In the first few hours or days or months, the symbiote burned through host after host. None matched it the way a good host should, and none were truly satisfying; but they fed it, sated the edges of its hunger, and it thought surely a suitable host would come.
One day, they fed it something different. This one wasn't a creature they'd taken from the streets of the city; this one had been one of the ones who decided when and what to feed it. This one had been one of its jailers, but then it had erred, and been condemned for its error; and in the process of eating its liver, Venom learned a little more about its other jailers, and their intentions for it.
Some of them thought it was a failed experiment, and wished to dispose of it, just as they'd disposed of the excess jailer. Others wished to release it into the world, to see what would happen. Still others wished to introduce it to the Asset, for he'd proven unreliable time after time, and termination had been discussed long before this.
It was this last that Venom kept coming back to, when the soft organs of its jailer were gone, including its brain and the knowledge it had held. The Asset was stronger than any of the jailers, than any living human. Strong enough to be the match Venom needed, perhaps; strong enough to be more filling than those others, at the very least.
It would leave its cell someday, despite its jailers' caution. When it did, it would eat them all, and take the Asset for its own.
*
Fifty or so warm bodies later, the moment finally came. The door opened after the symbiote had eaten, but without the terrible high sound that usually sent it out of itself, and without any other precautions. Someone walked in, knelt beside the body the symbiote currently occupied, checked its pulse. For a moment, the symbiote considered giving it one, a moment's distraction before it acted; but after all this time, it was too impatient to wait, to spend even a split second deciding when there was no telling how long this opportunity would last. It entered this new human, quickly as it could...
And discovered this one was the Asset after all. The symbiote hadn't recognized it; its shining metal hand was covered by a glove, its eyes somehow different than they had been in the jailer's memories. It was the work of another moment to figure out why, flipping through the Asset's memories to find the answer. The Asset had escaped, itself; it had been out in the world, and come back to eat the ones who had hurt it.
...Not eat them, the Asset protested.
WHY NOT?
Because that's...wait, who the fuck are you?
I AM VENOM. YOU ARE MY HOST. WE ARE/WILL BE ONE.
Already it was happening, the symbiosis, the true joining. Usually it took much longer than this, even for a perfect host...but the Asset was something else, something other, something more than even the most perfect host Venom could ever have expected (even if it had wanted, desperately and for centuries...). He was something more, and so it was now instead of later that he began to be able to reach into Venom, just as Venom could reach into him.
I don't know if I'm up for all that. I've had enough people try to control me.
I WOULD NEVER.
Sure you wouldn't, buddy.
Images of past worlds, past hosts, most far inferior, others perfect but always unwilling...how they had broken its heart, time after time.
I WOULDN'T WITH YOU.
All its sincerity, all its desire, everything it attempted not to feel, because it had been told over and over that there was no point in feeling such things, not for inferior beings...no point in being a romantic, for there could be nothing sadder or more pathetic than to fall in love with one's food/transportation.
...I'll think about it, the Asset said. In the meantime, I'm seeing if I can save anybody before I blow the rest of 'em up. You want to help?
NO, Venom said, (though it suspected it might not be very long before it did want to, if the Asset kept bleeding through, shallow-seeming pools that went far deeper than they appeared), BUT I WOULD LIKE SOMETHING TO EAT.
Sure thing. But you've got to stop calling me that.
It looked into the Asset's mind, deeper than before, dangerous-deep, much further down than a name should be, so that it was a surprise to both parts of it/himself when it was found:
YES, BUCKY.