#gasp!!

Unfortunately he wasn’t a cat, he didn’t have nine lives, he had one, and that’d already been taken from him, so he was really pushing his luck. Especially considering he wound up on that little trip out into town, partnered up with team super girl. Or team Byers-Hopper. He’d wanted to be with the people he knew, Steve, Robin, Nancy… but no, Eleven, the actual superhero had linked her arm with his, and that was that.

She basically adopted him. Pulled him into the direction of team Byers-Hopper.

“She’s comfortable with you” Joyce explained from left field, they’d wound up in a music store after several clothes stores, and Eddie, while mindlessly flicking through the metal vinyl’s, had been watching the psychokinetic teen perusing bins with Will for tapes, Hopper somewhere down the aisles looking for an album to replace one he’d lost in the chaos.

“Can’t imagine why, I don’t know her.” He knew of her, but only through the brief ‘there’s this girl, she has superpowers’ run down during the great Eddie Munson manhunt of ’86. She was the girl. He didn’t know what he expected, but… it wasn’t her.

She looked so fragile. Her hair at her chin, styled in a way that Eddie recognised as someone who also didn’t quite know how to handle natural curls. With a brush and nothing else.

Too young to have been through what she’d been through. She should be in a mall somewhere, trying on clothes, gossiping about boys, or girls, or anything not related to fighting for her life.

She shouldn’t have been through what she had. But then, none of them should have been.

“We find it best not to question it when El takes a shine to someone, it means good things, that’s what we’ve found so far. It means there’s something good in you.”

“Well… if anyone were going to see it… m’glad it’s the superhero.” Joyce smiled, gave him a gentle pat on the back that shouldn’t have been as comforting as it was, probably the overwhelming amount of mom energy she seemed to just radiate, “…do you know what they’re hiding from me?” Just as out of left field as her appearance beside him was, and it had at least some of the desired effect.

She looked surprised. She looked uncomfortable, she looked… like she knew.

“It’s nothing that you did, Eddie, I promise you. I think… I think they’re keeping it quiet because… if you did wind up remembering… the government would likely try and blame you, they’d have an excuse to blame you, the fact that you don’t, well I think that is what’s keeping you out of a lot of trouble.” It was keeping him safe. Keeping him out of the line of fire. Even if it was also keeping the people he’d tentatively begun thinking of as friends… out of reach. “They’re probably trying to avoid jogging that memory of yours for your own safety.”

“So there should be memories…” finally, some kind of clarity. While they’d all been nice to him, while they’d all been glad he was okay, nobody acting like he didn’t belong there, nobody being mean to him… Steve wouldn’t even help him unpack! He and Steve had been fine during the whole Vecna thing, they’d been okay, they’d laughed and joked, they’d gotten along, and now— “did I hurt Steve?”

“Not that I know of, he wouldn’t have told anyone if you did though, knowing him he’d be keeping it to himself to stop you from receiving the fury of The Children. So if you did, you’d have to pry that from him yourself.” Right… pry the knowledge from Steve. Okay, he could do that… if he could get Steve alone then maybe, just maybe, he could talk to him.

Steve was the only one who knew about his void, right? He was safe with Steve, he could talk to Steve. “I suppose I’ll speak to Steve then, thanks Mrs Byers”

“It’s Joyce, Eddie… you can call me Joyce.” He nodded, his smile small, but there.

“Eddie!” And there was the Supergirl, having left the bin to join them, taking his arm to pull him back with her toward Will “there are tapes you will like here. Will says you like Metal, I think I have found some, the name says Iron something, and I am certain that that is a metal.” Joyce offered him a smile, before releasing him from their conversation with a gentle shoo motion.

His attention switched to El as she pulled him along, and with a much bigger smile, he confirmed that “yeah, that’s a metal, Ellie, why don’t we find something for Max too, since I’m sure she could do with something other than Kate Bush by now” and gosh couldn’t that smile of hers just light up a whole goddamn room and make all those negative thoughts just disappear into the wind?

“Yes, I think so too.”

They dropped off the new tapes at the hospital on the way back to home base, the car fully loaded with clothes,it was intended to be a quick visit, Max was still asleep, so they didn’t plan to stay long, but Lucas was there beside her as usual, reading wonder woman comics to her as she slept. She’d wake up soon. The doctors said she would, and he’d be there when she did.

El added a new little woollen friendship bracelet to Max’s wrist, alongside the three others she’d already placed there through the week and whispered something to her, nobody caught what it was, nobody tried to. If El wanted everyone to know what she said, she’d have said it out loud.

It was Lucas who made him feel less like a piece of the background, just by smiling at him and asking him “you doin okay, Eddie?” Checking in with him.

“Feels like I need a montage to catch me up on what I’m missing but… yeah m’good man. Red likes Wonder Woman?”

“Mhm, big on the girl power, y’know? As if anyone could be tougher than her” as if anyone could be braver.

El was pretty damn special but… El could throw things with her mind, could snap all the bones in a human body with a thought, Max was just… Max, impossibly brave, but so very human.

“Princess Diana would bow at her feet, I have zero doubts. What about you though? You’ve barely left this place, can’t be good for you…”

“I’ll rest when she’s awake, she’d do the same for me. And before you say it don’t worry, I’m fully prepared to endure her attitude when she finds out how long I’ve been here. She can be mad at me all she wants, I’ll be here when she wakes up.”

“Good…. m’glad y-you’re… you’re prepared, stalker…”