Together, until the end | Eddie Munson

Those nights

Two days later.
Loud noises are heard from outside the window
Agonizing but at the same time confused screams reach Vivien's ears as familiar sounds.

The alarm reads 4:20 am.
Vivien suddenly wakes up in the middle of the night in the bedroom that Steve has reserved for her since his house is the one closest to the hospital. Also, her mom hadn't answered the phone in days, and it was starting to upset her even more.

Despite the fear she decides to get up yawning and goes to check out in case they came back.

It's all right.
Everything seems normal. Steve's garden is suddenly quiet and she can't hear anything anymore but only the chirping of crickets.
What were those noises?
Vivien goes back inside and notices that there is absolutely nothing outside.
But here they are again.
Okay, that's not funny.
"Come on...it's four in the morning."

She opens the door slightly peeking but immediately realizes that she is no longer in the garden, but in the trailer park...
White particles float in the air like snow, she exposes a hand and some rest on it. Vivien shudders at the sound of thunder and a red flash in the dark and threatening sky. That spooky wind that moves around and makes her bones freeze more and more as she walks out the door.
The once-green grass around her seems to have molded and withered. Her consciousness seems to fade. She blinks in an attempt to erase her confused vision. She focuses on her attempt to get a clearer view of the strange figure lying on the lawn not far from her.
It's a person.

Not this, not again.
And there he is. Her view turns clearer with every step forward she takes.

He lies in pain and his face is covered in blood. The torn clothes, the blood comes out of his mouth and wounds. His once soft, smooth skin is now littered with numerous scratches and sharp claw scratches. Like that fucking night.
That sight makes her blood freeze and her eyes become shiny and her breathing gets heavier and heavier.

She's going crazy. Cautiously she sits on his knees next to him.
There's that heaviness in her heart again. The same as that fucking night.

"Eddie..." a sigh comes out of her mouth as she brings a hand to the boy's chest that keeps coughing weakly. " It's-it's okay, I'm here now."

Her trembling mouth opens and closes as she desperately tries to breath to calm down.
"It hurts, it hurts."
"I know...I know."

"Why didn't you come with me to fight them. You left me there. Dying..." he raises his voice, taking the girl's wrist with one hand. The temperature of her cold skin contrasts with Vivien's warm skin.

"Eddie I saved you. You... you were dying in my arms... I-" Viv tries to talk but feels suffocated "Ed, you know I would have sacrificed my life to save you..."
Oh, how she wanted him to run.

"Bullshit."

The tremor goes back into her muscles. She wants to cry, she needs to cry, but she can't even gather the energy to shed a tear because of how much she has already poured.

"We could have fought them together. Why are you such a coward?" he growls
"Eddie, you're hurting me..." the pain makes its way through her lungs like there's something inside that's holding them tighter and tighter.

"Maybe if you'd gone, today I wouldn't be like this."
"No, no, no. You... you chose to go after them. And I...I felt horrible for not getting there in time but-"

"I bet you're glad i'm dead now, huh?"
"Eddie no. You're not dead-"
Eddie's in the hospital, isn't he? In a fucking cold hospital room.
"Oh...but I am."

Her heart starts beating faster in her chest as if he wanted to get out of her rib cage.
Someone else is behind her.
A younger voice intervenes between the two of them.
More fragile. "First me and then him. Who else do you want to hurt to be satisfied?"

Due to the fright she stumbles back with a gasp holding on her free hand on the grass, while her gaze bounces between Eddie and the boy in front of her...
"W-Will, hey honey-"
He's not the grown-up Will, he's the 11-year-old kid who's been through the worst things that can happen to a human being.

"You left us both alone."
At Will's words the girl's heart fills with guilt as she nervously shakes her head.
Was he really like that? No, she would never do that.

"Why are you doing this?"
"W-what?"
"Don't you see the blood on your hands?"
Vivien looks down at her hands. Blood. It's not Eddie's because it keeps flowing despite the girl trying in vain to dry them on the grass.

Eddie adds by lowering his tone of voice but squeezing his arm stronger and  bringing her closer to himself roughly "You should get away from the people you love if that's what causes them. Take it as an advice."

The air becomes more and more stuffy and makes the headache grow.
"ENOUGH!"

She can't run from demons in her memories.
"Yeah keep running away from the problems like you always have!"

But when she gets up weakly, she frees herself from Eddie's squeeze, groans in pain and starts to get as far away as possible, but sudden she wakes up in her bed breathless, soaked in sweat and sits down. Fuck.
She drops her head on the pillow sobbing. It was all too real, it always is.
Vivien turns on her stomach and tries to suffocate the sobs in the pillow.

The night was the hardest time to deal with, being left alone with only her thoughts. That memory was still printed on the back of her eyelids, seeing him almost every night when he tried to sleep.

Besides, she started dreaming about Will again. She stopped doing that about two years ago after the mindflayer thing, but apparently the wound reopened.

She knows and she's aware that on those nights, nothing happened that your head made you believe, and the two of them would never talk to her like that. She never said it out loud, but the guilt eats her up inside.