Chapter Text
Steve, Eleven, Hopper, Dmitri, Dr Owens and the soldiers all stand together, staring at the door that has just shuttered down between them and the army of nightmares. The thick metal doesn't quite mute the cacophony of shrieking and snarling from the other side, but it’s enough of a difference for even the heavy breathing of exertion from the people around him to suddenly seem loud.
Eleven is the one to break the strange atmosphere that descended with the door, as she turns around to face them all. Her eyes find Steve, and linger on him. The way she seems to silently assess him, he knows she knows Vecna now has a stronger hold on him; that by touching him with his talons Steve has been reinfected, if he was ever really rid of the bat venom at all. But she doesn’t say anything. Maybe because they are surrounded by spooked soldiers with guns, who might not enjoy finding out Vecna has well and truly got to Steve.
So, Steve speaks instead, “El, thank you.” He hopes she knows he isn’t just thanking her for protecting him just now, and for saving all of them, just then, but also for earlier, when she stopped and drew Vecna away from him.
“That’s ok, Steve,” El says simply, almost shyly, which is crazy, considering Steve and a bunch of big muscly soldiers were just hiding behind her less than a minute ago.
“We must move quickly to regroup with the others,” Dr Owens suggests. “There is a plan in motion.”
“Sooner better than later,” Dmitri comments with a glance back at the door, “I doubt there is much time.”
Steve watches Hopper turn to look at El, since, if there’s a plan in place to stop Vecna, she is going to be the key and centre to it all. El just nods back at him, like she thinks it will work. Steve feels comforted by her confidence, but also hopes to all that is holy that she’s right. Because Dmitri is right too. They can’t have much time. The inner security system has stopped the Upside Down onslaught for now, but it won’t last. They will find a way through, and…
And it isn’t until that moment that Steve realises Eddie is still on the other side of that door, and that he might become one of the ways Vecna tries to get through.
Dr Owens is ordering the soldiers onwards, and Dmitri steps up to provide support for Steve again as they all start down the corridor.
“What happened to Eddie?” Steve asks.
“You whited out, still standing between him and us,” Hopper tells him, “By the time anyone moved to get a clear shot he was gone down the next corridor. We didn’t have time to chase him, with all that coming after us, we just grabbed you and moved on. As far as I know he’s still out there somewhere.”
It sounds ominous. Like maybe Hopper would have preferred if the soldiers had been able to take that shot. And sure, Steve can understand that, because Hopper has only seen Vecna-controlled Eddie. Hop doesn’t know Eddie’s consciousness is still alive and well in the hive mind, that he sang Gloria Gaynor to snap Steve back to reality, that he told him he thought he was beautiful…
Steve glances back at the closed door, thinking of Eddie’s Vecna-controlled body on the other side, among all those creatures from the Upside Down, and can only hope El and Dr Owen’s plan works, once and for all, and that he can keep his vow; that he will see Eddie again. The Eddie he has come to know, and care for, and…and maybe even something else.
*
Dr Owens leads them to a room that requires his pass and another code to unlock. He opens the door to reveal a crowd of surviving scientists and soldiers, and more importantly, in the middle of it, gathered around a table – all yammering away about theories and plans, in a way that honestly feels almost comfortingly familiar by this point – are Steve’s friends. Everyone turns to look at the door, and they all just stare at each other for one, long, adrenaline-fuelled moment.
Characteristically, it’s Dustin who acts first. He hobbles forwards and throws himself around Steve, hugging him tightly. It hurts the bite wounds, but Steve can’t bring himself to push him off. He kind of needed this hug.
“Goddamn you, Steve, you idiot!” Dustin curses him tearfully, “Making me leave you behind!”
“Yeah, well, I’m not the brains of the operation, am I?” Steve reasons, “I’m just the one with the bat.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dustin sniffs, but sounds kind of pleased. He always does when Steve tells him how smart he is.
Robin is right behind Dustin, hugging Steve as well, and calling him an idiot even more creatively. As they part from their hug, Steve can’t hide his grimace as the bites are knocked, and, of course, Robin catches it immediately.
“Steve?” her worried eyes immediately drop to where the bites lie underneath his t-shirt. “Dustin said Vecna got to you again? He told us about Vecna using you, and using Eddie…”
“Yeah,” Steve admits, “Vecna’s found me a couple of times now. Vecna-Eddie…”
“We’re calling him Kas,” Dustin interrupts. “It differentiates our Eddie from Vecna-Eddie. Avoids confusion. So, it’s just Eddie or Kas, now.”
“Kas?”
“It’s another of their D&D codenames,” Robin clarifies.
“Why? What’s ‘Kas’?” Steve asks, even though he’ll probably regret asking, because he can never comprehend all their nerdy explanations.
Dustin surprises him by not even trying to bother. “That doesn’t matter right now, Steve. It will take too long to explain it to you. We’re just calling him Kas, now, alright?”
Steve holds his hands up, wincing a little as the movement pulls at the wounds. “Yeah, sure, fine.”
Robin’s eyes are travelling over Steve like she’s giving him a visual medical assessment she is in no way qualified for. “And are you fine?”
Steve’s gaze drifts over her shoulder, to check if the others are too busy plotting, theorising, or arguing to be listening in. No such luck. The ever-friendly Dr Keys has already broken from the group of scientists lingering at the sidelines and is heading right for them.
“Mr Harrington, I understand you have been reinfected?”
“I don’t know if I was every truly uninfected,” Steve mutters.
Dr Keys looks unimpressed and doesn’t acknowledge his comment about her previous work being ineffective. “May I see the wounds?”
Steve hesitates. Of course he hesitates. The last time this woman wanted to inspect his bites she strapped him down on a table and knocked him out against his will. Dmitri must be remembering the same thing, because he’s lingering close by, keeping a distrustful eye. With the way Robin and Dustin are eyeing Dr Keys warily as well, it's actually really nice knowing there are people who would be willing to have Steve’s back and stand up for him, no matter what.
But Steve also knows, however, that Dr Keys has a point. Steve is undoubtedly compromised by Vecna, and he cannot stay in this room. Even if Steve usually fails to wholly follow the kids’ plots and plans as they shout over each other and use their nerdy lingo, that doesn’t mean Vecna might not pick up something from Steve’s observations.
So, Steve swallows, summons his bravery, and lifts his t-shirt. He sees and hears Robin and Dustin’s horrified reactions before he even has a chance to look down and inspect himself. That’s not a good sign. Steve looks down and blanches.
The bites are still covered by a bandage, but spots of that unearthly black-red colour have bled through again; eerily in the same places Vecna’s talons had touched him in Steve’s vision of him. The raised vein-like black and red lines are also back with a vengeance, branching out from under the bandage in double the quantity, having spread in way, way less time, over his whole stomach, curling up his ribs and around to his back. Reaching up towards his chest and down below the waist of the pyjama pants he’s still wearing.
“Well, that’s not good,” Steve says, strained.
He realises the room has gone quiet, and looks up to see most eyes turned his way. Even Erica is quiet, which is really saying something – no ‘yuck!’ or ‘gross, Steve!’ or nothing. He can’t meet Robin and Dustin’s wide, fearful eyes as he yanks his t-shirt back down to cover it all up.
“I am afraid you are contaminated, Mr Harrington, and we cannot afford for you – and therefore Number One – to overhear any plans. We have taken the same precautions and measures with Mr Byers, Miss Mayfield and Miss Wheeler, so we will take you to…”
It is only then that Steve even realises Nancy isn’t in the room. “What’s happened to Nancy?” he interrupts.
“Vecna’s been pushing more and more visions into her head,” Jonathan’s voice answers him.
Steve finds him in the sea of faces. Jonathan looks exhausted – not quite as exhausted as Joyce looks, but nobody looks as exhausted as Joyce looks – and Steve feels for Jonathan. His little brother is caught up in the worst of the Upside Down’s power for the third time, and now his girlfriend has been targeted too. Jesus, not Nancy too…
“Well, I’d better go keep an eye on the three of them,” Steve quips, forcing a smile, looking back to Dustin and Robin. “Someone’s got to be babysitter, right?”
Dustin rolls his eyes, “You have, and always will be, an ineffectual babysitter,” he says, but his voice is thick, and he reaches out to squeeze Steve’s shoulder, and once again Steve is struck by how much that kid he used to ‘babysit’ has grown up, and not just in the whole literal-height sense.
“Nice. Thanks. Hurt my feelings why don’t you,” Steve snarks.
Joyce doesn’t seem to have picked up on the attempts to make light of the situation and comes forward, and says so honestly that it nearly makes Steve tear up, “If you could help Nancy keep an eye Will and Max, Steve, while I can’t be there, I would really appreciate it.”
“I’ll do my best,” Steve promises shakily, and glances to Jonathan again, who nods at him in genuine thanks, and goddamn the Byers family and their sincerity for making Steve emotional.
To break the heavy feeling pushing down on him, he sends an impish grin to Robin, “And while I do, you look after this idiot for me, will you?”
“Hey!” Dustin protests, “What happened to ‘the brains of the operation’?!”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t still be an idiot,” Steve counters, and Dustin scoffs.
It helps lighten the mood a little, but Robin’s worried smile still wobbles. “Just hang on until we can figure something out to cure you of the bat rabies, ok, dingus?”
Steve doesn’t even try to dispute the ‘rabies’ bit; it’s a bit too late to be pedantic about it at this stage of his bat-venomed state. “That would be great, not going to lie,” he says instead, and then there’s not much else he gets to say before Dr Keys is urgently advising him to put his headphones back on and is impatiently ushering him away.
He isn’t led too far away, to the room Nancy, Max and Will are currently secured in, so that they can’t overhear any of the plan being formed against Vecna.
The room is unlocked by Dr Keys, Steve walks inside, and the door is locked again behind him.
Nancy, Max and Will all look up at him. They are all wearing headphones.
“Hi,” Max welcomes him drily, “Welcome to Hawkins’ Number One Club.”
*
Over the next ten minutes, over all the songs playing quietly in their ears the whole time, Steve learns what he’s missed with Will, Max and Nancy since he saw them last. As Steve had already gathered by becoming an extra target, Vecna has been growing stronger, his reach and relentlessness quickly increasing. Overnight, Will and Max have both been fighting Vecna’s attempts to control them, to varying degrees of success. Nancy’s nightmare vision only a couple of hours ago – and jesus, has it really only been two hours since that happened? – was the dam breaking to an onslaught of relentless visions.
“I’ve been having nightmares since he got to me at the portal,” Nancy says, and Steve recalls all the times in the last few days he’s noticed how tired Nancy's looked; turns out she really hasn’t been getting any sleep at all. “I just thought it was an accumulation of everything that had just happened with Max, Eddie, Fred, and the stress of the gates opening up and the Upside Down breaking through.” She sighs and scrubs at her face wearily. “But now I know it’s been more than that this whole time. It’s been Vecna.”
Steve reaches out to take her hand. Not in that way, just in a friendly way…but Nancy doesn’t pick up on that.
“Steve…” she starts, full of guilt and uncertainty.
Steve shakes his head. “Not…not like that. I know you…” he glances at Will, who has his eyes closed and his headphones on; he looks like he’s maybe asleep, or maybe just quietly fighting for his life as usual. “I know you and Jonathan are together, and are staying together…” Max is watching them though, and Steve narrows his eyes at her with a look that tells her to mind her own business. She just rolls her eyes at him. “And I’m ok with it. I am.” And as he says it, Steve realises that he actually is. Maybe everything that has been happening, with him – with Eddie – has finally helped him get over Nancy again. “We’re friends though, aren’t we? You and me?”
Nancy’s lips quirk into a small smile and she looks so relieved. “Of course,” she vows, and squeezes his hand. But then her eyes drop, and her brow furrows. “Steve? What’s that?”
Steve glances down to where she’s looking. His mouth drops open at the sight of one of the red-black raised lines already poking out from under his t-shirt sleeve, creeping down his bicep. It means the lines must have grown again in the short space of time since he looked at them.
“Vecna reactivated the bites,” Steve says, though Nancy’s wide eyes have clearly already come to the same conclusion. “They’re spreading fast.”
“Can I see?”
Steve hesitates.
“Steve, please, let me see. We need to keep track of how fast they’re moving, in case we need to get help.”
Steve complies, because over-it-crush or not, he still can’t say no to Nancy Wheeler’s big eyes. That seems to be a recurring weakness of his; big doe eyes, like Nancy’s. Like…like Eddie’s.
Steve lifts up his top and Nancy doesn’t gasp and cover her mouth like last time. Her lips purse real thin, and she swallows down any big reaction, and Steve doesn’t know if that’s better or worse, because she looks so grave and serious, and that’s kind of worrying. Her eyes flick back up to his face.
“How are you feeling?” she asks, and there’s a tremor in her voice that, when added to that look on her face, makes things a little too real. Like he’s really got something to be afraid of, this time.
“Not great,” he admits, “I can’t really feel the…the veins. My skin just feels tight, and the bites hurt like hell, so they’re all I’m really noticing right now.” He looks down and sees that the lines have indeed spread, branching up his shoulders, and look to be denser around the bites themselves, where they cobweb out from under the bandage. He drops his shirt, and looks across at Max and Will.
They are both looking back. Of course they are. But they aren’t pitying him; they understand him. Because they are looking physically no better than he is, just in different ways. Will looks like he’s barely hanging on – like he’s halfway between the world up here and one that’s upside down – sickly, pale, gaunt and hollow, with huge shadows round his eyes. Max was all broken up and in a coma only days ago, and now she just looks bone-tired, like she’s been fighting every second she has been awake. It strikes Steve then that Vecna’s resurrection of Max in order to control her to his advantage is not so dissimilar to what he’s done to Eddie.
“How are you guys doing?” Steve asks, not just to avert the attention away from himself.
Max shrugs and says “Feel like shit,” which, under the circumstances, Steve will allow the cussing. Will emits what looks like the biggest, world-weariest sigh and says “Tired.”
And Will has every right to be tired. Physically and mentally. From the moment he disappeared all those years ago, and managed to survive alone for all that time in the Upside Down, to everything that has happened to him – and connected him to the Upside Down - since. He's probably mentally fighting Vecna right this second. If anyone deserves a break, it’s this kid.
“You’ve got this,” Steve says, recalling something from back in the day, “I mean, you’re the wise one, right? Will the Wise.” Then he turns to Max to add, “And Mad Max, right?”
Despite these kids being years older now, at the mentions of their D&D and arcade game names, they both get these proud little smiles on their faces. Steve grins back at them, and looks over at Nancy, who is smiling at him fondly.
“You’ve always been so good with them,” she says, so quietly even Steve struggles to hear her over his music, and she’s sitting right next to him, “One day, your six kids are going to be so lucky to have you.”
Steve supresses a cringe. He isn’t quite sure where that had come from in the campervan, when he’d told Nancy he had always wanted a big family. It wasn’t a future he had ever actually pictured before. Sure, when he had been a kid and his parents had been…well, themselves…he had longed for siblings, and felt jealous of other families in town; big and boisterous and all hanging out together. He’d never pictured himself with a wife, six kids and a camper, though, and honestly, looking back he was a bit surprised it had come out his mouth. But then, he supposes when things had been dire and he had been thinking about what made him happy in the spur of the moment, what had sprung to mind had been six kids (and later the unforgettable seventh in Erica) who had pulled him into their adventures, into their lives, and turned it – pardon the pun – upside down. And despite everything actual-Upside-Down-related, it was for the better. They had made Steve a better person, and a better friend.
With a bit of reflection, and personal experience – considering the fact none of those little shitheads ever seem to listen to him – six kids is way too many to handle and honestly, if Steve does have kids, he would be happy with two. So long as his kids have at least one sibling. That’s what he’d missed most as a kid; not having a little brother like Dustin or a little sister like Max.
And now, looking back on what he’d said to Nancy, with everything he has recently been learning about himself, and on the possible brink of destruction before he can even do anything about it, Steve honestly doesn’t care who the partner is in his dream-future scenario. The image of that dream-camper-spouse doesn’t look like Nancy anymore. They have a different face, and possibly even a different gender. Maybe even hotwiring it to get it going. He doesn’t even care if the future-kids in this dream scenario are biological or adopted or what. He just wants a family that’s together, and present, and loving. And free from anything otherworldly. That would be a bonus.
“That isn’t my dream anymore,” Steve tells Nancy simply. “I don’t know what it is now.”
Nancy shrugs. “Dreams change,” she agrees, a little sadly, “We’re still young.”
“Well, let’s hope we live long enough to change our minds a few more times, then,” Steve says.
Nancy reaches out and squeezes his wrist. Her eyes are shining with tears, and Steve can’t bear to look at her, blinking sudden unbidden tears out of his own eyes. There’s no time to cry, not when they still need to fight.
*
By the time the door opens again – hopefully with word that a plan is in motion – Steve knows he’s not looking good. There’s enough reflective surfaces in the room that he’s seen glimpses of himself. Seen that the veins have travelled up his neck onto one side of his face, branching out and meeting his eye, which is now flooded black and red. Nancy has been looking at him scared for a good fifteen minutes now. When his eye had turned, Max had moved over to sit on the other side of him, like she and Nancy were standing guard, despite being powerless to do anything about it.
“Did you ever read my letter?” Max had asked.
“No,” Steve had replied, “I wasn’t strong enough.”
“You’re more than strong enough,” Max had dismissed simply. “You still got it?”
Steve had rolled his head against the wall to look at her properly. “Yeah. Do you still want me to read it?”
She had considered that. “If we get out of here. Yeah, I want you to know what it says.”
“You could just tell me now?”
Max had shaken her head adamantly, and changed her tone to something more resolute. “When we get out of here.”
“Ok,” Steve had agreed, nudging her shoulder with his. “When we get out of here.”
Dr Keys’ eyes travel over them, lingering on Will’s gaunt and haunted complexion, Max’s grim and hunted one, Nancy’s pale exhaustion and Steve’s slow succumb to the bat venom.
“Have there been any episodes?” she asks them.
“No,” Will is the one that answers, his eyes closed and his head resting back against the wall. “His attention is focused elsewhere.”
That’s all Will decides to ominously reveal to the doctor. He had shared more with Steve, Max and Nancy earlier, when he had told them Vecna probably wasn’t coming for them because he was either too busy focusing his powers elsewhere, or saving them for what he knows is coming. The way Will had said it, like he knew Vecna’s thought process so intimately well, was eerie as hell.
“Focused on his creatures outside, no doubt,” Dr Keys says, “They have been trying to break through while the four of you have been locked in here together. Someone has been trying to access the security doors. We think Mr Munson has picked up a door pass from one of the bodies outside, but still hasn’t entered a correct code. Not for lack of trying. It will be a matter of time before one of his creatures breaks through and sabotages our mission. Number One knows these halls quite well, after all.” Her sharp gaze lands on Steve. “You have a connection to Mr Munson, correct? We would like you to try to break him from his current occupation.”
“And the plan to stop Number One?” Max demands.
“We will be commencing that momentarily. Hopefully once Mr Harrington buys us some more time. Until he does, we would ask you three to stay here, Miss Mayfield.”
Max huffs loudly and slumps back against the wall, her arm pressed to Steve’s like she isn’t pleased about him going with Dr Keys and her accompanying soldiers.
“Steve will be necessary for any plan,” Nancy states, like she’s worried Dr Keys will be willing to sacrifice him for the cause, which, Steve already knows she absolutely would.
“Of course he will,” Dr Keys assures, “We will return him in one piece.”
“That sounds so comforting,” Steve deadpans. Max snorts.
“Mr Harrington, if you would. Time is of the essence.”
“You don’t say?” Max gestures to Steve’s current state.
Steve nudges Max as he gets to his feet with a groan. Jesus, the pain is so much worse. He shuffles towards the door. “See you later, Number One Club.”
“Later, Steve,” Max says, with a determination that sounds like she doesn't allow him any other option except coming back.
He notices Will smile faintly, like the idea of being in a club with Steve Harrington, Nancy Wheeler and Max Mayfield is amusing to him. “Later. When we help save the world,” Will adds.
“That’s the plan. I’m hoping.”
“Be careful, Steve,” Nancy urges.
Steve gives them all a half-hearted, lame little wave and follows Dr Keys and the soldiers out the room. He’s relieved to see Dmitri lingering behind them.
“I’m glad to see you,” he tells him, because he really, really is. “Thanks for coming.”
“I told you,” Dmitri replies, “I will protect you like I would protect my own son. Even if I have not done such a good job of it so far.” He’s eyeing Steve’s face.
“Nothing you could have done about this,” Steve lets him off the hook. “I got bitten days ago. Vecna wasn’t going to let me go easily.”
Vecna’s not going to let Eddie go so easily either. Nor Will, or Max, or Nancy. And definitely not Eleven.
*
Rather than take Steve back to the room with all the others, they lead him straight to one of the security doors. The control panel on the wall to the side of the door beeps with a red light, like access has been denied, but not from their side.
“This is the one with the Upside Down’s creature on the other side,” one of the soldiers states.
“Creature…you mean Eddie?!” Steve snaps.
“He isn’t human right now,” the soldier returns, looking at Steve like he doesn’t think Steve will be human for much longer either, which makes Steve’s gut twist, because maybe…maybe he won’t.
Because he can feel something, crawling across his body like bats not using their wings. A hyper-sensitivity like he’s never experienced before. He can sense movement, pacing, on the other side of the door. He can somehow tell that there is more than just Eddie behind that door. Just as Steve can sense them, it is almost like everything beyond the door senses him in return. The movement increases, the sounds of snarls and shrieks reach their ears (at least Steve hopes everyone can hear it and not just him). And now he can hear it and feel it, it’s irrepressible.
“There’s more than just Eddie behind that door. If I snap him out of it…they could turn on him.”
“Then make a choice. Him or everyone else in here,” the solider states bluntly, which annoys Steve more than it scares him. The soldier taps the control panel, which happens to beep with that red light again as Vecna-Eddie, or Kas or whatever it was Dustin is calling him, is denied access again. “There’s a security intercom from this side of the door to the other…”
The overwhelming sensations of the movement and the shrieks and the soldiers’ demands and his fear for himself and his friends and his...Eddie…reaches a boiling point in Steve, and he snaps, “Stop, alright? Enough! Give me a second!”
Almost immediately, the noise in his head – and the noise from beyond the door – cuts off. The soldiers are all staring at him, but he doesn’t dare ask if the creatures on the other side of the door just…listened to him. He could only hope it was just an eerie coincidence, or maybe Eddie felt Steve’s notion through the connection and Kas-ordered them instead, but either way, they aren’t making any more noise. He can sense that they’ve stopped moving too. Oh god, he really is becoming one of them, isn’t he?
“I’m not going to use the intercom,” Steve says instead, hoping he’s effectively hiding his internal panic.
“We need you to speak to him.”
“And the intercom isn’t necessary,” Steve dismisses coldly. He glances at Dmitri. “I’m intending to white out,” he warns him, so there isn’t any alarm when he does. “I’ll be back soon.” He keeps his headphones on, but closes his eyes and blocks out the lyrics of ‘I Will Survive’. He has another song to think of, right now. “Master of puppets, I’m pulling your strings, twisting your mind and smashing your dreams,” he mutters under his breath.
He opens his eyes, and Eddie’s standing there among the soldiers. He looks more lost and confused than Steve has seen him so far, looking around vacantly.
“Eddie? Eddie, can you hear me?”
Eddie’s eyes finally find him, and they abruptly flood with a joy Steve can barely fathom. “Steve!” but then Eddie’s expression falters, as he takes him in. “Steve? What’s happened to you?”
“Bat rabies, Eddie,” Steve reminds him.
“Bats…” Eddie trails off. “Where am I?”
“You’re in Hawkins Lab. Vecna’s using you to try to open the doors, remember?”
Eddie shakes his head vigorously. “No. No. Last thing I remember is singing I Will Survive to you in the blank space. But now you’re here, and you look so much worse…”
“Oh thanks.”
“No, I mean, you’re still beautiful,” Eddie dismisses, so easily and naturally, that Steve doesn’t recover quick enough to respond before Eddie continues on, “But you look and feel more connected. To me. To the Upside Down. To all of it.”
“Yeah,” Steve says, thinking of how he could sense the creatures behind that door, and that maybe they just listened to his demands. “It’s getting worse.”
“Then you need to stop him, Steve. Soon.”
“I know,” Steve says, “But they want me to get you to stop trying to open the door first. He’s had you pick up a pass off a dead soldier and try different codes to get through the door.”
“I can’t…I can’t control what he’s making me do.”
“I know it’s hard, Eddie, but please. You’ve got to try. If that door opens, there’s only really soldiers that stand between the Upside Down and Robin, Nancy, Mike, Lucus, Erica…me and Dustin. I swear it’s not all on you. We’re working on things over here, but we need a bit more time, and you can maybe buy us that. Please.”
“I have to brave Mordor,” Eddie digests slowly, “Look Sauron in the eye.”
“Sure. Yes. Absolutely,” Steve agrees, despite not having a clue what Mordor or Sauron are. “But there’s creatures around you…”
“Orcs and Uruk-hai.”
“Ok, yes. Those. And I’m worried that if you stop doing what you’re supposed to be doing, if you manage to break free from him, that they’ll turn on you.”
“Don’t worry about me, Stevie. I’m likely dead already anyway, remember?”
“Don’t,” Steve begs, and before he fully knows what he’s doing, he’s reached out and grabbed Eddie’s hand. “Don’t say that. Just, find a room or something if you can, and lock yourself in it. And when this is all over, I’ll come find you.”
“You’ll come find me?” Eddie repeats, eyes growing so soft, like he’s so very fond of Steve.
“Wherever you are,” Steve vows, “If I’m still alive, I’ll come find you.”
“You’ll live,” Eddie says, with such determination, “I’m going to do everything in my remaining power to make sure that happens.”
Steve searches his gaze. He hates the Upside Down for so many things, except for the people it has caused to come into his life who are willing to fight his corner, watch his back, and care about him as much as they do about themselves. It’s changed him as a person, and changed how he’s come to want, or even expects, to be treated. He isn’t a kid who’s a waste of time, like he was treated at home, and he isn’t a king more worthy of people’s time, like he was treated at school. He’s a man now, who has peers, friends. People who aren’t afraid to keep his feet and his ego on the ground, but who also respect him, and are ready to help him – and each other – at a moment’s notice.
“I believe you,” Steve says, “So you’d better.”
Eddie steps up to Steve and presses a lingering kiss to Steve’s cheek, that has Steve’s body freezing, his face heating, his heart racing.
Eddie steps back, and with a fond look at Steve’s expression, shrugs. “Gotta try to break our curses any way we can, Harrington.”
“This isn’t a fairytale, Munson.”
“You sure look like a prince to me,” Eddie winks. “I guess I’ll see you at ‘The End’.”
A look of resolve descends on Eddie’s face, like he’s got a plan, and through whatever mental connection they have through the hive mind – growing stronger by the second as Steve’s body succumbs to it – he sees a sudden flash of Eddie’s intention; to rush into the nearest open room, like Steve told him to, to lock it, and push the pass under it and into the corridor, so he’s effectively trapped in there, which he’s hoping to do in the potentially mere seconds he has free from Vecna’s control; control which Steve has dragged him out of.
“I reckon you’ve bought me a few seconds,” Eddie clarifies. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck, Eddie. I’ll see you on the other side.”
“So long as the other side isn’t the Upside Down,” Eddie says, “And I’m going to do my part to make sure it isn’t. I swear it.” And then he disappears.
Steve blinks back to reality, to find Dmitri standing between him and the soldiers, blocking him with his own body, while Steve was whited out.
“Dmitri,” Steve says, and Dmitri turns to check on him. “I’m back.”
“Are you alright?” Dmitri says uncertainly, looking at him with concern, and Steve guesses his use of the mental connection has just made those dark veins creep further across his face.
“Yeah,” Steve says.
“He’s stopped trying to access the door,” the solider states, looking down at the control panel, which isn’t beeping with each denied access anymore.
“Yeah, because I asked him to,” Steve snarks. And then, in a flash similar to witnessing Eddie’s plan, he just knows Eddie has succeeded in his mission. He’s surprised to find himself feeling indescribably proud of him. “And he’s managed to stay free of Vecna’s control long enough to lock himself in a room and push the pass under the door. He can stay there until we sort everything else out.” He looks at them impatiently. “Well? Job done. Are we going back to deal with the rest of it or not?”
Steve has been made to feel cool many times in his life; during school (though looking back, how cool he actually was is debatable), when Dustin first got to know him (though that didn’t last long), when he beat a demodog back with a baseball bat, when Eddie called him ‘metal’ for biting the head off a demobat…but this? This might possibly be the most effortlessly badass he’s ever been. Not that he lets any of these thoughts show, though, as he marches off back down the corridor, Dmitri striding a pace behind him, and the soldiers forced to follow in his wake.
*
Steve isn’t taken back to the room of the ‘Number One Club’. He is brought to the room where The Plan is in motion. Nancy, Max and Will have already been fetched, and are with their friends and family.
Nancy and Will stand with Mike, Jonathan and Joyce fussing over them. Max is with Lucas, Erica, Dustin and Robin. Those who haven’t been witness to Steve’s ever-growing infection reaching his face stare at him as he enters.
Dustin and Robin move first, coming to stand either side of him. They both look scared for him, and that worries him more than anything else.
“Steve?!” Robin exclaims, “Oh my god! Your eye?!”
“Max said it was bad but…” Dustin starts and doesn’t finish.
“Gee, thanks Max,” Steve comments.
“You’re welcome,” Max retorts. “Did it work?”
Before Steve can answer, one of the soldiers reports “Mr Munson is no longer an issue,” to Owens, Keys and the other lab staff there.
“No longer an issue how?!” Dustin snaps at them.
“He’s managed to lock himself in a room with no easy way out,” Steve reassures the people who actually care. “He can stay there until this is over.” One way or another goes unsaid; either they are beating Vecna and the Upside Down today, or they are failing. They either live, or they die.
And Steve? Steve is one of the ‘lucky’ ones with three options. Either Steve escapes the Upside Down and lives, or the venom kills him, or turns him into one of its creatures. Eddie, technically, has four. If Vecna wins, Eddie will either remain Vecna’s puppet or no longer be of use. If Vecna loses, they will either find Eddie in that room a living, breathing human, or a corpse no longer being puppeteered.
Steve forces back those thoughts, because right now he’s too afraid of the answers.
If Dustin is also thinking about the outcomes for Eddie, he doesn’t show it. He’s clearly caught up in the here and now, gesturing to get Argyle’s attention and instructing him to cross off the ‘Kas’ that’s been written amongst a checklist of factors and obstacles written on one of the walls.
“So,” Steve says, averting his eyes from the list in case there is something he – Vecna – isn’t supposed to see. “Tell me you’ve got a plan.”
“We’ve got one,” Dustin says, “We can’t tell you it, you’re just going to have to go along with it and trust us.”
Well, that sounds like familiar territory for Steve, at least.
“It might not work, but it’s the best we have,” Robin adds, shifting her feet, “The only one we have.”
Steve looks between them, “Good thing I trust you guys then, isn’t it?”
“Too right it is,” Dustin says, “Because failure is not an option, here, Steve. It just…can’t be. We can’t be the ones to fail to save the world.”
“Alright then,” Steve agrees, “Then let’s not be. Shall we get on with it? Sooner rather than later, considering how much time I doubt I’ve got left.” Steve’s aching all over, and he’s started with a headache that’s making him feel sick and fuzzy.
There are four chairs that have been positioned in the centre of the room in a tight circle, with their backs to each other, like they are all set up for a game of musical chairs. Robin immediately grabs him and steers him into one of those chairs.
“Why didn’t you report the bat rabies properly, Steve?” Robin scolds him, not for the first time, her voice tight with worry.
“And let you miss out on your biggest ever ‘I told you so’ moment?” Steve quips.
“You look really, really sick, how are you feeling…”
“We’ll figure this out, Steve,” Dustin barrels right over her as he crowds in front of him as well. He says it with such conviction that Steve is honestly reassured. “You’ll be back to normal in no time. Well, as normal as you can get, anyway.”
“Ha-ha,” Steve deadpans. “I’m fine,” he adds to Dustin’s worried face, then tacks on “I’ll be fine,” to Robin’s.
He notices that Eleven has squeezed in between the chairs to stand in the small space in the middle of them. Nancy, Max and Will are being directed, or helped, into the other three seats, until the four of them are seated with their backs to each other, so close together that Steve’s shoulders are brushing Nancy and Max’s. Steve manages to refrain from asking if they are in fact, about to play musical chairs; he suspects it wouldn’t get a laugh. While he genuinely has no idea what is going on, he trusts the people around them to guide them.
He trusts Eleven. He trusts Hopper and Dmitri. He trusts Robin and Dustin, standing in front of him. He trusts Lucas and Erica, standing in front of Max. He trusts Mike, Joyce and Jonathan, standing before Will and Nancy.
Steve glances sideways at Jonathan, who is bent down murmuring to Nancy, his hand soft on her shoulder.
“Hey, Byers,” Steve comments lightly, and Jonathan acknowledges him with a curious side-eye, “You know, sometimes I think about how if I hadn’t gone to your house that night to apologise to you, I wouldn’t have gotten involved in this Upside Down business at all.”
Jonathan snorts, and turns to look at him properly, assessing. “Do you regret it?”
He doesn’t specify what it is Steve might regret; regretting getting mixed up in the Upside Down, or for coming to apologise to Jonathan that day at all. But would Steve have wanted to be so clueless, when all the Upside Down shit had gone down over the years; clueless about the creatures running about, clueless at Starcourt, clueless as fellow students died and Eddie Munson was blamed and a mob raised to find him and Hawkins torn in half as the Upside Down broke through? Of course not, and not just because Steve could have ended up killed by a creature he had never understood, or even become an unknowing, unwilling victim like Billy. Knowing about the Upside Down hasn’t just meant Steve has been at least half-prepared every time there has been an Upside Down-borne crisis, but it has meant he has become a part of something. He is one of the team, one of the gang. He has friends he would never have truly known and cared for otherwise. So, no, he doesn’t regret apologising to Jonathan, because he counts Jonathan among those friends.
“No,” Steve summarises succinctly.
Jonathan sends him a rare smile – rare, because he always seems to be burdened with some amount of worry for his brother, his mom or his girlfriend – and the warmth lights up his eyes in a way Steve has even more rarely seen directed at him.
“We’ll beat this, Harrington,” Jonathan tells him, “Easy as beating back a Demogorgon with a baseball bat.”
“That easy, huh?” Steve shrugs easily, “I’ll ace it, then.”
Jonathan’s smile turns into more of an eye-rolling smirk, and he nods at Steve before moving away; all the people around them now standing at least a foot away from Steve, Nancy, Max and Will.
“Is everyone ready?” Eleven asks.
Steve has no idea what he’s supposed to be ready for, but hell, sure, bring it on. Why not? He has nothing left to lose now; it’s this, or succumb to the poison of the Upside Down. Eleven’s hand lands on the place Steve and Nancy’s shoulders touch, and he can only assume her other hand has found where Max and Will’s shoulders are doing likewise on the opposite side of the chair circle, and then the next thing Steve knows, the five of them are standing in a circle in the blank space.
Eleven looks at home here, resolute and sure and unfazed, as she looks at each of them in turn; Will, then Max, then Nancy, then Steve.
“We are the bait,” Eleven tells them, and it’s not very reassuring, no matter how confident and determined she sounds. “We are the draw. He will come.”
And come Vecna does. He emerges from the darkness beyond.
“All of you, gathered together, in the place you all belong, with me.” His eyes travel to each of them in turn, a dark parody of how Eleven had only moments before. To Will, then Max, then Nancy, then Steve, as he addresses them as “My vessel, my marionette, my messenger, my creature.” Steve’s blood – his venomous blood turning him into one of Vecna’s creatures – feels like it freezes in his veins, as Vecna’s gaze moves over him and finally to Eleven. “And my creator.”
“I didn’t turn you into this, Henry,” Eleven says, like it’s an argument they have had before. “And my friends do not belong to you.”
“Oh Eleven,” Vecna says, “I beg to differ. They all have reasons to be here. With me. And so do you.”
Figures suddenly step out of the dark around them, and Steve recognises most of them. He sees Billy Hargrove, and Barb Holland, Bob Newby, Fred Benson, and finally, Eddie Munson. They all have vacant expressions on their faces, like they don’t see the group before them. But the group sees them. The group feels guilt. Steve thinks about Barb, disappearing in his swimming pool. Billy, who Steve fought with and rammed with his car. He looks at Eddie, who doesn’t see him, isn’t looking at him, is so void of the life Steve knows him to be brimmed with, even in his possible-death, and Steve feels the ghost of a kiss and the renewed guilt of leaving him behind in the Upside Down. Guilt for everything that has happened to him since.
“So many people sacrificed for your sakes, because of all of you,” Vecna says.
“We are not to blame,” Eleven states angrily, “These are your victims.”
“I don’t think so,” Billy suddenly says, and Steve hears Max’s breath shudder violently as they all turn to stare at him. “Since I sacrificed myself for you.”
“I sacrificed myself for you,” Bob echoes, his eyes finally focusing eerily on Will.
“I was left alone, by you,” Barb directs at Nancy and Steve, and Nancy audibly sobs.
“You led me into this,” Fred’s voice chimes in.
Their voices are dull, like they are reciting words rather than meaning them; like they are being made to say it. The figures are like copies of the people they knew and lost to the Upside Down; dead behind the eyes. There’s no fire in Billy’s, no intelligence in Barb’s, no warmth in Bob’s. It still hurts, though, to hear the accusations – and truths – thrown their way. It’s still an effective and painful distraction to see their faces and hear their voices.
It hurts most when Eddie’s figure – even being as uncharacteristically expressionless and vacant as the rest of them – says “I believed in you. I died for you.” Because he did. He did.
“We all died for you,” Billy says.
And then, all hell breaks loose.
Vines shoot out from the blankness to strike each of them while they are distracted, and wrap around them. Max yells out in anguished fury, Nancy screams, Will crumples soundlessly. Steve fights as best he can, but is overpowered scarily fast as they are tied up and made powerless, like tiny little flies in the web of the giant, powerful spider that is going to devour them one by one.
Eleven puts up a better fight. She throws out her hands and the vines coming at her are tossed aside. She and Vecna stand in the middle of the web, and square off in their final showdown.
Later, Steve finds out what happens back in the room they left behind, their bodies sitting in a circle of chairs. His other eye apparently floods like the first. Vecna talks through Will and Max to mock and threaten and goad the people still in the room. The four of them get drawn up out of their seats until they are levitating above their chairs; Eleven rises too, above them all, hands still on their shoulders, as she fights to keep control.
But all Steve knows now is this, right here in the blank space, Eleven and Vecna fighting each other; vicious, determined, so unimaginably powerful. Steve has the vague idea that Eleven brought the four of them here to use them like battery packs, almost, to utilise their own different connections to the Upside Down as extra infiltration, extra energy borne from Vecna’s own source for her to turn against him. Yet through his vines, Vecna is slowly weakening them, killing them, and it means Eleven is losing her advantage.
There’s a vine around Steve’s neck, and it’s cutting off his air. The vines probe at the bat bites and it feels like they’re on fire. He sees Will, strung up with vines; they curl back over the head they have invaded for too long now, and it’s eerie how much that gaunt, hollow boy smothered with vines looks like he’s transforming into Vecna. Max is almost cocooned, like Vecna is letting her know she isn’t escaping him this time; he can tighten those vines and break her body all over again. For one, long, terrifying moment, Steve and Nancy lock eyes, twisted up and smothered and it’s genuinely frightening at the helplessness he sees there, in the eyes of someone as strong and brave as Nancy. And then…well, the vines tighten further and his eyes roll up into his head and he’s not really seeing much of anything anymore.
But with that loss of other senses, that hazy consciousness, he can suddenly feel. Feel more than he has ever been able to before, his connection to the Upside Down. He doesn’t just physically feel the vines wrapped around his neck and his arms and his legs and his torso, he can feel them spiritually like they are extra limbs he has been missing all this time. The moment he thinks it, and reaches out mentally to see if he can further sense the vines around his arms, there’s a rush of visuals in the back of his mind, racing along vines and stretching far beyond the blank space into the veins of the hive mind. Suddenly he can feel the network of vines spread all across Hawkins. He feels the pulses of other living beings; the demogorgons, demodogs, demobats. It’s abruptly terrifying, and his survival instinct kicks in, reeling him back in repulsion. He could have seen if one of those beings was Eddie, but there was too much risk to find himself at the mercy of a beast, at the mercy of further becoming one of those beasts. There was only one surefire way of connecting to Eddie, and only Eddie…
Veins that pump with fear, sucking darkest clear, feeding on your death’s construction…
“Steve?” Steve hears.
His eyes flutter open. He’s in the blank space, with Eddie. Not that pale imitation of Eddie; his Eddie.
“Hi Eddie,” Steve says, and his voice is wrecked, exhausted…fading. “I think I might be dying.”
“No,” Eddie’s long, guitar-calloused fingers paw at him comfortingly, encouragingly, and more than a bit worried. Scared for Steve. “Not yet, Steve. Not now. You’re so close.”
“You believed in us,” Steve repeats the words of imitation-Eddie to his Eddie, “You died for us.”
“Ok, yeah, so I went down with the bats like Gandalf the Grey went down with the Balrog. But this story isn’t done. I’m completing my mission, going full Gandalf the White.”
Steve laughs hopelessly. Exhaustedly. “I don’t know what that means, man.”
“It means…” Eddie’s hands find his face and lift Steve’s heavy head until their eyes meet. Despite Eddie’s determination, there is desperation there too. Eddie’s eyes are frantically searching Steve’s face, like he’s trying to figure out how to beat this puzzle, win this campaign. Steve can almost sense the thoughts whizzing and firing in Eddie’s head, and maybe he can; they’re both part of the hive mind now, after all. He doesn’t know if Eddie hears that thought or not, but at almost that exact moment Steve sees Eddie’s eyes widen and brighten, like he’s found whatever answer he was looking for. “It means you have more cards in your hand than you’re playing, Stevie.” Eddie pulls him forwards by the back of Steve’s neck, resting their foreheads together without breaking eye contact. “Vecna may be the master of puppets, but we puppets share the same strings, right?”
“The same strings,” Steve repeats, hazy and weak, but the inkling of understanding sparks into a little flame. A little flame of hope. Which quickly roars into a fire.
He snaps back into the blank space, where the vines are almost completely smothering him.
“No,” Steve spits out, past the vine that has started to cover his mouth. He dives straight back into that connection to the vines he had felt through the hive mind; the same strings. “Get the hell off me. Off!” And to his astonishment, just like the creatures of the Upside Down had shut up when he had yelled at them to, the vines immediately feel less restricting. “Get off!” Steve snarls again, more fiercely this time. More adamant. He feels the vines actually start to retract a little.
He’s able to see again. He can see Will fighting his own battle, splayed up in the vines still like some sacrifice to the Upside Down, but his head is back and he’s looking up with blank eyes and his lips are moving; he’s saying something, without break, without rest. Whatever he’s saying is working, the vines around him are rippling but they aren’t wrapped around him anymore, at least in a way that he isn’t in some control of. Max is fighting too, shoving away the vines, and they are giving way under her hands. Nancy, however, who isn’t strongly connected to the Upside Down and hive mind – hasn’t been resurrected like Max, or linked to Vecna like Will, or been infected like Steve – hasn’t been able to order or force the vines back.
“Leave her alone. Leave her alone,” he sees the vines covering Nancy begin to draw back, and Nancy gasps a breath of air the moment they loosen enough. “Leave them alone. Leave me alone. Just let us go. Let us go.” And it works, whatever Steve, Will and Max are doing. It’s working. The vines aren’t attacking them anymore, aren’t actively trying to kill them.
Whatever power they have taken away from the Vecna’s vines, they have restored in Eleven’s energy. Eleven and Vecna fight each other in telepathic ways Steve can only guess at; too afraid to look into the hive mind to find out in case he gets lost to it. He’s still ordering the vines back, as they start to loosen enough to allow him to slip through and find his feet. He keeps one eye on Vecna and Eleven as he rushes over to help Nancy, tearing at the vines with his bare hands. Max joins him to help get her down. Will is doing something else, freed but directly helping Eleven through some connection he has to Vecna that Steve doesn’t think anyone but Will and Eleven will ever truly understand. He thinks maybe Will is helping impede Vecna somehow, a weapon of Vecna’s own making – years in the making – finally turned against him.
“They’ve got this,” Max tells Steve and Nancy adamantly as they all hold each other up, gasping and bone tired. “We’re winning.”
And naturally, Max is right.
Through their combined efforts, Eleven finally seizes the upper hand and overpowers Vecna. She raises a shaking hand like she’s lifting a ton of bricks, blood vessels burst in her eyes and blood dripping from her nose, as she levitates a frozen-limbed Vecna into the air.
“My friends do not belong to you,” she tells him. Her voice is quiet, but firm and deadly, and it rings around the blank space. “My world does not belong to you!” With each statement, she forces him back against some invisible wall. The vines start to creep up; not in Vecna’s control.
‘In our control,’ Steve thinks, and imagines the vines that have connected Vecna to all he has created in the Upside Down, turned against him. A form of self-destruction. The darkest corner of Steve’s mind admits it’s a satisfying idea. He connects with the vines enough to encourage them in their quest. He can bet Max and Will are doing the same.
“And I do not belong to anybody!” Eleven is continuing, “Not Hawkins lab! Not MKUltra! Not Dr Brenner! And not the Upside Down! I will not allow the Upside Down to own anything, not even you.”
Steve wishes he could say he saw the end of Vecna, but the moment Vecna is destroyed, everything he has reached, created or infected, is either demolished or cleansed of his presence. The pain immediately brings Steve shouting to his knees. It feels like his blood is curdling in his veins; the venom that has so infiltrated his system burning away. He’s curled over on the floor, fists clenched. Nancy is beside him, clutching her head as Vecna’s imprint on it peters out. Will, he hears later, managed to watch the obliteration of the horror that haunted his childhood; look it in the eye. Steve manages to drag himself over to Max, who went down too as Vecna’s hold on her body was destroyed. He’s frightened that because her broken body was repaired by Vecna, his healing of her might have reversed, but maybe Vecna’s defeat means the damage he had wrought on her in the first place has been undone. She is hunched over, but looks up when Steve’s hand finds her shoulder, and meets Steve’s wide eyes with her own. She looks exhausted, like she’s run a marathon, but she’s conscious and in one piece.
They return into the room not long after that, to the cheers and tears and hugs and loud voices of everyone that had been waiting for them and watching over them. And apparently fighting back a surge of creatures that had finally broken through in a last ditch sabotage attempt by their master.
Steve can’t believe they’re here after all this time. That it’s over. That they’ve won. They’ve saved Hawkins. They’ve just saved the world. They’ve saved each other. It’s too much to fathom. Too good to believe. They’re all here. All alive. Well…most of them.
The moment Steve can slip away from Dustin and Robin and the exhilarated, wondering, grateful celebrations, he does.
He races down corridors and through doors no longer hounded by the creatures of the Upside Down. He can hear Dustin shouting after him, hobbling after him, but he can’t stop. He can’t wait. Not right now. Not even for Dustin.
Eddie has sacrificed so much for their cause, that if he is alive in that room, Steve refuses to leave him locked in there even a minute longer.
Because Eddie has to be alive in there right? Max is ok. Max – thank god – hasn’t been rebroken, hasn’t slipped back into her coma, or died. Max is alive, and whole and free of Vecna. Which means Eddie can be too. He has to be. Even though Eddie fully died and was reanimated by Vecna, their cases aren’t so dissimilar, right? Eddie has to be ok. Steve dare not think about the alternative. About what he might find when he enters that room if Eddie isn’t alive.
Steve finds the right door. The one Eddie had pushed the keycard underneath. Steve snatches it up from the floor. He hesitates for only a moment, scared of what he’ll find on the other side, before unlocking the door.
He pushes it open and peers around the door into the room.
Steve chokes on his words at the sight of Eddie on his feet, because his back is to the door, and he’s standing eerily still.
“Eddie?” Steve whispers.
Eddie doesn’t move.
Steve is a second from freaking out.
But then Eddie’s voice cracks around the words, “Am I dead, then?”
Steve frowns at the back of Eddie’s head with concern. “No, I don’t think so?”
“You sure this isn’t heaven? Because I’m pretty sure I can’t be in hell if you’re here, Harrington.”
“Are you kidding me?!” Steve practically shrieks. “I’m here worrying about your mortality and your sanity and you’re here giving me pick-up lines?!”
Eddie spins around on his heel. The raised silvery scars still dot and criss-cross his skin, but he’s alive. He’s gloriously alive, and here. He’s here. No blank space. No Vecna-Kas-Eddie. Just Eddie Munson. The Eddie Steve has come to know and care for. “Sorry, Stevie. Old habits die hard. Or don’t die at all, I’m guessing? Since I’m still here? You did defeat the final boss, right?”
“Ye…yeah. Vecna’s gone. It’s over.”
“Thank god,” Eddie sags, and Steve stumbles over him to help hold him up. He can’t get over the fact he can actually physically touch Eddie now. That Eddie isn’t some figment of his imagination.
“You’re alive,” Steve murmurs.
“I’m alive,” Eddie agrees. “I think. Unless I’m a zombie, which, not gunna lie, kind of cool.” Eddie lifts a shaky hand to Steve’s face, where the bat venom had been branching around his eye. Eddie feels warm to the touch, alive. And Steve can’t believe it. That after all they have been through and everyone they have lost, that they get to win this time, like this. “What about you, Steve? You ok?”
“I think so,” Steve says. The raised veins on his skin are gone, the venom destroyed as Vecna was, but the bites remain. They’ll need disinfecting and restitching. They will scar, but they will heal. “No longer Batman.”
Eddie laughs, his eyes and his face brightening with it. So alive. “Batman isn’t infected by bats, Harrington.”
“But Spider-man got bit by a spider?”
“Yeah, totally different.”
Steve frowns, “Doesn’t sound different.”
“My young apprentice,” Eddie tells him fondly, stepping close to him, “You have much to learn.”
Steve searches Eddie’s face; the affection in his big, expressive brown eyes. “I’m glad you’re still here to teach me,” Steve confesses quietly.
“I’ll make a freak geek out of you yet, King Steve,” Eddie promises. He leans forward to press his lips to the corner of Steve’s mouth, and Steve feels his face blush warm in response. “Since you already learned Metallica for me.”
Steve rolls his eyes, and takes Eddie’s hand, the skull ring clinking against Eddie’s other rings. “I learned one song.”
“The most important one. The telepathic ghost-summoning one.”
“EDDIE!?” comes a screech from the doorway, and Steve releases Eddie’s hand so Dustin can limp-run into Eddie, arms wrapping tight around him. “Oh my god! Oh my god! You’re alive! You’re alive!”
Dustin actually ends up being the one to get them moving, ushering Eddie and Steve down the corridor, demanding they get checked out by the doctors.
“And if they find out I’m actually a zombie?” Eddie asks.
Dustin doesn’t even miss a beat. Suppose they’ve seen weirder. “Then nothing. You’re coming home with us.”
“Thanks little dude.” Eddie slings his arm around Dustin’s shoulders, and Dustin looks tons lighter and brighter, like the weight of Eddie’s death and the fate of the world has literally been lifted off his shoulders. Eddie glances over at Steve, a playful spark in his eye. “How about you, Steve? You ok with me being a zombie?”
“Better that than a ghost, I guess.”
This ignites a whole debate between Dustin and Eddie, who enter an actual serious debate over the pros and cons of being a zombie or ghost. Steve will never admit it, but the happiness he feels at having the two of them safe, reunited and alongside him is indescribable.
“I didn’t much mind being a ghost in the end. Turned out pretty well didn’t it?” Eddie remarks, sending Steve a wink, his fingers purposefully brushing against Steve’s as they walk. “The way I look at it, haunting Harrington is possibly the best thing that could have happened to me.”
Steve shouldn’t find such a ridiculous sentiment romantic, but goddamn it, up until fifteen minutes ago he had bat venom in his veins and a final boss battle going down right before his eyes – he’s used to things being Upside Down – so yeah, as it goes, he actually kind of does.