Chapter Text
Steve was going insane. He was sure about it.
It had started just a few days after… everything. After they had fought Vecna, who probably was still alive (which was a problem for another day), after they had made it back from the Upside Down, all of them except…
To be honest, it was easier to think and worry only about Max at first. At least she was still alive or whatever you wanted to call it. She would wake up, Steve was sure about it. When the clock had struck four chimes, Steve’s heart had stopped for a moment. The thought of having lost Max, having lost one of the children he was supposed to protect… It had almost been too much to handle.
But Steve had known that he had to stay strong. Sure, Nancy had been there, the strongest of all of them, but if Steve crumbled and something else happened, he never could have forgiven himself. So he had pushed his emotions down and concentrated on going back to the gate.
That was when everything got so much worse. When they got closer to the trailer park, Steve started to notice the dead demobats everywhere around them. Even though it was clear they weren’t going to attack them anymore, he felt irrationally nervous walking past the hundreds of cadavers.
He was busy avoiding a pile of demobats when Robin froze right in front of him and he bumped into her back.
“Rob, what’s…”, he started while raising his head. Then he froze as well.
This eyes caught the lump on the ground a few feet in front of them. A lump consisting of two people, one of them laying on their back, unmoving…
He started running. There were screams, he wasn’t sure if they came from his friends or if they were inside his head. Maybe both. Dustin, Dustin, Dustin… Eddie. No, no, no. He fell down to his knees and Dustin was in his arms immediately. Steve pressed the younger boy against him, making out the words: “He didn’t run” between his sobs.
While cradling Dustin as close as possible, Steve couldn’t tear his eyes away from Eddie. How was it possible that Eddie Munson, who always had so much energy and life inside of him, lay in front of them, eyes empty and skin pale? It seemed like a crime against nature.
Eddie, who Steve would have never expected to grow as close to as he did over the past few days. Eddie, who, against all odds, Steve quickly took a liking to. How could he not, under all the rough exterior, Eddie was one of the sweetest people Steve has ever met. Eddie, who gave him his beloved vest after the fight with the demobats, Eddie, who tried to give him love advice with Nancy, Eddie, who made Dustin smile and laugh so much. Eddie, who Steve thought he could call a friend when all of this was over… Eddie, dead, covered in blood.
There was no doubt in the fact that Eddie was dead. And yet, Steve could hear his voice.
The first time had been in the hospital. Steve was sitting beside Max’s bed and listened to Lucas reading from some Stephen King book. Then, suddenly…
“Harrington!”
Steve jumped up from his chair and almost fell down again when he twisted around so fast he lost his balance. There was no one there. But he could swear he had heard Eddie’s voice, right behind him.
“Steve? You okay, man?” He turned around to face Lucas, who was looking up at him with confusion.
Steve quickly caught himself and cleared his throat, which has suddenly gone very dry. “Yeah, yeah sure, I just… I remembered I promised to help Nancy and Jonathan with the cabin today. I uh… I have to go.”
Lucas nodded slowly, clearly not believing him, but not saying anything else. Steve removed his hand from the back of the chair, which he unknowingly gripped so tight that his knuckled stood out white against the dark wood. He shot Lucas a shaky smile, looked at Max one more time and fled out of the hospital room.
That wasn’t the last time that day he heard Eddie say his name. And the next day it got even worse.
So now, Steve was standing behind the table with all the donated clothes for the victims of the ‘earthquake’ and came to the conclusion that he clearly must have lost his mind. There was no other explanation. No sane person heard the voices of dead people as if they were standing next to you. Part of Steve could just break down crying, part of him wanted to laugh. It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it? He had finally cracked. And now he had to live with Eddie Munson’s voice in his head for the rest of his live. Well, there were worse things. It could be Tammy Thompson’s voice, after all…
“Harrington?”
Great, now Steve really started laughing a bit hysterically. The woman who was putting down a box of awful vintage clothes in front of him shot him a weird glance, but Steve wasn’t able to stop. What the fuck. Was he now officially going Joker-level crazy? (He had to thank Dustin for this scary comparison.)
Slowly, his eyes started watering and it took him some seconds to realize he was close to crying. Without a word towards the woman, who was still staring holes into him, he rounded the table and hurried towards the toilets.
As soon as he was inside an empty stall, he let himself fall to the floor, his legs pulled close to his body. In an attempt to get control of himself, he slung his arms around his knees and let his head drop back against the wall, closing his eyes to hold the tears back.
“Harrington.”
He was Steve Harrington, he never cried. He made it through saving Hawkins three times before this and apart from the nightmares, he used to be fine. Well, the many, many nightmares. And the paranoia that made him keep nailed bats in his trunk as well as his bedroom. And the sudden urges to make sure all of his friends were okay. He couldn’t count the many times he had called Nancy or Jonathan in the middle of the night, needing to know if their families were safe. All the times he had sat in his car outside the Henderson or Sinclair house uninvited, just looking at the silhouettes of the kids through the windows. Or all the times he had gone to join Max at the arcade, when he didn’t hear from her for a few days, or showing up at work when he wasn’t supposed to be there, just to see Robin. Thinking about it, maybe he hadn’t been fine for a long time.
But until now, he had been able to contain his emotions and to be strong when the others needed him to be. So what changed?
“Harrington!”
Eddie. That’s what has changed. They lost one of their own. Steve lost one of the people he felt responsible for. Sure, they had had losses before. But neither Joyce’s boyfriend Bob nor Chief Hopper belonged to the circle of people Steve had promised himself to protect. Eddie did. And now he was gone.
A sob escaped Steve. Fortunately, there seemed to be nobody else in the room, Steve wouldn’t want to deal with anyone hearing him right now.
“Harrington… Can you hear me?”
Oh great, his insanity had upgraded. Eddie’s voice was now saying more than just his name. Wasn’t that fantastic?
Steve was crying for real now, tears streaming down his cheeks, and he had to muffle his sobs by burying his head in his arms. He learned at that moment that he really didn’t like crying. People always said that it was freeing to let all the emotion out, but Steve felt worse by the minute. His chest, head and eyes hurt, he hiccupped uncontrollably with every sob and he just felt so… helpless. Helpless and alone and empty…
“Steve?”
It wasn’t Eddie’s voice this time. Steve needed a few moments to orientate himself, but then he heard the careful nods on the door of the stall.
“Steve?”, Robin asked again, softly and quietly, “I know you’re in there. Can you open the door?”
For the blink of an eye, he thought about ignoring her and then later acting like everything was fine. But it was Robin. She was his best friend and they hid nothing from the other. So he lifted his head and stretched over to unlock the stall door.
Robin pulled it open immediately and her gaze fell to the pathetic image of Steve crying on the bathroom floor. Her eyes slightly widened and her lips formed a little ‘o’. Then she slowly lowered herself to sit opposite from him, legs crossed and leaning against the wall. Steve felt himself thrown back to almost a year ago, to when he and Robin had a moment very similar to this, talking openly about their feelings in a toilet stall at Starcourt Mall. The thought calmed him down a little. Robin was here. She would never judge him, maybe she could even help him.
But he needed to stop crying first.
Robin waited patiently until his eyes were dry again and his breath slowed down before she started talking. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
Steve shrugged and tried to avoid looking at her directly. “Everything, I guess…” His voice was rasp and low.
“Everything is not a very specific answer, dingus”, Robin said softly.
He reminded himself that he wanted to be honest to her. “I think… Robin, I think I’m losing my mind”, he said, just above a whisper.
She just looked at him, waiting for him to continue, so he did.
“At first, I thought I could deal with everything. I spent time with Dustin, visited Max in the hospital, did everything to be there for the rest of you… I uh…. Did you know I’ve had nightmares ever since the first Demogorgon? That was three years ago. And after… after Eddie”, his voice broke for a second, “After that it got worse. First the nightmares and now…”
He stopped. Should he really tell Robin he was hearing voices? Wasn’t that, like, number one symptom of complete insanity? But the way she was looking at him, so honestly concerned and loving, made him feel safe enough for his confession.
“I hear his voice, Robin.”
She frowned. “What do you mean, you hear his voice?”
“Eddie. I hear him as clearly as I hear you right now. It started yesterday, at the hospital. Scared the shit out of me. And it didn’t stop since then.”
“What…”, Robin started to whisper now and looked around, as if she expected Eddie’s ghost to float above the toilet seat, “What does he say?”
“Just my name. And a few minutes ago, he asked if I could hear him.”
Robin nodded slowly.
“You also think I’m crazy, right?”, Steve asked with obvious despair.
“What? No!” She started to shake her head violently. “I mean… Maybe. But maybe it’s more than that. We fought a literal Freddy Krueger-type mind-controlling monster a few days ago and another monster made of molten people and rats last year, so… What makes you think ghosts aren’t real?”
Steve just looked at her for a few seconds. “You really think Eddie’s ghost is talking to me?”
“Why not?”, Robin answered, her hands flailing around to emphasize her point, “There has to be more out there than we know by now. Maybe we should try… I don’t know, a Ouija board or something. We could do a séance!”
“You are having way too much fun with my misery.”
“I’m just trying to help, dingus.”
Steve sighed. Here he was, thinking about doing a séance to talk to the ghost of his dead friend. What had become of him? He didn’t even believe in ghosts. It was so much more realistic that he had gone batshit crazy.
“Harrington…”
He flinched and Robin immediately noticed. “Did you hear him again?”
Resigned, he nodded.
“That’s kind of awesome… I mean, of course it’s not, for obvious reasons, but if ghosts really exist there has to be some kind of afterlife, right? Just imagine, our ghosts haunting Hawkins one day and scaring the shit out of everyone.”
Robin’s rambling caused Steve to smile. “Woah, what makes you think my ghost would associate with your ghost?”
“Obviously, ‘till death do us part’ is just for married people. You never get rid of your best friend”, she said and grinned.
“Harrington.”
Apparently, he wasn’t going to get rid of Eddie Munson either.