Chapter Text
All our times have come
Here but now they're gone
Seasons don't fear the reaper
Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain
We can be like they are
(Don’t Fear) The Reaper – Blue Öyster Cult
July 29th, 1986
Eddie steps out onto the Roane County court steps. He’s wearing the same clothes he had on the day the cops grabbed him, aside from the shirt. His Hellfire Club t-shirt had been all but shredded and soaked in sweat, blood, and Demobat gunk, and the staff at the county jail had deemed it too destroyed to keep. Upon his release, they instead provided him with a plain white t-shirt. His black jeans are stiff and dirty, his leather jacket is beat to hell and hot in the summer heat, and the green vest from The War Zone is slung over his shoulder. In his left hand, his release papers and minute documents are folded into as small a square as he could make them and clenched in his fist. In his right hand, he clutches his black bandana.
He’s honestly surprised the bandana hadn’t been lost to the Upside Down when those fucking Demobats got him. Somehow, through the claws and the tails and the deafening flap of hundreds of pairs of wings, that bad boy stayed firmly tied to his head. He wasn’t really thinking about it in the moment, though. He was more preoccupied with sending out silent goodbyes to Steve and Robin and Nancy, and all those fucking kids. Dustin most of all. When the Demobats had him down spread-eagle on the concrete, he had just about enough time to wonder if this was what it was like to be drawn and quartered in medieval times before they tore into him like a goddamn buffet.
He could hear Dustin screaming his name after the bats went limp mid-air and began hitting the ground (and his body) like cursed rainfall. The kid was limping to his side as fast as he could manage, screaming like he was the one bleeding his five pints onto the dirty ground. Eddie had busied himself with counting his inhales and exhales while Dustin tore off his ghillie cloak and yanked his grey sweatshirt over his head. Here, Eddie, here hold this, he’d begged Eddie in a voice shaking with panic. Eddie’d clutched it to his chest and abdomen and held it there tight in an attempt to stop his wounds from continuing to bleed.
It'd ended up taking Dustin nearly 30 minutes, a little crying, and a lot of swearing to drag Eddie back to the trailer. Between the busted leg and Eddie’s dead (nearly literally) weight, it was a struggle. Getting up the steps was probably the most time-consuming; After a couple of failed strategies, Dustin had ended up sitting on the second step and just dragging Eddie up by the armpits inch by inch, his good foot planted for leverage. Then he pushed himself up to the third step, drag, pushed up to the porch, drag, and it was just a matter of getting in the door after that.
Dustin got him far enough in to shut the door, then collapsed on the floor and just started bawling. It broke something in Eddie’s chest, and he swore that if he got out of that shit alive, he’d come back just to tear the heads off every single Demobat in the Upside Down.
They both laid there in the trailer in the Upside Down for hours, waiting for Steve, Robin, and Nancy to come stumbling through the door. Eddie rolled his head to the side to watch Dustin attempt to splint his calf with the folded cardboard of an old box and torn sheet strips. That kid is so fucking smart and he didn’t deserve this.
Eddie had briefly considered rifling through the cabinets under the kitchen counter for the first aid kit. Was the first aid kit even there? Did Wayne have a first aid kit in 1983? Surely, he must have. Didn’t matter much though, since the thought of moving from his spot on the floor made him want to throw up, so he didn’t. To be honest, he wasn’t even sure he trusted his body to hold together if he moved Dustin’s now ruined sweatshirt from the worst of his wounds. Instead, he just laid there until Steve, Nancy, and Robin finally stumbled in. The kids weren’t far behind, and he heard the Hawkins trailer door wrench open before seeing the dirty and sweaty faces of Max, Lucas, and Erica peering down at him.
After getting them back through the gate, Nancy only needed to look at Eddie’s blood-soaked clothes and Dustin’s fucked up leg for about half a second before she snatched up the phone to call an ambulance. Steve put an end to that shit right away; Are you kidding me, put that down, do you want the paramedics to see this? He’d punctuated his question by flailing his arms in the general direction of the gate. Eddie knew that going to the hospital was a bad idea, but he was pretty sure he was rocking battle wounds that were outside Nancy’s first aid abilities. He kept his mouth shut and went back to saying those silent goodbyes.
Nancy, not to be deterred from at least trying, followed Eddie’s barely audible directions to the first aid kit (thank you, Wayne!), and did a little triage care. She sent Steve to the bathroom to look for isopropyl alcohol or peroxide (Jesus, Steve, I’ll take a bottle of vodka at this point, just find me something!) He’d found a half empty bottle of rubbing alcohol under the bathroom sink while Nancy hiked Eddie’s shirt up to his throat, and he definitely didn’t tear up when she poured it over his chest and abdomen. He also didn’t tear up over the look in Steve's eyes as Nancy taped gauze pads to his mutilated skin, or the way Dustin looked like he was a hairs breadth away from having a full-blown meltdown.
It wasn’t great work, but it was better than nothing, he supposed.
Nancy wasn’t confident that her medical care would prevent Eddie from collecting a plethora of infections, and she argued with six other voices about going to the hospital. Dustin just stared vacantly at his own busted leg when it was decided that the trip was unavoidable.
So, they all piled back into the stolen RV and high-tailed it down to Hawkins General. Eddie knew as soon as the receptionist laid eyes on him that it was over. Her wide eyes flicked from Nancy and Steve, who were holding him up, to his face and he felt his heart sink. Nancy stared at the floor and Steve tightened his grip on Eddie’s wrist.
The cops got there less than 20 minutes later and cuffed him to his hospital bed, not without a fight from the group. Three days later, after some stitches, a lot of bandages, and a round of antibiotics, Eddie was declared healthy enough to not drop dead during transport. He was hauled off that morning. Steve and Robin made a big fuss, and Steve nearly decked the cop pushing Eddie into the car. Eddie wished he could’ve said goodbye to Dustin first, but he was in his own hospital room with a cast up to his knee. Eddie sent another silent goodbye instead.
That was in March. Now after nearly five months of sitting in county jail, a preliminary hearing, more sitting in jail, and an official murder trial, Eddie is officially a free man. More importantly, though, he’s officially an innocent man. The lack of concrete evidence combined with a stellar lawyer and Hopper, as he put it, “taking care of some people” once he got back into town, left Eddie cleared of all charges and subsequently released on an 88-degree Tuesday afternoon. Eddie still doesn’t know how he lucked out getting such a great public defender, but he isn’t about to look that gift horse in the mouth. He called his uncle for a ride home on the payphone in the court lobby with a quarter the desk secretary gave him, and that’s that.
Eddie drags his feet and begins descending the steps from the courthouse, his heavy boots clomping on the concrete, and takes a seat on the bottom step to wait. Hawkins is a good 30-40 minutes from Roane, and he doesn’t know the area very well, so all he can do is sit around and keep his eyes peeled for Wayne’s Ford. He can feel the hot concrete of the step through his jeans and can’t help but smile a little. After months of cold metal, a little heat isn’t so bad.
If anyone asks, Eddie will tell them that five months in county jail wasn’t so bad. To be honest, it really wasn’t all that bad on its own. Sure, starting the day at 5am was brutal and learning to sleep with the lights on took a while. Cleaning toilets most days sucked, but it was mostly just sitting around waiting for the day to be over. Wayne made sure there was always a few bucks on his books for the commissary, he was fed three times a day, and he had a cell to himself (perks of being a murder suspect, he supposes). It wasn’t physically being in jail that was bad.
It was the fear that he wouldn’t be leaving jail. It was the constant nagging anxiety that one day, an officer would escort him from his cell and move him to a Prison for the next 35-45 years. The fear that someone with power would decide to say, ‘fuck the trial’ and convict him. The fear that he would show up to his trial to find a jury made entirely of Hawkins citizens that wanted him dead. That anxiety never subsided. It sits heavy and grim in the pit of his stomach, tightening his chest and making his head swim. He'd spent many days of that long five months crying into the tiny thin pillow on his bunk, terrified that he would never get to walk away. No one needs to know that, though.
But now he’s out, and he can pretend that the weight of that fear isn’t still taking up space in his chest.
When Wayne rolls up to the curb in his beat up junker, Eddie truly could cry. Seeing him for 30 minutes once a week in jail with a partition between them just wasn’t the same as seeing him now and knowing he’s leaving with him.
Eddie got two 30-minute visits each week while he was locked up. One was reserved for Wayne, and the other was taken, without question, by Steve. He would show up at 11am every Thursday, even if that meant showing up late to his shift at Family Video. Often he would have Robin with him (two adults allowed at each visit), but sometimes he was alone. No matter what, though, he was there. Eddie was touched, genuinely. Despite the fuss Steve had put up when Eddie was hauled out of the hospital and into the squad car, Eddie still couldn’t believe that he would waste his time and gas to drive out to Roane and visit him. When Steve told him he’d see him the following week, he didn’t believe him. Surely, he was just saying it to avoid an awkward goodbye. Sure as shit though, he showed up just like he said he would. He showed up that Thursday, the next, and the next.
When Eddie found out he was being released, he didn’t tell Steve. He was still distantly worried that something might change, and he didn’t want to make a promise that he couldn’t guarantee follow-through on. But here he is on this 88-degree Tuesday afternoon, in his own clothes, out in the open air, watching Wayne give him a little wave through the open window of his car. Eddie Munson is going home.
Wayne smiles at him when he opens the passenger door of the car and slides into the seat, the edges of the split upholstery catching on the backs of his denim-clad thighs. The air inside the car is hot, even with both front windows rolled all the way down- the AC has been busted for over a year, and Wayne hasn’t been able to afford to get it fixed. The radio is still as good as ever, though, and (Don’t Fear) The Reaper plays quietly through the speakers. As soon as Eddie sits down, he can feel the sun beating down on his right side, but he doesn’t shuck the jacket. Thick as the leather may be, the Demobats still managed to sink their razor wire teeth and claws through it. The wounds turned to scabs within a couple of weeks and now little reddish-pink scars peppered his arms, breaking up his puppet master tattoo into something nearly unrecognizable, and leaving his bats with about as many holes in them as the Demobats gave him.
“Hey, kid,” Wayne greets him, raising a hand to lay his palm against the side of Eddie’s head.
Eddie smiles, small and soft, at the contact. The first physical touch from someone who cares about him in five long months. “Hey, Uncle Wayne.”
Wayne doesn’t have much to say, but that’s alright because Eddie doesn’t either. He doesn’t have any interesting stories (or horror stories, for that matter) from his time. He didn’t get into any fights, didn’t make any friends, and truly didn’t experience anything worth remembering. He does tell Wayne that he missed him, and Wayne doesn’t remind him that he’s seen him 20 times since March. He understands.
They roll out, and Eddie keeps the green vest clutched tightly in his lap as he stares out the window of the car. Highway 77 takes them from Roane to Leesburg, then Monoquet, and finally Hawkins.
Welcome to Hawkins, IN
The familiar double wall of pine trees engulfs them as they cross the invisible border into Hawkins, and Eddie takes a deep shuddering breath. He hasn’t been home since March, and while the familiarity of the trailer and comfort of his bed sounded stellar in his cell in county jail, he now felt unsure and a little afraid.
The gate in the living room ceiling of the trailer is gone, but the memories remain. Chrissy, suspended in the air; the snap of her bones and the wet crack of her jaw. The look on Dustin’s face as Eddie abandoned him in Real Hawkins to act as a Demobat buffet. The hours of staring into the gate from the Upside Down, not knowing if anyone would make it back alive to find him and Dustin.
Back at the jail, Eddie spent just as many nights sleepless as he did waking up drenched in sweat, heart racing with the final moments of a nightmare burned into the front of his mind. He didn’t imagine it getting any better once he was back at the trailer.
Eddie stares out the passenger side window, watching Downtown Hawkins slide by. On the main road, the general store and the record shop pass by. He sees a familiar burgundy beamer parked in front of Annie’s Diner and pretends he doesn’t.
It’s not that Eddie doesn’t want to see Steve, because he does. He really, really does. It’s just… There’s this feeling niggling at him; a part of his brain telling him that now that he’s back in Hawkins, Steve’s no longer obligated to care, no longer needs to see him or talk to him because he’s back. No longer need to get updates for Dustin, no longer needs to feel guilty or whatever about him being gone. And Eddie feels bad for thinking that, he really does, because as much of an asshole as Steve was in high school, he’s not like that now. He seems to genuinely care about his friends and those kids, and obviously he wouldn’t have wasted his time driving to the jail every week to see him if he didn’t care. But the worry still lingers – what if Steve doesn’t want to see him anymore? Eddie needs to prepare himself for that possibility.
“You doin’ alright over there, son?” Wayne asks, not moving his eyes from the road ahead. Eddie bites the inside of his cheek and sighs.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” he replies. “It’s just kinda weird being back, you know?”
“Yeah, I hear ya, kid.”
Wayne doesn’t push any further, and Eddie is grateful. He isn’t sure there’s any non-pathetic way to explain that he’s afraid to walk into his own home, and even more afraid to be seen outside of it. Sure, he’s innocent in the eyes of the court, but Eddie has no doubt in his mind that the good people of Hawkins would still pay their good money to see his head on a spike. An innocent verdict won’t mean shit to Carver and his band of idiots. It’s just as well. Eddie has never caught a damn break in his life. Why would he start now?
When Wayne finally makes the turn into the trailer park, Eddie pushes the discomfort down- it won’t do him any good.
--
Wayne takes the night off to stay home with Eddie. Eddie tells him he really didn’t need to do that (I don’t want you losing money over me, Uncle Wayne) but Wayne insists that it isn’t an issue (Don’t you go worryin’ about me, boy).
When Eddie walks through the squeaky trailer door, it looks about the same as it did the last time he’d been there. The living room furniture was moved back into place and his mattress no longer sits on the dirty carpet. The kitchen had been tidied up a bit, but the general clutter across the counters remains. All in all, it looks like home. All the coffee mugs are still sitting on their shelves, all of Wayne’s trucker hats are still hanging on their pegs. The five lamps are all still there and still only cast a dim glow over the living room and kitchen.
Eddie shuffles into his bedroom and it’s more of the same. His posters still cover the walls, and his handcuffs are still on the peg. His desk, dresser, and nightstand are still littered with various bits and bobs, and his shelves are still stuffed full of crap. The room had been cleaned up, though. His mattress is back on the frame, and the bed is made. There are no longer clothes scattered around the floor or piled on surfaces; instead, they’d all been washed and sit folded in his laundry basket. The old coke cans and food wrappers had been cleared, and his ashtray is empty.
He chooses not to dwell on the empty guitar mount above his mirror.
--
He and Wayne pick up Chinese for dinner that evening and eat on the couch with Scarface playing on the TV. Eddie ignores the blank expanse of the ceiling and Wayne brings him a beer when he gets too fidgety.
When Eddie finds himself too on edge to pay attention to the movie, he starts silently counting the hats on the wall. If Wayne notices, he doesn’t say anything.
When the movie ends, Wayne collects their empty cartons and beer cans to throw away, and Eddie sucks in a breath and drums on his kneecaps.
“Thanks for cleaning up for me while I was gone,” Eddie blurts out. He pointedly does not look to the kitchen, where Wayne is shoving down the contents of the trash can. He prays that Wayne doesn’t ask any questions about why the trailer was a goddamn mess when he got home from work the night of The Event.
“Sure thing, kid,” Wayne replies easily. “Wanted to make sure everything was ready for you when you got here.”
“You were that sure I’d actually be coming back?” Eddie snorts. “I’m still waiting for the cops to bust the door down and tell me they changed their minds.” Wayne chuckles at that.
“Eddie, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that you’d be comin’ home.” Wayne crosses the room to sit back on the battered couch beside Eddie. He claps a hand on Eddie’s shoulder and says, “I knew you were innocent. It was only a matter of time before that jury came to the same conclusion.”
Eddie finally turns his head to look at Wayne, and receives a warm, fond loom in return. Not a smile, exactly, but something careful and soft. “I appreciate you, Uncle Wayne.”
“Thanks, kid. I’m glad you’re home.”
“Me too.”
--
After finishing a second movie (The Shining) Eddie calls it a night. The 5am wakeup time that morning coupled with the emotional exhaustion of existing at the scene of countless interdimensional crimes has left Eddie beat and ready to pass the fuck out. He says goodnight to Wayne and drags his ass back to his bedroom.
Behind the closed door of his room, Eddie heaves a sigh loud enough to wake the dead before flopping face down on his bed. His blanket smells like dust and cheap laundry detergent. He feels the fear and anxiety starting to well up inside him again and shoves it back down. He just doesn’t have the energy to even try to deal with that shit right now. It’s been a long day, following an even longer five months, and Eddie just wants to pretend that everything is fine and nothing happened, at least for the night. Despite this, the anxiety keeps bubbling back up. It buzzes under his skin, a steady vibration that refuses to be ignored. Everything is fine, aside from the fact that it isn’t fine at all. The air in his bedroom is clear and familiar, if not a little stale, but every speck of dust that floats through the glow of his lamp makes his heart skip a beat.
Despite the lingering unease, Eddie chooses (forces himself) to believe, for the time being at least, that it’s all over. Vecna’s gone, the gates are all closed, and that won’t change. Maybe it isn’t true, and maybe something bad is waiting in the shadows, but that’s not a problem to think about tonight. Tonight, Eddie wants to exist in a world without terrifying hell dimensions. Tonight, Eddie is home.