"Still Just A Screw Up, Carver" - Eddie Munson & Y/N Sequel

ELEVEN ~ Nothing Compares 2 U

They're gone...
They're gone and it's all my fault. I spent so much time wrapped up in all the secrets and lies that I couldn't even see I was killing my baby, not until it was too late. Eddie and I wanted a fresh start and this was it but now I've fucked it all up. He will never forgive me for this, never ever, and I wouldn't blame him either. After the shit with Arwen I swore that I would never keep secrets from him again and instead I just repeated the same stupid and selfish mistake and someone out there was making sure I got the punishment I deserved... but they were taking Eddie down with me and I wouldn't allow it. I heard Eddie with Dustin, Lucas and Max last night, and with Gareth and Jeff before that - he was almost happy. But that happiness amounted to nothing as soon as he was forced to be alone in the house with me again, he just cried and cried on the couch until he was drained, eventually weeping himself to sleep beside me. I couldn't do this to him anymore and I needed space to think about if and how I couldn't ever move forward from this.

At first I wasn't sure where I was going when I got into the van, but as I drove beyond the Hawkins town line it didn't matter - I was gone and that's what everyone else needed right now. Was it another selfish decision? Yes, of course. But in the end everyone would see that it was for the best.

~ Eddie POV ~
"I don't fucking know, Wayne! I don't know where she would have gone!" I'd already had her parents screaming at me over the phone because I'd 'lost their daughter', her brother couldn't understand how I had no fucking clue where to find her and now Wayne was asking the question I was getting sick of hearing; 'Where could she have gone?'
"Alright, kid. Calm down. Just breathe." I didn't mean to shout at him or get mad at him, I was just feeling so helpless and out of control, and now my girl was fucking missing. After days and days and days of lying in her bed, doing nothing but crying and sleeping, even crying in her fucking sleep, she's finally gotten up and she's gone. Only a fucking note telling me she's sorry and that she needs to be alone? How she could've thought this was okay I'll never know. I'd called every single one of our friends, and nobody had heard from her or seen her, I even called the auto shop and Corroded Coffins management team but none of them had heard from her either.

I felt like the world around me was burning into ashes, almost in slow motion. I couldn't think or even breathe right now, I felt like the smallest human alive in the whole world. The expanding ache in my heart I'd been feeling for the last two weeks felt like it was going to kill me, I was silently begging for the brief numbness I'd felt after the divorce to take over before something worse did. It was like I was slowly losing every part of my universe and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I know I've been one of the shittiest people in the world, especially a shitty husband, but this felt like a cruel punishment that nobody on earth ever deserved to suffer through. Maybe I did deserve this? Maybe I'd underestimated just how shitty I'd been and this was my wake up call? Well, I'm awake. God damn it, I'm awake!

Hopper told me it was too early to send out a search party, I could tell it killed him to not be able to help but he put an APB on my truck so patrol cars would know to look out for it and swore to send out a missing persons alert as soon as he was able to. In the meantime I needed the best team of amateur detectives I could think of, I needed people who knew her almost as in and out as I did. I needed the gang. I only had a couple of hours until the kids were due home from school and a million places to search for her, I needed a miracle but our friends were pretty damn close. Nancy and Jonathan started canvassing door-to-door with flyers they'd made on the copiers at the paper, Red and Sinclair camped out at Reds moms trailer to see if she turned up at Wayne's whilst he was here ready to watch the kids and Henderson went with Wheeler and El to search the woods and Lovers Lake - El tried to find her with that weird mind power shit but it was a dead end. I gave Gareth the keys to my old apartment so he and his Mrs hauled out there in case that's where she was heading, Jeff and Erica searched the Arcade, mall and high street, leaving flyers in every store they visited.