Not that they could enjoy it, but every other Tuesday was date night for Eddie and Chrissy and even though neither of them were in a particularly romantic or perky mood, given the circumstances, they knew it would do them good to get out of the house and so after work, Eddie swung by the library to pick her up and took her to the local burger joint. Tonight, he was paying and ordered himself chicken tenders while Chrissy chose the club sandwich. He was glad that she could mostly hold a conversation by herself as she launched into a rant about how parents allowed their children to run amok in the children's section at the library and told them not to bother cleaning up any books they've taken out because it "was the assistant's job".

Eddie lived for these moments to see her so passionate about something that had for so long been denied to her. Her interests and hobbies were blooming now that she no longer had to worry about every microscopic detail of her life being monitored. It had been two weeks since the final court date where Chrissy's parents had signed away any rights they had and Chrissy had been granted a restraining order against her mother. It was a challenging thing to confront and Eddie couldn't have been prouder of her for the courage needed to essentially bid her parents forever farewell in front of the judge. Nancy and most of the party had also come to show their support to Chrissy, which made for a powerful counterargument against Chrissy's mother's appeal.

In the end, Chrissy was allowed to take whatever she wanted from her old room and had redecorated her new room with posters of famous landmarks, historical figures, and a photo of the Morse Code alphabet more as a dedication to her introduction into the party than for any informational value. Her room always had books strewn over all the furniture and dog-eared pamphlets hanging from her pinboard. It looked like a college history professor lived in her room, which was a huge change from the scrupulously organized prison that her mom had constructed for her where the walls had been adorned with the tri-color Hawkins High banners, her clothes for the day had been pressed and set out for her, and her meal plan had been written out.

She had such freedom now and was slightly overcompensating for it, but she was an independent woman and she could do as she liked. The only part of her room that had any personal touches was the corner with her bedside table upon which sat a collection of Steve Winwood tapes, a white bracelet that she always wore, and a photo booth roll that she had convinced Eddie almost at knife-point to take with her. He hated pictures unless he was able and encouraged to act however he pleased and so he had made a strange face in each of the four photo print-outs, not that Chrissy minded. The little things made her happy, so if he had to cram himself into a photo booth to take a few pictures with his girlfriend, he would do it.

The whole experience had ended up being especially worth it when, giggling and leading him out of the booth by the hand, Chrissy had spotted her former boyfriend Jason Carver watching her and Eddie from across the strip mall. Chrissy had tried to lead Eddie away at the sight of Jason, but Eddie had told her to wait, as he and Jason were locked in a staring contest and to give in would be to submit to the dominant being. He had wanted Jason to know that he had every intention of flaunting his relationship with Chrissy at every opportunity and that giving Eddie the evil eye was not going to deter him at all. In the end, Jason had moved on and Eddie had felt a small measure of triumph.

Chrissy had made so much progress but there were still times when she would hesitate as she attempted to unlearn the detrimental behavior instilled in her by her mother, such as when it came time to eat something not strictly adhering to a vegetarian diet. Eddie would buy her whatever she wanted to attempt to eat and then take a to-go plate home if she didn't manage to muster the courage to eat it and either he, Steve, or Robin would finish it off later.

Tonight, she was daintily nibbling on her fries but positively inhaling her sandwich and Eddie was content to sit there and admire her and how far she'd come in the short few months they'd officially been together. He was used to being stared at for all the wrong reasons at school and around town but when people now saw him walking hand-in-hand with Chrissy Cunningham after the news of her mother's abuse had leaked out, gossip followed them everywhere and he found that he actually enjoyed it–or rather, most of it. There were some nasty bits flying around of how he had gotten Chrissy hooked on drugs and taken advantage of her but these were all proven false just by looking at Chrissy who showed no signs of addiction or abuse and was positively beaming. The idea that Eddie could do something like that to her left a very sour taste in his mouth and it had made him a bit more cautious on his outings with her and a bit more guarded in how he touched her or made his way around her in public.

Like now, he was uncomfortably aware of the elderly couple in the booth across from them eyeing him suspiciously and most likely wondering if they needed to alert their hostess to a kidnap situation. They were not locals, from what Eddie could tell, just passing through. Normally, Eddie was a tried and trialed expert at ignoring people who looked at him funny but as with most things of late, he had a very different reaction than he had hoped.

It pissed him off, and Chrissy noticed, for she took a quick peek at the couple and then nudged her foot against Eddie's leg under the table to warn him not to say or do anything. It was amazing, how quickly she could pick up on his mood changes when they took Eddie by surprise every time and therein was the problem: he wasn't a moody person. He actually thought himself to be of the genial sort, someone who would always try to get along with others and taking them at face value, but the swings in his mood had him frustrated and bewildered at how his own body was betraying him and starting to give him a bad reputation. Not that he ever had a good reputation and not that he ever took out his frustrations on anyone or anything in public but at home, he had destroyed more than one pillow after smacking it against the wall or the floor to alleviate his tension.

"They don't know you and whatever they think will leave town right along with them once they finish their milkshakes," said Chrissy as she sipped her lemonade.

"That's great; that means I'll be a national celebrity once they spread the news at enough mom and pop joints that the kid with the long brown hair and ripped clothes is trafficking a young woman," said Eddie through his teeth, feeling the old woman's eyes on him.

"It doesn't mean anything, though."

"It does to me." Eddie had finally had enough and rotated in his seat to address the couple who shamelessly continued to stare at him. "I'm sorry, is there something I can do for you?"

"You local?" asked the old man.

"Very. Born and bred in this town, why?"

"She local too?" The old woman nodded at Chrissy.

"For about thirteen years," said Chrissy brightly, resting a cautionary hand on Eddie's arm as she also turned to face the couple. "I'm Chrissy, this is Eddie, my boyfriend."

"You doing okay tonight, Chrissy?" asked the woman in a very pointed manner.

Oh, go choke on your dentures, you old hag.

"I sure am, thanks for asking. It's date night and we're going to see Aliens after this."

"He's your boyfriend, is he?"

No, I'm her abductor and decided to kidnap a local popular girl in broad daylight in the same town we both grew up in and stay to grab a bite to eat and catch a movie before I stuff her in my trunk and hit the road.

"Been together four months on the twenty-fourth of this month," said Chrissy proudly.

"Happy for you," said the woman, not sounding sincere at all and returning to her milkshake.

Turning back to each other, Eddie crossed his arms and leaned forward with a lowered voice to tell Chrissy, "Did that or did that not sound just like an interrogation to make sure I wasn't kidnapping you?"

"Old people are superstitious and paranoid about everything, especially with all that cultist crap going around," responded Chrissy, copying his posture and movements. "And since you don't wear that Hellfire shirt anymore and have become a respectable member of society, no one has any reason to link you to Satanic cults."

"I still don't look normal enough for most people, apparently."

"You'll be waiting a very long time if you're holding out for universal popularity."

"I'm not holding out for any popularity. I just hate knowing people think I'm capable of doing what they think I'm capable of."

"They should have seen you fighting that spider, then. Then they'd really know what you were capable of." Chrissy lifted slightly off of her seat and kissed the tip of his nose. Seeing that Eddie's spirits had not improved, she nearly whispered, "I thought you were doing okay?"

Eddie scratched at a nonexistent itch on his upper lip. "I thought I was doing okay. I've been trying to be okay but there are some days where my emotions start running away and I just–I need him. I miss him and I need him and he's not here and it makes me angry that Vecna took that from me. And that scares me because I don't get angry. You know me; when do I ever get angry enough to want to hit something? Never. But now I always feel like I've got this rage boiling just below the surface and half the time I don't even know what it's about. I start to get upset about things that I have no control over, that already happened, that weren't my fault. I get upset that I didn't do something to help him and I get upset that he turned his back on that vine that killed him."

"Now, you know none of that was your fault. It was no one's fault but Vecna's. We couldn't have predicted what would happen after we killed him."

"We didn't, though, did we? For these things to be happening again, for Max and me to see a demodog and for this goddamned scar to keep growing, we can't have done the job properly. So that means we went through all of that, lost Jonathan and my brother, for nothing. I know I shouldn't feel like this, but knowing that Vecna's still out there and Isaac isn't–I feel like I let him down."

"He loved you," Chrissy reminded him.

"I know that," said Eddie a bit shortly and he reached across the table to grasp her hand in apology. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap. It's just that he told me. He told me before he died and he told me in a letter after and those were the only two times anyone has ever said that to me. But I never said it back. He never heard me say it and I know no one ever told him that they loved him. I sent my brother to hell without ever telling him that I loved him."

"He knew, I'm sure."

"But it's not the same as if he'd heard me say it," Eddie insisted.

"Sometimes you don't need to say it or hear it. Sometimes you just know. You've never said it to me but I know you love me."

That caught him off guard and now he hung his head somewhat sheepishly. True, they had only been together for a fourth of the year but after what they'd been through together, he should have told her by now. This, however, did not seem like the appropriate time to tell her just to appease her. She would know he was only saying it because she expected him to say it. He would have to tell her when he was truly feeling it, not when his thoughts were elsewhere.

Chrissy continued as if she knew the war waging in his head at the moment. "I knew it when you told me to cut myself loose when I was tied to you in the Upside Down and the vine was dragging you away. And it was probably before even that when you realized you did. You just knew and so did Isaac."

She returned to her food, now taking to the fries with a bit more gusto as Eddie stared down at his half-eaten meal that no longer seemed appealing. "I've lost my appetite," he said after a while.

"Then we should go." Chrissy hailed their waitress and asked for a box to take Eddie's food home.

Eddie set his silverware on the table and then saw someone come in the door that made his blood boil. It was Chrissy's mother and Eddie had not seen her since Chrissy's last court date where the woman had pleaded with the judge to make Chrissy come home, where she insisted that her daughter was not mentally well and needed her mother.

"We're going out the back way," said Eddie as he left a ten and a five on the table and handed Chrissy the keys to his van.

"Why, what's wrong?"

Eddie stood up and took two steps forward to create a barrier between Chrissy and her mother just in case Mrs. Cunningham attempted to move toward her daughter.

The woman caught sight of Eddie, then Chrissy and said shrilly, "So now you're back to stuffing your face like the fat pig you are?"

At the sound of her mother's voice, Chrissy stiffened in her seat, then grabbed her purse and scooted out of the booth. Eddie's fingers grazed her shoulder in support, reassuring her that he would shield her from whatever was to come. She never even turned back to look at her mother as she made her way toward the exit near the restrooms.

"Chrissy, don't you walk away from me!"

Mrs. Cunningham stalked forward but Eddie didn't move, giving Chrissy enough time to reach the van and lock herself in. He was immovable as he and Mrs. Cunningham stared each other down. He hated the bitch for the lies she had told in court to try and bring her daughter back under her control. As a grown woman who would be nineteen at the end of the year, Chrissy didn't need the protection most people thought she did. She had taken on Vecna, shot him in the face, and stood up to the abusive and manipulative people in her life and was by all accounts, a complete and total badass but Eddie couldn't shake the protectiveness he still felt for her. As her boyfriend, it was his privilege to stand between her and her abusers.

"You come near me and I'll scream," Mrs. Cunningham threatened.

"You say one more word to her ever or come near her again and I'll have you arrested," Eddie promised. He turned on his heel and marched out the back door, fists shaking. At the van, Chrissy had already put the keys in the ignition and he turned the vehicle on, comforted by the dull thrum of the engine. He rested his forehead on the wheel for a moment, as that had been a close call. He had never come so close to wanting to a hit a woman before, but for that bitch to see her daughter who she was supposed to stay one hundred feet away from at all times and for the first thing to come out of her mouth was to fat-shame her daughter, Eddie almost thought it was worth it to spend a few nights in jail for slapping a woman with her own purse.

Leaning across the gap between their seats, Chrissy steered his face around to meet hers and kissed him. He could feel her trembling just slightly as well and knew he wasn't the only one who had wanted to face assault charges back there.

"Thank you," Chrissy said against his lips.

Half of him wanted to give her the most meaningful, reassuring kiss back and hope her mother could see from inside the diner but the other half, the stronger half, was pleading with him to just drive and do something about the continuous boiling inside of him.

The sun was going down now at close to eight in the evening and was in his eyes the whole ride home. He put his visor down and wrapped his uniform sleeves over his knuckles on the wheel to protect him from the burning, penetrative rays. He was still getting used to the fact that living in one of the middle-class neighborhoods of Hawkins meant he was closer to the central action and it didn't take quite as long to get places as it had when he lived at the trailer park, so when he pulled up at home a few minutes later, he wondered how he had managed to drive for those few minutes without even being aware of it.

Chrissy slid out of her seat with his to-go box but Eddie didn't turn off the van. "I forgot something at the garage. I'll be back in thirty minutes."

She knew he was lying, but he just needed to drive, if only to clear his head of these overbearing thoughts. He knew she wanted him to stay with her just now, that she was both concerned for him and enamored by him after he had come to her defense at the diner and it killed him to have to turn her down, but his insides were all but screeching at him to get away from all human contact at the moment.

"You have your walkie?" she asked.

"Yup."

"I'm timing you. Be careful."

Seeing that neither Steve nor Robin were yet home from their jobs, Eddie added, "Lock the doors until someone comes home."

Thank God, she let him go after that with no argument. He, of course, had no intention of returning to the garage since his boss, Enrique, would have closed up shop for the night, so he planned to just drive the route he normally took with Max. He put both windows down to tempt in the evening breeze and tugged at the front of his uniform to try and air himself out. Sweat was making everything stick to him in the most uncomfortable sort of way and he was considering driving to Lover's Lake and jumping in just to have some relief from this unbearable heat.

He found himself once again on the scenic road where he had seen that patch of dead landscape two days prior when a strange tug in his gut made him slow down to a crawling one mile per hour, peering out at the woods on either side of him with an uneasy feeling. It was stupid and inconsiderate to stop in the middle of a winding road at night, but he had learned to trust his instincts lately and they were telling him that he needed to stop the van now. Climbing out, he kept a hand at the back of his belt for his gun and walked out in front of the van about a dozen feet.

The night was still. Almost dead. There should have been insects rustling up a storm, something moving around in the woods, the distant noise of traffic, but the world had gone silent on the precipice of something that was about to happen. It was the collective holding of a breath before the plunge.

He could feel something growing from deep within the earth, bursting forth like it had been fit to burst for a century and was finally getting the chance to spill out. Then the ground split right before him, parting the road in a fiery orange line like a pathway of lava. He tried to keep his balance but it was like trying to find footing on a trampoline when four other people were jumping about on it and he landed hard on his side, shrinking back from the pain he felt at the bursting heat from the crevice in front of him.

And he heard a grandfather clock chiming in its sinister out-of-tune key.

The prickle along the back of his neck rippled like a warning and then he cried out as he felt a hole ripping in his stomach. He could see blood already spilling out and staining the front of his work uniform and didn't have to look to know that the scar was now an open wound.

Hospital, he told himself. You have to drive yourself.

He hung off of the driver's side door handle to try and pull himself to his feet but the sight of the trail of blood he was leaving did not leave him optimistic for his chances of getting help. He was on his feet, he had the door open, he was climbing in, and he nearly passed out from those few small acts alone.

He almost sealed his fate right there and then by driving straight into the crack in the earth before he remembered that the hospital was back in the direction he had come which was a very good thing because he knew his van was not making it across that ravine without a proper ramp. Backing up the van and pulling a one-eighty, he switched on his headlights, only to start worrying as he realized that his vision was showing him four lights instead of two.

Slouching over the wheel, he tried to keep his eyes focused on the road, but he was losing blood fast. After he located the walkie on the floor, he touched the mouthpiece to his lips and put out the call, "Anyone in Spring Break Party copy? Does anyone copy?"

"This is Mike, I copy. Are you okay? That earthquake–"

"I saw it. I think it's the Upside Down breaking through. Call Eleven, tell her to get her doctors out here. And somebody tell Chrissy I'm on my way to the hospital. I'm bleeding out."

"Eddie? What do you mean you're bleeding out? What happened?" asked Dustin.

"Hospital, that's where I'll be."

"Eddie, it's Chrissy, where are you?"

"Going–to–hospital," said Eddie, wincing with every movement the van made on the road.

"I'm getting in the car with Steve and we're on our way. Stay on the line with me."

"Okay."

"You're gonna be okay, kid. We'll all stay with you the whole way," came Hopper's voice.

"Just keep talking to us. Let us know you're still awake," said Max urgently.

His foot was pressing the pedal to the floor, but even the impressive sixty miles an hour the van was pulling at the moment didn't seem fast enough. He passed the post office and knew he was only a minute or two out, provided that that earthquake hadn't cut through the center of town and blocked off his direct route to the hospital. Any delay in his commute could mean the difference between making it in time…and not.

"Stay awake, Eddie. Stay with me. Talk to me, " pleaded Chrissy.

"Things are looking…foggy out here."

Was that a side effect of the alternate dimension seeping into theirs, or was Eddie just losing all cognitive abilities?

"Eddie, you've got this. You're stronger than you think," said Dustin encouragingly.

He was, in fact, wrong, but Eddie appreciated the thought. Of all the words anyone could use to describe Eddie whether they knew anything about him or not, strong was not one of those words that were often to be said in the same breath or in the same sentence as his name.

"We'll be there for you at the hospital. You just have to get yourself there first," Max promised.

Oh, was that all? All he had to do was drive whilst bleeding out and hope he made it within the proximity of the hospital before he keeled over and died at the wheel? Piece of cake.

Eddie whimpered as another wave of pain rippled through his stomach, accompanied this time by a very hollow, empty feeling.

"Baby, I don't think…I'm gonna...make it." And he very much believed that. When he had died in his dream, it had taken less time than this to do so. It was maybe two minutes tops before he bled out, so for him to still not only be alive, but conscious as well, someone upstairs had to be rooting for him. But it frightened him that this might be the last time he would talk to Chrissy, that the last thing he had said to her when he saw her in person was a lie, that he hadn't taken the opportunity when she kissed him to kiss her back, that he hadn't told her he loved her.

"Eddie? Eddie, where'd you go? Say something to me! EDDIE!"

He could see the curb reserved for emergency vehicles and came to the very same sudden stop he had reprimanded Max for. Not even bothering to turn the van off, he kicked open his door and staggered all of four feet before his legs gave out on him and he collapsed with his feet still in the street. He tried to claw his way forward, feeling his blood soaking the pavement beneath him.

The automatic sliding glass doors in front of him parted and he saw several pairs of white shoes hurrying forward, felt multiple hands lifting him, heard voices calling out to one another in a series of commands, and then there was nothing.

/ /

He knew he wasn't dead and he knew that he knew what that would feel like because he'd died before. There was nothing in death but there was a very definitive something where he was right now. A lumpy surface to lay on, a scratchy piece of cloth hanging off of him, an annoying ticking and beeping coming from somewhere off to his right. And the hum of cooling, wonderful air conditioning.

His eyes opened, but the groggy film that had kept them sealed shut for quite some time made him have to blink several times to bring his world back into focus. As he suspected, he was in a hospital room but judging by the curtain drawn across the middle of it, he had a neighbor. Apparently, having his stomach burst open was not cause enough to offer him some privacy. He had an oxygen tube placed under his nose, a heart rate monitor attached to his finger, and an IV needle on the back of his left hand. His uniform had been removed and replaced with a poorly designed hospital gown that was open at the front to allow for better access to the heavy layers of bandages across his midsection.

Knowing that he needed to take stock of his situation with the help of someone who knew what had happened and how long he had been here, he pressed the call button beside his bed. With impressive timing, a doctor came in just ten seconds later, and Eddie recognized him.

It was Doctor Owens, and he was not employed at this hospital and wasn't that sort of doctor, so Eddie had good reason to believe that he had been here long enough for Owens to return with Eleven, find Eddie, and take over for those doctors who had been bewildered by Eddie's state.

"Hey, kid, welcome back," said Owens with a small grin.

"How'm I doing?" asked Eddie groggily.

"You're okay and you're gonna be just fine."

"How long?"

"Just about twenty hours. Hopper had called me on Sunday and I had already touched down in Indianapolis when the earthquake hit. Your friends told me that you were attempting to get to the hospital when your scar opened up, so I was already here when you made your entrance. You got here just in time to stop the bleeding and start a transfusion. You made it by the literal skin of your teeth, so you should be proud of yourself for that."

"Is the hole getting bigger?"

"No, it stopped, and I think you know why."

He knew why. The Upside Down had opened, spilling into their world and merging. There wasn't just a small collection of gates anymore; both dimensions had become one. Eddie's scar was synonymous with the reopening of the Upside Down.

"Where is everyone?" He couldn't pretend that he wasn't slightly hurt that Chrissy, Max, or anyone else hadn't been here when he had awoken.

"They've been sitting with you, but I figured you would be waking up soon, so I sent them out because I needed to speak with you before anyone else. We've set you up in this room with a neighbor in the hopes that you can identify this man. He was found on the side of the road in bad shape with no identification and the only thing anyone managed to get out of him was talk about you."

Eddie pushed back his covers and swung his legs off of his bed. He was getting a bad feeling about this and wanted to be ready to fight or (preferably, definitely) run. Standing up with the assistance of the contraption his IV was connected to, he stepped closer to the curtain.

"Now, I have a suspicion as to who this is, but I need you to be calm when I pull this curtain back, okay? Whatever you do, don't shout."

Those words did not inspire any sort of confidence in him whatsoever. By the look Owens was giving him, Eddie absolutely was not ready to see whatever the doctor wanted to show him. Eddie was expecting the mangled form of Vecna to be in the bed next door and was thinking up all sorts of other possibilities when Owen drew back the curtain.

It wasn't Vecna.

It was Isaac.

Except it wasn't. It absolutely couldn't be and any reasoning Eddie might have had went straight out the window because he was in complete regression His mind had been messed with too many times to accept the sight before him as reality.

"No," said Eddie almost instantly like he was on autopilot, programmed to have an immediate denial reaction. He took an ungainly step back and his bare feet slipped on the linoleum floor. Doctor Owens caught him and steered him toward his bed. "That's not him. I saw him die. I saw him taken."

"While that may be true, this is your brother, and he's alive."

"That's not him," Eddie insisted, looking at the heavily scarred side of Isaac's face and the black spider-webbing markings leeching off of him. He was already a thin man before he died but now he looked close to anorexic. His face was sunken in, his cheeks hollow, his eye sockets skeletal-like. He had been strapped down with heavy leather restraints across both wrists and ankles as well as his chest and was being fed oxygen from a full mask. His normally clean cut and perfectly styled hair was disheveled and had grown about three inches so that it now touched his shoulders. His skin was ghastly pale and bordering on jaundice-looking from not having seen sunlight for months. On the window seat beside him were the clothes Eddie had last seen him in, except they were nearly unrecognizable with how grimy and tattered they were.

It was like looking at a decomposing body if there had been a body to take back with them after battling Vecna.

"My brother died," said Eddie. "I watched him. I watched Vecna take him from me. There was no body, nothing left."

"I know this is hard for you–"

"No, you don't! You don't know shit! People always say that when they have no idea. I grieved for him, I let him go in my mind. He's gone and that thing right there isn't him. It can't be because we killed Vecna. I don't know what that thing is, but it's not him." Eddie pulled at some of his hair, yanking hard enough to probably make himself bleed. He could not cope, could not stand his emotions being toyed with like this. "I don't want to do this. I can't do this anymore."

He sank back on his bed, trying to retreat into the pillows to put distance between him and the ghost in the bed next to him. The various machines hooked up to him began to beep and blare as everything within him set a racing pace. He had half a mind to rip everything off and run for it, but how far could he get in his state?

Owens sat down at the middle of the bed, hands folded as he considered Eddie. "That is your brother, kid."

"I wish it was," Eddie admitted, hiding as much of his face as he could in shame. "I want it to be, but it can't be. I can't process that and I can't accept that. That's not my brother."

"How do you know? How can you know for sure unless you talk to him?"

"Because he shouldn't be able to talk! He's dead and he's been dead for months. I didn't want to believe that something was going to happen but it has and Vecna is back somehow and he's getting inside my head and fucking with me again and I can't take it. I can't take it anymore."

Eddie tried to make a break for the door, but Owens blocked him.

"Let me out," Eddie demanded. "I want out of this room. I will not be in the same room as that thing for one more second. I want to see my girlfriend."

"You just said the very thing that makes this all possible, Eddie. If Vecna is back, if the Upside Down exists, wouldn't it stand to reason that your brother does too? He and Vecna went into that portal together and Vecna was decapitated but he survived, so why couldn't Isaac? Why can't that be your brother?"

"Because," said Eddie desperately. "Because something will have happened to him on the other side, something that would change him and make him not my brother. He couldn't survive for that long and not be–contaminated or whatever the hell Vecna did to him while he was in there."

"You said he died for you that day. Don't you think you owe it to him to find out what's happened to him since? If he's been through hell, it was for you, and you owe it to him to sit there and listen to every miserable detail of it if he chooses to share it."

"No, I don't. He told me to do one thing and that was to let him go, so I did. I did that favor for him."

"He'll need you to listen to him when he wakes up."

"Why?"

"Because he thinks you're dead. The people who found him said he kept telling them his little brother was dead and if that's true, he'll have spent the past months trapped in that state of mind except he didn't have any of the support you did to help him face that fact. So he's going to need you to be there for him, in whatever state that may be, when he wakes up. He'll need his brother."

"If he thinks I died then…then what? I don't know what it means. I died in a dream, but Eleven said she saw it in the void, so wouldn't that make it real? But it never happened to me. Steve said it took fifteen seconds from the time that the vine stabbed Isaac to when the portal took him through. I couldn't have died and come back to life and seen it happen to my brother in fifteen seconds."

Or could he? Time had been slow then, so what was to say that what Eddie saw had even been real? He couldn't rely on his own eyes anymore; he'd been deceived by what he had seen too many times. Unless he got a detailed explanation from Vecna himself included with citations and footnotes, Eddie was not likely going to ever understand exactly how things had come to be at this point in time. He was on his own to try and make sense of what had happened to him–unless Isaac had something more that he could offer, if he remembered anything.

"Will you agree to listen to him?" asked Owens. "I promise that if it's not him when he wakes up, if he's hostile in any way to you or you feel threatened, we'll end everything right there and get you out of the room, but it's absolutely crucial that we understand where he's been because it could tell us what's happening right now, what that earthquake means, and where Vecna is, among other things. If he's sane and coherent, we need the information he can give us, but I know he won't give us anything unless he has someone he trusts here with him."

"If he thinks I'm dead, it'll only confuse him if he sees me."

"You thought he was dead. How confused are you?"

"Very."

"But you can see that he's real, and he'll see that you're real."

Eddie wasn't so sure. He didn't feel real anymore. He felt nothing and everything; he felt lost and overwhelmed as he had in the days following their first defeat of Vecna. Everything that had happened was too much for one human brain to process and so, to keep his mind from collapsing in on itself, it had made up scenarios in the most logical way to try and explain how circumstances had come to be. But none of that made sense now that this thing claiming to be Isaac was back on this side of the dimension.

He thought of the world outside this hospital room, of Chrissy and Max and Dustin and everyone who would now be at risk with the Upside Down converging on Hawkins. They would need to know everything they possibly could to head back into battle against an enemy that now threatened their very existence within their own world. They needed answers and short of Vecna himself, Isaac was the best chance they had of getting even a small portion of those answers.

"Will you talk with him?" asked Owens again.

It went against everything he believed in, it challenged everything he had come to learn and accept about himself and his lot in life, but Eddie agreed.

/ / /

AUTHOR'S NOTE: You all might or might not have seen this note in the last story but I am absolutely set on Burn Gorman being cast as Isaac in my mind. Whether that's who you might have or not, I think it just helps to solidify a face since he's really the only OC character.