idiot - steddie

Twelve

Max's attempt at reaching the Byers' household was a fail. Their line had been busy for hours that turned into days, and those days would soon turn into a week. A week with no contact to Mike, El, or Will.

Robin had dragged herself back to Nancy's side, with her black converse hanging off the side of the khaki armrest Nance had her elbow leaning off of, her dirty white jeans swinging just above the ground beneath her. Robin's arm was mantled around Nancy's shoulder, with Nance's head laying peacefully in the crook of her arm as she gazed up at the other girl, her pink lips allowing sunkissed words fall from her mouth and hang in the air above them.

Suddenly, Nancy's said something that made her eyes light up, an idea hiding behind them. "What if.. everything happening in Lenora is connected to what is happening to us?" Nancy asked, moving her eyes from Robin's to stare at me and Eddie. Who still had his head idling on the denim that covered my broad shoulders, with his hair laid out on the back of the couch, some even stringing down and onto my chest. "But Vecna can't hurt them." She looked at Eddie, who's head had since turned to her instead of me. "Not if he's dead." The suspense she was building up diminished the second she finished that sentence, crashing down and falling like a tower of bricks onto our group.

"We have to go back in there. Back to the Upside Down." She said, a demanding trace poisoning her tone.

Eddie removed his head from my shoulder rapidly, sitting up with his back detached from the back of the tan couch, forcing my arm to fall from his leather-racked shoulder aswell. He shook his head back and forth as fast as light, his hair flying out in all directions at the movement. "Nope." He said, his voice booming against the thin walls of Max's RV. "Nope." He repeated. Robin's head perked up in seconds, and her eyebrows knitted into each other, a worrisome expression crossing her freckled face. "Whoa, no, no, no. What?" She said, looking over at Nancy, "Let's think this through." She suggested, and I nodded, holding a hand out to her as if to say, "Yeah, that's a better idea."

Nance rolled her eyes at me, her smudged eyeshadow scrunching against her hazel eyebrow. "What is there to think through?" She asked, shaking her head as the words fell from gritted teeth. I shook my head, glancing at Eddie. "We barely made it out of there." I upbraided her, thinking back to earlier. Eddie in front of me, eyes rolling back into his head, his body still as ever with tears rolling back my cheeks. I genuinely thought he was dead. I was waiting for him to begin levitating, his body parts snapping into unhuman positions.

She shook her head stubbornly, her eyebrows wrinkled. "Yeah, because we weren't prepared. But this time, we will be. We'll get weapons and protection." She began listing off, and I kept looking at Eddie as she rambled on. He moved his dirty hand from behind his neck, and set it back to his lips. Staring at a small stain on the carpet beside Nancy's shoe worriedly. I patted him on the back soothingly, turning the pat into a slow rub as time went on and his pulse slowed down from its high. He turned to me, his eyes latching onto mine with a soft smile invading his lips.

"We'll go through the gate, we'll find his lair, and we'll kill him." She stated, as if it were actually as easy as that. Even I knew it wasn't that easy, you clearly can't kill Vecna with a gun or a knife. He was a monster, and considering what it took to kill the Spider Monster last July— he was probably worse. Like every monster our group had ever fought combined.

"Or he'll kill us." I retorted, knocking some sense into her thick skull. "The only reason we survived is because he wanted Eddie to. He's not scared of us."

Robin stood up from where she was next to Nancy on the armrest, her eyes glued to mine. "And for good reason." Her bangs flopped out of her face as she stood up quickly, an action that probably wouldn't benefit her low iron deficiency. "We were wrong about Vecna. Henry. One." She said, her face twisting into a look of confusion, probably because she had no idea what to call him at that point, as we all did. "Sorry, what are we calling him now?" She asked, looking over at Dustin, her hand outstretched in Nancy's direction.