Chapter Text
Steve heaves, gasping for air against the dead weight draped across his shoulders. Every bit of him feels bruised, broken blisters and bone-cracks, and Eddie’s body sinks into all the parts that hurt the worst, legs and arms limply bumping into Steve's sides with every step. Steve doesn’t stop though, puts one foot in front of the other, trying not to feel the wetness soaking into his shoulders and down his back—Eddie’s blood, cooling and sticky in the dead air.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Robin is chanting under her breath beside him, pressing her sweater to the deepest opening in Eddie's gut, her hands dark red. Her feet tangle with Steve’s as they lumber along.
The distance to the trailer is excruciatingly far, and they move slow. Dustin is limping behind them, still crying, and Nancy is at Steve’s other elbow, hand on his arm, her other against the small of his back, keeping him steady and balanced with the weight of Eddie on Steve's shoulders in a fireman carry, and Steve puts one foot in front of the other, trying not to think about the tacky blood on his skin.
“Almost there, almost there,” Nancy murmurs, her voice trembling where her hands are sure, a shaky little melody to match Robin’s cursing, Dustin’s sobbing. “We’re almost there, it’s going to be fine.” She says it like a prayer, a hymn. Their own chorus in the middle of hell—or something like that. Steve hasn’t been to church since he was six.
Steve is just a background beat, panting, struggling under an impossible weight—Eddie’s body, Dustin’s sobbing, Robin’s cursing, Nancy’s prayers—drowning.
Eddie is… Eddie is silent.
They help Steve up the steps to the hellish mirror of the Munson’s trailer, the thing nearly torn in half by the swarm, Dustin and Eddie’s hasty fortifications ripped off from the inside out. The three of them collapse together, cushioning Eddie’s descent onto the blackened mattress, Robin still cramming her sweater into the mess of Eddie’s middle. She strips Eddie of his vest and jacket, the tattered remains making a pitiful pile amongst the rest of the destruction. Steve presses a hand to Eddie’s neck, feels the weak pulse under his fingers, counts each beat. There are still a few little bat-like bodies scattered across the floor, but Nancy is kicking them to the side as she pulls the Munson’s small dining table over, aligning it below the gate.
Steve watches her, counts the heartbeats against his hand, and tries to catch his breath, tries to think—he doesn’t even know what they’ll do once they get Eddie to the other side. Hawkins in 1986 wants Eddie dead as much as this fucked up 1983 version. Maybe they can drive him as far down the interstate as they dare, with Eddie bleeding like he is, and find a hospital that wouldn’t immediately be overrun by angry villagers and the feds.
Nancy stacks a chair on the table.
“Dustin first,” Steve says, still short of breath.
“No,” Dustin sobs. He’s leaning heavily against the door. “I won’t—”
“You don't get a choice,” Steve says, leaving Eddie’s side—leaving that fluttering heartbeat behind—to grab Dustin by his shirt and help him onto the table. Steve feels brittle, breakable, but for now, he has to be steel. “No arguments.”
Dustin cries and Steve steadies him when he stumbles, helps him climb up onto the chair until he’s falling through the gate. He lands with a harsh thump and scrambles to pull Eddie’s mattress over again, staring up at them with wide, terrified eyes the entire time.
“Go on, Nance,” Steve says, jumping from the table. His knees give away when he lands, but he hides the fall by rolling close to Eddie again, pressing a hand back to Eddie’s neck—fast, weak, but there, still warm against his palm.
She goes quickly, and then she’s urgently piling Eddie’s mattress with couch pillows, anything she can find to soften Eddie’s drop. Steve and Robin maneuver Eddie back onto Steve's shoulders. They’re a wobbly mess of too many arms and legs as they climb onto the table, Eddie not much better than a limp corpse, and Robin steadying Steve’s spine when it wants to buckle.
“You’re going to go through with him,” Steve says, gritting his teeth. Everything hurts, it hurts so much. He looks her in the eye. “I’ll hold him up close enough that when you fall, you’ll pull him through.”
Robin’s face is pale, but her jaw is set. “Then you’ll be right behind us.”
“Yep,” Steve agrees, because he really hasn’t thought that far ahead. He just needs to get Eddie back to earth, needs to get him and Robin out of hell. He’ll work out the rest later.
“Okay.” And then she’s moving, climbing the chair and reaching one handed towards the side of the gate. She might have looked ridiculous in just her bra and camo pants, her sweater wrapped around Eddie’s bleeding torso, but she doesn't. She's fire and brimstone, strong back and strong hands. A survivor bringing her friends home. Robin looks down at Steve, nods curtly and pulls herself up, her hand gripping Eddie’s belt as she grasps at the edge. Steve puts one boot on the chair, hoisting himself and Eddie a little closer to the ceiling. It’s just as she’s about to fall through that everything goes to shit again, because Steve’s plans are always doomed to fail.
The ground beneath them shakes, and suddenly everyone is yelling, the chair, the table under Steve’s feet wobbling. It tips, and Steve doesn’t think, just gets his hands under Eddie and pushes, watching the two of them tumble away at the same time he hits the hard floor, covered in blood.
It knocks the wind out of him, and for a horrible moment he can’t move, can’t breathe, can only stare up through the gate as Robin and Eddie touch down on the other side, Nancy rushing to help them, and Dustin is staring up in wide-eyed panic at Steve, his mouth opening and—
The gate closes, an open wound sealing shut, all before Steve can take his next breath.
Eddie had woken up in a shitty hospital in Fort Wayne, of all places, a few days later. Nancy had explained it all to him like this: that they had wanted to put as much distance between him and Hawkins as they could, that they drove him two hours down the interstate while he was bleeding out all over her backseat, that she’d checked him in as Ed Wheeler, her cousin. That she had told the hospital and the police and anyone who dared to ask that, “No, we’re not sure what happened to his driver’s license,” and “He was attacked by a bear, maybe,” and “We went out searching the hiking trail when he didn’t come back when he said he would.”
That she’d had to tell them, “No, there was no one else hurt.”
He wonders if it had been hard for her, leaving Hawkins after the Upside Down had swallowed Steve up while she wasn’t looking.
“Of course it was hard,” Robin had said, the only time Eddie had been enough of a dick to say the thought out loud. There were tears in her eyes. Grief had already changed the shape of her face, hollowed her out. And still, she was smiling, bitter sweet but smiling, at Eddie while she said it. “But what could we have done for him? He’d be so pissed after working so hard to save your life, if we’d just let you bleed out on your nasty bong water mattress.”
“I’m sorry,” Eddie had sighed, blinking back his own tears.
“Don’t be,” Robin said, wiping at her face. Her hand was warm in his. She squeezed his fingers. “I don’t regret it. Steve wouldn’t either.”
Eddie would wonder, though, if Dustin might feel differently. Would close his eyes through Dustin’s silences, his clinginess and then his distance, sat in the corner of Eddie’s hospital room. Dustin never said it, never told him, “I wish it had been you, instead.” But Eddie couldn’t help but wonder, couldn’t help but hear it between Dustin’s quiet sobbing when he thinks Eddie’s asleep, and hates himself a little more each time.
Steve fucking Harrington had died to save his life. Eddie feels like it was a shit trade.
Eddie was discharged after two weeks, parts of him still raw and tender but already healing over. Under a different circumstance, Eddie would have been crowing about how metal the scars would be, how they made him look dangerous, battle trophies he’d earned for being brave. But instead, Eddie wished he had run away after all. Maybe Steve wouldn’t have died to save his worthless life if he had.
It was a fucking shock when the long dead Jim Hopper had picked him up from the hospital with a gruff hand on the back of Eddie's neck and shifty eyes scanning the parking lot as he led him to his car. The hour-long drive back to Hawkins was excruciating, and at first, Eddie wasn’t sure if he was being dragged back to face the mob.
“You’re listed as dead, officially,” Hopper had said as they pulled out onto the I-69. “Cleared of charges, another victim of Henry Creel.” After a beat, “Harrington, too.”
Eddie had swallowed. “So he’s…”
Hopper was silent for a long, long moment. Eddie had watched the freshly plowed fields and herds of cows pass them by as they drove. And then Hopper said with a gentleness that once wouldn't have seemed possible from the chief of police who used to bust Eddie for possession, “Jane can’t find him.”
Eddie didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded final. Steve was gone.
Since then, he’d been hiding out at Hopper’s cabin with a rotating group of people visiting him, people who were once strangers and now were Eddie’s whole world outside the grainy television and the FM radio. Sometimes it was Hopper and his daughter, the girl with the buzzcut and a solemn face.
“I am Jane,” she had said, very softly. “Though I am called Eleven or El as well. I like your tattoos.”
“Hi, Jane,” Eddie had replied, feeling a million years old and somehow so young in front of this girl with ancient eyes. “I’m Eddie.”
Other times it was Mike, just for a few hours, who was avoiding everyone he could with any excuse he could find. He came up to the cabin like he was deeply familiar with the land and the traps. Their silences were both awkward and comfortable all at once, staring at the tiny box television together, sitting side by side and saying nothing, because what was there to say anymore?
“I’m glad you’re alive,” Mike had said on his way out the door once, just the once. It had sounded sincere, but there was another layer to it. A Why couldn’t he have come back, too? quality, and Eddie tried not to let the guilt fill him to the brim until it was leaking from his mouth and nose.
A lot of the time it was Robin and Nancy keeping him company, never one without the other, and they were so good at acting normal, playing pretend. The guilt could almost swallow him whole in the wake of their grief stricken faces and sad eyes. But they sat close on either side of him, two lines of warmth bracketing him in, and the one time he’d broken down sobbing, they had both hugged him tightly.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said, again, and Robin had sighed a little and pressed her face into Eddie's shoulder. Nancy drew a breath.
“I’m not.” There wasn’t any hesitation when she spoke. Nancy Wheeler never hesitated, never during that week from hell, and never in the months that he’d known her since. “I’m not sorry at all.”
“Do you love him?” Eddie had wanted to take it back as soon as he’d asked it.
But Nancy never hesitated. “Of course,” she’d said. “He is—was so important to me. Just like Mike and Jonathan are important to me.” She’d paused, her smile small and sad. “Just like you and Robin are important to me.”
And Eddie had cried a little harder at that. He’d never had a big family, and for so long it had just been him and Wayne. And suddenly he was swimming in people that loved him.
The people that loved Steve.
Max, Lucas and Erica were easier company, bringing him books and board games, the radio, an old VCR with a bunch of movies under their arms. They laughed, not as bright as they used to, but they played games and brought him snacks, and Max punched him in the arm each time they left. The Byers came with them often, and Argyle, who left him his own little gift with each occasional visit.
Eddie was too scared out in the woods alone to enjoy the expertly rolled joints alone though. He saved them for the days Nancy and Robin stayed late. Hopper had caught them at it once and had blessed them out so loud, their ears were ringing, but the three of them had giggled their way through it. Hearing Robin laugh again had been like seeing the sun breaking through storm clouds.
Dustin was somehow the one he saw the most but also the least of. He didn’t come out to the cabin often, but when he did, he’d stay for days, as long as he could get away with it when his mom was breathing down his neck. It was painful. It was exhausting. Eddie didn’t want to be doing anything else. He spent those nights wishing that he had died. Dustin’s moods swung wildly, angry to distraught, silent then laughing louder and brighter than he ever had, with tears on his face.
One night, he had curled up at Eddie’s side and cried on his shoulder.
“He’s my best friend,” he’d admitted through his tears. “He’s— He was like my big brother.”
“I’m sorry,” Eddie had cried into his hair.
Shaking his head into Eddie’s shirt, Dustin said, “I kept telling him that you were so cool, y’know? I wanted the two of you to be friends so bad. So we could all hang out together.”
“Fuck,” Eddie croaked. “I am so sorry, Dustin.”
Dustin shook his head again, silent and hiccuping and soaking Eddie’s sleeve.
Three months passed them by like that. Not a sign of Vecna, not a rustle from the Upside Down. Jane couldn’t access it with her superpowers anymore, apparently. It’s like it never existed at all.
So, now, as Eddie stares at the lamp in the corner of the cabin by the radio, the lamp that is flickering unsettlingly, he wonders if he could just ignore it and it will go away. The bulb might be loose. The electricity is probably shaky, he hopes. Or maybe the radio station is interfering with it or something. Pop music pisses him off, too.
Except it’s flickering in a very distinct, very morse code, very SOS-patterned way.
He watches it, for a long, long time, before he lets out the shaky breath he had been holding, and asks to the empty cabin, “Steve?”
The flickering speeds up, and the bulb bursts.
“Are you sure?” Hopper hisses over the line. “Munson, if you’re fucking with me—”
“I’m not!” Eddie feels a little hysterical. He’d replaced the bulb immediately and it’s gone back to flickering the same code. “I swear to god, I’m looking at it right now.”
“You’re sure it’s an SOS?”
“It’s the only bit that I know, of course I’m sure!”
“Okay,” Hopper says, distracted. Eddie can hear Joyce Byers, her usual soothing voice high and alarmed. “Okay, I’m on my way.” He pauses again, another voice joining the static, Jane. “No— Okay, fine. We’re on our way.”
Eddie doesn’t take his eyes off the lamp. He presses himself tight against the opposite wall, heart hammering in his throat. “Please hurry.”
The radio is the only noise besides the click of the flickering light, some pop station that Eddie would never admit to listening to. Nancy had turned the dial to it this morning when she'd dropped his groceries off, and Eddie hadn’t changed it back all day.
“I'll keep holding on," the music croons through the speaker. “I'll keep holding on, I’ll keep holding on."
Hopper and Jane burst through the door, Jane breathless and wide-eyed.
“I can feel it,” she whispers.
“I’ll keep holding on, holding, holding, holding,” Mick Hucknall sings on the radio. The lamp stops flickering, the air turns heavy. The bulb burns uninterrupted. Steve—if it really was Steve—is gone. “That's all I have today. It's all I have to say.”
Jane raises her hand before Hopper can stop her, blood already dripping down her nose, and a hole opens slowly in the wall, tearing, pulsing, and Eddie thinks he’s going to be sick with fear. From the otherside, there’s an otherworldly scream, piercing and terrifying. Something massive moves, long claws reaching through the edges. Eddie wants to puke when its head peels open and it screams.
“Fuck—” Hopper shouts, hand at his hip, reaching for his gun. Jane’s other hand is in the air. Eddie is frozen and begging his feet to run, run, run.
But before anyone can move, the scream is cut off with a sickening crunch, the demogorgon’s head caving in with a splatter of blood and bone beneath a nail-lined baseball bat, the sharp spikes sinking into its flesh and holding. The thing is yanked back to the otherside, and something else tumbles out, a man, Steve fucking Harrington , as he ducks beneath a long armed swipe from another monster. There’s a machete in his other hand, and he hooks it up through the air, taking off the limb.
The cabin has descended into yelling, and Steve isn’t looking at any of them, flinches hard when Hopper unloads a clip into the gate and Jane screams, pushing what looks like three more demogorgons back as she seals the portal closed once more.
“Harrington!” Hopper yells, reaching out for him. His face looks almost tortured, desperate. “What the fuck—?”
Steve flinches again when Hopper grabs his shoulder, his machete coming down, and Hopper only just manages to keep his fingers. Steve stumbles into a corner, staring at all of them, holding his bat level between them even as Hopper quickly backs off.
He opens his mouth to speak, and his voice is a horrible croak, like he hasn’t spoken in months. Maybe he hasn’t.
“Is this real?” Steve asks.
He sounds so small. It breaks Eddie’s heart.
“Are you real?” he asks again, eyes never leaving Hopper. “You're dead, this can’t be real.”
And Hopper is struck silent, gaping, with that same tortured face, a man burning alive. Like he’s staring at his dead kid, snatched up by the boogeyman when Hopper should have been there to protect him. Even though he was apparently locked in a Russian prison the entire time.
Eddie’s feet unstick from the floor finally, and he stumbles forward. “Steve,” he breathes. Steve’s wide, wild eyes snap to him. His hands are shaking. “Hey, Steve, it’s okay, you’re here. You’re back, man, it’s okay now.”
“This is real,” Jane says. Her hair has grown a little since Eddie first met her. Steve’s stare drops to her as she wipes the blood from her nose. “I couldn't find you. But now you are here.”
“This is real?” Steve keeps bouncing between the three of them. Eddie chances another step closer. The bat and the machete clatter to the floor.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, and he feels a little like crying, and doesn’t even know if he has any right to be so happy, so relieved to see a guy that he—in so many ways—barely knows. Eddie knows Steve, the real Steve and not the King, only in that horrible week of spring break, and then in the stories and words of all his friends. Steve is mean sometimes. Steve drives them everywhere. Steve helped me with my hair for the Snowball. Steve accepted me. Steve is so stupid. Steve has shitty taste in music. Steve yells when we get dirt in his car. Steve is sweet. Steve is kind. We all miss Steve so much.
Looking at him now is like looking at a character in a book, come to life. Or maybe an old childhood friend risen from the grave. He’s covered in mud and dirt and what looks like old blood, his face gaunt, three months thinned and starved. His hair is wild and matted. His hands are wrapped in blood stained bandages.
He’s wearing Eddie’s battle vest still, over—of all things—a ratty Black Sabbath t-shirt.
The song has changed over, a new voice coming through the radio speakers, and Eddie likes The Fixx for the most part but maybe this one is a little too on the nose. “There will be no more isolation, in our secret separation,” Cy Curnin sings. “You touched my heart so deeply. You rescued me, now free me.”
“You’re home,” Eddie says.