The Person Coming To Save You Is Your Healed Self.

The person coming to save you is your healed self.

I heard Hold On, We're Going Home on the radio on my drive home yesterday and this is what my brain supplied me with so 🤷‍♀️

"Edddd-he-he-he-heeeeee!"

The sound of Dustin's wail splits through the rumbling of The Upside Down as they were racing back to the gate.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no! Fucking idiots! What happened to not being heroes! Steve thinks as he picks up his pace, sprinting faster than he ever has, towards where he thinks he heard the sound come from.

He comes to a skidding halt next to the pair. Dustin, clinging to a lifeless Eddie, his tear-streaked face turned up to the sky, a guttural scream ripping from his little brother's lungs as he howls in agony. It threatens to break through his concentration, but Steve's training is stronger.

"What happened?" Steve asks, trying to peel Dustin off of Eddie so he can get a better look at his wounds. It's obvious it was the bats; they're either dead or writhing around them. But it's like Dustin can't hear him; he's just weeping and rocking Eddie back and forth.

"Dustin!" Steve snaps, finally gaining the boy's attention, his eyes snap open and the grief and heartbreak in their innocent depths are almost too much. Steve knows it would've broken him this time last year, it still could if he doesn't keep his head on straight, "Let go. Let me help!" Steve insists, trying again to get Dustin to let go.

"Steve," Nancy mumbles, sympathy lacing her tone as she reaches out for him and Dustin over their shoulders, but he just holds his hand up to silence her.

"No! He's not going!" Steve asserts, "Dustin, off!" he demands, wrenching the boy away and all but throwing him into Robin's waiting arms. 

She's the only one who knew about the EMT course, she helped him read through some of his textbooks when he'd had to take the day off because he'd had the flu, she knows he's the only one that has a chance to fix this mess. 

Steve reaches for Eddie's throat, but there's a gaping hole on one side, it's bleeding a lot but not squirting, so he's hoping that it's just superficial. Blood's pooling around Eddie but not enough to have hit an artery, he's bleeding out, but it's slow, he can fix this. He presses his fingers into the other side of Eddie's neck. There, a pulse. Barely, but definitely there, once, twice then nothing.

He wastes no time in starting chest compressions, "Robin! Count," he pleads, he knows it'll be easier if he doesn't expend all his energy trying to do both at once.

"One and two and three, one and two and three, one and two and three," she copies his movements, only stopping counting when he searches again for a beat before continuing when he does.

He half hears Nancy trying to get what happened out of Dustin, how it happened, how long ago, but the kid only knows half of the story. He explains how Eddie cut the rope and ran off, how he made it back through the gate by himself, how the bats dropped out of the sky as he wobbled out of the trailer and how he found Eddie.

"He was- he was talking," Dustin gets out between sobs, still shaking in Robin's grasp, the two of them watching Steve work intently.

"When?" Steve asks, still pumping Eddie's chest, half listening to Robin keeping count. 

Dustin doesn't say anything for a second, then he splutters, "I- I don't…"

Except Steve doesn't have time for I don't know's, he needs to know, and he needs to know now, "Think, man!" Steve beseeches impatiently.

"Steve!" both girls snap, confusion written all over Nancy's face, fury on Robin's, mad at him for snapping at Dustin. She wraps her arms tighter, more protectively around the boy, pressing her chin into the top of his head, but she's still counting for him. Dustin's her favourite out of the boys and honestly, he can't blame her, he'd probably say the same if he had to choose.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry Dusty, but c'mon, I need to know," he implores.

Dustin nods, breathes deeply and sets his shoulders, scrunching his brows in concentration, "I don't know, he was bleeding, but he was talking, and then he said… but then he was gone, and then you arrived," he recounts, thinking hard he nods to himself, "Seconds, fifteen, twenty? Maybe more, but definitely less than a minute," he decides.

Steve nods back at Dustin, "That's good. That's so good, man. I'm so proud of you," he tells him as sincerely as he can, but he's starting to get tired. He knows he can't do this much longer, his body is screaming at him from everywhere, but he won't stop. He can't. Not just for Dustin's sake but for his own. 

Because honestly, he hasn't been able to stop thinking about Eddie since the boathouse, since he'd pressed broken glass against his neck and left a bruise at the bottom of his back that hasn't gone away, that has him thinking about that moment every time it twinges, and he's already decided that there's no way this is going to be it, he won't let it end this way, not if he can help it.

Nancy's found some fabric from godknowswhere and is doing her best to wrap up the worst of Eddie's wounds. It's only when she runs out of material that she stops working and feels at Eddie's neck, "Pulse!" she shouts. Steve knocks her hand out of the way to check himself and sure enough, weak but there, proof that Eddie's heart is beating by itself.

"Move! Gate! Now!" Steve demands, using every bit of strength he's got left to lift Eddie from the ground. The girls grab either side of Dustin and high tail it to the trailer, Steve moving as fast as his legs will carry him after them. "C'mon, Eddie, just hold on, we're going home," he tells him, holding him more securely as he waddles up the steps.

Dustin's holding the door open for Steve as the girls drag the dining table under the gate, Robin climbing up onto the wooden surface and boosting Nancy through to the other side. Dustin pulls the door closed behind Steve and Eddie, then grabs a dining chair, dragging it next to the table and using it as a step to wobble up on the table surface. Nancy's already clambered off the waiting chair that Dustin had used to launch himself through the gate and is dragging the table into its place, climbing back up to catch Dustin as Robin carefully boosts the boy through to the other side. 

Robin jumps down and helps Steve climb onto the chair and then the tabletop with Eddie in his arms then she climbs back up, and hops a few times. It worries Steve given the way everything here is slowly decaying that the table will crumble beneath their feet, but it doesn't. She leaps at the gate, clinging to its sides and lifting herself until she's falling, landing ungracefully into Nancy's waiting arms, Dustin doing what he can to help them keep their balance. 

Steve nods to himself as he watches them get situated, ready to catch Eddie. All he has to do is get them both through the gate and then they're on the homestretch. All his training tells him Eddie needs a hospital like yesterday but looking at the unconscious boy in his arms, he stalls, something deep in him just can't let Eddie go. Not again.

"Steve," Robin calls, his attention immediately snapping to her, and he just knows from the look on her face. She knows, she sees him, it'll be okay, he just has to trust her and he does. He sucks in a breath and lifts Eddie as high as he can and when he feels the pull from the other side he pushes him towards it, Eddie floating between worlds landing heavily and awkwardly in Robin and Nancy's arms. Steve sucks in a breath when they catch him and between the three of them manage to get back on the ground, laying Eddie down gently on the mattress on the floor. 

Steve doesn't hang around to watch as they do their best to get Eddie comfortable, as soon as they're off the table, Steve grabs the dining chair, dragging it onto the tabletop, stepping up and through the gate, landing heavily on the surface before rolling off onto the ground.

Robin and Dustin have already disappeared and Nancy's screaming into the phone, "I know you can hear us, you bastards! Man down! Get a doctor to Memorial now!"

Steve crawls over to Eddie, kneeling over his patient, pressing his fingers back into his neck. He's still got a pulse, and he isn't bleeding too intensely from anywhere he can see, but Steve knows he won't be able to lift him again, his arms just won't take it. It doesn't stop him brushing gentle fingers over his cheek, wiping away some of the grime, "That's it, Eds, we're home now, man. You just rest, we'll get you the help you need," he mutters to him. 

When he sits back on his heels, he looks up to see Nancy's already waiting with Eddie's legs in her arms. He smiles gratefully at her, but he's distracted from actually thanking her when a car honks outside. They glance at each other and lift, carrying Eddie out and into the waiting car.

Of course you taught Dustin how to hot-wire a car! Little shits, the pair of you! Steve thinks affectionately, as he and Nancy lay Eddie gently over their knees in the backseat. Robin's behind the wheel, thank god! She sticks her foot flat on the gas pedal as soon as the backdoors are closed, panicking and shouting "shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!" as Dustin screams for her to "slow down!" as they peel out of the trailer park.

Steve's got one hand on Eddie's neck, holding a pile of napkins from the car's console to the open wound with his thumb, feeling the beat of this pulse through his fingertips, gently stroking Eddie's hair from his face with the other. "You've got some explaining to do when you get better, Eddie Munson. Don't think being a hero means I'm gonna forget about ignoring orders," Steve mumbles. 

Nancy hears him, glances sadly over but doesn't say anything, just turns her face away and focuses on the carnage outside, seeing the way the gate ripped Hawkins apart. 

"Just hold on, Eds, you're doing so good. Just stay with us, man. We've got you. It's still gonna be your year, just you watch! I swear we're gonna get you that diploma if it's the last thing I do. We'll have you back on your feet in no time, so I won't hear any excuses. I bet Dustin's told you I'm a pushover, and I am for that kid but don't think you're not getting out of it that easy. You might be cute, but you're not my kid brother," Steve rambles, because he can't do anything else to help, but he remembers reading in his textbooks that the unconscious can still hear, that talking to them can help bring them back to reality, and he's been knocked out enough times by now to know that it's true. 

"And you're on babysitting duty too. Someone's gotta help me wrangle these damn kids, 'cause I love Robin, but she's useless at it! You and me we're gonna get this one's attitude in check before the big bad world comes to bite him in the arse," Steve tells Eddie knowing he'll know who he's talking about, knowing Dustin will too. He hopes a bit of levity will help, but instead of the protest he half expects, a quiet sob is the only sound that comes out of the front seat. 

Robin reaches over and puts her hand over Dustin's where it had been white-knuckle clenching his seat, giving him the comfort Steve can't right now, and it's almost like they've switched roles.

She's even gotten used to driving, she seems almost as comfortable as he is when he's behind the wheel, and she's as good as he is too, if not better. Not that that surprises Steve. She's always been bigger, brighter and smarter than him, and he loves that so much about her.

"Then when you're all better, and you've finally graduated, you can go off and be a big rock star and shout to the nation instead of the school cafeteria," Steve mumbles, gently removing the tangles and dried blood from his hair. It makes him impossibly sad, but he says it because he knows that's what Eddie wants, what he'd wanted since that damn talent show.

It's not even close to what Steve wants, he wants Eddie to stay with him, to choose to rant to him about the state of the nation's politics and how anything is made better if you add cheese, but it's not an offer he's sure he could ever make and definitely not something he wants to admit aloud especially when Eddie's unconscious.

They're around the corner from the hospital when Eddie makes a guttural rumbling sound that Steve knows isn't good. Shit! Everyone in the car seems to pick up on the tension that automatically fills his body as he presses his fingers harder into Eddie's neck, his pulse is there, but it's weakening. Robin presses down on the gas, the car screeching to a halt outside the ER entrance, Dustin leaping from the vehicle before it's even stopped moving, screaming for help. 

Robin pulls open the car door, grabbing Eddie under his shoulders, helping him and Nancy manoeuvre Eddie carefully out of the backseat, "We're here now, Eds, they're gonna fix you, okay? Just hold on a bit longer, baby, and we'll soon have you home," he tells him as he holds the bloodstained paper to his neck, barely noticing when two nurses arrive with a gurney.

The girls practically have to hold him up as soon as Eddie is safely laid on the bed.

The four of them follow him into the hospital as far as they're allowed anyway, a nurse pressing a firm hand into his chest. Steve wants to argue, he wants to go with Eddie, he wants to make sure they look after him properly, but as he looks at the nurse he realises immediately why he recognises her, it's Stinson. She doesn't say anything, just nods at him, but he understands that she's saying, I've got it from here, so he takes a step back, watching helplessly as the door swings shut behind her.

Dustin and the girls crowd into his chest, relief and grief and love, and all he can do is hold them tight and hope and pray he's right.

Steve thinks he’s doing a good job at hiding it, but then Eddie catches his eye right as he’s limping out of the RV and… huh, maybe not.

Eddie, with panicked urgency—which, in Steve’s opinion, is admittedly sweet but unnecessary—asks if the bites are bothering him again.

“No, dude, it’s nothing,” Steve says. “It’s literally nothing.”

Eddie doesn’t look at all reassured.

Goddamn it, Steve thinks. Better rip off the band aid and hope it’s not too mortifying.

“It’s not the bites. It’s… um. My feet.”

Eddie glances down but there’s nothing to see; as soon he’d entered The War Zone, Steve had crammed his feet into the first pair of combat boots he could find.

“Oh,” Eddie says, the penny dropping. “Oh, shit. Yeah, hang on, just…”

He looks around, humming in thought, then grabs a bottle of water with decisiveness, and yeah, Steve thinks, this is gonna be incredibly mortifying.

But he can’t find a way to wriggle out of it without making the whole thing a way bigger deal than it needs to be—so he ends up sat in the grass, wincing as he pries off his boots.

It is, in a word, gross.

“Don’t know why they’re bugging me so damn much,” Steve says just to fill the silence. He huffs self-effacingly, goes to wiggle his toes before deciding ow, better not and ew, better not. “It’s, like, hardly anything compared to…”

He gestures to the bandage wrapped around him.

“Well, you weren’t walking on your stomach,” Eddie points out.

He pours out water onto some tissues he’s rustled up and gets to work.

Steve keeps waiting for the embarrassment to well and truly set in.

But… it doesn’t.

Eddie doesn’t once make a crack about how awful his feet look.

Instead he launches into a story of how, against his uncle’s sage advice, he’d gone to school in a new pair of boots (his birthday present) without breaking them in first.

It was freshman year, so Eddie’s whole look hadn’t been solidified yet. But he was determined to make it work—stomping around the school (“Were any lunch tables harmed?” Steve asks, and Eddie warmly tells him to shut up), steadfastly ignoring the growing discomfort.

At the end of the day, he’d taken his boots off and surveyed the damage with a melodramatic cry; “Kid, I really don’t know what to tell ya,” Wayne had huffed.

Eddie hams up his whiny, teenaged disgust so that he becomes the butt of the joke, and Steve suddenly feels like he’s watching a magician onstage—except he knows where to look, isn’t fooled by the sleight of hand: Eddie’s dramatics all serve as a distraction from the caked on dirt and blood he steadily cleans off Steve’s skin.

It’s quiet, unassuming. A hidden kindness.

Eddie doesn’t need to be doing this; Steve could quite easily take the bottled water and do it all himself—would probably get it over and done with in a matter of minutes, concealed around the other side of the RV, quick and perfunctory.

But you’re letting him, Steve thinks. Why are you letting him?

Eddie’s hands are cold, a pleasant contrast to the burning sensation all across his feet—honestly, he’d been hoping that so long as he just kept walking, he’d gradually become numb to it.

There’s a loud rip of plastic as a pack of baby wipes are opened. Eddie’s touch is light which soothes some of the sting, at least; he trails off into silence as he works, hissing sympathetically at whatever’s revealed.

“You’ve got a couple cracks,” he says, eyebrows drawn.

Steve gives an over exaggerated sigh. “Give it to me straight, doc. Am I gonna have to chop ‘em off?”

Eddie chuckles, but his concern doesn’t fade away.

“Just here,” he says, pointing, and the tip of his finger brushes against Steve’s heel—Steve tries not to, but he twitches reflexively, and Eddie flashes him an impish grin. “Ticklish?”

“Fuck off,” Steve says, smiling.

He kicks out, stops just short of actually hitting Eddie in the face.

“Your secret’s safe with me, Harrington,” Eddie says through laughter, pushing Steve’s foot away—gently. “I’ll take it to the grave.”

It’s a joke; Steve knows it’s a joke. But—

“You don’t need to do that, man. Robin already knows.”

Eddie stands up and stretches, gives Steve’s ankle a little pat.

“Think you’re all set—woah, wait,” he says as Steve reaches for the combat boots, “what the hell are you doing?”

“Uh, what’s it look like?”

“Harrington. You cannot put those on without socks again, you’re gonna summon my uncle; he’s got, like, a sixth sense about that kinda stuff.”

Eddie’s smile drops a little at that, a flash of melancholy breaking through.

God, you must really miss him, Steve thinks.

“I’m just making do. I don’t have any socks.”

“Yeah, you do.” Eddie’s smile returns in full force—puzzled, perhaps just a little fond. “You got me some, remember?”

Eddie retrieves a pair from the RV and, that’s right, Steve had forgotten: he’d bought a whole pack during their first grocery trip, after Eddie had made an offhand comment about feeling cold in the boathouse.

Poor guy, Steve had thought as they walked through The Upside Down. This is cold on a whole new level.

The socks are thick and warm. Steve pulls on the boots, relishing the fact that his toes no longer scream in protest as he does so.

He tightens the laces; Eddie’s sat down opposite him again.

“There. Ready for battle,” Steve says.

Eddie’s eyes flicker over the combat boots, then Steve’s whole get-up—and there’s nothing teasing in his gaze now, as if he’s seeing everything in another light. Like the gravity of it all has just hit him.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Battle.”

“Hey, Eddie. Don’t worry.”

Eddie huffs with a wan smile. “Wow. And just like that, I won’t.”

Steve nudges him with his foot. Gentle. “M’not gonna ruin your handiwork.”

Eddie doesn’t reply.

Steve stands, tries a short walk in place. It’ll work. It has to.

“I’d just do it again,” Eddie says suddenly. “If… I—I wouldn’t mind.”

Steve pauses. Offers Eddie a hand and pulls him up.

“I wouldn’t mind either,” Steve says softly.

And then he lets go of Eddie’s hand.

Standing tall, he starts to round everyone up for the drive back—and wishes them all a future of simple fixes: of superficial cracks, easy to patch up.

crazy theory time!

In this scene Mrs. Driscoll was already possessed by Vecna and she put toxic stuff in that glass of Lemonade, but Nancy didn't drink that! She puts it down, and we hear the sound of her putting down the glass.

and maybe one little hint about this was the fact that previously she said that she liked the quiet, but then she told Nancy that she enjoyed the company of people in the other scene!

In the first scene she was herself

so what if it was Henry saying to Nancy

'' You're quite a regular little detective, aren't ya?''

because she was messing with his plan and he was pissed about that, and that's also why he sends the monster to kill her first because she's the first to disturb his plan in season 3

everybody give it up for will byers!

a talented, imaginative artist who combines his love of creating with his love for DnD and fantasy.

a romantic who loves his best friend so deeply that he spends hours making a painting for him that will show him just how seen he is, even while going months without talking and feeling ignored.

a selfless hero who will confess his own love under someone else’s name because he thinks it will save the world and make the boy he truly loves happy.

a boy with such empathy and love for all living things that he will stop to pet his dog while being chased by a monster and will refuse to kill any living thing even in self defense.

someone who is so true to himself that he absolutely refuses to even pretend to abandon his interests and desires when society- or the boy he loves- deems them childish.

a gay boy in the 80s who never pretends to be someone he’s not, no matter the severe life threatening pressure, and rejects advances from girls he knows he will never be interested in rather than trying to change himself or lie

an antiauthoritarian who listens to the clash and the cure and daydreams about committing fraud in vegas to never have to work, because he doesn’t agree with capitalist limitations on what he should want from life.

a boy who has been to literal hell and back and has been kicked around at every turn by his town, society as a whole, supernatural forces and a villain specifically targeting him, and even at times by the boy he loves- and has never ever let it made him violent or cruel.

the boy of all times, will byers!

and on some random thursday afternoon i realised that life isn't so bad after all. there are so many beautiful things i haven't experienced yet, so many places i've never visited, so many people i haven't met. i realised life is too short to hate myself.