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Dustin Henderson was dumb.
No, not dumb.
He was stupid, idiotic. A fool. A ludicrous, naive fool.
He really thought that after everything they’ve been through, all the horror that he and his friends had seen, that they could get out of this so easily?
No.
It was laughable, really. How much he had hoped; how much he had prayed that this whole nightmare would just end.
It had seemed like the end. When Eddie died. It had seemed like Dustin’s whole word was ending. The dark, empty sky of the Upside Down was crashing to the ground around him. The trees were splitting into violent red chasms down to their roots, bark falling in shards around the two boys on the ground. The great expanse of gray above their (his) head(s) opened up, lightning flashing scarlet amongst the neutral colors of night. The houses surrounding the road had crumbled, the infrastructure caving in on itself with resounding claps of thunder echoing from above.
As the light bled from Eddie’s eyes, as the last ghost of a smile shadowed his face, Dustin had felt he was dying as well. He felt it was him who was on the ground with numerous gaping holes spilling his internal organs onto the harsh, cold concrete. He felt it was him who was staring up at the false heavens with the last of his vision slowly ebbing away, as blood wrapped itself around his lungs, choking the air from his chest and stealing the voice from his throat in short, terrible watery gurgles.
But, no.
Dustin had survived.
Eddie-
Eddie had not.
Dustin had never seen someone die before. Not… not like that. Not someone he knew, not someone he cherished like Eddie Munson.
Sure, back when he was only twelve years old he had witnessed Eleven vanishing into nothingness, had thought she would be gone forever.
She came back.
Eddie did not.
Dustin knew the world wasn’t actually ending. He knew that Eddie was just one person, that his death would do nothing in the grand scheme of things because Dustin knew that everybody had to die eventually, but it was just too soon.
It was too soon.
Eddie didn’t deserve to go like that.
Not… not like that.
Eddie had plans! Eddie was going to graduate that year, it was his year! Not Dustin’s, not Mike’s, not Lucas’s, not anybody’s!
It was his. It was Eddies.
That had been stolen from him by the sharp talons of the bats that paraded around the Upside Down.
That dream had been stolen from him by fucking Vecna.
Now Dustin was back in the Upside Down. Back in that hellscape where Eddie had drawn his last breaths, back where his best friend had gone missing for a week and had had to endure the terrible silence of solitude, back where everything that had ever gone wrong in Dustin’s life had originated from.
Goddamnit, why hadn’t Dustin done more to make Steve turn around? Why had they chased after the demigorgon even though Dustin knew it was a bad idea. Going back there, back to that horrific place, would bring nothing but grief and bereavement of the memory of Eddie Munson.
Eddie Munson, whose life was cut much too short by the flick of a talon.
Eddie Munson, who didn’t give a shit about what anybody thought of him, who would always be himself no matter the circumstance.
Eddie Munson, who Dustin looked up to, who he wanted to be like someday.
Eddie Munson, who had lived the life of a hero, but had died under a facade of a villain.
Every single person left in that cursed town thought that Eddie was a murderer. Everybody but Dustin and a handful of the kids that knew the terrible truth about the horrors that lay just below their feet.
Even then, they didn’t care.
NOBODY CARED.
Nobody, except Dustin.
So yeah, maybe that’s why he decided to wear the Hellfire shirt to school, maybe that’s why he was looking for a fight that he knew he wouldn’t win.
Maybe it was to punish himself for losing Eddie, for not getting back quick enough for the slim possibility that maybe, just maybe, Eddie could have lived.
Maybe that’s why he couldn’t stand looking at Steve; why he was just so angry with the guy all the time. Maybe that’s why every time Steve smiled Dustin could only see the bloody grin of Eddie as the life vanished from his face.
Dustin couldn’t have it happen again.
He just couldn’t.
He couldn’t have another Eddie.
So when Steve drove that car through that scarlet gaping laceration in the silo, a crushing fear was the only thing Dustin felt. His veins, his lungs, his heart, his mind- It was all corrupted by the icy water that he felt he was drowning in.
Then they were on the other side.
They were in the Upside Down.
And Steve was laughing, bright and victorious, his eyes shining with triumph. He looked over at Dustin, hit him in the arm, and then Dustin was laughing too.
That didn’t dispel the rising fear that they were stuck in the hellscape that was the Upside Down.
Not. One. Bit.
But Steve was happy, Nancy and Jonathan too, and Dustin couldn’t help but join in.
Now that laughter was mere echoes in Dustin’s ears, replaced by Dustin’s own heavy breathing and the thunder of his running footsteps against the metal stairs.
God, he was so stupid.
He had thought they were surrounded by an energy shield, had thought he was so smart in figuring it out.
He had thought that he, Dustin Henderson, was able to outsmart Vecna when all the adults in his life could not.
It turned out that he had just signed his friends’ death warrants right then and there.
It wasn’t a goddamn shield generator, it was exotic matter. Which, when destroyed, will collapse the walls of the fucking wormwhole that the Upside Down apparently was, taking all living recipients of the worlds connected by the wormhole with it.
That included Dustin and his friends.
His voice echoed throughout the stairwell, desperate and broken, as he screamed into the radio that he had foolishly broken in his anger with Steve. It wasn’t going through; Nancy was going to shoot the exotic matter and then- then they would all die.
He ran right into Steve, didn’t glance back at him despite his confused yells after Dustin. When the building shook violently, causing Dustin to lose his footing and hit the wall, he thought he was going to die.
Just like Eddie.
But, no. Yet again, Dustin Henderson survived.
He buried the anger and frustration that encompassed his mind when he looked at Steve and explained the situation with the wormhole and the exotic matter.
Then Steve was charging off into the darkness as he always did, footsteps ringing in the stairwell.
A suffocating fear swept through Dustin’s veins when Steve disappeared from sight, capturing his lungs and squeezing the air from them. He ran after Steve, forgetting all about the anger, all about the fight that had occurred just minutes previous.
All Dustin could think about was when nobody followed him through that rupture on the ceiling of the small place Eddie called home, when he glanced over his shoulder and shouted till his lungs felt they were burning.
The relief he felt when Steve came back into view was almost enough to knock him from his feet, but Steve didn’t stop, so neither did Dustin.
Steve kept running up those stairs, up those stairs into what he knew would be imminent danger. He kept moving forward, when Dustin was stuck in the past.
Dustin hated it.
He hated it so much.
He hated it because he knew Steve was right.
No matter how much he resented Steve for it, no matter how much he resented himself for it, he knew that Steve was right.
Because Steve Harrington was always fucking right.
He was so smart, so much smarter than Dustin, and only now had Dustin realised this.
Eddie Munson had not died a hero.
It took a long time for Dustin to understand this, to wrap the brain which he had such pride in around the fact, but it was the truth.
It was ugly, it was abhorrent, but it was true.
If that didn’t carve an even deeper hole into Dustin’s heart than what was already there, he didn’t know what did.
The fact that Eddie Munson hadn’t died a hero, that there was no point to his tragic end, that if he had just followed Dustin out of the Upside Down like he was supposed to, he would have lived.
Dustin could feel his heart bleeding out of his chest, could hear the pitter patter of the scarlet hitting the ground beneath his feet. He felt his ribcage cave in on itself, the hollow, brittle bones giving way in the tsunami of grief that swallowed him whole.
Steve kept marching forward, Dustin running after him. He pleaded, attempted to reason, to tell Steve to turn back, to give up on this fruitless rescue attempt. Because deep down, even if there was a chance that Nancy and Jonathan were still alive, Dustin didn’t want Steve to die trying to get to them. If they survived, and Steve did not- Dustin didn’t know what he would do with himself.
Soon, the viscous, white liquid began to take over everything. It was as if the walls were melting.
It dripped down the walls, coated the floor in about six whole inches of tangible matter that made it nearly impossible to trudge through. The handle was coated with the stuff, and upon further inspection, the metal actually was liquefying into the thick glue like substance.
When the stairs where Steve was about to step dissolved, Dustin’s heart leaped to his throat. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hear, couldn’t see. He reached out a desperate hand and clutched the back of Steve’s shirt, pulling him back before he slipped over the edge.
Before he would die.
Just
Like
Eddie.
Steve stepped back, breaths heavy and harsh. Dustin stared, eyes wide and unblinking.
Again, he tried to reason that they go back, and yet again, Steve ignored him.
A frustrated, grief-stricken anger curled around his heart, and he suddenly found it very difficult to take in breath. His throat constricted in the way it did when he felt tears burning at the back of his eyes, and through blurred eyes he saw Steve move out of sight, then back in front of him, something large and metal in his hands.
A ladder.
No. No way.
NO.
Dustin was desperate at this point. He all but begged Steve not to go, voice breaking and frantic, but he didn’t care. Anything to keep Steve from going on that ladder.
Anything to keep Steve from dying.
Because the second Steve’s fingers curled around the first rung, the second the sole of his dark combat boot pressed experimentally against the cold metal, Dustin could only see the crumpled form of Eddie on the ground.
He could only see the blood marring the concrete below where Eddie lay, the multitude of scarlet lacerations decorating his skin, the dozens of dead bats littered around the boy.
He could only see the acceptance in Eddie’s dark eyes, the way he smiled despite knowing his time was up.
He could only hear the dreadful, watery gurgles that were Eddie’s last words, the gasps of breath for the time that he didn’t have.
He could only feel the blood seeping into his clothes, permanently sinking deep into his skin, his flesh, his bones.
Steve couldn’t die. Because if Steve died, Dustin would die.
A piece of him was already left by that bloody body all those years ago, left to rot in the Upside Down right next to Eddie.
Dustin couldn’t lose the rest of his heart.
He just couldn’t.
So he pulled Steve back from the brink of the edge, he yelled at him, tears flooding his eyes.
Then he held onto him tight, burying his face into Steve’s shirt, and distantly saw the ladder that Steve would have been on tumble down into the abyss, lost forever. He just held on tighter.
He would never let go.
Not now, not ever.
He couldn’t have another Eddie.
He couldn’t lose him again.