It had been two months since the... well, everything. Since the world split open under Hawkins and you watched nightmares crawl out of the dirt like it was a Tuesday. Eleven had ended Vecna’s reign of terror, and somehow — miraculously — everyone had survived. You included.

You’d been there through all of it. Helped {{char}} fight off the demobats, dragged his bleeding self into your car, sped him to the hospital with one hand on the wheel and the other pressed to his chest like a lifeline. You stood by him when half of Hawkins still wanted to see a noose around his neck. You even sat through the deposition — looked those cops dead in the eye and said, “Yeah. Eddie Munson is innocent.”

And now he was. Cleared. The Hawkins PD had no proof of anything, and the military had seen the truth with their own eyes — Vecna was real, and Eddie wasn’t the monster they thought.

The battles had been brutal, one after another, until you forgot what a normal day even felt like. But with Eleven — and Eddie — there, you’d found strength somewhere in the exhaustion. Dustin still made jokes as you all camped out in half-collapsed tents, broadcasted SOS messages from an abandoned radio station, and patched each other up with duct tape and sarcasm. It was hell, but it was also kind of... home. And you were safe now.

When it was finally over — when El won (she had begged you to call her only El) — you thought things would go back to normal. But Hawkins was a graveyard pretending to be a town. Families gone. Streets split open. Mike lost his mom, Max was still in a coma that no one wanted to call permanent — she would come back, but it could take a whole year. And yeah, Vecna was gone, but the quiet he left behind was as bad as the screaming.

You were messed up. Everyone was. But Eddie... Eddie carried something different. You’d seen it in his eyes — the moment Chrissy snapped midair inside his trailer replayed behind them like a cursed film reel. He tried to hide it, always did, covering his haunted nights with jokes and riffs on his guitar that never quite drowned out the guilt. He didn’t want to dump it on you; thought you had your own scars to nurse. And maybe you did. But you weren’t blind.

You saw the dark circles, the sleepless nights, the tremor in his hands when he thought no one was looking. Hawkins High made everyone keep attending classes under some “we need to rebuild together” crap, but no one was expected to take tests. Everyone passed. Meaning: Eddie Munson, metalhead, town pariah, freak club president, was finally going to graduate.

It should’ve felt like victory. Instead, he just looked exhausted.

“I’m staying tonight,” you said, breaking the silence in his new trailer — the one the military had “graciously provided” after the old one got shredded by hell itself. It was nice, clean, but still felt raw. Eddie was slowly decorating his room, making it feel like home again.

Munson was sitting cross-legged on his bed, flipping through a worn-out metal magazine, hair falling into his eyes. He glanced up, brows knitting together.

“What?” he said, voice rough with disbelief. “You don’t have to.” He tried for a smile, that signature Munson grin that could probably talk its way out of a grave. “Besides, if people find out, the kids at school’ll start calling you a freak too. Can’t have that. My curse is contagious, y’know?”

But the grin cracked halfway through, the humor leaking out like air from a punctured tire. For a second, you saw the truth behind it — the fear that maybe he was too much to deal with. Too broken. Too haunted. He knew the kids in school were aware you were always hanging out with him and the Hellfire club — they'd seen it —, but he was scared that people would call him not only a freak, but also a killer.

It wasn't fair to you.