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The white floors and walls of the hospital were a stark contrast to what everyone around him looked like. Most of them had minor injuries that would be tended to when the doctors had a free moment, but it still made them look like a scene from a horror movie, covered in dried blood, bruises, dirt, and the mess of the Upside Down. Some of them had tear streaks cut through the grime on their faces, Dustin still shaking with silent sobs. Steve let Dustin lean on his shoulder, knowing that the kid needed as much comforting as he could get, yet Steve couldn’t do anything more than be a body of support. His tongue felt like lead in his mouth, his arms weak from all of the activity of the day, and he couldn’t even think about what he would say if he could. Would he comfort them? Tell them all that it would be okay?
Every time someone said that to him, they were wrong, and Steve wouldn’t bring himself to lie to the kids. They had been through enough already.
But, what should he be doing, then? What was he supposed to do now? He was the babysitter, he was the one that had to protect all of them. Make sure that they were doing okay, yet he didn’t even know how anymore. It was easy when all he had to do was pick up a baseball bat full of nails, yet that wouldn’t help this time.
So he ignored it, ignored the confusion and helplessness he felt, ignored how he couldn’t comfort them like he should be able to, and turned all of his attention down to his hands. They were both covered in blood, blood of not one, but two people. Two people that could die at any moment, two people that he failed to protect. Eddie, mauled by Demobats and nearly dead by the time Steve reached him, and Max, who had basically broken every bone in her body, dead for too long until she began breathing again. Steve couldn’t get the image of her white, bleeding eyes out of his head, or Eddie’s limp body covered in a mess of blood and flesh. He couldn’t get Dustin’s desperate pleading out of his ears, or forget Lucas’ broken cries as he tried to wake Max up.
He watched as the blood on his hands began to dry, crusting in the smooth lines of his palms, the skin under his fingernails, all from when he tried to stop Eddie’s bleeding, from where he tried to wipe away Max’s bloody tears, trying to wake her up.
But those weren’t the only ways he got covered in blood, was it? He was coated in blood, head to toe in the red that gave life, but also represented it being taken away. He was coated in Barb’s blood, the smart, quiet girl, dead because of his stupid party and his own selfishness. She was the ghost that never let him be, and he knew her death was his fault. Her blood was on his hands, in his heart, and suffocated him with every passing day. Nancy was right, it was his fault. He did kill Barb. And it haunted him.
He knew that he couldn’t handle it if Max or Eddie didn’t make it. He would drown, drown in the guilt, in the blood of everyone that he had failed, and maybe he deserved it. He didn’t want it, though. He didn’t want to drown it, because then he would get lost, more lost than he already was, and then he couldn’t protect anyone else. He had to keep above the tide, the guilt that swelled up in his chest, so that he could make sure no one else died, no one else suffered because of his failure, his mistakes.
But he didn’t know how long he could float above it. How long he could go until he sank.
“Steve?”
He looked up, his eyes, unfocused by his thoughts, found Nancy, her kind eyes watching him with sympathy. She was covered in grime, just like the rest of them, yet held out a clean cloth to him.
“Nance?” He managed to ask, and she placed the cloth gently in his hands, the red from the blood spreading onto it, as if it was infecting it, too. He grabbed it, running it along his palms and fingers, trying to get the blood off. He barely muttered a thanks before Nancy walked off, right back to where Lucas was sitting. She began to comfort him, and Steve once again became aware of the kid leaning on him. He cast a concerned glance at Dustin, who seemed to fall into a light doze, and tried not to move.
He turned back to his hands and returned to wiping the blood away, cleaning away the remains of death on his skin, the reminders of what he had failed to do and what could happen. What has happened.
But, he knew that, no matter how hard he scrubbed, the blood would still be there, drowning him, suffocating him, slowly killing him bit by bit until there was nothing of his life left. He knew that he couldn’t escape it, just like Max couldn’t escape Vecna, like Eddie couldn’t fight the Demobats, like Barb couldn’t run from the Demogorgon.
There was no escaping anything in this small town, not even the blood on his skin or the guilt in his heart.
As he felt the weight of Dustin’s head on his shoulder, relying on Steve’s support to keep on going, to survive, Steve knew in his heart that all he himself could do was keep on going, keep on going until he couldn’t go any further. So he would. He would keep on going for them.
Everything was always for them.