Remind Me How the Birds Sing (ChrissyxEddie)
A/N: Hello everyone ✨
I have no idea what this is. I've got struck by an idea today and here we are now.
I have kind of a specific project for this, so there will be more parts coming because I NEED MORE CHRISSYXEDDIE STUFF.
!Edit: this is now a reissue of the prelude since the entire project is fundamentally entirely different from what I had planned yesterday.
So, back again, I hope you'll enjoy!
P.S. The intro it's basically the same but I'll mark with a ~ the point where the entire scene was set and changed.!
Summary: Inexplicably a connection exists between Chrissy Cunningham and Eddie Munson that bonds them even after "death do us apart".
Even being lost to what Chrissy believes to be the afterlife, her path crosses Eddie's, once again bringing them close, despite existing on two different planes of existence.
Trigger Warnings: Canon-Typical Violence, Chrissy is a Ghost, Afterlife Concept, Mention of Death, Mention of Violence, Mention of Suffering, Mention of Drugs and Drugs Consumption, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Spoilers
Part 1 | Part 2
Words: 2k
Gif by: Tagged
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Part 0 - Prelude.
At first, there was fear.
An uncontrollable, frenzied, bone-gnawing and paralyzing feeling like no other she had ever experienced.
She had been scared before, sure. She remembered when Jason and his mates organised a movie night at the cinema to go watch Poltergeist. She hadn’t slept for days after that.
Or like the time she was way younger, scared of dark corners and clowns.
But nothing had ever been as frightful as the horrendous sentiment that had been chasing her throughout the last days of her life.
It was made of cold sweat and shivering skin, nerve-wracking insomnia or dreadful nightmares. Every time she got a glimpse of unnamed shadows crawling in the corner of her eye, shortness of breath would clutch her chest.
She was never at ease, never resting.
Her stomach was contorted by never-ending nausea and sometimes – most of the time, it would peak into making her so sick she felt her insides could tear.
It was torture.
During that time, she found herself praying to everything that was holy to have mercy on her. To give her the chance to amend for whatever evil-doing she could have done to deserve such a punishment.
But then she would hear the tremendous echo of an off-pitch, old-kind pendulum clock and every time she knew: death was coming.
She didn’t know precisely how she knew, but she was certain of it. Still, mostly because of denial and partly because she didn’t have any intention to succumb to her fate, she did try and find an escape.
Even in all of that, she did find a moment of solace. Some peace and light, even hope in the darkness that her life became throughout those last, terrible days.
There, where she had never thought in a million years she would have found it, turning to the last person she ever thought she would have sought for her silent request for help, Eddie Munson. With his big, round, dark eyes and his wide and kind smile.
People called him a freak and she always heard so many terrible things about him… However, when she met him, she didn’t see any of that. He shined a light that made her feel warm for the first time in so long that she wasn’t even sure she had ever felt that way.
Even if they only exchanged a few words and she, Chrissy Cunningham, queen of Hawkins High, was turning to her last resort, fumbling into her darkness ready to try any mean necessary to make it all stop. And that would have been drugs. Still, Eddie became someone she knew she couldn’t let go of.
Before she could find an escape, death caught up with her.
Not before pain though.
Even if she could not feel much anymore if not long-gone echoes of memories, she could still hear the noise of her own bones snapping, while her muscles and skin tore.
She remembered being paralysed. She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t scream.
It was a demon that had been following her. And that being greeted her at her death, trapping her soul in his clutch all the while promising it was time to end it all, that all of her pain would have gone away… That unhuman, forsaken creature born from nightmares and curses damned her soul.
Her only consolation was that she didn’t die alone. Of all the people she died right in front of Eddie, which turned out to be a sad, cold comfort. In a way soothing.
The source of such an evil, the being that murdered her did not lie though. The pain stopped.
Everything stopped.
Now everything was only black and silent.
To the point that for a time that both felt like a second and a million years, Chrissy thought that couldn’t possibly be the afterlife. And yet it appeared to be so.
She was gone. Not existing.
Gone.
Forever.
And she was floating above every emotion or conception to be scared or to feel lonely.
Yet, if she looked down, she could see her own hands and legs. She was still wearing her cheerleading uniform. Her skin wasn’t scarred or bruised. Her joints and bones weren’t broken.
She didn’t feel anything yet she had a physical shape.
Maybe it was only her imagination. Maybe that was a way to process it all. And one day she would have faded, as her consciousness and soul, were eaten, absorbed by the abyss that surrounded her.
She always thought the afterlife would have been made of light and peace. She even thought that spirits could still visit earth, to guide them or to just pass eternity.
Yes, Chrissy believed in ghosts even if the thought of it scared her when she was alive.
But she was clearly wrong.
There was no light, no angels singing or soft clouds to rest upon.
Only nothingness.
Time was impossible to comprehend in the black space she found herself being lost into. She didn’t know where she was nor when or how. She didn’t even have a guarantee that she was something at all.
Was she existing? Must have been, or her own thoughts seem to be such a waste to fill the darkness surrounding her.
But how could she exist when she was dead? Furthermore, how could she be existing when she felt one with the infinite nothingness surrounding her?
Sometimes her own thoughts seemed to have the ability to break her. Other times it soothed her to know she could still have an idea of self – and memories.
She loved to remember things like the sound of rain or the smell of chocolate chip pancakes – not that she was ever allowed to eat them, but she remembered their taste from the mornings of her birthdays when she was a child.
She remembered songs. Not that she knew much more than the rhythm of the bits or some words from the chorus… Unless it was Rhiannon, by Fleetwood Mac, that one she remembered so well she would find herself softly singing it, even dancing to it from time to time, when she felt like it.
Other times she remembered stuff like the weight of her pompoms or the feeling of fresh cotton sheets on her skin.
Memories didn’t come with the assumed melancholy or guilt, it felt more like an embrace.
Even being so unsure of her new state of existence, Chrissy thought many times it wasn’t unbearable, it wasn’t so bad… She could have gotten used to it.
After all, she always liked her own company and being alone, she didn’t mind embracing eternity that way.
And then, all of a sudden, just when she started to get acquainted with such thoughts and her new reality, with no notice or explanation, her world of pitch-black nothing shifted.
~ Something changed, as soft as the beat of butterfly wings through the air and yet as mighty as an earthquake shaking the ground.
She looked around, for once with the true intention to spot something, looking for the source of that energy change.
She even found herself holding her breath as a weird feeling tingled in her chest. Was it anticipation or was it fear?
Something else changed.
She felt as if her feet touched the ground - or whatever form of it. She was now standing as if somehow, she had a physical form. Or as if never before she perceived she was actually upright, under the influence of a form of gravity.
"Hello?" She called hesitantly.
Her voice echoed through the emptiness bounding her.
The longer silence surrounded her following her question, the more she found herself being disappointed.
But then again, how could she expect something had changed or ever would? She was dead.
For some reason that thought made her giggle.
Chrissy looked down, frowning.
If nothing changed, why could she suddenly feel the weight on that surface?
She tested it, taking a small step forward, feeling the ground under her shoes, only then realising it was covered by a thin layer of water.
She tapped the tip of her foot, splish-splashing in the paddle she stood into.
She had no way to see how big it was. Or if it had any edges at all.
But then again, she didn't mind it. Every time she tapped her foot, the water would make a soft, wet sound that filled the void around her.
It was nice. Pleasant. It made her feel... Something.
Somehow, she didn't mind the silence and the loneliness before, but now, because of that tiny shift in her condition, she recognised that such a small sound and ability to feel gave her the chance to become more courageous. Hopeful even.
As her emotions seemed to shake off the drapes of hibernation, she realised that much, much more had changed in the blink of an eye.
She could hear the loud and steady pace of her own heart beating.
How could that be possible, she didn't know. Maybe it was only memory and imagination. Maybe it worked in the same way as the reason why she could still perceive herself in her own body.
But the longer she listened the clearer it became that those weren't the only new sounds she could hear.
Another heartbeat echoed through the still air.
At first far, bearably there. But the more attention she paid to it, the louder it became, reaching her ears as if it came from her own chest.
A pounding beating, accelerated and desperate.
And the more she listened, moving blindly through an indefinite direction, trying to get closer, the more she heard. And felt.
In her own chest started to vibrate an almost forgotten sense of adrenaline and trepidation.
Soon the mysterious, foreign heartbeat shifted, becoming an echoing, equally rhythmic noise of a rushed, heavy pacing.
It was more than a hurried stride.
Someone was running. And it felt very much like it was coming towards her.
Chrissy didn't know what surrounded her. She imagined it to be the afterlife but, in all truth, she had never been sure to be truly alone.
Yet, she didn't react with fear to the sudden ravaging awareness that something was charging in the shadows in her direction.
No, she wasn't scared. But hopeful, curious... How much worse could she endure than death itself? Anything different from what she already met and acquainted with was good.
Even welcomed.
Then, right in front of her, literally appearing out of thin air, materialised a person.
Chrissy choked on her own breath from the surprise and the slight scare such a sudden vision gave her.
It took her a moment to focus on who stood right in front of her.
"E-Eddie?" She hesitated, unsure about her own words, incapable to believe her own eyes.
Was it really him?
How?
Why?
If he was there, did it mean he also died?
His expression looked so different from how she remembered him the last time she saw him... He looked lost in the depth of despair, so scared fear had turned his skin a grey-off colour.
He was out of breath. Every time he gasped for more air it seemed to be extremely painful.
Chrissy moved closer while he tried to catch his breath and strength to recover from the unbearable strain he must have been under.
"Eddie?" She called for him again trying to get his attention.
He didn't seem to see her. Or hear her.
In fact, he looked right through her, as if she wasn’t there at all.
It all didn't last longer than a minute. He immediately started to run again, passing her.
If she didn't have a clue of what was happening and why or how such a cataclysmic event took place, she also didn't have any intention to lose time thinking about it, risking losing a chance - whatever that might have been.
So, she followed him.
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