Steddie Upside-Down AU Part 77
Part 1 Part 76
He’s growing – Steve can feel it eating away at the pathways in his brain. He can almost feel the way the connections drop, making way from something else, something more. It’s like he wants Steve to be able to see the paths he’s carving out of his brain so he can.
They’re dark, and winding, and there’s nothing in there at all. Steve’s being hollowed out, for a holy purpose he can’t quite grasp, but he can feel it, coiled cold and hard in the back of his skull, waiting to give him his own divine prophecy. When the time’s right.
But the time’s not right, and he’s lost in the tunnels of his mind, winding fast, fast, fast through corridors he doesn’t recognize.
It’s like, double vision. He’s looking at Eddie sitting beside him, twirling his frizzy hair in front of his mouth, but it’s dark, too, and the tunnels are winding. Winding, and empty until they’re not.
It’s not until he sees the man that Steve wonders if he’s looking at something internal at all. Because there’s a man he doesn’t recognize walking inside them. He watches him stumble, he watches him fall.
Steve doesn’t recognize the man. But, still. Something twists inside as he watches him collapse, He’s supposed to collapse. Steve knows, he can feel it.
But there’s still something pulling in his sternum. He can feel it, sometimes, when Eddie’s looking at him with big, sad eyes. He wants to wring the sadness straight out of him but can’t – he doesn’t know what’s wrong.
“Something’s wrong.” he says, but he’s not sure if he means the man or the look in Eddie’s eyes, or the way he’s not sure where he is right now.
“What is it, honey?”
The woman who says it looks frazzled from where she’s kneeling in front of him. He doesn’t know her, but she’s holding Will’s hand. He looks at Will, and his eyes match hers – both wide and worried and trained on him.
“There’s a man,” he says. There are vines circling the man’s wrists, legs, trailing up his neck. Steve rubs his own throat, esophagus convulsing in sympathy pain. And just for a second, there’s a flicker of that same man smiling down at him, settling something over his face, letting him breathe.
“Where?” the woman asks, at the same moment Eddie asks, “who?” and reaches out his burning palm to clutch Steve’s knee.
He turns back to Eddie. Eddie who’s touch burns straight through him, who he can feel pulling pulling pulling him in like he wants to incinerate him whole. Steve would let him.
So, he ignores the woman’s question and focuses on the man. “I don’t know him,” Steve whispers. He’s not sure it’s true, he can still feel the way his warm hand had cradled Steve’s jaw as he breathed life back into him.
Eddie’s boring his gaze into him, like maybe he can scoop out the images and muddle through them on his own. “But he’s in trouble?”
Steve nods.
The woman stands up with a grunt, hands braced on knees as hauls herself up. “I’ll try Hop again.”
The name twinges. “Hop, Hop, Hopper,” Steve murmurs, looking back down at Eddie’s hand on his knee like it’ll tell him what he’s thinking. Like it’ll make his brain work better.
“What about him?” Will asks quietly. He’s watching the woman pick up the phone, turning the numbers by rote.
Steve doesn’t know Hopper, but there’s a man with a dirty name plate attached to his dirty chest that reads the same name. “The vines,” he starts, before stalling out, unsure of what to say. “They’ve– they’ve got him.”
Eddie sits up, squeezing Steve’s knee tight, the bite of his fingernails into burnt flesh aching. “Hopper’s who’s in trouble?”
He nods, and sits, watching Hopper struggle, watching Will and Eddie trade looks around him, watching the woman hang up the phone with a sigh.
“Where?” Eddie asks.
Steve doesn’t know. He doesn’t know, but it’s Eddie who’s asking, so he closes his eyes. He closes his eyes and focuses. “There’s dirt,” he says, “and vines, and—”
There’s nothing else. No discernable features of the landscape he both can and cannot see, but he’s squinting into his own mind hard enough that the back of his skull starts aching like it’s splitting open and that’s when he feels it: a pull.
It’s coming from the back of his head, like a migraine, aching at the join between his neck and skull. He lets his head sway with it, then points with the sway.
He closes his eyes, focuses on the man, and lets the pull take him.
It’s like walking through purgatory – following the lines in his mind. He’s going the right way, can feel it just as surely as he can feel Eddie’s burning hand on his elbow and Will’s burning fingers on his ankles.
He doesn’t open his eyes, just walks, and walks, until there’s nowhere to walk anymore.
It’s not until he stops that the implications of the pull yanking him down sink in. He wants to drop to his knees and scrabble at the ground with his nails. But he’s down too deep, and time’s running out.
He opens his eyes and looks down. There’s a rotten pumpkin under his shoe, foot turning it to mush. Beneath that, there’s dirt. Dirt and vines. Steve points down to it, and looks up to meet Eddie’s worried eyes.
“He’s running out of time,” Steve says, watching both Eddie’s eyebrows furrow, and the way the man’s fingers are still flexing on the vine around his throat, keeping it at bay.
“He’s down there?” the woman asks, unhelpful in her hysteria.
Steve watches the reality unfurl in Eddie’s eyes and then looks down at the dirt beneath his feet and watches the man struggle.
People flit around him like ants. He doesn’t pay it any mind. Will and Eddie are here, and everything else is just killing time.
Part 78
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ougghhh everyone’s talking so fondly about lionpaw and his new friendships made by the ripwater event but all i can think about is his mention of ashfur’s comment. and how lion probably thinks it’s just a little joke but ash might actually mean it :(
There's this little pearl of a theme hidden in the Ripwater Episode, if you look carefully; abuse acts on people in insidious but subtle ways.
It's Mistystar who's defensive of asking for help or admitting a problem, thinking of what she did to Leopardstar and also repeating cultural sentiment that once victimized her herself.
It's Squirrelflight shouting at her daughter for acting like she used to, because she's spent some years being yelled at in a similar way
It's Hollypaw who isn't allowed to enjoy her achievement of saving Otterpaw's life or lean into how much she has in common with Lakepaw, because she's ashamed of how she did something "wrong" by snooping
And lastly, it's Lionpaw, who's starting to believe the vicious comments that Ashfur says about him. I referenced Willowpelt partially for the sweet little irony of him teaching her recipe to her unknown grandson, Ripplepaw, but ALSO because Ashfur is starting to isolate him.
Willowpelt is the Head of Hunting, currently, a position that Lionblaze is going to succeed her in. I don't think Ashfur is playing 4D chess quite yet, but there's a couple of little motivations knocking around in Ashfur's heart for why he's nasty whenever Lionpaw interacts with her;
Ashfur hates Willowpelt, because of the events from Ferncloud's Parting. He isn't aggressive to her directly, but he does spread rumors and slander whenever possible, happy to remind others of her exile.
Lionpaw getting close to Willowpelt will annoy him. Ashfur both hates and resents his apprentice, but also feels POSSESSIVE of him. He feels like Willowpelt will "steal" what's his.
A simple but hard truth; Ashfur wants Lionpaw to hurt. Maybe Ashfur sees it in his head like "telling the hard truth" or "toughening his apprentice up," but when he makes those malicious little comments, makes him recoil with hurt, it feels righteous.
Maybe in the next draft, it should actually be Ashfur, not Blackclaw, who comes to growl at Lionpaw for bonding with Lakepaw over the spears. Maybe have Willowpelt come in to show them how to properly use one and that's actually what set Ash off. Like he just used xenophobia because it was convenient in that moment.
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