#ghost eddie

El and Hopper went deeper into hiding that same night. Joyce came by the hospital the next morning to fill Steve in, her face drawn tight with worry as she sat in the chair he'd practically worn a groove into over the past week. They'd gone back to Hop's cabin, setting fresh booby-traps and all. It was still mostly off the grid and deep enough in the woods that, hopefully, no one would think to look. Publicly, the military presence was there to keep the surviving community safe, and to "fix" the fissures somehow. And maybe that was part of it. But they all knew better. The government was far more interested in finding El than in patching up the remains of cracks in the earth, and they were willing to do whatever it took to accomplish that mission.

Steve's chest tightened as Joyce spoke. He felt for El—always had. They'd all lost some portion of their childhoods to this Upside Down shit, but none had lost more than her. The few stolen months of semi-normalcy she'd ever managed were still spent looking over her shoulder, waiting for the next disaster to strike, the next betrayal from a government who had made her into a weapon for them to control.

Eddie took the news about the quarantine harder than Steve expected.

"I was gonna find Wayne," he said, staring up at the ceiling tiles above his hospital bed. His voice was still rough, though it had gotten stronger over the past few days, losing that awful gravel-scraped quality that had made Steve wince every time he spoke. "Soon as they let me out of here. Wanted to tell him I'm okay. That Dustin got it wrong." He turned his head on the pillow to look at Steve, and the defeat in those brown eyes hit like a fist to the sternum. "But he probably left town already, right? Why would he stick around for all this?"

Steve didn't have an answer for that. He just laced their fingers together and stayed quiet, rubbing his thumb across Eddie's knuckles the way he'd learned Eddie liked—slow, steady, grounding.

The days blurred into a routine that Steve settled into with an ease that surprised him.

He showed up every morning before visiting hours officially started—having charmed one of the older nurses, a sturdy woman named Dolores who reminded him a little of Claudia Henderson, into looking the other way—and didn't leave until they kicked him out at night. He'd pull the chair right up next to the bed, close enough to hold Eddie's hand, and they'd talk about nothing and everything. The sort of getting-to-know-you conversations they'd skipped right past in their sprint toward becoming whatever they were now.

Eddie had called them boyfriends. As much as Steve loved the way the word rolled off Eddie's tongue—loved the way it made Eddie's cheeks flush and his eyes go bright every time he said it—it felt too small somehow. Not wrong. Just woefully inadequate for the weight of what he'd come to feel in such a compressed stretch of time. There probably wasn't a word for the person you fell for while they were haunting your life, who you'd guided through the realization of their own death and then watched claw their way back from the inside out.

Boyfriend would have to do for now.

Sometimes the others would visit, minus the Hoppers, since it was too dangerous for them to set foot in town anymore. The kids would wreak cheerful havoc in the small room until the nurses threatened to ban them all. Lucas would perch on the windowsill and fill Eddie in on Max's recovery, his voice going soft at the edges when he talked about her. Mike and Will would argue about whether Eddie's spirit form counted as astral projection or something else entirely—a debate that made Eddie's head spin and Steve's eyes glaze over. Erica would sit in the corner of the room and act like it was all beneath her.

Robin came often, smuggling in contraband snacks and embarrassing stories about Steve that made Eddie laugh even though laughing clearly hurt him, the sound always catching halfway through on a wince he tried to hide.

But most of the time, it was just the two of them.

Steve watched Eddie's progress with careful, quiet attention—cataloging each small victory even when Eddie himself seemed too frustrated or exhausted to notice them. His fever broke one afternoon and stayed gone, the sheen of sweat that had been a constant companion finally drying up for good. The angry red of infection gradually faded from his wounds, replaced by the healthier pink of new skin slowly knitting itself together. Then the doctors started talking about discharge dates instead of survival rates, and something that had been clenched tight behind Steve's ribs for weeks finally loosened its grip.

Eddie could sit up without help now, though he still moved carefully, one hand braced against the mattress as if the world might tilt on him. He could eat solid food—and complain about it loudly and at length, which Steve took as a very encouraging sign. He could stay awake for hours at a time instead of drifting off mid-sentence, head lolling to the side while Steve was in the middle of a story about Robin accidentally setting off the fire alarm at Family Video back during their first week on the job.

It was good. It was progress.

And every night when Steve was finally forced to leave, walking out through the hospital's sliding doors into the cool spring air, he carried with him the memory of Eddie's hand tightening briefly around his before letting go.

A week after the quarantine started, the phone in Eddie's room rang.

It was Dustin, breathless and borderline frantic, begging Steve to come pick him up and take him somewhere—anywhere. Everyone else was busy, and Claudia was driving him up the wall with her hovering. He needed out. Steve, who'd just been told he was about to be kicked out of Eddie's room for the daily wound cleaning and bandage change—a process Eddie insisted on enduring without an audience and Steve had learned not to argue about—figured he could kill an hour running the kid around town. Maybe swing by his own house, grab more clothes for himself and Eddie both, since he was practically living at the hospital anyway.

They were heading back toward Hawkins General when Dustin suddenly lurched forward against his seatbelt.

"Wait—stop the car!"

Steve slammed on the brakes, swerved, and nearly took out a utility pole. His heart hammered against his ribs as he white-knuckled the steering wheel. "What? What's wrong?"

"That guy!" Dustin pointed frantically through the windshield at a figure on the sidewalk up ahead. "I think that's Wayne!"

Steve's head whipped around, scanning the street.

There—a man in a worn denim jacket and a trucker cap pulled low, walking with his head down and his hands shoved deep in his pockets. The kind of deliberate, don't-look-at-me posture, the body language of someone who'd learned the hard way that attention was dangerous. He'd have to take Dustin's word on the identification. He'd never actually met the man himself, and from this angle the brim of the cap hid most of his face.

Steve threw the car into park and they both scrambled out, Dustin moving faster than he should have on his still healing ankle.

"Mr. Munson! Mr. Munson!" Dustin called, jogging toward the figure with a pronounced limp.

The man didn't turn. Didn't slow. Just rounded the corner into a narrow alley between two half-collapsed buildings and was gone.

By the time they reached the mouth of it, the alley was empty. They spent twenty minutes searching the surrounding block, asking the few other people they passed if they'd seen a man in a jacket and hat. No one had. Eventually Steve had to practically drag a protesting Dustin back to the car before they got hassled by one of the military patrols.

"It was him," Dustin insisted, buckling himself back in and scowling out the windshield with his arms crossed. "I know it was."

"Maybe," Steve said carefully, pulling away from the curb. For Eddie's sake he wanted it to be true more than almost anything. "If it was, at least we know he's still in town. That's something."

"I'm gonna find him." Dustin's voice had gone quiet, but the steel in it was unmistakable. He was staring out the window, jaw set, wearing that expression Steve had learned to both dread and admire. The one that meant Henderson had locked onto a mission and wouldn't rest until it was done.

"I mean it," Dustin went on, turning to look at Steve with eyes blazing. "I'll ask around, check all the aid stations, talk to everyone I know. If Eddie's uncle is locked in here with us, I will track him down." He paused, his voice cracking just slightly on the next words. "Eddie deserves to see him. And Wayne deserves to know he’s alive."

Something tight in Steve's chest loosened just a little. He reached over and ruffled the kid's hat sideways. "I believe you, buddy."

Over the next few days, Steve kept Dustin's mission to himself.

There was no point in getting Eddie's hopes up until they knew for sure. Eddie had enough on his plate with his recovery. The physical therapy exercises the nurses walked him through each afternoon, the careful monitoring of wounds that were healing but still tender and prone to setbacks, the mounting frustration of needing help with tasks that used to be thoughtless. Buttoning a shirt. Getting in and out of bed. Walking to the bathroom and back without the world going swimmy at the edges.

Bit by bit though, Eddie got stronger. The improvement was slow but steady—a few more minutes on his feet before the trembling started, a few more steps down the hallway before pain forced him to stop and lean against the wall, catching his breath with his jaw clenched tight while pretending he was just admiring the decor. A little more color crept back into his face, not that he'd had all that much before.

The night before Eddie's scheduled discharge, Steve had barely gotten through the door at his own house—which felt less and less like home every time he returned to it—when the phone rang.

"I found him," Dustin said, so breathless with excitement that Steve could practically see him bouncing on the balls of his feet. "He's staying in Max's old house on Cherry Street. Mike helped me cross-reference the aid station logs with the temporary housing assignments, and Jonathan drove me over there to confirm it."

Steve closed his eyes, letting his forehead rest against the wall beside the phone. A sense of relief washed through him so strong it nearly took his knees out. "You're sure?"

"Positive. He was getting out of his truck when we drove by."

"Don't tell Eddie," Steve said quickly, a plan already forming in his mind. "Not yet. I'll take him there tomorrow when he gets out. Let it be a surprise."

A beat of silence. Then Dustin made a small, thoughtful sound. "You know, that's a pretty solid move for a guy who couldn’t get a date to save his life. It’s almost romantic."

Steve bit his lip to keep from smiling. "Shut up, Henderson."

"I'm just saying! Eddie's gonna lose it. He's gonna—"

Steve hung up on him, still grinning.

Eddie was released on a Tuesday morning in late April.

The doctor handed Steve a plastic bag heavy with prescription bottles and a printed list of instructions long enough to wallpaper a bathroom. Keep the wounds clean. No strenuous activity. Return immediately if anything seems wrong—redness, swelling, fever, any of the warning signs they'd already weathered once and never wanted to see again.

Eddie needed a cane to walk any farther than a few dozen feet, and when the pain or exhaustion got too much, a wheelchair. The hospital provided both, along with a surplus of gauze and antiseptic that Steve loaded carefully into the trunk.

Getting Eddie into the passenger seat was its own small production. Steve held the door while Eddie lowered himself in with painstaking slowness, one hand on the roof of the car, the other gripping his cane, his face cycling through a dozen expressions as he tried not to let any of them land on pain.

"Don't even think about saying you're fine," Steve murmured as he leaned across to help with the seatbelt.

"I wasn't going to." Eddie caught Steve's wrist as he pulled back, holding it for a moment. His eyes were bright, scanning the parking lot, the sky, the trees budding green along the hospital's perimeter—drinking in a world he hadn't seen from any vantage point other than a hospital window in weeks. "I was going to say this is the best I've felt in my entire life."

Steve smiled and kissed his forehead before rounding the car to the driver's side.

He pulled out of the hospital lot and turned in the opposite direction of Loch Nora.

Eddie noticed almost immediately. "Uh, Harrington? Pretty sure your house is that way."

"Taking the scenic route," Steve said, keeping his eyes trained on the road.

"Through the suburbs? What's scenic about—" Eddie trailed off, frowning as they turned onto a street lined with modest ranch-style houses set close together on narrow lots. The kind of neighborhood where people left their garage doors open and kids' bikes lay abandoned in driveways. It looked mostly intact, spared the worst of the fissures that had carved through other parts of town. A few houses had boarded-up windows and the lawns were a bit overgrown, but compared to some of the streets they'd driven past, this one was practically untouched.

Steve pulled to a stop in front of a small house with peeling white paint. He remembered dropping Max off here once or twice before but had never actually gone inside, doing his best to avoid a run-in with Billy. Now the driveway held a rusted-out blue pickup truck instead of a Camaro.

He killed the engine.

Beside him, Eddie had gone very still. His gaze was fixed through the passenger window, locked on the truck with an intensity that made the air in the car feel suddenly fragile.

Steve waited. When the silence had stretched long enough that he could hear his own pulse in his ears, he spoke softly. "You okay?"

Eddie turned to face him, and the look on his face was something Steve would hold on to for the rest of his life. Those big brown eyes, glassy and shining, spilling over with tears that tracked slowly down his gaunt cheeks as his lips pressed together, fighting for composure and losing.

"He's really here?" Eddie's voice was barely there. "You found him?"

"Dustin did. With a little help from the boys and Jonathan."

Eddie's hand trembled visibly where it rested on the handle of his cane, the rings he'd insisted on putting back on as soon as he had the dexterity to do so catching the morning light. "What if he doesn't believe it's me? What if he thinks I'm… I don't know, some kind of clone? Or, like, a robot sent by the government to trick him or something?"

"Of course he'll believe you." Steve chuckled, reaching over and setting his hand on Eddie's knee, squeezing gently.

"You don't know Wayne." Eddie let out his own laugh, shaky and wet. "He's a conspiracy buff. Man's been wearing a tin foil hat ever since he left the military."

Steve rubbed his thumb in a slow arc over the denim. "Baby, he loves you. He stuck around even when we told him you were dead. Even when half the town fled. That's not a man with nowhere else to go, that's a man who wasn't leaving without his kid."

Eddie stuck out his lower lip in an exaggerated pout. A fresh tear slid free and he swiped at it roughly with the back of his hand. "No fair pulling the baby card. You know what that does to me."

"Come on.” Steve unbuckled his seatbelt and leaned across the center console to cup Eddie's face, thumbing away the last wet streak from his cheek. “Let's go see your uncle."

Getting Eddie out of the car and up the front steps took longer than it should have. Eddie was stubborn about accepting help, but Steve had learned by now to offer it in ways that didn't bruise his pride. A steadying hand on his elbow, offered casually. A pace slowed to match Eddie's without comment, as though Steve had simply decided to take in the scenery. By the time they reached the door, Eddie was breathing hard, leaning heavily on his cane, a fine sheen of sweat at his temples.

Steve raised his fist and knocked.

For a handful of seconds there was nothing. Then—footsteps inside. Heavy and measured, accompanied by the scrape of a chain being unlatched and the click of a deadbolt turning over.

The door swung open and Wayne Munson filled the frame.

He was shorter than Steve expected, thin and grizzled, with sun-weathered skin. What little hair remained on his head was going gray at the temples. His eyes, though pale blue where Eddie's were brown, held the same startling depth. He wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, worn-out jeans, and an expression that went through a dozen transformations in rapid succession—confusion, disbelief, fear, then a tentative flicker of hope breaking through everything else.

His mouth worked around words he couldn't seem to force out.

"Hey, Wayne," Eddie said gently.

Wayne let out a strangled sound, half gasp and half sob, and pulled Eddie into his arms.

Steve stepped back, giving them the porch.

Eddie dropped his cane. It clattered against the concrete and neither of them flinched. Eddie clung to his uncle with both hands, fists bunching in the back of Wayne's flannel, and Wayne held him the way you hold something you'd been told was gone forever—fierce and careful and trembling with the effort of believing it was real. Steve could hear the older man murmuring into Eddie's hair, the words too quiet and too private to make out, and Eddie's shoulders began to shake.

Steve looked away. Blinked hard at the chipped concrete walkway, the mailbox, the strip of blue sky visible between rooftops. He busied himself with picking up Eddie's fallen cane, brushing it off, giving them this moment without an audience as best he could.

Eventually they pulled apart. Wayne gripped Eddie's shoulders, holding him at arm's length, his red-rimmed eyes travelling over every visible inch.

"Let me see you."

Eddie stood there and let himself be examined. Wayne's gaze tracked the fading bruises mottling the skin of Eddie's face, the careful way he held himself—slightly hunched, protecting his core—the too-thin frame swimming in clothes Steve had brought from his own closet because Eddie's had been destroyed. The cane. The new lines around Eddie's eyes that hadn't been there a month ago.

"You look like hell, son."

Eddie laughed, the sound watery and cracked and beautiful. "You should've seen me a few weeks ago."

Wayne's attention shifted to Steve then. Those pale, sharp eyes took in everything in a single sweep—the protective way Steve hovered near Eddie's elbow, the ease between them, the cane in Steve's hand that he'd retrieved without a second thought.

"Well," Wayne cleared his throat roughly. "Let's not stand out here all day, boys. Might as well come inside."

Steve glanced around the small living room as they entered. The interior was sparse—temporary housing furniture that clearly came with the place, a few personal items Wayne must have salvaged or acquired since. A battered toolbox by the door. A coffee mug on the side table with the Hawkins Power & Light logo. The afghan draped across the back of the recliner was the only thing that looked like it might have come from the trailer, its crocheted pattern faded and well-loved.

Wayne ushered them toward the couch, a sagging plaid thing that was obviously secondhand, and disappeared into the kitchen before anyone could protest, returning a minute later with three mismatched mugs of coffee and a plate of store-bought cookies.

"So." He settled into the recliner across from them, balancing his mug on the armrest. "You gonna tell me what really happened to you or are you gonna try to blame this on that fake earthquake like those government yahoos?"

Steve exchanged a glance with Eddie. Part of him, the cautious part that had spent years hiding every impossible thing he'd witnessed, wanted to deflect. Make something up. Eddie had been found injured in the woods. Memory loss. The chaos of the earthquake.

Clearly that wasn't going to fly.

But Eddie was already sitting forward, and there was a look in his eyes that Steve recognized. Someone who was done with hiding.

"All of it?" Eddie asked, directing the question at Steve as much as Wayne.

Steve held his gaze for a moment, then gave a small nod.

So they told him—everything.

Not the polished, abbreviated version. Not the version scrubbed clean of the parts that made you sound certifiably insane. The real thing, from the beginning—or at least what Steve knew of it. Eddie took over where his part of the story began. Chrissy. Vecna. His indoctrination into the world of weird when Dustin, Steve, and the others found him hiding out at Rick’s. The bats, and the wounds that had—for all intents and purposes—killed him. Naturally that extended to explaining Steve's ability to see ghosts, inherited through generations of Harringtons who'd kept their own terrible secret. Eddie's time spent as a spirit, unable to touch or be heard by anyone else. The possession. The battle. The gate slamming shut.

Wayne listened without interruption. He didn't flinch, didn't scoff, didn't shake his head. Just sat there in his recliner, coffee growing cold in his hands, sharp eyes moving between the two of them as the tale unfolded. Every now and then his jaw would tighten, or his grip on the mug would shift, but he let them talk.

Even when they finished, the room was quiet for a long time. Long enough for Steve to hear the refrigerator humming in the kitchen and a dog barking somewhere down the street.

Eventually, Wayne set his mug down on the side table with a decisive click.

"That's a hell of a story," he said finally.

Steve's stomach clenched. "Sir, I know it sounds a little—"

"Save it, kid." Wayne held up a hand, his palm rough and calloused. "I believe ya." He let out a long breath through his nose, shaking his head slowly. "God help me, but there's been more than enough weird shit going on in this town the last thirty-some years to make me believe just about anything. Things I've seen with my own eyes that I never could explain. Figured I was losing my marbles half the time." His gaze settled on Eddie, heavy with something too big to name. "At least now I know I wasn't."

Eddie shot Steve a look that plainly said—I told you so.

Steve ignored it, though his shoulders dropped a good two inches with relief.

"Wayne, um, while we’re on the subject of epiphanies and such—" Eddie began, his tone forced-casual but a slight tremor back in his voice. He pressed his palms flat against his thighs, fingers splayed as if to brace himself. "There's something else I should tell you. About me. And about me and Steve. We're—"

"Boy." Wayne cut him off with a soft bark of laughter. "As far as you're concerned, that's not exactly breaking news."

Eddie's mouth fell open, an appalled gasp sounding in his throat.

Wayne's lips twitched upward. "You ain't near as subtle as you think you are. And I'm not near as oblivious as I let on." He pushed himself out of the recliner and crossed the small room to where Steve sat frozen on the couch. "Stand up for a second, would you?"

Steve stood, pulse racing, with absolutely no idea what was about to happen.

Wayne pulled him into a hug.

It wasn't like the rare, stiff embraces his own father had administered over the years, Richard's hand delivering exactly two mechanical pats to Steve's back before pulling away like he'd completed some contractual obligation. This was different in every way. Wayne's arms were solid around him, the embrace firm and unhurried, smelling of coffee and laundry detergent and automotive grease. Steve felt the ground shift beneath him, some wall he'd built up so long ago he'd forgotten it was there giving way.

"Thank you," Wayne said, quiet enough that the words were just for him. "For bringing him back to me."

Steve's eyes burned. He hugged back—too hard probably, his fingers twisting into Wayne's flannel almost as tight as Eddie’s had—and tried to keep his breathing under control. It took more effort than he wanted to admit.

When Wayne finally let go, he kept one hand on Steve's shoulder, steadying him. Like he knew.

"I don't know what your plan was from here on out," Wayne said, with the blunt practicality of a man who didn't waste time dancing around a thing when he could just say it. "But there's plenty of room here if you boys want to stay with me. I get the feeling you won't want to let this one out of your sight." He jerked his head toward Eddie. "And I can't say I blame you. I'm feeling pretty much the same way, so you'd be doing me a favor."

Steve thought about the house in Loch Nora. The empty rooms, the staged furniture, the walls bare of any evidence that a family had ever lived there at all. His parents trapped somewhere outside the quarantine—or maybe not trapped so much as conveniently elsewhere, the way they'd always been. He tried to summon some pull toward it, some sense of obligation or loss, and found nothing. Just the quiet certainty that whatever that house was, it wasn't home. Maybe it never had been.

He looked at Eddie, who was watching him with hopeful, shining eyes, and the answer was the easiest thing he'd ever said.

"Yeah, I'd like that."

Living with the Munsons was nothing like living in the Harrington house.

The place on Cherry Street was small—three shoebox bedrooms, one bathroom, a small eat-in kitchen. The furniture was mismatched castoffs from the temporary housing program, the carpet bore stains of mysterious origin that Steve learned quickly not to investigate, and the pipes produced a symphony of alarming clanks and groans whenever anyone ran the shower.

Steve had never felt more at home.

Wayne gave them the largest bedroom without discussion, moving to one of the smaller rooms himself. The first night, Steve tried to argue, but Wayne had looked at him with knowing eyes and said, "Kid, I've been sleeping on a cot in a trailer for the last ten years before this. There’s two of you and one of me and that room’s got a queen mattress. Just say thank you and let me go to bed.”

So Steve and Eddie shared the room, the bed, the space. They developed a rhythm that settled around them naturally, like something that had always been waiting for them to step into it. Steve handled the morning bandage changes, his fingers growing steadier and more practiced with each day as he cleaned and redressed the healing wounds, whispering reassurances while Eddie bit down on his lip and gripped the edge of the nightstand.

They'd lie in bed at night, Steve curled carefully around Eddie's less-injured side with his nose buried in the dark curls at the nape of Eddie's neck, and talk until one or both of them drifted off. Sometimes about the future—vague, tentative plans that neither of them held too tightly considering their circumstances. Sometimes about the past—stories from before, the lives they'd led as near-strangers in the same small town, orbiting each other without ever really colliding until the universe forced the issue. Sometimes about nothing at all, just the drowsy back-and-forth of two people between kisses.

Wayne worked long shifts at the power plant, one of only a few folks left in town with the know-how to help keep the grid intact. He'd leave before sunrise, his boots heavy on the kitchen linoleum as he poured coffee into a thermos, and oftentimes come home well after dark. But he always made time to check in with them. Always sat down at the kitchen table for dinner, no matter how late or how tired. Always existed in the same space as them with a quiet, steady presence that asked for nothing and offered everything.

The days stretched into weeks.

Eddie's wounds continued to heal gradually, raw angry red softening to the dusky pink of new scar tissue. He needed the wheelchair less, relied on the cane more—and eventually, on a good day, he could cross a room without either, though Steve stayed close at his elbow anyway, pretending he just happened to be going in the same direction. Eddie wasn't fooled but he never called Steve out on it, which Steve suspected was its own quiet form of acceptance.

He could stand for longer periods now, walk farther before the familiar tightness crept into his face. It wasn't fast, and there were bad days when the pain pinned him to the bed, when his body simply refused to cooperate and he'd curl up on his side seething with frustration, Steve beside him always. But the trajectory was clear, even on the hardest days. Forward. Always forward.

Robin visited almost daily, usually bringing Vickie along now. The two girls had grown close in the aftermath of the "earthquake"—Vickie's boyfriend had left town before the quarantine barricades went up, and she'd spent most of her free time since then volunteering at the aid stations alongside Robin, organizing supply drives and sorting donated clothing. According to Robin—delivered in a very deliberate, very casual tone that Steve saw right through instantly—Vickie had broken up with said boyfriend via payphone not long after the last barricade went up. Something about distance making the heart grow fonder of other people.

The kids came by whenever they could, which grew less frequent once the schools reopened. They usually arrived as a pack, tumbling through the front door in a tornado of overlapping voices and dropped backpacks, filling the small living room with noise and life and the distinct smell of teenage boy. Wayne would retreat to the kitchen to make snacks, shaking his head with a barely concealed smile.

Max came too, navigating the—familiar but also completely different—space carefully with her new white cane, sunglasses protecting her scarred eyes. Lucas was always at her side. Patient, attentive, never doing for her what she could do herself but always close enough to catch her if needed. They never did find her mother. Susan Mayfield-Hargrove was among the dozens who remained unaccounted for. Not confirmed dead, but listed among the lost. Max was living with the Sinclairs now, sharing a room with Erica who pretended to be put out but obviously loved it.

It was a strange kind of existence—trapped in a quarantined town with the military patrolling the streets and no end in sight. But somehow, they made it work.

June arrived with humid heat and the promise of graduation.

Eddie had been working with a tutor, a retired English teacher named Mrs. Adams who volunteered to help him make up the classwork he'd missed. Between being wanted for murder, dying, being possessed by an interdimensional Eldritch horror, and a lengthy hospital stay, he'd fallen a bit behind. Understandably.

But he'd caught up. Through sheer stubbornness, a surprising aptitude for writing that Steve probably should have guessed given the whole Dungeon Master thing, and an unusually sympathetic Principal Higgins—who seemed thrilled to have at least one piece of good news to deliver that semester—Eddie was going to graduate.

The ceremony was held outside on the football field. Folding chairs set up in uneven rows and a makeshift stage constructed roughly where the fifty-yard line should be. It was a smaller ceremony than usual. So many families had fled before the quarantine, so many students simply gone. But the people who remained showed up in force, filling the bleachers with a quiet, stubborn resilience that felt distinctly Hawkins.

Steve sat between Wayne and Dustin, scanning the rows of graduates in their maroon caps and gowns. He spotted Robin first—her gown slightly too short, hem riding above her ankles as she talked animatedly to Vickie beside her, hands gesturing so wildly she nearly knocked the cap off the girl in front of them. Nancy sat straight-backed and poised a few seats down, Jonathan on her other side looking like his borrowed dress shirt was trying to strangle him. And there, near the end of the row, sat Eddie.

His wheelchair rested folded near the side of the stage—they'd decided he'd use it for the actual crossing, since standing in line for an extended period was still tough. But for now he was seated with his classmates, frizzy curls escaping from beneath his cap, grinning at something the person next to him had said.

Steve's heart felt dangerously full.

The ceremony began. The principal gave a speech about resilience and community that managed to be both generic and somehow genuinely moving. The valedictorian talked about moving forward even if college wasn't an option for any of them due to the lockdown, and finding hope in dark times, her voice only wavering when she mentioned the classmates who wouldn't be walking with them that day.

Then they started calling names.

Jonathan went first of their group, looking profoundly relieved to get it over with and escape back to his chair. Then Robin, who crossed the stage with bouncing, barely-contained energy, managing to catch the toe of her gown on the last step but recovering beautifully with a dramatic curtsy that drew laughter from the crowd. Steve and Dustin wolf-whistled.

Then—Edward Munson.

Robin appeared from the side of the stage, pushing Eddie's wheelchair. He sat tall in it, cap slightly askew, his smile so wide and unguarded that it transformed his entire face. They crossed the stage together—Robin handling the chair with exaggerated care, gesturing to the audience as if presenting royalty. When they reached center stage, Steve shot to his feet.

Dustin was already there beside him, clapping so hard his palms must have stung. Wayne was up like a shot too, then Lucas and Erica and Will and Mike and everyone who'd ever fought alongside Eddie or called him a friend.

Slowly, others joined. It started with polite, scattered applause from those who recognized the name—Munson—the boy they'd whispered about, called a dangerous murderer. The one who turned out to be innocent. But the sound built as more people rose from their seats, everyone in the stands was on their feet. Steve wanted to believe it was an apology of sorts, the surviving remnants of a town that had turned on one of their own, offering the only restitution they could. A small thing. Not nearly enough. But something.

Eddie looked stunned. His wide eyes swept across the crowd, shining and overwhelmed, and his lips parted. Robin squeezed his shoulder from behind the chair, bending to say something in his ear that made him let out a startled laugh.

Steve clapped until his hands ached, smiling so big his face hurt. Beside him, Wayne was wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand, not bothering to hide it.

Eddie accepted his diploma, shook the principal's hand—holding on for a beat longer than protocol, saying something that made Higgins frown deeply—and Robin rolled him to the far side of the stage.

Nancy was the last of their party, graceful and composed, accepting her diploma with a firm handshake and tight smile.

After the ceremony, they found each other. Eddie was out of the wheelchair, leaning on his cane with his gown draped over one arm, cap pushed back on his head at a rakish angle. Wayne reached him first, pulling him into another one of those tight, full-bodied hugs.

"Proud of you, kid," Steve heard him say, rough and low.

Then it was Steve's turn. He wrapped his arms carefully around Eddie, one hand cradling the back of his head, and Eddie melted into him with a long exhale, his face pressed into the curve of Steve's neck.

"We did it," Eddie murmured against his skin.

"You did it," Steve corrected. "I just hovered nearby and looked pretty."

"You did a lot more than that." Eddie pulled back enough to meet his eyes. "You kept me alive, Sweetheart. In every way."

Steve wanted to kiss him. But they were surrounded, and while their group knew about them and was good with it, the rest of Hawkins was another story. So he squeezed Eddie's hand instead, brief but firm, their fingers locking together for a single, charged moment before letting go.

Max stood slightly apart from the chaos, one hand gripping her folded cane, the other tucked into the crook of Lucas's elbow. He guided her closer, murmured something Steve couldn't hear, and she reached out until her fingers found Eddie's forearm.

"Congrats, Tiny Tim," she said, her lips curving.

Eddie let out a surprised bark of laughter, his free hand coming up to cover hers. "Thanks, Mr. Magoo."

Max's grin sharpened. "Too far."

"You started it."

"And I'll finish it. Don't test me, Munson."

It was only a few weeks later when Robin burst through the front door on Cherry Street without knocking—a habit she'd picked up alarmingly fast—and announced that she had found them all jobs.

"The radio station," she said, barely pausing for breath. "WSQK The Squawk. Building's been abandoned but it should have everything we need. People need information and music. The aid office needs a way to get announcements out that isn't stapling flyers to telephone poles. I want us to run it."

The three of them looked at each other. Steve could practically see the gears turning in Eddie's head already.

"I mean," Steve said slowly, "I don't know anything about radio."

"You know how to talk to people," Robin countered. "And you're weirdly good at staying calm when everything's falling apart, which is useful in practically any line of work!"

"And I," Eddie added, a slow grin spreading across his face, "know more about music than any human being should be legally allowed to."

Robin pointed at him excitedly. "Not true in the slightest, but I love the energy."

Within a week they had the station up and running.

Robin handled mornings—community announcements, supply schedules, school updates. Steve took afternoons, playing requests and reading dedications, chatting with callers who just needed to feel like someone was listening.

And Eddie took the evenings.

The first time he went on air, Steve stood outside the booth and listened to that voice—the one that had commanded a cafeteria lunch table, talked him through the most intimate moments of his life, and screamed defiance at an unbeatable monster from inside his own hijacked body. It filled the station and spilled out through every radio in quarantined Hawkins.

It felt like he was born for this.

Eddie called it The Witching Hour. He played metal, classic rock, and even some punk, mixing in deep cuts nobody had heard of, all while weaving in stories about band members who didn’t get along, or the backstories of rock’s most famous front-men. It was a surprisingly popular show considering the audience.

Steve sat in the booth with him most nights, feet propped on the desk, watching Eddie light up behind his microphone the same way he must have lit up behind his DM screen. On one particular evening, Eddie caught him staring and grinned, squeezing his hand before leaning back to the mic.

"This next one goes out to someone special," Eddie said, his voice dropping into that low, warm register that still made Steve's skin prickle. "You know who you are."

The opening chords of something slow and heavy and achingly beautiful filled the booth.

Steve closed his eyes and let it wash over him.

Late one night, they lay tangled together in the dark of their room.

Eddie's head rested on Steve's chest, rising and falling gently with each breath. Steve's fingers worked through his curls with absent, unhurried care. The window was cracked open, letting in the sound of crickets and the distant rumble of a military patrol making its nightly rounds. The sheets smelled like cheap detergent, and Eddie's skin was warm everywhere it pressed against his own.

"Hey," Eddie murmured, half-asleep, his voice a drowsy rumble against Steve's sternum.

"Hmm?"

"Wayne asked me something today. While you were at the station."

Steve's hand paused. "Yeah?"

"He asked if I was happy." Eddie tilted his head, resting his chin on Steve's chest to look up at him. In the dim light, his expression was stripped of all its usual armor—no bravado, no deflection. Just him. "I told him I didn't have a word for it. That happy wasn't big enough."

Steve's breath caught. He cupped the side of Eddie's face, thumb tracing the line of his jaw.

"I told him that for the first time in my life," Eddie went on quietly, "I feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be."

Steve kissed him. Slow and soft and unhurried, the way they'd learned to kiss now that urgency and fear weren't driving every touch. When they broke apart, he rested his forehead against Eddie's and just breathed.

"I know the feeling," Steve murmured.

Eddie made a contented sound, settling back against his chest. A comfortable silence stretched between them, warm and full, before Eddie spoke again—barely above a whisper this time.

"I love you."

They'd said it before. Eddie had shouted it across the impossible distance between them at the Creel house, when they'd both thought it might be the end. Whispered it in the hospital room, Steve desperate and sleepless, Eddie hoarse and drugged and barely conscious. But this was different. This was said the way you say something so true it doesn't need volume or urgency or the threat of loss to give it weight. Quiet. Simple. Sure.

Like the sun coming up. Like breathing. Like a fact of the universe that had simply been waiting for them to notice it.

"Love you too," Steve whispered back, pressing his lips to the top of Eddie's head.

Outside, Hawkins rested under military curfew, streetlights casting pools of sickly yellow light along empty roads. Somewhere deep in the woods, Hopper and El were tucked away in a cabin that smelled like pine sap and old books. The Upside Down was still intact, the Mind Flayer lurking within it or whatever other dark dimension it had retreated to. There were battles ahead, Steve was sure of it, fights they'd have to face.

But right now, in this room, in this bed, Steve had everything he needed.

It was enough.

For now, it was more than enough.

This fic is now part of a series! When Shadows Held The World In Place Please subscribe to the series if you'd like to know when the sequel starts posting!

Thanks as always to the wonderful @penny00dreadful for your incredible beta work and cheerleading 💜

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Buck was sobbing, choked hiccups of breath making his whole body tremble. He was sitting in his jeep, trying his damnedest to simultaneously let everything out in privacy while also composing himself.

He had to go pickup Chris. It had already been told to him, that Eddie had- for some fucking reason he had changed his will. Eddie had never even told him! Of course, when he got the news from the lawyer he instantly accepted.

But right now he was alone and breaking and found himself repeating, “it should have been me.” Buck had whispered it once before, alone in the hospital holding Eddie’s lifeless hand. “It should have been me.”

He managed to breathe and calm himself enough, he needed to go and get his son, they both needed each other right now.

———

They were sitting on the couch, Buck crying more than Christopher. It was supposed to be the other way around, he’s the adult here! But Chris was hugging him, telling him it was going to be okay.

Buck had to get up, had to do something other than just cry. So he offered to make some dinner, heading into the kitchen and leaving Chris to himself for a minute.

As soon as he’s reached the kitchen, the weight of everything tripled. He was staring into the fridge and let out a pained “why me?”

He never expected an answer.

The voice was Christopher’s… but the cadence? The strength?

“Because, Evan…”

It made an ice cold shiver run down his back, he turned and his son was standing in the door, but his face was creased, serious in a way a veteran could manage but not his little…

“Chris? Everything alri-“

“You were out there saying that it should have been you.”

Buck could just stare, his mouth slightly agape, speechless. There’s no way Chris could have known that he had said that.

“You act like you are expendable, but you’re wrong.”

And then, just as quick as it happened, Chris slumped back against the wall, a confused look on his face.

“Buck…?”

“I’ve got you, Buddy!” Of course, he instantly scooped up his kid, holding him close as his eyes scanned the room, there was no way but he couldn’t shake what he knew had just happened.

Most religions of the world certainly seem to think so. They all have different names for it. Heaven, Valhalla, Zion, Elysium, and so on, but they all mean the same thing. Eternal paradise where your soul can be at rest.

Granted, not everyone believed in that sort of thing. While Agnostics don’t quite know where they are going, they are quite confident that they are going somewhere. Atheists, as far as they know, just wink out of existence at their time of death, but they are perfectly fine with that.

However, no matter which theory or religion you believe in, absolutely no faith in the history of mankind has ever described the afterlife as a brightly lit waiting room.

That was why when Eddie Munson found himself passing through a revolving gate into aforementioned brightly lit waiting room, he blinked a few times in surprise.

Last thing he knew, he was badly hurt and laying on the ground, looking up at Dustin and giving him instructions to take over Hellfire. He remembered being certain he was about to die, but then he was here. Eddie had no memory of getting from there to here.

The revolving gate whacked him in the back then, pushing him a few steps further into the room. He turned around to see what was outside but couldn’t see anything beyond the gate except for darkness and fog. Above the door was a lit sign that stated, No Exit. Indeed, there was no way to get back through the revolving tines of the gate. It was one way only.

Turning back to the main room, he finally took in his surroundings.

A few feet ahead of him was a small sign on top of a pole. It said Administration with an arrow pointing to the left, and Waiting Room just under that with an arrow pointing right.

Looking to his right, the waiting area reminded him of an ER. There were multiple rows of empty chairs, a few end tables and coffee tables stacked with magazines. and a coffee service cart in the corner, which made the room vaguely smell like coffee.

Looking to his left, on the other hand, reminded him of the DMV. The counter serving as the desk area was behind privacy glass and had five sliding windows. Eddie could just make out a shadow behind each window, indicating someone was at the desk behind it. Ropes attached to stanchions turned the open floor area into a little rope maze leading to the desk, which encouraged orderly queuing. A little ticket dispenser stood on a little pole at the back of the line, encouraging people to take a number before getting in line.

And, just like DMV and ER waiting rooms, soft elevator muzak was playing through the overhead speakers.

While the room was perfectly normal, with items and furniture typical for all waiting rooms, it all seemed distorted somehow. Eddie couldn’t quite put his finger on why, but everything was slightly warped, like it was just a step to the side of what it should look like.

A handwritten sign was taped to the pole underneath the printed one. Eddie stepped closer to read it.

Please check-in with Admitting first upon arrival. We cannot be held responsible if you go to Waiting first and end up sitting there for 27 and 9/18ths of a year. - Management

While being in a waiting room is never fun, that seemed like an oddly precise exaggeration. Eddie passed it off as someone in the office having a bad day from being on the receiving end of one too many ass chewings.

As directed, Eddie went to the Admissions area, taking a ticket from the small machine before following the path laid out with the ropes. He thought about hopping them since he was literally the only person in here, but stopped himself. He still didn’t know where he was or how he got here, so being cautious seemed like a good idea, especially after everything else he had just gone through.

Once he got to the head of the line, Eddie finally looked at the ticket he was holding.

4, the print on the ticket said.

Eddie looked up from the ticket to a glowing red sign above the counter.

Now Serving: 3, it said.

A few minutes passed, then there was a ding from the sign as the number changed from 3 to 4 and one of the windows slid open with a sudden bang that made Eddie jump.

“Next!” a loud voice called from it.

Eddie started to hurry over to the window but came to a sudden stop when he looked at the woman sitting behind the desk and his brain processed what he was seeing.

She was missing half of her face and part of her head.

Eddie stared at her, horrified. He felt a scream starting to rise up in his throat, an icy feeling of fear gripping him.

But then the woman did something so unexpected, it surprised him out of his fear.

She rolled her remaining eye with a loud huff and waved Eddie over impatiently.

“Come on, come on,” she said, her voice bored sounding. “I haven’t got all day.”

Eddie blinked, then slowly stepped up in front of the desk. Despite how she looked, he was able to understand the woman clearly. There was no lisp, gargle or anything of that nature when she spoke, just a hint of a Jersey accent. On top of that, she seemed perfectly at ease, not in any sort of pain.

Regardless of how realistic it looked; Eddie decided it had to be makeup. Really, really fucking good makeup, but makeup nonetheless. It was the only thing that made sense.

“Name?” the woman asked, turning her attention to what looked like a typewriter hooked up to a small TV.

“Um,” Eddie said, eyes darting from the weird piece of equipment. “Eddie Munson.”

“Just Eddie, Edward or something else?”

“Edward.”

The woman started typing then on the strange device. Eddie watched curiously as green lines of text appeared on the black screen as she typed. This must be one of those new computer things he’d heard about. He hadn’t seen one before since Hawkins High’s newest technology was still ancient as all hell.

“Birthday?” she asked.

“May 15, 1966,” Eddie answered.

The woman typed some more.

“Place of origin?”

“Hawkins, Indiana.”

The woman typed again and then began staring at the computer like she was waiting on something. Eddie glanced at the computer and saw the screen was dark now except for a blinking green cursor. A second later, some text appeared.

No records found.

The woman sighed.

“I swear, why do they give us all this new technology if they don’t have all of our information in it yet? Easier, they said. Pfft.”

The woman pushed her chair back, yanked open a filing cabinet under the desk and started rifling through the files in it.

Eddie got a better look at her then. Whatever costume party they were having up here, she had clearly gone all out for it. She was dressed as a dead homecoming queen, complete with long, frilly pink dress, pink heels, an elaborate crown over a partially fallen up-do, and a banner across her chest that stated OCHS Homecoming ‘71.

It was very creative, though he couldn’t tell how she was supposed to have died. Some sort of head injury, for sure, but that’s as far as he could guess.

“Ah, here we go,” she pulled a file out of the cabinet, closed it and scooted back up to the desk. “Here are today’s scheduled departures. Give me just a moment to find you.”

Eddie waited as she began to skim the papers in the file one by one. There were quite a few to go through, and it took a while to look over each one. At a glance, every page contained a rather comprehensive list of names, dates and locations.

Finally, after looking over the last page, the woman looked at Eddie with a furrow in the middle of her forehead.

“And you’re sure you are Edward Munson, May 15, 1966, Hawkins, Indiana?”

“Yeah, I think I know who I am,” he said, laughing a little.

However, the Homecoming Queen didn’t seem to find it quite so amusing. She raised an eyebrow at him with a stoic expression.

“This it can be an extremely traumatic experience for some,” she scolded Eddie, and his smile faded. “Depending on your reason for being here, you may not quite remember who you are at first.” Then she gestured to the ruined side of her head. “Took me over a week to get my bearings.”

Eddie mumbled an apology, even though he didn’t know what he was apologizing for. The woman’s face relaxed and she flipped the folder closed.

“I don’t have you in today’s file, so you may be in one of our Potentially Early files,” she said, then looked him up and down. “I can already tell I don’t need to check the Terminal Cases file. I’m going to assume the Unexpected Animal Attack file then?”

Eddie quirked his head at her in confusion, and the Homecoming Queen gestured at all of him. He looked down at himself and staggered backwards a few steps in shock.

This was the first time he had actually paid attention to himself. His Hellfire shirt was all torn to shreds through the torso and bloody. The wounds underneath it were still open, though they had completely stopped bleeding. He reached up in a near panic to feel both sides of his neck. His fingers were met with similar feeling wounds, and he quickly jerked them away. Oddly, none of them hurt despite the extent of the damage. They just kind of felt numb and a bit tingly, sort of like when his leg would fall asleep. Not exactly painful, but not exactly pleasant either.

Eddie looked back up to the woman and slowly nodded in answer to her questions. Technically, the Demobats were animals.

She nodded in acknowledgement, then swapped the file she had with a different one in the cabinet and started going through it the same way.

As she did that, Eddie’s head was reeling.

His last memories of Dustin, suddenly being here, the way Homecoming Queen looked, the way he looked…it all spun together in his mind to form the beginnings of a conclusion.

“Am I dead?” Eddie asked suddenly.

Homecoming Queen slowly lifted her gaze back to him, fixing him with a weird look before she slowly nodded her head. Then she turned her attention back to the file.

While Eddie had expected to die soon while he said goodbye to Dustin, the confirmation felt like a punch to the stomach.

And also, somehow, severely underwhelming.

After hearing this very topic debated virtually his entire life, Eddie never was sure what to believe in as far as god or the afterlife was concerned. But it always seemed to him like if there was something afterwards, there would be something big to let you know of the change. Kind of like puberty or getting old. One minute you’re fine, the next you’re a mess. It seemed like death would be the same way. Not just…one second, you’re dying, then next you’re in a waiting room. Was this really the afterlife?

“Hmm,” Homecoming Queen said, startling Eddie out of his thoughts.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re not in Unexpected Animal Attacks either,” she said, putting the file back in its proper order. “That must mean you’re really early.”

“Early?” he asked, blinking.

She nodded, replacing the file back into the cabinet.

“It happens sometimes,” she said. “As they say, shit happens. The sisters can only predict so much with so many fates in their hands. I’ll need to have the Librarians pull your Book of Life and check the date of your scheduled departure. Once I know when you were actually supposed to be here, I can go from there and see about getting you a placement.”

Eddie continued to stare at her, confusion passing over his features.

“Placement?” he asked. “Scheduled departure? Librarians? This all sounds way more like office work than I would have expected.”

Homecoming Queen chuckled, a bit of a smile her half face. There was a bit of a glimmer in her eye that gave away she saw a level of humor in his words that he didn’t quite get.

“Tell me about it,” she said, then shook her head a bit. “Luckily, you have your whole future in death ahead of you. Me? I’m permanently assigned right here to this very desk.”

“An afterlife behind a desk?” Eddie said, wrinkling his nose. “That sounds more like hell to me.”

The Homecoming Queen smiled at Eddie again, this time with a wizened look before she slightly nodding her head in agreement.

“If I knew then what I know now…” she said, letting her voice trail off, before shaking her head. “Anyhow. Please have a seat. It may take some time to find and pull your Book, but I’ll call you back up here once they’ve sent up the information I need. But, in the meantime.”

She pushed her chair away from her desk over to a shelf holding several a stacks of books. She took one and scooted back over to the window, where she slid the book across the counter to Eddie. He looked down, reading the name on the cover.

Handbook for the Recently Deceased.

“Now is a good time to start reading up,” she said, then tapped the cover with one finger. “Start from the beginning. Don’t skim it like some people do. Trust me, it’ll answer most of your questions, teach you about your new reality, and it will give some starting pointers.”

Eddie nodded and thanked her. As he was turning away from the counter, Homecoming Queen turned to the phone on her desk, hit a button on it, then picked up the receiver.

“Hey, it’s Diana from Admin,” he heard her saying into the phone as he was walking away. “I need the Book for Edward Munson, May 15, 1966, Hawkins, Indiana pulled for departure verification. He’s early, possibly very early, so he should still be categorized under-“

Eddie didn’t catch the rest of it as his attention was caught by two people coming in through the revolving gate. He did a double take, then quickly averted his eyes. They were in worse states than both him and the Homecoming Queen combined. He figured at this point it was impolite to stare at the other dead people. He kept his head down and made for a chair on the farthest end of the waiting room. A quick glance up showed them reading the signs and then heading for Admitting.

And so, the wait began.

A few more people trickled into the waiting room through the gate. Eddie couldn’t help but people watch as they all went to get checked in. Each new person that walked in sent a small jolt of shock through his system. Every single one looked like they had been through a horrific accident. It got easier to look at them without wanting to stare as time went on.

But then the trickle of dead souls soon turned into a steady stream as more and more people began coming through the gate.

It didn’t really dawn on Eddie that this might be an odd occurrence, even when he started recognizing people from around town. It wasn’t anyone he knew personally, mainly just those he largely saw in passing, such as the night clerk from the only 24-hour gas station in Hawkins and the waitress from Benny’s that Eddie usually flirted with. They were both young, in their late teens at minimum, so it was strange seeing them in the afterlife. Both looked like they had been through major accidents. Then again, everyone that came in looked like that to varying degrees, as if a lot of people in Hawkins had suddenly become a fatal level of accident prone.

He was starting to wonder about it when more people came in that he recognized. These weren’t just service workers he encountered in day-to-day life; these were people he knew on various levels. There were a few of his fellow students, two of his teachers and random people he had seen at The Hideout, among others. At one point, Eddie thought he heard Max calling for Lucas, but when he went to look for her to keep her company, he couldn’t find her.

A wheelchair came through the gate just then, one of those old-fashioned ones from the early 20th century. This wasn’t a strange sight as several people had come through in wheelchairs when their injuries were too severe to let them move about on their own. Even though the chairs were manual, they seemed to have a mind of their own at first. They self-propelled themselves and their passenger through the gate, then would wheel themselves off to the side out of the way. This is where they would stay unless they wheeled themselves somewhere else or someone helped them.

While he hadn’t recognized any of the others who came through in a chair, this particular wheelchair contained none other than Eddie’s tormentor, Jason Carver.

At first, Eddie couldn’t help but feel a little smug. If he had to be here, it seemed somehow fitting that Jason would be too. He had no plans to go rub it in his face though, the knowledge that Jason got his was more than-

Then the wheelchair re positioned itself and he forgot all about his spiteful thoughts when he saw the state Jason was in. Saying he had been cut in half was putting it mildly. It looked like he had been melted through around his middle. The top half of Jason’s body was sitting in his own lap.

Eddie was still trying to process this when Jason looked down and saw for himself the condition, he was in.

Everyone who passed through the waiting room had a different reaction to the revelation they were dead. Some took it well and seemed unbothered, while others openly sobbed or sat in shocked silence. But Jason was the first to openly scream in abject terror. He started screaming in terror and panic. He started to trash in his chair in his panic. That was when he discovered all of his limbs still worked just fine despite being separated. This seemed to freak him out even more, and his screams took a higher pitched, frantic tone.

The other people in the waiting room were not pleased with this.

“Pipe down!” one person yelled.

“Be glad you still have legs!” someone in a different wheelchair cried.

“We’re all dead! You ain’t special!” another person scolded.

If Jason heard them, he didn’t acknowledge them, too lost in his own panic attack to pay attention to anything else.

It was at that particular moment that Eddie realized something.

Despite everything that had happened, despite everything he had been put through at Jason’s hands, from the bullying when he was growing up to recent events, Eddie couldn’t just sit there and do nothing when the man desperately needed help. Jason Carver was an asshole, yes, but not even assholes deserve to go through something so traumatic like this alone.

Before he could think about it more, Eddie was on his feet, quickly making his way through the now crowded waiting room over to the Captain of the basketball team.

“Hey man, hey hey,” Eddie said with a gentle tone once he’d reached Jason, hesitating briefly before putting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, everything’s gonna be fine, you just have to breathe through it. It’s shocking, I know, but try to breathe.”

It seemed ironic telling a dead person to breathe, but that was a train of thought for another time.

Jason’s head snapped up, eyes widening even more when he saw who was talking to him.

“Y-you!” Jason said, sputtering angrily. “Why, of all the-“

Then he stopped, his glare meeting Eddie’s sympathetic gaze. His face went blank for a few seconds before a look of dawning realization came over it.

“I-it wasn’t you…was it?”

Eddie slowly shook his head. Jason stared at him for a moment before a look of horror came over his face.

Death has a way of bringing someone clarity. They see what should have been obvious in life. It was one of those little twists the universe likes to throw at you when it’s too late to change anything or make it right.

“I-I,” Jason stuttered, a look of deep shame coming to his face.

It was at that moment Eddie found himself understanding Jason, too. Their pain and fear in life really hadn’t been much different from each other’s, but they were worlds apart socially and never would have seen that on their own. So, they hated each other instead.

Eddie waved off whatever apology Jason was trying to give.

“Water under the bridge,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter now anyway.” Eddie looked around at all the people occupying the large space and then gestured to all of them. “Henry Creel made sure of that.”

Jason looked at Eddie for a moment, then let his gaze sweep around the room. It was the first time he had really paid attention to the other people in the waiting room. His jaw dropped. Then he turned back to Eddie and got a really good look at him. He slowly looked him over, then back down at himself, before meeting Eddie’s gaze again.

“We didn’t survive the earthquake,” Jason said quietly. “Did we?”

Eddie shook his head, then went around to the back of the chair to start pushing Jason over to Admitting.