Chapter Text
1986
Steve's pov
Nothing is "good" right now.
I felt the tears fall down my face as I looked up at the dark red sky. We lose Max, Eddie, and half of our shitty home.
I feel the world crumbling down as I stand in this crowded building. Crackling and bowing angrily as dirt and rock split into their tectonic plates. The loud screaming echo from the outside, seeing gray particles fall from the sky. The red glow was coming out of the broken ground. The dread of knowing that this is too much for us to handle. We can't survive this.... We lost
We lost everything
The ground just keeps on breaking more and more. The world is cracking. I started to black out
There's nothing we can do about
The world is ending
..........
WE LOST TO VECN-
.-
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I feel like I was submerged under water. I heard a voice call out
God Save Us All
God Save Us All
God Save Us All
God Save Us All
God Save Us All
God Save Us All
God Save Us All
God Save Us Al
Go Save Us A
Go Save Us
GO SAVE US PLEAS-
....... Please.....
Steh- STEVEN!- S_EVE- SEV- SEVEN SEVEN!!!!
Wake up~
Wake up~
Wake up~
Wake up~
WAKE UP, SEVEN!!!!!
WHAM!! "AHHH, FUCK!!!" I say as sat up from.... Where am I?
My room.... ho- how did I get here? The sluggishness, buzzing lingering behind his eyes felt eerily like I had just woken up from a deep sleep. But the burning pains and aches all over my body say otherwise. It's like I was hungover but at times worse, and I hadn't touched alcohol since those littleshitlings came into my life....
SHIT.
THE SKY
I ran out of my bed and to the window, thinking to see the city destroyed, but it wasn't, and the sky wasn't red.
Was-
Was that day... all a dream?
Us losing to Vecna... please tell me it was.
I looked around my room and noticed things that were thrown away a long time ago are in my room. Like stupid car photo on my desk or white plaid curtain
*RINGGGGG*
I flinched at the sound. I run to answer the phone. " hello"
"Finally Steve, I've called you for 10 minutes, where are you!? Carol and I have been waiting for you to show up for class
"...tommy?"
"Tommy" the voice said in a mocking tone, " YES, now get your ass over here."
What...
Why is he-
"Overwhere?"
"STEVEN, DON'T ME YOU FORGOT." Carol said as she took the phone tommy
"..."
" STEVEN, IT'S THE BIG SCIENCE EXAM, YOU KNOW THE ONE THAT WE NEED TO PASS THIS SEMESTER CLASS." carol say, " YOU'RE NOT GOING TO WASTE MY TIME TO HELP YOU STUDY FOR THE EXAM THEN FOR YOU TO NOT TRY ALL. get your ass over here," she abruptly hangs up leaving me in thoughts.
I sit for a few minutes before getting up and check my kitchen calendar. I always mark the dates ever since my parents left me home at 13. I never miss a day.
It's November 4 1983, Friday... It's two days before Will goes to the upside-down.... or it should be.
How did I get here...
Everything about the upside down as it is a dream?
what's the upside down just a figure of my imagination or was that real
Am I back in time or was it all about a dream. Did any of that stuff actually happen or is somebody playing a prank on me. I don't believe that... But...
Why-
Why... Why is it like this
I'm so confused
It felt so real. Was it real? Was the past 3 and half years real? It have to be real..... Right? why would I dream of that reality?
I need to talk to Nanc-
No... she wouldn't know what to do right now. I will sound crazy if I told her this. What do I do?... Maybe I'm just dreaming right now... Steve pinches arms. OW! Oh... Not dreaming
3rd person
Steve found himself at a crossroads, the weight of the unknown pressing down on him. A decision had to be made, and in that moment, the familiar path of school beckoned. Steve wasn't one for elaborate strategies, even when faced with uncertainty. His instinct was to act, to grasp the immediate details and follow the well-trodden steps of his routine that he remembers does in his "junior year" even though it feels weird.
He drove to the school, the journey a blur of passing scenery as his mind raced. Upon arrival, he signed in, the lateness a minor detail in the grand scheme of his current thoughts. He sought out the familiar comfort of his "ex-friends"(?). Weaving through the crowded hallways, his eyes scanned for their familiar faces, a silent plea for connection in the midst of his swirling thoughts of truth and bitterness.
The walk to his classroom felt surreal, seeing the crisp autumn outside the window was doing little to clear the fog in Steve's mind. The vibrant colors of the falling leaves seemed too bright, too normal, against the backdrop of the apocalyptic visions that still clung to the edges of his awareness.
Tommy and Carol greeted him as he sat down in his seat, next to Carol. With their usual blend of exasperation and camaraderie, their complaints about his tardiness sounding strangely distant. "Seriously, Harrington, you were supposed to be here an hour ago," Tommy grumbled, as he take a pencil out of his pencil bag. "Yeah, we were starting to think you bailed on us," Carol added, her eyes narrowed in mock annoyance. "We suffered together." Steve offered a weak smile, his mind racing. He tried to focus on their words, on the familiar rhythm of their bickering, but the phantom weight of a baseball bat, the echoing roars of demogorgons kept pulling him away, Max being in the hospital, and Eddie's dreath.
The science exam loomed, a concrete task in the swirling chaos of his thoughts. As they reviewed notes and diagrams, the periodic table and the laws of thermodynamics felt like anchors in a sea of confusion. He answered questions mechanically, his mind only half-present, the other half replaying fragmented images of red skies, monstrous creatures, and the heart-wrenching faces of his friends.
"You seem... out of it today, Steve," Carol observed, her usual sharp tone softened with a hint of concern. "Everything okay?" He hesitated, the urge to blurt out everything – the Upside Down, Vecna, the losses – almost overwhelming. But the words caught in his throat. How could he explain any of it? They wouldn't understand. He barely understood.
"Yeah, just... tired," he mumbled, forcing a smile. "Rough night."
Tommy clapped him on the shoulder. "Tell me about it. I was up way too late training for basketball tryouts."
The normalcy of their conversation was both a comfort and a source of profound unease. Was it all just a nightmare? In the past three years, the bonds forged in the face of unimaginable terror, the sacrifices made, simply been figments of a sleep-addled brain? His brain was going a mile per hour thinking of all of it.
The image of Robin's face, came to mind, the playfulness the truthfulness and the warmness on their face. His need to see Robin was a sudden, sharp ache in his chest. He didn't know how to contact her in 1983. He was pretty sure she hates him right now. She would have remembered the time that they spend together. It was so painful for him. His true friend..
Another image popped up in his brain
The image of Nancy's face, etched with worry and strength, flickered in his mind. He needed to see her, to look into her eyes and try to find some semblance of the connection he remembered. But approaching her now felt different, awkward. They weren't them yet, not the battle-hardened allies he knew.
He asked himself, were we dating during this time?...
I don't want that.
*Ring*
The school bell rang for lunch.
The school cafeteria buzzed with the familiar cacophony of teenage chatter and clattering trays. Steve found himself almost hyper-aware of the scene, each face was a ghost of the future that he remembered.
Tommy and Carol sitting on one side of the table while he sat on the other. Then, she was there, Nancy Wheeler approached his table, her smile bright and guileless, a far cry from the determined, sometimes weary, expression he recalled. She carried her lunch tray with a youthful lightness he hadn't seen in years.
"Hey, Steve," she said, her voice carrying a sweetness that tugged at something unfamiliar within him. She sat down beside him, her movements easy and unburdened.
"Mind if I join y'all?" She say
He blinked, momentarily thrown off by the simple normalcy of the question. "Uh, no. No, go ahead."
Nancy sits down and she starts unwrapped her sandwich, a comfortable silence settled between them, a silence that felt distinctly different from the charged or anxious quiet they often shared later. This was just the quietness of two classmates, with Tommy and Carol talking in the background.
He watched her, taking in the details he hadn't consciously registered before: the way a stray strand of hair fell across her forehead, the slight crinkle at the corner of her eye when she smiled, the earnest way she listened as Tommy recounted a story about a mishap in shop class. This Nancy was... younger. Untouched.
The weight of his knowledge pressed down on him. He knew the trials that awaited her, the darkness that would try to consume her friends, her family, her. The urge to say something, anything, to warn her, to somehow shield her from the horrors to come, was almost unbearable.
But what could he say? Hey, in a few days your brother's friend will disappear and get dragged into another dimension, and because of that you'll fight monsters with Christmas lights and eventually face a psychic being from a hellscape? He could almost hear the incredulous laughter.
Instead, he found himself observing her with a strange mix of longing and protectiveness. This was the girl before the battles, before the losses. Across the crowded cafeteria, a flash of red caught his eye. There, amidst the sea of familiar faces, sat Robin Buckley, her vibrant hair a beacon in the room. Beside her, with his signature, but shorter, wild hair and a denim vest adorned with patches, was Eddie Munson. Both were younger, untouched by the horrors Steve remembered. But as his gaze lingered, a subtle flicker crossed their young faces, a fleeting shadow that mirrored the fear and exhaustion he remembered so vividly. It was just a hint, a ghost of the grime and terror that had etched lines onto their older selves, a whisper of the darkness and the endless battles they had endured. For a fleeting second, the carefree teenagers in front of him seemed to carry the weight of another world, a world he desperately hoped was just a nightmare. The illusion of their innocence wavered, replaced by a chilling echo of the hardened survivors he knew. The fearlines on their face while the blood, the appending darkness, the dirt and grind on their face as he remembered them from before.This was a chance, maybe, for things to be different to save everybody. But how? And at what cost? The innocent smile she offered him felt like both a blessing and a burden.
The rest of Friday dissolved into a hazy, indistinct blur. Each class, each hallway conversation, each familiar face felt both real and strangely detached, like watching a movie of a life he used to know. His mind raced, trying to reconcile the peaceful normalcy of 1983 with the apocalyptic horrors he vividly recalled. The weight of his memories was a heavy cloak, muffling the sounds of the present and casting a long shadow over everything. He went through the motions, answering questions on autopilot, his gaze often drifting, searching for something that felt real, something that connected this seemingly innocent world with the nightmare he had just escaped. The laughter of his classmates, the mundane concerns of teenage life, all seemed distant and irrelevant in the face of demogorgons and Vecna's curse. By the time the final bell rang, Steve felt utterly drained, the emotional whiplash of experiencing two realities leaving him numb and disoriented.
He walked drives home in a daze, the setting sun casting long shadows that seemed to mirror the doubts stretching within him. The familiar streets of Hawkins felt both comforting and alien. He reached his house, the white plaid curtains in his bedroom window a stark reminder of the changes in his room.
He sat on his bed, the worn fabric familiar beneath his fingers. He picked up the car photo on his desk, a younger, carefree version of himself grinning back. A pang of longing, of loss for the person he had become, resonated within him.
The ringing of the phone shattered the silence. He picked it up, his hand trembling slightly.
"Hello?"
It was his mom, her voice bright and oblivious. She was checking in, asking about school, about his plans for the weekend. Like she used to do before everything. Every mundane word felt like a confirmation of this strange, unsettling reality.
As he hung up, Steve stared out the window at the darkening sky. The red glow was absent, replaced by the soft hues of twilight. A wave of confusion washed over him, leaving him adrift in a sea of uncertainty.
The thoughts that came to him again for when he first woke up.
What was real? What was a dream? And what was he supposed to do now?
The weight of those unanswered questions settled heavily in his chest. He was back in 1983, before it all started, armed with memories of a future that might never come to pass. The only thing he knew for sure was that the feeling of loss, the echo of "Seven," and the chilling dread of Vecna lingered, a phantom pain in a world that was, for now, blissfully unaware.