was very young--they couldn't be more than sixteen at the oldest.

"I knew I shouldn't have worn heels today! But you're good, right? No injury?"

Nothing they said felt out of place, the tone was an appropriate level of concerned and the volume was just right for a normal conversation, but their thoughts were focused on anything but actual worry for your well-being. They were looking you over with a distinct focus, looking for any exposed skin and trying to strategize how they might be able to make some casual contact without appearing overbearing or drawing attention.

Aware that many eyes were on you and not wanting to draw any suspicion that you were escaping, you waved your hand in a "don't worry about it" way and adjusted one of your earbuds, praying it would be enough to signal that you were going to mind your own business and they should do the same.

Their mind confirmed you had succeeded, but your chest tightened as you felt their determination to put their hand on you spike. It didn't have any obviously malicious undertones--no lust, no violence, no harmful intent--but the simple fact they wanted to make skin-to-skin contact so badly set off all your internal alarm bells. You stumbled a few steps back, creating a gap with one of the waiting room chairs between the two of you, your gaze cataloguing everything you could about this person, determined to give a face to the thoughts that were triggering your flight response--another presence to add to the list of avoidance.

The world began to blur as your brain started to race, feeling an increasing number of thoughts focusing in on the small confrontation unfolding before their eyes. Breathe, you reminded yourself. I can't have a breakdown here.

You didn't care how it looked as you all but fled the hospital lobby--you just needed to GET OUT. The more distance the better. It didn't matter that you were basically blinded by the outdoor sun, you were out of there. You knew you weren't being followed, but the sting of frustration that came from the pastel stranger was plenty to assure you that it had been the right choice to ignore all social graces and follow your gut.

Once the hospital was long out of sight, you took a second to breathe, fighting tears that threatened to escape. You had too much to do and no one was going to cover for you if you lost it--that would require explanations that you couldn't give.

Work was blessedly normal--you had a few sticky notes of things patients had requested you pass on to the nurses (both literally asked and silently craved) and aside from someone accidentally tearing their stitches while stretching, no emergencies. But as you changed the linens on one of the recently vacated beds, the personal radio clipped to your uniform beeped. You frowned as someone spoke through it--the receptionist at the front desk, a friendly part-timer in her 50s named Janice.

"Can you come down to the records room? There's a situation developing."

You pressed the response button in the affirmative pattern--one long call, one short, two long to match the morse code "y"--and left your supplies where they laid to jog towards the room where you'd been summoned.

Janice was pacing by the door, barely dodging out of the way when you came in. Her face was scrunched in worry and she immediately pulled a pen and a scrap of notebook paper out when she laid eyes on you.

"Glad you came quick. There's a guy who came in asking if his girlfriend had been checked in. He gave a description that matched you creepily closely, claimed your last name was hers. Gave off bad vibes something fierce, so I didn't want to confirm anything. He's waiting in reception right now, refused outright to give his name."

The image in her mind was unmistakable: a shorter man, average build--a little on the scrawny side, actually--with a blonde crew cut and hazel eyes that held unmistakable malice.

You thought your stomach had dropped plenty when encountering the pastel stranger. The sight of Mitch at your workplace sent it through the floor.

Janice was still trying to explain what had happened at the desk and how she was trying to buy time, but you grabbed the paper and pen from her hand and scrawled as fast as your hands allowed without tearing through the flimsy surface.

He's bad news. Major bad news for me. Don't tell him I'm here. Long story, but he is not a safe person. I need to report this to Dustin, he'll get a notice to everyone who needs to know.

You shoved the paper back into Janice's hands and jerked the door open, sprinting for the elevators and thanking your lucky stars that the swing shift wasn't over quite yet--Dustin was on that rotation for the month and it would have been a nightmare to contact him if he wasn't onsite.

The administrative offices weren't an area of the hospital you spent a lot of time, but the unfamiliarity of the layout proved no big deal: there were only a handful of people up here and your sixth sense picked up on your handler's thoughts with little effort, serving as a waypoint in the boring, flat colored halls. You entered the office without knocking, setting the deadbolt and pulling the blinds on the small hallway-facing window shut.

"Excuse me, what are you--oh, it's you. Nevermind then; proceed." Dustin--a slightly fat man with a shaved head and square glasses--had jolted to his feet indignantly upon your entry but upon recognizing you, he settled back into his office chair, locking his computer and going to shut off his phone. Of course, you only ever came to see in of your own choice when there was something serious to discuss--and you weren't one to make mountains out of what he might consider molehills.

"A man came here to look for me," you signed, intentionally slowing your pace and giving the hospital admin time to read your signs as he was consistently out of practice. "His name is Mitchell Barrett. He's affiliated with a known agitator group."

"The one mentioned in your files or a separate entity?" Dustin whipped out a pen and began to write down the required incident codes.

"The one in my files, but I don't know if there is still an organized system. His current goals are unknown, but this is the second approach attempt he's made. I don't know how he found out this is my workplace, but I am so far his only target."

Your boss finished taking his notes and sighed heavily. Being a Hospital Admin was a seriously stressful job at times, but having to fulfill his secondary job at the same time? If it wasn't deemed a big enough concern by the USMS, then he'd be in charge of managing the response and with the investigation going on in regards to the--

"If you don't have any more relevant details to report, would you mind not following my thoughts all over the place?" Dustin interrupted, frowning at you. "You're free to clock out if you feel you will be more secure at home, I will excuse the absence as an emergency. I'll also have to pass along the warning to Dr. Joland and the other relevant staff."

Nerves twisted up, mouth dry and cheeks flushed, you stumbled back out of the office, struggling for a moment with the door latch. It hadn't been an intentional move to read Dustin's thoughts, but to be fair he was the only one who would know it was happening: he had a sensitivity for mutant powers that had forced him into the position he currently occupied. As you stepped through the elevator doors, your knees suddenly refused to support you any longer. Your hand dragged across the buttons, lighting up a handful of them as the doors slid shut, slowing your descent and giving time for you to silently weep at the years of your peace that had just ended.

#venom x reader #venom 2018 #venom movie #dr dan lewis #selectively mute character #selectively mute reader #mutant (Marvel comics)#fanfiction #writing #ao3 #hybridwrites

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