Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

‘That despair is like an explosion
of understanding.

It can make you quite careless.’
— from ‘The Future’ by Sandra Lim

Steve jolts awake out of a grey sort of half-sleep, heart racing and hands scrambling for purchase on the rough, worn couch, Tears for Fears faint in the background, Dustin looming in front of him and Eddie–

Steve’s not breathing. He gasps around the lump in his throat and chokes on his lungs and Eddie fucking died, Eddie died right there in his arms and what the fuck is happening here what is this is he losing his mind is he–

“Breathe, Harrington, c’mon, breathe with me,” and Eddie is alive in front of him, alive, not bleeding out, big dark eyes rich with steady concern and his hands on Steve’s knees, fuck, crouching before him alive– what the fuck is going on– “You’re okay,” Eddie says, and Steve’s not sure that’s true but whatever, “Just match my breathing, okay? Yeah, that’s it, Harrington, that’s it.”

Steve matches the breathing of a dead man. A man he saw bleeding out, felt bleeding out. He had this guy’s fucking blood all over his hands, slippery and hot, he felt the life drip out of him and now–

“I think I’m losing my mind,” he says quietly, scrubbing his hands over his face when he’s finally able to breathe.

Eddie looks up at him with a weary smile. “You and me both, my friend.”

“Steve?” Robin’s voice wavers. She’s switched off the boombox and is standing behind Eddie, wide fear in her eyes. “You okay?”

Max appears next to her. “Was it a nightmare? Have you had the headaches, the nosebleeds–“

Steve shakes his head slowly. “Just a dream.” He doesn’t say the rest, doesn’t say I dreamt this. At least, the start. The Tears for Fears and the boombox and the–

They wouldn’t believe him anyway.

“Sorry, man,” Dustin mumbles. “If I, like, startled you when I woke you up.”

Steve claps him on the arm and gets to his feet, can’t bear being this close to Eddie right now, Eddie who died — “Nah, you’re good. Just– on edge.” Understatement, understatement. Everything he’s seen is burning out of him. Why this? Why now? Why him? What the fuck?

Vecna, it’s gotta be Vecna, surely that’s all it can be–

Unless he’s totally losing his mind. Which, maybe it’s not that unlikely.

But come on. If this is some new way for Vecna to screw with him–

Then let’s kill the bastard. And this time, do it right. This time Eddie won’t bleed out in his arms, in anyone’s arms. This time, Steve will make sure. This time, he’ll do it right.

He goes and sits outside for a moment, as Nancy comes out of the bathroom, because he doesn’t need to hear it. He’s heard it already. And he puts his head in his hands and he allows himself to cry, just a little, not as much as he desperately wants to. He can’t understand this at all. All he can do is keep going on, right? Find some way to save Eddie. Find some way to make it to tomorrow.

And Eddie died–

There’s a crow hopping across the scraggly grass in front of him, cocking its dark head and eyeing him beadily. He kicks out his feet in an effort to shoo it away and winces as the movement stretches the bites. Then a hand on his shoulder makes him jump half out of his skin, and turning to see who it is doesn’t exactly help, because it’s Eddie. Leather-clad and grimy, still, but alive. And alive. What the fuck.

“You want a smoke?” he says, digging a near-empty pack of Camels out of his pocket.

Steve shrugs and takes one, thinking as he does it I know what your blood feels like on my hands, man, and how horribly insane that is. “Sorry about– earlier,” he feels compelled to say.

Eddie lowers himself down to the ground beside him and keeps his knees pulled up to his chest. There’s something distant in his dark eyes. “Don’t be, c’mon, man. Happens to us all.”

“Yeah.” Steve doesn’t move an inch as Eddie leans over to light his cigarette for him, like he couldn’t just pass the lighter to Steve instead, no, he’s doing that thing that Steve always does when he offers a girl a cigarette, which is use it as an excuse to get a little bit closer for a moment, and it always works. Eddie’s big eyes linger on his and he smells like sweat and dirt and cigarettes, the way the vest smells too.

“You doing okay?” Eddie says, when he’s finally moved back a little. Thank god, because Steve’s not sure he could have handled that question with a dead man so close to his face.

“Just peachy,” he mutters. “How’s anyone doing? This shit is– fuck. This shit is fucked.”

Eddie laughs. “Sure is.” He lights his own cigarette and takes a drag, holding it between his fingers by his knees as he picks at the loose threads in his jeans with the other hand. “Wheeler’s decided we need to nuke the fucker. Whatever that means. Which, well, you guys have been doing this a hell of a lot longer than I have, so I’m gonna defer to your judgement, but does that? Sound like a good idea, to you? Going back in there and letting Red–” He closes his eyes and looks away. Steve feels the same, about letting Max make the sacrifice play, about putting her in the worst danger of all.

(But not necessarily the worst, he thinks. Though he doesn’t know what happened to her. If they got to Vecna in time to save her. But Eddie — Eddie died for sure. He knows that.)

Steve exhales slowly. He can’t tell a good idea from a bad one, not when it keeps going wrong but he doesn’t know why, he doesn’t know where. “I think it’s all we’ve got, right? And we have to do something.”

Eddie drops his head between his knees and says, “Fuck,” slowly, half a sigh. He’s shaking, Steve registers, just a little. Steve places a hesitant hand on his shoulder. Which–

That’s the third time they’ve touched each other, since Eddie died in his arms. Something about it ought to be cataclysmic, really, the dead man and the man who keeps waking up to him alive again, touching without blood, this time — but it’s not. It’s just warm and vaguely, awkwardly comforting. The quiet of the moment between them, under a cool grey sky, nothing but the grass and the woods in front of them, the field where Eddie died last night but right-side-up this time. Steve takes a breath and imagines the moment of peace lasting forever. Maybe they won’t go to War Zone. Maybe they won’t try to kill Vecna. Maybe they won’t ever get to tonight, and maybe they’ll stay here in the morning instead, sitting here next to each other and Eddie never dying at all.

But time barrels on.

And after a while, Eddie pulls his head back up. “Army surplus store,” he mutters, and Steve’s been here before. Eddie picks himself up and takes himself inside and Steve follows him; he grabs a broadsheet ad page, taps a ringed finger on War Zone, and Steve really has to wonder what he bought there, again, because he still doesn’t know. Maybe this time he’ll ask.

Nancy is watching him, he registers, her eyebrows knitted together with something somewhere between concern and puzzlement, like she’s trying to figure him out. It’s a different look to the one she wore the first time, that kind of soft curiosity and weird almost longing that made him spout forth all the stupid stuff about six kids in the first place — she’s not looking longing now. She’s looking focused. Focused on him, keen discerning eyes that don’t waver as he hops into the driver’s seat of the camper van easily, now, though Don’t ya, big boy? still floors him every time — “Something’s going on,” she says, instead of How’s it handle?

He looks at her then looks away. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she says emphatically, “you’re acting weird.”

“The world is ending, Nance, we’re all acting weird.”

“Weirder than everyone else,” she hisses. “Freaking out this morning and then just brushing it off, going outside while I told everyone what I saw and then coming in and somehow being totally up to speed anyway, don’t think I didn’t notice that, you and Eddie talking outside, plus the way you’re looking at him–”

Steve blinks. “How am I looking at him?” he says, stupidly.

“With this sort of– lost, wounded look, like you’ve seen a ghost. It’s weird, Steve.”

He takes a deep breath and tightens his hands on the wheel. Maybe he’ll tell her. Hell, she’s smarter than him. She’ll know what to do. How to get him out of this mess, or else tell him he’s lost his mind, and hey. Maybe he needs to be told that. Maybe he has.

But before he can start, she cuts him off: “If I didn’t know any better–” then she stops. Her hand comes up to her face and she starts chewing on her thumbnail, eyes darting between him and the road. “Fuck it, maybe I don’t know better. I’m saying this because it’s– because it’s the end of the world, Steve, and everything’s been so confusing lately and maybe this is totally off-base but if it isn’t then I think you need to hear it–”

He’s never really heard her ramble like that before. She sounds almost like Robin.

“–it’s okay. If you want something different. If you want something no one’s expecting you to want.” She gives him a small smile as she says it, and he stares at her cluelessly, because he’s not sure he gets what she means. The last time they talked as he drove them to War Zone, it was about his dream for six kids in a camper van in California, which he’s pretty sure is what everyone is expecting him to want. Hmm, maybe they’re expecting three. But everything else?

But she doesn’t elaborate, and they lapse into a silence that he doesn’t fill with meaningless, embarrassing shit about the camper van. The stakes are too high. How does he save Eddie this time?

He settles on telling them to remember to block the vents; he settles for going with Nancy and Robin to torch Vecna as before, but with his whole body primed to run, carrying less gear because he knows he’ll need to be light — because if Eddie won’t let him save him when they’re together from the start, then maybe he can save him by doubling back later. Maybe.

So when they reach the staircase, he stops. He knows this is kind of a shitty thing to do, right now, but he also knows if he doesn’t he’ll be getting that walkie transmission in about fifteen minutes’ time, Eddie’s dead–

“I have to go,” he says, and his voice trembles. “Eddie and Dustin–”

Robin is frowning at him. “But, Steve, Vecna–”

“You guys can handle him. I know you can.” I’ve seen you do it. “I just have to–”

Nancy looks at him knowingly, though he’s not sure what she knows, and says, “Go,” and, granted permission, he goes. He fucking runs.

Eddie is still on his feet when Steve reaches him. And for a moment, he thinks, thank god. For a moment, he thinks he’s in time. He battles his way through the bats and hurls the axe at them, chops several in half as he does it, and Eddie stares at him and out of breath gasps, “What the fuck, Steve, what about Vecna–” as he swings the makeshift spear at another bat, and Steve just shakes his head and says, “I couldn’t let you fucking die, could I?” as two more bats come at them and they move in sync, almost, back to back, like this is what’s meant to happen, like maybe this is the solution–

Then Steve looks over his shoulder and Eddie isn’t there anymore.

Or, yeah, he’s there, but he’s on the ground and he’s covered in bats and they’re gnawing at him the way they were gnawing at Steve and he dives for them, he batters them away with the axe but they keep coming back and Eddie is spluttering blood, not even screaming anymore which is always a horrible sign and the bats keep circling–

Until, they’re not. Until they fall to the ground as one, dead, Robin’s miracle, and Steve can finally let go of the axe and drop to his knees by Eddie’s shuddering, bloodied form and scoop him into his arms and hiss, “You’re not fucking dying this time, you fucking prick,” furious, actually, which fury is better than desperately sad, for now. Fury allows him to hoist Eddie’s limp form in his arms, like strings cut from a marionette, Eddie’s head lolling into his shoulder and his breaths coming in a sort of ugly rattle that doesn’t sound healthy at all–

“Eddie, Eddie, holy fuck, Eddie–“

That’s Dustin, Dustin’s coming running up towards them, limping with his ankle at an awkward angle, eyes wild and desperate on Eddie. Eddie stirs, smiling against Steve’s chest through the blood on his face even as he doesn’t open his eyes: “You’ve still got eyes, then, Henderson, good, that’s good.”

His voice is brutally ragged. Steve doesn’t know what to do. Is he going to live? Was Steve quick enough? Or is he going to die here like he did the last time–

“Hospital,” Dustin moans. “We gotta– Steve, he needs a hospital. He needs–“

“Right,” Steve says, stutters, something like this morning’s frozen fear choking his lungs, but he starts to move. As fast as he can without jostling Eddie, that is, Eddie who lets out little involuntary gasps of pain at each rough movement, Eddie whose blood is dripping down Steve’s front, hot and sticky and red. “Hold on,” he says, prays, almost. “Not this time. Not this time.”

“You say that like I–“ Eddie breaks off and blood bubbles at his lips just like it did before, just like– and they’re running out of time– “like I’ve died before, Harrington,” and they’re at the trailer now so close to the gate so close to–

To what? Because the hospital is miles away, fucking miles away, and Eddie is bleeding out right here and there’s not even a rope through the gate now, no way of getting through, so what do they–

“It’s Steve,” Steve hisses, and Eddie doesn’t answer. Eddie doesn’t answer, and Steve shakes him harder than he should maybe but he’s desperate because Eddie isn’t dying again Eddie isn’t fucking dying–

But Eddie is dying.

He jerks in Steve’s arms, once, twice. His eyes flutter open then closed then open, and he looks at Steve and then Dustin and then Steve, and he says, “My year, huh?” and doesn’t say anything more at all, not ever again. Not until.

Welcome to your life, he hears Curt Smith singing again as he wakes again out of the grey haze of sleep, Dustin, Eddie, Robin and Lucas and he didn’t think it could get any worse but it did, because this time was worse, this time he was so close–

“You sleep well, asshole?”

Steve ignores him. He stands, on legs that feel little more stable than Jell-O, and stumbles across the room.

“Nancy’s in the bathroom–”

He knows Nancy’s in the bathroom. He fucking knows that, he’s seen her walk out of it three times already and he just– He hammers on the door. “Nance?” he says, and hates the way her name comes out, all thin and quaking and squeaky like he’s thirteen again and his voice has just broken. She opens the door, wide-eyed, red-rimmed, and her hands are shaking just like his, but he can’t focus on that now, he just brushes past her and drops to his knees by the toilet and throws up a mix of mostly stomach acid and some reedy streaks of blood.

His hands tremble in fists on the cheap bathroom tiles; his knees are aching. Why this. Why him. What the fuck is going on–

“Shit, Steve,” Nancy’s mumbling, sinking down beside him and placing a soothing, wary hand on his back. He’s sort of aware he’s interrupted her breakdown with his own, but it’s just this once. He’ll leave her to do it in private the next time.

Which–

Fuck.

Her hand winds up on his forehead, soothing and cool, and suddenly he’s thinking about that time just after Christmas a few years ago, January ‘84, he thinks, when he had a fever and she stayed the night to see him through it and even made him chicken soup (or got her mom to make him chicken soup, he has no delusions about her interest in cooking), and he remembers waking up in the middle of the night with his whole body hot and cold, shivering and reaching over and finding her side of the bed empty and barely even warm, a light under the bathroom door and — faint enough he could convince himself it was a feverish delusion — the sound of crying, muffled as if with a hand over her mouth.

Ashamedly, as he did most things that year, he turned over and slipped back into sleep.

“You’re warm, Steve, this isn’t good, this isn’t– is it the bites? Are they hurting? Let me–” She’s already tugging the vest off his shoulders but he flinches away because no. He can’t let her take it, not after– not when–

He pulls it tighter around himself and hunches back against the bathroom wall, by the basin, and how come he always ends up on bathroom floors?

She sits down too, cross-legged, hands twisting together in her lap. “If they’re infected, I have to look at them,” she says, and her voice is less soft than matter-of-fact. “You don’t look well.”

But he’s not feeling ill, necessarily, not in a way that’s about blood and pus and immune systems. More like his guts are tying themselves in knots like in sympathy to the way Eddie’s organs were torn out–

Nancy hasn’t gone out of the bathroom this time, sitting there watching him with big, serious eyes, so distantly he hears Robin putting another cassette in because she hasn’t been interrupted in her task — some The Smiths song, he thinks, the first one off the other side of their first album, he remembers it because he bought it for Jonathan one year under Nancy’s advisement and kinda liked it so he bought one for himself — and he puts his head in his hands as Morrissey starts to sing because maybe he is feverish, maybe this is a fever dream. Nancy’s hand lands on his knee.

“I can’t watch someone die again,” he grits out, and what he really says is I can’t watch Eddie die again, but she already thinks his bites are infected and he’d sound completely insane which maybe he is–

But she’s frowning anyway, because, right. In her world, he’s never seen anyone die. In her world–

So what does that make his world?

So he thinks, what the hell. “This day. I’ve been, like, reliving it. Over and over. Dustin waking me up, Robin and Lucas with the boombox, you in the bathroom and Eddie on the couch–” His throat tightens. He feels a little sick again. “Over and over. And we go and try to kill Vecna but he doesn’t die, he just disappears, and he– and then– Eddie–”

“What?” Her fingers tighten around his knee, like she’s trying to anchor him to the ground.

“Nance, I don’t– fuck.” He runs his hands through his hair. It feels greasy and heavy with grime. He’s looking somewhere beyond her, at the tiles, rather than at her. He can’t look at her as he says this. “You need to believe me. I tried to tell you guys the first time but I didn’t– I guess I didn’t explain it well enough, it didn’t– and I thought I could fix it on my own, but I couldn’t–”

She lays her hand on his forehead again, like she thinks he’s delirious. Maybe he is. But delirium wouldn’t do this to him; wouldn’t plant such vivid fantasies in his head. Such foreknowledge. Precognition.

“When you walk in there,” he says, taking a deep breath, “You’re gonna tell them about the dark cloud you saw, spreading all over Hawkins. Four gates, getting wider until they consume the whole town. And a lot of monsters. You’re gonna tell us Vecna is One, a number like El, and you’re gonna tell us he’s– he’s Henry Creel too, and none of us are gonna know what to call him and then that’s not gonna matter because you’re gonna set your heart on killing him, which might be a good plan except I’m not sure it actually works and then Eddie–”

He feels slightly like he’s falling. A lot like he’s falling. His mouth tastes sour with bile. “Eddie what, Steve?” she whispers. She’s leaned forward, staring in something like horrified wonder.

“Eddie dies,” and he’s not expecting the way it comes out at all, he tries to say it evenly, quickly, like ripping a bandaid off, but it gets stuck halfway up his throat and lodges there and he sobs around it, sobs once, sobs Eddie dies and then Nancy is pulling him into her arms.

He’s not sure how long he cries for. She strokes soothing circles on his back as his chest heaves and jolts with breaths that aren’t quite breaths, breaths that have tears tracing down his cheeks and dampening her torn, grimy sweater. She doesn’t say anything, just shushes him gently, holds him and doesn’t say anything and lets him cry. Which– he guess he needs. Eddie’s died three times. And he can’t see any way of stopping a fourth.

“I don’t know how to stop this,” he whispers. She pulls back and looks at him, her arms still bracketing his shoulders, eyes full and large and her lips pressed together in a concerned, slim line. She’s inches away, only inches. She’s cleaned most of the dirt from her face but there’s still dropped mascara rimming her eyes. They dart over his face carefully, she looks at him carefully, and she doesn’t look away.

“We’ll work it out,” she says. “I mean– okay, maybe Vecna’s shown you this day, somehow, different iterations of it, but we just have to do it right once, right? If we kill Vecna properly, just this once. Just today. Maybe we can– we can stop whatever visions you’re having from coming true. Cancel them.”

“But I’ve tried– I’ve tried three times, Nance. And it always goes wrong. I can’t watch him die again, I can’t. I can’t.”

Her face softens. He remembers, then, what she said to him in the RV. You and Eddie talking outside, plus the way you’re looking at him — talking about wanting. Wanting things no one expects him to want. Which– he still doesn’t know what she meant. The other her, in the other today. The other world? But suddenly he’s thinking — Eddie. Nancy’s eyes drooping sympathetically at the corners. The idea that–

What?

His brain doesn’t get much further than that. Because every time he thinks about Eddie he also thinks about him dying and it’s not–

He can’t think about it.

“So we fix it,” Nancy says fiercely. “We do something differently to what you’ve been seeing.”

“I’ve tried–“

“So we try differently. We change more of the plan. You know things, maybe, things he showed you like he showed me, that can help us, surely–“

He doesn’t mean to do it. He really doesn’t. But she’s so fierce right now, so bright, and she’s been talking about what he should want and what he does want and everyone’s been telling him he wants her so–

He looks at her lips. Leans closer.

It’s the fourth time he’s been here. Here, but not here. Not on this bathroom floor with the girl he used to love, as she tells him they’ll work it out, as she tells him he can save Eddie–

That’s why he leans in, maybe. Because she’s offering hope. And he needs a bit of hope.

And hopefully she looks down at his lips; then she looks back up at his eyes. There’s a mute, strained thread of apology in her gaze. She pulls backwards. The hope sort of drains.

“Think about it,” she says firmly, a little coldly. “Think about how we can make it different.”

Instead of wishing he could kiss her, because that’s stupid, and he’s embarrassed himself again, embarrassed himself in a way that’s different but also the same as the six kids in the RV, and he’s got to stop doing that, embarrassing himself — he thinks. Thinks about War Zone, and the trailer, and the Creel House. How do they make it different? Change more of the plan. So– what.

Steve isn’t smart enough or creative enough or sharp enough for this, he knows, and a great hot flood of why me sweeps through him, because if it was Nancy or Dustin or Robin stuck in the middle of all this they’d have an idea. They’d have another plan. But he–

“Eddie always– always makes the hero play. Y’know, sacrifices himself, to save the rest of us,” he says, quietly. His voice comes out hoarse. “But I don’t know how to stop that.”

“So put him somewhere else. Right? Somewhere he can’t do that. Say he’s not a diversion anymore, he can’t do that–“

“But we need him. We need him to play Metallica on his guitar to distract the bats from us, going in to kill Vecna.”

A beat. She looks away, brow furrowing as she thinks. He runs his hand through his hair again and winces at the grit in it. “What if we don’t? What if all of us together, you and me and Robin and Eddie and Dustin, what if we’re enough to hold them off? While Max and Lucas and Erica distract Vecna himself? I mean, it’s a hive mind, maybe distracting Vecna alone will be enough?”

“No decoy,” he says slowly. It strikes fear in his heart. But equally– it’s already gone wrong. They’ve already lost someone, and they have to try another way. They have to.

So they do. They go out there and when Nancy’s given her speech, the speech he already knows by heart, Steve clears his throat and says to everyone, “It’s too dangerous to go around playing heroes. Max, Lucas, Erica, you go to Creel’s house and distract Vecna, and the rest of us will kill him.”

“But the bats–”

“It’s safer this way,” Nancy says, and they listen to Nancy more than they listen to Steve, which he guesses is fair. They’ve always listened to her more, and she’s smarter than him, so he listens to her too.

“Harrington’s got her. Don’t ya, big boy?” Eddie says in the camper van, leaning back into him, eyes dancing and alive, and Steve thinks about Nancy’s words again, about surely she didn’t mean what it’s beginning to feel like she meant and he can’t even ask her because today she doesn’t remember what she said yesterday–

“We’re definitely talking about that later,” says Robin, leaning over from behind. He floors it out of the trailer park and doesn’t say anything in response, mouth pinched closed in concentration. Nancy doesn’t come to sit next to him this time. Which he supposes he deserves. So it’s Robin who fills the passenger seat, pulling her knees up to her chest in a way that would definitely get her killed if they crashed, so he tuts at her until she puts them back down. “Or we can talk about it now, if you want,” she says snippily, rolling her eyes at him.

“Nothing to talk about,” he says.

“Right. Because you haven’t been weird about Eddie this whole time–”

He looks at her with a frown. Because he’s barely even spoken to Eddie this time round — this time round he disappeared into the bathroom with Nance as soon as he woke up and didn’t even look at Eddie (refused to) until Don’t ya, big boy– “What? No, I haven’t.”

“You bought him Honeycombs and chocolate milk for breakfast! Don’t think I didn’t notice that.” And oh, she’s talking about before. Before this– thing started. It feels like a distant dream, now. Four extra days ago at least. “You never buy anyone chocolate milk because according to you it’s an insult to good honest dairy and also you’re trying to wean the kiddos off sugary cereal, which, if you don’t want to be called the group mom you probably shouldn’t act like one–”

“They eat enough crap!” He protests. “Dustin would probably live off 3 Musketeers alone if I let him–”

“Whatever, that’s beside the point, Steve, the point is you bought him something you thought he’d like, the day after he held a broken bottle to your throat.”

His mouth goes dry. He’s glad he’s driving, suddenly, so he doesn’t have to look at her. “He just–” He’s careful to match Robin’s measured, quiet tone. He doesn’t really want Eddie to hear them talking about him, not at all, but especially not like this. “He had a really fucking rough night, all right? And I feel like I know something about that.” He knows even more about it now, about fucking rough nights and the people (person) you lose in them– “We all do.”

He can feel her looking at him for a long, quiet moment. There’s some country song playing on the radio, the same song that was the soundtrack to him telling Nance he wanted six kids with her and now it’s– now it’s different-feeling. Now the hope of a camper van to California seems distant and far away.

She doesn’t push it any further. And he’s grateful for that, that she doesn’t push it. So grateful that when they’re talking about failed romances (he forgot to pull her away from Vickie again, fucking idiot, no wonder Eddie keeps dying if he can’t even do that right–) he says softly, “I almost kissed Nance.”

She stops pouring the kerosene and looks at him. Out in the field, Eddie is telling Dustin to never change. “Oh, Steve,” she says, quietly, uncertainly, like she’s not sure what tone she should be going for.

“I didn’t– it was stupid.” He looks at the ground and then at Nancy, sawing off the end of a shotgun as Max looks at her admiringly, even through dull eyes. “But I’ve done a lot of stupid things, so. Not sure it even cracks the top ten.”

“Steve,” she says, and he looks at her. He can hear her words in his head before she says them. “If I’m right, about this sense of– of fucking doom — and I’m praying to whatever fucking god is out there that I’m not, but if I am — then surely it’s better to say things. Whatever things those might be. Rather than to leave them unsaid?”

“You think?” he says, and he says it seriously but in his own head it sounds vaguely mocking.

“Like I said,” and she sounds sad again, fucking Vickie, “romance is the last thing we need to worry about. But also — I think it would be pretty horrible to die with something like that unsaid. Right?”

“I don’t even know what I’d say.” But he does know. He’d say some bullshit about six kids and a Winnebago and the cute little cul-de-sac life she fucking hates, the life he offered her before, the life she turned down. Maybe he should just be honest. Hey, in the times I’ve seen all this shit happening before, I said some stupid shit about wanting six kids with you and I’m sorry about that but I’m also not sure I didn’t mean it and I wanted to kiss you and maybe I still want to but also you said that thing about Eddie and Eddie keeps dying and and and–

He decides to keep his mouth shut.

And anyway, this time it’s the five of them creeping through the forest, and there’s no opportunity for alone time, for any sort of heart-to-heart. Eddie winds up walking beside him, clutching onto the axe Steve gave him, because he decided the nail-bat was better, demonic-bat-repelling wise. Besides, it’s trusty and familiar in his grip. Comforting.

“So, what’s the story with that wildly dangerous-looking instrument?” Eddie says mildly, and he’s got that weird calmness settled over him again, like he did when they were fortifying the trailer the second day. Maybe it’s the doing something. Not being swallowed up in helpless fear. Steve knows something about that too. “Or are you just not keen on someone on the baseball team?”

Steve snorts a small laugh. “No, no. This is– this is from the first time we faced all this shit. Jonathan made it, actually.”

“Jonathan– Jonathan Byers?” Eddie laughs too. He brings a hand up to rub at his jaw, wipe at his nose. “Now, I always saw him as fairly harmless, but it does make a bit more sense.”

“Than what?” Steve says, maybe a bit defensively.

Eddie lays a hand on his arm. The touch burns. “Relax, Harrington, I’m not impugning your manhood by suggesting you can’t hammer nails into a baseball bat. It’s just not very vanilla, is it?”

Steve’s glad they’re in the murky blue of the Upside Down, because he’s pretty sure his cheeks are aflame. “Nothing vanilla about the end of the world,” he manages, and Eddie grins.

“You got me there,” he says, and there’s something about that smile. His eyes on Steve’s in the dark. He’s slung the axe over his shoulder, hair pulled under his bandana, and he’s walking close to Steve, so close Steve could reach out and touch him and then that’s exactly what Steve does, reaches out and touches him, takes his wrist for a moment and it’s different to the way Eddie touched his arm, it’s more permanent, it’s more I’m checking you’re still here, for my sake or for yours, and Eddie stops walking. “What was that for?” he says, voice barely louder than a whisper.

“Vines,” Steve says. Lies. “Thought you were gonna–”

“Oh. Right. Thanks.”

After a moment, Steve lets go of his wrist. It felt the same as he remembers, from the second time, grabbing Eddie’s wrist and dragging him to safety and it still wasn’t safe enough–

Steve looks away. Says something about Robin and moves to catch up with her, where she’s freaking out a little, and he knows something about how to calm her down this time because he’s done it twice already. She looks at him gratefully and he tries not to think about Eddie. Things will be different this time. He knows it. They’ve changed the plan, rather than just the people doing it. That has to make a difference.

It doesn’t.

Max lets herself get Vecna’d; Erica gives them the signal. They move. Make it kind of far, actually, almost all the way up the stairs before it comes. The cacophony of thousands of leathery, evil wings, beating away at the windows, flooding in through the ruined roof: “Incoming!” Steve shouts from the top of the stairs, ahead of everyone else, raising the nail-bat and readying himself–

Then someone’s coming up beside him, Nancy, and she’s got the long staff in her hand that in another day they bound a knife to and used as a spear, and this time they’ve wrapped the head in a rag doused in kerosene so it takes only the flick of a Zippo to set it ablaze and she thrusts it at the bats just as they come careening down towards them–

But the bats are in the way, is the problem. Their way up the stairs is blocked. And the swarm is huge, the swarm is growing and they’re edging around the flame, they’re shrieking and snarling and Steve whips the nail-bat around desperately.

“Molotov cocktail?” he hears Robin shout from behind.

“We need them for Vecna!” Steve shouts back, because they do, they don’t have that many and if they’re gonna make sure he’s dead then–

They hold off the bats. But they don’t push them back. They can’t push them back, even with five of them, even with the flaming torches in their hands. And then Steve hears a sound from his left, almost a bitter laugh, and he knows. Again, he knows.

“Guess someone’s gotta play the hero,” Eddie says, like he’s gritting his teeth, the bitterness of the laugh still in his voice, and he shrugs at Steve almost helplessly even as Steve lunges for him — “Later, Harrington,” he says, and then he dives down the stairs and out of the door.

For a second, it doesn’t even seem like it works. The bats keep harrying them, snarling and ugly and so many of them, so many. Then–

Eddie’s voice, distant and hoarse and mocking, reaches them from outside. “Hey, fuckers! Come and fucking get me!”

And they do. They do go and get him.

Steve feels like he’s about to puke again. His guts are rolling inside him and he’s not sure he can breathe. He makes an abortive movement towards the stairs and then stops and then moves again, unsure, desperate, this can’t be fucking happening, not again–

“Steve! We have to move!” Nancy’s grabbed his arm, pulling him along up to the attic but what’s the point if Eddie fucking dies again–

No point, is the answer. This time Eddie dies before they can even touch Vecna. Steve feels it again, the pins and needles, the vertigo as the world tilts around him, watches distantly as Nancy and Robin and Dustin advance and then watches nothing at all, nothing but the inside of his eyelids as he prepares himself to wake up again. To try again.