Chapter Text
Eddie succumbs to the bats.
Steve isn’t caught by Jonathan in time.
Neither body is recovered.
Nowadays, every breath feels painful for Dustin.
He's a smart guy; he understands that this pain isn’t a response to signals being sent to his brain via pain receptors, but rather the metaphorical heart every musician sings about at least once.
The ache. Like something torn from his body and taken away, leaving its impressions in him, forever mourned.
Eddie was the first.
Mere inches away from freedom, gripping tightly as if he could hold him together and keep his spilling guts at bay. In his final moments, he managed to smile at him. A look of fulfillment. Triumph. Unregretful but scared.
The scent of blood was overstimulating, but he never dared to think of leaving his side even as Eddie’s shaking slowed to a halt and his eyes loosely fixed on the hellish sky above. Unseeing.
Dull.
He only let go when he was forcibly pried off, and even then, he regrets not holding on tighter. He left him down there alone, to be forgotten and picked at by those ugly things.
It had taken the hardest coaxing from his mother to come down to eat them 3rd night after. He had only managed to eat four spoonfuls of chicken noodle soup before he pushed away his bowl.
The days since the ‘earthquake’ passed, and the shift in him was striking even to his mother. But he didn't care; he couldn't give Eddie the recognition he deserved in such a narrow-minded town as Hawkins. The least he could do is honor his memory.
His friends bugged him about it once or twice, but he always brushed them off. They didn’t understand. It’s as if they had completely forgotten their former DM. About the figure painting techniques and the routes to take to avoid being caught skipping classes, (or potentially needing to break into the school for earth-saving reasons).
It stung, a fierce, raw betrayal between friends that upended their ‘unshakable’ relationship.
But none of his relationships became more strained than with Steve.
The second.
When Eddie died, Dustin thought this was the lowest he could ever go—that this was his breaking point.
But he was wrong.
He was so wrong.
And what was worse was how cruel he was to Steve, not knowing how little time they had left together.
But at that time, during that brief time of anger and tears. He had told himself that he would hate Steve forever for dragging him away from Eddie's body.
It was something that Dustin felt as though he could never forgive Steve for, no matter how stupid he knew it seemed.
But he was done being logical and mature for his age. He wanted to be a dumb kid. He wanted to be immature and illogical. Steve would've scoffed and said he already was. And he would've said to shove it—
THUD
And then the snarky words in his mouth felt heavy and stung just as his eyes began to water and the world blurred.
Dustin felt the will to stop the fantastic forces of evil come to a striking halt, and all that was left was what little strength he had to cry. Another piece of himself lost to this hellscape.
He almost couldn't comprehend the scene, as if it wasn't real. It simply couldn't be. In books and movies, when a character is threatened to fall, someone always saves them. Always.
But Steve never moved again after his last dying twitches, and unlike Eddie, he never got to say words for anyone to hear, who at least had Dustin in his final moments.
"Who would care about what some guy who peaked in high school has to say?— It's not like you're going to come up with any good ideas soon..."
But Steve watched the ones he loved move farther and farther from view until he hit the ground. Feeling the fear of the fall and the dread of the inevitable, having only ten seconds of thought before it was all over.
Dustin couldn't tell whether he or Robin—or anyone else — screamed during or after the fall. He couldn't feel anything but pain.
But the cruel don't stop for the mourners, and they never will.
Everyone around pushed forward, not because they didn't care, no matter how Dustin's mind framed it to seem so, but because the world needed them to. And so they pushed.
But Dustin didn't want to. In his mind, Venca had already won.
Through the Abyss, Steve's face replays in his head so many times that he believes his mind has been compromised by Vecna. He begged Will or El to 'fix' him, but looks of pity were all he was given in return.
"So much for friends."
Jane in particular flinched at that, but his face didn't let up from its sneer.
He kept moving, kept pushing forward towards his goal of killing Vecna, as Steve would've been overly driven to do had their fates been swapped as Nancy had so kindly put to prevent everyone from collapsing in on themselves.
God, how he wished that had been the case. For every heavy footstep made him flinch, the sound being too close for comfort—For his reprieve, more like it.
He would do anything for that to be the case and get the horrible image from his head. Or rather, what red splatter he could see from above since he wasn't allowed to go down for him. Be it ladder or otherwise.
And then the beast had awakened.
The Mind Flayer.
In his terror, but fierce determination to take it down, there had been a brief moment where he had looked to Steve for reassurance, only to stare out into an endless wasteland and nearly shishkabobbed.
In the end, it was Dustin and Jonathan who stabbed at the monster from below, Dustin roaring with revenge in his bleary eyes, and Jonathan's grip on the spear being so shaky that it slipped from his grasp when the deed was done, and he never bothered to pick it up again.
And neither did Dustin.
The spear held a curse rather than remembrance.
Dustin could never stand to look at it again.
Inside the huge carcass, the children were free, and Vecna was impaled.
Dustin had waited for Joyce to bring the axe to feel the sudden rush of satisfaction, justice, and a weight lifted off his shoulders, like the heroes often did at the end of a grand campaign.
But even as Henry's decrepit head plopped on the floor with a sickening THUD — The feeling still hadn't reached him.
As they all left the upside down, the army, having followed them into the Upside Down, was swept away by the collapsing wormhole, realizing too late what was happening. His mind was silent.
And when he looked at Hopper, who had been the one to go off and retrieve the body of Steve while they went to kill Vecna, he had this look in his eyes that broke him.
By the time he had sputtered to explain himself, Dustin was clutching onto himself for dear life in fear of falling apart.
"I'm sorry, kid. I— I went down there as fast as I could, and I looked around every few minutes to make sure no demogorgons were gonna jump out, but..."
Dustin didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to hear anything anymore.
"But the second I reached the ground, he was gone."
Dustin collapsed to the floor, almost instantly feeling hands around him as his knees hit the ground, but feeling nothing at the same time.
"It just doesn't make any sense," Hopper continued, but Joyced stopped him, her voice hoarse.
"Jim, please." She stifled out, but Hopper wouldn't listen.
"I know, I know, I just— There has to be— There was no one else there!"
Other voices had joined in, but Dustin had tuned everything out by then. holding his eyes closed, holding himself tight, curling his head further into his body.
He holds himself tighter and tighter and stifles his harsh sobs with all his might, his hat finally pushing itself off his head as his face meets the ground.
Where was the peace throughout the land that the fairytales promised?
Where was the happy ending?
Where was Steve?
He only found the fading black of sleep.
He could practically feel the godforsakenly smooth polyester of one of his polos the rare times they hugged, and taste the cologne of whatever the hell Handsome Hunk was supposed to smell like in the back of his throat with how much Steve would put on because the ladies ‘dig it.’
He could taste the popcorn and candy sticking to the corners of his mouth as Eddie laughed during a 'field trip' Hellfire took to the movie theatre to watch The Labyrinth. He could hear the cheers of relief and the warmth on his back as he rolled a nat 20, winning a pat of approval.
But then he wakes, and the ache rolls in again.
It's the Summer of 1988,
Two years since he's lost Eddie,
Ten months since he's lost Steve.
It's always late at night when a creaking sound out from his window wakes him.