Chapter Text
Eddie doesn’t even understand what the fuck his life is anymore. They’re all standing around a length of sheet that’s floating in midair, passing through the gaping, wet rip in his ceiling, up at the faces of Dustin, Max, and Lucas as they stare back up at them. They’ve dragged his mattress out of his bedroom and positioned it perfectly for the group on this side of the gate to land on and Eddie is still mentally smacking himself for even bringing up the stains. God he’s embarrassing, he thinks, cringing to himself as he tries to avoid looking at the large discolored spots on his sheets. He glances around at the others, honestly kind of baffled on how they’d managed to survive to this point.
Firstly, somehow not drowning on his way to the bottom of the lake, then the four of them fending off a pack of demonic bats, despite Harrington literally bleeding out. The image of the other man bare handedly ripping a demobat apart was going to stick in Eddie’s brain for a disgustingly long time, he was sort of ashamed to admit to himself.
“Listen, guys,” and that was Dustin shouting from above them, “enough standing around! Let’s go!” His words were enough to get them out of their heads and Robin twitches a bit and steps past Nancy, moving towards the rope they’d crafted.
“Guess I’ll go first.” She grunts just before she grips the rope and heaves herself up. Eddie stares up at her as she climbs, wondering how the pass through was going to work. He watches her pause at the top of the rope and hesitantly push her head through. As she breaches the gate the hair on top of her head starts to float, though really it's just gravity taking effect, Eddie figures. While none of this makes any goddamn sense to him and he’s scared out of his mind, more than he’s ever been in his life, actually, it is still really cool to watch her as she pushes the majority of her body through the rift and then gasps as she tumbles the rest of the way, free falling down onto his crappy mattress with a whump. He knows it probably didn’t feel too good, his mattress was a second round hand down from some distant cousin he didn’t know, but at the very least it was better than her falling straight onto the floor. He watches Dustin and Lucas grab her shoulders to help her up and she’s smiling and laughing along with them, which Eddie takes as a good sign. “That was awesome!” She huffs, shaking her limbs out and fluffing her hair, dusting some of the Upside Down dust off of herself. Max looks back up at them and waves for the next person to start climbing.
“Come on!” They shout in unison. Steve reaches over to tap Nancy’s shoulder and she jolts, startled for a moment. He nods his head towards the rope and gently nudges her forward.
“Oh, right, okay,” she breathes, stepping forward. She looks back at Steve for a moment, her big eyes shining with tears that she refuses to let fall, and the two share some kind of silent conversation that makes Eddie feel out of place. He shuffles a bit awkwardly, shifting his weight back and forth and glancing down at the floor to avoid looking at them. The trailer had always been a touch on the wrong side of dirty in the real world, but here it was rotted and filthy. The carpet was blackened with mold and debris, vines had forced their way inside through holes in the floor and done a fine job redecorating all the walls. Eddie wasn’t sure what he was gonna do once all this was over, if it ever ended. According to the others this was like their fourth or fifth time dealing with something fantastical and terrifying and otherworldly. His heart was going to give out if he ever had to deal with anything like this again.
The whole town thinks he killed Chrissy, that he’s some cultist doing rituals out in the woods, when in reality all he had tried to do was help her with her nightmares and play a fucking game with some kids once a week. He didn’t ask for any of this to happen and he was not equipped to deal with it. His conversation with Harrington earlier hadn’t been all bullshit, he really did think the guy was metal. Somehow the douchiest guy to ever walk the halls of Hawkins High had become the bravest person Eddie had ever met and it was really messing with his worldview. All his carefully constructed walls were crumbling in his mind, the boundaries he’d drawn to keep himself safe from getting too close to people that could hurt him.
The floorboards under the carpet creak as he shifts back to his other foot and the sound breaks him out of his head. He looks up to see that Wheeler is already halfway up the rope, with Steve beneath her giving her a boost, straining as the effort pulls at his wounds. Eddie jerks forward and reaches up to help, putting his hands under the backs of Nancy’s thighs with a quiet apology and pushes, stretching up onto his toes to lift her as high as possible. The girl weighs about 90 pounds soaking wet, but after the day he’s had he still shakes from the effort. But it’s enough assistance that Steve, whose taller, can take a breather before he reaches up as well and is able to push Nancy up just a little higher so she can reach through and grab hold of Lucas’s hand and be pulled the rest of the way. She squeaks as gravity takes her and she falls down onto the mattress, the kids grabbing her and helping her off the bed, checking her over for injuries before she brushes them off. Nancy lifts her eyes to the rift and waves them down.
Eddie realizes he’s standing basically up against Steve and hops to the side, ignoring the stupid warm feeling in his belly at the smell of the other man’s sweat. Ew, Munson, get your shit together, now is not the time to dwell on man musk. No matter how hot the guy is, he’s clearly got a thing for his ex and is also straight and that’s never gone well for Eddie in the past so he forces himself to act natural. He looks to Steve and gestures to the rope with a small flourish, his usual over dramatic antics bringing a small sense of normalcy to the situation.
“Your Highness,” He drawls, bowing slightly at the waist, but Steve scoffs and steps away from the rope to grab ahold of the shoulder of Eddie’s leather jacket, dragging him back up against his side. Eddie would never admit to the squeak he let out, tucking his ringed fingers under his chin to keep himself from touching Steve in any way. Despite his efforts to ignore it, he can feel the heat from Harrington’s bare arm leaking through the fabric of his Hellfire shirt and into his chest. “Uhhhm,” is all he can get out, staring up into the man’s eyes in confusion.
“You first.” Steve grunts, shifting so that he’s now pushing Eddie into the rope, giving him no real option to refuse but he snaps out of his stupor and shakes his head hard, his hair falling into his eyes as he does.
“Uhhh, listen Ozzy, I don’t know if you remember this or not but you did just almost die by bat bite today so maybe you should just let me help you up the stupid rope?” He knows it comes out whiny and high pitched but he doesn’t really care because he’s not wrong. Steve had been violently mauled and then nearly choked to death only a few hours ago and Eddie was a self-proclaimed pussy but he’d be damned if he ran and left the injured guy to drag himself up a rope. He tries to step back out of Steve’s grip but he just tightens his fist and shakes Eddie a little bit, shocking the shorter man for a second. Steve levels him with a hard look.
“No. Absolutely not. I’ve been dealing with this for years and you just got dragged into all this. I’m the babysitter, and now that means for you, too.” Steve is speaking hard, leaning into Eddie’s space to get his point across, “I’m fine, so shut up and climb the damn rope.” It’s clear that he’s ordering and not asking, and Eddie’s always had a hard time saying no to a deep voice and handsome face, so he rolls his eyes and slaps Steve’s hand off his shoulder. Fine, if he wants to be a self sacrificing idiot then so be it. He groans in frustration and shoots a sour look at Steve just to get the point across that he’s not happy about this but he steps forward nonetheless and grips the rope.
He heaves himself up and curses himself for never putting any effort in during gym class. His sneakers keep slipping off the knots but he manages to keep pulling himself along a little at a time. Christ, he needs to quit smoking. He’s almost there now and he looks up, pulling his body up as far as he can and pushing the edges of his sneakers onto the top of the knot at the right height and sticks his head through the portal, feeling his hair start to lift as he enters the real world. Breathing a loud sigh of relief that he’s made it, he yanks himself up the rest of the way, ignoring the vertigo of his body being half rightside up and half upside down. As his shoulders and chest pass through, he pushes with his feet one more time and throws himself through, into the air, waiting for the hard crash against his mattress.
Instead, it's like everything falls away around him, leaving him free falling through total darkness. He screams before he even registers what’s going on, kicking his legs and swinging his arms out, trying to find anything to catch hold of to stop his fall. There is no source of light, absolute crushing blackness surrounding him, his scream the only sound in this space. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. What the fuck. This wasn’t supposed to happen, not like this, no, he was getting out. Dustin and Lucas and Max and the girls had been right there above him a second ago, reaching out to him, encouraging him to drop through. Steve had been right below him, waiting his turn for the rope, watching his back. Now he was hurtling through space in abject terror, his scream ripping his throat apart. The fall in reality only lasts a few moments but to Eddie it feels far longer before the fall ends.
His scream is abruptly cut off as he slams into the hard floor of wherever he’s ended up, all the air knocked out of his lungs. Choking gasps take the place of the scream as he tries desperately to pull air back into his chest. The floor under him is unforgiving, rock hard, and Eddie thinks it might be cement. He’s finally able to take a breath and the sound of it is awful, wheezing and loud in the quiet and it feels like his throat is shredding apart. He coughs and squeezes his eyes shut, taking stock of all the pain in his body. The back of his head feels hot and his ears are ringing, breathing feels like being stabbed in the ribs. He reaches up behind his head and feels a warm wetness that is red on his fingertips when he pulls his hand back to look.
“Fucking fantastic.” He doesn’t even want to move, he just wants to lay here until he wakes up in his bed and realizes the last few days have been a bad k-hole hallucination. That’s not likely to happen though, so he whimpers as he sits up, his body screaming in agony the whole way. The room around him is covered in the same slimy vines as the Upside Down had so he knows he’s still there at least, and not in the real world. Truly, fucking fantastic. He’s in a fairly large room, with white cinderblock walls that are cracked and worn down in multiple places. There are sections of the walls that have fallen completely through and the vines have staked their claim, winding over and under and around everything they can. Under the vines though, he can see some kind of pattern running along the middle of the walls, neat lines of colors stacked on top of each other. It’s supposed to be a rainbow, he realizes, but the destructive nature of the Upside Down has muted and dulled the paint colors, leaving the design chipped and peeling. Standing up feels like hell but he does it anyway because he figures it’s that or die, basically. Thankfully once he’s actually standing it feels like breathing is a little easier, so he takes as many deep lung-fulls as he can, squeezing his eyes shut to center himself. He doesn’t understand what the fuck is happening. The others are gone and he’s in some random room he doesn’t recognize, bleeding from a head wound and completely defenseless.
Context clues would suggest that the inevitable has happened and Eddie really does not want to face that reality right now, but he hasn’t exactly been getting anything he’s wanted lately. Vecna finally has him. He’s been waiting for it to happen honestly, after watching Chrissy and Patrick both get taken, it had seemed like it was only a matter of time until he got snatched. Watching them die had been painful, terrifying, disgusting. Chrissy was such a sweet soul and she didn’t deserve to die, let alone like that. He wishes to god that he had known about the music then, wishes that he had been able to do anything other than scream at her and shake her while she seized in front of him. Patrick, despite being a member of the super sneaker squad, hadn’t seemed like that bad of a bad guy. Sure, he had been helping Jason chase him down to get revenge, but that didn’t mean he deserved to be cracked into the shape of a modern art piece by a dark dimension wizard. Eddie desperately doesn’t want that to happen to him either.
As he takes another scan of his surroundings, he can’t help but wonder what’s happening on the outside right now. He wonders if he’s just standing there in front of Steve, seizing and shaking with his eyes rolled into the back of his head, while everybody panics and tries to figure out what his favorite song is before Lord Vecna makes him float and bends him into a pretzel. He hopes that if they don’t manage to save him, that Steve or somebody will think to cover Dustin’s eyes. As much as the kid worships the ground Harrington walks on, Eddie would be an idiot if he didn’t notice that Henderson also is a little obsessed with him and he doesn’t want to scar him for the rest of his life by making him watch as he’s brutally murdered.
The room around him is pretty barren, but Eddie flits around in a panic anyways, overturning the short tables and chairs to look underneath for anything he might be able to use as a weapon. He kicks the moldy, torn children’s books and toys around as he moves. Sweaty hair clings to his forehead and he can hear that embarrassing whine he does when he’s scared climb up his throat and slip through his clenched teeth.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon! Fuck!” he screeches, because all he can find in the room is broken kids furniture and toys, scattered pieces of board games and a dingy stuffed animal or two. He’s fucked and he knows it and goddamn it all to hell, he should’ve never offered to sell Chrissy that ketamine, he should’ve graduated when he was supposed to and gotten out of this shithole town like he wanted to. But no, not for him, no way, this was his particular twist of fate, to get murdered by a monster in an alternate dimension in a rotting room that looked like some kind of demented children’s hospital playroom, because why would any of this make sense.
As he thinks about all of this, he’s dumb enough to let himself start to get pissed off about it all, and he takes a deep breath to really scream and shout and let Vecna know exactly what Eddie thinks of his bullshit tactics. He slams his fists against his legs in a little tantrum and opens his mouth to start screaming when he hears a booming clock chime, just the way Max had described it. The sound of it is too loud in the room and it’s ringing around his brain, so he claps his hands over his ears and instinctively curls in on himself with a squeal. The chime is echoing around him and it’s deeper than it should be, distorting and warping as it fades back into silence.
Eddie’s panic rises as he jumps closer to the back wall and spins to face out into the room, terrified of what he’s going to see. He remembers listening to Max describe her encounter with Vecna, how the wizard had tormented her and how scared she had been at the sight of him, grotesque and huge, how he had seemed like such an imposing figure, something impossible to beat. As his back meets the wall behind him, Eddie forces himself to keep his eyes on the floor in front of him because he’s terrified of what he might see if he looks up. His hair hangs down around his face in limp waves, sweaty and dirty, but still giving him the smallest sense of security, even as his body starts shaking from the overwhelming fear he feels.
“Eddie…” he hears from the other side of the room, the voice impossibly deep and guttural and it almost sends him fainting to the ground. His sneakers slip in the dust and grime on the floor and his back presses harder into the wall, the only thing keeping him upright anymore. As he finds his balance again, his eyes seem to move of their own accord, up and up and up until he’s finally staring straight at Vecna. The blueish tint of the air in the Upside Down does nothing to hide the mottled, raw flesh of him, the veins and scarred ridges and bumps that lap over his limbs. Eddie feels hot, acidic puke climb up the back of his throat at the sight of Vecna’s face, a sunken wound where his nose should be, what looks like the white bone of his skull exposed to the air, raw meat and musculature surrounding his piercing blue eyes. Eddie’s never been religious, in fact mostly the opposite really, but as he feels Vecna’s eyes boring into his own, he prays to anything that will listen that somebody on the outside will think to play one of his tapes to save him. Hell, they could kick on one of his uncle’s Bee Gees albums and it would probably be the best sound Eddie had ever heard.
He can feel the sweat starting to gather at the small of his back, soaking into his shirt and making it cling to his skin like glue. The nervous tremors have spread all over his body, the intensity so bad that he hears his teeth start to chatter together before he clamps his mouth shut as hard as he can stand and slaps a hand over his mouth.
“Poor Eddie…” Vecna rumbles, sounding amused. Isn’t that just nice, Eddie thinks, that the monster that’s going to suck the eyeballs out of his skull has a sense of humor. The towering figure takes a step forward and the clock chimes again, a booming sound louder than thunder that startles Eddie so badly a scream is torn from his lungs as he flinches violently into the wall behind him, the leather of his jacket creaking at the abuse. His breathing is ragged.
“I don’t…” he chokes on his words, “Please, I’m not…” He doesn’t know what he means to say, but it's all he can get out. That he doesn’t understand what's going on? That he’s not worth killing? Both are true but he doesn’t think Vecna is going to care about any of that. The wizard is entirely too close for comfort now, only a few feet away and steadily getting closer. At this distance, Eddie can see in even more detail the flayed flesh of his body and the deformities that warp his limbs into unnatural shapes and sizes. He’s so fucking scared and he doesn’t know what to do, he just hopes he manages not to piss his pants before he dies. His heart aches at the thought, because he doesn’t want to die.
He wants to graduate, he wants to practice for hours in Gareth’s garage with his shitty band, he wants to write more epic campaigns with Dustin and Little Wheeler, and god damn it all to hell, he wants to have the chance to get to know Steve Harrington a little better now that he knows the guy is more than just some small town douchebag. But instead, in front of him, Vecna steps closer almost leisurely, like he’s in no rush to get this over with and Eddie hates him for it. Jesus Christ, come on Henderson, play something already damn it.
“Scared little boy… Don’t you remember this place, Eddie?” He opens his arms to gesture to the room at large, his twisted flesh stretching as he steps even closer, invading Eddie’s space now. There is only a hard wall behind him and an evil monster in front of him, leaving no possible escape route. He’s quaking at this point, horrible rasping breaths getting caught in his throat as he shakes his head no, because is he supposed to recognize this place? He’s never been in this room. Right?
His eyes dart around again, over Vecna’s shoulder, around his chest, dragging his sight over the walls and floors to try and remember any part of this room but there is no spark of recognition in his mind. He shakes his head again and knocks the back of his skull against the wall on accident as he looks up at Vecna’s face. The bleeding spot from when he’d fallen weeps back open at the abuse and Eddie feels warm blood creep slowly down the back of his neck. Vecna’s chest expands, level with the top of Eddie’s head, as he takes a deep breath and sighs, though the sound comes out as more of a growl. He looks back down at the human in disappointment. “No…it was so long ago, of course you don’t remember,” Vecna lifts his hand, the long, sharpened fingers slowly reaching out towards Eddie’s face. As their flesh connects, Eddie feels tears slip free from his eyes, shame staining his cheeks when the whimper that's been building in his chest finally escapes.
“Let me help you remember… brother.”