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Part 2 of Steve Harrington's Unwilling Time Loop Saga
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steddie fics that live rent free in my head, Steddie fics that made my cry and throw up, Every Steddie fic I’ve read so far, Parental Trauma, Steddie fics i would sell my soul to get tattooed word for word on my body, sTranger things 😉, Crawling inside Stranger Things to wear it like a second skin, Time is a Weird Soup, Steddie for the coping, Steddie 🖤, larazara’s best of time travel, This is Now the New (ST4)eddie Canon, screaming crying throwing up and dying (and id do it all again): STEDDIE EDITION, My Comfort Steddie fics ♥
Stats:
Published:
2022-08-12
Completed:
2022-08-28
Words:
38,255
Chapters:
12/12
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1,760
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8,267
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Steve Harrington's Deaths (And The Times He Maybe Saved The World).

Summary:

“I had another one.”

It stops the playful atmosphere instantly.

Not everyone tells him when they have a Memento. Lucas had kept to himself, and Will had refused to tell Steve about his dream. Some of them just tell him, softly, I remembered number one-seventy-three, or I had a Memento, last night. Sometimes it’s easier to just mention that it happened, acknowledge it and move on.

And Robin, for the most part, had done this. She hadn’t mentioned the details, because she’s sure that Steve is tired of hearing them, doesn’t want to hear his death from another person’s eyes, another person who is left with his body for a day before the loop dissolves into nothingness.

AKA: In the aftermath of it all, when Steve is learning what happiness means for him, people start to remember his deaths.

Chapter 1: MEMENTO MORI

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“No!”

 

The sound pierces through the sky. 

 

And, you know, they’ve lost before. Barb had died, and Bob was killed, and Billy was torn apart, and Alexei was murdered, and Eddie was mauled, and Max died in a coma. They know loss like an old friend, unwelcome, unwilling to let him in, but he forces through regardless.

 

They know the Upside Down. It screeches and it takes, and it breaks everything in its wake. They know how to fight it. With little girls with superpowers, too young, too battle hardened, nail bats in hand, guns cocked, fists raised. They know this. 

 

(He thought they knew this. Thought that this was all they ever had to fight).

 

Time moves slowly around him. Will’s face is falling in the doorway to safety, and El is dropping to her knees, and Jonathan is racing to the spot that was once occupied with—

 

Steve.

 

His body drops to the ground, the back of his head crunching against the road. And then time is moving at ten times speed, and Hopper just wants to be able to fast forward, skip this part, forget it, pretend it never happened, skip this part, please, please, please.

 

It feels like he’s watching himself move around in the madness of it all. He registers his hands reaching for the forgotten gun limp in Steve’s grasp, slips it back into the holster. Jonathan is on his knees and sitting the kid up, and Hopper is grabbing onto his shirt, his arm, lugs him back to the house.

 

“Barricade the door!”

 

It’s not him who says it. It should be. He should be commanding these kids, just kids, oh god, and Steve is still laying limp against his arms. Hopper sees Will push the plates and the food, Steve’s cooking, Joyce’s drinks, across the table, tumbling to the floor. He hears the slide of bookshelves and couches and heavy furniture behind him.

 

“Get him up, get him up!”

 

And Jonathan and Hopper are pulling Steve up onto the table, laying him down as gently as they can, blood stains and horror and love taking over. It feels like he’s been thrust back into his body, because as soon as Hop lays his eyes on Steve’s face, his forehead, he breaks. 

 

He turns away, tears his eyes away from the body of the kid, to look at Jonathan and Will and El. 

 

(The kids who have just lost their mother, the kids who have just lost their friend, preparing for battle and victory and death).

 

Hopper turns the safety on for the gun. Wishes that he could throw it out the window and never see it again, because it was all his fault, his weapon, his fault—

 

They know loss. 

 

And they know the Upside Down. They know the two to be so incredibly interconnected, taking and taking and never giving anything back, and Hopper never thought, should have thought, should have known better, that it wasn’t going to be the Upside Down that killed Steve Harrington.

 

(He should have noticed. He should have payed more attention. Maybe if he had just talked to him, and reassured him, and made sure that he was held in the way he held the kids, urged him to move out of Hawkins, told him that he was proud—)

 

“El. El, he’s not—”

 

“No, he can’t, I’m not letting him—”

 

“Please, El, please—”

 

“I— I brought Max back, I can. I can do it! Please, let me—”

 

Hop turns back to the scene. Of El pressing her palms against Steve’s face, painted in red, rivers flowing down his cheeks. Jonathan, hand on her shoulder, arm around his brother, averting his eyes. Will, pleading and begging, arms reached out for anyone.

 

“He’s gone.” Hopper says. “Kid, he’s— he’s not coming back.”

 

(He hits fast forward. 

 

They make a battle plan. Will calls the party. They make their way to the Byers house. Robin is the first one there, and she’s snuck around the back. She makes her way in, armed with an axe, bag slung across her shoulder, and her face is hard and determined, and she’s opening her mouth and then her eyes swing across to the living room, to Steve. 

 

And she stops. And Hopper places his hand on her shoulder. And she crumples to the ground. And then Jonathan had made his way over, and lowered himself, and Will was standing in the doorway, and El was still holding Steve’s hand, and the rest is a blur.

 

Nancy came, at some point. Last. After everyone else was inside the home. Had taken one look at everyone’s faces, the lack of Joyce and the lack of Steve, of warmth, of love, reassurance. Built her walls up, made a plan, didn’t cry, didn’t waver, until after they had won.

 

Won. They had won. 

 

Why doesn’t it feel like it?).

 

At the end of it all, the edge of the world, the wisps of monsters disappearing into cracks in the ground, Hopper cries. When he closes his eyes he sees it, feels it replay in his head. Spine against pavement, gunshot ringing in his ears, a skull against road. 

 

The sun makes its way up. Hopper can feel it through the broken window in the Byers house, tries to think, to stop thinking, to rationalise. What does he do now? What is he meant to do now?

 

Steve’s body lays cold against the table. Hop checks his watch. It’s nearly been a full day since—

 

He runs his fingers through Steve’s hair. Tries to imagine a smile on his face. Hop grabs a rag from the kitchen, runs it under the sink. He sits down next to Steve’s face, presses it gently against his face.

 

I’m sorry, he wants to say. I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I’m sorry I didn’t notice. 

 

The world flickers in and out of view, and Hopper wonders if this is what dying feels like. He sees flashes of smiles and death, laughs and tears. He sees an image of Joyce, fringe in her eyes, hands holding his, mouth moving in a word that he cannot hear. He sees El, hair above her shoulders, wearing a patterned jumpsuit, dancing with Max. 

 

He sees Sara. He sees her laughing with her mother.

 

And then the images are slowly fading, swirling and twirling, like blood washed down the drain. Hopper feels like he should grasp onto them, hold them close to his chest, but he lets them go. Watches them mesh and mould into—

 

Nothing.

 

— — —

 

The kids are all crowded around in the cabin, tucked between the couch and the floor. They have pillows and blankets and sleeping bags strewn across the small space from the armchair to the TV, and it’s messy — popcorn and spilled soda, and Hop is pretty sure that his favourite flannel is being used as a towel.

 

It was an effort, fixing the cabin. There was a hole in the roof from where the physcial Mindflayer had broken through and tried to kill everyone, but Hopper tries not to think about it too hard. It took a while for everything to be habitable again, months of going to thrift stores and accepting gifts, and learning how to make furniture out of wood scraps.

 

It’s cosy, warm. Homey. 

 

The kids are all huddled together in a mess around their little nest that they’ve created, and they look happy. Hop thinks he can hear them gossiping about Steve and Eddie, has half the mind to tell them to knock it off, but their voices are filled with so much warmth.

 

“But it was so real—”

 

“Max, it’s probably just a nightmare.”

 

Hopper leans against the kitchen counter, pretends to be busy making breakfast. The kids voices have shifted, and they’re quiet, whispering, soft.

 

“No, I,” It’s Will. Soft-spoken. Hopper can barely make him out amongst the noises of the cabin. “I had one, too. A dream of Steve dying.”

 

It feels like a cool flush has taken over him. The pancake mix is abandoned as he turns around to walk towards the kids. The image of Steve laying across the dining table, of wiping away his blood with a wet cloth, of Sara and Joyce and El and Nothing flooding into the forefront of his brain.

 

“Will,” He swallows. “Did it happen at your house?”

 

The kids have turned to look at him. They look warm and safe and complete, and Hopper hopes to god, hopes to anyone that will listen, that the thought he had was just that. 

 

“Yes. You and Jonathan and El were there, and Steve was—”

 

“I saw it, too, kid.”

 

Hopper sits on the ground near them all. Brings Will close in his arms. They don’t cry, don’t speak. The rest of the party shift, correct themselves to hold each other, not crying. 

 

Max is looking at Hopper, eyebrows drawn, before she’s speaking, “We should tell him.”

 

There are murmurs of agreement throughout the group, but they stay like that, holding each other, mourning a death that doesn’t exist, mourning for someone who fought so hard for them to live.

 

(Later, Steve knocks on the door, and the kids are mildly apprehensive and melancholy. Hopper watches as his eyes dance around the room, realises the down mood, adjusts and smiles and laughs and plops himself down into the nest of warmth and blankets.

 

Nobody says a word. Maybe it’s because they see how hard Steve is trying (succeeding) to make them feel better, or because they don’t know how to approach the topic. He floats to the kitchen and uses the pancake mix, and serves breakfast, and laughs and jokes, eyes filled with so much love.

 

Hopper looks at the scar on his forehead, remembers the piercing sound of a gun, of body falling on asphalt).

 

— — —

 

He isn’t the one to tell Steve. Too busy with helping Enzo settle in, and filling in one year gaps with El. Hop goes to bed each night after the vision, the memory, and feels a blossoming of guilt eat through his skin. He tells himself it is because he’s too busy.

 

When he’s finally ready to confront Steve, to invite him over to the cabin and to talk about how things are starting to come back, how they are starting to remember his deaths— he receives a letter in the mail.

 

There are only a handful of people who knows where he lives, all of whom he trusts, so he knows it isn’t spam (laughs a little at the thought of spam mail and shitty tabloids tracking him down, just to advertise). 

 

The letter is sealed, chicken scratch handwriting with his name on the front. When he opens up the envelope, sits in the armchair by the TV, he wants to weep.

 

It’s a list. A long, long list. Each dot point is labelled with a number and a name, and Hop flicks through the pages until he reaches the end, sees over two-hundred entries. There are two copies within the envelope. One for him. One for El.

 

Deaths. It’s a list of Steve’s deaths.

 

(Hopper wants to cry, then. He wants to know which of the kids had to tell their Steve about what they had saw, that they had remembered. He flicks the envelope back over and catches Eddie’s handwriting, knows that, at least, Steve didn’t go through this alone).

 

There’s a small note, tucked behind the two lists. It’s written in Steve’s unruly handwriting, blocky and soft. 

 

“Turns out the scars aren’t done showing up, and I maybe-might-have-died a couple hundred times, and you guys maybe-might-be remembering my deaths? I’m really sorry about  I would say I’m sorry, but Eddie is a bully, and isn’t allowing me to.”

 

Hopper laughs. He’s glad that, at the very least, Eddie is making sure that Steve knows this isn’t his fault. Was never his fault. He turns back to the note.

 

“We made a list, Eddie and I. It probably would have been a good idea to just… give you the deaths that you would be a part of, but that’s kinda a lot of work and it’s like, 2 AM or something. Everyone just gets the whole shebang. 

 

It’s… a warning? Caution? I don’t really know how or when you’ll remember it (or if you’ll even remember it at all!), but I just wanted everyone to be ready. I’m sorry that there’s so many pages.

 

Love,

Steve Harrington.”

Notes:

ok so i know i said later this year but uhhhhhhh.... surprise?