WHAT: Dustin finds Eddie while out and about in the forest WHERE: The forest --> The Clinic WHEN: This morning WARNINGS: Blood, spoilers for the end of season 4 of Stranger Things STATUS: Complete
Eddie was sure that he must have blacked out or something. How else could he explain the sudden shift in scenery, the dead, desolate land of the Upside Down coated with a carpet of evil fucking demon bats replaced, suddenly, with a lush and verdant forest, or the sudden disappearance of Dustin, who’d just been holding him? He must have passed out, and Dustin must have left him, which Eddie couldn’t really blame him for, given everything. Desolate, monster-filled trailer parks were hardly the kind of place people wanted to hang out in for funsies. Not that… that was where he was anymore.
He supposed it didn’t matter where he was, only that he was suddenly very alone, and he was pretty sure he was dying, and he didn’t want to die alone. He didn’t.
“Henderson?” he called, not nearly as loud as he would have liked, so he tried harder, managing to call “Henderson” again a little louder. And then his voice broke, and he called out “Anybody?”
Dustin had been heading toward Skyhold. It was his way of exploring the woods without making Steve or the others worry. The Waypoint would spit him out and he could do a little bit of a wander around that area before making his way to the castle and seeing El. He thought it was a pretty good work around for the ‘don’t wander on your own’ stipulation that everyone kept bringing up.
Who knew what he might catch a glimpse of in the area. He was hoping for a unicorn or maybe a dragon. There were supposed to be a few somewhere in the forest but he hadn’t yet managed to find one. Wolves could be cool too. What he hadn’t expected was to hear someone calling his last name.
He blinked, turning in the direction of the voice. It had to be a trick of the woods. Maybe some fae creature trying to lead him into a place he wasn’t supposed to go. But no, there it was again. And it sounded like--”Eddie?”
Dustin hurried in the direction as he heard the next word, pushing through the underbrush and stumbled out to find Eddie laying on the ground. He didn’t look good at all. “Shit shit shit.”
“Hey,” Eddie said, managing a pained smile up at him. “I knew you hadn’t left.” Or, at least, he hoped he hadn’t left, but it was all the same now.
He hesitated, smile growing more forced, and then added, “Hey, I don’t mean to freak you out or anything, but I think I’m hallucinating a forest.” He tried to remember if he’d ever heard that hallucinations were a sign of bloodloss or dying, but he didn’t think he had, but he was sure the forest couldn’t be really. He couldn’t imagine how Dustin would have gotten them both through the gate in the ceiling of his trailer, or why he would have brought him into the woods afterward, all without Eddie remembering any of it.
There was so much blood. What the hell had happened? Dustin couldn’t remember Eddie being this beat up back home. It was Nancy that they were worried about, not him. He tugged at his own hair, trying to remember anything about stopping wounds like this. There were so many though that Dustin wasn’t sure that would matter much.
“We’re not back home.” They weren’t that far from Skyhold. Maybe he could get him there and then El’s people could help them out. Could he even stand though? If not, maybe he could reach out to everyone on the network and someone could come to them. “Do you think you can walk a little?”
“Oh, okay,” Eddie said, though it didn’t make him feel much better. He knew they weren’t back home, the Upside Down was never what Eddie would consider home – the only things that could consider the Upside Down home were the monsters and demons that had been born there. But he guessed that just confirmed that he was, in fact, hallucinating. Maybe the demobats had had some sort of venom in them.
Eddie struggled to sit up again, but his wounds screamed and he was overcome with a sense of nausea, and he gave it up pretty quickly. “I just need another minute,” he said, a little weakly. He just needed to rest.
Dustin was trying not to panic. There was so much blood, he could feel it wet and sticky on him as he tried to help Eddie. Walking him to Skyhold was definitely not an option. “We can’t rest. Or you can’t rest.” His eyes needed to stay open. Closing eyes would be a bad sign. “Keep your eyes open.”
He fumbled with the phone, fingers too slick with blood to get the damn thing to open for him. Fuck. “Help!” he called, voice breaking as he repeated the word a few more times. The woods were supposed to be populated, right? Someone should hear him.
Leon knew that patrolling the forest by himself wasn’t necessarily the best idea, but sometimes it was nice just being alone with his thoughts, and things had been pretty quiet lately on the ‘horrifying interdimensional murder monsters’ front (he tried to ignore the niggling feeling that said that it was because things had been quiet lately that he should be more on guard).
When he heard someone calling for help, someone who sounded suspiciously like a child or a teenager, he froze, turned off the safety on his handgun, and tried to get pinpoint where the call was coming from. He didn’t run toward the voice, but instead walked quickly, looking for any sign of an ambush or an attack.
One didn’t almost get eaten by a monster disguised as a bench without immediately questioning anything and everything that seemed out of place.
But when he broke through the bush and came across the kid, kids, maybe – the one on the ground couldn’t have been any older than Catra and Adora, it was hard to tell, sometimes, when they were covered in blood and looked terrified – he relaxed a little.
He recognized the curly-haired one as one of the new arrivals on the Network, but he didn’t recongize the metalhead.
“What happened here?” he asked, resisting the immediate urge to put away his gun and go running to them.
Dustin could have whooped for joy if he wasn’t completely frantic about the state that Eddie was in. “How the fuck am I supposed to know?!” he asked, voice rising with every word. Something had happened in their world, something bad. Only bad things seemed to be happening over the last few days. One thing piling on top of the other.
“Eyes open, Eddie!” Dustin demanded, nearly shaking his friend, but he resisted, not sure if that would cause more damage. “He just got here and he’s…” Dying. Dustin was pretty sure he was dying. “He needs a hospital. Magic. Something!”
“Yeah, okay,” Leon said, holstering his gun and stripping off his jean jacket. He closed the distance.
The other kid, Eddie, looked even worse up close, lips grey, and eyes fluttering weakly open, probably only because of the other kid calling to him. But he gasped, loudly, with pain when Leon jammed his jacket against the worst of the bleeding wounds, which was a good good sign.
“Hey Eddie, I’m Leon,” Leon said, glancing at Eddie. “I’m going to lift you up now. It’s going to hurt like a bitch, but try not to pass out. Think you can do that.”
“Yeah, I think so,” Eddie said, trying to shoot the kid what was probably supposed to be a carefree smile but looked instead like a grimace.
“You’re gonna need to make sure this jacket stays in place, alright?” he asked the curly haired kid, but he didn’t wait for a confirmation before he hefted Eddie over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry; Eddie screamed this time, which was, all things considered, probably a good sign.
Dustin cringed as Eddie screamed, trying to keep the jacket in position as he moved with the older guy. “You’re good, Eddie,” he started, walking with the two and trusting that Leon knew where to take them. He couldn’t remember which way the Waypoint was anymore or the direction Skyhold was supposed to be in. Fuck.
He focused on trying to keep Eddie awake as they moved, rambling on about everything that they could do there in Vallo. ”We’re going to get you help and you’re going to get to go to dinosaur island too. That’s a thing here. And Voltron is real. There’s talking dragons.” So many great things that Eddie needed to be alive for.
The trip passed in a blur for Eddie. He knew Dustin was talking, but most of it didn't make any sort of sense at all, he was sure he couldn't be understanding Dustin correctly, but he tried his best to respond to what he thought Dustin was saying ("Like the Lost World" or "Voltron's great").
It passed in jolts and flashes, trees one minute, the busy streets of a city the next, and then the inside what had to be a medical clinic. He had vague memories of a woman standing over him, hands glowing – stranger comforting despite how much he knew something like that should freak him out – and when he finally came around enough that he was certain exactly where he was and what was going on, he realized he was tucked into a bed in some sort of medical room, Dustin seated near by.
To say he was surprised was a bit of an understatement.
"Hey," he said, shooting Dustin a smile. "Looks like this really is my year after all."
Max’s arrival had brought a lot of questions, ones that none of them had really gotten answered or knew when they would get the answers. They’d had a plan and the group had gone in different directions to implement it but Dustin hadn’t known the outcome. Looking at how badly Eddie had been hurt he was fairly certain it wasn’t good. His injuries had been so severe that Dustin didn’t think he would have been able to recover from them if they were back home and magic wasn’t able to be used.
He rose as soon as he heard Eddie’s voice, taking the two steps over to get to the bed. “I heard you’re not even going to have any scars.” It was miraculous.
He needed to message Steve and the others to let them know Eddie was awake, but that could wait a few minutes. “What the hell did you do, Eddie?”
"Really? That's kind of disappointing," Eddie said, frowning down at himself. "Everyone knows scars are metal as hell." He was joking, but only half-joking. More than anything, he was glad to not be dying – he felt, in fact, way better than he was sure he was supposed to.
He took a moment to think about Dustin's question, trying to think about the best way to answer that. "Look," he said after a moment. "If I had gone with you, those bats would have just come through the portal too, and they would have totally messed up my trailer, and who knows what they would have done to my cassettes." Not to mention what they would have done to Dustin, and the rest of Hawkins. No matter what he thought of most of the population of Hawkins, they didn't deserve that. "So I thought it would be better to lead them off. But…well, I guess you saw how that turned out." He shot Dustin a grin.
Max had mentioned there had been some kind of plan underway when she arrived, but it seemed like Eddie was further along in the implementation of that plan. Dustin’s shoulders dropped as he took in everything his friend had said. All of it confirmed what he’d feared. Did this mean that back home Eddie was going to die? He didn’t know how to register that information, his brain short circuiting for a long moment as it tried to process everything.
Hawkins didn’t deserve him.
“That was a shitty idea.”
"Hey, it all turned out in the end," Eddie said, grinning. "How'd you get me out, anyway? And who was that man?" Oh, and also, how the fuck am I completely healed without a scar on me, because you guys might have mentioned there were actual clerics in Hawkins earlier, thanks.
He didn't mention the last part, partly because it was still hard to believe. He knew he hasn't been out long enough for his wounds to heal entirely – he surreptitiously touched his stomach, just to be sure it was healed and he hasn't been slipped some sort of painkiller – but "magic healing" was a stretch. But maybe not too much of a stretch given everything he'd learned this week.
For now. It had all turned out fine for now. Far be it from Dustin to look a gift horse in the mouth though. He sunk back down onto the chair and raked a hand through his curls. “So. We’re not in Hawkins anymore.” At least this should be a little more easy to digest considering Eddie knew about the Upside Down. “You know how the Upside Down is real. Well, so are alternate realities. And Universes. Completely different universes. We’re currently in a new one.”
Dustin had no clue how they had gotten there and the answers to that weren’t very forthcoming but maybe he’d understand it more once he started working with Lena and her crew. They had been around for awhile and might know more. “We’re in a place called Vallo. Steve, Eleven, Max and Hopper are here too. And a lot of other people. But this place has healers and the guy who helped us is another guy like us who randomly got pulled here.”
"Sheriff Hopper?" Eddie asked, just to be clear. "Didn't he die last year?" Because obviously that was the important bit there.
He needed a little more time to process the idea that they were in yet another alternate dimension, this one with, apparently, forests and healers, but eventually he settled on, "So, like Narnia? Please tell me it's more like Narnia than the Upside Down."
Had you asked him two weeks ago, he would have said that absolutely he'd rather go to a world with demons and vampires and the rest, but right now, he'd much rather take tea and crumpets with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver than fave another whirlwind of demobats.
“Apparently he didn’t die?” Dustin was still a bit fuzzy on those details and what all Sheriff Hopper had been through, but he was definitely alive. There were some things it was just better to accept.
“But yeah, more Narnia than the Upside Down. A lot more Narnia.” Vallo amazed Dustin from day to day, everything he learned about it only added to the beauty of the place. If only the others could show up. “Also, Voltron, is real. Like real-real. I got to fly in the blue lion with Lance and see dinosaur island.”
“Oh, okay, cool,” Eddie said. He and Hopper had had their fair share of run-ins, but Eddie was still somewhat glad to her that Hopper hadn’t died after all, especially once he’d learned that the mall fire hadn’t actually been a mall fire.
“Wait, so Voltron’s actually real, and I didn’t just hallucinate you saying that?” Eddie asked. That… that was a lot to wrap his head around, but… “Did you say something about dinosaurs, too?”
“There’s a whole island of them.” Actual real life dinosaurs. It was insane, but in a good way. Unlike the demobats or demodogs or anything else out of the Upside Down. There was probably a downside to the place, but Dustin hadn’t experienced it yet and he doubted anything could compare the what had happened over the last few years in Hawkins anyway.
“Steve’s got a place. The DOA people will probably come talk to you about everything soon. The starting out money and the apartments and things.”
“That I’ve got to see,” Eddie said. He wasn’t entirely convinced that he hadn’t died in the Upside Down and that this wasn’t some sort of afterlife situation, or maybe some sort of dying-moments hallucination. Though, if it was, he couldn’t imagine why he’d be spending it in what looked like a hospital room, and if this was the afterlife, then Dustin and Steve shouldn’t have been here.
Not unless something had gone terribly wrong.
“Are you staying with Steve? What do you mean by ‘starting out money’ and ‘the apartments’?”
“Yeah, I’m staying with Steve. So is Max.” Dustin didn’t think El or Hopper would be moving in with them. “And well, there’s these people who welcome you when you arrive. They probably would have found you if I hadn’t.” At least Dustin hoped they would have. They had found Steve when he’d arrived beat up from the demobats.
“They’ve got places for those of us who show up and money so we’re not starving when we arrive.” It was nice how people seemed to help one another.
“See, now I know that this place can’t be real; nowhere wants to help out that much.” Whatever this was though, it beat where he’d come from though, so he wouldn’t complain. Maybe he’d just try not to think too hard about it in case he broke the illusion, like those times when you realize you’re dreaming right before you wake up.
“I hope you realize that once I get the all clear, I’ll be expecting the full tour.”
"Don't worry, you'll get it," Dustin assured him. "I heard there's even a D&D group that gets together here once a month or so." It was almost like being home. "But you should get some rest." He had nearly died. "And I need to let Steve and the others know you're awake."
“Yeah, it will be good to see them.” Well, Steve, at least and Max. He didn’t know who El was, and he didn’t know that Sheriff Hopper would necessarily be happy to see him.
He hesitated for a moment, feeling a little silly, but then he reached out and grabbed Dustin’s wrist. “You’ll still be here when I’m good to go, right?” he asked. “You’re not going to just… take off or something?”
Dustin's eyes widened, looking at Eddie as though he'd lost his mind. Of course he wasn't going anywhere. They'd have to pry him away with a crowbar. "I'm not going anywhere."
He patted his friend's hand before nodding to the doorway. "I should probably step outside to call them, but I'll be right back."
Eddie nodded, relaxing back against the pillows. Stepping outside to make a call, that made sense. It wasn’t like Dustin could make any calls from here in the room, there were no phones in the treatment room.
“Yeah, okay,” he said, a wave of exhaustion washing over him. “Just don’t go far, man.” In the meantime, maybe he’d just take… a really quick nap.