Chapter Text
Do you still believe myths
can save you? Foolish creature
Let me be clear: every version of this story
Ends with you being slaughtered,
- anecdote of the pig, tory adkisson
They need to get out of there, the ground is shaking so violently that they can barely stand up. Steve is holding a chair steady with a foot while he helps boost Nancy up and through the portal, Robin and Dustin already waiting on the other side.
Eddie is d-
Is-
They had to leave-
They couldn’t bring-
There wasn’t enough-
He is-
Nancy lands on the other side, she’s shouting at Steve to hurry up, and Dustin is sobbing. Steve jumps up on the chair and then throws himself into the air, he closes his eyes as he feels the gravity shift and braces for impact.
He hits the mattress hard, it knocks the air out of his lungs and splits his sides open, and it's stupid, so stupid to think of, but his arms are cold.
He opens his eyes and everything is wrong.
The trailer is still intact, someone is crying but it isn’t Dustin. He jumps to his feet and takes everything in. Nancy is sitting on the ground sobbing, Robin wrapped around her shoulders, Erica and Lucas hovering close by. Max is standing a few feet away clutching her walkman.
He hears Dustin say something and he swings around, Eddie is standing there. Eddie is there. Eddie is alive? He’s standing there, one hand covering his face, the other on his hip, muttering something to Dustin who is next to him, Dustin replies and Eddie lifts his head. He looks stressed and strained, but he’s alive.
What the actual fuck?
“Steve!” Robin calls, her voice sharp, a tone completely unfamiliar to Steve. He turns back to the other group, Nancy’s sobbing had lessened and she was looking up at him with those big doe eyes, with that look that always made him drop everything and do whatever she wanted.
Which he does, he drops to his knees, curling his body over hers, and rocks her, “I’ve got you, Nance, I’ve got you,”
He doesn’t know what the fuck is going on, was it a dream? A vision? Vecna fucking with them? Was it real?
It can’t be real, no way, no way.
Nancy’s breathing finally steadies out so Steve lets her go, Robin keeps one hand rubbing her back as he rises to his feet. She shoots him an odd look but he doesn’t have the brain space to even consider what it might mean.
He looks over to Eddie again, he’s whole, alive, just standing there like he hadn’t been torn to shreds by demobats a few minutes earlier. But he hadn’t been, right? Because it wasn’t real.
One of his hands drifts into his hair, yanking it, like he could pull the images out physically, then throw them in a fire to burn because whatever the fuck just happened was severe nightmare fuel.
Eddie was now on the other side of the kitchen counter, gripping the edge of it, staring at the ceiling like he just saw a ghost. Steve can relate.
The room is slowly growing brighter, the sun rising. Robin helps Nancy to her feet, Nancy brushes herself down, like it makes any difference against the Upside Down gunk caked on their skin, and says, “We need to move out of here.”
Max flicks at a curtain, looking outside, “My mom’s car is gone, we can crash there for now.”
A chittering noise comes out of the gate and everyone freezes up for a moment.
Eddie claps his hands, startling the crowd, “Yep, right behind ya, Red.”
Steve holds the door open, glancing around to make sure none of the trailer park residents are lurking around, he signals when he spots no one, and Max and Lucas dart across the gravel lot first to unlock her door, followed quickly by Dustin and Erica. Robin nearly falls face first off the steps, only stopped by Nancy’s quick hands, then proceeds to nearly stack it again when she slips on uneven ground.
His eyes are flicking around, trying to look into every window, checking for signs of life and unwanted company, so distracted he nearly jumps out of his skin when Eddie places a hand on his shoulder.
“Jesus, Munson,” He lets out a deep breath to slow his heart rate.
“Sorry, you good man? You’re looking a bit,” Eddie scans his face like he can’t find the word, “Stressed?”
The words are almost calming, this didn’t happen in the vision, they hadn’t talked at the door, Eddie had taken off across the way with barely a glance back.
“Yeah, man I’m good, just y’know,” He shrugged, “a bit stressed.”
Eddie lets out a low laugh, “I feel ya there, we good to go?” He gestures a hand vaguely around the door.
Steve nods, taking a step out the door, and closing it behind Eddie. Eddie gives him a thumbs up before shooting across the road and into Max’s open door.
He takes a moment to just stand there, to convince himself that this was all real, the gravel digs into the bottom of his bare feet and his sides ache like a bitch, it hurts so it must be real right?
But it had hurt in the vision too.
They all settle into Max’s living room, Max was just hanging up the phone, telling them she couldn’t get through to the Byers, again. Dustin immediately starts questioning Nancy, asking why she hadn’t told them she had been cursed.
“I wasn’t, I wasn’t I swear, he wanted me to be there, to show me…” Her voice wanders off, lost staring at her hands.
“Show you what, Nance?” Robin asks her gently, from her folded-down spot on the floor.
“He showed me things that haven’t happened yet. The most awful things. I saw a dark cloud spreading over Hawkins. Downtown on fire. Dead soldiers. And this giant creature with a gaping mouth. And this creature wasn’t alone. There were so many monsters. An army. And they were coming into Hawkins. Into our neighborhoods. Our homes. And then, he showed me, my mom. And Holly. Mike. And they, they were all…” She can’t finish the sentence but he knows, he knows.
The words leave his mouth without permission, “Okay, but… he’s just trying to scare you, Nance. Right? I mean… I mean, it's not real.”
Because it can’t be real, not what he saw, not what she saw, it can’t be.
“Not yet. But there… there was something else. He showed me gates. Four gates. Spreading across Hawkins. And these gates, they looked like the one outside of Eddie’s trailer, but they didn’t stop growing. And this wasn’t the Upside Down Hawkins. This was our Hawkins. Our home.”
He knows what Max is about to say before she does, “Four chimes. Vecna’s clock. It always chimes four times. Four exactly.”
“I heard them too.”
Steve hadn’t heard them, hadn’t since the Creel House when the actual clock went off. But, that couldn’t mean anything, because that thing was obviously a vision, a dream, it wasn’t real. Right?
“He’s been telling us his plan this whole time.”
“Four kills.” Lucas sounds hollow as he turns to look at Max, “Four gates. End of the world.”
“If that’s true, he’s only one kill away.”
But he wouldn’t be, no no no, Steve had his vision, he could do something, he could, he would.
“Jesus Christ.” Eddie is muttering next to him, rubbing his face, his bangs sticking up wildly. Steve is almost compelled to hug him, soothe him as he had with Nance, but he couldn’t. Eddie wasn’t like Nancy.
“Try ‘em again, try ‘em again,” He tells Max, they needed El, needed her.
Just like last time (what last time, it wasn’t real, Steve) they get a busy signal again and again. Something’s wrong, which of course it is. They should know better than to think anyone could ever escape the Upside Down bullshit, even all the way in California.
He yanks his hands through his hair again, what does this all mean? How could everything be happening like this again, how could he know what was about to happen? How could he know every word coming out of everyone’s mouth, everyone’s movements, everything?
He’s so caught up in his train of thought he doesn’t realize Nancy is talking again until he catches her saying, “Not if he’s dead. We have to go back in there. Back in the Upside Down.”
Cold terror runs through his bones and he is immediately protesting, Eddie joining in, “Whoa, no, no, no,”
“Nope. Nope.”
Steve jumps up off the couch, they can’t go back, they don’t know what will happen, but Steve does, “We can’t go back, we can’t.” Maybe he can convince her, better than he had last time.
“Why can’t we?” She marches over to him.
“We barely made it out of there.” The unspoken, maybe next time we won’t.
“Yeah, because we weren’t prepared. But this time, we will be. We’ll get weapons and protection. We’ll go through the gate, we’ll find his lair, and we’ll kill him.” Nancy Wheeler, always with a plan.
“Or he’ll kill us.” His tone is begging. He’ll kill us, Nancy, he will, he will. “The only reason you survived is because he wanted you to. He’s not scared of us.”
“And for good reason. We were wrong about Vecna. Henry. One. Sorry, what are we calling him now?” Robin jumps in, tone panicking.
“One.” “Vecna.” “One.” “Henry.”
“Right, we’ve learned something new about Vecna/Henry/One. He’s a number like Eleven, only a sick, evil, male, child-murdering version of her with really bad skin. But my, my point is, he’s super powerful. He could turn us inside out with a snap of his fingers, it’s not a fair fight.”
“Then why fight fair? You’re right. He’s like Eleven. But that gives us an upper hand. We know Eleven’s strengths. And weaknesses.” Dustin has a light-bulb moment, he almost wishes he could feel proud of him, but he knows where this is all going.
“Weaknesses?”
‘When El remote-travels, she goes into this sort of trance-like state. I bet the same is true of Vecna.”
“That would explain what he was doing in that attic.”
“Exactly, when he attacks his next victim I’ll be you he’s back in that attic, physical body defenseless."
“Defenseless? What about the army of bats?” Steve signals to his throat, still red and raw, he can still taste the bitter blood on his tongue.
“True. We’ll have to find a way past them. Distract them somehow.” Dustin retorts, full of confidence.
“And, uh, how do we do that exactly?” Eddie starts to lift off the couch but immediately drops back down when Dustin responds.
“No idea. But once they’re gone, he doesn’t stand a chance. It’ll be like slaying sleeping Dracula in his coffin.”
“That all sounds good in theory, but there is no pattern to Vecna’s killings. Not one that I can decipher. We don't know when he’s going to attack next. We don’t even know who he’s going to attack." He nods along with all of Robin's points.
But the words cut deep before they even leave Max’s mouth, “Yeah, we do. I can still feel him. I’m still marked. Cursed. I ditch Kate Bush, I draw his focus back to me.”
“Max. You can’t. He’ll kill you.” Lucas sounds exhausted.
For all Steve knows it could be true, his vision didn’t last long enough to find out what happened to her.
“I survived before. I can survive again. I just need to keep him busy long enough so that you guys can get into that attic. Then you can chop his head off. Stab him in the heart. Blow him up with some explosive Dustin cooks up. I honestly don’t care how you put this asshole in his grave. Just whatever it is, whatever you do, try not to miss.”
He doesn’t know what else to say, how else to argue without sounding like an insane person. Of course, they believed Nancy’s vision, they were all there to see it. But they would never believe anything Steve had to say.
Steve Harrington can solve this. He’ll just chop off Vecna’s head, yep, he’ll get the axe and whack him dead. That’ll work. For sure.
Eddie asks for Max’s yellow pages, and says he knows a place. He flicks through the massive tome before dropping it dramatically on the table.
“Check this out. The War Zone.” He’s leaning over the book, his hip bumping against Steve’s, “I’ve been there once. It’s huge, they’ve got everything you need for, uh, well, killing things, basically.”
“You think fake Rambo has enough guns there? Is that a grenade? I mean, how is any of this legal?”
“Well, lucky for us it is, so…this, this place is just far enough outside of Hawkins. As long as we steer clear of main roads, we oughta be able to avoid cops and, uh, angry hicks.” He’s spinning his head around, addressing everyone, every movement brings another hip check and a new flare of pain up his sides. He’s tempted to put a hand on the other man’s waist to stop him.
But he doesn’t, because that might be a bit weird.
Erica, Nancy, and Dustin are talking again but Steve can’t tear his eyes away from Eddie’s hands. The ring-covered fingers dance over the thin page, but he is brought back to attention when Eddie speaks up again.
“Who said anything about bikes?”
He knows about the van but can’t help himself but ask, “You got some car we don’t know about?”
“It’s not exactly a car, Steve.” He brings himself back up to full height and tips his head into a smile when he says his name, and that right there is the smile he wanted to see again so desperately. All dimples and sparkling eyes, full of life and glee. “And it’s not exactly mine, but, uh, it’ll do.”
Eddie spins around, gifting Steve with a mouthful of curls for a moment before talking to Max. She disappears for a moment and then returns with a horrific Michael Myers mask. Eddie dons it and they all follow his lead out of the trailer through the park and over to the familiar Winnebago.
As Eddie heaves himself through the tiny window Steve notices the black bandana hanging out of his back pocket, did he really forget that when he asked Max for a mask?
Eddie makes short work of locking the door and yanking the wires out, snipping and pulling with expert fingers. It’s as mesmerizing to watch as it had been the last time.
“Special talent you got there,” He says with a note of awe in his voice.
“Well, you can thank my dear old pops for it. When the other dads were teaching their kids how to fish or play ball, my old man was teaching me how to hot-wire. Now, I swore to myself I wouldn’t wind up like he did, but now I’m wanted for murder, and soon, grand theft auto. so, uh, I’m really living up to that Munson name.” His voice is tense in the retelling, and Steve notices that he got the same response as in the vision, even if he didn’t explicitly ask the question.
Robin bounces up to them, “Eddie, I’m not sure I love the idea of you driving.”
“Oh, I’m starting this sucker. Harrington’s got her.” He knows what’s coming next but his face still heats up as Eddie leans up nice and close with that beautiful smile again. “Don’t ya, big boy?”
Oh.
Oh.
Then the engine sparks to life and everything starts moving really fast. Eddie dives out of the driver's seat as Steve jumps over the chair and into it.
“Everybody hang onto something!”
There is screaming from both inside and outside the van as he hits the accelerator and takes off.
“Hold on! Hold on!”
He steadies the vehicle as it hits the road and everyone bursts into laughter, half of the group laying on the ground, knocked to the floor. Steve can’t help but join in as they blast down the road.
“Were you headbanging? You weirdo,” He can hear Erica ask, her voice incredulous.
“That was metal as fuck!” Eddie shouts back at her, his voice filled with glee.
It was beautiful and Steve knew he was going to do everything to save him, would do anything to hear that voice make it til tomorrow.