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The thing about death, Dustin Henderson thought, was how quiet it was.
He'd expected noise. Drama. Something big and cinematic like in the movies, where the hero gets to say goodbye, where there's time for last words and meaningful looks and closure.
Instead, his mom had just… stopped.
One moment she was sleeping in her bed at the Holiday Inn, exhausted from the evacuation, from the stress, from losing their home and their town and everything familiar. The next moment, Steve was shaking Dustin awake at 4 AM with a look on his face that Dustin understood before any words were spoken.
"Henderson," Steve had said, his voice careful and gentle in that way that meant bad news. "Your mom- she-"
"I know," Dustin had interrupted, because he did know, had known from the moment he saw Steve's expression. "I know."
Now it was three days later, and Dustin sat in the cramped office that Hopper had repurposed as a morgue because there were too many bodies and not enough places to put them. His mom was one of seventeen people who'd died at the Holiday Inn in the past week; heart attacks, strokes, medical conditions exacerbated by stress and fear and the trauma of watching the world end.
Natural causes, the doctor had said. As if anything about this was natural.
Steve sat beside him, not saying anything, just being present in that way he was good at. Dustin appreciated it. Appreciated that Steve understood that sometimes there weren't words, that sometimes you just needed someone to sit with you through the grief.
"I should've seen it coming," Dustin said eventually, his voice sounding strange to his own ears hollow, detached. "She had high blood pressure. The doctor told her to watch her stress levels, and I just- I let her come with us. I let her be stressed. I-"
"Dustin, no." Steve's voice was firm. "This isn't on you."
"Isn't it?" Dustin looked at him, and he could feel the tears starting but couldn't stop them. "I could've made her leave. After the convoy attack, after we saw how bad it was getting. I could've insisted she go somewhere safer, somewhere far from all of this-"
"She wouldn't have left you," Steve said quietly. "You know that. Your mom would never have left you behind, not for anything."
Dustin knew that was true. Knew his mom had refused every suggestion to evacuate without him, had fought him on coming to Fort Wayne specifically because she didn't want to be separated even for a day.
That didn't make it hurt less.
"I was going to go to MIT," Dustin said, and now the tears were falling freely. "This fall. I was going to study engineering, and she was so proud. Steve, she was so proud of me. She had this whole plan for how she'd redecorate my room while I was gone, turn it into a craft space or something. And now-"
He couldn't finish the sentence. Couldn't articulate the future that had just vanished, the version of events where his mom got to see him graduate, got to meet his future wife, got to be a grandmother someday.
All of it, gone. Erased in a moment of cardiac arrest at 3:47 AM in a shitty room while the world fell apart outside.
"She knew you loved her," Steve said, and his voice was rough with emotion too. "Dustin, she knew. Every time you argued with her about staying safe, every time you worried about her. She knew."
"I should've told her more," Dustin said. "I should've- I was always so focused on the mission, on solving problems, on saving everyone else. And I didn't- I didn't save her."
"You can't save everyone," Steve said, and there was something broken in his voice that made Dustin look up.
Steve was crying too, silent tears tracking down his face, his jaw clenched like he was fighting to hold it together.
"I'm sorry," Dustin said. "You didn't sign up to be my therapist-"
"I signed up to be your friend," Steve interrupted. "Your brother. That means sitting with you when things are shit. That means-" His voice cracked. "That means being here even when I don't have the right words to make it better."
They sat in silence for a while, two people grieving in a room full of death, trying to make sense of the senseless.
"I keep thinking about stupid things," Dustin admitted. "Like how she'd make me those terrible casseroles that were mostly just cream of mushroom soup and noodles. Or how she'd insist on cutting my hair even though she was terrible at it. Or how she'd call me 'Dusty' even though I'd asked her a million times not to do it in front of my friends."
"She called you that when we were doing the evacuation," Steve said with a weak smile. "Right before she- before the heart attack. She was asking about you, and wanted to make sure you were okay. Called you 'my Dusty' and said she was proud of how brave you were."
Dustin's breath hitched. "She said that?"
"Yeah." Steve's hand found Dustin's shoulder. "She was proud of you, Henderson. Right up to the end."
Dustin broke then, really broke, sobbing into his hands while Steve pulled him into a hug and held on tight. All the fear and stress and terror of the past few weeks crashed over him at once, mixed with the grief of losing the one person who'd always been there, who'd always believed in him even when he was just a weird kid with no dad and too many opinions.
"I don't know how to do this without her," Dustin gasped between sobs. "Steve, I don't- everything's ending and she was supposed to be there when I figured out what came next, and now-"
"You have us," Steve said firmly. "Me and Robin and all the others. We're your family too, Henderson. And we're not going anywhere."
"Promise?" Dustin hated how small his voice sounded, how much like a little kid.
"Promise," Steve said without hesitation. "You're stuck with me. Sorry, but that's non-negotiable."
Dustin laughed, a wet, broken sound, but still a laugh. "Even when I'm annoying?"
"Especially when you're annoying." Steve pulled back to look at him. "Dustin, listen to me. Your mom loved you more than anything. And the way you honor that the way you make sure she didn't die for nothing is by living. By going to MIT and being brilliant and changing the world like you were always meant to. By being happy. By being the person she was so damn proud of."
"What if I can't?" Dustin asked. "What if I just- what if I'm too sad?"
"Then you're sad," Steve said simply. "And we sit with you while you're sad. And eventually, not today, not tomorrow, but eventually the sadness gets a little smaller. A little easier to carry. And you keep going anyway, because that's what she would've wanted."
Dustin nodded, wiping his face with his sleeve. "Will you-" He paused. "Will you come to the service? I know you're busy coordinating things and-"
"Dustin." Steve's voice was gentle but firm. "Of course I'll be there. You think I'd miss it? You think any of us would?"
"I just- I don't want to be a burden-"
"You're not a burden. You're family." Steve squeezed his shoulder. "And family shows up. Always."
They sat together for another hour, talking about Claudia Henderson about her terrible cooking and her worse fashion sense, about how she'd always supported Dustin's interests even when she didn't understand them, about the time she'd driven to the middle school during her work shift because Dustin had forgotten his science project at home.
About all the small, mundane ways she'd shown love.
Eventually, Hopper came to find them, saying they needed to clear the office for the next family. Dustin stood on shaky legs, Steve beside him offering silent support.
"Henderson," Hopper said gruffly, "I'm sorry for your loss. Your mom was- she was a good person."
"Thanks," Dustin managed.
As they walked back toward the barracks, Steve kept pace beside him, a steady presence in the chaos.
"Steve?" Dustin said quietly.
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For being here. For- for everything."
"That's what big brothers do," Steve said, and Dustin felt something warm cut through the grief.
Big brother.
Not just a friend, not just someone who tolerated him.
Family.
Dustin had lost his mom. Had lost his home and his town and his sense of safety.
But he hadn't lost everything.
He still had Steve. Had Robin and Lucas and Mike and Will and all the others.
Had a family that he'd chosen and that had chosen him back.
It didn't make the grief smaller. Didn't make losing his mom hurt any less.
But it made it survivable.
And right now, survival was enough.