#stangerthings 4

A/N: Thank you for all the love on part one! It means so much. If you haven't read part one yet, obviously, check it out!

PART ONE LINK:

"If you wanna save her, you're gonna have to trust a dead guy."

Season 5 spoilers:

Y/N was never meant to enter the Upside Down but when Holly Wheeler is dragged into it by a monster, she follows without hesitation. Now she's trapped in a rotting reflection of Hawkins… and the only one who can help her is a boy who should be dead.

Eddie Munson isn't human anymore. And Holly is running out of time.

Word Count: 2370

Stranger Things fanfiction | Dark Eddie | Angst | Horror | AU

 Chapter Two

March 1986

The woods behind Hawkins smelled like wet leaves and rust. I stayed close enough to Chrissy that our sleeves brushed when we walked. The forest felt wrong in a way I couldn’t name — too quiet, too heavy — like the air itself was holding its breath. The sky hung low and grey through bare branches, the kind of afternoon that looked like it forgot how to be daylight.

“I don’t like this,” I muttered. “Why’d he want to meet all the way out here?”

She hugged her cheer uniform tighter. “He said it was safer.”

That didn’t help. Eddie Munson was renowned for being the go-to supply for drugs in Hawkins. His freakish persona didn’t help either. After cheer practice, I had walked past his so-called Hellfire Club more times than I could count, always pretending not to notice the way they looked like they belonged anywhere but Hawkins.

We reached a small clearing, the leaves flattened like someone had been pacing there. A figure leaned against a rotting log like he owned the place, dark hair wild and jacket slung carelessly over his shoulders. When he saw us, his mouth pulled into a crooked grin.

Eddie Munson. He didn’t look dangerous. He looked… almost kind.

He greeted us in his usual way — light, sarcastic, like he was trying to make the whole thing feel less severe than it really was. I stayed quiet, watching him instead of listening, paying attention to the way his eyes flicked to the shadows between the trees and then back to Chrissy, like something worse than nerves sat behind her expression.

Chrissy didn’t waste time with small talk. She told him she needed something to help — something more substantial than whatever fear she’d been swallowing down at school. Her voice shook, and she laughed once like she wanted to pretend she wasn’t terrified. Eddie noticed and the joking stopped.

He listened instead. Really listened.

Not like a dealer, not like the “freak” everyone whispered about, but like someone who was trying to understand something he couldn’t see. He asked what she meant in a quieter voice, and when Chrissy glanced nervously at the woods, he understood immediately.

“I don’t want to talk about it here,” she said softly. “Can we go somewhere else? Somewhere normal.”

Eddie nodded without hesitation. “My place. The trailer. We can go later.”

Chrissy hesitated. “Tonight?” she asked. “After the game?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “I’ve got Hellfire, but after that, come by. I’ll be there.”

Her shoulders finally sagged in relief, like someone had loosened a tightly wound string inside her chest.

“Okay,” she murmured. “Tonight.”

Eddie reached into his jacket and handed her a small wrapped bundle. “Just something light for the game,” he said. “Nothing crazy. Just enough to keep you steady.”

She took it with a grateful nod.

“I should go,” she said quickly, looking down the path as though the woods might collapse if she stayed any longer. “They’ll be looking for me.”

She turned to me and squeezed my hand. “I’ll see you after, okay?”

I nodded, still trying to process everything that had just happened.

Chrissy hurried off through the trees, her footsteps fading until the forest swallowed them whole.

Then it was just Eddie Munson and I, awkwardly in the woods.

The silence stretched between us, thick and buzzing.

Eddie rocked on his heels and scratched the back of his neck. “Your friend’s not exactly subtle when she’s terrified,” he muttered, watching the path she’d disappeared down. “Whatever’s going on with her… it’s not just normal stress crap.”

I nodded quietly. “She’s been like that for weeks. Like she’s running from something none of us can see.”

Eddie exhaled slowly, his gaze still fixed on the trees as if Chrissy might suddenly come running back. Then, like flipping a switch, he straightened and glanced at me sideways, one corner of his mouth twitching.

“So,” he said casually, “you seriously don’t remember me?”

I blinked. “Remember you… how?”

He made a dramatic face, clutching at his chest like I had personally wounded him. “Wow. That hurts. I was convinced I was unforgettable.”

I frowned, trying to search my memory. “I mean, I know of you,” I admitted. “But… no. I don’t think we’ve ever really talked.”

Eddie scoffed, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, and leaned back against the log, arms crossed casually. “Yeah, because the last time we hung out, we weren’t exactly… high school age,” he said, tilting his head as if trying to jog a memory. His eyes scanned me with an intensity that made my stomach flip, like he was searching for something buried deep beneath my own recollections. Then, suddenly, the memory hit him. “You used to steal the swings from me at the park on Maple Street. Pigtails. Purple backpack. Always had a notebook you were scribbling in.” His voice was casual, but there was an unmistakable note of amusement and recognition beneath it, as if unearthing a long-lost secret. My chest tightened, and my heartbeat stuttered, lurching forward into the past before I could even grasp it.

“Eddie, I—” I began, my voice faltering, trying to place the boy he was describing in the fragments of memory scattered across my childhood.

“You cried when I scraped my knee trying to jump off the monkey bars,” he continued, deadpan, as if stating plain facts, yet there was a soft edge beneath the humor. “And then you told me I was ‘dramatic’ and ‘would survive.’ Which, honestly? Still checks out.” Something warm and electric spread through me at the recollection, a sharp contrast to the damp chill of the woods pressing in from every side. I could almost feel the coarse metal of the slide under my small hands, the squeak of rusted chains as I swung too high, the uneven seesaw tipping dangerously when we tried to race across it. I could see him then, a boy with wild hair and scraped knees, arguing with me over nonsense that had seemed like the most important thing in the world at the time. 

“…You’re Maple Park Eddie?” I breathed, my voice barely above the whisper of leaves stirred by the wind.

His face broke into a grin, unguarded and real, and I saw it — the same mischievous spark that had made him unforgettable back then. “There she is,” he said simply, as if the recognition between us was a bridge stretched across the years. I laughed softly, disbelief flooding me as I remembered more: the time he had toppled off his bike racing down the hill, landing in the dirt, arms and knees bleeding, and how I had yelled at him like some miniature parental figure while simultaneously laughing at his misfortune. 

“You ate dirt trying to race your bike down the hill,” I said, the memory vivid in my mind.

“And you yelled at me like a mother,” he shot back, smirking despite himself. “I was nine and already being emotionally attacked by a five-year-old.” I shook my head, a small, helpless smile tugging at my lips. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you,” I admitted softly.

“Well, to be fair,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the jacket and dark hair that marked him as the Eddie Munson everyone whispered about, “I’ve undergone what you might call… a dramatic character redesign.” For a brief moment, the woods didn’t feel so heavy. The weight of leaves, moss, and shadows pressing down around us softened, replaced by the warmth of memories I had forgotten but hadn’t lost. It wrapped around us, and for a second, I could almost pretend the forest was just a park, the chill of early spring no longer threatening.

Eddie’s voice softened, quieter now, almost vulnerable. “You moved away not long after. One day you were there. Then… you weren’t.”

“My dad got transferred,” I said, my voice low, almost shy. “We didn’t move back until middle school.”

He nodded, as if the simple explanation settled something he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding onto. “Guess I just assumed you’d forgotten.”

I looked at him then, really looked, past the leather jacket, past the reputation, past the boy Hawkins had already decided was a lost cause. There was something else there, something familiar, something I remembered clearly. “I forgot your face,” I admitted softly. “Not… you.”

Eddie swallowed, and for the first time since I’d known of Eddie Munson, he didn’t look like the loud, untouchable town freak. He looked like that boy who had scraped his knee at Maple Park, who had argued and laughed and insisted he could grow wings, who had been ordinary and human and right there in the sunshine with me.

I gave a slight tip of my head, the faintest nod, before turning on my heels to follow the path Chrissy had taken. My foot caught on a fallen branch hidden under the damp leaves, and I stumbled, twisting slightly as I tried to catch myself.

“Watch your step, Prom Queen,” Eddie called after me, his voice teasing again, carrying the warmth of familiarity that somehow made the cold woods feel less empty.

November 1987

“Watch your step, Prom Queen,” Eddie hissed out in the darkness. My eyes strained as the tried to watch for dips in the unstable ground, or branches.

“I must be dead,” I whisper to myself. That was the only sense to come from this, perhaps a gas leak and I was dreaming. Eddie stopped in his tracks turning to me.

“Watch your step, Prom Queen,” Eddie hissed in the darkness. My eyes strained as I tried to make out dips in the unstable ground or grasping branches that reached for my ankles like they were alive.

“I must be dead,” I whispered to myself. That was the only explanation my brain could come up with — maybe a gas leak, maybe a dream, maybe my mind finally snapping under the weight of everything. “This can’t be real.”

Eddie stopped walking so suddenly I nearly ran into him. He turned, the faint blue-violet glow from the dead sky outlining his face in sharp angles and shadows that didn’t belong there. “Trust me,” he said quietly, and this time there wasn’t even a hint of humor in his voice, “you’d know if you were dead.”

Something in the way he said it made my stomach twist.

Not dramatic.Not scary. Just… certain.

Before I could ask what that meant, a noise echoed deeper in the forest  low and wet, like something large shifting its weight. Eddie swore under his breath and grabbed my wrist, tugging me forward. His grip was firm, grounding, real enough to make my heart pound harder instead of easing it.

“Whatever you think you are,” he muttered, pulling me through a narrow gap between two half‑collapsed houses choked in black vines, “you’re breathing. And in this place? That’s all that matters.”

We moved again, faster this time. I had to duck under thick tendrils hanging from the skeletal branches above, their surfaces pulsing faintly as if something beneath them had a heartbeat. The air clung to my skin like damp cloth, heavy and suffocating, making every breath feel like work. My lungs burned, but I didn’t slow down. I couldn’t.

“Eddie,” I whispered, my voice trembling despite my effort to steady it. “Where are we going?”. His steps become more purposed. “Eddie, are you sure Holly is this way”.

“We aren’t going to Holly right now,” Eddie muttered, slashing a pulsing vine with a blade.

I stumbled again, grabbing at a skeletal tree to steady myself, and my chest burned with frustration. “No! We can’t just survive! We need to find her now! She’s out there! She’s screaming! We don’t have time to creep through this—this hell!”

Eddie froze mid-step, his grip tightening on my wrist. “You’re not listening,” he snapped, low and dangerous. His eyes glinted in the muted storm-light above us, unnerving me. “You can’t go barging into a rescue mission bleeding from your skull, Prom Queen. You’ll be dead before you even get to her.”

I blinked, incredulous. “How do you even know that?” I’d forgotten about the throbbing pain coming from my head. With everything going on, I’d gotten used to it.

He glanced at me, expression unreadable for a moment, then his lips curved into that crooked, lopsided smirk. “Because I can smell it,” he said casually, like it was the most natural thing in the world. A lump forms in my throat as he turns on his heels non-chalantly as we approach a clearing. A dark inverted version of the trailer park that everyone knew was the last place Chrissy Cunningham was seen, and murdered in a twisted satanic ritual. By Eddie Munson.

My head begins to flash with memories of my best friend, her smile, her ponytail swishing in the wind, her laugh.

I blinked, the memory mixing with the sickly glow around us, and my stomach twisted. Eddie’s grip on my wrist was firm but steady, guiding me through the grotesque reflection of a place that should have been familiar. The air smelled of decay, rust, and something else… something that made my throat dry.

“Holly,” I whispered to myself, forcing the word through trembling lips. “Please… hold on.”

Eddie’s eyes flicked toward me, sharp, knowing. “She’s out there,” he murmured. “And we’re going to get her. But you need to trust me. You follow me, step by step. No heroics. Not yet.”

I nodded, swallowing the panic, the pain, the horror. My hand stayed in his, my other hand gripping a jagged branch like a lifeline. Every fiber of my being screamed to run, to rip through the shadows and grab Holly, but the small, predatory awareness in Eddie’s eyes — the hint of something other in him — made me obey.

Because if we were going to survive, I had no choice but to trust the dead.