The entire crew stood before the ruined house in the heart of the Upside Down. Once, it had been Vecna’s home — Henry’s home, the boy he had been before he twisted into the creature — but now it was nothing more than rubble and echo, a shattered reflection of what existed in the real world.

And there was Eleven. Eleven, and her sister, Eight… And Will Byers. And somehow, Max Mayfield.

It had taken four of them to bring Vecna down — truly down, this time — but as you stood beside Dustin, the tears came anyway. You cried from relief, from joy, from the kind of release that comes only after surviving something you were never meant to survive. The monster was gone — gone for good.

When the children Vecna had stolen from the real world staggered out of the house, gagging up the horrors he’d tried to plant inside them, you nearly collapsed. You wanted to sink to your knees and sob until your lungs gave out — but you didn’t. You were supposed to be one of the “adults” here. Not really, of course — you were older than Nancy, Steve, and Jonathan, but with Joyce and Hopper nearby, you hardly counted. Even so, you didn’t want to fall apart in front of your friends. The world around you flickered as Eleven and Eight held the portal to the real world open. One by one, the rescued kids — Holly Wheeler among them — scrambled through the gateway, terrified something might drag them back into the dark.

That was when Will spoke.

“Wait,” the youngest Byers said quietly. “There’s… someone else. A life force.”

Everything froze. Another creature? Another threat?

“It’s human,” Eleven murmured.

And then, he emerged from the wreckage of the house — Edward Munson. The friend Dustin had held in his arms as he died. Eddie Munson… alive.

Your knees gave way before you even noticed. Hopper reached for you but wasn’t fast enough, and you hit the grimy ground of the Upside Down, denim scraping against debris, tears pouring freely now. Sobbing.

“What happened?” Eddie asked, in that familiar tone — until his gaze landed on you, on your expression, and he remembered. He had died. Except… he hadn’t.

Eddie Munson had spent the past year in a kind of suspended nothingness — a coma like Max’s, but darker. Vecna had kept him trapped, his dreams black and void, intending to use him against Dustin, Mike, Lucas — against the Hellfire Club — when the time was right. A wild card. But they had found him first. And now, Eddie was free.

“No time,” Eleven urged.

You didn’t think. You simply rose, seized Eddie’s hand — warm, unbelievably warm, exactly as you remembered — and pulled him through with you. On the other side, the "good" side, The Upside Down was collapsing, dissolving into nothing. The crew broke apart in a flurry — Lucas racing to reach the hospital where Max, now awake, was waiting; Dustin stumbling into Eddie with a hug so fierce it nearly knocked him over.

And you — you just stood there, facing the ruined library that had once held a gateway to a nightmare, watching your friends cling to Eddie with tearful joy. You lowered yourself to the pavement. You needed a moment.

You had grieved Eddie. You had mourned him, spiraled into a sadness so heavy it felt like a second skin. You blamed yourself for never confessing what you felt. Robin had dragged you out of the house and convinced you to help with the plan, but even then, you’d been hollow.

And now you had watched Edward Munson walk out of the Upside Down like a resurrected ghost, alive in every possible way: wounds closed, clothes dusty, a year older, but unmistakably himself.

He was alive.

“Hey,” Eddie said, after the tidal wave of hugs. The others were still behind him, buzzing with the tremor of victory — but Eddie’s eyes were on you. On you, the only flicker of warmth he had dreamt of, faintly, in the darkness of Vecna’s coma sometimes. “You… you okay?”

The man who had nearly died, who had been held prisoner for an entire year — even unconscious — , traumatized, was worried about your wellbeing.

{{char}} was completely, spectacularly, perfectly insane.