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It starts, technically, a few weeks after it ends. There’s smoke in the air and the moon in the sky and a body, cold and dark and bloody, laid out on the ground in the middle of a circle.
There’s a boy, warm and bright and bloody, kneeling over it, hands pressed to its chest and forehead, eyes closed and hoping.
There’s a shift, and a question, and a gasp.
There’s a new beginning, and underneath Steve Harrington’s hands and a full moon, Eddie Munson breathes once more.
(In between the Upside Down and the Rightside Up there’s a place that is (for now) called Hawkins.
In between the Upside Down and Hawkins there’s a boy with a bat and a whisper of something Other about him.
There is nothing that stands between the Upside Down and the boy.
He is Loved and he is Lonely, and he has never asked for anything that hasn’t already been offered to him twice over.
He still doesn’t, and maybe that’s why She pushes him to it.
Hawkins hums and shifts and settles, and on her surface another connection flares to life, burning and beating in time with the boy’s heart.)
Eddie had been… Eddie didn’t know where he had been. Only that it had been cold and dark and empty. Only that he’d wandered in that darkness for so long, stumbling along and searching for something, anything—
Eddie doesn’t know, in the end, where he was when he heard it.
He just knows that the song he followed out of that place had, despite sounding like nothing and no one that he can remember, felt warm and bright and safe.
Had felt like home.
(Hawkins has known many protectors since the beginning, stretching all the way back to the first boy that stood at the gate and took up the watch, years and years and years ago.
She’s known countless children who have been born and grown and died here, who inherited the mantle and carried it well and passed it down with love and pride and care.
Janice Ward, before she took the song in her chest and cast it away, had been a force to be reckoned with. She’d been brilliant and fierce and wild.
Janice Ward, at her best and brightest and most devoted, before the luster wore off and she married Richard Harrington to flee her town and her duty, could never have dreamed of competing with the boy she left behind.
Could never have hoped to measure up to Steven.
None of them have really, save for maybe the first.
But that–
That’s unsurprising for a number of reasons.)
Eddie wakes up with lungs full of ash. He coughs, splutters, curls onto his side and does his best to breathe deeply past the ache in his throat and ribs. There’s a hand on his back, rubbing up and down in a soothing rhythm he does his best to follow, and when he finally gets himself together enough to look–
Steve Harrington is kneeling over him, soot streaked and beautiful, the full moon framing him from behind like a halo. He’s grinning something fierce, like Eddie’s the best thing he’s ever seen, and–
Eddie coughs again, wracked with it, and Steve just gathers him up in warm arms and rocks him back and forth, whispering the whole time. “You’re okay, Eddie. I’ve got you now, you’re okay.”
Eddie doesn’t say anything. He just buries his face in Steve’s shoulder and lets himself be held, and he doesn’t look too closely at the warmth building in his chest.
(Years and years and years ago, before the gate opened, before Hawkins was called Hawkins, there was a boy in a place, and a place that was its dark reflection.
There was a boy, and when the darkness came he stood his ground, dug his heels into the dirt and held the line. There was a boy who bled for Her, and the place that became Hawkins never forgot.
There was a boy that kept the watch, and there were the ones that came after him, and he and they were Alone.
Years and years and years later there was Steven Ward, and when the darkness comes he meets it with a baseball bat and a feral grin.
He sings and swings and asks, and well–
She’s never been good at saying No to those that are Hers.
She answers, and Steven Ward isn’t alone anymore.)
Eddie doesn’t know how long they sit there, but eventually Steve scrapes him up off the ground and in the direction of a car. He follows Steve’s lead, is careful to step over the bowls arranged in a circle around them, makes sure not to disturb the lines painted into the dirt. He settles into the front seat, watches Steve go back for the bag and the things he can gather back up.
The ride to, well, wherever they're going, is silent except for the wind that whips through the open windows of the car and the hum in the air that he can’t quite place the origin of.
The second they stop Steve is hustling him inside, planting him in one of the kitchen chairs and going for the phone.
He’s fidgety and anxious, babbling to whoever's on the other end of the line, and even with the dirt and blood and ash that he’s smeared with, he’s something beautiful, something magical, something Other and Otherworldly.
The warmth in Eddie’s chest pulses, and he digs the heel of his hand into his sternum, trying to rub away the ache.
It doesn’t work.
(There is only one family that could even try to claim to have been in Hawkins anywhere near as long as the bloodline that declared themselves Hers, the line that eventually led to Steven Ward Harrington.
Across town Jim Hopper sets the phone back in its cradle with a smile that’s beginning to feel more and more at home on his face.)
Eddie is confused and tired and filthy, but Steve is patient and gentle, pushing a pair of soft and clean sweats into his hands and steering him towards the shower. When he stumbles out nearly twenty minutes later, light headed from the heat, Steve doesn’t even blink, just pushes him gently to take a seat and begins to work through the tangles in his hair with careful hands.
The hum doesn’t fade, and it’s only as Eddie is finally letting his eyes drift shut that he realizes it’s being echoed aloud by the boy at his back.
(There are two humming flares of life, connected to Her and to each other. One beats constant and steady, an unwavering rhythm she’s known for years. The other is newer, but no less dear, thready and flexible, writing its own melody that wraps over and around and through the first like a song over drum beats.
Eddie Munson sits on the floor in front of Steven Ward and echoes back the song he doesn’t even realize he knows. The magic glows in his chest, rooting itself deeper, tying Her boys even closer.
Hawkins hums along.)
The weeks eke by, filled with reunions and planning and patrols. Eddie wraps his arms around the kids he knows, reaches out to the girl with the shaved head and the superpowers, to the boy named Will with the familiar fear in his eyes.
Follows Steve as he prowls back and forth along the edges of the tear, following the song in his chest that’s growing more and more familiar.
Vecna’s hoards approach, crawling ever closer as those that still can form the line.
(Eddie Munson came back to life, back to Hawkins, back to the party. He is brilliant and fierce and wild, and he doesn’t run anymore because he is no longer Alone.)
Eddie looks over his shoulder and reaches out a hand, callused and dirty but unshaking and—
(Hawkins sings, and at the heart of town two twin lights hum along.
The line is held, more secure than it’s been in over 200 years.)
—Steve Harrington reaches back.