It started at graduation.
The day was already gonna be hard - would've been even if the mess in the Upside Down hadn't happened, given the weight of disappointed expectations and scholastic failures, but was even more so since it had - and they'd known that going in. It had been pushed back to account for the, ahem, "Earthquake", but a few months hadn't been nearly enough to move on. Maybe for the others, it would be - the normals, the ones who didn't know what had happened, the ones who (government cover-up and name-clearing or not) still looked askance at that Satanist kid, those too-shallow townspeople dwelling in blissful ignorance, unaware of everything that had been lost to Vecna and his scheming - but it wasn't for those in the know.
There was something so wrong about celebrating. Yeah, the fires had died down, and yeah, time had stubbornly refused to cease its inexorable march forwards, but nothing had changed. Vecna had won, even if no one really knew what that meant since he still had yet to recuperate. Eddie had died, had been left behind amidst the wreckage of a shattered plan. Max had recovered, though only slightly; she was awake, but the adjustment it took for her to get used to the loss of her sight and her mobility was hitting her hard and no one knew if she'd be able to recover.
Nancy was still beating herself up for the failure of her plan. El was doing the same for not being able to help even with all of her power. Dustin for not being able to stop everything that went wrong with Eddie, with the diversion, with the bats. Lucas for everything that went on with Max. Hopper for not being around. Joyce for leaving. The entire party had buried itself in various layers of regret and guilt, and a graduation wasn't gonna make things any better.
Steve was doing better than the others, if only because he had some practice. He'd spent too much time after his first encounter with the Upside Down just… sitting. Hovering on his patio and looking out at his pool, fighting the urge to get the hell out of there. Wondering how the situation with Barb could have gone differently, how he could have won that particular confrontation. He never came up with an answer, but he thought about it. Over and over and over and over again. Doing his very, very best to come up with anything to fix the situation. Consistently coming up empty, too.
The latest string of events was just a repeat, a reprise that somehow managed to be worse than the original. He'd spent too much time sitting in the Creel house, staring at the Rightside Up equivalent of where Max got Vecna'd; at least equal time sitting at the place where they lost Eddie; a whole mess of what ifs bombarding him. He and Robin had both gotten time off from Family Video in the name of disaster relief, complete with pay, but he'd done very little outside of sitting and brooding over how things might go wrong.
Those were hours of silence. His head ached and his ears rang - perks from one-too-many concussions over the years, or an exacerbated effect of oxygen loss during their siege, he wasn't fully sure - but everything else was dead silent.
Too silent.
It was the kind of silence that left too much space in its stead. One that brought with it too much room for self-recrimination. One that came with hypotheticals, with blame that was, he knew - intellectually, at least, if not emotionally - only partly fair. Yeah, intellectually, he knew that there was only so much they could have done - that they lacked any kind of training, any back-up, anything by way of room for error - but his head wasn't the kind to let that knowledge have any significance whatsoever, so he just… sat.
Robin had snapped him out of it, eventually, though. It had taken less than a day for her to start visiting, filling the too-oppressive silence with her energetic rambling. He didn't participate - couldn't bring himself to talk, not with that silence still so loud - but she didn't expect him too either. Just kept talking, about films and work and the party. By the end of the second day, he was chuckling quietly; noon the next, actually laughing. In some ways it felt like a betrayal, to laugh in an area wrought with so much pain. In some ways it felt like healing.
Besides, Dustin needed him.
The party was struggling, and he couldn't help but feel responsible for all of them, but Dustin was taking everything harder still. Steve hated to see it, hated the fact that the kid's cocky snark had died down - sure, he'd scolded the kid for it, but in a fond way, one that both knew was just his version of Dustin's teasing rejoinders - hated that he'd withdrawn into a thinly veiled shell of himself. He had his passions, still, but they'd turned half-obsessive, corrupted by too much pain and loss and grief that the kid didn't know how to handle. There was fixation and there was blaring the same Metallica song over and over again in his room, poring over D&D modules like they were his new religion.
So Steve did his best to be there for Dustin the way Robin had been for him. To pull him out of his funk - sometimes literally, if the kid didn't move for long enough that his room became a bit… musty - and at least try to make things better for him. There was only so much he could do, but he could at least be there for the kid. Could let Dustin rant to him about the game - he knew more about it than he'd ever expected too, and he'd even started saying the name right first try - so he'd stop obsessing over it on his own. Could get Dustin to consider attending Corroded Coffin practice sessions instead of holing up in his room and destroying his ear drums. Could sit with Dustin and chat with him about something inane until the silence the kid was trying so hard to drive away vanished under light chatter.
There were still bad days, though. Still says when he didn't feel like moving, or even getting out of bed. Days when his phone would ring with person after person trying to contact him without him having any will to actually answer them. Hours when he got so lost in his head that he wasn't certain he'd find his way out again, when his muscles felt like jelly if he tried to move and his head set to spinning after two seconds of motion.
If it weren't for the fact that he'd promised - himself and Robin and Dustin and everyone else - that he'd be there for the graduation, that would probably be a bad day too.
'86, baby. It wasn't anybody's year.
And yet there they all were, seated in rickety folding chairs arranged in awkward rows on the flat, rolling strips of land just outside of Hawkins High. The school gymnasium - where graduations usually took place - had been neatly destroyed by one of Vecna's gate portals, so they'd awkwardly attempted to simulate normalcy right out back; all it managed to do was remind everyone - definitely the party and party-adjacent, but even some of the others, judging by the looks Steve could see being exchanged - of all the crap that had gone down a few months prior.
And so Steve sat there, hands tapping aimless patterns on his knees, waiting for the ceremony to start so that he could get on with waiting for the ceremony to end.
The graduates had already left to their places. It wasn't clear if Steve should have been happy about this or not; yeah, he'd have appreciated Robin being there, a bulwark against all the shit trying to crash down on him, but he was also glad that she was having a moment to herself. (And, quite possibly, not just to herself, given that he was reasonably confident he'd seen Vickie already waiting in line. Nancy was there, too, though, and he honestly wasn't sure which friend she'd choose to hang out with.)
Besides, he was just sitting in the audience, and he should really be able to do that without needing someone to hold his hand the whole damn time. It wasn't like he actually had to do anything. He was just sitting there. It shouldn't be a hard task, shouldn't be something that has him wanting to bolt outta there as quickly as possible, shouldn't be something that feels like trying to complete a task while moving through molasses with weighted ankles… but he could do absolutely nothing about the fact that it was. A lot like that.
If it weren't for the fact that Dustin was sitting there, staring at the Congratulations to the Hawkins High class of '86! posters, pennants, and banners, he might not have been there, but he was. And he could handle it. And he'd be fine.
The microphone squealed and the graduation began.
– – –
It started at graduation.
They'd all known that graduation wasn't going to be easy, but it was a special kind of difficult when partway through the C-last names, a moment of silence was held - as would be custom for everyone else lost in the "Earthquake" and surrounding disasters - for "Chrissy Cunningham."
– – –
It started at graduation.
They got over halfway through before the first sign of trouble, but it was at least a semi-predictable sign of trouble. Something had gone on behind the scenes - Steve still suspected that Hopper had something to do with it, but that hadn't yet been confirmed - and the government had so nicely agreed to let out some cover story clearing Eddie's name. It had taken too long (not that that was especially surprising either given that it was the government, after all) but they'd eventually released something. Most of the graffiti and spray paint had died down after, and a rather alarming number of devout and charitable churchgoers stopped by the new Munson trailer - government-subsidized, of course - with a ridiculously large number of casseroles of various qualities.
None of them seemed to register that the person they'd wronged wasn't exactly around anymore, or that casseroles wouldn't do much by way of changing the past even if he were.
The latest in the long string of unspoken, unasked-for, self-centered apologies from the townsfolk came in the form of a letter, delivered to Wayne by care of Hawkins' usual postal service. It was well made - thick, embossed parchment, with a stamped-on gold seal to boot - and the dark, neatly arranged letters had spelled out another guilt-ridden platitude: We at Hawkins High would like to commemorate your loss at the Class of '86 graduation! (Steve found the exclamation mark bitterly amusing, a physical version of the glittering eyes and wide smiles of reporters conveying the latest tragedy for public consumption.)
And so it wasn't a surprise when, about 90% of the way through the last-names-beginning-with-M category, Principal Higgins carefully enunciated Eddie's name through the microphone.
For a moment - just a moment - there was dead silence. (It wasn't like with Chrissy, or the others. It wasn't respectful, and it didn't even seem intentional. It seemed nothing but stunned.)
And then the murmuring began.
The audience lost its mostly quiet, generally respectful silence en masse, as if the name had been a cue. The noise level mounted slowly, but surely, like a crescendoing hum of bees taking over the outdoor auditorium. Even some of the students still waiting to walk across the stage did it, turning to whisper at their neighbors without missing a beat. That, too, was more or less expected - an unfortunate side effect to the small-minded, small-town atmosphere Hawkins had developed over the decades - but that didn't make it any less aggravating.
And then someone in the front row - middle-aged, but still wearing a jacket too-evocative of a letterman's jacket (without, admittedly, actually being a letterman's jacket) - stood up, angrily gesticulating at the people around him before raising his voice and full on shouting, "To hell with Munson!" The murmuring stopped, then came back even louder than before. "That freak's name doesn't belong with our childrens', Higgins! What, just 'cause some government stooge comes in here, tells us some pretty story, you 'xpect us to forget that that murderer got what he deserved?"
Dustin stiffened where he sat in the next chair over, hand curling into a fist he barely seemed aware of making. Steve reached out, settled a comforting - and, ideally, restraining - hand over it.
The principal shifted awkwardly. "I understand how you feel, but-"
"Yeah, right." There didn't seem to be much by way of dissent amongst the audience. "You don't know anything. Too bent over boot-lickin' to see straight." It was less of a shout than it was a grumble, but they all heard it anyway.
Dustin shifted, and Steve wasn't the only one to notice. Whether it was the motion that caught his attention, or the tension-fraught audience that was about two seconds away from combusting, Hopper picked up on something that had him standing up, hat in hands as he tried to gather everyone's attention to himself. "Look-"
The guy turned, but rolled his eyes and turned away again within seconds. "Oh, butt out of it, Sheriff."
"No, you butt out of it." He sounded pissed - looked pissed - but Steve wasn't sure how obvious it'd be to people outside the inner circle. Somehow, he wasn't sure it'd be that much more subtle if he didn't know better. "Unless you think you're doing something by disturbing the peace at a high school graduation."
"The peace was disturbed the second Munson got a second's worth of time at a high school graduation, like he wasn't responsible for all the other moments of silence we had today? Will have today?"
Hopper scoffed. "What, he caused the earthquake now?" A little of the murmuring died down, but not much. Not enough.
"I dunno, but it's sure suspicious." He looked around then, staring at those around him as if waiting for them to agree. There were far too few who didn't immediately disagree. "Him and his Satanist cult of-"
Hopper interjected before he could get farther into the statement. "Alright now, that's enough-"
"It's not nearly enough-"
Dustin was out of his seat before Steve could stop him. In some ways, he wasn't sure he did want to stop him. "Don't talk about him like that."
The guy turned, looking back for the first time since Hopper had entered the debate. "Like what, kid?" A second passed before a look approximately the epitome of a double-take flickered across his features. "Wait, no, you're one of 'em, too, right? Part of that… Hellfire stuff?"
Dustin's chin jerked forward, expression defiant. "Yeah. I am."
"Then no wonder you're stickin' up for him." He turned away again. "Go home, kid. Or, better yet, go to church. Get yourself on the right path before it's too late."
Hopper looked like he was about to intervene, but Dustin spoke up first. "No."
The guy turned back again. "What?"
"I said no."
Over the years, Steve had seen Dustin - had seen all of the party, really - in the throes of various emotions. Glory, fear, confusion, combat. Grief. And also anger. Never - in all those situations, with all those emotions, over all those years - had Steve seen Dustin look even half so fierce as that one moment.
"You people, with your judgements, and your prayers, and your- your casseroles. You don't get it, do you? Don't get the point." The voice was one Steve had heard him use before, on any of the countless instances where he didn't follow the plot of some conversation or another, but lacking any of the warmth it'd held then. This was cold and angry. It didn't sound like Dustin, and yet it sounded exactly like Dustin. "Eddie didn't do anything. He didn't cause that earthquake, and he didn't hurt any of your precious darlings, either.
"You're so eager to pin the blame on him because he's not the same as everyone else. We're the freaks because we like to play a fantasy game." The words weren't his, not like all the others. Were more of a quote, a recitation, than anything. And Steve could hear it in a very different voice - Eddie's voice - so damn easily that he had no doubt about where he'd gotten them. "Because of the music we listen to. Because putting the blame on someone so obviously different hides the fact that your perfect little community has its flaws, just like everyone else. Has the bullies and the cruelty and the judgement. You don't wanna see that your children are the same ones who have made life a living hell for my friends and me since kindergarten. Because we're different, too.
"So, tell me. Well, where does the line stop? You've drawn a line in the sand: no freaks allowed? What makes a freak? Role-playing games are Satanist? Well, they're not that different from board games; are those Satanist too? Is bridge on Sunday freak behavior? Comic books? Theatre? Plays? Where does it stop?" He paused - just for a second - but no one spoke. Not yet. "You draw a line in the sand and it's only a matter of time before the waves push it closer to you.
"You preach being kind to one another, but I guess that stops at the church double doors, huh? Eddie was one of the only ones who accepted all the weirdos that you couldn't handle, and you call him a freak. Jonathan, too." That particular person looked vaguely like he wanted to crawl under his chair to avoid the attention, but he didn't. "If they're the freaks for not being as bad as all of you sons of bitches, then normalcy is overrated."
He stopped. Looked out over the crowd. Steve followed suit. The murmuring had stopped, but he couldn't tell how they'd react once they started talking again. The guy at the front was still standing there awkwardly, but he hadn't started speaking yet either.
"You know what?" Dustin managed eventually. "Forget it."
He raised his middle finger, directed it firmly towards the stage, and then ran like hell outta there.
– – –
It started at graduation.
Steve left a few seconds after. He stayed just long enough to register a short period of awkward silence followed by Hopper starting to say something, but he didn't hear any of it before he got too far away to hear much of anything. Dustin hadn't gone too far - was ambling around the parking lot with his hands in his pockets and his head bowed low - but it still took a bit of exertion to catch up to him.
When he did, neither of them spoke. He just tucked his hands into his own pockets - ignoring the fact that summertime was a bit hot for pocket-usage - and walked along at his side.
Unlike all the other times, Dustin was the first one to break the silence. "I don't get it."
Steve hummed. "Mmhmm?"
"They're so… so stupid." He huffed out a breath, but it didn't seem to help. "They can't just rise above all this superficial… shit around them."
"I know." He did. He was also in the unique position of having been one of those people, though. Of not seeing the "superficial shit" for what it was. Of not wanting to deal with all the repercussions of breaking the mold, be it his parent's or society's. "They might. Eventually. But it's not that easy." Dustin looked like he was about to protest, but Steve hurried on first. "It should be, yeah. But it's not."
"Yeah." Dustin nodded. "Doesn't make it fair. Doesn't mean I have to like it."
Steve echoed the motion. "I know."
Another moment of silence.
Steve took the initiative in breaking it that time, nudging him with his elbow. "Since when do you curse so much?" It was a light question, but he'd never been good with the serious stuff anyway. Philosophizing and wisdom weren't his things; inane chatter was.
Dustin smiled, though - a small thing, but real enough - so maybe it was worth it. "Just felt right."
They walked in silence for a few more paces, hitting the tree that grew at one end of the parking lot before turning back and pacing in the other direction.
Dustin took another step after that, then said, "Sorry to derail the event."
Steve shrugged. "Sucked anyway. And Robin already walked. So did Vickie. Your friend from Hellfire… J-, uh… Jim?"
Dustin rolled his eyes, and Steve might have scolded him for it some other day, but it was just good to see him acting a little more like himself. "Jeff."
"Yeah, Jeff. He's already walked. And he'd be happy with what you said even if he hadn't. And Nance'll understand, you know that."
"Yeah." Dustin nodded. "So what now?"
"Well, we've got-" Steve took a second, checked his watch. "Another hour and a half 'til it lets out. Wanna get some ice cream?"
He got another eye roll in return. "Wanna relive your Scoops Ahoy! days that badly?" A sigh, slightly more jovial than it had been previously. "Glory days, I suppose."
Steve whacked his hat into his eyes. "Shut up or I won't take you."
"Hurt me, hurt me." They turned anyway, walked towards Steve's car. "I guess I'll help you. But no flirting. I'd rather not have to bleach out my eyeballs."
"Yeah, yeah." Steve unlocked the car, stepped inside. "Wipe your-"
"Wipe my feet, I know." Dustin did - the right way, for once, and Steve wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad one - and then settled into the seat.
– – –
It started at graduation.
They got back about ten minutes before the event let out. They'd gone to an ice cream shop - not, of course, Scoops Ahoy! since it hadn't survived past the Starcourt Mall catastrophe, but a similar one - and then loitered around doing nothing in the booth they'd reserved. It had been a decent conversation, partly flawed by the undertone of anxiety about returning. Neither had wanted to do it, but they'd made a pact - silent, only between the two of them, but a pact nonetheless - that they'd go. Besides, they did want to congratulate their friends, and that might take some degree of personal sacrifice.
When the event did let out, it was with a flood of people that worsened that anxiety a touch, but no one ended up saying anything. Most ignored - or didn't notice - that they were there in the first place; those that did see them looked away again a few seconds after.
And then there were the friends in question, who were already waiting in a cluster, waving eagerly as soon as they approached. They were still standing in the graduation space, awkwardly clumped around crooked rows of empty chairs, the last remnants of the event already principally dispersed.
Ostensibly, they mostly didn't address Dustin's speech-slash-rant either. Not verbally, at any rate. But Steve could see how it was there, in the undertones. In the way Nancy yanked the kid in for a hug that lasted a little too long. Robin's affectionate stealing of the kid's hat, and then her subsequent ruffling of his hair. The party's allegedly-subtle fist bumps and high fives. Hopper pulling him away for a second to "give him a lecture about public respect" or something like that despite the fact that he ended with something that looked like, "Good job, kid." if Steve read his lips right.
And then, eventually, they clustered together even further, grabbing some random bystander and getting them to take a photo. (Steve hadn't been sure it was going to work - thought for sure that Dustin's speech would at least make it more difficult to find someone willing to - but she took the camera without question, snapped a shot, and then moved on.)
– – –
It all started at graduation.
They didn't know it then. Didn't know it at all until a few days later, when Jonathan developed the photos and noticed it.
It: a light flashing behind them, shades of white and black that hadn't been there when they took the photo.
It: a figure in the background, just barely visible in a blur of frozen light and motion.
It: a figure running diagonally away from the camera, half of a profile and half of a familiar baseball-shirt-turned-Hellfire-club-attire.
It: a figure that was definitely Eddie Munson.
