Chapter Text
The world shifts alongside the downward compression of his hands on that chest, turns on the crack of a rib beneath his palm as he counts out the rhythm, tangling with the blink of an eye.
And the disappearance of the whole goddamn world, all the screaming of every voice around him, all the grey floating motes on the air and the sinister red lightning—gone: replaced with black.
Only black.
But worse: there’s no body under his hands, and his own heart trips, then stops as he chokes on that same fucking heart stalled in his throat, choking him worse than vines or bat tails or the threat of a broken bottle at the jugular: he feels ready to bleed out worse and quicker than that glass ever had a chance in hell at.
And then he sees it. Not the body he’d been trying to save.
But a body. A seated body, on the kind of chairs too small for them, far too small for Steve—like…kindergarten chairs. Definitely grade school, at least. Cheap plastic, the brightest thing in the endless dark.
Too small for the person sitting on it, too.
And…the person: they’re young. In a gown that’s…not hospital garb, but also, like, not exactly not. Hair shaved. Young. Steve can’t even tell if they’re a boy or a girl.
And Steve may not have seen the comparison with his own two eyes but, context clues and snippets dropped along the way of the past three years? He thinks he knows where this kid comes from.
Came from?
Why they look like this, is what he means; why of all places, they’d be here. Thinks he can put two and two together, even as he chokes to death on his own lodged-and-swelling heart, from the bits and pieces he does know.
About El.
Steve thinks this may be the only time he’s whole-heartedly-no-reservations grateful for Dustin Henderson’s lack of a filter; for all the at-the-time pointless ‘origin stories’ as he called them, about how they first found her. How vivid his descriptions had been for no reason.
Save that now Steve thinks he’s found the reason.
“You are confused.”
Not even the voice helps him figure out a gender, here. They’re…they’re too young.
But their eyes don’t look as young to match.
“No shit,” Steve mutters under his breath, which he’s realizing just now is too fast, is a little thin and thready—he needs to get a grip. He needs to ground himself.
He needs to fucking find Eddie, because he’d felt a heartbeat, too faint for the pulse points, only under his hands and he needs to get back—
“Confusion is among the weaknesses most easily solved.”
The fuck?
“Is it, now?” Steve can’t help but snap, almost bite out because this…child is so calm, half-detached but half…half almost superior, considering him through narrowed eyes like he’s an insect—the kind that gets pinned down to die and be studied. At best.
Crushed under a boot, at worst.
“All one must do is ask well-considered questions of well-considered sources.”
Jesus fuck, and then the kid goes and sounds like Henderson.
And now Steve’s honestly wondering if the threat of life-and-death in the moment when this godforsaken hellhole rears its head, in keeping certain mouths shut compared to their usual constant yapping, is the only reason he’s able to function through the crises without migraine double-vision fucking with his aim.
Because in the absence of…well, anything around them, really: fuck if this kid isn’t starting a nasty pounding in his temples, goddamn.
Steve forces himself to shove it aside. If he’s learned anything from all these near-apocalypses, it’s how to ignore the pain enough to keep on fucking task.
And Steve’s really only got one fucking task in mind:
“Where is Eddie?”
Because Eddie’s not here. Not that anyone or anything is here in this void, save for the two of them. But Steve doesn’t really give a shit about anyone or anything else because Eddie was bleeding out, Eddie’s heart was slowing, fading, Steve took the lifeguard training enough times to fucking know that minutes counted, seconds counted, and—
“He has not moved.”
Bullshit. He’s not fucking here when he had been right here, Steve’s hands are still red, he can tell even in the darkness, he can feel the caked blood dried in his hair—Eddie isn’t here, under Steve’s tirelessly pumping hands, his mouth tasting the metallic gash at the corner of Eddie’s every thirty compressions and not fucking stopping because he wasn’t going to lose anyway, lose Eddie; so how the fuck could he not have been moved—
Except…
Except Steve can’t prove it.
“Where am I?” Steve tries not to snarl because…this is just a kid standing in front of him. Maybe. Probably.
Almost definitely not a normal kid but that said: Steve’s really fucking used to not-normal kids of all sorts, super powered or super genius or super fucking dramatic or super snarky—he’s good at this. He can keep his cool.
Maybe he just didn’t consider his fucking question well enough, the first time.
(But Eddie…Eddie needs compressions. It’s been more than three rounds of breaths, that’s more than a minute, that’s so many seconds—)
“You have not moved.”
Steve doesn’t fight back the way he growls at the…the nothingness in the not-sky because what’s in the space above him when it’s all just pitch black nothing?
Haven’t moved, his ass.
“Who are you?”
“I am Seven. Lucky, isn’t it?”
“What the hell is this?” Steve whips around a little, tries to see where…like, everything is hiding. “What do y—”
“One question at a time,” this little shithead—Seven—has the gall to fucking…tut at him.
“Self-regulation is essential.”
Holy fuck, Steve is absolutely going to have to self-regulate everything in him to not lose his fucking shit.
“What,” Steve bites out; “the hell,” he sucks a breath in so he can spit with a certain level of incredibly well-regulated venom:
“Is this?”
The monster—this fucking child is a monster, Steve’s calling it right now, swap out a Demogorgon and let Steve tear it to shit because Steve needs very much to tear something to shit—
“An opportunity.”
A what?
But Steve doesn’t actually think he can handle being told his questions need to be well-considered, so he pivots:
“For what?”
“Getting what you want,” the child-menace claps their hands together, tips their head. “What we both want.”
Oh, but that part…that part rings all the goddamn alarm bells.
Steve knows what the other product of that lab who they’ve encountered wanted. Steve just torched that fucker.
But then there’s El. Steve might not know her as well as he’d like but she’s in the Party, so she’s family. She’s on their side.
This is…this is like how Dustin said she was, when she escaped. Not like Vecna.
But Steve, Steve can’t just…just risk—
“What do you want?”
Goddamnit. He can’t risk his family.
But what he wants right now is them safe. All of them safe.
He wants Eddie living and breathing and hale and whole and safe, he fucking needs that, so what’s the cost—
But Seven?
Seven just waves a hand, dismissing the question—unbothered.
“In due time.”
Time. Time?
Like they have time?
But then…they’re in a void. Inside…maybe inside an alternate dimension?
So maybe, like…
“You have powers, and stuff?”
Stupid question. But Seven doesn’t call him out, just shrugs with a smug-ass little smirk.
“I can do many things.”
Steve pinches the bridge of his nose because…how do you get cursed, specifically, with endlessly growing numbers of snot-nosed little urchins? Like, where does that specific kind of curse even come from? What or who did he piss off for this to be his lot in life?
“Ask me what I like.”
Oh my god, the tone, like he’s the child.
“I don’t have time for, this, I—”
“This is your mind,” Seven cuts him off, too…condescending but like they’re trying to be helpful, fuck save him from minors with inflated senses of their own goddamn importance based on book-smarts alone.
“There is no time here,” the kid chuckles, shaking their head: “silly.”
Steve’s going to pretend to believe that, and swallow the frustration at the delivery—if there’s no time then Eddie’s not slipping with every heartbeat Steve’s wasting, here.
No time. He can shoulder the indignity of that being true.
Please be fucking true—
“Okay,” Steve takes a deep breath, another, opens his eyes.
“Okay, what do you like?”
The grin he’s met with is so wide it looks like it hurts.
“Games.”
Oh. Oh good god, but Steve really did think he had patience. Thought he had to have developed like, Olympic-level patience, if patience was an…Olympic, thing.
Wrong. He was so fucking wrong.
“What do you want?” Steve barks it just shy of a scream.
“Nothing,” the child…Steve thinks they’re wringing their hands but the longer he waits, he hears knuckles cracking, over and again before the next words come, softer, nearly menacing but also…weak, like a whine:
“And everything.”
Steve doesn’t think that answer means anything. Not very well-considered.
“Why am I here?”
He assumes it’s cruel amusement. He assumes he’ll either die stuck here, or be sent back too late, time was real—he’ll get set back to everyone else…
“You want nothing and everything, too,” Steve’s attention snaps back at that; “like me.”
What the fuck is that even supposed to mean—
“You will understand the rules.”
Steve feels his mouth gape open, because he…
What. The fuck.
“I don’t have anyone to play with,” and that comes out in a full-ass whine. “I am Seven,” it sounds very much like the kid just wants to stomp, and maybe only fails to because they carefully consider the move first.
“It is pointless to be lucky, if all the games require players,” they settle on huffing, petulant as hell; “and I am just one player.”
And…goddammit, the thread of loneliness in that. The lost edge along the entitlement. The want that’s selfish but not…selfish but complicated.
Steve nearly feels sorry for the kid.
Steve can almost see…the argument. Not that he agrees with it, but.
Maybe they’re not alike, like the kid said. But maybe Steve and this twisted, obviously deeply damaged child have…maybe their paths have crossways. Points where they’ve tread the same ground. Sort of. Ish.
Fuck. Fuck, if that’s even a little bit true then, like, what does that even mean for Steve as a person and—
“Your friend will live.”
And Steve as a person doesn’t actually matter beyond straightening the fuck up at that because: well.
The kid had asked what he wanted.
“He will survive, here,” this Seven character tells Steve like they’re commenting on the non-existent weather in this only-maybe-existent place. “I can assure you of that.”
“The fuck are you talking about, he’s—”
He was barely alive when Steve was whisked away to this no-time-nothing-box. No one else could find a fucking pulse, they’d tried to stop him but Steve…out of all of them Steve actually did know this shit, he might not know science and cinema and investigative journalism and smart person shit but he knows this—
“Not quite dead,” Seven stares at Steve, level.
Too level.
“Which, in spite of your little friends,” the kid leans in before glancing up and leaning in meaningfully, which is fucking weird and doesn’t fit this lonely fucking kid but shivers through Steve’s spine like this lonely fucking kid can see straight fucking through him:
“You know.”
And fuck. Fuck, yes. Steve had found a heartbeat and he wasn’t letting it go and he loved Robin and he loved Dustin and he even loves Nancy because she is family but Steve had found a heartbeat and he wasn’t letting it fucking go, he wasn’t losing anybody, he wasn’t fucking losing Eddie—
“You are not stupid.”
Steve…stills.
“You would not have worked so hard for a lost cause.”
That observation’s not…wrong.
But it also feels bigger than just an…educated hunch.
“You also know that if you move him now he will die on the way to help.”
Steve’s own heart lurches because…fuck.
Fuck, yes. Yes, Steve is goddamn terrified and between the blinks where he’d been pressed to snapping Eddie’s sternum versus standing in this empty gap of a space, he’d been trying really hard just to keep that fucking heart pumping, and think as little as possible about how long he feared it couldn’t keep at it without help, in the time it’d take to get Eddie topside.
“Where instead, here, he can be helped before it is too late,” Seven gestures around them as if there is literally anything but endless black surrounding them.
And an increasingly upsetting, tight-in-Steve’s-chest lack of Eddie, to try and fucking save—
“Here,” Steve gestures at the void as much as if it was all dead trees and red lightning as he cracks, shouts a little fucking manically, he’ll admit that, and he won’t fucking apologize for it either because:
“Here is what killed him—”
“Almost,” Seven lifts a pointed finger; “almost killed.”
And Steve’s already cracked, he’s fucking…he can’t do this—
“Then here is what almost killed him in the first place.”
Steve doesn’t pretend to know, like, audio-science. But he doesn’t know how his voice echoes when he screams in…less frustration than he expected.
More…something weirdly like heartbreak?
More of that than he thought.
“The bats were kind, once,” Seven muses, and honestly Steve doesn’t give much of a shit about the kid’s random babbling, and he’s gotten really good at toning out that age-level of….vocal registers when needed; “before,” and then the register shifts.
Steve’s muscles tighten, battle ready, because that voice goes fucking violent when it growls:
“Before him.”
Steve flicks his eyes to see this Seven character start to look fucking feral. He remembers a glimpse of that in El at Starcourt.
He’s…like the venom holds his attention, but imagining how much more Starcourt-like Eleven would be, now?
Steve’s not super fazed.
“You call him any of many names,” Seven spits, vibrating with what Steve is guessing to be a whole cocktail of emotions that were probably never taught by name in a fucking psychic government black-site, and definitely never taught for how to deal with.
“I called him friend. Family, but I am not sure that I am sure what that word means,” and in fairness, while it proves Steve’s suspicions, he hadn’t been super clear on it either, himself, most of his life.
“He was One, whatever else he was,” Seven’s voice hardens again where it had gone soft at the edges for memory, maybe even sentiment.
“The Here-Before calls him Defiler. I think that is a better name.”
Steve never thought about the Upside Down and all its…parts, being something that existed before it became a ghost-mirror of Hawkins, with monsters, but he knows immediately that’s what’s being referred to: the Here-Before.
With creatures. Beings with awareness enough to name their ruiner.
The bats were kind, once—
“If I know what it means,” Seven wavers a little, when Steve says nothing; “the right way.”
“You do.”
Because shit: that’s an apt descriptor if there ever fucking was one for that crepey ballsac.
“He is what hurt your friend. Not this place. Not its creatures. Not without him twisting them,” Seven’s voice dips like the kids’ always do: imploring. Trying to convince him to see. “You know what that is like, yes? To be twisted by something against your will, into something you are not?”
And then it’s Steve who’s feeling fucking seen again—Jesus, the normal geniuses are enough. The super powered apparently-at-least-partially mind-reading ones…he’s not that fucking strong, man.
“Why the hell am I supposed to believe you?” Steve’s good at redirection when he’s called for something he doesn’t want to face, so that’s where he leans.
Thank fuck this kid isn’t socially aware enough to call him on that, too.
“Because your friend is more, is he not?” Seven shapes it like a statement despite phrasing it in question. “He means something.”
Steve freezes, and his pulse thumps really fucking hard.
“He’s barely a friend,” he tries to control the immediate urge to splutter around the words; “I’ve only known him for—”
He cuts himself off when he registers the eyes on him: judgmental. Knowing, and judgmental.
The fucking nerve.
“What?” Steve asks, crossing his arms. Seven stares a little longer.
Steve refuses to look away; to so much as blink.
“I have many gifts,” the kid’s voice comes out steady, slow, precise; “and I like games.”
Steve wants to roll his eyes. He wants to throw something. He wants to scream, he knows this shit already and he doesn’t have fucking time to try and solve goddamn puzzles about how any of this applies to what matters, applies to saving Eddie—
“I will give you one.”
Steve blinks.
“Of what?”
“Both.”
Steve doesn’t know what the fuck to do with that.
“My gift of the knowledge that he is more, now and to come. He will be all to you,” this child, this fucking child looks at him so steady, so certain, as if they can see through to Steve’s pounding heart where it’s been bruised and swollen since that fucking boathouse for reasons Steve…understands.
Better than he wants to; than he has time to pick apart, in the middle of the end of the goddamn world.
And now, even less. In the middle of a deep dark void with a government lab weapon-child.
“And you to him,” and that, that proves Steve’s point—weapon-child, for how those words rip through Steve in a second, scorched fucking earth style: “if you wish it.”
If he—
“And if you follow the rules.”
Steve hadn’t forgotten there was a…a game to be involved with this batshit insanity unfolding around him, right before his eyes. But is it more insane than anything he’s known in connection to this place, thus far?
Ehhhh.
But he hadn’t forgotten, exactly. He just…
He’s been distracted. His pulse ramps up a little more for the reminder. The jolting yank back to the moment and its demands.
This child-weapon’s demands to play a game.
With what sounds like Eddie’s life on the line.
Jesus.
“My game is simple,” which, Steve’s not a fucking moron, not on this—he knows those are some ‘last words’ kinda bullshit:
“He heals here, and you speak nothing of the lie in his passing.”
Steve…Steve isn’t book smart, okay? Does not pretend to be. Never has.
But he did date Nancy Wheeler. And his platonic soulmate is a nerd.
Something about this reeks of Shakespearean tragedy, or like, the ones where the kings go super crazy and kill people or whatever. Or like the…Greeks? Romans? Egyptians?
Fuck if Steve knows. But this feels…mythical. Like that Tolk-elf dude would write and add dragons to. Like a riddle.
Or a trap.
“You can,” Seven bites their bottom lip, too young, too…human for a fucking sphinx.
Steve thinks those are what tell the riddles. He’s like…ninety-nine percent sure.
“You can speak of him, in abstracts, though it is a fine line you will walk to risk it,” Seven warns—Steve doesn’t know if more specifics or less is the more dangerous as this unfolds. The more likely to make this a tragedy, regardless of the type, when he fucks up.
When he fails.
But he cannot fucking fail.
“But you cannot mourn him for a loss that is not real, nor can you divulge your knowledge of the truth,” and the weight on that last word, truth—it’s intentional. Significant.
But like, even so, like, just…
What…
What the fuck?
“So everyone thinks he’s dead,” Steve sounds out the letters of each word like a child, because he’s not sure he could even contort this using Dustin-logic to make sense of a why. “And I have to agree with that, even though he isn’t,” and he eyes Seven until he gets a nod; “and I let everyone believe I’m an asshole when I can’t mourn with them, can’t even say his name?”
Because that…that seems like the gist of it. Which, again:
Fucking why? For what gain? To what end?
“Mmm,” Seven hums, and likewise, satisfied with it. Like they see it as so fucking clear-cut and obvious. But Steve doesn’t think it’s just his own deficient intellect at play, here. “Only abstracts, if you choose to risk it.”
That. That there, that’s one of those…those tricks. Those sleight of word-hands.
Plus, even Steve can see the first and fatal fucking flaw he’d be walking into.
“Either way,” Steve glares, lifts his chin almost in challenge though fuck if he knows for what: “Eleven’ll find out.”
It’s the first time he’s seemed to throw Seven, like, at all:
“Eleven?”
Steve doesn’t know her well, but he…really doesn’t like the laughing kind of sneer that’s laced through one of his kids’ names.
“She can see things. She knows things, I can keep my mouth shut all I want,” Steve wants it clear, because he either needs to know if the war’s already lost, or get insurance against the clear snare waiting for him. “I don’t have to speak it for her to know it, if she’s looking.”
“That puny little runt?” Seven damn near snorts, and Steve…once Steve works through his protective offense? He wonders…how long Seven’s been alone.
“She will not be a problem,” is the ultimate dismissal; “you overestimate her power. Because you do not have it, you are not so good at judging its reach.”
Which: not necessarily a horrible argument. But.
“If I’m not wrong, though?”
Seven sighs with a roll of the eyes.
“It would be an exception.” The sheer weight of annoyance that coats every syllable, over the idea of such a perceived waste of concern over a nothing-burger of an issue is…intense.
It gives Steve a strange surge of resolve, of maybe even something close to hope for the first time since he landed here.
“And what happens if I win?”
Seven brightens again; the game back on the table.
“You may retrieve him. Safe and sound. Healed and whole.”
It can’t be that simple. It can’t.
Plus: Steve can’t stay and also be an epic failure at mourning. So, like:
“And how will I—“
“You will know.”
Seven is decisive. No argument. Steve…doesn’t know if he could doubt if he tried.
But…Steve only just got the first inklings of hope, and only just, like, now. So of course his mouth opens before he even decides to let it shape the words:
“And if I lose?”
But he can’t lose.
“Then it will not be a lie any longer. The thing you cannot speak of.”
Even if he can’t prove there’s a possibility of this fucking super-teen is telling the truth, can deliver at all, can save anything—
Steve cannot lose.
“Can I mourn the loss that is real?”
Seven tips their head, closest they’ll get to a question.
“Even if he lives, and he comes back,” and the doubt’s sour on Steve’s tongue, goddamn:
“Am I allowed to miss him out loud, until the game is won?”
“Hmm,” Seven’s face twists up, displeases, and fuck yeah, Steve hoped he was catching out the loophole.
“Fine,” is the bitten out answer, clenched teeth and all. “Though not to anyone,” Seven damn near scolds him; “else the game is forfeit.”
So Steve gets to…miss Eddie in an empty room. Pray to a god he doesn’t believe in that this could be real at all, that this will work.
Not…the best outcome. But he’ll take what he can get. Which just leaves:
“How long?”
He doesn’t say out loud that he’ll hold the line as long as necessary. But he also doesn’t think he needs to.
“Long enough,” Seven says, not exactly unkindly but not…indulgently. “Healing is not instantaneous.”
Okay fine. Steve can concede that.
“And I can’t say anything,” Steve repeats, confirms; “to anyone.”
He doesn’t know how he’s going to face Dustin. And fuck: Robin.
“Mmm,” Seven confirms; “save empty rooms in lonely halls.”
“Fuck,” Steve exhales like a nervous tic, and then louder, running shaky hands through his hair because: “fuck.”
It’s real now. True or lie, the bargain’s real.
“Show him to me,” Steve demands, heart drumming in his throat; “prove he’s alive, still,” because what does Steve have more to lose, than the man he’d been terrified he was going to lose anyway?
Seven doesn’t hesitate, which surprises Steve a little, and waves a hand that if nothing else proves…power.
Powers.
Because there’s Eddie. On a ground that’s not visible, just the same black, but he’s just as bloodstained, just as still.
Steve doesn’t waste time to check the pulse points that failed him before, just presses his ear to that chest.
It’s easier to find. Like he’s…like here can make him whole again.
Steve’s heart is choking him, now.
“If there’s any kind of truth in this,” Steve pulls back only enough to look at Eddie’s closed eyes, to reach and frame his face with both hands.
“Come back, you fucking bastard,” he hisses, resting his forehead to Eddie’s brow.
And because there really is a whole fuck ton of a lot that Steve understands but cannot fucking sort through just now?
He kisses Eddie’s forehead and demands what he hasn’t earned, but—that’s part of the parsing part that needs to hold for later:
“Come back to me.”
“It is true,” Seven eventually interrupts after untold seconds—time’s irrelevant here, anyway, right; “both parts.”
And Steve wants to believe. He wants so fucking hard to believe.
“He will be safe. And he will survive,” and Steve makes himself channel Seven’s certainty with as much force as he can as he doesn’t just summarize, but demands; “and you’ll give him back, hale and healthy and whole, nothing wrong, nothing,” he swallows hard; “nothing twisted up from being here.”
He makes himself pull back far enough to meet Seven’s eyes. They’re…weirdly soft.
Almost kind.
“And you will come to mean all to each other, yes. It is why I picked you to play with,” they walk closer, and meets Steve eyes all the more like burning:
“Papa did not teach us good ways to lie.”
They sound too bitter about it for it to be a lie.
“Sure,” Steve still sneers a little, because—
“Henry was different,” Seven nearly growls. “Other.”
And Steve sees a flash of El, and…okay.
Okay.
He reaches out a hand. Seven stares at it, confused as fuck.
Part of Steve wants to laugh but…it would devolve into hysteria.
“What does it mean?” Seven finally asks, studying Steve’s hand like a foreign threat.
“It’s how you seal a bargain,” Steve explains patiently; they’re a kid. They’re just a kid. “Make a deal, and swear you’ll both deliver in full.”
He tries to be real clear about that last part.
“Oh,” Seven brightens, because this takes them back to the game; “yes.”
A hand grasps his own, deceptively strong.
“Leave him be,” Seven says simply, clear instructions; “and keep your end of the bargain.”
Steve nods. Swallows hard, but nods.
“Say nothing,” Seven reminds him solemnly. “Let no one even suspect.”
Steve nods again. His heart has to be loud enough to hear.
“Play the game,” Seven encourages him with something like a smile; “reap your rewards.”
Steve feels fucking faint as he shakes their clasped hands up and down: cements it.
“All hurt will be mended in the end,” Seven says before letting go—
And sending Steve back to straddling Eddie’s bloody body, hands set to press that heart, to pump that blood one more time like nothing’s changed.
Save for everything.
“Steve,” he hears his name from far away, like wherever he’d been whisked to in the void, the kid was putting him back in the here and upside-down-y now, but almost like in pieces.
That actually feels the most accurate; he feels fucking shattered.
But his hands don’t fucking stop pushing. Like it’s written into his bones not to stop, no matter what he saw, no matter what he said, no matter what might have been promised and still probably possibly could never be delivered—
“Steve, he’s,” and that’s Nancy, sounding more lost than he’s ever heard her, like she’s stumbled and hasn’t gained her footing back yet. She still doesn’t know how to talk to him—maybe she never really did, especially not after they tripped into this life.
She definitely doesn’t know how to interrupt the single minded focus of compress, compress, compress, breathe, fucking breathe—
“Steve.”
Oh, Nancy might not know.
But Robin would.
“Steve, you to have to stop,” and her voice is shaky, teary—she knows him better than to interrupt him entirely but she puts her hands on his shoulders gently as he lifts up, so he’ll almost have to meet her eyes for a split second before diving back into compressions.
She looks devastated, but whether it’s more for losing Eddie or for watching Steve, or a flat tie between them? He couldn’t fucking guess.
He doesn’t have time to guess. He’s—
“He’s gone.”
And that’s the only voice that can stop him, water-logged and still sobbing and angry underneath, so fucking angry.
Plus Dustin is the only one with the audacity to grab Steve’s wrists and stop him; and might be the only one Steve wouldn’t risk hurting to fight off.
So he stops. And he does not believe in a god, how could he after this, all of this, after knowing this exists—but he stops and lifts his eyes to Dustin’s, all fire and rage in them, and fuck if Steve doesn’t pray to something that the words spoken and the rules agreed to in that black blank space are real. That the game will hold.
“Steve, he’s gone.”
And Steve’s reminded out of nowhere in the moment where he hesitates:
You cannot mourn him for a loss that is not real.
Those are the rules. Those are the rules and if there’s a shot in hell that monster-child wasn’t lying?
Steve has to uphold his end of the bargain. He has to fucking…try.
“We have to move,” Nancy’s voice comes, more solid than before—something she does know how to speak to: order. Commands. And sure, the entirety of this world seems a little shaky just now and like it might be collapsing on itself, or having a full-body seizure, but.
There’s only one thing Steve absolutely has to do.
And none of them can ever know it.
“Can we,” Dustin starts, looks to Robin and Nancy whose plain ‘no’ is clear on their faces—they can’t carry Eddie’s body through the gate. Not quick enough. Not in time, if this place really is falling apart.
Save that Steve doesn’t think it really is. Plus he has to leave Eddie here, either way.
His whole fucking chest is in a vise for it when he grits through clenched teeth:
“Leave him be,” because he can’t find the words to start for himself; he has to take them from the kid in the dark who promised him everything and nothing; “most peace we can give him, now.”
Only chance they fucking have to save him; to keep him.
It’s good that the status quo is for Steve to carry up the rear of any escape—no one blinks when he bends back down over Eddie’s body and hisses half against his jawline, half into his ear:
“Don’t you dare make his real, dipshit,” he threatens, he begs: “you fight, and you come back.”
Of course Eddie doesn’t move, doesn’t answer.
But Steve braces a hand on the broken bones in his chest for just a few seconds, he’ll blame it on leverage—but he touches Eddie’s chest. And where he had to press his ear to hear it? He could swear he feels something playing a beat beneath his palm—a little pathetic, a little off-balance, but miraculous all the same.
Steve’s breath catches, and the last tears he thinks he can pass off as allowed within the rules of not-mourning escape his lashes before he turns to run toward the closing gate.
Before he chokes back toward Eddie’s body one last time—for now:
“You come back.”
