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liminalpebble · 7 months

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Eddie's Education: Chapter 25

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Minors DNI

In the main room of the community center six set of eyes fixed on each red circle in turn until the discussion itself began to run in circles. Dustin sighed dramatically. “There're too many options! We can't drive around to every backyard pool or fish pond in Hawkins and be like 'excuse me, mind if we look for a portal to hell real quick?'.”

Robin spoke up. “But...but you said there aren't portals anymore. How would we even get into his lair in the upside-down? Or how would he get out?”

El said gently, “I can open a portal. I think he's counting on it, if he's not strong enough to do it himself. But I don't need to. I can fight him psychically like I did last time...and like I did when I pulled Max from her coma. He said he'll make Leia come to him. So, he's either counting on me to make a portal to the upside-down or he's gathering what's left of his strength to do it himself.”

Mike nodded. “Yeah, and since he's just had a pretty hearty murder meal, he might be strong enough to do it.”

They all grimaced at that. Knowing he was right but not particularly wanting to think about it that way.

Nancy's eyes went wide, remembering a very specific swimming pool from years ago, where her ditched best friend was sucked into the upside-down, flayed, dismembered, and devoured by its monsters. The small woman rose her surprisingly-commanding voice. “What about places where the first murders took place. Those deaths created portals before, and even if they're healed over now, maybe those places are still....well...thin...maybe it's easier to break through there.”

Dustin rose his eyebrows. “You have a hypothesis?”

“Yeah.” She tapped a pink-polished nail on a specific coordinate. “Here. The Harringtons' backyard. The pool would be large enough for his...tank...or whatever, but also it's where....where Barb died. It'd be perfect for him. He can work on creating a portal in a 'thin' place while he's recharging. There aren't any other locations that have both a container that size and a murder, right? This would be his best strategic position.”

Everyone nodded and agreed, allowing small reluctant smiles of relief to surface. Held breaths were finally exhaled.

Dustin was in the middle of congratulating Nancy's sharp thinking when the lights flickered. Just then, Steve's panicked howling pierced the air like an arrow shot from the other room.

“JESUS CHRIST!” he hollered.

---

“Believe it. I can be super confident but also, you know, kind of an idiot,” Steve said with a wry smile. He looked away from Leia for a moment, recalling the past and his mistakes with some humility. When he looked up again he flinched hard and shouted “JESUS CHRIST!”, scuttling away from her and tumbling off the loveseat. Her deep coffee-colored eyes were now clouded over and rolled back, thick black lashes bobbing unevenly over ghostly corneas, like a broken doll. For a moment, all Harrington could do was stare up from the floor in petrified dread.

He was barely aware of the others tumbling into the room until Eddie shoved him out of the way to grab Leia's shoulders, screaming and babbling for her to wake up. His mind flashed to his old trailer, to Chrissy's eyes doing the same eerie blinks in the strobing lights, to him pleading with her to wake up...before...before...

“Leia!!” he wailed.

El pushed him away as gently as she could but he still wriggled and resisted. She held him by the arms and stared into his face, “Eddie! Listen to me! You need to move. I'm the only one who can help her now.”

He nodded in a haze of confusion and let Steve pull him back, keeping a hand on his shoulder.

El sat beside her on the sofa facing her. She put her hand to Leia's clammy forehead and closed her eyes, willing herself to descend to the psychic plane where Vecna had her.

Everything turned dark and quiet, then El paced forward into the horrible scene in Sam's childhood bedroom. She witnessed Leia's impossible choice, heard her agonized sobs and Vecna's cruel goading. She squinted and felt her heart ache. El knew for herself the pain of being used as a devastating weapon, but for now all she could do was watch. From this position she had no power to interrupt or stop any of it. For that she would need to get closer, much closer, and she would need help.

Still entranced, Leia was hyperventilating and tears were streaming from her eyes. Rusty hints of blood mixed with the saline of her tears. Besides El, none of them knew what hell she was enduring, but watching her suffer was breaking Eddie badly.

“Wake her up...please please...god please wake her up. Why won't she wake up?” Eddie muttered and implored to Steve over and over again, and Steve just let him, keeping his arm around his friend.

After moments that seemed like an eternity to everyone in the room, Leia and El's eyes simultaneous blinked back to normal as their bodies slouched heavily onto each other from the lurch of being thrown back into the physical world.

Leia sat up. El was still holding her gently as she struggled for air. Leia's pleading eyes met El's and she croaked and stuttered between sobs and short hiccups of breath, “I..I...k.k..killed him...oh god.”

El shook her head and held Leia's face. “I saw it. It wasn't you, Leia. You don't have the powers to do that. Even if you wanted to. That was Vecna. It's not your fault.”

Leia slurred on, shaking her head, “But he made me help he..he he..s...said I had to kill Sam or watch Eddie d..d..die. He won't take Eddie. I won't let him take Eddie!”

Hearing his name from her lips pulled him to her like a magnet. He flung himself towards her again, sliding to his knees and clamping his arms around her waist. He chanted, “I'm here. I'm here...I'm right here.”

El slowly stood up and joined the others saying quietly. “There's nothing else I can do for her right now, but there will be.”

As Dustin scanned the details of the scene before him, he noticed Leia still had one ear tucked under her headphone, the music still buzzing out in a tinny stream. “Oh fuck...” he sighed out, shoulders dropping.

“What?” Steve asked.

Robin, as usual, was a step ahead. She pointed to the headphones and said, “The music was still playing. It didn't stop him.”

“Fuck,” they all said in a depressing chorus.

Dustin took the lead. Reaching forward for Eddie's arm, he said in a soothing tone, “Eddie...we need to go and...”

Eddie flinched at the contact, inky eyes frantic and feral, teeth gritted. He barked out, “Don't fucking touch her!” and squeezed her closer. Her small body was now slumped against him on the floor, cradled in his arms. He nuzzled his face against hers. Shivering and squinting hard against his tears, he whispered, “I gotcha...I gotcha. Hang in there, baby. Stay with me.”

-----

The catalyst; that's what it was. That's how Dustin thought of it as the group sprung into action, in a fiery explosion of purpose.

Mike, El, and Dustin were working in Eddie's trailer, filling a kiddy pool with bag after bag of salt and gallons of water. They tacked up thick blankets over every window to build a make-shift sensory deprivation tank. From there, El could plunge deeper into the psychic realm and fight Vecna with her full power. At the very least, she planned to protect Leia and keep 001 occupied while the others launched their offensive. She took a calming breath and envisioned their endgame; dragging 001 out of the upside-down, destroying him by divorcing him from the source of power so he can never come back.

Eddie was in his bedroom sitting beside his love, stroking her soft sleeping face and quietly playing guitar for her (for whatever good music could still do). She had lost consciousness in El's arms in the back seat of Eddie's van as they drove, and she was still unconscious as he carried her in. El assured the panicked boyfriend that she was keeping a psychic link on Leia, monitoring for Vecna's presence within her mind. She explained that the experience had just overloaded her system and she needed rest now. It was blessedly silent inside Leia's head, and El suspected 001 had other plans at the moment than harassing his “pet” again. He was preparing for the battle just was much as they were.

Robin, Nancy and Steve were preparing for war in a different way. Steve awkwardly greeted his parents as they pulled up at their house under the guise of a holiday chat and visit (even though they had just seen each other at the community hall). While Steve did what he did best (talking about nothing and being friendly for long periods of time) Robin and Nancy investigated the Harrington's swimming pool.

It was surreal for Nancy to be back at the same house. This was where she was busy losing her virginity while her ditched best friend was being slaughtered in this very pool (or rather, in this pool on the other side). Robin's bright perceptive eyes watched Nancy's blanched troubled face. She knew the story, but didn't realize how the guilt still stretched taut like a string inside of her across all these years. Fuck. No wonder she's so high strung. She mused.

“You okay?” Robin asked, as the two women stared down at the dusty tiles of the bone-dry crater (it was well after swimming season, after all).

As expected, Nancy only answered a curt “yeah”. Stiff upper lip firmly in place, she quickly bypassed the subject. “Look,” she said pointing to a corner of the pool which gave off an eerie red luminescence in the gathering fall dusk. Steve saw it too, looking out the back window over his pumpkin pie and coffee, and past his parents faces, to where the glow rose up.

Before long the three were back in the car after their reconnaissance; an awkward heavy silence hanging between them. Everyone's old hurt and memories were surfacing, unwelcome and unbidden, like garbage bubbling up to ruin a placid lake. The mood was dour, polluted.

Then Robin held up the foil-covered pastry keeping her company in the backseat and began to snack on it, mumbling, “Holy shit, Steve. Your mom makes really good pie!”. The bubble burst and suddenly all three of them were laughing and crying simultaneously as they continued their quest around town.

They got guns and bullets from the sporting goods store; ingredients for Molotov cocktails from the grocery and hardware stores as puzzled cashiers rang them up warily. They stopped by Nancy's to retrieve a shotgun from her back shed (one she hadn't needed since she used it against Vecna 15 years ago). Car now weighted down with supplied, Robin buckled in and announced, “One more stop, friends.”

“Where?” Steve asked, looking over his headrest.

“Leia's place. I have a spare key.”

The other two just stared at her blankly as she rolled her eyes and huffed, “just trust me. There are some loose ends to tie up. Then we'll extract and flambe this asshole again...for good this time.”

-----

El knocked gently, peaking around into Eddie's bedroom, where he still sat with his eyes glued to Leia's sleeping form.

“Hey. I have to disconnect from her now to clear my mind for the tank. Mike and Dustin and I are going to prepare weapons by the fire pit down the road. The others will join us there when they're finished with their part. Can you stay with her for the rest of the time and watch her?”

“Uh yeah...uh...but what what if something happens.”

Mike and Dustin came over, and Mike chimed in, “We think it's pretty likely that he's biding his time now, and El has to disconnect. There's not really much else we can do.” He pointed to the guitar and smiled wryly, “music might still help though...a least a little.”

Eddie nodded, as Dustin and El left.

Mike continued fidgeting while he spoke. “We also...um...we wanted to give you some private time alone together as well. You know. In case....in case things....in case you have some things to talk about.”

Eddie smiled wryly back to Mike, but his eyes were still sad. “You mean in case one or both of us kick the bucket, Wheeler? Just spit it out, man. But yeah...I think that's wise.” He paused swallowing heavily and enveloping her small hand with his larger one, ringed fingers skimming over her knuckles. Then he said, voice shaking with a new tone of determination, “I died once, and I have no intention of dying again...and neither will she. We've both fought our way to a second life, and we're gonna live it together.”

@sweetsigyn @veemoon @elegantkoalapaper @sunflowerdaydreamer @little-wormwood @hellfirenacht

#eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x ofc #eddie munson #stranger things fanfic #stranger things

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