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candied-cae · 2 years

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And Who Are We At The End Of The World? - Wake Up

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Chapter 9/? - - - Read it on AO3

Word Count : 2,957

Summary: Now that the Party has everyone's favorite super-powered little girl back in Hawkins, it's time to figure out just what happened the night of the Vecna fight… Just how are Max and Eddie really doing?

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The group of them, now nine strong, walked into the hospital without further delay. Steve and Robin led the way for the kids while Nancy, Jonathan, and Argyle herded them from the back. They all made their way through the lobby and packed themselves into an elevator. There was a handful of other people in the box with them. They were discussing their own friends and families in hospital beds and, while it would’ve been customary to be solemn and slow-paced in such circumstances, as soon as those doors parted to release them onto the second floor, they pushed their way out in a manner that earned them a few, somewhat deserved, stink eyes.

But it wasn’t really their fault. They had to rush. They were on a very important mission.

Steve slowed as they made it about halfway down the hall, finding they’d arrived at the door for room 237. He reached for the door handle, pulling it open a crack as the lone sound of Lucas reading slipped out. He waved them all to gather inside as he pulled it further back and the boy’s voice stopped. The kids entered first while the older ones stayed at the back to let them reunite. Which was good. Because, as soon as Lucas saw the faces that began to pour inside, he set down “The Talisman” in favor of running to Mike and Will.

“Oh my god.” slipped from him as he crossed the room.

It was the first time either had ever seen him so hurt. Left eye nearly swollen shut, nose still bumped in the middle. They closed their arms around Lucas the second he was in reach. He locked his own around them in turn. The two who'd been gone could feel the deep breath Lucas pulled in to assure himself they were there; they felt his grip tighten as he convinced himself they were real; they felt him relax when he let himself believe it.

“We’ve been calling you guys like crazy,” he told them with closed eyes, focused entirely on just holding the two people he’s known since he was just a toddler, but didn’t have by his side on the worst night of his life.

“I know,” Mike answered,” We came as soon as we knew.”

As Lucas looked up from between their shoulders, he saw El. Looking right at him from just a step away. Her eyebrows were coming together in the middle, her lash line already holding back tears. The boys split apart so Lucas could hug her, too. They tightly wrapped around one another as El let out shaking breaths, trying to keep from releasing her sobs.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered beside his ear as she held tighter, squeezing her eyes shut and tucking her face into his shoulder.

He was giving a gentle rub to her back, to let her know there was no way she had anything to be sorry for, when she stiffened. She just had the chance to look past him to Max for the first time. Seeing her in the flesh for the first time in months… and it’s in a hospital bed, cast-covered arms and legs, neck brace in place, and purpling bruises under her eyes. Lucas released her as she took careful steps toward the motionless girl.

“Do they know… when she will wake?” El asked fearfully.

“No. They say she might not,” he told her honestly. Friends don’t lie.

El turned into Mike’s arm at the thought while Lucas continued, remembering what the doctors had said,” Her heart stopped for over a minute. She died. I… I mean, clinically, but… then she came back. The doctors don’t know how. They say it’s a miracle.”

El took Lucas’s hand in hers and squeezed it with some conviction. He looked to her for an answer she didn’t have. But she was going to try. She was going to try until she got her back. No matter how long it took. No matter what it took. El was going to get Max back.

The girl let go of Lucas’s hand and slipped out from under Mike’s to step closer. Sitting onto the bed beside Max and, with a featherlight touch, reached out to hold the fingers poking out from beyond the white material.

“I’m here, Max,” El told her. Willing with everything she had that the girl could hear her. Beyond monsters and madmen, and shit that’s not fair... beyond everything else, El’s words had to reach her. She looked upon her face for a moment longer before she closed her eyes in search of the girl in her mind.

But this was also not something she’s ever done before. She’s never tried looking for someone while they were asleep, or comatose, for that matter. But she’s found people when they’ve been blocked before. Her Mama when her mind was nearly gone, Billy when he was possessed, so surely she should be able to find something.

She hoped Max would gleam against the black like she usually did. Fiery, red hair and pale, speckled skin standing out against the backdrop of nothing. And for the first time, Max would see her back. Instead of a quick peek where El can only see her, they would be in the space together. Max would turn to her with wide eyes and run to greet her in the middle.

But she doesn’t.

She doesn’t do anything.

Because Max isn’t there.

When El enters the black void, it’s simply that: black and void. There was nothing but herself lurking there. In a wide expanse of nothing, a whole world left empty, El was alone. She looked and she called. She ran and she begged. Yet still, nothing. She couldn’t find her. She stopped Max from dying, but she doesn’t know what happened to her after. What did she do?

When she came out of it, back to the crowded inpatient room, they were all looking at her expectantly. No one said a word, but they stared. Waiting. She looked away from their eyes, finding some comfort in examining the floor instead of their faces, not happy to imagine how they’d look when she said it. When she let them down.

“I cannot find her,” she admitted in a small, defeated voice.

“What?” Lucas asked, not mad but scared.

“She’s not in there…” El’s voice wavered as her hand held Max’s fingers just slightly tighter, she sounded near tears.

“Is it… is it just because she’s unconscious?” Robin asked.

El’s shoulders shrugged the slightest like the weight was almost too much to move under,“ Maybe?”

“So, let’s visit the other guy.” Argyle thought.

“What?” Jonathan asked him.

His sudden words hit stark against the emotions in the room, but he had a point. And Nancy could tell what he was getting at.

“He’s right. If El tries to find Eddie and she doesn’t see him in there either, then it probably just means something about them being unconscious makes them hard to find. Nothing to worry about then, we’ll just need to wait a bit more.” she explained, honestly fairly impressed the new guy figured it out so fast.

“Okay.” El stood back up and wiped her eyes. She was barely ready to try again, but she needed to.

The group wandered across the hall, Lucas and Erica now in tow, as they opened the door into room 238. For a minute there, Steve was trying to think up some kind of excuse to give Eddie’s uncle. Maybe something about the kids just wanting to see him and wanting to say something alone. But it would still be weird to try and kick the man out of his own nephew’s room. But they couldn’t tell him what El needed to do, even if he believed them, they’d be pulling him into their mess of a world, and that wouldn’t be fair to Mr. Wayne. Course, maybe they could offer to watch Eddie for a few minutes and let him take a breather or smoke break or something. Or maybe one of them could try to pull him away with a distraction or-

It didn’t matter.

Because Wayne Munson wasn’t there.

The room was empty, except for little ol’ Eddie snoozing away in his bed. Steve shakes away his wasted panic with a reminder that just hours before, he was commenting on how badly he wanted to get out of the white room with all its beeping. And here he is, back in it again. Like nothing had changed.

Once more, the kids had filled the room first and had been the ones to gather closest to the bed. But this time, Mike is the one having the strongest reaction. It’s not that Eddie looked worse than Max, but Eddie wasn’t someone he ever expected to see wrapped up in all their secret stuff. Eddie was just supposed to be their DM, the cool senior who ran the coolest club, in Mike’s humble opinion, and did his own thing. They were only supposed to know each other inside the halls of Hawkins High. They were only supposed to share happy memories. That’s it. Eddie was not supposed to be someone they ruined with the Upside Down.

Eddie was all loud voices, big gestures, and dark clothes. And now he laid in clinical white, still and silent. Because of them and the stuff they discovered that night almost three years ago in the forest past Mirkwood.

It didn’t look right seeing him like that.

Besides him being so non-Eddie-like, his wrists were cuffed to the railing on the bed. The chains weren’t quite long enough to lay his hands on the bedding, they hung limply about an inch above. They’d been switched yesterday when the cops came through, and it already looked like the metal was wearing red marks into his skin. El gently took his hand into hers, lifting it off the constant pressure of the restraint.

“Hello Eddie, I am Eleven. I’m going to try to find you,” she said politely. Like they deserved to have a proper introduction before she tried to dive into his head.

Once more, El was in the void. Dark and empty, the familiar splashing of water under her feet. But this time, when she walked forward and called, she wasn’t alone. She found him. Eddie was lying on his back, but strangely he didn’t really look like he had in the real world. He wasn't lying in a hospital bed, he was on the ground. His arms and legs were stretched out around him further than the bed would've allowed. And, despite El approaching rather noticeably, he was unresponsive. He wasn’t completely frozen in place, though. His eyes were open, and he seemed to be shaking, like the full-body, involuntary kind of shaking. Like he was reacting to… something. But he didn’t react to her.

“Hello?” she called again, standing just beside him.

She looked down as he stared past her into the nothing. His breath was trembling, and every part of him seemed to be raked through with fear and pain. Like he was still being ripped into by the monsters. They weren’t there, of course, but he looked like he was stuck at that moment, unable to escape.

“He’s in here,” El said, loud enough for the people in the hospital room to hear it as a mutter.

“Is he okay?” a voice came back to her. It was Mike’s.

El bent down and hugged her knees. Crouched just next to his hand, the same one she held out there. Maybe she needed to… help pull him out? She brought her knees to the ground, leaning back on her heels, and slowly, she reached out to touch the hand. And as suddenly as her fingers brushed his skin, it was like he came to life. He drew a deep gasp of air into his lungs and connected terrified eyes with hers. He scrambled back away from her with a shriek, hair flying around him in his urgency.

El threw her hands up reflexively as he flinched away from her. She held them in front of her in surrender so he might realize she was not really all that scary.

“Woah, Woah- Who are- What is this pla-” he started asking fearful questions until a look of realization came to his face. He put his hand to his chest over the hospital gown,” Am I…?”

El remained quiet, waiting for him to finish a question so she might answer it for him. He, however, took her silence as the answer itself and came to his own conclusion of what was going on.

“Oh shit… Shit, shit, fuck. Wait, are you…?” He looked at her again, properly taking the stranger in for the first time. His eyes run up and down as his face drops the fear and picks up a look of confusion instead,” I mean, I guess I get the idea, but you really messed up some parts.”

“I messed up?” El questioned him back, ignoring the first bit of his sentence in favor of the second. How could he know if she messed up in bringing them back?

“Well, yeah, to appear as a younger me, to chill me out or whatever, it makes sense. Sorta. And, I mean, some of it’s fine. The buzz cut, the big brown eyes, the works. Not half bad. But that is not my face, I have never worn those clothes, and I definitely didn’t have those in middle school.” he motioned to indicate her chest at the end, which only seemed to make her further confused.

This statement completely took her aback,“ I am not you,” she countered.

“Clearly, like I said, not a perfect rendition. But I guess it doesn’t really matter.” He huffed before standing up,” Which way are we going? Up or down?”

“Up or down?” She asked him back, coming off her knees to join him on her feet.

“Yeeeaaahh? You know…” He pointed up and sang a mocking ‘ahhh’ like angel chorus,” or…” and he pointed down, imitating little screams of torture.

“Never figured God for the forgetful type, but what do ya know.”

El’s confusion seated deeper in the wrinkle of her forehead,“ I am not God.”

In the hospital room, El has been mumbling to herself, though it was too quiet for anyone to make out. So, after a few minutes had passed and they all started to get a little freaked, Steve leaned forward,“ What’s going on in there?”

Eddie clearly couldn’t hear it, but El looked up and spoke to them,” He thinks I am God and that we are going up and down.”

“Up or Down.” Eddie corrected, carefully stepping closer,” You know, it’s pretty rude to talk about someone to someone-” he glanced up with her at the blank space above them,” -or something else right in front of his face.”

El turned her attention back to him,“ Why have you not woken up yet?”

Now Eddie was the one that looked the most confused again,” What?”

“You should wake up,” she advised him.

“So, I’m… not dead?” he needed her to clarify what exactly was going on.

“No, you are not dead. You are in the hospital.”

“You’re kidding… Fuck, they pulled it off,” something of a proud smile formed on his face as he started pacing around the void, too much energy suddenly in him from the impossibly good news,” I mean, I really figured I was a goner, you know. Made my joke about graduating, tried to pretend like it was real for a minute, made Dustin promise to take over things for me, passed along my final words to the little guy, closed my eyes, and… ‘show’s over, that’s all folks’. I mean, there was this moment after, I think. I came back up for a second, but I thought that was like my one last chance to hold on, and I only held on a second before I was back out so… I just thought ‘Hey, that sucks, but that’s life! Or death, I guess’. But, shit,” he stopped to look directly at the angel before him,” I can wake up?”

She nodded, feeling just a little better to see someone so lively rather than the alternative,“ Yes.”

“O-okay, how do I do that?”

“You do not know to wake up?” she asked, squinting a little to look at him.

She was starting to feel the strain again. They’ve been on the road the whole time, so she hasn’t been able to rest up well since the piggyback and facing off against Henry. Just stunted naps and gas station snacks. Which were now proving to not be enough to fuel these trips much longer.

“Are you okay, Not-God? You don’t look like you’re operating in top condition.”

“I will be fine-” she began to say until she was interrupted.

“Tell him to stop being dramatic and get up already, or we’re going to kick his ass.” Dustin’s voice echoed through El’s mind, she could hear him trying to press a smile in his words.

“They want you to get up.” she passed the message along, omitting most of the boy's phrasing, though.

“They?”

Eddie was coming to terms with the fact that he was alive and had a chance to keep it that way, but he was still fairly confused about what supernatural business was going on and who was involved.

“Party.”

“They’re having a party?”

“You should hurry up, they are very impatient,” she told him, and then she was gone.

Like she’d never been with him in that blank vacancy in the first place.

#He speaks? Eddie speaks? Color me shocked.#Eddie meeting El was honestly one of the first scenes I wrote for this fic.#The second I realized that El almost exactly matches Eddie's description of his middle school self - I knew I had to do something #And so this interaction was born.#You can honestly interpret it as a transmasc!Eddie or not #Maybe he was saying he did look like a girl with perhaps a smaller bust than El when he was younger. Or maybe it's just the basic features.#I love the trans!Eddie hcs and fics myself - I just haven't really committed to the idea one way or another for this slowburn #Sorry Eddie's not immediately woken up JUST yet. I'm letting him bake just a little longer #But he is going to be waking up soon! Next chapter we're going to figure some stuff out + set up some Steddie things + have a lot of fun!#Steve Harrington #Eddie Munson #Steddie #Steveddie #Steve x Eddie #Nancy Wheeler #Robin Buckney #Ronance #Robin x Nancy #The Fruity Four #Stranger Things #Stranger Things 4 #Stranger Things 4 spoilers #Stranger Things 4 volume 2 spoilers #stranger things fanfiction #ST4 fanfic #Steddie Fanfic #Ronance Fanfic

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