Chapter Text
~ S - T ~ R - A ~ N - G ~ E - R ~ | ~ T - H ~ I - N ~ G - S ~
"Total Eclipse of the Heart" - Bonnie Tyler, 1983
Dying wasn’t even the worst thing to happen to Stephanie – call me Stevie – Harrington in the past two weeks.
In all honesty, it had all started long before Vecna had first set his sights upon Crissy that fateful day, but her death was the catalyst that had finally catapulted them into this particular hellscape masquerading as their fucked up version of normal with startling clarity.
How Stevie, of all the party, had ended up the last one standing, alongside El, of course, Stevie truly couldn’t comprehend. Because, if she was being honest with herself, there was nothing special about her, as far as she was aware that is. Sure, she was uncommonly beautiful and had been told so her whole damn life, with great hair and an easy smile; but when it came down to it, what were those fleeting attributes worth against a supernatural evil hellbent on taking over the world?
Not much, that was what, not much at all.
Stevie wasn’t smart like Nancy, hell, she wasn’t even as smart as any of her kids either, and she wasn’t even ashamed to admit that truth, at least not anymore that is. Stevie often struck people as simple, but where people went wrong was thinking that meant she was stupid, and she wasn't, she just didn't take the long way to get to the same place, was all. And sure, while she didn't understand even half of what her kids' rambled on about, that didn't mean that they didn't make her feel proud whenever one of her too-smart-for-their-own-good kids came up with an insanely clever idea that was sure to save the world.
Stevie had just learnt to follow right along with whatever craziness those rug rats brought her way, confident in their smarts, while she struggled along, down her self-appointed path of keeping all those little shits alive - that was her job, that was where she had excelled at, so she had never had to be the one leading. But it was safe to say that she failed this time in protecting the kids, fatally so, and if Stevie had thought before now that she already had more than enough nightmare fuel to see her through for the rest of her life . . . she would have been very wrong because nothing had the power to break her so cleanly wide open than the sight before her right now.
Robin was the closest to Stevie, laying there so still and broken, like a doll all bent out of shape, with her hollowed-out eyes seemingly looking right down to Stevie’s shattered soul. The sounds of Vecna breaking her friend’s bones were still ringing in her ears, as she lay there on the cold hard ground of his upside-down lair, holding the limp hand of her best friend, sobbing harder than Stevie ever had before.
And if Stevie could have found it within herself to dare look up, she’d see the rest of her friends' equally broken bodies scattered around her, just as still and lifeless as Robin…but Stevie couldn’t look…she just couldn’t. Turning her head as best as she could to avoid doing just that, Stevie searched her tearful eyes out for El’s, the only other one left now, with the heartbreaking thought in mind that at the very least . . . she wouldn’t be dying alone.
“Just look at me, El,” Stevie sobbed out thickly, as her eyes carefully found the equally sobbing and heartbroken girl, who lay curled around Hopper’s desecrated body. She was fatally bleeding out, Stevie could tell, if only by the sheer amount of blood rapidly pooling around the younger girl. “Just look at me.”
The truth of it was, Stevie wasn’t looking much better herself: she had a few cracked, if not completely broken ribs on her left side, barely able to catch her breath because of it; not to mention the three spread out stab wounds on her back and stomach she had received from several of Vecna’s freaky vine-like tentacles.
But it was the most minor of all her wounds - at least to the naked eye, the one hastily stitched up on her neck from her first physical encounter with Vecna, that left it feeling swollen and bruised - which was the one that was truly life-altering, even if Stevie herself didn't yet understand why. She had gotten it when his vines had first choked her, Robin, and Nancy, the same night Eddie died. The vine that had tried to crush her throat had been barbed with shallow but painfully sharp jagged spikes, slicing her neck all around in various points, not deep at all, but painful and revealing all the same.
But it wasn't until much later, the next day even, as they tended to their injuries in the brief respite that Vecna had unknowingly allowed them as he no doubt tended to his own wounds, that Stevie found something concerning in that shallow wound. She had plucked broken pieces of plastic and impossibly small wiring from her torn open flesh - but in perfect 'Stevie' fashion, she had shrugged the bizarreness of it off in favour of fighting for her and her friends' lives, not telling another soul of her findings. But El had known somehow, she had been looking at Stevie differently ever since that moment, and little did either of them know it was actually because, without that chip in her neck, El could finally truly see Stevie for what she was always meant to be...
“Save them…Save them,” El begged of Stevie, as she finally looked up at Stevie from over the still chest of her father, as she slumped weakly over his body, preparing to take her last breaths, “Only you can . . . now.”
Her words made no sense, how could Stevie save anyone when she couldn’t even save herself?
“El . . .” She sobbed out brokenly as she watched the other girl’s life fade out of her wet eyes, right before Stevie’s very own devastated ones. “No! No! No…El!!”
So focused as she was on the death of the last of her friends, Stevie didn’t even notice the strange electrical current rushing unseen from El, unseen until it hit Stevie that is, sparking along her shaking body in a violent red mist of lightning. The sheer force of it hitting her was so forceful even that her very next breath was stolen from her lungs from the shock of it, as her body seized, frozen as a wildfire rushed up her every nerve ending.
All the while, as Stevie struggled to find breath, she was unknowingly thrust up into the air by an unseen force from within herself. Back bowed and arms spread out, with her long hair whipping violently around her, as blinding red light danced across her pale skin in a storm so intense that even Vecna himself had to shield his eyes from it.
It was all for nothing though, for there was nothing either of them could do now, as the mysterious power now alight within Stevie exploded out of her with a force so atomic that the upside-down was seemingly obliterated in mere moments, sweeping out of her like a great wave of red shadowy fire, all of which felt like a lifetime to Stevie as she screamed out against the sheer all-consuming agony of the experience.
When – finally – the light left her, leaving her battered body to fall like a graceless stone back down to the ground below her, Stevie was barely conscious. Her dazed eyes took in the confusingly perfectly ordinary scenery around her form with shuttered breaths, trying to hang onto her now fleeting consciousness just long enough to understand what the hell had just happened to her.
There was no natural life in the upside-down, none save the monsters that inhabited it, so the fact that she was now staring at the blurry green blob before her very nose that she was almost certain was a patch of weeds was confusing. To say the least.
Am I dead? Stevie immediately wondered to herself.
A thought that was almost just as quickly dismissed as she vainly tried to struggle out from the tight hold that pain had on her in search of clarity; there was no pain in death . . . right? When you were dead, you were dead . . . right? Pain was your brain's way of letting your body know it was still alive and kicking, coach had always said so when she made the team practice cheer of painstaking cheer, and if that was to be believed then Stevie was somehow still alive. Though, by the sheer level of hurt that she was currently experiencing...Stevie didn’t imagine that that miracle would be gifted to her for too much longer.
Choking on the blood pooling in her mouth, Stevie tried to roll onto her side to better understand what was happening around her but immediately understood that that wasn’t going to happen, not with how hurt she was on her side, her ribs she would wadge a guess.
She was dying…she just knew it, could feel it, as darkness chased at the edges of her vision, but at least she was dying here…in a world untouched by Vecna. Or at least, it seemed so, given the light of a half moon currently shining down upon her from above, and the cool breeze causing her hair to whip lightly at her face and tangle in the unforgiving gravel she lay upon. It must have rained the night before, her tired mind pondered, as she felt the damp ground beneath her, too deep in shock to realise that it was her blood that was making the ground wet, to begin with.
It didn’t matter though, not here and now, not as she lay dying with a beautiful view of the stars in her last moments…it had been so long since she had seen such a sight and had the time to take it all in, not since before Vecna had brought his hellscape right-side-up at the very least.
Someone was shouting distantly, Stevie registered belatedly, as she blinked tear-clotted eyelashes up at the giant blurry flower-shaped figure now blocking her beautiful view. The flower came into focus before the voices could be unmuddled over the ringing in her ears: first, it was just a blur of wet black, about the size of a person's head, made up of five distinct petals, rapidly giving way to raser-sharp-looking points bordering the edges of the petals, right as her mind began to understand what was happening her hearing snapped jarringly into focus.
“Stevie! Stevie, run, you need to run, run, RUN!!” The familiar voice of her kids - her dead kids - ordered of her frantically, sounding so damn afraid, for her, she realised with a panicked breath as the creature roared horrifyingly loud an inch away from her pale face.
In a sudden surge of adrenaline, Stevie brought the thing she inexplicably now had in her hand - her bat - up in a swing that had her chest screaming out in pure agony, slamming it into the side of the demodog stood looming over her reclined form. It wasn't the best or most powerful of hits, but it was just enough to give her the few precious seconds that she needed to force her body to roll over with a pained cry and drag her battered body up to her bruised knees.
Gasping out against the pain seizing her body, eyes squeezed tight against the nausea that hit her like a frate train suddenly, Stevie was blind as those sparks that had blanketed her body before did so again at her fingertips, rippling out into the ground her hands were planted against, causing the dogs closest to her to cry out in pain of their own from just sheer proximity of it.
"Stevie - Run, God! Please, get up!"
It was Dustin's voice, and for a moment, Stevie thought she was dreaming, because the last time he had called out for her like that it had been almost immediately followed by his violent death. Stevie didn't want to look, but she had to see him, she had to see him just one more time, even if it was just some cruel trick conjured up by Vecna.
So dare to look she did, up through the long sweeping locks of her dark hair with a confused and slightly blurry gaze, taking in the scene that played before her, straight from what seemed like her memories. There he stood, between Max and Lucas, looking so profoundly terrified, and heartbreakingly young, on the bus from the junkyard, a near-perfect replica of that night, from oh so long ago it seemed now.
It was the need to touch him, to hold him in her arms - dream or real, she didn't care - that had Stevie finally succeeding in forcing herself up onto unsteady feet. Stevie had missed him like she'd miss a little brother if she had one. With his death, her hope for a day after Vecna had died with him, as well as her will to fight. They had all lost hope by that point and it had weakened them, broken them all enough for Vecna to turn the tides of the war in his favour ultimately.
"Stevie, run! - Stevie, hurry! - Stevie, run!" The kids all chorused as one unit now, beckoning her back to the bus from its open doorway, all with frantic and scared looks painting their pale faces.
Not having to be told twice, not when the carrot was so damn tempting, Stevie kicked her unsteady feet into gear, making sure her hold upon her trusty bat was tight in her blood-slick hand, as she shot towards the bus with everything left in her. Having run track for the last two school years of her life, not to mention her reign as Cheer Captain and the Female Swim team Captain as well, Stevie knew she was fast and in near-perfect physical shape, even wounded she was faster than most, and yet...she felt like she was running in slow-motion.
Stevie could feel and hear them hot on her heels, with the gravel crunching alarmingly close to her from behind, as she determinedly refused to look back and check on their progress like she had last time she lived this moment, which she recalled had almost tripped her up and gotten her fine ass eaten.
"Shit!" Stevie exclaimed as she threw herself into the bus with an agonised shuttered breath, while Dustin stood at the ready, closing the doors right behind her as she rolled ass-over-head past him and the others.
"Are they rabid or something?" Max asked, or more like screeched out, still half-convinced they were some kind of fucked-up looking dog, a perfect reenactment of Stevie's memories that it was eerie.
Stevie just ignored her and the now once more hazy surroundings in favour of just trying to breathe evenly, which was a struggle presently, what with how hurt, half-winded and scared out of her mind she currently was from having just relived one of her more pressing nightmares.
She had landed hard, jarring her already battered body all the more for it, but as the demodogs' bodies slammed into the now-closed door of the bus, Stevie was a little too distracted to care about the pain flaring harshly at different points across her body.
Was this real...she wondered with a shuttered breath...it felt real.
But if it was real, and all this was happening then Stevie knew that she couldn't just sit here, because she better than the others knew that the bus door wasn't going to hold them back, not for long. She had to protect her kids...So, on a grunt of pain, flooding through her like lightning as she pulled herself back up to unsteady feet, Stevie grabbed a sheet of metal from the front windshield of the bus, as she had before, shoving it up against the flimsy door certainly felt real in her bloody and shaky hands.
Following the action up by planting her ass upon the edge of the driver's seat, Stevie shoved her beat-up sneakers flat against the sheet to keep it in place, all the while mentally reminding herself that she just had to buy them all a little time, just enough for the Demodogs to get called back to their master because that's exactly what had happened the last time around.
"They can't get in!" Lucas exclaimed in hopeful alarm, sounding like he was trying to convince himself of the truth of that since Stevie sure as hell didn't believe it to be true, knew it too.
The sheet of metal was a temporary fix, at best, not like she could have sat with her feet holding the door closed indefinitely, if only because Stevie was still pretty sure she was dying, after all. And especially not when one of the dogs was attempting to find an entrance from another part of the bus, causing all but Stevie to let out a sudden and surprised scream, as the bus rocked alarmingly to one side, jolting her fragile hold against the sheet of metal. This allowed for the Demodog on the other side to push its slimy arm through the gap between the two folding doors, almost taking Stevie’s own arm clean off with its clawed hand in the process.
More screams sounded throughout the bus at the breach. Stevie reared back, slamming her feet back against the door with a grunt of serious effort on her part, as she palmed desperately for her bat on the seat behind her, nearly weeping with relief once her hand closed around its comforting handle. Stevie lunged forward and swung it down on the offending limb repeatedly, feeling the wound on her left side tear more because of the repetitive motion, while the kids rushed away from the invading creature, down to the other end of the bus, where Dustin busied himself with his radio.
"Is anyone there?!" He shouted - panic vibrating out of him steadily - into his headset, "Mike? Will? - God! - Anyone! - Shit! - We're at the old junkyard, and we are going to die!!"
Stevie would have found his fitting cry for help amusing on any other day, had she not been one of the ones about to die, and...not busy trying to beat an arm back while simultaneously trying not to drown in the suffocating pain trying to smother her to death inside of her own body, of course. To hit home just how bad their luck had drastically turned, the sounds of metal denting could be heard from above them, causing Stevie’s heart to freeze in blind terror – fuck…how did she forget about the one on the roof?!
Flicking her eyes - wide with alarm - over to the kids, she promptly realized that Max was the only other one to notice the sounds from above, and it had been her that had almost gotten eaten the last time too, before Steve had jumped to her defence that is. The poor girl stood shaking, terror so thick in the air surrounding her that Stevie could almost taste it, looking up at the open skylight on the roof of the bus with justified horror, realising just as Stevie did what was about to befall them all. But she wasn't moving, not even as the Demodog roared down into her face, hot spittal raining down upon her, it was like the redhead was frozen in fear, a feeling Stevie could 100% relate to.
But since the kid was about to get herself eaten, Stevie pushed past the fear and pain making her head dizzy, hitting the grasping limb still trying to get at her through the door one last time before she charged towards the ladder. She didn't even think about what she was doing before she did it, pushing Max out of the way, more harshly than she would have on a normal-non-monster-involved day, to put herself between the danger and one of her kids.
"You want some?!" Stevie taunted the monster, if only to bolster herself, as she readied her bat just in case the call to draw them away didn't come this time, or was too late, "Come get this!"
Stevie stood right at the bottom of the ladder unsteadily, swaying from side to side alarmingly so, even as she determinedly held her bat before her in a tight grasp, ready to shove the damn thing right up into the big, ugly flower-shaped head pointed down at her if she needed to. But luckily enough for the lot of them, all the demodogs drew back, just like the last time, with no explanation or obvious reasoning at all.
But unlike last time, Stevie knew as they turned away from her, looking out to somewhere in the far-off distance, that it was Hawkins lab that they were being called home towards.
With a sigh, Stevie allowed her tired arms to drop, bat rolling away, as she swayed where she stood. If Lucus hadn't taken note and grabbed her as she lent his way too far to bounce back she'd have ended up on her face for sure. She didn't want to let all her weight rest upon his shoulders, quite literally, but at this moment Stevie didn't have much choice so she was just grateful she was conscious at all to be quite frank.
The sweetheart that Lucas was, held her steadfastly, turning her gently even, as he and now Max too rushed to lower down onto the bus stead that closest to them. Dustin rushed over, pushing himself in between his two friends obnoxiously, an action that was just so him it brought a smile to her blood-stained lips, as he covered before her clutching his radio to his still heaving chest.
"Oh, my god..." Dustin stressed worriedly, eyes looking so big that Stevie was amused to find herself concerned that they might just pop out of his head. "Are you dying?!"
With a snort, Stevie smiled softly up at her little brother, looking alive and so endearingly worried that her heart stored with it, and answered honestly. "No, I don't think I am." Because how could she be dead? Not when Dustin stood before her looking so very much alive.
And with that clarified, Stevie reached a bloody hand up and snagged a startled Dustin by the edge of his jumper, pulling him down into her ready embrace. She held him as close and as tightly as she dared, which meant she was damn near suffocating him, as she basked in the simplicity that was breathing him in with a shuttered breath of grief-stricken relief, while tear-clogged eyes locked lovingly upon the two dearly loved and missed kids behind him.
Stevie didn't know why it was her, why she had survived or why she was the one to get this second chance, but what she did know was that she didn't plan on wasting it.
Not if she could help it...