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sp0o0kylights · 8 months

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"I feel him." El insists. "Alive."

She hasn't said his name since Will first raised them all over the walkie, but every person in the room knows who she means.

Not that Steve can say his name either.

"But we watched him die." Nancy says gently, before Dustin properly loses it from where he sits in the corner. "Owen's even sent someone back through to check."

"Yes." El agrees, but it's clear she's frustrated. "He died here. But he's not alive here, he's alive over there."

"In the Upside Down?" Steve asks, and pretends his voice isn't cracking with desperation and barely concealed hope.

"No!" El snaps, before taking a deep breath and collecting herself to try again. "Through the other gate."

"Okay." Hopper cuts in, hands waving in some kind of "stay calm" gesture. "El, honey, I think we're all still hung up about the other gate." He pauses, before adding. "And how Creel dying opened it."

El gives him a thousand yard stare.

"I'm getting the crayons." Joyce sighs as she stands up. In a mutter she continues, "Should have gotten them to begin with."

Silently, Steve agrees.

xXx Eddie xXx

It goes like this.

A bat breaks through the side of the trailer. It swoops low, teeth rattling, but it doesn't attack.

It emits an odd, echoing screech, before flying through the gate, to the Rightside-Up.

"Shit." Dustin curses wildly. "Shit, they're gonna try and invade!"

"I thought they were guarding the gate!" Eddie protests, as that echoing scream returns tenfold, coming from the mouths of too many demobats. “If they wanted to invade wouldn’t they have done that already!?”

"No, because Vecna was focused on opening more gates! This must be his plan--to open enough gates to push an army through. We have to lead them away!"

"Dustin-!" Eddie calls out desperately, but finds himself overwhelmed by bats as more and more break through.

He fights through them, trying to get to Dustin, trying to listen to what the kid’s screaming.

He can’t hear him.

Not over all the screeching, the beating bat wings and the thudding noises as they smack at his head. Their teeth snap, tearing into every piece of him they can reach.

Eddie doesn’t know how long he’s been surrounded, but he hears the trailer door bang open--and shut.

"Dustin!" He screams this time, voice as loud as he can make it.

The kid’s faster than he is.

He’d planned this--or at least, had thought about it long enough to get himself a solid head start, leaving Eddie scrambling after.

Fighting through the torrents of bats. Abandoning the gate because Hawkins can burn for all he cares--but there are people who don't deserve to go down with it.

People like Henderson, who have bright futures ahead of them.

Eddie tears his way towards Dustin, unthinking, just running.

‘Stupid, stupid, stupid-!’ He thinks, but not at Dustin.

At himself, because he knows the kid. Knows what to expect from how he acts in games.

Steve even called it--and Eddie’s not stupid enough to think he was talking to both of them when he warned them about not being a hero. He was included purely because Dustin would fuss otherwise and they were short on time.

Dustin’s on the ground when Eddie finds him, and he whips his spear at the few dozen bats that attack him, their bodies circling, teeth biting.

He gets in two good hits before shit hits the fan.

To his right something explodes, flames high and reaching, a thunderous boom whipping out so loud that Eddie's ears ring.

A shockwave nearly takes him off his feet, bandana pulled from his head and freeing his hair.

Eddie crashes on the ground next to Dustin.

Sees all the blood and doesn't know what to do.

"Come on man." Eddie pleads. "Come on!"

He doesn't get an answer.

It goes like this.

Vecna’s dead.

The blast that killed him was from some kind of explosion that took out all of Creel House.

It fireballed skyward, and the Upside Down rapidly began doing….something, seconds after.

Returning, Eddie decides, to whatever it was before the asshole got thrown in here.

Or dying, maybe.

(This is easier to think about than the fact that no one could have survived that blast. That there's a black hole Eddie can see, and it has to wrap miles and miles around the Creel House because he's still near his trailer.

It the trees down the stupid hill didn't make it then Robin, and Nancy, and Steve--

He stops. Shakes his head.

If Eddie thinks about it, it will make it real.

He can't let it be real.),

The monsters all fall as one, dropping to the ground like puppets with cut strings.

Eddie had been pummeled by a few demobat bodies before he could get clear, though given how some still occasionally twitch and hop around weakly after, Vecna's death doesn't necessarily equal their own.

Madly, he crushes a few beneath his boots.

Knows that won't bring his friends back.

Stomps on a few more because he can't do anything about that, and he can't cry any harder.

It goes like this.

Eddie gets back topside to find Vecna's revenge in action.

It's an act worthy of a mad god, not that Eddie would ever give him such a title.

Hawkins wasn't split. It was consumed, with large portions falling deep into the earth that opened under it. Smoke chokes half the town from an outburst of fires, while downed trees and electrical lines make walking a chore.

The road is a cracked and pitted mess, littered with holes large enough to swallow entire cars.

Passage is nigh impossible by car, and downright dangerous by foot.

It makes Eddie want to sink to his knees in despair.

There were still people around, that first day.

There were still people around the second and fifth days too.

But then the monsters appear.

They're not the demobats, or demodogs or even the demogorgons that Eddie was told of.

They're something--else.

Mutated and mutating, taking on appearances that reflect both the Upside Down and the Right-Side Up (a term coined by one of the freshmen--Eddie can't recall which.)

Actual flowers, great purple and orange looking blooms sprout teeth and attack. Vines stick out of arcade cabinets, carting them around like a hermit crabs shell.

Some people breathe the falling little pieces of ash and suddenly aren't people anymore.

(It was Erica, who had coined the term. The Right-Side Up.

Erica who was also deceased, because the fucking explosion didn't just take out the Upside Down version of the Creel house, but the real one too.

Which meant Max and Lucas and Erica…

But Eddie's not thinking about that.)

It goes like this.

Wayne's gone.

He'd been at the plant when the Earth had swallowed it, his first day back to work because he'd used all his PTO trying to find Eddie.

The coworker who watched it happen makes sure to tell Eddie his uncle insisted he was innocent. That the old man never stopped looking.

Likewise, the trailer is gone.

It fell barely a day after Eddie had climbed out of it, one half eaten while the other teetered dangerously on the edge.

There's cops at the borders of the city.

They’re been commandeered by the military and the feds both, and people in heavy gear prowl around like guard dogs just waiting to be let off leash.

Helicopters fill the air, always circling and searching. Units of men and women begin parading around with guns as they escort tanks and other battle equipment through the streets.

They're looking for something besides the monsters, and they're happy to cut the phone lines and police the survivors to find it.

No one's allowed in--or out.

Eddie tries to escape the first few days, after he realizes everyone who knew the truth is gone.

Thinks maybe he can get to the Byers, and that super powered girl out in California, but keeps getting cut off.

Twice they've nearly caught him, which means twice Eddie has been forced to come to terms with the fact that he's one of the things they're after.

They know him by name.

They know he was involved in Creel's takedown.

Eddie"s not just being hunted by the town now.

He’s being hunted by the United States as a whole.

It goes like this.

Eddie doesn't want to die.

Can't bring himself to take his own life, forever too much of a coward.

So he berates himself while he hides.

Wonders what the fuck his plan is here.

Focuses on surviving, stealing food, sleeping in people he loves houses and hoping maybe some of them made it out.

(Given how Gareth's and Jeff's places are both untouched, he doesn't think they did.)

He’s never prayed before but now he’s praying to every deity he can think of. Hoping, wishing, that if he can’t get out alive, he at least goes down quickly.

It goes like this.

Steve Harrington walks out of the woods with a nailbat in his hands, like a blood soaked fever dream.

Eddie doesn't care.

He hugs him so hard his own ribs hurt and the crazy thing is Steve hugs him back even harder.

"You're alive." Eddie sobs, face buried in Steve's shoulder.,"You're alive, you're alive…"

Steve grips him for a moment before whispering back; "And so are you."

He pulls away and Eddie struggles against him, not ready to let go, fingers grasping at his shirt.

Steve strokes his hair, his stupid tangled, gross hair and Eddie looks at him, desperately needing the contact to prove that Steve is real.

That he’s here.

"I need you to listen--I'm not your Steve." Steve says, and Eddie’s so desperate for contact that the words don’t register for a moment.

Not that they make sense when they do.

"What?" Eddie asks.