#angsty ending

*****

Who does he think he is? Who does he take me for? A fool?

Steve Harrington has been lying to you for years and you’re sick of it. For so long you’ve put up with the suspicions and the sneaking around, always excusing your “best friend” for every canceled plan because you didn’t want to believe he would hide things from you.

Steve Harrington has been your best friend and boyfriend for years, your family moving in next to his just before the midway point of your freshman year of high school. It was Steve’s sophomore year, so he took you under his wing and you forged the most tempered of bonds. He became the king of the school and in his eyes you were royalty yourself. So he made it official. You were king and queen of Hawkins High.

He conjured the courage within you to reveal your weaknesses and tell the tales of the hurts you faced in your previous school. You shared everything with each other, or so you thought. He was your safe space and you were his. There was never reason to doubt until about two years ago. Then the slivers of doubt slithered in and took root, building a little more with each cancelled date or avoided meeting. You could tell something was going on but Steve didn’t let you in as much anymore. Instead, you ignored the warning signs, you put up with his odd behavior and mysterious injuries - “boxing lessons”, he would say - and lived a pitiful life of forcing yourself to enjoy the moments you could have with him. He was still your boyfriend and you still cared for him more deeply than you wanted to admit.

Yet here you are now, pacing angrily across your bedroom, wearing a circle into the carpet where your feet pass repeatedly. Thoughts of the fight you had with Steve not even two hours ago are still swirling around your brain, replaying conversations over and again.

Are you overreacting? Maybe you would be if this was the first time you’d faced desertion.

You had been looking forward to the long-overdue date night with Steve, the chance to finally catch up on all of life’s crazy twists and turns and to be - just the two of you. But now two high schoolers had recently been killed in the most disturbing of ways and Steve called you to cancel your plans - again. You weren’t the clingy, dependent type, but for the fifth time this month, you were stranded at home alone again, Steve fully aware of the effect this kind of thing had on you. Steve, more than anyone, knew what you had been through in your past friendships, past relationships, and he knew how important truth and trust were. Not to mention the fear that bubbled at the thought of who might be the next victim of whatever evil was taking place in town.

So lying to you was out of the question, or so you thought.

When you questioned your boyfriend, begging him for the truth, he blew you off again with vague excuses of “there’s something I need to take care of” and “it’s Henderson again, he got himself into trouble”. It was always something with him. Once or twice was believable, but by now the lies finally reached a tipping point.

“If you don’t want to be around me anymore, can you just spare me the pity and tell me already?”

“That’s not what this is, you’re not listening-“

“Oh I’m listening, you’ve just got nothing to say, Steve! Empty excuses and avoiding me like the plague?! I don’t deserve this! I’m tired of chasing after this relationship when you’re clearly chasing… anything and everything else!”

You were a dormant volcano on the verge of emotional eruption, but you refused to let Steve see you like that. So you stormed away without looking back.

You held onto your confident convictions until you reached the safety of your bedroom, where you broke the dam and let the tears fall freely. Bringing you to now, your tear-stained face staring back at you from the mirror over your dresser.

As you stand stock still in the middle of your room, you close your eyes as a searing headache invades your senses. It’s mind-numbing pain stabbing away at your temples and not even the strongest of medications can dissolve the pain fully. This was the fifth day in a row. If these nagging pains pick up again tomorrow you swear you’ll take yourself straight to the doctor, but you hope it doesn’t come to that. It’s just the buildup of emotions over the course of the days, that’s all, right?

Knocking back a few pills, you collapse onto your bed and cover your face with your arms in an attempt to shut out the world and drift into sleep. Eventually, you fade into oblivion, sleep being your only respite from the headaches knocking at your skull.

As was pattern for the last few days, you’re awoken in the early morning with a sheen of sweat across your face. Another nightmare plaguing your rest, draining you further of the little energy you have from day to day. And every night it’s the same dream. You’re alone and you’re running from something. Something dark, sinister. But you leave behind a trail, a path leading straight toward you no matter what you do. Every failure of your life, every error and mistake that has ever followed you, now stalks closer and points the way toward you. That sinister something lurking in the shadows is creeping closer, you can feel it. And just before it reaches you, you wake up, breathless and shaking uncontrollably.

You silently extricate yourself from your blankets and pad down the stairs to the living room, having given up on sleep for the night.

Another day, another waste of time sitting alone in your house without a single thing to do or place to go. You think of calling Steve, but what’s the use? You should still be angry at him, and you are, but he is still the one person you want to talk to. Besides, he would probably come up with some pathetic excuse for his absence anyway.

So instead, you busy yourself with mindless tasks, attempt to read a book for a while, cleaning the house for when your parents return from their trip, and desperately seek out ways to pass the time.

Over time, the headache you dreaded returns with full force. You stand to walk to the kitchen, gather a drinking glass and a few pills and down them in one big gulp.

But it’s while you’re standing at the sink, glass still in hand, that you hear the oddest sound. A clock chime. Not like the one your father insisted on installing in the front hall not long after moving in, no that was a soft chime that gently reminded anyone in the vicinity of the changing hours. This chime, as it rings again, is simultaneously deep and tinny, the oddest of combinations.

You turn to seek out the source of the mysterious ticking, but your mind is blank. It’s in this moment that you realize the lights in the kitchen have gone out, leaving you in an unnatural darkness. The remains of daylight peek through the curtains, but even the setting sun casts a worrisome glow. An eerie feeling creeps up your spine and chills the back of your neck. The chime rings again. That makes three.

You wander into the hallway and turn left, then right. There’s nothing but darkness staring back at you. The front door looms to your left so you make your way toward it. As you approach, you see a shadow grow larger, taller, just on the other side. A figure of great size silhouettted against the pane of glass in the center of the door. You back away slowly, never taking your eyes off of the doorknob that slowly turns one way, then the other. The door creaks open. You back away a little faster now.

A fourth chime rings out just as the door swings wide to reveal the form on the other side of the threshold.

It’s tall and relatively thin considering the enormous presence it exudes, standing on two feet, the moonlight reflects off of what seems to be vines wound tightly up and around and through this terrible creature. But it’s the hands that you hone in on. One hand is… not a hand at all but a claw with arched fingers protruding like the claw machine at the arcade. Poised for plucking its target from its safety. Then it opens its mouth and you hold your breath.

“Y/n.”

**

Steve Harrington would never consider himself to be someone with a proclivity for making good decisions. But two decisions he thought he could never regret: falling in love with you, and then refusing to let you get involved in whatever it was that haunted Hawkins and hunted whatever happiness their little ragtag team of kids could find. First Will and Barb, then Will and Eleven over and again. Then the Russians, which was impossibly difficult to keep from you given your proclivity for puzzles and your insistence on visiting Steve at his place of work - always a welcome visit, but increasingly stressful for the boy to hide all those secrets. But Steve swore to himself long ago that he couldn't and wouldn’t put you in harm's way. He’d rather lose your love than lose your life.

He just never thought he’d actually have to choose.

You were the first person Steve felt truly himself with, the first person to call him out on his idiocy and the first person to comfort him in his pain. You had been the truest of friends and the most amazing partner. His constant. And he had to protect you.

Steve was the only person in Hawkins who knew the truth of your past, your heartache and your failings. He reminded you of all the good things you tended to forget.

You were each other’s sunshine on a rainy day.

But the rain clouds gathered too heavily and soon Steve’s attempts at keeping you safe began to push you away. He chose to lie about everything so you wouldn’t insert yourself into something so dangerous. His lies, however, necessary as they may have been, cost him dearly.

As you yelled at him, as you fought back the tears - and yes, Steve knew you were on the verge, despite your efforts at holding it back - Steve warred within himself. To lose the relationship he valued so much or to possibly lose your life. Logically, it was an easy choice. Playing it out in real life was a different story.

Now, Steve stands with the others who have dug themselves in too deep to climb out unscathed. He had listened to Eddie tell his tale of terror as he watched Chrissy Cunningham succumb to a ritualistic death by this otherworldly demon. He had seen the way Nancy pictures her friend Fred having faced a similar fate. And together the ragtag team of Hawkins heroes attempt to piece the puzzle together, to understand what they’re up against.

Steve had driven Max and Dustin to the school so they could break into the counselor’s office in an attempt to connect the first two victims. If they know why they were attacked, maybe they can predict who was next. They rifle through files, peeking into anything that might contain answers.

Six eyes scan the documents desperately for links to this ever-growing chain.

Headaches, hallucinations, nightmares. It all connects. Something gnaws at his thoughts but his memory fails to conjure whatever it is he needs to remember.

He racks his brain, the answer just out of reach - why those symptoms sound so very familiar.

Dustin’s outcry pulls him from his own little world and he realizes Max has grown rigid in her seat at the desk. Her eyes are glazed over and she appears to be living her own nightmare - though she was awake not five seconds ago.

“Max?” Hands shake her shoulders. Then her body surges backward in the chair, her eyes are returning to normal and she breathes heavily.

Max stands and runs from the room, then stops at the turn of a hallway. She points. “There was a clock. Right there. I saw it.” Her thoughts turn inward as she attempts to make sense of what she had seen in the vision that had seemed so real.

Returning to the confines of the office once more, the small group awaits the arrival of Nancy and Robin before Max rehashes the vision she had for all to hear. She tells of the fear that she felt so tangibly. She couldn’t tell nightmare from reality. All eyes and ears were focused intently on Max as dots were connected and her fate was put into question.

As the actual reality of the situation begins to sink in, a silence settles over the group. But it’s soon interrupted by the clatter of one of the large double doors at the end of the next hallway banging open with an alarming urgency. Grabbing whatever could serve as a weapon, each of the party stalks slowly out of the room. Steve leads the way, a large floor lamp held at the ready. Hurried footsteps race closer and the group braces for impact.

Suddenly, Lucas comes flying around the corner and Steve nearly takes his head off with the lamp. Screams echo through the empty halls and breathing is labored from the fear-induced adrenaline that had been pumping just moments before.

“It’s me! It’s Lucas!” His hands are desperately thrown in front of him to ward off any oncoming attack. But no one rushes him. He breathes deeply. “I came to warn you.”

Confused glances are exchanged as Lucas explains the danger encroaching on them all. Jason and his goons have gone on a vengeance-fueled rampage in search of Eddie Munson.

Eddie was safely in hiding, but for how long? The group of six now turn on their heels and race toward their cars, a fresh sense of urgency spurring them forward. As, one by one, they pile into Steve and Nancy’s cars, Steve lurches to a sudden stop.

His heart drops into his stomach and his breathing picks up. It’s all coming back to him. The memory that had been scratching at his brain earlier was surfacing and he didn’t like where his mind was leading him.

“Steve, come on!” Dustin shouted back to his older friend as he held the group up. “Steve! What are you-“ Dustin caught his eye and knew something was wrong.

Steve could hear the commotion in response to his sudden stopping. “Y/n.” He speaks softly. He wills his thoughts to align into a semblance of order. “Shit, shit, SHIT!” He cries as he runs the rest of the way to the car, throwing himself behind the wheel and whipping the car down the road. He fills the group in on his suspicions on the way, radioing his change of plans to the other car.

Nancy drives herself, Robin, and Dustin to retrieve Eddie from his hideout before Jason can hunt him down. Steve drives Max and Lucas, much faster than the speed limit allows, all the way to the edge of town and beyond. Steve knows exactly where he’s going, having traveled the way every day for as long as he could remember.

**

“Y/n.”

It’s voice the lowest you’ve ever heard, daunting and threatening in itself. You jump at the low groan emanating from within the creature, dropping the glass you forgot was still clutched tightly in your hands. It crashes to the floor and shatters into pieces, littering the hallway. You take your eyes from the beast for a second at the sound of the glass shards clattering across the hardwood floor.

Suddenly, the home you’ve grown up in disappears from around you and you find yourself back in the halls of the school you swore you’d never go back to. The halls that tortured you so terribly and tore you to shreds one measly insult at a time. Back there again, the walls now echo with intangible voices taunting you with every flaw you’ve ever identified in yourself. You hear them and, after a while, you start to believe them. They follow you down every hallway, into every classroom. You run, one foot propelling the next to carry you forward. But every turn you make brings you back to the same place, the same hallway that was home to so much hatred and hurt.

A sudden sound surprises you and you lurch backward into the wall of lockers. The creature from before looms just in front of you. Far too close for comfort. Yet it comes closer, its presence evoking a tremor to rack your body and your breath to hitch.

**

“Steve, slow down!” Max calls from the passenger seat, her body bouncing along wildly despite the seatbelt tying her down.

“I don’t have time to slow down!” Steve shrieks, panic rising with each passing moment.

He barely focuses on the road at all, in fact, as memories of the past few days flood back. In your spats which had become much more frequent in the last few days, you offhandedly had mentioned the nightmares that plagued your mind. Steve knew your history and the nightmares were direct descendents of those horrible memories of experiences of your past. Friends who turned on you. Ex-friends who tormented you relentlessly. Exes who spread the worst kinds of rumors. Things he swore he would never do to you. Those nightmares were so real to you and Steve could barely keep his eyes from growing fuzzy recalling your strained voice over the phone telling him of the horrors you imagined at night. Despite his distance, you never stopped trying to reach him.

You had even told Steve of the headaches, in a desperate attempt to get him to commit to actually coming to see you. You thought he might care a little more about you if he knew how you struggled. And now, Steve thinks back and regrets every missed conversation, every cancelled movie night and every second he could have held onto you.

After giving the briefest summation of his worry to the kids in the back, Steve slams on the brakes as the car pulls up outside your house. He throws his door open and his body out into the street. The younger friends follow suit, trailing Steve in his panicked sprint toward your front door.

Steve goes straight to the tiny stone stepper in the dirt along the porch, the one with your tiny childhood handprint impressed into the flat surface that you once told him about. He flips it over and retrieves the key hidden beneath. Then he quickly inserts the key and slams the door open in a fury.

“Y/n!” Steve waits just inside the door for any response. But all is quiet. Dread sinks deeper and he pushes himself forward.

Max and Lucas rush forward, Lucas proclaiming, “we’ll look upstairs” before their feet pound up the staircase.

Steve makes his way straight into the sitting room. His eyes dart from side to side in search of any sign of movement. Nothing. He continues to the next room, the dining room. Still nothing. But as Steve rounds the next corner, he freezes in place.

You’re here. But you’re not here at the same time. Steve hurls himself across the room until he’s standing before you, looking you up and down in concern. You haven’t moved since he arrived. Then he sees it. Your eyes are rolled back in your head, twitching, a glossy sheen replacing the deep y/e/c that once sparkled.

Steve brings his hands up to either side of your face. He presses his palms to your cheeks, feeling the cold chill that’s taken over your skin. His hands slide down over your neck, gripping you just behind the head, “Y/n, can you hear me?” His voice is desperate and afraid. “Y/n, please. Please answer me.”

His memory scans back through Eddie’s story and this one unfolding in front of him is ringing oddly familiar. “Someone help!!” Steve yells, straining his voice, his gaze never leaving your face, afraid to look away and lose you.

Once more, his hands slide down further until they’re on your shoulders. He shakes you gently, “damn it, Y/n, this isn’t funny. You can wake up now.”

“Maaaax!! Lucaaas!!” Steve shrieks, voice cracking uncontrollably in fear. Max and Lucas come bounding down the stairs, feet a flurry of movement. Following the voice, they head toward the kitchen where they find Steve gripping your face tightly, staring directly into your glazed eyes and begging you to wake up.

“Oh my god.” Max whispers, seeing a glimpse of what may lie ahead for herself.

Steve turns his head to look at them standing behind him, eyes red and bloodshot, tears leaking from his eyes in a constant stream. “What do I do?” His voice is weak and strained. Steve is desperate, helpless, with every possible shred of guilt overtaking his mind. Every regret eating away at him.

He shouldn’t have pushed you away. He shouldn’t have lied and kept the truth from you. Every lie and every avoidance had been to save you. Every attempt at keeping you away from the Upside Down had been Steve’s desperation at keeping you out of harm's way. And now that’s exactly why you’re here, in this very situation.

**

“Y/n.”

The way your name comes out of its mouth is so… wrong. It is a croak and a gutteral moan. It is a nightmare in itself.

Another nightmare. That’s all this must be, right?

You try to wake yourself from this terror but to no avail.

“It is time. To listen to the voices of truth.”

The echoes of the hall increase in volume and you hear the words they say, repetitions of the insults hurled at you day after day all those years ago. Reminders of the failed relationships you worked so hard to maintain and the friends who abandoned you for all the flaws you worked so hard to suppress.

“It. Is. Time.”

The creature looms closer, now it stands before you, practically chest to chest. You see the concaves of its face, the fleshy tissue making up its skin that, up close, really does appear to be vines.

You are frozen in place, paralyzed with fear, and leaning toward acceptance of your fate. Tears stream down your cheeks as an instinctive reaction to the overwhelming feeling of dread settling deeper and deeper.

In that moment, flashes of Steve fill your mind. You latch onto the images of his face, the feeling of his touch and the warmth of his embrace. You regret the way you left things with him, because this was the end. You could feel it.

The oversized left hand arches wide and the clawed fingers splay outward as this demon figure raises its hand toward your face. Each appendage stretches out until your head is nearly surrounded. You feel fear coursing through your veins, but you are helpless to fight it.

The claw springs forward and each ragged finger hooks into your face on all sides. You feel the energy of the demon seeping into you, commanding your body to obey. You scream, yet you don’t. You cry, yet you don’t. Then everything around you fades to black.

**

As his hands grip your cheeks, Steve feels movement and lets his hopes rise that maybe you are returning to him. But instead your head slowly rises so his hands slide to your shoulders, but your shoulders rise as well. He steps backward in alarm as your feet leave the floor. You hover in midair, body floating so high your head is mere feet from the high ceiling. Steve’s face loses all color and he gasps, sucking desperately for air.

“Y/n! Y/N!” Steve rakes his fingers through his hair, pulling at the strands harshly. His face is frozen in fear, tears continually leaking aggressively from his eyes.

Max walks forward, gaze turned upward at your body hanging limply in the air. Her breathing increases tenfold. Lucas joins her, his hand gripping her arm in comfort, knowing exactly what she is thinking. Lucas lays his other hand on Steve’s shoulder, though it offers little comfort to the young man who is watching the person he loves slip away.

Steve reaches out and takes your lower legs into his arms, pulling downward with all of his strength, but you remain in place, arms lingering a foot from your body with hands turned outward, legs dangling freely below. “Come on, damn it!” Steve tugs harder on your legs, his shock turning to anger as he fights for your life. Lucas exchanges a look with Max before hurrying to help, lending his strength to the cause. Max, however, stumbles backward, emotion threatening to overwhelm her.

Then, without warning, your body slipped higher into the air, the high ceilings of your home leaving only a few inches between the top of your head and the plaster above. At the elevation, Steve and Lucas stumble away, a new knot of fear forming. But fear washes away and utter dismay and terror takes its place as first your left arm snaps at the elbow, sending your forearm into a completely unnatural shape. Next, your right arm does the same.

Steve lets out a gut-wrenching howl of helplessness and he pulls once more at the ends of his hair, the pain of the action against his scalp doing nothing to distract from the pain of what his eyes behold. “Y/n- no, no, no!” He drops to his knees and on the same beat, your left leg and then your right break one by one, limbs now protruding at the worst angles. But this isn’t over yet.

While the scene is nearly impossible to tear their eyes away from, Steve shuts his eyes tight against what he sees next. Your face contorts and becomes horribly disfigured in what he can only assume is each bone shattering in its own time. Blood begins to seep from the holes where your eyes had once been, though they now are sunken in too deep to see.

“Oh GOD!” Max crumbles back against the wall behind her, watching with horror, helpless against the war within your mind. Lucas remains frozen in place, eyes agape and nausea bubbling in his stomach.

When there couldn’t possibly be another bone to break, your body drops heavily to the floor with an echoing thud. A silence falls over the room save for the heavy breathing of the onlookers. Steve crawls on his hands and knees across the kitchen tile until he reaches your prone form.

He reaches down and slips his hand into yours, pulling it up to his chest. “Y/n. Y/n, please. Please, don’t do this to me. Please.” His voice comes out as a whimper, as if he’s afraid of further shattering you. His hands reach up to your face, he cups your chin and holds your cheeks in his palms, but he knows. He knows that the life once pumping through you is gone, the light in your eyes is replaced by shadowed valleys and the heart that had once beat for him now did not beat at all.

He pulls your body into his, wailing his sorrow with reckless abandon. He cradles you in his arms, his tears falling onto the top of your head.

Lucas wanders backward to find Max in a ball along the wall, and he stoops down to hold her to himself. She sobs into his shoulder.

When a banging sounds from the front hall, both pairs of eyes dart toward the source to find Dustin standing in the doorway, looking this way and that for his friends. “Guys? Where are-“ It takes only seconds for him to catch sight of the couple huddled together on the floor in the kitchen doorway, so Dustin makes his way toward them, Eddie, Robin, and Nancy trailing just behind him. A traffic jam halts as each of them encounter the monstrosity of a scene before them.

Nancy turns her head away, Robin covers her face wiht her hands, Eddie shakes his head and turns around, still-too-fresh memories flooding back from Chrissy’s own ending. Dustin, however, makes his way further into the room and sinks to his knees beside Steve. His heart shatters to hear the person he looked up to most so utterly broken. One look at your body is enough to know that they were too late.

Steve’s sobs are muffled by his lips pressed firmly to the crown of your head and his body rumbles violently as he heaves for breath.

“Steve.” Dustin is crouched on his knees, he places his hand over Steve’s shoulder. Steve sinks backward, falling onto his backside, your body still clutched desperately to his chest. Dustin sniffles, wanting to contain his emotions for his friend, “Steve.” He struggles to find the words befitting this tragedy.

Steve leans into the arm that Dustin wraps over his shoulder, but Steve’s attention remains solely on you. He whispers to you, “I’m so sorry, I should have been here. I’m so so sorry. Please.”

The others in the room, through their own tear-filled eyes, exchange looks of sorrow, unknowing of what they can do. No one can prepare for something like this. No one is ever truly prepared to say goodbye to a friend, a lover. So they remain quiet and let Steve process for a few more minutes, silence ticking by slowly.

After a few minutes go by, Robin gently clears her throat and softly fills the hollowness of the room. “I know now’s not the best time, but I think we need to get Eddie somewhere safe before he gets blamed for this, too.”

Her words seem to sink in quickly and the others nod their agreement. Steve looks back over his shoulder and closes his eyes, nodding along as well. “You guys go. I can’t- I can’t leave them. Not like this.”

Lucas helps Max to her feet, her nerves still a wreck after what they witnessed. Dustin wipes his own tears on his sleeve and pats his older friend on the back before rising to join the others. He walks with Max and Lucas out the front door of the house and toward the cars parked haphazardly in the street.

Nancy loops her arm in Robin’s and pulls her toward the doorway to the kitchen with Eddie at their heels, but they’re stopped when Steve speaks up again. All three turn back. Steve’s eyes clear and he stares them all down. “We have to find a way to stop this. For Y/n.”

“And for Chrissy,” Eddie chimes in.

“And for Fred,” Nancy’s face falls.

“And now, we do it for Max.”

*****

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