Chapter Text
The plan is simple. Like a fairytale, they split into three groups of three: Max, Lucas, and Erica stationed at the Creel House to attack Vecna’s mind; Steve, Robin, and Nancy trekking through the Upside Down to attack Vecna’s body; and Eddie, Chrissy, and Dustin stationed on the roof of the high school to distract Vecna’s minions.
The Fred gate would have been more accessible than the Kim gate, but they’d settled on going through the latter because once the plan kicked in, the distraction team was going to need to be able to get undercover quickly. Using the gate in the high school puts them right near shelter, and means that they dont have to carry the distraction equipment as far to plug it in.
As it turns out, the high school isn’t all that difficult to break into, anyway, even while lugging weapons and a whole lot of sound equipment along with them. The challenging part occurs when they reach the girls’ locker room and remember that the gate is on the ceiling.
“How are we supposed to get all this stuff up there?” Eddie mutters, craning his neck to look through. “And how are we looking up at the floor here and down at the sky at the other two gates? How’s that supposed to work?”
“It’s a weird alternate dimension stuck in 1983,” Steve comments. “It’s not supposed to make sense. And forget getting your stuff up there - how do we get up there?”
Dustin apparently has a brainwave, and retreives a few of the PE climbing ropes, knotting them together. “The enemy’s gate is down,” he intones, and flings one end of the rope upward. They all watch it pass through the gate and fall towards the floor on the other side, suspended perfectly by its halfway point. An experimental tug proves that it’ll stay stable.
Chrissy, on a brainwave of her own, climbs through first, and nearly falls off the rope onto the linoleum on the other side when the gravity changes, but catches herself in time and lands more gently on her feet. She then drags a stack of questionably stained tumbling mats into place for the less coordinated among them to land on. Robin and Nancy find slightly less nasty mats on the normal side to put in place for the return trip (assuming any of them survives to make it).
The guitar and amps are a little trickier, requiring one person on the rope and one on the floor on each side to pass each piece along, but finally everything and everyone is through. They all just look at each other for a long moment, and then Steve and Robin and Nancy wish them luck and start on their way.
Eddie looks at Chrissy and Dustin. He knows that deep down inside, they’re warriors; he’s seen it every week since Hellfire started up this year. But physically, they’re a pixie-like cheerleader and a fourteen-year-old nerd. And here they are with only him, a delinquent metalhead armed solely with an electric guitar, to lead them.
Not great odds.
He breaks out his very best Dungeon Master grin, though, the slightly manic one, and claps his hands together. “All right! Are you ready for the most metal concert in the history of the world?”
Both of them nod eagerly.
“Then we’d better get this place set up.”
&&&&
All right, so the police might not have listened to him, but Jason can’t give up. He can’t. He’s the only person who knows the truth who appears to have the slightest inclination to warn anybody, so it’s up to him. He’s going to make sure Hawkins is safe no matter what he has to do.
He starts by calling the rest of the guys from the team, telling them he found out Munson wasn’t the murderer after all and to knock off the hunt. They’re skeptical, but they listen to him, agreeing to call it off.
They’re less receptive when he tries to tell them about the Upside Down, or rally them to spread the word about a possible invasion of monsters. “Yeah, right, Carver, what, have you been smoking some of Munson’s stash?” Andy jeers, right before he hangs up the phone.
Well, all right, he doesn’t need them. The world might not be anything like he thought it was forty-eight hours ago, but that’s all right. He’s got it figured out now. Even in a world where all the weirdest fantasies of the nerds and freaks have come true, he can still be the pillar of the community he was always supposed to grow up to be. He can be the upright one, the example. It’ll just look a little different.
There’s supposed to be another town meeting tonight, since the last one didn’t do much to calm people down. This time, Jason gets there early, and makes his way to the microphone after most of the people who are going to come have sat down, but before Chief Powell can take the reins.
Everyone gets quiet when they see him. That’s good. That’s the way things should be.
“People of Hawkins!” he declares. “I know you’re all scared, and worried, and for good reason. I know some of you have been saying our town must be cursed, for so much death to have happened. Well, I’m here because I’ve found out what’s causing all the death, and it’s not a curse. It’s something the police don’t want you to know about.”
Powell has arrived now, and is trying to intervene. “Son, we talked about this, now why don’t you just --”
“Let me talk, please, everyone here is in danger!” Jason dodges Powell’s grip. “There’s a whole other world underneath this town, one that the people from Hawkins Lab discovered. I’ve been there and I’ve seen it and all the strange things that have happened since Will Byers vanished, all the mysterious deaths, those were all caused by creatures from that place. And now there are new doorways opening up from there to here, and we’re in danger of being invaded by those monsters. So please, just listen to me and help me protect our town. If we band together, I know we’ll at least stand a chance.”
He stands, slightly disheveled, and stares desperately at the crowd. They all stare back at him, like he escaped from somewhere he shouldn’t have escaped from.
Then one redneck with a bushy brown beard, seated about halfway back, throws back his head and starts to guffaw. Around half the other people in the room seem to take that as a signal to burst into laughter themselves, and the other half start murmuring to each other in scandalized tones. Jason just stands there, rooted to the spot, and all at once realizes how he must look. He’s covered in Upside Down filth, is running on next to no sleep, and just spouted what amounts to a campfire story at them.
Chrissy once, what now seems like an impossibly long time ago, threatened to dump blood all over him so that he would have to go home clear across town humiliated and prime gossip material. This is worse, so much worse.
Head ducked down and face aflame, he flees, only to almost slam right into a woman on the front steps of the town hall. She’s wearing a pristine business suit, and her dark hair is cut shorter than he’s ever seen a woman’s hair.
She looks at him like he’s something she found while cleaning a drain. “Jason Carver?”
He nods reluctantly.
“You’re going to have to come with me. We need to talk.”
&&&&
Chrissy had always privately maintained that if Eddie were ever to play D&D as a character, rather than a Dungeon Master, he would naturally be a bard.
Eddie, the one time that she’d mentioned this, had insisted that no such thing would ever happen. He was born to be a DM, and a DM he would stay forever and ever, world without end, amen. Besides, he’d said, as awesome as music was in general, he seriously doubted that anything played on a lyre or a flute would have the power to slay monsters or inspire fighters.
As the signal goes and Eddie starts laying into his guitar, though, Chrissy wonders if perhaps they should reopen that discussion.
She’s seen him play numerous times before, at the Hideout and sometimes at his place. She’s seen how he gets into it, how his body moves with the music and his head whips back and forth like he’s somewhere else.
This is on a whole different level. Maybe it’s her adrenaline working on her, or maybe the stress has him getting even more lost in the music than usual, but he’s playing with his whole self. His eyes are closed, his fingers fly over the riffs, and on the heavy downbeats he bends with the force of it. The amps are turned all the way up and the noise is deafening, reverberating through Chrissy’s whole body. She thinks she might lose some of her hearing. She doesn’t care. She wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in either world while this is happening.
She needs to keep an eye out for the bats, and she does, gripping her spear tightly, but she can’t help but dance, too, moving her feet and banging her head, even if she can’t close her eyes.
He’s playing “Master of Puppets”, because of course. What else would one play to taunt Vecna?
She and Dustin spot the bats at almost the same moment. “Eddie!” he bellows over the music. “We’ve got incoming in thirty seconds !”
Eddie makes eye contact, nods, keeps playing. Chrissy’s been taken out of it now, though, focusing on the flying monsters winging closer, closer --
“ Twenty seconds! ” she yells.
Eddie’s playing through the riff faster and faster; she knows he wants to finish it in time, before they have to lock down.
“ Ten seconds! ” from Dustin. She can hear the screeching of the bats over the music, which, given that she’s standing right next to the amps, isn’t a good sign.
Five...four...three...two... She’s counting down the seconds in her head, and Eddie slams the final chord about half a second after they really should be moving. She and Dustin stab at the closest bats as he yanks out the cord with a jaw-aching squeal of feedback, and then they’re all running, scrambling for the ladder down to their way in, and Chrissy stabs and stabs and gets in a good whack occasionally, trying to fight like Ananda would, but Ananda can heal herself and others with magic and Chrissy is fresh out of that; if they get mortally wounded, that’s it.
Eddie’s down the ladder and then Dustin is and then she’s being pulled off the last couple rungs of the ladder as Eddie seizes her by the waist, and they all run like mad for the barricade they made around the side door, and then they’re through, it slams and locks behind them and then they’re through the door, they’re safe, they’re safe safe safe, they made it.
The leftover adrenaline takes over at that point, leaving them all hooting and hollering and jumping up and down right there in the hallway because they have to do something. Dustin yells, “Dude - most. metal. EVER! ” and he and Eddie howl in unison, and then Chrissy yanks Eddie close or he pulls her in and they clash together, kissing like their lives depend on it.
They break apart after just a few seconds when another whoop from Dustin reminds them that they have company, but still. They’re alive. They’re alive and their part is done and everything’s going to be okay.
&&&&
Eddie had, at the time, been fairly impressed with how thoroughly they’d been able to fortify the gym area of the high school with such limited time.
It’s only now that it occurs to him that they completely neglected to check the rest of the building .
Which, judging by the screeching and scrabbling that he can hear not all that far away, is something that they really should not have forgotten to do.
Everything in the Upside Down is in an advanced state of decay, the buildings not least. Of course there would be a broken window or some flaw somewhere that would let the creatures find a way in.
Chrissy and Dustin can hear them too, he can tell. He's just about to say something, to maybe suggest they run for the gate, when there's a distant crash and a split second later, a torrent of bats comes surging down the hall towards them.
He screams something, probably " Run! ", and then they're well and truly in a combat encounter. All three of them whack and jab and flail, retreating all the while, until they make it to the gym and then make a mad dash for the locker room.
Eddie slams the door behind them, locks it. It looks solid. "Okay. They shouldn't be able to get through that, right?"
That's when he hears the scratching of bats in the air vents.
That's also when it occurs to him that they can't just keep retreating. If they go back through the gate and the bats break through, they could follow them into Hawkins. No one would be safe. And even if they didn't break through, that would still leave Steve and Nancy and Robin cut off from their planned escape route. Yes, the Fred gate isn't far, but the plan is precarious enough without changing it.
Which is why what he's about to do is so colossally stupid.
"Let's go, we need to get back through the gate," he says, like a lying liar. "Henderson, you first."
Dustin clambers up and through, and Chrissy passes the guitar to him. The amps are going to be a loss, but he kind of suspected that from the beginning. He can get new ones, in the increasingly unlikely event that he survives.
He kisses Chrissy one more time before urging her up the rope, trying to hang on to the feeling and memory of it and give her a good memory, too. It's really weird timing, and she picks up on it, because she asks as she's climbing, "What was that for?"
Eddie waits until she's dropped onto the mats on the other side, then says, "Just in case I don't get the chance again."
Then he brings his spear around and cuts the rope.
He hears Chrissy's scream of protest, but then the first bats burst from the vents, and he hollers to get their attention, banging his spear against his shield before turning and running at top speed out of the locker room, the gym, and the school.
If he had a bike he could lead them further away, faster, but as it is he only has his own two severely unathletic legs. He does make it a respectable distance down the road, away from the Fred gate and the Creel House as well, before he can't run any further. He stops, bending down and panting, before turning to face the oncoming bats.
He might not be a hero, but he can at least go down doing his best, buying his friends more time, keeping everyone safe.
&&&&
Chrissy screams long and loud up at the gate in frustration, then turns on Dustin. "Stay here," she says fiercely. "Don't even think about coming through, no matter what."
"But we gotta do something!" he protests.
"I know. I'm doing it. What I need you to do is give me a boost, and then wait here so Steve doesn't kill us all. Okay?"
Dustin nods, and makes a stirrup of his hands.
Chrissy steps and launches herself into an upward that catches her and abruptly turns into down. It's a near thing, but she tucks and rolls into the landing, coming off the stacked mats a little shaken, but otherwise physically okay.
Dustin throws her her spear and shield without prompting, and she catches them and takes off running. There's screeching coming from outside, so she follows it and spots the cloud of bats as soon as she charges through the outer doors.
Eddie is standing, not running, in the middle of them, striking out and doing his best to fight, but as she watches, one gets its tail wrapped around his neck and another slams into him, knocking him down.
Chrissy sprints to him. She thinks she might be yelling a battle cry, but she's not sure.
She's not Eowyn. She's not Ananda. Not really. But, like them, she is a warrior and she fights for what and who she loves.
Besides which, she's spent the past few years routinely backflipping and handspringing and throwing her fellow cheerleaders bodily into the air. She's shaken pompoms until her arms felt like they would fall off, and kept smiling.
She might not be trained with a broadsword, but she does have a certain amount of strength and endurance in her, and right now that is being multiplied several times over by adrenaline and rage and sheer no this will not happen .
She leaps into the fray, laying waste to anything between her and Eddie, then stabs the bats on him until there's not much left.
"Chrissy..." he says, half-groaning in pain. "How... I cut the rope, you were supposed to..."
"We are both supposed to make it home," she says, whacking away a bat that dares to get close and crouching beside him. "How bad did they get you?"
"Uh..." Eddie partially sits up. "I'm kind of chomped on, but not gonna die in the next few minutes. I don't think."
"Can you run with me back to the building?"
"Maybe. But that'll lead them back to the gate, we can't let them through to Hawkins."
Chrissy takes a deep breath. "Then we'll have to try and hold out here."
The bats, at this point, decide to stop being wary of her, and start swooping in en masse again. Chrissy plants her feet and takes them on as they come, teeth clenched in determination. Behind her, Eddie is sitting up and fending off his share, punctuated with occasional grunts of pain.
It's not a great situation. There's still not a lot of hope. But at least they're together, and they have slightly better chances that way.
Then, just when Chrissy isn't sure she can swing her spear one more time - the bats simply drop out of the air.
At first, in the abrupt silence, Chrissy isn't sure what to do. She turns to look at Eddie, who looks just as confused as she feels, prodding at a fallen bat with his spear.
"What was that?" he mutters.
"They were saying everything here is a hive mind," Chrissy says slowly. "So maybe..."
"Maybe they did it. Maybe they got Vecna."
They stay there a long moment, pondering that, and then Eddie reaches for her hand. "C'mon, we should get inside before something else happens."
A fine thing for him to be saying now. Chrissy is definitely going to have words with him about his leaving her to go be a hero and make the sacrifice play, but she'll do it once everything is safe and stable and he doesn't have blood leaking out of him.
She helps him up and wraps an arm around his waist, and they slowly make their way back towards the school. The bats don't rise up from the ground to attack them again.
Everything is quiet until they've almost reached the doors, at which point Steve and Robin and Nancy come cycling up at furious speeds, skidding to a halt. "Oh, fantastic, you're alive," Robin says immediately with great relief, while Steve, without preamble, demands, "Where's Dustin?"
"Back on the other side. I sent him through on his own; we had a bit of a situation here," Eddie says. Then he winces. "We might need a new rope."
That, of course, prompts all manner of questions as to exactly what they got up to, and no small amount of reaming out when Eddie admits what he tried to do.
But when they finally all make it back through the gate (slowly but surely shrinking after what Nancy confirms was in fact Vecna's very thorough death), Dustin greets them with a shout and attempts to hug them all at once, so that they end up all hugging each other in one big clump, drinking in the knowledge that they're all safe.
And moments after that, Lucas calls in on the walkie talkie to confirm that everything went without a hitch on their end and he and Max and Erica are all safe, just as the gate closes with a final wet 'pop'.
It's over. They did it. Everyone is safe.